Thinks I find along the way
I’ve been blogging with WordPress for years. Lately, I’ve really been liking Storify. What happens when you put the two together? Amazing things!
I’ve been blogging with WordPress for years. Lately, I’ve really been liking Storify. What happens when you put the two together? Amazing things…
I’ve been blogging with WordPress for years. Lately, I’ve really been liking Storify. What happens when you put the two together? Amazing things…
…no matter how hard they try…
If you visit your favorite blogging tips and marketing tips blog today, you will come across a lot of tips, ranging from tips on writing well to tips on building an audience.
The reality is that a lot of new blogs spring up every day, and the majority of these blogs are bound to fail right from the beginning. It’s not because there is something wrong with their approach, but because they fail to neglect something really important: their wellbeing.
Do you know that blogging is not only a physical challenge? It is also a mental challenge.
There are a lot of things we bloggers go through every day that no amount of practice will help make easier, but by focusing on being okay in every aspect of our lives (mental, emotional, physical, etc.) we’ll find those challenges easier to deal with.
In this article I’ll be touching some subjects bloggers hardly discuss online, and I’ll be giving tips to help you deal with them.
Source: Why Most Bloggers will Fail, No Matter How Hard They Try
Go to the source if you’d like the rest of author John Smith’s perspective. Comment or ‘connect’ to talk about how this applies to you and your organization…
“Heights by great men reached and kept were not obtained by sudden flight but, while their companions slept, they were toiling upward in the night.”- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Longfellow was an American educator and poet.
“The best part of blogging is the people you will meet”- Hugh MacLeod repeating wisdom from Loic Lemeur to me at the Big Pink at 2 am in South Beach after the Future of Web Apps 2008.
If you asked me to tell you a list of three of the best decisions in my life, I can certainly tell you that regularly writing is one of them. It’s the reason I’m an author here at OnStartups, made many new friends, had interesting opportunities cross my radar, and most importantly had the chance to share knowledge that has helped other entrepreneurs.
Wow — this post is just loaded with business case and valuable tips. You can follow the ‘vi a’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’re interested in getting even smarter…
Still not convinced on the topic of curation? Read on…
Curation is now a necessity. The web is full of content. More than a person could consume in several lifetimes if all they did was sleep a couple hours per day and surf the web, life after life.
Google can’t help us with our internet A.D.D. Nor can Facebook or Alltop.
The best we’ve been able to do so far to harness the massive information overload is use tools like Google Reader and RSS feed aggregators like Alltop. They’ve helped, to be sure, but no one is going through all that information and picking out the best of the best and making sense of it all for you.
Rather than start a new site with the goal of creating a bunch of new content, it’s time for people to think about being content curators. Organizing and commenting on the best content around a certain topic.
Curators still use blog software to publish their content, but the vast majority of each post is made up of carefully reviewed and organized 3rd party information.
Jack Humphrey says it well here and I encourage you to follow the ‘via’ link and read his 11 reasons. Me? I am the self-styled ‘king of curation’ and my ‘e1evation workflow’ allows you to curate content better and faster than any other system I know of with maximum effect. Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to your organization…
Most writing could be better.
Not just a little better — significantly better.
If you start out with a solid topic, a good knowledge of your audience, and a reasonable degree of writing ability, you’ll usually end up with a pretty good piece of writing.
But you don’t have to settle for “pretty good.” A little attention to the final details can kick “pretty good” to “magnificent.”
Whether you’re creating blog posts, special reports, sales letters, a video script, email autoresponders, or whatever else, you can take your writing up a level just by applying some simple principles:
I love the first way; write drunk/edit sober. Follow the ‘via’ link to read all 5 ways…
You can follow the ‘via’ link above if you want an excellent synopsis of what your small business website needs to be successful. Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to your organization…
Things we’ve been tracking in the past 24 hours…
– What more proof do you need that Macs are overpriced?
– Don’t buy one. Get a desktop + netbook or pad + android phone for the same price…
It has been a year now since an eventful day when I was browsing the Internet and clicked on an advertisement that seemed an obvious scam: Get 90% off a new iPad. “Yeah, right,” I thought. But I wanted to check it out anyway since I seemed to recall seeing the same ad previously, and I wondered if it was a new type of scam I should be aware of. As it turned out, it wasn’t a scam, just misleading advertising … and thus began my blog on penny auctions, which are a class of entertainment auctions.
I found the idea exciting enough to blog about. I was just getting interested in multi-player game theory and thought that auctions are a nice field to study. The problem was, I had no experience of problogging at all. Like so many others, all I previously had was a blog for my random musings but nothing serious. I had a very elementary knowledge of SEO which I gained working as a freelance writer. I knew nothing about how to rank well in Google or how to use backlinks effectively. As a writer, the only promotional tool I did know about was article marketing.
I started this blog in May 2010, and it’s been growing for one year now. Looking back, I have learned so much and there is still so much to learn. Here is my journey in a nutshell.
You can follow the ‘via’ link above if you’re interested in the ‘journey’, but personally, I wouldn’t start something like this on a Blogger blog. Despite what you might think, they are not at good at driving Search Engine Optimization [SEO] as WordPress. I mean a Google product should produce great Google search results, right? Wrong! Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to your organization…
Things we’ve been tracking in the past 24 hours…
Things we’ve been tracking in the past 24 hours…
I thank God every day that my mother forced me to take touch typing in high school — especially when you consider that people who use keyboard shortcuts are 4x more productive than those who stumble along with their mouse! Keyboard shortcuts are what make Gmail and Google Reader the killer apps they are! Get to know them and you’ll be loving life…
This afternoon, I thought I was heading to a personal digital coaching session on Google Reader for local anchorwoman Erin Davisson of WFRV TV in Green Bay. Instead, unbeknownst to me, it was Erin’s intention to interview me for an upcoming news segment…
Fortunately, I’m always ready to talk about the power of ‘personal news aggregation’ using Google Reader and I had no trouble giving Erin 50x more content than she’ll ever be able to use! Erin was also kind enough to give me a tour of the studio and sit for this picture. Now I’ll have to ask her to autograph my blog…
:-)
PS Be sure to tune in Tuesday the 14th at 5:00 to see the segment!
Don’t follow the ‘via’ link unless you’re really serious about understanding Blogging and Search Engine Optimization [SEO]. Comment or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to your organization…
We all have a message drummed into us throughout life: people make snap judgements on you based upon the first impression you give. In many instances, those judgements are lasting ones.*
The same is true for your blog posts. Your opening line really does matter—readers will make a snap decision about whether to read your post by how you open that post, both in the headline or title and the opening line.
It’s no wonder that so many of us feel pressure to get our first lines right.
*It’s worth noting that you can bounce back from a poor first impression. For example, the first thing my wife ever said to me was, “Hi Michael, it’s nice to meet you.” Not a great opening … but I married her within a year!
Want to get better at creating great posts? You can follow the ‘via’ link above get the rest of Darren Rowse’s perspective…
Nilofer Merchant is a kick-a$$ woman from Silicon Valley about whom I have posted several times before [search box!]. Here she is at TED speaking about innovation…
I think you can why I’ve been blown away by her for years — she’s a deep thinker and engaging communicator, Nilofer totally rocks!
Well, today Nilofer just ask lil’ ol’ me for help in putting together her ‘thought leadership marketing’ toolkit. What a great world it is when a Silicon Vally powerhouse can call on an ‘internet plumber’ from Algoma, WI and they can collaborate using this wonderful thing called the internet…
I know that when you get in the end zone you’re supposed to act like you belong there but I’m awed. And humbled. And I’ve been practicing and perfecting my craft every day for 5 years just waiting for an opportunity like this. I’m ready to kick a$$ for you — let’s roll, Nilofer…
All the topics that interest US in the past 24 hours…
– Cool. I didn’t know RIM was still in business…
– Nice ad…
In real estate, first impressions are everything. Even though the color of the front door would be easy and affordable to repaint, it’s one of the first things a potential buyer notices. If your door is red and the buyer doesn’t like it, most likely she isn’t going to bother looking at the interior. Maybe she doesn’t even know why she doesn’t like the house. She’s on to the next one before yours had a chance.
Blog readers are just as finicky as house buyers—not that there’s anything wrong with that. There are simply so many choices in blogs and other online publications that it’s a reader’s market. A blog that doesn’t pass the front door test doesn’t attract readers willing to go farther inside the blog to look around. Think about these four ways to make a first impression with your blog so it becomes a hot property.
You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source. Comment or ‘connect’ to discuss how this applies to you and your organization…
It’s an online magazine rack with many of the world’s top sources gathered together by category. It’s an excellent place to shop for great content for Google Reader, too!
You can follow the ‘via’ link above to learn how to make your Facebook page awesome! Comment or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to your organization…
Bright, shiny objects! 
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