Writing Business

Working the Internet for resources can find some gems.

In cruising through my links for writing, I came across the Writers Resource Center at poewar.com. In Bloggers Writers Should Read, there is a link — and explanation as to why you should go read — 24-blogs about some form of writing.

I searched high and low for a blog about how technology can be used to market a writer’s work, but didn’t find one. I’ll nominate this one!

There’s a lot of really great writing going on behind these links. Go check them out.

Scot

This blog is about the technology that can help a writer promote their work. This, and other blogs, talk through how to build a blog, generate traffic, use podcasts to promote their work, and even write white papers to help increase the traffic for your blog and promote your work.

The Engaging Brand brings all this back to reality, however. In 6 top tips on how not to lose the human experience, Anna Farmery takes on those who think technology will replace human contact. She gives six great tips:

• Technology should replace paper and process not total human contact
• Incorporate human stories into the blog and podcasts to give the human element
• Technology such as Wiki’s can be a great back up to your human capital
• Networking events are still a great place to find contacts, search for talent, look for inspiration
• Leadership is about being present, about visibility
• Always remember that some people are afraid of technology, out of lack of understanding or appearing “stupid!”

Bravo — right on target.

As writers, whether fiction, non-fiction, freelance or technical, we write about the human experience. And how that experience evolves, changes, and interacts with what we are doing in our work.

Writers should be maximizing their contacts with the human experience and writing it through your specialty. Technology is simply a way of conveying that knowledge through your writing.

Technology does not replace the human experience. It simply provides another outlet to express our work in explaining it.

Scot

When we have our writing and are using our blogs to promote our work, it makes sense to promote our blog too, right? More traffic to our blogs means more exposure to our writing and, hopefully, more stuff to show potential publishers and sales for our published works.

When I started blogging, there were few tried and true principles for increasing your blog traffic and subscribers. Simple things like:

• Write good content
• Read other blogs and make constructive comments on them that add to the conversation
• Link to other blog articles and write to extend the conversation on your blog

Still valid, of course, and my favorite ways to increase traffic here.

Now, however, there are hundreds of ways to increase your blog traffic. Things like:

• Podcasts
• Bookmark your articles at social bookmarking sites
• Pay for a unique brand design of your blog template
• Advertise your blog
• Write ezine articles
• Guest post on other higher traffic blogs

And more and more. In the old days of blogging — a mere two years ago — there were few ways to promote your blog.

Now, however, you have to choose how to market your blog in ways that make sense for you, as a writer. It means having a technology plan that matches up with a marketing plan for your work.

Which promotional methods make sense to you? Here are some considerations:

• You love interviews and you are a great interviewer. Consider podcasts — even work on You Tube — and promote them on your site
• You write all the time. Consider doing white papers on your site to have your users download. Charge for them as you build up clients and have worked in some great content.
• You love surfing the Internet and are always looking for new angles for your work. Consider commenting extensively on other sites and linking other sites in your posts as part of your research.

The key is understanding the type of writer you are and combining that with your personality. Then identify two or three things that you can do to promote your blog — and go do it for a month and evaluate the results.

A plan and follow through are powerful tools in anything you do.

Scot

It has been since the last day of February since I’ve posted here. Regular readers will note this as unusual: I usually post once a day, Monday through Friday.

Since coming back from my eleven day vacation in Costa Rica in February (171 pics here on Flickr), I’ve been fighting the return of the sinus infection I had in January, recurring in Costa Rica the first weekend, and then returning yet again after I got back in the United States. It finally got the best of me, draining me of most of my energy and only leaving enough to stay at work on my day job.

But, after a good visit to Dr. M, some kick-ass drugs, and a little bit of time this week, my energy is returning and I’m finally able to do my passion: writing. Especially writing for writers. What a great privilege.

Most of you do not know, but I have been writing for Pimp Your Work for the last six months or so. My last post was written two weeks ago and, through the magic of technology, is posting at the same time as this post here on Ten Keyboards. Pimp Your Work is a great business blog and part of the b5media network of blogs. After spending a fair amount of time in Costa Rica on vacation thinking through a lot of things in my life, I made the decision to stop writing for them.

It was a tough decision to make.

Pimp Your Work is a fast-growing blog with many more subscribers than I have here on Ten Keyboards. Being part of b5media, there are untold advantages that come along with being part of that network. Not to mention that their business approach is exactly what is needed in the blogosphere today and they have a great group of bloggers writing their posts. Most of all, I could do good things on Pimp Your Work. But I wasn’t sure I could do great things there. Good, it is said, is the enemy of great.

All of those advantages weighed against what I wanted to do with my personal blogs. My personal blogs, you see, are really about the books I want to write. Cube Rules, my business blog, is about Career Management for Cubicle Warriors, a subject that I have a lot of experience with in my career. There is a great need for developing the methodology to become a Cubicle Warrior.

With Ten Keyboards, there is a great need for someone to define, explain, and give positive reasons for a Writer to use Technology to promote their work. Technology has become the great new thing to help a writer have the right stuff to sell their work to publishers and continue to have conversations with their readers.

Very few are writing about it. Yet, my day job in technology, combined with my struggling writer need to be successful, offers the perfect combination to show how technology can help writers market their work.

It just needs to be written.

We’ll write about that here on this blog. And, with the time saved from Pimp Your Work, now start writing it as a book.

It should be a fun journey.

Scot