Hello all! Welcome back to this blog!
Let’s talk about writing!… and how Marketing our work affects our Writings, and how our Writings affect our Marketing work.
As authors we have a difficult time in cramming all the work we have ongoing into our daily live’s, and still keep ourselves motivated and inspired to write.
At least, this is how I feel.
There are too many things to consider, too many things to learn, too many projects I wish to devote myself to, and I find it hard to put in the good work in all of them at the same time.
We must be a Jack-of-all-trades in order to do a, let’s be truthful, mediocre job at most of the tasks we have going on. We may be savvy in some things but we lack in others… like technical skills, for example.
Or we can spend lot’s of money, that we usually don’t have to begin with, in order to outsource those tasks that can be done by others. And spend more time doing all the research and trial to find some decent professionals to do them for us.
Which would be a nice to have, but it’s not doable for the initial (big) part of the time we take pursuing our dreams.
Marketing is one of those tasks
We find it simple enough to do it ourselves, so we start dabbling in it, and start seeing the immensity of juggling all of it ourselves.
But we need to know a few things first.
Learning the foundations of usable images, formatting, creating online content, sharing throughout platforms, helpful apps and gadgets, and all sorts of things that are needed, just to be able to do a somewhat decent job.
Decent, but only after a few years of a learning curve, or a steep few months if we have the strength for it.
I know this reality. I have been dancing to this tune for fifteen or more years.
Marketing is Images
First it was the images issue. All images had author rights associated and this implies having another cost. While starting a blog as a marketing tool, we have to produce content always accompanied by good, relevant, beautiful images. So I needed the images and had a passion for creating them. Uniting both I created my own images library.
So I worked my way into creating my own visual content, including all the images for each blog post.
Marketing is Brand
Also on the brand, constructing it made me meddle with logos and brand images. I got to learn how to develop the online presence imagery that I use, and spruce up when needed.
A few years ago, I discovered a new online design tool (canva.com) which gave me a lot more leverage to work on my visual content. I have learn a bit of Photoshop, back in the day, but I have never mastered anything but the strict basics of it. Also Gimp wasn’t friendly enough for me.
With Canva I got to experiment a thousand ways to create content and still use it daily.
At the same time, I had concerns about formatting the whole thing, about headlines creation, about visual presentation, tags, niche audience, and so much more. And I’m kind of allergic to SEO! Not that I don’t use it. I try to.
Marketing is Social Media
It has been a slow, but very rewarding, struggle managing all the need to know’s about the marketing experience connected to my blogs and online presence. I have been experimenting different social media tools and online presences and it requires focus and effort.
Marketing is Effective Writing
Permanently underlying all of this is the need to write good articles.
Marketing is supposed to be an accessory to our writing. It is not. It’s a full, complex, independent area of knowledge. And learn to write copy is hard work.
Writing blog posts, articles of sorts, is another type of writing that needed to be studied, and enhanced with practice. Even blog titles have a spin to it that needs to be learned.
As for my writing articles practice, I will not call them great content because until this day, my blogues remain the desired blog experience, not quite Content, focusing on sharing my experience through the meanderings of the writing dream, not the ‘build a business type of blog‘. And I do enjoy to write for my blogs.
Yes, I would like to have some revenue, sustaining my twenty year efforts and allowing myself to continue doing this thing I love the most: writing on its different formats.
I find that I like to put in the work but lack in other aspects.
After all, the writing dream does come with major costs associated, but I’m always struggling with how real my content is, opposed to the ‘How to write a best-seller in two days’ mentality.
And these views of the matter don’t produce good marketing content, do they? Trying to inspire others to pursue their dreams is not the same thing as promising them magical improvements by reading a single blog post.
A ‘write better’ article, a ‘devote more time to your writing’ or a ‘read from better sources’ aren’t appealing. People like to have it simple, not too much work, without too much pain. And we all know how that saying goes…
Marketing is Blogging
Since my first days blogging, I wanted a platform for my voice, my writing voice, and the cheap-online-business model will never do it for me. Blogging is supposed to add value, inspiring others to pursue their creative callings, not take it away. Not frustrating readers when the promise on life changing magic doesn’t appear.
All I ever wanted was to add value. To help someone in the pursue of their dreams, if possible.
We can teach how to put in the time to do better, but we cannot make it magically better just by existing. You have to put in the time and effort to do it.
Just like writing fiction, or non-fiction, or in any any form or genre that we may devote ourselves into. For example, writing a book is long, hard work. And also, very fun work. If we let it be so.
Marketing is Exposure
With all of this in mind, Marketing and how to grow the exposure to what I write, is very relevant.
Choosing my platforms, my public voice, working on my content, devoting myself to my writing practices, and trying to see a bit further away than today’s viewpoint, are constant efforts.
[So I resent it immensely when the players change the game, no warnings offered, in what seems to serve only big commercial self-interests. Yes, things change, tools evolve, social media is the golden egg chicken which needs to prevail through time… and it needs to evolve to prevail. But it has evolved poorly.
And, I know that all of the things we use freely aren’t free. I am the commodity, the product, the final endgame for them is to make money out of my needs.
We need it to reach other people that maybe would like to see what we have to offer. But no ‘buying space‘ = no ‘algorythming‘. But I’m digressing here…]
Marketing our work, on top of all the Real Work we have to put in to create our Life’s Work, is a conundrum of sorts.
No one will do it better than ourselves. Nobody knows our book better. Nobody knows our message better. Nobody knows what we like better.
Marketing is Connection
Marketing end’s up being just me and my big dream, fighting to get it to other people, so they can find some value and maybe inspire them to pursue their dream.
Not just sharing for vanity, but always searching to add something that others can use in their creative pursuits. Even if it doesn’t seem obvious.
Not just creating different iterations of the same well studied booklet, but offering a personal view. Not just copying the trendy stuff but making our own possibilities of trendy.
Truly knowing what we want to write about, and how to go about it, is a good strategy for finding a Marketing that works for our projects… to find a Marketing that works for our Work.
We may find the commercial side of things is the way to go but we need to have the skills for it. Or develop them.
It’s like learning to walk again. We will get up and fall down. We will take a step forward and stumble. We will manage to stay upright a few more moments at a time. And even after we have learned to walk, we need to find our balance and to avoid the slippery patches, and not run ourselves into walls and street posts.
Marketing is Learning
Marketing is showing how to register all of that process, how to paint our travelling experience in a captivating way, how to make others come together in communities of sorts.
It’s a hard and fun job. Even if accumulating with all sorts of other tasks. Like writing our books.
Quick question: How can we marketing what doesn’t exist yet?
See?! Another conundrum of sorts…
What’s your marketing strategy? How do you deal with the cheap feeling of pushing your work? How do you balance time for all of the works you have to do?
Leave the comments below. We would like to talk about this more.
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Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼
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