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Beat Writer’s Block with These Simple Tips!

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by
Tiffany Matthews

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Can’t Write? – Beat Writer’s Block with These Simple Tips!

You’ve just had a nice cup of coffee to start your day. Your fingers are poised on the keyboard, ready to type away most of the day as you churn out page after page of your manuscript or perhaps articles that you need to submit asap. Forty-five minutes later, you’re staring at the blinking cursor, the only sign of life on your still empty document.

Writer’s block is inevitable, especially for those who write nonstop 24/7. Sometimes, we need to step back from that piece of paper and pen or laptop, to allow ourselves to breathe and find new ammo to write. For those struggling with blank page syndrome, here are some tips on how you can try and beat writer’s block.

Take Long Walks

If you’ve been writing long enough, you know when your work is beginning to look like it belongs in the trash. Don’t force yourself to write. Get out of your chair and take a leisurely stroll outside. Enjoy the scenery and observe other people around you. If you live near a park, walk there and take time to stop and smell the roses, both literally and figuratively. Your walk will invigorate you, clear your mind and allow ideas to trickle in gradually.

Travel

Travel is one of the most foolproof ways of getting over writer’s block. All those exotic locations are sure to inspire you to write about your journey, the good, the bad and the ugly. Exploring new places will also allow you to learn about other cultures and their quirky differences. When you learn about another country and its people, you are broadening your horizon and expanding your understanding of the world.

Drive to the Beach

If you don’t have the funds to travel far, the next best thing you can do is to drive to the beach. The beach is a favorite thinking spot, and many writers have one way or another spent some of their soul searching on the sandy shores of the beach. Breathe in the salty air and let the wind whip your hair around your face. Let the cold water soothe your tired feet and if you decide to stay until dark, take your fill of the starry skies as you lie on the sand.

Do a Quick Exercise

It’s a little strange, but my former colleague swears by this. When she’s stuck in a creative rut, she does a couple of push-ups to get her blood rushing. Some of her best ideas came along after experiencing adrenaline rush. Push-ups are not a must. You can do other quick exercises like going down the stairs and going up again. Make sure you’re climb at least 4-5 flights of stairs so you can also work on improving your stamina.

Go on a Side Trip to Vegas

A trip to sin city, no matter how quick, is always entertaining. No two trips is ever the same. To spice up your little break, rent a limo with friends so you can explore Las Vegas in style. If you are traveling in a large group, rent a shuttle or van. Not in the mood for casinos? There are a lot of great restaurants to choose from or you can opt for dance clubs if you want to dance the night away.

Author’s Bio:
Based in San Diego, California, Tiffany Matthews writes about travel, fashion and anything under sun at wordbaristas.com. You can find her on Twitter as @TiffyCat87

Thank you, Tiffany! New experiences are a great way to move past writer’s block.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

7 Reasons No One Reads Your Company Blog (And What to Do About It)

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How to Blog

by
Timothy Carter

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7 Reasons No One Reads Your Company Blog (And What to Do About It)

Alright, maybe you’ve got a company blog. That’s great. With that, you’ve got a semi-casual avenue to “talk” to your customers, share news and comments about what’s going on, and provide some valuable or useful information while you’re at it. Maybe at some point, you’ve even realized that you can use it as a customer service platform by making it home to easily accessible FAQs – always useful, especially if you sell tech stuff not everyone is going to figure out quick.

So why isn’t anyone reading your blog and how can you remedy this problem?

Problem 1: You Bore People

Simply put, you’ve got nothing on your blog that people want to read. You don’t ask them questions, get them thinking, or engage their emotions. Your blog could contain the most useful information in the world, but it won’t do you any good if people fall asleep halfway through your first paragraph.

Solution: Spice Things up a Bit

Add pictures to give visual representations of what you’re talking about. Maybe toss in a relevant video or two. Engage people’s emotions and make them feel things other than boredom and crushing apathy! Give them something in the content to care about, rather than write like you’re slapping together a technical manual you know nobody is ever going to read.

Problem 2: It Looks Awful

Your site might be one of the ugliest things they’ve seen on the Internet. Okay, that is actually harder to pull off than it sounds, but that’s mainly due to the sheer density of the ugly, horrific things you can find if you bother to look.

Solution: A Makeover

First things first: get rid of the clutter. Remove any widgets or things that the blog doesn’t actually need, because they’re just taking up room and probably don’t fit in with the overall “look.” Go for simpler, less flashy colors, rather than the sparkle and glitter you’d expect from a teenager’s custom page. Rearrange things so there’s a lot less clutter and a lot cleaner in presentation. Too much going on at once makes a site ugly and really hard to navigate.

Problem 3: Your Site Is a Lifeless Husk

Is your blog relevant, or is most of the content consisting of nothing more than extinct posts that have no relevance whatsoever? Is all of it outdated information, serving as little more than a magnet for dust and an archive of long-forgotten notions and trends most people would rather forget ever happened?

Solution: Update Regularly

This is probably the single oldest piece of advice ever for people who have a blog, yet it is the one that is most likely for people to ignore. Keep the content fresh and relevant, and keep it coming at a regular pace. This doesn’t mean “update once every three months.” This means “update once a week or more, if you can manage.”

Problem 4: Your Prose Is Purple

“Purple prose” is a term used to describe written content that is long-winded for no real reason, often going into endless metaphors without really saying anything. This is good if you’re trying to write a terrible romance novel of some sort or if you’re emulating the popular writing style of certain historical periods. This is bad if what you’re trying to do is to get a point across.

Solution: Focus Your Content

Cut down on the metaphors and try to keep the content detailed, but without delv Problem 5: Your Content Isn’t Dynamic

Words don’t always say it well enough.

Solution: Add images, graphics, visual representations.

Newspapers and magazines, despite being focused on content and words, words, words, also toss in pictures and graphs to break up the monotony. Pictures are great not only for putting a visual representation of what you’re saying, but also as an “opening paragraph” – every writer knows one of the hardest things to do is to hook people in from the get-go.

Problem 6: Way Too Much Advertising

A blog is not meant to be a platform for advertising and marketing. Yet, some people overload them with ads and marketing banners, with some instances of them using posts as nothing more than sales spiel. People will walk away if you think you’re trying to sell them something they don’t want. This is true even when they’re reading a corporate blog.

Solution: Trim the Ads

Cut down on the ads. What little ads you do keep, make sure they’re not placed in an in-your-face manner, but instead are off to the side where they don’t get in the way of the content or navigation.

Problem 7: You’re Just Not Relevant

In theory, you ought to know your audience best. You know what they want to see and what is critical to their mission. If you don’t know that, you really ought to reconsider your business plan, since you probably don’t know who you’re supposed to be selling to, either.

Solution: Be Relevant

You know your audience, which means that to some extent, you have some idea of what they don’t know. Give them that. Insight into unorthodox uses of their favorite product or little-known functions that might come in handy are possibilities.

Author’s Bio:

Timothy Carter writes about social media, social marketing and trade shows at SmashHitDisplays.com. You can also find him on on Google+ and Twitter as @TimothyCarter

Thank you, Tim, for adding insight to the conversation!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Organize Your Thoughts Before You Blog

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how to blog

by
Poala Werner

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Perfect Blogging Tip: How to Organize Your Thoughts

There are a lot of people who believe that they do not have a talent in writing. Some college students, for example, will easily give up on writing a decent piece and simply settle for a mediocre essay because they will they do not have the knack for it.

But that is not entirely true. Though there may be fortunate people who can write better than the others without exerting too much effort, you can still learn how to be a good writer by learning the right tricks. One of them is called Thought Organization.

When writing anything, it is very important to have a collected thought to have a single focus. Who wants to read something that starts discussing Point A then ends in talking about Point W. It does not make any sense, right?

So how can we organize our thoughts? Are there any special tricks for it?

Let us learn each step one by one, starting with a discussion about the three basic essay components. These are the thesis statement, the supporting details, and the conclusion.

The thesis statement is the part of the essay where the main argument can be seen. It shows the focal point of the paper. It will be hard to start any writing task if we have no idea what our thesis statement is. It also paints the picture of the entire essay for the readers. Most of the time, the thesis statement can be seen in the last sentence of the paper’s introduction.

On the other hand, the supporting details refer to the discussion of the evidences gathered to support the essay’s arguments. Normally, essay writers (http://www.superiorpapers.com/custom_essay.php) stress the importance of each supporting details in separate paragraphs. If there are no enough evidence to support your argument, better change the focus of your thesis statement to something which can be discussed further.

And then there is the conclusion. This is the part that wraps up the entire essay by reinstating the thesis statement. It must go over the earlier details mentioned without having to repeat the words completely. A good conclusion must also pose a challenge or a call to action to the readers.

After learning the three basic essay components, let us proceed to the essay writing organization proper. These are Outlining, Writing, and Proofreading. Now let’s discuss each a little further.

Outlining

This is the first part of the thought organization process for writing. It is like making a blueprint of the house that you want to build. It may be an additional task for essay writing, but it can make your essay writing process a lot easier.

A sample outline can look like this:

I. Introduction/Thesis Statement
II. First Argument
III. Second Argument
IV. Third Argument
V. Conclusion

With an organized outline like this, it will be quite impossible for any writer to lost track of the discussion.

Writing

After we are done with our outlines, start the actual writing process. Our outline can actually cut the essay writing process in half because we just have to follow the items in it. We won’t have to worry about getting lost in our thoughts anymore.

Proofreading

Finally, we have the entire paper in our hands. Are we done with it? Not yet! We still have to do the proofreading part. Some essay writers choose to let the proofreading done by other people, like their friends or family. But you can choose to do it also on your own. Whatever makes you comfortable, do it. No one wants to submit a paper full of spelling or grammar mistakes, right?

See, we don’t have to be professional essayists like Kurt Vonnegut or David Forster Wallace to write a good paper. With proper thought organization, we can surely compose a good essay in no time.

Author’s Bio:
Poala Werner is a college student who spends her time juggling class duties and her baby sitting job for her older brother. She would love to work on a publishing company someday, that is why she is currently taking Journalism majors in the university. In her timeline, she will be in her dream job in two years time. Follow her on Twitter as @p0wer111890.

Thank you for adding to the conversation!

5 Compelling Reasons to Comment on Blogs

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by
Rosemary O’Neill

Blog commenting is the broccoli of the social media world, an important part of a balanced diet.

In contrast, it’s so easy to pop out a Retweet, hit the “like” button, or re-pin an infographic—those are the Krispy Kreme donuts. A quick rush and then you’re hungry again.

The ROI of Blog Commenting

The other day, I asked someone who was considering a major purchase from my company how they found us. What he said blew my mind. He found me through a blog comment I made on Jeremiah Owyang’s blog THREE YEARS AGO. I happened to be the first commenter on the post, and because of the post’s content, it had surfaced in a Google search by my new friend. (Yes, that’s the sound of angels singing.)

If you can craft a blog comment that contributes to the conversation, adds helpful information, or draws others in, then you’ve done something useful with your social media time investment. If all you have to say is, “great post!” then don’t bother.

Be brief, be witty, be on topic (or all three) and you will attract the attention of the blog writer as well as your fellow readers. Then it’s not only broccoli, it’s doing P90X while eating broccoli.

Start eating your broccoli today.

5 Compelling Reasons to Comment on Blogs

  1. Puts your hat in the ring – Every time you make a helpful comment, you have “shown the flag” for your personal brand. Some commenting systems even allow you to carry points or likes on your comment content, so they become a “body of work.”
  2. Follow you back – I frequently check out other commenters on blogs I frequent. I’ll check out their personal sites, recent posts, and their company pages. Even if the blog uses the “no-follow” for your link, you can still have people follow you home.
  3. Gives back to the blog writer – Commenting and extending the conversation is a small way to give back to the author of the post. Getting validation that someone is reading and that the post resonated with them is something even “famous” bloggers crave.
  4. Exercises your writing muscle – Blog comments can be a disciplined way of distilling your thoughts and practicing expression. If you’re not ready to write an entire blog post of your own, try routinely commenting for a while. It’s great exercise!
  5. Networking with other commenters – There are plenty of blogs where the discussion in the comments is even more stimulating than the blog content itself. Check out Social Media Examiner’s excellent commenter banter, or the established community within SpinSucks comments. If you show up frequently, you can become part of the community too.

So, have you had your broccoli yet today?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

Top 5 Things to Consider When You’re Blogging and Traveling

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How to blog

by
Amanda DiSilvestro

Blogging on the Go: How to Make Traveling the World “Work” for You

This post coming to you from a campervan somewhere between Byron Bay and Sydney, Australia — it can be tough to try and keep your blog up and running while you’re on the go. One of the greatest things about being a blogger and writer is the idea that you can do your writing from anywhere, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. This also doesn’t mean that you should sit home and let this great opportunity pass you by, but it does mean that you have to come up with some focus and discipline; fast.


Image: Can blogging while
you travel work out for you?

Working from home and working while you are traveling are two very different things. If you’ve been able to manage getting your work done with the lack of a real office, then you’re certainly off to a good start when it comes to working while on the go. However, there are a few things that are different and a few other qualities that you will likely need if you want to be successful as you travel wherever that plane or campervan may take you.

Top 5 Things to Consider When You’re Blogging and Traveling

It’s important to remember that working while traveling isn’t for everyone (as great as it may sound). Below are a few tips to help you make sure that you’re ready to be a traveling blogger:

  1. Get ready to work while you’re in the car or on a train or bus.

    Traveling often involves taking long rides to neighboring towns and tourist areas, and this means taking some sort of transportation. This is a great time for you to be working because these rides are usually pretty lengthy and there isn’t much else to do. However, you have to consider whether or not you get carsick and can actually work in a moving vehicle. Many people are able to get away with not working while literally on the go, but it’s the most convenient if you’re ready and willing to make it happen.

  2. Make sure that you’re prepared to miss out on certain activities.

    Part of traveling is the excitement of doing everything and seeing everything (especially if you’re with friends or family). It can be difficult to watch everyone travel down to the beach or check out that famous restaurant on the rooftop and just sit there and work. However, you have to realize that it won’t be possible for you to see and do everything. You have to make time for work, and this will mean having to say no to certain outings. For many (myself included), this is the hardest part about blogging while traveling and it’s often enough to cause a blog to fail.

  3. Consider the time difference and whether or not it will affect your business.

    You would be surprised at what an affect time difference will have on your blogging. If you’re working for a company, you are going to want to make sure that you’re online at least a little bit during the work hours of your company, and for you this could be right in the middle of dinner. You will also want to consider the different times that your content as well as the content your submitting to others is the most successful. If you’re writing an article late at night and then it goes live, is it really going to do you much good to promote it while the audience of that blog is asleep? You will want to make sure you have lots of scheduling tools in order!

  4. Try to spread out all of your travels.

    Let’s face it—if you’re going to travel while you blog you’re going to do it right. You will likely want to see more than one country, but it’s important that you spread out the times in which you travel. Make sure that you have a home base for at least a few months so you can really crack down and get some work done. It is during the transition periods that work suffers the most.

  5. Make sure that the Internet is readily available whenever you need it.

    This is one thing that can take many by surprise. They assume that they can just use Internet cafes or easily buy a wireless router, but this isn’t always the case. You want to make sure that you have this under control before you leave. In most countries, the best thing you can do is buy an Internet card in the country you’re visiting (bringing one from another will cost you too much money!). However, this isn’t always possible in more remote countries, so you’ll want to make sure you really research and decide if that is a country you can even travel to with a job. And remember—don’t forget your converters!

Have you ever maintained a blog or a blogging job while traveling the world? What were some things that you wish you had known before you got on the plane? Let us know your thoughts and tell us your stories in the comments below!

Author’s Bio:
Amanda DiSilvestro gives small business and entrepreneurs SEO advice ranging from keyword density to recovering from Panda and Penguin updates. She writes for Higher Visibility, a nationally recognized SEO consulting firm that offers online marketing services to a wide range of companies across the country. Connect with Higher Visibility on Google+ and Twitter to learn more!

Blogging on the Road: How to Keep Up When You Travel a Lot

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how to blog series

by
Ann Smarty

Understanding Online Business

When people ask about me, I usually have two main descriptions I go to: I am a travel-lover and a blogger. These two things make up so much of who I am and my life that they are the very first details that spring into my mind. Which is great, because they are two parts about my life that I truly love and would never change.

You would think the two would naturally intertwine, and in a way they do. I have plenty to say after each journey, and love showing pictures and videos taken along the way as I speak of my experiences. As I started out backpacking around the world in my earlier days, I have some serious stories about it. Which I am always eager to tell.

The problem is finding time to blog while I am traveling. This is something I have always wanted to be able to do, as my impressions and details would be much clearer and more accurate when it had only just happened.

It took me years to develop this skill properly, rather than relying on guest bloggers or hiatuses to get me through. It all comes down to a few tricks of the trade.


ImageCredit: Alex E. Proimos Learn the tricks.

Have Backups At The Ready

No matter how good your intentions are to blog while on the road, it won’t always happen. Your best bet is to have a small collection or prewritten articles in draft. That way you can publish on those scheduled days where you don’t have the time, ability or just energy to write.

Install Apps

Here’s a detailed guide on how to stay connected with your iPhone. Here’s another one for Android. It all comes down to which apps you choose to stick with as there are plenty!
Rely On Photo Or Video Posts

You don’t always have to tell about your day with words. Instead, you can post a vlog or collection of photos. It gives you a post, will update your viewers and also engage them visually.

Have A Blog Day

You know those days that you can’t bring yourself to go out and do anything? Even the most experienced travelers in the most beautiful and exciting destinations feel like this once during their trip. Take that day to lay low in your hotel room or hostel, and take advantage of the available internet connection. If they don’t have one, spend an hour or two at an Internet cafe or business with free WiFi. Knock out a few blog posts so they are ready and scheduled to go out. Then you won’t have to worry about it. If you are fast and determined, you will actually be surprized how much you are able to do in ten minites!

Fall Back On The Guest Bloggers

I mentioned before that I don’t like to rely on guest bloggers when I travel, and that was true. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like them at all. I love guest bloggers, and they have saved my butt more than once. I always have one on hand when I travel, who knows they will be called on to write at specific times. Or will just be expecting an email if I need them. MyBlogGuest is also always there to rescue!


This is one of my favorite ideas. Ask readers who are interested in writing for the site submit their ideas or blog posts on a relevant topic. Hold it like a contest with the winners having their posts published while you are traveling. You would be surprised by how many responses this tactic can get, especially from other writers looking for some exposure.

It isn’t always easy to keep up with a blog when you are a frequent traveler. But that doesn’t mean it is an impossible feat. In fact, it is quite simple to do if you just spend some time preparing for it. The tips above should help you out.

Author’s Bio:
Ann Smarty Ann Smarty is the blogger and social media gig launching Viral Content Buzz, the free social media promotion platform focusing on high-quality.


Thank you, Ann! Great information, Great guest post! Great birthday present to include SOBCon among them! 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss