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Opportunity always knocks when you’re busy

On 27 November 2020, I received an email, out of the blue, from the content manager of the WorldClassPerformer website, asking if I’d be willing to be interviewed and for the interview to be published on their website.

Now, November is always a busy month. NaNoWriMo dominates and, by the 27th, I am tired and not at all ready for Christmas which is just around the corner. So, the last thing I need is a call on my time.

BUT, this was a marketing opportunity …

Marketing opportunities: grab them with both hands!

Most writers much prefer the process of writing to any marketing activity at all.

You might write short stories and regularly have them published in magazines, or publish them yourself in collections. These are your products and I’m sure you have a plan for letting the world know. You have a Facebook page or some other social media platform and you make announcements at appropriate times to ‘warn’ your audience about an upcoming release date. That’s your marketing strategy …

BUT … if a newspaper / magazine / radio station / website content manager … offers you 10 questions to answer, such opportunities must be grabbed with both hands?

Marketing you – rather than your product

As writers, we might be great at writing fiction, non-fiction, poetry short stories, plays … the list is endless. What many writers are not so good at – and avoid! – is writing about themselves.

And, while a story is a product – or a novel – or a play, whatever – I believe your focus should be on marketing you. Only then might your audience be interested in what you write.

Using Scrivener for marketing

I use Scrivener for all my writing projects and have explained how in previous posts.

• My novels and how Scrivener works for plotters and pantsers alike
• My non-fiction books
• My short stories and poetry
• My memoir – a work-in-progress!

I also explained how I use Scrivener to keep track of what I’m doing.

• My social media posting schedules
• The courses I’m on and the ones I deliver: Scrivener for lifelong learning

It won’t surprise you to learn that I have a Scrivener project solely for marketing.

Here’s what the Binder in my Marketing ME project looked like on Boxing Day. (Yes, I did some work on Boxing Day!)

You can see that Scrivener provides an ideal opportunity to keep track of all my efforts to market myself and my various products.

However, it’s not just a store for what I’ve done to date on the marketing front. Every time someone writes to me, approaching me to take part in an event, they ask for my bio – something they can use to describe me to their audience. Rather than rewriting this from scratch, I refer back to how I’ve portrayed myself in similar circumstances for other opportunities.

What Scrivener features do you need?

Not many!

• Binder skills are essential. Read the series of blogposts starting here.
• I use split screens in the Editing pane – with what I’ve written before on the left – and what I’m trying to write on the right.

So, you don’t need to be experienced in using Scrivener for this application.

Read the interview!

To read my short life lessons, click here.

I was pleased to be interviewed for WorldClassPerformer. If you use Scrivener and would like me to interview you for a guest blog on the ScrivenerVirgin website, contact me.

Questions? Need a helping hand? Want a demo?

To discuss how best to use Scrivener, or to ask any questions about Scrivener features, book a Simply Scrivener Special.

To help me to prepare, you could also complete this short questionnaire.

The ScrivenerVirgin blog is a journey of discovery:
a step-by-step exploration of how Scrivener can change how a writer writes.
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