Create If Writing

To say the world of publishing has changed in the last 10 years would be an understatement. Laughable, almost. The biggest change being, of course, the state of self-publishing. That term used to come with disdain from "real" writers and the traditional publishing world. It was vanity publishing, really---what you did if you couldn't secure a book deal with a real publisher. Now, self-publishing, better known as indie publishing, has grown into a thriving business where authors have more control and are making more money than ever before. Want proof? See the latest report from Author Earnings. At the forefront of this rise of the indies is Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn. In this interview she shares tips for indie writers and wisdom from her own career. 

Also known as thriller writer J.F. Penn, Joanna Penn has been one of the positive and uplifting voices in the indie community, always on the cutting edge of trends. Her podcast, The Creative Penn, is on its way toward 300 episodes and she has sold almost half a million books in 74 countries... as an indie author. 

The Creative Penn (Sign up to get your Author 2.0 Blueprint FREE!)

Joanna's books

The Creative Penn Podcast

Subscribe to Joanna's YouTube Channel or connect on Twitter!

How to Write a Book Description with Bryan Cohen (of the Sell More Books Show)

Optimizing Kindle Categories, List Building, & Facebook Advertising (with Nick Stephenson)

Publishing Trends in 2016 (with Jane Friedman)

"The most important thing for anyone-- regardless of whether they're an author-- is to decide what is their definition of success."

The Question We Need to Ask: What is going to leave a lasting legacy? Our tweets, Facebook, and podcasts will disappear. But books can make us money for the rest of our lives, plus 70 years past when we die. What can I do today that is going to have a lasting impact? 

When you say yes to something, you are actually saying no to something else. You can't do it all, so yes is a choice to prioritize one thing over another. What are you saying yes to? What are you giving up? 

Twitter and I weren't always BFFs. But it has become a platform that uniquely allows you to connect with people-- if you know how to do it. If you are just starting out on Twitter, it can seem like an anti-social platform until you find your footing. Madalyn Sklar, founder of the Twitter Smarter podcast and the number 3 social media influencer in Houston has some great tips and ideas for mastering Twitter.

If you want to find Madalyn, you can check out her website, listen to her podcast, or connect on Twitter. On Thursdays, she hosts the always awesome #TwitterSmarter chat at 12pm central on Thursdays.

On Twitter, you have to be to the point with your message since you have limited characters. (Though this may be changing if Twitter adds the rumored 10,000 characters!) Twitter is all about making smart choices with your words. Be intentional in your tiny space! Make every character count.

Socially speaking, Twitter is the cocktail party-- a really great place to connect. One great way is Twitter parties feel like you're in a room full of great people and have side conversations in the midst.

Optimize Your Profile

The Best Tools for Managing Twitter

Consider what you want to be live and present for and what you want to schedule. Evergreen content is fabulous for automation within Twitter. You also can automate your books or coaching packages or email list landing page to tweet daily or weekly.

Madalyn's final word was to pick ONE thing from this interview and take action! You can Tweet to Madalyn (@madalynsklar) and to me (@kikimojo) or use the #TwitterSmarter hashtag to tell her something you've learned or applied!

Note: Madalyn is the opening keynote and I will also be speaking at Social Media Day in June! If you're in the Houston area, definitely come out for Social Media Day!

Whether you are writing a blog or another form of content, a huge question you need to answer is this: Should you write for yourself or for your audience? 

This week's Create If Writing episode came from an email that Sarah Borgstede sent me (thanks, Sara!). Except, this was not HER question. I'll share with you what she wrote and then I'll address what I pulled from it. And I'll also address her question a bit because it would be rude not to, right? Right.

Sara said:

THIS topic would be awesome. The seasons or stages of blogging.

At first I just posted randomly, about myself. That was my "all about me" stage. Now I've got my editorial calendar and I'm doing the whole Pinterest thing. I consider this my "Pinterest" stage. I hear you on the sponsored posts. I've started to delve into that and am not thrilled and I don't think my customers really like them either. I do need to make some income, though. I have a product: www.faithfulfinishlines.com. It does well but it's a tremendous amount of work! I run it (a 7 week program) a couple times a year. I need to offer more smaller products to go along with it, or products that can be purchased anytime. Working on it. It's all such a learning process.

[from a later email] I kept reading, "people don't want to read about YOU. Write for the reader." So I quit. But I miss writing like that and just being myself. My blog does well...I think it does well. I haven't been blogging very long and I get 100,000 page views a month. And I do enjoy it. And it is me. But it's not ME-me.

Help?! Is there a way to somehow do both and not lose this good thing I have going here? I thought I was all set with my blog goals and vision and now I feel confused.

How can you handle an insane work load? How can you manage to get the impossible done? How do you provide consistent value over time to your community?

John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur on Fire did what even his mentor considered stupid: he launched a 7-day-a-week podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. Three years later and he has over a million downloads per month and is known for being a podcaster with a vibrant and dedicated community, Fire Nation.

In this interview we talk about how he literally gets so much work done and also what keeps him going day after day, year after year. We discuss writing, community, email, and his new book, The Freedom Journal. All packed into a very compact interview. John knows how to bring the value!

Here are a few of my favorite links to some of my favorite interviews & resources from John!

"We need to amplify our strengths and ignore or hire for our weaknesses." -John Lee Dumas

Do you want to accomplish ONE goal in the next 90 days? John's latest passion project is The Freedom Journal, which helps walk you through accomplishing one smart goal in 90 days. It's not a one-time thing, but a way of focusing on one important thing at a time. John is on his third iteration, so I always love hearing from people who USE their own things to be sure they work. 

I always ask my guests but often forget to ask YOU. What's inspiring YOU this week? 

I stumbled into blogging eleven years ago, which in blog years makes me about 99. When starting out, I had no idea about ANYTHING. I definitely knew nothing about disclosure or the FTC. Because back then, the FTC had not given standards for disclosure to bloggers. We are in different times, people.

My blog about life with our dog morphed into a blog about life with kids morphed into more of a lifestyle blog. When people got sick of me talking about writing and social media,  I started this site.

Now blogging is so far from online journaling (did you know blog came from "web log"?) and there are a lot more moving parts. People make real, substantial incomes from blogging. Which means there are best practices, blog etiquette, and even actual RULES. Rules like: don't use fonts on a for-profit blog without a commercial license. Or, don't take images you find in a Google search and put them on your blog without actual permission.

The Federal Trade Commission (aka FTC) started regulating blogging a few years ago. They say that bloggers must let readers know if they received free product or will receive payment for a post. This included free product for review, sponsored posts where you receive money, or affiliate links where you get a commission for recommending a product. The overall rule of thumb is: don't be deceptive. Where there is money being made, consumers must be made aware, even if you're Beyonce. (Thanks to Julie from Girl on the Move Blog for that link!)

Most bloggers that make money are aware of this. Because bloggers making money are connected to other bloggers and learning the business of blogging, they know. I hear it at conferences, in blog groups, and on blog posts. It's really hard to MISS it if you've been blogging for a while. But I've run across a slew of people not disclosing and it prompted me to write this post. 

I want to point you in the direction of a GREAT and very thorough podcast episode from Taylor over at Boss Girl Creative to walk you through the basic ins and outs of disclosure. She and Jenn from Busy Being Jennifer hash out most of the things you need to know about disclosure. Rather than going through what she did such a great job of covering, I want to cover something different that is running rampant right now.

A lot of content creators are using free things like webinars, video series, summits, and ebooks to promote paid content. This is nothing new. But I've seen a rash of people promoting these as affiliates without disclosure. You get an email sharing a free opportunity, but what you don't see is the lifetime (or longtime) cookie attached to your email when you sign up for the free thing. If you do buy a paid thing, the person who referred you gets paid.

I think that this has been a gray area because the first link is to something free. Creators are simply sending you free content. Right?

Wrong. The FTC is clear on deception. That's the POINT of disclosure. And what I see very few people disclosing in these free content emails is the fact that if you buy something after watching or downloading the free thing, they will get paid. There are also sometimes incentives on the back end for affiliates to get the most signups. The person with the most signups often gets a cash prize. 

Why does this matter?

Some of you probably don't care at all about this. Some of you may be getting irked because you realize that you received a whole bunch of these emails this week. Maybe you got asked to join a Facebook group that was built around a particular launch...but not by the person launching the course or program. (You can bet the group was set up by an affiliate of the program.) Maybe you received free video training or someone emailed you a really great bonus to a course that was not theirs. All of those scream: AFFILIATE LINKS. 

This matters, ultimately, not simply because of the FTC. I'm way less concerned about the FTC coming after little old me and way MORE concerned about not breaking your trust, reader.

Disclosure is about integrity.

Disclosure is about saying, "Maybe I'll make fewer sales if I disclose, but I'm disclosing anyway."

(PS- Pat Flynn believes that disclosing can make MORE sales.)

Disclosure is about being up front with your people.

Disclosure is about trust.

This is why it matters so much to me and why I hope it matters to you. Do you care more about keeping your readers' trust or about (potentially) making an affiliate sale? I feel like trust is at stake and your integrity is at stake when you do not disclose to your readers.

If you are reading this and you realize that you haven't properly disclosed in the past, it's okay! You can start now. You can promote products well and make money as an affiliate while disclosing properly.

If there is a cookie involved and a potential commission for you if someone buys through a link, disclose. A general rule of thumb: when in doubt, DISCLOSE.

If you are reading this and you realize that you are getting pitched a lot of affiliate links that are not disclosed, consider hitting reply and kindly asking if the links are affiliate links. I'd like to give marketers the benefit of the doubt on this one...though I'm also a pessimist. If it bothers you, ask. If it doesn't, no biggie.

Once again, check out Taylor's podcast episode to get the nitty gritty on disclosure. But I hope to leave you with this one thing: When in doubt, disclose.

Hold your integrity and the trust of your readers over everything else. Don't be smarmy. Not disclosing affiliate links is like the essence of smarm.

I'd love to know YOUR thoughts! Have you accidentally messed up disclosure in the past? Have you gotten a slew of emails that were clearly affiliate links? 

With so many social platforms and social media posts, it can be really difficult to know WHERE to be. Should you be on ALL platforms? Or choose one and really rock it? In this interview with Amy Schmittauer of Savvy Sexy Social, we talk about how to choose the best social platform for YOU.

A little about Amy: She is PHENOMENAL. I "met" Amy first on her podcast, Social Authority. She is most well known on her YouTube Channel, but also has a great blog and a fantastic presence on Blab and Periscope. Oh, and Twitter and also Twitter. To get a great sense of who Amy is, you can watch this video or just head over to the Savvy Sexy Social blog.

The best way to choose used to be answering a question like this: who is your audience and where do they hang out? That is a great question, but with platforms like Instagram having 400 million users, you know that your people ARE there. So the question is more like this:

Answer questions of your target audience on the social platforms. Your goal determines the platform. Example: Twitter allows you to answer quickly and really to search and find people. YouTube has more of an archiving function, so content lives longer.

Start somewhere. NOT five social networks. You'll be mediocre at best at one of them. Aim for absolutely crushing it on one platform.

Live streaming has a personal connection unlike anything else, so consider some of the newer opportunities like Blab, Periscope, or Facebook Live.

You can be personable without being an extrovert. Don't feel like you have to be a certain type of person to be on video. You DO want to have a consistent brand in terms of how you present yourself in person AND online.

Amy's START Series - This is the Pinterest one, but you can find the WHOLE series.

Amplify Summit - Sign up to hear me speak February 10th!

Consider the Cross Audiobook for Lent - Don't worry. I'll share all about the process later.

Up Your Email Engagement - live training with Kirsten of Sweet Tea LLC

Writing, like most things, is not a one-size fits all activity. (Please unfollow and unsubscribe from anyone who tells you that it is.) In college it took me four years to discover how I best wrote papers. Unfortunate for me, considering I had already written something like forty papers by then. To succeed at writing, you need to know how to discover your writing process. You MUST.

Without knowing your process, you will take longer, do frustrating work, and expend more time, energy, and even maybe money to get to an end result of your best writing.

In this part two of my interview with Gabriela Pereira, we talk about her process of writing a book while also running a site and podcast. She shares her tips on how to discover your writing process to write smarter and write better. (Ps- That's the philosophy over at her site, DIY MFA.) Find more about Gabriela in Episode 28 or head over to the DIY MFA site to sign up for her email list and find great resources. 

What Gabriela Learned

Read more about finding your creative process from Gabriela HERE. 

Pain vs Suffering: Pain is objective. You don't make your word count for the day and that stinks. The suffering is the other angst you throw on top of the pain. You maybe couldn't change the word count, but worrying and moaning and whining and suffering through the fact that you didn't make that daily work ends up making everything harder. Failure does happen. Don't throw suffering and angst on top of it. 

What I came away with from this interview is that I need to REMEMBER my process, even on a daily level. If I simply dive into my work each day, I sometimes miss the big picture or work on the wrong project first. If I stand back and look at my big list BEFORE I start, I am much more focused and effective. I work faster and better, whether that is in writing or editing a podcast. 

I loved my conversations with Gabriela! She interviewed me on her podcast in episode 78. Listen to that HERE. 

Today I want to tackle a big topic that is close to my heart that has a lot of buzzwords surrounding it. I want to talk honesty. Integrity. Specifically I want to broach this question: of how authentic and transparent should you be online?

This, ultimately, is your choice. Completely. But I do think it needs to be a conscious choice and sometimes are not so conscious about it. 

Let's break this down and talk about some of the buzz words you may hear related to honesty and integrity. 

Transparent. This is allowing people to see behind the curtain. It's being honest in the amount that you let people see. 

Authentic. This is being true to yourself. It's being honest in that you stay true to yourself. 

Online, we all create a persona. We are constructing and curating the version of ourselves that people see online. As honest as you are, you are not your real self online. 

Let me repeat this:

You cannot possibly share every facet of yourself online, even if you wanted to. It would be like trying to fully represent a 3D object on paper, in a 2D format. It doesn't fit. 

THIS IS NOT INAUTHENTIC. This is simply making choices about what to share publicly. It is making the choice of what exactly you will be transparent about and what things you will hold back. 

It fails when people construct a persona that is so far from who they actually are and then people see behind the curtain and the whole thing crashes down. The great example is Tiger Woods, who sold himself as a family man. When all his issues came out publicly, he looked like a liar. If he started out as the bad boy of golf, he could have found sponsors and been successful as that. Selling himself as a family man and then being revealed as something else took away trust. 

Here is one thing you MUST be transparent about: legal disclosure. If you are an affiliate for something, you HAVE to share this. The FTC says so. (Just listen to this great podcast from Taylor Bradford on the Boss Girl Creative for more on disclosure.) Not disclosing compensation for affiliate products and programs is illegal and also can damage your integrity with your readers. This is one part of transparency where you don't have a choice. 

Integrity is a huge currency. It may be the most important currency you have with your audience. 

You get to choose what you share and how much you share and when and where you share it. You can be transparent and not share every single thing. You can hold things back and still be authentic. You can hold things back and still be transparent. 

But: 

Realize that being honest doesn't mean you tell EVERY SINGLE truth. It does, however, mean that you do not share untruths. You don't lie. 

Have you sat down and thought about what things you will and won't share online? 

Have you thought about your core values that you want to be clearly communicated, both online and in real life? 

If not, take some time to really hash this out so that you can set some boundaries for yourself and be conscious with what persona of yourself you are presenting online. 

In this short episode of Create if Writing, I want you to really think about your life. Are you doing what you LOVE? 

No, really. Are you doing what you love? 

If not, I hope you stop and consider how you can pursue your passion in life.