And now that you mention it, the thumbnail biogs ARE quite tricky. Perhaps I’ll employ a ghostwriter to do my next one. What’s the going rate?

I liked the advice on biogs too. Thumbnail biogs of the writers at the back of a short story journal are often more entertaining than some of the stories, for entirely unintended reasons. Give them enough rope and they do the rest. Funny, the care a writer will take over the word perfect story (if the reader’s lucky), and then all critical faculties are switched off when the writer just gets a chance to talk about themselves…

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Hi David, yes the ‘Bad Author Photo’ article’s hilarious!
You’re right, you get the impression that some people find the whole self-publicity thing a bit infra dig, or maybe it’s simply shyness.

What’s the best author photograph you’ve seen?

I only have experience of blogging rather than having a proper website, which suggests something more permanent and with more links and content areas, so I can only talk about what I think you need for a successful blog. The following is a combination of my own ideas and things suggested to me by successful bloggers in my field.

Whilist points 1-5 are important to explain who you are and what you do, point 6 is the one new bloggers should really focus on.

You have to accept the awful truth that people will only dip into your blog if they think there is something interesting there, so (a) you have to advertise – using twitter, facebook, catch-all emails etc – to gain an audience, and (b) the advertisement has to have some kind of teaser in it.

I hate to say it, but the headlines on the Yahoo home page are the way to go in this respect. There is always a main story which has a ‘Find out more’ tag – and I for one always hit that tag, even if I hate myself for reading it if it’s trashy.

Some of my ELT editors have ‘accused’ me of having a tabloid mentality when it comes to materials, but I’m afraid the newspapers PLU don’t usually read have amazing ways of hooking their readers, through headline, image and opening line. Unfortunately, if you aren’t famous, it may be the way to go.

When I blog, I tweet a teaser (wow – I wouldn’t have made head nor tail of that phrase five years ago!). For example, my next blog will be a continuation of my last one about adapting improvisation comedy activities for teaching, but the one after that will be more generally about ELT drama activities.

The fact is I don’t like the word ‘drama’ to describe the activities I’m going to talk about. So my teaser-tweet will say: Why I hate ‘drama’. Coming from the former director of the English Teaching Theatre, that might cause some raised eyebrows (and therefore visits to my blog).

I’ll let you know if it works!

Best,

Ken