I once read a comment from an agent (not mine) who said something along the lines: No offense, but most of the time writers who blog are just talking to each other. I was a little taken aback by the comment, mostly because I had hoped that I was reaching a much larger audience. And I wondered if what she said was true, did it matter that I was only reaching fellow writers? Did it matter that maybe no agent or editor would ever read one of my posts? Why was I blogging in the first place?
In the end, I decided that my blog was a way to share a little part of my world, and I hoped that in doing so my posts would speak to others or help them in some way. Are my posts always great? No. But the blog provides a platform on which to share one of the most important things in my life – my writing.
What do you think? Do you think we are just talking to each other? And if so, does that matter? What sorts of things do you do to reach a wider audience?
I think that cross promotion is essential to our success. We should be tweeting about our blog posts with links to send people to them. Same for Facebook and Linkedin or any other social media platform you use. And as a writing community, we can help one another by cross promoting. Several of you do this extremely well with what I call “link salads.” These weekly link roundups, such as this one from Adventures in Children's Publishing, helps to get more eyes on our blog posts and drive more traffic to our sites, hopefully increasing our followers.
I’ve seen your blogs grow in followers over the past few years, and it warms my heart to witness their growth. You are reaching more people each and every day. How awesome is that! Keep up the great work, and I hope that the ink is flowing and that you're proud of all that you do.
