The Secret to Easily Writing a Blog Post
I have blog post creation scheduled into my calendar. There was a time when I would sit for hours trying to create a blog post that folks wanted to read. I’ve since devised a formula to cut through the writer’s block and get straight to the heart of writing my posts.
I have a tendency of chunking my time. By using my creative sprints, I can create large chunks of content in a small period of time and remain in the flow of my creativity. In between, I leave myself notes about what I think my readers would like to know.
Start with your keywords
My formula is really quite simple. I start with the topic that I’m writing about. I decide on 3 keywords that I want to highlight in the post that I’m writing and I choose “long tail” keywords. For example, my topic today is the formula for writing blog posts, my keyword is not just blog post, but rather, “blog post creation”, “how to write a blog post” and “what to write in a blog”. Often times, I will use a keyword tool, such as Google Adwords Keyword Tool, to come up with ideas for my keywords. Type in the topic in the word or phrase area and search for relevant keywords. Use keywords that have the highest global monthly searches and the lowest competition.
Business Processes Create Business Bliss
Every business has it’s processes. Sometimes they are something as simple as a tickler file in a cabinet so that you know when to initiate a certain activity. It can be how you answer your phone, how to process a payment or refund, how you interact with your customers or even how you deliver your service. The processes can be as complicated as a fully integrated software sequence with checks, balances and validations at every step of the way. Your business processes may begin looking somewhat like the course shown in this video:
What is your business standing on? Taking the action to begin defining the processes is a great first step.
Creating Your Own ATM
When is the List Used?
The list is used each and every time you wish to communicate with more than one person that you do business with. You can also create multiple emails to be sent out to certain people on the list over the course of days, weeks, or months. You can create different series of emails to be used for different processes in your business. For instance, you might have a certain communication that happens consistently to welcome a customer, to walk a customer through a process, to announce a new product or even to say good bye to a customer.
Creating Your Own ATM
By creating regular communication with your customers, your business will always be top of mind with your customers. You can use the autoresponder to give your customers regular tips and training as well as to periodically offer them a product or service to help them to move forward in what they are doing.
FEATURED RESOURCE: Freelance Writer NZ
Today’s featured resource is Paul Callaghan of Freelance Writer NZ. Paul Callaghan is a freelance writer, content strategist and SEO and social media consultant.
He has been publishing online since 1997 and in print since the early 1980s. Most of his work has been landing pages, articles and blogs and he also write email campaigns and advise on or manage social media and content strategies. He writes fiction for fun. In 2010, he decided it was time to give up his day job as Head of English at a New Zealand high school in order to set up Freelance Writer NZ and write full time.
Read along as Paul describes what he does and why he does it:
Q. What is your passion?
Seasonalize Your Website
As we approach the coming holiday season, it seems that everything is getting decorated. Have you thought that perhaps you’d like to decorate your WordPress website a bit as well? Now you can! I found a nice little plug in that will float objects down (for snowflakes and such) or up (for balloons and such) on your website pages. The plugin is called “Snow, balloons and more” and is a no cost solution for you!
What I like about this plugin is that it shows the images you want and they show up nicely then over the next 30 seconds or so and then fade away. The images are there long enough for the “Oh cool” effect but not so long that your reader becomes irritated with the movement on the page. There are several options of what you want to fall across your page. You can choose snow, balloons, leaves, raindrops, etc. The author of the plugin also encourages sending additional graphics to be included in the plugin.
This is a nice plugin that works well, doesn’t look too cheesy and gives the reader an uplifting experience while they visit your website. Enjoy!
Planning to Succeed in 2012
Do you have the processes in place to help you to succeed in 2012? If you’re just starting, do you have your list in place? If not, what are you actively doing to create your list?The ability to use processes for the basic functionality of your business tells the tale of whether your business is a smooth running machine or if it’s an only half drafted
Create Your Own Groupon – Part 2
Don’t cut your own throat.
Sometimes it’s ok to give an incredible deal as long as you know it will bring you more business not take money out of your pocket. This is especially true if you are a small business. You can do many things as a small business to expand your business that doesn’t cause you to lose money as in the case of our example bakery.
Have everyone who responds register for an awesome give-away.
Create Your Own Groupon – Part 1
Using Groupon can be very exciting for a business. Sometimes it can be too exciting. Take for example this bakery in the UK who says they lost $19,500.00 due to having to pay for supplemental labor during the Groupon special. The bakery owner underestimated how popular the special would be and 8,500 people signed up for the offer. What was the offer? 12 cupcakes for $10 which were normally priced at $40. She lost between $2.90 and $4.70 on each dozen.
What can be learned from this? The bakery owner’s goal was more business. Obviously Groupon upheld their end of the deal there. It sounds like in this case, too much of a good thing was…well, too much!
Limit Your Exposure
Add an HTML Signature to WebMail
Have you ever wanted to add a nice HTML signature to your webmail? Most webmail clients do not allow the display of HTML without a VPS or dedicated server hosting account. There is one webmail client which will allow this feature. The webmail client that allows you to set up an HTML signature is called RoundCube. Basically, inside the signature setup area there is a check box that when checked will allow for this functionality. I have created this video to show you exactly what to do:
The code that I refer to in the video is:
