Sizzling Summer Content Writing Tips

High ThermometerSummer is here and it’s not the time for cool, mediocre content on your blogs or website.  Send your content and website hits soaring with these successful tips to keep your rankings and indexing climbing to the top of the charts.

#1 Consider what sells you on eBay — A good description of a product as well as the imagery selected creates the motivation to buy the item, right? So it’s no different with your product or service description.  Want to heat up the return on your investment of time, money and effort expended on building your business, brand or blog?  You have to engage and inform in such a way that ignites the audience to take action.

#2 Yes, Sweat the Small Stuff — I don’t like saying the “devil’s in the details” but the small, sweat drops of critical points are what’s going to take the success of your content sky-high!  Remember, in the online world, all your competitors are just a few clicks away.  Give them more than just a simple photo and bland product dimensions; engage them visually and then close the deal.

#3 Hot Headlines & Following the News in Your Niche — News is a great source to turn up the heat on your content . You’d be surprised where great ideas can be formulated when derived from the media’s ‘hot topics’ and headlines promoted on Yahoo, CNN and various websites as well as TV. This technique can effectively increase the exposure of your content and be just what you need to jump-start your creative juices and typing fingers.  For example, while on my LinkedIn page, I saw an article about choosing the red vs. the blue pill in ‘Happiness Is Not the Most Important Thing at Work.’  It made me consider a future blog topic about the power of engaging headlines and questioning your audience within your content to fully-engage them.

#4 Test the waters with a Blog Aggregator  – A what?  You read it correctly – a blog aggregator.  It’s a website that keeps track of blog posts and where bloggers go for idea sharing with other bloggers in your niche.  This is a great way to be inspired, share ideas and even professionally debate a topic.  I recently wrote an article on Triberr, one of the prominent blog aggregators today. Not only were people engaged, but one of the founders of the company commented on my blog to address some of the points I made.  Engagement accomplished!

#5 Window Shopping & People Watching – Most of us are out & about more than usual during the summer months.  Whether at the beach, tanning poolside or BBQing in the backyard–watching others can give way to some pretty cool topics for blogging. Window shopping and long walks about town can also be the catalyst for thoughts on a product or service, from or for your own business.  Also, by watching how someone reacts to various stimuli can strike the right match to turn up creative thought within you.

I hope this ignited some inspiration in you with some great insights to consider when writing and posting your content.   I’d love to hear what other piping hot tips you have to share with me!

Because You Have Better Things To Do Other Than Blog

We’ve talked a lot about people making a shift from micro-blogging to real blogging of the past few years. For us here at Design Theory I think it’s an awesome shift in acknowledgement in a fantastic medium. The main reason why this is great is because we now have so much great content online about almost any thing you can think of. From a business prospective, blogging is continuing to place smaller businesses ahead of their bigger competitors because of their rich content being read and shared by many.

That’s all fine and dandy, but what about all the other “more importing” things you are trying to keep a focus on in your business?  What I’d like to do is sympathize with you because I feel your pain. You want to be out there, you want more people to know about your products and services, but to take the time to write something special about them every once in a while is just not in you schedule.

Well let me first explain that blogging is a great free way to advertise about your business. Not to say that all your posts need to be just about your business, they do need to be informative and offer ways to solve problems for people in your industry. But while you’re explaining the how to’s, instructions, and shortcuts, your readers are engaged and that’s the best time to offer them to seek your products and services that do just what they’re looking for.

The use of social media helps to push your posts out to areas and people who you normally wouldn’t have direct access to.  I shouldn’t have to explain more on this as by now you should understand how this can snowball from a post to a tweet, to a comment, to a share, to a forum, to Google search, and more.

So time right, that’s usually the biggest issue. I’m here to offer you a free Blog Editorial Calendar. An editorial calendar is basically a really easy way to control the content being published from your website. If you sometimes get ideas on things you want to write but don’t have time to write them, jot them down on this calendar and when time comes for you to write you’ll be able to pick up where you’re initial thought started. Fill out the form below to get your free custom copy of our editorial calendar that you can easily edit in Microsoft Excel to use for your own media.

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Ready to Go Tribal -Why We Need Triberr

Social Media cartoonJust when we thought Pinterest was one of the coolest and innovative ways to share content, namely sticky notes and images, along comes…(hear the drum roll)…TRIBERR! I won’t deny  that at first, I like some of your reading this, though “What the heck is Triberr?  My second thought was, great another app/software/latest & supposed greatest to manage my info/data/life.  So I’ll start with the basics and lead you onto a path where I highlight some of the pros and cons voiced about it and from there, it’s up to you.

The blog world according to Triberr needs their help as they tout “IMAGINE…Hundreds of bloggers reading, discussing and sharing your content for free.  Join a tribe of related bloggers, and Triberr will import your latest posts for the group to read and share whilst you enjoy theirs. Delight your followers, while growing your reach.”  Right off the bat I begin my dissection of their promotion.

#1  Sounds great right – no branding or tattooing.  So far, not bad.
#2  Free sounds good-especially as bloggers.  Rarely are we paid what we should be for all the painstaking time it takes to research and write solid content
and not just pontificating pointless opinions. We’re on a roll!
#3  Related bloggers – hmmm, smells like a bit of competition & peeking from your desk at my test in school but I get it that sharing is what Triberr is all
about.  Feeling a little reluctant though but I’ll go with it for the sake of research.
#4 For the group to read and share – what is my blog, a bag of M&M’s?  A comic book?  Sharing sounds great if it’s going to get me more hits and exposure
but is their network the kind of network I WANT to share my blog with?  Whom else are they sharing my blog and as an extension thereof, my information with?

Ok, now that I’ve gotten out my own issues out about it, here are other relevant and thought-provoking opinions about Triberr.

Pros
-Gives followers more diverse content and increases your reach and expands your business network
-Access great information from others like writers/bloggers that is zero-inned on your particular area of expertise, geography
-A new reader system that could replace Google Reader for many users
-WordPress offers an all-in-one plugin with seamless integration into your blog

Cons

-Some unhealthy practices have included people posting vast amounts of updates each day just to get multiple shares;
-It can be hard to find the right “mesh” and specific but rare topical tribe
-Many question Triberr’s method of tweeting/retweeting posts and it’s reliability
-Tribes can selectively choose not to promote your blogs

For more opinions and information about Triberr see…
http://alltriberr.com/a-guide-to-getting-started-on-triberr/
http://dannybrown.me/2011/05/31/why-im-hesitant-about-triberr/

WHAT ARE OUR THOUGHTS ON TRIBERR?

Best Blog Advice Websites

We all know that blogs have practically taken the place of television now-yes even “reality” TV is green with envy.  Every moment of every day someone is blogging.  It’s actually estimated that currently there are “about 450 million active English language blogs right now from when Technorati estimated over 200 million blogs at the start of 2009.  That’s some exponential growth and these numbers change every day as new blogs are started by the thousands (or tens of thousands) every day.”

So that’s a lot of people opining on every topic/issue and many, with a sharp business acumen and talented tapping tips (fingertips that is & suggestive ones too) that we can all learn or gleen from.  So today I pay homage to my fellow bloggers and thought you’d enjoy some of my picks for sound advice from some trendy and noteworthy fellow bloggers who I follow and are part of my Go-To sourcebook for information and inspiration.

ProBlogger

 

SEO Moz

 

For Bloggers By Bloggers

 

 

 

 

HBR Blog

The Blog Herald

Advertising Age  Young Entrepenuer

Spice Up Your Blog