How to Use the Power of Silence to Boost Your Writing Career

The Power of Silence

A guest post by Linda Formichelli of The Renegade Writer

As writers, we voice our opinions, discuss options, interview sources, ask questions, negotiate with editors and clients, and kvetch about assignments with our writer friends.

For what most people call a solitary profession, writing sure involves a lot of talking.

But there are times when silence is the best thing for your career. Here are some examples.

1. The Interview Silence

I recently became a wellness coach and personal trainer. Our natural tendency is to formulate what we’re going to say next while the other person is talking so we can jump right in when they’re finished.

But coaches need to listen deeply to their clients, which means there will be a dreaded silence when the client is done speaking where the coach is thinking about how to respond.

With my last few clients, I decided to fight my fear of silence and let it happen. I listened mindfully to my clients and tried to restrain my impulse to swoop in as soon as they finished speaking. It felt a bit unnatural, but my clients gave glowing feedback on my listening skills and coaching manner.

I decided to try the same tactic with my next phone interview for an article I was working on for a custom publisher. Instead of being at the ready with my next question, I thought about what the source said and then based my next question on that. We had a delightful conversation, and I learned more and got better information than I would have if I had peppered the source with question after question.

Try it: The next time you have an interview, prepare a few ice-breaker questions and list the questions you absolutely have to ask, but let the conversation be your guide. Listen intently to your source — no multitasking — and take a few seconds when the source is done speaking to formulate your next question.

2. The Community Silence

We writers are an opinionated lot, and nowhere is this more evident than on online writing forums. But sometimes it makes sense to be silent, leave the arguments to others, and spend your time on building your writing career.

Writers who know me only online often comment on how nice I seem. (Notice how I said “seem”!) That’s because I try not to get caught up in flame wars, opinion flinging, and judging. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying I don’t think these thoughts. I do, and sometimes they turn into hopefully illuminating posts on the Renegade Writer blog. But I prefer to save most of the actual complaining and gossiping for a couple of my best writer friends — offline.

Every once in awhile I find myself constructing arguments in my head to something someone said online, and then I catch myself and realize that just because I had a thought doesn’t mean I need to make it public.

The same can be said for social media. Whenever my toddler says something über- brilliant or I get a plum writing assignment, my first reaction is often, “I have to put this on Facebook!” But then I started wondering: Why am I so concerned with what 600 acquaintances (most of my FB friends I don’t know in real life) think of my son or my career? I then consider how, when I go onto Facebook to post one comment, I often get sucked into reading all the updates. So I remain silent and do something else instead.

Try it: The next time you’re tempted to jump into an argument online or share every witty thought with the social media world, try to stay silent for a while.
The urge will pass, and you’ll have spent your time on tasks that actually move you towards your career goals.

3. The Negotiating Silence

Kelly James-Enger and Carol Tice are both proponents of silence while negotiating with clients and editors.

Here’s how it works: An editor says, “We can pay you 20 cents per word.” Your first inclination is to jump in and ask for more, but instead you stay silent for a few seconds. This creates tension without being aggressive, and sometimes the editor comes back to offer more without your even saying anything. (Ask Carol how this happened to her!)

But if he doesn’t, the silent pause is your chance to determine how much you want to make and how you’re going to ask for it. If you fear the silence, you may walk right into a contract that doesn’t work for you.

Try it: The next time a client has you on the phone and is offering an unacceptable deal, resist the urge to jump in with a better deal and wait a few seconds
instead. If the client doesn’t break the silence, you can still use that time to figure out what you really want from the deal.

Linda Formichelli has written for more than 120 magazines since 1997, from Pizza Today to Redbook, and is also a wellness coach and personal trainer. Linda’s writing blog is The Renegade Writer, and her coaching blog is HappyFit, where she posts about anxiety, depression, energy, fitness, diet, motivation, and happiness.

Join Leo Babauta and Mary Jaksch in their spectacular training environment for bloggers: the A-List Blogger Club.

Categories: Blogwriting, Craft

What Are YOU Writing?

What are you writing?

By Mary Jaksch

What are you working on right now?

A blog post? A novel? Your best article ever? A poem? A film script? An Ebook?

Maybe you’ve just finished something you’re really proud of.

Or maybe you just can’t tell whether it should get a Pulitzer or be thrown into the trash.

Here’s your chance to share and discuss with each other what you are writing about.

Whet our appetite with the opening paragraph of your future bestseller, give us a link to your best post, give us a taste of your awesome poem – or tell us what you are writing at the moment.

Who knows, your piece might even attract the notice of a major publishing house! Here are some guidelines:

A. Writers:

  • State what aspect you’re working on. For example, you might want to say, “Here’s a link to my article “The Role of Rabbits in Nuclear Science”. I’m currently working on eliminating superfluous words.”

B. Commenters:

  • When commenting, first list everything you really like about a piece.
  • Only then offer careful suggestions.
  • Treat each other with respect, friendliness, care, and honesty.
  • Remember that we are all still learning.

Now it’s over to you. Take a deep breath. Then jump into the comment section and bring out your treasures!

Mary Jaksch is the Editor in Chief of Write to Done. Together with Leo Babauta, Mary runs a spectacular training environment for bloggers: the A-List Blogger Club. Join our 900 motivated and supportive members! If you’re a blogger and want to create an online income the ‘Good Karma’ way, check out Mary’s brand-new blog A-List Blog Marketing

Categories: Blogwriting, Craft, Fiction

How a Single Bullet Can Get a Customer To Buy

A guest post by Sean DSouza of Psychotactics 

Sell what you write

I remember going to a workshop in the year 2003
The price of the workshop was $8000. Plus there was overseas travel involved. And yes the usual accommodation and food expenses. In all it was going to cost me almost $12,000 to get to this one workshop. And I made the decision on the basis of a single bullet.

So what are these bullets?
The bullets I’m talking about are the bullets that you see in advertising. Bullets are the same thing that you see on the cover of magazines and newspaper mastheads. And if you want to sell more effectively here’s how bullets can help you considerably. When you’re writing copy or creating a speech or rehearsing a presentation or writing an article for that matter, don’t sit down and write text or sales copy.

Write bullets instead
Bullets help you clear your mind. It gives focus to your marketing message.

Let me give you an example of bullets in marketing material

  • The Spider’s Secret. How to get customers to call you instead of you chasing them.
  • How to get your fee paid 100% in advance every time.
  • How to create a huge demand for your product or service. This secret is over 10,000 years old and works every single time. And most business doesn’t use it.
  • Why your website, business card and your advertising can turn out to be a total waste of resources and effort. How the eye sees things and what causes customers to buy.
  • The secrets of being able to sell the same product or service at up to 400% higher prices.
  • How to create a sequential system that will bring business even if you don’t have a single new customer.
  • The Three Prong system. This tool will change the way you look at your business forever. Ignore at your risk.
  • How we got over US$40,000 worth of products complimentary this year alone…and how you can do it too.
  • Piggybacking: You’ll laugh and cry when you see how simple it is to piggyback on the success of others. The more the others succeed, the more you succeed. And all at zero cost to you.
  • The Secrets of Conversion. How to engage and make your customer never want to leave you, and instead, continuously buy from you.

What you see are just some of the bullets that we used when we sell one of our courses. At that point the course wasn’t ready. Just the bullets were.

Bullets are your foundational material
Bullets free you to just run wild with your thoughts and create the outline for your sales copy and syllabus. And they help the customer make a decision. Often, the customer may be too busy to read copy. So they’ll skim till they reach the bullets. Then hit the brakes.

It’s the brakes I hit back in 2003
One bullet caused me to stop and make my decision to spend all that money on that single workshop. That one bullet was my starting point. From then on, everything I read on that sales page was just an added bonus. The more I read, the more I felt that it was exactly what I was looking for.

But let’s get one thing straight
That one bullet alone can’t take the entire load. The rest of the sales page needs to do the job as well. We know this to be true, because if we turned things around and put just one bullet on the page—and no other sales copy—I would most certainly not buy into the workshop.

But the one bullet acted as a brake. It stopped me, and then got me to re-evaluate everything else. And that’s why bullets are so darned important.

No matter how good your marketing material, your customer will usually buy for just one reason
They’ll pick one bullet out of the whole lot and say, ‘Yeah, that’s what I really, really want!’ And they’ll buy. So before you go into that long winded presentation; before you write copy; before you do anything.

Write bullets
They’re the key to getting customers to stop, read and then buy.

To read more articles by Sean DSouza—and get a very useful report on “Why Headlines Fail”, go to PsychoTactics.com

Categories: Blogwriting - Tags: ,

Are You Missing This Crucial Skill Set as a Writer?

Have you got the tools you need?

By Mary Jaksch

Every writer dreams of being discovered. Don’t you?

Whether you write fiction or faction, you want people – lots of people – to read your stuff.

Maybe you dream of writing a bestseller, or becoming a Top 100 blogger, or writing a script for a box office hit, or landing an article for a top magazine.

How to get from where you are now to your dream?

For the slog from novice to master you need two different skill sets: skills as a writer and skills as a marketer

Why marketing skills are crucial

Here’s a story. A few weeks ago a blogger emailed me with a pitch for a guest post on Goodlife ZEN. Actually, you could hardly call it a pitch. She just threw an idea at me without telling me about herself, her writing, or what the guest post might be about.

I emailed back: “If you want to land a guest post, you need to read my article: The Perfect Pitch: How to land a Gig Every Time. Remember that I receive guest post requests every day – so you need to stand out from the crowd by writing a great pitch.”

She whined back, “Oh, but that’s like marketing my guest post. I don’t like doing that.”

Yes, well – as you can imagine, she didn’t land a guest post on GLZ…

The point I’m making is:

No matter what you write, you need to learn marketing skills to get your stuff in front of readers.

When writers need to market

  • When you contact a possible agent.
  • When you write to a publisher.
  • When you pitch for a guest post.
  • When you introduce yourself to fellow bloggers.
  • When you ask people to share your stuff on Social Media.
  • When you approach a joint venture partner
  • When you launch a book or a report- even when it’s free.

As you can see, there are many more occasions when marketing skills come in handy.

I must admit: at first I really disliked marketing.

There’s something about creating desire for something people don’t really need that doesn’t seem right to me. And I hate it when people try to sell stuff with a ‘gun to head’ style.

So, when Barrie Davenport – one of the best bloggers to emerge from the A-List Blogger Club that Leo Babauta and I run – approached me with the idea of joining up to create a marketing blog for bloggers, my first thought was: “Yeah, right – I’ll start a marketing blog when water starts to run uphill.”

But then I thought about it. Barrie’s a lovely person with lots of integrity. She runs a beautiful blog, Live Bold and Bloom. It seemed to me that there must be a way of marketing that’s different. That treats potential customers like valued friends. That places passion and respect before profit. And still works to create a great income.

I thought of all the people like you who would like to earn some extra cash – or want to develop an online career that gives them a recession-proof income.

So, in the end I said ‘yes’.

Barrie and I then developed a style of marketing we call ‘Good Karma’ Marketing because it’s based upon the principle that what we give out in life is what we get back.

And today we’ve finally launched A-List Blog Marketing as a resource for all those who want to learn how to market themselves or their products – in a way that feels good.

Do come and visit us! We’ve created a complimentary video course for you: The Heart of Online Marketing. Grab ithere.

Mary Jaksch is the Chief Editor of Write to Done. Check out her new blog A-List Blog Marketing

Categories: Blogwriting, Business, Craft

Do Long or Short Headlines Work Better?

Confused by the Headline?


A guest post by Sean DSouza of PsychoTactics.com

Let’s say I told you to go down to the supermarket.

And I gave you directions.

Take the first left, and then take a right at the fifth corner. After which you take a U-Turn at the traffic lights. But don’t miss the right hand turn, which you’ll see right after the roundabout.

Huh?

What just went on there, you wonder…

You see I confused you on purpose. And you knew that. But most of the time, you’re not seeking to confuse customers with your headlines. And yet, time and again, you end up writing headlines that seem to confuse the heck out of everyone.

What’s worse is that you CAN fix the headline in a flash.

If you knew what to do, that is.

So let’s cut the chatter, shall we? Let’s look at why most headlines are confusing. And headlines are confusing, simply because we confuse the thoughts.

Huh, what do thoughts have to do with headlines?

Ok, so why were you confused when I gave you directions in the first paragraph? Yes, there were way too many thoughts involved. So while your brain was trying to hold onto one thought, the second thought stomped in, quickly followed by a third and the fourth.

So let’s look at a confusing headline shall we?

Example: Is your personal services business struggling to find enough new clients because you are making these classic mistakes with your best clients?

So how many thoughts did you detect in the line above? Let’s see.

Thought 1: Struggling to find enough new clients.
Thought 2: Making classic mistakes with your clients.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

Now let’s separate these thoughts and rewrite them

Headline 1: Are you struggling to find new consulting clients?
Headline 2: Are you making these classic mistakes with your clients?

But, but, but you say…

Because what I’ve effectively done is treated the concept as two headlines, when in fact the writer wanted to write one headline—and convey the exact thoughts above.

So how do we use both thoughts without losing the gist of the concept?

Why, that’s easy. You don’t write it all in one headline.

That’s the biggest reason why you have sub-headlines.
I’ll say it again. That’s why you have sub-headlines.

So yeah, if you’re that peachy keen to get the very same thought in the headline you just go choppity chop, and split the headline down the center!

And here’s what you’ll get:

Are you struggling to find new consulting clients?
(How to avoid making these classic mistakes when prospecting)

See what just happened above?

We took two mangled thoughts, and separated them. We bathed them, freshened the thoughts up a bit, and re-presented it without any confusion.

Confusion that begins once you start exceeding 14-16 words. Or to put it another way, your headlines shouldn’t exceed 14-16 words.

Come to think of it, none of your lines should exceed 14 words. Why? Because a line represents a thought. And when you write a line that exceeds 14 words, guess what happens?

Yes, another thought sneaks in through the cracks. Before you know it, a couple or even a trio of thoughts have taken residence. And then your brain feels like a grocery list you can’t remember.

Imagine having a page, full of grocery lists you can’t remember

You’re trying to get an idea across, but your client reading the information is inundated with multiple thoughts. And instantly, their brain starts going into shut-down mode. This of course, is the last thing you want.

And we haven’t even taken the visual aspect into consideration

We are visual creatures. When we see too much, our brain presses the ‘exit, exit’ button and wants to get out in a massive hurry.

The longer, denser, and more clumped your headlines, lines, and paragraphs turn out to be, the less it’s going to get read.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that you write less. What I’m suggesting is that you do the following.

a) Keep your headlines (and lines) focused on one thought.
b) Keep your lines visually short. It helps readability.
c) Keep adequate spacing between your paragraphs to avoid overload.

This simple act of brevity causes your reader to focus on what you really want to tell them.

Don’t get intimidated with length or lack of length of your headline.

Concentrate on the power of the thought.

Um…one, one thought will do just fine!

Read more top stuff by Sean DSouza on PsychoTactics.com

Categories: Blogwriting - Tags: , , ,

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