Wordpress – Flores Factor

International Podcast Day and Other Updates

by Richard Flores IV on 2017-09-30 0 Comments

I still really haven’t got back into the regular swing of writing since my nearly three year hiatus. Even regular blogging still eludes me. I don’t like to do several self promoting posts in a row, but at the same time I believe writing anything is better than nothing. So I thought I’d touch on a few updates since I last blogged.

But first, today in International Podcast Day, so what better time to announce that I have sold another short story. My story, “Compassionate Death” was sold to the Canadian Podcast, The Centropic Oracle. This marks another first for me. I’ve never sold a story to a podcast before. I also had to explain to my Dad what a Podcast was.

No information on when this story will be published, but given that today was International Podcast day, I thought I’d share the news now. Besides, the folks at The Centropic Oracle deserve a name drop.

You may also remember that I sold a short story to SciFan Magazine, which was my first print sale. I also blogged a little bit about my thoughts on the publishing side and may have mentioned that I missed doing it. This prompted SciFan Magazine Co-Producer, Dayne Edmondson, to contact me. They asked if I’d join their review team and I accepted.

Now I will preface this with the fact that SciFan Magazine is doing amazing things and I am happy to be a part of their review team. However, it has only made me miss publishing magazines that much more. I will say that I am glad to see a magazine like SciFan. This magazine has huge potential and could go somewhere big in the near future. I am so glad to be a part of it. Still, I hope someday to publish a magazine of my own again. Someday.

But, on the topic of SciFan Magazine, I am giving away a signed copy of Issue 9 as well as some other great prizes. Enter through Rafflecopter today!

There are several great prizes and you can earn more point each day by simply tweeting.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go send a few more short stories off to other great publications. Wish me luck!

10 Things I’ve Learned After 7 Years of Blogging

by Richard Flores IV on 2017-07-14 2 Comments

Today, according to WordPress, is my 7th anniversary of blog writing (nearly 6 with this blog). I started this blog because I got my first story sale with my short story Death Watch, which was published by the good folks over at Liquid Imagination. Originally my blog was my website, and though I have since separated the two, a lot of people still find me through this blog.

When I started out, I really didn’t know what to expect. And seven years later, I still really don’t know what could happen. But here are at a few things I have learned since starting out.

1 – Getting traffic to your blog is hard.

It took me a long time, a really long time, to gather up any type of blog traffic. I tried funny posts, writing posts, life posts, and mixtures of all three. What I learned is the topics don’t really matter, it just takes time to start showing up in search results and for people to come to your blog looking for certain content. Which leads to number two.

2 – Pick a topic for your blog

Pick a topic for your blog and stick to it. Does that mean I don’t blog about life? No. It just means that the general topic of this blog is books and writing. I love the movies, video games, and hockey. Sure I mention those in my blog, but I don’t think I’ve written blog posts on those things. This doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to write on other topics, but you’ll get a better following if your blog has a theme.

There are exceptions to every rule. My post, Eight Things I’ve Learned Since Moving to Washington is not writing related at all, but it is the only post that gets a hit at least once per day.

3 – If getting traffic is hard, getting a following seems impossible.

For the longest time, my family were my only followers. It look a long time to work up to a decent following and to keep them following. There are a lot of ways to get the regular following and keep them, and many of those are involved in these things I’ve learned. The truth is, no advertising ever worked. The only followers I ever got were from reading a post of mine and liking it enough to follow the blog.

4 – Losing followers is very easy.

People stop following a blog for many reasons. The most common, you offended them. Society has placed a lot of weight on being offended, as if it really means anything. I’ve lost followers when they found out I’ve got LGBT characters in my novels. I’ve lost followers because I’ve mentioned I own guns. I’ve lost followers because I made a Trump joke. You will also lose followers if you don’t blog in a while. I lost most of mine during my two year hiatus.

5 – You can’t please everyone.

So you may be thinking that you should sterilize your blog from any possibility of offence. I tried that in the beginning of my blogging days. Hell, I used to try that in the start of my writing days. Well, fuck ’em. People will get offended by what you say. If they don’t, does your writing carry any real passion anyway? As I said above, people think being offended means something. It doesn’t. What I have learned is that more people appreciate the honest writer connecting with his audience than they do a sterilized blog. You can’t please everyone, so don’t try.

6 – Listen to your audience.

Many of my blog post ideas come from blog comments or my social media. I’m not saying you need to ask them what to blog about next, though you can a time or two. But pay attention to what they are saying about your blog. As a self published author, I noticed many of my readers were talking and interested in that aspect. As a result, I wrote Self Publishing, a post in which I explored what Self Publishing was all about. It took more work than most of my posts do, but it was also the most successful post.

7 – Read and connect with other bloggers

You really need to read and connect with other bloggers. For one, you will see what is trending and discover what other bloggers like you are doing. This will let you know if the topic you want to blog on is over-saturated or that it is of no interest to anyone. But also you can work with others to do guest posts and other connections to attract their followers to you and your followers to them.

8 – Guest posts are great.

Guest posts are a great way to drive followers of others to your blog. For a long period of time I was doing an author focus blog series that allowed guest posts from other authors. It drove new eyes to my blog that may have otherwise not visited. Don’t expect a ton of new followers from it, but you just might get someone poking around your blog for other stories.

9 – Don’t expect your blog to be a revenue stream.

I’m not sure I have made any book sales from people who came to read my blog. In most cases it is the other way around. People have come here after reading my work. Some to complain, but most because they liked what they read and wanted to see more. Also, ad riddled blogs suck to read (of course we have no control over the WordPress ads). One ad maybe, or sponsored content is okay. But some blogs read so heavily of sales pitches that they become no fun to read.

Also, don’t overly self publicize on you blog. It isn’t wrong, but it is a fine line between content and advertising. The point of a blog is to connect with your audience, not sell them shit.

10 – It is okay to blog for yourself.

It is absolutely okay to write a blog for yourself with no aim to gain followers. You might accidentally acquire a few anyway. But not every blog has to be for fan connection or to gain more readers. Some can be for the hell of it. You can have as many blogs as you like too. The choice is yours.

BONUS: We’re all full of shit.

Here is a bonus thing I’ve learned, everything on the internet about how to write a great blog is full of shit. This one included. What worked for me may not work for you. Lord knows I read a lot of crap, that when I tried it, did’t work for shit. More to the point, articles with things I’ve learned titles are there to help you see what was learned. You can use it, or you can toss it. The choice is yours really.

It is your blog, write what you want, but I’ve shared what I’ve learned. Your results may vary.

I Call BullSh*t: Social Media Marketing is Easy

by Richard Flores IV on 2014-04-08 1 Comment

I’ve decided to start a new regular post call “I Call Bullshit”. In these articles I will take common themes, rules, myths, and legends about writing and publishing, and I will call out the bullshit behind all of them. Call me the Mythbuster of the writing world. Unless that violates some copyright, then just call me Richard.

Anyway, one of my favorite sayings is, “I call bullshit.” Why? It has so much more of a punch than, “I don’t think that is true. ”

This time around I tackle the myth that Social Media marketing is easy. You wouldn’t believe how much I heard this starting out as a business owner, and now as a writer. And on the surface it sounds easy.

Here are some of the things I have heard:

All you have to do is post a lot and people will follow you and buy your products.

Once you have followers, the word will get out about your projects.

If you write engaging articles, people will continue to read your blog.

Getting followers is easy.

Well, I call bullshit.

I am not a social media expert, and I think anyone who claims to be an expert better have some concrete evidence to this title. But, I have used social media for my old security business. And I currently use if for my writing, and for Plasma Frequency. I am constantly on social media, not just for business but for personal use too.

First, simply posting doesn’t attract followers. You have to post things that either engage your audience or entertains them. And you have to get them to like it enough to share (or ReTweet or ReBlog) it to their followers. And it has to be good enough that their followers than choose to follow you. This can be excellent articles, a hilarious Tweet, information that your audience might enjoy, or anything like that.

Again, that sounds easy, but it isn’t. Lets look at my author account on Twitter. I’ve been on Twitter for going on three years. Not a long time, but I have almost 4,000 tweets in that time. Or, roughly four tweets a day. That doesn’t sound like a lot and compared to others, I am a novice. But, even still I can only think of maybe twenty tweets that actually gained mass popularity and directly resulted in adding one or two follower. I know of only three tweets that directly brought on 10 or more followers.

Now, my blog on the other hand does tend to attract more followers with each post. I usually get one follower for every three to four posts I make. But, I have had some posts, such as my self publish one, that brought on a ton of followers. And my articles on writing tend to draw more attention that my promotional posts (I’m getting to that).

I haven’t had a a follower of Facebook is ages. Facebook is becoming the vast wasteland of social media marketing. And I will get to that soon.

Now, posts resulting in purchases…. I hate to tell you this. But I can not account a single sale on any product to Social Media posts. Not one. For one reason it is hard to measure that. I am sure people see my book is out and go buy it. But my guess is most of those people were going to buy it anyway because they know me, or know my work. They just needed the reminder it was out now. But, how many people have read this blog and decided they wanted to buy my book? There is no way to really know that.

I will say, as a big time consumer of books, I have never seen a promotional post by an author I didn’t know and decided to buy it. My promotional post I mean “Here is my book link. Please go buy it.” Followed by a link. Any why not? Well that is a lot like a hard sale. Imagine walking into the car dealership, which is already a hard sell location, and the first think the salesman said to you was, “Here is a car, please buy it.” You probably would leave. And I doubt you would buy the car, you know nothing about it.

The same is true in social media. You need to get people to buy your books because they like what you have to say. That means they like what you post on your blog, the Tweets you post, the Facebook things you share. And then, only every now and then, you give them a reminder that you have a book out. Or you integrate reminders through out your posts. I often reference my books and my magazine in posts. But not in a “Buy me now” way, but in an example or a causal reference. Like product placement on TV.

And that takes a lot of work. I go back through my blog posts to add these links you see. I have to constantly update my website and blog to show relevant books. And even still those only result on a few clicks.

Promotional posts are not outlawed. There are several promotional rules out there. Some say the one-in-three rule, or the one-in-five rule. I personally use the one-in-ten rule. That is that one in ten of my tweets or Facebook posts are promotional. Now, that doesn’t mean that I count my tweets. It is a general rule of thumb.

Lets say you are lucky to have a vast amount of followers. I certainly don’t. But maybe you are lucky. You may actually be unlucky. Here is why:

Facebook has stacked the deck against authors, especially broke ones. It is a game of percentages. Not all those people will see your posts. Not even half of them will. Not even a quarter of them, unless of course you pay for that. Promote your post and it will pop up everywhere and to everyone, even people not following you. But it comes at a price. Of my last few posts on my Author Page, only 2.5% to 8% of my followers saw the posts I made. On Plasma Frequency’s page it was a bit better, 9% to 41%. Note, the 41% was on those posts that were shared by others (like when an new issue releases and all the authors share).

So here lies the problem with Facebook: Getting Followers, and getting those followers to see what you post. The solution, and the only one I know of, is to pay Facebook.

But I am a small press that doesn’t make a profit. My books are not making a profit yet either. I am unemployed, trying to make a living off of writing. I don’t have “extra” money to pitch into a Facebook campaign. And even if I did, a little research will show you that there are plenty of people who didn’t get much for their money. And what would I have to pay to get all my posts seen all the time? My wallet just started crying at the thought of it.

You may be thinking Twitter is the way to go. Sorry, to tell you that simply being free has not solved the problem. Getting followers can be easy. Follow a shit-load of people and so many will follow you back. Then, I know people who go back and unfollow all the people who don’ follow back… I call bullshit on that too, but that is another topic.

Anyway, I see people with 5k followers and following 5k people. I follow 400 people on my account. When I go on Facebook, I can go back for an entire day and read all the post from a day. Maybe it would take an hour, or two tops. Go on Twitter, I can read Tweets for four hours, and only get about 3 hours down my timeline. There are so many people out there shouting on Twitter that things get lost. Some of my favorite Tweeters are constantly missed by me. I find myself skimming over my timeline and bypassing any tweet with a link in it. Anything that sounds like “buy me”.

And that got me thinking. If I am doing that with 400 people, what is the person who follows me with 5k other people they are following. I can guarantee they are not reading Tweets by a small time author with sarcastic humor. So while Facebook will tell you that they are not showing your posts to everyone. Twitter is showing it to everyone, but I contend that just as few are actually reading what you Tweet.

And, WordPress tells me how many views I get on each article I write. None of them add up to all of the followers I have. In fact of the last ten posts, the readers number worked out to about 25%, on average, of my follower count. And that is just the ones that clicked the link. Not that actually read the article.

And if that is the case, simply having followers does not mean they are hearing about your projects.

Write engaging articles, Tweets and posts, and people will read what you write. Well, what the hell is engaging? You can answer that for yourself, but not for other people. It sounds easy. Just write about writing. Sorry, but every independent author and writer out there is putting out self help articles on their blog.

So what makes yours stand out from the crowd? Your personality. Certainly the fact that this feature has “bullshit” in it will mean some readers won’t read it. But, it is also giving this article a bit of my own style. Regular readers know that I tend to have a rambling, sarcastic, and sometime crass humor in the topics I write about. Every single one of my blogs oozes with my opinion, and that gives it my own flair. You can get my information anywhere, but my opinions and humor you can only find from me.

All that still doesn’t mean new followers. They have to find your blog, Twitter, or Facebook before they even decide if they want to read what you say. And while WordPress does well to attract new people to my articles, the rest is up to me. It isn’t easy. And, I can write one really good article, but not everyone is going to read it.

Finally, getting followers is easy. Three years I have been fighting my way up to getting good quality followers. And you see, that is the real trick here folks. Getting followers is easy. You can get thousands of egg avatar followers on Twitter, but those bots aren’t reading shit you write. You can use programs to gain more followers, or be part of “Team Follow Back” and get thousands of followers quickly. But they are not reading what you say, and that defeats the entire point of everything you’ve been working for. Why write at two thousand word blog, such as this one, if no one reads it? Why keep tweeting away when no one is reading them? That is not an effective social media marketing strategy. That is a scam of trying to make yourself look popular in the hopes that you might get more followers based on your perceived popularity. It won’t work.

There is only one way to get quality followers on any social media platform. Time. Develop a strategy and stick with it. Modify it as you find out what works, and keep plugging away. I certainly get more hits to my blog now than I did three years ago. My interactions on Twitter have gone up. But it takes a lot of hard work. Why do think major companies hire social media team members to manage their pages? Because it takes a full time marketing team to really work on it. And let’s face it you are only doing it part time around all the other jobs of being a writer, publisher, and/or editor.

To say social media marketing is easy is complete bullshit. Like all marketing, it takes time, strategy, know how, and hard work. It also takes the added step of being social and being yourself. There is nothing easy about it.