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Promoting your work needn’t be expensive (unless you want it to be). There are lots of ways you can reach out to audiences; all you really require is perseverance and patients. Rome wasn’t built in a day! Don’t be put off by rejection, if everybody loved everything you wrote the first time there would be no room for improvement.
1. Pick popular topics. Keep an eye on ‘hot content’ and ‘top searches’ so that you know what is popular and can show off your writing skills by producing articles of widely sought after information.
2. Link your articles/fiction as widely as possible.Triond offers the opportunity to post your links on an enormous number of writing sites. Some are good, some bad and some downright bizarre! As you get to know them you will be able to decide which ones you like and which ones you don’t. Almost all of them will let you create a personalised profile page to display your work. See how many hits come back on your Triond dashboard to work out which sites are worthwhile. I like Stumbleupon, Xanga, Zooloo, and Digg.
3. Maximise tags.When you have written your article add 50-100 tags (minimum). If you feel like going the extra mile, purchase Google Adwords too.
4. Design a website. If you are good with technology then you will be able to make your own from scratch, if not then chose a site builder package. There are millions to choose from but if you are looking to keep costs low then something like 123 Regoffers pretty good value for money. They have useful facilities available such as online shop and forum.
5. Create a Google blog. Hosting is free and you can add a Triond widget by going to the Widgetbox site. Type in your Triond user name to create a personalised badge which automatically updates when you publish something new on Triond. To add it to your blog go to ‘design’ and then ‘add a gadget’ and chose ‘HTML’from the list of options. Paste your Triond widget code from Widget box into the space and ‘save’. Hey presto! The personalised Triond widget is now visible on your blog. You can also add face book and twitter widgets by the same method.
Look out for companies who will sponsor your blog. They promote you and offer you a percentage. Be wary of telling them your PayPal details until you are comfortable. There are a lot of genuine companies out there who will act as sponsors, but there are many scams too. Exercise caution and get recommendations where possible.
6. Open a writer’s page on Facebook and update readers by posting links and updating your status with what you are working on. You could promote it with an advert but I don’t think this is really worthwhile. You will soon see news getting around regardless.
7. Make a promotional video or trailer. If you are a writer or poet, why not make a video of you reading some of your work? Videos can be uploaded on Triond under ‘media’ and will appear on sites such as Kleep. You could also upload them to Utube and post them on Facebook.
8. Get known where you live! Attend open mic nights or poetry reading evenings in your area. If your local church or town hall is putting on an evening of festive entertainment, enquire about performing a Christmas themed monologue etc.
9. Create a business card. Vistaprint is very good for affordable personalised stationary and you can either use a template or design your own. They also offer to make postcards, posters and pens which could be useful for giving to libraries and book shops.
10. Offer to write on demand. For those of you who are more interested in writing articles than being creative there are loads of sites looking for writers to rate products and write about specific topics. Some may ask to see your resume so create one which specifically focuses on your experience as a writer rather than the day jobs you have done!!
