Book Blogging 101 – Chapter 1
Making a Plan
Think Blogging is your calling? Want to give it a try? The first step before you even login to WordPress or Blogger is to Make A Plan. To introduce myself, I’m a blogger, a book blogger to be exact that runs a number of side blogs for design and social media. I started book blogging for fun, as a hobby, but I approached it like a business. Yes, it is a hobby, but my career is based in marketing and it has taught me some things along the way, so when there are numbers to be generated (followers) I go for it business style. This always brought me to the question:
What is the first step in starting a business?
Section 1: Write a business plan.
Your blog is going to be your “business”, therefor before you start out you should form the “business” model and plan. It will help you along the way, giving you a road-map of goals and steps to take to promote your blog. You should follow this road-map, revising it as trends change and as you establish yourself.
When writing your plan, here are some questions to ask yourself:
- What is your blog’s name?
- What would you like to convey with your blog’s name?
- What feelings would you like to inspire when people read/view your blog?
- What is the purpose of your blog?
- What do you want to accomplish with your blog?
- What kind of following do you want to achieve with your blog?
- Do you plan to do anything else in the future with your blog?
- Do you want your blog to help you achieve something in real life?
These questions can help you get the basics down. For example if you are content with just reaching 100 followers and reviewing a book a week, doing a few memes here and there, you really won’t have to be aggressive with your networking. But, if you would like to one day reach 1K followers, use it to make contacts with Harlequin and Simon and Schuster, etc., one day advancing your career as a freelance writer, well you have to be pretty aggressive and professional.
Your plan should guide you in the direction you want to go, but it shouldn’t be rigid, let it adapt as you progress. It should reflect in everything from your writing style to the images you place on your sidebar. If you are striving for professional, stick within those guidelines. Snarky? Keep that sharp wit honed. Consistency, like in any business is the key to success. If your readers know what they want and you deliver it to them, right on time, just as you promise – they will keep coming back for more and more.
After asking yourself the first question, you will then be faced with a very big decision, because now it is time to Brand Yourself.
Section 2: Brand Yourself
The biggest mistake I notice in the business blogging world is the brand. The brand is the first thing everyone sees, hears and reads. Your name. Your identity. Bloggers that quickly brand themselves into something generic or anonymous soon regret it. Especially when they start delving into the blogosphere and notice how many people share their name, their identity, their style. We might think we are original creatures, but original ideas are hard to come up with, unless you put some thought into it, and even then this is usually a talent done best by a select few. Idea people. Ad men. Whatever you want to call them. But, you can channel a good idea, you just have to understand that ideas are usually not just sudden insights. They usually take brainstorming, talking to others around you, research and knowledge. You do not want to be just another Book Babe, or Game Guru. You want to be something that says, I’m here, I’m original and this is what I do. All conveyed in your name. I know this sounds hard, but with some careful thought and research it can be done.
Write down a list of names that you would like. If your name is Linda, you can play on that, but give it a twist. Add some adjectives to it, Lucky Linda’s Blog, instead of just Linda’s Blog. Maybe you have a nickname, try that out. I would suggest coming up with five unique names – they don’t have to be out of this world, go for short and easy to understand, but stay away from generic terminology.
Lady Linda’s Blog
Linda Loo’s Lair
The Linda Stop
These of course are just examples of different and easy things to come up with. You of course, want to make it personal and uniquely yours. Once you’ve come up with at least five names, Google them. Search and search. If those names show up on Google. Start over with five more names, until you get one you like that isn’t in use by someone else. Even if that blog is a music blog and you are going to be creating an art blog — you don’t want that confusion. You want them to search your blog’s name and that is all they get…watch, search Parajunkee. It’s all me. There is no mistaking it. But, it is on the weird side. Say it out loud to an author and they might look at you like — huh? Or type it in with an ie. Nothing can be absolutely perfect.
Along with catchy words you also want to think about things that reflect what you will be covering on your blog. Are you a writing blog, or just a review blog? Maybe include a catchy word in the title that reflects your topic. But, once again, make sure that it is not a common phrasing that everyone is using.
After you have chosen a name, or two. You might want to have a back-up. Think of what you would like to use as the short, URL version. For example, if you decided Linda was just too common of a name and went with your nickname which was Junkee — and decided on The Junkee Stop, you could shorten all your WWW screen names to: junkeestop
Go to GoDaddy or another domain seller of your choosing and search for that domain. junkeestop.com
If it is available you are in luck. I recommend always going with .com because that is everyone’s first inclination.
If that dot com is not available, you have to start all over again, or if you have a second choice try that one out.
If you are in luck and junkeestop.com is available, consider yourself ready to hit the ground running!
Get That Name Down Straight.
The name is The Junkee Stop — now you have to put it everywhere. You will use this for everything. You have to keep it straight also. You don’t want to use The Junkee Stop on one thing and Junkee’s Stop on another. You are The Junkee Stop, nothing more. You can drop the THE for your url and email, but consistency once again is a must.
Run over to gmail and grab junkeestop@gmail.com
Run over to Blogger & WordPress and start the blog with junkeestop.blogspot.com and junkeestop.wordpress.com (even if you don’t use one, you don’t want someone to like your idea and start a blog on WP)
Make your twitter name @junkeestop
Facebook, Tumblr, MySpace, Yahoo — everything! You don’t want to be junkeestop@gmail.com and @JunkeesBlog on your twitter. You want your name to be recognized and even if someone doesn’t have a link or URL in front of them, they can pretty much figure it out.
Tune in Next Week for Section 3 — Figuring Out Your Look/Style
Reader Question of the Week:
When I comment, I follow my morals and only comment when I have something to say. But, I also leave my blog link at the bottom, sort of like a signature. What do you think of that?- Kim
Kim, there is nothing wrong with self-promotion. You just have to make sure it is not spam. If you are following set rules you’ve created yourself, by only commenting when you have something pertinent to say, there should be nothing wrong with leaving your link. Where general grumpiness comes into play is when bloggers comment generic platitudes with the link as the main focus of the comments. The owner of the blog assumes that the only reason you left that comment was to embed your link within their site. Much like spambots operate. This might not be the intention of the person commenting, but it might be received in this way.
Book Blogger News:
Paid Reviews
Book Reviewers made The New York Times and not in a positive light. The beginning caption is “Todd Jason Rutherford inside his home in Bixby, Okla. He says that he is now suspicious of all online reviews — whether of books or of anything else.”
Fabulous right? The thing is, like all nefarious, wrong-doers, they see only what they are used to and Mr. Rutherford was charging Indie Authors upwards of $1000 to generate 10+ ridiculously glowing reviews. All fake. All targeted to what the author wanted him to say about the book. He was clearing close to 30K a month. Big business in fake reviews. But does this make us all look bad? Judge for yourself. Read the Times article here.
Hippies Shuts Down
Another blog has purportedly succumbed to the wicked machinations of the Indie Author Onslaught (Carrol Bryant and that Idiocracy that is Stop the GR Bullies). Hippies, Beauty & Book Oh My! a blog that rocketed onto the scene in mid 2011 and quickly amassed a record number of followers, claiming unheard of pageview counts within only a short time, posted an out of the blue post, titled Bye, Bye, Blogging. Out of the blue, I state, because of the fact that only three short days earlier they had even started a new function on their blog and were promoting it. Along with the fact that they have a lot of advertising and all their Blog Ad links are still active and clients have the ability to purchase advertising.
Amanda states in her post:
Jon and I have decided we are shutting down our blog for good. This will be our last post. At this time, we feel as if we can serve our community better without all of the drama and without waking up each day with people belittling the things that we do. The stress is not worth it anymore.”
I am sorry to see that these negative clouds of insanity have forced a book blogger to shut down, but I do recommend that if something like this happens to another blogger that they might be other alternatives then packing it in. Of course if it is not worth it then that is your personal choice, but blogs that accept advertising and then just shut-down are not only making a decision for themselves, they are also impacting their advertisers.
Bloggy Awards are now accepting votes
You can now vote on the nominees at The Bloggy Awards.
Twitter Author Spam
A new trend has begun, it would seem in the last few weeks. I’m assuming someone wrote a very misguided article. But, I’ve recently been bombarded with Author’s personal accounts sending me tweets with just a BUY ME type link. I wouldn’t mention this, except that it is happening almost on a daily basis. I’ve taken to just replying and saying this is a good way to get your twitter account shut down as a spammer, but my evil voice says “why should I?” I should probably just do what I usually do for spam — Block & Report Spam. Have you been having this happen to you lately?
Happy Thursday. Talk Less. Read More. Blog with Integrity.
Have a question? Fill out the form by clicking on the button to the left. This will go into a spreadsheet to be looked over at a later date and hopefully answered on this blog. This is completely anonymous, you do not have to leave your real name. Urls will not be included in your question unless it pertains to the question.
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Thanks Para. You always give great advice.
This is really great advice. I have been getting quite a bit of the twitter spam you mentioned. I just keep reporting it as spam. I never know if it is spam or a troll, and I don’t feed trolls so I just report it in case.
A. Awesome advice. You encouraged me to go grab my name on Tumblr and FB. Just in case. I had WordPress but not the others. Thanks for the great advice.
B. I’m so sorry to hear about the Hippie. I just learned of her the other day. I’m so sorry to hear about the drama getting to her.
One more thing, her post really made me consider the new challenge parents today have with making sure their kids know how to handle cyber bullying. Thanks for sharing her post with me.
I’ve been getting spammed by authors on Twitter recently too. I block & report them.
That’s something I wish I had planned out more in the beginning! Now I’m a bit lost…do I change the email to match? Do I just leave it be? Yikes.
C.J. Sarcasm&Lemons
Great post! I especially like the part about branding … When I started my blog I picked a name I still like. When I started blogging seriously (2 years after starting the blog), I made sure to use that name EVERYWHERE. Nothing frustrates me more than bloggers who have different names everywhere — I like to know exactly who I’m talking to or reading about no matter where I am.
Informative as always! Thanks Rachel! Love what you did with my friend Maja’s blog!
As always, great post! The name is SO important, can you imagine going through blogging life as Leeswammes? Well, it’s almost a brand now, what can I do? {sigh} At least it’s original!
Twitter: I had one author reply to a tweet I did about a book review on my blog – he wrote: If you liked [that book] then you’ll also like [this book], which of course turned out to be his own. I Reported & Blocked them, as I do with all spammers.
I’ve encountered less spam on twitter lately, but I also am very selective of who I friend and what I respond to. I unfollow if the majority of tweets are self promotion. if it’s worked in every so often, I don’t mind that at all.
That article about the paid reviews was crazy. First, i can’t believe how much he charged AND that authors paid that! He even said he didn’t view his reviews as critical reviews, but as a promotional tool. So essentially,he’s turned reviewing into a paid promotional opportunities. I wonder how it translates for sales for those authors.
I took a hiatus from book blogging and I came back sooo confused with all the drama going on… Such a shame…
Love your tips though! Keep up the great work!
I think I managed okay with the branding part…coming up with a name that isn’t being used by anyone else (even if it is kind of silly). Unfortunately, the twitter and gmail accounts are already taken, so I can’t have everything match up as nicely as I wish it would. :S
Thanks for the great post. I’ll be keeping a close eye on your Blogging 101 posts, because I have a lot to learn to get my blog where I want it to be.
Darn it. Can I start over? I have no business plan. I thought about trying at the one year mark and totally went another direction. I honestly have no real idea what you can do with a book blog in the long term except blog about books.
And good grief the naming. I hadn’t known about books blogs way back when. I hadn’t thought of being clever or original. Just not a copy of someone else’s name at the time. I hadn’t thought it was for a book blog. I went totally back-asswards into this thing.
I guess it’s too late now. I’ve got a slightly generic name. One that’s now slightly similar to someone else’s.
And I really hope no one takes The Junkee Stop or that you already own those domains and twitter accounts…
Can’t wait for your post about style.
Mine is happily bought and paid for. 
Love this week’s question. I have no problem with people leaving the main link to their blog as a signature if they’ve left a relevant comment. And I love links when I’ve asked for them in my post.
I am totally anti the 5-link comments that only say, great post. Um. No. My blog filters out anyone with more than 2 links regardless, but if they’ve left five links and landed on and left my site in under a minute I doubt they’ve actually read it. My posts are always freaking long!
I’m still so mad about the information contained in that NYT article. Makes me so upset and disappointed.
And I’d heard that the blog closed down from one of the commentators on mine. I hadn’t really known of Hippies, but I’d heard they were enormously popular. That was so sad. When I went to investigate I saw that they’d started a new feature. I hadn’t known it was because of the Indie drama, however.
Sometimes burying my nose in a book is the best way to stick it out in the blogosphere.
I hope the hurricane hasn’t taken you down too much! Stay safe!
I have spent way too much time thinking back and forth about the name thing. My blog (and Twitter, FB, email etc) is NinaReads. I picked it because, apart from the s, that’s how you pronounce my real name, I like plays on words, and it is descriptive of what I do. Then I later found that there was AnnaReads, MariReads, and so many other names that I can’t even remember them all. Now I kinda feel like my name is too generic, but at the same time I chose it because it was personal to me, and because I’ve had it long enough that changing it would just cause trouble. Wish I had read a post like this before I started blogging, it would have saved me a lot of time down the road..:)
Hello Parajunkee,
This is Jon from “Hippies, Beauty, and Books.”
First, I would like to thank you for the kind words. Not only from you, but to others from the rest of the book blogging community as well. I still hop through many of the blogs I have listed in my RSS reader and enjoy reading many of the posts.
I would like to clarify a couple of things though. I do realize that us shutting down did come out of the blue. It was a disappointment to us as well. We were looking at a lot of fun projects over the next few months. Amanda did not really state how bad the harassment had been before closing down though. We did not publicly state everything that was going on because we try to stay away from the slings and arrows, especially with how volatile things have become in the book blogging world as of late. We had been receiving numerous harassing comments daily for the past two months. We also had a severe issues with spam comments at one point so we were forced to turn comment moderation on. Because of that, the harassing comments and other issues never made it to our readers. But at the end of the day they made it to us. Our last comment we received was the breaking point.
We do have of couple of ads running on the blog at the moment. These have all been scheduled to run previously. I really wish that I knew how to remove the purchase links for the ads, but as far as I am aware I cannot remove them without removing all of the ads that are hosted through BlogAds. We have contacted BlogAds and our advertisers that have ads scheduled to run or are currently running, with us, so they are aware of the situation. We aren’t accepting new ads and the blog, along with the ads, will be removed as soon as all of the ads end.
I suck. I picked my name Candace’s Book Blog just cause it was where I was going to keep track of what I read and stuff. But then I realized there was this whole book blogging community and gradually started taking it more seriously. Now I wish I had a more creative name but I feel its too late to change it now.
I don’t mind links in comments as long as they leave a real comment. I hate when they say something generic then ask me to check out three different links.
Had no plan when I started my blog and sort of regret that now, as there are several things I wish I had done differently. Great advice as always, and I’m looking forward to next week’s post!
That’s the one thing I’m glad I did. When I started seriously book blogging (and not just writing reviews on a personal page), I came up with a name I thought was original and would stick out, but I failed to google and get it everywhere. Thankfully, five years later, there is only one place that I couldn’t get LiteraryEscapism (Tumbler) and the person who does have it uses it more art.
I agree with Rachel…I wish there was a post like this when I first started. I’ve been treating the site as a business for the two years or so, but I’ve never came up with a plan. Now that I am trying to make this more into a business, I feel so lost with everything.
I have to say, these posts of yours have been really helpful. So thank you for taking the time to do them!
Great article yet again. I think I mostly fell into this in a decent place – my twitter, blog and facebook and gmail names all match, but I think it was mostly happy accident that it happened that way. I was not prepared and had not thought things through. I’m still not 100% sure I’m prepared to run this like a real business, though some days it feels like one. I think this series you are writing is a very thoughtful way to help new bloggers out so they have a step in the right direction.
As for spammy type stuff – I’ve been getting spam on my facebook page for my blog. Authors just posting their synposis and links to their book on my wall. Totally weird, because if they approached me in a normal way, I would probably help them promote their book via all of my media resources. *sigh*
I hope this drama in bloglandia slows down or stops. It’s not why we started our blogs – or at least I know that I started mine to share my love of books and connect with like minded individuals.
Looking forward to your next post.
Wow. Thanks for the advice! It really helps to feel pointed in the right direction for networking and blogging. Thank you