Do You Write About What You Love?

February 4, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 2 Comments

Do you love your business enough to write about it? Are you passionate about what you do inside and outside of your business? Of course I know people who have business because they want to make money and then I know people who have business because they are passionate about what they do AND wouldn’t mind making money from it too!

I find that a lot of people can get really stuck in writing articles, blog posts, small reports, infoproducts, etc because they really don’t love what they are writing about.

Hey if I had to write a book about high school algebra, it would take me literally a lifetime to do it. I would find every excuse in the book not to do it. Or if I committed to writing one – it probably would read like pure garbage!

So just a thought…if you haven’t written anything about or inside of your business for a few months now — you may need to re-evaluate your love and your passion for what you do.

Any thoughts? I’d love for you to let me know if you think loving what you do is essential in succeeding in your business or at the very least writing about it. Leave your comments below.

Article Writing: How To Write Effectively For The Web

January 29, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 7 Comments

I was a professional journalist for several years before I switched careers into the mental health field, so I was hyper aware of grammar, composition, story flow etc. It was how I was trained, and I was trained by some of the best (The New York Times, Gannet News Service). The internet is different though, and the rules are not the same when it comes to writing for the web.

I had a bit of a learning curve when it came to writing effective articles for the web. For instance, the most important lesson I’ve learned when it comes to writing compelling or interesting copy for the web is to “write like people speak”. Now that sounds simple enough, but it’s actually really hard for those of us who actually paid attention in English class, because a lot of web writing totally ignores a lot of the “writing rules” that we learned as students.

For example:

1. People do not run on and on.

2. People speak in chunks.

3. They take a breath.

4. Then they speak again.

5. People usually finish a thought and then go onto another thought – and then may tie the two together. But not 10 thoughts or ideas.

When people speak, sometimes they begin sentences with “and” or “but” — something you would never do when writing a term paper or a news article. But guess what? That is exactly how I write when I write articles, article-shorts, and small blog posts on the web. I write the way that I would speak. I write in a way that is conversational and comfortable for the reader — because statistics show that that is the format that converts best. Conversational.

So when you sit down to write your article for the day or for the week, don’t worry as much about getting the grammar just right — worry more that your content speaks to your readers.

Related Websites

Write An Article About The Inauguration

January 20, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 6 Comments

If you are looking for a topic for your daily article or blog post today, it makes a lot of sense to write about today’s U.S. Presidential Inauguration of Barack Obama.

How can you tie it into your business? Well, if you don’t typically write personal blog posts or you are writing a full length article, you can use the spirit of hope or self-determination etc. of this even and tie it in with whatever it is you do.

If you are a dog groomer of course you can talk about the new puppy coming to the White House. If you work in fashion, health, fitness, etc. you can discuss Michelle Obama’s fashion picks or the new President’s workout schedule. Another general item to discuss is about today’s crowds on the mall or even talk about the weather.

Whatever your niche – you can find something about today’s historical events and tie it into your marketing message.

SPELL CHECK!
inaugurate | verb [ trans. ]
begin or introduce (a system, policy, or period) : he inaugurated a new policy of trade and exploration.
• admit (someone) formally to public office : the new president will be inaugurated on January 20.
• mark the beginning or first public use of (an organization or project) : the museum was inaugurated on September 12.
DERIVATIVES
inauguration | noun
inaugurator | noun
inauguratory | adjective
ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from Latin inaugurat- ‘interpreted as omens (from the flight of birds),’ based on augurare ‘to augur.’

How 10 Articles Will Change Your Business

November 27, 2008 By Lisa Angelettie 4 Comments

I wish I had written this post, but that’s okay, because it really explains what I have been saying for years to new entrepreneurs on the web…

1. Look at your competition. Figure out who’s at the top.

2. Google Them

3. Betcha’ they have written articles that are being ranked by Google.

4. Write 10 more than they have and watch how your business changes.

Read more about what I’m saying over at Chris Pearson’s blog.

Article Marketing 101: Why Content Is Still King – Or Queen!

November 20, 2008 By Lisa Angelettie Leave a Comment

If you ever wondered why you should even bother writing another article for your blog, for an ezine, a directory, or any place else — this blog post by Cory Miller really explains it, without me having to say another word. Content is still king and this is why…

Check it out: Content Is Priceless

WordPress Plugin For Writing Article Series

November 19, 2008 By Lisa Angelettie 2 Comments

I write a lot of article series on my sites, especially this one. I’ve always wanted to create a connection between each article but didn’t want to manually put the NEXT or BACK links in my post. This cool wordpress plugin that I found will do it for us. Try it and let me know how it works out!

clipped from www.siolon.com

In Series WordPress Plugin

Often times when writing about a topic in-depth it’s advisable to break it up for the reader. The way to do this before would be to create a page announcing the series and provide links to all the articles in the series. Well no more! The In Series WordPress Plugin makes this task seamless. The plugin adds an option to add it to a series, and the plugin generates the necessary connections between the content. It’s great, because it requires no hacking of your template–it works right out of the box!

Even though I personally haven’t got to give this plugin a go, I’m excited to really make use of this one. Writing series is a great way to present lengthy content on the web, and this plugin takes all of the work out of doing so (besides the writing of course).

Have you backed up your latest articles?

November 18, 2008 By Lisa Angelettie Leave a Comment

I must admit that I was a little late on implementing this very necessary task, but I could no longer ignore the fact that if one thing were to go wrong and I lose everything on my computer — that every article I have written in the past six years would be POOF! gone.

Now I know that there are some marketers who feel that if they submit all their work to one main, dependable directory like ezinearticles (which I love by the way), that their work will be protected. But I am a little more paranoid than that. I think that I should have my own back up because what if that site decides to just retire. What would you do then?

Or how about those of us that like to spread our goodies around and not submit ALL our content to one place. We would have to track down our article all over the place. BLIP! That’s not going to work.

That’s why I finally decided to use one of the key features that comes with Mac’s relatively new Leopard operating system and that is the back-up feature called Time Machine. Pair it with a hard drive and you have a copy of everything on your computer, even what your desktop looked like, just like it looked last time you backed it up. I LOVE it. It makes me feel so safe.

So my point here is — if you haven’t done it yet — start backing up your articles and all of your other content. Don’t own a mac? While there are other free or low-fee web-based storage solutions out there — I don’t trust ’em. Nothing is more secure to me than buying a zip or hard drive of your own (you can find one over on Amazon) and manually downloading and saving all your content. That way YOU have it.

If you want to back up all the articles and posts on your wordpress blog, this is a good article to walk you through the process:
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/backup-your-blog-regularly/

*Last note: Are you a Mac lover like me? I’ve written about other mac resources that I use to build my internet marketing business over at squidoo. Enjoy!

Article Marketing 101: Spell Check Your Writing Please!

November 17, 2008 By Lisa Angelettie Leave a Comment

I subscribe to a well-known marketer’s monthly print newsletter. It’s — okay. I don’t love it. And I don’t absolutely think it’s junk. But for 40 bucks a month — I think that it should at least be spell checked!

While I am a firm believer in getting people out of their perfection traps, and promoting the saying that writer should just get it done instead of worrying about getting it done perfectly — let’s be reasonable here.

Marketers who charge me for their information and do not have the common decency to spell check and grammar check their work, leave me feeling cheated. I truly believe that this really successful “guru” speeds through writing this newsletter every month because it’s just one more thing to do on his plate.

Perhaps he isn’t outsourcing enough of his other tasks, because when I tell you that there is some obvious grammatical errors every month — that make me have to stop and re-read them so that I understand what he just wrote — I’m telling you the truth.

It’s just plain ole’ annoying, and I feel — unprofessional. Not when he has a huge staff working for him. Heck – even my nine year old daughter could do a basic spell and grammar check in Microsoft Word!

Listen everyone. It’s important. Don’t spend the entire day on it. Don’t even spend an hour on it. But take 10 minutes after you’ve written something – especially something that you are going to charge people for and do a spell and grammar check.

The quality of your work is a reflection of you as a person and as a business owner.

By the way, if there are any errors in this post – I’m sorry:-), but hey at least I didn’t charge you for it!