To blog, or not to blog? Literary Publicist, Stephanie Barko, discusses why authors should be blogging in this short clip.

Tip #2: Blogging

Why is blogging so important for writers and authors?
Blog posting is important because blogging trains Google to find you.

Why does Google find you when you blog? Because when you keep a blog, you are using keywords that relate to your book.

If you have taken the time to identify and test your keywords and phrases and are using them deliberately in your online communications, all the better. The best place to use keywords is in your blog post title.  Designate a focus keyword in your title and see how many times you can use it throughout the post. You may want to keep your title to a length of between 40 and 70 characters as this is  the number of characters that search engines can see. Use your focus keyword in the first paragraph of your post.  Write at least 300 words of text in every post and keep your writing style as simple and direct as possible.

Include a few outbound links or hypertext in your article to increase its likelihood of being found.  Example: IBPA or www.ibpa-online.org.

Images and videos lead Google to your post faster. Use graphic content to supplement the text you have carefully crafted and start your images at the top of your article.

Without blog posting, Google may find you on social media, but it will not index your website or blog unless you are blogging on a domain that you own.  Do you want to build traffic for Facebook & Pinterest or for your blog? The choice is yours. Install a blog as a page on your website and add a new post twice a month or more.  Then go have fun with social networking the rest of the time.