Why Now is the Best Time to Blog a Book

If ever there were a time to start a blog or to blog a book, it’s now. Yes, the blogosphere is crowded and loud. On the other hand, the number of people on or using the internet continues to grow, which creates an enormous opportunity for anyone—including authors and bloggers. Now truly is the best time to start your author blog.

In 2012, the United States boasted of 31 million bloggers. In late 2013, www.wpvirtuoso.com reported that “a new blog is created somewhere in the world every half a second.” That means that 172,800 blogs were added to the internet every day that year. We can assume that number has grown in the past twelve months.

You might, therefore, see the blogosphere as an over-crowded space, a space too full for one more blog—yours. If you do, you’d be wrong.

Grab Your Place in the Blogosphere

Consider this: During the five year period between 2015 and 2020 the number of people online will increase from 2.5 billion to upward of five to seven billion people, predicts Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the XPrize innovation competition, executive chairman of Silicon Valley-based teaching organization Singularity University, according to an article written by Jason Ankeny and published by Entreprenuer.com. From the online space companies of all types and sizes will serve customers around the developing world, and some of the people they serve will become online entrepreneurs in their own right.

One of those might be you—if you grab your spot in the blogosphere.

Use Your Blog to Become an Expert and Impact Lives

The opportunity to become an authority or expert via your blog—and your book or books—is huge. This is the best time in history to start a blog if you want to reach more people, serve your audience, make a positive and meaningful difference in the world, and build an online business around your book(s) and your blog.

Diamandis said, “If you’re passionate about solving a problem, you literally can be a guy or gal in a garage using the internet and exponential tools and technologies to take on any problem at scale. An individual has the potential to impact the lives of a billion people in a decade.”

If you want to take advantage of this opportunity:

• start a blog that solves a problem or answers a question
• blog a book—or many books—that create a movement or eases the pain of your target audience
• serve your audience
• become a thought leader in your subject area

4 Tips for Building Your Authority Blog

It’s easy to use a blog to become an authority. Use these blogging tips to help you develop your expert status fast:

1. Publish blog posts often. Sites that update their blogs 20 times a month (i.e four to five times per week) generate five times more traffic than those that update their blogs less than four times a month, according to www.wpvirtuoso.com. Also, the more often you post, the more often Google catalogs your content. Publishing in a consistent, frequent and focused manner pushes your site up in the search engine results pages (SERP). When you get on that first SERP, your site, you, your book(s), and your products and services become more discoverable.
2. Publish in the morning. Most blogs get read between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. Posts are shared on social networks more often in the morning as well. That means you probably want to write your post the day before (at the latest) and schedule it to publish early the following day.
3. Provide content that leads visitors to your books, products and services. Blogs help to influence customers’ buying decisions and purchases. Be sure to answer questions, solve problems, provide proof, tell stories, and generally offer high value in every post. This gives readers a good reason to purchase.
4. Don’t give up too early. “Companies that have more than 51percent articles on their blogs experience a 77 percent increment in median monthly leads,” reports www.wpvirtuoso.com,(www.wpvirtuoso.com/how-many-blogs-are-on-the-internet/). That’s a lot of content. It takes time to produce that much content. Write valuable content and lots of it. This effort pays off over time. I’ve heard it said that when you have 1,000 posts on your site you see a huge increase in traffic. That should also result in leads and sales. But you can’t produce 1,000 posts—or develop a site that is 51 percent content—in a month or even six months.

Remember: There are more people on line daily. That means there are more potential readers for you to reach with your blog, you book(s) and your products and services every single day. You have to be online to reach them. And your site must be visible.

How to Get Started

You don’t need much to get started blogging or blogging your book. You must have:

• a computer
• an internet connection
• hosting
• a URL
• a bit of technical skill to set up the blog or a developer to do it for you
• a unique and necessary idea in your category and market
• expertise in a particular subject area
• a blog plan

You can start your blog in a coffee shop. You don’t have to have your own office or internet connection. And you still can impact thousands of people in a positive and meaningful manner with your words. In fact, your blog stands a chance of getting read more than your book(s).

It bears repeating: Now is the best time to start a blog and to blog your way to expert status, authorship, and a booming business. Take advantage of the opportunity provided by our changing times.

If you need help learning how to blog your book, click here or here.

Photo courtesy of by Thomas Leuthard.