Three reasons blogging works

Corine La Font, Contributor

Blogging can be a tedious and daunting task, to say the least. Not only do you have to write your book and finish it in time; you now have to take on the task of writing blogs for your website or standalone blog.

As with everything else, you must be disciplined and leverage your time wisely when trying to maximise your available time. Two tips I can give you are:

Decide how often you want to have a blog on your website. My suggestion - and this is realistic - have a blog on your site every two weeks. Once a month is insufficient to create any impact and every week is just too much to keep up with.

Carve out some time that you would spend writing the blogs. My suggestion is to write blogs that will cover a three- to four-month period. That means, if you follow the two blogs per month, you will end up with eight blogs with a recommended word count of 350 words each. That should cover you for a good time so that you can focus on writing your book or any other activity. Make sure you find appropriate images to go with each blog. Use your own or find images on the web. Just ensure you recognise copyright laws and indicate where you sourced the images at the end of your blog. Schedule your blogs for every two weeks, walk away, and you're set for three or four months. Does that sound doable?

Ok, now on to three reasons blogging works:

1. Blogging encourages interaction and engagement with your audience and allows for feedback from your audience or potential audience so that you can make adjustments to your book/MSS as necessary to meet their needs. This is applicable if you started blogging before you published your book, which is highly recommended. If you didn't take this approach, then use the feedback to help you make revisions for a second edition of your book or follow-up to a series.

2. Blogging helps with building content which further helps to get you ranked higher on Google. Blogs do not only have to take the form of written content. It can be audio, video, or a combination of text, audio, and video.

3. Earlier, I spoke of leveraging your time. With blogging, you also need to leverage other people's networks and the best way to do this is through guest blogging. This takes some work and time to find others who serve the same target audience, but when you do find other bloggers who are willing to accept your blog on their site, it is a win-win situation for both parties involved, especially if they have a strong following.

Before I move on to the reminder of the upcoming Authors Summer School in May, I found this awesome tool that I know you would just love that can help you with coming up with blog topics because that in itself is another challenge! To find out what it is, you need to go to this link to access it: http://bit.ly/1gRRNYt.

Authors Summer School 2014

Remember, Authors Summer School is drawing close so get in early. It begins May 9 and goes through to August 29. Held on Fridays, both online and face-to-face sessions will be conducted for each module. For full details and early-bird registration, visit http://bit.ly/1iESt36. Previews of the topics include:

• The Author's Platform 101
• The Juggling Act: Writing and Marketing
• Using Virtual Events to create engagement and increase sales
• Lather, Rinse, Repeat - How to create multiple streams of income from your book
• Funding for writers
• How to become a Bestselling Author
• Building a Sales Team behind Your Book
• How to build a business behind Your Book

I am only doing this for the first 50 persons who register for each session (online and live), so make sure you get in early - http://bit.ly/1iESt36.  See you at summer school!

Corine La Font is a self-publishing, online marketing and virtual events specialist and consultant. She is also an award-winning publishing resource in the 2013 Small Business Book Awards. Get a copy of her book at http://amzn.to/TFHQka and Tune in to her radio program at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/helpdeskja. She can be reached at corine@helpdeskja.com."