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How To Market Your Book Online Step 2: Setting Up A Blog for Your Book

Last time we covered the first step in creating an online marketing campaign for your book--setting up a website for your book with a way to capture email addresses.

Today we'll move to the 2nd step: 

Set up a blog to be associated with your book.

If you already have one, you’re ahead of the game! If you don't have one, that's okay--set one up. There are lots of easy-to-use blog platforms, like TypePad and WordPress.com. 

If you have the technical abilities or if you are outsourcing the work of setting up your blog to a technical person, it's best to put your blog on your own server (for SEO reasons), rather than to use shared hosting. You can use WordPress.org if you're installing your blog on your own server (WordPress.org is different from WordPress.com).

If you can't set the blog up on your own server, then use TypePad or WordPress.com

How To Get Free Professional Photos For Your Blog Posts & Website

A photos speaks a thousand words... (What does this one say to you? It's telling me that I should have dessert tonight.)

Yes, if at all possible, I love to include photos with my blog posts. I think it catches a reader's attention, and it helps set the tone for the post.

Okay, so where do you get photos to put in your blog posts?

Some people just do Google searches and look for images there, but that's kind of dangerous. If you make the blunder of posting a photo that is copyrighted...watch out! There is an increasing number of people taking legal action for copyright infringement of photos.

A second popular option is Flickr.com. I've used that site a lot, and it has worked fine for the most part.

For a long time Flickr was the only place I would look, but then I found Fotolia.com and very quickly became spoiled for any other photo site!

I never realized it before because I didn't really know that there were any other options, but now that I've been using Fotolia for a while (mainly using it for posts I do for my clients' blogs) I'm realizing that in the past I made finding photos for blog posts harder than it needed to be.

How To Get Your Blog (or Yourself) Featured In Newspapers

Within just a few months of starting eSoup back in 2006 I was fortunate enough to be featured in an article by Boston Globe career columnist Penelope Trunk, which ended up being published in The Boston Globe and syndicated in several other newspapers. Here’s how that media windfall came about:

Penelope and I came into contact with each other through our blogs– I had written a post responding to one of her posts and linked back to her, then she came to check out my blog, saw what I did for a living, thought it sounded like a cool job, and found a way to include me in one of her articles.

That article led to me being interviewed for this article by Emily Shartin, which led to a few other interviews, the most recent of which came out just a couple weeks ago.

My first media blitz was the result of being in the right place at the right time, plus having a blog that established me as a credible resource. The other times the journalist contacted me either through being referred or through finding a relevant post on my blog while doing internet research for a story.

As someone who just started blogging a couple years ago (and before that I didn't even know what a blog was!), I am astounded at how having a blog has made it really easy to reach journalists without even trying.

Actually when you look at the numbers, it's shouldn't be that hard to believe--over 75% of journalists refer to blogs when doing research for stories.

I really think that if you have a blog and if you write on timely topics, it's just a matter of time before a journalist calls you up or emails you asking for your expert opinion.

How can you get ready? How can you inspire journalist to want to talk to you? How do you give a good interview?

If I could give just a few pieces of advice for getting mentioned in mainstream print, they would be: