http://www.stephengordon.org Helping you write more and sell more without an agent or a publisher en-PI http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ JellyCast http://www.jellycast.com stephen@stephengordon.org (theindiewritersshow) Arts & Entertainment Sun, 11 Aug 2013 13:14:38 +0100 Mon, 16 Sep 2013 15:58:55 +0100 https://theindiewritersshow.jellycast.com/files/tiws_itunes_logo_0.jpg http://www.stephengordon.org 144 144 Helping you write more and sell more without an agent or a publisher Stephen Gordon theindiewritersshow stephen@stephengordon.org podcast No No Helping you write more and sell more without an agent or a publisher Welcome to the Indie Writers Show giving you practical advice on how to write and sell more books without an agent or a publisher. Have you always wanted to be a writer but find that you never get the time, or do you have great ideas that you can’t turn into a complete story? Do you have finished manuscripts that keep getting rejection slips or ebooks that aren’t making any sales? On The Indie Writers Show we look at practical steps you can take today to write and sell more of your independently published books to an eager audience. https://theindiewritersshow.jellycast.com/node/6 7 steps on how to power up your Twitter profile that will attract more of your target audience to follow you. Mon, 16 Sep 2013 16:00:55 +0100 Content https://theindiewritersshow.jellycast.com/node/6 jellycast https://theindiewritersshow.jellycast.com/node/6 No Podcast 00:16:28 https://theindiewritersshow.jellycast.com/node/5 Call yourself an AUTHOR to take a step closer to success. Mon, 16 Sep 2013 16:01:08 +0100 Content https://theindiewritersshow.jellycast.com/node/5 jellycast https://theindiewritersshow.jellycast.com/node/5 No Podcast 00:16:28 https://theindiewritersshow.jellycast.com/node/4 I’m your host Stephen Gordon and in this episode I’ll share a simple and effective way to get into the habit of always having a notebook around and how you can make sure that every idea you have is always at your finger tips ready to be turned into the next big thing. Mon, 16 Sep 2013 15:59:52 +0100 Content https://theindiewritersshow.jellycast.com/node/4 Stephen Gordon https://theindiewritersshow.jellycast.com/node/4 Helping you write more and sell more without an agent or a publisher No writing, writers, indie, author, notebook 00:16:28 https://theindiewritersshow.jellycast.com/node/3 I’m Stephen Gordon and in this episode of the Indie Writers Show I’ll share the first two steps towards using twitter to help build a relationship with your target audience and drive traffic to your website. Mon, 16 Sep 2013 15:59:37 +0100 Show Notes If you enjoy this episode I’d really appreciate you giving the show a rating over in iTunes or sharing a link to stephengordon.org/show over your favourite social network. This year I was honoured to be part of the 26th John Hewitt International Summer School which is an annual event supporting the development of writers with a week of talks, readings, and workshops delivered by internationally acclaimed, awarding wining authors including Man Booker Winner Anne Enright and Irish Novel of the year Winner, Gavin Corbett. One of my responsibilities during the summer school was to manage the society’s social media presence including their Twitter account. This captured a lot of attention from a number of students who knew that they, as writers, should be using Twitter to build better relationships with their current or potential target audiences but weren’t sure of the best place to start. In this first part of being a writer with a terrific Twitter following I’ll share the first two steps. Know what you measurably want from Twitter AND use the 70/20/10 content rule to engage a growing army of followers. Step 1 Know what you measurably want from Twitter. There are two types of measures. Things you can easily measure and things you can’t. As indie writers we have enough going on without adding the complexity of chasing down dozens of different social media metrics every day so I’m recommending two easy measures to track if you are getting what you want out of Twitter. The amount of followers you have and the amount of traffic going to your website from your tweets. The amount of followers is easily checked from Twitter itself by looking at your FOLLOWERS number and we will cover checking the amount of traffic you are getting to your website in another show all about analytics (which is more fun that it sounds). These are two key measures as they will help show if you are engaging an audience on Twitter so much that they take the next step and go to your website. Step 2 Now that you have set your expectations of Twitter Use the 70/20/10 Content Rule for your tweets. There are millions of people on Twitter and a lot of them, like us, are trying to get noticed. Maybe trying to sell a book, sell a new app, a fitness program, whatever but all in all there are millions of others tweeting to as many people as they can trying to sell their product. Except us. Twitter is not an effective place to sell. How long would anyone last in your Twitter stream if the only message they had was screaming at you to buy their book, app, or fitness regime? How long would you expect someone to follow you if the only message you had was buy my product? Twitter is a place to read messages that will interest us, build relationships with others and occasionally point out that we are writers with books available to buy, read and enjoy. And that is what we are going to use the 70/20/10 conent rule to do. The 70/20/10 Content rule means that 70% of your tweets will be about topics, news, or updates your audience will want to hear about. 20% of your tweets will be about you to help your target audience get to know you as a person. The remaining 10% of your tweets will be about your work as an indie author. Let’s look at each one of those in more detail. Twitter is fast. Really fast. Information buzzes past at a scary rate and to help stand out from the crowd your tweets need to be as engaging and interesting to your target audience as possible. So give the people what they are looking for based on what kind of writer you are. If you’re a sci-fi writer this is where you can share your take on the latest article from the New Scientist magazine, which of the sci-fi pilot shows you think are going to be picked up by the TV networks or a mini, positive, review on the latest genre book you have read. This approach goes for horror writers, thriller writers or whatever genre you write in. The key is that 7 out of every 10 tweets will not be about you but about things that interest your target audience. Tweeting about the things that interest your target audience means they are more likely to watch out for your tweets, put you on their Twitter lists, and get into the habit of looking out for your tweets when they come online. Your 70% is where you stand out from the crowd. The next 20% of your tweets are about you. Not your new book just released on Amazon or reminders of one that has been on there for a while. You. The bulk of your tweets so far have been about things you and your target audience will enjoy, this is the chance for you to let other tweeters know about you. Been to a reading? Gone to the movies? Taken a picture you really like? Here’s where you show your human side and let your growing army of followers get to know you. I strongly recommend using these tweets to link back to content on your blog to drive traffic to your website. This is incredibly powerful traffic to your site because the people going there have been put in a positive frame of mind with your other tweets covering things they already like. These are people who have ALREADY DECIDED TO LIKE YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE and will stick around to read your blog post and are MORE LIKELY TO SIGN UP TO YOUR MAILING LIST. We’ll go into more detail on BLOGS and MAILING LISTS in a future show but you can check out the first two episodes of the INDIE WRITERS SHOW for an overview on why every INDIE WRITER should have them. The final 10% is where you get to talk about your work but NOT in a constant ‘BUY MY BOOK’ kind of way. Every one tweet in 10 you should talk about a work in progress, retweet a review of your book you’re really proud of or even a reminder about your latest release. It’s scary just how powerful this piece is if handled correctly, especially if you are just starting out as an INDIE WRITER. It can take a long time to get your work ready to be shared online and your 1 in every 10 tweets about your work in progress are an effective way to gather up interested readers right from the beginning, make them feel part of the creation process AND get their powerful word of mouth support when your book is released. This is so powerful that there’ll be a dedicated show just for this one topic. For now use this 10% of your tweets to kick around title ideas, character names, daily updates on your word count, cover choices and yes, even the, very occasional, link to your book online. That’s it for this episode. In Part 2 of Be a writer with a terrific Twitter following we’ll look at the easy way to build up an army of followers on Twitter. Before I go I often get asked what’s the best software to use for writing. I encourage everyone to use whatever helps them sit down and write every day. It could be MS word, Google Docs, a notebook and pen just as long as it works for you. As an Indie Writer I strongly recommend SCRIVENER. It has a ton of features to support different writing styles and has the ability to format your work DIRECT into the eBook format of your choice so uploading your finished product is a cinch. So regardless if you’re an outliner or discovery writer SCRIVENER will work the way you need it to and make the e-publishing process as simple as possible. There’s a link to the software in the show notes or you can GOOGLE SCRIVENER to go to the site. I hope you enjoyed the show and I’d love to hear your questions, comments or feedback which you can send to show@stephengordon.org. If you did enjoy this episode I’d really appreciate your time to give the show a rating over in iTunes or share a link to stephengordon.org/show over on your favourite social network. Until next time I hope you’re writing more, selling more and having fun as you do it. https://theindiewritersshow.jellycast.com/node/3 Stephen Gordon https://theindiewritersshow.jellycast.com/node/3 Using social media to build relationships with readers The first two steps towards using twitter to help build a relationship with your target audience and drive traffic to your website. No writing, writers, indie, author, 00:16:28