Seasoned and newbie bloggers ask me the same question: When should I begin blogging my book? My answer doesn’t differ much despite the varying levels of blogging proficiency.
Blogging a book provides a fabulous way to write, publish and promote your work at any point in your blogging (or writing) career. It’s effective, quick and easy compared to the standard way of writing a book: sitting at your computer and writing chapter after chapter. When you blog a book, you plan it out in post-sized bits of content and compose those 300–500 word posts, which are strung together to create a manuscript. Chunking the process down makes writing the book easier. The process moves fast as well if you write and publish posts several times per week. And, the whole time you are, in fact, promoting yourself and your book —building that platform you need.
Complete Two Analyses Before You Start
You should not begin writing any book—whether you choose to blog it or write it in a traditional manner—without first completing both a market and competitive analysis. I’ve written about this quite extensively in the past.
A market analysis helps you hone in on who your readers are and what they need and want. Such an evaluation allows you to write a book that targets the market. Additionally, this analysis helps you determine if you even have a market to target.
To learn more about conducting a market analysis, and why you should do so, read these posts:
A competitive analysis familiarizes you with published books on the same topic. You then can compare and contrast your book idea to these other titles. With this knowledge, craft a book idea that fills a need in the category and offers readers something unique and, hopefully, better than what has been offered to date.
To find out more about how and why to conduct a competitive analysis, read these posts:
For Seasoned Bloggers: When to Start a Book
If you are a seasoned blogger, you have the advantage of the platform you created from consistent and regular blogging activity. You probably already know your market pretty well and have some sense of the competition—at least in the blogosphere. With a little research into recently released books, you are in a good position to begin blogging a book.
If you don’t tell your readers you are doing so, they may never realize you are writing your book post by post rather than publishing posts as usual. However, you can tell them and allow them to get excited about this “event.” They will enjoy taking ownership of the book by providing feedback and leaving comments on the blogged-book posts.
So, plan out that book and get started.
Or, if you prefer, book your blog by repurposing existing content. You can blog the missing or remaining content necessary to create a good book, although I suggest the final product contain at least 20 percent previously unpublished (on your blog) content. Also, be sure to avoid the common mistakes bloggers often make when they turn existing content into a book.
For Newbie Bloggers: When to Start a Book
If you’ve only been blogging a short while, or if you are in the planning stages of going live with your site, you are in a great position to begin blogging a book for three reasons:
- Blogging a book helps you build a consistent blog readership.
- Your blogged book content provides the foundation of your initial blog content plan.
- As you blog your book regularly and consistently, thus focusing primarily on the topic of your book, your blog (and its posts) will rise in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
In other words, by writing your book in post-sized bits on your blog, you will know what to blog about (and provide valuable content), help your site become discoverable, and attract readers.
Just like a seasoned blogger, you also will develop fans and followers who will take ownership of your blogged book content. When you publish the book, they will purchase it! And they will continue to return to your blog to see what new and valuable content you publish there.
No matter how long you’ve been blogging, there’s no time like the present to begin blogging your book! Your site will benefit from this activity, and you’ll end up with a new status: author. Blogging a book, in turn, helps your expert status, thus driving more readers to your blog.
What are you waiting for? Start blogging that book.
If you would like more information on how to write (or blog) a bestselling book and create a career as a bestselling author, click here to watch my series of 4-free videos on this topic. And don’t forget to enter your name in the form below. This ensures you get notified when the next video becomes available and when I release details about my new Six Months to Your Bestselling Author Career premier coaching program.
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I can’t seem to activate the rest of your blog.
What does that mean, Heather? It was migrated to a new server last night…maybe you caught it at that time.