So You Want to Have a Writers' Blog

Blogs are a great outlet for writers, but serve other purposes as well. Many writers are turning to blogs to help promote their books, to let potential associations and organizations know of their availability for and skill at speaking, and to keep in touch with their reader base. Regardless of the reason for creating and maintaining a writer’s blog, the one thing a writer must do to be successful with their blog is to attract new readers and keep the regulars coming back. So if you’re an author with a blog, how do you keep people interested?

First you consider why they came to your blog in the first place. Most readers who come to your blog on purpose do so because they want to know about you, the author, and about your books. They want information that is useful. They want to associate with you, much in the same way that your readers want to associate with the characters you create. If you’re a non-fiction writer, they want to know about you and get more information on the topics about which you’ve written your books.

Now that you know what your readers are seeking when they visit your blog, it’s important also to know what they don’t want. For the most part, they don’t want you to go off topic. If they come to your blog expecting to learn a little more about you or your books or the topics about which you write, they don’t want to be surprised by a political rant (unless that’s what your books are all about) or disappointed because they didn’t get what they came for. Your blog readers want content. Content can include links to other useful information as well.

For example, my husband is a Greg Bear fan. If he was a writer and if he had a blog, he might want to include a link to an interview with Greg Bear. And I do a great deal of technical writing in addition to my other writing, so on my blog, I might want to offer my readers a link to the Society for Technical Communication.

If you are an author with a blog and you want to attract more attention and keep your readers coming back, then remember that such blogs are about people (you and your characters) and content. Give your blog readers what they want and expect, and you can expect to keep them coming back for more.