How to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

by C. Patrick Schulze

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With the emergence of self-publishing as a viable form of authorship, it behooves the writer to learn how to market his work for maximum success. One of the initial steps you should consider is blogging. Once that marketing piece is in place, you then need to drive readers to your blog.

Here are some basic steps you can take to do just that.

Publish regularly. You should author articles and post them to your blog as often as possible, but no less than once a week.

Learn how to title your articles. Determine what terms and phrases people use to find information on the Internet and use those to title what you write. I first started with Google Adwords and then began to keep a database of those terms and words people use to find my blog. Can you guess what the number one phrase is?

Populate your blog posts with subscription options. Most of us are aware of the RSS feeds but you might also consider an email subscription service like Feedburner.

Try some article marketing. Think about writing article for sites like EZine or Scribd.com and others. As long as you place a link to your blog in the article, it’ll drive traffic to your blog.

Offer to guest post for other bloggers. Just this past Friday Elizabeth S. Craig was kind enough to allow me to guest post. Of course, she’s posting on my site in just a few days. These reciprocal arrangements encourage people to read both blogs so it builds readers for each party.

Consider if you should place a link under your email signature. Now everyone who sees your emails will be exposed to your blog. And you never know who knows whom.

Link your posts to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and any other social networking sites to which you subscribe. As long as they serve your target market, it’ll help build your blog.

You may wish to add a button that allows your reader to retweet your posts. This encourages their followers to find you. I’m been remiss with this but will pick it up this week.

Read other blogs within your market and comment on them. People do tend to read article comments and everyone who does will see the link to your blog.

Build an email list of people who visit and comment. Send an email announcement to each of these people whenever you have a new article posted.

You might also implement share buttons on your blog posts. If you allow your readers to connect with you on various social networking sites, it’ll generate word of mouth advertising for you. One person did this for me on Stumbleupon and I received more than four thousand hits in one day, by far my best day relative to hits.

If this is a topic that holds interest for you, keep an eye out for this blog as I’ll be doing more on this subject soon.

So, what are your favorite tools to drive readers to your blog?

Until we speak again, you know I wish for you only best-sellers.

C. Patrick Schulze

Author of the emerging novel, “Born to be Brothers.”

How to Create a Plot Outline

Recently a reader of one of my blogs asked if I might offer some insight as to how to outline the plot of a story. I’m glad to help.

I know of two methods by which you can outline the plot of a work of fiction. My favorite is known as The Hero’s Journey. It’s a method by which you identify twelve major activities the hero must undergo in your story. The other is a five-step method where you perform the same task, but focus only on the most important aspects of your story. I’ve outlined the two methods below.

The Hero’s Journey, those twelve steps your hero must face, are defined in its most simplistic form as follows:

1. Ordinary World – Your hero’s life prior to beginning his quest

2. Call to Adventure – The event that tells your hero a major life change is approaching

3. Refusal of the Call – Your hero’s attempt to ignore or forestall the Call to Adventure

4. Meeting the Mentor – Your hero meets the premier person who will assist him on his quest

5. Crossing the Threshold – Your hero moves away from his life and onto his quest

6. Test, Allies and Enemies – The people your hero meets who aid or hinder him during his quest

7. Approach to the Innermost Cave – Your hero stands on the precipice of fighting his villain

8. The Supreme Ordeal – Your hero fights your villain

9. Reward – The treasure your hero receives for defeating the villain

10. Journey Home – Your hero travels home and combats additional, lesser villains

11. Resurrection – Your hero proves worthy of the treasure he has received

12. Return with Elixir – Your hero reaches his home and received the accolades due him

The Five-Step Method is loosely defined as follows:

1. Identify your main characters then establish the setting and decide upon the major point of conflict around which your major characters will revolve.

2. Create the building action. In effect, you place your protagonist in the position where he must take some sort of action to quell the conflict you’ve established.

3. Bring the conflict in your story to a head. Here the conflict rises to the point of its highest emotion.

4. Lower the emotional level for your reader and your hero. Any loose ends are tied up and your story is moved toward its conclusion.

5. Define the formal conclusion of your plot arc or your story.

You can see the similarities between these two systems. I prefer The Hero’s Journey as it, to me, insures you don’t miss any critical scenes. Regardless which method you use, after you’ve created the basic storyline, flesh out those events you need to lead your hero from step one to twelve, or one to five if you prefer.

By first outlining your story and constructing those steps that must take place to move your story forward, you’ll enhance your chances of creating a well-structured and well-received story.

I wish you the best with this and if you have any questions, please post them in a comment. I’ll be glad to help.

Until my next post, I wish you best-sellers.

C. Patrick Schulze

Great Blog for Authors

Good day, All.

I recommend few twitter personalities as most as little more than digital mash. However, if you're a writer, I've one which I enjoy. Follow http://twitter.com/mariaschneider and you shall find enlightenment. (Well, maybe not actual enlightenment, but you will garner useful and interesting information.)