. . . taking your blog from stagnant to stunning

Mark Twain said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” But how do we choose the right word?

Sometimes a word just hits us and we know it’s right. But oftentimes, writers struggle to select the “perfect” word for a situation. What do we do then? Should we play the three cups game and hope for the best? What about eeny meeny miny mo? (You can read some writing and wonder if that isn’t how the writer chose the words he or she used.)

Actually, there is an easy and logical 6-step process to go through when determining which word to use:

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Have you ever found yourself staring at a blank screen or flashing cursor and wondered, “What, oh what, shall I blog about today?” Most bloggers have probably experienced the feeling of dread at dragging yet another amazing blog post from the over-mined recesses of their creative stores.

Blog Blossoms can help. Register using the form on the Free Blog Blossoms site, and every day you’ll receive a free Blog Blossom in your email in-box to help stir those creative juices. You can adapt them at will, re-mix ones you’ve already used, or simply ignore the ones you don’t like.

Sometimes simply reading an idea on what to blog about puts your brain in a creative state, so even if you don’t use a particular Blog Blossom, just helping shift your mind into brainstorming gear can be helpful.

The following are examples of Blog Blossoms: Continue reading →

WordPress TV is a collection of help and tutorial videos on WordPress for beginners and experts alike. At this “information central” site, you  can browse by category or type keywords into the search box if you have a particular topic in mind you’d like to learn more about.

There is a variety of information at WordPress TV. For example, under the “writing” category, you can learn how to schedule a post for a later date, create an excerpt using the “more” tag, set a post (or blog) to private, use the QuickPost function, create a poll, and other articles.

The categories list at WordPress TV is extensive. A few you may find helpful include Blog Management, Blogging Tools, Media, Plugins, SEO, Themes, and more. You may wish to bookmark this site for future reference.

Until next time,

Happy Blogging!

We haven’t discussed too much about how to make money blogging, but that will be the topic of the next few Marketing Monday segments. In some ways today’s online market is easier to sell to than even a few years ago. Social media has increased our audience. Yet in other ways, it’s more difficult because the online community has quickly learned to identify ads and sales pages.

The key to online marketing is to “pre-sell” your target audience by creating such a desire in your readers before you even launch a product that they have their credit cards in hand the day your sales page goes live.

So, how do we do that? Three steps: Continue reading →

Scribe is a new plugin from Brian Clark of Copyblogger that takes the guesswork out of writing search engine optimized blog posts, or any other form of online writing, for that matter. With Scribe, bloggers can instantly tell whether or not their posts have maximized optimization for search engines yet maintained readability for humans. I’ve been using this plugin for several weeks now and have seen an increase in organic traffic. Plus, it’s very easy to use.

Scribe differs from typical SEO tools. Instead of asking you for a keyword phrase and then guiding you to construct content around it, the Scribe plugin will:

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