Starting A Blog
Many of us self-published or indie authors have found our way over to social media to let people know that we have a book. Some of us may think Facebook or LinkedIn, or Twitter, or Instagram, or whatever one you’re on is the greatest thing ever. And maybe they are. But, here is where it gets tricky. We don’t truly own our social media channels. At any moment, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or any other one, can change the conditions of our working environment. This is bad when we’re trying to sell our books through them. They can limit or stop our ability to connect or communicate with people. There are various ways they can limit or even suspend our privileges. This is really bad for our business if we have all of our marketing eggs in our one social media basket.
We’ve all heard of diversification and ownership, right? Through diversifying, we protect ourselves. When one income stream dwindles or even dries up, we can still be okay because we have other income streams. With ownership, we own it. It’s not so easy for someone else to take away what we own. So, as self-published authors who are out there hustling, it makes sense for us to own some virtual real estate in the indie author marketing world. Owing a website and having a blog are a couple of ways we can invest in virtual real estate for our authoring business as authorpreneurs.
Blogs are pretty simple to do, especially if we’re decent writers. Having a blog, and then actually writing a quick, simple blog every day is an excellent way to get ourselves in the habit of taking action daily, or hustling.
So, what do you want to blog about? It needs to be something that you know about, or want to know about and are willing to do a bunch of research on. After you know what to write about, you need to figure out what your blog’s name is going to be. This is important. This blog name will become part of your brand. And brands are what people look for when they want to do business. Brands are what people have been conditioned to trust and buy. I used Granddaddy’s Secrets as my brand name. I wanted people who came across my brand to think of an older, wiser person, who is gracefully sharing some of the secrets of success that only a life-time of living could give one.
Next, I would suggest that you don’t do a stand-alone blog. Rather, set up your blog on your website. I use WordPress for my website and my blog, which is on my website. WordPress is a free and open-source content management system with plenty of plugins and templates. It’s free, and it’s pretty easy to use. So, there is no reason now for you authorpreneurs out there not to set up your website and blog, even if money is tight.
Another benefit is that blogging from your website allows your readers to easily go from your blog to other parts of your website. While checking out your site, they can get to know your better and check out your books. Most book sales are from spontaneous actions. So, if we emotionally charge them up with our blog and then make it really easy for them to just click and purchase one of our books or services, I think we’ll sell more books, don’t you? Now you’re probably beginning to see the wisdom of setting up a blog and then blogging from your website, right?
So, how do we do all this? What actually goes into setting up a website and blog? Well, if you’re ambitious, you can watch a bunch of YouTube videos and teach yourself. Hey, it might be helpful to have that skill because later, you can charge other people to set up their website and blog. Now you are diversifying and setting up another income streams for yourself, too.
Or, if you’re very busy and just want to keep things simple, and you have a few bucks laying around, you can just hire someone. For a couple hundred bucks or less, you could have a basic website and blog set up. Now you can hang your virtual authorpreneur business shingle and get to work almost immediately.
In this particular case, good is not the enemy of great. Sometimes good enough really is good enough. Don’t fall into the perfection trap. Too many people won’t take that first step unless everything is perfect. Too many authors will not set up a website and blog that aren’t perfect, or at least don’t look impressive. Stop being afraid of making a fool of yourself. Set up a simple website and blog and get going. You’ll figure all the other stuff out as you go. Trust me. You’ll learn a lot, and everything you do will get better and look better over time. But that’s only if you start. You need to begin and just have faith that it’s going to work out and that you’ll figure it out as you go. Realize that any message you put out there is better than no message.
So get that power of the pen, or maybe I should say the power of the web going. Just do it. Just begin. Don’t let the start stop you. Don’t let the start keep you from the beautiful journey toward the end. Hey, I’m still learning stuff every day. Every day I make mistakes that I will improve upon down the road. I don’t sweat it, and neither should you. Making mistakes is what makes us human. It’s what helps people think we’re authentic and not too polished like some slick salesman. Making mistakes is what makes us believable and likable. So now that you know all that, what are you waiting for? Get blogging.
*Watch this FREE video lesson on this chapter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ-CjiRWqYo
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