THINKing

Top 11 Free Resources To Improve Your Blog’s Content

As part of our continuing series to help you in developing compelling content, today we provide you a list of the top 11 online resources to help you improve your writing skills.

The Elements of Style – there is no better resource for writers than William Strunk’s classic. I have a well-thumbed hard copy, but this online version covers the writing bases.

100 Useful Web Tools For Writers – Whether poet, biographer, journalist, blogger or technical writer, you’ll find a helpful tool in this list.

Problogger – Darren Rowse is one of the best, most successful bloggers on the planet. Problogger provides advice on everything from writing good headlines to how to come up with story ideas.

Poynter’s Fifty Writing Tools – For the auditory learner, there is Poynter’s index of podcasts that cover the nuts and bolts of writing.

Lifehack on Communications – I love Lifehack for its tips on a range of topics like productivity, technology and of course, communications.

Grammar Girl – Mignon Fogarty is Grammar Girl and she can explain split infinitives so simply that a Neanderthal could understand it.

Time To Write – Need inspiration? Well, here you go. This site is full of inspiration as well as tips to help writers along their way.

OWL – The OWL is Purdue University’s online writing lab that features free writing resources and instructional material.

Common Errors In English Usage – If you don’t know the difference between peak, peek and pique, then you need this site.

Grammar Slammer – Need help with capitalization, abbreviations or maybe your participle is dangling! Here it is.

Writing: The Online Community For Writers – Need to get advice from other writers? There are 819,000 members of this active forum.

In case you missed our initial posts on content development:

Five Key Elements To Creating Compelling Blog Content – I have been thinking a lot recently about creating compelling blog content, and at first blush, there seem to be a lot of barriers. But like getting over a barbed wire fence, you just have to step back for a minute and think through your approach so that you don’t catch something important on a barb.

How To Be A More Compelling Writer – If you can afford it, hiring a good writer for your blog is solid advice. If you can’t, then you need to become a better writer. A few simple things can help take your writing to the next level.

Great Images Make Content More Compelling – Good pictures alone are not enough. Photos can help draw attention to a post, keeping it from looking like a huge gray mass of words. But – to be most effective – the image must complement, or support the the story in some way.

WIIFM? - Today we’re going to take a look at WIIFM, or What’s In It For Me. You must answer some questions and perform a little research to find out what your readers or prospective readers truly want from your blog.

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Compelling Content

Recently, THINKing has been looking at ways to develop more compelling content. Below we’ve compiled our posts into an easy to navigate form.

Five Key Elements To Creating Compelling Blog Content – I have been thinking a lot recently about creating compelling blog content, and at first blush, there seem to be a lot of barriers. But like getting over a barbed wire fence, you just have to step back for a minute and think through your approach so that you don’t catch something important on a barb.

How To Be A More Compelling Writer – If you can afford it, hiring a good writer for your blog is solid advice. If you can’t, then you need to become a better writer. A few simple things can help take your writing to the next level.

Great Images Make Content More Compelling – Good pictures alone are not enough. Photos can help draw attention to a post, keeping it from looking like a huge gray mass of words. But – to be most effective – the image must complement, or support the the story in some way.

WIIFM? - Today we’re going to take a look at WIIFM, or What’s In It For Me. You must answer some questions and perform a little research to find out what your readers or prospective readers truly want from your blog.

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WIIFM?

The young lady pictured above is skeptical, and rightly so. So many blogs are posting content that doesn’t really relate to her. Will your blog be any different? She thinks not.

We’ve been taking a look over the last couple of weeks at developing compelling blog content. (links to the previous installments are at the bottom of this post) Today we’re going to take a look at WIIFM, or What’s In It For Me so we can erase that look of skepticism and turn your blog visitors into regulars.

You must answer some questions and perform a little research to find out what your readers or prospective readers truly want from your blog. This blog covers advertising, creativity, PR, marketing and social media topics – a pretty broad spectrum.

First, we keep an eye on our blog stats to see what are the top keywords bringing people to our blog.

We have written a series called “New Business Primer”, which has been very popular.  The term “new business” brings in a lot of traffic for us. Phrases containing the words “creative” and “creativity” show up often in our top keywords, as do phrases containing “journalism” or “journalists.” Are you using your blog stats to review keywords?

Another thing we do is review our stats to determine which posts get the most traffic, both initially and over time.

Our posts on media relations always seem to be a hit, as do our creativity posts. Writing-related and social media posts do well, too. Advertising posts are not doing as well and we don’t post much on that topic any more.

But it is not enough just to post on those topics. Just as we do in advertising copywriting, we need to think about the reasons people “buy” something. In a blog’s case, visitors are “buying” your writing.Geoff Ayling writes about the reasons people buy in his book Rapid Response Advertising. The 51 reasons people buy include,

• to make more money
• to attract praise
• to avoid criticism
• to make their work easier
• to speed up their work

So, how does that apply to the blogger? Let’s take the first one and come up with a post title that fits into THINKing‘s list of topics. We know that people like our writing-related posts and Ayling tells us they want to make more money at it. So, how about: Copywriting Tips To Help Build Your Direct Marketing BusinessSo, just remember, give the readers what they are looking for and they will come back. We’d love your thoughts on this topic.

#1 – Five Key Elements To Creating Compelling Blog Content

#2 – How To Be A More Compelling Writer

#3 -  Great Images Make Content More Compelling

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Sharing

It’s funny how when you start thinking about a certain topic – like content development or web design – that you start seeing more and more references to it. I guess it is because you are attuned to it. Anyway, I’ve been running across some excellent articles on content development, as well as web design and thought I’d share with the class.

5 Ways To Create Fresh Content For Your Blog – One of the toughest parts of running a blog is coming up with fresh content. Fortunately, there are a few tricks you can pull out when you’re tapped out and in need of some new blog content.

10 Ways To Use Recycled Content – Make sure you’re getting as much mileage out of your best content as you can. That means finding ways to repurpose it. I mean, you wouldn’t throw an ice cream carton away until you had scooped out every last bit, right?

50 Powerful Time-Savers For Web Designers – This list will help you find some nuggets of information that will help you avoid headaches and stress by saving you time.

Color Theory Reference Sheet For Designers -This cool infographic lays out a lot of data about color theory in a visual manner that is easy to comprehend.

40+ Web Design and Development Resources for Beginners – Just getting started in web design? Here are some valuable resources to get your career kickstarted.

30 Essential iPad Apps For Developers & Creatives -  Here are 30 different apps spanning several categories that can help designers and creatives out with everything from jotting down notes and wireframing to staying on task.

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Great Images Make Content More Compelling

You are probably wondering what this photo has to do with this post. Well, in part one of this series, Five Key Elements To Creating Compelling Content, our friend, Rubbermaid blogger  Jim Dietzel, laid out his five key elements for creating compelling content. Number 3 was “pictures are good.”

Our digital colleague, Rodger Johnson from GetSocialPR, also thinks that imagery can kick your content up a notch. He says use compelling images to support the story, a lesson he learned from his journalism days that still works today.

The photo above may be interesting, but it doesn’t really go with this post. So, good pictures are not enough. Photos can help draw attention to a post, keeping it from looking like a huge gray mass of words. But – to be most effective – the image must complement, or support the the story in some way.

If you are going to use photos, you also must respect copyright law. Don’t just do a Google search and use the images. They may be copyright protected. We did a piece sometime back about some free photo resources that you may want to revisit.

Below are a few more related posts on the use of images in your blog.

An Introduction To Using Images On Blogs

Finding Compelling Flickr Images

Using Images Legally On Your Blog

Using Images To Take Your Posts To A New Level

Why Images Are Vital To Modern Blogs

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How To Be A More Compelling Writer

We’re examining the ways to make your blog more compelling.  A number of Twitterati responded to my request for their ideas. The quality of writing was on their minds:

As we heard from Jim Dietzel, a Fortune 1000 blogger for Rubbermaid, “Hire a good writer. Seriously.”

Colleague Tom Pick of Webbiquity tells us we must do a better job in naming our posts, using compelling headlines like “Common Myths of…” or “Mistakes to Avoid in…”

Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer thinks we need to consider the way we approach the content. He says to think like a movie trailer, not a journalist. Compelling content isn’t reporting. It’s entertaining.

If you can afford it, hiring a good writer for your blog is solid advice. If you can’t, then you need to become a better writer. A few simple things can help take your writing to the next level.  Let’s address a few of these basic ideas that we have tackled here in THINKing previously.

Write Tight -  My first news editor hammered one thing into my consciousness: write tight. Leave out the frills, just present the facts and move on. You don’t have to create an act of literature every time you sit down to write. But remember, as Jason Falls points out, simply reporting is not enough. Don’t edit out the entertainment while editing out the extraneous.

Tell Me A Story – Since the dawn of time mankind has been a sucker for a story. We may be wearing synthetics now instead of skins, but that one truth has not changed. Storytelling is a way to add some passion, interest and drama to your blogging.

Tell Me A Story About Me – Well, it’s all about me after all, isn’t it? Don’t tell a self-serving story. Tell one that speaks to the self-interest of the reader.

Get Active -  My lovely bride and mystery novelist par excellence, Terry Hoover, is the queen of the vivid verb. Peruse the first chapter of her book, Double Dead, to see what I mean.

Storystarters – Sometimes you are just stuck for an idea or an approach to a blog post.  Leap those obstacles with these methods.

Do you have some thoughts on compelling content? Well, what are you waiting for…tell us!

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Five Key Elements To Creating Compelling Content

I have been thinking a lot recently about creating compelling blog content, and at first blush, there seem to be a lot of barriers. But like getting over a barbed wire fence, you just have to step back for a minute and think through your approach so that you don’t catch something important on a barb.

The primary reason I have been pondering the topic is purely selfish.

This blog once had great traffic, but it has fallen off recently due to spam attacks which hijacked my blog and took out my RSS feed. I had nearly 1,000 subscribers to that feed.  Not a huge number in the grand scheme of things, but enough interested folk that we had some good conversations going. So, now I find myself trying to rebuild what I had originally built over a span of about five years.

Compelling content brought subscribers here in the first place, and it will bring them back.

I reached out to some of my Twitterati to ask them to define compelling content. Their input will be the basis for much of this series on compelling content. My friend Jim Dietzel from Rubbermaid was first to get back to me and he had a list of five key elements.

#1. Hire a good writer. Seriously.

#2. Write about what your audience cares about.

#3. Pictures are good.

#4. Make it easy to read/scan

#5. Look at what is working and do more of that.

That’s a pretty simple, but effective formula. We’ll explore these ideas in future posts.

I’d love to hear from you, as well. So, please comment on this post with your thoughts on creating compelling content, or take our poll.

More on developing compelling content:

How To Be A More Compelling Writer

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I’ll Tell You What You Like

A lot of marketers are into empty chest-thumping when it comes to their content. They don’t seem to care what their audience wants. Instead, they force-feed them a diet of self-serving content that only alienates them.

I know companies who want to use Twitter only as a broadcast medium, sending out links to their content about upcoming seminars, their latest news and the like. It’s as if they are saying,  “we know what you need, so shut up and read it.”

It’s not that hard to have a marketing program that meets the needs of your audiences.If you already are investing in self-serving content, it doesn’t really cost much more to develop content that is relevant,original and impactful.

Marketers can survey their audiences to determine content preferences. Just be careful how you construct and evaluate your survey, as we have discussed here before.

Or, marketers can take advantage of the free survey information that is available. For instance, just today eMarketer had a story about what Twitter Moms prefer. Although coupons were high on the list, the Twitter moms said they really wanted was links to interesting and relevant content. Says eMarketer,

Their top reason for following businesses on Twitter was that they provide useful information (68.3%), just edging out that they were already customers (67.3%) and the desire to find out about products and services (66.9%). While about two-thirds said they liked to see businesses tweeting links to sales, moms most wanted (emphasis added) companies to share links to interesting articles or news.

Here are some other tools that can assist marketers in developing the right kind of content:

Content Grid

Content Marketing Today

Junta42

CopyBlogger

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Show Up For Success

Your minister of the church of marketing has some words for you to ponder today: if you want to succeed you must show up. Woody Allen has often been quoted – incorrectly – on this subject. What he really said was, “80 percent of success is showing up.”

He was not talking about making a cameo appearance or a movie walk-on. He was suggesting that being there fully focused, giving your best effort and doing it on a consistent basis is the formula for success. Allen knows that most people just try to phone it in. And even then they don’t follow through every time, nor give it their all.

Friend Brent Dees says it another way during his Focus Four business coaching sessions. “Do what you say you’re going to do and do it on time. This applies to everything you do in life, from being an employee, a father, a business owner or a friend.”

Let’s consider it from a marketing perspective. I have written and distributed my e-newsletter monthly since April 2002. That’s 95 issues and counting.

Every month, rain or shine, I worry about what to say that will most help my readers in their businesses. Researching the subject and the links follows. Then, writing, editing and newsletter layout come next. Finally, I distribute it and then respond to any reader questions or requests. It takes roughly eight to 10 hours of my time each month and that is really cutting into my naps.

Do I ever want to take a break? Silly question. But the newsletter has long been my primary awareness vehicle. Every piece of business I landed for my first 6 years in business can be traced back to the newsletter in some way. Consistently getting it out at the same time each month has paid off for me.I think about what the president of window blind giant Levolor once said to me, “we can’t afford to do everything from a marketing perspective. But what we do, we can execute violently.”

The bottom line here is this: pick a few things and execute them to the best of your ability on a consistent basis. That’s showing up. Do that and 80 percent of success is yours. We’ll discuss the other 20 percent later. But right now, I need a nap.

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Top Content

In case you missed some of our posts, here are the top five read of all time:

Twittering Journalists

Top 10 Story Starters For Blocked Bloggers

Newspapers: Dig The Grave 

When Billboards Go Bad

It’s The Relationship, Stupid

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