Friday, February 27, 2015

Spread the Word

Hm. I see that you've written a beautiful new blog post following the guidelines of Preach My Gospel and Blog My Gospel. Fantastic! Now all you need is someone to read it. Preferably lots of people to read it. Well, no one will know what you've written if you don't open your mouth and share it.

The best place, and only permitted place for missionaries, to share your link is Facebook. But apart from your wall, where do you put it? And how can you encourage others to click on your link?

To start with, one of the best parts about your blog having pictures is that there is a picture to go with your link on Facebook. Pick one that best illustrates your blog, but also makes people go, "That looks interesting. I want to know more." When you're on a computer, you can also change the title of your link before you post it. I like to take off the title of my blog and just leave the title of the post just to clean it up, but it's up to you.

The next step is to add a caption or quick 1-2 sentence summary. It's kind of like the tagline to a newspaper headline. You can sum up what you wrote or include a line from the post itself. Either way, it needs to make people say, "What is this all about? I like the information I've already gotten and now I want to learn more." But please, for heaven's sake, do not say, "I just posted on my blog." Obviously.

Then, you need to spread the word. It sure helps when you have friends or parents or ward members or investigators share your link. However, you can do a lot of the work. Post your link to appropriate groups on Facebook. If your blog is directed towards members, try one of the bunches of Mormon groups. If it is directed towards Christians in general, there are lots of other Christian groups that might enjoy your post. Search for ones that might be interested in it. Be nice and don't spam. If your post gets lots of negative comments due to a link you left in a certain group, maybe it's best to not post in that group again.

Happy clicking!