Speaking of Painfully Funny and a Glorious Evening...But Not In This Post
To Blog or Not To Blog, Part 3
Or, as I like to call it, Part 1 of the two-part answer to one of Donna's many questions.
Gotta Blog, Gotta Sing, Gotta Blog
So, you want to be a blogger. You’re ready to run with the big blog dogs, if only you knew how to do it. You’ve decided that if it’s good enough for name authors, it’s good enough for you. You’re ready to show the world how good your writing IS.
In that case, you need a blog that shows said writing off, not that shares what you wore today, why you don't like your boss, and why you think all agents and editors are out to get you (more on this later).
Until you have something published to talk about, you should consider what you want your blog to ultimately support. Are you going for a regular column, or to become the next David Sedaris? If so, then your blog should reflect that -- it should be funny. If you're writing romances, then your blog should reflect some sort of love for that genre, as well as some information -- perhaps the books you've just read that you thought were fab, describing a meeting with a favored author, etc. Same holds for other genres -- your blog should support what it is you write.
I'm now going to take the assumption that if you're here, you're at least attempting to write Humor, so I'm going to focus the rest of my remarks on Humor, only. But it applies to all genres, with the appropriate genre twists.
If you're going to blog, then your blog must first and foremost be FUNNY. It should reflect your voice, the voice you use when writing humor. Let me be brutally honest, like your mother should be but isn't -- a blog about whatever happens to be on your mind at the moment is unlikely to be funny. It's also unlikely to be interesting.
Which is the next key. As your readership grows -- that IS the idea, remember -- you want to have more than your mom and the people whose blogs you visit regularly showing up and posting. You want posts from people you've never heard of, don't know, and potentially will never meet. You want to build an active readership, to have people who check out your blog because it's YOUR blog and they WANT something new from YOU.
No one, not even your mother, wants to hear about that weird dream you had last night that didn't have a start, or an end, or anything even fun or funny happen in it, and you can barely remember it, but...
Seriously. Do. Not. Do. This. Ever. Again. Yes, I'm talking to you. All of you.
A blog is, ultimately and for real, a MARKETING TOOL. Yes, yes it IS. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again -- it's a tool you control, a weapon you wield, in the vast marketplace of consumer choices. You're better without a blog than with a bad one, because, as Ben Affleck has learned and Britney Spears is learning, there IS such a thing as too much publicity. If you, as a WRITER, present yourself as unprofessional, inane, and, worst of all, boring, then you cannot use your blog to create readership.
Your blog should drive readers to your published humor pieces, and vice versa. If you have an active blog that is actually funny, aka supporting your humor writing, then you should have it listed in every author bio you have. And you should keep it updated.
Yes, updating a blog is work and it's writing and it takes time from the "real stuff". However, if you're using it as a marketing tool (aka, as you should be), then you need to ensure that it's updated more than once every few months or so.
But, how to do this? And do it without depleting your entire store of saleable humor pieces?
Tune in next time, when we finally get to the entire point of this lecture series. We think.
Homework: Find a blog of a famous author you particularly like. (Yes, part of the homework is YOU finding it, not me finding it for you.) Study it and see what it is they do. Now find a blog of an author who isn’t famous, someone who’s mid-list or brand new. See how they do it. Compare and contrast.
