5 steps to blogging success: thoughts inspired from the Melbourne Writers’ Festival

Federation Square, setting of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival*

Gauging from the audience questions (both during, and those coming people up to me afterwards) at our ‘Author as Brand’ session yesterday, it seems this subject is a hot one. I’m not surprised. I suppose it goes back to that old catch-22: to get a publisher, you need an agent. To get an agent, it’s often after you’ve been published. It helps – in both circumstances – to already have an audience or readership. It might be the difference between being taken up or being passed over. This is where blogging can help.

But it’s not easy.

So today I thought I’d write up some quick bullet points that will go over some things we covered for those of you unable to make it (and for those of you who are curious), and how I think they wind their way into blogging.

1) The day blogging changed forever for me was when I published The Psycholanalytic Implications of Blogging.

It was my first determined effort to sit down and put in words lots of ideas and thoughts I’d been having about blogging – at least in the Bigger ‘Meta’ Picture sense. I haven’t had a chance to expand on it since (not since a PhD scholarship application of mine along a similar vein was rejected last year – a story I haven’t told yet because I’m still annoyed about the whole thing went down). It’s NOT a perfect post by any means, and I would write it differently today, but it provided a pretty basic framework that I could (and have) used for a reference.

Moral: Blogs have crucible moments throughout their life. Remember them. They are important. Learn from them.

2) I occasionally publish posts that I’ve laboured long and hard on, I tinker, I fiddle, I anguish – and they don’t make a splash. Nada. Zip. Then there are others, like If Prime Ministers Were Chosen On Masterchef, which I throw together purely for fun and boom! They’re popular.

And I like both kinds of posts equally.

Moral: Publish posts you’re happy with and can stand by in whatever circumstance.

3) Along with a great many other people, we went along to see Joss Whedon at the Town Hall on Friday night. As you’d expect, he was very interesting and funny. The one thing that struck me was how honest he was about the demise (some will say tragedy) over the short life of his Firefly television show. “There isn’t a day that goes by I don’t think of a scene I could’ve written for that show,” he said regretfully. But as we all know, he’s kept on working and creating, turning into almost a juggernaut. Dare I say, his own ‘Brand’?

Moral: There will be artistic/creative disappointments. In blogging, that may take the form of someone pinching your post or meme ideas (or just flat out pinching your content), partnerships fall through or were not as they initially seem. But you pick yourself up and keep going.

4) Kathy Charles and James Othmer both came to writing savvier about marketing and advertising from their professional backgrounds than I did. What I know now has only been cobbled together over the years. But one thing we were all in agreement about yesterday was when it comes to interacting with your reading community, your readership, that genuineness was key. Authenticity. If, from that, as James said, you can create a sort of “umbrella” for yourself from these factors then that is a pretty good place to be.

Moral: Be engaged. Respond to comments. Thank people. Be friendly. It might mean a book sale – or a new subscriber to your blog. Kathy talked about authors making for themselves a Key Marketing Document: a list with all the essential points about your book to mention in an interview: title, a brief plot synopsis, etc. This is a good idea for blogs, too. Be upfront about the main points of your site: create a landing page, a sneeze page, or at the very least an ‘About Me’ or ‘Professional Me’ style of page.

5) I still have a blood blister on my big toe from last month’s half-marathon.

Moral: There is no moral. I just like saying I ran a freaking half-marathon. Heh.

*Photo credit: vincentq