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 #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.

“I just don’t know what to blog about.” I can’t tell you how often I hear that one. While the obvious answer is, “Then don’t blog!” I suspect the problem is more fundamental. Many people who blog or think they should blog don’t know why they’re doing it…except that it seems everyone else is blogging. So before you start blogging…or give up on an apparently unsatisfactory blogging experience, consider these 21 steps. They’ll help you know how (or even if) you should go forward.

Now, as a twist today, I crafted this post in response to a challenge over at Copyblogger. Author Brian Clark suggested we all take a page from a current issue of PC World and create a post with a list headline. You can see his post by clicking here.

I’m not going to elaborate on any of these 21 items as my post would be impossibly long. But I promise to return to some of these subjects in future posts and explore them in greater depth. Also the items are in no particular order. Enjoy.

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“I have a great designer and a really beautiful website…it’s gorgeous!”

That’s what someone said to me the other day. My reply was immediate, “That’s great, but you want the interest value that an ever-changing front page buys you.” Since that exchange, I’ve been thinking more about the importance of a blog, and I’ve decided to devote several posts to the subject. I look forward to your questions and comments.

Okay, so let’s consider website beauty for a moment. I think we’ve all admired drop-dead gorgeous sites from time to time. I’ve seen some really nice sites, and their talented designers deserve our recognition and admiration. But to be successful, designers need the support of strong editorial direction.

Be honest now…How many times have you returned to a website because you loved the way it looked? Not many I wager. But how many times have you returned to a site that:

* Answered an important question
* Gave you guidance you wanted
* Helped you make a decision
* Introduced you to a new service or product
* Held out the promise of much more information and assistance

More than once, I suspect.

Here are the facts:

* Websites are NOT window dressing for companies.
* Websites are selling tools that encourage their owners to “sell” by informing prospective customers.
* Websites must be dynamic and stay current with all the latest information.
* Websites are not constrained by the costs and time of production…this fact must be reflected in the content.
* Content is STILL King…and we must never forget that fact.

Well, actually, in our current economic times Cash is the real king. So listen to me when I say that the quality of your content is the key to your ability to earn cash online. Or in the case of authors, earn readers who will buy your books. Blog platforms provide a built-in text editor that enable everyone to post and manage the content on their blog sites.

What you need is a blog strategy for your editorial content..the subject of our next post.

Whether you’re an author or business owner, you probably are looking to the Internet to expand your reader or client base. That means, of course, you’re using email to connect with prospects.

If you’re considering creating a blog or even a static website, you’ve got to have it hosted someplace. With so many free resources, you may be thinking of saving your money for other marketing efforts and taking advantage of the freebies. Here are a couple things you need to consider.

* There’s power in the right URL (that’s Uniform Resource Locator, and quite simply it’s your web address).
* You want to build your OWN brand, not someone else’s.
* The right URL builds your brand.

The free services are terrific. They enable you to do so much to get the word out about your products, services, even books. And in future blogs we’ll help you put these to work. But you need your own base of operations. And that’s your URL. Free social network sites can help you build a following, but eventually you’ll want to drive these followers back to your own blog or website.

So start your online efforts by securing a meaningful URL. The first thing you have to consider is what you are marketing and branding…yourself or your product. If you have (or plan to have) multiple products, books or services, you may want to promote yourself as the common denominator in all these. In that case, you should buy your name, such as www.yourname.com. If you want to push your book, you can lock in the title, such as www.booktitle.com.

It’ll cost you less than $10 to get most URLs. GoDaddy is a cost-effective source for buying URLs. And hosting should cost you something between $5 and $20 a month, depending on the services you select. Get your blog or website up and then be sure to create your email. Only a few years ago, it was acceptable to have an AOL, Yahoo! or similar free email account. NOT TODAY. Now it just labels you as a small player. Not something you want to broadcast to your customer or prospect base.

Start right. Be a pro. Create the brand that will impress readers, clients and prospects…YOUR brand.

You’ll find this and more in our eCourse “Write Your Way to More Book Sales.”