3 Key Realizations that Will Help You Promote Your Writing with Confidence
And why you should accept, or better yet, embrace self-promotion as part of the process
To be a writer of any kind, you must love, in a painful kind of way, the writing process. As to promoting your work, you must at least accept that it’s part of the deal — that is, if you want readers.
When I first started blogging, I hated the idea of promoting myself. Silly me, I expected people would just find my writing if it was any good or relevant to them. Not only that, I thought those readers would be clicking the “forward” or “share” button every time they read any of my writing.
Go ahead. Laugh. I was ridiculously naive and unjustifiably arrogant.
I created my blog and published my first article. I told no one. After a few weeks, less than a handful of souls had stumbled upon it.
I abandoned the endeavor — until a year or so later when I found this platform. Also, my son, who’d just completed an internship with a news publication, began telling me about all that’s involved in getting any content in front of people’s eyes.
Slowly, I became familiar with the meaning of terms like content, tags, rankings, domains, SEO, reach, etc., in the context of blogging.
“Ok then,” I said to myself, “I gotta get myself out there.” I have, and I wish I could tell you self-promotion is easy. Well, it’s not. The amount of content and the competition are staggering. That you must be patient and persistent is advice that falls short.
To be a writer of any kind, you must love, in a painful kind of way, the writing process. As to promoting your work, you must at least accept that it’s part of the deal — that is, if you want readers.
Promotion is about helping people find you, regardless of the proportion who will actually like and read your writing.
It’s a numbers game.
Say 20,000 sets of eyes came across your piece. Who cares if just 4,000 clicked and 999 read it as long as 999 found it funny, helpful, illuminating, entertaining, or moving?
I don’t care at all! That’s exactly what I would love to happen every time: for my story to find its 999 readers. Or 29. Or 27k. Over time, some of these readers will become your regular readers, the audience you care about and further build by continuing to promote your writing.
Never let the worry about what other people will think about your work deter you from self-promoting.
“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own. “ — Marcus Aurelius
What matters most is your own opinion about your pieces. As long as it’s up to your high standards, then promote. If you’re especially proud of it, promote twice as much.
Of course, you should do your utmost to publish quality writing every single time. You should be analyzing and learning what types of topics hit a nerve, and publish knowing that this or that topic is more or less popular.
Work to improve your opinion of yourself and your work by honing your voice and your craft. Worrying about what other people will think will only paralyze you and hinder your growth. Plus it’s something you cannot control.
Don’t do anything you find obnoxious and learn as you go.
I often respond to other people’s stories because I have something I want to say and, yes, as a way to self-promote. My comment may make the writer curious about me and my writing.
A few times, I included a specific reference to an article of mine in such responses, basically asking for a read. That is, until others used the same tactic on me. I found it obnoxious, desperate, and silly.
It doesn’t work, so I’m never doing that again.
I discovered Quora recently. I’ve begun to answer questions and to comment on the spaces related to autism, a topic I write about a lot. Occasionally, I also post my autism-related stories on such spaces and I’ve seen good results with this.
There are dozens of ways to promote my writing I haven’t attempted or don’t even know about, which means I don’t have to rely on any tactic I come to find uncomfortable — like asking for reads!
People care much, much less about you than you’d ever imagine.
I used to worry about what people I know would think of my writing. Would they find it awful? Would they laugh at my problems and ideas?
As to people who know and love me, I expected they’d be sharing my pieces with friends and on their own social media.
Guess what, I shouldn’t have worried about the former nor expected the latter.
Humans are self-absorbed creatures. People who don’ read you will almost always just be indifferent to your writing. They won’t take even an instant to analyze why they decided not to click and read that post. They’ll just ignore it, maybe delete it, and just move on to whatever. Just like you do with what other people send you!
As to your dearest sisters and closest friends sharing away your stuff, forget about it. If you’re lucky, maybe they’ll do so once in a lifetime. There’s too much going on, too much to send and resend, post and repost.
You’re on your own.
Final Thoughts
Marketing your writing is time-consuming. I’ve learned to actually get a kick out of the self-promotion process. At least I often do. Other times I get fed up with it and don’t engage in self-promotion for days or weeks.
My views, reads and engagement drop, as I know they will, and I don’t mind terribly. I’m not a professional writer, so I have the freedom to not care too much. I do, however, want readers badly— the more the better.
So I always go back to doing the work of self-promotion, a process I’ve completely stopped fearing and actually grown to like. Sort of.
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