Tag: Write (Page 4 of 5)

Based on a comment to How to write well I answered:
My own top writing tip would be to write about what you are passionate about and to let the passion show. When someone combines passion and knowledge almost any topic is worth reading about.

Skellie writes about “How to Write Like a Painter” where she picks a painters way of working and applies it to writing.

Once you have an idea for an article it’s relatively easy to work out what you want to say. It’s the how that trips us up, so often causing writer’s block. We’re trying to paint a masterpiece in the first sweep, when every great masterpiece grows from very humble beginnings.

Anna Goldsmith has a guest post at Copyblogger about Five Easy Steps to Editing Your Own Work. Editing can be boring but is needed to make things as correct as possible.

DailyWritingTips has a post with 34 Writing Tips That Will Make You a Better Writer. It is a useful collection of tips from readers. I like this one:
Learn the rules of good writing… then learn when and how to break them.

Brian Clark at Copyblogger writes about How to Use the “Rule of Three” to Create Engaging Content.

You see the Rule of Three used all the time across diverse areas of life. Why? Because information presented in groups of three sticks in our heads better than other clusters of items.

DailyBlogTips has a guest post by Mike Smith about The Art of the Follow-Through: Every Great Headline Needs an Even Better Opening Paragraph.

You should be using your headline as an attention grabber and something that’s going to sting when hit with it, or in the blogger’s case, it should grasp the reader’s attention. Your introduction paragraph should be a combination of punches that really rock the reader and stop them from moving forward to the next website.

Mike rounds off his post with “The knockout blow: The final paragraph”.

If you write well you want to be seen, Leo Babauta has a post at Copyblogger about Go Big or Go Home: Why Being Bold is Critical to Getting Noticed.

Do you sometimes have a problem with getting started? Check out Ready, Set, Write! at DailyWritingTips.

One of the biggest problems people have with writing is getting started. A blank page (or computer screen) can be intimidating, but prewriting is a great way to overcome that intimidation.

This was originally posted at another (now extinct) blog of mine.

I am a fan of using pen and paper, it is nice to see others post along the same lines. In “The Power of Analog Writing” is this part which I agree on:

Putting down plans, notes, ideas, and hunches in a notebook can be a great way to help organize your mind, as well as sharpen it. We tend to remember things jotted down by hand better than words hammered on a keyboard.

Over at Anywired Skellie posted “Origami Productivity: Why I Don’t Want a Paperless Life”. The start goes like this:

I love paper in all its forms and always have. In fact, if given the choice between a notebook and a web app to fulfill the same function, I’ll choose a notebook every time.

Previous pen and paper related posts are:
Be productive using pen and paper
The back-to-paper movement
Task management my way – pen and paper.

Note: Photo by Chris Campbell.

This was originally posted at another (now extinct) blog of mine.

Seth Godin has published a free e-book titled ‘Money for nothing (and your clicks for free)’. Quotes from his post:

There’s an enormous amount of superstition about what makes some pages rank high while others languish. When you look at the actual figures, though, much of that fades away.

It turns out that the new playing field enforced by the search engines is eliminating many of the shortcuts that used to be effective. In other words, the best way is the long way.

The long way is to create content that is updated, unique and useful.

Those three U’s are not that simple. Useful and updated are the easy ones, unique is a different issue. The e-book is short but food for thought and includes links that shows more about what Seth means.

Read Seth’s post.

This was originally posted at another (now extinct) blog of mine.

It is a bold title but I have gathered links around this for a while and add some of my own comments along the way.

Brian Clark at Copyblogger writes about Ernest Hemingway’s Top 5 Tips for Writing Well which actually are four of Hemingway’s and one of Brian’s. Rule number one, Use short sentences, is worth keeping in mind. It does make the text more reader-friendly.

Skellie posts about “Little Words, Big Meaning”, your writing can be short (under 200 words) and still meaningful. I like shorter posts, if you got much to say about a topic then why not create a series of posts instead of one long.

Sarah Lewis at Blogging Expertise writes about “Four tips for structuring your blog articles”. Her fourth rule is what Hemingway said, Keep your Sentences Short. The other three are about making the post easier to read, web is different from paper.

Sarah Lewis also writes about “What makes a good blog post?”. I do not think all posts need to be laser-focused but I agree on linking to relevant information. For me that is added value, it gives more information if I want to go there.

Brian Clark at Copyblogger has a post about Three Ways to Spice Up Any Blog Post. I think the final comment, Develop a Distinctive Voice, is important. Confidence in your own style might not be asy to find but

While you’ll always want to keep pushing your boundaries, a writer who is comfortable and confident in her own style naturally ends up an effective writer.

Joanna Young at Confident Writing writes about How to be a total reader magnet: pulling the readers that you want. Guess what, short sentences are mentioned here too.

Skellie posts over at DailyBlogTips about 10 Tips for Writing Bookmarkable Content.

Michael Martin at Pro Blog Design lists 30 Ways to Improve Readability. The list is a mix of design tips at blog level and tips that are relevant to posts.

I round it off with Use These 10 Tips to Write Your Most Popular Post Ever from Daily Blog Tips.

See more in How to write well part 2.

This was originally posted at another (now extinct) blog of mine.

These are the top 5 things I look for in a blog.

1. Looks and style.
I prefer a clean look where content is king. Too much clutter drives me away. Ads can bring home money to the site but if the ads are all over the place and are more prominent than the content then something is wrong. Sound is annoying unless I can control it, turning it on or off based on what I want there and then.

2. Personality.
Information can be found in many places. What makes a blog and a blog post stand out is often the personal touch. I do not mean tearing your heart out, I mean adding your own view and thoughts based on your own experience. A personal style in writing, not just lining up the facts, is what makes me long for more.

3. Food for thoughts.
Whether I agree or disagree, I do like it when a blog post makes me think. A post that challenges me or makes me see things from a different perspective is gold.

4. Content and structure.
We often enter a blog on a single post we found somehow, through a search engine or a link. This makes it important for the blog to connect the dots in a user friendly manner. Using things like categories, tags and related posts in a smart way keeps the reader there browsing more posts. If I see that a blog has many interesting posts I bookmark it or subscribe to its feed. But if I can not find my way around the blog I leave.

5. Links.
A blog that has many links is useful, you can continue reading about a specific topic elsewhere. To me it means that the blogger has done some research and is willing to share sources.

What about my own blog?
The readers should vote on this but I can say what I try to achieve in these areas.
1. I have neither ads nor sound and have picked a theme that I think has the content as centerpiece.
2. Well, I think I need to get better at this.
3. This is up to the readers, I post about things that I have been thinking about.
4. I use categories and site search tags but not related posts.
5. I use links whenever I find it useful for my posts, to name sources as well as additional reading.

This is my submission for the Top 5 – Group Writing Project at Problogger.

This was originally posted at another (now extinct) blog of mine.