With the impending shut-down of the consumer side of Google+ apparently slated for August of 2019, those of you who have a Google+ account will have one less online space to update. Of course, there will also be one less online space whereby your blog posts may be aggregated and disseminated publicly to users in a single stream. That's the hub of the problem.
I've read the news posts regarding the shutdown. I understand their reasoning. Google+ just isn't working out. It hasn't gained that all-important popularity like some of the other social networking sites. But, how then are bloggers supposed to get their blog noticed when Google+ goes silent? And, let's be clear, it is Google+, NOT BLOGGER, that is going silent.
Well, there are Google searches. Adding labels to blog posts will help get it noticed in search results. Hopefully Goggle will allow more than 20 labels to a post. Adding a blog roll and a link list to your blog and asking those you list to add your blog to theirs is another way of generating readers and followers. Adding a link to your blog or listing your blog site in your profile information in other social media sites you are involved in is another. Guest blogging on other blogs will help too. Getting your blog pinged and crawled is important. Adding links to keywords in your blog posts (most of you already know) may help drive traffic to your blog and help someone else out, too. None of this is new, but some of it may have been forgotten in the shadow of the big social networking sites that consume a lot of time.
There are more than a few people, like me, who have decided to spend less time on social media sites like Facebook ( providing free content for Facebook to sell ads while not sharing the revenue stream they get from them, and being pressed to pay Facebook to 'boost the post') and Twitter (similar to Facebook), and LinkedIn (ditto x 2), in favor of generating content and traffic for our own blogs, and spending more time actually writing books, essays, articles, etc, for which we may be paid and which our loyal readers are eager to have.
Don't worry. Be Happy. Blogger is not going anywhere anytime soon. At least, I hope not. It's still the easiest blog platform to get started with, to update, and to customize. Wherever you blog, you should be thinking of your blog as prime real estate. Those blog rolls and website links you can add are fertile ground. And if you want to grow your followers, be sure to add an all-important email subscription button to allow visitors to get your updates, minus the drama, directly in their inbox. Re-explore all that functionality that has been overlooked or undervalued since you first set up your blog, or abandoned it in favor of social media sites.
Remember, sharing is key, and subscribing via email to the content you really like may just make you a happier blogger and a happier reader. And, allowing moderated comments on your blog(s) will allow you to be as social as you want or need to be.
Be sure to check into affiliate marketing opportunities for the websites you own, and set up an AdSense account with Google and monetize your own blog and start generating some revenue for the content you work so hard to create. I'll be adding a blog roll for our author's here, so you can visit their blog sites, and I will be adding a link list for other writing-publishing-related sites, as well as one for writing groups, that an author, or aspiring author, might be interested in exploring.
In closing, I want to mention that the opinions stated herein are my own and may not be endorsed by everyone in our writing group. But as writers we all need to be certain that the investment of time and energy, and it's considerable, is well balanced with the return.
Susan Cronk
