Monday is my normal day to post here, but I’m holding out ‘til Wednesday so I can participate in Alex Cavanaugh’s.Insecure Writers Support Group. Today I just wanted to go over a few brief items.
First off, did anyone catch Rachelle Gardner’s post today About Author Platform? If not, I suggest you go check it out. Then take a gander at those benchmark statistics for Facebook and blog followers and visits. Yikes! Really? We should shoot for 500 Facebook fans and 15,000 monthly pageviews to our blogs? Well, that all sounds good, and I’d certainly love to have those stats, but they seem a tad unrealistic for the majority of writers who blog, most of whom are still unpublished. I’m jumping for joy to have 700 pageviews a month. And maybe someday, when I am agented and on the road to being published, I will have an author page on Facebook, but right now I’m keeping my friends limited to around 125 or so. Personally, I can’t manage much more than that and I won’t simply collect friends for the benefit of …well, collecting friends. That seems a bit insincere to me. All right, you can clearly see the insecure writer in me, huh?
Anyway, moving on…Alex Cavanaugh, along with Matthew MacNish at QQQE, have a new blogfest called the Pay It Forward Blogfest scheduled for October 14th. This blogfest is designed to help introduce us to the many other bloggers out there. Here’s how Alex and Matthew describe it:
“We want this to be an easy post that allows you to meet and follow as many other bloggers as you can. In your post, we would like you to please list, describe, and link to three blogs that you enjoy reading, but that you suspect may fly under the radar of a lot of other bloggers. Or they can be famous blogs, as long as they're awesome.
But don't stop there! Certainly visit and follow all the blogs that are featured in people's posts the day of the blogfest, but those don't have to be the only blogs you visit. You can visit everyone who enters in on the fun, and signs up on the linky list. In the interest of time you don't even have to leave comment. You can just follow, and come back another time.”
So go to either Matthew or Alex’s blogs linked above and sign up on the Linky List to get your blog listed in the blogfest then participate on October 14th. This should be another good one!
Lastly, I would love to thank all of my followers who commented on my post last week about blogging vs. writing vs. life. It seems I really struck a chord common among writers who blog. I know it’s helped me just to know I am not alone and that others feel the exact same way. Well, that’s it for today. I’ll be back on Wednesday with a post for Alex Cavanaugh’s.Insecure Writers Support Group
19 comments:
Looking forward to your Insecure Writers post! I just raced to get a story in before then, and hope that I'll come up with something worthwhile for Wednesday! Even when you take time off, you're still helping others, which really says a lot! Julie
I'll be there on Wednesday too. And I already signed up for the "pay it forward." Holy crap, those stats do seem unrealistic. Hmm. How do people keep up with it all? Do they give up sleep? I have no desire to be glued to a PC non-stop unless it's to write. :)
As far as the platform thing, I really don't see how it is even possible to have that many hits/fans/pageviews when you have no product to offer! I mean really. As unpublished writers, we don't have anything beyond blogging about writing to really offer people. I can see if you had something published or you had something coming out or maybe if you had self-pubbed or had had short stories or articles published, then you would have something that people could check out and become fans of--otherwise it feels like you just want fans to be a fan of you just because you're you. There's nothing wrong with that (speaking of you specifically you are awesome enough to warrant fans) but overall if you're trying to build a platform with the idea that you're collecting readers for your work then shouldn't you have something that they can actually READ? I still don't get how that really works for unpublished people. And yeah, how would one keep up with all that?!
Thanks for the info about Alex's hop. I signed up! (Have been out of the loop - old computer's motherboard died *groans* -
Those stats make my head swim!
Thanks for mentioning both the blogfest and the support group! And 15,000 pageviews? I only get half of that on my blog. Epic fail.
Thanks for the link to the post about Author's Platform. Those stats sounds ridiculous! I signed up for Alex and Matthew's Blog Hop, too. Sounds great!
I couldn’t agree more with you about “collecting friends”
I very seldom look at my page views, I determine success with comments. If I fail to elicit a response from people: what good is it if they click through my pages.
I don’t use face book or twitter; if I get an agent I might open myself up to more social outlets.
Wow, you weren't kidding! *cues twilight zone theme song*
Same page today. Literally. Ha.
Yeah, 15K page views? A MONTH? I'm not Stephen King.
ps I'm gonna go find you on FB :) I'd like to be #126
I would think it would be hard to have that many views even IF the person is published.
15,000 a month? Maybe when we become best sellers. That's a lot. I don't really like FB. Don't know why, just don't. I do have a page and a fan page [which I just set up]. But we can't be everywhere and do everything well. Like you've said.
I'll be on wednesday for IW, and I signed up for Pay it Forward. There are so many people I'd like to Pay it Forward to, who have been so wonderful to me these past few days. Maybe it's something I should do now and then anyway. Ooo! An idea ...
I won't be able to participate in the Fest. But I've got a good reason. We're off to New Brunswick to meet our newest grandson. Hope you have a great time, Nancy, and make lots of new friends.
That's a lot of blog look-sees and facebook friends. Yikes. I'm curious about your Insecure Writers Support Group. Will check back. And thanks for stopping by my blog today.
I'll be seeing you at these fun upcoming events. Thanks for stopping by my blog with a comment too, Nancy.
Be well.
xoRobyn
You will get that following when you are rich and famous. I left Facebook, it was to much like work.
I'm looking forward to your post, Nancy!
As for the platform benchmarks, I'm with Lisa. Those are some pretty unattainable goals for those of us without a product. I wouldn't worry too much yet. ;)
15k page views a month? yikes. I need to step it up? Meh, maybe after I eat some chocolate... ;)
It's probably a good goal after we are published.
I haven't had fifteen thousand page views TOTAL yet, let alone in one month. Maybe someone like George R. R. Martin gets that many hits a month. If so, good for him.
Look forward to your Insecure Writer's post.
I've pledged no more blogfests (or bloghops), but I'm really intrigued by Matt and Alex's idea. What a great way to introduce and be introduced to new blogs. Uh oh, now I'm considering it.
Rachelle Gardner's point is well taken. It's not so important how many page views we receive per week, but that we keep that number steadily growing. Increased number of hits, means a growing audience - not that I'd scoff at 15k page views per week. :)
Hi Nancy,
I'm going to check out what you have done over at Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writers Group. And that will be about the extent of it.
In so far as stats, personally, I'm not terribly bothered. Actually, you cannot, of course, judge the popularity of a blog, for instance, by the number of 'followers' it has. I've noted blogs with a thousand followers and very few comments. Me thinks they might have that kind of total because they have clicked onto many sites, the blogger on that site notices their icon and proceeds to 'follow' the 'popular' blogger. No, I say, ever so humbly, I like being a 'well-kept' secret :)
Take care Nancy and happy writing
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