Opening the Floor–Ask an Expert! What Do YOU Want to Learn More About?

Trust me. I be an expert….

One of my favorite parts of blogging is I get to hang out with you guys. I love your comments and REALLY LOVE when you share your stories. I read every one of them, and the only reason I don’t reply to all comments is because some of you subscribe to be messaged when there is a new comment…

…and I don’t want to blow up your e-mail with “((HUGS)) You are so awesome! I forget my purse ALL the time!”

I never run out of ideas because the world is a very interesting place. Writing is a complex topic and social media for writers is ever-evolving (along with the publishing paradigm).

I do try to mix this blog up with different content, some informational and some just fun. Keeps me fresh and you from being bored. Besides I am far too crazy creative to wear an expert suit all the time. I have to wear digital panty hose and they chafe .

But I want to try something different, today. I generally choose the topics. Ever so often one of you might ask something in the comments and that gives me an idea for a blog. I can keep just blogging about the things I find important or interesting, but I’d like to ask you guys what you’d like me to blog about. Here are some ideas to get you thinking:

• What do you want to know about fiction?
• Plotting?
• Character?
• How do you hook in the beginning of your book?
• When do we need a prologue?
• POV?
• More dialogue (maybe from me or another expert)?
• Tips for self-editing?
• How to find a good editor? What’s the difference between a line-editor and content-editor? What is reasonable to pay for these services?
• How do we choose what genre to write?
• How do you write YA?
• How do you get started writing for children?
• World-building? (for fantasy, sci-fi, etc.)
• Differences and expectations in genres?
• How do you create romantic tension? Write love scenes?
• What are the fundamentals of good romance?
• Scene and sequel structure?
• Generating conflict and tension?
• How to write a strong female character and make her likable, too?
• What are elements of great heroes?
• What are the must-have resources for writers?
• Why is it a bad idea to put Band-Aids in your hair?
• If you are brand new, where do you start? How do you begin that first novel?
• How do you get ideas for stories?
• How to do research?
• Want to know about non-fiction?
• How do you choose a topic?
• Write a proposal?
• Land an agent without using chloroform?
• How do you choose an agent? What questions do you ask?
• When is it time to fire an agent?
• How do you pitch?
• Create a log-line/elevator pitch?
• How do you get blurbs for your book without using blackmail?
• Which type of publishing might be a good fit for you?
• Choose a conference?
• Speak Pig Latin like a pro?
• Do you want to explore psychological profiles for crime writing?
• Forensics?
• Want to write about the military or guns in your book and sound like you know what the heck you are talking about? Revolvers DO NOT have a safety, btw. Also, it is a MAGAZINE, not a CLIP. And if we call it a MAGAZINE CLIP, it makes us sound double-stupid.
• Want to know more about author brand?
• How to handle a pen name with social media?
• How to use a pen name and ACTUALLY protect your real identity?
• Internet safety. How do we stay safe in cyberspace?
• How to use Twitter and NOT be a spamming @$$clown?
• More about blogging? Where to start? What to talk about?
• How to deal with haters and trolls without becoming one, too?
• How to balance social media and writing? It can be done. No whining.
• Want to know more about Smashwords? What does it do?
• CreateSpace? How to use it?
• Why it’s a bad idea to let your husband have a remote control helicopter AND access to Post-It Notes?
• Want to learn tips for productivity?
• Time-management?
• Learning self-discipline? I was once a lazy sot, so if I can do it, ANYONE CAN.
• Balance family, work and writing without going crazy…ok craziER. Y’all are writers, so you know we all start out crazy. Little disclaimer there.
• Learning social intelligence?
• Having a fabulous social media presence WITHOUT changing your personality (unless you’re a jerk). Shy introverts don’t need a personality transplant. You are awesome. Be YOU.
• How to teach your child Jedi skills by age three?
• How to deal with family/friends who doesn’t get why you want to be a writer and who are kinda jerks to you?
• How to put down boundaries in a world with no borders?
• How to be an expert on ghosts? What exactly IS a K-2 meter and why are all paranormal investigators named “Darryl” and wear a mullet?

These are just some of the topics I could think of. Most I can blog about, but I also am connected to other, more knowledgeable writers who are always happy to lend a hand (as y’all saw with Les Edgerton’s series). I am not ashamed to admit I don’t know stuff (like WTH IS a K-2 meter and why do all these regular people all seem to have them in their kitchen drawers like a flashlight?).

Honestly, if I don’t know about a topic,  I will just abduct recruit another expert who does know…and then promise to free them in exchange for a guest post. I have a creepy panel van AND a very impressive and intimidating NERF battle-ax. So here’s your chance to tell me what you want to talk about. What do you need help with? The floor is yours…

I LOVE hearing from you guys! Now you get to ask me questions AND it counts for the contest. How COOL IS THAT?

To prove it and show my love, for the month of April, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. If you leave a comment, and link back to my blog, and mention my book We Are Not Alone in your blog…you get your name in the hat THREE times. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly.

I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

And also, winners have a limited time to claim the prize, because what’s happening is there are actually quite a few people who never claim the critique, so I never know if the spam folder ate it or to look for it and then people miss out. I will also give my corporate e-mail to insure we connect and I will only have a week to return the 20 page edit.

At the end of April I will pick a winner for the monthly prize. Good luck!

LinkedIn—Making The Most of Your Six Seconds

Image courtesy of cellardoorfilms WANA Commons…

Happy Friday! Today Jenny Hansen is going to talk to you a little bit about LinkedIn…hey, she gave me cookies. Who can say no to COOKIES?

You might be wondering why to bother with a LinkedIn profile, even if you aren’t a NF author (for NF authors, LinkedIn is a must). For one reason, a lot of agents and publishers are there, so it’s a good place to connect professionally.

Also, many of us will do additional work to supplement our writing income, especially in the early years. LinkedIn can be vital for getting freelance work that pays the bills or even gives us a little extra spending money.

Finally, if we self-publish (which many of us will), we will need to hire a team of professionals—content editor, line editor, book cover designer, book interior designer, e-book formatter, web designers, etc. LinkedIn is a wonderful place to find endorsed professionals to be part of your publishing team. Thus LinkedIn really is more than just one more social media site. It can be a valuable tool in your writing success.

So I am shutting up now, namely to go have cookies for breakfast. Take it way, Jen!

****

Hey y’all! Yes, I bribed Kristen into letting me shake my Cowbell here at her place so we could all talk about LinkedIn.

[I just heard some of you writers groan: Another social media platform?!]

I know, I know. I’ve got critique partners who are worried their heads might explode. I’m already on Facebook, they whine. I just want to stay home and write in my pajamas. Why do I have to talk to people?

Because you do.

We all need to build a writing team to survive in this crazy business. Those of us who hang out at #myWANA with Kristen Lamb know We Are Not Alone, unless we want to be. The process of getting a book published requires a massive amount of teamwork.

LinkedIn will become a big part of your team-building once you understand how it works and how to navigate it like a rockstar.

The most important thing to remember?

You get two inches, or six seconds, to make your first impression.

(Get your mind out of the gutter! You’ve gotta hang out at More Cowbell for thoughts like that.)

Seriously, it’s a common saying in the business world. Get your most important point into the subject line and the first paragraph of an email because that’s all most people will read. Even as an author, we’re aware that we have anywhere from two paragraphs to two pages to engage an editor, agent or reader. Hook people quick, or they’re moving on.

The average resume or LinkedIn profile gets no more than 6 seconds to engage someone. To be fair, the average person is looking for different things than the recruiters I mention in the link above, but 6 seconds is still the average browse time.

What makes people scroll past your “top two inches” on LinkedIn?

1. Your picture.
It should be a clear, close, front-facing shot where you look friendly and attentive. Unless you work with kids or animals, there shouldn’t be anyone else in the picture with you. No spouses, no kids, NO hats.

2. Professional Summary
What are you doing now? What have you done in the past? By adding current and past positions to your LinkedIn profile, you get a quick summary of this in your top profile block. (I’ll show this below.)

3. Easy to remember LinkedIn address
Very few people remember to customize their LinkedIn address. http://www.linkedin.com/in/kristenlamb will be easier to remember than http://www.linkedin.com/pub/writername/11/442/b42/. One I can type from memory and share easily. And the other…I can’t, and won’t.

4. Multiple ways to get hold of you
If you don’t want to be called, you don’t need to put out your phone number. But you should have an email, blog, website or social media account like Twitter listed in your Contact Info. These things will also help update your status, if you set them up correctly, which is a really easy, passive way to stay at the top of your connections’ minds.

Let’s look at a few profiles so you see what I mean…

I’m a software trainer by day and one of the things I do is work with accountants who want to build their networks. Last year, I took a class through Accounting Today with marketing master, Eric Majchrzak (and was delighted to discover he was in sync with our WANA Mama, Kristen).

Here’s Eric’s profile:

If you were to click his Contact info button, you’d see his email, phone number, Twitter info and website. He fits all of the four criteria above (and he should, because he’s a marketing dude).

What about authors?

I picked a traditionally published author and a small press/indie author so you could see some good examples. (I’ve linked their names if you’d like to see their entire profile.)

Robin Lee Hatcher – Traditionally Published Author

I’d maybe like a closer picture of Robin, but otherwise she gets an A+. Inside her contact info, she has two emails, her website and her blog.

Amy Shojai – Blogger and Small Press/Indie Pub Author

Amy’s entire non-fiction platform focuses on animals so having her cat and dog with her (that’s Magical Dawg and Seren-Kitty) is appropriate. She also has her Twitter info, blog, website and radio show links in her contact info.

The one update I would make to Amy’s profile is the addition of her new thriller, LOST AND FOUND. It’s a smokin’ book and she should have it listed on her LinkedIn profile.

Just to recap on WHY the above are great examples:

• They have a picture, blog, and other social media info.
• They clearly list what that person is up to.
• They’re friendly and engaging, yet professional.

Starting in April, I’ll be giving LinkedIn classes for WANA International, but if you need some LinkedIn info now, I’m teaching the following class at WANA Con…

• Course: LinkedIn – Your Professional Identity (The Cliffs Notes)
• Time: Friday, February 22^nd, 9 pm EST (that’s 6 pm for us on the West Coast)

We’re going to review topics like ”5 Things You Need To Know To Rock LinkedIn.” We’re also going to be looking more closely at LinkedIn profiles, what works well, and what could be improved. If LinkedIn has been making you want to hide under the covers, or if you’d simply like to know more, I hope you’ll join me next Friday night.

Special More Cowbell Offer:

List the URL to your LinkedIn profile, if you have one, down in the comments section. One winner will receive:

• a summary of 4-5 profile changes that will yield better LinkedIn results
• a 15 minute online Q&A session, one-on-one with yours truly

Do you use LinkedIn now? What questions do you have for Jenny? She’s at your service in the comments section!

About Jenny Hansen

By day, Jenny provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. By night she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction and short stories. After 15 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

When she’s not at her personal blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter at JennyHansenCA or at Writers In The Storm.

THANK YOU JENNY! As Jenny mentioned, she will be teaching at WANACon. Her classes are fabulous, so please join us this next weekend.

WANACon Registration

Again, here is where you can view the full conference schedule.

Sign up for BOTH DAYS of WANACon for a mere $125 (this includes ALL the parties and Surprise Pajama Sunday). Register HERE.

If you can only do one day? No problem! Registration is $75. Register HERE for DAY ONE or HERE for DAY TWO.

Ready to get an agent? Sign up for Agent Pitch Sessions HERE.

We hope to see you at WANACon and PAJAMACon. Seats are limited, so sign up asap.

3 Social Media Myths that Can Cripple Our Author Platform

Image courtesy of Jenny Kaczorowski WANA Commons

As the Social Media Jedi for Writers, I am very blessed to be able to speak and teach around the country at various writing conferences. I am always open to learning new methods, and I love hearing other perspectives. Yet, with the good, comes the bad, the ugly and the downright—in my POV—boneheaded observations about social media. My favorites?

Writers are the only ones on social media.

*scratches head* Seriously?

I have heard comments such as these come from even very well-known authors:

Twitter is a waste of time. Only writers use Twitter.

Blogs only attract writers, and writers don’t read a lot of blogs.

Blogs won’t help you sell books.

*head desk*

Since I tend to hear comments like these more often than I care to, we are going to set these myths straight, because believing any of this nonsense is a ticket to Crazy Town, and it can cripple our platform.

Myth #1

Only Writers Use Twitter

Okay, last I checked, Twitter was closing in on 250 million users, and I doubt ALL of them are writers. Too often writers want to blame Twitter instead of looking at their own on-line habits.

If we blame the platform, then we get a pass and don’t need to use it, right? Wrong.

Twitter is one of the best ways for a writer to locate and cultivate a passionate support base. The problem is that writers are too often mistaking their professional peers for their audience. We stay in the comfort zone and only hang out with the people we know and who like all the same stuff we do, and that can spell “platform inbreeding.”

Inbreeding. Yes, inbreeding, and anything involving inbreeding eventually gets ugly. Don’t blame the platform.

Twitter is not Our Personal Spamming Tool to Sell Books

How many of you loooooove spam? There is nothing you love better than interacting with automatically generated messages. What? No takers?

Every time I warn writers off automation, I get some person who wails in protest the same, exact words. “I am not automating tweets, I am scheduling them.”

All right, let’s peel back the euphemism here. Anything that is posted on the Internet/social media automatically without a flesh and blood human being physically present is SPAM. Of course, when I say this, the spammers “marketers” often howl, “But I spend a lot of time crafting those tweets.” Okay, so you are an eloquent spammer. Better?

Here’s the thing, spam is anything automatically generated for the sole purpose of gaining something from the community. Whether that is for that community to buy a book, look at a link or come to a blog or give us their attention, it doesn’t matter, IT IS SPAM.

Oh but I am giving to others with cute quotes or information to help them.

Um, it is called social media. It’s like a giant cocktail party. If I am “talking” to someone at a party and they mention some helpful tips, that rocks. If they keep peeking in the door and dumping off fliers full of tips then disappearing to do more “important things” than talk to me or others at the party?

We call security.

We should never ask of others what we, ourselves are unwilling to give. We can’t ask others to be present on social media (to follow all our links or see our clever quotes) if we are unwilling to be present as well. It’s uncool.

Don’t Blame the Medium

A lot of writers tweet, and that is awesome. But, sad to say, too many writers have become the All Writing All The Time Channel. We tweet about word count and pass on blogs about writing a synopsis or crafting a query. We use #s like #amwriting #nanowrimo #pubtip #indie #selfpub…then say But only writers are on Twitter.

Yep.

If all I talked about was my dog, and I used #s like #canine #puppy #puppylove #woof then complained that cat owners didn’t use Twitter? Yeah, you guys get the point.

Myth #2

Writers Don’t Read Blogs

News flash. Who cares? Writers are only a small portion of the overall population in need of entertaining or informing. Regular people? Regular people LOVE blogs. Most “regular” people feel daunted reading a book. It gives them flashbacks to high school and that dreadful paper on Wuthering Heights.

But blogs? They LOVE them.

Regular people (code for “readers”) love being entertained daily in small, manageable, bite-sized pieces. They often read them on their smart phones while in line or on the train or when stuck at an appointment. In fact, this is precisely why blogs are one of the most powerful tools for creating a dedicated readership.

If readers LOVE our blogs, then they are tickled silly when they can buy an entire BOOK. These types of readers may only buy and read one or two books a year, but who cares if it is OUR BOOK? Blogs ROCK when it comes to creating a passionate author following.

Don’t believe me?

The Bloggess (Jenny Lawson) gets THREE MILLION UNIQUE VISITS A MONTH on her blog. She tried to hold a live book event, and her followers crashed Goodreads. Pioneer Woman (Ree Drummond) is another favorite. MILLIONS of people follow these blogs. Any guess why?

These bloggers (writers)…are you ready for this? These writers…don’t blog about writing.

BLASPHEMY!!!! 

No, I’m being serious.

These writers blog about what normal people might be interested in. Guess what? Most regular people don’t care about 10 Ways to Write a Snappy Query Letter and they care even less about Three-Act Structure Made Simple, Writing Witty Dialogue or The Future of Book Reviews. In fact, I might go so far as to say that, the normal person could give a flying fruit fly’s derriere about Understanding Create Space or 20 Ways to Rock NaNoWriMo.

Yet, when I blog about writers not starting writing blogs, I get wails of protest (and two weeks worth of posts dedicated to telling me I’m a moron).

We are correct when we say that writers don’t read a lot of blogs. Why? Because all the blogs in our sphere are the same. Yes, I blog about writing and social media for writers, but that is because writers are my book-buying demographic.

Writers are wonderful and supportive but we are flat tapped OUT. We don’t need another writing blog, and it isn’t helping that other social marketing experts are encouraging this sort of nonsense.

Please do NOT start a writing blog. If you need help learning how to blog, I teach classes about this stuff so check out the WANA International site to get your slot in my next blogging class.

Myth #3

Blogs Won’t Help Us Sell Books

No, bad blogs, egocentric blogs, boring blogs or abandoned blogs won’t sell books. Writers too frequently run out and start a blog with no content or brand preparation. They blog about writing until they wear out, which happens quickly if we are trying to post articles 1-3 times a week.

Certain types of content are just never going to go viral, period. Yet, it is shocking how much time writers devote to content, that by its very nature, will never, ever, ever, ever…ever go viral.

Ever.

Don’t believe me?

All righty. How many of you have been at the regular day job or with “regular friends” and heard about that Korean dance video (Gangnam style) or Surprise Kitty? Maybe you even heard these non-writing acquaintances mention Mentos making Diet Coke explode. How many times have you been in these groups and heard conversations like this:

Oh, Gangnam Style? Sure, I heard about that. Have you heard about the interview with that self-published writer about how she got the idea to pair werewolves with pixies? No? What about the review of that popular indie vampire book? No? What about that post about the when to use prologues? Seriously, Dude. Do you live under a ROCK?

This conversation has never happened. Likely, it never will.

Social media is a powerful gamechanger for writers who learn to use it properly, but we can’t expect to connect with readers (who don’t write) if we insist on only talking about what we are interested in. I have a family member who LOVES sports, and I could care less if baseball, football and basketball held hands and fell off the planet. Yet, this doesn’t stop my family member from talking non-stop about sports.

And it’s annoying.

And self-centered.

And not a great way to make me want to hang out and engage with him.

We all have those people in our lives who insist on talking about only what interests them and it alienates us. Yet, it is so easy for us to hop on social media, and, because we are nervous, shy or insecure, we end up turning into that person we detest.

Writers have been using symbols in various combinations to create magic for thousands of years. This shouldn’t cease the second we start a blog or decide to tweet.

So what are your thoughts? Have you fallen for one of these three myths? Do you have people in your network who make you bonkers with their automation? Any comments or suggestions?

I love hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of November, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. If you leave a comment, and link back to my blog, and mention my book We Are Not Alone in your blog…you get your name in the hat THREE times. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly.

I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

And also, winners have a limited time to claim the prize, because what’s happening is there are actually quite a few people who never claim the critique, so I never know if the spam folder ate it or to look for it and then people miss out. I will also give my corporate e-mail to insure we connect and I will only have a week to return the 20 page edit.

Note: I will post October’s winners next week. I nearly got stranded in San Diego and am a tad behind. Thanks for understanding.

At the end of November I will pick a winner for the monthly prize. Good luck!

I also hope you pick up copies of my best-selling books We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media and Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer . And both are recommended by the hottest agents and biggest authors in the biz. My methods teach you how to make building your author platform FUN. Build a platform and still have time left to write great books.

How To Get Unfriended, Ignored, and Blocked on Facebook

Send GF cookies.

Happy Friday! Man, what a week. We’ve been having a ton of fun at WANA International with all the cool new classes. The teachers at WANA are so much fun, just like my good friend and WANA Instructor Lisa Hall-Wilson who’s stopped by for a visit.

Lisa? Why do you have a pillow case and duct tape? Are we querying agents today? I really think you should———*muffled tussle* *crash*

Signal Lost

Friends, this is Lisa. Sorry to do this, but I’ve taken Kristen and her blog hostage. I locked her outside and hid the spare key because I think she’s unfairly biased against Facebook. It’s true! She’s posted on here about the big bad Facebook tyranny ganging up on writers. The truth is writers can be their own worst enemy.

How did she get out of those bungee cords? All right, I’ve got to type fast.

Facebook is still free, and you don’t have to buy ads or promote posts to find success there. 50% of Canadians and 38% of Americans have a Facebook profile, and half of all users come back daily. Repeated studies have shown that people who engage with brands on Facebook are more likely to purchase from and recommend those brands than the brands they don’t follow.

I spend a lot of time on Facebook because I’m paid to, but also because it’s a natural fit for my personality. Writers seem to have this love/hate/I-don’t-get-it relationship with Facebook. The platform arbitrarily changes the rules, isn’t great with customer service, and their privacy track record is a bit tarnished terrible. I understand why people find that frustrating, but stop whining. I’m serious. *clears throat* Kristen that means you too ((hugs)) Facebook is a little dictatorial not perfect and it’s really easy to waste time there – I get that, but it’s still FREE.

I have two suck-it-up buttercup band-aids:

#1 Facebook just passed the 1 billion user milestone. 1 Billion Users! This is a massive marketplace and your readers are likely already there.

#2 Fans aren’t on Facebook to know about your latest book (stop frowning). People are on Facebook to connect with friends and family, but while they’re hanging out there they may take time to learn more about you, they may buy your book, they may tell a few dozen of their friends about your book. That’s all gravy.

Hang on…

OK – I’ve barricaded myself in the bathroom with my laptop tethered to my phone. She’s threatening to shut me down. I scooped her laptop and gave her phone to the Spawn to hide. That should buy us a few more minutes.

WANA is about helping you be a better writer, equipping you to succeed, and creating community. Here’s the hard truth: shortcuts on Facebook don’t work. Stop. Right now. Just STOP.

*engine turning over*

Did Kristen just fire up her creepy stalker van? She has a rather astonishing collection of stale candy in that thing. I’m resisting because this is important.

Posting Too Often

For the love of lol cats – stop posting on Facebook like it’s Twitter. Three to four times a day is a maximum. If I look at my newsfeed and it’s filled with posts from one page or profile, they’re blocked. No second chances. Sorry. (And while I’m willing to block game applications from my newsfeed, lots of people won’t – they just unfriend you)

Facebook is NOT Twitter

Why am I seeing hashtags on Facebook? If you link your Twitter and Facebook accounts, people will notice. There’s a whole generation on Facebook who don’t know what a hashtag is! If I wanted to hang out on Twitter I’d do that. If you must schedule posts, make sure to spread them out over several hours, and repeat yourself sparingly (or not at all).

Spam (Invading Space)

Do not DO NOT post about your book or plaster promotional statuses on other people’s walls. Especially don’t do this using your Facebook page. “Hey Lisa, great post. Why don’t you check out my page <insert link>.” It makes me feel like I’ve been groped on a first date – and I’m not that kind of girl. On Facebook, a profile wall is considered personal space. I own the space on my wall, and I decide who has permission to post there. This is akin to slipping your manuscript to an agent under the bathroom stall door. It feels…icky.

Stop the Guilt

Posting status updates/call to action/fill-in-the-blanks that manipulate or use guilt and shame to garner interaction are great if you want to be ignored. We’ve all seen these statuses: I bet you won’t share this… or Most people won’t share this because… or Click like if you think murder is wrong. Guilt trips are not endearing. I don’t even read past the first line.

Never Showing Up

People leave comments because they’re looking for a conversation. When you automate your posts and never hang out there, people are offended. It’s like inviting the neighbors to a backyard barbeque and then hitting the beach while they’re standing in your yard with empty glasses. Another great way to teach friends to ignore you.

Use Events for Book Launches

I get invited to online book launches on Facebook all the time. I can choose to attend or decline an event invite. Don’t use a group for a book launch, don’t force invite all your friends so you can spam them forever with ‘buy my book’ messages and email. Details about book tours, endorsements, etc. belong on an author page, not a group. That is how you get unfriended and blocked, or at best ignored.

Time’s up. The Spawn sold me out for Goldfish, and Kristen’s got her phone back. I’m taking one for the team here – remember that . Oooh – Is that Halloween chocolate…? No, not falling for it.

*loud banging on bathroom door*

What’s the most annoying thing you’ve seen or done on Facebook? Are you a reformed FB abuser? Have you had to reprimand friends in your network for poor manners? What are some of the habits that drive you bonkers on Facebook? I love hearing from you, too!

*Pixie Sticks slide under bathroom door*

Ooooh pixxxxiiiieeee stiiiiicks…..wheeeeeeee!!!!!!

I’m baaaack!

Whoa, Pixie Sticks to the rescue. Lisa’s in my living room spinning in circles and making herself dizzy. That should keep her occupied for a while until the sugar wears off. In all seriousness—which is kind of a rarity around here—Lisa is an amazing teacher and I hope you guys will sign up for her upcoming Facebook class. It’s like SIX WEEKS long, so plenty of time for Lisa to talk you off a ledge show you how to maximize Facebook AND have fun.

I hope you will show Lisa some comment love, because today we are going to do something different with the contest. One lucky winner will get to take Lisa’s class for FREE! Also, since you guys are such awesome and loyal friends of this blog, if you sign up for Lisa’s class Own Your Own Stage—Using Facebook for Author/Artist Branding and enter in the code WANAFB, this will give you $30 off Lisa’s class so you get SIX WEEKS of WANA Awesomeness for only $99. That is only $16.50 a week, $2.36 a DAY, .68 an hour! Lisa could be making Nikes in Taiwan for .73 an hour so this is a total BARGAIN! She rocks and I hope you will sign up and benefit from her wisdom.

Ok, fair enough, she does take candy from strangers, but she knows her stuff with Facebook. Give Lisa a warm WANA round of applause and enjoy your weekend!

I also hope you pick up copies of my best-selling books We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media and Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer . And both are recommended by the hottest agents and biggest authors in the biz. My methods teach you how to make building your author platform FUN. Build a platform and still have time left to write great books.

How “Personal” Should Writers Get On Social Media?

Image courtesy of Jenny Kaczorowski WANA Commons

The world around us is changing so quickly that most of us struggle to keep up. New paradigms call for new rules and new social norms. What do we keep from the old? What do we add to the new? The common denominator to all this social media technology is the human heart beating in its center, and we are wise to remember this.

Yet, we do run into dilemmas. How much personal information should we reveal? How professional should we be? A lot of experts seem to have conflicting advice, so I am here to clear all of that up…

They are wrong and I am right .

Unless these experts are telling you the same things I am, then they are also right and amazingly brilliant and insightful. Odds are they are probably freakishly good-looking, too.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Advice.

I know that writers are encountering new problems in the digital world, and you guys need some vodka and chocolate sound advice. I am actually trying to talk Writers Digest Magazine into giving me a monthly advice column for social media questions…and a corporate credit card with unlimited spending for candy. They replied and mentioned something about a restraining order and a 50 foot perimeter, but I know this is just them playing hard to get.

In the meantime, while we are waiting on Writers Digest to let go of denial and acknowledge the vast empty hole in their content that is exactly Kristen-shaped, I will just go ahead and answer your biggest social media questions as you send them. Here is an e-mail I received recently over at WANATribe:

Dear Social Media Jedi, Kristen Lamb,

I am so confused. Everything I read says to keep the tweets we send and the pages we create professional, but then I look at your messages in your Twitter stream and your blogs about spamming and they are personal to the point that they seem to contradict that advice. I think I have my blog under control, but I’m unclear about my Facebook page and I definitely don’t know what to do about Twitter, as I’ve been trying to only post relevant writing information, which results in essentially retweets and links – completely opposite of your advice.

Can you point me in the right direction? How much personal is okay before it’s unprofessional? How many links are okay before it’s spam?

I really need an answer quickly, or I might lose all hope and be forced to shave my head and join a cult of moon-worshiping vegans.

Thanks.

Staci Troilo

Wow, now you see why we had to talk about Staci’s problem quickly. Hair takes time to grow, and a life without bacon is no life at all.

Okay, I totally made up that last line about the vegan cult (and she didn’t specifically call me a Jedi), but the rest of Staci’s problem is not only true, but it is also very common.

Technology and Humans

We are in a completely new age, and technology cannot help but affect human civilization. Not only does technology affect our lives, but it affects our language, our ideals, and even how we define our reality.

For instance, for thousands of years, every human activity was governed by the sun and the seasons. Then some genius invented the clock. The clock got its start in the Benedictine monasteries in the 12th and 13th centuries, and the reason the device was created was for one sole purpose—to provide regularity for the monk’s seven periods of devotion throughout the day. The church bells would ring, signaling a canonical hour, and the technology that afforded bell-ringing precision was the clock.

So this doo-hicky “the clock” was invented to make sure a bunch of monks prayed enough during the day in between doing other things like gardening and inventing beer. Yet, I would venture to say that none of the monks could ever have imagined how this tool would change the very course of human history. In fact, economic ideologies like capitalism would have never been possible without the invention of the clock, and forget movie matinees, commerce and mass transportation.

Can you imagine trying to be an air traffic controller with no clock?

Why do I mention this story? Because it was really cool and I needed a place to share. But, aside from that, we cannot envision life that is not precisely measured in increments of hours, minutes and seconds. Measured time ripples into every corner our world.

Like it or not, social media is doing to humankind what the clock did centuries ago, only on a larger scale and far faster than ever in human history.

The world before clocks had different rules, expectations, and norms than a world revolving around the notion of precisely measured time. Same with social media. When some marketing “expert” tells us to only present our “professional face” on social media, that information and approach is outdated. It applies to a pre-social media world.

The New Paradigm

In a pre-Facebook world, most people didn’t own and use computers. There were no smart phones and reality television was some weird experiment on MTV. People didn’t interact real-time with each other, let alone with their favorite authors. In the pre-social media world, web sites were very expensive and most were not user-friendly, so we had to hire copy writers and web masters to do any changes.

This meant changes were expensive, so they happened very little.

Cost and difficulty are why our author image had to be so carefully crafted in the pre-social media age. We were engaged in one-way communication that had only a small window of opportunity. Print ads, billboards, television time were astronomically expensive, so of course we would present a crafted one-dimensional image.

This was why authors had only the heavily airbrushed author photo, a newsletter and some press releases. We only had small (and expensive) windows of opportunity to connect, so we needed to make them count. We needed to talk about our books our work and about ourselves before the window closed and we had to cough up a trunk-load of cash to open it again.

These days?

Our world is completely different. We are interacting real-time, globally, and for free. The technology is so easy a five-year-old can use it. Ah, but this also means that we are inundated in a bazillion choices (this was not a problem back in 1995). Our world is more and more impersonal, and we are looking for fellow humans among all the technology.

The Global Cocktail Party

If all writers do is talk about one facet of their identities, they will quickly bore others. Social media is like a giant cocktail party. At cocktail parties we do talk about our work and what we are writing, but we probably would also mention an upcoming trip we are excited about. We’d also tell people if we were married and how many kids we have.

If we are really great at socializing, we might tell a couple jokes, or share stories and anecdotes that will make other people laugh and want to gather around us and maybe get our number so they can hang out again or do business with us. We would ask questions about others and be careful to be good listeners. We’d compliment others, and go out of our way to talk to them and make them feel welcome.

What we wouldn’t do is badmouth others, rant about sex, politics and religion, or start fights. We wouldn’t whine and complain and tell others intimate or embarrassing personal details. We wouldn’t likely give names and specific details about our kids or our home address. We wouldn’t go to our car and grab a box of books, a folding table and a credit card machine and start selling copies of our new novel. And hopefully, we wouldn’t get blitzed on Fuzzy Navels and cry as we talk about our ex.

Granted, there are people who do all of these things at cocktail parties, but they don’t get invited back…ever.

And while it is okay to talk business and give tips and advice, if we just walked around the party handing out business cards and fliers and spouting off stock tips, others would think we missed taking our meds. So, Staci, to answer your question, feel free to post some links…but don’t get crazy.

Timeless, Yet Not

A lot of things are still the same. We are still humans with needs, loneliness, issues, drama, and a longing for company. What is different is that technology sometimes makes us forget this. We forget about the human on the other side who wants to know us as a person as well as a writer. My advice to you, Staci is to just balance both. People crave connection with real people, and they buy from who they know, so why not know you?

If you have a burning social media question, please send it to my minion assistant Chad. His e-mail is ccarver at wanaintl dot com. And, for those who want to learn more about how technology has changed our world, I recommend Neil Postman’s Technopoly–The Surrender of Culture to Technology.

Also, at WANA International, we are offering a seriously cool class, Audio Books–Catch the Wave! for only $25 this Saturday and from the comfort of your own home, using the WANA International Digital Classroom. So if you’ve envisioned your book in audio format, this class will get you started. Here is the list of our current classes. My October Blogging to Build Your Author Brand class is now open, so make sure you get a spot. This class is two months long and can be done in your own time, but it is also a class that has a history of selling out, so sign up asap. I won’t be offering another one until 2013.

But back to social media and etiquette…

What are your thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Problems? Concerns? What do you feel is TMI on social media? Do you like authors who connect with you as a person? Does it not make a difference? Have you had an experience with someone in your network wearing a digital lampshade after too many digital daquiris?

I LOVE hearing from you guys! And since we have a guest today, every comment counts DOUBLE in the contest.

To prove it and show my love, for the month of September, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. If you leave a comment, and link back to my blog, and mention my book We Are Not Alone in your blog…you get your name in the hat THREE times. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly.

I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

And also, winners have a limited time to claim the prize, because what’s happening is there are actually quite a few people who never claim the critique, so I never know if the spam folder ate it or to look for it and then people miss out. I will also give my corporate e-mail to insure we connect and I will only have a week to return the 20 page edit.

At the end of September I will pick a winner for the monthly prize. Good luck!

I also hope you pick up copies of my best-selling books We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media and Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer . And both are recommended by the hottest agents and biggest authors in the biz. My methods teach you how to make building your author platform FUN. Build a platform and still have time left to write great books.

Social Clear-Cutting–Can Our Social Media Behaviors Destroy Our Social Environment?

We must be stewards of our environment. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia EPA)

So many writers rush onto social media with tunnel-vision. All they can see is 99 new ways to blitz others about their books, and it makes me kind of sad because there are a lot of benefits to being on social media that have little to do with marketing or sales. When we look out at our fellow human beings and can only see them with dollar signs on their faces, we shortchange them, but worse, we shortchange ourselves.

In a sense it makes me think of a documentary I watched the other night about the redwood forest. Did you know that those leviathan trees, the tallest living thing on earth, used to make up much of North America during the days of the dinosaurs? Even into the 1800s, the redwood forests were still quite large…and then came the lumber industry.

Businessmen soon realized that one felled redwood could make 200 picnic tables. All the lumber industry saw was dollar signs, and they clear-cut the trees until they’d virtually destroyed the redwood forests. The current forest is a mere fraction of its original size and has never recovered. Likely, it never will.

Social Clear-Cutting

I have spoken at length about the dangers of tools and automation when it comes to social media, but today I am going to probe deeper and explain why using machines to connect for us is just a bad plan. Sure, we gain some short-term advantages—more time to write instead of tweeting—but, over the long term, we destroy the very platform we are working to build. We clear-cut the community, planting no seeds of relationships.

The Law of the Fax Machine

Metcalf’s Law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users to the system (via Wikipedia).

Metcalf’s Law is, by some laypersons, referred to as the Law of the Fax Machine. In the beginning, when there was only one fax machine, how valuable was it? Not very. Why? No one to fax. Yet, as more and more companies bought fax machines, the value of the fax machine drastically increased because there were more people capable of receiving a fax.

This is true of any telecommunications tool from the telegraph to the telephone to the cell phone. What good was a calling plan when no one we knew could afford a cell phone?

Thus, the number of connected users drastically increases the value of any telecommunications tool. Same with the Internet. The more people hop onto the Information Highway, the more content they contribute, the more valuable the Internet becomes. This applies to search engines and….you ready for this?

Social networks.

Balance is Key

This is one of the reasons that my Law of Three—1/3 Information, 1/3 Reciprocation, and 1/3 Conversation—specifically includes conversation. Why? Notice how Metcalf’s Law states that the value of any telecommunications network is proportional to the square of connected users.

When marketers start abusing various forms of telecommunications, what happens is that people withdraw to go hang out where people are. Humans are wired to be social, not just to part with cash to buy more stuff.

The Days When the Telephone Ruled

Many of us remember the days of the telephone. I recall being so excited when we got an extra long phone cord, because then I could drag the 30 pound phone into my room and talk all afternoon and evening with my friends. I was the Master of Three-Way Calling and many teenagers like me tied up the phone so much, that this forced the invention of Call Waiting.

But then something happened. Telemarketers.

Invasion of the Marketers

As more and more marketers started calling our home phones, this prompted more and more inventions to avoid these marketers. Answering machines and Caller ID are two that come to mind. We started avoiding our home phone. More marketers called and we started gravitating to using cell phones even more to escape the non-stop barrage.

People who knew us understood that, if they wanted to actually talk to us, it was just better to call our cell phone. Pretty soon, it got to the point (for many of us) that we knew if the house phone rang, it was someone trying to sell us something. Eventually, using our home number was a worthless way to connect with us.

Why?

Because to avoid being sold to non-stop, we had set of a layer of filters (barriers) to weed out the telemarketers. Our friends and family knew they’d have to hop the answering machine and Caller ID barriers, and that the quickest and best way to reach us was the cell phone.

As more people gravitated to using cell phone networks, cell phone network providers were able to offer more and more bells and whistles for cheaper and cheaper. Thus, the amount of connected users of cell phone networks has increased exponentially in the past 5-10 years, and, as this has happened, the value of the telephone has steadily decreased in value.

Why?

There are fewer and fewer connected users. The telemarketer, in my opinion, killed the home telephone.

Newsletters–Not as Powerful as the Good Old Days

Spammers have made marketing using e-mail less and less effective. This is one of the reasons I am unsure how much value there is to be had in giant mailing lists. As spam filters get better and better, most newsletters are more likely to end up in the spam file, and, unless the fan is eager to get our content and goes looking for it (which won’t happen unless we engage), then the newsletter will effectively die a slow lonely death in the cold of cyberspace.

Click-through rates are dreadful (how many people actually open a newsletter) simply because modern humans no longer only have a handful of e-mails to manage. We have hundreds. This clutter renders most messages (including newsletters) invisible.

I am not saying that newsletters and large mailing lists are worthless. I am only saying they are less effective. Sort of like a four-year degree is still valuable, but it is no longer a guarantee to a high-paying job. This isn’t 1983. Any marketing approach that fails to account for changing social dynamics is a plan that will fail.

We can’t rely on tools that worked famously…ten years ago. We have a different, more sophisticated audience with different thresholds and expectations, and we either appreciate this or we waste a lot of valuable time and effort. We must appreciate that spammers have clear-cut the e-mail environment, and now the harvest isn’t what it used to be.

Connect or DIE

One of the reasons that it is dangerous to automate on social media is that it is too easy to get lazy and rely on automation. Now, if this wasn’t a common human tendency, then we wouldn’t have a problem, but it is part of human nature to slack off. We all do it.

Yet, when we start automating our messages and not engaging with others, we need to remember that other people will be doing this too. The more automation invades a social site, the less effective that site becomes. Why?

Metcalf’s Law.

No Connection, No Value

Value is related to the amount of connected users. Less people connect because either 1) they have automated everything so they have time for more “important” things or 2) they are avoiding Twitter, Goodreads, etc. because they are tired of all the spam and just want to talk to another human being, because it is called a social network not a shopping network.

Ads have crippled or killed many social platforms, and, if we want to reap advantages of these large pools of fellow humans, then it is our job to contribute instead of take. Yes, we can post links to our blog or posts that interest us, but the Law of Three is designed to keep this in balance.

When we don’t take time to talk to people, they move on, and if no one is present to see our link, follow it and part with money, then our Twitter account is as useless as those e-mails about my inheritance in Ghana from relatives I didn’t even know I had.

Social media, in ways, is a delicate ecosystem. Harvest its fruits, but remember to plant more seeds. Clear-cutting is only profitable short term. We should want Facebook and Twitter and all our current social networks to thrive. If they continue to thrive, this saves us from having to rebuild on a new social network.

We should want our current networks to grow and to be there long-term. We have better things to do–like write more books—than start from Ground Zero on a NEW social site because no one logs on to Twitter anymore because of the non-stop spam.

And trust me, link after link after link, automated or not gets spammy. We are on Twitter to chat with people too, and when that goes away? Then Twitter and Facebook and Goodreads all join the ranks of the home telephone, and the only people who hang out there are the spammers, marketers and bots. Don’t believe me? Go check out MySpace to see the devastation of social clear-cutting.

Welcome to MySpace
(Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

What are your thoughts? Opinions? Concerns? What social sites have you started avoiding? What would you like to see change? Do you miss MySpace? I do. I was really saddened that the ads ruined it. Which platform is next? What platforms do you now avoid that you used to enjoy?

I LOVE hearing from you guys!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of September, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. If you leave a comment, and link back to my blog, and mention my book We Are Not Alone in your blog…you get your name in the hat THREE times. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly.

I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

And also, winners have a limited time to claim the prize, because what’s happening is there are actually quite a few people who never claim the critique, so I never know if the spam folder ate it or to look for it and then people miss out. I will also give my corporate e-mail to insure we connect and I will only have a week to return the 20 page edit.

At the end of September I will pick a winner for the monthly prize. Good luck! I will announce August’s winner on Friday.

I also hope you pick up copies of my best-selling books We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media and Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer . And both are recommended by the hottest agents and biggest authors in the biz. My methods teach you how to make building your author platform FUN. Build a platform and still have time left to write great books.

The Blessings of Social Media

Kristen Lamb (Age 6), Ingrid Schaffenburg (Age 3)

Happy Friday, WANA peeps! I know I’ve been posting a lot of heavy stuff lately, so today something fun light and…short. YAY! My business partner and close friend Ingrid Schaffenburg wrote a really beautiful post about social media and how two women who met over thirty years ago and hadn’t seen each other in 20 years would come together to (hopefully) change the world. And, yeah, her blogs are way shorter than mine.

Take it away Ingrid!

***

Last May, when I decided to move back to my hometown of Fort Worth, a huge priority of mine was reconnecting with old friends. I am a VERY social creature and without my tribe, I am lost. Well not lost, but I would’ve been creeping around Starbucks all day trying to make new friends if I had had none to come home to.

So I started with my trusted few. Close friends I’d known since childhood and some old family friends. But there was one person I just KNEW I wanted to connect with.

A few months prior, a distant acquaintance from high school had friended me on Facebook. And when I say distant I mean we had probably only spoken a handful of times in the halls of our high school. She being a senior and I a freshman, our orbits hardly ever crossed.

So at this point we’d spent, 18 years apart. Living completely separate lives and never entering into each other’s consciousness.

Until Facebook.

And as often happens, by clicking “accept” we gained access to one another’s pages but for the most part, nothing changed. We remained acquaintances.

For several months leading up to my move, I’d see her posts scroll by.

Over and over again, I’d see these posts. And just as The Rule of 7 in advertising states, it started to sink in.

This girl’s a writer. And she’s serious. And she lives in FORT WORTH!

For the rest of Ingrid’s post, and the story how Facebook changed both our lives and the lives of countless artists, go here…..

Have a fabulous weekend and I’ll see all y’all on Monday. Yes, “all y’all” is correct in Texas. I hope you guys will share your comment love over at Ingrid’s place. I still love hearing your thoughts and stories and I will count them for the contest (for details about the contest, just click on Wednesday’s post and scroll to the bottom for anyone new).

Twitter & Twisters–A Life-Saving Combination

For more about the tornadoes, there are more slides and videos over at CBS news.

This past weekend I taught social media at the Texas Two-Step Conference. One of my classes was about Twitter. Many people see no use for tweeting, especially the mundane information of everyday life. It is my job to teach people why Twitter is so essential and help them understand the power Twitter gives us all access to.

I gained a profound lesson about Twitter yesterday during the massive tornado outbreak that ripped through North Texas. Twitter and twisters? Huh?

I’ll explain in a moment…

I am from Texas and have lived here virtually all of my life, and I have to say that spring here is one of the most nerve-wracking times of year. We’ve been through our share of horrific storms. Say 5-5-95 to anyone from the Fort Worth area and their eyes widen. They instantly get the reference.

Then there was the outbreak of April 26, 1994 with 25 tornadoes including an F-4 that nearly erased the town of Lancaster. The twister stripped homes clean to the foundation and dropped debris halfway to Austin *shudders*. Then there was the outbreak of December 29, 2006 that served up 22 tornadoes, including an F-2 in Rio Vista.

I’ve been very fortunate to have never been in the heart of any of these outbreaks. Not that these storms weren’t still terrifying. Just because you aren’t in a tornado, doesn’t mean you aren’t getting 100 mile an hour squall lines that are uprooting trees all around you. Also, as a native, I have friends and family spread across the DFW Metroplex, so it is mind-numbing trying to contact everyone to make sure they take cover or, later, that they are still alive and accounted for.

Ah, but yesterday was different. I’d taught at a conference all weekend and was off my normal schedule. I couldn’t shake the fatigue, so my business partner, Ingrid, and I loaded The Spawn (my 2 year old) into the car to go to the gym. While at the gym we saw the weather report and it didn’t look good, so we high-tailed it out of there so we could run home before the storms hit. We still weren’t too concerned, because *shrugs* we are Texans and we are used to these violent spring storms.

So we get home, and Ingrid had one more errand she needed to run. She told me to check the weather but I got sidetracked with the toddler or something shiny, can’t recall. Anyway,  she was about to walk out the door when I said, “Wait! I totally forgot to check the weather. Let me look at that before you leave.” I go to the Weather Channel’s web site and what I see makes me stop dead cold.

TORNADO ALERT

Not a TORNADO WATCH or a TORNADO WARNING … no, a TORNADO ALERT, which means take cover or kiss your @$$ good-bye. Alerts mean a twister has been spotted and it is headed straight for you.

We scramble to get the storm supplies and take cover in the bathroom, and after a few minutes it seems we are in the clear. We creep out of the bathroom–shared with a hungry toddler, two cats and a dog–and look at the news. Is it past us?

The power goes out.

I can no longer tell what is going on. According to my friends on Twitter, it had just passed over us. Out the back window it seems we are clear, that the storm missed us. I venture a quick peek out the front door to see if I can get a visual on the storm. We are clearly NOT in danger, but I see this horrible wall cloud.

Anyone venture to point out the tornado?

This photo was actually taken earlier and from a different storm, but the wall cloud and that funnel dipping down is exactly what I saw. I would have been happy to provide an actual photo of THAT particular wall cloud, but I was too concerned with…um, not dying. Anyway, as you can see, there is a funnel dipping down, only, unlike the photo above, this lowering actually created a tornado that tore through Kennedale and then Arlington (right near the gym we’d just left) destroying or damaging 130 homes.

The video below is exactly what I saw form. This is footage of the actual Kennedale tornado.

What was so terrifying about yesterday was that all the tornadoes were all hitting almost at once. The meteorologists couldn’t keep up because the storms were spread across so many counties.Thus, while they were focusing on the Dallas tornado, those of us in or near the Arlington area couldn’t tell what was going on. Never seen anything like this.

What does all this have to do with social media? Huh? Social media. Well, it is Wednesday and normally social media is our topic. Twitter actually helped us take cover. The meteorologists couldn’t keep up, but countless tweeps across the Metroplex could.

There were moments that we didn’t have power and people were tweeting the warnings so I knew to get back in the bathroom. When we had power, I took up the self-appointed duty of Amateur Meteorologist and started tweeting every warning as it came, telling people to take cover.

Why was this important?

Well, the tornadoes hit during the workday and many people were not at home. A lot of workplaces don’t have televisions or weather radios. If the place of employment doesn’t have a lot of windows, people might not know there is a problem. BUT many people do have a phone that chirps when they get a tweet. One lady in Mesquite tweeted to me that she didn’t know that there was a tornado until I tweeted that one was on the ground headed straight for them. They had a chance to take cover.

The tweets also helped people warn friends and family or watch to make sure if they were in the clear. It was very rewarding to see how many people got on Twitter and worked together to share the news and make sure people they’d never even met could get to safety.

Social media is social, and storms have a way of making us feel powerless against the onslaught of Mother Nature. Yet, with Twitter, we could warn people we knew and even those we didn’t (unlike Facebook). By using hash tags like #DFW #tornado, we were instantly connected to people we’d never met, but who we could warn to get to safety (For those who don’t know, a # is a search filter, so anyone following #DFW, #tornado #warning would likely see all the tweets warning people to get to safety).

We could look for tweeps we knew were in the area and comfort one another. Twitter helped tremendously when the power went out, because we could still rely on our phones’ Twitter application and gain up-to-the-second information from our friends who were being vigilant enough to keep tweeting real-time information.

Twitter kept us safer.

If we rely on the TV, we can’t be in the bathroom, but my family could take cover and stay safe while we watched Twitter on my phone for the best real-time information. We could also tweet back to those warning us what we were hearing or seeing and if we were okay.

So thank you to all the tweeps out there who took time to look out for us. Some of you have never met me, and you might not ever know me, but know that we are so grateful that you took time to care for strangers. No one was killed, thank God, but there are countless people who’ve lost everything. I am off to bring some supplies to the @RedCrossDFW. Follow them and see how you might be able to serve those hurting right now. But thank you, thank you thank you for serving us yesterday. Who knows if your tweets are why no one died? Maybe you saved a life.

So were you helped by Twitter in the DFW storms? Did you tweet to help others? Have you ever used Twitter in a similar fashion? What are your thoughts? Stories? Impressions?

I LOVE hearing from you!

And to prove it and show my love, for the month of April, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. If you leave a comment, and link back to my blog, and mention my book We Are Not Alone in your blog…you get your name in the hat THREE times. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly.

I will pick a winner every week for a critique of your first five pages. At the end of April I will pick a winner for the grand prize. A free critique from me on the first 15 pages of your novel. Good luck!

I will announce the winners next week. A little behind after the storms.

I also hope you pick up copies of my best-selling books We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media and Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer . And both are recommended by the hottest agents and biggest authors in the biz. My methods teach you how to make building your author platform FUN. Build a platform and still have time left to write great books.

Does Publishing Support the Writer-Artist?

 

On Monday’s post we talked about the importance of craft in the new paradigm, yet there seems to be some assumptions floating around that I feel are flawed, and we need to talk about those today. We are artists, and the ONLY one who can develop and mature an artist is…the artist. We are responsible. We always have been. Just because Amazon is not going to appreciate our art beyond the sales numbers doesn’t mean anything other than Amazon remains what it has always been—a means of getting a product to a consumer, the art to a potential patron.

Yet, I will say the same thing about NY publishing.

They can wax rhapsodic about how they care about developing writers and how they care about writing and art, and I believe they do…but only to a certain point. The second any art becomes a commodity, then no one really cares only about the art. It becomes more about how many units can be sold, and will it be enough to gain back our investment before they cut off the power?

There are bills to pay.

But we will get to that, too, in a moment. But first we need to make sure we all have nice open minds and to do this we need to dispel some myths.

Myth #1

The only people who publish on Amazon are writing junk and weren’t good enough to get a traditional NY deal.

In the comments section on Monday many of you expressed that you were working on your skills, honing your art and holding out for a NY deal. That is awesome and up to the individual artist, but be careful. A lot of terrific and innovative writing has come out of the indie movement.

Sometimes writing won’t get picked up by New York for any number of reasons that have nothing at all to do with the skill level of the writer. Feel free to check out Kait Nolan who was the only indie author nominated for the prestigious DABWAHA award (and you can go vote for her, too).

Myth #2 NY Publishing supports art.

True, Amazon doesn’t have any gatekeepers, thus no way to keep out the truly motivated. But, this does not therefore mean that, by default, NY is a great patron of art.

How?

Some art challenges. It upsets and disrupts the status quo. It transforms us and changes us. Not all art is commercial art.

For instance, I could publish a book of nothing but commas, and on Amazon, no one can stop me. No one would stop me. My book of commas might not be a great use of my free time, but who are you to judge my art? Maybe my book of commas is a challenge to the post-industrial society to take more breaks.

Why are you laughing?

Maybe I yearn to make our culture really think about how they have forgotten to pause in their everyday lives. Perhaps I long to expose all those tiny breaks to appreciate life that you missed because you had e-mails to check or a Facebook page to update. Every comma in my 1,000 page e-book represents a moment you will never get back.

I have them all here. Your lost moments. I captured them like little damsel flies in amber.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

I collected your lost moments into one place, a tribute to all the breaks no one wanted. We are a pauseless society always on fast-forward, plunging into the Red Bull-soaked abyss of suffering.

Wow, I really ran with that.

Please look for upcoming book “,”…never in stores, well, for obvious reasons. It is part of a series–”?” “!” and “.” will be released some time after they let me out of the looney bin.

Some Art Cannot Begin as a Commercial Product

I know I am going to get e-mails about this one, but again. Breathe and give me a moment. Some art is meant to please and be aesthetic. It is designed to appeal. But is that the only art? No. Some art is designed to shake things up, to challenge. This kind of art, the kind that disrupts, confronts and even offends is often only appreciated as a commercial item retrospectively.

Trust me. Most people didn’t “get” Dahli at the time, and now his work graces many a T-shirt. The industrial publishing machine is in business to sell goods people want, but if something is a certain type of art, then no one knows they need it…yet. This art will only be appreciated by the society the art changes.

For instance, in Picasso’s time, art had been steeped in realism for centuries. Then Picasso stepped in and shook things up by doing things…differently. He painted a woman with her eye closer to her forehead or a person made of geometric shapes. It forced society to transform, to open its ideas of what it considered beautiful of what it considered to be art.

Of course, now, a century later, even a small schoolchild has seen cubism if only on her mother’s mouse pad near the computer. Modern art was once shocking and of no determined commercial value…but then as society changed, the value did as well. This art, once only appreciated on the fringes of society, over time became more and more commercial.

Writers are Artists

Yes, there are wanna-be-amateur hacks who believe they are being rejected because no one can see their brilliance, yet I would be bold enough to say that there are some genuine artists being rejected by New York, too.

Oooohhhh.

Who is to say that modern digital age society wouldn’t like to read a 130,000 word book written in the verbose style of A Tale of Two Cities? Anyone who shops at Wal Mart truly understands how it can be the best of times and the worst of times. That manuscript that is being rejected for all of its heaviness and lack of commercial appeal might just spark that style of writing back to life.

It could. Why not?

Maybe potential readers are feeling nostalgic. Maybe we were too immature to appreciate The Grapes of Wrath in 11th grade, but now, a book like that is just what we need. Maybe works that read like Jane Eyre would appeal to modern audiences if the stories were modern. Perhaps the unique juxtaposition of a modern world and archaic language would be brilliant.

Worked for the movies! I saw Romeo and Juliet. Lionardo Dicaprio’s performance was stellar.

You might chuckle, but maybe I am right. Yet, the thing is, New York will reject most books that really challenge conventional tastes, so how will we ever know?

Agents will reject these works not because they might not love them, but because they can’t sell them. New York will say these works won’t appeal to reader tastes, and they would be right. New York is in the business of satisfying appetites, not necessarily creating new ones or reviving old ones.

I am in no way saying that New York Publishing doesn’t appreciate art, it just doesn’t always support it. It can’t afford to.

Publishing is Not Necessarily about the Art

Yes, publishing supports some great works of literary genius…ones it believes it can sell. Publishers have overhead and payroll and frankly, they cannot afford to be philanthropists. It isn’t as if they are supported by donations and foundations. Museums have the luxury of being innovative and provocative.

Let’s take Dadaism as an example.

Dadaism was an artistic movement birthed in response to the outbreak of WWI. It was to protest the reason and logic of a bourgeois society. Dadaists believed the misguided values of the time had plunged the world into war. Dada was the antithesis of everything art stood for at the time. Dada had no concern for aesthetics, and their works were intended to offend. Through their rejection of traditional culture and aesthetics, the Dadaists sought to destroy traditional culture and aesthetics.

What this means is that people of the time, regular people buying stuff, probably would not have cared for anything Dada in nature. It was a fringe appetite. If we have a urinal installed in our home, it is a place to use the bathroom. Install it in a display at the Museum of Modern Art and it is an Marcel Duchamp exhibit.

So New York can say they support art, but the fact is they would probably love to, but they can’t. They likely could if they would embrace digital publishing. Maybe my book of commas would be a hit. If NY followed my suggestions, they could take more chances on art. Maybe they could mold tastes instead of trying to predict them and react to them.

Hmm. Food for thought.

Social Media Art–Embrace WANAism

Why my social media teachings are different is that I am not here to make “responsible little marketers” who can sell books as if they were no different than vacuums or light bulbs.

I created WANA (We Are Not Alone) to tear down the establishment that wants writers to run out and automate messages promoting book giveaways on 8 different platforms. WANAism rejects the current system and declares that writers are not car insurance and books are not tacos. My medium is social media, and I create art every day. So do my followers…WANAites. WANAism cannot be measured with metrics, because, while WANA is digital in delivery, it is human at its core.

WANA is here to liberate your inner artist, to show you the truth of the new paradigm, and that is you are free. Writers have a new medium. Social media isn’t a chore, it is a new canvas! I am not a marketing expert; I teach art classes for WordPress .

Art is the Divine Part of Our Humanness

What makes us human is this longing to create. No matter what race, creed, religion or place in time, we humans are united by our universal desire to create art, and we will use anything available—stone, canvas, skin, words, paper or Facebook. Doesn’t matter.

Those who follow WANAism understand that technology doesn’t steal our artist spirit, it gives it another medium, much like the invention of cameras and film gave rise to movies…a new way to tell stories. Make social media your art and your attitude will change. It will no longer be a chore to be endured. It will transform into a place to share your artist passion with those who can….appreciate it.

Social media offers a place to give away your art. Not your product…your art. Art is part of who we are so each interaction, each tweet, every blog represents a sample of us, our art, our personal Dada movement.

Amazon Opens the Door for Art

So if I really wanted to make an argument for who did a better job of supporting art, I would have to vote for Amazon. By opening the doors and not using any outside market standard of “acceptable, publishable material” Amazon has liberated the artist to put his art on display. If the world throws digital tomatoes at it, c’est la vie.

Either the world wasn’t ready or the artist wasn’t. Time will prove which was the case.

But…

The daring. The truly original. The writer-artist who creates that very thing that no one knew they needed until they saw it…this writer will be rewarded. He will sell books and his following will grow because his art will affect people. They will feel it and will want to share this experience and pay good money for it because this is always what art does.

This digital paradigm lets indie and self-publishing test the “art” to see if there is an audience for this innovation and create the market (then NY can step in with a deal when the risk makes fiscal sense).

The New Paradigm Liberates the Author-Artist

Until now, the act of publishing a book was so terrifically cost-prohibitive that is truly limited art in our medium. If we created something so original it would revolutionize the world, we had to hope and pray we landed a gatekeeper with vision who was willing to risk her reputation and career. A lot of money was on the line if the art was not embraced in a way that made it commercially viable. Now? Digital makes art possible.

All of us art putting out art…just not all of us will make the commercial cut.

Art vs. Tastes

Let’s even set this notion of art aside and maybe just talk a moment about reader tastes. Tastes can be molded, shaped and changed. In the new digital paradigm we are seeing a resurgence of essentially pulp fiction. Fantasy, sci-fi, erotica, Westerns, novellas, poetry books and all kinds of works are now finding a home now that we have loosed the chains of capital risk.

We no longer need anyone but the artist to invest, and the readers either come…or they don’t.

Maybe we are a Picasso that later will be embraced by millions and generate wide-spread commercial interest, but we could just as easily be a giant sculpture crafted from used diapers that a handful will think is brilliant and provocative…but no one will want to take home and display in their living room.

Thing is, in this Brave New World we all get our own exhibit.

Thoughts? Reactions? Are you elated? Horrified? Do you think writers should shape and create reader tastes or publishers? I want to hear from you! And yes, I am putting my art out there every week, hoping that even if you don’t agree, you will walk away somehow changed . Off to go do revisions on “,” and I will let you know when you can pre-order copies .

I LOVE hearing from you!

And to prove it and show my love, for the month of March, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. If you leave a comment, and link back to my blog, and mention my book We Are Not Alone in your blog…you get your name in the hat THREE times. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly.

I will pick a winner every week for a critique of your first five pages. At the end of March I will pick a winner for the grand prize. A free critique from me on the first 15 pages of your novel. Good luck!

I also hope you pick up copies of my best-selling books We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media and Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer . And both are recommended by the hottest agents and biggest authors in the biz. My methods teach you how to make building your author platform FUN. Build a platform and still have time left to write great books.

This Week’s Mash-Up of Awesomeness

10 Myths about Forensics Spread by TV

Protecting Our Writing Time by Elizabeth Craig

I’ll Get to It…Eventually by Alan Orloff

How Does a Publishing Auction Work? by Literary Agent Rachelle Gardner

What is More Fairly Priced at 99 Cents? Nonfiction or a Novel? by Edward Nawotka over at Publishing Persectives

What is an Author Platform? by Jane Friedman

The Controversy Over Controversy by Amber West

What’s Better than a Fight? over at More Blogging Cowbell

Who Will Rule Social Media? Introverts vs. Extroverts

Yesterday, one of the commenters asked my thoughts about introverts on social media. At first glance, it seems that social media, social networking and social platform-building is a job made in heaven for the extrovert. Well, yes and no. Actually, each personality brings a unique skill set to the table.

The terms “extrovert” and “introvert” were first made popular in the 1920s by the famous psychologist Carl Jung, then given further momentum later by the Myers-Briggs personality test. Over the past century, it appears our society has developed an unhealthy fascination with the extrovert, favoring the bubbly, outgoing energetic personality over their quiet, more contemplative counterparts. Corporations spend money by the buckets training their people to “group think,” and “team-building” has virtually wiped out all quiet reflection.

In a world that can’t seem to stop talking, the introvert is getting lost.

Yes, I am an extrovert *shock face*, but one thing you guys might not expect is that I actually score very high as an introvert as well. Every time I’ve taken the Myers-Briggs, I score almost dead even on the extrovert vs. introvert questions. I am technically an extrovert with strong introversive tendencies. It generally is only one or two answers that have tipped me over to the extrovert side. I do feel that introversive side is part of what drew me to becoming a writer in the first place.

So, let’s just say that I do have some idea of what it feels like to be an introvert trapped in a corporate culture that doesn’t value quiet time. I know what it feels like to slug though meeting after meeting with every person feeling the need to fill the air with chatter and suggestions, whether they’d thought them through or not. And to make matters worse, our culture seems to reward the person who is noisiest, regardless whether the person makes any sense at all.

I remember being part of a sales meeting and all the reps were tossing out what they thought the company’s main focus for the year should be. Lower prices! Shorter lead-times! More choices! The CEO was just beaming in the sea of all this noisy brilliance. After a while, I finally raised my hand said something that stopped everyone cold.

“Has anyone asked the customers what they feel is important?”

See, one area introverts shine is they tend to be better listeners. Most managers will seek out the gregarious chatterbox who isn’t afraid to strike up a conversation and recruit them to the sales force. Yet, the interesting thing is that what makes the extrovert supposedly “good” at sales, can actually be a hinderance. To be good at sales, the extrovert needs to, above all else, learn to be a good listener first…and that is an area where we extroverts can struggle. We get so busy being entertaining that we often forget to be quiet long enough to hear the real problem our product can solve.

Thus, when it comes to social media, introverts are at no disadvantage…well, not using the WANA approach. Originally I had intended to only post one vlog this week. But, since the weekend was such a disaster, yesterday, while Spawn was passed out on codeine, I filmed a quick vlog to answer this question…because talking is easier than writing at this point. And the Spawn is doing fantastic today. Thanks for all the prayers and support.

As you can see, the introvert doesn’t need to become an extrovert in order to rule social media. In fact, using WANA, introverts can actually rely on their extroversive teammates to carry on their message while they rest and recharge. Since WANA is a community, we all harness each other’s strengths while collectively mitigating each other’s weaknesses. TEAM–Together Everyone Achieves More. Introverts have their own special contribution, and we aren’t here to change your personality, just your approach. Introverts have just as much to contribute to the world of social media, so don’t try to be something you aren’t. No phonies!

So what questions do you have that you might like for me to address on the vlog? Questions about social media? Craft? Questions about sea monkey training? Throw it out there.

I LOVE hearing from you!

And to prove it and show my love, for the month of…heck it is close enough for March, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. If you leave a comment, and link back to my blog, and mention my book We Are Not Alone in your blog…you get your name in the hat THREE times. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly.

I will pick a winner every week for a critique of your first five pages. At the end of March I will pick a winner for the grand prize. A free critique from me on the first 15 pages of your novel. Good luck!

I also hope you pick up copies of my best-selling books We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media and Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer . Both books are ON SALE for $4.99!!!! And both are recommended by the hottest agents and biggest authors in the biz. My methods teach you how to make building your author platform FUN. Build a platform and still have time left to write great books.