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I get this question quite a bit when I’m speaking to businesses about using content marketing to grow their business, but writers also ask how much they need to blog in order to build their platform and promote their book.
While there is no hard and fast rule, I do have a few guidelines that may help you as you’re trying to increase your visibility.
1. Post new content at least three times a week, daily during a major event.
This doesn’t mean you have to come up with new things all of the time. Invite other knowledgeable people to participate on your blog. I try very hard at Writing Career Coach to make sure that I have writers talk about what they did to market their work and the business side of writing. They can also talk about their books, but I know the reason people come to my site and I work hard to focus on those areas. With that said, when there is a major push, I try to write more [either on my blog or via social media.] For example, my DVD of “Earning a Living with your Writing” will be releasing very soon –possibly in a week or two—so you’ll see a flurry of posting from me in various places as I work to get that message out.
2. Offer longer articles to people who get your newsletter or join your contact list.
In business this is called “Value Added”. Give an additional bonus to people in exchange for joining your contact list. I like to make this something in the form of an article that delves deeper in a topic than blogs do.
3. Make sure your website is well written and doesn’t sound like a list of keywords, spammy or in some other way unappealing.
It irritates me when I have to scroll a long time on a site hearing how wonderful their product is. Just get to it already! How much money do you want? If I’m going to a website to try to learn something, I want to learn. If I’m going to a website to buy something, let me buy.
What I don’t want either place is to have my time wasted by a company/individual who thinks I have 20 minutes to scroll through their site. If I cannot figure out you’re worth paying attention to from the content on your site, no amount of badgering is going to make me think I want to work with you.
Make sure that you don’t make your website a place that will irritate someone like you. It may get you some quick, short-term sales, but it won’t build long-term relationships and referrals.
4. Have some cohesion
Make sure I’m clear what your blog/website is about. Is the information you provide something that will help your primary market? Is it something that will interest them? If not, seriously think about why you are including it. Writing Career Coach, talks about business and writing. That is it. That includes marketing, authors and some personal development, but all of it circles around the writer and business owner. I would not talk about gardening…unless it had to do with the topics of my site.
Know the reason you write your blog and stick to it. That is what your reader wants too.
Above all else it is quality more than quantity. Give people a reason to come to your blog or website. Filling them with fluff, sales letters and other things that focus only on earning you money are the wrong ways to build your platform. Instead, really focus on giving people what they want and what will help them. That is the kind of writing that will build your platform the fastest.
Your Coach for the Journey, Tiffany Colter, The Writing Career Coach
Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com.
Writing Career Coach is all about building and developing relationships. We’re thrilled to have the following blogs and websites working with Writing Career Coach to spread our message:
Moving From Mid-List: A pre-published author’s guide to breaking out when you break in
Printed by Writing Career Coach Press, copyright 2011
No matter the level of our craft and the strength of our platform, it will take you some time to sell your first book. That is because it takes time to develop the people connections, not to mention actually writing the book itself.
However, for those of us who love to write and want to do it full-time, simply writing books is not always enough. We want to earn a living writing. For all of you with that passion I’ve listed three ways to earn money while you’re waiting to sell your first book.
1: Write for smaller publications and individuals.
2: Offer to work as a copywriter in various areas. One good resource for leads on this are the books The Well Fed Writer and Back For Seconds.
3: Write for online e-zine, print and magazines. Find the smaller ones who may only pay $20-$25 per article.
Don’t get so focused on writing a novel that you miss opportunities to make money as a writer. Remember, these will be valuable connections and bylines when it comes time to market yourself to an editor and they’re all a part of the writing process.
Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com
Up to this point we’ve talked about live events for the most part. Although I did touch briefly in my public speaking for writers blog about using webinars and online workshops.
In the early days of Writing Career Coach I had young children at home and my husband’s schedule made it difficult for me to leave town for any length of time. Even today, having four busy daughters to chase around everywhere, leaving town can sometimes be a burden. Therefore I have utilized the power of webinars to help me do what I can’t always do in person.
Using webinars and online workshops is one way to help expand your speaking while still staying at home. The benefit of these is your cost is much lower. Consider, for example, GoToMeeting. They charge $100 a month for the meeting software that you can do from home. One thing that I do with Writing Career Coach is I offer workbooks as e-books that are available for download. My webinars are free and anyone can attend them. If you would like to know about my webinars please sign up for my newsletter at www.WritingCareerCoach.com, it’s called the Writing Career Coach Playbook, and you’ll find out when the webinars come out.
The webinars are completely free to attend, however individuals get the most value if they own the corresponding workbook. Consider doing that. The $100 is well worth it because you can meet with clients using the software as well as putting on webinars and meetings and workshops for individuals. But then you can have the value added of offering products for sale that you don’t have to buy ahead of time, that you can offer them an e-book instant download as you’re teaching and if they are enjoying your lesson they can go over and buy it right then. There was no upfront cost for you other than the meeting software and there is no time away from your family except for you prep time and the time that you’re actually speaking.
This is a cost effective option for individuals who may find it difficult, for whatever reason, to leave town or to go to live events. Also people who are a little bit afraid of talking in front of people will find this a more comfortable option to present information without feeling like there’s a hundred eyes staring at them.
I hope that this series of blogs on public speaking for writers and for your business and developing your business through public speaking has been useful. If you have questions about how to apply this to your own business or you would like to have a coaching session with me or purchase materials, we’d love to hear from you. You can contact us at www.WritingCareerCoach.com. If you have general questions, I’d love to hear them and I may even answer them in an upcoming blog or workshop.
Tiffany will be doing a series of Business courses that include online workshops and live events. All textbooks and fees included in the price. If you’d like Tiffany to come to your city, look at our flier and contact us through our website.
Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com
Today I’d like to step out of the writing career coach role and talk a little bit about my experience as being a judge in a multitude of writing contests, for both published and unpublished writers. One misperception people have is that judges go in to these contests for some kind of personal gain. I can tell you as a judge, the only gain I get from it is helping another person grow as a writer. Nearly every writing contest is a volunteer contest. The judges are not paid in any way. The only exception to that is that in published writing contests the judge will usually get the copy of the book they are judging. Judges are giving their time out of their love for the craft, and their desire to help other writers. It’s important that writers keep that in mind when they’re reading through critiques and comments from the judges.
I, as a writer, completely understand how painful it can be sometimes to receive those critiques from the judges. I also understand how painful it is when you have one judge who gives you straight perfect scores and another judge who rips you apart. You wonder how you can even use this information to develop your writing. We’ll talk a little bit about that in the next blog, but for today I want you to think about using the comments the judge says and recognizing them as individual readers because once you’re published, the readers are going to be just as subjective as the judges are.
Understanding that people are going to have wildly different opinions and that there is some validity in each perspective, can help you grow as a writer. Understanding that judges are there to genuinely try to help you as a writer will help take away that animosity that we sometimes feel when we get those harsh critiques.
If you have questions that you’ve always wanted to ask a judge, I’d love for you to put them in the comments and get a dialog started. As I said, I’ve judged a number of categories in both published and unpublished writing contests, large and small and I’d be happy to give you the point of view of a judge and help you with your writing.
Next time we’ll be talking about how to use those comments to help you develop your writing.
Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com.
In keeping with our theme we are now going to move from organizing our time to organizing our writing workspace. There are three ways that you need to organize your workspace.
• You need to mentally organize your work space.
• You need to organize your workspace to minimize distractions and maximize efficiency.
• And you need to know what you’re going to do each day.
Today we’re going to look at the mental aspect of organizing your writing time.
Where is it that you work? This space can be a separate office or a space at your kitchen table. Wherever it is, make that place your office. Mentally prepare yourself so that is where you write. It may seem odd, but when I was in college I read a study about the brain. It said that studying in your bedroom actually can cause problems with sleeping because your brain becomes trained to study in that place. Our brain associates different spaces with different activities.
The more I learned about that, the more I recognized the truth of that. Think about when you’re heading to work, how you’re mentally shifting. When you move from work to school, school to church, or church to sports event, think about the different ways that you change physically, mentally, emotionally with each place. This same holds true as you prepare to write. Mentally you need to recognize a single spot, even if it’s the same place where you eat. You need to train your brain to be in writing mode when you are there with your writing supplies.
The next thing you need to do is warm up your mind. That means you begin to think about what you’re going to write as you get ready to go write. If you’re working on a novel, start playing scenes in your head. If your writing an article, think about the previous articles you’ve written or the interview you just did. Put your brain in the writing frame of mind instead of sitting down at your computer cold.
Whenever possible write the same things at the same time of day. When I began writing I had a newborn, a 2 year old and a 4 year old. I caught writing time between naps and diaper changes. I was able to write my first full novel in two months during that time because I worked the story through when I was feeding one of the babies or watching Barney for the 900th time.
Next time we’re going to deal with minimizing distractions, but for today take some time to determine where it is you’re going to work if you don’t already have that. If you do, look around that workspace and see what kinds of things that are currently distracting you from getting your writing work done. Is it set up in a way that’s conducive to accomplishing your goals? Then mentally prepare. And get writing.
Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com.
My next book is Historical Romantic Suspense.
What?
In a world of genres even that is slicing the pie pretty thin. But it aptly describes Stars in the Night and a growing subset of fiction.
Read more here.
Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com.
What if?
What if there’s an old wardrobe in my house that leads to another world?
What if there’s a monster under my bed, and he’s scared of me?
What if I follow that odd rabbit with the pocket watch into his burrow?
What might happen?
Read more here.
Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com.
