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We’re wild about words!

5 must-read articles to grow your blogging audience

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Some of my Internet research on ways to grow your audience for your blog.
Some of my Internet research on ways to grow your audience for your blog.

Are you spending hours blogging but the response is crickets? I’m going to help Rochester area bloggers with that dilemma in my class Blogging 201 at Writers and Books on Nov. 1.

I’ve been looking for best practices and tips to share with my students, which has meant digging through the Internet (or the “black hole” as I’ve been calling it).

So I thought I’d share links to five articles I’ve found that I consider must-reads for bloggers.

Here they are:

How to write headlines that drive traffic shares and search results by Nathan Ellering. Ellering wrote this for the CoSchedule Blog. He writes about CoSchedule’s amazing headline analyzer, in which you can paste in your blog headline to see how it scores. The analyzer looks at word balance, length of headline and headline type and Ellerby explains what each part means and gives tips on writing better headlines. I am definitely going to start using this tool for all my blog headlines.

Blogging gone bad: 7 mistakes you don’t want to make by Michael Hyatt. Hyatt is my guru on so many topics related to business, blogging and leadership. In this post, he offers ways to fix common mistakes of bloggers including creating posts that aren’t scannable and being inconsistent in your blogging schedule. I always recommend Hyatt as resource to my Blogging 101 students.

3 free tools to help you understand your online audience by Larry Kim. In this blog post for Social Media Today, Kim writes about how so many businesses don’t understand their target audience. That goes for bloggers, too. He gives brief summaries of Google Analytics, Facebook Audience Manager, and Twitter Audience Insights.

How to market with email newsletters posted on the SCORE website. A great way to gather a following to your blog is to collect email addresses, and then send out an email newsletter on a regular basis, which includes links to your blog postings. This posting walks you through how to get started, including explaining how to comply with the the CAN-SPAM Act. The post also includes a link to download a guide. I’m a volunteer mentor with Greater Rochester Chapter of SCORE and the national website of SCORE is a treasure trove of helpful information and webinars.

Facebook Page or Group: The Definitive Answer by Andrea Vahl. I stumbled upon Vahl in one of my “black hole” searches on the Internet, and I’m glad I did. She works with small businesses on their social media. Her posting confirms what I’ve grown to realize: A Facebook Group can be a great way to interact with people of similar interests. Sounds perfect for bloggers, while a Facebook Page is better for branding your business.

If you’re interested in taking Blogging 201, call Writers and Books at (585)-473-2590. Only a few spots were available as of today but I’ll teach the course again in 2017.

Time management technique brings inner peace

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girl_dock

I’m constantly working on time management. There’s just so much I love to do that I tend to say yes when I probably should say no. But I’m grateful for these opportunities, and who knows what tomorrow will bring so I hate to pass them up.

My latest attempt at time management actually has to do with making more time for something that I was neglecting. And that’s time to focus on my inner core, my spirituality, the foundation of who I am.

I’m taking a clue from two leaders whose writings I’ve come to respect: Michael Hyatt and Greg McKeown. I’ve read books and/or blogs by both of these men and they each begin their day by reading something inspirational and then writing in a journal.

Starting my day in a new way

So for most (but not all) days in the last couple weeks, I’ve tried to do the same. It helps that I tend to be an early riser (sometimes on purpose, sometimes due to insomnia). I’ve gone into my home office, turned on the light, shut the door and picked up my reading. From there, I take several minutes to write in my journal. I often write about things that happened the day before, and I try to make sense of them, sort out my feelings, whatever.

Every day that I’ve done this, I’ve felt more peaceful and ready to face the day’s challenges. So this attempt at time management actually means setting aside time to do something that’s improving my mental health, I’m convinced.

What are you doing to maintain inner balance? I’d love to hear from you.

 

 

 

What’s truly essential? 3 steps to Essentialism

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I'm highlighting key take-aways from this book.
I’m highlighting key take-aways from this book.

I’m always trying to cram more into my day. Who isn’t? But I’m reading a fascinating book called Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less and trying to discern what’s really essential to me and where can I make the greatest contribution.

Greg McKeown is the author of Essentialism, and I heard him discuss this form of “systematic discipline” on this podcast with Michael Hyatt.

McKeown makes the point that we live in a world where “the preponderance of choice has overwhelmed our ability to manage it. We have lost our ability to filter what is important and what isn’t.”

He uses the analogy of our clothing closet — just like it gets cluttered, so do our lives as we make commitments and the list of things we are doing keeps growing.  So the Essentialist way of approaching life, like his or her closet, is three-fold:

1. Explore and evaluate. Take a look at everything you’re doing and determine what you really love or what pertains to your goals.

2. Eliminate. Get rid of the nonessential activities.

3. Execute. Develop a process so you have a method, a systematic discipline, for making these decisions on an ongoing basis. As McKeown states, “It’s about learning how to do less but better so you can achieve the highest possible return on every precious moment in your life.”

I actually read a library copy of this book while on vacation about two months ago, and I liked it so much, I purchased my own copy. Now I’m re-reading it, highlighting key points. From there, I plan to do some discernment as I look at all the activities I have in my life. Now is a good time for me to do this, as it’s been two years since I left daily journalism to “rewire.”

As part of this exercise, I’m going to look back at my journal from 2013-14 where I wrote about what I imagined my life would be like when I left 33 years of full-time journalism. I know I’ve accomplished a lot, but am I achieving what I dreamed? Have those dreams and goals changed?

How about you? What changes have you made in your life to be an Essentialist? Or are you, like me, in need of some soul-searching discernment?