Marketing

After a successful four-city tour, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs returned for three-city encore tour. The Dallas Museum of Art was one of those stops. I received an email from my cousins in Austins who planned to come to town for the exhibition. We set it up, reserved the tickets and had a memorable experience. (Yes, I remember my sons complaining. This cropped photo had my family, but only my daughter and husband cooperated.)

It had been over eight years since I last visited the museum for the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition. When I finally visited Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth for the first time, it took a traveling exhibit to get me there.

Notice a pattern here? I visited the museums when there was fresh, temporary and interesting content.

Like my never visiting a museum for its static exhibits, how often do you visit a company’s static website? What connects you with a company? Fresh, informative content.

Content Marketing

I found this old post on undervaluing content. In reading it, I think attitudes toward content have finally changed and it has a name: content marketing. Truth is, content marketing has been around for a long time, it just didn’t have a fancy name.

Content marketing involves creating content to engage customers and prospects, to earn their trust you and to get them to take action. You have to keep it coming or else customers forget about your company.

Blogging. That’s content marketing. Emails. Yep. Webinars. That, too. Tweets, Facebook updates and LinkedIn statuses. Yep, yep, yep. It includes newsletters, white papers, special reports, articles, podcasts and videos.

And the cool thing is that any of the content available online attracts search engines. Customers seek information. They need answers. Those answers can be found in content.

Marketing in Disguise

You may be thrown by the use of “marketing.” Content marketing isn’t focused on promoting a company’s products and services. If you constantly sell to them, they won’t come back for more. Content needs to offer value, otherwise how can you earn prospects’ trust? We also buy from people we like. Content helps customers get to know you. As you keep delivering useful content, customers drop another objection that blocks the sale.

Someone asked me if I knew of any way to automate original content. That’s one thing technology can’t do. Even if it could, would it share stories? Make it interesting? Add humor? Content automation sounds like dry content that will tell you everything about a topic without personality.

You don’t need to create content from scratch every time. Turn the contents of your white paper into a video, a blog post, a LinkedIn status update. I bet you can find a great sentence in there that would make a nice tweet.

Companies have it easier today. Instead of trying to reel people in to their websites, they go where they are in social media.

What do you rely on for content marketing? How do you connect with customers and prospects?

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Image from sxc.hu user buzzybee

Guest post by Lior Levin. Reference this post for the what and why have a platform.

In business and in life, what you say only means something to those who hear it. You can shout all you want, but if no one is listening, then what you say doesn’t matter much. A platform is the audience you create for yourself — the “who” that you develop around you. They not only hear what you have to say, but also they care deeply about it.

Just like many other processes, the building of a platform involves steps. Following the steps ensures that you don’t skip anything, and prepares you for bigger and more important steps that require the ones that come before.

Step 1: Have Something to Say

Too often, people jump online, start blogging or try to develop a following before they’ve stopped to consider why they are there and what they have to say. People shy away from the difficult yet crucial questions:

• “What am I trying to say?”
• “Why should anyone bother listening to me?”

Until you can answer both questions with confidence and clarity, you shouldn’t aggressively attempt to build your platform. In all likelihood, you wouldn’t go to a conference without knowing the topics, would you? Why, then, should you invite people to “follow you on Twitter” without knowing the reason? Give people a reason to be part of your crowd.

Step 2: Know Who Should Listen to You

The second biggest thing people forget to do before growing a following is figuring out their ideal audience. It used to be that everyone needed to have a “target” audience in mind, but that’s no longer good enough. You need to really know your audience — not just target a specific group of people based on a couple of characteristics. The whole benefit of sitting down and determining an audience profile is to find out who is ideal for you.

Here are great questions to get you started:

1. Who would care about what you have to say?
2. How do you know that?

Answer those questions, and you will hold the key to reaching your audience with little effort and incredible results.

Step 3: Figure Out Where to Find Them

Where is your ideal audience? Are they hanging out on Twitter, joining a Twitter chat? Are they on LinkedIn, participating in group discussions? Are they on Facebook, posting comments on images and videos?

Finding out where your platform lives, breathes and desires to be is the next big step in developing it. Think of it like pulling out a map before going on a road trip. Sure, you could do without the map, and maybe you would eventually get to where you are going. However, with a map in hand, you can take the shortest route, or perhaps the most scenic, or the one with the most rest stops along the way. Whatever route you take to reach your ideal audience to grow them into a following, you need to know where to find them.

Once you figure that out, go find them! Consider everything: blogs, social media profiles, forums and even Meetup and Yahoo groups. You don’t need to be in all places at all times. What’s most important is what you do when you get there. (See Step 4.)

Step 4: Start Communicating 

If only there were a secret recipe for the best way to interact with your platform. Wouldn’t it be great if you could rely on daily blogging, ten to twenty tweets per day, a Youtube video and three Facebook status updates every morning knowing that that would make your audience go crazy for you?

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. But there is a golden rule: whatever communication works for your audience, you need to maintain it. Once you have established a way of engaging your audience — speaking, responding, reaching out, involving, polling, etc. — keep at it! Remember that for whatever reason, online activity has a short memory life span. People don’t remember things for very long, and there are a lot of messages going out every day. To remain top of mind, you need to be around a lot. Commit to having an active relationship with the platform that you build.

When broken down into steps, building a platform sounds simple, and it really is. Simple doesn’t mean easy, though. It takes work to follow the steps and ensure that the platform you build is relevant, worthwhile and highly effective for you. It’s worth it.

Have you built a platform? How did you go about it? Or why haven’t you built one? Should everyone have a platform? Why or why not?

About Lior Levin. This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing consultant for the University of Tel Aviv in the political communication masters programs. Lior also consults for a company that provides business and individuals with a to-do list tool.

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Image from sxc.hu user krissyOoO

How do you get most of your business? For me, it’s referrals. For fellow freelance writer Thursday Bram, it’s her address book. This guest post from Thursday shows how to make connections and make them work for your freelancing business. 

As a freelancer, my business wouldn’t bring me a lot of money if I had to sell it — except for my address book. It’s the main asset I have to work with. I have a computer, some on-going client accounts and not much else that an appraiser would even bother to put a price tag on.

That’s perfectly fine with me. Business is booming, because of that address book. I do minimal marketing and yet I’m turning away work almost constantly. That’s because the right connections really are incredibly valuable.

Connections Are the Most Important Asset You Can Build

As a freelancer, word of mouth has to be one of the best marketing methods available to you. There’s no direct cost that you have to budget for, like advertising and the like. Clients prefer to work with freelancers and contractors that come with a referral, rather than someone they find through an online search or the like. All of that adds up to create a situation in which it simply pays off for you to invest time and effort into building up the right connections to bring you word of mouth business.

Think about how many novice freelancers are encouraged to start out by asking their friends and family for connections to people who might need work. Relying on your connections is not something you only do in the first days that you are looking for freelance work, however. It’s easy to let meeting new people and maintaining your relationships by the wayside when you have a full slate of work. It’s the same issue that goes along with marketing for any freelancer — unless you put out special effort, you only go looking for work when you don’t actually have any.

But if you’re willing to invest time in building up your address book, you can smooth out some of those hills and valleys.

Going Out of Your Way to Build More Connections

For some freelancers, networking is the hardest task we can set ourselves. It’s not uncommon for a freelancer to choose to work for herself so that she wouldn’t have to deal so much with the in-office networking necessary to get ahead as an employee. Unfortunately, the reality is that most of us freelancers wind up talking to people more when we’re running our own businesses than we ever did before.

You have to put yourself in the position to make more connections — and they need to be the right connections. Of course, you can make friends with anyone and there will be a chance that they’ll pass your name along to someone who needs a freelancer. But if you have a good idea of who your perfect client is, you can figure out where you can connect with the people who match that profile. That way, you can focus your energy on connecting with people who are actually likely to hire you.

Pick the conferences and events your prospective clients are going to be at, and make sure that you can attend. Even if it isn’t an event that you’d normally be interested in, the people who will be there are more important than the event itself.

New Connections and Old: You Need Both

While you’re going to have to go out and actually meet some people in order to have any business relationships you can build on, a truly valuable address book is a lot more than just some place to put the business cards you collect at networking events.

I make a point of following up with new connections within a month of meeting them. It helps if you make sure that during your conversation you discuss something that makes the follow up easy — like promising to forward an article you read — but even if you’re only sending out an email to touch base, you’re still doing more than most of the people that were at any given event. It’s my experience that even at an event that was specifically intended to help people network and build their businesses, well under 10 percent of people ever follow up after the event.

Every day, I send out at least three emails to people I already know. I make an effort to meet up with people for coffee or lunch as often as possible, even if the person I’m meeting isn’t going to hire me. I put as much effort into maintaining my relationships (or even making them more valuable) as I do into meeting new people.

That’s what makes my address book more than a list of names: it’s a list of people who like and know me, and know that I’m a good choice for their freelance projects.

Thursday Bram has been freelancing for more than eight years — the last four full-time. She’s the co-founder of EnhancedFreelance.com, a membership site for freelancers ready to up their game.

How do you find most of your clients? What other ways do you find clients?

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OK, so you can barely see us... but gotta have the traditional photo with Big Tex

The State Fair of Texas organizers have announced the winner of Big Tex Choice Awards — aka fried food wars. (Yes, the one with fried bubble gum, fried Coke, fried butter, etc.) It’s not a fried food contest, but rather a new and unique food competition for the fair’s concessionaires. One of the finalists is the Walking Taco, not a fried food item. However, that’s the only one I can recall in the history of the awards.

The Fried Food Nugget

Fair organizers knew that food was one of the top reasons fairgoers came to the fair. According to the State Fair website, Fletcher Corny Dogs debuted at the State Fair of Texas. “1942: Neil and Carl Fletcher come up with a new fast food product – corny dogs – which they offer to the public for the first time during the summer midway operation.”

In 2005, the fair organizers came up with a brilliant marketing idea to take its food theme to another level when it started the Big Tex Choice Awards. Thus, the fried food games was born. Eventually, the organizers added the slogan of “Fried Food Capital of Texas” leading people to associate the fair with fried food. The website even includes a map showing the location of the concessions for each fried food finalist and winner. (Some past food winners like fried cookie dough are available at the fair.)

No focus on the giant Ferris wheel, auto show, animals, shows or other attractions. It’s all about the fried food. The smart marketers found something that intrigued people and exploited it. Fried food became the magic nugget.

Using Nuggets to Write Stories

I write about many brands and models of cars for one client. At last count, I’ve written over 70. How many ways can you describe how fast a car goes from 0 to 60? Besides, when will you ever need to hit 60 mph in an instant? (I’d like to think most of you wouldn’t have a need to run away from cops.) In reality, this kind of info grips some buyers.

Nonetheless, I need more than just the magic number for hitting 60. The trick to writing a story about a car comes in finding the little nugget and creating a story around it. I study the car’s marketing materials ignoring luxury, comfort, sporty, safety references. Eventually, I find one word or phrase that stands out and capitalize on it.

This works great for coming up with articles and blog posts. You can look at past articles and find an idea or nugget that deserves its own article. How many articles have you seen touting the benefits of Twitter? Yet, they continue to come out daily with a different focus. Just look at the previous posts on Twitter. (8 Steps to Start Strong in Twitter and 5 Clues Affecting Twitter Follow back.)

Have you made the most out of a little nugget? How did you turn the nugget into a pot of gold?

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As my family prepared to move in our first home, like most people — we had lots to do in the house. To do it all would mean taking shortcuts and buying low-priced items. The result would be less than flattering. The job called for prioritizing to ensure we bought decent quality items. First up: windows. We needed blinds, lots of blinds or else I would go blind with the too many windows we had. (Seriously, the eyes are sensitive to sunlight.)

Image from sxc.hu user ColinBroug

Next, bedroom furniture. Previously, we lived in military housing and chose to focus on the downstairs rooms rather than upstairs including our bedroom. The rest we added when we could or when we saw something that worked.

Good thing we didn’t do it all. It turned out those first few items we bought were my least favorites. The toddler-abused blinds need replacing. The bedroom furniture … I love its function, but not its color. I thought the wood would be a white wash wood. Instead, it was painted a bothersome faint white. We could paint it, but the colors wouldn’t work well in the dark-colored bedroom. Natural wood color works best.

This situation can happen when work slows down and it’s time to bring in new business. It’s tempting to take on every opportunity that comes along. It’s like a reverse of firing bad clients except you’re proactive. Instead of finding yourself working with a less than ideal client, feeling miserable and having to figure out how to get out of it — you skip all that.

I happened to be working on finding another client to serve when several opportunities came in. For one of them, warning signs alerted me to do serious due diligence. In the other, the prospect asked if I could write articles on X, Y, Z topics. I turned it down because I know those topics would require a lot of energy and most of it not good. I’d rather spend the energy looking for a client I can better serve doing work I enjoy.

Turning Down Opportunities

These signs give you the clues you need that a potential assignment or client may not work for you. Be careful when it comes to an assignment that scares you because you’re afraid to fail, not because something is iffy about the client. It may be an opportunity to grow.

• Boring. Think about your least favorite industry. Do you want to spend hours living and breathing that industry? When you work on things you despise, it takes longer and drains more out of you.
• Suspicious. You find little information about the company or person contacting you. The person may use a common email address, provides terse responses to your questions and reveal little else.
• Budgeted. I saved time for a prospect whose message implied she was focused on price. I gently responded if she was looking for a low-priced writer that I was not a fit for her.  I don’t turn down all budgeted assignments. For example, I liked an owner and his business, so I came up with a way to quote a lower price that worked for both of us.

Digging Deeper

Sometimes the first or second contact isn’t enough to decide yea or nay. This is the time to dig deeper. Someone contacted me about writing a bunch of blog posts. First warning sign. The email address came from a yahoo.com address. Second warning sign. The “From” address only had a first name, but she signed her last name in the first message. Half a warning sign.

I searched her name, email address and company name (I had to ask for the company name as she didn’t mention it in the first email — another sign) and found nothing. At this point, I decided this wouldn’t work out. Rather than turning it down, I replied with more questions. Never heard back. Hmm …

When you’re not sure about an assignment, these actions help:

• Research. Look up the client, company, email address and whatever info you have. Don’t stop with the client’s website. Go to social networks like Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere.
• Ask. It feels awkward to ask some of the questions you need to ask, but how will you feel if you take the job and hate it? Request links to related sites. For example, I received an assignment to write for sites on generic topics. Ask for links to those sites.
• Probe. Make sure you get a full picture of the assignment. At first glance, one assignment sounds like writing X articles. Read between the lines, and it could easily be more than double the work because of other tasks involved.
• Check. Your network may know about the person or company. If you find out who has hired your prospect, contact them.
• Follow up. Don’t feel pressured to stop asking questions after the first contact. Ask more questions especially if the answers reveal little new info. (This could be a warning sign, or simply someone who is rushed and wants to reply quickly.)

What types of assignments or clients have you turned down? What do you watch for when a prospect contacts you?

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I’ve spent too much time on social networks this morning that I’d better keep this short and get stuff done to enjoy the long weekend. Besides, lots of great reads this week. With a longer weekend for most of us, I figure you wouldn’t mind the extra reading. Worthy stuff. Have a whiz bang fourth!

4th of July in 2007

Brain food…

• 30 Websites to Find Free Vector Graphics: I currently manage two PTA and one other nonprofit organization’s websites. This should come in handy. Figure y’all could use it, too. [Link: Deborah Edwards-Onoro]
• Are Case Studies Helping or Hindering You: People also misunderstand what makes a white paper. Yes, it should mention the company, but not until the ending.
• 50 Powerful Time-Savers for Web Designers: Great resource.
• Google Web Fonts: Nice free fonts with no Comic Sans look alike. Whew. [Link: theparallaxview]
• How to sell your services for a higher price: Motivating read.
• 300+ Resources to Help You Become a WordPress Expert: Even I’m overwhelmed.
• What Is The Point Of Writing A Book If You Have No Online Presence? A keeper for writers. Not just for authors.

For fun because we’re allowed…

• 10 Words of Summer: Last week, I asked what you think of when it comes to summer. Vacation is the only one on this list that I’d think of.
• Pacman Tube Map: Nom nom.
• 10 Coolest Items Inspired by Alice in Wonderland: Surreal, of course.
• Archiving People’s Woes: 10 Cheerful Websites. Instant upper without the Rx. Some new. Some familiar. Some not safe for work. [Link: Gina Stark]
• 10 Amazing Geek Bars and Restaurants: Love Miracle of Science’s menu.
• 20 Animal Group Names You Probably Never Heard Of: What kind of business do flies have? Corps of giraffes? They’re serving our country? [Link: Erika Napoletano] More? OK. Fun with Words: Collective Nouns. [Link: Samuel Hawk]
• Alice in Wonderland Cupcakes: Off with her … frosting?
• 12 Coolest Typography-Themed Furniture: I do love good a font. The drawers are the only useful item, but the font is plain.
• 16 Online Gamers Unmasked: What they Really Look Like. I don’t remember the last time I created a game alter ego other than the one on the Wii, and it’s awful. These rock.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Meryl Evans

When I think summer and song … first thing that comes to mind is “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess. I don’t have many favorite slow moving songs, but that one sounds beautiful and has lovely words. Witness…

Summertime,
And the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’
And the cotton is high

Your daddy’s rich
And your mamma’s good lookin’
So hush little baby
Don’t you cry

Photo from flickr user itsjustkate

It flows and captivates. Why don’t I like more slow songs? I think part of it is because they’re harder to hear and follow. For example, I love “Sunday” from Sunday in the Park with George, but I can only hear the latter half of the song. I saw the song in its entirety on TV with captions and liked it. Some of the lyrics:

Sunday, by the blue purple yellow red water
on the green purple yellow red grass
Let us pass through our perfect park
pausing on a Sunday

By the cool blue triangular water
on the soft green elliptical grass
as we pass through arrangements of shadow
toward the verticals of trees
Forever . . .

Beautiful way to describe the famous painting by Georges Seurat.

As for other things that come to mind with “summer,” it’s all the usual stuff: swimming, 4th of July, vacations (rare), the smell of suntan lotion, camp.

Over to you: What do you think of when it comes to summer? Can be songs, activities, whatever.

Brain food…

• Old School Book Marketing Techniques for Digital Age: Book business card — brilliant.
• How to Tell If Your Website Sucks: How timely. I just finished judging 100+ sites to write an annual top websites article. Many of websites got knocked out because they had the problems covered in this infographic. People will argue that popup windows can work — depends on popup.
• How To Respond To The “Pick My Brain” Question: Worth memorizing. [Link: John Haydon]
• So You’re Having a Bad Day: That was me on Monday, but nothing serious. Just an off day. It happens. I got through it. It’ll happen again. And I’ll get through it even though it won’t feel like it when I’m in the moment.
• The 50 Best Short Stories of All Time: Impressive list. I haven’t read short stories since college, and yet this list captures the ones I remember. Only one missing is Edgard Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. That freaked me, but I’ll take that over The Telltale Heart. I also did my 11th grade thesis on James Thurber. Boy, I wish I saved it.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• The 30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults in History: Faulkner, Emerson and Capote insult Twain, Austen and Kerouac.
• Zork: Free download for your PC or Mac. Wow. I played this game on my first computer, an Apple ][+. What do ya mean, "What the hey is Zork?"
• America According to Twitter: Apparently, I live in Metroplex. Supposedly, I was born and bred in Funkytown. Column Five also has many other infographics. [Link: Bitrebels]
• Top 10 Manliest Quotes: We shall have our fight … [fill in the blank]. [Link: Esther Schindler]
• 10 Funny and Fabulous Flow Charts: Like Mental Floss always makes me laugh. Beware: these charts can waste hours of your life. [Link: Michelle Mangen]

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Meryl Evans

I was born and bred in Fort Worth. I’ve lived in the Dallas / Fort Worth area for my entire life except for the six years I lived in Washington, DC. So all my favorite teams are the ones from here including the Texas Rangers, Dallas Cowboys, Dallas Stars and the Dallas Mavericks. I stuck with all of ‘em through great years and forgettable years. When folks kept saying the Mavs were a joke and never contenders, I reminded them of the Mavs’ good years in the ’80s with Mark Aguirre, Rolando Blackman, Roy Tarpley and Brad Davis.

Thanks to Donald Carter for bringing the team to Dallas. Thanks to Mark Cuban for turning them into champions in a short 11 years. The Mavs almost did it in 2006, you know?

Meryl's Dad in USAF Uniform

Dads. Happy Father’s Day to all the involved dads out there who play catch with the kids, take them to school, help them with homework and be there for them. I’m lucky to be married to one of those dads. My dad (in loving memory) was one, too. We played catch many times, he took me to lots of Texas Ranger games, he embarrassed me on my way to school by waving at me while taking his morning walk and he was always there for me.

Best advice for the week: How to deal with criticism in one single step: “Don’t care. You’re not going to please everybody.” Even the nicest people have a few non-fans. You can produce the most beautiful work product and your boss, editor, client loves it. Someone, somewhere out there will hate it.

Brain food…

• How to Create a 5 Step Facebook Marketing Strategy for Your Blog: This one is doable for just about everyone.
• The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Taking a Vacation: Not just for entrepreneurs… Americans, too. My husband had been doing a lot of research on human resources stuff for his international company and Americans are sorely behind other countries in benefits and other areas. I challenged him by asking questions like “Maybe we have a better salary? Maybe we have a lower cost of living?” He had solid answers for all of them.
• 10 Reasons I Don’t Answer Your Email: I reply to most emails. The ones that don’t get a reply often fall into one of these 10.
• 3 Steps You Can Take to Reduce the Firefox 4 Memory Leak: Memory has been a Firefox problem for years. I had two tabs open and Firefox managed to hold on to 1,000,000K of memory one day last week! Bad, foxy, bad.
• World’s Worst Freelance Advice: Write what you know… seriously. If I followed that advice, I wouldn’t write about cars, Billiards or buffaloes.
• Book Marketing Q&A: Q&A worth listening to or reading.

For fun because we’re allowed…

• 10 Coolest (and 5 Worst) Father’s Day Gifts: My husband would love that Corvette Wall Shelf.
• 8 Weirdest Dog Breeds Ever: Some of these look familiar as they’ve appeared in movies and TV shows.
• Praha Opening: Choreography in a Skydive Arena. Very cool. Yes, watch to the smooth ending.
• 12 Funny Signs Found at the Beach: Some not safe for work.
• 15 Coolest Pictures Taken at the Right Time: I have one of those (not on Oddee, mind you). I captured a lightning bolt by the Washington Monument. I’m not a good photographer, but am proud of the picture that I have it on the wall in my office.
• Neon Movie Signs: Wow.

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I went to bed late a couple of times this week because of The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. Great series — so far. I’m just getting to the meat of the second book (Catching Fire). I knew the games and themes in the series resembled the The Running Man, but couldn’t imagine why it was a best seller. “The Running Man” was a good movie, but I didn’t love it and post-apocalypse themed stories tend to be depressing. After finishing the first and digging into the second, I got my answer.

But I don’t think everyone would love it especially my mom. I’m curious to know what she’d think if she reads “The Hunger Games.”

Anyway, I accidentally learned the result of “The Hunger Games” when I was reading the synopsis of “Catching Fire” on Amazon’s page. (I looked at it to see if I wanted to read the series.) Despite knowing the result, the book gripped me to the end. Some of us may read the synopsis for an entire series to see if we want to read it or not. You can bet I’m not reading the synopsis for the final book, Mockingjay.

Thinking about this, I checked out the synopsis for “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” series. I’m at a disadvantage because I’ve read the whole series. After reading all three summaries, I believe they don’t contain spoilers. I tried to do the same with Harry Potter, but again I’ve read them all and may not be the best person to judge.

The synopsis from “The Hunger Games” also gives away a couple of things. However, these happen near the beginning of the book and not knowing these things beforehand adds to the surprise. Then it dawned on me to “Look inside” for the official blurb on the book’s jacket. The blurb revealed little compared to the “Editorial reviews” that I often refer to for the summary. I never had a problem with reading these until this happened.

The editorial reviews read like a summary not a review. A review gives an opinion. The two summaries only have one line giving an opinion and they reveal nothing about the plot. Did the rest of the summary need to reveal so much?

Amazon lists editorial reviews before any other content and doesn’t display the blurb anywhere on the page. The customer reviews appear further down the page. All this time, I saw them as summaries and rely on them to give me an idea of what the book is about without any spoilers. Not every book has a preview aka “Look inside,” so we have to rely on something to help us decide to read or not to read.

I checked Barnes and Noble’s summary on its website. It was almost identical to the blurb on the book jacket. Same for Borders’ website except it included an extra paragraph right before the blurb. I like Borders’ the best of the three.

So why does Amazon post editorial reviews instead? What do you think? Should Amazon post the blurb in place of editorial reviews and move the editorial reviews elsewhere? Have you ever read a blurb that contained too much info?

Writer confidence comes with experience. Even so, many of us — me, included — let things get the best of us and we lose confidence. “Oh, I’ve been lucky to make it this far.” Or we get scared and fear someone will open the curtain and discover no wizard back there.

Photo from sxc.hu user aiyaz

The writing profession is a tricky one. We don’t learn how to cut, repair and sew bodies in grade school. We do learn how to read and write. We don’t learn the law inside out so we can quote cases to defend our client in grade school. We do essays and theses. (I did one on James Thurber.) It’s easy for us to fall in the trap thinking, “What makes me a writer when everyone has to write papers in school?”

What makes you a worthy writer?

You treat it like a business. Guess what? Writers are in a business. Grade school doesn’t require you to take finance or learn people management and marketing skills. The closest required class is economics, which runs for only one semester with government taking up the other semester. (This is a Texas education requirement that was around when I was in high school and continues today.) Much of what I know to run my business didn’t come from grade school. Some of my management and people skills comes from college and graduate school. I also picked up some from past jobs and reading.

Treating writing like a business involves marketing, planning, accounting, management. I don’t simply write article after article, post after post, tweet after tweet. I also do problem solving, project management, research and content strategy.

You don’t do the mill thing. Many writers write for pennies and keep doing it even after producing a bunch of lousy articles filled with keywords and little substance. Confessions of an Ex-mill Writer is a must read. It shows how one person got her start by writing for a mill and it didn’t help her writing career. She had to cut it off and start over. Mills are not a stepping stone to a writing career.

You don’t make “no time” excuses. Many say they want to write and never do it. Many folks say they don’t have time to do that novel, memoir or short story. That excuse is no different from the “I don’t have time to exercise” excuse. Believe me, I’m busy that I gave up some activities because I needed to make time for exercise. So writers who have done it and got paid for it — you’re ahead of the majority!

I started my writing business on the side to my corporate job. With gentle nurturing and without aggressive marketing, the writing business grew. Early on, I had no plans to make it a full-time career. I fell in love with the work and pushed harder in the couple of years before I retired from the corporate world for the writing business.

Successful people occasionally question their worth no matter how long they’ve worked at their careers. That’s being human. That’s our overstimulated or under simulated brain taking over. Just don’t let it stop you from moving forward. (At least, not for too long.)

What do you do to show you’re a worthy writer?

Lori Widmer’s post on Writers Worth Week inspired this post.

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