I love spring because the new flower buds, green sprouts and unfurling leaves are delicate, beautiful and full of promise. In the autumn, the color palette shifts and I love the warmth of the crimson and orange leaves, the pumpkins, textures of the scarves and jackets and the gray skies above.

None of this is, strictly speaking, art, but all of it inspires me. Don’t just stumble through each day, zombie-like, without taking a look around you and soaking in the loveliness. Brains are good but beauty is the food of artists.

I’ve been researching social media monitoring tools lately in an effort to simplify my life – I have far too many  social accounts to efficiently monitor and track and I would hate to miss anything important. As it is, I sometimes don’t respond to Tweets in a timely fashion and it’s definitely not because my followers aren’t important to me. 

So I’m asking you, the smartest, most wired and innovative people I know what tools you use and recommend. Are there any betas available? I’m particularly interested in free or very low cost tools in part because I’m cheap but this is a realm that changes so often and I want to be remain nimble.

Please share your favorites or even just monitoring tools you’ve heard good things about. I’m keen to learn all I can.

Thanks!

Oregon grapes were always one of my favorite plants as a child. I loved smashing the dark berries and seeing the purple-blue juice squish out. We used them to draw on sidewalks and once even dyed fabric to make doll clothes. You had to be careful because the leaves were edged with little spines that would scratch viciously. But I don’t think I ever noticed the pretty, delicate yellow flowers that produce the luscious dark berries.

I’m a little late, but I wish you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous Year of the Snake! May your creative endeavors be fruitful.

I have some new action happening below. You are most welcome to attend any of my stuff pro-bono, cause I just sooooo appreciate your willingness… I was curious, how can I connect with other bloggers or get my blogs more noticed? I had “rxxxxxxx@gmail.com’ who liked my blog. They are in NY and I have no clue how they found this latest blog. Should I just email back and say love to link to you..not sure what to say? And, I am not Tweeting yet or on google+, etc. yet… first things first.

I was just wondering where I might go to ‘get connected’? BTW… you are a great writer!!!!

have a great day!
J

My response:

Hi J,

Congrats on growing your blog audience organically! This is the beginning. Yes, I would definitely reach out via email and ask how they found you and if there are any particular blog topics that would be of interest to them. If (and this is a big if) the person is articulate, intelligent and has something to offer your blog visitors, you might ask them if they’d care to guest blog on your site. This is a great way to get their readers (assuming they have any) over to your site and vice versa. At the very least you can learn how they found you and consider generating more of the same kind of content/using similar tags for your posts.

One of the best ways to “meet” other bloggers is by visiting their sites and leaving comments. I follow a number of blogs – new posts get emailed to me – and when I see a subject I feel like commenting on or read a particularly good post, I have a link in the email that allows me to quickly and easily visit their site and comment on it. Your blog comments should ALWAYS include a link to your site. You never know when someone will agree with what you’ve said and want to read more.

I get a lot of new blog readers from Twitter because every new post is tweeted out to my followers. It’s one of those games where having a large audience helps you get more readers/followers but getting started is slow.

I’d love to come to a workshop or attend a teleconference but the week of the 25th is our big trade show in San Francisco and I am committed all week. Maybe a Ben Lomond workshop? I’d love to see what you offer and if there’s any way I could develop a social media aspect to the classes to help your students amplify their coursework if appropriate. Let me know what you think of that and if it works with your vision.

I’m so glad you like my writing. It’s always good to hear that you’re appreciated!

All the best,

Diann

Question, readers: how do YOU grow your audience? Any hints or tips to share with my friend? I know she’d love to hear what worked for you. Thanks!

Reblogged from Diann Writes:

1. Skip over the trouble spot and move to another, less difficult passage.
2. Add a new character to stir things up.
3. Kill off a character to stir things up.
4. If you can’t kill a character, put your main character in danger and see what happens. Jeopardizing a treasured character is a great way to shake up your writing.
5. Power through the rough spot.
6. Change perspectives: split your group into two and send them separate ways or simply take a different perspective on the situation, from the vantage point of another character or another locale.
7. The Nike treatment: just do it. Seriously, sometimes you just have to muscle through it. Remember you’re not writing a final version – it’s a first draft. So this part will need a lot of help later; that’s OK.

My NaNo Ninja

There you are, a few good ideas that actually work to overcome writer’s block. Let me know which ones work for you or what other tricks you use.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 7,400 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 12 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

My brother, a man of few words, sent me this message: “I just finished reading your book, good story.”

Thanks, Jim!