Authors

If you wanted a face-to-face explanation of how technology can help market your work, come to Write On The Sound in Edmunds, WA, (Seattle-land) October 5-7th. I’ve just signed a contract with the hosts of the the writers’ conference and am pleased to report I’ll be doing a seminar on…technology for writers.

More details to follow.

If you have never been to a writers’ conference before, it is a very good experience and one I would recommend. There are always a few good things to learn at these conferences.

Write On The Sound inspired the theme for this blog — technology for writers where one can learn how technology can help market your work. My presentation will be the oddball one in the group, no doubt. Amongst the publishing, fiction oriented, non-fiction writing skills, I’ll sneak in there and talk about blogs, web sites, white papers, virtual book tours and all things technology that can help you in your work — in a way that a writer will understand.

And, I’m planning a really great leave-behind as well with lots of resources and links.

“There are a million blogs about technology out there. Very few are written from the viewpoint of a writer trying to develop a voice and market their work.”

You’ll get that point of view in the Technology for Writers session at Write on the Sound.

I hope to see you there!

Scot

When starting out writing a blog, how do you know what makes a good blog for a writer? I’ve spent the last month coming up with Seven Criteria for Evaluating Writers Blogs. After giving a brief look at each of the seven items, I’m now going into detail on each of the criteria.

This post looks at the “About” page.

In any blog, there are “posts” and “pages.” What you are reading right now is a “post.” Usually posts are in chronological date order and show up on the front page of the blog.

Pages, on the other hand, are static and are in a single location. You’ll typically see pages listed in a blog header, such as my current pages of “About Ten Keyboards“, “Contact Scot“, and “Why RSS.”

Pages can be about anything and the blog software allows you to show pages in particular order to the reader.

So, pages are powerful marketing weapons to be used by the writer to market their work.

Looking at the Seven Criteria for Evaluating Writers Blogs, three of the seven criteria are pages to be found on your blog.

The first one is the “About” page. This page describes to your readers what the purpose of your blog is all about — hence, the “about” title.

While almost universally found on every blog published out there, few “About” pages really nail it for the reader — and I’m not sure mine does either, but it at least explains what I’m trying to do here in the blogosphere!

In my view, the About page resonates with your readers when the description of the blog contains:

1. The Value Proposition of your writing. Value Proposition is a term used in sales that states how your product provides value to your reader. In my case, Ten Keyboards is about how technology can be used to market your work as a writer. Since few writers pay that much attention to technology, my view is that this topic should provide good value to writers.
2. Your unique view on the value proposition. This is why a reader should be reading your blog in particular. If you look out in the blogosphere, there are thousands and thousands (almost ad nauseam) of blogs about blogs, technology, and how cool all that stuff is. Since my day job is technology and my avocation is writing, my view is that I have a unique perspective on how technology can help writers market their work. That’s my unique view.
3. The page describes the reasons you want to write about your topic. Some would describe this as showing your passion for the subject — and passion is somewhat of a conundrum to me when it comes to different types of work — but I view this as why you are personally interested in writing the subject. In my case, I saw a clear need of this type of blog for writers. And, with my combination of technology and writing, it allowed me to continually search out new and different ways of marketing using technology. My motivation is I can learn a lot more about technology and writers. In any case, readers want to know your personal motivation for the topics of your blog.

When your blog is new, your “About” page is usually the second most read piece on your blog — people want to know what the blog is all about after reading some particular post that they found. The “About” page, even refined over time as you learn more about what you write about, becomes the rationale for the reader to come back for more of what you write.

Scot

When you are starting to think about doing your own blog, one of the great questions is “what makes a great blog?” I know I did and I spent a lot of time out on the blogosphere just trying to figure out which blogs were good and which ones were not as good and which ones were just flat out bad. Not many bad ones, fortunately.

Writers, of course, are more specialized and have specific needs in a blog, especially when a writer wants to market their work. So, I’ve spent the last month going through lots of different sites and determining what a great writer blog should contain. All seven criteria are found in Seven Criteria for Evaluating Writers Blogs.

The first was what every great blog contains: great content. Here are four ways to evaluate the content in a blog:

1. The content is on target for your market. If you write mysteries, your blog content appeals to those readers who also like to read and write mysteries. If you write non-fiction articles and books on pets, your content should be around pets.
2. Original Content. If all you do is parrot news articles, other blog points, and quote others, there is no reason to read your blog — except to find those who do have the original content. There are a surprising number of blogs whose authors are right out there at the bleeding edge of thought leadership for their particular topic. Perfect sense, too: their blog is usually about their passion and a tremendous amount of learning takes place by a blog author. They naturally, then, develop strong leadership in the blog topic — which then enhances their original content.
3. Content extends the conversation. The other part of content is quoting others in their work. You might think this a contradiction to Original Content, but the difference is this: you take the idea presented in another’s posting and add new and original thinking to the content quoted. This extends the conversation and conversations are happening all the time in the blogosphere.
4. Consistent publishing. My standard, that I hit rarely in my two years of blogging, is one post per weekday. Weekends off, so to speak. I don’t hit every weekday, no doubt about that. But going too long without posting is dangerous in an age of RSS readers and instant unsubscription to your blog.

Now, you can argue that these four content points apply to all blogs, not just writer blogs. You’d be right.

The trick on these four points is to stay consistent to your work as a writer. The purpose of this blog is using technology to market your work. Not grammar. Not publishing books. Not signing writing contracts. Not how I spent last weekend in Port Townsend with my wife enjoying life.

Instead, I have to consistently post original content and content that extends conversations (hard to do with a technology blog for writers!!) on my blog’s purpose.

It’s both easy and hard at the same time. Write twenty posts and see how well you mix up the four content points on your blog.

Scot

Back at the beginning of April, I blogged about having a Criteria for Writer’s Blogs so that one could evaluate a blog from a technology viewpoint. How well does the blog use technology to market the writer’s work?

Back then, I didn’t have any criteria — just my personal biases. After looking at a lot of writer’s sites over the last month, I’ve come up with seven criteria for evaluating a site.

Note that my criteria is my opinion — and I’d love to hear yours as to what makes a great writer site. And, it is not my intent to be critical of any particular site. Indeed, the ones I select will be ones that I consider as doing well in meeting the criteria. Ones that you should emulate in working with your blog setup.

Let’s take a quick look at the seven criteria and then I’ll expand on them in the next few days to more fully explain what each section means.

The seven:

1. Great Content. All blogs, not just writers blogs, need great content. Without great content, there is no reason for a reader to read what the writer is writing.
2. Blog “About” Page. This would explain what the blog is about from the writer’s viewpoint. Is the blog about a particular book that you have written and you are writing about the subject in the blog? Or is this the personal writer site where you write about your success and struggles in writing the next big novel? Either way, a reader should find this out from your About page.
3. Contact Information. A reader — or publisher, editor, or others wanting you to write for them — should easily be able to find out how to contact you.
4. Subscription Information. It should be easy and obvious to subscribe to your content in your blog.
5. Media Page. This is a page that talks through your bio. I’m particularly biased towards several views of your bio — a tag line, a short bio for a paragraph at the end of an article, and a long bio where one could formulate questions to do an interview with you. Pictures that can be used for an article in different sizes and/or poses a plus.
6. Top Posts. This is a place to make it easy for your readers to find what you think, or your readers think, are the best content from your site. There are lots of blogs where the most popular and read posts are from a year ago through yesterday. Continue to promote those posts by showing them on the front page.
7. Good Blog Design. Not necessarily fancy or custom — but a design that doesn’t detract from the message you are trying to promote on the blog.

It has been an exciting month looking at all the different sites seeing what works best.

And, clearly, I have a lot of work to do on my blog based on my own criteria. Time to get at it!

Scot