Whether you write professionally or simply want to publish your first novelette, your success depends on more than just your ability to pen a good story. Today, Almost An Author shares a few tips on how to grow your audience so that you can craft a career in creativity.
Keep your resume up-to-date.
No matter what writing path you’ve chosen, you need a resume. Make sure that you keep this updated and on the cloud, and go with a PDF editor to ensure it stays up to date. An editor lets you update a PDF more easily than a word processing file, and they are smaller files that can be downloaded, shared, and opened by virtually all systems.
Make sure you have a dedicated writing space.
Although there’s nothing wrong with grabbing your laptop and plunking paragraphs at your local coffee shop, you should have a quiet and comfortable place to write. The kitchen table doesn’t count. If your home doesn’t currently have a dedicated writing space, make one. But also make sure that you document and track updates so that you can get a higher appraised value on your home when your book becomes a success and you sell so that you can finally buy that secluded cabin in the woods.
Get to know your audience.
Who is your audience? If you answered “everyone,” you’re wrong. Each style of writing is geared toward a different demographic. Young adults, for example, tend to consume different books, magazines, and short stories than their younger siblings. A great tip here is to create what’s known in the marketing world as a buyer persona. HubSpot explains that creating this concocted customer can help you better tailor your product (in this case, your writing) to appeal to your real-world buyers’ wants and needs.
Take to social media.
Social media is an excellent tool for promoting your writing business. It’s also a wonderful platform for connecting with other writers. In addition to networking, you can use free and paid social media posts to get feedback on ideas that you’re not quite sure about.
Write a business plan.
Many of us hope for an angel investor to come along and pay our way until we get the novel from our heads to the presses. But that rarely happens in real life. If you want to make money with your writing, you have to look at it like a business. This requires writing a business plan, which is a document that helps you best outline your marketing, business, and sales strategies.
Run your work past an editor.
When you’re just getting started with writing, the idea of having someone blatantly critique your work is intimidating. You get over that eventually, and you shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that editing is a crucial step in the writing process. Take heart knowing that your editor won’t try to change your piece fundamentally, but their role in your success can’t be underscored enough. Master Class explains that there are many different types of editors, including developmental, structural, line, and copy. Sometimes these are the same people, but it never hurts to have your pieces edited in different styles. If you work in digital marketing, you may also have an SEO editor or others that ensure that your content matches the technical specs needed to rank online.
Is this everything you need to know to be a successful writer? Not even close. However, the tips above, from keeping your resume and writing spaces up to date to using social media for feedback and having a business plan and editorial reviews, can all help you improve both your business and writing skills so that you can pursue your passion as a profession.
As a former banker, Jim McKinley uses his background and skills to provide advice and valuable resources to anyone who needs help with their financial literacy. In his spare time, Jim spends time with his family and his dogs and he maintains his website Money with Jim.
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