Writers Supporting Writers ~ Group Blogs

By Narelle Atkins

I’m a big fan of group blogs, and blogging in general. Blogs provide a platform for writers to share and interact with readers. Blogging platforms are public and accessible to everyone who has a web browser. Unlike other social media platforms, the blog reader has full control over the blog post content they can access online. They can also choose how they want to read and interact with different blog posts.

Writing group blogs are a fun way to network and meet other writers and readers. They provide an opportunity for writers to hone their article writing skills. They also provide an opportunity to create an online community that’s inspiring, supportive, and encouraging. A community that is welcoming, inclusive, and works together to achieve a common goal.

How can you support your group blogs? 

1) Participation 

Being an active member of group blog is a great first step. This may involve joining a group blog as regular member of the blog posting team, guest blogging, commenting on blog posts, and sharing blog posts on social media. 

Australasian Christian Writers (ACW) has an active Facebook Group that’s linked to the blog. The Monday-Friday blog posts are shared in the ACW Facebook Group. We welcome guest bloggers and we also invite writers who have guest blogged to join our blogging team if a regular posting spot becomes available.

2) Commenting on blog posts

Last year Paula Vince shared an excellent post on her personal blog titled Why don’t we leave comments on blogs? Ironically, her blog post has 70 comments. I encourage you to read her post and comments if you haven’t seen it. Paula tackles the elephant in the room and covers this topic in-depth.

Blog post comments are one way you can support other writers. Sometimes we can over think what to write in a comment. A simple thank you or a few words of encouragement can mean a lot to the author of the post who has invested time and effort in writing the post.

I believe it’s important for all of us to consider taking a step outside our comfort zone by reaching out and commenting on blog posts written by Bloggers who we don’t know. This is how we can create a welcoming, inclusive, and supportive blog community. If we only comment on group blog posts written by our friends, the group blog could look like a clique to readers who follow the blog posts and notice the pattern in the comments.

Blog comments provide a chance to give feedback to the author of the post. If there are no blog post comments, the author may assume their post isn’t engaging or reaching their target audience. Writers may quit blogging if they think no one is reading their posts.

3) Sharing blog posts

Many of us have busy lives and find it hard to schedule time to read blog posts. This can be more difficult if the blog post content is outside our area of interest.

We can support the authors of blog posts by sharing their posts on social media. Wordpress offers an option for blog readers to like blog posts. Liking a blog post is a fast and easy way to show an author that you value their blog post. Carolyn Miller recently wrote an excellent blog post titled Please Like Me! that explores the question of why people don’t press like on Facebook posts.

Blogger and Wordpress have made it easy to share blog posts on social media. For the examples below I’ve taken screenshots from Iola’s ACW blog post on Monday.

• M symbol – Email the blog post link to a friend via Blogger. You need to have a Blogger profile to access this option. 

• B symbol – Blog This. You need a Blogger blog to reblog the content. 

• T symbol – Share to Twitter. A fast and easy way to tweet the blog post to your Twitter followers. The blog post text is automatically created, and all you need to do is sign into Twitter and press share. 

• F symbol – Share to Facebook. You can share the blog post to your Facebook profile timeline, a Facebook group, or a Facebook page you manage. 

• P symbol – Post to Pinterest. You have the option to select the boards where you want to pin the post. 

• G symbol – Share to Google+. Pressing the G symbol creates a ‘plus one’ (which is the equivalent of a like) and the option to share the post to your Google+ profile. Last year I wrote a blog post for ACW on Google+ ~ Is it relevant and useful for writers?

I share group blog posts via Buffer and Social Jukebox. Please see Iola Goulton’s ACW post How to be on Twitter 24/7 Without Being on Twitter 24/7 to learn more about sharing blog posts using social media tools. 

My daily routine for social media group blog post sharing

I use the paid version of Buffer and share group blog posts to 1) Twitter 2) Google+ profile and 3) Facebook Author Page (if the content is relevant to my target audience). 

I may not have the time to read the daily posts from my list of group blogs, but I can find five or ten minutes each day to support the writers by sharing their blog posts on social media. 

Is there something new you can try to encourage and support the writers of group blog posts? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences.

A fun loving Aussie girl at heart, NARELLE ATKINS was born and raised on the beautiful northern beaches in Sydney, Australia. She has settled in Canberra with her husband and children. A lifelong romance reader, she found the perfect genre to write when she discovered inspirational romance. Narelle's contemporary stories of faith and romance are set in Australia.

Website: http://www.narelleatkins.com

Blog: http://narelleatkins.wordpress.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NarelleAtkinsAuthor

Twitter: @NarelleAtkins https://twitter.com/NarelleAtkins

How to be on Twitter 24/7 Without Being on Twitter 24/7

By Iola Goulton

This week I'm going to talk about how to automate your Twitter account so you’re being a good Twitter citizen.

Yes, this will require a little time to set up. 

But it really is set-it-and-forget-it. Mostly.

Here are the main tools I use:

CrowdFire (previously JustUnfollow)

This tool is for managing Twitter followers. Twitter has rules about how many accounts you can follow, and the basic aim is to ensure you follow roughly the same number of accounts as follow you, so keeping your follower/following ratio close to 1:1. Tools like CrowdFire allow you to identify which accounts you follow that don't follow you back, so you can Unfollow these people and best manage your following/follower ratio.

The free version of CrowdFire allows you to follow up to 50 accounts per day, and unfollow up to 100 (well, these are my limits. Your limits might be lower if you have less than 5,000 followers).

The paid version allows you more follows and unfollows, and allows you to connect Instagram as well. I've just upgraded on a month-by-month basis, mostly to manage my Instagram followers. I haven't decided if I'll make this a permanent investment yet. It might depend on whether I get to keep the USD 5.99 promotional price, or whether I'll have to pay the USD 9.99 full price.

RoundTeam

I'm on the free plan, which allows me 200 tweets per month. I’ve set it up so I’m retweeting 5-6 tweets per day from a List (the @ACWriters list of ACW members). Every time someone on the @ACWriters list tweets, Roundteam put that tweet into a “bucket”, then tweets one post an hour between midnight and 6am (New Zealand time).

Paid plans start at USD 10 per month. 

These allow you to connect more than one Twitter account, and to have more tweets per month. The paid plans also remove the promotional tweets (at the moment, for every 50 tweets I send, RoundTeam will send one automated Tweet from me extolling the virtues of their service).

SocialJukebox (previously TweetJukebox)

You all know what a jukebox is: in the old days, it had a bunch of 45s and you could select which song you wanted from the playlist (for the younger readers: a 45 is a record with only one song on each side). They also had a random play function, and that is the concept behind Social Jukebox.

You load a virtual jukebox up with tweets, and SocialJukebox sends them randomly at predetermined intervals. 

So, for example, you could have a jukebox for old blog posts that you tweet each Thursday using the #tbt (throwback Thursday) hashtag. Yes, you have to load the posts into the relevant jukebox, but it’s a once-and-done thing: once you’ve loaded a post, it will be in that jukebox until you delete it. If I was going to post self-promotional tweets, I’d create them in SocialJukebox, then set it to post. Not too often—I wouldn’t want my Twitter stream to become all about me (the general guideline is to make no more than 20% of your posts about you).

SocialJukebox was previously known as TweetJukebox, and it just offered Tweets. The new version also posts to Facebook and LinkedIn, although I don’t use those options. Yet. (Mostly because while I don’t mind seeing Tweets repeated, I’m not a fan of seeing the same Facebook post over and over. And if it annoys me, it’s reasonable to expect it will annoy my followers as well). So I have to work out an effective sharing strategy.

Thank You Tweets

But the handy feature of SocialJukebox is that it automatically sends out thank you Tweets each Friday—an @mention and thank you to up to 50 people who have retweeted or mentioned you during the preceeding week. It’s always polite to say thank you, and this feature makes it easy.

I am currently on the basic paid plan for Social Jukebox. 

This gives me more Jukeboxes and thank you tweets to 100 people. I paid USD 120 for a year, but the prices are about to go up (to reflect the move from just supporting Twitter, to also supporting Facebook and LinkedIn). Even so, the new price of USD 24.99 per month is cheap compared to MeetEdgar, a similar tool, which is now USD 79.99 per month.

The paid plan also allows me to access three Twitter accounts ... so I can create an Australasian Christian Writers Jukebox to support and promote our blogger members.

More on that later ... 

Buffer

This requires a little more input in my part. It works in a similar way to RoundTeam and SocialJukebox in that it automatically posts content for me. The only difference is I have to load the posts in myself, and each will only post once (although there is a multiple post option). I find Buffer to be an excellent tool for posting new content or news, whereas SocialJukebox is better suited for evergreen content (content which isn’t going to date—like a book review or Bible verse meme).

I’m on Buffer’s Awesome plan, which costs me USD 10 per month.

This allows me to link up to 12 social media accounts—including Pinterest and Instagram. If I could only justify one paying for social media plan, this would be it, because it enables me to post throughout the day even when I'm out of wifi zone (as I will have been for the last three days by the time you read this).

This is also how I share many of my posts to the Australasian Christian Writers Facebook group.

No, I'm not on Twitter (or social media in general) 24/7. But tools like this allow me to be "active" even when I'm asleep.

Do you use any free or paid tools to help you manage social media? Which tools do you recommend? 

About Iola Goulton

I am a freelance editor specialising in Christian fiction. Visit my website at www.christianediting.co.nz to download a comprehensive list of publishers of Christian fiction. 

I also write contemporary Christian romance with a Kiwi twist—find out more at www.iolagoulton.com.

You can also find me on:
Facebook (Author)
Facebook (Editing)
Instagram
Pinterest
Twitter