I know it has been a while since I have written a blog post. We both got busy with other things. You entered LinkedIn (which we can write about in the next few posts), pinterest, and youtube. All of these will be useful for you to learn about. But for now, I think we should address the last question you asked: How do you know if people have read what you have written? How do you get them to read it?
How do you measure who and what people are reading
So, let's say that you are writing a blog on something of interest to you: quilting or storytelling. You write the post, you ask for feedback, but no-one comments. Perhaps your audience is shy. Perhaps there is really nothing they want to comment on. However, perhaps no one is reading it. How can you tell. If you are using blogger, every time you go to your dashboard (menu) you will see a set of statistics. The graph shows you how many times people have looked at your page and below the graph you will see how people found your blog. If you click on the "stats" menu on the right, you can see additional information such as where your readers are located and what devices they are reading on.
Why is this important? Let's say that the majority of your friends and family like to read your blog posts on their smart phones. This will make a difference in terms of what template you might want to choose so it is easier to read from a cell phone than on a regular computer. Think of the size difference between a cell phone and a computer. If the majority are reading on a computer, you might want to include some pictures to make it look better. However, those same pictures on a cell phone might make it more difficult to read. If you are writing for a cell phone or tablet, you might want to make it shorter (many shorter posts).
You can also click on the "posts" sections of the stats to see which of your posts had the most readers. If you want to gain more readers, you can use these stats to see what they are interested in. Finally, if you want more information on a long term basis about your blog, you can type in your blog name at trends.google.com. You can also use a free program called Google analytics, but that is not really necessary at this point.
How do I get people to read my blog
It is important to know who your readers are (so the stats are important). However, the more you know about where they are coming from, the more you can target a social media to share your blog address (URL or the https:// address). If you find many are coming from Twitter, and you don't have a twitter account, most likely someone who has a twitter account found your blog and is sharing the web address with the world. You might consider going on twitter then. If they are coming from Pinterist, you might want to make sure you have some nice pictures (e.g. quilting blog would want a picture of a finished quilt or a quilt in progress) to make sharing your post easier. You might also want to make sure you have a pinterest account so you can interact with your readers there. If your readers use a cell phone, you might want to message those in your address book when you write a new post.
For this post, for example, I announced on LinkedIn that I was adding a new post. I will be also sharing the URL on twitter where I have a number of followers who work with technology. This is the audience I am writing for, so that is where I will be sharing the link.
So, I will end for now. Next week we can either discuss your experience with LinkedIn or I can answer those questions you have about Pinterest.
