Making sure your hard work pays off
Want a sure-fire method to build your writing even better, regardless of what your present level might be?
Here it is, in short: Editing.
All writers, professional or amateur, must edit their work. Editing makes the distinction between a masterpiece and an unreadable mess. If you do not edit your writing, you may discover weeks later that you used the term “internal” instead of “internet” throughout your post.
Avoid being intimidated though. Editing does not have to become overwhelming. In reality, here are a few easy tricks that may help you make your work ready for prime time:
- Take a break. When you’re too close to a piece of writing, you are able to become blind to your own mistakes. Take a stroll neighborhood, step away from the computer for a short time, grab a cup of coffee, and then make contact with work. You’ll suddenly see your post with new eyes, and several errors will just jump out at you.
- See clearly aloud. Reading aloud makes you slow down. You gloss over words if you need to pronounce every single one! That’s why reading aloud is a superb approach to catch spelling and grammar errors, along with repetitive words or phrases. You’ll find it just does not ”sound right” if there’s a problem.
- Outsource it. You can even hire another editor to complete a replica edit of the writing. If you should choose to outsource your editing, you’ll receive the most value for your money if you group a lot of posts together as opposed to sending them one-by-one.
- Swap using a buddy. Look for a buddy who could be interested in an editing partnership. It is possible to exchange your posts and study each other’s work, checking for grammar and spelling errors, nonsensical sentences, and unclear areas.
As you can see, editing doesn’t always have to become a massive, complicated process. It simply involves going through your work to be sure it’s clear, concise, and clean. Whether you’re doing it yourself, make use of a partner, or hiring an assistant, the main thing is to do it. You be glad you did.
WordPress Plugin’s In Review: TinyMCE Advanced
Finally you can format your text the way you want!
I remember the first time I sat down to create a post on my new WordPress blog. It was an exciting moment that quickly changed to frustration. All I wanted to do was change the font size!
Seemed to me like a reasonable enough request. But, I’d be darned if I could figure out how to do that with the default tool bar. Sure I could change from “paragraph” to “Heading 1″ or “Heading 2″ but none of these gave me the results I wanted.
This sent me on a quest for a good wordress wysiwyg editor. After hunting around for a while I discovered two that I liked. One is called “WP Super Edit” and the other is “TinyMCE Advanced”. Since of the two I prefer TinyMCE Advanced, that is the plugin I will discuss today.
So with out further ado here are some of the features this plugin provides:
- Change font size and font family !!!
- Create and editing tables
- Text justificati0n
- Text hi-lighting
- Subscript & superscript
- Anchor links
- Search and replace
- Time & Date insertion
- Emotions (Smilies)
- ieSpell checked
40 new formatting buttons in all.
Needless to say this plugin has become a staple in each and every wordpress website & blog I design. To see the plugin installation in action I invite you to watch the video below:
Every Post Needs a Clear Purpose
Picking a good topic is only theinitial step in developing a fantastic, bookmark-worthy post. After you’ve selected a subject – or maybe even beforehand – determinethe main point of your post. Each post on your blog must a purpose. Whether it’s to encourage readers to sign up for your email list, urge them to leave a comment, or encourage people tobuy something, every single post needs to havea certain point along with aproactive approach.
Here are some goals that blog posts may have:
To encourage subscriptions. Should you write what Darren Rowse of Problogger.net calls a “pillar post,” you might impress the future prospect so much that they’re wanting for more. At the end of these posts, include a sign-up box for the list so you can capture traffic while they’re still wowed because of your brilliance.
To market something. Whether it’s your personal products or someone else’s, websites can make people more receptive to buying something. Reviews, case studies, and new service announcements can help you sell a product or service. Just be sure to skip the hard sell.
To engage the future prospect. Sometimes, you might like to reinforce that community feel. To get your potential customers to respond, you might ask questions, invite discussion, or actually suggest that readers respond inside the comments section of your blog.
To encourage viral marketing. If you’d like your posts to go viral, you have to create valuable, evergreen content that others may wish to save and spread to friends, and even tweet with their followers on Twitter. While they may not be directly monetized, they encourage readers to come back again and again, also to recommend your site to their colleagues and friends.
There are many reasons for blogging. The bottom line is to have a reason, and to know that reason before you even start writing. Only then does that post belong in your blog.
