I started this Poseidon’s Scribe blog in January 2011, so it seems I’ve been doing this for a decade now. I’m closing in on 600 blog posts (this is my 587th). Hard to believe Poseidon’s Scribe is ten years old.
It was very kind of author Todd Sullivan to interview me on the subject of blogging discipline. You can watch the interview on YouTube.
In fact, I’ve included a new Interviews tab on my website, so you can read or view all the interviews of your favorite blogger and author.
Back to Todd Sullivan’s interview of me. In that video, I provided the following overall advice about blogs:
- Valuable content. Provide useful information to readers.
- Quality writing. Keep posts brief, interesting, and well written.
- Clean appearance. Make your site uncluttered and easy to navigate.
- Periodic posts. Establish a rhythm of posting and stick to it.
Here’s what I advised about starting a blog:
- Write down why you want to blog. What’s your niche?
- Identify your intended audience. Whom are you writing to?
- What might your audience want to know, that you can provide?
- Write down 20 topics for your first 20 blogposts
- Add to that list as you come across other ideas
- Commit to posting on a regular schedule (helps you, readers, and site popularity)
- Don’t expect instant followers, comments, or notice, let alone fame.
This was what I said about writing individual blogposts:
- Craft an interesting and useful subject line. Numbers catch readers’ eyes, as do the words you, your, and you’re.
- Include an image or video with your posts
- Start with a rough outline before writing, but be willing to deviate from it.
- Edit by imagining you’re a reader just surfing to that post. Cut boring stuff. No long paragraphs. Keep the overall post short.
- Proofread before publishing
To supplement the advice I gave in the interview, I’d add this—it’s best not to dedicate your blog to the craft of writing. The net is saturated with writers writing about writing. Consider blogging about the subjects you write about instead. If your fiction focuses on certain settings, or characters, or themes, write about them.
I’ll go further than that. Consider not blogging at all. Set up a website, sure. It can be a fairly static one, with your bio, your bibliography, your scheduled appearances, etc. But think about this before you start blogging: time spent blogging is time you could be spending on your fiction.
Back in 2011, experts advised all beginning writers to blog. It was, and remains, a good way to increase your online footprint and to raise your site ranking in searches for the topics you blog about.
However, I’m not sure it increases sales of your fiction, or improves the quality of your stories. Think about that before you start a blog.
If your goal is better fiction, or more sales, work on your fiction and your marketing.
For me, though, a decade-old habit is hard to break. You can look forward to more years of steady blogging from—
Poseidon’s Scribe