Founding Zille Books was an administrative and organisational effort from start to finish, including a long and ambitious business plan, financial matters, market research, spreadsheets and power point presentations, the signing of more contracts than I can count on my fingers, leadership, sales pitches and the management of printing, distribution and orders.
However, while I very much enjoy and feel confident working on these things and have loved seeing the tangible result of my first publication in book shops, none of the above has been what drove and engaged me the most during this process.
Storytelling and communications has been both a discovery and a joy for me over the last year. I can talk at lenght about influencers, engagement rates, social media software, photography, audio recording, editing, RRS feeds, SEO, Wordpress and statistics, but I believe they are only a means to an end which is to convey your message and your ideas to people who want to hear about them. The actual process of social media management has for me been about creating real and meaningful relationships, about networking with genuine intentions and about showing your passion for what you are doing.
The rewards from this work have been the most gratifying professional experiences of my life. It has resulted in women I admire happily agreeing to come onto my podcast to discuss their work and their beliefs, people responding to that podcast with support and enthusiasm, receiving messages on Instagram from people who tell me they love what I am doing, and finally seeing them all come through after ten months of hard work to feature what I have done on their own channels. This has been truly humbling, and taught me the value of authentic marketing.