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Category Archives: Guest Bloggers
WELCOME TO DAY 9 OF THE #RWISA “REVOLUTION” BLOG TOUR! #RRBC @nonniejules @RRBC_ORG @RRBC_RWISA @TWEETS4RWISA #RWISAREVOLUTIONTOUR | RWISA: RAVE WRITERS – INT’L SOCIETY OF AUTHORS
Welcome to Day 9 and the conclusion of the RWISA “REVOLUTION” Blog Tour! We’d like to introduce you to an amazingly supportive RWISA member, Author, Nonnie Jules, who is also the Founder of RRBC & RWISA. Take a peek at her writing below… A LIFE ISN’T WORTH LIVING IF NOT IN SERVICE TO OTHERS I’d like to begin by thanking…
— Read on ravewriters.wordpress.com/2021/02/26/welcome-to-day-9-of-the-rwisa-revolution-blog-tour-rrbc-nonniejules-rrbc_org-rrbc_rwisa-tweets4rwisa-rwisarevolutiontour/
How to add an Admin on your WordPress website. #tips
Adding an Admin, Editor etc. to your website!
If you aren’t overly tech savvy it can be hard to work out how to do things. Even though WordPress have tutorial, lessons and can help you to do what you need, sometimes it is easier to find a blog post to read which shows you how to do something. Personally I am a visual person and love to look at images and text to work out what I need to do.
This blog post is about adding an admin to your WordPress website. After having to re-learn how to use WordPress due to their update (which I’m still not fond of) I found out many of my clients didn’t know how to make a website, were having issues posting items and needed me to check things out…This is when we found out for some it was difficult to work out how to add an Administrator.
Here is hoping this works for you. Good Luck.
Open the main page of your website. It should have a similar set up as the one below. At the top left of the image you will see ‘MY SITE’ circled in RED. Click on it and you will open another page.
The next image shows the page you will open. It shows a list on the left hand side. You will need to scroll down the list for the next part. It also hows you how to enroll for WordPress Courses… if the need arises.
Scroll down through the list on the left until you get to PEOPLE and click on it. This will take you to another new page where you can invite people.
Once you click on PEOPLE the new page will look like the one below. It shows who you have invited to your site and where you can invite others.
As you can see above, there are two red circles on INVITES. Click on the lower red circles INVITE one and it takes you to the final page as shown below.
Once again I have highlighted the area you need. In the box put in the persons email address who you are inviting to your website. There is a list below the box. You need to pick one of them so the person you are inviting can work on your blog with and for you. The list is – Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor and Follower. If you are working with me, I’d need ADMINISTRATOR or EDITOR.
Last but not least…is the final TAB/BUTTON called SEND INVITATION – circled in RED. Click on this and you are all done. The person you have invited will get and email which they can accept or decline. Depending on which type of Invite you sent, they will have access to your website…
Good luck.
How to Tell a Compelling Brand Story by Clifford Chi
Last year, a buzzword ripped through the content marketing space that most marketers were surprisingly thrilled about and eager to implement. Shockingly, it didn’t start with “virtual” or end with “intelligence”. Instead, it was what attracted most marketers to the industry in the first place — “storytelling”.
Content marketing’s steady adoption of storytelling is an exciting new opportunity for content creators. The human brain is wired to respond to well-crafted narrative — neuroscience proves that storytelling is the best way to capture people’s attention, bake information into their memories, and forge close, personal bonds. Your audience is programmed to crave and seek out great stories — that’ll never change.
However, since we’ve spent the majority of our careers optimizing content for algorithms, it can be challenging to flex a creative muscle that’s slowly withered away from inactivity and, in turn, move people emotionally and sear your brand into their memories.
So, to help you strengthen that creative muscle and write compelling stories again, we’ve created a guide about the fundamentals of brand story structure and provided examples of three small-to-medium sized businesses who have leveraged their brand story to resonate with huge audiences, despite their comparatively small size.
What is a brand story?
A brand story recounts the series of events that sparked your company’s inception and expresses how that narrative still drives your mission today. Just like your favorite books and movies’ characters, if you can craft a compelling brand story, your audience will remember who you are, develop empathy for you, and, ultimately, care about you.
When HubSpot first started, we noticed traditional, interruptive marketing didn’t appeal to consumers anymore. Due to the digital age, people were in complete control of the information they consumed — and they were sick and tired of receiving direct mail, email blasts, and cold calls. People wanted to be helped, so we started creating educational content that aided people in solving their marketing problems.
Today, we’ve built a passionate community of inbound marketers, expanded our inbound marketing approach to the sales and customer service industries, and strengthened the inbound movement more than ever before.
This our brand story — a simple, digestible narrative that explains why HubSpot began, and how this reason still serves as our purpose today.
How to Write a Brand Story
1. Highlight your story’s conflict.
Check out the following story. Does it resonate with you?
A girl wearing a red-hooded cloak is strolling through the woods to give her sick grandma some much-needed food and TLC. She passes by a wolf on the way. They exchange a slightly awkward soft smile-nod combination that random colleagues usually greet each other with as they pass in the hallway. She makes it to her grandma’s house without a scratch. They eat lunch and play a game of Clue together. Grandma wins by deducing that Colonel Mustard killed Mr. Boddy in the Billiard Room with the candlestick — what a shocker! The End.
So … what’d you think? Did this story keep you on the edge of your seat? Or does it feel … off? For some reason, it doesn’t work, right? That’s because there’s no conflict. Despite the intense game of Clue at the end, there’s nothing at stake. There’s no tension. The wolf didn’t try to eat the girl. He didn’t even go to Grandma’s house. He barely acknowledged Little Red Riding Hood.
At their core, stories are about overcoming adversity. So if there’s no conflict presented, there’s no drama or emotional journey that people can relate to. And if your story has no drama or emotional journey, it won’t hold anyone’s attention — let alone resonate with and inspire them.
Unfortunately, in the business world, brands are horrified to reveal any adversity or conflict they’ve faced. They believe that spinning a rosy, blemish-free story about how their company only experiences hockey stick growth will convince people that they’re the industry’s best-in-class solution. Any adversity or conflict during their company’s history will expose their imperfections, deterring potential customers from buying their product.
But, in reality, this is a huge misconception. Nothing’s perfect. Everything, including companies (especially companies), has flaws. Plus, people don’t relate to perfection. They relate to the emotional journey of experiencing adversity, struggling through it, and, ultimately, overcoming it. Because, in a nutshell, that’s the story of life.
Conflict is key to telling compelling stories. So be transparent about the adversity your company has faced, and own it. The more honest you are about your shortcomings, the more people will respect you and relate to your brand.
2. Don’t forget about your story’s status quo and resolution.
Read More Here
Meet The Band – Recovering The Self
Meet The Band – Recovering The Self
— Read on www.recoveringself.com/fulfilling-your-dreams/meet-the-band
Word War is BACK – Affect/Effect
With Cac, the Proofreader
WORD WAR is back. I will be doing these each Tuesday, and they will be much shorter than before…at least I will attempt that! Let’s go!
Affect v. Effect.
Affect is ??????? a verb. It means to impact or change. Transform. “How did that affect you?”
Effect is ??????? a noun, at least 90 percent of the time. If you’re discussing cause and effect, and you’re referring to the end result, use “effect.” Quick hack: they both start with “e.” “Did you feel an effect from the earthquake?”
An ez pz way to determine which one to use? Ask yourself the question “What is this word being used for?” If your answer describes a conclusion or outcome, effect with an “e” is the correct choice. All others, you can safely use affect with an “a.”
There are exceptions to just about every WORD WAR in our beautiful language. I choose to lay out the most commonly used.
Got your own WORD WAR? I welcome them!
Reach me here: cac@cactheproofreader.com or 833.I.PROOF.U/833.477.6638.
????’? ?? ????? & ??????-???? ???????!
Word War with Cac the Proofreader – Understanding Jokes…
A SPECIAL TREAT FOR THANKSGIVING FROM CATHY.
• An Oxford comma walks into a bar where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.
• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
• A question mark walks into a bar?
• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out — we don’t serve your type.”
• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
• A synonym strolls into a tavern.
• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar — fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.
• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.
• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.
• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.
• A dyslexic walks into a bra.
• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.
the pen is mightier than the sword!
Cac The Proofreader
Committed. Accurate. Consistent.
cactheproofreader.com
Publishing Confusion – Part Two. Author Brand
Author Brand! What is it?
Who likes Nike, Adidas? Who’s your favourite Movie Star, Poet, Author? The first two are BRANDS which people love. The Second are people who can be turned into BRANDS and generally are. So, how do they do this? What does it mean to have a BRAND?
If you get a big enough BRAND you can sponsor others, the same way Nike and Adidas do. They are MARKETING MACHINES, but how did they do it? How did they get so big and noticeable? It’s a bit of give and take. The big businesses sponsor the big names in sports and movies. If a movie star loves the shoes, clothes, drink…whatever the business sell, then the public will buy and support the person being sponsored which in itself supports the MARKETING MACHINE. It continually circles around, making money.
As authors and publishers we need to do something similar. The trouble is getting your foot in the door. How is this achieved. Well it’s time to ask some of the Independent Authors who’ve made a success of their books. There is one lady I know you’d all love to chat with. Sadly she is busy heading for a deadline right now though Jami Albright has given me permission to share how she went about her first book launch, which also shows how she used her BRAND to her advantage.
This article was written by Jami Albright in 2017. Jami has since released another three books in her series.
The minute you decide to sell your book it stops being your baby and becomes a product. A product that needs to be launched into the world. Which, frankly, is a dubious task when you consider that there are millions of books on Amazon alone, not to mention the other platforms such as, Kobo, Apple iBooks, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble’s Nook.
Did you hear me, people? Millions!
So how do you launch your book so it will sell, but also stay sticky in the Amazon rankings and therefore, continue to sell? We have to have a plan. A launch plan.
On April 11, 2017, I released the first book in my Brides on the Run series into the top 3000 in the Amazon paid store and had 50 reviews within the first three days. Eleven weeks later (as of this writing) my book is still ranked in the top 5000 and has over 200 reviews. It’s sold 1100 copies, and has 700K pages read in Kindle Select/Kindle Unlimited.
My little book has made over $5000, y’all! (I’m a Texan. We’re excitable.)
When I was asked to write this article about my book launch, my first thought was, Surely, there’s someone more qualified than me to talk about this subject? Because, while I’ve done well, other indie authors are knocking it out of the park with their numbers. But like most of you, I’m a part-time writer with family responsibilities, and a day job, who’s doing everything I can to figure out this indie publishing thing. What I’m trying to say: If I can do it, you can do it.
My launch plan began months before I put my book on Amazon. I started by understanding my genre and making sure my book met the expectations and conventions of that category. How did I do that? I read books like the ones I wanted to write. I familiarized myself with the tried and true tropes that readers want, and then worked very hard to make sure I delivered on those expectations. You can choose to write outside of the parameters of a genre, but know that you are going out on a limb to do it. And you might find yourself alone on that limb with your determination to be unique and no audience. Readers come to a genre knowing what they want. If you disappoint them because you decide to break convention, they will not be happy. They’ll then share their displeasure by leaving a nasty review.
The same is true of covers. When choosing a cover for your book, check out the top one-hundred best sellers in your genre. Are there themes, colors, and fonts that are used to signal that the book is a YA fantasy or a cozy mystery? I’m not telling you to copy those covers, but you should use them as guidelines for your own design.
I write romantic comedy. In the rom-com sub-genre there are three camps as far as covers go. One camp is full of sexy, shirtless guys. The second is illustrated covers with quirky characters, and third features women in flirty skirts, that only show their legs. My book didn’t fall neatly into any of those styles. It’s kind of a combination of all of them. It took several iterations, but I came up with a compromise that I think works. It’s flirty, quirky and sexy, just like my book.
A reader should be able to look at your cover and tell immediately what kind of book it is. If your cover and your content don’t match, then you’ve confused the reader. And a confused reader is one that moves on to the next book by another author.
In addition to a great cover, you also want a blurb or book description that hooks the reader. If you don’t know how to write good copy, learn, or pay someone to do that task for you. Bryan Cohen’s How to Write a Sizzling Synopsis is an excellent resource on the subject. If done well your cover and blurb can sell your book for you.
Before we move on, one more quick word about covers. Put down the mouse and step away from Photoshop. Now! You should not be making your own covers unless you have an extensive background in graphic design. There, I said it. Someone had to.
I know these things cost a lot of money, and if you’re like me, that money isn’t in your budget. But it’s important, so important that I worked odd jobs to make extra cash and, ultimately, sold plasma to pay for it all. Was it hard to travel thirty minutes to an unfamiliar part of town, sit for hours in a small room filled with people I didn’t know, and get stuck with a needle twice a week? Yes. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. I have a book I’m proud of. A book that looks professional on the inside and out. A book I paid for with actual blood, sweat, and tears. Damn right, I’d do it again.
Now that I’m off my do whatever you have to do soapbox, I should say that you can sometimes barter with an editor to get the services you need. Or find a graphic design student that has experience and wants to build their portfolio. Or just wait and save up until you have the money.
I know you want your book out yesterday, but we’re playing the long game. Smart, professional authors don’t rush something to market that isn’t ready because it will hurt them in the long run.
To re-cap, we need to know our genre expectations, have a fantastic cover that we don’t make ourselves, a well-written blurb that hooks readers, and professional editing and formatting.
Finally, I can’t encourage you enough to get involved with the indie community. Once I realized that indie publishing was the route I wanted to take, I immersed myself in learning everything I could about the business of self-publishing. I listened to podcasts, I got involved with Facebook groups geared toward publishing and marketing, I went to the Smarter Artists Summit, and I tried my best to be a good community member and make meaningful connections with other indie authors. Little did I know how those connections would be a driving forces behind my successful launch.
In the beginning, I had very little to offer other writers other than encouragement. I could share posts, give moral support and be a friend. So can you. It requires a little effort, imagination, and courage, all things you have because you’re a writer.
How do you feel? Do you think you’re ready to release your baby… um… product into the world?
Jami Albright
Running From A Rock Star
www.jamialbright.com
jamialbright1@gmail.com
Please continue to read our blogs for the processes about Author Brand and Book Launches, and please remember the first step to building your book is RESEARCH
Our next article will cover Social Media and Website Building. What to expect, what you need to do and learn. Much of this also depends on your budget. Can you afford it or are you willing to LEARN what’s needed to get your BRAND working for YOU.
Word War with Cac the Proofreader – Allusion, Illusion & Elusion
Here we go again! It’s WORD WAR time! Today I’m bringing you something that is extremely confusing to so many: ALLUSION vs. ILLUSION vs. ELUSION. Let’s get to work.
ALLUSION: figure of speech describing something, either direct or implied, often a comparison.
Example: “He’s such a Romeo.” The reference to Shakespeare’s Romeo implies he’s very romantic.
ILLUSION: refers to a deceptive appearance or impression, a false idea or belief. It tricks the brain into thinking something that isn’t there, is. unreal into a real.
Example: “David Copperfield’s sudden appearance of a Cadillac on his stage is just an illusion.”
ELUSION: describes the act of hiding from or avoiding.
Example: “Elusion of these words is easy as long as you remember their meanings and uses”
Feel free to send me your WORD WAR! I’d love to share it right here for all to enjoy!
For your proofreading needs (and soon to be copyediting!), I am easily reached via the below:
833.I.PROOF.U/833.477.6638
Website: cactheproofreader.com
Word War with Cac the Proofreader – Already or All ready?
It’s WORD WAR time! Today I’m giving you a double dose of fun! ALL READY vs. ALREADY. This is actually very simple.
ALL READY means exactly what it says: completely ready, or all prepared, all done.
Example: “I am ALL READY to eat dinner.”
ALREADY means to come before, prior to a specified time.
Example: “Dinner has already been served.”
TIP: If you can replace the word “ready” for “all ready” and the sentence still makes sense, use the two words.
Next: COULD OF vs. COULD HAVE.
COULD OF is actually incorrect usage of the English language. Due to the fact that many folks who speak the phrase omit the “h” when saying “could have,” it’s assumed the proper spelling would be COULD OF, simply because of how it comes out. ALWAYS use COULD HAVE.
And there you have it: two for one!
Feel free to send me your WORD WAR and I’ll put it up right here. For your proofreading needs, contact me below: