Menu

Why Blogging Is Important: A Tale of Two Authors

If you are an author or publisher, you should be blogging. This piece of advice is said so often, it’s practically a cliche. Any book marketing advice site, person, or book all say the same thing: “Blog, blog, email list, blog, bloggetty, blog, blog!”

Yet, despite this massive repetition of common wisdom, many authors barely touch their blogs. Same with publishers, who mostly use theirs for announcements and “News” instead of engagement. This is, in my opinion (and that of many others) a serious mistake.

If you aren’t regularly using your blog, you are missing out on a significant opportunity to grow your audience and improve your sales.

And I’m going to prove it, right here, right now.

ThirdScribe provides author websites and, as the network owner, I can see where the network traffic is going. So, today, I’m going to present you with undeniable evidence why regular blogging is so important to expanding your audience.

To do that, I’m going to compare two prominent authors who use ThirdScribe (I’m keeping their names a secret, but they know who they are). One is an up and coming Indie author who, quite frankly, works it. The other is a USA Today Bestselling author with a traditional publishing contract. We’ll call them Author #1 and Author #2. They have similar numbers of social media followers (Twitter and Facebook), and they both have sites on ThirdScribe. But, their site traffic is very, very different. Let’s take a look!

The Indie Blogger

This author is an up and coming Indie sci-fi darling who has written a few books and blogs twice (sometimes three times) a week. Author #1’s articles are engaging, almost always have images, and occasionally video. In other words, #1 takes the time to write a quality, share-worthy blog article. This author has been on ThirdScribe for about a month and immediately started generating new content.

First, let’s take a look at Author #1’s numbers:
Posts written in last month: 15
Number of Twitter Followers: 1,117
Number of Facebook Fans: 1,204

And now, Author #1’s site traffic over the last month:

The Traditional Non-Blogger

This author is signed to a major publisher, just wrapped up a second book, and the first book is both an award winner and a best seller. Author #2 has a fair following on social media and is engaged on Twitter. But, not a very consistent blogger.

Here are Author #2’s numbers:
Posts written in the last month: 0
Number of Twitter Followers: 806
Number of Facebook Fans: 1,194

And here is the site traffic over the last month:

Blogging Works

As you can see from the two case studies above, regular blogging drives traffic to your site.

Why is this important? Because once a visitor is on your site, they are on your home turf — that’s where your books are and where your newsletter registration is. You want people to come to your site.

Both of these authors had similar numbers of social media followers. Both were engaged on social media. But, one has lots of site traffic and the other doesn’t. Why?

Social media, for all of it’s wonderfulness, does not inherently bring people to your website. It does not drive sales. It does not get people onto your newsletter. It does not close a purchase. It helps to spread the word, and little more.

You want to leverage social media to direct traffic to your site, as the more traffic is on your site, the more opportunity to make a sale or sign someone to your email list. But, it’s not so simple as just tweeting “Come to my site, it’s awesome!” You have to have something of value. Something worth their time.

Like a blog post.

Does blogging work? Yes. Yes, it does.

Now, don’t you have a post to write…?

ThirdScribe is a social marketing platform for authors and publishers.

Latest Books on ThirdScribe

Rob is the founder of ThirdScribe, a unique author services platform and social network. As a naval officer and diver, he spent a majority of his career doing a lot more than you would think with a lot less than you can imagine -- a skill that has proven extremely valuable in the start-up world. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.