Tag: blogging

Letter to My Younger Self #MayChallengeDay 26-27

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Do not think that I am upset right now, though my speech is slow and my brow furrowed in my forehead. This is just my thinking face. We are actually pretty calmed right now, optimistic if you will. You see we’ve learned to be this way, content. I want you to know that it is OK to take your time. What you need is already prepared for you in the day that you need it. You’ve got some hard times ahead but some groundbreaking ones too. Your level of resolve will continue to be placed against your desire to endure, so pay attention then to the choices you make; they will bear fruit of whether or not you’ve chosen to be strong or held captive to your weaknesses. I want you to know that it is OK to acknowledge the good in your life; to seek good and to pursue love. The attacks to which you are set to receive are not small but they do have the potential to tear you down if you let it. But if you can instead take the time to ponder all of the good things in your life, to notice the small progressions, these occurrences will not move you nor will they alter your desire to win. I know, I know things are never easy for us, never have been. They are always hardcore, up front, and personal. I regret to inform you that this will not change and it will cause you to often, doubt. I would tell you not to doubt but you won’t listen. Experience will continue to boss you around and pain is still your teacher. However, love, joy, happiness, and contentment will not leave you. Like a mother, sister, aunt or a good friend they will not leave you. There will be temptations galore and they are not limited to the flesh. But remember that the fascination of wickedness obscures what is good, and roving desire perverts the innocent mind. Hold on to your innocence but do not be naïve. Learn to understand the world that you live in, and how to properly navigate it. If I remember correctly, we have much more important teenage stuff to do than to sit here and talk about goals but one more thing before you leave. I want you to write this down and to remember it whenever you feel hopeless. Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian journalist, once said

There are moments when troubles enter our lives and we can do nothing to change them. But they are there for a reason. Only when we have overcome them, will we understand why they were there.”

Signed, Your Future Self

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I’m reposting this from a throwback Bewow post I did last year. My birthday was yesterday (yayy) and I thought it was perfect to repost as the #MayChallenge is coming to a close, which I’m sad to admit makes me excited. (Seriously, I think I was the only person who participated lol). I’ll have something much more organized next time. I don’t think I was ready. LOL.  Anyways, enjoy your weekend.

What Will You Leave Behind?

When the dust settles and the coffin hugs your flesh, what will you leave behind? What would be our final worth when the world is forced to see us, not through the lens of rose-colored glasses but from what we have cultivated in the earth? After the money becomes useless and the ink fades from the degrees we placed so much faith in, will our names linger on the edge of tongues? Will your children grow to benefit from your work? Will you be able to stretch your arms forth in the breath of yesterday and kiss them with creativity? I wonder if children are in my future and, if so, if they will live to cherish my books one day.

What would ultimately become of these words? Will they become heirlooms on the shelves of memory? Will my offspring reminisce on an existence that did not include them and somehow influenced their decisions? I am smitten with the reflections of these revelations, how my ancestors lived and how those lives affect us today—the nostalgic images of yesterday and the way they Underground Railroad themselves into the future. I am forced to consider what kind of tracks I will leave behind for others to follow. Will the sweat of labor coddle my children’s tears, or will it just become moisture for the worms of the earth when the dust has settled, and the maggots hug my flesh? I wonder.

Just Write the Damn Book Already #MayChallengeDay23-24

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I really debated on whether to publish this or not. I definitely wanted to, but I was not sure I wanted to hear anything else about book publishing, let alone you. Of course, this is what I do so that boat has sailed for me. I opened my email this morning and there was confirmation that I needed to indeed hit this publish button on this. In that email was this quote:

“Book writing tip: For every 1 hour you spend marketing your book, spend 100 hours writing something worthy of being marketed.” —Jon Acuff

The secret is this: Good books market themselves.

I didn’t have a plan for The Stella Trilogy. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, you definitely should. But to be honest, I didn’t! And yet, these books have turned out to sell more and to be my greatest work to date (far as reader interest is concerned). Sure, I could use more  reviews, but the big picture is that I did it and in my humble opinion, it has been successful so far. Not by way of numbers. I didn’t make Amazon’s #1 spot (I made #17 though!) let alone NYT. What I did however is make an impact on peoples lives. Don’t get it twisted, I’ve worked very hard (your not getting off that easy!), but almost everyday there’s a testimony from a reader about how the books changed them. One European woman messaged me to say that before reading Stella she didn’t know what the NAACP was (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). The young woman doesn’t live in the United States by the way so before you judge understand that whats prevalent over here isn’t in other places. The point is that the books have touched people and that’s what has made it succeed. Though I didn’t have much of a plan, the books are genuinely good stories so they market themselves.

Everyone has an opinion on what you should be doing. Funny thing is that most of what you read about Self-Publishing is not entirely the case, no longer accurate, or just completely untrue. Advice itself is subjective. Personal. It “could” be true or maybe its not. Maybe the moon is really made of cheese.

The Industry is changing faster than you can finish writing one book, let alone several. By the time you finish that book, chances are the research you did will have a different face to it. What works for one author may never work for another. Interestingly enough, this means we really only have our experiences and expert opinions which is a fancy word for “I tried this and it worked. Maybe it will work or you too”. Like I said, there’s LOTS of advice out there, and while some of it is awesome, at the end of the day you have to write a good book. What I love about Self-Publishing is that with each new project I learn something new. This year, I am learning the value of writing a great book. Whether marketing, promotion, or whether or not there are green men on mars, at the end of it all I need a story that will keep readers reading AND keep them talking about it. (Maybe the men aren’t green. Maybe they’re grey. Or maybe they have skin suits).

Authors across the board, Indie or Traditional, simply must produce engaging content. When I review a book I read, for instance, its as if I’m a reader because I am. Meaning I’m not a grammatical geek with glasses on the tip of my nose saying a series of “Ah ha”, “Hmmms” and “Isn’t that Interesting?” I’m just a reader looking for a good story. I’ll leave the editing (OK so maybe you do have one too many sentence fragments) to the editor. For me? I just want to enjoy what I read and you know what? This is the mind of the reader as well. The sob story for Self-Publishing is not Self-Publishing. The sob story is that people are not writing good stories. It (SP) got its stigmas because with the increase in technology, people became so fascinated with the idea of book publishing than producing a good book. Everyone wanted to know what it felt like to hold a book in their hands that they wrote. Everyone forgot that writing is still a skill and we had people to enter this industry who never knew how to write but saw On Demand Publishing as an opportunity to publish a book. This can’t happen in other fields. You can’t walk into a doctors office and start to diagnose people. You don’t have the skill.

Indie Publishing is the IT thing right now. All of the cool kids are doing it but writers are driving themselves crazy with all the information out there. “What should I do?” “What should I not do?” “What’s fact?” “What’s fiction?” “Should I outline?” “Should I not?” “Should I promote this way or that way?” “Should I pay?” “Should I not pay?” “Am I doing it wrong?” Just write the damn book already!

Excel At Being Yourself: Redefining Success

A man and his son were on their way to town. On their way they ran into different people. The first group thought someone should be riding the donkey. They thought it silly that the man and his son had a donkey that they were not riding. So the old man decided to ride the donkey. The next group thought the son should be riding the donkey. “How could he have his son to walk?” they thought. So the son climbed on top the donkey. Another group thought, “Poor Donkey. You two should carry the donkey,” they thought. So the old man and his son tied the donkey to a pole and carried him. The final group just laughed and laughed. “Why are they carrying the Donkey?” In the end, the Donkey finally got frustrated and ran away. So read a children’s book.

A man wrote a book. He Self-Published this book, and spent 200k on a book launch that failed. According to him, he didn’t make The New York Times Bestsellers list. Sure, he made other awesome lists and made enough money to quit his job. But he didn’t make the NYT so the launch failed, or so he said.

A Bestseller could be a book that just keeps selling. A book that people cannot stop talking about. A book that, years from now, will continue to make money. How much? It doesn’t matter. What matters? People keep talking about it. At least this is one definition of a bestseller.

Success is when you excel at being who you are and doing things the way you want it done. Perfecting your invention is what makes others want to invest in it because its original. Its something that hasn’t been done before. Why hasn’t it been done before? Because you hadn’t been born yet. Instead of figuring out how everyone else has done it, how about we redefine what it means to be successful by investing in the visions we’ve been given and perfecting them? How about we sharpen our blogging, writing, photography, or whatever skills we have and release this greatness into the world? How about we become professionals because we’re good at what we do and not because the status quo deems it so. After all, what is a professional anyway? More so, who told you that’s what it was?

Before The Week Ends: Quality Connections

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It’s no secret. I pretty much blog like a madwoman so I actually have days I take off, which is the weekend pretty much with only very few exceptions. And although I should really be cleaning right now, I’d like to share something before we dig in for the weekend. Something that is on my heart, and that I also think is very important both for Indie Authors as well as anyone running a business or trying to run a business. This subject matter is concerning social media connections. And as always there is the disclaimer that this post is based on my experience and is not necessarily professional insight. For the record.

I would be very careful playing the numbers game with social media. Obviously you want more interactions, but don’t get frustrated, embarrassed, or beg if you do not have lots of Twitter followers, IG followers (I am staunchly against that app where they promise you thousands of followers. I want my connections genuine)  or Facebook Likes. The reason I would not force these connections is because you just don’t want a whole bunch of people following you, but what you want is quality connections. By quality, I mean people who could really help you in achieving your goals. What is 4,000 Twitter followers worth when 3,000 of them are family members and friends? Don’t get me wrong, family is very supportive but they are also a conflict of interest. Since they’ve known you since forever and they love you so much you cannot count on them to really be honest about your work because they don’t want to hurt your feelings. They also want to see you make it, which is great, but you need more than mom and dad on your bandwagon to really make some noise.

You need a community of support that is more than just your family members. What is 2,000 email subscriptions worth when you only have a 2 percent open rate? Open rate, it’s the percentage of people who actually open your emails. This is easy to track using Mailchimp. I don’t have a lot of subscriptions to my email list personally and I love that. Not that I do not want it to increase, but I want it to increase with quality and value. For now, I’m OK with not having many email subscribers (by subscribers I do not mean to this blog, I mean to my personal email list). I enjoy the close knit family I have currently signed up (by family I do not mean blood related, I mean those who support me. I call them family because they are. If you signed up, you would be family too. Not shameless plugging, just saying) because the open rate of the emails is still in the 30-40 percentiles which are great for only about fifty or so subscriptions. This means that most of the people who are signed up are actually opening and reading the newsletter as opposed to 1,000 subscribers of which only ten are engaged.

This same thing can be true of social media across the board. I don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook and I don’t get overly excited about the numbers. The reason I don’t get overly excited is because though people are there and obviously find something worthy because they like the page consistently, the interaction is low. This I can compare to the email list. If my Facebook Page was an email list I would only have a few opens. For this reason, Twitter is my favorite place right now. It’s my favorite place not because I have tons of followers. It’s my favorite because the interactions are high. People are actually engaging and the people following me are either readers, authors, editors, or professional business people (Note to Authors: Careful befriending JUST authors. Authors are not going to buy your books, readers are).

We live in a world where people ravish in the idea of being Internet Famous. But  what we have to understand is that bragging is not branding. Having lots of followers and likes doesn’t mean anything if they are not coming from the right sources. What you want, more so than numbers is quality connections in an ethical / professional atmosphere. This means you want to leave what your sister in laws baby cousin Tracey did at the club last night out of your business accounts.

Re-Spinning Posts: How You Can Self-Evaluate Your Blog

OK so you know that post you wrote last year that only got 3 likes and 2 views? Come on, we’ve ALL been there.

If you are new to this blog (Welcome! Waves) you may notice that I re-spin a lot of my posts. I expect anywhere from 50-100 new followers each month, which means a lot of new faces have not seen older posts, especially those that have really proven to be valuable. I try to re-spin my poetry at least once every year for this reason. I also re-spin posts I’d like to get more exposure. New faces also mean new perspectives.

Re-spinning posts is basically when you re-post a previously posted post (feel like I’m over writing the word post here). When this happens, the post shows up at the top of the reader and it also reaches the inboxes of new  e-mail followers who may not have been around when you first published it. < Please re-read last sentence.

I didn’t start off re-spinning (I still believe you have to be blogging for at least next to a year to build up material before re-spinning so it doesn’t get stale). In fact, I didn’t even know what it was. I remember the days I engaged in conversations with other bloggers about it, trying to understand it. After a year or ten months or so of blogging I decided why not? And I started re-posting previous posts just to test the waters. While I am still learning, so far, one of the main advantages I have noticed about re-spins is being able to self-evaluate my blogs content:

Self-Evaluation

What I have come to understand about blogging is this: There is no one method to doing it “correctly”. There are so many different elements that may make a blog “successful”. Sometimes people have tons of followers but not many views meaning only a handful of those thousands of followers are actually tuning in (Reminds me of social media in general, where numbers can be deceiving. Out of 4,000 Twitter followers, for instance, how many of them are actually valuable followers? Meaning, how many of them, for a business account, can actually provide insight and leverage to that business verses how many of them are family and friends?) Some people have lots of viewers but only a handful of followers. Some people get lots of commentary coming in along the comments section (what’s up with my alliteration today actually?) but not many likes on the posts. Content and social interaction also play a role, time of day, I can go on and on. This is why Blogging Confidence is important because there’s no one way to do it. The more confident you are in your blog and writing in general the more others will connect with you. Lots of followers or lots of viewers can mean nothing or it can mean everything depending on how you look at it.

While there is no one way to do it, re-spinning posts in my opinion has become a great tool in self-evaluating the quality of content on this blog.

The Process

You have to understand that in your mind the post is nothing short of brilliant. You put your whole foot and every other body part in it. The fact that everyone else didn’t understand your brilliance is beyond you. But, if you really want to see if others are benefiting from your writing (besides yourself), here’s what I do to self-evaluate:

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I search through my posts, picking and choosing a certain category. Let’s say poetry. I find a poem that didn’t get much attention. “Hmmm”, I think to myself. “Why?”

I click on edit and look at a few things. Can I rephrase how this was written? Is the photo taking away from the post? (Which it sometimes can). What about those tags? I have come to discover some poor tagging habits in my past! Sometimes the tag just didn’t make any sense and had nothing to do with the price of tea in China. And what about structure? Could it have been formatted differently? (I’m totally in love with the “Justified” paragraph formatting! Everything is lined up and it just looks super neat).

Edit

Before I re-spin a post I edit something about it. This isn’t to say grammatically or the content necessarily but something else about it. The tags for instance is an example of what I usually edit. Rotating the tags also grabs the attention of people who  blog under certain tags and have therefore never seen your post before. After rotating the tags I make sure everything in the content is spelled correctly and makes sense (at least to me). I also make sure the post is in the appropriate category. (If its a poem don’t put it in articles, put it in poetry! If you write poetry and you don’t have a poetry category– unless all you write is poetry– make one now and make sure all poetry is in its own category. This will increase its visibility when people search “poetry” or “spoken word”) Bam, we’re ready. I schedule it to post again.

NOTE: When re-spinning successful posts (lots of views/likes) I wouldn’t edit it too much. It was successful for a reason. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

Observation

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This is an important part of the process. If a post that got poor attention before now blows up I know that it wasn’t the content itself, it was just how I published it. Maybe I used five tags instead of fifteen or perhaps it had too many typos. However, if the post still gets poor attention its not that I’m a bad writer, it’s just that the blogging world obviously does not get how brilliant I really am.

Seriously though, if the post is still not attracting attention then you know its time to check the actual content of the post. I have found that it’s not the words themselves, but it is how the words are presented. I have re-spun lots of posts that were poorly written and re-written again. In this process, I have noticed that the re-written article, with slightly different wording, did better than its ancestor.