Find Your Fans and Grow Your Readership: Introducing Blog Event Listings!

Lack of interaction has caused many a new blogger’s hopes to run aground on the rocks of demotivation, no matter how gung-ho their blogging start. Many of us quickly realize that publishing is actually the easy part — finding readers and encouraging comments is tougher.

What if there were a way to jump-start your entry into the blogging community (or breathe new life into an existing blog)? There’s no Bring Me 100 New Readers button in the dashboard (YET), but participating in blogging events can help fast track you from the margins to the center. To make it easier for you to find and participate in events and challenges that interest you, we’re launching a page just for blog event listings.

Most blog events and challenges work a lot like the ones we run here at The Daily Post — the event organizer will post a theme, prompt, or some instructions, and you publish an entry on your blog and leave a link back on the original challenge post. The organizer — and other participants — can and do visit and comment on each others’ entries, boosting views, likes, and comments on participating blogs; most events have robust and welcoming communities. Often, organizers also highlight entries in posts on their own blogs for a little extra link love, and sometimes there are prizes (yay!).

Blog events run the gamut from single-post flash fiction events to month-long “post every day” marathons to genre-specific events like recipe contests and DIY/crafting challenges. No matter what your blogging interest or how much time you have to spend, there’s bound to be an event that works for your blog and schedule.

• To find an event, head to the blog event listing page (you can always find it via the menu up top or the link in the sidebar), and browse the listings that interest you — Photography & Visual Arts, Fiction & Flash Fiction, Non-Fiction/General Blogging, or Niche-Specific*. Each entry contains the basic description and instructions, plus a link to learn more on the organizer’s blog.

• If you run an event, please submit a listing! The more events listed, the more useful this page becomes — and that means we need you to participate. Fill out the submission form, and our editors will add your listing to the page. Along with the page, we’ll highlight events via Twitter and the Daily Post Digest — a great opportunity to expand your event.

Please feel free to share these links far and wide — share the listings with your communities, and the submission form with any bloggers you know who run events. This isn’t limited to WordPress.com bloggers; anyone can submit a listing. The more blogging, the merrier!

We love seeing your writing and photo challenge entries every week, and we can see you visiting and commenting on one another’s sites, which is fantastic. If you want to take it a step further, try another event or challenge — it will grow your audience and your blogging prowess.

*I know, there are none listed in this category yet. Maybe yours could be the first! We’ve got our first one! Fashion bloggers, rejoice.