Post vs. Articles Part II

As a continuation of last week’s post about blogs vs articles, I recently read an article that purported to show the differences between a blog post and an article online. Let’s look at some of the elements they listed:

Article: Casual writing style on a blog post, scholarly in an article.

MC: If you are writing on a travel blog about your vacation or recent mission trip, you could be casual with lots of photos and comments on the fun you are having and give some historical information about the site without being scholarly. However, if you are writing an article for an online encyclopedia about deserts in Egypt, a scholarly style is in order without your comments about the fun you had sliding down a sand dune in Egypt with your children. Note I said scholarly; I did not say boring.

Article: A blog post is primarily your opinion about the topic; whereas, an article post is more factual and doesn’t allow for your opinion.

MC: Don’t be fooled. Readers want to know what the topic will do for them, and they depend on your  help to see that.

Followers are Key: Readers expect more from those they follow. They expect well-researched information, but they want more from you. They want your opinion. They can find a list of facts in any encyclopedia or a quick Google search. If you want them to follow your site regularly and recommend it to others, they must “tune in” to find out what your take on the subject is. They want to know what you think, feel, and opine about the facts based on your experience. A few clicks and they know whether you are regurgitating a list of facts or interpreting the list to assist them to understand the topic. And, yes, they want to be up close and personal.

Caution: Giving out personal information may come back to haunt you. You’ve seen the cops and robbers television shows that send shivers up your spine. Use some practical safety guidelines when giving out family information like home address, children and grandchildren names and pictures, your social security number - gotcha ya! Be smart about what your share with the world you cannot see.

As a freelance blogger and newsletter writer for a wide variety of clients from plumbers to physicians (although what they do is similar in construct: analysis and treatment), I do research on a specific topic with a request from my client. Coupling that information with client personalization: opinion, their services that address the topic, coupons, specials, recipes, etc. all in the same vein, is the difference in whether someone signs up for their site and cashes in the coupons they offer. I could regurgitate facts from Internet research, but the post would be dry as dirt and far too technical for their average client. When I write for IT companies, I include the products—software, hardware, apps—they have tried, along with information on what worked and what didn’t meet their expectations and the hype. These are the experts readers turn to when making purchase decisions.

Article: Grammar and spelling correctly are optional on a blog and optimal in an article.

MC: Ridiculous on sooo many levels.

Do you honestly believe that misspelled words and grammar mistakes, which aren’t intentional like using the word “sooo”, improve your professional appearance online? However, having fun with regional idioms and words you create like I wrote last week with “bloggish” make you as the writer more human and win followers, which is the name of the game. One thing I have always liked about Hope Clark on her Funds for Writers sites is the casual and friendly pictures she posts of herself, her dogs and chickens, her gardens. They bring her to life on the page. I learned quickly to respect her weekly editorials and referral sites for freelance work, contests, grants, etc., but it was her smiling face that lured me in that first year. I’ve been following her for ten years!

Article: A blog post has no interviews; an article has research and interviews from experts.

MC: This no longer applies. They both have interviews and research.

Interviews build credibility for the owner of the blog/website and the person being interviewed. You gain respect for your contact capability and insider knowledge. The expert, well, you know that part.

Create a list of questions to draw from. Use four to six of them that speak to the expert’s specialty. Be sure and include “insider” questions such as what is your favorite writer, quote, book, food, or vacation - anything that makes them more human and humane. Think this doesn’t work? Look at any magazine on the newsstand. Almost 100% of them have at least one interview. Pull questions from those lists to make your list reader-friendly. If you are knowledgeable, readers will keep coming back.

Article: A blog always focuses on SEO’s (search engine optimization); an article doesn’t.

MC: The assumption here is that search engines don’t care about keywords in an article; they let the length do all the work. Not absolutely true.

When Google tightened down on keyword stuffing, some people assumed keywords were a waste of time. If your piece is to promote your new fiction book about preppers in the United States, and you don’t use the title of your book, the words preppers or United States or better yet, preppers in the United States, frequently in the article, particularly the title of the post, how are browsers going to find your piece? I won’t go into the standard way of calculating keyword density here, but there is a basic formula to use. If you want more info, go to http://www.bestseoideas.com/seo-factors/keyword-density-formula-calculation-for-google-seo-6 or http://www.ehow.com/how_2341682_calculate-keyword-density.html. If you type calculating keyword density into your browser, you will see hundreds of other sites as well.

Responding to Comments

Never ignore a comment to your post or article. Never.* Unless you don’t care about what your readers have to say or think it’s stupid, or your disagree so vehemently, you snatch out a handful of hair when your read it.

Take a few minutes to think about what you want to say and then type. A simple “Thank You.” isn’t enough. Come on, you’re a writer, you can think of at least one sentence to explain what you are thanking them for.

Example 1: “Mahala, I agree with your comments about freelance blogging. My experience is….”

“Thank you, Marilyn. I had a similar experience when….”

Example 2:  “Mahala, I completely disagree with your comments about freelance blogging. The people I wrote for were rude and never wanted to pay me more than $10 for a 300-word post! What a waste of my time!!! You shouldn’t encourage writers to take that kind of money.” 

“Thank you for your feedback, Marilyn. I’ve also talked to potential clients who wanted to pay low fees, some as low as .0001 a word. I never work with people who aren’t willing to pay a respectable fee for the research and time it takes to create a professional piece. Best of luck with your freelance work.”

If James Scott Bell, Rhys Bowen, James Patterson, Hope Clark, Stephen King, and other very busy and popular authors can take the time to respond to hundreds of comments weekly, I can do my part in my slip of the world. And, yes, I know that these authors may pay a person to do the responding for them, but what does that say about them? They respect their readers enough to pay out of their own pocket to ensure that each comment gets a personal response.

*Except for obvious spams, which we were inundated with several years ago. This brings up another point. Always, always, always have administrative control over the posting of comments, so that a comment is never posted online for the public to see unless you approved it. It’s a control mechanism that comes with every reputable blog and website vendor, and you can opt in or out of the control.

Headlines (aka as titles)

One final thing about headlines to encourage readers to click on your post/article. In September 20, 2013, Marcy Kennedy, author of Strong Female Characters wrote a guest article on http://writersinthestorm.com, an excellent site with valuable information. It did a beautiful job of explaining how to write killer headlines and why that is important. I mentioned this last week, but it bears repeating. Go to their archives to read the rest of the article. The example on bacon is wonderful. This is the idea Marcy explains:

The Shocking Truth About Doctors (vague) What shocking truth about what? Overweight cardiologists? Anesthesiologists who steal from patients under anesthesia?

The Shocking Truth About What Your Doctor Might Be Doing to Harm Your Health (specific)

Marcy reminds writers to follow with a piece that gives the reader an obvious benefit. What’s the takeaway from the piece? In a piece like this, it obviously needs fact-based research with article references to back it up. This goes back to my post last week. What do you want the reader to see, know, and learn after they read your piece. See previous post in Archives on Blog Post vs Article/August 26, 2015.

If writing headlines send you around the bend (Southern for drive you crazy), go back to the magazine section of the library or newsstand and look at the covers. Magazine marketers are experts at writing headlines, so we will buy their magazine.

Drop me a comment about your experiences with your freelance and personal writing of blog/site posts and articles!

Write Like You Mean It   ~ Mahala

Authorpreneurship Part 2

How many workshops and conferences have you attended solely because of one author who was speaking or teaching? If you are like most people, more than one. But why do we do that? Maybe we read their books. Maybe we know them by reputation. Maybe, and most likely, because we hope some kernel of truth will drop from them and push us through the grates that strain writers to achieve greatness.

Ever ask yourself why writers (many famous and well published) speak at workshops or conferences or teach? Maybe because they need press. Maybe because they enjoy it. Maybe, and most likely, they do it to bolster their income. As I mentioned last week, well known, well-published, well-honored writers have to work a day job to supplement their book writing. With the exception of a few notables, i.e. James Patterson, most authors only produce a book every few years - at least a book worth reading. With contract fees for books at an all time low, writers must turn themselves into a lean, mean writing and speaking machines to “bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan.”

To some degree, the changes in the publishing industry, coupled with the cost of living and the challenge to find any job these days, has brought a wealth of new ideas, new approaches to writing, new reading resources and gizmos, and thousands of new freelance jobs for writers. When downsizing, business often start with the writing staff - publicity, marketing, education, training - in the erroneous belief that “anybody can write.” The work is parceled out to unsuspecting and too often inarticulate managers.

After almost ten years of this mediocrity and lost revenue, companies have found solid gold. Freelancers don’t require overhead expenses such as an offices and equipment, supplies and insurance, or retirement plans. When this happened, freelance writing requests exploded all over the Internet. If you don’t believe me, type in freelance writers and watch your computer struggle to load the enormous lists. Unfortunately, these same companies, still believing "anybody can write" wanted to pay low rates.

I began working as a freelancer through individual clients, a word-of-mouth type of arrangement. Then I started bidding on jobs through several online freelance companies about ten years ago. Competition was (and still is) high and international. After a few jobs that paid me $1.50 for five 500-word articles for websites, and they wanted ten a day, this dummy woke up. But, I hung in there until I learned how to do research and regurgitate words on the page at an all time high. They weren't looking for quality, they wanted words and keywords that breezed through Copyscape. I built up some credits and that led me to higher paying jobs from the same online source.

It didn’t take me long to realize which companies I didn’t want to work with, but I have to admit that education was painful in all sorts of ways. Some of those companies no longer exist. Nuff said.

And that brings me to today’s lesson. Just as hair styles have changed since the dawn of time, so has the role of a freelance writer. Things have changed DRAMATICALLY in the past three years. It is much easier to find intellectual stimulation and better fees with an influx of professional people and companies vying for our skills and time.

The number of rip-off companies were complained about so frequently, most have been eradicated. I still see companies and individuals seeking to “make a deal” as though hiring a good writer was some type of e-bay activity.

I, too, have changed. I find myself talking to the computer when someone wins the bid; someone who is willing to do the work for 90% less than my I am. I wish the writer well and hope they build their credits quickly. I also wish the client well, because they make what was clearly a cost per hour decision that had nothing to do with logic. We all have to learn from our mistakes.

While online proposals for jobs account for only about 5% of my income, the bidding process is fun and challenges me to sell myself and my work, a trying job for anyone who prefers to hide at the computer or in a book. That process does me more good than anything else I’ve done when it comes to building my business, and I've met some wonderful writers and clients. Oh, the ugly looks I got from other writers when I launched my first marketing campaign. You would have thought I had single-handily pillaged and destroyed the crops for half of the United States.

Here are a few things I learned along the way to become this unusual critter - authorpreneurship.

1.  I do not work below a certain rate. Period. I have stuck to that, which has also been painful at times, but I learned there are more than enough people who understand the value of good writing and appreciate the value of editing to sell their products that I will not prostitute myself for the work.

2.  The difference between assets and liabilities (try not to laugh), and debits and credits (not the Visa or MasterCard kind), negotiation and browbeating, value given and value earned (not ego and id), harassment and feedback, and best of all friends and acquaintances.

3.  The value of contracts and agreements.

4.  The necessity of requiring some payment up front or continue to be cheated by “reputable companies and authors.”

5.  Prepare for the leaner times when you are flush.

6.  I do not work for publications that do not pay. (I have Hope Clarke to thank for harping on this on www.fundsforwriters.com.) Period.

7.  If I want to finish and sell a book, the time has to be scheduled, and if it invades my reading time, I have the power to choose.

8.  Networking is an absolute necessity to survive as an entrepreneur and as a writer. Deal with it.

9.  Prizes such as the Agatha, Pulitzer, Newberry, PEN/Faulkner, Pushcart, Gold Dagger Award, etc. are next to impossible for most writers to win. I will be happy with great reviews on GoodReads and Amazon.

10.  There is a secret to the New York Times bestseller list. It is called advance copy distribution. The NYT list is based on the speed at which a book sells in its first week on the shelf. Pre-orders count towards the first week’s sales rate. No wonder ARCs are all over websites such as GoodReads and the authors are happy to give them away and publicize their upcoming books on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

11.  Careful placement of a book in a category or selling an e-book for 99 cents can skyrocket a book 

to the top of the list, and then the author has bragging rights and sells more books.

If you are interested in being a freelancer and/or an authorpreneur, jump on in. The water’s choppy but what an adventure you will have!

Mahala

New releases coming down the pike

cj Sez:  NEXT SATURDAY, February 7, 2015, my friend, Dean James, is having a book signing for the hardcover version of ARSENIC AND OLD BOOKS, one of the books in his cat in the stacks mystery series.

 

The signing is scheduled to take place at 5-6:30 p.m. at the White House Hotel in Biloxi, MS.

Everyone is welcome to stop by and chat with Dean (who writes as Miranda James) and have some fun. Check out the reviews on Amazon at http://amzn.to/1KgYjT0

Next comes Carolyn Haines’ BOOTY BONES, a Sarah Booth Delaney mystery that will be out in paperback on February 15. Carolyn plans to be at the White House Hotel for Dean James’s book signing and expects to join in the fun. She says she’s also going to go ghost hunting, because, and I quote, “I think this wonderful, historic old hotel will be an excellent setting for my next creepy book.” She writes her creepy stuff under the pen name of R. B. Chesterton.

Check out BOOTY BONES at http://amzn.to/1Adfq8j 

Dean and Carolyn's novels are enjoyable reads, and that kind of excellence doesn’t happen overnight. These two Gulf Coast authors have honed their craft over the years and continue to work hard at putting out their very best effort for their readers.

One of the blogs I follow is that of author/editor/chief-cook-and-bottle-washer, Hope Clark at   http://www.fundsforwriters.com  Her “Funds for Writers” blog has been on the Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Websites for Writers list every year since 2001. Anyway, Hope says: “Writing well takes time. It isn't an instinct. You are not born with it. You do not accidentally write a stupendous tale. You develop this talent with hard work and a crazy number of hours invested in making your craft better.”

That means all writers, but especially aspiring writers, need to participate in workshops, critique groups, conferences, and READ in the genre you write. Before a writer can develop his/her own writing voice, (s)he must read the good work of other published authors.

Now, to inspire you to look at your own WIP, here’s another famous first line: 

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. —Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985)

Be sure to check out the new “Meet The Author” widget on the right side of our page. Lyrical Pens will soon post info about more local authors' new books with a smidge of info about them or the book.

You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same.

cj

Summer Reading

Summer is a great time to catch up on some of the reading we've been "meaning to do." You know, that book on the how-to's of writing, editing, publishing, whatever your interest is. It's also a great time to sit down at the computer with a huge glass of iced tea spiked with lemon or mint or a blend with mango or blackberry or peach, shut your door (if you're lucky enough to have one between your and the rest of the world,) and track down ideas for writing magazine articles or entering contests. There are a slew of them. Check out Hope Clark's web site, which is loaded with wonderful ideas for the new and experienced writer. http://www.fundsforwriters.com/.

I've decided to try writing for magazines again with the encouragement of her recent post with an informative and short article by Janet Hartman. I've had a few pieces published in magazines before, but I would like to amp up my participation (read that as increase my income) and add a few more lines to my bio. She gave me a whole new twist on the market and what I could sell. I tend to write regional Southern, historical, and humorous pieces in addition to health articles, so I'm going to put a new spin on a few things and get them back out there. Like the note on my desks says: "I believe there are three answers to prayer: yes, no, and do this instead."

Hope you had a wonderful/exciting 4th. It's my birthday and although I try to ignore it, my family steadfastly refuses to honor that idea. My daughter gave me a mint chocolate ice-cream cake which was worth every calorie!

YOU MUST DO THAT WHICH YOU THINK YOU CANNOT....ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

Mahala