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Visual Content Marketing for the Confused and Terrified Writer

February 3, 2017 by Marianne H. Donley in category Writing: It's a Business tagged as Elena Dillion, Marketing, OCC/RWA Online Class, Social Media

Visual Content Marketing

for the Confused and Terrified Writer

Instructor: Elena Dillon

http://occrwa.org/classes/february-online-class/

February 13 – March 10

$30 or OCC/RWA members $20

What is visual content and why do you need it for your marketing strategy? And how does this apply to your author business? The answer is fairly simple.

Visual content is anything that uses pictures, graphics, video, etc. When you see a GIF of cats falling off tables? That’s visual content. A pretty graphic with a quote from a book? Visual Content. Those fabulous cooking videos where they make a cinnamon roll apple pie in twenty seconds? Visual content.

It’s what will get your content seen. As a matter of fact, statistically, your readers are 44% more likely to engage with visual content. Hmmm. 44%? Hard to ignore. We all want to work smarter not harder, right? In this class, you will learn:

How to decide what kind of visuals will work for you and your business
How to create all kinds of visuals
How to make one piece of content work in many different ways
Drive traffic where you want it to go (your website, lead page, Amazon or other retailer page)
Save time and effort in your marketing efforts

This class for you if you’e never created any kind of graphics on your own. It’s for authors who need to learn how to create visual content for their author business and are unsure about using new technology. We will go over:

Strategies for smarter marketing
Tools that make visual content easier to create and more manageable
How to plan out your content and marketing so it takes up less precious writing time.

And believe it or not? I’ll make it fun. I’ll teach you how to create a graphic while you’re standing in line for coffee. =)

Join me for the fun in the February 2017 OCCRWA Visual Content Marketing for the Confused and Terrified Writer class!

About the instructor:

Who Am I?

I’m Elena Dillon, an author of the award winning Young Adult ‘Breathe’ series. When I’m not writing, I love to help my author friends with technology and social media. I’ve taught Social Media for the Confused and Terrified, Pinterest for the Confused and Terrified, Visual Content for Authors and spoken at numerous conferences, chapters and groups about social media and indie publishing.

Most of the time, I’m a wife to my husband of twenty-six years, mom to my two grown kids and servant to my high-maintenance English bulldog, Brutus, while I wait, not so patiently, for grandbabies.

Enrollment Information

This is a 4-week online course that uses email and Yahoo Groups. If you do not have a Yahoo ID you will be prompted to create one when you join the class, but the process is not difficult. The class is open to anyone wishing to participate.

The cost: $30.00 per person or, if you are a member of OCCRWA, $20.00 per person.
Enroll at: http://occrwa.org/classes/february-online-class/
Class dates: February 13 to March 10

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California Dreamin’ Is Right Around the Corner

February 2, 2017 by A Slice of Orange in category Writing Conferences, Writing: It's a Business

Only seven weeks to go until the California Dreamin’ Conference, March 24-26, 2017 at the beautiful Embassy Suites in Brea, California.

There’s still time to register!
Here’s an update from your conference committee:

We’ve opened the signup for book cover advertising. For $25, you provide the artwork, we’ll produce the slide. If you’re an author, you just need to provide your photo and one book cover image and we’ll do the rest. The slide show runs during certain portions of the conference for all attendees. Add additional covers if you wish for just $20 each. Deadline is March 1st. Sign up here.
Want a chance to win free registration at the 2019 California Dreamin’ Conference? Sign up to be a volunteer here. Remember, the conference is a non-profit endeavor of the four Southern California RWA chapters, and it can’t happen without the help of many generous volunteers.
Our Conference Extras page is open for business. Need a marketing consultation? A professional headshot? A massage break at the conference? Check out all the good things being offered as Conference Extras and sign up here.
Do you want to be part of the official conference thumb drive that will go to every conference attendee? If you’re registered for the conference, you can take advantage of this fabulous promotional opportunity sponsored by Smashwords by putting up to three of your books on the 4GB drive at no cost to you. Find more information here. Deadline is March 3rd. [When you’re ready to submit your book, be sure to look for the registration confirmation notice you received when you signed up for the conference and retrieve the registration ID that was sent to you.]
Our slate of special Saturday Night Tales events has been announced. Tickets to these exclusive events will be drawn at the Saturday keynote dinner. Find out more information at https://caldreaminwriters.com/

Spots are still open for Debra Dixon’s Book Camp on Friday, March 24, 2017, and for the conference itself. It’s not too late to join your chapter mates for an educational, inspiring, and fun weekend!

Alina K. Field

Jann Audiss

Your OCCRWA Conference Committee Reps

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Easy Goal Setting for Everyone by Kitty Bucholtz

January 18, 2017 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing: It's a Business tagged as Goal Setting, goals, It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, writers goals, Writing Goals

Welcome to 2017!

It’s January, and you know what that means: time to plan your goals for the year. Right?

Don’t Be Discouraged!

Depending on how well last year’s goal setting went, this might be easier said than done. Maybe you’ve tried a lot of ways to plan and they haven’t turned out very well. The biggest thing to remember is to find a method that works for you.

I’ve been teaching a time management and goal setting class for the last eight or nine years (not this January, as I’m busy living and writing books in New Zealand!), and there are a couple of things I’ve found that seem to work for most people.

Write It Down

The first thing you need is a list. Write down every single goal you have for your life this year . . . personal, financial, spiritual, career or writing-related . . . anything at all, write it down. This is your Goals Master List.

It may take you a day or a week to get everything written down, but once you think you’ve got it all, go through and circle the five most important goals. These will be your Primary Goals for the year.

Now go through and underline the next five most important goals. These will be your Secondary Goals for the year.

Move Some Goals to Next Year

Look at the rest of the items on your Goals Master List. Does it seem like there is more than you can do this year? Let me give you a hint: the answer is almost always yes. If there is anything that you are willing to put off until next year, get another piece of paper and move these onto your 2018 Goals Master List.

Now you have your primary goals, your secondary goals, and your extra goals. The idea is that you will work on your five primary goals first, and when they are accomplished you will work on your secondary goals. Then, if you get all of your primary and secondary goals accomplished this year, you’ll work on your extra goals.

Rearrange Some Goals

If, when looking at your lists, you feel like this won’t work for you, then you probably need to move some of your goals around. That doesn’t mean adding more than five to the primary or secondary lists but simply exchanging one goal for another more important one.

Congratulations! You have your 2017 goals list!

Fewer Goals, Better Chance You’ll Achieve Them

Another way to do this, which arguably might be more achievable, is to look at your goals master list and choose no more than 7 to 10 goals for the whole year. That’s it. You can work at each of them a little at a time or work at one all the way through, it’s up to you. If you want, you can choose two or three extras that you will begin working on only when you finish the most important 7 to 10 goals.

Go back to your original goals master list and try the second method. Now, look at both final lists. Which one speaks to you more? Which one excites you more? That’s the one you should type up and print out.

Or if you’re feeling artistic, rewrite it with colored pencils and pens and stickers and make it beautiful.

A Daily Reminder to Keep You on Track

Post it on your wall, someplace where you’ll see it often, and make sure to look at it every day.

If you haven’t started your goal setting for this year, or if you feel overwhelmed by the thought of it or the thought of failing to achieve your goals, give this a try.

Then post a comment below or write me an email and let me know how it went. I know you can do this!

I’m super excited about 2017. It’s going to be a great year!

[Follow my post next week on Planning Your 2017 Calendar on Writer Entrepreneur Guides!]

Kitty Bucholtz decided to combine her undergraduate degree in business, her years of experience in accounting and finance, and her graduate degree in creative writing to become a writer-turned-independent-publisher. Her novels, Little Miss Lovesick, A Very Merry Superhero Wedding, and Unexpected Superhero are currently available on Amazon . The free short story Superhero in Disguise and the new short story Welcome to Loon Lake are available wherever ebooks are sold. You can find out about her courses on self-publishing, marketing, and time management for writers at her website Writer Entrepreneur Guides.

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Feb. Online Class: Visual Content Marketing for the Confused and Terrified Writer

January 16, 2017 by A Slice of Orange in category Writing Classes

It has been my privilege and pleasure to find and schedule online classes for OCCRWA, and next month’s class on Visual Content Marketing, taught by our own Elena Dillon, sounds fabulous! Here’s the scoop from Elena:

Visual Content Marketing
for the Confused and Terrified Writer

Instructor: Elena Dillon

http://occrwa.org/classes/february-online-class/

February 13 â€“ March 10

What is visual content and why do you need it for your marketing strategy? And how does this apply to your author business? The answer is fairly simple.

Visual content is anything that uses pictures, graphics, video, etc. When you see a GIF of cats falling off tables? Thatâ€™s visual content. A pretty graphic with a quote from a book? Visual Content. Those fabulous cooking videos where they make a cinnamon roll apple pie in twenty seconds? Visual content.

Itâ€™s what will get your content seen. As a matter of fact, statistically your readers are 44% more likely to engage with visual content. Hmmm. 44%? Hard to ignore. We all want to work smarter not harder, right? In this class, you will learn:

How to decide what kind of visuals will work for you and your business
How to create all kinds of visuals
How to make one piece of content work in many different ways
Drive traffic where you want it to go (your website, lead page, Amazon or other retailer page)
Save time and effort in your marketing efforts

This class for you if youâ€™ve never created any kind of graphics on your own. Itâ€™s for authors who need to learn how to create visual content for their author business and are unsure about using new technology. We will go over:

Strategies for smarter marketing
Tools that make visual content easier to create and more manageable
How to plan out your content and marketing so it takes up less precious writing time.

And believe it or not? Iâ€™ll make it fun. Iâ€™ll teach you how to create a graphic while youâ€™re standing in line for coffee. =)

Join me for the fun in the February 2017 OCCRWA Visual Content Marketing for the Confused and Terrified Writer class!

About the instructor:

Who Am I?

Iâ€™m Elena Dillon, an author of the award winning Young Adult â€œBreatheâ€ series. When Iâ€™m not writing, I love to help my author friends with technology and social media. Iâ€™ve taught Social Media for the Confused and Terrified, Pinterest for the Confused and Terrified, Visual Content for Authors and spoken at numerous conferences, chapters and groups about social media and indie publishing.

Most of the time, Iâ€™m a wife to my husband of twenty-six years, mom to my two grown kids and servant to my high-maintenance English bulldog, Brutus, while I wait, not so patiently, for grandbabies.

Enrollment Information

The cost : $30.00 per person or, if you are a member of OCCRWA, $20.00 per person.

Enroll at: http://occrwa.org/classes/february-online-class/

Class dates: February 13 â€“ March 10

Schedule of Classes for 2017

We’ve had to cancel the January class Overcoming Perfectionism and Procrastination with MM Pollard, but I’m hoping to reschedule it for later this year or 2018. MM is a fabulous teacher.

Here’s the rest of the 2017 schedule of classes:

April 10 – May 5: The Feminine Journey with Mary O’Gara

May 15 – 26: Self-Editing (two week class) with Linda Carroll-Bradd

June 12 – July 7: Horse Sense with Shannon Donnelley

August 14 – Sept. 8: Monster Revisions with Suzanne Johnson

Oct. 16 – Nov. 10: Time Management Secrets for Authors with Stacy Juba

Linda McLaughlin

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Indie Doesn’t Mean Independent

January 15, 2017 by Rebecca Forster in category The Write Life by Rebecca Forster, Writing: It's a Business tagged as indie publishing, Rebecca Forster. writing

Just before Christmas, a new author asked me how she might get more exposure. I’m sure she was waiting for some social media insights or advertising suggestions. Instead, I introduced her to Marianne Donley, one of my first writing friends.

Thirty-two years ago I published my first novel with Harlequin and joined RWA. The women I met there saw me through three genre changes, five publishers, four agents and the final leap into indie publishing. In those early days I learned that being part of a creative community was not simply important, it was essential to the health of my creative career.

With do-it-yourself publishing all authors – newbies or seasoned writers – are often overwhelmed. We juggle writing, design, formatting and marketing, but if human interaction isn’t a part of the equation our hard work will lack inspiration, depth and heart. In an age where we boast of the number of followers we should be counting our friends.

When I ushered in the 2017, I took a time out. I looked backward and forward and was amazed to find out how truly un-indie I am. Old RWA friends like Marianne, Sandra Paul, Mindy Neff, Angie Ray, Barbara Benedict are still my best writing buddies. No less important are those in my new virtual community – authors like Rick Bard, Brian Drake, Sheldon Siegel, Christine Whitmarsh, Chris Taylor, and Jennifer Chase. I have a superb team that inspires me and helps me create my books: cover designer, Hadleigh O. Charles, marketing expert, Robin Blakely of Creative Center of America, editor, Jenny Jensen of E-Bookeditor.com and formatter Stef McCaid. There are readers and pen pals, Tweeples and Facebook friends, family and neighbors who join in the mix. I am so grateful for them all.

As your year unfolds, remember this: being a successful indie author means being a successful human being. In the coming days reach out, give back, pay attention, get to know the people behind the avatars and the books. Your work will be better for it and so will your heart.

May 2017 be filled with fabulous friends and colleagues, good acquaintances, and admiring readers.

Happy New Year!

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