The Bookseller.com

13th October 2008

Alex Milway is an author and illustrator, who blogs at www.themousehunter.com/blog. His latest, The Curse of Mousebeard, is published by Faber on 3rd July.

What’s the point of blogging?

25.06.08

Contrary to popular belief, writing a blog is not simply about having an online diary. Writing a blog is, in fact, about keeping in regular contact with your readers. It’s a brilliant and beneficial marketing tool.

When The Mousehunter was launched back in January, I started a blog in order to raise people’s awareness of my work. Since then, I’ve spent about half an hour each day writing one or two posts, and I’m already seeing the results. In the space of four months, its readership has grown to an average of 400 unique readers a month.

From the outset, I saw The Mousehunter Blog as providing extra content for the reader, just like you’d find on a DVD: I post pages from my sketchbooks, animations and films I’ve made, as well as giving away downloads, such as a cut-out-and-make Gibbet.

That’s the wonder of a blog post; it can contain audio, films, pictures and words, all at once.
But why not build a traditional website instead?

First, blogging software is simple to use and already optimised for search engines (which means Google should find it easily), so you don’t have to worry about that. Second – and this is the real beauty of a blog – the content is different each time you visit, making it rewarding for regular readers. This is where its power lies. It is of the moment, and comes directly from you.

It’s for this reason alone that it can be stronger than a mailing list or an advert in a newspaper. Your blog readers are coming to you, wanting to know what you’re up to.

Successful blogs come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but American authors seem to be one step ahead of us Brits. As a creator of the Spiderwick Chronicles, Holly Black has a successful personal blog – just look at the number of comments per entry. Even though the posts are short and lightweight, they are fun and relevant to her work, and always keep her books on the readers’ minds. It’s a great example of how to inform your readers of upcoming events.

Another American blog worthy of note is Shrinking Violet Promotions. This takes a slightly different approach to a personal diary-style blog. Written by two American YA authors, the blog is instead full of marketing advice for new writers, using the writers’ own experiences as subject matter. It’s a brilliant form of guerrilla marketing, as that wealth of information on their site sits right alongside covers of their books, keeping their work and names always in the readers’ minds.

The main purpose of a blog is self promotion, and that shouldn’t be frowned upon, but embraced. It needn’t be egotistical, or spiteful – in fact the best blogs are quite the opposite – but it should be focused and targeted.

As I’ve found, from the humble beginnings of a blog, you can soon create a loyal following, as well as lifting your content to the top of the search engines above the likes of Amazon.com, which means your own words are what greets a reader when they search for you online.

It does take a little time and effort to get a blog off the ground, but your readership is already out there waiting for you.

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