Blogging is more popular than ever and despite the fact that the majority of bloggers launch with a bang, many discover that there's a considerable amount of work and commitment involved to prevent their blogs from fizzling out. If you're an author, having a blog can be a powerful way to promote yourself and your published work. Here are a few reasons why authors need to jump on the blog bandwagon.
1. Build a cyber sales channel.
Blogs are actually quite flexible in terms of content and functionality. For example, you can integrate e-commerce so that blog readers can purchase books directly from your site. You can tie-in your blog sales outreach to services like Clickbank and even Amazon.
2. Connect with your audience.
You audience is much broader than just readers and fans. Through a blog you can meet publishers, literary agents and other authors to exchange information and build a social network to support your book.
3. Boost book sales.
As an author you have the advantage of never running out of great ideas for blog posts. You can use our book to generate hundreds of topics for posts. Try using an excerpt from you book and expanding upon it, touch on something unique about one of your characters, discuss plot or print out a teaser page to encourage sales. Endless opportunities exist for blogging authors.
4. Become search engine friendly.
The primary search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Bing, continually crawl the web looking for new content that is regularly updated. Every time you submit a post a search engine bot will come along and index it on the internet. That makes you more searchable and increases your exposure. People will have an easier time finding you and connecting with the material that you're producing.
5. Develop conversations with readers.
Blogs aren't a one-way street. Commenting systems enable readers to share feedback and thoughts and regardless of whether they're positive or negative, participating in a dialogue is an excellent way to learn how to improve and expand on things that are disliked or favored.
If you don't have a blog, there's no time like the present to start one today. Give your fingers a run for the money and start typing.