Candy Harrington on “Finding a Niche, Building a Platform & Marketing” — by Sandy Sims

Our wonderful program chair, Sandy Sims, not only put together the terrific and information-packed meeting with Candy Harrington, who gave lots of tips, Sandy also wrote these excellent notes about the meeting on March 20 at Books, Inc. in Opera Plaza in San Francisco.  Thank you very much, Sandy.

Candy Harrington on
Finding a Niche, Building a Platform and Marketing

Candy Harrington (photos © John Montgomery)

BATW members have been telling me they found Candy Harrington’s presentation on March 20 excellent. Her talk was all about finding a niche, building a platform and marketing, something she has done so successfully that editors call her for stories. Candy’s niche is travel for slow walkers and wheelers. She says she had been writing general travel stories for 15 years and was getting somewhat bored with that. So she started volunteering for some nonprofit organizations. Someone at one of these agencies suggested she start writing about accessible travel. Now, some 15 years later, Candy’s expertise in accessible travel has come into a time when baby boomers will need this information. Candy does not take credit for thinking ahead about the baby boomers. It’s just happened that way. But she did think about and work on her branding, her platform and her marketing, and this is what has brought her success.

Here is a summary (sorry for all I left out) of what Candy suggests for us:

(Note: You can go to Candy’s website www.CandyHarrington.com/BATW for a list of links to her information and to helpful websites. Use the link online or print out the list.)

Finding a niche:

Become an expert on something. Candy says she didn’t know anything about wheel chairs or accessible travel but found the subject fascinating. So she did the research. She says find something you are passionate about or love to write about. It should not be too big a subject or too small. The general topic “accessible travel for all disabilities” turned out to be too big so she narrowed it to slow walkers and wheelers. She says, if you say you are an expert, people believe you, so you need to back that up with research. You will have to answer lots of questions about the subject.

There are all types of expertise — for example: destinations, writing styles (humor, etc.), unique voice or a combination of things.

Branding:

The idea is to be known for something. Then have a topic, a logo, a style, a slogan. She says the corporate world does this well, and suggested McDonald’s is a great example. When children see the golden arches they want their happy meal. Some of our members are already known for expertise.

Part of branding is coming up with things that will represent you and help people remember what you do, even engage your readers. For example Candy had a bio photo of herself on her website that included Agnes the chicken. Both Candy and the chicken had bright read hair. This was not a planned thing, but it turned out Agnes became a character that received fan mail. Agnes died so Candy is going to get another “red-haired” chicken.

Candy Harrington

She also has a stuffed bear, Cherry, who is in a wheelchair. Cherry has a space on Candy’s blog. Turns out this is a great gimmick for talking to children about inclusion of people with handicaps. She pointed out, too, that our seeing Cherry and the wheelchair pretty much cemented in our minds what Candy does.

Your platform is your fan base, and people are attracted to you because of what you do (write about). Publishers today want a ready audience, and this is what you build by networking. She says you should tell everyone what you do.

Branding and platform tools:

1. Elevator pitch – This should be about 8 seconds long. She tells it to everyone she meets. “I’m Candy Harrington. I do accessible travel for slow walkers and wheelchair travelers.”
2. Website – It all starts with good editorial design. Do it yourself or get professional support. She’s fortunate that her husband, Charles, is a website expert. You need to figure out what you want the website to do (sell books, brand, etc.). If the material doesn’t fit the purpose of the site, it goes. Make an outline of what you want. Goal of Candy’s website is to build her brand; it links to her book sites, her blog, lists her speaking engagements, Twitter, her press page. You can use www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com to set up your website.
3. Blogging – Great marketing tool. A blog is a journal, informal writing that interacts with readers. It sends traffic to Candy’s book sites and her website. Her readers’ responses help her sort out ideas for future writing. It also brings editors to her site and assignments. It builds her voice. She uses keywords in her blogs that will trigger search engines. Link the blog to professional websites. A blog is good for getting comments on topics. Newsy blogs get more traffic — that would be a blog entry that relates your subject to some current news topic. Enabling RSS feed, imports your blog to other sites. You can keep your whole story private by doing a quick lead that links to the rest of the story. She does this through Linked in, Facebook and Amazon connect. It’s good to network with other bloggers. Comment on other blogs, but know that your comments need to be “giving back” comments. This shouldn’t be all about you. Candy says to use blog tagline on articles. This is non-threatening to magazines, but gets people to your blog. Some interviews are done on blogs. You can even do guest blogs on related topics and link back to your blog. She’s done a virtual book tour on blogs. And Candy says blog content needs to be premium content.
4. Google Alerts – If you go to Google alerts, you can put in any subject (including your name), and when it shows up on the Internet, you will get an email from Google notifying you. You can put subjects like your niche, book title, article title, etc., in Google alert. You can go out on the Internet and comment on the places where these are showing up. This is also a great research tool on your subject or anything you might be working on.
5. Social Networking – Candy describes this as online mingling. She says it doesn’t take long if you keep at it everyday. Candy gets up, has her coffee, checks email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Sometimes she retweets on Twitter, etc.

LinkedIn – This has a more business focus. You can ask a LinkedIn member for an introduction if you want one. She has connected with old colleagues. You can offer resources and ask questions.

Facebook – This is a mix of personal and professional.

She likes it because it’s personal, has readers, and you can request help with something you are writing. It gives you a personal face and puts writers and editors in touch with each other. There are Google indexes on Facebook. You can import your blog. She says to note if you are the only one pasting on your wall, you are doing something wrong. There should be interaction.

Twitter – This is business and private. You do micro blogging, which is usually a small statement that links to some bigger statement, story or the like. You can follow anyone. You don’t need permission. You want to be listed and can create a list, for example, maybe you start a list for vintage aircraft or some other interest of yours. This will get you more followers. You tweet on the subject and sometimes get retweeted to others and get more followers. But it’s important to be contributing and not writing just for yourself. Once you have followers, occasionally you can use this list for self-promotion. Successful tweeters are retweeting, listing and getting new followers. Tweet tools are Tweet Deck (to organize tweets), Twellow (yellow pages in which you type in a topic to find out if there are followers on that topic). Look for sources and interviews. You might find PR people who represent the place you are writing about as well as other resources. You might even announce a contest on your website.

Traditional branding

Print collateral materials, business cards, book cards, blog cards, handouts, anything about yourself and your topic that you can hand out.

Learn to work with the media – do interviews. Candy has a pressroom on her website that is helpful to media. It should include things that you can do to help a journalist. Put a link to your press room at the bottom of your website because that’s where reporters look for it. There’s a website called HARO (Help a Reporter Out ). Look in the travel section and see if there’s a reporter’s request. You can do radio interviews from home (in your robe no less). Candy offers a website for learning how to work with media. She has gotten print jobs from editors because of radio interviews.

Candy’s six tips for working with radio
1. Know your subject.
2. Tell the host “that’s a good question.”
3. Use the hosts name.
4. Be succinct.
5. Don’t use jargon language or acronyms.
6. Never give the answer: “It’s in my book; buy it.

Write industry tip sheets – this strengthens your expertise. It’s freely distributed and gets media outlets. Example: 12 tips for finding lodging accessible to wheelchairs. Write for ezines with a byline and tag line. Keep them to 500 words use bullets and subheadings.

Event driven press releases – find significant anniversaries for your subject

Become a sought-after speaker – at bookstores, libraries, assisted living housing. Candy makes money as a speaker. She charges. She says to take collateral material with you. And if you have trouble with public speaking, join Toastmasters and practice, practice, practice.

You can have an ask the expert section on your website in the expert section of your website. Always be approachable. If you don’t have the answer, point them in the right direction.

Why bother with all this?
The market place is changing. Her first book was released two days after 9/11, so she went to Print-on-Demand and sold lots of books because of her branding and marketing. She had readers who wanted her product. Publishers came to her wanting to publish her 2nd edition. She is now a consultant and makes money that way. Even CVBs (convention and visitors bureaus) refer editors to her.

– Sandy Sims
BATW Program Chair