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- Hate to Write? 3 Ways to Start Enjoying It
- What to Write When an Employee Dies
- 5 Ways to Get Your Email Read, Remembered and Responded To
- Six Tips for Writing in Easy Reading Season
- 12 Ways to Plug the Email Productivity Drain
- Two Questions to Ask Before You Start Writing
- 6 Ways to Aim Your Arrow for the Heart
- 6 Ways to Become an Idea Machine
- 3 Reasons Why You Need to Improve Your Writing Skills
- Get Personal With Your Holiday Greetings: 3 Tips
Posts Tagged ‘blogs’
Remember when gurus insisted that email would be killed by RRS feeds, Facebook and other innovations? Turns out they were wrong. The contact lists you compile from your newsletter and other sources are now touted as solid marketing gold.
You are your lists. You need to grow yours. But how? Here are eight simple ways:
- Offer high-value content, a discount on your product or some other incentive in exchange for a new subscriber’s email. Ask yourself what your customers or community would most like from you.
- Promote your blog and newsletter subscriptions in as many places as possible, for example prominently displayed samples of past newsletters on your site accompanied by a signup form or a link in your email signature.
- If you blog, compile your posts into a newsletter. If you publish a newsletter only, revise and publish the content as a blog. This will give you more ways to meet people and fit your readers’ medium of choice.
- Ask people you meet if they’d be interested in your newsletter and sign them up. Don’t wait for them to act. But make sure you have their permission. Email them a past issue and ask if you’re not absolutely certain.
- Promote your newsletter through social media. Don’t fire to every site automatically. For example, I don’t always update to Facebook, because my personal friends who hang out there don’t give a fig about some of my business or professional interests.
- Make sure your email content is valued by your readers. If you only push products or services, people will stop reading and clicking. They might unsubscribe. If they love your content, they will pass it along. Give them terrific content all of the time so you can sell to them some of the time.
- Remember that email is the mother of social media. To keep the personal touch with long lists, offer different versions so content matches different groups’ interests. Ask questions, give prizes and think of other ways you can encourage interaction.
- Keep the design simple, following the F pattern of online reading, so your content can be easily read on mobile devices.
Thanks to Geoffery Kehring for the photo.
Planning how you’re going to share your expertise this year may be almost as important as those promises about getting in better shape.
To make those content resolutions, ask yourself how often, what topics, how to manage crazy times and how to improve.
1. How often?
Be realistic. Bloggers who vow to post every day or newsletter publishers who aim to distribute weekly can end up like those dieters who give up because they didn’t lose 10 pounds every month.
Decide what you can commit to while maintaining high quality and your sanity.
Allow some flexibility. While it’s wise to have a schedule, don’t be tempted to pass off inferior quality because you haven’t posted in a few days. Your readers should notice if you fall off the map for a while, but will probably not care if you miss the odd slot or veer off course.
2. What will I write about?
Just like you’ve signed up for zumba classes or a marathon and set times you plan to hit the gym, you need to draw up an editorial calendar.
If pressing issues come up, feel free to switch topics. But if you don’t start with a plan for about three-quarters of your content, you’ll end up missing commitments or staring at a blank screen.
Start your calendar with seasonal issues. I almost always discuss planning in January. Accountants may want to talk about tax preparation next month. Gardening experts will soon offer tips on seed germination.
For the times you don’t have seasonal issues, plan topics that are important to your community and will further your business objectives. For example, real estate agents will talk about the top renovations to boost your price, while specialty bakers will explain why you get different results from gluten-free flours.
3. What can I prepare in advance?
Expect that you’ll have times when you’re unable to write much, just as you’ll have sniffly days when you can almost see the muscle wither.
While you’re planning, go through your archives and see what you can dust off and update. Draft content on new topics, so you can quickly edit and publish when you’re in a pinch.
Because you have a calendar, you’ll know what to save for later use from your routine and random reading, listening and viewing. Collect and mull as you go. The writing process will become so much easier.
4. What do I need to improve?
Just as January is a popular for fitness assessments, it can be the best time to review your content vehicles.
How you can you improve them? How can you get better results? How can you reflect changes such as mobile communication and new social media? What’s new with your audience?
If you need to upgrade you writing skill, or speed up the process, this is the time to read my book Write Like You Talk–Only Better, now available in print from Amazon or here.
Like fitness, preparing quality content can be hard work–and fun. Get a jump start in January and you’ll establish a routine that will develop strength, speed and the right curves throughout 2012.
Thanks for the photo, Daniel Moyle.
If you’d like to learn the secret to pulling ideas out of your head and onto the page, read my book, Write Like You Talk–Only Better, now available on Amazon and here. Learn more or check out the first chapters. An e-version for Kindle and other digital readers will be available very soon.
A quick read at just over 100 pages, the book outlines how to start building community by thinking deeply about the person you most want to connect with, writing a concise and precise summary of what you want to say to them and picking the best structure to deliver your message.
Then comes the fun, writing like you talk, pretending you’re having a conversation with that special person. By going back to your first and favorite way to communicate, talking, writing becomes easy and social.
After that, you’ll learn how to tighten your content to respect busy readers and stay focused on what you want them to remember. You’ll check for the five common grammar flubs that still matter.
To reach the next level, you’ll learn to tell stories and apply other advanced techniques from music, movies and other media.
The learning can continue as you practice and keep improving with the worksheets and checklists. All for $20 or less, tax included.
The breath mint or candy cane
If you don’t need the book, you might want to consider giving it as a reading treat to colleagues whose rambling emails, cold reports or mistake-filled content make you crazy. It’s like passing around the mints instead offending someone you care about who’s unaware that their breath stinks.
In addition to making enough money to feed my two teenagers, I want to make the world a better place, where people understand each other and are better equipped to reach their potential through clear and compelling writing. That’s my Christmas wish.
I have never been a private person, partly in rebellion against my parents’ insistence on presenting perfect family portraits, a reflection of the times. Yet, when I decided to go public about my history of addiction, I worried the reaction would be shock and awe. It was more like bored and ignored.
Most people would nod politely, then steer the conversation back to themselves. So I decided it was safe to go further, with a post about how stories change lives, as I’d learned listening to thousands at 12-step meetings.
I wanted to share this evidence of the profound power of storytelling, which we knew long before the neuroscientists. Also, I was tired of pretending the ginger ale in my glass was scotch, to prevent well-meaning people from pushing booze on me.
I’m on the side of people like author Susan Cheever, who argue that the insistence on anonymity is keeping us recovered alcoholics in the closet of shame, much as it did with gays. The anonymity of Alcoholics Anonymous was essential when it started in 1935 and for people newer to recovery today.
But the blanket rule is a reflection of times past. Besides, I am proud of what I have overcome and become.
With my misspent youth so far behind me, I don’t have much to hide. Of course I zealously guard my bank password and other information people could use to rip me off. I’d prefer people didn’t know my age and weight, but when it slips out, most people are nice enough to say I look younger and it must be mostly muscle.
I don’t offer a lot of personal information on my online profiles, where I’m warned that evil forces will attack. I prefer to reveal on whim, like my attempt to be funny about my too-frequent need to pee, inspired by the hilarious shit-free diarrhea scene in the movie Bridesmaids.
We keep hearing that people won’t get hired if they share too much on Facebook. But as I discovered when my daughter got a part-time job with a large retail chain, recruiters don’t rule out everyone who is tagged in photos with a beer bottle or a bong. There wouldn’t be enough candidates left.
I think our privacy commissioner and other government officials overreact. They should focus on keeping private what needs to be guarded, not information that I have chosen to share on Facebook or other public forums.
I’ve been reading Public Parts by Jeff Jarvis, where he discusses how the right to privacy is a relatively recent social construct, not a divine right. By going public about his prostate cancer, even though it meant disclosing problems with peeing and sex, he was able to connect with many other people going through the same things. And it made him human.
Because I’m not famous, I don’t worry about the tales, some true but many false, that were discussed in the recent British investigation into the Murdoch newspapers’ phone hacking. Because I’m not a blogging celeb, I’m not concerned about twisted allegations, like those I’ve seen in the David Navarro-Naomi Dunford drama.
Although I despise this prying and exploitation, they’re the tradeoff for a mostly free press and internet.
Public disclosure helps keep corporations honest, deters pedophiles and puts looters in jail. Photos of me dancing on tables or throwing up might have encouraged me to clean up earlier. Still, I’m relieved there are no ghosts hauting me on Facebook. But what I choose to share with you today is fair game.
As long as there are restrictions to curb deceit and hate, as there always have been with free speech, the benefits outweigh the occasional embarrassment. I’m comfortable with the parts I choose to make public. And I respect your right to keep some private.
But with the proliferation of cameras, from cell phones to security systems, we all have to live peacefully with our paparazzi.
Fortunately, I’m comfortable with my public parts. Are you?
Today I’ve posted at Toronto IABC. Think small, act big for your book.
Only Toronto members can comment there, so if you have anything to add, and I hope you do, please share here.
By the time I knocked off on Monday, I’d already received two get-rich-quick offers about writing ebooks. By the end of the week, I expect my inbox will be bursting with them. Now that everybody is getting tired of talking about Facebook, ebooks are the next big thing.
The pitches all go like this: Turn your archived content into an ebook that will rake in millions while you sleep. Get ready for your closeup with Jon Stewart.
Ignore that an ebook involves a lot more than pasting dusty old content into a shiny new template. Don’t think about the many months it takes to produce something primed to go head-to-head with the competition from traditional heavyweights and the coming flood from self-publishers.
Stuff my Dad says
As my Dad asked when I told him I was writing an ebook: “But why would you write a book, now that everyone with a computer can?”
After I brushed away the little-girl tears, I told myself the old coot doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Two years later, getting ready to publish the second edition, I have to concede he had a point.
Because everyone can publish a book, lots more will. So your book has to be good. Make that spectacular.
Stuff Seth Godin says
Just ask ever-bright Seth Godin who has been blogging about this for The Domino Project where many of us ebook writers are seeking advice and support.
Let me be honest and admit that my first edition, a PDF on my website, did not even keep us in groceries, in large measure because I didn’t tell many people aside from my family, friends and subscribers. I had read all the hype about quality content going viral and figured I would be discovered, much like Lana Turner in Schwab’s Drugstore.
After talking to my readers and the people who took my workshops, I realized I had missed a few things. The reason the second edition is taking so long is that I keep coming up with more. I’m taking the project much more seriously than when I dreamed of going viral. Now I’m working at it.
Sloggers and slooks
The get-rich-quick guys would tell me to stop being so fussy. They were giving bloggers the same advice a few years ago. They kept telling us to post raw and frequently, writing quality and subject expertise be damned. How many of those sloppy bloggers — I will call them sloggers — are still around?
If you’ve seen my kitchen cupboards, bookkeeping or blog typos, you know that I will never be a perfectionist. Not even close. But my book has to be my best. Not a slook.
When I tell people I’m writing an ebook, some offer to let me write theirs. No, they won’t pay me for that lost weekend, a week if it’s complex. But they’ll give me a big cut of the money they’re confident will flow in.
No thanks.
Listen to what you need to hear
It’s not that I don’t think they have enough content, some languishing on their site, the rest lodged in their brain. Because they listen to the people who tell them what they want to hear, they don’t appreciate the huge investment of time and editorial skill involved in pulling it all together. Then there’s all the money for chores they should not do on their own.
If there’s an ebook in your soul, go for it. I’m thrilled that the doors have opened. Just be prepared to pour in years of learning, months of prep time and days of worrying.
That is how legends are made. After all, the Lana Turner story turned out to be a hoax. Going viral is way harder than sneezing on people when you have a cold.
I was flattered when I received Dee’s guest post pitch. After all, this is not one of the big shot blogs with a queue of eager writers wanting to make a name for themselves.
But my antenna should been gone up at the mention of “free” in the subject line. The alarm bells should have sounded when her submission contained the words “peak” when she meant “pique” and “reign” instead of “rein.”
What should have stopped me dead in my tracks was her request that I re-insert a link I had omitted because it had nothing to do with the post. Ironically, Dee had ranted against superfluous links.
When I spotted the “reign” mistake again in a blog an expert tweeted I simply had to read, I figured maybe I was being too tough. However, I made sure these examples were included in the list of common sound-alike confusions I provide in the new edition of Write Like You Talk–Only Better.
From running another blog, for the Toronto chapter of IABC (International Association of Business Communicators), I know that newbie bloggers can be sensitive souls. I want to help them. And I don’t like to look like Mrs. Cardwell, my grade seven English teacher, who would stamp her kitten heels in frustration when we kept making the same mistakes over and over.
When I refused to add the meaningless link, Dee complained about not getting paid for the link after she’d spent all that time on the “free” post for me. At her request, I took it down.
I don’t feel bad because I’m against sleazy link-building practices. Solid links are tough to earn.
But from all those “$20-a-post” ads I see, I know that many McWriters are toiling for these content farms, whose mission is to hoodwink the search engine giants with misbegotten links.
Writers have long kick started their careers with low-priced prose to magazines and other prestigious publications. But the writing had to be good. One “peak” or “reign” and the editor would stop reading.
The payoff was being able to show prospects that the big shots had published you. Today you also earn a prized link.
Highly regarded newspapers such as the Globe and Mail have gone from paying peanuts to saw dust. But I still send them articles occasionally because their circulation is huge and includes the kind of people I want to impress. The last time I published there, I immediately received a call from an occasional client who is now sending a stream of quality work. I also vie to provide guest posts for blogs like Problogger and Ragan.com because they always deliver new subscribers and attention to me.
So Dee, here’s my my advice if you want to go from being a McWriter to a white table cloth writer like me: Hone your craft, by avoiding sound-alike confusions and other common mistakes. You can do this, and earn more, by getting a job with an organization where the boss knows how to write well. If you dare, write quality posts and articles for big shots.
Google and other search engine keep changing their algorithms to discourage the content farms. You’re not helping your career by slaving for them. Don’t blame me.
And thank you, Dee, for reminding me that nothing in life is free. Now if I can only cast off the spirit of Mrs. Cardwell. And why do I still remember her green suede shoes?
Thanks for the photo, Floyd Brown.
When I want to impress people, I tell them to google “awesome” and they will find me.
Actually, they have to google “alternatives to awesome” or “other ways to say awesome” to find me quickly. Still, it’s close.
Almost every day my top post is 55+ ways to say awesome. Every month, the top phrase searched to find my site includes the word “awesome.”
When I wrote that post, which I’ve updated a few times with longer lists, my intention was not to rank high on “awesome.” No, my lofty objective was to discourage its overuse among people ranging from air heads who can’t think of a more original word to middle-aged people who delude themselves into thinking it makes them sound younger.
Awesome seekers
Let me stress, “awesome” alternative seekers, that I am not judging. I too have word weaknesses. Often I lose words, usually nouns, which an expert on Oprah said was a fleeting perimenopausal symptom. Plus, I am convinced that wearing my Converse sneakers wipes years off my age.
I am encouraged that people are searching for alternatives to “awesome,” though I hear it just as often and have seen no studies to confirm elevated levels of articulate discourse.
While I am pleased more people are finding my site, they are not becoming my clients. Too few are buying Write Like You Talk–Only Better. I don’t know if it’s possible to “convert” them, as the SEO guys blithefully advise.
“Me, me, me”
Though far more modest, my success with “write like you talk” has been intentional. I rank high because I’ve used it in as many posts, blog comments, guest submissions, Twitter and other social media as much as I can, without sounding like a three-year-old who missed her nap screaming “Me, me, me.”
Of course, with long-tail keywords like this, I have to brain wash people into actually searching for “write like you talk.” Any tips, guys, for mass keyword hypnotics?
My Snooki
The same goes for my name, Barb Sawyers, which also ranks me high simply because of the unusual extra “s” spelling. Recently, I discovered a Barbara Sawyers on Twitter, who describes herself as an Arab princess who wears designer fashions to clubs in New Jersey. For a vicarious thrill, I am following her.
I keep reading advice to jam keywords into every title and first paragraph. But that would piss off my readers and get on Google’s nerves.
I am a white table cloth writer, as opposed to those McWriters who crank out keyword-crammed posts for content farms. I may not be too proud to admit temporary noun or footware deficiencies, but I am certainly above this kind of fast and cheap but low-nutrient, unappealing algorithmic food.
No thanks
To show you how ridiculous keyword-inspired titles can be, let me share with you the most recent title suggestions I have received from Ezinearticles.com, based on the keywords people have used to find the articles I post there:
Tips For Using Alliteration in Prose
Silly, eh? I can’t imagine filling an entire article. ”Using words that start with the same letter helps readers remember,” just about sums it up.
How the Way We Speak Reflects the Way We Write
Why, when ”write like you talk,” which I am busy plugging, is so much snappier?
Poetry – Emotions in Writing
I would never dream of advising gourmet poets, though emotions in writing are what I would expect to hear from teen girls, romance novelists and other literary wannabes.
The keyword challenge
In addition to my vulnerability in nouns and fashion, let me confess that I don’t entirely get all the fuss about keywords. I used to eat the crusts on my toast because my dad kept saying they would turn my hair curly. But I am not a child any more, so I’m not going to fall for every oft-repeated mantra.
I really can’t quite figure out how these keywords are going to sell my book or fuel my writing business. Though I am tickled pink that you can google “awesome” and find me.
Care to share, you self-styled SEO experts who keep spamming my site or anyone who has actually figured this out?
Thanks, Joudry288, for the awesome photo.
Us writers love to bitch about the many people who throw money at accountants, dry wall mudders and web designers, but figure they can, and should, write everything themselves.
When they need extra help with, say, a catchy slogan, they ask their spouse, assistant, babysitter, fitness trainer, financial planner, chimney sweep or other people they encounter in the course of their day.
“I just don’t have the time,” they babble breathlessly, much as I moan about not enough hours in the day to finish my backyard particle accelerator.
For people whose jobs or businesses are built on their expertise, professional writers would save enough time only by peering into their brain and pulling out their ideas, then presenting them attractively on the page.
My light bulb moment
I figured this out when I was talking to Deanne Kelleher, founder and director of Kaos Group. I had called to find out why she was such an enthusiastic reader of my first kick at my book Write Like You Talk–Only Better.
I hoped this insight would help me do a better job with the second edition, which will be available soon in print and for e-readers.
A professional organizer, Deanne loves sharing her passion for imposing order on chaos, from transforming crowded cupboards to streamlining digital files. Her elephant problem is lack of time.
When I met Deanne, she was a facilitator at a small business group. Deanne and the other advisers constantly exhorted us to focus on what we do best and outsource the rest. Despite this, they did their own writing. Imperfectly.
As Deanne says, “It’s all in my head.” With no hope of finding an affordable 24/7 psychic writer, she accepts her fate. It is written.
Deanne’s turning point
But Deanne realized something had to give after a long day of making lists with clients, taking her kids to swimming lessons and struggling to meet the deadline for her monthly online magazine. She decided to rest her eyes—just for five minutes. The next morning little Tess found her slumped over, asleep at her desk.
She vowed to change. She could not stomach missing a deadline. She hated the example she had set for her kids. She was desperate to balance her work with time to play with her children, fiancé and friends.
Naturally, Deanne wanted an organized approach for writing her magazine, blog and other marketing material.
As soon as she realized the book would help her write more efficiently and effectively, the colour-coded highlighting began. She is still using the checklists and worksheets for the Organized Lifestyle Magazine and other writing.
As a result, Deanne is getting more sleep, even though business is booming.
Big bonus
She’s also shaken off the ghost of her grade 10 grammar teacher, threatening damnation unless she wrote in a formal tone and obeyed all the rules. Now her writing sounds more like the sugared-up Martha Stewart that audiences love in her live and televised presentations.
I am enlightened too. When experts insist on doing their own writing, I don’t take it personally. Let me confess that I sometimes try my hand at graphics, spreadsheets, plastering and other do-it-yourself tasks I am not trained to perform.
I have, however, resolved to become more studious, like Deanne whose office brims with manuals and how-to books. Especially before I risk blowing up the world with that particle accelerator.
Today I’m starring on the popular Problogger. Check it out.