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 #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 #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.