Get Your Name Out There with Blogging
I got a funny email from another author once who told a story I hope he won’t mind me retelling. It demonstrates the power of blogging and how blogging (even by itself) can be enough to get your name out there. It also demonstrates, along the way, the power of social media.
My friend was on social media when he saw a post from an author who was touting a self-published book. The book revolved around improving your Amazon ranking, and my friend, innocently (he says) posted a reply indicating that the Amazon ranking for the book wasn’t very good. What he found out later was that the Kindle ranking for the book was actually excellent, because the paperback version wasn’t the focus of the author’s efforts. The damage, however, was done.
The author in question turned out to be an extremely popular niche author with a loyal following. He went on to comb social media and then write not one, not two, but three separate blog posts about what a jerk my friend was supposed to be, complete with unflattering hand-drawn pictures. It wasn’t until he started getting random emails from readers of that blog that my friend realized his mistake.
Eventually my friend wrote an email to the author. “I told him I couldn’t sue him and didn’t have the money to try,” he explained to me, “but I basically said, ‘Hey, can you not?’ I said that I thought what he had written constituted libel and that it might even harm my prospects of finding work. I didn’t see how what I wrote on social media warranted such an over-the-top response.”
To his surprise, my friend got an immediate and friendly response. The author basically said, “Sure, no problem,” and took the blogs down. Nothing ever came of the interaction, positive or negative. I asked my friend who the author was (although I wouldn’t publish that information; I was simply curious). It happened long enough ago that he doesn’t remember the person’s name. That’s probably for the best.
What I take from that true story, though, is that most authors on both sides of blogging don’t realize just how powerful it is. Blogging is a way of reaching out across the Internet and establishing both your reputation and your audience. It’s the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy. You decide to become a writer. You start writing. You blog about your writing. People start to listen to you writing about your writing. They start reading your writing. And just like that, what you set out to make true has become true, all through actions you took, mostly through a keyboard in front of a computer.
“I do have friends. Maybe they live hundreds of miles away from me, and maybe I can only talk to them through a screen, but they’re still my friends.” – Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters
Now, I’m not here to tell you how to put yourself out there. Well, okay, maybe I am. One suggestion I would offer you is that you should strive for only positive interactions. That means sometimes holding your tongue (and your typing) when you have something critical or snarky to say. But it also means you’ll be in a better position to make friends and allies.
Putting yourself out there can be a little scary. You might even be tempted to write under a pseudonym, which isn’t a bad idea if you’re consistent with it. What you’ll find in blogging to get your name out to your audience, however, is that it works both ways. They’ll get to know you… and you’ll get to know them. It’s a pretty darned good trade.
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*This blog was written 100% by a human and contains no AI-generated written content.