Hello Blog Hopping Buddies! Here we are again!

Thursday, July 14th 2011:
QUESTION: Do blogs or serializing your novel on line really help build your brand name? Question provided by author  Wendy Woods

Frequent Blogging
I think anything you do frequently like daily blogging, or blogging on a regular day each week (so your readers know when to expect something new from you) helps keep your name “out there”, whether you are published or not. So, yes! It does help build your brand name! Probably more than many realise.

Connecting to SMM Sites
With technology today, frequent blogging is also a great marketing skill, since so many blogs now allow you to connect each new post to popular Social Media Marketing (SMM) places such as Twitter and Facebook. This gives you even more scope for reaching many more people each time you publish a new blog post. Get yourself a stat counter and check. On blog hops like this, for example, we all get double the hits. Many more views than comments left.

An Increase of Blog Followers
These are muddy waters for some, but by frequent blogging or serialising a novel you can also gain more followers if you also add useful “reader connecting” programmes like Google Friend Connect to your blog. Another way is to allow readers to subscribe to your post feeds via email or they’ll simply add you through one of the many feed distribution sites. Dip your toes in and have a splash around. Go on, try it for yourself. 

Comment Love!
Then there are comments, both those you receive and those you make on others blogs. Not only is leaving comments on other people’s blogs fun and friendship building, it’s a great way to garner more people to your own blog. People are curious. They may click on the comment you left on someone else’s blog to find out more about you, which could bring you another regular reader or two! No one can spread comment love (or promote themselves), floating around the ice cold territories of the Internet seas acting like an iceberg. 

Serialised Novels Do Get Noticed
I love reading blogs that are just serialised stories, and quite often they become very popular and get picked up by main publishers – like The Secret Diary of a London Call Girl and many, many others. 

Is Anyone Alive Out There?
Plus, if book bloggers and other media professionals visit your site, and you have a blog that is frozen in time – you haven’t touched it since 1989 – it doesn’t leave them with a very good impression. And getting readers annoyed even before they have had chance to find out more about you (since your blog is so unused and out of date) is not going to work in anyone’s favour.

My advice? Don’t let your blog sink like the Titanic! 

What NO Blog?
If you do not have a  blog, you may look a little on the chilly side; unfriendly and without time to interact with your fans… (or prospective ones!) and for some that is equally off-putting. Show some warmth. Let us see a drop of the real you. It’s much more personal and as a reader myself, I love finding out more about the person behind the book/pen name. Don’t you?

Want to play? Have your own views on this question?

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