How I Successfully Built My Author Blog From The Ground Up

Okay…let’s be honest about something, my blog. When I started my author blog, I made a ton of mistakes. I spent way too much time trying to design a logo and various graphics to feature on the website. All of this took time away from the most important thing…writing blog posts. I read all of the “starting a blog” tutorials from Pinterest, and watched all of the “blogging is dead” videos on YouTube. I tried extremely hard to find something from other authors who had blogs featuring work that was clean, professional, and engaging.

I want to let you know that it took me a lot longer than I desire to admit. I was totally wrong in my approach and perspective about blogging. Yes, it was important for me to build for a search engine, but then AI hit us and changed everything. However, I was still missing an important component….being personable. Readers, like yourself, will stay on the blog to read my words when you are able to actually connect with my writer’s voice. You AREN’T here solely because of the various technicalities needed to feed an invisible engine.

So, this is why I wanted to share a vulnerable moment in time with you. In this post, I will share what I know about about blogging that I didn’t know before. And I will describe what I’d do differently if I were starting all over today as an indie romance author.

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my link, at no cost to you.

The Mistake That Most Author Blogs Make

The #1 mistake that is typically made is focusing only on building the infrastructure of the blog before you’ve ever defined the ideal audience OR who you’re talking to through your words. Most blog creators will start with their “home”, “about me”, and “contact” pages. The various categories for the blog are also built out before you ever figured out the identity of the reader and what the purpose of the blog is for establishing a genuine connection with the reader.

If you have put all of the pieces together about the error in my ways, then…yes, you are correct. I created a huge issue for myself at the beginning of building my author blog. I’m sharing my mistakes because I don’t want you to have to spend months of your time creating the platform where your ideal readers will find you on the internet.

You are here, because you are interested in creating an author blog. So…the first thing that you should is determine what you will title your blog.

For me, I kept it simple and used my pin name. This was easy, because this is how my readers will be able to identify me. Determining the title of your blog will allow you to set the tone on your identity. Readers will be able to connect the name to a person, and not solely to books they’ve read or are on their TBR list.

Afterall, romance authors are people with emotions, personalities, characteristics, and daily routines that many don’t really know about.

Who The Author Blog Is Actually For

Creating your author’s blog is a strategic marketing plan for your business.

Yes…my nonprofit management degree has seeped its way into this post. See! I told author’s have various character traits and skillsets. Being a former nonprofit professional with a Masters in Nonprofit Management is one my hidden talents.

Okay, okay…let’s get back on topic! Having a blog means that you are working to connect with your ideal readers.

As a romance author, the blog’s audience base will arrive to your platform for one of the following things:

1. Romance readers will follow you to your blog to gain a close proximity to the you as the author
2. Your peers in the publishing industry will visit to gain insight on your work or want to connect with you
3. They will visit for combination of things. You simply never know. And that’s okay!

Personally, for me…I created my author blog to develop a relationship with my ideal romance reader. Writing blogs allows me to remove the guardrails and open up more to others. Being on social media and sharing my content there felt like I was performing to gain attention. And to be frank, that’s the last thing that I ever want to do. My heart was speaking loudly about being true to myself and not allow my introverted nature to be forced into doing something that didn’t feel right.

I believe that everything that my peers are doing on social media to market their work and build rapport with their ideal readers could also be accomplish through blog posts. The readers who will land on The Brittany Jay’na blog will come with a purpose to connect. They will value what we’ve created over here on our tiny portion of the internet, and this reader will take immense value in it.

What to Write About First On Your Blog

Earlier in the blog, I shared that it was important for you to first establish the name of the blog. And this is true…but after establishing your identity, you need to determine your content strategy. The blog posts that you write should help sustain your writer’s voice and personality. You may fall deep into the content trap and coping others by only focusing on book-adjacent content, such as reviews and recommendations. Or you may burn out from not creating content that is true to who you are.

When you sit down to plan out your content calendar, you need to focus on what will work for your blog. You should consider creating content around your writing journey, your reading life, personal opinions on popular topics, or even insights on your lifestyle.

The things that you share to definitely utilize a reader’s psychology. A strategy that I’ve been using lately to write my blog posts focuses on a reader’s voluntary and involuntary behavior. I try to figure out how I can help pull a reader’s attention to get them to stop and click on a specific blog post. After they open the blog post, I try to figure how to keep reading the entire post.

The blog posts that I write about discusses my experiences as a romance author, my reading life, my personal opinions, my desire to live a “lover girl” life, my health and wellness, as well as the behind-the-scenes of my lifestyle. Before I determined the content in my marketing strategy, I was writing content that solely focused on book recommendations.

I believed that by writing these sort of blog posts that I would gain a ton of traction. But…this content royally flopped. I had to learn the hard way that people wanted to connect with me a person, and not a marketing reel for products or book recommendations.

The Technical Basics: What You Actually Need and What’s Distracting You

There’s a lot of technical knowledge required to building a blog.

Well…that’s if you chose the route that I took. Initially, when I started my blog, I was hosting a website through Squarespace. Over time, I learned that my blog would have a harder time growing via search engines on this particular platform. And I discovered that I didn’t really own my website, but simply renting.

I made the hard decision to shut down the blog on Squarespace and move over to WordPress. I had to obtain a new blog host and separate my domain from the host. Trust me…you will want to do this!

Re-learning coding took forever, but I was okay with taking on this challenge. With a huge understanding on my technical gaps, I was honest with myself about reaching out to gain assistance. So…I bought a blog template. This template would allow me to customize my website and blog to align with my author brand identity. I changed my logo, updated the color palette, and established blog categories to easily navigate the website.

When I started this journey, I wish I created a email list, unique freebies, and understood SEO & GEO basics. To this day, I am working on building my email list, because this is a list of contacts that I don’t have to fight to connect with, like I would on social media. Having an email list means that I don’t have to deal with a platform’s algorithm silencing my content. I get excited knowing I can share highlights of my journey to my email list’s inbox with ease. And that’s amazing part about focusing on this project.

Hmmm?

What’s SEO and GEO?

Oh…my bad! SEO stands for search engine optimization, and GEO stands for generative engine optimization. This two measures will help you to create blogs that will enhance your content’s ability to be recommended or cited.

I understand that this a lot to take in, but the more you expose yourself to this nature of comprehension, the more you gain confidence in your ability to incorporate it. You don’t need to understand everything in the beginning. Creating blog content means that you constantly learning due to constant changes in how topics and niches trend online. It’s better for you to remain a student of your craft, then a master who isn’t open to grow or evolve.

What I’d Do Differently, And the One Thing I Got Right

Whew! Who knew that simply creating a blog would cost you so much…financially, emotionally, mentally, and physically?

Yes, I learned a lot of the past couple of months. But…if I were to do it differently, I would have taken a blog course from a trusted and reliable source. Trust me…you need to vet the person who created. Don’t just purchase from any ole’ body! If you want, I will share the course that I used to help me learn the ins and outs of creating my blog. It’s called Perfecting Blogging. By the end of this course, I learned about the importance of keywords, keyword research, planning your content calendar, and SEO strategy.

Despite not understanding how to build my blog, I was right about creating a blog platform that I owned that my ideal audience would be able to find. If you are just like me, then I want you to know that we must celebrate the thing that we got right while to work on our areas of improvement. We got this!

One more thing…

What’s the one part about creating a blog that’s tripping you up?