Despite Steve's praises, I'm rather a newbie with the whole blog thing.. I followed the trend for about two years before finally jumping in, and then actually tried to organize a "blog co-op," where five "marketing gurus" would each blog on a different day of the week, every week. I don't think that's been done before as an ongoing project, though this and other special blogs do it once in a while--and I do think it would be newsworthy. (Anyone want to set this up? I'd happily be one of the participants.)
But I never got critical mass of participants, and then finally decided I didn't need to blog every day. I could blog when I had something worth saying, and that would be that. So in December, I finally launched "Principled Profit: The Good Business Blog" -- at http://principledprofit.blogspot.com/
Now--I am an author and a publisher, and I set up my blog with a few very clear agenda points:
* To generate interest in my books and traffic to my various websites, of course
* To broaden momentum for a campaign I've started to find 25,000 business leaders who will sign the Business Ethics Pledge, http://www.principledprofits.com/25000influencers.html
* To advance my long-term, back-burner agenda of becoming a political/social commentator, for pay. It has long been a passive goal of mine to be a syndicated columnist and/or radio/TV commentator, covering a thoughtful progressive perspective that's pro -peace and pro-environment, but also pro-business. Recently, that's been bubbling up to the surface with some insistency, and the blog is one of several steps I'm taking to position myself for those kinds of gigs.
* To monetize some of my free content through Google AdSense and other channels
To address Steve's questions:
1. Are Blog Tours Worthwhile?
Yes. Almost any publicity is worthwhile--something I stress in my book, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World--and a blog tour automatically creates good partner relationships--which I discuss in my newer book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First.
Of course, you have to choose the right blogs. Too much of the blogosphere is random and purposeless, and those are not blogs I'd bother with in an author tour, unless they were directly relevant to my topic. But I see a blog tour as one more arrow in a quiver that includes online chats, seeded articles/excerpts, one's own and others' e-zines, discussion lists, press releases, etc.
2. Pros and Cons of Author Blogs
+ Search engine food
+ Reader interactivity, with the comment feature--no need to hunt through a website for the content form and then hope the site owner actually reads your comment
+ Soooo easy! Takes all the challenge and time away from formatting content
+ If the author is disciplined, it can become a powerful and focused promotional tool, especially if tied in with special events, promoted through sig and website, etc.
+wonderful possibilities for networking, cross-content sharing, partnerships of various kinds
-Undisciplined authors will squander the tool with "who cares?" entries about their favorite breakfast cereal
-Competition for eyeballs--hard to get noticed
-It takes some time to write a post, proofread it, and so forth
-May have to weed out rude and spam comments
-Comments, especially on older entries, are easy t miss
3. How to Buy Advertising on Blogs?
I purchase very little advertising. However, as a publisher, I've expanded my Google AdSense account to display ads on both my blog and my site-specific search engine; we just implemented this and I don't know yet what kind of results it will bring. I would suggest that when a blog is closely targeted to the same readership as a book, some advertising may be effective--I could see, for instance,an unknown fantasy author advertising on a blog that coves Rowling or Tolkien, and potentially generating significant reader awareness. But I believe providing actual content to the blog would generally be much more effective.
4. Will RSS replace eZines?
Not until
* RSS readers are as easy to set up and use as blog-creation software
* There's a way to manage a very large amount of content arriving through multiple streams. Speaking personally, I have been known to subscribe to as many as 60 e-zines plus a dozen discussion groups--I've cut back, but if I tried to do all that via RSS, my screen would be so crowded with orange buttons I couldn't see the site I was visiting!
5. Will Blog Spam Kill Blogs and/or RSS?
They've killed e-mail (though I still use it as my primary communication tool). They killed postal mail. I'm sure they'll find a way to destroy each successive golden egg.
6. Quick comment on Gwendolyn's post yesterday: "My issue is getting my author exposure in the next six weeks while her book is on the shelves."
While it's true that the window immediately following publication is "hot," for most books, that's only the beginning of the opportunity. I'm a huge believer in promoting backlist actively. My most current book was released almost two years ago--but in that time, the number of Google hits for my name went from around 7000 to over 11,000. I am *still* getting major media coverage (e.g., Woman's Day, Reader's Digest, Bottom Line/Personal) for my book, The Penny-Pinching Hedonist: How to Live Like Royalty with a Peasant's Pocketbook, which was published in 1995, went out of print in 2003, and is currently available only as an e-book and only from my site. I got a three-page story in Bottom Line/Business in 1999, for a book that had been published six years earlier. I kind of like the slow build, actually, as it gives me a chance to tailor my message more carefully. Of course, I wouldn't recommend this approach for a book on how to survive the Y2K crisis
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Shel Horowitz - copywriter, marketing consultant, author, speaker
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