In today’s world, to be a writer we’re told that writing is not enough, you must market your work and do everything in your power to get the word out, even before you’ve written a sentence of your brilliant to-be manuscript.
Today’s Writers Life:
(The most common tips and suggestions out there.)
- Write and publish a blog post every day.
- Accepting the latest Medium challenge and see how many claps you can get in 2 hours or 2 days or 2 weeks. Who knows how long, but you need those claps! And if you don’t get them? Get better at marketing your articles.
- Create groups on Facebook for likeminded, writers, artists and entrepreneurs. Maintain it daily and, better yet, update hourly, if possible. It really depends on how much you want this writing thing to work.
- Guest posting! If you’re not doing this, you’re wasting your time on your personal blog because you’ll never get anyone to visit, much less care about your work.
- Podcasting, this is the next step for any serious writers looking to market their work and hit the bigtime. You may need some vocal training and voice coaching, but if you’re serious about your career—you’ll do it.
- Join: Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Reddit, and every writer’s marketing forum you can find.
The list goes on.
And there are people who can do all this stuff without ever seeming to break a sweat. Usually they’re young and jobless or highly gifted and self-employed or have a spouse with a day job and thus have time to sit in front of the computer all day.
Either way, whatever the reason those gifted people can do all of that and flip jelly beans in their mouths without ever seeming to care, it can give you the feeling you’re a complete and utter failure, because there’s no way in the world you can maintain all that online marketing and remain sane, employed, or married.
What the masters haven’t told you is that on top of doing all that stuff—you need to do it brilliantly, all of it, otherwise you’re wasting your time. Doing it half-ass won’t cut it. Second best is the first loser. (Insert any other demeaning you-aren’t-doing-enough cliché here.)
Here’s the truth:
Marketing can kill a writer’s enthusiasm, desire and creative spirit.
Sure, we know this is the modern age and self-publishing is all the rage, but dammit, all this marketing is too much, and writers are falling by the way side, exhausted, miserable and feel utterly dejected.
It’s death in the worst way, because you’re still alive, but you feel worthless for not achieving greatness doing the stuff you really don’t care about.
And every time you look on Facebook, you see that (you know the one) bestselling author talking about raising her kids, writing 2000 words a day, teaching online courses, and making the New York Times bestseller list again (yawn), because she just laid another golden egg epic and it hatched all over the world at #1. (Are we jealous much?! Fine.)
How’s your passion doing now?
But hey, if you CAN do all that internet marketing at the top of today’s game, then guess what? You’re a bonified badass!
However, there’s a catch, if you can’t keep up, well, then the badass title isn’t yours to claim. Isn’t that the message?
Let me be clear: If you can’t, because you don’t have the time or the inclination, or whatever your reason, do all that fantastical marketing stuff, there’s nothing wrong with you.
Let me state that again, in all caps:
THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU!
In fact, it may prove you are absolutely sane and more interested in living a healthy, fulfilling life as a writer, sculptor, painter, or whatever your vocation might be.
You don’t need to build a platform. You don’t need to write 500, 1000, or 2000 words a day. You don’t need to post to Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram 10 times a day. You don’t need to be charismatic and a magnet for all the wannabe greats. You don’t need to be the next Seth Godin.
Who you should be focusing on is… Y.O.U.
What floats your boat? What makes you excited to live today? What’s your guilty pleasure? What makes you write like the day is on fire?
Here’s the secret you might not know about those great internet marketers who write bestselling books, most of them were great at marketing first and writing is something they do to take advantage of their marketing prowess.
Did you know that Jeff Goins’ day job was in marketing before he started his blog and book career? Seth Godin started ‘Yoyodyne’, one of the first Internet-based direct-marketing firms before he became the author and blogger we all know and love today.
Jeff and Seth are brilliant writers and have written wonderful books, but here’s the thing, they were marketers first. This is important, because as authors we try to copy their success believing that if they can do it, we can too! But are you a marketing expert? Have you made a living marketing? Then how do you (or rather, why would you…) expect to be as successful doing what a pro does doing his or her profession?
I’m willing to bet you know some great carpenters or butchers, but can you succeed in those fields as well as the professionals? Probably not and you likely don’t spend too much time worrying about it.
So why do we beat ourselves up for not being as good at marketing as we are at writing? Well, full disclosure, I also studied marketing before I became an author and blogger, so I’m a bad example. However, it’s a good question.
Here’s what I’m getting at, be the best you can be at what you do best. If you’re a great writer, be the best damn writer you can be. Focus on your craft first!
You can learn the basics of internet marketing, such as how to build a platform and attract an audience, I teach a simple course on this here, but what you do best should be your focus.
Too many people get caught up in trying to be something they’re not or do something they’re simply not all that great at and end up feeling terrible that they don’t measure up. It’s not fair, and the odds are you’ve been comparing yourself to trained professionals. You can’t do that if you want to focus on being the best you can be in your calling.
Think about that the next time you kick yourself for not having ten thousand page likes or twenty thousand twitter followers. Too often we forget that our writing comes first and platform and audience building second. Unless, of course, you’re a marketing professional and you’ll do the marketing first and write a book second.
Whatever you do, stop comparing yourself and beating yourself up. Do what you do the best you can do it!
I’m not saying don’t learn how to market your work online, but rather, be fair to yourself about it and bite off what you can chew. If you need help, I can help you here.
Otherwise, go scribble your heart out and give us the best articles and books we deserve from you! With the way the internet works, if what you write is awesome, it’s going to spread anyway! Keep writing and keep striving, because your best is yet to come.
