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Why are links so important ‰ÛÒ Podcast Episode #219

by admin

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In this week‰Ûªs internet marketing podcast, Kelvin discusses the fairly short but very important history of search engines and some major concepts behind linkbuidling. He explains what a hyperlink is and which characteristics it contains. He then gives us some insights into PageRank, the link analysis algorithm, and how it evolved over time. Finally he explains what a nofollow link is and how a ‰Û÷normal‰Ûª website portfolio should look.

åÊ
Post from Apple Pie & Custard blog by SiteVisibility – An SEO AgencyWhy are links so important ‰ÛÒ Podcast Episode #219

Filed Under: Uncategorized

How to Write Killer Bullet Points

by admin

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Keep your readers running down your page like water on a slide.‰Û

Wouldn‰Ûªt you like your copy to have that effect?
Of course. Who wouldn‰Ûªt?
And while writing great sentences and using persuasive words are essential elements for making it happen, don‰Ûªt overlook the importance of bullet points.
Because well-crafted bullet points make your copy more readable.
And they allow you to do something else that is very important, as well.
What is that something else? You‰Ûªll have to listen to the latest episode of The Lede to find out.
In this episode, Demian and I discuss:

  • The two primary functions of bullet points
  • Why bullet points are essential for readability
  • How bullet points can (and should) be used to tease and entice
  • What ‰ÛÏbullet clutter‰Û is ‰Û_ and how to avoid it.
  • Essential formatting guidelines
  • The importance of bullet point brevity (but what to do if your bullet points run on a little longer)
  • Why Mel Martin is a copywriter you should study

Listen to The Lede ‰Û_
To listen, you can either hit the flash audio player below, or browse the links to find your preferred format ‰Û_

  • Click here to download the mp3 | 32.4 MB | 13:29
  • Click here to subscribe via iTunes
  • Click here for the RSS feed (non iTunes)
  • Click here for the show archive

The Show Notes

  • 8 Quick Tips for Writing Bullets Points People Actually Want to Read ‰ÛÓ by Robert Bruce
  • Little Known Ways to Write Fascinating Bullet Points ‰ÛÓ by Brian Clark
  • Mel Martin Copywriting Swipe File

The Transcript
Click here to read the transcript
Please note that this transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and grammar.
The Lede Podcast: How to Write Killer Bullet Points
Jerod Morris: Welcome back to The Lede, a podcast about content marketing by Copyblogger Media. I‰Ûªm your host, Jerod Morris. If you want to get a content marketing education while you work out or while you‰Ûªre driving to pick up the kids from school, this podcast is the way to do it.
In this episode, Demian Farnworth joins me to continue our series on the 11 essential ingredients of a blog post. And this is one that just may kill your content if you are not locked and loaded with your strategy. I‰Ûªm speaking, of course, about bullets, and if you want to begin writing better bullet points today, keep listening.
Bullet points serve two primary functions:

  1. Make your copy easier to read
  2. Allow you to highlight specific copy points

But just because bullet points are simple, it doesn‰Ûªt mean that they are simplistic or easy. There are a number of sophisticated ways to use bullets that make your copy killer. We‰Ûªre going to discuss those today. And there are also a number of things that you want to keep in mind when it comes to formatting your bullets to make them seamless parts of your copy.
So Demian, let me kick it over to you. Why are bullet points absolutely necessary for online writing?
Demian Farnworth: Bullet points provide an avenue to break up text, and they‰Ûªre essential for the readability part of online writing.
So you have a web page, and most people are going to skim and scan that copy. Bullets provide that opportunity that people can see something, and see something in a formatted point that‰Ûªs staccato, that is short, and that is easy to scan and read. It provides an opportunity to highlight, stop the eye. Because people, if they like your headline, they‰Ûªre going to hit your page, and probably read the first sentence, but before they do anything really, they‰Ûªre probably going to scan it. And so bullets provide the opportunity to stop people and get them interested in what you‰Ûªre writing. Same sort of idea behind subheadlines. Bullets provide a sort of landmark to stop people and get them to actually read what you‰Ûªre writing.
Bullets are a great opportunity to entice and to tease people, and give them something, but not give away the farm. So for instance, I‰Ûªve seen this so many times through ads where they‰Ûªre basically giving their product away. A bad bullet point is this bullet point where you kind of tell people, like, here‰Ûªs the promise.
Robert Bruce talks about this in his Eight Quick Tips for Writing Bullet Points People Actually Want to Read. He talks about the two things that are essential: brevity and promise. Brevity is the part that it‰Ûªs short. A long bullet point sort of defeats the purpose of doing the bullet point. But that doesn‰Ûªt mean that it has to be two, three, four, or five words. It needs to be long enough so it‰Ûªs readable, but it also needs to provide some sort of promise, and that‰Ûªs the part we talked about, the tease.
And where I was going earlier, you‰Ûªll see people who write bad bullet points ‰ÛÓ where you make a promise and you tell people everything. For example, I wrote an article a couple of years ago called ‰ÛÏThe Dirty Little Secret to Seducing your Readers,‰Û and I gave some examples of this book with a dust jacket that explains what someone needs to do to eat right, or a sales letter that unpacks the secret to raising brilliant children, and right in the letter they give away the sort of tips and the tactics, and then a video that demonstrates the best way to save money for your child‰Ûªs college education, and then they give you all of the reasons or methods to do that, or a movie trailer that spills all the best lines, the funniest jokes, the most exciting plot twists. You‰Ûªre not giving anybody anything to want. The problem is the reader doesn‰Ûªt end up going any further. They don‰Ûªt end up buying any of the products because they‰Ûªve been told everything.
So a good bullet point teases. For example, say you‰Ûªre writing, and your readers ‰ÛÓ say they want to run a marathon in four hours, right? You would tell them you have a 17-week training program that will get them across the finish line in 3 and 1/2 hours, but will also prevent them from dehydrating, and allow them to recover in just one day with some little trick. But you don‰Ûªt tell them what that trick is. Or, if your audience is dealing with crippling insecurity, you can tell them that you have a way to transform them to robust, productive human beings in seven days by thinking these three thoughts, but you don‰Ûªt tell them what those three thoughts are. Say your audience wants to live to be a hundred. Then you might tell them that you‰Ûªve figured out exactly how to do just that with the right combination of exercise, food, and vitamins; but you don‰Ûªt tell them what those exercise, foods, and vitamins are.
Jerod: So Demian, let me stop you really quick here, because what you‰Ûªre describing, it sounds like, you really want to think of your bullet points like they‰Ûªre headlines, like they‰Ûªre all little mini-headlines. You talk about brevity and promise, and Robert even talks about that in his article, that obviously not every bullet point could also serve as the article‰Ûªs headline, but if you think about them and infusing them with that ‰ÛÏheadline-ability,‰Û then you‰Ûªre going to be on the right track with your bullet points.
Demian: Exactly. Like I mentioned earlier, they are in essence sort of serving another function of getting to stop the reader again inside of the actual article, from the headline to the actual article. They serve the same purpose as subheadlines, the bullet points do, and so this is sort of related, too, to another topic that I‰Ûªve written about too, which is what we call these ‰ÛÏinternal cliffhangers.‰Û
Which is nothing more than just ‰Û_ well, we know cliffhangers from episodic TV shows, right? Where they end the show with the hero, the heroine, in some sort of catastrophic event, and we‰Ûªre not sure whether they‰Ûªre going to die or not. Well, the internal cliffhanger is serving the same purpose but more subtly. It‰Ûªs not as dramatic.
You see this, too, in books at the end of chapters. You know, novels. They‰Ûªll end the chapter with something dramatic happening, and you‰Ûªre like, ‰ÛÏWhat in the world is going to happen here?‰Û But you can do the same thing with internal cliffhangers, and bullet points can serve that purpose too, where you sort of roll out some curiosity that makes people think, ‰ÛÏWell, what‰Ûªs going to happen next?‰Û
Or you make a bold claim at the end of a paragraph that strikes people as audacious, and they‰Ûªll stick around to see if you can actually pull it off. You can even use humor, in which the jokes inside your knee-slapping posts are killing the readers and they want more, or you can use amazement in the sense of setting up some ridiculous scenario where your readers will wonder, ‰ÛÏIs he or she really about to do what they suggest?‰Û
So yeah, again, it‰Ûªs the idea of the headline, of getting them interested to keep reading within the bullet point, within the copy, within the subheadlines.
How to format bullets (and avoid bullet clutter)
Jerod: Yeah. It‰Ûªs not always just a list that you‰Ûªre breaking apart; you really want to think about it strategically, and like you said, use as an internal cliffhanger. I think it‰Ûªs also very important to make sure that you format your bullets correctly, and so let‰Ûªs talk about that a little bit.
I know just from an editing standpoint, it‰Ûªs one of the things that I really pay attention to, how bullet points are formatted. So for example, each bullet needs to be the same type, right? This is for the readability part of it. You don‰Ûªt want to put a statistic on one line, a long explanation on the second bullet, and then the third one, kind of a random link. There‰Ûªs no symmetry there. You really want to make your bullets symmetrical for the most part.
You also want to start them out the same way. If you‰Ûªre using verbs, use the same tense of the verb. It‰Ûªs really a stop-down place for a reader when they‰Ûªre going down the bullets and you‰Ûªre changing tenses, or you‰Ûªre changing formats. Again, it‰Ûªs about readability. Like Robert says, you want them just sliding down the page like they‰Ûªre on a water slide. If your bullets are jagged at all, if there are those differences, you might stop them.
And then the other thing, you talked about brevity. And you do want to keep your bullets short. Sometimes you‰Ûªre going to have longer bullet points, and I‰Ûªve seen it work where a bullet point is a longer sentence, or even two or three sentences if they don‰Ûªt go on forever. But if you‰Ûªre going to do that, think about your reader. And one way to make a longer bullet point work is to almost give the bullet point a headline, a 2, 3, 4-word little headline at the beginning that you put in bold, and maybe use a colon, or a dash, and then put the rest of it out there. So again, it adds another layer of breaking it up, and you can even scan the bullet points. So if you are going to use long ones, think about that to keep the readability there.
Do you have any other specific formatting tips like that that help?
Demian: Yeah, I think it‰Ûªs important to realize that bullets, like headlines, aren‰Ûªt necessarily sentences. So you can use fragments, and that‰Ûªs sort of what you were getting at with the verbs.
But you know, you need avoid sort of bullet clutter at all cost. That‰Ûªs this idea of where you have sort of subtitles, and then bullets, and then sub-bullets. So there‰Ûªs this kind of cascading effect that goes on there. That doesn‰Ûªt really work. It sort of defeats the purpose. So stay away from those sort of things.
Jerod: I like that term ‰ÛÏbullet clutter.‰Û I‰Ûªm going to start using that.
Demian: Yeah, right.
One tip to improve your bullet points today
Jerod: That‰Ûªs a good one. Okay, so let me ask you this, Demian, as we close up this episode of The Lede. If you were going to leave everybody with one tip, and obviously we‰Ûªre going to put the links to Brian and Robert‰Ûªs articles in the show notes, because those are must-reads when it comes to bullets. What other specific tips would you give to the listeners that they can use to make them better at writing bullet points today?
Demian: I think what they should do is go out and look up a guy named Mel Martin. He was a copywriter who is probably one of the greatest copywriters that nobody knows about. But he basically put his name on the marketing map through bullets.
His copy is unbelievably powerful. It‰Ûªs unbelievably persuasive. His trick, though, was not just bullets. His trick was that he went for maximum anxiety. Going for the emotional jugular. Look at some of the stuff that he wrote.
He would write stuff like:

  • ‰ÛÏWhat never, ever to eat on an airplane: The dirtiest, deadliest airline in the whole world‰Û
  • ‰ÛÏHow to get VIP treatment in hospitals (all patients are not treated equally)‰Û
  • ‰ÛÏCruise ship rapes: The uncensored facts which even the news media won‰Ûªt touch‰Û
  • ‰ÛÏHow to find out if someone has a past criminal record, bankruptcy, or whatever they‰Ûªre hiding‰Û
  • ‰ÛÏThe little-known casinos in Atlantic City and Nevada that offer the best odds‰Û
  • ‰ÛÏDeduct the cost of your hobby as a business expense even if you never show a profit.‰Û

So this idea of kind of getting into our subconscious and bringing that out with these sort of fearful scenarios that excite the reader. So find him. His ads are all over the internet, just look up Mel Martin copy writer. And study his ads.
Jerod: And that fits in with the theme of this show and what we teach at Copyblogger, which is study what‰Ûªs come before, because there are age-old tips and guys who have been doing it long before us that could have really paved the way. And we‰Ûªll put a couple of links in the show notes as well.
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Lede. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a rating or a review on ITunes. You can also e-mail the link to a friend or tweet about the show. We would greatly appreciate it.
Also don‰Ûªt forget to listen to New Rainmaker. Brian Clark and Robert Bruce are re-defining what a business podcast can be. Either search for ‰ÛÏNew Rainmaker‰Û in ITunes, or go to newrainmaker.com. You don‰Ûªt want to miss it.
The next time Demian and I get together, we‰Ûªll be discussing another topic that is essential for the readability of your blog posts: Subheads. There is no excuse for your subheads being anything less than exquisite, and we‰Ûªll tell you how to make them that way.

*Credits: Both the intro (‰ÛÏBridge to Nowhere‰Û by Sam Roberts Band) and outro songs (‰ÛÏDown in the Valley‰Û by The Head and the Heart) are graciously provided by express written consent from the rights owners.
About the authorJerod MorrisJerod Morris is the Director of Content for Copyblogger Media. Get more from him on Twitter, Google+, or at JerodMorris.com.

The post How to Write Killer Bullet Points appeared first on Copyblogger.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

SEO Keyword Prioritization – #seopodcast 222

by admin

Welcome to the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes, hosted by E-Webstyle! Join us this week as we talk about

Testing Ads and Landing Pages for Conversions

SEO Keyword Prioritization

Better Branding And Business

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Is Guest Blogging Dead? ‰ÛÒ Felice Ayling ‰ÛÒ Podcast Episode #236

by admin

In this week‰Ûªs internet marketing podcast Andy talks to Felice Ayling, Digital Content Account Director at SiteVisibility. They discuss Matt Cutts‰Ûª recent post on guest blogging and how linkingåÊis being used unscrupulously to boost search ranking. Felice talks about the way in which some companies have corrupted an authentic engagement tool to manipulate search. She gives some advice for legitimate linking using ‰ÛÏdo follow‰Û or ‰ÛÏno follow‰Û codes and offers tips for genuine guest bloggers worried about their status.

SiteVisbility‰Ûªs LinkedIn
SmartInsights
Econsultancy
‰ÛÏNo Follow‰Û Code
Post from Apple Pie & Custard blog by SiteVisibility – An SEO AgencyIs Guest Blogging Dead? ‰ÛÒ Felice Ayling ‰ÛÒ Podcast Episode #236

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How to Write Damn Good Sentences

by admin

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Well look at that.
Can you believe this is already the fourth installment in our 11-part series on the essential ingredients of a blog post?
Time sure does fly when you‰Ûªre having pure podcasting fun ‰Û_ and churning out a new bite-sized episode each week.
We‰Ûªve already explained how to write a magnetic headline, discussed how to nail your opening, and (hopefully) convinced you about the importance of using persuasive words.
Today, we take it one step further.
Demian Farnworth imparts his vast wisdom to teach you what makes a good sentence a damn good sentence.
In this episode, we discuss:

  • The importance of showing versus telling
  • Why you should trust your reader
  • How thinking about the 5 W‰Ûªs (and the H) can help you write sentences
  • Active versus passive voice
  • Why reading Hemingway is one of the best lessons in sentence writing you could ever give yourself
  • Tips to improve your writing that you can implement today

Listen to The Lede ‰Û_
To listen, you can either hit the flash audio player below, or browse the links to find your preferred format ‰Û_

  • Click here to download the mp3 | 20 MB | 13:54
  • Click here to subscribe via iTunes
  • Click here for the RSS feed (non iTunes)
  • Click here for the show archive

The Show Notes

  • 5 Ways to Write a Damn Good Sentence ‰ÛÓ by Demian Farnworth
  • 10 Ways to Write Damn Good Copy ‰ÛÓ by Demian Farnworth
  • 7 Ways to Write Damn Bad Copy ‰ÛÓ by Demian Farnworth
  • Think You Know ‰ÛÏHow To Write A Sentence‰Û? ‰ÛÓ NPR podcast with Stanley Fish
  • Robert Bruce‰Ûªs Twitter and Google+ accounts

The Transcript
Click here to read the transcript
Please note that this transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and grammar.
The Lede Podcast: How to Write Damn Good Sentences
Jerod Morris: You‰Ûªre listening to The Lede, a podcast about content marketing by Copyblogger Media. If you want to get a content marketing education while you mow your lawn or while you fold your laundry, this podcast is the way to do it.
I‰Ûªm your host Jerod Morris, and in this episode we resume our series on the essential ingredients of a blog post. You are going to learn about sentences, but not average or okay sentences ‰Û_ damn good sentences. And who better than the Duke of Damn himself, Demian Farnworth, to explain how.
Demian, I like alliteration and I like giving credit where it is due, and so I have a new nickname for you: The Duke of Damn. It‰Ûªs one that you have earned with damn fine blog posts about how to write damn good copy, how to write damn bad copy, and of course, how to write damn good sentences ‰ÛÓ which is the fourth in our rundown of the 11 essential ingredients of a blog post. You are a master at the art of the sentence, which is why I want to do a lot more listening than talking on this episode.
So let‰Ûªs start with the obvious question: What is the difference between a good sentence and a damn good sentence?
Showing versus telling
Demian Farnworth: It boils down to this: the difference between showing and telling.
A good sentence would tell you what‰Ûªs going on in a particular action. So I might say, ‰ÛÏShe is crying,‰Û versus something like ‰ÛÏShe sobbed,‰Û or ‰ÛÏShe was trembling.‰Û It‰Ûªs simply the quality of ‰ÛÓ you have a concrete, specific image versus a sort of vague, ambiguous instruction. See, what you‰Ûªre after is this goal of allowing people to use their imagination, and I think it comes down to this idea of being able to trust your reader, to trust them to use their imagination. And they will. I think there‰Ûªs some confidence that comes in enjoying, embracing that idea that people are going to. If you say, ‰ÛÏShe wept,‰Û that‰Ûªs going to be more powerful than ‰ÛÏShe was over there and her eyes were wet with tears.‰Û It‰Ûªs a lot more powerful when it‰Ûªs short and sweet, and it‰Ûªs powerful like that.
But it‰Ûªs not easy, right? I‰Ûªll admit that. It takes years of practice, but what you‰Ûªre thinking about when you‰Ûªre trying to show somebody, what you‰Ûªre after, is being specific and concrete. And one way that I use to get to that point is to think through the five W‰Ûªs. So you‰Ûªre thinking of the who, the what, the where, the when, the why, and even the H, the how.
For example, you want to write a damn good sentence, so you would say, ‰ÛÏIn Istanbul, the bullfighter liked to drink vinegar because it made him angry.‰Û So you‰Ûªve got a pretty specific, concrete idea that would allow you to get a vivid picture of what‰Ûªs going on in that ‰Û_ there‰Ûªs life to that ‰Û_ and there‰Ûªs imagination. I know that just by saying the word ‰ÛÏIstanbul‰Û that people will get in their minds a sort of exotic, far-away, ancient city. There‰Ûªs a lot of stuff that‰Ûªs sort of swirling around, and that‰Ûªs really the power of choosing the right words, choosing those powerful words, using those words that generate and paint that picture.
For the next part, in getting to that point of writing a damn good sentence, is this idea of creating images, and I kind of already did that. But here I want to talk more about something like this idea of the five senses. That‰Ûªs what I kind of did in that previous sentence. But if you want to paint an image, you want to think through the five senses, also. So for example, that same sentence, I talked about, what is the weather like there? Is it hot? Is it cold? I imagine it‰Ûªs probably hot there, so we might add some sort of elements of humidity, like ‰ÛÏThe air was humid, was moist, was thick with water.‰Û We might talk about something like, what time of day is it? And what color is the sun? Is it golden, or is it more orange or red? And you might think of an odor, like vinegar. I said ‰ÛÏvinegar‰Û and a lot of people probably turned up their nose at that. So there was that sense of smell and odor going there. And so you‰Ûªre thinking‰Û_.
Jerod: Let me ask you a question really quickly, Damien, because I know a lot of times we talk about specific and concrete, and sometimes that can be boiled down to mean ‰ÛÏshort,‰Û because we talk a lot about short sentences.
Demian: Yes.
Jerod: How do you determine what is a detail worth giving, an image worth painting, and what is too much?
Demian: That‰Ûªs a great question. I think it‰Ûªs a gut thing, really, because obviously you can‰Ûªt think through every sentence and put in the five senses, because then it would just become too much. It would be almost impossible for you to get anything done. It would also be overbearing for the reader himself, so you have to be selective. And it just takes time to kind of catch an ear.
Like, you may in one sentence just want to highlight some sort of color. Like the sight. And the next sentence, you want to heighten something about the texture and the smell. In the next sentence you may want to simply talk about the taste, or a sound they heard. And a good writer would combine those with action, right? With some sort of action. So instead of ‰ÛÏHe ran up the stairs,‰Û say ‰ÛÏHe darted up the rough-hewn stairs.‰Û
You want to combine all those pieces together, being specific, using active verbs versus passive verbs. And make sure you mesh those together, and sprinkle them throughout your senses when you‰Ûªre hitting these sort of concrete and specific images.
Active versus passive voice
Jerod: Can I add a quick note on active versus passive verbs?
Demian: Yes.
Jerod: So you‰Ûªre right, you want to make your verbs active, not passive. And if you actually want a good example, look no further than this very podcast, because last week I received an e-mail with the subject line simply, ‰ÛÏPassive voice.‰Û And it said, quoting one of our episodes, ‰ÛÏChange ‰Û÷next week Demian and I will be resuming our series of the eleven essential ingredients of a blog post, we‰Ûªll be discussing persuasive words and you won‰Ûªt want to miss it,‰Ûª change that to ‰Û÷next week Demian and I resume our series on the eleven essential ingredients of a blog post. We‰Ûªll discuss persuasive words, and you won‰Ûªt want to miss it.‰Ûª‰Û The difference, of course, is the verbs. ‰ÛÏWill be resuming‰Û gets replaced with ‰ÛÏResume,‰Û and ‰ÛÏwill be discussing‰Û gets replaced with ‰ÛÏwe‰Ûªll discuss.‰Û It makes those verbs active, right? You hear how much better that sounds, and it reads better too, because the subject of the sentence becomes the doer, and the verbs are invigorated.
And I‰Ûªll give you one guess who sent me that much-appreciated, clear, concise, reminder about how to write better sentences. (Laughs)
Demian: (Laughs)
Jerod: So‰Û_.
Demian: Yeah.
Jerod: So yes, be active with your sentences, not passive, and it‰Ûªs something I try my best to do that all the time, and it even slips in like that and you don‰Ûªt even realize it. It‰Ûªs definitely something upon an edit you can go back, because that‰Ûªs one way to eliminate some of those unnecessary words so you can put in some of the ones that paint the picture, that make your sentences so much better.
The best sentence-writing teacher you can read
Demian: Right. And so, being an Ernest Hemingway fan ‰ÛÓ and working for Copyblogger, you sort of have to be ‰ÛÓ I read a ton of him probably 10, 15 years ago. And the thing that I walked away with was the simple sentence structure. It‰Ûªs a subject, and then a verb.
And when we talk about active versus passive verbs, you‰Ûªre talking about instead of having an action done to something, someone is doing an action. So where it would say, ‰ÛÏThe dog was kicked by that man,‰Û it would be just a simple inversion: ‰ÛÏThe man kicked the dog.‰Û So yeah, talking about Ernest Hemmingway, I just remember reading it, such a simple sentence structure. Basically it was just subject and verb.
And I think that as far as we‰Ûªre talking about, like ways to become better at this, is practicing writing that way. Simple sentence structure. Subject, verb.
Jerod: Mmm-hmm. That‰Ûªs a good point, and let‰Ûªs go to that, in terms of practice, and this can probably be a tip that we leave everybody with.
You know, as we prepped for this I was reading something ‰ÛÓ and I‰Ûªm going to put this in the show notes. There‰Ûªs a podcast, an NPR podcast with Stanley Fish, the author of ‰ÛÏHow to Write a Sentence.‰Û And he recounts in his book, actually, a story from Annie Dillard‰Ûªs book ‰ÛÏThe Writing Life‰Û where she had a conversation with a painter ‰ÛÓ asked him how he got into the profession. And he told her, ‰ÛÏI like paint.‰Û And of course, as Fish explains, you have to really have a feel for the nitty-gritty material of the medium, and so as a writer there‰Ûªs nothing more nitty-gritty than words and sentences.
Demian: That‰Ûªs right.
Tips to improve your sentence writing
Jerod: And so Demian, what would you say is a tip or two that people can take away from this that will make them better at just that simple, nitty-gritty art of writing sentences?
Demian: I would definitely encourage anybody, whether they can stomach his stories or not, to read as much Hemingway as you can.
Outside of that, one of the ways that I kind of mastered the ability to do this, at least get really trained highly in it, was early in my career I wrote a ton of text ads ‰ÛÓ Google AdWords text ads. So I was forced to compress those words into a meaningful, persuasive message in a short space. So that really forced me to write small. But you don‰Ûªt have to do text ads like that.
You could also treat your Twitter account this way, and just give yourself the task of, say, writing 100 Twitter posts a day for seven days, and in each one you just try to, within 140 characters, tell a story. Make a message. Use one of the five senses. Dig into the five ‰ÛÏwhos.‰Û
Another trick you can do is try to condense an event, like a historical event like the Civil War, into one sentence. Sometimes I will go read the front page of Wikipedia or the front page of The New York Times. Read a few of those stories, and then try to tell that story within one sentence.
And finally after every article or blog post that you actually read, try to summarize that particular article or blog post in one sentence. That will give you practice. Not only will it help you remember what you just read and sort of process what you just read, but it will also force you to write those sentences, saying a lot into one sentence. That‰Ûªs really what it boils down to: just trying to stuff a lot into a small space, as much space as you can with the sentence.
And here‰Ûªs the thing to keep in mind, too: you‰Ûªre not going to do this with every single sentence. I don‰Ûªt sit there and agonize over every single sentence. It‰Ûªs pretty much kind of native to me now, and I do dozens of rewrites of stuff that I write where I‰Ûªm working systematically through each word. But I don‰Ûªt give the same amount of attention over each sentence. I just try to, for the most part, kind of work that into the sort of warp and woof of what I‰Ûªm writing.
Jerod: Yeah, and if you want to see a great example of what Demian was talking about with Twitter and summing up a story in one sentence, follow Robert Bruce on Twitter and Google Plus.He does a great job of showing that.
All right, Demian. Thank you very much.
Demian: Thank you.
Jerod: I thought you did a damn good job today.
Demian: (Laughs) Thank you, Jerod. I appreciate it. Lived up to my name.
Jerod: (Laughs) We‰Ûªll talk soon.
Demian: All right. Thank you, sir.
Jerod: Thank you for listening to The Lede. If you are enjoying our show, please consider leaving us a rating or a review on ITunes, or tweet about us, or tell a friend. We appreciate your helping us spread the word any way you can.
The next installment of our series on the essential ingredients of a blog post will be about killer bullet points. Now you may not think bullet points are a topic with enough meat to demand their own episode, but you‰Ûªd be wrong. Listen and you‰Ûªll see. Talk to you soon, everybody.
# # #

*Credits: Both the intro (‰ÛÏBridge to Nowhere‰Û by Sam Roberts Band) and outro songs (‰ÛÏDown in the Valley‰Û by The Head and the Heart) are graciously provided by express written consent from the rights owners.
About the authorJerod MorrisJerod Morris is the Director of Content for Copyblogger Media. Get more from him on Twitter, Google+, or at JerodMorris.com.

The post How to Write Damn Good Sentences appeared first on Copyblogger.

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Content Marketing Case Studies ‰ÛÒ Felice Ayling ‰ÛÒ Podcast Episode #235

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In this week‰Ûªs internet marketing podcast, Andy talks with Felice Ayling, Digital Content Account Director at SiteVisibility about all things content marketing. To begin, Felice gives us some insights about her background and how she grew into her current role. She discusses some of her most favourite examples of content marketing and gives us some great tips what to do and what not to do in the industry.

Post from Apple Pie & Custard blog by SiteVisibility – An SEO AgencyContent Marketing Case Studies ‰ÛÒ Felice Ayling ‰ÛÒ Podcast Episode #235

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