A note from Susie May: Alena Tauriainen is one of my favorite aspiring authors – she’s a hard worker, creative and has a heart to press on in this journey. She is also the MBT Retreats Hostess and writes a series for the MBT Blog called, “The Next Step,” about the small steps an aspiring author makes every day that add up to a finished novel. I asked her to blog today on her perspective on attending a writers conferences when you’re early in the journey. Thank you, Alena! ***** Many of my writing friends told me attending a writing conference was the next step on my writing journey. I shrugged them off. After all, I was learning to schedule time in to write, reading blogs and other various articles […]
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Use Social Media to Get More Out of Your Next Event
I know from the emails and blog comments I get that many of you have taken the jump into social networking. Today I’d like to share some thoughts about how social media can help with your brick-and-morter events, like a book launch or book signing. Often times we revert to traditional channels to advertise these events and miss some of the advantages social networking can give us. Don’t give up the traditional avenues, but add some of these ideas to increase your next event’s visibility. One of the benefits to social media is that you can identify people with similar interests. You can do this several ways. Hashtags on Twitter. A hashtag is a number sign (#) in front of a word or groups of letters. This makes the tweet searchable throughout the Twitter universe. For example, if I want […]
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What Comes Before Editing: Planning the Work & Working the Plan
With the nickname of The Evil Editor (TEE) – said with affection, remember! –I bet you think I’m all about editing. Not true. I’m also a writer. Which means I’m also about writing. But even before the writing, which comes before the editing, I’m about planning. I can see all you seat-of-the-pantsers (SOTPs) out there in the blog-o-sphere rolling your eyes. Thinking: Not another writer who chains herself to scripting out every last word of her novel, detail by infinitesimal detail. You think there’s nothing better than letting your story run away with you, surprising you with unexpected twists and turns as a character kisses someone unexpected – or maybe kills them. But even a SOTP has to plot something. Beginning, middle, end. The Disappointments (Ds). Maybe resist putting hands to keyboard and […]
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Changes to Tweetdeck or Why I Moved to Hootsuite
This time last year I shared with you my discovery of the social media manager, Tweetdeck (www.tweetdeck.com). I was thrilled with its versatility and all the options it offered. Fast forward to this year and Twitter has since acquired Tweetdeck and my love affair with this program has waned. It no longer offers many of the options that helped me organize and manage my social networking. Here are just a few that have gone missing. •The ability to copy and paste something into updates. •The general ease of navigation that made this program so simple. •The live timeline that pops up no matter what you’re working on. •The easy interface between Tweetdeck and Facebook. Because of these changes I’ve switched programs and now use Hootsuite (www.hootsuite.com) almost exclusively. There are drawbacks to Hootsuite, but now I […]
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