The Commitment You Need to Make if You Want to Grow Your Readership

How can you grow your readership?

You’re a good writer. You have the awards or the reviews to prove it.

But something’s not working. Your books aren’t selling as much as you’d like. Your email list isn’t growing and your readership has stagnated.

What would propel your writing career to the next level?

It’s no secret what you need to do. The problem is most writers won’t do it. They say they want success. They say they want more readers. But the truth is they’re just not willing to do what it takes.

Day after day. Month after month. When they feel like it and when they don’t.

Success in writing rests on one thing: consistency.

You know this already. You don’t need to read any more about it.

Yet if you’re not doing it, you can’t expect to grow your readership.

Grow Your Readership: Why Consistency is So Important

There’s one thing that’s true in marketing regardless of what you’re selling: your customers are much more likely to buy from you if they trust you.

According to the authors of a 2000 study on marketing, trust between firms and consumers is “a crucial factor in the move from discrete market transactions to continuous exchange relationships.” In other words, if you want your readers to keep coming back to your blog, your newsletter, and your books, you have to build trust with them.

In a more recent 2019 survey by global communications firm Edelman, results showed that over two-thirds of respondents—67 percent—agreed that unless they trusted the source they were buying from, they wouldn’t buy. These results showed that trust has become even more important than it used to be, with consumers ranking trust as a potential dealbreaker in their shopping decisions.

Consumers simply can’t afford to waste money on a “bad purchase,” so the bar is higher when it comes to getting readers to take a chance on your book—even if it’s less than $20.

The question then becomes: How can you get readers to trust you?

What Does Not Grow a Readership

Let’s start with what does not build trust: inconsistency.

Blogging for a few weeks and then disappearing for another few weeks. Emailing once a week and then stopping for a month. Posting on social media every day for a month and then vanishing for three weeks. Writing one or two guest posts and then failing to show up anywhere except your own site for six months.

This sort of approach does one terrible thing to you as a writer: it makes you forgettable.

Think about how busy you are in your life, and how easy it is for you to skim through blog post after blog post and tweet after tweet. Most of us don’t have time to remember the passing post or video, even if we like it. Even if we think the writer did a good job. We have bills to pay, jobs to do, and kids to take care of.

On top of that, we’re all bombarded with information day in and day out. It comes at us from our TV screens, phones, computers, tablets, and radios. You as a writer have no chance of being remembered by your readers unless you are consistently there for them, day after day, month after month, and yes, year after year.

The brands you’ve come to trust have had to work hard for that trust. Imagine how many times you’ve been exposed to information from McDonald’s. Best Buy, Staples, Macy’s, or any of the other big brands you buy from. Now imagine how many times you were exposed to your favorite authors before you started buying from them.

Few of us are willing to part with our money after only a short introduction. Build trust with your readers and they’ll be happy to purchase from you over and over again, as long as you maintain that trust.

Grow Your Readership by Building Trust

How do you do that?

Let’s start with two ways:

1. Consistency in QUALITY
2. Consistency in PUBLISHING

You can apply these two “rules” to anything that you do related to your writing career: writing books, publishing books, writing blogs, sending e-newsletters, guest posting, appearing on podcasts, etc.

Whatever you do, make sure it’s the best you can do, and do it consistently. Every week. Every month. Every year.

“It is one of the truths in publishing that consistent regular action is the path to success,” writes author Terry Whalin on The Writing Life. “At Morgan James Publishing, we’ve had a number of books with modest sales in the beginning, but the author consistently works at marketing and spreading the word about their book. These authors try multiple approaches to reach their audience. Then almost without explanation, their book begins to consistently sell in large numbers—month after month.”

It sounds so simple, and it is on one level, but not on another. It’s not really hard to write a blog post—it’s just hard to write one week after week after week for years.

“Consistency happens only with conscious, deliberate effort,” writes Grael Norton, Director of Marketing at Wheatmark publishing. “It’s writing a couple of comments every single day for a whole year until you have left your thumbprint on 100 blogs and over 700 posts. It’s tweeting a tweet when you don’t feel like it, but you do it anyway and after days and weeks and months your name becomes known, your face becomes known and what you are writing about becomes noticed.”

Talk to any marketing professional and you’ll hear the same message.

“Think about the products you buy, the books you read and the stores you frequent,” write the experts over at Bublish. “Each product, book and/or store has invested time to market to you. They didn’t send out one tweet and call it a day. They didn’t post on Facebook occasionally. They made a plan and stuck with it. They took time to reach their target audience by developing a consistent marketing strategy to connect with you. Their goal: turn you — and others like you — into a loyal fan.”

To Grow Your Readership, Adhere to a Regular Publishing Schedule

How often you publish is secondary to how consistently you publish.

Of course, it’s better to publish every week or every other week rather than once a month, as you’ll give your reader less time to forget you between exposures. But it’s better to create a schedule you can stick with than one you can’t, so consider carefully your limits before committing to your plan.

“Whether you publish blogs every day or once per week, it’s crucial for your organization to choose and adhere to a schedule,” writes Forbes Councils Member Jon Simpson. “When your content quality, quantity or schedule isn’t consistent, it can confuse your customers. Keeping with a regular strategy not only helps create a better customer experience but it also helps build credibility, reputation and brand trust.”

You can start simply by scheduling your production of five major pieces of content:

Social Media

Post several times a week. Watch what your target audience is posting too, so you can start to be a part of the conversation. “Publishing on a regular basis also gives you the opportunity to learn from your customers,” writes Simpson. “When you are a part of the conversation, content creation becomes an easier feat as you listen to and learn what your customers want.”

Blog

Write and publish a blog post once a week. It should fit within your niche and serve your readers. Then post links to your blog posts on your social media platforms. (For help determining your niche, see the award-winning Writer Get Noticed!)

Email Newsletter

Send it out twice a month to your subscribers. Include information that’s helpful to them, along with links to your blog posts and any news you want to share.

Subscriber Magnet

Create and post one new freebie for new subscribers twice a year: once in January and once in July (or whatever you prefer). You want to build your email list—give readers a reason to share their email address with you.

Large Piece

Publish a larger piece of content—a short story, novel, or nonfiction book—once a year, or once every 18 months. You can also combine several of the posts you’ve written on one topic into a pamphlet if you like, and offer that for free or a low price on your site or as a published piece.

This schedule won’t propel your readership overnight, but if you stick with it and don’t give up, you will see results. Consistency of action in service to your readers is truly the key to building an audience for your work. It’s not easy, but that means if you do it, you’ll be one of the few authors who stand out in your readers’ minds.

“Getting an audience is hard. Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.”

—Bruce Springsteen

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_Sources

_{Edelman. “Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: In Brands We Trust?” Edelman. Last modified 2019. https://www.edelman.com/research/trust-barometer-special-report-in-brands-we-trust.}

_{“Marketing Consistency: The (not-so-secret) Formula for Successful Author Brands.” Book & Ebook Marketing Information for Authors. Last modified 2015. https://bublish.com/blog/2015/02/marketing-consistency-the-not-so-secret-formula-for-successful-author-brands/.}

_{Norton, Grael. “Consistency is the Key to Book Marketing Success.” Wheatmark. Last modified January 23, 2014. https://www.wheatmark.com/consistency-is-the-key-to-book-marketing-success/}

_{Raimondo, M. A. “The Measurement of Trust in Marketing Studies: A Review of Models and Methodologies.” IMP Group. Last modified 2000. https://www.impgroup.org/paper_view.php?viewPaper=108.}

_{Simpson, Jon. “Why Content Consistency Is Key To Your Marketing Strategy.” Forbes. Last modified February 11, 2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2019/02/11/why-content-consistency-is-key-to-your-marketing-strategy/?sh=1977b4384ef5.}

_{Whalin, Terry. “The Writing Life: The Value of Consistent Book Marketing.” The Writing Life. Last modified May 15, 2017. https://terrywhalin.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-value-of-consistent-book-marketing.html.}