Building an online following (and the next round of critique winners!)
I know, I know…who am I to talk about snagging followers? I know most of you have more followers than me, but someone asked me that question this week and I’m willing to answer! My responses might be a little different, so maybe this will be worth reading!
1. Tweet new posts with an interesting title. I’ve only been on Twitter for two-ish months, but I already have more followers there than I have here. So everyone I tweet to has the potential to retweet my post (if it is good) to their followers. Boom! My blog could be visited by hundreds of people, some of which may decide to follow.
2. Follow well-followed blogs and leave good/funny/smart comments. Others who follow that blog may click on your name and head on over to your site.
3. Participate in blog tours or hops. And by participate, I mean visit and follow lots of the blogs and leave comments. Writers are notoriously good about returning the favor.
4. Host a contest with a good prize. This does not mean that the prize has to be expensive! Of the three contests I’ve hosted, the query and critique contest was by FAR the most successful! (And speaking of contests, the winners of the next round of crits are: Jess, Laura C., and Redleg! Please send your next 50 pages! Thanks!)
5. Be relevant. Write timely, interesting, funny, informative posts. No one is going to follow your blog if you don’t consistently deliver readable material.
Since I’m trying to take my own advice, I’d like to announce an Awesome Author Interview on Monday! Avery Olive (averyolive.blogspot.com) has agreed to share the story of how she went from stay-at-home mom to soon-to-be published author! And the kicker…she did it without an agent!
(BTW I wrote this entire post on my phone. Sorry for the blah-ness. I couldn’t get the bold or bullets to work. Monday will be better. Promise!)
1. Tweet new posts with an interesting title. I’ve only been on Twitter for two-ish months, but I already have more followers there than I have here. So everyone I tweet to has the potential to retweet my post (if it is good) to their followers. Boom! My blog could be visited by hundreds of people, some of which may decide to follow.
2. Follow well-followed blogs and leave good/funny/smart comments. Others who follow that blog may click on your name and head on over to your site.
3. Participate in blog tours or hops. And by participate, I mean visit and follow lots of the blogs and leave comments. Writers are notoriously good about returning the favor.
4. Host a contest with a good prize. This does not mean that the prize has to be expensive! Of the three contests I’ve hosted, the query and critique contest was by FAR the most successful! (And speaking of contests, the winners of the next round of crits are: Jess, Laura C., and Redleg! Please send your next 50 pages! Thanks!)
5. Be relevant. Write timely, interesting, funny, informative posts. No one is going to follow your blog if you don’t consistently deliver readable material.
Since I’m trying to take my own advice, I’d like to announce an Awesome Author Interview on Monday! Avery Olive (averyolive.blogspot.com) has agreed to share the story of how she went from stay-at-home mom to soon-to-be published author! And the kicker…she did it without an agent!
(BTW I wrote this entire post on my phone. Sorry for the blah-ness. I couldn’t get the bold or bullets to work. Monday will be better. Promise!)
34 Comments
Jess
Great post on followers~ and thanks so much (in advance) for critiquing my next 50 pages!!! Again, it’s so generous of you to give your time like that 🙂
Can’t wait to read about Avery Olive~ as a fellow stay-at-home mom, it’ll be especially inspiring!
Avery Olive
Having troubles commenting 🙁
Great post Becky! I think you’ve given everyone some great tips.
Can’t wait to check out my Author Interview on Monday! I’ll stop by and answer any questions anyone might have, or check out my blog and shoot me an e-mail.
Becky Wallace
@Jess: I’m so excited to see the rest!
@Avery: Woot! Can’t wait!
William Kendall
If you can’t get the bullets to work, you’ll have to reload them in the…
Oh, wait… wrong kind of bullets.
Lindsay N. Currie
FANTASTIC:) Looking forward to Monday and guess what? Your blog post looks better than mine most days – and I use a laptop, not a cell phone LOL:)
Redleg
Ourrah! Pobieda! And…sent.
Laura C.
I enjoyed the post–it wasn’t blah at all.
I’m thrilled I’ve made it to the next round. As soon as I kick this miserable stomach bug and can think coherently, I’ll send you the next 50. Thanks so much!
Danette
Twitter followers aren’t tough to get fortunately. If you go around following people, they follow back. I have way more followers there then on my blog. But I find it really hard to get people from twitter to my blog. Occasionally I can, but rarely. Actually I’ve had the most success at getting followers for my blog by being a regular commenter on other people’s blogs and making interesting comments. Then people pop over and sometimes follow. I have also had some people comment when I do a review of a movie. They google the title and pop over just for that one movie then follow when I reciprocate. But the most successful blogs (not mine!) are the ones with just really interesting posts that include scientific research, politics, religion!, music and sometimes just nice sunset pics (in other words lots of interesting topics not just on the topic he writes on). But he also has fun stuff that features his readers on his blog like holding a contest for cats. The cat contests right on his website/blog and then I think readers vote. He gets tons of comments and when I comment there, if I’ve made a good comment, his readers pop over. I see the links quite often.
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