Words in Action - An Interview with Jeri-Lyn McCrea

Here is the first in a series of podcasts with our own Jeri-Lyn McCrea, Author of Words in Action - A Journal to Inspire Change. Jeri is very frank and casual in her discussion with us about overcoming obstacles, finding your passion, and touching lightly on a variety of other subjects.

This is a 21-minute interview that is perfect for someone needing a jolt to shake them up and get started on their journey.

We’d love to hear your comments on this podcast - please click on the comments link below, in the footer of this post to leave one. You are not required to log in to make comments, but all comments are approved before being visible to the public.

The next podcast in this series will be available in a day or so. To be alerted when new ones become available, please fill in your email address in the box at right, and subscribe to my feed.

He Twitters, But Masie’s No Twit

For many years, I’ve been a subscriber to the newsletter (now turned blog) of Elliot Masie of the Masie Center, an eLearning thinktank based in Saratoga Springs, New York.

I like Masie - he’s got a clever, out-of-the-ordinary way of looking at the way people learn and communicate. Masie is a very readable writer, and he communicates complicated ideas in a simple and easily-assimilated manner. He might be a training nerd, but he does it with style.

Therefore, I was pleased today to receive the most recent edition of “LearningTRENDS“, his newsletter. His headline? Follow him on Twitter as he participates in the Harvard Kennedy School event on Presidential Leadership Competencies.

For those of you not already on board, Twitter is a handy-dandy little website that allows you to broadcast one-liners, or “headlines” of content to a a list of your subscribers. It’s another one of those things that falls into the category of Social Media Marketing. People can subscribe via email, or even on a cell phone. We’re only talking about a short string of text - messages are capped at 140 characters, so most people will stop and read it, even if they don’t have time to read your blog.

The caution here is that Twitter must be used carefully to avoid “burning”, or over-messaging your subscribers, and making them want to leave the list. It’s about serving the needs of people who have taken the trouble to sign up to hear what YOU have to say.

Masie announces, “If you would like to get a taste of RealTime blogging, I am using Twitter to send all-day-long “blog” objects: quick notes about comments from Joe Klein, David Gergen, Ken Blanchard, Rosabeth Moss Kanter and more.” He calls this “small-burst blogging”, and invites people from all over the world to listen with him on this important leadership conference.

By following him on Twitter, I received several stimulating headlines throughout the day that made me stop and think. Items like “How will you create an environment for innovation within your leadership team?” and “Evaluate your campaign as a case study in leadership — success, failure, personal learnings” can easily apply to almost any business leadership situtation.

So, I’m taking note: THIS is how Twitter should be used. To stimulate, to question, to inform, and most of all, to keep people wanting more. Masie understands the needs of his audience, and he has really maximized the use of this channel. I’ve seen some really poorly-utilized Twitter feeds, which turn into personal rants about the weather, or comments about being unable to get a taxi. What does your reader really need to hear about all day long? Industry news? Updates from a conference? Cool new products you’ve seen at a trade show? Only you know what will be of greatest benefit to your readers. So, unless you’re the weatherman, no rants about the rain.

Photos from Words in Action - Meet the Author

Thanks to those who came to our little “meet the Author” night last Wednesday, May 7th, at the City of Langley Library. Jeri greeted all our visitors and directed us through a goal-setting exercise that brought out some interesting observations from all of our attendees.

Jeri was pleased to sign books for those who purchased them at the event, and we are very grateful to the Library and their energetic support. A special thanks to Ken at the coffee counter who kept us refreshed for a delightful evening.

Hope to see you at the next event!

Blog Question Week - eBook On The Way

This week, I’ve had a number of readers ask me questions that relate to blogging; setting up blogs, writers and blogging, and promoting through blogging.

In response to this, I’m preparing a short eBook that will be available shortly for download from this site, which is essentially a re-work of a class that I taught some time ago, titled “Blog Essentials for Self-Publishing Authors”.

The eBook will include information that was not in the original course, including a variety of updates and lists of resources, both free and paid. As usual, comments will focus on resources that are open-source in nature.

To be updated when this free eBook is available, please subscribe to my blog using the sign-up box at right.

Words in Action is now at Target.com

I didn’t realize that when we made Words in Action - A Journal to Inspire Change available on Amazon.com, that it would also be available in so many other locations. This includes Target.com.

I realize that Amazon.com is not a high-margin way for an author to sell a book. However, it does improve your reach, and potentially also your volume.

So, speaking literally and figuratively, Words in Action is now happening on Amazon.com.

Why do we blog?

To document.

Whether we are blogging as a promotional mechanism, to help spread useful information, or simply to be heard, all of that boils down to documentation.

Bear with me a moment while I give you some background to a point I’ll make another paragraph or two down. The movie “300” (2006), the classic story of how a tiny Spartan force of 300 defeated hundreds of thousands of Persians, was popular because it’s really a timeless story. It’s about clever strategy standing a real chance against evil and pure might. About how a single event can change the course of history for the entire world. About events that happened once, and which are repeated over and over again in small ways in every culture on the planet.

Not many realize that the events in that book and movie are based almost entirely on the single surviving account, written by a fellow named Herodotus. Herodotus is often called “the first historian”, because he didn’t write poetry, or about philosophy or religion. He wrote down that which he observed, and what was told to him that had been passed down through oral tradition. He was really the only one to attempt to document this time in world history.

Here’s my point: Herodotus was the first blogger.

He sold his material in his lifetime, and it was clear that he wrote for the masses. This is evidenced by the fact that he was granted, by public vote, public money to further his work. (How far do ten talents go these days, anyway?) His posts come from as far away as Pharaonic Egypt and back up to Western Europe. He was objective, and as accurate as he could have been at the time.

Being a political upstart, he didn’t think of himself as a reporter, because he was outside the realm of (his own) traditional media. He tells fantastic, inspirational stories from real life that have wide-reaching applications. He was a lifelong advocate for freedom, including in that of his own work, and that of others. And his work spread because of viral mechanisms - not sophisticated ones, but effective nonetheless: gossip.

Any of that sounding familiar?

Herodotus clearly understood the importance of documentation. In his main life’s work “The Histories”, he travels extensively to test the accuracy of what he is told by many local peoples. The first few lines of Book One read as follows: “Herodotus of Halicarnassus here displays his inquiry, so that human achievements may not become forgotten in time, and great and marvellous deeds – some displayed by Greeks, some by barbarians – may not be without their glory; and especially to show why the two peoples fought with each other.”

Not just how, where, and over what the Greeks and Persians fought, but why. He carefully notes that he will document the deeds of non-Greeks alongside those of his own adopted people. Sounds pretty fair to me, and what I aspire to in my own blogging efforts. Just as long as I don’t have to write it in classical Greek.

Jeri’s Giving Away Scholarships!

Jeri-Lyn McCrea, the Author of Words in Action, has offered to fund scholarships through a partnership with Rotary. It works like this: any Rotary club worldwide can place an attractive ad banner on their website that directs people back to a custom web page, where anyone can buy the book. When a book is purchased through this link, our system calculates a payment of $5 per book for that club. Simple.

Does your Rotary club want to sign up for this program? Click here to apply. The qualifications are that your club must be able to cash a check in US dollars, and you must direct the funds back to a scholarship that meets Jeri’s specifications.

Jeri explains… “To align with Rotary values, and those of my book, this scholarship would benefit students who exemplify the characteristics of action, effort, determination, courage and dedication. Therefore, using the existing Instructor jury process already in place by many of the local Rotary clubs, the scholarship would be given to the student who displays the best consistent effort toward his or her future goals. It is not necessary for this student to achieve a high GPA. It is only necessary that this student applies their best, consistent effort.”

For more information, or to apply for a scholarship in your area, call me at 1-866-907-4084.

A HUGE Thanks to Zebra Logic

Let me take a moment here to throw a plug out for Zebra Logic, and Mr. Rob McCrea. Rob specializes in hard drive recovery. When you think all is lost, it isn’t. Call Rob, and he can recover stuff you didn’t even want him to. Rob claims a 97% success rate, and I believe him. He worked wonders for me lately on a recent project.
ZebraLogic.ca is based in Cloverdale, BC, Canada. Call Rob with your hard drive problems, at 1-866-MY-ZEBRA.

Facebook - You Made Me Love You

I didn’t wanna do it, I didn’t wanna do it… Being old and married, I didn’t really think that Facebook had anything to offer me. I was wrong.

It’s true that most traffic in social media is just that - social. I can’t host an open author-training Skypecast without somebody asking me what colour underwear I’m wearing.  But I’m obviously part of huge-and-growing marketing and business sector that is using these services. The third item in the top menu bar at Skype is now labelled “Business“, right after “Download” and “Use Skype”. And I’m still discovering new stuff on Facebook everyday.

It’s very important to know that when one is creating groups, events, inviting friends, writing on walls, and adding applications that the key thing to remember is to keep it a very soft sell. People don’t want to be oversold on anything - to offer them something of genuine benefit may have a cost associated with it. But that’s still cheaper than trying to sell something to someone who doesn’t want to buy it.

this is a test of the emergency blogging system

what if i wrote an entire post without any capitalization punctuation or any other type of formatting would you read it without having eye pain or would you navigate to another page right away

what do we really need as a minimum for communication to work for example if there was a sudden natural disaster and we relied entirely on text messaging to enable ourselves to get back up and running quickly what could we do without for a day

perhaps this is an interesting test as an exercise in simplicity and to avoid the typical complications that we impose on ourselves have we evolved communication into a selfdefeating exercise or have we instead evolved our own expectations of what communication must entail in order to become effective such as in the case of giving detailed and contextual instructions

sorry theres no final question mark here today to avoid falsely inflating the importance of my final impact statement

The Editor in the Family

One of the things I love the most about my job is that I get to become very involved in the lives of my clients. All of my clients are very interesting and complex individuals, and as a student of human nature, I’m always enthused by the idea of getting to know an interesting person on a very deep level, a level that perhaps not many others have. Over the course of the project, we do seem to develop a relationship that resembles that of a tightly-knit family.

Whether it’s stories about whacky things that happen to nurses, the worst thing that somebody has ever found on a previously-believed “dead” hard drive, or the moment when a client asks themselves a profound question that shapes their writing for years to come, I enjoy being there to hear all of it. It shapes my own writing, and my impressions of the world around me.
Editing is really about objective observation. We see the errors in grammar and punctuation that writers don’t, because we’re not emotionally invested in the material. (Or at least, we shouldn’t be emotionally invested.) When I realize I’m really starting to like a client and become friends with them - a difficult thing to avoid - I start to lose my objectivity. I’m then on dangerous ground, because I can best be an advocate for my client when I can see their faults, and help to correct those faults before the manuscript goes public.

But like any solid family, it’s interesting that we are usually able to find a solution that perhaps takes some compromise, but makes everyone happy in the end. The basis of a relationship that supports that is trust. I work hard to earn the trust of my authors. I offer them support in any way that I can - and I am always looking for support on their behalf. I want to be the best editor I can be for them, because they are doing their best to write a great book for their readers.

The Social Media Diet

I have been on a diet for most of my adult life, but I’ve only been practicing social media marketing for less than a year. I’ve decided I like doing the marketing part more, not only because the results are quicker, but because it’s almost as rewarding as chocolate at midnight.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about how I’m conducting a marketing experiment on a client of mine, Jeri-Lyn McCrea. Jeri is a perfect candidate for social media marketing (SMM) for several reasons. She’s beautiful, clever, and is also now a published author. (Did I mention she’s single, guys?) It’s easy to talk about her and her lovely book online, because the book demonstrates a number of things we all have in common: hope, struggles, stress, and believing in ourselves. You don’t need to be in the same room with someone to understand these universal themes.

I’ve been using the five major techniques from that post, and several minor ones, to tackle the job of creating a “buzz” about her book. Until a few days ago, I didn’t know if it was working. But just like that morning when you step on the scale and see yourself a pound less than you were yesterday, the effects are starting to add up.

One of the so-called minor efforts we’ve been making has been to use a handy-dandy SMM tool that’s been around for a relatively long time in online terms, Meetup.com. We setup a meetup.com meeting for Jeri, called the Words in Action Meetup Group, and linked it to the Facebook group for Jeri, which is now getting attention by capitalizing on the friend networks that both she and I already have there.

The first meeting is meant to be a very casual “meet the author” sort of thing, at a local coffee house. It makes sense that the group could be a really strong regular thing after that time, because journaling is an activity that often benefits from a bit of support. Setting goals, keeping them in your sights, and constantly working towards them is very, very hard work. All the Meetup.com group really needs to be self-sustaining is a regular clique of people who want to attend. There isn’t even a cost involved, because we’ll keep paying the fees.

Dieting is hard work. So is SMM - researching target markets and mechanisms, sending out emails (individually written for each person - no form letters, please), spending hours on the phone, sending out sample copies of the book to various people, etc. I’ve done so much of that this week that I’m working up a sweat. But that’s ok - SMM is such good exercise that I’ve already lost two pounds. That’s better than I did last time on South Beach.