How To Create A Marketing Plan

 What steps are involved in creating a highly effective marketing plan for a startup business?

As a startup, 90% of your success is going to fall on the shoulders of your marketing. That applies even if you are doing no big paid marketing or display campaigns. The number of users you can attract, how much you can charge for your product, and the funds you can raise are all outcomes of marketing.

1) Know Where You Want To Go

To craft a marketing plan that works, you need to know what it should do for you. What’s the ultimate goal in terms of users, coverage, profits and an exit for your company?

Knowing this will help craft every part of your plan, and ensure these components will get you there. That isn’t just the volume you want, but whether the brand and reach you are creating will have the wings to reach that altitude at all.

Knowing these big goals will also facilitate backing out the math. How much marketing will be needed to get to your biggest goals? You probably don’t have the budget to achieve that on day one. So, break it up into milestones, and identify the marketing needed to get you to each marker on the journey. One of the first will be hitting that crucial breakeven point, and paying your founding team enough to be able to afford to stay in business, and enjoy it.

In fact, once you know where you want to go you will need to capture the direction inside your pitch deck. There will be an entire slide dedicated to this in your pitch deck which potential investors expect. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash. Moreover, I also provided a commentary on a pitch deck from an Uber competitor that has raised over $400 million (see it here).

2) Market Research

Research and data is everything. Do listen to your gut. Then back that up and follow the data and facts. You are going to want to include key statistics from this research into your pitch deck when raising funding.

Among the most basic data will be how big the market is and your startup’s total addressable market (TAM).

Creating marketing and user personas is an important and valuable part of this. Both if you are a B2C and B2B venture. Knowing exactly who your best customers are will enable you to pinpoint and nail your marketing better out of the gate. You’ll waste a lot less, and convert a lot more using targeted campaigns and the right messaging.

The more you know about your customer the better. What do they do for a living? What keeps them up at night? What gets them excited about getting up in the morning? How much do they earn? Where do they shop? What’s their favorite color? What time are they online? Where do they hangout?

Then make sure you have conducted some thorough competitive analysis. Who are your competitors? How much do they charge? How is their customer service? What are they doing well? Where are they dropping the ball and leaving room for you to do better?

This sounds basic, but it is scary how many aspiring entrepreneurs try to launch ventures without really knowing if they are just recreating the wheel.

Equipped with all of this knowledge you will be able to craft an effective positioning statement, USP and brand. Creating a style guide and specs for your marketing and branding to keep everything consistent may be a part of this. It can certainly help to keep a unified image. Just don’t let it slow you down, as things are bound to change as you test, grow and raise money from new investors.

3) Identify Your Marketing Channels

After identifying your best prospective customers and the right branding, entrepreneurs will be able to better select the best fitting marketing and advertising channels.

There is no single right answer. What’s best will be a little different for every startup. It may include social media, TV, outdoor display advertising, print ads, email, popup shops or retail storefronts, apps, affiliate platforms, live events, or outbound calls.

Just make sure you have a well-rounded marketing mix, leave room for trial and error and testing, and give yourself enough time for these channels to payoff and reach critical mass.

4) Budgeting

Clearly all of this requires budgeting. Even if you aren’t doing Google PPC ads, Facebook or other big paid campaigns, marketing requires a budget. Even if that is creating great content for a winning pitch deck and getting out there to present it.

You can never afford to stop marketing. When you stop marketing, you stop having a business. If Apple and Nike are still doing it with all of their billions and market position, then you had better believe it.

Investors need to know this information too. It shows that you know what you are doing. They’d normally much rather invest in helping you expand in this way than to pay for salaries or just keep you afloat because your overhead is draining you.

5) Team

Who will create all of this marketing, respond to incoming leads and follow up?

You may be a sales genius and love selling and creating advertising pieces. Though, no matter how good you are, there are many channels and factors to master in this area of business alone. It’s hard to be a true master on top of all these trends and best practices, and run the business and raise funds well too. Your time may be best spent on other higher level tasks. Even in the beginning your time will be better spent simply closing hot leads than on marketing material.

Know who you need, and make sure you are hiring and having them create for your needs months in advance. Not at the last minute. Otherwise you’ll pay more and have rushed collateral which isn’t near as good or as effective as it could be.

6) Formatting

You should have a stand alone marketing campaign you are consulting regularly and your team is working on. All of the core basics will also be incorporated into your executive summary and pitch deck too.

Being specific is good, but don’t go too crazy with creating volumes of marketing plan documents at the beginning. All of this will evolve over time. You need to get to raising money and gaining new users.

Summary

Marketing is the life blood of every startup. Even if you have a very technical physical product you are developing for the B2B market.

While the outcome of the above may be a very simple and concise plan and set of facts and stats for your deck, all of these factors are important for an affecting marketing game plan that works and delivers on the main goals your startup has.

Culled from Forbes

Post Tags:#business#how to#Marketing#marketing plan#startup business

7 Social Media Management Tips to Save Time & Improve Results

Why is social media management important? According to data from Mainstreethost, social networks are the 2nd most popular way to research brands, just behind search engines. We can google “Faux-suede shirt” and receive an ad from UNTUCKit—but it’s fairly unlikely that I would purchase that shirt before doing my research on the brand.

First, check them out on Facebook, see some reviews; check Twitter and Instagram for discounts. It’s like doing recon for a blind date! I want to know I’m not going to get ripped off; and in the process, the brand should utilize these social channels to develop a relationship with me as a customer.

That being said, I think we agree that social media management can be a stream of irritation. Your brand needs to be engaging, posting and sharing constantly—but who has time for that? I have gathered a list of tips that my colleagues and I use for WordStream’s social media management to help save time, save money, and grow and engage your audience.

1. Social Media Management: Focus on Quality

It is always good to have a constant flow of content and announcements, but I would much rather have nothing at all than abysmal posts with incorrect information.  We want to make sure that we are sharing content that is good enough to be re-shared or retweeted, passed on to colleagues across industries.

We also try to look for content that will last, not just trend for a week and disappear. If you are able to produce content or develop insights that will stay relevant in the industry, these are gold! For us, social media content does really well on—surprise!—social media. This tweet was posted in mid-June and I’m still seeing it being retweeted even now.

It’s a bummer that this doesn’t direct to WordStream, but we have content posted on it, too!

Think about it this way, if someone writes a terrible post without citing sources and shares it on social media—are you going to interact with it? And what does that post say about your credibility as a brand?

2. Analyze Data to Find the Perfect Quantity

…and almost as important, quantity. Because let’s face it, social media is about what is going on NOW, right this second. This is especially true for Twitter; we recently found that engagement rate increased 46% week over week after publishing 30 more tweets than the week prior. In fact, those 30 extra tweets helped push 30% more traffic to the website with 60% more link clicks than the previous week.

During the week with 30 extra posts, there was an average of 5.9K link clicks daily.

It can be hard to get visibility as organic reach continues to decrease, and the one way we’ve found to combat this is to post more often. My favourite trick is to re-post content multiple times—for blog posts, I’ll share it on Twitter up to 5 times on the day it is published. Just make sure you’re not being spammy on Facebook! People hate that. Truly, I’ve seen the comments…

Another good trick is to stay aware of demand—keep your eye on trending topics in your industry’s sphere. Chime in when you can! This will increase your engagement rate and potentially garner more followers.

3. Be Charming (Tools Can Help!)

When my mother complains about social media, she references her friends that only post to brag. “Tommy got into Harvard AND Yale! Such a hard choice!” *Insert picture of the son as the homecoming king*. But, being the charmer she is, she will congratulate them (with a “xoxo”) and as a result, they will like and share and comment on her posts as well. Be my mother! What goes around, comes back around: engage with others and they will engage with you. Though this sounds silly, Larry swears by it.

Yes, my mother’s last profile picture was a flower pot. For 4 years.

One of my biggest challenges is finding content to tweet and post about! A way to tackle this is through social media management tools like Mention and Buzzsumo, which will send alerts your way when a keyword you select is posted online. I currently use keywords like “WordStream” or “Larry Kim” to see if others are posting about us. Then I can retweet their content! Another great resource is Feedly, an RSS feed website that helps you read your favourite blogs all in one space, or Klout, which suggests original content that hasn’t been seen by your audience yet.

4. Use Scheduling Tools

Because no one expects you to manage your social media accounts so intensely that you are manually posting 20+ times per day. Actually, who is reading these daytime posts?! Procrastinators, I see you…

I personally use Hootsuite, which had been conveniently set up before I started working in social media. I’ve also tried Buffer, which works similarly. For a complete list, check out our post on Social Media Management Tools.

Hootsuite dashboard for WordStream

I have found that the most important part of these tools (other than the obviously time-saving) is their ability to auto-schedule posts when your account is most likely to see high engagement. It takes a certain amount of brain power to pick times for 10+ posts per day, and this a huge help. If you’d like to simply analyze your twitter sphere timing, Hubspot has a handy tool called TweetWhen which will select your most retweetable time of day, and Tweriod will select the best times to tweet.

5. Automate Repetitive Tasks with IFTTT

IFTTT, short for If This, Then That, is a social media recipe website! In a series of simple steps, this website will help you set up simple commands which link up different applications to automatically perform actions if triggered. For example, IF the weather app tells you there is a high UV index, THEN a reminder to put on sunscreen is triggered. IF you are tagged in a photo on Facebook, THEN save the photos to dropbox.

At WordStream, we have a few blogs that we follow and trust to post quality content consistently that is of interest to our audience. We were able to set up a recipe that automates the sharing process. IF a certain blog posts new content, THEN tweet the post to our followers on Twitter.

6. Utilize Social Media Analytics

Does this need an explanation? How do you know how many people are seeing your posts and engaging if you don’t look at the numbers! Make decisions based on data!

I won’t pretend to be an expert in analytics, but I appreciate the vast number of metrics available. Luckily, there are experts out there, like the fine people analyzing tweets at Buffer, Twitter themselves, and Kissmetrics, who are kind enough to give us a beginner’s guide to Facebook insights. Personally, I tend to watch post engagement (based on audience size) and URL clicks when managing social media because our goals are to expand and engage our followers while driving them to the site.

7. Be a Real Person

As individuals, we have a higher tendency to follow accounts of “real people” vs. businesses even if we don’t personally know the person. I have tried my hardest to show on social media that WordStream is a real place with a real person with a real personality behind it! To get some ideas, Gizmodo and Contently have companies that manage their social accounts with flair and sass and everything people love…about real people. My personal favourites are Chipotle, Seamless, and Nutella. This says nothing about my real-life favourite things, I swear.

My favourite thing to do on Twitter is to find disgruntled customers and respond, trying to solve their issues. In a survey from InSites Consulting, 83% of companies reported that they deal with questions or complaints sent via social media, so I’m not alone. This is a great way to show that your company cares and has a face and personality behind the façade.

This customer had tweeted @WordStream unhappily reporting his dashboard was broken. We were able to respond and get it fixed! Previous tweets have since been deleted.

We already know from Larry that posts with emojis receive more attention. Similarly, when examining our tactics with images, we found that photos will generally receive more attention. This was further affirmed by Convince&Convert, who report that posts with pictures generate 150% more retweets. At WordStream, we analyzed posts on Twitter and Facebook and found that the most retweeted or liked posts featured images of real people–#PPCkid and images of our employees worked fairly well, but even memes featuring a real human work as well.

This is the back of everyone’s head at WordStream. It received 200% more likes than a post directing to an article a few minutes later.

Just like PPC, managing social media accounts is a constant work in progress. I’m keeping an eye out to see how Facebook’s new algorithm will affect our organic visibility while being vigilant about metrics and engagement across all channels. Do you have any great tips that I missed? Let me know!

10 Tips and Tricks to Stay Safe on Social Media

 

Many of us spend a large amount of our time on social media – Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, or other sites. We share our pictures, our feelings and our memories. However, we also share a lot of personal information on these sites, whether we know it or not.

Because of social media’s large presence and the amount of information we share through it, it is extremely important to be a smart social media user. Follow the tips below to help you stay safe while using these platforms.

1. Don’t Overshare

It’s easy to share information on social media, and much of it is content you may not deem important. But, individuals with bad intentions can use excessive personal information you share to commit crimes, such as stealing your identity, breaking into your house when you’re on vacation or stealing packages off your porch.

This also goes for LinkedIn; the more work and education history you share, the easier it is for thieves to steal your identity or guess your passwords. Be careful of any specifics and details you share online, and before you hit “post,” consider how the information could be used by someone of ill will.

2. Check Your Privacy Options

On Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and all of the other sites, make sure your security settings are where you want them to be.

It’s wise to make your Facebook profile private to users that aren’t your friends and to request the approval of your Instagram followers. Limit the personal information that other social media users can see by adjusting your privacy settings on each of your profiles.

You can also edit your privacy options to require a security question to be asked when logging on to the site from a new IP address, which will help prevent your accounts from getting hacked.

3. Verify People and Pages

Before you accept a friend or follow request, look at the individual’s page. If you know them and can verify that through the information available, then it’s probably safe to approve them (if you want).

If the information on their profile page doesn’t seem to add up, or you’re not sure if you know them, don’t be afraid to deny (or just ignore) a request.

If there are a lot of typos, only limited pictures or posts that just don’t sound like the person you think it might be, you should proceed with caution. It is not uncommon for people to impersonate other users or even brands on social media and use it to take advantage of other users. Keep this in mind and do a thorough check before you accept.

4. Do Not Violate the Social Media Policies of Your Company

Be familiar with the terms and conditions that regulate social media use at your work. Some obvious no-no’s are using company property to check your personal social media pages or posting on social media about co-workers.

You should never share company-specific details online – for some companies, this may even qualify as the sharing of trade secrets and can land you in big trouble.

5. Know How Sites Use Your Information

Many social media sites sell some of your information to advertisers; that is how they keep the use of their sites free. You have a right to know, however, exactly what information is being collected and how it is being used. Most social media sites will have this policy posted somewhere on their company website, but if you can’t find it, don’t be afraid to reach out and ask for a copy of this policy.

6. Don’t Buy into the Popularity Contest

Contrary to popular belief, the more is not necessarily merrier when it comes to social media friends. Make sure your “friends” online are actual real people that you know. For any “friends” that you’re not sure about, dig into their profile a little bit more and if you still have concerns, don’t be afraid to remove them from your network.

Having the most “friends” out of all your friends is not worth the risk if it leads to imposters knowing too much information about you.

7. Check Your Password

Make sure your password is something that could not easily be guessed by someone scrolling through your Facebook, YouTube channel, Instagram or Twitter (e.g. if all of your posts are about your dog Binkie, then don’t make your password Binkie123).

It’s also best to have a different, unique password for each social media site. If you access social media from your phone, be sure that your phone also has a unique, difficult-to-guess password.

8. Sounds Too Good to be True? It Probably is.

When a social media account gets hacked, the account will likely start posting offers for various goods. A common example is: RayBan sunglasses for $19.99!.

Do not ever click on these links, no matter how tempting. It’s nice to also let your friend know if you think their account has been hacked.

9. Install Antivirus Software

Make sure that any computer you use to access social media has antivirus software.

Because of the sheer amount of posts and links and profiles related to social media sites, it’s very easy for viruses to sneak into the content, particularly if you do inadvertently click on a malicious link. Good antivirus software will also protect your pages against viruses that are trying to steal your information.

10. Lose the Location

It’s tempting to tell the world exactly what you’re doing exactly when you’re doing it and exactly where you are. That, however, is not a smart practice. As was already previously mentioned, this can make it easy for thieves to take advantage of the fact that you’re in Aruba for a week. But it also makes it tempting for individuals to stalk you during your everyday routine.

Make sure to turn off all location settings on your social media sites so that Facebook or Twitter doesn’t announce to the whole world that you posted that picture at the gym Monday morning (when you were supposed to be at work).

As with most things, it’s important to listen to your gut when it comes to social media. This friend request looks a little weird? Ignore it. That ad has too many typos? Don’t click on it. The friend of a friend of a friend that you approved keeps commenting on all of your pictures? Delete him. Remember that you’re safety is always the number one priority.

You can never be too cautious when it comes to social media. However, if you follow these tips listed above, you’ll be off to a good start.

5 Bad Practices in Social Media Management

 

Social media has come to stay, that is why you see individuals across income levels, large, medium and small-scale organisations, as well as public figures and institutions scurrying to have a notable presence on popular social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Medium, to mention a few.

The fact that you took the time to read this is another strong indication of the importance ascribed to social media these days. Business schools now dedicate modules to teaching it as part of the strategy for business success. Not to mention that 32-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, the largest social media network, is currently the 5th richest man in the world with an estimated worth of $56.0 billion.

In this age and time, to be without a social media presence is like living in the Dark Ages. That on its own has unsavoury implications for a public figure or prominent organisation, as it means unscrupulous fellows will go ahead to create social media accounts in the name of such persons or entities and use such to defraud innocent people. In Australia alone, there were reported cases of $300million lost to social media scammers in 2016, with one person losing $1.6million out of that sum. At TRW Consult, we recently did a survey for one of our clients, a major oil and gas corporation and discovered there were other social media accounts in the name and guise of this company, all with valid and up-to-date information on them meant to defraud innocent people who are either aiming to work for or do business with this organisation.

However, the focus of this article is not about the increasing fraudulent practices around social media. That is a discourse for another day. What I intend to dwell on are some of the bad practices business owners/managers make in deploying social media networks for commercial success which ultimately result in frustrations and failures.

5 Bad Practices in Social Media Management

1. Hiring IT experts to manage your social media accounts

When there were just issues around internet connectivity, hardware and software, then an IT guru would have offered more value to your online endeavours. But in this dispensation of social media, a content expert is what you need to run a successful brand campaign. Content in this regard refers to text, graphic, and audiovisual information which can be published on your social media accounts in daily or weekly frequency that will be of substance to your audience; thus positioning you in their consciousness as an expert or a provider of value in your field and keep them coming back for more. As the saying goes in social media circles, content is king.

2. Hiring anyone to manage your social media accounts

Next, to ramming a square peg into a round hole by deploying a software and hardware person to manage your brand, the worst damage you can do to your corporate brand is to hire just anyone to manage your social media accounts because the person has a social media account of his/her own.

Managing corporate or individual brands on social media must be done strategically. It involves planning, trend analysis, research, reporting, and creative skills coupled with content development expertise to make a success of social media. The way you won’t approach anyone you see in the hospital to attend to your ailment is the same mindset you must deploy in handing over your most sensitive and easily accessible brand assets to anyone to handle because he/she is a graduate and has social media accounts.

3. Doing it all in-house

A vibrant social media brand is usually a result of plural input. No single person can deliver a successful social media campaign on his or her own. The saying “two good heads are better than one” holds true in social media management as in other concerns that justify it. To give your brand a vibrant edge on social media networks, you need cognitive skills in research, creativity, analysis, reportorial, content development, intuitive and trend analysis. While it’s possible to have all these talents latent in one person, that is usually an exception and not the rule.

From experience, at TRW Consult, we usually have to deploy between three operatives or the entire team to a single campaign, depending on the scale of expected result and budget of the project. Apart from this, we also have three agencies [two local and one foreign] that we also engage in running our flagship accounts. That is why we are renowned for stellar results in content, brand and reputation management, while most of our jobs come through referrals.

For you to make the most of your social media brand assets, you need to deploy between two or three of your staff to the assignment for an average brand. And they should see to such concerns as social media calendar, audience analysis, [industrial or societal] trends, marketing integration, audience engagement, etc. You should also invest in training them so they can be abreast of developments and add such to their delivery.

4. Spending less and expecting more

This is another faux pa business owners and managers make. Due to the common notion about social media as a plaything or an avenue for frivolous social engagements, they do not consider it an end for business investment or marketing budget. It is this belief that informs assigning just anyone to handle their accounts in the first place.

Social media, while thriving on seeming frivolous social engagements, is a serious business. The stocks of corporate and individual brands rise and fall by the week on the back of social media hits or misses. If in doubt, then google Pepsi’s Black Lives Matter to cite a recent global example. The Nigerian scene abounds with scandalous posts by spokespersons of government officials, which have earned their principals more enemies than fans, not to mention the international embarrassments such ill-advised outputs attract.

To make the most of your social media endeavours, you must be willing to invest a sizable sum in growing your audience and increasing the reach of your posts so that more netizens can see them.

5. Content is no longer king

This may sound self-contradictory, considering my first point. Yes, content is no longer king in effective social media management, quality content is. You can’t say because you need to keep your channels busy with content as well as engage your audience, then you post anything or only information about your business. You will only make your audience unfollow/unlike your accounts fast. And, once gone, it’s difficult to win them back because they would have profiled you in their psyche as a junk or irrelevant brand.

You need quality, fresh and relevant content to engage a social media audience, who by nature are restless and insatiable. And you don’t do that by posting stuff about your business alone. There must be a perfect blend of content ranging between serious and trivial, hard and soft information, business and social content to win on social media. The interesting thing is that not every social media expert or agency can offer you that blend. To underscore this point, here is a commentary from the anchorperson of a local social media outfit we engaged for a major campaign: I commend TRWConsult and the team for a great job when it comes to research and content development. We also offer content development as a service for the too busy clients, but we just always prefer that the clients pass to us useful information that will make the work smoother and easier.

I suppose that nails it on the importance of quality content as a catalyst in driving your personal and corporate brand to social media hit.

As a recap, go for the right expertise, go for teamwork, go for quality content and have the right mindset to project your brand to top-of-the-mind awareness on social media.

How to Make Your Social Media Stand Out (When Everyone Else Is Doing It, Too)

As a social media addict, I feel like each time I turn around, there’s some sort of new Facebook or Instagram update that will change how my followers engage with both my personal and business accounts.
Sometimes, it can be a bit of a hassle to keep up with it all. Standing out in a crowd feels nearly impossible.
We’re all looking for a way to engage with our friends, customers, and followers online in the most natural way possible. The best way to do that is to create unique content, which is easier said than done.
Here’s how I approach it for Instagram. You can use these ideas for Facebook, too.

How to Use Instagram for Business

When it comes to Instagram, it’s not necessarily what you do, but how you do it.
We all fell in love the with “Stories” feature when it landed on the platform. When users noticed their followers engagement levels dropping, they eventually caught on that they could supplement it by following their posts up with stories informing their followers that they’ve dropped some new content.
This was well and fine, and Instagram itself continues to introduce new ways to decorate your stories to stand out. But, I love seeing people’s unique talents take center stage.
I know it can be difficult to stand out in the crowd online, especially when you’ve got a business account. It’s a struggle I constantly face while constantly reevaluating the social presence of my business, Bikini Luxe.
Because we’re always looking for photographers to collaborate with, I follow a ton of talented individuals–and recently, one in particular stood out to me. The manner in which they were presented made me laugh and piqued my curiosity.
Photographer Joey Wright replaces the faces of models with his own. He has dubbed this collection of art, “Joey Wrong” and saves all of his favorites to the highlights on his profile.
When you’re scrolling through the seemingly endless sea of photos, stumbling upon something funny makes it all worth it. Wright’s unique use of the stories feature entertains his current following and draws new curious people into his profile, thus broadening his reach of potential clients and boosting his stats.

How to Stand Out on Instagram

It’s less about Wright having fun with the face-swapping tool and more about using readily available features to create unique stories on a platform that constantly begs for new content. It’s refreshing. It keeps viewers asking for more, and is a great way to use social media for your business.
You can, for example, use videos on Instagram stories–something not enough people do, in my opinion. Instagram’s newest feature, IGTV, could be a great place to get a foot in the door. After all, nobody else has used it yet either.

You’ll captivate viewers by creating content that is, above all else, relatable. Here are a few questions to ask yourself before you hit record:

1. What is the takeaway? Is the goal to turn them into customers, keep them engaged with your brand, or simply for brand awareness? Determine how you want your viewers to feel after watching your story and incorporate that into your recording.
2. Will this capture their attention for the length of the video or until I get my point across?  Be sure to engage verbally or offer strong visual cues to suck them in.
3. What is the call to action? Do you want viewers to comment on the IGTV post, answer your poll questions, or like your latest image post? Let them know, sometimes a subtle nudge in the right direction is all they need to engage further.
4. It’s key to always be fluid and keep an eye out for ways to enhance your potential client, customer, or supporter experience when dealing with your brand. As social media algorithms change, so should your attempts to stay relevant.

And finally, remember, everyone loves a good laugh.

By Candice Galek Founder and CEO, Bikini Luxe@bikinigeek

Inc.com

Post Tags:
#Facebook
#Instagram
#Marketing

#Social media

10 Things a Writer Should Never Do

 

There are a lot of articles on how to be a better writer and things a writer should do, but what you rarely see though is what a writer should never do. Thus, here goes 10 things a writer should never do:

 

1. Follow a strict rule:

   In writing, there are rules and guidelines on how to go about it. However, what a writer should never do is follow a strict rule on how writings should be done. As a writer, you should be free to break the norm, find your path and do what works best for you.

2. Write like someone else:

   Yes, it is good to have a mentor or a writing idol; however, what you should not do is to write like someone else; because in that case, you would never be the best, rather you would be the second best. So, be free to find your own voice and style and write like yourself.

3. Give up:

   Although writing is tasking, it can also be very rewarding. So when writing becomes tough, take a break, re-strategize but never give up. Just keep writing until you become the very best.

4. Hate a critic:

   When you write a piece, a lot of people offer feedback even when you didn’t ask for it. Some of these feedback might be unpleasant but what you should never do as a writer is to hate the person who gave the feedback; rather, analyze the feedback and work on being better.

5. Get Envious:

   When you are a writer and you see someone else’ work being celebrated more than yours, sometimes you may feel envious, but you should never embrace that feeling. Instead, celebrate the writer, ask him or her for advice and work hard for your own success too.

6. Wait for the perfect idea:

   Sometimes, you can run out of ideas, but rather than waiting for the perfect idea to hit you like a wave, go out and search for an inspiration. Talk to a friend, go on a date, observe nature and find your muse.

7. Lamenting over a mistake:

   Everyone makes mistakes, and sometimes, you will make one too in your writing. So, when someone points out a mistake in your writing, rather than lamenting over it, correct it and move on from it.

8. Steal another writer’s work:

   Sometimes, you may need to develop a piece and you find out that someone else has written something similar, so you pass it on as yours. Such an act is unethical and immoral; so, rather than stealing another person’s work, read and learn from it and write your own piece.

9. Be in a hurry:

   Sometimes, you may need to churn out a piece of writing very fast;as a result, you tend to write in a haste While it is good to write fast, never be in a hurry that you forget to review your work before publishing; this is in order to avoid a lot of mistakes that will question your credibility as a writer.

10. Be afraid:

    Sometimes, the fear of what people might think of your writing may stop you from writing,but you never can tell, people might actually love your writings once you share them with the world. So, rather than letting fear stop you from writing or publishing your work, be brave and get on with it.

 

Finally, as a writer, be original, ethical and consistent, and you will find yourself soaring high.

 

Goodluck!

8 Important Questions to Ask Before You Publish Your Book

 

Right now, I feel like I’m drowning.

I’m in the final frenzy of preparing for the launch week of my new print business book, The Pocket Small Business Owner’s Guide to Starting Your Business on a Shoestring.

I’ve learned a lot about book marketing since my previous print book, How They Started, came out, and I’m excited to apply some of the ideas.

In going through this process, I realized there are some basic questions all authors should ask themselves if they are preparing to publish a book, whether self-published ebook, print-on-demand, or physical, traditional press, fiction or nonfiction.

These questions provide a roadmap that will clue you in on whether now is a good time to put your book out, and will steer you to use what marketing time you have productively.

Ask yourself:

1. Who will care about and buy my book?

These days, book sales are all about who you know. How big is your network? Who can you promote this book to? Most importantly, who do you know who has a big audience of their own who’d be willing to review it, interview you, or otherwise help you promote your book?

If you’ve been sitting in your garret writing and are thinking your book is so amazing and irresistible that it will sell itself (as I saw one writer boast recently on LinkedIn)…prepare to be disappointed.

I meet too many writers who write their book and then decide to start blogging to promote it. That gets the order backwards. First, start building your audience and making connections with others in your planned book niche, so that you have a way to market your book.

2. Who will blurb my book?

I saw this eye-opening comment on one of LinkedIn’s author groups recently — a new nonfiction book author wanted to know how she could get the top thought leaders in her niche to give her book some raves for the cover.

She wondered if a traditional publisher could line that up for her. The answer is no. It doesn’t work like that.

The people who blurb your book tend to be people you know well and who likely you have done favors for in the past. If you don’t know him, Bill Gates is not going to blurb your business book, and J.K. Rowling isn’t going to rave about your children’s book.

Blurbing a book is actually a big pain because you have to really read the entire book to make a coherent review comment! It’s a lot of ask as a favor of someone.

I had interviewed quite a few business-book authors over the years as a business reporter and built some relationships there that helped. But if I hadn’t attended SOBCon, I would have been hard up for book-cover blurbs on my first book — about half of them came from relationships I formed there.

3. Who will review my book?

The next thing you need is people willing to read advance copies and post Amazon and GoodReads reviews on publication day, so that readers get the idea it’s a happening tome with an active reader base.

Could you get 50 or 100 people to do that? If so, that will get your book off to a good start. Once you’ve got a nice number of reviews up, other buyers will tend to chime in and add to them.

4. What forms of marketing can I do?

Lots of writers hate talking about themselves, and hate marketing in general. But selling a book involves butt-loads of marketing. Start thinking about what types of marketing you’d be willing to dive into. Could you hit trade shows and do a book tour? Bookstore-based book talks and signings? Rent a billboard? Start thinking about what’s within your comfort zone, time availability, and budget.

Consider what marketing will make the most impact for your particular book. There are only so many hours for book marketing, and you cannot do it all.

Because I’ve been blogging and writing about business for years, I’m focusing most of my energy on tapping the blogging community. I’m submitting my book to business-book review sites, guesting on business podcasts, doing guest posts, and Skype interviews.

That comes naturally to me, and I’m well-connected there. I’m doing a bit of in-person, but since I live in a small town it’s more impactful for me to concentrate on Internet marketing, where I can reach a much larger audience.

5. Can I tap my network for marketing ideas?

The best advice I can give about book marketing is to start asking around about what you should do. You’ll learn a lot.

For instance, I did one post on Facebook and Twitter asking for suggestions and immediately got three leads of business blogs I hadn’t thought to approach, even though they were names I knew.

One of them I turned out to become an instant new best friend on Skype. We turned out to have loads in common. she introduced me to a large Skype mastermind group she’s in, and asked for a video post! You will greatly increase your marketing reach when you ask for help.

I asked one personal friend for ideas and she reminded me that — duh — our town has a daily paper, a monthly lifestyle magazine, and a regional business journal, all of which might write about my book launch event here in town. In fact, as I write this, I see the business journal has posted a release about my local book launch party. That’s a great bit of great exposure I would have probably would have forgotten to pursue without the nudge.

6. How much free time have I got?

In my case, the answer is not a ton, since I need to spend a lot of time helping Freelance Writers Den members. I have dropped some freelance clients, but still have family responsibilities, too.

Unless you can drop everything to become a book-marketing machine, you’ll need to pick and choose your promotional methods. Also, start earlier if you know you’ll need to juggle your schedule with other commitments.

For instance, I gather GoodReads does only marginally well for nonfiction books, and that you should spend an hour a day on there interacting with people to get some real traction. Given that it’s not an ideal platform for my type of book, I decided to fill out my profile and do a giveaway contest (check it out in the sidebar!), but otherwise not make this a big focus.

I think the most important sanity-saver here is realizing book marketing is a bottomless pit. In the end, you need to do all you can with the time and resources you have, and then let it go.

7. Can I do something creative?

I took a book marketing training this week, and one of the things I learned that works well in book marketing is the element of surprise or something unusual. How will you make your book stand out in the sea of new releases?

For instance, the trainer had worked with a Christian book author who did some book-signings in brewpubs, because his theme was taking Christianity to blue-collar people. I’m still brainstorming about what I might do that would be off-the-wall.

8. How does this fit with my goals?

We only have so much time in our writing careers. Each book you write leads your career in the direction of that type of subject matter. Is it something you love? Will you enjoy the opportunities that come out of this particular topic and book type?

As a longtime business writer, I jumped at the chance to boil down 20 years of business interviews into a single, handy guide full of great stories of success and failure that will help other owners stay in business. Writing about business is one of my passions and my future goal is to ghost business books for CEOs, so to me this book was in line with my plan for my writing career.

Culled from Make A Living Writing