LBJ's Writing

If any of these topics interest you, check out my Bright Hub articles!  I have over 130 articles on Bright Hub now mostly dealing with alternative healing and natural healing.  A few on web development and blogging and even a couple about crafts like cross stitch and knitting.  Bright Hub is a wonderful source of information and all of our articles must live up to some very high guidelines and standards.  We can’t just write anything.  The articles must be referenced appropriately to back up what it says and every article is edited for quality.  Check out my articles here.

Twitter is fast becoming a place where writers are able to get noticed by very large groups of people. If you know how to use it properly, the chances are you can improve your writing in the process. Here are ten things writers need to do that are fostered by the constraints of Twitter and other micro-blogging apps.

1. Evaluate yourself as a writer. Who are you? What topics interest you? What do you want to express – in this tweet and over time? If you haven’t asked yourself such questions starting out, you’ll come to them before long.

2. Make style reflect content. What writing style comes naturally to you – informational, snarky, amusing, inspirational? What style best suits your writing aims? Do they match?

3. Evaluate your audience/readership. While a few writers only want the joy of self-expression, most want readers too. Microblogging is a crash course in reaching out.

4. Be concise. A fundamental of good writing.

5 Weigh the words. You’re told how many characters you’ve used, when you’ve gone over the limit and by how much. In working out which words to remove/alter to make your message fit, you get a writing tutorial.

6. Get clear. No room for faff and imprecision.

7. Choose strong verbs and nouns. No room for unnecessary adverbs and adjectives either.

8. Stretch vocabulary. You’ll need to dig deep into your vocabulary to find the best, shortest word.

9. Respond appropriately to feedback. On Twitter and other microblogging sites, the feedback loop is instant and unforgiving. If you’re not making sense or adding value, you don’t get retweeted or followed.

10. Play with the words. Have fun with it. What words will inspire people to follow you, take an action you’d like them to take, click on your link, retweet your tweet? Microblogging works best for writers who treat it as a word game – like a crossword or Scrabble.

It is incredibly hard to write when you find yourself with an inability to focus on the matter at hand. This is extra important for professional writers. Building up good concentration is something that most people have to work at. Here are some concentration techniques that can help to improve your writing experience.

Remove Distractions

If something is distracting you then it doesn’t need to be in your work area. Distractions are different for everyone but once you identify something as a distraction than you should remove it immediately. Sometimes this means removing posters, changing the color of the walls, or simply cleaning up around your work area.

Take a Break

During work, concentration can often be improved by taking a break. Though this seems counterproductive there are sometimes when you are simply unable to concentrate because you are tired or have worked too long. If you feel you need breaks often then keep them extremely short, one or two minutes. Even a minute of doing something besides the task at hand is considered a break and can be one of the most effective concentration techniques.

Practice Regular Meditation

Meditation has been scientifically proven to change the way the mind works. Meditating regularly can greatly improve your ability to focus and concentrate. Since meditation is in fact itself a form of concentration it can be difficult for some. Do not worry; regular practice will soon culminate in results. Start out with ten or fifteen minutes every other day of meditative practice and slowly increase it.

Push yourself Just a Little More

One popular concentration technique that is used for sufferers of ADD is the method of pushing the attention span just a little bit each time concentration starts to slip. Concentration is in many ways a learned activity. When you feel that your mind is beginning to wander stop and make a commitment to yourself to concentrate on you set task for five more minutes before taking a break. Then make it ten, fifteen, so on until you feel your concentration is up to par.

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.

Story telling is a very effective way to get your point across. Here are some tips to help you develop a dynamic powerful story.

• Decide on the purpose for the story. What is the main point you want to make? Slant the telling of the story so that that point is clear.

• Create the backdrop. Describe the scene so that the audience can picture it in their minds. What is the time, location, weather? What is going on emotionally, physically, or spiritually?

• Introduce the main characters. Help your audience to picture the important characters through detailed descriptions. Become them; describe their relationships, quirks and personality. Add character voices or mannerisms to make them different from your own.

• Begin the Journey. What is the task, the goal, and the journey to take? What are the challenges that need to be faced?

• Meet the obstacle. To avoid boredom something must happen to get in your way and make it interesting. This could be a person, a self limiting belief, or a challenge to overcome. Exaggeration will add humour.

• Overcome the obstacles. What had to be done to overcome the obstacle? What inner resources did you have to summon? Did someone help you? A hero? Or you? Be specific. Break your solution down into a few steps in sequence. This is where the teaching happens.

• Resolve the story. How did everything turn out? Tie up the loose ends-what happened to the other people? To your hero?

• Make the point. A story needs one clear point to have more points confuses the issue. Write out and memorize the point, work on the words to make it simple and easy to remember. Find “the phrase that pays”.

• Ask the question. Make your story personal to the audience. “Has that ever happened to you?” Turn the main point into a question. Push their buttons!

• Practice, practice, practice. Tell your stories to anyone who is willing to listen. Get feedback, make adjustments, and tell it again. These steps will ignite the WOW in your audience.

Remember the best story you will ever tell is your next story!

Barbara White helps speakers develop dynamic
speaking skills
through workshops, training and coaching. For more articles on speaking skills
visit
http://www.livingbeyondbetter.com and

http://www.articlesbeyondbetter.com

SEO writing is very different from content writing, article writing, story writing and news writing. When I first realized my innate talent for writing stuff and putting thoughts into words, I was still reading Mills and Boons, and it was during this time that my romance storybooks were confiscated by my classroom teacher because I was reading in class.

Writing is a very personal thing, I discovered. Some people have the talent for writing creative stuff. Some people have the talent for writing ads. Some write excellent factual stuff. Well, I fall into the factual stuff category. The boring-writing-technical-mumbo-jumbo writing stuff. How I fit into this category, I don’t know.

Well, SEO article writing is very much like that. First, you decide what topic or keyword that you want. For instance, you’re selling decorative lamps, right? in the SEO article writing process, list down ‘decorative’ and ‘lamps’. Then think about other words that relates to ‘decorative’ and ‘lamps’…words that people use all the time to describe them. This is a very important part of SEO article writing because these are common words that your potential site visitors will use to find you.

How about ‘light’, ‘bright’, ‘pretty’, ‘lighting’?

Ok, now your SEO article writing keywords are:- decorative, lamps, light, bright, pretty and lighting, right? So, on to the SEO article writing process. First you write everything that you need to write down first. Beef up the article. As a general rule of thumb, SEO articles should be no less than 300 words and no more than 500 words. Any more than that, you’re wasting your writing a novel for your SEO article. Read through the SEO article now and replace words and reword sentences to fit in those keywords. Yes, you’ll have to restructure some the SEO keywords here and there, but do it anyway.

Make sure the sentences make sense, ok? Because although the search engines won’t know bad grammar from good grammar, your site visitors will. And most of them, site visitors who visit your website based on those SEO keywords DO mind the bad grammar. And once you turn them away, it’s almost impossible to bring them back!

The final step to SEO article writing is…..proofread your SEO article and make sure they flow. The problem with SEO writing is that your thoughts might come in buckets….a splash here and a splash there. So, during the SEO article proofreading process, you’ll have to make sure one paragraph flows on to the next.

Good luck!

You heard writing articles is a great way to drive traffic to your site. So you have written several articles and posted them to dozens of article sites. Then you sit back and wait for the avalanche of traffic. And wait. Nothing is happening. What’s the deal?

The deal is depending on where your article gets republished your links may not be “live”. Writing articles and posting them is a great way to drive traffic to your site. Search engines love it and if done correctly it will help drive new visitors to your site and get you listed higher in the search engines. The problem comes when article writers and authors and publishers don’t all follow the same rules. The main problems are:

1. Original article not formatted correctly
2. Article copied and pasted into new webpage without links
3. New publisher doesn’t make links live

Lets start with #1 “Original article not formatted correctly”. Not all article sites are the same. On some sites you can simply put in plain text and it will format it correctly, paragraphs will be correct and it will recognize http://www.yoursite.com as a live link. Some sites you may need to format it all in html. Sometimes the easiest way to do that is type your article in a web design program such as “Dreamweaver” and then view the source and copy and paste the code. If you don’t have access to such a program then you should learn a few basic html tags:

View the source of this page to see the html tags.

This is a “break” tag, The break tag is used when you want to end a line, but don’t want to start a new paragraph. The break tag forces a line break wherever you place it, a very common tag and one that is recognized by most all article sites.

Bold anything you want in bold should go between these tags

italic anything you want in italic should go between these tags

http://www.yoursite.com–some sites will recognize this as a live link. Many will not! This is where you are going to lose your links! If your article is copied and pasted into another web page or ezine your link will not be clickable. Someone who really wants to go to your webpage can copy and paste it into their browser but it is alot easier if someone can just click on it! If it is not a clickable live link search engines will not follow it not matter how many times it is republished. Imangine your article being reprinted 1000 times, a potential of 1000 back links to your site but without it being a clickable link you won’t reap the benefits of those 1000 links. Your links to your sites should always be formatted this way:

YourWebSite

If you follow the correct html formating for links your website links will always be clickable. To learn more about html tags search google for “html tags”

2. Article copied and pasted into new webpage without links. Your article may be correctly formatted on the article site you posted to but when it is copied and pasted into a new webpage or ezine it may lose some of it’s formatting. Some of the better sites have a choice of “ezine ready”, this will display your article in the correct html formatting which makes it easier to copy and paste.

3. New publisher doesn’t make links live. All article sites have a policy that clearly states “you are free to republish the article as long as the links and author bio stays with the article” Some don’t realize your links are no longer live or don’t know to make them live. Others leave them off all together or don’t make them live on purpose. Not much you can do except write to the website owner and request they make them live. Some will comply, some won’t. Chalk it up to the cost of doing business. For everysite that doesn’t make your links live, 10 will.

Keep publishing! Writing articles and posting them across the internet is still a great way to drive traffic to your site. Content is king and website owners, and ezine publishers are hungry for fresh new original content.

This article is free for republishing TJ Smith is the creative force behind several websites including
Article Boy article submission site and content archive and
The Blogger Nation Blog Directory

Assuming you’ve read my rants on articles, you may want a checklist of items to consider for future articles. I am at your service.

Checklist

This checklist is going to be short and to the point. Remember, I’m lazy. Go back and read the original article if you need more information.

1. Headlines – Keyword phrases should ALWAYS be the first words. No exceptions.

2. First Paragraph – No more than 38 words. Two to three short sentences with the keywords from your headline included near the beginning.

3. No one sentence paragraphs.

4. Cut up long sentences into shorter ones. If a sentence is over two lines, it can be cut down.

5. Linking In Article – Don’t. Just do it in the byline.

6. Body Headlines – Break up the article with headlines in the body. Just keep them short and capitalize the first letter of each word.

7. Last Paragraph – Sum up the point of your article. Don’t include links or a plea to go to your site. Use the byline for your begging. I do.

8. Bylines – Keep them under four lines. Try to include the keyword phrases you are using on your site. If you are linking to an internal page of the site, use the keywords on that page, not your home page.

Eight stinking guidelines. Is that too much to ask? I think not! Besides, I’ve already had laser surgery and can’t afford a second session of smelling my eyeballs smoke. Please follow them. If you do, I will publish your articles and so will others.

Despite the tone of these articles, I am trying to help you get more bang for your buck with your articles. Okay, I am also trying to make my life easier, but there isn’t any reason why we can’t both benefit. If you want to get published more often, follow these guidelines. Publishers, webmasters and editors will love you.

The again, I could be wrong.

Okay. Occasionally you can use one-sentence paragraphs.

Just not very often.

The key to selling reprints to parenting publications is the creation of dynamite ideas followed through with professional writing. Here, I’m focusing only on finding those lucrative topics.

Most topics in regional parenting publications are straightforward: finance, parenting tips, health, sports, and education. The trick is to twist them in an unusual way.

1. If you’re a parent, what do you wish you knew about a topic? Write down questions that you have as you go through the day. When I was driving the other day, I complained to myself about bad teenage drivers. Then I wondered, “What can parents do to encourage good driving?” If you already know the answer to the question, it won’t make a good article unless you’re an expert on the subject.
2. Take a generic topic and make it seasonal. Choose a season about four months away, because the lead-time for parenting publications is 2 to 6 months. Four months from now is April. What happens in April (or would be published in April) that I can combine with a topic like health? In April, parenting publications start printing their summer guides to camps. What can parents do to make sure their children stay healthy at camp? What are the traits of a safe camp? Change to camping plus another topic like education or finance to create unique articles.
3. Who do you know who has an unusual or remarkable story – something that affected children? What did the parents learn? Write an article using the anecdote as an introduction to the information you want to give. A great anecdote can sell a story.
4. Visit online parenting forums and read the questions people ask. Use some of these as a basis for your article ideas.
5. When you research a piece and talk to experts, look for what you don’t know. “Joe says insurance is important for families,” won’t make an article interesting. Too many people know that insurance is important. But a quote like, “Joe says disability insurance is the most neglected area of insurance, but it protects young families from the biggest threat to their security,” will make parents keep reading.

If you give editors timely articles that readers will want to read, you’ll sell your work over and over again.

Websites, Bloggers, Ezine Publishers all need content. All business need exposure and advertising. Writing artilcles to share your expertise with others can benefit in a number of ways even if you offer your articles freely.

1. Brand Yourself. You will brand your website, business and yourself . Make sure you include your name, business name, credentials, web site address and e-mail address in your resource box.

2. Gain credibility. You will become know as an expert on the topics you write about. Get an edge on your competion with a boost in credibilty.

3. Free advertising. This will broaden your advertising efforts in addition to yur normal advertising budget.

4. Get Published All Over The Web. Multiple visiting publishers to need free content for their websites, ezines, blogs and more.

5. Get Published in Offline Content. Some publishers may put your content in ebooks and so your advertising can multiply further.

6. Gain Trust. If when people read your article they like it, they will be more likely to buy your product or service increasing your profits.

7. Highlighted Exposure. A publisher may choose to place your article on their homepage or high traffic blog. Placement can increase credibility as well as exposure.

8. Long Term Advertising. Your article may end up in archives to ezine publications. Some subcribers like to read back issues before subscribing.

9. Multiply Income. You may get extra income from people who want to hire you to write other articles, books or even speak at seminars. This can be a great way to multiply your income.

10. Link Popularity! When publishers begin placing your article along with resource box on their websites you will start to raise your search engine rankings. The more links back to you site the more popular you are with the search engines. Start gaining all sorts of popularity today!