7 Steps to Blog Post Perfection

taj_mahal I want you all to know I suffered at the ruthless hands of time and atrophy to bring you this. We’re talking countless hours spent thinking, writing, scribbling, procrastinating, rewriting, deleting, groaning and starting over—all for a blog post. Nowadays it’s better. I developed an easy 7-step system that helps me power through my blog writing. I now get it done not just in record time, but with much better efficiency and competence. So here you go: [Read more...]

Coming Soon: Blogging 3.0

stairsIt’s time for Wordful to move up the ranks of blogging.

Instead of solely focusing on ways to be more expressive, free-thinking and creative with your blog, I’d like to put more energy into how you can build your blog into a viable media publication. This implications of this shift have huge upside potential, as it follows blogging’s natural evolution towards mainstream publishing.

A Brief History of Blogging

In the beginning, blogs provided soapbox-like platforms for personal expression (Blogging 1.0). Then, a few smart bloggers started posting useful content and hustling for readers. From this they built traffic and loyal audiences and began making money. Enter the blogging goldrush. [Read more...]

Focus on Being You

mermaid1I was recently perusing one of those free downloadable viral reports and discovered a very interesting line of copy. It was a simple yet profound statement that summed up everything about the web content niche I don’t believe in:

Today we are going to show you how to appear like an inspirational, creative, buzz generating genius, with almost zero effort.
Hmmm…why would anyone want to merely appear genuinely inspirational and creative? Why not just be genuinely inspirational and creative? Well, to answer that question look at the end of the sentence: with almost zero effort. Standing out from a crowd takes effort, no matter who or where you are. Bloggers need to be brilliant, innovative and patient to realize a payoff. However, it’s very common to see the most eager and ambitious bloggers quickly get derailed by the artificial promise of the quick and easy payoff. [Read more...]

Shorter is Better, But Hey – Style Matters!

I just read a quick Copyblogger post by Jim Estill about blogging as “Shorter is Better.” It was pretty well done — short, of course — providing a general overview of why it’s good to write clean, brief and concise blog posts. I do mostly agree it’s no fun to both read and write long anything these days, but no writer should have to mute their individual style just to get their point across. The length of a sentence – or an entire post for that matter – should be no more than what conveys the information via the unique voice of its author. Just imagine if everything sounded the same on the web — what would be the appeal of reading other than to systematically derive facts and information for consumption? If bloggers are to survive in this fiercly competitive web, than we need to still be mindful that writing of any kind can always be a work of beauty. Humans are naturally attracted to beauty – we always have been and always will be. Am I right on this? [Read more...]

Blogger = Writer + Editor

In several of my very early posts I kinda sorta touch on the subject of writers and editors. The gist of my message is that it’s very important to consider not only creating your own content (as writer) but also setting the tone and direction of your blog (as editor). I notice that many bloggers out there are prolific and can crank out one post after another, up to several times a day. Their ability to create a steady flow of content is certainly impressive, but is it editorially effective? Let’s take a look at the following definitions as it pertains to blogging: [Read more...]