Look Who it Was Random video

Make Your Own Luck In Social Media With Alexis Grant

730 views · Published 31 January 2012 · 21:22 · Indexed 10 November 2026

Channel: The Creative Penn · 2012 · Education

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Alexis Grant is an entrepreneur, social media strategist, freelance journalist and travel writer who now helps other people with building an effective online presence. She has just released a course on 'Using social media to make your own luck' which we discuss in this video.

    How to put your networks in place and make strategic connections so that opportunities to come to you. People say 'you're so lucky' but actually you can make your own luck. The course is an email a  day for a month so you can put strategies into place to build your networks.

    For writers, it might mean meeting an editor, or a literary agent. Or connecting with other authors for peer support or blurbing books, or writing opportunities.

    Alexis was named as one of the bloggers to watch in 2012 on Problogger. I was on that list a few years ago and being on lists like that make a real difference. We both connected personally with the writer of the piece, Jade Craven.

    How Alexis met her agent, Rachelle Gardner through her connections on Twitter.

    Don't just target the 'big names'. Start the process with connecting with anyone who is interesting to you as well as people with lots of followers. But people with smaller and more targeted networks are great too. Alexis and I met on Twitter in early 2009 when we had little blogs and no real audience. We've both grown our platforms since then but we connected before it all.

    How long will it take to make an impact? It does take a while. You need to be consistent over time and make it a habit. How can you push your networks to the next level.

    Alexis recommends Rapportive as a Gmail plugin. It gives you all the social media links of the person who has emailed you.  [It's awesome - I now use it too] It means you can connect on multiple channels which keeps you in their mind.

    Who are you connecting with? Readers or other people in your industry. Word of mouth is word of mouth and people do share in their networks. Just connect on a personal level.

    How Alexis moved from her day job as a journalist to full time entrepreneur. She creates online products but also works with clients as a social media strategist building communities for people. She does a lot of blogging with start-ups.

    How Alexis uses her writing to make money. Creating content is a full-time job -- blogging and tweeting for companies. She also writes creatively including an essay on Salon.com

    Alexis wrote a travel memoir a few years ago. It's with her agent but the traditional publishing industry moves so slowly. She has published several ebooks since then, so it's strange to experience both worlds of fast and slow. How Alexis feels about the control aspect of publishing and what she's planning for her writing. The difficult of selling memoir as indie published. Non-fiction as more lucrative than fiction. Alexis has changed a lot since she wrote the memoir but it's not her focus at the moment.

    On the lifestyle of an entrepreneur. Alexis is heading off to Nicaragua and Costa Rica in February. She will do some work while she's there but it's an experiment in running her business while traveling. I quit my day job a month after Alexis and so we're both excited about what will change in the next 2 years

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