Category Archives: I Write

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I Write…

once uponThis week, I’d like to look at four signs that you need a content writer. If you are thinking about hiring a content writer, you are really hiring an expert who can write content to appeal to your audience. You are also hiring someone to correct problems that your blog may be having—poor visibility, poor audience participation—or just poor internet salesmanship all around. If you are encountering these problems, then you may want to find yourself an expert to help you correct them.

Why Content Matters…. And Why You Need Traffic

There is one rule to online business. You must blog! If you have a business with an Internet presence, you need a blog with lots of content. Blogging can certainly get boring, but it really does affect your bottom line. On average, blogs increase business. Businesses that blog get more traffic from Google and more visitors surfing in from other sites, which benefits revenue and brand loyalty. It’s a win-win!

Low Engagement…. No Effect

If people aren’t coming to your blog, you’re more than likely doing something wrong. The problem is, it could be any number of things. You might have a basic problem like lack of promotion, incredibly boring articles, poor targeting, or ten other reasons. You might be facing a competitor’s aggressive marketing campaign. Alternatively, your blog might just be too new. Pretty much everything you do on your blog affects engagement, so the problem could be almost anywhere. Don’t give up if you don’t get a million hits on your first day.

Irregular Habits

If you have a personality-driven blog, a lot of ideas, and the time to put it together, it’s fine to sit down and write what’s on your mind when you feel like it. As long as the ideas keep flowing, your audience will be receiving new content and hopefully coming back for more.

Missing Those Crucial Opportunities

When something happens that affects your business or your community, getting your voice out there can enhance your authority, expand your reach and deepen your connection to your customers. The right commentary at the right time is what viral posts are made of, but you need to have someone ready to react. Building an audience over time will ensure your voice is heard when you really need it to be.

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I Write…

writingThis blog is all about decisions—a decision that could take you to the next level—a decision that could allow your business to grow. I have put together four reasons why you should consider a ghost writer. These four reasons are a checklist. I want you to look over them and place a check against the reasons that would simplify your business life and give you time to grow, expand and become bigger. If you come away from this blog with three checks or more, I think you should investigate hiring a content writer—seriously. The time to act is the moment you realize action is needed!

Save Time

Would you rather just focus on growing your business? Hiring a ghost writer for your blog will free up some time so you can use your talents more effectively elsewhere. If you are spending more time creating content than you are spending bringing in new business, you may want to adjust your priorities.

Share Excellence

You may not be a great writer, but the business demands excellence. Perhaps you don’t need a ghost writer to take over your blog from start to finish; maybe you just need someone to proofread and edit your content before publishing. A good editor can help you fix your grammar and spelling, be more concise, and better organize your thoughts.

Cultivate Talent

You should try to update your blog with brand new content once a week. In order to keep coming up with relevant topics, you need to be clued into your industry, monitoring the mindsets of your readers, watching trends. It’s certainly an ongoing process. Some people are better at this than others. Sometimes you just don’t have the time. Sometimes you need to delegate. Again, you may not need a ghost writer to handle all your blog responsibilities… maybe you just need someone to research and brainstorm ideas with you.

Social Media Manager

Once your blog is written and published, you’re going to want to generate interest and attract new followers. This means posting on various social media, publishing an e-newsletter, monitoring and responding to comments, talking about your blog at networking events, maintaining a subscriber list, and anything else that will help get the word out. Remember, when it comes to blogging, you can’t rely on an “if you build it, they will come” mentality; someone has to constantly be plugging your blog and getting more eyeballs on it. It’s a full time job.

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Why Using A Ghost Writer Could Make Your Business Flourish

writingYou have all the time in the world. You can write your own blog articles. But why would you want to? This article is all about your brand—the brand of your company and how using a content writer can help your brand grow infinitely stronger. You are a business owner—you really shouldn’t be writing your own content or that book about your product. You should be running your business. Let your ghost writer build the brand and be the voice of the company…

Enhance Your Brand Image

When you use a ghostwriter, you’re able to increase the amount of content you produce, and thereby, enhance your brand image. More content equals more visibility, which ultimately results in more traffic and increased conversions. That right there is reason enough to hire a business ghostwriter.

More, More, More

When you hire a ghostwriter, you’re able to maximize productivity within your company. You no longer have to delegate writing responsibilities to employees who could be using their time better. You also don’t have to waste precious hours of your own week coming up with new ideas. A ghostwriter can pitch and write quality content for your business, allowing everyone to do what they do best.

Better Quality

Let’s be honest, you’re a business owner, not a writer. And while you probably write well enough to get by, the fact of the matter is your brand deserves a professional writer. You wouldn’t throw just anyone into the role of accountant would you? Well, then, why are you using non-writers to write your brand’s most visible content? Hiring a ghostwriter allows you to keep the same brand visibility, while leveraging higher quality work.

Speedy Turnaround

Have you ever had an idea for a blog or news article but just can’t seem to get it written and published quickly enough for it to be relevant? Well, with a ghostwriter you can drastically improve turnarounds. For the right price, you may even be able to have a piece pitched, written and published in a matter of hours. That’s invaluable when you’re trying to beat out the competition and establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry.

It’s Cost-Effective…

Ultimately, ghostwriters are extremely cost-effective for businesses. In most cases, you’ll simply hire them as independent contractors. That means you’re not responsible for employer-provided benefits and simply pay the writer for the work they produce. Could it be easier?

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I Write…

writingFor most companies and successful individuals there is an understanding. This understanding is a simple one—it says “content sells.” But how do you get content? Do you have time to sit in your busy life and write content? That’s why many successful companies, individuals, and entities use ghost writers to create content for them and here’s why…

Easy and Efficient

Ghost-writers can manage the process of blog or article writing from beginning to end. They will interview and capture the content needed to establish a solid point of view, follow up directly with your content experts, gain approvals and make any necessary changes before delivering a final version. They work without any need for you to supervise. Just like a well-oiled machine.

The Voice

This is one of the most important reasons to bring a ghost-writer on board – although it might have been a show-stopper for you before now. The truth is that experienced ghost-writers have written many hundreds—thousands even—of blogs and articles for companies, so they know exactly how to capture the voice of content owners.

Research…. Who Does It?

Ghost-writers are expert researchers, which means they can fact-check and provide supporting statistics and meaningful industry information that will enrich the content owner’s blog and content. They can add links to sources for extra search engine boosts, too. Can your overworked secretary do this as a side job? Not as efficiently.

Busy, Busy, Busy Media Calendar

A ghost-writer working for you can develop a full year of frequently published content. Timely and continuous publishing of content can help increase your company’s brand as your content owners get more and more recognition in the industry. Busy means successful—remember that.

A Penny Saved Is a Penny Earned…

If your need for content is large enough, you could add an additional resource to your staff. But most marketing managers find it’s more economical and just plain easier to have an outside resource fill this need, as you only need to call upon a ghost-writer when needed and pay less per project that you would with a writer on salary.

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I Write…

once uponFormatting and uploading an e-book can be one of the most frustrating parts of publishing a book. It’s a completely different process to formatting a paperback or a hardcover, and it can be frustrating to see your perfect looking Word file turned into a jumbled mass of words when it’s uploaded and previewed. This blog article is all about formatting your e-book from your Word document. Just a few tips to help your frustration…

Fiverr Is Your Friend!

Yes, you can do it all yourself, but really, it’s much easier to let someone else do it. E-book formatting often costs around $100, but you can get it done for $15, or even less on Fiverr.

E-Books Are a Living Thing…

The most important thing is that the text works and is easy to read – so if you’re trying to do anything too complicated, let it go. Simple is usually the solution. Look at any mainstream published e-book – they rarely have special fonts or images and are super minimal.

You can’t set up everything exactly because readers need the ability to enlarge the text, change the font, and the e-book will look different on every device and previewing tool. Rather than add a lot of style, you need to remove as much style as possible and make everything very simple.

Start with Your Word file

The easiest way to make an e-book is to start by setting up your Word file the right way. Use automatic paragraph indents not tabs. Use the “heading1” style for all chapter titles, and check that a TOC is being made automatically. If you’ve done it right, you can use a simple online e-book conversion tool, or upload it straight to Kindle, or run it through Calibre, and everything should look just as you set it up in Word.

There Is No Page!

If you learn one thing about formatting an e-book it should be this: Inside an e-book, there is no page. This is the hardest thing for would-be e-book publishers to get their heads around, and I understand. It was hard for me too. Seriously.

Don’t Overdo the Fonts

Try to use the same font and font size throughout the book for both text and headings. Select a standard font face such as Times Roman or Verdana in 12-point size. Use italics in the text where appropriate, but no underlines. It makes everything else easier.

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I Write…

medFor many authors, the obvious way to get their book onto shelves as a paperback is by using the CreateSpace service. With numerous pros and cons, CreateSpace has been the market leader for some time now. I thought it would be a good idea for us to take an in-depth look at the platform and see if it could be the way forward for your book project…

The ISBN Issue

CreateSpace offers several options for ISBNs, and the most popular option, by far, is the free ISBN. Amazon will, for no charge, list your book so it can be ordered by libraries and academic institutions. This is part of Expanded Distribution. As ISBNs themselves can be pretty costly, this is a good alternative that will give you the freedom to publish at will.

Need a Barcode?

You don’t need to buy a barcode, which is necessary for printed books, because it is provided for free by CreateSpace. This is another major positive to using CreateSpace.

Looking for a Hardback?

Hardbacks are an important edition for many authors, and although several services offer them—CreateSpace is not one of them. This is one of the major negatives to using the CreateSpace service.

The Price of a Book

Your price per book—the price you pay CreateSpace if you want to buy copies for your own use—is the same for any size book with one hundred or fewer pages. There is, however, no volume discount for buyers. This is both a positive and a negative.

Keywords, Categories and Optimization

You choose a single category for your book in CreateSpace compared to the two you get when you use KDP to release your Kindle book. You have the option to input five keywords. Compared to Kindle, there are fewer SEO options.

Away from Amazon?

Your book will be available on barnesandnoble.com and on some other online stores if you select Expanded Distribution, which is free.

Counting Your Pennies

You can produce a print book for free if you are willing and able to create your own book cover, and templates for those are provided by CreateSpace. The other plus is that you don’t have to buy a printed proof, but most authors will want to see a hard copy before releasing their book to the general public.

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I Write…

coachOver the years, there have been many success stories from people who have self-published their books—and many more stories of failure. This blog article is all about examining the places where authors went wrong when they first published their books. Let’s take a look.

Is your book too long?

If you are looking to write a book, you have to be aware of the fact that a story can be told either with brevity or with sloth. If your book is too long, you could be damaging your own success. People like to read shorter books—it makes them feel good. Will your 2,000-page book make them feel good or will it bog them down?

Can people afford your book—really?

Yes. It’s a temptation to price your book at $12. But will people buy your Kindle book at that price? People are used to paying less for e-books.  Try to price your book so it fits all wallet sizes.

Did you happen to mention the sequel?

Even if you don’t have a sequel in mind, you want to set up the book so that you can have a sequel if you ever decide to write one. If you have a long book, you may want to consider splitting it into a series of books that will create a franchise. Don’t overlook the sequel.

Wait—I have to format it differently for Kindle?

Yes. You do.  Authors have learned that you need very specific formatting in order for a book to transfer to Kindle and other popular e-book formats like Nook.  Many people overlook this fact—and will continue to overlook it. Don’t make their mistake.

Wait—hold on. People buy books from Amazon?

If your e-book isn’t on Amazon, you are missing a huge automatic sales funnel that could be sending you customers while you sit back and do nothing. Your ability to promote it on your own tiny blog is nothing compared to the exposure it gets on one of the biggest sites on the Internet, just from people doing searches in their “book” tab. Take advantage of Amazon, use their promotional tools, and use it to be seen. Don’t wait around for Barnes and Noble to call you up with a great offer—chances are they won’t even know you exist until you sell a lot of books.

YOUR VISION TORCH Series
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I Write…

once uponThis blog article is all about self-publishing your book through Amazon KDP. There are many different opinions about the world of Amazon. Some say that it’s the greatest platform for writers—other say it’s a platform you should strive to be on. In this article, I want to look at four myths about self-publishing that you may have heard of, and the truth about those myths…

“You don’t need a physical version of your book…”

CreateSpace is an amazing company that can print your book on demand. You can have a physical copy of your book. Why would you actually stop yourself from having a physical copy of your book? Why would you deny yourself a product that many people will buy? Did you know that the majority of non-fiction books are sold as hard copies? Don’t discount the power of the printed word.

“It’s easy to get your self-published book into book stores…”

Most authors can tell you that getting placement for your book in a bookstore is hard. Bookstores only want to give space to proven authors. There’s a self-publishing company called Lighting Source, which has a relationship with Ingram books. Ingram distributes books to all the major bookstores. Ingram can get your book in a bookstore’s catalog but not necessarily in the actual bookstore. Don’t be sold on expensive programs that promise to get you into stores. Research thoroughly and do it yourself.

“You don’t have to market your book because Amazon is too big to fail…”

It doesn’t matter how good your book is, your book will sell or languish depending on the marketing that is done. Remember the hundreds of thousands of books that are published every year? Many good books go unnoticed. Writing a good book is just the start. Marketing gets the book noticed and persuades people to buy it. Don’t think for a second that Amazon will do the marketing for you—they won’t.

“One book will make you rich…”

Successful self-published authors have multiple books. It’s possible for one book to take off, but that’s the rare exception, not the rule. Multiple books, especially series, give all of your books a better chance to sell. If someone buys one of your books and likes it, they’re likely to buy your other books. Don’t be caught in the trap of believing that one book will make you fantastically successful.

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I Write…

once uponLast week, we talked about the positives behind self-publishing. This week, I’d like for us to talk about whether you are actually ready to publish. Knowing if you are ready to publish is half the battle—so take a look a look at this list and see if there are any reasons here for you not to publish your book. You should be absolutely certain you are ready to publish before you bite the bullet…

Writing for the Wrong Reason—Do Not Fall Into This Trap

The most common wrong reason to write a book is to make a lot of money. In many cases, you will be letting yourself in for a huge disappointment. You should try to write a book for good reasons—reasons like having something to say, something you want to express or something you’d like to share.

You Didn’t Use an Editor

Many writers believe that they’ve caught every mistake in their book. They’re wrong. Time after time, a fresh set of eyes has found typos in a book once thought clean. Don’t fall into the trap of trusting your eyes—find another set of professional eyes before you publish.

Design Your Own Cover?

The cover is one of the most important marketing pieces for your book, so hiring a great designer is money well invested. The beauty pageant that is Amazon web pages displays fifteen to twenty covers at a time. With a graphic the size of a postage stamp, you need to entice people to click. Are you ready for the competition?

Too Few Plans?

There are at least three plans to getting your book published: Plan A is to find a traditional publisher; Plan B is to self-publish; and Plan C is to implement Plan B in order to attract a traditional publisher and reinstate Plan A. There is no right and wrong. There is only what works for you and what doesn’t, so be flexible. Don’t undersell yourself and go to work without a plan.

Did You Build Your Marketing Platform?

Self-publishing is not a serial process where you can write a book and then worry about marketing it later. You need to start building a marketing platform as soon as you start writing because the process takes a year. Get in on your marketing early!

Did You Use Microsoft Word?

There are cheaper and more elegant word processors, but nothing has the paragraph styles capability of Word nor the universal acceptance from the reviewers. If you’re writing a book—write it in Word.

Don’t Just Sell the E-Book

People live believing that E-books are taking over the book market, and that dream is partially true—but you should never discount the paper book. Yes, it’s going to sell slower, but it will be picked up by certain readers; and if you’ve written a non-fiction book, the paperback will, more than likely, outsell the E-book version.

YOUR VISION TORCH Series
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I Write…

once uponMany people ask me about self-publishing. There are a lot of pros and cons, but the five I am going to discuss today form the backbone of the pro argument. Are these reasons enough for you to go upload your book to KDP?

Higher royalty rates

Traditional royalties were, and are, a pittance. The best royalties were 20 percent of net. With the digital revolution, Kindle, Apple and Barnes and Noble are paying 35%-70%, 55% and 65%, respectively. Just another reason not to throw away any ideas of self-publishing your book.

Bypass Tradition

The current digital revolution has changed the face of the publishing world. Before, digital authors had to go through publishers. Publishers controlled every element of the books they published. It was impossible to get books into bookstores without a publisher. However, with the digital revolution, this has all changed, and the self-published author can break tradition and appear on bookshelves alongside traditional bestsellers.

Control… You Must Have Control

Many self-published authors enjoy freedoms traditionally published authors could never have. Controlling content, the cover, the design and the marketing of their books is a huge appeal. So are you looking to control how your book is unveiled to the world—or are you just happy for someone else to do the work for you? The choice is yours.

Time

Most books get a shelf life of around 60 days in a store. One of the great advantages to self-publishing is that there is no limited timeframe for you to work within. The self-life of a digital book is… forever.

Cost controls

Even though you have to actually frontload the cost of producing your book, buying copies and promoting the book, authors who are self-published have said, in many cases, that it has been cheaper than buying copies through a traditional publisher, paying fees to be published or other expenses traditional authors incur.

YOUR VISION TORCH Series
Achieve Your Dreams, Ignite Your Vision, & Re-engineer Your Life Purpose

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More blog articles at www.yourinneryou.com
Dear Princess Column at: www.sentimentalnursewriter.com

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