RedPen Mentoring
Group Challenge 2

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Challenge 2 is essentially another stock check, but includes a lot of preparatory work – for which you might be grateful one sunny day when fortune shines on you.

The focus is on the ‘you’ that your prospective audience will meet in the future and the product(s)/services that you will be providing for them.

In true RedPen tradition, I have three tasks for you to complete.

TASK ONE

For Challenge 1, you revealed to me: who you are, where you’ve come from (what you’ve achieved to date), and where you see yourself headed (your vision of the future).

Now, I challenge you to prepare written/visual forms of that information, with a view to using them to inform your prospective audience who you are, where you’ve come from and where you might feature in their lives going forward.

As an example, look at how I present myself.

Using images

I had a professional photoshoot done last Autumn and now have a selection of photos I can use. You can see these on my website, and Facebook and Twitter.

Using text

On my website, there’s an About Us page.

On Facebook, my profile reads: Writer/editor/mentor @ RedPen Editing and blogger on https://www.scrivenervirgin.com

On Twitter, it says: Writer/editor/mentor blogging on and offering the RedPen editing system to the world

This information is the online equivalent to a business card. Having looked at mine, check out some other writers (eg Patsy Collins, Joanna Penn, JK Rowling) or suppliers of similar products/services, and then devise/revise your own.

TASK TWO

For Challenge 2, identify ONE product (or service) that you will (one day!) be hoping to sell to your audience. Give it the same treatment as you did for yourself in TASK ONE above.

  • Think images: a logo, a book cover, …
  • Think text

Look at what I’ve done for ScrivenerVirgin and RedPen Editing … and look also at other writers’ promotional material, eg for their books or courses.

You might not be ready to ‘sell’ this one product/service, but it will help you to start thinking about what you will be selling and how you might promote it.

TASK THREE

Imagine that your product/service is about to be launched. You have all your promotional material set up as per TASK ONE, ditto for the product/service in TASK TWO.

Now, you are contacted by a friend-of-a-friend and you’ve been offered a shot of publicity. This could be a radio interview, an article in a writerly magazine, a guest blog post, a podcast interview, …

For this friend-of-a-friend to introduce you to their audience, he/she needs some brief information – it’s usually called a bio (short for biography).

In anticipation of this exciting opportunity, I challenge you to write some ‘treatments’ of different lengths, so you are ready to send the material requested, by return.

  • 2-line bio of 140 characters – ideal for Twitter
  • Short (50 words) to go at the end of any article
  • Medium (100 words)
  • Long (400-600 words) suitable for eg website – include trivia about your likes e.g. popcorn … to help to tell a story about you
  • Speaker intro (250-300 words) suitable for someone who has to introduce you to their event. Never let anyone else introduce you with their words – worst mistake ever! Instead, provide it for them.

As an example, look at some treatments that I prepared earlier.

Now, over to you. There is no deadline for you to complete this challenge. The material you produce will need regular reviewing / updating as your writing journey progresses. (However, there will be a challenge 3 in about a month’s time!)

If you have any questions about this challenge, raise them in the RedPen Mentoring Facebook group and/or in the thread for the next Facebook event for our monthly MMM. I’ll then aim to include that topic in that session!