As you blog your book, you can do something more meaningful than build a foundation of avid fans and readers for your finished product or even land a traditional book deal. You can start a movement.
If the reason you want to become an author or a blogger involves a cause, calling, or soul purpose, a blog provides the best tool to get people involved in your mission. You can start your movement, gather a community of like-minded people and even write your book—all with a blog.
Does a blog and blogging sound a bit more attractive now? Ready to get things moving and make a positive and meaningful difference with your blog or blogged book?
Use Your Blog to Attract Like-Minded People to Your Cause
First, start your blog with the intention of having it serve as the primary web site for your movement or cause. Then:
- Brand it in a manner that lets visitors immediately know why and how to get involved.
- Develop a blogging plan to help you focus on post subjects related to your mission.· Publish posts regularly and consistently.
- Share your posts on social networks.
These actions send your message out to the world and help you attract people who are interested in your cause back to your web site. The reason this strategy works is simple. Every time you publish a blog post, the bots, spiders and crawlers—computer programs—from Google and other search engines show up to “read” what you’ve written. They catalog the keywords, or search terms, in your posts. The more often they find the same keywords, the more often they “file” your blog under those terms.
If you publish posts often and consistently, and if you focus your posts on the topic of your movement, your site quickly rises in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Before long, people who search for related terms find your website—your blog—on the first Google SERP. Maybe you’ll even have #1 Google ranking, which means your site is listed first on the first page of a Google search.
Develop a Community of People Interested in Your Cause
When visitors arrive at your site, you want them to read and share your posts. You also want to encourage them to become part of your community and to take up your cause. After all, movements begin when like-minded folks join your efforts to create change on some level. Here are two ways to create your community:
- Create an online community simply with a Facebook page or a LinkedIn or Google Plus group. Doing so costs you nothing, and you can set one up quickly. Promote your gathering place on your blog in a banner or a widget. Provide a link so visitors easily can click through and “join.”
- Set up a forum on your site. If you have a WordPress site, this requires a plugin, some of which are free while others require you pay a fee. A forum on your site gives you control over it. You also “own” it; you don’t need to worry about Facebook disappearing or changing algorithms, making it hard for people to find your group.
You also can create a MeetUp via www.meetup.com. MeetUps give people a way to find your cause online but meet with you regularly in person. Promote the meetings on your site. You can even discuss the events in your blog posts.
Use Your Blog to Author Change
If you want to write a book that inspires change (and you’d like to do that rather than blog), don’t worry. Blogging doesn’t have to stop you from this pursuit. Instead, it can support your authorship efforts. Combine your blog and book writing by blogging your book. Compose your manuscript in post-sized bits that you publish on your blog. These short installments—300-700-word posts—of your book comprise parts of a chapter. As such, the posts work like a long series all focused on one topic or theme—your movement.
As you blog your book, you attract people to your movement and to your site. You give Google and the other search engines content to catalog, which improves the discoverability of your site. That gets your site even more traffic. In the process, you also produce a manuscript for your change-inspiring book. Your book and blog help you author change.
That’s a pretty good reason—a meaningful reason—to blog, don’t you think?
To learn more about blogging book and booking blogs, purchase a copy of How to Blog a Book Revised and Expanded Edition.
Hey Nina,
This idea really intrigues me. Do you think that blogging your book limits your ability to connect with traditional publishing avenues? My initial plan for my book was to start writing, get some momentum, and then submit a non-fiction book proposal to agents and publishers. But I love the idea of getting these ideas out there NOW and building a base of support through the blog. In other words, I’m torn. What advice do you have? Thank you!
Karen,
If you read this blog or my books, you will know that I DO NOT think blogging a NONFICTION book hinders your abiltiy to land a traditional publishing deal. Novelists may find that publishers of fiction do not want to take on previously published works. However, if you have built a platform and a successful first novel, they will take on your second–even if you blogged the first. And they may later publish that blogged novel as well. Do have a plan, though…read the first draft of my book here or get the second edition of my book. It contains the information you need to entice publishers to your blogged book (such as how to plan for additional unpublished material for the final version of your book).
Hey Nina,
If a blog is about book review blog, then what according to you should be the main theme? Is is the genre ? And secondly, do you think that by creating a Facebook page about a book review blog will add anything to the blog?
The theme could be book reviews, or great books, or good reads, or you could choose a genre, which will make it easier to carve out a niche and get noticed. A Facebook page and Twitter account will help you have a place to share your content and drive readers back to your site.