Blogging Without Giving It All Away

A friend — we’ll call her “Casey” — came to me for advice recently. Casey’s a writer too, with a nice deal writing a nightlife column for a local alternative weekly, in addition to her other work writing celebrity news for local and national magazines.

Casey knows that to keep her site Google-friendly and to build her platform as a writer, she needs to keep up her blog. That constant stream of content gives the search engines plenty of keywords to chew on, and gives her potential clients and fans a quick taste of her work, too.

The problem is, she didn’t know what to write. As an up-and-coming writer struggling to make a living with her words, she can’t afford to give away stories on her blog that she could get paid for elsewhere. But what, then, could she post that would demonstrate her abilities and make her blog worth reading?

Adding Value

Casey is hardly unique in her concerns. For writers who make a living selling words, giving away too much can leave a nasty hole in our finances. Most of us don’t make so much that we can afford to give up a chance to get paid!

At the same time, though, we’ve come to recognize the power of blogging to help build our platform — blogging is very much an investment in our future careers. Writers who blog, then, need a strategy. We need to figure out what we can post to our blogs that will have value for our readers and for search engines, but minimal value to our editors and clients.

This means first and foremost taking some time to discover quite a bit more about ourselves as writers than we might otherwise. Only by knowing who we are as writers — and where we’re headed, at least in the immediate future — can we determine the best kind of material to post to our blog to support our writing career without taking anything away from it.

That’s the role a writer’s blog should play: support. A writer’s personal website should add value to the writing he or she gets paid to do, not replace it.

Here are a few ideas to help you figure out the right kind of content for your blog:

• Advice: Tell your audience how to do something you’re good at, or something you’ve learned how to do while working on paid projects. In the course of a writing career, you pick up a lot of random pieces of helpful information. Corporate writers tend to learn a lot about marketing and branding, book reviewers learn a lot of useful tricks from the non-fiction books they review, feature writers learn how to conduct interviews and organize their time. This sort of material can make great blog posts.
• Behind-the-scenes: Give your audience a taste of your “glamorous” writing life. Maybe you’ve interviewed a famous person for a feature piece; while the words of the interview will go into the article, the experience of interviewing them is something your readers would like to hear about. Or maybe you visit an out-of-the-ordinary place in the course of researching a piece or meeting a client — describe it for your readers. Did something amusing happen while you were writing at the local coffee house? Share that. Remember that however ordinary your life is to you, writers still hold a strange mystique for most people.
• What I’m Reading: Writers read. A lot. Share capsule reviews — or go all out and post chapter-by-chapter overviews — so your readers can learn along with you. Save your audience the trouble of reading crappy books, and direct them towards good ones. And maybe one day it will be your own book you’re recommending…
• Meta-journalism: Talk about the events in the news that have special relevance for you and your writers. For example, if you’re a science writer, share your thoughts about the space program, the latest biogenetics advances, or proposed laws that would effect the teaching of evolution in public schools. If you’re a corporate writer in the financial industry, share your thoughts on the latest Wall Street news as it breaks. Most writers have a somewhat broader perspective in their niche than the average participant — share that unique perspective with your audience.
• Experimentation: Use your site for all the crazy ideas you have that would never fly with a client or editor. Maybe you want to write sales copy in doggerel or haiku, or humorous stories about a pair of goldfish from Mars — your blog’s the place. Or use your blog to gear up for new niches you’d like to enter or new styles you’re mastering. Nobody wants to buy your first-ever try at a new form; experiment on your blog so you’re pitching material you’re already familiar with.

Conflict Resolution

So what’d I tell my writer friend? “Casey,” I said, “you have one of the most exciting jobs in the town. You get to hang out at all the coolest places, meet famous people, and interview rock stars. Take your readers along with you. Tell the stories that don’t make it into your finished pieces, or the ones your editors wouldn’t be interested in — or brave enough to print. Describe the funny things that happen to you while researching your pieces. Explain what it’s like to sit down with the musicians you love and interview them. Tell the story behind the story — anyone would be fascinated to read about your life here in Vegas!”

I’m happy to say that Casey took my advice. I don’t know if she’s seen any immediate results from her blog’s audience, but that’s beside the point. Platform-building for writers is long-term — the payoff may well be years down the line.

For now, though, her blog is a hundred times more interesting. And that’s a great start. In fact, I get jealous every time I read it — I should have such a life!