Breaking the Wall between Productivity and Creativity

 

Productivity and creativity in writing, sometimes seem to be two opposing forces that are impossible to be reconciled. The wall between the duo is the contrast between quantity and quality. While productivity likes tidiness - that is, a streamlined process to get the tasks done before the deadline - creativity thrives on chaos. You let your mind wander as you take time to explore new topics, perhaps you would stumble upon a new idea.

And here comes the battle! How to be productive without submerging creativity! As a writer, how do you sustain your consistency in terms of quantity, yet maintain the quality of your articles? It is obvious that creativity enriches, and helps the writer to stand out in an overcrowded market. Hence, the quality of your writings is primary to all other factors.

Are you itching to demolish the wall, increasing your productivity and expanding your creativity? Let’s go for a ride.

Identify the benefits of being creative

Is creativity valuable anymore? For budding writers and authors, it is easy to conclude that the way to expand one’s presence is by the number of articles or books published. Consequently, one drags oneself into scribbling shabby ideas and publishing poorly edited content. However, the fact remains that most readers or organisations value creativity and craft in content creation and production.

Ann Handley, a regular keynote speaker on content marketing, writes, “Metrics and measurement are important. But the art in marketing is just as important as the science!” In other words, the craft of your content is as important as the figures.

The best way to attract a loyal audience is to nurture our voice and to stand out. So, we need to be creative.

Set boundaries for your creativity

Setting boundaries for creativity means finding a spot between chasing productivity and welcoming creativity, order and chaos, strict planning and freewheeling, staying safe and exploring new territory.

Imagine how frustrating it is sitting before your computer system or with your pen and paper, and you are just blank. You searched and travelled through your mind, but it seems like you have been formatted. However, creativity benefits from such limitations.

Therefore, instead of looking for a random idea, limit your idea generation to a specific topic. When the mind is focused on a topic, ideas are generated sporadically. Meanwhile, your choice of topic should be what resonates with the needs of your clients or readers now. For instance, as a life coach, ask yourself: What’s the main aim of your clients? Perhaps, they want to find more balance in their lives and feel less stressed. So, how can you help them achieve that? It is amazing how ideas that seem erased begin to crowd the head and become the answers to questions.

By setting boundaries for your creativity, you save more time and reduce the stress of planning. This then improves your productivity.

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.” – Steve Jobs

Go down rabbit holes

While in a hurry to get things done, it is crucial to foster your curiosity to be detailed. Work flows easily when you allow serendipity to guide. Be adventurous in doing your tasks. You get more inspiration for writing when you follow your curiosity and read widely.

Don’t wait till you finish your first draft before searching for a quote you are curious about. Be wide in your reading. Taking on reading and writing challenges on different topics opens your eyes, gives you a fresh perspective, and might even boost your productivity.

You can also foster creativity by asking “Why” more often. Why do clients struggle with a specific problem? Why do they make certain mistakes? Walter Isaacson writes that Leonardo da Vinci—possibly the most creative person ever—embraced his inner child, and kept asking “Why?”

“He never outgrew the child’s need not just to admire the beauty of a blue sky but to ask why it is that colour.” – Walter Isaacson

Learn to switch between the creative desk and the productive desk.

Austin Kleon has two different desks to switch between his productive and creative mindset: An “analog” desk for creative work, and a digital desk for productivity. As he writes in his book “Steal Like an Artist,”

I have two desks in my office—one is “analog” and one is “digital.” The analog desk has nothing but markers, pens, pencils, paper, index cards, and newspapers. (…) This is where most of my work is born (…). The digital desk has my laptop, my monitor, my scanner, and my drawing tablet. This is where I edit and publish my work.

You should learn to switch between the productive and creative modes. When you sit down to work, ask yourself: What is the main objective of the next half hour? Do I need to write as much as possible of my first draft? (that’s a productive mode). Or do I have time to explore ideas before finalizing an outline? (that’s a creative mode).

Rabbit holes are only dangerous when you don’t limit your time. Know when you should be on the “analog” and when to move to the “digital.”

Launch into the deep

Each blog post or article you write should give you a tip on your next topic. Have you identified 10 Characteristics of a leader? Go deeper by picking each feature as a topic one after another. So, you have 11 articles already. Lovely!

Don’t be generic with your writings. The magic in writing appears when you learn to listen better, dig deeper into your topic, and force yourself to learn more.

Being creative doesn’t require a lot of extra time or extra work. You just need to allow for a limited dose of chaos in your process, to foster curiosity, to formulate questions and look for answers, to admit your ignorance, to be brave enough to explore unfamiliar territories.

Writing becomes more fun, you procrastinate less and boost your productivity.

7 Content Writing Tips Experts Swear By

 

Every day, more and more people discover the wonderful art form that is content writing. Whether you are just starting or are already an expert, it is always helpful to remember these 7 content writing tips. So, in no order, consider the following tips:

1. Writer, Know Thy Audience

To write content that appeals to the right audience, you must first of all know your audience. It is one of the most important of our 7 content writing tips. This saves a lot of time and energy as there is nothing worse than trying to sell the right product to the wrong person. When you know who your target audience is, this will help you tailor your content effectively. Knowing your audience involves more than simply knowing who they are, as a content writer, you should always put yourself in the mind of your readers. Ask yourself, “Why should anyone read my content?”

It’s like asking, “Why should anyone buy what I am selling? What’s in it for them?”

If you can’t give them a good enough answer, they’re on to the next product and you end up losing a potential client. Nobody wants to spend money on something that is of no benefit or relevance to them. This is the reason why successful content writers cannot do without proper qualitative research.

2. Research Like Your Life Depends On It (because it does)

As a content writer, in fact, as any kind of writer, you must recognize that you cannot pour out of an empty tank, it is the basic law of Nemo Dat Quod Non Habet. In other words, you cannot give what you do not have. This is why research is very important. And not just any kind of research, but research that results in an engaging content that is relevant and useful to your audience. A vital part of research as a content writer is sourcing for ideas on what to write. There are numerous online resources to help you with this.

Nobody wants to read content that is inaccurate or that they have no use for. Research is the foundation of good content. It validates your written work and if done in a targeted way, it will multiply: the traffic on your site, the number of clicks on your content, your social media shares and ultimately, your sales.

3. Go for Their Emotions!

It was Maya Angelou who once said; “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Her words ring true in the business of content writing. Business brands that have mastered the art of evoking an emotional response from people through their ads are usually the ones that rake in the highest sales and profits. We can all recall that one ad that made us feel; “Oh wow, I really need what they’re selling;” even though thinking about it deeply, we may realize that we probably didn’t. The advert connected with you, the audience, and that’s what made these products or services so attractive. Well written content should always achieve the same result.

4. Keep It Plain and Simple.

Readers don’t click websites because they want to read long-winded literature. By all means, keep your content simple and devoid of verbose terms and phraseology. Use simple words that get the message across as effectively as possible. This way, you avoid losing your audience before you have even had a chance to make a good impression.

5. SEO is Your Friend.

SEO, which means Search Engine Optimization, is a practice of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a webpage from search engines. It is a marketing strategy that improves your website’s presence and ranking on search engines like Google making you pop on the first page of search results. It increases your website or blog content’s visibility on the World Wide Web. Do you ever take note of the sites that come up on the second, third or tenth page of your Google search? No?

That’s right, you don’t…and neither does anyone else! People rarely go beyond the first page of search results. So, your goal should be to write content that guarantees you a premium spot.

6. Solve a Problem

People are forever searching for information on the internet. From self-development tips to money-making ideas, or random content just out of curiosity. Whatever their reasons, content is to them what formulas are to mathematicians and scientists. They help solve their problems or simply whet their appetites to surf the net even more. Good content should always aim to solve problems or meet a pressing need, it must also answer questions.

7. Always. Review Your Content

This is cannot be overemphasized. Nothing kills a write-up faster than poorly worded or punctuated content. Nobody wants to wade through an unsightly mire of writing filled with all manner of errors. Make sure to always proofread and review your content as many times as possible to ensure that it adheres to the rules of grammar, syntax, punctuation and spelling. Honestly, this is so important that some businesses hire the services of proofreaders and line editors who will painstakingly review their work just to ensure that no error is somewhere hidden in their content.

You also want to ensure the proper flow and overall readability of your work so that not only do people read your content because they need to, but they also read it because they want to.

Well, there you go! This list is by no means exhaustive. If you can put these tips here to practice, sure enough, you will make your mark in the content writing world.

 

Good luck and happy writing!

5 Ways to Come Up with Great Story Ideas

 

Been racking your brain about great story ideas?

We all have a million excellent ideas for stories, but, without fail, they magically disappear the minute we sit down to write. It seems impossible, but it happens constantly. Hours are wasted staring at a blank page. And, no matter how many cups of coffee are in our systems, we still can’t find the energy to kick our muses into gear and develop story ideas.

Have no fear: I have five ways that will help pump up your creativity muscle and build story ideas that will keep you writing for hours on end. Here they are.

 

How to Build Great Story Ideas

 

1. Reinvent a scene from a book.

 

Take a very small, seemingly unimportant scene from one of your favourite books and consider what it’d be like if that were the opening scene to your novel. Change the characters of course, and add one or more unique elements to that scene. The key is to give you a starting point and then let your imagination run wild.

While there are many ways to stay inspired, this challenge really takes something that you love (an old book) and gives it new life.

 

2. Use junk mail as inspiration.

 

Take the next two pieces of spam mail you receive (either snail mail or e-mail) and use them to determine the profession of your protagonist and your protagonist’s love interest.

I get this type of mail all of the time, particularly from politicians, credit card companies and auto dealerships—and that’s just what’s delivered by the United States Postal Service! When I add in the junk sent to my e-mail inbox, I get “foreign ambassadors from Nigeria” looking for million-dollar loans and women begging me to click through to get “erotic” pictures of them. Any one of these jobs will lead to many fun and unusual situations—and will give you plenty of fodder to write about.

 

3. Invent a history for someone with whom you’ve lost touch.

 

We have all had friends in our lives from grade school, high school or college that we knew quite well back then, but haven’t seen much (if at all) since. In fact, most of their lives are a mystery to us. Pick one of those old friends and write about the life they’ve been leading ever since you lost touch.

What happened in his or her family life? What career path did he or she choose? Was he or she involved in something that led them to a life of crime? The possibilities are endless, which should drive you to be as creative as possible.

 

4. Eavesdrop on a conversation.

 

Just because you’re stuck in a bit of a funk when it comes to ideas doesn’t mean that other people are. Take your notepad or laptop out of the house, sit down somewhere and observe the scenery around you—and listen to any and every conversation within earshot. You can do this at a park, restaurant, coffee shop or, my personal favourite, a bar (people who have a few drinks in them tend to share the best stories). Remember, jot down all the stories you hear but be sure to give them a twist to make them your own.

 

5. Find a writing prompt and run with it.

 

Sometimes the best cure for writer’s block is to let someone else start your story for you. #

SOIPublishing has some great creative writing prompts. You can also search the web and find a number of other sites that offer them, and who knows, the idea you get from a writing prompt may be just the inspiration you need to spark your creativity and write a short story or novel that sells.

 

Have your own suggestions on how to beat writer’s block and get your creative juices flowing? Leave it in the comments section here. The more suggestions we have, the better the chances none of us will ever have to sit there staring blankly at a page again.

 

Credit: Writers Digest

6 Terrific Tips to Writing a Gripping Horror Story

 

This guide to how to write a horror story covers the basics - a basic understanding of the definition of horror and common elements of horror fiction gives a good foundation on what is needed to write a gripping horror story. These tips can be applied to evoke an intense feeling in your readers, even if you don’t exclusively write horror.

The word ‘horror’ means ‘an intense feeling of fear, shock or disgust’ (Oxford English Dictionary). The word comes from the Latin horrere, meaning ‘to tremble or shudder’.

5 common elements of the best horror stories

The best horror stories share at least five elements in common:

1. They explore ‘malevolent’ or ‘wicked’ characters, deeds or phenomena.
2. They arouse feelings of fear, shock or disgust as well as the sense of the uncanny – things are not what they seem. There is a heightened sense of the unknown and/or mysterious.
3. They are intense (as the dictionary definition reminds us). Horror books convey intense emotion, mood, tone and environments. Together, these produce the sense that everything is charged with ominous possibility.
4. They contain scary and/or shocking and scintillating plot twists and story reveals (unlike episodes of the cartoon Scooby Doo, in which the bad guys are typically conniving realtors dressed as paranormal beings – ghosts, werewolves). In horror the ghosts and werewolves are very, very real.
5. They immerse readers in the macabre. Horror tends to deal with morbid situations, from repetitive cycles of violence to death-related uncanny scenarios. Zombies march, vampires make you join their legion, or (in subtler scenarios) long-dead friends or relations pay unexpected visits.

How do you write a horror story or novel like Stephen King, Clive Barker or (looking further back in the genre’s history) Edgar Allan Poe? Start with these six tips:

1: Learn how to write horror using strong, pervasive tone

Tone and mood are two elements that contribute to how your story feels. Great tone and mood can have readers’ spines tingling before a single character has even spoken or made a terrible decision.

How you describe settings, character movement and actions creates an overarching tone. In horror writing, a dark or frightening tone is often pronounced. Take this example from Clive Barker’s The Thief of Always:

‘Half closing his eyes, he crossed to the window and fumbled to slam it, making sure that the latch was in place this time.

The wind had started his lamp moving, and when he turned back the whole room seemed to be swinging around. One moment the fight was blazing in his eyes, the next it was flooding the opposite wall. But in between the blaze and the flood it lit the middle of his room, and standing there – shaking the rain off his hat – was a stranger.

He looked harmless enough. He was no more than six inches taller than Harvey, his frame scrawny, his skin distinctly yellowish in colour. He was wearing a fancy suit, a pair of spectacles and a lavish smile.’

The scene is suffused with a sense of the unsettling. Objects that should be stationary move. The room itself seems to move. The  viewpoint character is disoriented. A peculiar character seems to materialize out of nowhere.

Barker also creates an ominous tone through indirect means. ‘He looked harmless enough’ draws our attention to the possibility the man could in fact be harmful. The ‘scrawny’ frame and ‘yellowish’ skin both make the stranger unsettling and increase the sense of unfamiliarity.

Whether you are an aspiring horror author or not, work at creating consistent mood and tone. If you want to write a scary novel, focus on ways you can make actions and descriptions work together to establish an uneasy atmosphere.

2: Read widely in your genre

Whatever genre you write in, whether psychological or paranormal horror read as many books by respected authors in your genre as possible. Examples of celebrated horror authors include Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker, Bram Stoker, Neil Gaiman, Chuck Palahniuk, John Lindqvist and more.

As you read authors in your genre, make notes on what aspects of your genre the author excels in. Is it great, spooky settings? Copy out your favourite quotes that create an eerie sense of place and re-read when trying to make your own settings more vivid. Actively learning from great authors will improve your mastery of the horror genre.

3: Give wicked characters better, credible motivations

When you write a horror novel, it shouldn’t read as though a malevolent force is sitting at a bus stop, waiting to infiltrate your unsuspecting characters’ world ‘just because’. Give every malevolent character a strong, clear motivation. Revealing exactly what the motivation is can be part of the mystery that sustains your story and keeps readers guessing why unsettling things keep happening.

If there’s a malevolent force, being or stranger in your horror novel, make their motivation similar in magnitude to the character’s actions. Readers will scoff if a creepy doll goes on a murderous rampage in your novel simply because somebody took its batteries out.

4: Use the core elements of tragedy

This is excellent horror-writing advice from Chuck Wendig’s blog Terrible Minds. As Wendig puts it:

Horror is best when it’s about tragedy in its truest and most theatrical form: tragedy is born through character flaws, through bad choices, through grave missteps.

The horror genre uses the core elements of tragedy so nakedly that some of these have become clichés. ‘Don’t go in that house, idiot,’ you might shout at the screen while watching American Horror Story, because the character has the tragic flaw of being oblivious to personal danger. In horror stories, we get scared because, as readers, we see the signs foolhardy characters don’t.

At its heart, tragedy teaches some important lessons, for example:

• The destructive, rippling cause and effect acts of cruelty can set in motion (the frightening way the title character of Stephen King’s novel Carrie unleashes her powers due to bottling sustained psychological abuse is a good example)
• The value of seeing situations and scenarios from multiple perspectives (e.g. You could tell yourself, ‘That house is abandoned because the property market fell’. But also: ‘That house is abandoned because something terrible happened there (and keeps happening there) and people are afraid of it.’)
• The lesson that bravery means making a choice in full awareness of danger, whereas making choices in blissful unawareness of their potential consequences leaves people vulnerable

To write a credible horror novel, in other words, show that the horror-filled situation is dependent on a network of character choices, past or present. At its heart, horror fiction reminds us that cause and effect is real, even in the fantastical realm of storytelling.

5: Write scary novels by tapping into common human fears

If the point of horror writing (and horror elements in other genres such as paranormal romance) is to arouse fear, shock or disgust, think of the things people are most commonly afraid of.

Live Science places an interest choice at number one: The dentist. It’s true that you can feel powerless when you’re in the dentist’s chair. Couple this with the pain of certain dental procedures and it’s plain to see why a malevolent dentist is the stuff of horror nightmares.

Making readers scared creates tension and increases the pace of your story. Even so there should be a reason for making readers fearful. A terrifying situation should be central to the plot and should be driven by some or other cause (even if the reader can only guess, ultimately, what the precise cause is).

Here are some of the most common fears people have. As an exercise, list the reasons why we might find these things terrifying. Most relate to physical and/or mortal danger, but you can also draw on other common fears. Fears such as fear of humiliation, inadequacy or failure:
Most common fears – fodder for horror novel writing

• Fear of animals (dogs, snakes, sharks, mythical creatures such as the deep sea-dwelling kraken)
• Fear of flying (film producers combined the previous fear and this other common fear to make the spoof horror movie Snakes on a Plane)
• The dark – one of the most fundamental fears of the unfamiliar
• Perilous heights
• Other people and their often unknown desires or intentions
• Ugly or disorienting environments

Think of how common fears can be evoked in your horror fiction. Some are more often exploited in horror writing than others. A less precise fear (such as the fear of certain spaces) will let you tell the horror story you want with fewer specified must-haves.

6: Terror vs horror: Learn the difference

To learn how to write horror novels, it’s useful to understand the difference between horror and terror. Both have their place in horror writing.

‘Terror’ describes a state of feeling. Oxford Dictionaries simply define it as ‘extreme fear’. To ‘terrorise’, means to use extreme fear to intimidate others. Horror, however, also suggests elements of disgust and surprise or shock. Thus the word ‘horror’ describes not only extreme fear but also revulsion and a sense of surprise and the unexpected.

Horror writers share different ways to understand the difference between terror and horror:

For Stephen King, terror is a feeling the author tries to evoke in the reader before resorting to shock tactics such as surprising with the extreme or unpleasant:

‘I’ll try to terrify you first, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll horrify you, and if I can’t make it there, I’ll try to gross you out. I’m not proud.’

King’s quote suggests that if you can create terror in the reader before there’s even a gross-out moment or sickly reveal in your horror novel, you’re winning.

Culled from Now Novel

How to Write a Book Cover Blurb

 

In as much as book covers lure readers to your book, a professionally written and persuasive book cover blurb will grip your reader and persuade them to buy or download your book. In this article, you will learn how to write a book cover blurb that sells fast following these easy steps:

Your book blurb should entice and not summarize

While studying several book cover blurbs, I did a comparison between bestseller book blurbs and non-bestseller book blurbs, and discovered that unlike the book blurbs from bestseller books which entice readers; those from non-bestsellers only summarize the entire book.

Perhaps, another secret to becoming a best seller probably lies in how well your back cover blurb is crafted. After all, getting the label of a ‘bestseller’ lies in how fast your book sells.

Use a third person PoV when writing a book blurb

It doesn’t matter if the book is written from a first-person point of view, or even if it is your book, the blurb should always follow the industry standard which is third-person PoV.

Avoid the use of clichés in your book blurb

Except of course you have it in mind to keep changing your blurb often, for eBooks especially, you should avoid the use of clichés in your book blurbs. No matter how good the cliché seems, as long as it has been overused, they would only elicit an eye-roll rather than a total engagement. Your book blurb is another way of telling your audience what makes your book different from other authors, so why use a cliché?

Your blurb tone should not vary from your book’s tone.

When writing a book cover blurb, it is important to maintain a particular tone, as any form of discrepancy can make your book misleading. A jolly blurb will not fit in for an action-packed manuscript.

Start your book blurb with a hook sentence

Your book blurb should always start with a hook sentence, as this is one of the forces to grip your reader into reading the entire write up. In one of my articles, where I emphasized on “why hook sentences are important”, I mentioned that the first sentence in a piece can either arouse or kill the interest of a reader. This is also applicable to book blurbs; when the first sentence in your blurb fails to capture the interest of your reader, then you just lost him.

Keep your sentences short

Studies show that readers looking to pick up a book for their next read, spend a few minutes if not seconds scanning through book cover blurbs of titles that intrigue them. As such, writing a book blurb that will promote sales should use short captivating sentences. Rather than having a large chunk of words strung together in a sentence. Another trick is introducing a length variety for the sentences. That is, a long sentence should follow a short sentence and vice versa to intrigue your readers, as well as promote harmony in the reading.

Emphasize the purpose of the book in the book blurb

If you want to write a book blurb that sells fast, then you should state the essence of the book in the blurb.  Readers when trying to purchase a book, always have a reason in mind, which is what they also set out to look for on a bookshelf. If your book blurb emphasizes on the needs of your readers, then your book will be their choice of purchase.

Make your book blurb short

While you might have a lot in mind to put on the book blurb, you should note that time is very important. Your readers will not spend so much time reading a single blurb. Rather, they will likely scan through different book blurbs before settling for a particular book. Hence, it is advised you keep your book blurb short, let’s say 150 words. Better still, follow the Amazon guidelines on the book blurb.

Get feedback before publishing

When you have finally written that book blurb, you should give it out to at least two persons and get their honest opinions on their perception of the book blurb. Note what they love about it and what they feel is a turnoff and work on it.

Have more tips on how to write a book blurb that sells fast? Drop them in the comment box.

Chima Rachael J.

The 3 Hiring Mistakes Most Small Businesses Make

 

Each and every employee is an investment made by the company they work for, and for a business to succeed it has to make the most of its investments.

This is especially true of smaller companies and startups, which typically have fewer employees and limited investment income with which to try and net a profit. In these cases, every single dollar a company spends on finding and hiring an employee can affect its longer term success, making it crucial that they avoid making any major mistakes while hiring.

The problem is that running a small business is hard work – very hard work. This means that those involved are often short of time, and when time is short mistakes happen.

The good news is that this means that your competitors are probably making these mistakes whilst hiring too, and an opportunity is present for you to close your own loose ends and employee a better hire whilst wasting less time and money.

The Most Common Hiring Mistakes:

Having Zero Interview Plan

The single greatest mistake that small and new businesses make when hiring is failing to have any type of interview plan. Many businesses go into the interview with little idea of what they are going to do, other than perhaps a few interview questions scribbled on a piece of paper.

Interviews should be treated like a science. You’ve selected the individuals with the best resumes, and you’re bringing them in for a job interview. How do you choose who to select unless you have a carefully measured way of determining who is going to bring value, and who is not.

You do this by coming up with an interview plan. You find the most important questions to ask and make sure that you ask them to each candidate. You figure out what answers you’re looking for, and consider finding a way to score them objectively in order to ensure that you’re hiring the right people. You consider the amount you’re willing to pay, the factors that go into a great employee, and more.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be official, but there does need to be a plan in mind before you conduct your interview. If you wing each one of them, you risk asking some people more important questions than others, or not properly comparing those at the interview and letting your own natural biases kick in.

When it comes to recruitment, everything should be planned in some way, and although there is room for you to go off on some tangents (for example, if an applicant shares with you an interesting story), there should also be a methodology in place to make sure you’re hiring the right people.

Failing to Correctly Value Experience

This mistake goes two ways, and the best place to start is with an American baseball analogy. There are only 30 teams in all of major league baseball, each one employing a General Manager to run the entire team. When one general manager does a bad job (usually due to multiple seasons of hefty losses) that general manager is usually fired.

Some teams find up-and-coming stars to lead their organisation, and although sometimes those teams fail, other times they are wildly successful. Many of the most successful baseball organisations hired General Managers without any previous GM experience and reaped the rewards.

But other teams are a lot more “old school” and risk adverse. They refuse to hire any general manager unless they have previous GM experience.

Experience can be a good thing. But remember that there are only 30 teams in baseball, and at any given time, 25 to 28 general managers are employed for multiple years. That means you’re limited to hiring the 2 or so general managers that are out of work, both of whom were likely already let go because they failed to bring turn their teams into winning organisations. With this “Experience Only” mindset, you’re potentially limited to hiring someone with a history of losing.

This is the fatal flaw in overvaluing experience. Your next great employee may be someone that has limited experience but significant aptitude. If you focus too heavily on experience (either by requiring a considerable list of “qualifications” in your job description or hiring the person most experienced without considering other factors), you may be overlooking or turning off someone that could have been a better contributor.

On the other side of this, however, is the recent trend of business owners to hire those without experience at all, hoping to find people that are “cheaper” and just as productive. Many individuals with excellent experience are being ignored in favour of saving a few thousand dollars a year on an unproven individual. While there is significant value to be found in those that may not have traditional experience, there is also nothing quite like good experience that relates directly to your company.

Assuming Hiring Stops After the Job Offer

Finally, a very common mistake with small business owners is assuming that recruitment stops with the job offer. It doesn’t.

An employee’s productivity is 50% ability and 50% factors that occur after they have been hired. Employees need to be properly on-boarded, with excellent training (including not only their tasks, but also where to go to ask for office supplies, how to find files in folders on the network, etc.), programs in place to improve job satisfaction, and even smaller issues like opportunities for growth, objective job performance evaluation methods, and more.

You can hire the best employee available, but with poor training, no access to resources, and little in your office to ensure job satisfaction, that employee is going to struggle. Recruitment doesn’t stop after the job offer has been made, and no matter the size of your business you should be committed to making sure that employee adapts properly.

Avoid Costly Hiring Mistakes

Small businesses can’t afford to waste money on a bad hire. Always keep in mind the above hiring mistakes, and the tips that you’ll need to consider in order to avoid them in the future.

Culled from Recruit Shop

How to Build a Social Media Community: Content and Collaboration

 

I like to be on the cutting edge when it comes to utilizing social media and content. With the social landscape changing so often, we have to constantly be students of it, striving to find individuals whose content stands out from the crowd - to learn from and emulate.

Being "more interested than interesting" means that I take the opportunity to learn from the top social media influencers, allowing me to duplicate their social media fundamentals to improve my online presence.

I often consult my team members about the content that they enjoy most on social media. This is how I came across Eliot Robinson, the young entrepreneur and operator behind the @dunk account with more than 2 million followers on Instagram. Robinson has built a massive community based on his unique brand of basketball content. His community-building talent even caught the attention of superstar entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, who asked Robinson to help expand his social media profiles, resulting in more than a million new followers across Vaynerchuk’s platforms.

I was eager to learn more about what makes the @dunk community special. So, I phoned Robinson to get his input on my two keys for creating an engaged social media following: content and collaboration.

Content is still king

Today’s best social media strategists focus on aggregating content on their platforms. They elevate their own brands through collaborations with others, leveraging their content, while also minimizing operating and production costs. And the better your reputation for social media excellence becomes, the more users you'll find who are willing to work together for little-to-no compensation. This technique allows you to aggregate valuable content on your social media platforms and avoid content creation processes that waste time and money.

According to Robinson, incorporating humour and putting your own personal spin on the content of others adds personality to your posts and allows for personal expression, which pulls in your audience. You must find a frequency, a combination of truth and awareness that resonates with others. This is key for any public figure, and especially true on social media.

Be sure to bring an energy of creativity when it comes to your content. As Robinson advises, “Post things the viewers want to see, rather than satisfying your own preferences."

Originality and emotion build better relationships

One important facet of social media success is maintaining strong relationships with viewers, readers and listeners. That's why I make a point of replying to almost everyone who interacts with my content, whether it's on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or YouTube.

Experts in this field, like Robinson, advocate building long-lasting relationships with your audience by consistently posting content that is 100 percent your own. Original content gives followers insight into your life (and mind), which aids in developing a stronger connection.

 

Emotion is another tool heavily utilized by many social media strategists. The best social media pages use emotional pulls to develop connections between themselves and their audience. In my content, I do my best to address and solve common problems that my followers experience, such as being told “no” or experiencing the emotion of embarrassment. This provides value that they might not get elsewhere.

These days, there's a vast amount of focus on negativity. But, if you add components like humour, excitement or hope to your content, you'll generate a stronger attraction to your community.

The role of partnerships

Social media professionals like Robinson are able to create and maintain partnerships with other talented content creators by leveraging their internet popularity and success. Robinson also cites a need to have the first rights to the content of others, however, as original content is much easier to monetize.

This strategy of combining lots of valuable and unique content gives users the ability to stand out and flourish as a one-of-a-kind social media account. For this reason, I leverage my own brand to connect with icons in the sports, business and inspiration fields, in order to collaborate on new content.

One of my best recent social media collab opportunities came from working with the @motivation_mondays Instagram account. I did an interview on Instagram Live, along with the curator of the account, and answered questions about inspiration and motivation from the account’s followers. Not only did I help to create some great original content for @motivation_mondays, but I captured content to share on my own page and gained many new followers in the process.

This mutually beneficial exchange is the essence of a community. Both giving value and gaining value is what collaboration is all about!

David Meltzer

9 Tips to Get More Preorders for Your Next Book

 

There are a lot of great reasons for you to boost your book's preorders:

• Preorders allow your biggest fans to express their enthusiasm for your work
• Having a book available for preorder gives the impression that you're a successful, "must-read" author
• Preorders give you yet another useful marketing angle to promote your work (while extending the promotional timeframe)
• Making your book available for preorder gives you an opportunity to identify your most ardent fans
• Preorders help you build hype and anticipation, making it more likely that your book will be a bestseller

But you can't just make your book available for preorder and expect people to buy it en masse; you have to do some work to ensure that your preorder campaign is a success. Thankfully, that's where we come in.

We've got some great tips to help you maximize the preorders for your next book!

How to Drive Book Sales Through Preorders: 9 Tips

#1 -- Tell Everyone You Know   One of the best pieces of preorder advice we've encountered was given by author and entrepreneur Julian Hosp back in Episode 66 of The Author Hangout. Julian is a master of getting preorders, and one of his recommended methods is simple but incredibly effective: contact everyone you know personally, whether they're in your phone's contacts, your email, on your Facebook friends list or elsewhere.   Making this personal connection means a lot to people, and it can help you spread awesome word-of-mouth promotion for your book. This takes time and effort, but it's something that can pay off in a big way!

#2 -- Take Advantage of Your Email List   Your email list is the cornerstone of your author platform, and getting preorders is a wonderful way to make use of it. The people on your list are more likely to preorder your book, so be sure to let them know about it!

#3 -- Set the Price Low   It's much easier to get people to preorder when you provide incentives for them to do so. Set your preorder price low and you'll give people a great reason to get on board!

#4 -- Build Your Social Media Following Early   Promoting your book on social media is essential, but if you want to ensure that you maximize your preorder sales, you need to build a strong following. Don't wait until you make your book available to start getting followers and fans!

#5 -- Reach Out to Online Influencers   Identify podcasters, bloggers YouTubers and social media mavens who can help you build excitement about preordering your book. Provide them with something of value in exchange for preorder promotion.

#6 -- Use Goodreads   Obviously, you're going to be promoting your upcoming release on your website (you're doing that, right?), but be sure to use the Goodreads platform, as well, so you can reach the world's biggest book fans where they hang out.

#7 -- Run Promotions on Existing Books   If you have a back catalog of titles, now is a great time to promote them aggressively, which will enhance your author profile and get more people interested in your existing output. By doing this, you stand a much better chance of getting them to preorder your next one.

#8 -- Update Existing Books' Back Matter   Another great way to leverage your existing selection of books is to update their back matter to include the preorder link for your next book.

#9 -- Build Your Marketing Plan as Early as Possible!   Don't make your book available for preorder and then create your marketing plan; instead, create a solid marketing plan (which will involve you doing something significant to promote your book every week, at minimum) and then make your book available for preorder. Have a great week, authors!

Culled from: Book Marketing Tools

4 Top Reasons You are not a Successful Writer

 

There are some clichés that go with being a successful writer. A Chimamanda Adiche, for instance, might tell you that hard work and perseverance are prerequisites to becoming successful. But there are so many talented hard-working writers who do not get the credit and accolades that they deserve. And others who, though not as good or hardworking, become quite popular. The truth is, even geniuses do not attain success by just their intellectual capacity and diligence alone. There are other underlying factors that we have found to be a common factor.

So, we are going to look at real-life reasons you are not a successful writer.

1. You are not Famous at Doing Something Else: Toke Makinwa comes to mind. Many may be able to write better, more thoughtful books than Toke, but her book quickly became a bestseller simply because she is Toke Makinwa. Even some politicians who can’t string words together to make a correct sentence now write books through ghostwriters (like us) and they become bestsellers. This is simply because you are more important than what you do. You need to have a core following that will buy and help you broadcast the arrival of your book.
2. You are not Well Connected in the Publishing Industry: When you are not someone famous, nor connected to someone famous (most especially a successful writer), your writing dreams can become really bleak. If in future, Chimamanda Adichie’s child decides to write a book, chances are it will blow up way more than an ordinary writer can ever dream of. This isn’t because the child of this legend is more talented and hardworking than others, it is simply because they are associated with a name that sells.
3. Privilege is a Great Head Start: Do you know if William Shakespeare was female, no one would have known he even existed? This is simply because at that time, women, in general, had remarkably fewer opportunities than their male counterparts. Of course, today, women have greater opportunities but that is not to say there aren’t other hindrances to becoming a famous writer. sometimes, race might be a factor. But let us bring it down to Nigeria where race might not be an underlying factor. The biggest barrier to you becoming a successful writer will be…yup, you got it, Money!
4. Luck: Truth is, you might not have the first three privileges but might just hit a bit of luck. You might be writing for a small magazine that immediately blows up. The right editor might come across your manuscript and decide to read it or a wealthy humanitarian might come across your short story on Social Media. But one needs to continue to place oneself in situations where one might get lucky. Get into writing competitions, create a blog and get active on social media, send your works to magazines and big publications, etc.

This isn’t to say without any of the above, you cannot be a successful writer. There are many writers today from humble beginnings who achieved remarkable success by applying themselves consistently and taking advantage of opportunities, even the ones that seemed so small.

There is a saying in football that the better teams tend to have more luck. The same applies in life: the better you become as a writer and through taking advantage of opportunities, the more likely you are to become a best-selling author and successful writer.

7 Ways to Get Your Customers to Actively Promote Your Brand

 

In the startup realm, certain principles stand out as essential to lasting growth in a company. Customer retention, for instance, trumps customer acquisition in terms of overall value. And brand loyalty is one of the most important elements that lead to higher customer-retention rates.

Brand loyalty is worth prioritizing in any business, of course, but there’s one level of brand commitment that goes above and beyond just loyalty: brand evangelism.

Whereas "brand familiarity" describes a customer's awareness of a brand (and, hopefully, his/her comfort with it), and "brand loyalty" describes a customer's commitment to one brand over competitor brands, "brand evangelism" describes customers who are more than loyal -- they’re outspoken and active advocates of your brand.

So, not only are brand evangelists more committed than the average brand loyalist, they’ll work on your behalf to attract more people to your brand. Clearly, brand evangelism is a nice setup. Now, how can you encourage it?

Here are seven ways:

1. Differentiate your brand, sharply.

Some of the biggest fan bases in sports have arisen out of a response to a fierce rivalry. By similarly giving customers a diametrically opposed “enemy,” you'll steer them into being more likely to vocally and deeply align themselves with your brand.

Take advantage of this tendency, by sharply differentiating your brand from those of your competitors’ -- not necessarily making enemies of them, but still making the average customer experience dramatically different.

2. Focus on loyalty first.

Brand evangelism is the last threshold in a series of increasingly intense brand relationships; first comes familiarity, and loyalty must come after that, if you hope to cultivate more evangelists.

There are several stages to this, as loyalty warrants its own article, but the basics should be under your control; give users a great experience, keep them coming back for more and be consistent and visible in your branding efforts.

3. Dole out individual attention.

If you want stand-out customers, you have to give them stand-out experiences. That means doling out individual forms of attention to make memorable, unique brand impressions on certain members of your community.

For example, go above and beyond the call of duty during especially tough or unique customer service cases, or call out specific social media followers and promote their material to show your appreciation. Those people will remember you.

4. Create a community.

Brand evangelists’ loyalties deepen the more they feel that they’re truly a part of something. As users on your app or website, they have a certain degree of personal investment.

But as members of a thriving community, they'll offer a level of loyalty that's even stronger. For example, you could create a user-driven help forum, or have some other on-site feature where users contribute their own content and talk to one other.

5. Encourage active participation.

Participation does a few things for you. First, every act of participation makes your target evangelist more loyal to your brand -- think of it as a kind of ritual action that becomes a habit.

Second, every act of participation increases the overall visibility of consumer brand affection, and brand affection is contagious, to say the least. Get your customers posting frequently about your brand by making new announcements, asking engaging questions, and generally contributing to the community.

6. Incorporate feedback.

This is the mark of a champion brand, and it’s going to help your company on all three levels of brand relationship. Collect and really listen to feedback about your brand, products and services, and when you encounter pieces of information that make sense, implement them.

That kind of response shows that you listen to your customers and care about what they say, which in turn inspires more loyalty. You can even give shout-outs to the individuals who submitted those pieces of feedback, to make them feel like an even more ingrained part of your brand community.

7. Make it easy to be an evangelist.

No matter how excitable they are, most people are still lazy. They're not going to go completely out of their way to evangelize your brand -- you have to make it easy for them. Offer ample opportunities for your users to post about you on social media (with contests, discussion opportunities, etc.), and make signup and participation in your community constructs both simple and rewarding.

These strategies aren’t foolproof, and you’ll need to allow some wiggle room for adjustment and development, but with these seven tactics in place, you’ll equip your startup with almost everything you need to cultivate a community of brand evangelists.

Don’t expect every customer to become an evangelist, of course, and don’t try to force it to happen unnaturally. Just know that a few nudges in the right direction can make a huge difference for your customer enthusiasm -- and your bottom line.

Culled from Entrepreneur

Being Able to Publish Without Editing Doesn’t Mean You Should

 

“The first draft of anything is shit.” — Ernest Hemingway

Since I joined Medium a few weeks ago, the sheer volume of incredible writing on the site has left me floored. Unfortunately, I’ve also encountered my fair share of great articles bogged down by the most rudimentary writing infractions, ranging from repeating the same word twice to failing to include ending punctuation.

As I’m sure you can guess, I’ve sent many a private note discussing these grammatical hiccups. I don’t send them to show that I’m a grammar snob and that they should be ashamed of their mistake — that’s not what any of us should be here to do. I simply do it to demonstrate to even well-known writers that they, too, would benefit from reading over their work before publishing.

These minor issues don’t eliminate the article’s intrinsic value — I’ve seen articles with these issues written by Medium-famous authors with well over 10,000 claps and hundreds of comments — but they certainly call the authority of the author into question. After all, if you’re publishing a piece about your writing process but confuse they’re, their and there, are you really someone whose words they should take seriously?

In a writing economy where we are desperate to capture the eyes of dizzyingly inattentive readers, minor grammatical errors can, at best, throw off a reader’s flow, but at worst demonstrate to the reader your piece isn’t worth their time.

This isn’t to say that everyone needs to achieve perfection the first time; after all, a litany of articles on this site explain that unchecked perfectionism is an obstacle to creativity. Everyone deserves to have a moment to simply unload their thoughts on the page without the pressure of checking or editing.

But to make that first draft your final draft is like serving soup right after putting all its ingredients in a pot together. Sure, it’s edible, and certainly won’t get anyone sick, but it lacks the complexity of a dish that’s simmered for hours, one that’s had the time to let all the individual flavors meld together and intensify.

What’s more frustrating is that a thorough read over the work or an advanced writing aid like Grammarly would catch most, if not all, of these issues. The ubiquity of these typos makes it clear, though, that writers aren’t taking time to proofread their own work before hitting that precious publish button. Deliberately choosing not to utilize either of these last defenses does a disservice to your reader, your writing, and yourself as a writer.

I know why people do it — the publish button’s temptation is palpable. Sometimes, the idea of sharing work can be so anxiety-inducing that blindly hitting publish is one of the only ways you send your piece out into the world. Other times, you think about what you just wrote and you’re certain that the piece you just wrote is perfect, that your prose rivals the literary greats, your topic is amazing, and you know it’ll get tons of claps, comments, and maybe even make you some cash.

Regardless of how your work makes you feel when you put that metaphorical pen down, a closer look can always improve it.

Editing helps you to be more certain of what you’re saying and how you’re saying it, stymieing the stress of sharing your art in the process. Even if you’re certain you’ve laid out your thoughts as eloquently as you can muster, editing gives you an opportunity to ensure that your memory matches your reality. Whether it’s taking time to consider a different word choice to realizing a hole in your argument or research, editing your piece can improve your confidence in your work and your readers’ ability to comprehend it.

We all want to be better writers — that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? We all dream of the day when we show up to our word processor and write the next great novel or the most moving personal essay, as if the words were always at the tips of our fingers and all we had to do was sit down at our desks and bring it to life in one go.

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works, even for some of the greatest writers in history. But we can be a bit more like them and edit, edit, edit, for it’s in the revisions that we find the best ways to say what we’ve always wanted to say.

 

Credit: Writing Cooperative

 

  

7 Common Mistakes Made by Novice Novelists

 

Professional writers of all stripes will agree that writing is both easy and hard. For novelists, the challenge exceeds composing well-written content. Agents reject flawed work. It is better to create a less mistake-riddled work given the high rate of rejection by agents.

Novice novelists make a number of common mistakes. Weed out these weaknesses while drafting the novel. Keep in mind the following common mistakes made by inexperienced writers.

1. An Undistinguished Manuscript

To get out of the slush pile, the novel needs to have a concept, an angle, or a pitch that is outstanding. Think big. Develop an aspect of the novel that makes it fresh, even if you are writing for a genre in which readers expect to see certain elements in their books. If your manuscript is good, but not good enough, do not be surprised by a rejection letter.

2. Extreme or Inefficient Language or Cliché-Riddled Writing

Strong language is useful, when used with discretion. Overuse is off-putting. Make every sentence economical; make your words count. Excessive verbiage is dead weight that hampers the reader you want to impress. Descriptive language or content that is too familiar is a cliché. Keep that in mind, and you will see that agents and editors will appreciate your efforts.

3. Absent or Bland Descriptions

Readers enjoy being transported into a different world. Provide a context and setting that will engage readers.

4. Pretty Prose, Lack of Clarity, or a Literary Writing Fail

Showy language overwhelms content because the disruptive power of pretty prose impedes the flow of the narrative. Optimally, prose clearly and economically conveys meaning. Be aware that sloppy prose may signal sloppy thinking. If you aspire to write literary fiction, competence is insufficient. Literary fiction must be well written.

5. Pointless Detail and/or Distracting Research

Avoid unnecessary details to keep the reader interested. Even if you have done extensive research about the background setting of your fiction, do not smother the narrative with facts. This also applies to information about location and scenery. You are writing fiction, not a travelogue.

6. Plots, Character, and Conflict Weaknesses

Is the plot discernible? Your manuscript should not be a sequence of events affecting your characters or have bland, non-relatable characters. Add depth to your characters with insights into their inner lives or background stories. The backstory provides more information about the character. It can even just hint at the inner motivations of the character.

7. Dialogue and Pacing Weaknesses

Believable dialogue can be challenging for first-time novelists. Read each character’s dialogue to catch inconsistencies. Stick to the same points of view in a scene. Handle the transition from one character to the next carefully in a scene. Uneven pacing makes the narrative disjointed and could turn off readers.

Writing a novel is a major undertaking. The next challenge is to get past the slush pile. Avoid common mistakes to create an outstanding first novel that launches your writing career.

Culled from AIPWE 

How to Create & Use Data-Driven Content for Link Building

 

If you want to grab the attention of readers and journalists – and attract links – then your content must be exciting, eye-catching, and unique and data journalism is the easiest way to create content that stands out from the crowd. 

Basing your content on statistics and facts about engaging topics ensures that you’re creating content that is interesting, newsworthy, and sharable. And it should also help drive more traffic to your site.

One of the coolest things about creating your own proprietary data is that it’s kind of reminiscent of playing “Jeopardy!” The thoughtful questions, simple responses, and the basic simplicity of being the first to have the knowledge.

 

Be the Source

Creating your own data for an article is typically one big headache.

If you’ve ever tried to survey customers, you know what I’m talking about.

But, as SEJ’s own Loren Baker says, “Be the source.”

When you create your own data, people will want to link back to the place they cited.

Using tools like Google Trends and Google Consumer Survey, you can search for trending topics and build your own data.

 

Pick Your Topic

Good data doesn’t always equal good content.

You have to figure out how to tell a story with the data you have.

First, you must decide what your content is going to be about.

With data, this can be a chicken and egg situation – do you use the data you have to form your topic or do you choose your topic and then collect some data around it?

It may depend on whether you have pre-existing data or whether you already have a subject matter in mind that’s newsworthy or trending.

When researching what topics I may want to cover, I’ll start researching with Google Trends and BuzzSumo. These tools are built for research and exploring trends.

 

Gather Your Data

The first step to creating data-driven content is to actually find the data.

I begin to gather my resources of data, whether I’m surveying users or using my own data.

Important note: When building content with your own proprietary data, it’s not about quantity. Traditional content strategy suggests more content equals more leads, but that’s not true. You only need one major piece of killer content to achieve your goals.

 

- Conduct Surveys

The go-to place for collecting fresh data, surveys are a fantastic way to gather information and to get statistics and data around subjects that you specifically want to focus on.

Think carefully about your questions before asking them. You want to get the best results possible to generate a variety of angles for you to use in your content.

Make sure your questions will support your story and limit the number of open-ended questions you ask. Include a variety of demographic questions so that you can cross-reference answers given with details about the respondents. This will allow you to create multiple sub-stories and angles to push out to local press.

 

- Ask Your Community

Do you have your own community of customers or fans? Then ask them a few questions or send out a questionnaire!

If you work for a bigger brand and have forums where your customers come together to discuss a range of different topics, this is a great place to start a conversation about the topic you want to create content around.

Many businesses also have a large database of customer contact details and some regularly send out newsletters. An easy way to obtain data is to send this database a set of questions or forms to fill in via email and reward them with a discount code or entry into a prize drawing once they have returned their answers.

If you have a large social media following, you can use Facebook and Twitter polls to gather data.

Or simply run a competition on your site to find out the information you need using a data capture system as a form of entry.

 

- Use Your Own Data & Reports

Many SaaS companies don’t realize the amount of data they are already sitting on.

You likely have some analytical tools to track the success of your own website and marketing efforts. These tools could be used to give you useful insights and data you could use as part of your content marketing strategy.

Google Analytics is a good place to start, as you can look into different consumer demographics such as their age, gender, and location of your customers, along with the industries they work in, what they buy, what devices they use, and more.

You can also carry out your own tests and experiments to generate data and insight that will interest others in your industry or your customers.

 

Look for Interesting Angles

Once you’ve got your data, you need to analyze it and pull out the angles you want to use to tell your story and make your content as newsworthy as possible.

Analyzing data isn’t always easy, especially if you find yourself staring at a huge spreadsheet of numbers and stats.

Try and highlight any key points and statistics that support the storyline or headline you want to use and pull out any compelling insights in your results. Use conditional formatting and create pivot charts to find correlations between different data sets, and if you don’t get the answer or result you were hoping for, don’t force it — put it to one side and focus on a different angle.

Once you have some strong data in front of you, segment your results demographically. This will help you find a range of local angles you can pull out for your content based on gender, age, location etc. – perfect for pushing out to regional press and publishers for extra coverage.

 

Visualize Your Data

The way you present your data is key to the success of your content.

Data visualization is the first step of making your content engaging and shareable. But it isn’t easy.

Ideally, you should work with a designer to visualize your data. But if you don’t have access to one (or don’t have the budget), you can make it yourself using a data visualization tool.

Once you’ve created your visual, you need to make sure there is still some content around it to tell your story and make your data come to life. Always keep in mind how you want your readers to digest your content and that it needs to be responsive on mobile and tablet devices.

 

How to Structure Your Content Support Activities

If the content is truly a unicorn, as Larry Kim would say, you need to do all the supporting activities around this piece.

Here’s how I structure my content support activities:

• Collaborate with the PR team to create a strategy. PR teams develop some of the highest-quality link opportunities, but they leave a lot of opportunities on the table. This is where link builders come in to do the manual outreach.
• Conduct manual outreach to industry blogs for backlinks and guest blogs.
• Partner with other companies on a webinar to discuss the data.
• Create a blog post series to give further context to the data and optimize for new search terms.
• Utilize the data in presentations at conferences.
• Recreate the data in infographics, charts, and graphs.

 

Awesome Examples of Data-Driven Content

Here are a few pieces of data-driven content to inspire you:

The Guardian has really taken the lead with data visualization and has a whole section on their site dedicated to it. It’s a great place to go for inspiration on how you can shape your data into eye-catching graphics.

Here’s another really cool example of some data visualization based on A Day in the Life of Americans:

 

Don’t Have Any Data?

Don’t have time to collect data yourself?

No problem!

There are plenty of data sources you can use and combine to make a whole new data set.

For example, you could take two similar data sets that were created 10 years apart and then compare and contrast them.

Or, you could analyze someone else’s data and pull out some new angles that haven’t been used yet.

Here are some other resources to find some interesting data to use in your content or as a starting point for a bigger piece of data journalism:

• Pew Research Center
• Wikipedia
• Google Scholar
• The Office for National Statistics
• Reddit’s Data is Beautiful subreddit

You can also simply type into Google “[keyword] market research” or “[keyword] data sets” to find a range of different information available online.

Read this article for a case study and even more ideas: Building Links with Data-Driven Content (Even When You Don’t Have Any Data)

 

Credit: Search Engine Journal 

8 Tested Ways to Overcome Writer’s Block

 

Ah, the old enemy. Writer’s block can happen to anybody no matter how good a writer you are. From writers like Malcolm Gladwell to writers like the author of “Nkechi the bush girl.” Not just authors but musicians, speech writers or anyone who deals with content. So, what do you do when you feel like you don’t have a creative bone in your body and everything you pen down finds a home in your trash bin?

Frist, Writer’s block can be caused by timing. Sometimes your ideas need a little more time to get fleshed out before they are penned down.

It can also be caused by Fear. Some writers fail before they even fail. They are so scared of penning down their ideas and showing the world to critic.

The third reason is perfectionism. Many people want their ideas to be perfect in their head before penning it down and when this doesn’t happen, they fail to write. Truth is, perfection comes during the process of writing and not before.

Now, there is no formulaic fix to this problem as different tricks work for different people. You simply have to find something that works for you (which might not work the next time you try it so you have to think up something else again). Here are some creative and practical solutions to Writer’s Block.

1. Go for walk to take your mind off the work a bit. View the scenery and it will help you relax.
2. Eliminate as much distractions as possible. Sometimes, the problem is that the creative space in our head is being occupied by pictures from Instagram.
3. Play a game. Chess will do, or a word game.
4. Change your environment. Sometimes it might just be your village people…ok, seriously, it might just be that the environment isn’t conducive enough for you to be creative.
5. Read a book. This does wonders!
6. Listen to music. This also works wonders!
7. Spend time with someone that makes you feel good. A friend, family member or partner will do.
8. Brainstorm ideas in bullet points. These ideas might look stupid at first but if you drop your book and take a second look later, you might be able to build something around them

If all these still don’t work, then you should probably call us to do the writing for you.

But note that you do not overcome writers block by refusing to write and waiting for “inspiration” to come. Also, do not wallow in self-pity and make excuses to procrastinate. Also, watching TV is a bad idea! And you do not overcome writer’s block by reading articles on how to overcome writer’s block…oops.

Samuel Ejedegba 

Ten Simple Steps to Make Editing a Novel Easier and More Fun

Writing the first draft of a novel or any book is, you might say, the easy part. But it’s at the novel editing stage that we craft our work into something special. We aim to transform our material into work that will compel a reader.

If you’ve recently finished a draft of a novel – or indeed, if you are mid-draft but aware that you need to edit before you continue – the methods that I share here break down the process and make it much more manageable.

When I edit my own novels, I always work through several stages so I thought it might be useful to share a checklist of the things I’m looking for when I edit my own work. This article focuses on fiction primarily, but a parallel process can be used for non-fiction.

Take Time Out:

Once you have completed your manuscript, take time away from the work prior to editing. Have a break for a couple of weeks and consider getting feedback on the work from a trusted writing colleague. Think carefully before sharing your work, however, and choose somebody who you know will be constructive. Opinions can be subjective and if you are not getting professional feedback, it is worth choosing a number of readers, so you can get a balanced opinion on the work. You might like to prepare a list of specific questions for your reader. Alternatively, if you prefer to keep your work private, just taking time out alone will be enough. You need to gain distance from what you have written before you can edit it. Do something fun whilst you’re waiting!

Consider the feedback carefully:

The best part about receiving feedback is that you are free to use it or discard it. Nobody will give you some ‘ultimate truth’ on your novel. Some feedback will be valuable.  Some you can discard. Go with your gut feeling. It might take a few days for the feedback to sink in and for you to sift what is useful. Sometimes we experience a sense of disappointment that the work is not perfect already. It’s a natural response. But learning to accept feedback and use it well is a vital part of our work. The fun part here is the freedom you have to accept what you’ve been told – if it is insightful – and use it well. Take your reader’s notes to an inspirational place and journal on the areas of your work that you now sense need work.

Go for the full read-through:

Take a deep breath and don’t put it off any longer. Just take time out, pick up the entire work-to-date and a pen to scribble with, get comfortable in an armchair (or on a cliff-top, wherever you feel at ease…) and read.  Read it as if you had never read it before – as if you were an outsider, a professional editor. Read the whole document – if necessary over several longish sessions – and annotate your text with any comments that occur to you in relation to changes you want to make, including small line-edits. Just get everything down on that manuscript as this will be your working document. Whatever comes into your head as you read – get that on the page.

Look at the big picture:

As you read, have a separate notebook where you make notes on what I call ‘the big picture’. This is where you can scribble more lengthy thoughts on the over-arching shape of the work.  Is the structure effective? If not, why not? What would you like to change? How might you adjust it? Are there any missing pieces of the puzzle? Get it all down in your journal as you read. You’ll use these notes later.

Use a simple check-list:

As you read your manuscript, look out for the following in particular. Make notes in the margins and your notebook. Keep scribbling freely and don’t let any thought go:

• Structural issues – where does it not hold together? Are there plot holes? Does it go off at a tangent? Is the plot too clichéd? In non-fiction, does the ordering of the material work?
• Voice issues – is the tone right? Is it consistent? Is it written from the right perspective? Do I need to make changes to the narrative voice?
• Character issues. Are the characters believable? Do they take actions that seem real? Do I believe that they are flesh and blood? Is their dialogue naturalistic? Can the reader empathise? Do the characters develop and change in the course of the book? What do they learn?
• Dialogue – Is it a good, condensed version of natural dialogue? Is it too focused on telling a story via dialogue and not realistic enough? Would the characters SAY this? Is the dialogue there for a purpose – to deepen characterisation or to advance the story?
• Telling not showing – Am I telling the reader too much, when I should be revealing the truth through action? Remember, dialogue doesn’t equal “showing”. Good “showing” is when a scene is dramatised and we are immersed in what is happening, unaware of the narrator’s presence. We don’t say ‘he is sad’, his sadness is revealed to us.
• Pace – is the action always moving forwards? Am I certain that each scene is propelling the character towards their goal, even if they are frustrated in that process? Am I wasting time, waffling? Every scene must be there for a purpose and advance the plot in some way.
• Scene structure – Is there movement in the scene? Do the characters shift? Does perspective change? Is there drama and conflict and change and development?
• Sentence construction. Is this working on a line by line basis? Am I overusing adjectives? Am I using adverbs? (They rarely work!) Do I repeat myself? Are there phrases I overuse? Does it flow? How’s my grammar?

Condense your actions down to a short list:

Once you’ve completed the read-through, take a separate session to look through your annotated notes. Then, choose a notebook – or a document if you prefer to work electronically – that relates specifically to your editing process and begin by making a list of all the major ‘big picture’ changes you want to make. Then ask yourself –  can you condense this list to five key areas? Examples of such areas could be:

• The character of Isabelle is too passive; I need to change her actions and responses to make her more feisty and thus engage the reader.
• The pace in the first third of the book is too slow – cut down on extraneous scene-setting and cut to the chase. Keep the scenes more focused on action.
• Work on my tendency to over-describe and lay-on the adjectives. Remember that less is more
• Get clearer on Simon’s motivation in the novel. That needs to be built at an earlier stage if the book is to have drive.
• Find a different resolution to the love affair. At present, it is too clichéd and the end of the book doesn’t have an impact as a result.

Don’t forget the line edits:

These are simply examples of the kind of points you might make, but there’s something very powerful in having key focus areas. It means that as we go through the book, we know where our main attention should lie. In addition to these larger points, you will also have a list of smaller points. However, you can work directly from the manuscript in relation to the smaller points rather than noting them separately.

Keep excellent records – be organised:

When you are editing, work on your main document but draw from all of your sources. Have the annotated manuscript(s) at your side and your list of key points. Editing can be an organic process, as when you make changes to a book, other aspects of that book can shift and change. Keep your editing notebook open as an ongoing document. From time to time, print up your newly edited work and read it through. It’s so satisfying to read a new draft and to feel how much smoother and more believable it is becoming. When working with clients, I’m often amazed at how swiftly work can improve with good editing. It is always a pleasure to see how work can be transformed in this way.  Don’t let your filing get disorganised at this time. You need to know where everything is so that you can draw everything together with ease.  Generally, I save a copy of the old full manuscript, then take a fresh copy of it and ‘over-write’ the new version on the word processor. You can start a whole new document if you prefer, but I generally find over-writing works best.

Be a perfectionist:

Once you’ve edited the document – if you are preparing for submission – you need to read the final manuscript through at least twice more. This might seem like the least fun part but if you approach it in the right way, you can gain a lot from this stage. No literary agent or publisher wants to receive a manuscript full of typos and often-repeated words (we all do it!)  When I was finishing my last book, I did the final read-through on a Kindle. (You can forward the ms to your freekindle.com address). There’s something empowering about this, as it enables you to see the manuscript as if it were a finished book. But also – when you read it like that, all the little errors leap out at you. The final read-through is the most fun of all because (if you’ve done your job!) you can really enjoy the pleasure of reading your work in a fully polished form and you can take huge pride in this.

Remain true to your own vision:

Finally, remember that if we don’t edit, we don’t learn. Even when we think a book is finished, it will then go to an agent or a publisher who will notice aspects of the work that will improve with further editing. As a result, the book generally gets stronger and stronger. At the same time, remember that it is important to hold tight to your own vision of the book. Stand your ground if you need to. We do learn so much in this process and it strengthens our abilities as a writer.

Essentially, aim above all for the best possible work you can do and for a vision that is uniquely yours. Then your own pleasure in the work and your skill will shine through to the reader, agent or editor. Don’t forget – you don’t have to do all of this at once. Just make that commitment to the read-through, pick up the manuscript and a pencil to scribble with and before you know it, you’re engaged in the process.

Why not try beginning today and let me know how it goes? You can break the process down into simple thirty-minute chunks if you’re busy.

Culled from: The Writing Coach