There are basically three reasons to write: for the love of it, to share your ideas, and for the money. If you’re into freelance writing full-bore, you’ve undoubtedly discovered that writing is only half the job; the other half of the job is marketing. This article describes effective ways you can promote the articles that you write.
Why Write?
1st Reason
I’ve heard many writers assert that they just write for the joy of writing–nothing more, nothing less. That should absolutely be the first and the last reason a person writes. If a writer doesn’t enjoy writing, the other reasons for writing aren’t going to be reason enough to continue writing.
2nd Reason
Sharing your writing with others is a close second on the list of reasons to write. Creation in a vacuum is at best ineffective–at worst, pointless. A writer should be writing to share, assist, and inspire others. If we and others don’t find value in our writing, then we need to reevaluate our goals for being writers.
3rd Reason
The third reason to write is financial. For many, their love of writing and sharing their ideas is enough, and they don’t seek to be rewarded financially for their efforts. For others, though, their objective is to make writing into an income stream–perhaps even a part- or full-time career. Seemingly, the cards are stacked against the writer seeking to earn money at the craft, though, in part because of a deeply entrenched, yet misguided, way of thinking about creativity and money.
Wrong-Headed Ideas About Creativity and Money
There is an all-too-often-accepted mindset that asserts that if you earn money for what you truly enjoy doing then you are selling your soul. Where did this wrong-headed idea come from?
Being a savvy business person does not mean that you are no longer bringing forth valuable, inspiring, creative work to share with others. This negative way of thinking about money and the creation of art does a huge disservice to creative individuals who seek to become professional writers, musicians, artists, and so on.
Sites Where You Can Promote Your Work
Since I started writing for Triond, I am gradually learning more about marketing. I’m discovering that to be a successful freelance writer, you must find a balance between writing articles and promoting the articles you write. In a nutshell, readers are vital to the success of a writer.
I’d like to share a few sites with you where I have found it to be effective to promote my work. Obviously, there are numerous other sites where you can also promote your work. If you would like to, please share the sites you promote your work on by leaving a comment.
Twitter is one of the easiest ways you can promote your work. In fact, you can set up your Triond account to automatically post tweets about your just-published articles to Twitter.
To increase the effectiveness of Twitter, you will need to gain more followers. To do this, start following people who you are genuinely interested in. In turn, many will begin to follow you.
In addition to tweeting notices about your new articles, also tweet helpful information about different topics you write about, freelance writing, ways to earn money, and so on. If you are providing helpful tips and/or interesting information, you will attract more followers.
Facebook can be a highly effective way of promoting your writing, especially if you have a lot of Facebook friends. However, I have been resistant to posting links to my work on Facebook. I don’t want to go from using the site to exclusively connect with friends to just promote my work. However, I think I’ve found a good middle ground with this. In my “Information” section under my profile picture, I added my Triond profile page. I also periodically upload a link to certain articles I think would be of interest to my Facebook friends.
Note, there is a Triond application that will automatically post notices about all of your new articles to your Facebook wall. I have chosen not to use this, but it is available for those who would like all of their articles to appear on Facebook.
Fark
If you publish funny, bizarre, strange, ironic, weird, or offbeat articles, then consider posting links to your material on Fark. Fark is an anti-news news site that receives about 4 million unique visitors each month.
A few links submitted to Fark are approved for posting on the main Fark page. Articles that are approved often receive thousands and thousands of views. Sometimes the servers on which these greenlighted articles are hosted “fark,” which means they crash due to the high volume of traffic generated.
Other Sites to Promote Your Work On
I’ve also dabbled on the following sites, though my knowledge of them is still in the early stages:
- StumbleUpon
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Shetoldme
- Dropjack
- Digg
- Propeller
- Mixx
- Newsvine
You can learn more about these sites from other Triond members by simply going to the “Explore” section on Triond. Triond writers are an invaluable resource to learn more about how and where to promote your work.
To successfully promote your articles on social networking sites, you must invest time, energy, and patience into learning your way around each site, learning each site’s protocol, and building a network of friends. Best of luck!
September 11th, 2009 at 4:33 am
Wow, this is some great stuff mate. I liked the pic with the girl in the t-shirt. “I sold my soul for this t-shirt’ lol
September 11th, 2009 at 6:48 am
Great informative article. Like it!
September 11th, 2009 at 9:21 am
This was helpful, motivating and well written. We forget that it’s not JUST about creating good work.
September 11th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Good post. Some bookmarking sites are new to me.
September 11th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Great post,I use most of these anyway but some are new to me
September 11th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Promoting articles can be done in so many different ways it is actually pretty scary but a brilliant article by you and I do agree that some of the ideas youve given here can be put to much use. Nice stuff…
September 11th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Very informative. Great article!
September 11th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Very good article! I am on some social networks but I really do not promote as much though… Thanks for the great article!
September 11th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
thanks for the info. much appreciated.
September 11th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Sound advice! I use Facebook occasionally, but like you, I don’t make a habit of it.
September 11th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Thanks for the helpful information, I don’t promote my work to friends either.
September 11th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
good articel i liked it
September 11th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Great info. I would add that forums specific to your topic are also great places to promote.
September 12th, 2009 at 1:01 am
Good info for those who can actually do the work required in promoting their articles. Not only should you register at these places, you must form network of friends who read each others’ submissions. This work is bigger than what is involved in writing, but important, nevertheless.
September 12th, 2009 at 3:38 am
Good article and sensible approach. Thanks for sharing. I also agree with Uma Shankari that marketing articles in the manner suggested often take more effort than actually writing it. It may be partly due to my slow computer.
September 12th, 2009 at 3:41 am
Tremendously helpful, thank you.
September 12th, 2009 at 11:57 am
You are a great writer!
September 13th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
I found stumbleupon to be a good source of small traffic, really anything people can see your work is great. I like giving a person the option to look aside from just stumbling though
September 16th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Thanks. I find this post useful. Amazingly I have those three reasons in me.
September 26th, 2009 at 9:16 am
I like this article very much. Thanks for sharing
September 27th, 2009 at 4:23 am
This was very helpful to me, so far (after triond) I get most of my views from StumbleUpon.
October 6th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Great piece… my top article is nearly at 1000 views now, from doing nothing more than posting it on some of the sites that you’ve listed – especially Reddit. That may not be much to the experienced guys and girls, but that many views would have been inconceivable to me a few days ago. I’ll have to try this Tweet thing, next.
Marketing is not what I expected. It’s a relief to find out that promoting your work isn’t the same thing as being the life of the party, a spammer, or a suck up.
I agree about the friends thing. Not only do I not promote my work to friends, but I regret telling friends and family as that I even write here. Everything gets analyzed and sometimes, when you know your niece or your mom might possibly read your stuff, you can’t really let yourself go and write with the filter off. :-/