What can I ask my readers to help me and how?
I have a growing non-fiction blog about challenging existing dogmas in my culture, and it has been attracting a good amount of readers. However its growth is still not optimal, as they just read or want to meet me, not really commit to help me. I don't want to be greedy or arrogant, but I think I can ask them if they can help me in some tasks, so that they can see the project growing, and I can have time to focus on writing new articles. I sincerely consider me as being overloaded right now. The tasks they may help includes:
- Share it to other potential readers, either on their Facebook wall or via chat
- Help me engage with other readers: manage pages, posts, comments
- Write emails to other targets: publishers, people they don't know personally but probably see its importance in their work
My questions are:
- Is this reasonable?
- How should I approach them?
Related: What to ask next when people tell me that my article is excellent?
1 answer
You are trying to turn a critique into a movement. Is that possible? Sure. That's how all movements start.
But critique is easy and it is everywhere. All the cranky old men who write to the newspapers decrying every new development and change in public policy are engaging in critique. Not one of them ever started a movement.
Movements are hard. Never having started a movement myself, I'm not going to offer advice on how to do it. Besides, it would not be writing advice. But I'm pretty sure that just writing a blog of social critique and asking readers to do the work of starting a movement because you are too busy to do it yourself is not going to work.
On the other hand, there is definitely a communication component to is. Jordan Peterson, who definitely did what you are seeking to do, spawned a movement off one post on Quora. But he took advantage of that moment by writing a bestselling book, making hundreds of YouTube videos, and going on a book tour that nearly killed him.
But notice that Peterson did not do this off criticism alone. Yes, there is a lot of cultural criticism in his work, but at the core there is a program for personal improvement that has appealed to many people.
I think it is very difficult to start a movement of criticism alone. Do you have a program for self improvement or political action to go with it?
The most you are likely to get just out of a cranky blog of social criticism is a few cranky followers who happen to agree with you. And they are not going to share or promote your cranky blog unless they think that sharing your blog will make them look better in the eyes of the people in their social circle that they want to impress.
And guess what, criticism of the zeitgeist does not tend to impress most people's social circle. The zeitgeist is the zeitgeist because most people agree with it. The depth of most people's social criticism is that the guy next door got a better deal than they did.
So, is getting other people to do the work of turning your part time efforts at social criticism into a movement a reasonable ask. Probably not.
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