For those of you who have been
reading this diary I have this week had a real boost, for those of you that
haven’t read it before I have still had a boost but it just might not sound so
impressive. Believe me; to me it is hugely impressive.
I have had the
blog (http://jojenner.blogspot.co.uk)
since May last year and had been adding stories intermittently since then. I am
a member of a writing group where we all produce one story a month to a set
theme and I occasionally post my Open University Assignments and weekend
writing challenges there.
As you will by
now know, I am planning on writing a short story every week and posting it on
that blog, however it doesn’t matter how my times I post if no one reads it. I
will quite happily carry on writing stories but I will not improve if people
don’t read them and give my some honest and constructive feedback. So I have
been trying to expand my readership.
I always post my
Open University assignments on the Open University groups I am a member of and
also to all my friends and family on Facebook.
I then decided to increase my profile on LinkedIn. For those of you who
don’t know LinkedIn is like Facebook for business. I have about fifty
connections at the start of the year and I have steadily increased up to over
one hundred by connecting with my connections, connections. I then post the
link to my blog here every week and hope that some of my connection will read
and enjoy my work.
Finally I
decided I needed to embrace Twitter. I had struggled along on Twitter for about
six months not really understanding what it is and how to use it. Then I read a
book by @nicolamorgan and it became apparent. You treat twitter like a pub and
just go it there to chat to people. Whilst you chat to one person he may be
chatting to others who you don’t know but who may have similar interests, so
you start chatting to them. If you like these people start following them and
they might follow you. Like in a pub there will be loud opinionated people you
don’t want to talk to and that is fine, ignore them. The thing to remember is
that it isn’t all about you and you need to engage with other people. So I post
my stories once a week. The rest of the time I just chat. In a little over two
weeks I have doubled my Twitter followers and my blog hits have gone from
twenty a weekend to nearly one hundred.
So based on all
this extra work I was feeling quite pleased with myself and enjoy the fact that
people were reading my stories when the icing on the cake came. I had a phone
call at work about some recruitment we are doing. The young man chatted away to
me about his company and how we needed to work together. All perfectly normal.
Then just as we were finishing our conversation he mentioned we were connected
on LinkedIn and how he was disappointed that the previous week’s story had
ended so abruptly. He was quite insistent that I must continue this story and
expand it. For the first time ever I had spoken to a real human being who I had
never met before and he liked my stories. WOW! I have had positive feedback
before but either from family, who are usually kind, or over the internet. Some
how it feels so much nicer when you can hear someone’s voice as they say they
enjoyed a story you have written.
So off now to
produce this week’s story and also I must remember to continue my research into
how to get my stories out there. Hopefully I can find even more people who
enjoy what I write. If your one of them let me know and if you don’t like
something let me know. I want to get better and I can only do that with your
help.
Until next time – Happy Reading.
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