Build your audience!

If you’ve been published on narratorINTERNATIONAL, then congratulations! But if you want to develop any sort of writing career, no matter how small, then your work has only just started. The next step is to leverage the benefits of being published – and build your audience one story or poem at a time, like bricks in a wall.

narratorINTERNATIONAL is a great way to start building that audience, to find out what it is that people like about your writing, and to hone and craft your writing skill to please and develop that audience. It’s all well and good to write from the heart, and write for yourself, but if it’s not interesting anyone, then you may as well write it on paper and put it in your drawer.

At the end of the day, building any business – and if you wish to be a writer of any sorts, then you’re building a business, no matter how small – requires marketing. The more you can market yourself, with value, the wider your word will spread, and the more demand you will be able to create for your writing products.

So if you’re wanting to build your audience, here are some steps you can take to help maximise the benefits of being published on narratorINTERNATIONAL:

  • When you submit an item, put a bio or a few words about the item at the bottom of the page so that it’s included when you submit that item. If you have your own website, or blogspot, or have won some recent awards, then include hyperlinks to relevant places on the internet so that readers can easily find out more about you if they like your piece. Also, include links to your Facebook business page (not your personal page), or your Google+ or Twitter account.
  • When you’ve been published on narratorINTERNATIONAL, shoot out an email (or forward the one we sent you) to your family, friends and fans across the world, making sure that you include the hyperlink from the address bar in the email we sent you so that your followers can quickly click and read your piece!
  • When you’ve been published, post a link on your Facebook page (personal or business), Google+ page, Pinterest etc, and Tweet it.
  • If you have ebooks or print books for sale somewhere, make sure you include a link in your bio or information so that if people wish to consider buying one of your products, it will be easier for them to find.
  • If you have ebooks or print books for sale somewhere, go to One Thousand Words Plus and take out a very affordable lifetime listing to publicise your book. This site is search engine friendly, so choose text from your book which is likely to attract readers.

One Thousand Words Plus

  • If you’ve been published on this site, then let your friends know when the hard copy of the book comes out – and also make sure your local library gets a copy. Let people know you’ve been published in an anthology, and if you have a website or blog, make sure that you mention that your work ‘appeared in narratorINTERNATIONAL, Volume [X], [Month], [Year]’.
  • Make it part of your resume/CV – list the date, title and type of any item you’ve had published, not just on narratorINTERNATIONAL, but elsewhere – so that potential employers or contractors can check what you’ve done.
  • Publish elsewhere. If you have a selection of short stories or novellas, publish them one at a time, for free, or as a small collection, at Smashwords. Smashwords distributes to a variety of ebook retailers, including Barnes and Noble, Kobo and Apple, so when you write your masterpiece, you will already have audiences in several places who, already familiar with your work, will be more likely to pay to read a longer piece.

Smashwords

  • If you have written any books at all and have them publicly available in an ebook format, consider entering the Global Ebook Awards. This is a great way to get your book read by others who may talk about to their friends – widening your audience among strangers!

Global Ebook Awards

  • If you write for commission (as a journalist, copy writer or ghost writer), include links to your bio information when you submit to narratorINTERNATIONAL so that someone looking for someone with your writing style can easily contact you.
  • Register on Google Alerts for your name, variations of your name, or perhaps the name of your piece, so that if it’s referred to elsewhere on the internet, you’ll get an alert, usually within 48 hours, via email. This is a free service and really great for keeping tabs on where you’re being mentioned on the internet. Of course, if you have a common name, you may end up with too many useless alerts, so you may find it’s not so beneficial in that respect, but if you use a fairly original pseudonym, then that’s worth setting an alert up for. Visit http://www.google.com.au/alerts?hl=en and register there. It’s also useful for finding information about topics that you’re waiting for new information on!

Now, none of this happens overnight, but without taking any of the above steps, pretty much very little will happen at all unless someone of influence reads your work and decides to tell the world for you. And we all know how likely that is to happen, no matter how talented you are!

So if you’re proud of what you’ve created, and proud of having had it published – shout it from the cyber rooftops and let the world know!

Happy writing now 😀