Promoting Your Crime Novel Through Blogs
In today’s online world, blogging is all the rage. Blogging can reach a huge audience, is cheap and very easy to learn. People use blogs to promote all kinds of things, from health and fitness coaching, creative products like women’s fashion accessories, and even books. Your book.
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Blogging is a powerful way to bring in new readers and keep previous fans interested in your upcoming books. In 2011, it was estimated that there were over 150 million public blogs in existence. If you’re looking to start your own personal blog, consider a few of these tips below to get started.
Making Your Blog Successful:
- Analyze Your Audience And Customer Base
- Use Social Networking
- Listen To Your Fans
- Talk Back
- Get Creative With Content
Using Blogs For Marketing
If you decide to use your blog to market your crime novel, the first thing you should do is sit back and analyze your audience. Who will be reading your book? If your book is for young adults, gather ideas on what sort of articles and interactive activities draw them into online blogs.
A hugely popular way to draw not only young adults, but anybody that uses a computer to your blog is to use social networking. Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are great methods for catching the attention of your fans. Creative a Facebook page that links to your twitter and update it regularly with exclusive information.
Of course, it is always quite wise to listen to your fans. They might leave comments on your blog telling you that they absolutely love what you’re doing or that they dislike it. If they’re enjoying the content, keep doing what you’re doing. If not, change it up. You can even take some of their suggestions and tweak them to your liking as you see fit.
Interact with the blog readers by answering individual questions left in comments, sent in emails or otherwise. This is another style of building website morale. Talking back could ease tension on the blog and reassure readers that there is someone on the other side that cares about their thoughts and feelings. Nobody enjoys the feeling of talking to a bot.
Already have a blog, but are just looking to spice it up? Consider finding a service such a Blog Wranglers who will take the blog you already have and move it to WordPress –a more hip and interactive blog base.
The widgets and plugins are great tools to help your writing become slightly more interactive via your blog, as opposed to just talking about the book itself.
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Generating Blog Content
- Guest blogging
Guest blogging is when a blogger is invited to another website to share their words about a specific topic needed for the particular blog. If you are trying to promote your crime novel, find other fiction writers looking for all kinds of articles to build up content for their own blog and keep their fans interested.
But why is this helpful to you? The great thing about guest posting is that you are usually allowed to include a link to your own blog. This means that there is endless potential to drive traffic to your website by inciting the help of other bloggers.
- Utilize Online Resources
Browse the internet for different tips on how to market your fiction book online. The web is full of resources from people just like you, looking to start blogs or some that have had them for years now. Take advantage of that.
Don’t be afraid to shoot a message to a person that owns a fiction blog much like one you are trying to start. You’d be surprised at how many people are willing to help you get started. Plus, you’ll never know unless you ask.
Marcela De Vivo is a freelance writer and online marketing professional in the Los Angeles area. She’s planning to write a book on online marketing and SEO, and has already begun posting content ideas to her company blog at Gryffin.co.