Photography: The Crowd Watches the Fireworks by Waldo Jaquith
Many bloggers and webmasters struggle to decide what topics they should cover. In this post, I want to answer some common but very important questions.
Some of the most successful and appreciated blog posts I’ve written elsewhere have been complete surprises to me. As I wrote them, I worried that they’d be criticized as being too basic, and as merely restating common knowledge.
One thing I’ve learned is that what is common knowledge for us may be a revelation to others, particularly if we have significant experience in our field. In the field of meta-blogging, I’ve always been surprised by the success of posts compiling information which, to me, seems like very basic stuff.
What I’ve come to realize is that most readers of advice writing are beginners, and for them, succinct explanations of basic principles are very useful.
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Photography: Jeurgen welding by scjody
In the month or so since I started writing on this topic I must have seen upwards of fifty articles on how to achieve social media success. A number of elaborate strategies have been devised across the blogosphere: the inexplicable magnetism of list posts, the fine art of constructing Diggbait, and so on.
I’ve yet to see a single article, however, give due time to the single most important element of creating content with the potential to define your site: hard work. With time and effort any blogger or webmaster, regardless of talent, can create content with the potential to become rip-roaringly popular.
The key ingredient to success on social media services, as I’ve observed it, is time — time to create carefully crafted and assembled content. Your instinctive reaction to that might be: sure, but I don’t have that time.
I’d argue that you do. In fact, anyone who blogs or runs a website has that time. You just need to change the way you use it.
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Photography: Antique Printing Press by DaddyNewt
eBooks are books or pamphlets in a digital format. They’re a unique form of web content because they’re inherently portable. An eBook can be shared and spread far beyond your web presence.
There are a number of ways bloggers, webmasters or any web user can leverage an eBook to achieve a variety of outcomes, from building a brand to attracting traffic, and everything in between.
In this post I want to present a guide to creating your own eBooks from the idea stage right up until distribution. I’ll also describe various ways you can use the eBooks you create to build buzz and achieve individual outcomes. Best of all, the process can be completed without spending a cent.
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Photography: surfing lesson by kevinzim.
In this post I want to suggest an innovative new framework for developing tips, tutorials, guides, lessons and other kinds of advice writing. I call this the ‘Building Superheroes’ approach.
At its best, it will help you work out what to write, how to write it, and for whom.
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