WRITING TIPS: 5 Free Ways to Promote Your Work

When I’m not busy helping North Wales businesses with their digital marketing, I try my best to show some of our less experienced Vultures how to share their work to reach the biggest audience. There’s more competition than ever to have your voice heard online, which is why you should never become complacent with the way you market your writing.

If you feel like all you do is write and don’t see much back from your hard work, it could just be because you aren’t sharing it in the right places or are unintentionally missing big opportunities. You don’t have to spend any money to promote your work, which can be an easy trap to fall into for more small businesses and authors.

Here are just a few quick tips to help you promote your writing without breaking the bank.

 

1. Lean on your friends

You never really know who your friends are until you ask them for favours. However, if you can bear to run the risk of being taken off some Christmas card lists, you should talk to your nearest and dearest to see if they can lend you a hand. Whether they’re sharing your work on their Facebook or retweeting and giving you a #FF, a great friend should be happy to help push you in the right direction.

 

2. Facebook groups

Are you in many Facebook groups? Chances are that you aren’t; it’s one of the most underrated aspects of the social giant. There’s a group for almost everything, including plenty of places to share your writing. Whether you have a manuscript that needs reviewing or a new blog post that deserves some more views, you don’t want to discredit how powerful this marketing opportunity could be for you. Better yet, you might even be able to meet some marketing partners who you can collaborate with long-term to share each other’s writing.

 

3. Guest posting

If you’re still one of the many who believe that guest posting/blogging is a waste of time, stop that right now. It has an unwarranted stigma to it, mostly down to how spammy some SEOs have been in the past with it. Here’s the simple solution to that: don’t be spammy. Don’t write the absolute minimum of 300 words and then pack the content with links back to your portfolio and don’t write for a disreputable website that won’t do your reputation any favours, either. Put the effort in to create an authoritative, worthwhile article and you will reap the rewards.

 

4. Find a writing community

It’s true that it’s more difficult than ever to have your writing read online, but that just means there are more avenues than ever to explore, too. With more writers on the web than you could probably count, so too have the amount of communities dedicated to celebrating and helping them. Places like Goodreads and LitReactor are two of the most frequented, but you can’t go wrong with any of these, either.

 

5. Email, email, email

Forget your word processor, cached copy of the entire Wikipedia site, or motivational posters, your email account should be your biggest asset as a writer. Talent sometimes just isn’t enough for modern authors and bloggers; half the battle comes from having the fruits of your labor reaching enough people. Have a new article to promote about video games? Contact a gaming website to see if they might link to it. Written a review of a new album? Get in touch with the band and their PR. If you’re worried about how to phrase an outreach email, just keep it simple and friendly, like this basic template I usually stick to and regularly see results with:

Hey,

How are you? How is [MONTH] treating you?

Just thought I’d reach out to see if you might be interested in something I’ve put together about [SUBJECT]: [LINK]

It would mean a lot if you could give it a read and maybe even share it with your audience?

I won’t blather on, just let me know what you think if you get the chance.

Warm regards,
[NAME]

Make sure you don’t do the opposite and write a Tolkien epic when sending emails. We receive a lot of unsolicited PR emails here and nothing loses our interest quicker than opening one up to see that it’s longer than the instruction manual for building a castle.

Those are just a few of the quick tips that I have to give about cost-effective ways to promote your writing. Be sure to keep an eye on our Facebook page for more updates!