Why I'm Starting a Blog

For the past few years, I’ve spent my days working as a marketing writer. By night, I’m an aspiring novelist. I’ve been making up and writing down stories since I was a kid, but only recently did I finish a novel that I deemed ready for the world.

It took years and hundreds of hours researching, writing, and rewriting—and that was just getting the words organized and polished! It was hard and it was fun. But the process didn’t end there. The next step is building a space where I can showcase and share my work.

Especially today when there are so many books out there, aspiring novelists need to have a place where they can sell their stories. This means marketing.

Marketing myself as a writer—a novelist—has seemed challenging and cringy to me. It’s something that I fought. It’s a struggle that I don’t think is unique. Lots of writers think (hope) that our work is good enough that it’ll sell itself. Sadly, that’s not true. Hundreds of thousands of books are published each year. That’s a lot of options for readers.

So how will they ever find my book?

Marketing.

My marketing experience:

After a stint in political journalism, I spent about a year and a half writing social media content for professionals in a variety of fields. At a given time, I juggled 7 to 12 clients, and I produced content for their Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts. We’re talking hundreds of tweets a month.

For the past two years, I’ve been writing for a company that does B2B marketing for big tech companies (Microsoft and Amazon). I write content like eBooks, infographics, emails, and PowerPoint presentations to sell technology solutions. I also run social media strategies for executives.

In both of these positions, I got really good at figuring out the story of a person or a product. What makes it valuable? Why is it different? Why should people care?

I know how to build a brand and sell it. I know how to market stuff. I do it all day every day.

I finally decided if I’m serious about being a novelist, I need to market myself too. I decided to approach this marketing project just like any other—but this time, I’m the client.

My marketing strategy:

Rule Number 1 for successful branding and marketing: you need to have something to say and it needs to be specific.

The most impactful strategies are personal. What is this person passionate about? What makes them special? Different? Worthy of following and listening to?

What’s their “thing”?

In my opinion, that “thing” needs to add value to the world.

This was tricky for me because, at first, I felt I didn’t have anything valuable to offer the general online world. I didn’t want to be just another voice speaking for the sake of speaking and adding nothing

Once I publish a novel, I thought, then I’ll have something to say. Until then, I would just be a wannabe nobody. So I’d stay quiet. And maybe I’m still a wannabe nobody.

But after careful consideration and brainstorming, I figured out the value I can add.

My focus, my value:

Often a good first step for developing a brand is determining your focus. This helps shape the valuable messaging you are going to share. It fits into the questions from above—what makes you different?

For some of my clients, the messaging was about the importance of oral health. For others, how AI can be used for good in the world.

For me, it’s the power of stories. I strongly and passionately believe that stories can change the world. They need to be shared! So I’m going to share stories that I deem are interesting or worthwhile. Or just happy. Happy stories are important too.

I also want to share my writing journey. Working in a creative field is all about the journey. The process of creating is often just as fulfilling as having the completed work. Creatives are curious people. We like exploring and learning and growing and trying new things. Our work is never really done. We finish one project and then want to start another.

Also, I think too often we miss the journeys of others. We almost always see the final product and the journey is a substory. We see the bestseller, the multi-million-dollar business, all the success without seeing the insane hours, the tears, the stress, and the low points.

My messaging will be about my process. My audience can be anyone who is interested in this journey. I hope that by being okay with sharing my work-in-progress self that someone else might feel okay with being a work in progress. And maybe by following my experience, they embark on their own to share their important stories too.

It’s all a journey for all of us.

What you’ll get from this blog:

I’m pulling the curtain back on my marketing. It’s not a tactic I’ve tried before, but I think it fits with how I’m developing my brand.

I’ll share blogs and social posts about my work—what’s going well and what isn’t, when I succeed (hopefully) and when I don’t (inevitably). I’ll write about my writing process and what I’m learning. Since I’m a former journalist who loves finding interesting fun facts to weave into stories, there will probably be some of those sprinkled in, too.

And this likely will evolve. The best marketing strategies do.

So here we go! Thanks for joining me on my journey.