 Alright, so yes, I am Catherine Lang. I am the master of words. I love words, and I am an author, a speaker and a hopesmith. I've been doing this now professionally for over almost 14 years, and I have been writing almost as long as I've been talking. So you can imagine. Today, we are going to focus on you and repurposing your words. How many of you have ever written a word? How many of you write for a living? How many of you have a blog? What we're going to do is help you figure out ways to take all of your writing words and repurpose them in ways that are going to work for you. Because you want your words, you work hard to create them, right? So you want to make sure that your words go to work for you. So today, we're going to be talking about defining your unique voice, also simple ways to get your words flowing, creating a plan for your repurposing, and how you're going to write your book. Because you can write a book. You can write a book. I know, he's just sitting there. How many of you think you can write a book? How many of you want to write a book? How many of you want a book but don't want to write it? I got an answer for you too. So I want to tell you a little bit about me. I have always been a unique individual. I'm one of those people that you kind of looked at and went, that person's not quite normal. There was one time when some friends of ours, me and my friends went to McDonald's. They went in to get something to eat. I waited in the car for them. I got bored. So I decided to walk around the roof of the car. And the police officer came out as I was wandering around the roof of my car and looked at me and he said, you know, even if you were drunk, we would never know the difference. I said, that's my plan. So I have never been normal. And that's a good thing. But as I began progressing in my path of writing, people began to tell me how I was supposed to act, how I was supposed to write, the order that I needed to do things, the way that I needed to do things. And I began to lose my unique voice. The other day at co-working night in Huntsville, and if any of y'all are from North Alabama, every Wednesday night in Huntsville they have co-working night free sessions. Great people. It's a good place to network. And the sessions cover just about anything you can imagine. But they have a website you can go to. When we were sitting in there, I was introducing myself to a gentleman. And I said, I love encouragement. I'm a natural born encourager. I'm the one that, you know, slapped the doctor's rear when I came out and told him he did a good job. But I love snark. And I love playing with words. And he said, snark and encouragement, I just can't get my head around it. It's like trying to picture a snarky rainbow. And I said, ooh, I bet that domain's available. So now I am snarkyrainbows.com. I defined my uniqueness and I embraced it. I embraced it on LinkedIn. Did you know you could be snarky on LinkedIn? Who knew? You have to find it. You have to hone it. You have to hold tight to it because you are unique. There's nothing new under the sun except you. And if you let other people tell you how you're supposed to be, you will never get to the place that you want to go. You need to find your uniqueness and walk it out. So if you don't know who you are, I mean, I'm sure you know your name. If not, you should have a name tag that will help you with that. So ask people around you, the people closest to you. What is it that really stands out about me? I enjoy entertaining. I knew I enjoyed entertaining. The third person that said you really should do stand up. I was like, no, really, I shouldn't. But I got the sense that they knew that I enjoyed entertaining. I enjoy telling stories. I enjoy making you laugh. If you're not laughing, then I think I've done something wrong or you're on Facebook. Those are my two options. Ask them what they notice about you, what stands out about you, and begin taking this all down so that you can grab hold of that uniqueness and you can utilize it. So here we define you. We're going to dare to be you. That's PQ. He is our mascot. So that's Platman and Egan. But you need to dare to be you because only you can be you, right? How many think that in order to be a business, you have to act professionally? Oh, God. Oh, well, we'll just get these next few. Okay. How many have heard of a restaurant called Wendy's? Wendy's is not exactly known for being easygoing, right? I don't know if you've ever seen this, but this guy sent a tweet to Wendy's that said, I have a confession. I asked for a courtesy card and I put soda in it. And Wendy said, does anyone know the number to 911? And that started a whole thread. This is the soda that we're looking for. And then somebody said, who runs your Twitter account? Velociraptors. Okay, this one thread is the best thread ever. Well, penicillin. And finally, when did you get so sassy? How many of you remember this? So Wendy's has always been a little bit of a sassy kind of restaurant that's never lost that personality even when they crossed into social media. How many of you have been told snarky and sarcasm do not go over on social media? Wendy's is proving it can. Now, do people get annoyed? Yes. But what does Wendy do? Where's the beef? So they are their uniqueness. You have to be your uniqueness, no matter what other people tell you. Professional doesn't have to be like everybody else. You are your own professional self. Before Facebook, professional meant suit and tie. So everybody does professional their own unique way. Now we're going to be talking about everything you need to know about word building. How many of you have ever built anything? I am in the process because I'm on medication apparently or need to be, one of the two. I needed some more space and so last Saturday I told my husband we were going to enclose the front porch and we're going to, I meant us physically, frame it up, cover it up. So I have learned to frame a wall but I had to burn the process. It's the same thing. How do you write a book? Thank you. How many of you have written a word? Now come on, more of you have written a word because more of you have written. You already admitted to that. So more of you have written a word that means you've already started the process of writing your book. You just don't know how to keep going. That's what we're going to talk about. Ways to build your words. How many of you have a phone? Pull up your phone if you have a phone. Did you know you can record on that? Okay, when you're driving down the road and you come up with a great idea for a blog or an article or a book, start recording. I've got a novel I'm working on and sometimes I'll see something and it'll spark the dialogue in my head and instead of trying to remember it I just pick up the voice recorder and I use the voice recorder. I also go old school. I have, and you all are welcome to come up and look, but this is my recipe box and it's my recipe for word building and each blog or e-book or whatever has a card when I have an idea. I write it on the card and I write it out. Every Saturday except for today because I'm with y'all. I blog, I mean I brainstorm ideas for blog posts so when I sit down to write my blog posts I have them handy. So that's old school. And then also I keep notebooks and pencils because I have yet to have pencil and paper crash on me. The pencils will break but you get a little sharpener. They still make this. So those are different ways that you can build your words. Once you build your words, once you start building your words what are you going to do with them? Organize? Yes, you're going to organize. I found out that if you do things in bite-sized pieces you get there a lot faster. When I first started reading the Bible and y'all don't have to do this. I'm just showing you for bite-sized purposes. Hang with me, we'll get there. So I would read the Proverbs every day. So on the first of the month I would be Proverbs 1. On the second of the month I'd read Proverbs 2. If I didn't read that day I just went to the next day instead of trying to catch up. And after doing this for several years I realized, hey this is a really good way to get in the habit of doing something. So I wrote down the entire Bible into 30-day readings. Which turns out is how I clean my house. I have it broken down into daily tasks, weekly tasks, monthly tasks. So why not just do our words that way? Instead of trying to do it all when you sit down I have it broken down. On Mondays I work on the ads for my products and for my content. On Tuesdays I do posts. Now what did I tell you I do if I don't get to read the Scripture? If I didn't read my Proverbs 1 go to the next day. So if I don't do my 16 posts on Tuesday what do I do on Wednesday? Thank you. But I'm doing more than I need so that it starts building itself up. That's how you create the foundation you need for your word building. I have three boys. They're boys, I say boys, 21, 18 and 12. They're like locusts. If you put something in front of them they are going to engulf it. If you put a pound of bacon out there they will eat a pound of bacon. If you put three strips of bacon they'll eat three strips of bacon. I plan overs. So I would make six breasts of chicken and I would plan how to use those chicken breasts in future meals. Not so easy now because if I put six breasts of chicken out there they eat six breasts of chicken. But the point is I had a plan for how to use my leftovers. When you're writing your blog posts be thinking about how you can plan to reuse those words. Now, when I do my leftovers I do not have the same dish every day. I change it up. I add vegetables, I mix it in, I do a stir fry. Same thing with your words. You can't put a blog post in a book. But if you take that blog post and you add a little content to it you can e-book. So we're just building on the words as we go just like we do for a planned over meal. Planned overs is not just what's for dinner. Planned overs is what you do to make your words work for you. So you're taking your blog post and when you're writing your blog post if a sentence jumps out at you set it to the side. Write it down on a card. That would be a great meme. So I'm going to do a card. That would be a great meme or image for you to create to use in your post later. So we're going to go from blog post to a downloadable pdf. How many of you want a product that you can put in your website in order to get people to sign up for your emails? How many of you have written more than 10 blog posts? How many of you have written more than 10 related blog posts? How many of you have your pdf? All you have to do is take a few minutes download that content relook at it, repurpose it and you have a pdf waiting for you that you can use as a giveaway. Because even though they can get it for free on your I mean they can get it already on your website you're making it more convenient. How many of us like to be convenience? If you drove down 65 to get here convenience is a wonderful thing. And Birmingham's not doing a good job. So from our for my pdf we're going to go to a print book. I have several different ways for you to look at it. We have gone from Bible studies to print books. We've gone from presentation outlines to pdf's. So there's a lot of different ways. Don't let somebody tell you you can't do it that way. Michael Hyatt who is a literary agent, his first book platform was actually written from social media content. People had asked him questions and he realized that he had written a book in his answers on social media. So who knows your social media posts may be a book. So we're going to go from our podcast to an e-book. Who in here does podcasting live streaming? Yes? Do you write a script for your content? Have you thought about taking that content and making an e-book for your folks? Okay. When I do my podcast it takes about 3,000 words to do a 25 minute podcast. And if I do related content all week I have 15,000 words at the end of the week. I just need to tweak it a little bit and I've got an e-book. For e-books I have a print book. So we're going to go from the podcast to our blog or our podcast or blog to our social media. And again when you save those little quotes all you have to do is throw it into your template because you already have a template, right? With your branding, because branding is important our voice, remember, see my little rainbow? Here's the words that you need for repurposing. If you want to do a pdf download you want to go around 3,000 to 8,000 words. If you're going to sell it you want to put a little bit more into it. But if you're giving it away for free you literally can do whatever you want if you're giving it away for free because it's free. But add images, make it pretty, keep it branded. With your print book you want to get up to around 65,000 words for a nonfiction book. Ebooks when we're not talking about just a digital version of a print book you can go as low as 15,000 words. That's about what I would go if I'm going to sell it to somebody. A gift book or journal I have some up here are around 30,000 words. And then of course if you want to do a resource page as a free giveaway here's a great resource you take those 10 blog posts and you come one tip away from each of those blog posts. And now you can give that as a resource page. The top 10 tips for and you put that up there as your giveaway. Always link it to your pages. Alright my shameless plug just for y'all. Download a free copy of Repurpose Your Word slide presentation by visiting CatherineLang.com for all 2018. Always do your shameless plugs. If you're not asking people for the sale they can't know you want to sell them anything. Remember Bite Size Pieces. Bite Size Pieces are what add up to the big differences that you want in your life and for your life. If you are struggling and you're not sure what step to take next you're welcome to register for a free 30 minute coaching call. I do coaching. I do one-on-one coaching for books. I do one-on-one coaching for focus. If you need that extra help I'm here for you. You can do it. It's just your choice. Do you want to write a book? Do you want to repurpose your words? Do you want to have a blog? It's up to you. Do you want to have a podcast? Totally up to you. You can do it. But you don't have to. If you don't want to write your book but you know you got the words then you can get a ghost writer. Ghost writers are not spooky. They're not cheating. They're just another tool. If you don't want to build the addition on your house you don't have to learn how to frame up a window. You can hire somebody but if your White Board of World Domination has learned to frame a wall then you want to learn to frame a wall. I can help you write your book. I can help you find somebody to write your book. I'm Catherine Lang. You can find me, connect with me. I want to connect with you. I want to encourage you. I am here for you. It is all about relationships. If we're not investing in each other, if we're not investing in the relationships, if we're not investing in the people then what's the point? So I am here to help you. You just let me know what you need. Thank you. Any questions? No? Okay, y'all can leave. It's interesting because I started writing for forums. Y'all remember forums? And I was getting paid 15 cents a word and I had to do at least 15 words for each comment. And I was only doing things that I knew I could write. And my husband said I had a BS degree in Leisure Services. And I needed to put it to work. And so I started writing about anything. Someone asked me to do articles based on the posts that I had done for them. So I started blogging for them and went, hey, I can do this. And that's how I started blogging. Yes ma'am. Now, but I will tell you that's really getting into the publishing side. I just wanted to help you build your words. If you're really interested in the publishing side we'll be talking some about that at lunch. But the ISBN number, if you go through Create Space or Ingram you can get free ones. If you buy your own, which you really want to do, there are $100 for one. $500 for a hundred. So if you're going to do more than one book, you're going to want to work with somebody to do that. Anybody else? Yes, sir. Yes. When I write the words, I'm always writing for one person, usually me, because I get me. See, y'all get that. That was funny. Y'all are supposed to laugh. But when I am repurposing the words, I still have that one person in mind. When I share on social media, I'm sharing to that one person. I'm finding where they hang out. If it's a coffee drinker, I'm going to coffee sites and hanging out with them and getting to know them. If it's writer books, I'm going to the writer websites and hanging out with them and getting to know them. Maybe. My shameless plug. It didn't work. You broke it. Well, if it doesn't work for you, email me and I'll hook you up. I got you. I got you covered. Yes, ma'am. When I did practical proverbs, it started as an e-book. I just literally took my blog posts and then I made content in between the blog posts to make the content flow. I had related content, but I treated each blog post like a separate chapter or a separate section in a chapter. Then I would just put content in between them to make it flow. When I do print books, I do an irreduction to each section. Does that make sense? Right. I take my blog post and usually any blog post I have is going to have 5 to 10 tips, ideas and when I'm thinking of a print book, I'm thinking of something that somebody could use as a Bible study. That's another market. That's the way I like to read. They could read on one day and then on the next and on the next. And so I take the content and I stick it in on a page and then I stick the next content below it, the blog posts, and then I think how can I make those flow? What do I need to tell you to make it readable? Simple, right? How many of you are ready to write your book? Yay! Well, again, a whole other world and we could do a whole other section on book publishing but you can I got 30 minutes? I got 30 minutes? Wow. Well, no, it's only 45 minutes. I got 15 minutes? I'm good? Okay. So, if you want to publish your book once you write your book, then what you're going to do is go to writer conference and meet an agent or a publisher. That's the best way if you want to go traditional. We independently publish, we have connections with editors, graphic designers that we've built over the years and so we can be a mediator for you our peculiar productions, which was what PQ is from the, you know, flatman and Egan, and we help you get the product you need or want in order for it to be professional and then you maintain control. As an indie publisher you maintain control. If you go with traditional publishing you give them control. You sign over your rights, they have rights and they give you some of the money. So, you can go either way, but the best way to get a publisher or an agent is to go to conferences and meet them personally. Again, it's all about relationships and if you want to be traditionally published it is about building relationships with the publishers and agents that represent your type of writing. Absolutely. Not me. I am a writer. I am not an editor. My 12 year old is a better editor than me. You'll still write. There are editors that for hire all over the place when the newspapers began going out a lot of people a lot of print, publication people became freelance editors and I will tell you plug for the newspaper editors greatest editors in the world. I had one that did place and purpose and I gave the book to them. 24 hours later they gave me the edited book and said I'm sorry it took so long because they're used to just knocking it out. So, you can look around again it's about relationships. We have editors like that that we contract with. Yes, sir. Tell us more about what your idea pool looks like. This is really the juxtaposition of my idea pool and I come up with titles and then at least either a sentence or two that will tell me what the title is about and I started doing that because I used to just write the titles. The thing you have an entire day where you just... Yes, yes, yes. So you mean my personal... Where was that? Do y'all know? Yeah. I do all of that. If I'm stuck at the doctor's office I pick up the magazine and I start stealing topic ideas from the print magazine. There are several and I may have the handout I'll check. If I don't have it today I've got it at the hotel I'll bring it tomorrow because we just did this with our master of mind group and co-working night but there are sites where you can plug in... They help you figure out titles. I use co-schedule headline analyzer to test my titles to see how powerful they are and I come up with all these different ideas and co-schedule and it's their headline analyzer and their headline analyzer is free. But I have some other tools like that that I have on a printout I can bring you. Five things I learned being an organizer for WordCamp and why you should do it too. Does that help? I mean, seriously, that's what... and sometimes when it's numbers I'll leave a blank but Google likes lists and they like how-tos. How to not overheat at WordCamp. You get really warm when you have all those guys hooking you up at the beginning. That's how to stay warm here at WordCamp. Anything else that I can help you with. This is just my example. I stole it from a podcaster Owen Video is his Twitter and he was talking about how when he's doing his podcasting instead of thinking I've got to record what I do so I've got to load it and I've got to make the images and he did everything on a different day and I was like that's brilliant and then I realized I already do that for everything but my writing. So I broke it down and it's made a huge difference because I don't stress. I just don't stress. You do words. Do you do the images as well? Yeah, I do the images for social media mostly because social media likes images. So I keep the images branded and I have a template in I use Photoshop. When I have a quote I want to put I just drop it in there and it all looks the same and if you go to my Instagram account you'll see that every other block is one of those images and then it's just a plain picture and it just makes it very impactful when you look at my social media. Instagram I do link it. I don't know how links work on Instagram Yeah, I don't get any feed from Instagram. Twitter is my favorite. I love Twitter. I am a Twitter fiend. I love Twitter chats. I don't know if you've ever done a Twitter chat but it's my favorite place that people are so engaging. They talk to you. It's immediate conversation in those Twitter chats and they're really good about building relationships and to me that's what social media you know if you really listen to the word social media second. Socials first and we forget that. Engaging with people is so important and I know how valuable these quotes are for folks. They like having them and they like having them again convenience. They want it convenient and if they've got a look for it so I've got my quotes on my blog post but then I can share them on social media as well. Yep, the quotes. And it's also going to be on my blog post so it's all connected when you're repurposing your words you're connecting your words. You're not just making separate items you're rolling it all together and by rolling it all together it makes it easier to create more because you're not having to you're recreating as opposed to inventing from scratch. So it's a lot easier to make dinner if you already have all the elements prepared than if you have to come in and do it all. I use co-schedule and yeah, I use co-schedule it is a paid service but I like it because it's set up in WordPress. I don't have to leave when I put my blog post in I scroll down, I can schedule all of my social media while my blog post is still in draft. I only say who's who because that's mine. Yeah, but there are 101 social media management tools. Thank y'all very much. You can find me we'll be talking at lunch if you want.