Posts tagged The Christian PEN

“Teaching is a great way to learn.” I don’t remember who told me that originally, but I’ve found it to be true. I’ve taught music, Bible studies, journaling workshops, and marketing courses. In every instance, I had to bone up on my subject matter in order to teach it effectively. Also, in most cases, I’ve learned as much from my students as they have learned from me.

My online marketing class (offered through The Christian PEN) that’s wrapping up now has been a great learning experience for all of us. We had 10 participants from all over the U. S. States represented are Washington, Idaho, California, Ohio, Virginia, Alabama, Colorado, Kansas, and Tennessee (my location).All students are aspiring freelance editors, many of them also freelance writers in the Christian publishing industry.

I’ve taught this class each year for four years now. This year’s class enlightened me on the following developments in marketing for Christian publishing.

Writers/editors know they need a Web site. In the first class, very few members had a Web site. Blogging was foreign to most people, and social networking was not yet a big thing. When we started this class, 80% of the class already had a Web site, and some of them also had blogs. Part of our course deals with promotion, and a Web site is recommended as a “must.” Those who didn’t have one at the start are well on their way to getting a site set up. Those who had one in the beginning have heard ideas about how to improve theirs. See my Wired to Write blog for how-information on Web sites and blogs.

They are intensely interested in how to present themselves online. Having accepted the necessity of being online, the students wanted to know what else they could do. Some of them cannot do much in-person networking to promote their business because of their location or family situation. Online networking is the next best thing. Twitter, Facebook, and Shoutlife are some of the most popular networking methods these days. There’s some information on electronic networking on my Wired blog, too. See it here.

Most are hesitant about “selling” themselves. All of my class members expressed hesitation or downright distaste about having to “sell” their services. All of the class members were women. I don’t know if that had anything to do with it or not, but I’ve observed that men don’t seem to be bothered by the idea of selling as much as women are. We spent some time discussing the fact that they have a product or service that has value for their customers. If they believe in their product, they should not have qualms about telling people about it and asking a fair price for it. I’ll develop an article for this blog on the subject of personal selling soon. In the meantime, take a look at the information on KnowThis.com.