Mark Tosczak's Blog» Writing

Four things readers want

Mark Tosczak — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:29:30 +0000

Publishing news about your niche or topic area is one sure-fire way to attract and retain an audience. (Photo: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/106233)

What do readers want? And not just readers, but viewers, listeners – audiences for all media. If creating content is part of your marketing strategy then you’ve got to figure out what content your audience wants. What kind of blog posts, ebooks, podcasts or videos will attract the most people, get shared most often and keep your brand uppermost in people’s minds?

What they want is likely to boil down to four kinds of content.

How To

How to be wealthier, how to be sexier, how to be slimmer. How to do something — create a great Facebook fan page, sell more life insurance or bake the perfect cake.

Bookstores and libraries are full of how-to books. Magazine covers are scribbled over with how-to headlines – “How to get your guy to ____” screams Cosmo. And the Internet has become a treasure house of how-to content of every type.

People want to know how to do things. They want to know how to do things because they think that being able to do those things will get them something they want — a better sex life, more money, less stress. How to content appeals to a fundamental human desire for empowerment. Help fulfill this desire, and your content will be successful.

Examples: Lifehacker, eHow

News

The conversations around the water cooler used to be about what happened the day before, what was on the news last night and the paper this morning. Now those conversations (which are perhaps more likely to occur on Twitter or Facebook) are about what happened today at lunch time, the announcement made an hour ago, or even the big press conference that’s taking place right now.

People want to know what’s new and different. We’re hardwired to constantly scan our environment (that’s why we’re so easily distractible). In the today’s world scanning our environment means monitoring the news. Providing relevant, up-to-date news can be difficult (I used to make a living doing this), but it can also attract massive audiences and attention.

If you can provide the latest updates in your niche or industry you can quickly establish your content as authoritative and worth revisiting frequently.

Examples: CNN, Mashable

Emotional Experiences

Make them laugh, make them angry, make them cry. Whatever you do, make them feel something. If you provoke emotion in your audience, chances are they will stick around. Emotional experiences are the foundation of all good entertainment, and it can be the foundation of all sorts of compelling online content.

Fundraising appeals, for example, often seek to tap our empathy and inborn desire to help other people. Every funny TV commercial you’ve ever seen uses the same principle — it makes you laugh, giving the company a chance to deliver a sales message to you while you’re paying attention and feeling good.

Examples: Gary Vaynerchuk, Dooce

Secrets

Everybody wants to be part of the in-crowd. Letting your audience in on something that very few people know is a great way to keep them coming back for more. This is more than just a desire to know what’s going on in the world. People like secrets (or what they think are secrets) because knowing someone’s secrets makes them feel special.

If you want to quickly establish powerful ties to an audience, try giving them some secrets. Of course, the problem is that as soon as you tell them the secret, it’s not a secret anymore. So for most of us, this is probably only going to work a few times, at most. That doesn’t stop advertisers form trying to tap into this, however. Over the next few days, notice how many times the word “secrets” appears in ads that you see.

Examples: Post Secret, Penelope Trunk

As you might guess, you don’t have to restrict yourself to just one of these categories. A single blog post or video can combine, for instance, how-to content with secrets. And the content still has to be relevant to your niche. Mashable attracts readers interested in news about the latest in social media, not readers who want to know about the latest news in home improvement.

What category or categories does your content usually fall in? Please share your thoughts in the comments.Four things readers want

Five mistakes newbie bloggers make

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:31:20 +0000

Some blogging mistakes can block your path. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/589399)

I’ve been blogging for about 10 years now. Along the way I’ve learned a lot. I’ve also made a lot of mistakes. A lot.

So, if you’re new to blogging and determined to be successful at it, here are five mistakes to avoid.

Mistake #1: Not sticking with it.

Some bloggers see a lot of success relatively quickly, but there is no such thing as an overnight success. Even those bloggers who brag about how they took a new blog from zero to 10,000 subscribers in three months, or whatever, didn’t really go from zero to hero overnight. Chances are they put in years of work before they ever launched that “overnight success” blog, developing skills and acquiring tools to make a big splash quickly.

Whatever your goals are as a blogger, you’ve got to stick with it to see success. A good rule of thumb would be six months of steady blogging before you begin to see significant traffic, readership or (if it’s a goal) revenue.

Mistake #2: Not focusing on content.

Great design, cool widgets and useful plug-ins are all good things to have on your blog. But you can waste hours on these things without adding the one thing that makes the biggest difference: new content. If you want to fiddle with your design, write a new post first. If you want to add a new plug-in to the back-end of your WordPress admin panel, write a new post first. If you want to add a cool new widget or explore a new social media site, write a new post first.

Readers come to blogs, and come back, for one thing and one thing only: content. Make that the No. 1 focus and you will be much more successful.

Mistake #3: Not being consistent.

One of my biggest mistakes as a blogger has been inconsistency. Being consistent means regularly creating and publishing new content. You don’t have to publish a new post every day. And you certainly don’t have to do what the big, commercial blogs such as Mashable and Lifehacker do — publish many, many posts every day. But you do need to publish consistently.

Pick a frequency that you think you can maintain (once a week is probably a minimum for most of us) and start with that. If you want, and can, then increase your frequency down the road. But don’t decrease it. Pick a goal for how often you want to publish and stick to that.

Mistake #4: Not writing for your readers.

The biggest misconception that blogging and social media suffer from among those who are not enthusiasts is the idea that we all sit around and write about what we ate for breakfast or that we’re all writing poorly thought out, uninformed reactions to the news of the day. This isn’t true, of course, but there are some bloggers and social media aficionados who do those things. And that’s fine, but it’s probably not going to get them a ton of readers, bring in torrents of new business or job offers, or result in highly profitable online information businesses.

The key is to write for your readers. What information and content do your readers need and would find helpful? What are they looking for online in your niche or your industry? What would you want to read if you were one of your readers? It’s fine, from time to time, to write about things that may be more meaningful to you than some of your readers (like this post of mine from last week on global poverty and educating girls). But overall, concentrate on content that’s of value to others. Give value, and over time you will receive value in return.

Mistake #5: Not blogging because you’re afraid of failing.

Everyone is afraid of something, and lots of people hesitate to start something (or continue it) because they’re afraid of failure. That little voice inside that warns you that maybe you shouldn’t because you’ll fail, because something bad will happen? That voice was really useful thousands of years ago when human beings had to worry about getting eaten by a prowling sabretooth or a hungry bear. That voice isn’t so useful now, but it still won’t shut up. So ignore it.

Listen, you may fail (however you define that). But even if you don’t achieve what you set out to achieve, even if you fall short of some goal or promise or commitment, it will be OK. Chances are, most people won’t even notice (the Internet is a noisy place, after all; it’s hard to keep track of who’s gone silent). Even if you fail, you will still learn something in the process and you will still be a better human being for having tried it. Don’t let fear stop you.

What other mistakes have you (or other bloggers) made? Don’t keep them a secret. Please share in the comments below.

How to blog frequently

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:46:58 +0000

Posting frequently requires discipline and a commitment to that goal. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1122022)

One of the biggest challenges for most part-time bloggers is finding the time and energy to blog consistently. Since Jan. 18, I’ve been engaged in a little challenge here for myself — 30 posts in 30 days.

As it turns out, I probably couldn’t have picked a worse time to try to average a post a day. Work has been crazy, with a lot of travel and an unusual amount of night and weekend hours. A couple of my volunteer commitments have required more time than usual. And just last week snow kept my daughter out of school for four days, which disrupted our household schedule and made it even harder for me to keep up a demanding extracurricular writing schedule. There is more travel on my calendar in the next couple of weeks, so this is not going to get any easier. In fact, I’m going to have to average about 1.5 posts a day to make my goal.

Nonetheless, despite the challenges I’ve learned a lot of good lessons about how to blog frequently. Here are some of the keys that have helped me to write as often as I have the last couple of weeks.

1. Keep a list of blog post ideas some place. Your list could be in a file, on paper or even inside your blogging software. But keep a list of ideas and every time an idea pops into your head, add it. You don’t have to end up writing a post for every idea, but having a bunch of ideas ready to go makes it a lot easier to keep to a writing schedule.

2. Work several days (at least) ahead. In the last three weeks or so I’ve had a couple of times when I had as many as four posts written and scheduled to go. Typically I was able to do that on the weekends, when I could devote more time to writing and when I felt less pressure to publish. This helps because it takes the pressure off to produce something for today or tomorrow and makes you feel less anxious about maintaining a frequent posting schedule.

3. Write partial drafts. Sometimes I don’t have the energy or time to finish a blog post all in one go. But that’s OK, and in fact in someways it’s better. If I start to write a post knowing I don’t have to finish it right now it makes it less intimidating to start. And if I go back to a post I’ve already started with the intent of finishing it, it’s easier because I already have some of it done. Writing partial drafts has been one of the most important keys for my regular posting.

4. Prioritize writing over reading. It’s tempting when you hop on your computer to just check your email, your RSS feeds or Twitter to see what’s going on. Don’t. Write first and write often. If you want to be a frequent blogger, you have to put your priority into creating content. And the way to do that is to simply put in the time.

5. Have a goal. Thirty posts in 30 days was a goal for me, to see if I could post that frequently. It was a private goal at first, and now I’ve made it public. But keeping that goal in mind has helped me keep going at times when I didn’t feel like blogging. Other people can post this frequently, so I should be able to also, right? (Check in on Feb. 16 and we’ll see how well this worked for me.)

These have been the most important things I’ve done in the last few weeks to post frequently, even as I’ve been busier than usual in other parts of my life. How do you keep up a regular blogging schedule?

12 things to do when you don't feel like blogging

Mark Tosczak — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:05:47 +0000

Don't resort to cat blogging. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1244985)

This is another one of my occasional posts on what to do when you don’t feel like blogging.

1. Update your bio/about page. If you’ve been doing this for any length of time, chances are it’s out of date. You should also make sure that you’re including everything there that’s going to help reinforce your brand and (if it’s a personal blog) establish your authority and expertise.

2. Develop a list of non-content tweaks to improve your blog. Chances are, you’ve got a widget or a plug-in you’ve been meaning to add to your blog, or a design tweak that you haven’t gotten around to. If you’re not going to create new content (the most important thing you can do), then figure out what else you could do to improve your blog.

3. Make one (or more) of your list of non-content improvements. If you already have a list of potential blog improvements, or you’ve made one, now is the time to start implementing those. Decide which is most important, and implement that.

4. Add more social media sites to your Ping.fm account. Ping.fm is a cool service that allows you to send updates to all sorts of social media, chat and social bookmarking sites at once. That makes it easy, when you publish a new post, to spread it to all sorts of networks. You still have to sign up for individual accounts at these sites, but Ping.fm automates the process of posting to some or all of them at once. Hint: You can also tie Ping.fm into your Hootsuite account, so Hootsuite updates it — if that makes sense for you.

5. Create a notebook with all the important records related to your blog. If you’re not keeping track of all your passwords, business records and other information related to your blogging and social media activity, it’s easy to find yourself hitting that “I’ve forgotten my password” link too often. I use 3×5 cards in a little plastic box (about $2 from an office supply store) to keep track of this information.

6. Brainstorm ideas for the next time you do blog. Sometimes taking the pressure off yourself of actually writing a full blog post can be freeing, and you may find new ideas flowing.

7. Leave smart, relevant comments on other blog posts. If you’re like me, you’re already blogging, keeping up with social media networks and digesting a torrent of incoming email, RSS feeds, ebooks and paper books. Commenting is something you probably don’t do as often as you should. Blogs with CommentLuv installed or that use Do Follow links can be particularly helpful for SEO purposes.

8. Check out other blogs in your niche, and figure out how to get a guest post on one of them. Guest posting can boost your search engine visibility, bring you new readers and give more credibility to your reputation and brand. Step one is to figure out where you’d like to guest post.

9. Look at your blog with a browser you don’t normally use and fix any design problems that show up. If you habitually use one browser (I recommend Firefox), you might be surprised what it looks like in Internet Explorer (various versions), Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome or the Opera browser (all of these, except Internet Explorer, come in versions for both Mac and Windows machines). You might also want to consider making your site better for mobile browsers. Here’s a set of WordPress plug-ins to help you do that.

10. Do something totally different to get inspired. Exercise, visit a museum, play with your children or read a thriller. Sometimes your brain needs a rest or a change of direction.

11. Proofread old posts. You’d be surprised at how many grammar and spelling errors could be hiding in old posts. Go read some of that older content and fix any mistakes. After the Deadline is a WordPress plugin (there’s also a Firefox add-on version) to help you find and correct those errors.

12. Blog anyway. If you’ve committed to posting regularly, don’t let your feelings (which are probably temporary) dictate your actions. If you’re feeling blocked, read my post on eight ways to overcome writer’s block.

What do you do when you just don’t feel like blogging? Leave your tips in the comments.

How to overcome blogger's block (aka writer's block)

Mark Tosczak — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:19:15 +0000

Sometimes your mind goes blank — like a busted laptop. Don't let that stop you. (Photo by winjohn @ stock.xchng - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/529107)

It happened to me this week. I was cruising along, had a good list of blog post ideas and had written four of seven posts for the week. But I knew I had some very busy days coming up, and I needed to get three more written to meet my self-imposed quota of posts for the week. And I got blocked.

None of my blog post ideas seemed interesting. Or the ones that were interesting seemed too challenging — I wasn’t sure I knew enough to credibly write about the topic. Or I could write about the topic, but it would take too long, and I was tired. In other words, I was blocked. Call it blogger’s block or writer’s block, it happens to all of us from time to time.

But for bloggers, who rely on the ability to consistently publish new content, this can be fatal. It can murder your momentum, drown your enthusiasm and kill your creativity. However, I’ve been getting paid to string words together for almost 20 years. I’ve faced this demon before, I know a few tricks to get past him.

1. Write partial posts. Instead of trying to put together perfectly formed posts, open up your text editor, word processor or blogging software and write partial posts. Write in bullet points and just put down a few key ideas. Do this for two or three different post ideas, and often something will light your interest and get those blogging fires burning again.

2. Write something that you promise yourself you won’t publish. Don’t worry about whether it’s any good, just write it. You can change your mind later if it turns out it’s worth sharing. If it’s not, you can trash it.

3. Write a links post. Go out and find half a dozen really good links to stuff other people have written or created, and write a links post. For each link hammer out a couple of sentences about why you like it. This is a low creativity task, but it’ll give you a blog post you can use, and the discipline of writing this sort of thing is good for you.

4. Use a different writing tool. If you normally type up your blog posts on your computer, try writing one by hand on paper. If you normally write in your blogging software’s built-in editor, try using Word, or a text editor, or Google Docs instead. You could even try recording it instead of writing it.

5. Take a photo, shoot a video or record a podcast. I admit, I’m very focused on text. I’ve always been a writer who wrote for print, and I love the power of words well put together. But if you have the ability, you might want to try a different kind of content. So maybe that means shooting a photo or a video, or recording a short podcast. It could even mean a slide show you publish with Slideshare.

6. Write in a different place. I usually write at my desk at home. But if that’s not working, I might move to another room or even sit outside (if weather allows). Anything that gets me out of my habitual, unconscious patterns habits might also shake loose a little creativity.

7. Write about something totally different. This blog is generally about topics related to social media, blogging and online marketing. But what if I took a break from that and instead wrote about the earthquake in Haiti, or my challenges in balancing a number of volunteer activities on top of my job and family, or something else entirely? Maybe you’ll publish this entirely different post, maybe you won’t. But maybe it’ll loosen up your writing muscles enough to get some more content created.

8. Just push through. Sometimes the best way to overcome the demon of writer’s block is to just push on through. Ignore those voices in your head telling you your ideas aren’t good enough, or not interesting enough, or that you’re not qualified, or that you don’t have enough energy. Write anyway. Just put some words down. This was ultimately the tactic I picked this week – and I got two more blog posts out of it. I’ve faced this demon before, and I know that sometimes I just need to shove him aside, keep on moving and ignore his taunts and insults.

If you’ve got tips for overcoming writer’s block, please share them in the comments below. (Hey, a comment can be just a couple sentences — it doesn’t need to be War and Peace. Push on through that resistance and tell me what you think.)

10 ways to generate ideas for blog posts

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:40:51 +0000

How do you come up with ideas for blog posts? (Illustration by raja4u at stock.xchng - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1156284)

Here’s the problem most bloggers, and anyone doing content marketing, faces: how to come up with ideas for posts.

I’ve got a list of about 30 potential blog post topics for this blog, right now, and I add to that list each day.

There’s lots of ways to come up with ideas. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that if you consistently work out at these techniques below, you’ll soon have more ideas for blog posts than you have time.

1. Wordtracker

SEO software maker Wordtracker’s free keyword questions tool allows you to enter a keyword and see the questions that people have actually typed into search engines related to those keywords. As with many of these online question tools, I always assume that if some people asked these questions online (through a search engine or another forum) than many others are probably also looking for the answer and interested in the topic.

2. LinkedIn Answers

Go to LinkedIn Answers and you can drill down, by various industry categories, and find questions that people have asked related to that. As above, I am assuming that if someone on LinkedIn asked the question, may more are interested in the answer. I’m not suggesting you should copy the answers, by the way. To produce good content you need to come up with your own original, meaningful, useful way of answering these questions.

3. Yahoo! Answers

Just like LinkedIn, Yahoo! Answers is a compendium of people’s questions, categorized by topic. You can use these just like you use LinkedIn Answers.

4. Ask MeFi

Same as above. There are some really interesting questions, by the way, if you dig into the Ask MetaFilter archives.

5. Everyday Conversations

What do people ask you? What do they wonder about? What conversations do you have that make you think about ideas related to your blog? For example, I had a conversation recently with a personal trainer who’s really trying to grow his business — he’s only got two clients at the moment. He mentioned being on Facebook, but obviously there’s a lot more he could do. Maybe there’s a blog post there, don’t you think?

6. Magazines in Your Niche

Go to a news stand or library and look at the magazines in your niche or industry. What cover blurbs do the latest issues have? What are their stories this month? Could you write your own take on some of these subjects or ideas? I’m not suggesting copying or stealing their stories, I’m saying that chances are, sometimes you’ll have your own ideas that are different from the ones in the magazine. Turn those into a blog posts.

7. Read Other Blogs in Your Niche

Has someone write a post that you have strong feelings about — maybe you think it’s brilliant, maybe you think it’s terrible. Either way, write a post in response. You can even link the original post that prompted the idea. (Although, even if you think the original post is horrible, be polite and diplomatic.)

Also look at the ideas that other bloggers in your niche are using. Could you do your own version of some of these posts? If someone does “10 tips for doing better” in your niche or industry, could you come up with 10 different tips? If so, you’ve got a blog post. I’m a big fan of giving credit where credit is due, so linking to these inspiring posts is a good idea.

9. Ask Your Community

Run a poll on your blog about possible future topics, or just put out a call “What should I write about next?” You can also ask these questions on your social networking sites, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. If you have an email newsletter (which you should), you can put out a call on that channel, too. This probably won’t work so well for start-up blogs, but if you have a reasonably active community of people tied to your blog and social media presence, this could yield some good ideas.

10. Timed Brainstorming

Set yourself a deadline and simply come up with a certain number of ideas — say 10 in the next hour. The trick to this is to write down anything and everything that comes out, even if a lot of those ideas are not terribly good or original. With all the unusable ideas you get out of brainstorming, you’ll also get some usable ones. I did this recently on a plane trip when I didn’t have anything to read, and I added 10 new ideas in the last hour of the flight.

How do you come up with ideas for blog posts? Please share your tips in the comments below.

19 tips from (almost) 10 years of blogging

Mark Tosczak — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 11:09:41 +0000

I’ve been blogging for almost 10 years now (not always here, though, in case you’re wondering). I’m not saying I’m an expert, but I know a thing or two. I’ve also picked up what I like to think of as a few best practices and good ideas along the way. Here’s some:

Use WordPress. It’s not perfect, but it’s still the best out there as far as I’m concerned. There’s a free hosted version if you don’t want to mess with installing it yourself.
Give credit where credit is due — for photos, ideas, whatever. Whether it’s required by law or not. That’s what links are for.
If you’re linking to anything other than an HTML page (for example, a PDF), tell the reader in the link text. Put “[pdf]” or something similar
Use a spell checker. I’m a good speller — a really good speller — but everyone makes mistakes. So double-check.
Be consistent. This is something I’ve been very inconsistent about, especially since I became a parent (’cause, in case you didn’t know, kids take up a huge amount of time and energy). And I’ve paid for that with fewer readers and less traffic. So be consistent — blog regularly, and you’ll get and retain more readers.
Don’t get paralyzed by trying to make things perfect. Do the best you can, hit publish, and then go on to the next post.
Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want your boss, spouse/partner, parents or children to see. Because they will. Discretion is the better part of valor.
Do post about things that you find interesting and helpful. There’s a lot of other people in this world, chances are some of them are going to find the same things interesting that you do, and they’ll read your blog.
Publish an RSS feed, and also provide an email subscription. There are lots of options to do this, and most of them require little or no knowledge of actual code.
Use Feedburner for your RSS feed.
Subscribe to your own RSS feed and your own email subscription (yes — both!). See what your readers are getting from you, so you can fix it if it’s bad and so you know if it stops working.
Don’t blog on your employer’s time (unless you really are getting paid to do that).
It’s OK to make a little money with ads, affiliate links or whatever, really. Being a blogger does not require a vow of poverty. Just don’t be the kind of smarmy marketer we all hate (for more on this I suggest Copyblogger’s excellent post on the ‘Third Tribe’).
Write interesting headlines. One very basic, easy place to start: Put verbs in your headlines.
Periodically go back and read your old blog posts. If you’ve been blogging for a while, it’s good to remind yourself what you’ve already done. You may also find some posts that could be updated or added to — in other words, a new post!
Look at your blog through a different browser than the one you’re using sometimes — other people are, so you should, too.
It’s OK to post a collection of links to other interesting stuff occasionally. Just don’t do it everyday. That’s what Digg and StumbleUpon are for.
Get a Twitter account. OK, there are a few very successful bloggers who don’t have Twitter accounts. But really, if you’re one of them you don’t need my tips. So if you don’t have one, get a Twitter account.
Be inspired. This post was inspired by David Risley’s 50 Rapid Fire Tips for Power Blogging. You’ll note we share many ideas about best practices. He does have a longer list than me, though.

Have some tips yourself? Please share them in the comments below.

Links Worth Reading – Sept. 27, 2009, edition

Mark Tosczak — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 10:03:37 +0000

Here are some of the best links, blog posts and resources I’ve come across in the last week. Note: Many, but not all, of these I first published via Twitter. Please follow me there if you’re not already.

Top 10 Blogs for Writers 2009

How to Create Reader Profiles/Personas to Inspire and Inform Your Blogging (Great idea right out of marketing research 101. Creating personas is something I’ve done for this blog.)

Free Social Media Worksheets (These are good resources if your planning or executing a social media campaign of some sort.)

Media Usage Study Shows Radio, Online Media Consumption is Up (This blog post links to a news release and other resources. It’s a good, basic reference for those of us working in marketing and public relations.)

The Science of ReTweets (Want to figure out how to increase your odds of getting retweeted? This free report is a good place to start. The author, Dan Zarella, studied 40 million tweets in his analysis.)

Membership Programs for Lead Generation (Joe Pulizzi is a content marketing specialist, and he makes some good points about using membership programs for lead generation. This is a must-read for marketing and sales execs trying to understand how to better use social media and the web to boost the bottom line.)

How to Use Social Media to Market a Boring Product or Service (It’s probably not a good sign if you, as a marketer, think that what you’re marketing is boring. Nonetheless, some products and services are less engaging than others. Keith Burtis points out that you can still use social media to market those by trying back to related passions.)

Six Social Media Marketing Case Study Lessons (Looking for ideas and inspiration for social media marketing? HubSpot has six social media marketing case studies with lessons learned from each. This post is worth bookmarking.)

Let me know what you think of these links in the comments.

Eight tips for writing shorter tweets

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:00:07 +0000

Twitter, the microblogging sensation that is all the rage – at least among marketers and social media aficionados – requires a considerable economy of phrasing. Fitting a useful thought into 140 characters, including a URL, can be tough sometimes. And if you want your tweet to be retweeted – spread by your followers – than you’re better off making it even shorter, like maybe 120 characters.

To that end, here are a few tips on how to tighten your tweets:

Cut unnecessary words – fillers, redundancies and words that don’t add anything, for example. If you put an opinion in Twitter, you don’t need to say “I think” – we assume that’s why you tweeted it unless you’re attributing it to someone else.
Choose shorter words over longer – “about” instead of “approximately,” for example.
Eliminate unnecessary punctuation. Do you really need those quote marks to emphasize something? Probably not. Do you need the extra “:” that Twitter adds in retweets? Again, probably not.
Use contractions (ex. “didn’t” for “did not”) and acronyms, though judiciously. Don’t sacrifice clarity for conciseness.
Make use of symbols – %, &, etc. – liberally.
Substitute punctuation for conjunctions. For example, a comma in place of an “and.”
Incorporate hashtags as part of the tweet, instead of putting it on the end. For example, “#PR pros will find this useful …”
Revise, revise, revise. It’s amazing how often, just as I think I’ve boiled a thought down to its essence, one more revision allows me to tighten it even more. Focus on your core thought or message.

That’s it. Follow these guidelines consistently and you’ll end up with shorter tweets that are more retweetable. If you have more ideas about how to shorten the length of your tweets, please add mention them in the comments.

Eleven types of posts to boost your blog

Mark Tosczak — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 12:57:39 +0000

I’ve been blogging in one form or another for more than eight years now, and one of the things I’ve learned is that you can classify most blog posts into one of a limited number of categories, or genres. Why is this a useful? If you’re running a blog and trying to generate ideas for fresh content, thinking about different kinds of blog posts is a good way to come up with ideas for new posts. With that in mind, here’s a list, with examples, of 11 blog post genres.

The ‘ask your Twitter followers’ post
This is a relatively new category that I’ve noticed more often recently. The blogger asks his or her Twitter followers a question and then takes several responses and makes them into a blog post. The individuals responding usually get links to their tweet streams, so they have the possibility of gaining more followers, and the blogger gets instant content. It’s an example of community-generated content.

Example: How do you define success?

The tweet recap post
This is another new post category that’s arisen due to the popularity of Twitter. If you’re active on Twitter, you may be sending out all sorts of links and other good stuff on Twitter. Rather than let it reside just there, some bloggers re-publish it as a post, usually something like “this week’s best tweets.” This allows you to get some good stuff in front of an audience (your blog readers) that may not have seen it, and it can also drive your blog readers to follow you on Twitter.

Example: Tweet recap: The Past Seven Days from @clickequations (2008-12-05)

The round-up post
If you’re posting at fairly regular intervals, this is a good way to make your site a little more sticky. Look over your blog posts from the last week, month or year, and then pick a handful of posts that you think are your best, or that have been the most popular. Then write short descriptions and create links to each one. Of course, you’ve got to have enough posts to choose from to make this meaningful, because if you simply list every post you’ve written, you’re not providing any extra value to your readers. Pointing them to the handful of posts that are the best or most popular, on the other hand, can be a useful exercise. You should never assume that your readers, even your most loyal subscribers, have actually read every post that you’ve published.

Example: This week’s most popular posts

The list post
This is probably one of the most common types of posts, especially among bloggers looking to increase their traffic. I know I tend to use it a lot here, and it’s a classic way of producing linkbait (i.e., posts that people will want to link to and list on social bookmarking sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon). This usually takes the form of “Top X ways to do such-and-such” or “Top X books/blogs/movies about such-and-such.” These posts are popular because people like lists, and because as long as you come up with some kind of list, you can probably write one without spending too much time thinking about writerly matters such as transitions and structure.

Example: 30 ways businesses can use Twitter to boost their bottom line

The list of more-or-less random links post
This is also a list post, but unlike the classic list post above, this is just a way of producing a bit of content out of the scraps you pick up surfing the Internet. It’s kind of a lazy blog post, in that it requires remarkably little effort, assuming you’re collecting links to interesting stuff anyway. There was a time when I would do one of these posts every week. Now I do them occasionally. These posts are not very sticky — they don’t keep people on your site — but they can provide some value to readers by pointing them to other web pages that may be useful or interesting. These posts may or may not be organized around some kind of loose theme.

Example: Six links on social media, content marketing and online public relations

The picture of the week post
This is a great way to add a little more visual interest to your blog. Some people take their own pictures and use it for a picture of the week (or picture of the day, or whatever) feature. Others search photo sites such as Flickr and use interesting Creative Commons licensed images. Though I haven’t seen it recently, you could also do a video of the week, either with your own video or by searching YouTube or one of the other video sharing sites. Also note, as in the example below, you don’t have to call it “picture of the week.” Lots of people come up with more creative titles.

Example: Foto Finish Friday

The open-thread post
This one only works if you have a sizable, active community of commenters on your blog. But if you do, this is a great way to give people a chance to talk amongst themselves without having to come up with a blog post to spur conversation. Even for people who regularly use this type of post, I would caution that you probably can’t do it too often. It’s an adjunct to regular posting, but if you have a large community of readers andcommenters , then presumably people are coming to your site for the content and ideas that you provide. Bloggers often kick these off with something short to start the conversation, but the whole value of the post is intended to be in the comments, not the post itself.

Example: Open Thread

The tutorial/how-to post
These types of posts, which show readers how to do something, are also great for linkbait. They are harder to write, though, usually requiring more time, thought and expertise, than the link posts I mentioned above. To make a truly useful, engaging tutorial or how-to post, you have to provide enough information and enough detail that your readers can actually duplicate whatever task or project you’re writing about. Leaving out key details or making the tutorial too advanced for most of your readers (ex. assuming nontechnical readers know how to write code) is a recipe for failure.

Example: How to Drastically Increase Subscriber Numbers to Your Email Newsletter

The link to some news
Linking to a news article, often with a short summary, a quote or a comment, used to be one of the most common types of blog posts. As quality standards have gone up in the blogosphere and it has become more professionalized (yes, I know some people may think that’s a ridiculous statement), these types of posts are becoming less common. Still, if you have a well-established readership and a knack for finding interesting content, these can still work. I wouldn’t try this for a new blog, though.

Example: Running of the bulls

The single-link post
In some ways, this kind of post takes us back to the very beginnings of blogging, when it was often just as much about sharing links as it was about creating content. But a lot oflinksharing has migrated to social bookmarking sites, such as StumbleUpon , and microblogging services, like Twitter. Still, you still see it occasionally on blogs. As with the ‘link to some news’ blog posts, if you have an established readership and a knack for finding interesting stuff, this can still work.

Example: Mickey Kaus: You have to wonder, can the good Bill Gates is doing with his Foundation ever match the suffering caused by Vista?

The review post
Last, but not least, the review post gives you a chance to say what you think about a particular movie, album, book, product, game or whatever. This is a classic way to make money for bloggers who run affiliate ads — review a product and then put up an affiliate link so readers can buy it. But if you have a community of readers that you know are interested in some set of products, whether it’s zydeco music or scrapbooking products, then reviews are a good way to offer substantive, useful content. The downside, at least from the standpoint of a busy blogger, is that these require substantial time, because you’ve got to take the time to actually evaluate the product. But, if you’re using a product anyway, you might as well write a review.

Example: Review: Gears of War 2

So, what have I missed? What other categories of blog posts might provide inspiration for people looking for content ideas for their blog? Please leave your ideas in the comments.