Archive for On Writing Better – Page 15

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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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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Friendly Persuasion: Blogging as a
Content Marketing Tool

BlogPersuasion What makes blogging work as the best content marketing tool there is online? I say it's the best, but maybe you don't see it that way. Maybe you see it as a chore…

Business blogging works because it's a persuasion tool. It is the most powerful marketing tool on the planet. It works because readers have a chance to know, like and trust you. KLT is essential before people buy anything from you.

It works because of reciprocity and social proof, two powerful persuasion triggers. Reciprocity is what happens when a person gives something to another: the other person feels obliged and wants to reciprocate. When you give generously of your knowledge on your blog, and respond to people's needs, you are creating a relationship of trust and building reciprocity.

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Beware Boredom, the Road to Mediocrity Lies Ahead

My-tv By now you may have given up on setting New Year's resolutions… too many disappointed attempts at losing weight, or working out, or making big bucks… Broken promises to yourself can turn you off to goal setting, that's for sure.

Enough talk about woulda, coulda, shoulda, who cares? Don't worry, be happy! That's my advice.

And yet I can't help but take a peek at what worked last year, what didn't work, and make plans to more of the former and less of the latter. As it turns out, I had an excellent year, both financially, and in finding passionate fun in my work.

It's too easy to get caught up in work that pays the bills. I'm not saying you should only do what's fun…If you're not paying attention to where the passion lies, however, you may be on a fast track to mediocrity, boredom, and burnout.

In my opinion, we get bored when we have to do repetitive non-creative tasks that don't challenge us to think. But we can also get bored when we disengage from tasks because we don't like them, they're too hard, we aren't good at them… or we aren't seeing good results.

This is dangerous because if you're just blogging because you need to stick to a schedule, then you aren't blogging with a passionate message to deliver. You won't get good results. How could you?

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How to Save Time with Blog Writing

Time_is_money_passes How can you avoid time-sucking traps when it comes to blog writing? Here's what often happens to me…

I sit down with my coffee, open email, and an hour later still haven't posted on my blog. I decide I need inspiration for what to blog about, so I go over to my feed reader, or to my Alltop.com. I start reading my favorite blogs.

Ninety minutes later, I still haven't started a new blog post. I've read some great stuff over on Copyblogger, Ittybiz, Seth's Blog, and Problogger… only now I feel like my writing sucks. I've got serious blog envy and feel like crap.

It's now time to get started on a client project, but I've got a tennis match so I'll have to come back later.

Sound familiar? Change a few details and I bet this is your story. Yesterday I wrote about two ways to find your blog writing genius, going outside and going inside.

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2 Ways to Access Your Genius for Better Blog Writing

Boy-genius The biggest blogging challenge is never lack of time, it’s lack of inspiration.

Lack of inspiration comes from not being sure you’re doing it right, or doing it well, and lack of confidence that it will be worth it… in other words, fear and doubt.

Fear and doubt go away when you know what you’re doing, and have a system that will allow you to move forward confidently. How do you sit down to write a blog post so that you side-step Mr. Fear and Mr. Doubt?

Here’s how to proceed to write frequently and consistently so that you acquire a blogging habit that will grow your abilities over time. Nobody starts out writing well. Everybody’s got a piece of genius within them, it’s a question of finding it and putting it on paper, quickly, before any demons get in the way.

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Social Skills: What’s Needed for Social Media

Groups "Getting or giving anything is about social skills. The world is about being comfortable where you are and making people feel comfortable, and that’s what social skills are.

"What’s important is to be kind, and be gracious and do it in ways that make people want to do that for someone else." ~ Penelope Trunk, founder of BrazenCareerist.com. Her blog is blog.penelopetrunk.com.

I read this on page 75 of Seth Godin's new ebook, What Really Matters. There's even more wisdom in these words of Penelope Trunk when you realize she's got Asperger's Syndrome, a brain disorder. Penelope Trunk says she's had to learn to mimic socially appropriate responses because it's not a natural skill for her. Her brain doesn't pick up on things like that.

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What Really Matters… the ebook

6a00d83451b31569e20128760a3602970c-350wi Seth Godin wants to put this ebook What Really Matters into the hands of 5 million people. I don't blame him. It's got some really good gems written by really good people.

You could take a page a day, and a quote from each page, and write something on your blog about it… with appropriate links to the authors, of course. That's over 80 blog posts almost written for you…

Please go download this book now, right here: Download What-matters-now-2.


Then tell me what you think's the best page… what best describes to you what really matters?

Are You Boring Your Readers?

Different-goldfish How do you know you're boring? Like a fish that doesn't know he's in water, can we really tell when we're boring our readers?

Yesterday it was my turn to read at the Ajijic writers meeting, and I chose a piece about working from home using Web and social media tools. The piece was 1,700 words or 4 pages and takes a while to read. There's a lot of practical information in it, and not many compelling stories.

During the reading, I furtively looked up to gauge audience interest. At one point, I got a few chuckles and eyes were open and on me, so at least I knew no one was falling asleep.

Other than that, I had no idea if I was boring or not, since a lot of it was information about blogging, Twitter, teleseminars, shopping carts and the stuff I do everyday to make a living online. Of course, once the reading was over, there was feedback.

It turns out, the stuff I take for granted as being standard working-from-home tools are a mystery to the average writer in my community. Many of these folks are still computer-shy and working offline. Instead of it being boring in the sense of "old news," it passed into the realm of overwhelmingly "new school."

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