Blogging for Writers

I’m not ashamed to admit it, I’m after fame and glory and my blog is going to help me achieve it. The only problem is how do I convince a legion of people to read my wonderful words?

At this year’s Melbourne Writers’ Festival (MWF) I attended an event called “Colonising the Internet”, a discussion, I thought, with published authors about building an online presence. I was expecting fireworks and tips on how to attract readers, what I got was a talk on how the Internet has effected they way they write novels. Interesting but not particularly helpful to the fledgling blogger.

There are a buckets of sites and blog posts out in the ether that will provide tips on how to promote your blog (in fact searching for them is no. 2 in my list below) but none that chronicle how someone actually did it (they’re probably out there too, I just haven’t found them yet – do you know of any?). So I’m going to, right here, right now. I hope you find it, if not interesting, then at least helpful.

Here’s what I’ve done so far:

  1. Installed Google Analytics as a barometer for how my efforts are succeeding.
  2. Googled “promoting your blog”. Quite a number of sites came up in the search and provided me with some great tips like give meaningful comments on other blogs.
  3. Post to twitter and Facebook. I’m not a fan of either, but many people are and they offer a great platform for say “Hi, I’m here, check me out”. So every time I post something new a link to it goes up on Facebook and Twitter. I’ve used some WordPress plugins to automate the task for me, Twitter Tools and Feed Facebook, Leave Facebook.
  4. Found blogs with similar topics/interests to mine. Link to them. It’s amazing what you can learn from other people and what opportunities can arise. I’ve described one such below but before I get to it …
  5. Left comments on the above blogs complete with my name and website address. The hope is if you leave a meaningful comment the blog authors will be inclined to visit my blog in return.
  6. Participate in writing exercises like Writer’s Weights run on some of the blogs I found. These are great ways to build relationships with other people because you’re (kinda) working with them and if you post a link to your finished exercise on their blog, maybe they’ll read it.

Does any of the above need more explaining?

There are links to a number of helpful sites on All My Links. If you know of any others let me know, I’d love to hear from you.

One thought on “Blogging for Writers

  1. Hi Belinda, you have a good list here. I’d add google alerts to your list above that allows you to track when people link back to your blogs. I’m not a huge user of twitter (mostly use it to chat (rarely… )) but there is a great writer set of groups that you can find out there as well. You might be interested in looking at #fridayflash, where people link up their fiction. It’s a supportive community of writers.

    P.S. Thanks for the link 🙂

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