How to make your blog go viral in three easy steps
I’m sure I’m missing someone here, and please forgive me.
Boise has a lot of world-class writers on first-name bases. We’re kind of like
Iowa, only our writers’ workshops are supportive and polite in the
“constructive feedback” process. Also, we have lots of brew pubs.
The lineup for this season’s blogging-themed retreat was
intimidating. Stephanie Worrell, PR maven and founder of Red Sky, kicked off the
show with a 42 page comprehensive guide to writing, producing, and starring in
Your Blog. Stephanie was followed by writer
Ken Rodgers, who independently produced (with his talented wife Betty) a moving
documentary about the siege of Khe Sanh called Bravo: Common Men, Uncommon Valor. Then there was The Anarchist
Soccer Mom. I described how to get yourself a publicist and hide under a rock
when your blog about a controversial topic—your son who has mental illness, for
example—goes viral.
I can’t really tell you how to make your blog go viral, by
the way. As for handling the media, well, let’s just say that I didn’t even
know who Anderson Cooper was until my friends told me. I haven’t had
commercially broadcast television since 2002. But I learned this: stick to your message. You don’t have to defend yourself
for saying something that needed to be said!
I can tell you this: we live in an age, as former Vice President
Al Gore has said, when a single blogger can influence the course of a national
conversation.
What does that mean for you? It means that you had better
write your truth as well as you can, each and every time you Tweet, post on
Facebook, or compose something for your blog. Because you just never know when something you
say will change the world.
Blogger Arlee Bird has been exploring the topic of blogs as
an essential part of every writer’s platform in a recent series of posts on Tossing It Out. He had this to say about “making” a blog go viral: “In
answer to the question "Did your blog post go viral?", the answer is
no. Nor did I expect my Monday post to go viral. The content for virality wasn't there
[emphasis added].”
I don’t personally think any one of us has the power to
“make” a blog go viral. But Arlee has hit on the writer’s main job: provide
meaningful content. As I learned with my viral essay about my son with mental illness, which was picked up by
The Blue Review and Huffington Post under the title “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother,”
one of the most meaningful consequences of sharing our truths, even when our
stories are painful, is that we can actually change the world. I mean, I spoke
at a TEDx event in San Antonio last week with some of the coolest people I will
ever meet in my life! I never could have imagined that kind of platform for my
mental health advocacy. But it happened (and yet just days later, so did another tragic school shooting).
So with this post,
I’m officially adding my name to my blog. Yes, I’m THAT mom, the one who shared
a story that made some of you wince and many of you cry. I started blogging in
2008. I’m a lazy blogger, posting whenever I feel like it—no content schedules
for me. And I write about whatever I want to, from yoga to kids to grammar
lessons to thrift store wedding dresses (Little White Dress, a collection of
essays and poems I edited, was conceived from that 2011 blog post).
Arlee interviewed me recently about my viral blog post and
its effect on me as a writer. You can read my answers to Arlee’s interview questions
about viral blogs here. The advice I
gave both to Arlee and to the would-be viral bloggers at Elaine’s retreat was
simple: “Write your truth. Write it well. And accept the consequences.”
It’s that simple. And it's that hard.
