Here are my reflections on what marketing tactics have and have not worked for me.
The publishing industry is changing so quickly that business plans become obsolete almost as soon as they’re written.
My conclusion? Community is everything. Authors have to help one another. And the “sure things” aren’t, necessarily.
So I’ve set up my Wordpress blog, and I’m pretty happy with it (except for the fact that their restrictions on iframes and javascript means no cool Amazon or Zazzle widgets). My WP posts automatically post to Facebook, Tumblr, and Google+.
But what about Blogger, Google’s blog publishing tool? My Gmail address automatically entitles me to a Blogspot site, and I wanted to take advantage of that. I hunted for tips on autopopulating my Blogger blog with my WordPress posts, and immediately found myself neck deep in fairly technical stuff on RSS feeds.
I finally hit on a simple way to do it. Here it is:
(TL;DR: On Blogger, set up the email address for posting via email. Then on WordPress, subscribe to your blog using that email address that you just set up.)
1) Set up your Blogger site.
2) Set up your mail-to-Blogger email address. Anything you send to this address will be automatically posted on your Blogger blog. Do this by clicking “Design” (in the upper right hand corner) and then “Settings” (at the bottom of the menu on the left hand side of the screen)
3) Click “Settings,” which will open a new menu underneath. Click “Mobile and email.”
4) Select “posting using email” and think of a word to insert in the box. I put “post” in this example. Don’t put “post.” Too easy to guess, and Blogger won’t accept it.
Set up your custom email address
Now every time you send something to that super-secret email address, it will automatically post on your Blogger blog. If you don’t want everything from WordPress showing up automatically, select “Save emails as draft post.” I chose “Publish email immediately” because I’m reckless like that.
Now subscribe to your Wordpress blog:
5) Go to Appearance>Widgets and Add a “Follow Blog” widget to your site if you don’t already have one.
6) Visit your WordPress site while you aren’t logged in. Use the “Follow Blog” widget to subscribe using your super-secret Blogger email address.
7) WordPress will send you a confirmation. If you selected the “Publish emails immediately” option it will post right onto your Blogger blog. Don’t be embarrassed. This just means it’s working!
8) Click “Confirm Follow” and follow the directions.
A confirmation post will appear on your Blogger blog:
9) There! It’s working. Now every time you post something to WP it will automatically be reposted on Blogger as well.
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