I’m planning a business trip soon. I know that it isn’t cool to announce over the Internet that you will be gone from home. In this case, someone will be here with the cats. I’m going it alone.
I thought that some of you might have questions about how to continue a daily blog even when you are traveling. Here are some of my ideas.
1: Sometimes I compose blogs ahead of time and leave them for someone else to post to my blog site.
2: If I’ll be gone for three days or more, I take my computer with me. I try to write blogs ahead of time to quickly post each morning that I am traveling.
3: When I plan a major trip of a week or two, I lower my standards and post every other day or every third day.
I attended a writer’s conference in Santa Rosa recently. It was basically an overnighter. I decided not to carry my computer—it felt weird going through the airport with only a small purse. I wrote two blogs during the week prior to the trip and posted one in the wee morning hours before heading for the airport that first morning and the other one the next day in the early afternoon when I returned.
This week, I am preparing for my travel next week by creating a series of blogs to plug in each morning before I rush off to partake of or to participate in the conference. I’ll post one the morning I leave. I’ll post the second one as I prepare for the first morning of the conference. I’ll hurriedly post one the morning of the third day—my absolute busiest day of the conference (I’m speaking, signing books, attending a luncheon and a banquet and working two stints at the bookstore) and I hope to have time to post the last one the day I fly out.
The subjects of these posts are specific ways to build your platform. Each post focuses on a different aspect of your platform and how you can strengthen it both before and after the publication of your book. Watch for these posts the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st of November.
As I understand it, there are services that post your blogs for you. Do any of you use them? I’d like to know how they work.
I’m also interested in the publishing/writing/book promotion blogs you follow faithfully. Which ones are they? How do you follow them—Google Alerts? A feed? Or do you just go there on your own every day—every few days?
Also, what subjects are you most interested in reading here at my blog site?
To learn more about me, my services and my books, go to:
http://www.matilijapress.com
http://www.patriciafry.com
Have to plug Magical Words … http://magicalwords.net/ …. they have daily posts by a variety of writers in the SF world. I haven’t read one yet that I didn’t get something of value from…
… I prefer to go directly to the sites… it seems more … erm… respectful I think is the most accurate word. … I have a list that I visit daily and a weekly list. I thought about having a monthly list but in the end I decided that it wasn’t worth my time and given the numbers of bloggers that do have a commitment to post at least once a week, I also figured I wasn’t missing out on too much!
… I’ve only been following your blog for about a week or so, so ask me in a few more weeks what else I’d like to see. … so far, I’m impressed. Thanks for putting yourself out here.