How To Blog (104): Resources and Social Media

You’re remarkable. No, really. You’ve set up your website, maybe written your first blog post, put together graphics and captions, and now you’re almost ready to publish your first post. Are you excited? You should be!

The first time I pushed “PUBLISH” I was so anxious, I thought I was going to vomit! Hopefully, you’ll feel more confident than I was and know you have a cheering section here.

In this short post, I’m going to give you a few more resources and ideas for building your platform.

Ready? Let’s go.

*“Don’t forget this as you are becoming a writer/author: Nothing is more important than family.”* ~Leigh Mackenzie (photo credit: Kim Harris)

Resources:

Jeff Goins is an author/blogger/speaker. He has been a great resource for me as a writer and blogger. (Click HERE for some terrific FREE content for writers. At www.creativelive.com you can pay for more teaching and videos.)
If you get on The New York Times bestselling author Jerry Jenkins‘ email, he has great content you can get directly to your inbox (https://jerryjenkins.com). His information is fantastic.
Ally, from “The Modern Mary“, has a great post with resources at her site for Christian bloggers. I just found out that Ally recommended my blog as one of the “Top 25+ blogs for Christian Moms to Read“, too! WOW! I’m a little teary-eyed now… I have never met her… or knew that she knew me… And Billy Hallowell from Pureflix.com just wrote that I am one of the top 15 Christian Mommy Bloggers in the U. S.! Whhhhaaaattt???)

Subscribers, Mailing Lists, and Social Media:

Friends, what I haven’t mentioned before to you is that in the writing industry, the only subscribers who count are email subscribers according to Mr. Goins, my friend, international bestselling author and inspirational speaker, Donna Partow, and other industry professionals.
Social media is amazing for finding people who want to read what you’re producing. Start with your family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers. You can experiment with finding your niche and your voice and your audience here. From there you can intentionally grow your audience as your network grows.
Something to think about: Social follows on FB, IG, Twitter and the rest are not considered true marketing connections because the algorithms change constantly and your post that showed up in someone’s feed yesterday will not necessarily show up today. Plus, FB, IG, and other platforms can crash at any vital promotional moment leaving you at their mercy, whereas your own personal site is almost ALWAYS under your control.
That said, you still want to market yourself through social media to find the people who want to regularly receive your emails. Ya gotta think about both from the start.
If you have a four-figure email subscriber list, Jeff Goins says you have the potential of having a six-figure income. Our buddy, JG, is huge on monetizing and not being a starving writer.

I’m loving time on Instagram these days – do come join the party over there! Facebook has been changing their algorithms repeatedly and unexpectedly and making it less fun to be on that platform so I’m not hanging there much these days.

That’s it for now. Comment or email me with your questions.

If you’ve somehow missed my other posts in this series, be sure to click to read #101, #102, #103, and #105!