How to Build a Powerful Writer’s Platform in 90 Days Using Only the Free Social Media Table of Contents Introduction ..........................................................................................................5 How to Use this eBook .........................................................................................7 What You Need before You Begin .......................................................................8 Chapter 1: The Writer’s Online Platform .....................................................11 What Is an Online Platform? ..............................................................................12 The Writer’s Brand .............................................................................................13 Setting Goals .......................................................................................................18 Chapter 2: Establishing a Home Base ..........................................................21 Creating Content ................................................................................................22 All the “Other” Pages ..........................................................................................24 Outsourcing Work ..............................................................................................26 Chapter 3: Blogging ...........................................................................................28 Writing Effective Blog Posts ..............................................................................29 Keeping Up with Other Blogs ............................................................................31 Your First Blog Post ...........................................................................................32 Chapter 4: Social Media ...................................................................................33 Twitter ................................................................................................................38 Facebook ............................................................................................................39 Google+ ..............................................................................................................42 LinkedIn .............................................................................................................43 Pinterest .............................................................................................................44 Audio and Video .................................................................................................45 The Importance of Being Consistent .................................................................47 Chapter 5: Polishing Your Product ...............................................................48 How to Find a Good Editor—or Three ...............................................................49 How to Keep Editors Involved ...........................................................................50 Getting the Inside Scoop .....................................................................................51 Chapter 6: Researching Your Market ..........................................................52 The Market for Non-Fiction ..............................................................................53 The Market for Fiction .......................................................................................54 Where Is Your Market? ......................................................................................55 Chapter 7: Choosing Your Product’s Format .............................................57 Self-Publishing a Physical Book ........................................................................57 eBook Publishing ...............................................................................................59 Chapter 8: Branching Out ................................................................................61 Reaching Out on Twitter ....................................................................................61 Guest Posting .....................................................................................................64 Article Marketing ...............................................................................................67 Blog Tours ..........................................................................................................68 Cross Promotions ...............................................................................................69 Chapter 9: Turning Your Fans into Buyers-in-Waiting ...........................72 How to Set Up a Mailing List .............................................................................73 The Email List Sign-up Page ..............................................................................73 Confirm Subscription .........................................................................................74 Your First Marketing Email ...............................................................................75 Chapter 10: Countdown to Launch ...............................................................76 Gather Some Reviews ........................................................................................76 Your Affiliate Program .......................................................................................78 Writing a Sales Page ..........................................................................................80 Prelaunch Buzz Overflow ...................................................................................81 Staying Motivated ..............................................................................................81 The 90-Day Calendar ........................................................................................83 The Maintenance Tasks .....................................................................................85 Part 1: Laying the Foundation ...........................................................................86 Part 2: Getting Help ...........................................................................................94 Part 3: What Your Market Wants ......................................................................98 Part 4: The Rewrite ..........................................................................................103 Part 5: Creating a List—and a Tangible Product .............................................106 Part 6: Maintaining Momentum .......................................................................111 Part 7: The Final Product ..................................................................................114 Part 8: Generating Buzz ...................................................................................118 Part 9: The Launch ...........................................................................................124 .................................................................................................130 A Bird’s-Eye View The 90-Day Calendar: A Bird’s-Eye View .........................................................131 Contact .................................................................................................................132 Introduction I know. Many guides out there promise success in 30 days, two weeks, and even 24 hours. Some guarantee success on autopilot. There’s a googolplex of sales pages swearing that you can go from having ten dollars to being a millionaire with little effort. Let’s be even more honest; you’ve wanted to believe some of those promises. But you know better. This isn’t one of those empty promises. This is a step-by-step guide on creating an amazing author platform in 90 days, based on your ability to write, be interesting, and engage others. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’ll read this book. You’ll think, “Man, this sounds like a big job.” And you’ll wonder if you really have time to do it. What you won’t have to wonder is whether it’s going to work. It won’t be effortless. But it will work. In this book, we’ll cover: » How to build a genuine online platform; » How to generate buzz around your book; » How to launch a book successfully using only social media; » How to make sure your book lives up to the hype you’re about to build. We won’t cover: » Strategies unrelated to social media, such as radio and TV interviews, speaking engagements, book tours, etc.; » Advertising-based strategies; » Shady social media tactics, e.g. procuring huge numbers of dummy followers through special websites; Writer’s Platform 5 » Underhanded “Amazon bestseller” tactics, such as buying reviews, creating sock puppet accounts to purchase your own books, etc. This work will require commitment and discipline. This will also require a good effort on your part. So how do you get committed to this project? Committing to Success The work laid out in this book will take up to several hours every day. Some days will have less work; very few, like the days leading up to your launch, will demand more. “This is a step-by-step guide on creating an amazing author platform in 90 days. It won’t be easy. But it will work.” What can you cut out of your schedule? Can you skip that favorite TV show? Can your spouse take care of the kids while you work on this project? Can you wake up earlier for the next three months? Can you ask your employer for a sabbatical? There are ways to find the time. I recommend using the “rule of five roles”, which states that a normal person can be proficient at five roles at any given time, and not more. A “role” in this context is a major priority, such as being a wife or a business owner. Trying to balance more than five roles leads to burnout, poor quality of output, depression, and so on. As an example, here are my five active roles as I write this text: 1. Father of three kids; 2. Husband; 3. Employee, working a 12-hour day for a major corporation; 4. Author; 5. Fitness enthusiast. Writer’s Platform 6 All my other possible roles, such as “active friend”, “attentive son”, “supportive brother”, etc. are de-prioritized for the time being. The question is, do you have that burning desire to develop a platform from which you can launch your books and related products? Do you want your voice to be heard above the thousands upon thousands of other writers? If the answer is yes, then making the time is a matter of simple administrative decision. Make this one of your five roles. Clear your calendar and open this book. In three short months, you’ll have a platform from which your words will be heard. How to Use This eBook First, I recommend you read it through so you understand the work needed to create your platform. As you read, please remember: this work will get you where you want to be. If you commit to it for 90 days, you’ll see amazing results, and you’ll be glad you did it. Get your head in the game. Hold nothing back. I’ve created a bird’s-eye view of the 90-Day Calendar to assist your planning (helpfully titled “A Bird’s-Eye View” and located on page 131). Second, get yourself a notebook. We’ll move rapidly through many techniques, and it’s a good idea to keep notes. Alternatively, you can print this eBook out to highlight thoughts that jump out at you and to make notes in the margins. Keep track of what strikes you as relevant to your project. There’s nothing worse than having twelve great ideas while you’re reading the book—only to discover after you turn the last page that you’ve forgotten them all. Write your thoughts down. You’ll find some good concepts here, and you’ll have even more valuable ideas of your own. Those ideas will make your platform distinct from everyone else’s Writer’s Platform 7 and, as you’re about to see, that’s half the battle. Third, print out the calendar and post it somewhere prominent, where you’ll see it every day and be motivated by it. Do you start writing first thing in the morning? Then stick it by the bathroom mirror. Do you write after work? Stick it where you’ll see it when you walk in the door. Finally, as a general philosophy for using this book, it’s not the gospel. This book will give you a solid framework with practical strategies. However, it’ll work better if you allow your own instincts to guide you. If you know a little something about search engine optimization, or SEO, go beyond my recommendations. If you can get creative with brand building, go for it. Trust your instincts and go off book when it feels right. (P.S. Just remember that the voice in your head saying, “Take today off, have a beer, and watch a few reruns of Cheers,” isn’t your instincts. It’s procrastination, and it won’t help you build anything but a beer gut.) What You Need before You Begin The final draft of the best book you can write I assume you already have a book, since we’re here to build a platform so you can launch it. I also assume your book is the strongest it can be. Fantastic books sell themselves through word of mouth; no amount of clever advertising can make readers support a poorly written book. We’re building a platform to spark that word of mouth. If your book doesn’t live up to the hype you’re about to create, the whole exercise will be an embarrassing flop. Too many writing careers were dead on arrival because books were rushed to market. Writer’s Platform 8 Don’t rush. You’ll want to have the best possible product before beginning this journey. If you don’t, then create one. No worries; this eBook will still be here when you get back, and everything in it will still work magnificently. N.B.: In the context of this eBook, a “product” is anything you’re creating your platform for: a novel, a set of short stories, a serialized Twitter saga, a nonfiction book, etc. A Website I looked this over from every angle. I even tried doubling up on tasks, but there was no avoiding a simple fact: you need a good website before you begin the 90-Day Calendar. Everything else in this eBook is entirely your domain. But unless you’re a website designer as well as a writer, you won’t control how fast you can get that website up and running. By the time a website is up on the web, you’ll go through several rounds of revision, design, and coding. There’s plenty of room for errors and delays, and you can’t afford that when you’re building a platform. Here’s an example. I envisaged my website (www.AustinBriggs.com) in January 2011. The first four months were spent working with a developer who couldn’t deliver what I wanted. Only when I contracted my current web designer (www.MenWithPens.ca) did things finally fall into place. My website went live in July 2011. Why did it take so long? I wanted quality. When the cost of market entry is as low as it is today, professionalism becomes the main differentiating factor. I respect my readers and I offer them the best experience I can afford. If you already have a website that makes you proud, you’re good to go. If you don’t have one, please create or commission it before you begin. At a minimum, it’ll need: » A Product page, » An About page, » A Blog, » A Contact page, » A Newsletter sign-up form, » Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest widgets. Writer’s Platform 9 Other optional, but beneficial, pages you could have are: » A Services page for consulting, coaching, or other paid services, » Product pages for what you’ve already published, » A Copyright page, » A Disclaimer page, if you run affiliate marketing, » A Press page. If you don’t offer services and the book you’re launching is your first, not to worry. You’re about to create an amazing platform from which to build your future. As your website grows, and as you master the traffic generation strategies, you’ll add more pages that’ll help you interact with readers, rank higher with the search engines, and have more fun and income. There’s a wealth of free and paid resources online covering the subject of building a strong website. One of the best places to check is Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger Blog. Writer’s Platform 10 Chapter 1 The Writer’s Online Platform For a long time, the game for writers has been the race to get published. Writers sought literary agents, editors, and big-time publishing houses, but few aimed at recognition online. Many writers who had websites got their fame first, and those well-known on social media were household names long before the creation of Twitter. While many still achieve great success with traditional publishing, the world is changing fast. Self-publishing has become a legitimate and lucrative way to build careers. Writers are connecting directly with their readers without the endorsement of publishers or celebrity reviewers. Many are reaching their dreams on their own; and as they prove that their writing appeals to the market, big-time publishing houses also begin to pick up books they would have turned down a few years ago. In fact, many of them are picking up books they did turn down a few years ago. The success stories are fascinating. Lisa Genova wrote a novel about a Harvard professor’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. After being rejected time and again through the traditional publishing channels, Genova decided to self-publish via Amazon.com. The book was a hit. Readers bought it. The Boston Globe reviewed it. And Simon & Schuster, having the unique advantage of seeing the book’s appeal in real time with real people, decided it was worth the risk of publishing an unknown author—mostly because there was no risk, and she was no longer unknown. A writer can also put out such a successful series of online articles that publishing houses come and commission a book, certain that a loyal online following will snap it up in a heartbeat. Shit my Dad Says by Justin Halpern is a good example of this: a Twitter feed that Writer’s Platform 11 had reached over 3 million followers, a book (now two), then a television series. An online platform can help a writer develop a strong following, self-publish, and make a splash. It’s a way to supercharge your writing career. For the purpose of this eBook, I assume you’ve chosen to self-publish. If you’re published traditionally, simply skip the few sections that don’t apply to you; most of this eBook will still be relevant. What Is an Online Platform? An online platform is a following of people who find your work through the World Wide Web. Your fans will find you through different avenues, including your website, social media, and others’ platforms. Together, those channels will connect a mass of people who love the way you write. “Having an online platform is the difference between wading through the millions of people who also want their voices heard and standing apart from the crowd.” You’ll find them by reaching out through targeted channels. You’ll keep their attention by producing strong writing for your unique audience. You’ll gain their loyalty by being interesting and helpful, and, when you ask them to pay money for the value you offer, they’ll be happy to do so. An online platform is a solid place from which to launch new material and new ideas. It’s the difference between wading through the millions of people who also want their voices heard and standing apart from the mêlée. The foundation of your platform will be your website. Just as all roads lead to Rome, all your online channels will lead back to this home base. This is where people will come to get to know you and your work better. This is where you’ll announce new endeavors. This is the Writer’s Platform 12 place from which you’ll ask people to read what you’ve produced, and from which you’ll secure a market for your work, your insights, and knowledge. From this base, you can branch out into exciting offline activities that’ll bring you even more sales, such as radio interviews, TV appearances, talks, and paid membership plans (these are outside of this eBook’s scope). Right now, an online platform is the most important tool a writer has. The Writer’s Brand Building your platform will require both tactics and strategy. Tactics are logistical, such as using social media channels, launching an email marketing campaign, and engaging editors. Such steps can be set out in checklists. Anyone could perform these exact same tactics and get excellent results. Your brand strategy, on the other hand, is unique to you. It’ll influence how you perform each tactic and what you look like and sound like while doing that. If the tactic is to use Twitter a dozen times a day, then your brand strategy will dictate what you tweet, what words you use, and whom you interact with. Your brand strategy defines whether you use different tactics than everyone else (e.g., crosspromoting your Celtic Fantasy book with a Fantasy artist who has a matching portfolio or creating an Internet radio network for your genre), or the same tactics, but done differently: for example, instead of text-based blogging, you could blog via short YouTube videos. I’ll lay out some tactics in this eBook, but your brand is too personal to cover fully within its scope. Only you can determine the way you want to be perceived as a writer. Although I can’t tell you what your brand is, I can suggest two principles: » Keep your brand positive. I’ve seen too many writers spawn negativity on various forums about their distributors, retailers, reviewers, and even readers. Doing this is a sure way to destroy your brand. Writer’s Platform 13 » Many people and organizations online use Google Alerts; your comments will likely end up right in their inboxes. For instance, as a book distributor considers authors to recommend for an Amazon.com promotion, he’ll likely skip someone who’d been badmouthing him all over the Internet. » Stay professional. Every bit of information you put out under your name is an audition with potential readers and agents. You’re always on stage, performing in front of a vast audience. You’ll want to say things that are consistent with your brand. Here are some examples of what I’d call a lack of professionalism: » Once I visited an author’s blog before committing to buying his books. There I found a heap of racist comments that he’d posted. » Another author grumbled in an interview that he didn’t give a damn about his readers, whom he considered a bunch of uneducated fools. » Yet another author turned awkwardly aggressive in his responses to reviewers on his book’s Amazon page. Later he came to his senses and deleted his own comments, but the readers’ shocked reactions to his aggression remained for all to see. Your fans will need to understand that no matter what you do online (blogging, engaging in social media, running a coaching service), you’re still the same person. They need to see consistency. They need to feel that they know who you are and what you would and wouldn’t do. They need to trust their understanding of you as a human being. What Is and Isn’t a Brand Branding is among the most inconsistently defined terms in marketing, so let’s take a moment to discuss it. When a fan describes your work, your brand helps him distinguish you from every other writer on the market. If your brand is too similar to another, you risk being identified via that person. Stephen King is an excellent example of how this happens. When a new writer appears with a talent for suspenseful writing, he’s compared to Stephen King. This may be flattering at first, but it reinforces Stephen King’s brand and diminishes the brand of this new writer. When Writer’s Platform 14 people read an article comparing this writer to Stephen King, they’ll remember Stephen King. They’re familiar with Stephen King: the talented man who puts out a book practically every time he wakes up in the morning and is deeply suspenseful. Despite what some advertisers recommend, I never compare my material with that of more established authors. They write to their audiences; I write to mine. And I aim to build a brand that stands on its own. This doesn’t mean our writing has to be utterly unique. No writer is uninfluenced by others. The brand is about the writer, not the writing. It’s about the way you approach your work, how you engage with other writers and with your fans. Naturally, the first thing people will say about you is what kind of writing you do. “He’s a business writer;” “She writes historical fiction;” “He blogs on minimalist living.” Your brand is the second thing they’ll mention. “He’s a business writer—but he takes an aggressive, warrior-like approach. Spare and primal.” “She writes historical fiction with an emphasis on little-known documents.” “He blogs on minimalist living—and he’s the funniest Zen master alive.” You build a brand by bringing your unique qualities into your material, by adding the secret ingredient of your personality and imagination. You already know what kind of writing you do. Your brand is about what kind of writer you are. Creating Your Brand As we established, a good brand originates from who you are as a person. Companies and individuals who try to create brands out of whole cloth usually fail, because the audience feels it when the image isn’t genuine. You may design a website or a logo that’s all about youth and vitality, yet if you write emails like a stodgy accountant, people won’t believe your brand. Writer’s Platform 15 But if your brand comes from who you are, why work on it at all? A lack of consistent brand strategy may lead you to thrash about searching for the latest tool to achieve that elusive breakthrough, confusing your fans. Also, we’re easily influenced by what others tell us we should do. For example, even if you’re bold and rough, a designer you’re working with may convince you that a softer style is very in right now. Defining your brand saves you from these kinds of pitfalls. Instead of merely asking yourself, “Do I like this idea?” you should also ask, “Is it consistent with my brand?” Many would enjoy owning a Picasso, “More than anything, branding is about quirks—what’s unusual, unique, and personally defining about you.” but few have rooms in which a Picasso would look at home. Platforms fall apart when you try to fit in elements that are cool by themselves but don’t support the real you. The smart place to begin is to ask yourself what kind of person you are. If you don’t feel comfortable answering this question, you can ask close friends, colleagues, or other writers you’ve worked with in the past. How would they describe you to a stranger? This isn’t about strengths and weaknesses. More than anything, branding is about quirks— what’s unusual, unique, and personally defining about you. Make sure when you ask around that people know you’re not looking for compliments; you’re looking for the things that differentiate you from others. Exercise: Write down your three most defining traits. Then consider how these traits would look in shapes and colors, how they would sound out loud, and how they’d show up in your writing business. For example, if one of your defining traits is “funny”, then what would funny look like on a website? How would it come across in your writing? Are you funny in personal emails? Would you be funny during a radio interview? You’ll want to think about the difference between your writing voice in products Writer’s Platform 16 like books and your writing voice in more casual circumstances like social media, emails, and blogging. As you go through the 90-Day Calendar, ask yourself before you perform each task, “How can I do this in a way that’s consistent with my brand?” It’ll make you a little more creative, a little more excited about what happens next, and a lot more effective. The Ethics of a Brand Writers face issues of copyright and plagiarism. There’s nothing more devastating than being accused of stealing someone’s work—unless you’re the writer whose work was stolen. To earn the trust of readers, your brand must follow the same ethics you follow in all other aspects of your life. Stealing someone else’s brand isn’t quite the same as stealing the words from their pages, but it’s close. It’s flat-out lying to your fans. Develop a brand that’s true to you. If it’s similar to someone else’s brand, that’s okay—just like it’s okay to have a writing style similar to another author. What isn’t okay is to imitate what that author does and says. It’s surprisingly easy to do. You might see someone you admire with an effective biography on his About page or a powerful strategy to engage new readers. You might like the way he pulled off a launch or the way he subtitled his latest book. You may consider it a cool idea for your own web presence. One idea turns into six, which turns into 20, which turns into your website, your Twitter feed, and your overall brand becoming nearly identical to that other person’s. Stay ethical and rely on your own ingenuity. Go right ahead and use good ideas from other people, but make sure those good ideas are supported by plenty of your own. Become better than the best so you’re never tempted to copy anyone. Writer’s Platform 17 Setting Goals Expectations Before you launch your platform, you’ll want to hammer out precise goals it must accomplish. If you’re aiming to self-publish a book online, you’ll want to establish a sell-through goal. Working backward from that target, you’ll be able to set realistic goals for the size of your email list, number of Twitter followers, unique visitors to your blog, etc. A good rule of thumb is to assume that about 2-3% of people who view your platform will be influenced by it. In other words, if you have 1,000 people on your newsletter list, you can expect that only 20 or 30 of them will purchase your book unless they specifically signed up to buy the next volume in a series. There are ways to improve that conversion number, but a buy rate of 10% is considered superb, so it’s worth betting on the average when you set your platform building goals. Consider how much time and effort has gone into your project. What’s that time worth? Write down a number. How many people would have to buy your product for you to recoup that investment? Here’s the basic equation: Income goal (I) = number of people (Y) multiplied by price of product (Z). “The authors of Chicken Soup for the Soul had 1.5 million subscribers as a result of their active platform-building efforts.” If you put $10,000 worth of work into your product, but you only plan on charging $0.99 apiece, you’ll need 10,101 people to buy it (before taxes). Since you’re only banking on 2-3% of your list (at most) to buy the product, you’ll need approximately 250,000 people to see your book. How realistic is that? Can you get 250,000 readers on your list any time Writer’s Platform 18 soon? Probably not. Calibrate your expectations accordingly; either price your product higher, or lengthen your financial recovery timeline via a sustainable sales plan. (Not that a massive mailing list is unattainable, of course. The authors of Chicken Soup for the Soul had 1.5 million subscribers as a result of their active platform building efforts). With a longer-term approach, it’s important to realize the “time value of money”: money is worth more now than in the future. Two approaches may help here: » Set the exact time by which you wish to recover your investment, and use all your energy to meet that deadline; » Minimize your upfront investment (for example, by splitting payments to your providers into monthly installments). Pricing Long-term pricing online is a matter of split testing to see which price point works best with your type of readership. Low pricing may move lots of copies, but the book can be perceived as low value. Many assume low-priced eBooks to be unfortunate self-publishing gaffes. High pricing may also move lots of copies; but it may not be seen as credible. I’ve bought a few highly priced eBooks from the Internet Gurus that contained little useful information; these days I tend to stay away from expensive online products. I strongly suggest picking an odd number ($0.99, $4.99, $23, $35, etc.); but beyond that, test and see how it works. Exercise 1: Play around with numbers and come up with your own goals. Write them down in your notebook, where you can easily see them as you move forward. Here’s what you’re striving to achieve: » Income goal; » Number of people you’ll need to buy your product; » The time limit by when these goals must be reached. Writer’s Platform 19 Exercise 2: Visualize your success. How does it feel to have a powerful platform and reach thousands of readers? What does your ideal day of writing and communicating with fans look like? You’re a writer. You can create mental pictures of irresistible strength. Use this skill! Describe your success in words that galvanize your imagination. Boil it down to several powerful sentences and write them down in your notebook. Numbers excite our minds; emotions move our souls. Anytime you feel like you’re flagging, take out your pages and read them aloud. Ideally, read them daily to keep yourself going. Writer’s Platform 20 Chapter 2 Establishing a Home Base Your online strategy should be aimed at pulling potential fans into your circle of influence. Your website is the most effective tool, since this is where you’ll list all your books, entertain visitors, and impress casual readers with the quality of your writing. The website’s purpose is to inspire in your readers a powerful desire to buy your books. It’s not to share ramblings on the hardships of your self-publishing journey or the value of your pet’s Eukanuba diet. You’ll want to bring your audience from complete indifference to passionate engagement. Here are the approximate stages of this journey: Engagement Stage Outer Reach Circle of Interest Inner Circle Master Mind Circle General Characteristics • • Twitter follower, Facebook “Like”, or Google+ circle connection May have visited your blog/website once • • • • Casual reader of your blog/website Has responded to your call for action, e.g., participated in a contest Re-tweets your messages or shares them on Facebook, Google+, YouTube, etc. May have bought one of your products • Regularly comments on your blog/website • • Supports you on relevant communities (GoodReads, LibraryThing, etc.) Buys most of your products • • • Actively generates positive word of mouth for your products Has become your beta reader Buys all of your products Writer’s Platform 21 Before you encourage lots of potential readers to come to your website, you’ll want to exhibit excellent material for them to see. The amount of poorly thought-out websites is staggering. It’s not difficult to gain an edge by keeping your pages tidy, focused, and readable, and your material relevant to your target audience. So when people start to swing by, you pull them into your circle of influence. Creating Content Even if you already have content on your website that you love, you’ll want to take a few steps to improve its effectiveness. Since you’re a writer by trade, you might think it’s a cakewalk to create your own website copy. You’ve definitely got a leg up on the competition; you understand the power of language. You know how to put words together in a compelling way, and you probably have a better grasp of spelling than most of the online population. These are all good assets to have. What you need to do now is weave in a couple of basic web copy strategies to make your website as powerful as it can be. Write short Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs. Don’t use long words when short ones will do well. And break your sentences up so they read faster. Paragraphs should rarely be longer than four lines on the page. People tend to scan when they read online, and they’ll skip long paragraphs automatically. It doesn’t hurt to have a couple of one-line paragraphs, either. Readers like those. Write consistently Decide if you’ll write about yourself in the first person (“I wrote this book,”) or the third Writer’s Platform 22 person (“John Doe wrote this book.”) Be consistent with the tone you take (casual, formal, quirky, or joking, for example) and the level of language you use: switching from academic terms to colloquialisms will confuse your reader. Cut the crap Many new website owners start off the way people did in the 1990s: “Hi! Welcome to my website!” You’ll want to skip that. “Hello world” is the default post in WordPress. So it probably shouldn’t surprise us that folks actually start their blogs with it. Here’s an example from a live website of a writer. A treasure of learning can be gathered here. I’ve changed the wording a little to protect the identity: “Hello world. This is my first post. I “Many new website owners start off the way people did in the 1990s: �Hi! Welcome to my website!’ You’ll want to skip that.” have no particular reason to write it, but I was told blogging helps reach readers. I bet many of you have never spoken with a real writer before! So, let me share how I write books... (The author goes into a 2,000-word narrative on how he writes books.) So anyway, that’s all I wanted to ramble about, and if you want, you can reach me on Twitter. Tell me what you want to hear about me. Bye.” People are acquainted with websites, and they don’t need to be told they’re visiting one. What they need to know is who you are, what you’re offering them, and what you’re working on. They need to understand how you’ll bring them value or entertainment. They need to know where you want them to click next (your product page, your blog, etc.) and Writer’s Platform 23 what you want them to do when they get there (buy something, leave a comment, get in touch, and so forth). If you stick to the basics, you’ll have a good early blueprint for you site. Then you can start playing around until you get it just right. Just do it Write a lousy first draft. Allow yourself to write text that goes on for too long, rambles too much, and makes too many bad jokes. Get that draft on the page. Once you’ve written down everything you could possibly want to say, get your editing pen out and tighten up your writing, guiding your readers just how you want. Oh, and one final thing. Take a look at the page where you’ve described your brand. Does your web copy fit that image? All the “Other” Pages Your About page comes next. You’ll want to have those branding “Mention every writing and professional accomplishment that relates to the image you’re aiming for, and keep the rest to a minimum.” notes handy once again. The way you talk about yourself is directly tied to your brand. If you want to come off as approachable and friendly, then speak in a casual way and mention a few things about your private life. If you want to be seen as a cool professional, you might make your About page read like a formal biography. Writer’s Platform 24 Either way, mention every writing and professional accomplishment that relates to the image you’re aiming for and keep the rest to a minimum. Be sure your contact information is accurate and includes your social tools like Twitter and Facebook. Create a Services page if you offer coaching, consulting, or other services. If you already have products, make sure the descriptions for each are compelling and concise. This does not include the book you’re about to launch. Save that one for later. We have plans for introducing that book to the public, and they’ll kick in around week three. First, we have to get people to pay attention to you. The Press Page Out of all the possible “non-obligatory but beneficial” pages, I’d like to highlight your Press page. Its purpose is to show the press that you’re a professional worth talking to, who’ll make them look good and won’t waste their time. This page should usually include: » High resolution pictures of you and your book cover; » An exciting summary of your book accompanied by the sales information (ISBN, retail price, page count, publication date, etc.) » A set of fully updated press releases. It would be smart to keep these press releases current by linking them up with latest news, your other publications, speaking engagements, etc; » A list of questions and answers about you and your books that could intrigue both traditional media and bloggers; » Most interesting or high profile reviews of your books and products; » Media engagements that have already taken place (for example, links to your earlier newspaper interviews, downloads of your audio interviews, and embedded videos of you being interviewed on television). Here are some strong examples of such pages: » Darren Rowse’s Press page (nonfiction), Writer’s Platform 25 » Karen McCann’s Media kit (auto-biography), » Robert J. Sawyer’s Press kit (fiction). When your platform becomes strong enough, a quality Press page will help catapult you to new heights of reach and influence. Outsourcing Work You can successfully build your platform by doing every single task yourself. You can also create some breathing space by outsourcing elements of it. Caution: always make sure the result of your outsourced work perfectly fits your brand and meets your quality standards. “Always make sure the result of your outsourced work perfectly fits your brand and meets your quality standards.” What can you outsource? » Editing and proofreading, » Website design and coding, » Website maintenance (backups, plugin updates, etc.), » Press release preparation and distribution, » Admin support, » I don’t recommend outsourcing the complete process of creating your articles or blog posts. However, a freelancer can provide you with an excellent first draft, on which you can build your unique piece of writing. Never outsource the real interaction with your audience: » Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and other social media updates, » Comments on forums and other blogs under your avatar, » Comments on your own blog, » It may be obvious, but never “outsource” (i.e., purchase) reader reviews for your books. Here are several excellent generic outsourcing hubs where you can find pretty much any Writer’s Platform 26 professional, from website designers to editors to cover artists: » www.fiverr.com » www.elance.com » www.odesk.com » www.deviantart.com Book formatting: » www.indiemobi.wordpress.com » www.candescentpress.com » www.cyberwitchpress.com » www.everything-indie.com » www.facebook.com/EbookFormatting/info » www.jasonga.com/ebook-formatting » www.writersblockadminservices.com/ebook-formatting Cover Design: » www.allenmohr.com » www.bookcovers.creativindie.com » www.gobookcoverdesign.com Writer’s Platform 27 Chapter 3 Blogging A blog can be magnificently useful for two things: name recognition online and authority. Name recognition is simple; the more material you have online under your name, the more likely the search engines are to point people to you. If you have written a hundred blog posts, then your website will most likely be the first thing Google comes up with when someone searches for your name. And that’s what you want— since that’s where all your products and information will be. You achieve professional authority when you can prove you know what you’re talking about. As a writer, you can achieve such authority in two ways: prove you know how to write, or prove you know about your topic. Generally, fiction writers will excel with the former approach, while nonfiction writers will excel with the latter. For example, if you’re about to publish a book on business networking, you’d blog about how to network, what experiences you’ve had doing it, and insights from others who know about it. If you want to self-publish a set of short stories, you’d blog about coming up with inspiration, fun facts about the worlds your stories are set in, and interviews with other short story writers. Some folks decide to write fiction for their blog. An excellent example is Shaun Allan’s website where he posts as Sin, his protagonist. But beware of this strategy if you sometimes experience writer’s block; for your blog to contribute to your online platform, you’ll need to publish new posts often. Writer’s Platform 28 Be honest. Can you produce that much unique work, ready for others to read? Few writers could hold up to that kind of scrutiny. Some budding authors think a blog is good motivation to write daily. However, you’re starting this blog not to motivate yourself, but as a tool to build your online reputation. When choosing your blogging strategy, make sure it serves that purpose before anything else. There’s another fact to consider. Google Analytics demonstrate that most clicks go to the Product page, the About page, posts packed with practical information, and fun contests. People seldom read fiction in their browser. You have a lot of room to breathe “You’re starting this blog not to motivate yourself, but as a tool to build your online reputation.” in your blogging topics. The only important rule is not to deviate too far from your source of authority. If you’re a romance writer, you don’t want to start a blog about your cute cats. As a writer or a romancer, it won’t do your reputation any good. We’ll do some specific work on keywords, blog topics, and your editorial schedule as we get into the 90-Day Calendar later on. Writing Effective Blog Posts Millions of articles exist on how to write effective posts, and it would take a whole separate eBook to distill all the information. We will, however, work on this as we get into the Calendar. Best Practices I recommend reading some excellent websites devoted to helping people become effective bloggers. You’ll have a good foundation in effective techniques, how to come up with great blog post ideas, and a few other tips and tricks you may not have imagined existed. Writer’s Platform 29 Check these sites out, among others: » www.menwithpens.ca » www.copyblogger.com/blog/ » www.problogger.net/blog/ » www.johnchow.com » www.bloggingpro.com » www.chrisg.com Posting Frequency There are several schools of thought on how frequent blog posts should be. Some authors swear by occasional posts, timed to your major book launches. Others, like Joe Konrath, prefer almost daily blog updates to keep the conversation going. Social Media Examiner suggests omitting dates in your posts, so they never appear obsolete. If the content shines, any approach may command massive audiences. As an example, Joe’s posts routinely draw over a hundred comments. In this eBook, I recommend blog posts every other day for the first three months to build a solid blogging archive. Later on, I suggest moving to a couple of posts a week, or whatever works for you, so you don’t burn out. When you develop an authoritative blog, you’ll have people approaching you with their guest posts, which will lighten up your workload. Length A blog post doesn’t have to be long. An article of 500-700 words, with a few carefully selected pictures thrown in, is all you need. That’s also what the online readers usually have patience for. Effectiveness To gauge the effectiveness of your posts, I recommend Google Analytics. It’s a free and Writer’s Platform 30 powerful suite of tools to measure just about anything that happens at your blog: how much time people spend on your site, their favorite pages, the average number of posts they read per visit, etc. Google Analytics can also help understand the main sources of your traffic. Of course, this is an “in-process” measurement system. At the end of the day, the only number that matters is how well your book is selling. Keeping Up with Other Blogs There are blogs written on every topic in the world (well, almost), and many have followings. You should know of at least half a dozen blogs where folks enjoy talking about the same topics you write about. Don’t discount blogs that aren’t “Bookmark all the blogs you like, or put them in a single RSS feed so you can check them daily.” dedicated to your topic. If you’ve written a book on how to be a stayat-home mom and an entrepreneur at the same time, go right ahead and comment on the blog about monster truck rallies if you can link its audience with your platform. Bookmark all the blogs you like, or put them in a single RSS feed so you can check them daily. Go around and comment, ideally on a regular schedule. Make friends and keep track of them. Every single person you meet online is a potential fan and a candidate for your inner circle. Browsing forums is a perfect way to kill time. Resist turning this interaction strategy into a procrastination strategy. Visit your target site, read, comment, and leave. Exercise: Note what kinds of articles your favorite blogs put out and start brainstorming what you could write for their audiences. You’ll use this material later on, when we explore writing guest posts. Writer’s Platform 31 Your First Blog Post Begin with confidence. Don’t bother introducing the blog; start with the best post you can write. Let the blog speak for itself. You’ll be inclined to begin with the easiest topic you can think of. Resist that impulse with everything you’ve got and, instead, write the post you’d love to read. Would you want another author in your field, someone you admire, to speak on that topic? If so, great! If you struggle selecting the best topic, use the keyword research tools (Market Samurai, Google Keyword tool, etc.) to zero in on subjects with the highest keyword potential. We’ll discuss this more as part of the 90-Day Calendar. Here’s the most important thing about your first blog post: it’ll be your worst post. Even if it’s a great post, it’ll be your worst, because you’ll get better with every post you write. As you go on blogging, many people will only see your latest post. Some will want to browse through the archives. But by that time, the post will no longer look like it did when you first wrote it. You can edit your own online work, or rewrite it entirely. And you should. This is a good time to mention the second most important thing about your first post: no one will read it unless you ask them to. Ask a few friends to come around and share their sincere thoughts and feedback. This is a good way to start improving right off the bat. That said, it’s unlikely anyone will comment on your first post, or your second, or your third. That’s why we’re not encouraging people to come read your blog early on. People like to see that a blogger has some history. They don’t want to get attached to a writer who may not be blogging in another month. If you’d rather not have immediate feedback so you can get used to blogging, that’s okay too. Publish it anyway. Get used to the idea of putting things online. We’ll be doing that a lot. Writer’s Platform 32 Chapter 4 Social Media Facebook and Twitter are two social media channels you simply cannot do without when building an online platform. Google+, Pinterest, and LinkedIn could also become indispensable. New social media channels, bookmarking services, and link exchanges develop all the time. All these channels are similar in many ways, and they can all be used to bring prospective readers into your inner circle. The main difference is in the level of engagement: it’s the difference between wandering down to the local bar, throwing a dinner party, or attending a business soirée. “The main difference is in the level of engagement: it’s the difference between wandering down to the local bar, throwing a dinner party, or attending a business soirée.” First things first: how often should you update your social media channels? The answer will relate directly to your brand. If your brand assumes plenty of interaction with your fans, you’ll be spending lots of time on social media channels, particularly Twitter. The analogy of the local bar for Twitter is fairly apt; if you want to be the guy at the bar that everyone knows and looks for when they walk in, you have to be in the bar at all times. That means you should be on Twitter as often as you can. Writer’s Platform 33 If you have a smart phone, getting a Twitter app can be immensely helpful with that. If you intend to be more reflective, reclusive, or simply laconic, you’ll still want to be on social media, but not nearly as often. The key is consistency; you’ll want to show up at roughly the same time, and you’ll want to put out roughly the same number of posts. On the high end of the usage scale, you’ll be posting new updates throughout your workday, and you’ll want to set aside one or two hours strictly for this. You may also want to invest into some tracking and automation tools. On the lower end of the scale, you’ll tune in a few times a day, post once, and go away again. Exercise: Based on your brand, set a goal for the number of social media interactions for one day. This number can go up, but you shouldn’t allow it to go down. For example, the minimum number of tweets you should post in a day, as you build your online platform, is five to ten. Any less than that, and people may not think you’re committed enough to start paying attention to what you say. Social Media Goals Whatever social medial channel you decide to focus on, your goals would normally be: » To find potential readers and pull them into your circle of influence; » To develop long-lasting relations with helpful people, such as editors, publishers, cover designers, and fellow writers with whom you can cross-promote. Based on this, the goal of each social media update is to get your update “shared” or responded to because of its quality; it’s the most sustainable way to excite followers and build your credibility and reach. The purpose of these channels is not to drone, “Buy my book,” every few minutes. Some writers use them that way and it’s really unfortunate. Writer’s Platform 34 Content According to the social media scientist Dan Zarrella, people tend to share: » News (over 60% of all “shares”), » Humor, » Opinions, » How-tos, » Alerts and warnings. On this scale, “fiction” is the least “shared”, with less than 8% of all shares. In terms of content forms, the most popular are brief sentences, clear pictures, and infographics. Build them into your posts. The most boring subject for the social media is you. Resist turning your update stream into a soap opera about your daily routine. “I hate boiled fish.” “I love eating mud from my garden.” “I’m off to sleep.” “I just woke up.” Stop! Social Media Handles These are critical as you build your brand and must reflect your confidence and professionalism on which the success of your platform would rest. If at all possible, your Twitter, Google+, “It should be possible for someone to type your name into Google and have all your media channels pop up at the top of the page.” YouTube, and Pinterest handles, your website URL, and your Facebook page name should all be the same. Ideally, it should be possible for someone to type that name into Google and have all your media channels pop up at the top of the page. If you’re a fiction writer, odds are good you’ll want your social media identifier to be your name or some variation thereof. If you’re John Smith, the best name you could Writer’s Platform 35 possibly get is @johnsmith. It’s likely that @johnsmith is taken but, as an author, you probably know that John Smith isn’t the most unique name and you have varied yours with a middle initial (John A. Smith) or a nickname like Johnny. @johnnysmith and @johnasmith are fine choices, if they’re consistent with how you are known as an author. If you are a writer with a popular product, business, or website, those are also valid social media names. If you’re not well known as John Smith, but your product Banshee Willis is popular, @bansheewillis is a good handle. If none of those names are available, your best strategy is to veer slightly toward the random, or an inside joke. For example, Neil Gaiman doesn’t go by @neilgaiman, because someone else snapped up that Twitter name while Neil wasn’t paying attention. He started tweeting under the name @neilhimself to show he was the real Neil Gaiman and the guy using the Twitter handle @neilgaiman was full of it. Later, his daughter Holly got the Twitter name @hollyherself. It was a joke all his fans could share in. If you have something like that, that’s just fine. A good rule of thumb is to imagine someone introducing you by this name at a party. If it can be played off as an inside joke—as in, “This is Neil himself,”—you’re fine. If it’s a nickname, you’re also fine. If you lead a business, that works too. Jay Conrad Levinson isn’t known by many, but “Guerrilla Marketing” is, and it’s easy to imagine him saying, “I’m Jay Levinson, from Guerrilla Marketing.” His Twitter handle could be @ guerrillamarketing. Don’t use numbers in your handle; very few take @johnsmith456 seriously. Avoid the words “Twitter”, “Facebook”, etc. in your name or your self-description. @ johnontwitter is awkward in the way that [email protected] would be awkward. I suggest dropping the word “writer” or any variation in your name. @johnny_writes is about as awkward as a person who actually introduces himself as, “I’m Johnny who writes!” Writer’s Platform 36 Profile Bios The best social media profiles make readers want to engage with you. Folks usually don’t want to know if you’re a coffee addict or a chocoholic, nor do they care that you have seven lovely grandkids. They want to know why they should follow you. Do you offer entertaining, sarcastic tweets? Do you create sexy worlds of magic? Do you share fun historical trivia? Showcase that in your bio. Resist placing hash tags (e.g., #writer) in your Twitter or Google+ bio. It looks overly promotional. A sample bio might run something like this (or shortened for Twitter): John Smith is an expert in business networking who has consulted for companies like XYZ Corp., Excellent Inc., and Whoaimpressive. His philosophy is that networking should be like speed dating, but with fewer chances to get a drink thrown in your face. His writing has appeared in publications that include Inc. magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle, and he is working on his first book, Networking Shmetworking. As always, have your social media bio match your brand. For example, do you want to mention that you’re a “starving, self-published author who needs support”? Go right ahead if that’s the image you aim for; otherwise skip it. You’re building a successful platform. Behave as if you already have one. The Numbers Game The most successful authors attract readers, not only fellow writers. In the beginning, you’ll likely be followed by lots of other writers. Over time, you’ll want to find a way to plug into the audience of readers who enjoy what you write. A common mistake on social media is to go after a massive number of followers. While the overall number is important as an element of social proof, the number of truly interested people on your opt-in email list is much more critical for your sustainable sales. Writer’s Platform 37 The name of the game on social media is engagement; you’ll want to fascinate your audiences with your brilliant interaction, then show them exactly where to sign up for your insider list. Twitter Tweets are statements of 140 characters or less, and again, bar talk is an apt analogy. The most hated people on Twitter are those who only post links to their own website or products and those who post banal information. It’s the equivalent of a guy in a bar trying to sell you a timeshare. You’re not there to buy things; you’re there to have a beer and chat, so you hate that guy. You hate the dull banal guy too, because he’s ruining your evening. The people on Twitter everyone likes are funny and interesting. They say things your friends say. For example: » They start conversations: “Hey, did anyone else read this article on increasingly complex submission guidelines?” » They make jokes: “I wanted to be a starving artist but my wife keeps feeding me. Now I’m fat.” » They point you toward things you might like: “You’ve got to see this. It’s the best story I’ve read all week.” » They also pay attention and respond to what you say. “I’m sorry you’re sick. Make yourself some hot tea and watch Whose Line is it Anyway,” or, “How did the launch go last week? I bought your book and I’m loving it so far.” Occasionally, these people do promote “Feel free to selfpromote, but spend enough time being sociable.” themselves, but the percentage of selfpromoting tweets is low, usually less than 10% of the total. Think back to enjoying yourself at the corner bar. If your friend spends an hour chatting with you about life, fun things he knows about, and what you’ve been up to, you don’t mind if he also invites you to his art showcase, do you? In fact, you’re excited to go, because you like him and you think his showcase will be great. Writer’s Platform 38 Feel free to self-promote, but spend enough time being sociable. You’re there to form relationships. Those relationships will eventually lead to sales, but you can’t force them there right off the bat, so don’t try. A few things to avoid on Twitter are: » TrueTwit. Making others type silly words into small windows, before saying your first “hello” isn’t inclusive. If you read people’s timelines before following them back, you’ll identify those spam-bots yourself. » Bombarding your followers with the same message over and over. In capital letters. Every few seconds. » Sending private messages to your new followers pushing your books or your blog on them. This is simply desperate. » Setting an auto responder with obnoxious texts. “Thanks for the follow! Click here to like me on Facebook.” Why would anyone do that? Exercise: Head over to Amazon, or another bookstore, and find the 50 most successful writers in your genre or field. Follow them on Twitter. Watch them for a few days. How do they interact with their readers? What makes them interesting? Consolidate your learning and plan out your own Twitter strategy. Don’t copy the successful authors in what they do; stay ethical. Draw your own conclusions and come up with your own approaches to become the best in your field. Write your ideas in your notebook. Facebook You may already have a Facebook profile that you use for interacting with friends and family. We’re not going to touch that, because it isn’t ideal for creating an interactive online platform. A Facebook Fan Page, however, fits that purpose. It’s built right into the title. To set it up, go to the Pages part of the Facebook. Alternatively, scroll to the bottom of the screen, and click on Create a Page. During the sign-up process, you’ll be asked for some information about your company. Writer’s Platform 39 Your company, for the purposes of the Fan Page, is everything to do with your professional writing. For example, you’d put your name in place of the company name. In the “Company Overview”, you’ll want to give a brief bio and a description of your work, including a teaser for the project you’ll be launching with this 90-Day Calendar. Facebook has a nice variety of apps to help businesses promote themselves and interlink with the rest of their online platforms. A Twitter feed is already built into the page options. (That’s why we set that up first.) You can also add the RSS feed for your blog, YouTube videos, and other interactive tools. For more advanced tactics such as giveaways, email subscription campaigns, and other buzzgenerating activities, I recommend subscribing to a paid app service such as North Social or Involver. You can also learn how to do these for free; this is outside of this eBook’s scope. If you’re not using a pen name, be forewarned that your personal profile will undergo some scrutiny. You may wish to change your privacy settings or, if you’ve decided your brand must include lots of interaction with your fans, ensure your profile doesn’t display any information you don’t want commonly seen (e.g., your address, the social security numbers of your kids, flirty suggestions posted on your girlfriend’s page). Stay professional with any photos and information you choose to post. Remember to check in with your brand if you’re questioning whether it’s wise to publish a particular photo. Tweak your security settings until you’re satisfied. Using Facebook The Facebook equivalent of a tweet is your status update. You have a little more space to express yourself (420 characters), and your status updates can be less frequent. Since we’re building an online platform fast, we’ll be updating twice a day, but that’s the most you ever need to do. Your status updates will often link to your latest blog post. We’ll be publishing that update every morning, at the same hour, ideally just before your readers go to work. Writer’s Platform 40 In the evenings, after your audience has had their dinner, you may want to engage your fans in conversation. Here are a few ideas of how to ignite the interaction: » Ask what they want to see on your page via a poll, then deliver it. » Invite them to post what fascinates them right on your page (e.g., their own blog updates, their best cat pictures, latest Nikon rumors . . . whatever is relevant to your subject). » Run a quiz or a contest related to your topic, with the prize being your book or another author’s book in your genre. » Run a giveaway for those who sign up for your email list. In all cases, ensure your status update is brief, has a large image, and is focused on the one thing you want your audience to do: click a link, share a joke, select an answer, etc. People respond by posting comments, “You’ll want to post something that people can respond to or empathize with.” and, since their comments stack up, your fans can feed on each other’s responses. Another option for a Facebook status update is to share a personal anecdote, as you would with a tweet. You’ll want to post something that people can respond to or empathize with. Don’t overly talk about yourself unless you can be hilarious doing so. You’re there for your audience. As soon as you can, change your Facebook Page’s URL to the “vanity URL”, which would be your social media handle. Usually Facebook allows you to do it once you have a certain amount of followers. There can also be an upper follower cap, so pay attention. Facebook Ads This can be a productive strategy to collect a large number of interested followers. For example, I used this approach to get 1,700 followers for one of my historical fantasy Facebook pages over two or three months. If you do have the budget and desire to run an advertising campaign, I recommend you consider the following before launching your campaign: Writer’s Platform 41 » Prepare your Facebook landing page. Think what would excite your new visitors enough to “like” your page and subscribe to your mailing list immediately. I use a combination of free book giveaways in my genre and contests. » Install an email sign-up form so the visitors can opt in to your list. I use various applications from North Social. » Set your monthly advertising budget and control it tightly. » Design your interaction plan to stay relevant and interesting to your new followers. The mechanics of running Facebook ads are outside of this eBook’s scope. You can get a wealth of resources online. My favorite place to get training and inspiration is Get 10,000 Fans. They’re a little pushy, but when you cut to the chase, they have great advice to give. Exercise: As you did with Twitter, learn from the best. Study the most successful writers in your niche, and analyze how they engage their audiences on Facebook. Based on your observations, create your own Facebook strategy, aiming to become the best in your field. Write your plan down in your notebook. Google+ If Twitter is a bar, and Facebook is a dinner party, then Google+ is a town with many closeknit neighborhoods. At this moment, Google+ is one of the fastest growing social networks that have ever existed. Consider it if you’d like to reach your audience in ways that aren’t possible on Facebook. The most relevant feature of Google+ is “Google+ gives you an unprecedented ability to target your communication.” its ability to “circle” contacts. You can “circle” fellow authors, book reviewers, editors, and readers. Then you can post tailored messages for each of those circles. There doesn’t seem to be any length limit for your status updates, so you can be as expressive as you wish. Writer’s Platform 42 This gives you an unprecedented ability to target your communication. Based on your brand, you can either stay sparse by posting links to your blog updates, or go very personal by running “video hangouts” with your fans. Because Google is all about search, this channel allows you to find, monitor, and join relevant conversations. Also, your Google+ page would most likely come on top of a search list when someone looks up your name. There’s another benefit of Google’s vast search capabilities; when you link your latest blog post to this community, it gets indexed by the search engine robots faster and it may get to the top of a search page ahead of all others, if their authors don’t use Google+. Similar to Facebook, you can use Google+ as a personal profile or set up a page. Google has a nice guide on setting up and working with pages. Updating your status twice a day should be sufficient. Use it as a stand-alone tool, and don’t repost the same content you’ve already shared on your Facebook page. Use it for its search and collaboration superiority. Exercise: You guessed it. Learn from the best and develop your own, unique Google+ strategy. LinkedIn Continuing our previous analogy, LinkedIn is like downtown. People here wear business suits and carry portfolios of their professional achievements. This channel differs in two ways: 1. It allows you to join networks on virtually any interest out there (Fiction Writers Guild, for example, or the Book Publishing Professionals). If you bring value to your chosen networks while keeping your self-promotion to the minimum, LinkedIn will become invaluable in building your credibility as an author. 2. The audience here is professional. Folks come to LinkedIn to advance their careers. This profoundly affects the mindset of the people using it, as most are keen to build their own reputations by helping others succeed. Writer’s Platform 43 Here, you can find excellent editors and book cover artists, connect with fellow writers in your genre or field, find contacts for your research, and, if you’re good at what you do, get referred to publishers or agents. LinkedIn shares some common tools with many other social networks. You can automatically share your Twitter feed or the links to your latest blog posts. You can connect with others to pull them into your circle of influence. You can post status updates related to your latest projects and achievements. It also has some unique capabilities, such as Polls and Surveys, the Answers section, and the ability to get introduced through a common connection. As with Google+, I recommend carving out a separate niche for this tool in your social media toolkit. Don’t recycle the same material as you post on your other networks, and certainly don’t push your books on people. Use this tool for its ability to connect you with the best professionals in any field you need. Exercise: Yep, study the best and develop your unique LinkedIn strategy. Search for relevant networks, and select two or three that you can commit to participating in. Pinterest Pinterest is a great tool to engage folks visually. It allows you to create and share wonderful stories in pictures and videos. It may not be the most obvious channel for a writer to use; however, a smart strategy here can create unparalleled engagement. For example, you can help your followers visualize your story world by “pinning” photos taken at the location. You can make them want to meet your characters by posting their sketches. You can go even further and ask your readers to think with you. For example, I usually write my scenes while having a picture in front of me that either represents the setting or inflames Writer’s Platform 44 my imagination. With Pinterest, I can ask my audience to help me find such pictures. Pinterest can be invaluable for research. For example, you can begin a “pin board” on early Spanish ships; over time, you’ll see this board grow as folks suggest fascinating new resources or rare images. If you wish to go personal, you may “Pinterest may not be the most obvious channel for a writer to use; however, a smart strategy here can create unparalleled engagement!” choose to share pictures of your writing environment: your desk, your trusty laptop, the special cap you wear for inspiration, etc. Here are some tips on using Pinterest: » Post your original content, rather than re-pin what you find on the net. Use tall, dramatic images that would stand out on the page. » Make sure the image link leads back to your site. Don’t leave that field blank. » When posting the cover image of your book, link to its sales page and mark the price (type a currency symbol followed by the number in the description field). Pinterest will put a price stamp across your image, and place your book into its Gifts section. » Post videos to engage folks even more. » Embed the most important text right into the image. This way, when people re-pin your content and replace your caption with their own, your critical message will stay. Here’s a great example from a successful explorer and writer Tahir Shah. Exercise: Study the best and develop your own Pinterest strategy. Audio and Video These channels are optional, but they can become valuable assets because many people prefer interacting via videos or podcasts. Writer’s Platform 45 If your target audience includes young adults, these channels are a must. Some ideas for creating an audio or video channel include: 1. Start a podcast discussing the same topics as you do on your blog; 2. Interview other writers or experts in your field and post the videos; 3. Start a YouTube feed reviewing other writers’ work or discussing hot issues. 4. Spend a month living as one of your characters (e.g., exploring the Amazon) and post the video documentary series. An overlap between your audio/ “If your target audience includes young adults, these channels are a must.” video channels and your blog is fine. These channels are for those who are interested in your material, but would rather listen than read. “Re-purpose” your material simply by changing your text-based content into a video presentation or a podcast. Many tools exist to help you create video and audio online. The essentials are a good microphone and recording software (such as Screenflow or Jing Project). The quality of your audio and video will define how much people enjoy your material. Many computers come with built-in video cameras and quality microphones, but please experiment by making sample runs on your computer and checking the results on someone else’s equipment. YouTube and Vimeo are the primary channels for posting videos online. These can then be shared on your blog, via Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest. Audio and video should be updated no less than once a week, although twice or three times a week would be ideal to build the following faster. As always, the goal of your updates is to engage. Be entertaining, insightful and humorous, so that folks want to share what you create. Writer’s Platform 46 The Importance of Being Consistent As the weeks roll by, you’ll see some tasks repeat themselves. These will almost entirely consist of social media maintenance—blogging, tweeting, Facebook, Google+ updates and frequenting online forums. One reason I’ll be recommending a whole week to get accustomed to your social media channels is because you’re going to use them daily. Your social media are at the core of building an online platform. Every task over the next 90 days will stand on the shoulders of your blog and your social media presence. If you were trying to build a platform in a year, you could get away with blogging once a week, or leaving Twitter for days at a time without any major fallout. But your goal is to create a platform as swiftly as possible, which is why you need to commit right now. You’ll be spending about an hour a day just keeping the whole machine running, starting from the very first of the coming 90 days. It’ll be fun. Writer’s Platform 47 Chapter 5 Polishing Your Product You already have a product, and you have the tools to start building a solid content-generating machine working its magic all over the Internet. You’ll create relationships with lots of new people and get feedback on what resonates with them in your blog posts. Odds are that you’ll have some new insights into how to improve your product, too. Let’s assume you’re launching a nonfiction book. You’ve covered chapters on every topic you can think of, and you’ve gone in-depth into each. But the more you discuss one particular topic on your blog, the more people want to know. They’re asking questions you didn’t realize needed answers, seeking to clarify the things you thought were clear. And while you’ve successfully answered those questions on the blog, you haven’t answered them in the book. At this point, take all the information you’ve learned from interacting with your fans and start improving your book with that knowledge. Exercise: Go through all the comments on the key blog posts you (or your competitors) have written on your topic, and take notes on subjects that need clarification or expansion. Then compare your list to what you originally wrote in your book. Are there holes you could fill in? For fiction, go through the reader comments to the prominent books in your genre. What excites most readers, and what distresses them? Do they prefer more or less description? How tolerant are they of sex scenes? Do they crave scientific plausibility or romance, or both? See if some chapters or scenes in your book need to be re-written. Writer’s Platform 48 Before you launch your product, be sure you’re proud to have your name on it. The content of your book is the most powerful platform-building tool there is. How to Find a Good Editor—or Three Getting a strong editor, or a small group of them, will be critical to your success. They’ll become the mastermind team who’ll keep you professional, readable, and consistently interesting. I’ll call them “editors”, but you may want to think of them as your beta readers, for example. If you’re working with a professional editor, you’re unlikely to have any trouble establishing deadlines and receiving marked up drafts on schedule. But if you’re working with friends, family, or other writers, you’ll want to set some ground rules. “Getting a strong editor, or a small group of them, will be critical to your success.” After all, they (presumably) have lives of their own, and editing your work isn’t their top priority. You’ll need to explain that you’re on a short deadline and that their help is essential to getting your product to market. The more you emphasize how dependent you are on their help, the more likely they are to take their job seriously. Negotiate a deadline at least a week before when you need the product finished—in this Calendar, you’ll want it by Day 46. That gives you an extra week in case of delays and procrastination, which happen in the writing world. Let them know you’ll be following up nicely. You can spare everyone’s feelings if you pop up a couple of days before the deadline and say, “Hey, just wanted to see how the edits are coming along and whether you had any questions.” Odds are they haven’t started yet. Your gentle reminder gives them a little kick in the pants and makes it more likely they’ll pick up your project that day. Writer’s Platform 49 Offer them good value for their work. Pay them, if you can afford it. If not, think about what they’d really want. If your editor has children, offer to babysit so he can take his wife out to dinner. If he needs his own work edited, offer to swap services—but only after your 90-Day Calendar is complete. You won’t have time before then. If you’d like to go the paid route, here’s a list of good editing sites that I or writers in my network found reliable: » www.ashleycase.com (Ashley has edited this eBook.) » www.jenniferpooley.com » www.kristenweber.com » www.hollowayhouse.me » www.editavenue.com On the more expensive side, you may want to try this service that employs only Ph.D.’s: » www.edit911.com How to Keep Editors Involved Here’s the secret to keeping an editor engaged: be engaged yourself. Most editors lose interest because the writers they’re working with expect the editor to motivate them. That’s not the editor’s job and, frankly, not many editors enjoy being a motivational coach. They want to get a new draft that incorporates the previously suggested changes, and to use that draft to make even more suggestions. An editor loves a good back-and-forth. An editor loves to see progress being made. An editor likes to know he’s not the only one who’s committed to making this project better. Show up regularly and take the editor’s advice seriously. Many writers ignore the editor’s notes when they get tired of working on the project—a terrible idea both for the project’s success and for your editor’s interest. If you truly disagree with one of your editor’s notes, simply explain your point of view. That way, the editor knows he wasn’t ignored; he was simply overruled. Respond to your editor’s emails promptly and let them know when they can expect your Writer’s Platform 50 revisions. Even if you won’t have time to revise for a few days, respond immediately, thank them for their time, effort, and help, and tell them when they’ll hear from you. Then keep your word. After all, your editor wants what all of us want: respect. If he gets that, he has every reason to stay engaged. Getting the Inside Scoop In addition to the notes on your project, you’ll want to ask your editors specific overarching questions to make sure your product works as a whole. Here are a few questions I’d suggest, though you should add your own: » Do you feel I’ve taken a consistent tone throughout? » What do you feel was the point of this book? What will the reader walk away with? » What section is especially strong? Why? » What section is especially weak? Why? » What sort of person do you think will be most attracted to this book? » Is there anything missing? Anything you wish was expanded or altered? » Does the text flow logically from one point to the next? Through these questions, you can discover how outsiders may view your product. If any of the answers aren’t what you were hoping for, then you can explain what effects you were hoping to achieve and ask your editor how you can modify your book to achieve them. Without this step, you might publish your product not fully realizing its faults. Your marketing efforts may fit wrong, your buyers may expect something different from what you deliver, and, ultimately, what could have been an amazing launch may flop. People like to know they’re receiving what they expected. By getting the inside scoop from your editors, you can ensure that what you think you’re delivering is exactly what your buyers think they’re receiving. Writer’s Platform 51 Chapter 6 Researching Your Market Let’s look into who wants what you sell, and how you can get them to pay attention to you. For fiction and nonfiction writers, the market research strategies will work somewhat differently, because their target audiences have different mindsets when searching for new books to read. Non-fiction books normally answer a practical question or provide new insights into a topic their buyers are already interested in. For example, over a thousand books “Nonfiction buyers look for useful books. Fiction buyers look for enjoyable books.” exist on running a small business. Their readers are small business owners or people wanting to become small business owners. It’s rare that anyone would select a book on small business just for fun. People pick it up because they want to know more about that topic and they’ve heard a particular book explains it well. Fiction readers, on the other hand, look for good books written in a style they enjoy. People who like murder mysteries search for more murder mysteries. People who enjoy literary fiction browse The New York Times Book Review to find new authors they might like. Fiction buyers seek what’s “good”—in other words, what they like. To recap: nonfiction buyers look for useful books. Fiction buyers look for enjoyable books. Writer’s Platform 52 (If you are in the nonfiction genre written for people who read nonfiction for pleasure, such as biographies of famous people, I suggest you follow the advice for fiction writers.) Let’s find out where these two different audiences spend their time. The Market for Non-Fiction Since nonfiction readers look for specific information, you have the Internet available for your market research. One of the best places to go is Clickbank.com, which is where information product marketers put new products up. Do a search for the topic on which your product is based. If you’ve written a book on Internet marketing, search for “Internet marketing” and any other related keywords or phrases you can think of. Be encouraged if you see a lot of results. That means people need information on your topic and are willing to spend money on products that will explain it to them. Exercise: for a deep dive into the market research, you may want to explore the Google Keyword tool, Market Samurai and, if you need some hand-holding, SiteBuildIt! I won’t go into these powerful tools here. A simple Internet search will turn up all you need to master them. You may also discover new things that may make you want to update or adjust your product. For example, your search for “Internet marketing” may bring up hundreds of books written on that topic, but nothing on a sub-topic you’ve already devoted a part of your book to. That means you may have found a new niche in a topic where lots of people want information. Some examples in your book may cover Internet marketing for fitness experts. If you find no books on that subject, but a Google search reveals that there’s a horde of fitness experts needing Internet marketing help, then you may want to shift the focus of your book to target those people. Discovered you’ve got a market for your book? Excellent. Skip to the section titled “Where Is Your Market?”—unless you’ve also got fiction to publish. Then stick around for the next section. Writer’s Platform 53 The Market for Fiction We can safely assume there’s always a market for good fiction. The question is whether there’s a market for your fiction. In other words, is your writing any good? To answer this question, you’ll need to put your work in front of people who can objectively judge it. These include editors, beta readers, and other writers. A fiction writer is never done becoming a better writer—or, said differently, a more marketable writer. For fiction writers, the question of “The question is whether there’s a market for your fiction. In other words, is your writing any good?” marketability boils down to whether there are people who enjoy their writing. If anyone has ever asked to read something you’ve written because they enjoy it, not because it was assigned to them or because you asked them to read it, then you have at least a one- person market for your writing. Your job now is to expand that number of people. Places people hang out when they enjoy reading quality fiction are, among others: » The New York Times Book Review online » www.GoodReads.com » www.LibraryThing.com » www.Shelfari.com » www.BookSlut.com In particular, GoodReads has many reader groups dedicated to specific genres or topics (e.g., Napoleonic Wars, and Book Promotion Forum by Genre). It’s a good idea to join some of those and learn about the readers and their preferences, without spamming them with your sales pitch. Writer’s Platform 54 Where Is Your Market? Non-fiction and fiction writers are likely to find readers in entirely different places, but the search strategies are similar. Throw your most important keywords into a search engine and look for forums, websites, and other interactive locations where people discuss the topic you’ve written your book on. For automated search, setup a set of Google Alerts that would guide you to the relevant discussions as they happen in real time. For example, if you’ve written a nonfiction book on copywriting, you’d look for forums on marketing, copywriting, and improving writing skills. You’d also look for websites that cater to copywriters, freelancers, and online marketers. You’d search for reviewers interested in business and marketing-related books, and you’d browse relevant LinkedIn communities. If you’ve written a fiction book about a woman protecting her foster child from his abusive biological father, then look for forums and websites that cater to book reviewers and book lovers. Here are some examples: » www.kindleboards.com » www.nookboards.com » www.fictionpress.com » www.writing.com » www.fanstory.com » And certainly don’t forget the relevant groups at www.GoodReads.com. These are the people who both read the kind of work you’ve produced and are actively looking for more of it. You can also reach out to forums dedicated to the main theme in your book. For example, because I write historical fiction, I frequent www.historum.com and other related online communities, such as forums devoted to historical computer games. Because my books focus on the Aztec history, I’ve joined some Yahoo groups dedicated to this subject, too. Become an active member of these forums and websites. You want these people to know who you are and be familiar with what you can do. Start this relationship well before you need their help. Writer’s Platform 55 If you strike the right cords, the people will be excited to help you generate a buzz about your book when you bring it to market; they may even volunteer to help you. For example, at some forums where I’m a member folks offered to beta-read and edit my stories for free, and to make video interviews for their audiences. Writer’s Platform 56 Chapter 7 Choosing Your Product’s Format The format in which to distribute your product is a critical decision, as it affects all the aspects of your writing life. Among the variety of choices, three are most common: » Publish with a publishing house; » Self-publish a physical book; » Self-publish an eBook. The ultimate decision will depend on your goals. Are you publishing: » for prestige and national coverage? Go the traditional route. » to build credibility with your customers? Self-publish a physical book using the printon-demand technology. » for fast, economical access to your readers? Go with an eBook. I’m assuming you’ve decided to be an independent author, and the rest of this section will be dedicated to self-publishing. Self-Publishing a Physical Book You may want to go this route for the following reasons: » A Physical book will help build your credibility if you’re running a service business. The print-on-demand technology will make your book virtually indistinguishable from those published by the large houses. » Contests. Many high-profile contests still accept only physical books, although this will, eventually, change. » Giveaways. At this moment, GoodReads only allows paperback giveaways. This trend is changing; for example, LibraryThing already has an option to give away electronic copies. Writer’s Platform 57 » Reviews. Some reviewers still accept only paperbacks. These days, book production is really easy. Here are just some of the choices: » Services like Lulu and others offer detailed instructions, and a variety of options. » Amazon’s own CreateSpace offers smooth integration with the planet’s largest bookshop. » Some excellent content distributors like BookBaby have branched out into physical book production. » If you’re on a more adventurous side, registering with Lightning Source will cut your production costs and will put you into direct contact with Ingram, the largest book wholesale distributor in the world. Print-on-demand isn’t click-and-shoot. You’ll fiddle around with fonts and layouts. Producing great looking proofs will take time and effort, too. All told, this project can end up costing you a lot in time, hassle, and money. Cover design will likely be the most serious quality challenge. While the print-on-demand houses can give you the same quality of material they give to major publishers, they can’t make your self-styled cover look any more professional. If you’re serious about it, invest in a professional exterior and interior design for your book. The upside is that you’ll deliver a real, “While the print-ondemand houses can give you the same quality of material they give to major publishers, they can’t make your selfstyled cover look any more professional.” hold-it-in-your-hand book that you can feel proud about selling to strangers, if that’s what you want. And truthfully, when you decide to go all in and make the effort to produce a professional book, there’s no reason anyone would ever need to know that you self-published it. It won’t sport the logo of a major publishing house, but many excellent books have been printed by smaller houses. That kind of quality is well worth paying for. Writer’s Platform 58 eBook Publishing New eBook readers are launched often. Amazon, Apple, B&N, Sony, Kobo, SmashWords, and other eBook distributors are expanding their catalogues. Millions of people read books on their smart phones. This is the way to go if the following objectives excite you: » Flexibility. If your book ever needs revisions—and let’s face it, many do—this format allows you to upload the new version with minimum hassle. » Speed. While you still must ensure perfect text and beautiful internal design, you’ll save time by skipping the laborious process of preparing your book for print. » Low Costs. This approach will save you hundreds of dollars in upfront costs for internal design, cover design, and production. A well-written eBook with a good buzz surrounding it is an excellent way to improve your credibility as a writer, which can in turn lead to publishing house attention down the line (if that’s what you aim for). This is more or less the route that Leo Babauta, Chris Guillebeau, and others have taken. Your book distributor choice is a critical one. If you live in the US, you can publish to most major retailers by yourself, keeping your complete freedom and all of your royalties. If you decide to go directly via Amazon, Kobo, and B&N, for example, do consider their special author programs: » B&N offers some serious marketing support in exchange for one-month exclusivity. » Kobo would support you without any exclusivity at all. » Amazon would demand full exclusivity if you joined their controversial KDP Select program. If you don’t live in the US, or if you find the prospect of dealing with many booksellers daunting, you may want to choose a good eBook distributor. Their role is to help you format your book for each retailer’s exact specifications, place your book in their catalogues, consolidate your royalties, and send regular payments to you. One downside of having a distributor is that your book may get locked into their system Writer’s Platform 59 forever, and you may not be able to regain full control over it unless you relaunch it with a different ISBN number, losing all of your sales history and sometimes also your reviews. SmashWords and BookBaby are two excellent distributors you may want to consider, among others. Because eBook publishing takes less effort and can put your product into people’s hands fast, it’s usually going to be your best bet for a fast platform buildup. You can always add a paperback version later on, giving your readers the choice of both formats. Writer’s Platform 60 Chapter 8 Branching Out Once you have a few weeks of platform building under your belt, you’ll want to start encouraging people to take a look at what you’ve done. Sure, you had your Twitter followers and your Facebook fans to begin with, but now you’re going to reach out to audiences on other websites and get their attention trained on you. When you begin branching out, your greatest concern is not to get overwhelmed. These will be bigger audiences than you might be used to, and they’ll already have an accustomed way of interacting with the other writers. You’ll need to keep track of which website you’re on, what their audience is like, and how often they like to interact. And you’ll be doing that while juggling “When you begin branching out, your greatest concern is not to get overwhelmed.” all of your own online channels. Not to worry. This chapter will show you how to make some new friends and allies, which will give you an enormous advantage when it comes time to launch. Let’s talk about branching out. Reaching Out on Twitter Twitter has something of a trial period for newbies. Devoted Twitter folks generally won’t bother following someone who has one of the following warning flags: Writer’s Platform 61 1. Very few tweets 2. Ten latest tweets are all marketing or spam 3. Low ratio of followers to follows. Two or more of these warning flags is a definite no-no. Use your common sense and the principles laid out in this eBook, and you’ll successfully avoid numbers 1 and 2; and we’re about to eliminate number 3. The reason Twitter folks avoid following people with few followers is simply because of what it implies: you haven’t been around long and not many people like you. You can overcome that prejudice by having interesting, funny tweets (which we’ve already covered) and having a long, consistent tweeting history (which you’ll have just a few weeks into the Calendar schedule). Now it’s time to learn how to reach out to new people. On Twitter, when you use the @ sign before someone’s handle, they’ll get a notification. Going back to the bar analogy, it’s like saying a person’s name while he’s within earshot. You can do it directly, or mention the person in relation to something she’s done, like so: » “Hey @johnsmith, how have you found homeschooling? I’ve been thinking about it for my kids.” » “If you want a hilarious article on bass fishing, check out this gem from @johnsmith.” John Smith will get notifications for both tweets. The first makes him more likely to respond, as you asked him a direct question. The second flatters him. Either way, he’ll probably check your Twitter history and see if you sound like someone he’d want to know. Which brings me to an important Twitter rule: keep your recent history clean. When people come to check your Twitter page, they’ll read your latest few tweets to see if they enjoy what you write. You want those tweets to be a good mix of interaction with others, interesting or funny things said on your own, and mild promotion of your work. If all your recent tweets are self-promotion, folks won’t follow you. Who would? They’d have to listen to you talk about yourself all day in their Twitter feed. Writer’s Platform 62 If your recent tweets are banal or useless chat with other people, they’ll think you’re boring. There are countless Twitter feeds looking like this: » @stjpon LOL! » @mmmgood I know, right? » @cutelostpanda JK! ; ) You’ll wind up with a couple of silly tweets as you interact with others, and that’s fine. You can solve that problem one of two ways: put up a handful of new tweets before you sign off, or delete the tweets that don’t matter to anyone but you. That way, those who look at your profile while you’re away will see a nice smattering of interesting stuff and none of the boring bits. You can send @ messages to anyone, and you should do it often. You can also do a search in Twitter for people who are, at this very moment, talking about the topics you’re interested in. @ those people and join the conversation; start pulling them into your circle of influence. If they like you and like what you have to say, they’ll follow you. Go easy on automation. Many automation tools exist: Twitter Adder, Hoot Suite, and others. They offer excellent features that, if not abused, could make your tweeting life easier. My recommendation, however, is to watch what you decide to automate. I’ve seen (and unfollowed) many a person spamming my Twitter timeline with prescheduled advertising of their products, inspirational quotes, and re-tweets of the same blog entries. I use three automation tools: 1. Twitter Adder to automate my target audience search. By plugging different keyword combinations into its search engine, I can follow the relevant conversations that spring up on Twitter. 2. MarketMeSuite for its capability to brand my tweets with a small “Sent by Austin Briggs” link which connects those tweets back to my website. I consider this a good way to add an unobtrusive branding message and build some backlinks. 3. Timely to deliver an occasional tweet during hours when I am not available. I use this tool sparingly. Writer’s Platform 63 I recommend never automating your actual tweets. Let’s not turn this lively community into a collection of robots shouting advertisement messages at one another. Guest Posting This is one of the best things you can do to build your platform, so we’ll spend some time talking about how to do it the right way. Guest posts are blog posts you write for another person’s blog. A few weeks into the Calendar, you’ll have produced a lot of posts for your own blog, so you may not be all that enthusiastic about writing an extra one here and there for someone else. I’ve got good news; guest posts can be a huge relief for the new blogger. When you write for your own blog, you want to stick to the topics you’ve already laid out for yourself. In guest posting, you want to stretch your topics to fit into someone else’s blog format. Let’s say you blog on writing. If one of the blogs you chose to keep track of happens to be a finance blog, you can write about how to budget on a writer’s shoestring, or how writing economically and spending economically are related. These will often be posts that you wouldn’t be able to use on your own blog, but they’ll let you use your knowledge in new and creative ways. The second way guest posts can give your tired blogging brain a break is that you can direct people from your blog to the guest post in lieu of writing a brand new post. Meanwhile, Jack Moneybags’ readers will be coming over to your website, as well. You’ll greet them with links to the best articles on your blog, giving those articles another shot at comments and feedback. Let’s take a look at what goes into a good guest post approach. Writer’s Platform 64 The Pitch Before you even begin writing your guest post, you’ll want to create your pitch to the blog owner. You have something to offer that person: a chance to skip a blog post for one day. That means less stress for him, and a chance to titillate his readers with new material and information. If you can write the post well, he won’t even have to edit it, which means almost no work at all. After a few weeks of blogging, you’ll see the appeal of not having to post for a day. When you pitch, remember that the blog owner really wants your guest post. All you have to do is convince her of two things: 1. You know how to write. 2. The post is relevant to her readers. The pitch may go something like this: I’m John Smith, and I’ve been reading and enjoying your blog for some time. I write about the self-publishing world over at www.johnsmith.com, and I came up with an idea for a guest post that your readers might find valuable. After your post on how freelancers can learn to be their own accountants, I thought a follow-up on being your own publisher might go over well. I hope you enjoy the post, and I’ll look forward to hearing from you on whether you’d be willing to run it. Thanks for all the great information you’ve been putting out. Three things have been accomplished here: you’ve successfully shown her that you know her blog, you know her readers, and you have a post that will appeal to those readers and give them valuable information from a new perspective. The pitch also serves a basic purpose on a wordsmithing level: most blog owners will have warning bells going off if a potential guest poster doesn’t have a basic command of English. You’re a writer, so go right ahead and show off your chops—and be sure to double-check your pitch for spelling and grammar errors. Writer’s Platform 65 What Should Go into the Guest Post? Acquaint yourself with the blog you’ll be guest posting for, and ensure your post both fits in with this blog and stays true to your own voice. Your goal is to intrigue a new audience with your way of thinking, so be consistent with your brand. Choose a topic that bridges the gap between this blog and your own. It never hurts to mention the project you’re working on. You can do it casually in passing (“As I was writing my book on software development, I struggled a lot with writer’s block,”) or make it the central focus of the piece, but it’s worth bringing it up and linking to it. Triple-check this post for spelling “You want your guest posts to be even better than those on your own website.” and grammar errors. It’s almost a must to have an editor or a friend with a good eye take a long look at the post to ensure you didn’t make any embarrassing typos or mistakes. You’ll also want someone to check the post for clarity and—let’s be frank—for quality. You want your guest posts to be even better than those on your own website. You’re trying to convince a new audience that you’re worth taking time to get to know. Make this post count. Finally, don’t forget the bio section. This serves two purposes; it should intrigue your new readership and give you a little boost in SEO. If you’ve chosen the guest blog wisely with a sizable readership, the blog will rank higher than yours. A link from that blog to your website will increase your credibility with search engines. Your bio section may read: John Smith writes about the myriad of challenges in self-publishing at www. johnsmith.com. His new book, How to Make Real Money Self-Publishing, comes out in January. You can find him on Twitter @johnsmith. Your name, the title of your book, the name of your website, and your Twitter handle should all be links back to your bio page, the sales page for your book, the main page of your blog, and your Twitter page, respectively. Those links are worth their weight in new fans of your work. Writer’s Platform 66 Keeping Up with Comments When you guest post, you must spend as much time with the commenters as you can. This is true for your own blog as well, of course, but since you’re not accustomed to frequently checking in with someone else’s readership, it’s worth posting a reminder to yourself on the day your guest post is due. Be even more cordial than you normally would on your own blog. Remember that you’re a guest in someone else’s home, metaphorically speaking. Even if you’d usually shut down someone who talks nasty, ask your host if he has a particular way to deal with problem commenters, or simply resist the urge to engage with people who behave badly. Be sure to answer questions. When appropriate, you can link them back to posts you’ve written in the past that may provide new insight or ideas, but only do this when it’s obviously relevant, and not more than once or twice in the same comment thread. Above all, remember that these are potentially new fans of your work. Treat them with respect and be on your best behavior. Article Marketing This is one of the often-ignored ways to build your platform. However, if done right, this tool will increase your readership and will drive previously untapped traffic to your website. The approach is simple; you write brief, insightful articles and submit them to several online directories. Various web-masters find your material, and repost it on their blogs for free. The catch here is in the little bio section that you place at the bottom of your article; you can use the same bio you’ve created for your social media and guest posts. It must intrigue readers to click on the link you’ll provide and will bring them back to your website or blog. Here are some popular directories: » www.Buzzle.com (accepts fiction) » www.HubPages.com (accepts fiction) » www.EzineArticles.com Writer’s Platform 67 » www.GoArticles.com » Completely on its own stands www.BrooWaha.com, a lively “Citizen Journalism” community. (Accepts fiction) When writing these articles, include just enough content to answer the immediate questions a reader may have. Your text must entice that reader to want to learn more by visiting your site. Another way to reach new audiences is Yahoo Answers and www.EHow.com. Search for the questions that you can answer with a highly relevant link back to your website unobtrusively inserted into your text. If you wish, you can use these services in reverse, as it were. If you need a break from regular blogging, why don’t you search the directories for high quality authors and ask them to guest blog for you? They may even do it for free. Blog Tours You may want to organize your guest posting into a Blog Tour: a sequence of posts, book reviews, interviews, excerpts and giveaways planned across a wide selection of blogs as one coordinated program. Such tours can “The purpose of a Blog Tour isn’t only to build your online presence, but also to generate a spike in book sales.” last a week or a month, or any time you’re able to invest into this intense activity. Usually, the purpose of a Blog Tour isn’t only to build your online presence, but also to generate a spike in book sales, so these are best executed immediately after your book is published. You can organize a tour yourself, if you’re willing to screen and manage dozens of host candidates. You can also hire one of many companies who can take care of all the logistics for you. When screening the potential hosts for your tour, pay attention to how well their theme Writer’s Platform 68 matches with your book’s main subject, how many followers they have, how active their comment sections are, etc. Instead of writing a series of posts for those blogs, consider asking them to write their own reviews of your book. This would both cut your workload and give a boost to your credibility as an author, since readers would trust the host’s impartial opinion and would be more likely to purchase your product. It could be prudent to incentivize your hosts with affiliate selling links, for example, or free copies of your product, or other giveaways their own platform can benefit from—as long as your incentive doesn’t make them feel obliged to give your book a more positive review than they’d otherwise have done. Here are some websites that can help you coordinate your Blog Tour: » www.authorblogtours.com » www.novelpublicity.com » www.tlcbooktours.com This tactic requires significant advance planning and superb organization skills. I suggest doing it soon after your 90-Day Calendar is finished, as a powerful follow-up to the online splash you’re about to create. Cross Promotions A fantastic way to capitalize on other author’s platforms is to cross-promote with them. I can suggest several simple, yet powerful tactics. Blog and Social Media A good way to increase your mutual reach, and bring additional value to your audiences, is to promote other authors writing in your genre or on a similar subject from your platform. Sharing their most interesting blog entries, tweets, and videos with your readers, interviewing each other on your blogs, and writing guest posts for one another can go a long way in creating Writer’s Platform 69 an engaged community of readers increasingly interested in your niche. For example, there are few authors writing about the Aztec history. It’s not surprising, then, that I take every opportunity to promote the work of my fellow author Zoe Saadia, whose books I enjoy and whose blog I follow. There, I’ve done it again. Author Associations These can be immensely helpful in reaching wide audiences. Instead of fighting it out on their own, several authors may decide to form a guild to share the burdens of promotion, blogging, searching for media contacts, and interacting with fans. If you can’t find existing associations relevant to your writing, create one. Set up a group on Facebook or GoodReads. Invite authors you admire, and succeed together with them. Book Bonuses Some authors report solid success exchanging opening chapters or other writing samples, such as short stories, at the back of each other’s books. This allows them to reach highly targeted and interested audiences. A word of caution here. It’s prudent to transparently describe such a bonus at the book’s front cover, or inside its store listing, for example: “Bonus Content—Includes a free short story, Zombie Bunnies by the acclaimed author John Smith.” Readers normally watch the progress indicator inside the book, and they may get annoyed if your text finishes before they expect it. Give them an advance notice of what to anticipate. Review Exchange...Not! This is a common, and frequently genuine mistake of beginning authors. In their drive to get more reviews for their first book, they may ask to exchange reviews with other authors. Writer’s Platform 70 If you’ve ever been tempted to do it, resist with all your strength. Here’s the problem. When two authors agree to swap reviews, there’s frequently an unspoken expectation that both will come out positive. All is fine if you both fall in love with one another’s books. But what if you don’t? Would you lie to the readers by leaving a fake, glowing review? Would you hurt your relations with that author by sharing your honest, negative assessment? Cross promotion? Heck no. Writer’s Platform 71 Chapter 9 Turning Your Fans into Buyers-in-Waiting If you follow the 90-Day Calendar closely, you should quickly develop a stable online following. You’ll have guest posts coming out on prominent blogs, solid archives in your blogging history, enlightened discussions on LinkedIn, and interactive fans and followers on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. But how to turn those followers into buyers? I’ll cover how to set up your mailing list, which will become one of your main selling channels. Building this list should be your priority, because people who sign up already know and like you and have showed interest in buying something you’ve produced. Selling stuff on your blog is tricky, and blogs that try to begin selling a product often get huge backlash. People get used to visiting your blog and getting information for free—and if one day they see that you’re aggressively selling stuff, they may disengage. Your mailing list is there to say, “Hi. The blog is still free. You can keep enjoying that and I won’t stop you. But I’m also going to come out with a valuable paid product soon, and if you want, I can let you know when that happens. You can be among the first to find out.” Those who sign up for such offers want you to sell them something, which is good, because that’s exactly what you’re going to do. You’ll use this chapter to make sure everyone knows that they can be the first to own your books if they just sign up for your insider list. Writer’s Platform 72 How to Set Up a Mailing List When you created your website, you hopefully didn’t forget to design a place for people to sign up for news and exclusive offers. We’ll take advantage of that now. To manage your mailing list, you’ll need to set up an auto-responder. One of the best is called AWeber. It costs about $20 a month, is easy to use, and is recognized by almost every email server out there, which means your automatic emails don’t get sent to the spam filters. Cheaper auto-responding companies exist, but they may lack the credibility of AWeber. An email from one of those companies might end up in a spam filter, and your list would never know you sent it. The Email List Sign-up Page One of the most important parts of your website is the email sign-up page. Work with your designer to make it easy to find. (Generally, the upper right-hand corner is a good place for it, but your designer will know where your audience’s eyes are naturally drawn.) “Few people, unless they’re already fans of yours, will want to opt in for an email list right off the bat.” Few people, unless they’re already fans of yours, will want to opt in for an email list off the bat. They’ll sign up for one of two reasons: 1) they’ll get an immediate benefit for doing so, or 2) they believe they’re going to get a tangible benefit in the future. Offering them both incentives is best. An immediate benefit is a free giveaway. For writers, a short piece of content is often a good choice. If you’re a fiction writer, you can offer the first few chapters of your book, the first book in a series, a short story, or a collection of flash fiction you’ve written. If you’re a nonfiction writer, it’s a good idea to create a stand-alone piece such as a short eBook of 10-20 pages, or a short guide on a topic related to your main project. For example, if Writer’s Platform 73 your book is an online marketing manual, you might give away a short eBook that includes 10 excellent tips for using Google+ effectively. You can experiment with ways to get people to pay attention to your free giveaway. Some find it effective to incorporate a pop-up into their website so that visitors are given the chance to sign up right away. However, your readers may find it annoying, and it may not fit your brand. Other good places are in the copy of your home page, at the tail end of each of your blog posts, and occasionally in social media, which we’ll get to in a minute. You can encourage people to sign up by playing up the future cost savings. We’ll set up a prelaunch of your product before the actual launch, during which it’s traditional (and highly beneficial to you) to offer a discount to the people on your email list. This is the “secret” or “insider” launch, and only the people on your list get to be a part of it. That makes for an excellent reason to sign up for your newsletter, since they’ll have access to your product before anyone else and pay less for it. Good things to include on your newsletter sign-up are: » A promise not to spam your readers, which you should keep. Many will refuse to sign up because they don’t want one more email to delete every morning. » A security promise. Your readers must feel assured by your promise not to do anything untoward with their information. Confirm Subscription When people sign up for your list, you’ll get a notification that someone new just hopped on board. When you go to the AWeber website, you’ll find a list of all those who have signed up. You may find that some people have a little “unverified” mark next to their name. This means that such person tried to sign up for your email list. They entered their name and information and clicked “Submit”, but when AWeber sent them a confirmation email, they didn’t open it up. This usually happens because they’re new to subscriptions and didn’t realize that there was an extra step. To avoid this problem, prepare a special page in AWeber. When you set up your autoWriter’s Platform 74 responder, you’ll see a box that says “Confirmation Success Page (optional)”. You’ll want to direct your visitors to a new web page that reminds them to be on the lookout for that confirmation email. Creating that page is simple. If you’re using WordPress for your blog, you’ll simply create a new “page” and type your reminder text in the box. Hit the publish button and copy the URL straight into the Confirmation Success Page box in AWeber. Have your web guys take a look at what you’ve created and maybe give it a polish, just in case. Your First Marketing Email The first email you send is going to contain a welcome message and a link to the giveaway you’ve promised your readers. It should also include a thank you for signing up to the list and a reminder of what they get for doing so. A sample first email might read: Thanks for signing up to the insider list! You’ll be the first to hear when I launch the new book, and you’ll get a hefty discount for it, too. Click the link below to download your free eBook on How to Self-Publish Online, and keep your eyes open for new updates. Pretty much every email I send out is going to contain something special for you. By sending a welcome email, you’re reminding them that it was a great idea to sign up and you’re setting the stage for your readers to respond with enthusiasm when they receive emails from you, instead of feeling like it’s more spam to delete. Folks like to open emails with discounts for products they want. Since they signed up to hear about your books, you already know they want what you’re selling. They should be happy to hear they get it before anyone else, and at a cut rate. Writer’s Platform 75 Chapter 10 Countdown to Launch As you finalize your book, you’ll start building up the buzz you need to have your launch go well. Every single channel we’ve discussed will be critical to generate that buzz. You’ll make sure your guest posts include essential information about your upcoming launch. You’ll start talking about it on Twitter and Facebook without selling it. You’ll answer any questions people have—as long as it’s not about the price. You want all the talk to focus on your book’s strengths, rather than the slightly-less-than-fun fact that it’ll cost money. You’ll be trying to get people talking about your book every which way except the detailed content of the book itself, since they won’t know it yet. But they’ll start to suspect that it’s fantastic. Gather Some Reviews Remember all those online relationships you’ll be cultivating? The friends you’ll make online, the other writers you’ll be schmoozing with, the blog owners to whom you’ll deliver excellent guest posts? How about the forums where you’ll be actively engaging in conversations with people who know your genre and enjoy it? You’re about to put those relationships to work by garnering some quality reviews for your product. Writer’s Platform 76 Choose your reviewers wisely. You’ll want to select at least ten people, though you’ll probably only use three or five of their reviews. Pick them based on: » Their credibility and expertise in your field. For nonfiction, you want a recognized expert on the topic you’ve written on. For fiction, you want someone whose opinion is respected, hopefully both on and offline. A book reviewer or another published author is ideal. » Their time availability. Some of your topmost picks won’t have the time to read your book, so ask them upfront if they’d be available. You don’t want to get stuck with a bunch of polite, “Sure, I’d love to,” “Choose your reviewers wisely. You’ll want to select at least ten people, though you’ll probably only use three or five of their reviews.” responses and find out later they can’t make the time. Tell them not to spare you and be realistic. Generally, if you ask them point-blank, they’ll be frank about what they can do. » Their eloquence. Let’s face it, some of your most enthusiastic fans can’t write for beans. They may love your work, but if the best way they can express their admiration is “It’s so cool,” it won’t help your sales page. Pick people who know how to write and who can give well-articulated reasons why they think your work is worth buying. After you’ve gotten your reviews, you may want to trim them down or, on occasion, fix a typo, misspelling, or misstatement. In those cases, simply make the edit and send the text back to the reviewer. Ask them if they’d be comfortable with you making this minor change for purposes of conciseness or accuracy. Be sure to thank them profusely for writing the review in the first place; very few like to be corrected, especially when they’ve so recently done such a big favor for you. If a review needs too many corrections, scrap it and use another. That’s why you’re getting ten: to bypass some. Another tactic to get powerful reviews is to use Amazon’s top reviewer list. Browse the list to find reviewers who read your genre and whose reviews you like. Study their reading preferences to make sure they’d be interested in reading your book. Writer’s Platform 77 Some of them have their emails or website address published publicly. Contact them, explain why you think they might be interested in your book, and ask for a review. Leave them with a choice to opt out; don’t put any undue pressure. Offer them your book for free regardless of their decision. At the very least, you’ll leave a good impression! Your Affiliate Program No matter what you’re publishing or how you choose to publish it, you’ll want affiliates to help you sell it. By the time you start seeking affiliates, your platform will be bigger than you could have hoped for when you just started, but it’ll still pale in comparison to platforms other writers and experts have spent years building. You can piggyback on their success. Essentially, you’ll ask others to sell your book for you. In exchange, they get a percentage of the sale. How big a percentage? If you want good affiliates who work hard to sell your product, the best offer you can make is a 50/50 split. You’ll only get half the sale, but you’ll be making a whole slew of sales you wouldn’t have otherwise. On your own, you might be able to sell a hundred copies of your book at the full price of $19. You’ve made $1,900. That’s great. A strong affiliate might be able to sell a thousand copies of your book. After he takes his 50% commission, you’ll be left with $9.50 a book, or $9,500. Good affiliates can work out well for you if you share generously. One excellent affiliate program is e-junkie, which features very low fees and an easy set up process. In the fiction world, good affiliates are those websites that pool together and actively promote books in your genre, for your target audience, or at your price point. They get their commission through Amazon, SmashWords, or B&N, or by charging you an upfront fee. Writer’s Platform 78 Some examples are: » www.pixelofink.com » www.99-cent-network.com » www.kindlenationdaily.com Individual book reviewers may also be Amazon affiliates, although their percentage is low. SmashWords has a special program, where it helps connect book authors with potential affiliates. How to Recruit Affiliates Most people start an affiliate program by creating a page on their website specifically for those interested. People who like your products, and think their own audiences would be interested in buying them, can sign up via that page. If you’re a newbie in the online world however, you’ll have better luck getting enthusiastic affiliates by targeting specific people who can do a lot for you. Go back to the list of people you know online. Choose those who may have an interest in your book and have large audiences. You’ll write a targeted pitch letter explaining what you’re offering their readers, why they would enjoy it, and your affiliate terms in a simple and direct way. Be humble. Remember that this is a person who has welcomed you into his community, and he may have a higher standing online than you do. Trying to pitch him the “Have I got a deal for you!” game won’t work, and could be a little insulting. Anyone with an online platform will recognize the monetary benefits. You’ll convince him that he won’t undermine his own reputation by selling your product. As you’re pitching to your list of potential affiliates, don’t forget to include a copy of your product. He’ll want to endorse your product wholeheartedly, and he can’t do that if he hasn’t seen it. Writer’s Platform 79 Writing a Sales Page While all this buzz goes on, you’ll want to pitch to your insider list. Naturally, you’ll aim to send them to an exciting sales page that talks up all the virtues of your book and incorporates those fantastic reviews you’ve gotten from your supporters. So what goes into a good sales page? For fiction, the benefit is always that your reader will enjoy the book. One of the best ways to prove this point is with a compelling synopsis and the strongest reviews you can muster. Fiction is the one area where other people’s opinions matter more than the concrete benefits, because it’s created for enjoyment, and the way we discover something new is by hearing what other people have already liked. If you’ve written fiction, your sales page should be short, sweet, and full of other people’s accolades. For nonfiction, it’s all about the “For fiction, the benefit is always that your reader will enjoy the book.” benefits. When someone finishes your book, what exactly will he be capable of doing that he wasn’t able to do before? Benefits often get confused with the features of a book, which are simply what the book has to offer. If you’ve written a book about how to become a better runner, then stating, “It has a day-by-day training guide,” is a feature. The benefit is that by the time you finish the training guide, you’ll be capable of running a 5K. Good strategies for a powerful sales page are: » Sound like yourself. No one likes sales-speak and you’ll have worked hard to develop a consistent brand that’s recognizable all over the web. This is the last place you want to lose that voice. » Talk to your readers. Don’t treat your reader as a complete stranger. Write for the Writer’s Platform 80 people who have come to your blog most often, and explain why you really think this product will be invaluable to them. » Create mental pictures. One common sales page technique is to ask a question such as, “What would it be like if you could generate twice as many sales this quarter?” Questions force our brains to create an image of the answer and, more often than not, an attractive answer. Paint a picture for your audience and they’ll be able to see themselves getting all the benefits out of your product. » Use your reviews. Pick your three best reviews and scatter them throughout. » Offer a discounted rate for your insider list. You’re going to change it to the full rate for the rest of your buyers, but right now, the only people who will see that page are your insiders, and you’ve promised them a discount. Pre-Launch Buzz Overflow You have to know how to direct all the excitement your insider list is going to generate into the right channels. When those people receive their products, you’ll want them to respond enthusiastically in as many social media channels as possible. To encourage them to do that, create an autoresponder that will be sent off six hours after they’ve received the product. (If you chose a physical book, try to time it for one or two days after the arrival.) The email should simply say thanks for buying the product and express the hope that they’re enjoying it. Tell them you’d love to know what they think on Twitter or on Facebook, and provide them with links to those channels. Odds are they’ve already begun reading the book, and your email could be just the nudge they need to get out there and start talking about it. You’ll also need some people out there who can super-charge the buzz. These are your affiliates that we’ve covered earlier. Staying Motivated If you’ve taken my advice and read the whole book through before starting with your 90-Day Calendar, you may be feeling a little overwhelmed right now. Writer’s Platform 81 That’s natural. It’s a lot of work, and plenty to think about. Everyone has heard the old adage about the man who ate an elephant: when asked how he had eaten an entire elephant, the man replied, “One bite at a time”. Contemplating the entire elephant might be too much. A few projects may have overwhelmed you in the past, even though folks may have advised you to take them step-by-step. Why? Because you were the one who “We discussed the vision. You have the desire. And in your hands, you hold the blueprint of a plan.” had to figure out the steps. You were the one who had to decide what part of the elephant to start with, how much to eat in a sitting, and what time of day is ideal for digesting it. I’ve taken that part out of your hands. You have a 90-Day Calendar with a handful of tasks for every day. Three things are needed for successful action: a clear vision, a burning desire, and a clear plan. We discussed the vision. You have the desire. And in your hands, you hold the blueprint of a plan. You just have to show up. Trust the process. By the time you’re into week three, you’ll be enjoying the ride. You’ll stand on your own feet and come up with a whole new step that I haven’t included here. You’ll see the momentum growing from all the work you’ll have put in, and you’ll be psyched to build it even more. You’ll never be lost. You’ll never be uncertain about what to do next. You’re going to show up and give it everything you’ve got. And that’s going to be everything you need. Throw your hat into the ring. Decide to have your words heard. And begin. Writer’s Platform 82 The 90-Day Calendar With most caveats covered, it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty tactics. The 90-Day Calendar is a tool. This tool works best if you stick to the schedule. You’ll be tempted to take just one day off and get back on the wagon the next day. But as anyone who’s ever been on a diet can tell you, that first day stretches into two, then a week, and soon you find yourself deciding if you should just pick another time to start this whole project. Here’s the problem with that; your web presence will be out there. If you start on this project to build a spectacular writer’s platform and stop midway, you’ll have a bunch of information about yourself out in the open. You might have a blog up or a Twitter feed going, and every day that ticks by without something up there will go against your reputation. People will come by, check you out, and decide that you aren’t going to be there soon. They won’t be back. Trust me on this. I’ve made this mistake once—and I’m not making the same mistake again. Regaining the lost ground is much harder than gaining it the first time around. So decide right now. Once you start, you’re going to finish. To not finish is to fail; and you’re not a failure. This is a go-big-or-go-home moment, and you are more than equal to it. You’re a writer. The hard part is already done. Now all you’re doing is committing to spend 90 days ensuring as many people as possible know that you’re a writer—a damn good one—and that people have a lot to gain by paying attention to what you have to say. You can give 90 days to that endeavor. There’s no question about it. Writer’s Platform 83 Using the 90-Day Calendar The Calendar is split into 10-day segments. Each of these segments will have particular challenges and high points, and I’ve done my best before each segment to illuminate some of the problems you might encounter so you can avoid them. I’ll direct you back to the appropriate sections in the book for information and ideas on how to perform each task. (E.g., the first task in the calendar is to “write or rewrite your current web copy”, with a direction to look to Chapter 2’s section on “Creating Content”.) Another reason to split the 90 days into segments is to break it down. You might offer yourself rewards for completing each segment, or dole out punishments if you fail, in case you prefer the stick to the carrot. Or you might quietly rejoice in your accomplishment. Either way, the smaller segments give you a place to rest your feet and reflect on how much you’ve done. You’ll find that many days you’ll be “It’ll be tempting to skip just one day, but don’t do it. Before you know it, you’ll have fallen out of the race.” performing the same tasks over and over, such as getting on Twitter or writing blog posts. That’s because, to be effective, most social media work needs to be repeated. It’ll be tempting to skip just one day, but don’t do it. Before you know it, you’ll have fallen out of the race. Just show up every day, and do the tasks laid out. To make it easier to follow along, I’ve created a section called “Maintenance Tasks”. These are the tasks that repeat over and over. There’s a cheat sheet list of Maintenance Tasks below— whenever you see Maintenance Tasks (or “MTs”), you need to perform every item on that list. Some days, all you’ll have to do will be the Maintenance Tasks. Other days, well. . . . Why don’t you read on and find out? Writer’s Platform 84 The Maintenance Tasks (MTs) » Read your financial and emotional goals, ideally aloud. » Polish or publish the blog post, then update Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Aim to publish a new blog post every other day. » Hit your social media posts target for the day. » Search for relevant discussions on Twitter and @ five new people to join or start the conversation. » Respond promptly to any platform-related correspondence (blog owners you’ve written to, fans of your own blog, etc.) » Go to your six favorite forums and post at least one comment on each. » Go to your twelve favorite blogs and make one comment on every new post. » Study Google Analytics for your blog and plan adjustments based on the trends you see. Writer’s Platform 85 Part 1: Laying the Foundation In this section, you’ll put the groundwork in place so you can start building a platform on top of it. You’ll see to it that your website copy is perfect, that your brand is set up, and that you’ve signed up for all the tools you need. At the end of Part 1, you’ll be able to lean on your platform without worrying that there are any gaps or weak points. Day 1 Take this day to brainstorm ideas for your brand. Refer back to “The Writer’s Brand” section for inspiration. Write down all the adjectives you can think of that apply to you and narrow those down to three that describe you. Then see if you can come up with a description of yourself as a writer in one concise sentence—that famous “elevator pitch”. Keep working until it’s as brief as you can make it. This first day requires lots of creativity and thought. Don’t skimp. Everything else you’re about to do depends on the brand you create today. Write down your brand statement—both the adjectives and the sentence—on a piece of paper and keep it where you’ll see it as you work on your platform. Remember that everything you create from now on should build off that. » Brainstorm brand ideas. » Zero in on three adjectives describing your brand. » Write one short sentence describing your brand. Day 2 Today we’ll write (or rewrite, if you already have one) your web copy. This job has three stages: 1. Identify the target audience for your blog. Normally, these would be your readers, as Writer’s Platform 86 opposed to fellow writers. Be as specific as you can; you may even want to draw your ideal reader on a piece of paper. Here’s an example: for my fiction-related blog, the target audience is men and women between 18 and 55 years of age, educated and worldly, well-travelled and imaginative, who speak English and possibly another language, and have interest in human history. 2. Create a keyword cloud that appeals to your target audience and fits with your brand. These keywords must represent the focus areas for your future blog topics and will be the basis for your SEO efforts. For example, my blog is focused on two main keywords: Aztecs and conquistadors. To guide the search traffic to my blog, I’ve created a keyword cloud focused on Aztecs (Aztec Calendar, Aztec Gods, Cannibalism, etc.) and on conquistadors (Hernán Cortés, Vera Cruz Landing, Fall of Tenochtitlán, etc.) On Day 4, you’ll use this keyword cloud to brainstorm your blog topics. 3. Write your web copy. Systematically go through every page on your website, not neglecting the little side boxes or the page titles, and either write or improve your web copy. When appropriate, use your keywords, being careful not to overdo it. Using one or two relevant keywords for every 100 words of your copy is a good rule of thumb. Refer to “Creating Content” for tips on how to keep your copy clean and readable. When you’ve finished creating your copy, don’t publish it right away. Instead, send it out to a few people who know you well and ask for their feedback. Send along the brand statement and the audience description you’ve created, and ask them whether: » your brand is an accurate reflection of who you are as a writer. » your website copy reflects that brand and appeals to your target audience. While you’re at it, ask them to keep an eye out for typos and grammar or spelling errors. Writer’s Platform 87 Day 3 Choose a username that works with your brand, your website, and your given name. You’ll be employing this username for all your social media channels, so make sure you can live with it. Refer to the “Social Media” section for advice. You may want to come up with several options in case you find out your desired choice is taken. After that, sign up for your social media channels. Head over to Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest and LinkedIn—all of them have obvious “sign up” buttons—and fill out the standard profiles. All these networks will have a section for you to describe yourself. Guess what that branding sentence we created on Day 1 is great for? For both Twitter and Facebook, you can get a jump-start if you allow the websites to use a tool that searches your email contacts. If you have 20 friends from work who used their work email addresses to sign up for a Facebook account, you’ll have 20 new friends on Facebook right away with minimal hassle. One flag with this tactic is that these people will receive a standard message showing you have zero followers. You may want to drop your friends a line just before to tell them that you’re launching a new platform and would need their help taking it off the ground. If anyone says “Hi” or welcomes you to their network, respond to them. Make your response personal—for example, always include their name, and try to mention some relevant information from their own communication stream. Otherwise, folks may assume it’s a note from your auto-responder. You’ll want to get in the habit of developing online relationships whenever the opportunity presents itself. Optional: Please also sign up for GoodReads, YouTube, a podcast service (such as BlogTalkRadio.com), or any other social media channel of your choice. When I mention updating social media channels in this Calendar, please update those other channels as well. » Sign up for all the social medial channels you need. » Interact with anyone who interacts with you. Writer’s Platform 88 Day 4 Based on your keyword cloud, map out a list of topics you’ll be covering. The major keywords you’ve selected may become themes (e.g., Aztecs); your secondary keywords may become topics for individual blog posts (e.g., Aztec History Timeline, Aztec Cuisine.) You may want to use mind-mapping software for this exercise; I use Tinderbox (Mac) and NovaMind (Mac/Windows). When the list of topics feels complete, structure them into an editorial calendar spanning the next 90 days, assuming a new post every couple of days. It may look like this: Theme Conquistadors Blog Posts Posting Date Post Where? » Why did Cortés burn his ships? Aug 12 My Blog » “Display Violence” against Natives. Aug 14 Zoe’s Blog It’s a good idea to organize this calendar as an attractive PDF table and post it on your blog to attract potential readers and contributors. Then, refer to “Blogging” (Chapter 3), for insights on writing the first post. Give it the time and attention it deserves. Don’t publish that post just yet. Make it as strong as you can, then take a break for the night. We’ll come back to it tomorrow. Take a little time to hop on social media and engage with folks. You might also fish around and see what’s out there, how other authors in your niche or genre use the tool, and what you like and don’t like. Oh, and have you heard back from those people you asked for your web copy reviews? If not, follow up with them. If you have, incorporate the changes they’ve recommended, if they make sense to you and fit with your brand. » Create your editorial calendar, print it out, and tape it where you can see it every day. Writer’s Platform 89 » Write your first blog post. » Follow up with your peers about your web copy. » Play around on social media and interact with others. Day 5 By the end of today, your website will be up and running. If you’ve heard back from your friends, go ahead and incorporate their comments. If not, go full steam ahead with your own best judgment. Triple check for any factual errors, misspellings, or grammar problems, then put that copy up on the website. Now take a look at that blog post you wrote yesterday. Mostly, you’ll find things to improve the day after. That’s why we’ll get in the habit of writing a post a day in advance. Polish this one up, then go right ahead and put it online as your first blog post. Take a moment to celebrate. Your website now has quality content. When that moment has passed, crack out your keyboard again and start writing a new blog post. You’ll want it ready soon. As always, check on your social media. If you’re starting to sense this is going to become a regular thing, you’re right. » Polish your web copy using peer reviews and post it. » Polish your blog post and publish it. » Update your social media channels after the post is published. » Draft your second blog post and set it aside. » Interact on your social media. Day 6 It’s time to get jamming on social media. If you’ve been paying attention as you tune in every day, you should have a decent idea of how others use it and how you can use it, too. Today, spend some serious time on Twitter. Get to know others, @ a few people who seem interesting, and comment on their tweets. Don’t push your books on them. Writer’s Platform 90 Need a refresher on how to behave on Twitter? Review “Twitter” (Chapter 4). Look over your second blog post for any improvements you can make. Rewrite the draft until it feels as complete and as brief as you can make it, and set it aside for posting tomorrow. » Rewrite your second blog post. » Hit your social media posts target for the day. » Respond to any comments on your blog, and social media. Day 7 Today is a rinse-and-repeat day, although, if you had decided to do an audio or video channel, you’ve got a little extra homework. Go ahead and create an audio or video file, and let it rest until tomorrow. Like blog posts, audio and video posts get better with age. » Polish your second blog post and publish it. » Draft your third blog post. » Hit your social media posts target for the day. » Respond to any comments on your blog and social media. » Optional: create audio or video. Day 8 Once again, if you forewent the audio and video, you’re just getting into the groove of updating frequently, so repeat yesterday’s checklist. If you did create an audio or video yesterday, review it and see if it needs editing. If you like what you hear and see, upload it to your website. And update your social media! At the end of the day, log into Google Analytics and study your early traffic trends. » Rewrite your third blog post. » Hit your social media posts target for the day. » Respond to any comments on your blog and social media. » Optional: Post audio or video. Writer’s Platform 91 Day 9 Today you’re going to seek out other blogs and websites with audiences who might be interested in your work. Use a search engine to look for websites on the right topics, and see which other blogs and websites people recommend or interact with frequently. You can also follow those blog and websites’ owners on Twitter and see who they enjoy interacting with most. Here are some solid website examples to start with. Registering with the first three will get your blog indexed by the search engines faster: » Best of the Web Blogs » www.BlogCatalog.com » www.Bloggeries.com » www.BrooWaha.com » www.writing.com » www.thebookdesigner.com » www.thecreativepenn.com Write down a list of twelve blogs and six forums where audiences could be interested in your work. Remember that these can include blogs that don’t have anything to do with your subject. Check out “Keeping Up with Other Blogs” for tips. » Polish your third blog post and publish it. » Draft your fourth blog post. » Hit your social media posts target for the day. » Respond to any comments on your blog, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. » Find six blogs you enjoy and six blogs where your market hangs out (12 total) and bookmark them in your browser. » Add all these blogs to a single RSS feed. (Google Reader is excellent, but use whatever you like.) » Bookmark six relevant forums in your browser. Day 10 Today marks the final step in getting accustomed to your “Maintenance Tasks”. After today, you’ll be doing everything on this checklist—and on many days, additional tasks. The good Writer’s Platform 92 news is you’ll get used to doing the same tasks over and over. After 31 days, your MTs will become as natural as brushing your teeth or putting on a clean shirt. Sure, you may not want to do the tasks on any given day—but you really won’t consider not doing them. Go to each blog and forum you bookmarked yesterday, and leave a comment on every new post and/or trending topic. Don’t bother linking back to your own blog unless the site has a “link love” option (where you can enter the URL of your blog). For now, you’re just beginning to establish your presence on those blogs, and it’ll benefit you not to be seen as one of those misinformed self-marketers who participates on other platforms only to plug theirs. » Rewrite your fourth blog post. » Hit your social media posts target for the day. » Respond to any comments on your blog and social media. » Go to your six chosen forums and post at least one comment on each. » Go to your twelve chosen blogs and make one comment on every new post. Writer’s Platform 93 Part 2: Getting Help If you strive to deliver a quality book, you’ll need outside help. That means editors, peer feedback providers, and lots of elbow grease on your own time incorporating their suggestions and changes. This week, we’ll reach out for the help you need and establish a “master team” that can help you get your product to where it needs to be. At this stage, don’t ask your helpers for line edits yet, as you’ll be rewriting your draft once again. Focus them on the overall flow, the logic, the power of your dialogues, etc. Day 11 Today you’re going to seek out editors who can help you refine your product for the market. Write to three people who might be willing to support your journey to the launch; these people could be paid professionals or friends. Refer to “Polishing Your Product” (Chapter 5) for tips. This also marks the first day you’ll be performing the full list of MTs. If you need a handy referral list, there’s one right after the introduction to the 90-Day Calendar, titled “Maintenance Tasks”. » MTs » Write to three people who may become editors. Day 12 Continue your search for good editors. You’ve probably heard back from at least one of the folks you’ve approached yesterday with a response; if it’s a yes, send him your book and ask for feedback. If it’s a no, you’ll want to thank him for his trouble and send out a letter to new potential editors. Remember, the more editors the better, so send out three more letters today regardless of whether you’ve heard back from anyone. Writer’s Platform 94 » MTs » Respond to yesterday’s potential editors and send your book to those who offered to edit. » Write to three new people who may become editors. Day 13 Last round: send out three more letters. Over the next week, whoever has agreed to become your editor will make it to the final list. You’ll work with them regularly, so ensure you’re enthusiastic about each of these people and feel you can take feedback from them. If you decide in retrospect that you have three editors you like very much and one that you’re not sure you can take criticism from, it’s okay to tell that person it turns out you already have plenty of editors and thank them sincerely for offering to help. » MTs » Respond to the previous days’ potential editors and send your book to those who offered to help. » Write to three new people who may become editors. Day 14 Today’s a maintenance day. If you happen to get answers from potential editors today, respond promptly and give them all the information they need. » MTs » Respond to your potential editors. Day 15 If you haven’t heard back from some of the people to whom you’ve sent your query letters, send follow-up notes. If you haven’t heard back from your editors in three days, though, it’s a safe bet that these people may not have the time to work with you on your project. » MTs » Follow up on any non-responses to your editor queries. Writer’s Platform 95 » Respond to your potential editors. Day 16 Make the final editors list. From now on, these people should be at the top of your priority list when it comes to responding promptly to emails. Remember: they may have no incentive to help you except the sincere desire to see you succeed. » MTs » Make the final editors list. » Make sure all your editors have a copy of your book and specific feedback requests. » If you’ve heard back from some of your editors already, well done. You picked good editors. Respond to them promptly. Day 17 While your editors are going through your book, you’re going to get a little more assertive with your social media. Start by experimenting a little on Twitter. @ five extra people and start a conversation with them. You get bonus points if any of these people retweet something you’ve said or show up at your blog. » MTs » Respond promptly to your editors. » @ five extra people on Twitter and start a conversation with them. Day 18 Delving a little further into social media, reach out directly to someone whose blog or website has been an asset to you in building your brand or your writing career. Send them an appreciative email, being specific about what they’ve done that has been useful to you. Don’t ask for anything, and—naturally—don’t mention your books. Most blog and website owners will respond to sincere appreciation. » MTs Writer’s Platform 96 » Respond promptly to your editors. » Write an appreciative email to a blog or website owner you admire. » @ five new people on Twitter and start a conversation with them. Day 19 Once again, with feeling. Today is a repeat of yesterday, but don’t let that fact make you slack off. People online, contrary to popular opinion, are not stupid. If you start all your Twitter conversations the same way, or you’re tempted to repeat yesterday’s letter with different names, don’t. You want people to see you as an individual worthy of personal attention. Treat them the same way. » MTs » Respond promptly to your editors. » Write an appreciative email to a blog or website owner you admire. » @ five new people on Twitter and start a conversation with them. Day 20 By today, you should have received feedback from your editors on the first chapters of your book. You’ll have responded promptly to their email correspondence, and today we’ll look at the editors’ notes and incorporate them. You don’t need to accept every suggestion, but please consider each one. If you conclude that the editor simply has a different opinion, but that you’re confident in your own approach, that’s fine. Take each comment seriously. Your editors took time to give you their thoughts, and you should understand their comments and consider the implications for your product. If the same note crops up with more than one editor, that’s a red flag that something needs adjusting. » MTs » Respond promptly to your editors. » Review all the notes you’ve received from editors and start marking up your own copy with changes and improvements you can make. Writer’s Platform 97 Part 3: What Your Market Wants Your editors will continue providing you with excellent feedback. Their perspective will be valuable to you; they can pinpoint almost every improvement needed; after all, they have the book in their hands. In this 10-day stretch, we’ll spend some time learning the market as a whole. We’ll want things included in your book that your editors may not have even considered. It’s hard to figure out what’s not there when you have a complete product in your hands. Part 3 is all about listening to the public and giving them what they want. If you write fiction, your “information product” will likely be the final draft of the book you’re about to launch. You may want to approach creative writing websites and collect some feedback there. A few examples are: » www.Writing.com » www.BrooWaha.com » www.Zoetrope.com (you can join their “Virtual Studio”) » www.fanstory.com To get quality input at these websites, you’ll need to give quality input first. There’s no way around it; you’ll need to read the work of other writers and tell them what you think. People will return your kindness. As an alternative, you may want to register with GoodReads and find its Groups dedicated to your topic or genre. These are a fantastic resource to understand what excites and turns off your potential readers. Day 21 We’ll start on familiar territory. Remember those blogs and forums you’ve been visiting regularly to leave comments? Go through the relevant posts and see what people want to know. What questions do they ask? What excites them in your field or genre? Also, register on some creative writing websites and GoodReads Groups and start studying their dominating attitudes and expectations. Writer’s Platform 98 » MTs » Respond promptly to your editors. » Browse the comments on relevant topics and write down 5-10 pieces (information or scenes) you could include in your book that aren’t already there. Day 22 The best way to find out what’s missing in your product is to ask. When you write today’s blog post, explain that you’re finalizing a book on a particular topic and ask your readers what they’d most like to see included. Make sure to send the word out on Twitter and ask people to retweet because you want lots of feedback. » MTs, with a special assignment for today’s post. » Respond promptly to your editors. Day 23 Choose one of your favorite forums and start a thread on your book. Don’t be specific about what’s already included, because you don’t want anyone holding back their comments if they see something tangentially related. Simply explain the general topic and ask what they’d most like to know about. Get on Twitter and Facebook and promote your blog post more than usual—but in good style and without spamming the timelines of your followers. If you’ve successfully made friends with a few people who have large followings, send them a direct message and ask if they’ll help spread the word so you can get feedback to create a better offering. They should be happy to help out. » MTs » Respond promptly to your editors. » Put extra effort into promoting on social media. » Monitor comments closely and follow up with those who introduce new topics. Writer’s Platform 99 Day 24 Write a guest post on building a new product. You’ll have plenty of material to work from: your mistakes along the way. Explain in the post that you’re finalizing a book and introduce the idea of getting feedback on what should be included. Check “Guest “You’ll have plenty of material to work from: your mistakes along the way.” Posting” (Chapter 8) for ideas. We’ll have more intense guest posting drives in Parts 6 and 8. What we’re doing now is a live rehearsal for that, to build the initial connections and gain invaluable experience early in the program. That’s enough for today. You’ll have your own post to work with, after all. » MTs » Respond promptly to your editors. » Write a guest post and let it sit until tomorrow. Day 25 Polish your guest post (don’t abandon your own blog post). You’re about to send it to a blog you admire, so put some serious effort into making sure everything flows well, makes sense, and has no errors. Write a cover letter to go with your guest post and send it to a blog whose audience would benefit from it. Check “The Pitch” section for ideas. » MTs » Respond promptly to your editors. » Edit your guest post. » Write a cover letter. » Send cover letter—with your guest post attached—to a blog owner. Writer’s Platform 100 Day 26 It’s a rinse-and-repeat day. We’ll write another guest post for another blog. This post will still be to ask for feedback on your product, but I suggest you take a different approach so that it doesn’t resemble the first one at all. Get creative and remember that you don’t need the entire post to be about asking for feedback—only the conclusion where you encourage people to comment. » MTs » Respond promptly to your editors. » Write a guest post. Day 27 Send your new post out to another blog and double-check your correspondence. Remember to respond promptly if you hear back from one of the blogs. Some popular blogs may take a few weeks to get back to you, so don’t lose heart. » MTs » Respond promptly to your editors. » Edit your new guest post. » Write a new cover letter. » Send cover letter—with your guest post attached—to a blog owner. Day 28 One more time! New guest post, new blog, new angle on the idea. Dig deep; it’ll be a while before you write guest posts again. » MTs » Respond promptly to your editors. » Write a new guest post. Writer’s Platform 101 Day 29 Send that post out and take a deep breath. Hopefully you’ve already received plenty of feedback on your own blog, and you’ve taken some good steps to get even more from larger audiences. These steps should pay off in the next round. » MTs » Respond promptly to your editors. » Edit your new guest post. » Write a new cover letter. » Send cover letter—with your new guest post attached—to a blog owner. Day 30 Haul out the marked-up copy of your book that already reflects the notes from your editors, and start incorporating the feedback you’ve been getting from your market. If more than three people ask for information on a specific topic, it’s a good idea to make sure it gets in there. Don’t let your book morph into something you never intended; you don’t need to expand so much that you’ve essentially created two books in one. But do pay attention to what the audience is asking for. If you find no one is interested in one major section of your book, it may be wise to excise it and put in a new section that more people are interested in. Spend some time today making such choices. The next stretch will be all about rewriting. » MTs » Go through your feedback notes and see what sections of your book may need changes. » Respond promptly to your editors. Writer’s Platform 102 Part 4: The Rewrite There’s no getting around it: at this point, you’ll have a ton of quality feedback that can transform your material from “good” to “so-amazing-you-have-to-own-it”. Unfortunately, to get the feedback out of the margins and into the final text, you’ll have to do some serious editing. And by serious editing, I mean a full-scale rewrite. Don’t skip this step. Editing will only get you so far. With all the feedback and inputs you’ve collected, there may be a need for some fundamental changes, and you won’t be able to make it into a coherent new text unless you “By serious editing, I mean a full-scale rewrite.” start from scratch. Treat your previous draft as a guideline, and feel free to use the exact same sentences if they work just as well in the new draft. But write it all down again, incorporating the new notes. You’ll find yourself adding whole new sections or scenes and removing those that aren’t needed. You wouldn’t get that far with a simple edit. As you finalize your chapters, send them to be proofread. Here are a few options to do this, although you may have your own way: » Hire a professional proofreader, if your budget allows. » Split your book into three equal chunks and ask each of your usual editors to proofread one. This would make the task more manageable for them and save time for you. » Proofread it yourself, if you’re brave enough. I don’t recommend this as your only option, although this is necessary as the final quality assurance step, anyway. When proofreading, you may want to change the way you look at your text. If you’ve been working on a computer screen, print it out. Read your chapters out of order, read them aloud, or read your manuscript from the end to the beginning word by word, so Writer’s Platform 103 that each word stands out for you. Ready to create a book that will sail off the shelves? Let’s go. Part 4 will soon become real. Every single day of this stretch is identical. Rewriting, proofreading, and social media maintenance. That’s it. Day 31 » MTs » Respond promptly to your editors. » Rewrite. Day 32 » MTs » Respond promptly to your editors. » Rewrite. » Send finished sections for the final proofread. Day 33 » Repeat day 32. Day 34 » Repeat day 32. Day 35 » Repeat day 32. Day 36 » Repeat day 32. Writer’s Platform 104 Day 37 » Repeat day 32. Day 38 » Repeat day 32. Day 39 » Repeat day 32. Day 40 » Repeat day 32. Writer’s Platform 105 Part 5: Creating a List—and a Tangible Product Part 5 is twofold. First, you’ll finalize your draft and send it off to be formatted. You may want to refer to “Choosing Your Product’s Format” (Chapter 7) to help you decide which option is right for you. Self-publishing a printed book will take a good deal longer; that’s why I’m introducing this step early on in the Calendar. You’ve got 50 days to make your product perfect. Second, we’re setting the stage to capture an audience who will be delighted to hear about your book when it’s perfectly formatted and ready to launch. Part 5’s busy, but it pays to put your head down and power through. Day 41 Using what you know about your audience from your research in Parts 2 and 3, decide which format is best for your product. Then sign up for a book creation and distribution program like CreateSpace, Lulu, SmashWords, or BookBaby and start the process of formatting your product for release. You can also find a free-lancer to do the formatting for you. Take a look at the “Outsourcing Work” Section in Chapter 2 for ideas. » MTs » Sign up for a book creation program. » Incorporate the final proofreading changes and send your product to be formatted. Day 42 Whatever format you’ve chosen, you’ll spend the next few days in frequent correspondence with your product creators, making sure they have all the files they need, filling out any questionnaires they may have on the design requirements, etc. Writer’s Platform 106 Respond promptly and don’t be afraid to ask questions. For example, if they need your product in a file format you’re not familiar with, don’t hesitate to ask how to convert your files or where you can find the correct program. » MTs » Provide any additional information your product creator may need. Day 43 Today will be much like the day before, making sure your product creator has all the necessary information. After tomorrow, corresponding with your product creator will be included in “MTs,” and you’ll simply know to respond to those people promptly. » MTs » Provide any additional information your product creator may need. Day 44 This is the last repeat to get the final bits of information to your product creator. Tomorrow, we’ll get started on creating an email list, so make sure you clear up any remaining points of confusion between you and your product creator today to have a clean slate for tomorrow. However, don’t worry if you need more time to work with your product creator on layout and design. You have until Day 60 to make it perfect. Just keep working on it in the background, as you go through the following sections. » MTs » Provide any additional information your product creator may need. Day 45 Today you’re going to set up an AWeber account to create an opt-in form where visitors can sign up for your newsletter. You don’t need to call it a newsletter, and, if you follow this Calendar closely, you’re not going to issue weekly updates, which is what most think of as a newsletter. Instead, you’ll simply Writer’s Platform 107 invite people to sign up to hear about exciting new products first. The tutorials on the AWeber website are easy to follow, so please log in there and create your account. » MTs » Create an AWeber account. Day 46 Before you put a sign-up form on your website, you need to be sure people will receive an automatic thank you email when they sign up. You’d need to create that email today. Refer to “Confirm Subscription” and “Your First Marketing Email” (Chapter 9) if you need some help. It’s a good idea to add a little teaser by letting them know that one new development is already well on its way. Put that email up on AWeber as the first auto-response for people when they sign up. » MTs » Write welcome email and post on AWeber. Day 47 Today we’ll install that sign-up form on your website. There are plenty of plug-ins that link to AWeber when someone signs up. Here’s a simple one for Wordpress, but you may want to talk with your web coder and ask for his recommendation on the best plug-in that will work with your design and your coding. » MTs » Install the opt-in form on your website. Day 48 Now that everything’s set for your email subscribers, you’ll need to create a free giveaway to Writer’s Platform 108 entice people to sign up. This part will be easy. Remember the sections you removed from your eBook because they weren’t as critical as others? Use one of those and create a 10-point list of handy tips. Convert it to a PDF and voila; you have a free giveaway. If you’re a fiction writer, you may decide to offer a short story that showcases your talent, or a special report for your readers on the latest trends in your genre. You may offer a humorous look at the genre’s stereotypes, as another example. Be sure to copyright your material so that no one filches it. To secure your copyright in the US, go to http://www.copyright.gov. In the UK and most other parts of the world, there is no official copyright registration system, although some agencies exist for your peace of mind, such as http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk. » MTs » Create a free giveaway and let it rest for a day. Day 49 Flip through your new free creation to make sure it’s perfect. If you feel like going the extra mile, also run it by one of your editors. Check that they have the time to review it in one day, because you’re going to attach it to your first AWeber auto-responder email. This is a simple action. Write a quick line at the bottom of the welcome email saying, “Click here for your free giveaway.” Include the title of the piece so folks can see they’re getting what they signed up for: for example, 10 Hilarious Historical Mistakes in Popular Novels. Then simply attach your PDF to that email. Dedicate today’s blog post to your giveaway. This can be a short post, mentioning that you’ve started an email list to tell people about new developments and projects, and you’ve put together a free giveaway for anyone who feels like signing up. Tomorrow, we’ll put that post up on your blog and encourage people to get on your list. » MTs » Review free giveaway and convert to PDF. » Attach it to the auto-responder email. Writer’s Platform 109 Day 50 Today we’ll officially launch your new giveaway. Publish the promotional blog post that you wrote yesterday, and get on social media to spread the word far and wide about your excellent giveaway. If anyone says something flattering about your offer, retweet their comment and thank them. » MTs » Review your free giveaway one final time before it goes live. » Promote your giveaway on your blog and on social media. Writer’s Platform 110 Part 6: Maintaining Momentum You’ve gotten a nice rhythm going, producing excellent content. You have over 20 posts up on your blog, which means you’ve found a voice and a way of communication that works for you. Odds are you may have become a little bored, though. I have a solution for that . . . but it involves more writing. In Part 6, you’ll further expand your horizons. This is the second, more powerful burst of guest posting to solidify the interest of people who have bigger audiences and more pull online than you do. By the time you’re done with this section, you’ll have made friends in high places. This will position you well for your coming launch. Check “Guest Posting” (Chapter 8) for ideas. That said, the formula is simple. You’ll write guest posts targeting the audiences of popular blogs, you’ll pitch them, and you’ll repeat that process a few times. The nice part is that you’ll have to stretch your knowledge and your ideas to fit in with the new audiences, and that means you’ll tap into new areas of creativity and shake out of your usual way of thinking. It’ll be great for your blogging enthusiasm, and you’ll get out of any ruts you may have fallen in. “By the time you’re done with this section, you’ll have made friends in high places.” Remember that guest posts may be accepted quickly, but they might run a full month from now. Be sure to ask the blog owners when they’ll publish it. They won’t mind; they know you’ll want to promote it. It’ll also mean you won’t show up on five different websites on the same day; not that it would be bad, but you don’t want to use up all your firepower at once. Separately, you may still be working with your product creator on finalizing your book layout Writer’s Platform 111 and design. Don’t compromise on this part of work; if you run into any scheduling conflicts, prioritize your product creation and skip the guest post for that day. Day 51 (“DAY A”) » MTs » Write guest post for a blog with a larger audience than yours. Day 52 (“DAY B”) » MTs » Review your guest post and send it with a cover letter. Day 53 » Repeat day A. Day 54 » Repeat day B. Day 55 » Repeat day A. Day 56 » Repeat day B. Day 57 » Repeat day A. Day 58 » Repeat day B. Writer’s Platform 112 Day 59 » Repeat day A. Day 60 » Repeat day B. Writer’s Platform 113 Part 7: The Final Product In Part 7, we’ll give your book one final review, because it’s time to start pushing it out to those who can help you promote it. It’s no time to fool around; you’re pitching to early customers, which means anything you’d be ashamed to have a paying customer see must be corrected right now. This is also where we’ll gather affiliates who will be willing to launch your product with you in just a few short weeks. We have only 30 days to go until the official launch, and you’ll want lots of people helping you create the buzz for that. Check “Your Affiliate Program” (Chapter 10) for ideas. Day 61 Get the final version from your product creator and send it out to all of your editors for a final check. Take a hard look at it yourself; you’ll want to nip any formatting or design problems in the bud right now. Time is of the essence. » MTs » Send your final product to your editors. Day 62 Gather the feedback from your editors and combine it into one document, so that you can be sure no edits cancel one another out and that it’s easy for your product creator to read. Send those edits off immediately as well. Assuming you’re working with a PDF file at this stage, use the “Annotations” feature of Adobe Acrobat Reader to mark the edits right in the master file so your product creator can’t miss anything. » MTs » Combine editors’ notes and send in one document to the product creator. Writer’s Platform 114 Day 63 While you wait for the product creator to complete the changes, write another guest post and spend some time on social media. If you have any problems that the product creator can’t fix, now’s the time to ask for help. » MTs » Write a guest post for a major blog. » Spend time on social media and get peer help on any problems or concerns. Day 64 Draft a letter to at least 20 people who might be interested in promoting your product. Among these should be the blogs on which you’ve been a frequent commenter in the last two months, any major website owners who have shown interest in your blog, and any blogs who have accepted guest posts of yours. You can also include any friends you’ve made on social media. The letter will simply say that you’ve created a product and would love to hear what they think of it. If they’d also like to become an affiliate for the product, you’d be delighted to have them and would appreciate their support. Don’t give them the hard sell; these people know you and presumably like you. If they’re interested, they’ll get on board without any fancy selling tactics. Let them know what the affiliate rate is, too. » MTs » Draft a letter to potential affiliates. Day 65 Send out your final product, attached to your letter, to every single person you think might be interested in promoting it. Be careful to address each letter individually and to make sure the addresses and names are all correct. Nothing turns people off of a good project like seeing their name misspelled. Writer’s Platform 115 » MTs » Send letter and product out to potential promoters and affiliates. Day 66 While you wait to hear back from your potential promoters, it’s time to create an affiliate program. Sign up for an online affiliate management tool like e-junkie and make a note of any information your affiliates might need. For example, most of them will want banners for your product so they can post them around their blog. We’ll cover that tomorrow. » MTs » Sign up for an affiliate program like e-junkie. Day 67 Fill in any missing information in your affiliate program, such as banners and promotional details. Your affiliates are going to want a quick bullet list highlighting the best features of your product for easy reference. Cover anything you can think of to make their life easier. Crank up your image editing program and design a few banners promoting your book. A thumbnail cover image and a brief benefit statement, or an enticing question challenging folks to create a beneficial mental picture, should be enough for a banner. Design them in two or three standard sizes. Designers Toolbox is an excellent site that lists the standard sizes with live examples. » MTs » Create supporting information for your affiliates. Day 68 By now you should have heard back from some of your potential affiliates. Send those interested over to your sign-up page (e-junkie will provide this,) so they can enroll. Writer’s Platform 116 Ask if they’d be willing to put up a promotional blog post on the day of the launch. (This is fairly standard, but it never hurts to make sure.) Keep a list of every single blog and website that will be promoting your product on launch day, because you’ll want to show up frequently. » MTs » Send affiliates to affiliate sign-up. » Offer any information you have and ask how they plan to promote. » Create a list of all blogs and websites that will promote you on launch day. Day 69 It’s time to write a sales page. You won’t use it for another fifteen days or so, but you’ll both want to give yourself lots of time to get it perfect, and you’ll want your affiliates to have access to it so they can create excellent sales pages of their own. Spend some time writing the first draft. Check “Writing a Sales Page” (Chapter 10) for ideas. » MTs » Write the first draft of your sales page. Day 70 Today, we’ll give that sales page a polish and publish it. Create a hidden web page, one that doesn’t have any public links to it. If you don’t know how to create a new web page, or a hidden one, just ask your web coder. It’s a snap. Put the sales page up and toy with formatting until it looks good to you. Then run the gamut of your editors and whatever affiliates have already volunteered, asking for their feedback. You’ll want to take their advice seriously. Many of your affiliates will have more experience writing sales pages than you do. » MTs » Write a second draft of your sales page. » Create a hidden web page and post your sales copy. » Send your sales page link out to your editors and affiliates for feedback. Writer’s Platform 117 Part 8: Generating Buzz This is where you set up your launch for ridiculous success. Step 1: get guest posts on every blog in sight. Step 2: spend every waking minute on social media. Step 3: try to get some sleep, if only because people who don’t sleep tend to get snappy at prospective buyers they should be attempting to charm. A quick note: you’ll be doing a lot of “Try to schedule one of your major guest-post appearances on a big blog for Day 85.” guest posting this week. If you can, try to schedule one of your major guestpost appearances on a big blog for Day 85. That’s the last day people can sign up for a discounted version of your product by being on your opt-in list. Make sure you tell them that in your post. Ready? Let’s go. Day 71 Today, we get serious about guest posting. This third round of guest posting will be the most intense of all, but it’ll be worth it. You’ll write a guest post, edit it, and send it off to a blog with a cover letter all in one day. You’ll also want to continue fielding questions from your affiliates and other correspondents, and, of course, perform your daily maintenance tasks. On top of that, start spending good time on Twitter chatting about your upcoming launch, because you’ve got to get the buzz a-buzzing. If that sounds like a lot of work, I’m afraid that’s because it is a lot of work. But there’s only a little bit of hard work left to do before your launch, so buckle up! Writer’s Platform 118 » MTs » Write guest post. » Write cover letter for guest post. » Send cover letter, with guest post attached, to another blog. » Spend time on social media discussing your project with others. Day 72 Engage your audience. Start dropping hints in your blog posts about the upcoming launch date. If you feel up to it, you can announce a contest—for example, say you’ll choose a random commenter to receive an early, and free, copy of your product. Announce the contest the following day (after your blog post has had its usual overnight time to air out), and officially start the contest on Day 74. » MTs, mentioning the contest in your blog post. » Write guest post. » Write cover letter for guest post. » Send cover letter, with guest post attached, to another blog. » Spend time on social media discussing your project. Day 73 Use social media to your advantage and ask your friends or fans how to do a successful launch. Ask what makes a good launch even better; you’ll likely get responses ranging from customer service to bonus extras to exclusive offers. Consider incorporating some of the suggestions if they sound appealing, or just stick to the script and thank everyone for commenting. Either way, you’ve gotten your audience involved in what you’re doing. This is the last day before your contest, so make sure the post you write for tomorrow’s blog entry is extra interesting to discuss. They’ll come and say something just to enter the contest, but they’ll stay engaged—and, perhaps, sign up for your list—if they like what they find on your blog. Writer’s Platform 119 You’ll be writing another guest post today, too, as you’ll do every day this week. It’ll be a rough ride! » MTs, mentioning your contest. » Write guest post. » Write cover letter for guest post. » Send cover letter, with guest post attached, to another blog. » Get on social media and ask your audience a specific question about a book launch. Day 74 If you decided to go with the contest, it’s time to launch it! Put up your engaging post from yesterday and let the comments run wild. Be sure to get on your social media channels and promote it, too. » MTs » Write guest post. » Write cover letter for guest post. » Send cover letter, with guest post attached, to another blog. » Promote your contest on your blog and social media. Day 75 Today, choose a contest winner randomly from the respondents (e.g., by using the number generator at www.random.org) and announce the win on your blog. When you send the winner their prize, ask if, as a personal favor, he would give you a book review for your official launch. » MTs » Write guest post. » Write cover letter for guest post. » Send cover letter, with guest post attached, to another blog. » Choose winner and announce on your blog. » Send prize to winner and request review. Writer’s Platform 120 Day 76 Time to gather some more reviews from people who have lots of pull online. Remember when you sent your product out to all those other popular blog owners? Request reviews from everyone who has a copy of your product, or from the top Amazon reviewers. Check “Gather Some Reviews” (Chapter 10). » MTs » Write guest post. » Write cover letter for guest post. » Send cover letter, with guest post attached, to another blog. » Request reviews of your product. Day 77 Did you get some reviews? Slap them up on your sales page. While you’re there, give it another once-over. Could it be improved? Streamlined? Is there anything you’ve learned from generating buzz over the last week that might be a good addition? Tweak the sales page, and don’t forget that reviews speak for themselves. » MTs » Write guest post. » Write cover letter for guest post. » Send cover letter, with guest post attached, to another blog. » Add reviews to sales page. » Tweak the sales page language. Day 78 It’s another social media day. Spend some serious time on Twitter talking up your project— and on all your other social media channels, too. Writer’s Platform 121 You want everyone to be psyched for what you’re about to pull off in the final ten days. » MTs » Write guest post. » Write cover letter for guest post. » Send cover letter, with guest post attached, to another blog. » Spend at least an hour on social media talking up your project. Day 79 Social media all the time. If any of your guest posts have run this week, you should be on the host blog commenting up a storm (nicely!) and encouraging people to sign up for your email newsletter. Today is also the day to get your affiliates psyched about the prelaunch and then the launch. They’ll be a part of both, so send an email out to all your affiliates and ask them if there’s anything at all they need before the prelaunch begins. Some will need handholding. You’ll want to solve all those problems now, not later. » MTs » Write guest post. » Write cover letter for guest post. » Send cover letter, with guest post attached, to another blog. » Check in with affiliates to be sure they have everything they need. Day 80 Today we set up the most important part of your sales page: the buy button. Here’s one plug-in that works, but ask your web coder if you’re not comfortable tweaking your page. This is important and you don’t have a lot of time left, so don’t leave it to chance. It’s easier to have a professional do it for a minimal fee than to give yourself the added stress of something not working out. Of course, your buy button may be a simple link to your book’s Amazon, B&N, or another retailer’s page. Writer’s Platform 122 » MTs » Write guest post. » Write cover letter for guest post. » Send cover letter, with guest post attached, to another blog. » Set up a buy button and (if necessary) the shopping cart at your sales page or the retailer link. Writer’s Platform 123 Part 9: The Launch This is it: the final stretch. This is going to be one of the most difficult sections, but you’ve built up an enormous platform and there’s no good reason to back out now. All your hard work has come to this; you’ll have an extraordinarily successful launch. Here’s how. Day 81 Check in with the people who have agreed to promote your product. Do they have everything they need? Do they know what date they’ll be promoting on? Will they be publishing a post about your product? Make sure everyone has what they need and that you know where you’ll be expected to be on launch day. Today you’ll also put out a teaser email to your list. This is just a quick heads up to say that in a couple of days, they’re going to get an exclusive offer. Encourage your list to send new visitors around to sign up for your newsletter so that those people can also get in on the discounted version of your product. » Perform maintenance tasks, mentioning the upcoming launch and encouraging people to opt in for the discount. » Check in with your affiliates and promoting sites. » Put out a teaser email to your list encouraging new sign-ups. Day 82 You’ll be sending out a handful of emails to your list over the next week, and you’ll want these messages written in advance. Write the following four emails that will go to your opt-in list: » A “Heads-up! We’re pre-launching tomorrow!” email. » The official pre-launch email where you offer your product at a discount, with a link to your sales page and a reminder that the offer only lasts for three days. » The day-after email that reminds them the discounted rate will only go on for two more days. Writer’s Platform 124 » The final-day email that reminds them this is the last day for the discount. You’ll have a chance to review all of those emails before you send them, but for now upload them to AWeber as drafts. (Be very careful not to send them!) Do the rest of your daily maintenance. » MTs, mentioning the upcoming launch and encouraging people to opt in for a discount price. Day 83 Write the thank you and follow-up email for your list. This is the email they’ll receive right after they buy your product, confirming their purchase and giving them a link to download the product if you’ve decided to go with an eBook pre-sell from your site. Upload to AWeber. » MTs, mentioning the upcoming launch and encouraging people to opt in for the discount. » Write thank you and confirmation email. » Upload to AWeber to send after purchase. Day 84 Perform a dry run of the buying process so you can iron out any kinks before the real customers have a chance to get frustrated. Send yourself a copy of the official prelaunch email (the one that includes a link to your sales page). Use the link to go to the sales page, click the buy button, and buy one of your products. Make sure you receive a confirmation email, including a link to download your product, and that the download link works. Did everything go okay? Have a friend who operates a different kind of computer than yours try it, too. If you use a Mac, ask a PC friend to do it, and vice versa. It’s wise to also check on several different web browsers. » MTs, mentioning the upcoming launch and encouraging people to opt in for the discount. Writer’s Platform 125 » Check your buying process “six ways to Sunday”: by yourself, on a different computer, and with multiple browsers. Day 85 Recall that I advised you to get a guest post up on a major blog for this day? It’s time to field those comments. Be sure to encourage people to sign up for your opt-in list, because the last day with the discounted price will be Day 89. Get on social media and make sure everyone knows. » MTs, mentioning the upcoming launch and encouraging people to opt in for the discount. » Monitor guest post and spend time on social media telling people there’s only one more day to opt in to your list. Day 86 It’s time to start the pre-launch. Today, you’re sending out the teaser email that tells people to keep an eye out for the pre-launch tomorrow. You’ll want to check in with your affiliates one last time since they’ll be sending a pre-launch email to their personal lists tomorrow, too. Make sure they all know the official launch (with the full price) is on Day 90, and that this prelaunch is only for their email lists, not the general public. » MTs, mentioning the upcoming launch and encouraging people to opt in for a discount price—tomorrow would be the last day! » Send your prelaunch teaser email. » Check in with your affiliates. Day 87 It’s the pre-launch day! Writer’s Platform 126 Send your official pre-launch sales email with a discounted rate, and encourage people to click through to your sales page. Check and make sure everything is going well with your affiliates, too. » MTs, mentioning the upcoming launch and encouraging people to opt in for a discount price—last day! » Send your prelaunch email. » Check on your affiliates. Day 88 Send a note warning that the pre-launch price will only last until Day 89 (tomorrow), and encourage the people on your list to buy now. Check in with your affiliates again, and be sure not to neglect your email or social media: if people have complaints and can’t get through to you on email, they may resort to Twitter, and you want to nip any problems in the bud. » MTs, mentioning the upcoming official launch. » Send your second pre-launch email. » Check on your affiliates. Day 89 Tomorrow is the launch day, which means today is your list’s last chance to get the product at a discounted rate. Make sure they know that. Check in with your affiliates and see that they’re prepared for tomorrow’s launch. At the very end of the day, at whatever time you’ve decided to shut off the pre-launch, make sure you replace the discounted price of your product on e-junkie and your site to the full price. Otherwise you’ll be giving the general public the same price as the list people—and you promised the list people an exclusive offer. One word of advice: it would be wise to set your cut-off time after midnight US Pacific Time Zone. Once I changed my price after midnight Swiss time, only to wake up the next Writer’s Platform 127 morning to a storm of disappointed notes from US buyers in my inbox and on my Facebook. I compensated all by sending them my book for free; and I learned my lesson. » MTs—your blog post for tomorrow MUST be a launch post! » Send your third prelaunch warning email. » Check on your affiliates. Day 90 The launch day has arrived. Your only job today is to ensure everything goes smoothly. » Make sure all the bloggers who “If you manage every problem that comes your way calmly and quickly, if you are considerate of the people who are buying from you and give them the respect they crave, all the problems will disappear.” promised to promote your product did so, and show up regularly to answer commenters’ questions or thank them for feedback. » Make sure all the links work and that the affiliate software is keeping track of who sent you which sales. » Make sure your own blog post’s links work, and that the buy button on your sales page is functioning properly. » Keep a close tab on your email so you’re on top of any problems in the system. » Stay on Twitter, Google+, Facebook to field questions and to thank people for buying and promoting your book. Check in on everything and keep a cool head. Things are bound to go wrong; Murphy’s Law is a powerful force. But if you manage every problem that comes your way calmly and quickly, if you are considerate of the people who are buying from you and give them the respect they crave, all the problems will disappear. Writer’s Platform 128 Congratulations. You just launched a product from an enormous platform that didn’t exist 90 days ago. At the end of the day, pat yourself on the back, count your earnings, and sleep in tomorrow. You’ve earned this break. And the day after tomorrow, start preparing for your post-launch Grand Blog Tour. Then write your next bestseller. Writer’s Platform 129 A Bird’s-Eye View I’ve created a bird’s-eye view of the 90-Day Calendar so you can see what’s coming and make sure you find the right time to start in your schedule. Since there’s no reason to start the calendar on the 1st of the month, I’ve just labeled it with Day 1, Day 2, and so forth. Don’t feel like you have to start on a Monday or a specific date. Make it work with your schedule and make sure it fits in with any other commitments you may have. If you have a big project coming up and it’s going to align with some of the busiest days on the 90-Day Calendar, then plan for a different start date. But make a commitment, and stick with it. Writer’s Platform 130 The 90-Day Calendar: A Bird’s-Eye View 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1: Laying the Foundation » Define your brand » write web copy » sign up for social media » set editorial calendar » begin blog » find relevant blogs and websites 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 2: Getting Help » Engage editors » incorporate early feedback » get assertive on social media » contact helpful website owners » perform MTs 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 3: What Your Market Wants » Research your audience’s key expectations » write guest posts to collect ideas » incorporate new inputs » perform MTs 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 49 50 4: The Rewrite » Do a complete rewrite of your book or information product » perform MTs 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 5: Creating a List—and a Tangible Product » Finalize your draft and get it formatted » set up an email list » create a free giveaway » perform MTs 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 68 69 70 6: Maintaining Momentum » Conduct a guest posting campaign » perform MTs 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 7: The Final Product » Give your book the final review » set up affiliate program » write your sales page » perform MTs 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 8: Generating Buzz » Conduct final guest posting campaign » run a contest » engage fans into your launch » gather reviews » energize affiliates » perform MTs 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 9: The Launch » Ensure perfect execution by affiliates » run pre-launch and launch campaigns » LAUNCH » perform MTs Writer’s Platform 131 Contact If you have any questions, contact me via www.austinbriggs.com. You can find the up-to-date list of helpful resources here. Connect with me on Twitter (@TheAustinBriggs) here. Connect with me on Facebook here. Connect with me on Google+ here. Writer’s Platform 132
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