A blog post on Writers in the Storm (which has quickly become my favorite writing blog) got me thinking (as all good blog posts should, really).

The post was called “The Tools Have Changed But Your Voice Still Matters.” And it details how, in even as few as five years ago, blogging and how readers find your blog has changed. It used to be, according to the author, that you wrote a blog, posted it on your website, and Google handled the rest sending interested readers to your site. But as Google has gotten crowded out by AI as a source of information this once reliable source of readers simply isn’t there anymore.

“Writers, bloggers, and creatives built entire careers on the promise that if they showed up, wrote their truth, and optimized for Google, readers would find them.” Lisa Norman, Writers in the Storm Blog

As the author of nearly 600 blog posts written over the past fourteen years I have entirely relied on Google to direct readers to my site. I have posted links to my blog to social media every so often, and tell people about it, but for the most part I’ve just let it grow organically.

But is this still the way to go?

Norman, the author of the article, points out that Substack and Medium are much better at directing interested readers to your blog. On those platforms, readers can name their interests and will be fed related content. But is this true? If you write it, will they come? Or, I suppose more relevantly, will your work be shown?

I’m sure just like with SEO for Google, there are similar tricks for getting your work shown to readers on Substack and Medium. Just because I don’t know them, doesn’t mean that they’re not there.

So, what is a blogger to do? Do you stick with what you know and post your blog to your website or do you take a chance and move to another platform? Well, just like it is when you publish a book, you want to give the most people an opportunity to find your work. I say:

Post it everywhere!

Yes, post your blog on your website. Yes, post it to Medium. And, hey, why not? Post it to Substack as well. You’ve written the blog post. It takes very little additional effort to post the same thing to multiple places.

So, where do you get your readers? (According to my website stats, mine still come from Google, and Medium doesn’t tell me to how many people they have shown my blog they only say how many have “viewed” it, by which I assume they mean clicked to open it.)

Ultimately, I agree with the article—your voice does still matter—only now you’ve got so many more ways for it to reach people.