Blogging is still a viable option when it comes to promoting yourself and your work. But is it right for you?

We’re going to talk about something that is near and dear to my heart and that is blogging. I say that because blogging was what helped me get into my digital marketing career. It was the thing that got me back to my first passion — writing.

I spent my academic years chasing a job in the legal field because at that time writing wasn’t a real job. Writing was just something cute to do on the side. So I thought being a lawyer was going to be a real job. After two degrees and working my first law office job, I realized it was not what I was meant to do. I wanted to get back into writing

While working an admin job back in 2008, blogging was really just starting to take off. A friend of mine suggested I start one. Just pick a topic I want to write about and set it up online. So that’s how I started online writing. My blog back then was Fierce Beauty and Fashion and I wrote about hair, makeup, and skincare. Then I landed a volunteer writing job writing for Yahoo!’s beauty vertical.

And it was just a snowball effect after that!

Click here to listen to more about my writing journey!

Blogging really introduced me to the world of content marketing, marketing yourself, and how to create a brand. As a beauty blogger, you had to pitch yourself to PR people and their brands so you had to know who you were, what you were about, what you had to offer, and what made you different from all the bloggers out there.

Back in 2008, it was simpler to stand out as a blogger because not that many people were doing it. Those who started at that time (and kept with it!) launched their careers as influencers, personal brands, magazine editors, and even business owners. For me, blogging has a really special place in my heart because if I hadn’t started blogging, I wouldn’t have gotten a career in content strategy nor gotten back to my fiction writing.

Now when it comes to blogging as a fiction author, there are a lot of differing opinions on the subject. Some people say fiction authors shouldn’t even waste their time blogging. Others say all authors should blog no matter what they write.

No matter the opinions, blogging is not dead. Unlike 2008 when blogging first started taking off, the I content playing field has leveled out now. Just like when indie publishing was new and it was easy to get on top of Amazon’s charts, you have to work to stand out as a blogger. You just have to be a little bit smarter about it. Realize that it is a long game. You’re not going to get 10,000 readers off of one blog post. It’s going to take Google a little bit to get you up in those rankings.

But blogging is still a viable option when it comes to promoting yourself and your work. As long as you’re consistent and you have quality content, trust me, it will pay off.

So now let’s figure out if blogging is right for you. If you’re a fiction author should you have a blog?

The answer: it depends!

Ask yourself the following questions to help you figure out if blogging is right for you:

Will this blog be a way to can share your story in a way that connects you with what you do?

For example, let’s say your fantasy novel deals with mental health issues and that’s something that’s really near and dear to your heart, you can use your blog to bring awareness and understanding to the reading community.

Will having a blog strengthen your brand as an author?

If you want to be known as the fantasy author who always has some kind of a unicorn in her story, you can create a blog that talks about everything related to unicorns. That lets people know you are serious about unicorns

Does your ideal reader typically read blogs to find new books?

That may require a little bit of called market research on your part. You can ask that question in an Instagram story or do a Google search of authors in your genre that have blogs.

Do you have time to create and maintain a blog?

Time really plays a part in running a successful blog. You have to figure out if you have time to not only start a blog but blog consistently. As we talked about earlier, blogging is a long game and it may take time to see results. Blogging is something you have to do regularly because you want to build that trust. The people that are coming along on this journey to becoming a fan want to know that you are going to show up and deliver great content each and every time.

So you really have to ask yourself, do you have the time to create a blog around a topic that answers all those through any of those three questions we talked about earlier? That can be once a month, once a week, three times a week, or any other timeframe that works for you if blogging is something you really in truly want to do.

Let’s chat! Do you plan to have a blog? What would it be about?