And the Liebster goes to...

I don't usually post on Thursdays, but today is an exception because I've just received my first blog award! The Liebster is mine!Yeah, the crowd goes wild.

 

 

I was nominated by Laurie Meyers for "doing so well managing social media". If Laurie says it, it must be true. Of course, I owe all my new found knowledge to the wonderful Robert Lee Brewer for all his sage advice during April's Platform Challenge.

 

So what is a Liebster? This is an award given to small blogs for being generally awesome at something. Yep, pretty vague. I tried to search for how the whole thing got started, but apparently even Google doesn't know. Here's what we do know. "Liebster" is German meaning favorite or dearest, and it's used to showcase up and coming bloggers.

 

Here are the Liebster rules:

* Thank the person who nominated you by linking back to them. (See Laurie's link above)

* Nominate up to five blogs with less than 200 followers.

* Let the nominees know they rock by leaving a comment on one of their blog posts.

* Add the Liebster image below so all your readers can know how awesome you are.

 

So here are my Liebster nominees. All these folks have one thing in common. They all rocked to the end in Robert's April Platform Challenge. So congrats to the following blogs for having the perseverance to fight to the finish:

 

Susan P Dumpy Grace Writes a Novel 

Michelle Reynoso My Writing Life

Lynn Daue Rhymes with Tao

Melanie Cole The Writing Life of Melanie Cole

Alvarado Frazier Alvarado Frazier

Now go check them out!

What I learned from the #MNINB Platform Challenge

So today is the last day of Robert Lee Brewer's April Platform Challenge. If you haven't heard of it, every day Robert posted a challenge action item to help us writerly folks improve our platforms. While there have been days I fantasized about killing Brewer in his sleep, the challenge has been extremely helpful. For those of you playing along at home, here are my top five take-aways from the month.

I stole/borrowed this from Robert's website

1. Social Media will eat you alive...
 If you let it. Between blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Goodreads, Pinterest, etc. you could spend all day updating posts, pinning articles and tweeting. You've got to set limits. Everyone will be different. For me, I check all my social media in the morning and then again at lunch. If I've been good (i.e. I wrote something that wasn't garbage) I check it again in the evening. Without these rules I would spend all day reading blogs, updating Twitter and stalking the gossip pages to see if Jessica Simpson has had that baby yet.

2. Social Media is hard.
 If you want a quality product (blog post, twitter following, Pinterest board) you have to be willing to put in the time. No one wants to read a blog about all the places you find cat hair every morning. Well, someone might, but it won't be me. If you want people to read your stuff, it needs to be interesting, informative, and/or entertaining. If it's all three you get a gold star for the day.

3. Social Media is not that hard.
 Sure, you have to do the leg work, but there are a million people willing to help you. Do you need guest bloggers to help cover a two-week visit from your in-laws? There are tons of people willing to write guest posts and who might also send you copious amounts of liquor. Are you looking for interesting people to interview? Just ask those interesting people. You'll be surprise by how many will say yes and be honored that you asked. Do you need a flying unicorn? OK, you could be out of luck on that one.

4. There is no magic wand.
 Having a successful social media platform is a combination of hard work, a bit of luck, and that special sauce that makes you uniquely you. While there are plenty of things you can do to improve your platform, you will not find an easy button that instantly turns all your Tweets to solid gold and causes followers to fall from the sky like manna.

5. There is a magic wand.
 Well, no, not really. But if there was, it wouldn't shoot sparkly fairy dust out the end. Instead it would spout words of wisdom from the rest of the writing community. This place is filled to the brim with crazy geniuses. So if you don't know something, just ask. Because no matter how awesome you are at blogging, or twitter, or whatever, there is someone else who has been awesome for longer, and that person has something to teach you.

So there you have it. Five wonderful lessons and a month worth of insight. If you aren't familiar with Robert Lee Brewer, I would encourage you to go check out his website right now. My Name Is Not Bob is chock full of sage advice and savvy wisdom.

Writerly Love

A recent post about giving bad reviews sparked a lot of conversation both on and off line among my writer friends. I'm going to talk about that some more next week. Today I want to talk about the other side of the coin: showing writerly love.

A blog I often read has the phrase 'sharing is caring' by the comments section. This is so true. Commenting on a blog, retweeting someone's post, sharing an article that helped you. These are all easy ways that we can show appreciation for the wonderful writer folks we get to interact with every day.

Here's a timely example. Today, someone I follow tweeted the blog link for someone they follow (who I didn't know). The blog was hilarious! So I retweeted it. The author of the blog liked my tweet so she: favorited my tweet, retweeted it, followed me, and commented on my blog! So now I'm following her and have her blog linked here which hopefully many of you will read. It's the social media equivalent of the circle of life.

And here's the beauty of it all. My followers are introduced to something that may be new to them. Her followers are introduced to me. And the whole thing took less than fifteen minutes.

My new goal is to make sure I am showing writerly love to someone new every day. It can be a tweet of an interesting article, a thoughtful comment on a new blog or a shout out to someone I haven't met. So what are you doing to show writerly love to others? Out of ideas, feel free to tweet this blog post. :)

A dissapointing google search

So this month I am participating in Robert Lee Brewer's April Platform Challenge. Every day Robert will post a challenge on his blog and...ok you get the idea of a challenge.

As I am nearing the end of my editing process, the awarness of my own platform (or lack thereof) is becoming more top of mind. Just for fun I did a Google search of my name to see what would pop up. I've heard that agents may do this to see what kind of online presence a potential client has.

Let me preface this by pointing out that my name is not so common. That being said, I can expect to get pretty clean results from this search.

So in goes my name, and my first results are what I expected: Facebook, Twitter and my YALITCHAT page. Ok, that makes sense. I spend every morning on those pages and my name is all over the place. Then I see my LinkedIn page. I don't go there often, but I'll take it. Then comes my MySpace page?

First, I thought I deactivated that thing years ago, but apparently not. Second, MySpace, really? Um, where's my blog. You know the one I post to several times a week that has part of my name in the URL?

Hopefully, I pick up a lot of great tips during the platform challenge, because apparently I need it.  If you're interested in the challenge please check out Robert's Blog My Name Is Not Bob. I'll be periodically posting tips that I pick up, and you may see some changes on the blog as a result of what I'm learning. Whatever happens, it should be an interesting exercise.

Walking the Line

Unless you've been buried under revision pages for the past several years, you've heard non-stop about the importance of an author platform. Obviously, by way of the existence of this blog, I've bought into the idea.  Honestly, I love that, as a reader, I can look into the private world of the masters who have written some of my favorite works.

I mean really, wouldn't it be cool if Jane Austen was alive and could blog about her world.  I'm kinda geeked out by the idea of it.

There are all kinds of idea about what makes a good author site/blog.  Many folks cite wanting to know about author inspirations, their path to publication, updates on the progress of their current projects and the like.

I also think it's interesting to read about certain aspects of authors more personal lives. I would love to learn that you wrote your novel on graph paper in half-hour increments during your kids baths. Did your dog literally eat your first draft forcing you to start from scratch? That's awful and I want to hear all about it.

Insight like this can remind us that writers are real people.  However, when does sharing cross that invisible TMI (too much information) line?

For me, the line is irrevocably crossed when I start to squirm. If I open your website and immediately feel like I accidentally read an entry in your diary, damage has been done. I don't want to hear about your husband's affair, your strong political/religious beliefs or the inadequacies of our public school system.*

Let me clarify a point here.  This really applies for fiction writers.  If you are a non-fiction author who writes about child labor violations, then I'm going to expect that your website will leave me feeling slightly uncomfortable.

However, for the fiction writers among us, it should be noted that some topics should just be off-limits.

*I know that sometimes these experiences/beliefs can fall under the category of inspiration, but sometimes less really is more. :)