Category: Blogging Tips

Articles on improving your blog writing and publication with an emphasis on essential skills, knowledge, and technical tips.

How being an organized writer improves productivity

  • How being an organized writer improves productivity
    Neat And Organized Wok Area

Most people find organizing their writing hard, but being organized is the key to effective writing. You should always plan what you’re going to write before you begin writing. Organizing your work helps you develop order in your writing, which will help in avoiding repetition or even leaving out important points. A writing plan can be a few jotted notes to a detailed numbered outline.

Most writings, especially blog writings, have three main parts: the introductory part, the body, and the conclusion. The introductory part should inform your readers about the aim of your blog post, the contents of your post, and what you’re trying to prove in writing. The body should have all the facts, arguments, and information in a coherent order that can be easily understood by your readers. The conclusion should summarize everything by reporting your findings, your views, and your final thoughts and recommendations. 

How to Order Your Writing

There are several ways you can use to order your writing. The type of order used in your blog posts largely influences your readers since it shapes their thinking and interpretation of your work. Some of the common ways of ordering used in writing blog posts are:

  • Ascending order of importance – the most important ideas last
  • Descending order of importance – the most important ideas first.
  • Ascending order of complexity – the simple ideas first.
  • Descending order of complexity – the complex ideas first.
  • Chronological order – ordering your ideas in sequence.


Out of all these orders, the most useful ways of organizing your work are descending order of importance and categorical order. Ordering your work is useful because it allows readers to maneuver easily through the document and not to miss important information. Listing your most important ideas and arguments first increase the chances of your audience reading the article.

Being organized improves efficiency.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re doing fiction, non- fiction, poetry, blog posts, or any other type of writing work. Any type of writing requires you to communicate ideas to your audience clearly. To come up with an article that’s clear and compelling, you need to introduce the right facts at the right time. How you organize, and the details and how you choose to support your points can drastically affect your productivity as a blog writer. The order of your points determines how well your audience will understand what you’re saying in your article.

Being Organized Makes Your Articles Professional

Apart from the message you’re trying to convey, your reader will also get an impression of your professionalism from your work. If your work is poorly organized with ideas not listed in an orderly manner, your audience may get an amateurish impression. On the other hand, if your article has well-organized ideas with smooth transitions, accompanied by just enough details, your audience will feel confident in you and the information you’re presenting. Being organized will give your work a polished and professional look, which is very vital for any kind of writing.

Being Organized Makes Your Articles More Immersive

Every time your audience has to stop and try to make sense or understand what you’re saying, he/she is tempted to stop reading your article. This not only agitates your work but also weakens it. However, if you make your points clear and list them in an orderly manner, it will eliminate the need for your readers to stop and try to figure or relate one idea to the other. Organizing your writing will immerse your readers in your writing. 

Having a project plan ensures that you Won’t Miss Important Details.

If you’ve ever written a text to a friend about something urgent only to discover that you did not include the most important details in the text, you already know how important organization is in any form of writing work. A project plan helps in this, but in case you don’t want to use a project plan, making a small list of the what you’re planning to include in your article and the types of keywords you’re planning to use can help in keeping you on track. A project plan will ensure that your final piece won’t leave out anything that your audience needs to know or understand. This is also very important for blog posts that require a specific set of keywords to improve their SEO rankings.

Organization Helps to Avoid Repetition

Apart from ensuring that you don’t miss important points, the good organization also prevents repetition. Most blog writers are victims of redundancy, and this is mostly caused by poor planning. Most people find it challenging to remember what they’ve already discussed, especially if you’re working on a piece for several days, weeks, or months. Organizing your work using an outline or project plan will make your article more concise, thus improving productivity.

Organizing your work Saves Time

Organizing your writing doesn’t just benefit your audience; it helps you as the writer too, knowing where you’re headed to when writing will save your time since you will spend less time revising your work. This especially comes in handy with longer articles that may have multiple plotlines and subsections. Without prior planning and organization, it’s easy for you to get lost when working on longer pieces, and you may find yourself rewriting large sections as a result. Organizing your work well can the time spent on the article drastically, which in turn improves productivity.

Organizing your work and workplace reduces stress levels.

Being organized with your writing and workplace also reduces stress levels. Just picture a situation where you need a copy of an article you did two years ago. If things are well organized and everything is neatly labeled, tracking the article down would be a piece of cake, instead of a source of stress! Organizing your work and workspace will also ensure that you don’t become too engaged in a task and lose track of time. Set calendar and time alerts to keep you on track and organize your workspace to avoid the stress of misplacing copies of your work and rushing to complete tasks after falling behind schedules.

Effectively communicating your thoughts and ideas to your audience requires good organization and structure. Knowing what to introduce first, how-to guide your audience from one section of the blog post to the other, and when your writing needs information and insights will not only make your writing powerful but also professional and fun to read. The type of writing you do doesn’t matter; organizing your work will improve productivity.

Writing tip – How inspiration improves writing quality

  • Write when you are inspired
    Write when you are inspired

Everyone has different sources of inspiration. As a writer, inspiration is not optional; it’s the irresistible force that drags you the computer and influences you to write something that may change the world. As a blog writer, you must somehow find inspiration for as long as you have to keep your blog updated with high-quality content. 

There are many benefits to writing when you’re inspired. Finding inspiration for your writing work will help you generate fresh ideas, as well as maintain a smooth flow of ideas. Below are some ways on how inspiration improves writing quality.

1. The Writing and Language Will Flow More Naturally


Although there are several ways you can use to structure your information when coming up with a manuscript, your article will sound and feel more natural if you write it when you’re inspired. Inspiration helps you to write in a natural tone, with a natural flow of ideas. But remember to remain on topic as it’s easy to slip into a comfortable writing style, which may move your ideas away from your target audience. 

2. Idea Generation Will Be Easy



Seeking inspiration from your favorite writers will assist with idea generation as soon as their words start rousing your mind. The benefit of writing when you’re inspired by your favorite writers, of whom you’re well versed with their style is that you’ll be able to keep track and relate your ideas. Inspiration will let your mind wander and generate ideas related to whatever your planning to write about with ease. You can list down all the ideas and filter them based on their relevance, connections, and how they relate with your main theme. Being Inspired may even promote the generation of new and unique ideas that are better than what you might have written without inspiration. 

3. Inspiration Will Improve the Quality of Your Writings.

If you’ve ever wanted to improve the quality of your writings, the best thing to do is look for inspiration. You don’t need a specific trainer, theme, or topic to do this. Inspiration will help you generate lots of ideas and themes, and it will be up to you to choose the best idea based on your type of audience. The more you get inspired, the more you get ideas that can be developed into something unique and more complete.

4. Inspiration Increases Creativity.

Everyone was born creative, but being inspired will open your mind to a whole new world of creativity. Being inspired will make your mind wander, which will feed your mind with crazy ideas. Letting your imagination wander will give you unique ideas that your readers would enjoy reading. The crazier the ideas, the better. The more you’re inspired to experiment with different opportunities, styles, and possibilities, the more creative you’ll become. Being inspired is a great way to increase your creativity levels. 

5. Being Inspired Helps You to Stay Organized.


Writing when you’re inspired helps in keeping your thoughts comprehensible and organized. You can explain in detail the feelings and opinions you had about a specific occasion. You’ll remember the events in detail if you the inspiration to write the article was from a specific event, and you won’t lose track of your ideas even if you continue writing after a few days, weeks, or months. 

By writing articles that are particular to certain topics, inspiration can make you achieve and organize your thoughts in a better way. You can seek inspiration from life events, e.g., the time you graduated from high school or even a business you once had that failed, and the reasons behind the failure. Whatever you decide to write about, being inspired when writing helps you organize your thoughts into points and phrases that make sense and relate more to your readers.

6. Inspiration Helps in Maintaining Focus

Inspiration also keeps the writers’ mind focused on the theme. We usually think we can control our thoughts, but a recent study revealed that negative thoughts act as a barrier to self-growth. This is because the mind is prone to doubt and vacillation, which makes it prone to distraction. Often as a writer, you may feel a deep inner sensation to complete your article, the mind will go along with your ideas at first before you run out of ideas and start encountering obstacles in achieving your goal. Inspiration will keep your mind focused until when you achieve your final goal. 

7. Being Inspired Motivates You

Having inspirational thoughts while writing your articles motivates you to complete the article in time. Being inspired while writing your articles will benefit not only you but also your audience. Although the reasons or source of your inspiration may vary, the intense need or desire to accomplish your wishes through writing is usually consistent regardless of the drive behind them.

8. Inspiration Gives Writers a Sense of Direction

Inspiration normally has specific needs, urges, or desires, which somewhat predetermine the actions and direction taken in your writing. Knowing what you want to achieve as you write will enable you to focus and compose your article in a more coordinated fashion. This will act as a guide in how you structure and express your ideas.

9. Inspiration Gives Your Writings a Purpose

Having inspired thoughts when writing will remind you of exactly what you want to achieve, you’re your writing and the best way to do it. Without being inspired, it would be impossible to stick to your main agenda. Inspiring thoughts will remind you of the purpose of your writing, which in turn improves the quality of your writing. 

10. Inspiration Gets the Job Done Within a Short Time. 

When you’re inspired, writing will be faster because the ideas are fresh and already in your mind. Although sometimes generating ideas and expressing them in words might seem difficult, focusing on the reward instead will motivate you to get the job done within a short while. Just think of the reward you’re getting from writing that blog post, or what you’ll lose by not publishing a high-quality blog post, and use them as a source of inspiration.

The need for writing when you’re inspired is important if you expect to succeed in improving the quality of your articles. The ability to think and come up with high-quality articles is critical for the success of an article writer, and finding daily inspiration before writing will help you produce high-quality blog posts for your readers. As you’ve seen, inspiration is the ‘motor’ that propels your content to greater heights. You can seek inspiration from the people around you, music, poems, the natural world, or even from your inner resources.

Reblogging, why do it?

  • Blog Social Media Information Connect Concept

Re-blogging is one of those capabilities which I’ve known about for a long time but just never got around to seeing the value of. However, recently I have started using it and sit in seeing the value of it in terms of solving some particular circumstances. This not hard to do particularly if you’re using WordPress, which does most of the heavy lifting when you reblog.

In my case, re-blogging has made it possible for me to write content once and publish it to one of my other blogs when that content happens to cross boundaries between the subjects of both blogs. This re-blogging approach is really nice because it allows me to write the article once and perhaps been a little more time on it, and then use it in more than one place which for me has always been a bit of a dilemma across my multiple blogs.

Another nice aspect of re-blogging is that if someone chooses to view your post on that re-blog site, then the re-blog post serves as a pastor will send them to the originating site.

The word press re-blogging button and process also takes care of etiquette features of giving credit to the originating site, as well. Which is great if you’re reposting someone else’s content from within WordPress.

What is re-blogging?

Re-blogging really is a method of sharing or pushing content through re-publishing directly to a different blog site. Within WordPress, it might be another blog which you own, or it could be sharing the content that someone else published that you think is valuable to your readers.

How to reblog?

Re-blogging with WordPress is relatively easy, once you get used to the interface, which I find a little confusing. Assuming you have enabled reblogging on your blog site then, basically, re-blogging involves the steps of re-blogging your own content:

  • First, write and publish your blog.
  • Then, got the WordPress Reader, click the visit icon
  • Next, find the “Reblog” button, which is generally located near your “like” button in the Sharing section of your page.
  • In the reblogging dialog window, choose the “Post To” site name to which you want to republish / reblog the post, Add a note if desired, and press the “Reblog Post”.

Other Benefits of Relogging

Drives Trick To The Originating Blog site

Another nice aspect of re-blogging is that if someone chooses to view your post on that re-blog site, then the re-blog post serves as a pastor will send them to the originating site.

Relogging Etiquette

The word press re-blogging button and process also takes care of etiquette features of giving credit to the originating site, as well. Which is great if you’re reposting someone else’s content from within WordPress.

Blogging – Why use internal links?

Internal links are hyperlinks added to your page which link you to other pages within your own site. There’s a lot of fluff articles out there and a lot of discussion around whether you should use them for the reasons of Google optimization or search engine optimization (SEO). However, I believe that the best reason to use internal links on your webpages and blog pages is to guide your readers to other content that is closely related to the current page or blog post. This means they don’t have to search for other posts and/or scan down your posts to find other related older articles. Providing these internal links can get you additional page/blog use without relying on Internet search engines to bring people back to your pages or blogs.

What can the use of internal links provide?

Internal links can provide an opportunity for the typical blog or webpage writer to benefit from, among these are:

Facilitates Site Navigation

As of already mentioned, adding closely related internal links can make it easier for your readers to define related content and move through your site. Thus, increasing your site views per visitor on your blog or website.

Constructs a hierarchy between blog post or pages on your site

Adding internal hyperlinks, builds a hierarchy between the pages or blog posts to the other posts to which they are linked.  For example, if you create a primer page or blog post on the subject and then build topic-specific pages or blog posts that address topics identified in your primer page or post linking your primer page or blog posts to all of these sub-topic pages or blog posts creates a hierarchy of association.

Creates Page Or Blog Posts Authority

Now I freely admit that this one is a little more dubious than the previous two benefits that internal links provide, but if the search engines are looking at your website do in fact create page or blog post authority rankings, then the associating of the pages will assist in generating a page or blog post authority ranking. This is especially true if you intentionally use a strategy of building a peer middle hierarchy amongst your webpages or blog posts. Basically, creating a parent-child hierarchy at the top of which is a single page or blog post.

Conclusion

Truthfully, I use internal links for the first two reasons, to facilitate site navigation thereby making it easier for my readers to find information that I want them to see and constructing hierarchies and relationships between content within each of the various blog sites which I operate. I have found these two reasons to have added more than enough value in the increase of views per visitor on my blog sites to make internal links valuable and worth the time and effort to add.

Related Reference

How using quotes can help your writing?

Quotes are often an underutilized writing opportunity.  Adding quotes, and I don’t mean just a few spackle on random pages throughout your writing, can be very beneficial to writers in a number of ways. quotes can also help you convey your meeting, grab readers attention, and communicate your message better. So, here are just a few thoughts on how quotes can help you achieve your writing goals.

Using quotes can help with your use of Tactful repetition

An on topic quote can give you another communication point about the subject that you are discussing, thereby, providing another mental reference to reinforce your subject.

If done with care, you can also get more than one use out of a quote. You can use a quote in the sentence of your paragraph, but this also doesn’t preclude you from isolating it and using other tactics listed below to present it more than once, to make it stand out, and to make it visually impactful.

Also, when quotes are properly placed and made distinct enough, garner the attention of readers who are using skimming and skinny techniques to acquaint themselves or to refresh themselves with the information that they are reading.

Use of quotes can add Volume to your writing

Quotes or an easy way to add value and to expand the volume of your writing. This this is especially true when writing about nonfiction topics.

Sometimes when writing you have a target word count that you’re trying to achieve or document length. If you’ve done your research ahead of time and collect your quotes , then you should be able to add a few short, on topic, non-distracting quotes, which will increase the total word count of your document and the total page count of your document.

If you’re flexible in your approached including quotes in your writing, then you will have several opportunities to make your quotes stand out and to better convey your message.

Isolation

Isolating your Quotes within your document can make it easier to distinguish and add emphasis to the quote but it also adds whitespace before and after the quote and citation. Depending on how you formatted your quote and citation, you may also add one line or two between the actual quote and the citation.

Isolation of your quote not only adds white space, it makes your quote more visually impactful. If a quote is by itself, rather than buried in a paragraph, the reader will notice the quote and read the quote without the distraction of surrounding words.

Italicising

In addition to isolation or rather than isolation, you can bold and or italicize your quotes, so, that they are more visually prominent within the text of your paragraph.

Highlighting or background Shading

Highlighting the quote or shading background surrounding the quote can both be visually effective methods to make the quote stand out, be more recognizable, and potentially cause the reader to pay more attention to the quote and read the quote.

Including the quote in a picture or a graphic

Using a graphic or a picture with your quote included in it is another way to make a quote graphically stand out within your document and to be eye-catching. The trick here is that the graphic or picture must be directly related to the quote, your topic, and it must not be too big and distracting in nature. you need the picture or graphic to appeal to the reader, to catch the reader’s attention, and to focus and reinforce the reads thinking.

Quotes Assist in communicating expertise and background knowledge

Using quotes when pertinent to the topic you are writing about and from a variety of sources, can demonstrate that you have thought about and researched the subject about which your writing. This particularly true, when the quote come from all of variety of authoritative sources which have been properly cited and not just from a web search.

Conclusion

I’m sure there are more ways in which quotes can be put to use full effect in writing, but this primer should be a helpful start.

Why writers should have a powerful computer?

Desktop Personal Computer (PC) In A Dual Monitor Configuration
Desktop Personal Computer (PC) In A Dual Monitor Configuration

Recently, when speaking with a friend of mine, he questioned why I had purchased such a powerful computer? It seemed to him to be unnecessary to purchase such a powerful computer.

By way of background, my most recent personal computer (PC) is a super high-powered gaming computer, meaning it has multiple CPUs a high-powered graphics card and several gigabytes of memory.

Pondering on his question, I decided to write a short article explaining my reasoning. After having written several books and running several blogs for years I have come to this understanding of why a high-powered computer is a benefit to writers.

As it happens, my most recent computer purchase was a desktop. However, I have laptops, iPhones, iPads, as well.

I would like to note, that even though I own a gaming computer, I am not nor have I ever been a gamer. As a matter fact, I’m never found much purpose in games; computerize or otherwise.

Computer Application Performance
Computer Application Performance

Perhaps, my biggest reason for investing in a really powerful computer, is application performance. There are a number of applications that I use in the course of my day, which I like to have work quickly and efficiently. This is especially true, for tools such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking (my speech to text tool), my word editor, and my photo editors; all of which I use on a daily basis to support my writing and my blogs.

Speech To Text

Nothing hinders my performance more than sitting around waiting for an application to catch up. I find waiting on the computer to catch up when I’m using speech to text, for example, to be super annoying and distracting to the point of causing me to lose my focus sometimes. This hasn’t been a problem in a while with the new computer but is definitely work on my nerves in the past. This is an area where high-speed CPUs and significant amounts of memory can be very helpful.

Photo and video editors

I use a number of photo editors and today even if you take a photo with your iPhone modern cameras take photos which can be quite large sometimes. This is even more true, if you’re working with video. This would be the reason that I lean toward a significant amount of memory and for high-end graphics card.

Web-based tools

in addition to having high-speed Internet access, in my case 1 Gb optical, it pays to have plenty of memory, high-speed CPUs, and a good graphics card, so you’re not sitting around waiting for your tools to keep up online and so that they’re not always having to buffer to your PC. And this can be true for any number of tools including WordPress, Grammarly, and online word processing and editing tools.

Web research

for the same reasons that having a powerful computer helps will web-based tools, it also helps when you do online research and when you download online content. This is particularly true, when downloading large content.

Photo Editing On A Computer
Photo Editing On A Computer

What I look for when I buy a new computer?

Plenty of memory

Plenty memory is important, 16 GB of memory is kind of the minimum these days, so, go for as much memory as you can reasonably afford. Memory isn’t terribly costly these days but unless you just like buying more memory and switching it out (assuming your not tech savvy and like that kind of thing), I recommend that you get the memory up front in your computer or have it installed by their support team at the time of purchase. The more memory you have the more work at one time your computer can do in memory without writing to disk–working in memory is always faster than writing and reading from disk.

Several high-speed CPUs

Since CPUs are the real brains of the process along with the high-speed memory is important to get modern high-speed CPUs and several of them.  Multicore computers are not terribly costly these days, either, and with a 64-bit operating system can be quite fast and efficient. More CPU’s and/or Cores will allow you to run multiple programs efficiently at the same time.

Graphics cards

Now graphic cards may be a little more optional if you don’t do a lot of work with photographs and videos but I would still recommend that you consider getting a computer with a powerful graphics card installed. Even if for no other reason than the ability to work efficiently with your content on the web and in the cloud. Powerful graphic cards improve the performance of photographic and video editors, as was as, providing a smoother overall user experience.

High Speed drives

If you have the budget for it going with a Solid State Drive (SSD) rather than Hard Disk Drive (HDD) can also add performance with it comes to caching and saving you data and files. My most recent computer actually had both types. An Solid State Drive (SSD) as my main drive (C Drive) and an Hard Disk Drive (HDD) for backup, recovery, and long term storage for less frequently used file. This combination has worked very well for me.

Blogging – Why Should Your Blog Post Have More Than One Picture?

Adding Photos to you Blogging Content
Adding Photos to you Blogging Content

In blogging, images play a crucial role in your success. No matter the subject you are writing about, believe me, or not pictures are not easy to ignore if you are looking forward to succeeding.

Thus, in this article, we have comprehensively covered why blog pictures are important towards achieving success in the blogging field.

Below is why blog pictures are essential in a blog post:

Visually Appealing Photograph Of A Butterfly
Visually Appealing Photograph Of A Butterfly

Visually Appealing

Having a picture and the right picture makes your content to create a positive impression.

If your post is visually dull and has no emotions, most visitors will run away from your site even before reading anything thus creating a lousy impression.

However, if your posts are visually attractive, the chances of creating emotional connections with readers are high thus luring them to take actions.

In some cases, images are the main focus of your post. Make sure the pictures you have used are beautiful and relevant to the content of the post to make them attract the reader and convey the message you intended to pass.

Selecting From Search Engine Results Based on the Pictures
Selecting From Search Engine Results Based on the Pictures

Search Engines Traffic

When you use appropriate images in your blog post, be assured to get better results in search engines.

There are some things you should consider when adding images to increase the traffic from the search engines. Adding tags, descriptions, and titles is vital in boosting performance in search engines.

Use of relevant keywords in a good way, help to make your post easily seen. Compressing and resizing your images helps in optimizing them to load faster and rank well in search engines.

Social Media Apps On a cell Phone
Social Media Apps On a Cell Phone

Social Media Exposure

Many social media users will pay a little to no attention when bypassing their timelines and come across posts lacking images.

Use of emotional and creative pictures will make your post easily seen in a timeline that has been overcrowded.

Posts accompanied with pictures get higher engagement which is contrary to posts without images.

If your post has images, you will get more likes than that lacks. With a picture, some users will like the post even without reading it.

When users are interested in the image you have used, there are higher chances of clicking on your post and open it.

If social media has no pictures, it would be a dull and unimpressive place. Use relevant photos to ensure your posts are standing out.

Blog Pages with Little Written Content
Blog Pages with Little Written Content

Article Length Increment

There are posts which require few words to pass the intended message, i.e., “Top 10 best web designs trends in 2019”.

In this case, you’ll to have ten images, ten subtitles, as well as ten short descriptions and you, ’re done with the post.

Thus, relevant and well-chosen images are perfect in creating a lengthy blog post using very few words.

Understanding Complex Information
Understanding Complex Information

Makes Understanding Complex Information Easier

In some posts, for example with more technical data like how a specific technology works, may be hard to be understood by those with little to no knowledge on that field. Thus, the use of screenshots can be a good way to go.

So, it’s good to provide images to make the information easily understood. These images are crucial and educate the readers about whatever you are writing and illustrating.

The use of screenshots, educational images like tables, graphics as well as wireframes will give more precise meaning to the information making it easy to be understood and relevant to the reader.

Photos Support Your Point
Photos Support Your Point

Supporting Your Point

Whenever a reader reads, a blog post gets a kind of a certain feeling. Depending on the posts, some will encourage, guide among others.

With the help of images, you can achieve this comfortably. Let us say your post regards losing weight and the content is about healthy eating, using a picture of a slim and fit woman will motivate the reader.

Relevant images will support your statement, and your post will be useful to many.

People are visual
People are visual

People are visual

If for no other reason because people of all ages are visual and simply enjoy pictures and graphics. Vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch are the five traditionally recognized senses and sight (or vision) is almost always listed first among them for a reason. A person need look no further than Comic books and children’s books to understand this. Also, a reader can derive meaning from context and content of a picture or graphic, people will tend to remember it faster, better, and longer.

Pictures Add Color and Character to Your Writing
Pictures Add Color and Character to Your Writing

Conclusion

Images play a crucial role in blogging. The just discussed why blog pictures are important reasons are a tip of an iceberg. They are many and endless.

However, when you use images in your blog post, you will get all the benefits discussed above, and you will have a breakthrough in the blogging industry.

Related References