As an indie author, your author blog is one of your best marketing tools for promoting your eBooks, engaging with your readers, and sharing insights into your personality. But to make your author blog work well for you, it helps to design it properly. In this post, we’ll discuss the tools you need behind the scene to make your author blog work. In the next post, we’ll discuss what you need to include in your content.
Platform
We recommend WordPress. It’s easy to use, search-engine friendly, and quickly customizable. There are several free and premium responsive themes to choose from that will ensure your blog will be read no matter what device your reader is accessing your site from. If you aren’t a fan of WordPress, alternatives include Wix, Tumblr, and Blogger.
SEO Tool or Plugin
SEO doesn’t carry the same power it used to, at least not in the traditional sense of stuffing poorly written articles with keywords. But search engine optimization tools are important. They help you make sure you have a proper title and excerpt that Google can pick up in its search and work behind the scenes to increase your visibility. In WordPress, the two most popular SEO plugins are Yoast and All in One SEO Pack.
Social Sharing Tool
One of the ways you can leverage from the marketing potential of your blog is by making sure it reaches a wider audience. You do this by making it very easy for people to share your content, providing them with social sharing buttons. If they like what you’re writing, they can simply click a button to share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or any number of other platforms.
Click To Tweet
Another very powerful tool that can help expand your audience is Click To Tweet. This tool embeds clickable tweets right in your blog. You can grab a sentence or phrase, add a hashtag, and make it incredibly easy for readers to share your content.
What other behind-the-scenes tools do you think are necessary for the perfect author blog?
