How to Get Your Writing Noticed: the Most Overlooked Secret
Did you know there’s a website called Medium.com you can use to make a full-time living writing, no strings attached? Get exclusive access to your free five-day email course on monetizing Medium.
Let’s cut to the chase — you want people to notice your writing.
If you didn’t, you wouldn’t attempt to publish your work online, you’d just keep it in a journal or on a file in your computer.
Humans crave attention.
It hurts to feel overlooked, ignored, or mired in anonymity.
Many writers feel this way, especially with the explosion of blogging, content creation, self-publishing, and all of the new avenues accessible to online writers today.
You think to yourself, “Why not me? I have something to say. I know I can contribute something meaningful to the conversation.”
But there’s so much noise, right? Millions of articles posted every day — many of which seem to say the exact same thing — how are you going to stand out?
The solution is simple, easy to follow, and straightforward.
Every single successful online writer you follow used the exact same process to get where they are today. It still works, and you can do it too if you would just get out of your own way.
Why Trying to do it “Your Way,” Will Cause You to Fail
The quickest way to becoming a failure in the online writing space is this: get cute.
Ignore all of the tried and true marketing principles, be “authentic,” and blaze your own original path.
Let me be clear here. If you want to write vampire fiction, historical narrative non-fiction, or any other niche topics, my approach won’t work.
I’m talking to the writers who want to either educate, inspire, or entertain people with their writing. Those are the avenues with proven paths to success.
If you want to be the next Stephen King, I don’t know what to tell you, but if you want to write the kind of words people are actively searching for online, the recipe for success is dead simple.
I’ve seen many people look this truth in the eye, ignore it, and wonder why things aren’t working.
The #1 Strategy for Getting Noticed Online
You’re a little fish in a big big big pond, right?
If you start a website, write a post, and hit publish without doing anything else, nothing will happen.
Smart writers utilize the attention of other people’s audiences.
That’s it. No big tricks. No magic formula. Just find out where people are reading the type of material you write and get your work published there.
I’m positive the “build it and they will come mentality,” is the only reason most writers fail.
If you want attention, you have to go out and get it. You don’t deserve it.
Attention isn’t that hard to earn if you aim your sights at the right target.
The Three Step Formula For Growing Influence
The framework for finding people to read your work online is as follows:
Research the landscape for places who feature work by guest contributors.
I write about writing, so I feature my work on popular writing blogs.
Here’s a guest post I published recently.
The blog has hundreds of thousands of readers. It also allows guest contributors to add a link in the bio portion of their posts.
I added a link in my bio to a page where I offered a free guide in exchange for an email address.
The published post resulted in me gaining nearly 100 email subscribers.
You can also post your work right here on Medium, but to get your work in front of enough people, publish your work in one of Medium’s “publications,” like The Writing Cooperative.
I’ve given this tip dozens of times now, and I can count the number of people who followed it with one hand.
Each post I write on Medium helps add dozens or hundreds of people to my list.
I’ve gained hundreds of email subscribers with one post. I’ve seen examples of people gaining thousands of email subscribers with one post.
Put your writing in the right place, and good things will happen.
I remember when sales of my book had a huge spike within a span of a few days.
The spike happened because I published a piece on The Huffington Post and included a link to my book.
This was the same old book, but featuring it in a different placed gave it more traction.
Most of my posts revolve around the idea of getting your work in the front of the right people because it’s the only thing you need to do to succeed.
Wash, Rinse, Repeat
More than one hundred thousand people have read my work with this simple strategy.
From now until I croak, I will publish my work in places with larger audiences than my own over and over and over again, because it works.
It’s how I went from having one email subscriber (me) to thousands. It’s how I went from unknown to growing and progressing.
You can grow your presence online and find more readers, but will you?
How many times do you have to read blog posts telling you exactly what you need to do before you do it?
When is it going to be your turn?
People like you are why I do what I do. I know what it’s like to sit on the fence for years and do nothing. It sucks. Nobody likes to feel stuck.
Take the next step today, use the guides I share with you, and come along on the journey to getting noticed.
If I didn’t think you could do it, I’d stop writing for you, but I know it’s possible to flip the switch and get to work.
I did it.
Now it’s your turn.
