 Hi, welcome everyone to Building Your Author Platform with Rusty Shelton. My name is Taryn Edwards and I am one of the librarians at the Mechanics Institute of San Francisco. This event has been produced in partnership with the San Francisco Writers Conference with whom I work closely to provide learning experiences that are relevant to the Bay Area writing community. We also have with us today, acting as my co-host, Barbara Santos, who is Marketing Director for the San Francisco Writers Conference. And our speaker today is Rusty Shelton, who is a prolific writer and public speaker on the topics of public relations, marketing, business and personal branding. He is a regular at the San Francisco Writers Conference and the founder and chairman of Zilker Media. Now, I will put his websites in the chat space. I encourage you to check them all out because there's a lot of content there that is relevant, I know, to you and your projects. Rusty will also be offering a class with us on August 28th, so stay tuned. We will have registration details shortly. I hope by the time I have the video from this recording ready to share with you. So the way it's going to work today is Rusty will share some of his knowledge and then Barbara and I will moderate the questions. So please post those in the chat space, but give him a chance to answer the question in the process of giving his presentation because we have a large audience and I know there will be some duplication. And you know, of course, we're going to try and answer as many as possible. All right, welcome Rusty and thanks for coming in, coming and joining with us today. Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me and Barb. Thank you as well. And for everybody that's here, thank you for joining us today. I have been really looking forward to this presentation and I take very seriously, you know, you guys setting aside an hour and midday on Friday to be here. And so my goal is to really just provide as much value as I possibly can during the next hour that we have together and maybe I'm being a little ambitious here. But what I want to try to do in this presentation is really cover a lot of ground. So the main focus for me kind of the first 20 minutes or so of the presentation is I want to share some thoughts with you on how to build a brand. I know for many of you, if you're currently an author, if you've started going to writer's conferences and getting feedback, probably the word that makes you pull your hair out more than any other is platform and it's what you're hearing from agents and publishers. And so what I'm going to try to do today is just really cut through some of that clutter and give you a few ideas of things that I've seen work really well over the last 17 years of working with authors and publishers to launch successful books. So again, we're going to start off on the branding side of things. We'll transition there and they're looking at the new media landscape. And then we'll talk a little bit about a roadmap to kind of shift that bookmarking strategy and encourage you to think about things a little differently this year and beyond. One note. So the last half of this presentation at least is going to be devoted to your questions. And so as I'm going through, as Taryn mentioned, please just add those questions in the chat and we'll spend the last 30 minutes of our time together diving in on those. All right. So let's kind of start on the branding side of things. And I love this picture because anytime I talk to a room full of authors and I mentioned this concept of a personal brand, for many of you, this is either the face you're giving me from the audience or it's the face you want to give me from the audience. And the reason is because for many of us, when we think about this idea of a personal brand, our minds immediately go to people that are building ego driven, hey, look at me kind of brands. And one of the things I want to get out of the way just right out of the gate. When we talk about this concept of building thought leadership or building a platform or a brand as an author, I'm not talking about a brand just so that you can stroke your ego or build an audience for the sake of it. In fact, it's actually completely the opposite. What I want to do is I want to lead with what I like to think of as mission driven thought leadership. I want you to be perceived not as an author with a book to sell or a leader with a consulting gig or speech to sell. Instead, I want people to look to you as somebody that they can learn from, as somebody that's going to give them value in a long the way. What we're going to do is we're going to nurture them toward hopefully moving forward with that book or other ways of engaging with you. So let's start on the branding side of things. I talked to a lot of authors and, you know, when I asked, hey, how do you think about branding for many of them? It's, you know, it's my book cover or it's what my website looks like or it's my logo and certainly each of those things contribute. But the way I like to define branding is really, really simple. And that is creating an image in the minds of your audience. All right. So if you sort of think about that, creating an image in the minds of your audience, what's really interesting is in today's media landscape, there are two very distinct phases to creating that image in the minds of your audience. So phase one is what I like to think about as pre-engagement. Okay. So phase one is before you and I meet in person, before I buy your book and read it, before I decide to hire you to consult with my organization or before I bring you in to give a virtual presentation. And so in phase one, because the image that you create in my mind isn't created in person or over the phone or after reading your book or as a result of a great experience, in phase one, pre-engagement, the image you create in my mind is creating on page one of Google. And from there, if we're lucky, it's then created on your website or on your LinkedIn profile or on your Twitter account. And that initial image that you create in my mind in phase one is either an image that is congruent with what you're actually going to deliver once I buy that book or as a producer, once I book you to come on the air for an interview, or it's an image that's either non-existent because I can't find you, or if I can find you, the image that's created on that LinkedIn profile or on that website, your nephew built six years ago, isn't an image that accelerates me through to phase two. And in fact, probably is throwing sand in the gears of me actually making it to phase two. So we're going to spend a lot of time today on that phase one image. Phase two is post-engagement. So phase two is once I decide to buy that book and read it, once I work with you and your company, once I bring you in to give that speech and the image you create in my mind in phase two is connected back to the answer to one very simple question. And that is, did you over deliver on my expectations or did you under deliver those of you that are prolific authors? You are somebody that, you know, once somebody opens your book, it's off to the races. They're going to drive positive word of mouth. This is going to be a really happy reader. What I would tell you is in today's landscape, that is not enough to be successful. That is table stakes. And so to be super clear, I'm not suggesting we do phase one instead of phase two. I'm going to consider phase two a given. If you're, if you're involved with this organization, if you're, if you're somebody that's really pouring into your books, I'm going to assume you're writing good books. What I want to make sure is that we take that exceedingly positive phase two image and move it upstream so that when somebody's thinking about buying that book, thinking about interviewing you, thinking about moving forward, that we're creating an image that actually is congruent with the quality that you're going to deliver once I buy and read that one. Now, one of the really important principles to think about in phase one is this concept of authority by association. Okay. So one of the really, really important concepts to get when somebody, uh, it has been referred to you and they get to your website. Uh, what you've got to be crystal clear on in phase one is just the normal headshot or a normal picture of you doesn't yet bring an image to their mind, right? Cause it's the first time they're seeing you. And so one of the ways that you can really accelerate trust with your audience is to do what John Acuff is doing here on his website. Now, for many of you, this may be the first time you're ever seeing John and so just a normal picture of him wouldn't do anything to accelerate trust through phase one. So what he's done here is he has shared some of the places where he's given speeches and been featured. And my guess is for many of you, you don't know John, but you know Forbes and you know, the New York times and you know, FedEx, et cetera. And so what happens in a really subtle way is the image you have in your mind for John is now along for the ride with the image that's in your mind for those particular logos. So one of the things that I want each of you to think about, we're going to talk about an online brand audit here in a second. One of the things I want each of you to think about is what logos, if you've been featured by media in the past, if you want awards as an author, if, if you've worked with certain high-profile organizations, I want you to think about how can you bring those things forward in phase one visually. Going back to this idea of not building an ego driven brand, what I want you to do on your website and on your LinkedIn profile and on your Twitter account is walk a really fine line. Essentially, I want the visuals to say what I don't want you to say about yourself, which is top of her category, thought leaders, standout author, best-selling author, media personality, et cetera. Okay, the, the, the logos do that, the 3D cover of your book, the focus of an image of you in a setting like a TEDx talk or a speech on stage. And then the flip side, the entirety of your content strategy from your book to your blogs, to your podcast, your social is entirely focused on mission driven thought leadership. In other words, leaving somebody better off as a result of having read that article, whether or not they ever move forward with your book. But I'm not interested in reading your blog until I know why you're the person to teach me. And so that's why we've got to do both sides of that point and I can talk in more detail on that when we get to the Q&A section. One of the big things that I want each of you to do after today's session is to do an online brand audit for yourself. Okay, here's what I want you to think about. Let's say Barb and Rich out in the San Francisco area referred you to me and they said, hey, Rusty, if you're looking for a great speaker on this topic, this is the person you should talk to. Well, even though I love Barb and Rich, the first thing I'm going to do when I get that recommendation is I'm going to go kick the tires on Barb's experience with you and make sure she wasn't the outlier in having a great experience with you as a speaker. And so first thing I'm going to do is pop your name into Google and so one of the real practical things I want each of you to think about is if I am Googling you from Austin, Texas as a potential speechbooker for you, number one, can you be found? Okay, if when I Google your name, you are a ghost on page one or at least your ghost above the fold, my guess is there are one of two reasons why that could be the case. Number one, you just intentionally never worried about a platform. You haven't been active on social. This is something you never really thought about to this point. And it's so cool. We're going to talk about how to change that today. If instead the reason that I can't find you is the much more common reason, which is you have an incredibly common brand name, then one of the things we're going to talk about today is whether or not it makes sense to change your name. All right. One of my favorite examples of this is one of my favorite authors in the PR and marketing space, a guy named David Mierman Scott. His name's David Scott. And what he recognized early on was if he went with David Scott as his brand name, he was competing against hundreds of other David Scott's that were out there. And so this is going to sound super in the weeds for some of you, but the foundation of success in terms of building a platform is actually having a name that you can own when you're referred to somebody like this situation. So what I want you to think about here, a name like David Scott is like a piece of virtual real estate. Okay. On that David Scott lot, there were hundreds of other David Scott's trying to build the tallest possible tower in terms of visibility. When he added in his middle name, David Mierman Scott, that became what was on the front cover of his book. That's how he was introduced on NPR on stage. Essentially what he did was walk across the street to a piece of dirt that was completely empty and with the very first brick that he laid in his foundation, he owned search. Okay. So if you're hearing this today and your name is Steve Johnson or James Smith or you're unlucky enough to have a really unique name that you share with a major league baseball player or an axe murderer from the seventies that dominates page one results. One of the first things that I want to really encourage you to think about is does it make sense to add either a middle initial or a middle name to your brand name so that when I hear you on NPR and I write your name down and I Google you later or when I get referred to you, I can get right to the person that I'm looking for. Again, Barb just referred you to me. I want to find you. And if I can't find you, the kind of a foundational piece of this is we're really neat to start with a name that you can own. By the way, if you don't own your name as a website address, so like for example, for me, Rusty Shelton dot com. What I want you to do as soon as we're done today is go to GoDaddy or Namecheap or another registrar and I want you to type in your name and if it's available, I want to go ahead and reserve that name. By the way, while you're at it, get your kids' names, get your grandkids' names. That digital real estate is valuable today. It's only going to get in the future. During that online brand audit, in addition to trying to figure out, hey, do I own search right now? And by the way, the other thing I should mention is consistency. David Miriaman Scott is David Miriaman Scott everywhere. It's his Twitter account. It's what he's introduced as for speeches. It's on the front cover of his book. So if you decide to make a shift in terms of your brand name, I want to make sure that we make that really consistent across the board. The other things I want you to think about. So on page one, if I google your name, am I getting to a blog spot, a blog that's decaying since 2014? Am I getting to a LinkedIn profile that you haven't looked at in four years? Get real clarity because if I'm a publisher thinking about offering you a book deal, if I'm a TV producer thinking about covering you from a potential customer, potential book buyer, what I find in phase one is either going to accelerate me through or it's going to do the opposite of that. Responding to your audit, do you need to consider a brand name change and then update all your profiles? By the way, if you are watching this and if I get to your Twitter profile or your LinkedIn profile and when I get there, I've got the little avatar picture in the header area. For many authors that I talked to that header area, I'm seeing a sunset in Big Sur or I'm seeing snow-capped mountains in Colorado or some really gorgeous landscape picture that does zero for the image in my mind for you as a thought leader, as an author, as a standout. So use that header area, give me a picture of you on stage or a picture of you with podcasts, headphones on or something that's connoting a bit of authority because that's going to accelerate trust in really a much different way. I want to spend a couple of minutes before we start taking some questions, really looking at where we are in today's media landscape. We're going to go much deeper on this when we get to the workshop. But I want to really touch on this because this framework is one that I want each of you to use alongside the promotion that you do for your book and alongside the focus that you have around building your platform. One real quick thing before I jump into this. Number one, when you are building a brand or a platform, always full stop, always you start with a brand built around your name. Okay. You are the focus. The book is one of several spokes in terms of different ways that people can get value and interact with your content. Please do not build a website for your book. Do not lead with the book as the brand. We hope to become fortunate enough to have a book that stands alone, that is so successful, it stands alone as the brand that you can super the soul. Over here, one of the few examples of books that have done that. When you start off, if you are marketing to somebody with a book cover or a book title, their guard is up. They're expecting they're being marketed to. When you lead with mission driven thought leadership, you work them then back towards the book as you get value and build affinity with them. So in today's media landscape, three categories of media. Rented media, earned media, owned media. When I started my career back in 2003, my first job coming out of school was actually as a book publicist here in Austin, Texas and I'll never forget walking in the door my first day on the job. I had eight books stacked on my desk at a telephone and a three ring binder. And if I was pitching drive time radio in San Francisco, I thumbed through that three ring binder, get to the San Francisco page, pick up the phone, cold call a producer and try to charm them into having one of my authors on the air. And so if you think back to that previous media environment, if you wanted to get a message out at scale about your book, there were only two ways to do it. You could either rent the media's platform by buying an ad in the newspaper or on radio, or you could earn your way on their platform by getting interviewed or featured. But in that previous media environment, there was no way for you to kind of push the media out of the way and go directly to your audience at scale, right? You could do it one reader by one reader or one meeting by one meeting, but not scale. Fast forward to where we are today. We still have rented media. We still have earned media, but the biggest game changer and I'm going to argue for each of you watching this today, the biggest opportunity for leverage and impact as you grow your platform is the growth of owned media. Alright, so it's just briefly unpacked these. So rented media, the definition of rented media, these are all of the messages that go out where you fully control the content, but somebody else owns the real estate, somebody else owns the audience. Advertising is the obvious in this category. The other big one in this category are your social media channels. So your Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, Twitter account. And for a lot of people that say, you know, Russell totally get advertising, but you know, those are my relationships on LinkedIn. Those are my relationships on Twitter. I'm not paying for those. Why is that rented media? Here's the way I want you to think about it. When you build an audience on Facebook or you build an audience on Twitter or on LinkedIn, essentially what you're doing is you're gathering a group of people on dirt that Facebook owns or dirt that LinkedIn owns. It's not that that's a bad thing. And in fact, in the workshop, we're going to talk about how to do that really well. But you're going to have crystal clarity that when you're building an audience on Facebook, your ability to get to that audience is completely beholden to Facebook's algorithm and their willingness to let you get to that audience. And so the two big blue arrows that you see right here are there for a reason. And that is, I want you to have a mindset shift. Anytime you have a message going out, either on rented media or on earned media, we're trying to do two things with that message. Number one, we're trying to over deliver with the message itself, right? Of course, we're trying to give a great interview or give a great speech or write a great article, obviously. The second thing we're trying to do, how do we give this person who is reading this article on real estate that Forbes owns or real estate that LinkedIn owns or Facebook owns? How do we give them a reason to get up out of their seat and follow you back over to real estate that you own? And I'm going to touch on that briefly here in a second. Earned media is the second category. These are all of the messages that go out on real estate somebody else owns, where the impression of the audience is that you earned that message. Okay, so these are media interviews, speaking engagements, Amazon reviews, word of mouth about your book, awards, all of that lives up here in this earned media category. Nothing does more for your authority, for your credibility than earned media, right? A message just hits us differently in this category. For that reason, I see a lot of authors make the mistake of putting all of their eggs in this earned media basket. They hire republicists, they sit back, they do some interviews, and they hope that that's the thing that actually moves their book forward. When in fact, the risk factor around earned media is you don't actually have any direct control in this category over whether or not a message goes out. Right? So you get indirect control, write a great book. Probably you're going to get some interviews, but that producer still has to say yes, or that blogger still has to write the review. So part of what I want you to think about with earned media, yes, it's important. But if you don't have the right owned media strategy, what ends up happening is a very expensive exercise in not generating ROI, not generating leverage as a result of the PR that you're doing. That leads us to the last category, owned media. So owned media includes all of the assets where you fully own the connection with your audience. This is your website. This is your blog. This is your email list as well as a mailing list. No number matters more to a potential publisher or to the potential success of your book than the size of your email list. Okay. And for that reason, I want to spend the last part of this presentation, the last five minutes or so before we jump in on questions talking about your own media. All right. I'm a football guy. I'm an Austin Texas native. And so I'm going to use a football analogy here that I think will help each of you understand how to think about your owned media. Okay. So each of you as you're sitting here today, if you have a book, you have three audiences in place. So if you can imagine you've got a virtual football stadium, there's a line cutting it in half down the 50 yard line. Audience one is on one half of that stadium. Audience one is everybody that as we sit here today has crossed over and bought a copy of your book. Or if you're a nonfiction author that's trying to generate sales for something else, they crossed over and bought consulting from you or bought an audit from you or something, the conversion you're ultimately trying to drive. Okay. And for each of you, there's a certain amount of people in the seats on that half of the stadium. The other half of the stadium is audience two. And audience two is everybody that as we sit here today is on your email list. You own the connection with them, but they've not yet decided to buy that book, or they've not yet decided to raise their hand about working with you in some capacity, but you own the connection to them. You got a chance to nurture them over time. Audience three is outside the stadium. So audience three is everybody that falls squarely in your target market. They would love your book. They could benefit tremendously from working with you. They have no idea who you are. There's no brand recognition whatsoever. The mistake that I see so many authors make is they spend a fortune in advertising marketing PR to reach as many people as possible in audience three. Again, squarely in your target market have never heard of you before. And they're typically driving those people into a website or to use this analogy into a stadium where the only thing for that audience to do is either immediately jump to audience one by clicking on that Amazon link to buy a copy of your book, or if they're not yet ready to do that very practically the only other thing for them to do is hit the back button in their browser. Okay, to stick with football that is a Hail Mary. We're going to get lucky with that here and there. You cannot build your marketing strategy around that. If as we sit here today right now, if your website is a virtual brochure, in other words, if I can go there and read about your background as an author, if I can learn about your book, maybe I can find a blog. But when it comes down to it, if the only thing for me to do is either click to buy the book or click to fill out that contact form or if I'm not yet ready to do that, the only other thing for me to do is hit the back button. Instead of being a virtual brochure, the way I want you to think about your website is it needs to really act almost like a virtual media property. Our goal when somebody gets there is how do we extend our interaction with this person? How do we give them a reason to take a seat in audience to so that we can nurture them toward a book purchase? And this will be my last slide before we jump into Q&A. This gets the term probably many of you have heard about, which is what is your lead magnet? What is the offer that you're giving to the audience that gets to your website? That's a reason to take a seat in audience to or very practically a reason to join your email list. There are three categories of lead magnet. Category one, unfortunately, is what I see for most authors and that is click here to sign up for my newsletter or click here to sign up for news and updates. And as each of you know that have that right now that converts at a horrific rate. Category number two is some free exchange of value. So click here for free white paper or free download or free chapter, free guide, free workbook, etc. Certainly that works better than category one. What I found is is level two can work well. If you're well known, in other words, if people already have some brand recognition, they know that they're going to get value from that download. On the way up, what we have seen be more successful than anything else is level three interactive content, offering a free quiz or a free assessment on the website where instead of you giving me something that you think is valuable in the form of that free download, you give me something that I think is valuable, which is free personalized feedback. One quick example before we throw it to Q&A. We worked on a book a few years back called The Confidence Code. It was published by Harper Business. Claire Shipman and Catty K wrote that book. One of the ideas early on was to create a confidence quiz and Claire and Catty partnered with researchers at Ohio State University. You don't have to do that, but they did in this case and created a confidence assessment. That assessment broke every rule in the book. It was 55 questions long. The first 10 questions are all just the ridiculous demographic information that researchers want. How much money do you make? Who did you vote for? Just stuff that would scare off a lot of people. To date, that quiz has been taken 220,000 times over the last four years. Here's how they used it. Going back to that arrow that you saw from Rented and Earned. When Claire and Catty would get to the end of an interview and the host would lob them that softball question, which is, hey, where can our audience go for more information? 99% of authors, the way they answer that question is, hey, our new book, The Confidence Code, is out wherever books are sold right now. And you can go to theconfidencecode.com to learn a little bit more about it. Well, the problem with that is the only people that we're converting on that three to one call to action is the minuscule percentage that just happens to be ready to buy the book that day. So instead, when they got that softball question from the host, what Claire and Catty would say is, hey, I'm sure a lot of members of your audience are curious how confident they are. We get that question so much. We set up a free confidence quiz. You can go to theconfidencecode.com to take it. And when they did that, what they were able to do was siphon off a dramatically larger percentage of the audience that they were reaching because they were not just converting the people that were ready to buy the book. They're also converting the additional five to 15% that aren't yet convinced this is a book they need to buy, but are sure pretty interested where they fall on that scale. So one of the things I want to encourage each of you to think about, if you are spending a dime right now on PR, marketing and advertising, and you don't have either a level two or level three lead magnet on your website, you are throwing money in a fireplace. Okay, you might be getting some media, but the results that come out of that are going to be really small because it's only the Hail Marys that are getting completed. Instead, make sure you've got a call to action that gives your audience value and gives you a chance to nurture them toward that book purchase. As Taryn mentioned, I'm going to be doing a workshop on August 28th. I'm excited to do that, but let's spend the next 30 minutes or so diving in on your questions. Let's unmute ourselves. We have a question here. Oh, where did I lose it already? Sorry. Wow, they're coming in so fast. Okay. This viewer has a LinkedIn and a Facebook page where her banner heading is her book cover. She thinks from what you've just told her that that's too much of a sales pitch. Yeah, if possible, what I would rather out there would be a visual of her in action. So in other words, whether she's speaking, whether she's training, whether she's doing an interview. So in some kind of a setting that connotes authority, I like the book better a lot better than I like a picture of snowcap mountains. But I think an even better way to do that is to have a visual of her personally in a setting that connotes authority. How do you feel about hiring a search engine optimization company to help? It's not necessarily a bad thing to do that. I think foundationally, again, I see a lot of people jump right to spending money with publicists and digital marketers and SEO companies. And we do those things. So it's not that I think those things are bad, but most people jump right to that before they actually have the right brand in place before they have a good lead magnet in place. And so what I would encourage is pause all of your spending until you have a brand name that you could own search for until you've got a good home based website. And as you drive traffic there, you've got a way to actually extend your interaction with that audience. So again, if you don't have that good lead magnet, my encouragement would be to wait to deploy any dollars until you do lots of great content here. You know, I just wanted to address a question that Kali submitted early on and maybe your focus on branding yourself first rather than your books is maybe let me just read the question because it sounds as if maybe you've covered this a little bit, but she asks, how do you fine tune your author brand when you grow as you grow? You have more titles. So for example, she has nine books on the market and is known as an author, but she's also an award winning filmmaker and a photographer and a transformational coach. So yeah, well, first of all, I, Kali, it's a friend of mine from the San Francisco Riders Conference and she does great work. But this to me is an exact reason why you never build a brand around the book because hopefully you have nine of hopefully you continue to do new things in the future. The one thing that's never going to change is Kali's name. I guess unless you know, the last name changes at some point in the future which I doubt. So that name, that's the thing that's consistent. I want people to see Kali again, not as somebody with a book to sell or coaching to sell, but as a mission driven thought leader. The thing that blew my mind in what you were saying earlier and it's been my problem is when you said consider changing your name, if it's a really common name or whatever. And we've had several questions from people. Maybe you want to give us a little more feedback on the possibility of changing your name or spelling them medically or the reason I say it that way is because I want to be dramatic. I want this to really hit you over the head because if you have a brand name right now that is super competitive or that you share with somebody that's really well known. You are making this much harder on yourself than you need to in terms of building an audience. The more media you do, the more people are going to be looking for you on Google and if you can't be found, they're not going to pack a lunch and go seven pages deep in Google to find you. And so the easiest remedy for that, Barb, is to either add a middle initial, which I find more people are comfortable doing, you know, rusty R. Shelton, for example, or the full middle name. But having a name that number one, you own the URL for, but number two, most importantly, that when somebody looks for you, they're referred to you, they want to find you, they need to be able to find you right away. And so if you have a name right now where that's unrealistic, I think foundationally, the best thing you can do is to start fresh on a piece of dirt that you're going to own search for right out of the game. What about if you have a pen name? Pen names make all of this a lot of harder, I will say that. So it's for some people it's necessary. But if you have a pen name, it's still, you know, the beauty of that is you can pick a name that you can own if you haven't picked it yet. So you can pick a name that's available and that's, you know, Blue Ocean to use an overused term. But the same advice would be true, which is build the brand around your name, whether it's a pen name or the real name rather than the book title. Someone is saying that they have an excellent email list. But how do you feel about sending out regular eblast to that list? At what point do you have people opt out? Yeah, well, you know, I think first of all, great that you got a good email list. You absolutely need to be sending content to that list. So there is a fine line, as we all know, I probably get, I don't know, 30 email newsletters a week. Most of them I can't delete quickly enough, because somebody's just pounding me over the head with a sales pitch or marketing. There are a couple that I look forward to opening every month because I know when I open it, I'm going to laugh or I'm going to learn something. And so what I would say is the most important four hundred words that you're going to write every month are the four hundred words that go into that email newsletter. What I love about an email newsletter is number one, it's a great way to stay connected with your audience. There's nothing, by the way, that drives actual revenue from a digital marketing perspective like email marketing. Nothing is close to it right now. So we know it drives conversions. The other thing that I like about email newsletters, though, Barb is it's a monthly reminder to refer you. In other words, the ability to just click forward and say, this is the author I was telling you about at the barbecue last week. I forgot to send you the information. That's the other reason to think about an email newsletter. Don't overdo it. So don't overmail to that list and make sure that your best content is the content that's going out with that email newsletter. Great advice. Yeah, Alan is wondering if the fiction community really needs to think a lot about branding oneself as an author. Yes, they do. They do. So I would say it's certainly tougher to do it on the fiction side. I think we all acknowledge that, but it's still a great opportunity that you have as a fiction author to build a brand around you. The question that I get a lot of times, Taryn, is how do I get, listen, if I was writing a book on confidence, of course, a confidence quiz is easy to do. Or on leadership, of course, that's easy to do. I'm writing on superheroes or I'm writing on 1800s historical fiction or whatever it might be. And so what I always encourage people to think about, a quiz actually in many cases works better on the fiction side when you can tie it back to things that your audience already knows and is familiar with. So for example, if you're writing about what's called superheroes, you could do a quiz around which superhero most closely matches your personality. Or if you're writing a horror book, what axe murderer would you be if you were an axe murderer? Have fun with it. Create something that connects back to characters that they already know in that space. And then let's use that to then work them back to the thing that you're really interested in, which is, of course, your books. Yeah, it sounds like it might be a little easier for people who write serieses because then they can kind of capitalize on the main characters, personality and brand as well. Right. And the other thing I always think about Taryn with novels is when you're marketing a novel, you want to think like a nonfiction author. In other words, you want to think about the themes in the book, the tangible things that could be pulled out and focused on one of the bestselling novels that we ever worked on was a book called Saving Max. And it was written by a woman named Antoinette Van Juden. And the book was really focused in on a mom whose autistic son was accused of murder. And she spends the book trying to figure out is her son actually capable of doing this? Well, Antoinette had two autistic children. And so there was a nonfiction thread in that book that she was able to do a ton of media on that connected back to a novel. And so I do always encourage novels to think about, OK, what are you that personal experience on that connects back to your book? And can we use that as a way back in terms of promotion? Well, that's fascinating. I mean, our fiction is always our child in one way or another. So there's always a through line through that runs through it. Let's see now, Jim has a question. He's a first time author and he has a writing coach that advises him not to talk about his personal career or family, not to include that in his author bio. And now he has an agent that says that he that he should make his bio more personal. What what do you think? Or do you have any comments on that? I think his agent is exactly right. And that is you want to bring that depending on what you're writing about. But in most cases, you want to try to bring forward the things that give you credibility in that space, which in a lot of cases is going to be, you know, your professional background, the family stuff. You know, I include information about my family and my bios. That's more of a subjective thing if you're comfortable doing that. If that's, you know, the something that's important to you, but the professional side, absolutely. Yeah, what's the point of a bio if you don't include your bio? Yeah, I don't know what else you're going to put in there exactly. That's great. Yeah, that first slide had a banner with all of the places that the speaker had been published, you know, New York Times and all of that. What do you think about using logos from writers' organizations that you belong to? It's not really an endorsement, but it looks good on your website. Yeah, I would say on that, Barb, is let's use the best logos that we have. And my guess is some of you were thinking, yeah, Russ, you'd be great if I had the New York Times to put on my website or the San Francisco Chronicle. If you don't have that stuff yet, let's start with the best stuff that we've got. And maybe that is writers' organizations or a smaller award that you've won or even local media. What we want to go to is we want to go to images that already have an image in the mind of your audience. And if they know that group or if that's a group that connotes a little bit of authority, then it's going to be a trust accelerator for you. This is particularly true with media. Media always is looking for proof that somebody else has covered you or somebody else has validated your work. And so if you've got that stuff and you've been thinking, I don't come across as too forward here. I don't want to look like I'm bragging. I will tell you that using those things visually, you can really move the needle tremendously. I have an interesting one. This person already has a website for their business, not their name, their business. They want to start selling their book that's related to that business. How do you merge the two or do you? So I would assume for this person, the book is really something that's meant to generate leads back to the business also. And so the key thing I would say on that is it's not either or it's both. So in other words, the business should be the interstate. Your personal brand website is an on-ramp back to that interstate. The practical reality is if I get to a business website, my guard is up. I'm expecting I'm being marketed to and sold something and the speed to trust is a lot longer than it is. If I just heard you on NPR or I spread an article you wrote and I get to a website that's built around you, an individual that I view as somebody I can learn from as somebody that's gonna teach me something, then my speed to trust is a lot quicker there. So what I would say there, Barb, is don't take the business website down, but plant a flag for yourself where that business is one of several ways that people can get value from content you're creating. Yeah, that I think will answer a couple of people's questions who have started businesses and started marketing, but also are a little bit confused about how to separate one's personal brand from one's business marketing. Yeah, I think the most important thing there, Taryn, is just big picture, guys. The environment we're in right now, if you are leading with a corporate brand, the audience that you're trying to reach, number one is more distrustful of businesses than they've ever been before. Number two, it is exceedingly difficult to differentiate a generic business name from another generic business name from another generic business versus on the personal brand side, we are really gravitating towards individual thought leaders that we believe are more trustworthy, are more interesting in most cases, and this is one of the reasons for the explosion in micro-media around podcasts and newsletters. We're gravitating towards individuals, and so if you are leading with a corporate brand right now, unfortunately, you're really not set up for success. It's not, again, I don't want you to take that away, but I want you to come out from behind the corporate brand and be out front as an on-ramp back to it. Speaking of corporate brands, are there copyright issues with using profile logos from big companies? So you want to be careful if it's client logo, so for example, if you gave a speech to Microsoft, I wouldn't want you to put the Microsoft logo on your website unless you had permission from them, but media, where you've done media in the past, hyperlink the logo to the media hit and you're helping them drive traffic, they want that. So for media logos, there's really not an issue there, assuming you're driving some traffic over to them. Writers association, et cetera, awards, most of those places want their logos out there. What you want to tread a little more carefully is around client logos and just making sure they're comfortable with you showcasing those. So just to clarify that, like if you wrote an article for the New York Times, you want to, you can use that logo and have that link go right to your article. Yeah, so what I would do is I would have that logo in two places. I would have it on the homepage, ideally in one of those little logo belts, and when I click on New York Times, I'm going right to the New York Times website. I would also encourage for those of you that have a personal brand website, add a press room within your website and a press room should be a place where all of your media hits are contact information, ideally for your publicist or for you, a download section that is high-res headshot, high-res book cover, a press kit. That's a simple way to tell the media you've been there down there. And you do that nicely on the bio that you provided for this class or for this event. So I just put the link to that in the chat space so you can see how Rusty does it with his own bio. His links to the Huffington Post and to Wharton or Forbes, they link directly to articles that he's in or he has written. Let's see, there was another question that I think will kind of cut through some of the stress and worry about how to focus one's platform efforts. Bo asks, what are the three most important platforms that you recommend for authors? She says blogs take a long time, a lot of time, but are there some takeaways that you can offer about where one should focus? So Bo, I'm gonna answer this a little differently although I'll give you the three. What I would say is this is such a common thing which is when we get to content marketing for most people the questions are around the where of the content. In other words, should I have a podcast or should I be on LinkedIn or should I be on YouTube? The practical reality is the much more important question is the what, what kind of content is your audience looking for? Pictures used to be for Instagram, videos used to be for YouTube, text used to be for blogs. It's now for everything's for everything. It's all omnichannel content. And so the more important question is not the distribution but what kind of content. So one of the most important things that I want you to think about it, those of you that are trying to create content to build an audience, the analogy I like to use on this Darren is your content strategy is kind of like your personal newspaper. And the mistake that I see a lot of well-meaning would be authorities make is they either fill their newspaper with ads, each overly promotional content or the much more common mistake that I see is they fill their newspaper with op-eds or opinion pieces, meaning it's just the rusty Shelton show again and again and again and again. And there's two problems with that. Number one, I'm gonna get bored with it pretty quickly. Number two, if I'm standing on stage in a stadium that's got my friends and family in it, and that's it, if all I'm serving up is my own style and stuff in terms of growth. And so what I wanna encourage for your audience, we're gonna go deeper on this in the workshop, three categories of content. Okay, that everything should level up to. Category number one is you driven content. All right, this is content that connects back to your intellectual property, your lessons learned, your vulnerabilities, your content, really, your perspective. Most people are doing this at 99%. I want you to do it at one third. The more vulnerable, the more interesting, the more entertaining, obviously, the quicker you're gonna grow. Second category is news driven content. What David Muirman Scott likes to call news jacking, that's taking something that's really prominently in the news cycle, something your target audience is paying attention to, is worried about, is anxious about, is excited about, and you providing analysis. You're not reporting the news, you're providing analysis for your audience. If you're a novelist, that might be reviews of the big books in your space, or the big movies that are coming out, and you're providing a really interesting review for that. Third category, I think is for those of you that are just getting started, the most important in that is relationship driven content. The best way for you to use content to grow your audience and build goodwill is to involve as many other people as you possibly can in that content. A really brief example of this. There's an author we worked with a few years back named Denise Leon, who was a corporate marketer who's coming out of corporate America, wanted to start a keynote speaking career. She had a year before her book, What Great Brands Do Was Set To Come Out. And what most authors do in that year is they go out to big branding authors and they say, hey, would you be willing to endorse my book? Or would you write the forward or will you review it? In other words, asking for things. What she did was flip it. For that entire year leading up to her book launch, every week she either interviewed a branding author on her blog or reviewed a branding book on her blog. So built 52 new relationships. And when her book came out a year later, she had a line around the block of people that wanted to reciprocate. So the biggest thing that I would encourage for those of you that have no idea how to create content or how to build an audience, think like the media, not a marketer. Involve other people, interview series, reviews, et cetera. Wow, that's great content. You know, I think we have one more question here and where did it go? It's, all right. Looks like we have a couple of copyright questions. One is regarding photographs on the website. And I just wanna say, yes, you need to get permission before you put photographs that other people have taken on your website. And there's lots of places to find copyright free materials. Let's see. Riffing off of what you just said about the different types of content. Abby has a question. What about a send me, meaning the author, your questions and I will publish the Q&A every Friday in my social media. What do you think about soliciting questions and then answering them via social media? Do you think that's a great way to help people become interested in your personality and your vulnerabilities? Yeah, I do think Q&As always work well but what I found works better than anything else is Abby, if you can give your audience a way to personalize the message with something that they wanna share. All right, so in other words, there's a book we're working on coming out this fall called The Daily Practice of Life. And it's a book really focused on the routines that lead to a fulfilling successful life. Well, the reality is all of us have our own routines. That's a really personal thing. And so the campaign around that is gonna be an interview series where people share their daily routines, the things that they have really built their lives around that when that runs on the author's website, the person who shared that is pushing it out on their Facebook page, is sharing it on their LinkedIn in a way that feels like they're winning as opposed to in a way that feels like they're doing the author a favor. And so if you can create an interactive campaign like that where people can take the message and write something that's a little more personal for them that tags back to a hashtag or a movement that you started around your book, the best interactive campaigns do that really well. Maybe that's a great way to end this is to make sure that your audience feels like they're winning when they engage with you. Thank you. All right, well, we are bumping up on time and I just want to say that if you've found this engaging and if you found some great pieces of advice, there will be lots more in Rusty's class that he will be offering on August 28th, is that when it is? 28th, 10 a.m. On the 28th at 10 a.m. Now the plan is for us to get the details of this class up and running. Do you think we can get it by Monday so that I can send it out with the video? Let's try. I think we can send another email, but yeah, so we're gonna send out the video to you, I hope on Monday and hopefully the class information. So yeah, I just wanted to say thank you, Rusty. I took so many notes that I'm gonna have to watch the video to confirm it all. Well, thank you. I appreciate you having me and Mark. Thanks for putting this together for our audience. Thank you guys for hanging in. I hope it was helpful. Oh my gosh, helpful. Yes. Thank you, Rusty. Very much. All right, thank you everyone for coming. Take care. Thanks, Rusty, and thanks, Barbara, as always. Great to see you all. All right, bye-bye. Bye.