Reluctant E-Mail Signatures May Not Be Courteous Signatures

Your E-mail Signature: 

Choosing Courteous and Great Marketing 

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson 

In a public e-mail to her clients, someone near and dear to me (an expert) said most people look at the first two lines of an email. That’s it. They aren’t interested in fishing through pages of post-signature blather. People need to have ways to learn about you, not reasons to put up shields.” She advised three or four lines, tops. Boy, did that set me off. So, these people we send mail to are in such a hurry that they’d rather spend time looking up in dozens of places for the information that could just as easily have been in the contact’s e-mail signature?  Here’s my rant—er . . . rebuttal:

 My old friend, I so disagree with this. 

For one thing, there are no fast rules. Much depends on the genre an author writes in. Another depends on the author’s personality. But more than either of those, a complete signature is a courtesy to the person an author is corresponding with. Put that word in caps! COURTESY!

There is nothing more annoying than getting an e-mail from someone who doesn't have proper contact information in it. And the trouble is, depending on what the recipient plans to do with the email, it is difficult for the sender to know exactly what will make the life of that contact easier. Will she need your website address? Will including your Twitter moniker help her in some way? Won't the repeated visual of your book cover to your contacts help your branding? And if your contact has seen your cover before, will it hurt her that much to see it again? Especially considering that old marketing advice based on research that people need to see something seven times before they act on it.

  

And don't you––as someone whose business it is to help authors--want your authors to sell as many books as possible and to get as much media attention as possible? In the PR world the winner is the person who makes it easiest on the gatekeeper to do her job. It is a busy world. She doesn't need to be searching for information, especially information that could easily go into a signature.

To arbitrarily tell anyone how to sign their emails without any idea of the tone or purpose of the email seems very presumptuous to me.

I hope you will give your authors this alternative view. Many authors are already far too reluctant to get the word about their books out there. Telling them to arbitrarily limit information in their signatures may encourage their reluctance to do right by their books—and their own careers.

Hugs, [Yes, hugs. Even rants are mostly designed to help rather than make enemies!]

CHJ

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson is a former journalist, retailer, and marketer who started publishing how-to books for writers for the classes she taught for UCLA Extension’s renowned Writers’ Program. Members of the California Legislature named her Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment. Learn more about her how-to books and her creative writing at http://howtodoitfrugally.com  Learn more about book promotion (and avoiding being the reluctant book promoter!) in her The Frugal Book Promoter and the rest of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers at http://bit.ly/FrugalBookPromo. 

Once You Have Social Network Followers, Then What?

This is a short post, but one that’s important for anyone who is purposefully using social media. What I mean by ‘purposefully’ is using social media to promote and sell your services or products.

One of my email subscribers asked me about Staged. It’s a social media engagement service that gets you Twitter Followers. But, unless you have the budget, it can get expensive since there’s a monthly fee.

I’ll call the subscriber John Doe for this article.

The other part of John’s question was that although the service did get him a lot of Followers on Twitter, how could he monetize them?

The first thing I asked John was if the Followers the service got him were targeted. In other words, were those Twitter users interested in what he had to offer? Were they potential customers?

On my own social media marketing, I’m picky about who I Follow. I only Follow targeted users. I do this because I want potential leads / clients. I also want Followers who can add to the targeted conversation in my niche.

So what do you do with those Followers?
Whether John gets Followers on his own or through a paid service, he still has to produce quality content that will lead those Followers back to his website. And, just as important, where ever he brings that traffic to must be monetized or optimized.

So, if John brings the website traffic to his blog posts, those posts must have a CTA (call-to-action). It might be a prompt to join his mailing list or to get a free consultation.

The same holds true for sales pages or product pages. If you’re bringing traffic to those pages, they must be effective enough to motivate the reader to take the desired action you want.

Bottom line, the size of your Followers isn’t as important as the quality of those Followers. It goes back to the blogging strategy of quality over quantity.

More on Writing and Marketing

Are You Living the Writer’s Life?
Writing Skills - Spread Your Wings
10 Ideas for Social Media Posts

Need help with your author platform?
Check out my WOW! Women on Writing eClasses.

Bullying 101

Kids are cruel. That's a known fact. Kids who take cruelty to the extreme become bullies. The reality is that bullying is and will continue to be a part of every child's life. Even in institutions with an active anti-bullying program, kids go underground and carry on in any way they choose. You know, like when we were in school.

We as children’s writers want our stories to reflect the lives of young people. We can speak to kids' lives by including a bully in our story and showing how our characters react to her. 

What is Bullying?

The regrettable dynamics of bullying comes in the form of the viscous "bullying triangle" of the bully, the victim, and the bystander.  

Bullying takes on many guises. Its main intent is to hurt someone and is relentless in its delivery. Once a bully zeroes in on a target that he deems small, helpless and/or weak, he preys on his victim over and over by calling him names, recruiting cronies to gang up, and in the worst cases, the bullies can become physically violent. 

Often bullies are bigger kids who pick on kids who they think won’t stand up for themselves, and kids with few friends. But that’s not always the case. A short kid could be a bully as a means of defense against his size, and even a kid who has been bullied can turn into a bully to gain favor from his previous aggressor. As Kaitlyn Blais put it in Bullying Under Attack: True Stories Written by Teen Victims, Bullies and Bystanders, edited by Stephanie H. Meyer, John Meyer, Emily Sperber, and Heather Alexander, “Every kid wants to be ‘cool, popular, and in.’ The problem is that you can’t be ‘in’ unless someone is ‘out.’” Kaitlyn stood up for a victim who turned on her and victimized her. She wrote that she learned from that experience that “there needed to be only one black sheep.” 

Inside a Bully’s Head

First and foremost, a bully hates himself. He is hurting inside. Why? His home life may be unhappy. He may imagine that he has an embarrassing flaw and feels self-conscious about it. So he picks a victim who appears weaker than him and lashes out. If he gets away with it, he feels a sense of power and as his behavior continues, he becomes hooked. Eventually, as confessed bully Michael Ortiz wrote in Bullying Under Attack, Michael lost control and any ability he might have had to tell right from wrong. The hate he inflicted on others replaced the hatred he felt for himself.

Target  Practice

The victim is led to believe that more harm will come to her if she seeks help, and anyway, she doesn't want to be a tattletale. Lacking the proper skills to defend herself, she takes it and takes it until her life spins out of control and she descends into self-pity and worse. In dire cases, the victim may resort to harming herself by retreating into her own lonely world, and worse--cutting and even suicide. If a child is fortunate enough to rise above her unhappy situation, she is often left with long-lasting scars. 

Enter an Audience and the Triangle is Complete

Bystanders witness the bullying--the presence of bystanders actually encourages the bullying. The bully loves to show off his skills, especially if he is egged on. And even if the bystanders remain silent, the bully believes that they are lending him support.

Bystanders might:

• Look the other way
• Avoid any people or place where bullying might take place
• Are afraid or embarrassed to speak up
• Feel helpless themselves
• Don't think they should interfere
  
  
  When Bravery Wins Out
  Enter the rare person who is willing to stand up for the victim, dubbed the upstander, in the excellent chapter "Understanding Bystanders," in Bullying: Prevention and Intervention--Protecting Children and Teens from Physical, Emotional, and Online Bullying, by Cindy Miller, LCSW and Cynthia Lowen.
   
  
  If You’ve Never Been a Part of a Bullying Triangle
  The closest I have come to a bullying situation was breaking up fights as a classroom teacher. Other than that, I have never became involved so I can’t speak from experience. But I have been hurt by girls who I considered my best friends. Granted, the scars couldn’t be as deep as the scars from a bullying situation, but there are scars. For two years I stewed over one friend’s hateful behavior toward me until I forced myself to stop and I finally got over it. The good news? I have a "well of darkness" to draw on in the portrayal of bullies and villains in my stories. I’m thankful for these experiences, for as writers, we draw on every scrap of personal experience and emotion we can.
  Please leave a comment if you’ve experienced bullying and let us know how it has affected you and your writing.
  Illustration: Courtesy of www.constantcontact.com
  Next month: What it Takes to Overcome Bullying   
  
  Linda Wilson, a former elementary teacher and ICL graduate, has published over 100 articles for adults and children, and six short stories for children. Recently, she completed Joyce Sweeney's online fiction courses, picture book course and mystery and suspense course. She has currently finished her first book, a mystery/ghost story for 7-11 year-olds, and is in the process of publishing it and moving on to new writing projects. Follow Linda on Facebook.
  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

Self-Editing for Our Best Writing

What you offer on your website will consistently draw readers to your site.  Our goal is to write a strong introduction with clarity, and focused content. To achieve our goal, we must become self-editors and put it into practice. 

Self-editing is tricky because we are familiar with the way we put words together in a sentence, our style. We are in-tuned to our message, and what we want to convey, but we surprise ourselves at times with wonky writing.  The point is to catch, and correct before release.

I have a few tips and resources to offer:

·         If you have a writing partner who edits your writing, even your posts, nurture the relationship.
·         To save time and money, self-edit or have your writing partner edit your work before hiring an editor.
·         I use online editors to help me analyze my pieces.  My favorite is ProWritingAid.  The free version is quite thorough, but a premium version is also available.

o   Copy and paste your piece and click to run an analysis. Follow the comments and choose how you wish to tackle each one.

o   ProWriting Aid:  https://prowritingaid.com/

o   Page Rater is my second go to online: https://www.paperrater.com/free_paper_grader

o   Hemmingway is good for style: http://www.hemingwayapp.com/

o   Smart Edit is worth checking out: http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/smart-edit-software-video-tutorial/

o   Grammarly is another option: https://www.grammarly.com/1

o   If you use Microsoft Word, a choice for extensive grammar checking is available via options – proofing – writing style.  Choose grammar & style, and click settings according to your watch-areas from the pull down menu.

Tips for growing a following:

• Use visuals: many sites such as Pinterest are photograph-driven.
• Add links to your Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc., pages with a brief intro.
• Always include subject tags, labels, or categories for easy searching.
• E-Newsletters and regular posts are an excellent way to promote your work and to recommend the work of others; an important part of book marketing.

I appreciate your feedback.  Please comment below.  Thank you much!  deborah

Deborah Lyn Stanley is a writer, artist, and editor.  She is a retired project manager who now devotes her time to writing, art and caregiving mentally impaired seniors.  Deborah writes articles, essays and stories. She has published a collection of 24 artists’ interviews entitled the Artists Interview Series.  Careful editing preserves the artist’s voice as they share their journey. The series published as monthly articles for an online news network, can also be found on her web-blog: Deborah Lyn Stanley - Writers Blog.  Her “How-To” articles have appeared in magazines.   

“Write your best, in your voice, your way!”