EzineArticles WordPress Plugin
Posted by Mitch on Aug 27, 2010
I’ve been a member of EzineArticles since 2008. I didn’t have a lot of articles on the site because frankly I’m still sort of skeptical as to just how much benefit I get from articles being posted to the site. I’ll come back to that in a few minutes.
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When I eventually reached 10 articles, some weeks later I received a gift in the mail. It was a mug from these folks congratulating me for reaching that milestone. I thought that was pretty cool, so then I decided that maybe I’d see what I could do to put more articles on the site. You know, a little bit of encouragement never hurts.
Suffice it to say, I didn’t rush into getting another article on the site, no matter what I felt initially. As a matter of fact, it pretty much took me 18 months to get another article on the site, and what helped to facilitate my getting that article, and others, to the site was the EzineArticles WordPress Plugin. I don’t even remember what brought it to my attention, but every once in awhile my mind says “hey, I wonder if there’s a plugin for ‘that’”.
I decided to load it onto my business website, since my account on EzineArticles is through my business, and of course it loaded seamlessly. Then I ran into an issue that I hadn’t expected, but I understood later. You obviously have to have an account on that site, but you then have to wait a day or two before it creates categories that you can see within your blog. I think the categories are already on the site, but you don’t see them in your blog until that point; at least I didn’t. So, I couldn’t immediately add articles, and I was irked because I didn’t know. A couple of days later I saw it was working, and I was on my way. In just the last month I’ve added 7 more articles to my account, and I’ll be adding more along the way. By the time you read this I might have added the same plugin to this blog under that same account, since it seems the site doesn’t totally pigeonhole you, as I have articles on web issues there as well.
One other thing you need to know is that you can’t submit any articles if you have a link in them. So, you can do it two ways. One, write the article first, submit it, then add links. Or two, if it’s an older article, remove all links, submit, then leave the article without updating it, and all your code will be there when you go back to check on it.
I said I was going to get back to this, and so I am. I said that I wasn’t sure that article submissions really does me all that much good. I preface this by saying that having external links coming to your site never hurts, so I’m appreciative of that. However, when I look at my stats over two years, I see that my articles have been viewed 919 times, which is pretty cool, with my best read article being one titled A Positive Story. What I also see is that only 16 times has anyone clicked on my link and followed it back to my website. That’s a rate of 1.7%; not a hearty endorsement for driving business to my site.
Still, I figure that these days I’ve been talking a lot about influence, and influence doesn’t necessarily mean driving people to your website as much as getting people talking about you for whatever reason. That, plus being able to find another legitimate use for articles I’ve already written and still having control over them is giving me enough reason for now to do this for awhile.
There does seem to be an interesting caveat, though. If your post looks too “bloggy”, they’ll turn it down. I’m not quite sure about that one, but it seems that if you decide to have any type of personality in a post they don’t like it. I sent one where I referenced a lesson I learned from my dad and they rejected it, even though it was a post on leadership.
Anyway, if you’re thinking about it, give it a shot, and let me know what you think.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
10 Posts That Deserve More Attention
Posted by Mitch on Aug 23, 2010
Something that’s hard for a lot of people is self critique. We’re either too easy on ourselves or too hard on ourselves.
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I’m no different, although my parameters change depending on what it is. When it comes to this blog, I know that there are a few throwaway posts, where the post isn’t necessarily important to anyone but was entertaining to write. That’s part of my quest to give visitors something different to look at.
However, there are times when I write something that, in my mind, didn’t get enough attention or enough visitors for whatever reason. Every once in awhile, I like to go back to some of those posts and share them in one specific post, hoping that maybe newer visitors will see those titles and say “hey, I must have missed that one”. At least that’s what I hope. So, here are 10 posts of mine over the last 2 months of 2009 and first 6 months of 2010 that didn’t get many visitors that I feel deserve more attention.
5 Ways Poker Is Like Blogging – This was my attempt at being creative by comparing two of the things I love doing most, one of which is playing poker.
An Interview With Marelisa Fabrega – Marelisa is one of the top bloggers in the world, and I was able to secure an interview with her. This needs to be read by everyone.
Twitter Marketing – Do You Have A Plan? – I found myself again some days ago explaining to someone what Twitter was about and how it could be used for business, and this wasn’t at my workshop either.
How Can You Prosper Through Publicity? – Everyone who has a blog needs to understand just how much more prosperous they could be, either monetarily or personally, by figuring out how to handle their publicity better.
What Do We Expect For Free? – We all like free stuff, but are we taking it to the extreme for some things?
Are Writers Taken For Granted? – As someone who’s been writing to make a living for the last year, it seems that people devalue just how much of a commitment it is, even when they can’t do it themselves.
Content Is An Electronic Emperor – This was my response to a comment made by Rupert Murdoch, partially one of the most hated men in the world.
Web Courtesy – Don’t We Deserve That Much? – With so much hate that people spew in blogs and especially when responding to news stories, I question whether there is any courtesy anymore.
Are You Using Social Media For Promotion? – I wrote this last year, way before I ever started thinking about doing workshops on the subject.
My 10 Favorite Blog Posts Of 2009 – Okay, this isn’t quite fair, but at the end of the year I posted 10 blogs posts I liked that I wrote in 2009; so now you have 10 more to check out if you’re interested. 
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Sunday Question – When Is The Last Time You Wrote A Personal Email Letter?
Posted by Mitch on Aug 15, 2010
I didn’t get into email until early 1996. When I discovered it, I couldn’t wait to find people who had it to write letters to. I’d always been a letter writer. I was the one who would find people from college and get caught up with them and keep them up to date on what was happening with everyone else. Initially it was on typewriters, then computer word processing programs before the modern Windows, and finally the good stuff, mainly Microsoft Word.
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These days, I couldn’t tell you the last time I wrote a personal email to one person. I say it that way because I’m sometimes known to write a long compilation email and send it out to a whole bunch of people. And, as it figures, if I get anything back at all, it’s often a one or two line response.
What happened to the revolution that we were supposed to have in more and better communications because of email? Is it all time related? I ask that because I used to get to every email I got very quickly, and now sometimes it’s 2 or 3 days before I get to an email, even a business email. That feels so unlike me, but then there’s just so much email that goes along with all the research I do for all the writing I do. I’m always wondering if that excuse is good enough for neglecting friends that probably aren’t going to respond in kind. Thank goodness for my friend Kelvin; I think he is the only person I actually correspond with on at least a weekly basis, if not more often, and if history means anything, he was actually my first true email friend back in 1999 as the first person who actually told me he was going to send me an email and then did. Of course, I don’t expect him to see this so maybe I should say something bad about him and see if word gets out.
So, there’s the question; do you send personal email to your friends or family, and if so how often? Enjoy your Sunday!
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Writing A Press Release
Posted by Mitch on Aug 14, 2010
Okay, by now everyone should know that I’m putting on a social media workshop on Thursday with Renée Scherer. Well, at least you’d think that. What I found out just after the last one is that no matter how many times I put the link out on Twitter, people seemed to miss it. I mean, what the hey? This included people I talked to often on Twitter; that was discouraging, and of course if people don’t know about it, they’re not coming.
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This led me to considering the idea of writing a press release for this one and seeing if the newspaper would put it in. Of course, one can have a press release go to many other outlets as well, but there’s only one main newspaper in town, and I know the rules for writing a press release, which is pretty much only one main rule; make it sound like a news story and not an advertisement.
Having said that, there are some basic rules for writing up a press release; here they are:
1. You need to make sure there’s contact information in it
2. You need to indicate what the press release is for, hopefully giving them a title they might be able to use. I did that within the article, and I told what the event was up front.
3. You should have someone quoted in it. That’s not quite a necessity, but it helps to have a quote or two.
4. It needs to be in 3rd person. No “I’s” or anything like that unless it’s contained in the quote.
5. It needs to look “newsy”. In other words, it should read like it’s a story in the newspaper, even if it’s a short one.
I created the press release and I passed it by one of my Twitter friends who also happens to work at the newspaper. She said it was perfect, and that she’d give it to the powers that be. This isn’t my first press release, by the way. I’ve had two others put into the newspaper, one in 2004 when I was giving my Keys To Leadership seminars, and another when I was promoting a customer service workshop in 2005. So, it had been awhile, but my hope was that I hadn’t lost the skill of putting one together.
I hope it shows up in the newspaper, but there are never any guarantees. Actually, I’m writing this days ahead of time, so if you see this line then it probably won’t make it in time. In either case, another friend of mine in media said I should put it on my website to make sure it’s at least seen by someone. I decided to share it here:
Press Release:
Social Media Marketing Workshop
Hope Lake Lodge, August 19th, 2010Following up on a successful first presentation on July 22nd, Mitch Mitchell of SEO Xcellence and Renée Scherer of Presentations Plus are putting on a second workshop on the topic of social media marketing. Titled “Make A Splash With Social Media Marketing”, they put on a 5 hour workshop that talks about social media strategies that have been used by many companies across the United States to enhance their business profiles and interact with customers.
“Smaller companies found out first how successful they could interact with current clients and grow their client base by using social media marketing, and now bigger companies have hopped on the bandwagon and establishing themselves as players in the game as well,” said Mitch Mitchell, who’s been working with clients on social media marketing strategies for 3 years now. “Anyone who hasn’t figured out that they need to embrace at least some aspects of social media marketing are going to fall behind, and it’s not going to be easy to catch up.”
Since both Mitchell and Scherer are from the Syracuse area, why start at Hope Lake Lodge? “I’m a skier and I love Greek Peak,” stated Scherer. “Once I realized how much more they had and that they’d love finding ways to help promote the new Cascades Water Park it seemed like it would be a nice marriage.”
They are working on setting up a workshop some time in September in the Syracuse area, then hoping for at least one more presentation at Cascades Water Park before deciding where to take it next. “I’d love to take it on the road, as it’s become a very hot topic”, said Mitchell.
To find out more about the presentation, you can call Renée Scherer at 315-863-9011 or visit http://www.seoxcellence.com/SMMregistration.html.
For confirmation:
Mitch Mitchell, SEO Xcellence, 315-622-5922 or mitch@seoxcellence.com
Renée Scherer, Presentations Plus, 315-863-9011 or renee@presentations-plus.biz
So, what do you think?
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Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
The Problem With Editing
Posted by Mitch on Jul 18, 2010
As y’all know, I fancy myself as a writer. I think at this point I can qualify that statement with all the different types of things I write and have written. I thought about recounting all the things I write, but then decided it was easier to link you back to a previous post on how much I write. Actually, I’m writing more than what was in this post at the time, which is scary.
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However, I wanted to talk about editing for a little bit. There’s always problems with editing, especially when you’re editing something that someone else wrote. Editing really comes down to the issue of what you like and are looking for versus what someone else has said. I find that it’s a fine line sometimes between editing to help someone fix typographical or grammatical errors and changing the entire tenor of what someone has written.
About six weeks ago I helped a friend edit her book. She’d had some other people look at it and I guess they’d made some suggestions here and there. I went at it with a critical eye, first looking for typing errors, then looking for grammatical errors, and finally what I consider errors of omission. Let’s take these in order, because they’re quite different.
Typing errors are more than just misspellings. A typographical error could mean things that are capitalized that shouldn’t be and vice versa. They could mean words that are spelled correctly but not the right word for the sentence, such as when we see people always getting wrong the concept of ‘there’, ‘they’re’, and ‘their’. This is actually the easiest thing to fix because most often the rules are cut and dry.
Grammatical errors are in a way the hardest edits to make. One of the issues with grammatical errors is that you have to take into account the fact that people speak differently depending on where they live, and of course where you live. For instance, most places I’ve lived in, when you went outside to throw the ball around, you were ‘playing catch.’ In downstate New York, and it appears areas of Pennsylvania, they call that ‘having a catch.’ Another example is that when I was younger we would ‘go to lunch’, and now people ‘do lunch’.
Those are small examples, but they become important when you need to make sure a person’s home voice is heard instead of the voice of the editor. There are words I often use when writing something that someone will say “I’d have used this word instead.” My general thought is that “You might have used that word, but I wrote it”, so I tend to stick to my guns. However, if someone used the same word four times in one sentence, suddenly it’s a different issue because the readability of the sentence is in question, whether the writer understood what he or she meant to say. There’s also the issue of writing for your audience to understand you, yet, because it’s how you talk, suddenly throwing in a word like ‘perspicacious’ because it hits your fancy, and now you’re sending people scrambling to look it up because you didn’t think of writing ‘using good judgment’ at the time. If it’s honest and how someone speaks, every once in awhile you just have to leave it alone.
Errors of omission are either difficult or hard, depending on the reader and the types of things they’re used to looking for. At my writer’s group, one of the participants is always looking for more detailed descriptions of people and what they look like, little touches in rooms to help her see it in her mind, and other thing such as what foods smelled like, did mouths water, what kind of sound a car made, etc. That kind of thing doesn’t always enter my mind. What I look for are things that don’t explain something that a writer has put into a story. For instance, a character’s name being mentioned without any explanation before or afterwards as to who that person is or was. Or a tale being told that’s missing so much detail that you wonder why it’s there in the first place.
Something I don’t do all that often on this blog is edit. When I write here, I’m kind of in my own Mozart zone; what I say is what I say, and when I’m done saying it I move on. I do look for typos, but as Sire has shown, every once in awhile I miss a word. This blog is freestyle, and I enjoy it for that reason. I edit much more thoroughly on both my business blog and my finance blog, because the audience for those blogs is much different than this one, and the topics always more serious. When I wrote my first book I edited it 7 times, and I asked a few other people to edit portions of it as well. Remember I helped Guy Kawasaki edit his book Reality Check back in 2008, one of many people he asked for help (talk about feeling honored!). That was one time I didn’t speed read.
Editing is a very important component of writing, but its importance devolves depending on what it is you’re doing and your audience. While no one wants to read a lot of stuff that’s missing simple words over and over so that it gets in the way of easy reading, studies have found that most of us will insert words here and there that are missing so that it’s not a big deal. If you’re writing your own blog, do the best you can with some effort, but don’t hurt yourself. If you’re writing for others, or hoping to make money, that’s a different story altogether. Remember the three critical areas of editing, whether it’s for yourself or for someone else.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Does Your Content Stink? Kind Of A Rebuttal
Posted by Mitch on Jul 8, 2010
A couple of days ago I came across a post that kind of intrigued me and kind of bothered me at the same time. Actually, my mind said it was fulfilling one of the points of the author, and in that case it probably worked as he expected. In another, however, I’m in almost full rebuttal mode, hence I’m writing about it on my site instead of his.
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The post is titled 10 Signs That Says Your Content Sucks (a phrase that I’ve never liked, so I’ve never said it, but I did have to quote the title), written by Chris Peterson of Blogging With Chris. Actually, though it says 10 signs, only 9 of them actually ask you a question for you to determine if your content stinks. And I have to say that I disagree that if these points apply in some fashion that it means your content stinks. I want you to read his post so I’m not going into full details with it, but I will at least mention what I’m countering. This means I won’t hit all his points; no need.
First point, journal entries. In essence, he says no one is interested in our lives. Actually, since I decided to be more personal on this blog, I’ve had way more traffic and received a heck of a lot more comments. Beforehand, I think many folks had no clue who I was or what I was about. You can play it too close to the vest in not divulging any personality sometimes. Remember what my most visited post is all about; it was personal and social commentary, and I doubt anyone learned much from it.
Second point, number of comments. The reality is that some of the best stuff written on the internet is not only never seen, but never commented on. Blogging turns out to be a community, and if you don’t give yourself to trying to reach out to others, unless you’re famous for some other reason, you’re going to get neither visitors or comments. Judging your content based on only comments is useless.
Third point, if time were the great predictor of how many comments people were going to get we’d all take a week putting together our posts. Every post isn’t a home run, just like every song on an album (or CD; I still like to refer to them as albums) isn’t a top 10 hit. If you’re looking for that kind of perfection you’re never going to attain it, and you risk alienating your audience because they have no idea when something new is coming.
Fourth point, fan mail. Yes, I get some fan mail. But I receive a heck of a lot more comments than fan mail. Truthfully, I didn’t start getting fan mail until probably the middle of last year; it threw me off initially. I tend to view it as some people wishing to express a point of view, but not wanting to be “outed” on the blog itself. On my business blog, I get a lot of email responses whenever I write on topics of racism and diversity instead of comments on the blog. Are those posts better, or are they scary enough for some folks to not want to put their name on it in the blogosphere?
Fifth point, hate mail. Why would I intentionally want to put out a post to receive hate mail? Who am I supposed to be, Rush Limbaugh? I don’t ever want hate mail; I’d rather be ignored if someone didn’t have the guts to post their rebuttal on my blog. However, I have received a version of hate mail twice ever; didn’t like it one bit, especially since one was on a tribute to my dad, thus it was way out of place.
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Sixth point, is it my responsibility to educate or expect someone to learn something from every post? It’s an interesting point, and one that I believe is what finally makes some people give up blogging. If you don’t diversify, you’re going to stagnate and want to go away. Did anyone learn anything from my cleavage post, easily the most popular post ever on this blog? What about my story about losing and finding my keys? Were people entertained? Yup! Is there anything wrong with entertaining? Nope. Charles Barkley once said “I am not a role model”; well, he got that one wrong, but what’s not wrong is that “I am not everyone’s educator”. I’ll educate when I want to, like my recent post on PHP 5, but otherwise, as Wanda Sykes like to say, “I’m a be me.”
I think that’s enough. Chris actually made me think, which is good, even if I disagree with his premise. Darren Rowse’s blog gets plenty of comments, but at least half of his posts these days are written by someone else. Are those posts all great content, or are those people who visit because he’s the Problogger? Sometimes, lousy content gets lots of comments, even more than good content; I see it all the time. It’s about connections and community as much as the content. Without content, nothing moves. With good content, you’re afforded one type of opportunity; with bad content, you’re actually afforded another type of opportunity.
But does your content stink based on the number of comments you get? There’s no real way to affirm that. What say you?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Journal Writing For Personal And Business Reasons – Guest Post
Posted by Mitch on May 7, 2010
I met Carolee Sperry at a local networking event where, unfortunately, it was just the two of us who showed up. As we talked, though, it seemed like we had a lot of things in common, especially blogging. Something else we have in common is the propensity to keep journals. I like logging what’s going on in both my personal and professional life, and it comes in handy when I need to go back to see what might have happened at a certain period in the past. I think that helps me with this blog in knowing where to find older posts to link to. Please enjoy her article here.
Have you ever kept a diary? Many people do. A diary is a way to keep track of daily events, the weather and perhaps a line or two about current events. A journal can be that and so much more.
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A journal can be used to work through problems, make a life changing decision, heal relationships, help recognize patterns in our life and even discover the writer within. It can also be a friend in times of need.
They can vary- there are personal journals that not only serve as a diary but also use to work out personal issues that arise in their life.
Business journals help keep track of everything related to running a business. It’s an effective way to keep everything in one place, thus giving one the ability to look back and see what worked and what didn’t.
Other journal types could include, but are not limited to: medical journals, weight loss, parent/child journals, travel journals, dream journals, child discipline and more.
A journal can be anything from a high priced “journal- journal” from a stationary store or my favorite, the spiral notebook.
There are many journaling techniques that one can use to assisting them in working through problems. Even something as simple as “the unsent letter” can help one work through a challenge they may be having with a loved one, friend or co-worker.
Try it the next time you are upset with someone. Instead of saying something you may later regret, write a letter to the person.
Maximum effect seems to happen when the letter is written quickly- just “dumping the junk.” Don’t worry about grammar just get it out!
When you’re done, throw it out or burn it.
There are several other journaling techniques that can be used separately or in conjunction with the Unsent Letter.
To learn more about Journal Writing, and how it can help your personal or business life join my next class!
Carolee Sperry is a WAH (work at home) mom who homeschools her 12 year old daughter. She is also the coordinator of the Central New York Network Marketing group. You can check out her sites by going to Blogging4You, Advice for Work At Home, and Working In Jammies.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
I'm Just Sharing is where I share my thoughts on internet marketing, writing, blogging and many other things. You never know what I'll be posting on. So keep coming back, read, enjoy, and buy! ;)
