Even though being an author has always been my ultimate goal, I started making a name for myself as a book blogger first. Catching hold of the publishing life isn’t a fast process. My debut just released this year, but I’ve been blogging for 7 years, and I’m so glad I did! Writing is equal parts glittering magic and long stretches of terrifying waiting, so blogging provided an excellent distraction, plus built an audience who one day would want to see what havoc I could wreak in 300-pages.
CG Drews
I’ve never been the world’s biggest blogger, but here are some tips of how I went about building PaperFury.com:
Consistency. I am nothing if not madly in love with being clockwork! I don’t post heavily and then disappear. I keep a super regular schedule so people know what and when to expect me. This also stops my audience forgetting me!
Friendliness. When I was scraping my book blog off the ground and getting PaperFury set up on all my social media platforms – I focused on meeting people. The book community quickly realised I was here to chat! Make friends! Being friendly earned me a lot of interaction very quickly.
Supporting Others. I made sure to be “everywhere”…well, as much as I could! I commented on other’s blogs and supported their work. In return? They supported mine.
Fun content. I’m known for my comedic tweets and I absolutely love that. It’s my goal to make people laugh! If something makes you feel good, you come back to it.
Individuality. It took me a while to find my blogging “voice”, but you know what? I just learned to be myself. Make my own style of jokes. Let my sense of humour, which can be part dark and part nonsense, run wild.
Current And Relatable Content. It’s important to be unique, I totally believe that, but it’s also super important to be in on the conversation. With book blogging, I liked to be reading and reviewing the new books and engage in the latest discussions. Keep things current. Make my platform safe and welcoming. If people relate to what you’re saying, they stick around.
Stay On Brand. This is important so people recognise you! Keep all your blog URLs and social media handles consistent. Stay true to your themes and voice. Don’t change up your profile pictures too often. Make it so that when people see you, they recognise you.
Become Known For Something. So not only am I known for funny tweets and ridiculous jokes, I talk about some topics so so much that people connect me to them. Like “cake” for instance! I’ve blogged about my love of cake so much, that it’s become a running joke. Cake, dragons, glitter, rainbows and stabby books: people expect me to talk about them and I do.
Be An Actual Human. Be relatable. You are absolutely allowed to be private about your personal life, but also be real. Life isn’t perfect and your audience appreciates knowing you sometimes lie on the carpet and howl as well.
Time. I clambered so so slowly up the mountain of blogging. So put in the hours. Hard work absolutely DOES pay off, but it rarely happens overnight.
