Create If Writing

We are in part three of Finding Your Perfect Audience! Catch up by reading the first post on how to identify your purpose and then the second on how to create your ideal reader profile. 

When you are trying to grow your audience, a hugely important step is to know how to identify your current audience. You may have created a fantastic and detailed reader profile and know how to reach those readers, but what about the audience you already have? Unless you are starting from scratch, you already have an audience. And sometimes your current audience doesn't match up with your ideal.

Even if you don't LOVE analytics and number crunching (I don't), you can fall in love with analytics (I did). The great thing is that you can use free analytics for your blog and also your social media sites that give you great info that you can use to your benefit.

Site Analytics - You should be using Google Analytics on your site, not trusting the Jetpack stats on Wordpress or the stats in Blogger. They included extra bot traffic that isn't actually REAL. This may mean you have less numbers than you thought, but you'd rather get an accurate picture.

To install Google Analytics, you can read this helpful post from Hubspot. I would NOT recommend the plugin on Wordpress, only because more plugins mean slower site and you can do without. I use Genesis, so utilize the Simple Hooks plugin that works with Genesis. It basically has these nice blank spaces you can paste code in that will add it to your CSS without you crashing your blog or doing weird stuff. (Also, if you have a super low--under 10%--bounce rate, you probably have GA installed twice. Here's how to figure that out.)

If you're like me and Google Analytics makes you totally nuts, then you should consider using Dashboard Junkie. You can easily download a new dashboard right into GA that cuts out some of the things that might stress you out and highlights the things you care about. I have two that aren't available anymore, but the Gender Insights dashboard might be really helpful for considering audience. The Personal Blog dashboard also has a lot of the information you might want to see. These dashboards give GA some focus and help you see only what you really want to see.

Social Analytics - Just about every social media platform has analytics you can use. (For Pinterest, make sure you have a business account! Read more on setting this up on my post at Jane Friedman's blog.) Twitter has analytics. Your Facebook page has insights. If you want to use something like Iconosquare with Instagram, you can get a better idea of how Insta is working for you.

Use GA to see where your traffic comes from and then focus on the analytics for that social site to see what is working there. How are people engaging on Facebook? What pins are people repinning on Pinterest? If you find that people are engaging more with content that is NOT yours on those social sites, that can help you see the kind of content you SHOULD be creating for your readers.

Surveys can be invaluable. Whether you use Survey Monkey, Google Forms, or Typeform (my fave because it's so purty), ask your readers who they are and what they want from you. Some people offer a prize, so that each person who responds gets an entry. This may get you more responses, but if you don't offer something, you're more likely to get people who are passionate.

This deep-dive from Ramsay of Blog Tyrant has some really great suggestions for surveys and out of the box ways to ask people. Pat Flynn interview Ryan Levesque, the author of Ask, all about HOW you should ask. I've actually read his book Ask (*affiliate link!)and it has some great specific strategies if you want to go all in with surveys.

I do this at least once a year with my people one both blogs. Sometimes I'll do mini surveys. It's a great way to find out what your readers want and also the language they use to describe their problems and their wants. This is something great to use when you're writing your About page and sales copy when you create products or books.

I have never done this, but have heard many people recommend getting on the phone with your people. Send them a link to sign up for a Skype or phone call using something like Calendly (what I use for my podcast episodes). You can't do this with everyone, but maybe try to talk to a few people a month. (This IS something I plan to do this year, so get excited!)

If you do get on the phone with people, do a lot of listening. Let there be awkward pauses. This allows you the chance to really hear things. Record it so you can go back and don't have to take extensive notes, but can just listen in the moment. (Ecamm Call Recorder is what I use to record Skype calls on Mac and Pamela is a great Skype recorder for PC.)

If getting on the phone gives you the heebie jeebies, you can also chat with people in your Facebook groups, do something like Blab, where people can comment in or even join you on screen to talk in more of a group setting. You could also ask in an email for people to reply if they are interested in a longer conversation and you can talk via email. Find a way that feels comfortable to you. Ask. Listen. Get to know your peeps.

You may discover as you learn more about your current audience that they don't match up with the ideal reader profile you created. This is common, so if it's you, don't freak out. It often happens if you aren't blogging intentionally from the beginning or if you pivot, changing your why and the purpose of your blog. It can also happen because sometimes we don't see ourselves and our message clearly. You may need to get an extra set of impartial eyes to read your blog and see if your intentions and your why are lining up with your content and strategy. (Pssst- I offer this service! And it's one of the things I think I'm best at! Check out brand audit service HERE.)

If you find a mismatch, don't worry about it. You have options with pros and cons.

Option 1- Forget the Current Readers & Write for Your Ideal

This seems a little cold, but there might be instances in which you want to move on. If you are completely changing your theme or purpose but don't want to start a new blog, writing for your ideal audience will drive out the current audience members that are NOT your ideal.

Option 2 - Slowly Transition Your Current Readers into Your Ideal

If option one seems to hasty and inconsiderate, option two might work for you. You can be more gentle and gradual with reaching new audiences without completely ignoring or alienating your current readers. Consider posting once a week with the content you are writing for your ideal readers. Slowly build up to a bigger shift over time that would allow you to convert or change some of your current readers to be more of your ideal readers, or at least more interested in the content you are creating that is geared toward that ideal reader profile.

Option 3 - Write for Your Current Readers & Let Them BE Your Ideal

In some cases you may want to throw out your ideal reader profile. (Don't forget the free printable guide to creating your ideal profile!) If you have a large current audience hungry for what you are already creating, then you may want to consider these readers your ideal and rewrite the ideal profile including what you know about your ACTUAL readers.

Option 4 - Start a New Blog

This is what I did when continued surveys of my readers at my KirstenOliphant.com blog said they did not care about writing or blogging posts. I still really wanted to write them, so starting a new blog with a more narrow focus made sense. If you don't want to change your current readers and also don't want to stop writing the content that they aren't interested in, consider starting a new blog.

Now it's time for you to go and DO THINGS. Find out about your audience. See how they line up with your ideal and figure out what you're doing to do if they don't! Join us in the Facebook group for more conversation!

When you take some time to think about your target reader, you are being intentional, which is ALWAYS a good thing. Without intention, you don’t have strategy.

Will this be perfect? NO.

I sometimes get a little eye-roll-y when people talk about their perfect reader named Molly, the one with three kids, a husband who works a corporate job, and who loves to buy her clothes at White House/Black Market.

This drives me crazy because I know my own audience pretty well. At least, a good portion of them. They email me back and talk about their lives. They hang out in my Facebook group and share what they are working on and struggling with.

I still don’t know where most of them shop. And if you asked me where I like to shop, I would say that I LOVE White House/Black Market, but I can AFFORD Ross.

People are complicated. Your audience will not be one-dimensional.

If it helps you to name your ideal reader and think of that person when you write, great. If that brings clarity and cohesion to your work, power to you! Do what works. But more often, I think that completing a workbook like this and thinking about your target audience is more about YOU.

It is more about finding out the kinds of need that you meet with your blog, your writing, or your business. Your ideal reader is the person who NEEDS what you OFFER.

Do your best to imagine that one person who needs what you have. Think about their ins and outs and their finances and marital status and what shows they watch and what makes them click on a particular headline. This can be a very helpful exercise.

But then remember as you write that your audience may have some commonalities and some similar backgrounds and interests. They are diverse. They are not all named Molly.

Defining your target audience is a great tool for you! But the more you actually connect with your readers in a personal way through emails or Facebook groups or comments on a Facebook page, the more you will be able to write with those particular people in mind.

It doesn’t mean you will try to please them all, but you might think about how you word something because there are four REALLY dedicated dudes that follow your 90% female readership. Consider your target audience and write for them as WELL as the audience you know IS actually reading.

This is the first in a series of posts on Finding Your Perfect Audience! For more conversations and resources on FYPA, join the Create If Writing Facebook group!

When I first started blogging eight years ago, I had a simple goal: to share updates on my pregnancy with friends and family who lived in other states. I did not edit or plan posts, but wrote what I wanted, when I wanted. People weren’t using social media to promote blogs back then, so my workflow was as simple as write a post, publish the post.

Though I had just received my MFA in Fiction and was hard at work on a manuscript at the time, I did not see any correlation between what I considered my “real” novel writing and my “fun” blog writing.

A few years later my blog grew to reach ten thousand readers a month and I realized I had missed something really important. My blog writing differed from my book writing, but the two were linked. If an agent or publisher cared enough to look (for they were just starting to ask about platform at that time), I wouldn't want them to read my off-the-cuff, unedited blog.

To be honest? I didn't consider my blog WRITING. And I did not consider who was reading. I wrote for ME. And if people showed up, great.

As I moved toward using my blog as a platform to build readers, I had to think about my goals and also my readers. What did I want to accomplish? Who were my readers?

Choosing clear long-term goals and thinking about my audience made my blog a much better read. It also meant being more purposeful about connecting to the right people.

In this series of posts I want to help you save all the time I wasted not being intentional. The goal is to walk you through steps to create intentional blog content that targets the right kinds of readers.

The first step in this process is to know your goals. It all starts with your WHY.

When you think of your long-term goals, you want to identify the reason you are blogging and what purpose you want your blog to serve. Keep your audience in mind, but this step is primarily about YOU.

Do you blog to build an author platform? Do you blog to bring in revenue? Do you blog because you love it? Do you blog because someone said you had to? Do you blog to discuss the process of writing your book? Do you blog to have a creative outlet?

If you plan to publish books, it’s important to know which comes first—the book or the blog. Do you blog in order to support your first love of writing books? Or do your books stem from the blog?

These distinctions matter. Identifying your goals will impact the kind of content you write and also the kind of audience you will build.

Identify your primary goal. You will likely have secondary goals (and maybe even tertiary) as well, but make sure that you know the order. The more specific you make your goals, the better you will be able to follow the next steps and make decisions related to your blog.

In ninth grade I thought I was pretty hot stuff in my honors English class. Until I got an F on my The Old Man and the Sea paper. My mother, furious, called a conference with the teacher. “It’s simple,” my teacher explained, “the assignment was to write on a theme in the book. This paper is a plot summary.” In that moment I realized I had no idea what theme meant.

Plot tells what something is about. The Old Man and the Sea is about a man on a boat trying to catch one large fish. In the case of your blog, the topics, the niche, and the general content categories are like the plot of a novel. The plot of your blog might be defined as a food blog sharing original recipes and restaurant reviews.

Theme, on the other hand, is about what something means. A book may have many themes, but there is also usually one central meaning tying the events together. Theme on a blog shows the perspective of the writer and carries an implicit message through each post. The theme of the food blog mentioned above might be Healthy Living Through Healthy Eating. Think how different that same food blog would read if the theme was Eat, Drink, & Be Merry for Tomorrow We Die. Same content, different lens.

Sometimes the theme is subtle and sometimes it becomes the phrase you put on your business cards. For my lifestyle blog (which has nothing to do with the process of writing) my tagline is “An eclectic celebration of chaos.” I have four kids and blog about everything from parenting to food to faith. Life is crazy, but my theme through the blog is to celebrate that everyday craziness.

When you think of the theme of your blog, keep your goal in mind. If your goal is to create an author platform for your true crime novel, you probably don’t want the theme of your blog be Encouragement for Daily Living. Even if are a positive person, that theme is disconnected from your goal and would be jarring to potential readers.

I’m not saying you can’t have that kind of blog, but if your end goal is to support your true crime novels, you should perhaps consider two blogs. The one whose goal is to support your crime novels should be something relevant to an audience who wants to read true crime. Perhaps the theme of this blog would be True Stories Are Worse Than Fiction.

Here are some questions to answer as you move toward finding your WHY:

• What is the overarching purpose behind your blog?
• What are your secondary purposes?
• Where do you hope to see yourself in a year?
• What do you consider the theme of your blog? (This will be a question we talk about this week in the Facebook group!)

You may not think a crisis will happen to you. Crisis is such a BIG word that it can seem like one of those things that happen to OTHER people. Not us. But in this post (and podcast episode) I want to talk about the kinds of challenges we can face and how to handle an online crisis when it comes your way. Because it WILL come your way if it hasn't already. The one thing I know is that you want to be prepared before a crisis hits.  

Before we talk about the details of how to handle an online crisis, let's create some umbrellas for what kind of crises you might face and how you may respond. 

Raise your hand if your blog has ever crashed at an inopportune time. (Or if you've ever been personally victimized by Regina George.) If it hasn't happened to you, it will. Today. Tomorrow. Next week. I deleted a whole blog once. I feel you when you have big tech issues, you need to have someone on call that can help. Whether that's the customer support for your blog or platform (note: the free Mailchimp plan does NOT come with any customer support) or a friend who can get in and fix your code, this is a place where knowing smart people comes in handy.  

You can do this one of two ways: by making a mistake or by choosing a stance on a controversial issue. You cannot always avoid the first one. Last night I sent a text to my sister-in-law and with one slip of a vowel, "duck face" became something much less savory. (Though for the record, I don't support duck face either.) You might send an inappropriate tweet or choose a hashtag that (in context) may have serious implications. (Ex: When DiGiornio Pizza chose a hashtag intended to reference staying home for frozen pizza that was widely used in regards to domestic violence.) It happens. It might happen to you. 

You may also choose a stance or to post on a topic that invites a firestorm all on its own. This is when you need to really pick your battles. Do you REALLY want to take on that hot button issue? What if you get the traffic you're trying for and everyone HATES what you said? You need to decide if that's an area you really want to stand for or a hill you want to die on. If you choose a controversial topic, be ready for the attention, positive or negative. 

You may have a real life situation that pulls you away from the internet at an inopportune time or in such a way that you need to post, but can't. For me, this happened in one of my births when I wasn't able to communicate personally with people in my life OR in my public blog world. It's a great idea to always have a person you trust know the passwords or be an admin on your blog or accounts in case you need to communicate something and cannot actually do so. 

Be Aware. Have alerts set up and check in daily with your accounts to make sure if you are being attacked or if you have a tech issue, you KNOW about it. Down Notifier is a great way to know if your site is down, by the way. This is how I knew it was time to move out of my BlueHost hosting, though I had been happy with them for three years. 

Consider Your General Response. Do you respond to negative comment? Do you delete negativity? Some blogs have a general no-negative-comments policy that they overtly state. Then they delete anything that doesn't add to the atmosphere they want to cultivate. Make your choice before you ever get a comment from haters. 

Consider the Specific Situation. You may want to respond in some cases and delete in others. You may want to respond with humor or with sincere apology alone. General responses will give you a framework and then with each specific instance, you should consider the context. 

Have Friends on Call. Know some tech wizards and other great people to help with tech issues or who can read over your response tweets or emails before you send out a response. Make sure someone you trust (and that has some blog or social media knowledge) has access to your accounts.

• The Red Cross "drunk tweet" situation.
• The Yellowstone bison controversy. 
• Kohl's quick response to a positive viral post. 
• More examples of social media fails to make you feel better. 

A big thanks to Jasmine Commerce for the music to the show. You should check out her site or follow her on Facebook for more of her music!

Another thanks to Matt McCarrick for being a great community manager in my Facebook group this week. If you are looking for some real community and conversation, join us!

Building an online platform as a writer doesn't happen in a vacuum. Or...it doesn't happen WELL in a vacuum. When we blog alone, we miss out on the community and the benefits of collaboration. I think that it's vital to connect with people at or around your same level, people below you who are newer, and then also people who have a larger sphere of influence than you do. (From here on out in this post, I am referring to these people who are in that "higher" sphere as influencers.) There is a right and a wrong way to do this, so in this episode I'm going to share my experience in how to connect with influencers.

The biggest rule of thumb that undergirds ALL the things I'll say about how to connect with influencers is that you need to NOT be a douchebag. I mean, seriously, you could sum all of this up with that. But since I suspect we need more practical applications for that, I'll lay them out here.

Connect before You NEED Something

Don't go follow someone on Twitter five minutes before you send them an email asking them to come guest post on your blog. If I like someone's content, I'm already following them on Twitter or subscribed to their email list. I'd love already be on people's radars (see the next point) by reaching out or starting conversations or sharing on Twitter or hitting reply on an email that meant a lot to me. Long before I try to reach out for a collaboration or anything else, that person should ALREADY know who I am. The best places for connections (I think) are Twitter and email. Maybe for you that's Instagram and Facebook. Wherever you can make a point of connection with influencers, do it. Even if you don't you'll ever ask anything. CONNECT.

Give Generously without Expect Anything Back

I set up lists in Twitter via Hootsuite (see more of my Twitter practices HERE) and have lists of bloggers, social media experts, writers, and more. I try to schedule out shares and retweets of the people on those lists. Not because I want something back (though it's always nice when you get a thanks from someone you admire), but because their content is great and I want to share great content with my people. And like the first point, don't just share things the week you plan to reach out to someone. This is a great way to curate content that is helpful to your audience and also lets you get on the radar.

Ask in a Personal Way

A template for asking something (like when I ask people to be a guest on the podcast) can be great, but templates don't take into account the personal. You want that person to know that this is a message for THEM. Not 100 other people. There's nothing like getting those emails asking for me to partner with a company that has ZERO to do with my audience or content. Mention a recent blog post or something they have done that really meant a lot to you. Be personal. Show them you know who they are.

Don't Ask for Things That Are ONLY Good for You

Influencers are busy. Chances are that your email to that person is not the only one they got that morning asking for something. Make sure you're very clear up front what you are asking for, what that entails, and why it would benefit them. You can talk about your audience if you are asking them to be on your podcast or blog. Tell them what kinds of people they might connect with as a result. Tell them how you promote things. You can mention numbers (like how many people read your blog or listen to your podcast) or another kind of benefit, like having a small but engaged audience. Don't ask people to give you free things if you're creating a paid product. With the Profitable Blogging Summit, there was a paid upsell, but the Summit itself was free and I only asked for the interview. I required NO promotion of the speakers and I did my best to really promote them to my audience.

Build Relationships Rather Than Getting One YES

It's more important to establish and maintain a relationship than getting one yes. This means that you are planning for the long run. It means you are giving back to that person and making whatever partnership you have something that has a long-term benefit to them. I've already been emailed back by several speakers from the Summit who saw their email lists grow or sold products directly from the summit attendees. Most of that was the fact that they shared great content, but I also made a big and intentional effort so share their content widely and well so the speakers were very visible. Rather than just having someone speak once for something, I want to treat speakers so well that they WANT to partner again.

Don't Take No Personally 

You WILL get nos. I hear them all the time. If you don't hear back at first, hit reply to the email you sent that person (so they'll get a Re:Subject email) and give a short bump asking if they've had a chance to think about it. Don't reach out more than that, but do give them a week to respond and then try the reply. After that, let it go. If they say no, it isn't the end of the world and doesn't mean that you can't reach out again. You can sometimes get the tone from the email that maybe they are not interested at all, but you can maybe keep that door open by thanking them for their time and responding politely. Then keep on sharing their content the way you were and keeping those points of connection. Maybe the next time you'll get a yes.

Don't Leave People in the Dust

If someone collaborates with you, make sure you follow up. THANK THEM. Share a lot. Tag them. Make your content work for them to bring good things back to them. We all know those people who use people and then leave you in the dust. I HATE THAT. Everyone hates that. And word gets around in the blogging world. Be grateful, be generous, give back to the people who give you their time. Don't build your platform on the backs of other people. That's gross.

My favorite ways to connect are through Twitter, which I think really does make the world small. It allows you to reach influencers and people you might not otherwise reach. Many people don't think about Twitter much because they don't get a lot of traffic from it. Twitter, for me, is all about connection. Follow people you respect. Share their content. Hit reply to a Tweet and start conversations. Be engaged and you will find your engagement grow. (Again, this post outlines how I use Twitter.)

I also love to connect through email. Email is usually the best way to REALLY connect with people. I love to hit reply on an email that means something to me. Often that person will be on the other side and hit reply. I've established relationships with readers and turned a casual reader into a raving fan by responding to people who respond to my email. We have a conversation. It's private, not in some social media space. It's a very intimate way to connect and can really make a connection you might not otherwise make. (Need email help? Take my free course!)

Overall, treat people like people. Don't be a douchebag. Give before you ask and give MORE than you ask. If you are doing these very practical things, you are likely to create a fabulous network of real, authentic connections on the internet with influencers great and small!

Virtual summits are EVERYWHERE this year. They are the new webinars: the cool thing that so many people are doing to grow their list and sell products. But summits are usually free, right? How are they money makers? Why are people doing summits? Grab a cup of coffee and let me pull the curtain back to show you how to host a virtual summit. 

You can read along or listen to the podcast episode on itunes or Stitcher or RIGHT HER. 

You have to be a little crazy to take on this huge task. Your life will be crazy. Just realize from the get-go that you will be saying no to a lot because you are saying yes to something HUGE. Summit is a big word because a summit is a big thing. You need bravery, time, expertise, help, and a big dose of knowing your life will be nuts. Are you there? Okay, let's move on. 

I'm all about whys (see: The Foundation Series) because without them, you are going to lack clarity and purpose. You need to think about why you are hosting one in terms of YOU and YOUR AUDIENCE. Why will it benefit you? What is driving you to host a summit? Why would people want to attend? Why will the benefit? 

Speakers are a key component of a summit. If you don't already have relationships with influencers or people who could add value to a summit, don't think you can pull this off. Take a few steps back and form some authentic connections LONG before you ask for something. 

Long before I even launched a podcast, I had connected with influencers on Twitter, following them, retweeting their tweets or tagging them when I shared their content, and even striking up conversations. NOT because I wanted something. And not in a creepy/stalker way. I simply made connections with people whose content I admired. So when I thought about starting a podcast, I realized I had connections with a lot of people who at least knew who I was. This makes an ask SO much more palpable. You aren't just following them on social and tweeting that week before you ask for a favor or their time. 

Create authentic relationships with people before you ask them to do anything for you. This may mean not doing a summit right away if you aren't connected. I think even if you DON'T want to do a summit, you should be connecting in this way with people whose work you admire. And don't contact them yet if you already know them! Go on to the next step first. 

Before you begin asking speakers to get on board, you need to consider what this summit will look like and how it will work. Is it paid? Is it free? Will you have affiliates? What are the requirements for the speakers? 

This is important especially when approaching speakers. I've had speakers say yes to the podcast or to different things ONLY if there were no affiliate program and no promotion required. That doesn't mean they won't share, but they don't want the requirement to share. 

With open rates hovering around 20% and click-through rates even lower, it's no wonder people get frustrated with email. Why spend the time to create content if no one will read it? Writing a successful email newsletter can be especially daunting, because unlike an email that offers a tutorial or tip or a roundup of resources, the newsletter is more personal. It's based less on a NEED. There is not as much urgency. It doesn't solve a problem.

Yet many bloggers write what would be considered a newsletter-style email. In this episode of the Create If Writing podcast, I'm talking with Kirsten (pronounced Cur-sten, unlike my Keer-sten) Thompson of Sweet Tea LLC and Sweet Tea and Saving Grace. As a virtual assistant she wrote weekly newsletters for other bloggers. Through the years she got to see the inside view of what worked and honed her email craft. And in this episode she shares that with us!

Big Takeaways:

• This is a struggle for many bloggers or writers who feel like they don't have anything to sell. But whether you are selling a product in exchange for cash or a blog post for pageviews, there is some form of currency involved. You need to figure out what your "product" is.
• You want to get your target audience onto your blog post through email.
• Social media will not drive traffic to your blog in the same way.
• Your email list, if done well, becomes your community.
• If you do decide to launch a product or service, your email list will be your best customers.
• As far as directly speaking to your target audience, there is nothing that beats email.
• Cleaning your list by deleting people who don't open your emails helps you and helps the reader-- they don't want to read anyway and you don't want to pay for them.
• Let people know you HAVE an email list. Don't just stick a signup in the sidebar. Put links in your blog posts, ask people through social to sign up.
• If a reader is going to give you an email address, treat them as a VIP.
• Don't forget a call to action! Tell your readers to DO something! Ask them to reply or click a link or share something. We are doers when people ask us.
• If you want to be a person who responds to email, make sure your settings are set up so you GET the emails and ASK people to reply. But don't ask for one if you don't want to take the time to respond.

• Behind the scenes stuff. We are curious and so interested in the messy behind the beautiful images.
• Be relatable. Let people see the struggle too, because that makes you more relatable to them.
• Be honest and authentic.
• Give sneak peeks or ask them to be beta testers.
• Let your readers share their feedback and take part in your creation of future projects & content.
• Be personal and intimate (the way bloggers often used to be on their blogs).

• When you are just starting out, consider cost. If you aren't making any money, you don't want to invest in email, unless you are starting a business blog where you will sell courses and products, then you may want to think ahead and be more professional in your choice.
• You also need to think about features and your goals. Which platform will help you meet your goals?
• As you grow, you'll want to think about more advanced features like tagging and more targeted segmentation.
• The email service providers all have great features, but you need to consider your goals, your lists, and what the goals are for your email.

(For my post on why you might want Convertkit, read that HERE.) 

If email seems like a big, scary thing, consider it another piece of content, like the content you post on your blog or social media. Reframe email if email becomes a mental stumbling block.

• How to properly disclose affiliate links 
• 101 Newsletter Content & Opt-In Ideas
• How to Create an Email List

Find more about Kirsten at Sweet Tea LLC or check out her book, Inbox of Opportunity, all about Mailchimp!

And are you signed up for the Profitable Blogging Summit? Over 30 sessions from amazing bloggers and experts in social media and more! 

Do you know your brand story? Have you written yours? 

Brand is one of those terms that gets thrown around all over the place. We use it often without being 100% sure that we know what it means. Add another really broad term like story and you have Brand Story. Something you could probably talk about in a conversation or nod along with, but when pressed, you might not fully get this concept.

In this post (and podcast episode) I want to help you understand what a brand story is, why it's important, and how to craft your own brand story. The coolest part? I made a freebie just for you! Click to get a free mini-course that will walk you through crafting your brand story in a few minutes a day.

I would define your brand as your full identity. Not as a person, but your identity as a writer, blogger, or business. It encompasses everything from your visuals (which is what many people think of as a brand) to your ideals and beliefs.

Your brand has a vibe. It should have a clear sense of purpose, which is where the brand story really comes in. Your brand becomes recognizable not only visually, but in terms of the kinds of content you create and share and how you interact with people in your space.

Your brand story is the way that you would describe all of those moving parts that make up your brand, but in a HUMAN and relatable way. You see, story is engrained in our DNA. It is an innate part of us. Sometimes after childhood, we don't validate story. It becomes less important than some of the more tangible or measurable things: income, ROI, financial security, investments, and all those fancy adult terms.

And yet, we know and we see how story actually impacts us. This is why advertisers utilize story in Superbowl commercials.

When you write your brand story, you'll be talking as much about your audience as you will yourself. Because this is not simply a story for you, to bring the focus to you, but this is a story that is meant to draw in the ideal audience. You talk about your history, your values, your struggles, and your transformation, but you'll also be really speaking to THEIR values, struggle, and the transformation they want to see.

You'll want to write out the whole thing, then edit it down, and become familiar with it. You should already know it, because it's your story, but just like everything online, there is editing. Every value you hold dear may not come through your brand. You edit. You choose. You define your brand.

I've never seen a Brand Story tab on the navigation bar on a website. Rather, it's a framework that goes underneath everything else. It's like your why: it brings focus, clarity, and cohesion to your brand. Even if you never share the actual story you write word for word. Even if the whole thing doesn't go on your website.

Pieces of it may appear in your About page, or on your Work with Me page. When you talk to people about what it is that you do, this brand story will come out. At least, that's the point. You want to work on this and craft and write this like a mission statement and KNOW it, so that when someone asks, you will retell your brand story in your own words. Because it is YOURS.

Want to craft your brand story? CLICK HERE to sign up for the free email mini-course!

I interviewed Maria Ribas of Stonesong and we got very nerdy (and practical!) about what writers and bloggers really need to know about platform. You can find helpful (and some delicious!) posts from Maria at Cooks & Books. She has great posts for authors (and readers) as well as recipes. She and I share a mutual love for talking about building a writer platform and utilizing the online tools we have to connect with readers. 

Some of my favorite posts from Cooks & Books: 

How to Connect with Your Audience (with free workbook)

Do Fiction Writers Need a Platform?

Healthy Pantry Pasta Salad (Aren't her pictures GORGEOUS?)

Connect with Maria on Instagram, Pinterest, or Twitter and get her great tips for writers by signing up for her email list on the Cooks & Books site!

Publishers are really looking for some quantification that the writer will be able to move a lot of books down the road. If you don't already have an email list, start that right away. You want to be able to directly contact your people to tell them about the book. 

Authors often feel like marketing and platform building are icky self-promotion. Reframe the discussion and start making those connections NOW, before you also have a book to promote. Think of platform as a way to share and to help people. It's how you can offer people something they want or need.

The best piece of advice she would give is to get out there and talk to people and overcome the hesitancy to make connections and share your work with others. You want to start this as soon as possible, not when you are about to have a book come out. Work through the fears of "marketing" and reaching out to other people about your book. It takes time to get comfortable with this idea of getting out in front of people. 

You don't need to have an audience in order to get a fiction book deal, but you need to be building your platform if you want long-term success. Plenty of people get a fiction book deal with no social media accounts, while on the non-fiction side, it's very competitive in that area and you need to have a strong platform there. It doesn't have to only be online, but that is a crucial place. A lot of authors also do speaking engagements or teach classes and have an in-person connection. 

If you aren't in my Create If Writing community, join us to share inspiration, ask questions, and talk to other writers and bloggers about building an authentic platform!

After listening to the interview (and thinking about my interview with Joanna Penn on Indie Publishing), are you more interested in traditional or indie publishing? Leave a comment below! I'd love to hear YOUR perspective! 

This episode traces a common thread through the speakers on day 1 of the Smarter Artist Summit, put on by the guys from the Self Publishing Podcast.