A website or a personal blog has many benefits and basically, it is responsible for representing your ideologies and thoughts. A good website can be a key factor in distinguishing yourself from the rest of the world.
And because in today’s world, everybody needs to market their talents and skills, a website or a personal blog can provide you a great platform to accomplish your dreams.
So if you're figuring out reasons to create a website or personal blog, here are a few that you must consider:
1. People can reach you easily |
It is necessary for an author to create their personal website as it helps in many ways. One of the most important things for an author is getting in touch with people.
If they don’t interact with people or come out with ways so that people can reach out to them, nobody will ever know about their existence.
So, a website or a personal blog ensures that you are willing to get in touch with people through various channels. You can use your website or personal blog to highlight places of your online visibility.
For example, you can write that you would love to be contacted through Facebook, Twitter, email, LinkedIn or other social media channels.
Also, using keywords like the name of your university, city or industry will increase your chances of appearing higher in search rankings.
Many authors or bloggers claim to have benefitted from their own website or blog as people find it easy to search them on Google and get in touch with them regarding their work.
See Lee Goldberg’s blog:
2. Engage readers |
There are a million people in this world who are authors or write about something and sell their books. How do you distinguish yourself from them?
You can distinguish yourself from them by sharing your personal thoughts or views through your website or personal blog.
Use your website to establish healthy relationships with the people who are willing to connect with you. This can be a great way to engage your audience or readers.
For example, you can initiate a conversation with people through a blog post and write in the end, “What do you think about this topic?” This way people will express their views on your website or blog and it will keep them engaged to your subject.
You can also ask them to leave their questions for you. This way you respond to their questions and people get to know you as a human being rather than just name on the cover of your book. Build close connections through online channels adds up quickly.
Letting know that you are a real person and having a conversation with them will ultimately help you build a fanbase.
3. Build a personal brand |
Having a personal brand is one of the basic necessities of today. This is yet another way of carving a niche for yourself in the ever competing market.
A personal blog is a great way of building a brand. You can publish great content on your blog to make your website known to others and make new connections through online presence.
Out of the many ways to establish a personal brand, a personal blog helps much and comes to the rescue.
Using your blog to publish a wide variety of content and showing your values, passions, attitudes, beliefs, style and other factors can make you stand out. Because if you don’t stand out in the world today, you are far left behind.
See how Michael Hyatt uses his blog as a personal brand.
4. Improve your communication skills |
In today’s world, it is important to be able to communicate with your audience non-verbally. If you want to impress people online, you must be able to write adequately and have the proper manners or writing etiquettes.
When writing an email you must be able to write a clear and concise email with great content.
Marketing trends of 2017 suggest that content will rule the online world and help you stand out. Thus, it is very important that you know how to write and publish content online to gain everyone’s attention.
It is about communicating a message that is both remarkable and resonates with the personality or interest of the reader.
By creating a website or a personal blog, you can experiment with different types of content, practice and develop good writing skills that will ultimately compel the audience to read more of your posts.
5. Get in touch with a network |
If you think that by creating a personal blog you will be able to get in touch with your fans or people who admire your work, then it is time to think back again. A website or a personal blog helps you create your network.
There might be other authors who have website or blogs similar to yours. You can use your blog or website to get in touch with them. Fellow authors, publishers, and book sellers also have their online presence which will allow you to connect with them.
You can use this opportunity to write guest posts and expand your fan base even more. If you are scratching your heads over guest posts, these are basically normal posts that you write or create and put up on someone else’s website or blog.
Guest posts are a great way to engage the audience to your blog along with tapping into someone else’s audience to get your name highlighted as an author.
Having a bigger network has this many benefits. You get to relate to a large number of people, get plenty of writing collaborations, author events, etc. that ultimately bring a lot of writing opportunities to you as an author.
Thus, having a personal blog can land you with many benefits and the best part is that you will have nothing to lose. You will get more time to practice and sharpen your writing skills and experiment with a large variety of content.
And not just writing you can also try your hands on building your website and learn much about it. Knowledge of web building components such as HTML, CSS or Wordpress can help you add an extra factor to your author persona.