Guest Blogs |
Guest Blogs |
You’ve written your first book or your tenth book, the amount doesn't matter—how do you get your book in the hands of readers? Book signings? Pitch to local bookstores? Libraries? Social media? Advertising on social media or on Amazon? If you’re counting on social media, you could be banned in an instant. Recently, you may have heard on the news several prominent users with millions of followers were banned from Facebook and Instagram. If you were to be banned from social media would you still have a way to communicate with your readers? You can’t count on social media, but you can count on your email list that you’ve built by sending out blog posts (a.k.a., newsletter, articles, updates). What’s the first thing you see when you go onto a website? It’s that annoying “Sign-up for our email/newsletter/list” – it pops up or swooshes in from the side or it takes over the screen. Sure they want you to receive their content, but more importantly, they want to know where they can reach you. I’m signed up to receive emails from some big-name authors. Yes, even the big names want your email address so they can still reach you if something goes awry with any or all other marketing channels. The email list is golden. How do you get an email list? Blogging from your website or a blogging platform (many how to videos on YouTube, look for recent videos as services change). Email services are typically free until you reach a certain number of subscribers. I began blogging before I published my first novel, everything I’d read said blogging was a must. It’s a conundrum for authors—with nothing published what would you blog about and why would anyone sign up to receive something from you? You have to start with friends and family. Blog about what inspires you. Something drew you to write in your genre; think hard, what inspires you? Is there a specific era or event? Maybe there’s a location? Paris, France has been the inspiration for many romance novels. Let’s say you write historical romance inspired by Paris. You could blog about Paris and drill it down to specifics. What was happening in Paris during the time period you write about? Was there a street you fell in love with when you vacationed there? In my case, I write in the mystery/thriller genre. Because I worked in public education, school crime inspired me. I blog about my school crime research. Blogging about research is fun and most authors have a plethora of research. How about zombie apocalypse genre? You may have pondered what if people in Chicago, Illinois, were infected with a virus that turned half the population into zombies? Actually, that may have been Bird Box. Okay, let’s use Bird Box as an example of what to blog about. You could write about the city setting which inspired the city in the story, and the same for the grocery store, the bird’s behavior, the river, the cabin, the bird sanctuary, etc. A word of caution—when you do blog, keep it relevant to your books. If you write war stories, blogging about your passion for cooking will not help you get your war stories to your target audience. Here’s where I’m guessing you feel like this is too much. There’s a bonus I didn’t know when I started blogging—your writing will improve because it doesn’t matter if you’re writing novels, articles, or blog posts, it all helps to improve your writing. Lastly, run your blog posts through a grammar and spelling check the same as you would for your full novel (or have Word Refining proofread them for you). I use Grammarly for blog posts and love it, here’s a link to the free version (I’m not an affiliate – I just love it). Grammarly So to blog or not to blog--YES! Blog and be consistent and cohesive. If you say, you’ll send out your blog post every Saturday, stick to it. Steven King sends out an email about every six months or when he has news. Email me if you need help deciding on what you should blog about or how to blog in general. We can figure it out together—authors helping authors—with no strings attached. [email protected] About Robin Lyons, Author Robin Lyons writes mystery/thriller stories based on disturbing reality. The concept for her School Marshal series came about after a beloved school principal and friend in her hometown was gunned down in his office by an employee. The loss felt by the school district and community was tremendous. The tragedy changed Robin's view of life in a small town. Check out the Research Blog where she shares information from researched cases, true crimes occurring at or connected to schools. Twenty-nine years working as a school employee and six years as an elected school board member provided plenty of inspiration for her stories. www.robinlyons.com/ #blogpost #blogging #blogcontent
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AuthorThese are posts made by friends of Wordrefiner. I am grateful to share these with my guests. Archives
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"I'm very pleased with all your efforts. Twitter promotion and proofreading were beyond what I expected with a book review. Your suggestions throughout the process of refining both books helped me immensely. I look forward to working with you again." A.E.H Veenman “Dial QR for Murder” and “Prepped for the Kill”
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