Using YouTube to Develop your Platform by Karla Akins

Are you using video to gain interest in your writing and build your platform? Author Karla Akins provides her experience and reasons why you should consider it. -- Sandy

Karla: It’s no mystery why people have been drawn to TV and movies since the 1950s. Video on the web isn’t any different. People love relaxing and pulling up a short video to enjoy. A lot of people I know don’t watch TV anymore. They’re getting their news and entertainment exclusively from YouTube. I’m one of those.

Using video in your marketing strategy is an ingenious way of connecting with users. That doesn’t mean you have to abandon written content. Kristy Cambron is an author who combines both mediums beautifully on her blog. In fact, she is who inspired me to jump on the YouTube bandwagon.

If you want to stand out in today’s competitive book market, consider video. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Video is shared 1200% more often on Facebook than pictures (via simplymeasured.com).

2. Video is the best way for your readers to get to know you personally.

3. Video is more memorable than written copy. Our Internet culture is making us blind to ads. We have learned to ignore them. It’s harder to ignore a good video.

4. Video appears in 70% of the top search engine results.

5. Videos increase the time people spend on your website pages.

It’s relatively easy to start a YouTube channel. Here’s how I did it:

1. I chose a name for my channel other than my own name. Some people advise this. Others don’t. But since I wanted my channel to be more than for promoting myself, I chose a name (Sparrow Song Radio) and Logo. However, I always, always put a link to my website IN the video and in the video description, no matter what the topic.

2. I hired the cool video intro to my channel at Fiverr. It cost me a whopping $25.

3. I decided what topics I would cover on my station. I have many more episodes to be edited that aren’t yet posted.

4. One of the ways I develop video content is by interviewing other authors or people that fascinate me.

5. You don’t have to edit videos or have an expensive camera. You can start with simply talking into your phone’s video camera. Most YouTubers start this way. As my own channel grows, I plan to buy better equipment but for now, I’m using what I have. You have to start somewhere!

6. Later, you can learn to edit videos to make them “fancier.” Explore video editing software. It isn’t as difficult as you think! I started out with Windows Movie Maker and graduated to Camtasia. I love Camtasia. It’s very user friendly, but it’s not for advanced users. Still, for me, it’s perfect. (Price: $299 for PC; $99 for Mac.) One caveat: editing videos is very time consuming. Especially when you’re first learning. At first you may want to block out a substantial amount of time for this. 

7. I embed my videos into my blogs but I also have a dedicated “channel” site for them: SparrowSongRadio.com. 

Really, the possibilities are endless with video! My channel has a talk show launching soon. It’s tons of fun building a platform this way.

If you'd like me to interview you for your book, let me know! We love authors at Sparrow Song Radio!

Yours for writing on and on! Karla

Have you used videos for building your platform? Any questions for Karla?

 

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 Karla Akins is the author of The Pastor's Wife Wears Biker Boots and countless short stories, biographies

and other books for middle grades. She currently serves as President of ACFW-Indiana Chapter and resides in North Manchester with her pastor-husband, twin adult sons with autism, and her mother-in-law with Alzheimer's. Her three dogs and two cats are attentive editors.

My Journey to Publication by Karla Akins

Karla Akins

A couple weeks ago, Karla Akins shared her heartbreak over her son's arrest and encouraged us to weather the storms with her adapted poem, Write Anyway. Today, she's back sharing her journey to publication. Hope you enjoy! ~Dora

I’ve been writing since I held a piece of chalk in each hand.

As a young child I was ambidextrous until I gradually adopted my left hand as the one to hold my pencil. I have a bump on my middle finger where I used to grip the pen far too tight. I don’t think many people see those writing bumps on kids today. They come out of the womb typing.

I wrote reams of poetry in fifth grade. That same year I entered an essay contest and placed second in the county. (The boy who sat behind me won first.) In Junior High I wrote a poem and entered it in a radio show’s “Win a Tie for Your Dad” contest. I woke up one morning and heard my name and my poem. In high school I wrote a three-act musical and my drama teacher took all us corn-fed Kansas kids to NYC to perform it at a theater convention. I was sure I was headed for the big time.

God had other plans.

I met a handsome minister and got married. While my children were small I took the mail order Writing for Children and Teenagers course through the Institute of Children’s Literature and finished it. I wrote for anything that needed copy: organizational newsletters, magazines, church letters and local newspapers. Writing has always been as much a part of me as my crooked little toe. I wrote for bigger magazines and got rejection after rejection. But I’m a stubborn soul and believed that I was called to do this writing thing and refused to quit.

After my children were mostly grown, I participated in NaNoWriMo in 2003. After a year or two of participating in NaNoWriMo, I stumbled across a call for stories by a homeschool curriculum company. That led me to write several narrative biographies to be included in compilations. A few years after those were published, the publisher asked me to write a book about Canada.

Simultaneously I was introduced to some writers online, and learned about ACFW. I was also introduced to my current online critique group where my writing got a thorough working over. I learned more in one year of participating in the critique group than I did in all my years of writing combined. I can’t stress enough how important finding a critique group is!

I didn’t have to search far for an agent. One of our critique group members became an agent at Hartline Literary Agency where she was already working. Linda Glaz became my agent and sold my book to Pelican Book Group’s Harbourlight imprint. My current book, The Pastor’s Wife Wears Biker Boots is due out tomorrow!

If I were going to give advice to new writers today, it is this: don’t quit. No matter how many years stand between you and publication, if you don’t quit, you will be published as long as you remain teachable and apply the things you’re taught.  

So tell me, how did you get started? I’d love to know!!

The Pastor's Wife Wears
Biker Boots
Purchase Link

Pastor’s wife, Kirstie Donovan, lives life in a fishbowl, so when she hops on the back of a bright pink motorcycle, tongues start to wag at the conservative, century-old First Independent Christian Community Church of Eels Falls. 

Kirstie loves roaring down a road less traveled by most women over forty, but she’s not just riding her bike for the fun of it. Kirstie has a ministry. However, certain church members have secrets to hide, and when God uses Kirstie’s ministry to fill the pews with leather-clad, tattooed bikers, those secrets could be exposed…and some will stop at nothing to hide the truth. 

Join Kirstie and her motorcycle “gang”—two church matrons and a mouthy, gum-smacking non-church member—as they discover that road-toughened bikers are quite capable of ministering to others, and faith is fortified in the most unexpected ways.

Karla Akins is a pastor's wife who rides her own motorcycle. She is the mother of four boys and one step-daughter, and grandmother of five. She lives in North Manchester with her husband who is the pastor of Christian Fellowship Church, her twin teenage boys with autism, mother-in-law with Alzheimer's and three rambunctious dogs. Karla and her husband have been in ministry together for 30 years. You can contact Karla for speaking engagements via her website at KarlaAkins.com.

Write Anyway by Karla Akins

The Pastor's Wife Wears Biker Boots
by Karla Akins
Purchase Link

When I first connected with Karla through her website, I knew immediately I wanted her to guest on Seriously Write to talk about her passion for helping families with incarcerated loved ones. You can see more about her prison ministry here, but meanwhile allow her words to touch the deepest part of your writer's, and your parent's, heart. ~Dora

When I wrote the first drafts of my manuscript, The Pastor’s Wife Wears Biker Boots, I had no idea that it would find an agent and be released at the same time one of my sons would be arrested for drug charges.

Yes, you heard right. My son, the pastor’s son. Homeschooled. Nurtured and taught the Word of the Lord from conception, is now in prison because he was caught selling $50 worth of Meth to a friend.

It’s funny how God works. When I wrote my book, part of the story included a rebellious preacher’s son who gets in trouble for underage drinking. I never imagined at the time I created that scenario that my own son, in his late 20s, was slipping into drug addiction.

Oh. The heartache.

When I wrote about a man with Alzheimer’s in my book, I had no idea that my mother-in-law would come to live with us because she developed Alzheimer’s at about the same time my son went to prison. My household is not exactly a haven of serenity with Mama, adult twin sons with autism and another adult son on the autism spectrum living there.

I have to wonder—while I was writing this book—was God somehow preparing me for the worst storm I’d weathered yet?

But I keep writing. Writing is the one time I can escape into a blissful other-world. I refuse to let the devil steal from me anymore than he’s already tried to.

I’ve refused to see my son as he was—a drug addict and felon, and I’ve chosen to believe in what he will be on the other side of his incarceration. (You can read more about this experience on my prison ministry web page: http://www.karlaakins.com/prison-ministry.html ).

But it hasn’t been easy.

There are certainly days I want to curl up in a ball and hide from the world, but I know that’s exactly what the devil wants me to do. He hates me, my children, my message. He’ll do anything he can to stop it.

Satan hates you, your children and your message, too.

Don’t let him win.

Write anyway.

Supposedly the following poem by Mother Teresa in its original form is posted on an orphanage wall in Calcutta. (See original here). I’ve paraphrased it below as a poem of encouragement for writers:

When people are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered:

Write anyway.

When you are hurting, in pain, and feel like quitting:

Write anyway.

If you are kind, and people accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives:

Write anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies:

Write anyway.

What you spend years writing, may be rejected and never be published.

Write anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness in writing, others may be jealous:

Write anyway.

The good writing you do today, people will often forget tomorrow.

Write anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough.

Write anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God.

It was never between you and them.

Write anyway.

Karla Akins

Karla Akins is a pastor's wife who rides her own motorcycle. She is the mother of four boys and one step-daughter, and grandmother of five. She lives in North Manchester with her husband who is the pastor of Christian Fellowship Church, her twin teenage boys with autism, mother-in-law with Alzheimer's and three rambunctious dogs. Karla and her husband have been in ministry together for 30 years. You can contact Karla for speaking engagements via her website at KarlaAkins.com