Saturday, June 9, 2012

Are blogs effective by Margot Justes


Blogs take a bit of time to write, at least for me. I know that marketing has to be a factor in sales, and that name recognition goes to marketing and sales.

A midlist author needs that crucial name recognition to build a readership, and so it goes. E-book sales are a huge business and growing rapidly, and many of us are taking the plunge and going indie, and trying to build on that name recognition.

How to do it? One way is to blog and post all over e-net creation. That is an upside, our name is out there. There is also a downside. How many read all the blogs that are posted?  People are busy with everyday life.

Are blogs effective? Do the readers really get to know us through them? Is a shorter version of communication better? There is Facebook and Twitter, and many other social networks that take far less time and are a faster way to communicate.

What do you think? Are blogs effective, or have they outlived their usefulness?

Cheers,

Margot  Justes

Hearts & Daggers

A Hotel in Paris

and coming soon Hot Crimes Cool Chicks

www.mjustes.com

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think they're overrated. Reading was arguably more popular decades ago than it is now. There's no reason why people should require a blog to feel compelled to read an author's work. It's silly. Agents and publishers are so gung-ho about social media presence these days, but really, if any reader is like me, they block and/or ignore most of the social media feeds they see on their feeds from authors.

Now, if an agent or publisher likes to peruse an author's blog to get to know the author better, fine, that's perfect. In this capacity, a blog can be very revealing.

I'm a Stephen King fan, but I have no desire to read regular blog posts by him. His PR people send out a newsletter like once a month, and hey, that's great. I like knowing what he's up to, or what he has coming down the pipe fairly soon. But a day to day blog of trivialities? I guess I'm just not that nosey.

If the blog makes me think, however, I'm all for it. But I've encountered so few that do.

Margot Justes said...

cslevy,

I agree with you. You get so many sales pitches on the social media sites that it becomes overwhelming.

I own 1 book by S. King and that is the one on writing-a masterpiece. Generally horror books and movies terrify me.

Thank you for the comment. I'll try to make mine interesting, the preference is to write about art and travel.

Margot