Social media is, without question, a big book promotion time suck for most authors. We know we need it, but there’s a lot around social media that still leaves us baffled. The biggest issue is this: When it comes to book promotion, is social media really effective? Yes and no. Posting to social, for the sake of posting and “looking busy,” isn’t a great way to drive engagement. Posting thoughtful pieces that drive engagement and audience response is a better way to grab attention on social, but does it drive sales? The answer is not technically – but it drives exposure, which helps drive sales. As with anything you do to promote your book, it’s got to be more about exposure, and less about sales. In most cases there is no direct correlation between a post on Facebook and a book sale. The same is true for a book review, blog interview, etc. But it all leverages into exposure – and the right kind of repeated exposure will get you book sales.

Facebook has dozens of features and news stories to compete with; Twitter is insanely fast-paced and not conducive to disappearing for days at a time to meet a writing deadline; Goodreads is fantastic for genre specific book promotion but Instagram…Instagram is that unicorn social media site that helps you build a brand on a very simple premise – captivating visuals and positive vibes – truly.

Instagram is a very positive space to operate in, and while creating visuals can be daunting, it’s a great balance for an author who typically is hyper-focused on the written word. Yes, Instagram images needs captions and hashtags, but those are supporting roles, the visual is the star and this is something that resonates to easily with many of us, so why not capitalize on it?

So here are 8 tips for really making Instagram work for your book promotion. And if you’re not on Instagram yet, I strongly encourage you to go through this list as a way to determine whether or not Instagram is your speed – and if so, it could be the social media site that changes the game for your author brand and book promotion.

The post The Best Way to Start a Blog in 2019 appeared first on ProBlogger.

If you’ve been Googling how to start a blog, then I’m sure you’ve already come across many resources telling you how. And most of them are pretty much the same, as creating your first blog is just a matter of a few technical steps. We even have a “how to start a blog” right here.

However, we then went one step further and created another free resource – the Ultimate Guide to Starting a Blog – a course with videos and resources to step you through not just creating a blog, but one that helps you make some of the most important decisions when starting out. In fact, one of the more important modules is the first one – should you even start a blog at all?

Thousands of bloggers have signed up for the course since it launched almost exactly one year ago. But this isn’t why we think starting a blog with us is the best way to start a blog in 2019. It’s because we went even one step further again and designated February 7th as International Start a Blog Day!

The post 6 Ways to Boost Your Blog Traffic in the New Year appeared first on ProBlogger.

This post is based on Episode 177 of the ProBlogger podcast.

Did your blog have a bit of a holiday slump?

Many bloggers find they lose momentum with their traffic in January. So if it happened to you, you’re not alone.

Your readers were probably online less than usual. A lot of my fellow Aussie bloggers struggle at this time of year because their readers are enjoying the beach or off on vacation.

You may have taken some time away from blogging as well to spend time with friends and family.

But now you’re back at your desk, and want to start working on your blog in earnest.

Today, we’ll be looking at six things you can do to boost your traffic and get it back to where it was (or perhaps even higher).

read more https://problogger.com/boost-your-blog-traffic/