Even the shyest author, who would never speak at writers’ conferences, or to a group of readers at a library, can write his or her way to success. I am not talking about your next book, which is certainly important. Your readers will want to read more from you once they discovered you as an author. Writing short stories, magazine articles, blogs, guest posts, and prequels for your next book – this all helps to get noticed by readers. At the same time, you build your writer’s platform and your place within search engines.
Content marketing is a form of attracting readers/customers to you, the author, through the writing of short stories, blogs, magazine articles, guest blogs, etc. In other words, it is marketing through your content – rather than by paying for expensive advertisements. It is a way to soft-sell your paid writing. The object is to entertain (or educate) first and sell second. You should rarely talk about your book. You can mention it in your author bio, but not in the actual writing content.
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Online Content Stays Forever – Ads NOT
Writing content aside from your book will not automatically transform your book into an overnight success, but it is a wonderful tool for a long-term strategy. It helps to build an author platform, and it also provides your readers a valuable sample of your writing. And, when you write books for the joy of writing, all the better! Bestselling author Erica Jong said: “When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. I think it is a wonderful way to spend one’s life.”
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Main Assets to be a Content Writer
You have already the three main assets to become a successful content writer:
1) your writing skills
2) the content you have already penned
3) the research you have done for your book(s)
Your research can be used to write at least 20 to 30 articles or blog posts. If you regularly post them on LinkedIn and Goodreads, it will boost your search engine ranking tremendously. But not only that: You can sell those articles (slightly re-written) also to newspapers and magazines.
Here are some additional benefits of writing new content:
- It is a subtle way to promote your book
- You will receive valuable back-links to your website or blog
- You will have lots of content to post on Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or Facebook
- You can include links to your articles in an e-mail newsletter (that you hopefully send out regularly to your readers)
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Prequels: Promote Your Future Book Through Short Stories
J.K. Rowling did it for Harry Potter – every writer should create them too: Writing a Prequel for their upcoming book. They are teasers in short story form that preview the key characters and settings of your next novel.
Savvy authors are building excitement and attract readers. Editor Alan Rinzler describes them: “Backstories for the longer book to come. Others are like outtakes from the novel, standalone narratives that add to our knowledge of the characters, but don’t appear in the books themselves. Prequels provide readers with the flavor and quality of the forthcoming book in a way that makes them yearn to read more. This technique has had notable successes lately, like propelling a book from obscurity to six-figure advances, and building pre-publication buzz and momentum.”
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Rewrite Your Articles or Book Chapters
Add more material, background information, interviews, or statistics and offer them to magazines, newspapers – print and online. Start with these: airline in-flight magazines (which pay the most), Huffington Post, and Salon. Even The Atlantic might be interested in publishing your article – if it is a long article with exceptional content.
Focus more on discoverability rather than on selling. Your work is important, so help readers to find it. You can also post on your blog, or contribute guest blogs to other sites that are focused on the same topics as your book. Artists in other disciplines, such as musicians or ballet dancers, train six to ten hours a day! Become a prolific writer by doing the same. It pays; not only in financial terms.
Become a publisher and not just a seller! Content marketing guarantees you more of your readers’ trust! Become a part of your readers’ lives without selling. At least half of your marketing effort should be content marketing. Your writing content can be in a variety of media or formats: print, web, radio, social networks, video, and even web TV. Here are more benefits of content writing:
- You can make money with your writing, and also by selling some of your images and videos.
- You can also charge to read your blog or online magazine, for example, via Amazon blogs or asking your readers for a tip, as many authors do. “How to Publish and Sell Your Article on the Kindle: 12 Tips for Short Documents” is the title of Kate Harper’s e-book with lots of tips for authors.
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Offer Writing Samples
Retail businesses know the importance of sampling. In the past, some publishers would offer the first chapter of each book in their new book listings. Yet, they only handed these reading samples out at book fairs or to bookstore owners. Now, readers can download samples of any book published electronically. If readers like the book, they will most likely purchase it too. Offer reading samples from your website or blog, as well, or as a “thank you” for e-mail newsletter subscribers. Another way of giving writing samples is to get an assignment at a public library, where you can read from your book – and hand out bookmarks or business cards with your book sales page on it.
As more of your writing appears online and in print, more people learn about you as an author. Your writing and publishing success will increase. However, before you write anything, you first need to know who is your audience and who is your competition. Research both groups thoroughly! Only then you can find your writing and publishing niche.
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Perfect for Shy Writers: Content book marketing is also perfect for shy writers who might cringe at stepping outside their comfort zone. They can promote their books at the end of each article they write and even add links to their website or book sales page. And use sentences from articles to build interesting posts and tweets.
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Books by Doris-Maria Heilmann:
To the TOP
Smart Free Marketing for Entrepreneurs and Self-Employed
ebook: https://books2read.com/u/mqv8Z1
print: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1988664381
ebook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08957T6XN/
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Audiobooks for Success
Valuable guide book for authors, audiobook publishers, narrators, voice-over artists, and audiobook listeners. Learn how to create, produce, publish, and market your audiobooks.
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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07W81MN2Z
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111 Tips to Create Impressive Videos
How to Plan, Create, Upload, and Market Videos
https://www.books2read.com/u/3GYnpa
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BYDH41S/
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111 Tips To Make (More) Money With Writing
The Art of Making a Living Full-time Writing –
An Essential Guide for More Income as Freelancer
https://books2read.com/u/bWZMjz
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1988664187
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111 Tips on How to Market Your Book for Free
Detailed Plans and Smart Strategies for Your Book’s Success
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111 Tips to Get Free Book Reviews
Best Strategies for Getting Lots of Great Reviews
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https://books2read.com/u/mZ5nx5
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018RA72LY/
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111 Tips to Create Your Book Trailer
How to Create, Where to Upload, and How to Market Your Videos
https://books2read.com/u/mVZkjr
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CHWX6X2/
Book Marketing on a Shoestring
How Authors Can Promote their Books
Without Spending a Lot of Money
https://books2read.com/u/mZ5gdp
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1988664225
Hello Friends, visit my Author Page for the latest books here:
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How to Create Curated Content for Your Blog
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In an upcoming book, I listed content that bloggers can use without even writing much, such as info-graphics, videos, images and also “curated content”. It prompted a question what curated content means.
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News aggregation websites, for example, have been curating content from other news websites and from the wire since online news reporting began, and even before that, at newspapers and TV media. Almost every non-fiction guidebook, how-to-guide, and self-help title is an accumulation of curated content.
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What is Content Curation?
Content curation is finding information relevant to your audience from a variety of sources and then sharing it via your blog, website, social media and other communication channels. You write a post based on a given subject and within that post you add snippets from other bloggers posts written on the same subject. In layman’s words: You write about what others write, you comment and you create a summary of their articles.
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Important: Linking
However, you have to give full accreditation in the form of one or more links back to their blog post and other important sites of these authors, e.g. “about”, “bio” or other posts they have written about similar topics. Whether you’re recommending a blog post, article, video, social media update or another online resource, always use the permalink (permanent link) for the specific item, rather than the general website address.
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Any Content can be Curated
As long as you include a link to the author, you can curate any kind of content, for example, you can curate written content, any video material which is shareable and can be embedded, such as YouTube and Vimeo videos, any video images, news from aggregation sites. However, always be aware of copyright issues and check if you are not sure. If you want to engage your visitors you need to find specific and relevant content, whether it is text or images, video or audio.
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Content curation doesn’t include creating totally new content – it’s more about discovering, compiling, and sharing existing content with your online followers (from your blog or social media).
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Blog Post Planning
Set the scene for your subject with a couple of paragraphs and try to include quotes or mention other authoritative bloggers or experts in that field, and introduce other relevant content. There are even tools, such as Zemanta a free WordPress plugin which scans your page as you type and suggests images and content for you to use.
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An example of curated blog content is my former post from Monday this week: “Amazon Book Reviews Worldwide?”
https://www.savvybookwriters.com/amazon-book-reviews-worldwide/
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Accreditation
Keep your quotes brief – one or two sentences – to adhere to fair use guidelines. Simply by placing a link to the original article and a mention of the author will suffice. Images are more mostly covered by copyright, so use your own ones or get them at free photo sites.
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Commentary
Without an engaging commentary, content curation will be no more than taking someone’s content and placing it on your blog page. Give the reader quality content which is relevant to their search, if you can give your own take on the subject and then inject the curated snippets and content into your own thread then you are getting the reader to engage with you on your own ideas.
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Find Great New Content
List the best posts before moving on to the curation process, and check the page rank of the post. A higher page rank will help your own page to rank higher. Choose a part which is interesting to build the story you are writing, copy and paste it into your article and link back to the article that you are taking the snippet from.
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Add a Commentary
In an article ContentMasteryGuide.com suggests:
This is your opportunity to demonstrate your expertise by drawing on great work others have published. Explain why the content you are sharing is relevant to your audience. You could for example start with an introduction to the subject, followed by a snippet taken from another blog, followed by more of your own words, then insert a video from YouTube or an image from your own files. The great thing about curation is that you can use anything as long as it doesn’t affect the copyright, you even could use some text from Twitter or explanations from Wikipedia.
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By designing new interfaces, and making information more accessible, innovative companies have just begun creating the “Curated Web”. With Google recently stating that it favors sharing news and information, it can only enhance your web presence.
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Read More About Curated Content:
http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-curation-tools
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-collis/6-powerful-tips-to-effect_b_5901856.html
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If you would like to get a mentor and our support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer for three months all this and more for only $179 – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting / Book Marketing for your success: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars
To learn more about professional book marketing and publishing, please read also“Book Marketing on a Shoestring”
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UAVL3LE
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