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

MARKETING'S 4 P's AS IT RELATES TO BOOKS

An excerpt from my guest blog post for Midwest Writing Center's Blog:

In marketing, we talk about the 4 P’s: place, price, product, and promotion. This is just a simplified way to plan out how to promote any product, including a book. Place is where you will sell your book, more commonly known in the book-world as distribution. Price is how much you will charge for your book, but also encompasses determining if readers will pay that price. Product involves more than just your book’s title, but also includes, among other things, its genre, length, and ideal reader. Finally, promotion is figuring out how to tell people about your book.

To learn more about how to apply these 4 P’s to your book as well as other marketing tips, please attend my workshop from 10 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. at MWC’s March 22^nd Pen In Hand Mini Writing Conference (Yes, it's tomorrow - but if you're in the Davenport, Iowa, area - you're still welcome!). In this workshop, you will learn how to create a basic marketing plan so you can take focused action to try to get you book into readers’ – and buyers’ – hands. We’ll cover the four P’s (place, price, product, and promotion), the 5th P (people), holding giveaways, using social media, and setting up appearances.

Click here to learn about moreabout Pen In Hand. Call 563-324-1410 or email mwc@midwestwritingcenter.org to register. Or just show up on the 3rd floor of Bucktown at 225 E. 2nd Street in Downtown Davenport, Iowa.

To the 4 Ps!

-The Wordsy Woman

PREPARING TO HELP ANOTHER GROUP SAY WHAT THEY WANT TO SAY

Next week, I embark on a 6-session Beginning Creative Writing workshop series with the Midwest Writing Center. This morning, as I prepared my presentation, I wondered about the people who would courageously embark on the writing journey with me. We have sent information and offered discounts to senior centers and retirement community residents, so I hope there will be some grandparents who will be able to pass on their legacies. But, will they do it through fiction, poetry, or creative non-fiction? I'm anxious to find out.

The goal of the first session on March 12th is just to encourage them and get them writing. We'll talk about getting into a writing routine and making time to write, even making writing appointments with ourselves. I plan a listing exercise so when they do sit down to write, they will never be at a loss for what to write about. We'll end by talking about free writing, doing a timed free write of our own so they can walk away, already, with words in print.

After that will depend on the group dynamics and what they want to write about. Whatever it ends up being, my goal is, at the end of the series when it wraps up in May, they will have at least started to say what they want to say, whatever that may be.

Happy Writing!
-the Wordsy Woman

OLYMPIAD WRITING

I've been watching the Olympics the last couple of weeks. I'm usually not even interested in many of the sports, but I find myself watching anyway as it is something different from HGTV and old sitcom reruns. Also recently, I've been working on my mind - my thoughts, beliefs, self esteem, and confidence. I've always heard that an Olympian's success is as much of a result of his or her mindset as it is physical ability, but it didn't solidify until watching the Olympics.

Though I would never put myself on the same level as an Olympian, certainly not physically, and not even mentally, my process as a writer is not totally different. Part of writing well involves having pre-contest rituals - drinking a cup of coffee, taking a walk, reading through research, or breathing deep. I see the Olympic competitors performing their own pre-competition rituals.

A big part, for me, is confidence. When you write pages and pages to get a few paragraphs of something decent, your confidence can be shaken. When Olympians fall or miss their landings, even though they may have done the same thing successfully hundreds or thousands of times, their confidence can be dented. So it's important to be able to remind myself I've written successfully in the past and one (or more) miss-steps don't mean my writing will never be good again.

Finally, another similarity is simply not thinking about it too much. Before competitions, Olympians jump around in the locker room to stay loose or listen to music in headphones to try to distract themselves from the impending performance. Often, they avoid watching their competitors or seeing the scores. They concentrate only on themselves and what they have to do, not even thinking about the scores or outcome. I try to do this with my writing as well. Although I read others' work for inspiration and instruction, I certainly don't copy them and I try not to compare the quality of my writing with theirs. I simply attempt to do the best job I can do, turn it in, and hope for the best.

And maybe, just maybe, one day I'll get that writing gold!

Happy Writing - And May All of Your Words be Golden...
The Wordsy Woman

STRATEGIC FOCUS

As part of my MBA program, I'm taking a competitive strategy class online (which is awesome - class in my jammies!) We've been talking a lot about a company's mission and vision as it relates to strategy. Most (I believe) of my classmates work for large companies, totally unlike my little, one person writing and editing business. So our perspectives are different - which is actually great for the class because it gives me a way to contribute.

But because my business is just me, everything we talk about is more personal for me. My company's vision is my vision; my company's mission is my mission; and my company's strategy is my strategy. We are intertwined. I'm thinking that this is an ideal situation even for large companies - to have each employee's personal vision, mission, and strategy aligned with the company's. If an employee follows his personal mission to achieve his vision according to his personal strategy, and that is intertwined and aligned with the company's, it can do nothing else but help that company excel.

What is challenging for me in this whole strategic mission and vision process is focus. Sometimes I have so many ideas about how to operate and promote my business that I get distracted. The first step, of course, is to align everything I do with my vision and mission. My mission is to help people say what they want to say and my vision is when someone needs writing or editing services, they will think, “Get that Wordsy Woman!” and hire me. Helping people say what they want to say is the bar against which I compare everything I do; if it helps people say what they want to say, I consider it, if it doesn’t, I dismiss it.

This doesn’t eliminate everything, however, and I realized recently even more focus is needed, so I’ve decided that other than serving my current and future paying clients, I will choose three additional projects to work on over the next three months. I’m still getting ideas, but I’m writing them down in a notebook to evaluate at the end of the three months. This way, I can have enough focus to follow the strategies I’ve chosen, but I won’t lose any new ideas. 

Happy strategizing!

-The Wordsy Woman

ZIPPING INTO THE FUTURE

I have long been amazed at our shrinking world due to the the expansion of technology and am proud to say I've finally started to take full advantage of it. And my new found experience has made me start to imagine all sorts of possibilities.

I come from the olden days - before Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram; before Skype; before cell phones (before cordless phones, even); before the Internet; even before personal computers! When I was a kid, I always enjoyed hearing the stories from my mom and aunts about how it was "back in the olden days." These were stories about things like color TVs, tacos, seat belts, and even garbage bags. Now, I find myself repeating these types of stories to my kids:

"Back in the day, if we wanted to communicate with someone, we either had to put on our shoes and walk to the person's house, or we had to be tethered to the wall and call them on the telephone."

Now, this past week, I've Skyped with someone near London, England, from here in the Midwest. It worked great; I could see her and hear her. We had a lovely chat. I also started my first on-line class with an actual virtual class meeting period and collaborated on a group project. Most of us were in Iowa because the class is offered by the University of Iowa. However, some people were not logging in from Iowa, but were as far away as Brazil. And except for some growing pains with software and echoes, it worked almost seamlessly.

So this has got me to thinking about where my business could go. As I get more comfortable with this technology, I don't have to restrict myself with just emailing non-local clients but I could actually have a "face-to-face" meeting.

I also wonder what my kids will be telling their kids:

"I remember back in my day, we could only see the person's face and hear his voice through speakers or headphones when we had a virtual meeting. We couldn't reach through the screen and shake his hand!"

Maybe????....

Happy Imagining,
-the Wordsy Woman