Write Nonfiction NOW!

Getting Feedback, Readers, and Money with HubPages

When I began my career as a journalist, the only way to make money writing articles was to get an assignment with or to sell an essay to a print publication, such as a newspaper or magazine. These days opportunities abound online for writers wanting to make a bit of money—especially if you want to write about your interests and make an investment in time.

That’s right. Write the articles first and then wait to get paid. It’s not exactly writing for free because the likelihood is that you will, indeed, earn money from your work. It’s a bit more like write about what you love and the money will follow–as well as a web presence and author platform.

For example, you could write for HubPages. I have to admit, I started a Hub several years ago and knew nothing about HubPages. Someone just suggested I do so. And I did. I wrote something and went away and never went back. Then I ran into Jason Menayan, director of marketing at HubPages, while attending BlogWorld and New Media Expo in Los Angeles last year. He explained to me exactly how HubPages work—and how writers can make money with Hubs. I decided it was time to spread the word.

Why? Because I’m all for writers finding ways to earn a living with their writing (me included), and HubPages gives you just one more way to earn a paycheck. Jason makes money every month off his Hubs, and so can you.  Today, he’s going to tell you how.

Feedback, Readers, and Money: The Three Things HubPages Offers Talented Non-Fiction Writers
By Jason Menayan

Have you heard of HubPages? If you haven’t, you’re in ever-shrinking company these days. Over 25 million people the world over visit HubPages every month, and we’re consistently among the top 70 sites in the world in terms of our U.S. traffic. Who are these visitors, and why are they coming to HubPages? They’re primarily information seekers, and they’re mostly finding HubPages articles (what we call “Hubs”) through search engines. The reason so many of them are coming to our site is that the quality of many of our Hubs is simply better than what’s found elsewhere online.

Over 200,000 people have published over 1.2 million Hubs over the past six years for many reasons, but what might be relevant to a professional online writer can be distilled into three things: feedback, readers, and money. First, exceptionally high-quality Hubs, especially those enhanced with relevant pictures, data tables, maps, and other rich media, tend to get noticed by our large community of active users. Interested readers will offer their thoughts, ask questions, and often add supplementary information in the form of comments. Such comments can encourage you to flesh out certain parts of your Hubs, or inspire you to write another Hub on a tangential topic.

Second, consistent publishing on HubPages, and interaction with other writers on the site, can lead to growing readership. It is not unusual for established writers on HubPages to have upwards of 2,000 followers on the site, who are notified when you publish a new Hub. Your most dedicated followers are most likely to read and respond to your work, and check out any other profiles you have on other sites. They’re also able to share your Hubs with their followers, and see your status updates.

Third, a large trove of informative, exceptionally high-quality Hubs has the capacity to pull in substantial traffic from search engines, the sort of traffic that translates into significant earnings via Google AdSense and our HubPages Ad Programs. Our success stories page profiles 14 authors who have seen their persistence and attention to quality translate into consistent revenue, even when they take breaks from writing on the site. I’ve personally earned over $16,000 on the 157 Hubs I’ve published, and earn fairly regularly between $550-700 a month.

An additional benefit of publishing on HubPages is that you own your own content and are free to unpublish and even delete Hubs you’ve published on our site. You can keep your Hubs up on HubPages as long as they perform well for you.

We all know that establishing a powerful online presence these days requires multiple places where clients and readers can find you, check out your work, and interact with you. With the ability to enjoy consistent readership and the feedback that that brings, along with meaningful potential earnings, HubPages should be considered by talented nonfiction writers looking to broaden their online footprint.

How to get started: Signup is easy and absolutely free. Please visit our signup page to create an account and begin writing.

About the Author

Jason Menayan is the Director of Marketing at HubPages. Prior to his work at HubPages, Jason was a technical producer at CNET’s Shopper.com, a Peace Corps volunteer in Poland, and managing producer of education portal WorldWideLearn.com. Jason publishes on HubPages under the username livelonger.

Putting Your Passion to Work in a Niche

Recently I was interviewed by the Author Learning Center, so I went to their site to check out some of the interviews there. I discovered a video by one of my favorite authors, Seth Godin, who is a marketing guru. I highly recommend you watch it. Then consider what he says. He has an important lesson for nonfiction writers about finding your niche and following your own unique path. Here’s my take on it:

If you have a passion about a certain topic, stop worrying so much about whether or not a traditional publisher is going to publish your book on that topic. Begin writing about it–blogging about it, for instance. Start publishing short books about it–ebooks, for instance. Direct your work at an audience who also has an interest, a passion for this subject.

Don’t worry what anyone else thinks of your idea. I suggest you do the work to evaluate your idea, just like you might if you were going to write a proposal, but go online and start test marketing your idea. Blog about it. Tweet about it. Publish short books about it, etc.  Produce enough content to become the expert on it. In this way, by developing a niche and owning it,  you will succeed.

Everyone talks about creating a bestseller. And authors will tell you they have done so. Right. Their book may have made it to the Amazon bestseller list for a few moments on one day. Maybe a bit longer. But few if any, like Godin says, make it to the New York Times bestseller list.

So, aim for an achievable goal. Claim a niche that means something to you.

What are you passionate about? Do you feel you have a purpose in life? Go out and pursue your passion and fulfill your purpose with your writing. You are more likely to achieve success this way. You may even land a traditional publishing deal in the process because you probably will build a nice fan base without hardly trying. And it surely won’t feel like work.

Like Seth says, don’t worry about being weird. It’s okay. Weird is good. You need to stand out from the pack. Books need to be unique. So do authors.

Have you had success by following your passion or your purpose or by following a niche in your own unique way?

Mari Smith on Blogging and Writing Books

We writers hear it all the time. I just heard it at least five times at the San Francisco Writers Conference this past weekend from at least five different publishing and PR experts.

To become a published author–and to produce a successful book (one that sells to lots of readers) you need more than a good idea and good writing. You need an author’s platform.

Here’s the hitch. It takes time to build platform–time away from writing your book. And that’s why most writers don’t want to build a platform or don’t bother.

Eighty-one percent of the American public says they have a book inside of them waiting to get out, but most of them never get it written. No wonder those who are writing don’t want to take on promotion on top of all the other things they are already doing.

There are ways, however, to write a book and to build platform and to get the support you need for doing both necessary activities.

Mari Smith, the author of The New Relationship Marketing: How to Build a Large, Loyal, Profitable Network Using the Social Web and coauthor of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day, knows what it takes to get a book written and how to market and promote it. She’s done it. And she’s familiar with building platform on the internet. Indeed, Fast Company described her as “a veritable engine of personal branding, a relationship marketing whiz and the Pied Piper of the Online World” and Dun and Bradstreet named her one of the Top Ten Most Influential Small Business People on Twitter. Mari specializes in relationship marketing and Facebook mastery. With her popular blog at MariSmith.com and her huge large, loyal following on Facebook, Twitter, and now Google+, Mari is considered one of the top resources and thought leaders in the world of new media marketing.

When I had a chance to interview her at BlogWorld and New Media Expo 2011 in Los Angeles, CA, last November, I couldn’t resist asking her what she though of the idea of blogging a book. After all, I think blogging a book is the fastest and easiest way to write a book and promote it at the same time. By that I mean build platform for the book and the author while writing it. Mari seemed the perfect person to give me feedback on this premise.

I told her about my forthcoming book, How to Blog a Book: Write, Publish, and Promote Your Work One Post at a Time, and I waited anxiously to hear what she had to say. “I think the idea is brilliant,” she began.

Mari’s follow-up comments about how to get a book written, the writing process and the bigger job–marketing–are below. And don’t forget to read the previous two posts based on my interview with Mari:

Mari Smith on How Writers Can Use Social Networking Effectively

Mari Smith on Why Writers Need to Use Relationship Marketing

Knowing that you didn’t blog your book, you wrote it in the traditional fashion, what advice would you give to someone blogging or Writing a book?

If anybody has any desire whatsoever to have their message get out there, then they should work with someone like you. I’m saying that playfully, but I do actually mean it seriously. The place people get stopped with anything, any skill, is lack of knowledge. So, the advice I’d offer is to get professional training, find the people that have gone before you and find out what works. You can always tailor and customize something that works for you. Join a support group or reach out, and, if you can afford it, pay for professional services—a writing coach, even an accountability buddy. People end up taking five or  ten years to write a book that’s been nagging at them forever because they didn’t have any systems of accountability in place—a deadline or something. I’ve worked with coaches over the years.

A public declaration is a wonderful form of accountability. You tell people, ‘I’m writing or blogging a book, and here’s what my target date is to have it complete.’ You basically share the whole journey with people through the blog and the tweets and everything.

I think people’s fears probably will come up doing this, but if you have a dream in your heart, it was put there for a reason. God did not put a dream in your heart that you can’t bring to fruition . If you’ve got this idea, even if you’re going smack up against your fear, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve now got fifty readers to my blog, I have this sense of obligation to keep writing and posting,’ that’s okay.

What was your experience writing your own book, The New Relationship Marketing?

I went through quite a journey with this book. I was like, ‘Oh, my God. So many edits and changes and the cover and everything.’ It was a struggle. It was a love-hate relationship for nine months. Then finally it was in print, and I thought, ‘Okay, phew, done!’ No, you’re not done.  Now it’s time to market the book. Then the work starts! Thought I was done! Not really. I like to market, though. I like to write, but I really like to market.”

I’m preparing to market and promote How to Blog a Book now–two months prior to its release (and I began doing so two months ago). I suggest you read Mari’s book, The New Relationship Marketing, which offers tons of useful advice on how to market a book online using social networks. In fact, it offers information on the business skills you need online and features nine invaluable steps for relationship marketing that will help you create a readership—buyers—for your book.

Then take Mari’s advice: Get an accountability partner of some sort so you get your book written. Blog it, if that works for you. And start building platform long before the release date. Lay the first board when the idea for the book pops into your head. Then marketing and promoting the book upon its release will be just a bit easier.

If you want more information on blogging a book, check out www.howtoblogabook.com.

Who Said It Would Be Easy?

I was sitting on the judges panel for the 2012 San Francisco Writers Conference Pitchfest, which is usually a contest—we changed the rules at the last minute this year, when my literary agent and fellow judge, Verna Dreisbach, leaned over and said, “It’s okay, Nina. It’s okay.”

I realized I had sort of gone off the deep end. It was late—maybe 11:30 p.m. We’d started at 9 p.m. and were supposed to have finished at 11 p.m. My voice had gotten kind of loud, I was adamantly giving this one attendee—actually the whole group—a lecture on the fact that coming up with a pitch takes hard work.

What had spurred my tirade, if you could call it that, was the third or fourth (Or was it fifth or sixth?) person who had said (Whined?), “Writing a pitch is hard.”

My mind was screaming. “Of course, it’s hard. Who said it would be easy?”

Writing is hard to begin with. But when you write a pitch you create promotional or marketing copy. That’s when the job gets even more difficult. You leave behind the job of pure writer, and you become a marketing writer. In this position, you must wear two hats, that of a marketing expert and of creative writing expert.

Most writers just want to write. They don’t want to worry about promoting themselves or their work. Thus, writing a pitch does feel pretty difficult, I admit. Yet, it’s really about honing their idea to a fine point. It’s about getting the message across to readers. It’s about conveying the benefits of their book to those who will purchase the book. It’s about relaying the narrative curve of a story without giving away the whole story.

And when it’s all said and done, to accomplish that feat you need to things: good writing and hard work.

So, if you want to pitch an agent or acquisitions editor or a potential reader, if you need compelling copy for your book cover, website or marketing material, sit down and get to work. Work hard. Keep working until you get it right.

Here are a few ways you can get some help on your pitch:

1. Test your pitch out on many people.
2. Compare it to book jackets of other author’s in your niche or genre.
3. Go to pitchfests and try it out.
4. Ask other writers to critique it.
5. Take it to an editor and get help.
6. Read this excerpt from an article I recently published in my newsletter (and consider subscribing here so you can read all of it and get lots of great articles just like this one):

How to Craft a Winning Book Pitch

Aspiring writers come to conferences from all over the country–and even the world–hoping to get in an elevator with an agent and to give their “elevator pitch.” They pay to go to pitch sessions where they have 3-10 minutes to tell an agent or editor about their idea. They hope to leave with a card in hand and having heard the words “Send me your proposal. I’m interested.”

I’ve been involved in helping judge the San Francisco Writers Conference, for several years now. I’ve heard a lot of pitches. So, let me tell you what I know coupled with what I learned from Chuck Sambuchino, an editor for Writer’s Digest Books (an imprint of F+W Media) and the editor of Guide to Literary Agents. I heard him speak on this topic just last weekend at the Writer’s Digest Conference in New York City.

Chuck says a pitch is basically your query letter memorized, and for a three-minute pitch session, your pitch should only take you about 60-90 seconds to say.

To craft a pitch, I suggest writing a draft of 75 words or so. Then hone it down to something under 50 words. At the San Francisco Writers Conference, the rule used to be 25 words now it’s about 50 words. I like one great sentence.

There’s a huge difference in pitching fiction and nonfiction; memoir, while nonfiction, can be pitched more like fiction because it reads like a novel.

Nonfiction writers should focus a pitch on what the book is about, why it is unique, timely or needed and its benefits (the added value to readers). Also, if you can include information on your market, unique features, or any comparison to another best-selling book, that’s great. Additionally, you want to let the agent or editor know what makes you an authority or expert on the topic and if you have a platform; this last part, says Chuck, can even be offered as if in bulleted form.

Fiction writers shouldn’t make the mistake that I see most often: telling the whole story. Just offer the narrative arc  in the most creative way possible to hook the listener. Again think about the benefits you book offers (yes, even fiction benefits the reader in some way); that’s how I focused my pitch the year I won the San Francisco Writer’s Conference pitch contest, and that pitch was for fiction.

Chuck offered great advice for fiction writers. I’ll repeat it although most of my readers tend to be nonfiction writers. Follow this format step by step:

1. Tell the details first – genre, title, word count (if appropriate), if it is complete.
2. Offer a log line – one sentence (ex. A treasure hunter searches for a lost necklace in the Himalayas.)
3.  Pitch using these 6 elements:

     a. Introduce the main character(s).
b. Introduce something interesting or what he/she wants (or both).
c. Introduce the inciting incident (that moves the story forward).
d. Introduce the hook (plot)–in other words, say what the story is about or repeat the log line.
e. Explain the stakes, or complications (ex. innocent people die, they get lost).
f. Describe the unclear wrap up.

          4.  Describe how the character is changing – the character arc.

Last, when you get frustrated and hear yourself saying, “Writing a pitch is hard,” remember, no one every said it would be easy. If you want to be a successful writer, if you want to be a published author, it take more than just a good idea, more than just good writing, more than just being a writer, and it takes hard work.

I’d love to hear about your pitch writing and pitching experiences. Leave me a comment.

WNN Podcast: Jim Kukral on Self-Publishing Books Successfully

Why look for a contract with a big traditional publisher when you can raise your own money for an advance and control your project start to finish? Jim Kukral can’t think of many good reasons.

I thought I’d begin podcasting with a bang! That’s why I decided to make my first interview with Jim Kukral of Digital Book Launch. As Jim likes to say, he “knows a thing or two about book marketing.” He has five books on the market – one of them, Attention! This Book Will Make You Money, was traditionally published by Wiley – and has six in the works. He’s taken his titles to the top of Amazon in his categories and made them best-sellers. He’s also raised over $30,000 in just over 30-days for books that he hasn’t even written yet.

Shortly after Attention! This Book Will Make You Money was published, Jim realized he did not need to have a “big publisher” to have a successful book. So, he decided to write books and publish and market them on his own. He says he hasn’t looked back and he’s been self-publishing his own books ever since.

Not only that, Jim looked forward to the needs of other authors and created Digital Book Launch, a company that helps writers self-publish their books as well. Digital Book Launch offers authors such services as professional book covers, landing pages to drive awareness and pre-sales, and marketing strategies  to ensure they maximize their chance for a successful book. With his background in PR and sales and marketing, and his experience as web-entreprenuer coupled with his successful author status, Jim had a lot to tell me.

During the interview Jim discussed how he landed his traditional book deal. Although it did offer him a few advantages, he said as an entrepreneur he soon realized he wanted more control. For him, traditional publishing did not offer as many benefits as self-publishing.

He also described how authors can apply to Kickstarter to raise funds, much like an advance, on their own to write their books. If their project is not accepted by Kickstarter, they can instead do what Jim did: Seek donations on their own. Crowdsource your project. With the money he raised – his “advance” – he is now writing a series of books. He writes about how to do this in his book, No Publisher Needed – Crowdfunding Your Book – How I Raised Over $30k in 30-Days To Pre-Fund My New Book. I’ve read it, and you’ll want to read it, too, if you think the idea of pre-selling your book and raising funds to write it is a great idea.

Jim also discussed how to make a book successful and the importance of a good cover design. Digital Book Launch offers a phenomenal service whereby authors can get a cover not only designed with their content in mind but with marketing in mind as well; that means you get a cover that sells books. And it only costs $199. To find out more about this service, click here. (I’m proud to be an affiliate for Digital Book Launch’s cover design program, an inexpensive way for authors to procure an effective cover design for their books.)

Last, but not least, Jim offered his 2012 predictions for the publishing industry. You can listen to the interview or download it below. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Would you rather take the self-publishing route? And would you rather create your own advance?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Mari Smith on Why Writers Need to Use Relationship Marketing

I spend a lot of time on social networks every day—maybe more than I should or have to if I knew how to do a better or more effective job with my social marketing. However, those efforts have garnered me a decent—not huge—platform, one that grows every day. In fact, it’s growing faster every day. I’d like it to grow even faster, though. Why? Because the bigger my social media platform, the more people who might buy my books.

This represents the foundation of all social or relationship marketing. The more people you connect with via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, or any other social networks, the more likelihood these people might eventually buy something from you. For authors, however, a social media platform also can result in a book deal since publishers also see the number of fans you have as your potential ability to sell books. It also can result in relationships that garner you book reviews and book blurbs, as it has for my own forthcoming book.

So many of the aspiring authors I work with, as well as some of you—my blog readers, remain reticent to spend time on social networking. They don’t understand its value—or maybe they do but not fully enough to give up writing time for relationship marketing. I thought, therefore, I’d let the real expert on the subject—Mari Smith—explain the value here on my blog.  Maybe then some of my clients and readers would listen…

Today’s post is based on my interview with Mari, which I conducted while at BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2011 in Los Angeles, CA, this past November. (read part one of this interview here.) Mari is a passionate social media leader who specializes in relationship marketing and Facebook mastery. The author of The New Relationship Marketing: How to Build a Large, Loyal, Profitable Network Using the Social Web,  and coauthor of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day, Dun and Bradstreet named her one of the Top Ten Most Influential Small Business People on Twitter. With her popular blog at MariSmith.com and her large, loyal following on Facebook, Twitter, and now Google+, Mari is considered one of the top resources and thought leaders in the world of new media marketing.

Mari and I first discussed her thoughts on the fears authors have about getting involved in social networking and how to use social networks effectively. (You can read what she had to say in my last post.) Then, we discussed relationship marketing and its use for authors. Mari discusses how her social media presence impacted her ability to land a book deal and how writers can follow in her footsteps. The following is our conversation on that topic.

Let’s talk about relationship marketing.  It is the crux of what you’re talking about, so describe for me what that means.

Relationship marketing as a term was first coined in the 1980s by Professor Leonard Berry. From what I can understand from my own research for the book, it was an academic term. It wasn’t really a mainstream term. However, the simplest and easiest way to describe it is to think of traditional marketing as transaction focused on going for the sale. Most often businesses are focused on the one sale in front of them. Relationship marketing is focused on building a connection with the prospect or customer in front of you and beyond you so you can have a long-term relationship. It’s really the shift from one sale to a customer for life. That’s the difference. The relationship marketing part is really building that connection, building up what’s called social equity. You’re using social networks, and such, so you become the obvious choice when people are looking for your product or service.

Even though I feel relationship marketing as a concept has been around a couple decades now, the new part is this social networking, the online social networking that has literally propelled people into a new level of relating. They are sharing every nuance of their life. Nonetheless, as a savvy marketer, you can tap into that plethora of personal information that people are sharing and use it to tailor and customize and personalize your marketing messages and really wow people. You can wow influencers, wow people. You can turn around a negative customer relationship situation and turn people into customers for life very, very easily.

What does that mean for authors?

For an author, I would say it’s been the same forever; it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. What social networking has created and accelerated is the even more important aspect of who knows you. It’s all about relationships and the connecting. For example, in 2008, I got written up in Fast Company, and they dubbed me “the Pied Piper of the online world,” simply because I was Facebook friends with the journalist from Fast Company. I didn’t know her, had never met her, but we were Facebook friends. I have used that moniker for years, and it has literally created a phenomenal positioning for me in the marketplace. Being able to create those relationships can literally open doors for you.

Many authors are also speakers. You can get all kinds of speaking engagements through these social networks. There’s a terrific organization called SANG, the Speakers and Authors Networking Group. It was founded by a friend of mine, Larry Benet. I met him through Facebook. He was a Facebook friend, and then we did meet in person at many, many events, and we became fast friends. I’ve been to all the SANG events, and it’s been an absolute catalyst in my speaking and writing career. The online social networks are there to help us amend existing personal relationships and to create new ones. It’s like how we just met this morning, you commented on my Facebook page and said, “I’m at BlogWorld. Can we talk.” I responded, “We can make that happen. I’m still here for a few hours.” And here we are in person!

What is the main message you want to give aspiring authors who want to build platform but still feel put off by involvement on Facebook or the other social networks?

My main message would be just that persistency and consistency are key. Don’t give up.

Also, get the right education. That’s often what stops people from moving forward—simply a lack of knowledge or a lack of understanding. I started with zero fans, zero followers. I started somewhere. I think what I’ve accomplished—literally reaching an audience of a quarter of a million people, being able to aggregate all my audiences, and being headhunted for book deals—that’s perfectly achievable for any aspiring author. Ultimately no author on the planet wants to write a book and have it sit on the shelf. Every author dreams of being a bestselling author, I would think, or at least selling a reasonable number of their books. The chances of that happening are significantly enhanced by using social media marketing, or, as I call it, relationship marketing, which is a blend of the offline and the online—doing the speaking as well.

Why should published authors and aspiring authors, as well as bloggers, utilize social networking? What’s in it for them? What will they gain?

When you have an already built-in audience, when you’ve built up a decently sized and nice array of an online platform–and it doesn’t have to be monstrous (it could be 5,000 Twitter followers, 2,000 Facebook fans, and some blog subscribers), you’re more likely to get a publishing deal when you, obviously, come up with a good proposal. I was literally headhunted by my publisher. They said, “Mari, we’ve been watching you for a while.” They headhunted me from the Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day book, and at the same time they said, “We notice you’ve been calling yourself a relationship marketing expert for many years.”  That was a tagline on my blog.  “We want you to know that we know  you’ve got a Twitter audience, a Facebook audience, et cetera. They were watching how active I am. This acquisitions editor, said  “We’d love to have you write a book on the subject.”

Contrary to that, a client of mine and very dear friend who is extremely well-known in the personal growth seminar industry—if I said her name to anybody who’d been to a training in the last several decades, they’d know who she was—has no presence online, her site’s outdated, she’s not on Twitter, she’s barely on Facebook, and she has a brilliant idea for a book. Someone recommended her to a publisher, and they looked over her proposal, and they tried to find her online and did all these searches, and they said, ‘You know what? Sorry. We can’t give you a deal. Come back when you have an online audience.”

I was like, “Whoa! You’re kidding me? That is a sign of the times.”

What I think is cool is when you have an online audience, and publishers are following your every word, and they’re loving you, you can actually then take your pick of publishers.

What would you say are the best social networking sites for authors to use?

You know, Facebook’s always the top of my list, predominantly because of its sheer volume. I mean, eight hundred million plus, hurtling…well, they were hurtling for a while, now they’re on a slow, steady climb toward their first billion. I do think they’ll make it at some point in 2012, maybe 2013. We’ll see this platform with the first billion.

What’s really fascinating is the whole psychology of Facebook, how it’s become part of people’s everyday life. Out of the eight hundred million people, half the people log on every single day for an average session time of 55 minutes. Even though Google has the ranking of number one as the most visited site, Facebook is number two in terms of traffic.  In terms of session time, nobody beats Facebook for the length of session time. That’s one thing to keep in mind; you’ve got an enormous number of people, literally hundreds of millions, and their eyeballs are looking at Facebook either on their mobile device or on the web. Why not go ahead and carve out your piece of real estate, and set up shop? You can sell directly on your fan page. You can communicate and build this audience. You can really get to know your people. You can conduct market research. You can crowd-source a whole book; ask people to contribute content.

I love Twitter as well. On Twitter it is really easy to grow a sizable following when you take action to proactively seek out new people to follow. There are two hundred million or something people on Twitter. Look for an example—even right here at BlogWorld. For example, you look for the hash tag [#BWE], and it’s a wonderful way to meet new people and follow new people. And people will follow you back.

Google+ has a lot of potential, and I would definitely recommend getting active on there.

I’m not a big fan of LinkedIn, but I’ll bet writers could do really well with LinkedIn. I’m actually a member of several groups on LinkedIn. There’s an author’s group and writing groups.

Depending on your preference, there’s definitely at least one or more social networks that people can get active on.

I suggest you read Mari’s book, The New Relationship Marketing, so you truly understand relationship marketing. It offers tons of useful advice you can adapt with a focus toward building an author’s platform. The information Mari offers in an understandable and easy-to-read format includes “New Business Skills for Everyone” and “Nine Steps to Significantly Growing Your Business Through Relationship Marketing.” If you look at these as if your book is the center of your business and you are your brand, you will quickly discover the importance of all Mari teaches.  Putting Mari’s rules of relationship marketing to use definitely will help you create a readership—buyers—for your book.

If you’re just getting started on relationship marketing, be sure to read part 1 of my interview with Mari. If you’re doing something that’s working well for you on the social networks, I’d love to hear about it…and so would the other readers of this blog. Please share your stories in a comment.

Mari Smith on How Writers Can Use Social Networking Effectively

Many aspiring and published authors balk at the idea of getting involved in social networks. My clients continually tell me they don’t want to have to “sell” themselves and their writing via social media nor do they want to “waste” their precious writing time on this endeavor. So, when I found myself at BlogWorld and New Media Expo 2011 in Los Angeles, CA, this past November with Mari Smith, THE Facebook and relationship marketing expert, I asked her to sit down with me for an interview. She happily agreed. (You know how I got her attention? With a comment on her Facebook page…)

Mari is a passionate social media leader who specializes in relationship marketing and Facebook mastery. The author of The New Relationship Marketing: How to Build a Large, Loyal, Profitable Network Using the Social Web,  and coauthor of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day, Dun and Bradstreet named her one of the Top Ten Most Influential Small Business People on Twitter. With her popular blog at MariSmith.com and her large, loyal following on Facebook, Twitter, and now Google+, Mari is considered one of the top resources and thought leaders in the world of new media marketing.

Mari and I discussed her thoughts on the fears authors have about getting involved in social networking and how to use social networks effectively. She offered a variety of tips and tools. Additionally, we discussed relationship marketing and its use for authors; you can read that in my next post. You’ll find our conversation below.

A lot of the aspiring and publishing authors I speak with don’t want to get involved in social networking or social media. They are afraid it will take up too much of their time and call it a “time sink.” They just want to write. They also may think it’s not in line with their overall writing and publishing goals—or maybe even with their personal goals. With that in mind, what would you tell them?

I really see social networking as the total opposite. We have the unprecedented opportunity now for anyone on the planet with internet access, the biggest percentage of whom use a mobile device versus a computer in some parts of the world, to access Twitter, Facebook, Google+, et cetera, and to create one or more social profiles and carve out a piece of real estate in the world. You can carve out your platform and bring your message out to the world—whatever you want that message to be.

As regards to the fear piece, my book [The New Relationship Marketing] is divided into two sections. In Part One: Relationship Marketing Basics, the very first chapter is “How To Get Started In Relationship Marketing and Overcome Your (Perfectly Normal) Fears.” Among the fears that I list are fear of this taking up too much time and fear of exposure. Although the time issue is a big one, privacy is huge for people.

In online social networks there’s this big myth that we have to live in a glass house and share every nuance of our life. Especially now with Facebook’s timeline, it’s absolutely amazing to me how much the new design makes it feels compelling to the average user  to go back in time and click the little timeline. They have all these lists of life events that you can add from your first word to your first kiss to your first roommate. Got a license, got a degree, et cetera, from birth on up. The fear of exposure is actually increasing because there’s more and more and more pressure to share everything about our personal lives. I address that right up front in the book. If you’re not comfortable with anything being online or in public, you’re in control. You don’t have to get mad at Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg.

I’m not going to share anything even under tight, locked-down privacy settings. Even if I wanted to have my timeline as my own personal record of everything I’ve ever done on this planet, I don’t want it then sold to advertisers. I’ll keep it on my own computer or something. As for the fear of exposure, I just think caveat emptor. You’re in control.

As for the fear of the time sink, a lot of people have that. They think social media is  going to take up a huge amount of time. “What if I were to get thousands of followers, thousands of fans,” they say, “and then I have to manage all these people that want to talk to me.” Guy Kawasaki wrote the foreword for my book, and he does an amazing amount of social networking. The size of his platform is huge. He manages to be very engaging, and he responds to as many comments as he can. I do the same. There’s not enough hours in the day to personally get back to everyone, but when you’re seen to at least do your best on a regular basis to respond to as many people as you can in any given day, that’s enough.

How do you manage to do that—get back to so many people each day?

I use my mobile device—my iPhone. I suggest that during your day while waiting for appointments, when you have a minute here, a minute there, you respond to comments, and by the end of the day, you might’ve replied to sixty people, or sent or re-tweeted  a tweet here or favorited there, with all your systems.

One of the antidotes to the fears actually is to have systems in place to bring that peace of mind. I’ve got my sources for where I’m going to get my content—Google+ circles, let’s say. Different sources to gather up the content. You may be using Hootsuite to schedule your updates. And you’re using your mobile device periodically—minutes here and there throughout the day to do your engaging. As you do grow in scale, you can always bring in other people to help. For me, personally, I never use anyone to speak as me; I just do not delegate my voice ever. If you see something written in first person, it was me that wrote it. Nonetheless, you can bring other people in to a fan page, for example, to speak as themselves.

I have what I call superfans, and they’re the ones that just love me. They’re on my fan page several times a day, and I incentivized them to help themselves and respond to any questions other people ask. That’s another way to get help.

If you’re using Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, and Google+, what’s the best thing to help organize all the social networks and use them effectively? What do you suggest using, or what do you use?

I have never been a fan of TweetDeck, and for some reason, I don’t know if you can change the color scheme, but I don’t like black in terms of looking at a screen. I like it to be light and white. Also, I don’t like to look at lots of columns. I like to keep things just to one column.

In terms of managing the different accounts, I use Hootsuite. The number one reason I use Hootsuite is to pre-schedule on Twitter. I do my best not to schedule through Facebook because you actually get less visibility in the News Feed by using any third party app. You’re going to get more visibility and more “likes” and comments and shares if you post manually. I appreciate that that’s not always practical. You might pre-schedule one in the morning, and then later in the day put another post up manually. You don’t need a lot of posts on Facebook; two to three a day is plenty.

Also, it’s important to have an editorial calendar or a content calendar, which you can easily do in an Excel spreadsheet. Plan out what you’re going to say when on your fan page. Then track the results. A lot of people forget to track and look at their insights and their metrics, and see, “Oh wow, my fans are responding the best at 8:30 in the morning to posts with an image and only 250 characters versus 500 characters.” That’s going to be your own personal sweet spot. There are a lot of different studies out there that say, “Okay, you should be tweeting this many times a day, or this is the best time and day to post on Facebook, and you want this many posts,” but that’s going to vary from business to business, industry to industry, page to page.

What other tips can you give writers so  their social media time doesn’t end up becoming a time sink?

This really depends on, first of all, their objectives.  I would get really clear on what your objective are. Is it to be really deliberate about building relationships with, let’s say, key influencers, media contacts, peers? Is it to establish yourself as the authority on a subject? Is it to grow a large following so you can get a publishing contract? Whatever your objective is, that’s where you would want to dedicate your time.

The social networks work when you share a good cross-section of quality content—a mixture of your own and other people’s. I call it OPC for short (Other People’s Content). On social networks you absolutely want to do roughly fifty-fifty, but you could do more. I probably do maybe thirty-seventy. I’m always re-tweeting other people and sharing other people’s links, but I have an opinion on it.  I’ll add a comment, and I’ll elaborate on whatever I share, which is important, too.

The second part is connecting and engaging. You don’t ever want to use the social media platform as one-way broadcast channels. You’ll just come off like a news site. The time management is going to be that fine balance between sharing quality pieces of content and stepping in periodically throughout the day and the week to respond to comments.

The other piece really is deliberately, proactively finding new people to follow. You also need to get the word out, so you’re not just doing the content and the connection and hoping the growth will happen by itself. You have to be proactively getting the word out and following new peeps.

When it comes to Facebook or to Twitter, would you share your most effective strategies?

For Facebook, less is more; you don’t have to be really prolific with sharing lots and lots of content, but make sure you are consistent. Let’s just say you pick eight in the morning and one in the afternoon, and that’s twice a day you’re going to share content on Facebook. Then make time to go back and respond to comments.

Not everybody necessarily has a fan page. I’m going to tell you something really exciting that happened recently; Facebook made a change where they allowed the personal profile to have a subscribe button. It’s like the Twitter “follow” button; it does the same thing. You have to enable it. Here’s the link for that: facebook.com/about/subscribe. All that does is it allows anybody on Facebook to receive your public updates in their new feed. In other words, it’s a place for you to create more visibility. Why would you do that? I’m a writer and an author, but I’m also a marketer. I look at these online social networks not as a place necessarily to create warm, fuzzy feelings with my close, personal friends and family—if I want to do that I can pick the phone up or meet them in person or e-mail them. So, I turned my subscribe button on, and within three weeks I had 30,000 subscribers. It is the fastest growing social channel I have ever seen. That would be a hot tip. If someone doesn’t necessarily have the desire or inclination to set up a fan page and have a whole other place to manage, just turn on your subscribe button, lock down your privacy settings, make sure you’re comfortable with who can see what’s on your profile, and your pictures, and things like that. Then you can choose every time you make a post on your profile whether this is going to public, this is just going to friends, this is going to family. I call it the “Audience Selector.” Post by post, you literally can have this diverse and varied experience for you and for your whole community all under one nice, neat profile, which is soon going to be the timeline. I would imagine a lot of people that don’t have a fan page feeling like, “Oh God, I can barely keep up with my profile. I don’t want a fan page.” That’s fine. Just turn your subscribe button on.

For Twitter, my favorite site is Twellow. It’s like the yellow pages for Twitter, and they’ve approximately forty million accounts they’ve indexed. First, go set up an account; it’s totally free. Log in through Twitter credentials, and put your standard bio in there. Then anyone searching for you and your topics will find you because of the bio info. That’s also where you’re going to look to find new people to follow. Think of any keywords that might be in the bio of your prospective follower. Who would make an ideal follower? The vast majority of people you follow will follow you back, so it’s a really cool tool, I’ve been using it for a long time.

Take a look at Mari’s new book, The New Relationship Marketing. It offers great advice you can adapt with a focus toward building an author’s platform. In it she tell you how to overcome your normal fears of relationship marketing, why everyone needs the new business skills required of social networkersand how to stay connected while not giving up all your precious writing time. Plus, she outlines nine steps for putting relationship marketing to use, all of which will help you build an author’s platform. In other words, using the advice in Mari’s book will help you create a readership—buyers—for your book as well as a find a publisher.

I know I’ll be putting some of Mari’s tips to use so my social networking efforts become less time consuming and more effective. Do you have tips you use? If so, leave a comment. I’d love to hear about them and I’m sure Mari would, too. And stop by on Wednesday for part 2 of my interview with Mari.

Using Your Life Issues as an Article Idea File

Some of the best articles I’ve written came out of the issues I faced in my life. Not only that, they solved those problems for me and for other people who faced them as well.

Thus, your life issues may be the best article idea file you can find. In other words, look to your life for article and essay ideas. If you are struggling with issues, the likelihood is that others are as well. That means an editor somewhere will be interested in your idea.

Don’t worry about the fact that you don’t have the solution to the problem. You can interview experts who do.  I’ve done this on numerous occasions with situations involving my children. For example, when my children ended up attending four different elementary schools I became worried about how that might affect them.  I proposed a story on the topic to a regional parenting magazine. They published “The Ins and Outs of Changing Schools,” which also landed me their publishing company’s Best Practices Award for a local feature. When both my children were involved in competitive sports-related activities, I wondered how that stress would affect them. I proposed a story to the same magazine. They published “The Competition Dilema.” I moved into the national magazines with a story about dancers’ foot problems after my son, a dancer, incurred several foot injuries, and I wanted to know how he could prevent them in the future. They Dance Teacher Magazine published “Fancy Footwork.”

You may not think you are an expert on anything, but you are. Everyone knows something about something. You have had experiences. You have gained knowledge. Maybe you know how to keep the deer away from your plants or how to grow really great lettuce. Maybe you know how to teach children to love learning languages or to paint. Maybe you know the best places to hike in your neighborhood or how to care for a diabetic cat. You know something, and some publication wants that knowledge—and so do their readers. That means they will buy your work.

A number of years later I wrote a piece for the same regional parenting magazine based on my family’s experience with teen suicide. I queried them because I felt that even their audience, which consists of parents with young children, should be made aware of the prevalent problem in the community and how to prevent and deal with it.  The essay was based solely on my own thoughts, but I did interview an expert and offer advice in a sidebar, and it accompanied a story on bullying. It was called simply “Teenage Suicide.” In March I have story in LI & Business that is based on my experiences as a book, writing and author coach. I discussed how writers can use social networks to help them write their books. I didn’t interview anyone; I was the expert source. I’ve written a number of articles on boys in dance “off the top of my head” and numerous essays on Jewish and spiritual topics this way. For instance, “I wrote If God Were Sitting at Your Sabbath Table, Would You Notice?” and published it at www.JewishMagazine.com.

All of these articles and essays me platform for the books I want to write. (I am building platform in three areas: writing /publishing, religion/spirituality/human potential and dance.) And that’s something important to think about. The topics that interest you because they are issues or problems with which you grapple make great book ideas. So do the areas that you know something about that other people know less about—or that may hold interest for others. Why? Because most readers of nonfiction books purchase them to solve problems, learn how to do something, find out how to handle issues they are having, or somehow create change in their lives.

Today, make a list of:

• the problems you wish someone would solve for you
• the issues you face
• the challenges in your life
• the things you know
• the things you wish you knew
• the things you are good at
• the things you wish you were good at

Now write a query based on each one of these topics. Then get out the current issue of 2012 Writer’s Market and research the magazines that might be interested in your proposed article or essay. Then start sending out those queries. Let me know how it goes.

And if you’ve had success doing this exercise (previously or after taking my advice), please leave me a comment and tell me about it.

Please Blog Your Book: 4 Reasons Why

More blogs become books every day. Why? Publishers see them as successfully test marketed book ideas. If the blog has enough unique readers, they assume it will also attract book buyers.

Not everyone agrees with the premise behind blogging a book—writing a book and building author platform at the same time (and maybe even hoping or trying to get discovered by a publisher at the same time). Yet, I do encourage writers to blog their books.

In fact, I did blog a book. I even blogged a book about how to blog a book, and I did land a book deal. I stand by my belief that blogging a book provides nonfiction writers with the easiest and fastest way to write their books and promote them at the same time. That said, there are some reasons not to blog a book. I’ve heard most of them before. So, when I woke up this morning to read Jane Friedman’s post, “Please Don’t Blog Your Book: 4 Reasons Why,” I wasn’t too surprised by her remarks. She made some valid points, many of which I often stress as well. Therefore, I thought it appropriate to address them. I began doing so in a comment to her post, but it got so long that I decided to write an entire post on the topic!

Let me begin by saying that I highly respect Jane, and I don’t totally disagree with what she wrote; in some cases I totally agree. But let me go through her points one by one.

First, I agree that writers should think carefully about whether or not blogging a book is the best course to take to publication. Bloggers—those who are purists—would say you cannot blog with a book in mind. The blog and the blogged book are two different forms. A blog is a conversation, or should be if you blog well. It’s a place to communicate and to speak with your readers via the comment function, hashing out thoughts and ideas. That may or may not be conducive to writing a book. If this is what you want to do, don’t blog a book.

Book bloggers, aspiring authors blogging a book using blog technology, and those blogging for business or to create an author’s platform or any other type of expert status or platform, definitely should consider blogging a book (or later repurposing their posts into a book). A well-read blog in and of itself is a platform and the basis for a business. It remains a way to communicate with and engage readers of your book, as well as with potential clients. And some authors blogging books (and bloggers) find the comments incredibly useful in the book writing process; I think comments provide an essential and valuable tool. Lots of reader engagement in the form of comments also could be conducive to getting discovered by an agent or acquisitions editor. But, if you began as a purist and didn’t set out to blog a book, you’ll need to do a lot of work to “book your blog,” as Joel Friedlander calls repurposing your blog content, after the fact.

Writers planning to blog a book need to ask themselves if their ideas are marketable in both the publishing world and the blogosphere. That means taking it through what I call the proposal process—looking at the blog and the book idea through the lens of a book proposal or through a publisher’s eyes. See it as a business venture. After all, publishing is a business. Publishers want ideas and books that sell, and they are looking for business partners (not simply authors). If you want to blog a book, realize your blogged book idea will compete with the blogs in its niche—and later with the books in its niche. You can’t just assume that by blogging a book your blog will “get discovered.” It takes work—lots and lots of great and consistent content production and good promotion of that writing on line and off.

Second, let me address the four reasons Jane give not to blog a book by changing them into reasons to blog a book:

1. Blog writing can be book writing.

She says blog posts must be optimized for online reading and, therefore, writing posts differs from writing a book manuscript. You can blog a nonfiction book and, by staying focused on your topic (which you should do naturally), you will use keywords over and over again in your content; thus, your blog will get SEO without you even trying. You can and should us images with each post and provide links, when appropriate, all of which also help your SEO. It’s true, however, that depending upon the type of book you are writing, you may not have as many links. Memoirists and novelists, for instance, may not have links at all.

You can even tie into breaking news and current events, if you wish, by occasionally breaking the flow or your blogged book to discuss newsworthy issues related to your book. It is still a blog after all. Or you can choose to have an author blog in conjunction with your blogged book where you write about other things related to your book. Or you may just want to blog your book.

Blogging holds merit on its own no matter how you approach it, and those who blog their books should not see this work as “less than,” only different. I love having a blog where I can write about other things outside of the topics of my books (see www.asthespiritmovesme.com, a blog still related to some of the topics of my “other” books but which allows me the freedom to write about what I like in depth). There is no reason that the writing in a blog intended for publication has to be of a lesser quality than in any other type of blog or in a printed book (and there are lots of different types of blogs as well). In fact, a good writer’s blogged blog should be of equal caliber to any and all of his or her writing. The only difference between the blog and the book should be that the posts show up in short form—250-750 words or so at a time. Great posts written one after another, flowing one into the other in a well-thought out manner eventually form a book—if you do the planning in advance.

2. Blogs can make for very good books.

A blogged book (or even a booked blog) that gets no professional editing prior to its release as a printed or ebook becomes a “bad book.” I wouldn’t want to read it. Not only that, a blogged book that wasn’t mapped out from the start with a vision for its final printed or ebook version will fail. To create a good blog-to-book product, the writer must from the start have an idea of how the finished book will benefit readers, and that end product must offer something in addition to the current blog content—extra features, benefits, chapters, information, etc. Once the book they finish the first draft by posting all of it on line, they must take the manuscript they (hopefully) have created and begin the editing and revising process; then they must hire a professional editor to finish the job. Yet, many booked blogs consisting of just blog posts and now new content have successfully been edited for flow, their numerous links removed, and readers have loved simply being able to easily read all or part of the blog from start to finish.

Never, never send a blog over to one of those programs that simply prints every post as a book. That’s a recipe for failure. Like all “good” books, a blogged book needs great professional editing and design to succeed.

3. Nonfiction, narrative and fiction blogged books get book deals.

Although it is more difficult to land a deal like Julie Powell (Julie & Julia), memoirists can and do blog books successfully. It’s a bit harder for novelists, but I hear tell of successful fiction blog-to-book deals as well. If you’ve got a nonfiction book, however, you stand a high likelihood of success as a book blogger.  Any subject that falls into a how-to category, such as business, spiritual, or self-improvement, lends itself to blogging. I highly recommend niche blogging for aspiring nonfiction authors. Humor and parody do always goes over big, as Jane mentions, as does any close look into an uncommon lifestyle (see Hack by Dimtry Samarov).

4. Some people love books with short, easy-to-digest chapters written in a blog-like style.

While I understand that some people don’t like to read books with short blog-post-like chapters, many time-crunched people (like me) do actually enjoy and appreciate such books, which is why more and more books are written in a format similar to blogs. I surely wouldn’t want a novel I choose to purchase to read like a blog, but I do like my nonfiction books to have shorter chapters—maybe not 500-word chapters but 1,000-2,000-word chapters—so I can read them in small chunks as I have time.) If a blogged book is written and edited well, it should not read like blog posts. It should be fleshed out from its original first- or second-draft stage seen online into something much more in-depth and meaty. It should read like a typical book and not like a blog. Even a reader with a trained eye should not know the book was once a blog. It can, however, meet the needs of the reader who wants a book that offers more than a blog and/or the reader who wants a book that is a quick, easy read.

I loved Jane’s “indicators that blog-to-book deal might work for you.” They are right on the money, so I’m going to take the liberty of reprinting them. (Read the whole post here.) They are:

• You’re blogging in a nonfiction category, especially if your blog focuses on how to do something or solves a problem for people.
• You’re focused on your blog for the joy of blogging, and you have the patience, determination, and drive to keep blogging for years. You won’t get recognition overnight, and it takes time to develop a following. Ultimately, it’s the buzz you generate, and the audience you develop (your platform created by the blog), that attracts a publisher to you—not the writing itself (though of course that’s important too!).
• You agree that the book deal isn’t the end of the road, but another way to expand your audience for your blog (or services/community connected to your blog).

As you consider whether or not to blog your book, realize that not all blogged books “get discovered.” Sometimes you have to go out and help a publisher find you. If you can write a great proposal to go with your blogged book, turn out a couple of well-edited chapters, show how your printed book will offer something of benefit to your loyal readers (and new readers), and prove that you’ve developed a readership for your blog that is growing daily, however, you might land a book deal anyway.

If you’ve blogged a book or read a blog that was turned into a book, what has been your experience? Do you think blogging a book is right for you?

How Writers Can Use the Super Bowl as a Promotional Tool

I’m not a football fan—at all—but I spent the afternoon and evening yesterday keeping my husband company as he watched the Super Bowl. I watched the commercials and the halftime show and kept a running commentary on them on Twitter as I pigged out on junk food. With the exception of the dip and chips, I found the time actually well spent in my writerly estimation. Why? Because even the Super Bowl has something to offer writers not interested (or interested) in the American past time of watching football.

I noticed that Writer’s Digest Magazine editor Jessica Strawser wrote an inspirational post today about what writers can learn from yesterday’s game. (You can read it here.) She suggests that beneath every story is an even better story. I’d say there might even be an additional story—one that ties into the topic or theme of your book or your area of expertise and that helps you promote yourself and your work. For example, I wrote a blog post called Lessons learned from Christina Aguilera’s Super Bowl Mistake after Christian Aguilera changed a few words while singing the national anthem at the beginning of the Super Bowl last year. You can read it here.  As a tie in to the Super Bowl last year I also wrote about the benefits of playing team sports for one of my national Examiner.com columns: What Spiritual Lessons Does the Super Bowl Offer Parents? With these stories I got in on the hype of the football game while still writing on topic. This pulled in more readers for these posts than ususal–readers interested in what I might have to say about the Super Bowl who might not normally read my work.

I’d add another practical twist on what writers can learn from the Super Bowl: Every newsworthy event offers an opportunity for writers to tie their books and their topics into the news. Any event in the news is a prime chance to drive traffic, meaning readers, to your blog or website or to garner a bit of media attention for yourself. How do you do this with, for example, the Super Bowl? Ask yourself what your topic or book has in common with the Super Bowl, one of its players or coaches, the place where it was played, or the commercials you viewed. Once you discover that commonality, write an article, blog post or press release on that topic. You may get even be able to land a radio or TV spot in the process.

As I watched the Super Bowl commercials, I noticed how a few of them tied into themes recently in the news. For example, the Chevy truck ad drew on the 2012 end-of-the-world theme. The Audi ad featured vampires, which continue to rake in bucks in movies (Twilight) and books (Amanda Hocking). Chrysler’s “halftime in America” commercial with Clint Eastwood brought politics into the scheme of things, an ever present subject with the elections looming ahead of us, and asked people to have hope (again) for better times. You can do the same. Ask yourself if any of the topics used in the commercials are ones you could tie into with your writing. Is there a way to bring those themes into your blog posts, articles, ezine articles, or press releases? If you do so, just like those commercials, you’ll garner some attention.

But the news isn’t always the main event for a commercial. Sometimes it’s the emotional connection. The Super Bowl Honda commercial featuring Matthew Broderick wanting to take a day off and have fun strikes home for many of us, for instance.  The biggest hits in Super Bowl commercials tend to be the ones with babies, animals and celebrities. How can you bring these into your writing? Is there a way?

The point of looking at commercials, or advertisements in general, is simple. While we all say we hate commercials, they can be quite creative. They are worth paying a bit of attention to as a way to spark out creative juices. Ads make people buy products. They drive people to stores, phones and the internet with their credit cards or wallets in hand. As a writer, you want to drive readers to your website or blog—or to a book store (online or off) to purchase your book or to subscribe to your newsletter of blog RSS feed. Although you want to do it with great content and a genuineness that makes readers trust and like you, and, therefore, want to buy from you, you still need to get them to your site to read that content and get to know you. Tying into the news and looking at the basic principles behind advertising offer wonderful tools to accomplish this feat.

If you can think of more reasons writers should watch the Super Bowl, please leave me a comment. I’d love to hear what you learned and applied to your writing.

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