Embracing Technology to Improve Your Writing

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These days, technology remains at your fingertips when it comes to being able to have writing resources.  Not only can you use an online dictionary or thesaurus, but you can brainstorm ideas by reading through current events and forum posts, or play word games to get the creative juices flowing.  But technology doesn’t have to stop there.  Do you have an iPhone or an iPad?  You can even use those smart devices to your advantage and make your writing life that much easier (and perhaps more portable) by using the apps as writing tools.

Built-in Apps to Use

These include the free applications that are already on your device when you purchase it.

  • Calendar  You probably already use it, but its value is worth mentioning!  Not only will the calendar keep you organized right now to the time and place for your appointments, but if you are a task-oriented person, you can map out time for you to write each day/week/month.
  • Photos  An easy way to have a camera with you (moreso with an iPhone, since it can fit in your pocket, but of course you can still use the iPad if you have one with a built-in camera).
  • Clock  Set a timer or alarm to do your marathon writing sessions, or set the stop-watch to keep track of how long you write when you’re long-winded.
  • Calculator  Let’s face it: not everyone can do math in their heads.  And you don’t have to if you don’t want to.  Use it to calculate your hourly pay, or total the hours you wrote, etc.
  • Notes  This app is great because you can write memos to yourself in list fashion or in paragraphs.  One tip that helps – make your first sentence be the title of your note (perhaps with the date) for easier access when skimming through your list.
  • Voice Memos  If you have an iPhone with this feature, you don’t have to worry about typing on the go – open the app and press “record” and you have a very handy and easy-to-use voice recorder.  Later you can transcribe your thoughts and never miss an opportunity to take down your thoughts just because you lack pen/paper or an Internet connection.
  • Youtube  Had to mention this one, since without it you wouldn’t have video how-to’s, or a way for you to branch out in you writing by creating short video clips you can share with the world to showcase your movie skills.  Even better, add clips to your writing and you add more weight to your content!

Free Apps to Download

Not all apps cost you anything to download, and not everything that’s for a fee is worth the money.  Fortunately, by looking through reviews, skimming the list of apps by user rating stars, and watching for sales (since some apps start out as paying and then may become free), you can find some indispensible gems.  Here are mine:

  • Facebook  Used as an easy networking and marketing tool, you can promote your business, articles, and events by posting them on Facebook.  And since you’re probably on the go with your iPhone or iPad, this mobile app makes logging in easier and faster while loading the site.
  • Pinterest  A highly addictive site should you choose to browse through it when taking a writing break, it can also be useful when scouring ideas for how-to articles you want to write or sharing your ideas with others.
  • Words With Friends and Scramble  These are two games I can’t go without!  By playing them on a regular basis with my contacts, it stimulates vocabulary and makes for interesting discussions.  So forget playing pc games when you can have easy word games to feed your brain without needing a flash player or other plug-in.
  • Ruler  Though not larger than the screen of your device, having a ruler can be useful if you need a quick measurement on something while on the go.  Changes easily from centimeters to inches.
  • DocsToGo  If you like using Microsoft Office, then you’ll probably love using this app.  Create, share, and manage docs, spreadsheets, and jpegs just as you would with the MS office suite.  The best part is, you can save the files to your home computer or upload files from your home computer to the smart device.
  • AppShopper  No matter how many apps you have, this one is bound to be most important, and for good reason.  AppShopper is where you can keep track of sales on all apps you may want to buy (writing or non), and know when prices go up.  Because of it, I hardly ever use the App Store anymore.

With so many applications available at your fingertips, you can’t help but enhance your writing quality and make the most out of each writing experience.

Natasha Kohlhoff Polak (Freelance Writer)

Content and Creative Writing Services

 

 

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Hiring a Writing Team

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After you have established the framework of your company’s or organization’s website, you now have questions to answer.  What do you want your audience/customers to do on your site?  How will you market yourself?  How can you stand out from your competitors?  Such questions can be answered based on the content you have displayed for people to read when they come to your site.  Written either by you, your associates, or a third-party writing team, having quality work that emphasizes your expertise in the field will give credibility to your brand and exponentially grow your business.

Finding Writers

So let’s say you personally are not a writer.  The good news is that you don’t have to have a writing staff in-house to do the work!  All you have to do is search online for writers or ask your colleagues and mutual business contacts for recommendations.  Having freelance writers at your disposal will help you accomplish more without spending as much as you would in hiring new employees in your office.

Choosing Well

Before hiring the first writer you see, it’s important to keep a few things in mind.  Review each prospective writer’s credentials.  How much experience does he or she have in your field?  Don’t be afraid to request the writer’s biography or list of published works.  Look through writing samples to get a feel for the writer’s overall tone and outlook.  Have him or her write you a sample piece (if possible) before making your selection.  Also keep in mind that having a writing team, rather than just one writer can have its advantages.  You can give your group several topics to cover in less time than with having one person do all the work, and allow each person to provide you quality work according to their niches.

Resources

Here are some sites for you to start searching for your online content team:

Natasha Kohlhoff Polak (Freelance Writer)

Content and Creative Writing Services

 

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Copy-writing and article writing, get help from a Professional Web Editor

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My name is Natasha Kohlhoff Polak.  I’m a freelance writer, specializing in copy-writing and editing articles for in-print and online publications since 1999.  I also write Inspirational fiction, Chic lit, and drama novellas and novels for young adults and adults.  I write because I am passionate about helping people, but I also enjoy researching and learning about new things.  When I’m not writing, I thrive on reading books, knitting, traveling around town and abroad, surfing the Internet, spending time with my family, and volunteering for various causes.

My areas of expertise include:

  • Religion: faith, Christianity and lifestyle

Published in Insight Magazine, The Adventist Review, The Collegiate Quarterly, Corner Stone Connections, and WellnessWalkers.  Self-published Love, God.

  • Health: general, women’s, children’s, self-help, treatments and prevention

Published with Baby Zone and various websites.

  • Relationships: family, dating, parenting, socialization

Published with various websites.

  • Special Interest: general topics, travel, product reviews, current events

Published in Wise Guide Indianapolis Motor Speedway, as well as various newsletters.

In addition to the above topics, I am available to write custom content for websites, newsletters, and magazines.  I am a current contributor to Bangari Content Gallery, Factoidz, Helium, Associated Content, and Hubpages.

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3 Effective Internet Marketing Tips To Boost Your Online Profit

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There are so many things that you have to learn in order to make money online. People think that Internet marketing is child’s play, this isn’t the case because it should be treated just like a regular business to make it successful online.
Here are some of the most effective yet basic internet marketing tips to boost your online profit:
Search Engine Optimization
Most Internet users rely on search engines to find the information that they are looking for. Thus, it is imperative that the product or service that you are promoting online must be in the top 10 of the 1st page in search engine results to increase visibility.
There are many techniques to optimize your web page that features your product or service to rank it well in search engine results but only few are most important. First, your web page must contain the keywords that you are targeting to rank high in search engine results. These keywords must be related to the product or services that you are promoting. Second, it must contain enough valuable information to get it indexed in search engines’ data repositories; it is basically hard to rank well a web page with too little content. Last, but not the least, build backlinks to your web page. A web page is seen as an “authority” page in search engines’ eyes.
Research The Keywords To Rank For
Of course, you need to rank for the keywords that have high monthly search engine searches. There’s no use to choose a keyword that generates only 10 searches per month, right? One free tool to search for keywords is Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Another one is Wordtracker. Choose keywords which have total searches of at least 3,000 every month.
Drive Traffic To Your Product Or Service
One of the most important Internet marketing tips is to drive traffic to your product’s sales pages or website. This encompasses search engine optimization and keyword research. There are many methods that you can learn online, and you can also find free traffic generation tools in the Internet. All you have to do is to diligently find the best ones that will work for you. Traffic equates to income in the Internet marketing world. You should make this as one of your top considerations in making money online.
These are just some of the most basic internet marketing tips that you should learn, yet they have proven to be useful especially to the successful Internet marketers of today. Perhaps, you can learn from these online marketers too.

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Creating Great Content for Your Brand

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When you set out to revamp, or build a new website for your company, brand, or business one of the first things you should ask yourself is, “What do I want to say?” Great design and practical functionality should be at the forefront of your web development project, but without the proper content that reflects you and your message, your website will not gain and retain the business it should.
You first need to establish your voice. You want to be an authority on the product or service you are offering, but how you do this is just as important. If you use humor to ease your client’s nerves about making a large purchase, consider using humor in the content of your website. If you are a fact-loving, statistical person then display numbers and graphs about your field of business on your website. Be yourself, but find a careful balance between being informative, and just being over the top. Above and beyond finding your voice you must be open and honest about who you are, and how you do business. Using multimedia content is a perfect way to reach a large amount of potential customers socially, while providing information they will ultimately need. Videos and podcasts can (and should!) be developed by professionals and can easily be posted and shared via social media websites. That brings us to social media. You may have the funniest, most interesting content on the web, but if you’re not sharing with the masses, it’s not working for you. You should be utilizing the many social networks to blast your information to your audience, as well as having meaningful, shared conversations with industry peers, clients, and potential clients.
Be honest, be open, and utilize today’s innovative resources to create great content that will be seen and heard by the masses. Not sure where to start? Your marketing professional should be able to help you begin creating your content, but at some point it may be necessary for you to take the reins on your own social media/content strategy. After all, if you’re not saying it and you’re not doing it, your clients are missing a piece of the puzzle – you.

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Genuine Search Engine Optimization

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SEOThose that have a website and are tech savvy know how important it is to rank well on the major Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. If your website does not turn up on the first page of search results on Google, then one is said to have a website which is not working for them. The importance of coming up tops can either make or break a business, which is trying to establish its presence online.

This article is from a Web Designers point of view.  Having designed websites for 12 years, I have not been involved in SEO work (promotion of websites), except for the part of inserting SEO tags in the web pages to make them Search Engine friendly. The SEO was normally done by SEO experts, in the company that I worked for. The staff that were involved with the website promotion were called Access Facilitators. Their sole job was to handle the online welfare of the website. It was basically everything to do with making the website popular online, with the end result being to top search results.

Ever since I started my own web design business, I have always been intrigued by SEO and wanted to learn more on the subject. I was also egged on by clients who were happy with my design work  and were blindly willing to let me handle their SEO campaign, without having any knowledge of the responsibility and specialization required. This year was spent by me pouring over loads of books on SEO, sourced from the library and online blog talk, forums and every imaginable top resource, available online for SEO, by people who claimed to be ‘experts’ in the field.

What I found was shocking: There are no direct answers or guarantees to making a website rank high. No one would admit this fact as these were the ‘experts’ who claimed their methods worked. Many of the SEO agencies that I got quotes from on behalf of my clients never guaranteed first page results on Google. Some of their explanations were: ‘because Google constantly changes its algorithm, because your business has too many competitors online and the classic: we will keep trying till we achieve results’.

SEO is an industry that is constantly evolving. In my opinion, no one can claim to be an expert. What works today, does not work tomorrow. The strategy one uses to promote a certain website does not help another website. Each has to be dealt with differently. It takes years of research and hard work to become someone who can claim to know the SEO game. SEO involves learning about the business that one is trying to promote and finding out the right places online to market or spread the word. It is a dedicated job and a time consuming one. So, the next time a snake oil salesman comes around promising you that you will be guaranteed the number one spot on Google in a few days or months, and that they are so called SEO ‘experts’ – beware!

Play it safe, especially considering the fact that the SEO ‘expert’ fee is high. I would recommend you do the following research before signing up to any SEO package:

1. Check to see if the SEO business you are engaging in your area, comes up on page 1 on Google results. For eg use the keywords ‘Sydney SEO company’  to check if a company, located in Sydney, specializing in SEO, top the search results. If they are nowhere to be seen in the results, the chances are they are new to the industry and have no experience or have got a website that is not properly optimized themselves. If their own website does not rank well for their keywords, then how do you think they are going to help you achieve prominence on Google with your website?

2. Check their business reviews online, left by clients who have dealt with them. This will give you an idea on whether they are good at what they do.

3. Look for successful case studies of clients they have promoted. Look at their clients listed on the portfolio or client section of their website. Then, verify the claims by doing a search for those clients on Google and see where they rank. If they are nowhere to be seen, chances are these are false claims of SEO success.

4. Beware of experts who claim to have tie ups with Google and guarantee first page rankings. The only way Google ranks websites is through merit. No one has control over Google.

Here is what I found through most of my research on SEO:

Having the right textual content on your website is important. Equally important is to have a well optimized website.  Promoting your website can be achieved by having your say in blogs/forums and writing content rich articles, with links back to your website. Gain quality backlinks to websites, with relation to your line of business. Continually write and rewrite content to keep it fresh. SEO uses trial and error strategy. You will basically be looking for a good writer and communicator rather than a so called SEO ‘expert’. In the time that it takes for me to finish this article, the search engines might have changed their algorithms, and this article would probably be deemed useless.

Comments from other people’s experiences while dealing with SEO firms, promotion techniques and ideas would be appreciated to enhance this post.

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