Friday, January 13, 2017

Why Your Blog Doesn't Take Off

Losing focus is a main reason many blogs fail.

The writer starts a blog on personal development. Later he starts adding content on whatever he feels inspired and sometimes videos as well.

Here he is forgetting the audience which is coming for a specific need: personal development.

Suppose you went to buy vegetables. In the vegetable shop, there were piles of vegetables, then you also find footwear clothes etc. etc. You wouldn't have much of a variety of choices of vegetables, nor sufficient quantity as all the space is taken up by different stuff.

The same issue can happen with a book as well. The author is making a promise with the title. He just cannot add topics at random or because he likes them or because he thinks they are important.

The key issue is:
get out of your need zone, and get into the customer (reader's) need zone. Try to understand what they want and fulfill that requirement.

Thursday, January 12, 2017

Polishing Up Your Writing

Writers stumble as they begin their freelance life. In addition to learning to market their writing, they also have to improve its quality, or it would be just another drop in the vast sea of aimless content on the net.

To be an effective writer, one has to train in these facets of writing and related activities. This list is not exhaustive. This is the writing process roughly as I see it. You may see it differently.

Reading: 

Here is where we gather the material out of which we find raw material for our thought, the foundation of our writing.

Reading consists of several components, broadly classified below:
  • Scanning the material
  • Rapid reading
  • Taking notes

Thinking

We can prod our mind to think on the subject with these steps:
  • Mind mapping to brainstorm
  • Outlining (organizing the ideas from mind mapping)
  • Alternate ways-think 'what if', juggle various possibilities in your mind. Sometimes you may get a breakthrough idea.
  • Consider the reader's needs (based on the persona you have given to him.her)

Writing

  • Consider the reader's needs (based on the persona you have given to him.her)
  • Mindmap- structure- outline
  • Freewrite on each subtopic in the outline
  • Editing, revising
  • Add information, references
  • Restructuring if any
  • Add images
  • Final check