real/brilliant has evolved.

Not only do we serve small businesses with blogging, strategy, and coaching (a refresher on that next week), but we also have recently signed on several authors. Our offering to authors is a bit different; we’ve developed Social Media Packs: Starter Pack, Coaching Pack, and Mastery Pack. It’s a way for us to “productize” our services so that authors (who are overwhelmed by their publishing schedules already) can pick a Pack and get the same amazing service as always. Plus, authors know how to write, so they don’t need much help in that area. They just need someone to introduce them to social media, a bit of coaching on how to approach social media, and then an action plan of what to do next and when.

Our brilliant products page highlights these packs, but I’ll pull much of the information out here as well. Contact us if you’re interested or go visit our web site for more information.

1. Our Starter Pack is real/brilliant‘s mantra for authors: visibility online. You must be a search result for your book’s platform so that when people search for your subject (or you) in Google, they find you and your information first. Thus, you need a blog, a Twitter account, and a subscriber list. Our Starter Pack is a launch kit for authors, basically step one.

2. Our Coaching Pack is real/brilliant‘s goal to help authors make their online interactions authentic. An author must learn their personal mission with social media, and it’s not just to build a tribe, it’s to attract readers that “get” you and want to keep up with what you write. Thus, you must customize your blog and Twitter and create useful infoproducts for your audience. Our Coaching Pack is habit creation and step two.

3. Our Mastery Pack highlights real/brilliant‘s desire to help authors sustain a social media tribe for growth. Authors need to learn sustainable best practices for social media that fit their schedule and goals. Our Mastery Pack is a growth kit and step three.

We are excited by these new products and having a great time helping authors build their platform and tribe! We’d love to talk to you if you are an author struggling with social media. We offer a free 30-minute initial consultation. Just contact us and we’ll set up a time to chat!

I love my sponsors so much. This blog wouldn’t even exist without them.

GoDaddy sold me the domain name, provides the host, and while they have DREADFUL Super Bowl ads, the folks at GoDaddy rock. They bend over backward to help when I get stuck, answer the stupidest questions I have, and there are a few I even know by name and when I email, they call immediately asking, “What do you need? What’s going on?” Your mileage may vary, but my mileage is loving GoDaddy. So, of course I recommend them for domain name and hosting, because I use them and abuse them and they never seem to mind too much.

Starting Monday, if you purchase a hosting plan thru my GoDaddy affiliate link, I’ll give you a free WordPress install. That means you give me all your login info and password to your domain and I’ll install the basic WordPress blog on it. For free. Yep, just because I love Godaddy so much, and want you to get started blogging immediately. This offer good through February 28, 2010 at noon PDT. (Disclaimer: Your basic WP install will not get you a blog that looks like mine. See below.)

Aweber handles my email lists. I love Aweber so much that I actually signed up for two separate accounts and just realized it this month. Seriously, these guys rock my world. I just have to create the content and Aweber folks send it out safely with their double opt-in signups and their fantastic and fully designable email templates. Fantastic stuff. You can sign up for my brilliant/blogging eZine here or my Editas (for editorial clients) eZine here.

In fact, starting Monday, if you use my Aweber affiliate link to sign up for an annual account (one payment), I’ll send you the templates I use for my emails and eZine. They are completely customizable for your own use, SPAM safe, and trust me when I say that the template I use for my eZine is used by the best in the business. You can’t go wrong by simply copying what I do to make it work for your business! This offer good through February 28, 2010 at noon PDT.

Thesis is my blog theme. While the basic WP theme was easy to load, I really wanted some more customized options. So pretty and white and easy on the eyes, yes? I think so. Thesis was designed by Copyblogger Chris Pearson and is one of the fastest-growing paid WordPress themes out there right now. Once you buy, you get upgrades for life. I own the Thesis Theme and the Thesis Developer’s Option (highly recommended) and I know you’ll love it as much as I do.

Also, starting Monday, if you use my Thesis affiliate link and purchase the Thesis Theme and Thesis Developer’s Option, I’ll do a basic install of Thesis 1.6 for you and customize it by adding an RSS link and email RSS link in the sidebar. That’s a great first step for anyone’s blog. This offer good through February 28, 2010 at noon PDT.

Well, what are you waiting for?

You’ll notice my sidebar is becoming more colorful, albeit not quite centered correctly.

Yes, I’m adding sponsor advertising to my blog. It was a decision that I came to only after realizing that I can still be authentic in what companies I allow to use my blog for advertising. So there will be no miracle drugs, diet pills, or get-rich-quick schemes on this blog. All of the sponsors I’ve allowed to advertise are services or products I use for this blog and my business and I highly recommend them all!

Coming up next week, some special offers from me to invite you to test drive these services and products in the near future. You can ignore these offers, but you might want to try at least one or two out. If only to have something you can hold over my head, because if you’re not happy, I’m not happy either!

Also, starting up in March, the long-awaited ebook/ecourse on authenticity will start up. I’m hoping it’s a nice ease of entry way to introduce you all to some of the things I’ve learned and that I really want you to know too.

Anyway, I’ve got to go figure out how to make these sponsor ads line up better. Talk to you all next week!

Hey, look, they’re centered! That’s the beauty of Thesis! Even a blonde can make it work for her.

“Are you crazy?” most authors ask me. “Don’t you realize how much time I have to write? Not enough!”

And they drop their head in their hands and sigh. “How will I ever do all this?”

I know. The idea that an author now has to handle the majority of their own publicity and PR on their own (unless you’re Dan Brown and have a publishing assistant to do it all for you) is hard to take. Not only do authors have to write the book, they have to write a blog to go along with it, have to Twitter everything they think on an hourly basis, have to gather a Facebook following, send out an email newsletter, handle some direct mail to bookstores and book clubs to set up book signings and appearances, all while striving to protect what was once their precious book writing time is a hard pill to swallow.

So how is it done exactly?

1. First of all you need to take a deep breath and realize that you are not the only one feeling this way. Every single author who has brought a book into the world — a book! — is weary and ready for the publisher to do their part and just sell it to everyone and their sister. You’ve finished the book. Great job. Now gird your loins.

Ready? Okay.

2. Put on your marketing hat. It’s a different hat than the writing hat you’ve been wearing almost nonstop these past months (or years). This hat looks at your book differently. Looks at your book from the reading public’s point of view: what’s in it for me? Yep, that’s what they think. Not, lovely cover, wonderful writing (which comes later) but if there’s not something in there for them (that they consider you wrote just for them), well, I’m sorry to say it, but most folks won’t be interested. So, WIIFM? (What’s In It For Me?) What can you offer, what ARE YOU offering your readers? This is what you will be blogging about, talking about, speaking about, writing about, dreaming about, repeating over and over and over and over to everyone that you meet who wants to know WIIFM?

3. Don’t go overboard. Don’t go out and gather up thousands of Twitter followers right away, don’t start a blog yet, don’t do anything rash. Just hold for just a bit. What is your plan? How can you best execute your social media strategy for this book (and yes, for future books that may come later)? What is your goal? Monetary? Copies sold? Visibility? Speaking engagements? Consulting clients? You have to be clear before you start about what’s in it for you. Although it is MUCH less important than WIIFM. But it’s there. So figure it out.

4. Make a list of what you think might do the trick for WIIFM for your readership. Then make a list for yourself (your own WIIFM). Compare the lists. What areas overlap? That’s where you start. What if you don’t know what social media pieces will fulfill WIIFM for you or your readership? You’re thinking, “Ideas for what to focus on, please, Trish!” That’s why you may need more help with this. If you think you might need some help from a social media strategist, you’ll need to visit here. If you’re sure you don’t need help, read on.

5. Figure out the help you’ll need to do those social media pieces to ensure WIIFM gets fulfilled. WordPress or Blogspot? TweetDeck or Tweetie? Facebook Fan page or profile? Group page? How do you set up an eZine? How do you get a list of subscribers? My publisher sent me 1000 postcards to mail out for my book. Who do I send them to? My mom, my sister? Again, here is a place you can hire a social media strategist (read: me!) for help designing and implementing all this. But you can figure it out yourself. I know you can.

In future posts, we’ll talk specifics about putting together those pesky strategies and plans on paper and how to decide if you should hire a blog designer or if you should hire out your blog content or not. See you then.

I’ve had to take a Twitter break. You’ve seen me Twittering posts, but generally I’m just staying quiet. Perhaps it is because I’m having enough issues with the writing. And sometimes the direction a person sets out on is not the direction they wish to continue.

I’m reconfiguring, yes.

In late 2009, I split my Twitter feed up into two, but that only served to discourage me further. Two Twitter feeds? Goodness. So I’ve just backed off from it all in recent months, thinking through what I want to attempt in 2010 and rereading a few key tomes about Twitter to make sure what my vision is really does the job I want it to.

1. Does it build community? If I put more time into it, will I actually see that community beginning to appear? I’m still thinking how to do that exactly.

2. Does it help me as well as others?

3. What is the ROI of Twitter? I’m trying very hard to not focus on ROI first off. That’s not the point of Twitter really, but it is a side effect. So I’m thinking about it.

And that’s where I am lately. What are you thinking about your Twitter feed?

I’m back. I’m not a Moonlighting Entrepreneur anymore. I’m a full-time entrepreneur (woohoo!), but I figured there’s still some principles I am learning that apply to those of you who are just part-time and moonlighting. (Yes, I’m still learning!)

It’s the day in, day out act of marketing. What is marketing anyway? It’s telling people what you do, over and over and over and over.

If you don’t market much, yikes! You are lucky. But even if you’re getting referrals for work, that’s marketing.

And what happens when your referrals dry up? What do you do then? If you engage in day in, day out marketing, you won’t ever have that problem!

What do I mean?

Four stage of marketing are:

1. Filling the pipeline
2. Follow up
3. Presentations of Products and Services
4. Closing the Sale

First of all, you’ve got to pick the stage you’re in. I would start with #1. Once you actually find some names to market to, then you’re into #2. If you’ve got all that covered, you’re in #3. And if you’re one of the lucky ones to have names, follow up opps, and presentations, you’re in #4. Clear as mud?

Hold on.

What I mean by day in, day out marketing is that you find out where you are in marketing and then you do the same things over and over and over. If you’re gathering and contacting prospects, you do that over and over. If you’re following up with people you’ve contacted before, you do that over and over. And so on.

The thing that gets people confused is that at some point in your freelance venture you’ll be doing all four at once. That’s fine. That’s normal business behavior. You spend a day sending out 20 emails to prospects, then you call up or email four others from the previous week that have not yet responded to your email, and then you present a solution to a prospect, and then you will probably close the deal.

The problem is that people (especially moonlighting entrepreneurs) get caught up in these events and forget to return to the daily marketing. And I know the feeling. Sometimes I get so much going on in my biz that I can barely answer all my email, nevermind send out 20 more emails each day. But if I can, I will NEVER run out of prospects. I will never be feeling desperate.

True, it depends on your industry, your response rate, the economy. But seriously, why wouldn’t you do that one thing YOU CAN do each day? Why would you wait until you’re out of work and then sit around and feel terrible because you don’t think you’ll ever make another penny again from your business.

The marketing day in, day out approach is not just for our business! It’s for our sanity! Trust me. You’ll feel so much better about everything when you are doing this small step to ensure your business always has enough prospects and projects.

It works.

Folks have emailed to ask how I can think marketing is boring.

“It’s not boring; it’s terrifying!” they say. “Talking with clients scares me speechless. I sound like an idiot.”

Another says, “I would rather just have the work; forget marketing for me.”

I was right there with them at the beginning of this business. Marketing was boring because I didn’t get any results. As when I talked to clients on the phone, I was freaked out.

What to do?

Study. How much time do you invest learning about how to market? How much time do you spend thinking about how you would leverage your experience into something of value for a client?

1. Start with Pete Bowerman (if you’re a corporate writer), Michael Port (if you’re selling services, including writing). I love Bowerman’s texts for their ease. Plus he’s the nicest guy you’ll ever meet. Michael Port has simplified authentic marketing down to doable steps.

2. For an even simpler start, try C.J. Hayden and her “Get Clients Now” program or Robert Middleton and his “Infoguru” marketing programs. C.J. is a fabulous resource. I used her program to start and then moved onto Middleton, Port, and Bowerman after I knew what I needed to do next. The key is to not let it get too complicated at first.

3. Decide where you are in the marketing process: most folks are at step 1, which is “filling up the pipeline.” This is web site building, direct mail, blogging, emailing, cold calling. More info can be found from C.J. Hayden in her Get Clients Now book.

4. Stick to one thing at first. Fill up your pipeline with C.J. Hayden’s book, write an ebook using Michael Port’s expertise, put up a web site with Robert Middleton’s help, cold call like Pete Bowerman recommends.

5. Then you can expand out later.

As for being afraid of marketing, we all are. It’s human nature to fear rejection, which is what marketing actually is in its roughest sense, but you can’t market without getting a no, even if it’s a lot of no. Marketing is a numbers game, really. Sure, there are marketers out there who can hit a yes on the first try, but usually that is after years and years of being told no (they never talk about that) and studying why they were told no.

Marketing is a business. Just don’t try and do too much at first. It takes time to get the hang of it. And trust me, if you just slow down and really apply yourself to it, you’ll make incredible progress fast!

I hear this all the time. Business owners who just want the clients to automatically show up at their door. Freelancers who just want to do the fun stuff and not the boring stuff.

Learn to LOVE IT!

I did. Back in 1995 when I started my freelance biz, I had no idea how to get clients. I was pleased when they found me by chance, thrilled when someone referred me to another publisher. In 1996, I started figuring out how to get more clients and as the years wore on, the thrill of the chase got to me.

Shhhh. Don’t tell, but I actually really love marketing now.

So much so that sometimes I wish I could just market for a living. Thus why I blog and consult and help other freelancers/businesses get where they need to go.

But ideally, a business owner must learn to do both.

Here’s how:

1. Set aside some marketing time on a daily basis. If you hate it as much as I did back in the beginning of my business, you’ve got to get into a habit. Don’t force yourself to do a lot of it at once and pick out the funner pieces of it to start with (for me, this is writing copy, blogging, Twittering, checking in with folks, sending out emails, direct mail pieces, and writing eZines). The boring stuff (for me, database management, keeping up-to-date with email and addresses and who needs what when) just has to be done (set up a rewards system: cookies, donuts, TiVo).

2. Divide your marketing tasks into doable chunks a la David Allen’s Getting Things Done. For today, I have to dive back into my contact management database and move some things around. I have to format some lists into proper format and check my contacts to make sure everyone is on the right list to get my newest piece of direct mail. Later, I’ll have to print labels and put stamps on. But that’s fun. I can watch stupid movies and do that at the same time. No, I don’t have an assistant. Darn.

3. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. And just keep doing it. Word to the wise: even when you’re full up and scheduled to the wazoo, keep marketing. You never know when it will pay off and you never want to let yourself get out of the groove. This is probably the hardest piece of freelance time management out there. How to market and work and keep up with everything? It takes practice and determination and fortitude, but isn’t that what you set out to prove when you started your business? If you tackle some small marketing piece every day, you won’t be left with a pile of not-so-fun projects that bore you to tears and make you curse the day you had to start this damn business.

Relax! Everyone’s marketing just like you. It’s hard out there, but so full of opportunities! Don’t sit back and let 2010 slip by without claiming your share.

Ready? Set? Go.

Yes, I still miss Hawaii. Can you tell?

My word for 2010 (each year I choose one word to focus on for the next twelve months) is real.

Or as we’ve been talking about on the blog, authentic.

I had such big plans for this blog in 2009. These plans fell to the side because of a too-busy schedule, oh yeah, I went to Europe!

In 2010, I’m making decisions about what I absolutely MUST spend my time on to get to the goals I’ve set for 2010. I waver back and forth whether or not continuing to develop this blog is worth it. I think I’ve decided that it really isn’t a priority for me this year.

Don’t panic!

I’ll still update this blog, but on a less-regular basis. I’ll pop in with interesting tidbits that I find. I will finish an ebook on authenticity (that is on my list for this year) and you’ll be the first to know about it. I will create a blogger-author press kit and you will have first access to it as well. I am not in the mood to charge hundreds of dollars for these products. I like seven dollar ebooks, don’t you? So these will be seven dollars. Yes, 7 dollars.

I’ll be developing a book on blog content this year and you’ll get the benefit of my latest, zaniest thoughts on that. Plus you’ll watch as I attempt to sell a book based on a blog. And I may change my mind and come back here and really just churn out the content. Who knows?

For now, I’m focusing on doing the two things each day that will bring me the closest to my goals this year: writing 2500 non-blog-related words a day and marketing constantly to find top-notch clients for my editing, writing, blogging business. I really believe in marketing, even if you’re maxed out with work. We must market MORE. That is the name of the game in business for 2010.

I have some deeper thoughts about that and I’ll share them as my marketing gets underway this year. In the meantime, what two activities should you be doing instead of reading this blog? I’m serious.

The two greatest things to bring you the closet to your goals this year. What brings you the most results in the least amount of time? Expand your time. What brings you the least amount of results but takes the greatest amount of time? Downgrade the time you spend on those worthless tasks.

Read this article and tell me you will follow Ramit’s and my advice in 2010.

I was here four days ago (I have the sunburn to prove it!):

It was wonderful! I admit I was not thinking about blogging while I was there. I was snorkeling with the fish and sea turtles and having the time of my life! Now my burnt back itches, but I will survive.

Back this week with the 2010 plan for this blog. Finally, I intend to actually execute the plan. Sheesh!

Have a great Monday!