Several newish writers have asked me how to help their readers find their writing. What they're doing does not seem to work. They write on LinkedIn and on other social media sites. But the people they want to attract to their writing do not seem to find it.
That's the writer discoverability problem.
Every writer has a discoverability problem. Fiction writing is about entertainment and finding the hordes of people who want your specific entertainment. If you write fiction, consider Discoverability: A WMG Writers Guide (WMG Writer's Guides).
Even if you don't write fiction, please click on that link. That will bring you to a Books2Read landing page that shows you every place you can buy that book. Books2Read helps book writers with discoverability because it shows the distribution possibilities.
However, nonfiction writing is about solving problems for ideal readers. (Yes, if you write in an entertaining way, more people will read your work!) While you might distribute a book to many stores (as I do), there is one version of your book.
The same idea applies to your blog posts or articles. If you write on your site first, you can then use social media to distribute your work to many sites. That wide distribution will help your readers find you.
Even better, the search engines find that writing on your site once the initial enthusiasm for that one specific post or article has lessened. That's the point of Writing Secret 8: Publish on Your Site First.
That's the difference between publishing and marketing.
Publishing and Marketing are Different
Publishing is where you choose to publish the original work. However, every writer also needs to market their work, to attract ideal readers, wherever those readers are.
Marketing is all the ways you can bring people's attention to that original work.
If you choose to publish on a social media site, you depend on that site reminding people of where they saw that idea first. That means you rely on an algorithm somewhere that changes without you knowing about it.
Instead, if you want people to find you as an expert, you somehow need to build your body of work. That's why I recommend you publish on your site first. Then distribute—market—via all the social media sites.
If you're not sure about publishing on your own site, here's a checklist that might help you decide:
- How accessible is this site for people who do not already subscribe to other writers? For example, Medium charges nonmembers to read anything. (As far as I can tell.)
- Who else affiliates with this site? (Substack platforms Nazis, so I do not publish via Substack, not even my newsletter.)
- How does that platform make money? Remember this truism: if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.
This is why I have my own sites and publish there first, then distribute widely as my marketing.
Discoverability is a real problem for all writers. Choose where you will write and publish. Then, see where else you can distribute so your ideal readers can find you.
Read More Here
While I didn't frame this problem as “discoverability,” I have a large chapter about using content marketing to find your ideal clients in Successful Independent Consulting. Start there. There's a chapter about publishing your work in Free Your Inner Nonfiction Writer. I am preparing for the Q1 2025 Writing Workshop and expect to open registration within a couple of weeks.
While this post is a “writing secret,” I also expect to write a series of books about writing, publishing, and marketing books. This is just one post in that series. Yes, I need a good tag for that. Later.