Being a Jill-of-All-Trades is an understatement, as I have to literally switch my thinking patterns and writing styles completely, often several times a day. Over the years, I’ve trained my brain to shift from being analytical to descriptive or, even, opinionated in a breeze.

If you’re a freelance writer like me, it would be beneficial to master several non-fiction writing types, so you can accept more clients and write for more publications. Here are the five types I’ve mastered, which I believe would be beneficial to all non-fiction writers.

1) Op-Ed

My first published article was an op-ed article. It’s an article written to voice an opinion that’s in opposition of the editorial, or to deliver a specific public message. It starts with a defined point and is written with clarity and strong voice. The Journalist Resource of Harvard Kennedy School covers this nicely.

2) Inverted Pyramid

This type of writing is mostly used for news writing, including in online publications that cover news. It primarily refers to a structure in which the most important and the heaviest information goes at the top of the story and the least important at the bottom. A good reference on writing inverted-pyramid news stories can be found here.

3) Personal Essay

Many top publications publish personal essays, so it’s something worth learning. While it’s “personal,” you’d need to focus on how the readers would perceive your personality based on the story. So, the focus is still the readers. Start with a strong hook, find an angle to show (not tell) the story, and conclude with a thought-provoking statement that readers can relate to. Grammarly has a good resource for writing personal essays.

4) Storytelling

When you’re working for a business client, most likely, you’d need to tell stories about the company, their products, or their customers. Success stories or case stories are today’s staple in increasing business or product value. It’s all about using the most suitable structure and wrapping a story around it. The Dummies Series has eleven strong story structures for business storytelling for you to start with.

5) Content Marketing

In this Internet era, writers should be familiar with content marketing writing, because almost every piece of writing you see online is some sort of “content marketing.” Why is it called “content marketing”? Because whatever your content is, it wouldn’t be read or, even, clicked without its “marketing element.” And without any traffic, there is no point in producing any piece of content or having an online presence or business. Here is a good source to answer what “content marketing” is.

Today’s freelance writers must equip themselves with several types of writing, so they can leverage their skills better by reaching more clients and audiences. You may, of course, specialize the topic or subject matter. However, you should be ready to deliver in various formats and structures.

Jennifer Xue is an award-winning author, columnist, digital strategist, and serial entrepreneur based in Northern California. Her byline has appeared in Forbes, Fortune, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Business.com, Business2Community, Good Men Project, Addicted2Success, Positively Positive, and others. Her blog is JenniferXue.com. Follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

The post #5onFri: Five Types of Non-Fiction Freelancers Should Master appeared first on DIY MFA.

And that’s total nonsense.

In fact we can know more about what marketing and advertising is doing for us than ever before, thanks to all sorts of technology. In addition to metrics reporting tools, we also have sophisticated strategies we can implement that are known to get results over and over again. So there is no excuse for not knowing what your advertising is doing. But the spirit of this quip feels familiar, doesn’t it? I hear authors say things like this all the time:

• “I blog every week, but people aren’t clicking through to my Amazon page.”
• “I know I ‘have’ to be on social media … but it doesn’t sell books.”
• “Awards are nice, but they won’t pay off in sales.”

I imagine you’ve heard statements like these about as many times as I have. Luckily, no matter how witty the popular advertising saying above seems at first glance, the mentality behind it isn’t at all true. In fact, I’ve got something much better for you. Not only is it a smarter approach toward marketing, but it will help you understand how things like awards and social media fit into a plan to grow your readership and get books into hands, even if they don’t directly correlate to sales.

It’s called the Seven Points of Contact.

Seven Points of Contact

The seven Points of Contact is a marketing and sales theory that has been tried and tested quite a lot. It applies to everything from online plat-forming to business-to-business sales. In short, this theory states that a person needs to be exposed to a brand or product (or author) seven times before they are motivated to make a purchase.

Some may wonder: Why would a person need to be exposed to something seven separate times before buying it? If a book is good, won’t people just buy it when they see it? Why would their opinion change just by seeing it multiple times? The truth is, our brains just aren’t wired that way. The Seven Points of Contact theory accounts for two important truths about people and how they relate to new brand:

1. Repetition breeds familiarity
2. Familiarity breeds likeability

What Seven Points of Contact Looks Like

Theories are great, but they only matter if they can be put into practice. What do seven points of contact look like for an author? Let’s take a look at how I came to love one of my favorite authors.

I first heard about Rainbow Rowell because I just happened to be living in Omaha at the time. She also lives in Omaha, and writes a column for the Omaha World-Herald, so there was a lot of buzz locally from the start. I paid attention to the announcement about her upcoming book launch immediately, because here was a writer, right here in my own town, on the “other side” of the success I dreamed of getting some day—she had a publisher.

After I discovered Rainbow Rowell, and because it was easy to learn more about her by reading her Omaha World-Herald column archives, I did. Later, I caught more announcements about her here and there as her launch date neared. Then, I got curious and checked out her website. I could relate to her author identity, and her novel’s promotional copy intrigued me. So to stay up-to-date on her launch, I followed her on Twitter.

We had some shared interests like comic books, and that led to some interactions between us on Twitter. Which led to some major geekouts on my part—a published author was talking to me! So by the time I arrived at her book reading event, I was already sold on purchasing her book. Then, when she signed my book, she (amazingly) recognized me from Twitter. She signed my book “To Emily, whom I enjoy very much on Twitter.”

With those nine words she won a lifelong megafan. I don’t even usually read romance, the genre of her debut novel.

Creating Your Seven Points

How did you come to love your favorite authors? Many of your stories are likely very similar to mine. Sure, we all have the serendipitous moments where we discover something awesome randomly off the shelf … but most of the time, it’s a more gradual process. A few things to notice about my Rainbow Rowell story:

• At no point did I feel marketed to—when I wanted more, I sought it out
• What I was seeking was always available for me and easy to find
• It took a while for me to go from basic interest to active engagement
• What won my loyalty was not her book, but her engagement with me as a reader

If the idea of creating seven points of contact for your readers sounds exhausting, I get it. But don’t hyperventilate just yet—it’s not as hard or as complicated as it sounds.The bottom line to taking advantage of this theory is simply to reach out to readers multiple ways. It does not even have to be seven different ways—just a few. These outreach methods could include:

• A website
• Blog posts
• Guest posts for other websites
• Account on a social media site
• Local media interviews
• Book reading/signing events
• Facebook ads
• Book on a store’s shelf or an online list of genre titles
• An announcement for an award you won
• Participating in a panel at a reader convention
• Emailing your subscriber list
• Goodreads book giveaway

That’s twelve different options right there, and that is hardly a complete list. Get creative! You don’t even need to be using seven different methods of outreach; you just need to be consistent in those efforts. Over time, those points of contact will add up.

If you take nothing else away from this post, remember this: Even when your social media posts or blogs or other outreach efforts don’t seem to correlate to sales, they are helping you engage readers and rack up those points of contact. Every engagement matters.

Focus on Being Persistent

Don’t stress yourself out weighing your time on Twitter against direct clicks from your account to your Amazon page. That’s not how readers are earned.

The lifelong fan is worth so much more than the impulse buy that gets thrown in a never-ending stack of TBRs—so focus on earning those relationships by reaching out persistently and in a variety of ways. Help readers get to know you and your work, and pay attention to them when they reach out to you.

As hard as it is, when you shift your focus from sales stats to reader relationships, it’s a game changer—maybe not right after your next Twitter post, maybe not tomorrow or next week, but over the long tail of your career as an author.

By day, Emily Wenstrom, is the editor of short story website wordhaus, author social media coach, and freelance content marketing specialist. By early-early morning, she is E. J. Wenstrom, an award-winning sci-fi and fantasy author whose debut novel Mud was named 2016 Book of the Year by the Florida Writers Association.

The post Marketing Magic: The Seven Points of Contact for Authors appeared first on DIY MFA.

Today I’m talking to blogger and writer, Kirsten Oliphant, and we’ll be discussing one of my absolute favorite writing topics: email list-building for writers!

But first, a little bit about Kirsten. She earned MFA in fiction from University of North Carolina at Greensboro and has been blogging for eight years about food and parenting. This year she launched a new venture: the Create If Writing blog and podcast, which provide inspiration and authentic platform building tools for writers and bloggers. On this website also shares interviews with bloggers, writers, social media experts, and publishing insiders.

Kirsten is the mastermind behind the Free Email Course, where she helps demystify email lists for writers and bloggers, along with her signature course (Own Your List) that helps people grow, monetize, and manage their lists. When she’s not busy taking the email list world by story, Kirsten lives in Houston, Texas with her husband and four kids.

In this episode Kirsten and I discuss:

• Why an email list is your most important communication option in a world full of options.
• The personal touch of email versus other social media.
• 15 Step Intensive List Growth Checklist
• Finding the email tech that’s right for you.
• Do’s and Don’ts to help keep your subscribers happy and engaged once you have an email list.

Plus, Kirsten’s #1 tip for writers.

Resources:

If you want to know more about Kirsten, you can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter or visit her website and join her email list!

Email client options for you to consider when building your list (in alphabetical order):

• Aweber
• ConvertKit
• Mad Mimi
• Mailchimp

Other awesome resources include The Persistence of Email Marketing for Book Publishers and the Creative Profitability Course* which is currently part of an awesome discount bundle!

*Note that this is an affiliate link, which means if you decide to purchase the course through this link, DIY MFA will get a commission at no cost to you. Thanks for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 78

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, leave a review, and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available. Also, if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please share!

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome.

The post Episode 78: Building an Email List – Interview with Kirsten Oliphant appeared first on DIY MFA.