I'm sure that most of you know about these things, but since someone asked about this in another forum, I figured that I'd post some basic tips:
I was trolling the forums at Absolute Write today and stumbled upon a post about Blogs VS Website, in regards to being an author.
As an author, I prefer a blog because it's more personal. I have direct contact with my readers, and I enjoy the feedback that I receive regarding my posts.
The author of the post said that he tried blogging, but quickly grew bored of it since no one was reading it. I suspect that the poster didn't do much to let the world know about his blog.
There are a few things you need to do to promote your blog:
1. List your blog in the search engines. You can do this for free at Add Me and Submit Express.
2. Come up with a theme. Unless your readers are you close friends and family, they probably don't care about what your cat did last night, or what you had for breakfast.
3. Find other blogs similar to your own and comment on them. This is a great way to meet like-minded people.
4. Respond to comments on your blog. Let the readers know that you are reading what they take the time to post!
5. Post often. I like to post at least 2-3 times a week.
6. Ping your blog every day! This will let blog sites know that you have a new article posted. You can ping your blog at Ping Goat or Ping-O-Matic.
7. Join a blog surfing site such as Blogexplosion. This takes some work, but I always manage to pick up a few readers.
If you are looking for a blog service, I recommend Wordpress. Blogger is just plain buggy. Both of these hosts are 100% free. I don't see any reason to use any of the pay services.
I was trolling the forums at Absolute Write today and stumbled upon a post about Blogs VS Website, in regards to being an author.
As an author, I prefer a blog because it's more personal. I have direct contact with my readers, and I enjoy the feedback that I receive regarding my posts.
The author of the post said that he tried blogging, but quickly grew bored of it since no one was reading it. I suspect that the poster didn't do much to let the world know about his blog.
There are a few things you need to do to promote your blog:
1. List your blog in the search engines. You can do this for free at Add Me and Submit Express.
2. Come up with a theme. Unless your readers are you close friends and family, they probably don't care about what your cat did last night, or what you had for breakfast.
3. Find other blogs similar to your own and comment on them. This is a great way to meet like-minded people.
4. Respond to comments on your blog. Let the readers know that you are reading what they take the time to post!
5. Post often. I like to post at least 2-3 times a week.
6. Ping your blog every day! This will let blog sites know that you have a new article posted. You can ping your blog at Ping Goat or Ping-O-Matic.
7. Join a blog surfing site such as Blogexplosion. This takes some work, but I always manage to pick up a few readers.
If you are looking for a blog service, I recommend Wordpress. Blogger is just plain buggy. Both of these hosts are 100% free. I don't see any reason to use any of the pay services.
I am guessing this info is in there, but for anyone like myself who might not have time to go through it right now, and is reading this topic, I thought I would add a few links of some great articles that helped me: