Another look at WordPress blogs...

I have had another look at WordPress blogs, and found a really great facility in WordPress.

With both WordPress and Blogger, your posts are organized in order of entry with the newest one at the top. But what do you do if you have a post or topic which you want to keep always at the top, so that everyone who reads your blog will see it? WordPress has solved this problem by adding "pages", which have tabs across the top of the blog and can be seen immediately.

Once I found out about this facility, I immediately understood why Wordpress blogs are so popular!

Here, by way of example, is the WordPress blog which I have created to tie together my book and several of my blogs: http://carolwalczak.wordpress.com.

There you will see my first and only post for the moment, and big tabs across the top for "About me", my book "Choose to Live!" and my "Grief Log" blog.

If I want people to go directly to the "Choose to Live!" page, I can give them this link: http://carolwalczak.wordpress.com/choose-to-live/ and I can also use this link to advertise my book on the traffic exchanges.

This is a fantastic way to tie together several ideas or forms of expression, it's exactly what I've been looking for.

Getting your blog pinged at Technorati

Pinging is a way of informing the search engines that you have added a new post to your blog. The more search engines are aware of your blog, the more likely you are to get visitors who are searching for information on your topic.

Blogger will automatically ping your new blog posts, but it is still a good idea to ping your blog at Technorati for greater exposure.

Go to www.technorati.com to begin the process.

Technorati Profile

Use a free blog to promote your book

If you find the idea of a website too challenging and complicated, think about using a blog. Blogs are about the easiest way to set up your internet presence, and you'll be able to easily add, change and remove elements such a photos, posts and links.

Two free blog providers are Blogger and Wordpress. There are others which you can find by doing a google search for free blogs, but these are the most popular ones. You might like to try them both before you decide which one suits you best. I prefer Blogger, but as far as I can tell opinion is about evenly divided.

You can also use the blog facility provided by your social network. This is good because people already know you there and are likely to read your blog out of friendliness or curiosity, but on the other hand you won't get visitors from outside the network.

So, what will you write about in your blog? You can write about a topic which is related to your book. That should be easy. You are already a writer, and you know a lot about your topic. On the other hand, you can write about anything which takes your fancy and appeals to readers, and simply advertise your book in the sidebar. It's up to you, but it's best to have a topic which you feel motivated about, as regular blog entries will make your blog rank more highly with the search engines which should lead to more readers.

Here are some examples of book promotion in blogs : Antonio the Saint, The New Energy Journey, Living in Eden, Australia. As you can see, it's a very individual thing, but what you are doing is getting some attention and hoping that readers of your blog will then be interested in checking out your book.

Once you have your blog started, you will need to promote the link so that people will find it. Here are some places where you can put your link:

- in your email signature
- in your signature on forums (where allowed - check the rules of the forum you are using)
- in comments you make on other people's blogs
- on a friend's blog or site - ask them for a reciprocal link. This means that they put your link on their blog, and you put their link on yours. The more links you have pointing to your blog, the higher the search engines will rank it.
- on your page at Yuwie, Facebook, MySpace -wherever people usually find you
- on your page at Squidoo
- on your HubPage
- on your free storefront at Lulu.

Once you get started you will see how other people do it, and you will get more ideas. The important thing is to start somewhere. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just keep going until you get results.