SPA Girls Podcast

Disruption – the entire world is feeling it at the moment, so how can we, as writers, keep our creativity bubbling and stay focussed? It’s hard – we’re not going to deny that – but looking at your schedule and productivity in a different way can help you stay a bit calmer, get some work done and prepare for when you’re on a more even keel.

For the Spa Girls, we’ve pivoted a wee bit to bring you Lockdown Sessions – a daily video of around 10 minutes where we just hang out, sometimes discuss self-publishing, but mostly just lift each other up with our usual cheek and bad jokes. Please join us – either on our facebook page or our new You Tube channel:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCckftViKM301hH_MYlFUxXA

This was a scary move for us all. We’re used to talking on our podcast now, but didn’t have the some confidence about “putting ourselves out there” on camera. Every day we do it though, we’re a little bit more relaxed, so it’s been a good thing that’s come from this disrupted New Normal, I believe (Shar). The best thing for us has been hearing from our community members and we so appreciate your comments (and Subscribes to our channel!). As an experiment, we also recorded the video of this podcast episode, so if you’d like to check that out too, please head over to our channel.

Ways to help deal with a disrupted schedule:

-Ease pressure on yourself by pushing your own deadlines (communicate them early to service providers if you can’t meet them).

-Acknowledging and accepting something has changed, and that it’s ok to be off-balance.

-Create a new schedule by looking at your circumstances and adjusting.

-Don’t beat yourself up because you are not doing the amount of work you were before things changed.

-Find a space to work among the chaos and away from other members of your household

-Life gets disrupted regularly and the tools / skills you figure out now will help in the future when the “usual” disruptions happen – eg holidays, school breaks, illness, travelling etc.

-Don’t overthink things. Change is happening, and roll with it, make the best of it. People will be reading more than ever, so remember that positive!

-If your allotted work/writing time is small, then hit the ground running and be productive while you can. Ten minutes a day can still be productive.

-If the words don’t come, then accept that for now and pivot to doing something else for your author career – e.g. watching a craft tutorial, learning a new skill or tool like canva, reading business / writing books

-As much as possible, focus on positive news and people. Set boundaries on news intake / social media scrolling. Try hard to stay in touch with people that lift you up and in turn be of service to others.

-Romance writers (and other writers) are fulfilling a very real need as a way for people to escape via books – be proud of what you’re doing!

Visit our website for all our podcast episodes and show notes at:

www.spagirlspodcast.com

You tube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCckftViKM301hH_MYlFUxXA

Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/SPAGirlsPodcast

This episode we are delighted to welcome Ricci Wolman to the SPA! Ricci is founder and CEO of Written Word Media, the company that created author promo providers Freebooksy, BargainBooksy, Red Feather Romance, NewInBooks, and Reading Stacks.

Ricci holds an MBA from Harvard and has over 10 years of experience building online audiences using data-driven customer acquisition techniques. (Which means she’s really good at building newsletters and connecting with customers!)

She says that the philosophy of Written Word Media has remained unchanged from the day they launched their first site – to provide authors and publishers an affordable, effective marketing product with which to reach readers, and to help readers of varying preferences and budgets find their next great read.

We discuss how Written Word Media began, how it’s developed and serves authors today and how authors can best use promotions companies/mailing lists to boost their brand and their sales.

So many additional marketing tips in this podcast – it’s a must listen!

Links: Written Word Media

Checkout the Spa Girls’ new daily videos The Lockdown Sessions on youtube (please subscribe so Shar will stop begging!) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCckftViKM301hH_MYlFUxXA

If you’ve been wondering about how to make the most of being in KU…this is the episode for you! 

Lucy Score is the bestselling author of romantic comedy and contemporary romance novels and she’s been doing super well in KU. We asked her to be on the show to tell you how to make the most of being exclusive to Amazon as well!  

Lucy is smart and savvy, and gave us some fantastic tips, so be sure you have a pen and notepad with you as you listen to this one! She also has one of the best author taglines we’ve seen to date: “Writing romance so steamy, her family can’t look her in the eye!”

Find Lucy’s website here.

Understand Social Media Importance With 5 Benefits to Using It

1 It Shows The World Who You Are
With social media, you have the opportunity to highlight all the best aspects of your business with one click. What information would be most useful for your potential and current clients to have easy access to?

2. Target and Attract Your Audience

When it comes to the importance of social media, there are so many different purposes – it’s up to you to define how you want to use it!

Is your business trying to gain a general following or is there a specific audience that would value from learning about your services? It’s critical to figure out exactly who are you trying to reach with your messages. With the advancements of social media, getting to reach and interact with your audience has never been easier!

3. Embrace Diversity In Your Content

Work towards diversifying your interactions by evaluating the best social media platform to share your messages on! Major platforms can reach thousands or millions of people; your next client might be one of them.

While social media increases your ability to connect, social media’s importance is also seen by allowing you a variety of options when evaluating which channel is best for you.

4. Create An Attainable Plan

Translate your marketing goals into the online sphere!

After you have critically assessed your needs as well as what you are looking to do, create a specific plan that to put that into effect.

Determine a timeline for your social media campaign and start to create some SMART goals:

5. Easily Track Campaign Results

You put in all this effort into planning and building your social media accounts, but how do you measure social media importance? Follow your content and deliverables with ease.

The importance of social media comes down to creating a space for you to review and analyse the results of your work with impeccable detail and data! Easily evaluate tracked metrics to your original goals.

Checking up on your social media’s data and statistics is a great way to re-evaluate if you are meeting your original intentions. Do not forget that even though social media can be saturated with information, some of your content will still require daily follow-up while others might not require as much attention.

IT’S IMPORTANT TO KNOW AND UNDERSTAND WHY YOU’RE POSTING ON SM: 

Have a specific goal, and know why you want to achieve it. Just doing it because everyone else is doing it is a terrible reason. You won’t be motivated to continue and you won’t know what kind of content to put up, and you won’t achieve anything. 

Here are some ideas: 

Why brands use social media: 

To drive web traffic by posting links back to original content
To build brand awareness by posting unique content
To build customer relationships by interacting with users

It’s more informal than other settings, users are more likely to interact with you, it’s great for increasing brand loyalty. 

Before you start posting, IT’S IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND YOUR BRAND, and who you are aiming for. 

Maybe create an avatar – 

Jenny is 45, lives in Idaho, works as an attendant at the local aquarium, and loves to knit, has three kids, a dog, and loves Rom Com movies. 

Alex is 25, she lives in an apartment with two friends, works in an office, has no kids, likes to go out on Friday and Saturday nights, likes punk music and reads Urban Fantasy. 

Then do all your content to Jenny. Or Alex. Or whoever you think best represents your ideal reader. 

Content to Jenny – best knitting/crafts ideas, projects you’ve done, cool ideas for crafts, yummy recipes, funny memes about being a busy mum, animal memes and photos, Romantic Comedy movie recommendations, your favourite RC movies, favourite actors in Rom Coms, etc etc 

Content to Alex – Best UF reads, fave UF movies, characters, actors who’ve played, casting options for famous UF books, music recommendations, movie recommendations, memes about cool stuff happening around the world, adventures she could go on, inspiring quotes etc etc 

NOW YOU NEED TO HAVE AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA. 

What works on Instagram?
Image and video based. Tends to have a younger audience. Generally used on mobile phones. #Bookstagram Not optimal for driving blog or website traffic. Best suited to strong visual brands – like authors!! 

What works on Facebook?
Facebook has a wide audience, and tends to be more community focused. It’s a great place to encourage sharing and reader engagement. Can use images and videos as well as text. You can test various lengths for text. It sends more website referral traffic than any other SM platform. They’re placing an emphasis on video content for the future. 

What works on Twitter?
It’s best to think of twitter as a news platform. Posts are limited to 140 characters, use images as well. Encourages retweets and curation. Kind of like a whole bunch of people at a party shouting at each other. 

Instagram is a hub for sharing photos or short videos. Users can post content on their general newsfeed or give live video updates as part of the Story feature.

LinkedIn creates a space for users to widen their professional networks. They can share articles in their field, look for job updates or watch informative training videos to increase their industry knowledge.
Pinterest lets users discover new content (pictures, articles, links) based on their favourite interests. They can browse by topic and categorize their findings into aesthetically pleasing boards.

Creating shareable content: 

Why people share (six main reasons based on survey of users): 

So consider these six reasons when you’re figuring out what to post. I would suggest that being too political, or supporting controversial causes isn’t going to get you anywhere, so look to the other five options. Or consider only supporting baby kittens rescue centres. 

Help define themselves – create content about your different reader types, and help them self-identify. Which hero do you like best? Which kind of love story do you most like? 

Help them connect with others – Create a group of readers and let them talk amongst themselves. 

Help them believe in something – i.e. you. Let your readers know you appreciate their respect. They’re your rock stars, make sure they know it. 

Content types – blogs, polls, quizzes, excerpts, videos, images, quotes, questions. 

Curated versus original content – Curated content is when you find other funny/cool/relevant stuff on the web/SM and share it on your page or group and give an opinion on it. Original content is when you create it yourself. It’s okay to have a mix of the two, and even to have more curated content than original. Just make sure it all matches your branding.

Now choose your weapon and make a plan!

This week, we are absolutely delighted to talk with romance author and superstar, Cora Seton, about writing organisation, branding, mindset and having a stellar strategy.

With over one million books sold, New York Times and USA

We had the privilege of hearing Cora speak at last year’s

This episode will get you thinking (deeply) about your

Find Cora at : www.coraseton.com