Blogs, marketing, and misfires

With the current drive to "personalise" things - readers buying a book because they liked the author's blog/photo I suppose I should admit something:

I've never bought a book because of an author's blog. However I have not bought books because of an author's blog.

If the blog is simply life, the universe, and everything then unless they have an interesting and unusual job (and I don't mean writing) it isn't going to hold my interest. Since most people's lives are very similar, just blogging about your own life won't pull people. This is especially true if you write about something outside your normal field. It's one reason why I keep my writing and books seperate from my job/work/life/cats blog. Just as celebrities resort to desperate tactics to stay in the headlines, writers resort to more desperate tactics to gain blog readers and problems start to occur.

A few years ago I was following a blog, from someone with an extremely unusual career and a good writing style. Like many people, I followed it, gave advice and help. The writer wanted to change jobs, so they were even negotiating a publishing deal through another readers' connection. About eighteen months into this the writer came clean: they didn't have the job, they had lied about the events and had in fact done it as a creative writing exercise to prove they could write.

The result was not readers praising them as a good writer: it was the total loss of their fanbase. The blog never recovered, and the publishing deal evaporated. I, like most of their other readers, were completely stunned.

I checked recently. The blog has gone and so has the confessional post and everything before it. The person is now back to writing on their first book, and trying to get another publishing deal. Six years lost for one lie. It was one of the most spectacular marketing misfires I have ever seen.

(No I'm not naming the writer. With any luck their life is back on track and they are older and a bit wiser. Teens are meant to make mistakes - it's just that when they do them online the results don't ever really go away.)

The moral? You can lose friends and reputation a lot more quickly than you can make them.

Be honest with your readers.

You only have to check the google rankings, however, to see that a targeted and focused blog will do better in search results and click through traffic, which is why I also run those. So why do I keep this blog going, when I have targetted blogs available? Because I can be a lot more abrasive, accurate in my views, and cover a much wider range of subjects here than on other blogs where I should be worrying about marketing, trying to make everything fit a focused and targeted blog, and work with SEO.

The other reason? On a marketing blog you shouldn't say anything negative or burn bridges. As anyone who has followed this blog knows, in some areas (usually to do with fraud, criminal behaviour, or incompetency) my policy is closer to "Hand me the matches and the petrol and stand well back." Not the best marketing and sales policy in the world.

An update

I haven't blogged for a while since Google's cookie set-up made it difficult to log into my account without having google try to link it to the work account I manage for an employer. (This frantic urge by certain companies to link everything up online is irritating. I hear Facebook is worse.)

Rant for the day: Tailored advertising has resulted in my finally cracking on my desire to not block ads and downloading Adblocker. After all, if I'm not interested in the ad the first time, show me something different on the next page, not the same blasted thing 600 times! I'm not going to click on it, but I may start to think your company are a) annoying and b) rude. Rant over.

Some changes here: I have split my fiction writing into another blog/Squidoo account to make it easier to manage, not least because I've got two more titles out. Currently I'm rather busy with three more books being worked on.

I'm slowing withdrawing my content from Bukisa, after finding some of it on a PLR site (now pulled) and included in a for-profit ebook with someone else's name on it (now pulled). Their switch to shared-advertising revenue has killed any earnings since they won't accept my adsense account, as I'm outside the US and don't have a zip code. It's either going in free e-books online or on lenses. Some may yet end up on Associated Content, but I'd have to check their licencing.

I'm moving my ebooks from Lulu to Smashwords, giving them a re-edit in the process. The result has been a success: The Three Great Ships of Isambard Kingdom Brunel is now their most downloaded non-fiction history title. Rather anxiously, I've turned on premium distribution, so these things should start turning up on B&N, Apple etc. over the next few months.

The cats are still cats. Some things don't change.