Passion for Writing

A DIFFERENT WAY TO BLOG

Serious about Blogging

When my agent said, “If you’re serious about publishing in the traditional market, you’ve got to get serious about social media,” I was uneasy. When he added “especially blogging,” I was dismayed. Then he told me “serious” meant blogging weekly. I panicked. I’d had a blog (Suzanne’s Scribbles) since 2008. In seven years I posted a total of thirteen entries. My silence must have cried “Help!” because Jim immediately gave me a list of articles to read about blogging. Oh my…

Value Added

I started reading. The consensus of the authors was that successful blogs can be summed up with the phrase “value added.” I was vaguely familiar with the term from discussions with my CPA daughter about the “value added” by her company’s products in foreign markets. As I puzzled through the connection, I began to understand that successful blogs offer content valuable to their readers. Travelers, for example, read blogs written by other travelers offering information about out-of-the-way restaurants, reasonable hotels, and little-known side trips. Quilters read blogs about fabrics and new tools. Cooks read blogs filled with recipes. Hmm…

Audience and Theme

I looked through Suzanne’s Scribbles and found entries ranging from anecdotes of my trip to Australia to reflections on Multiple Sclerosis fatigue to directions for making a batik scrap quilt. So who was my audience? I might assume my family and friends would be interested in these mildly entertaining ramblings, but the real truth was that I was my own audience. I wrote and posted on the topic I was interested in at that moment. Oops…

A Different Way to Blog

I began to consider the audience I wanted to attract to my blog. Because my fiction is romantic suspense for the Christian fiction market, my readers are primarily women and predominantly Christian. I needed a theme this audience would consider valuable, content I could offer from my life that connected with their lives. I puzzled for several weeks. Then one Sunday evening as I was preparing reflection questions for the verse-of-the-week Bible discussion I lead on Mondays an idea popped into my head. Maybe…

TwitterBible

Could I blog on one Bible verse a week?  My daughter liked the idea, my online writing partner liked the idea, and, best of all, my agent liked the idea. But there was still that pesky issue of social media. What if I posted the verse to Twitter on Monday and the reflection questions Tuesday through Thursday? Friday my blog would appear. I breathed a prayer and launched TwitterBible.

By the way, this morning I posted the thirteenth blog entry—not in seven years, in thirteen weeks. Besides that, I the next three entries are ready to go. Imagine that…