Lately, I've had several people I should start a blog. Right now I'm doing some setup thoughts to start the blog on http://www.bookiejar.com . Great company and a great staff - awesome site with 800 readers. We are putting our e-Books there and enjoying the networking. Any ideas or tips on how I should shape my blog? Content that most people would enjoy seeing from a women with two decades of experience in publishing? 

The best way I know to start a blog is to start.  My first efforts were sincerely uninteresting, but I kept at it until I started getting some comments that let me know what my readers were interested in.  In my case, they wanted to know how and why I chose self-publishing after several books with established publishers.  Once I addressed some of the lessons I learned along the way, readership blossomed.  I just checked the figures on yesterday's blog and discovered that it received more hits in 12 hours than my entire blog got in the first two months. 

 I have found that one effective way of gaining readers is to do a guest blog for people who are already fairly well established on the blogging scene.  When I started, I offered my services to several writers whose work I enjoyed reading.  Most were delighted to allow me to appear as a guest on their blog.  Their readers read my article, clicked on the links I provided to my blog, and came back if they liked what they saw.  That's why I've seen my numbers soar.   

There's a ton of great information on my blog, www.howtoblogabook.com, on how to get going with a blog. Although it's geared to blogging a book, the sections/posts on driving traffic will interest you. Plus, I've been posting information along these lines most recently. Ezine article marketing is a great idea. I've used this successfully, but I go a step farther and use an ezine article distribution service called Submit Your Article (http://www.submityourarticle.com/affiliates/idevaffiliate.php?id=1930). This gets me placement in many more ezines and many more links. Also use whatever social networking opportunities you can drum up--commenting in groups, posting your newly published posts to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter using services liked HootSuite.com. Twitter is a great way to get blog readers.

Blogging is great fun but also a lot of work. Best advice is, first of all, to stick with it. It takes a good 6-8 months before you gain a foothold. My first 5 months I only averaged 40-400 readers a month and now, 15 months after my launch, I am seeing 5000-7000 unique visitors a month.



·      Consistency with regular postings on same days of the week helps.

·      Publishing in article directories also helps, but wait 48 hours before you deliver a recent post to a directory so you retain first search engine ranking for the article. Also best to rewrite it a bit.



·      Add photos relevant to your topics. People like pictures; as the saying goes, "a picture is worth a 1000 words."



·      Weave in current news topics and be relevant in your discussions or posts.



·       Publish your best trafficked postings to article directories like EZineArticles.com and ArticlesBase.com