10 Basic Ways to Promote Your Writing Skills
If you are reading this blog post, means you stumbled upon it when you searched for something like “how to promote my writing skills” or maybe “How to market my article?” Is that right? If it is, read on. You are investing your time in the right place currently and by end of this reading you will feel confident about how you should promote your writing skills.
Just like you, I have a penchant for writing. I write anything and everything that I feel like scribbling – be it regular articles, web content, blog posts or even reviews. And every time I finish a writing task, my heart still yearns for even more writing gigs. But spending hours in front of the computer, trying to write your heart out one wonders do my articles have an audience? Are my writing skills being recognized? Am I doing enough to spread the word about a fantastic article I just came up with? As a writer, you have every right to think – whether or not your articles and your skills are being marketed correctly and sufficiently?
In the middle of these wishful thinking also lies the dreadful “writer’s block” which every writer faces time after time. I recently went through the same ordeal and after a long gap, I actually went ahead and wrote a blog post to suggest some tips to overcome the writer’s block. You can read that blog post here.
So let’s you and me walk through the below 10 ideas of how you can start marketing and promoting your writing talent and those wonderful articles and content which you churn out:
1. Social Media – Are you on Facebook? Twitter? Google+? Depending upon what type of niche you belong to as a writer, you have to be on one of these social media platforms. Period. I would prefer you setup and be active on 3 different social media platforms. Again, “be active”, and by that I mean, interact with your followers, readers, post links to your articles now and then. Keep attracting traffic.
2. SEO – If you are wondering what this stands for then you should instantly open another window here and search for SEO. Articles that are not SEO friendly are bound to be dumped beneath the pile of gazillion other articles from the same category. You ought to have SEO based keywords embedded into your content to improve your search rankings.
3. Quality or Quantity? – Don’t bother to debate here. Quality is all that matters. Writing a short post of 100 words which reflects important keywords, a good concise message and to the point description is bound to attract more attention rather than ranting about the same topic and coming up with a 3 page article. Remember readers have short attention spans.
4. Groups, Forums and Discussion Panels – Yes, I know you think why I care about other writers when I am such an extraordinary writer myself. Stop. You are going the wrong path. No matter how big of a writer is, you always want to join discussion groups and collaborate with fellow writers. Major benefits include – not driving up to a writer’s block, brainstorming ideas to pen down and most importantly creating your presence in the world of writing!
5. Creating your personal space – Blogs and website exists for a reason. Internet is free; a fast paced entity and is here to stay. Doing writing gigs and not being able to write for your own self is the biggest blunder you might be making or bound to make. Setup your personal website, maybe a blog, frequently promote that, write articles to keep users engaged. This shall help you develop and build reputation.
6. Visit other writers – Sometimes, taking a break off writing is the best way to explore and see what’s going on around you. Visiting certain writers’ websites, sifting through their work, leaving comments, is a great idea to promote your own talent too. If you leave a comment when you are done reading this article, you are trying to build a connection. It’s your way of expressing your gratitude and viewpoints about what you feel. And I shall certainly connect back with you in some way or the other. It works, believe me!
7. Commenting – The reason I mention this separately is to emphasize the important of recognizing other people’s talent, their works and conveying a message of assurance that what they are doing is absolutely great. Comments are a great way to get recognized, express opinions and tell the world you hold some value too.
8. Guest writing – Let’s say you have a plethora of topics you want to write about. How about contributing to other writer’s blogs or websites? Again, you must be thinking, why should I write for others? Think about it this way – You have maybe 15 readers who regularly read your posts. The other guy has 10000 twitter followers. Would it not help you to write something for him as a guest writer and use his marketing resources and reach to promote your writing talent to a wider audience? That’s the power of becoming a guest writer and inviting others to be the same too.
9. Word of mouth marketing – The last, not the least, but one of the most effective ways to market your content – talk about your skills yourself! Be it friends, family, colleagues, random people on the train, online, offline – no matter where you are, keep your mind active to strike a conversation and slowly express what you like to do, speak about your personal blog, some of the writing projects you did, challenges and much more.
10. Keep writing – Since I ran out of ideas, and I started of this blog post with a desire to write 10 ideas, I am just putting a short, sweet and simple thought here – Follow your passion to write and write like you have never written before! Keep it rolling…
Remember, curiosity and intriguing people is the best way to drive them to read your content. So before you even go on to write an article, think about the many ways you would like to promote that article when it’s ready. Plan, prepare and promote!
What do you think would be the best ways to promote and market articles, writing talent, blog posts and web content? I am all ears to what you got to say, so go on and give me your feedback in the comments section below. Remember, by commenting, you are trying to build a connection with me and I certainly am looking forward to it!
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