Blogging

Facebook Masterclass.

/ lizziechantree / 7 Comments

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Hello everyone. I went on a Facebook Masterclass last week and as soon as I got home I deleted my personal profile and my business account and started again! I now have a page that’s a few days old and barely finds an audience, but I’m working on it again. The page is Lizzie Chantree Author if any of you want to pop by. My other page had over a thousand likes and follows, but it’s much easier just having one business page linked to one profile page.

You can only have one profile on Facebook, so you can’t have one for your close friends and one for your business that has friends on it. You can however have several business pages linked to one profile. With your business profile, although it’s great to get ‘likes’ and ‘follows’, the best way to widen your audience is from comments. Facebook like interaction and are focussing on meaningful posts and mental health. This means that ads or links are not as valued as chat and will not reach as many people’s FB pages.

Another thing I didn’t realise was that you can still be followed on Fb if you don’t approve a friend request. Check where it says INTRO. Under that it will say how many people who  are following your profile anyway.

I’ll be posting more tips in my FB book group Lizzie’s Book Group and here on my blog in the coming weeks.

I finally completed my latest manuscript and am on my second set of my own edits before it wings its way to my editor. It’s such an exciting feeling to hold a finished book in my hands. I can’t wait to start on my next one too! Have an amazing week everyone.

 

Are you a tidy person?

/ lizziechantree / 10 Comments

Are you a tidy person? By this, I mean, is your desk space clear, your housework up to date and your mind clear and raring to go? Lol:) I try and keep on top of housework and the studio where I write usually has a clean desk space, but with a second book launch and book tour rapidly approaching, I seem to be surrounded by piles of ‘stuff’. I have a corner for gifts for my online facebook launch, boxes for my paperback launch, books ready to sell, paperwork that needs clearing, notes and lists of things to do and suddenly my clear area to work has become an avalanche!

Perty.Lizzie Chantree. Launch party

Multi-tasking is something I am good at, but I’m so easily distracted by another idea that I have to write lists and cross them off, so that I finish one task before I begin another. I don’t always stick to this rule though. My studio, although very well thought out and organised, is quite small, so everything has to have it’s place and I am finding that my space is creeping into other areas of the building as I leave more boxes that I can’t fit into my studio, just outside the door.

Writing this is making me realise that I need to spend a few hours putting everything where it should be and finding a designated corner for book launches. I also have a library talk coming up and need promotional items and banners for that which will take up more space! In fact I need to sell more books and find a bigger studio. You’ve got to have a dream!

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Monday marketing. 3 quick tips.

/ lizziechantree / 9 Comments

Happy new week everyone. Here are 3 quick tips about scheduling social media posts or tidying up your Twitter feeds. Marketing can eat into your day, so I am sharing some great tools to help you schedule in some of the posts to save time. I don’t agree with all posts being scheduled, as the idea of social media, is to be social! Interaction is the main way to keep and grow your Twitter/ Facebook accounts etc.

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  1. SocialOomph: This a is a scheduling app. It has free and paid options. You can run a free trial to see if it is the app for you. You can schedule tweets, Facebook posts and blog posts, add images and links.
  2. Hootsuite: Hootsuite is a bit clunky for me, but it is a great place to start when you are looking for content to retweet on Twitter or you have your own information to schedule. Because this app updates so often with new news items, it can be slow. The upside is that there is a wealth of information to choose from and it is very easy to use.
  3. Manageflitter: This is a good app for unfollowing anyone who doesn’t follow you back. There have been recent changes, so unless you pay for the basic service, you can only have about 30 unfollows a day. For their basic package, you can unfollow as many as you like.

 

Pinned Tweets.

/ lizziechantree / 7 Comments

Happy new week! After the fun and excitement of my first book launch and solo blog tour, I am now getting back to sharing marketing and writing news each week. I will share things I’ve learnt on my journey so far with my latest book, Ninja School Mum.

NSM tweets

 

This week’s post is about Twitter and pinned posts. I really enjoy interacting with people on Twitter, but unless you are actually chatting and networking there, it’s probably a bit of a waste of your time. I have noticed lately that a lot of people leave a pinned tweet for a long time. A pinned tweet, is the first tweet you see when you open someone else’s page on Twitter. There is an option to ‘pin’ any of your own original tweets to the top of your profile page.

Many think that if you leave this pinned tweet, then it collects retweets and the numbers of RT’s look good if they are high. The problem with this, is that if someone like me, (who often visits the pages of my Twitter followers and likes to Rt their work), has to scroll through lots of tweets to find one about their work, I give up and move on. I can RT the pinned tweet, but if I have already done this, I can’t do it again. This is such a wasted opportunity. I always update my pinned tweet at least once a week, but often every few days or hours. That way, anyone visiting my Twitter page has fresh content at the top of my page, that they don’t have to page down or waste their time looking for. Everyone has busy schedules and this saves them time and makes the opportunity of a new RT more possible for me.

Check out some Twitter feeds you know and see if you agree.

 

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Too much information.

/ lizziechantree / 5 Comments

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Last weekend I had been trying to manage my work tasks, plus organise Christmas for my family after a week of being unwell. Sometimes my head felt like it was full of too much information for it to be productive at all. After climbing a mountain of wrapping paper and filling the cupboards with two Christmas puddings and various festive treats as we have people coming to stay, I decided to stop worrying about what I had to achieve  and do something completely different.

I was probably thinking of a brisk jog with my dog or getting some housework done, but I must have walked past the kitchen and I cooked and scoffed one of the Christmas puddings… it was a very small one… instead! The change of thinking (and probable sugar rush) from the process of stepping away from my work load, managed to clear my mind and I was then able to sit at my desk and complete most of the work I had been fretting about finishing for two days.

We sometimes overload ourselves with useless information that holds no relevance to what we need to do. By thinking of them over and over and procrastinating, we are adding to our own confusion and wasting precious time not doing the things we are thinking about. This week i’m going to try not to overthink and also to not walk past the Christmas cupboard too often, as although it was helpful in this instance, the repeat journey to the shops to replenish what I ate is definitely not the way forward!

Working while asleep.

/ lizziechantree / 9 Comments

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This week i’ve had an awful cold and have been half asleep at my desk. What has surprised me is that i’ve still managed to complete quite a lot of work, when I feel like i’ve slept through half of the week. A friend on Twitter said she was up working at 2am and I mentioned that sometimes we are more productive when we’ve had a rest. Time away to restore and recuperate can mean you achieve twice as much when you do get back to work. I know I haven’t actually done any work while asleep, but the amount i’ve accomplished while awake, means I feel like I must have done!

Do you feel more productive after time away from your work, or does it make you panic and feel like you are not getting enough done? I’d be interested to hear how you all manage time away from your daily tasks.

Marketing merchandise.

/ lizziechantree / 5 Comments

Happy new week everyone. This week I’ve been working on some new merchandise for my blog tour and launch. I had this brilliant photo taken for me and it’s a wonderful way to spread the word for my work and make people smile. I have also made promotional keyrings and had posters printed. The theme of my book content and colour scheme follows through all of it, so that it is easily recognisable. This is a good idea, as it refers to your work and hopefully encourages people to pick up your book and give it a try. You never know who you might meet whilst wandering round, as my promotional photo shows, so take every opportunity and make the marketing fun for you and your readers.

 

When you bump into Batman and he’s reading your book! 🙂

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Are you a master of time management?

/ lizziechantree / 13 Comments

Perty.Lizzie Chantree. Launch party

I’ve been pondering on the thought of how hard we all push ourselves to be creative and get our work done. This month I’ve taken on a lot, with #NaNoWriMo which I have only written a few thousand words for and my latest book launch. I also have a new book to edit. Last week I began to have raised stress levels. No one put this pressure on me, other than myself. I keep piling more jobs onto my ‘to do’ list before I have completed the last one, as many of the jobs interlink.

I’ve come to the conclusion that what I am doing is good enough and that panicking or overdoing things is not going to work for me. My priority is to get all of my book launch information to my tour hosts, which is gradually happening. Next will be marketing for my new book. Further on the list is getting some new words onto paper for #NaNoWriMo and finally to edit book 5. All of these jobs are important, but if my head feels like it is packed full of too many tasks, I will feel counter-productive and start procrastinating.

If I happen to manage task one and two quicker than planned, then the other items on my list can swoop in and take over. This week has begun far more efficiently with jobs being ticked off of the list at a fast pace. The key for me is to do one job and do it well, then move on to the next, rather than half completing it and starting something else. I’ll let you know how much I get done in November. It’s exciting and the possibilities are endless, I just have to curb how many ideas I write down on that list and how many I add to a different notebook and store until a later date.

Do you push yourself to hard at work, or are you a master of time management?

3 time management tips (I’ll be using these too!):

  1. Do the most important job first.
  2. Don’t let unimportant tasks drag you down. Sideline them.
  3. Say ‘no’ to some things. If you are busy, it’s ok to decline social or work offers. Only take on commitments you have time for.

 

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SEO tips for your website.

/ lizziechantree / 16 Comments

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Welcome to my blog. Today I thought I’d share 3 quick ideas about how you can improve the SEO on your website or blog. SEO is important as in ensures the visibility of your website and helps your content discoverability by search engines. This means that if someone puts a word in the search engine to find a topic, that your page is higher on the list than other peoples pages.

1.  You need SEO to provide clear navigation for the search engines to find your site. Make your articles relevant to your page and don’t veer too far off of subject. Too many terms on one site become confusing and don’t rank your site.

2 .  Write content that will keep visitors on your page and use internal links to interest them enough to stay on your site for longer. If they enjoy one article, they may like another you have written.

3.  Don’t load too many photos onto one page or have too much content. If a page is slow to load, people will rapidly click off of the page and find another website with quick loading times. Always name photos what they are and not pic 1,2,3,5, or 5! The picture for this article is called Lizzie Chantree SEO tips.

 

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