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When you’re planning to write, but before you’re actually writing, you create an outline. Unfortunately, most outlines are worthless. You need a better outline: a fat outline.
Outlines are helpful for mapping out the structure of a long piece of writing — anything more than 1,000 words (a couple of pages). An outline ought to help the people you’re working with — your boss, your clients, your editor — to understand what you’re going to write. It should also force you, the writer, to think clearly about content.
The problem is, traditional outlines don’t do this very well.
I’ve had the privilege of my writing being published on Forbes, Mashable, TechCrunch, Time, Fast Company, VentureBeat, Entrepreneur, and several other publications, and if you aspire to see your writing in mainstream publications like these, perhaps there is something in my story that will help you get there.
The writing I’ve had published has brought me speaking opportunities, a book deal, and more than 1000% growth for my business. I’ve been able to interview and network with my marketing and business heroes, all in the last two and a half years. Prior to that, my writing had never appeared in a mainstream publication. I was just a guy nobody had heard of, posting here and there on my blog, with a small handful of readers. This is the story of how everything changed. ...
Attempting to write 1667 words a day for 30 days during the month of November – also known as NaNoWriMo – is the perfect way to add a dose of discipline to your writing schedule. Many writing experts and published writers agree that successful writing is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.
NaNoWriMo, if nothing else, adds a healthy splash of sweat to your writing schedule.However, anyone who has attempted NaNoWriMo will have faced a number of obstacles on their journey to the end of the month. Fortunately, Stop Procrastinating, the productivity website, has surveyed 2 000 NaNoWriMo writers ahead of this year’s November writing challenge to find out what kept them going until the very end....
From posting a photo of my "amazung view of the muntains" to sending an email prematurely, I know that feeling of regret all too well.
We're all trying to maintain control of our online footprint as best we can. But with so many opportunities to mess up on the web, it's easy to make silly tech mistakes from time to time.
Luckily for us, there are ways to correct some of these embarrassing slip-ups. I consulted my colleagues and scoured the web (hat tip to you, PureWow) to find the following tech hacks that are so simple and yet so life-changing, you won't believe you ever lived without them....
This free tool will analyze your headline to determine the Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) score. As you know, reaching your customers in an deep and emotional way is a key to successful copywriting, and your headline is unquestionably the most important piece of copy you use to reach prospects.
Your headline will be analyzed and scored based on the total number of EMV words it has in relation to the total number of words it contains. This will determine the EMV score of your headline.
In addition to the EMV score, You will find out which emotion inside your customer's your headline most impacts...
I like to ask people when I meet them, “What’s your story?”
It’s more interesting to me than typical questions about education, major, city of origin, job title, or sports team. All of these things might play a part in their story, but story implies something much broader and more personal. It’s the narrative of your past, present, and expected future. It’s the drama of your own life as you see it playing out.
When I think of the most interesting and talented people I know, I think of their story. I don’t think of their status. “Oh, he’s a graduate student” is a status. So is, “Married, salesperson, lives in Ohio”, or, “Studying business at USC”. A status is a static snapshot of a handful of labels attached to a person based on some institutions or external standards. It conveys nothing really unique that gets to the core of the person, or the animating force behind their actions and ideas. There is no passion in it. No sense of direction and creativity....
Why nitpick about grammar? Because if you don’t, people will assume you don’t know what you’re talking about — they often equate sloppy speech or writing with sloppy thinking. As a result, you may miss out on career and business opportunities. The stakes are that high.
This brief quiz will help you gauge how well you know some basic points of grammar. At the end, see how your score compares with the average on hbr.org....
Your headline will determine the success of your article.This is something that Vincent Musetto, a former editor of the New York Post who passed away in June, knew to be true -- even when newspapers were only products of paper and ink. He was a master at structuring sentences and organizing words into wacky, surprising, and memorable ways.
Consider his most famous headline: Headless Body in Topless Bar
Or his personal favorite from his work: Granny Executed in Her Pink Pajamas
I wouldn't hesitate to click. According to a study from Upworthy -- a site with a polarizing headline formula -- traffic to an article can vary by 500% based on the headline. ...
1) Stephen KingIf you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.
2) Suzanne CollinsAll the writing elements are the same. You need to tell a good story… You’ve got good characters… People think there’s some dramatic difference between writing ‘Little Bear’ and the ‘Hunger Games,’ and as a writer, for me, there isn’t.
3) George OrwellFor a creative writer possession of the ‘truth’ is less important than emotional sincerity....
What is the most valuable skill of a blogger?
Most people say ‘being able to write ‘well’. While this definetly is a very valuable skill to have, there is one variable that is often overlooked, and that is being able to write fast!
If you are only able to write one blog post every solar eclipse, it will take you an eternity before you can be considered a succesful blogger, or get better for that matter. You dont have that much time. This is why i recommend to write at least 500 words every single day, and do so within one hour or faster.
Here’s my method to writing fast without messing up....
Considering the amount of content that marketers put out there and the investments that goes with it, how great is their ROI? I mean, how many of them generate more visitors to their site, as well as increase sales?
Persuasive copy that converts boils down to understanding how to trigger the right emotions that will induce a potential customer to want to buy from you.
In this article, I’ll show you how to use five proven copywriting strategies to drive both search traffic and rankings to the top....
Your headline is the first contact with your content, and must grab your target audiences’ attention. At this point you have no control – the reader does. They either click the link to your content or they don’t. The job of the content creator is to make sure that they choose the first option, and read and share your carefully crafted content.
How much time do you spend coming up with a killer title? Reading stats like this one by Copyblogger should make you sit up and take notice.“
On average 8 out of 10 people will read your headline but only 2 out of ten will read the rest of your content.”....
Colonel Sanders had his “11 herbs and spices” that were (and still are) mixed in two separate facilities. Coca-Cola’s secret ingredient, affectionately called “Merchandise 7X” has been under lock and key since 1886; the entire formula since 1925.
Secrets build mystique. What does any of this have to do with writing articles, blog posts or copy?
Limited information heightens curiosity.Take the subjects out of your headlines or blog post titles and social posts and replace them with the word “this,” “it” or “here” and see what happens....
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I have studied a wide variety of top notch writers (who are also great marketers) over the years and noticed that they all have certain skills in common.
In this article, I’ll break down these skills, showing you examples of them in action and ways to develop them.
By the end of this post, you should have a concrete game plan of how to become a better writer for the benefit of your business....
We’ve pulled together every single copywriting formula we’ve ever seen to create the ultimate guide – the most complete handbook – to copywriting formulas.
This one post will help you write all your copy faster and with greater likelihood of success.
You should be using copywriting formulas whenever you write anything.
They eliminate the guesswork that makes a lot of bad copy bad copy. They will help you face the Blank White Page without cowering. They’ll help you generate A/B test ideas faster. They’ll help you pinpoint what’s going wrong in a button… in a headline… or even in a video script....
So in this post, I’ll share 12 non-fiction editing strategies to make your writing powerful and extremely effective.
You’ll do much better than your first drafts. Trust me.
But before we begin, I want to tell you about some distinguishing features of great writing. ...
Communications experts often preach the importance of face-to-face interaction.
When you hear a person’s voice and see his facial expressions and gestures, you get a clearer understanding of his message.
What if there were punctuation marks that translated those physical cues and vocal fluctuations for you? You know, like a punctuation mark to denote sarcasm, irony or how much you love your reader.
If that sounds intriguing, check out this infographic from Mental Floss; it reveals 13 little-known punctuation marks that you’re probably going to want to start using....
Coming up with an epic book title can be frustrating.
It’s equal parts art and science, and can really test your limits....
Oxford Dictionaries announced its latest additions on Wednesday, highlighting the things we were talking about in the summer of ’15—like angry Internet commenters, gender identity and what a sweet time of day “beer o’clock” is.
Oxford Dictionaries is the branch of the Oxford family that focuses on modern language—words that people are using now and how they’re using them—which makes their barriers to entry different than the venerable, historical Oxford English Dictionary. Their new words often arise from fresh technology and pop culture and might include Internet slang (like new entry pwnage) that would get laughed out of the OED’s admittance office.
As with every update, the additions reflect who English-speakers are. Sometimes we are microaggressive brain-farters. At other times we are butthurt pocket-dialers. At others still, we are simply hangry fat-shamers or rando Redditors....
To clear the confusion and help you create headlines that will capture the interest of your target audience, we’ve put together a new guide, How to Cook Up a Killer Content Marketing Headline. In it, you’ll find an outline of the most important rules, along with some suggestions for spicing up your efforts once you’ve mastered the basics.
But to get you started off on the right foot, I’ve put together some additional tips and tools that you can use to generate unique headlines, evaluate how well they perform, and attract your target audience without having to resort to sneaky tactics that may turn off readers....
Headlines are more important now than they've ever been. According to research by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 51 percent of all U.S. online readers identified a compelling headline as the reason why they clicked on a given story.
The quality of the article's source was only responsible for motivating 37 percent of people to click. What that means for you, as a content marketer, is that the strength of your headline is responsible for whether or not the rest of your article gets read. You could have a landmark piece of research written in eloquent, captivating style, but without a strong headline to bring someone in, it won't matter.
These seven headline qualities will help you craft the great titles necessary to attract that initial traffic...
The key to an emotionally engaging headline? Context Words: a group of 1,072 words in the English language that can increase a person’s interest and attention in a specific message.
Context Words were uncovered through EEG testing and something called the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, a way to measure the correlation between two variables. In this case, we were looking to understand the relationship between word choice and the brain’s emotional response.
We’ve split the Context Words into four categories: insight words, time words, space words and motion words.Insight words provide more detail, i.e. closure, admit, inform, think. Time words refer to a point in time, i.e. after, fast, long, prior. Motion and space words help us understand where something is happening, i.e. appear, replace, arrive, enter....
A friend works in the legal department of a Fortune 25 company where, apparently, they communicate entirely in corporate-speak.
Here, alphabetized for your convenience, is the best list I have ever seen of corporate metaphors, catchphrases and clichés you would be embarrassed to utter outside a teak-paneled boardroom.
Bonus points to anyone who can use three or more of these in a single sentence....
Yes, content marketing is all about telling your existing and potential customers how your product or service can make a big difference in their lives without sounding like a desperate door to door salesman. It is not just about jotting down a few lines on how to use something or what it does but building strong relationships with your growing audience.
But what does it take to make content that really does click with people? Our industry fondly calls them ‘buzzwords’. Buzzwords are basically marketer fascinations that last for a couple of months; basically until they find another interesting way to sell their products and services. The most difficult thing to do here is keep a tab on what’s trending, the buzzspeak as well create a content strategy and execute it on a regular basis.
Yes, we understand running from pillar to post is what you’re being paid for but let’s make that a little easier for you so you can tread at your own speed.
Here are 10 buzzwords and content marketing definitions to watch out for this year....
To a writer, there's nothing scarier, yet full of pristine possibility, than a blank Word document. After YouTube's most prominent mixologist Mamrie Hart got a book deal last year, she suddenly found herself with hundreds of those blank slates lined up in a row, like so many cars to be jumped by Evel Kneivel's motorcycle. Somehow, she managed to clear them all—but not without some serious challenges along the way.
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Josh Bernoff says fat is good – that is when you're writing an outline and intending to share it with editors, your boss or others.