The Importance of having an audience & how I’m going to grow mine
I’ve written over 70 blogs in the past 16 months. I’ve actually lost count. I’ve just started analyzing visitors. Google analytics tells me I get 177 unique users, monthly, on karsens.com. Most users come from google through search, and are looking for React Native related stuff. Pretty cool!
On Medium I got 740 views in the last month. Wow! And all of this is without sharing a lot! Most is from search and organic.
So yeah… It’s about time to get an audience. Letting people that like my posts know, in a way, that I have published something new! Because they won’t look me up themselves. Most people don’t get to information in that way these days, most people let information get to them.
So about two weeks ago, I decided to move to medium. I came up with a few pro’s and con’s and decided the shift was worth it.
Pro’s of moving to Medium:
- Medium brand = better SEO
- Scalable
- Social proof & conversations
- More features for readers like quotes
- Optional paywall
- I can still link to other places and collect email
- Easy to add stories from other writers to my publication
- Easy to become writer for other publication as it’s on the same platform. I can change the publication of an already existing post without having to edit the post.
- Respondses are also stories, so if I get social and read other stuff, this can also grow my audience. If I do this without having my blog on Medium, it won’t really help much.
Con’s of moving to Medium:
- Loose own design
- No google analytics, (however, stats on medium are basic but sufficient)
- Less about me, more about the content (actually, is this negative?)
In the end, I can do both, so the con’s are completely diminished!
Busy
I’m extremely busy with my coding but I think this is at least as important as coding. If I have an audience that I email every time I publish something new, I have a minimum amount of reads on every new post I publish, which will give the post traction and social proof. Those readers will like and share the post, and this way I. will get more readers. If a new post gets a lot of social proof within a short time after posting it, it may even be featured on Medium and rank higher in recommended posts.
Ultimately, it’s great to have a huge Medium audience and email list. I can divide my audience across multiple publications, because I have many different topics I write about. This will also make sure that people that subscribe are actually interested in what I write. This way I don’t have to feel bad about sharing a new post. It isn’t spammy because people actually asked for it.
A few months back I did a lot of research and made strategies about blogging and getting more audience. These posts stuck with me: Why you don’t crosspost your essays and the Strategic guide to Resposting Content On Medium And LinkedIn. I think they are very insightful.
Here’s a good strategy of a very succesful entrepreneur, Ryan Hoover.
I typically post my essay on my personal domain (ryanhoover.me) and promote the piece on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Quibb. The following day, I cross-post the essay on Medium, Svbtle, sometimes Quora, and most recently, LinkedIn’s Influencer program. -Ryan Hoover, Founder of ProductHunt
I strategized a lot but I never really took action from my strategies. Now I want to chagne this. I will spend an hour every day to achieve these things, until they are achieved in part of my routine! Actionable things that I can do now are the following:
- Keep importing my articles to Medium and putting them in the right publications.
- Upgrade to Ghost 2 so that importing is easier and the editor is more WYSIWYG.
- Decide on the source of truth. And plan of posting:
— Always first post on karsens.com and let some people proof-read it.
— After a few days, post it on Medium. This remains the source of truth.
- Set up IFTTT. Automatically post on Facebook Pages, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Also automatically email my subs, like so, so, so.
- Consistently collect emails at the end of a post using upscribe
Thanks for reading! I am excited and hope to see my audience grow the coming months. If you liked this post, please let me & others know by clapping 👏👏👏, and feel free to share it! I’m also always open to feedback and discussion. Are you totally blown away by what I wrote? 👉 Follow me, check out my other posts, or sign up below 👇👇 . Thank you!🙏