Blogging a book ahead of time has become such a controversial topic lately. Some influencers are saying that it’s a bad idea but this is not exactly the truth. In fact, not blogging can cripple new authors because they start to get afraid of writing a book about anything they have blogged about in the past, and vise versa. What ends up happening is they shy away from topics that are centered on their book’s main topic. This pushes them to boring, repetitive blog posts that end up hurting their marketing. That’s why it’s so important to blog your book.
The fact is that successful authors say that 45% of their followers are found on their blogs. While most of their following is still found on social media (55%), the fact that almost half of them are brought into the fold through blogging is impressive.
This post is going to show you why you should blog your book. It’s a great idea and it will help you market a new book. Blogging your book will help you:
- Enhance your book.
- Build an impressive audience.
- Test new ideas.
Let’s look at these in more detail.
Blogging Enhances your Book
Blogging is one of the best ways to hone creative ideas. It serves as a casual way to lay out your ideas in a format where your audience can provide feedback. But each post is generally based on a smaller niche idea that is not really connected to the rest. Sure, some posts might be loosely related but they are not connected like they would be in a book. Therefore, it’s okay to use blog posts as inspiration to a book since they are connecting ideas and use much different phrasing.
Basically, we use blog posts to get feedback about certain topics from our audience before adding them to a book in order to enhance it. This ensures the two are different while also increasing the quality of the book.
Using your Blog to Build an Impressive Audience
A blog should be used as one method of advertisement for your book. Blog posts have the potential to go viral and that is going to be the most powerful form of marketing for new authors. The worst case scenario is that your blog trickles in a few new readers every day and some of those readers can be funneled into your book’s sales funnel. However, the best case scenario can transform your book into a best-seller. If a blog post goes viral, then it’s going to garner your book a lot of attention. It can quickly become a best-seller!
The key is to make sure that your blog is pointing people to places where they can find your book. If your blog is not being used as a funnel to lead people to your book, then it’s a waste.
Use your Blog to Test New Book Ideas
Finding resonance with an audience is one of the most difficult tasks that writers face when writing a book. Writers who stop blogging are going to find it much more difficult to find this resonance. In fact, I would actually encourage you to blog even more! Blogging builds a direct connection between you and your audience. There is two way communication so when you blog your book, you are creating a way to test a new idea that you might have come across. If you are not sure whether to include a new idea in your book, then write a blog post along that same niche. See how your audience responds to it. Chances are that if the content won’t work as a blog post, then it’s not going to work as a chapter in your book.
Final Thoughts
Obscurity is the greatest challenge that new writers must overcome so the best way to overcome that obstacle is to create a blog. Just be sure that your blog is being used to funnel your new audience toward your book.
- Include a link to your latest book at the end of every blog post.
- Create pages for each of your books on the blog.
- Always share blog posts on social media.
Follow those three simple tips and you will be able to blog your book in a way that enhances your overall writing career. Just remember that as long as you are rephrasing everything (never copy/paste blog posts into a book), then your book is considered original content. Blogging presents an amazing opportunity to enhance your book by building your audience and testing new ideas.