Why I can’t take people seriously (when they don’t even update thier WordPress install)
April 16, 2008
I know, its fairly harsh, but I’m in a bad mood this evening.
There’s a rash of internet marketers making me itchy at the moment - they’re running out of date WordPress installs, and worst of all, they’re not even doing the ‘basics’ of making sure thier blog has a good reach ability.
I’ve written about ‘reachability’ before, but the basics of it is that you’ve got tools that you can use to make sure your blog is plastering itself wherever you’ve got a spare piece of wall. Why not use them?
Do you niche?
April 14, 2008
Image by FotoosVanRobin via Flickr
Recently, over at Mamaneedsabookcontract, we talked about niches (we choose a theme each week, and blog on it - its amazing how simple a topic becomes diverse and complex answers).
This week our theme was ‘niches’ - which is important to bloggers.
All of the answers that were posted resonated with me, but Heather’s post was the best for bloggers. So, go read it, and then come back.
Copywriting ‘in the black’
April 12, 2008
Image via Wikipedia
One of the biggest issues I’ve faced in recent months is explaining the lay basics of both copywriting and grant writing to one of my clients. Both are incredibly complex processes, if you don’t have the right ‘mindset’ for it, and more importantly, if done wrong, can cripple your business.
A plugin that’s not a plugin?
April 2, 2008
Image from Wikipedia
Normally, I save my ‘tech’ talk for other blogs - but I thought this warranted sharing.
I don’t know who recommended it to me, but I’ve found this really awesome plugin called ‘Zemanta‘ It installs into your browser, and is a tool that ’suggests’ images and articles to you as you’re writing posts.
It might not sound like much, but I’ve spent the last three weeks trying to work out how to add images and make sure I’m pcoviding decent links to people. And Zemanta is a great step towards that.
Farewell to a great
March 19, 2008
Where’s the ’secret’ post then?
March 16, 2008
About a week ago, I made a post that garnered 93 comments.
93!
If you’ve come to Ardentwriter since last night, you won’t have seen the post, but I wanted to say to those of you that took part - thank you. Those that followed the instructions to the letter were great - and those that didn’t also gave me food for thought.
So, over the next few weeks and months (cause, err…I was expecting 10, not 93) I’ll post the stuff you’ve asked about.
And the next time I make a post like that I might leave it for longer 
Buckling down
March 15, 2008
Butt in seat – or laptop on knee – or - pen and paper in hand are three of the most important traits any writer can learn. Once you’ve fed your muse, you gotta find a schedule of work – that schedule of work needs to be daily.
Not weekly, not ‘when you can be bothered’ – daily.
Writing daily is an art in and of itself. I was once told that once you got into a routine for 21 days, you would always do it, but that doesn’t work for me. I can ‘force’ myself to write and work, but I don’t like it. I still do it though.
Muse-ili
March 14, 2008
My muse is an informant. She comes in the night, and whispers stories to me. Constantly.
The problem is, she’s very easily led.
You see – most people can’t write without inspiration – and if you write – long term, you have to keep feeding your muse, or they starve. And a starved muse is probably a form of torture for writers, to be honest.
So, ratting on your muse and sharing everything starts with reading, and absorbing experiences. WE can only write about the things we have a passing knowledge of after all – even if it’s creating events in our head and following them through to logical conclusions. Or illogical ones.
What the heck are RSS feeds and why should I use them?
March 13, 2008
If you’re interested in anything RSS, you should probably head on over to my blogging blog, where all will be revealed
Completely Blogging is also offering *free* blog reviews, in exchange for a link back to Completely Blogging. We also offer lots of informationon blogging, social bookmarking and more.
Can yahoo pipes actually HELP your blogging?
March 10, 2008
Recently, I discovered a cool API that Yahoo had set up called ‘Yahoo Pipes’. Basically, what it does is ‘pipe’ feeds together into one ‘uber feed’, like connecting up a lot of little pipes to the main line.
It then spits that main line out in order of posts, into one feed, over however many blogs you’ve added to it.
The beauty of it is I can add any RSS based feed to it, and then republish it on ANY website I choose - so, any blog, free article site that I publish my work on, forum that allows me to grab feeds and more - and et voila, I’m able to combine it all into one constantly updating and evolving data stream that lets people see what I’m writing, where, and how its going.