Janice, I noted at the bottom of the post that I updated and expanded the article. I don’t remove old comments (relevant or not) when I revise and refresh content.

About Substack vs your own blog…I’m working on a blog post on this topic, so I love your timing! I’ll tell you what I told one of my book marketing coaching clients 2 months ago: Why do you want to send all the traffic your content will generate to Substack and not your own site? One of the best reasons to blog is for SEO. It generates the relevant keywords your audience will use to find your site. Site traffic can pay off in many, many ways (but I’ll skip that topic for now). Moving your blog (which is what you’ll be doing) to Substack will hurt your SEO. Yes, your current content will stay on your site and help. But search engines like sites that continue to add content. You’ll lose that advantage.

I hope that helps!

Sandy

Sounds smart, Gail! Just make sure you share links to your blog posts on social media so that people know you’ve got great content there and come back for more. I’m glad you like the face-to-face stuff — so many don’t!

Sandy

I appreciated this post, esp. with my debut novel coming out soon. I’d much rather speak w/a group and connect face-to-face than do ANYTHING online, but I have been working on my blog.

So I hope those two combined will do the trick –probably not realistic, but since when are writers realistic? LOL

Dean, if you aren’t writing what people want to read, or if your social media posts aren’t written in a way that makes people think, “I need to read that,” then it will always be a struggle. Checking Google Analytics to see what posts have generated the most traffic, then writing more of those types of posts, might help.

Also, nudge nudge NUDGE your guest bloggers to share the link to their post with their networks. Many forget to do that, so you need to ask.

Good luck. I know it isn’t easy, but it sounds like you have faith in your product, and that’s important.

Sandy

Good morning, Sandy,
Thank you for the suggestions. Here’s where I am with the blog. After talking with a marketing consultant I’m trying to do two things: post every week, same day, predictably, and vary both topics and, I hope, guest bloggers. I do link all those posts to the social media I use–FB, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. I’ll just keep at it, I guess, trying to improve the product itself and also trying to hook up with friends and acquaintances who have websites and are willing to share contacts. If you can think of anything else, I’d love to hear it. I can do the choosing of topics, hustling of guests, and the writing. The selling just escapes me.

Blog traffic is a slow build, Dean, which makes it frustrating. Plus, you need to be writing things that people want to read — that’s easier for some than for others. Have you talked to any of your target book readers about what would interest them? Are you sharing links to each post on the social networks that your target audience uses?

Sandy

Thanks for that link, Terry. I love that you made lemonade out of that big lemon — that’s a great reminder for all of us to do the same when things don’t go as hoped or expected.

And thanks for taking the time to comment. We always learn something from you!

Sandy

Thanks for the encouraging message. I agree authors need to keep learning but to take action. Recently I wrote about When An Event Fails Your Expectations. I tell about meeting the executive director of that library and asking for name of the person who adds books to their collections. I sent that person a book yesterday and heard today they received it and were adding it to their collection. There is always a way to make good things happen.

Terry