Sia McKye’s Thoughts Over Coffee
Sharing the laughter and tears, the glitches and triumphs, authors face in the pursuit of their ambition to write.
http://siamckye.blogspot.com/
BLOG GUIDELINES
Check out the archives.
PUB TIMES: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Monday I usually reserve for my blog articles, sometimes it’s an author interview. Most of my reviews are either on Amazon, Goodreads, or Night Owl Reviews. Night Owl also carries some of my interviews, so there is double exposure when that happens.
PREMISE: The premise is simple. Over Coffee shares the laughter and tears, glitches and triumphs, authors face in pursuit of their ambition to write. This about you, the author.
TARGET AUDIENCE: Fans, readers, and other writers
ARTICLE LENGTH: 600-700 words. One of the reasons I try to keep the word count lower is because I also publish your back cover blurb and an excerpt link, hopefully back to your website. I also link buy buttons directly to Amazon and Barnes & Noble for the book I'm featuring.
ARTICLE CONTENT: Think about sitting down over coffee and sharing something with group of friends who are writers. I want to keep the articles as a way to highlight author behind the books. Promotion is more about personalities and building a readership for ALL your books, not just THIS book.
It’s designed to show the common denominator of writers juggling life, jobs, family, and writing. Regardless of the level of success we have, we still face battles and triumphs over writer blocks, unruly characters, plots difficulties, proposals, deadlines, international release dates, and doubts.
How do you recharge, how do you keep your writing fresh? Or how you juggle promotion, life, and writing. What research do you do and how does it play to your story? How do you deal with being author and working full time? Parenting and writing. How does a hobby help you? You don’t need to address all of these, pick something that fits with the premise.
Let your personality show through, this blog is an informal setting. You can make the article humorous or play it straight. Readers like to see that authors are just regular people who share some of the same likes and dislikes, hobbies, and everyday problems they have. Personalities sell products and draw readers to you and build your readerbase. I want the articles to be more than, “here is my book.” Let’s face it; there is only so many ways to talk about a book. However, readers are drawn to people.
AUTHOR RESPONSIBILITY: Provide me with the article, bio, book cover, and author pics. Is there an excerpt of your book available? I’ll link it, preferably to your website where an excerpt should be. There’s no space to have the full excerpt on the blog. Are you giving away a book to a commenter and do you have a limit on where the book winner lives? Is the book being provided by you or your publisher?
Send me the article the weekend before your blog date to: siamckye@gmail.com Follow the article guidelines. For a blog tour to be effective you need to be a presence on your blog day. It’s informal and I like seeing fun and laughter. I realize that most authors also work and if you do then let me know, but check-in during the morning, and if possible mid-day and after work. Basically it’s working it around your work schedule.
You also need to announce you are blogging on my site to whatever social networks you belong to and provide the link to my site. If you have an author blog, publisher website and or blog, belong to a writing group, you need to announce it there as well.
BLOG HOSTESS: That would be me. I keep all email addresses, and any personal information shared with me absolutely confidential. I do not share this information with anyone without prior permission. I do not send cutesy emails. To me that is a vital part of business and it’s strictly enforced.
I announce your article to all the social networks I’m part of—which are more than a few. I update twitter, Goodreads, Facebook several times on your day. I also announce it to my large writing group, and several other writing groups I’m part of.
Unlike most other hostesses, I am present and will comment on your article. I watch and if comments are low, I will take steps to correct that. My blog articles usually get at least 20 comments—site meter shows anywhere from 100 to 200 view and read it and don’t comment. Comments draw the search engines because it shows activity.
I also have network share button at the end of each article—this allows your supporters and mine, to share and spread the article around the Internet—via Twitter, Digg it, WordPress, Delicious, Stumble etc. Encourage your fans to use the buttons as it helps spread the word of your blogging.
Looking forward to working with you.
