This helps boost credibility and the blog itself may serve as a work portfolio with all your knowledge put into it. Besides that, you can also earn on the side. If you need more convincing on why you should start a blog (or continue on with your current one), here I give you 10 reasons why you should still blog if you haven’t already.

1. It’s a Resume in Action

If you are looking to create the perfect resume, especially if you are in web design and development as well as writing and graphic design, blogging about your focus is basically a resume in action. It tells people that you know what you are doing. Employers and clients might as well skip the interview part.

Take for example web designers who regularly publish tutorials about how to build websites on their own blogs. That, in itself, is a testament that they know what they are doing.

Suppose a man handed you their business card and it has their website, email address, phone number, and business address written on it. Which would you be most likely to use first? Are you going to email the guy or call him, or send him a letter?

If you don’t already have one, start a blog and include your blog address on everything. Your resume, business card, letters, social media profiles, and maybe even place a sticker of it on the back of your car.

2. It Increases Your Credibility and Authority

Companies and individuals are going crazy about building up their brand. They want themselves to be presented to the public in a way that will make them a credible authority in their niche. Of course, that’s the goal, and blogging is the easiest method to accomplish it.

Put yourself in the place of potential clients or employers. Suppose you have ten resumes on your desk and only two of them have their own blogs. Wouldn’t you be curious about these two and read their blogs? And if you like what you see, wouldn’t you give them a higher score than the rest?

This is a useful trick that works most of the time. If you have a blog, people will trust you more. The same thing happens with businesses. Notice how people will trust a business more if it has its own website. The same goes for individuals.

3. It Makes Networking Easier

Blogging connects you with like-minded people and in this competitive world having the right people in your network is equivalent to good currency. This applies to the real world too. If you’re a writer who has a web designer friend, you can ask them to help you with your website for free or for a cheaper price. If you know an IT person you can say goodbye to your computer problems.

If you connect with people who know search engine optimization, blogging, freelancing, and the like, and if you develop good relationships with them, it’s as good as saying you have those skills yourself. And I mean it in a very positive way.

Safe to say, you can also use your personal network as a way to ask for help or feedback (and give yours too). Of course, you need to reciprocate. But you get the idea, right? And if you do it right…

4. It’s a Good Way to Find Clients

You can start a blog that answers common questions about your field, how-to articles, tips, and tutorials or a mix of everything. The thing is, you need to make it useful and be sure to add your personality to it. You need to make sure that everything you publish expresses how well you know your field.

It’s your time to show off. Big time. You are the artist and your blog is your canvas. And you are trying to sell yourself.

If you are a copywriter, be sure to publish tips on how to become a better copywriter. If you are a web designer, publish your best designs. And so on, you get the point. If your goal is to attract clients through your blog, be sure to design your blog in a way that will scream “Hire me!”

I’ve been blogging actively for almost 4 years now and I can attribute at least 60 successful freelance works that were led to me by my blog, whether it’s web design and development or copywriting. All of these happened while I was employed full-time.

5. It Can Be a Source of Extra Income

You can monetize your blog if it becomes popular. You can make anywhere from a dollar to several thousands of dollars a month depending on how well you market your blog. You can earn by selling your product, someone else’s product (and earn commission), or by placing advertisements on your blog.

If you are wondering how blogs make money, it’s mainly through advertisements and affiliate commissions. One of my blogs earn somewhere from $50 to $300 monthly, mostly through affiliate commissions. And it’s a good way to earn passive income.

6. It Makes You a Better Communicator

One of the most useful skills to have in this day and age is writing. If you are a good writer, no matter what the field, you instantly become a good communicator and that’s exactly what upper management level jobs require. If your goal is to ascend the corporate ladder, make sure to work on your writing skills. And blogging is the perfect place to start. What makes a good writer is that they write daily.

But if you are not fond of entering the corporate scene and would rather work as a freelancer, being a good writer will definitely do wonders. If you can write the best cover letter, proposal letter, resume, and any kind of text that would entice employers to pick you then you are basically securing your future.

Think about it. If you are looking for a web designer and two people emailed you regarding the project, which one will you pick, the one who writes better or the one who just rambled on endlessly?

7. It Turns You Into a Teacher

With great power comes great responsibility. This also applies to the skills you have. By default, you have a responsibility to help educate people, especially if they are clueless on how to be like you.

Besides, what are you going to use your skills for aside from work? It would be wasteful to just keep them to yourself, especially in today’s age where information flows freely from across the World Wide Web.

Think of it this way, I’m certain that you didn’t learn everything you know right now from school or from books you bought. Most of the practical skills you have you probably learned from free tutorials online. So why not give back?

8. It Forces You to Learn New Things

Blogging is not just about writing and waiting for pageviews. Blogging, in itself, is an art that is comprised of several parts. If you want to make your blog popular (and it should be your goal), you’ll need to learn how to do many things like marketing, SEO, keyword research, basic web and graphic design, and the like.

I daresay if you know Internet marketing and SEO on top of your other skills, you’ll be an invaluable asset to anyone, especially in the online world. If you know how to make things go viral as well as what kind of tools to use in order to have a smooth-faring website, you’ll be an unstoppable entity (like the Batman of the Internet). Simply because you have multiple skills to offer your client.

If you start your own blog and put some serious effort into it, it’s definitely a possibility.

9. It Helps You Strengthen Your Mind

Aside from solidifying your skills through blogging, you get to strengthen your mind as well by delving deeper into different topics.

Just think about the last article you’ve read. What are your thoughts on it? Did you agree or disagree with it? How will you improve on it? The process in itself turns your mind into a more well-rounded inquisitive mind. And the world needs more of that.

Another thing you should keep in mind about blogging is that it’s a process of self-discovery. You can only write your opinions and what you know.

Blogging is also a great way to organize your thoughts. By writing regularly for an audience, you are forcing yourself to form coherent sentences and your mind remembers this process, which you can then incorporate throughout your life.

10. It’s Easy

Blogging is easy and it yields great results. All you need to do is set up a blog and start writing your thoughts about your interests (that are relevant to your work, since you want your blog to be your resume, right?).

Write, improve and learn from other. In the process of doing so, you’ll inadvertently improve not only your work, but also your entire self.

Conclusion

Running your own blog can be time-consuming, but it can also be fun, especially if sharing your knowledge makes you happy. The great thing about blogging is that if you do it right it will pay off big time.

And there are a lot of guides out there that will teach you exactly how to blog. Regardless of your profession and speciality, I highly suggest that you put your expertise online for the world to see.

Show yourself off online.

The post 10 Reasons to Keep Blogging appeared first on Hongkiat.

If you want to know how to capitalize on this, read on.

Why Even Write Long-Form Content?

Good question. After all, a 1,500-word piece takes a lot of effort to write and proofread. Why not focus on shorter articles instead?

There are a few reasons why you might want to invest in writing long-form content:

1. Google Panda, Google’s long-term search ranking algorithm, often prioritizes websites with longer (1,000 words or more) articles.
2. On average, each web page on Google’s first SERP ranking page includes at least 1,400 words.
3. Longer content increases page authority which also contributes to increasing SERP rankings.
4. These articles are perfect pillars for topic clusters to build a content strategy off.
5. Skyscraper content has been shown to attract more links for SEO purposes.

There are good reasons to keep writing short content, but long-form content is ultimately a trend that cannot be ignored. It doesn’t have to be the only way you choose to write content, but it will be a part of an effective content marketing strategy.

What is Considered Long-Form Content?

This is a tricky one. Although there are specific reasons to write long-form content, different websites have definitions of what constitutes a long article. Some websites might suggest long-form content is 700 to 2000 words, whereas others prefer nearly 3,000 words.

For example, Quartz, a famous business blog and news aggregator, considers anything longer than 1,500 words to be long-form content. This is just enough to add a lot of detail and value but short enough to read in one sitting.

How to Write Long-Form Content & Grab Reader’s Attention?

If you’re interested in writing more long-form content, below is a breakdown of how you could approach this.

1. Choose a title suitable for a longer article.
2. Conduct preliminary research and choose your format.
3. Determine the platforms you will distribute your content on.

Below, we focus on each stage in more detail.

Choosing a Great Topic for Long-Form Content

Choosing a topic for your long-form content is going to be the MOST important part of grabbing the reader’s attention. The first thing they see is the title of your content! This is the first chance to attract readers, pique their interest and get them to click.

Therefore, choosing a topic that summarises your content, gets straight to the point, and is click-worthy comes down to some essential points:

• How popular is the topic? You want to focus on topics that retain their relevance despite changes in technology and people’s perceptions. Long-form content often uses evergreen topics, ones that won’t necessarily lose popularity but will always be searched for and relevant. These kinds of topics can provide lots of points to write about, making long-form content even easier.
• How specific is the topic? Your readers will avoid articles with generic titles like ‘Tips for being a good writer‘. A much better solution is to mention specific concepts or theories. For an example of a specific topic, just look at the topic for this article! Having specific topics can also mean you target a long-tail keyword which is good for SEO.
• How compact is the topic? A compact topic could feasibly be summarised in 1,000 words articles. If you are trying to write an article on targeting digital book publishers, no number of words is going to express all the tips and recommendations that cover this topic, making long-form content appropriate.
• What is the content’s purpose? Long-form content can be used in many ways, from blog posts to published books. Therefore, the actual purpose of the article informs the topic you are choosing as well. Is it a simple blog post that focuses on one single idea or an ebook that covers a broad subject by diving deep into its aspects?
• How can you compose the title? The topic itself is not the only reason why readers will click on your content, the way you construct and present the topic is important too. Can you include statistics? Numbers have been proven to attract masses of readers. Can you use power/emotive words? Triggering emotions in readers can be the kick they need to click, read and love your content.

This first stage is probably the most significant to determine whether your long-form content will be successful or not.

How Do I Choose a Suitable Format?

After you choose your topic, it is time to conduct some preliminary research and choose how your article will be structured.

If, for instance, you are writing a detailed ebook on academic writing for students, you might want to write longer paragraphs. Including sections that detail the key types of academic assignments, tips on how to pay attention to the lecturers’ requirements and doing proofreading.

If, on the other hand, you are writing an online guide for other freelance writers (just like this article!), shorter paragraphs and a more entertaining structure (e.g., using questions and answers) should be a good fit. Other freelancers are busy people who simply do not have the time to read another wall of text and a bullet list could be a better way to present information.

Reading other long-form content on similar topics should provide you with a good idea of what structure you should choose. In general, the use of highly specific and compact topics also calls for using bullet points and infographics to complement your main discussion. These elements can help complement as well as provide variety within your content that helps keep the readers interested and attentive to your content.

The form and structure of what you write are essential to providing good value to your readers. How well is the information organized and does it present the information clearly? Are there other interesting elements such as checklists, images, videos, or infographics?

The way you present your content is just as important as the content itself and will keep the reader’s attention.

What Platform Should I Publish Long-Form Content On?

Again, this decision might make or break your long-form article. This choice is primarily made between two types of platforms.

• Gated websites. Gated websites are anything that hides the content behind a specific wall. It may be a paywall or a simple login form that requires the user to submit their personal info before being able to read your article. Websites requiring users to turn off their adblockers also qualify.
• Ungated websites. These websites do not restrict who can view their content in any way.

On the one hand, gated websites can pay more for long-form content, especially if these platforms have a paywall such as Medium. Websites like Medium are an excellent choice for high-value, long-form content in order to make money and build a following. But, competition on such a large platform can be high. However, with a powerful and attention-grabbing title, your content can thrive.

On the other hand, other gated websites could have low traffic as many people simply leave the page when they see a login page instead of the article they clicked on. Ungated websites enjoy greater traffic but can fail to filter their audience in any meaningful way. Leaving some such websites vulnerable to spam and low-value leads.

Although about 80% of B2B companies use gated content, ungated content is great if you want to improve SERP rankings and grow organic search traffic. However, a good balance between shorter and long-form articles and gated and ungated content will contribute to your SEO rankings.

Final Thoughts

Choosing to include long-form content in your marketing strategy can be very difficult, especially if you are used to writing shorter pieces. While long-form content is not for everyone, we hope that the above guide motivates you to write longer pieces and choose narrower and more compact topics.

Even if the idea of writing long-form content does not sound appealing right now, writing just one or two longer articles per month could significantly grow your audience and attract sponsors and partners.

The post Writing Long-Form Content: Tips for Engaging Readers & Adding Value appeared first on Hongkiat.

Today, we’re going to talk about the best ways you can write a summary for your blog. So, let’s dig in deeper.

Why Blog Summary is Important?

A blog summary is a vital aspect of the content. It can accompany your primary text on many platforms online, and it can be an important draw for your target audience. So, if you wish to promote your content on social media, then a summary is the most important glimpse of your main content.

Moreover, suppose you’ll email your target audience about your blog. In that case, a small summary of your blog’s contents should suffice to attract them.

5 Ways to Write a Good Blog Summary

Writing a good summary takes a lot of effort and various aspects into it. Whether you do it manually or you get help from a summarizing tool (like this one), you must understand a few things to write a good summary.

In this section, we’re talking about the five best ways to learn to write a good summary. So, let’s get started.

1. Read Profusely and Take Notes

A good summary isn’t an extension but rather an overview. It’s a plot synopsis of your main story, which allows the reader to understand what the main content entails. It’s not meant to overtake but extend the reach of your primary content.

That’s why it’s important that you read your content, then read it again. This way, you will allow yourself to comprehend the idea. Now, reading should be done with a purpose. Ask yourself a few questions, such as:

• Which sections are more important?
• Which section requires more attention?
• Which section should lead the summary?
• Where is the bulk of your argument?

The focus should be on that particular section. Even though filler content is necessary to avoid, it’s not always the case in blogs. So, avoid using filler content as a part of your summary. And the only way to do that is by reading your content repeatedly.

2. Talk About Research & Importance

Every content piece has a specific method behind it. It could be about technical aspects or general – the importance of research behind it never fades. That’s why your reader must know why the research was important in the first place.

Here’s an example of NASA (image below), one of the biggest organizations in the world, summarizing a blog for social media captions:

In this caption, it mentions something that’s in detail in the main article. However, it gives you a glimpse of how it uses the four images of Europa captured by the Juno Spacecraft. Then, it just gives us surface-level information about the “Valuable views” of this moon.

What it tells us is the research and importance behind it. Your summary needs to feature that. In blogs, it’s not always easy to overlay this information. But, if you link your blog in an email or on social media, you will provide this information.

The only way to do that is by understanding the basic methods in the main content beforehand.

3. Condense Larger Ideas into Surface-Level Sentences

A summary is a brief report of your content. The keyword here is “brief,” but that doesn’t mean it cannot be detailed. Now, it can be difficult to do, as not all summaries are written equally. Some summary requirements are less than a hundred words.

While other summaries are almost equal to the primary content. In blogs, it’s more of the former than the latter. So, to achieve a specific length, you should condense larger ideas into surface-level sentences.

For example, you must summarize the outcry over inflation in 50 states. But, the information cannot be covered in a few words. So, how do you write a sentence-based summary?

Here’s an example:

The underlined idea is the fundamental idea in the blog. Whereas the rest of the sentence is a summary of the larger idea at work. And the author’s name in the bold text tells us that this person wrote it.

So, this kind of summary doesn’t only draw attention; it makes the reader want to read more. Plus, it’s much more suitable for a blog’s homepage, social media, or email.

4. For Each Section, Write a Sentence

Not all summaries are one-sentence glimpses. Instead, some summaries need to be longer to effectively capture an idea. That’s one of the main reasons that each section needs a separate sentence to cover all.

Let’s divide this into a simple equation. So, let’s say your content is around a thousand words. And you’re supposed to write a hundred-word summary.

How do you do it? By summarizing each 100-words within 10-words.

So, you don’t only have the 10% of the original content but also a summary of all the important information within the article. But, it’s important to skip the introduction and conclusion from this equation.

5. Revise or Use a Summarizing Tool to Achieve Specific Length

The final step you’ll take is to revise or summarize the rest of your content using a summarizing tool. But why is using a summarizing tool important? Because it can help you achieve a specific length for your summary with options like these:

As mentioned, some summaries must be longer than usual. Thus, with an option like this, a summarizing tool can make the job easier. Besides, if you write a summary manually and it doesn’t meet the word count, this process can also help you condense it.

Conclusion

These are the five ways to learn to write good blog summaries. Not only do you need manual input, but also the help of viable summarizing tools. So, it’s important that you read your content until you grasp the idea and then write the summary according to your understanding.

The post How to Write the Summary of a Blog (5 Best Ways) appeared first on Hongkiat.

For instance, you might see the word “troll” or “trolling” often in the comments section on social media. It refers to making offensive or provocative comments to elicit a strong response (usually anger) from someone else.

Go back a few centuries, and you will find the word “troll” referring to a giant, usually hideous, almost always bad news, who is also quarrelsome and likes to make life difficult for others. See the connection there?

Here’s a list of more words that carry a history all on their own, with a quick look at their present vs. past usage.

In this article:

1. Milestone

What does “Milestone” means?

The mile was a commonly used unit for measuring distance. One mile equals 1.609 kilometers, 5280 feet, or 1760 yards.

A milestone originally referred to small markers placed along the side of a road (typically a highway) to indicate the interval of a mile. Its purpose is to indicate to a traveler how far more he has to go to reach his destination or to show the total distance that she has already covered.

It is also useful for communicating a specific location along a road, for instance, in the event of an accident.

Nowadays, kilometer markers are more commonly to be used for the same purpose due to most countries relying on the metric system. However, it would still be acceptable to refer to them as “milestones”.

What it means now:

It is mostly used nowadays to mean a significant achievement or stage of development. In other words, it denotes a measurement of progress. For example, a baby who has just learned how to crawl is said to have achieved a new milestone in his physical development.

A startup that has secured funding to proceed to the next phase of its expansion is also said to have achieved its first milestone.

The word “milestone” can still convey its traditional meaning though describing location markers (see below).

2. Footage

What does “Footage” means?

The term originated from the fact that movies used to be captured onto physical reels of film that would be measured in feet. For example, when using 35mm film, a commonly used film gauge for movie recordings, a foot-long film would contain 16 frames, translating into one second’s worth of imagery when played.

What it means now:

When used in the context of motion pictures, film footage normally describes a recording (be it a photograph, video, audio clip, etc.) that is used as part of a movie or an edited version of a video. It can also be taken to mean the material (subject matter) that was captured in that recording.

3. CC and BCC

Image source: Holger Ellgaard

What does “CC and BCC” means?

Carbon copying refers to a process whereby one or more copies of a document can be made using carbon paper sandwiched between the original document and the duplicate copy.

The carbon paper would then trace the contents written on the original copy onto the duplicate. This was especially useful during the days when handwritten and typewritten documents were the norm.

Carbon copying would be used for writing office memos (where the list of recipients would be printed in a CC list at the tail end of the document) or for filling out forms or receipts. This traditional technique has declined since most documents are produced digitally. There are some situations where this method is still in use, though. For instance, in handwritten receipt books.

Blind carbon copying also existed back in the days when paper was the primary mode for documentation. An office typist would sometimes need to include additional names in memos sent out in order to keep the identity of certain recipients confidential.

Their names would be typed onto designated document copies after creating all the necessary duplicates without using carbon paper.

What it means now:

These two acronyms relate to email usage. Both are alternative input fields for email addresses (in addition to the conventional To field). CC is commonly known to mean “Carbon Copy” whereas “BCC” is “Blind Carbon Copy”. Names on the CC list will be visible to everyone else on the same list; names on the bcc list will not.

Some may argue that CC stands for “courtesy copy” rather than “carbon copy”. Others say that it just means “copies“, following a convention of using double letters to indicate a plural, such as how “pp” stands for “pages“.

4. Movie trailer

What does “Movie trailer” means?

From the very beginning, “trailers” had always referred to a preview of a future movie release, but it made more sense back then because they were shown at the end of a movie screening, trailing the actually shown movie, instead of at the start as is the practice today.

By the end of the 1930s, however, film studios realized that trailers would have a greater impact if they were screened before a movie rather than afterward. Consequently, they began showing them in that order instead.

Movie trailers were said to have first emerged around the year 1913, with the first known movie trailer to be advertised in a theatre of a Broadway musical called The Pleasure Seekers.

What it means now:

A form of advertising whereby a sneak preview for an upcoming movie is shown to a cinema audience before the beginning of a movie screening. The term is so widely used nowadays that any form of movie preview is generally known as a “trailer”, even those shared online.

5. Blueprint

What does “Blueprint” means?

Back in 1842, Sir John Herschel invented a method of reproducing documents known as cyanotype.

An existing plan drawn on translucent tracing paper could be photocopied by placing it on top of another piece of paper that has been coated with a photosensitive chemical solution (ammonium iron citrate and potassium ferrocyanide). The two layers are exposed to ultraviolet light (the sun) for a few minutes.

Consequently, the bottom sheet will turn blue due to the reaction of the chemicals to the light. However, as light would not be able to penetrate through the parts of the original document where the drawing marks are, those sections would remain white on the bottom sheet.

When the chemical solution is washed off the bottom sheet and the paper dried, a copy of the plan is created.

Other methods of achieving the same effect have emerged since that time and have replaced this practice, but the term “blueprint” continue to be used until today.

What it means now:

The word is generally used to refer to any layout plan for a room, building, or landscape. It is most commonly used to refer to technical drawings in architecture and engineering. For most of us, a situation where we would likely need to refer to a blueprint of some sort would be when we’re considering real estate to purchase, for instance, a house.

6. The press

What does “The press” means?

In the distant past, the news was disseminated mostly via printed publications; in other words, newspapers. Hence, the term “the press” was mostly a reference to the newspaper industry, whose pages were created through the use of printing presses.

What it means now:

The phrase is often used interchangeably with the term “media” and refers to the producers of mass media or those in the news industry. It is generally understood as encompassing all forms of news delivery, from printed publications like newspapers and magazines to TV stations, radio, and online news portals and blogs.

7. B side

What does “B side” means?

Back in the heydays of vinyl records, 78 RPM (revolutions per min) and 48 RPM phonograph/gramophone records could be played on two sides: an “A side” and a “B side”; the latter is sometimes called the “flipside”. It was around the year 1924 that the first such records were offered for sale in public.

Initially, record companies randomly assigned songs to either side of a record, but later on, it became a convention for “B side” songs to be those that were excluded from the album, weren’t radio-friendly, were alternate versions to the songs on an album or were just tracks that were considered inferior.

With vinyl records being more of a collector’s item nowadays than the main mode of music distribution, the use of the term “B side” isn’t as widespread. However, it still carries some of its earlier meanings in terms of describing music tracks that match the above criteria.

Some quarters have also come to think of the “B” in “B side” as referring to “bonus”, since music content that can be categorised as befitting of a B side is also known as “outtakes”, “exclusive” or “unreleased” tracks.

What it means now:

This is a phrase you will often hear with regard to music albums. It normally refers to additional music content not part of an official album release. This might refer to a different version or arrangement of a song compared to the same tune on the official album or tracks that were not included in that album at all.

8. Presentation deck / Slide deck

What does “Presentation deck” means?

While there doesn’t seem to be a definitive authority on the origins of this term, many believe it was a legacy from the days of the 35mm photographic film slides, which were displayed during presentations through the use of slide projectors. The slides in a projector tray were said to resemble a deck of cards, hence the name.

What it means now:

It is generally used in reference to a collection of slides used for a formal presentation. A Microsoft Powerpoint file that contains a set of slides is an example of a presentation deck. Some also consider the printout of such files as a slide deck.

9. Horsepower

What does “Horsepower” means?

The idea of using horses to quantify power came from James Watt, the Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer known for his contributions to improving the steam engine. Another unit of measurement for electrical and mechanical power, Watt, was named in honor of him.

During Watt’s time, horses were regarded as the highest power-yielding source and used in production mills. Horses would be harnessed to a central mill shaft and made for walking in circles to power grindstones and other such equipment. They were considered cheap to acquire and maintain for such purposes.

Image source: The Virginia Settlement

Hence, Watt chose to quantify the capabilities of his steam engine in horsepower terms since it was horses that this technology hoped to replace. With the aid of a mathematical equation, he estimated that a mill horse could push around 33,000 pounds in one foot in a minute. That was the power of one horse, i.e., one horsepower

He then went on to market his engines as being able to offer the power of 200 horses at once. His success led other competitors to copy his approach, and the term remains.

What it means now:

It is a measurement unit to quantify power and is typically used about the capability of an engine. In electrical terms, the energy generated for one horsepower is equivalent to 746 Watts.

10. Blockbuster

What does “Blockbuster” means?

Back in the 1940s, a blockbuster referred to an aerial bomb that was used in World War II, capable of demolishing entire city streets or blocks of buildings. This phrase eventually became an advertising term to depict extraordinary success by the mid to late 1940s.

Blockbusters were generally understood to mean large-scale productions that typically involved huge financial budgets. However, some other sources have claimed that the word “blockbuster” was used because it signified extremely well received plays or movies that effectively “busted” other competing production houses and put them out of business.

What it means now:

This term is used to describe popular or successful movies, or other forms of entertainment such as theatre productions or mobile/PC/console games.

11. Dial a number

What does “Dial a number” means?

There was once a time where rotary phones were the norm. Such phones featured a dial with the digits zero to nine arranged in a circular layout.

Each number had a hole on top of it, through which you inserted your finger, pull the disk in a clockwise motion to the end, then released it, before doing the same with the rest of the digits in the phone number. This action was also what you would call “dialing a number”.

What it means now:

The phrase is normally used when making a phone call. Nowadays, we use keypads (be it physical or even virtual one) to type in the phone number or name of the person we’re trying to reach. So why call it dial a number?

12. Mixtape

What does “Mixtape” means?

In the 1980s, mixtapes were mostly homemade by music fans using cassette tapes. It grew in popularity along with the use of cassette tape players, including the renowned Sony Walkman (RIP).

As cassette tapes were slowly phased out to make way for CDs and eventually, digital music files such as MP3, mixtapes evolved but remain available albeit in newer formats instead.

Meanwhile, in the hip-hop music scene, the term “mixtape” carried a slightly different meaning. Back in the 1970s, mixtapes consisted of recordings of performances by DJs that were taped by their listeners. Later on, in the 1980s, DJs themselves started recording their own shows and selling those tapes.

By the year 2000, a hip hop mixtape became a means for rappers to attract the attention of record labels and to connect with fans in a more personal manner. Such mixtapes were usually hosted by a DJ and included rap material that was less radio-friendly. Even successful hip hop artists have released mixtapes containing their original compositions, which are offered to fans for free. These can be mostly found on the Web nowadays.

What it means now:

Generally, it is understood as an audio compilation of songs whereby its compiler’s identity is known. Some use this characteristic of mixtapes to distinguish mixtapes from other kinds of music compilations where the compiler is relatively unknown or not revealed.

A mixtape can consist merely of a collection of its creator’s favorite tunes or may take on a more conceptual or artistic approach in its selection of songs to convey a certain message to its listeners.

The post 12 English Words With Interesting Origins appeared first on Hongkiat.

That said, these results depend on well-written blog content. There are many mistakes you can make when writing articles, and it’s easy to get caught up in trying to produce and publish as many posts as possible each week to keep your readers’ attention.

However, quality matters far more than quantity.

Luckily, there are strategies you can use to craft high-quality content for each of your blog posts.

Conduct thorough target audience research

Who are you writing to in your blog posts?

You must know the audience you’re trying to reach and the kind of content they’ll resonate most with if you want engagement.

Learn as much as you can about your target audience. This includes demographic, behavioral, and psychographic data. In addition, dig deep into their thoughts about your content and how they engage with it. Determine what topics they’re interested in, which blogs they read and how often, and the visuals they’re attracted to.

Once you’ve done your research, create reader personas, which are breakdowns of your ideal readers. You may need to create a few personas to cover a range of people most likely to read your blog.

Your reader personas should include:

• Name
• Age
• Education level
• Career
• Cultural background
• Interests
• Lifestyle patterns
• Future goals
• Challenges they’re facing
• How they find information
• Digital platforms they’re on the most
• The kind of content they consume.

Once you have these details and have a better understanding of what your readers like, you can create a content strategy they’re more likely to enjoy and interact with.

Use the Hub and Spoke Strategy

With a grasp on what your ideal readers deem valuable, it’s time to create a strategy for your blog content. The hub and spoke strategy, in particular, is beneficial for content planning.

This strategy is best understood as a visual.

Envision a bicycle wheel with spokes. The hub is the main content topic, while the spokes connected to it are the supporting topics that substantiate that central topic.

The goal is to create a lot of content around primary topics to show that you’re a thought leader on specific subjects. Thought leadership can increase your authority and prompt search engines to deem your blog trustworthy, which helps you drive more traffic to your site.

To use the hub and spoke strategy, the first step is to research keywords for hubs and key phrases to use in your spoke content. One to two hub keywords is enough, as you’ll create a lot of spoke content for each. After that, brainstorm topics around your keywords and phrases with which your readers will connect.

Be authentic

Aim to be as honest and accurate with your content as possible. Write blog posts that discuss your company in a transparent way. Use these posts to help develop your identity as an organization and show the world who you are. You can even communicate your values through your blog content.

However, it’s vital to be authentic in your content. It’s easy to fall into the trap of telling readers what you think they want to hear to secure a “quick win.

For instance, if your startup is committed to creating a healthier planet, your posts about this should talk honestly about where you are and what you’re doing to honor this commitment.

Avoid greenwashing in your content and don’t misrepresent your environmental activities to try and win readers over. If you’ve yet to become an entirely sustainable company, don’t say you have. And don’t write about how you’ve reduced your carbon footprint by 50% when it’s only 5%.

If readers discover dishonesty, that content will ultimately hurt your brand far more than it could ever help. Even big brands and established businesses struggle to overcome that kind of reputational damage. Your startup’s blog is a clean slate; use it as an opportunity to invest in your brand.

Write long-form content

A survey by Orbit Media revealed that the average blog post is a little over 1400 words. But the survey also shares that content even longer than that (around 3,000 words) gets better results.

Only a tiny percentage (4%) of bloggers write content that long regularly. If you learn to write high-quality, long-form content, you’ll have a better chance of standing out among the millions of other blogs online.

In general, though, you’ll want to follow these steps during the actual research and writing stages of your content:

1. Determine the keyword and phrase you’ll be using throughout the post. You should apply the Goldilocks principle here: not too much but not too little. You don’t want to keyword stuff your content, as that may come across as low-quality writing to your readers, but you still want to ensure your content is optimized to rank for those terms.
2. Read content from your competitors and authoritative sources. From your competitors, you’ll understand what content is being published that audiences are appreciating or not appreciating. From authoritative sources, you’ll gain useful information and find useful pages to reference and link to in your own writing.
3. Outline your piece. Identify the core point of your post, your supporting arguments in the body, and how you’ll wrap up the post.
4. Write the piece. Hook your readers with the first sentence. Keep their attention with a unique perspective and tell a good story. Be sure your startup’s personality shines through in your tone and messaging.

It may take a lot of time and effort to craft a single blog post, but it’ll be worth the effort when you see the kind of engagement a quality post inspires.

Create unique visuals

Images, videos, or other visuals should accompany every post you create if you want your readers to have a memorable experience with your blog.

Of course, you can use stock images, but original visuals will give your readers a real “wow” moment.

Considering creating the following visuals for your blog posts:

• Quotes
• Screenshots
• Infographics
• Stunning images
• Unique illustrations
• GIFs and memes
• Short and long videos
• Graphs, maps, and charts
• Interactive content like polls and surveys.

Track your blog content’s performance

You can’t improve your blog content if you don’t keep an eye on the results it’s generating for your startup. It’s essential to attach specific metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to every blog post to see how it measures up to your goals for the piece.

Track how your content ranks for your target keywords and phrases. Make notes about the posts that are doing great, as well as those that aren’t doing well.

You can then use what’s working in your best posts to update the pieces that aren’t doing well and, hopefully, improve their ranking and performance the next go-round.

Conclusion

Writing better blog content takes work. But you need a high-quality blog for your startup to fast-track its success.

Aside from implementing the tips above, ensure your blog is a part of an omnichannel marketing experience to further its impact. Use your blog to drive traffic to your other digital platforms, like social media and your email list, and vice versa.

Ultimately, each post should connect readers to the next touchpoint in their customer journey.

The post Crafting Better Content for Your Startup’s Blog appeared first on Hongkiat.

Are you great at writing compelling fictional character stories, or are you the sort of person who finds writing non-fiction almost second nature? Do you want to write to educate, to entertain, or to make money?

Regardless of the path you choose to take, writing will certainly involve certain steps; the first step, the backbone of your work, is research. Now, while it is true that research tends to play a more critical role in non-fiction writing than it does when writing fiction, it is still important for fiction writers to understand the value of research, particularly when it comes to looking for references to base the elements of your story.

Preliminary Research

This is the part where you gather as much information as you can. When doing preliminary research, you don’t need to spend too much time reading and analyzing studies, articles, books, and even videos. All you need to do is find them and compile them for later.

Step 1: Identifying The Mystery

The first part of research is, of course, figuring out exactly what it is you want to write about. You’ll want to consider a topic that you can talk about for hours to days on end – preferably, something you’re passionate about. Make sure it’s a topic you have a good grasp on, though, otherwise, you’ll be writing fluff-filled pieces, and your readers will certainly notice.

The best way of identifying which topic could work well with you is by jotting down at least 10 of your interests. Then for each interest, write as much sub-topics as you can that are heavily related to their parent topic.

Once you are done doing so, pick the topic that has the most sub-topics – that is your golden topic.

Step 2: Picking up the magnifying glass

Now that you know what you want to write about, it’s time to start the actual research!

Researching doesn’t just mean gathering facts. It also means determining exactly how to write your piece in order to make it both unique and valuable. For example, if you’re interested in writing about money, don’t just stick to money as a general topic; go deeper, finding a sub-category, or a microniche, so that your book can be laser-focused.

If the main niche is Money, then its microniches (or sub-niches) are personal finance, investments, among others. Why not write about personal finance or investments?

Step 3: Gathering the clues

The next part of researching is spent on gathering lots of related materials. It is crucial that you do proper research, avoid inaccuracies, and make sure to nail all those tiny little details that may build up and eventually ruin a good book or article.

Gathering data may range from facts and information pertaining to your topic of choice to published works discussing topics similar to or tangentially related to yours. Note, however, that this step is akin to making a stew. You simply throw everything into the pot without doing any hard reading or analyzing just yet.

All you need to do is skim through your resources and find potential references; read the titles and subheadings, perhaps even the intro and conclusion as well, and just throw them into your makeshift database if the material looks like it would fit.

On deciding what sort of materials “would fit” check out books that are similar to the topic you want to write about. Look through their table of contents to get a general idea of what the book emphasized.

Make notes and identify what all these books have in common when it comes to content, and also determine what makes each of those books unique. If this sounds like a lot of work, here are some tools to help you with this stage:

Google Scholar – if your topic requires academic search results, use Google Scholar. You will see peer-reviewed studies, books, articles, journals, and the like.

Google Search Operators – when using Google, it will do you well to learn the many operators it has so that you can get more specific results. Here’s a post on what you can do with Google Search.

YouTube – Videos are also a great source for helpful materials like how-to’s. You might be able to find a fresh outlook on topics once the way it is presented is changed.

A word on blogs

Do not immediately jump to researching using blogs, because you might catch yourself heavily relying on them. Only start looking for relevant blogs once you already have a specific (but not compulsory) outline in mind. Check out Alltop and Reddit for leads.

Find the posts that are closely related to your main topic and determine if they are valuable enough to use as research material.

• Does the article or post in question have lots of social media shares?
• What about comments?
• Is it one of their top performing posts?

Generally, these metrics are what you want to see, because it usually means people responded favorably towards them.

Separate good feedback from bad feedback. Check out what the readers had to say in the comments section and learn how to filter the good from the bad. Categorizing these will act as your do’s and don’ts when writing your book or article.

Keep a copy of anything that is relevant to your topic, including the link(s) (it’s research, you will need to revisit your sources a lot), compile them in the same spot and make it semi-organized – basically know where you can find what in the shortest amount of time. Once you have done compiling all there is to read about the topic, then organize your stash according to relevance.

After this stage, it’s basically just reading and reading and more reading, before you begin the process of weaving everything that works well together and discarding whatever doesn’t. Use the outline you’ve created earlier to guide you on what to focus on and what to write.

Afraid that you’ll spend too much (or too little time) researching? Don’t stress over it too much. As a matter of fact, you can complete your research in just one day and start writing the next.

Analyzing, Restructuring, and Writing

Analyze everything. Remove the not-so-relevant parts and the bad stuff. Work with what is left on your table. Then, begin mapping out all the clues like how the private eyes on television shows do it. They grab all their newspaper clippings, photos of suspects, maps, and other forms of evidence and lay it all out on a cool-looking board or wall or table.

After removing the nonessentials, draft your final outline by dividing each section using their own headlines. Be sure to note what “worked” for the readers and try to capture the same “lightning” in your own figurative bottle.

Grouping info by relevance will also help when it comes to writing. Once your paragraphs can flow with relevance, and the harmonious flow in your structure is established, writing will be very easy. You already have everything you need based on your preliminary research. You just have to make proper use of them – make them work for you.

Wrap Up

Note that while others prefer to research, read, and then write, then research again, that is just messy. It takes your mind away from your writing. But by researching everything first (read: compiling all the relevant data) then reading everything later (and removing the unwanted parts), you can focus on just your writing.

Lastly, there are a few other important things to keep in mind during the writing process:

1. Cite your sources properly. (Aren’t you glad you kept all those links?)
2. Base your conclusions on data from your research, i.e. things you can defend on your own in the event that questions get raised about your conclusions’ validity.
3. Learn to exercise good judgment and consider both sides of the coin before choosing what to include in your writing. An opinion that is popular is not always right.

Remember: Only write the things you can back up with credible sources. When in doubt, do without. Now, go forth and be the Sherlock Holmes of writers.

The post How to Find The Right Topic (Writing Tip For Freelancers) appeared first on Hongkiat.

Through live blogging, if you can provide regular updates with useful insights throughout an event, your readers will most likely take your blog as a go-to place for event coverage. Also, live-blogging may help your blog get better visibility in web searches and may help boost your blog rank with search engines too.

That is why, you must learn the tips and tricks of live-blogging like a pro, which is the goal of this post. So, let’s get started.

1. Prepare well before the event

First of all, you must choose a relevant event with the right audience. The live conference or event must match your blog niche and fit with your readers. Then, you must set goals for live-blogging. And finally, you must prepare as much as possible before the event since you must post updates as soon as possible.

Check the event website

An event website is a great place to start researching the event. You can get the schedule of the event along with its speakers, sponsors, and corporate participants.

With this information, you can research more about them and create initial content for your live-blog including speaker details and links.

Speak out to the speakers

If your live event has a website, it will probably list the schedule of the event along with its speakers. If the site doesn’t show it, try checking the site later as they may post the speakers’ info just some days before the live event.

Once you know them, try reaching out to them on social media and telling them about your plan to cover the event. You can share the post link with them and on social media with attribution to them, calling them in a conversation.

And if they engage with you on social media, do share your excitement to hear them.

Design graphics and templates

It’s good to include graphics in blog posts as it interests users and helps with SEO. However, it takes time to create graphics, so you should consider creating them in advance.

If it’s not possible, you should create or download graphic templates with ample space to include some info or quotes from the event.

Be ready to talk to your audience

People always love insider insights about events. So you must prepare a list of questions you can ask the speakers and/or the audience at the event. If you speak to the speakers, you can get their take about the event.

Or you can discuss the event with attendees and ask their take about the event and its speakers.

You can also spread the word on your social media channels about interviewing people in the event and ask people to send questions. You may get surprised by people’s creativity and curiosity in asking questions related to the event.

2. Choose a blogging platform

Since you’ve prepared for the event, now is the time to pick your blogging platform. You can choose among multiple options based on their pros and cons (which I’ll discuss below under each sub-heading) and your preferences.

Your existing blog

Using your existing blog as the liveblogging platform is the most obvious choice — especially if you’re looking forward to boosting your blog audience through live-blogging. You probably need to create a category or tag for the event to help your readers follow it. Also, it’s suggested to write an introductory post.

Alternatively, you can create a single blog post or page dedicated to the event. However, you must create a post or page per day for a multi-day event. Also, you should consider having multiple authors for covering large conferences.

Microblogging site

Using a microblogging site like Twitter or Tumblr to live-blog an event may work better than your blog if you want to provide short updates.

Also, it’s probably a better idea if you’ve a major following on Twitter or Tumblr. Otherwise, you should think about live-blogging using your blog or a live-blogging service.

If you’re opting for a microblogging site for covering the event, check if there are hashtags associated with the event and make use of them. Also, you can include the microblogging feed in your blog to send updates to both audiences.

Live-blogging service

Using a live-blogging service like 24liveblog or Arena.im provides you additional benefits over your blog or a microblogging site. These tools provide features to engage your audience and grow social engagement like content walls, event analytics, group chat rooms, spam control, etc.

Moreover, they allow you to embed your liveblog in your blog, boosting the reach of your event coverage. Also, 24liveblog allows contributors and editors to write on your liveblog and enables you to live-stream the event directly.

3. Choose an enjoyable device

After you’re done picking a platform for live-blogging, you need to choose a device for live-blogging. Since you’ll be on the go, the most obvious choices are laptop, mobile, and tablet.

It also greatly depends on the event: will the sitting be tight, will you need a full-day charge, or will you be comfortable using the device?

You must ask such questions before picking the devices. You must charge your devices to 100% before leaving for the event. It’s advised to carry extra batteries or power banks just in case; you never know if you’ll need them. And you should carry a tripod along with a camera — especially if you plan to live-stream it.

Also, don’t forget to test your devices prior to the event — especially if you bought any new equipment for covering the event. There’s nothing worse than you working or recording for an hour and your device getting crashed. Or the recording getting blurred or deleted or getting recorded without the audio.

4. Post blog at the live event

There are several things to keep in mind when you’re at the event. First of all, you must understand you’ll make mistakes. Live-blogging will have grammatical errors, typos, and whatnot. It’s mostly unavoidable — especially if you’re trying to post quick updates as close to real-time as possible during the live event.

Then, be mindful and respectful of others in the event. You should pick a device per comfortability in there, i.e., use a mobile or tablet instead of a laptop if you’ve less space.

If you’re clicking a photo or recording a video, remember to turn off the flash (it distracts the speakers) and turn up the ISO setting instead. Also, if the lights are dim in there, adjust your device’s brightness accordingly.

5. Live-stream at the event

If you want to enrich the experience of your audience following the event, you can live-stream along with live-blogging. It helps your audience get better and richer coverage of the event.

In case you’ve got team members with you, one of you can manage the camera for live-streaming while the others do live-blogging.

If you’re going individually to the event, you should carry a tripod as well (as I suggested it above). You can set up the camera on the tripod and then focus on live-blogging while the camera is managing live-streaming to your audience.

For the live-streaming, you can make use of a variety of platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Also, if you choose a live-blogging service for covering the event, check if it supports live-streaming. If yes, you can live-stream directly, and if not, opt for the platform with the most audience.

6. Go beyond live blogging

Live-blogging can’t be the end of your coverage at the conference or event. You should consider more ways to cover the event and reach a larger audience. You can set up a collection on Flickr to showcase your images of the event. Then, you can share your live blog on social media channels like Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Live-blog or Cover an Event Live (Complete Guide) appeared first on Hongkiat.

Let’s not forget the optimization part (SEO, keywords, etc) and sharing your content on the Web so that others will read it and hopefully share it.

With all of these steps involved, blogging can be quite time-consuming and many bloggers get burnt out rather quickly doing these things on a daily basis.

Lucky for us, the process doesn’t have to be so difficult anymore. Thanks to the web and technology, there are hundreds of tools out there to assist your blogging process and make it less of a headache.

This list will take a look at some of the top tools for and applications for making blogging easier.

Grammarly

Either you’re native or non-native English-speaker, chances are that you may often fall into spelling and grammar pitfalls while writing your blogs. So for such people who are doubtful about the strength of their writing, Grammarly is nothing short of a boon.

Grammarly, with the help of its AI-powered writing assistant, allows you to compose bold, clear, mistake-free writing. Moreover, you can organize your writing feedback according to your readers and even get suggestions on finding the perfect words to express yourself.

Canva

No matter how strong your textual content is, you always need graphical content to make your posts more enticing for the reader. But not everyone is a graphic designer and this is where Canva comes in handy.

With Canva you can design stunning graphics (flyers, posts, invitations, presentations, business cards, etc.) via pre-made templates or simply drag-n-drop elements like fonts, filters, icons, and stock images. Once done, you can save and use these graphics freely on your website.

My Stock Photos

A blogger never gets enough of stock photos. My Stock Photos offers 1259+ high-quality and creative stock photos that you can use in your blog posts and other projects. The images are added by a community of brilliant photographers and are regularly updated.

There are different categories to choose from and the interface is so simple that you won’t find any difficulty navigating the site. Also, all photos are licensed under CC0 license – meaning you can do whatever you want with our photos, including their usage in commercial projects.

Google Trends

An amazing service by the tech giant, Google Trends shows you the most searched phrases or terms on Google over a given period of time. For a blogger, it can be a useful source for comparative keyword research and to find out about event-triggered spikes in keyword search volume.

The tool shows you trending keywords from top to down. You can even enter a specific search term that you’re curious about and it’ll show you how search volume has varied for that term over time and in different locations.

Todoist

Creating new ideas, writing the blog posts, tinkering with the SEO, coordinating with writers, checking the analytics… there is a whole gamut of tasks that a blogger has to take care of. So to organize their personal and professional life better, Todolist can be a helpful tool.

You can use the app’s intuitive dashboard to create a list of things that you want to work on along with their priority and schedule. Within these tasks, you can create subtasks, designate the person responsible, see the task’s progress, and keep a record of the tasks completed.

Sumo

Sumo offers a set of different useful tools that help optimize your site’s growth and make your visitor’s experience easier on your website. From analytics and ecommerce to audience development widgets and viral components, there are a variety of tools that you can use right out of the box.

There are different ways you can use Sumo to grow your blog like, boost social shares on your website, give a hike to your site traffic, get more email subscriptions, and a lot more.

Keywordtool.io

In order to optimize your blog for search engine rankings, the best practice is to do a good keyword research. And so, the Keywordtool.io allows you to find out what your potential customers or readers are searching for on Google and create content around these topics.

The tool offers you to generate up to 750+ long-tail keyword suggestions for every search term and all the results are reliable. The best part is, you can use this tool for free and without even having to create an account on their website.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is perhaps one of the most famous WordPress SEO plugins on the internet. And there is a good reason for that. It provides users with an array of useful features to optimize their website for higher SEO ranking.

Yoast allows you to optimize your site for keywords and keyphrases, provide readability check, making it easy for bots to crawl your site, ability to work in every WordPress editor, and a whole lot more. Moreover, the plugin is regularly updated for efficiency.

Hemmingway

A boon for blog writers who have to write professionally and frequently, the Hemmingway app points out grammatical mistakes, lengthy, complex sentences, and common errors in your writing.

When you enter a text in the Hemmingway app, it highlights different errors in different colors so you can easily make changes in your writing. Moreover, you can format your text right in the app and use it wherever you want.

Ahrefs

Bloggers cannot get enough SEO tools so here is one more in the list. Ahref is a set of comprehensive SEO tools that help you in optimizing your site for better search engine ranking.

With Ahref, you can research keywords or keyphrases that your readers are searching for, analyze your competitors, track your ranking progress, and a lot more. What’s more, is that there are free learning resources and great support available for the users.

Buffer

To keep abreast of your website’s performance and analytics on social media, you need a tool like Buffer. It is a simple tool that helps you publish your brand’s story on social media and measure its engagement rate among the audience.

Buffer allows you to schedule your social media postings for maximum effects. You can also use it to measure your performance on different social media platforms, create reports, and get insights on your campaign’s reach, engagement rate, and sales.

Meme Generator

Every blog can do with a good meme. And why not. It’s a fun way to put your message across. So, if you want to put up a meme in your post, instead of looking all over the internet for the perfect one, you can take help from the Meme Generator.

It is a simple app with an easy interface that allows you to search or generate any meme. There are different categories of the most viral memes that you can use as visual and add your own text to it.

Pocket

With this tool, you can save Web pages to your read-it-later list to be read at a later time. Items can be saved from your computer or mobile devices via numerous applications and integrations. You can access your list just about anywhere for online or offline reading.

A similar tool is Instapaper, which works in the same way, but doesn’t have as many applications. One of the best things about Instapaper is that you can forward full emails to save for later (Read-it-Later only allows you to save links via email).

Evernote

You can capture anything from Web pages to images, text, and voice notes with Evernote. Just like Pocket, there are numerous applications and integrations that let you save items to your account.

Your notes can be accessed from just about anywhere via a computer or mobile device. Plus, with the ability to search through all of your notes (even text within images), you’ll be able to find things super fast.

Diigo

With Diigo you can annotate the Web by highlighting, adding sticky notes, bookmarking, taking screenshots, saving images and more. You can then manage it all and reference your findings from your Diigo account for later use.

Best of all, whenever you return to a page that you’ve annotated, your notes will still be there. You can even see annotations that others have added to pages as well. You can use Diigo to annotate specific parts of Web pages that you want to use for a blog post or to save items that you want to read at a later time.

Open Live Writer

Open Live Writer is one of the most popular blog editors for the Windows platform. You can create new and edit previous blog posts, see what they’ll look like on your blog before publishing and set up multiple blogs.

You can add things like images, videos, Bing maps. There are also 100+ plugins that you can use with Open Live Writer in order to add more features and increase its functionality. Best of all, Open Live Writer is complete free.

BlogJet

BlogJet considers itself to be the “most advanced Windows blog editor and manager.” With it’s WYSIWYG editor, you don’t have to have any HTML knowledge. It’s very speedy and lets you add Flickr images, YouTube videos and file attachments.

There are numerous other amazing features and it works with numerous blogging formats. Unlike Windows Live Writer, BlogJet isn’t, but there is a free demo version.

ScribeFire

ScribeFire is an extension that you can get for Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari. It’s a full featured blog editor that lets you create and publish blog posts right from your browser.

You can drop and drop text and images, schedule blog posts for later, tag and categorize, edit pages, post to multiple blogs and more. While some find the endless features in ScribeFire overwhelming, others just can’t live without them.

Dropbox

Dropbox is the ultimate tool for syncing files between your computer and mobile devices. There is a Dropbox app for just about every device and system and there even more integrations with other apps.

So not only are your files always secure, but they’re always with you wherever you go. If you need to save files for use later, just add them to Dropbox or sync them using a supported app.

Google Docs

If you’re looking for a way to access your blog posts from anywhere, one of your best options is to create and save them in Google Docs. Since Google Docs is a web-based word processor, you can access your account no matter what device you’re on – computer or mobile device.

This allows you to work on the go, from anywhere. You can also collaborate in real-time with others, which makes Google Docs great for collaborative posts and projects.

Awesome Screenshot

Awesome Screenshot is a capture, annotation, and sharing tool by Diigo for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. You can capture the visible part of a page, selected area or entire page. Annotation tools include adding shapes (rectangles, circles), arrows, lines, and text.

There is also a blur tool that is great for protecting your privacy and personal information that you may capture. There are 3 options for saving your screenshots; you can save to the Awesome Screenshot website for a month, save to Diigo forever, or save on your computer.

FireShot

FireShot is an extension for Firefox, Chrome, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and Internet Explorer. It lets you capture, edit, annotate, organize, export, upload, and print screenshots from the Web.

There are quite a few capture options: entire page, visible part of page, selection or browser window. One of the unique things about FireShot is the full set of editing and annotation tools that it provides. Plus, it can even allow you to capture flash content.

More:

• Desktop File & Image Sharing Tools
• Screen Capture Tools: 40+ Free Tools and Techniques

Word Tracker

With SEO Blogger, you can “find the most sought-after keywords for your subject without ever leaving your blog editing screen.” It currently works only in the Firefox sidebar via an extension.

It allows you to research keywords, see how popular they are, and compare them instantly with other keywords.

You’ll also be able to see how many times you’ve used specific keywords in your content. This is great for keeping track of the keyword density in your posts which is a big part of SEO.

Desk

Desk is a wonderful little tool for writers and desktop publishing clients to work on writing, blogging, and note-taking. It is a simple yet intuitive app that helps you organize your thoughts and ready the content for publishing on your website or blog.

Desk supports different publishing platforms including WordPress, Blogger, Medium, and Tumblr etc. The app offers an array of writing modes, visual styles, and shortcuts. There’s also a preview mode for real-time editing and meta information section.

The post 20+ Essential and Free Blogging Tools appeared first on Hongkiat.

In this post, I am going to share with you more than 35 useful Firefox add-ons that’ll help you save time one way or another.

Tab Session Manager – This add-on helps you save the current state of the opened tabs in a Firefox window and recover it when needed. It can even recover tabs state after a crash.

Tip Tab – Simply shows a preview of the other opened tabs when you hover your mouse cursor over them. Very handy if you always have dozens of tabs opened and want to reach the right tab quickly.

Tile Tabs – Tile Tabs helps you organize your tabs in highly customizable tiles. You can create vertical, horizontal, or grid style tiles and easily view and manage tabs.

ColorfulTabs – ColorfulTabs randomly gives a color to your opened tabs to make it easier to distinguish between multiple tabs. A must have extension to save time while working on dozens of tabs.

Tab Mix – It’s a highly customizable tab manager for Firefox that gives full control over your tabs. You can manage what each tab should do when it is opened/closed or is in session. There are also option to manage links, events, mouse shortcuts, tab display and much more.

Share Anywhere – Share Anywhere makes it easy to quickly share any web page or web page content over your favorite social network website. It has support for over 45 social media networks.

I don’t care about cookies – Due to EU regulations about cookies, many websites are bound to show an annoying pop up to confirm that the website is using cookies. This extension simply gets rid of that pop-up and saves you that one extra click.

Gif Blocker – GIFs can eat up bandwidth and slow down page loading speed, and many websites use GIFs today. If you don’t want GIFs to load without your permission, then install Gif Block. It will automatically block GIFs.

Link Fixer – Link Fixer solves one of the biggest browsing problems, URL typos. It will automatically fix most common URL typos and let you access the right website. You can add your own typo corrections and even configure it to ask before fixing a URL.

AutoCopy – As the name suggests, AutoCopy automatically copies anything you highlight in Firefox to the clipboard. You can then use the middle mouse click to paste it. A very handy extension if you need to copy/paste often.

Simplify Gmail – This add-on adds few helpful features to Gmail to make it easier and faster to manage your Gmail account. Some of the features include, unread messages count in tab favicon, attachment icon, hierarchical labels, and hide spam and chat, etc.

Grammarly – Grammarly automatically finds typos and grammar mistakes and lets you quickly fix them. It works on most of the websites, including email services and social media websites.

Lazarus – Lazarus simply saves all form entries you make and lets you restore it in case it gets deleted due to internet problem, crash, or a server timeout. It can recover form entries, comments, and any WYSIWYG editor content. It may not sound very useful, but it’s only because you haven’t faced a form crash yet. Just install it, you can thank me later.

iMacros for Firefox – This is basically an automation tool for repetitive tasks. You just need to record any task that you need to repeat often and iMacros will let you complete it with a single click whenever you need. The possibilities are limitless, but some of the things you can do include, automatic form filling, download/uploading content, updating websites, and much more.

Amazon Assistant for Firefox – If you shop on Amazon, then this will surely help save time and shop smartly. It will help you access daily deals, compare prices, track orders, create a universal wishlist, and much more.

Gmail Manager – The extension helps you manage multiple Gmail accounts in a single tab and view and control other accounts without moving away from the current account. Really handy for people with multiple Gmail accounts.

Reddit Enhancement Suite – A must have add-on for Reddit fanatics. Reddit Enhancement Suite adds features like unlimited scrolling, image preview, keyboard shortcuts, easy switching between two accounts, and much more to make it easy to use Reddit.

Disconnect – Disconnect stops all types of third-party tracking websites that track and store your data. It’s not only good for privacy but also speeds up browsing up to 44% as the tracking is disabled.

Magic Actions for YouTube – This add-on adds multiple features to YouTube to make your experience faster and smoother. Some of the features include AutoHD, screenshot, rating review, enlarge thumbnails, loop videos, hide comments/related videos, and stop autoplay.

Wikiwand – Wikiwand magically overhauls UI of Wikipedia and makes it much more advanced and easier on the eyes. The table of contents is on the left, and content is much more clear and easier to read.

Stylish – Stylish gives you tools to style websites the way you want them to work. You can customize the layout, change colors, remove content, add panels, and much more.

Adblock Plus – One of the best extensions to block ads. Adblock Plus will automatically block almost all types of ads you see while browsing the web, including video, audio, animation and text ads. As ads slow down browsing and create distractions, it will speed up your browsing. Although don’t forget to whitelist websites you care about, as ads fund them to keep providing free service.

Similar Sites – Simply click on the Similar Sites icon in the search bar and this extension will show a list of websites that are similar to the one you are viewing. Talk about faster research.

Full Web Page Screenshots – A powerful screenshots extension that can take screenshots of individual tabs simultaneously and even create PDFs out of them. You can also edit and annotate screenshots.

Morning Coffee – A very handy extension to organize your favorite content websites by days and automatically open them on a specific day. It can make it really easy to get your daily dose of web content, such as news websites or weekly columns.

Speed Dial (Lite) – Similar to Opera’s speed dial feature, this add-on offers you a speed dial UI in Firefox to save your favorite websites for quicker access. The UI is fully customizable and you can even add a background image.

Vertical Toolbar Reloadedsession – Simply adds a vertical toolbar at the side of Firefox window where you can add extensions, bookmarks, and buttons for quick access.

LastPass – One of the best password managers, LastPass will automatically save all your passwords and make it easier to automatically login to websites. You just need to remember a single master password to manage all your passwords.

syncmarx – A simple extension to save all your bookmarks and syncs them over all your devices. If you don’t want to waste time syncing and moving bookmarks, then get Xmarks and store all bookmarks in one place.

Notepad (QuickFox) – A simple note taking add-on that focuses on taking notes faster. It uses tabs layout to quickly jot down multiple notes and has features like spell check, auto copy/paste, and auto save to make note taking easy.

DownThemAll – A must have extension for any Firefox user. DownThemAll not only helps save time by speeding up download speed up to 4 times but also helps stop/resume and manage downloads in one place.

Save to Folder – This add-on removes the need to deal with “Save File to” dialog. Anything you download will be directly downloaded to your predefined folder.

ScrollAnywhere – The extension makes your middle mouse button work as a quick grab and move button for the scrollbar. Just press the middle mouse button and move up/down to scroll.

Foxy Gestures – This add-on puts dozens of mouse gestures in your hand to do almost anything in Firefox. You can move between tabs, move forward/backward, close/open tabs, re-open tabs, and a whole lot more just with your mouse. You can even create your own scripts if you can.

Visual Tabs – Viewing the contents on the each tab may be quite a time consuming task hence, this add-on makes it easier since you can preview and navigate the tab contents through pop-up either in the backward or forward direction.

FlasgGet – This add-on helps maximizes your download speed. It is light-weight, reliable and amongst the most popular download manager.

Firebug – This add-on probably doesn’t need any introduction. For web designers and developers, this is a must-have.

FireFTP – This is a secure, cross platform FTP tool for Mozilla. If you are a fan of opening too many apps, then this add-on is for you.

Summary

All these Firefox add-ons will make your work easier and get things done faster. Tab management is probably the best way to save time and work hassle free, and I’ll recommend you to check out Tab Mix Plus for this as it’s astonishingly functional.

If there are any other time-saving Firefox add-ons that you use, share with us in the comments.

The post 40 Firefox Add-ons For Better Productivity appeared first on Hongkiat.

In today’s internet-centric era, you can use your writing talents to earn not just a living but some really good money from some authentic websites.

Well, this is what this post is all about. Here is a comprehensive list of websites that pay you to write on them or through them. The list ranges from freelancing websites, lifestyle websites and even parenting blogs.

Read on to know which one would suit you the best.

Writers Weekly (Blogging)

Writers Weekly focuses on ways to make money through writing related to corporate communication or writing for markets, etc. They accept queries related to the topics before you write an article. If accepted, they pay $60 for a 600-word article via PayPal.

A List Apart (Web Design)

A List Apart is a site that specializes in web design and its related topics. You can pitch your ideas or submit an article that is written per their style guide. They publish articles of ~1500 words and offer a variable pay based on your write-up.

Scotch (Education)

Scotch believes in high-quality content that focuses on educating its readers on almost any topic. They prefer writers with demos on CodePen, and any previous writing will also give you an edge. Their payment is tier-based – up to $150 per article.

TakeLessons Blog (Education)

TakeLessons Blog features articles revolving around music and language. They accept articles 900-1200 words long, and if accepted, you get paid $50. Additionally, you can conduct classes as an instructor at TakeLessons as well.

The Change Agent (Education)

The Change Agent focuses on articles related to different social justice issues. The magazine feature works of adult education students aka learners. They accept articles of a length of 200-1000 words and pay $50 if it gets accepted.

Polygon (Entertainment)

Polygon specializes in content for the video game industry, be it game reviews, opinions, or strategy guides. They prefer that writers pitch forth their ideas before typing out the articles. They pay competitively depending upon the word count.

WhatCulture (Entertainment)

WhatCulture allows you to write versatile articles revolving around gaming, films, and sports. They also consider video submissions and news articles. Your article must be at least 1500 words long, and if accepted, you will get paid £30 per article.

ListVerse (General knowledge)

ListVerse lets you earn straightforward – write an exciting list on almost any topic, and you can earn $100 via PayPal. They accept only original content and have some strict rules, which you must check before submitting a list.

International Living (Lifestyle)

International Living features articles that provide insight into foreign destinations. Their readers want info focusing on the cost and the way of living, culture, healthcare, etc. They pay variables depending upon the type of content and its word count.

Lies About Parenting (Parenting)

Lies About Parenting accepts feature articles that are based on your parenting stories. Also, you can write about parenting techniques, traveling, and advice lent by doctors, teachers, etc. You get paid $50 for each of your featured articles.

Scary Mommy (Parenting)

Articles to do with different stages of parenting, from pregnancy to childbirth, to issues to do with raising kids, and more.

DigitalOcean Community (Programming)

DigitalOcean Community has a donations program through which you can contribute articles that deal with production systems, and software development, etc. You get paid around $300 for tutorials along with a contribution to a tech charity.

Linode Guides & Tutorials (Programming)

Linode requires writers who are experts in the field of Linode and Linux and can contribute tutorials for the same. You must have a knack for explaining the technicalities clearly and elaborately. You get paid up to $300 for every guide you compose.

SitePoint (Programming)

SitePoint pays you a hefty sum of $150 for articles and $200 for tutorials but has strict guidelines. They cover topics based on HTML, CSS, and more web development niches, and pay via bank transfer within Australia, PayPal, or SWIFT transfer.

The Partially Examined Life (Cultures)

A philosophy podcast and philosophy blog that accepts book reviews, brief posts related to culture and ideas, and philosophy accompanied by commentary. They do not disclose a payment rate, but you can contact them to ask them.

The Diplomat (Current affairs)

The Diplomat features articles and blog posts related to news analysis and reports of the Asia-Pacific. You must inform their editors that you require compensation, following which they will decide the fee they will pay for your write-up.

Cracked (Humor)

Cracked is on the lookout for artists and writers with a good sense of creativity and humor who can produce comical articles and images. Although they do not mention the payment, they will pay well, seeing their reputation.

New Scientist (Science)

New Scientist requires content that covers science and technology; for example, the psychology of terrorism and the stories on the latest research. Their payment is dependent on the number of words and will be sent to the address provided by you.

Great Escape Publishing (Travel)

Great Escape Publishing accepts content that focuses on jobs that pay you to travel, be it for photography, tourism, writing, etc. Their payment is variable and ranges between $50 and $200 depending on the length and the type of your article.

More:

Due

A freelance job site for technical writers, Due offers great assistance in finding gigs related to long-form and well-researched posts. Although you need to have a good experience in the field of technical writing, however, once you get in, many lucrative offers await you.

PubLoft

PubLoft goes beyond providing you with freelance job ops and takes the management of your tasks into its hands. It finds and manages clients for you to focus on producing quality work.

Contena

If you’re looking for quality writing gigs, then Contena would work for you. It has an array of quality projects for writers, editors, and content creators of all kinds. Moreover, you can get a potpourri of freelance gigs and full-time remote jobs on this site.

Journalism Jobs

As the name implies, Journalism Jobs features journalism and media-related jobs. It’s a full-fledged job site that allows you to find opportunities in the freelance category as well. You can find jobs ranging from TV and radio journalism to print and public relations, etc.

Freelance Writing

Freelance Writing brings you real-time freelance writing jobs online for beginners and experts. Its simple interface makes it easy for you to browse the type of job you want according to your experience.

All Indie Writers

At All Indie Writers, you can search for hundreds of jobs in the field of writing. The free service also offers you to subscribe to a feed based on specific keywords and compare the available projects with the client’s budget, even if their budget is low.

Contently

Contently works as an agent to help manage your writing portfolio and online publications and provide useful freelance advice. They select you after rigorous vetting and on the basis of your portfolio and then connect you with clients offering high-paying freelance jobs.

Writer Access

Writer Access offers diverse freelance writing jobs to writers, including online articles, case studies, tech papers, etc. You can also find tools for content analytics, keyword optimization, and content planning to add productivity to your work.

The post 30 Best Sites to Get Paid For Writing & Blogging appeared first on Hongkiat.

First of all, it’s relatively hard to get your blog or website approved for Google AdSense. Then, Google’s ad platform has rigorous fraud and other checks, which results in thousands of accounts getting blocked after some months. That’s the reason bloggers and website owners look for alternatives to Google AdSense.

However, it’s not uncommon to find ineffective or scammy services. That’s why I’ve compiled this post to help you find the best ad networks for your blog or website. I understand you’re looking for a simple yet trusted alternative to Google AdSense, which has a low payout threshold and supports numerous ad types to fit your blog or website, right? Well then, let’s get to the alternatives.

Media.net

Media.net is one of the market leaders in the contextual advertising industry, which boasts of generating the second-largest ads revenue in its industry. It’s the best alternative to Google AdSense considering its variety of ad types. Also, it offers high-paying ads with ad types mostly similar to Google AdSense.

Pros

• Customization options to make ads fit your website.
• Payout threshold is $100 for PayPal and Wire Transfer.
• Quick approval process — especially if you’ve a quality site.

Cons

• English should be your blog’s or site’s primary language.

Useful links

• About
• Sign up

Infolinks

Infolinks is the leader in the text-advertising industry, making it one of the best ad networks to work with for text-based ads. But it also provides banner and video advertisements. Moreover, its admin dashboard — like others — provide ad customization and live testing options along with payments and reports.

Pros

• No minimum page-views requirements, so it’s easy to join.
• Minimum payout is $50, same as RevContent and less than others.
• Various payment options including eCheck, Paypal, and Wire Transfer.

Cons

• No minimum requirements, so payment may be lesser than others.

Useful links

• About
• Sign up
• Publishers

Propeller Ads

Propeller Ads is another high-performing ad network. It services more than a billion users using ad formats like standard ads, native interstitial ads, and push notifications. It boasts of ad units bypassing ad blockers, which means, you get to generate more revenue (though it may disturb some of your visitors).

Pros

• Features various ad units that can bypass ad-blocking tools.
• Minimum payout is $5 — much less than other ad networks.
• Supports multiple ad types including on-click and interstitial ads.

Cons

• Minimum payout is $550 for Wire Transfer — more than others.

Useful links

• Sign up
• FAQs

RevContent

RevContent is another reliable advertising network, which presents great monetizing options for your blog or website. It focuses on quality or quantity blogs and sites, so your blog or site gets better engagement rates. Upon sign up, it offers an admin interface for you to manage ads and payment reports.

Pros

• Payout limit is $50 for PayPal — even less than Media.net.
• Multiple ad formats including display, mobile, and video ads.

Cons

• Hard approval process since they opt for quality only.
• PayPal is the only payout option, unlike as with Media.net.

Useful links

• About
• Sign up
• FAQs

Amazon Native Shopping Ads

Amazon — the largest e-commerce store — has its own ad network for showing shopping ads directly to the potential customers. It pays handsome per-click rates, which is better or comparable to Google AdSense. Its Native Ads is much like affiliate marketing, but it’s better since you mostly earn flat rates.

Pros

• Features three types of ads, letting you pick per your blog or website — recommendation ads, search ads, and custom ads.
• Easy to join in and show advertisements if compared to AdSense.

Cons

• Minimum payment threshold is $100, which is more than others.
• Payments are done via Check, Direct Deposit, and Gift Certificate.
• Works best if your blog or site has traffic from the EU and the US.

Useful links

• Sign up
• Help

RevenueHits

RevenueHits is another reliable platform for getting ads for your blog or site. Its contextual and geo-targeted ads help you generate the best revenue from all your digital assets including applications, search widgets, toolbars, etc. The network supports multiple ad types like standard ads, pop-ups, and widgets.

Pros

• Minimum payment is $20, which is among the low thresholds.
• Supports various payment options like Payoneer, PayPal, and Wire.

Cons

• Payment threshold is $500 for Wire (more than a few networks).

Useful links

• Sign up
• FAQs

Adcash

Adcash is another popular platform for adding advertisements to your blog or website for generating some passive income. It offers premium ad units such as in-stream and pop-under videos to standard ads. After getting accepted, you’ll have an admin dashboard for customizing ads and checking reports.

Pros

• Multiple payment options including Payoneer, PayPal, Skrill, WebMoney, as well as Wire Transfer, unlike the above two ad networks.
• Supports multiple ad types including standard and video ads.

Cons

• Payout threshold is €100 — more than the above networks.

Useful links

• About
• Sign up
• FAQs

Bidvertiser

Bidvertiser is another good advertising network that works as an alternative to Google AdSense. What makes it special is it pays for every visitor who clicked on an advertisement — even if the click doesn’t convert, unlike many others. It offers various ad formats including banners, pop-ups, sliders, and more.

Pros

• Easy and quick approval process, unlike Google AdSense.
• Payment threshold is just $10, which is the lowest on this page.
• Multiple payment options like Bitcoin, PayPal, and Wire Transfer.

Cons

• Serves non-contextual, non-relevant ads, unlike many networks.

Useful links

• About
• Sign up
• FAQs

EvaDav

EvaDav is one of the new ad networks that focus on push notifications. Of course, it supports other ad types as well like banners, native content, video ads, and more. It reaches worldwide visitors, allowing you to generate revenues for traffic from anywhere in the world, unlike Amazon Native Shopping Ads.

Pros

• Payment threshold is $25, which is lower than many others.
• Multiple payment options such as Bank Wire, PayPal, Skrill, etc.
• Referral program that earns you 5% of your referrals’ earnings.

Cons

• Minimum payment is $1000 for Bank Wire (more than others).

Useful links

• About
• Publisher (Sign up)

Sovrn //Commerce

Sovrn //Commerce — formerly VigLink — is one of a kind ad network that’s best suited for blogs and sites linking to business or e-commerce sites. It converts the links on your site to affiliate links automatically, allowing you to earn commissions from them. So, it’s quite different from Google AdSense.

Pros

• Minimum payout is just $10, i.e., the lowest among all networks.
• Multiple payment options including ACH, Check, PayPal, and Wire.

Cons

• Payments are processed after 90 days (longer than many others).

Useful links

• About
• Sign up

That’s all about the ad networks that work well as alternatives to Google AdSense. Though Media.net, Infolinks, and Propeller Ads are some of the best ad networks, there are more options based on your site’s requirements and traffic performance. So, you must consider them before picking an ad network.

The post 10 Best Alternatives For Google AdSense appeared first on Hongkiat.

In our interconnected, globalized world, there’s a more significant need than ever for the kind of human connection and understanding that storytelling can convey.

New technologies such as the big data revolution, data visualization, and data analytics tools allow us to raise the quality of our stories by backing them up with relevant data.

Probably the most popular form of data storytelling is infographics, but more and more websites use data stories and visual data to convey its message more effectively and engage their audiences on a deeper level.

In this post, we will take a look at how data storytelling works in practice and how it can help you to make your writing more persuasive and authentic.

How Data Storytelling can level-up your writing

Data need stories, and stories need data. Data without stories are dull, bare, and it’s hard to make sense of them. Stories without data are less trustworthy and might be seen as if they were just arbitrary made up.

If we use data to back up our stories, we can prevent presumptions of being inaccurate or that we manipulate our data. Well-chosen data can serve as proof.

Data storytelling or data journalism is a new form of written communication in which the author analyzes a large data set and filters out the relevant part.

In other words, data storytellers transform big data into small data to find the accurate and digestible data set that they can use to illustrate their story the best.

In fact, data storytelling is such a big thing nowadays that this summer Google launched a new product under the name of Google News Lab to support it.

Google News Lab explains quite accurately how data-driven storytelling can level up the quality of your writing:

“New platforms and technologies have opened up the playing field for reporting, and journalists and entrepreneurs are developing more dynamic, engaging, and powerful ways to tell stories than ever before”.

Of course, data storytelling is not only restricted to journalists, but everyone who needs to convey a message, such as copywriters, designers, marketers, and bloggers.

How to find relevant data

We are lucky as these days there are many resources out there that weren’t available previously for the public.

Just think about open data, open access publishing, or MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) that ship high-quality and accessible knowledge to all parts of the world. As the world is full of information, finding the relevant data is more and more a “needle in a haystack” kind of problem.

The first task of data storytelling is to find the needle you need (the small dataset) in a vast haystack of data. You need a needle that matches the thread (the narrative) of the story so you can use them together to sew a valid and robust piece (the data story) that you or your client can happily wear.

First of all, the data you find need to be trustworthy. The internet is full of misinformation, so you have to be cautious. Sometimes you can find the right information and useful hints in blog posts and forums, but these sources are better double-checked and backed up with other alternate sources.

The more prominent and more reputable a data source is, the better. University web sites, open access journals, national statistics offices such as the British Office for National Statistics, big reputable organizations such as the American Federal Reserve, or international organizations such as the UN usually serve information and a knowledge base that is reliable and trusted by the vast majority of people.

Google News Lab has several instructional videos about how to use Google’s different tools to find the relevant data you need to be a reliable and exciting data storyteller.

Here we mention three courses that we think are the most useful, but you can find information about many other Google Tools and Courses of Google News Lab.

1. Advanced Search

Google’s Advanced Search feature enables you to research with precision. If you click on the little gear icon on Google’s home page, you can select the “Advanced Search” option that takes you to the Advanced Search screen where you can fine-tune your search query.

You can search for the exact phrase, omit certain words, narrow your search based on language, region, domain, last update and file type, and there are many other options that can lead you to the most accurate dataset.

2. Public Data Explorer

Google’s Public Data Explorer is a handy data research and data visualization tool. It aggregates datasets from trusted sources such as the World Bank or the Eurostat, and lets you monitor change over time, and compare metrics based on region, industry, country, gender, and many other variables.

You can choose from many data visualization options such as line charts, bar charts, map charts, and bubble charts. You can even save the datasets you created in your Google Profile, so that you can return to them later. You can reach Public Data Explorer here.

3. Google Trends

Google Trends lets you explore different topics, and under its "Trending Stories" section, you can see which queries are the most searched on Google at that time. You can use this handy tool to see how the interest for a specific term has changed over time, and you can compare the popularity of different names, too.

You can also find the geographical regions where the given search term was the most popular, and Google Trends even offers the option to take a look at related searches. Google Trends has many cool use cases, for example, The Washington Post used it to produce a Daily Misery Index by analyzing depression-related search terms throughout the year.

How to find the right tools

After you have found the appropriate data, you need to visualize them. Public Data Explorer and Google Trends visualize data on the go, so if you use them, you don’t have to worry about how to present them to your visitors.

Google Maps also enables you to visualize geolocation-based data quickly. We have a great tutorial here on hongkiat.com about how to customize Google Maps to create interactive and information-rich maps that you can embed into your website.

Google has another cool geo-based data visualization tool called Google Earth Pro that was made free by Google. Google Earth Pro is not an online tool; you have to download it to your computer. The software provides you with a 3D interactive globe with sophisticated data visualization, analysis, and drawing tools.

The post How to Improve Writing Quality with Data Storytelling appeared first on Hongkiat.

Seems like a lot of work, eh? That’s not really an issue if blogging is nothing more than a hobby to you. But when your entire livelihood depends on your ability to churn out posts on a daily basis, spending too much time polishing each post is impractical and dangerous to your business.

Of course, quality isn’t something you should sacrifice, no matter how clogged up your blogging schedule is. To solve this dilemma, you can either hire an editor to clean up your work, or purchase editing software online.

But then, in those cases, there’s no real guarantee that you’ll get what you pay for. So what’s a blogger who’s strapped for time and cash to do? Why, use these free editing tools available online, of course!

1. After the Deadline

After the Deadline (AtD) doesn’t just flag and give suggestions for your spelling, grammar, and style. It also concisely explains the reasons behind the corrections given. That means that the longer you use AtD, the better a blogger you become!

According to the developers, AtD can:

• Recommend the right word 90 percent of the time;
• Detect approximately 1,500 misused words;
• Help you write clearly and concisely using thousands of rules in "Plain English" style
• Use statistics to find exceptions to grammar rules.

AtD is available as a plugin, add-on, or extension for platforms like WordPress, bbPress, Firefox, Google Chrome, OpenOffice.org Writer, and the IntenseDebate comment system.

2. ProWritingAid

Like AtD, ProWritingAid not only tells you what to improve, but also how to improve. It has the ability to generate a detailed analysis on overused words, sentence length, writing style, plagiarism, cliches, redundancies, "sticky" sentences, consistency, and the like.

Although you need to download the Premium version to enjoy all of its features, ProWritingAid’s free version is enough for most types of blog posts.

3. EditMinion

(This tool is no longer available)

Don’t let the site’s inelegant design fool you. EditMinion takes only a few seconds to check your work for the usual signs of weak writing, like adverbs, overuse of "said", passive voice, ending with prepositions, tricky homonyms and more.

EditMinion generates a report card for your reference, and allows you to add "hashtags" for easier editing. As of this writing, though, the site is still in Beta stage, so use it with care!

4. HemingwayApp

Ever wish you had Hemingway’s terse yet punchy writing style? Well, your wish can come true now, thanks to the brilliant minds behind HemingwayApp. Here, your copy will be assessed based on readability, number of adverbs, number of complex words, and number of times you use the passive voice.

The app also detects spelling errors, although it’s not much help in the grammar department. In case you need to use it offline, a desktop version of the app is also available for $5.

5. WordCounter

Whether you want to check for keyword frequency, or you just have a tendency to be repetitive with words, WordCounter.com is the answer. As its name suggests, WordCounter counts and ranks words according to frequency. The apps is great for reducing redundancy and/or repetitive writing in your copy.

You can also include "small" words, use only root words, and adjust the number of words listed by the app. You can use this primarily as an analysis tool, checking your drafts as you keep honing them to perfection.

6. ClicheFinder

Do cliches drive you crazy? If "Yes", ClicheFinder might be a godsend for you. Just paste your post in the space provided, click the "Find Cliches" button, and presto! Every cringe-worthy phrase will be highlighted in red. You can either rewrite these phrases to make them sound simpler and fresher, or toss them into the back-burner like the blights on language that they are (har har)!

If you experience the message "Unhandled Exception: An unhandled exception was thrown by the application," don’t be alarmed. It’s possible that your text doesn’t contain any cliches at all, so the system’s going all wonky on you.

Wrap Up

Naturally, all these programs have their pros and cons. Tools are only as good as the people who use them, and these six editing tools for bloggers are no different. It’s still up to you to decide whether their suggestions/corrections to your blog post are worth it or not. In any case, here’s to effective and efficient editing!

Do you know other free, downloadable, and/or safe editing programs for bloggers that haven’t been featured here? Share them in the comments section!

The post 6 Free Editing Tools to Improve Writing for Bloggers appeared first on Hongkiat.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It’s not. There are 3 very common mistakes that often lay waste to all the hard work you have put into your guest blogging efforts. Here’s how you won’t fall victim to them.

Recommended Reading: 8 Tips To Getting Your Guest Post Published

1. Not having a clear objective

The phenomenon of aimless guest blogging has been especially apparent since Google algorithms started becoming more quality-oriented. Don’t jump on the guest blogging bandwagon just because you see everyone else doing it. For any marketing effort to succeed in the long run, you must first have a clear objective in mind.

Picking the right limelight

Let’s say you’re looking to introduce your products or services to a particular market segment. You should then cast your attention to some of the top blogs in the industry that most of your prospective clients are likely to visit. This would help with building a credible image for your brand and generating qualified traffic.

The same goes for client acquisition. Submit guest posts to some renowned blogs that your prospective clients will likely visit.

Now, if your objective is to get backlinks, then your selection of target blogs will obviously change. A freelance writer myself, I made the mistake of guest blogging frequently on freelance writing blogs in the hope of getting clients. I did get traffic and backlinks from those guest posts, but not customers.

The reason? My potential clients are small businesses, tech startups, and web design companies, and not one of them visits freelance writing blogs. In short, you should develop strategic focus and be clear about your objectives because otherwise, your guest blogging efforts won’t give you much return.

2. Pitching low-quality & spun content

There’s probably nothing more detrimental to your brand image than pitching low-quality content – it’s a real brand killer! You should spend as much time on creating guest posts, if not more, as you would for your own blog as a poor guest post can actually do more damage to your brand image than a low-quality post on your own blog.

Unfortunately, an increasing number of guest bloggers are pitching used or spun content in their writing. First of all, spun content is not that hard to detect these days, and secondly, even if it doesn’t get identified, it still usually looks bad enough to be rejected.

Go for quality, instead of quantity

In my view, this tendency stems from the belief that you need to write a lot of guest posts to achieve any significant results – this is just plain wrong. Ask any content marketing expert and he would probably tell you to focus on the 80/20 rule, i.e. 80% of your results should come from 20% of your most focused efforts.

One high-quality guest post on a credible blog is indeed much better than 10 low-quality guest posts on substandard blogs.

By credible blogs, I’m in no way suggesting that you should target only the top blogs. Look for the mid-range blogs in your target niche with loyal readers and an active social media following. Unlike the top blogs, these blogs wouldn’t ask you for epic guest posts, but of course, they would also not accept any substandard work.

3. Wasting the exposure

The moment your guest post goes live, you’ll start getting referral traffic to your website from the links in your author bio. However, don’t make that common beginner’s mistake of letting your guard down at this stage. You need to have a clear plan for capitalizing on the traffic and exposure you get from your guest post.

One great way of doing that is routing the traffic to a particular landing page where you can make the visitors take action. For example, if your objective is to get subscribers for your new eBook, then all your referral traffic should be routed to your eBook subscription page. Similarly, if your objective is to acquire clients, then the traffic should be routed to either a dedicated sales landing page or your own services page.

In any case, just bear in mind that getting your guest post published is not the end of your guest blogging cycle – it’s just the first step.

Conclusion

As Google places more emphasis on high-quality content with each update to its search algorithm, guest blogging is bound to become more prominent in the near future. But in order to take full advantage of this highly effective marketing channel, you need to set your sights on the big picture instead of merely looking for short-term benefits.

Be clear about your objective(s) and avoid the mistakes we have looked at in this post, and you will increase your chances of success considerably.

The post 3 Common Mistakes in Guest Blogging to Avoid appeared first on Hongkiat.

Where, exactly, do you lose a user’s interest when telling a story? What are the key ideas that must be utilized when you’re attempting to convey a key set of ideas? Let’s look at the elements of a good, shareable story, and what goes into creating content that sticks in people’s minds.

Recommended Reading: How Telling Stories Can Nail You More Clients

Be like a politician

A story is like a marketing meta message from your client to your users. Think of a story like a democratic government, and your users as the voters. You, the designer, the political campaign machine — you develop key storytelling elements that excite and compel people, and get them fired up.

If they vote to share your content, then your campaign is a winner. If not, then it’ back to the drawing board.

Go back to the story

If you ever observe politicians running for office, you may start to notice something very peculiar: no matter what question they’re actually asked, they will always make a point of coming back around to their prepared “talking points”, or a specific set of topics that they wish to stress to voters.

People often express frustration with politicians for evading the question being asked, but part of the goal of politics is to shape public opinion in the direction the politician wants it to go.

You can do something similar (though not nearly as slimy and manipulative) with your own storytelling to make sure people get the main message. Crafting a list of key points that you absolutely want to convey no matter what will help you stick to only those ideas that get people the most excited.

Look for commonalities

It’s said that we humans are all far more alike than we are different. There’s no better example of this right now than the fascinating website, Humans of New York. Photographer Brandon Stanton finds people from all walks of life, and interviews them to draw out their unique, individual stories, which he then posts an excerpt from beneath their photograph.

It’s a brilliant example of the universality of storytelling in action, and the fact that Stanton’s book of the same name went straight to the top of the New York Times Bestseller list reinforces the idea that people are looking for common experiences with their fellow humans.

The very best storytellers find common joys, fears, complaints, and truths that bring people together and tell the story of how they can overcome their trials and succeed in accomplishing their goals. Pick things that everyone can relate to, universal ideas that people will always want to share with others.

Read Also: 5 (Genuine) Wedding Proposal Videos You Have To Watch

Use the right emotions

The fact that we have common emotions in storytelling is all well and good, but what if you want to cut to the chase, so to speak, and get people to really share what you create, enough so that it goes “viral” and puts you, the storyteller, in the spotlight?

Read Also: Top Tips & Resources To Creating Content People Want To Share

Nostalgia, frustration, anxiety, pride, surprise, amusement, and controversy are excellent storytelling emotions that make people want to share. Peace and contentment, on the other hand, are terrible for storytelling.

Nobody wants to share a story in which there is no conflict. Think about the last work of fiction you read. Did the protagonists simply float through the book with no conflict whatsoever, and then live happily ever after? Probably not.

Even nonfiction must contain some type of conflict within the story it’s trying to tell the reader.

Cut the fluff

Storytelling is very much like design. The more efficient and minimalistic it is, the better and more elegant a solution you will end up with. Each element must earn its way into your story. If it’s not serving any purpose, cut it out. Create easily digestible content.

This is a reason infographics are so popular these days. It’s a great way to amuse and inform people, and tell a story at the same time.

Read Also: 25 Interesting Infographics For Your Inspiration

Another efficiently simple storytelling medium is joke-telling. The best jokes are the ones with the least amount of setup and the most “punch” in the punchline. These types of jokes have been refined through numerous tellings, and all the current teller has to do is not mess it up (there is an art to telling a joke properly, after all).

The more you decide you don’t need to tell your story, the faster your audience will get the essence of what you’re saying, and the easier they’ll find it to share with others.

Read Also: 30 Clever Logo Parodies Of Famous Brands

Images matter!

Here’s where you really get to shine as a designer. Viral storytelling is so much more effective when there are images involved. Again, infographics are a perfect example. If people don’t have time to read a long, complex story, a compelling, well-designed image is the next best thing.

And a short, easily digestible video is even better, provided you post it in the appropriate places. What do I mean by that? It’s important to respect the digital medium you’re using, and tell your story in the way that the majority of people on the site want to hear it told.

Be mindful of where you share

People go on specific social networks for different reasons. This idea is outlined very well in Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. In it, he explains the differences between users of Tumblr versus Pinterest, Facebook versus Twitter, etc.

You need to know your audience and why they share the content they do in the places they do. If you’ve ever had the experience of being on a particular site, and feeling like the editors have made a misstep in how they presented their information to you, you know what I mean.

Read Also: Powerful Branding Techniques Through Social Media

Perhaps you didn’t feel like clicking on a video when the majority of the site is text. Or you were expecting to see more images and fewer words. You’re not always in the same frame of mind when you visit different places online, and neither is your audience.

Be aware of what kind of story they want, in which particular format, and give it to them.

What do you think?

What are some other things to consider when telling a story to your users? Have any interesting insights to share? Tell your own stories in the comments!

The post How to Tell Stories Others Want to Share appeared first on Hongkiat.