Writers in the Storm

by Jenny Hansen

A while back, I attended a free two-hour seminar on social media provided by Constant Contact (my new BFF). While it’s true that I attended for my day job, writers are their own small business so YOU get to benefit as well.

Look at this article from Business Week back in 2008 – Social Media Will Change Your Business. Look at how far things have come since 2005. (Light years!)

Now compare it to this L.A. Times article from last Fall, Social Media Giving Small Firms A Boost, which cites social media as a portal to success for small businesses.

Again, all us writers, particularly those who self-publish are a small business in charge of billing, marketing, quality assurance and - yes - social media.

Here are eight low-cost tips to help you expand your social media footprint:

1. Voicemail If you haven’t added your Facebook address and Twitter username to your voicemail, you are missing out on some cheap easy marketing. Hundreds of people hear your voicemail each year and it could be the push they need to connect with you online.
2. Your website Does your website have clear links to your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn page? What about to your blog? If someone finds your website, you want to make it easy for them to find the rest.
3. Printed materials Do you have your social media information printed at the bottom of each letter and brochure you put out? What about on your business cards? It’s easy to make room in the address block for something so important. Try including this the next time you print any materials.
4. Email Signature Do you have all your social media info in the signature blog on your email? It’s amazing how many people will click that link if you make it easy.
5. Email marketing It’s a good idea to build an email list and use it for some email marketing. I didn’t say spamming. Once a month is fine for connecting. Once a day is not. Be sure to include all your links as well as a periodic promotion. You’ll be surprised at the results. Tools like Constant Contact can track this for you.
6. Signage Do you have a sign up at bookstores or tradeshow events telling your customers readers how to connect with you via social media? It’s likely you’re missing out on some contacts you could have made. When people are browsing these places, you’ve got a pretty captive audience. I’m discussing QR codes next week to expand this idea.
7. Business presentations Do you do any public speaking? Your social media contact information should be on each slide, in any handouts you provide and should also be verbalized at the beginning and end of the presenation.
8. Cross-promotion between platforms It’s a very good idea to be sure that your  customers readers can find you anywhere. The easiest way to do this is to list your social media information on each platform – Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and your blog.

Remember, “Content is King” – nothing will replace good content (i.e. great books). But Social Media is Queen these days and small businesses writers should cast their social media net as widely as they can.

Are there any social media marketing tips you’ve found helpful? Which social media platform has worked best for you? What part of social media do you like or dislike the most? (p.s. I'm happy to answer questions down in the comments!)

Jenny

About Jenny Hansen

Jenny fills her nights with humor: writing memoir, women’s fiction, chick lit, short stories (and chasing after her toddler Baby Girl). By day, she provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. After 15 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s digging this sit down and write thing.

When she’s not at her blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter at jhansenwrites or here at Writers In The Storm. Every Saturday, she writes the Risky Baby Business posts at More Cowbell, a series that focuses on babies, new parents and high-risk pregnancy.

By Laura Drake

I’m only beginning to come out of my post-conference fog, and to get my head around all the work I have to do! Before I jump into that though, I wanted to tell you what I learned from this conference. Hopefully it will help you decide if conferences are worth your time and money.

RWA National, Washington, D.C.

My first conference was the RWA National, three years ago, in Washington, DC. I was at the sophomore level then, having completed two books, and was pitching my most recent for the first time. It was an overload to the brain. I was a hyperaware, fangirl, sponge. Craft workshops, keynotes, networking, pitching, I soaked it all in, and went home with a sense of being part of a community of writers, and a renewed belief that I could do this!

Spring forward three years.

We were lucky enough to have the National RWA Conference in our backyard this year, ten miles from my house. I expected my experience to be a bit different, since I’ve now sold, but I didn’t realize just how different.

I’d planned out my time, chosen the career-track workshops I wanted to attend, and was organized. I thought. Well you know what they say, “Man plans, God laughs.”

Being the President of the Women’s Fiction Chapter made it even better – and crazier. We’d planned a packed mini-conference that didn’t have much “mini” to it. A twelve hour agenda seemed like a great idea in the planning stages; in reality, it was crazy!  Thanks to Fae Rowen and a ton of hard-working WF volunteers and great hotel staff, it came off almost without a hitch, and I think everyone got something from it.

We had two knowledgeable panels of authors, editors and agents, who discussed the market for women's fiction.  Margie Lawson was brilliant in her two hour craft session, and Kristen Lamb’s Social Media Keynote was riveting – galvanizing a crowd that had been thinking hard for eleven hours (not to mention myself, who had been up for twenty hours at that point.)

The rest of the conference was a blur of lights and action, like squinting your eyes on a Merry-go-round. I met with my agent for the first time, and both my editors. I literally ran from one thing to the next, and still missed a Pajama Party, Meet & Greet, and most of the workshops I wanted to attend. I’m not complaining – I made it to a publisher dinner, the GH/RITA ceremony, and the Harlequin party!

My WITS roommates helped me dress up each night for an event (you know I’m not a glitter-gal, right?)

I felt like Cinderella, the entire week!

To make it even more exciting, I'm so proud of my local Chapter! OCCRWA was well represented at the Awards Ceremony: Diane Pershing received a Service Award, Kara Lennox (monthly WITS blogger!) was a DOUBLE RITA Finalist, and Tessa Dare walked away with a RITA!

Well, Cinderella is now home, facing a two foot wall of laundry, a sink full of dishes, and a $57 dry cleaning bill. Sigh.

My point to this rambling though, is that no matter where you are in your journey, writer’s conferences are invaluable. There is a lot available for everyone, at any stage of their writer’s journey.

Kudos to RWA. The Marriott Hotel was superb, the staff friendly and helpful, the food on time and delicious. I can’t imagine the logistics and grunt work that goes into putting on an event of this kind. And they did it without breaking a visible sweat. Great job!

So, what do you think? Have you attended an RWA conference? Another Organization’s conference? What was your experience?

Thank-you to Shannon Donnelly for supplying a "handout" to a workshop I was looking forward to - SUBTEXT.  We are truly fortunately at Writers in the Storm to have Shannon as a contributing blogger the first Monday on every month.

by Shannon Donnelly

There was supposed to be a workshop on this at RWA national conference—it was canceled and I heard some folks regretting that. So in the interest of helping out, here’s some easy advice on subtext:

Let your characters talk about everything EXCEPT what they are thinking and what’s really going on.

A great example of this is to have your characters meet for breakfast the morning after they first go to bed. Instead of the guy talking about how he doesn’t want this to be a commitment, have him bring up and talk about sports—about the game that afternoon, about how it’s going to be good since the home team traded for a better player from another team, about how it’s changed a lot since the team picked up a new coach (message in all of this is that nothing stays the same).

Heroine—being a smart girl—gets the point, and she then starts her own subtext conversation. Oh yeah, well, you’re going to regret passing up someone like me—that’s what she’s thinking. But this is subtext. She doesn’t say any of that. She throws back at the guy that the other team’s star pitcher—who has been with them for five years—is going to wipe the field with them. Oh, and by the way, she goes on to burn his toast, and leave seeds in his OJ just to get back at him for being such a jerk.

In other words—the character talk about anything EXCEPT what they are thinking and what’s going on.

This is often something you have to do in revision. First draft you may find yourself letting him tell her he’s not ready for commitment, and she cries and tells him he’s a jerk, and the reader is bored, bored, bored. You’ll be bored just writing it, too.

And here’s the thing—most people, most of the time, want to avoid conflict.

We don’t want to ask the boss for a raise. We don’t want to tell the girl/guy we just met that last night is not going to be repeated. We don’t want to tell a loved one that something must be done with that morning breath. We don’t even want to tell the favorite kid that the person picked out for marriage is soooo very wrong.

So we duck and cover, and we try to slip in what we mean between words.

Instead of asking the boss for a raise, we take on a project, do an amazing job, and then mention to the boss how sales are up in this past month (subtext is you should give me a raise because I did that).

Instead of telling the girl/guy last night is not going to be repeated, we refuse breakfast, take down the phone number, tell ‘em we’ll call, and duck out the door with excuses of other things we’re late to (subtext I’ll call you).

Instead of telling a loved one about that morning breath, we buy them a bottle of mouthwash and leave it in a conspicuous place (yes, subtext can be through action not just words).

Instead of telling the truth to our kids, we smile, and ask that very wrong person a bunch of embarrassing questions designed to show the kid that this person is the wrong one. Alternate strategy is to trot out embarrassing stories about the kid (subtext is you guys are so wrong for each other).

Subtext works best with strong contrast—and it can work, too, with characters that don’t play along. It’s sometimes fun to have a guy who doesn’t get the subtext of a woman trying to brush him off without her saying, “Get lost, jerk.”

Subtext is all about how we negotiate in a conversation for what we want—we want to play nice, be polite, and still get what we want.

And, yes, you have a few folks who don’t do this—who are blunt and rude and say exactly what they think. But they’re not as much fun to write.

Do you have questions about subtext? Examples of subtext in your life? We want to hear about them in the comments!

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About Shannon...

Shannon Donnelly’s writing has won numerous awards, including a RITA nomination for Best Regency, the Grand Prize in the “Minute Maid Sensational Romance Writer” contest, judged by Nora Roberts, RWA’s Golden Heart, and others. Her writing has repeatedly earned 4½ Star Top Pick reviews from Romantic Times magazine, as well as praise from Booklist and other reviewers, who note: “simply superb”…”wonderfully uplifting”….and “beautifully written.”

Her latest Regency Historical Romance, Paths of Desire, can be found as an ebook, along with her Regency romances, now available from Cool Gus Publishing. She has had novellas published in several anthologies, has had young adult horror stories published, and is the author of several computer games.

Shannon is a regular speaker at writing conferences, and will be speaking at the 2012 RWA  National conference in Anaheim. She gives online workshops and is the author of Story Telling; Story Showing, an ebook that compliments her popular online class Show and Tell: An Interactive Workshop.

She lives in New Mexico with two horses, two donkeys, two dogs, and the one love of her life. Shannon can be found online at sd-writer.com, facebook.com/sdwriter, and twitter/sdwriter.