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Editors and social media: Instagram

Continuing the series of posts about editors and social media, Tanya Gold takes us to the world of Instagram and tells us how she turns her working with words into striking pictorial snapshots.

When and why did you start?

In 2015, I was chatting with some clients on Twitter and they were raving about this social media platform that was image-centric. It sounded like they were having a bunch of fun interacting with other writers there, so I decided to check it out.

I immediately loved how visual Instagram is and how you can use it to connect with new people on a variety of topics. Since I started posting about three and a half years ago, I’ve met all sorts of cool writers, photographers, illustrators, plastic dinosaur enthusiasts, and other creatives. I’ve even made some IRL friends and landed a few amazing clients.

What do you share?

I post about the books I’m reading, interesting things that I see around town or while travelling, literary activities, and my editing life (often illustrated by my editorial assistants). If I had to sum it up in a hashtag, it would be #editorlife.

I post about a lot of things, but I know that most of my followers come and stay for my editorial assistants. I get it. They throw the best office dance parties.

I work with a lot of authors who are active on social media. And I like to involve them in my posts – tagging them when I’m working on their projects (with their permission, and always keeping it very general and positive). This means that they get more people hearing about their books and gives them an opportunity to interact with more readers. I’ve had a number of clients ask for specific assistants to be featured in posts about their book or to be mentioned in a dance party.

It’s a lot of fun to interact with clients in this way. It also encourages them to share the images or to post about me, which puts my name in front of other writers and encourages word of mouth referrals.

When do you share?

I try to post photos at least a couple of times a week. If I’m travelling, about one picture a day. I try to limit myself to one photo a day. It’s about finding a balance. I don’t want to bombard people with photos and I want to stay present in their minds.

For other platforms, I schedule one post a week to make sure that I’m still active – even when life gets in the way. Instagram is the one platform where I don’t schedule anything. I want the images to reflect what is happening at that moment in my #editorlife.

Why do you do it?

What I love most about Instagram is that it’s about posting original content. Sometimes, I find it frustrating that I can’t share links and articles with my followers there, but that’s also part of its beauty. This limitation makes us share parts of ourselves, which can help to encourage more meaningful connections.

And I get to talk with people about books A LOT. It’s such a happy place.

What about other social media platforms?

Just like on Instagram, I like other social media platforms for the connections they allow me to make. I love Facebook for its editor groups, Twitter for its chats, Goodreads for all the books. All social media platforms offer different ways of interacting and forming communities. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s allowed me to make so many wonderful connections.

Any advice?

All social media is about interacting with people. Find your people. On Instagram, you can do this by looking up friends or by exploring what other people are posting.

Try out an Instagram #monthlychallenge if you want prompts to get you started. Take pictures of your #catsofinstagram. Post some #shelfies. Check out hashtags that are relevant to your interests. See what other people are posting on the same topic.

Interact with strangers. You never know what amazing people you might meet.

Tanya Gold is a book editor, writing coach, and literary omnivore based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She’s been in publishing for about twenty years, and has worked on all kinds of cool books. These days, she edits fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. It’s been suggested that she reads too much for her own good. This might be true. Perhaps unsurprisingly, you can follow her on Instagram.

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Editors and social media: YouTube

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In the second instalment of our ‘Editors and social media’ series, Denise Cowle explains why and how she uses YouTube for her business, and how that fits in with her use of other social media.

Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash.

When and why did you start?

In 2015 I went to a conference run by the Content Marketing Academy, where there was a workshop by Marcus Sheridan. It showed me that there was so much more I could be doing to promote my business online. I was full of enthusiasm and started blogging regularly and using social media to promote it and engage with lots of people, both editors and potential clients.
Since then I have embraced lots of new things, most recently taking part in a challenge which saw me produce one video each week for 13 weeks.

I’ve only been using video for a few months, but the results have been very positive so far.

What do you share?

I share my latest blog or video every week, plus I rotate through older content which still has value. Most of the stuff I create doesn’t date (it’s evergreen, to use a buzzword!) so it’s still relevant months or even years after it’s written or filmed. People aren’t necessarily going to find it directly from searching, so it’s good practice to put it out there at regular intervals to show what you have.

I don’t just share my own content – I read other blogs and websites, and there is a lot of really useful information worth sharing. I think if you share the good stuff it goes a little way towards pushing the useless stuff further down people’s newsfeeds!

When do you share?

Depending on the platform, I’ll share/post every day or several times a day, using a scheduling tool (Buffer) to automatically share my own content and other links that I’ve spotted but don’t necessarily want to share when I first see them. But I also spend a little time every day engaging with other people, liking, sharing and commenting on their posts as they appear in my timeline.

I find blogging quite time-intensive. It can take me four or five hours to write a blog, edit it, find or create the right images, and then do all the behind-the-scenes work for SEO, like adding links, meta-description, social share buttons and the sign-up buttons for my newsletter.

I’ve been surprised at how quickly I got into a rhythm for video production – it doesn’t take nearly as long to produce, as I can now film, edit and upload a five-minute video in around two hours, including all the SEO and techy things (like creating a custom thumbnail and choosing the right tags for that post) and the on-screen titles, cards and subtitles.

Why do you do it?

It’s actually given me a lot of confidence – the first few videos I created were pretty dodgy, but I kept going and picked up advice on improving the technical aspect of it and the presentation skills needed for talking to my iPhone while it’s balanced on a pile of books on a stepladder (you can manage perfectly well without high-tech equipment!)

Generally, I keep motivated by the feedback I get from people who enjoy what I produce and share it. More importantly, when clients tell me they read my blog or saw my video, that tells me that I’m doing the right thing. Writing or creating videos about editing-related topics shows people I know what I’m doing, rather than me just telling them that!

The videos have been incredibly effective, particularly when I upload them natively to LinkedIn (natively means publishing the video directly on that platform, rather than posting a link to the video on my YouTube channel). I got several new clients directly as a result of them seeing my videos. One was a global publisher I hadn’t worked with until now, and another was an edtech company who asked me to reshoot one of my videos for them, so they could use it in one of their courses! Now THAT was something I didn’t see coming!

Getting concrete results like that is all the motivation I need!

What about other social media platforms?

Although my videos are created for my YouTube channel, that’s not primarily where people will go to look for them, so I upload them to LinkedIn, which has far and away been the most effective platform in terms of engagement and actual sales, and I share on Twitter and my Facebook page. It sounds like a lot but only takes a matter of minutes to do.

Any advice?

I would encourage anyone to have a go at video. If you have a decent phone and somewhere quiet to record, that’s enough to get started. I dipped my toe in the water with some Facebook Live broadcasts last year, just to get used to speaking to camera. I also watched quite a few online tutorials about getting started, which gave me lots of helpful tips, particularly about setting up my YouTube channel.

And it doesn’t have to be perfect – I’ve left bloopers in and made a feature of them. Video is a great way of showing your personality – you know you’re fabulous, and now your prospective clients can see that too!

Denise Cowle is an editor and proofreader based in Glasgow. She specialises in non-fiction, particularly education and business, and edits for a variety of global publishers, companies and organisations.

She has an interest in continuing professional development and content marketing, and when she’s got spare time she loiters on social media and writes her blog.

Denise is an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders and is also its Marketing and PR Director.

Posted by Abi Saffrey, SfEP blog coordinator.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the SfEP.

How editors use social media: Twitter

When and why did you start?

I find it very hard to believe that once there was a time I didn’t really understand Twitter. Why would you go on it? What was the point of telling strangers things in (then) 140-character bursts? And then one day in 2012, I decided to give it a go, and I was hooked. A bit too hooked – I lost many, many hours staring into my phone, and a couple of years later I decided to take a break. But when I started my editorial business in early 2016, I knew it was time to flex my Twitter muscles once more.

I went back to Twitter because my former experience had shown me it was – in amongst the political squabbling, Nicki Minaj GIFs, and cat pictures – a powerful tool for connecting with people. It’s a wonderful way to keep up to date with trends, issues and events in your industry – as a newcomer to publishing, this was invaluable to me. And there is, or at least there can be, a real sense of community on Twitter, if you can find the corner of it where your tribe hang out. Editing Twitter is definitely one of those corners – we chat, we laugh, we debate about all things word- and book-related (and food. There’s a lot of food in Editing Twitter).

What do you share?

I try to keep my Twitter posts mostly related to what I do, so at least vaguely connected to words and books and editing, but sometimes I veer off and post things that are more personal, such as tweets about my kids, especially if they’ve been particularly cute/enraging that day. One of the good things about Twitter is it’s easy to stay active even when you’re only popping on quickly – you can share other people’s tweets and content, or take part in whatever meme/game is currently doing the rounds, so If I’m busy and don’t want to spend too much time on Twitter, I do that.

When I do post more of my own content, my main concern is to keep it funny. I go on Twitter for business reasons, but as a reader/viewer/consumer, I want to be entertained, so that’s what I want to do for other people too. Sometimes I’m pretty sure I’m only amusing myself, but some of my original content gives other people a giggle too – a recent thread I wrote outlining a DEFINITELY REAL AND ACCURATE (spoiler: not so much) approach to editorial pricing seemed to go down pretty well. It garnered lots of retweets and several cry-laugh emojis, anyway. I also use Twitter to share my blog posts, and grumble about Microsoft Word (don’t we all?).

When do you share?

I try to tweet most days, but less frequently if I’m trying to stay away from Twitter for time-saving purposes. I spend barely any time composing most of my tweets, because I am naturally spontaneously hilarious, interesting and wise. But If I’m tweeting something designed to be more engaging, such as my #TheDailySwear tweets (last year, I tweeted one compound swearword every day, with my personal preference on how it should be styled), or a blog post, that obviously takes me longer. My ‘comedy’ threads don’t take me all that long, because they’re pretty much just me opening my brain and letting some silliness fall out. The most time-consuming part is arranging the text so the tweets don’t go over the character limit!

Why do you do it?

Well firstly, because it’s fun, especially when I get to be silly. Some people might baulk at that as a marketing strategy, but it works for me and my personality (humour is all I have, dammit! And swearing. Don’t forget the swearing). But I also love Twitter because working at home on your own can be really lonely. Twitter and other social media are like my virtual office, providing me with colleagues to chat to and connect with. It gives me a sense of belonging to a community, and that can be invaluable in fighting isolation. It provides networking opportunities – I have definitely had work and other professional opportunities that I can trace to Twitter. For example, this year I gave a session on swearing at the SfEP (now CIEP) conference, which came about because of a blog post I wrote that was based on my Daily Swear tweets.

What about other social media platforms?

Twitter is the social media platform I find the most interesting and easy to use. I do also have Facebook, but I post very little on there outside of the groups, and my poor business page is horribly neglected. I recently signed up to Instagram, despite the fact that I’m absolutely terrible at taking pictures, and I have my Instagram account linked to my Twitter, so it’s a good, quick way of sharing more visual content on Twitter.

Any advice?

Twitter can be an amazing place to network with colleagues and potential clients and can lead to work. But it’s important not to approach it solely as a marketing opportunity. It’s easy to think you can go on Twitter, say ‘Hire me, I’m awesome’ and wait for the offers to roll in, but in reality it doesn’t work like that. Relentless self-promotion is boring, both to the person doing it and those reading it. Social media networking is like all networking – it works best when you are sincere. Be interested and interesting, help as much as you ask for help, and you’ll find the experience so much more rewarding. I use Twitter to build my online presence in the hope it will help my business be successful, sure, but I’m also building real connections that benefit me in so many more ways than just the prospect of work.

There’s a dark side to Twitter – there are some terrible people on there, there’s an awful lot of news that can make you angry, and it can be an astonishing time-suck – so take steps to protect your time, energy and mental health. Take breaks when you feel overwhelmed by it, realise you don’t have to read or respond to everything, set up filters so you don’t see things that distract you – whatever you need to do to manage your experience and set boundaries. But if you can get the balance right, there’s a wonderful community there just waiting to welcome you with open digital arms. And cat pictures.

Kia Thomas spent 12 years in the arts before becoming a freelance fiction editor at the beginning of 2016. She specialises in contemporary romance and is an Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP. Kia lives in South Tyneside, and she can often be found networking with her colleagues in online spaces (i.e. spending too much time on Twitter).

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP

7 questions to consider when naming your editorial business

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One of the most important decisions you’ll make when starting any new venture is what you should call your new business. Here are seven questions that will help you come up with the perfect name for your editorial business.

1. Should I use my own name?

If you are already well established in your editorial career, it can be helpful to use your own name in your business as it will help potential clients find you, particularly if they have worked with you previously. However, this doesn’t work if you have a more common name. If your moniker is along the lines of John Smith, you may prefer your business name to be a little more original.

2. Should I include details of what I do?

It can be helpful to outline your services as part of your business name, but be careful not to box yourself in. While ‘X Proofreading’ may be a perfect description of your business offering today, next year, after you’ve expanded into copy-editing or developmental editing, you may find that the proofreading part of your business name restricts you.

3. Is my proposed business name easy to pronounce and spell?

Picture the scene: You’ve met a really promising contact and exchanged business cards; a week later your new contact wants to get in touch. Unfortunately, they’ve mislaid your contact details, but that’s not a problem because they remember your business name. A simple internet search should yield your phone number or email address. Except when they type in what they remember as the name of your business, they spell it differently. Or maybe they have seen your business name written down and they are recommending you to a colleague, but they pronounce the name of your business as they remember hearing it, not as it is actually spelt, so they can’t find you. You’ve lost out on potentially valuable business. So keep your business name simple and avoid homonyms or puns that could confuse potential clients when they try to find you. Moreover, slightly odd spellings could be seen as detrimental when you are trading as someone who specialises in catching typos.

4. What is my story?

If you decide not to use your own name, don’t just think about the services you offer, think about your story. Is there a particularly original path you took that brought you to this career? Could your business name hint at your story? An added bonus is that this will give you something to talk about when you first introduce your business to prospective clients.

5. Is geography important to me?

Perhaps you have a local landmark or heritage that you’d like to reference in your name. Or would you rather not tie yourself to a particular region? Remember to think about the future as well as the present. If you are likely to relocate, would this impact on your business if your name is linked to a particular locale?

6. Are there any other businesses already using my proposed name?

You’ve come up with the perfect name; it’s so original no one else could have come up with it — never assume this is the case. Always search on the internet first. Google your ideal name and see what comes up. Then check the common domain name providers to see if the address is available. And don’t forget to search across social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, to see if other organisations or individuals are already using your proposed name. The last thing you want is to buy your web address and then discover that someone is already using your business name on Twitter, particularly if they are in a less salubrious line of business!

7. What do friends and family think of my name?

Test out your proposed business name on friends, family, colleagues, or even the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading’s forums. What does the name say to people? Is there anything about your business name they can spot that you didn’t notice? For example, do the initials spell out an unfortunate acronym?

Are there any hints or tips you would add to this list? How did you come up with your business name?

Joanna Bowery was the CIEP’s social media manager. She offers freelance marketing, PR, writing and proofreading services as Cosmic Frog. Jo is an entry-level member of the CIEP and a Chartered Marketer. She is active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

Proofread by CIEP entry-level member Alex Matthews.

The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the CIEP.