May 21, 2018
How to be the Coco Chanel of Blogging.
The classics never go out of style.
You look at the people who are where you want to be, and the distance between you seems so huge.
It doesn’t even seem possible to bridge it.
And those people try to teach you what they know, the method they used to become those people. Only they became those people in a different age. If they have anything to do with digital/tech/online business, what they did to get where they are is almost definitely useless information to you now.
You know that. You know in your gut that guest posting doesn’t really bring in thousands of email subscribers like it did ten years ago. And that a self-hosted blog might have been necessary five years ago, but now it’s likely to sit fallow and lonely, read only by whoever happens to click on the desperate links you post to your personal Facebook page.
Pinterest strategies don’t work anymore. They keep changing the algorithms so that you can’t take advantage of them the way you could when those people used pins to drive traffic to their self-hosted blog. You know . . . their sites with the slick photos and social proof tags running along the top of the fold.
So what does work?
You know how there are some styles that are huge for a minute and then they’re gone. They have their bright flash of a moment, and then they’re gone. Fidget spinners of the style world.
And then there is Coco Chanel or Audrey Hepburn or Marilyn Monroe?
What works isn’t trying to hack your way into the stratosphere. Classic style, clean lines, and a personal connection work. They always work. They always have. They always will.
Building an audience always works.
Writing where your audience already is always works.
Solving a problem for your readers always works.
The rest of it, especially if it’s advice that depends on tech and last worked five years ago or more, is just noise.
Build an audience. Go where they are. Solve a problem for them.
It works.
Anti-Blogging for Creatives is about the basics — the Coco Chanel timeless standards — that always work. There’s a free mini-intro to it. You can sign up for right here.
I’m also hosting a free webinar on Wednesday, May 23 at 12:30 pst. It’s about using the only tool that really matters if you’re starting any kind of business at all (including a fiction writing business.) Your email list. Come on over and reserve your seat. Even if you can’t make the live event, you’ll get the replay. But I hope you can make it. It’s always a blast when Ninjas get together.
Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She lives in Reno with her husband, three superstar kids, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the author of Viral Nation and Rebel Nationand the upcoming novel The Astonishing Maybe. She is the original Ninja Writer.
Do you have a writing question you’d like me to answer? Send it to shaunta@whatisaplot.com with DEAR SHAUNTA in the subject line.
