Posts Tagged ‘blog’

When you begin to write your book, you may be pleasantly surprised to find that you’ve already made significant progress….especially, if you’ve been active in your field for a long time.

Because you may have already written a lot of your book, the first writing step you should take is to take a fresh look at your hard drive, looking for content just begging to be included in your book!

Existing content takes many forms

To help you locate contents you already wrote, I’ve added a copy of my Existing Content Inventory Worksheet to my Active Garage Resource Page which you can download without registration.

My Existing Content Inventory Worksheet will help you keep track of content like case studies, examples, ideas, opinions, perspectives, procedures, resources, shortcuts, tips, and warnings.

Where to look for ready-to-use content

Look for existing content you can reuse for your book in files originally created for projects like:

• Articles & newsletters
• Blog posts & comments
• Books, e-books, & previous book proposals
• E-mail
• Memos & reports
• New business proposals
• Presentations & speeches
• Press releases
• Teleseminars, webinars
• White papers

As you review your previous client, prospect, and writing files, you may be surprised at the content richness waiting for you.

During your exploration, you might want to search your hard drive for key phrases and words that might take you directly to the content you’re looking for.

What to do after locating existing content

Once you consolidate the titles, relevance, and locations of existing content onto copies of the Existing Content Inventory Worksheet, you can address questions like:

• What type of content is it? Is the content an idea, a process or a technique, a case study, an interesting anecdote, or a tip?
• Where does the content belong in my book? Which chapter?
• How much of the content is useful? Where will it appear within the chapter? Will the content be used as part of the text of your book, or is it more appropriate as a sidebar interview or tip?
• How literally can I reuse the content? Can I simply copy and paste the content, (assuming you have copyright ownership of the content)? Or, do I need to paraphrase the content? Do I need to expand the content? Do I need to verify the accuracy of the content?
• Do I need permissions for quotations? You may not need to obtain permission, for example, if the quote appeared in a published magazine or newspaper article. You might have to get permission, however, if you quoting an individual’s comments in a recorded teleseminar interview you hosted.

In many cases, of course, you may have originally written the content in long-forgotten articles, blog posts, or newsletters.

Of course, if you already knew, or suspected, that you were going to be write your current book, you’d- -hopefully- -have tracked the content using a mind map like the one I prepared for this blog post series (among other free resources).

Conclusion

Writing a book doesn’t have to mean a time-consuming endeavor requiring you to write every word from scratch! If you’ve been active in your field for a long time, you may have already written a lot of your book! Even better, if you used tools like mind mapping to organize your content and track your writing, you may be pleasantly surprised to find how much of your book has already been written.

Roger C. Parker helps business professionals write brand-building, thought-leadership books. He’s written over 30 books, offers writing tools at Published&Profitable, and posts writing tips each weekday. His next book is Title Tweet! 140 Bite-Sized Ideas for Article, Book, and Event Titles.
—

Roger C. Parker helps business professionals write brand-building, thought-leadership books. He’s written over 30 books, offers writing tools at Published&Profitable, and posts writing tips each weekday. His next book is Title Tweet! 140 Bite-Sized Ideas for Article, Book, and Event Titles.

Tagged as: active garage, anecdote, articles, author, blog, book, case study, comment, Content, e-books, emails, interview, Inventory, memos, newsletters, perspectives, presentations, press releases, procedures, proposals, publisher, quotations, reports, Resource, roger parker, seminars, speeches, teleseminars, tip, title, webimnars, white papers, Worksheets, Writing for Business

This is part of the the book BLOGTASTIC! Growing and Making a Difference Through Blogging. You can read the table of contents and follow the book on this page:

See the table of contents for the book here: BLOGTASTIC project

Previous article: Avoid mudslinging

BLOGTASTIC!: Earn links to your blog

Simply speaking, a link is a gift. You have to treat it that way. You wouldn’t ask a friend or colleague to give you gifts. You shouldn’t ask your blogging friends for links.

Imagine a stranger comes to you at a networking event. Before you can even say hello, the stranger says “give me a gift.” What would your first reaction be? You might be shocked, angry, or upset by this rude behavior. Now, imagine you have dozens or hundreds of people asking you for a gift each day. You’d probably get jaded and eventually just ignore these requests.

Successful bloggers get frequent requests for links or link exchanges. Some of these requests are even automated. If you add your request to this queue, you will probably wind up annoying these people. They may even put you on their blacklists, and so they may not listen to you even when you have something good to say.

There are three simple ways to get links:

1. Consistently write compelling content.
2. Provide a high “return on investment for an interaction”(ROII).
3. Create content that is link-worthy.

One more thing to observe here is that when you ask for links, you’re openly announcing that you have little influence in the blogosphere.

---

Blogging Tip: Focus on earning links rather than asking for them

If you are really, really good at something, then it is hard for people to ignore you. If you maintain an excellent blog, then it is hard to imagine nobody will link to you.

You will definitely need to put in more work to earn links than to ask for links. Earning links is fool-proof strategy, and asking for links is a crap-shoot strategy.

---

Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He maintains another blog called Life Beyond Code and tweets as @UpbeatNow

Tagged as: blog, blog traffic, BLOGTASTIC!, links

It is important to understand what is going on here. There is a real shift underway. Building your brand through traditional tools and trends need a closer look. Are they making you vulnerable? Are they making you a stronger business?

Speed of change is HIGH. Advertising has been moving online and is becoming less effective. The payouts of online advertisement are declining. It is harder to justify marketing budgets and ROI for online advertising.

Here are some current trends:

Trend #1 Balance of Power
There has been a big power shift and today consumer has unparalleled power.

Trend #2 Emerging Marketing opportunity
More intimate customer relationship marketing is possible.

Trend #3 New Technique to build brand identity
You can shape your brand identity through response to social market. Transperancy and humility are rewarded. Authenticity is identity.

Every marketeer is now struggling with the following questions:

Should we be on FB?
Do we start a blog?
Do we offer everything for free?
Why aren’t we tweeting?

There are a lot of people who know what is social media BUT are not sure how to use it. Social Media is focused on the long tail so it is customized for easy adaptation by consumers. For marketeers to use it effectively, they need to demonstrate leadership in using social media. They need to develop social leadership strategy that delivers desired outcome and meets their business objectives.

All day I read articles, blogs, case studies about brands that tried something — usually — missed the boat, and are now enjoying the not always positive feedback we are all so ready to give. But then again, every once and a while a company comes along and really hits the nail on the head.

The Nature Conservancy leverages Facebook and Digg for cause marketing: How TNC raised nearly $75,000 through Facebook Causes and a partnership with Lil Green Patch, a popular Facebook application. The group has also built significant brand awareness through the social news site Digg! (As reported by Jonathon Colman of TNC, September 29, 2008).

So why bother with social media?

I meet with a lot of companies, and almost always I am asked to “give an example of how a company has increased their bottom-line with social media.” Well, now, in addition to my usual spiel of stats, graphs, etc., I can also hand case studies. What it comes down to is any company can find success with a social media strategy; they just need to have the right goal in place. They need to understand where their audience is hanging out, and get in there with a good story … start passing it around. The rest usually takes care of itself.

–
Contributed by Deepika Bajaj, President and Founder, Invincibelle, LLC. Invincibelle helps women who live and work in a multicultural world to accelerate their professional growth. You can follow Deepika on Twitter at invincibelle.

Tagged as: advertisement, blog, budget, deepika bajaj, facebook, Identity, invincibelle, Leadership, marketing, online advertisement, Return on Investment, ROI, Social Media, Twitter, www.deepikabajaj.com, www.invincibelle.com