Is a blog still worth it for writers?

What should writers blog about?

Blog about the subjects that bring readers to your books: the worlds, ideas and questions your books are made from. Posts on the craft of writing mostly attract other writers. That’s good company, but readers of your genre want something else, so write for them. A useful test is whether someone who loves books like yours, and has never heard of you, would read the post to the end.

For fiction

Take an invented example. Nell Harrow writes cozy mysteries set in Little Fenwick, a fictional Vermont village with a fiercely contested baking competition. Her readers might enjoy these:

• The history behind the story: how old-fashioned village fairs judged their baking classes, and what she borrowed for her plots.
• The setting: the real landscape, food and weather that shaped her invented village.
• Recommendations: five cozy mysteries for a snowed-in weekend, with a line on why each one works.
• Character extras: the recipe one character would never share.

For nonfiction

Take another invented writer, Theo Marsh, author of a guide to keeping bees on city rooftops. His readers might enjoy these:

• One useful idea per post: how to choose a hive spot on a flat roof.
• Answers to reader questions: the ones that arrive by email after every talk he gives.
• News through the book’s lens: what a new city planting scheme means for urban bees.
• What has changed: advice he’d now revise, and why.

How do you write titles and subtitles people click?

Write a title that makes one specific promise, then a subtitle that adds the detail that persuades. Readers usually meet a post as a line in a list or a shared link, with nothing nearby to explain a pun.

Specific titles work because they tell a scanning reader what they’ll get. “Some Notes on Bees” gives a reader little to go on. “Five Rooftop Plants That Feed Bees Through a City Summer” promises something they can use.

• Be concrete: numbers, names and solid nouns signal that the post has substance.
• Lead with the key words: titles get cut short in search results and on phones, so put the meaning first.
• Keep the promise: a title that oversells costs you the reader’s trust next time.
• Try several: draft at least five, read each one out loud, and keep the one you’d stop for.

A subtitle earns its place by adding what the title leaves out: the method, the stakes, or what the reader will come away with. Keep it to one clear sentence, and don’t give away the answer the title made them curious about. For the bee post, a good subtitle might be “All five grow in pots on a sunny roof, and between them they flower all summer.”

Before you publish, read the pair together through a stranger’s eyes. If they make sense on their own and promise something specific, they’re ready.

How do a blog and a newsletter work together?

Publish on your blog, then send your best posts to your newsletter subscribers. The two reach people in different ways. A blog post waits to be found through searches and links. A newsletter lands in the inboxes of people who asked for it, and they may never have seen the post.

When you send a post as a newsletter, write a fresh opening of two or three sentences. Say why you’re sending it now and what was on your mind when you wrote it. Then link back to the post, so subscribers can comment on it or share it.

Not every post needs sending. A post earns its place in the newsletter if it would interest someone who has never visited your blog. Reflective pieces, stories and recommendations usually qualify, and short announcements usually don’t.

Keep some things for subscribers only, so that subscribing gives people more than the blog does. Good candidates are first news (a cover reveal or a publication date), more personal letters, deleted scenes and anything time-limited. And put a sign-up form at the end of every post, where a reader who enjoyed it will see it.

How often should you post?

Post as often as you could keep up for a whole year, including your busiest months. For a writer with a book on the go, once or twice a month is often realistic. A steady rhythm teaches readers when to come back, while bursts followed by long gaps make a blog look abandoned.

• Keep two posts in hand: finished drafts for the weeks when life gets in the way.
• Keep an ideas list: reader questions, research notes and books you’ve loved all become posts.
• Pick a day: put it in your calendar like any other appointment.
• Skip the apology: if you miss a post, publish the next one as usual.

Length matters less than rhythm. A focused post on one idea, finished and published, does more for you than a long essay that stays in drafts.

What are pull quotes, and why use them?

A pull quote is one striking line lifted from your post and set apart in larger type, as magazines do. It gives a skimming reader a reason to slow down, and it gives you a line to share on its own. One or two in a post is enough, since they work by being rare.

Use the same line elsewhere: on a social media quote card, as a newsletter teaser, or as the words you post with a link. Here is one from Nell Harrow’s invented post on village rivalries: “In a village of four hundred people, the bake-off is the only election anyone takes seriously.”

Choose lines that pass these tests:

• It stands alone: it makes sense without the paragraph around it.
• It’s concrete: an image or a sharp observation carries further than a general statement.
• It doesn’t spoil: no twist, no punchline, no ending.
• It sounds like you: a reader who likes the line should like the post.

Do the same for each of your books. Keep a document of five or six favorite lines, with page numbers, so you always have something worth sharing.