Literary Boston
Building a brand through content writing, distribution, and social media
In 2012, I moved (back) to Boston, ready to start my MFA in Fiction Writing at Emerson College and ready to be part of the city’s rich literary community. I opened my computer and went searching for a website that covered the local literary community — events, authors, resources, history — but there was none. If I wanted to get the full picture, I had to go to bookstore websites, the Globe, do a Google search on Boston-area authors…
Since there wasn’t one website that was a hub of the Boston literary community, I started one.
Launch
In November 2012, I launched the Boston Book Blog (on Wordpress!) as a place to report on local news, highlight local authors, and start collecting local literary events into a master calendar. I started posting on Twitter and started to collect a little following as I posted daily events and literary news. I remember being around 400 followers on Twitter, taking a break for a few months, and coming back to find those followers still there — and they welcomed me back! People I talked to about what I was doing had a need for it, and I kept going.
Scaling
In 2016, I moved my website from free Wordpress to Squarespace, which allowed me to expand further. My Twitter following continued to grow, and in 2018 I started posting on Instagram. I launched a weekly newsletter in 2019 (with an 81% open rate the first week!). I began interviewing local authors and literary organizers, sharing these articles view my channels. My list of venues hosting literary events grew to over 100 websites I would check for the master calendar, and I shared events daily on Twitter (on my way to work!) and weekly in the email.
My following continued to grow. But running this alone, without any monetization, started to become too much. I always had a much larger vision for this, including rebranding it as “Literary Boston,” as I could sense the word “Blog” for something much more than a blog at that point was limiting. I hit a point in Fall 2021 where I either had to go all in on it, or hit pause — and I hit pause.
Rebrand
I left everything up during 2022 and 2023 — the website, the social media channels, the email sign-up form (oddly) — while I took a break from the project. But in 2023 I began to miss it, and wondered what a relaunch and rebrand would look like. The amazing thing is that when I checked my channels, I had gained MORE followers on social media, and MORE subscribers on my newsletter. My audience was growing while I was on pause! Which told me there was a need for what I was doing that still needed to be filled.
On March 14, 2024, I relaunched as Literary Boston — you can read more about the story here — and am back sharing content about the Boston literary community.
Content Strategy and Channels
My content strategy includes posting interesting and relevant content across a variety of channels.
Website: My website is my primary hub, which includes the master calendar, articles, local author new releases, local literary news, resources, and literary history. My approach is a hub-and-spoke one, where I load up the website with all sorts of content and then share that across channels to followers. The Literary Boston website has received 36,738 total unique viewers since I launched it in 2016: 6,675 in 2021, 5,861 in 2022 (while on pause), 8,747 in 2023 (while on pause!), and 3,262 as of April 23, 2024 (more than all of 2018!). Top posts are “Four Doors of Pinckney Street: Nathaniel Hawthorne” (6,079 unique views) and “A Walking Tour of The Handmaid’s Tale” (3,469 unique views).
Twitter: I originally grew my following on Twitter, when it had a strong writer presence. Since the changes under Elon, Writer Twitter has migrated to Threads, and while I still maintain 2,845 followers on Twitter, engagement since the relaunch has been nearly non-existent. Without the community of followers, I may hit pause (again) on this channel.
Instagram: My favorite social media platform! On Instagram, I post the week’s events, news, local author features, literary history, and coverage from local events — all of which are accentuated by the visual nature of the platform. When I relaunched I was around 1,818 followers, and just hit 2,022 on April 23 — a growth of 11% in a little over a month.
