marketing -

28Apr 2014 by Dianna L. Gunn

Your Daily Marketing Schedule

Now that you've decided which social media networks to focus on and where you hope to make guest appearances, it's time to create a daily marketing plan for the next month. Some activities, like scheduling promotional social media posts, should be done once or twice a month for best results, but you should incorporate time for marketing in your schedule every day. Why it's important to market daily Even if your blog already has several hundred followers, even if you're selling books well or making a decent living from freelance writing, you need to market yourself every day. Word of mouth is great, but marketing your books and blog yourself is the only way you can guarantee an increase in followers. This is especially true early on--eventually you will experience…

21Apr 2014 by Dianna L. Gunn

Planning your newsletter & subscriber freebie

Marketing, Writing

Remember when I mentioned newsletters and subscriber freebies while you were building your content plan? I wanted you to write down any ideas you had for this content and when to release it. Now that you've gotten the other aspects of your author platform nailed down, it's time to plan these out in more detail. Don't skimp on this process. Your subscriber base will become the heart of your platform--email subscribers who feel they've developed a relationship, however insubstantial, with you and your work are the people most likely to purchase your products. Your blog should already have an RSS feed set up, but to maximize efficiency with email marketing you need to sign up for a newsletter service like Mail Chimp or AWeber. These platforms allow you to create…

14Apr 2014 by Dianna L. Gunn

Creating a guest article strategy

Blog Stuff, Goal setting, Marketing, Writing

If you read any marketing blog long enough you'll eventually hear about the benefits of guest posting on other blogs or writing articles for different websites and online magazines. Many popular bloggers attribute their success to these guest appearances. I've personally made several guest appearances over the years on different websites, and I find each one is marked by a spike in readership both for the day and in the long run. Better still, the right guest article strategy will earn money while you build your author platform. There are several blogs that pay for guest posts, and if you're interested in freelancing, guest articles are also a good way to build publishing credits. Of course, you can't guarantee that every guest post you pitch will be accepted, but if…

25Jun 2012 by diannagunn

Creating a Coherent Marketing Strategy for Your Blog

Blog Stuff, Writing

You might think that once you've set up your blog and started posting your brilliant thoughts and diatribes that people will flock to your writing and become your adoring fans almost instantly. You're terribly wrong if you think that. There are millions of blogs, and every minute hundreds more are created. Everyone and their mother has a blog, and nobody has time to look through them in search of brilliance. In order to be heard over the millions of voices clamouring for attention on the world wide web, you need to make yourself visible in different arenas, particularly in the world of social media. Remember that in the blogging game content is always king. Without clear, interesting and useful information, your blog will wither and die, read by no one…