C.G.Koens's Blog, page 11

What's On My (Kindle) Nightstand

Let's get one thing straight - I love reading physical books. I like the feel and smell of the paper, and the heft of a good, solid novel. I love the sight of a room full of bookshelves. I love bookmarks that give me a reason to smile when I'm too tired to hold my eyes open any longer. Books and I are old friends, with some of the ones on my shelves going back to Kindergarten and earlier. Taking my copy of Little House in the Big Woods out of the box doesn't just make me happy because it's a...

Why Goodreads Needs to Be On Your Social Radar

It’s not unusual for me to receive a blank stare when Goodreads is brought up in a professional conversation. In my experience working with authors (and bookworms, like me), I have found that Goodreads can be one of the most overlooked social sites, despite the fact that it can make a big impact with very little effort.

Many authors balk at the idea of social media in general, offering the excuse that they don’t have time to interact and engage, or they don’t want to be tethered to technology...

Tools of the Trade

I like to think that editing found me, rather than the other way around. An avid bookworm from the age of 5, I believe that years of reading well-written literature helped instill a natural sense of how sentences should flow, and why semi-colons are horribly misunderstood in the punctuation world. After graduating with a degree in English, Public Relations, and Journalism, I realized that I preferred taking the work of others and tweaking it to make it shine, over coming up with my own materi...

Time for a Tidy Up!

Professional Tip: About once a year, it’s a good idea to take a hard look at your professional bio and give it touch up. I recommend keeping three versions, of three different lengths, up to date. This allows you to quickly cut, paste, and tweak for various accounts (e.g. Twitter About, LinkedIn Summary, full-length bio for websites), and gives continuity when people search for you online.

There are specific things that you should look for as you give your bio the once over, including:

Accur...

The 10-Second You {Case Study}

Making your online presence reflect your offline personality when 140 characters is considered “long.”

The Client

A social sales speaker, social media expert and strategist, and a continuous connections officer who works with organizations to drive revenue through the effective use of social selling strategies and techniques.

The Challenge

In a society that feeds off of trending topics and instant entertainment, it’s vital that you stand out from the crowd. Playing it safe is no longer an opt...

Gaining Ground in the Email Battle

“You’ve Got Mail!” It inspired a movie title. It made our day. This happy little voice that let you know that someone, somewhere in the world, had used technology to connect. Those days are long gone! If your inbox(es) are anything like mine, that chipper little voice would never get past “Yo… You…Y…You’v…” the way emails roll in one on top of the other.

Spam, work projects, notifications, newsletters that I never signed up for, promotional emails from websites I visited once while looking fo...

The Gift of Confidence

A few years ago I was put in a work situation that I never expected to hold: training new team members. My patience was routinely put to the test, and night after night I reviewedmy methods of instruction in an effort to figure out if was me, or if – as I strongly suspected –it was them.

I will never forget the co-worker who noticed my exasperationand ever so gently reminded me thatI was once new on the job, asking a lot of (the same) questions. In fact, she pointed out that even though my re...

What's Your Excuse?

This week my sweet husband said two words to me that you might not expect out of him...

You're pathetic.
Now, before you get your knickers in a knot and leave comments about how no man should ever say that to his wife, and no self-respecting woman should ever take that from a man, let me be very clear: he was totally correct. 
In context, we were discussing a fundraiser that we're trying to plan for our adoption. And by "trying" I mean that we've talked about it a lot. And by "planning," I...

The 6 Marketing “Should Nots” No One Tells You

For the last four years I’ve had a front row seat to the book marketing process. I’ve seen best practices in action, I’ve launched books, I’ve discovered what works – and what doesn’t, and I’ve learned a ton about the industry. With all of that on-the-ground experience, you’d think I’d be a master promoter when it comes to my own self-published book… but you’d be wrong.

Of course I think thebook is wonderful! I love the story and the illustrations, that our real-life postman is included in th...

6 Ways NOT to Market Your Book (or Product or Service)

For the last four years I've had a front row seat to the book marketing process. I've seen best practices in action, I've launched books, I've discovered what works - and what doesn't, and I've learned a ton about the industry. With all of that on-the-ground experience, you'd think I'd be a master promoter when it comes to my own self-published book... but you'd be wrong. Why? I'm an introvert. 

Of course I think our children's book is wonderful! I love the story and the illustrations, an...