Category: Blogging and Writing

Organizing Your Writing In The Workplace: Top 10 Tips For Enhanced Productivity

Three focuses of my blog are Blogging and Writing, and Career Discussions and Workplace Discussions. Your ability to write is one of your most critical skills. It is critical in the workplace and you want to use it to maximize productivity. The following contributed post is entitled, Organizing Your Writing In The Workplace: Top 10 Tips For Enhanced Productivity.

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Image by Cytonn Photography on Pexels

Effective communication in today’s fast-paced work environments is of utmost importance. Writing professionally organized emails, reports, memos or presentations not only shows professionalism but can increase productivity as ideas flow more easily while saving time and preventing misinterpretations of messages – this blog post contains 10 useful tips that will ensure your writing blends into an office setting seamlessly.

1. Assess Your Audience

Before creating any content for publication, conduct an extensive assessment of who your target audience is. Take their needs, preferences and understanding into account when crafting messages tailored specifically for them; whether that involves writing technical reports for colleagues or client proposals – taking this step will make writing much more successful and productive!

2. Craft and Outline

Outlining is at the core of organized writing. Before beginning to draft your piece, take some time to brainstorm key points and structure in an outline that helps keep ideas organized logically while remaining easy for readers to follow; this roadmap keeps thoughts focused and prevents divergences as you compose.

3. Employ Clear and Concise Language

Time in the workplace is of utmost importance, so no one wants to waste it reading lengthy sentences. Opting for concise language which effectively conveys your point will save yourself and others valuable minutes; aim for simplicity without diminishing its message’s essence.

4. Present One Idea Per Paragraph

In order to enhance clarity and avoid reader disorientation, aim at presenting one concept at a time per paragraph. When changing topics or concepts, begin new paragraphs as visual cues for your readers that something has altered.

5. Integrate Headings and Subheadings for Effective Organization

These elements serve two functions. Readers can quickly locate information they seek while significant headings provide focus for writers composing each phase of a project.

6. Proofread and Edit

Grammar and spelling errors can quickly undermine an organized writing piece’s effectiveness; to ensure readers receive clear messages while helping transform ideas into impactful writing pieces, be sure to proofread and edit before finalizing a work. Not only will proofreading/editing ensure readers enjoy ease of comprehension for reading purposes but it can help transform those thoughts into impactful works that engage readers as well.

7. Bullet Points and Lists

Bullet points and lists offer an easy-to-understand format, helping readers absorb key concepts quickly. Furthermore, lists allow us to present multiple ideas or options at once.

8. Take Full Advantage of Technology

Take full advantage of technology! There is an abundance of writing tools and software out there which can assist in organization, revision and collaboration – including grammar checkers or project management platforms which streamline writing processes while increasing overall productivity. You may want to use resources like zoho writer which can be a huge help!

9. Set Up A Review Process

An effective review process should always be in place when working on important documents or projects such as thesis or dissertation submissions, to make sure fresh eyes spot mistakes more quickly while providing constructive criticism that helps develop organizational writing styles and structures more successfully.

Make sure someone from outside your department carefully reviews the document or project in question so as to offer valuable constructive criticism that could enhance organizational writing styles and structures further.

10. Review Your Writing Style Guide Regularly

Maintaining consistency within any workplace setting is of utmost importance; to promote it effectively in yours, consider developing and adhering to a writing style guide which sets forth grammar, punctuation, tone and formatting standards that all writers in your organization abide by when writing across teams or individually for consistent practices and improved team writing results more quickly together than separately.

With consistent styles as an outline to work from team writing can produce results faster together than independently.

Final Thoughts

Organization of your writing in the workplace is an invaluable skill that will mark you out as an effective communicator. Knowing who your target audience is, outlining content carefully, using clear language and employing impactful persuasion techniques are just some of the keys to successful workplace writing! Apply these tips, and watch as both personal and financial benefits accrue through increased written communication! Enjoy happy writing!

How To Write Effectively For Any Audience

A key focus of my blog is Blogging/Writing. Writing is a craft and can open up numerous doors for you. The key is to grow in the craft to the point where your writing is distinct and where audiences enjoy what you create. The following contributed post is entitled, How To Write Effectively For Any Audience.

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Good writing is a skill that can be enormously useful in pretty much any context. Whether you are writing something creative for yourself or others, you are putting together some material to share with colleagues, or you’re copywriting, it’s vital that you know how to write effectively and what kinds of rules to follow. One of the main things you always need to keep in mind with writing is the importance of the audience. You have to make sure you are writing effectively for the specific audience that you have in mind.

Pic Credit – CCO License

In this post, we are going to look at some of the things you might want to bear in mind to help you along with that. As long as you have thought about the following, you should find that you are able to write so much more effectively for any audience, and that is a great skill to have.

Research The Reader

First of all, if you want to write effectively for your audience, you need to make sure you know who they are. That means you need to research your reader as thoroughly as you can. If you are writing something like marketing material, then this is probably a process you have already been going through, but at other times you might find that you need to really work on it if you are going to know who you’re really writing for. In any case, it’s important to have this down before you get started where necessary.

The clearer a picture you have of your audience – who they are, what they respond well to – the easier it will be to craft writing that they will enjoy or respond well to. So it’s absolutely worth putting the effort into your writing research before you do anything else.

Pic Credit – CCO License

Follow Basic Principles

There are a lot of principles you may want to know about if you are trying to write effectively, and it is a really good idea to try and be aware of as many of them as possible early on. Many of these have been in place for many years, and while some are hotly contended, most of them have at least a nugget of truth to them. So you are going to find that they are absolutely worth knowing about, at least – and you can then decide how much you want to take them on board yourself.

So what kinds of principles are we talking about here? One perfect example would be Chekhov’s Gun, named after Anton Chekhov, the famous playwright. This is all about introducing an element only if it will advance the plot of the story – otherwise, leave it out. That applies not just to creative story-telling, but to pretty much any kind of writing you may engage in. If it doesn’t serve the piece, leave it out.

Then you also have principles like showing rather than telling. While not always the case, it’s often better to show the reader what you mean, rather than simply telling them. This also comes from Chekhov, believe it or not! As you can see, these two together put you in a pretty good stead when it comes to putting any writing together, so they are the kinds of principles you should try to be aware of.

Pic Credit – CCO License

Avoid Confusing Terms

If you are unsure whether your target reader will understand a piece of jargon or a niche term, avoid it altogether or introduce the concept to them in a way they can understand. This is important because there is no quicker way to frustrate an audience than by throwing some confusing terms their way, in the hope that they already know them. Sometimes the writer might even come off as arrogant as a result of this, so it is clearly something that you need to avoid at all costs.

It’s much better to slowly incorporate those terms by introducing them properly. This is altogether more respectful and more encouraging, and your reader will appreciate it.

Organize The Information Well

A lot of the time, good writing is really about how you organize the information you are trying to present. You want it to be meaningful and well and easily understood, and most of that comes down to the manner in which you arrange it on the page. Think about what needs introducing first, and then slowly go deeper and deeper. That is the best approach you can take if you are trying to talk to an audience of any kind.

5 Ideas To Improve Your Content In 2022

Three focuses of my blog are Business/Entrepreneurship, Blogging/Writing and Video Content/Media Creation. Whether you are an author, a blogger, or a YouTube content creator, you always want to think about improving your content as it will lead to an ever expanding audience. The following contributed post is entitled, 5 Ideas To Improve Your Content In 2022.

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Unsplash

With plenty of competition, brands simply can’t afford to produce low-quality content. To remain relevant and competitive businesses need to be consistently improving their strategies. To make an impression with your content marketing, focus on these five areas.

1 . Figure out your goals

When you’re developing a content marketing strategy it’s important to determine your key goals. Common content marketing goals include improving lead generation, boosting customer retention and driving customer loyalty.
With a solid understanding of your content goals you can create the best content for that particular purpose. Whether you’re looking to increase brand awareness or educate your audience, be clear on your content goals.

2. It’s all about storytelling

Looking for marketing tips for 2022? Well, great content marketing is all about telling stories, by using stories you can engage your audience and provoke an emotional response. Marketing stories can help you to appeal to the values of your audience, and forge a deeper connection. Stories come in many different forms whether it’s brand storytelling, stories about your products, or stories about your employees. There are so many benefits of storytelling including:

● Stories can help to build the trust of your audience.
● Helps you to create a memorable brand.
● Build a rapport with your audience.

3. Collect plenty of feedback

Improving your content relies on analytics and data, collecting feedback can help you to identify your strengths and weaknesses. There are lots of different ways that you can collect audience feedback. Firstly, you can use surveys, pop-up forms or focus-groups. Using these tools you can ask customers how they feel about your content, and what you could improve. Software can also be useful, visitor analytics tools can provide plenty of helpful data, to help you improve your web content.

4. Provide extra value

To stand out in the crowd, you need to provide something extra special. Providing extra value helps you to build a memorable brand. There are lots of ways to add extra value with content, here are a few key ideas:

● Create an engaging podcast, exploring the key trends and news in your industry.
● Offer interactive content, providing an exciting experience for your audience.
● Produce educational content, helping your audience to learn new things.
● Collaborate with similar brands to produce unique social media posts.

5. Get content support

If you’re looking to revamp your content strategy there are plenty of support tools that you can use. Check out tools for content ideas, analytics, graphics, or content writing services. There are plenty of different types of software to streamline your content success. When you automate a few content tasks, you’ll save time and boost productivity levels. If you’re looking for a fantastic content support tool check out GlideSEM. If you’re stuck for content ideas, GlideSEM can produce content for you, including the appropriate keywords.

In five steps you’ll improve your content strategy for 2022. From storytelling to support tools there are lots of ways to take your campaign to the next level.

5 Tips To Improve Your Writing Skills

Two key focuses of my blog are Blogging/Writing and General Education. The ability to write is a critical skill no matter what sector you aspire to go into. The better you get at it, the better off you’ll be. The following contributed post is entitled, 5 Tips To Improve Your Writing Skills.

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Pixabay

Writing is one of life’s most underrated skills. Of course, there are many ways to make money from being a great writer. You could craft a Booker Prize winning novel, work as a freelance copyright, or create and monetize your own blog. These are all respectable ways to earn a living, but writing is not just useful as a means to financial success. It is a valuable skill in its own right.

Whatever career you are in, there is a good chance you have to write occasionally. You may have to draft business proposals or create Powerpoint presentations to deliver to clients. Monthly reports, marketing plans, press releases, financial statements: all of these are examples of the written word in which a miscommunication could be disastrous. Even if you are in a manual line of work, you probably still have to send emails or participate in Whatsapp conversations.

Being able to write well makes you more articulate and helps you get your point across in a much more concise and meaningful way. This can benefit you when convincing a client to do business with you, asking for a pay rise, or getting yourself out of trouble. But how do you become a better writer if you’re not naturally talented with the written word? Here are five tips to improve your writing skills.

Read more

The best way to become a better writer is to read profusely. This way, you can absorb different techniques and styles and gain a better understanding of what makes for good writing. Look at things like vocabulary, sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation. Consume a variety of different texts from novels to news articles to scientific journals. Eventually, all this content will rub off on you and you’ll develop a keen eye for excellent writing.

Write a lot

Practice makes perfect, so make sure you devote some time each day to write. It doesn’t have to be public or even meaningful, as long as you make an effort to put pen to paper. Start a journal, publish a blog, or even just scrawl down some random thoughts in a notebook. The more you write, the more comfortable you will become and you’ll soon cultivate your own unique style.

Take a course

If you’re a complete beginner when it comes to writing, it is a good idea to learn from an expert. There are many courses and workshops that can help you develop your writing skills and turn your passion into a profession.

Edit everything

Once you’ve started writing for real, you need to become a perfectionist. It’s not enough to just churn out a blog post and hit publish. Be ruthless with the editing process and scrutinise every paragraph, sentence, and word. You need to be able to get your point across in as concise a manner as possible.

Get feedback

When you’re a writer it can sometimes be hard to see the wood for the trees. That’s why it can help to get feedback from an impartial observer. Ask friends and family to read your material and offer their criticisms and advice for how you could improve it. You’ll soon learn to identify your own flaws and work on them.

Three Business Lessons: Checking Your Receipts, The Importance of Customer Service, And Managing Your Business Systems

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“The receipts were communications that we were good to go, and that I would be paid, or that a change needed to be made, and typically, quickly.”

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The Business Of Blogging/Writing

This blog post is going to involve the areas of Blogging/Writing, Business/Entrepreneurship, and Technology. As many of you know, I was able to monetize my blogging platform a couple of years ago. With multiple projects, I only have a little bit of time throughout the year to generate pieces here for myself now. Much of the content is generated by customers/collaborators. By the way, my new blog entitled, ‘Big Words Authors’ is now up and running and has a more literary/storytelling focus. Take look if you want to read creative writing narratives, stories, poetry, and my new book project entitled, “The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story”, and the many supporting promotional pieces that are on the way.

This piece, while it will discuss how I monetized my blogging platform, will also talk about two important aspects of starting your own enterprise: monitoring your business receipts and customer service. Over the years I’ve heard that systems are an important part of any successful business, and I’ve found that to be true. I will thus also discuss what happens if some of your critical systems breakdown, compromising important aspects of your business like your customer service.

There are currently numerous documents on the Big Words Blog Site involving blogging. Some were written by me, and some were written by a customer. A year or two after starting the Big Words Blog Site, I unexpectedly entered the business of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I plan to discuss SEO in greater detail in a separate post. For now, however, I’ll just say that I started collaborating with other entities to publish content, for which I’ve been compensated. I’ve worked with several collaborators, and each involved the generation of business receipts and customer service.

Checking Your Business Receipts

In one of my Fathers’ Day posts (2017), I shared a memorable experience where my father reprimanded me for not taking my receipt and counting my change – a life changing experience for me. It turns out there’s a business context for checking your receipts. As I’ll describe in the business context, checking your receipts not only ensures a given transaction was executed properly, but it can ultimately save your business.

In short, I was able to monetize my blogging activities through the area of SEO. I’m no expert in SEO, by any means, but essentially it involves increasing your rank in the Google search engine by being linked to other websites. This is a big thing in our modern digital age and there are companies that specialize in this. The client/company/partner I started working with created short informational pieces of all kinds, linking companies in them.

Our partnership involved my publishing the content they sent to me perfectly, meaning that the final published version needed to match the draft they sent me in terms of content, structure and the weblinks inserted in the original piece. Once I sent them the published link and it was satisfactory, they would send me a receipt letting me know that the piece was perfect. I have partnered with other customers performing the same service, and still others who simply want their links added to specific contents. When the partnership with my main customer started a couple of years ago, I couldn’t believe it. It involved me publishing large amounts of content and it became profitable.

Interestingly, in some instances with large numbers of pieces being generated and passed back and forth, inevitable mistakes occurred. These were either on my end or on theirs. This was understandable as they were generating thousands of pieces (from me and others), and I was publishing as many as they could send me. Occasionally, I would unintentionally leave a link out, to which I’d receive a polite message saying, “Can you please put the X link back into the piece?”. In some instances, they’d send me an apology and would ask me to change something to update it from the draft they sent me – an error on their part.

In some cases, a link that was anchored to text would need to be changed to a naked link (the actual ‘https’ web address), or sometimes the other way around. Either way, the receipts were communications that we were good to go, and that I would be paid, or that a change needed to be made, and typically, quickly. These communications also occurred when I was offered a piece, when I accepted it, and in some instances, when they needed me to delete a narrative for whatever reason. They were very important communications for our partnership.

The Importance of Customer Service in Any Business

Up to this point I’ve discussed an important element for any business/organization without explicitly stating it, Customer Service. Depending on the office in which you work, many federal employees are rated for their level of customer service every year. Simply put, customer service is the proficiency, quality, and speed with which you see to the needs of your customers.

An example from a McDonald’s restaurant comes to mind. Years ago in a McDonald’s Restaurant I ordered an extra value meal. I could taste the food as I ordered it and was set to scarf it down as I picked the tray up from the register. Somehow, I tipped my tray in such a way that my fries all fell on the floor, spilling out everywhere in front of me. Embarrassed and sure that I’d have to pay some more, I turned back to the register.

“Can I have another medium french fry, please?” Within seconds the girl working at the register got me my new fries fresh out of the fryer, and she didn’t charge me for it. This was an example of stellar customer service.

In terms of bad customer service, how many of us have had to call technical support for your cable/internet provider? Maybe you’ve had to call for your new technology device you just purchased. How long did you have to wait on the line and did the person even speak English? Was your problem resolved or did it linger for hours, days and weeks? Depending on your answers, you may have experienced poor customer service and have either complained about that particular business, or you may have never returned to do business with them.

In a nutshell, they say that the reputation of your business spreads by word of mouth. Thus, if your customer service is poor, the word could spread quickly. The same is true if your customer service is stellar. You want to stay in the latter group as it can affect your profits. That goes for whether you’re in the food service industry or SEO.

Business Receipts, Your Business Systems, and Your Customer Service

It is said that the most important part of your business is its systems. When I started the Big Words Blog Site, I set up a Microsoft Outlook account to handle the email correspondence for the site. I eventually downloaded the Outlook app onto my smartphone and upon using it, I could quickly see the notifications my customers sent to me once we started working together. From the palm of my hand, I could see if the published pieces were satisfactory or if something needed to be changed. Outlook and its app allowed me lots of agility, so to speak.

Unfortunately, there is generally at least one technical glitch per year for my business. Earlier this year something disappointing happened. My Outlook account was hacked and I could receive emails, but I couldn’t send them. This threw a major wrench in my operation. If I couldn’t send emails, how was I going to accept and confirm the documents from my customers? Immediately, I had a light-bulb moment and decided to set up a G-mail account to conduct my business while the host attempted to fix my Outlook account.

In short, it worked, but it wasn’t the same. Fortunately, my customers started sending their content to my new G-mail account so that aspect of our partnership continued. One problem I encountered though was the functionality of the G-mail account wasn’t the same as the functionality of the Outlook account. With the G-mail account, I could see when new emails were coming in, but I couldn’t quickly differentiate when an action was needed. Also, when I opened the account on both my PC and my phone, it was difficult to differentiate between the new posts that were sent, when they were sent, and if they were satisfactory.

Because I was multitasking and was a little lax in terms of checking my business receipts, I was slow to accept documents and slow to react to errors in the pieces I published. My response time had become embarrassingly slow, and frustration built for both me and my customers. One issue went unresolved for a week and half, which was unfortunate because my customer worked according to deadlines. This was confounded by the fact that my blogging software didn’t always update in the most expedient way. A customer wrote me back once saying that they would slow down sending content and I came to the sobering realization that I may have permanently destroyed our collaboration.

Restoration Of My Outlook Account, Moving Forward and Lessons Learned

It took my webhost about three months to fix my Outlook account. In the meantime, my troubles using the G-mail account with my business taught me a valuable lesson. I paid much closer attention to every piece my customers sent to me, as they had not abandoned me. I refocused and attacked problems with a renewed intensity. I closely watched my business receipts and responded to customer emails expeditiously. Once my Outlook account was restored, things were pretty much back to normal and hopefully they will stay that way.

Closing Thoughts and Conclusions

I learned several lessons from the entire turn of events. They are as follows:

• Check your business receipts and ratings regularly.
• Make sure your customer service ratings are as high as possible.
• Have a backup plan should one or many of your business systems go down.
• In the business arena, you must remain ever vigilant.

Thank you for reading this post. If you’ve found value here and think it would benefit others, please share it and/or leave a comment. You can follow me now on YouTube on any of my Big Discussions76 channels, the Big Words Blog Site Facebook page, and Twitter at @BWArePowerful. Lastly, you can follow me on Instagram at @anwaryusef76.

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

Thank you for reading this piece. For the next phase of my writing journey, I’m starting a monthly newsletter for my writing and video content creation company, the Big Words LLC. In it, I plan to share inspirational words, pieces from this blog and my first blog, and select videos from my four YouTube channels. Finally, I will share updates for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Your personal information and privacy will be protected. Click this link and register using the sign up button at the bottom of the announcement. Regards.

10 Steps To Enhance Your User Experience

Three focuses of my blog are Blogging/Writing, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. As a blogger, there are several aspects to consider. If you want to become successful, you want to have a handle on the technological side of your operation in addition to be a proficient writer. The following contributed post is entitled, 10 Steps To Enhance Your User Experience.

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You’ve decided to start a blog, and now you want to make money blogging. This means that you need users and lots of them. But how can we ensure we reach our desired audience?

Image Credit

User Experience (UX) refers to the overall experience with an app, site, or product, whether it’s good or bad. The goal of UX is to make the user’s interaction as simple and effective as possible. Whether you use Cloud Development Environments or entry-level applications, here are 10 steps to enhance your UX:

1-Optimize You Clicks

Users don’t like waiting around, especially when they are used to partaking in tasks quickly. If they click on something and have to wait for it to load, they’re going to get annoyed.

This can be as simple as making sure that links on your site aren’t taking too long to load or as complicated as altering the layout of your page so that content loads faster.

2- Create a Blog That Appeals to your Target Audience

If you’re going into fashion blogging, you don’t want to have a blog that appeals to people who are into technology or sports.

You also need to consider your content; if your target audience is women between the ages of 35-45, you’ll need to alter how you present information so that they’re more likely to be interested in it.

3- Make Sure Your Blog Has a Reliable Host

It doesn’t matter how amazing your blog looks or what information it contains if nobody can access it. Many internet users will immediately leave a site if there is an outage, even if the outage only lasts a few minutes.

This isn’t as easy as getting a hosting service and putting up some HTML code anymore. You need to be able to provide fast, secure hosting to users.

4- Optimize Your Site Search Function

People often don’t like searching around on sites, especially if they’re used to only having the information that’s relevant to them right in front of their face. This means that you need to ensure that your site search function is working properly and that it doesn’t take too long to find the information that a user is looking for.

5- Write Content That People Want to Read

This may sound like an obvious one as it’s something that many bloggers start out doing; however, you need to make sure that you’re offering interesting content to your audience.

6- Make Sure You Offer Relevant Advertising

This might sound like you need to skip adding advertising if it doesn’t make sense for the type of blog you are running. However, it’s important to ensure that your ads are relevant because this can affect your site visitors just as much as slow load times.

7- Optimize Your Images

It may seem like an unimportant detail, but it’s not. Images are just as important to bloggers today as they were fifty years ago with paper magazines. You can use several different tools to add images onto your blog, including free options such as Imgur and more advanced programs like Photoshop.

One of the easiest ways to make your website more user-friendly is by optimizing your images with Photoshop. In Photoshop, there are several tools and features that you can use to improve the quality and size of your images. By following a few simple steps, you can ensure that your images are loaded quickly and efficiently on your website.

Here are a few tips on how to use Photoshop for image optimization:

-Transparent background: When you make transparent background on photoshop, choose the PNG format. This will help to keep the file size down while still keeping the quality of the image high.

-Resize your images: Make sure that your images are the appropriate size for your website. If they are too large, they will take longer to load; if they are too small, they will appear pixelated.

8- Offer Users Their Social Media Links Easily Accessible

Many bloggers may not see this as an important priority, but they must do it. One of the most common complaints people have with different sites is that they’re very difficult to find.

The best websites are the ones that offer users their social media links easily accessible because this allows them to share your content more quickly and with other people if it’s particularly interesting.

9- Organize Your Content Clearly

It doesn’t matter how attractive, well-written or informative your content is if it isn’t organized properly. People expect to find each piece of information on a blog easily without having to read through the whole thing at once.

You can use headings and subheadings to help separate your content into easily accessible chunks that people can check out quickly.

10- Make Sure Your Site Is Mobile Friendly

Google is now penalizing sites that aren’t mobile-friendly, and the number of people who use their phone or tablet to browse the internet is increasing all of the time.

With this in mind, you need to make sure that your site is set up in a way that will be easy for people to access, whether they’re using a mobile phone or a tablet device. You need to avoid using pop-up adverts, and you also need to ensure that the site doesn’t take too long to load.

For your blog to hope to be successful, it needs to be easy to find, navigate, and use. If it isn’t, you’re likely to lose a lot of potential readers before they ever get started with your content.

The Best Blogger Outreach Ideas

Two focuses of my blog are Blogging/Writing and Business/Entrepreneurship. When you start a blog, you have to think about ways to get your messaging out and expanding your reach. There’s a lot more to it than just having insightful and well-crafted pieces. The following contributed post is entitled, The Best Blogger Outreach Ideas.

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Blogger outreach, sometimes known as influencer marketing, is when bloggers and businesses work together to create promotional content. In most cases, the business will provide the blogger with samples of products or services in return for a review, or offer as prizes in a giveaway hosted by the blogger. Sometimes both are done, to maximize the results. Blogger outreach can be an effective part of a digital strategy to build brand recognition.

Image – free for commercial use

The type of blogger outreach that you decide to do and that will work best for you will depend on your business, and there are lots of great options to choose from. You can manage your own blogger outreach, or you can work with a company like FATJOE who already has a list of contacts for you to work with, cutting a lot of work out for you!

Sponsored Posts

These are posts that you pay a blogger to write and publish, with mentions of and links to your brand. The amount a post like this will cost you will depend on the influence of the blogger, as well as the kind of post you want. Make sure you agree on terms beforehand.

Remember that the Advertising Standards Authority states that a blogger must always declare when they have been paid for a post, so they will need to use a clear disclaimer on the post you pay them for.

Product Reviews

Another option is to send out your products to bloggers in return for a review, whether in the form of a blog post, photos on social media, or videos. Remember that bloggers will not guarantee a positive review, so make sure whatever you send them is great, so that what they tell their followers about you is good.

Product Features

A product feature is similar to a review. However, instead of reviewing it, the blogger will feature your product as part of a larger post. For example, they might include your jewelry in a gift guide around Christmas time, or mention your walking shoes in a post about a hiking trip they’ve taken.

Giveaways

Giveaways can be incredibly effective for both the brand and the blogger. The brand provides the prize and the blogger will host the competition, which could be on their blog, YouTube channel, or social media channels. Giveaways are a great way to gain followers and exposure.

Blogger Events

If you prefer the idea of real-life to digital, then running a blogger event could be for you. You invite bloggers and other influencers to attend an event that will showcase your brand, such as launching a new product range, in exchange for them covering the event. This is a great way to boost your brand with coverage from a lot of bloggers at once.

You could create event hashtags to give you a clearer idea of what the return on investment is. Blogger events do take a lot of time and effort to organize, but the payoff can be well worth it.

How To Boost Your Blog With Ease

A key focus of my blog is Blogging and Writing. Starting a blog is one thing and it’s a lot of fun, but you also must know how to boost it so that you can maximize its reach so that it achieve its full potential. The following contributed post is entitled, How To Boost Your Blog With Ease.

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Running a blog can be a truly rewarding experience, but it takes time and energy to attract sufficient attention and make a healthy profit. Luckily, learning how to boost your blog doesn’t have to be as difficult as you might expect, as there are several simple tips and tricks that you can make the most of to reach a wide audience in no time at all. So, if you would like to find out more, then read on to uncover some of the best steps that you can utilise now!

Image Source – Pexels

Remember That Aesthetics Matter

The way that you present your blog can have a dramatic impact on the way that it is received, as a site that maintains poor quality visuals may be disregarded due to an obvious lack of creativity and care. There are many different styles and themes that you can explore to add a little flare to your blog, but it’s important to remember not to go overboard. Having a jumbled mess of pictures, patterns, colours and more is no doubt going to be overwhelming, and such a loud aesthetic can distract the reader from what they came for – your content! Such a theme that contains too many different features and add ons will even encourage your blog to take far longer to load when clicked in the browser, and this may inspire new visitors to simply click back and find a quicker website. The best theme that you can choose to get the most out of your platform is a minimalist style, as you can include a few key features and colours without going overboard. Minimalist designs always look sleek and professional, and such a theme will even help to make your blog more accessible. If you’re a little stuck on what features contribute towards a classic minimalist blog design then do not fret, as there are so many resources online that you can utilise to learn the ropes in no time at all.

Improve Your Rank

Your ranking in search engine results pages will contribute massively toward your overall success, as you must make an effort to boost your blog right to the top if you want to attract sufficient attention. Simply creating a beautiful website that maintains interested and inspiring content is not enough to succeed in the modern blogging world, as there’s far too much competition for you to fight against in order to make your way onto the screens of budding readers around the world. One of the easiest ways to improve your ranking is by getting in touch with an experienced SEO company, as they have all of the necessary skills required to catapult your platform as high as it can go. They’ll show you how to utilise long and short tail keywords, backlinks and so much more to ensure that your blog has a great chance at success.

Boosting your blog has never been so simple when you can take the time to make the most of the brilliant tips and tricks that have been carefully described above! So what are you waiting for?

A Blogger’s Tale: Cyberattacks, Lost Metadata, Social Media Plugins and SSL-Certificates

Starting My Own Blog

As described in the story of my blog, I wrote for the Examiner prior to starting the Big Words Blog Site. One of the things I realized when starting my own blog was that I now had to do everything myself besides just the writing. The Examiner was a massive operation in itself, and a business that had systems in place for everything, i.e., quality assurance, technical support, and advertising/promotion/monetization of its content. Starting my own blog meant that I had to do all of that which also involved managing unforeseen challenges. Some of the major challenges involved cyberattacks, promotion of my content, and managing my social media’s ‘metadata’.

When writing for the Examiner, even if we, the writers, didn’t promote our own work, the publication did it in the form of grouping and promoting the popular pieces of the week in mass email correspondences (email blasts). I also noticed that all over the Examiner’s site there were advertisements from marketers, which is in large part how the Examiner and other publications made money. They tossed some of the ‘crumbs’ to us which was in large part driven by the clicks and views our writings generated. Through writing for the Examiner one of the biggest lessons I learned among other things, was that while much of our population wastes time on it and in some instances misuses it, social media is an important tool for writers who want to grow their audiences in modern times.

Metadata and Social Media Plugins

When I set out to create my own blog, I needed to understand the conceptual and technical aspects of doing it and thus purchased a copy of Blogging for Dummies. Unfortunately, I only got halfway through it before purchasing my webhosting services from ‘GoDaddy’, my ‘Word Press’ site, and my unique web domain name/URL (Uniform Resource Locator). When initially setting up the Big Words Blog Site, I realized that none of the social media buttons that were available on the Examiner and other websites were visible on my site. After going to back into Blogging for Dummies, I learned that these were called ‘plugins’, and there were multiple free options to choose from in the Word Press store.

I chose the Word Press Social Sharing Optimization plugin because it gave me and my readers the buttons for the social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Buffer and others. Though I didn’t understand it at the time, I also read that the information captured by these buttons – the ‘likes/shares’ were called the ‘metadata’ described above which updates in real time whenever someone likes or shares your work.

As a writer, until you’ve built up your audience in the way of a Twitter following or through subscribership, your metadata is critical in terms of knowing the popularity of your content. It also tells new visitors to your site how others have reacted to your work. Many readers click on your content and read it, but don’t necessarily comment. Ideally, you’ll get clicks, likes/shares and comments from each reader, but that’s not always the case.

My Blog’s First Cyberattack

Up until early February of 2018, I didn’t really have any significant issues with my Word Press site. Well actually, there was one instance where I temporarily broke it by continuously adding and removing one of the plugins, probably for something cosmetic. Afterwards, the site wouldn’t load, but fortunately my webhost, GoDaddy, restored its settings from the previous day as they were continuously backing it up; something I recommend for all bloggers and website owners.

My first cyberattack came on a Saturday morning (or probably the night before). I had just published my interview with Dr. Cedric Bright, and it was getting lots of clicks and views based upon support from people in his network. I woke up that Saturday morning to an unfortunate surprise. My site, which I had opened and logged into hundreds and maybe thousands of times, was now ‘redirecting’ to a site I was unfamiliar with in the United Kingdom. After contacting my webhost, GoDaddy, it was determined that some form of ‘malware’ had infiltrated my site causing it to redirect. I hadn’t significantly invested in any security measures up to that point and to make a long story short, there were numerous entry points that the malware could have entered. In the meantime, all my operations had ground to a screeching halt.

As GoDaddy set out to fix my site, days went on and I pondered whether I might have to start the Big Words Blog Site all over from scratch, which would have taken a little bit of work because all the pieces were saved in various folders. And all of the comments I received on some of my most popular pieces would have been gone, as well as all of my metadata from the previous two years. It took about almost two weeks, but GoDaddy was able to remove the malware and I could use my site again. There was yet another surprise though.

SSL Certificates and Losing My Metadata

Once my site had been salvaged, I realized something was missing – the metadata for my social media plugins. My cover page, for example, had approximately 8,500 Facebook likes/shares prior to the cyberattack and now the number was zero. When I called GoDaddy initially to inquire about why my site was redirecting, the associate kindly pointed out that Saturday morning that my site didn’t have an ‘SSL Certificate’, something I hadn’t paid attention to out of the thousands of websites I’d visited in my lifetime.

SSL is an acronym for ‘Secure Sockets Layer’, a global standard security technology that enables encrypted communication between a web browser and a web server. My URL (Uniform Resource Locator) was an http and not an https, where the ‘s’ designates the possession of an SSL Certificate. I was informed that I would need the SSL Certificate for my site to gain a much better standing in Google’s search algorithm. Hearing this, I bought the certificate, and my site was likewise converted to an https from an http.

Restoring My Metadata

The reason all of my social media likes and shares disappeared was because of the very thing I had just paid for, my SSL Certificate which converted my site to an https instead of http. The problem is that the Facebook plugin on my site was created under the http. When I converted to the https, Facebook no longer recognized the 8,500 likes/shares from my plugin because it was now essentially a different URL. From a technical standpoint, the “Application Programming Interface” (API) between my blogging platform and the social media sites was altered.

How was I going to get my 8,500 likes and shares back? Could I get them back? Needless to say, I was very frustrated and didn’t know how I’d solve this problem. At some point I had a ‘lightbulb moment’ and decided to simply ask Google. It turned out that I wasn’t the only blogger to encounter this quagmire, and another quick Google search led me to an article with a bunch comments which ultimately led me a company called Social Warfare. Social Warfare sold their own social media plugins and had a feature through their ‘pro package’ which allowed metadata to be retrieved when bloggers like myself unknowingly converted from an http to an https designation.

By purchasing the new Social Warfare Pro Plugins package I now had a plan for restoring my metadata. After uploading the pro plan’s Zip file, I activated the function to retrieve my data and anxiously watched as the numbers gradually ticked upwards, which they did for the most part over a series of days. All throughout my site, the Facebook likes were restored, and I was at ease for a little while until the next set of challenges emerged.

Conclusions

In closing, I think it’s worth noting that while I approached starting my blog as a personal project, you can also hire someone to do it who has all the expertise, assuming you have funds to invest in those services. That may save you some of the ups and downs I described in this piece. You may save some time, but you also won’t learn those valuable lessons. It’s essentially one of life’s many tradeoffs. I think it’s also worth noting that based upon my science training, which was technology intensive and involved learning new methods and techniques on the fly, I felt equipped to build my platform myself once I learned about the available applications and tools.

I was fortunate to be able to monetize my blogging platform in 2017 and build a business around it. I’ve learned that, as a business owner, one has to problem solve and think of creative solutions when disaster strikes without warning (which is usually how it strikes). Sometimes it is creating the solution on your own, and sometimes the solution is out there, and you only need the intellectual curiosity to find it.

The other thing is that you’re forced to learn and evolve when things go wrong unexpectedly, and it did in this instance with my blogging platform. In addition to some of these technical aspects I learned about running a blogging platform in this post (an ongoing process), I also wanted to communicate these general lessons I learned about running a business, and I hope you were able to get something out of this blogger’s tale. Look for more in the future and thank you for reading this.

If you’ve found value here and think it would benefit others, please share it and/or leave a comment. To receive all the most up to date content from the Big Words Blog Site, subscribe using the subscription box in the right-hand column in this post and throughout the site. You can follow me now on YouTube on any of my Big Discussions76 channels, the Big Words Blog Site Facebook page, and Twitter at @BWArePowerful. Lastly you can follow me on Instagram at @anwaryusef76.

Ways to Enhance Your Blog for Modern Audiences

Two key focuses of my blog are Blogging and Writing, and Technology. For new bloggers, there is much more to blogging than simply having novel and exciting writing ideas. There are also strategic and technological considerations as well. Once you understand these elements, you can have a lot of fun and achieve your goals, whatever those are. The following contributed post is entitled, Ways to Enhance Your Blog for Modern Audiences.

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Things on the internet are constantly shifting and changing. So if you’re still blogging in the same ways you were 10 years ago, you’re probably not doing it right anymore. That might sound harsh but if you want to enhance your blog and reach an ever wider readership, you really do need to keep in mind the needs of modern audiences.

If you think now might be the right time for you to start making changes to your blog and how it operates, we’re here to help you with that. There are many ways in which you can make your blog more modern and meet the needs of modern audiences.

Each of the tips we’re about to discuss will help you get the fundamentals of good blogging right. And by doing that, you can ensure your blog is fit for purpose for a long time to come. So read on now to find out more about what you need to know about enhancing your blog for modern audiences.

Make Sure the Blog is Properly Categorized

First of all, you’re going to need to make sure that your blog is organized and planned out in the correct and proper way. That means putting proper categories in place and ensuring your posts are tagged correctly can be found in their corresponding category. It’s a simple thing but it matters.

It’s about making sure that people can find what they’re looking for when they visit your blog. If the task of finding content becomes difficult and frustrating for them, they’re definitely not going to stick around for long and you can be sure of that. So it’s worth taking the time to make your blog navigable.

Make Sharing Content Simple

You should also make it as easy as possible for people to share your content. If people are having difficulties finding that share button, they won’t share your post; it’s as simple as that. After all, they’re not gaining much by sharing your content.

It’s you who benefits when your readers enjoy a post and subsequently want to share it with their followers online. You should use share buttons and layouts that make it easy for them to do this. It’s not rocket science but it’s certainly something that you’ll need to go out of your way to put in place.

Use Clear CTAs

What do you want your readers to do? Calls to action are very important on most modern blogs and that’s something that can’t be denied. You should try to find a CTA that’s relevant to your blog and that your customers can get something out of.

Maybe you have an email list and you can use a CTA to prompt visitors to sign up to it. This is good for you because it affords you greater email marketing opportunities going forward, but it’s also something that can appeal to your readers too because they’ll then be able to read your regular newsletter.

Cross-Link to Other Relevant Content

As a blogger, you want to make sure that people are visiting as many pages on your blog and reading as many posts as possible each time they visit. Ideally, you don’t want them to simply read one post and then leave again. And cross-linking is the way to get this right.

So whenever you write a post, take the time to find other posts that are connected to it or relevant to the subject of the post in some way. When you do that, you can link to those posts within your current post. This will encourage clicks and encourage readers to stick around for longer.

Image Source – CC0 License

Use a Web Design Service if You Don’t Have the Necessary Skills

If you don’t have web design skills and you want to update the aesthetic of your blog, you should definitely think about using a web design service such as Caltech Web. These days, people expect a lot from a blog and they might be immediately put off if your blog looks outdated.

There’s nothing more revealing about a blog’s age and relevance than the design. If the design looks like it hasn’t been changed in 15 years or more, then you’ve got a problem. You should try to update it at the earliest opportunity.

Learn to Write More Appealing Headlines

It’s imperative to create headlines that are going to make people want to click and read your content. That doesn’t mean that you create headlines that are false and misleading because that’s not the answer to this issue either; a balance needs to be struck.

Learn to write headlines that are interesting, catchy and appealing. They should be relatively short and to the point, and you can then follow them up with longer subheadings that help to give the reader a better idea and understanding about what they can expect from the post.

Ensure There’s Great Visual Content

The right images and other kinds of visual content will be vital on your blog. If you want to make sure that people stick around and pay attention to your blog, you need to be using visual content in one way or another. This helps break up the text and keeps things interesting for the reader.

There are so many examples of visual content that can be used, from good images to video content to infographics. Make an effort to include as much of that stuff as possible in your posts if you want to keep them interesting and visually appealing.

Be Open to Collaborating with Others

These days, it’s very common for bloggers to collaborate with other bloggers and online personalities. This might not be something that you’re used to doing, but it can be a great way to keep your readership interested and to expand your reach and make your blog known to more people.

You should try to be more open to collaborating with others because there are benefits. It can be as simple as guest blogging, so if you haven’t tried that before, it’s a good place to start for you. It could do more for you than you might expect.

Image Source – CC0 License

Research What Your Audience is Interested In

These days, there are so many analytics tools out there to help you understand your audience better than ever before. You should definitely be making the most of these because you can then optimize and improve your content when you have a fuller understanding of what your audience actually wants.

Take the time to understand keywords and search terms that you feel are relevant to your blog and your target audience. You’ll be able to capture readers better and ensure relevant people have the chance to see and click your links via search engines with the right SEO approach.

Write About Those Things

Writing about the things you find out your audience is interested in is key. You need to be offering up content that’s relevant to your audience otherwise they simply won’t keep reading it. It’s as simple as that. Do your best to make sure that you don’t leave your audience behind.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t express yourself and explore new ideas through your blog content because you can. But the desire to do that also needs to be balanced with the needs and wants of your audience members.

Keep Your Content Readable

Readability is an important factor when it comes to writing blog posts. If your style or writing becomes too unwieldy and complex, people will likely turn away. Keep sentences relatively short and always read over your posts before publishing them, and do so with readability in mind.

You might even want to hire an editor or simply ask a friend to read the post over before it gets published. An outside perspective and an extra set of eyes can make a huge difference when it comes to assessing the readability of your work. That extra person might point out some things you haven’t noticed yourself.

Respond to the Responses

Interaction is key as a blogger. As your blog’s audience starts to develop and grow, you’ll find that people are interacting with you on social media before and maybe leaving comments under your blog posts. If that’s the case, you should try your best to respond.

People will really appreciate that added interaction that comes with doing so. They’ll see the human and personal side to you and as such they’ll feel much better connected to your personal brand and the blog you run. That can only be a good thing from the perspective of retaining readers.

Blogging is a challenge and there are no quick fixes or easy answers. If you want to get to where you need to be with your blog, it’ll only come about through hard work and action. Make the most of the ideas above, but don’t feel confined to these changes. Find your own way forward; it’s your blog after all.