Merry Christmas

Every year, adults try to beat the kid-friendly-free-toy system and send their wish lists to Santa. This year has been no different. These letters were caught in Santa’s spam filter and he forwarded them to me for investigation.

Anyone recognize this group of goons? They call themselves writers. I call them at large.

Sincerely,

Irvin Elf

North Pole Bureau of Investigations

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the IWSG team! 

Be Kind To Yourself

As writers, the work can be mentally and emotionally draining as you grind away on those manuscripts. Creative slumps, dry spells, and writer’s block hit all writers from time to time.

Writers can be very neglectful when it comes to self-care, especially those who work from home and know that there are bills that need to be paid, looming deadlines, household chores and children who need your constant attention.

It can be quite daunting.

Pause.

Take a deep breathe.

A reminder that you need to give yourself permission to sit back and let the well refill.

As you reflect on the year that has been, here are some reminders:
1. Write for 20 minutes, then stretch your arms, back, and shoulders.
2. Take frequent breaks. Go for a walk. You can people watch and observe and listen.
3. Don't check your sales figures every single day.
4. Buy some new accessories (maybe a bullet journal or colorful post-its)
5. Remember that everyone feels like an impostor sometimes.      
6. Have a little bit of writing-related fun where you give your inner writer a little TLC such as, doodling or writing some bad poetry. Alleviate the pressure from yourself by not expecting the writing to become “a thing.”
7. Read for the sake of reading. When was the last time that you picked up a book just to enjoy the experience? Too often writers seem to focus on craft books instead of reading for the sheer love of reading.
8. Accept that you'll always have room to grow so you need to stop beating yourself up for not being 100% productive all the time - remember that perfect is the 'enemy' of good.

Are there any other tips you can add to this list?

Avoid These Facebook Ads Oversights

Facebook is easily the most popular social media platform, with more than 2.4 billion monthly active users and almost 1.6 billion visiting the site every day. This makes it the perfect opportunity for businesses to connect with an audience and find people interested in their products.

Unfortunately, Facebook marketing isn’t always that simple, and the majority of small business owners say their Facebook ads don’t reach their goals. However, if you’re not currently partnered with an agency but are looking for some quick tips to avoid simple errors that hold your campaigns back and hurt results, this article can help. Here we will cover a few of the most common Facebook marketing mistakes and help you develop more effective strategies.
 
Failing to Create a Clear Plan
Small business owners are typically responsible for a wide range of tasks, and this makes it difficult to give Facebook marketing the attention it deserves. If you advertise on Facebook without a clear vision for each campaign, you probably won’t achieve your marketing goals.
It’s important to match each goal to a relevant statistic that can measure the success of each ad. If you’re looking to increase brand awareness, for example, you shouldn’t focus on conversions when evaluating your results. Instead, look at metrics like impressions and cost per impression to determine how successful you were in reaching out to new users.
 
Failing to Target the Right Users
Facebook allows you to pay for each ad based on either impressions or clicks, but these numbers don’t always reflect the value of your content. If you target users who aren’t interested in your brand’s product or core message, impressions and clicks probably won’t lead to many sales.
Since Facebook’s audience is so large, it’s critical to use every tool at your disposal to target the right users. Targeting small audiences with granular similarities allows you to create personalized content that responds to that group’s needs and desires. Personalization is one of the most important factors in digital marketing on any platform.
 
Failing to Consider the Customer Journey
Sales are the goal of every campaign, but you can’t expect each ad to lead to an immediate sale. Customers often need to interact with a brand a number of times before they feel comfortable enough to make a purchase, and trying to sell products to cold leads almost always leads to a poor conversion rate.
Rather than pushing sales with every ad, start the sales cycle with engaging, interesting content that keeps your audience’s attention. From there, you can start moving each lead toward a conversion.
 
Failing to Retarget Existing Audiences
You should also take advantage of Facebook’s powerful retargeting features to market to users who have already interacted with your brand. Retargeting ads convert much more often than ads targeting cold audiences, and you can personalize retargeting campaigns to respond to customer behavior. It’s important to build your Facebook ads for long-term engagement in addition to short-term sales. 
You can create retargeting audience based on website interactions by setting up the Facebook pixel on your site. Facebook also allows you to develop audience using other factors like app activity, customer profiles, and previous Facebook engagement. Start building retargeting audiences by accessing the “Audiences” section in Ads Manager.
 
Facebook marketing is a complicated process, and it’s easy to make these simple mistakes that decrease sales, engagement, and audience retention. Addressing these issues will help you improve your Facebook results and achieve a higher ROI on your next campaign.

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Thanks to Rae Steinbach for contributing this post today. Rae is a graduate of Tufts University with a combined International Relations and Chinese degree. After spending time living and working abroad in China, she returned to NYC to pursue her career and continue curating quality content. Rae is passionate about travel, food, and writing (of course). You can follow her on Twitter - @araesininthesun