Create If Writing - Authentic Platform Building For Writers & Bloggers

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This episode is a little different from the norm! No real show notes and not a lot of practicality...just some encouragement for you to keep on running. Unless it's time to rest! To join in the conversation with our community, sign up here: http://createifwriting.com/community To keep in touch via email with weekly updates, sign up here: http://createifwriting.com/quickfix 

I've been talking about Facebook groups since episode 16 of the podcast, but here on episode 125 I'm sharing how to create a Facebook group with the latest tools! With all the recent hoopla with the updated Facebook algorithm, there has never been a better time to learn how to create a Facebook group! I love email lists because it can create a really direct line from you to your fans. But when you create a Facebook group, you are fostering the ability for your fans to talk with each other. You can check out my previous resources on Facebook groups: How to Leverage a Facebook Group for Your Biz with Katie Krimitsos How to NOT Be Smarmy in Facebook Groups Why You Still Need a Facebook Page in 2018   WHY YOU SHOULD HAVE A FACEBOOK GROUP First of all, a Facebook group is NOT for every person, brand, blog, or business. Not sure if a Facebook group is right for you? Consider whether you have the time to manage a community and if you want to be more engaged with your audience. If you don't have the time, definite

Find the show notes and more resources at http://createifwriting.com/124  Join the fabulous Facebook community here: http://createifwriting.com/community  And get email updates every Friday: http://createifwriting.com/quickfix  "Forget Facebook pages. I'm just going to create a Facebook group." "I'm not using a Facebook business page. My personal profile gets way more interaction." "My Facebook page drives most of my traffic. I'm scared my income will dry up along with my pageviews." These are the kinds of things I've been hearing since Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement about the new Facebook update and what this would mean for seeing posts from a Facebook business page in the newsfeed. People are panicking. Many people are peddling specific advice about what you should do. Rumors are rampant. So how DO you handle the new Facebook update and make a Facebook business page work?  Let's dive in! Read the Facebook newsroom announcement HERE and Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook post HERE.  HOW FACEBOOK UPDATES MAY

When is the last time you thought about the writing process? Or, more specifically, YOUR writing process? The older I get, the more I know myself and understand how to tweak the writing process to fit what works for me. The writing process could really be called a system, the way we think of systems in business. Systems are simply the process, method, or course of action to get a desired result, especially consistently over time. When we get to know ourselves better and how we work, we can tweak our writing process to work better for us. We write more, better, faster. Check out Derek's video where he shares a small box with big ideas, plus some of the secrets of his writing process! (Then come on back for more on process.) For more great, daily content, I would highly recommend subscribing to Derek's channel! He's really ramping it up this year and sharing a lot of behind-the-scenes looks at life as an entrepreneur.  LOOSE STEPS OF THE WRITING PROCESS You could break down the writing process in any number of

"You're doing it backwards." Does that sound like a good thing...or a bad thing? Usually when someone says that to you, what they mean is that you're doing it wrong. You are going about a task in the wrong order. But when it comes to making goals and accomplishing them, the best way is to work backwards on purpose. You need to look at your big goal as Point B. You are currently at Point A. Then work backwards to think about the steps in between to bridge the gap. If you look at your Yearly Content Guide and the daily planner printable sheets, this will make much more sense! Let's walk through the process. 1 / How do YOU Work? Before you can really start planning effectively, you need to take some time to figure out how YOU work. You don't want to waste time on methods that don't work for you. I'll give an example to make this more clear. When I was in college, I wrote a ton of papers! I can't begin to think about the hundreds of pages I wrote and the all-nighters that I pulled. But it took me 'til my senior y

Should you re-launch your book? What about launching within a specific time frame? How do you deal with FOMO when it comes to buying courses? I'm answering three community questions! Are you in the community?? http://createifwriting.com/community Or join the paid community- FREE in December 2017! (Join the $4 level to get access to the private community.) http://createifwriting.com/patreon 

This week's blog post and podcast shares how to throw a book launch party. I'm sharing experiences from my own recent party and giving you tips and questions to help you decide if throwing a book launch party is right for YOU! When my latest book, Creative Collaborations, was nearing completion, I decided to throw a local book launch party. For myself. I've NEVER done anything like this before and typically am not the party-throwing (or going) type. Hellooooooo, introvert! Still, this party seemed perfect for the launch of this book and I'm so glad that I did this! Keep reading or listen using the player below (or on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app) to find out what I learned and if a book launch party is right for you! Listen to Episode 120: How to Throw a Book Launch Party It would be amazing if you'd subscribe on Apple Podcasts! Even if you listen through an app, this is what determines my discoverability in the search rankings on Apple Podcasts and in iTunes. Disclosure: This posts contains af

In this interview with Kevin Tumlinson, we are talking about what will help you increase your sales rank on Amazon. In other words, sell more ebooks on Kindle. If you are interested in self publishing your books, this is a MUST listen (or read) to see how you can boost your Amazon sales! See the show notes on Create if Writing for images and more! Why isn't my book selling? I've spent the time to write it. I got a great cover. I told my launch team. And...barely a blip on the radar. This is all too common! You're not alone if you have experience this! Today author and podcaster Kevin Tumlinson joined me to give feedback on three of my community members' books on Amazon. We talk about what they're doing right and what they could improve to better their sales rank on Amazon. Connect with Kevin Tumlinson on his site, listen to the Wordslinger Podcast, or check out Draft2Digital! (

I self published my first book in 2012 and so much has changed! This post will share the best tools for Kindle Self Publishing, from the formatting to the cover. Plus some great tools for choosing categories and keywords on Amazon! When I dove into Kindle publishing with my first book (Make Him Room, an advent devotional), the big thing I remember was staying up 'til 4am crying, cussing, and generally wanting to kill someone over...the TABLE OF CONTENTS. I spent hours in formatting hell. No matter what I gleaned from Amazon's instructions or tried to do in Word, I could not get my Table of Contents to be clickable. (You know, where you can click on a chapter and immediately be taken to that part of the book.) I also had weird characters in between words that I couldn't see in Word, but appeared in the Kindle reader. Now that I have five books for sale, I've got more of a streamlined writing and self publishing process for Kindle. (See them all here!) With Creative Collaborations, I feel like I finally got int

Snag my new book! http://createifwriting.com/cc Hear the introduction from my newest book, Creative Collaborations: What I learned about collaborations from playing roller derby.

Learn how to leverage one-time paid collaborations into more long-term partnerships and relationships.  Snag my new book for more! http://createifwriting.com/cc

Single or double opt-in? Now you have a choice with MailChimp! That sounds great...except that your existing forms will be affected. Here is what you need to know about the two kinds of opt-ins and how you should update your forms before October 31, 2017.  For more: http://createifwriting.com/chimpdates Also! My book, Creative Collaborations, is ready for pre-order! Get yours here: http://createifwriting.com/cc 

Want to form lasting and lucrative connections?  You need to start winding up LONG before the pitch! Learn ways to connect with influencers that set the groundwork for a successful pitch to collaborate.  You can now order my book, Creative Collaborations! Head to https://createifwriting.com/cc to get your copy!

My book, Creative Collaborations, is just a few weeks away from release! In another episode on collaborations, I'm talking about bad pitches.  To kick off a collab, you'll have to pitch. We often think of pitching like a sales pitch, but really pitching is a wider category. It refers to the ask-- asking people about a potential partnership. So how do you pitch well?  Let's start by bad pitches. With examples. You ready? 

In this episode I'm starting a week series leading up to the launch of my book, Creative Collaborations: How to Form Lasting and Lucrative Partnerships without Being Smarmy.  Today it's all about connecting with people: where? How?  I've got two surprising (maybe?) places to find people.  Listen up to find out!

This is the conclusion of my series on Why Isn't My Audience Growing? Today it's all about what to do when you feel stuck. We'll get a little more woo woo into the mindset, inspiration, and encouragement. To see all the posts, you can can check this page: How to Grow Your Audience and Platform. When you are trying to grow your audience, you are going to hit bumps and plateaus. To be honest, I'm not sure which is worse. Bumps are when something might not work the way you hoped it did, like a Facebook ad that flopped or a webinar that no one registered for. It stinks! Plateaus are when you go on for long periods with very little forward motion. You might grow a little here and there, but nothing consistent or worth writing home about. This also stinks! You might even feel like you are learning and applying strategies and following best practices with no results. Maybe you followed this whole series (catch up HERE if you haven't!) and still feel like nothing is happening. Your growth is stagnant. THIS POST IS FO

I've been talking about why your audience isn't growing and want to tackle how to get more readers and sell more books. I have a great interview with Chris Syme of the award-winning CK Syme media group and author of Sell More Books with Less Social Media. Many authors struggle with promotion the same way that bloggers do. Content creation is awesome! But promotion...not so much. I think sometimes we need to reframe the conversation.  Think back to when you were young and fell in love with your first books. Did you ever wish you could write to your favorite author? I did! But...back then there was no internet. No website for authors. Just the publishers' address on that boring page no one reads in the front of the book.  Now? If you want to reach your favorite author, you might be able to get a response in under an hour on Twitter.  Yes, social media means we have to do some promotional work. But what if instead of thinking of this as WORK, we thought of it as connecting with our readers. Directly. THAT'S SO C

Want to know how to get more followers on social media? I've got you covered. This posts is the third in a series on Why Your Audience Isn't Growing. You should also read Why Your Social Media Isn't Growing to see mistakes you might be making! One of the biggest questions that people have about social media is how to get followers. No matter how many you currently have, we all seem to want to get MORE followers. And more. We can never have enough!! I especially know what it feels like to be just starting out where you have under 1000 followers. I remember my first year on Twitter with something like 300 followers, feeling like I would never grow. Getting followers feels like an impossible task. You need more followers so that you have some kind of social proof, so that more people will follow you, but no one will follow you without more followers. And I have found it to be true that once you pass a certain benchmark of at least a thousand people, it gets easier to grow. Getting followers is kind of like a chi

Today's post is all about why your social media isn't growing. As in, why you can't seem to grow your social media followers. It's the second in a series called Why Your Audience Isn't Growing. You can click to read the first post, Why Your Blog Isn't Growing.  Social media can be one of the most valuable tools in your arsenal...but it can also be the most frustrating. It takes a lot of time, can feel like a part-time job, and sometimes doesn't seem to bring in results. If you are one of the many people stuck wondering why your social media isn't growing, I've got some explanations and some tips for what you might do differently.  Listen to Episode 108 - Why Your Social Media Isn't Growing Keep scrolling to read the post! You can also subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, I Heart Radio, your favorite podcast app, or find the audio on YouTube. WHY YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ISN'T GROWING  Here are three reasons why your social media isn't growing.  You Aren't Sharing Relevant Content Back when