The Benefits of Blogging

A guest post by Anna Lewis
Anna Lewis is the co-founder of the online print-on-demand self-publishing service CompletelyNovel held the Author Blog Awards in April 2010. You can also find Anna on Twitter – http://twitter.com/anna_cn

For anyone who is aiming for a career in writing, blogging is a fantastic way to hit the ground running. Find out about the main benefits of blogging and pick up a few tips to get started.

Blogging can improve your writing
Ever read Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘Outliers’? One of the main messages of the book is that to excel at something, you need to put in the hours….around 10,000 of them in fact! You might not have that much time to spare, but the essential message is that the more time you can devote to writing the better your writing is likely to become.
There are very few successful bloggers who don’t blog regularly, and blogging regularly means that you have to write. You need to decide how often you will write a blog post and stick to it. Writing a blog is not like keeping a diary – it’s a public commitment, which means there is much more incentive to keep it up!

Use your blog to build up an audience
If you have an idea or are are working on a book which you are looking to either publish yourself, or get published, it will be very valuable to have built up a readership and a connection with your potential audience. Writing a blog is a great way to do this over time. Your publisher will definitely thank you for it later!

Your blog could get you published
Blogging could help you find someone to publish your work too. The recent winner of the Author Blog Awards was Emily Benet whose blog ‘Shop Girl Diaries’ caught the attention of a publisher – as a result, they asked her to turn it into a book. Having already shared your writing online and received good feedback is a real selling point.

So, ready to start blogging? Here are a few handy tips:

1. Don’t expect to have thousands of followers from day one – you’ll probably end up very disappointed. To begin with, just concentrate on writing, improving and creating quality posts.
2. The best blogs tend to have a focus that is beyond a person’s day to day life. Blogging from a unique perspective will make your content much more interesting and will help your readers know what to expect.
3. Link your blog to profiles on other networks such as Twitter and Facebook – it will help you to extend the reach of your blog and connect with others.

Links: Malcolm Gladwell: http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html
Author Blog Awards: http://www.completelynovel.com/author-blog-awards
Emily Benet: http://www.completelynovel.com/publishing-news/how-to-be-top-of-the-blogs-Emily-Benet