4 Subtle Strategies I Use to Self-Promote my Articles
Tips for new and reluctant self-promoters
“Content can exist in a vacuum. But it shouldn’t have to” — Thomas Smith
Each of us hit the publish button for different reasons:
- For the joy/pleasure of it
- For fame and fortune
- To leave a legacy
- For documenting everyday musings/journaling
- Raise awareness
- Self-expression (audience optional)
(Feel free to add to this list in the comments)
However, this article is mainly for those writers who are interested in gaining more exposure for their articles, reader engagement, and boosting their stats.
Recently, I was in conversation with my Medium friend Jill (Conquering Cognitions) about the topic of self-promoting articles. While she refers to herself as a ‘reluctant promoter’, I prefer fellow writer Justiss Goode’s recent response to my article about Medium Lingo in which I talk about how link bombing (embedding multiple links of your previous articles in your current post as a self-promotion strategy) annoys some readers:
“ If I don’t promote myself, who will? Yeah, that’s what I thought :-)” — Justiss Goode
She has a very good point and I’ll explain why.
I looked up how many articles are published on Medium on a monthly basis and the best I could come up with was JJ Pryor’s estimate that there are 1,385,000 new articles posted on Medium every month!
And this interesting snippet from The Creator’s Hub shows that Medium added 65,000 new writers in 2020 alone!
So barring virality or a huge readership base that actively reads your articles, how to make your articles stand out/gain views/earn a piece of that $11M👆 pie?
In my opinion, the only way is to self promote (I saw the eye roll right there but hey the choice is entirely yours😜)
“Good work speaks for itself. However, it needs somebody to listen to it first. That means before other people will promote for you, everybody has to do some self promotion” — Hannah Kowalczyk-Harper
3 strategies I use to self promote my articles
- Legwork: Since I enjoy reading as much as I do writing, I rarely leave someone’s article without clapping and leaving a thoughtful comment. This not only helps in building genuine connections with other writers but also many times my comments have led to new followers. In addition to appreciating the writer’s work, I have found this to be a good way of sparking curiosity and interest with regard to my profile and in turn, my articles.
- Social Media: I may be new to the game but I am glad to have benefitted from pubs (like Coffee Times, Better Humans, and The Start-Up) that not only have a social media presence but also take an active effort in promoting articles.
- Leveraging my Top Writer badges in This Happened to Me and Social Media to write articles that have a strong niche audience. An example is “How I maintain my Top Writer Badge as a Newbie.”
- Reciprocity: I strongly believe in community and the concept of co-elevating one another so I actively promote other writers be it a tweet or a shout out or quoting them in one of my posts. The great thing about sharing other writers’ work is that you connect with writers/readers of similar tastes and oftentimes they end up following you or reciprocating. I am happy to see that the editor-in-chief of Coffee Times pub also pushing this initiative in order to build a wonderful, supportive community on Medium.
Having seen enthusiastic self-promoters as well as reluctant ones, I would consider myself somewhere in the middle. If you are like me, then I hope you find these strategies to be helpful.
I would like to share Nancy Blackman’s lovely post about allowing your soul to speak through your writing