A question for the readers

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Some of you might know that the thousands of comments that I receive on my Yahoo column are generally abrasive. Here’s an example.

Some of the most common things people say to me in the comment section on Yahoo are:

1. Why do you write for Yahoo? You should be fired!

2. You don’t have enough experience in the workforce.

3. When you grow up, you’ll think differently about this.

It looks to me like Ryan Healy, who writes the Twentysomething column on Brazen Careerist, gets the same type of comments on this blog about his posts. Here’s an example.

Do you guys agree or disagree? What do you think about this?

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Use blogs as a career tool for becoming super-connected

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One of the best ways to make a big leap in your career is to blog. Blogging allows you to create a high-quality network for yourself based, not on the old model of passing out business cards, but on a new model of passing out ideas. Contrary to popular opinion, blogging is not for college kids holed up in their dorm room posting photos of themselves. Blogging is so text-intensive — in terms of both reading and writing — that the amount of time required of a blogger makes it unattractive to college students. (Here’s a funny video about how time-consuming blogging is.)

However, to the curious and driven who are passionate about their careers, blogging is a great way to keep learning after college is over. So when you go to Google to search for blogs, most of those that come up will be from professionals who are using a blog to establish themselves as a thought leader in their field.

Most of the time you spend blogging will be reading other peoples’ blogs and linking to them and writing commentary on your own blog about what others in the blogosphere are talking about. It’s a constant course in your specialty and keeps you on the cutting edge. Moreover, the linking between blogs keeps you in touch with the other thought leaders in your industry, even if you do not know them personally.

One of the best things about blogging is that the benefits are huge, but the barrier to entry is very low. The software is free, and easy to use (try Blogger or WordPress) and it takes about 10 minutes to get started.

Minh Luong wanted a career in food writing, but found breaking into the industry was very tough. Instead of waiting to find an offline connection and nurture it and wait for the right opportunity and then make her move, Luong opted for taking more direct initiative to create the life she wants: She started blogging.

Almost immediately, her blog, Minnie Eat World, became a local Boston favorite, and the credibility she gained by blogging led to offline offers for work she would not have had access to had she not built a quick network for herself via blogging. The blog has replaced not only paying one’s dues, but also the network that comes from that.

The most efficient way to build a brand name for yourself is via blogging. Not just because blogging is so linked to one’s own ideas, but also because the tools for blogging encourage people to measure the reach of their personal brand. You can measure the number of people who are talking about you (via Technorati) and the number of people who are visiting you (via SiteMeter), and you can see who is telling their friends to read you (via Mint). But the commitment to a blog like this is intense — writing blog posts at least four days a week is a basic requirement, for example.

Harleen Kahlon recognized that while blogging is a great way to feel part of a smart, informed community, the time it takes to blog is often at odds with the time it takes professionals to manage the career they already have. So Kahlon founded Damsels in Success, which is a community for professional women that includes a group blog — a place where about 50 professional women are contributing to a blog that serves as a connector for all of them.

Many people are finding that group blogs provide both an outlet for ideas and a foundation for community, but the demands are much less than blogging on their own.

Another group blog that provides similar benefits is Employee Evolution. Led by the intrepid duo Ryan & Ryan, this blog provides a place for generation Y to spout about workplace issues to a wide audience without having to blog frequently enough to build that audience for themselves.

Another limitation of blogging is that you need to decide what sort of expertise you want to be known for before you start blogging. A blog needs a topic, and the only topics worth investing in are topics that are very meaningful to you. If you are not sure about a topic, you might just start blogging and find that you gravitate toward the topic that’s right for you.

But if that seems too disorganized to you, start by commenting on other peoples’ blogs. The bloggers are knowledgeable, committed, and passionate — just the kind of people you should add to your list of friends. Pick the bloggers you enjoy reading the most, and comment. Don’t just say, “great post.” Suggest an angle the blogger might not have seen, or present some information the blogger might have missed. Have a conversation with the blogger, because this is, after all, what building a network is all about: conversations.

Which brings us to Ben Casnocha, teenage entrepreneur and author of My Start-up Life. Ben blogs at ben.casnocha.com, and he has a loyal following of people who are fascinated by the thought process of someone who could launch a successful Internet-based company in sixth grade (check it out: Comcate.com). But Ben is doing something that is both in the realm of forward thinking and conventional thinking: He’s meeting people face to face. Ben took a tour of the United States meeting people each day who have become part of his electronic network.

Ben’s tour of the United States reminds us that each connection we make — either electronically or face to face — is just a starting point for something deeper. And he reminds us that for all the hoopla and fantasy building of the “new amazingly networked Web 2.0!”, it all comes down to good, old-fashioned connecting with people we want to hang out with.

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Brazen Careerist blog makes its television debut

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So, I went to Tampa, FL for two days. I met a bunch of great people at the book signing, and I did a couple television interviews about the book — one with Charley Belcher who is a very funny guy. The Tampa Tribune called my blog “smart and insightful” and Fox News did a news segment about me blogging. The most interesting part of this program might be the fifty camera tricks it takes to make the actual act of blogging look visually interesting. Check out the Fox News segment here.

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How to get a six-figure book deal from your blog

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I’m going to tell you how to get a six-figure book deal from your blog. People ask me this question all the time, and I have been a little hesitant to give people advice because I had only sold one book, and maybe it was luck, because it’s hard to know how to do anything from just doing it once. But now I feel like I know a bit because I just got my second book contract, based on my blog.

Here are ten tips for getting a book deal of your own that is based on that blog you’ve been writing.

1. Solve a problem.
Non-fiction books define a problem and offer a solution. This is what makes the consumer buy the book. A blog can be a fun rant. A book needs to be more than that.

Do the “how to be” test. Can you say, “My blog is about how to ….” And finish the sentence? You need to be able to do that to turn your blog into a nonfiction book.

For my book, I said I’m solving the problem that most career advice books are irrelevant to the current market. I did a they say/I say section. For example, they say report sexual harassment/I say don’t. They say don’t lie on your resume/ I say be practical.

2. Have a big idea.
A blog is a big pile of small ideas adding up to a community of people talking about those ideas. A book needs to be more than that. A book needs to add up to a big idea. You get your advance based on how big the idea is. One of the hardest lessons for me was that I thought I would just put a bunch of posts together in to a book. But my editor rejected that when I turned it in. The posts need to be organized in a way that builds up into bigger ideas (chapters) into a big, grand idea (the book).

Aside from Seth Godin, who is an industry unto himself (mostly as a public speaker), there is no record of printing out a blog and having a six-figure-worthy book.

3. If you’re in a niche, make it a big one.
Editors don’t like to buy a book that is in a field where no other books exist. In the blogosphere, if no one is blogging about your topic, it’s probably because you’re in a very small niche. Niches are fine for blogs, but not for six-figure book contracts.

Also, ask yourself if you are solving a problem for a mass market or a niche market. If you’re in a niche, you need to expand your reach by choosing topics for a more broad audience.

4. Have a big audience, but say they are old rather than young if you want a lot of money.
Most blog readers are young and most book buyers are old. Therefore, books that are geared exclusively toward young people often come out as paperback originals, which don’t get huge advances. Figure out how to sell your broader portion of the population.

5. Have a lot of blogger friends to promote the book, but talk mostly about USA Today.
It’s true that a few books, like The No Asshole Rule and The 4-Hour Work Week, got to the top because of initial support from bloggers. But publishers aren’t making bets that they can tell which books this will happen with next time. So you need to tell the book publishers that you can get a lot of attention from conventional media outlets. Editors are more comfortable with traditional media. After all, that’s what book publishing is.

6. Follow conventions.
Most of the non-blog world sees bloggers as the Wild West, at best, and a freak show at worst. The publishing industry is wary of being able to translate bloggers into authors, and there have been a lot of high profile flops. So make your writing look like the kind of writing that agents and editors are used to dealing with. This means not only very high quality writing samples (which will probably be blog posts). But you also need to follow the conventions for writing a killer proposal.

7. Find someone to model yourself after.
I am not the only person to get a book contract from a blog. Here are some others: Gina Trapani at Lifehacker, Shauna James at Gluten-Free Girl, and Joe Bageant. When you were in sixth grade, you read five paragraph essays in order to figure out how to write one. When you started blogging, you read other peoples’ blogs to figure out how you wanted to do your own. Now you should read books by bloggers in order to figure out how to package your own blog into a book.

8. Put your blog in the marketing section of your proposal.
A book proposal is about the idea, and who you are and how you’re going to sell the book. If you have a large blog readership, you can say that in the marketing section. You can’t say they’ll all buy the book. If that were true, Gina Trapani would have the one of the biggest selling books ever. But you can say that the blog will provide a lot of buzz and a lot of customers.

9. Trust that agents know a good proposal when they see one, but try again if you get a bad response.
Here’s how I got my agent: I bought The Writer’s Market and picked out five agents. Here was my criterion: I only chose agents who said they weren’t accepting new clients, because I wanted someone who was established and doing well. And I picked people whose last names started with letters at the end of the alphabet because I thought other people who pick agents randomly probably start at the beginning, so people at the end must not get as much mail.

This experience makes me trust the agenting system. It’s not hard to tell the big agents – look at the books they represent. Send your proposal to agents who represent books like yours. If no one likes your proposal, admit that your idea is flawed. Figure out why, fix the problems, and try again with another proposal.

10. Use blog comments to train yourself for rejection.
If there is any way to prepare for the constant rejection from the publishing industry, it’s by answering the negative commenters on your blog. Respond in an even-handed, respectful way. This is how you’ll have to respond to agents and editors who try to poke holes in your proposal. For example, I wrote eleven proposals that my agent said no to before she sold my most recent one.

That’s a lot of work. But, to be honest, it’s not as much work as posting to a blog five days a week.

 

This is cross-posted at ProBlogger. Which, by the way, is the online resource that has been the most helpful to me over the past year as I have been figuring out the blogging world. ProBlogger has great answers to a very wide range of how-to-blog questions.

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Regular exercise is no longer optional

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Exercise is an essential part of a successful career. It’s an essential part of a good life. I think one problem a lot of us face is that we approach exercise like it’s a choice.

When email first became widely used, I worked for a guy who thought it was optional. At some point, it truly was optional. High-level executives used to be able to say, “Call my secretary. I don’t have email.” I remember thinking that my boss did not understand reality. That times had changed and his career was going to end if he couldn’t manage to take a look at his in box once a day.

Today I am thinking the same thing about exercise. We used to think that it was optional. But today, it is so overwhelmingly clear that regular exercise changes your life and makes you perform better at work, that it is absolutely absurd to think that you can function optimally in your life without regular exercise.

This is not just about good-looking people doing better in life (which is true). It runs deeper than that. Mary Carmichael wrote in Newsweek about the research that shows exercise boosts our IQ. And exercise increases our resilience to difficult times, which is often the difference between success and failure in getting what we want.

I told myself all of this stuff last month when I started going to the gym again. Last year, a few months after I started blogging, I was so totally overwhelmed by the amount of work it took, that I told myself there was nothing to do but stop going to the gym until I caught up with my work.

It took me four months to realize that the extra hour a day that I was able to work because I wasn’t at the gym was not changing my life. Being overwhelmed by the demands of blogging was not about one hour. It was about that I had made a career change and didn’t even realize it.

But going to the gym for an hour does change my life. Regular exercise requires a careful mental shift. First you clearly prioritize what’s important to you, and why. Then you pick a specific time and specific place, and then you convince yourself that going is not negotiable. There is clear evidence to show that people who make one conscious change – such as going to the gym every day – unconsciously change many other positive changes in their life. Making one decision to live consciously has a ripple affect throughout your life.

In an interview with Harvard Magazine, psychology professor Ellen Langer says, “More than 30 years of research has shown that mindfulness is figuratively and literally enlivening.” And while we all say we want to live in the present, Langer points out, “If you’re not in the present, you’re not there to know you’re not there.”

I remind myself of this when I start thinking of exercise as negotiable. And for all the ten million pieces of advice on how to make exercise regular in one’s life, the best advice, I have found, is to realize that I will not get the life I want if I don’t go to the gym when I plan to go to the gym. When I interviewed positive psychologist Senia Maymin, she convinced me that the key to regular exercise is to tell myself that it is not a choice, and to also tell myself stories that encourage me to go to the gym. One of my stories is the one I told you — about how working that extra hour did not help me catch up at work.

So tell me, what stories do you tell yourself to exercise regularly? Do stories work for you?

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Twentysomething: Blogging is the new graduate school

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By Ryan Healy — like most people our age, my friends don’t really read blogs. So I created a My Space page to market my blog. At first, this worked out great. Our friends could see bulletins every time a new post went up and people got a better sense of what the blog was all about.

On top of this, every night before bed I left an AIM away message stating, “click here” and people would be sent to the site. I also updated my Facebook profile every time a new post went up. All of these things worked great for the first few weeks. My friends went to the site, and someone new would ask about it nearly every day.

Despite all of this, we realized that it is not easy to convert the average twentysomething to the wonderful world of the blogosphere. Even my friends and acquaintances that appreciate what I’m doing and compliment my site do not frequent my blog or any other blog on a regular basis. And when they do visit the site they almost never leave a comment.

It’s ironic, though, because blogging is a way to deal with the biggest problem at the beginning of one’s career: No expertise. If you offer intelligent opinions or advice on a credible blog, then you are an expert. This is why more young people should blog. If you have a focused blog, then you can jump from job to job and learn many skills, but the constant will be that you are an expert in whatever area you choose to research and write about.

A great example of someone establishing themselves as an expert through a blog is Ramit Sethi of Iwillteachyoutoberich.com. He started writing about personal finance a few years ago and now he gives speeches on the topic, has a book coming out and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal. Sure it takes a little hard work, but the end result can certainly justify the means.

If you are interested in a subject but really don’t know much about it, creating a blog is a great way to learn. If you are really clueless at first, then start your blog as a clearing house for everything related to your niche. Scan the web for articles, create Google alerts for key words and contact a few experts. Eventually you will absorb so much about the topic that you can write intelligent posts as often as you would like. Get Rich Slowly is an example of a blog that started as mostly links and summaries of other peoples’ posts. Quickly, though, author JD Roth became expert enough to write his own commentary in addition to linking.

One of the hardest parts about starting a blog is that nearly every subject worth writing about has been covered to death. The solution to this is to put your own spin on it. If you are a young person the easiest thing to do is highlight the fact that you are young and write about it from a young person’s point of view. For example, if you are interested in marketing, research how the “experts” try to reach young people and then write about what works and what doesn’t. People are bound to listen; everyone is trying to figure us out.

Creating a blog will not only turn you into a subject matter expert, but it shows drive and motivation when trying to get your next job. Highlight the blog on your resume, discuss how you balanced blogging with working and brag about your site statistics and mentions around the web. Maybe blogging is the new graduate school.

Ryan Healy’s blog is Employee Evolution.

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Coachology: How to get a book deal

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The good news about getting a contract for a nonfiction book is that you don’t have to write the book to sell it. You just have to write the proposal. The bad news is that often authors spend four or five months figuring out what the proposal is.

Where agents earn their commission is helping the author to understand what they should be writing a book about. Last week, my agent, Susan Rabiner, laid out seven tips for writing a better proposal. And this week’s Coachology will be 90 minutes of free help from her to get your proposal into shape. Or, if your initial idea doesn’t work, she’ll help you to come up with something else.

For those of you who think 90 minutes is too long, I just got a contract for my second book — to be published in 2008 — and I spent the last five months writing proposals until I got it right. I’d say that I spent about 900 minutes on the phone with Susan, but after 90 minutes you will at least know what you need to work on.

If you’re interested in working with Susan, please send a three-sentence summary of your proposal (include the idea and your qualifications to write it) by the end of the day on April 29.

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Travel update from New York City

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So here I am in NYC, doing my book publicity stuff. I had grand plans for posting on the blog last night and today, but my Internet connection is terrible. As in, nonexistent. And it was going to be be the first weekday in months that I haven’t posted.

I started feeling withdrawal. So I called my husband to ask him to search online for a computer I could use in between my 1pm meeting and my 3pm meeting, and here I am, in between meetings, posting from Kinko’s: For thirty cents a minute in case you are wondering.

But believe me, the Kinko’s cost is nothing compared to the babysitting costs on this trip.

I took my twenty-one-month-old son with me because last month I traveled without him, and it really felt wrong. Like he was too young for me to be away that long. And the time before that I took him with me but he cried the whole time because I left him with unfamiliar people during the day. So, this time I flew my babysitter from Madison to NYC for a five-day trip.

Expensive, yes, but I have a one-hour window today, and I can use the time for posting on the blog instead of feeling guilt about how I’m taking care of my kids. Feeling guilt takes time. I like to think that the insane cost of the babysitter frees up my mind to do more interesting things than feel guilt. But maybe that’s not totally true. Because look, I spent the time writing about it instead.

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A week of journalism: How to move between print and online

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One of the biggest issues for writers today is how to move between print and online. The issue is really authority. For print people, moving online is difficult because their established offline authority has relatively little meaning online. Conversely people who are mostly online understand that there is a much more structured way to earn authority offline, and they want to feel they are respected in that way.

In both cases, the way to get to the other side is, first and foremost, to care about the other side in a way that is deeper than prestige and self-preservation.

There’s advice here for online writers first, print writers second, and everyone who isn’t a writer and worries about the length of this too-long-to-be-a-post post can skip to the last two paragraphs.

Here are three ways for people to move from online to print:

1. Understand that it’s about paying dues.
And surely you know what I think about paying dues. But you need to work your way up in the print world. Even if you’re great. Sure, there are exceptions, but not so many that you should build a career plan based on them. So if you are doing a lot of work you don’t like doing, and a lot of work you’re not really learning from, you might be on a solid path toward an essay in the New Yorker.

2. Write all the time and expect to be rejected all the time.
You absolutely have to believe that you are a good writer. You must believe this independently of what the rejection slips tell you. Or there is no way to go on. You also absolutely must figure out what you are good at, and this will make rejections in other areas not hurt so much.

No one is good at everything. Very few people really are essayists. Very few are columnists. Very few people give good advice about sex. Fortunately there are lots of different specialties. Figure out what’s right for you. Some people can write for Maxim and some can write for The Atlantic. Few can write for both, but both take talent.

3. Learn the rules.
You have to know how to write a good query. Just stop everything you’re doing and learn how to write one. And have someone you trust review your queries at the beginning. Good resources for this are Media Bistro’s How to Pitch section, and the classes for writing queries at Freelance Success.

The rules for print are arcane. How to get a column is arcane. Mostly, you can’t ask for one — an editor asks you. How to get syndicated is arcane. (But here is some advice on that anyway.) The only thing that is not arcane is the rule that people hire who they like. It’s true in every industry and publishing is no different. So get to know editors if you want writing assignments.

Soul search tip: Ask yourself why you want the prestige of writing for a big-name publication. Prestige is not an end in itself. It doesn’t change who you are, and it doesn’t change how good (or not-so-good) your writing is. Sure, prestige opens doors, but what door do you want to walk through? And why? Because maybe you don’t actually need that particular type of prestige to get where you want to go.

Here are three ways for people to move from print to online:

1. Get a voice and have opinions.
The world does not need another Associated Press. We already have it. So making a name for yourself online is not going to be about duplicating the reporting that the AP is doing just fine. Online success will be something different. It will be about taking a stand. Even if it turns out to be wrong, just take one. This means you have to unlearn all that impartiality.

2. Get off your print pedestal.
Writing online doesn’t mean taking all the stuff that the New Yorker rejected and pasting it into blog software. Writing online means genuinely responding to the community you’re talking to.

If you “just want to write” then moving online is not for you. Because print is about writing from authority and everyone listens. Online is about establishing your authority and having conversations, and people dis you.

Also, be careful whom you emulate. Some people leveraging huge offline brands to move online are not necessarily the online writers you want to emulate. Malcolm Gladwell, for example, is not part of a conversation. He is a great print journalist posting his stuff online. Seth Godin is not having conversation. He doesn’t even accept comments. He is an extremely highly paid public speaker who writes an online diary.

You have to think about where you fit in this new world. And how you want to be. It’s not just writing. It’s a discussion, and there are a lot of different ways you can talk.

3. Educate yourself. Constantly.
The video titled The Machine is Us/ing Us is one of the most enthralling things I have seen about writing online. It has been viewed 2 million times and 5000 people left comments. This video shows what writing online is and what it will be and where we fit. I have watched this video fifteen times, and each time I learn something new.

Many of you will understand almost nothing of this video when you watch it the first time. But if you watch it, and then you read blogs, and you read your news online for a few weeks, and you set up a Google alert system, and then an RSS feed. And after each of those actions, you look at the video again, you will understand a lot.

Soul search tip:
I know this sounds like tons of work. But if you really want to move your print career online, this is the work you have to do. Are you totally annoyed to hear this? It’s okay to not want to learn about how information is spewed and sifted online. Maybe it’s not that interesting to you. But then be honest with yourself: If you don’t get excited about learning about it, why would you want to be a part of it? Think about other career options that get you really excited about learning.

And you know what? This is career advice that applies to everyone, in any career. You need to love learning and exploring in the career you choose. Or else what are you doing there? And you need to be going after something bigger than prestige. If nothing else, we know it’s inherently unsatisfying.

So find what you love to learn about, and find what you’re great at doing, and see where they intersect. That’s where your career potential is strongest.

Other posts from “A Week in Journalism” series:

How to be a freelance writer without starving

Why journalists misquote everyone (and how I met my husband)

Seven ways to get an agent’s attention (by my agent, Susan Rabiner)

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This week, a series for journalists

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I am speaking at the American Society of Journalists and Authors in New York this Sunday. So I thought that in addition to regular posts, I’d do a little series this week on tips for writers.

I have never done a series, but I’ve seen them done on other blogs, so I thought I’d try it. When other bloggers do it, they give a schedule. So, here’s my schedule:

Monday: How to be a freelance writer without starving

Tuesday: How to move from print journalism to online journalism

Wednesday: How journalists can use LinkedIn

Thursday Sunday: Why journalists misquote everyone… or do they? (And how I met my husband)

Friday Saturday: Seven ways to get an agent’s attention

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