Guest Blogging Topics to Avoid By Angela Wilson

I am excited to have Angela Wilson as our guest blogger this week. I was turned onto Angela's blog, Market My Novel, by fellow book marketers. It has quickly grown into one of my favorites to read. Angela is an author and a social networking expert who operates Ask Angela from her blog. This allows authors to submit their book marketing questions directly to her. Visit her blog today and look around. You won't be disappointed.

Before we get to Angela's article, here are a couple of housekeeping announcements:

1. First, as many of you know by now, my computer has died. I have one on order from Dell. It should get to me by July 23rd, and I will be on the Gulf Coast next week for vacation. All this means that for the next few weeks, I will have very limited access to a computer and for my normal blogging/video creating activities. Thanks for your patience during this time.

2. The next chapter, chapter 10, of The Samson Effect is now released on my serial blog. If you have not started the action/adventure novel yet, you can do so by visiting the Table of Contents. There you will find links to each chapter available as well as links to the announcement for the movie rights to the book being purchased, NY Times best selling author Clive Cussler's cover quote for the book and the international story where science finally caught up to the fiction I created in the book. I hope you enjoy it!

Now, on to Angela's article.


Guest Blogging Topics to Avoid
By Angela Wilson

Guest blogs are one of the best ways authors can personally connect with fans in the blogosphere.

Not doing it right, however, can permanently blemish your virtual reputation and limit the number of blogs willing to host you.

As editor of Pop Syndicate's Book Addict blog, I've noticed a disturbing trend of mediocrity the past three months among authors. It isn't just newbies committing these cardinal sins of guest blogging; it is also authors with enough experience to know better.

Three of the top guest blogging mistakes I experience include:

• Authors send posts regurgitated from previous guest blog tours, their personal blog or Web site.
  
  
• Authors draft an extended synopsis of the book.
  
  
• Authors create a post that is nothing more than a hard sales pitch that could put any used car salesman to shame.
  

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Imagine the feeling you get when you eagerly dive into a novel only to realize you've read it already. That's the same feeling readers get when they find the same information on several different sites. Eventually, readers will stop seeking out your posts because you don't offer anything new. Blog hosts will stop having you at their blogs because your copy isn't new and doesn't drive traffic to their site, or offer unique information to their readers. This may seem daunting to some - particularly nonfiction authors who need to focus on one topic for their tours. If this is you, borrow a trick from freelance writers, who take one topic and write about it from several different angles to sell to different publications. For example, if you have a book on divorce and want your theme to always be on that topic, you could write about how to find a good divorce attorney, how divorce impacts children, your pets rights during divorce, changes in laws that could impact your divorce, how to craft a rock-solid prenup, and what it means to be "separated." Tell Me a Story If readers want to know what your book is about, they will go to Amazon or a big box store to read the cover copy, or find it on your Web site. When reading a guest blog, fans expect to learn something new, different or exciting about you or your novels. That said, there are creative ways you can give a short synopsis of your novels without becoming a jacket copy drone. You can pull out specific plot points and tell readers unique facts about them - like the research it took to create the scene, how you got the idea for the scene, or how many times you changed the scene until you got it just right.

• Marie Force offers an excellent example in her post, "Rules, Schmools," where she discusses the plots of her novels and how these plots broke cardinal rules of romance writing. She goes on to say that, had she known "the rules," her creativity would have been stifled, and she never would have written her first two romance novels.
  
  
• Science fiction and fantasy author Rie Sheridan Rose discusses plot points from her novels to illustrate the Show, Don't Tell Rule in "The Watershed."
  
  
• Barbara Freethy talks about how she built a separate world for her Angel's Bay series, and includes tidbits of plot in "Barbara Freethy Blogs about Writing an Ongoing Series." At the bottom of her post, she included a short tag that included her latest novel title and Web site.
  

Buy My Book - Please! Don't you hate those pushy sales clerks in posh stores who follow you around, peddling this and that in the hopes that you will buy something so they make their sales quota? Most people feel the same way - including people in sales. Hard sells are a major no-no on social networks - much to the chagrin of major corporations trying to sell their goods online. One of the worst "sales pitch" guest blogs I received included this paragraph, editing slightly to remove any specifics about the author: My book depicts the day to day struggles of living ... and will intrigue the reader with horror, laughter, sadness and tears as I tell my true and compelling story. The reader will not be left disappointed or bored. This I promise! It's already being called a ... classic and will surely be appreciated by almost three generations of ... fans.... I don't want to read that. My readers at Book Addict don't want to read that. Your fans also don't want to read that. They want to know about YOU and your books. You can mention your book title, genre, and even blog about specifics of writing it, but don't try to push readers into buying. Before you take on a virtual guest blog book tour, write out a list of topics that you want to talk about, and think of three different ways to approach each topic. Write up the posts at least a month in advance of your tour, and ask fellow authors to proof them not just for grammar and spelling, but also for decisive differences in approach. Angela Wilson is a social media consultant and online marketing strategist. Visit her blog www.marketmynovel.com for more author marketing tips and tricks.