Author’s note: When I composed this blog post – way back in 2008 – if you wanted a search engine friendly, easy to use website to promote your book – your choices were limited. Many authors turned to blogs as a way to easily publish content to the web. The problem with blogs is – well – they take a LOT of work to not look ugly.
Fortunately – time marches on and today authors have another choice when it comes to creating the best author websites.
The best author websites are beautiful, search engine friendly and easy to use… just like this free flash website creation tool.
So keep that in mind as you read this post. In 2008 – you HAD to have a blog to have a website which was search engine friendly and easy to use. Today – thankfully – you have options.
Marketing Tools for Authors
If you’re an author with a book to promote, there’s no better marketing tool than a blog.
However, a blog is not book marketing magic. Merely launching a blog and then expecting book buyers to flock to your author’s blog to buy your book simply isn’t a realistic expectation.
Marketing your book is a numbers game… pure and simple.
An author blog can help you get the numbers you need to succeed.
Think of marketing your book like filling a funnel. The more people you pour into the funnel mouth, the more book buyers who will emerge from the business end of the funnel.
In our illustration, the book’s blog has a newsletter to which 10% of the blog’s visitors subscribe.
From those 10% who subscribe, another 10% go on to purchase the book.
The reason blogs are a great marketing tool for authors is that your blog can act as a powerful visitor attraction tool. The more potential book buyers you feed into the funnel, the more concrete customers who emerge from the bottom of the funnel.
I recently got an email of frustration from one of my author blog clients. This author has posted a grand total of 13 posts to her blog. None of the posts are tagged nor are they focusing on her targeted keywords.
She does have a newsletter, but she’s not getting any subscriptions. Out of frustration, she’s changed the text to encourage visitors to sign up for her newsletter three times in the past three months. (Remember, she has a grand total of 13 posts over the three month period!)
She’s the one of the primary reasons I’m developing the 8 Week Blog Power Launch series in which I walk you through step by step the essentials to creating a successful blog.
A blog really is a powerful marketing tool for promoting your book… but just like a rake is a really effective tool for moving leaves into a pile in your yard…. you have to use it correctly to make it work. If you purchase a rake and leave it lying in your front yard… in the end, all you’ll have is a rusty rake which is covered with leaves.
