Posts Tagged ‘Writing Advice’

Over the next 25 posts, ending on my birthday, I will be covering an incredibly creative moment or idea from a year of my life AND one creative moment in either the marketing, advertising, technology or media world.

For me, 1999 was a difficult year. For the first time in my life, I struggled with an English class. This had never happened before. English classes (book analysis, essays, poems, etc) had always come very easy to me. So, my freshman year of High School I decided to take Advanced English and push myself a bit. Push myself, I did. I was finally reading books that were at and above my level. I was expected to analyze them past the surface level, and it was fantastic. I loved the pressures that were put on me, the fact that if I wanted to do well I would have to go above and beyond what was expected. While this was one of the most difficult classes I ever took (okay, calculus was up there too), after my first year of it, I was even further in love with writing and reading than I already was. To this day, I know that the Advanced English classes I took were the beginning of my career in blogging. Once you get the writing bug…it’s impossible to get rid of.

In the media world, 1999 was a scary thought. Who could forget the hype they created over the end of the millennium? The world was going to end. Poof, money gone, banks destroyed, computers crashing, life as we know it would be no more. People stocked up on water, food and pulled their money into safer places. So what really happened? Well, a lot of people got drunk, the world didn’t end and January 1, 2000 was just another day.

Over the next 25 posts, ending on my birthday, I will be covering an incredibly creative moment or idea from a year of my life AND one creative moment in either the marketing, advertising, technology or media world.

1990 – the year I fell in love with writing and CBS realized their biggest mistake.

In first grade, I made my first book and found my passion for writing. I remember each week, we were given the task of creating a book. The room parents (my mom was usually one of them) would come in and help the kids to create a story, however we could, and then bind it together so it looked like a real book. The first one was just pictures, with the few words I could write. As the school year went on, the books got longer, the words got better and my writing was more like real writing.  I wrote as often as I could, coming up with stories in my off time to take with me to school. In addition to getting to create our own books, we also got to spend a couple hours per week in the library, picking out a book to take home and read with our parents. I would take the stories, and then write a new ending to them. Or add on to the ending that was there. I wrote stories for the characters that got ignored, and created my own characters to add to the story. I feel head over heels in love with writing, and haven’t stopped.

In the world of TV and media, Law & Order premiered on NBC. This marked the moment that NBC took over the ratings hold and CBS realized the greatest mistake they’d ever made. 2 years prior, CBS met with the creators of the show and turned down their pitch idea. CBS thought that the show was dull and would never attract a large scale audience. Luckily for NBC, the creators of the show weren’t fazed and approached NBC with the show idea. NBC took the risk, and the risk paid off. More than 9 awards, 3 spin off’s, 5 video games and millions of viewers later it is now the longest-running prime-time drama currently on American television. NBC – 1. CBS – 0.

Over the next 25 posts, ending on my birthday, I will be covering an incredibly creative moment or idea from a year of my life AND one creative moment in either the marketing, advertising, technology or media world.

In 1987, I decided it was my time to start getting noticed and shocking everyone who met me. I hadn’t quite learned how to read on my own, but I certainly was able to convince people who visited our home.

How did I do it? At bed time, my dad would read to me. It was always the same books, either Why The Bear Has A Short Tail or The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse . Since he read them almost every night, pretty soon I had started memorizing the words. Which meant if it had been a long night, and dad wanted to skip a page? I would catch him…and start reciting it back to him. (I told you I was precocious!) Anyway, pretty soon, I could “read” the books and recite the words at the exact moment and on the right pages.

Anyway, one of my favorite things to do when we had guests over was to sit on the floor of my room, with one of the books open and “read” it. I thought it was like a comedy routine, and I loved watching the faces of the people as they watched a 1 year old flawlessly read through a book. It was the first (but definitely not the last) time that I realized how much I enjoyed captivating an audience.

In the tech world, one of my favorite tools I currently use was first discussed (*hint: It’s icon is a blue box and it starts with photo and ends with shop*) by the Knoll Brothers. Photoshop is now one of the most popular photo editing software and is a staple in my everyday arsenal. I couldn’t imagine my business without it…so thank you Knoll’s, you two are amazing!

Blog management is the process of managing all parts of your blog: niche, content, post schedule, keywords, seo, design, promotion, comments. In order to manage them all properly, it is important to give them quality time and avoid short cuts. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a few tricks up my sleeve to help get you started!

1. Niche: Pick one thing that you are passionate about and add it to the mix. Maybe the blog is all about business, but once a week you feature a favorite recipe?
2. Content: Keep writing. Everywhere you go, make sure you have something to jot down notes when ideas come into your head. No idea is too silly.
3. Post schedule: Choose how many days to write, not which days. As long as you always get the number of posts you want, it doesn’t matter which day it is. Aim for 4 per week.
4. Keywords: Use a brainstorming bubble. Main keyword in the center, and 5 longer keywords based on each keyword around it. Repeat this for your main 6-10 keywords and you will have 30-50 longer keywords developed.
5. SEO: Hire someone. (sorry, I know this isn’t what you were hoping for, but honestly, it is the best investment in your business you can make!)
6. Design: Whether you do it yourself, or hire someone (like me ), your blog needs to show who you are. Even if all you do is add a custom header and some fun buttons, make it your own and you’ll enjoy it much more
7. Promotion: Make it easy for your readers to share your story with a tweetmeme button and sharethis options at the bottom (see mine?)
8. Comments: Ask for them. No I don’t mean telling your readers to “give me comments or else”. I mean, write posts that create discussion. Ask a question of your readers, find a way to get them to participate in the conversation. Make it about them!

What other quick tips do you have for blog management?

I have found that the most difficult part of writing my blog posts is the headlines. I can write content all day long, but when it comes to trying it all together under on neat little title, I tend to fall a little short. So, over the next month, my goal is to really work on improving my headlines (of course, I’d love your thoughts on them too!). In order to improve my headlines, I have been studying other writers headlines. Here are 5 websites that I have found with great headlines:

1. Perez Hilton. I explained this one a while ago, and I stick to my claim that he has incredible headlines. We can all take a cue from his style.

2. Copyblogger. While I am not an avid reader of the site, there are some killer suggestions in the content on header writing (and obviously, they work, judging by his traffic). Plus, they are usually about business so they fit into my writing more effectively.

3. HotAir. Whether you are conservative or liberal, you can’t ignore good headlines. Hot Air creates some awesome headlines for their own posts, but also feature other great articles (with killer headlines). I love the hints of sarcasm and word choices…

4. Awkward Family Photos (or a similar humor site). While these sites have nothing to do with business, their titles are almost always clever and eye catching. For example, a couple days ago, the headline was “Eye Contact (back by popular demand“, funny right? Also makes you want to click, which is the point!

5. Angry Julie Monday. This is the only one on the list that isn’t a “professional blogger” which is exactly why I added her. She doesn’t have hours to spend coming up with these titles. She works, raises a family, and still her titles, like this week’s “Squirrels in my pants, what?” are always clever and creative. Plus they are usually on point (read it, you’ll get it) which makes them even more impressive.

Whose headlines do you love/recommend?

Today, I gave my followers a chance to create their own two-word tuesday. Here are their two-word responses to the tweet “In two words – what are you feeling right now?”

chrispenner super hungery

HennArtOnline Fiery Passion!

TravelCostaMesa Too cold!

caflowergirls it’s raining!

PaulTTran Cock Tail?

tsc0809 slightly demented

parksdesign time delayed

AngryJulie Monster Energy

RicDizon Manage Priorities

OakleyOC Pleasantly surprised

GregoryPerez Distantly focused

HyattIrvine Cautiously Optimistic

Thanks to all my followers for chiming in today!

*And don’t forget to register for the Business Strategy Workshop!!*

Ever have those days where you just can’t seem to focus?

You’re working on writing an article and then *poof*, you’ve lost focus and are browsing recent tweets.

Then the tweets lose your attention and you’re logging into Facebook?

Of course, once you’ve looked through everyone’s news feeds, you head over to your email to see what’s new.

Email gets boring, so you get up for a fresh cup of coffee or a snack and chat with someone about their weekend (or text someone if you work alone).

And pretty soon, it’s 3 hours later and you haven’t finished your article.

Yup, we’ve all had those days. In fact, today has been one of them. With some serious struggles, I was able to get some work done on a new clients wedding site (The Diffenderfer Wedding), and I finalized the new copy for another clients site, but I still been feeling out of focus. Nothing has been coming easily, and I had to physically force myself to log out of facebook, close tweetdeck and even turned off my music to try to reclaim my brain.

How do you deal with those days? What do you do in order to refocus your mind and make sure that your work gets completed?

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If you’re anything like me, you have a whole heck of a lot of blogs that come via rss every morning. Currently, I have about 50 that I subscribe to and read every day. I also love leaving comments on the blogs that I read, but as I was commenting on a couple posts this morning, I found something very interesting: I rarely comment on posts that already have a lot of comments. I read their posts, but when I notice that I would be the some-teenth comment, I choose not to leave one. I would much prefer to leave a comment on a blog post that has no other comments then on one that has 20 or 30 other comments.

So, after leaving comments on a couple posts that didn’t have any yet, and not leaving comments on those who did have a ton…my thoughts caught up with me. Am I the only one that does this? Do other people prefer to leave comments on blogs that already have a lot? What drives someone to leave a comment in the first place? And the most important – why is it that I comment this way?

Never being okay with just wondering, I dissected my commenting strategy:

First, I feel that if I comment on a post that has no comments (or even just one or two) that my comment will be more appreciated. It will make the person realize that they did write something quality, and that they touched at least 1 person that day with their thoughts.

Second, I feel like if you already have 30 or so comments, why do you need mine? More than likely it will just get lost in the clutter, or will sound similar to someone else. I don’t feel special leaving a comment on a blog that has that many comments already – and a commenter deserves to feel special.

And finally, I know what it feels like to get no comments on a post that I worked a long time on, and that feeling sucks. So, if I can, I try to keep others from that feeling. I want good writers to keep writing, and I know how hard it was for me when I wouldn’t get comments to want to keep writing.

What is your commenting strategy? Do you like commenting when there are lots of others or do you prefer to help out someone who doesn’t have a lot of comments? And the kicker – what makes you want to comment at all?