Archive for Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks – Page 12

Ezine Critique: This one’s a bummer

Hi <$firstname$>,

Warm and fuzzy yet?

Don’t you love it when someone reaches out to you this way? For anyone who uses Kick Start Cart or one of the other versions, you recognize this as a glitch somewhere that should have inserted your first name.

I wouldn’t have minded too much when I got this ezine from a person who bills himself as an expert, except for a couple of things:

  1. I never asked to be put on his ezine list, and never answered an opt in request
  2. His area of expertise is directed towards something I have no interest in doing
  3. I am not in his targeted audience of potential clients

He lost all credibility with me. I stopped reading after the first 5 paragraphs. Why? The first 5 paragraphs made excessive use of these pronouns:

I, me, my, they, their, them

It wasn’t until I scrolled 1/2 way down (and it was a long article too) that I found the word "you."

If you want to engage readers in reading your ezine, shouldn’t you use the word "you?" I think so.

Next time you meet someone at a workshop and get their business card, be sure to ask if you can put them on your email list and then send them an invitation. That way you don’t annoy people with your stuff.

His area of expertise? Selling and persuading. You’d think he’d know better, no?

Blog Writing Refined & Defined with the Copyblogger

Brian_clark
Everybody loves Brian. Brian Clark’s Copyblogger blog made a big splash in 2006, and he continues to help bloggers elevate their writing no matter what niche they’re in. His mission: to educate bloggers how copywriting skills can help business blog writing.

He’s clearly succeeding. In the first year of his blog he reached 10,000 subscribers. In the second year, 20,000.

We interviewed Brian for our Internet radio show on Blog Talk Radio, Blogging and Beyond. You can listen here.

A few nuggets: when you’re starting a blog you need a strategy. Blogging isn’t advertising in the old sense but in the new sense. You must have a unique perspective and find new ways to convey that message.

You must reach out to others to find out what they want and need, and create relationships with potential partners in your field. When you have something worth talking about, you’ll be noticed in your niche. You will shine. You gain attention by linking out to others.

Even if you’ve already been blogging for a while, I strongly urge you to visit his blog today and read his Blueprint for a Brilliant Blog Launch. It contains three elements for building readership for your blog that you can apply at any point in your blog’s life cycle.

And of course, all of his content is good on copywriting, headlines, and other tips for good blog writing.

One-Track Mind: I Have a Problem

Coordination
I have a problem managing my work load: I can’t multi-task like most successful people seem to do. I am a one-track minded gal. Like for most entrepreneurs and small biz owners, I have plates spinning in the air all the time, and juggling is required.

If it were up to me, the plates would have splattered already. My partner Denise is great at juggling.

Do you experience this when writing for your business? Got any tips for helping me out here?

For example, today I’m preparing a presentation that The Blog Squad is giving up in LA at the Publishers Association. If only I could shut down email, ignore

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Web Site Woes: Why Can’t I Just Kill It & Blog?

Homepage_02
I get such dismal traffic to my Customized Newsletters website that I wake up with dreams of trashing it altogether. Why can’t I just put it all on a blog? Blogging is something I know how to do and building traffic isn’t such a problem with a blog.

Every time I go in to update or change something on my website, I feel insecure and frustrated. It’s not a Dreamweaver problem either. No matter what I do, it doesn’t attract more potential clients.

I even know what some of the problems are, but redesigning it from scratch is too expensive for the potential payoff. Each time I’ve tried major re-writes, well, the problem persists…not enough of the right kinds of eyeballs.

So Denise and I will more than likely convert it to a blog, especially now since Typepad now has stand alone pages that can serve as landing pages.

It seems I’m not the only one who struggles with websites, and home pages, and is considering moving to a blog platform instead. Tom Chandler of The Copywriter Underground talks about it here, and also tells about Matt Ambrose of The Copywriter’s Crucible who both get more traffic to their blogs than their websites.

Tom and Matt ask, "Is the Home Page Dead?" in true copywriting style – it seems dead stuff attracts readers. So if I kill it, will they come? I bet they would if I blogged… stay tuned.

Let me know your thoughts on this by commenting. Good idea? Bad?

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Formatting an Article Into Adobe PDF

AdobepdfThis is the next step in our serial writing project. Take your full article, after it is edited, and convert it to an Adobe PDF file. This preserves your formatting and content across all computer systems so that it can’t be distorted or changed.

It makes delivery of the document easier and more stable. You can also add some formatting to it for easier readability and attractiveness.

In your word document program you can create boxes with shading and create a title page. You can also create other boxes to highlight particular points in your articles. Make sure you also have any web sources linked before you convert it to PDF form.

Depending on the length and value, once it is formatted into a PDF file, you may wish to call it a special report, or an ebook which can be either given away as a bonus for signing up or subscribing to your newsletter, or sold.

Previous posts on serial writing:

Serial Writing Formula: 1+5+2=7+1

Confessionals of a Serial Writer

Make a List of 5 Key Points

Summarize your List & Ask Readers

Editing your Blog Posts as Articles

Editing the Full Article from Your blog Posts

Editing the Full Article from Your Blog Posts

Continuing our series of blog posts about writing articles that can be used for many purposes (ezines, blogs, article directories, special reports), we come to the next part: how to edit the full article after you have created several stand alone articles from your blog posts.

Edit the full article: gather each individual article and copy and paste it into a word doc, with each headline but minus the resource box. You can keep the headline for each article if you wish, and break each article into sections with a line separating them. The resource box is included at the end.

Of, if you wish, you can delete the headlines, and rewrite it into one stand alone full article. This is more work, because you’ll have to change the beginning paragraph of each of the individual articles where you explain the context. Your choice.

The most important part of editing the full article – besides writing a captivating headline – is the summary and the conclusion. I’ll review why here:

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Editing Your Blog Posts as Articles

Pair_of_steel_scissors
After you’ve posted daily on your key points of a concept, and written a summary with a call to action, it’s time to gather the individual posts together and edit them as stand alone articles.

Since they are already written, this isn’t difficult to do. You must keep in mind, however, that you are developing individual articles that you can use for multiple purposes. They must "stand alone" so you  want to briefly explain the context of each step and how it benefits your readers.

A primary purpose of editing your blog posts is to make them clear to people who read them without any prior knowledge of who you are. Edit for brevity and clarity as much as for grammar and typos.

Cut out all extra words. Ask yourself "so what?" at each paragraph; keep being clear about what’s in it for the reader.

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Summarize Your List & Ask Readers

Jigsaw_pieces
After you’ve written daily on your blog about each main point in your article, you need to review, summarize, and ask your readers for something.

For example, on Monday I introduced my formula for a serial writing project:

1 concept = 5 points + intro + summary = 7 articles + 1 PDF report

On Tuesday, I made my confession about why I love serial writing (saves time and energy, produces multiple articles, blog posts and special reports).

On Wednesday, I revealed the "Make a List" tip for breaking down any article into doable chunks.

This post is reviewing the steps for serial writing and summarizing. Remember that your summary serves a greater purpose than just reminding readers what they have learned so far.

Here are two real reasons a summary is important:

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Make a List of 5 Key Points

Writing_hand
The key to writing multiple articles for your blog, ezine, web pages and marketing purposes is to start with a good list of 3-5 key points. My previous two posts on this explained the time and energy saving advantages.

This is not to mean you don’t have to do any research or reading on your topic. It depends on how well you know your subject. If you know the topic well, it’s easy to break down a concept into 3-5 elements.

Here’s my 5 point list for any serial writing project:

  1. Start with an idea that will benefit your readers
  2. Break it down to 3-5 steps or key elements
  3. Write an introduction to the article that includes the problem/solution, benefits to the reader, and your list
  4. Post about each point in your list on your blog
  5. After the final point, summarize and review, and remind readers why this is important to them and what they can do next

That’s it. Writing the points as a daily blog post helps you to be short and to the point. Also, blog writing tends to be more informal and personal. For me that helps stay away from academic jargon or language that’s formal or convoluted.

Posting daily breaks the full article down into doable chunks. This helps you avoid writing blocks or procrastination because you have a writing plan: you have your list.

At the end of a week, you have several chunks you can gather together to form a full article.

Previous posts:

Serial Writing Formula: 1+5+2=7+1

Confessionals of a Serial Writer

Serial Writing Formula: 1=5+2=7+1

Math_genius
I’m no math genius, nor do I even think remotely like that in analytical terms. But once in a while I stumble upon something that makes sense, saves time, and produces exponential results.

I’m talking about serial writing. You take one main concept, break it down into a list of 5 key elements, write an introductory overview, write a concluding summary, and here’s what you get:

7 stand-alone articles to post on your blog and to submit to article directories
1 longer article you can include on your website, ezine, and format into a PDF special report to sell or give away as a bonus.

1 idea = 5 points + intro + summary = 7 articles + 1 PDF report

Here’s why I like to do this:

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