Writing for People and Search Engines
January 31, 2008
Writing for the search engines is much different than writing in any other medium. Search engines are finicky, but they love text, so you’re talking their language. When writing your web content, it’s important to keep the following three things in mind.
1. What You Want the Reader to Do: While writing your content, keep the overall objective of the page in view. Think about what you want the reader to do. Do you want them to sign up for something? Click to another page? Buy something? Visit your store? Download an e-book? Whatever it is you want them to do, keep that in mind as you write.
2. Search Engine Optimization: Remember the search engines as you write too. Usually it’s better to do a quick draft without thinking of the search engines first, then later, come back and optimize the writing of the page. We will get into the details of how to make your web content friendly to search engines later. For now, just remember that it’s one of those things you have to keep in mind as you write your web content.
Steps to a Writing an Effective Press Releases
January 31, 2008
Steps to a Writing an Effective Press Releases
by: Diana Ennen
Want to get the most media attention and spotlight for your business? Then the first place to start is with a GREAT press release. Now I can almost see half of you leaving now, dreading the thought of having to write one of these. But wait!! I’m going to show you easy methods to make your press release work for you and get the attention it deserves. Ready? Let’s go.
We’ll briefly go over the basics because of their importance. Editors want to see things done the RIGHT way. I would bet that a lot of good releases simply get tossed out just because they aren’t set up properly. To a busy editor, that all too familiar “10 second glance” says a lot for you and your business; it let’s them know if you’ve done your research enough to warrant that release to be placed in their newspaper or magazine.
Here are your essentials:
“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” on the top left of the page.
Your contact name, phone number, e-mail address, and website follows.
The Three “Questions” Of Science Fiction
January 31, 2008
The Three “Questions” Of Science Fiction
by: Steven Barnes
There is a great deal of misunderstanding about what that particular branch of literature called “Science Fiction” actually consists of. Is it space-ships and monsters? Time machines? Galactic empires? Well, its all of those things, and often none of them.
Science Fiction, broadly speaking, is story-telling that deals with the impact of organized knowledge on human beings. Usually, this means technology, and the way it changes us—and reveals about us. After all, most technology is an extension of our senses, attributes and desires: computers are brains, cell-phones are voices and ears, cars are legs, planes are the dream of flight.
Many classic S.F. films and books take place in worlds identical to ours, except for the creation of some new device, or the appearance of a new life-form. Others take place in worlds so apparently foreign that only the most dedicated and experienced reader can understand what is going on!
But at the core, there are three questions or musings most often asked or explored in any work with the “Science Fiction” label. Those three are:
1) What if?
2) If Only
3) If This Goes On
What Can a 13-Year-Old Kid Teach Us About Article Marketing?
January 30, 2008
Yesterday I met a 13-year old boy with a devilish grin who told me he “makes a little money off his classmates sometimes.”
“How so?” I asked, intrigued.
“I sell them candy,” he said. “Mom buys the Twizzler economy boxes from Cosco and then I mark them up to like 50 cents each.”
“Get out!” I said. “Kids actually buy them?”
“Yeah,” he said. “And I also smash up Lifesavers into little bits and put them in Ziplock baggies and sell those too. People like the fact that the candy is in a different form. I convinced them that it feels kinda funky in their mouths and they pay for it!”
“Wow,” I said. “You were born to be in sales!”
So, article marketers, why am I telling you this story?
Because that kid already knows something that every one of us should be thinking about and putting into practice every single day:
That in order to make something re-marketable, all you have to do is “transform and repackage it” a little bit.
Then, go out and convince people that what you have is pretty neato, and watch them become dazzled - and actually BUY IT for more money than they could get it elsewhere.
How to Make Money With Your Short Stories, Poems, Essays, and Novels
January 30, 2008
Recently, someone rated my "Online Book Marketing" article a 2 out of 5. That person apparently didn’t like the article. My guess is that he or she was turned off by the marketing angle. Writers write; they don’t sell. Some writers even view the concept of selling or marketing their work as somehow inherently wrong.
That’s fine. But unless you get a lucky break from a huge publishing house you will probably not go far with book sales unless you are willing to roll up your sleeves and do some serious marketing.
There are many ways you can market your writing and build a readership online. But you should also start thinking about your writing differently. For example, instead of trying to write and sell one book of short stories or one novel, why not break it into separate small books (each one a short story or two) or sell your novel as a serialized version-a new chapter or two every month? (Eventually you can sell this material in a physical book.)
Getting A Publisher & Getting What You Want
January 30, 2008
Getting A Publisher & Getting What You Want
by: Sophfronia Scott
In the basic scenario of book publishing, a writer finishes a book and then finds an agent who helps sell the book to a publisher. When someone asks, “How do I find a publisher?” they’re often looking for the details of this scenario. But let’s backtrack a little. The answer to this question has to do with what you as a writer want out of the publishing process as well as what the publisher wants. It’s best to be as clear as possible on both counts. Here are a few things to consider.
What You Want
What exactly do you want for your book? It’s possible that your answer can save you a lot of time and heartache. Here’s an example. A writer recently emailed me about wanting to find a publisher for his book on dealing with sickle cell anemia. He said he felt it was a really important book and that people would be interested in the information. That’s great, but if his main goal is getting his book into the hands of those coping with the disease, he doesn’t have to go with a big traditional publishing house in order to do that. He can self publish and take the book directly to doctor’s offices, support groups and sickle cell organizations.
Is Your Content Provider Selling You Ripped Content?
January 29, 2008
Ripped content: well the term itself is self explanatory. Content that has been copied from some other site, without any official authority to do so. Although sounds like an extremely trivial issue but is not so, considering the strict copy right laws governing intellectual properties in various countries. Careless usage of such content can thus lead you in some seriously troubled waters and at times involving legalities of more then one country. By the term "content provider" I denote the person, whom you may hire for writing the content of your website, articles or for copywriting a product or service.
Let’s look at this problem more closely. You are contacted by some person, quite distinctively, through your IM service. The person introduces himself to be a reputed content provider and for credibility also supplies you with some web site addresses he claims to have given the contents for. The final shot, to sweep you from your feet is their rock bottom prices. Any mention about copyrights is brushed aside or circumvented so effortlessly and cleanly that you stand fooled with both eyes open.
Using “Tipping Point” Concepts To Market Your Book
January 29, 2008
Using “Tipping Point” Concepts To Market Your Book
by: Sophfronia Scott
Ever wonder how trends get started? As much as we’d like to think that all trends are Madison Avenue creations propagated by the media, many times a movement is sparked by the action of a few. Then word of mouth makes it spread. Author Malcolm Gladwell examines this phenomenon in his 2000 book “The Tipping Point”. There’s a chapter where he describes how this kind of movement by a few groups powered Rebecca Wells’s 1996 novel, “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood”, to surprising success. When I read that I sat up and took notice. I realized I could use the same concepts to market my first novel, “All I Need to Get By”. You can too! Here’s how.
1.) Write Your Book So It’s “Sticky”
How To Think Through Writer’s Block
January 29, 2008
How To Think Through Writer’s Block
by: Sophfronia Scott
In his book, On Writing, Stephen King says, “We are talking about tools and carpentry, about words and stylebut as we move along, you’d do well to remember that we are also talking about magic.” When something is really well-written we tend to think it was effortless for the writer, that it seems magical. We wonder, “Did that author ever have to deal with writer’s block?” Yes, he or she probably did. Pretty much every writer does. But how do you work through a block when the inside of your brain feels so foggy? These tips will show you how to clear things up.
1.) Work Consistently
When I started my first novel I joined a class to help get me going. After it was over, I took a few more workshop sessions with the instructor, but when those ended all my work ground to a complete halt. Why? Because from then I was only working on the book a day or two a week, mostly on weekends. If I got stuck that meant I wouldn’t write for two or even three weeks. Then I went out and got a place to write. I committed myself to going there 3-4 times a week to work on my book. Suddenly the writing got easier! I thought it was because I was putting in more time–and that’s partly true–working consistently helps to build momentum. But that wasn’t the whole answer. Here’s the rest: I was thinking about the book all the time! Which means…
How to Create High-Quality Backlinks the Search Engines Will Love
January 28, 2008
One great benefit of article marketing is the generation of high-quality backlinks.
Simply put, a backlink is a link to your website from another website. There is a difference in quality of backlinks, and search engines know the difference. When marketers first learned that search engines rewarded websites that had many links from other websites, they began to establish link farms (they traded links with each other) that were nothing more than pages upon pages of links. Clearly, these links were not helpful, either for someone looking to follow a link, or for the search engines, who at first supposed all the links meant a high-quality site was being linked to.
As search engines got smarter, marketers realized they needed links to be contextual: that is, there should be a body of content (at least a paragraph) surrounding the backlink. This new understanding defeated the purpose of link farms, and marketers began to understand and see the value in article marketing: They could write one article, send it to 100 or more article sites, hopefully have it reprinted several times, and have contextual (high-value) backlinks from a number of sources.
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