I’m wondering what people think about the value of blogging for writers. Specifically in the promotional sense. I’ve heard from a number of people that they think blogging is *the* way to get yourself out into the larger universe, or build up a following or… and I’m wondering if it’s true.
I see some people blogging quite successfully, but often it seems they developed their blogging brand before they developed their writing brand. They had something to say, a dead horse to beat, what have you, and they built an audience around it. I’m wondering if people either have experience with blogging as a promotional tool, and/or if anyone’s done any analysis of the value of website/blog traffic in terms of conversions to loyal and ongoing (and dare we say, paying?) readers.
All of this is absurdly premature in my case, as I don’t even have a book to flog, but hey, I’m curious if anyone knows of any good data points or quality examples, or just personal experiences on the topic. Thought I’d throw it out there.