Writing: Growing Your Platform

This is my post for Day 19 of the Author Blog Challenge.



What are the three most important things you are doing to grow your platform?

I have been blogging for years now, and it does help grow my platform. However, when I first started out, my blogs weren't getting very many views. I just wasn't getting enough people to read my blogs. That's when I found Twitter, and eventually, through my Twitter contacts, I found Facebook.

Blogging, Facebook, Twitter and other social media are great ways to grow your platform. But there are a few things that are even more important.

1. Interact with your readers. If someone comments on your blog, respond to them, even if it's just to say "Thank you." Don't ignore your "friends" on your Facebook profile or your "likers" on your Facebook page. Interact with them, ask them questions and care about what's going on with them.

2. Care about your readers and offer them quality content. If you talk down to your readers, they will lose respect for you, and if you don't offer them quality content to read, they will not bother to continue reading what you write. You have to care about them for real, not just see your readers as a potential revenue source. The people who connect with you through social media are not stupid and they can tell if you don't care about them.

3. Be honest with your readers. Be polite and respectful at all times, but within those parameters, you need to be honest with your readers. Your readers can be uncannily intuitive, so don't underestimate them by hiding yourself. They need to be able to sense your voice in your writing, and that isn't going to happen unless you are honest with them and with yourself.



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