Author Blog: Things to Consider

Last week I wrote about Starting an Author Website. Related to this, authors often debate whether to have a blog or not. And if they start a blog, should it be on their author website or somewhere else.

Let me pose some questions that will help you decide whether to start a blog and where to put it.

Do you want to start a blog to promote yourself as a writer?

If yes, then absolutely, the blog should be connected to your author website. If you want to blog for personal reasons unrelated to your writing or author platform, then it needs a separate space.

What do you want to blog about? Do you plan to share your work (stories, poems, etc.) on your blog? Will the topics of your blog be related to the topics of work?

If your blog is connected to your author website, keep the content related to writing (even if it’s about writing problems), your work (stories, poems, etc.) the topic you write about, or your author platform.

Let me expand on what I mean when I say “the topic you write about.” Let’s say as a fiction writer the protagonist of your story has multiple sclerosis (MS) because you have MS and it’s an important topic to you, it would then make sense for you to blog about living with MS because that’s what your readers would find interesting as well. In that case, promoting awareness about MS might be your author platform.

If you write nature poems, you might get away with blogging about hiking and your time out in nature, the place where you draw inspiration.

Here’s what to avoid when blogging:

This is good advice, regardless of whether your blog is connected to your author website or not. Do not blog about everything. Don’t blog about hiking, knitting, baking, yoga, hunting, well, you get the idea. If you blog about every day life with your family, and this happens to be what you did this week, you might get away with it. Or, if your platform is about seeing the humor in your everyday life, this might work as well. But in general, the audience who is interested in yoga is not necessarily the same audience who is interested in knitting or your writing life.

You may think you are broadening who might find your blog interesting, but you’re really dividing your audience and creating an obstacle for loyal readers.

Though all my posts are related to writing in some way, even my audience is split between those who want writing tips, those who want to read poetry, and those interested in horror stories.

Although I’m a person of many, varied interests, the people who read my blog are not going to be interested in everything I do.

I might even share several interests with another blogger, but the truth is, I want to depend on them for a certain type of content.

Because there are always people who want to find loopholes, let me give you a helpful one. Let’s say you want to blog about writing-related topics, but like me, you have a few different areas under the umbrella of writing topics that you want to blog about. Have a consistent schedule where you blog about book reviews on Mondays, writing advice on Wednesdays, and share your work on Fridays. This allows your blog to grow faster, because you have more blog posts appearing each week, but it will also create a reliable schedule that your readers can depend on, and if they only want to read your book reviews, they know they can come back each week and find one. I personally only blog once a week because I know I can get one post out, and still have time for all the other writing projects that I have going.

Here are the main things to remember about including a blog on your author website:

• Keep it related to writing, your work (stories or poems), or your writing topic.
• Write a new post regularly.

Let me leave you with one last point to consider. Say you decide you want to blog and you want it on your author website. Do you make the blog your home page or place it somewhere else on your author website?

I had a friend tell me once that when he visits a website, he wants to get to the meat of the page. He doesn’t want a static landing page where he then has to click to get to the content that he came to the website to view.

This is still great advice. Don’t make visitors hunt to find the latest information on what you’re working on, writing, blogging. Give them what they came for right on the home page.

And in my advice, while I try to provide a strict path to follow, I also provided loads of wiggle room. Just like writing advice, you want to think about the rules and have a reason behind breaking them. Be intentional with how you run your website and blog and keep the above things in mind, but they really are guidelines to help you make the most out of your author website and blog.