Struggling Writers discussion

I'm not sure I am putting this in the right place. If I'm not I'm sure the moderators will move it. when I had my first novel published I was told to start a blog to promote my book. At first I posted about writing and the majority of responses were from other writers. What I wanted was readers coming to my blog, so I started posting humorous and sometimes silly short stories and essays to attract readers. I would still promote my books and write about writing, but not as much as I had before. After two years I have a couple hundred followers, but it just doesn't seem like many when I compare it to some of the other writing blogs I've seen. I was wondering how the rest of you who write about writing are doing? Should I go back to writing basically about writing again? My blog is: http://www.thewritingdeputy.wordpress... if you want to check it out.

Joel wrote: "I'm not sure I am putting this in the right place. If I'm not I'm sure the moderators will move it. when I had my first novel published I was told to start a blog to promote my book. At first I pos..."

I blog too, and you have wayyy more followers than me!! I have two friends who read my blog and one other person commented (that wasn't spam).

Maybe I'm just expecting too much. I went to a blog the other day that was a picture and eight sentence paragraph. It had 1800 likes and 135 comments. I've never come close to anything like that. By the way I like your blog Lokrow.

Hmm this is a really question! If your looking for readers, do you host giveaways/promotions for up and coming books? I've heard that's really helpful in getting traffic. I recently just started my blogs a couple weeks ago and I hosted my first ever pre-release and my views double LOL.

I also like/follow anything/everyone. Mainly the types of people who I'm targeting so that I can more views and I'm at about a 40% of people who return the favour ... But I have no idea!

Lokrow wrote: "Thanks Joel, I do like yours too. The "I make Vladimir Putin with his shirt off look good" line really made me laugh!"

Hi look row! I checked out your blog and it really nice, but there's no way for people to follow you ... Is this what you wanted?

Hmm well it looks like your blog is on the Blogger... If you go to my Goodreads profile you should be able to click on my blogger site. On the right side you'll be able to see a whole bunch of things like 'share' 'follow' etc. it's things like that, that will allow people to 'like'/follow your blog. Without them people can only look at your blog. They won't receive info when you post new things or anything. They'll have to specifically remember to check your blog, which is pretty hard LOL.

If you need help with this let me know :)

And If you do have things like that... For reason I couldn't see it. LOL.

I set up an email list on my blog. Anyone interesting in following submitted their email address and got notified whenever I posted something new (one of the many perks of using Blogger).

It's important to have more than one way for people to contact you, to post great content very regularly, and to use images to spread your stuff all over social media, and hopefully people will share, and then to use social media correctly as well as making sure your site is search engine friendly. I have lots of great tips, but I am terrible at actually doing it. It might help to have a group or place to connect and promote each other? Is there a place like that?

Ellen wrote: "It's important to have more than one way for people to contact you, to post great content very regularly, and to use images to spread your stuff all over social media, and hopefully people will sha..."

A place within our group or just in general, Ellen?