Two Women Business was the creation of Matilda Butler and me back in 2008. It’s been our platform for talking about publishing, marketing and social media…as it applies to women entrepreneurs and authorpreneurs. We were originally trying to maintain this site while simultaneously building and expanding Women’s Memoirs. Truth told, Women’s Memoirs received most of our attention in 2009 while Two Women Business lay fallow. My last post was in February 2009.

But abandoning this site does not suggest that Matilda and I have turned our back on the topic. Quite the opposite. We find social media/social networking, publishing and marketing (specifically book publishing and marketing) so critical to the memoir writer that we have created a category called “Book Business” on Women’s Memoirs. We’ve been blogging about Book Business for months now.

I felt it was about time that I redirected everyone who finds their way to Two Women Business to Women’s Memoirs. Here you’ll find plenty on business, marketing and social networking…and so, so much more.

Thank you for your interest. And welcome to Women’s Memoirs 2.0 (the more inclusive version that will continue to expand and unfold in 2010.

Post #14–Two Women Business–Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

The Blog Carnival, that is. And we’re about to tell you how you can have some fun while increasing visibility for your blog or Website. But first, you’ll need a little background.

When blog writers and editors want to collect a lot of information on a subject and share it with their community of interested readers, they often turn to the Blog Carnival for content. You can think of a Blog Carnival like a magazine; it brings together and reports on information from any sources/writers. The Blog Carnival host will set a schedule and topic. Blog Carnivals usually come out on a regular schedule, such as every second Monday or the last Saturday of the month. Topics can be as broad as general interest or as narrow (first-time writing experiences from sci-fi geeks) as the host chooses. Contributors with content that fits the subject can submit links to their blogs and Websites. If you make the cut, the host will provide annotation and links to your content. This is a great way to build your readership.

Since there are no guarantees that your site or post will be accepted, here are a few tricks that will help you increase your chances of making the cut:

1. Study the hosting blog. Can you detect any patterns or topics that suggest what the host likes? These are your cues.
2. Consider the hosting blog’s audience. Your best bet to make the cut is to deliver content that the host will agree serves their readers.
3. Deliver solid content. Since this is your chance to attract new readers, don’t waste your opportunity with vapid, vacuous content. You want these readers to return.

Your first step is to find Blog Carnivals that match your requirements. Here’s the place to start looking: The master list at BlogCarnival.com.

For fun, I ran a sample search on the category “writers.” Here are a few of the results that came up:

Carnival of beginning writers (first Monday of every month)

Creative carnival (exercise your creative writing muscles on every second Saturday of the month)

Just Write (share writing experiences every Wednesday)

Scribes (for any kind of writing or publishing on the last Thursday of every month)

The Mad Editor’s Round-up (both subjects and deadlines vary)

Writing Success Blog Carnival (chronicle one’s writing or blogging career due 25th of each month)

If you follow this blog, you may know that once a month we coordinate this post with a companion post at the Story Circle Network blog, “Telling HerStories.” This month the subject is creativity. You’ll find a link to a nice little test of your creativity. One of the exercises evaluates your ability to make associations. It’ll give you a little insight into how your mind works. Now, here’s your opportunity to put that creativity to a real-world test. My Blog Carnival sample above was the obvious first search a writer would run. You have the tool, now put it to work. How inventive are you? Good luck.

 Post #12–Two Women Business–Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

If writing (and finishing) a book and getting it published was easy, everyone would write a book. Still, thank goodness it’s not this difficult. Here’s a video produced by the Digital Marketing group at Macmillan that is pretty funny. Have fun with this. Enjoy.

Post #11–Two Women Business–Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

Serendipity Books III by dweekly on Flickr

Earlier today I read a post by Hugh McGuire, entitled “What If the Book Business Collapses?” McGuire started out lamenting the presence of the big box store, the power of stockholders over the book business and the many changes and closings we can expect. I have to admit that my irritation grew with each sentence and woe. Not because I applaud declines in readership or the disappearance of quirky independent booksellers and musty secondhand book shops. Actually I love both. In fact, I met a boyfriend years ago in Santa Barbara through the secondhand book shop. I bought and sold a lot of books in my grad-school days and always put my name inside. This one man kept buying my books. He became so enamored of our similar tastes in history and literature that he tracked me down to my new home in San Francisco. But that’s another story. [click to continue...]

Post #10–Two Women Business–Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

Mini Cooper buried under a foot and a half of snow

It’s December 22nd. And optimist that I am, I’m looking forward to every day getting longer for the next six months. Believe me, that’s a good thing, given that it’s cold, windy, snowy and dark more than it’s light here in Downeast Maine. And as you can see, I have the pictures to prove it. The snow fell and the wind howled overnight. My white Christmas is guaranteed.

As the end of the year approaches, I’ve been making lists:

• Things I want to get done before January 1
• Things I have accomplished in 2008
• Things I want to accomplish in 2009

I thought I’d share a portion of my lists with you because I realize that so many people with traditional backgrounds in writing, publishing, business and marketing are looking at the social media and Internet marketing with a combination of interest, loathing, curiosity and confusion. What’s more, many of you are feeling overwhelmed and wondering where to begin.

I’d like to start by sharing a couple facts and a personal confession that may make the whole thing appear more surmountable. First My Confession: I’ve only just celebrated my first anniversary in Internet marketing. I’ve been writing, publishing and marketing for almost 30 years, but I too am a relative newbie to Internet marketing. My primary objective is to meld the best of traditional offline marketing/publishing strategies with the smartest online communication tactics.

And Now for the Facts: For all the people that appear to be engaged in Internet marketing, the truth is the vast majority are still on the outside looking in. Many more will make 2009 the year that they embrace some or all aspects of social networking and Internet marketing. Stay true to your personal passions and interests…use the components of social networking and Internet marketing that help you build on whatever it is you love doing. And finally, there is no right or wrong way path to success…they’re more like guidelines!

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Post #9–Two Women Business–Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

Podiobooks.com

I discovered Podiobooks.com just a little more than a year ago and I’ve had a lot of fun exploring the site’s new and innovative writers ever since. I really don’t recall how I fell upon the site, but I definitely remember the first series I downloaded. It’s called “Great Moments in History” by John G. Stockmyer. It’s British, and Mr. Stockmyer created these recordings back in the 1970s as an engaging way to teach history. He presented historic events as if a BBC-type reporter was on the scene…only the events he chose (Battle of Thermopylae, Britain sailing against the Spanish Armada, an interview with William the Conqueror, and more) occurred long before radio and television.

I’ve been a fan ever since. More importantly, I believe that Podiobooks.com may be a useful resource for new authors looking for an audience. You can record your book chapter by chapter, and “readers” can sign up for regularly scheduled downloads delivered like podcasts to iTunes or through your RSS feed. All the instructions are on the site.

Podiobooks.com is guerilla marketing for the author. If you have an earlier book that never received much play, why not read your book aloud, save it as a series of mp3 files, and see if you can’t build your own audience. If you succeed, you can report on your success in your next book proposal. It’s legitimate evidence of interest in your work.

As of today, the 52,119 reader members can choose from 263 titles. Books of all sorts are eligible: novels, compilations, anthologies and nonfiction. You’ll find author submission guidelines here.

Here’s a little sample:

          Printing Press Promo

Post #8–Two Women Business–Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

If you read much about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your blog, you’ve probably heard that video is a fast, easy, and powerful way to improve your standing in Google. All well and good…but most authors and entrepreneurs don’t know where to start. “I don’t have a video camera,” they tell me. “Do I need some complicated piece of software?”

Inexpensive video cameras and powerful software tools do exist. But today I want to give you an easy alternative…something that will get you started with video. It’s a new browser-based screencasting tool called ScreenToaster. “Browser-based” means the tool runs on your Web browser. There’s no software to download. It runs equally well on both PCs and Macs. And it’s FREE. “Screencasting” is video technology that captures action on your computer screen in real time.

You can see a quick demo of ScreenToaster:

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Post #7–Two Women Business–Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

In my post yesterday I talked about the power of Web 2.0 to create a groundswell for products, whether that be a political candidate, ballot measure…or your book, service or latest widget. The case made by our recent elections serves as such a clear example that I want to follow up with a few numbers I’ve come across. The disparity in the social media presence between Senator John McCain and President-elect Barack Obama illustrates how Obama could raise record sums from so many small contributors.

• 150 million blog posts about John McCain v. 500 million posts mentioning Barack Obama (according to post on ReadWriteWeb).
• Just 224,254 MySpace friends for McCain v. 867,074 friends for Obama (figures as of 11/6/08)
• 4917 followers on Twitter for McCain v. 119,762 followers for Obama (figures as of 11/6/08).

So what do the numbers tell us? You should start building your ground game today. As entrepreneurs and authorpreneurs you can use social networking to create more than just buzz. You can connect with your customers and prospects (to provide a higher level of service) and build word of mouth support, both powerful marketing tools. And you can make sales. Social media translates into real dollars.

Your first step is to move away from your static Website and start running your site on a blog platform like WordPress. And when you start posting your blogs, aggressively use tags, keywords and search engine optimization. You’ll build valuable Web presence. While this is important regardless the market you are trying to reach, it’s absolutely essential if you target the Gen X and Gen Y markets (consumers 14 to 44). Fully 90 percent of the 130.5 million young consumers in the United States rely on the Internet for most of their information. Their collective annual income? Almost $6 trillion.

If you’re not sure how to start, let an Internet marketer help you develop a professional blog and create a blogging and social networking strategy. Getting started is not expensive, and once you’re up and running you’ll easily be able to manage most of the site yourself. This is a cost-effective strategy with huge potential for payoff.

Post #6–Two Women Business–Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

It’s the day after our elections and there is one more winner that needs to be announced: technology. We call it by its many names–MySpace, Facebook, blogging, Twitter, YouTube videos, email campaigns, banner advertising, optin pages and list management–but make no mistake. Technology, Web 2.0, social networking (whatever you want to call it) was a real winner.

As authorpreneurs and entrepreneurs, I hope the significance of the Internet hasn’t been lost on you. Web 2.0 marketing has proved its potential–no, its power–by helping build and motivate the voter base from the ground up. Make no mistake.

The blog Mashable ran a post listing more than 65 sites designed to help voters prepare to exercise their franchise. Sites range from candidates’ home pages, background on the many Propositions, polling sites, and voting services (e.g., where to vote and how to get there). In addition to all the background and supporting sites, and major candidates’ social networking accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Digg, Twitter, and YouTube, tens of thousands of voters shared their thoughts and intentions openly…even aggressively.

This election season, Two Women Business had a personal experience with the power of the Internet to make a difference…in this case at the local level. The town of Gilroy, California, was preparing to put forward Measure F to support the construction of a larger, seismically safe library. Supporters of the measure had limited funds to get the word out. To augment the phone banks, publicity and community canvassing, we created a blog site to help get the community involved and keep them informed. You can see the site by clicking here. And the result? We did what many thought impossible. Measure F passed: We needed 66.67 percent voting YES for a super majority. We received 68.10 percent.

The 2008 election may indeed be a referendum on Politics 2.0. Don’t let the lesson be lost on you and your marketing strategy.

Post #5–Two Women Business & Publishing–Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

Traditional media has been taking a beating of late. Well not just of late. Newspapers and magazines have been reporting declining readership, lost ad revenue, and dwindling stock values for some time now. Seemingly the only thing going up are the number of layoffs. And now after about a century of daily publication, the Christian Science Monitor will cut back to a weekly. Last night on the NewsHour with Jim Leher, we heard an interesting segment, called “Old Media, New Media,” and I’ve included a link to the audio file.

There’s no question print media has to change to remain at all competitive. And digital media is the cost-effective choice. Paper, printing and distribution costs make it difficult for publications to compete aggressively for readership that’s drawn to 24-hour news, cable TV channels tailored to virtually every interest, mobile media and the Internet. Add economic uncertainty to the equation and it becomes virtually impossible.

So what does this have to do with blogging? It’s this. For all I read and hear from the traditional media about the need to cut costs and reposition themselves in the digital arena, I hear very little about how they’re going to build their Web presence.

I grant that the major magazines and papers have a stronger brand than you and I, and that many of their loyal readers will follow them online. But will they stay? It all depends on how effectively the old media make the transition. Will they embrace interactive formats, encourage forums, blog effectively? Will they be able to compete with social networks? Some will. Many will not. The new media is not traditional media sans the paper and ink. Success requires a new template.

The same applies to authors and entrepreneurs moving online from traditional publishing and brick-and-mortar businesses. Blogging and social media are key components that we’ll continue to explore there. But I want you to leave you this link to a discussion between author-entrepreneurs Seth Godin and Tom Peters recorded for American Express’ Open Forum.