BusinessBlogAngel

Writing with confidence - project confident writing (reprise)

In my last post, I mentioned that I'd been thinking about Joanna Young... Coincidentally, I had an email that same morning from Karen Swim of Words For Hire with a secret mission all to do with that same amazing lady...

Joanna has just moved house to the west coast of Scotland. As a result, she's been offline for some time. As Karen pointed out, for a prolific blogger like Joanna, a week or so offline must feel like an eternity - and Brad Shorr along with Karen and fellow blogging/Twitter friends Robert Hruzek and Daniel Smith came up with a lovely idea: to welcome Joanna back to the blogosphere with a collection of posts on her various friends' blogs featuring our favourite posts from her Confident Writing blog. I've raved about Joanna on this blog several times and clearly I'm not alone in recognising her greatness. It speaks volumes that virtual friends want to do this for her.

Anyway, I've had a good rummage around her blog and, continuing the 'confident writing' theme, have opted to highlight a 'round up' post she did earlier this month which features a whopping 8 posts from the archives all about what to write when you're feeling stuck. So...

"Welcome back Joanna - we've missed you - we love you - you are the mutt's nuts!"

8 From The Archives To Help You Free Your Words by Joanna Young  at Confident Writing

Writing with confidence - project confident writing

Was coaching a client this morning - teaching her about the technical stuff, showing her round the admin interface and talking about effective blog writing etc. when the topic of 'what to write when you don't know what to write' came up.  I immediately thought of a brilliant post on this topic which Joanna Young wrote on this blog.

Here are 3 super simple ideas to try when you're stuck:

1. Post a video. Got to YouTube, search one of your keywords and see what comes up. Chances are there'll be something fun or interesting or both. Use the 'embed' code to have the video appear on your blog.

2. Post a quote. Google 'quotes about xxxx' replacing xxxx for one of your keywords. Simply posting a really thought provoking quotation can sometimes be enough. Or at least provide the inspiration you need to write a quick 'top' and 'tail' for the quote.

3. Post about a post. Go to Technorati and search for your keywords under Blogs to see who else is writing on your topic. You'll almost certainly find something recent and relevant that you can create a post around - inserting a key paragraph of theirs, or simply linking to them. Remember to Trackback, or comment on, the original post.

There are loads more ways to get inspiration - what are your favourites?
Where do you go for blog content inspiration?

Smart Twittering, Twhirl and an invitation to Twitterers

Last month, I promised an new article on Twitter... I've still not got around to it, but I've just opened up the latest issue of the SubHub Insider: Publish for Profit newsletter and found a great article on that very topic. This isn't the first time I've borrowed an article from SubHub.com - and I'm sure it won't be the last... well, they produce great content and I've checked and they dont mind provided I link back to them. So here it is:

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Twitter - The Smart Way
by Mark Ramskill, SubHub.com

Twitter - http://twitter.com - is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post regular updates (otherwise known as 'tweets'), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.  Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them.

The aim of this article is to give you more of an idea about how to use Twitter (and by association other micro-blogging services, such as Pownce or Jaiku) for following and engaging with the world's top bloggers and top websites.  I call this 'Smart Twittering'.

ShareThis - social bookmarking to promote your blog

I haven't really being saying much about social bookmarking here at Business Blog Angel, have I?

It's the classic small biz 'issue' of spending so much time working 'in' your business that you can't find the time to work 'on' your business, and rightly or wrongly, maintaining this blog always takes second place to client work.  BUT, if you are a business blogger and you are not yet using the wealth of free social media tools to promote your content, then you are missing out on a lot of the power of blogging for business. I'm talking now about social bookmarking, social networking, blog directories & communities and micro-blogging.