Passive Guy runs the very popular blog called The Passive Voice, which is dedicated to areas including writers, authors, self-publishing and traditional publishing. As a writer, there are a number of things you can learn from Passive Guy, in order to create a blog that is popular, regularly visited by readers (both existing and new) and has high levels of engagement.
Read on to learn about some of the key characteristics of The Passive Voice, which makes it stand out from the rest, and might just help you do the same with your own writer blog.
Share the latest news
Passive Guy is very effective in finding the latest, credible news from newspapers, industry magazines, and other blogs related to areas of book and eBook writing and publishing, and which will be of interest to writers, editors, agents, and publishers. He finds the latest information and shares this promptly on his blog.
We all love news related to our individual worlds, and as a writer, if you’re looking to grow your reader base, then sharing news can be a great way of doing so.
Voice your opinions
Not only will Passive Guy post news of interest; where he has something to say on a particular story, he will voice his opinion on the piece and share whether he is for or against particular arguments.
As a writer you’re looking to voice your unique view of the world through your stories and books. Doing so will be important in finding your own readership. The same principle applies to your writer blog. Share your own thoughts and views, and allow readers to find about the real you.
It’s okay to be anonymous
He started his blog as a completely anonymous writer, to ensure that his personal views about the publishing industry didn’t conflict with his professional work as a lawyer. His situation has changed and he longer needs to remain anonymous. However, Passive Guy had become so used to writing using this name and writing in the third person, that he decided to continue with it!
As a writer, this might seem counterintuitive. After all, you’re writing books and eBooks and you want readers to know your name, right? But what if you’re thinking about using a penname for your stories? In such cases, you can certainly create a website to help market your work using your penname.
You don’t always need images for your posts
These days any advice on internet marketing with regards to websites will tell you to include images with your posts. There is definitely merit in this guidance. After all, there are massive amounts of information across the web with writers and authors fighting to attract readers to click through to their websites and engage with their content. Therefore, having a nice image will increase the chances of more readers clicking through to your articles. This may be true.
However, after you take a look at the posts over at The Passive Voice, you will see there are no images with articles. Yet, if you scroll down to the end of them, you will notice numerous comments from readers!
What this shows, is if what you have to share and say about a topic is truly valuable, having articles that are made up of only text could be a viable strategy.
Share your domain expertise
Passive Guy is a lawyer by trade. Although he is clear on his blog that what he writes shouldn’t be taken as professional legal advice (unless you work with him on a signed contract basis), at times he shares his legal point of view on stories related to publishing. These perspectives become even more interesting for readers as they are based on real experience.
As a writer, is there something else that you specialise in? It could be either related to writing and publishing. On the other hand, it might be in a different area altogether. Is there a way you can share such expertise on your blog, so that you demonstrate your authority over what you’re writing even further?
Image credit: Frédéric BISSON on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/hv1.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Hiten Vyas is the Founder and Managing Editor of eBooks India. He is also a prolific eBook writer with over 25 titles to his name.[/author_info] [/author]