What do I do when I've written an article?

A few days ago I decided to try blogging every day. The writing is one thing. Brain to screen, press publish. But publishing a blog post doesn’t mean anyone is going to see that article.

When I last tried to do this, in 2018, it was a simpler world. You could put out as many links as you liked on Twitter, and Facebook was only just starting to throttle the reach on posts with links.

Now, I no longer have a Twitter (or X) account on principle. Facebook now no longer shows people posts with links, and the advice on LinkedIn is not to put links in posts. This week, it was announced Instagram is finally allowing links in posts. And I have a Bluesky account I’m rather neglectful of.

Last year I separated my writing out. My personal essays are here, my writing tips go on my Rachel’s Writing Club site, and my public affairs pieces go on my main business website. All of these have different audiences and my writing here on re:writes is eclectic.

One of my questions to myself, after making this slightly rash decision, is: what counts as writing for these purposes?

I didn’t write a blog yesterday but I did write the 12th consecutive weekly edition of my newsletter. It was 500 words long, I figure it counts as writing. And I put links to my writing in there.

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But how do I get my writing in front of more people?

Which brings me back to the question: what do I do when I’ve written an article?

I confess I have resistance around this part. Writing is fine, but then repurposing it and sharing it out feels time consuming and I get in my head about the ‘rules’.

Does everything I write belong on LinkedIn?

Is there any point putting a post on Bluesky with a link, like it’s old school Twitter? Or should I copy my blog post out as a series of nested posts?

At what point do I say, ‘please read the rest of this on my blog?’

How do I lead people from one platform to another?

In an ideal world, people would happily click through and read what I’ve written on my blog.

In an even more ideal world, they would subscribe and get my blog posts in their inbox.

And then there’s the fact that I don’t want to simply broadcast at people.

I feel like I ‘should’ be good at this. I’ve been blogging for nine years now. I should have a system. A content production flow going seamlessly from publish to all the different platforms, with each article presented in the way those platforms like.

I saw a post on Bluesky today from an author called Rob Bignell that read: “Give someone a book, they’ll read for a day. Teach someone to write a book… and they’ll spend a life-time mired in paralyzing self doubt.”

Replace book with blog (or magazine, since I have one of those) and there you have me.

At least us writers aren’t alone.

Anyway, I’m going to try a variety of things, including posting on all the platforms, and doing posts inviting people to subscribe. Let’s see what happens.