LBJ's Writing

To help you on this, here are three tips to help you develop you own writing style, so that you don’t have to pull your hair too often. Ha ha!

KNOW.

Writing is not just about relaying what other people have already said or written about – that is plagiarism. Instead, writing is about saying something original, something that is a product of the writer‘s own mind. For this to be possible, it is important that the writer has, at the least, some working knowledge on what he is going to write about. It is at those times when the writer feels that he knows so much about the topic that suddenly, a very smart idea comes along.

FEEL.

Objectivity is a vital part of writing. Even those opinion articles that we get to read in a newspaper should still exhibit a certain form of objectivity, as any plausible argument should always be hinged on a well-established fact. However, a lot of writers tend to write in a way that is devoid of emotion or anything that resembles humanity.

To be able to write effectively, a writer must be comfortable with the way he writes. Since we are all human beings, we cannot help but feel emotions, especially when we write about something that we are quite passionate about. Hence, letting an emotion or two flow into your text is not necessarily a bad thing. Instead, it can actually be the perfect way for you to be able to connect with your audience.

BE.

Oftentimes, we become so preoccupied with how the prospective audience will receive our work, how they would react. This is a legitimate concern, especially for those whose continuity of work relies heavily on their article’s marketability. However, we must remember that we were allowed to write because we can write.

By saying that we can write, it means that we have the capacity to create material that is not like everybody else. Be yourself, then write. You need not be someone else.

After all, it is every person’s uniqueness that makes this world a less boring place.

In the words of singer Beyonce, if you like it, put a ring on it. When it comes to writing a book, put pen to paper.

I wrote my first book in 30 days and no, I did not attend a workshop and or training to learn how to write my book. What I did do was use two model books to provide a foundation for structure purposes and as a road map for book development.

The bottom line is this, writers write and no matter how much technology there is out there, in the end one has to put pen to paper if they want to write and finish their first and or next book.

I highly recommend you decided on what type of book you want to write, will it be fiction, non-fiction and or a novel? The choice is yours and the primary thing you must do is clear your head of any doubts, because they do not help you write and ultimately publish your book.

You must be determined, set a schedule for writing and carve out quiet time for writing. Avoid any and all distractions as best you can and I am confident you will be able to write a book in a month, like I did. I wrote Living on Higher Ground: How to live with passion, motivation and joy in 30 days.

The bottom line is, I had said on more than one occasion that I was going to write a book. I removed all of the excuses I placed before me and wrote a writing schedule, reviewed my book models and started writing. The approach I took and recommend is to write one chapter per day.

My book has 13 chapters and on the days I did not feel up to writing, I would proof read, correct typos and review my progress. After a short break I would start writing again and before long, the first draft of my book was written.

After finishing the first draft of my book, I hired a book cover designer, interior designer, copy expert and book printing expert. All in all, if you look at my book you would automatically think a major publishing house did the work because my book looks great.

The look and feel of Living on Higher Ground is an extension of my brand and thus I wanted it to look professional and position me to become an author of several books over the course of several years. Guess what, I want you to become an author and do what I do, here is to your success as an author.

The main task of a newsletter publisher is to select and package quality content of direct, practical relevance to its specific readership audience.

This might sound quick and easy, but it is not.

Publishing a quality newsletter is more than just cutting and pasting quality content into your newsletter. A quality newsletter is more than just the sum of its parts. The more the different sections in a newsletter support each other, the more benefits subscribers can get from it.

A quality newsletter makes sense out of the Internet chaos. A good newsletter editor understands the Internet big picture and is able to pick out relevant information which is packaged into one newsletter issue in a way that makes sense for its readers.

A poor quality newsletter is easily produced in less than 15 minutes of cutting and pasting quality content text. One issue of a good quality newsletter takes one day to produce – it might also select from the same content pool as the poor quality newsletter – but it takes more time in selecting the right combination of available free content for each issue.

Extremely high quality content, randomly aggregated into a newsletter makes a poor quality newsletter. Somewhat lower quality content, expertly packaged and organized make a high quality newsletter. Your editorial note (that introduces each newsletter issue), shows how much understanding and effort you put into this critically important step.

Publishing a quality newsletter is a creative process. It does not involve following three easy steps. Good editors will find this article packed with value, others will consider this article as utterly useless.

Quality newsletters gets edited by the most senior, experienced people in an organization, not on a rotational basis by anyone with some free time on their hands.

The following are some concepts that help a good newsletter editor in his or her task:

Integration: combine the value content of several experts in their fields into one newsletter issue. Each of these experts can only contribute expertise on their topics. However, when these standalone expert contributions are combined into one newsletter issue, all their contributions grow in value because it is part of a larger solution. Your newsletter subscribers can possibly get all your newsletter content easily elsewhere, but come to you because of the way you package and present it to them.

Position: by publishing a newsletter, you position yourself as the central point where they go to get quality Internet content, nicely packaged to address their exact needs.

Team: your newsletter will be more valuable if its content is produced by a team of people. This team of people consists of: guest article authors, contributors of tips, subscribers that provide questions and software products authors that ask you to review their software.

Benefits: your newsletter is only about providing benefits to its subscribers. The more value content you have the more benefits your subscribers get from you. Value content like: feature articles, guest articles, questions and answers, link to value resources, product reviews, your editorial comments, tips.

To summarize: you, as newsletter editor and publisher, use your newsletter to combine the content of your team of contributors into a logically-arranged, benefit-rich newsletter for your subscribers.

Your newsletter is benefit-rich when it is packed with useful, practical content that is directly relevant to the needs of your readers.

A newsletter is not benefit-rich only if it contains detailed, step-by-step articles.

A newsletter that helps its readers understand the bigger-picture meanings and implications of the Internet on a more philosophical level also has benefits. Such a newsletter should focus on educating its readership on how to apply their insight practically and on a daily basis to their business.

A newsletter that focus exclusively on step-by-step articles makes its readers work harder.

A newsletter that focus exclusively on philosophical, Internet bigger-picture visions make its readers think harder.

In my opinion, a combination of these approaches is best. Such a combination will make your readers work hard – smarter.

There are two main (opposite) approaches to packaging a quality content newsletter:

Your write all the content yourself … very time-consuming.

You select and package content created by others … the more practical and realistic approach.

Most editors choose a middle road where they contribute some original content and get the remainder of their content from other contributors.

If a good newsletter editor’s main task is packaging value content, a good newsletter subscriber’s task is to read, understand and ACT based on the insight the gain from this content. A good newsletter is your personalized to-do list for the week.

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If you earn income as a writer, or use writing as a marketing tool, you know how difficult it can be at times to write. I started writing for my website and newsletter a few years ago. Sometimes it would be two or three weeks between articles. Sometimes writing would be torture. Then one day I caught the writing bug.

Now I write two or three articles each day. I don’t have to struggle for topic ideas. I have thousands of good ideas to choose from. Instead, now I struggle to limit the scope of areas that I will write about. What happened to cause this change? I caught the writing bug.

The writing bug is contagious, and by reading this article, you too will catch the writing bug!

How to Choose a Topic

The most difficult part of the writing process is choosing a good topic. A good topic is one that other people want to read about and one that is interesting enough for you to write about. Here’s how to create a notebook full of great topic ideas.

- Use a three-ring notebook as an idea file.

Your idea notebook should have two parts. The first part is sheets where you jot down ideas whenever they pop into your head. The second part is tabbed dividers where you keep reference material and partially written articles.

Where do ideas come from? Everywhere! Ideas can come from TV news or any TV show. They can come from a book, newspaper, or magazine. They can come from the web. Ideas can come from a conversation with a friend. All of these sources are sending information and ideas to you.

After you learn how to catch ideas, your idea notebook will be bulging with great ideas and research information for article and book topics. You don’t need to plagerize or copy other peoples’ work. Your article should be nothing like the material that you get an idea from because you have the “writer’s attitude”. Below are some thoughts from a person with the writer’s attitude.

• I can explain the topic better.
• I know more about the topic.
• I disagree with this source.
• I can approach that topic from another angle.
• I can elaborate more on that topic.
• I can write a more concise article.
• I can break the information up into more readable short articles.
• I can write a more comprehensive article.
• I can write a more up-to-date article.
• I can rewrite that topic and include examples.

When an idea hits you, write it down in the first part of your idea notebook. If the idea comes from an article, tear the article out, punch holes in it, and save it behind a tab in the second part of your idea notebook.

Now when you need an idea, just flip through your idea notebook. Eventually your idea notebook will contain thousands of great ideas to choose from.

- One surprising source of topic ideas is material that you wrote previously. You can apply the writer’s attitude to your own articles.

How to Write the Article

The second most difficult part of the writing process is actually writing the article.

First, make an outline. If you’re going to write the entire article in one sitting, the outline doesn’t have to be in writing, you can keep it in your head. If you’re writing a large article or a book, create a written outline.

- Sometimes when an idea pops into my head, I can visualize the final article. I want to get it on paper before the vision goes away, so I drop what I’m doing and write the article immediately. This is when writing comes extremely easy. I call this “flow”.

Divide large projects into parts and write one part at a time. Don’t publish the first part of the article until you have completed all the parts, or at least several of the parts. When working on later parts of a multi-part article, you may find it necessary to make some changes to earlier parts.

Your first draft doesn’t have to be comprehensive. Just get the main ideas down. You can go back and flesh it out later.

Your first draft doesn’t have to have have correct spelling and grammar. Just get words on paper (or on disk). You can go back and correct the spelling and grammar later. The first draft may not be perfect, but having an imperfect first draft is a whole lot better than having a perfect nothing.

Go back later and revise your first draft. Make sure it contains all the information and ideas you wanted to put in the article. But keep in mind that almost any topic is infinite. You have to limit the scope of your article based upon the purpose of the article and the practicality of doing the research required for a more comprehensive article.

I feel it’s very important to let someone else read your article. You may have written something in a confusing way or a way that requires the reader to have some knowledge or experience they can’t be expected to have.

- If your article is for an audience that is expected to already have some understanding of the subject, limit explanations of the basics. You have to limit explanations at some point or the article will be too long and too boring to your target audience.

Go back and correct the spelling and grammar but don’t try for perfection. I see spelling and grammar errors in magazines, newspapers, and on TV all the time. If all writers waited until the spelling and grammar was perfect before releasing their work, we wouldn’t have anything to read.

I feel it’s important to set your article aside until the next day and then read it again. But don’t take editing to an extreme. No matter how many times you re-read your article, you can always find something to change. Don’t try for perfection. Your goal is to create an article that communicates the information and ideas that you intended. Recognize when the article is good enough and meets the requirements.

If you are not an expert writer, keep learning by studying a page or two each day of a grammar book such as Painless Grammar by Rebecca Elliot

With your idea notebook, the writer’s attitude and the ability to recognize when an article is good enough, you have the tools to be a productive writer. Have You caught the writing bug?

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Wisdom can be found in the most unexpected places. Today, wisdom bubbled up from a pineapple under the sea. I suddenly realized that everything you’d want to know about writing articles for your website can be taught by SpongeBob SquarePants and his friends.

When you write for your newsletter, blog, or website, which character are you most like?

Squidward: Squidward is B-O-R-I-N-G. When writing articles, are you a Squidward? Do you just get the words down on paper or are you finding a fun twist to entertain your audience and keep them coming back for more? Take time to make your articles stand out from the thousands of other dull articles out there by including personal stories or just having fun while writing. For instance, this article could be entitled “How to Write a Good Article”, but would it stand out from the hundreds of other articles about article writing? Probably not.

Mr. Krabs: This crustacean is focused on one thing and one thing only, making more and more and more money. Only a cartoon could actually have dollar signs drawn in his eyes. He thinks of no one, only how he can benefit. Are your articles focused on you or on the reader? Are you providing information or do you have blinders on, thinking only about how you can make money from the article you are writing? If your article reads like an ad or is self-serving or full of affiliate links, you might write like Mr. Krabs.

Patrick: SpongeBob’s best friend, the starfish, has a good heart, but isn’t the brightest creature in the sea. Do your articles make you sound like an expert? Are you providing valuable content or just pushing out sloppy articles as fast as you can? Always double check for typos and grammatical errors. If you’re challenged by spelling and grammar, hire a Virtual Assistant or Copywriter to proofread and submit your article for you. Or slow down, set your article aside for a day and then reread it before you click the “submit” button.

Plankton: The smallest creature in the sea is also the sneakiest. He’ll do anything and hurt anyone to steal someone else’s work (the Krabby Pattie secret formula). Write your own material. Don’t be Plankton. Don’t copy and paste someone else’s work, edit it, and try to pass it off as your own. You will be caught, and it just isn’t worth it. Take the same amount of effort and work on your own thoughts and ideas. Plankton never gets away with his schemes, either. He’s on Plan “Z” and is still pathetically failing at his attempts to steal the secret formula.

SpongeBob: This little guy always tries to do the right thing, and is a hard worker. He may not always end up getting the results he hoped for, but he bounces back and tackles his work with a renewed vigor. SpongeBob works very hard, he’s a good friend, he always thinks of others, and tries to have fun no matter what he is faced with. Hardworking, friendly SpongeBob is the guy to be when writing articles.

Although this is a silly lesson in article writing, I hope you’ll remember the important messages our underwater friends have taught us.

1. Be entertaining. Not boring.

2. Write articles to help others, not with dollar signs in your eyes.

3. Proofread your articles carefully, and provide valuable information.

4. Write your own material. Don’t copy others.

5. Be a SpongeBob! Hard work and persistence pay off.

Before you know it, you’ll develop a following for having informative and entertaining articles and you’ll be King or Queen of the sea.

Successful brands are known and trusted brands. Without mentioning too many names and making this into a ‘product placement’ fest – think of some BIG brand names, from worldwide to the local electrical store chain. All of these brands have one thing in common; almost all of their marketing budget is spent on brand building and recognition. The brand is everything, if you’ve done the job right, people will not only think of your brand first but they will trust that you will produce what they expect of that brand. There’s the big word: TRUST. Successful brands are built on trust; if people know and trust your brand then the product is an easy sell.

This can apply to you too. Think about this as an analogy. You like someone, so much that you’d like to start a relationship with them. So you dress nicely, smile your biggest smile, act naturally, buy them flowers, take them to dinner, you’re courteous and accommodating. You’re actually building the brand of YOU with that person because they get to like you and then trust you because you’ve delivered on all the subliminal promises you’ve made. A relationship begins and will continue as long as you keep providing on what you (your brand) stands for. If you step out of line then the trust is broken and that person you so loved is going to want to shop somewhere else.

When you’re going into business for yourself, you are also building a brand that you want people to trust as something useful that provides value to them. When you’re talking about a business that IS you, like network marketing, massage therapist, personal coach, marriage celebrant…the list goes on, then YOU are the actual brand that you require people to have that trust in. Without it you’re going to have to work really hard, or have an amazingly good service in order for people to buy into it. It’s not impossible to do it that way but building brand recognition and trust is a much more effective path.

How do you do that? Well this is one way; I’m writing articles to show the marketplace that I know what I’m talking about (hopefully) and that I can provide value through the words I write. I am also very active in social media, Twitter, Facebook and others. Quite often I’ll get an inquiry about my business and the email immediately after that is a friend or follow request through a social media platform. People want to know who I am, if I’m real, have a family, have good values and live the life I say I do. Through everything I do I am building the brand of ME. It’s not contrived or planned, it’s just me living my life and talking about things that I’m passionate about. All this gets my name out there, shows people who I am and hopefully allows them to trust me enough to want to find out more about what I do.

I’m a pretty trustworthy guy so it’s not a hard thing to accomplish (LOL).

So, who are you? What are you trying to let people know about? How good is YOUR brand? Are you trying on one hand to build a business but then being portrayed (by yourself) as something else out there on the internet? One facet of business success is always going to be integrity; do you have integrity between what you’re promoting and who you really are? If not it’s going to be pretty easy for people to see through that. Know who you are and let others know that too. Build the brand of you as if it’s a million dollar enterprise because in fact it really does have the potential to be.

It doesn’t have to be New Year‘s Eve to finally decide you want to set some goals. In fact, each day we set goals for ourselves. Whether they are small goals, like to meet for lunch with Sally, or large goals like deciding to lose 15 pounds in the next three months. The problem with our goals is that about 95% of people who set them fail to achieve them. Now it’s time to explain why.

What people don’t realize about goals is that you have to do more than just think them. First thing you should do, is write them down. Don’t write them on a piece of paper you won’t see 3 days from now, write them somewhere you will see each and every day.

Next, you need to decide what steps are going to help you achieve your goals. For example, if you want to find a new job, you may have to start by creating a new resume. Next, you might want to start searching online for job postings. And third, you may want to take a day to walk around to companies you are interested in and drop off your resumes. Writing out clear steps helps you picture the process to success. Also, it allows you to track where you are in your goal, so while you see progress, you can start to reward yourself.

It is important to have a visual map laid out in front of you. Where people fail at goal setting is that they don’t put everything on paper. That means tracking what goes right and even what goes wrong. For me, I do this with a success journal. I start by writing down my goals and what I need to do to accomplish them. Each night, I reflect on what I did that moved me forward (or what I didn’t – it’s okay to recognize a set back as long as I carry on). From there, I do an overall weekly reflection and a monthly one. I ask myself key questions that allow me to truly analyze how I have made progress. The truth is, without my success journal, I’d get lost in the commotion of my daily life, and my goals would just become another dream I never seemed to accomplish.

It doesn’t matter if your goal is big or small – they key to success is writing your goals down and making reflections. When you start to see progress with you efforts, it’s most important that you reward yourself for all of your efforts. And, if you find it hard keeping yourself on track, go ahead and grab yourself a success journal – they’re completely worth it.

Recently, on the suggestion of my wife and a friend of hers I was ‘dragged along’ to a Michael Buble concert.

Well, actually… I bought the tickets. But only because I love my wife so much – and knew she’d be thrilled.

Anyway, the concert was scheduled for a Saturday night on the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House. But it was as windy as Wellington that night and so the event got cancelled.

So after dinner we left and scheduled to come back the next night to see if we had better luck.

Thankfully, we did.

I say thankfully because I learnt a few lessons that night. The master of jazz is not only a great musician… he’s also an incredible communicator, and has a solid understanding of human psychology. (Could this be one of the reasons he’s achieved the heights of success?)

Here’s what he did.

1. He opened up the concert by addressing the guys. And saying… “Men. I bet when you found out the concert was cancelled last night, you breathed a sigh of relief and thought… thank god. After all, when you see me on my album, you probably think ‘What a smuck.’ I know I would!

What’s the psychology behind this? Firstly, he went straight for the jugular as to what people were thinking. He knows his target audience is female (they go wild over him) and he knows the guys are coming along for the ride.

The majority of guys aren’t that into him. And in fact, many of us men are probably jealous he gets so much damned attention from the ladies.

He also realises some people are a tad upset over the fact the concert was cancelled.

In short… he brought the objections up to the surface and handled them immediately.

And you need to do the same in your ads and sales letters.

Here’s an example of something I wrote in a sales letter to immediately answer people’s objections about the property market (which at the time was seen as something to keep away from).

Notice how everywhere you turn today… the media keeps hollering at you:

“The property bubble is over”
“You can’t make money from property anymore”
“Interest rates are going to go through the roof”

Give up. Don’t invest now. Hold off… we keep being told. Yet in some areas the prices continue to rise. Like in… (then I listed areas where property has risen)

And here’s another way of dealing with people’s objections upfront…

“I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m a stark, raving lunatic when I say…. (whatever claim you are making).

Well, before you have me strapped into a straight jacket and dragged to the nearest funny farm, think about this…

So take a lesson from the king of Jazz… and think about what’s going on in the back of people’s mind when they read you ad or sales letter. Then answer that objection upfront.

If you’re a mechanic… they’re probably worried you’re going to rip them off and overcharge them.

If you’re a pest controller, they’re probably wondering if you’re environmentally friendly. And if the toxins will damage their pets and plants.

Can you see how powerful this principle is? Can you see at one of the reasons Michel Buble has risen to the top…when someone of equal musical skill would have remained a brilliant but virtually unknown performer?

I don’t know about you, but my experience tells me that our ability to get our message across has more to do with creating wealth and success than anything else – no matter what industry you’re in.

What do you think?

“But I’ve only been on the Internet 3 months! How can I write an article?” That was my reaction back in 1999 when I began my online career and heard that writing articles was the key to bringing targeted visitors to my website.

But I went ahead anyway and wrote my first article. I soon discovered that writing articles is the quickest way to build your reputation as an expert in the world of online marketing.

So don’t wait for someone else’s permission – start writing articles and grab your space in the limelight.

Here are some other mental blocks and how to deal with them:

• “I don’t where to start”. Start anywhere – it doesn’t matter where. Putting words on paper is like planting a seed in your subconscious. Your mind will go to work on it while you’re busy doing other things: while you’re driving, while you’re sleeping, while you’re doing the dishes. Suddenly, out of nowhere, will come the next idea. That’s the power of the subconscious and the power of putting words on paper.
• “I don’t know how to finish”. Again, it doesn’t matter. Just write and the conclusion will come to you of it’s own accord.
• “It’s just an idea”. This is another mental trap – the fear of turning ideas into reality. Look around you and realize that every skyscraper, every ocean-going liner, and every symphony was once “just an idea”.
• “I’ll do it tomorrow”. Tomorrow never arrives. Give yourself a deadline. Imagine that your article must be finished within the next 12 hours – you’ll be surprised how much you get done!
• “My article will be a flop”. This is a big one – fear of failure. It’s much safer to never try. But remember, with every article you write you are one step closer to developing your own unique style, your “voice”. In that sense, you can never fail.
• “I can’t get it right”. Some times you simply can’t find the right words. Turn off your inner critic and just write. When you have something down on paper, you have something to work with. But you can’t work with something that remains an idea in your head.
• “I can’t sort out my ideas”. The easiest way to organize your article ideas is to use a technique that mirrors the way the mind works. This technique is called Mind Mapping. We are taught in school to use lists to organize our ideas. But lists are linear and the mind doesn’t think in a linear fashion. You can find out more about Mind Mapping at: http://www.mind-map.com/