Living & Working Consciously

-- Quote of the Day --

 "Don't bother just to be better

Than your contemporaries or predecessors.

Try to be better than yourself."

~ William Faulkner

-- Conscious Discussions Radio --

Our featured guest on today's episode of Conscious Discussions Talk Radio is Stacey Lundgren - the Vice President and Lead Presenter for Bucketfillers for Life Inc. She tells me that she learned to have a great appreciation and desire for adventure and realized that making new friends is easy very early in life. Our focus of this discussion is Living a Fulfilling Life… Click on the hyper-links above to access today's discussion or look for links on this blog's sidebars for recently aired Conscious Discussions talk Radio episodes.

-- Networking, Part 1 --

I'll be sharing a 2-part discussion on networking starting today with Part 1... I hope you enjoy this topic and invite our readers to leave comments or contact us anytime! We love networking! 

Developing a strong networking system with reliable contacts is the key to any marketing plan – yet one of the most difficult and time consuming tasks that an author will face. While it is true that a contact list can take years to develop, if done correctly you will have a team of individuals across the globe who are hungry for news about you and who volunteer to share information about your work through their circles.

How does one go about creating a contact list?

First you must decide whom you wish to work with and that requires much thought on key words to use in your searches and feeling out the industry to see where your work fits in. Once you have these initial steps done, you can begin approaching people that have a similar audience. But don’t just start sending query letters in a willy-nilly fashion. Really think about how this particular outlet could help you, who their audience is and how you can provide interesting tools or material for them. This will get the attention of the owner/editor of the outlet, however to really build a relationship you need to offer something – usually something greater or equal to what you are hoping to get from them.

When I approach a media outlet of any kind or an organization I want to network with I consider what their audience will get out of it AND let them know how I intend to drive traffic their way. For instance, I would mention that I will promote the event to my contacts via social networking sites, the Brummet’s Monthly newsletter, this blog, our radio shows, websites, forums, Book Tour site, etc.

Remember to keep your initial query email as brief as possible and don’t send along attachments. Write a paragraph or two and close with your signature and website address. Most busy individuals give an email less than 30 seconds perusal and if it doesn’t catch their attention it is trashed. So be brief, concise and make sure that you offer your main website address where ALL your information should be available. This way, all they have to do is click to find out more about you – rather than reading a huge email with pages attached.

Drop by tomorrow for part 2 of this discussion...

Find Dave and Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, information about their radio shows and free resources and more at: www.brummet.ca