Why Producing Good Writing is Not Enough

You can have the most beautiful prose in the world, but if you don’t promote your work, it will get lost in the sea of the internet.

You can write until perfection and edit your articles until they are gleaming, but you are losing out if you do nothing with it.

The writing community still seems to be divided over the benefits of promoting your content online. Although success is never guaranteed, sharing your words with the rest of the world, is ultimately why you are publishing online in the first place, no?

But the truth is, if we slave over our work until it’s perfect, hit publish, but then don’t take action on promoting our work ourselves, the point of writing in the first place seems pretty redundant. Writing in the online world is also dependent on marketing, self-promotion and bigging yourself up. Which can be hard to deal with, if you’re anything like me, a severe introvert who hates talking about themselves.

After spending six months writing online, building up my audience and working on my writing, I’m falling in love with the process and with each day that passes, I’m considering the idea I could pursue it as a full-time job.

But to do so, I’m going to have to up my game in terms of promoting myself. This is why it matters — and how you can do it.

We Live in a World With an Abundance of Content, You Have to Stand Out

Writers of all kinds have a beautiful tool at their disposal — the internet. We live in an age where anyone with access to the internet can share their deepest thoughts with the whole world, from a click of a button, and there is something so democratizing about that. You don’t have to get through the loopholes of finding a publisher, or someone wealthy that likes your work. You don’t have to just be a white man; you can be anyone.

Although this is ultimately beneficial, it does make it harder to stand out on an individual level. You could write the most beautiful piece of work ever, publish it, and it could still get lost in the sea of the internet. Which is why using social media to promote your work is key.

I don’t believe you have to have a niche, but rather, work on being your true self. It may sound cheesy, but there is nobody in the world who is just like you. Your individuality as a writer, your life experiences and passions make you a niche. But that being said, because of the amount of content published every day, it is worth taking the time to promote yourself.

How to Promote Your Content

If you decided to promote your articles on every social media channel every time you published, it would almost turn out to be a full-time job. But there is another way.

Choose 1 or 2 social media channels to promote your work on. Then, stick to them, build up a following and increase your external views and readership.

For me, this is Twitter and Instagram. Twitter has been working well for me, in around 10 months, I’ve amassed a following of nearly 1.5K. I’ve also had some lovely comments from readers about my work and got myself involved in the community of writers on the platform. Its benefits have been endless.

Instagram is more complicated; I wouldn’t say I like it as a platform and find it fiddly to use. I’m far better with words than images, so naturally, I find it more challenging. But I try and post a link to my article every time I post, and follow likeminded people and hopefully — they’ll keep coming back.

Using social media is a vital way to build your readership, interact with a community of writers and amass an audience to sit alongside your general readers. Don’t put all of your time and energy into it, or chasing the latest trends, but choose 1–2 platforms to re-post your work on.

Promoting Yourself Will Give You More Confidence

When I first started promoting my content on social media, I used to cringe every time I posted. I hate talking about myself, writing job applications or bigging myself up in any way, but it has to be done. Additionally, the more you do it, the more you get used to it. In my experience, I’m lucky enough only to have ever had a few nasty comments, which lovely ones vastly outweighed.

Promoting yourself online can actually lead to having more confidence in your work. Yes, you may receive the occasional negative comment, but you’ll also receive really insightful comments, or readers telling you how much they resonated with your work. And that’s always worth it.

If I didn’t publish my work on social media, it would be harder to gauge whether people were reading my work, and what they were taking away from it. Without sounding big-headed, it has allowed me to realise that some people find value in my words; at difficult times, this has given me the motivation to keep going.

It’s not all about your writing's monetary value, but knowing that at least one or two people resonated with your work in some way. And sharing your work on social media facilitates that, and can give you greater confidence in the process. We should all be bigging ourselves up — as producing content online in any way — is scary.

If You Want to Write for a Living, External Views Are a Must

Despite the abundance of online creators in this digital world, people will always need them. People will always need writers for as long as there is the internet, social media, product marketing, advertising, services and business. Everywhere you look, even on toilet roll packaging, there is writing. Someone was paid to write that. You get my drift.

Never estimate the value of producing a sound article and sharing it online. , you never know who may see it and decide to get in touch. I was lucky enough to have my blog noticed last year by a copywriting client, who got in touch, and asked if I wanted to do some freelance work. From sharing an article on LinkedIn, I landed myself a steady income for a few months. But that also built me experience and a contact.

If you want to pursue writing as a job or career, it always pays to share your work online as you never know who is watching. Share it everywhere to generate more views and build an audience of potential clients. Just like writers shouldn't restrict themselves down to one niche, you shouldn't only publish your work on one platform and not share it with the rest of the world, as you close off any other opportunities.

To be a writer online, you ultimately want to be read in some capacity. There will be a small part of any writer who wishes this. To maximize this and start to believe in yourself, you have to adopt the mindset of promoting your work.

It’s hard at first but is the key to standing out in an increasingly busy online world. Part of the beauty of writing online is the freedom to publish what we want and when, but it is useless if we do nothing with it.

It would be a waste to let your masterpiece just sit and sink, spread it everywhere, let in touch the hearts of as many people as possible.

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