Is a Blog Necessary for Author Marketing and Business Book Promotion?

Author marketing experts will answer "yes" to this question every time. A blog serves several important functions in the overall marketing campaign. It's not just a place where the writer - or the publicity agency, if the writer has hired one - will talk about the new book. It's also a place that can become very search engine friendly, if handled correctly, and lead readers to the connected website and into the sales process.

Whether it's business book promotion or widget sales, Google and the major search engines love to see fresh, relevant content on a website. (Although we differentiate between "website" and "blog," search engines do not.) Until blogs came into fashion, anyone with a website faced a quandary: How to keep putting content on a website that already has all the content it needs.

Blogging has solved that problem. In book promotion, the author or his or her publicity firm can make sure new posts are going up on an appropriate schedule. Because these posts aren't actual website pages - such as Home, About, Books, History, etc. - a wide variety of topics can be covered without sludging up the streamlined navigation of the main website.

Authors can write blog posts about their books, how and where they learned to write, the art of writing, the passion of writing, writing pitfalls, other books they've read and liked and just about anything else. What is the point of all this?

Traffic.

Relevant content that is always being added to has a far better chance of attracting the search engines - and thereby visitors - than a static website that hasn't been updated for months or longer. Of course there's more to what is known as "search engine optimization" than just relevant, growing content, but this is a big part of it. Online promotion efforts also focus on elements such as the actual design, a reduced use of HTML, meta tags, post titles, navigation, text headings and the like.

Author marketing professionals typically have the resources to perform excellent design and optimization work for their clients. They also have the expertise to create the kind of website, to which the writer's blog readers will be sent, that has a powerful sales message, written and formatted in a way that has been proven to be effective.

So, does a writer need a blog when doing author marketing? The answer to that question today is like the answer a few years ago to the question, "Does a company need a website?" An author needs every tool he or she can get in order to win in the highly competitive book-sales market. This is why so many turn to professional book publicists who have taken many authors down the road to success and who understand the inner workings of the publicity game and the book industry itself.

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How to Drive Traffic to Your Business Blog: Hire a Business Blogging Service

According to a survey done by Hubspot, those businesses that have a blog see 55% more web traffic than those that don't. Given that they are relatively inexpensive and can bring in significantly more visitors to a site, it is no wonder why business blogs has become as huge. Blogs can not only bring in new leads but encourage those who do visit you to come back again. While many people accept the fact that blogs help to generate leads, not everyone knows how this is achieved. If you find that you fall into this group, don't worry, we will clarify everything for you. Let's take a look at what factors are involved with improving web traffic and how a business blogging service can build upon them.

The Search Engine Optimization Factor

How it helps: Statistically speaking, the chances of your site being clicked on if it isn't on the first few pages of a web search are pretty low. In fact, not being in the top 10 can dramatically reduce your chances of getting clicked on. Blogs help to improve your search engine ranking by having content that appeals to web crawlers (the programs that a search engine uses to match a search with relevant content). The sort of things that the crawlers look for are: relevant keywords, blog length, blog format, and the quality of the blog.

How a Blogging Service can improve it: The biggest way to get a web crawlers attention is with strong keywords. In order to get these keywords you need a professional who can find what the hot keywords are for your industry as well as pick which specific ones will gain you the most exposure. Experts play a balancing game of determining which keywords are too general and which ones are too specific to help with visibility. When they are too general you can easily be pushed to the hundredth, or even thousandth page in a search. If they are too specific the crawler won't pick you up at all.

The Social Media Factor

How it helps: Social media is becoming increasingly important in driving blog traffic. A good percentage of our total internet activity is spent on social media sites, and linking your blog with these sites is essential to finding new leads. Brief content can be posted on these channels that peeks your followers interest and encourages them to follow your links back to your blog. Also, whenever someone Likes or Retweets your blog post they are endorsing your content and sending it out for others to read, increasing your exposure.

How a Blogging Service can improve it: First off, a business blogging service markets your blog through your social media channels. This lets your social media followers know that you have new content to check out and brings them to your site. Second, when you have great, professionally written content, your readers are more likely to share that content with others.

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