Cate Russell-Cole's Blog, page 26

SEO and Social Media Survival

Sculpture by Jeremy Mayer. Source: http://technabob.com/blog/2008/10/04/jeremy-mayers-typewriter-robots-will-blow-your-mind/

There are many bloggers out there who still don’t know what SEO is. That is and isn’t a good thing. SEO is Search Engine Optimisation and for best practice, it is supposed to have a very large say in how you write book titles, web pages and blog posts. You should use the correct keywords to get higher search engine rankings. A great idea? Yes, if you want to stop writing as yourself and be told what to do by a robot. Think about it…

While SEO is needed to an extent, using keywords for blog posts can also assist you with better SEO rankings. Plus I guarantee you, it doesn’t matter how good you are at SEO, you will still get blog comments in your spam folder, telling you to use their service to get better results. They are robotic mass dumped comments… all computer injected. It is big business and it wants to tell you what to do, how to write and what you write. That is an anathema to my creative soul!

I said robots again, didn’t I? To a degree the old sci-fi writers were correct: we are being controlled by them. They just don’t clean our houses yet. They scrub our brains instead.

Digital computations determine how easy it is for us to have our books found on Amazon, our Page posts read on Facebook, our web site or blog found on Google… They are awfully frustrating and if you want to claw your way to the top of the pile, you have to work – hard! You must sprinkle your keywords through your post, use meta tags on web pages, sprinkle matching keywords through your web pages, tweet, status update, Like, Plus 1, retweet, share and comment until your fingers fall off and your brain goes numb.

I am making the rank gods unhappy. Tough!

I did this asiduously throughout 2013 and got to the end of September and simply burnt out! I wasn’t tired of blogging, writing and people. It was those robotic demands that did me in. So I spent far less time on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. Yesterday, after reading a massive, endless stream of SEO and social media how-to posts, I came to the conclusion that as writers, we are possibly far better off writing in the attic, away from the computer and all this “wonderfully good advice.”

Any available time I have in my week, is spent assuaging the gods of rank. So I quit! I’ve noticed that since I began to pull back in September, my visit stats and book sales didn’t actually change much.

So here is how I intend to survive online from here on. I hope it inspires you and if you have further suggestions, I’d love to hear them!

I will automate as many blog posts and shares as I can, so I can take time to see the sunshine and not be spending hours manually on social media. “I’m sorry Hal, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
I will not read any more SEO and social media how-to posts or books: instead I will be myself and stay tapped into my innate creativity identity.
I am using all social media, including Facebook, for business only. Sorry, you will rarely see me, no matter how much I like you. I have a lot of healing to do.
I won’t join groups and communities I cannot keep up with, just because they are “must-do.”
I will not get trapped in worrying about my statistics. If I get 2 Likes on a post and someone was inspired: I aced it! That is my main goal: encourage, equip, empower. Not rack up fat numbers.
I will write the blog posts which are close to my heart, regardless of what posts pull in the greatest number of readers.

It sounds like mutiny. I am reading more and more about people shutting down blogs and killing off their social media accounts. In business, if something does not pull in sales, you stop doing it. Yet online, many of us tend to jump feet first into the latest and greatest next thing, perhaps in the hope it will propel us to stardom? That doesn’t work. It simply chews away more of our time and sanity.

It is all about sanity. If I have to mutiny against binary calculations, the numbers game and everyone’s marvellous advice, then I will. Join me… your creative soul is worth more than this.

For further common sense, please see these posts:

Building A Blog Audience from Your Writer Platform and

How to Find Clarity and Confidence as a Writer, from Jeff Goins’ blog.

This article / blog post is Copyright Cate Russell-Cole 2013. All rights are reserved Internationally. You may not reproduce it in any form, in part of whole, without Cate’s prior written permission. That includes usage in forms such as print, audio and digital imaging including pdf, jpg, png etc. A fee may be requested for re-using her work if it is for a commercial venture. Link sharing and Pinterest pins are most welcome as long as Cate is the attributed Author.

Filed under: 2013, Author First Aid, Blog Building and Promotion Tagged: author, blog, books, burnout, challenge, conflict, discovery, encouragement, Facebook, failure, Google Plus, growth, inspiration, mutiny, problem solving, ranking, sanity, search engines, SEO, SEO optimisation, social media, stress management, success, time management, Twitter, web site, writer, writing

Sending Your Readers in the Right Direction: Blog Post Marketing

The bigger your blog gets, the harder it is for readers to find the content they want, or you need shared the most. However, there is an easy solution: build in a simple mini-search engine for your readers which is easy to access and takes no technical wizardry to set up.

Last week I posted on how and why I had cut my posts down to 164 to make the blog more reader friendly. I was also wondering who was going to read back through over 200+ posts? Probably no one. However, there is one way to keep high quality older posts accessible to readers: by effectively using categories.

While it can take some time to go through a big blog and categorise old posts, it’s worth that investment! Think through the best way to represent your topics. A straight label may not always be effective. Cleverly named categories may work well as teasers to pique curiosity. If say, a book title isn’t drawing traffic, alter the category name your book posts are under, to draw interest.

To make categories readily searchable, you can either use the category sidebar widget that your blog has, or do as I have done as used a text widget to separate the categories out of the cloud and make them more readable. To increase their usefulness, you can also link straight to a category and share it on social media; or as I have done, list them in places where they will draw attention, such as on my Best of the Blog page and my web site. Don’t forget to use the slug feature which allows you to put in a brief description or explanation of the category. It will clear up any confusion and let you communicate extra information.

I’m interested in hearing what categories draw your attention. What works on your blog? Please share in the comments. Here is my new category list.

Author First Aid
Blog Building and Promotion
Book Marketing
Character and Plot Construction
Posts on Editing
‘Dose of Inspiration’ Videos: Writing Skills or Interviews with Best-Selling Authors
Most Popular Blog Posts / Best of the Blog
Writing Lessons from the Writing Life Guest Posts
Awesome Posts Re-blogged from Other Writing Sites
What’s On
All Writing Resources Posts


Filed under: 2013, Blog Building and Promotion Tagged: blog, blogging, books, categories, creativity, failure, goals, marketing, motivation, navigation, passion, promotion, reader, stress management, support, writer, writing

NaNoWriMo: Planning and Tracking Tools

I was involved in NaNoWriMo last year. These are some of the most useful tools people were looking for in the lead up to the big month. I hope you find them useful.

I have so many different types of word count meters. Some of them are plain ugly! If you like style and colour, visit http://svenjaliv.com/resources/wordmeter/ They are free, copy and paste codes. You can change colours and adjust them in several different ways. They will copy and paste into your web site pages and blog posts as well.

3902 / 50000

(7.8%)

 

If you’d like inspiration on novel planning, here are two excellent Youtube videos from writer, Johanna Harness. I loved the second one, but both are inspirational and full of useful ideas. Please visit her at: johannaharness.com

This blog post by Cate Russell-Cole is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You are free to share and adapt it.

Filed under: 2013, What's On, Writing Resources Tagged: author, books, challenge, characterisation, creativity, fiction, goals, ideas, inspiration, Nanowrimo, novel, plot, resource, success, support, writer, writing

The “My Gutsy Story®” Contest

When I started blogging in 2008, I realized that creating a “brand” was an important part of building an audience for my forthcoming memoir. At first I was known as the Gutsy Writer, and in 2011, I decided to broaden the scope of my blog to encompass the Gutsy Living concept.

Prior to publishing my first memoir, Freeways to Flip-Flops: A Family’s Year of Gutsy Living on a Tropical Island, I realized that everyone has a “My Gutsy Story”; some just need a little help to uncover theirs.

So in October 2011, I came up with the idea of starting a weekly writing contest, called the “My Gutsy Story®” contest.  The first story submitted and published was from a memoir writer, Rhonda Hayes. It’s the first story in the My Gutsy Story® Anthology: True Stories of Love, Courage and Adventure from Around the World.  After wiping my tears away I knew that Rhonda’s honesty would help others who were going through the loss of a loved one. Rhonda lost her husband and then her daughter to cancer. Rhonda’s 35-year-old daughter “forced” her to join an online dating site as she wanted her mother to find another companion before she died. It was such an emotional and inspiring story, and a few weeks later, I started receiving testimonials from other writers and readers.

Liz Burgess: “Thank you for offering this platform for writers to share themselves in the hope of touching another soul.”

Juanima: “Sonia, thank you for the opportunity to share my story, and be a part of something incredible: your Gutsy Story Anthologies.  Reading the stories of others has inspired me in many ways.  I can’t wait to read them all! There are so many heroes around us.”

Soon people started feeling safe to share their own “My Gutsy Story®.” Memoir writers submitted stories, and in return, I offered to promote them, and link back to their websites.

I started a monthly poll, where readers vote for their favorite “My Gutsy Story®” of the month, and the winner selects a prize from our list of sponsors.

The series continues on my website: http://SoniaMarsh.com, and we just published out first Anthology with 64 authors.

We have already started accepting submissions for our 2nd Anthology, and plan to put together another BIG EVENT after the success of our first launch on September 26th, 2013.

More than 100 people attended our “Bring Out the Gutsy in You” event with keynote speaker, Marybeth Bond, (A National Geographic author, contributor to LA Times, USA Today, PBS, CNN and guest on Oprah) and our panel of authors which included, Linda Joy Myers, Jason Matthews and Marla Miller. We held the event at a movie theater to launch our first: My Gutsy Story® Anthology: True Stories of Love, Courage and Adventure from Around the World.

To find out more about the event and the panelists, please check out this post.

If you are interested in being published in our 2nd My Gutsy Story® Anthology, please note the guidelines below.

Sonia Marsh (left) with Marybeth Bond.

Do you have a “My Gutsy Story®?” Share something “Gutsy” you’ve done that either:

Changed you
Changed the way you think about something
Made your life take a different direction

Submission Guidelines for being published in our 2nd “My Gutsy Story® 2014 Anthology:

No more than 1,000 words
Submit to Sonia@soniamarsh.com
A new story posted every Monday on http://GutsyLiving.com
One winner/month.
Winner picks prize from our great list of sponsors
We offer link backs to your website, and your social media to help you get more readers.
Check out guidelines and prizes. http://soniamarsh.com/my-gutsy-story-contest
Questions? Contact: Sonia@soniamarsh.com.

Follow Sonia

Blog: http://soniamarsh.com

Gutsy Book Coaching: http://soniamarsh.com/gutsy-book-coaching

E-mail: sonia@soniamarsh.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/GutsyWriter

Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/GutsyLiving

Facebook Group: Gutsy Indie Publishers: http://www.facebook.com/groups/387267894630479/

Twitter: @GutsyLiving

Sonia Marsh is a “Gutsy” woman who can pack her carry-on and move to another country in one day. She’s a motivational speaker who inspires her audiences to get out of their comfort zone and take a risk. She says everyone has a “My Gutsy Story®”; some just need a little help to uncover theirs. Her story, told in her travel memoir Freeways to Flip-Flops: A Family’s Year of Gutsy Living on a Tropical Island, is about chucking it all and uprooting her family—with teenagers— to reconnect on an island in Belize.

Her memoir has received 7 Awards at the:

2013 London Book Festival,
2013 Los Angeles Book Festival,
2013 Great South West Book Festival,
1st Place, Gold Medal in “Autobiography/Memoir E-Lit Awards 2012/13
2nd Place, Silver Medal in “Travel Essay” category E-Lit Awards 2012/13
2013 Paris Book Festival
2013 Hollywood Book Festival

Sonia has lived in many countries – Denmark, Nigeria, France, England, the U.S. and Belize – and she considers herself a citizen of the world. She holds a degree in environmental science from the University of East Anglia, U.K., and now lives in Southern California with her husband, Duke, and their rat terrier Cookie.

Sonia welcomes new friends, bloggers, writers and readers at Soniamarsh.com

The images and text in this post are Copyright Sonia Marsh 2013. All Rights Reserved Internationally

Filed under: 2013, What's On Tagged: anthology, autobiography, contest, Gutsy Living, inspiration, life story, memoir, My Gutsy

You Don't Know Until You Try... Implementing Plan B

Reblogged from Write Your Life Story:

The team has had to make a really tough decision to cancel the memory prompt challenge which was due to happen next February.

We have done our homework, watched the statistics and promoted as much as we've been able (which is hampered by needed funds as this is non-profit), however, from the feedback, a challenge isn't viable just yet. Perhaps in the future we can make it work.

Read more… 119 more words

Email and RSS Subscribing: Pitfalls for Bloggers and Readers

While we need to give readers as many ways to access our content as possible (including RSS) there are a few issues worth considering as a blogger and reader.

My biggest hassle with my followers who subscribe through email, is that they occasionally receive a “misfire” if I hit the publish button too early, which is ridiculously easy to do! The other worrying problem is that by only reading the email, they may never visit the actual blog. That means they miss special offers and announcements in banners, links to additional resources on side bars and feature pages go unseen. In other words: for a blog which shares writing resources: readers can miss out on additional content.

Personally, I like to use email for blogs I just don’t want to miss, but I hate it when I have to still visit the blog for the full post as only a teaser is sent, but it does get me to the blog! RSS feed has the same disadvantages in keeping me away from blogs as email does, but I have stopped using it since Apple removed it from Apple Mail and the convenience was lost.

Today I accidentally scheduled a 2014 post on #journalchat as 2013 and it’s gone live. I quickly deleted the post on Twitter, Google Plus and Facebook, however, for those of you who follow by email, you have a post which leads to a dead link. My apologies for the mishap. I will re-schedule that post to go out properly in 2014. In the meantime, you can catch the post on Write Your Life Story’s blog. Dawn’s service is for more than just memoir readers.

Thank you for being a subscriber, follower, RSS junkie or casually visiting reader. I appreciate you all.

Filed under: 2013, What's On

#NaNoWriMo: Links, Resources, Articles and a Nonfiction Alternative

If you need a helping hand with getting that novel written, NaNoWriMo is just about to start again with a new look and new energy! From their official web site: “National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing on November 1. The goal is to write a 50,000-word (approximately 175-page) novel by 11:59:59 PM on November 30.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. This approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.”

The Writers and Artists blog has published a great article by author Roz Morris , on how to nail NaNoWriMo. It is a must read guideline! https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/2013/09/could-you-draft-a-novel-in-a-month-here-s-how-to-nail-nanowrimo There is another great article on their site from author Jenni Davis on how she fared through NaNo and it’s benefits for her. It’s realistic.

CommuniCATE is also publishing articles to prepare you through October. Check the hashtag #nanoprep on Twitter, Google Plus and Facebook for more resources and support. NaNo also has a better blog than previously seen. Go there for encouragement. Plus if you have funds to give, please donate! NaNo helps many Indie authors. Their books are excellent or you can donate any amount you can afford.

If you are a memoir or non-fiction writer like I am, NaNoWriMo may have you feeling like a fish out of water! Non-fiction writers and people who want to finish works in progress, do have a forum at NaNoWriMo, but you can’t enter the competition. You are called a “Nano Rebel.” I like that term. I also appreciate their all-inclusive policy. You can search for the forum on the NaNoWriMo web site.

Even better than NaNo Rebels, Nina Amir, a teacher and writing coach runs ”Write Nonfiction in November.” It is much simpler, there is a great blog which is informative and has a Facebook page for group support. If November is just not long enough, get involved in Write Nonfiction Now which Nina runs all year. I have gotten to know Nina over the last year and she shares excellent content and is a great lady.

Follow Nina:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InspirationToCreation

Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/107098776847894040162

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NinaAmir

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/ninaamir/

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/NinaAmir

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ninaamir

This blog post by Cate Russell-Cole is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You are free to share and adapt it.

Filed under: What's On Tagged: author, books, challenge, creativity, fiction, goals, Indie publishing, Nanowrimo, Nina Amir, novel, passion, success, support, Write Nonfiction in November, Write Nonfiction Now, writer, writing

Why free-write the first draft?

Reblogged from FlashMemoirs:

"Don’t get it right, just get it written." ~James Thurber

"Rewriting in process is usually an excuse for not going on." ~John Steinbeck

I’m a big fan of free-writing the first draft, which means you don’t pick up your pen until you're done - or at least you don't look back and start revising until you finish the draft.  Skip grammar, punctuation, and every other interruption. 

Read more… 345 more words

Great inspiration from Chris at Flash Memoirs. Thanks Chris!

Cleaning the Cobwebs Out of Blogs: Reader Engagement and Content Value

As blogs grow, action needs to be taken with blogs to make them engaging to readers, rather than leaving them full of old flotsam. From time to time I remove out of date content as I want readers to be able to find the good stuff. Today I have archived over 100 posts in my Spring clean. It’s a value-adding marketing move.

While I am crying into my keyboard over posts I love and don’t want to part with, I’ve stuck to the game plan. If you have a blog which is a few years old and needs a broom taken to it, be brave. Here are the benefits:

I can see what ideas and series worked and didn’t. So I know what not to repeat in 2014.
Book and event promotions which under-performed can be assessed so the mistakes aren’t repeated.
I’ve located and removed posts that can be re-written or re-used at a later date.
Posts which have performed badly have been retired to another blog. Some may go to the big blog in the sky…
I’m finding weird phenomena where some posts have been shared more than read. I know now, that I need to investigate how these share buttons really work.
Old events are removed. (However, all guest posts, videos and Written Acts of Kindness Awards have been kept out of courtesy.)
Off-topic or personal posts are gone.

So if you have come here looking for an old link, you may get a 404 error. Triberr tends to leave posts up which are four months old, which means you may experience a wild goose chase. My very apologies for any time lost on your part. However, 122 well-performing entries with great content, are better than  a dusty archive of “what was” any day.

P.S. If you want to back up your WordPress blog for safety, or to move it elsewhere, go to Tools then Export. It will do it easily. At the other end, go to Tools then Import. Just be aware, I couldn’t take my entire blog to my new self-hosted one as it’s limit for taking in content was 11MB and my blog backup up as 14MB: without images! All images on my Project Sandbox backup blog are linked back to here.

Filed under: What's On Tagged: 404 error, audience, blog, management, quality, readability, size, Triberr, writer, writing

Save Time on Social Media by Using Shortcut Keys

Reblogged from Healing by Writing:

Using social media can lead to a love/hate relationship.

We love social media for its ability to connect us with others with like minds and interests.

We hate social media when its allure mesmerizes us into wasting time better used for something else.

Time spent on social media can be made more efficient through the use of shortcuts, or keyboard shortcuts, or as some call them hot keys.

Read more… 393 more words

The ultimate social media time-saver post, thanks to Sherrey Meyer.

Follow Cate:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cateartios
Google Plus: http://plus.google.com/112808915215573430690/posts
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/cateartios/
Youtube CommuniCATE Resources for Writers Inspiration Channels: http://www.youtube.com/user/katiecrcole?feature=watch




"Write Your Life Story" Community and Memoir Prompt Challenge

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Write-Your-Life-Story/173393852705651
Google Plus: http://plus.google.com/communities/112990534902148227158