Nicole Bianchi

{ copywriting, marketing, & productivity strategies for creatives }

A GDPR Compliance Checklist For Your Email Marketing

Last Updated By 6 Comments

A Super Simple GDPR Compliance Checklist For Your Email Marketing

Want to connect with other writers? Make sure to get your invitation to my private writing community on Facebook!

Over the past several weeks, the blogosphere has been buzzing with talk of a new EU privacy law called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that will go into effect on May 25.

When I first heard about the law, I thought, “Well, I’m not in the EU so I guess this doesn’t apply to me.”

Wrong. I soon found out that if I had any email subscribers who were EU citizens, the law applied to me as well. That means it probably applies to you too if you have EU subscribers on your email list.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of conflicting information out there about GDPR and what actions to take to make sure your email marketing is GDPR compliant. [Read more…]

Use this Strategy to Craft Captivating Blog Post Introductions

Last Updated By 27 Comments

Use this Strategy to Craft Captivating Introductions For Your Blog Posts
Photo by Christin Hume
Want to connect with other writers? Make sure to get your invitation to my private writing community on Facebook!

When I was a little kid, I fell in love with a book and read it so many times that I nearly memorized the first page. Here’s the book’s opening line:

Where’s Papa going with that ax?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.

Do you know what book it’s from? It’s the first sentence of the children’s classic Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White.

Now go back and read that opening line again. It really grabs your attention, doesn’t it?

It certainly grabbed mine when I was a kid. Just like Fern, I wondered why in the world her dad was heading out with an ax. Was he going to chop down a tree or, heaven forbid, kill someone? [Read more…]

How to Write in a Conversational Style That Will Connect with Your Readers

Last Updated By 28 Comments

Photo by Pablo Heimplatz
Want to connect with other writers? Make sure to get your invitation to my private writing community on Facebook!

The other day, I was checking my email when I came across a suspicious looking message. It began with the line, “Dear Sir/Madam”.

The first paragraph read,

Please pardon me if I intrude into your privacy, and may I humbly solicit your confidence in this transaction. I came to know about you in my private search for a reliable and reputable foreigner to handle this confidential transaction.

Wow, that writing sounds like something straight out of a Dickens novel. I quickly clicked delete, suspecting that this was a phishing scam.

You’ve probably received emails like this too. And maybe you’ve also chuckled at their standoffish, overly formal tone. It seems to be a trademark of these types of spam emails.

However, not too long ago, no one would have laughed at that style of writing. It’s the style most people would have used if they wanted to come across as polite and professional.

In fact, your English teacher probably taught you a similar academic style when you were in school. Flowery language. Long paragraphs. Precise grammar. No contractions.

And then came the Internet. Over time, everyone from bloggers to big corporations realized that a conversational style of writing is a much more powerful way to engage and connect with your audience. [Read more…]

The Two Magic Words That Will Strengthen Your Writing

Last Updated By 40 Comments

The Two Magic Words That Will Strengthen Your Writing
Photo by Alexa Mazzarello
Want to connect with other writers? Make sure to get your invitation to my private writing community on Facebook!

It’s a Thursday afternoon, and I’m teaching a group of restless sixth graders some of the finer points of English grammar. As you can probably guess, this isn’t the easiest task in the world.

Several of the students are beginning to whisper back and forth to each other and laugh under their breath. Two others are absorbed in drawing pictures on their worksheets. Another looks like he’s about to fall asleep. I realize I only have a few minutes before I lose complete control of the class.

“Okay,” I say in a loud voice. “For example…” I pick up a marker and begin drawing a stick figure on the whiteboard. “Let’s look at some sentences about Bob. He’s going to help us see when we should and should not use commas in our sentences.”

My illustration on the whiteboard is far from a masterpiece. In fact, my tutoring students are laughing at it. But they’re also sitting up straight in their chairs now and all eyes are on me.

As I write sentences on the board accompanied by funny illustrations of Bob, the kids are eagerly calling out answers to my questions. All I had to do was use the two words, “For example” and come up with stories to illustrate the grammar rules, and I’ve captured their attention once again.

It works like magic every time.

And these two words can work like magic in your writing too. [Read more…]

The One Powerful Strategy That Will Help You Stand out Online in 2018

Last Updated By 20 Comments

Photo by Paul Dufour
Want to connect with other writers? Make sure to get your invitation to my private writing community on Facebook!

It’s a brand new year filled with opportunity. You’ve resolved to focus your energy on writing more blog posts or maybe even publishing a book. There’s only one problem. There are thousands of people out there who’ve made the exact same New Year’s resolution as you.

The Internet is a crowded place. Every day someone writes a new blog post in your niche or publishes a new book on Amazon in your genre. In a sea of content, how can you get people to pay attention to your work?

I remember a shoe store my mom used to take me to when I was a little kid. It was called Merry-Go-Round Shoes and was quite unlike any store I’d ever been to. There was a merry-go-round in the center of the store that children could ride on.
[Read more…]

How to Grow Your Email List With Giveaways

Last Updated By 14 Comments

How to Grow Your Email List With Giveaways
Photo by Ben White
Want to connect with other writers? Make sure to get your invitation to my private writing community on Facebook!

This November, I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my soon-to-be-released eBook How to Grow Your Email List: A Step by Step Guide for Writers.

In this in-depth book, I’m compiling all of the strategies I’ve used to grow my email list from 200 to over 2,000 subscribers in just one year. And I show you step-by-step how you can use them to grow your online audience too.

I’m planning to release the book this December. But in today’s blog post, I’m sharing a sneak peek of one of the chapters. It’s about a very cool email list building strategy: giveaways! 🙂

Running a giveaway is one of my favorite email list building strategies. It’s a fun way for you to show your current subscribers how much you appreciate their support. And, at the same time, it’s an effective way to attract new subscribers to your list. (Don’t have an email list yet? Check out my blog post here for how you can get started.) [Read more…]

Why I’m Joining NaNoWriMo This Year (And My Top 5 Tips on How to Win)

Last Updated By 34 Comments

My Top 5 Tips on How to Win NaNoWriMo

This is a post I wrote last October 2016. Since I’m planning on participating in NaNoWriMo again this year, I decided to update and republish it. Are you joining in NaNoWriMo too? Make sure to get your invitation to my private Facebook group for writers!

Today I checked the calendar and realized that November is only a few weeks away, and that means that National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo!) is nearly upon us.

Who else has decided to join in on the NaNoWriMo fun?

If you’ve never heard of NaNoWriMo before, it’s a month-long event where writers challenge themselves to pen a 50,000-word novel (about the length of novels like The Great Gatsby or Fahrenheit 451). The goal is to begin writing on the first of November and finish by midnight of November 30.

You can plan and outline your story as much as you like beforehand but the actual writing of the story can only be done during November. Sounds kind of crazy, right?

I’ve participated several times over the years and completed the challenge twice, and it’s always been a fun and ultimately satisfying experience. [Read more…]

What Charlotte Brontë Taught Me About Being a Writer

Last Updated By 18 Comments

What Charlotte Brontë Taught Me About Being a Writer

Want to connect with other writers? Make sure to get your invitation to my private writing community on Facebook!

Charlotte Brontë dips her pen in the inkwell and begins to write. She and her sisters, Anne and Emily, have brought their desks into the parlor and are busy working on their stories. The rain taps soothingly on the windows of the parsonage, and Charlotte pauses from her work to stare out into the garden. Though she feels in her heart that this is the best story she has ever written, she still fears that the publishers might turn it down as they did with her last manuscript.

The gentle scratching of her sisters’ pens against paper arouses her from her thoughts. Shaking off her doubts, she examines the paragraphs in front of her. There isn’t time to worry about the future — she must only worry about putting her words on paper and getting her protagonist Jane out of this latest predicament with Mr. Rochester.

That was how I envisioned Charlotte Brontë, the author of Jane Eyre, as I gazed at her portable writing desk last December. No, I hadn’t been transported back to the 1840s to her home in West Yorkshire, England. (I wish I had, just for an afternoon! I would have loved to have taken tea with Charlotte and talked about writing with her and her sisters.)

Rather, I was visiting the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City for a special exhibition celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charlotte’s birth in 1816. [Read more…]

How to Start Building Your Email List: 3 of the Best Email Marketing Services for Writers

Last Updated By 20 Comments

How to Start Building Your Email List: The Top 3 Email Marketing Services for Writers

Want to connect with other writers? Make sure to get your invitation to my private writing community on Facebook!

Back in May, I wrote a post about how I grew this blog’s email list from 100 to 1,000 subscribers in less than a year. The email list is now nearing 2,000 subscribers (!!). To celebrate, I’m expanding on that blog post and writing an in-depth step by step guide. It’s going to share all of my tips and strategies that will help you grow your online audience too. (Update: Get the book here!)

Since I’m terrible at keeping things under wraps, I couldn’t wait to share a sneak peek of the book with you. Today’s post is from an early draft of the book’s “getting started” section where I explain why an email list is important, and I narrow down the top three email marketing services for writers who are just starting out.

If you’re overwhelmed by all of the different email marketing options out there and aren’t sure which one to choose to get started, this is the post for you.  [Read more…]