Connections: Success Story

We have discussed several ways that writers can connect with others – writers, readers, editors, publishers, etc. – online during this month. If you would like to look back through the posts, then here are the links:

1. A Writing Blog

2. Social Media (if you’d like to connect with me on Facebook or Twitter, please leave your links below in the comment section!)

3. Writing Platforms

4. Guest Blogging.

Today, I would like to share an example of what I have been able to accomplish with my writing, through my online connections. This is only the beginning of my success story, but from it you can see just how much the above combination can help you to achieve.

I started this blog in January 2015. Originally, it was a challenge for a year on Tumblr, although I moved it to WordPress at the end of January. At first, my plan was to post one short story or poem every two weeks, but this quickly increased to one post per week, then two posts per week, and by the end of the year three. At the same time, my blog helped me to gain new experiences that went beyond these posts.

I connected my blog to social media and made a Facebook page for myself (which is, I admit, a weak point). My Twitter has been quite successful at helping me to connect with other people, including writing and book promoters. But it was my blog that enabled me to make the best – and the most important – connections, as by chance I followed an independent publisher who were looking for a guest blogger to produce writing tips for them. I had never made any writing tips before, but I figured I had at least enough experience writing to give it a shot. In March, despite my lack of confidence, I sent them a sample writing tip, and was accepted as a guest blogger.

For the following 18 week period, I sent them 3 writing tips each Friday night, which the publisher then posted on their blog throughout the week. This allowed me to gain new followers, who found me through my writing tips, and gave me a great confidence boost. I was also placed on the publisher’s email list, as they could now tell that I was genuinely interested in writing for them.

Later on in the year, I saw that the publisher was looking for poems to be featured in a printed anthology, and submitted a poem. Soon after that, I was contacted about a publishing competition, which was the opportunity that led to the publication of my debut collection of poetry, City of the World.

During this time, I also discovered several writing platforms where I feature my most popular poems, advertise my book, and promote my blog. This has allowed me to gain more traffic and discover new writers who have helped to inspire my writing.

This is hopefully only the beginning of me, but I feel it demonstrates a great deal about the power of the internet in connecting us with people and companies that can help us to achieve our goals. What will your online success story be? You won’t know what you’re able to accomplish until you start posting and connecting!

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This month’s theme is CONNECTIONS. If you have written something that you would like me to share on this blog on the theme of connecting with other writers online, then please post a link in the comments or email me on lauramarieclark1@gmail.com with the subject: Connections.