Writers are told to build their brand through social media. On top of finishing a book, they should create a website, start a blog, be present on Facebook, tweet multiple times each day. While losing popularity, blogs remain one place where writers can reveal their personality and talents. Blog tours help spread writers’ names through using our time and talents versus costing lots of money. I thank Carolyn Boehlke for inviting me to join this tour. You can find her at http://carolynkboehlke.weebly.com/blog. We share a publisher.

When blogs were sizzling, Technorati served as the place to find top 100 listings of blogs by subject matter. In June, Technorati stopped providing that information to the public and reconfigured as a slightly different business.

The top 100 list of writing-related blogs was my information shopping destination with new sites always replacing those that fell off in readers or shut down. Spending about a half hour today researching top blogs by subject matter produced lots of ads for services willing to build my blog traffic or apply analytics to a market. Access is now commercial and no longer free.

Business Week announced Technorati’s change in business model with a broad statement about blogging “… the inhabitants of the blogosphere started emptying out, lured away by the new crop of social media networks. Somewhere between the rise of Friendster and MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, people stopped updating their blogs and then abandoned them altogether en masse.” Many writers have adopted Tumblr preferring the microblogging approach.

In July Leaving Ashwood, my fourth speculative fiction novel, was released by North Star Press. I’ve been blogging off and on since Minnesota Cold, my first novel, was released in 2009 and enjoy writing in a more immediate and informal format.

Because I’ve participated in other blogs about my writing process, I thought I’d talk about my blogging process. There are two ways my blogs develop. I keep a list of topics to provide prompts. That’s my planned self. The second approach relies on spontaneous entries sparked in places like airports, hospital rooms, or the back deck.

Once I decide to write on a topic I develop an opening and an ending. I spend time researching the topic to find links that might be of interest to a reader. Then I start writing. Often I’ll finish, print the entry, come back in an hour, read the text and revise. I read the text out loud once it is in WordPress. When the writing is finished, I find a graphic to lure a reader’s eye.

I’d like to hand you next to Ellen Shriner who produces WordSisters with Elizabeth di Grazia. They are two strong bloggers who work together to produce http://wordsisters.wordpress.com , a blog about their writing, families and the world in general. Ellen writes creative nonfiction and has received recognition for her work as marketing communications professional.