How it all started: I touched on this briefly in another post, but I’ll expand it more here. After I joined the Go Teen Writers Facebook group almost three years ago (I can believe it’s been that long), I noticed a lot of the other members had their own blogs, and I wanted to start building my author platform. I decided to make a blog, but I had no clue about blogging. I just knew people do it and people read them. That was pretty much the extent of my knowledge.
At first, I only posted about my own characters, because I felt like I wasn’t good enough give anyone writing advice, because I wasn’t an author so I wasn’t qualified. Then I sorta like my blog die. After some time I started realizing, “You know what? Despite not having been published, I do know a thing or two about writing.” After I started getting confidence in myself my blog started to blossom. Now I write a wide variety of posts catering to the writing geeky crowd. But it took me a while to gain the level of commitment to blog well. Only last year do I feel like I really started getting good.
Blogging is a journey, and I think it’s helped me a lot as a writer and a person. Seeing people comment on my posts and getting emails about how it’s helped them encourages me to keep writing both my books and my blog. Plus writing blog posts gives me experience with a different type of writing instead of just novels.
My super sage advice:
1.) Be consistent – That’s probably one of the hardest things about blogging, but it’s essential. I didn’t get hardly any following when I just posted whenever I felt like it. Determine when you think you can consistently blog. Once a month, once a week, multiple times a week on certain days … Whatever works for you. Posting around the same time is important too, so your readers will know exactly when to expect posts from you. Something that helps with this is setting a schedule. Plan out your posts for the month so you know what you’re going to do or even better go ahead and write them all at the same time if you can.
2.) Comment. Comment. Comment. – Reply to every comment on your blog. Readers like interaction, and you may have a good conversation. Comment on other people’s blogs. People love comments. It only takes about a minute to write a short one, and that goes a long way. It’s a nice gesture to that person and could give them the spark of confidence they need when they see it. You never know. They could check out your blog because you took the time to comment on theirs too. I do that.
3.) Participate in blog activities liiiiike this one – Blog hops, nominations, and link-ups are a great way to interact with other bloggers plus they’re fun whether you create your own or do someone else’s. You often learn about yourself, learn about your character, or just help others.
4.) Know who you’re writing for, and target your posts toward those people – I write for writers and geeks so I target my posts toward them. Keep your posts relative to your determined audience. If I started randomly posting about how to crochet baby bonnets then I will be cheating my audience, because they came to my blog for geeky writing stuff not crochet tips. I made this sort of mistake a while back. ^ ^’
5.) Have confidence that you do have something to say – You’re you and be confident in that. What you say matters. Don’t think you’re inferior to someone else and let that suppress you. Everyone has something to say, you just have to have the guts to put it out there.
Les Nominees:
Yeah so fifteen people is so not happening, especially since most are probably taken by now. ^ ^’ But I’ll do five.
1.) Ana @ Butterflies of the Imagination
2.) Heather @ Sometimes I’m a Story
3.) Cassia Taylor @ Dimensions of My Universe
Well that’s it! Thanks again, ladies, for the awards! ^ ^
