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BookWhirl.com is stretching out its coverage to bring you the latest articles, news, and tidbits about the self-publishing industry.

For this week, BookWhirl.com features winning reasons why self-published authors should have and maintain a blog.

Blog for the Win: Why Blogging is a Must-do for Self-published Authors

Blogging is a necessary strategy for an effective book marketing campaign. In fact, blogging has changed the way ideas and opinions are shared. It provides a multi-channel of information dissemination. Sharing of information has never been as easy as blogging. It is something that should be professionally utilized.

A survey published in the 2009 State of the Blogosphere by Technorati showed the significance of blogging towards building relationships between writers and readers. Here are some interesting figures: 77% of Internet users read blogs, 56% say that their blog has helped their company establish a positioning as a thought leader within the industry, 58% say that they are better-known in their industry because of their blog.

Now, here’s a list of winning reasons why self-published authors should have and maintain a blog.

Read the succeeding paragraphs at this link: http://www.bookwhirl.com/Marketing-Tips/1.html

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Blogging is a necessary strategy for an effective book marketing campaign. In fact, blogging has changed the way ideas and opinions are shared. It provides a multi-channel of information dissemination. Sharing of information has never been as easy as blogging. It is something that should be professionally utilized.

A survey published in the 2009 State of the Blogosphere by Technorati showed the significance of blogging towards building relationships between writers and readers. Here are some interesting figures: 77% of Internet users read blogs, 56% say that their blog has helped their company establish a positioning as a thought leader within the industry, 58% say that they are better-known in their industry because of their blog.

Now, here’s a list of winning reasons why self-published authors should have and maintain a blog.

Establish Author/Writer Reputation. Blogging lets you share as much as you want. It’s an opportunity to grow and demonstrate your knowledge and expertise.

Unlimited Reader Communication. Writing blog entries regularly helps you communicate with your readers. Blogging allows two-way communication since your site visitors can leave or post comments on your entries.

Convenience and Accessibility. Of course, you would not want your readers to have a difficult time in reaching you. Through blogging, you can provide 24/7 access to your reading material.

Provide Cost-free Information. Readers undeniably appreciate free information, especially when it’s beneficial. Blogging helps you draw in a bigger market. Interesting and helpful articles will help gain you more and more site visitors everyday.

Search Engines Love Blogs. Website traffic and high page ranking is crucial when you are doing online marketing. Blogs often rank higher on search engines, especially if their contents are worthy and relevant to common search queries.

Another benefit of blogging is revenue generating opportunities. It’s a recommended medium especially when you’re on a tight marketing budget. As a writer, you can profit from your writing since you wouldn’t need to pay someone else to do consumer relations.

Most blogging software allows you to create and post blog entries in minutes. More often, these blogging software have a built-in management system. You have an option to create from scratch or choose from hundreds of design template. Blogging is a giveaway publishing utility.

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source: http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Internet-Marketing/7-Quick-Writing-Tips-For-Daily-Bloggers.html

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by: Phyllis Zimbler Miller

source: http://www.millermosaicllc.com/blog-posts/

Publishing a non-fiction book will usually make it easy for you to write a blog dedicated to your book. The non-fiction subject of your book and related topics can provide ample blogging material.

For example, if you wrote a book on cooking low-fat diets, you could post one low-fat recipe a day along with insider tips to ensure the recipe turns out well.

Or if you wrote a book on new social media platforms, you could write each post about one new social media platform and probably never run out of new posts.

The problem of writing ongoing book blog posts really presents itself to fiction writers. If you’ve written a romance novel or a mystery novel, what are you going to write about in your blog posts?

With a little imagination (and you are a fiction writer, aren’t you?) you can come up with interesting posts for your book’s blog. Let’s look at some examples:

You write a novel that takes place in 1970 during the Vietnam War. Because the Vietnam War plays an important role in the novel, you could write posts about historical events that took place during that era or historical events that led to that era.

And you could write about the military today fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan and about military families back home. There’s no need to mention your book in every post; the overall context of the blog is about your book.

Now let’s stretch our imagination farther. You write a mystery novel about a series of medical-related murders. You could write posts about deaths that were not murders but were actual medical mysteries.

You could also write posts about new hospital procedures that are being implemented to reduce medical-related deaths. And you could write posts telling the family of hospital patients what to look for in suspected medical malpractice.

What if you’ve written a children’s picture book about family members learning to get along? Children are not going to read your blog and their parents aren’t going to read your blog aloud to their children.

You could write posts about parent-child issues; if you’re not an expert, you can quote other experts. You could review other children’s picture books on similar topics. You could write posts about children’s literacy issues.

The truth is that you can cast your imagination net far and wide for subjects on which to blog. Just remember that every few posts you should mention your book in connection with that post.

For example, if you were writing a post about children’s literacy issues, you could mention that a specific second-grader in your book could read long words but not short words and that her teacher suspected dyslexia.

Or you could quote an entire (short) scene from your novel to illustrate a point you’re making. And, yes, it’s okay that people reading your blog may not know who the characters and situation are. If you choose an appropriate scene, most readers will be able to understand the context of the excerpt.

Fiction authors should be as active as non-fiction authors in the use of blogs to market books. Give your blog readers interesting and well-written posts, and they will read your blog and hopefully buy your book. – P.Z.M.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a National Internet Business Examiner at http://www.InternetBizBlogger.com as well as a book author, and her power marketing company http://www.MillerMosaicLLC.com combines traditional marketing principles and Internet marketing strategies to put power in your hands.

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source: http://www.blogsdn.com/computers-internet/7552-blogging-can-be-a-powerful-tool-for-marketing.html

Blogging is a practice that has been around for at least 5 years. It began with average, but opinionated people with something to say, who wanted to share their opinions with anyone who would read them. While it has been popular with the general public, it hasn’t caught on with many businesses until recently. Blogging can be a powerful tool for marketing and exposure for any business if done properly. This article will cover the first steps businesses will need to take to set themselves up for successful blogging.

1. Your first step is to select an appropriate host for your blog. There are a couple of solutions that you can use to host your blog. You can:

1) Host it on your own server
2) Host it at a blogging hosting server, such as livejournal.com or blogger.com

If you host your own blog on your own web site, you will need to find blogging software that you can use on your web site. You will need to determine what your web site server capabilities are, and then determine what blogging software will work within your server environment. You will then need to install the software and arrange it in order to begin blogging.

2. Configure Your Business Blog

Once you have determined how you want to host your blog, and have installed it, or signed up for your blog service, you will need to configure your blog.

Configuring your blog includes, what template you want to use with your blog. Most blogs whether they are on a blog hosting service, or software that you have installed, will come with several templates. If you are new to the Internet, and don’t have a lot of programming experience, it is probably best to stick with one of the templates that has come with the software or service. It is however, better if you have some programming background, or have the funds to hire someone, then you can get your blog to look like your business web site
Other things that will need to be configured are settings such as the name and description of your business blog, the email address you want messages from your blog to be sent to, how you want your blog archived (posts saved for future access), what ping services you want to notify when you update your blog, and other settings too numerous to mention in this article.

3. Determine the Content of Your Business Blog

This next step can be done before you actually install your blog, but you will need to determine the topic of your business blog, and how you want to convey your information to your target market. The content and topics of your blog should relate to your industry. You can focus as narrow or as wide as you choose think is appropriate. In general, it is a good idea to cover many areas within your industry and then separate the different areas of your industry into different categories within your blog’s

lastly but most importantly, you should choose topics and categories that will be of interest to your visitors. You will need to research the keywords that your customers would use to find you. There are many keyword research tools existing on the web today that will tell you what exact phrases, and how often, your target market is using to find you. These keywords will determine the topics of your blog entries. You should also use some of the phrases you have found in your research in your business blog posts.

4. Begin Blogging for Your Business

The last step is to start blogging. You can choose from a number of various formats to add entries to your blog, as blog entries can take on any format. Some formats that you may want to consider include:

1) Writing articles and posting them to your blog.
2) Finding related news items in your industry and posting them with comments as to what you think of the news item.
3) Answering frequently asked questions you get from your clients.

4) Writing reviews of products/services in your industry your style of posting should match what your target market would find interesting.

Now that you know the basic steps of what needs to be done to begin business blogging, you can choose how you want to host your blog, what keywords your target market uses to find you, and what format would make the most sense to begin blogging. There are many web sites that have more articles and in-depth information about business blogging. You can use these resource sites to help guide you through the process from making your first post, to getting your first customer from your business blog.

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