Telling Friends About Your Hubs
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Besides all the ways you may be promoting your Hubs to bring traffic, I am sure you are also telling your friends about it. But did you consider that you might know a friend who is also into writing and may want to join HubPages?
Referring your friends, who may also like to write, to HubPages is a great way to improve your social life and gain a following of like-minded people.
Lead them on, and encourage them to join, especially if you see they have a talent for writing.
Let them stay abreast of your own work so they begin to see the enjoyment you are having.
Since they don’t yet have an account with HubPages, it’s not possible to have them click the follow button as other Hubbers do. But there are other ways to keep friends informed of your new published Hubs. The most straightforward way is to send them links each time you publish.
Short URL For Hubs
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You can email your friends the URL each time you publish. But some people have email accounts that don’t handle long URL’s well and they become truncated and useless. Short URL’s are the solution.
Have you noticed that short URL that HP gives you each time you publish a Hub? Do you know how to find that again if you didn't save it?
Well, guess what? It’s still available under the "Stat" tab on each Hub. After clicking “Stat” click on the “Hub Metrics” tab and you will see the short URL for that Hub.
Twittering About Hubs
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The easiest way to get the word out to your friends each time you publish is to get them to follow you with Twitter.
I use Twitter so people who don't have accounts on HubPages can still follow me. This is useful to let your friends follow you and you may even discover that word spreads around because some people will RT your tweet. RT means that they retweet to their own followers if they like what you wrote. I find that this helps get additional followers as well.
In case only know what some people say about Twitter, you may have heard a lot of talk about silly people tweeting about what they ate for breakfast or when they arrived at the mall. Yes it’s true that there are people doing that. And I agree that it’s silly. I see no point in it. But Twitter is useful for those who use it professionally.
If you use twitter yourself, tweet only about articles you write. That's what your Twitter followers are following you for. Don’t tweet anything else. Consider it part of your business, your writing career business. And use it professionally.
Tracking Friends with Referral Trackers
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Referral Trackers are codes you can insert into the URL’s you send to your friends to read your Hubs.
There are times when I send a friend a link to another Hubbers hub because I find it may be something of interest to them. I like to track those too. And I can do that by making a URL Tracker code unique to that friend. If they ever sign up and start writing hubs, I get 10% of their earnings.
Hey, the nice thing is that they don’t lose 10%. They still get their 60%. But HubPages takes only 30% instead of 40%. That’s where your 10% comes from for referrals.
You can monitor the usage of the Referral Trackers you give out by going to your account page and clicking the “Earnings” tab. Then click "Referral Trackers".
At the bottom of that page you can create new tracking codes and even give each on a description. But you don’t need to go crazy creating dozens of codes. Just make codes to indicate what group your friends are from. Such as your school friends, those you know at work, or those in your social group. Narrow it down that way.
There’s no need to make an individual tracker for each person. I’ll tell you why. When any of your friends actually sign up and create an account, you will be able to see each individual account by clicking on the Referral Tracker in your list. It opens up to another page listing ALL the people who signed up under you via that Tracker Code. And the list also shows their Hubber Scores, how many Hubs they published, and the signup date. Cool.
If you just want to know how your trackers are doing, the first page under “Referral Trackers” displays the traffic views for each referral tracker as well as how many signups you had. Click on any tracker code and you can see the individual Hubbers who signed up, as I mentioned above.
Your Own Local Writer's Group
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Did you now that HubPages is using the Meetup platform to let any Hubber create and run their own Local HubMeets?
There's a Forum dedicated to this. Once you have signed up some of your friends who like to write, you can get them together on a regular bases to share information on how to be successful with your writing. It’s a fun way to socialize too, because you are getting people together who all have the same interest... writing.
My HubPages Support Topics Table Of Contents
Table of Contents listing of all Tutorial Hubs by Glenn Stok
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Lisa, I also see that happening with certain people. I mean the part your said about people not having enough time to write or just don't want to write. But some of these people are strange. There is one person I know who sometimes brings up a subject that I had ironically written about. So I send her a link to my Hub. Then she never read it. And she argues that she doesn't care to read online. But this same woman reads and writes streams of emails every day. Go figure.
Another one kept talking about all the things he wants to write about. Because of his interest, I kept nudging him on. He even came to a few local HubMeets. But then she stopped coming and I was told he felt too overwhelmed by it. I think we all feel overwhelmed, especially because we have so much in us to get out. But we do, eventually. Oh well. To each his own.
Another great hub, Glen! Thanks so much.
You have given me more ideas about how I can keep in touch with my friends through Twitter and just sending them links to the Hubs I believe they will be interested in. Thanks also for the short URL info.
By the way, I agree with Lisa HW who says she likes the way you lay out your hub. And I particularly like your link to your Table of Contents to specific hubs.
Maralexa, Thank you to you and to Lisa for the kind comments about how I organized the layout of this Hub. I forgot to mention a thanks to Lisa as I was responding to her comments. Sorry Lisa. And to both of you, thanks for being the first two of my valued readers to check this out.
Thanks for putting this together to encourage expanding readership. I appreciate the practical look at Twitter and the concise info on urls and referral trackers. Thanks for another well-done and inspiring hub.
RTalloni, Thanks for stopping by and for your feedback. It helps me know what I'm doing right.
Hi Glenn:
As always another great hub with useful information. This hub in itself is almost like an extended greeting to new potential members. Members who cannot only join hubpages, but maybe feel it out first, by coming to one of their local meetups. And to add, you have included a lot of great information, in a neat and organized format that we can talk about at our Feb. meetup on Long Island. You mentioned the referral trackers and Twitter. Which I use only to promote my writing, nothing else. In fact I prefer Twitter over Facebook for this type of exposure. Thanks again for sharing a eye-gluing read, which I voted not only useful, but up as well.
Jim
Jim, Thanks for the positive vote and comments.
Great eye opener!
Glenn-- as always another great hub- I apologize for the late read, but this is true, you have to tell your friends about yoru hubs. The hubs are your lifeblood to your other things-- your blogs books ect-- which you need to see success.
I'm not on twitter-- but I think I might give it a go soon.
Rebecca, Always good to see you stop by, no need to apologize, ever. Twitter is great for non-Hubbers who want to follow you. I seem to get a lot of retweets by other people too. That has a tendency to expand the audience, I guess. If you try it, let me know how it works out for you.
Thank you very much. I learned lots of things from your Hub. Voted up!
chamilj, I'm glad it was helpful. Thanks for stopping by and for the vote.
Only my Internet friends read my stuff. My real life friends and family don't; if they do, they don't say anything to me despite some of the controversial and unkind-but-true things I've said at times.
Lisa HW Level 6 Commenter 4 months ago
This is, maybe, not the kind of thing people are supposed to make comments about on Hubs; but I like the way you've made this Hub's appearance look so well organized.
One of my sons has signed up with HP, so he's somewhere on here (I don't know where, though. It's apparently a secret. LOL ) My daughter has said she hasn't ruled out the idea of doing something on here. (If she does, I imagine it will be a secret too.) LOL They're both excellent writers.
Other than they, everyone I know pretty much makes it clear they're not at all interested in writing (to quote a few "LOATHE writing") themselves LOL, or in reading "stuff on the Internet" (which I'm left to then assume includes my stuff, of course LOL) - which could be part of why my writing kids and I are all pretty reticent about sharing what we write. (Well, actually, I've tried, which is the reason I know the the bits about "can't be bothered reading online", "don't have time to be on the computer", and "loathe writing". LOL ) HOWEVER, the idea of having friends on here and kind of sharing whatever goes on is a nice one (at least for people who friends who aren't "too busy to be on the computer" or too busy "loathing writing". :)