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ASJA 2015 Conference: Connect for Success at the Roosevelt Hotel (map)
May 1, 2015 • 11AM – 12:15PM

Use Social Media to Land Writing Gigs and Make Money (session: F06)

Most  hard-working professionals feel like there’s never enough time in a day. Between deadlines, creative pursuits, and trying to have a life, who has time to blog, update their website and keep up with social media?

In this session you will learn how to use your time efficiently to get the best results. You will be given tips and tricks based on hard-won experience. We’ll talk about the best tools to use for your specific goals and how to stand out online amidst worldwide competition.

You’ll learn about improving your website, blogs, and social media accounts. Find out the different language and etiquette for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, Reddit, Google+ and YouTube. And, most importantly, you’ll learn how to use social media to make more money.

Dorri Olds, panel organizer, speaker and ASJA member • www.DorriOlds.com • @DorriOlds

Here are some of my social media stats (as of April 10, 2015): YouTube: 470,000 views (yes, that’s almost half a million!); Twitter: 33,5 followers; Facebook: 4,000 (likes and followers). My areas of expertise include freelance writing, social media marketing, web design and WordPress. I will discuss:

• Social Media Etiquette and the differences across platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube).
  Yes, there is a difference.
• Tips and Tricks: How to use your time efficiently and get the best results. Groups, hashtags, comments, blogging, linking, networking and the way money streams come my way all the time.
• How I’ve landed writing gigs through social media
• What to do and what NOT to do

Most Important Rule: Do not scream, “Look at me! Look at me!” Instead, pay attention to the people you want to connect with. Most editors are writers too. Google them, read some of their articles, compliment them. Share their posts and tag them, retweet their tweets, leave comments on their LinkedIn posts. That is the best way to introduce yourself. One of the biggest mistakes I see writers make is to contact me on Facebook or Twitter and tell me what book they wrote and to please like their page. It’s annoying that they introduced themselves by asking me to take time out of my swamped schedule to do something for them. Why would anybody want to stop what they’re doing for a complete stranger? But! If they’ve commented on my articles or shared my Facebook posts and retweeted my tweets, I will notice them and there’s an excellent chance that I’ll remember them and want to respond. That is how the best connections begin.

MEET MY WONDERFUL SPEAKERS:

Kirsten Koza, author, humorist, journalist and editor www.kirstenkoza.com • @KirstenKoza

Kirsten says: I will discuss Facebook Pages and how to target the right followers and attract publishers. Attend this panel discussion and you could win a waterproof, shockproof Nikon camera and memory card as part of a demonstration on how to quickly grow a Facebook Page of ideal followers using simple techniques such as raffles.

This editor admits it: I just finished reading thousands of stories to make my selection of 30 for a Travelers’ Tales anthology, and at times the writer’s social networking reach was a factor in my decision making process. Of course the story still has to be great, but if it comes down to a tie breaker and one writer has an audience of followers through social networking and I know they’re going to promote their work, then that will sway my choice. Publishers want their stories to be read. The writer is part of that process.

Hot Tips:

1. Facebook Pages have improved how you can target followers. But you still need to avoid click farms.
   See this video re click farms which are sometimes called the sweatshops of social media: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag.Avoiding fake accounts LIKING your page can be done easily by selecting the countries you target. You can also select specific interests and hobbies when attracting new followers, or when promoting a story or book.
2. If someone follows your page and you suspect they are a fake account, delete them. Facebook sends your posts out to a certain percentage of your followers and you want those followers to be real.
3. Keep your page interesting and alive. Find your angle. Share material that benefits not just you but your followers.
4. Be generous to other writers on your Page and they’ll promote you on theirs.
5. You don’t know when a story is going to go viral but you can help spread it with a catchy teaser and social networking. And, yes, it is possible to be your own pimp without looking like one by following step 3.

I have 8,600 targeted followers on my Writers’ Expeditions Facebook Page. They consist of travelers, writers, editors and photographers. Through these 8,600 I can reach 100,000. I look forward to sharing what I’ve learned with you.

Tom Miller, Literary Agent, Greenburger • @ThomasWMiller

As an agent, I particularly look for writers who have substantial presences on Twitter and LinkedIn. If an author has 5,000 or more Twitter followers, and if he or she tweets interesting and on-point tweets 2–3 times a day, I take notice. So do publishers — believe me! I also notice an author who has a well-populated and impressive LinkedIn page. I’m not particularly impressed when an author says, “I have 1,000+ Facebook friends” about her or his FB personal page (nor are publishers), but I do notice when an author has an active and well-populated FB fan page with a lot of interactivity on it.

• Join Twitter and tweet about your writing 2–3 times a day. Follow writers you admire and retweet salient tweets from them. Use hashtags judiciously and strategically.
• Start a Facebook fan page for your writing. Invite the friends you think will respond and who can share your posts to their friends and contacts. It’s a matter of getting as many people engaged about your writing as possible.
• On LinkedIn, it’s actually OK to send LinkedIn invitations to people you want to connect with even if you don’t know them personally. Just don’t hound those people relentlessly or send them inappropriate messages. Upgrade to LinkedIn Premium if you want extra benefits.

Nikki M. Mascali, Editor in Chief, TheBlot Magazine • @NikkiMMascali

My areas of expertise are editing, writing, setting editorial calendars and hiring and working with freelancers. I’ll focus on:

• Branding yourself as a journalist
  You could have the perfect pitch that leads to the perfect story, but does any of it matter if no one sees it? Social media gives writers the tools they need to freely reach out to people with similar interests in an effort to self-promote their work and those at their respective outlets.
• Does the initial size of your social reach matter?
  Not necessarily. Sure, I want a writer that has tens of thousands of followers because, let’s face it, we’re all gunning for clicks, but one of the main things I look for as an editor is diligence in cultivating a social presence. As a writer’s body of work grows, so will their following across social media platforms — so long as they continue to seek out new ways to gain valued viewership.
• The king of self promotion for writers
  Twitter, by far, is the most valuable tool, especially for digital edition stories. Its forced use of the 140-character format is helping to establish a new breed of headline writers looking to instantly capture an audience. In fact, I credit my Twitter activity in the site’s early days for helping me become a more concise writer and editor.
• The worldwide pitch generator
  With so many voices spanning the web, digital media is not only a prominent way to promote your work, but to expand on it as well. Use social media as a springboard for story ideas by following subjects that you are interested in. Although most of your legwork will consist of fact checking, there is no other time in history that news can break faster than today’s digital age. I love getting a pitch from someone minutes after I saw that topic trending on social media.
• Reaching Sources
  Now that you have an idea on how to find, write and promote your story through social media outlets, you can start on expanding those articles using the same media. Sure you may have to still deal with publicists and agents, both of which could put speed bumps on the completion of your projects, but people of interest are commonly reachable through their social media channels. Don’t hesitate to reach out to potential sources directly — it may be the difference between your latest scoop and yesterday’s news.

Jason Gross, Social Media Manager, TheBlot Magazine, journalist and author • @jgrossnas

My area of expertise is marketing, promotion and branding. The points I will focus on are:

• Remember that social media platforms have a long memory and that employers (including publishing companies, agents) might search your accounts to see what kind of things you post there. What you say there can stay there, even if you delete it. The rule of thumb is: “Don’t say anything there you wouldn’t say in front of your mom.”
• Choose the social media platforms that are right for your needs and don’t over-extend yourself there. Usually good to pick 3–4 places to concentrate on.
• Arguments and disagreements on social media are fine. Flame wars are bad because they make you look bad even if you’re right.
• You don’t have to be a social media expert but it helps to keep up on the newest features on SM platforms so you can use them to your advantage. Some good sources for this are Mediabistro Social Media Newsfeed, Mashable’s Apps/Software and Adweek’s Social Times

The post ASJA Panel: Use Social Media to Land Writing Gigs and Make Money appeared first on Award-Winning Writer and Graphic Designer.

The text, written in Arabic and accompanied by an illustration of Dorsey’s face with crosshairs superimposed on it, said, “Your virtual war on us will cause a real war on you.” It was a reference to Twitter shutting down and/or suspending 2,000 ISIS accounts last week. The ISIS post also said, “We told you from the beginning it’s not your war, but you didn’t get it and kept closing our accounts on Twitter, but we always come back.”

Twitter, of course, had every right to shut the accounts down — they were in direct violation of the social media site’s terms of agreement banning threats of violence and using the social network “for any unlawful purposes or in furtherance of illegal activities.”

The company has been trying to keep up with removing execution videos and all other offensive posts, but it doesn’t monitor accounts for terrorist behavior. It only reviews posts and accounts that have been flagged as inappropriate by Twitter users. Yahoo News reported in February thatTwitter officials said, “Like our peer companies, we do not proactively monitor content. Users report potential rules violations to us, we review their reports and take action if the content violates our rules.”

As more and more pressure was applied, Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser told BuzzFeed, “Our security team is investigating the veracity of these threats with relevant law enforcement officials.”

THINGS JUST KEEP GETTING WEIRDER AND WEIRDER …

According to The Associated Press, on Sunday the sadists of ISIS released 19 Christians from a group of 220 Assyrian Christians they’d captured last week; nobody seems to have any idea why the 19 were released. The former captives were from a village named Tal Ghoran in the northern Syria province of al-Hasakah and have now returned home.

There are conflicting reports on the number of hostages freed. On Tuesday, March 3, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said that a Syria watchdog group reported that 21 of the kidnapped Christians have been released.

SOHR has reported chilling stats of ISIS executions from Jan. 28 to Feb. 28:

• 1,238 civilians, including 6 children and 8 women. They were executed by beheading, shooting or stoning in the provinces of Deir Ezzor, al-Raqqa, al-Hasakah, Aleppo, Homs and Hama. 930 out of 1,175 are from al- Shaitaat tribe in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor.
• 95 fighters of the Nusra Front, rebel and Islamic battalions. IS executed them after arresting them either in clashes between the mentioned battalions and IS or on IS- checkpoint.
• Islamic State also executed 125 of its own members for “exceeding the limits in religion;” most of them executed after arresting them during their attempt to come back home.
• 511 officers and soldiers of the regime forces. They were arrested during clashes between IS and the regime forces.

In further news, on Tuesday, The Telegraph reported that Jassem Emwazi, the father of ISIS executioner “Jihadi John” — recently outed as Mohammed Emwazi — described his son as a “dog” and a “terrorist” and said he hopes his son will die. But, as of Wednesday, March 4, The Guardianreported that the father said that was a “lie, lie, lie.” He also insisted there is no proof that his son was the ISIS executioner.

The post ISIS Wants to Behead Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey for Shutting Down Their Accounts appeared first on Award-Winning Writer and Graphic Designer.