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Headlines are everywhere in our life; in the newspapers, on the front page of magazines, on websites, on blogs, on social media sites, and so on. In fact, headlines help us getting a really good idea about the content of articles. Thus, headlines are critical because they will determine if an article is read or not!

For example, social media sites are handling and broadcasting tons of content each days. The only way for anyone to discriminate about all those stories is to look at the headlines. In fact, there is a natural selection - just like Darwin would say - that is done. The best headlines will be read and the weaker ones will just dies silently! If we apply Pareto, 20% of the stories - with the best headlines - will be read by 80% of the site users.

This is only a simple example to illustrate how crucial the headlines are. In order to help you improving your headlines, I made a list of 15 excellent resources related to headlines creation. Hope this will be useful for you.

Here it is:

1. The Sexy Art of Writing Headlines that Kill - freelanceswitch.com

2. Writing Effective, Attention-Getting Headlines and Titles on Your Blog - lorelle.wordpress.com

3. How to Write Magnetic Headlines - copyblogger.com

4. How To Write Great Headlines - modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk

5. How To Write Eye-Popping Headlines While Exhausted - instigatorblog.com

6. Five Tips for Writing Effective Web Headlines - google.com

7. 25 Headline Formulas That Have Plagued and Blessed Web 2.0 - skelliewag.org

8. 54 Proven Headlines Templates That Sell - seoblackhat.com

9. Headline writing: How to write web headlines that catch search engine spiders - newmediabytes.com

10. Writing Headlines for Regular Readers, Search Engines, and Social Media - copyblogger.com

11. 7 Easy Ways to Create Eye catching Titles - netwriting.co.uk

12. Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Headlines - world-copywriting-institute.typepad.com

13. How To Write Web Headlines That Beg To Be Read - lockergnome.com

14. Five Keys to Writing Killer Web Page Headlines - wordsmithbob.com

15. The Best Headlines Are Not Just Written For Google or Digg - instigatorblog.com

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This is a guest post from Hendry Lee. Hendry helps bloggers overcome technology challenges in starting and growing their blogs. Get daily tips, techniques and strategies by visiting his blog at blogbuildingu.com.

Articles are the building blocks of every blog and most web sites. In fact, they are one of the most important factors that will make or break your blog. People visit your site for the first time expecting to get good quality information.

If they find your content interesting, they may subscribe to get updates from your blog via RSS feed or email. As a blogger, you need to keep delivering fresh articles and meet the readers’ expectation. Otherwise, they may lose interest and unsubscribe.

The Importance of Content Creation

I always recommend that everyone who wants to start an online business to begin with a blog. That puts content creation at the highest priority. And content is a great business asset that can be leveraged for a wide variety of purposes later.

Just as an example, most bloggers miss the fact that they can re-purpose their content into articles and tap into article marketing to drive qualified traffic to their site.

No matter what you do, content production should account for 40-50 percent of the time you spend to build your online business. Blogging helps you get better in this critical business and marketing activity.

Note: We’ll avoid getting into audio and video content production. That is certainly an option for people who prefer talking rather than writing.

The Challenges

Blogging requires that you update your blog with fresh content regularly. For many people, this can be daunting, especially if they haven’t been writing an article for years.

When I first got started with blogging and article marketing, I couldn’t imagine myself doing this for the long haul. It took a few days to write a 500-word article, not to mention the hours I spent to make the article perfect.

Ideas were also hard to come by. It was so frustrating to stare at a blank screen for 15 minutes.

Even after I was finally able to finish my writing faster, still it was almost impossible to do that regularly because I was struggling all over it.

I am certainly not the only one.

7 Blogging Tips for Faster Content Production

The good news is, you don’t have to be a perfect writer before you can start publishing to your blog. If you can get across your message well to the other party, you have more skills than necessary to blog. Writing conversationally can help convey personality better than if you adopt academic writing style.

With that said, here are a few blog writing tips that I’ve learned over the years:

1. Write a clear and compelling title. Don’t be afraid to make bold statements to grab the reader’s attention and make them read the rest of the blog post. Title is the first and perhaps the only thing the readers will see if you don’t give a reason to your blog visitors why they should stop and read.
2. Make your content valuable and worthwhile. It is worth repeating that people visit your blog the first time to get information. They seldom come with credit card in hand. If they like what you have to offer, still it is content that makes them come back or subscribe to your content feed / e-newsletter.
3. Research your keywords. If you are able to get traffic from organic search just by integrating your primary keyword in the right location and including secondary keywords, synonyms and other thematically related keywords, there is no reason why you should leave the strategy unused.
4. Provide content structure. Subheadings, bulleted and numbered lists, and text formatting are there to help readers to go through your content easily. Most people are scanners. It helps if you make your content easy to scan. With this list, for instance, you don’t need to read the whole thing to understand what’s in it. The bold statements already give you the big picture.
5. Link to internal and external pages. Links are the currency of the Web. Pointing to external resources builds your credibility and positions you as an expert in your topic. With trackbacks and pingbacks, other bloggers will notice those links. Those can often be a start of a profitable relationship.
6. Know your audience. While long articles have higher perceived value, they are not always appropriate. Some people prefer concise and to the point articles. If you can deliver the same message within 3 minutes, don’t waste more of the readers’ time. They will appreciate it.
7. Proofread to ensure professionalism. Spell check your blog post before you hit the publish button. Make your content clean and professional. You will never do business with people who wear dirty jeans and a checked shirt. It gives a bad impression. That doesn’t mean you have to write in perfect grammar. Starting a title with a number is not proper grammar, but it is effective and bloggers use it. What’s not optional is the impression you make with the content.

Last but not all, keep in mind that the readers always tune in the WIIFM frequency (What’s In It For Me). You will build your credibility by providing great information instead of talking about yourself and your business. Broadcast with a signal that matches the receiver helps get the message across effectively.

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One of the most useful and valuable tools a blogger could own is an idea journal. Having a constant flow of ideas is essential to keep writing quality articles and maintain your blog readership. In fact, for probloggers post ideas are directly link with their income. For them, running out of ideas may be dramatic and significantly impact their living.

I wrote some time ago an article titled 12 Effective Ways to Find New Article Ideas. In this article, I listed some ways to get new source of ideas. These sources are quite simple and may help you to fill up your idea journal with great ideas. Now, concerning your journal, Steven Snell wrote an interesting article on DailyBlogTips to help people maintaining an effective idea journal. This article is titled Keys to an Effective Idea Journal. You may take some time to read it; it may help you to improve the way you use and maintain your own journal.

Those 2 articles will give your great resources to maintain an effective idea journal. However, I would like to go a little bit further by giving you 5 additional tips. Those tips are more related to your journal structure and may influence the way you write your idea in your journal. The tips are the following:

1. Create Categories.

Creating categories may help you to better organize your ideas and to relate them to a specific topic. Of course, this may change later in time, but at least you’ll have an initial base. Using categories may also help you to avoid duplicates. I also recommend using a generic category like “General”, “Uncategorized” or something like that. This category will be useful to insert general ideas. In fact, the key here is that you better use a general category than dropping your idea because it doesn’t fit anywhere. Note that your categories must fit with topics relevant to your niche.

2. Create a Special Section For Article Types.

Sometimes you may have some idea related to a special type of articles. For example, you may have several “Top 10″ ideas. In fact, because you already have some elements in mind, the type of your article is clear to you. Thus, having a “Top 10″ section may help you to properly categorize your articles. Don’t forget to write the elements you already have in mind. For example, you may have 2 or 3 elements of your “Top 10″ article; write them down! Other potential article types could be “Reviews” or “How to”. Note that article types are not related to you niche.

3. Sketch Your Article Structure.

If you have any idea of your preliminary article structure, just write it down. You may want to take a look at the 4 Simple Rules to Increase The Quality of Your Articles. In that article, you’ll find a way to properly structure your article. Of course, sketching your first article structure is not a necessity at this point (when writing in your journal). However, if you have something in mind, you have to write it down immediately. It may not be your finale structure, but it will be great beginning!

4. Add an “Article Ready” Score For Each Idea.

You may want to add some kind of a “article ready” score to each of your idea. In fact, what I called “article ready” score is a code to let you know at which level you feel each idea ready to be exploited in a concrete article. This score could be anything you want. For example, it could be as simple as “L”, “M” and “H” that stand respectively for low, medium and high. For those who better like numbers, you may want to use a 0 to 10 scale. Thus, ideas that are clear in your mind may have a score of 7 or 8. In opposition, an idea that was just drop without any context or clarification may have a score of 2 or 3. This score may help you when you want to pick up an idea for a new article. Depending of the time you have, you may want to develop an idea with a score of 2 or 3. However, if your time is limited, you would probably prefer to develop an idea with a score of 7 and above.

5. Leave Sufficient Spaces Between Each Idea.

This one is a very simple tip, but very worthy. We all tend to write ideas very fast and we generally don’t leave spaces in between. Please, don’t do this anymore! Give you a lot of spaces between each idea. Those spaces will allow you to insert additional elements in the future. If you don’t give you this possibility, you’ll sooner or later own an unusable and illegible journal. The chances are that you will try to write with so little characters and you won’t be able to recognize them anymore. This is bad and this is way out from what you are expecting from your journal. Don’t hesitate to leave you enough spaces. In that context, remember that too much is better than not enough!

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Have you ever run out of idea when trying to make your blog post? Have you ever experiment a writer’s block? Don’t worry about that! I guess every blogger experiment that scary feeling someday.

The goal of this post is precisely to give you effective ways to find new ideas. My recommendation would be to try one or several of the following ways before running out of ideas; prevent it instead of healing it!

1. Set alerts on specific keywords.

Setting alerts with either Google or Yahoo is a great way to prevent running out of ideas. All you need to do is define a list of keywords that will be relevant to your blog’s topic. Then, log into your Google or Yahoo account and set your alerts based on the keywords you previously defined. I would recommend to setup alerts on both news and blogs. This will help you to cover an acceptable part of what is happening on the web.

Resources:
Goggle Alerts: http://www.google.com/alerts
Yahoo! Alerts: http://alerts.yahoo.com

2. Visit new blogs on your niche.

Sometimes, we just need to break the routine to get new ideas. To do so, I would recommend visiting new blogs on your niche. There are plenty of places where you can find them: blog directories, blogroll from your favorite blogs, social media, forums, search engines, etc. Depending on your niche, you’ll find lots or few blogs to visit. Take the time to read some recent articles and browse their archive.

Resources:
Google Blog Search: http://blogsearch.google.com
Yahoo! Blog Directory: http://dir.yahoo.com/news_and_media/blogs
Google Blog Directories list: http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/Directories
Yahoo! Blog Directories list: http://dir.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/Blogs/Blog_Directories

3. Browse the most popular articles from other blogs on your niche.

You may find great article ideas when browsing the “Popular Articles” section of a blog on your niche. It may help you getting more inspiration as well as helping you finding popular topics to update or expand. The most important aspect, when you start from that point, is to really make your updated content original and unique. To do so, take the time to read carefully the articles you may want to update or expand and only take the main ideas. Then, start from the scratch and present those main ideas by exposing your personal thoughts. Then, it would be kind from you to insert a link back to the original article.

Resources:
7 Efficient Ways to Increase the Value of Your Content

4. Look at what people are looking for.

Looking at what people are looking for may help you a lot to find a new article idea. In fact, keywords may help creative minds to find terrific ideas or at least be the starting point of an efficient brainstorming.

Resources:
Google Trends: http://google.com/trends
Google Zeitgeist: http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
Yahoo! Buzz: http://buzz.yahoo.com
AOL Hot Searches: http://hotsearches.aol.com
Dogpile Search Spy: http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/searchspy

5. Look at what people is looking for on your blog.

More specifically, it may be very helpful to know the search engine queries that lead people to your blog and what people are specifically querying while they are on your blog. This type of information may help you to focus your effort on articles that actually get the attention of your readers. Almost every tracking software will allows you to get this information. The most known one is Google Analytics. However, you could also consider using Sitemeter which also offers a great service.

Resources:
Google Analytics: http://www.google.com/analytics
Sitemeter: http://www.sitemeter.com

6. Encourage your audience to suggest topic or ask questions.

Another great way to find new ideas is to either open a question session with your audience and/or create a “Q&A” or “Ask The Blogger” section. This is a simple and effective way to interact with your audience and find targeted ideas for your articles. Depending on the questions and the subjects submitted by your readers, you may want to organize them into categories. This will ease you job to create articles based on common topics. Note that this method may also be very successful to get new loyal core readers.

7. Browse through Social Media.

Social Medias receive tons of new submissions each day. It is a tremendous place to find plenty of new creative ideas. All these websites offers the possibility to make a search that may help you to find hot topics on your niche. Moreover, most of them offer also a way to filter the results by rating or by time. Get ready to take some notes and to create your own list of new ideas.

Resources:
StumbleUpon: http://www.stumbleupon.com
Digg: http://digg.com
Del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us
Mixx: http://www.mixx.com
Technorati : http://www.technorati.com
YouTube : http://www.youtube.com

To get even more…
Yahoo! Social Networks Directory: http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Cultures_and_Groups/Cyberculture/Social_Networks

8. Browse forums on your niche.

Forums are places to share ideas, ask questions or talk about general topics. Therefore, it is another good place to find fresh ideas. It is also a great place to participate in idea sharing and challenging discussions. To find forums related to your niche, get to your favorite search engine and type keywords relevant to your niche followed by the word “forums” or “forum”. For example, if your blog is related to health, you’ll have to type “Health forums” or “health forum”.

9. Look at the most popular things.

Taking look at the most popular things may help you to target your articles on things people are really looking for. It could be software tools, hot topics, breaking news or anything else relevant to your niche. There are several places where you could find popular things. The following resource list gives you a starting point.

Resources:
Wordpress Plugins: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins
Firefox Extentions: https://addons.mozilla.org
eBay Pulse: http://pulse.ebay.com
Technorati: http://technorati.com/pop
Digg: http://digg.com (Use the “Popular” filter)
Del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us (Use the “Popular” filter)
Mixx: http://www.mixx.com (Use the “Popular” filter)

10. Look for the most recent things.

As for the popular things, the newest things may have a good traction on your readers. It is always great to demonstrate that we are up to date in our niche. It may have a positive and significant impact on your authority. In fact, this could lead you to terrific opportunities to create original and unique content and thus, create a lot of back links pointing to your articles.

Resources:
Wordpress Plugins: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins
Firefox Extentions: https://addons.mozilla.org
Technorati: http://technorati.com
Digg: http://digg.com (Use the “Upcoming” filter)
Del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us (Use the “Recent” filter)
Mixx: http://www.mixx.com (Use the “Recent” filter)

11. Browse articles directories.

Articles directories get a large amount of article submissions each day. These websites aim to allow writers to get more visibility and to promote their sites and services through article submissions and, on the other hand, they help webmasters and bloggers to get free content based reprinting rights. As a matter of fact, these websites become large databases of ideas. All you need to do is to make a simple research with some relevant keywords.

Resources:
EZineArticles: http://www.ezinearticles.com
Article Dashboard: http://www.articledashboard.com
Go Articles: http://www.goarticles.com
Article Pros: http://www.articlepros.com
Articles 888 : http://www.articles888.com

Of course, there are many others…

12. Pay attention to your daily experiences.

Ideas are everywhere! They can be in a park while walking or they can also be on your day job processes. In fact, an action or an observation in a particular context could generally be translated in another context. For example, observing your children sharing their toys may gives you an idea about how generosity or altruism may impact your activity on a social media context. Everything is possible for an opened mind!

I would really appreciate if you could share your own experiences about writer’s block. How do you find new ideas? What are your personal experiences in that area?

I really hope this list to be useful and valuable for you!

If you like this post, please consider subscribing to my full RSS feed. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Also, if you like what you read, I’ll really appreciate if you could share it on Delicious, StumbleUpon or Digg using the links below. Thanks!

Photo by Ella’s Dad

Generating traffic and getting more engaged readers require some ingredients. In this post, I would like to focus on the value of articles. You are writing articles every day or several times each week, but are they really value-added?

The strength of your articles may have a significant impact on the way your content will be distributed and on the perception readers will have from you and your blog. The circulation of your content and your authority are critical to build a wide and strong readership.

Creating quality content isn’t an easy task. In fact, as I already said before, quality is subjective. It is based on your own values, your goals, your interests and many other personal elements. However, no matter on the niche you are, there are several points that may help you to create added-value content.

The following list do not pretends to be exhaustive. However, it refers to elements that may raise your readership by influencing how readers will perceive your content and your blog and by increasing the distribution of your content.

1. Cover the main perspectives. Depending on the type of content you are publishing, covering the main perspectives may apply or not. For sure, any news or story coverage should include this element. The main goal for this point is to present the different visions behind a story. For example, some people may be very favorable to a particular project for different reasons and others may be against it for very legitimate reasons also. It is very interesting and very enriching to cover the different visions behind some news or stories. In general, people are pleased to read articles that may help them to make their own opinion.

2. Cover the impacts. Whatever you are writing about, your topic may raise some potential impacts on something or someone . It could be on you, on your readers, on the blogosphere, on the society or on the economy. Every action, every change, every movement have an impact on something. For example, Google AdSense did a change by adding their sliding/scrolling feature on text ads. In fact, this is an important change that may have a significant impact on the income of many bloggers. Covering the impacts may considerably increase the value of your content.

3. Take position. People generally enjoy reading about the opinions of others. It In fact, more than the position itself, it is the different arguments somebody will raise to support this position that will attract most of the attention. The danger behind taking position is the perception. If you take position on something, be sure to be clear. Take the time to well formulate your different arguments and to reviews them before publishing it. You may also consider asking a friend, a relative or another blogger to review your article. Taking position will add value to your content and will make it unique.

4. Include examples. In my opinion, one of the most important characteristics of good content is clarity. One possible way to make your content clearer is to add examples. Don’t hesitate to include examples to explain a point you have in mind. Sometimes, words are you not enough and example with context may really help. In fact, if you have a doubt that something is unclear, try to find an example that would be relevant to what you are trying to present. Note also, that many people are example-oriented; they better understand or confirm their understanding with an example.

5. Insert supportive schema. Another possible way to add value to your content is to add some supportive schema. As for examples, schema may help to clarify and understand what you are trying to explain. Translating words into drawings or pictures may be very helpful for many people. In fact, schema are generally demonstrating more than words could do. If possible, this is a must for every article. In my opinion, this is a strong way to easily add value to your content.

6. Insert link resources. This is something clear to me: no articles could pretend to be exhaustive and totally complete on a specific topic! You may have done the largest research or you may have read articles written by the most knowledgeable experts; you’ll never be able to put all this information on a single article. This said, the best way to help your readers in that area is to give them the references. Concretely, this means that you may share with your readers your best links by inserting them into your articles. This will allow your readers to be properly guided to the best sources of information. There will be no need to your readers to start again the same research you did. You allow them to save time and you really increase the value of your content for a better distribution.

7. Insert relevant pictures or videos. As for the schema, the pictures and the videos give a visual support to your articles. The real value of these elements will depend on their level of relevancy. The more relevant they are, the more value you will add to your content. It is, therefore, essential to make a targeted and serious research to find the best pictures or videos. I would recommend being very careful about the intellectual property related to this kind of media. Take the time to read the license carefully of what you find. You may also consider reading my article describing the steps to safely get the best of Flickr.

Don’t underestimate the power of adding value to your content. Sometimes, a small time investment may results in terrific results. Creating value-added content is essential to build a strong readership.

The content you create is the foundation of the perception people have about you and your blog. It is also the catalyst to a wide and deep distribution. In fact, it is critical to properly evaluate the process that conducts the creation of your content in order to efficiently meet your personal goals.

If you like this post, please consider subscribing to my full RSS feed. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Also, if you like what you read, I’ll really appreciate if you could share it on Delicious, StumbleUpon or Digg using the links below. Thanks!

Photo by Hamed Saber

As a blogger, you want to create original and valuable content for your audience. And you know the quality of your article have a significant impact on your feed sign up rate. We may admit, also, that quality is a subjective concept. However, there is an element that may be considered as totally objective in term of quality: the structure.

Your article structure have an impact on the quality of your content and have a significant influence on the perception of your audience and your new visitors. You should agree on the fact that there is an infinite way to structure the same subject with the same ideas. Have you ever ask you why an article treating of a specific subject is successful and another one, treating of the same exact subject, isn’t so popular? One of the possible answers is the structure. Naturally, the human mind needs some structure to make things understandable. So if you want to make your article a little bit stronger, I would recommend you to follow some simple rules. Note that these are general rules that may not apply on every article. You are the best judge of that!

The rules

1. Drop all your ideas on paper. Dropping all your ideas on paper will let you organize your ideas into some divisions or some categories. It also may help you to find secondary ideas from your main ideas. I would say that this step may seem very simple – and it is – but it is also the most critical, because it will determine your article structure plan. Take the time to create a good plan. A great strategy to create a good plan is to do it with iterations. This means that you make a first draft. Then, you revise it from A to Z by modifying the order or the ideas. You can do that 4 or five times until you get something you will be proud of. You will notice that your article it much easier to write when you have a good article structure plan.

2. Introduce your subject and your main ideas properly. This is a simple rule that everyone may know. In fact, this is the introduction of your article and I guess you already do it. However, are you doing it in an efficient way? You must be aware that the impact of this part of your article is very significant. In reality, it may determine if your readers read the entire article or if they leave it after only few paragraphs. Creating an attractive introduction will encourage your reader to go further. Here are some points to consider:

    a) Create a context to your subject;
    b) Firmly establish how your article may be helpful for your readers (the benefits for them);
    c) Pricked their curiosity;
    d) Determine a goal to achieve;
    e) Expose the ideas you will develop throughout your article;

3. Use subtitles and explode your ideas. Using subtitles involve that you already make few subdivisions with your article. This is something that may help you to make a logical structure. This should have been made on your article structure plan. Also, create a single paragraph for each idea you develop. There must be no more than 1 idea per paragraph. This will clarify your article and make it easier to read. For example, you may have something like this:

4. Summarize for your audience. This part of you article must be inline with your introduction and the development of your ideas. It must demonstrate that the goal of you article have been achieved. Try to specifically target your article summary for your audience. You need to demonstrate in a single paragraph the quality of your entire article. I would recommend to do a little recap with the context and to express how your main ideas create the benefits.

Summary

The perception your visitors will have on the quality of your content will have a significant impact on the success of your blog. We determined that the article structure is an essential element to consider. In fact, a structured article is more understandable and easier to read. By raising the quality of your article, you will also raise the authority perception people have for your blog. Don’t underestimate the value of a well structured article and always remember that writing an article is doing the road with each of your reader: your introduction must convince him that the goal and the benefits worth to walk the road with you (reading). Your development may clearly demonstrate the value of your ideas and keep the curiosity present. Your conclusion must demonstrate that the goal has been achieved; the landscape must have worth the walk!

If you like this post, please consider subscribing to my full RSS feed. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Also, if you like what you read, I’ll really appreciate if you could share it on Delicious, StumbleUpon or Digg using the links below. Thanks!