A lot of agent- and publisher-hunting authors have a 15-second elevator pitch prepared for their novels. Should they ever corner an agent in the bathroom or have the opportunity to leap out at an editor from behind a potted ficus, they are ready to rattle that pitch off. An enticing little tidbit designed to sell the novel.
This is great, but, as I’m perusing more writer blogs (and we’re talking published, unpublished, and self-published alike), I’m noticing that few of these folks have a tagline or pitch line or anything of the sort that tells visitors what their blog is about.
This is something easy to add to your blog (if it’s not easy to add, you may want to think about re-purposing your blog into something more focused), and it makes a huge difference.
People surf into and out of websites faster than they flip channels on the television.
This is especially true of folks who find your blog via the search engines. They tend to click a link and if they don’t see what they’re looking for on the page that loads, they’re out of there within seconds. It’s a shame if they leave not realizing you actually had what they were looking for.
A tagline on your blog, either right up in the header or high up on the menu, can help new visitors figure out right away whether this is the blog they’ve been looking for. And every new visitor to your blog has the potential to one day become a reader (a buyer!) of your books. This is where the relationship starts.
Here’s the one for this blog:
Publish your e-book, market your e-book, sell your e-book!
Here’s the one on my Goblin Brothers site:
Short stories for children of all ages.
There’s nothing witty or brilliant about either of those taglines (I’m sure your novel pitch lines are a heck of a lot better!), but they achieve their purpose: they let new visitors know exactly what the blog/site is about as soon as they land.
A tagline for your blog is a quick and easy way to send non-target visitors packing and invite potential readers to stay a while.
