It's time to take a second look at blog sites—a Web 2.0 phenomenon that has redefined “authorship” and “readership” in ways that affect all of us.

What: Create an online web log (blog) to circulate your thoughts, ideas, and works. These publicly-viewed online articles are written on a regular basis – daily, weekly, bi-weekly, at least monthly, with a feature to provide instant reader feedback and conversation between the author and readers and between the readers themselves. Blogging allows everybody with a computer and an online connection to become an author, so now it is more important than ever to demonstrate why people should pay for some people's ideas and not for others. Your blog gives potential readers/customers an opportunity to both explore your ideas and provide feedback.

What makes blogs proliferate is the ability of your loyal readers to subscribe to your posts just like they would sign up for the regular delivery of a magazine or newspaper to their doorstep--using the magic of Really Simple Syndication (description from Wikipedia). Once a reader has electronically subscribed to your blog, they receive notification of your new posts automatically in their email mailboxes or blogging sites.  They can even read the first part of your post, click on the hot-link and then read the whole piece. Imagine if 1,000 people subscribed to your blog this way.  It would free you up as the author to concentrate on publishing quality content and let the distribution take care of itself.  Think of the RSS feed as your online Berrett-Koehler.

In the retail book world, even Amazon has gotten into the blogging act by encouraging its authors to join its AmazonConnect blog, which allows authors to communicate with their customers directly from their Amazon book pages. BK author Beth Kephart shows us her Amazon blog below.

Readers of  BK Currents books are heavily influenced by popular current affairs blogs:

Daily Kos
Alternet
The Huffington Post

Why: Although blogs have not been in the limelight for very long, the speed with which they have proliferated is nothing short of an explosive, informational wonder. This publishing treasure is also becoming quite the trend; BusinessWeek Online reports that "there are some 9 million blogs out there, with 40,000 new ones popping up each day." Authors are far from absent in this diverse pack. Blogs offer attractive idea-trafficking prospects; the concepts which form the foundation of a single paragraph in a work can themselves be examined and elucidated, offering invaluable understandings of both the book and the author. There's no reason to lose the informal topics, however—many authors use blogs to voice their casual observations, be it critiques, rants, simple observations, jokes or anything else that may serve digital interest.

Here are some of the reasons why BK authors should blog:

How: Questions to Consider

-Should I build it myself or use a blogging service? Using free blog publishing programs such as Typepad, Blogger (from Google), and WordPress offer easy setup routines that will have you posting blogs within an hour. These programs are awesome because of their ease of operation and maintenance. They are hosted by the sites themselves, relieving you of the hassle of finding your own host. You can simple link to the blog from your website. The downside is the limited ability to customize. Blog hosting sites can provide you with pre-constructed pages and the ability to link your page to your social network profiles (i.e. FaceBook, LinkedIn) or your own websites. You can also blog within your author website, rather than link to it, but your hosting company may need to help you set this up.

-Who is my audience and what do they want? People who read your blog must have a reason to keeping coming back. Decide what groups you want to reach and find other blogs that already communicate well with your target market.  Mare sue your intended content addresses the needs and desires of your audience.

-What should I write? Once you have your blog set up, post your first entries. You may follow these initial posts up with "status posts", but it's best to grab that online traffic with insightful understanding and genuine thoughts. Pick something that you may have some unique knowledge about—something that brings questions or understanding to your readers' minds. If it moves you, then most likely you will bring to the table a topic worth reading. Keep your topics fresh by attending to your blog. Your topics are free to expand as widely as they do in your mind, so don't feel limited. This allows you to avoid repetition and droning. Watch the traffic on your site, because comments may offer new directions and also can reinforce your understanding of the interests of your audience. However, be aware of your expertise boundaries, because writing uninformed posts may lead to misunderstanding and loss of readership.

-How do I grow my network? Remember that you are plugging into a global network that includes everyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Your readers and contributors have blogs too, so be willing to link to other blogs and sites related to your interests. This creates a connection that allows visitors to bounce around the blogs via deliberate links, keeping the attraction high and the material fresh. Blog hotspots like TPM Café and Technorati garner blogger attention and energy. Joining these communities may inspire your own blog content and keep you aware of blog development. This also helps when people are searching for blogs on a topic, not just a particular author or book. Maintaining a list of blogs on your own blog has come to be known as "blogrolling." Get into it.

-How do I get the search engines to find my blog? Smart word choice can increase traffic to your blog site.  As stated in a tip in Microsoft's "Small Business Center," "if your topic focuses on marketing a business overseas, use of the words 'marketing' and 'overseas' as often as possible and in varied permutations can help push your blog site toward the head of the search engine line."

-How often should I post new entries?  Keep your blog updated. Nothing is more disappointing than coming back to a blog you've saved and finding that it has outdated or superficial posts. Build an audience with a solid, consistent posting performance.

 

How Much: Depending on how much control you want and how specific you'd like your blog to be designed, you could spend hundreds of dollars per year or nothing at all. With an Internet connection, you can find free, open-source, blog publishing software at various sources:

If you have programming-know-how or the funds to explore more sophisticated approaches,  you can incorporate blogs into your own websites, using HTML coding to create many of the features present in leading blog software. The pricing of these options depends on which hosting services you use and how much operations responsibility you delegate to others.

Help: Many sites and weblog publishers offer instructions on creating blogs, some which offer tips and tutorials and others that expand on the utility of blogs. We've found a few sites that may help you get started: