How would you let readers know about your blog?

What the title says. I've been writing a blog for 7-8 months now, (I'm at over fifty posts) and I haven't gotten more than a small handful of readers. I'm obviously the wrong one to view my work objectively, but I have been listed as number 32 in Feedspot, [after less than six months from when I started] and I'm pretty certain that my work has value for at least a number of people. Does anyone have any idea how to reach an audience?
I've had various suggestions from friends, such as put up an advertising video on tiktok. While this might be good advice, I've gotten so many pieces of such advice that I could spend fifty hours and still not complete them all. Nor do I have endless time, especially as I want to keep releasing posts and as I am currently taking a 40 hour a week course [vocational training] in programming. If you have reason to believe that your advice is more than just surmising, I'd love if you could mention it.

(for those that are interested, my blog is called dragonencounters.com, and I'm working on creating creative combat encounters for the various monsters of 5E. I find ways to use terrain, traps, and other features to let the each monster's special abilities and inclinations shine. I've been working through the Monster Manual in order, and I'm currently in the middle of demons. I'll include a sample below [in spoilers. I've been informed that my blog posts are a bit long by forum standards] for anyone curious. If anyone wants to reply to the blog post, I am curious how people would rate my work.

Spoiler: Ideas for the dretch

Show

This is the article I wrote for the dretch. It was one of my shorter articles, actually. (for anyone unfamiliar, a CR 1/4 demon that can release a cloud of poison that slows anyone who fails his save.
How to Use – Combat Encounter 1 (difficulty varies)

The dretch is the rare monster that can be used against far higher-level parties than its 1/4 CR would suggest. While its fighting skills are limited, its fetid cloud can really mess up your players. Combine it with other foes who are immune to the poisoned condition, as this will render them immune to the additional riders that come with the poison conditioned as well. (The text says “Creatures that are poisoned in this way…” and they won’t be poisoned) Easy examples are other demons and undead. You can also use ranged attackers that aren’t immune to the poisoned condition, as long as you have some melee to keep them inside the fetid cloud.
I would have the dretch arrive from the side of the combat, not start together with the other enemies, as that would make it too easy to kill through the area-of-attack spells that would anyhow be used by your players to target the enemies’ ranks. Possibly, you could have the dretch first show up in the second round of battle, when your players are already committed and will have trouble rearranging themselves.
You’ll have to let your players know about the fetid cloud beforehand. In this case, the best way would be to let your players encounter a dretch or two in an easy combat beforehand, where the fetid cloud will be a minor effect. I would suggest using at least two dretch in this encounter, as one might get killed before it has a chance to activate its fetid cloud.
Note: Like most ideas, this is fun once or twice. Do it a lot, and your players will hate it.
Dretch Tactics: The dretch will waddle forward and attack the nearest enemy that it notices. Once it arrives next to an enemy, if it isn’t in the middle of a fetid cloud caused by another dretch it will release its own fetid cloud, otherwise it will attack. It lacks the intelligence to plan out where to release its fetid cloud in any better way.
While the dretch could use the dash action to move forty feet, you might not want to do this. Having it only move twenty feet gives the players a better chance to counter it, and seems fairer. You can always say that the dretch was too dumb to think of dashing.
How does the dretch release its fetid cloud? I suspect that the Monster Manual has in mind that it farts it out. If you think that your players won’t like that, though, or if you’re playing with young players who will enjoy it too much (and won’t stop letting you hear about it for weeks afterwards), you can always have it belch up the cloud.

Combat Encounter 2: (difficulty 3)

For weaker players especially, you could put a number of dretch in the middle of the enemies, or in front of 1-2 range units.
Let your players see the enemies before the enemies see them, perhaps from a balcony of something. Consider giving your players a second way to enter the area, and a number of obstacles which they can use to their advantage. This will allow the players to send the rogue ahead to decoy the dretches to the side, where they won’t influence the main part of the battle. The players might also think to decoy the dretches away with an illusion. And it they don’t think of it? Then they’ll have a fairly hard battle to overcome. At least you’ll have given them a chance.

Combat Encounter 3: (difficulty 3)

For a variant on the previous encounter, put the dretches in cages or summoning circles, and put some range units [I suggest skeletons] behind them. The cages or summoning circles won’t prevent the dretches from releasing their fetid cloud if the PCs get near [probably within 10 feet of a dretch. While the fetid cloud has a twenty-foot range, I doubt the dretch will think to use it at that distance. They’re used to getting close to their enemies and then releasing it.]
The main difference between cages and summoning circles is that cages protect the dretches from the players ranged attacks, and summoning circles have a chance of releasing the dretches they get broken by the players.
You can also have one of the other enemies, or an automatic effect, release the dretches at a certain point of the combat.

To be Trite:

No one reads anymore. Turn it into videos instead.


The *slightly* less trite answer:

- SEO
- Strong titles
- Use social media to point traffic at your blog
- Ask your readers to spread the word
- Use contests to drive engagement
- Link back to yourself in the blog
- Consistent new content at a consistent time
- Good content

The annoying but true answer is that you just need to shamelessly link to it from other places. The quality of your work will only matter if people are getting the chance to read it in the first place. Getting eyes on your creations at all is a challenge in-and-of-itself given the overwhelming amount of content on the internet, doubly so when your blog is a standalone website rather than a page on an existing social media site.

To answer your question with a question: what means do you currently have for people to find your website? You’re naming Feedspot as something you’re using, but I don’t know what that is and a quick Google search didn’t make it much clearer. Which probably says a lot about how useful that site is for reaching the general public.

I do think the example you posted looks solid. I like that you assimilate both in-character logic (the dretch’s low intelligence) and out-of-character gameplay considerations (being debilitated by poison gets unfun quickly), and I appreciate that you clarify non-obvious mechanics when they come up (creatures immune to poison also ignore the rider effect).

Edit: The first thing I see when taking a glance at your website is that you misspelled Hezrou and Goristro. So that's not helping.

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Originally Posted by Easy e

To be Trite:

No one reads anymore. Turn it into videos instead.

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Complete opposite for me, videos are usually annoying and slow, I'd much rather written versions so I can skim for parts that are interesting or read it at a faster pace, not to mention it's much more likely i'm going to be somewhere where reading is less disruptive than watching something, or only have a few minutes to read.

To OP, as others said, linking it shamelessly

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Originally Posted by Brookshw

Complete opposite for me, videos are usually annoying and slow, I'd much rather written versions so I can skim for parts that are interesting or read it at a faster pace, not to mention it's much more likely i'm going to be somewhere where reading is less disruptive than watching something, or only have a few minutes to read.

To OP, as others said, linking it shamelessly

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Yeah, I prefer reading blogs, transcripts, and forums. However, I also realize that I am the outlier.

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Originally Posted by Lalliman

The annoying but true answer is that you just need to shamelessly link to it from other places. The quality of your work will only matter if people are getting the chance to read it in the first place. Getting eyes on your creations at all is a challenge in-and-of-itself given the overwhelming amount of content on the internet, doubly so when your blog is a standalone website rather than a page on an existing social media site.

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This is the biggest thing. Plug it, plug it, plug it! Stick it in a forum signature, bring up old blog posts in discussion when they're relevant, and look for "promote yourself" channels/threads that explicitly allow you to post when you have new content. Over time, you'll build an audience of people who keep coming back.

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Originally Posted by Easy e

Yeah, I prefer reading blogs, transcripts, and forums. However, I also realize that I am the outlier.

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Same for me. But I imagine people on a text based forum lean that way.

Ouch! I cannot believe I misspelled those monsters. I fixed it (hopefully I caught all the cases), and I really appreciate your telling me about it.
To all the messages telling me to plug it, let me reclarify my original position. Does anybody have information on where it is and where it is not appropriate to plug my blog? CarpeGuitarrem mentioned channels/threads that allow you to post when you have new content. Can I ask for clarification? I don't think I've heard of these channels (or I didn't know about them giving permission, or I'm not certain what else.)
In similar vein, I'm not certain how easy e's suggestion of using contest to drive engagement would work (I don't have huge amount of cash lying around. If I did, I'd probably pursue regular advertising.) Also, why would linking back to myself in a blog help? (I'm not coming to argue, I really don't know this stuff, and I really appreciate all the advice.)

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Originally Posted by Easy e

To be Trite:

No one reads anymore. Turn it into videos instead.


The *slightly* less trite answer:

- SEO
- Strong titles
- Use social media to point traffic at your blog
- Ask your readers to spread the word
- Use contests to drive engagement
- Link back to yourself in the blog
- Consistent new content at a consistent time
- Good content
- Do videos instead

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Fixed that for ya.

(Though, to be honest, I personally prefer reading stuff. But it's a lot easier to gain traction with videos these days.)

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Originally Posted by Alexander Atoz

To all the messages telling me to plug it, let me reclarify my original position. Does anybody have information on where it is and where it is not appropriate to plug my blog? CarpeGuitarrem mentioned channels/threads that allow you to post when you have new content. Can I ask for clarification? I don't think I've heard of these channels (or I didn't know about them giving permission, or I'm not certain what else.)

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I don't know about places specifically for self-promotion. But definitely focus your effort on text forums, because that's where your target audience is. Don't bother with, say, TikTok (as your friend recommended) because long-form text content is the last thing those people are looking for.

Actually, I think the most effective thing to do is find relevant forums like this one, plug your blog in your signature, and then just be active on that forum, so that every post you make is calling attention to your blog without it being an explicit promotion. That's not what you're asking for, but like, there is no fire-and-forget option for self-promotion, it has to be an ongoing process to be effective.

When Rich Burlew wanted to drive traffic to his website, he started writing a stick-figure webcomic called The Order of the Stick.

Obviously, I'm not suggesting you do the same, but the crucial point is there. You need to create something so interesting to people that many of them show it to their friends.

Nothing turns a handful of readers into thousands of readers except constant recommendations from those handful of readers. And then from all their friends. And then from all their friends. And then ...

In no order...

- Develop a 'USP' for your blog. There's massive amounts of generiky/listicle blog stuff out there, you need to stand out - normally by offering unique/funny/interesting/useful stuff. Hit Google et al to see if anyone has done [proposed topic for blogpost] to see if anyone's done it before and if yes, if you genuinely believe you can put a unique spin on it or do better. Doing this will help bump up your search result rankings and make it more likely to generate repeat visitors [ie they saw a post and liked it, so bookmarked you and returned later].

- Self-promote. One tactic not mentioned yet is to plug yourself/your blog in the comments of other blogger's posts. As long as you aren't spamming and clearly adding to the discussion [so blogs of similar topic to yours], most bloggers will leave your link be [esp if they see from their dashboard you've linked back to them somewhere].

- On the whole video debate, blogs aren't dead. A lot of content simply isn't suitable for either videos or social media - and I don't think much of the latter for generating original content anyway. The sample given at the top would be a good thing for a blog as I think a lot of possible-readers would desire to print/bookmark/save the post for later consultation, rather than having to listen to a video again. Plus, what content would this have to warrant a video? Unless you're really cute and/or charming, I suspect you'd simply be reading it to camera.

- Though this makes me wonder whether trying to find a collaborator might be an idea. If you can find someone who could sketch a dretch [and other critters] to put at the top of the appropiate posts.

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Originally Posted by Easy e

To be Trite:

No one reads anymore. Turn it into videos instead.

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There is some truth here, but not as much as Easy e seems to think. After all, we're having this discussion in writing on an extremely successful website with lots of reading and no videos.

I repeat; what would turning the 'sample content' into a video improve the quality of the content?

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Originally Posted by Jay R

There is some truth here, but not as much as Easy e seems to think. After all, we're having this discussion in writing on an extremely successful website with lots of reading and no videos.

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Sure. But that's a far more niche audience. Sounds like the goal is to increase audience.

Even if you want to go the blog route, combining it with video is probably the winning strategy to drive traffic. Do a more in-depth blog post, and a video going over the concepts in general.

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Originally Posted by Mr Blobby

I repeat; what would turning the 'sample content' into a video improve the quality of the content?

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Sure, making more engaging content is also a big part of it. You need both good content and effective distribution/marketing.

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Originally Posted by Lalliman

Actually, I think the most effective thing to do is find relevant forums like this one, plug your blog in your signature, and then just be active on that forum,

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Are there blogs besides this one that give you a signature (besides a name)? I've checked two other blogs, (D&D beyond, and EN world) and they didn't.

By the way, how do you get a signture on this blog? I was planning to start a thread on the greetings/hello area just to ask, but since the subject has come up here...

Since the last time posting I found out about the one-page dungeon contest. That's not until June/July, but are there any other contests that are similar? (Because it seems a decent way to win some amount of notice, assuming I score an honorable mention or better.)

One last question. Does anybody know of any D&D blogs that accept guest posts? So far, the only one I found was Dungeon Solvers, but that blog hasn't posted new content for about four months, so it's possible the creator has more or less quit. Master the Dungeon has contact info, so I will try them, but I suspect that they're too commercial to do something like that.

Before signing off, I want to take a moment to thank all the ideas that I haven't referred back to. Rest assured that I saw and treasure them. The only reason I'm not referring to them is that I don't have what to say and/or I'm still contemplating their advice. Thank you.

Alexander Atoz

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Originally Posted by Alexander Atoz

By the way, how do you get a signture on this blog?

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In the top right corner of the site, click Settings. Then in the bottom left is a panel titled My Settings, with Edit Signature as one of the options.

From experience working on the tech side of this, you get what you pay for. Blogs that have tons of visitors are usually paying for a Google Ads campaign to drive traffic to their site. SEO helps, but it's something basically everyone does now and will cause the quality of your content to plummet drastically if you do it enough that it makes a serious difference. You've probably seen that yourself: googling something and finding dozens of pages with strangely repetitive buzzwords arranged in such a way to make you scroll and click links to find the actual information beyond an inflammatory headline. This gets you a lot of visitors, clicks, and ad views, but is probably not what you want unless this is purely a revenue stream for you and not a passion project.

What others have suggested are the best free options. Have someone with a captive audience plug your blog, self-promote everywhere you can without getting banned for it, and just make your site something worth visiting.

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Originally Posted by Alexander Atoz

Ouch! I cannot believe I misspelled those monsters. I fixed it (hopefully I caught all the cases), and I really appreciate your telling me about it.
To all the messages telling me to plug it, let me reclarify my original position. Does anybody have information on where it is and where it is not appropriate to plug my blog? CarpeGuitarrem mentioned channels/threads that allow you to post when you have new content. Can I ask for clarification? I don't think I've heard of these channels (or I didn't know about them giving permission, or I'm not certain what else.)
In similar vein, I'm not certain how easy e's suggestion of using contest to drive engagement would work (I don't have huge amount of cash lying around. If I did, I'd probably pursue regular advertising.) Also, why would linking back to myself in a blog help? (I'm not coming to argue, I really don't know this stuff, and I really appreciate all the advice.)

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So I mean on places like Discord servers or forums, a lot of times there's designated spaces that are set aside for people sharing stuff they do. It's different for every community, so take some time to get to know them.

Put it in your signatures here, reddit, etc. find relevant discords and share it there. Even just reading it while showing b-roll footage of stuff and you talk over it may be enough to attract attention. There really is no such thing as making a product so good that it sells itself. You have to put some effort in to sharing it. Also, ask your readers to share as well!

Have a Mastodon account.

Make post "I have a new post on my page." with a link to it and the relevant hashtags any time you update your site.

There's quite a lot of activity around the #ttrpg tag. Though somehow I rarely see TTRPG Mastodon mentioned in other places about RPGs.

I don't have a visitor counter ob my site, but it seems like there's been a lot more readers and references to things I wrote in the last year than there's ever been before.

To be noticed on social media platforms, such as mastodon and discord, how important is it that you engage with other people and "like" people and all that?
I have limited time, and I want to know if I just show up to post about my blog, how much will it hurt my getting noticed?

Also, how on earth do I attach on link? (on mastodon).

I don't get a ton of traffic on my blog, but my general plan is

1) Put a link in my signature. Every post I make has my blog on it. More posts means more people have a chance to see the link.
2) When you've talked about something on your blog, say so, and link to that article.

If someone asks about doing Dragonlance in Savage Worlds, I might go:
"Oh, hey, you want to do Savage Worlds Dragonlance? I wrote some blog posts about that. Here; some of the older ones in there are for 5e and Explorer edition, not SWADE, though."

If they're more specific, you might say "I had the moons influence magic by giving a +1 to rolls when waxing, +1 and 1 bonus power point when at high sanction. Waning is "normal", and Low sanction gives them a -1 to rolls and slower power point regeneration. I go into more detail here."

Simple, concise, on-topic. I'm directing them to my blog where I talk about it. When they have a specific question I've answered, I give them the gist. When they're general, I'm general.

This has the advantage of being within the rules, too. <***** mod hat> (not saying all other ways are outside the rules, BTW; just that mine is)

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Originally Posted by Alexander Atoz

To be noticed on social media platforms, such as mastodon and discord, how important is it that you engage with other people and "like" people and all that?
I have limited time, and I want to know if I just show up to post about my blog, how much will it hurt my getting noticed?

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I don't know about Mastodon, but on the Facebook RPG discussion groups I'm part of, you have to be at least a semi-active member to advertise your stuff (i.e. have some activity on the group beyond posting your ads). People plopping on a group just to post a link toward their latest blogpost/vidéo is common, but it's frowned upon, and can get them banned by some mods.
But if you engage in conversation once in a while (or simply actually comment and discuss your announcements), they're pretty chill.

Lots of Mastodon references. Has that platform picked up steam? What kind of demographic uses it?

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Originally Posted by earthseawizard

Lots of Mastodon references. Has that platform picked up steam? What kind of demographic uses it?

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It varies. I find my Mastodon is slower than my Bluesky, by a lot, but it's also where I'm seeing a lot of gaming stuff, and I find discovery of new accounts to follow easier on it. I'm specifically on a gaming fedi, which no doubt helps; I started on an art one, and discovery just wasn't there.

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Originally Posted by LibraryOgre

It varies. I find my Mastodon is slower than my Bluesky, by a lot, but it's also where I'm seeing a lot of gaming stuff, and I find discovery of new accounts to follow easier on it. I'm specifically on a gaming fedi, which no doubt helps; I started on an art one, and discovery just wasn't there.

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Maybe it's time I took another look.

What's Bluesky? First time hearing it.

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Originally Posted by earthseawizard

Maybe it's time I took another look.

What's Bluesky? First time hearing it.

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Basically an alternate twitter.