June 2012
1 post
5 tags
Social Media: Opportunity and dilemma
Time for your social media checkup. Social media is no longer just about advertising your products or services. It is about relationships, but not the touchy feely kind. Relationships where your readers can relate to you about your products and services. And where they can easily contact and converse with you.
What you do on social media today lays the ground work for tomorrow. The highly...
May 2012
15 posts
5 tags
71 year old author "learned" how to grow pot for...
Linda aged 71, is a song writer and author. As she does not play a musical instrument others set music to her lyrics. Her song writing inspiration comes from counter intuitive places. Her song, “Amazing Grace” was inspired by her first failed marriage. “Mama Where is Heaven?” wrote itself soon after the death of her 3 month old daughter. “Mary’s Christmas” fermented for a year while Mary morphed...
3 tags
Pin Me: The 6 Be's of effective Pinterest use
If you are reading this you likely know Pinterest is a social networking site with a creative twist! Pinners share collections of images they find around the web or create, allowing users to engage visually with a product. A 500 character comment canbe added to each pin.
Be generous: If you have a service of a product to sell the rule of thumb is you promote others 75% of the time and yourself...
4 tags
E-book solution to rising text book costs
Many parents and educators worry about the spinal effects of children carrying huge backpacks filled with books. They may be delighted to read that major and community colleges are considering the e-book option. A student would exchange an onerously heavy canvas bag for a simple reader.
Weight is not the only consideration, the cost of text books rises annually. “Experts said…this...
2 tags
Need relevant twitter followers? Use Follow Blast
Want more relevant followers. Think of the key words you need to use to find them. As my first novel is on crime and the criminal justice system I googled FollowBlast and clicked on the link.
This instruction appeared:
In order to search for users by hashtag and follow them, please sign-in with your Twitter account.
Easy enough to do that. Once the “Follow Blast” page appered I typed...
4 tags
How To Plan a Successful Book Promotion
Book done? Nearly done? Well done. Time to promote it. Don’t think you have to? Think again. Even large traditional publishing houses expect you to self promote. Ready?
If you are uncomfortable with self promotion and the concept that you write for profit you will be uncomfortable with this.
You have to settle that first.
Stop reading, settle it, now let’s get on with it.
You may...
3 tags
Writers, Never Give Up: by guest blogger Ron Katz
I lead a support group for people who are unemployed. I received an e-mail from a member of my the group last week. It said, in essence, “I give up. I don’t know what to do anymore to find a job. Nothing is working.”
I understand the paralysis and frustration he’s feeling. Life feels out of control. At our meetings we discuss strategy on how to gain control of an uncontrollable situation, and...
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Focusing your website
Simon Jordan who has had amazing success online and who focuses on clarity in promotion and branding, wrote (with only a few of my own alterations):
On a website you have between 3-7 seconds to get your message across. If the message is lost amongst all the images and buttons, you will miss valuable sales leads.
Tell them:
1. how your product will add value to their lives, and
2. who you...
5 tags
The Third Fate, by Nadja Notarini: Book Review
The Third Fate by Nadja Notariani follows her previous two books, Claiming The Prize and Her Dark Baron. The book is well named as the hero, Paige pursues just that, the third fate, without knowing that or that it is preceded by the first and second fates. Timid, compliant and one unaccustomed to power or status Paige Kinnell catalogues library books. Her mother died in childbirth. Paige was...
It's Here!! My new ebook.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0080RXZIO
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Elena Martina author: "Clinging to Deceit"
The first thing you notice about Elena Martina’s facebook page https://www.facebook.com/author.elenamartina#!/author.elenamartina is her enthusiasm. She offers cheery chats and helps to other writers. Not surprisingly her column is titled, Happy Living One Day at a Time. As Elena was born in Peru, South America Spanish was her first language. She came to the USA to attend A.P.S.U. and graduated...
4 tags
Winning when a long term female friendship ends is...
Females in long time friendships become as close as sister friends. Women negotiate their friendships differently than males do. They begin them differently, develop them differently and end them differently. When a friendship spanning decades ends for women many grieve as if they had lost a sister. Men who end long term friendships typically tend to just move on.
A male therapist would tell a...
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Blogging with social media flair
There are many blogging and social media sites. Here are some of the more popular. Whichever ones you use, do it with social media flair. Use one site to complement the other. As your blog is the foundation stone of your social media networking remember to use all other sites to link back to it.
Tumblr: free blog host. I use this as an example to demonstrate how easy this. There are 3 easy steps...
5 tags
Speakers: Social media turns audiences into...
You have been invited to speak, paid in advance, the limo waited for you at the airport. You found a welcome note, a basket of teas, chocolate, cheese, smoked salmon and fruit at the hotel. None of it you arranged. Your presentation you did arrange, you read, plotted the flow, and wrote. You rewrote, discarded it and began again, handouts, accompanying videos and slide show. It is brilliant.
...
5 tags
Antedote to performance anxiety:Drug free, and...
Anxiety sucks. Skilled, well trained, passionate about music, she could not play her loved cello in public. A salesman needing to commute anywhere anytime could not drive over a bridge. She ran like the wind, a runner by nature but she could not run in front of a crowd. An expert in her field, she knew her material thoroughly, but place her in front of a live microphone and her lips quivered,...
April 2012
12 posts
3 tags
Cyber multi tasking
Waiting to fly, all those round me at the airport were connected. Smartphone, not so smart phones, really, really dumb phones (only used for talking and texting), laptops, iPads, kindles.
Onboard passengers whip out hand held games, iPads, kindles, and any other PED allowed. They talk, type, read and play.
Waiting for the Bainbridge Island ferry to leave from Seattle is a line of cars. As I...
3 tags
Unintended consequences of the cyber age
The internet has brought thousands of unintended consequences. Not only have the buying practices of consumers changed so have the selling, marketing and reading practices of users.
Today anyone with a computer and a free web page can claim to be an expert. The unintended consequence of that is that it is more difficult for consumers to distinguish the legitimate sellers and experts from those...
4 tags
Carnival barking cyber style
Online scams abound. You are in your own home. It is just you and the screen, and that promise. The face is young, fresh. Does it belong to the promoter? How old, or touched up it is. No way to know. You do know you need to use this or that social media and to hone your skills and spend less time flailing around learning.
You register for the free seminar. It’s free, right? At the appointed time...
1 tag
My Puffyfacemoment
In primary school, awkward, legs too long, taller than all the boys, not happy. When I walked I scraped my feet along the pavement. Nine year old boys, ever the analysts and psychologists told me I did that because I wanted attention. I was a “show off”, I was an “attention pig”. I need to shut my feet up. They would taunt me until I did.
I had no shoes of my own. I wore my mother’s. They were...
4 tags
Pinteresting
Facts:
Pinterest is here and it is successful beyond imagination.
Images and links are posted to a virtual board where thoughts are shared visually.
Photographs, quotes, DIY instructions, products and articles from the web are collated, organized and shares.
Pinterest browsers discover new products and are inspired and informed by sharing interests or finding others.
Pinners have to be...
Screenplay Lit agents share dirty secrets →
3 tags
Deadly Pleasures: The author speaks
Mary Firmin author of Deadly Pleasures is a vibrant, irrepressible character. As her diverse topics indicate she is interested in life and all its facets. Her family always supported her writing. Her mother suggested she become a newspaper reporter. Mary wishes now that, “I had done what she suggested”.
She jokes about being an “over night” success after only 25 years of writing. Short...
1 tag
“I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose....”
– http://koti.mbnet.fi/pasenka/quotes/q-writ.htm#About characters
Gael's facebook →
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For audience attention retention try this formula
Glenna Salsbury, CSP, CPAE has an impressive lineup of speaking credits to her name. She is a warm and “real” person. She engages with those she meets as equals, as human beings not as “target audiences”. Last July she was the keynote speaker at the National Speakers Association convention.
She shared her time tested formula for speaking success. She gave Lois Creamer permission to share it....
March 2012
4 posts
3 tags
Focus on social media
Social media is where the world teaches, learns chats, socializes and buys. It is where the people you want to reach lurk. Ignore them at your influence peddling, audience/platform building, selling peril. Fact: There are more facebook users than people in Europe.
Warning: Social media is filled with shiny things that distract. You have to focus, determine what your goal is. If it...
“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not...”
– http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/focus.html#ixzz1oqa84G7b
