Episode 081 - Human-Centered Marketing with Dan Blank
June 1, 2021
Dan Blank of WeGrowMedia shares the central tenets of his concept of human-centered marketing: Give yourself permission to create; understand who you hope to reach; and connect to a person, not an audience. He discusses the pitfalls of counting your success by numbers of Likes and Follows, and how a focus on tools and algorithms can kill the creative spirit. And he shares tips for how introverts can reach out to form lasting bonds with those who will love their work.
Dan Blank is the founder of WeGrowMedia, where he helps writers develop a human-centered approach to marketing and reaching their audience. He is the author of the book Be the Gateway: A Practical Guide to Sharing Your Creative Work and Engaging an Audience. He has worked not only with thousands of writers, but also with companies including Penguin Random House, Sesame Workshop, Hachette Book Group, Writer’s Digest, Library Journal, and many others.
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Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Dan Blank. Hey Dan, how are you doing?
[00:00:06] Dan: I'm good. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:09] Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Dan Blank is the founder of WeGrowMedia, where he helps writers develop a human-centered approach to marketing and reaching their audience. He's the author of the book, BE THE GATEWAY, A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO SHARING YOUR CREATIVE WORK AND ENGAGING AND AUDIENCE. He has worked not only with thousands of writers, but also with companies including Penguin Random House, Sesame Workshop, Hachette Book Group, Writer's Digest, Library Journal, and many others.
[00:00:37] And I wanted to take an opportunity to thank Tiffany Yates Martin for her shout out about Dan in Episode 74 Perspectives on Personal Branding, which is what led to this conversation.
[00:00:49] So we are going to be talking about human-centered marketing. And, Dan, I wanted to start out by asking you, what did you see in the author community that drove you to develop this idea of human-centered marketing?
[00:01:02] Dan: Oh, great question. I guess it was two things. Looking outward, what I sometimes see as a focus on the buttons, the secret buttons, the secret tactics. This is how you do something on KDP to get found. This is the new Instagram thing that you have to use, and this is how to get found. Really focusing on the technology, really focusing on the trends, really focusing on best practices. And I'm doing air quotes to people who are not watching a video. And realizing that when I look at marketing and I look at the history of writers and artists sharing their work, there are things that are common to what engaged us today as people.
[00:01:44] I used to manage a cafe and we'd have poetry readings and used to play in a band and I grew up as the art kid and my wife is an amazing artist and my friends were singers and actors, writers, and all this stuff. And you realize the thing that draws someone into a cafe for a poetry reading is not dissimilar to what draws someone to follow a writer, discover and follow writer on Instagram, to subscribe to their newsletter, to buy a book, to post a review of the book, to tell a friend about the book.
[00:02:13] There's a lot of these what we're drawn to and what we look for that are similar. And then the other thing is just that for the last 10, 11 years, I've just worked with writers full-time. That's all that I do. And so for me, it's not just this idea of looking at the industry and the theory. It's looking at the work and the conversations I'm having every single day with writers and creators. And that's for a lot of this comes from.
[00:02:44] Matty: So you had come up with three belief statements and I thought that a good basis for our conversation would be to just walk through those belief statements and have you unpack them a little bit for us. And so the first of those belief statements is "I believe that you should give yourself permission to create."
[00:03:01] Dan: Yeah, this is a big one. And I think that the older that I get, the more important that I find that this one is. I am incredibly lucky. I grew up in a household where I was encouraged to create. I was encouraged to do all these wacky projects. My parents started sending me to art school, which was a local woman's basement with murals on the walls, on the cinder block walls. And my parents were each creative in their own way. And as I grew older and went through high school, college, and after, now I realize not everyone has that. ...
[00:00:06] Dan: I'm good. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:09] Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Dan Blank is the founder of WeGrowMedia, where he helps writers develop a human-centered approach to marketing and reaching their audience. He's the author of the book, BE THE GATEWAY, A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO SHARING YOUR CREATIVE WORK AND ENGAGING AND AUDIENCE. He has worked not only with thousands of writers, but also with companies including Penguin Random House, Sesame Workshop, Hachette Book Group, Writer's Digest, Library Journal, and many others.
[00:00:37] And I wanted to take an opportunity to thank Tiffany Yates Martin for her shout out about Dan in Episode 74 Perspectives on Personal Branding, which is what led to this conversation.
[00:00:49] So we are going to be talking about human-centered marketing. And, Dan, I wanted to start out by asking you, what did you see in the author community that drove you to develop this idea of human-centered marketing?
[00:01:02] Dan: Oh, great question. I guess it was two things. Looking outward, what I sometimes see as a focus on the buttons, the secret buttons, the secret tactics. This is how you do something on KDP to get found. This is the new Instagram thing that you have to use, and this is how to get found. Really focusing on the technology, really focusing on the trends, really focusing on best practices. And I'm doing air quotes to people who are not watching a video. And realizing that when I look at marketing and I look at the history of writers and artists sharing their work, there are things that are common to what engaged us today as people.
[00:01:44] I used to manage a cafe and we'd have poetry readings and used to play in a band and I grew up as the art kid and my wife is an amazing artist and my friends were singers and actors, writers, and all this stuff. And you realize the thing that draws someone into a cafe for a poetry reading is not dissimilar to what draws someone to follow a writer, discover and follow writer on Instagram, to subscribe to their newsletter, to buy a book, to post a review of the book, to tell a friend about the book.
[00:02:13] There's a lot of these what we're drawn to and what we look for that are similar. And then the other thing is just that for the last 10, 11 years, I've just worked with writers full-time. That's all that I do. And so for me, it's not just this idea of looking at the industry and the theory. It's looking at the work and the conversations I'm having every single day with writers and creators. And that's for a lot of this comes from.
[00:02:44] Matty: So you had come up with three belief statements and I thought that a good basis for our conversation would be to just walk through those belief statements and have you unpack them a little bit for us. And so the first of those belief statements is "I believe that you should give yourself permission to create."
[00:03:01] Dan: Yeah, this is a big one. And I think that the older that I get, the more important that I find that this one is. I am incredibly lucky. I grew up in a household where I was encouraged to create. I was encouraged to do all these wacky projects. My parents started sending me to art school, which was a local woman's basement with murals on the walls, on the cinder block walls. And my parents were each creative in their own way. And as I grew older and went through high school, college, and after, now I realize not everyone has that. ...
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[00:03:35] And the problem with it is that we always fear that the thing that's going to stop us is the industry and bad timing on a trend. And, oh, I messed up the launch in this way. And the problem I find is that a lot of people have these creative ideas. They have a memoir they want to write a novel, a nonfiction book, a poem, and then they don't write it. They are the first person to stop themselves from creating.
[00:04:05] And that can be for a millions of different reasons, but sometimes it's this idea of them saying, oh, it's not going to be any good. There's so many science fiction books out there anyway. What am I really going to add to it? The whole market is saturated. Or they say, I should have started years ago. My favorite author, he started when he was 22. I'm 58. Why even start now? And there are so many permutations of that. And the thing about that is usually they can be rooted in some form of reality and there's like a logic to it, but I find that when you realize that the creative process in and of itself is a magical and worthwhile thing, and that when you enter that, when you allow yourself to pursue an idea, to write it down, and to tell someone about it, whatever you want to do with it, this is where everything happens. This is where all the beautiful parts of artistic and literary work really happen.
[00:05:05] And I think too, it gets around a lot of the objections that we have about what we feel it is to be a modern writer, a modern creator. Oh, I don't want to get on social media and I've heard agents require you to do that. So you know what? I'm not even going to bother writing it because I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to be that guy. And it's like, you know, there's a logic in it, but it's like, okay, now we have like reverse engineered our way to never creating, never writing.
[00:05:34] And I obsess about this, beyond just speaking to writers all day, all I do is listen to podcasts and read biographies of creators present and past. And in everyone's story is this idea that they had an idea that wasn't obvious. It would have been ridiculed, maybe, if someone had heard it was like, oh, great, you're going to write a book about a boy who likes to, who knows how to do magic and he's a wizard, and then there's witches with pointy hats? Wow, how original, you know. That's the Harry Potter series or anything. And that's why just that idea of having permission to create is just permission to think about who you are and how you want to grow and what can be created from that.
[00:06:18] Matty: Well, it's interesting that the name of your company is WeGrowMedia. Is there a tie in in that last phrase you used there to that?
[00:06:26] Dan: I don't know. The truth is that 11 years ago when I was kind of forming this, I'm trying to figure what to call it. It was me and my wife in our apartment at the time. And just me like seeing what domain names are available, and just yelling ideas back and forth. It's not available, not available, not ... Oh, that's available. And I've thought a lot about the name over the years, about the individual words, the We Grow Media and I think it's evolves into what it should be, but in some ways I know that it feels almost random in another ways it really just is the work, the daily work is what creates the brand around those words.
[00:07:07] Matty: When you were talking about your thoughts behind, give yourself permission to create, I realized that I can't think of the last time, maybe ever, that I heard of someone and I'll use writers since that's the primary audience here, someone writing something that they didn't have a goal for, other than journaling, I'll say. But you never hear about someone saying, I wrote this great story with wizards and a kid who could do magic and I'm so pleased with it. And every couple of years I'm going to go back and read it. I'm going to be so proud of myself. And maybe we're just not hearing it because by definition we wouldn't hear about it if they were only doing it for the act of doing it. But do you encounter those people at all in your line of work or just personally?
[00:07:56] Dan: Yeah, I do. It's such a great question. I think what I find is that the people who have dedicated themselves to creativity in their life, and that can be someone doing professionally or whatever, or you find that they have all of these different projects and ideas.
[00:08:13] I've interviewed Rebecca Green, who's an author and artist, three times on my podcast, and recently had our third chat. And she's someone who you can really whittle down, who's Rebecca Green. Oh, she illustrates children's books. Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Got a quarter million Instagram followers. Like you whittle it down to the top line things. Then you talk to her and you follow her and you realize, oh my gosh, she's got this cacophony of ideas and projects. And she's not going to shout about, and I'm not maybe going to define her by the little 3D sculpted thing that she's working on, because I don't quite know what it is yet. And she doesn't know what it is yet.
[00:08:52] And I think that maybe as a broader culture, we don't always know how to talk about that. But the flip side is that's, to me, the beauty of social media is that you can share the process. You can share, look at this weird little thing I made.
[00:09:06] I follow Debbie Ridpath Ohi on all the social media, but she shares so much, but one of the things she does is she'll do a lunchtime doodle. So she'll literally take an object, like a piece of lettuce from her sandwich, and then she will turn it into a grasshopper that is singing or something like that, just some random thing. And you're like, this is someone who has embraced creativity as their life. And that's where those funny little projects like her series of lunchtime photos should, and hopefully will be a book. Maybe it is already and I've missed it. And I think it's just those people who are creative in between all the other spaces in their life.
[00:09:43] Matty: I like that idea. I'm going to move on to your second belief, which is, "I believe that you need to understand who you hope to reach."
[00:09:53] Dan: Yeah. So a lot of what I do with people is help them get clarity on what they're creating, identify their audience, and kind of launch it into the world, through book launch or marketing. And I think that very often we've never developed that capacity to think of an audience. We know how to create. And then usually we get really apprehensive to share it because a lot of people have different social fears. It's just baked into human beings.
[00:10:19] I think in my book BE THE GATEWAY, I give the example of oftentimes we have that book or the thing we want to release, and we're like that kid, first day of high school, you walk in the big lunch room, got a tray with fish sticks on it. And you're like, where do I sit? And you're trying to figure it out really quick. And that's how we feel when we think of, yeah, I wrote this memoir and it speaks to this or that, and these are the themes, but you're like, oh, I don't know who to share it with.
[00:10:43] And then we think of the audience. We think of Likes and subscribers. And I find that we all have this incredible power to just say, forget about that. Think about this idea of, who would really care about this? Who would care about the themes of this book? And this is where you go deeper. A lot of times what I hear, because a lot of times people say, oh, I just wrote this book to entertain people, like as an escape. And you're like, cool. Tell me more about that escape. No, it's just escape. It's just escapism. And there's got to be something more. Like if you think of anything like, STAR WARS, you know, on the one end, it's a prototypical classic soap opera. It's almost not even science fiction as science fiction is rigidly defined, but we'll call it science fiction.
[00:11:33] And it's that's not why it affected a generation of people. It affected the generation of people because it dealt with good and evil. It dealt with a sense of hope. It dealt with a sense of being an underdog, of coping with defeats, of how we come together to succeed. We might not be shouting that thing at the screen when we're like, light sabers are awesome, but that is why we show up for it. It's why people get tattoos of different things, because they're symbolic of that. And understanding who you hope to reach is about, have conversations with people.
[00:12:03] If you're an author and you're like, I don't know where to begin and I don't know social media, there's two ways to think about it. One is, oh my goodness. You were so lucky to live in an age where we have just as a research tool for getting about any other ethical thing, Amazon and Goodreads and Instagram and Twitter, because we can look at other authors are vaguely writing what you're writing and see what they're sharing and see who's following them and see what do people say in their book reviews? If you find a book review, the 6,000 reviews or 600 reviews or 60 reviews, read them. And look at the words that come up again and again, the phrases again and again that come up. Because it's like the language of the actual reader and you can go on Goodreads and do the same thing.
[00:12:50] Likewise, often you can reach out to an author. You can send them an email. It's probably better if you don't email like a Stephen King, who is just a celebrity who will never really be able to see your email probably, but find a mid-list author who vaguely writes in your genre topic and email them. Or follow their work. Or if you are near a bookstore or a library, or have any access to like a conference or anything where you think your readers show up, talk to them.
[00:13:21] I used to do a lot of speaking at writing conferences and I would come with my presentation, like on my laptop, but it wasn't done yet because I would spend the morning talking to people. For my own session, I would go early and sit in the back of the room and just talk to someone who's there for my own session. Oh, what do you know? What are you here for? What are you write? And it gave me a good sense of who these people are and how I can best help them. I would really quickly modify the presentation before.
[00:13:49] And I think that thing of just thinking about who we hope to reach and understanding them on the human level, it's this incredible power we have. We have to get over our ability to be afraid of sending an email or sending a DM on social media or just walking up to someone and asking. And I'll give one more story here. If I have a moment.
[00:14:08] I'm friends with Barbara Vey, who is a really big blogger and she's a huge reader. We met years ago when I was working with Publishers Weekly. And I remember she came to New York and I took her on her first subway ride, crowded New York City subway. It's packed. We're in Midtown. And she sits down and then she starts talking to the woman next to her. And I'm just sort of like, no, no, don't, don't talk to people on the subway. No.
[00:14:33] And of course Barbara is amazing and lovely. And her question is always, What do you like to read? She does this everywhere. And her and the woman next to her sparked up this wonderful conversation. And it was just such a great example of no matter where you are, you have that ability to ask someone about, what do you like to read, or what do you like to write or whatever the question is.
[00:14:56] Matty: I have a whole bunch of questions I want to ask about that, but before I do that, I want to go to the third, I believe, and make sure I understand the distinction between this third one and the one we just talked about, which is, "I believe you should connect to a person, not an audience." So is there some more nuances there that you want to talk about before I dive into my questions?
[00:15:17] Dan: They're connected, but they're definitely distinct. So a phrase I will hear often as I'm talking to a writer and maybe we're going to work together, I'm like, Tell me, you know, have you been on social media, have you shared anything? It's like, yeah. You know, got a newsletter, but I only have 60 subscribers. And I don't know what I'm doing on Twitter. It's such a mess. And I look, and I see they've got 112 followers. And it's always this sort of like, wow, we keep viewing them as numbers, this audience. And we'd probably say , no, no, no, I don't want that. Everyone's an individual. But we treat them that way and we feel bad about ourselves because we "only" have 60 subscribers.
[00:15:53] And this is where I go back to those times in the nineties when I had all these art projects and poetry projects. If I had 60 people show up to a reading, or if a band had 60 people show up, you would be like the biggest thing in town. It'd be like high fiving each other. You'd be like, take photos, take photos of this. You'd be using that in a press release, sending it to record labels or literary magazines. We forget the back then having nine people show up was the norm. If you had to 20 people, it was like you're going to get booked again.
[00:16:27] And here we are, we have this idea of newsletter subscribers or Instagram followers or people showing up to a webinar or subscribing to a podcast or to a Zoom event. And every one of those people counts. And it's that ability to learn from these people. And I very often think that when people have three subscribers, all they do is think about, I want to get three more. How do I get more people? It's like, have you talked to these people? Do you know what they like?
[00:16:56] If you have three people and you talk to them and you engage with them, that allows you to get six and allows you to get 12 and that kind of doubling happens. And it really is about these deep connections, not just about, oh, this went viral. You know, why isn't this being reshared? What's wrong with it? And you're like, did no one respond? No, four people responded. And you're like, four people responded. That's great. That is the work that we do to put our art in the world because it affects people. And if we ignore that moment of how it connects and why, and our ability to connect with that person, we're sort of ignoring the whole magic of what this whole thing is about.
[00:17:35] Matty: I had a very interesting variation of that, which is that I recently opened up a Matty Dalrymple Readers Group private group on Facebook. So in Episode 66, I was talking with Jason Kasper about Going from Indy to Traditional, and one of the things he mentioned is that the advice was if you want to be active on Facebook, you have to have a private group because that's what Facebook is preferring now. You know, they'll send people to the private group posts. And so he was so convincing about it that I set up my own group and I invited my friends. I invited the people who followed my Facebook page and I got a pretty good response and I'm trying to only have it be non-promotional stuff. I really don't talk about my books at all, unless I have a book launch coming up or something like that. And then I'll post once, join me for the lunch, but it's like a lot of pictures of my pets.
[00:18:29] Dan: That's perfect for the internet.
[00:18:31] Matty: Yeah, exactly. And then I'll say, here's a picture of my dog, post a picture of your dog. And pretty soon a bunch of people will post pictures of their dogs or comment on the picture of my dog. And there's a very active core group of people, maybe like 10. And the other day I happened to look and I saw that there were almost a hundred people in the group and it makes me think, are those other 90 people not engaging? Are they people who just like to read and not participate. And it really feeds into exactly what you're saying. Like you get obsessed about what about these other 90 people instead of what about the 10 people? So if you're thinking in terms of, let's just take a private Facebook group as an example, what would your advice be to me to comply with a connect to a person, not an audience mindset?
[00:19:24] Dan: Great question. And the first thing I'll say is, as I think about again with we can go back to the more old fashioned examples is to be empathetic about people have different ways they want to engage. So if we go back to the poetry reading, there are people who need to stand in the back and take it in. And they're never going to sign up on the list are never going to go in the front. They're never going to ... they just are engaging differently. Their social differently, or their needs are different. And I always want to note that like with a group of a hundred people, that some people, they just can't put themselves out there or they're whatever they are and that's a part of it.
[00:20:00] So a couple things. So one, it would go back to what is the goal of the group? And it can be, how can this be working in service of those people? What are their goals for being a part of this? How can you connect these people in different ways? How can you serve them? And sometimes we don't know, and we have to ask, or we have to try different things.
[00:20:22] We can say, hey, I'm going to do a live chat on Instagram. I'm going to have office hours on Friday, or I'm going to do a video or I'm going to run a poll. Something I think a lot about is how creators are working across channels because the danger of being on any channel is that they own the connection and they make the rules. So I see this a lot with a lot of young creators where they're starting out on YouTube and then they're also on TikTok and then they're also pushing it to Instagram, so that they're connecting in different ways. And you might find that some people are going to engage with you more on Instagram than in that group.
[00:20:58] Although the group is a phenomenal idea because it's a safe space. We're all here to get the updates from Facebook. But it could be a series of experiments, a series of different ways of engaging, because some people just want to leave the Like on the dog photo, but then a really good question draws them in, or you do a mini workshop or you do a 10 day challenge.
[00:21:18] So you take that group and you think of all the ways you can engage. And I guess the offline example I would use is, if I worked for a company, we'd have these yearly offsite meetings, and that's where you did all the team building stuff, we're going to make a boat out of cardboard and try to get it across this swimming pool, which was one I remember. I was a part of once. The parachute thing. I remember first day college, they brought up the parachute and we're doing that. And it's, you know, the writing examples are good. Let's go around the table and do this thing. Or the things that are informal matched with the things that are formal, or giving people leadership roles. So I would almost look to these old fashioned offsite things to think, well, how can we apply that to a Facebook group so it's not just the same thing of I post and they Like?
[00:22:04] Matty: Yeah, I am trying to pose questions and that's a distinction I'm making now between my private group and my author page is that the author page, if it's just something like here's a nice picture or I'm going to be speaking here next week or whatever, I post it there. But if it's something that's a question, I make sure to put it in my Readers Group, but maybe I should be mixing up a little bit more so I'm not totally abandoning the people who are following the author page to the less interactive stuff.
[00:22:32] Dan: Yeah. I mean, I can build a whole strategy around this.
[00:22:36] Matty: Yeah. I think it's very tough because I totally agree with what you're saying about putting all your eggs in one basket, especially because my basket is Facebook, not only from the fan interaction, but also from an ad point of view, which makes me very uncomfortable. I'm trying to look for ways to not have it be that way. But on the other hand, I've tried other platforms, and I'm also trying to comply with if you don't like the platform, don't kill yourself trying to do it because Twitter, like I have no idea. I have no idea what's going on over there. So yeah, it's just weighing these things.
[00:23:10] When you were talking about emailing the author, being brave enough to email an author if you had questions, what would you put in the email? What are some ideas of things people could email about?
[00:23:19] Dan: So let's just think about, it's a Monday morning that we're chatting. What is this author want to hear on a Monday morning? Could be a lot of things because you might know the author, they have a certain cause that's really meaningful to them. I'm going to go donate $15 and let them know it's because of them that I'm now following that cause, I donated $15.
[00:23:42] But the most common thing can just be, send a thank you email. Sending an email saying, hey, I followed you whatever I've read, these books. This book really moved me because whatever, whatever, whatever I just want to say thank you. I hope you're having a great Monday. Goodbye. Not asking anything of them, not making it complicated, not sharing too much, because that can be taxing on people, but just a simple thank you email. Make it specific, and then get out. Let them just have that moment where they wake up and they're like that's nice, an email where someone says that my writing helped them.
[00:24:16] And of course there's a thousand permutations because it depends who the author is and what they do. Like the donating to a cause as another example. Any action that you think that would be meaningful to them. And again, you want to be clear, I always like short emails if possible. If you do need to ask something, make it really obvious. Don't hide it in the middle of paragraph 16. Because you can ask them something. If you want to ask, you know, hey, I'm a new writer or whatever, is there any advice you'd give? A lot of people like mentoring as long as the mentorship is easy and clear. A lot of people, it really makes them feel good to realize, wow, they're asking me for advice. I remember back when I was starting out and when I was afraid of. And that clarity and specificity, I think, can be really helpful.
[00:25:01] So Those are some of the first things, which is just say thank you. And it's funny, nine times out of 10, when I have a writer do that, they're always like, oh, I'm bugging them. And who am I to write them? And I don't want to. They send the email and it's like nine times out of 10, they get a response, they get a response within 24 hours. And the response is always lovely. They're like, thank you. You made my day , dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Even if it's super short, but sometimes they go on long and you're like, oh, I was generous. It was easy for me and it was easy for them and that's a really positive thing.
[00:25:38] And it's again, you just think of what are these writers want? They want people talking about their books. Write a review on Amazon and Goodreads and say, Hey, loved your books. I posted a review on Amazon and Goodreads and I'm telling my three friends about it. Have a great day. That's what a writer dreams about waking up to every day. Give that to them.
[00:25:56] Matty: I have also found that in the social media space, it's always a good idea to flag the person using their social media handle, because I flagged a bunch of well-known people, Charlaine Harris and Ruth Ware and writers that I really admire. And I post it on my author page, you know, just read Ruth Ware's latest book, it was great, and flagged her and pretty soon Ruth Ware comes on and says, wow, thank you. And it's a tiny effort in outreach, but now Ruth Ware knows I'm an author. And if she gets intrigued, she can look up my books. But even those little bits of acknowledgement can be really valuable.
[00:26:33] Dan: It just makes your life richer, I mean, just as a creator to know that you've had an interaction with someone that you like, that's a part of the career. It's a part of the thing of, wow, I've interacted with these people. And that just makes it feel like, I'm a writer, like I'm in the group, I'm doing this. We're having casual little interactions. I think there's something really special about that.
[00:26:52] Matty: That's great. I've never heard anyone frame it up quite that way, but that is absolutely true. That is a super fun part of being a member of a creative community.
[00:27:01] I also wanted to ask about the idea of the audience. So when I was writing my first book, I was writing it more for myself and I had a general idea of who my audience was, but I don't know that I did other than they are kind of like me, whatever that means. And so I didn't have a good sense of my audience when I started out, but then once it was out there and I started seeing reviews and I would have author events and I would see who was showing up, I would get a better and better idea of who my audience was.
[00:27:34] So I think there sort of three flavors that, I have no idea who my audience is. There's the I'm seeing some indications of who my current audience is, like by who stops by my table when I'm doing a signing. And then there's the who my audience could be. Do you have any advice about how people sort through those three different groups?
[00:27:56] Dan: Oh, sure. So something I do a lot with writers I work with is we create personas. We'll create three audience personas. One is a primary and a secondary. And usually we're pulling upon people that we have met in our life. We say, who's your ideal reader? Again, we're whittling it down to one person.
[00:28:14] My ideal reader is Sarah. She's 48. She lives in Des Moines, Iowa. And she reads this author and that author, and this is what her life looks like, and this is why she reads them and who she follows and social media, podcasts she listens to. And it's like a fake person, but based on reality. And then we get to think, okay, cool. Would Sarah join a private Facebook group? Maybe? What would she be weighing if she joined? What kind of people would she hope to meet there? What would the topic be? Would she subscribe to a newsletter? What would she want to read? What would get her to reply back?
[00:28:47] You know, who else is she reading? Because I want to feature those authors in my platform because that will signal all the other Sarahs out there. Do I know any Sarahs? Would they belong to any local book clubs? Would they show up at the literary festival one town over? Do they belong to this group or that group?
[00:29:05] You know, I kind of based the persona on this one, Sarah, I know whose name is Jan. Let me actually talk to her about what she reads. Let me talk to the librarian. I've done this plenty of times here , like, oh I'm writing this kind of book. What do you know of that reader? Or what other books are like that. Same thing with going to a big bookstore. Be really honest. Hi, I'm a writer. I'm working on this book. I don't know where you would shelve it, who the other authors you'd put me next to, and who that reader is. Can you help me out? As long as they're not busy, a lot of times this is something that people like helping out with. And that's one of the first ways.
[00:29:40] The other way is to find comparable authors. And again, if you're finding mid-list authors, that's a little more helpful. And always note, we have to get around the special snowflake syndrome, which is that your book is unlike any other book ever, which in a way, of course it is. But that it defies genre. It's actually cross genre and you're not going to put me in a little hole and all that kind of stuff, because it's not helpful. Every artist and musician ever has not want to be put in a box, but in the end you're either playing heavy metal or you're not. You know, there's got to be a line somewhere.
[00:30:20] So knowing who those comparable authors are allows you to look at those people. Who were showing up to the book events for these other authors? Who's following them online? Who's tweeting about them? Who's @replying them on Twitter? Who's having them on their podcast? All of these people are in that little Venn diagram, that universe of who your ideal readers might be. And these are all ways into that conversation.
[00:30:45] Matty: I've always found that the idea of finding comp authors is much easier if I think about it as who were other authors that people who like my books would like and vice versa, not what are my books most like.
[00:31:00] Dan: Yeah, I love that. That's a great way to view it.
[00:31:02] Matty: It's very hard for an author to distance themselves a little bit in that way, just as you're saying.
[00:31:07] Matty: All the things you're describing about you show up early to your talk, you talk to the people in the back of the room, I'm imagining this could sound scary to people who are introverts. So if you're talking to an introvert and you're advising them on interacting with people as individuals, not as an anonymous audience and things like that, do you have special advice for introverts?
[00:31:29] Dan: I would very much describe myself as an introvert. And to me, the way that I talk about this is actually because of that. I show up early because I get nervous about everything. So I show up early to mitigate that, so I'm early for everything in life, like very early, and then I'm waiting around so I know everything's safe. I do not go to meetings. I don't go to group events. I don't go to parties, but I love one-on-one. So I figured out that even though I'm an introvert, there are things that I love, like this kind of conversation. I love this. This is where I do well, but I know I don't do well at a dinner party with six people. It's just too much going on for me, for some reason.
[00:32:12] And I think that everyone's different and everyone has their sense of that. So the first is to know what is your level of introversion and how does that play and what are you comfortable with? But for me, the one-on-one thing is because I'm comfortable with that. I definitely have to get over stuff, but it's that idea of making it small enough so that I could do that. And that's part of why the online world is so many meaningful to me because I can put something out there. I was going through a whole list of fantasy authors this morning for a client and then we're looking at what they share.
[00:32:44] You know, if I share a photo of the flowers in the backyard, or of my kid or of a cat, this is something that an introvert can do because I'm sharing a photo and I'm posting it and I'm over here, like I'm talking to you from my home office. After this call, I'll probably take a nap because I will need to go in my safe little room in my head, because being this extroverted in a way is something I genuinely enjoy, but it also takes something out of me.
[00:33:09] So I think you want to know yourself, what you're comfortable with. Definitely. If you're being social, you're asking of something that's uncomfortable for almost anyone including an extrovert, but then figure out ways to make it more likely to be successful. Think of what's the result because sometimes if you don't prepare, you send that email and it's not just, Hey, I love your book. Dah, dah, dah. Have a great day. It's, I love the book because when I was a child, this thing happened to me.
[00:33:37] And I remember I was talking to I think it was Meera Lee Patel, who is an amazing artist, and we're talking about the complexity of social media and she's talking about the DMs, the direct messages and how it's emotionally difficult for her, not because she's not appreciative that people like her work, but because a lot of times it affects people so much that they really send to her these very harrowing stories of trauma. And she, of course, wants to see that and to support them. But when you're just casually scrolling on your phone and it's an otherwise busy day and you have many of these things, it can be a lot.
[00:34:13] And there's not a good or right or bad way to do that. You do what you want to do. But when you think about an interaction, like the woman in the back of the room and she's there to see me speak, it's also me preparing, how can I be there for her? How can I approach this? How can I make it easy? And that's a way that it makes it safe for an introvert to do that.
[00:34:32] And I think too, the other thing is just you gave the example before of reaching out to a library somewhere else. Something I do all the time, if I'm talking to someone, if you know that they're in just some town Des Moines, Iowa, I mentioned, go on Google Maps and go to Street View and just literally "drive around" Des Moines, Iowa. Drive to the library, see what's next to it. Go on Facebook. Just look at their photos and you'll get a really clear sense of what the library looks like and who are all the people that work there. And what's it like to drive around that library? And to me that makes the introversion level more approachable because now you feel like, oh, I have a sense of who these people are and what it looks like there and what their reference librarian, what they do. And it just makes it easier.
[00:35:18] Matty: That's really cool. I have never heard that before. I'm going to have to give that some thought. And the other way that I would love to put that to use, and long-time podcast listeners will laugh because this always comes up, but I have a terrible time with my email, managing my fiction email. Nonfiction email, fine. I sent out a email once a week. That's basically a summary of that week's podcast and related information and things like that. That totally makes sense. And if I received that email, I'd be happy. My fiction email, for some reason, it's like, I don't want to bother them.
[00:35:51] And I think that your connecting with a person not an audience, and Sarah, who you talked about earlier, having that idea of who that person is that you're writing the email to would be useful.
[00:36:06] But then my fear is that basically I want to send out the email because I know there's some subset of people who aren't on social media, so they're not seeing my Facebook updates and so I'm just trying to convey the same information to them. But I don't know that that's quite the right mindset. Do you have any thoughts specific to email newsletters?
[00:36:28] Dan: I mean, I've sent out a weekly email newsletter for 15 years. The most important part of that email is the unsubscribe button, because I want everyone to choose what they want to hear and what they don't. Of course, yeah, it's nice to have subscribers. It means so much to me. But I also want people to be able to choose if they want to unsubscribe or unfollow, if for any reason it's not working for them. Because some people are going to want an email and some people aren't.
[00:36:58] And then I think the flip side of that, of what you share, is to think about, and it's the process I worked through of like, what are you about? What are you creating? What is the world you're creating or what are the sort of the ethos behind it? Because is there a way to give that to people in between your books or as you talk about other books? Or if you say, Hey, these readers, they probably like this, this and this. And then this is who I am.
[00:37:20] And this is the fun part when you really start following a lot of writers, it's like the person who has a certain kind of dog, or they like knitting, or they like running. And even if you're not a runner, you start knowing them for it. And you actually become more attached to them because you understand a hobby of theirs and why it's meaningful and have like a certain sense of humor or a certain seriousness.
[00:37:42] And that becomes part of them being a presence in your life. I always think of this where, you know, if you work a job, typically you're probably interacting with the same four people every day for years. Maybe it's 16 people, maybe it's two people. And you build friendships. And these are not people you might have chosen if you had a lineup of a thousand people, but you get to know them because of just who they are, what they believe, their values, their funny little hobbies.
[00:38:09] And this is something that you can share now. You can share that in the newsletter. If you've read mine, my pieces are typically pretty long. There's probably a few different kinds of posts that I write. And then I share a photo of something inspired me this week. It's usually a flower or an animal. It's very basic. And I give a photo of my kids. And there are a lot of people who emailed me back saying, look, Dan I've read your emails for years. I don't read every issue. I always open it and scroll down to see your kids. And it's been great to see them grow up. That's the reason that people are staying subscribed is because they know me as a person, not just as someone who helps writers with marketing. And that can be a great thing to help your newsletter out.
[00:38:52] Matty: I did have to ask, you had mentioned early on that you weren't a band and I'm just wondering, it's sort of like a wrap up, what lessons have you learned from your band experience that you apply in the human-centered marketing arena?
[00:39:06] Dan: It's funny. So much of human-centered marketing comes because of the pathetic failure of that band. Not because of the music but because it didn't do everything that I now do now. So we focused so much more on the gear. We were always getting together, yeah, let's go down to the music shop, see if they have any more used effects in, so there is an hour doing that.
[00:39:31] We focused so much more on setting things up, on noodling. And it was abandoned, literally never got off the ground, because we're so focused on all these other things, instead of just saying let's write four songs and let's take a train to Manhattan and just play them in Central Park, go busking. Or what do they like to hear at that place? Let's learn these six cover songs and try to get on there. Let's perfect these 10 songs.
[00:39:57] That kind of thing of creating and then sharing and that loop that you have to do, we never did that. I never did that. And it's that kind of thing where we had goals, but we weren't really clear about them. And then we allowed a lot of other things get in the way. And it led to frustration over the years. Not with anyone else, just with the lack of, I never really learned my instrument. You know, there's so many things I didn't do because it was just more caught up in this vague idea.
[00:40:28] And even now I'm cracking up that there's five guitars to my left here. And it's been my obsession the last three years to finally learn how to properly play them. And I have no goals for that. You'll never see me or hear me play guitar because the goal is literally to walk down to my front porch with a guitar and just be able to noodle. That's like the big goal. That's a goal I never succeeded with a quarter century ago when I was like playing with friends.
[00:40:54] Matty: Would you consider reconvening a band now?
[00:40:57] Dan: No. I'm too much of an introvert to care about that, I think. Yeah. I think that part, if it is, I know that I'm just who I am now my goals with music like that are just very they're very personal, to just be able to relax and do that.
[00:41:10] Whereas my writing and my podcast, that's something that I feel like that should be shared. So it's good for me to know that your art doesn't have to be shared. Sometimes, and you mentioned this earlier, just creating for creativity's sake is a very worthwhile thing. And you want to know which of your endeavors that falls into that kind of category with.
[00:41:31] Matty: Dan, thank you so much. This has been so helpful. Please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and your work online.
[00:41:37] Dan: Sure. Thank you. WeGrowMedia.com is where you'll find my blog and newsletter and some advice. I've got a podcast called The Creative Shift with Dan Blank. And then on social media, I'm @Dan Blank. So any of those places are good.
[00:41:51] Matty: Great. Thank you so much.
[00:04:05] And that can be for a millions of different reasons, but sometimes it's this idea of them saying, oh, it's not going to be any good. There's so many science fiction books out there anyway. What am I really going to add to it? The whole market is saturated. Or they say, I should have started years ago. My favorite author, he started when he was 22. I'm 58. Why even start now? And there are so many permutations of that. And the thing about that is usually they can be rooted in some form of reality and there's like a logic to it, but I find that when you realize that the creative process in and of itself is a magical and worthwhile thing, and that when you enter that, when you allow yourself to pursue an idea, to write it down, and to tell someone about it, whatever you want to do with it, this is where everything happens. This is where all the beautiful parts of artistic and literary work really happen.
[00:05:05] And I think too, it gets around a lot of the objections that we have about what we feel it is to be a modern writer, a modern creator. Oh, I don't want to get on social media and I've heard agents require you to do that. So you know what? I'm not even going to bother writing it because I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to be that guy. And it's like, you know, there's a logic in it, but it's like, okay, now we have like reverse engineered our way to never creating, never writing.
[00:05:34] And I obsess about this, beyond just speaking to writers all day, all I do is listen to podcasts and read biographies of creators present and past. And in everyone's story is this idea that they had an idea that wasn't obvious. It would have been ridiculed, maybe, if someone had heard it was like, oh, great, you're going to write a book about a boy who likes to, who knows how to do magic and he's a wizard, and then there's witches with pointy hats? Wow, how original, you know. That's the Harry Potter series or anything. And that's why just that idea of having permission to create is just permission to think about who you are and how you want to grow and what can be created from that.
[00:06:18] Matty: Well, it's interesting that the name of your company is WeGrowMedia. Is there a tie in in that last phrase you used there to that?
[00:06:26] Dan: I don't know. The truth is that 11 years ago when I was kind of forming this, I'm trying to figure what to call it. It was me and my wife in our apartment at the time. And just me like seeing what domain names are available, and just yelling ideas back and forth. It's not available, not available, not ... Oh, that's available. And I've thought a lot about the name over the years, about the individual words, the We Grow Media and I think it's evolves into what it should be, but in some ways I know that it feels almost random in another ways it really just is the work, the daily work is what creates the brand around those words.
[00:07:07] Matty: When you were talking about your thoughts behind, give yourself permission to create, I realized that I can't think of the last time, maybe ever, that I heard of someone and I'll use writers since that's the primary audience here, someone writing something that they didn't have a goal for, other than journaling, I'll say. But you never hear about someone saying, I wrote this great story with wizards and a kid who could do magic and I'm so pleased with it. And every couple of years I'm going to go back and read it. I'm going to be so proud of myself. And maybe we're just not hearing it because by definition we wouldn't hear about it if they were only doing it for the act of doing it. But do you encounter those people at all in your line of work or just personally?
[00:07:56] Dan: Yeah, I do. It's such a great question. I think what I find is that the people who have dedicated themselves to creativity in their life, and that can be someone doing professionally or whatever, or you find that they have all of these different projects and ideas.
[00:08:13] I've interviewed Rebecca Green, who's an author and artist, three times on my podcast, and recently had our third chat. And she's someone who you can really whittle down, who's Rebecca Green. Oh, she illustrates children's books. Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Got a quarter million Instagram followers. Like you whittle it down to the top line things. Then you talk to her and you follow her and you realize, oh my gosh, she's got this cacophony of ideas and projects. And she's not going to shout about, and I'm not maybe going to define her by the little 3D sculpted thing that she's working on, because I don't quite know what it is yet. And she doesn't know what it is yet.
[00:08:52] And I think that maybe as a broader culture, we don't always know how to talk about that. But the flip side is that's, to me, the beauty of social media is that you can share the process. You can share, look at this weird little thing I made.
[00:09:06] I follow Debbie Ridpath Ohi on all the social media, but she shares so much, but one of the things she does is she'll do a lunchtime doodle. So she'll literally take an object, like a piece of lettuce from her sandwich, and then she will turn it into a grasshopper that is singing or something like that, just some random thing. And you're like, this is someone who has embraced creativity as their life. And that's where those funny little projects like her series of lunchtime photos should, and hopefully will be a book. Maybe it is already and I've missed it. And I think it's just those people who are creative in between all the other spaces in their life.
[00:09:43] Matty: I like that idea. I'm going to move on to your second belief, which is, "I believe that you need to understand who you hope to reach."
[00:09:53] Dan: Yeah. So a lot of what I do with people is help them get clarity on what they're creating, identify their audience, and kind of launch it into the world, through book launch or marketing. And I think that very often we've never developed that capacity to think of an audience. We know how to create. And then usually we get really apprehensive to share it because a lot of people have different social fears. It's just baked into human beings.
[00:10:19] I think in my book BE THE GATEWAY, I give the example of oftentimes we have that book or the thing we want to release, and we're like that kid, first day of high school, you walk in the big lunch room, got a tray with fish sticks on it. And you're like, where do I sit? And you're trying to figure it out really quick. And that's how we feel when we think of, yeah, I wrote this memoir and it speaks to this or that, and these are the themes, but you're like, oh, I don't know who to share it with.
[00:10:43] And then we think of the audience. We think of Likes and subscribers. And I find that we all have this incredible power to just say, forget about that. Think about this idea of, who would really care about this? Who would care about the themes of this book? And this is where you go deeper. A lot of times what I hear, because a lot of times people say, oh, I just wrote this book to entertain people, like as an escape. And you're like, cool. Tell me more about that escape. No, it's just escape. It's just escapism. And there's got to be something more. Like if you think of anything like, STAR WARS, you know, on the one end, it's a prototypical classic soap opera. It's almost not even science fiction as science fiction is rigidly defined, but we'll call it science fiction.
[00:11:33] And it's that's not why it affected a generation of people. It affected the generation of people because it dealt with good and evil. It dealt with a sense of hope. It dealt with a sense of being an underdog, of coping with defeats, of how we come together to succeed. We might not be shouting that thing at the screen when we're like, light sabers are awesome, but that is why we show up for it. It's why people get tattoos of different things, because they're symbolic of that. And understanding who you hope to reach is about, have conversations with people.
[00:12:03] If you're an author and you're like, I don't know where to begin and I don't know social media, there's two ways to think about it. One is, oh my goodness. You were so lucky to live in an age where we have just as a research tool for getting about any other ethical thing, Amazon and Goodreads and Instagram and Twitter, because we can look at other authors are vaguely writing what you're writing and see what they're sharing and see who's following them and see what do people say in their book reviews? If you find a book review, the 6,000 reviews or 600 reviews or 60 reviews, read them. And look at the words that come up again and again, the phrases again and again that come up. Because it's like the language of the actual reader and you can go on Goodreads and do the same thing.
[00:12:50] Likewise, often you can reach out to an author. You can send them an email. It's probably better if you don't email like a Stephen King, who is just a celebrity who will never really be able to see your email probably, but find a mid-list author who vaguely writes in your genre topic and email them. Or follow their work. Or if you are near a bookstore or a library, or have any access to like a conference or anything where you think your readers show up, talk to them.
[00:13:21] I used to do a lot of speaking at writing conferences and I would come with my presentation, like on my laptop, but it wasn't done yet because I would spend the morning talking to people. For my own session, I would go early and sit in the back of the room and just talk to someone who's there for my own session. Oh, what do you know? What are you here for? What are you write? And it gave me a good sense of who these people are and how I can best help them. I would really quickly modify the presentation before.
[00:13:49] And I think that thing of just thinking about who we hope to reach and understanding them on the human level, it's this incredible power we have. We have to get over our ability to be afraid of sending an email or sending a DM on social media or just walking up to someone and asking. And I'll give one more story here. If I have a moment.
[00:14:08] I'm friends with Barbara Vey, who is a really big blogger and she's a huge reader. We met years ago when I was working with Publishers Weekly. And I remember she came to New York and I took her on her first subway ride, crowded New York City subway. It's packed. We're in Midtown. And she sits down and then she starts talking to the woman next to her. And I'm just sort of like, no, no, don't, don't talk to people on the subway. No.
[00:14:33] And of course Barbara is amazing and lovely. And her question is always, What do you like to read? She does this everywhere. And her and the woman next to her sparked up this wonderful conversation. And it was just such a great example of no matter where you are, you have that ability to ask someone about, what do you like to read, or what do you like to write or whatever the question is.
[00:14:56] Matty: I have a whole bunch of questions I want to ask about that, but before I do that, I want to go to the third, I believe, and make sure I understand the distinction between this third one and the one we just talked about, which is, "I believe you should connect to a person, not an audience." So is there some more nuances there that you want to talk about before I dive into my questions?
[00:15:17] Dan: They're connected, but they're definitely distinct. So a phrase I will hear often as I'm talking to a writer and maybe we're going to work together, I'm like, Tell me, you know, have you been on social media, have you shared anything? It's like, yeah. You know, got a newsletter, but I only have 60 subscribers. And I don't know what I'm doing on Twitter. It's such a mess. And I look, and I see they've got 112 followers. And it's always this sort of like, wow, we keep viewing them as numbers, this audience. And we'd probably say , no, no, no, I don't want that. Everyone's an individual. But we treat them that way and we feel bad about ourselves because we "only" have 60 subscribers.
[00:15:53] And this is where I go back to those times in the nineties when I had all these art projects and poetry projects. If I had 60 people show up to a reading, or if a band had 60 people show up, you would be like the biggest thing in town. It'd be like high fiving each other. You'd be like, take photos, take photos of this. You'd be using that in a press release, sending it to record labels or literary magazines. We forget the back then having nine people show up was the norm. If you had to 20 people, it was like you're going to get booked again.
[00:16:27] And here we are, we have this idea of newsletter subscribers or Instagram followers or people showing up to a webinar or subscribing to a podcast or to a Zoom event. And every one of those people counts. And it's that ability to learn from these people. And I very often think that when people have three subscribers, all they do is think about, I want to get three more. How do I get more people? It's like, have you talked to these people? Do you know what they like?
[00:16:56] If you have three people and you talk to them and you engage with them, that allows you to get six and allows you to get 12 and that kind of doubling happens. And it really is about these deep connections, not just about, oh, this went viral. You know, why isn't this being reshared? What's wrong with it? And you're like, did no one respond? No, four people responded. And you're like, four people responded. That's great. That is the work that we do to put our art in the world because it affects people. And if we ignore that moment of how it connects and why, and our ability to connect with that person, we're sort of ignoring the whole magic of what this whole thing is about.
[00:17:35] Matty: I had a very interesting variation of that, which is that I recently opened up a Matty Dalrymple Readers Group private group on Facebook. So in Episode 66, I was talking with Jason Kasper about Going from Indy to Traditional, and one of the things he mentioned is that the advice was if you want to be active on Facebook, you have to have a private group because that's what Facebook is preferring now. You know, they'll send people to the private group posts. And so he was so convincing about it that I set up my own group and I invited my friends. I invited the people who followed my Facebook page and I got a pretty good response and I'm trying to only have it be non-promotional stuff. I really don't talk about my books at all, unless I have a book launch coming up or something like that. And then I'll post once, join me for the lunch, but it's like a lot of pictures of my pets.
[00:18:29] Dan: That's perfect for the internet.
[00:18:31] Matty: Yeah, exactly. And then I'll say, here's a picture of my dog, post a picture of your dog. And pretty soon a bunch of people will post pictures of their dogs or comment on the picture of my dog. And there's a very active core group of people, maybe like 10. And the other day I happened to look and I saw that there were almost a hundred people in the group and it makes me think, are those other 90 people not engaging? Are they people who just like to read and not participate. And it really feeds into exactly what you're saying. Like you get obsessed about what about these other 90 people instead of what about the 10 people? So if you're thinking in terms of, let's just take a private Facebook group as an example, what would your advice be to me to comply with a connect to a person, not an audience mindset?
[00:19:24] Dan: Great question. And the first thing I'll say is, as I think about again with we can go back to the more old fashioned examples is to be empathetic about people have different ways they want to engage. So if we go back to the poetry reading, there are people who need to stand in the back and take it in. And they're never going to sign up on the list are never going to go in the front. They're never going to ... they just are engaging differently. Their social differently, or their needs are different. And I always want to note that like with a group of a hundred people, that some people, they just can't put themselves out there or they're whatever they are and that's a part of it.
[00:20:00] So a couple things. So one, it would go back to what is the goal of the group? And it can be, how can this be working in service of those people? What are their goals for being a part of this? How can you connect these people in different ways? How can you serve them? And sometimes we don't know, and we have to ask, or we have to try different things.
[00:20:22] We can say, hey, I'm going to do a live chat on Instagram. I'm going to have office hours on Friday, or I'm going to do a video or I'm going to run a poll. Something I think a lot about is how creators are working across channels because the danger of being on any channel is that they own the connection and they make the rules. So I see this a lot with a lot of young creators where they're starting out on YouTube and then they're also on TikTok and then they're also pushing it to Instagram, so that they're connecting in different ways. And you might find that some people are going to engage with you more on Instagram than in that group.
[00:20:58] Although the group is a phenomenal idea because it's a safe space. We're all here to get the updates from Facebook. But it could be a series of experiments, a series of different ways of engaging, because some people just want to leave the Like on the dog photo, but then a really good question draws them in, or you do a mini workshop or you do a 10 day challenge.
[00:21:18] So you take that group and you think of all the ways you can engage. And I guess the offline example I would use is, if I worked for a company, we'd have these yearly offsite meetings, and that's where you did all the team building stuff, we're going to make a boat out of cardboard and try to get it across this swimming pool, which was one I remember. I was a part of once. The parachute thing. I remember first day college, they brought up the parachute and we're doing that. And it's, you know, the writing examples are good. Let's go around the table and do this thing. Or the things that are informal matched with the things that are formal, or giving people leadership roles. So I would almost look to these old fashioned offsite things to think, well, how can we apply that to a Facebook group so it's not just the same thing of I post and they Like?
[00:22:04] Matty: Yeah, I am trying to pose questions and that's a distinction I'm making now between my private group and my author page is that the author page, if it's just something like here's a nice picture or I'm going to be speaking here next week or whatever, I post it there. But if it's something that's a question, I make sure to put it in my Readers Group, but maybe I should be mixing up a little bit more so I'm not totally abandoning the people who are following the author page to the less interactive stuff.
[00:22:32] Dan: Yeah. I mean, I can build a whole strategy around this.
[00:22:36] Matty: Yeah. I think it's very tough because I totally agree with what you're saying about putting all your eggs in one basket, especially because my basket is Facebook, not only from the fan interaction, but also from an ad point of view, which makes me very uncomfortable. I'm trying to look for ways to not have it be that way. But on the other hand, I've tried other platforms, and I'm also trying to comply with if you don't like the platform, don't kill yourself trying to do it because Twitter, like I have no idea. I have no idea what's going on over there. So yeah, it's just weighing these things.
[00:23:10] When you were talking about emailing the author, being brave enough to email an author if you had questions, what would you put in the email? What are some ideas of things people could email about?
[00:23:19] Dan: So let's just think about, it's a Monday morning that we're chatting. What is this author want to hear on a Monday morning? Could be a lot of things because you might know the author, they have a certain cause that's really meaningful to them. I'm going to go donate $15 and let them know it's because of them that I'm now following that cause, I donated $15.
[00:23:42] But the most common thing can just be, send a thank you email. Sending an email saying, hey, I followed you whatever I've read, these books. This book really moved me because whatever, whatever, whatever I just want to say thank you. I hope you're having a great Monday. Goodbye. Not asking anything of them, not making it complicated, not sharing too much, because that can be taxing on people, but just a simple thank you email. Make it specific, and then get out. Let them just have that moment where they wake up and they're like that's nice, an email where someone says that my writing helped them.
[00:24:16] And of course there's a thousand permutations because it depends who the author is and what they do. Like the donating to a cause as another example. Any action that you think that would be meaningful to them. And again, you want to be clear, I always like short emails if possible. If you do need to ask something, make it really obvious. Don't hide it in the middle of paragraph 16. Because you can ask them something. If you want to ask, you know, hey, I'm a new writer or whatever, is there any advice you'd give? A lot of people like mentoring as long as the mentorship is easy and clear. A lot of people, it really makes them feel good to realize, wow, they're asking me for advice. I remember back when I was starting out and when I was afraid of. And that clarity and specificity, I think, can be really helpful.
[00:25:01] So Those are some of the first things, which is just say thank you. And it's funny, nine times out of 10, when I have a writer do that, they're always like, oh, I'm bugging them. And who am I to write them? And I don't want to. They send the email and it's like nine times out of 10, they get a response, they get a response within 24 hours. And the response is always lovely. They're like, thank you. You made my day , dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Even if it's super short, but sometimes they go on long and you're like, oh, I was generous. It was easy for me and it was easy for them and that's a really positive thing.
[00:25:38] And it's again, you just think of what are these writers want? They want people talking about their books. Write a review on Amazon and Goodreads and say, Hey, loved your books. I posted a review on Amazon and Goodreads and I'm telling my three friends about it. Have a great day. That's what a writer dreams about waking up to every day. Give that to them.
[00:25:56] Matty: I have also found that in the social media space, it's always a good idea to flag the person using their social media handle, because I flagged a bunch of well-known people, Charlaine Harris and Ruth Ware and writers that I really admire. And I post it on my author page, you know, just read Ruth Ware's latest book, it was great, and flagged her and pretty soon Ruth Ware comes on and says, wow, thank you. And it's a tiny effort in outreach, but now Ruth Ware knows I'm an author. And if she gets intrigued, she can look up my books. But even those little bits of acknowledgement can be really valuable.
[00:26:33] Dan: It just makes your life richer, I mean, just as a creator to know that you've had an interaction with someone that you like, that's a part of the career. It's a part of the thing of, wow, I've interacted with these people. And that just makes it feel like, I'm a writer, like I'm in the group, I'm doing this. We're having casual little interactions. I think there's something really special about that.
[00:26:52] Matty: That's great. I've never heard anyone frame it up quite that way, but that is absolutely true. That is a super fun part of being a member of a creative community.
[00:27:01] I also wanted to ask about the idea of the audience. So when I was writing my first book, I was writing it more for myself and I had a general idea of who my audience was, but I don't know that I did other than they are kind of like me, whatever that means. And so I didn't have a good sense of my audience when I started out, but then once it was out there and I started seeing reviews and I would have author events and I would see who was showing up, I would get a better and better idea of who my audience was.
[00:27:34] So I think there sort of three flavors that, I have no idea who my audience is. There's the I'm seeing some indications of who my current audience is, like by who stops by my table when I'm doing a signing. And then there's the who my audience could be. Do you have any advice about how people sort through those three different groups?
[00:27:56] Dan: Oh, sure. So something I do a lot with writers I work with is we create personas. We'll create three audience personas. One is a primary and a secondary. And usually we're pulling upon people that we have met in our life. We say, who's your ideal reader? Again, we're whittling it down to one person.
[00:28:14] My ideal reader is Sarah. She's 48. She lives in Des Moines, Iowa. And she reads this author and that author, and this is what her life looks like, and this is why she reads them and who she follows and social media, podcasts she listens to. And it's like a fake person, but based on reality. And then we get to think, okay, cool. Would Sarah join a private Facebook group? Maybe? What would she be weighing if she joined? What kind of people would she hope to meet there? What would the topic be? Would she subscribe to a newsletter? What would she want to read? What would get her to reply back?
[00:28:47] You know, who else is she reading? Because I want to feature those authors in my platform because that will signal all the other Sarahs out there. Do I know any Sarahs? Would they belong to any local book clubs? Would they show up at the literary festival one town over? Do they belong to this group or that group?
[00:29:05] You know, I kind of based the persona on this one, Sarah, I know whose name is Jan. Let me actually talk to her about what she reads. Let me talk to the librarian. I've done this plenty of times here , like, oh I'm writing this kind of book. What do you know of that reader? Or what other books are like that. Same thing with going to a big bookstore. Be really honest. Hi, I'm a writer. I'm working on this book. I don't know where you would shelve it, who the other authors you'd put me next to, and who that reader is. Can you help me out? As long as they're not busy, a lot of times this is something that people like helping out with. And that's one of the first ways.
[00:29:40] The other way is to find comparable authors. And again, if you're finding mid-list authors, that's a little more helpful. And always note, we have to get around the special snowflake syndrome, which is that your book is unlike any other book ever, which in a way, of course it is. But that it defies genre. It's actually cross genre and you're not going to put me in a little hole and all that kind of stuff, because it's not helpful. Every artist and musician ever has not want to be put in a box, but in the end you're either playing heavy metal or you're not. You know, there's got to be a line somewhere.
[00:30:20] So knowing who those comparable authors are allows you to look at those people. Who were showing up to the book events for these other authors? Who's following them online? Who's tweeting about them? Who's @replying them on Twitter? Who's having them on their podcast? All of these people are in that little Venn diagram, that universe of who your ideal readers might be. And these are all ways into that conversation.
[00:30:45] Matty: I've always found that the idea of finding comp authors is much easier if I think about it as who were other authors that people who like my books would like and vice versa, not what are my books most like.
[00:31:00] Dan: Yeah, I love that. That's a great way to view it.
[00:31:02] Matty: It's very hard for an author to distance themselves a little bit in that way, just as you're saying.
[00:31:07] Matty: All the things you're describing about you show up early to your talk, you talk to the people in the back of the room, I'm imagining this could sound scary to people who are introverts. So if you're talking to an introvert and you're advising them on interacting with people as individuals, not as an anonymous audience and things like that, do you have special advice for introverts?
[00:31:29] Dan: I would very much describe myself as an introvert. And to me, the way that I talk about this is actually because of that. I show up early because I get nervous about everything. So I show up early to mitigate that, so I'm early for everything in life, like very early, and then I'm waiting around so I know everything's safe. I do not go to meetings. I don't go to group events. I don't go to parties, but I love one-on-one. So I figured out that even though I'm an introvert, there are things that I love, like this kind of conversation. I love this. This is where I do well, but I know I don't do well at a dinner party with six people. It's just too much going on for me, for some reason.
[00:32:12] And I think that everyone's different and everyone has their sense of that. So the first is to know what is your level of introversion and how does that play and what are you comfortable with? But for me, the one-on-one thing is because I'm comfortable with that. I definitely have to get over stuff, but it's that idea of making it small enough so that I could do that. And that's part of why the online world is so many meaningful to me because I can put something out there. I was going through a whole list of fantasy authors this morning for a client and then we're looking at what they share.
[00:32:44] You know, if I share a photo of the flowers in the backyard, or of my kid or of a cat, this is something that an introvert can do because I'm sharing a photo and I'm posting it and I'm over here, like I'm talking to you from my home office. After this call, I'll probably take a nap because I will need to go in my safe little room in my head, because being this extroverted in a way is something I genuinely enjoy, but it also takes something out of me.
[00:33:09] So I think you want to know yourself, what you're comfortable with. Definitely. If you're being social, you're asking of something that's uncomfortable for almost anyone including an extrovert, but then figure out ways to make it more likely to be successful. Think of what's the result because sometimes if you don't prepare, you send that email and it's not just, Hey, I love your book. Dah, dah, dah. Have a great day. It's, I love the book because when I was a child, this thing happened to me.
[00:33:37] And I remember I was talking to I think it was Meera Lee Patel, who is an amazing artist, and we're talking about the complexity of social media and she's talking about the DMs, the direct messages and how it's emotionally difficult for her, not because she's not appreciative that people like her work, but because a lot of times it affects people so much that they really send to her these very harrowing stories of trauma. And she, of course, wants to see that and to support them. But when you're just casually scrolling on your phone and it's an otherwise busy day and you have many of these things, it can be a lot.
[00:34:13] And there's not a good or right or bad way to do that. You do what you want to do. But when you think about an interaction, like the woman in the back of the room and she's there to see me speak, it's also me preparing, how can I be there for her? How can I approach this? How can I make it easy? And that's a way that it makes it safe for an introvert to do that.
[00:34:32] And I think too, the other thing is just you gave the example before of reaching out to a library somewhere else. Something I do all the time, if I'm talking to someone, if you know that they're in just some town Des Moines, Iowa, I mentioned, go on Google Maps and go to Street View and just literally "drive around" Des Moines, Iowa. Drive to the library, see what's next to it. Go on Facebook. Just look at their photos and you'll get a really clear sense of what the library looks like and who are all the people that work there. And what's it like to drive around that library? And to me that makes the introversion level more approachable because now you feel like, oh, I have a sense of who these people are and what it looks like there and what their reference librarian, what they do. And it just makes it easier.
[00:35:18] Matty: That's really cool. I have never heard that before. I'm going to have to give that some thought. And the other way that I would love to put that to use, and long-time podcast listeners will laugh because this always comes up, but I have a terrible time with my email, managing my fiction email. Nonfiction email, fine. I sent out a email once a week. That's basically a summary of that week's podcast and related information and things like that. That totally makes sense. And if I received that email, I'd be happy. My fiction email, for some reason, it's like, I don't want to bother them.
[00:35:51] And I think that your connecting with a person not an audience, and Sarah, who you talked about earlier, having that idea of who that person is that you're writing the email to would be useful.
[00:36:06] But then my fear is that basically I want to send out the email because I know there's some subset of people who aren't on social media, so they're not seeing my Facebook updates and so I'm just trying to convey the same information to them. But I don't know that that's quite the right mindset. Do you have any thoughts specific to email newsletters?
[00:36:28] Dan: I mean, I've sent out a weekly email newsletter for 15 years. The most important part of that email is the unsubscribe button, because I want everyone to choose what they want to hear and what they don't. Of course, yeah, it's nice to have subscribers. It means so much to me. But I also want people to be able to choose if they want to unsubscribe or unfollow, if for any reason it's not working for them. Because some people are going to want an email and some people aren't.
[00:36:58] And then I think the flip side of that, of what you share, is to think about, and it's the process I worked through of like, what are you about? What are you creating? What is the world you're creating or what are the sort of the ethos behind it? Because is there a way to give that to people in between your books or as you talk about other books? Or if you say, Hey, these readers, they probably like this, this and this. And then this is who I am.
[00:37:20] And this is the fun part when you really start following a lot of writers, it's like the person who has a certain kind of dog, or they like knitting, or they like running. And even if you're not a runner, you start knowing them for it. And you actually become more attached to them because you understand a hobby of theirs and why it's meaningful and have like a certain sense of humor or a certain seriousness.
[00:37:42] And that becomes part of them being a presence in your life. I always think of this where, you know, if you work a job, typically you're probably interacting with the same four people every day for years. Maybe it's 16 people, maybe it's two people. And you build friendships. And these are not people you might have chosen if you had a lineup of a thousand people, but you get to know them because of just who they are, what they believe, their values, their funny little hobbies.
[00:38:09] And this is something that you can share now. You can share that in the newsletter. If you've read mine, my pieces are typically pretty long. There's probably a few different kinds of posts that I write. And then I share a photo of something inspired me this week. It's usually a flower or an animal. It's very basic. And I give a photo of my kids. And there are a lot of people who emailed me back saying, look, Dan I've read your emails for years. I don't read every issue. I always open it and scroll down to see your kids. And it's been great to see them grow up. That's the reason that people are staying subscribed is because they know me as a person, not just as someone who helps writers with marketing. And that can be a great thing to help your newsletter out.
[00:38:52] Matty: I did have to ask, you had mentioned early on that you weren't a band and I'm just wondering, it's sort of like a wrap up, what lessons have you learned from your band experience that you apply in the human-centered marketing arena?
[00:39:06] Dan: It's funny. So much of human-centered marketing comes because of the pathetic failure of that band. Not because of the music but because it didn't do everything that I now do now. So we focused so much more on the gear. We were always getting together, yeah, let's go down to the music shop, see if they have any more used effects in, so there is an hour doing that.
[00:39:31] We focused so much more on setting things up, on noodling. And it was abandoned, literally never got off the ground, because we're so focused on all these other things, instead of just saying let's write four songs and let's take a train to Manhattan and just play them in Central Park, go busking. Or what do they like to hear at that place? Let's learn these six cover songs and try to get on there. Let's perfect these 10 songs.
[00:39:57] That kind of thing of creating and then sharing and that loop that you have to do, we never did that. I never did that. And it's that kind of thing where we had goals, but we weren't really clear about them. And then we allowed a lot of other things get in the way. And it led to frustration over the years. Not with anyone else, just with the lack of, I never really learned my instrument. You know, there's so many things I didn't do because it was just more caught up in this vague idea.
[00:40:28] And even now I'm cracking up that there's five guitars to my left here. And it's been my obsession the last three years to finally learn how to properly play them. And I have no goals for that. You'll never see me or hear me play guitar because the goal is literally to walk down to my front porch with a guitar and just be able to noodle. That's like the big goal. That's a goal I never succeeded with a quarter century ago when I was like playing with friends.
[00:40:54] Matty: Would you consider reconvening a band now?
[00:40:57] Dan: No. I'm too much of an introvert to care about that, I think. Yeah. I think that part, if it is, I know that I'm just who I am now my goals with music like that are just very they're very personal, to just be able to relax and do that.
[00:41:10] Whereas my writing and my podcast, that's something that I feel like that should be shared. So it's good for me to know that your art doesn't have to be shared. Sometimes, and you mentioned this earlier, just creating for creativity's sake is a very worthwhile thing. And you want to know which of your endeavors that falls into that kind of category with.
[00:41:31] Matty: Dan, thank you so much. This has been so helpful. Please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and your work online.
[00:41:37] Dan: Sure. Thank you. WeGrowMedia.com is where you'll find my blog and newsletter and some advice. I've got a podcast called The Creative Shift with Dan Blank. And then on social media, I'm @Dan Blank. So any of those places are good.
[00:41:51] Matty: Great. Thank you so much.
Links
The episode I referenced where the guest suggests creating a persona to help craft your email newsletters is Episode 058 - Author Newsletters with Lee Savino
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