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Laura Smith is the multi-talented, multi-faceted founder of a hugely successful blog, Laura’s Books & Blogs. She’s guest posted on my blog, I’ve guest posted on hers, and I also follow her posts with the sort of devotion I show to very few online outlets. This woman is a pro and a fine human being. Busy as she is, she was generous enough to share with us (and with you) some of what she’s learned about blogging. In addition, there’s a brief interview with her at the end of this newsletter. This is a woman you can trust, folks. She knows her stuff.
LAURA SMITH
How Your Blog’s Content Will Help You Build an Audience
The excitement of starting a blog is knowing that you can write about whatever you want. There’s no submissions process, no rejection letters, and no picky editors telling you what can and cannot be published. But the downside to this is that when it comes to finding an audience, you’re on your own.
Part of the blogging process is learning SEO (search engine optimization), and you come to realize that blogging is more than writing about what you want; it’s about writing what people want to read. Success comes in balancing the two. After all, what’s the point of publishing something that no one wants to read? At the same time, strictly writing for an audience is going to make the blogging process feel like a chore. And blogging, whether it’s for a hobby or as a dream job, shouldn’t feel like a chore.
Like any type of writing, blogging is a lot of work and takes a lot of effort. Audiences will be drawn to your blog if it offers some sort of tips or advice on a certain subject, has a common interest that both the writer and reader share, or promotes another writer’s work.
I’ve been blogging for over three years, and I’m still trying to build an audience and figure out what readers want. I’ve read articles, taken courses, experimented, and improved the look of my site over the years in hopes of building and maintaining an audience. Here are some tips on what I’ve found draws readers to a blog.
- How to articles: My blog is primarily a book blog, but it didn’t start out that way. I began by writing about whatever topic I felt like. Eventually, it evolved into a book blog as I began to put out calls for books to review, authors to interview, and writing tips. But I’ll still occasionally write an off-brand post about a project that I’ve undertaken or a product that I’ve tried. Incidentally, these posts are among the most popular on my site. I’ve written about taking hunger blocking pills, taking a food sensitivity test, and creating a sketchbook for The Brooklyn Art Library’s sketchbook project. Whether the success lies in it being an SEO-friendly topic or just topics that people Google frequently, “how to” posts are definitely a good way to bring traffic to your blog. You don’t need to be an expert on any subject. In fact, it helps to show readers the errors you make along the way so that they can avoid doing the same.
- Writing tips: Writers of all levels are always looking for writing advice. Even bestselling authors can never achieve full confidence in their craft. We can always get better, and asking for advice on writing, both specifically and in general, is frequently searched for online. My most popular posts featuring writing tips include how to write awesome reviews, methods to cure writer’s block, and a guest post written by another writer offering writing tips for disabled writers. The topic ideas are endless, and the advice can be as general or as specific as possible.
- List posts: It’s hard to get social media users to click off of the sites as they’re scrolling, but one link that always seems to work for me is a list post. There is something that grabs you about someone else’s opinion and ordering of a collection on a beloved topic. It’s why BuzzFeed is as popular as it is. Even if readers don’t agree, they still want to hear your opinion because it’s about something that holds their interest. My most popular list posts include podcast recommendations, cleaning tips, and comic book to movie adaptations.
- Life experiences: I think the traditional idea of a blog is an online diary that others can read. Unfortunately, our daily lives are not that interesting, and no one wants a play-by-play about the errands you ran, the TV shows you watched, or how your work life has been. Vloggers can get away with that because they have a visual medium and if they’re charismatic and creative enough, we’ll watch them sit and stare out the window. Those mundane tasks are little harder to find an audience when it’s relayed in print. Instead, readers want to hear about your current adventures or nostalgic posts about what life used to be like. That is what will capture their attention. My most popular posts on this topic include celebrating Halloween in the 90’s, being a teen in the 2000’s, or visiting an abandoned mall.
- Travel posts: Finally, it’s travel posts that round out my top five blogging topics. I haven’t done a ton of traveling in my life, but I have done some, and guest posters have contributed their travel posts as well, giving me a nice little collection of travel posts that tend to do well. My most popular travel posts include my first trip to New York City, a guest post offering tips for visiting Graceland, and visiting an abandoned mall. Traveling is adventurous, and people want to know what to expect before they go somewhere new. So, if you have a bunch of photos and tips that you can relay to them, it will make them eager to visit your site.
My final piece of advice is not to put SEO above your writing passions. Find a topic you love and then shape the SEO around it, not the other way around. Find your audience by writing about your interests and experiences. Create some social media accounts and follow others who share your interests. Chances are, they’ll follow you back, and then when you post links to your blog posts, you’ll have a built-in audience more willing to click on those links.
But more often than not, your audience will be searching for you. So, make sure you throw in the right key words, add a catchy yet clear title, and write a high-quality article with something to say that will keep readers scrolling till the end. Throw out a question at the bottom of the piece to compel them to leave a comment. Then, engage in those comments and create a conversation and community rather than talking at your readers and then sending them on their way. It will be a slow burn at first, but with time, education, and perseverance, you’ll have your own group of devoted readers along with a revolving door of casual ones who just might come back if you feed them a helping of the content that they’re looking for or didn’t realize they were looking for in the first place.
About Laura Smith
I blog for several websites. Most recently, I’m writing for HubPages, with over 200 blog posts to my name. Many of those posts are indie author interviews where self-published authors like me answered questions about their craft.
My Links: Laura’s Books and Blogs ~ Amazon ~ Facebook ~ Twitter ~ Pinterest ~ Instagram
JULIE WRAY HERMAN
The Day My Blog Died
In July 2020, exactly a week after my father died from COVID, I discovered my website was gone, along with two years of carefully crafted bi-weekly blog posts about writing advice (Friday) and gardening tips (Tuesday).
Gone.
Frantic emails to the webhost I’d paid good money to went unanswered. A quick WHOIS search told me that my URL was now held by a company I’d never heard of. A reseller. I contacted them expecting extortion. My previous host had folded without a word, selling the urls they registered for people like me to a company in China. They wanted money to transfer the url back to me. I paid it. I’m a wimp, plus I really wanted my domain back again. It’s a little thing, but it was mine.
Now, had I been a smart blogger, I would have a shadow version of my blog on my hard drive. I was not a smart blogger. I had some, but not all of those wonderful posts. And some of them, upon revisiting, weren’t as great as I remembered.
I started over.
Now it’s been two years since I discovered my loss, and while I have stopped crying about it, I also haven’t really blogged regularly. As in, there are exactly two blog posts on my website currently. I might should do something more productive than that, and perhaps this week is the week that I rediscover my urge to share views, lists, tips and tricks, links and laughter more than once a month. Or not. I’ve been guesting on other people’s blogs and that seems to suit me pretty fine too. It’s far less like stress to have a topic they ask me to think on rather than to have to come up with both a topic and something to say about it.
But that urge? To share?
Getting stronger.
Might get around to doing something about it sooner or later. Until then, follow the b.read.crumbs because that’s where I’m dropping my thoughts for now.
Julie is busy revising a novel that has been both a delight and a terror. She graduates in July from the Vermont College of Fine Arts Writing for Children and Young Adults program, the best gift she ever thought to give her writing self. She (and her two blog posts) can be found at juliewherman.com and on social media: @juliewrayh
THREE GOOD THINGS
1. My dear friend, Anna Watson, blogs regularly about Femme things that bring her joy. Try a moment with Anna and see if you don’t catch some of that joy for your own: thetotalfemme.com
2. I also want to mention a newish blog about First Lines—My classmate and friend, Amanda Elend, talks about the effect of first lines in a novel on the reader: https://onlinesonline.com
3. And while many of you may already subscribe to this blog, it is always worth a mention: https://writershelpingwriters.net from authors Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi.
Write on, y’all!
DEBORAH-ZENHA ADAMS
My Blog Has a Point…Sort Of
Laura’s already explained some of the benefits of blogging. Since she’s been blogging like wildfire for years, I’m inclined to call her an expert on the subject.
I, on the other hand, am not. It’s true that I started a blog back in 2010, and I posted regularly for about six months. One post even got Pressed (is that what it was called?), and racked up a gazillion comments.
My blog posts were usually written versions of the rants that play out in my head. Topics ranged from organic gardening to chickens to domestic violence to “Puff the Magic Dragon.” Whatever held my attention at that moment.
Maintaining a blog is tough if you a) don’t have a dedicated field of interest and b) recognize that wiser minds than your own are doing a better job of chronicling the issues. I checked both those boxes.
These days most of my blog posts showcase other writers’ work.
Why that?
My first book came out way back in the Stone Age, before social media. Hell, before the internet. Back when self-published was a filthy word and there were still dozens, if not hundreds, of major publishing houses in New York.
In those days, promoting your book meant contacting bookstores (brick-and-mortar being the only bookstores that existed), sending out postcards to announce your forthcoming title, providing bookmarks to anyone who’d accept them.
There were book conferences where booksellers learned about new titles. Publishers would arrange to send several copies of their latest books to those, but midlist authors generally had to pay their own way if they wanted to attend. (And sometimes it was worth the expense. Ask me about ALA in New Orleans.)
Charlotte MacLeod and Elizabeth Peters sent newsletters via snail mail, but I was neither of those revered ladies. So I rounded up a few friends whose writing careers, like mine, were just getting started, and we produced a group newsletter, The Femmes Fatales. Over time the individual Femmes changed, and eventually the newsletter became-you guessed it-a blog.
Enter cyberspace and all its wonders. First there was email, which changed not only the way manuscripts were submitted, but also gave authors a more affordable way to promote their work. And listservs! My gracious, how eagerly we awaited the daily digest!
Then came author websites, which were either slightly more sophisticated versions of the dancing hamster site or were so elegant and trendy that it might take thirty minutes to load the homepage using the most powerful dial-up modem.
Built into the core of all these technological miracles there was BSP (Blatant Self Promotion). Blogs were born, then MySpace, followed by Facebook, Twitter, a million other options for shoving our names and titles at innocent scrollers-by.
Do I sound jaded and disapproving? Yes, I am.
Maybe it’s because I’m a Southern woman and my genes are encoded with the directive: Don’t Show Off, Be Nice, Never Vote For Yourself.
Despite that, I know that no one is going to buy my book–or your book–if they’ve never heard of it. And I know that authors aren’t competing with each other. No reader ever walked into a bookstore (or browsed online) with the idea that “I can buy a book by Author A or Author B.” Readers do not choose between books; readers buy them all and sell the car to pay for more books.
So why shouldn’t I help other authors get the word out about their work? I’m a reader first, after all, and I love sharing great writing with other readers.
My blog may be just another little drop in the cyber ocean, but by golly it’s a drop that matters.
Come visit when you have a minute and meet some of my guests. And if you find you’ve got a useful post that helps writers improve their writing, check out my guidelines for guest posts.
Now go write.
THREE GOOD THINGS
1. Joanna Brichetto is a Certified Tennessee Naturalist. She’s also a rather brilliant writer. Her blog, Sidewalk Nature, showcases her writing skills while educating readers about native flora and fauna in her residential neighborhood. https://sidewalknature.com/
2. Via Negativa is where Dave Bonta and Luisa A Igloria post daily first drafts of their poems. First drafts! Shared with the world! These people are superheroes. https://www.vianegativa.us/
3. How to Start Blogging: A Definitive Guide for Authors. In case you haven’t yet but would like to…. https://www.janefriedman.com/blogging-for-writers/
Deborah-Zenha Adams is often lost in the woods without a paddle. Officially she is an award-winning author of novels, short fiction, CNF, and poetry; she is also a certified naturalist, a yoga educator, a vegetarian, and a Prius owner. Yes, she’s the living stereotype of a liberal tree-hugger. You’re invited to visit her website to learn more about her work. https://deborah-adams.com
LAURA SMITH ANSWERS OUR QUESTIONS
Question: What books do you recommend for a new blogger? For an experienced blogger?
Blogging is always evolving. So, I wouldn’t really recommend books on the subject because they could become obsolete as things change.
I started out on blogger sites where I essentially typed out my text into their blogging template, added photos to break up the text, and hit publish. Blogging on WordPress is much more involved. You don’t need to know coding, but you do need to know how it works.
I was fortunate enough to learn how to use WordPress through an internship that I took on. That gave me the confidence to start my own WordPress site. But if you are brand new to WordPress, I would look for courses or books that explain the basics so that you’re not totally lost when you first sign up.
I would also read online articles about blogging. Some of the most successful bloggers blog about blogging, and they keep up with all of the changes and can help break them down for you to give you a game plan as to how to adapt to yourself to those changes.
Also, go online and pose your questions with other bloggers, particularly bloggers who are already blogging in your niche. You may get a ton of conflicting answers, but you can at least pick and choose from those answers and determine your next steps based on the advice that most resonates with you.
Question: What one piece of advice can you offer to the more experienced writer who is having a bad day/week/year/decade?
I think that a writing rut is most common when we’re trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. We’re suffering from writer’s block because we want to write a particular type of book. We haven’t been writing lately because life has gotten in the way. We’re writing a ton, but it’s not coming out onto the page the way we’re imagining it in our head. Any mindset which forces us to write when we’re blocked, unmotivated, or don’t have the time creates a really unproductive environment that can turn that bad writing day into a bad writing year.
That being said, my top tips for writers who are going through a bad time include:
- Write in a different genre. If you’re trying to write fiction, write an essay, If you’re trying to write a poem, write a short play.
- Write something short. Take notes in a notebook. Write a character profile to better get to know your character and bring out inspiration for the story that you’re trying to tell.
- Start with the setting. Build the world and then populate it with characters and stories. It doesn’t even have to be a specific place. It can be a particular decade, a different country, or a different planet.
- Write for yourself. Take away the expectation that someone else is going to read what you’re writing. Write in a journal or buy a writing prompt book to keep up the habit of writing until something more productive comes to mind.
- Don’t make writing a chore. If you’re not up for it, don’t do it. I know a lot of writers say that they force themselves to write a specific word count or for a particular length of time, but I feel that those are writers who write for a living. Sometimes you have to take a day to take the kids to a water park or catch up on your housework. You also need to go out and have experiences so that you can bring those experiences to your work when you feel more motivated to write.
Question: What’s the best advice about writing that you’ve ever received?
The best piece of advice that I’d ever received came in response to some bad writing advice that I’d previously received. In one of my college fiction writing courses, I brought in a piece to workshop, and afterwards, I admitted that it based on a dream, despite being told in the past that you shouldn’t take inspiration from dreams. The professor asked me who had told me that because it there was no truth to it. That gave me the freedom to let inspiration come from anywhere, not just from those sudden bursts of ideas that come unexpectedly and sporadically.
And now, dear Reader, let us know about your own blog experiences. Send us your links. We want to read you.
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