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Written on 11/19/2012 at 12:02 am by

One Essential Characteristic of a Pro Blogger [Not Your Everyday Blog Writing Advice]

Filed Under: Featured Posts, Writing Content

Each week, my Content manager Georgina turns away around 20 or so posts for publication at ProBlogger. She tells me that maybe 5-10% of those are of a publishable standard, but they just don’t fit our audience or purpose. The rest aren’t pro-level pieces.

Learning

Image courtesy stock.xchng user Valsilvae

Forget for a moment that these are guest posts—which are supposed to be bloggers’ best content.

Instead, I want to think about what that means for the average blogger, toiling away on their blog day in, day out, trying to reach and captivate their audience.

What is “pro blogging”?

Pro blogging isn’t just about making money through a blog. You don’t need to write a word to do that. But I think most of us would expect pro bloggers to be able to write reasonably well.

Why?

Because Pro bloggers need to be consummate communicators. Whether they hire others to write for their blogs, or use video, audio, or images rather than text, clear expression is a hallmark of any pro blogger.

Clarity doesn’t just mean error-free writing. It means:

  • content that touches readers, showing you empathize with them
  • relevant, helpful content
  • consistent information, in terms of frequency, tone, etc.
  • content that delivers what it promises, and has integrity.

A blogger might use writing for a range of purposes, too:

  • to attract readers, and keep them coming back
  • to promote their blog or sell something
  • to approach potential collaboraters
  • to build relationships and networks
  • to make money directly (e.g. through an information product).

There’s plenty of great quality advice about writing and content marketing online. Writing tips abound.

This week, we want to present a few different takes on writing for your blog. Over the next four days we’ll publish some posts that focus on some nitty-gritty aspects of writing—ideas that go a bit deeper than usual.

Writing to make money

Our first post will look at writing product reviews that deliver real value. Among other things, the post explores the challenges bloggers face in exposing the negative aspects of a product they’re reviewing and may want to encourage readers to buy (if they’re an affiliate for it).

Handling that tension is exactly the kind of thing that pro bloggers work to master. This post will show how showing the full picture supports authority, and can actually encourage more sales than a purely glowing review.

Writing to improve

One great thing about blogging is that everything we do is practice—each post we publish should be an improvement on the last one.

Looking to leaders for advice on writing is an excellent way to develop your skills. Our second post will reveal the thoughts of some of the world’s greatest writers, and provide starting points to help you apply that advice in your own posts.

Writing to build your profile

When bloggers think about content marketing, we often ponder the question of content reuse. If you do it right, it can be an efficient way to get the most out of the time you spend writing—it can boost your visibility, your publishing schedule, and your available time.

Our third post this week explains how freelance writers can best reuse their freelance content on their own blogs. This isn’t a straightforward topic, and this post highlights the potential advantages and pitfalls so that if you’re a freelancer, you know where to start looking into content reuse.

Writing to experiment

For many bloggers, after high-school or college essays, and workplace emails, blogging is the first focused writing they’ve done.

We’ve all heard the advice that if you want to be a great writer, you need to be a big reader. But the final post in our series shows that to be a better blog writer, you need to be a better writer, period. It prompts us to look beyond blog posts for opportunities to write, and topics to write on. It shows that through experimentation, we can learn skills out of context that we can bring back and apply to our blogs.

Are you up to the challenge?

The advice we’ll cover this week goes beyond the everyday. It assumes you’re already serious about being good writer, and are facing the challenges of becoming a great writer. There’s no hype in these posts, and no write-your-way-to-a-million-dollar-income-in-five-minutes advice. They’re posts that aim to provide a different perspective on post writing.

Where are you at as a writer? Are you ready to challenge yourself to become better? Or do you think you’ve reached your limits, either in terms of potential, or interest in writing? Share your perspective with us in the comments.

Written on 11/17/2012 at 6:03 am by

Set a Posting Schedule that Encourages Shares and Pageviews

Filed Under: Writing Content

This guest post is by Lindsey Dahlberg of Bloggingtips.com.

We’ve all heard the saying, “great content gets shared.” But what happens if yours isn’t getting shared? Does that mean you don’t have great content?

Not necessarily. It could mean you have top-notch content, but you’re not posting it at the most opportunistic times of day.

Maybe you aren’t interested in social shares but would like to know why your killer content isn’t generating lots of pageviews.

Perhaps you’re suffering from the same malady: your content isn’t getting viewed because you aren’t posting on the best days of the week.

According to Shareaholic, the day and time you post your content will determine how many social shares and page views it receives. The following information was taken from data received in 2011 (social shares apply to Facebook and Twitter).

Social shares

If your top priority is social shares, you’ll want to know the best day and best time to post your content. Here is a breakdown of both those stats.

Best days

According to research, content posted on Thursdays gets more shares than any other day—10% more in fact. From there, sharing days decrease in popularity as follows: Wednesday, Friday, Monday, Sunday, and Tuesday.

We can take two things from this information. First, people are using Facebook and Twitter at work. Second (and more relevant to you!), posts made later in the week do better than posts made earlier in the week.

Best times

Now that you have determined which days you should be posting, you’ll want to know which hours are best.

According to Sharaholic, 27% of all social shares occur between 8am and 12pm EST. There is a definite surge of activity between 9am and 10am. After that, social shares are on the decline for the majority of the day. There are two other small peaks of activity around 2pm and 9pm.

Apparently, we like to take in our information with the morning news, get an update after lunch, and check in before bed.

One popular blogger shares his posting schedule. He posts at 4:30am. That way, his content is ready for his US audience while his UK audience is still awake and active.

Pageviews

If you are interested in driving traffic to your blog, and you’re not too particular about social shares, your posting schedule will be completely different.

Best days

The four best pageview-related posting days are the same as the social share posting days. However, the winners are in a different ranking. Of the top 100 pageview days in 2011, 43% landed on a Monday. Tuesdays received 28%, Wednesdays 24%, and Thursdays finished the list with 5%.

Note Saturday and Sunday didn’t make the cut.

Best times

Most pageviews take place between 7am and 1pm EST, Monday through Friday, with the majority occurring between 9am and 10am. From there, views decrease significantly.

What this means for you

There are several takeaways we can gather from these statistics.

First, you need to determine how you want your audience to find your content. Do you want them to click from Twitter? Do you want them to subscribe via email? The answer to these questions will determine how you implement a response to these statistics.

Second, these statistics should act as a guideline only. They provide a nice place to begin your testing. However, you’ll want to check your own numbers and adjust from there.

These statistics don’t apply to everyone and they aren’t carved in stone. Pageviews and shares can vary from topic to topic, time zone to time zone, and country to country.

Third, you should determine which time zones read your content and when. Some businesses focus on the US east coast, since the majority of the country resides there. However, other companies draw a large band of followers from the west coast or Europe. Use your site’s analytics to determine where your target audience lives.

Lastly, be ready. Have your content up before the peak viewing time occurs. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to let viewers know it’s coming. A simple social media post along the lines of, “check the blog tomorrow at noon for a hot new post—you won’t want to miss it!” couldn’t hurt.

If you have been churning out stellar content and not receiving the traffic or social shares you’d like, try making a few changes to the times at which you post your content.

Lindsey Dahlberg is a blogger at http://bloggingtips.com and http://ppc.org/.

Written on 11/16/2012 at 12:05 am by

The Day A Spider Monkey Tried to Kill Me (And What it Taught Me About Getting More Blog Readers)

Filed Under: Writing Content

This guest post is by Logan Marshall of the Free Life Project.

The hot Costa Rican sun filters through the canopy, warming my back as I walk up a small path towards the house where I am staying. I can hear the calls of howler monkeys in the distance, echoing through the rainforest like prehistoric dinosaurs.

Caught up in the magic of this place, I am barely aware of my surroundings—marveling at the exotic wonder that surrounds me. Massive, vine-covered trees erupt from the soil. Vibrant red flowers pop out against the canvas of dark green…

And then it happens.

Triggered by a flash of movement, my eyes shoot upward to see a full grown monkey charging towards me, its eyes fixed on mine as it rockets across the forest floor.

All of the sudden, the world is moving in slow motion. Panic floods my body as I realize what is happening.

Twenty meters separate us, then ten…

In an act of unrestrained desperation, I turn and sprint towards the beach, hurtling away like a man on fire.

I am running on the edge of collapse, crashing through the jungle in a frenzy of pure terror. My heart pounds in my chest. My lungs burn. I can hear the soft footsteps coming closer and closer…

That, my friends, was a (slightly dramatized) true story.

Yes a monkey actually tried to kill me. Yes I screamed like a nine-year-old girl. Yes I left Costa Rica the next day.

But while that story hopefully had you engaged and chuckling at my paranoid idiocy, you’re probably wondering what it has to do with blogging.

Well, I’ll tell you.

It’s a ridiculous example of how to “hook” an audience and engage them enough to keep reading. A model of how to look blogospheric boredom in the face and proudly give it the finger.

When it comes to blogging, people don’t want to just receive an endless stream of instructions (no matter how good they are). People want to be entertained. They want to be engaged, excited and captivated.

As David Mamet puts it:

“The audience will not tune in to watch information. You wouldn’t, I wouldn’t. No one would or will. The audience will only tune in and stay tuned in to watch drama.”

This is why the Hunger Games can attract the entire US population while the latest edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica rests on a dusty bookshelf next to the works of some high-browed and equally lifeless academic professor.

It’s boring. And we humans will do everything in our power to avoid the crushing grip of boredom.

Online, most blogs are cybernetic reflections of Ferris Bueller’s Economics teacher: dry, painfully boring and utterly devoid of life-enriching color.

With this in mind, it’s your job to break through the clutter and offer your readers more than just good content. Offer them an experience. An adventure. A vibrant integration of valuable information and galvanizing awesomeness.

Let’s begin.

The great “Infobesity” epidemic

There’s a disease ravaging the western world. A life-sucking affliction slowly making its way into the cracks and crevices of our lives.

No, I’m not talking about physical obesity or technological addiction, although these are both equally dangerous.

I’m talking about what John Naish calls infobesity.

Yep, infobesity. As Naish writes,

“We are so wired to gather information that often we no longer do anything useful with it. Instead of pausing to sift our intake for relevance and quality, the daily diet of prurient, profound, confusing and conflicting information gets chucked on to a mental ash-heap of things vaguely comprehended. Then we rush to try to make sense of it all … by getting more.”

There’s a ton of information out there. You know that.

Especially when it comes to the online space, we are drowning in a sea of contradictory messages: “Just learn blogging, PPC, affiliate marketing, SEO! Try this one magic formula and it will instantly transform you into the supreme master overlord of all things awesome!”

Yeah … I think I’ll pass.

With so much information fighting for our attention, people don’t really pay attention to any of it.

They ignore it. They block it all out … unless you can find a way to break through the clutter and give them an obvious reason to watch, attentively, like a seven-year-old at Sea World.

This is your mission. Let me show you how.

6 Ways to turn your blog into the next big TV drama

Okay. So you understand the importance of being interesting and the reality of information consumption.

Now it’s time to switch gears and dive headlong into the practical section of the post. The “meat and potatoes.”

While there are undoubtedly more, I’ve identified six primary ways to eradicate the “customer coma,” capture attention, and turn your blog into the next big TV drama.

Step 1. Tell stories

Stories have been around for thousands of years. Since the very creation of language. They are the purest form of human communication.

As Robert McKee puts it:

“Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.”

Agreed. Stories are insanely powerful.

They have the power to captivate an audience, skyrocket your email open rates, and have your readers excitedly awaiting your next piece of content like it’s the finale of Lost.

While I can’t go into all the details in this post, the essence of effective story telling can be condensed into one single sentence.

As Andrew Stanton puts it:

“The greatest story commandment is: make me care.”

Such great advice.

In every piece of content you create, every story you write, keep this at the front of your mind.

The reason why my sister (and thousands of others) will dress up like Hermione Granger for the Harry Potter finale is because they care about the characters. They desperately want them to succeed. To make Voldy pay.

With this in mind, your job is to make people care about what you have to say. To create suspense. To evoke emotion. To get them to “feel” why your story matters.

Do this, and watch your success skyrocket.

Step 2: Employ open loops

Have you ever watched Lost, 24 or another hit TV drama?

You probably have.

They’re insanely popular, captivating the minds (and destroying the work ethics) of countless people all over the world.

But why are they so addicting?

Simple: they employ a little-known suspense-building tactic that makes people have to know what happens. A trick that leaves people on the edge of their seats, counting down the days until the next episode airs.

What tactic am I talking about?

Two words: open loops.

I was first introduced to open loops by the (storytelling genius) Andre Chaperon…and they’ve made big-time difference in my business.

Here’s how they work. You’re fully captivated by a story, you’re on the edge of your seat, wanting desperately to know what happens.

The action rises.

The tension builds. And then…

The episode is over. You have to tune in next week to see what happens.

Here’s an example.

Get it? You build the action and suspense…and then leave the story unresolved. Unfinished.

This “lack of closure” causes people to return week after week because they need to see what happens. Once a “loop” is opened, it’s human nature to want to see what happens. They can’t not know what happens.

How do you apply this to your blog or online business?

Here’s what I do: instead of writing isolated blog posts or email messages, I create context around my content.

I “continue the story” from one piece of content to the next. Leave stories unresolved so that people watch their inbox like a hawk, eagerly awaiting my latest “episode.”

This is my primary “anticipation building” weapon. I leverage it in my content, emails, even guest posts.

Use it at your own risk.

Step 3: Leverage the senses

Video wins. It has the highest perceived value, crushes long-form sales letters, and captures attention far better then plain old text.

Why? Because it “leverages the senses.”

Instead of relying on mental imagining, video gives you the full experience. You can hear it, see it, “feel it,” and often read it too.

With this in mind, instead of putting out the same old posts, mix things up. Include video, audio, images, and text. Send people on what I call a “discovery adventure.”

The key is to always make things interesting and exciting. If you get bored reading your content, chances are it will tranquilize your audience.

Step 4: Create your “super alter-ego”

One of the most fundamental rules of blogging is this: people follow bloggers, not blogs.

You’ve heard this before, right? Well, it’s true.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, people do not want cookie-cutter information delivered to them from some impersonal void. They want to interaction, entertainment, and connection.

You see, there’s a saying in internet marketing that goes like this: “Make fans over friends, and friends over followers.” Simply put, people like to do business with people they empathize with, and the best way to foster this is to infuse personality into your marketing. Not a bland, neutral, “corporate” version of your personality, but a strong, exaggerated, larger-than-life version.

Your “super alter-ego.”

The key here is to take the aspects of your personality that people will connect with, and blow them up. Amplify them. Don’t be afraid to take a stand.

As D. Bnonn Tennent puts it:

“You gotta be hot! You must have more personality than you know what to do with—a personality that appeals to your ideal prospect. Then you simply write to him directly as one person to another; as if you were having a conversation.”

Step 5: Don’t be afraid to use comedy

Online, most people shy away from comedy. They say it doesn’t work. They say it turns people off.

Well, this is absolutely false. I don’t know about you, but when someone makes me laugh, I instantly like them. And I want to be around them as much as possible.

As Dan Kennedy puts it in his book “Make ‘Em Laugh and Take Their Money,”

“The ability to get those laughs, to make people relax and be uninhibited and enjoy themselves, to leave their worries behind and enter a different mind space, to feel a sense of shared, funny futility over life’s problems and puzzles, to trust you enough to open up and laugh with you…is as necessary to a performer or speaker as an audience itself. For the speaker seeking to sell, it is the golden key to the vault.”

Such great advice. And this doesn’t just apply to speakers, but also to bloggers or any other form of content creators. If you can make people laugh, you’re golden. People will like you, trust you and want to do business with you.

Don’t believe me?

Just look at Frank Kern, Andy Jenkins, David Siteman Garland and Marie Forleo. All wildly successful. All notoriously funny.

Of course, you don’t have to use comedy. It is possible to persuade and connect with people without ever eliciting a chuckle (and to be honest, cliched or “cute” comedy probably won’t get you anywhere.)

But if you study and master the skill of authentic humor, people will flood to you with open arms.

Step 6: Captivate people immediately

The sixth and final strategy is to combine all of these tactics and hook people right when they land on your site. The second they arrive.

How?

Well, there are really only two steps:

  1. Understand the norms within your niche. Get a good idea of what most people are doing.
  2. Go out of your way to violate people’s expectations and do something surprisingly different.

It really doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

If everyone has their blog on their homepage, create a nerdy presell page or ridiculously awesome music videos.

The key is to make people stop dead in their tracks and think, “Wow! This is so cool! I’ve never seen anyone do this before. I should learn more.”

Do something bold. Do something epic. Do it fast.

Bottom line

Ultimately, you gotta realize that creating average content and posting it on an average blog is not good enough. Not any more.

The blogosphere is too darn crowded, there’s too much darn competition, and the rent is too darn high.

As Glen Allsopp puts it,

“People do not have the time to read your content. They really don’t. We’re busier than ever, have shorter attention spans and more people in our entire history own websites they want us to visit.

How many marketing bloggers do you think wrote something today hoping that you’ll read it?5,000? 50,000? I don’t know, but it’s a lot. If you did nothing but attempt to read all of the marketing content that is published today, you wouldn’t be finished this year. In other words, it’s no longer enough to be part of the top 1%. You have to be in the top 0.1%.”

In order to stand out today, you need a remarkable approach. You gotta innovate, get creative, and fascinate each and every person who visits your site.

And most importantly, you can’t let people doze off into a semi-conscious browsing state. Ever. You must hook them immediately, plaster their eyes to your content and suck them into an inescapable vortex of dramatic, suspenseful, hilariously entertaining awesome.

This is how the game is played. These are the new rules.

This is how you win.

Logan Marshall is on a mission to help aspiring entrepreneurs change the world with their message. If you’re one of them, check out the cinematic trailer to his upcoming blog.

Written on 11/14/2012 at 6:04 am by

Curate a Best-Of Post that Gets Read, Used, and Shared

Filed Under: Featured Posts, Writing Content

One of the posts I’m featuring in the carousel on Digital Photography School at the moment is the Best of dPS.

dPS best ofIf you haven’t compiled a best-of list of your most-loved posts yet, you should.

  • It’s very sharable: Take your best posts, make them into one post, and you can be sure that your readers—current and new—will love it, and love to share it with others.
  • It supports your authority: Posts like this act as a scannable guide to your expertise and experience within the niche.
  • It provides enormous value: A best-of really is a valuable piece of content for readers. That almost goes without saying!
  • It helps you get attention to great, evergreen content: If your best works are languishing in your archives, a best-of can get them the fresh attention they deserve.
  • It helps readers access content they’ve missed: It’s inevitable that readers will miss some of your posts. A best-of brings your best, most helpful work to their attention in a single, easily bookmarked location.

Now, it might seem like putting to post together is as simple as looking through your visitor stats and working out which posts have gained the most traffic. But there’s more to it than that. Here are my tips for curating a really strong best-of post.

1. Weigh the stats

The way most of us work out which are our best posts is to look at our stats. But what does that actually mean?

I think it’s a good idea to look at social shares and comment counts as well as pageviews. Also, try to remember what type of social media buzz the posts generated when they were first published—the kinds of things people were saying, and why. Finally, look at how long the traffic to the post lasted, as a gauge of how much it drew readers back again over time.

Different posts have different statistical profiles, and not all traffic is created equal. Ideally, your best-of post will contain articles that attracted traffic that converted (for example, became subscribers or social media followers for your blog).

2. Consider your blog’s evolution

The dPS post covered posts that had been published in the space of six months. While these were evergreen posts, you might want to include more topical posts in your best-of. That’s fine—so long as these posts still reflect where your blog is at.

Industries change, and so do bloggers. Something you wrote six months ago—and which did really well at the time—might seem a bit dated or stale to you now. Maybe your opinions have changed, or perhaps it’s your writing style. If you’re not still excited by a post, don’t include it in your best-of list. You want this to be a post you can stand behind whole-heartedly.

3. Review hot topics in your niche

When you’re choosing between good posts that all look they might make the cut, one way to narrow down the options is to look at what’s happening in your niche at the time. Does one post suit the current niche “climate” right now? Does it play into a concern, dialog, or sense of anticipation, and might it draw more readers for that reason?

Including a post or two from your archives that tap into current trends in your niche can really boost the discussion around your best-of, and encourage sharing.

4. Consider reopening closed comments

If you close comments on posts after a set period, you might consider reopening them on the posts you’ve included in your best-of when the post goes live. Allowing new visitors to add to the discussion on these evergreen posts can bring new life—and present-day insight—to these older posts.

Then, when other readers come across the posts in future, they’ll find the discussions more relevant to them.

5. Make sure the linked posts are perfect

Of course, you’ll make sure that all the posts that appear in your best-of list are perfect. Even if you’re the kind of blogger who doesn’t let anything make it through to the blog that’s not perfect, go back over those old posts.

This will give you a chance to reacquaint yourself with the material, so that you can talk about it with readers who ask questions via email or social media. But I think you might also pick up on one or two things that you want to change in each post. It might be something as simple as a turn of phrase, or correcting a link that’s become broken. But these small tweaks will help you get the absolute most out of your best-of post.

Do have a best-of on your blog? Tell us how you put it together—and what benefits it’s brought you.

Written on 11/13/2012 at 12:08 am by

How to Blog In the Moment (or What Acting School Taught Me About Being a Better Blogger)

Filed Under: Writing Content

This guest post is by Tommy Walker of Inside The Mind. 

Editor’s note: We’ve broken ProBlogger’s ban on offensive language for this post, as we feel it’s necessary in this particular piece. If harsh language offends you, you may want to skip this one. 

 

In the Summer of 2005 I graduated from The New York Conservatory of Dramatic Arts with a certificate in Film Acting.

Normally mentioning my training would be of no consequence, and to this point it’s been a loosely guarded secret; fearing you might confuse my degree with some glorified week long camp at your local community theater that said I was “certified” to act on camera, hurrr hurr.

No. My school was serious. I was one of 16,000 who auditioned, one of 154 accepted, and one of 60 who graduated.

The training was taxing. Twice a week we would access the kind of bared-soul vulnerability you feel after a long fight with your spouse—or the first time you undress in front of a crush.

The whole first year was about getting past the layers we use to defend ourselves. When someone says “F*ck you” for example, that has an impact, but you’ve trained yourself to not care. In reality, some part of you is bewildered. The school’s unofficial motto was “If we catch you acting, you suck.”

Every day was another exercise to achieve that emotional nakedness, but the most effective was also the most simple—Repetitions.

The Repetition exercise looks like this: you and a partner stand across from each other, gaze held, and wait until someone voices an observation. It’s not about who speaks first, or how clever the observation is, it just needs to be organic.

“You’re wearing a blue shirt.”
“I’m wearing a blue shirt.”
“You’re wearing a blue shirt.”

Our instructor, John Tyrell, was a first generation Meisner student. He sat at a small table at the corner of the stage watching the repetition move like a tennis match. He wore a black shirt with blue jeans. Outside of class, John was sweetest man you’d ever meet. But in class, he was always just this side of worn.  Maybe it was the cigarettes, maybe it was the burden of passing the teachings of one of the greatest acting instructors of our time, who knows?

He watched to make sure neither actor would sabotage The Moment. If we did, he would say “Bullshit!” throw his glasses onto the table, run a hand through his salt and pepper hair, then say, “Okay, look…

“Open. Vulnerable. Penetrable…

“There is never nothing going on. There is only this moment. This moment. This moment.” he’d say hitting his heart and tugging at an invisible thread.

“And it changes, one second to the next. It is not your responsibility to manipulate it, make love to it, or hold on to it, only to recognize it and let it work through you, then move on to the next.

“Get out of your head! Again.”

Rookie actors live in their heads; they practice their looks and memorize scripts by reading aloud, training to say this line this way. They build the scene in their head, without regard for other actors or the director.

The outcome is inevitably the same; everyone plays their interpretation of the scene, missing moments, and delivering cardboard performances. It’s inauthentic, contrived, and a nightmare to watch.

What we learned through Repetition was to be open to the pure joy, uncontrolled laughter, and gut wrenching tears, or whatever else The Moment demanded. It was hyper-realism, volatile, and at times, terrifying.

But when it was done you’d take a breath, reset, and come back in two days.

For a year, unless you quit or were cut from the program.

Of course, as a blogger, and more specifically a blogger who talks about marketing, it can not be stated enough how relevant the “If we catch you acting, you suck.” mantra is.

See, like acting, blogging and marketing are meant to take the audience away and get them caught up in The Moment.

Bloggers like Jon Morrow and Derek Halpern understand this so well that it doesn’t matter if the article is 100 or 3,000 words, you’ll miss appointments to see how it ends.

Sure, a percentage can be attributed to talent, but if you asked either of them how they do it, I’m betting it would come down to repetition.

“If we catch you blogging, you suck.”

“If we catch you marketing, you suck.”

Sometimes I wish John Tyrell were a blogging coach.

If Meisner repetitions were meant to get us out of our heads; movement exercises were to get us out of our bodies.

Movement was primarily a weekly yoga practice, but the homework was to journal how random people carried themselves. In the next class, we would incorporate their physicality into our own bodies.

The major revelation was that taking on someone else’s physical characteristics meant your body would adopt the associated energy.

For example, rub your thumb repeatedly in circles around the outside of your knuckle on your index finger. Feel that? Do you feel anxious? Is your leg starting to bounce? It’s always a little bit different for everyone, but the principal remains: certain tics are triggered by emotion, but it’s possible to trigger an emotion by activating the tic.

Of course, we all have our tics (the example is mine) so for the exercise to be effective, it’s best to abandon your own physical tensions and become a blank slate.

To do this, we’d stand in alignment, in a neutral stance that allows the skeleton to support itself, free of its defenses from the world. For example, shifting weight to one leg, or pushing your pelvis, neck, or shoulders forward, or curling into your own back. Trust me, it’s harder than it sounds.

As an actor, it’s your job to become other people. How can you be believable as someone else if you don’t learn to first abandon yourself?

“Listen and respond. Listen and respond,” John would say, hitting his chest.

At the surface, this might seem like something one could incorporate into their routine after reading it in a book, or blog post. (Wouldn’t this make for a nice tips and tricks article?) But this couldn’t be any further from the truth. There was a reason we did these repetitions twice a week, every week for ten months. There was a reason more than half of the students were cut.

Repetition until it is etched into your bones is exhausting. Maintaining total mind body vulnerability while being told, “That’s bullshit!” wears you down.

Accessing The Moment at will doesn’t take weeks, or months, but years of constant dedication to the craft. You certainly don’t get there by reading a blog post or two.

I’m not just talking about acting. Whatever you consider your art, you have your own version of the Repetition exercise. If you’re lucky, eventually The Moment comes with less resistance, but it’s just a sign to dig deeper. Your willingness to do so is what really determines whether this is something you want to do.

Of the 60 that graduated, I can think of two—maybe three—who have pursued their career as actors. One did Burger King commercial and has been on Bravo. Another was in that Wendy’s Frosty Posse commercial. But that’s it.

The rest have gone on, like myself, to start families or businesses. One classmate is finding celebrity in the world of hairdressing (I’m happy to say he cut my hair more than once). Yet, everyone seems perfectly content with their path, even if we all said at one point, “I couldn’t imagine doing anything but acting! Acting is my life.” [Barf.]

My point is: saying you’re dedicated and being dedicated are two different things. It takes repetition and vulnerability like we’ve talked about, but it also means doing it full force, even if it risks finding out you don’t love it quite as much as you thought.

My classmates who work now don’t do it by sitting in coffee shops waiting to “get discovered,” but by sending out endless headshots and resumes, going on calls and facing constant rejection.

Once you’ve found The Moment, you must do the equivalent. This means sending endless emails asking for guest posts, and sharing your most intimate work with people you don’t know understanding full well they’re probably going to shoot you down.

The world is made people hoping to make it big without damaging their precious egos. They’re afraid of letting go of the “what it would be like” mindset and refuse to surrender themselves.

If you want to make magic, you can’t be one of them. You must expose your vulnerability and do so repeatedly. The Moment is magic, and the only way to harness its power is to let go entirely.

It won’t be easy, but don’t you owe yourself to yourself to try?

Tommy Walker is host of “Inside The Mind” a video show that aims to flip the world of online marketing on it’s head. He has been described as having an “infectious creative energy that is as rare as it is refreshing.” Currently he is guest posting on every popular site known to man in order to raise $100,000 in 30 days in an experiment in crowd funding designed to make online marketing accessible and fun to learn.
Written on 11/11/2012 at 12:03 am by

The Biggest Lie in Blogging and How to Disprove it

Filed Under: Writing Content

This guest post is by Ryan Biddulph of Cashwithatrueconscience.com.

You lie to yourself. Every day as a blogger.

Okay, maybe you don’t. Maybe you don’t buy in.

But you probably do. If you moan about struggling to blog.

Writer’s block

The lie is writer’s block. You have no ideas. You can’t write.

So you don’t write. Lose leads. Miss creative practice. Feel comfy cozy in your excuse zone.

The worst part about the lie? You can disprove it now. And ten hours from now. Or whenever you pen your next post.

But you need to a few things to attack, disarm and disprove the lie.

Abundance

Abundance exists. Lack and limitation is a human concept. No shortage of ideas. Only an infinite flow.

You tap into that infinite flow any time you write a blog post. You choose to block the flow any time you surrender to writer’s block.

Both are choices. You choose to snag the idea or block the idea. Own this choice. You disprove the lie.

People buy in

People tend to buy in. Why? Any crutch supporting their limiting belief sounds great to them. No need to own stuff. Or succeed.

But if you can own your life you can become the master of your fate. That’s not a bad deal, I know.

Because ownership precedes acceptance, and acceptance precedes happiness. How’s that for a triple play?

You can’t buy in to writer’s block. You must reject the idea, when people note it, or use it as an excuse.

You are unlimited

You are unlimited and remain unlimited until you accept the idea you aren’t unlimited. Accept this. Where you at now, writer’s block?

Life follows your belief system. Writer’s block just made a hasty retreat. No more low energy handcuffs. You are free to write!

Practical tips

Do these things to dissolve writer’s block.

Meditate

Meditation dissolve blocks—or limiting ideas—from your being. Once the block dissolves you tap into the infinite flow of creative ideas.

Read blogs

You generate many creative ideas by reading relevant blogs. Read, take notes, write your own posts. Love that jingle.

Surround yourself with winning bloggers

Winning or successful bloggers rarely make the writer’s block excuse. So you follow their lead.

Step away from the computer

Eureka! You have experienced the moment many times, and it was likely when you were away from the laptop. Detaching opens up you to creativity.

Your turn

Do you buy into the writer’s block lie? How do you overcome this block?

Please share your thoughts in the comments section!

Ryan Biddulph helps entrepreneurs create value and build connections to grow their home based opportunity. Please subscribe to his blog Click Here.

Written on 11/7/2012 at 6:00 am by

The Commonsense Approach to Fresh Post Ideas

Filed Under: Writing Content

This guest post is by Ryan Shell of Fashables.

If you’re a long-time blogger, you, at some point, have inevitably looked at a blank document on a computer screen and thought to yourself, “I have no idea what I’m going to write about.”

And if you’ve never been a blogger, it’s likely you haven’t even fathomed the idea of, you know, sharing your thoughts with all of “those” people on the internet, let alone knowing what to write about.

What to write about

This is a topic I’ve addressed with a number of individuals during the past few months, and imagine it will continue to come up time and time again.

When the “What do I write about?” question comes up, I quickly start brainstorming and, within minutes, can develop a number of topics for the individual to write about.

My method isn’t rocket science.

It’s also not some wildly colorful secret that you’ve not been told.

It is one thing though, and I’d like to share it with you.

Common sense

Everyone’s an “expert” about something. What we fail to do is realize that what is easy and common sense to Person X (you) may not be common sense to Person Y.

What happens is that people inventory the knowledge floating around in their brain and eventually—due to their expertise—think, “that’s nothing special” or “everyone already knows that.” And that’s a big mistake.

I recently built a website for someone and the following exchange happened via text message.

Her: “Is my site mobile phone friendly?”

Me: “Yes. Very.”

Her: “Cool! How did you do that?”

What immediately came to mind after seeing her question was, “It really isn’t that big a deal. I simply customized a mobile responsive WordPress theme.” When I look at that short thought through a different lens, I can quickly see two blog posts develop: one about the importance of creating a mobile friendly website, and another that discusses mobile responsive WordPress themes and how they easily make mobile friendly websites.

That simple exchange, followed by what came to mind for me, is a great example of how we constantly take knowledge and our life experiences for granted.

What’s simple for you very well may not be simple for someone else.

Ryan Shell is the Senior Manager, Online Communications for a global communications firm. He is also the founder of the fashion blogFashables and recently created a t-shirt line, The Home T, that helps raise money for multiple sclerosis research. He can also be found online at RyanShell.com.

Written on 11/4/2012 at 6:04 am by

8 Rules You’ll Need to Become An Editor’s Go-To Writer

Filed Under: Writing Content

This guest post is by Thomas Ford of www.123Print.com.

Whatever stage of development your blog is in, it’s useful to consider the elements that characterize a good blog writer. Perhaps you’ve recently begun accepting guest posts. What are the criteria that inspire you to publish or make the call to reject a post?

Even if you’re just getting started and authoring all of your own posts, don’t publish just anything. Learn to self-edit, and you’ll be far more likely to please future editors when you begin posting elsewhere and seeking other outlets for your writing.

If you get to the enviable place where an editor or blogger is paying you for your words, it’ll be due to both your insightful sharp wit and your ability to make their life as easy as possible.

To keep the paid work flowing your way (or even if you’re just blogging for yourself and slowly building an audience), stick to these tried-and-true rules of the road.

1. Don’t turn in typos

We all know that you’re working on deadline, but clean copy is paramount to pleasing an editor. Don’t push yourself to the wire, to the extent that you’re literally skipping the reread to get your copy in on time.

Once you’ve spent hours (or even days) with a piece, it can feel like a chore to read slowly through it, line by line, but it’s the only way you’ll catch the tiny errors that can chip away at an editor’s trust in your grammatical skills.

2. Try to sleep on it

This can be tough, I know, but do your best to arrange your writing calendar to allow yourself a day between writing a piece and posting it or turning it in. It’s amazing the clarity that a day can provide. Even when I feel like a post is perfect, revisiting my words the following day always turns up something I can improve upon.

3. Meet your deadlines

Being a professional writer or blogger often boils down to self-discipline and time-management. Design your schedule in a way that affords you the time to follow rules 1 and 2, while still always meeting your deadlines.

If you miss a deadline early in your relationship with an editor, you may have blown it already. Once you’ve proven yourself, most editors will provide you some leeway now and then, but being late should always be the exception to the rule.

4. Seek feedback

A good blogger loves to collaborate and offer input to writers working on a post for their site. Seeking feedback and direction during the researching and writing process is also a fantastic opportunity to build a relationship.

If you discover a new angle for a post, don’t hesitate to reach out to an editor or blogger before completing your writing. The perspective they provide may lead to more posts down the road, and will almost always strengthen the blog you’re working on.

5. Offer strong headlines

Often, bloggers will replace headlines by a guest poster with a phrase that better fits the direction of their site. Even if this happens to you on multiple occasions, don’t stop providing headlines with each post. Your title helps an editor understand the direction of your piece, even if they recreate it in their own words.

6. Answer follow-up questions quickly

Editors and bloggers are busy people. Even if they take a week to get to your post submission, once they do read it, they’re going to want quick answers to their questions.

Make a point to prioritize these emails and calls when they arrive, providing quick edits, clarifications, and rewrites as requested. The easier you are to work with and the more promptly you respond, the more likely it is that you’ll find repeat work with that blogger.

7. Be careful talking money

It’s amazing how some editors will reply within seconds to emails about content, yet any question about payment is met with silence. Work out your payment arrangement and schedule in advance, before writing your post. Give bloggers the benefit of the doubt when it comes to sending payment, and then some.

If you’re depending on payment from a particular post to pay the bills this month, you may need to seek out further employment and save some money before trying to make it as a writer. When you’re not dependent on fast payment, it’s easier to be patient, and editors will respond in turn with more work when you’re not one of the writers that’s always bugging them about money. Most of the time, they’re just busy—they haven’t forgotten.

8. Be a self-promoter

Whether you’re writing for your own blog or submitting a guest post, utilize all of your avenues and social media channels to promote your work. Once a post goes live, link to it and spark conversation on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. If there’s a corresponding, compelling image, link to it on Pinterest.

When you utilize your own contacts to draw traffic to a site, editors will take note and appreciate your efforts, returning the favor with new assignments.

What other tips do you have for writers looking to increase their visibility with an editor or blogger? Have any of these ideas worked for you?

Thomas Ford is the Marketing Director of www.123Print.com, a leading supplier of business cards and a wide variety of business and office printing materials. Tom is responsible for the blog at 123print, and writes on a range of topics of interest to bloggers and business people.

Written on 11/1/2012 at 12:02 am by

Three(ish) Techniques to Unborify Your Blog Posts

Filed Under: Writing Content

This guest post is by Stephen Guise of Deep Existence.

I’m working on a secret project, and it requires that I read studies. The information from the studies is absolutely fascinating, but they are run through a science machine that sucks the fun and life out of them. The verbose verbiage and dry delivery are brutal on the eyes.

Fiction: people enjoy academic studies for the writing style.

While studies and textbooks have a hidden code that says you must write with the intent to bore, there’s no such restriction on blogs. If your blog is boring, and there is another blog with similar content and enjoyable delivery, you lose. Pack up your keyboard and go home. Unless, that is, you want to unborify it.

In this post, I will suggest three excellent techniques to hold your reader’s gaze. When you type it in Word, “unborify” has a red line under it because all new words face initial resistance. This post has already been through the unborifying process, so I hope you enjoy it!

Three(ish) techniques to unborify your posts

1. Inject humor into bland posts

Humor breaks through stubborn minds, making your content instantly more relevant and accepted. Not only that, but humor is funny.

I like to use the strikethrough jest. It works by inserting a funny, out of place “what if I wrote THIS” word or phrase in a sentence. Then, use strikethrough HTML to cross it out. Readers can see the ridiculous word, but you “fix it” and write the correct words after it, like this…

Michael Jordan plays with his hair basketball.

I am more successful than Darren Rowse several 6th graders.

I’ve noticed that women are hopelessly drawn to me chocolate.

These kinds of comments are laced with self-deprecating humor, which is funny when it’s used sparingly. Anyone can learn to add humor to their posts, but not many people do, that I’ve noticed, and it’s a mistake!

Make your readers laugh, and you will double their chance of sharing the article (there could be a study to back this up, but likely nobody’s read it because it’s boring).

2. Add in a relevant quote … or seventeen

Quotes are frustrating to me. Some quotes say more than a 1000 word blog post can. But instead of being jealously distant, bloggers are better off using them.

A relevant quote that coincides with your content is a nice break from the paragraph, paragraph, paragraph format. If it’s from a well known author and you’re not as famous, it serves as a credibility boost. You can even throw your own quote in a special box to highlight it.

“Quotes are good.”—Stephen Guise

Tip: Don’t add seventeen quotes to your post unless it is titled “The Seventeen Greatest Quotes From Ernest Hemingway.” Quotes are more powerful individually than in packs, so use them with care.

3. Build anticipation

People love anticipation. If the Summer Olympics were held twice a year, I wouldn’t be so darn excited about them every time. When you read in a blog post’s title that you’re failing to make a key revision to your blog, you want to find out what it is. List posts are filled with anticipation because you wonder what each list item says.

You can claim you have secrets, make promises, reference later parts of the article in the beginning, and structure your article to build to a climax. If you split an article into two parts, part II will have extra anticipation built in automatically. Anything that leaves your readers wondering what’s next is going to add valuable anticipation to your content.

4. Cut out weak content

*scissor sounds*

5. When it doesn’t matter, choose interesting over technical

Sometimes you’ll want to add details, but there are other ways of stating boring data. Pick one…

  • The weather was 97 degrees with humidity at 95%.
  • I walked outside, and my shirt was completely soaked in sweat within two minutes.

See how both convey the same general idea, but the second version is more gross and interesting? Make your blog posts as gross as possible. Who cares if the humidity was 95% or 93%? It is remarkable to drench your shirt with sweat in two minutes and share it publicly. As a bonus, readers wonder what’s wrong with you, which builds anticipation for your next article.

6. Be unpredictable

Six! I wrote six tips after saying I’d write three. That is unpredictable. Nobody has ever promised a number of list items and then delivered more! Oh, they all have? Well, not twice as many. Do this too much, though, and readers will think you can’t count—or they’ll simply adjust their expectations to your chronic lies. My other list posts have been very upfront and honest, so this one is a true surprise.

People are naturally interested in anything they don’t fully understand (Lady Gaga’s brain) or can’t accurately predict (Lady Gaga’s outfit). They’re bored by predictable things (a loaf of bread on the table) and things they already know (the Lions are the best team in the NFL).

Deliver more than you promise or alter your format occasionally to keep readers guessing and interested in what you’ll come up with next.

In addition to “standard” posts, I write two series to mix it up. One is called Opposites! where I advise people to do the wrong things. The other is Mindshift, where I try to give people a concussion teach people how to shift their mindset to a better place.

These series, and my dedication to being weird, do a nice job of keeping my readers on the edges of their mousepads.

A look inside the Blogger Sea

Once you’ve finished your final draft, go back through your work and ask, “how can I make this more interesting to read?” Useful information is ubiquitous, but useful and entertaining information is a rare treasure that readers crave. Applying these “3″ tips will instantly make your content better.

In the Blogger Sea, these techniques will propel you to giant squid status. But if you don’t use them, you’ll be a piece of seaweed. Giant squid are better writers than seaweed because they have more ink (okay … maybe leave this type of humor out of your blog posts).

What sea creature best represents you as a blogger? How do you spice up your posts?

Stephen Guise is an electric eel in the Blogger Sea because his wit is shocking and he likes sea caves. His passion for changing lives through changing minds is painfully obvious at Deep Existence – Personal Development’s Deep End. Humans are permitted to subscribe (no reptiles, NO exceptions) to receive Stephen’s acclaimed book – Stress Management Redefined.