Hey Everyone, So I've recently started a daily flash fiction blog, and I was wondering how one goes about advertising something like this. I think it would be really useful for me if more people gave me feedback on my writing, and I don't want to be annoying and post a new thread on these forums everyday. Actually, I just think it'd be neat if people wanted to read it in the first place. Any ideas? How does someone just starting out gain viewership? Thanks a lot!
@Squishytheduck, Well, if you build it they will come. If it's interesting, I am sure folks will come read it.
That's a common misconception. You get people to come see it by telling people about it. It's that simple, and also that hard. I do something similar. My readership isn't huge - I've got in the region of 50 people on an e-mail list I mail stories out to fairly frequently - but I've also not attempted anything mass-market, just let the word spread for a couple of months. Here's how it started: 1. For last year's NaNoWriMo, I said I'd do a 100-word story every day in November. To make sure I actually stuck with it and didn't give up on day 6, I made it public and posted them all in my Facebook feed. 2. People liked them, so I set up a blog to keep going with it, though not one-a-day. When I did that, I told everyone who'd been following the stories on Facebook. 3. Some people preferred to read them on Facebook and not either on the blog or by e-mail, so I set up a Facebook page and posted them there too. When they get liked and shared, people outside your follower base see them, and that's sent a few more people to the page. 4. Like a load of other people, including you, I've got a link to the blog in my signature on this forum, and various other forums I use. A few people have clicked through these links to go look, and a few of them have liked the stories enough to sign up. 5. I tell people on Twitter and occasionally Facebook when another story's gone up Mostly, the people on the list are people I know in real life who signed up after the November 30. But not all of them. I recognise a few people from this forum, a few who are friends of friends, and some I don't have the first clue who they are. Getting one of those people sign up is AMAZING. If you're interested in putting more time and money into spreading the word, you can buy banners on websites like this that already have the kind of readership you're looking for, find bloggers who'd be happy to tell their followers about you, or pay for ads somewhere. Find where the interested eyes are and put yourself in front of them. But mostly, tell everyone you know. Keep telling them. Get them to tell everyone they know. Don't stop.
I won’t go into any details as to how you should write your blog or what your blog should be about (I think that is for you to figure out). But here are some thoughts that can be applied to most blogs: 1) Good blogs usually has some sort of consistency in how they update. Amatures post a few times some days and then they don't feel like posting for a few days or a week and the readers comes back just to see nothing new posted (this disapoints them and it can make them stop coming back for more). 2) Blog name is important. I believe people are lazy and typing deltaindialimauniform takes quite some time and can be misspelt. I would try to pick a shorter blog name, Facebook had the name Thefacebook previously but changed it so people could type it faster, pick a short and easy to spell name is my suggestion. 3) Comment and spread your site (leave few comments in others blogs and maybe they come read you back). 4) Always look for ways to make your blog better.
