Episode 027 - Why to Stop Blogging ... and What to Do Instead with Pauline Wiles
May 19, 2020
Pauline Wiles discusses why authors intent on reaching new readers should not be investing their time writing blog posts for their own website, and shares ideas for alternatives that will offer better returns in terms of building your reader community.
Pauline Wiles is a website designer who builds simple, stylish sites for authors and writers. As an author herself, being the author of the Saffron Sweeting romantic comedies, she noticed others were often overwhelmed by this task. Now, she’s helping to dispel some of the myths around how difficult – and costly – a web project should be. British by birth, Pauline is now a contented resident of California, although she admits to an occasional yearning for afternoon tea and historic homes.
Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. My guest today is Pauline Wiles. Hey Pauline, how are you doing?
[00:00:07] Pauline: I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for inviting me, Matty.
[00:00:10] Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Pauline Wiles is a website designer who builds simple, stylish sites for authors and writers. As an author herself, being the author of the Saffron Sweeting romantic comedies, she noticed others were often overwhelmed by this task. Now she's helping to dispel some of the myths about how costly and difficult a web project should be. British by birth, Pauline is now a contented resident of California, although she admits to an occasional yearning for afternoon tea and historic homes.
[00:00:43] And apropos of our conversation today, she's also the author of an article in the February 2020 issue of Self Publishing Review entitled "Why Authors Should Stop Blogging Now." And that's what we're going to be talking about today: "Why to Stop Blogging and What to Do Instead." So, Pauline, before we dive into the details of why to stop blogging, can you describe what you were encountering, either in your own experience or authors you knew, maybe your clients, that led you to think through this topic.
[00:01:14] Pauline: Yeah. My whole philosophy really on marketing is based on the two principles that it's a marathon, not a sprint, so as authors, we really have to find marketing activities that we can sustain for the long term. And then the other angle is that we only have so much time in a day. Many indy authors are still juggling the day job alongside writing.
[00:01:40] And so our marketing time is really very precious, and we have to guard against, activities which feel like they might be useful, but in fact don't really help get the word out about books.
[00:01:52] Matty: What particularly focused you on blogging as something that people need to take a careful look at in terms of its value?
[00:02:00] Pauline: I got into website design as I started going to writer's conferences and talking to other authors and finding that in general, technology can be baffling for many indy authors. And in looking further into the website world, it became apparent to me that many authors either didn't have a website at all or they set one up several years ago when blogging was arguably more popular than it is now.
[00:02:30] And many of those blogs were starting to languish, becoming neglected, very few new pieces of writing being added, and frankly, as a visitor to a website, nothing signals to me that the author doesn't really care about readership than if they haven't bothered to visit a blog in three years and it's gathering dust.
[00:02:52] And then the other angle, I think that writers need to guard against most of us in terms of marketing, we don't have a broad skillset. We're not that comfortable with getting out there and talking about our work in other ways. Writing, of course, comes pretty naturally to most of us, and therefore it can be very tempting to think, all I have to do is sit in my safe space at my own desk, write a blog post, publish it, and I've done some book marketing.
[00:03:20] And I encourage, of course, writers to write and publish and have short articles and short pieces and short pieces of fiction, but I am not convinced that a blog on the author's own website is the right place to hope to gain traction without hard work.
[00:00:07] Pauline: I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for inviting me, Matty.
[00:00:10] Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Pauline Wiles is a website designer who builds simple, stylish sites for authors and writers. As an author herself, being the author of the Saffron Sweeting romantic comedies, she noticed others were often overwhelmed by this task. Now she's helping to dispel some of the myths about how costly and difficult a web project should be. British by birth, Pauline is now a contented resident of California, although she admits to an occasional yearning for afternoon tea and historic homes.
[00:00:43] And apropos of our conversation today, she's also the author of an article in the February 2020 issue of Self Publishing Review entitled "Why Authors Should Stop Blogging Now." And that's what we're going to be talking about today: "Why to Stop Blogging and What to Do Instead." So, Pauline, before we dive into the details of why to stop blogging, can you describe what you were encountering, either in your own experience or authors you knew, maybe your clients, that led you to think through this topic.
[00:01:14] Pauline: Yeah. My whole philosophy really on marketing is based on the two principles that it's a marathon, not a sprint, so as authors, we really have to find marketing activities that we can sustain for the long term. And then the other angle is that we only have so much time in a day. Many indy authors are still juggling the day job alongside writing.
[00:01:40] And so our marketing time is really very precious, and we have to guard against, activities which feel like they might be useful, but in fact don't really help get the word out about books.
[00:01:52] Matty: What particularly focused you on blogging as something that people need to take a careful look at in terms of its value?
[00:02:00] Pauline: I got into website design as I started going to writer's conferences and talking to other authors and finding that in general, technology can be baffling for many indy authors. And in looking further into the website world, it became apparent to me that many authors either didn't have a website at all or they set one up several years ago when blogging was arguably more popular than it is now.
[00:02:30] And many of those blogs were starting to languish, becoming neglected, very few new pieces of writing being added, and frankly, as a visitor to a website, nothing signals to me that the author doesn't really care about readership than if they haven't bothered to visit a blog in three years and it's gathering dust.
[00:02:52] And then the other angle, I think that writers need to guard against most of us in terms of marketing, we don't have a broad skillset. We're not that comfortable with getting out there and talking about our work in other ways. Writing, of course, comes pretty naturally to most of us, and therefore it can be very tempting to think, all I have to do is sit in my safe space at my own desk, write a blog post, publish it, and I've done some book marketing.
[00:03:20] And I encourage, of course, writers to write and publish and have short articles and short pieces and short pieces of fiction, but I am not convinced that a blog on the author's own website is the right place to hope to gain traction without hard work.
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[00:03:41] Matty: There's one thing I want to talk about that you mentioned before we dive into more details about what people should be doing instead of blogging. And that is that when people do have old content, certainly if a blog post is dated, then it's clear that it's maybe out of date if it's three years old, and certainly depending on the content, some content is just more evergreen than other content.
[00:04:05] If someone has some blog posts out there that they did years ago and they're not dated, and the topic is sort of evergreen, is there harm in leaving those up, or do you think that if it's not identifiable as old, it's okay?
[00:04:22] Pauline: Right. And this is a great point, that many blog systems and website setups do allow us to disguise somewhat when something was published. The default can often be that the date shows up, but that's by no means what we're stuck with. And yeah, if the content is evergreen and it still serves its purpose, then I don't think there's any harm at all in having that there if the rest of the website still appears to be fresh and the copyright year and the footer is correct and all those little details.
[00:04:53] Matty: I guess that the possible downside, even if it isn't clearly dated, is that you're preaching to the choir, right? And I think that that's part of your argument against spending time on your own blog, that the people who are visiting it are going to be the people who are already interested in you enough to be following what's on your website. And if they have seen the same material there year after year, even if it's not dated, they'll know.
[00:05:17] Pauline: Yeah, and that's one of my big concerns is that unless an author is very lucky with social media reach or unless a big name picked up an article and shares it on our behalf, then what we find is the same small loyal tribe come to our website and read our stuff and all that hard work that we've spent in thinking of a topic, and writing something thoughtful and polishing and editing and publishing, all that really only then reaches the people that are already within our circle. So, yeah, that's one of my big concerns.
[00:05:50] Matty: And I suppose there's also a difference between people who are blogging because they're looking to reach readers and people who are blogging because it's something they intrinsically enjoy doing or it's therapeutic for them, or in some ways, the actual process of writing that blog post is beneficial for them
[00:06:10] Pauline: Completely. That's one big distinction worth making. And the other one that's worth throwing in there is I think there is a difference in blogging activity for a fiction versus a nonfiction author.
[00:06:21] So let me come first to your point about the people who really enjoy it. I do actually still blog fairly regularly on my own site. I enjoy it. And for me, at the stage of the business I'm at, it's worth it to me to build a body of reference material that I can then share and point to and even refer questions back to.
[00:06:44] And the enjoyment thing is very important because I think there are plenty of authors who gain great satisfaction from blogging. It's not particularly time consuming or onerous or tedious for them. It doesn't stress them out every Tuesday morning when they sit down at the keyboard and think, "Right, what should I publish this week?" And I think there is value in that, if blogging is a form of a therapeutic sharing.
[00:07:09] Now, I just say in that case, be honest about the purpose that blogging serves for yourself as an author and in your writing life. I like to call it self-care sometimes that it falls into that category of activity more than perhaps into the book marketing category.
[00:07:27] Matty: I think that another possible downside of the self-care type of blog post is that do you really want people to be reading that years from now? If you as an author going through a tough patch and you've decided to sort of vent about it on your online diary, if you're using the blog post in that way, then are you still going to be comfortable with people revisiting that later on?
[00:07:49] Pauline: That's one angle. And also I think the blogging that is more the author thinking through their own thoughts, the topics can be more broad and perhaps less directly relevant to the topics of our books and what the readers are really looking for. So we need to be a little bit careful when we have blog posts published that are more about our daily lives and our thought processes rather than targeting our readers' interest.
[00:08:17] Matty: Yup. You had spoken about the difference between fiction and nonfiction posting or blogging. Can you talk about that a little bit more?
[00:08:24] Pauline: Yeah, so I think in some cases for a nonfiction author who is trying to establish authority, there may be a slightly stronger argument for sticking with blogging even when it feels like an uphill battle.
[00:08:39] But even in that case, I would encourage that author to try to build their body of work and their credibility by producing pieces and content which can be published and shared on wider platforms than just their own blog. There is a school of thought that if a nonfiction author wants to be credible in a subject area, that their own websites should have a certain amount of material and expertise shared there. But even in that case, I would encourage authors not to make that the main focus of where they write and publish and connect with other experts.
[00:09:14] Matty: For people who are building up some content on their sites, do you have recommendations regarding how to position it? Because I see fewer people writing in the nonfiction world that are advertising what they're posting as blogs, and they're posting it as more like articles.
[00:09:33] And I think that in some cases there's this sense that the blog is the sort of free form, stream of consciousness, not necessarily well thought out piece of content, as opposed to a series of articles about a certain topic. Is the term "blog" still relevant and what kind of connotations does it bring along with it that may or may not be what the author is looking to convey?
[00:09:57] Pauline: Yeah, that's a great distinction. I've gone back and forth on this myself. I have certainly renamed my top menu item to Articles and then back to Blog, and I'm on the fence about that. I think you're completely right that these days calling your work "Articles" or "Resources" and being very intentional that they are useful pieces of content on a certain topic does convey more focus and more professionalism than calling it a blog.
[00:10:27] I think that's an excellent issue to point out. I feel I might still flip back the other way and stop calling my work a blog and call it "Resources." And for anyone who's just getting started or just setting up a website, I would think that going with "Resources" instead of a blog or "Articles" instead of a blog would be a very smart move.
[00:10:50] Matty: And if people are bringing the same kind of mindset to it, the same kind of professionalism, the same consideration for the content, then if suddenly blog becomes more the thing to do, it's an easy change, right? You just go into your website or you ask your webmaster to change the name of whatever's in the tab, but perhaps it wouldn't be necessary to then overhaul what's behind that tab as long as it fits the criteria for whatever term you're using.
[00:11:18] Pauline: You're right. Yes. As long as we keep our readers in mind and the content is useful and evergreen and not an overly personal rant about what happened at three in the morning, then yeah, completely.
[00:11:31] Matty: Let's get into what the alternatives are if an author's goal is to reach more readers, what are the alternatives that are a more productive way of going about that than posting on one's own website?
[00:11:45] Pauline: Yeah. Well, it's important to emphasize that when I suggest that authors stop blogging, I certainly don't mean they should stop writing short articles, short pieces. You have your own book about leveraging short fiction. So I say to people, just because I'm saying don't blog doesn't mean don't write short pieces and put them to use elsewhere. And for many authors, the baby step, if you like, of getting outside their comfort zone with their own blog, is to offer to be a guest writer on somebody else's blog. That's a really nice way to both get the content to a wider audience and to start to build some wonderful relationships in the author community. Medium of course, is growing in popularity. That probably needs a whole separate podcast episode from an expert, and that expert wouldn't be me.
[00:12:40] Medium, I know, has attracted a lot of attention because there is a ready-made platform there to share our writing, and there is the potential, at least, to make a few pennies or a few cents from the work. But as with many other things in our author life, it's not easy money. So people shouldn't assume that they'll publish three articles on Medium and that they'll be paying for their coffee bill, even. So Medium is popular, but certainly needs to be researched before somebody plunges in wholesale.
[00:13:10] Matty: Let me just ask a quick question about Medium. Is that the kind of platform where people are going to Medium to look for things? Or is it more of a hosting platform, so to speak, where you can post it on Medium, but then you would also have to promote it through other venues to get people to go there?
[00:13:28] Pauline: I think a bit of both. There are Medium opportunities which are curated, and again, I'm not publishing on Medium, so I don't have expertise in this, but the idea of, being lucky enough to have a piece picked for curation on Medium is the other readers are already on Medium looking for that kind of content on those kinds of topics. So that really gives you a boost in the people you reach.
[00:13:57] Matty:
[00:13:57] Pauline: LinkedIn is a nice one to consider. Probably, again, more for the nonfiction authors than for fiction, but LinkedIn allows publishing of longer pieces and of course, depending on one's background, we may, as authors have a different or a wider reach on LinkedIn among our own field than perhaps we do on our own website.
[00:14:21] Matty: That's something that I've found. On most of my social media platforms where I had to approve people following me or liking me or whatever is appropriate for that platform, I was a little more selective about it, but with LinkedIn, I just let whoever wanted to connect with me, connect with me. That was back when I was in my corporate job and I amassed probably thousands of connections there. And now what I find I do, now that I'm no longer in the corporate world, but I still have all those connections that I formed when I was in the corporate world, is if I do something like a podcast or an article that I can spin so that I think it might appeal to the people who are on my connections list, I'll do that. So it might be something about storytelling. And for most of the people who would follow me on The Indy Author, let's say, I would just post it as, here's some tips about storytelling. But if I'm posting it on LinkedIn, I'm posting it more as, " Every job requires storytelling. And so here are some tips that even if you're working in the corporate world and you need to convince people of something, or proselytize about something, champion something, here are some tips. So I use the same content in different areas, but I'm spinning the text I use to encourage people to click on it a little bit different depending on what the platform is and what I know my followers are going to be interested in.
[00:15:39] Pauline: Yeah, that's wonderful because knowing the audience on each platform, they can be looking for very different things. Somebody who follows you on Goodreads is probably very different from your LinkedIn network.
[00:15:50] Matty: Exactly. Beyond those platforms that people will recognize, like Medium and LinkedIn, how do you recommend people go about finding sites that are looking for guest posts that are going to be a good match for the people that the author is trying to reach out to?
[00:16:07] Pauline: Yeah. The easiest way to start is simply to get on the search engine and look for sites which have published guest pieces in that arena previously. For a nonfiction author, hopefully there's a topic there that can narrow down that search. And for the fiction authors amongst us, then book bloggers are still very active and very helpful, and interviews on book blogging website again helps widen the reach. And in my experience at least, book bloggers have been very gracious with supporting my work and giving me some bandwidth on their site.
[00:16:49] And even though we love to write, and we might want to get our writing published on various guests’ sites, you and I are using our voices right now. And if an author is comfortable at looking into the podcast arena, then you had a wonderful episode recently on building community through podcasting. I think that's a really nice place to look at. And even though a large proportion of the population is apparently scared of public speaking, I think that can be a really wonderful way, again, as either a fiction or nonfiction. To meet the right audience and to spread the word.
[00:17:28] Matty: Are there differences in the searches you would do to find people who are interested in written blog posts as a guest blogger versus people who are looking for guests on their podcast?
[00:17:41] Pauline: Yeah. I think in general it's easier to find search results for guest articles and guest blogging because the topic and the word guest, guest writer, guest article, guest post can usually be found. The podcast, I think it takes a little more time to establish not the audience for the podcast and not what its focus is, but whether the podcast host actually accepts guests.
[00:18:10] When you interviewed, I think it was J. Thorn talking about podcasts, he mentioned that there are solo podcasts where the host just talks. There are pairs where a regular two people have a conversation every episode or every week, and then the format more like yourselves where you're inviting a guest to come and talk.
[00:18:32] Yeah. You certainly, if you're trying to pitch yourself to a podcast, you want to be sure that guests are in the picture in the first place.
[00:18:40] Matty: Yeah. With any outreach like that, it's important for you to be familiar with the platform that you're reaching out to because I'm sure there's nothing more annoying to podcasters who always do solo episodes to get a suggestion, "I think I'd be a great guest for your podcast," when nobody's going to be a good guest for that podcast because it's not a guest kind of podcast.
[00:19:00] Pauline: It comes back to the same principles really for pitching anything, whether one is asking a book blogger to review a book, or for those authors who have explored traditional publishing and we're reaching out to agents, I think it makes sense to go for the quality approach rather than the scatter gun approach of asking people if they'd be interested in your work.
[00:19:23] Matty: Do you have a recommendation on whether people should be refocusing their efforts from written blogs to podcasts? Because I kind of feel as if podcasts are the new platform like that, that in some cases, circumstances where people would previously have searched for information on a certain topic, now they're turning to podcasts. Do you see any emerging pros or cons on either of those?
[00:19:47] Pauline: I think your instincts are probably right. I don't have data. I have my own gut feel on this and my own behavior that I suspect, and again, when you had your whole episode about podcasting, there was very much a sense that listening is something that we can do while we do other activities. I remember your guest mentioned that. And I know from my own personal behavior and the behavior of my friends, I am generally spending less time reading blog posts and reading online content versus listening to podcasts. So I think authors, of course, need to know where their audience is and what their audience is doing.
[00:20:34] I did hear from one website owner who speaks to authors on a regular basis, and she felt her audience were not listening to podcasts and therefore blogging was still very much applicable for her, but yes, definitely, ask a few of your readers, ask some of your ideal audience, are they reading a lot of blogs? Are they reading online? Are they watching YouTube videos or are they out walking the dog and listening to podcasts as they go? Because, yeah, that's the way I'm moving. I suspect your instinct is good on that one, but it really just come down to where are your audience hanging out and how can you best connect with them?
[00:21:12] Matty: Yup. And looking for current data, because, I believe it was in the article you wrote, that as of 2010 or something like that, blogs were the thing to do, and if someone was doing research on blogging versus podcasting, perhaps where their desired demographic was hanging out, make sure you're looking at something current so you're not basing your business plan on outdated data.
[00:21:36] Pauline: It's worth mentioning that any advice that comes to authors on how to market ourselves and promote our books, it's worth taking just one step back and looking at who is giving that advice and are they selling a product that helps us do it in that particular way. I find plenty of information online about why blogging is still fantastic and wonderful and marvelous, and oftentimes the person behind that advice has a product or a course or a book on how to blog. And, you know, I'll be honest at this point, I am not a fan of blogging for all authors. I'm not sure it's the best thing for people to do. And in fact, the websites that I generally create don't have blogs. So I need to be upfront and say that I come from a particular angle on the topic as well. And in every case of reading advice, check into the situation of the person giving it.
[00:22:32] Matty: That's a great call out. If someone finds themself in a position where they've tracked down places that accept guest blogs, they've gotten agreement to have one of those sites carry their material, are there any cautions that they should look out for to make sure they retain the rights to reuse that content if they expect to want it to do that down the road?
[00:22:56] Pauline: I think that's probably a case by case basis for each offer. As I got deeper into my author career, I almost made a list of things that I wasn't going to worry about and stress about. That wasn't one of them, but in fact, I choose not to get particularly concerned about where my words go and whether I retain the rights to them.
[00:23:20] I probably could delve deeper into that myself, but a lot like authors worrying about their books being pirated, I love the the advice and the expression that obscurity is a much bigger danger than piracy. However, you make a good point and you give authors wonderful advice on your site about what to do with their short fiction, and you have a book on that topic also, so yes, I'm sure that if an author has their eye on repurposing or collating that content or submitting it somewhere else for an anthology or whatever, then it is a little bit more important to just be clear on the policy of where the guest post is submitted.
[00:24:06] Yeah. So just because that's on my list of things not to stress about it doesn't mean that that's universal advice.
[00:24:12] Matty: I think that where it would become a real consideration is if you write a piece of content about using short fiction, for example, and you find a home for that, then it would be great if a year later you could take that same piece of content, maybe massage it a little bit to accommodate any changes that had happened in the meantime, and submit it somewhere else.
[00:24:36] Now, I would think just to be a good corporate citizen, you don't want to have the same content on a bunch of guest blog posts at the same time. But I would think that most places that host guest blogs would be okay with you at some point down the road, as a reprint, in the same way that in the fiction world there are reprints and you could submit reprints to different platforms after a certain amount of time, that that might be a desirable thing to do with blog content.
[00:25:01] But of course you need to make sure that the person that you're giving that content to agrees with that and then make a decision about whether you want to live with any limitations they might want to impose.
[00:25:13] Pauline: Yes, and I think many sites do state their policy on that. Some of the smaller ones don't, but some of the larger ones do ask for exclusive rights for number of days and so on.
[00:25:25] Matty: A lot of these are quite straightforward for nonfiction writers, the ability to search for whatever your area of expertise that you want to get known for is, that you want to reach more people about. For fiction authors, does blogging for other people offer the same kind of opportunities as for nonfiction authors?
[00:25:43] Pauline: Yes. Although it might not always be dressed up as blogging. It might take the form of being interviewed about your work and about your fiction. It might take the form of a book blogger featuring primarily your book with a few extra pieces of information about the author to round out that piece.
[00:26:06] And I think it depends. Many fiction authors struggle to identify a strong theme in their books. I was always very lucky that I knew I was writing for Anglophiles and that almost every chapter features somebody having a cup of tea and a piece of cakes. So it wasn't hard for me to know where my themes were that I was going to then use as my hooks on wider platforms. But I think fiction authors should not assume that just because they write fiction, that they can't be featured as a guest somewhere else.
[00:26:38] Matty: It seems as if there are two angles you could take even on that. One is just talking about your book, finding those podcasts or blogs that like to talk about the story that was written about. The other thing would be if you have any kind of factual background of your book, for example, one of my books has as its backstory a big fire that took place in 1947 in Maine on Mount Desert Island that burned a lot of the island, and so I suppose that I could also pursue Maine-based blogs, blogs about historical events in Maine, New England, fires. I don't know what those might be, but people could maybe look beyond just their story to what they've used as the setting for their story or the historical background of their story, and that might lend itself to ways of reaching readers. That would be totally new because they might not even be people who are normally, let's say, mystery readers, but they love history set during a certain time, and so they may pick up your book when it otherwise might not occur to them to do so.
[00:27:40] Pauline: Absolutely. By the time we've written our book, we can have our noses pretty close to the content, and sometimes I think we miss the fact that there is all kinds of great information in there, which is very interesting to a wider readership.
[00:27:55] Certainly any historical fiction authors probably know way more about their period of history than the average person walking down the street. And something we hear anecdotally about book clubs is that readers particularly enjoy some of the book club picks because it gives them a chance to learn something new.
[00:28:14] So whether that new thing is about a fire that happened at a particular time or about the daily life of keeping bees, there are all kinds of learning threaded through the average novel that sometimes I think as the author, we don't realize that.
[00:28:32] Matty: So now we're in a situation where we've landed the guest blog gig and people are reading it and they're interested. What are your recommendations about the best practices for getting those people from the guests post site to your own site where you you want to interact with them?
Pauline: My favorite suggestion there is to have a short, crisp, enticing bio and to mention in that bio some kind of free resource or lead magnet or collection of short fiction, something people can get for free if they go on over to your website and take a look at you there. So I don't know if you'd cover this in your book. Short tack, you probably do. But If we're not spending our time blogging, we can spend our time creating a resource or a short collection of our stories or some other freebie, and that then is a really nice thing to talk about when we think of a platform to guest blog or to write some kind of article on someone else's site.
Matty: Great. Well, Pauline, thank you so much. This has been great. I think all our listeners will leave with a list of to dos of things that they want to look into, and many I think will be relieved to be relieved of the responsibility of forcing a blog post just because they read it on a list of necessary to dos a decade ago.
Pauline: Yes. I think as authors, there are so many ways that we can promote our books and market ourselves. That we sometimes make the mistake of thinking that we have to do all of them and really the sweet spot, I think for long term marketing, is picking just the few things which really resonate with us. Really connect with our readers and that we can sustain. And if a blog isn't one of them, then I encourage people, don't do it.
Matty: Excellent. Pauline, let people know where they can find out more about you and your work online.
Pauline: Yes, the best place is my website, Paulinewiles.com. Everything is linked up from there, you'll find me on various social media, but starting with the website is a great place to get to know me.
Matty: Great. Thank you so much.
Pauline: Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.
[00:04:05] If someone has some blog posts out there that they did years ago and they're not dated, and the topic is sort of evergreen, is there harm in leaving those up, or do you think that if it's not identifiable as old, it's okay?
[00:04:22] Pauline: Right. And this is a great point, that many blog systems and website setups do allow us to disguise somewhat when something was published. The default can often be that the date shows up, but that's by no means what we're stuck with. And yeah, if the content is evergreen and it still serves its purpose, then I don't think there's any harm at all in having that there if the rest of the website still appears to be fresh and the copyright year and the footer is correct and all those little details.
[00:04:53] Matty: I guess that the possible downside, even if it isn't clearly dated, is that you're preaching to the choir, right? And I think that that's part of your argument against spending time on your own blog, that the people who are visiting it are going to be the people who are already interested in you enough to be following what's on your website. And if they have seen the same material there year after year, even if it's not dated, they'll know.
[00:05:17] Pauline: Yeah, and that's one of my big concerns is that unless an author is very lucky with social media reach or unless a big name picked up an article and shares it on our behalf, then what we find is the same small loyal tribe come to our website and read our stuff and all that hard work that we've spent in thinking of a topic, and writing something thoughtful and polishing and editing and publishing, all that really only then reaches the people that are already within our circle. So, yeah, that's one of my big concerns.
[00:05:50] Matty: And I suppose there's also a difference between people who are blogging because they're looking to reach readers and people who are blogging because it's something they intrinsically enjoy doing or it's therapeutic for them, or in some ways, the actual process of writing that blog post is beneficial for them
[00:06:10] Pauline: Completely. That's one big distinction worth making. And the other one that's worth throwing in there is I think there is a difference in blogging activity for a fiction versus a nonfiction author.
[00:06:21] So let me come first to your point about the people who really enjoy it. I do actually still blog fairly regularly on my own site. I enjoy it. And for me, at the stage of the business I'm at, it's worth it to me to build a body of reference material that I can then share and point to and even refer questions back to.
[00:06:44] And the enjoyment thing is very important because I think there are plenty of authors who gain great satisfaction from blogging. It's not particularly time consuming or onerous or tedious for them. It doesn't stress them out every Tuesday morning when they sit down at the keyboard and think, "Right, what should I publish this week?" And I think there is value in that, if blogging is a form of a therapeutic sharing.
[00:07:09] Now, I just say in that case, be honest about the purpose that blogging serves for yourself as an author and in your writing life. I like to call it self-care sometimes that it falls into that category of activity more than perhaps into the book marketing category.
[00:07:27] Matty: I think that another possible downside of the self-care type of blog post is that do you really want people to be reading that years from now? If you as an author going through a tough patch and you've decided to sort of vent about it on your online diary, if you're using the blog post in that way, then are you still going to be comfortable with people revisiting that later on?
[00:07:49] Pauline: That's one angle. And also I think the blogging that is more the author thinking through their own thoughts, the topics can be more broad and perhaps less directly relevant to the topics of our books and what the readers are really looking for. So we need to be a little bit careful when we have blog posts published that are more about our daily lives and our thought processes rather than targeting our readers' interest.
[00:08:17] Matty: Yup. You had spoken about the difference between fiction and nonfiction posting or blogging. Can you talk about that a little bit more?
[00:08:24] Pauline: Yeah, so I think in some cases for a nonfiction author who is trying to establish authority, there may be a slightly stronger argument for sticking with blogging even when it feels like an uphill battle.
[00:08:39] But even in that case, I would encourage that author to try to build their body of work and their credibility by producing pieces and content which can be published and shared on wider platforms than just their own blog. There is a school of thought that if a nonfiction author wants to be credible in a subject area, that their own websites should have a certain amount of material and expertise shared there. But even in that case, I would encourage authors not to make that the main focus of where they write and publish and connect with other experts.
[00:09:14] Matty: For people who are building up some content on their sites, do you have recommendations regarding how to position it? Because I see fewer people writing in the nonfiction world that are advertising what they're posting as blogs, and they're posting it as more like articles.
[00:09:33] And I think that in some cases there's this sense that the blog is the sort of free form, stream of consciousness, not necessarily well thought out piece of content, as opposed to a series of articles about a certain topic. Is the term "blog" still relevant and what kind of connotations does it bring along with it that may or may not be what the author is looking to convey?
[00:09:57] Pauline: Yeah, that's a great distinction. I've gone back and forth on this myself. I have certainly renamed my top menu item to Articles and then back to Blog, and I'm on the fence about that. I think you're completely right that these days calling your work "Articles" or "Resources" and being very intentional that they are useful pieces of content on a certain topic does convey more focus and more professionalism than calling it a blog.
[00:10:27] I think that's an excellent issue to point out. I feel I might still flip back the other way and stop calling my work a blog and call it "Resources." And for anyone who's just getting started or just setting up a website, I would think that going with "Resources" instead of a blog or "Articles" instead of a blog would be a very smart move.
[00:10:50] Matty: And if people are bringing the same kind of mindset to it, the same kind of professionalism, the same consideration for the content, then if suddenly blog becomes more the thing to do, it's an easy change, right? You just go into your website or you ask your webmaster to change the name of whatever's in the tab, but perhaps it wouldn't be necessary to then overhaul what's behind that tab as long as it fits the criteria for whatever term you're using.
[00:11:18] Pauline: You're right. Yes. As long as we keep our readers in mind and the content is useful and evergreen and not an overly personal rant about what happened at three in the morning, then yeah, completely.
[00:11:31] Matty: Let's get into what the alternatives are if an author's goal is to reach more readers, what are the alternatives that are a more productive way of going about that than posting on one's own website?
[00:11:45] Pauline: Yeah. Well, it's important to emphasize that when I suggest that authors stop blogging, I certainly don't mean they should stop writing short articles, short pieces. You have your own book about leveraging short fiction. So I say to people, just because I'm saying don't blog doesn't mean don't write short pieces and put them to use elsewhere. And for many authors, the baby step, if you like, of getting outside their comfort zone with their own blog, is to offer to be a guest writer on somebody else's blog. That's a really nice way to both get the content to a wider audience and to start to build some wonderful relationships in the author community. Medium of course, is growing in popularity. That probably needs a whole separate podcast episode from an expert, and that expert wouldn't be me.
[00:12:40] Medium, I know, has attracted a lot of attention because there is a ready-made platform there to share our writing, and there is the potential, at least, to make a few pennies or a few cents from the work. But as with many other things in our author life, it's not easy money. So people shouldn't assume that they'll publish three articles on Medium and that they'll be paying for their coffee bill, even. So Medium is popular, but certainly needs to be researched before somebody plunges in wholesale.
[00:13:10] Matty: Let me just ask a quick question about Medium. Is that the kind of platform where people are going to Medium to look for things? Or is it more of a hosting platform, so to speak, where you can post it on Medium, but then you would also have to promote it through other venues to get people to go there?
[00:13:28] Pauline: I think a bit of both. There are Medium opportunities which are curated, and again, I'm not publishing on Medium, so I don't have expertise in this, but the idea of, being lucky enough to have a piece picked for curation on Medium is the other readers are already on Medium looking for that kind of content on those kinds of topics. So that really gives you a boost in the people you reach.
[00:13:57] Matty:
[00:13:57] Pauline: LinkedIn is a nice one to consider. Probably, again, more for the nonfiction authors than for fiction, but LinkedIn allows publishing of longer pieces and of course, depending on one's background, we may, as authors have a different or a wider reach on LinkedIn among our own field than perhaps we do on our own website.
[00:14:21] Matty: That's something that I've found. On most of my social media platforms where I had to approve people following me or liking me or whatever is appropriate for that platform, I was a little more selective about it, but with LinkedIn, I just let whoever wanted to connect with me, connect with me. That was back when I was in my corporate job and I amassed probably thousands of connections there. And now what I find I do, now that I'm no longer in the corporate world, but I still have all those connections that I formed when I was in the corporate world, is if I do something like a podcast or an article that I can spin so that I think it might appeal to the people who are on my connections list, I'll do that. So it might be something about storytelling. And for most of the people who would follow me on The Indy Author, let's say, I would just post it as, here's some tips about storytelling. But if I'm posting it on LinkedIn, I'm posting it more as, " Every job requires storytelling. And so here are some tips that even if you're working in the corporate world and you need to convince people of something, or proselytize about something, champion something, here are some tips. So I use the same content in different areas, but I'm spinning the text I use to encourage people to click on it a little bit different depending on what the platform is and what I know my followers are going to be interested in.
[00:15:39] Pauline: Yeah, that's wonderful because knowing the audience on each platform, they can be looking for very different things. Somebody who follows you on Goodreads is probably very different from your LinkedIn network.
[00:15:50] Matty: Exactly. Beyond those platforms that people will recognize, like Medium and LinkedIn, how do you recommend people go about finding sites that are looking for guest posts that are going to be a good match for the people that the author is trying to reach out to?
[00:16:07] Pauline: Yeah. The easiest way to start is simply to get on the search engine and look for sites which have published guest pieces in that arena previously. For a nonfiction author, hopefully there's a topic there that can narrow down that search. And for the fiction authors amongst us, then book bloggers are still very active and very helpful, and interviews on book blogging website again helps widen the reach. And in my experience at least, book bloggers have been very gracious with supporting my work and giving me some bandwidth on their site.
[00:16:49] And even though we love to write, and we might want to get our writing published on various guests’ sites, you and I are using our voices right now. And if an author is comfortable at looking into the podcast arena, then you had a wonderful episode recently on building community through podcasting. I think that's a really nice place to look at. And even though a large proportion of the population is apparently scared of public speaking, I think that can be a really wonderful way, again, as either a fiction or nonfiction. To meet the right audience and to spread the word.
[00:17:28] Matty: Are there differences in the searches you would do to find people who are interested in written blog posts as a guest blogger versus people who are looking for guests on their podcast?
[00:17:41] Pauline: Yeah. I think in general it's easier to find search results for guest articles and guest blogging because the topic and the word guest, guest writer, guest article, guest post can usually be found. The podcast, I think it takes a little more time to establish not the audience for the podcast and not what its focus is, but whether the podcast host actually accepts guests.
[00:18:10] When you interviewed, I think it was J. Thorn talking about podcasts, he mentioned that there are solo podcasts where the host just talks. There are pairs where a regular two people have a conversation every episode or every week, and then the format more like yourselves where you're inviting a guest to come and talk.
[00:18:32] Yeah. You certainly, if you're trying to pitch yourself to a podcast, you want to be sure that guests are in the picture in the first place.
[00:18:40] Matty: Yeah. With any outreach like that, it's important for you to be familiar with the platform that you're reaching out to because I'm sure there's nothing more annoying to podcasters who always do solo episodes to get a suggestion, "I think I'd be a great guest for your podcast," when nobody's going to be a good guest for that podcast because it's not a guest kind of podcast.
[00:19:00] Pauline: It comes back to the same principles really for pitching anything, whether one is asking a book blogger to review a book, or for those authors who have explored traditional publishing and we're reaching out to agents, I think it makes sense to go for the quality approach rather than the scatter gun approach of asking people if they'd be interested in your work.
[00:19:23] Matty: Do you have a recommendation on whether people should be refocusing their efforts from written blogs to podcasts? Because I kind of feel as if podcasts are the new platform like that, that in some cases, circumstances where people would previously have searched for information on a certain topic, now they're turning to podcasts. Do you see any emerging pros or cons on either of those?
[00:19:47] Pauline: I think your instincts are probably right. I don't have data. I have my own gut feel on this and my own behavior that I suspect, and again, when you had your whole episode about podcasting, there was very much a sense that listening is something that we can do while we do other activities. I remember your guest mentioned that. And I know from my own personal behavior and the behavior of my friends, I am generally spending less time reading blog posts and reading online content versus listening to podcasts. So I think authors, of course, need to know where their audience is and what their audience is doing.
[00:20:34] I did hear from one website owner who speaks to authors on a regular basis, and she felt her audience were not listening to podcasts and therefore blogging was still very much applicable for her, but yes, definitely, ask a few of your readers, ask some of your ideal audience, are they reading a lot of blogs? Are they reading online? Are they watching YouTube videos or are they out walking the dog and listening to podcasts as they go? Because, yeah, that's the way I'm moving. I suspect your instinct is good on that one, but it really just come down to where are your audience hanging out and how can you best connect with them?
[00:21:12] Matty: Yup. And looking for current data, because, I believe it was in the article you wrote, that as of 2010 or something like that, blogs were the thing to do, and if someone was doing research on blogging versus podcasting, perhaps where their desired demographic was hanging out, make sure you're looking at something current so you're not basing your business plan on outdated data.
[00:21:36] Pauline: It's worth mentioning that any advice that comes to authors on how to market ourselves and promote our books, it's worth taking just one step back and looking at who is giving that advice and are they selling a product that helps us do it in that particular way. I find plenty of information online about why blogging is still fantastic and wonderful and marvelous, and oftentimes the person behind that advice has a product or a course or a book on how to blog. And, you know, I'll be honest at this point, I am not a fan of blogging for all authors. I'm not sure it's the best thing for people to do. And in fact, the websites that I generally create don't have blogs. So I need to be upfront and say that I come from a particular angle on the topic as well. And in every case of reading advice, check into the situation of the person giving it.
[00:22:32] Matty: That's a great call out. If someone finds themself in a position where they've tracked down places that accept guest blogs, they've gotten agreement to have one of those sites carry their material, are there any cautions that they should look out for to make sure they retain the rights to reuse that content if they expect to want it to do that down the road?
[00:22:56] Pauline: I think that's probably a case by case basis for each offer. As I got deeper into my author career, I almost made a list of things that I wasn't going to worry about and stress about. That wasn't one of them, but in fact, I choose not to get particularly concerned about where my words go and whether I retain the rights to them.
[00:23:20] I probably could delve deeper into that myself, but a lot like authors worrying about their books being pirated, I love the the advice and the expression that obscurity is a much bigger danger than piracy. However, you make a good point and you give authors wonderful advice on your site about what to do with their short fiction, and you have a book on that topic also, so yes, I'm sure that if an author has their eye on repurposing or collating that content or submitting it somewhere else for an anthology or whatever, then it is a little bit more important to just be clear on the policy of where the guest post is submitted.
[00:24:06] Yeah. So just because that's on my list of things not to stress about it doesn't mean that that's universal advice.
[00:24:12] Matty: I think that where it would become a real consideration is if you write a piece of content about using short fiction, for example, and you find a home for that, then it would be great if a year later you could take that same piece of content, maybe massage it a little bit to accommodate any changes that had happened in the meantime, and submit it somewhere else.
[00:24:36] Now, I would think just to be a good corporate citizen, you don't want to have the same content on a bunch of guest blog posts at the same time. But I would think that most places that host guest blogs would be okay with you at some point down the road, as a reprint, in the same way that in the fiction world there are reprints and you could submit reprints to different platforms after a certain amount of time, that that might be a desirable thing to do with blog content.
[00:25:01] But of course you need to make sure that the person that you're giving that content to agrees with that and then make a decision about whether you want to live with any limitations they might want to impose.
[00:25:13] Pauline: Yes, and I think many sites do state their policy on that. Some of the smaller ones don't, but some of the larger ones do ask for exclusive rights for number of days and so on.
[00:25:25] Matty: A lot of these are quite straightforward for nonfiction writers, the ability to search for whatever your area of expertise that you want to get known for is, that you want to reach more people about. For fiction authors, does blogging for other people offer the same kind of opportunities as for nonfiction authors?
[00:25:43] Pauline: Yes. Although it might not always be dressed up as blogging. It might take the form of being interviewed about your work and about your fiction. It might take the form of a book blogger featuring primarily your book with a few extra pieces of information about the author to round out that piece.
[00:26:06] And I think it depends. Many fiction authors struggle to identify a strong theme in their books. I was always very lucky that I knew I was writing for Anglophiles and that almost every chapter features somebody having a cup of tea and a piece of cakes. So it wasn't hard for me to know where my themes were that I was going to then use as my hooks on wider platforms. But I think fiction authors should not assume that just because they write fiction, that they can't be featured as a guest somewhere else.
[00:26:38] Matty: It seems as if there are two angles you could take even on that. One is just talking about your book, finding those podcasts or blogs that like to talk about the story that was written about. The other thing would be if you have any kind of factual background of your book, for example, one of my books has as its backstory a big fire that took place in 1947 in Maine on Mount Desert Island that burned a lot of the island, and so I suppose that I could also pursue Maine-based blogs, blogs about historical events in Maine, New England, fires. I don't know what those might be, but people could maybe look beyond just their story to what they've used as the setting for their story or the historical background of their story, and that might lend itself to ways of reaching readers. That would be totally new because they might not even be people who are normally, let's say, mystery readers, but they love history set during a certain time, and so they may pick up your book when it otherwise might not occur to them to do so.
[00:27:40] Pauline: Absolutely. By the time we've written our book, we can have our noses pretty close to the content, and sometimes I think we miss the fact that there is all kinds of great information in there, which is very interesting to a wider readership.
[00:27:55] Certainly any historical fiction authors probably know way more about their period of history than the average person walking down the street. And something we hear anecdotally about book clubs is that readers particularly enjoy some of the book club picks because it gives them a chance to learn something new.
[00:28:14] So whether that new thing is about a fire that happened at a particular time or about the daily life of keeping bees, there are all kinds of learning threaded through the average novel that sometimes I think as the author, we don't realize that.
[00:28:32] Matty: So now we're in a situation where we've landed the guest blog gig and people are reading it and they're interested. What are your recommendations about the best practices for getting those people from the guests post site to your own site where you you want to interact with them?
Pauline: My favorite suggestion there is to have a short, crisp, enticing bio and to mention in that bio some kind of free resource or lead magnet or collection of short fiction, something people can get for free if they go on over to your website and take a look at you there. So I don't know if you'd cover this in your book. Short tack, you probably do. But If we're not spending our time blogging, we can spend our time creating a resource or a short collection of our stories or some other freebie, and that then is a really nice thing to talk about when we think of a platform to guest blog or to write some kind of article on someone else's site.
Matty: Great. Well, Pauline, thank you so much. This has been great. I think all our listeners will leave with a list of to dos of things that they want to look into, and many I think will be relieved to be relieved of the responsibility of forcing a blog post just because they read it on a list of necessary to dos a decade ago.
Pauline: Yes. I think as authors, there are so many ways that we can promote our books and market ourselves. That we sometimes make the mistake of thinking that we have to do all of them and really the sweet spot, I think for long term marketing, is picking just the few things which really resonate with us. Really connect with our readers and that we can sustain. And if a blog isn't one of them, then I encourage people, don't do it.
Matty: Excellent. Pauline, let people know where they can find out more about you and your work online.
Pauline: Yes, the best place is my website, Paulinewiles.com. Everything is linked up from there, you'll find me on various social media, but starting with the website is a great place to get to know me.
Matty: Great. Thank you so much.
Pauline: Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.
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