Blogging for Self-Published Authors
By: Peter Lancellotti
Posted on: September 14, 2022
If you have a website, you might not want to make the same mistake I made, which is not posting new content regularly. I know I should have been posting as often as I did before the book launch, but when it started to take off, I started working too much on splitting my attention to working on my next book and figured there was enough content for the moment on my website. I’m currently working with my website designer on that now. I’m waiting to hear back from my accountant to see if I can use all those expenditures as a write-off. A fellow author said he did.
Back to blogging, there’s no magic number of how many blogs you feel you want to join. Just keep it at a number that you think you can manage. And try to post daily. If you only have an hour to engage with them, start with 5 to 10 different blogs.
Remember to think about who you’re writing this book for, your target audience. Find like-minded content providers and ask them if you can join their group (some are private, some are public). Start interacting with them, and their followers. If you post something people find brilliant, exciting, and enlightening, that’s your chance to ask the owner of the blog if you can post a link to where your book is selling, along with your website. Some say “yes,” and some say “no,” which is the nature of sales, marketing, and the human ego.
I’ve been interacting with 19 groups. I’m now down to 17 after getting booted off one for having too strong of an opinion on a topic that was near and dear to my heart, and leaving one because they liked my posts so much I was given admin duties. Be careful of that. You might find yourself spending hours on other people’s admin duties. At first I thought it was a good idea, but then I became the welcome wagon. It’s wonderful to welcome newcomers, but it’s also time consuming.
I hope this helped, and I can’t stress enough the importance of blogging once you’ve published. Moving up in the LGBTQ Memoirs and Spiritualism categories meteorically in the seventh week after my launch while marketing my fingers to the bone felt fantastic! What struck me down was a 12-day bout with Covid, and just as I was feeling better, a friend I hadn’t seen in years had some time off and came for a five-day visit. I got lazy and didn’t do any marketing for three weeks watching my sales ranking fall fast. But I cried when she walked through the entrance door because I’d been in isolation for three years. The first was due to one of those tragedies I speak of in the memoir, and the next two years because of our shared tragedy, Covid, the indiscriminate killer.
During my blogging, it also helped to be on a podcast with a celebrity in Los Angeles who appears in my story because she was born intersex (the arcane word considered politically incorrect nowadays is “hermaphrodite”). Naturally, due to my subject matter, I don’t just talk about being gay, but all people who fit into the acronym, LGBTQ. During the podcast, she asked me questions about my psychic mother as the show’s format was called “Haunted Playground.”
And as successful as I want to be, which I project in my morning meditation, be careful what you ask for because my third-grade elementary school teacher is reading it now. She sent me a private message to tell me what chapter she was on, and I cringed. She also said it was extremely well written, and she was enjoying it. While I can spin a yarn, I also gave credit where credit is due – to my amazing editing team. Keep in mind, work with professionals if you can afford it. I realize not everybody can. But if you can get some beta readers who are willing to give you feedback, and minimize mistakes, that’s like gold! But blog, blog, blog, and engage in those threads! I have an upcoming podcast with a woman, Hanlie Robbertse, who has over 150,000 followers in South Africa at the beginning of September. She’s a story coach and an empath. I have a little over 4000 followers, which won’t do much good unless I plan on becoming a bestselling author ten years from now. So, my fellow writers, bloggers, threadlings and authors to be, “If you want to get to the fruit of the tree, you have to go out on a limb.” – Shirley MacLaine.
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