Instead of coming up with New Year’s resolutions for my writing in 2016, I decided to take a friend’s advice and try a new approach. I wrote down what worked and what didn’t for me in 2015.

Worked

1. Blogging
2. Facebook
3. Twitter
4. Seeking Reviews

Didn’t Work

1. Blog tour
2. Pinterest
3. Goodreads
4. Reviewing Books

Due to blogging, the activity on my website increased steadily over the year. My most successful blogs were about pitching your manuscripts to agents and editors and writing in general.  Blogs about historical trivia and book reviews were the least popular.  Setting up a blog tour took a great deal of time and was only minimally successful.

Joining Facebook groups dedicated to writing and sharing my blogs and other interesting information about writing resulted in a lot of activity on my website.  I joined Twitter in November and began sharing writing tidbits and my blogs. Creating a Tweet is short and quick and fits into my life style.  Goodreads was time consuming and sometimes confusing.  Although I like Pinterest, more of my pens about drawing and painting were repined than anything about biographies.

I was successful in obtaining reviews for my books simply by asking for them.  It was a time consuming process, but I received six 5 star reviews from Amazon reviewers and Debbie Alvarez, The Styling Librarian highly praised my biography of George Eastman on her blog.

 

So do I have a New Year’s Resolution? No!  But I do have goals.  What are they?  Keep doing what worked.  So I will continue blogging, making friends on Facebook, Tweeting regularly, and seeking more reviews.  Plus, I have two new goals for 2016.  I want to carve out more time to work on new projects and develop a workshop for writers on pitching their work.

 

What are your goals for 2016?