Musings

A Writer’s Master Guide to Social Media Marketing

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A Writer’s Master Guide to Social Media Marketing.

If you’re a new writer, or anyone who’s trying to build an online presence for marketing purposes, you know it can feel like an uphill battle.

Ideally, we’d just publish the book and people would flock to us to buy it.

The reality is that nobody will know you have a book for sale if you don’t tell them.

Anyone wanting to sell any product these days will need to be online and have a basic understanding of how to get noticed.

Your online presence might refer to anything from blogs to social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram. It all comes down to ensuring that when a potential reader looks for you or for a book in your genre, they’re going to find something.

Here is a Master Guide to creating, growing, and maintaining your online presence.

First things first: who are you trying to reach?

Do you write romance? If so, your target audience is probably women.

Do you write technical manuals? Your target audience is the people who work in that field or with that product.

Once you know who you are writing for you can target platforms where those readers hang out.

Here are some basic demographics, but keep in mind these numbers may fluctuate a lot.

Social Media Platforms Data
Social Media Platforms Data

There are many, many more but these are the ones I use personally and can recommend for building up your social following.

You might also want to consider WhatsApp, Wechat, Douyin, QQ, Weibo, Kuaishu, Qzone, Telegram, or Quora as they all rank over 300 million monthly active users.

I’m going to take a second here to plug Patreon and Onlyfans.

Subscription Sites
Subscription Sites

These have notoriously been used for adult content or gamers, but I’ve recently seen more and more authors moving to these subscription based platforms. They will generally put the subscription price around the cost of one short story, which is minimally 4.99. Then they post a new, original story to the platform at least once a month. This is a brilliant way to keep readers engaged and keep income coming in each month.

I personally use Patreon as the exclusive source for all things Cunningfolk and I reserve OnlyFans for exclusive naughty stories and audio recordings of those stories. You don’t have to sell skin pictures, just sell what you’re already writing! If you feel like you have a voice for it, you can even record yourself reading the stories for your fans, making it more personal than just buying an audio book on Audible.

Okay, your next step is to create a home for yourself online. This means you need a website where they can come to learn more about you and what you are offering.  

This is the first thing people and publishers will look for when investigating a new author, or when researching whatever product you’re selling.

At a minimum, your website should include a page about you, another page for your books or products, and a contact page with a link tree to everywhere they can find you online, including social media platforms, stores, goodreads, etc.

You can find more information on how to write a good ‘about’ page here: 3 Tips to Write an Amazing Online Bio

I highly recommend that you invest in a custom URL. YourName.com or your business name.

Having an good domain name will give your site a lot more authority and make you easier to find.

Let’s talk about blogs. If you have the ability to include a blog with your website, then you should do it. Having a blog will encourage search engines to visit your website more often and help you rank higher, which makes you easier to find if someone does a search for books or  products you are offering.

At a minimum, you should post a new blog post every month. You can write them all in one day and just schedule them ahead of time, but you need to have at least one new post each month.

Weekly blog posts are better.

Analytics have shown that the best time to publish your blog posts is between 9am and 10am on Tuesdays, so adjust your scheduled posts to come out during that time period or just before it.

For writers, great topics for blog posts include notes about your current work in progress, book reviews, or conversations about the writing industry and marketing.

Whatever you blog about, never try to push readers into purchasing your books, that comes across as desperate and will drive them away. Their time is valuable, so give them something of value to read.

You can talk about your work and your writing, but do it in a way that entertains or gives your readers some value from reading it.

A newsletter or email list is another great addition to your website. This should be done similarly to your blog, which every newsletter or email offering quality entertainment or value to the reader. Give them a reason to keep opening your mail when it arrives.

One newsletter or email per month is good, don’t flood their inbox or they’ll quickly unsubscribe!

You can find more information about crafting a good email campaign here: How to Master the Art of Email Marketing

Now that your website is ready and you’ve got a couple of blog posts under your belt, let’s start directing people to your virtual front door.

It’s time to work on your social accounts.

You don’t have to be present on all of the social platforms we listed earlier, just pick one or two to focus on at first. If you find that you have time you can add more later.

Go back and look at the ages and genders of each platform to determine the best places for you to be.

Each platform has its unique strengths and flaws.

Facebook can be used as a daily micro-blog with little notes and pictures of what you’re working on or currently doing.

Instagram is great for those with an artist eye or a knack for photography.

TikTok is great for those with limited time. Just a 30 second video once or twice a day will work, although three times a day is better.

No matter which platform you chose, make sure that you offer some value for your followers. Make your posts funny or informative. Give them something to think about or something nice to look at. They are gifting you with their precious time, so give them something worthy of that time.

On each platform, assure that you have included a nice picture of yourself and a link back your website.

It’s important that you don’t use social media to push products or books.

If someone walked up to you on the street and started pushing their product in your face, you’d probably get mad, right? Social media is the same way. You’re selling your personality and your friendship. You’re offering a conversation and letting them get to know you.

If they like your energy levels and the way that you communicate, they will want to know more and they will follow the link to your website.

It’s okay to occasionally post a link to a blog post or a product that you’re especially proud of, but do it in away that they don’t feel pressured to go look. You’re offering a look at something you love, so they can better understand you. You’re not demanding they go witness the glory that is your product.

Another important thing to remember is that you need to engage with your followers.

Answer comments. Like their posts and pictures. Add to the conversations that are happening in a positive way, like you’d talk to someone you care about. Don’t get into arguments. Be polite. Be professional.

Once you have a profile created on each of your chosen platforms, you’ll need to set up a schedule for keeping them active

The more you interact with people, the more you will gain notice and the more people will find their way back to your website.

The best days and times to schedule posts, per platform, are as follows:

Peak Activity Hours for Social Platforms
Peak Activity Hours for Social Platforms

Try to schedule your posts to these schedules when the most users are online and make sure that you stay for awhile afterwards to answer comments, reply on other users posts, and engage in conversations.

You can schedule your posts in advance using tools such as Hootsuite or Buffer, but you’ll get the best response if you’re online during those peak times to engage your followers.

You’re on your way now! I know this is a lot to digest, especially if you’re just starting out, so bookmark this page so you can come back and reference it again when you’re ready to add new platforms to your system or to review your progress.

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave it in the comments or to send me email directly. If there’s a platform you’d like help with, which I haven’t covered yet in my blog, let me know and I’ll try to cover it in an upcoming post.

celestehall.com

Writing Tips

3 Tips to Write an Amazing Online Bio

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Have you read my “about me” page? It’s probably not what you expected right? But analytics have proven that it the most often shared and visited page on my website. More than books, more than the blog, people are sharing the link to my bio! So how do you write an online bio that gets attention, and more importantly, gets people sharing?

3 Tips for writing an AMAZING online bio

  1. Be yourself. Let your real voice shine. It’s your originality that will attract new readers and make you unforgettable. Go read my About Me page again. I revealed that I was a writer, but I did it in my own snarky way, with jokes about my age and an odd assortment of pictures.
  2. Be innovative. If your bio looks just like a template that you just filled in the blanks for, it’s not going to inspire anyone. Find an innovative way to make yourself stand out. What is something you could add that makes people look twice? In example, the random facts section of my bio.
  3. Be comprehensive. A good place to start is imagining how your best friend might describe you in a job interview. They might talk about your age, your skills, your origins, your hobbies, whether or not you enjoy traveling for work, those types of things are interesting to readers too!

Whatever you do, don’t just copy and paste a generic page and fill in the blanks. Push yourself a little bit and come up with a page that makes readers want to come back and read it again! If you’re just copying someone else, it won’t come across as genuine and it could hurt your relationship with your readers.

Bonus Tip: Have fun! If you have fun writing the page, chances are your readers will have fun reading it.

About Me Cheat Sheet
About Me Cheat Sheet

CelesteHall.com

Writing Tips

Grow Your Followers on Instagram in Five Easy Steps

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When you’re first starting out on Instagram, the whole platform can appear a bit daunting. You post a few pictures and wait around for those likes to show up, but what if they don’t? What do you do next? How do you find followers and increase their engagement with your posts? Never fear, my friend, let me show you five easy steps to start building up your Instagram following!

Celeste Hall on Instagram
Celeste Hall on Instagram

How to Grow Your Followers on Instagram in Five Easy Steps

Step 1: Your Bio

Instagram only gives you three lines for your bio, so you need to make them count.

Use an emoji for each line, it can help really help you stand out.

You only get one link, so use it wisely. A great solution is to use linktr.ee or to link directly to a mobile friendly page where fans can find you wherever they congregate.

Step 2: Find Your Fan Base

No matter what your job or hobbies might be, there are probably people on Instagram with the same interests.

The easiest way to build your fan base is to search out the top 10 to 20 Instagram accounts in your niche and follow them.

Top accounts might not have a million followers, but the followers they have are posting comments and engaging with the creator. Those are the accounts you want to follow.

Look at what they’re posting and what fans are eagerly responding to.

Make sure you start commenting and actively participating in their comments and if your contributions are noteworthy, their fans will head over to your profile to check you out. This is your chance to shine!

Step 3: Create Quality Content

Use the ideas you’ve gained from following top creators to turn your posts into conversation starters that new fans will want to respond to.

Try to post daily, but if you can only post once a week, start with posting on Wednesdays. Demographics show that Wednesday at 11am is when Instagram is the most active, but this is a very generalized statistic. Once you have a steady flow of viewers you can check your insights and see which days you get the largest response from your target fan base.

Keep a folder on your desktop or a note on your phone and write down ideas for future posts when you run across something that you think your followers might appreciate.

Step 4: Hashtags are Still Important

The algorithm has advanced. It can now read your post or listen to your video and pull out the keywords to determine what the post is really about. For this reason, you need to be sure that your hashtags match your content so you don’t appear  “spammy”.  

Prioritize relevant keywords in your texts and comments which relate to your hashtags.

Step 5: Don’t Forget the Reels

After the explosion of TikTok, Instagram has started giving more weight to reels. You absolutely need to be uploading reels whenever you can.

Upload unique reels directly to Instagram, don’t try to share from your TikTok or Facebook page. Instagram wants unique content; it doesn’t want to promote competitors.

That’s it! As you gain likes and comments, Instagram will promote you more and you’ll gain more and more fans. Now get out there and start building your empire!

celestehall.com

Musings

New Year Resolutions for Writers

Let’s talk about New Year Resolutions for Writers. When I was younger, I would update my goals each year and sometimes even modify them throughout the year. Goals were exciting back then. They were a way for me to challenge myself and review my progress. I had a three-ring binder divided into four categories; mental, physical, financial, and spiritual/emotional.
Throughout the year I could pull out my binder and see where I needed to focus more attention or where I was overachieving and refocus on other areas.

I would cut out articles from magazines or write down ideas that I wanted to try and put them in the binder to review when I needed inspiration or motivation.

Mental goals included things like; learn 50 new words in Spanish, earn a new certificate in an interesting field of study, and meditate for 30 minutes each day. So I would print out the 50 words I wanted to learn and include that page in my binder. I would also print off a sheet for each of the interesting certifications I might be interested in pursuing. And so forth.

Physical goals included things like; get 8 hours of sleep each night, learn 5 new moves in a martial art, and try a new workout each month. For this category I would print out a page outlining the steps to a new Jiujitsu throw or Taekwondo kata. I would also print off examples for the new workouts I wanted to try that year.

Financial goals included things like; put $500 into an emergency fund, pay off my highest interest credit card, and increase my yearly income. For this category I would print off spreadsheets of my current spending and savings, so I could determine where I could cut back to put more into my emergency fund. I would also print off ideas for side hustles or jobs I could do to increase my yearly income.

Emotional/Spiritual included things like; say something nice about myself every day, keep a dream journal, compliment someone every day. For this category I would print off motivational mantras and positive quotes that made me happy. I would also keep blank pages to keep notes of dreams or experiences that touched my heart, like conversations with people I found inspirational.

Setting goals can be fun and rewarding, no matter how you work on them. So let’s look at some goal ideas for writers.

Setting Goals
Write Down Your Goals
  1. Sit down and write! Something important for writers is to share their story, their truth, without worrying about what others might say or think. A good resolution might be to write at least 1 paragraph every day. You can write more, so much more, but aim for a paragraph every day. It doesn’t have to be great. You can write a paragraph about your drive to or from work, or write about someone you saw at the grocery store. Just sit down and write something every day.
  2. Post on social media. A lot of writers would prefer to hide in their bedroom with their laptop, but it’s important to stay in touch with your readers. Just a simple post about something going on in your life or your story is great. Share a picture. Share a poem or a thought. Just set yourself a goal to post every week, although every day would be better.
    Publish something. You don’t have to publish a full novel this year, or even a short story. Publish an article or guide to your blog or to Reddit. Publish a list to Listicles, Cracked, WhatCulture or other similar sites. Set a goal to get something published this year.
  3. Try something new. In 2015 I saw a request for short stories that were based on popular fairytales but had a zombie twist. I immediately decided it would be a good practice to stretch my creative muscles. I wrote The Seven Ravens and it was accepted into the Once Upon An Apocalypse anthology. Trying something new can be fun and a great exercise for strengthening those writing muscles. Step outside your comfort zone and try writing in another genre or another format such as journalism.
  4. Read a guide. Writers do love to read, but push yourself a little and try reading something from the non-fiction category. I absolutely love motivational books, but I’ve also found a lot of value in reading books about marketing, manifesting, and self help. There are so many great books out there. Step out of your favorite genre and try something new.
  5. Start a journal. Journaling can be an excellent way to to keep your creative juices flowing, but it can also give you deeper insights on areas of your life you might want to improve. If you already keep a journal, then you could set a goal to write in it every day, or expand the topic to include documenting something new, like dreams you’ve had or story ideas.
  6. Talk to other writers. You can learn so much from even a brief conversation with another person who works in the same industry. They might have a new writing method, or marketing tip that completely changes the game for you. There are groups for writers in almost every part of the world, but you could start out by finding a few groups online and joining in their conversations. Once you gain a little confidence, you can start meeting with groups at local bookstores, retreats, and other venues.
  7. Take time to recharge. Don’t be afraid to step away from your writing and just take time to breath and think. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I always set aside time for meditation. Run a hot bath and just let yourself relax. Set aside time to calm your mind and your body. Set a goal for 10 or 15 minutes a day. Lay down on the couch and close your eyes, or do whatever you find most relaxing. Just let yourself rest and recharge.

    I hope I’ve given you some ideas. The most important thing to remember is to set goals that you can achieve. Keep things realistic, attainable, and measureable. Most of all, have a Happy New Year!

celestehall.com

Musings

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

For people of nearly any religious background, the time of the winter solstice is a time when we gather with family and loved ones. For Christians, we have Christmas. For Pagans and Wiccans, it’s often celebrated as Yule. but there are certainly dozens of ways you can enjoy the season.

Rejoice in family and friends as you welcome light and warmth into your home, and embrace the fallow season of the earth.

No matter how you chose to celebrate, I hope your holiday season is as wonderful as you are! May you find hope and happiness in all that you do, and may you hold tight to your dreams, no matter how bold they are. Allow the magic of the season to embrace you and carry you forward into the new year with warmth, love, and laughter!

Merry Christmas
Christmas 2016
Musings

Helpful Tip For Boosting Employee Performance And Loyalty

Boosting employee performance might not seem like a big deal if you’re a Freelance writer, but once you’ve leveled up to hiring outside help to build your empire, you really need to learn this trick!
This blog post comes curtesy of TikTok. No, really! I saw something on there this morning that I wanted to scream from the rooftops. Or at least shove under the nose of every corporate manager. Here it is…

"Nothing will destroy a great employee faster, than watching an employer tolerate or reward the bad ones."

Here is my amazing tip for Boosting Employee Performance and Loyalty

I’ve been a work-from-home mom for so many years, I forgot how stressful a corporate job can be. But it doesn’t have to feel that way! It seems like there is a lot of pressure on employees to meet goals and follow strict guidelines, but there is very little reward offered for reaching those goals and even less positive encouragement.

A lot of employees are driven to meet goals through fear. Fear of getting written up. Fear of not getting the promotion. Fear of getting fired. After a while, they start to associate the job with fear and dread. It becomes a negative thing. I don’t know about you, but if I’m in a constant state of fear and dread, I’m not going to be functioning at my best.

Do you want to know how to draw out the best in your employees? Use the carrot and throw away the stick!

I need to give a shout out to Ashley here, who really made this difference in managing styles so clear to me.
She isn’t the kind of supervisor who sits down with you and starts pointing out all the areas you need to improve.
Instead, she talks to you like a human being.

Use a Carrot not the Stick
Use a Carrot and throw away the Stick

“How are you doing?”
“How can I help?”
“What areas are you working on improving this month?”
And when she sees you making those improvements she is right there with the encouragement and the cheers. She’s recognizing your wins, patting you on the back, and encouraging you to keep reaching for greater wins.

That’s how you get the best work out of your employees!  Turn the workplace into a positive place. Help them become better and celebrate their achievements.
If they’re struggling in an area, brainstorm some ideas for helping them improve, but in a way that makes them feel supported and not chastised. If they struggle with attendance, offer an hour of PTO for every month that they have a perfect attendance. If they struggle with keeping their lunch breaks to a time limit, offer a free lunch voucher for every month they stay within time.
Start challenging your employees to do better in a positive way and they will forward that positive energy into coworkers as well as your customers.

CelesteHall.com

Writing Tips

How to Master the Art of Email Marketing

Mastering the art of email marketing might sound like an impossible task, but it doesn’t have to be.

If you’ve been online for any amount of time, you’ve probably found yourself signed in to at least one email list. You might not even remember how you managed to opt into that list, but the emails started arriving on a regular schedule and quickly filled up your inbox.

You know how frustrating it can be to get swamped by unwanted emails.

Don’t do that to your followers.

Now, how do you create an email list that people actually WANT to sign up for and read? That’s what I’m going to teach you here.

Mastering the Art of Email Marketing

There are a lot of ways to encourage your followers to sign up for your email list.

You could add an opt-in form on your contact page. Collect emails at an event. Add a signup button to your social media page. Build a personalized page on your website explaining the benefits of signing up with a form to fill out if they agree. And so many more ways.

The most important first step, is that they chose to sign up. Don’t ever send unsolicited emails or you may quickly find yourself automatically dropped into the spam folder and blocked from future contact.

Whatever method you use, the key to successful email marketing is to create emails that your followers want to open and read.

Sent With Love
Sent With Love

The first thing you need to focus on is who your target audience is.

Why did they sign up for your email? What problem can you solve for them?

If you’re a writer, they may want to know when your next book is going to be released or what you are currently working on. That’s great! But how do you keep their interest up if your next book isn’t coming out until next year? What if you’re taking a brief hiatus from writing? You don’t want them to move on to the next author and forget about you, right?

It’s okay, you can still provide them with quality entertainment in the meantime. You can keep their interest and keep their attention, even without having an immediate solution to their problem, and here’s how.

Just like Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms, email is another form of a conversation you can have with your fans.

Something I’ve learned from having a 9 year old in the house, is that people love to peek into the private lives of other people. They want to know what’s going on behind doors. Reality TV shows are ridiculously popular because people are naturally curious about what other people are doing.

So, leverage this in your emails.

Share with them a story from your past and how it led you to become a writer.

Share how you almost lost your home because the books didn’t just fly off the shelf and you were terrified that you’d never make it.

Share how excited you were when that first book sold and how you celebrated that achievement.

You’re a writer, write them a story.

Now the best emails will be a sequence of events which eventually come to a resolution, being the publication of the promised book. So if you can reference the book in your emails each time, it will keep that book fresh on their minds.

For example:

The first email could be about the events or experiences which first inspired you to write the book.

The second email could be about the events or experiences which inspired the characters in the book.

The third email might be a story about your car being repossessed but by golly the characters in your book just had a huge breakthrough and they might just find the Jewel of the Nile this time!

The fourth email might be a short story about a funny dream you had about the characters and how you might try to work it into the book.

The fifth email might be funny story about what you did for you birthday, Christmas, or Thanksgiving, with a snippet from your book as a sneak peak gift for your readers.

There are endless possibilities, but the most important thing you can do is make every email an engaging story of its own. Readers love to read, so turn your emails into short serial stories they can read about you and your work.

The keyword there is short. Don’t send novel length emails. Just short moments of humor and insights to touch base with them. Something short and sweet that you might laugh at with a friend over a quick telephone call.

Keep your readers engaged doing what they love most, reading quality stories.

Answer back when you can. Or offer further details and discussion on your blog, or your social platforms.

If they love your voice and you do your job well, they will come back again and again for another funny story and a peak into your life.

And when your book comes out, they’ll already be in love with your writing style, so of course they’ll be eager to buy it!

celestehall.com

Writing Tips

5 Helpful Facts About Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome isn’t something your family doctor can cure. It is a psychological phenomenon in which a person doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments. They may even have a fear of being exposed as a fraud. It happens to self-published authors all the time and has even shut done careers which might have achieved golden futures.

If you find yourself asking, “What gives me a right to call myself a writer?” or “Why would anyone buy my books, I’m a nobody!”, you’re probably suffering from a touch of imposter syndrome. The truth is, every famous artist had to start at the beginning, just like you. You’ll never know how great you might be if you don’t try.

Help for Imposter Syndrome
Help For Imposter Syndrome

5 Helpful Facts About Imposter Syndrome

You Are Worthy

One of the best ways to overcome imposter syndrome is to recognize why you’re feeling that way. Take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
Finishing a book takes hours, weeks, months, and even years of hard work! If you’re a copywriter or a content marketer, you’ve put hours into researching, struggling over the headline and hooks. Every word that goes onto the page is sweated over, reconsidered, checked for spelling, grammar, and understanding.
Writing is hard. It takes time. If you’ve put time and effort into your writing, you deserve to be recognized for that work.

We All Struggle Sometimes

If you struggle to see your own value, talking about it can help. Every new author I’ve talked to has gone through a bout of Imposter Syndrome from time to time. None of us are immune and it isn’t a condition restricted to authors. Talking about it can help, as Neil Gaiman (author of The Sandman and American Gods) confirms when he wrote:

“And I felt a bit better. Because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did. Maybe there weren’t any grown-ups, only people who had worked hard and also got lucky and were slightly out of their depth, all of us doing the best job we could, which is all we can really hope for.”

You Deserve Success

When we’re struggling with imposter syndrome, we have a tendency to brush off our successes. It’s important for you to accept positive feedback and see yourself in a more positive light.
Accomplishments don’t have to feel big to have a big impact on your view of yourself. Reward yourself for the little things too. Give yourself a mental pat on the back for publishing your paper, your book, or your most recent article, even if nobody is reading it. Then start working on the next one!

Nobody is Perfect

Don’t lower your standards, but make sure that you aren’t setting the bar so high that you can’t reach it. Do the best that you can do and then do it some more. Keep an open mind, and keep learning along the way, and you will ultimately be moving toward the success that you’re seeking.

We All Make Mistakes

Everyone makes mistakes, it’s important to be gentle with yourself, especially as a writer. I have opened up books belonging to the top selling authors on the market and found typos. It happens to everyone! Forgive yourself for mistakes. Make those little changes along the way and just keep moving forward. Don’t let a bad review or a mistake stop your progress.

CelesteHall.com

Writing Tips

5 Great Ways to Keep Calm and Keep Writing

If your 9 to 5 job is anything like mine, it can be quite stressful at times, but even if you’re a full-time writer you may occasionally find yourself overwhelmed by all the tasks on your plate.
With all the writing, editing, social content creation, marketing, ledger keeping, production issues regarding covers, audio, and so forth, there sometimes aren’t enough hours in the day.

Keep Calm and Keep Writing
Keep Calm and Keep Writing

5 Great Ways to Keep Calm and Keep Writing

  1. Keep Your Eyes on the Finish Line
    Focus on the goal and just work on one thing at a time to reach that goal. Multitasking is a great skill to have, but there are times when you need to chop out all distractions and focus on your deadlines.
    Put away all the other manuscripts, turn off the ringer on your phone, lock yourself in your office and focus on that one thing that must be done right now.
  2. Keep Breathing
    Slow, deep breathing improves oxygen saturation, lowers blood pressure, and reduces anxiety. If you start to feel overwhelmed, take a minute to close your eyes and take a few slow, deep breaths.
    Slowly breathe in through your nose for the count of four, feeling your lungs and chest expand. Then exhale out your nose for another slow count of four.
  3. Keep Laughing
    They say that laughter is the best medicine. Studies have shown that laughter reduces the amount of stress hormones in your body and increases the feel-good endorphins. Laughter has also been proven to connect people.
    If you’re having a stressful day at work, sharing a funny meme or story might help reduce that stress a little.
    For writers, reading a funny story might work. If you’re feeling especially creative, try working a funny moment into your manuscript so you can offer your reader a good laugh too!
  4. Keep Realistic Expectations
    Set realistic expectations for yourself. Be aware of how much you are actually capable of writing within any given time and don’t expect to best those records.
    Also, be aware of writer’s block and give yourself some slack if you’re having difficulty coming up with the right words. If you often struggle with writer’s block, give yourself extra time to reach your goals.
    The important thing is to own your truth and not expect more than you know you can realistically produce.
  5. Keep Communications Open (talk and listen)
    Research shows that a quick ten-minute chat on a light-hearted or social topic can boost executive function, the type of mental agility which helps us solve problems.
    A great work strategy might be to take a quick break once an hour to answer a quick chat or share a joke with a friend.
    Just make sure that you keep these breaks short and sweet, so you don’t cut into your deadline goals and cause yourself additional stress.

CelesteHall.com

Musings, Writing Tips

Slide Into Their DMs Without Being Creepy

Do you want to know how to slide into their DMs without being creepy? With how much time I’ve been spending on TikTok lately, this topic was bound to come up sooner or later!
All my spicy content creator friends will agree that we have probably seen or heard it all when it comes to creepy DMs that fly in out of the blue. For whatever reason, there are always a few fans who think that spicy content creators would appreciate unrequested, not-safe-for-work photographs or comments.
Please don’t be one of those people!

Don't Be Creepy!
Don’t Be Creepy!

How To Slide Into Their DMs Without Being Creepy

Keep it Simple

Realize that we are probably answering your DMs during a quick break or down time between projects. Most content creators work ten to twelve hours a day, including weekends, to keep up with all the demands on our time. We probably don’t have time to read a twenty-page declaration of your love.
Keep it short, sweet, and safe for work!
You can mention similar interests based on their recent post on social media or their website bio. Maybe ask a question or share a thought about something they’ve writing.

Be Thoughtful

The best way to keep a conversation going is to talk about interests you might have in common but keep this to topics that might come up in a job interview.
For example, if you both love reading spicy romance novels, do NOT go asking them about their favorite positions, or anything else that might be inappropriate for a job interview.
Instead, ask them who their favorite authors are. Or something which might gain a few laughs, like whether they prefer covers that have the top portion of the head chopped off so you can imagine what they hero or heroine looks like.
This is a real thing! Go look at some covers and see what I mean!
Topics like this can inspire some fun conversations. These are the types of conversations that create friendships which can later become something more.

Use Spellcheck

If you frequently have people on Facebook correcting your grammar or spelling, it would probably help if you typed everything out in a word document first and checked it for grammar or spelling errors.
This is especially true of the person you’re talking to is an author or content creator. Most of us have years of training in reading, writing, and editing English.
There are people out there who are physically or mentally triggered by a text or DM that is riddled with errors.

Be Available

When you reach out to anyone online, whether it is through a dating app, social media, or their personal website or blog, you are stepping up for more than just a conversation.
You have probably spent at least a few minutes, hours, or even days researching them to see if they’re someone you’d like to have a conversation with. Then, once you’ve sent that DM, you’re giving that person an opportunity to spend at least an equal amount of time researching if you’re someone they would like to talk to.
This means you need to give them something to research.
If you don’t have a completed profile, I can almost guarantee that you’ll never get a response.
A profile with just a picture and a name is the equivalent of a face leering at us from a windowless van. To put it bluntly, you look like you are hiding something.
The more you appear to be hiding, the more you’ll look like you might kidnap and “unalive” someone if they get too close. Making yourself more available online can be hard, but if you want to connect with people, you’ll have to try.

Creepy White Van
A Blank Profile Page = Creepy White Van Vibes
What are you hiding???

Finally, Be Respectful

Always, always, always treat people with respect and kindness.
Your life isn’t all sunshine and happiness, and neither is theirs. They might be going through some things and just not have time or the emotional strength to answer back to every message they get.
We never really know what’s going on in someone else’s life, just like they don’t know what’s going on in your life.
So be kind and be respectful.
If they don’t follow you back, that’s their choice. Don’t start spamming messages to change their mind or you’re guaranteed to get blocked and probably reported.
The same is true if they don’t respond to messages.
If you really want to show your support, make thoughtful comments on their posts and just be available for a later conversation. Once they see that you’re respectful and friendly, they may start replying to your comments and future DMs.
If they don’t, that’s okay too, you’re learning skills that will make you more valuable to the next person.

CelesteHall.com

Romance novels, erotic stories, books we all love!

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