Please Help A Blogger

~ beetleypete

I was contacted by British blogger Ian Swinton yesterday. You may recall that I featured a guest post from him a while back.

Guest Post: Ian Swinton

This is what he had to say.

My ideal scenario is to be part of the wider blogging community. To read your posts, to share our work and generally help each other out. Whether that be in WordPress or on social media.

I am asking for help in joining the blogging community in a number of ways. Firstly, I would like to know of any tips on Twitter. Any accounts that you would recommend to follow and why? Are there any twitter chats worth joining in with? Any other tips for twitter that you would love to share?

I am keen to join the blogging community on Facebook. Can you recommend any Facebook communities, groups or pages that would be worthwhile in joining? I am specifically looking for areas to share my work, read others blog posts and be able to join in with commenting and sharing.

The internet can be a lonely place for a blogger when trying to reach out. A lack of views, comments or general interest in what you have spent time producing can lead to logging out and never returning which would be a shame, don’t you think?

We all start out at the beginning but some grow and some fall away, hopefully with all your help, I can grow and be part of a great community.

Ian’

As you can see, he is asking for advice and tips about expanding his contact with our blogging community.
I am not on Facebook, but I know many of you are. Although I do use Twitter, I only promote my posts on it as a rule, and do not engage that much with tweets.

So, please rally round, and let Ian know your thoughts, ideas, or suggestions.
I am sure I can count on some of the members of our great blogging circle to help him out.

Thanks in advance, Pete.

67 thoughts on “Please Help A Blogger”

  2. I don’t share my stuff on facebook because I have a lot of family and friends on there and I don’t like to be questioned about something I blog about.

    I more so have my page listed on my bio on Twitter and occasionally will share my posts on there. To be honest, I myself am trying to find motivation to keep writing. I don’t get a lot of views on my posts. And trying to get people to communicate back is nearly impossible. But maybe it’s that I just haven’t marketed myself enough yet, or I haven’t found my niche yet.

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    1. Thanks for your thoughts, BH.
      You don’t say how long you have been blogging, but it took me at least four and a half years to develop the level of engagement I enjoy today.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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    2. Don’t give up Braveheart! The “trick” is to interact with other bloggers on their blogs, following and commenting, not just leaving “Like”. If you comment, you often get comments back and also… new followers because they want to know a bit more about the person they are talking to. Main thing for me though is “quality” – not quantity.

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  3. I don’t do any social media but I’d take Maggie’s advice. I’m happy with my WordPress “readership” because of the responses and interaction. So WordPress and maybe Blogger is where I’d put my energy – I’m thinking, just thinking mind – to start a blog on Blogger, but as I barely can keep up with my WP interactions, another blog may be overkill. Still, a different venue… I could re-post a lot of my WP content. But for that to mean anything I’d have to nurture a whole new line of “followers”.

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    1. I have two blogs on WordPress, and that is all I can mange. I have a couple of friends who use Blogger, but I don’t have time to search out their posts and keep up with them.
      Thanks for your thoughts, Sha’Tara.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  5. Ian:
    You are right about the Internet being lonely. If you think about it there are minions (probably billions) of us casting our words, photos, music, knowledge, opinions, and stories into cyberspace every day, I have posted a blog for a few years now. Mine is not successful in terms of numbers of comments, followers or the like. It is successful in one way—it is a letter to old friends and they read and comment (by phone as they are older and not really “hip” to the computer age). I do have a small number of bloggers who comment regularly. I make sure I reply, I go to their sites and while I am not good about always clicking the “I was here” button called “like” nor commenting. I do from time to time and I look to those few for advice or help when I need it. However, were I interested in becoming more fully immersed in the blogging community I would do what Pete does. He comments regularly o other bloggers’ posts. He responds to every comment on his posts. He generally reserves politics for another blog, not his beeetleypete (I do not do that, so in mine, I put my left foot forward frequently—that may turn off followers).
    Notice it is not a site to go to, it is not another platform, it is attention to the community over time that rewards Pete with a central place in a lot of our lives.
    I do hope this was helpful.
    Warmest regards, Ed

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  6. I’m not a Twitter person, so I can’t help your friend out there. But as far as the blogging community, a person needs to be serious about it, work hard at it and treat your visitors as you wish to be treated – or they’ll find you are out for yourself and NOT part of a community.

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  7. Hello Ian, you should follow Sally Cronin @sgc58 and Debby Kaye @pokercubster on twitter. They are both influencers with big followings and are very active on their blogs and twitter. On FB you can follow Authors/Bloggers Rainbow support club which is a very active group. Best of luck.

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  9. I don’t think I can offer much advice.

    As you know, I do have a little WordPress blog on which I occasionally post a limerick or photo. It has around a hundred followers. Most of them probably found my blog by way of beetleypete; some may be fellow tweeps who clicked on the auto-generated Twitter link out of curiosity; and a few may have stumbled upon it by searching for limericks on the internet. As for Twitter, I’ve slowly built up a following of around 950 users, but have done so primarily by replying to other tweets (many of which are of the political variety) rather than by composing my own. Although I almost never retweet, I do realize that retweeting is an effective way to build community. I am also on Facebook, where I have a rarely viewed personal account. But I also share with my composer partner two Facebook accounts related to music promotion/production. Those accounts will probably see more traffic in the future.

    In short, I participate in social media, but not in a big way. I’ll check out Ian’s blog, but I must warn him that the only blog I follow religiously is beetleypete.

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    3. Hi, Ian! I think Pete’s advice re blogging is the best – you get out of it what you put in. You need to interact, but also give yourself time; not everything happens at once. You need to keep posting, but on the other hand, it’s not ‘homework’ – if you don’t enjoy it there’s no point whatsoever. I think WP, although extremely annoying in some ways, is the best for building a community, and for content. I’m not on FB, Twitter is good for news etc, and IG I like for any kind of visual arts ( the artist community is very encouraging and friendly), but I can’t stand ‘influencers’, and people who keep posting selfies and photos of their lunch, so I don’t follow any of that. Best of luck!

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  11. Hey Pete. I am on FB but that’s just a page I don’t have an account so yeah I don’t know much about it. Twitter, instagram.. All that not my cup of tea. I don’t do much promotion but yeah he should open a Pinterest account. It’s great I get most of my views from there. Ian should also try Tumblr. It’s great and LinkedIn, I don’t check them much but my main recommendation is Pinterest. I have 877k monthly unique viewers and 253 followers. I will go over and follow him. Will try my best to support our fellow blogger. Great post Pete. Can’t say no to support my mentor’s friend, can I now?? 😊😉😁✌

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    1. You are very kind, Suzan. The advice about Pinterest is excellent. I use photos from there for some blog posts, but I don’t currently have an active account myself.
      Best wishes, Pete. 🙂 🙂

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  12. I blogged into a vacuum for about 4 years writing for myself, but about a year ago I began to find other bloggers with roughly similar interests (e.g. Pete) and had more time to read them and make comments and unexpectedly found I was getting more views and even a small number of followers, some who comment every time I post. So without going all out in a single-minded “bums on seats” kind of way, it’s being interested in others that counts (just like in real life).

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      2. It’s a site to promote authors’ blog posts. You join a ‘tribe’ and link your blog to it. It then appears in the blog roll along with everyone else’s in the tribe. You then share others’ posts by tweeting them, and they then share yours. Usually tribe organisers ask for a certain amount of Twitter followers first.

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  15. I don’t use FB or Twitter or any other form of social media to promote my blogs (and yes I have more than one). I found that it takes time to build up a genuine following of interested bloggers and agree with Maggie that it is the quality and consistency of posts that draw people in. Find blogs that are similar in content to yours and comment on the posts you enjoy. Meaningful comments not just – I like this – or nice photo – and then you will find conversations starting. It takes time Ian. My first posts got very view viewings and no comments. But my early posts were for my enjoyment, a record of my travels, a place to store my photos, somewhere for me to record changes in my life, so don’t despair, just keep on posting what interests you and hopefully interests others. And interact. Then the views and likes and comments will come. Oh, and I found that for me joining in the photo challenges were a way to connect with like-minded people. Just my tuppeneth worth. Most of all, have fun and enjoy your blog for what it means to YOU!
    Jude xx

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    2. Thanks. I do enjoy finding like minded blogs and reading them. It’s really good hearing tips from fellow bloggers. It helps to steer you in the right direction. When you blog on your own you can doubt yourself. So the interaction is great, thank you.

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  18. Last night I happened on the statistic about where my blog has been shared. I was surprised how many times and which posts have been been shared on various social media outlets. Twitter was highest, but I saw no links coming back to my blog from twitter. Most of my link backs came from Facebook, but I credit that to the blogs I have personally shared to my friends on Facebook. The majority of my views come from WordPress. My only advice is to offer readers consistent and quality content. The times I am absent, my readership has dropped dramatically. I would stay away from FB groups that share blogging content, because you become one in a sea of others. The groups should relate to what you are blogging about so that sharing your blog makes sense. Also, FB has been known to block sharing of content from other platforms. That happened to me — I was blocked for about six weeks. I also use the WordPress reader to search for content that aligns with my interests. That’s when tags and categories become important.

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