We’ve been talking about character blogs and
yesterday when I put out a call for links to anyone who had a character blog, someone asked me what they were. For those who aren’t familiar with character blogs and what it entails, let me try to help clear up that confusion and tell you why not only are they fun, but they can help your readers get more into your book before they even buy it.

Character blogs are simply blogs in which you do the typing but your character gives you the voice (and believe me, they do).

Just in case you have no idea where to start, here are a few helpful tips on how you can get your character blog up and running today:

• Pick a character you want to use for this blog.  Usually the author chooses the main character but that’s not always the case.  In my own  case, I chose the character I thought would be more fun and was out of the ordinary – a ghost.  Henri the ghost was actually a background character but I thought I’d finally give him the voice he deserved.  As it turned out, it was a wise choice and he got a great following.
• Decide whether you want your character to come into the present day time (great for books who are historical) or you want to keep him/her in the same time frame as the book.  There’s two ways you can go about it which will take some thinking.  If you keep him/her in the same time frame as the book, you can carry on from where the book left off and it could result in an idea for a sequel (happened to me).  If you put him/her in the present day time frame and your book is set in the 18th century for example, think of how fun that would be to bring your character into the present.  But you’ve got to weigh both positions and decide which would be more fun for you because you’re going to have to be the one to come up with blog post ideas for your character.
• If you want to go incognito with this character, you must sign him/her up to a new account and not as an extension to your present account (at Blogger for example) because your profile will come up in the sidebar unless you know how to remove it.  What I did with Henri’s blog is give him a gmail address and set his blog up in his name.  This way I could comment on other blogs without my profile or picture coming up.  Imagine the surprise when people would check for comments on their blogs and a ghost would come up.  That’s what I’m talking about – having fun and thrills with your character blog.  No way did they know it was me until they kinda figured it out with the book cover splattered all over the place, but throughout the whole blogging process, people never questioned that it was me or my co-authors because Henri became so believable.
• Set up some kind of feed on your blog  because you’re eventually going to get a huge fan base if you do it right.
• Include everyone who comments in your blogroll.  I started doing this from the get go and what happened was, they in turn added Henri to theirs.  If they had a Blogger account, they would see when Henri updated and would scurry on over to see what he was up to.
• Don’t make the mistake of naming your blog the same name as your book.  It confuses people.  Remember, this is your character’s blog, not yours (the book cover should be prominently displayed in the sidebar and the character’s profile will be right there explaining that this is his blog so there shouldn’t be any confusion).
• As for content, where should you start?  Begin by introducing the blog in the character’s voice.  Don’t bombard readers with excerpts (save that for your book blog) and reviews and promo for your book and that’s going to make people say “boooring!” and turn them away.  Immediately try to draw them into your character’s life and do not try anything that makes the reader think you’re trying to sell them your book.
• Make your character interactive.  Go into blogs of the same genre and leave comments.  This is how I built up a fan base for Henri.  Don’t leave it up to others to find you (a big mistake for new blogs).  Advertise, sure, but the single solitary most important way to get people over to your blog and love your blog enough to stick around is to go into other peoples’ blogs and comment.  Works better than anything else you can do.
• Since this is your character’s world and his/her blog, you’ve got to give this character some quirks.  Keeping him in character, have him/her do things he didn’t do in the book.  Have him travel.  Have him visit long lost loves.  Have her pick up on new interests, new love lives, new experiences.  All the experiences you will write about for your character does not have to stick within the theme of your blog, but the personality of your character does.  In my book, Henri was quite a lady’s man.  When he started blogging, people got into his escapades  trying to keep Juicy (his love interest) at bay and developing new interests (although Juicy still held his heart as much as he tried to deny it).
• Something else that would be fun to do with your character is put him in the news.  What’s the latest news happening?  We have a new President being elected in another week or so, have your character attend the inauguration.  Not only would this be fun, but the search engines would pick up  your blog post for those key search words.
• Bringing it back to reality, if you get a great book review and want your character to blog it, that’s great, but keep it in the storyline.
• And that’s another thing.  Have your blog read like a story.  Have one event mesh into another with ease.  You want this to seem like a serial and everyone knows how popular serials are.

Blogging your characters is so much fun and quite a release for the author who is on deadlines.  Don’t not start a book blog because you think it’s going to be work; it’s not really.  The great thing about character blogs is that sometimes these blogs develop into new ideas for the authors which in turn develops into new books!

If you are blogging your character, leave me a link in the comment section below.  I am setting up a page with nothing but character blog links and that’s more promotion for you and your character!

Hope this helps!

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