Blogging for Fiction Authors by Jason Hamilton
Today we welcome a new guest writer to Writer’s Fun Zone, Jason Hamilton who is stopping by to chat with us about “Blogging for Fiction Authors.” Enjoy!
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Blogging can be a powerful resource for any author who wants to enhance their content marketing potential.
As a quick definition, content marketing is the act of creating content (whether written, video, or audio) that attracts your ideal audience. For authors, this means it should attract the type of people who read your books.
Blogging isn’t necessarily for everyone, but it is one way to gain attention for your books.
In this article, I will uncover some of the basic misconceptions about blogging and give some advice that authors can use to their advantage.
Misconception #1: Blogging Is an Online Journal
While blogging did start out as a “web-log” or “blog” for short, it has since evolved beyond that. In fact, I don’t even like the term “blogging,” because it is so suggestive of an online journal mentality.
Instead, blogging should be creating articles that attract your ideal customers on search engines. That means that when someone enters in a search query such as “the best middle-grade fantasy books,” and you sell those types of books, you want to create an article that will rank for that search query.
Not only does this bring in potential customers, but it also builds trust with those customers, because you are directly answering their questions.
Misconception #2: Blogging Is Dead
A lot of people will say that blogging is no longer a profitable form of marketing. That might be true if you use a blog like an online journal.
But if you can pick a specific niche, then create many articles related to that niche, you can easily rank on Google for the right search queries.
People have been doing this in nonfiction niches for years, and fiction authors have an opportunity because many of the appropriate niches for a fiction author have less competition.
For example, my personal website is built around mythology to promote my mythology-driven books.
The first step to succeed here is to pick your niche.
I would do this by brainstorming a lot of potential niches related to your books, then seeing if anyone else has a niche website around those topics. If I find that there are, and that some of them are just regular people writing successful articles, that is a good sign I’m in a good niche.
Misconception #3: It Is Too Hard to Rank on Google
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of getting an article to rank on Google. This used to be incredibly difficult, requiring not just great content, but you had to build a lot of links on other websites.
This is still the case, but links are far less important than they used to be.
Instead, I find the best way to rank on Google is to write the best content possible.
I do this by comprehensively covering the topic, making it understandable, doing original research, and establishing topical authority by creating multiple articles around a similar subject.
If you can do this, you are well on your way to creating amazing content that can rank on Google.
For authors, this is great news, because we are already experts at writing.
If you can learn to write well for an online space, you already have an edge over the competition.
This is our philosophy over at Kindlepreneur. For example, you can see this article on how to format a book. We pulled out all the stops to create an amazing resource, and I’m quite proud of the results.
Final Thoughts
Websites are important for authors, and blogging can be a great way to take your marketing to the next level.
If you do it right, it will not only be another way to market your books, but it will become another basket to put your eggs in. You can run ads on the website, promote someone else’s product for affiliate commissions, promote a Patreon, and more.
In other words, it not only promotes your books, but becomes an additional source of revenue.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jason is the Content Manager for Kindlepreneur and a mythic fantasy author. He loves mythology, history, and geek culture. When he’s not writing, his favorite hobbies include hiking, chilling with his wife, spouting nonsense words at his baby daughter, and developing his website: MythBank.com.
