If you’re an author keep in mind you can start blogging anytime – you don’t have to wait till your book comes out! The earlier you start the conversation on your blog the more you’ll be able to build community. One of the key things to remember as you start to blog is to, “Be a person, not a persona.” Blog about what you know, what you care about and what you hope your community will find useful.
We all want to connect even virtually with the real person behind the curtain. Step out on your blogging stage and be yourself.
Use the Web 2.0 tools as a conduit for empowering your ideas and reaching out to a new audience. And don’t leave your community hanging! Blog at least three times a week and remember don’t fall into the “back to me” syndrome. Don’t blog just about you – blog the bigger idea, the larger context and what will be helpful to your readership.
Every fifth blog post ask your readers a question at the end of your post, you’d be surprised how quickly you’ll start generating comments.
Every month try to feature at least one other blogger as part of a blog post and let people know about them too. The YA authors are absolutely superb about doing this by the way and building repricocity.
Mommy bloggers are wonderful examples of this as well. But anyone can do it!
Now go and blog the change you want to see in the world!
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Dear Nettie,
You ARE the e-Bomb! After attending your amazing, highly informative web 2.0 workshop at IBPA, you left me with the insights and resources I’ll need to now comfortably ‘rock on’ in the social media world – and then some! Even though co-presenter David Matheson kaiboshed the idea of your wearing a long, dark wig looking like Cher while perched on a stool and singing, “I’ve Got You Babe,” once I got over that severe disappointment, I can now wrap my head around how straightforward it will be for me to blog, add Facebook and twitter and a host of other amazing tools to what I do with my books and programs. I’m grateful to you and your insights have given me many more possible ways to reach folks who might be interested in the topics I’m passionate about.
Pity about the BookExpo folks who can’t see what you showed us. Given that they know how to read, I’m still optimistic that they might find their way into the online world in a meaningful way, e-candles or no e-candles. Perhaps they have been too preoccupied to explore all the amazing things taking place online. But I know how they feel, and hope that even if they aren’t early adopters, they’ll discover most of what you shared with us is not only true, but meaningful and highly relevant too.
One of the major things you did was to help me clarify and gain the deep and resounding reason of WHY I ought to fully embrace blogging. Your passion was infectious – to the delightful extreme – and yet the overall raison d’etre is so sensible. You helped me so that I could see how all of this put together can become a heartwarming and purposeful sharing. It was like discovering why chocolate is good for you!
What you showed us in your workshop will help all of us embrace and take two-dimensional social media tools and engage ourselves in ways that helps create three-dimensional positive energy and then some. What a great way to be and become constructive social change agents.
One of your tags says it all for me, “Doing the Greater Good.” Soon to be on Digg, I can really dig what you’re all about. I could not really understand why people were atwitter about Twitter. Admittedly, I didn’t take the time to really find out. I was open and receptive but too busy trying to finish my project.
You’ve shown me how much potential social media has: far beyond the personal yet by embracing the personal and our truths we e-morph into the transpersonal and thus generate the potentiality for additional transformation on so many levels. Bless you for this.
People make so many choices in their lives – about what they do, think, emote, write and care to express. So many of those choices can be for the betterment of themselves and the folks in their lives. Thanks for helping me grasp and now make new choices that I know will be good, empowered and that provide the opportunity to empower others. You’ve inspired me and then some, Nettie. And I still have that hope that one day I will get to see you on that stool, in that black long wig and singing, “I’ve Got You Babe.” I definitely want to be there for that! Heck, I’ll even take it a step further — it’s my hope that, some day, I might even be able to get up on that stool and sing with you!
eHugs and etalk soon,
Julia
p.s. Karaoke is a definite possibility here…
Now that is simple and to the point. I do try to blog but I know I don’t do it nearly enough!
This helpful formula you suggest at least gives the lax blogger a good guideline to work with.
Looking forward to having you on my show.
Catherine