RECONSIDER OUTSOURCING IF YOU'RE A SERVICE BUSINESS

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/44313045@N08/6290270129/

As a service business owner, especially a solo, micro, or small service business owner, you are busy. Swamped. You barely have enough time to perform your service, let alone do your own clerical tasks and marketing. So you hire someone to do it for you. Outsourcing work that drains you or is a weakness for you is a great idea in almost every aspect of your business, except for at least one: writing your social media posts.

There are so many different ways for small service businesses to get involved in social media, it can be overwhelming. You may find yourself thinking that there is no way on this Earth you could possibly have enough time to do all of this social media marketing adequately. And you'd be right. So don't. Don't try to be active on every social media platform. Instead, pick a few on which to focus. If you're totally new to social media for your business, pick one to start with, get really good at it, and then add another outlet.

You may be tempted to outsource your social media marketing; although it might be a good idea to get some help with your planning and strategizing for social media, I believe it is not a good idea to outsource the actual posting or writing. If you are a service business, your business is essentially all you. To attract, gain, and keep clients, you need to build a relationship with them through trust and mutual connections. To do this, you need to be genuine and authentic; i.e. you need to be yourself. If someone else is posting on your social media outlets for you, you are not being yourself, so any trust or connection you build will be false. Besides, how embarrassing would it be to have someone comment on something you posted when they see you in person, but you have no idea what they're talking about?

Outsource your taxes, your bookkeeping, your office cleaning, and even your website building, but try to avoid outsourcing writing your social media posts. It's better to be small and authentic in social media than to be prolific but fake.

Happy Socializing!
-The Wordsy Woman

HOW I WRITE - SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS (Updated)

I originally posted this over a year ago in March, 2013. Since I'm currently enrolled  in a social media marketing class (hello #6M215 on Twitter) and because the Internet world is always changing, I thought I'd revisit this post to see if I've changed (note: new parts are in bold).

As someone who has always been much more comfortable with the written than the spoken word, I love social media. And email is one of the best inventions of my time (the other being MP3). The social media world in the realm of marketing is exciting because it is ever-evolving with nearly limitless opportunities to create new ways to use it. At this time, I use Good Reads, Twitter, Pinterest, Linked In, Instagram and Facebook. Just like when writing anything, when deciding what to post on these various outlets, I consider my audience. Regardless of which outlet I'm working in, however, my goal is always the same: to provide value through information, entertainment, or insight. Here is a breakdown of how I approach each:

Good Reads:

The audience, of course, for Good Reads is readers. I have an author account so I can link my blog, provide free giveaways, and track my reviews. But Good Reads users don't want to see only my books, so I make sure to periodically update my reading list, rate books I've read, and find new books to add to my "to read" shelf. This allows my Good Reads friends and others to get to know me as a reader and book lover.

Twitter:

Most of the people I follow and who follow me on Twitter are also writers or people in the publishing industry. Therefore, they are not going to be impressed with anything "instructional" I might post. So I try to limit my tweets to insights, thoughts, and feelings about the writing life, including things going well, challenges, and what I'm doing in my writing life like holding a book signing.

I now have two Twitter personas: my Wordsy Woman persona and my Literary Author persona. My goal with posting on Twitter for Wordsy Woman is essentially the same but with more of a slant toward business and marketing issues. For @AuthorJodieT, I'm connecting more with other poets, novelists, and those in the publishing industry, trying to attract readers. My posts, then, are related to books and what it is like being a poetry and fiction author.

Pinterest:

Pinterest is completely image-based which can be challenging for people working strictly with words. Most of my Pinterest followers are other writers or aspiring writers so I try to pin items that might interest them. Of course, I have my own products but I also have several other boards that writers may find helpful, including writing-related quotes, books about the writing business, reference books, and funny pictures of writing mistakes.

Linked In:

Because Linked In strikes me as more formal, I keep it all business and, frankly, I forget to post updates there. Mostly, it is a place where people can view my resume, peruse my work experience, and see what endorsements I have. I am beginning to use Linked In more by joining a few groups and trying to participate in them more. 

Facebook:

In order to gain "likes" for my Facebook pages beyond my friends, I ran an ad and now have around 350 likes for my Wordsy Woman page. I'm not sure of the characteristics of my following, but I suspect, like with Pinterest, it includes people interested in writing but who may not be as entrenched in the business as in Twitter. Therefore, I can be a bit more instructional. Every Wednesday, I post a writing-related quote and whenever I think of it, I post a link to my blog. I also use it to post insights about the writing life, lessons I've learned, and what I have going on. I have stopped posting the writing-related quote on Facebook as I intend to start putting these on Twitter and/or Instagram. I've also separated my personas with a Wordsy Woman page, a Jodie Toohey Author page, and pages for each of my books: Melody Madson - May It Please the Court?, Other Side of Crazy, Missing Emily: Croatian Life Letters, and Crush and Other Love Poems for Girls. I admit I'm behind on using this platform.

Instagram:

I recently opened an Instagram account, inspired by my social media marketing class. At first, I wasn't sure how to translate my "word" business into visuals, but the class gave me a few ideas. I have only one persona on Instagram: my author persona. I thought the platform would be a better fit for an author of poetry and fiction. I have only a few followers so far, but hope to connect with readers and other writers. Types of posts I've published so far and plan to publish include lines from my and other books over my original photographs, writing quotes and insights over my original photographs, updates on my own work through photographs, and fun writing or book related pictures (I'm thinking of a way to create a "Tale of Two Cities" photo collage). Thanks to the Over app, I don't have to abandon words for Instagram, but can incorporate them.


Social Media is powerful and, like others, I am still learning how to best use it. In addition to adding value, another rule I follow regardless of which social media outlet I'm using is to reciprocate when I can. On Twitter and Pinterest, I follow anyone who follows me unless their interests are not related to writing at all. On Good Reads, I try to add books written by other local authors to my book shelves, and on Linked In, I endorse people who endorse my skills if, in fact, I can attest to their skills. And on Facebook, I "like" the business pages of my friends who like mine. I guess this is the whole "network" part of social networking. Regardless of which sites you use, social media is here to stay and I, personally, am anxious to see what the future holds.

Once thing I've learned in my class and using social media over this past year or so is that it is extremely hard to be consistently active on each one. And knowing I can't afford to outsource the work (and wouldn't want to being a service business), I just have to accept that I can only do so much. I focus on sharing quality content that I hope my followers will find value in, and keep keeping on.

Do you have any insights about or tips for the power of social media? Feel free to share in the comments section.

Happy socializing!
-The Wordsy Woman

USING A CREATIVE WRITING FRAMEWORK TO DRAFT WRITTEN MARKETING MATERIALS

When leading creative writing workshops, I usually show the participants this graphic toward the beginning of class. It depicts my personal view of the creative writing process. This process can be applied to any type of writing, not just poetry, novels, and creative non-fiction. Let's say you have a marketing piece to write but you don't know where to start.

First, do some free writing. Get out a notebook and pen (or computer if that better suits you) and write down everything that pops into your head about what you want to say. Describe the ideal person who will read the piece. Where are they when they read it? What do you want them to think as they read it? Feel? What do you want them to do after they read it? Brainstorm as many ways as you can think of to convey the idea or message. Don't worry about grammar, punctuation, or even if it's written well. Just get everything in your head down on the paper or up on the computer screen.

As you write and re-read what you've written, you will start to formulate ideas. Do some additional free writing focused on these ideas about what form the writing should take (blog post, ad, article, etc.) and more specifically how to say it. As you can see from the diagram, this is a cyclic process. Writing leads to ideas which leads to more writing which leads to more ideas, etc. until you're ready to catapult down the line into the revision phase.

Think of the revision phase as the overall crafting of your piece. Put it in the form on which you've decided. Move things around, fix sentences, add in graphics, etc. You can also picture a cyclic arrow within this phase as you keep revising until it is almost just right. If you're working with a team or have someone you can share it with, go ahead and do it at this phase. You don't want to have them read it at the very end only to hear some great over-arching ideas for change.

Next is the editing phase. This is where you look at the piece on a sentence-by-sentence and word-by-word level to make sure there are no typos or errors. During this phase, you will want to read the piece out loud, at a minimum, or, if you can, have one or several people read it over for you to point out any errors you've missed.

Finally, is sharing. Post the blog. Run the ad. Publish the article, etc. And, like with creative writing, get started free writing for your next piece.

Want to learn another creative writing technique to help you connect with your target market (especially a service-based market)? Then click here to subscribe to my enewsletter and get my free report.

-The Wordsy Woman

CHOOSE YOUR ENDING

This spring, we had a robin foolishly build a nest on top of a dilapidated bird house attached to our back deck, right outside of our sliding glass doors where we let our dog out at least a dozen times a day. Here is the story in pictures:

This first picture was taken just after April 30th. The next day, a third egg was deposited, but, unfortunately, it was swiped by a crow within a few days.









Picture number two was taken on a warm day, where Mildred (or Fred if she is a he) was trying to keep cool.

Cletus'/Maxine's Birthday.








These photos show the baby bird's growth over the next approximately 10 days. The other egg never hatched.

It was so much fun to watch our little miracle of life in our own backyard. Sadly, though, we don't know the story's ending. Two nights later, the baby bird was put to the test: its parents left it home alone. The bird was there the next morning early, but later, it was gone.

We've narrowed it down to 3 possibilities:

1. It flew away and is now living a happy, productive, healthy life.
2. It fell out of the nest and our dog ate it.
3. A crow or hawk took it.

I like to think of the ending in the positive light of number one. We've ruled out number two - if our dog ate it, we think there would've been evidence and we found none. What ending do you prefer? Or do you have another idea?

So, how can I relate this story to saying what you want to say and/or business? Well, it's a stretch. And maybe it's more of a life lesson: even if the story doesn't have the happiest of endings, it's still worth telling.

Happy bird watching!
-The Wordsy Woman

USING CREATIVE WRITING IN MARKETING

As I've studied marketing on my own and while getting my MBA, I've been kind of amazed at how much crossover there is between writing things designed to try to sell a product or service and writing novels and poetry. I've taken many lessons from creative writing and applied them to writing for marketing purposes. Some of them include:

• Using all 5 senses to tell a compelling story
• Saying things succinctly
• Using fewer words for greater impact
• Defining a character (or target reader)
• Creating things with a beginning, a middle, and an end
• Using a leading hook to grab attention
• Increasing pace with short sentences
• Considering your audience or reader

These are just the few I could brainstorm at the moment. I'm sure there are more I haven't remembered - and some I haven't realized yet.

If you want to learn more about one of them - Using Creative Writing Techniques to Connect with Your Target Market - I have a free report and mini workbook available in exchange for signing up for my e-newsletter. Just click here to go my Business Words Enewsletter page and enter your email to subscribe. After that you'll get an email from my newsletter distribution service asking you to confirm your subscription; you'll receive the link to the report within an hour of getting the subscription confirmation email.

If you want to look at past issues or learn more, that information is on the Business Words Enewsletter page, too.

Happy Writing!
-The Wordsy Woman

A MARKETING LESSON FROM "THE WALTONS"

I am known to watch several episodes of The Waltons on Sunday afternoons when the show takes its turn in INSP network's Sunday marathon rotation. I wasn't really old enough to watch it when it aired weekly and I'm not sure I would've been interested had I been. But, now, I enjoy watching and reading about times of long ago and with John Boy being a writer, I can relate to his character.

But the last time I watched, I also got a lesson in marketing. Elizabeth and her friend set up a lemonade stand outside of Godsey's General Store. They offered pink lemonade and regular, yellow lemonade for the same price: 5 cents per glass. But neither sold well.

Then Grandpa Zeb had an idea. He lowered the price of the pink lemonade and deemed it only for women and children. He then added a bit of the "recipe" to the yellow lemonade. He also set about letting people know about the special lemonade for men. Of course, after that, the kids could barely keep up with production; the yellow lemonade drained out almost as fast as they could pour it.

This is a great demonstration of how things need to work together in marketing to make a product successful. It sometimes takes some experimenting and tweaking. In this case, it was the product that needed the most revision. Once that was done and a few people learned about the delicious yellow lemonade, word spread and sales took off.

It's amazing what you can learn (or reinforce what you've already learned) just by watching old time TV on Sunday afternoons...

May all your lemons be made into special-"recipe" spiked lemonade!

-The Wordsy Woman

NEW YORK MEMORIES

A little over a year ago on a snowy Tuesday morning in March, I was getting ready to disembark from an 18-hour bus ride from New York City. And, yes, it was snowy and cold on the trip, and it was a whirl-wind tour ... but I still miss it. There is just something about the "Big Apple." So I thought I'd take this post to share a few photos of the trip and reminisce. If you have any less-than-perfect trips that you, nonetheless, become nostalgic for, please tell me about them in the comments section.

   

Happy Travels!

-The Wordsy Woman