To Blog or Not to Blog? That is the Question.

Blogging? Just what is blogging? The word “blog” is short for “web log.” Web logs originally started as online personal journals kept by individuals, but quickly expanded to a number of different uses. In addition to the regular written blog, there are blogs which primarily feature photos and videos. As a writer, your blog can be a combination of all three—the written word, photos, and/or videos—but the main goal of the blog should be to enhance the reader’s awareness of you and your work.

How can you do this? As with a website, blogging entries should be timely and regular so that you will have return visitors to your site. For example, if you decide to post only once a week, make sure your readers know this and be regular with your postings. Set one day each week on which you will do your blog entry so that readers know when to return.

If you plan on blogging more often than that, again, try to keep to a regular schedule so that readers will know when to visit. Also, consider what will be the theme of each of your blog entries and whether that theme will appeal to your readers. While you cannot be all things to all people, you do wish to provide enough variety to keep people coming back.

For example, on my blog I feature a Guilty Pleasures Monday where I highlight handsome men. I chose the phrase Guilty Pleasures because it ties back to my South Beach Chicas women’s fiction—the Guilty Pleasure reading I provide. Sometimes I will tie the handsome man to one of the heroes in my novels. On Tuesdays I provide an assortment of tips. Some of them are writing tips for the pre-published writers who visit. Some of the more popular entries have been recipes. Occasionally, as with the men, I tie the recipes to something in one of my books.

“Writing a blog entry every day?” some of you may ask, cringing as you do. That was a choice I made initially and I’ve tried to keep to it, but again, it is not so much how often you do it so long as you are regular with how you do your blog entries.

If you are not certain that you can be that timely or create new content on an ongoing basis, there ar e other things you can consider if you wish to have a blog.

Many writers have a “platform” blog. A good example of this is Marta Acosta’s Vampire-Wire (http://www.vampirewire.blogspot.com/). Blogs with a “platform” should ideally be related to something about your writing in order to increase the public’s awareness of you in that capacity.

Another thing to consider is to gather together a group of people for a blog, like SmartBitches Who Love Trashy Novels (http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/) or Romancing the Blog (http://www.romancingtheblog.com/). Having several people will let you create a schedule for blogging and alleviate some of the pressure of daily/weekly entries.

When selecting the group, consider what will be the theme of the blog and the kind of content you intend to post. Remember that your goal is to increase awareness of you as a writer and that you should be able to accomplish this via either the theme or the content.

Once you’ve decided to enter this Brave New World of Blogging, how do you get started?

Luckily, there are a number of free blog programs available, such as WordPress (www.wordpress.org), Myspace (www.myspace.com), eblogger (www.eblogger.com) and Live Journal (www.livejournal.com). Some allow you to keep the blog at your own server/website, like WordPress. Others will host the blog for you, such as WordPress (yes, it has both versions), eBlogger, and Live Journal. Regardless of whether you host your own blog or allow someone else to host the blog, always be sure to provide a clear and visible link from your website to the blog and vice versa.

How do I get people to come visit my blog?

As with websites and search engines, it is important to get your blog listed at various locations to generate traffic to it. Some of the more popular blog portals are Technorati (www.technorati.com), Blogflux (www.blogflux.com), and Bloghub (www.bloghub.com). List your blog on these portals so that people who are interested in reading blogs will know you are out there. In addition, some of these blog portals will also accept content from you so that readers will be able drawn to your site. Finally, get listed at sites with similar content or are writer-related, such as Romancing the Blog.

So you’re done now, right? You’ve decided which program to use, how often to blog, what to blog about, and where to list your blog.

You’re ready to go, right? Not so fast. There’re just a few things left to do to make the most of your blogging experience.

The first is to make sure that you are getting your content to all those blog portals that take content feeds. There are two ways to do this.

The first is to determine if you are using a program that allows automatic feeds of new content. WordPress is one program that does this, and you can easily set up content feeds to those blog directories.

You can also set up RSS feeds (Really-Simple-Syndication), but that is a topic for another talk!

The second thing to do is to make sure that your blog contains tags about the nature of the content. WordPress allows you to enter tags that will be read by the content feeds, RSS feeders and search engine
spiders. Other blog programs may have similar features. Tags are merely the keywords in your content.

For example, in a blog with the recipe for mojitos (http://caridad.com/blog/2007/01/16/say-mojito-for-a-south-beachkind-of-mood/) like those that the South Beach Chicas may imbibe on one of their outings, the tags might look like this “Latina, rum, mint, mojito, cocktail, south beach, chicas, south beach chicas, miami, recipe, drink recipe, Caridad, Piñeiro.”

What will the tags accomplish? When someone is searching for “Mojito ,” they may get a hit for your blog entry.

So, do you have an answer to the question of whether to blog or not to blog? If the answer is “Yes,” I hope the above information was of assistance.

Caridad Pineiro

For more information on Caridad, please visit www.caridad.com or www.thecallingvampirenovels.com.