Blogging Tips

The Writing Process

Anything that can make writing easier is a blessing, but many writers often approach it by the seat of their pants. There’s nothing wrong with that. Adding some structure to the writing process can make the work move along more smoothly though.

Many writers, who use structure, follow certain steps when planning or preparing to write:

1. Determine your audience or purpose.

2. Research: Gather facts and information.

3. Organize the information.

4. Write the first draft.

5. Revise and edit.

The first step; determining your audience and/or purpose can be difficult. The purpose for the material you want to write may be clearly defined but how you present this material or your arguments could be a bit trickier; especially if your message is intended to persuade instead of to inform.

To help define your purpose, ask yourself several questions:

Do you intend to analyze something or …

Written by Patti Stafford from Patti Stafford
Posted on March 17th, 2010 and filed under Writing
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Top Ten Best Selling WordPress Themes on ThemeForest

WordPress continues to be one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) on the Internet and for good reason. It’s incredible versatile and, better still, it’s completely free to download to use. However, you may want to spend some money to customize your WordPress blog or website.

One of the better marketplaces on the web for premium WordPress templates is ThemeForest. Looking at the current top ten best sellers, you can get a good sense of current design trends. For instance, it seems that magazine themes are rising in popularity, as are “portfolio” style themes that prominently feature one large image above the fold.

1. Twicet 5-in-1

The current number one best seller on ThemeForest is Twicet. This theme is best suited for business applications and comes with five different skins to best complement …

Written by Michael Kwan from Beyond the Rhetoric
Posted on March 17th, 2010 and filed under WordPress Themes
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Build Rapport with Rapportive

I get a ton of e-mail from many different people. Keeping everyone straight can be difficult and those are just the people I know personally. I have a contact form on my blog and occasionally get people contacting me and asking me to try things, blog about things and for help. I don’t know these folks most of the time. However, I’ve discovered a great tool to help me identify people who are contacting me. The tool is called Rapportive.

When you install Rapportive (available for Chrome and Firefox) you gain some cool insight into the people that e-mail your Gmail account. When Rapportive installs it does a few great things right off the bat. It removes the ads that are on the sidebar of Gmail and replaces them

…

Written by BenSpark from BenSpark.com
Posted on March 16th, 2010 and filed under Personal, Productivity, Social Networking
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Looking For Work Should Be Ongoing

I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but I don’t take advice usually until I’ve gone through all the painful lessons the advice was meant to save me from. Here’s a case in point.

When I first started freelancing on the Internet I wanted to learn all I could so I decided to read a few articles I found about my new chosen profession. One in particular told me that although there were many benefits to freelancing like setting your own hours and being your own boss, one of the big downfalls was having to be constantly looking for work because contracts and clients change frequently.

So far, I’m glad that I’ve never really run into trouble even though I ignored that kind of advice at first and had a few big contracts tank over the years through no fault of my own. …

Written by Rob Starr from Rob Starr
Posted on March 14th, 2010 and filed under Blogging
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Twitter Sells Wine to Promote Literacy

Not many know about the Fledgling Initiative by Twitter, the micro-blogging site that everybody loves. The Fledgling Initiative is a Twitter project that makes wine for the benefit of a non-profit organization named ‘Room-to-Read‘ that extends educational opportunities for deprived children worldwide. According to the description on the website: “These wines are being made using some of the best vineyards in California by the acclaimed winemaking team at Crushpad”

A single bottle, “a suave rendition of Pinot Noir produced from top-flight California vineyards,” will cost you 20 $ while a case (12 bottles) costs 240 $ (you also have the option to donate more). This Twitter initiative was announced in October 2009. You can read about an event related to it on the Twitter blog.

“Every case sold will provide approximately 60 local language children’s books …

Written by Vikas from Vikas Gupta
Posted on March 14th, 2010 and filed under Blogging
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5 Ways to Share on Google Buzz

Yesterday I talked about ReBuzzThis, a button that you can add to your blog for others to share your posts on Google Buzz. Well what about those blogs that don’t have a button or that cool site you come across while browsing and want to share? Luckily, there seems to be an increasing amount of Buzz sharing tools popping up, including the five listed below. From desktop apps to browser plugins to Facebook apps, you’re sure to find a method you like for sharing items on Google Buzz.

Submit to Google Buzz

This is an extension for Google Chrome that lets you share the current page you’re viewing on Google Buzz. Just install it and you’re good to …

Written by Charnita Fance from mrsfance
Posted on March 13th, 2010 and filed under Social Media
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Writing Instructions to Improve Your Writing Skills

I recently covered improving non-fiction writing through the use of studying fiction structure. Today, I’d like to continue with another writing style; writing instructions.

Your website may not be a how-to website, but writing out instructions can help you hone your writing skills in general.

Writing instructions includes giving step-by-step details of how to do something, procedures to follow, operating machinery, or a computer, etc. These are written as commands using an active voice.

Before you write instructions you need to understand what it is you’re giving directions on, so choose something that you’re extremely familiar with.

Second, focus on the audience, just as if you were writing a blog post; the audience is always the reason behind most of the writing you do.

Instructions are generally written in a specific style–like an outline. Practicing this will help you pinpoint key components …

Written by Patti Stafford from Patti Stafford
Posted on March 12th, 2010 and filed under Writing
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