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Karen Cioffi,
on 10/13/2014
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Writing for Children with Karen Cioffi
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The greatest way to drive traffic to your website is through content marketing.
If you’re not sure what content marketing is, it’s simply a marketing strategy using content to create inbound traffic to you and your website. It’s also the strategy of using effective copywriting techniques to motivate your readers to take a desirable action.
Content marketing includes copywriting, SEO writing,
My Country ‘Tis of Thee: Matching Subject to Style
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| Author Claire Rudolf Murphy |
Writing my new book My Country ‘Tis of Thee: How One Song Tells the Story of Civil Rights taught me a craft lesson that I am working to replicate again in other nonfiction projects, matching subject to style. When writing for young readers, it is a great challenge how to share one’s research in a style that connects with their lives and brings clarity and enjoyment to new, complex subjects. Stephen J. Pyne’s wonderful nonfiction craft book Voice and Vision: A Guide to Writing History and Other Serious Nonfiction discusses the importance of identifying a vision for one’s book and that finding the right style and structure to carry it out.
For many years I had been conducting research on civil rights activists throughout American history. I wanted to tell this larger story that began when the colonists first began protesting against the English taxes and continues today in areas like immigration and gay rights. But that is a great deal of material to cover in one book. As Pyne says, “If you’re lucky you have an epiphany (on what structure to use.) But if unlucky, your manuscript crawls and sprawls and never comes together.”
For many years I had been researching people of color and women who had fought for equal rights throughout our country’s history. I wanted to write a collection of stories about them. But editors kept saying the profiles were too dense, not riveting enough and wouldn’t connect enough with younger readers. For several years my project sprawled every which way, growing more unwieldy every week, with new activists and events I had uncovered, but no structure to carry the load.
Until I was knee deep into research on the women’s suffrage movement for my 2011 book Marching With Aunt Susan: Susan B. Anthony and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage. I ran across suffrage verses set to the song “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” Like many protest movements, the suffragists had written verses to well known tunes to support their cause and sing at meetings and rallies. I’ve long known that music can convince and connect with people in a way that words alone cannot.
When I found their verse (that ended up in Marching With Aunt Susan,) something clicked in me. I had that epiphany Pyne talks about. I wondered - did other movements use this same song to promote their cause? Some quick research uncovered several examples. I found more and more, until I found my climax with Martin Luther King, Jr. quoting the song in his “I Have a Dream” speech and the resolution of Aretha Franklin singing the song at President Obama’s first inauguration.
I knew immediately that all my years of research had brought me to this place where I could put this history together for young readers in a format that would connect with them in an inventive way because they already knew the melody. Everybody does. I knew immediately that I had finally discovered the structure I needed, possibly the best structure I’ve ever used in a nonfiction book. And it brought double pleasure because it also tied into my love of music. Because I had done all that research for so many years it allowed me to realize how this song truly did represent the history of civil rights in our country. I wouldn’t have realized how important these verses were if I didn’t already understand the power and depth and breadth of protest throughout our country’s two hundred plus years. Most of my research doesn’t appear in the book, but it holds up, gives gravitas to the verses I feature, even if the reader doesn’t fully understand it. They get it. And Bryan Collier’s stunning illustrations bring these protest verses to life in a new way, too, for readers to pore over.
I am delighted that I end the book with the line: “Now it’s your turn. Write a verse for a cause you believe in.” Because this invitation to young readers has become the focus of my promotion as I help launch this book. With the support of my publisher, I have started a contest, inviting students across the country to submit new verses. I have books and posters to send to the winners.
Second graders in Spokane wrote this verse:
Schools should be bully-free,
Full of our honesty,
Friends should be kind.
Include us in your game,
Please treat us all the same,
Stop calling us those names,
Friends should be kind.
A 5th/6th grade class wrote this one:
My country ‘tis of thee
So sad the poverty
Homeless abound
God keep them in your sight
Help us relieve their plight
Shelter them for the night
New hope is found
My hope is that teachers will grab onto this way to teach history and music and use it as a writing activity in class. New verses can be submitted on my web site and musical recordings of the verses can be found there too.
Let freedom ring!
Thanks so much, Claire, for writing this insightful and inspirational post for The Fourth Musketeer's readers.
Part 1 of this three-part series discussed finding a niche and working it. Part 2 discussed finding your audience and building your list. Now, it’s on to establishing relationships with your audience and subscribers.
This element of niche building actually goes hand-in-hand with finding your audience.
To find your audience you need to search them out and share valuable information. To develop
If you’ve written a book, you know that marketing the book is more important and more difficult than actually writing it. And, an effective book and author platform marketing strategy is article marketing. Article marketing involves posting to your site on a regular basis, submitting to article directories, and it seems more important lately, being a guest on quality blogging sites.
As you may know, guest posting on a quality site in your niche does at least four things:
• It affords you a wider audience and often this leads to clicks back to your site.
• It allows you to cement your expert status.
• It provides the host site with fresh content.
• The host site will get additional traffic from your promotion efforts.
Keep in mind that quality content is what counts!With your quality content in hand, the first step is to find a blog that gets good traffic and offers quality content. If you’re not sure about a site, you can go to http://alexa.com to check the site’s authority.
At this point, you have the content and you have a website that will accept it. Now, it’s on to the tips.
9 quick tips for being a guest on blogging sites:1. Check the host blogging site’s guidelines carefully. And, be sure to know what type of content the site publishes, along with what’s already been done. You don’t want to offer to guest post about Google’s Penguin when it’s been done before.
2. Provide a brief bio with a link to your site or landing page (do not embed the link – provide the complete URL). If you don’t have a website set up yet, use your Twitter or Facebook URL.
3. Provide relevant tags for your host to use. A minimum of three tags should be included with your submission.
4. EDIT your content before sending it off.
5. Ask if the host would like you to send a relevant image for the post. A number of sites are requesting images accompany the posts to save time.
6. Thank the host for allowing you to be a guest blogger.
7. Once your post is published, promote it, promote it, promote. And, in you promotion, ask for visitors to leave a comment. Bringing traffic to the hosting site is nice, but getting comments is even better.
8. Stop by throughout the day to respond to any comments.
9. Stop by periodically for the next week to see if there are any other comments.
The most important tip is to be professional and courteous. These qualities go a long way in building relationships.
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RECOMMENDED TOOLCREATING AND BUILDING YOUR AUTHOR ONLINE PRESENCE: Website Creation to Beyond Book Sales
An information packed 8 week ecourse by Karen Cioffi. Check out the course outline
HERE!
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MORE ON ONLINE MARKETINGWhat is an Author Platform and How Do You Create It?Creating Images – Simple and QuickIncrease Sales by Writing for the Web More Effectively~~~~~
To keep up with writing and marketing information, along with Free webinars, join us in The Writing World (top right top sidebar).Karen Cioffi
Multi-award Winning Author, Freelance/Ghostwriter, Editor, Online Marketer, Affiliate Marketer
Writer’s Digest Website of the Week, June 25, 2012
Karen Cioffi Professional Writing Services
http://karencioffifreelancewriter.com/karen-cioffi-writing-services/Author Online Presence and Book Marketing Ecourse:
http://karencioffifreelancewriter.com/book-marketing-ecourses/ ~~~~~
How and Why to Guest Post by Heather Smith
Guest posting can be a very rewarding experience, believe it or not. You would think that writing for other people’s blogs would be boring or frustrating, but, on the contrary, it is actually useful and fulfilling. After all, how many times have you wished to branch out and write something that didn’t fit with the theme of your blog? How many times did you think: ‘I wish there was a better way to drive traffic to my blog’? Well, with guest posting, you get the best of both worlds.
WHY:• You get to write fun, new stuff – Let’s say your blog is about flowers, but you really love purses as well. Unfortunately, your blog just won’t take a post about purses. However, your friend’s blog is all about them. Tada! A perfect opportunity.
• You get links back to your blog-Which brings your blog up higher in Google rankings. Instantly, you’ll get more hits to your site.
• You get more readers – More hits equal more readers, and who doesn’t love that?
• You get more exposure – With these readers on her blog and on yours, you get increased exposure, which means still more readers coming in!
Now we get down to the nitty gritty. This all sounds great, but how do I start guest posting? I’ve never done anything like this before! Well, it is actually very simple. There are just a few steps to successful guest posting.
HOW: 1. Contact bloggers you love to read – If you love to read it, chances are you share similar tastes. The blogger would probably love a break and a fresh set of eyes on her blog, and would be more than willing to share her readers. It is a win win!
2. Ask if they will allow you to write a guest post – Guest posts are great for both of you. They get free content they didn’t have to write, and you get more readers without taking away any of theirs. Tell them all about the positives and they’ll be bound to allow you to post.
3. Give them a choice of topics you can write on - If you can, make a connection between your blog and theirs. Maybe you can write about using purses as vases for flowers, or three floral printed purses every woman must own, or something that makes a connection between your focus and theirs. That way, the readers will understand what you have to offer and you’ll get more long-time readers and fewer curiosity seekers only.
4. Write in a way that is similar to the blogger’s style – Do their posts all have numbers? Are they essay format? Do they have pictures or video clips? What audience is she trying to reach? It is important to keep these things in mind as you create your guest post. The closer it is to the current style, the more likely it is to be posted.
5. Include an author summary with a link to your blog – This is so, so important. This is the whole point. You want to let people know who you are, what you write about, and, most of all, where to read more!
6. Wait for the readers to pour in!
There you have it. Now, wasn’t that so simple? You will be surprised how great this works. With a little effort, you can grow your blog by leaps and bounds, and expand your writing repertoire. You can also make lasting connections with your blogging friends. Now, isn’t that a win win?
Author BioHeather Smith i
Find the Best Guest Blogging Spots with Better Outreach Emails
by James HarperGuest blogging is nothing new, but it is enjoying a sudden surge in popularity at the moment. Since Google's Penguin and Panda updates, simplistic SEO methods such as buying links or using blanket article directory submission just don't cut it for SEO. This means that more and more marketers are turning to guest blogging to boost the popularity of their sites.
Guest blogging can work well, but finding quality sites to post on, and then getting a positive response from those sites, can be a challenge. Of course, this makes sense - the best sites to share posts with are the ones that are authority sites with high quality standards. If you want those sites to take your content, then you, or your SEO agency, will have to put forward a compelling case.
First Impressions MatterAs a website owner yourself, you know how much hard work goes in to building a good blog, and you know how much email prominent bloggers get. If a blogger sees a boilerplate mail from an SEO agency, there's a good chance that they'll just delete it before they even get past the first paragraph. Most bloggers are, understandably, rather jaded when it comes to people offering them "free content" (read, spam posts) for their blog.
If you want a good response rate, you'll need to put some effort into the emails you send. In an ideal world you'd send carefully written emails to every recipient, but that's not practical if you want to reach out to hundreds of bloggers. It's still a good idea to tailor your emails though. A good SEO agency will put together a list of high quality, relevant blogs, and will send emails to each of those bloggers, mentioning their name, and the name of their blog in the mail. Since these mails only go out to relevant bloggers, those people will feel that the agency has done some research before contacting them, that that will increase the chances of getting a response.
Build a ConnectionEven if a webmaster responds to your initial email, there's no guarantee that they'll accept a guest post from a complete stranger. Authority bloggers are protective of their blogs, and understandably so since they have a reputation to maintain. If you want someone to allow you to speak under their name - which is essentially what guest blogging is, then you need to build up a positive relationship with them.
A good SEO agency should have long-standing relationships with bloggers under a range of niches. Those bloggers know that the agency will only contact them about relevant and interesting websites, and will provide them with high quality articles when they're looking to place guest blogs. If you want to handle your guest-blogging in house, you'll have to cultivate the same relationships. You can do this by building up a list of quality blogs in your RSS reader, commenting on those blogs, leaving trackbacks, and generally being a part of the community. Bloggers think of regular readers and commentators as friends, and are more likely to want to work with them than they are to work with strangers.
This post was written by James Harper on behalf of Boom Online Marketing. To find out more about this SEO Agency, please follow this link.
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Other Marketing Articles
0 Comments on Find the Best Guest Blogging Spots with Better Outreach Emails as of 1/1/1900
Join me on the Barn Door as we talk about summer things to do.
Note: I am delighted to welcome debut novelist Carole Estby Dagg to The Fourth Musketeer! She has written a fascinating post about her research into her own family's history, which inspired her new novel The Year We Were Famous, reviewed yesterday here at The Fourth Musketeer. Carole's novel won the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators' Sue Alexander award for most promising new manuscript.
I grew up with whispers about Great-grandmother Helga and her daughter, my Great-aunt Clara. What they’d done wasn’t widely talked about because it had been considered a scandal back in 1896: they’d left the rest of the family, including Clara’s seven younger brothers and sisters, back home in Mica Creek, Washington to walk clear across the country to New York City on a $10,000 wager that would save the family’s farm. What’s more they’d covered half the country, from Salt Lake City on, wearing skirts that were a shocking six inches above the ground. Even worse yet, Helga Estby was one of those suffragists who wanted to prove that women were the equal of any man and deserved the vote.
I didn’t discover details about the walk until I was grown, when two articles from Minneapolis newspapers which had been salvaged from a burn barrel started circulating among family members. When I found out that Clara and her mother had walked for 232 days, from 25-50 miles a day, surviving flash flood, blizzards, assailants, days without food or water and meeting the whole range of 1890’s society from bands of Indians to president-elect McKinley, I knew this was a story that had to be told. When I heard that the journals which Clara and Helga had intended to turn into a book had been destroyed, I vowed that someday I would tell their story for them.
By writing to librarians across the country and scrolling through microfilmed newspaper collections at the University of Washington, I collected a dozen newspaper articles about the walk. The articles weren’t as helpful as I’d hoped, though. They often contradicted each other in details, and descriptions of their adventures were tantalizingly brief. Being lost for three days in the Snake River Lava fields for three days, showing a band of Ute Indians how to use a curling iron, or shooting an assailant just rated one sentence in a news account.
2 Comments on Guest Post from author Carole Estby Dagg, last added: 4/9/2011
Tomorrow, Thursday, 4/24th, I'm guest blogging at The Graveyard Shift, Lee Lofland's blog. Lee Lofland is a retired police detective and the author of Police Procedures & Investigations: A Guide for Writers. Please stop by and say hello.
Summertime means relaxing in the sun with a good book, writing the next best novel, swimming, spending time with friends and family, gardening and weeding (yuc!)