Content Mastery Guide

Editor and Ghostwriter

Website Manifesto – I’m taking a stand

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I write and edit materials for coaches, speakers, mediators and organizers because the world needs you and I want you to succeed.

That’s why I’m taking a stand against websites that are:

UNTARGETED……

C’mon, already! This is one step you simply can’t skip. You can put it off, a little, if you’re new. You may even need to wait until your niche or target market finds YOU. But be on the lookout, know it’s coming, and make it your goal to define your niche as soon as you can.

Andrea Lee, author of Multiple Streams of Coaching Income and co-author of Money, Meaning and Beyond, is co-leading an upcoming tele-summit about the hottest coaching specialties.

UNCHANGING……

If you’re being held captive by your website designer or your website host and you can’t update your content easily or inexpensively, start taking action to make a change – now!

Write a blog, post articles, do expert interviews or share and comment on the latest news.

UNSUCCESSFUL

Here are the TWO KEY THINGS missing from an unsuccessful website:

1. An opportunity to stay in touch with you by signing up for your mailing list. As Sandra De Freitas points out in her upcoming book, unsuccessful websites are like one-way conversations. Don’t let your visitors disappear without establishing an ongoing connection and an opportunity for conversation.

2. Clear, straight-forward instructions for the actions your visitors should take while they’re at your site. Of course, their main action will be to sign-up for your mailing list. And what’s next? If you don’t know, they won’t know. And if you don’t direct them, they won’t do it.

For more simple tips to improve your website, please re-visit my blog post, “Top 5 Ways to Make Your Website Work for You,” and watch for the upcoming post, “Website Help.”

Want to write more? Read more – RSS can help!

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One of the things I love about Dina Lynch is that she's always referring to something interesting that she read or heard about. She really keeps her ear to the ground and fulfills what Andrea Lee wrote about in the Multiple Streams of Coaching Income chapter, "Excuse me, can you be my Google?" She does it for her membership site for mediators, and now she's doing it on her brand new blogsite for boomer-aged couples.

I try to keep up with the news, I really do. I LOVE to read and can get lost for hours if I let myself. Which I rarely do, but that's another issue.

The reason it would take hours is because of the sad state of my Inbox. You see, it's flooded every week with the daily, weekly and monthly newsletters that I subscribe to AND email alerts from Feedblitz or Feedburner that tell me when the bloggers I'm watching have posted something new. Sadly, I end up overwhelmed and often don't read any of it.

Now, I've known about RSS readers for awhile. I've had a Bloglines account for ages, I just never used it. For whatever reason, it just didn't work for me. At a recent PWAC seminar about new media tools, I was inspired to give RSS another try.

Some research at the SEOmoz site led me to BlogBridge. I'm still in the process of subscribing to my favourite blogs, but so far I am REALLY enjoying my new feed reader AND I'm already using it quite a bit.

I'm also UNsubscribing to several email newsletters, if the author has a blog or if I'm simply ready to let them go. Why stay subscribed if I'm not reading them anyway?

My experience with Bloglines and BlogBridge reminds me that as amazing, cool and seductive these tools can be, they're only useful if we use them!

Want to write more? Get out more!

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Ok, so I thought that my editorial schedule and PWAC seminar about new media tools, I heard a wonderful speaker, Joan Vinall-Cox. A writing coach, editor and educator, she is also a Web 2.0 consultant. I was so entranced by her warm, accessible way of describing all of the cool Web 2.0 tools out there.

Many of the tools weren’t new to me, but my enthusiasm got sparked. I’ve now got my very own delicio.us account and a great new feed reader that I’m actually using (more on that in another post). Plus, Joan and I have set up a chat and I’m really looking forward to getting to know her better (and maybe finding an opportunity for YOU to get to know her, as well).

I got a bit futher out of my comfort zone at CaseCamp. Unlike the CaseCamp event I attended at a museum in July 2007, this one took place in a loud, dark dance club filled with hundreds of people, mostly gen-Y’ers. I heard some inspiring, interesting and entertaining presentations about how people are using Web 2.0 tools. I’m still following up with some of the contacts I met – so the rewards of that outing are still to be revealed, but I’m really glad I went (and I was glad to get home to bed).

Getting technical

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Sandra De Freitas, the Tech for Coaches, hired me to edit her book, "Does this Blogsite make my Wallet look Fat? How to use a WordPress blogsite to make money, attract clients and gain expert celebrity status."

WordPress is a free (open source) blogging tool that’s also a powerful content management system (CMS).  With Sandra’s book, you’ll be able to use WordPress to create your very own blogsite (a combination of a blog and a website). And you could probably do it over a weekend.

This was the perfect time for this book to have come into my life, because I was actually creating a blogsite at the time (for a non-profit group that I’m involved with). Not only did it make it MUCH easier to get my site done, but I was able to be much more helpful to Sandra. I had first-hand experience building a site with WordPress AND I had used her book to do it.

Aside from editing, I also made a couple of suggestions about WordPress functions that still had me confused, and we worked together on adding some new sections to the book.

Above all, CLARITY was key for this project. We needed to ensure that "geeks" and "non-geeks" alike will be up and running with WordPress in no time flat. So as I read Sandra’s helpful, jargon-free instructions, I tried them out in my own WordPress system, and made sure they were crystal clear and accurate.

I am SO pleased with the work I did on Sandra’s book, and extremely proud to be involved with it.

Sandra is amazingly disciplined – it’s truly inspiring! "I gave myself a tight deadline and then made it even tighter, " she said, "I wrote this book from start to finish in 3 1/2 weeks and I only used the weekends to do it." Wow!

When I asked Sandra about the difference it made having an editor on the project, she had this to say:

"I knew before I even wrote the book that I would hire you to edit it. You may not know this, Linda, but I actually considered extending my deadline a few times because of various excuses. Having you on my team and reading your emails about our time line really helped me focus and stay with it. I also loved the funny subtitles you added to the book! Thanks for keeping me on track, encouraging me to keep writing and making me look good!"

UPDATE (May 9, 2008) – Sandra’s book is now available from http://WPBlogsites.com. Here she is with the book:

Sandradefreitas

Amazon’s New Print-on-Demand Policy

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If you’ve been thinking about selling your self-published book on Amazon, have a look at this story on Angela Hoy’s Writers Weekly website.  Apparently, Amazon is trying to ban any self-publishers who don’t use their own print-on-demand service, BookSurge.

I first heard about the situation in the Aha (Authors Helping Authors) blog. [Update December 11, 2012 – the original blog post is no longer available.] Then, Lynne Klippel mentioned it to me when we were speaking about putting together a flat-rate publishing package for my clients.

One of the biggest benefits of self-publishing your book is that it gives you – the author, the expert – more choices and more automony over the process. Now Amazon is trying to take those choices away.

There are a LOT of other online booksellers out there, and I bet their business is going to be booming as a backlash from this situation.

There’s an online petition with 1,092 signatures and counting (including mine). What about you? Will you sign the petition? Or will you "vote with your feet" and take your book-buying and book-selling business elsewhere?