Finding and Keeping an Audience

Last time I talked about creating your Niche. I asked if you needed one and determined it was helpful if not completely necessary.

I also talked about knowing and listening to your audience.

But, you asked, how do I even get an audience? How do I know what they want?

I'll answer these questions based on my own experience as a professional blogger/writer. I'll take you through my thought processes and the steps I took. Some of which worked out and some of which, well, didn't.

Every writer is different. Not only in the sense we all write in different genres and different subjects in different ways, but also on an intrinsic level. Our personalities are different. Our cultures and references, levels of experience and education, the way we express our innermost thoughts and imagination.

Because we are all so different, no one way will work for everyone. I can only offer the lessons I've learned, the things I've tried, and how well (or not) they've worked for me.

There are many writers out there who are more successful and more prolific than I. And they most likely have a different method to the writer's madness that seems to have possessed each of us on this platform.

Let's begin.

Personal Journey

A few years ago, a friend of mine who was in the indie publishing business suggested I write a memoir.

I have heard this so, so many times in my life. "You should write a book."

I had a title for my memoir, and an image in my brain. I got some notebooks and started brainstorming with pen in hand.

I wrote before work. I wrote at work after my duties are done and my client was sleeping. I wrote and wrote and wrote.

I reached a point, somewhere in the early 90s, past which I could not move.

I stopped writing. I was blocked.

It didn't really matter, though, because who would read my memoir, anyway? I'm not famous. No matter how interesting my life might be to me and to those who know me, strangers most likely wouldn't care.

Two years went by and I didn't write and I didn't paint and every therapist and psychologists suggested I needed to be creative.

"You thrive on creativity," they would tell me.

Every treatment plan included, "must write at least 15 minutes per day."

I started counting and adding every second I spent writing words. I counted Facebook posts and text messages.

Eventually, the treatment plans included, "must write in a journal."

Some people find out very easy to write in a journal, detailing what they did that day or the previous day.

They'll write about people they saw on the way to work out conversations they overheard.

My life was boring

Dan Brown, the Author who wrote The Da Vinci Code teaches a Masterclass. His first lesson is to write down a few lines of conversation you overheard that day.

I couldn't do that, though. I didn't go anywhere but work and home. My client was an older lady who had white matter disease and didn't necessarily make sense mist of the time. She asked a lot of questions. She repeated the same questions throughout the day. My life was boring.

I just couldn't find anything to journal about. Unless I was angry. And then I would vent all over the page. But I wasn't often angry.

I was in the midst of the worst of my son's depression and subsequent hospitalizations. Every day was much like the day before. I didn't particularly want to detail each and every little thought I had.

Instead, I took to the internet. I started searching for journaling prompts. I came across an article that talked about writing and earning money. It was interesting.

I saw it was published on Medium so I crossed on over to that platform, bought a $5.00 membership and read everything I could.

I learned I could write for Medium and make money!

I quickly signed up to the Partner Program and started writing.

Nobody read my work.

I didn't have an audience.

I mean, nobody besides my mother and my brothers.

My reading focused changed from what to write to earn money to how to find an audience.

I had to sift through hundreds of articles. I found some common themes and started a trial and error campaign.

Here's what worked for me:

Social Media

Just about every article advised to create social media accounts.

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Instagram

Reddit

Quora

I was only familiar with Facebook. So, I opened a Twitter account, a LinkedIn account, and an Instagram account.

I began linking my Medium stories to these accounts and slowly saw my number of followers go from 3 to 12 to 20.

I got a little discouraged. I went back to the drawing board (Medium) and started reading more articles. I discovered a few that told me how to find followers.

F4F

Follow For Follow

The most consistent advice I received was to spend each day following between 10 and 50 accounts. The theory being that at least some of them would follow me back. And yes, this worked a bit. I gained more followers on Medium, Twitter, and Facebook. More people were reading my Medium stories. More people were clapping.

At that time, Medium paid authors by claps they received. This paradigm changed shortly after I joined in September 2019. Now, Medium paid based on read time.

Communities

On Facebook and Twitter I discovered a bunch of communities and pages. Twitter brought me #WritingCommunity and Facebook had all sorts of Medium pages.

Those Facebook pages were basically clap for clap and read for read and follow for follow pages.

Still, I joined all the communities and groups and pages I could find. I made connections with other members. We interacted and some of us are friends to this day.

Interaction

Once these social media accounts were established, I had to maintain them. I had to read, clap, and comment on Medium stories linked on Facebook and then like and comment under the links.

I had to heart and comment on Twitter.

I had to create clever poems and photograph them with cute drawings to post on Instagram.

I had to reply to all the DM's and group invitations I was getting. I didn't more time on Social Media trying to find an audience than I did writing for any audience I might find.

It was exhausting.

Life happens while you're busy doing something else. My son's crises was ramping up and my attention shifted from finding followers on social media to his needs.

I stopped going on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. I never really jumped into the Reddit or Quors pool.

My follower count never decreased on Medium or Twitter. Even when I began to unfollow people.

In fact, my following keeps going up.

I have made a concerted effort to unfollow people with whom I have little to no interaction.

Please keep in mind, all of this takes time and patience. I stayed in September of 2019.

I started blogging on read.cash in April, 2021. I've only got around 280 subscribers.

I started noise.cash the same day I started read.cash. I have more followers there than here.

I try to remember to promote my read.cash articles on noise.cash, Twitter, and Telegram where I have access to a much larger potential audience.

You have an audience, now what?

Once you have an audience, the tricky parts are listening and catering to your audience. This might be before or after you've found/created your niche.

I'm pretty sure my niche is, "Personal Essay."

Anything I write is colored by my experiences. As well be anything you write.

Everything I write resonates on some level with someone.

So I don't really pay to much attention to my niche.

I DO pay a great deal of attention to my audience.

Engagement, engagement, engagement

The best way to cater to your audience is to engage with them. They will tell you what they like, what they don't, what they think of your content, what they think of YOU personally.

The platforms on which I write all have a comments section.

I read and respond to every single comment.

I remember the first time I commented on a piece and the writer responded. I felt so special!

When I read books, leave a review, and the author takes the time to respond - wow!

Whether you agree with the comments or not, read them. Respond to them.

I try to respond with kindness. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes my emotions get the better of me and I am forced to apologize later on. I always apologize!

When the comments get nasty and unproductive, that's when to stop responding. You can do so with a statement, "This conversation is becoming unproductive, I'm not going to participate anymore."

If you make such a statement, stick by it. Stop participating.

On this platform, it isn't enough to only write and reply to comments. You also have to be generous with your time and your tips.

Read other writers. Comment and thumbs up or down. Give a tip. I definitely tip nearly every first comment under my stories. I try to give between 2 and 5 cents to everyone who comments the first time. And even sometimes tip replies.

Self promotion

This one is huge and probably the most difficult for me. I feel weird promoting my own work. It feels like bragging or begging. It is, however, incredibly necessary.

How will all these followers you've gained appreciate your writing if you don't tell them about it? You have to link your stories to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

You have to let them know you've written something. You have to sell them on the idea to stop scrolling and go check out what you've written.

Link your articles, blog posts, stories, and other content on every single social media you have. (I'm still really bad at this part)

It's also a good idea to boost your articles if the platform had that feature. This one does!

Newsletters and email lists

The most oft cited means of self promotion is to have a newsletter and an email list.

I've not had much luck with these. I had a few subscribers, but not many would open the emails. I had very little engagement and I gave up.

After all, of I want my mom to read my stuff, I'll just text her a link.

Others have had a huge success rate with their newsletters and email lists. So much so that now that I've gained a large enough following, I might give it another go, myself.

Mixed Media

Mixed Media is a term artists use to describe their piece when more than one material is used.

For example, "Oil pastels and melted crayon on sheetrock."

I've applied it to writing, or any content creation, as well.

Finding and keeping an audience in this day and she means expanding your horizons. Mixing your Media.

You might find a larger audience for your writing if you also make videos.

I'll cite @scottcbusiness and @CryptoMax as two examples. Not to mention read.cash Santa Claus @MarcDeMesel. These three people have a huge following and are great successes. They each have mixed media for their self promotion.

I might not agree with everything they have to say, but I'm fascinated enough to watch their videos and live streams. I follow their Twitter accounts. I subscribe to their noise.cash channels. I engage with them as much as possible.

These guys really know how to gain and keep an audience.

I'm going to conclude this article before I once again, somehow, lose the bottom half. I first lost half the article on Thursday.

And again just now as I was adding images.

Grrrrrrr

Frustrating!

I am too distracted, apparently.

In conclusion, wherever and however you find your audience, you have to keep them. In order to keep them you have to engage with them. You have to listen to them.

For example, this article is in response to a comment left on another article. I've also gotten many comments asking me to write more tutorials.

So, I am.

Now it's time for engagement! Test me! See if I don't respond to all of you!

Meanwhile, be generous with your reading time, upvotes, comments, and tips. You never know, that person may be your next audience member.

Til next time!

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All uncaptioned images are license free from Unsplash.

All screenshots are my own from the past two weeks or so.

First and lead image Photo by Jonas Jacobsson on Unsplash