Archive for About Blogs – Page 25

The Practice of Writing: Are You Publishing, Too?

Cat-computer Are you taking notes? Whenever I speak somewhere, people in the audience are furiously scribbling. For myself, I always take notes, mainly because if I don't write it down it goes through my two ears like the wind.

Most writers I know love to take notes, heck, even non-writers do. Everyone's taking notes. Here's my question, what do you do with your notes?

Are you publishing what you write? Here's what I find incredible: only a tiny percentage of writers are actually publishing on the Internet. Most writers, even serious ones, aren't publishing their work on a blog.

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Content Marketing Profits: 10 Tips to Unlocking the Secret Key

Group-of-people How much time and effort do you devote to Outreach – connecting with others, leaving blog comments, responding on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn? This is an essential key to successful blogging, and essential to making your content marketing efforts profitable.

If you're like me, not enough, I'll bet. We (I mean me!) are so driven and task oriented that it's easy to forget to reach out to others.

I'm really writing this for myself, you see, but maybe you can relate. For example, I have a list of things to do, and I plow through those things, checking off as I go…and I'm pretty good about getting most things done.

But the one thing that often gets left til last is reaching out to others, finding out what they're doing, reading their blogs, commenting, and checking their tweets on Twitter.

I should take that back, it's not entirely true. I visit Twitter daily, sometimes 2-3 times. I get several emails a day from a service SocialOomph which gives me all the tweets in certain keywords I track.

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6 Writing Tips from Novelists for Content Marketing

Little-person-big-pen One of the beautiful things about living in Ajijic, Mexico is all the creative people who come here to write, paint, act, and design. This summer I did acting classes. I believe this helps me become more creative, more innovative in my business work.

This week I'm attending the 6th Annual Lake Chapala Writers' Conference. The two speakers, Marc Acito (How I Paid for College, Attack of the Theatre People) and Cai Emmons (The Stylist, His Mother's Son) are giving our group of 45 writers good tips.

It doesn't matter if you're writing a novel or your company blog, some writing tips are universal. Here are a few tips from novelist Cai Emmons that you should incorporate for your own content writing.

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Does Your Content Marketing Have Personality?

PabloCat Signature Do you use creative images to represent yourself and your business? Joan Stewart does a great job of branding herself as The Publicity Hound, using a dog on her blog and sites.

I've used a lot of images from iStockPhoto.com and Shutterstock on this blog. An interesting picture can magnetize readers into your post to find out more.

On my other site I use a blue man because I love the whimsical nature that it adds to an otherwise heavily-text based website.

Here's a fun site that offers you the possibility to create your own graphic image of yourself, adding hair, clothes, accessories for a reasonable price: DesignherGals.com. Here's what I recently created and purchased for use as a personal email signature:

My friends tell me it looks like me, and it's fun. There's even a pic of Huey my cat…

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Is Your Blog Connected to Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn?

Circles-of-influence Have you included social marketing, social media into your blog? You must do this.

Why? Because that's where people are these days, looking for information and connections on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

How do you connect your blog to these 3 sites? It's pretty easy (if I'm blogging about it and have done it successfully then you know it's easy, cuz I'm no "techie…").

This is all part of the class I'm teaching today with Joan Stewart aka The Publicity Hound. So I'm going to be strict and not tell you how to do this, simply that you MUST do it

Wanna get the details? Go register for the class, you'll get all sorts of tips, audio recording, handouts, etc.

Time-Saving Tips for Smart Blogging with Joan Stewart

Wednesday January 20, 2010 at 4 p.m. ET

On the phone, a teleseminar.

You must register and there's a small fee, but well worth the valuable tips, handouts and information.

I guarantee it will make your blogging for business easier, faster, more fun and get you more clients!

If you can't come, don't want to spend the money, for whatever reasons, then go log into your accounts on each of these three sites, and any others you belong to, go to settings, hunt for a feature that autmatically feeds your blog posts to your updates.

You should be able to figure it out, and if you can't, let me know.

16 Must-Have Marketing Tools for Blog Design

Blue-man-taking-a-bow What should you put on your blog if you want to use it for marketing, to attract clients?

Content is king, but if your design stinks, visitors won't get past the banner. They won't stay, they won't get to know you and they won't subscribe to your blog.

Worse, you could be spending a lot of your valuable time blogging for nothing. Bad blog design = bad marketing = no new business. Stinks, doesn't it?

If you care about attracting the right people, get a professional blog design or theme installed. You can do it yourself on Typepad, but you'll need a graphic designer to supply the banner with a tag line built in.

There are plenty of good freelancers available, but you'll need to know what to tell them. Here are my tips for good blog design and set up.

Design for Branding, Trust, Personality

Everything on your blog should reflect your branding theme, personality, and the problems you solve for your readers. Your banner should clarify what the blog is going to give readers.

These are branding issues that need careful thought. You may even need professional help if you want to get it right.

Joan Stewart is a good example of this. Her blog, at PublicityHound.net, features tips for people seeking PR and media attention. You know this immediately after arriving on the blog.

[15 second commercial break: Joan and I are teaching Time-SavingTips for Smart Blogging in two days, Wednesday Jan. 20, 2010. Sign up here…]

Personality Counts

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Is Your Blog Really Sick? 8 Health Check Points

Laptop_doctor Is your blog sick? I don’t mean in a good way, like your blog’s really hip, slick and cool. I mean is it limping along on crutches with barely enough Google juice to keep the joints from creaking…maybe you haven’t been posting lately, then when you do, you make a few lame excuses and expect readers to care…

Maybe your blog is a reflection of you, just a mirror of your mind, an expression of your spirit or lack of it…you could put on a happy face, do some blogging, and then say to yourself, “There, it’s done, I’ve blogged.”

So what? You know that’s not what I mean when I say that a business blog is the best damn content marketing tool on Earth. But you can’t get fired up and fix what’s wrong if you’re not sure where the problems lie.

Maybe your blog needs a yearly physical checkup. Here’s Patsi’s quick fix check list for diagnosing blog problems…

Take a look at your blog and examine it for the following signs of health:

  1. Blood pressure: How’s your traffic these days? Last week, last 30 days? Has it gone up or down in last 3 months, 6 months, 1 year?

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Fast Blogging? What About Truth and Meaning?
What Shakespeare & Seinfeld Can Teach Us

William-shakespeare "There's method in the madness." ~ William Shakespeare

Can you blog quickly AND create meaningful value for your readers?

It's one thing to be saving time with speed blogging tips I'm giving you here this week. But if you're writing junk that has no depth, if you're just saying what's been said before, no one will stay to read. Your readers won't subscribe, they won't buy, and they won't take any action, except to click away.

Here's the crux: how do you go deep when you're in a hurry and got a million other things to do? How can you write great blog content that serves your business marketing goals, when you've only got a half-hour?

Read books. Read Shakespeare. Go to the source. Go to the well. Read the classics, read history, read what geniuses have written. Watch movies, TV. Then blog about it.

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How to Save Time & Money with Smart Blogging in 2010

Time_is_moneyBe smart. Turn your blog into the best darn marketing tool on the planet. Joan Stewart (The Publicity Hound) and I (The Blog Squad) will show you how. Join us January 20, 2010 at 4 p.m. ET for this Smart Blogging teleseminar. Sign up here: http://snipurl.com/smartblogging.

Speed Blogging in Action: Step 1 Pick a Problem

Speed-skater1 5:46 a.m. Ready, set, GO!

How do you speed up your blogging? Here are some ways I solved the blog writing problem this morning. Since I started a blog series yesterday, 6 tips for faster blogging, I already had step 1 figured out: Pick a problem.

How can I write 3 tips about this 1st step of blog writing?

(Sometimes this may take far too long, because of inner demons…. As reader M. Scott Schaffernoth commented, "Great tips for making what can be a daunting task much more approachable, especially for those who hate/fear writing.")

Sometimes what you face yourself as you write about your expertise can reveal an interesting perspective on a problem, and your readers may experience similar pain. Write about it. In this case, if your readers' pain is writing, then you've got great fodder.

6:00 a.m. Other times, you may not be sure what to say, so you'll need to do some quick research. Here's where to go, but be careful not to get lost and waste time.

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