#AuthorTips: What to Keep on Your Calendar by Kayelle Allen #MFRWorg #author

What kinds of things do authors need to keep on their calendars? How can they stay organized and on top of things? There are two basic types of info to track on a calendar -- personal and professional. To be sure they're included and planned for, list personal and family items first. They are your priority, aren't they?

Personal

• Personal items such as family events, like picking up the kids from practice
• Date night with that special person in your life
• Birthdays of friends and family
• Personal time off - TV shows that you don't want to miss; a movie you want to see. For eight years, I had the TV show 24 on my regular schedule and never missed an episode. It was a big event in my household and we all gathered to watch it.
• Vacation. If you don't rest, your mind won't be clear. Carpal tunnel syndrome is real -- overwork can injure your hands. You'll end up needing more time off than you would have than if you'd simply allowed your body to rest properly. Your body will thank you.

Professional

• Clearly indicate deadlines for long term projects (books, articles, drafts, edits)
• The release dates of your next books, if you know them.
• Contests for which you are either entering material or are serving as a judge
• Conventions
• Book signings or other appearances
• Workshops and training
• Birthdays of fellow authors, friends, and fans
• Work backwards from book release dates to plan pre-publicity, advertising, guest spots, interviews, blog tours, and submissions to review sites
• Plan as many events in the three months following your book's release as possible.
• Assuming you'll have at least one book release per year, request guest blog spots throughout the year. Try to be a guest on other authors' sites every month. It will keep your name in front of readers. If you release books more often, this is doubly important.
• Release day events
• Follow up events for a new book
• Chat dates
• Guests on your blog - other authors will bring fresh readers to your site. Take advantage of that by inviting others to share material you think your readers will enjoy.

The Last Vhalgenn 

Set up your calendar with a routine reminder period for scheduled items. For example, being reminded four days prior to a chat or blog so you have time to do last minute work and promo. Be flexible in your planning. The only thing in life that's permanent is change. Accept life as it comes along. Some things can't be avoided. Deal with them and move on.

---

The Last Vhalgenn

By Kayelle Allen

Duty to king and country has shaped Raik's life since birth, but to protect them, she must perform a ritual that betrays all she holds sacred.

http://is.gd/amazon_vhalgenn

About the Author

Kayelle Allen is a multi-published, award-winning author, and the founder of Marketing for

Romance Writers. Her unstoppable heroes and heroines include contemporary characters, futuristic immortals, covert agents, and warriors who purr.

Homeworld http://kayelleallen.com

Unstoppable Heroes Blog http://kayelleallen.com/blog

Twitter http://twitter.com/kayelleallen

Facebook http://facebook.com/kayelleallen.author

#WWoW Use Tweepi with Twitter.

Post reblogged from Writer's WoW Blog with permission.

Tweepi is my favorite tool to use with Twitter.

Tweepi helps you make sense of your Twitter social graph with stats. You will be able to learn about the number of people you haven't followed back, the number of people who aren't following you, search people who your friends follow and much more. It makes it simple to manage your account by doing the following things much easier than manually through twitter...

FLUSH UNFOLLOWERS

This tool allows you to unfollow users who aren't following you back. Sometimes there are people we've followed that are no longer relevant and if they aren't following you, you may choose not to follow them.

RECIPROCATE

This tool helps you find all the users that follow you, but you don't follow back. Then you can follow them back with a click of a button.

CLEAN UP INACTIVE FOLLOWERS

This feature allows you to unfollow users who no longer keep active twitter accounts. It's likely that you're following more than a few hundred people on Twitter. You must've noticed that many of these users either don't engage in conversations, never retweet anybody, or simply just ramble about nonsense stuff all day long (no links to useful content whatsoever!). You can use Tweepi cleanup tool to filter these people out and unfollow them. The Clean-up tool enables you to filter out those inactive and unwanted tweeps by letting you check out their details and decide for yourself!

FIND NEW FOLLOWERS

This feature gives you a resource for finding users with similar interests. The most common way to find and add people with the same interests as you, is to find a popular user within your area of interest and add people who follow these known users.

Tweepi helps you analyze and filter tweeps out -the geeky way,

with numbers in a table- based on their activity and sociability. 

How do you start using Tweepi?

It's only 5 simple steps.

1. Go to http://tweepi.com/
2. Choose "login" (to start using Tweepi for free which is all you need)
3. Enter your username/email with your password and click "Authorize app"
4. Create a Tweepi account with your first and last name and your e-mail
5. Start using Tweepi!

The first time you go through your account, it may take awhile but as you then update it every few weeks, it

becomes less of a chore. You'll find it worthwhile to create a SAFE LIST so you never accidentally unfollow someone you want to follow regardless of any stats. For example, you might be following a celebrity who doesn't follow people but you won't want to unfollow them. You might be surprised though at how many people you follow that aren't  following you and vice versa. Tweepi gives you the tools to make your Twitter account be exactly what you want. Make it work for you using Tweepi.

Triberr, The Basics for #MFRWorg

What I know about Triberr – The Real Basics
Putting it simply Triberr is a platform for blogs. It helps get your blog out to people who otherwise might not find it. Once you join Triberr and find the proper tribe your tribe members will upload your feed – your blog – to their twitter account.

I’m not going to go into detail on how to get started. Triberr has lots of documents that are easy to understand to help you understand the way it works. I’ve used them and they’re great, I found Triberr very easy to understand. If I had a question they had a tutorial for it. Anyway, once you load your RSS feed to Triberr, and there is a tutorial depending on the blog web site you use, you now have your blog programmed to go out via Triberr and your tribe mates. These tutorials can be found in the little drop down box labeled account, then help.

If everything goes smoothly, and most of the time it does, your blog will load to your stream within a few hours. I give it about a half hour and normally it is there, but every once in a while I have to give it a helping hand. You do need to know enough to know how to check your feed from time to time. I check for my blog and if I don’t see on my stream I go to my settings, then my blogs. There you’ll see the details of your blog, your rss feed and the opportunity to check and make sure it’s working.

Now your stream is the list of blogs waiting for you to release to your twitter account. I try to check mine twice a day and release the ones waiting for me. It doesn’t take long. I belong to ten tribes and can work my way through my list in about five minutes, but I don’t stop and read the blogs when I do that. My main goal is to make sure I release the blogs waiting for me. My tribe mates are kind enough to release mine, I should reciprocate. If I don’t release the blogs of my tribemates why should they release mine?

Since I joined triberr I have had a lot more visits to my blog. It has been a wonderful investment for me and it could be one for you too.

Want more information on Triberr?

Try these other INFORMATIVE ARTICLES...

All Triberr... A Guide to Getting Started  |  Don't Get Spooked By Triberr  |  WoW! The Impact of Triberr

This Post was provided by MFRW Staff Member, Barbara Bradley.

MFRW Monthly Quote - March 2014 #MFRWorg

“The more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”
 -Vincent Van Gogh








Emerald
Emerald is an erotic fiction author whose short stories have been featured in anthologies published by Cleis Press, Mischief, and Logical-Lust. She serves as an assistant newsletter editor and Facebook group moderator for Marketing for Romance Writers (MFRW), and she selects and posts the monthly inspirational quote on the MFRW Marketing Blog. Find out more about her at her website, The Green Light District.

#MFRWorg Authors Secret Weapon: Street Teams

Author Street Teams. Likely, you've heard this term before. They're popping up all over the place as authors take advantage of their most valuable resource - their readers. Readers -especially bloggers/ reviewers- are vital to a book's success because their opinion goes a long way. Some readers have an established reputation as being a person to turn to for book recommendations. Why not partner with them if they love your books/ series?

That's exactly what creating a street team is... partnering with readers who like your books so much, they want to share them with other readers.

A Street Team is an author's secret weapon. In this article at Kobo Writing Life, an in-depth description of one author's experience puts it all into perspective. Read it here.

A Street Team is a group of readers/bloggers that are fans of a particular author and want to spread the word about books they love. They're just doing what they already do - reading what they like and telling their friends. There's no recipe as to how many members per street team, benefits to offer or rules to follow. Each author has their own style.

Here are some Basic Guidelines:

• Provide a central place/ method to communicate. Many authors use a private facebook group, google+ group or yahoo group. Regardless what you use, be sure to interact. Place a reminder on your calendar to post an update weekly.
• Choose a creative name that suits your branding. Google "author street teams" to see what others are already doing.
• Share WIP previews, excerpts and cover reveals.
• Ask if any are interested in serving as beta readers/ proofreaders. DO NOT use them in place of editors!
• Chat and give updates often, and always in advance, to the group.
• Honor and recognize their commitment by commenting when they post on their blogs or other social media sites.
• Have target tasks that you'd like members to help with... ask them to host a blog stop, like your books at on-line sites, place reviews on goodreads, share cover reveals, pin on Pinterest, post updates on facebook or tweet about your new releases. In general, you want them to spread the love for your book.
• Have contests just for your street team. Be creative: winner chooses a name for a character in your next book!
• Create perks. Provide swag and ARCs. Blog badges that members can display on their own blogs or social sites are great too. Not only do bloggers love them but it also increases your visibility.
• Allow your street team members more "personal" on-line access to you. Answer their requests quickly. Group them for ease and then interact with them on facebook, google+, twitter,etc.

There are a lot of books in the world and authors need help to spread the word. A street team is a fun way to interact with fans while asking them to do what many already do … and it has added perks (for you both).

Here's a list of links to some author's street teams for ideas on how to begin your own:

Cat Johnson  |  J. Kenner/ JK Beck  |  Heather Hildenbrand  |  Donna Grant  |  Sabrina York

I began my own street team after a few readers requested it. I keep it small and simple. There's no gimmicks or contests. Each member gets an ARC as soon as they're available in exchange for honest reviews on as many on-line sites as possible. And every week, I post an update and try to engage on facebook mostly. For the details, CLICK THIS LINK. 

Talk to me.

Do you have a street team? Post it in a comment to share. Do you want to know more about creating a street team? Just Ask. - Paloma