FAMP: A Message From Your Target Audience

I am so excited today to feature my very first guest post from Madeline Bartos of My Capricious Existence.  If you were here yesterday, you saw that I honored Madeline with the Versatile Blog award.  Madeline is brilliant, passionate, and outrageous. But today I asked her to post because she has an asset we can all benefit from: she's a teenager. So this From a Marketing Prospective blog post is advice directly from our target audience. Take it away, Madeline:

First off, I want to thank Laura for asking me to guest post. It was like someone asking me to rant. Yeah, I was all game.

Today I want to talk about what I like and dislike about author blogs. Being some of you aren't published yet you're only writers, but this will totally apply to you, too.

I suppose I'll start off with the positive first!

Madeline Bartos

Things I Like About Author Blogs

1.) They’re pretty. There. I said it. I’m being shallow, I know. But it’s so true. People judge books by their covers whether you tell them to or not. If your layout is pretty, maybe your content is just as good, too!

2.) I learn something I didn’t know before. Reading blogs is time consuming. And quite frankly, people are selfish. There has to be something in it for them. So when I learn something I didn’t know before and get something out of a blog, I don’t care that I just invested 5 minutes reading it. Besides helpful posts, I also love resource pages where writers share their favorite links.

3.) Spill your knowledge about being a writer. This is similar to learning something I didn’t know before, but only it’s learning something about the life of a writer. Whether it’s showing off your writing space, spilling about your writing routine, or sharing ways to get rid of distractions, I love reading it! The life of a writer is half the fun of being one.

4.) Link Within. This has to be my all time favorite blog widget. If a blogger has helpful posts, I can sit there and click on other posts that show up in the Link Within for ages. (No, really. I love those things. I hate you for having them and gobbling up my short attention span, but I really do love them.)

Things I Dislike About Author Blogs

1.) Posts that are hard to comment on. I love to comment on posts. It lets the blogger know that I read what they had to say, and I enjoyed it. Some posts are just so hard to comment on. I sit there starring at the screen, struggling about what to write besides “Great post!” It’s always a lifesaver when questions are asked at the end of the post, making it super easy to comment.

2.) Posts about things completely unrelated to writing. It’s a writing blog after all. Sure, a little unrelated personal post here or there is all right. It's always good to share with readers. I don’t mind reading what’s up with personal life, but when it starts to become post after post about your cat, I just don’t care anymore. I want to read about your writing life, not personal life.

3.) Long posts. Unless every single line written is pure gold, I don’t want to read an extremely long blogpost. I simply don’t have the time. Make your point, make it hard, and make it quick. That’s why I‘m such a huge fan of lists in blogposts. You don’t even have to read the little blurbs after the point, because you get it the first time around.

Once again, thanks for having me Laura! I enjoyed being able to ramble and rant.

Thank you so much for sharing, Madeline! And because of your suggestion, notice I added that Link Within widget on my own blog.  Please check it out everyone.  It's very easy to install and makes your blog look awesome.

Did any of Madeline's comments surprise you? How does your own blog measure up? Have you added the Link Within widget? What are you waiting for?