Writing Tutorials

4 Reasons You Should Add Photos or Illustrations to Every Blog Post

Humor me for a moment and go dig out a copy of the White Pages — you remember, it’s that 10-pound behemoth gathering dust under the sink. Now, flip it open to any page and tell me the truth? Are you pulled into the content? Do you have any desire to continue reading or have you already closed it up and moved on to the next thing? Online or offline, people constantly come across content and make a split-second decision about whether to stay or go. Often, the decision is made before the content... learn more

Writing a Query in Four Easy Steps

Suppose you have a project in mind for a (potential) client but no current contract with them. Short of waiting for them to contact you, what can you do? Write a query. A query is a question. Based on this, a query letter is a business letter asking someone to let you work for them. You can use the SLAP method of four steps to writing a query: learn more  Read More →

Plug into Smartphones and Use Google Analytics to Track Your Traffic

The growing popularity of smartphones, and of mobile computing in general, is already starting to change the way visitors interact with your site. It’s not too soon to start laying out the blueprint for a version of your site designed expressly for pocket-sized screens. Times may be tough, but the smartphone market isn’t hurting because of it. According to market researcher, NPD Group, 23 percent of cellphones sold in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2008 were smartphones. That’s... learn more

10 Tips for Meeting Deadlines

If you do any freelance work, chances are you work from home. Everyone who works from home knows what distractions and challenges come with that particular work environment. When that happens, how do you meet deadlines? Here are ten tips for meeting internal deadlines set by you and external deadlines set by an editor: learn more  Read More →

5 Best Sites for Finding Freelancing Jobs Online

The latest news reports indicate there have been over 600,000 jobs lost in the United States in this current recession. Because of this, many people are considering freelancing/contracting who wouldn’t have done so in the past. The question arises, then, what are the best freelancing websites online? Here is a list of five of the best freelancing sites: 1. Freelance Writing Jobs: This site is dedicated to freelance writers and bloggers. It started as a blog on Blogger and grew, eventually moving... learn more

Why You Should Focus on Widgets, Gadgets and Social Nets in Tough Times

In these tough economic times, the smartest companies are using everything–including sticks and rocks–to get the attention of prospects and customers. The most potent weapons in their marketing arsenals include Web 2.0 tools and services, social networking, mobile apps, desktop widgets and gadgets, based on a recent Forrester Research study. Their main objectives are to improve customer service (73 percent) and acquire new customers (71 percent). Help your boss or client tighten their... learn more

Here’s What’s on My Apple iPhone Today

On the side, I write for a few blogs, one of which is AppCraver, an Apple iPhone applications review site. With each review I do, I get smarter about which apps are truly useful to people like you and me. Here’s what’s been on my iPhone lately: Bringing in the reads and feeds The best news app I’ve come across is Mobile News Network. It’s AP news that you can configure in a variety of ways: top news, local news, sports, business, politics and on and on. The interface is super... learn more

New Searchable Scanned Docs and a Common Screw Up

I mention Google so often that many people must think I’m getting paid by the company. Just for the record, they don’t pay me. I just can’t help myself–Google is always doing cool things. Recently, Google said it is now able to use optical character recognition to index scanned documents stored as Adobe PDFs. Previously, the company rarely scanned docs because it couldn’t be sure of the search results. According to Google’s blog: While we’ve indexed documents... learn more

Here’s How to Use Blogging to Promote Your Business

When clients ask me if they should write a blog, I always respond: “Heck yeah.” I’m all about quality content and the more keywords you can get into your pages the better off you’ll be, at least I think so. Blogging is just another way to feed searchbots. After reading Josh Bernoff’s “Time to Rethink Your Corporate Blogging Ideas,” report, I’ll be more inclined to reply “That depends,” the next time the question comes up.  Bernoff is an... learn more

Why Writing for the Web and for Print Differ and What to Do About It

Visitors to your Web site won’t read much of your content word-for-word. They’ll scan the text, cherry picking what to read. They’re in a hurry, easily distracted and have limited attention spans. If they don’t see right away what they’re looking for, they’ll bail out. You can look it up. Go to the Poynter Institute’s or Jakob Nielsen’s site. Those guys have done lots of studies on how people read on line. learn more  Read More →

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