Archive for the ‘Writing Advice’ Category

Many of my blog management posts are written around the struggles that I have had and have overcome in the blogging world – but this post isn’t about me.

It is all about you…and your blog struggles you shared with me today on twitter!

Earlier today, I asked my followers what their biggest blogging struggles were. Many shared the same frustrations, and these were the 4 most common that I found (credit given to the first who tweeted it):

jeffespo: @kirstenwright Sticking to the content schedule
DesireeW: @kirstenwright My blog challenge is “creating the content ideas”. I feel like I’m repeating my topics a lot.
TellingKids: @kirstenwright biggest struggle for me is getting other people excited about what I’m blogging. Looking for growth.
studionashvegas: @kirstenwright time to write in it.

Now, onto the solutions!

@jeffespo: The easiest  way to stick to a content schedule is to create it in a place that it is always looking at you, but that you can also move things around easily. I use an outlook calendar to manage this blog (and my clients blogs) so that when I come up with ideas I simply add it as an appointment. If I want to make changes, add notes, or even work on the post, I can do so in there. Also, if I decide to move things around, it is as simple as dragging and dropping. This allows me to know what is coming and still feel comfortable with changing the future.

@desureew: Repeating topics can be frustrating – the good news is that even the best bloggers do it! We repeat topics because we understand them well, and we have a lot to say about them, which is perfectly fine. The way to keep it from being redundant is to share the message in a different way, using different ideas or different lines of thought. We all learn differently which means that having more than one way to say the same thing can actually make it easier to understand for a wider audience. If you still feel like you are struggling with new topics, try taking a week (or two) where you write nothing about your usual topics – go in a completely different direction or area of focus.

@tellingkids: This is one that we all face, and can be very disheartening. We all want readers, comments and participation. The big questions is how do you get it? Unfortunately, I am no problogger or Chris Brogan, so I don’t quite have the secret to thousands of readers. What I do know is that delivering good content, sharing it with your followers and providing consistency will work. It takes time to build an audience, but even the top bloggers had zero comments once! Remember why you started your blog, why you enjoy doing it and write with heart. The audience will come. One other trick I have? Call out your readers! Ask them good questions and give them a reason to want to start commenting. Sometimes, that’s all it takes.

@studionashvegas: Time, the one thing we all wish we had more of (well, that and money). Time is always going to be a struggle unless you can start thinking of your blog the way you think of anything you do everyday. You never run out of time to use the restroom, and even if it’s late, you always eat, right? Blogging needs to be in those categories if you want it to work. Just put it into your schedule like you would a workout, a phone call or a party and then do not let yourself skip it. If you schedule it and then force yourself to do it, you will. It is tough at first, but over time it will get easier (just like going to the gym) and then it will become second nature (like eating) and you will want to do it more often!

Do you have other blog struggles that I didn’t cover? Share it in the comments and I will answer!

For most blogs to be successful, they need to have at least 3 posts a week. There are a few rare occasions that a writer can get away with once a week or once a month, but that is usually because they are already famous and people would read them no matter what. For the average blogger, consistency is key. And, in order to be consistent, a blogger needs to come up with lots of great ideas to share with their reader. Luckily, most blogs have a wide variety of topics they discuss. For example, while this blog is mostly about business ideas, writing, blog design, blog management and social media, it also stems off into funny marketing ideas, news stories, random anecdotes from my life and interesting photography and art. Having this many topics to write about gives me a lot of space to find great ideas and a lot of different places I can search for content. But, after two years of experience writing and coming up with blog posts, I have discovered a couple ways that I can count on to consistently deliver ideas:

Reading other peoples blogs. Other writers work can be helpful in lots of ways – it can give you something to argue against, add to or look at from a different angle. It can also jump start your mind onto different areas of the same topic. I read about 30 bloggers daily, including Ike Pigott, Steve Woodruff, Suzanne Broughton, Ari Herzog, Jon Buscall and The Incslingers. In addition to business blogs, I also read a lot of humor blogs, like Faliblog, and AwkwardFamilyPhotos. While I don’t usually use their posts as starting points, sometimes the topic or idea behind the humor will stem an idea (if not, at least I’m laughing!). In fact, I have used an image from awkward family photos (turned out it was @emilyquestions son!) in a post.

Searching through flickr’s creative commons. You can browse through photos that other people have taken, all over the world, and you can use most of those images as long as you give the author credit for using it (and you’re not making money off it). This one can take time though, as searching by keywords is tough. But, I have definitely wound treasures there and I have written entire posts just because I want to use an image I found. Today’s image is from one of my favorite photographers who shares her work on Flickr – D Sharon Pruitt – I have used many of her shots in past posts.

Taking in a change of scenery. I recommend taking a short walk everyday, outside if you can, to see what is new around you. Are the flowers blooming? Is there a new decoration in someones office? Simple changes in your environment can create a mental release, allowing you to gain a new perspective or motivate a new idea. I also recommend that if you’re going to get out and wander, bring your phone or a camera, so you can snap a picture if something really motivates you to share. It is always better when you can visualize what spurred the idea rather than having to try and remember it all the way back to your office.

While the above three do tend to consistently deliver for me, there are still days that I hit rough patches and even the ol’ standbys aren’t working. On those days, I get a little more inventive. Here are just a few of the things I have tried to get some new ideas for blog posts:

• Call someone to talk about life.
• Listen to music, and sing.
• Take a shower.
• Do laundry.
• Clean the house.
• Go for a drive.
• Garden.
• Watch a stand-up comedian (love Tosh.O)
• Color with crayons.
• Scream. Loudly.
• Ask your twitter friends.
• Don’t write a post.
• Re-organize my office.
• Send emails.
• Change clothes.
• Do accounting.

The most important thing to remember, is no matter where you come up with ideas – keep writing! The more you jot down ideas, notes and potential topics, the easier it will get to turn them into real blog posts.

What other ways do you find blog ideas?

This morning, at 11:33, my wordpress dashboard went from this:

To this:

And I went from having a normal day to the ledge of a cliff in 2 seconds flat. I screamed. I freaked out.  And I tweeted. Luckily, I have some amazing twitter followers and tech friends, and @thevixy, @ikepigott, @jonmrich & @lorennason …you are my twitter heroes. You 4 kept me *relatively* sane when the world came crashing down…and my entire blog went kaput. You told me to breathe, found me articles on what might have happened, reminded me that you read my blog, and have many posts in your RSS readers and suggested solutions, including calling my hosting company and asking them if they could restore my database. Which is where Lunarpages came in – and was incredible. They were able to restore my database and recover every post (even my drafts!) and all my pages.

This near catastrophe taught me three things:

1. Twitter is awesome, especially when you make the effort to make real friends out of your followers. When you need them, they will be there. And, they will help you calm down, figure out the right solutions and talk you off the edge of insanity. Anyone who says social media and virtual relationships are silly just isn’t doing it right.
2. Backup your blog more often!! Luckily, even if Lunarpages hadn’t been able to save my database, I do backup my blog. But, I only back it up once a week…which meant I would have lost 5 posts that had been published plus the 15 I have scheduled for this month when I am on vacation (yikes!). So I need to backup more often – especially during times that I put a lot of new content onto my site.
3. My blog really means a lot to me! I have always enjoyed my blog – it is fun to write and I share great advice that some people read. But, I hadn’t ever thought about how much it meant to me until it was completely gone. The pages didn’t worry me as much – as I knew what was in them and could have re-written them. It would have taken time, but not that big of an issue. However, the thought of losing 2 years worth of thoughts, emotions, ideas and creativity nearly sent me into shock and made me realize how much I appreciate this blog!

So again, thank you to my amazing supporters and for talking me through this – I couldn’t have managed without you!

I am in love with technology – the tools, the tricks, the abilities it has to create amazing things and utilize the world in whole new ways. Adobe photoshop, email, wordpress and my phone are four of my favorite tools…and most days, it would be impossible to live without them. However, I do like the traditional ways of creation – paper, pen, face-to-face conversation, film based cameras, live performances, and some days, that is all I want.

I want to listen to live music, sketch out designs on real paper and sit and talk with people in person. On days like this, I pull out my notepads, draw a little, write a little and enjoy the feeling of looking at something other than a digital screen. It is fabulously freeing, and when I am done with the “traditional”, it has usually refreshed my mental state and my love for new technology. Trust me, after 2 hours of writing with a pen…my fingers are itching to get back to a keyboard.

So, I challenge you to try it – turn off the computer and write your blog post ideas, map out a client design, or just write whatever comes to your mind…0n real paper. Then tell me what you’ve experienced.

104 weeks, 730 days, 470 blog posts and a lot of lessons later… writing this blog has been one of the most challenging and rewarding pieces of my business, and life. I love this blog, and every single person who has commented, read and lurked here. It is a place for my ramblings, thoughts and business advice. Even more, it is a place for learning. Especially for me. So in honor of my 2 year anniversary, here are the 24 lessons I have learned in writing Wright Creativity (one for every month I’ve had it):

1. Spellcheck doesn’t always work. Six looks a lot like sex when you are reading quickly…proofread closer!
2. If you are getting rude comments, you’re doing something right.
3. There are at least three sides to every topic – and it’s guaranteed you’ll get to hear all of them!
4. Just because you find the topic interesting, doesn’t mean your readers will.
5. The posts that become the most popular will surprise you.
6. The more you write, the easier it gets, but the easier it is to repeat yourself.
7. Use pictures. People like pictures. Especially of cute animals…like this:
   
8. Being funny is not easy. Neither is being clever. So if it doesn’t come naturally, don’t try it.
9. It is okay to decide you never want to write about a topic again…and then change your mind.
10. Archives are forever.
11. Linking to another bloggers site is the sincerest form of flattery.
12. I am never going to be famous from my blog, but that’s perfectly okay.
13. If I can help one person with what I write each day, I did my job.
14. Getting comments is like Christmas morning. Seriously.
15. Ask questions. A lot of them.
16. Narrowing your categories will improve your writing and focus.
17. Take a notepad or your phone everywhere, just in case you think of a blog post.
18. Use plugins.
19. Make sure you save while writing, even if you think wordpress auto saves.
20. Posting 5 days a week is easier said than done. But, it is worth trying every week.
21. Formatting in posts is imperative, and it makes it easier to read.
22. Titles, while they may be obnoxious to come up with, are helpful and needed.
23. If you can make it into a list, it will get more traffic.
24. I will probably keep writing this blog as long as people keep reading it.

Regardless of whether you use google, yahoo, msn, bing or ask…you use a search engine. Probably daily, in fact, probably a lot of times during the day. You use it for random questions, musings and story seeking. And unless you are a genius searcher (I have yet to meet one), you struggle to find exactly what you are looking for. You type in one thing, and then have to search through the results to find what you want. Images, videos and news are all under different tabs, but that doesn’t make it easier. You even type things in the way search engines want…with quotes, and’s and or’s. But no matter what you do, you struggle to find exactly what you are looking for. Even Bing, which I prefer over google, and is supposed to be much more user friendly, is still difficult to use.

Why?

Because search engines are a little evil.

Search engines are created by an algorithm that based on what you’ve searched and what others have wanted when they have searched similar terms, the search engine spits out a series of possible links. Those links change daily based on what others click on when searching similar words, what the websites themselves do for SEO (are they optimizing right? changing their keywords?). Basically, a search engine is a little brain controlled by a math problem. A brain that only works if you know the “right” way to work it. Simply put, a search engine only works if you already know what you are looking for. You can’t just type in a generic thought and get to a solid answer. You need a clear understanding and just the right words for what you want if you ever hope to find it. And – you have to hope that the person or product you are looking for has optimized their site the same way you would search for it.

Why can’t search engines be fixed?

Categories are simply the large ideas that you cover in your blog. Usually these are found in a list on the sidebar of the blog for your readers (like mine) to find easily. Categories are extremely important for a lot of reasons, but mostly for organization and search engine optimization. Categories make it easy for your readers to read more posts in certain topics – and tells search engines the topics that are important to your blog.

This post is going to cover the thought process behind how you create categories in general, then I will show a quick tutorial on the two ways you can create (and edit them) in wordpress.

Creation of blog categories should be one of the first things you do when you start deciding on the content. You can change or add more later on, but you need to at least get started. Categories will help you in creating your first few posts, and will give you a strong backbone for your site. They will help you to come up with content when you are struggling and will help you to define your blog and its readers.

The easiest way to start creating these categories is to think about what you want your site to cover, and start jotting town topics. If you think you can write 30 posts about a topic, it would probably make a good category. If you think you can write only a couple posts, then we can use it as a tag later on. Once you’ve written down all the topics you think you want to cover, then go back and group them together. For example, I write about twitter, facebook, linkedin and foursquare, but they are all under the category “Social Media”. Once you’ve started grouping your categories, you should have between 5-15. Less than that, and you are not dividing your topics out enough. More than that and you are getting too specific, leave the ‘specifics’ for tags.

If you are having trouble creating your categories, you can also think about it from your readers perspective – what would they want to click on? What categories would they want to read? What can they expect from you? Many times thinking from a different perspective will give you a chance to come up with better categories. Once you have created your 5-15 categories for your blog, you are going to add them into wordpress so you can start using them. Luckily, wordpress makes them very easy to create and very easy to change.

To create a category in wordpress:

1. Login to your wordpress account
2. Click on “posts”
3. Click on “categories”
4. Type in the name you want for the category (don’t worry about the slug)
5. Add a description of the category if you want (some themes will display this)
6. Click “add category”

Once you have added your categories, they will be available to check off when you are writing a new post. I recommend never selecting more than 2 categories per blog post.

Now, if you want to change a category, you simply go back into the categories menu (step 1-3), then

1. Click on the category you want to change
2. Type the new name/edited name for the category
3. Change the slug to match (make sure to keep the – mark between each word)
4. Click “update category”
5. This will update all the posts in that category

Finally, now that all your categories are created and imputed into wordpress, you need to start writing. This is where creating a blog calendar can come in handy. Start with your first category and work your way through, coming up with at least 5 blog posts for each, then place them into the calendar. If you are writing 4 times a week, have 10 categories and 5 blog posts for each category (in the beginning),  you will have 3 ½ months worth of blog posts ready for you!

photo credit: Piez from Flickr

There are very few things that really offend me, but inappropriate emails or phone calls are at the top of my list. This week I got an email that fit the bill. It was one of those that you get angrier the farther you read and that you would really love to reply to with some even more inappropriate words. But, I am a stronger person than that, so instead, I am using it as a lesson for my audience – a lesson of what not to do should you choose to email people.

In order to explain why I was so irritated, I must first explain how the email arrived and the basics of the composition. I am going to protect the person who sent it (although I am not sure why..) by only revealing what is necessary to explain why the email was so awful.

First, here are the basics about the email that I received:

1. The email was sent to me by someone whom I have never met in real life, and have only tweeted with in passing. We are not friends, we are barely acquaintances. (I even had to read the name of the person a couple times to remember who it was)
2. The email was sent to about 20 people, all of whom were just cc’d, instead of bcc’d, revealing everyone’s email address to each other. (apparently privacy isn’t important?)
3. The email was in bold blue ink, not formatted well, and very informal. (not gonna give the right impression here…)
4. The email was sent with a headline in all caps with multiple exclamation marks (what are we, 12?)

Now that you have the background of the email itself, here’s what it included in the content:

1. The intro was an assumption – it assumed that we all knew the person well enough to know what was going on in their life. (as noted above, I barely know the person, so I was confused).
2. This person then explained that they are choosing to become a business owner. (okay, I appreciate that)
3. But then the person states that they have no money to start the business and wants donations. (wait, so you saved ZERO money before you decided to start your own biz???)
4. Of course, this person also wants donations of  a free website, free publicity, and free… (basically, if this person needs it, this person wants it for free).
5. This person did not offer a business plan, or a solid reason for asking me for the money/free stuff. And didn’t tell me how giving them money would benefit me.

Basically, this person is outwardly begging for monetary support from everyone they kind of know, rather than standing on their own two feet, using their savings and making a serious effort at the business themselves. I am seriously bothered by this…

So I turn to you…am I over-reacting?

What would you think if an acquaintance sent you an email like this?

How would you feel/handle it?

today, ari herzog called out uppercase letters and blogging. personally, it bothered me a bit because i found it a little difficult to read. i have received emails like that and i definitely feel like i am getting yelled at by the writer, even though they probably didn’t mean anything by it. i could still read the content and still got the idea, it just wasn’t as fun to read.

so, his call out on casing got me thinking (good blogs tend to do that) and i wondered if all lowercase letters would have the same issues. obviously, the biggest issue with all uppercase letters, as he points out, is that it looks like someone is yelling all the time. with lowercase letters, it doesn’t…it just looks like someone was lazy and didn’t want to talk the time to capitalize anything. which is a little strange, but i think it is less invasive feeling than all uppercase letters. at the same time, i do notice that things tend to blend together and the periods get lost, which means it kind of looks like one big run on sentence.

but then of course, i thought about the content and whether it really mattered in which case it was written. whether you type in upper, lower, all bold, or all italics, as long as the content is the same, does it really matter? does the way that a word looks affect the way you read something? personally, i feel that while it looks strange, after a few sentences, i forgot about the casing and just focused on the content. sometimes (with either all upper or all lower) I got a little lost where the sentences divided. however, this did make me slow down and read more thoroughly, which isn’t a bad thing.

what do you think about all uppercase (ari’s post) vs all lowercase (this post)? did it affect how you read them?

…with Sexy Bookmarks, that is

I have a list of plugins that I love: all in one seo pack, wordtwit, akismet, disqus, etc…but until recently, I didn’t have a social bookmarking suggestion tool I liked. I use tweetmeme for twitter, which is awesome, but what about Digg, facebook and stumbleupon? Or sharing my articles via email? I had nothing. So now…if you scroll down to the footer of this post, you will see my fabulous new share section…complete with some words of wisdom “sharing is caring!”

So, go on, share one of your favorite posts, I’ll wait

Not sure which to share? Check out some of the other readers favorites:

• 10 reasons you should start a blog
• Blogworld
• 10 reasons you shouldn’t start a blog
• Spec-ulation is bad for business
• Promotion
• What is the cost of being fake?

What do you use for bookmarking? Do you even have something so your readers can share your writing?