When I was working with a cowriter, we had a Web site together. We wanted to promote it, so we put up book-related articles. The articles included:
- Writing Tips
- Word XP for Writers
- Military Rank/Awards
- Civil War Firearms (the project was set in the Civil War)
I had read somewhere that you can help promote a book by posting articles and links to topics related to the book. Little did I realize that, with the exception of the writing tips, all the articles turned into a big headache. With the Word tips, people would email me to ask how to do something in Word. If I was nice and explained how, I would then get another question.
With the military articles–and there were only TWO very general articles–I ended up getting an email from this woman wanting to know how to request her husband’s awards. I looked it up online, found the DOD site, and sent it to her. She promptly sent me a nasty email back saying that wasn’t what she was looking for (by the way, it did answer her question. Certificates she could get, medals, she couldn’t. She wanted a different answer).
Then there’s the gun articles, easily the most popular thing on the site. About once or twice a week, I’d get an email from someone who had a Civil War firearm and wanted to know what it was worth.
I ended up taking down most of the articles because they became a nuisance. People emailing me were only interested in not doing the work, not in what we were writing. If you’re thinking of doing content other than writing subjects for your site, carefully consider what the content will be so that you don’t end up being the Ann Landers of (fill in the subject).
