Writers! What is Almost Better than a Free Web Site?

Wow! This will be the second week in a row that Writer’s Digest Magazine has recognized this blog for excellence. I am truly and deeply terrified…honored. I meant honored. Yes, honored. So thank you Jane Friedman for working your tail off to give writers the tools they need to succeed. And thank you, thank you, a million thanks for considering this blog to be one of those tools.

Deep breath. Ok.

Originally I was going to blog this week about Facebook—profile pages versus fan pages. But apparently Jane Friedman has better writer spies than I do, and she beat me to it (link to her blog at the end). I’ll do that another week. So what are we going to talk about?

MySpace.

Bet you didn’t expect that one. Maybe the title gave you a teensy hint. MySpace. Ha ha! It actually isn’t dead. In fact over 60 million active users as of March 2010 say MySpace is alive and well despite some setbacks. Will it fade away eventually? Probably. But Twitter and Facebook likely will as well.

Blasphemy, Kristen!

Yes, I am sorry to tell you that Twitter is not timeless. It has a shelf life. Hopefully, for us addicts, it will be a very long shelf life, but we do tend to forget our loyalty when lured by the new shiny thing. That is why a lot of what I teach has less to do with technology and more to do with application. Technology will eventually face obsolescence, but application is timeless. Branding your name (last week’s blog) was smart back when everything was done by snail mail and it was smart when Friendster was big and it is smart now with Facebook.

Back to MySpace. Until it blows up or is taken off-line for good, it is going to be a super-powerful tool to help you succeed. I hear too many authors say, "MySpace is so yesterday. I'm on Facebook." Well, okay, but you are shelving a very powerful tool for promotion, and we aren't on there for fun, we are there to build a brand.

Every writer should have a MySpace page, especially a new writer. GASP! Yes you read correctly. I do believe I am unique in teaching this technique that I am about to pass on to you. And there is more about this topic in my upcoming book, We Are Not Alone—Writers and Social Media Marketing.

Kristen! Why on earth do you want us to mess with MySpace? We can barely keep up with FB and Twitter for goodness sakes!

Well, first of all, my book teaches a method that will help you dominate the domains and command all the digital real estate you can. It takes a lot of work at first, but if done correctly, it will take minimal time to maintain. I recommend a presence on all three major platforms—MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. To what degree you participate in any of them is up to you. But that is a discussion for another time.

MySpace is one of your greatest assets, and more writers should take advantage. Why?

How many of you already have a customized, fancy, interactive website? If not, then…

How many of you have $10,000 to go drop on a customized, fancy, interactive website?

How many of you have $1000 or $500 for a regular, not-so-impressive web site?

How many of you, especially new writers, barely have money to eat, let alone THINK of building a web site?

How many of you want to pay some web guy every time you want to put up something new or change something?

I highly, highly, highly recommend MySpace pages as a web site. Why?

They are free.
They are easy to build. If you can right click, cut and paste, then you can build a killer MySpace page. MySpace is the friend of the technology-challenged writer who doesn’t have the cash to pay someone to build a fancy web site.
MySpace pages are free, quick, and easy to modify (upload new pictures, blogs, links, etc). In fact, you can change the look of the entire page in 20 seconds.
It is easy to post blogs.
It is easy to link to your Twitter (embedded widget)
Regularly updated MySpace pages score very highly with search engines. In English that means your name (brand) will rank higher on a Google search much quicker than you will with a static site.
MySpace makes it easy to separate your personal life from your professional (without the awkwardness of multiple FB identities).
Can be easily synced to Twitter. Update Twitter, and it will auto-update MySpace.
Is a great transition to a Facebook fan page. Face it. If you are an unpublished writer who isn’t even sure of what genre you want to write, you DO NOT need a fan page (yet).
Unlike a static web page, MySpace pages are already integrated into an existing network thus making it easier to gain a following. There are some die-hard MySpacers who could be potential readers. Why alienate them? This is why I assert that ALL authors can benefit from having a MySpace page.
I taught this technique on Saturday to a group of Rotarians. Rotary is 105 years old. Like many service organizations, they must get plugged in and become relevant or face declining numbers. I built a MySpace page for my club and we use it for recruiting. It looks cool, has embedded music and video and best of all…it was FREE!!!!! And it took all of two hours to do and takes only minutes to maintain.

Now when I meet someone and they say, “What is Rotary?” I can send them to our MySpace and feel confident that it portrays the best about who we are and what we do.

Our club didn’t have to hope that some Rotarian in our club was a computer geek who would build a site for free (or at least give us a price break). We didn’t need to raise funds to hire a web master to build a nice looking web site. We didn’t have to allocate funds for web hosting.

MySpace allows us to get all the benefits of a webpage without the hassle and expense of a web page.

http://www.myspace.com/swfwrotary

If you aren’t already on MySpace, I recommend getting a MySpace page (using the name you wish to brand). It will save you time and money better spent focusing on improving you and your writing skills. When you get business cards, print the MySpace domain on your card just like a web site (or along with your existing web site). Put your MySpace domain in your information section of your bios on Facebook and Twitter just like you would a regular web site.

You don’t have to do your socializing on MySpace if you don’t want to. MySpace might be annoyed at me for saying that, but it is their job to make interaction more fun and exciting than Facebook, not ours. They benefit off us being users who post regular content. Thus, they still profit when we use them for a free web site (we are sending traffic their way).

My MySpace page, I think, looks great, and it has had well over 30,000 hits (even though I was once dumb and went under texaswriterchik). My MySpace page has the links to my blog, my static site and even a nifty button to help visitors follow me on Twitter. Sounds a lot like a web page, right? Only this didn’t cost me anything but time.

And I know all the Facebook loyalists are groaning, but human nature is to be impressed with the shiny thing, and cool backgrounds trump uncool backgrounds any day of the week. If you love Facebook, feel free to invite visitors to socialize with you on your Facebook site. It isn’t social media infidelity if you do. MySpace will get over it. I am sure they would rather have you on their platform some of the time instead of none of the time.

I recommend MySpace or Yours for awesome free backgrounds. For those on Twitter, they also offer some amazing free Twitter backgrounds (even to match your MySpace background if you like). Freesourcecode.com is also a great place for amazing free backgrounds (particularly for fantasy writers). This site also has ways of helping you create a customized background with you photo or logo. You will have to mess with some pop ups, but I have always used both of these sites, and, in the past four years, have had no problems.

I recommend saving the code in individual Word documents and labeling what they are…Killer Dragon MySpace Background, Awesome Fairy Background, etc. This will make it easier to change backgrounds regularly and you won’t have to start over looking for a good background. You will be able to change the entire look of your page in the time it takes to highlight, delete, copy, paste, and save. DONE!

Some tips…

If you load music, make it appropriate and even neutral. We are there to build a brand, not upload every song we’ve liked since high school. We might love Hip-Hop or Norwegian Death Metal, but others might not.
Limit adding flash. Photo slide shows are pretty, but they will slow down the loading time of your MySpace page and frustrate visitors.
Keep it simple. Think of this like your web site. Bio, contact info (on all other social media sites) and your blog (feel free to use it to send people to your Wordpress or Blogger). That’s all. Photo albums are extra. Games and Mafia Wars are for regular people, not professionals.
Update regularly. Make an effort to log in and at least send out a status update at least once a day. Just comment on someone's page or add a friend or two. Just have activity. It takes 5 minutes and will help you score higher with search engines.
Make your page open to the public like a web site (cuz, well, it is like your web site). Make it easy for us to visit. Solving CAPTCHAs and making us cough up your personal e-mail, your real last name and the name of your first pet is annoying. We are lazy. We will go elsewhere and find friends who are not so high-maintenance.
Most of all HAVE FUN! MySpace is a great way to express your creative side and all that money you would have spend building a fancy website can now pay for you to attend a conference to make you a better writer.

Happy writing!

Until next time…

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Invest in your career.

I recommend you stop by Jane Friedman’s blog “There Are No Rules.” Check out all the other links that Editor Jane listed for their quality information. She works hard to gather the best of the best to make us the best, so take full advantage

http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/

I also recommend Bob Mayer’s Warrior Writer Workshop. This blog would have never happened had it not been for Bob and his Warrior Writer training. Bob works extremely hard to help writers be successful. Sign up for a WW Workshop near you or join his on-line Warrior Writer Workshop at www.bobmayer.org.

The Single Best Way for Writers to Become a Brand

Writers! Want to know the single best way to become a household name??? Brand the right name! Yep. That easy.

This might sound silly, but I think writers love handles and monikers more than any other group. Building a platform/fan base is hard work. As we discussed last week, we can make it easier by recruiting key people to “help with construction.” But there is one key mistake that can totally undermine all your hard work building a social media platform. Branding the wrong name.

There is only one acceptable handle for a writer who seeks to use social media to build a platform, and that is the name that will be printed on the front of your books. Period.

I can already hear the screams of protest, but I am going to save you a ton of hard work and needless duplicated effort.

Part of the reason I decided to teach social media to writers is that I actually have a highly unique background for a writer. Before I was an editor/writer, I worked in corporate sales. Most writers, especially fiction writers, cringe at the word sales. I don’t blame you. But too many writers forget that the purpose behind all of this twittering and FB and MySpace time is for one main purpose—driving sales.

Being published is not the real end goal. Being published is only the means to your real end goal—SELLING BOOKS.

Kristen! Must you be so crass?

Yep.

Plain truth is this. Great, you get published. But, if you don’t sell enough books, you cannot quit your day job. If you fail to sell out your print run, you hurt your chances of another book contract. In order to do what you love--WRITE--you must learn to do what you hate--SELL. It doesn't have to be as hard as a lot of people make it. Brand your name, then your name can do the selling while you do the writing.

In order to maximize sales, your goal is to become a brand. Brand=Big Sales

If I want a good thriller, I pick up a James Rollins. If I want a good YA book, I pick up Stephanie Meyer. A good legal suspense, read John Grisham. Amy Tan will have to change her name if she decides to suddenly start writing novels about the Italian Mob. These authors are the designer brands of writing.

People dig brands. Why?

Most of us don’t have time to research each and every purchasing decision and thus, we as consumers, are prone to rely heavily on brands. Brands let us know what to expect. When we buy Dolce & Gabbana shoes, we expect a certain quality. We go off the name and do far less inspecting and road-testing than we would for a designer/manufacturer we’d never heard of. We are willing to order ahead of time and pay full price and even ridiculous prices for Coach, Ralph Lauren, Prada, Versace, Harley Davidson, Porsche, BMW, Mac Computers, John Deer, etc. So on and so forth.

As a writer, your goal is the same. Your big goal should be to link your name interminably with your content for the purposes of selling books.

Produce enough good content and eventually readers won’t need to read every review about your latest book before they buy. They will trust you for good product and will pre-order your books because they have confidence you provide content that is entertaining, interesting, or informative. They will default to buying books brandishing your NAME because they trust your books are a wise purchase. No more hand-selling--whoo-hoo!

This is where YOUR NAME becomes vital in social media. Your NAME is first and THEN linked with your content, NOT the other way around. We heard Xerox enough times that not only did it become synonymous with copy machines, but ALL copy machines eventually became Xerox machines. Xerox was said enough times in conjunction with the act of copying that it became its own VERB.

This is what we in sales call “top of mind.” A name that is top of mind will be the first we (consumers) will default to when we need a product—name recognition.

I have made all the mistakes, so I can speak from experience. I spent two years under the moniker writerchik. After two years, I had good news and bad news. Good news was that I was smart. I started building a social media platform for my work before I was published. Good news was that thousands of people knew I was a writer and that one day I would be releasing a book. I could actually pitch to an agent that I had a vast platform already in place for when my book hit shelves.

Or could I?

Bad, bad, super bad news was that these thousands of followers knew WRITERCHIK was a writer. My fans/following couldn’t go to Barnes and Noble and buy a book by writerchik. They couldn’t go to Amazon and order the latest and greatest by writerchik. I had spent a lot of hard work and posted a ton of great content….to build the wrong brand.

DOH!

We must realize that we serve the reader not the other way around. Successful writers think like successful companies with good customer service and make the purchasing decision as easy as possible for the reader.

We must appreciate that people are tired, overworked and a lot of times lazy. If they are in a book store, they will default to what they know. We cannot expect that rather than pick up a branded author that our potential reader will instead:

Go to their PDA or borrow the computer at Barnes & Noble
Where they will then log into Twitter
And scroll to one of our tweets
And click on our profile
To get OUR NAME
In order to buy our book.
Maybe they will, but likely they won’t. We MADE IT TOO HARD!!!

Additionally...

When you use anything other than the name that will be printed across your book, you give up your most valuable marketing real estate…the top of mind. Every time you “tweet” or send out a status update, you want those following you to see your name. It is like your very own commercial playing over and over and over, scrolling down the news feed.

There are far too many writers using cutesy handles (I was guilty). I have a ton of writers in my following who, if they released a book tomorrow, I would love to buy it, but I cannot find books written by VampireChick or BookLover_88. I have people I love chatting with on Twitter and FB and MySpace…but I haven’t the foggiest idea what their name is.

Your handle/username is not the time to be clever and creative. Save that for books and blogs and content. We followers will catch on pretty quickly what you write.

If Maura Devlin (made up name) regularly posts blogs on fantasy and links to other fantasy events and talks about her latest fantasy novel that will soon be released, guess what? When I run by a bookstore, I will default to what I know…and now I KNOW Maura because I have basically had scrolling commercials from her every day I am on Twitter.

I also feel like I am Maura’s virtual friend, and I like to support my friends first. So if I am going to try something new in fantasy beyond staples like J.R.R. Tolkien, Piers Anthony, or Anne McCaffrey, I am going to try Maura Devlin because she has focused all her social media energy to making her name synonymous with good fantasy entertainment.

Let’s use Maura as an example.

Scenario 1, Maura is Dragon_Girl
On Twitter, I see a lot of:

@Dragon_Girl New “Wizard Woman” blog post. Where did the legend of dragons begin? (inserts link here)

@Dragon_Girl Book coming out soon. Should be here by end of May

@Dragon_Girl I love the cover. What do you think? (She attaches the cover here)

@Dragon_Girl Book signing is this weekend. Make sure you are early before we run out of books (attaches information on how to get to book signing)

***Notice I NEVER see Dragon_Girl’s NAME. She is always top of mind, but using the WRONG NAME. Even if I wanted to buy her book, I would be at a loss and would have to go do research. If I have an antsy husband who wants me to hurry and get my book so we can go to Costco, and a baby who is teething and starting to fuss, I am not that motivated to figure out Dragon_Girl’s real identity.

Scenario 2, Maura Using Pen Name Maura Devlin
On the contrary, I SHOULD see a lot of:

@Maura_Devlin New “Wizard Woman” blog post. Where did the legend of dragons begin? (inserts link here)

@Maura_Devlin The dragons are near! Book coming out soon. End of May!

@Maura_Devlin I love the cover. What do you think? (She attaches the cover w/dragon art here)

@Maura_Devlin Book signing is this weekend. Make sure you are early before we run out of books (attaches information on how to get to book signing)

Maura Devlin doesn’t need to be Dragon_Girl for those who follow to get that she writes fantasy. We are actually pretty sharp. This second scenario keeps Maura’s name continually top of mind so that those in her network see a scrolling stream of, “Maura Devlin, Maura Devlin, Maura Devlin…always linked with her content—dragons/fantasy.”

So, what if you have used the wrong name, what now?

Don't panic. It is pretty simple to remedy. Go change your username as soon as possible. Those following you are clever. They will "get" that this is a change to your pen name. If it makes you feel better, send out an announcement that you are now focusing on building your brand. Likely no one will blink an eye.

Professional authors use their names and so should we. Using our name sends a message to others that we believe in ourselves and have confidence in the future of our work.

On Twitter and MySpace changing your user name is relatively easy. Facebook is less moniker-friendly, so most of you should be okay unless you started your FB page under any other name than the one you want printed on your books. My advice? Start over. Create another FB page with your pen name and transfer your friends over.

If you cannot get your name, be creative. Kristen_Lamb can easily be The_KristenLamb, KLamb, KristenLambTX, Author_KristenLamb. THIS is a good time to be creative, ;).

Time is precious, so make sure you maximize your efforts by focusing all your energies behind the name you wish to brand. It will save a lot of time for you and confusion for your fans. Branding the right name will help you work smarter, not harder. You need time left over to write great books.

Happy writing! Until next time...