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Blogging is hard. But keeping a regularly updated blog that always relates to your book in some way makes blogging a great way to continue expanding your audience. It's also a means of passing on information that is useful to your readers and provides them with something of value.

For me, the best way to do this is taking a 12-month calendar and finding topics for each month that relate to issues/themes discussed in the novel. I call this the "Blogging Calendar". Once you have brainstormed an initial calendar, start researching various possibilities on the Internet. The research process can also be the spark for additional topics you may not have considered.

Some of the themes in Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace were: alcoholism and chemical dependency, politics and voter awareness, divorce and child custody issues, health concerns, particularly ovarian cancer, Minnesota history and tourism, and writing and publishing trends. Some months are going to be easier to fill than others, but here are examples of how I started plotting out my blogging schedule.

March

Women's History Month

April

Alcohol Awareness Month

September

Labor Day

Ovarian Cancer Awareness

October

Ministry Appreciation Month

Domestic Violence Awareness

Grandparents Day

November

U.S. Presidential Election

Finding topics relevant to your book at least gives authors a starting point. In my case I also keep abreast of current events in the realms of politics and the writing/publishing industry. For example, I posted a blog on the Twin Cities hosting the GOP Convention and tied it together with the Pierson family's political activism. I've also done a number of blog articles on the writing and publishing industry, and I post whenever something of interest to authors happens, such as Amazon's new policy on Print On Demand (POD) publishing.

Blogging does take work (especially if you have several blogs to keep updated) but think of it this way - you're not only promoting your book(s), you're providing reader benefits, and writing regularly, all of which helps you as an author to constantly improve.

Catherine Johnson is the author of the novel, Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace. Visit her web site at CatherineJohnsonNovels.com or contact her via e-mail at: catherinejohns58@yahoo.com

Catherine Johnson is the author of Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace. To find out more about the novel and download an excerpt, visit: http://www.CatherineJohnsonNovels.com

Everybody is talking. The blog is your voice. It represents you through the content and personalized touch that it offers to visitors. A blog is basically all about having conversations. Therefore, it must be borne in mind that you will need to provide meaningful contribution in order to leave behind a positive and worthy experience for the visitor.

Everyone has an equal voice. To ensure that visitors will return to your blog for more, you will need to create effective blog communication. This can be achieved in the following ways:

(1) Through listening

Everyone is talking. Blogs are aplenty. How do you get effective results from this blogging phenomenon? The answer is real simple. It is always good to listen. The conversation may be limitless, but listening will always enable you to extract more knowledge from the blogger at the other end. You may get the chance to receive certain priceless information that may greatly help your marketing strategies. So, listen more each time you are engaged in conversations. You are in effect creating effective blog communication.

(2) Through understanding

You will encounter different types of conversations. In order to manage these well, you will need to learn how to understand these conversations and impart value to them. These conversations are indeed valuable feedback that you must pay attention to. In a nutshell, you will need to value three things: (a) conversation (b) blogger (c) feedback. They are all too precious to be disregarded. For small businesses, this is vital for the fact that it will help to gain visibility by making use of what you have noted to further create another level of business opportunities.

(3) Through giving value

Feedback should be considered as precious information to your industry. When you value such feedback , you will be helping yourself and your business. This is because there should be nothing that is too unworthy of your attention. Sometimes, when you value certain contributions, it may not be appreciated. It is a realistic world. Accept this reality but continue to value contributions of others. This is another aspect of effective blog communication. You can never tell - one contribution valued may turn out to be the savior for your business!

(4) Through interpretation

Conversations are always taking place on the blogging landscape; it is important to learn how to interpret and evaluate these conversations before you participate in them. It would be good to know something about the topic that you wish to join, as this would put you in good position to make a positive contribution to the current conversation. If you have offered some information that is of great value, it will be picked up and appreciated by other bloggers.

(5) Through positive contribution

It will be beneficial to you if you can contribute something of value and relevance. This will help to build up your personal credibility in your scope. Sincerely contribute to conversations with your authority and passion, particularly on your area of expertise. You will receive an influx of readers and their generous feedback that will give your business a boost. Your blog will consequently receive an increase in visibility.

In conclusion, blogging will help your business to grow. It is only through effective blog communication that you are able to set your blog and business apart from the rest. So, do it and be heard!

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Starting a blog using blogger can be a simple or hard process depending on how to about doing it.

If your new to blogging, Blogger may be the best choice for you to start out with. After you've gotten your feet wet a little bit, or if you want to use your blog for business purposes you can think about switching to Wordpress. Wordpress in my opinion is a much better blogging system for people who are serious about blogging. But if your just blogging for entertainment purposes, Blogger is probably sufficient for your blogging needs.

Getting started with a Blogger blog is simple, all you need to do is go to Blogger.com and sign up for a free blog. If you use Gmail you don't even need to create a new account, you can just use your gmail account.

After you sign-up for your blog you need to choose a name and a template for it. The subject of your blog should determine the name of it. So try to pick a name that identifies with the subject of your blog. You don't want to mislead people and then have them turn away once they get to your blog. Try to give your blog a name that people can remember.

After picking a name for your blog its time to pick a template to design your blog around. Templates are good if you don't know how to design blog templates. The template that you choose isn't permanent so if you decide that you don't like the look of your blog, later on you can change it.

Once you've finished naming and designing the look of your blog, the next step is providing content for it. You can either create original content for your blogs yourself or you can use free information on the internet for blog content.

To learn how to make money using blogs visit - http://www.seegarsproducts.com/bloggingonsteroids