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Jonathan Fields on Blog Traffic, Subscribers and Content

January 26, 2012 By 1 Comment

Yesterday I published a blog post on my other blog, Write Nonfiction NOW!, based on a very interesting interview I conducted with Jonathan Fields. In that post, Jonathan and I discussed what it takes to create a bestselling book: author’s platform, a business model, hard work, great release strategies, and a great book. (You can read the post here.) Today on this blog, I’ve published the remainder of our conversation, which covered tips for bringing in blog traffic, getting blog readers to subscribe to your blog and creating a better blog.

Jonathan is the author of  Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love, which was named a Top 10 Small Biz Book by Small Business Trends, and Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance, his latest book, which has generated extraordinary praise for its provocative, science-meets-art approach to embracing uncertainty as a catalyst for innovation and action. It’s a must read for authors—yes, even authors of blogged books! I wrote a short review yesterday, but it bears repeating for those of you blogging with the hope that your book will be discovered in the process. All writers feel uncertainty, and that can stop us in our tracks. When you have no readers—or few readers—to your blog, when you aren’t sure if what you are writing makes sense, has meaning, is touching anyone—or ever will be purchased by a publisher or readers, it’s hard to keep moving forward. That’s why you want to read Jonathan’s book, Uncertainty. There you will find advice on how to make the uncertainty we all feel at times less unpleasant and to use it as a way to fuel your creative process.

Jonathan, a dad, husband, author, speaker and serial-entrepreneur, blogs at JonathanFields.com. Check out his blog if you want  a taste of a successful blog. He’s been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, FastCompany, Inc., Entrepreneur, Forbes, USA Today, People, CNBC, FoxBusiness, Vogue, Elle, Self, Fitness, Outside, O Magazine and thousands of other places. He also runs a book marketing educational venture TribalAuthor.com, where he shares what he has learned about marketing his books and becoming a successful author. (He shared a ton of great info on this topic in yesterday’s post.)

What follows is our conversation on blogging. Enjoy and learn!

For those authors who are beginning to blog, blogging a book or wanting to improve their blogs, can you offer a few tips for bringing in more traffic?

Bringing in more traffic…that’s an interesting question, because a lot of traffic is moving away from blogs these days and towards social media. There’s so much attention getting split. I would say leverage Twitter to build relationships. Where you can, share links to your blog. Make sure that when you share links, it’s both a much smaller part of everything else that you do, so you should be 90 percent other-serving, and 10 percent or less self-serving. Same thing with Facebook, but when you do it in Facebook, you can have more of a conversation. So share a link to a post, but then you can also put in content. Share a paragraph or two from the post, and then ask a question that will inspire a conversation in the comments on Facebook. Sometimes this defeats the comments in your blog, but…

Other ways to drive traffic are to create what we call “flagship content.” Create a major thought piece that’s provocative and establishes a position and a strong voice and builds leadership that people will want to share. It can be a series. It can be a long blog post. It can be a manifesto. We actually used a manifesto to launch Career Renegade.

It was called The Firefly Manifesto and was a PDF.

And once the readers show up, how do we get them to actually subscribe to the blog?

One, offer them something in exchange for their e-mail. That may be a mini-course or an eBook or a teaser chapter from a book. Feature the call to action to subscribe boldly, either at the top of your blog, the top right, or underneath your blog posts.

Second, ask them at the end of your blog post to subscribe. Throw in a sentence that says, “If you’ve enjoyed this…” or some variation of “if you’ve enjoyed this post, sign up for the weekly updates,” or whatever works for your format.

Any other tips you might want to add on blogging well?

I can go way down the rabbit hole with this. Just because you know how to use the technology doesn’t mean you have something to say. Blog because you have something to say, not because you have a place to say it.

One of the questions I get all the time is, “I’ve been blogging for six months, and nobody’s listening.” And I’ll look at the blog, and I’ll realize It’s because the person’s not saying anything. It’s like white-washed content, or there’s no voice, no position, no story, no value. If you’re going to put in the effort, have something to say, offer real value, tell great stories, be provocative (if that’s in your nature), have a voice. Give people something to say “yes” or “no” to. If you don’t, nobody will care.

Take Jonathan’s last comment to heart. It is especially true for book bloggers. Why would anyone want to read your blogged book if you have no voice, nothing to say, aren’t adding any value to anyone’s life, have no story to tell that touches people in some important or deep way? Write a book, blog a book, that matters–that’s worth reading.

Comments or questions about this post? Leave them below! I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Don’t forget about my upcoming “Blog Your Way to a Book Deal” 4-part Teleclass starting next week!  Preorder a copy of How to Blog a Book and SAVE $30 on registration fee! Get all the details here: http://bit.ly/BlogaBookTeleclassOffer

 

Filed Under: Building a Better Blog, Increasing Traffic, Publicizing Your Blog Tagged With: , , ,

C.C. Chapman on Blogging vs. Blogging a Book

January 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Writers like to write. They don’t like to promote or build platform. That’s why I encourage them to blog and to blog their books. As they blog, they actually promote themselves and their work—and build platform. Why? Because they are producing content.

Search engines love content. And readers want content—especially content that solves their problems, adds value to their lives, touches them emotionally, or makes them think. When search engines and readers find content on your blog, your blog—or your blogged book—gains traffic. If you get enough traffic, and enough people talking about your content and sharing it, before long you and your blog or blogged book get noticed—by more readers and possibly by an agent or publisher. That’s why they say “content is king.” Great content produced regularly gets you noticed.

No one knows this better than C.C. Chapman. I met C.C., the co-author of Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business, at BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2011 this past November.  C.C. is a recognized leader in the online and social media marketing space. He is a digital lifestyle writer with a passion for travel, photography, food, and music, as well as an author, speaker, entrepreneur, and father. He writes a blog, which you can read here.

C.C.’s book, Content Rules, is a must have for authors wanting to use their writing skills to engage readers, build author platform and build a business around their books—and for those of you blogging books. It’s filled with case studies, tips, and advice on how to do everything from writing a blog post to producing a video or podcast.

I interviewed C.C. while at BlogWorld Expo. We covered a lot of different topics related to content marketing and how it applies to social networking, making money and fitting this activity into a writer’s daily writing schedule, which I included in a post on my other blog, Write Nonfiction NOW! (You can read that post here.) However, I told C.C. about my book, How to Blog a Book, and we discussed that and blogging as well.

In a conversation we had later, C.C. admitted he didn’t agree on the total concept of blogging a book. In fact, he said, “I think your approach (and the book) is a very valid one, but it worries me a bit that it reads as if anyone can just start blogging and it will end up in a book. It felt a bit like anyone could do it, and I don’t agree that they can. What I mean is that anyone can be a blogger, but not everyone can be a book author. It takes a lot more.”

C.C. is right. Not everyone who sets out to blog a book will succeed, nor will every blogged book get discovered. Nor does every book idea, blogged book or blog deserve to become a book or to be “discovered.” That’s why aspiring authors should first look at their ideas through the lens of a book proposal using what I call the “proposal process”; this helps you decide if your idea has what it takes to become a book. Additionally, some writers/bloggers with good, marketable ideas will have to shop their book around to agents and publishers using a proposal and some will have to self-publish in some form. Not every good idea finds a home with a traditional publisher.

All that said, here’s the great information on blogging that came out of my conversation with C.C. And take a peak at the longer post on my other blog, too.

Do you think blogging a book is a good way to attract readers and possibly a publisher?

Blogging, or blogging a book, will definitely help attract attention, because you can definitely point to your blog and say, “You can read my writing here,” when you meet that agent or publisher. If you are going to rely only on your blog to get noticed, you are going to have to be really good and really, really lucky. More happens if you go to events and meet a publisher. Relying on the blog to get you the book contract is short sighted. It’s a piece of the publishing puzzle, for sure. I think it will help you in the long run.

I’ve written blog post that turned into chapters in a book. I put the idea out there to see how people would react. That’s a great way to test your audience. But I think there is so much more than the writing piece when it comes to getting published.

I don’t disagree with the idea of blogging a book, but there is more to it than just blogging. You also need to do the legwork…meeting publishers, writing the book proposal. It’s rare that publishers line up and say, “Please, please let us publish your book.” It does happen. But it doesn’t happen overnight. And you have to be a good writer.

And writing a book is extremely different from writing a blog.

How is writing a book different from writing a blog?

Just the scale of blog post versus writing a book is not even comparable. I’m not just talking about the number of pages. Having a coherent thought for a blog post is much easier than having a coherent thought for 200 pages in a book. That’s very, very difficult. I’ve heard lots of people say, “I’m a blogger. I can write a book.” I don’t think it’s one and the same.

To blog a book, I suggest writers start by evaluating their book ideas through the lens of a book proposal, creating platform and promoting the blogged book (the blog) on line and off. I tell them they should work toward being “discovered” by writing posts regularly as well, but they should be prepared to self-publish or to approach a publisher or agent with a proposal once they’ve finished writing the book. What do you think of this concept?

I think it’s an interesting and different approach. It reminds me of artists pages, where you are saying they should every day focus on a piece of the project.

I tell people, “If you want to write a book, writing the proposal is the hardest part.” It’s harder than anybody every imagined. To do it right takes a long time. Breaking it down and thinking about it through a proposal is a strategic and smart idea. If you can’t put together a book proposal, you’re never going to be able to put together a book. Ever. A proposal really focuses your thoughts. It makes sure you don’t just have an idea but that you have a book. There is a difference. There are all these great ideas that sound like they might work as a book, but can you really dedicate 20,000 or 40,000 words to that simple idea? Can you break it down in your process and really write the proposal?

Now, if you want to just blog, I don’t think you need to do this sort of strategic research. I believe you start a blog because you are passionate about a subject. Unless, of course, you want to make money. Then it makes sense to go through this process with your blog.

If you are blogging a book, you need both passion and a strategic business process. You’ll be blogging about this topic for a long time to come–long after you finish the book. And you need a business plan for the book and the blog–especially if you’d like to make money with your book and your blog.

Two short pieces of business today: Please remember to pre-order a copy of How to Blog a Book to get your $30 discount off the upcoming “Blog Your Way to a Book Deal 4-part teleclass.” For more information, click here.

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Filed Under: How to Begin Blogging a Book, How to Decide if You Should Blog a Book Tagged With: , , ,

Liz Strauss’ on How to Get Readers to Comment on Your Posts

January 19, 2012 By 3 Comments

Engagement. That’s what every blogger seeks—or should seek. If your blog readers comment on your posts, it means they not only read but get involved in what you write—involved enough to actually have a conversation with you. The blog stops being a one way broadcast, like a printed book, and becomes a conversation. Most bloggers would say that’s a true blog, one that engages the reader to do more than simply read what you wrote.

As a book blogger, you also want your readers to comment. Your blog represents a test marketed version of your book. Every time you publish a post, the comments your readers leave offer you valuable feedback you can use to improve your manuscript and make it more readable and marketable. Your blog readers serve as the best critique group you could ever find because they are the actual people who will buy your book. You want to engage them.

Assuming you have blog readers, how do you do you get them to comment? I asked Liz Strauss, the Queen of Comments, that question at BlogWorld & New Media Expo in November 2011.  At that time, Liz, who is a strategist, CEO and founder of  SOBCon, and keynote speaker, had over 94,000 comments on her three blogs. Wow. Wow. Liz, the author of The Secret to Writing a Successful and Outstanding Blog: An Insider’s Guide to How Conversation Is Changing the Way that Business Works, has been named among the The Top Influencers Alive: 10 Breakout Influencers of 2011, and was on Forbes list of Top 10 Women Social Media Influencers in the same week. She writes her popular Successful Blog  as well as what she calls her “writing blog” and the Liz Strauss blog.

If you don’t know Liz, she also was named Top 100 Social Media & Internet Marketing Bloggers, Top 100 Most Influential Marketers of 2008 and 2009,  50 of the Most Powerful and Influential Women of Social Media, NxE’s Fifty Most Influential ‘Female’ Bloggers and her blog is listed on Alltop Social Media and Alltop Twitterati. Liz is a social web strategist and community builder who works with businesses, universities, and individuals to help them understand how text, words, and images work in the culture of the social web. Learn more about Liz here.

As I said in my last post, Liz knows more than a thing or two both about blogging and publishing. And she knows a lot about how to get readers engaged on a blog. We have differing opinions about how comments can or should be used when blogging a book (as noted in my last post), but if anyone knows how to get readers engaged, it’s Liz. Here’s what she had to say when I asked her about getting readers to comment on blog posts.

You have 4,300+ posts on your Successful Blog and 600+ on your writing blog and several hundred on the Liz Strauss blog. Even more impressive to me, you have 94,000 comments on your blogs. How do you get that kind of engagement from your readers?

Blogging experience. Blogging experience. Information is all over the internet, but your experience of the information is not. A great example of that is movie critics. If every movie critic only blogged the information about a movie, we’d only need one movie critic. That’s critical. Don’t try to tie everything up in a bow. A blog is about conversation, not presentation.

What I just did [here at BWE] was presentation, so I’m quite happy with the idea that maybe nobody had any Q&A because it was about me presenting information. But I’ve actually gone back in and undone pieces of blog posts because I’ve tied it up too completely. Don’t tie everything up like you did with your essays. It doesn’t leave me as a reader anything to say but “great blog post.”

In other words, leave people with something to think about?

I call it, “Be complete but not thorough.” Don’t put the finishing touches on the painting, so to speak. It actually makes the post easier to write.

Along that same line, if you go reaching for a list of “how many things,” make a bulleted list without a number in mind. You can put the ordered list down, and let it number itself. Don’t go for seven or ten, just go for however many you think of. Then, after that write, “That’s how many I thought of,” because if you go reaching to fill out to ten, once again, you’re not leaving me any room. Stop and just say, “I thought of five. I bet you can think of more.” First of all, that’s truthful. Second of all, you leave me room to add something.

And that’s when you get the comments?

Right. Conversation is about me having an idea, and then it’s your turn to talk. A blog post, a true blog post, is really about one idea.

The most important parts of a blog post are the title and the question at the end. People write, “So, what do you think?” and that’s the right thing to do. “What do I think about the Vietnam War?” Ask a question that you or they can answer. And actually consider how someone might answer the question.

Sometimes I actually model the answer. I have a series of blog posts that are just questions, called “Questions to Get Closer to You.” Literally, they are just questions, like “What are three words that describe you and your business?” and then to help you out, I’ll answer the first one. I went into the comment box when I published it and wrote my answer, because sometimes people don’t want to comment because they don’t know what to write.

If you’re constantly thinking about your readers and their experience of what you’re doing, you might think, “Oh, I might be afraid to answer this because I wouldn’t know what kind of answer people are looking for. I’m such a weird thinker that I’ll end up being the one who’s way off in left field.”

What are the kinds of questions you ask readers at the end of posts?

Often the question I ask at the end becomes the title of the blog post. There’s one I’m working on right now that I know the question at the end is going to become the title of the blog post, and I haven’t even written it yet. It’s called “Are You Using Your Time Promiscuously?” I know where I’m going, but I haven’t gotten there yet. So, they’re pretty straightforward.

I wrote a blog post about CFD, a syndrome I named called “Can’t Follow Directions,” and it was called, “Has a CFD experience harmed your business?” That’s the question at the end. I explain how I did this thing where I invited people to give me five bits of information, and eighty percent of the two-hundred-some people who sent in the information couldn’t give me all five bits of information. This is the reason why CFD can really hurt your business, and it can hurt your business whether you’re the one who’s not following directions or someone else you’re working with can’t follow directions.

I offer a lot of information on my blogs and don’t get a lot of responses. I guess don’t always ask good questions at the end of my posts.

You have to be thinking about “What would I say back to myself after I read this?”

When I first began blogging, I learned that if I was about to put a sub-head in, I would cut the blog post and move that to Tuesday. What actually happened for a while was the blog post that I thought on Monday was going to be one blog post would end up running all week.  Tuesday I would start writing the post with that sub-head, and I would end up breaking that up again and again.

I find two things: If you’re trying too hard to make a sentence, that’s may be trying to be a good writer or maybe the sentence doesn’t belong there. If the blog post is getting long, you probably have two blog posts there. You want to hit it with a nice, killer bump at the end. We’re all reluctant readers. With lots of sub-heads, you’re going to have lots of type and turn people off.

Many  writers who are blogging books or promoting their books approach their topics as experts. They offer information. I see and read many blogs like this as well. These bloggers don’t tend to get as many reader comments. Can you discuss the different types of blogs and role comments play on these blogs?

What makes a blog a blog is that people are commenting on the posts. Obviously I’m being a purist here. Do you want to talk about the kind of blogs that The New York Times does, and The Harvard Business Review? If so, then you’re talking about a magazine with comments, and that’s not what I’m talking about. On these, basically people are just saying, “Yeah, I really like what you wrote,” or “Good job.”

I have a blog post from probably 2007, “Humility,” where the conversation goes on for about a hundred and three comments, where through that conversation I had ideas change; I found out why I do not like the sentence, “your humble servant.” I always knew I didn’t like it, but I found out why. Somebody had said something like, “You have to accept thing. Humility is about accepting anything,” and in the conversation ideas were actually changing, thoughts were changing. A conversation and discussion was actually happening.

I’ve had it happen more than once that I put a blog post out there and I thought I know what it was about and someone took it in a totally different direction.  It’s like when you’re sitting in a bar with four friends, and you put an idea out there and they take the conversation in an entirely different direction than you ever expected. That’s what the genre is about, and that’s why people call it “the conversation.”

Liz had a few more things to say about comments on blogged books in a previous post based on my BlogWorld interview with her. You can read them here.

With Liz’s last words in mind, let me ask you, my blog readers, a question: What have you done to garner comments on your blogs or blogged books? What has worked best to engage your readers?

Filed Under: Building a Better Blog Tagged With: , , , ,
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