Posts Tagged ‘article marketing’
5 Blogging Trends You Should Not Ignore
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
Blogging has been around for a long time and while its basic foundation remains the same (write and publish), some changes do occur that may be passing trends or they may become permanent. You need to be on top of the latest blogging trends and keep up to date with content marketing strategies in order to remain competitive.
To keep you up to date on what’s going on now, this post will look into five of the trends you can expect moving forward. This will help you stay current with the latest practices and may inspire you to do something different on your blog.
1) Visuals
Visuals have always been a large part of blog content and are on the rise. And that’s a plus for your brand’s visibility and retention.
Although using visuals is good, you’ll need to use custom graphics as opposed to generic images. People tend to ignore stock photos these days.
With tailored graphics, you have the advantage of branding. When you use custom-made visuals, you can choose color palettes and fonts that resonate with your blog’s design and viewpoint. This makes your blog posts and pages look consistent and not patched together. You can also design visuals like charts, infographics, and graphs that directly reference the content they are part of.
If you’re not a designer, you can still take advantage of this blogging trend with tools like Canva, Visme, and Prezi. They’re perfect for beginners who are not knowledgeable about design. These tools come with pre-built templates, fonts, and color palettes that make designing custom graphics easier. They also have an option for creating/importing your own color palettes and fonts.
Since blogs are becoming longer and more detailed, design and interactivity become more important. Visual content offers readers a way to scan your content without reading the entire post.
2) Interactivity
Since people’s attention span has increasingly dropped over the years, interactivity has become a more important way to keep them engaged. You can embed interactive videos and also interactivity to those videos like hotspots and time triggers such as popups and CTAs to move viewers to certain areas of the video in order to reach a particular time stamp. You can use the Vimeo platform that can do this right out of the box.
By using a website such as Giphy, you can use animated images called GIFs to add some color and humor to your content in order to make it less boring. Once you’ve decided on a GIF, it can be inserted into your content by using either autoembeds or add it via an image block.
3) Originality
In an environment where websites tend to repackage the same information over and over, being original adds freshness to your blog, establishes your commitment to your readers, shows your thought leadership, and can immediately make you stand out.
There are several ways to make your content original. You can talk about a distinctive topic, provide a unique perspective, or conduct your own research. Conducting your own authentic research is the easiest way to level up your blog. However, not everyone has the bandwidth to do original research. So, you can reach out to others in your industry and conduct your own surveys using Google Forms and Typeform.
You can also tweet about your queries using the hashtag #JournoRequest on Twitter.
4) Content Experience
A shift from consuming content to experiencing it is a bigger blogger trend to focus on going forward. You can no longer simply deliver accurate information to your readers. You’ll have to consider other factors to make your content more appealing. You can do this by focusing on core web vitals and improving your overall content environment. Core web vitals are measurements of key aspects of page speed and user experience that also influence search ranking.
Some examples of a bad content ecosystem (environment) are:
Lots of popups or other interruptions and distractions like multi-step cookie notices
Autoplaying audio and videos
Web design problems such as low contrast among others
Bad website or information structure that leaves visitors not knowing what to do
Your goal is to make sure that each section of content is part of a bigger puzzle that makes sense.
5) Cross-Channel Promotion
One of the trends that will be dominant is cross-channel promotion, a marketing strategy that integrates all your marketing channels and unifies their plans, data, and goals across the board.
Just churning out blog posts is no longer enough to be successful on the internet. You now need to invest your efforts in other marketing channels like social media, SEO, and email marketing.
Unlike multi-channel marketing, which also uses several channels to attract customers with each channel working independently, this cross-channel promotion uses all channels to push out the same message at the same time.
The first thing you need to accomplish this is a Customer Data Platform (CDP). CDPs can help consolidate and organize consumer data from all your channels in one place. Three good sources are Bloomreach, Insider, and Segment.
Then you can use micro-segmentation to group your audience by different demographic details, characteristics, and buying behaviors so you can hyper-personalize your content and marketing channels to suit prospects where they are in their journey.
Some examples are starting an email with the reader’s name, writing content to target readers’ needs, adjusting mailing frequency to suit their needs, and otherwise catering to whatever else your audience is looking for. This is a great way to stand out while blogging.
Even though blogging is a well-established medium, there are trends that come and go. Staying on top of these developments allows you to decide which ones you want to use and when. Most of these 5 blogging trends you should not ignore heavily focus on user experience. The best trend to follow is figuring out how to better serve your readers with the content you write and how you present it. In doing so, you’ll end up with a better blog than when you started.
The Ideal Length for Blog Articles
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
Because your business strategy is in place, you should have already determined your audience.
Your audience should be a determining factor when deciding on an ideal blog post length as well.
You need to consider these questions when determining your audience and your ideal blog post length.
** Which social media platforms do your audience share content from the most?
** What types of media sources are they following?
** What types of content are they sharing?
** How long are the blog posts that they are engaging with?
Word count is not a standalone ranking factor. It only has value if the content is of great quality.
A few years ago, the average blog post was usually somewhere between 500 and 800 words or even less.
Now long-form content is dominant.
There is no magic number for every post every time.
What is the average length of a blog post?
Although there is no average length per se, there are suggested lengths for different industries.
Financial technology (FinTech) – 2,000 – 2.150 words
The topics in this industry are fairly complex so they require a lot of depth. For adequate coverage, you should aim for between 2,000 – 2,250 words with a significant number of data-driven images like graphs and charts.
Finance – 2,100 – 2,500 words
Research has shown these numbers to be ideal for the largest volume of organic traffic in the finance industry.
Manufacturing – 1,700 – 1,900 words
The manufacturing industry includes chemicals, textiles, machines, and heavy equipment. There might be differing opinions regarding the word count. But, on the whole, 1,700 – 1,900 is a safe number.
Sales – 2,500 – 2,700 words
Sales is a wide umbrella covering many different areas. The most successful posts in this industry have a high word count.
Retail – 1,500 – 1,700 words
Retail drives the U.S. economy, whether it’s massive chains or mom-and-pop stores.
Online retail has experienced massive growth over recent years, and like manufacturing, the retail industry can involve a lot of different types of content.
So, 1,500 – 1,700 words or even less is sufficient to explain a product or service.
While images are always important across the board, for retail-based articles they’re especially critical.
Real estate – 1,800 -1,900 words
Real estate is an incredibly competitive industry in which you’ll need to specialize in a few strategic areas and be able to deliver expert advice to your readers.
You’ll need to master local SEO.
Home and garden – 1,100 -1,200 words
The word count for this industry is much lower than for the rest because these types of posts are more visual-centric and use lots of pictures and how-to videos to demonstrate their products.
Tech – 800 – 1,000 words
Most tech articles are a short commentary on a product, technology developments, or events, so 1,000 words is a reasonable count.
Gadgets – 300 – 500 words
After talking about long-form content being best, this seems incredibly low.
There are always exceptions. You probably don’t need to go on and on about a new gadget. Just be practical and cover the background, key features, nice images, pricing, etc.
You want to give readers a clear idea of what to expect if they buy it.
Marketing/advertising – 2,500 – 3,000 words
Just about everyone in marketing engages in content marketing. Which means a lot of content.
In this area, giving value with a high word count will help you to stand out from the competition.
Healthcare – 2,000 – 2,150 words
Healthcare is a huge industry. Not only are there major publications, but there are so many scholarly articles that feature original research from top universities.
To get your content noticed and shared, you must create top-level articles that are filled with valuable data.
Fashion – 800 – 950 words
As with tech gadgets, there’s no need to over-state fashion content. This number of words will allow you to adequately discuss fashion trends, styles, or industry models.
It goes without saying; be sure to include plenty of images.
Recruiting – 900 – 1,000 words
This industry content tends to be statistics-heavy but fairly short.
Food – 1,400 – 1,900 words
There are a whole lot of people writing about the food industry, and food blogs have increased.
Be sure to include beautiful images to make an instant connection with readers.
Travel – 1,500 – 1,850 words
This should be long enough to entirely cover topics like travel tips, destinations, useful gadgets, and more.
Film – 1,500 – 1,700 words
This industry keeps growing. To stand out you have to create substantial, long-form posts.
Producing content is not all about length. There are other variables that determine the success of your blog articles.
** Substance – The most basic consideration is what you’re trying to say. It may require 150 words or 10,000 words.
** Style – Of course, writing styles vary and will affect your content. Some styles will use content that is short, brief, and to the point, and other times it’s conversational and interactive. The style will affect the length of your content.
** Frequency – It takes time to write good content. Some bloggers post once a week while others put out short posts daily. The frequency depends on how much you can manage.
** Format – Your format has a great impact on its readability. You should break your content into small sections so readers can easily skim it. You can do this by using lots of subheadings, a few images throughout the article, and short paragraphs.
** Purpose – What is the purpose or purposes of the article? You may want to spread brand awareness, drive social engagement, provide education, grow email lists, or improve SEO. All these are sub-goals related to your ultimate goal of making conversions.
** Audience – You have to create content based on what your particular audience needs and wants. It should be based on their passions, interests, and their problems.
** Medium – When you post a video, meme, or infographic, word count doesn’t matter. With an infographic, you might use around 100 words to introduce the topic.
Why is long-form content best?
You can cover your topic with a level of depth that’s clearly impossible in a shorter post. So, long-form is perceived as high quality.
As most people don’t read word for word, long-form content is perfect for skimming. What people do is scan and check out headlines, subtitles, and bullet points, and look at the images.
Research shows that most visitors only read about 20 percent of an article.
It seems that creating content with a high word count leaves readers feeling as though they’ve just read something very impressive when they’ve finished.
Short, thin content can’t provide this certain sense of satisfaction.
As long as you provide value to your readers, they’ll appreciate a short or long article. So, use this information to determine the ideal length for blog articles that works for both you and your reader.
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Get Started With Creative Writing
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
Creativity is using imagination or original ideas in producing artistic work. Creative writing is using words in an artistic way to express emotion.
There are different styles of creative writing including fiction, memoirs, poetry, movie and television scripts, plays, and songs. However, in digital marketing creative writing refers primarily to copywriting and storytelling in which you can use text-based and audio-visual formats for creative writing.
How Do You Write Creative Content?
You can use the following five tips to get started:
1. Define your brand or purpose
Give your brand or product purpose. Give it a human touch that is more than a name, logo, color, or tagline. What is the core philosophy, and what does the brand or product stand for? What kind of emotional response or reaction does it produce from your target audience?
Answering these questions will help you talk about what you’re offering effectively through creative writing, whether that’s a blog, impactful videos, or some other way.
2. Use storytelling to build an emotional connection
People love a good story.
They like hearing about interesting people who have overcome challenges that we can all relate to.
This technique can be used in an email series, on a landing page, or in a short video. Whatever the format, it should include three basic features:
Opening – Show how the character of the story had a normal life until something happened to change that.
Conflict – Show how his/her life was threatened if s/he didn’t respond to the problem. What did this journey look like as the challenge was undertaken?
Dialogue – Start a conversation about the journey.
3. Use interactive content
Don’t limit your creativity to blogs or articles. Now there is no shortage of interactive audio-visual options to use in your creative writing. This type of content is quick to scan and easily engages your target audience.
Some of the formats you can use are:
Images
Videos
Quizzes
Polls
Memes
Infographics
Calculators and tools
Webinars
Image sliders
Surveys
4. Use fewer words
Unlike a play, novel, or movie script, in digital marketing creative writing is usually short-form content because people generally have a short attention span. They want information immediately.
5. Read
If you’re not an avid reader, it’s a good idea to develop a reading habit because creative writing calls for inspiration from different sources.
Reading makes you empathetic as you can step into the characters’ shoes and understand their feelings. You can incorporate these feelings into your creative writing, and of course, reading also expands your knowledge and increases your vocabulary.
You can familiarize yourself with the creative writing of authors and experts by reading short stories, fiction, poetry, or anything that inspires you to think creatively.
What Else Can You Do To Get Started With Creative Writing?
1. Acquaint yourself with literary devices
Literary devices or literary techniques are specific structures that writers often use to add meaning or create more compelling stories for the reader. Some common examples are metaphor, alliteration, hyperbole, and imagery. These techniques can give the reader a greater understanding and meaning of the writer’s intent.
There’s no limit to creativity when using literary devices since they provide wide-ranging creative freedom which can generate impactful writing. Start practicing with metaphors, alliteration, and imagery and you’ll soon begin unleashing your creativity.
2. Use your own writing style
Analyze your writing to understand your strengths and weaknesses. When you write you want your target audience to recognize you. Is your style descriptive, persuasive, or maybe humorous while getting your point across? You should take the reader on a journey that includes a beginning, middle, and end as mentioned earlier – opening, conflict, and dialogue.
The goal of creative writing is to find new ways to tell stories that can surprise and delight audiences.
3. Challenge yourself
Every element of your writing requires unique thought processes. You can research writing exercises online and use them to improve your writing skills. Your readers will appreciate content that flows smoothly and effortlessly. It takes practice, but you can use these tips to get started with creative writing.
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Use A SEO Copywriting Strategy
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
Copywriting involves the creation of textual content for the needs of your target market. It’s broad and includes written content for blogs, advertisements, product catalogs, emails, print media, and websites.
It requires communication with your clients to know what they want and the reason for the copy you’re writing. Understanding your target market or the audience for whom you’re writing is a must.
You need the following for copywriting:
1. A computer or a smartphone
2. Internet connectivity
3. A document app or writing tool like Google docs, Draftable.com, and access to a content management system
4. A tool for checking plagiarism, like CopyScape or another
5. Tools for checking grammar and sentence structure, e.g., Grammarly
What does a copywriter do?
Copywriters write for the internet, and their content is informative for businesses and is designed to guide readers in their own research.
A copywriter is a lot more than just a wordsmith.
As a copywriter you:
Obviously, write
Research
Interview
Edit
Proofread
Plan and implement marketing campaigns, and much more.
The kinds of things copywriters write include:
White papers. Non-government white papers are about 1,500-2,500 words and are informative, educational documents that explain the origins of a problem and how it might be solved. Often that solution will be linked to what the client sells, but the majority of the white paper will be objective and useful. These tend to be gated behind a form, and are used for lead capture.
Case studies. These are short articles explaining how you’ve helped your customers.
Blog posts. These are generally a bit more informal or opinionated, but this varies from client to client.
Emails. Email campaigns are for attracting interest, raising awareness, and prompting an action. They should be short, enticing, and informative to help turn leads into customers.
Social media posts. Social media also requires copywriting for those limited-character tweets and clever Facebook updates.
Website copy. Writing for the web requires a whole other skill set, although many copywriters have it.
Today, it’s essential to have a SEO copywriting strategy for your business. It may be even more important than your social media strategy.
SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of improving your website to get more organic traffic, free traffic from people performing internet searches.
You may have to change your website design, content, and other non-technical features to get better results. Your website should be designed to attract traffic, without you having to pay for it.
This is a way you can continually get traffic, and it pays off in the long run. SEO is used to get your website’s landing pages to rank on a search engine’s first page of results for a particular word or phrase.
SEO copywriting is writing copy with this in mind and maximizing your opportunity for getting free traffic to whatever website, landing page, or offer you have.
SEO is not something that you do once and expect it to keep working. It’s an ongoing process, and you should be ready to keep investing your time and effort in it.
What skills does a copywriter need?
There are certain skills a copywriter must have which include:
Attention to detail: You need to be able to evaluate your work or copy from an objective point of view. This is necessary to properly proofread and edit your work in order to improve or enhance its quality.
Writing: Everyone can write, but not all can do it well. You don’t have to be a top-notch writer before you can attempt copywriting, although improving and fine-tuning your writing skill goes a long way in helping you become a good or even great copywriter.
Creativity: Creativity involves being imaginative and able to view things from different perspectives. Clients rely on the creativity of copywriters to make a copy interesting or engaging to a target audience. When you are creative, the development of copy ideas is easier.
Listening: You must be a good listener to be a good copywriter. By understanding your client’s needs and requirements you can more clearly meet their needs. Being a good listener helps you to become an authority in copywriting.
Along with the proper tools and setup, you need to use a SEO copywriting strategy in your business.
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Beginner Blogger Mistakes to Avoid (Part 2)
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
In part 1 of Beginner Blogger Mistakes to Avoid, we discussed 6 mistakes.
Following are the remaining mistakes to avoid:
7. Not tying specific posts into the larger picture.
Specific posts should relate to the broader picture and to your readers’ concerns.
Solution: Identify the problems and concerns they’re facing.
What will be the benefit for readers taking action?
What do they think are the consequences of not taking action?
8. Using stream-of-consciousness writing style.
You don’t want your writing to be a brain dump. People usually scan a blog post. So, it needs to be well organized.
Solution: Use a template, outline, and section headers.
Write an outline before you begin your post.
Make a list of the top things you want readers to get from your post. Then, pare those into larger section headers. Putting in a section header every few paragraphs. This makes your blog post more enjoyable and easier to read.
9. Relying on the conceptual rather than concrete.
Don’t rely on conceptional and vague ideas. Include actual, actionable steps to be taken for success.
Solution: Include actionable steps to achieve success.
Content creation should be useful. Your audience should be given something. It could be a “how-to” recommendation for a particular strategy or simply a suggestion for a tool or tactic to make a process easier.
10. Not using data as evidence.
When you make claims in your post, use data and research to back them up.
Solution: Use data to support your statements.
If you say that people prefer one social media platform over another, you need to show proof of your argument.
Some places to find great data include:
Hubspot Research
Pew Research Center
Marketing Sherpa
HubSpot’s State of Inbound Report
11. Not adding enough context.
Not using examples to back up that what you say is important.
Solution: Use visual aids and additional content to illustrate your ideas.
Saying that one product is a better bargain than another is fine. Don’t just make the statement and move on. Add more content to show why by actually comparing the two and showing the additional benefits of the one over the other. Write for the person who’s just learning about your topic.
For more specificity, you can hyperlink to other posts that relate to your current topic.
12. Borderline Plagiarizing
Don’t copy and paste content to your blog. Your post must be in your own words and in your style of writing.
Solution: Give proper credit.
If you quote someone’s content, you must cite the source.
13. Not Editing.
You’re not done when you finish writing the post.
Solution: You must take time to edit your writing.
Proofread your post. Check for typos, sentence structure, there/their type mistakes, format, and flow.
14. Trying to be perfect.
Don’t try to be perfect. It won’t work. You’ll always find one more thing to correct.
Solution: Publish. You can update later.
After you’ve put in about thirty minutes editing, just publish the post. You can always update it at a later time.
15. Not being consistent.
It’s important to be consistent for your sake and so your subscribers learn to know what to expect.
Solution: Use a calendar.
Before you start blogging, set up a planning strategy that includes how often to post, dates to post, when to do related duties to prepare for each post such as research, the actual writing, etc.
You can use Google Calendar, excel spreadsheets, other sources or just make your own when first starting to blog.
16. Concentrating on fast traffic.
Your focus should be on long-term traffic.
Solution: The ROI of your blog is the accumulation of organic traffic over time.
Publish content that has durable relevance on a consistent basis, to help drive traffic. This is known as “evergreen” content. It’s great quality and is relevant year after year with minimal attention required.
17. Not growing your subscription list.
To get traffic, leads, and eventual customers you need to get subscribers. You can add a call to action (CTA) to your blog to grow subscribers.
Solution: Set up a subscription CTA and email newsletter.
Use your email marketing tool to set up a welcome email for new subscribers and place a simple sign-up form at the top of your blog. You can also use PPC advertising, email, and dedicated landing pages for subscribers that direct people through channels like social media and other pages on your website.
Some other things you can do include offering incentives for signups, promoting on your “About Us” page, adding footers that act like CTAs to blog articles, and using SEO (search engine optimization) for each article you post.
These are beginner blogger mistakes to avoid.
Not making these mistakes and using the suggested solutions to avoid them should set you well on your way to productive blogging.
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Beginner Blogger Mistakes to Avoid (Part 1)
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
When you tell people that you blog for a living, they think it’s easy, that you just sit at home all day on the internet writing. They say anyone can do that!
But, when they actually try it, they realize it’s much harder than they thought. At first, they make many mistakes like any beginner.
The challenges are pretty easy to avoid if you know they’re coming.
Below are some common mistakes most beginners make and some tips for avoiding them.
What is a blog?
A blog is short for weblog, a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. — Wikipedia
Blogs can help you establish authority in your industry, drive traffic to your website, convert traffic into leads, and grow your business.
What are the most common blog post mistakes?
1. You think of ideas that only interest you.
No matter how great you think your post is, you’re writing for other people.
Solution: Blog posts should reflect your company’s or your site’s larger goals.
You’re blogging to offer solutions to your audience’s problems and to grow your business. All of your blog posts should be written with these goals in mind and have a natural tie-in to issues in your industry while addressing specific questions and concerns of your prospects.
2. You forget about your persona.
If you want your blog content to generate traffic, leads, and sales, it must resonate with your audience and make them take action. You have to have an idea of the person you’re trying to reach – age group, interests, male, female, income range, etc.
Solution: Understand your persona’s problems and frustrations and solve them.
You can bridge the gap with your content by defining your buyer persona and the things that are important to them.
3. Your writing is too rigid.
You should write like you talk, in a style that is effortless to read.
Solution: Write blogs that are personable.
So, relax your style of writing and be more conversational. Use contractions. Throw in a pun or two.
4. You think people care about you as a writer.
People care more about what you can teach them than they do about you and your experiences.
Solution: Show your personality without obscuring the subject.
You can introduce parts of your personality in your writing to make people feel at ease. Some people crack jokes, some reference pop culture, and others use vivid descriptions in their writing.
The choice is yours. Make your tone personal and engaging, as if you’re in a face-to-face conversation.
5. You digress
Although you’re encouraged to let your personality shine through when you’re writing, don’t abuse the privilege. Don’t bring up too many personal experiences that bury the point you’re trying to make.
Don’t digress into these personal anecdotes and analogies too much — your readers aren’t sitting in front of you, which means you can’t guarantee that you have their undivided attention. They may lose patience and bounce from your article.
Solution: Assert your argument repeatedly.
Restate your point in every section of the article, to prevent your writing from losing its audience. Commit to an overarching message and deliver it gradually, repeating it several times throughout the post.
State your main point upfront. Don’t spend several paragraphs telling a story of how you came to do a certain thing before getting to the main focus of your post.
6. Not narrowing your topic.
Don’t use topics like:
“Internet Marketing”
“How to do Social Media Marketing”
“Digital Marketing”
These topics are too broad. To get the most short-term and long-term benefits of your blogging, you need to be very specific.
Solution: Start with a clear, concise idea.
A working title isn’t final — it’s just a solid perspective to keep your writing on track. Once you get this stage right it’s much easier to write your posts.
This is a link to some sources to get ideas. (I get no commission)
https://coursemethod.com/blog-topic-generator-tool.html
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AI and Automation In Online Marketing
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
There are several trends and technologies that have emerged over the last several months that point to what the future likely holds. There is increasing use of chatbots, a focus on voice-driven search optimization, and the use of artificial intelligence. Added to these top three are podcasts and video.
Due to an increasingly cluttered communication environment, marketers are seeking ways to better engage with their target audiences. Personalization is a trend they believe holds promise.
“Technology is having a real impact for marketers, improving efficiencies and boosting customer satisfaction. Here, experts weigh in on what marketers can expect going forward.”
Please read this article for more information on these developments.
Increase Creativity in Your Writing
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
What is creativity?
This is in the dictionary: 1: the quality of being creative 2: the ability to create
A Google check shows this: the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.
These are just for starters. Of course, you can find many more definitions and even come up with some of your own.
Anyone can be creative. Creativity is not something that is bestowed upon a few seemingly extraordinary people.
Research shows, that once you get beyond the average I.Q. of about 100, intelligence and creativity are not at all related.
You still have the potential for great creativity when writing copy.
Why Are Some People, Seemingly, More Creative Than Others?
Seemingly is the operative word here.
You may not be striving to write a book. But, when it comes to writing copy for your online business endeavors, you’re trying to get prospective clients’ attention and to get them to take a specific action for a particular purpose.
It’s a matter of immediacy, a sense of urgency.
You want to come up with different ways to get prospects attention and to engage them. It may be time for another blog article and you need new ideas.
In these situations creative thinking is crucial.
You may have tried what someone else has advised that didn’t seem to work for you, or you may have some mental blocks.
Imani Campbell of The Sage Neuroscience Center states “A mental block is your brain reaching a barrier in accessing creativity, motivation, or productivity.”
So, What to Do?
This inability to clearly think or process information can be caused by many things.
If you really care about the outcome of something, you can become very anxious. For instance, that article you need to write looms like a giant question mark. What ifs begin to creep into your thoughts – what if it’s not good enough, long enough, clever enough, etc.
Whoops! Here we go with the blockage.
People learn bad habits that are mental blocks to creative thinking. These seven things may be holding you back:
1. Using different types of thinking simultaneously
Creating is generating new ideas, picturing, looking forward, considering possibilities.
Evaluating is analyzing, judging, picking apart ideas, and categorizing them as good and bad, helpful or not.
You need to separate the two. Set down your ideas first, then go back and evaluate their worth.
2. Following advice without question
There are many gurus who tell you their success secrets. It’s fine to listen, but following advice without question could lead to stifled creativity. Many have found success doing what others said wouldn’t work.
3. Fear of failure
No one likes making mistakes or failing. However, trying too hard to avoid failure sets you up for avoiding success.
4. Lack of confidence
There’s some level of uncertainty in every creative undertaking. A little self-doubt is natural.
Just have confidence that you can create and effectively carry through with solutions to challenges.
You’re on your way to becoming more confident and more creative when you understand that ideas often seem ridiculous at first, that failure is a learning experience, and nothing is impossible.
5. Discouragement from others
Most people will not see things as you do.
You may be all excited about some new venture you’re considering and they say you need to be sensible or they subtly imply that it won’t work.
Ignore them and once you’re successful, they’ll have to reckon with you.
6. Information overload
Over analyzing and cramming so much information into your brain before actually starting a project can cause you to lose the ability to act. You have to know when to stop collecting information, for that article, and start writing.
7. False limitations
Don’t become trapped by false limitations, self-imposed products of your experience. Be open to new things.
Step outside your comfort zone and explore something unrelated to what you do. Consider how people in those areas do what they do. You may find something that seems impossible today doable in the future.
How do You Regain Creativity?
Now that you know what may be holding you back, there are several things you can do to free your natural creative abilities:
1. Establish routines
Plan your necessary daily activities so you can have free time for creative ideas to show up and proper space to develop them.
2. Rest your mind
Block out the noise in your brain with scheduled time for daydreaming.
3. Move around
To create space for mental clarity you can walk, jog, run, etc. each day.
4. Complete mini projects
For practice in completing goals that require long-term commitment, perform a small task each day so that at the end of the week you’ve finished a project.
5. Take steps that help you achieve your long-term goal
Break down your long-term goal into a list of manageable tasks for each day, and check off one daily no matter how small. Don’t do more.
This is about sticking with a large project, rather than doing a lot of tasks fast and suffering burnout or losing interest.
You want to get into the habit of taking steps that help you achieve your ultimate creative goal.
6. Relax
Do something every day that you love. Spend 10 minutes daily doing just that and focusing on the good feeling you get.
You’re more likely to get new ideas when you feel relaxed.
7. Play around with your thoughts
Don’t always accept thoughts as truth. Think of the opposite as being true. If you’re worried that a situation may not go as planned, see the possibility of it going smoothly. Envision how you want it to go.
Playing around with your thoughts allows more creative solutions to arise.
Remember, creativity is not something that is bestowed upon only a few individuals. People learn bad habits that are mental blocks to creative thinking, and there are ways to regain your creativity.
These are just a few suggestions to increase creativity in your writing.
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10 Common Grammar Mistakes to Avoid in Your Writing
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
While you’re using great copywriting skills to convince your readers to take a particular action, make sure your content is grammatically correct.
Be careful when using autocorrect while typing. It won’t catch grammar mistakes, because a word may be spelled right and be grammatically incorrect. For example:
Your my favorite dancer.
You’re my favorite dancer.
Both words are correctly spelled.
Here are some common writing mistakes that can weaken the sparkle and credibility of your message.
1. Incorrect subject verb-agreement
If the subject is singular, the verb must be singular.
Example: There is so many great ones.
Correct: There are so many great ones.
Example: Everyone was willing to participate. (This is correct.)
2. Missing commas
How you use commas in a list depends on the specific writing style you follow.
An Oxford, or serial, comma is the last comma in a list. It goes before the word “and.”
Example 1: When you go shopping, be sure to get eggs, milk, bread and peanut butter.
When you go shopping, be sure to get eggs, milk, bread, and peanut butter.
Although there are different schools of thought regarding the use of the Oxford comma, when you want to write a good sentence, it’s proper punctuation to always use commas to separate the multiple items you reference in a list.
Technically, it’s grammatically optional in American English.
Example 2: If the shop is closed when we get there we’ll have to wait until next week.
If the shop is closed when we get there, we’ll have to wait until next week.
3. Apostrophes
Apostrophes are generally used in two instances:
For contractions (I’m planning to go tomorrow, if it’s not raining)
To show possession (Susan’s computer means the computer belongs to Susan)
They’re also used to indicate missing numbers in a year, ’89 for 1989 and ’07 for 2007.
4. Hyphens
Example:
Wrong: my 90 year old grandmother
Right: my 90-year-old grandmother
5. Loose or lose
Loose means not firmly or tightly in place.
Example:
Your shoelace is loose.
He might lose the money.
6. Could of, would of, should of
These are incorrect uses of contractions for I could have, I would have, or I should have.
Correct Example:
I should have gone to the reception, and could have, if Tom had been on time.
Slurring in speech results in the common grammar mistake of substituting of for have.
7. Affect and effect
Affect and effect are often confused, although one is a verb and the other a noun.
Affect is a verb that describes something that causes or influences change. Effect is what happens as a result of the change.
“Here’s a mnemonic: A is for action. Verbs are about action. Affect starts with an A, so it’s a verb.”
Correct Examples:
Not getting enough sleep will adversely affect your health.
The effect of not getting enough sleep is bad health.
8. There, their, they’re
There is a location, their shows possession by more than one person, and they’re is a contraction for they are.
Examples:
We live here not there.
They work there but it’s not their shop.
They’re happy to be home.
9. Your and you’re
Wrong: Your my inspiration.
Correct: You’re my inspiration.
Your is the possessive of you.
You’re is the contraction for you are.
10. Then and than
Use then when referring to time.
Than is used when comparing things.
Example:
I’m going to the library then to the store.
That is better than this one.
You can use Grammarly.com (no compensation received here) to check your writing.
Of course, there are some exceptions, to these rules, that are not discussed here.
Always check and recheck your writing for mistakes.
This article only covers 10 common grammar mistakes to avoid in your writing.
Remember that autocorrected writing must be checked for correct grammar usage.
Affiliate Marketing Is More Than Just Posting Links
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
Affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy with partners promoting and selling other companies’ products for commissions. When customers click on an affiliate link they are taken directly to a brand’s product or service website. Ideally, this leads to a sale, signup, or just clicks. The partner earns a commission according to how many users are redirected to the brand via that affiliate link.
But, affiliate marketing is more than just posting links and it involves much more than just joining an affiliate marketing program, promoting a link, and hoping people buy what you’re advertising….
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