Simple things. | A Year of Discovery. I’ve got an amazing friend who has been heavy on my heart lately. We’ve been friends for nearly my entire life, and as is to be expected as we get older and build our lives nearly 1,000 miles apart, it’s been a few weeks since we’ve been able to catch each other and talk. We’ve swapped texts and other brief messages as we always do, but there’s nothing quite like hearing the sound of a friends voice as you swap stories of life and love. Today we connected — albeit briefly — and I was filled with love and happiness and reminded just how blessed that I am to have people like her in my life. Over the course of our quick conversation she said to me, “… it seemed like I’ve had a lot of different friends over the years, and sometimes felt like I had no friends at all… but you were always my friend, and I think that’s how I made it through so well.”
The crazy thing about hearing this from one of my oldest friends is that earlier this morning, I shared nearly the exact same thought. Like this: 15 things I wish my 18 year old self would have known. | A Year of Discovery. For a number of reasons, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and reflecting over the past several weeks, and this piece has been a work in progress for a seemingly endless number of days now. Without sharing too much detail or background (and without really needing to), I’ve come up with this — a short start to a list of things I wish I had known sooner in life. Some of these would have served me well in high school, others are certainly better suited for my college self. And others are still things I find myself reflecting on and reminding myself of on a daily basis. Whatever you want to call it, I’ve had an overwhelming desire to share… 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
Like this: Like Loading... Because sometimes, you can’t find the right words. | A Year of Discovery. Blogging Best Practices from Jesus and Albert Einstein. One day, Jesus was teaching and a large group of people had gathered around. It was one of the largest groups to listen to him to date, and even local religious leaders were there to hear what he had to say. Toward the end of his sermon, Jesus asked a curious question.
He said, "Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? " So Jesus continued, "If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! " The point that Jesus is making refers back to something he said earlier, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. What Jesus so eloquently demonstrated was a Rabbinical method of teaching called Kal v'homer which means, literally, "light and heavy. " It is an extremely effective technique for teaching and debate, and one that is still used today.
4 Good Places to Find Content (Where You Might Not Think to Look) How to Grow Traffic to Your Blog. Of all topics, this is one of the perennials. People want more traffic, more attention, more awareness to their blog. It’s fair. We work hard on our blogs. We want more attention and traffic. If your business depends on volume, this is especially important (for instance, if you’re using ads). Getting traffic is a tricky business, and it requires a lot of experimentation.
I’ll tell you what’s worked for me, so far, and I’ll tell you what you might try. Great Titles Help The first few seconds of someone’s attention are the hardest to pass. Graphics Don’t Hurt This entire series (and most of my blog posts) use graphics to catch your eye. Now that we’ve got a decent title, decent graphics, let’s be quick about your content.
Brevity Is the Game Keep your posts brief (unless you want tons and tons of bookmarks). Share Your Blog I’ve written about making shareability a priority. Subscriptions or No? In my case, subscriptions to my blog matter. Guest Posts Consistency Market Your Blog. A Q&A with Mr. Potter, a story commenter with attitude. August 30th, 2010 I can say with confidence that every site on the Web that enables comments has a few commenters who … let’s just say they come off as a bit cold. Statesman.com has a few of its own, including a strongly opinionated guy who speaks from behind an anonymous handle and a movie character’s mask. His name is “Roadgeek,” and his avatar is Mr. Potter, the heartless villain from “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Roadgeek has contributed nearly 2,000 comments to Statesman.com in two years.
Many are within our rules, even if a bit harsh at times, but some have gone over the line. “Oh, boy. Andrea Ball, the Statesman’s charity beat reporter, says he frequently comments on her blog, and one day a comment he left hurt her feelings, so she reached out to him to see why he is so personal in his attacks. I agreed to keep Roadgeek’s anonymity for this Q&A, though he told me he lives in Austin, and his public profile says he’s 47 years old and a male. Why the name Roadgeek, and why Mr. 7 Great Places to Register Your Blog RSS Feed. Do you have an RSS feed on your blog? My web and graphic designer, Ryan Briggs, insisted I put an RSS feed on both my news items and my blog. I didn’t think I needed one in either place but I took his advice. Or I should say, I didn’t make a noise about it and he implemented his own recommendation. I’m really glad he did. It took me awhile to figure out the power behind the feed. PerthWIND has news and opinion from all sources in the digest.
In recent months, I’ve really come to understand how to exploit my feed. Wot News www.wotnews.com.au – A news aggregator for the Australian media, when I found out about Wot News at the Media140 conference, I immediately registered both my feeds. I’m on the lookout for new places all the time. Where have you registered your RSS feed?
Subscribe here to have new posts from the Global Copywriting Blog delivered by email. *Image courtesy of Stylianos Mystakidis at www.flickr.net Connect: Authored by: Sarah Mitchell See complete profile. 10 Resources & 50 Tips for Better Blogging. Each day this week, prTini.com will feature lists of resources to help small businesses navigate social media and the changing business landscape. First up, blogging. Check back tomorrow to see what else we’ve got in store. Think your company needs a blog? Or, have you already created a blog but not seeing the benefits? Blogging isn’t as simple as “if you build it they will come.” Successful blogging requires a mix of strategy (with goals!)
Value Your Blog Real Estate — Because we couldn’t have a list of blogging resources without Chris Brogan: “Look at your blog as if it were a storefront, or an office space, or a gathering spot for conversations, or a magazine, or a part of a mall. Like what you’re reading? 15 Excellent Corporate Blogs to Learn From. Sharing. The 7 Secrets of Running a Wildly Popular Blog. 40 Elegant, Minimal And Clean WordPress Themes For Free Download. Blogging has now become a regulation for many, mostly college going folks have entered this profession that is extremely powerful today. There are many platforms that allow you to start a blog, one such good platform is WordPress, and if you are looking to minimize your setup cost for self-hosted WordPress, then you need a theme that is yet attractive and not heavy on your pocket.
To make sure your pocket doesn’t get lighter, This article is for you, where we present 75 free WordPress themes that will win over your visitors with design, simplicity, responsiveness and minimalist approach. So, if you are looking to setup your WordPress blog without paying for a designer or coder, you can easily choose one of the themes from the following collection. All the images are linked to download pages or theme information page. With large screenshots, we have made it possible for you to see how will the design look after activating the theme.
SEE ALSO – 20+ Top WordPress Photography Themes 1. 2. 4. 10 Tips for Corporate Blogging. This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. In a world where small businesses with corporate blogs receive 55 percent more traffic than small businesses that don't blog, companies should be taking note on how to improve their blogs, attract more readers and get more results.
But still, a lot of companies with corporate blogs seem to be bogged down in uniformed policies and simply aren't thinking outside the box. Afraid to take on colorful personalities or step a bit outside of their company's happenings, many corporate blogs employ an official tone announcing the play-by-play updates of company news. This is just one mistake that businesses are making in the blogging world.
There is a laundry list of issues that need to be addressed when it comes to improving corporate blogs, but here we've narrowed down the key elements that companies should focus on. 1. 2. Why You Need An Editorial Calendar For Your Blog. I have a confession to make. My name is Lisa and I used to be a really bad blogger. I used to wake up every morning in a panic about what I was going to write about. I had nightmares of going three days without a fresh post. There were anxiety tears, writers block headaches, and even worse, horribly unpolished posts being let loose into the wild.
It was a scary, scary time. But all of that is behind me now. What changed? I began thinking like a professional publisher and created an editorial calendar for the blog. Post quality will INCREASE: No more scrambling to throw a post together to avoid the dreaded blogging dry spell. Now that you know why you should do it, HOW do you go about using an editorial calendar that you’ll stick to and use to help you plan content? I’m a big fan of Google Calendar. And that’s when the fun part starts – figuring out what your blog is going to look like over the next few months!
Check a real calendar You should also be consulting your own internal calendar. How to create your own blog. People often ask me to help them create a website. In the past I’ve tended to do all the work for them but this is getting increasingly time-consuming so I’ve put together this DIY guide to: Buying your own domain nameBuilding a simple WordPress websiteSetting up email and web forwarding My objective is to let people get their own ‘proper’ email and website address without having to pay a lot of money for hosting – just the cost of registering the domain itself.
While there are free registration and hosting options, I prefer the idea that people own and manage their own domain name. So here goes… Set up a domain name I use 123-reg.co.uk to manage my domain names. Find available domain names. Set up a free WordPress blog Set up a WordPress account. Link the domain name and the website <img style="border-width: 0px;" src=" alt="image" width="477" height="165" border="0" />Bingo!
Forward emails to your regular email account. Adobe Blogger Challenges Apple's 'Great Man' -- InformationWeek. Adobe blogger John Dowdell wants Apple to start communicating openly about its actions rather than through comments relayed by unattributed sources. In an Adobe blog post on Saturday, John Dowdell, who who works in customer relations for the company, challenged Apple to be more forthright in the way it communicates.
"Get your CEO to either talk, or not," he said. "Put some skin in the game, put your rep on the line with attributed statements. The lack of confirmation, denial, or clarification from Apple PR about rumored quotes from The Great Man is telling. " Adobe and Apple have had a rocky relationship for years, owning competition between Apple and Adobe in the video software arena, among other issues. Since the launch of the iPhone, the relationship has deteriorated as it has become clear that Apple doesn't want Adobe's Flash platform on the iPhone. With Apple's iPad announcement, that conflict has become more public. Dowdell objects to this practice. More Insights.
Three Training Tips to Become a Better Blogger. How to Write an Article That Draws Thousands of New Readers | Co. 6 PR-Boosting Topics for Your Company Blog. Why do you maintain a company blog? Chances are you blog to engage your target audience and give them fresh news about your company and views. But are you getting the most out of your blog, or merely playing catch up? If your company blog is stagnating, why not blog about one of these six PR-boosting topics? 1.) Explain a Company Policy – Your company offers free shipping, a money back guarantee, or expressly refuses to sell widgets with a large carbon footprint. Why? 2.) 3.) 4.) 5.) 6.) If done right, any of these six topics are sure to engage loyal followers or even get your company a little extra attention.
This article is written by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases ( the online leader in affordable press release distribution. PR Bonus - 5 Free eBooks ($67 Value) Based on Actual Results of 15+ Years and 40,000 Press Releases Hone your PR skills with these valuable PR tools, publicity tips, and press release resources. The bundle includes: Getting Intimate On Twitter? « Jeffbullas's Blog. I have enjoyed and toyed with Twitter since I first signed up in December 2008, not expecting the journey to be so transformational. For the first few months I sent the occasional tweet and connected with a few friends and watched the stream pass by. In March 2009 I started my blog inspired by the content, search engine optimisation, social media inspiration and evangelism provided by Hubspot.
I then waded in a bit deeper and started to use tools and apps like TweetDeck and Bit.ly, Social Oomph, Hootsuite and Ping.fm to integrate with Twitter. I discovered Guy Kawasaki and Alltop. Twitter has connected and communicated my content to people from places as diverse as New York, Memphis, Miami and Lithuania. I have had face to face meetings initiated by a Tweet. If I want to get intimate, close and personal then I change channels and communicate via DM followed by an exchange of phone numbers or email adresses. Stop thinking, stop worrying, stop planning, and start writing y. Stop thinking, stop worrying, stop planning, and start writing your online legacy Recently I’ve written about maintaining your blogging focus, I frequently advocate smart time management and why you should plan things out (even though sometimes the best plan is not having one), and a couple weeks ago I passionately shared my advocacy for the blogging platform as a means to (literally) “change your life“.
Serious shit people. Through the past year (yes we’re finally only a couple days away from the big ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY here at Life Without Pants – if you can believe it’s only been a year) – I have received countless emails and have sat down with some amazing, passionate, articulate people that all present the same dilemma: “I want to start a blog but I don’t know what to write about” So, I get it – I understand that starting a blog is a daunting task and when you go and read this “big names” out there – you can’t help but think “I’ll never be where he/she is”. A blog won’t run itself. The Ten Myths of Creating Web Content - mediabistro.com: PRNewse. How to Write a Succinct and Effective “About Me” Page — Samantha. Blogging Tips: 52 Different Ideas | The Fight Against Destructiv.