Tag Archive for: writing

TS Eliot quote

A new year and another chance to get it right

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TS Eliot quote

Happy New Year everyone! Isn’t it exciting to realize that there is an entire calendar full of days waiting for you to put your own unique stamp on them! Even though it’s only been one day since 2012, there’s just something refreshing about starting a new year.

It’s a time to reflect back on what went well in the previous year, and what you could improve on going forward. One of the best things that I did at the end of 2012 was to attend a session called, “Setting Your Intentions“, put on by Cathy Goddard of Lighthouse Visionary Solutions. A lot of my focus was on setting personal intentions, but I also came up with some business intentions for Jenuine Marketing:

  • Post daily updates on my Twitter & Facebook page accounts, and utilize HootSuite and TweetDeck to help in scheduling those posts
  • Spend 15 minutes on LinkedIn every other day
  • Publish a blog post once a week
  • By the end of January, perform my own social media audit and determine whether I should continue spending time on Google+ and Pinterest for business purposes
  • Schedule time into each work day to promote Jenuine Marketing and to connect with other like-minded business owners
  • Spend at least 30 minutes every work day viewing business-related articles, blog posts and video seminars
  • Put aside time to finish the business analysis work that I started in 2012 with Melanie of BrandHer.com
  • Remember to take at least one day off a week from work

Those are my business intentions. Hopefully I can keep them! And the words of Oprah Winfrey, “Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.”

What do you hope to get right this year?

Stack of papers

Just do it… Start generating content

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I always tell my clients that the hardest part of posting content on the web is getting over your personal hurdles, no matter what they may be. Things like, “I want my first Tweet to be perfect” or “I want to write the most interesting blog post anyone has ever read”. The problem is, these desires to be great and wonderful and perfect can actually become roadblocks that prevent you from getting anything at all done. For me, lately, the hurdle has been, “I want to wait until I have time to sit down, clear my desk, and get into a writing mode”.

Well, that never happens. Right now, I’m writing this surrounded by unfiled papers, with three different browser windows open with who-knows-how-many-tabs open in each browser, and I realised there is never the perfect time. There is never the perfect post. There is never the most interesting content ever written waiting to spring forth from your brain.

The point is, sometimes you need to seize on the moments you have and make them work for you. Dash off a blog post between meetings. Post an interesting thought on your Facebook page while you’re waiting in line for your morning coffee. Just start writing content. Some of will be good, some of it will be bad, and some of it will even be great.

So what are you waiting for? Go do it!

Writing for Web – Why are you writing a tome?

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TomeIn case you didn’t know, a tome is a very large book, often part of a larger series of books. Exactly what a blog post should not be. And yet every day I see these huge long posts that make my brain want to crawl under a rock and take cover in the fetal position.

The problem is that writing for web is often much more challenging than people think. Because if you actually want people to read what you write (and isn’t that the point?), you need to optimize your content for online viewing. Here are some suggestions to bear in mind:

  1. Use paragraphs. This helps to separate your content into different sections for each unique point or thought, and it also creates lovely white space on the page that is visually appealing to our eyes and brains, increasing the odds that your readers will read the entire post.
  2. Be aware of ‘the fold’. When a person looks at their computer screen, whatever content is visible without needing to scroll down the page is referred to as “above the fold’. It makes sense to put your most engaging points at the top of your post, in order to draw your reader in and give them a reason to scroll down the page to read more.
  3. Use the ‘thesis’ approach. In my university English class, we had to practice writing essays in the following format:
    • Opening paragraph with a sentence about the topic, followed by the three to five points you want to explore.
    • Three to five paragraphs about your topic, with one paragraph per point.
    • Closing paragraph that reiterates the points explored and that summarizes your thoughts on the topic.
  4. Use a list. See, I’m following my own advice already. It doesn’t matter if the list uses bullets or numbers; the point is that a list organizes your points in an efficient way and encourages you to write more succinctly.
  5. Write succinctly. People read online content much differently than books or magazines. Generally speaking, your audience is probably looking to find information quickly. So help them out by writing short sentences, omit unnecessary adjectives, and strive to write good content with less words.
  6. Consider splitting your post into a series. If your post is longer than one and a half pages in a Word document, I would recommend dividing your content into sections, and then posting each section as part of a larger series.

What suggestions do you have for writing online content?