If you’re looking for an excellent writers’ conference to attend this fall, consider Write on the Sound in Edmonds, Washington, October 1-3, 2010. (Edmonds is just north of Seattle.)

Since 1985, the City of Edmonds Arts Commission has hosted this conference, which has a capacity of 200 attendees and draws presenters from throughout the Northwest.

I’ll be teaching a social media workshop bright and early Saturday morning (Oct 2), from 9-10:15 a.m. This is a beginning workshop for fiction, non-fiction and poetry writers. If you’re not yet up and running with a blog, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn — but want to learn how — this workshop will introduce you to the myriad options available to you.

Here’s the workshop description:

Shaping Your Social Media Strategy

Somewhere over the rainbow, a yellow brick road wends through the land of blogs, Facebook, Twitter, (and more). Learn what online communities can—and can’t—do for you; time-management techniques for using social media productively, and strategies for linking intelligently among your social networks. Close your eyes, click your heels three times, and say, “There’s no place like social media.”

Details about the conference:

• Keynote speaker: Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
• Friday Pre-Conference half-day workshops
• Manuscript critique sessions
• Saturday and Sunday workshops with over 30 sessions on craft, marketing, and specialty writing topics designed for every writing level
• Saturday evening public reception and book signing
• Sunday 3-hour workshop on writing memoir with Sheila Bender
• Early registration until Sept 9 – $116 for two days
• Regular registration rate – $139 for two days; $72 for one day (Sunday registration slots still available)

More information: http://www.ci.edmonds.wa.us/ArtsCommission/wots.stm

Lee Block, Guest Columnist

This is a guest article by Lee Block. If you would like to submit a guest column, please check out our guest post guidelines.

Whether you have a blog where you review items, or a travel blog or even a basic business blog, it is always great to be connected to the press. But, how do you go about getting those public relations firms to even give you the time of day?

First, sign up with HARO. There are two sides to HARO. One side is the Public Relations, or those who respond to the queries to get their news or ideas published, and then there is the side that is seeking information. If you are looking for information, such as items to review or information about resorts, this is a great resource.

There are some things to know though before you submit a query to HARO. First, you must have an Alexa ranking of fewer than 2,000,000. You can check your ranking with Alexa by going to their site and typing in your URL.  If you do not have a ranking under that 2 million mark, HARO will not put out your query.

Next, be careful how you word your query. If you are looking for products, do not put that you want to review products, but that you want to know about the latest trends in say, travel. Not only does HARO not like to send out queries that ask for reviews of items, but you will not get very many responses.

If you word your query right, you should get on average 50 – 100 responses. Although time consuming, respond to all with a thank you, even if you are not going to use their information that they sent you. It is always wise to say that you will keep their information for potential articles, and to please add you to their email list for future press releases.

You will find that many of the companies and PR firms that contact you will offer to send you merchandise. You see, you are opening a door for them to spread the word with free advertising. They will bend over backwards to provide you with the material, pictures and many other things that you need for your article or review.

If you form a great relationship with a PR firm, it is invaluable, as they will continually send you information, which is more research for future articles.

And, finally, when you do use the material you get from the PR company, let them know with a link to the article. Don’t be shy; ask them to put it on the Facebook page and to tweet it!  It will bring you great new traffic and followers.

Lee Block is a professional blogger and writer for others. She also is following her passion for travel and cocktails on her travel site, The Travel Connoisseurs. You can follow her on Twitter @TrvlConnOsseur.

On my Facebook personal profile and business page, I’ve added several “profile boxes” – third-party applications that appear in the lefthand sidebar that link to things such as my e-newsletter subscription form, Twitter account, NetworkedBlogs, etc.

You’ve likely added profile boxes to your account, too.

The folks at Facebook, in their infinite wisdom (or their quest to keep users constantly confused and frustrated — I’m not sure which), are eliminating the profile boxes and replacing them with bookmarks that will appear on the left menu of your Facebook home page.

Here are instructions from Facebook’s Help Desk.

How to bookmark your profile boxes before they disappear forever:

To bookmark an application, click on the “Add bookmark” button that should be visible while you’re using the application. If no option to add a bookmark is available, it is possible that the developer has not yet built this functionality for their application.

How to add an application bookmark:

1. Click the Account drop-down menu in the top right corner of your home page and select “Application Settings.”

2. Find the application you’d like to bookmark. If you don’t see it in the list, select “Authorized” from the drop-down menu to view all of your authorized applications.

3. Click the “Edit Settings” link for the application you’d like to bookmark.

4. Choose the “Bookmark” tab in the settings box. From this tab you can select or remove the bookmark for that application.

Please note that if you don’t use a bookmarked application within 30 days, you will have to click on the “More” link in the Left Menu to access the bookmark.

David Jones, owner of Blazing Onion Burger Company

“I’m not very social,” confesses David Jones, owner of the Blazing Onion Burger Company. “But when it comes to my business, I’m an extrovert.”

A year ago, Jones created a personal Facebook account and began following “the big guys” — Starbucks, Subway, McDonald’s, Red Mango, Five Guys Burgers and Fries, Red Robin.

As he lurked on their Facebook pages, Jones learned what to do — and what not to do. “Some of those restaurants only post announcements of new store openings. That’s boring. And others only post promotions. Also boring.”

Jones vowed that the Blazing Onion’s Facebook page would not be boring.

And it isn’t.

In my September Relationship Marketing column for the Snohomish County Business Journal (Washington state), I detail several innovative techniques Jones uses to keep the Blazing Onion’s business Facebook page interactive and interesting.

You can steal — er — adapt these simple techniques for your own Facebook page. Read the full article and please share one thing you learned from David Jones that you can try on your Facebook page.

By Barbara Scott
Guest columnist
Reprinted with permission

Acquisitions editors are the busiest people I know and the most elusive. If we admit what we do for a living, people want to send us their grandmother’s self-published poetry or a best friend’s novel that she wrote in high school.

We may be your next door neighbor or the guy who picks up his dry cleaning every Saturday morning, but you’ll never know. We’re not flashy dressers. We don’t talk about publishing trends in the checkout line. And at parties, if someone asks us what we do for a living, we mumble and then wave at an imaginary friend. “Nice meeting you,” we say before darting to the other side of the room.

Then how can a writer catch a break? Ah, grasshopper, you must know the secret lives of editors…not bees. Following are the 5 best ways to meet an editor:

1. Make friends with other writers, especially those who have published at least one book.

They’ve made the leap and most are willing to help you achieve your dreams.

Attend their workshops at writers’ conferences and please don’t act like a stalker. Listen and ask intelligent questions. Learn the craft of writing, as well as marketing, your book.

Then write an actual manuscript. You’d be surprised how many people have an idea for a novel, but have never applied their behinds to the seat of a chair.

How can meeting other authors help you meet an editor? Published authors know editors, and if you have actually written an entire manuscript that other authors like, they’ll be more than willing to give you a recommendation.

2. With your polished manuscript nearby, query agents (make sure to read their guidelines for submission) or pitch your project to an agent at a writers’ conference.

Attend the best conference you can afford. One of the perks of attending a conference is that you can request an appointment with an agent. Agents know editors. They know if your manuscript is ready to be published. Listen to their advice and rewrite your manuscript if necessary. An agent can be your ticket to meeting an acquisitions editor.

3. Acquisitions editors attend writers’ conferences as well.

They set up appointments with agents. They take 15-minute appointments with conferees. Sometimes they will agree to critique your manuscript for a fee.

Don’t waste your 15 minutes. I can’t tell you how many people have sat across the table from me and pitched a project that our company would never publish. Not every publisher has jumped on the vampire bandwagon . . . or Volvo.

4. Attend workshops taught by editors.

For instance, I teach workshops that vary from character development to how to self-edit your novel.

Some of us will even hold evening roundtables. Not me. I’m an early to bed, early to rise kind of person.

But you might smile and say hi at the coffee bar early the next morning. I may not be coherent, but I’ve been known to sit down and have a nice little chat with a newbie writer.

But remember, no stalking behavior. No passing manuscripts under the bathroom stall to an editor. Yes, Virginia, this has happened before and you, too, will gain a reputation as a crazy person.

And no following an editor to their hotel room door. This is especially creepy.

5. Attend a daylong intensive workshop with an editor or a small group of writers and editors.

Some editors and writers have even scheduled whole cruises around a writing theme. I’m looking into this because I think my creative juices would really flow in that atmosphere of free food, sun, and tropical breezes. However, the price could be prohibitive for most writers, especially unpublished writers, but it’s a nice excuse for a vacation.

Barbara Scott is the acquisitions editor for Abingdon Press fiction. She’s also hitting the road as The Roving Editor and teaching daylong writing intensive workshops around the country. You can follow The Roving Editor blog at http://therovingeditor.blogspot.com.

Submit a guest column to Blogging Bistro. First, check out our guest post guidelines.

Anything can happen on talk radio – and it often does. Particularly when you’re a guest on a live call-in show.  All the same, talk radio is a great way to subtly promote your business, your book, your products, your services, or your cause.

Based on my own experiences as a guest on dozens of talk radio shows, I wrote a guest column for the WinePress of Words blog (WinePress Publishing). I offer eight quick tips for interacting with callers during a live call-in show. Hope you’ll visit the WinePress blog to read the full post.

Question of the day: If you’ve been a guest on talk radio, what’s the strangest thing that’s happened to you during the show?

Chris Berggren, a professional photographer from Sonoma, California who recently joined our new Social Media Support Group on Facebook (we’re also on LinkedIn), is a new Facebook user.

He writes:

I am striving to offer interesting content, pictures primarily for now, also I often get asked for photographic related advice. …Should I just promote through my personal page? How do I communicate with friends through my business page?

Many of us struggle with this issue, Chris, and how you use your Facebook account is largely a matter of personal preference.

Facebook’s terms of service state:

• You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain (such as selling your status update to an advertiser).
• You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications (such as spam) on Facebook.

Keep ‘em separate

Both of those terms feel rather “gray” to me; to be on the safe side, I’ve elected to keep content on my personal profile and my business page separate. My personal profile “friends” are friends in real life. I stream my Blogging Bistro blog posts into my personal profile, but the remainder of my updates are about stuff that goes on in my personal life. My privacy settings are customized so that only my friends can see most of the information I post there. My personal profile is just that: Personal.

My business Page (@bloggingbistro) is devoted to business-related updates. I like Pages because they’re public. Similar to a blog, anyone can access your Page and read your updates. If they have a Facebook account, they can “like” you (formerly called “becoming a fan”).

If you choose, you can allow your “likers” to post updates, comments, videos, photos, and links to your Page, so the possibilities for interaction are endless.

Use ‘em in tandem

That’s my approach and it works for me. But others use Facebook differently. One of my clients – real estate agent Joni Kerley – uses her personal profile AND her Page to help build her business.

On her personal profile, Joni regularly shares cute pictures of her daughter’s French Bulldog puppy, and chats with friends about other “day in the life” events. She also streams her Everett Area Real Estate blog posts  into both her personal profile and her Page.

And, to entice some of her friends to “like” her new Facebook business page, she posts teasers on her profile that include a hyperlink to her Facebook Page.  Here’s an example:

When you click the link to go to Joni’s Facebook Page,  you’ll get access to her “Hot Buy of the Week” video, exclusively for her Facebook fans.

Joni uses her Facebook business page to build her reputation as the go-to real estate agent in Snohomish County, Washington. Daily, she posts interesting, quirky updates about happenings around her county.

Now, back to Chris.

After taking a look at your new FB Page, Chris, I’m liking what you’re doing with photos. Each day, you’re posting one image that showcases various aspects of your photographic talent: weddings, commercial photography, and scenic shots.

This is nice because it allows visitors to focus on a single image (as opposed to an album of images), and it shows us, at a glance, the type of work you do. As you add more pictures, you can organize the previously-posted images into albums so visitors can easily access all your photos from one central location on your FB Page.

An effective value-added technique to get people to subscribe to your page is to offer photographic advice. Perhaps a photography tip of the week. Since you own a photo studio, I assume you’re marketing to prospective clients, so your tips should be geared for them. You could write tips such as “how to color-coordinate your family for a family photo” or “the five most important things you need to know about passport photos.”

Your turn!

Please share how YOU coordinate your Facebook personal profile and Page.

And if you have ideas for Chris to try, please share them!

While you’re at it, please give the folks mentioned in this article a little Facebook love:

Custom Image Sonoma (Chris Berggren)

Everett Area Real Estate (Joni Kerley)

Blogging Bistro (Laura Christianson)

And join our Social Media Support Group:

…on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=137678352938961

…on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3279553

Do you know what the second most popular search engine is, after Google?

YouTube.

And for “how to” information, YouTube is the #1 search engine.

You can take advantage of a little-known YouTube feature to gather statistical information about videos in your niche, and to learn how people are finding those videos.

Here’s what to do:

For our example, I’m using one of my favorite marketing videos, “What if Starbucks Marketed Like a Church? A Parable.” (The video is embedded at the end of this post…be sure to watch it!)

This popular video has had over 585,000 views. Let’s find out how viewers discovered this video.

Beneath the video, you’ll see a hyperlink that reads, View comments, related videos, and more. Click the link.

Directly below the video (on the righthand side), you’ll see a box that notes how many views the video has had. Click the “Insight” button in that box and scroll down to the “Links” section of the analytics.

You’ll notice that over 67,000 viewers came from various Facebook pages. That information tells me that this video “went viral” on Facebook, with people liking and sharing it like crazy.

Over 13,000 people accessed the video from the creator’s website (where the video resides permanently on the Home page).

More than 11,000 people viewed the video from their smartphone.

And here’s a telling statistic: Over 10,000 viewers found the video through searching within YouTube.

Here’s how to apply this information to videos you are developing:

1.  Before you create a video, search YouTube for keywords you’ll likely use to help folks find your video.

2.  Check out the statistics of the most popular videos for that keyword and list the most prominent sites from which viewers are finding the videos.

3.  Note the keywords that those popular videos use in their titles, descriptions, and tags.

4.  Use the most relevant keywords in the title, description, and tags of your own video.

P.S. If you have uploaded your own videos to YouTube, and you don’t want your video’s statistics visible, click the “Insights” button (in the box next to the number of views) and then click “Private.”

Now for the video you’ve been waiting for (let me know what you think of it):

By Ava Pennington
Guest Columnist

*If you’d like to submit a guest column, check our Guest Post Guidelines.

“Let’s get together for lunch soon.”

How many times have I said those words in the past few years without actually doing it? Too many to count, I’m afraid. Oh, I post on Facebook. I tweet on Twitter. And I blog.

I’m so busy staying connected that I can easily go weeks without face-to-face social contact with real live individuals. I don’t mean teaching a class, attending a meeting, or running into someone I know at the supermarket. I mean pure social contact, where we intentionally meet just for fun and to enjoy each other’s company. A time to talk about nothing and about everything.

It doesn’t help that I’m a writer – I spend more time with my laptop than I do with people! Some argue that social networking brings the world closer together. Perhaps it does. But if we’re not careful, our array of posts will create a vast network of intimate strangers rather than cherished friendships.

When I logged on to my social network this morning, I learned which “friends” were spending the day shopping, at the beach, or reading. I was advised of the weather in three cities, read seven Bible verses, and was motivated by five inspirational quotes. I was even reminded to wish two people a happy birthday, thanks to the handy-dandy reminder in the margin of my profile page.

But do I really know what is happening in their lives? What are they struggling with? What trials are they facing behind the smiley face icons and the countless exclamation points?

A tally of my “friend” count yields 400+ names, but how many are acquaintances and how many are friends in the truest sense of the word?

Then, at the beginning of the summer, a friend in another state was diagnosed with cancer. It’s inoperable at the moment, but she’s receiving chemotherapy and hopes to have surgery in the fall. Before her cancer, she had focused on all the things needing to be done – lessons to be prepared, classes to be taught, and the duties that encompassed a wife and mom’s job description. However, during this battle with cancer, something changed.

She wrote, “I have to confess that I have not been out there cultivating new relationships or nurturing the ones that I already have. My priorities have been elsewhere…I have given much thought to the changes that I am going to make (when cancer is a part of my history and not a part of my present) with respect to my friends. I have been loving as the world loves and that is simply not good enough…When it comes to all matters of the person – social, emotional, spiritual AND physical – friends matter!”

After reading her words, I knew it was time for a change. I wasn’t impressing God with my service at the expense of my relationships. And if there was one thing that was a priority for Jesus, it was relationships. For more than three years, He poured Himself into the lives of the twelve disciples. On His last night with them, when He could have spoken about anything He wanted, He affirmed the value of relationships.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35).

So at the beginning of this summer, I decided to start living differently. I began contacting people with whom I had promised to “do lunch,” and started scheduling a specific time to meet. Breakfast, lunch, coffee – it doesn’t matter. It’s been wonderful to catch up with long-time friends for nothing more than to enjoy their company.

Funny thing is, a few of the people I’ve called or emailed have not called me back. Could be that they’ve been meaning to, but have just been too busy. Could be because they lost the message. I’d hate to think it’s because they’ve given up on the relationship, but that’s possible too.

Whatever happens, I just know I don’t want to settle for relationships with intimate strangers any more. Relationships require the gift of time to flourish into friendships. The alternative is to settle for an army of acquaintances. So if I haven’t contacted you yet (and you know who you are!), please pick up the phone or drop me an email and let’s set a time to get together…for no reason at all.

What are you doing to cultivate new relationships and nurture existing ones?

Ava Pennington is an author, Bible study teacher, and speaker. Her book, One Year Alone with God: 366 Devotions on the Names of God, will be released by Revell Books, a division of the Baker Publishing Group, in October, 2010.

This post was originally published at Ava Pennnington’s Pen Station Blog (8/3/10). Reprinted with permission from the author.

We’re going to do something different with this week’s blog makeover. Our winner is Sharon Wright, blogger at Moms with Grace.

I took a close look at Sharon’s blog, which is hosted at WordPress.com (a free blogging service) and she is definitely doing things right, design-wise. So we’re going to use Sharon’s blog as an example of what to do.

Here’s a screenshot:

I like the way Sharon’s blog is cleanly designed:

She clearly identifies her blog’s title (and theme): Moms With Grace.

Her tagline is tiny, and a bit lengthy, but it lets us know “what’s in it for me” and promises a tongue-in-cheek, lighthearted approach to the foibles of motherhood.

Motherhood comes with mistakes, mysteries and moments of pure bliss. Explore them all while keeping your dignity firmly intact.

At the top, Sharon prominently includes a “search this blog” form, which is excellent, particularly for a “mommy” blog in which many topics are interrelated.

Her e-mail subscription form is “above the fold” (visible at-a-glance to anyone who lands on her site). I suggest adding an option for people to subscribe via their RSS feed reader, as not everyone likes to receive blog updates via e-mail.

Sharon includes a “Share” widget that includes the major social networks. She also includes a couple of her latest tweets – a good enticement for those who may want to follow her on Twitter.

She lets us know she’s a contributing blogger at Attachment Parenting International, which lends her credibility.

And Sharon includes something most bloggers neglect – she lists links to her three top posts. These “top posts” don’t necessarily have to be posts that are the most commented on or the most linked-to; they are simply posts YOU want your readers to pay attention to.

Just one suggestion regarding Categories: I’d get rid of the “Uncategorized” category (which is WordPress’s default category) and file the nine posts that currently reside there into their own categories. On a blog, Categories function like an index; they’re important for helping visitors find their way around and dig deeper into your archives.

BLOG POSTS

Sharon shares from her heart, and from her personal experiences. And while she is giving advice to other moms, she doesn’t come across as preachy.

Some of her paragraphs are lengthy, which is a common problem among bloggers. In school, we were taught to write detailed paragraphs. Blogging, however, is journalistic-style writing. Short paragraphs. One tiny idea per paragraph.

Here’s the opening paragraph of one of Sharon’s posts:

I spent the last nine days worrying and praying for my 19-year-old niece who was hospitalized again for a problem stemming from her kidney disease. Her strength and stamina are inspiring, her tears are gut-wrenching and her journey is still an uphill climb. One realization for all of us this week is that she can never live by the same rules enjoyed by her peers. While most collegians survive on pizza and experiment with alcohol, my niece can get sick from too little sleep and too much stress. It doesn’t take much to upset the delicate balance of keeping her body healthy. She must adhere to very different rules and regulations.

There’s nothing wrong with this paragraph. It expresses one complete thought. But blog readers are skimmers. We read more slowly on a computer monitor, but we subconsciously want to read at the same pace as we would read a book. So we give a blog post a 2-second once-over to see if any words or phrases jump out at us.

If we’re presented with four or five lengthy paragraphs, we tend to lose heart and stop reading.

So it’s important to format your posts for skimmers. Here’s how I’d break up the paragraph above:

I spent the last nine days worrying and praying for my 19-year-old niece who was hospitalized again for a problem stemming from her kidney disease. Her strength and stamina are inspiring, her tears are gut-wrenching and her journey is still an uphill climb.

One realization for all of us this week is that she can never live by the same rules enjoyed by her peers.

While most collegians survive on pizza and experiment with alcohol, my niece can get sick from too little sleep and too much stress.

It doesn’t take much to upset the delicate balance of keeping her body healthy.

She must adhere to very different rules and regulations.

-I put that final sentence by itself because it is the thesis of her article. Putting it on a line by itself calls attention to the thesis and gives readers a chance to pause and think about the words.

-Note that I structured the pizza and alcohol sentence as a block quote. That sentence contains phrases guaranteed to elicit an emotional response in readers. Setting it off in a larger font size adds visual variety to the post, as well as telling readers, “This is important. Pay attention!”

MOM DARE

I love the “Mom Dare” Sharon includes near the end of many of her posts. The Mom Dare is a practical, doable challenge that will help moms improve some aspect of their parenting.

Again, break long Mom Dares into short paragraphs (give each part of the dare its own paragraph).

The Mom Dare would be a great place to solicit reader comments. Share the “Dare” and then ask readers to report back on their progress, or invite them to share additional ideas that work for them.

BUILDING READERSHIP

Sharon writes:

I’m committed to blogging once a week, after realizing twice a week was overwhelming with my workload.

She asked where she can submit her blog posts so she can build her readership, and how to link to social media sites.

Since your posts are so informative and well-written, I suggest searching Technorati.com http://technorati.com for “mommy blogs” or “motherhood” blogs. You can also do a Google Blog Search for mommy blogs. The search results will give you a good idea of some of the popular mom blogs (and there are thousands of them!).

Check some of them out and find out whether they accept guest posts, or reprints of previously published posts (often, you can rework a post you’ve already published into something new and fresh and submit it to a blog that doesn’t accept reprints).

Guest posting on others’ blogs will attract new links (and new loyal readers) to your blog.

LINKING TO SOCIAL MEDIA SITES

You can automatically stream your blog posts into Facebook, Twitter, and/or LinkedIn (as well as many other social networks).

In addition to (or instead of) the automated links, I suggest crafting short “teasers” that entice people who follow you on Facebook or Twitter to click through to your blog posts. I wrote a guest post for the TwiTip blog that explains how to do this: http://www.twitip.com/get-more-mileage-out-of-your-blog-archives-with-twitter-teasers/

Readers, can you offer any additional suggestions to Sharon?