What’s the brand love model:
1. Build a beachhead of Fans that love your product or your idea. We’re not talking about passive brand targets on steroids but customers who actively promote your brand and want a meaningful relationship with company.
2. Join the dots. Build a community for your fans, a platform for them to share and connect.
3. Work closely with your Fans to develop the product.
4. Lauch product to wider market.
5. Go global.
~GRAHAM BROWN, author of Brand Love: How to Build a Brand Worth Talking About
WRITING
- How to uncover your character’s emotional wound, Writers Helping Writers | Tweet
To build a compelling character (and write them convincingly) we want to make them real as possible, and that means developing a backstory that lets us understand them on a deeper level.
- The Naked Truth: How to write a book and get it done, Write to Done | Tweet
Write to Done. I’ve always thought it an odd name for a blog until the lightbulb went off, and all became clear. It’s a name that not only encourages us to write, it also inspires us to finish that writing, and get it done and out there.
→The Marshall Plan Workbook : Writing Your Novel from Start to Finish
- An Introduction to Satire: A modest proposal, The Write Practice | Tweet
Want to write satire? Me too. Looks fun, and you get to make ridiculous arguments. Here are two techniques and tips to write great satire.
→Turn Tale and Pun: The Composition of Satire
- Is your idea strong enough? Story Structure Part 4, Kristen Lamb’s Blog | Tweet
Whether we are traditionally published, indie published or self-published, we must connect with readers and tell a great story. Structure is the “delivery system” for our story, so it’s wise to make it as solid as possible.
→Story Structure: The Key to Successful Fiction (The Red Sneaker Writers Book Series)
- How to plot and outline without using a formula, Jane Friedman | Tweet
Writers everywhere need help building something beautiful, solid, and original, and that takes a method. The method I’d like to suggest has three main concepts: 1. Scene 2. Series 3. Theme.
SELF-PUBLISHING
- Crowdfunding, a passion for print and WB Yeats with Orna Ross, The Creative Penn | Tweet
Crowdfunding is becoming ever more popular with creatives to raise fund for various projects. But when is it a good idea for an author?
→The Crowdfunding Book: A How-to Book for Entrepreneurs, Writers, and Inventors
- 5 Tips for going on an offline book tour, The Book Designer | Tweet
When the attendees at that gig trickle in, you aren’t taking any of them for granted. You aren’t looking to sell a product or a service so much as you are looking to connect which increases your chance of selling anything dramatically. A few words to the wise, then, about active touring.
- The Key Book Publishing Paths in 2015, Jane Friedman | Tweet
Should I traditionally publish or self-publish? This is an increasingly complicated question to answer.
→Publishing 101: The Publishers Weekly Introduction to Publishing and Self-Publishing
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SCIENCE
Cosmology has been on a long, hot streak, racking up one imaginative and scientific triumph after another. Is it over?
→Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe
STARTUPS
In 2015, your successful business needs to translate — preferably, across borders and languages too, especially if you run an e-commerce based startup. Short of translating all your existing materials — a potentially costly and time-consuming process — how and where do you even start?
→Startupland: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea into a Global Business
COWORKING
What makes coworking spaces – defined as membership-based workspaces where diverse groups of freelancers, remote workers, and other independent professionals work together in a shared, communal setting – so effective? And are there lessons for more traditional offices?
→Coworking: Building Community as a Space Catalyst
STATISTICS
- The problem with sexed-up statistics, Tim Hardford | Tweet
Men think about sex every seven seconds. Eighty-four per cent of women are emotionally unsatisfied with their relationships. Single people in the United States have more sex than married people do. Sixty-nine per cent of people over the age of 35 have had extramarital affairs. People have 40 per cent less sex now than they did 20 years ago. Truth, or myth?
→Sex by Numbers: What Statistics Can Tell Us About Sexual Behaviour
BRANDING
- Do we really love our favourite brands the same way we love people, The British Psychological Society | Tweet
People can get awfully attached to their preferred brands. Some tattoo logos on their skin, others camp out overnight to buy the latest products.Late in life, people often still favour and trust brands from their youth. But is brand obsession and attachment really the same as the love we feel for people?
→Brand Love: How to Build a Brand Worth Talking About