A guest post by Larry Brooks of Storyfix.com. Image by [phil h]

We are all storytellers. Whether we’re writing a blog, an ebook, a cheesy novel or a killer screenplay, even an essay, article or report.

Without some semblance of a story at the heart of it all, what’s left is a masturbatory exercise in rhetoric. And if there’s one thing we know about masturbation, it’s that we’re alone.

Thing is, alone doesn’t get us paid. Writing for money is a team sport that demands we pass the ball to a publisher and then a reader somewhere down the road.

The differences in various forms of writing reduce to executional semantics. Which means, the essence of what makes us better writers remains eternal and therefore something we can practice and eventually master, no matter what it is we write.

It Is Written

Behind the conventional wisdom, beneath the tips and techniques, before the fundamentals and the principles, and above everything else, there are certain foundational truths about what we do and how we do it.

This is a closer look at the latter.

These universal truths apply to pretty much any profession, by the way. But for some reason there are writers, especially newer writers, who tend to think such foundational truths either don’t exist or do not apply to them.

If that’s you, hear this clearly: that is the worst writing advice, ever.

The best writing advice – ever – comes from a core, fundamental perspective. Embrace these five gifts of truth and your writing will quickly and forever escalate to the next level.

1. Design your writing like an engineer.

The most pervasive and destructive illusion floating around the writing universe is that you can write something good without order and structure.

Even if you just wing it, if you like to make it up as you go, you’ll end up rewriting and revising until an ordered structure emerges and becomes the skeleton of a finished piece.

Some writers – often the most experienced and successful, so pay attention – give significant creative mindshare to the structure of a story before they write it. They build on a structure, rather than digging one out from the chaos of a convoluted draft.

The worst thing that can happen is that you don’t even realize that it’s convoluted. But you see, a story engineer would.

And it’s not just any ol’ skeleton, either. Structure isn’t something you make up in the moment, in mid-stride as you write. Story structure in any genre and in any deliverable format is based on accepted principles and models.

You violate them, or write in ignorance of them, at your own storytelling peril.

Without a narrative structure in place, even the most elegant and powerful prose plops to the ground in a heap of moist, quivering helplessness.

Order and structure is always – whether planned or retrofitted – a function of design. And design, by definition, is a practice based on certain physics, principles and those proven laws and models.

Learn them, then build your writing upon their proven strengths, and your story will be set free to elevate itself to art.

2. Polish your writing like an obsessive poet.

Writing is very much like singing, playing an instrument or excelling at athletics. The more you do it, the more evolved and polished your sensibilities become, until finally you can instinctively add subtlety and nuance to your performance.

Which, by the way, is what separates the published from the non-published.

Such deft touches usually look easier that they really are when observed from the cheap seats. Success in all of these pursuits is the product of craft, and craft is the product of evolved instincts colliding with proven principles.

The inherent risk in polishing your work is to overwrite, to imbue your narrative voice with a certain hue of purple. Polishing is as much the rendering of complex words into simpler terms as it is de-cluttering the space between your periods, while leaving just a little stylistic juice to spice things up.

Sooner or later your writing will settle into a voice that is uniquely yours. Once there, polishing your work becomes the literary equivalent of clearing your throat.

Sometimes the best writers are simply the best throat clearers.

3. Edit your writing like an anal retentive executioner with a hip edge.

Editing is easily confused with polishing. It can mean two things – copy editing (which is, in fact, the cleaning up and correction of your prose, whereas polishing is more a style and voice issue), and story editing, which is the trimming of expositional fat and the empowerment of narrative moments.

You need both. And you need some combination of two things to do it right: time, and the eyes of a stranger.

What you don’t need is someone trying to turn your work into the vanilla sensibilities of your old high school English teacher. Deliberate, effective voice trumps English 101 any day, provided your readers agree. (Example: earlier I used the word “executional.” Look it up, there is no such word. Each time I type it I see that pesky red underlining. But it’s the right word, the intended word, I’m confident you get it, and my old English teacher can bite me.)

One of the best strategies to bring out the best in your work is to set it aside for a while before turning a fierce editor’s eye back on it. And if you can’t be that set of eyes with objective clarity, consider outsourcing the task to someone who is as hip within your target niche as you are.

In my case, my wife. If it’s purple or if it’s bullshit, I’ll hear about it.

Turning in well-edited – in this case synonymous with appropriately edited – work is the great secret of published authors.

4. Advocate for your work like someone possessed.

Know that the manuscript next to yours on an editor’s desk, or the blog competing for the attention of your reader, is likely every bit as good as your stuff.

Maybe not – making sure that doesn’t happen is the goal here – but sooner or later that will certainly be the case.

Which means, you’ll win some and you’ll lose some.

Persistence is every bit as important to a writing career as talent and craft. This isn’t a business for the thin-skinned, and it isn’t a marketplace for the uninitiated.

Agents and editors and even readers are actually looking for a reason to reject our work as much as they are hoping they’ll fall in love. Nobody said this was fair, and it isn’t.

Your job is to be as passionate about how and to whom you are pitching your stories as you are about writing them. Which means you need to master skills such as manuscript preparation, niche market research, the competition, market trending, live pitching and written querying, not to mention picking yourself up after a good cry and doing it all over again.

The world is full of perfectly worthy manuscripts that didn’t get published because their writers didn’t have the chops to sell it. Don’t be that writer.

Whatever happens to you in this business is what you make happen.

5. Love your work as if you are its mother.

Your mother loves you unconditionally. And yet, she calls you to a higher level of performance, of being. She helps you get there, even if she doesn’t model it herself. She expects you to get there, and if she believes you really want it, she’ll accept nothing less.

And if you don’t, she’ll love you anyway, and just as much.

Her expectation of your excellence, your success, and ultimately your happiness, is the expression of her unconditional love for you. And chances are she takes no shit in the process.

She picks you up when you fall. She tends to your wounds when you fail. She hugs you when you need it, she kicks your ass when you need that.

Then she sends you back into the real world to try again. All in the name of simply loving you.

Your story needs more than a genius writer, a crack idea, a ruthless editor, a maniacal advocate and a few lucky breaks. It needs someone to love it.

Someone to will it into a state of excellence, who understands and accepts that good isn’t good enough in today’s market. Good is just the ticket to someone’s submissions inbox. The ultimate winners bring more.

What they bring is the love of their story, forged and coached and loved into existence at a motherly level of commitment.

And as the author you are, after all, its mother.

This is the best writing advice you will ever hear.

Because everything else in the vast universe of writing knowledge, anything possible to learn and apply to the craft and art of it, is empowered by these truths.

Without all this, all you have is an intention. And that alone won’t get you there.

These five core truths, combined with your talent and passion, not to mention your killer idea, just might.

Larry Brooks is the creator of Storyfix.com, an instructional writing resource for novelists, screenwriters and those who love them. His new novel, Whisper of the Seventh Thunder, releases March 2010.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The Best Writing Advice. Ever.

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This post continues my series exploring Principles of Successful Blogs.

Have you ever seen a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering speed and momentum and growing in size as it rolls until it gets to a size that will destroy anything and anyone in its path???  

Me neither…. not outside of cartoons anyway….

While the image may not be one too many of us have seen in reality – it is a great metaphor for what seems to happen to many successful blogs.

They start small (like any other blog) but gradually (at first) grow (a reader at a time) into blogs with more and more loyal readers. Along the way events (some lucky and some strategic) happen that make the blog grow and roll faster down the slope.

In time momentum grows and it seems that the blog can’t help but grow as it rolls on and gathers new readers, builds its brand, expands with new features…. in time people start referring to it as an A-List blog and what was once a simple blog with no readers has ‘made it’.

How do successful blogs grow?

There are many reasons that successful blogs grow bigger and bigger over time but one principle that I observe in many such blogs is that they use the power of leverage to grow what they have to the next level.

The principle is simple yet it can be applied in many different ways and levels to blogging. It revolves around this question:

“what do you have now that you can use to help you get a step closer to where you want to be?”

Leverage: “the mechanical advantage gained by being in a position to use a lever” (source).

Another way to ask the question – what ‘lever’ do you have at your disposal that might help you to lift your blog to its next level.

Illustrating Leverage – an Example

Most readers of ProBlogger will pretty familiar with my photography site. I call it a site and not a blog because today it has a forum, 3 blog areas, strong Twitter and Facebook presence, 2 E-Books (portraits and Photo Nuts and Bolts) and continues to expand. It is read by 3 million or so visitors a month and generates some decent income.

However it wasn’t always what you see today. In fact when I started it in April 2006 it was a simple blog with a free template design that had 3-4 new posts a week and that made less than a few cents a day.

The last 4 years of building dPS have seen many many points of leverage. Let me highlight a few:

1. My previous photography blog – before dPS I had a small photography blog (now inactive) that aggregated camera reviews from around the web. The traffic wasn’t massive but it was enough that I had a nice little community of readers (mainly Australians as it was on a .au domain). When I launched dPS I was able to kick start it by letting my current readers of my original photography blog know about it. It didn’t generate a rush of traffic, but it meant that in week 1 it had some readers. Similarly i promoted dPS here on ProBlogger in that first week. I don’t think it drove too many new readers directly but know quite a few ProBlogger readers recommended dPS to family and friends. Point of Leverage: traffic/brand from a previous blog to launch a new one.
2. Profile/Network – because I had been blogging in the niche for a while I knew a number of other photography bloggers. I was able to pull in a few favours and get some promotion from these blogs to help drive a little more traffic (the links would have helped with SEO also).  Point of Leverage: relationships from credible people in the industry to help launch the blog.
3. Flickr – I had a very basic presence on Flickr when I started dPS. I used it purely to share photos with my family and friends and to host the occasional image for my blog. As a result I had a network of 40-50 people on Flickr that I was able to promote dPS to. I also started a Flickr ‘group’ on at that time and promoted it to my network of 40-50 people.  Point of Leverage: using a presence on a social media site to drive traffic to a new blog.
4. Flickr Group – the Flickr group grew quite organically. I did promote it to a few people but they invited their friends who invited theirs… it had a life of its own (today it has over 10,000 members). After 6 months I took the energy of that Flickr group and started a forum on the dPS domain. I exclusively invited members of the Flickr group to join the forum.  Point of Leverage: using a presence on a social media site to launch a new feature on a site.
5. Social Media – traffic to the blog and forum continued to grow. I had never really done anything on Twitter or Facebook with dPS until about 18 months ago but decided to test what would happen if we started to promote our Twitter and Facebook pages from the dPS site. Doing so helped us to grow solid followings on those networks. Point of Leverage: using established traffic on a site to recruit followers on social media.
6. Expansion of Topics – when I first started dPS I dreamed of a site that not only did tips on how to use cameras but one that was wider in terms of topics and covered cameras and post production (and more). However I decided not to launch with this wide focus but rather just to focus upon beginner tips. Last year we rolled out two new areas (cameras/gear and post production). I’m glad I waited – having an established audience on related topics enabled us to kick start these new areas. Point of Leverage: using established traffic to launch new areas of the site.
7. E-Books – having built an audience, brand and community I was able to launch E-Books that were guaranteed of at least some level of success. We had traffic (and more importantly credibility, goodwill and trust with our readers), community, multiple ways of connecting with our audience and relationships with other sites – all of this was leveraged to help launch our E-Books. After we had launched the first we also had a database of buyers which helped launch the 2nd E-Book.

Of course there are many other small points of leverage along the way but hopefully you get the point. Each time I’ve launched or grown the site I’ve looked at the arsenal of what I already have and pooled those resources to help build what comes next.

Points of leverage can come in all shapes and sizes. Some might not seem that big but they can lead to things that are. For example my initial Flickr network of 40-50 people led to a Flickr group of over 10,000 which led to a forum of over 80,000!

What do You Have that You Can Leverage?

I’ve raised this topic in a number of presentations over the years and the reaction of many is ‘I don’t have anything to leverage’.

I can relate to that feeling – in 2002 when I started my very first blog I didn’t really have much either. I’d not done much online beyond using hotmail, IRC chat and an occasional search on Netscape. I didn’t have an online network, knew virtually nobody who did and had no idea where to start. I’d not had any experience in building a website or writing copy for the web – I’d only seen my first blog hours before I started my own.

So I started with what I did have – my friends and family. They were my first readers.

Interestingly one of my friends had another friend who was a blogger on a similar topic to me. That generated my first link which generated my first comment from someone I wasn’t related to (a momentous moment in the life of any blogger)!

Homework – Make an Inventory of What You Have

Here’s an exercise that could be helpful. Grab something to write/type with and start making a list of what you have at your disposal. Thing broadly – it could include almost anything:

• Current blogs/sites that you own or are involved in
• Newsletter lists
• Social Media Accounts/Presence
• Real life Relationships and Networks
• Skills
• Experiences
• Memberships in clubs/communities
• Profile
• Customer databases
• Financial resources

This list only scratches the surface – what you have will be unique to you.

Another thing you might like to add to your list is things that you don’t have but that you have the ability to have. Next step goals if you like.

• For example many bloggers have the ability to write content and could potentially guest post on other blogs. Guest posting on another blog might not be your ultimate goal as a blogger – but it could take you a step closer.
• Another example might be that you might want to get to know someone that you don’t yet know. I know one blogger who told me that they felt that they didn’t know anyone in the blogosphere so they made a list of 10 bloggers that they wanted to get to know and meet in person over 2009. They achieved their goal and now have a decent relationship with 10 pretty influential people when they need it down the track.

One Last Tip – Build It Before You Need It

As I wrote my 7 point list of points of leverage that I’ve had at dPS above it struck me that what I was writing sounded pretty strategic and as though I knew what I was doing.

The reality is that I’d say that about 20% of that was strategic and 80% of it was not. When I started out I knew I wanted to build a site that helped people grow in their photography and that would hopefully make me a decent income – but I didn’t have much idea of where it was headed. I didn’t see a forum, I had no idea about E-Books and certainly had not considered Twitter or Facebook (I’m not even sure if they existed back then).

My approach instead was to grow the site organically – to try new things and see where there was energy and to keep building upon what worked. I wanted to build a presence in any way that I could and that was relevant to my potential audience and then to see what opportunities opened up to grow things further both in terms of size and financially.

I didn’t really need to have a way to email readers in the early days because I wasn’t selling anything – but I built a newsletter list from day 1. I didn’t really have much to say on Twitter or Facebook when I started with that but decided to build that network early because I knew one day I would.

In a sense a lot of what I did in the early days was to build a network/community knowing that one day I’d need it to do more than make a few dollars from ad revenue. This of course came to be true when I launched our E-books in the last 6 months. I’m glad I didn’t wait until I needed the network to build it but instead built it well in advance.

Further Reading:

• 10 Ways to Find Readers for Your Blog by Leveraging Other Online Presence
• Blogs as Launching Pads
• How to Leverage Your Blog for Bigger Things – Springboard blogging Part II

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Leverage What You Have and Take Your Blog to the Next Level

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It is that time of year when an amazing array of products and teaching resources are being released for those wanting to explore how to make a living online. I know as someone who covers the topic here on ProBlogger I’ve been pitched to write about many of them (at last count I’ve been pitched to write about and recommend over 20 this week alone).

I’m pretty selective in the products that I recommend – one of those that I do suggest you check out has just reopened its doors to a new calls of 300 members – it’s called Online Profits.

Online Profits is the work of Daniel Scocco from a number of sites including ‘Daily Blog Tips’ and he’s one person in this game that I’ve come to respect a lot.

Online Profits is a comprehensive teaching course that covers 24 learning modules. After completing the course:

• You’ll know Internet marketing inside out.
• You’ll create your own online business.
• You’ll take your existing websites to the next level.
• You’ll discover the tools you need to succeed.
• You’ll get access to a vibrant community of entrepreneurs.

The 24 modules cover a lot of ground and go way beyond just talking about blogging. Daniel and his team go through the basics like choosing domains and niches but get into a lot more detail including topics like SEO, affiliate marketing, developing and selling products and much more.

The best part about what Daniel has done though is in the group of mentors and teachers that he has assembled. He’s used people like Neil Patel, Chris Garrett, Yaro Starak, Zac Johnson and a lot more successful internet marketers to share what they know.

If you want to get a taste of Daniel’s style – I recommend you do so by checking out his free report – 10 Deadly Business Mistakes You Should Avoid.

It’s a valuable report that will not only give you an insight into how Daniel goes about his business but it’ll give you a sample of his style.

Online Profits opened its doors minutes before I hit publish on this post and will be closed again once 300 new class members signup. It’s a worthwhile investment in your learning about internet marketing.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The Online Profits Teaching Resource Opens its Doors to 300 More Students

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Happy New Year (at least it is here in Australia)! I hope that as you read this you’re full of all kinds of inspiration and motivation for the year ahead.

As the last post in our Best of ProBlogger 2009 series I wanted to share a list of 11 more general topic popular posts from ProBlogger. Enjoy!

1. 13 Quick Tips to Make Your Blog Stand Out from the Crowd
2. Let Me Show You Inside a Secret Blogging Alliance
3. How to Create Great First Impression on New Readers and Convert them into Loyal Readers
4. How to Take Your Blog to the Next Level…. Once You’ve got a Start
5. 7 Questions to Ask on Your Blog to Get More Reader Engagement
6. 5 Plugins to Make Your WordPress Blog Blazing Fast
7. 10 Ways to Get Fit While Blogging
8. 13 Things I’ve Learned About Successful Blogging [My 5000th Post on ProBlogger]
9. 8 Tips for Building Community on Your Blog
10. 6 Reasons Why You Need to Consider Email as a Communication Strategy on Your Blog
11. Brainstorm 10 Ways to Expand Your Blog: Homework

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

11 More Blog Tips from the Archives: Best of ProBlogger

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A Guest Post by Nathan Hangen of Making it Social.

As much as many of us want to get our blogs up and running and create an overnight success story, the truth is that having desire alone just isn’t enough. For starters, guys like Darren make it look extremely easy now, but it’s not like he rolled out of bed one morning and became an instant success. He poured hours of blood, sweat, and tears into his blogs before they became income worthy, but don’t fret just yet, help is on the way.

Even though we have to make our way through the learning curve until everything “clicks” into place, there’s no reason that we can’t shorten the learning curve so that we can spend less time wishing and more time living. By learning from our own experiences and, more importantly, the experiences of others, we can do just that. Darren does a great job of doing that here, but I’d like to present a list of things I learned the hard way, things I wish I knew sooner, and things that I think new bloggers could use to elevate their game to the next level.

1. Good design is crucial

Most bloggers don’t have a very long time to make a good first impression, and with the abundance of great content throughout the interwebs, readers try fo find ways to cut back and/or make quick decisions on which content they consume. One of the ways they do this is by judging a book by its cover. It might not be fair, but it’s reality. You dont’ have to give your kidney for a good design. There are dozens of theme providers that have both inexpensive and free themes that look much better than what was designed 2-3 years ago.

2. Narrow Your Niche

This is something that took me a long time to understand. I thought that by covering a bunch of topics, casting a wider net so to speak, that I would attract more people to my blog. The problem with that strategy is that when you do attract new visitors, you throw them off if your content isn’t consistent. They’ll wind up leaving and you’ll have to recruit new readers for every single post. So, try fishing with a spear instead.

3. Comments Really Do Matter

I didn’t take this seriously at first. I thought that my content was special enough to get noticed on its own. Boy was I wrong! It wasn’t until a few months ago that I crafted a comment policy that has helped my traffic explode. I do it by subscribing by email to a dozen or so blogs in my niche so that I’m notified as soon as there is a new post. I try to comment right away and do my best to add something meaningful to the conversation. More importantly, I come back and reply to other comments in the discussion. Do this often enough and on enough blogs and you will start to get noticed. You can’t give commenting lip service either; it is something that needs to be done every day.

4. Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Your Knowledge

When you master a skill, it’s easy to think that others might be on the same level as you, which can lead you to discount the value of your skill set and experience. However, most people don’t know what you know and would to pay you to teach them. Things that might seem simple to you can look like Greek to a reader. Don’t ever take your skill set and knowledge base for granted.

5. When You Have a Blog, You are the Authority

Own It! – We blog from behind a desk and see our lives as imperfect or incomplete. However, to a customer or new reader, you have an incredible amount of authority. If you have gone through the work of publishing content, then you need to step up to the plate and own that content. Take the authority and use it. You might be a 6 or 7 (on a 10 point scale), but to that new person, you are a leader. This excites people…they want a piece of your vision. Use that authority to step up to the plate and give them what they want. Don’t be afraid to be an expert!

6. Consistency Counts

I thought I could get away with blogging whenever I felt like it. I thought I could change the topic based on what felt right at the time. Looking back through my archives, I’m almost embarrassed by the casual attitude I took with my blog. These days, I know better and I keep a steady editorial schedule (3 posts per week on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday) and have narrowed the topics of my content to a degree that keeps my readers feeling like they belong. Changing it up all the time confuses people and scares away good readers.

7. Have a Plan

What are you going to do when your readership doubles? How are you going to handle getting hundreds of emails per day? How will you respond to comments? How do you see your platform evolving over the next year, 2, or even 5? These are some of the questions that you need to address early and often. Your plan might not be perfect, but at least you’ll have a direction to head. There’s nothing wrong with being flexible, but allowing your circumstances to dictate your business can lead you down roads that are better left untraveled.

8. Start Networking Early!

I cannot emphasize this enough. Use Twitter, comments, and guest posting as a tool to meet new people. The wider your reach, the easier it is to get noticed. Don’t wait for people to come to you…get out and network. People love personal connections! Go to conferences and shake hands with other bloggers. You never know which contact could turn into a great guest posting opportunity, a JV deal, or a new devoted fan. Blogging is a business, and you’ve got to get out and meet people if you want to take your blog to the next level.

9. Be Everywhere

This is tied in with the previous point, but to keep it simple – try to be in as many places as you can. Use Twitter, Facebook, USTREAM, YouTube, LinkedIn, and any other social network you can. You don’t have to live there, but having a presence there is important. People need to be able to find you in as many places as possible. You never know where that next source of income or the next reader might come from.

10. Hustle

Really, it all boils down to this. If I had to give you one piece of advice, it would be that you need to work your tail off to become a problogger. There’s no secret recipe, no golden ticket…you’ve just got to work hard and treat your blog like a business. It might seem like you aren’t getting anywhere at first, but be patient and keep at it. Adjust your plan on the fly if you have to, but never stop hustling. You’ve got to love what you do…absolutely enjoy doing it every day, if you really want to quit your job and go full time. If you don’t love what you do, then stop what you’re doing and go do what you love. Trust me, the work will come MUCH easier at that point.

Although this is just tip of the iceberg, I believe that if you just learn to improve on a few of these points, then you’ll shave a tremendous amount of time off your learning curve. You still might have to learn the hard way, but at least now you’ll have the context to understand what’s might be going wrong. If nothing else works, then you can’t go wrong with #10. In fact, I’d say that’s a great place to start.

Nathan Hangen is an entrepreneur, social media consultant, and co-author of the book - Beyond Blogging.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

ProBlogging – 10 Things I Wish I Knew when I Started

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This week’s community blog review is of a blog by the name of Groovy Vegetarian (another ProBlogger.com member).

The idea behind these reviews is that readers of ProBlogger read:

• the story of the blog
• the goals of the blogger
• the questions and areas of concern that the blogger has (all below)

Then readers are invited to visit the blog before giving their feedback and constructive advice to the blogger whose blog is being reviewed.

Please do keep your advice helpful. Telling the blogger that their blog is no good isn’t constructive – share what you’d do to improve it.

OK – here’s what Missy (the blogger behind Groovy Vegetarian) submitted in response to my questions about her blog. I hope you find it helpful information in constructing your own advice for her blog.

Tell us the Story of Your blog

I started Groovy Vegetarian back in the Summer of 2007 at first to chronicle my experiences with becoming a vegetarian. Like many other bloggers I had started on blogger.comand over time progressed to the more powerful Wordpress platform. But for some reason (can’t recall why) I wanted to start with a completely new blog. Actually I think it was the name, I wanted to create a new BRAND and so I cooked up the brand Groovy Vegetarian. When I created this blog I knew nothing about Wordpress, SEO, monetization, Google, etc. The only thing I did know is that I wanted to SHARE my vegetarian experience with others. And that is what I did. As of right now the blog has over 600 RSS readers, 1,200 plus Twitter followers and over 500 email subscribers.

I had been having hosting trouble lately but last week, I switched hosts. And so far so good with it staying up. I love my blog and know I need to nurture it more to get it to the next level.

What are your goals for the blog?

I would love to be a go-to resource for the vegetarian lifestyle. To have more pillar content. To showcase more cool vegetarian products. Vegetarianism has evolved, it isn’t your mom and dad’s granola hippie type lifestyle anymore. Lots of people are interested in the lifestyle, because of several factors, but one driving alot of interest as of late is global warming. There is nothing more planet destroying than eating meat. This has been proven by scientists. Not too mention the horrors inflicted upon BILLIONS of animals each year.

So more mainstream people are turning to the net looking for information and resources on the topic. PETA does a great job of providing information, but there is room for us small publishers as well. I’ve never really considered Groovy Vegetarian a recipe or food blog, but more of a lifestyle blog. Focusing on news, products, information, entertainment, etc.

And most importantly, I would really like to create a guide on the topic. A comprehensive one aimed at new vegetarians and those wanting more information on the diet. That for now is my next BIG goal – to create a vegetarian guide of sorts.

What would you like our readers to help you with?

A challenge for me from the get go has been content, organization and design. I don’t know how to structure the blog content or layout. Obviously there needs to be room for monetization, but what form should that take? And which Wordpress theme should I use? Everyone keeps touting Thesis, but I’ve never liked the design aspect of Thesis. So minimalistic. But it appears to be a really good theme with a solid support community behind it.

I would love for your readers to advise me on what they would do with my blog? What is the first thing they would change or get rid of and what do they like about the blog?

OK – it’s over to you. What advice and constructive feedback do you have for Missy about her blog.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Review This Blog – Groovy Vegetarian

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Posted by great scott!

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According to Chris Brogan, the President of New Marketing Labs, we have all been playing around with social media for far too long. It is his hope that users stop being amateurs and really get serious and take it to the next level.

Looking at the last Presidential election, Obama reached out through social networks to spread his message. On the contrary, McCain stuck with traditional methods and called home telephones with his recorded message. Obama’s message was distributed across Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and more, and he won as a result.

Brogan believes all users should apply that model to get the message out since there is so much good that can be done. For example, actor Anthony Edwards is utilizing social media to raise awareness and funds for a children’s hospital in Africa. Social networks are powerful tools to get needed messages out.

Up to this point, the use of social networks has been sloppy. However, Brogan believes that now is the time to use these tools to get the message to the right people. He says: “It’s time to get over being a tourist. It’s time to put a claim down and do something with it and really tend it.”

Do you want to learn to blog in a way that goes beyond just conveying information and helps people to take action on what you’ve written?

Last night as I was watching the new Australian version of The Apprentice I saw a very short segment featuring public speaker Brett Rutledge. The winners of a task were rewarded with a session with Brett to talk about communication and public speaking. The show only showed 30 seconds of Brett but in that very short snippet he said something that resonated with me.

He was talking about principles of communication in leadership – but I think it applies pretty well to bloggers. I’m paraphrasing here but what he said boiled down to this:

To communicate to me clearly you need to do three things:

1. Give me a Message
2. Make me Care
3. Give me a Way to Remember it

I suspect there’s a lot of truth in that for leaders communicating in the business setting – but it rings true for me as a blogger wanting communicate effectively each day through my blog.

Lets explore each in turn briefly (this is of course my interpretation for bloggers on what Brett was getting at with his points).

Give them a Message

I suspect many bloggers work pretty hard on principle #1 – we craft our posts carefully and work hard on communicating clearly – but perhaps the other two elements are things that could lift posts to the next level in terms of getting people to actually take action on the things we write about.

Giving a message of course means we ourselves need to know what we’re trying to convey and what action we want readers to take at the end of posts. If we don’t know what we want people to do it’s pretty hard to get action.

It’s also about communicating clearly and giving people a call to the action we want them to take.

Make them Care

• When someone cares about what you’re writing – they have much more motivation to take action on it.
• When someone cares they’re more likely to tell someone else about it.
• When someone cares they’re more likely to respond to you with a comment.

Communicate something to someone who doesn’t care and you might as well not be communicating!

How do you make them care? I think it partly comes down to showing people how what you are sharing with people applies to them, how it will make some aspect of their life better, inspiring them with a picture of how things will be once they’ve done something – it’s about getting people in touch with their feelings, fears, motivations, values and desires and tying them to what you’re communicating to them.

Give them a Way to Remember It

Have you ever read or heard something that inspired you to go away and take some course of action…. only to promptly forget to do it? I do it all the time. Sometimes I don’t take action because I change my mind, sometimes it is because I get busy and sometimes I just forget to do it (I’m thinking to myself ‘I’m sure there was something else I had to do today).

It’s one thing to communicate clearly what you want and to get someone to care about it – but a whole other thing to get them to actually take the action. A big part of closing the deal is to give them a way to remember what it is you want them to do.

I’d love to hear Brett (or others) talk more about how he helps people to remember what you say – but I find that I have most success in ‘closing the deal with people when I give them something simple, achievable and immediate to do.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

3 Principles of Effective Communication

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Search advertising has been a very successful business within search engine marketing. But can it be improved moving forward? Nick Fox, the Business Product Management Director of Google AdWords, thinks it can and extends three challenges to change the future of the search advertising business. They are:

1.    Can we go beyond keywords?
2.    Can we go beyond text ads?
3.    Can we go beyond cost-per-click (CPC)?

Fox suggests that instead of “guessing” on keywords, matching the advertiser’s actual business objectives directly with the action the users are trying to do. For text ads, why not change the ad format to include items such as maps, video, directions, and more since users are accustomed to those enhancements in their searches.

To go beyond cost-per-click, Fox advocates the idea of cost-per-acquisition or pay-per-conversion systems. Advertisers do not simply want visitors to their site, but instead, want to see business results such as sales and relationships. Google’s Conversion Optimizer is one step in moving toward this direction.

While keywords, text ads, and cost-per-click have all worked well in the past, there is always room to boost the experience for both the advertisers and the users.

What direction would you like to see search advertising take in the future?

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