Branding 101: Promo and Marketing for Writers, Part One

I just had a wonderful long-weekend retreat with writer pals Caryn McGill and Kathy Weyer. We even looped in Sandy Bremser for a “writer gals” lunch. There is something about focused, concentrated time with other writers that is a good contagion. One’s excitement about current and future projects infects the others. One leaves such an engagement with a renewed commitment to write and publish.

But, for a professional writer, that’s not enough. One must also have a business plan, a marketing plan, and promotional activities developed and implemented. That was the focus (though not the whole story) of our weekend together.

At my first writing conference (I’ve shared this before), I didn’t have a clue what a “platform” was. My only connections to “platform” were shoes and train stations. Clearly, that was not what these writing instructors were talking about.

I’m not stupid. I did “get it” pretty quickly, but the individual components of the platform still were unfamiliar to me. The underlying purpose for the platform is branding. You want people to see your name and recognize what you write. They might even buy your books if you’re lucky! lol

So what does a professional writer do when confronted with expectations? She learns what she must, and she implements that learning as quickly and deeply as she can. It’s sort of a spiral with me. The range at the top of my spiral was pretty small, very narrow at first. Then it widened and went deeper. I now have multiple intertwined spirals. And I know I am not done.

I was told, and went home to learn about and implement, that there are four basics or essentials to your writing platform. Get those going, and you can deepen and extend from there.

The four are:

1) Author website,

2) Blog with regular posts (at least once a week),

3) Twitter with regular posts (at least once daily), and

4) Facebook author pages and membership/participation in FB affinity groups.

Check. Check. Check. Check.

Of course, for me, having multiple genres and pen names to brand and market, I ended up with one website with descriptions of my genres, three blogs, three Twitter accounts, and four author pages on Facebook as well as membership in more than a dozen affinity groups.

I will be coming back to this topic in the coming weeks to elaborate these four basics and then how to extend your reach.

If you are interested in how to find me in a variety of places, check out my website and poke around on the links there: Sharon Arthur Moore, Author  

The Karma of Tweeting Book Titles

I have a burn against people who continually hawk their books but never even click on others’ hawked books to check them out. And do they buy someone else’s book? I don’t think so!

Indeed, if we each bought just one book a week that someone tweets, all of us authors would be better off. And if we only wrote one book review a month for a book title that was tweeted (and then broadcast that), we would have a bunch of happy, not-so-desperate authors.

I did a very unscientific survey on Twitter and Facebook asking authors if they also bought tweeted book titles. I had an abysmal response rate. Pathetic, even. Very few people said they did. One person said he/she would buy but nothing sounded interesting.

Really?

I suggested he/she might want to follow different people. There are tons of titles/topics out there. If you don’t see any, find people writing what you do like.

Take a kind of selfie right now: How does it make you feel when someone tweets they bought your book or tweets they just left a review? How do you look, inside and out?

Well, share the love. Do unto others blah blah. Get it?

I probably buy a half-dozen tweeted books a week. (Okay, you’re right. I probably should seek professional help for that.) But my point is, I am trying to support people, and I entertain myself in the process.

Sure, lots of the books are not-so-good and some are awful.

But there’s also some great stuff the tweeps are making available. And it’s little money you are expending. Heck, I spend less on tweeted books than you’d pay for a Caramel Macchiato several times a week! AND I made somebody feel good!

I truly believe that if you expect others to buy your books, you have an obligation to buy some of theirs. Not all. Not even close to all. But click on the link of enticing tweets. Read the blurb. Sound like what you like to read? Buy it. Read it. Leave a review.

Karma is an interesting thing. What goes around, comes around. Do your bit to spread good karma.

Just in case you want to get your karma revved up, here are the three books I have published. I’d love to hear what you think!

Guest Post: "Feeding Your Inner Muse" by Katherine Ramsland

I am delighted to have the talented, prolific, and knowledgeable Katherine Ramsland today at Write Away. I have her excellent "The Criminal Mind" from some years ago. Her post today may help you view creativity and productivity in a whole new way. Welcome, Katherine! Thanks for sharing your expertise with us today.

You know the feeling: You’re at an impasse with a character or plot point. You’re frustrated. It’s going nowhere, but you’re on a deadline. You’ve run out of ways to spur your muse.

Consider this: Don’t work so hard. The less you push, the better your chances of getting what you need. Your brain needs some space to do its best work. In other words, relax and trust it.

Isaac Asimov realized this. Whenever he experienced writer’s block, he knew it was useless to force the issue. So, he’d go to a movie. He’d let his subconscious process the material in its own way. Once he returned, he invariably had new ideas. (I did this once, and got ideas before I even sat down to watch.)

Many writers, inventors, scientists, artists, and mathematicians have discovered the same thing. When they’re focused on something else, or on nothing, the idea they need arrives – aha! –seemingly from nowhere.

But these insights seem so random. We think those people just got lucky.

According to recent neuroscience discoveries, that’s not true. Insights arrive with preparation.

Any of us can harness our resources to produce flashes of genius that will move our writing along. With a little work, we can prime our brain for “aha! moments.” Better yet, we can get them on a regular basis.

I call them “snaps,” because the aha! that really counts is insight plus momentum – it snaps us toward action. It makes us drop everything and run to our desk. It might even get us out of bed in the middle of the night. Sound exciting? It is!

I learned a lot about this experience from a 19^th century mathematician, who described it to a group of psychiatrists. After reaching an impasse on a series of problems, Henri Poincaré went to the seaside to relax. When he went for a walk one morning, the idea he needed for resolving his impasse struck him at once. It was “immediately certain.” Upon returning, he got back to work, but there was one part that remained stubbornly mysterious. He worked on it day after day, to no avail. Again, he went on a trip, and while walking along the street, the solution hit him.

Comparing unconscious ideas to atoms, Poincaré said, “During a period of apparent rest and unconscious work, certain of them come unhooked from the wall and put in motion. They flash in every direction through the space where they are enclosed….  Then their mutual impacts may produce new combinations.”

Conscious work was necessary, he said, but it could go only so far. “We think we have done no good because we have moved these elements in a thousand different ways in seeking to assemble them,” he stated, “and have found no satisfactory aggregate. But after this shaking up imposed on them by our will, these atoms do not return to their primitive rest. They freely continue their dance.”

In a more modern frame, neuropsychiatrist Nancy Andreason suggests that the brain is a self-organizing system of feedback loops that constantly generates new thoughts, sometimes spontaneously. Using PET scans, she found activity in the association cortex, where information from diverse parts of the brain gets integrated.

The association cortex makes it possible to gather a lot of information in one place. Thus, it creates the conditions for novel associations. It makes sense, then, that when sudden insight occurs, the idea seems to arrive fully formed. It is! We don’t realize it because we don’t “feel” the brain working the way we do when we focus and concentrate, but it does.  

While we’re not looking, our brains have the chance to mix and match all the ideas we’ve absorbed.

Here’s the formula: Scan, sift, and solve. First, you work: you do your research. Be diverse. Gather lots of different types of data. Immerse in your field of expertise, but also read something new to you. This “idea stew” forms your knowledge base. This is the scan stage.

Now, for the fun! Read through the material on which you’re blocked and then go do something else. Relaxing your left brain releases your eager right brain to sift through and reshape the data into new patterns. There is a lot of good research to support how this works.

Then, let your brain solve your problem.  Stop clenching. Give your brain room to play. Then, when you least expect it, an idea will pop.

Consider these other examples:

·      Jonas Salk was working on a cure for polio in a dark basement in Pittsburgh. He failed time and again, so he traveled to Italy to wander in a monastery. There, he experienced a rush of ideas, including the one that resulted in the polio vaccine.

·      Martin Cooper was watching Star Trek when he first envisioned the cell phone.

·      Math professor Darren Crowdy let his mind wander while listening to a lecture and he suddenly “saw” the solution to a long-unsolved math puzzle.

·      J. K. Rowling was on a stalled train pondering the plot of an adult novel when she snapped on a child wizard. “I simply sat and thought, for four (delayed) hours,” she said, “and all the details bubbled up in my brain.”

Start now to learn your rhythms. After working, walk, take a shower, throw a stick for your dog: do something that relaxes the cognitive load. This gives your brain the energy it needs to merge data you’ve supplied and switch on your inner green light. Once you’ve learned what works, set up the conditions for doing it on a regular basis. You’ll be amazed by how often your brain will surprise you.

Katherine Ramsland is a writer and professor of forensic psychology and criminal justice. Among her 58 books are The Murder Game, The Mind of a Murderer, and Snap! Seizing Your Aha! Moments. She has published over 1,000 articles, is a #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller, and blogs for Psychology Today.

Website:

www.katherineramsland.com

Facebook Fan Page:

https://www.facebook.com/Kath.ramsland

Twitter

https://twitter.com/#!/KatRamsland

Linkedin

http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=21782772&trk=tab_pro

Psychology Today blog:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shadow-boxing

Twitter for Writers: Keeping It Going

Maintaining the momentum to post day after day, month after month, year after year is daunting. Good intentions slide away. I have been tweeting, from my first account, since 2011. Yet, it wasn’t until 2014 that I was consistently tweeting (from three accounts at that point). Like all of us, I let pieces of my platform rise and fall depending upon what was happening in my life.

I realized that I had to be consistent if I were going to build my follower base, and I had to provide content they would want to read and retweet. So that’s when I got serious, and like the newly converted, I became an advocate for Twitter and blogging.

It paid off. While my numbers are not in the tens of thousands, across my three Twitter accounts, I connect with almost 10,000 followers. I have seen my page views for my three blogs rise to more than 3000 per month with me blogging just once a week. If I put up more content, I’ll bet I’d get even more page views.

Name recognition is what it’s about. Do I sell a bazillion books? Nope. Can I trace book sales to my tweets and blog posts? Nope. But I know me as a reader. If I know the name, have seen it a lot, I am more inclined to buy that book. Just ask Dan Brown and Stephen King if that name thing isn’t working for them.

So, how did I turn the corner on consistency? I came up with a system. I’ve already described parts of it:

1)   I create two or three tweets for each blog post (which I can use on Facebook, too).

2)   I collect content of interest to my followers by reading news items/articles and create tweets from them. One article easily equals five or more tweets.

3)   When making tweets about your book and how to buy, think of the tweet as a tiny book hook. Engage, intrigue, question, provoke so they click on the link.

4)   I retweet others, follow back those who fit my Twitter focus, and use hashtags to bring attention to my content.

5)   I arrange each day’s tweets in advance (I can do several days at once) and divide the list into two or three segments for tweeting at different times of the day.

6)   I attend Twitter parties like @StoryDam on Thursday evenings which allows me to share blog posts and interact with people who are also attending.

7)   Create your own Twitter party and invite people to attend. For example,  “You’re invited to a Twitter #mysterywritersparty Weds. 6-7pm MST. Bring questions/ideas/blog posts. Topic: Murder weapons you’ve used” That’s a commitment you are making, but ask some other mystery writers to co-sponsor it with you.

8)   I go back into my other two accounts and re-tweet my other accounts. My three alternate tweets about a blog post now I have been tweeted two more times. 3 tweets is multiplied as in the table below. G2T = @Good2Tweat; RR = @RomanceRighter; RG = @RiverGlynn

Tweet A version Morning post	Tweet B version Mid-Day post	Tweet C version Evening post
G2T; RT by RR/RG RR; RT by G2T/RG RG; RT by G2T/RR	G2T; RT by RR/RG RR; RT by G2T/RG RG; RT by G2T/RR	G2T; RT by RR/RG RR; RT by G2T/RG RG; RT by G2T/RR

Not even close to all your followers are on at the time you’re posting, so when I post three times a day, one tweet gets 27 chances for viewing. It’s the multiplicative effect. But, if you only have one Twitter account, you are still posting the link to your blog three times. Three is good! And if you’re using hashtags, someone else is helping you by re-tweeting.

Some Tweeps use services like HootSuite to schedule and post their tweets. That doesn’t work for me. I want to interact with my followers when I see an interesting post or I find things I want to re-tweet. Since I’m at the site anyway doing those things, I can find the 8 seconds per tweet it takes me to put them up.

Well, I’m done talking about Twitter. I hope this series has helped you to navigate the system you may have been avoiding. Remember, you only have to spend as much time as you allocate. Set that timer and tweet away!

April A-Z Blog Challenge

Coming soon to a blog near you! At my blog, in April, you get a two-fer! Here’s a sample:

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W is for Walk-on Characters

Ever write a story with walk-on characters? [That’s my W word on Day 23.]

Walk-ons shouldn’t be throwaway characters. Nor should they be extraneous. Each character in your story …

Story--W: Day 23

         “Will you help? Please?” She sat next to his cooling body, picked up a lifeless hand, and looked up at her captor. “I don’t want to leave him like this.”

         She thought she caught a flicker of doubt in his eyes as he shifted them to the wagon behind her. …

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Come back on Day 23 to read more. Better still, mark your calendar to start following me daily (except Sundays) in April. Each day you will get a two-fer! I’ll post a writing tip or tidbit for authors, and then I will post the next segment of a story broken into 26 pieces. Each day’s story segment will begin with that day’s letter of the alphabet. Doesn’t that sound like too much fun???

If you have a blog and haven’t signed up for the most fun Internet challenge ever, now is your chance! Visit the A-Z challenge site

and add your name to the hundreds of others. By April 1^st, there will be thousands of us. I just signed up and am super excited for this year’s challenge to begin.

Two years ago I posted on “Romance Righter” about random words. Okay, I was just getting the hang of it. It got better.

Last year I posted on “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time”. This January I was interviewed about my posts on food terms and techniques, and it was published on the A-Z blog site. Yay!

This year I am posting on my third blog, “Write Away”. Trying to share the love. Ya’ll come back in April. Of course, I’d love to have you visit me before that, too. On Tuesdays, I post a new piece. Check out my archives and add me to your blog visitation schedule! I have great fun here!

Twitter for Writers: How to Construct Tweets that Get Re-Tweeted: Part 2

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Since I last posted about tweeting, there’s been some water cooler conversation on the author loop for Oak Tree Press authors. The reactions to Twitter range from disdain to delight, from cluelessness to consistent use.

One huge issue for these writers’ is time. SO, I timed myself. It takes me 8 seconds per posted tweet to copy, paste, and send the tweet to my followers. If I am sending 8 tweets in that time period, that is just over one minute to post. Now, additional time does go into the prep for those tweets, but it is not onerous at all. And you can control how many tweets you send a day and when you send them. More time goes into re-tweeting others via from followers or from hashtags. But, again, you have control over when and how much.

So, sorry, no sympathy here for the whiners who say it takes too much time. My response: Just how much time are you willing to allocate to promotion and marketing of yourself and your brand?

Back to work: Two weeks ago, I wrote Part 1   of this post. Too much to do in one post, so I split it. I think I’m going to have a book when I finally finish this series that began last fall! (Okay, a small book.)

So the goal is to be noticed, right? And noticing you means tweeps: a) re-tweet your tweets; b) click on the links you provide; or, c) both. If people notice you they are more likely to follow you.

One way I have found to get my followers to re-tweet me is to re-tweet their posts. I sometimes find them in my Twitter feed, and I re-tweet posts of interest to me and my followers.

On occasion, I click on someone’s name who follows me, and I re-tweet a number of interesting tweets. That brings me to their attention, thus, I am more likely to be re-tweeted. And most of their followers don’t follow me--yet. But by re-tweeting, then I pop up in the Twitter feed of someone else. I always get more followers from the person I r-etweeted followers.

I’ve read that getting the first 10K followers is the hardest. After that it expands easily. I agree with that. I don’t buy followers nor do I follow people who offer to sell followers. I’d rather grow gradually with real followers.

But as I get more followers, I get more re-tweets. Makes sense, eh? So work on growing that Twitter follower base and you’ll get more RTs.

What are some other features to attract re-tweets and/or clicking on links?

Ways to Get Re-Tweeted:

1) Hashtags are invaluable.

I said it in an earlier post I wrote, and I’ll say it again: join into Twitter via hashtags. This exposure introduces you to a wider range than your followers so you get more followers from like-minded folk. These people have tacitly agreed, like you, to re-tweet others with that hashtag. The potential reach for you is in the hundreds of thousands more than your small followers list.

I’ll repeat here the list of hashtags I use regularly:

#SundayBlogShare (Sundays for blog posts only)

#MondayBlogs (Mondays for blog posts only)

#WWWBlogs (Wednesdays for blog posts)

#ShareBlogPost (Thursdays for old posts mostly, can be new)

#ArchiveDay (Saturdays for old blog posts)

#BlogHer (any day)

#WriteTip (any day for writing tips, not promos)

#amwriting (any day)

#amreading (any day)

2) Be consistent in posting.

Followers start to look for you. I have even gone hunting for some I follow who haven’t posted recently. They come to depend upon your content and rely on you for a consistent presence and flow of consistent information that reflects your Twitter accounts focus.

Post daily, even if only once. And post at similar times. I post two or three times a day--Early morning, midday, and evening. People have tried to figure out the best hours and days, and there are articles all over the Internet on somebody’s study or other.

3) Analyze the highly re-tweeted posts and replicate where possible.

Okay, cute animal and baby tweets can go crazy, but that’s not my content, so I may click on them, I may re-tweet them, but I won’t create them. Not my thing.

Sex also sells, and I do create some of those for @RomanceRighter, as well as relationship topics, also highly re-tweetable. Feel good articles are also popular topics for re-tweeting.

Quotes are one of the hugest areas for re-tweets. Surely you can collect quotes for your account’s focus and re-tweet them. I have pages of quotes to dip into.

Another thing that gets re-tweeted a lot is quirky and odd facts. For @RiverGlynn, I tweet science facts (like the recent “9 Facts about Flatulence”) and info about paranormal happenings.

It’s a good thing recipes are so big in the Twitterverse. @Good2Tweat posts lots of recipes and links to recipes. I get tons of followers that way since we have a shared interest.

In fact, “how to do” tweets on just about anything is appealing to re-tweeters.

4) Be Yourself--whoever that persona is.

Related to number 3, being yourself is a feature of consistency. Followers do not expect me to retweet sex facts from @Good2Tweat, but @RomanceRighters followers expect it. So build a consistent persona and tweet accordingly. Authentic tweets get re-tweeted because you met your followers expectations.

5) Share “personal” information.

No, I don’t mean what you ate for breakfast. Yawn! Nope, share things that are important to you, like the birthday of a favorite author and tell why he/she is a fave. Or share that you are struggling with a knotty plot point and ask for help. Share the steps you are using to prepare for NaNoWriMo. This is also part of being authentic. You are a working author. That intrigues lots of people.

6) Grow your audience, and thus the potential for RTs, by finding influencers in your area of expertise.

You write like Michael Connelly so might follow him (he’s unlikely to follow back) and then cherry pick some of his followers to also follow. These are people who selected him because they like his tweets. After you follow some of them, go to those profiles and RT some of their tweets to get their attention. Many will follow you back, because like you, they are NOT Michael Connelly, but they want to hang with people LIKE M.C.

7) Use the handles of others when posting whenever possible.

When I have guest bloggers or I am posting on someone else’s blog, I tweet about it, and I use that person’s handle. @SuziAuthor has followers who see my tweet. I hang out with Suzi, well, that might be enough to entice them to follow. I sometimes mention other authors when sharing personal information. New eyes see my handle and I get followers. Again, the more followers you have the more RTs you get. Basic math, eh?

Using Twitter for authors continues next week. Stop back in to see some specific ideas for how to use Twitter for marketing and promotion of your books. Once you have built a following, you have folks to sell to.

If you haven’t visited my website recently, Sharon ArthurMoore-Author, please go by to check it out. It looks VERY different (and needed to!). 

Guest Post: "Writing is Not for Wimps" by Sue Faris Raatjes

I am so happy to introduce my readers to a new author I recently met, Sue Faris Raatjes. She is publishing her first book very soon, and I know you'll find this post supportive of both new and experienced authors. Welcome, Sue!

Discipline is a dirty word. We cringe when we read it, especially when self- comes in front of it. All writers struggle to maintain the self-discipline required to perfect their craft.

I’d like to put a positive spin on this dreaded term by focusing on the root—disciple. A disciple is a follower of someone or Someone or something. A loyal follower. Apply that to your role as writer and think of yourself as a follower of a dream to influence readers. You are pursuing an end product—a piece of writing that gives you pride and joy.

Toss out that dreaded term discipline and replace it with motivation, structure, or perseverance. I like the term doggedness because it conjures up images of growling strength.

Clichés for writers:

·      It’s a marathon not a race.

·      Duct tape yourself to the chair in front of the computer.

·      Adopt a “butt in the seat” philosophy.

·      Quit whining and just do it.

·      Writing is 20% inspiration and 80%...well, you know the rest.

These all are good, but are worn-out and guilt-producing. If you are holding down a job, managing a home, caring for others, and you’re developing a writing career, you probably have the discipline-thing worked out. You forfeit sleep, streamline your life, eat more take-out, or ignore relationships in order to fit writing into your bursting schedule.

For those with more time to write (and fritter away), it helps to adopt a work attitude. I tell myself I’m off to work when I sit down at the computer. I take coffee breaks and lunch breaks, but that’s about it. No goofing off at work. Good thing there are no co-workers to distract me. (Best part is I don’t have to dress up or do my hair.) I’ve considered hanging an old-fashioned time clock on the wall of my den so I can punch in and punch out.

Word-count Discipline:

Someone once said, “To improve any piece of writing, cross out every other word.” A little tongue-in-cheek but the message is good. We not only have to be dogged about our time but also our wordiness.

As a writer for the Christian market, I enjoy devotional writing because it forces me into a specific word count. Devotionals usually are limited to 300 to 350 words. It’s a great exercise that requires the elimination of superfluous words in order to meet the required number. Why use two adjectives when one strong one will do the job? It forces me to eliminate meaningless, unnecessary verbiage. There’s no room for fluff.

I serve on a volunteer editorial panel for the Arizona Republic. Each week we receive a question dealing with current events to which we respond in one hundred words. Editors select four answers and publish them in the column titled AZ Talk. It’s an exercise in brevity. If it’s a question I feel passionate about, I easily can create a 150-word response. Then I delete until I get to the golden 100, revealing a nugget of powerful writing.

Give yourself an assignment with a limited word-count to see what it feels like. At first it’s devastating to delete beautifully worded prose. After a while, though, you get into the swing and see your writing is improved, tightened up. It’s very Hemingway-esque.

Rewards and Inspiration:

It’s tough being a writer. The rewards are slow to come, if they come at all. It helps to be self-driven, goal-oriented, or just plain stubborn. Find out what inspires and motivates you and shower that generously on yourself.

·      Gourmet coffee and/or expensive chocolate

·      An encouraging friend who thinks everything you write is wonderful (Thanks, Mom)

·      An inspirational quote hanging on your wall

Here are three items that keep me plugging when the gas tank is empty:

1.     “Write. Finish what you start. Make it great. Then do it all again.” (Chuck Wendig, Writer’s Digest, February, 2014) (The “finish” part is for me.)

2.     An article from the newspaper titled, “Author publishes 1^st Novel at age 85.”

3.     A poem, “On Being Happy,” from a greeting card I received thirty years ago that talks about singing a song, painting a picture, or writing a poem that no one hears or sees or reads. It ends with: “Then one day/ I sang my song/ and I read my poem/ and I saw my picture/ and I knew why/ and I was happy.”

Congratulations for choosing to write. Most people don’t have the skill, inspiration, or perseverance to do what you are doing. Be proud of yourself. You are a disciple following the dream of changing lives through your words. Your brain connects with other brains and that is a formidable task. Wimps need not apply.

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Coming Soon!

Route to Survival by Sue Faris Raatjes

(a novel published by WestBow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson-Zondervan)

Support systems crumbling? In Route to Survival Kate Mitchell shows how to make wise choices in tough times. You’ll live through it, but you won’t look the same!

Sue Faris Raatjes is a former high school English teacher and writer with credits in various Christian magazines. She’s taught Bible studies to all ages for many years. She has four children, ten grandchildren, and lives in Phoenix with her husband, Bob.

Social Media Contacts:

Blog: “Grow with God” at www.sueraatjes.blogspot.com

Website: www.sueraatjes.weebly.com