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Alyssa / Melissa from the Deliverability Defined podcast from ConvertKit
I was listening to a podcast the other day called Deliverability Defined. If you want to use newsletters for your marketing efforts, I recommend you add this podcast to your playlist. I'm not here today to sell you on this podcast, but something more important that was said in the podcast that will help you as a writer.

One of the women on the show was talking about two friends she had that each decided on a course of action as creatives. They both started at the same time and were in a similar creative space. One friend would post on a social network and send out emails randomly and irregularly, and the other creative was consistent and regular with her approach.

By the end of a year, the first friend hadn't made a significant income from her efforts and had dropped out. But the second friend, who consistently followed through in her social media campaign, advertising campaigns, building an email list and sending out emails had succeeded in her creative space.

Be a Consistent Writer

I offer to you today there is great value in being consistent as a writer and marketer. We've all been there, it takes you years to write that first novel. You finally write "The End" and have it edited, beta read, formatted and printed and send it out to the world. You get great sales that first month and then the bottom falls out. What do you do?

You develop a long term plan. You commit to a plan of writing everyday, developing a social media presence and creating an email list for future growth. The first few years are difficult and you hear of so many different things people are doing. You're envious of the people that shoot to fame and fortune after their fist novel and commiserate with writers like yourself that struggle to sell a book here and a book there.

Everything I've read over the last five years tells me the most important thing you can be doing in your early career as a writer is . . . WRITING. Work on getting those first five to ten books written. Concentrate on that aspect of your writing life. If you're a business person you have to have inventory to sell. Without inventory you're not going to make money. So first things first. Write. Everyday.

Develop Your Social Presence
When you're consistently writing and if you still have time, then work on your social media presence. You're doing this to develop friends and hopefully superfans. Superfans will help you sell your books. They'll share your posts about your newest books with their friends and enlarge your fan base by "word of mouth."

Nothing sells better than word of mouth marketing. How many times have you purchased something because a friend told you, "I use XYZ product to solve that problem?" To succeed in social media you have to be consistent. One of the best social media groups I belong to is an Australian group known as Zombie Pirate Publishing. They publish anthologies of short stories and the two guys that run the operation are writers themselves. One of them, Sam Phillips, is one of the great writers in the rarified atmosphere of Issac Asimov.

Anyway, they are consistent in their social media posts. Everyday they're asking a question, posting a quote, and occasionaly hawking their newest books. They have built their fan base and presence into a large group. How many of us read a book or a post about a person who does social media and you decide I can do that too? You start off posting every day, but two weeks later you're down to once a week and within two months you stop altogether.

Persistence and consistency will drive your marketing efforts. And don't expect overnight results. Don't expect the first year to have three million fans all interacting with you each day. It takes time to build a network. You post something, someone likes it and maybe shares it with her friends. Then nothing happens for a couple of months and then it repeats. Long term consistency will grow your fan base until you reach critical mass for your market. Then the real fun begins.

Review
Two actions to become a successful writer. Be consistent with your writing and be persistent until you succeed.

Write Everyday,

Kenneth Brown Author

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