It's Your Website...
Can You Win the Internet Trifecta?
You're a writer,
you have a lot to say...
so start talking!
Content is king on the internet. Web presence, whether it is a webpage or squidoo page or blog or a 'pedia' page, needs content so that the spiders can see it. A major drawback for most websites is that there is too much glitz and glare in the format pictures and animations. To work well on the web, content is king.
Fresh content is even better.
Keeping your website up to date and different enough for the search engines to frequently re-spider you is a challenge. Many people don't know how to maintain their own websites and for that they pay dearly. There are tools out there that make it simple, but it is so intimidating for most that once they get their website up, they don't keep it current. After all, it is just selling a book - and the book's sales pitch doesn't change - right? I've heard that excuse hundreds of times. And it is 100% WRONG!
Let's assume you can meet the challenge above and keep a website full of relevant content that is constantly changing. Then you have to meet the challenge of making it popular. Once you have good, current, popular content, you've won the trifecta of the internet.
So how do you do that? How do you accomplish this if you're not web saavy?
Enter the blog...
If you've been listening to the buzz of the best sellers lately, you'll hear that most authors have become dependent on blogs to get the word out about their book.
Blogs are great tools for very specific reasons, and those reasons are lots of content, current content and popular content.
Blogs however are not the only tools on the net that can create the trifecta. There are many others. It is just blogs, right now, are en vogue. Use it if you can. But if you go this route, you need to know you will be committing to quite a bit of work.
Why Blogs Work
Blogs work because they give you the platform to create a community online based on a following or a topic. They give you a platform to speak out. They give you a chance to be a celebrity or an authority from the comfort of your own desk. In the past few years, many bestseller's successes have been credited to a good blog.
Blogs give you a chance to put in a lot of text. Blogs give you the chance to add to it as many times as you want. But without popularity, they are pretty much just a diary.
Most people with blogs are advised to comment on other people's blogs to create a buzz about their blog. This is how you create popularity.
So, if you want to, get a blog - there are many blogging programs out there - easy to find and I'd print their names here, but the opportunities to blog increase daily, so find your blog spot on the web and claim it.
Figure out what you want to write about and write about 5 spots really quickly. Yes, 5 - get used to writing a lot - you're a writer, it's not so hard! And then start commenting on other people's blogs.
Voila, you'll end up with a successful blog!
Sounds good in theory...
Why Blogs Don't Work
The internet is a very patient place and it takes a long time to see results, sometimes weeks, even if you put full-time effort into the process. It can be months of waiting if you're working this effort part time. That fact alone discourages many people. They get a full head of steam, create a blog, write and write and still no visitors and virtually no impact on sales.
What successful bloggers will tell you is that you have to keep at it, even if you're the only one reading your blog. But that kind of persistence is rare and most people don't stick with it the way they need to. And truth be told, many successful authors actually pay someone else to create their online persona for them. It's usually a good investment, especially if you can't do it well by yourself.
Blogs also don't work because people don't want to 'be sold' and many authors create a blog that only sells their book.
In a similar way, when these bloggers comment on other people's blogs, they often point visitors back to their own blog by the virtual equivalent of getting up on a soap box in the back of someone else's lecture and yelling, "Look at me! Look at me!" That is called spamming and author's can get virtually blackballed by doing it. Again, this is another point of frustration, so they give up on their blog.
Yet another point creating 'blog failure' is that the blog author runs out of things to say or doesn't know how to organize blog topics to make for a compelling blog. They feel like they run out of material or just don't know how to structure the material they do have.
That was the bad news about blogging.
The good news is that if you read this entire book and do all of the exercises, you will have your first 20 blog entries already done.
You need to be persistent in your book marketing efforts, but it is easier to be persistant when you have a plan in place.
