What’s on the iPod: Incomplete and Insecure by The Avett Brothers
What a day. I couldn’t have done any more that had nothing to do with marketing or contacting conference people if I’d intended to. I had a few minor client emergencies, a few interviews, and an impromptu meeting that completely threw me off kilter. It wasn’t until 3 pm before I got to responding to conference people.
I was talking with another freelancer, who was asking about following the advice of others. I’m an advocate for listening, but heeding your own internal voice. However, I’ve seen writers — some of them quite successful on the surface — start to sink. In a few cases, I’d be willing to bet that sudden decline is because as these writers were following the best advice they thought they could find, they were ignoring something major — themselves.
Not sure if you’re losing yourself? If any of these examples fit, the answer could be yes.
Follow blindly. I’ve had other writers preach to me (and to their other friends) that you have to market a certain way, blog a certain way, mimic the “experts” to a tee, etc. That works at first, but guess what? What works for Fred may not work for Wilma. Maybe that’s what Robbie Burns meant about best laid plans.
Forget your own personality. As you’re busy following that super-special expert, are you remembering to tailor that message to fit your style, not hers? If you expect your audience to find one ounce of sincerity in your message, you need to tweak that message to reflect who you are.
Rely on gimmicks. I’ve stopped reading blogs that have those screaming headlines, empty promises, failure to deliver on the promised message, etc. Why? Because the content wasn’t really content — it was just shouting and fancy fonts. Stop listening to someone else’s idea of what makes a great blog post. Just write from your heart. And God help you if you’re using that same tactic to attract clients.
Over-promotion. I’ve seen plenty of people get this one wrong. Some are friends who have no idea I started — or stopped — following. If you send me more than one message a week that’s attempting to part me from my money, I’m done listening. My freelancer friend said in one case, she was hit with five messages in 24 hours. Why? Because she’d signed up for a webinar. I had to laugh — I’d read the same marketing piece that said people have to be told time and again about the webinar. No. No, they really don’t. I don’t need one more signup that badly that I’ll risk offending everyone else.
How do you see writers losing themselves?
I think you have to find the style, the promotion, and the approach that fits your own personality, skills, and goals. Blindly following a super-extrovert who loves public speaking, when you're more of a quiet type will never work.
You have to make your own path.
As for over-doing webinar promotion, it seems the webinar companies can get overzealous too. I held a webinar last week (my first ever – eeek!). It went fairly well, but the company sent me 4 or 5 emails reminding me of the date. I know the date, I scheduled it myself!
I always say you need to know what you want first from your business before you can decide what's right for you.
That sounds simple, but often we haven't really thought about it. And it can change.
If we don't know what we want, that's how we fall into living some other person's dream (or hype, as the case may be).
There are writers who are very successful now and they worked darn hard to get there. I say congrats to them. But, that doesn't mean it's what I want at this stage of my life. I don't want to work the long hours and I don't want to build an empire. And I really don't want employees. 🙂
Know what you want and then figure out what works for you.
Lori, this post – and comments so far – are so timely. After a couple of webinars and downloading free e-books recently, my inbox is so full of "helpful hints" that just opening and reading them seems like a part-time job.
I have felt that I must read them all in order to reap the benefits of their experience. While I do that, I'm cheating myself out of developing my own expertise! Thanks once again for reminding me of my own worth.
I use Twitter to promote classes/semianrs/webinars regularly, because it's an ongoing thing and falls off people's lists after 100 tweets or whatever in the follow queue. So I tweet about the classes regularly on Twitter, there's now a Facebook Page up for the Fearless Ink Workshops that has daily writing tips along with the promotion for the workshops, and I put it in the newsletter and as a reminder line on the blog.
I also interact on Twitter and blogs and other media, on topics that have nothing to do with what I'm promoting, because there are a lot of interesting people out there.
I don't send people endless emails.
I've "unsubscribed" from a bunch of lists where the person just shoots stuff out to promote sales, but never has any actual interaction with the list.
The hard sell always backfires on me, probably because my dad always said, "If they have to work so hard to sell something, it's probably not worth much." Meaning quality shines through, mediocrity needs hype to gain attention. (Like certain "celebrities" who are famous for being famous, not for anything they've done. It's all smoke and mirrors.)
Piggybacking on Devon's comment – she has a good balance of general tweets and promotional tweets. I've unfollowed a couple of writers who tweet links to the exact same blog post about 10 times in one day. I'd understand twice a day, in different day parts, but every other hour is a bit excessive – and off putting.
It is easy to get sucked in at first. I wanted to learn, so I jumped on a bunch of lists and followed numerous blogs. Now I'm more selective and click the unsubscribe if I get annoyed or oversold.
Being true to yourself is key. Do what feels right for you and be genuine.
Jodi, that's funny. I know–more frustrating for you — but funny that they felt you'd forget your own webinar! I'm sure it went superbly, too. 🙂
Cathy, super comment. It's funny — I see others measuring against people with different goals. Sure, you can be just as successful, but is it what you WANT?
Cheryl, it's great to have free tips and advice, but you've nailed it — spending all that time listening to someone else's vision can blur your vision of your own business. Good insight!
Devon, I'm on your newsletter list and honestly, when your stuff comes in it's so infrequent that I think "Hey, that's right! I signed up for this!" and I OPEN it. Maybe not at that moment, but I do open it. There are some that come in that I just don't open because guess what? It's the third time this week.
Paula, we were just discussing the Kardashians last night! Muhahaha! I agree — Devon's tweets are a balance, and since Twitter is what I call fickle communication, the tweets aren't in your face constantly. I know another writer whose tweets were so obnoxiously promotional that I just tuned that person out (and unfollowed).
Wade, you did nothing wrong. You learned something too, I'd bet. It's just that too many "gurus" or "experts" don't understand moderation when it comes to contacting their email lists. It's clear you've learned one big item — over-promotion loses your audience!
I agree. You have to be genuine or you're not going to like your own results.
Getting 5 emails in 24 hours urging me to sign up for a webinar is the quickest way to get me to click "unsubscribe." That's serious over kill.
Amen to that, Kim. I can't stand that.
I agree with Cheryl on getting overloaded on emails. I mean, after all, I subscribed to those lists because the authors had, at some point, provided helpful information!
I get it mostly from two lists I'm subscribed to. One of them is particularly bad about over-promotion and gimmicks, as seemingly ever email promises to solve a grand problem if only I'll pay for another product. It's a shame, because I might be more inclined to buy something if they offered at least *something* for free.
Instead, I've decided to spend more *doing* and less time reading what "experts" say about things.