Tag Archives: Writing

Is Your Blog Successful? My Version

April 2, 2010 Mitch Mitchell 22 Comments

I’ve often said that you can get inspiration for writing blog posts from anywhere. In this case, I got the inspiration for this post from a blog called One Cool Site Blogging Tips (not to be confused with Sire’s blog tracking site Cool Blog Links, and this post titled Is Your Blog A Failure Or A Success? The conversation on that post wasn’t quite what I thought it was going to be based on the title, yet it made me want to throw the question out to everyone else, so it did its job.

How does one decide to measure success? I think that’s the most important question for everyone to answer for themselves. It all depends on the reason you continue to write your blog. I say that because I started this blog for a much different reason than why I write it now, and as those parameters have changed, so have my expectations for it.

My original reason for creating this blog was so I could say whatever I wanted to say without worrying about being filtered or worried about how it might impact my business. I also had high hopes that I would make some money from it. So, when I first started writing it, half of the posts were geared towards talking about something that I thought I’d make money from, and the other half talking about some things that were on my mind, though not necessarily personal.

At some point, the blog focus changed to talking about affiliate programs, blogging, and writing for the most part. That was fun to a degree, but there wasn’t anything personal in it. Well, I have my writing style, so I guess that was personal, but I almost never talked about anything I was feeling, never taking a real stand on anything, just doing reviews. The thing is, to do a legitimate review takes some time to investigate, and, well, like everyone else I needed to make money, thus I was draining the bank account while doing a lot of that stuff.

Then in September, I changed once more. I decided I was going to start talking about a few more personal issues, more of my beliefs and the like, while still keeping up with some of what I’d talked about in the past. Though I’d still like to make money with this blog, the focus definitely moved from that direction a long time ago. I still put up products and the like, just in case someone has an interest, but mainly I just like to write, share my thoughts, and see how others respond.

So, based on all of that, how successful do I view this blog, which certainly can’t be called a niche blog? Overall I think it’s a fairly successful blog for what it is. I’m certainly not at guru status when it comes to internet sales, but I think I have a nice loyal group of folks I get to interact with here and there. And it’s changed a lot; the people I was talking to a lot between the middle of 2008 through the middle of 2009 has drastically changed. Many of those folks either stopped blogging or their priorities changed.

New folks have come along, in higher numbers yet, and that’s pretty neat. And I know when people comment here, they’re not doing it just to get a link onto a popular blog that offers them nothing except an opportunity to maybe steer people to their blogs by kissing up to the owner of the blog, who most of the time doesn’t even see their responses. Oops, let’s not get into that discussion again! 🙂

Yes, I think this blog is a success, and I’m happy with it. What say you about your blog?

Business

How Do You Work Projects?

March 18, 2010 Mitch Mitchell 16 Comments

First, I’d like to point to another guest post of mine, this time on Rose’s Blogger Talk blog, the topic of which is Why Have A Business Blog. Thanks for the opportunity, Rose.

I’m presently working on a big health care project. It’s a short term project, but there’s a lot of technical numerical information that I have to get through to get it completed. I actually love working on things with this kind of detail, and I’m glad to have another big project after such a long time.

There’s always the question of how people work projects. I’ve changed up from how I’ve done things in the past this time around. Usually I plow my way through things, not giving any time to anything else, until it’s done. This time around, I’m spacing things out somewhat, giving my mind some mental breaks here and there. I’m doing that because not only do I want to make sure I don’t make any mistakes, but I know there are a couple of areas that are going to take me longer to get through than other parts.

This isn’t a project of my own doing, however. In May, I’m going to be doing a presentation on customer service, one day a regular seminar, the next day a webinar on the same thing. I’ll be advertising it once we’ve solidified where we’re having it. Anyway, I had to put together an outline for what I wanted to talk about, which was going to help with advertising.

This was one of those times where, once I started, I had to get through the entire thing, and, me being me, it took just about an hour to actually write the entire outline, which was 80 lines or so. Outlines are my way of doing most things when I get a chance. When I’ve created my websites, I’ve always written an outline first, as well as sketched the design. When I wrote my books and ebooks, I went with an outline. Every live presentation I do starts with an outline.

Thing is, I know people do all sorts of things. For instance, I know a writer of fiction who, before he starts writing, always writes biographies for as many people as he figures he knows are going to be in his story. If he ends up introducing new characters, he’ll stop writing the story and write a biography on the new character.

I also know a lot of people who don’t plan anything. They just start projects and believe that things will come together. Of course, those are the people who most often end up having to start all over, but if that’s their way, so be it.

How do you work on projects? I’d really like to know if there are other ways people get things done.

Writing

Your Creativity Is There Inside You

February 12, 2010 Mitch Mitchell 22 Comments

I’ve written enough times on how it seems I’ll visit a blog because a topic got my mind going, only to see that it’s something I’ve not only read before, but almost word for word at the same time. A question I addressed in my blog writing series was how to think about what to write about.

Here’s a great example of how I find things to write about. Someone I met on Twitter named Rachel Lavern writes a wonderful blog that used to be called “Fearfully ‘n Wonderfully Made, but is now called… actually, I’m not quite sure what it’s called. If you follow the link below, you’ll see what I mean. Anyway, it’s a great blog with lots of content made to make people feel good and to think about things, but it’s one of those Intense Debate blogs, kind of like Disqus, which you know I don’t like, so I won’t comment there. Instead, I will comment through this blog which she’ll see on a trackback.

Anyway, her post is entitled What Will You Create, and in this case she has a short video on creation, then 10 ways to stem creativity by a guy named Jeffrey Baumgartner, whom I thought I knew but I don’t. Anyway, his 10 ways to stem creativity aren’t bad, but no one says you have to do it his way. As a matter of fact, though I’m not going to go through the 10, as I want you to check out Rachel’s blog, I will counter one of them.

He recommends that you don’t watch TV. I’m not going to suggest that, but what I am going to suggest is that you think about what you’re watching and see if there’s any concepts in any of those shows that you think are something worth commenting on. I mean, could I have written a top 10 TV shows if I’d never watched TV? You know, the most mindless drivel is entertaining to someone, and maybe if that person wrote about it, others would see it in a different light; or not. lol

I once wrote that I thought creativity was obsolete, but I really don’t think that’s the case. What I believe is that there are some of us who don’t want to challenge ourselves to be different, to make a statement, to give something that no one else has given before. That’s the safe route; what fun is being safe all the time? Well, unless you’re thinking about doing something really stupid like this (this is going to take you to a video that’s kind of an adrenaline rush; no embed, otherwise I’d put it up here). Then again, watch that video and tell me this guy wasn’t creative.

Probably one of the most creative blogs out there is Marelisa’s Abundance Online. Man, talk about wonderful words to read each time I’m ready for it. She really puts a lot into each post, like her latest one called The Paint By Number Approach To Accomplishing Your Goals. She writes beautifully, gives a lot of information, often gives a lot of leads, and I’m telling you, if you ever needed to find ideas on what to write about, her blog will give them to you.

How will you show the creative side of yourself in your next few blog posts?

Writing

The Ethics Of Your Writing

January 21, 2010 Mitch Mitchell 24 Comments

Last summer, Peter and I noticed that one of our blogging friends seemed to be posting things that were lifted from another source. They were word for word what was on another website; we considered that a serious breach of ethics.

Phil Hilfiker via Compfight

I finally had the opportunity to ask him about these posts, telling him that I had noticed that they were the exact same thing is on some other websites. He told me that he had purchased some PLR (private label rights) articles and was using them because he didn’t have time to write anymore but wanted to keep new content on his website. I pointed out that it didn’t look right, and that when people usually use PLR articles that the idea was to modify them so that they would become one’s personal articles.

As some of you know I now offer writing and blog writing services as part of my business. With one of my blogging clients, I knew his industry really well, so I didn’t have to do much research with it. With most of the other writing that I’ve been doing, there has been a fair amount of research. What you start to find out is that as you read on the subject enough times, you start to get the feeling that you know it fairly well and can pretty much write totally original content more than half of the time without having to do any research at all.

But there are those times when you have to do some kind of research. On most topics, what I will do is think of what I want to write about, pull up four or five resources, read them all, and then start writing. If the majority of the resources quoted exact same information, then I would use that exact same information, but will alter the words if it’s possible.

Sometimes it’s not; if you have a list of things that have to go in a particular order, you’re pretty much stuck using what’s there. For instance, I once wrote an article regarding something called “revenue codes“, which is a health care term. I listed a whole bunch of numbers and descriptions, and no matter what resource I might have had to look at, those numbers and descriptions would have been the exact same everywhere.

I think when it comes to writing there has to be some kind of ethical standard that a writer has to have. It doesn’t do a writer any good to copy blocks of words from someone else’s articles without giving them attribution. One of the gripes I’ve written about often on this blog is seeing people on other blogs saying the same thing over and over that they got from another blog.

True, there may not be many new ways to say “create great content” when talking about ways to improve one’s blog or to encourage visitors to stop by, but that’s part of the essence of what writing is supposed to be about, that being creativity. I’m sure that someone else has probably written about ethical writing in the past, but I’m also betting that no one is ever written about it in quite the same way that I’m writing about it right now. That’s the kind of thing that makes us all unique.

There’s also the question of rewriting articles. Many people believe that’s unethical, because they’re taking one source and basically saying the exact same thing that someone else said only in a different way. I have kind of a different take on that one also. I have rewritten my own stuff from time to time, and as I am the original source for that information, I have no qualms about doing that rewrite.

I also think that it depends on what you’re writing as to whether doing a rewrite of something is ethical or not. For instance, if you’re writing something about a new story you read, and you can only find that information in one place, I don’t think there’s anything unethical in writing that in a different way; after all, that’s news, and it’s what all the major newspapers around the country do when they get those newsfeeds from places such as the AP and Reuters. I do that on my finance blog all the time, although I also didn’t comment on those stories which make them unique.

What are your thoughts on ethical writing? Do you think I’m too strict, too lenient, or something else? Inquiring minds want to know. 🙂

Blogging

How I Write Blog Posts

November 22, 2009 Mitch Mitchell 27 Comments

Lately I’ve been seeing a rash of posts on blogs that are telling people how to write blogs. Of course, I have my own blogging tips, which I hope some folks have checked out here and there, but what I’m seeing are the same tips over and over from other people.

Let’s face this fact; just how many times do you want to read “first come up with a keyword rich topic, then write a keyword rich article on your niche?” No matter how many times you read that and how many ways someone tries to write it, nothing is different. How different is reading “write in your niche so that people will find you on search engines?”

I’m not saying it’s not true; I’m just saying it’s boring seeing the same thing over and over. And I’m not saying what I’m about to write is any better than what you’ve seen someone else say. But it will be different, and I’m thinking that’s my little niche. Let’s begin.

Believe it or not, the longest part of my blogging is trying to figure out what I want to write about. For someone like me, that doesn’t often take long. For this blog, since I pretty much write about what I feel like, it doesn’t usually take me longer than a couple of minutes. The same for my business blog, because I know my topic there. For my finance blog, it takes a little longer. I usually scour the news to see what feels like it might be interesting enough for me to expound upon, then I’m ready to go.

The next step, if needed, is the research. For instance, when I wrote my post the other day on my 13 favorite singers, that one took a long time to put together because I had to first list my singers, go find the videos for each of them, and then find the product links for each artist. For the last post, 34 questions, I had to actually answer the questions first. I could have answered them once I started writing, but I had some formatting I wanted to do so I answered them before I posted everything. For my finance blog, research is always essential, because I don’t want to use only one news source to write those articles from.

Next it’s time to either start writing or paste certain things into the writing area. When I’m writing, I go into my zone and just write, and I don’t usually stop until I’ve finished the article. That’s why it doesn’t take me all that long to write. If I have an opinion on something, my mind just puts things in the order I want to talk about them in and I go for it. Kind of my own Mozart thing going on. If I’m just pasting something, most of my work is already done.

Now it’s time for my internal linking. I don’t have full recall of every article I’ve written, but obviously I know my topics. So I go back through my topics to search for articles I’ve previously written on a topic. The internal linking serves two purposes One, it helps my site show off previous material that I’m hoping someone might be interested enough in to want to check it out. Two, at least on my finance blog, it helps with the SEO in reinforcing topics I write about there. This blog does okay in the search engines, but it probably will never get its PR back, which means probably only my affiliate advertising will ever be here, whereas that blog has a high PR, does okay on Alexa, and if I can increase the visits a bit more it’ll be prime property for financial advertisements.

Next is something I don’t always do, but I will check for it. Since everyone says text advertising is supposed to be so great, I go back through my words to see if there’s anything I said that can link to a product. Then I go looking for a product that I can link to and add that link, with the new blue lines.

The next to the last piece is trying to decide what I’m going to highlight at the bottom of each post. Will it be a product? Will it be just a banner ad of some sort? I certainly have plenty of stuff to choose from, so that usually doesn’t take much time either.

And now, the final pieces of the puzzle. I go to All-in-one-SEO and I write something in the description box on what the piece is about. I type in my keywords. Then I go up and type in my tags for the post, which is something I just started a few weeks ago. I select the overall category for the post. The last thing depends on if I’m posting the article immediately or on a delayed basis. If I’m delaying the post, I set the schedule for when I want it to post. Sometimes I write my posts a couple of weeks in advance, so that works great.

And there you go. Now, it takes me less than 5 minutes to write a post, but all the other stuff I add on is what builds up the time. It may eventually take me 10 to 20 minutes to fully complete a post, but that’s okay because the possible rewards for the extra stuff are worth it if you ask me.

Now, whether you fully agree or not, wasn’t that better than the cookie cutter posts you see all the time? 🙂

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