Platform 201 - Advanced Blogging by Nathan Lowell

There are so many tools out there for building a platform that we tend to get buried in the pile. My advice is to start with the basic tools of social media and master them one at a time. In my opinion, the cornerstone of your platform is your website - and in this case - your blog.

The blog (portmanteau of "web log") started out as a "fast web page" tool with few features. Anybody can add content without having to mess about with writing web code. Blogging software has grown into fairly robust content management systems over the last decade -- tools which can be very useful in managing a platform without requiring an author to have a computer science degree to use it effectively.

Regardless of what platform you use, it helps to know the terminology and what it means:

• Blog - verb: the process of episodic publication using a specific web based application. ("I blog about the publishing industry") noun: A collection of tools bound in a single web based application ("I use a wordpress blog").


• Post - verb: the act of publishing an article on a web page ("I'll post a story"). noun: the article itself ("Did you see Bob's post about that?"). A lot of people use the word "blog" as a synonym for "post." Technically, this is incorrect but used commonly enough that it has become acceptable. Usually posts are arranged by date.


• Page - noun: a kind of entry in the blog that is not arranged chronologically. Pages generally consist of things like "about" pages and get organized differently than posts. Typically, the RSS feed (See Syndication below) doesn't publish pages, but does publish posts.


• Comment - verb, noun: readers respond to posts, offering opinion and insight.


• Trackback - verb, noun: modern blogs have the ability to link conversations together via trackback. A mention on one blog shows up on the source, closing the loop on citation.


• Syndication - noun: Blogs generally provide a tagged content stream which can be handled by software. This is also known as a "feed" and is available in several types, most notably Atom and RSS.

In common terms, blog software is just a simple way for you to organize your information for the web. It's sometimes useful to think of it as a simple content management system, rather than a communications channel. It's simply a fast and easy way to publish to the web in a uniform style and format. Setting up the template once means you never have to worry about how your page will look when published.

I think a website needs to provide these capabilities:

1. A place to write about your work


2. An address to tell people where they can learn more about your and your writing


3. A place for your visitors to leave you a comment and talk about your writing

Blogging software does those things very easily.

There's a lot of advice on how, what, and when to blog. For me, writing when you have something to say is key. Writing as an exercise in discipline or to lure readers for the blog seems counter productive to me and I avoid it in my practice. I established my blogs to have a place where people can go after listening to or reading my stories to find out more about me and my other works. This seems to make the most sense to me. I have never been successful at getting people to discover my blog and - through that discovery - pursue my other writing. The strategy of using the writing to drive traffic to the blog (and not the other way around) has worked well for me.

I also believe that what you choose to write about will make a significant difference in your readership, both on the blogs and of your writing. I write about the next book, promote the new cover art as it comes available, have extra back story maps and content that aren't available anywhere else. I reward them for hanging out with me. They leave comments and I respond. I added some bells and minor whistles (like an email notification list and a fan forum) but mostly it's a very clean, simple way for my fans and I to have a conversation about stuff we are interested in - the genre, other genre works, my works, and basically anything that applies to the topic "If you like reading my stories, you might be interested in this..."

That idea carries an important kernel at its core. I don't write about other stuff. I don't write about the process of writing, or about genres that are different from mine. I even have separate sites for my fantasy and science fiction work since those audiences are really quite different. It means I'm very careful about what other writing and writers I promote on those blogs. If it's not related, it doesn't get published. It's not enough to be interesting. It has to be relevant to my audience.

We tend not to think about blogging as social media, but it represents one of the first of the tools to break down the wall between producer and consumer. By allowing readers to offer immediate feedback in the form of comments and trackbacks, blogging represents the first tool developed for (and in many ways defining) the read/write web.