Categories
Writing and Publishing

How Big is Your Platform?

A few years ago literary agent Amanda Luedeke quantified what constitutes a “solid author platform.” Frankly, her numbers are overwhelming:

  • If you have a blog or website you need 30,000 unique visitors a month.
  • Your Twitter and Facebook need to have 5,000 followers each.
  • If writing for e-publications, 100,000 people a month need to read your work.

This is daunting. Even more disconcerting is knowing that the number of blogs, websites, Twitter accounts, and Facebook pages is growing much faster than the number of people who visit, follow, and view them. This means that on average, everyone is going to have fewer visitors, followers, and viewers.

Regarding other platforms, she noted:

  • If public speaking, it must be 30 times a year to a total of 10,000 people (which equates to 333 people per speaking engagement.
  • If writing for print publications, the number is 100,000 per quarter. (The seeming implication is that print has three times the platform impact as online.)

How discouraging.

However, the emphasis seems to have shifted since then. Sheer numbers mean nothing without engagement. The number of friends, followers, and visitors account for little; it’s the amount of interaction that matters.

I’ve recently heard that an engaged audience of 1,000 is a start. Even a couple hundred really loyal fans can make a difference.

The old view was quantity; the new metric is quality.

I can do that. So can you.

Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.

Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.

Categories
Writing and Publishing

How to Avoid the Poison of Procrastination

Procrastination is a serious problem for writers and when taken to excess, it can be fatal to the craft. Procrastination can manifest itself in many different ways, but the result is the same: writing is deferred.

When it is time to write:

  • Does the sink of dirty dishes or unmowed lawn suddenly seem more important?
  • Is there an inescapable call to check email, your favorite blog, or Facebook?
  • Do you convince yourself that you’re not in the right frame of mind?
  • Do you notice the accumulation of dust on your computer and have a sudden urge to deal with it?
  • Is the lack of an idea or inspiration enough to defer action?
  • Do you “ease” into it by playing solitaire or watching the game first?
  • Do you put if off because you have writer’s block or want to wait until you are inspired?

These are all forms of procrastination. In your writing career, you have likely experienced one or more of them. Perhaps one is your current nemesis. (Are you reading this blog when you should be writing?)

While a dogged self-discipline to preserver is one sure prescription to procrastination, it may be helpful to explore the underlying impetus:

  • Do you have a lack of self-confidence in your ability to write?
  • Are you bored with your subject or assignment?
  • Do you fear the rejection of your work once it is complete?
  • Are you not fully committed to being a writer? (For example, is it more fun to say you are a writer, then to actually write?)
  • Also, know that a common side-effect of perfectionism is procrastination

Whatever the distraction or the cause, know that to be a writer, you must write—even if you don’t feel like it.

Don’t delay, do it today!

Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.

Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.

Categories
Writing and Publishing

Five Ideas of What to Write

Hopefully, you’ve given some thought as when is the best time to write, as well as where is the best place to write. Even if these decisions are works in progress, needing to be fine-tuned, you need to move on.

Now we get to the question of what to write. Although, it may seem a nonsensical query; for some, especially those just starting out, it is not. Here are some ideas:

  • If you have a project, you need to be working on it. This is an obvious answer—if you have a project.
  • Work on a potential project, something that could turn into a project. That is, work on an article or a book that you could sell in the future. Write a query letter or proposal for this project.

However, if you’re just starting out, you likely need to develop and hone your writing skills before seriously embarking on a project. So, here are some more ideas:

  • Blogging is a great way to release creative ideas and develop a writing style. (I don’t put Facebook in this category, though I do know some who compose intriguing and well-written posts. I do not recommend journaling or keeping a diary as worthy writing exercises either; they are too informal, introspective, and narcissist—however, they may provide useful fodder for a future memoir.)
  • Write book or movie reviews. Work on developing a reviewer style and on being concise, fair, and helpful. Avoid the mistake of many professional reviewers—being unnecessarily critical or writing a review merely to call attention to your skill as a writer.
  • Writing exercises are other worthy considerations. “Exercising” will get you in the habit of writing and provide opportunities to develop your skills. Here are some ideas for writing exercises.

Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.

Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.

Categories
Writing and Publishing

Going Forward

Regular readers of this blog (thank you, one and all) have noticed a decided decrease in posting frequency over the past six months. While Musings will remain alive and active, infrequency will become the new norm.

When I started Musings over three years ago, it was to provide a creative outlet, connect with others via the written word, and learn about the art of blogging. By design, Musings had no theme, other than to share the musing of my mind at that moment. While it was not a stream-of-conscience spew (that would be narcissistic and boring), it did bounce all over the place. No one would connect with all my topics, such as family, computers, nature, movies, politics, business, sports, weather, and even blogging about blogging.

Realizing the need to blog around a theme and for me to focus on areas of interest, I have begun to specialize. The result is that, going forward, I will primarily be blogging at:

I encourage you to pick the ones that interest you and follow me there, as well as occasional future posts here.

Thank you!

Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.

Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.

Categories
Call Center

Social Media: Opportunity or Distraction?

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD

For some, the mere mention of it produces a spontaneous smile and causes their eyes to light up. To them, it represents the preferred way to communicate; they would be lost without it. Business leaders seek to stifle it or monetize it.

Author Peter Lyle DeHaan

Others groan audibly and roll their eyes at its utterance. Some give it a resigned yawn, quickly tuning out the discussion or leaving the room. Still others are desperately trying to figure it out, while some don’t understand the fuss, and more than a few simply don’t care.

The reality is, we should all care, because the future of your contact center may be at stake.

For contact centers, there are two social media considerations. The first is promoting your business, reaching out to prospects, connecting with clients, and recruiting and supporting staff.

These opportunities have been amply covered by others, but before moving on to the second consideration, let me ask a pair of questions: First, if your competitor is providing customer service via social media, can you afford not to? Second, if the businesses that tap your labor pool use social media to find new hires, shouldn’t you do the same?

The more weighty consideration for social media is the opportunities that await you in providing additional services to your clients. (While this is of greatest interest to outsourcing contact centers, in-house centers also have opportunities to offer value-added services within their organization – an important factor come budget time.)

Consider some of these opportunities:

Email and Chat

These first two, which I’ve covered in the past, provide both a prelude and an entry point to social media. Succinctly, everything you currently do with phone calls, you need to apply to email. Answer email, screen email, route email, add value to email, prioritize email, and escalate email.

With chat, which is increasingly an expectation on consumer websites, you can do the same things you currently do for the phone number that is listed there: answer questions, assist with site navigation, and keep visitors from abandoning their shopping cart.

Contact centers that are already offering these services are one step closer to embracing social media, but that’s not to imply these are social media prerequisites, just helpful steps.

Facebook

Making a Facebook page is easy. However, to be of use, relevant content needs to be posted and, more importantly, the people who “like” you deserve interaction. When customer service issues surface on Facebook, they need to be quickly addressed.

Similarly, if an inquiry materializes, it warrants a speedy response – just be sure to follow social media etiquette; doing sales wrongly in social media can be a painful and damaging experience.

Blog Comments

Most blogs allow comments to be made, but to protect against spam, the comments must be manually screened and approved. This is something that a contact center can do easily, especially since approval notifications can arrive via email.

Additionally, a response to the comment is sometimes called for and a dialogue can take place, be it within the blog’s comment section or via email.

Twitter

Although Twitter is a broadcast medium, one that is best left to your clients, sometimes a tweet may warrant a personal response. This is another great contact center service opportunity.

Media Alerts

There are services that scan cyberspace for mentions of a word or phrase, such as a company’s name, a trademark, or an individual’s name. Although helpful, this information generally needs to be filtered.

For example, there are scores of magazines with “connections” in the title, so my media alert for “connections magazine” contains numerous false matches. A contact center can receive these alerts, cull out the mismatches, and then process the true matches as appropriate.

Other Ideas

These are just a few ideas. As you investigate social media, you will assuredly come up with more. Also consider LinkedIn, Flickr, and YouTube. Even better, ask your existing clients about their social media frustrations – and then solve them.

For me, in pondering the question posed in this column’s title, social media is both an opportunity and a distraction. I’ve been on LinkedIn the longest, but have yet to complete my profile.

I do welcome those who want to become part of my network and occasionally send out similar requests to others, but I’ve yet to actually use it for something practical.

Next, after hearing horror stories of the time-consuming and even addictive nature of Facebook, I long resisted it, only acquiescing to it in the past year. Though Facebook held an initial intrigue, the criticism of it being a time-waster quickly proved true. I haven’t “checked” Facebook in weeks; I now use it primarily to communicate with friends who prefer it to other methods – or who won’t respond to email.

Connections Magazine has both a blog and a podcast site. Both were started in 2008, so their three-year anniversary is approaching. The blog (348 entries, serving 1,200 visitors a week) is a means to quickly disseminate news and information, while podcasts of industry interviews (thirty-one recordings, serving 300 visitors a week) are a great way to gain insight from industry leaders. Additionally, the podcasts are available on iTunes.

This year, Connections launched a Facebook page and opened a Twitter account; we’ve also been on Flickr for several years, posting convention photos (but we actually have more photos on Facebook). So far, we’re not on YouTube.

All of this to say, we are simultaneously learning and using social media to provide you – our readers – with options. If any of these seem worthwhile to you, then please check them out – otherwise, feel free to ignore them. Just don’t ignore social media for your contact center – its future may depend on it.

Read more in Peter’s Sticky Series books: Sticky Leadership and Management, Sticky Sales and Marketing, and Sticky Customer Service featuring his compelling story-driven insights and tips.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Connections Magazine, covering the call center teleservices industry. Read his latest book, Healthcare Call Center Essentials.

Categories
Writing and Publishing

Do You Tweet?

Are you into Twitter?  Do you tweet?

Twitter, by the way, is self-billed as a “social messaging utility.”   I prefer an alternate description as a “micro-blogging service.”

Frankly, it’s been a challenge for me to keep these blog posts under my self-imposed limit of 300 words (this one stands at 278), so I can’t fathom being succinct enough to stay under Twitters 140-character limit (which is less than this sentence).

Regardless, many people are tweeting away.  According to Audience Development magazine, who was reporting on Nielsen findings, the growth rate on Twitter from February 2008 to February 2009 was an amazing 1,382%  That is an astronomically huge jump.

To check Twitter out I signed up for a couple of feeds.  First, is President Obama.  He (or at least someone purporting to be him) doesn’t tweet to often. 

The last one was asking me to tangibly show my support for his healthcare reform plan.  I agree with his three principles (reduce costs, guaranteed choice, and ensure accessibility) but see them as being mutually exclusive, so I declined to sign his petition.

The other feed that I subscribe to is Erwin McManus, who recently embarked on a trip to Europe (he’s back now).  It was interesting to journey with him, albeit in 140-character increments, but I would often forget to check the feed. 

I suppose if I received them as text messages on my cell phone it would be more convenient, but I block text messages on my cell phone because I don’t want to be interrupted with text messages on my cell phone.

I have better things too do.

Besides, I still need to carve out time to set up my Facebook account.

Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.

Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.