Smashing Magazine, a great web­site deal­ing with all things web design, had a really great arti­cle the other day titled “10 Ways to Put Your Content in Front of More People.”

Not all of these ideas are applic­a­ble to everyone–some are quite specif­i­cally techy.  Most cre­atives don’t really need an Adobe Air app on someone’s desk­top, and they don’t need to cre­ate an API or wid­get (although wid­gets are often pro­duced for authors by larger pub­lish­ers.  I don’t know that they get used by fans much, but they do get made).

However, the basics, like Facebook, Twitter, guest posts, and more are all very applic­a­ble meth­ods.  Using mul­ti­me­dia is still some­what rare in the author cir­cles I fre­quent, so it’s open for some real inno­va­tion.  Book trail­ers are just a start.  I’m work­ing with one client on some­thing that takes advan­tage of all these options.  More on that when it’s done.

My approach for my author clients is that any read­ers of their online media pres­ence are poten­tial read­ers of their books.  But I don’t have them treat their online pres­ence as a giant adver­tis­ing plat­form for those books.  No, the key to get­ting more peo­ple to look at your con­tent, above all else, is to write com­pelling con­tent.

There are tricks to mak­ing your web con­tent more com­pelling when it’s in a blog style for­mat.  The specifics of those tech­niques I save for my con­sult­ing clients.  In gen­eral, pay atten­tion to the kinds of posts that go viral, get retweeted and linked all over.  And match those post styles, but within your own niche.

Of sec­ondary impor­tance, after the con­tent, is estab­lish­ing a good niche and thus an iden­tity.   If you main­tain a niche, cre­ate a solid iden­tity (and thus some author­ity), and write in a link­able and web-friendly for­mat about com­pelling sub­jects, you’ll grow read­ers like crazy.

As many blogs out there as there are, peo­ple are always look­ing for some­thing new that grabs them by the throat.  Something that edu­cates them, or titil­i­ates. There are a lot of ways you can be com­pelling.  Hell, we all strug­gle with that in the non-online types of writ­ing we have to do.  But it’s not enough to just blog about your day and your word count, or your lat­est pho­tos.   It’s fine if you don’t mind what your audi­ence size is online, but if you’re inter­ested in build­ing a fol­low­ing, you have to take it further.

That’s what I’ve been try­ing to do with these posts, appear­ances on pod­casts, and so on.   And to be nice about all of it.  I gen­uinely enjoy help­ing peo­ple with this stuff, and shar­ing what I’ve learned.  So the extra read­ers are really just a bonus on top of  the main motivation.

Tagged as: audience building, blogging, content strategies, creativity, online media