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Any Pinterest Users Out There?

May 3, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Pinterest is supposed to be one of the hottest socialnetworking sites, but what exactly is the point? I know you use it like a bulletin board to pin photos and such that interest you, sort of lke a scrapbook, but then what?

And what if you don’t see things you like? That’s my problem — I don’t like “things.”

I get that it’s a fun site for most people, gives them something to play around with or dream about, but then what?

If you’re an author, how does that help you connect to readers? Or doesn’t it?

An author needs to be mindful of his or her “brand.” How does Pinterest help with branding?

Do you use Pinterst? What do you use it for? Do you find it fun, annoying, fascinating?

(This photo is from Second Wind Publishing’s Pins.)

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in culture, How to, internet. Tags: pinterest, what do you do on pinterest, what is the point of pinterest. 13 Comments »

What is Wrong With Using a Prologue?

April 16, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Most agents, editors, and publishers frown on prologues because they claim that readers skip them.

Perhaps that’s true. I myself am not a fan of prologues. Some writers have the appalling habit of using a prologue as an information dump, telling readers things they think they need to know rather than presenting the material a bit at a time when it is needed. Some writers have the even more appalling habit of augmenting a poor beginning with a prologue that is not really a prologue but more of an interlogue, an excerpt taken from the middle of the book, copied and pasted into a prologue. While this excerpt might create suspense and keep us reading through a less than stellar beginning, it is not necessary to the story since the material is a duplication, and we feel cheated when we reread it during the course of the book.

I don’t even have much use for true prologues, which present events that happen before the story begins. The main rule in writing is “everything in service to the story.” If a prologue does not advance the story, if it is not as exciting as the rest of the book, then it should be removed and any essential information presented during the course of the story.

Sometimes, however, a prologue is necessary, especially if important events take place years before the main story. Occasionally, to get past the stigma of a prologue, authors will label the pre-story chapter “Chapter One.” To call a prologue “Chapter One” does not make it any less of a prologue, and it confuses readers, who think they are reading one story and find out they are reading another.

Despite the cautions about prologues, I used one in Light Bringer. It is a true prologue in that the events take place thirty-five years before the present day action, but I do something that is frowned on even by those who see nothing wrong with prologues: I introduce a character who does not appear in the body of the work, only mentioned in dialogue.

When I rewrote Light Bringer before submitting it to Second Wind Publishing, I considered getting rid of the prologue but I kept it for three reasons: I wanted readers to experience for themselves the events that precipitated the story, it was the way I originally conceived it, and I loved the image of tiny footprints in the snow. The prologue might seem like a darling, a word used by William Faulkner to describe the parts we love but that have no real function in the story, but without the prologue, the story loses some of its immediacy. Being told of a radiantly special baby being found on a doorstep is entirely different from experiencing it for ourselves through the eyes of the staid woman who found her.

And if readers skip my prologue? Well, there’s not much I can do about that. The truth is, there is there is nothing wrong with a prologue as long as it has a hook at the beginning, has conflict, and is written with immediacy as a scene, just as with any other chapter.

If you’d like to read the prologue, click here: Light Bringer by Pat Bertram

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Posted in books, fiction, How to, writing. Tags: Light Bringer, prologues, using a prologue, what is wrong with using a prologue, writing a prologue. 21 Comments »

Fight Scenes and Motivations by David Lucas

April 7, 2013 — Pat Bertram

The internet truly is an egalitarian place. Where else would I be able to meet someone like David Alan Lucas, a writer, poet and martial artist who is an expert in the arts of physical and psychological combat?

David belongs to my Suspense/Thriller Writers’ group on Facebook, and he has been discussing fight techniques with the group. I asked if I could post part of his discourse, and he kindly said yes. Thank, you, David!

Fight Scenes and Motivations by David Lucas

This might be a bit of a ramble, but let’s talk about fight scenes. We all have our areas of expertise. Do you ever feel thrown out of a story or movie when “they” get it wrong? I know I do. I have closed those books and never picked it up again. If I go to a movie by myself, I will walk out of it. When I am with others, they can usually tell from my facial expression that I am biting my tongue. (I’m polite and don’t ruin it for them—there is always the after movie drive to talk about it.)

Besides being a writer, I am a fighter. I am a 3rd degree Black Belt in a Black Art (Black=War Art instead of a sport style). I have been in more hand to hand (or bare hand vs armed) fights than I even want to contemplate. Fight scenes are hard to write, even for me. But when someone gets it wrong I shake my head. But when they get it right, I want to jump up and dance (I almost did that when the 2009 Sherlock Holmes came out and they actually got into the Holmes’ head as he planned the fight before it began).

As a result of being a fighter and a writer, I have been writing about fight scenes and have given a few seminars. While I would imagine there is a book on how to write a fight scene, I haven’t seen it. So, I am going to tear apart the process as best as I can over the several months. Before I begin to outline it, let me be very clear: Writing is an art. Martial Arts is an art. There is no one way to do anything. Take from this what works for you, knowing that, like all writers and marital artists, we all walk our own path.

The first thing I do with writing a fight scene is to understand who is involved. When people fight in real life, everyone has a set of skills, a way they think, and a motive to be in the fight. Let’s work this backwards and start with motive. Why does your character want to fight?

Let’s face a few facts about fights. On film they can look exciting. But the truth is that in every fight (even among friends) there is a risk—even if it by accident—that you can lose your life. Let me use a real life example.

Have you ever been there when someone yells, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” People gather around cheering it on. They are stupid. No I am not holding back punches. Here is the true story that happened in one such case and why I called them stupid. One of the fighters in such a case—it was at a bar—took a glass bottle and broke it. He swung wildly at his opponent. His wild swings cut the throat of a guy I knew in the crowd who had stupidly thought he was going to see a fight. His funeral was a few days later.

All fights are dangerous—being in one, seeing one, etc. It doesn’t matter if it is in a ring where people are trying to be sure that no one is harmed in the long run or on a battlefield somewhere—and they are painful. What were the two drunks I talked about above fighting over and what had been worth so much for someone to die?

Someone can be beaten to a proverbial pulp or lose their lives over trivial issues–like a pair of shoes, a spilled drink, or (as a guy I once knew discovered) looking at someone’s girlfriend the wrong way. In St. Louis, Missouri a game among teens has developed where they go up to complete strangers and try to knock them out. Fights can start over imagined slights, being drunk, forced to protect yourself or a loved one, property and so forth.

Why is your character willing to fight?

Before you decide to turn your character into a super hero or the next Jet Li, let me break down the motivation a bit. There was a story my Master Instructor once told me that I have never forgotten.

A man, who was studying Martial Arts and had grown so confident that he felt like he was bullet proof, was once asked what he would be willing to fight for. He was asked, “If ten men were leaning on your car and causing trouble, would you fight them?”

He replied with confidence, “Of course I would beat the . . .” You can fill in the words.

His instructor then asked, “What if they all had chains and baseball bats and you were unarmed?”

The student thought about it and agreed he would not fight them.

The instructor then asked one final question, “Take these same men, armed the same way, and now they are raping your wife. Would you fight them?”

His answer changed.

The circumstances in real life and in our fiction writing are what will determine if someone will be willing to risk their lives in a fight. What are you willing to fight for and lose your life over? If you answer that quickly, I personally ask–plead with you–to think about it a little more. What is your character willing to fight for? What is their line in the sand?

How do they fight? More importantly, how do they think about fighting?

If you have questions about writing fight scenes or about how various characters might act in a fight, please feel free to ask. I will do my best to answer your question. Your question’s response may even lead to a blog entry in my blog relaunch on The Writer’s Lens.

David Lucas’s blogs: http://davidalanlucas.blogspot.com/ and http://www.thewriterslens.com/

David Lucas’s website: http://www.davidalanlucas.com/

David Lucas on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Owlkenpowriter

Posted in culture, How to, life, writing. Tags: David Lucas, fight scenes, fighter and writer, motivtions for fighting, Suspense/Thriller Writers Group on Facebook. 3 Comments »

Striving For Clarity in Writing

February 28, 2013 — Pat Bertram

stage There seem to be two vociferous groups of writers nowadays:

1. Self-published writers who insist that they can do everything their way without regard to grammar rules, publishing conventions, and even readers.

2. Writers who want to be published by the major publishing houses, and who scrupulously follow every dictate in the hopes it will bring them the acclaim they strive for.

The first group of writers often strive for originality at the expense of readability. They take the easy way out by choosing limp words that demand to be propped up with adverbs and adjectives. Or they throw out grammar rules, which comes across not so much as being creative but as being too lazy to learn the right way. Grammar is not a straightjacket but a garment that flows softly around readers, keeping their attention on the story rather than the structure. If readers have to read and reread a paragraph to try to make sense of it, then the author has not done her job.

Some of these authors believe that readers should have to work to make sense of their story, that it’s okay if readers are pulled out of the story to look up an unfamiliar word, or to admire a particularly well-turned phrase, but readers for the most part want to be immersed in a story. If you’re watching a play, you want to see the characters, the action, the set. You do not want to be shown the backstage bickering or the ugly scaffolding. You simply want to be immersed in the play. (Unless, of course, the play is Noises Off, in which case all the bickering and scaffolding are part of the story.) And the same goes for books.

The second group of writers strives for perfection at the cost of originality, especially originality of style or voice. These writers are often too assiduous in their dislike of “was”, “it”, “ly” adverbs, adjectives, or any number of words that make our writing seem amateurish. Yes, an abundance of such words does make our writing seem amateurish and even hard to read, but removing every single was or it or modifier makes for a stilted style.

The truth of good writing lies somewhere in the middle of those two groups.

As I read in an old book called The Practical Stylist by Sheridan Baker: “Clarity is the first aim; economy the second; grace the third; dignity the fourth. Our writing should be a little strange, a little out of the ordinary, a little beautiful with words and phrases not met everyday, but seeming as right and natural as grass.”

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Posted in books, How to, writing. Tags: clarity in writing, readability, self-published writers, traditionally published writers, truth of good writing, what is good writing, writing style. 7 Comments »

Giving Readers a Stake in Your Story

February 16, 2013 — Pat Bertram

jockey I don’t like stories about gambling. They set my teeth on edge because of the inevitable slough of despair the character falls into when the addiction gets the better of him. Despite that, Let It Ride is one of my favorite movies, probably because although the story takes place at Hialeah amid the horse racing culture, it is not a movie about gambling. It’s the story of how the forces of the universe align to give Jay Trotter (Richard Dreyfuss) one perfect day, and how he had the courage to accept the gift.

My favorite lines are when Pam (Teri Garr) says, “I don’t know why people have to gamble. Why can’t they just watch the horses run?” Trotter responds, “Without gambling, there is no horse racing.”

I’m with Pam — someday I’d like to go to a racecourse and watch the horses run, but I can also see why there is no horseracing without gambling. First, there would be no income, and second, no one but those directly involved — racecourse owners, horse owners, trainers, and jockeys — would have any stake in the matter. Gambling gives anyone who has the price of a bet a stake in the outcome of the race.

This is similar to writing — if an author doesn’t give readers a stake in the outcome of the story, then there is no reason for anyone to read the book. Since there is no gamble when it comes to a book (well, except for the gamble of whether the reader will enjoy it or whether they will feel cheated for having wasted the money) the stake has to be an emotional one. For example, Kendra, the main character in Mickey Hoffman’s mystery, School of Lies, is a special education teacher in an inner city school. The book’s true-to-life atmosphere is appealing to anyone who enjoys mystery and mayhem, but it’s especially appealing to special education teachers. Special education teachers — or any teacher — who have been in similar schools and situations perhaps wish they could have said the same things or done the same things Kendra did, which gives them a stake in the outcome of her dilemma. Of course, anyone who ever went to high school would also have a stake in the story, if for no other reason than to see the truth of what they suspected — that much intrigue was going on behind the scenes.

For this same reason, a popular main character in many books is a mother juggling home life and career, which immediately gives a large section of the population a stake in the story. You see the same thing dozens of times a day in your sidebar ads — “mother in (the name of your city, which supposedly gives you an added stake in the matter) gets skinny”; “mother discovers secret to youthful skin”; “mother earns a fortune working at home.”

Your choice of characters and their predicament are not the only ways to give readers a stake in the outcome of your story. You can make readers a part of the story by giving your characters characteristics that people can identify. You make readers involved by stirring up their emotions. You show them what is happening instead of explaining every detail, and let their own reactions to the action become part of the story.

Giving people a stake in your story is not exactly the same thing as getting them to bet a bit of cash on a horse race, but getting them to pony up a bit of emotion while reading your story will give them greater winnings in the long run.

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Posted in books, How to, writing. Tags: a stake in your story, gambling, Hialeah, horse racing, Let It Ride, Mickey Hoffman, School of Lies. 1 Comment »

What Works When It Comes to Book Promotion?

February 11, 2013 — Pat Bertram

A new author asked me if I ever found a series of steps to take that have at least a small chance of working when it comes to book promotion.

That is a very good question, one I have been pondering for a long time. I have been doing various promos online for more than five years (I started with my blog in September 2007), and I don’t sell very many books, though my publisher assures me that ultimately I will sell many thousands of copies of each of my titles. I have come to the conclusion that promotion is what we do until luck finds us. If you don’t write erotic romances, horrifyingly violent thrillers, or vampire stories (or whatever the current fad is) that can catapult you into bestsellerdom, you will need luck to get your book discovered. Many authors who have found success will tell you they did it on their own through hard work, but almost every time, a bit of luck played into the equation. And it’s always possible to get discovered — the media (which includes online and offline means of communication) has a fickle and roving eye, and it’s anyone’s guess where that glittering gaze will fall.

It used to be that you could do giveaways and contests to get attention, but there are tens of thousands of books being given away every day, so it’s almost as hard to give a book away now as it once was to sell it. And unless a contest somehow captures the imagination of people, they will pass on taking a chance (even if it’s a sure thing that they will win something) because they are inundated with hundreds of such promos every day.

It used to be that blogging would bring you a readership, but now blogging is so common that it is simply an expected part of being an author. Blogging can be a satisfactory and fulfilling means of writing and communicating, and it does help to create an online presence, but by itself blogging doesn’t sell books.

It used to be that MySpace was a good way to find a readership — the first authors who promoted on MySpace became instant successes, but when other authors signed up for the site by the thousands, hoping for similar results, no one paid attention to them.

It used to be that Facebook was the best place to find and connect with readers. The first authors who used Facebook to promote made a fortune. One guy became a best selling author by maxing out Facebook accounts (5000 friends is all you are allowed, so he had several accounts), and he will sell you a book telling you how he did it, but recently it came out that he also paid for reviews, so who knows what the truth of his success is. One thing I do know is that most authors are not selling tons of books via Facebook because Facebook continually changes their algorithms to keep that from happening. Where once I’d get hundreds of people seeing what I posted, I get maybe thirty now if I’m lucky. And of that thirty, maybe one or two respond. (Respond to the post, I mean.)

The first authors on Twitter, Pinterest, and all the other sites also made a name for themselves, but the rest of us? Not so much.

As for offline: authors who do book signings and festivals and such do well to a certain extent, but you have to be careful — I know several authors who sold thousands of books that way, but when it came time to figure out profits and losses, it turns out they didn’t make enough to pay for all their expenses. They’d have been better off just standing on a busy corner and giving the books away.

So, what do you do until luck comes calling? The best advice I can give you is to do three things to promote every day. It can be something as simple as signing up for Facebook if you haven’t already done so, adding a few friends if you have signed up, posting a photo on the site, or commenting on someone else’s photo. You could do a blog post on your blog or ask someone if they will let you be a guest on their blog. You can comment on the posts of other bloggers so that everyone who reads those posts will also read your words. You could sign up for Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn or any of the other currently popular social networking sites.

You can get bookmarks printed up with your book cover, a brief blurb, and an online address or website where people can contact you or buy your books, then pass the bookmarks out to everyone you see. You can get business cards printed up with your book cover on the front side and information on the back where they can find you and your book. You can get addicted to Vistaprint — once you are on their emailing list, you will receive sales notices, and over time you can get all sorts of great stuff such as t-shirts and mugs, stickers and posters, for free or for a nominal fee. Then give those out or offer them as incentives for people to buy your books.

You can do book signings and other events such as fairs, festivals, and craft shows. You can offer your services as a speaker.

The best promotion is one that captures people’s imaginations, so maybe one of your promos for the day could be nothing more than brainstorming with someone to come up with a totally unique idea. Or you can check out my Book Marketing Floozy blog for tips from other authors. Book Marketing Floozy is an indexed blog of sixty-five different articles by various authors about book marketing.

I don’t think it really matters what you do. Just do three things to promote your book every day.

My final suggestion — keep writing. The more books you have, the greater the chance of having sales snowball, but you also have to keep improving your craft. Just throwing out any old thing in the hopes of making it big won’t help you stand out from the crowd.

And that’s all promotion is — trying to find a way to stand out from the crowd.

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Posted in blogging, books, How to, writing. Tags: book promotion, book promotion ideas, Facebook promos, giveaways and contests, MySpace, social networking. 14 Comments »

Saying Good-bye

January 29, 2013 — Pat Bertram

During the past three years, I’ve met way too many people who have lost their mates. (Until I became one of them, I had no idea the vast numbers of people living with such grief). Some, like me, lost their mates through a long dying. Others lost them instantly. I’ve never been able to figure out which is worse for survivors to deal with. The quick deaths bring such shock and disbelief that it seems impossible to survive, but we who have plenty of time to get used to the idea have to deal with the memories of our lack of generosity toward our long-dying mates. The trouble is that when someone dies slowly, as the months and maybe even years pass, we get used to their dying. The dying itself becomes a way of life, so that a flash of irritation here or a lack of empathy there means little in the fullness of the days. It’s only when they are gone that these things loom large, and we wonder why we couldn’t have held to our equanimity just a couple of months longer.

But of course, we did not know how short a time we had to be with him. It felt like a new low is all, and at the end, death came in an instant, as all deaths do, bringing shock and disbelief.

In the world of grief, I am one of the lucky ones — I got to say good-bye. That is the thing that haunts so many bereft — their inability bid farewell to the person who meant more to them than any other. It’s not just those whose spouses died suddenly in an accident or from an unnexpected heart attack who never got a chance to say good-bye. I’ve heard sad stories of hospital personnel cleaning out the emergency room too quickly so that the person left behind never even got a chance to see their beloved one last time. I’ve heard of nurses who demanded the bereft to be quiet in their weeping or quick in saying those few final precious words. I’ve heard of doctors who insisted the ill one would get better, giving the couple no reason to believe they would need to say good-bye.

One woman, whose husband died in a vehicle accident, was particularly sick with regret. After she’d been notified of the tragedy, she’d gone to the hospital to find him already on the way to the morgue, leaving her with no way to say good-bye. She too, is one of the lucky ones. He came to her in a dream, and told her it was okay, that he’d already been gone from his body, and that he loved her. And in a way, he had already said good-bye. Shortly before his accident, he had called family and friends he hadn’t talked to in a while and chatted with them for no real particular reason, and then a day or two later he unexpectedly invited her to a special lunch. Two hours after that lunch, he was dead.

Such pre-good-byes are fairly common, as if something in us knows the time of our death and prepares for it, but many bereft are left without even such a farewell to bring them comfort. Since parting words seem so important to the grief process, the unfarewelled bereft have to find other ways to say good-bye such as writing letters to the one who is gone, talking to him, or taking a memorial trip to a place that had special meaning. Actually, these are good ideas even for those of us who did get to say good-bye. I’ve written him and talked to him. Maybe one day I’ll take a memorial trip to a place with special meaning, though to be honest, everyplace we ever went — even the grocery store — was special because we were together.

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Posted in culture, grief, How to. Tags: dreaming of the dead, dying, dying as a way of life, memorial trip, saying good-bye, saying goodbye to the dead. 9 Comments »

Making a Video Blurb

January 8, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Grief: The Great Yearning is a finalist in the memoir category for the Sharp Writ Book Awards, and I need to put together a 30 second book trailer for their “awards ceremony” video. Thirty seconds isn’t long enough to do a real book trailer, so I’m doing a few photos and text pages — more like a video blurb. I found a thirty second piece of Beethoven’s music — since it’s the last completed piano piece Beethoven ever wrote, it seems fitting — and I have been working on the pages. Do you think these will work? Is it a bit over the top with the title on each page? Do the photos fit with the theme? Any suggestions for improvement?

Posted in books, How to, writing. Tags: Beethoven's last piano piece, Grief: The Great Yearning, Smart Writ Book Awards, video blurb, video book trailer. 4 Comments »

On-Page SEO and Keyword Usage

December 18, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I give my blog spam folder a quick look now and again to make sure that non-spam comments don’t get relegated to spam limbo. Sometimes the spam comments are totally absurd, such as this one: Nice tips. It is actually incomprehensible opinion now, but also from general, that usefulness in addition to significance is usually overwhelming. Thanks once again and all the best.

And then there was this one:

Hello Web Admin, I noticed that your On-Page SEO is is missing a few factors, for one you do not use all three H tags in your post, also I notice that you are not using bold or italics properly in your SEO optimization. On-Page SEO means more now than ever since the new Google update: Panda. No longer are backlinks and simply pinging or sending out a RSS feed the key to getting Google PageRank or Alexa Rankings. You now NEED On-Page SEO.

So what is good On-Page SEO? First your keyword must appear in the title. Then it must appear in the URL. You have to optimize your keyword and make sure that it has a nice keyword density of 3-5% in your article with relevant LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing). Then you should spread all H1, H2, H3 tags in your article. Your Keyword should appear in your first paragraph and in the last sentence of the page. You should have relevant usage of Bold and italics of your keyword. There should be one internal link to a page on your blog and you should have one image with an alt tag that has your keyword….

Considering that this was posted by someone trying to get me to subscribe to their Search Engine Optimization company, and considering that the comment actually made sense (or would, once I translated the jargon) and considering that my website domain provider has been trying to get me to buy SEO Visibility to the tune of $36.00 a month, I decided to research the topic a bit.

I started with “keyword.” Obviously, it’s the key word in the post or web page, but more than that, it’s a word or phrase people use when searching the internet. There’s no doubt that using the exact search terms adds to one’s search engine visibility. I often check the terms people use to find this blog, and then use those search terms as topics for articles. I made sure to use the search term in the article and in the title, since it stood to reason that if people were looking for such topics, I should make it as easy for them to find as possible. (A few of those articles are among my all-time most viewed posts: Describing a Scene in an Interesting Way, Describing a Winter Scene, and What Do You Say to Someone Who is Grieving at Christmas?) Apparently, although I didn’t know it, this was good On-Page SEO.

Luckily, I never had to worry about the keyword being in the URL — if the keyword is in the title of the article, WordPress automatically adds it to the URL of article. I used to try to write cute titles, such as Writing to the Extremes for a post about hands and feet (the extremeties), but not surprisingly, that post didn’t get many hits. So I try to keep the cuteness to minimum. (The key word here is “try.” Sometimes I let my attempts at cleverness get the better of me.)

Also, the title of the post uses H1 — Heading 1, so that fulfills one of the requirements for H1, H2, H3 tags. Since I try to follow good essay styling when writing, I generally include the keyword (the topic) in the first paragraph and then bring things full circle by referencing it in the last paragraph. I’m not going to worry about H2, H3, bold or italics in the body of my posts — I don’t want to lose the stream-of-consciousness flow that so many of my posts have by kowtowing to SEO.

I have recently begun to use an internal link in all my blog posts as a hedge against content scraping and plagiarism. And now it turns out to be good on-page SEO usage. I also use an image for each post, as suggested by WordPress in their articles about how to get Freshly Pressed, so now all I have to do is add the keyword to the alt tag. (When you upload an image, there is a place for Alt Text. I never knew what it meant, but apparently, if for any reason the image can’t be displayed, the alt text will be shown.)

Which brings us to the final point — Latent Semantic Indexing. Search engines have the capability to scan articles to see what they are about. A page with both the keyword and semantically related terms has a higher search enging ranking than one using only the keywords. (In this article SEO, search enging ranking, search engine visibility, and Search Engine Optimization are semantically related terms.)

Whew! All that research because of a spam comment! I learned something tonight, and I hope you did too. (Hmm. I might have learned something, but I didn’t follow through — there was nothing about SEO in the first paragraph, and until this sentence, nothing about SEO in the last paragraph. So perhaps this article is really about spam!)

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Posted in blogging, How to, internet. Tags: blog spam, H1 tags, Keyword Usage, Latent Semantic Indexing, On-Page SEO, search engine optimization, search engine terms. 9 Comments »

Is a Blog or a Website Better for Reaching Out to Readers?

December 9, 2012 — Pat Bertram

A new author with little internet experience and no money recently asked me which he should set up, a website or a blog, and which was better for reaching out to readers.

As for which is better to reach out to readers, a blog is. A website is generally static. A blog is a fluid site that is updated frequently, and sites that are updated frequently get better exposure in search engines. Also, a blog is a place where author and reader can communicate instantaneously. It doesn’t always work that way, of course, because first you need readers to communicate with, but that also holds true for a website — generally, you need readers first. Just because you have a website doesn’t mean that anyone will see it.

I have a website (http://patbertram.com) but I seldom update it unless I have a new book available or other such news. It’s mostly there just to be there, a landing place for people who Google me or my books. I paid for the domain, but not much else — I even used a template to make it easier to set up. Still, it does exactly what I want it to do — let people know that I am an author, what books I’ve written, and where they can buy them.

This blog doesn’t have a domain name — I’m sticking with ptbertram.wordpress.com for now. Some people say it’s unprofessional, but it gives me what I need — a place to write about what comes to mind each day, a place to talk about what matters with those who follow this blog, and a place to promote my books. (In case you didn’t realize it, all the books on the right side bar are mine.) In fact, if I’m asked for a website when I comment on a post, I use this blog for a web address rather than my official author site. Not only does this blog show my books and bio, my posts reveal way more about me than my website does.

I recently found out I’ve been doing this website/blog stuff all wrong. (So feel free to disregard everything I’m saying.) Each of my blogs should be a subdomain of my website, so that combined they get a higher ranking than each separately, but then I would need to pay a yearly fee for a domain name for each blog, and I’d have to hire someone to set it up for me. If I ever become a world famous writer with sales in the millions, then perhaps it would be necessary to do things right, but for now, I’d rather just have fun playing with my blogs and letting the website take care of itself. Besides, this way I can do it all myself.

As for deciding which to set up, a blog or a website, that’s an easy choice to make. A blog is a website. If you set up a wordpress blog, pay for a personal domain name, and set up a static landing page, then you have both a website and a blog. http://lazarusbarnhill.wordpress.com and http://rubiconranch.wordpress.com are blogs set up as websites, though as you can see neither paid for their own domain name.

(To set up a static front page on your wordpress blog, write your post as always. Then go to “Visibility: Public” on the right hand side of the page, click on edit, and check “stick this post to the front page.” Then publish the post as always. If you want to set up an already published post as a sticky post, you can edit the post, edit the visibility, and then click “update”.)

As with everything else on the internet, setting up a blog or a website or both can be as easy or as involved as you want it. Me? I choose easy every time.

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