You may be surprised to learn that the skills needed to be a creative writer aren’t the same as those required to be an effective blogger. Unlike short stories, poetry, novels, or memoirs, an author blog requires some mastery of networking, sharing, and making connections online. The marketing experts at Web Design Relief know being a successful blogger will require both writing interesting content and having a targeted promotional strategy that will keep your audience engaged and sell your books. Here’s how to focus the content of your author blog to best attract book-buying readers and boost your sales.

Smart Ways To Focus Your Author Blog Content

Ask Yourself These 10 Questions:

• Who is your primary reader?
• What is your main goal as a blogger?
• What will be the takeaway value of your author blog?
• Do you want your blog to be casual and practical or deeply serious and thoughtful?
• What do you want your blog to look like?
• What will separate your blog from any other author blog?
• How often will you post?
• How will you promote your blog?
• Will your blog be separate from your author website, and if so, will it have its own name?
• Do you have your first blog post ready to go?

Create An Editorial Calendar

An editorial calendar will help you stick to your schedule and keep your content frequent and focused, but not repetitive. By posting on your blog consistently, you’ll encourage your audience to visit your website often, where they will also see information about your creative writing and the availability of any books for sale. Learn how to create your own editorial calendar here!

Maintain Your Authenticity

To create blog posts your audience will enjoy, it’s important to find your authentic voice. Readers will sense if your posts sound forced and lose interest if there’s no real meaningful content. And you’ll definitely lose followers if your posts are nothing more than thinly veiled buy my book sales pitches. Ask yourself: What would I want to read about on a blog? The writing process? Living with an author from a pet’s point of view? Grammar tips? That’s what you should write about.

Listen To Your Audience

It’s important to be open to feedback from your audience—you’ll build a stronger following if readers feel they can engage with you and be part of the process. Be sure to enable comments on your blog posts and provide a private messaging system or contact form so readers can reach out to you. You’ll be able to gauge the topics, length, and types of posts based on the comments and response you receive. When your audience feels heard and involved, they’ll be more receptive to buying your book.

Include A Call-To-Action

Once your blog posts have captured your audience’s attention, guide them with strategic calls-to-action to make your blog a powerful networking tool. Encourage readers to follow you on social media, post a comment, check out your events calendar, join your mailing list—and occasionally, to buy your book!

Creating a blog that book-buyers will enjoy reading requires some careful planning and forethought. Fine-tune the format, frequency, and purpose of your blog until you find what works best for you and your readers. With loyal followers, you’ll be able to sell more books! To help get you started, here are 40 blog post ideas for novelists, poets, and creative writers.

Question: Which author blogs do you enjoy reading?