Angela Booth's Writing Blog

Who Are YOU?

Got a brand? For most writers, their brand is built by default. Few writers bother to create a personal branding statement, and they spend more time thinking about the fonts they use in their documents than they spend thinking about their platform.

This is because it’s a real challenge to see yourself clearly. As I said on my Creativity Factory blog, knowing how to present yourself is hard:

You’re in charge of your own image. You teach others how to look at you. Most of us get an image by default.

Professionals craft their image. Politicians know how important it is to stay “on message”, and movie stars employ PR people to carefully build their image.

You can craft your own image too, so that you present yourself memorably to your audiences. Remember: you teach others how to look at you. To do that, you need to see yourself clearly first.

Read all of the above post on the blog, and create your own branding statement and tagline – it’s the most important advice you’ll get from me all year, I promise you.

Few writers bother to build a brand and platform. However, as I said on this page:

Building your platform was always important for authors. These days, it’s mandatory for every writer, because writers have become a commodity. Anyone can call himself a “writer”.

Since anyone and everyone can call himself a writer, it means that people who hire writers get burned with shoddy writing – or with writers who take their money and disappear. They’re wary. They no longer care if you call yourself a writer, they want some evidence that this is so. In other words, they want to know that you have an audience – a platform.

Spend a few minutest thinking about your brand and platform today. Those minutes will have a far-reaching effect. With any luck at all, they’ll start you thinking about your writing strategically.

"You're a Celebrity" Writing Guide Reveals the Secrets of Advertising and Branding to Writers (PR)

 

Angela Booth has just released a new guide for writers, which helps them to develop name recognition and visibility. This guide is: "You're A Celebrity: Advertising And Branding Tricks For Writers." It's available now, as a prelaunch offering.

The guide helps its readers to make the switch from amateur to professional status, and reap the rewards.

They do this by discovering the importance of promotions and branding. They also learn to avoid some of the common pitfalls of branding. Angela says that she explains why writers should allow their branding efforts to grow organically. This is because as a writer gains experience, he invariably changes focus. He may change from writing for magazines for example, to copywriting for the Web.

Many writers never understand the importance of becoming known as a writer. Name recognition is vital. In practical terms, becoming known means that the writer receives a constant flow of clients and opportunities.

Angela says: "I created this package because my writing students were floundering in this area and missing out on opportunities. Many writers are nervous about self-promotion. Unfortunately, this means that they don't get the opportunities they deserve -- clients who would love to hire them don't know they exist."

The guide helps both new and established writers. It's comprehensive, and includes a series of videos, to help readers to create their first promotion quickly.

Angela has tested the guide on her students. "I wanted to make sure that the strategies worked quickly and well. I'm pleased that the early readers are getting great results," she said.

As with all her writing reference material, Angela includes coaching in the offering. She says: "My goal is to ensure that readers get the results they want. Coaching ensures that they do."
Further information on "You're A Celebrity: Advertising And Branding Tricks For Writers" is available here.

About
Angela Booth is a top copywriter, and writing teacher. She offers many guides, courses and classes to help writers to enhance their skills. She also provides inspiration and motivation for writers on her writing blogs. Angela has been writing successfully since the late 1970s, and was online in the 1980s, long before the birth of the Web. Her business books have been widely published.

Article Marketing for Writing Success

In next week's issue of Fab Freelance Writing Ezine, we cover article marketing.

Here's an excerpt from the Editorial:

Have you discovered article marketing? It's a great way to promote yourself online, and offline. I include offline, because the promotional articles you write for the web will often be picked up by print publications, and will even be included in books (with your permission, of course.)

But what's article marketing? Essentially, it's advertising. You're trading information for the chance to get your name in front of people who can buy your services.

I've been using article marketing off and on for around a decade, as one of my primary forms of marketing.

Does it work? You bet. If you type "Angela Booth" into Google, you'll find thousands of references to my name.

Can it work for you to sell your writing services? Yes it can.  However, there are pitfalls.

You can easily avoid them; let's see how.

This issue is out next Tuesday. Enjoy. :-)

Discover the secrets of highly-paid writers: free each week

Want to make great money writing? Discover the secrets of high-selling, highly paid writers, for free. Each week, Angela Booth's Fab Freelance Writing Ezine is delivered in easy-to-print PDF format.

Join the thousands of other writers who are using the information to change their lives. You'll learn how to write, and how to sell. Angela's been writing for 30 years, and shares her knowledge with you.

Your Writing Career: Use Cross Promotion to Extend Your Reach

Are you cross promoting your writing? Cross promotion is a vital form of marketing. Once you have a presence online (a website or blog), it's up to you to promote it.

For example, in Lesson 7 of Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON), I make this point:

Cross-promote all the writing you do online to make more income

The more writing you do online, the more opportunities you will have to cross-promote. For example, you've got a site and blog, so now you can link the two together and can promote your blogging services (which we'll discuss in this lesson) on your article sales site. And vice versa, of course.

Linking helps you to make the most of your traffic. You can lead your site visitors from one of your Web properties to others.

The more you promote your writing, the more your career will build.

Even if you've worked with a client several times, chances are he'll have forgotten your name the next time he's looking for a writer.

Get into the habit of promoting your writing services every day, and your writing career will take off.

Develop a great income writing for the Web - start by writing simple articles

I've developed "Sell Your Writing Online Now" (SYWON) to help you to start making money writing online in 24 hours or less.

Each week, for one full year, you'll receive a lesson, with an assignment which will build your Web writing income – you EARN as you learn.

SYWON is totally unique, and if you want to write for the Web, it's your ticket to success.

Twitter for writers: make connections, get hired

Have you discovered the power of Twitter?

This week I've received a couple of messages from writers who are excited about using Twitter to make connections.

One writer tweeted his annoyance about a magazine editor who seemed to be ignoring him; the editor got in touch right away.

A new writer asked whether a company was a legitimate buyer of writing services -- and yes, the marketing manager got in touch.

People might not respond to email (often your messages end up in a Junk folder), or they just never find the time to respond, but they usually respond to tweets which mention their company name.

In this article, Angela Booth's Writing Blog: Freelance Writing: 5 Reasons You Should Be Tweeting I wrote about the power of your tweets:

"Twitter Helps You to Make Connections and Contact People Fast Once people know you exist, and what you write, they need a way to get in touch with you -- fast. Like most freelance writers who are visible online, I get many offers of writing gigs which I don't have the time to accept. (Note: lots of job offers are a benefit of online reach.) So if I'm aware of you, and that you might be a good fit with someone who needs a writer, I'll let you know, often via Twitter."

If you're new to Twitter, yes, it can be frustrating, but you'll pick up the rudiments quickly, and you may be amazed at the results you get from your simple tweets. Follow me on Twitter.

Befuddled by Twitter? You'll be amazed at how many writers, editors, agents and buyers of your writing use it

Be where the action is with "Twitter for Writers: Achieve Writing Success 25 Words at a Time", your guide to micro blogging for writers.

Freelance editing: finding editing jobs

Do you have editing skills? Editors are in high demand. They're hired by publishers, websites, businesses and agencies. Of course, they're also hired by writers, who want to ensure that their book manuscript is presented in a professional manner. I've had several questions about where to find editing jobs this week.

Check out my article Angela Booth's Writing Blog: Freelance Editing: Find Unadvertised Jobs, in which I gave you a process to follow:

"1. What Specialties Do You Have? Firstly consider your specialties. Publishing houses need specialists when they hire editors. If you've been writing articles for parenting magazines for example, you can consider yourself a specialist in parenting topics. Therefore, approach publishing houses which publish parenting books. Parenting  is an extremely wide field, with many opportunities."

I've recommended Twitter to several editors, who've managed to get jobs very quickly.

Befuddled by Twitter? You'll be amazed at how many writers, editors, agents and buyers of your writing use it

Be where the action is with "Twitter for Writers: Achieve Writing Success 25 Words at a Time", your guide to micro blogging for writers.

Selling Writing Services: Manage Your Reputation Online

Managing the search results for your name helps to manage your reputation online

Want to manage your online reputation effectively? If you're selling your writing services, it's essential that you do so.

Your aim should be that when someone types your name into a search engine, your site, and other references to you, occupy the entire first page of the search results. 

As you can see in the image above, when I type in "Angela Booth" I've managed to occupy the first page of the Google results. Enter your own name into Google, and see what the results are. It's vital that you occupy as much of this real estate as possible.

Managing your reputation starts with your site.

1. Your Website Is You: Add Content, and Promote Your Site

Your primary sales tool is your website. Once your site is online, people can find you via the search engines. You get writing jobs without having to hunt for them.

I've always recommended to writers that rather than using a clever business name, they use their own name for their writing. If you're trying to promote both the business name, and yourself, it gets much too complicated. Unless you have a very good reason not to do so, use your own name as your business name.

So your first step in managing your reputation online is to add content to, and to promote your site. There's no substitute for this. It just has to be done. The more pages you have online, the more opportunities there are for people to find you via the search engines -- and the sooner you can stage an effective land grab for the entire first page of the search results when anyone searches for your name.

2. See What People Are Saying: Create Alerts for Your Name

The second step in managing your reputation online is to discover what people are saying about you.

Google provides an "alerts" system, which is a valuable tool for research. However it's valuable in another way. You can create an alert for your own name so that you'll notified whenever your name is mentioned online.

3. Get Active on the Social Networking Sites

Your activity on the social networking sites provides links back to your primary website and boosts it in the search engines. This means that you'll be found more easily.

These links also help you in your endeavor to grab the first page of the search results when anyone searches for you.

Want to make great money writing? Discover the secrets of high-selling, highly paid writers, for free. Each week, Angela Booth's Fab Freelance Writing Ezine is delivered in easy-to-print PDF format. Join the thousands of other writers who are using the information to change their lives. You'll learn how to write, and how to sell. Angela's been writing for 30 years, and shares her knowledge with you.

Ezine: promote your writing

In the next issue of Fab Freelance Writing Ezine (out tomorrow) we discuss promoting your writing services.

Here's an excerpt from the Editorial:

Don't want to promote your writing? Do it anyway!

Yes, I know. Promoting your writing is a drag, and if you're new to it, it can even be scary. Here's my own guarantee to you: if you persist with promotion, a six-figure income becomes not simply a dream, but a certainty… moreover, sooner or later, promoting will become FUN.

You must promote your writing.

Promoting your writing isn't optional, it's essential if you want to make a decent income. In fact, you'll be able to see your income increase, every month, if you take promotion seriously.

There are many ways you can promote your writing. Keep it simple. Start by creating a website and/ or blog, add article marketing, and send out news releases occasionally.

Every bit of marketing you do builds on everything you've done before. If you're just starting out, this can be depressing, because you're starting from nothing. However, remember that every writer started where you are, and be assured that if you keep at it: writing, and promoting, you'll be amazed at the change in your circumstances. They'll come. One day not too long from now, you'll look around and wonder… "what happened?!" because your life will have changed so much.

If you're not a subscriber, subscribe now and discover how to make promotions easy and fun. Enjoy the issue. :-)

Today's writing tip: create AND promote

For many years, one of my mantras was: create and promote. I wrote about it extensively in my marketing skills for writers book.

Both creation (writing) and promotion (marketing) are essential for a writing career however, since most writers don't have a business background, they somehow feel that if they continue writing, the promotion will take care of itself. Unfortunately, it won't. Marketing is essential.

It's essential for every writer, unless you want to remain a generic writer, who accepts low rates and wants to stay on the lower rungs of a writing career.  

Writer's Digest has an interesting article "How to Build a Marketing Platform" which is essential reading for anyone who's either in the middle of, or who's contemplating a writing career. It covers the topic brilliantly.

Here's the thing: you MUST promote every day, even if you're booked solid for months ahead. If you don't, in a few weeks you'll be looking around wondering where all the people went. 

Sometimes, the constant promotion can feel as if you're the ringmaster (and clown) in a three-ring circus, but that's the way it is. You need to not only make your peace with the necessity of promotion, but get highly creative at it. If you do, you'll thrive. If you don't... you need to get a day job.

Marketing your writing: just do it

I was just thinking about my previous post on marketing, and why it's so hard to convince writers that they should just do it.

Here's the benefit: marketing is a marketable skill.

Once you learn how to market your writing and writing products, you can market anything. Marketing is a valuable skill: it pays better than writing.

There's nothing difficult about marketing.

It's just a matter of planning your campaigns, carrying out each campaign and then tracking what the results are.

Over time your results will improve. Along the way you're learning a valuable new skill. So please don't hesitate to market your writing, or think that it's something that other writers don't have to do -- that somehow, magically, someone else will do it for you. They won't.

Every writer needs to market, so build marketing into your writing day.

Sell your writing: create a marketing campaign

Are you serious about selling your writing? With my writing students, I emphasize the importance of marketing. It's not an optional extra.

Even if you have a Web site and blog, you still need to market them. Marketing is ongoing. It never stops.

To help you to kick off your marketing efforts, here's an easy way to create a marketing campaign.

Let's say you've just started to offer PLR articles from your site. (That's Private Label Rights, if you're new to the terminology.)

Great. You've got your first package of PLR up and ready to go, and now you want eager buyers in their hundreds.

So you map out a campaign, which will take one month. Your campaign will include:

* Two press releases

* 15 articles posted on article directories, as well as to your own site

* three Squidoo lenses, linking back to your sales page

* 30 comments on business blogs linking to your sales page

* five guest posts on blogs, linking back to your sales page

Now you've created the campaign, it's time to create tasks for each and every item in your campaign. Insert each task into your diary program, or paper diary.

Off you go -- put your plain into action.

Track, track, track!

Please track the results of your campaign. I use Clicky to track my sites, but you can use your own site's referrer logs. It doesn't matter how you track, as long as you track.

Remember that the full results of your little campaign won't show up for three months.

I like to take a brief look at a campaign one month after it's complete. This shows me what's working. I might toss out another ten articles if the articles are sending traffic and sales. Or, I might do another couple of guest posts, or whatever.

Three months after your campaign is complete, review the results.

Create marketing campaigns, and make sales

Selling your writing online is EASY. Really. :-) All you need to do is map out a plan of action, and stick to it. Consistency and persistence are everything. No one knows who you are, or what you do, until you tell them. MARKETING is how you tell them.

The difference between a writer who's making a great income and a writer who's struggling is marketing. Talent has nothing to do with it.

If you can get your head around marketing, you'll have a great writing career.

A final word on marketing campaigns

There is no "right" way to market. You do what works FOR YOU. To find out what works, you have to try lots of stuff. And you just wanted to "be a writer", didn't you. :-) Please realize that no matter what you write, marketing is an essential part of it.

Marketing your writing gets easier (and much more fun) when you create campaigns, and put them into action.

Subscribe to Angela Booth's fabulous free weekly ezine for freelance writers: get a free report just for subscribing. Even if you're a new writer, you can freelance your way to a fantastic writing career.

Join the thousands of freelance writers who are making great money freelance writing, using Fab Freelance Writing Ezine as their guide.

Writing for Money: Free Ways to Advertise Your Services

Want to make money selling your writing services online? You'll need to advertise to attract clients. However when you're just starting out, paid  advertising can be expensive. Let's look at some free ways to advertise and make money writing.

1. Add Content to Your Website/ Blog Every Day

Here's a secret: the search engines will send you all the traffic and all the clients you need. When somebody runs a search for writing services, your website or blog should be returned in the search query results.

You ensure that you get all the search engine traffic you want when you add content to your website and blog every day, simply because the search engines love fresh content.

2. Use the Free Online Classifieds Sites

There are hundreds of free online classified sites online. The secret to success with them is to create lots of ads. Be careful however. The major sites are tired of spam. This means that each of your ads will have to be different, and will have to be legitimate.

3. Post on Forums -- but Not Writing Forums

Interacting on webmaster and marketing forums online will get you writing jobs, because these people hire writers. Posting on forums is a free way to advertise your services, when you put a link to your website in your signature file.

Just add "Writer for Hire" and add a link to your website.

Here's a tip: don't bother posting on writing forums, because other writers, while lovely people and great fun, can't hire you.

4. Make Thoughtful, Considered Comments on Blogs

When you comment on a blog, you're offered the opportunity to add a link to your website. Don't abuse this opportunity. If you make offhand comments whose only purpose is to act as a link to your blog, your comments will be deleted.

Your aim when commenting on blogs is to join the conversation, and also to get known as a writer. Therefore, make your comments useful. Never comment just for the sake of a cheap link.

5. Submit Articles to Article Directories

Articles are great free advertising for your site. The benefit of articles as a form of advertising is that articles stay online for many years. 

I'm still receiving traffic from articles I wrote way back in 2000, for example. Considering that I probably spent around half an hour writing each  article, those articles have been sending me traffic for eight years. That's an amazing return on investment.

Discover the easiest way to advertise.

Sell Your Writing Services - 5 Tips for Easy Promotion and Sales

Want to sell your writing services online? You can. It's all a matter of promotion - you need to promote consistently so that you get clients.

You have incredible opportunities for promotion online, so please don't take them for granted.

You can get your name out to millions of people, often for free. You can compete with companies and individuals who have deep pockets, and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising, with just a small amount of effort every day.

Read the article.

Your Web presence as a writer: build your writing income in 2008

Do you have a Web site? I hope you answered "Yes!", and I hope you're putting time each day into getting known online: into building your Web presence as a writer.

I've devoted this week's issue of Fab Freelance Writing Ezine to building your presence. Here's an excerpt from the Editorial:

Here we are at the start of 2008, and looking around the online world, a lot has changed for writers. The most important change  for writers is that the move to the online world has accelerated.

The media world is much more Web-based: magazines and newspapers are online with a vengeance, and they're putting more resources into their online presence. Advertising is moving online, so where the advertisers go, the media follows.

New media networks are growing and are hiring more writers.

So where do you fit into all this? I hope you've created your writers' Web site and blog, and that you're building your presence online. 

The biggest benefit for writers of an online presence is that your target markets (the people to whom you want to sell your work) are already looking for you online. This means that they come to you – you don't have to go hunting for writing gigs. If you spend less time hunting, you get to spend more time writing, and your income grows.

Enjoy this week's article: "Creating a Presence Online: Build a Platform, Get Readers, Make Sales", and put the information to good use.

This issue is out on Wednesday. Subscribe, it's free.

Become A Marketing Dynamo - It's The Secret To A GREAT Writing Career

The latest issue of Fab Freelance Writing Ezine is online - "Become A Marketing Dynamo - It's The Secret To A GREAT Writing Career". The issue will be online for one week only, so read it while it's available - issues are no longer archived.

Not a subscriber? Subscribe here.

Here's an excerpt from the editorial:

Marketing Is The Only REAL Secret To A Fantastic Freelance Income

I correspond with writers who aren't selling, or who are making very little money, every day. I could compress my advice into a single word: "Market". Marketing skills are the only difference between a writer who's not selling, or is selling to tiny markets which pay in tiny amounts, and writers who are making a great income, and whose income goes up every month.

Great writers are great marketers of their writing. They have to be. Many writing venues are crowded. With some 150,000 books published in English each year, and magazine markets struggling as the Internet captures more advertising dollars, marketing your writing needs to be something that you do every day, as a matter of course.

This week's article lets you in on some of the secrets of using marketing and developing a highly lucrative writing career. Writing well is a skill that few people have, so you deserve to be well-compensated for the time you invest in learning how to write. Marketing ensures that as you become known, you can charge more for your work.

I should add - it's much more fun to be well paid than to be struggling. And there's no excuse for struggling in these boom times for writers. So if you're serious about wanting a six-figure income, and the security for your family that a high income brings, look to marketing.

My ebook "You CAN Sell Your Writing Now: Marketing Skills For Writers" teaches you essential marketing skills.

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