Want to Be A Blogger? Read this.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: You don’t have to be a writer to be riveted by today’s blog. (And there’s a special treat at the end!) 

If you’re an author, or a craftsperson, or a hobbyist, or an entrepreneur—you might be thinking: should I have a blog?  I SHOULD have a blog! But…how?

And how can I make it work?

Today, here and continuing on Career Authors, the brilliantly entrepreneurial Dorie Clark generously reveals all her secrets.

So grab your coffee or tea. Read this. It could change your life. 

  

How Authors Can Build a Large Blog Following

By Dorie Clark

How can authors build a massive following for their blog? That’s one of the questions I tackle in my new book Entrepreneurial You, which centers on how entrepreneurs – including writers – can develop an audience and earn more money from their work.

Building an audience for your blog is crucial for future book sales, of course, but it’s also about impact and meaning. You’re not journaling for your own entertainment: you’re sharing your work publicly because there’s a message you’d like to share. 

When you take the necessary steps to build your following, it enables you to reach more people and touch more lives.

In Entrepreneurial You, I profile James Clear, a blogger who writes about the habits that can improve physical and mental performance, and who is one of the most impressive examples of rapid list growth that I’ve ever seen. 

He started blogging in late 2012 and made a commitment to post two articles a week. Within two years, he’d reached 100,000 email list subscribers who received his blog updates; by April 2017, he had more than 400,000

Clear’s list-building success hinges on four strategies: consistency, focus, great headlines, and syndication.  Here on Jungle Red today, we’ll talk about consistency and focus. And then, at the end, click on the link to Career Authors, where I’ll continue--and discuss great headlines and syndication. 

Consistency

For Clear, there’s only one explanation for why his readership has skyrocketed so dramatically: his consistency. When he launched his site, Clear recalls, there was a health blogger he admired: “He was writing really great science-based pieces that people really liked. His audience was five times the size of mine when I was getting started. Today, my audience is twenty times the size of his, and you can’t say that it’s because of quality, because he’s producing very high-quality stuff. The only difference is that I decided to write every Monday and every Thursday starting on November 12, 2012, while he has just written intermittently.”

His consistent pace gives him two advantages. First, he says, “every piece of content that you produce is a chance to rank in Google and drive search engine traffic, or for people to share it on social media, or for someone to email an article to their friends.” More volume means more exposure. 

But second, he says, writing at least eight articles per month ensures that some of them will strike a strong chord with readers.

I’m with Clear on the importance of consistency. From January 2012 to April 2015, I wrote between 5-10 articles per month for Forbes, for a total of well over 250. That frequency allowed me to experiment, find my editorial voice, make connections with interview subjects, and have many more chances to reach new readers.

“Every marketing strategy is easier with good content,” Clear says. “We often think, ‘I just need a better strategy, or I just need a better tactic,’ when really what you need is better work.”  His frequency gave him the opportunity to produce more great ideas. (Note: even for the best writers, frequency can be hard to keep up, and during a book project, Clear backed off his twice-weekly schedule. But it remains an exceptionally powerful strategy, largely because it’s hard to keep up – so there’s less competition.)

Focus

You don’t want to paralyze readers with too many choices when they visit your website and read your blog.

“I want there to be one clear call to action on each page,” Clear told me in Entrepreneurial You. “I don’t want to confuse people by having them ‘Click here to buy my book, click here to sign up for my email list, follow me on Twitter and Facebook, and read this article.’ That’s five things that they should do. When they have five things to do, they’ll probably do nothing because they don’t know what the most important thing is.”

Instead, Clear’s site draws attention to only one thing: signing up to receive a free ebook on transforming your habits, which will also opt you into his email list. He includes no sidebars or anything else that will distract viewers from the main focus: signing up for his list.

On my own website, I used to overwhelm readers with options, from following me on Twitter to subscribing to my (now defunct!) podcast. 

I now focus on steering readers to one option as well: downloading my free 88 Question Entrepreneurial You self-assessment, which signs them up for my newsletter. (To see what it looks like and get ideas for your own “lead magnet,” as these free downloads are called, click here.)

HANK: SO fascinating! And there’s more. Would you rather read a blog called : “My Journey in Blogging” or “Five Secrets to Creating A Great Blog” ? Ah HA. Seems obvious, but hey. If you’re writing an article, you want people to read it. 

Yet some headlines get ignored, while others are almost irresistible to readers. Click here for Dorie’s take on headlines...and her incredibly successful idea for getting your blog an amazingly expanded audience.

And if you have questions? Dorie will be here at Jungle Red today to answer them! And discussing them on Facebook via Career Authors.

Dorie Clark is the author of the new book Entrepreneurial You, and this article is adapted from it. Her past books include Reinventing You and Stand Out, which was named the #1 Leadership Book of 2015 by Inc. magazine. She teaches for Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and you can download her free 88-question Entrepreneurial You self-assessment workbook.

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To Tweet?Or Not toTweet?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Well, it's happened again. Yesterday, Reds chose team Hank or Team Hallie on tax preparation--it didn't start out that way, but that's how it evolved.

Today, somehow, hilariously, we've got another H or H decision for you.

Ten years ago we had NO idea what this was!

I tweet. @hank_phillippi

Our fabulous secret weapon @JungleReds tweets. (You DO follow us, right? It's never a dull moment, trust me.)

@rhysbowen tweets.

And @deborahcrombie, and @LucyBurdette, and  @JspencerFleming.

Hallie--doesn't. (But she does other stuff, of course. And what ever it is, seems to be working quite successfully, thank you so much.)

So it happens again. Are you a Hank or a Hallie? 

According to branding expert extraordinaire Dorie Clark--and more about her below--anyone who thinks Twitter is too silly or too shallow or too difficult or too easy, should take one more look at this new-ish shiny thing on the internet. And Dorie, because she's always ahead of the curve, is now shairng--just for Jungle Red!--her

Three Twitter Tips for Mystery Writers (and Readers)

                     By Dorie Clark

Dorie Clark--actually tweeting!

I was originally a Twitter skeptic – when it first hit the scene seven years ago, it seemed like the worst combination of useless and narcissistic. But my opinion has changed, and I now think it’s one of the best ways to build a following, establish your brand, and keep connected with your community.

In my new book Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future, I profile a number of “professional reinventers” – including Jungle Red co-conspirator Hank Phillippi Ryan, who used her successful career in television news as a launchpad for her mystery writing career. Whether you’re seeking to grow your profile as a mystery writer or stay on top of news and cool opportunities as a reader, here are three quick tips I recommend.

• Leverage the power of lists. Twitter allows you to create lists, a terrific feature that enables you to make sense of the ceaseless stream of content. Set up lists for your favorite authors, other readers whose opinion you respect, industry insiders, potential agents you’re querying – you name it. That will make it easier for you to track what they’re posting and, if appropriate, respond in a timely fashion.

• Schedule your retweets in advance. How do you avoid the last-minute stress of not knowing what to post? And how can you strengthen your connections with other mystery writers and readers? Kill two birds with one stone by scheduling your retweets in advance. Using a service like Hootsuite or TweetDeck, you can glance at your lists once a week, pick out the best tweets others have sent, and schedule them as retweets throughout the week. Others will appreciate that you’re sharing their content, and your own pipeline will be full.

• Brainstorm in bulk. Another way to ensure you have plenty of Twitter content is by brainstorming in bulk. Block out an afternoon on your calendar to create a list of tweets (i.e., 1-2 sentence nuggets). I can often bang out 100-200 in a couple of hours. These should be tips, insights or recommendations that establish your expertise or give readers a sense of your perspective. (In my case, writing a book about business and careers, I might write, “How to create buzz? Think about marketing as you design a product, not after” or “Have you had coffee with your local reporter? If not, invite them today.”) For a mystery author, you could share links to the menus of restaurants your characters visit (“Want to try [protagonist’s] favorite apple pie? Visit [name of restaurant] in the South End”), information about the milieu of your novel (“Fun fact: 95% of the population in Thailand is Buddhist”), or simply recommend great authors or books you admire.

Twitter is a fabulous “real time” communication tool, and part of the fun is responding to messages quickly or commenting on breaking news. But to stay sane (and ensure you have enough time for writing and reading), most of us should only log in for a few minutes a day. The majority of your Twitter presence can be handled once a week, in bulk – and hopefully these tips will make that easier.

HANK: So how about you Reds? Are you on the twitter bandwagon? What have you learned and what are your secrets? We'll give Dorie's new book on branding to one lucky commenter! And hey, what's your twitter address..we should all follow each other!

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Dorie Clark is CEO of Clark Strategic Communications and the author of the newly-released Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013), a book about how to change careers, embrace new professional challenges, and take control of your professional reputation. You can follow her on Twitter.