Micro-Blog It, Baby!
The mavens of blogging have no shortages of rules about the form. Yet, I see the rules broken all the time, sometimes delivering results that make one never want to read – or write–a blog again. The thousand-word mark has been a flexible gold standard for blogging for some time. But what happens if the […]
An Interview with Children’s Book Writer, Pat McCord
Greetings from Hazleton, Pat! And Hello, Tucson! I first met Pat McCord through Facebook, that magical jungle. She is a fellow copywriter; however, after talking to her for a quite some time, I discovered that she is also a kindred soul. In this particular question and answer interview, I asked Pat questions, and really, I […]
The Dark Side of Blogging
There are a lot of purely evil blogs out there. Of course, behind these evil blogs stand evil people. Some belong to gangs or may be white supremacists. Others may just be lone wolf haters. Perhaps others are terrorists. Others are just jerks with megaphones. Hatred comes in more flavors than Baskin Robbins ever conjured. […]
Neutralizing Competition
The headline for this blog is meant to beguile you, well, just a bit. I am not going be writing here about blasting your competition off the page or out of the market. Rather, I am talking about becoming “competition-neutral.” Honestly, I don’t believe in competition, unless we are trying to be clones, and unless […]
Blogging: Don’t Lose Your Voice!
Find it. Keep it. And develop its many dimensions! “Voice” is what sets you apart as a writer. Every one of us has a writing voice, even if we can’t write. It is the written expression of the voice we use to speak and sing, and it is more. My father, for example, could only […]
Blogging 101: Find Your Niche…Avoiding Ruts
Yes, I am teaching you how to blog in these posts! You can consider each post a key lesson. Let’s consider first that the planet is already heavy with bloggers, and most of them are bombing out, that is, failing abysmally. Many can’t write a sentence in good, Standard English. In the case of ESL […]
What is a Blog? Let’s Define It.
Of course blogs have their roots in journalism, both in hard news and commentary. Overall, in the field of traditional journalism, they resemble columns most closely. A blogger might be considered a cyber-columnist. But that would not be as much fun to say as “blogger,” a word that sounds like a gastrointestinal malady. At it’s […]
First Law of Blogging: Know Your Audience
If you want to add a blog to your website, first you must understand the nature of the folks who will be reading your posts. There are 7 billion people on Earth, and they are diverse. You must brainstorm to find the parameters of your basic reader/ customer. You can never expect to write for […]
Using Adjectives to Distinguish Your Business
This is one of many exercises I will share with you to help you make your business better. It is the kind of exploration that works from the roots upward. Yet, it requires you to move inward, plumbing the depths of the dream of your cherished enterprise. Task: I would like you to make […]
101 Ways to Pick the Best Writer
1 You get what you pay for, most of the time. Recently, I heard that Amazon.com paid a company in Washington $11,000 for some copy with a not-so-quick turnaround. The problem: it needed massive editing, so they had to farm it out to another writer. You should really read what you writer produces before signing […]