Part 1 – The Writers’ blog
How do you write a writer’s blog? The technical aspects of it are very simple. If you get Bluehost and go through the startup, they install WordPress automatically for you (at least, they did for me).
I write all of my blog posts in Scrivener. Just create a blank fiction project, name it “Writer’s Blog” to differentiate if you have one on Colonial furniture designs or something.
Add a chapter, and give that the name of the current year, 2019, 2020, whenever it is you’re finding it.
Now add twelve chapters beneath it. Those obviously are the months.
Now, inside each month, add the number of days. There’s 23 weekdays per month, average. I write five blog posts a week. You can do four, but that’s the bare minimum I would recommend. Indeed, the first few months I published a blog post every day, then cut back to six a week, then five. Once I get a sufficient number of followers, I’ll consider going to four.
At first, you’ll need quantity over quality. Remember that you’re a writer, and your posts will be a step or two higher in quality than the average blogger.
WARNING – stay away from controversial issues. This is a writer’s blog. You’re blogging about writing, not social issues. Keep in mind that your social media is an open book, and it’s part of your resume. What if whatever agent is interested in you a year from now reads your manuscript, then goes to your social media to earn more and finds you campaigning hard for political issues dear to your heart – and they’re the opposite party? What if they disagree with your stand on social issues?
Answer – you don’t get the contract. Even if they agree with you, remember half the reading public will take one stance and half the other stance. What it all your prospective readers are of the opposite political party? Answer- you don’t sell any books. There’s a few authors who I’ll never buy their books because they insist on adding their political mindset into every one of their novels.
Back to the how-to.
Go to Bluehost.com. The whole process should take you about 20 minutes.
There’s two choices when you first click to buy – website with a URL, and one without. I’d do the one without. Some people go an extra step or two and buy the domain name first. That’s okay, it just seems a lot easier to me to do it all at once through one place.
Choose the plan you can afford. I really wanted to get the three year option, but I really couldn’t afford it. If I’d known the low price is only for your initial sign up period, I’d have gotten it. The year after, the price goes up to about $100 a year or so. I spent $72 my first year, so really, the price only went up about $1.50 a month. The year after that, they start offering you discounts again. Over the long haul, it’s worth it.
Bluehost will offer you a whole series of options and upgrades. Most of them I skipped. The one I did choose was the domain whois hider. Why? I don’t want some deranged fan showing up at my door with a little penguin in one hand and an ax in the other. You can choose what options you like, but I only chose the whois hider.
Michael Hyatt warns that once you click the “Create your account” button, some people get an error. This is because Bluehost is creating your account, and it sometimes takes a couple of minutes if a lot of people are doing the same thing you are at that time. I did mine on an early Saturday morning, and no problems. If after a few minutes there’s no change and you still get an error, call Bluehost at 1–888–401–4678.
Log into your Bluehost account screen. Again, you’ll get an upgrade offer. Ignore that. My domain name was blank, and I went through a momentary panic. I typed it in, logged in – and everything was just fine.
There’s only a couple more steps. I was going to follow Michael Hyatt’s instructions and click install wordpress, but it was already there. If it’s not, the wordpress installer will ask what domain you want it installed to. Your domain should be visible, just choose it and you’re off! Click on advanced, and enter your site name. Mine was my catchphrase – “Nicholas Reicher, author screenplay writer”.
Ta-da. Now log into the control panel and get started. It’s a simple matter of waiting for your website to show up publicly. You’ll be able to log in before it’s publicly visible. While you do that, open the interface, and write a simple “hello, it’s me, I’m a writer” kind of blog entry. Your first seven posts or so will be generic introductions.
Make sure you enable the social media publicize. It’s easy – just enter your Twitter @ address. This way, your first blog post will also show up on social media, and get your writer’s platform off to a bang!
Your first post can be, “I’m Nicholas Reicher, author, screenplay writer – my website is now live at https//www.nicholasreicher,com!”
And you’re now a blogger, with a writer’s platform!
Here’s the important part – you need to write at least four blog posts a week. That will total to 200 or so posts a year.
I write my blog posts on weekends – I get up early on Saturday and Sunday, writing my blog posts, LinkedIn posts, and tweets for the coming week. You can actually schedule your posts in advance, and I recommend that.
You can take a couple of different approaches – I’m a Guide, or I’m a Traveler (like you). I choose the guide persona, because it’s a role you grow into. By the very mindset, you become used to teaching. The traveler is someone who discusses what you’ve learned, having trouble with, etc – just like the reader.
You can delay that decision for a week, while you write generic blog posts for the first week. I want to emphasize this – it’s going to take a year or so for people to find your website. Don’t worry if it takes forever. You’ve got the comfort of knowing that you can make mistakes the first two years before you really start getting readers. It took two years for people to start visiting my blog regularly. Once you notice people showing up almost every day, it’s time to do some work on your blog – but I’ll get to that in a couple of days.
It’s much easier on wordpress.org, because they have the blog reader feature. Don’t rely on that – I wish I’d done it the right way and gotten a self hosted wordpress right from the start.
Although I will say I recently saw a Wix style website, and I was very impressed with how professional it looks! Don’t be afraid to look at Weebly, Wix, and similar interfaces first, before you decide!
My blog posts average about 650 words, sometime getting up to 900 words. Right now I’m just over 1100 words in this post. I’m not going to teach Blogging here – I’ll get to that later. We’re working on getting started.
The important thing is – get on a schedule and stay there! I only deviated from my schedule once, and that was this winter when I got seriously ill. I actually was so ill I lost most of my hearing and my voice was very ragged and hoarse for almost a month. As soon as my health was back, I was blogging again.
When this happens and you get caught up in the future, consider writing some evergreen content (we’ll go over that later) and going back to that empty time to post it. Why? People won’t be drawn to it first, but that’s the content the search engines push the most. People will visit just for evergreen content!
You’re ready to get started. If you don’t have a Twitter account, wait until after the next blog post on Saturday, and I’ll cover that. Then you can get started on your writer’s platform!
