Many authors are overwhelmed with the number of tasks they face each day. However, which tasks are the most important for you to focus on each day?
In this post, I share with you my top 10 list of high impact tasks I recommend for authors.
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Top 10 List of High Impact Tasks for Authors
1. Prayer
This is something I think we gloss over many times.
I am a Christ follower and a lot of my lifers are Christians or Christ followers as well. Therefore, I want to emphasize the importance of prayer again.
My husband and I recently recorded a Godly Gain segment on the topic of prayer. You can read the transcript here: www.shelleyhitz.com/writing-led-by-the-spirit
2. Strategy
Many authors neglect to spend time in strategy. Instead, they tend to dive right in to doing, doing, doing.
A lot of times this is due to the bright shiny object syndrome.
What I recommend to do instead is to set a 90-day BREAKTHROUGH goal. Many of you have a hard time focusing and you have many different book ideas. I’m the same way. However, I want you to focus on your 90-day BREAKTHROUGH goal.
If you’re an Author Audience Academy member I have a training for you called Plan It Day. This training will help you set you 90-day goal. Simply go into the member’s area, click on the icon that says Plan It Day and you’ll find the training there.
Just a small amount of time spent in strategy, will really yield a lot of results. When you are laser focused you can;
- complete tasks
- get things done
- get momentum,
- start getting results
- and actually finish your projects.
If you don’t have a good strategy in place, everything else will tend to be haphazard. It can be hit or miss and you may be easily swayed with the bright shiny objects until you set your strategy in place.
3. Creating New Offers
When you’re creating new offers, you’re finishing books and/or products.
You’re crossing the finish line.
I have a lot of authors I know who are writing all the time, but they are not finishing books and therefore not creating new offers.
If you don’t publish and don’t put your product out there for sale, you’re not going to be able to have the impact or the income you want.
I recommend you spend time creating new offers. This includes writing and being focused on finishing. I want you to be a finisher, and and not simply start new projects that never get done.
I want you to cross that finish line.
“Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they’ve started.” – David Allen
When you have the focus and a 90-day BREAKTHROUGH goal, you know what you’re focusing on this quarter and the offers you’re going to be creating. Therefore, you’re not just going off on rabbit trails starting new book projects, but finishing your main goal.
If you do get new ideas, make sure to write them down and capture them for later. But, stay focused on your primary goal right now.
4. Writing and Sending Emails to Your Subscriber List
I just sent an email to my list this morning. And you know what? I didn’t feel like it.
I didn’t want to write an email and I didn’t want to click send, but I know that is a high impact task for me as an author; as a business owner.
So, I sat down in my chair and I did it. Notice I didn’t just say, “building an email subscriber list,” because that is important. But I really want you to focus on nurturing your current email subscriber list;
- writing emails,
- making them personality driven,
- telling stories,
- linking back at times to your books and your offers,
- and clicking send.
There is so much I could teach you about email marketing, but that is another entire training.
5. Use what is currently working.
I’m always saying, test, track, and tweak.
When you’re doing your marketing tasks, growing a publishing and book business, or writing books, you want to use what’s currently working.
Right now, as of 2016, Facebook is highlighting and featuring Live Video in their feeds. So, if you’re not using Live Video on Facebook yet, why not?
It is what is working right now on social media. What is working really well for you right now?
Right now something that is working well for me is webinars. So, I need to be focusing on doing more webinars. But what is working for YOU right now?
You can look at your statistics to know what’s working and what’s not, but don’t become obsessed with them and look at them every single minute of every single day. Look at what’s working for you and do more of that.
If you want to get more information on Facebook Live I have a completely free training at ShelleyHitz.com/LiveVideo, it walks you step-by-step through how to get started.
6. Setting Up Your Author Platform
Having an author platform in place is a high impact task in my opinion.
Many authors constantly put this off.
I have a very specific strategy I teach that is called the Author Automation system. I am now recommending all of my members in Author Audience Academy, start with that system. It’s a set it and forget it system that saves you time so you can do more of what you love.
Once you have the Author Automation system in place, you can start focusing on the other things.
7. Writing Your Book Description and Sales Pages
How many of you love writing book descriptions?
Most authors I talk to do not love writing their book descriptions or sales pages. This is what is called copywriting. It is different than the actual writing we do and yet is one of the highest impact tasks you can do for selling more books.
Work on learning how to write to sell. Learn how to write a book description in a way that draws your readers in to click the buy now button.
Many of us avoid it and I don’t want you to be doing things you hate all day, but when you improve your copywriting it will help you:
- Sell more books
- Get more results
- Have more impact
- And reach more people
I have invested a lot of time and money this year to learn more about copywriting. It is one of the most important skills we can learn to grow our business and sell more books.
8. Webinars
Along with your books, if you at least have smaller priced products, I think you should consider hosting webinars.
Webinars have been the number one way I have sold memberships into Author Audience Academy.
There are so many different ways you can use webinars. It’s not always the best way to focus on selling a book, but if you have additional products, which I recommend you have, then I definitely recommend webinars.
9. Setting up Facebook Ads
This is, again, if you have higher priced products.
I’m not a huge advocate of setting up Facebook Ads to sell your books. If you’re selling a $2.99 book on Kindle and you’re paying for Facebook Ads, it’s going to be hard to get your return on investment. But if you have a $97 program, or a membership that’s $59 a month, then you can easily regain your investment back.
There is a learning process and I’m going to be teaching this eventually in my academy—probably next year in more depth—but I really want you to think about it as one of your high impact tasks.
10. Investing in Continued Learning, Both Time and Money
You may have more time than money right now, so you could invest in a lot of free training and figure it out yourself.
The best shortcut is to invest in coaching or products that can shortcut the learning curve for you. I have options for you to continue learning from me in both ways.
- I have free trainings, and those free trainings are available at ShelleyHitz.com/Free.
- Then, AuthorAudienceAcademy.com is my paid program where you can get author coaching with me.
- Finally, I have my writing retreat—this will be my very first, in person, writing retreat—if you just want to get your book done and you want to have time with me. You can check that out at ColoradoWritingRetreat.com.
Conclusion
There you have it. I’ve shared with you my top 10 high impact tasks I recommend you focus on as an author. This training and mind map is available inside Author Audience Academy in the “Start Here” module.
And if you’re an Author Audience Academy member and you have not gone through Plan It Day yet—it’s my entire training where I help you set up that 90-day BREAKTHROUGH goal—do that. Go through that training first, set up your goal, and then you can start working on your plan each week.
I have, in my 30-day writing challenge WriteMoreWriteBetter.com, a training on how to use mind maps and I have 30 mind map templates you get. If you’re an Author Audience Academy member you already have access to it, simply go into the 30-day writing challenge and look for the lesson on mind maps.
What are your high impact tasks?
I’m not saying all of you are going to be doing webinars or setting up Facebook Ads. I only think those of you who have higher priced programs are going to be focusing on those two things. But everything else, 1-7 and 10, any author that focuses on those 8 tasks will see momentum, will see progress.
The question is “who is going to do it?”
We can do a million things, but you have to ask these questions to yourself.
- “What is going to have the biggest impact?”
- “What is going to be the biggest bang for your buck?”
- “What is going to be the best way to spend your time?”
These are the top 10 things I recommend.
Until next time keep working on those high impact tasks, and I’ll see you in the next training.
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