Five Foolproof Ways to Generate Story Ideas Editors will Love

One of the biggest obstacles writers face is nailing down a solid story idea. You may have a good topic, or at least one that you’re fascinated with. But is it a topic, or is it a story? There’s a world of difference between the two. Here are five clues that you don’t yet have a dynamic story idea – along with some solutions that will have you coming up with more terrific story ideas than you know what to do with.
1. The “About” Problem.
Do you find yourself saying, or writing, “I plan to write about golf, or sex, or fishing, etc.? That word “about” is your tipoff that you don’t yet have a story idea – you have a topic, and probably a broad one, that interests you. Because it is so broad, it won’t interest anyone else. And if some naïve editor actually assigns a story like this (it happens) you’ll have one hell of a time trying to write it. The solution: research, research, research. Get specific – about a person doing something interesting, a problem in need of a solution, or an issue that outrages you.
2. It’s not timely.
Do you have a news peg? Say you want to write a story about the topic of alternative energy. What’s going on with solar technology – has someone invented a new technology that the general public doesn’t know about yet? That would make it timely. Is Congress considering legislation that might give a boost to renewable energy? Timely. Has some local con artist just ripped off some naïve green customers? Timely. Do you know someone who’s built an off-grid house, using inventive technologies and ideas? Could be timely, depending upon the market. (When you’re querying a monthly magazine, make sure that your story idea will still be timely in four to six months.)3. There’s no tension.
The best stories are about a problem or a conflict. It can be internal or external. For instance, weight loss stories are all about an internal conflict: I want to get thinner but for whatever reason – whether it’s a losing battle with potato chips or a thyroid problem – I can’t. Or it can be an external problem: local activist is trying to save groundwater from being poisoned by Corporate Polluter Inc.
How do you find great complications (and thus, great story ideas)? The great narrative nonfiction journalist and teacher Jon Franklin says in his book “Follow the Story” that newspapers are full of them – but that newspaper reporters usually write their stories after the subject has already resolved his problem. Consider, for instance, the local piece about someone who’s received an award for ten years of volunteer service to an organization that helps foster kids. The story’s about an award (yawn). But your story could be a profile of that person, who, you learn upon interviewing her, started out as a foster kid herself, faced down numerous obstacles to achieve a happy life, and then overcame more obstacles in the service of foster children. (I’m making up this example, but you should get the picture – the complications are there, in local newspapers all over the country, for you to mine.)
4. You haven’t focused in tightly enough.
Can you “tiny-fy” your story? At the public radio station where I work, I have a colleague whom I admire greatly. Like all of us, he writes about issues. But rather than simply talking with the policy makers, he looks “underneath” the policy speak to find the regular person who’s affected by that policy. So for a recent story about how schools will use stimulus money for special education programs, he interviewed a high school student with Down’s syndrome. Instantly, that relatively boring issue became compelling.
5. You’re bored with your own idea.
If you’re going to write a magazine feature, chances are you’re going to live with this story for quite a while. If it doesn’t compel you now, it probably won’t later. At this early story idea stage, it’s just as easy to throw it out and look for an idea that you love. Believe me, months down the road when an editor is asking your for revisions, you’ll be glad that you did.

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Ten Tips for writing a blog post

The following post on tips for writing a blog was submitted by Lyndon from Flockblog who in his email to me with it described it as a simple ‘back to basics’ kind of post. Thanks Lyndon.
Get more Blog tips from our Blog Tips for Beginners series.
Here are ten tips that help me with my blog writing.
Make your opinion known
Link like crazy
Write less
250 Words is enough
Make Headlines snappy
Write with passion
Include Bullet point lists
Edit your post
Make your posts easy to scan
Be consistent with your style
Litter the post with keywords
1. Make your opinion knownPeople like blogs, they like blogs because they are written by people and not corporations. People want to know what people think, crazy as it sounds they want to know what you think. Tell them exactly what you think using the least amount of words possible.2. Link like crazy.Support your post with links to other web pages that are contextual to your post.
3. Write LessGive the maximum amount of information with the least amount of words. Time is finite and people are infinitely busy. Blast your knowledge into the reader at the speed of sound.
4. 250 is enoughA long post is easier to forget and harder to get into. A short post is the opposite.
5. Make Headlines snappyContain your whole argument in your headline. Check out National newspapers to see how they do it.
6. Include bullet point listsWe all love lists, it structures the info in an easily digestible format.
7. Make your posts easy to scanEvery few paragraphs insert a sub heading. Make sentences and headlines short and to the point.
8. Be consistent with your stylePeople like to know what to expect, once you have settled on a style for your audience stick to it.
9. Litter the post with Keywords.Think about what keywords people would use to search for your post and include them in the body text and headers. make sure the keyword placement is natural and does not seem out of place.
10. Edit your postGood writing is in the editing. Before you hit the submit button, re-read your post and cut out the stuff that you don’t need.
I hope you enjoyed my tips for writing a blog post - feel free to share your own blog writing tips below.

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Is your Blog Scannable ?

Girls Phone Number
Some one at Bed
The wild Indonesian Teens

Most people read online by scanning the page for individual words or phrases, headings and other visual cues. Studies have shown that reading from a screen is more tiring and therefore about 25% slower than reading from paper - hence scanning becomes a technique that most employ.
Is your Blog Scannable? It’s a pretty simple thing to test. Ask a friend who is not familiar with your site to take a quick look at a few of your recent posts. Give them 15 to 30 seconds on each post, at the end of which you ask them what the post was about. You’ll quickly get a sense of how they’ve interacted with your blog.
Techniques to Make your Blog Scannable
Good bloggers keep this in mind as they write and will employ a variety of techniques to make their posts easier to read. Some of these techniques include:
Lists - Anecdotal evidence here at ProBlogger suggests that its my posts with bullet point lists in them that get linked to ALOT more than similar length posts written in of an essay style.
Formatting - Use bold, CAPITALS, italics, underlining, teletext and to emphasize points. Don’t go overboard as you run the risk of frustrating your reader. Also consider changing font size, color and style to draw your readers eyes to your main points.
Headings and Sub Headings - Large, Bold words that act as visual cues of what is happening in the content are effective ways of drawing readers further into articles.
Pictures - Research shows that readers eyes are drawn down the page by pictures. Place them cleverly by your key points (especially when they closely relate to the content) and you have more of a chance of getting readers to read full articles.
Borders/Blockquotes - boxes around quotes and key points can similarly get the attention of readers.
Space - don’t feel you have to fill up every inch of your screen - rather create spaces because they help readers not to feel overwhelmed and again tend to draw readers eyes to what is inside such space.
Get to the Point - try to be succinct with your points.
Don’t Bury your Points - one trap many of us fall into is to bury our main points deep within content where it’s unlikely to be noticed. If you have a key point make sure you say it up front. You can expand upon it later but get your message across in the first few sentences if possible.
Find creative ways to reinforce your main point throughout your post.
Don’t Introduce too many New Ideas in one post - once again this helps to avoid overwhelming readers with information all at once. If you want to cover many ideas that relate to one another consider a series of posts that link to each other.
If your site and its posts are not easily scannable you run the risk of losing your reader to another blog that is.

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Some Ideas for Blogging

Some Ideas for BloggingEntrepreneurs are always full of great ideas that they can turn into business ventures. Just like the entrepreneurs, bloggers should also have fresh ideas for their blogs to keep their readers and subscribers posted and interested at all times. If your blogs are not interesting and are always dull, you will soon lose your readers. In this article, you can find some good ideas for blogging. Many people find blogging as a fun activity. Through the blogs you post, you can nourish your hobby. Now, there are those who create blogs for serious reasons like making money. There are hundreds of income-generating opportunities that you can find online and paid blogging is one of them. However, if you want to make a living out of blogging, you have to be dedicated and hard working. There will come a time when you're not in the mood to write blogs but you must overcome this and post your blogs regularly, no matter what. You must be able to maintain your rhythm so that you can produce the needed weekly posts. You must know how to organize and you must also have self discipline. As a blogger, you need to arrange everything. You must schedule all your tasks so that you can do them accordingly. Your posts should also have a fixed time. Have a different schedule for reading other blogs and posting comments, and most especially, you have to research for new blog ideas. Any new idea may come up even when you least expect it. So it would be best to always have a notebook and pen with you wherever you go. Jot al the ideas down so you won't forget them. By taking notes, you can meet all your writing schedules on time. If you're a wide reader, then you will know the recent things that are happening in the world. One of the best blog ideas is to tackle a major issue of society. By reading newspapers, magazines, and other reading materials, you will be keptinformed of what's happening in the different countries. Aside from that, you can also write about your personal life. In fact, many bloggers simply want to share their personal experiences to the public and so they create blogs. Some individuals focus on their cherished household pets.You see, blogs can be about anything. No one will be there to tell you whether you're right or wrong. But an effective blog will usually attract more readers and subscribers. You must be able to come up with new blog ideas every now and then. This will prevent monotony and you can keep your audience interested at all times. By conducting a research, you will know more about the blog ideas that other people like to read. You can check out all the ideas and choose the ones that you're also interested in. don't write blogs that you're not interested in because it will reflect in your blogs. Exercise your mind. Always spend enough time to read and research so that new ideas will come popping into your mind. Never think of copying the ideas of other bloggers because your readers will lose their trust and confidence in you.Come up with your own blog ideas and you can continue in this kind of business. You can even be more successful in the future and earn huge money through paid blogging.

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Blog Marketing: How Easy Is It?

Blog Marketing: How Easy Is It?Blog marketing is one of the latest trends of marketing online that you are going to find. Blogs which are also known as web logs are very popular in this day and age. You can make a blog on any particular subject that you want and then publish it for the world to read. If you are just beginning in internet marketing, you are going to find that starting a blog is very easy to do. Anyone can sign up for a free blog, and then proceed to market basically anything that they want to. Because blogs are free to have and make, this makes blog marketing even better. Where as if you have a website, and are wanting to market things that way, you would have to pay for your domain, pay for your hosting of the domain, and then know some HTML or hire a website designer. Search engines love blogs, and are always pretty fast to index them. Getting yours out there for the world to see is not going to be hard. There is this cool tool that you can use every time you update your blog that is known as pinging. Pinging your blog after every entry that you make will let everyone know that your blog has a new entry and updated.Depending on your overall goal with blog marketing, you can update your blog as frequently as you like. Which could be daily or weekly. Whichever you choose, just be consistent with it. If you start out updating daily, stick with it. This way your blog readers will know that they can check your blog daily for new postings. If you are wondering exactly what you can market in a blog, you can market whatever you want to. However, it is best to stay within one market in your blog. If you have several different things that you would like to promote, and none of them really fit together well, you can create a blog for each market. Remember that if the markets are not related, do not mix them on your blog. For example, if you have a blog on vacuum cleaners, you will not want to also mix in television sets on the same blog. This is because both vacuum cleaners and televisions sets are two different markets. But, you could mix vacuum cleaners and handheld mini dust busters. Make sense?There so many things that you can market in your blog. Whether you want to sell your own products and services or someone else's and make a commission off of what you sell. The sky is the limit when it comes to marketing. Affiliate links work great in blogs as well. Signing up to sell other people's products and then marketing them in your blog is a great idea.If you are considering having both a blog and a website that will work if you have enough information to cover in both. Linking them both together is a great idea if you do decide to have both. You can always use the website to hold your main information and products, and the blog to promote them and discuss any issues regularly.Wondering about hosting? If you have a website, you can either host your blog on the same server you use for your site, or you can leave it where it is. The choice is ultimately up to you, either way you can have successful blogs that will begin to bring in revenue to you.Getting links to your blog is a good way to gain new readers. Another great tool you can use is the RSS feeds. When you use the RSS feeds, it allows people to publish your blog on their site, and in return it gets you more visitors.Blog marketing can be pretty effective if it is done right. However, you cant just set up a blog and expect people to find it. Get your blog out there and make it known to others just as you would a website. Exchanging links with others will help, so will article marketing using your blog.Blog marketing is easy and anyone that wants to can do it. Getting your blog out there and known will be your biggest challenge, but just know that the harder you work at it, it will pay off. Find sites that are related to the market you are promoting, but not in direct competition and ask for link exchanges.

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How to Turn Blogging into a Successful Career at this time?

How to Turn Blogging into a Successful CareerMany people blog. In fact, there are more bloggers out there now than ever before. What seems to fascinate many about blogging is that it can actually become a career, believe it or not. However, just sitting down at your computer and typing is not going to make you rich. So how do you make a living blogging? There are a number of things you can do that will help. Here, though, are a few tips that will get you started and show you how to turn blogging into a successful career. First of all, you have to have a blog in order to make money from a blog. There are a number of sites out there that will set you up with a blog for either a fee or a portion of your advertising proceeds. If you are truly serious about making blogging your career, then you need to consider not using these services. If you are going to try to make money in blogging, then it would make sense to share the money with as few people or services as possible. Instead, start your own website and keep the money. You will pay a monthly hosting fee, but if you are serious about blogging you know that this money will be considered a business expense as if you were to rent a storefront for a clothing store or something similar. So your first step in turning blogging into a successful career must include starting a blog and doing so on your own website.Secondly, you have to figure out how you are going to derive revenue from your blog. There are a number of ways to do just that. The easiest and perhaps most popular way is to use some sort of advertising. Many of the search engines and other services on the web will place ads on your blog site and then pay you for every time someone clicks on one of the ads. Another way to do it is to sell something from your site and use the blog to bring in customers. Or, in a similar strategy, advertise someone else's product on your site and then get some sort of commission from that person. No matter which strategy you use, or even if it is another strategy you come up with on your own, you need to find a source of revenue if you are going to make blogging into a successful career.Third, once you have a way to make money off the blog, you need to get people to the blog. The key to most anything that happens on the internet is to drive traffic to your site. No matter what, whether you are using an ad service or selling a product, internet money is a game of percentages. You want to draw as many people as possible to your website. The larger the overall number of hits your site gets is the lower percentage of those clicks that have to be profitable you need. So how do you draw traffic? They key is, to turn a phrase, keywords. You need content on your site that is going to bring traffic from search engines to you as much as possible. There are a number of ways to do this: through software programs designed to find the best keywords, websites that perform a similar service, or just coming up with them on your own and crossing your fingers. No matter how you choose to do it, though, just bare in mind that you cannot turn blogging into a successful career without getting people to your website. Blogging can certainly be fun, but what if you want to turn that fun into a profit? There are hundreds of people out there who have turned blogging into a successful career. It is a great way to make money from home doing what you want, when you want. However, there are some things you need to consider before diving into a blogging career. First of all, you have to get yourself a blog, obviously. Next, decide how you are going to generate revenue from that blog. Then, finally, work hard to drive traffic to your website. Remember, the internet is a game of numbers and percentages so promote and update your blog as often as possible.

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The Aspects of Blog Marketing

The Aspects of Blog MarketingBlog marketing is truly only as difficult as you make it out to be. However, if you have never had a blog before, and never marketed anything in your life before now, it may be a little more difficult to understand. If that is the case, you should start of with a blog and just journaling in it to see what it is like. Keep it updated so that you can see what is required to get readers, and try some of these techniques listed below.While you are learning all about the aspects of blog marketing, you are going to find that comments on a blog are also a very important aspect of blog marketing. You will want to be sure that you always answer and acknowledge the comments that are made to your blog as well as others. When you show that you are an actual person that can hold a conversation, you are showing others that you are real and that you really and truly have the best intentions for your blog. Make sure that no comment goes unanswered. When you do this and do it consistently, it will show your readers that you will acknowledge them and answer their questions. That will in return make them come back to see what your answer was if they asked a question.Having contests are another way that you can market your blog. Having contests on various things would be a lot of fun, and something that will keep your readers coming back. Everyone loves to win things, and you can also make the prize that you are giving away relevant to the market you are promoting on your blog. Some do not realize how effective this aspect of blog marketing can be. While others are reaping the rewards.Another huge aspect of blog marketing is the track back feature. When you have the track back feature on your blog, you are allowing other people to link to your blog. Maybe someone has a post to post on their blog that is relevant to one of yours. They can use the talkback to your post, and send their readers to your blog so that they know what they are referring to. Another good thing to remember is that if someone gives you a track back, it is a courtesy to return that to their blog if at all possible. This is something that most bloggers all ready know and something that new bloggers should know.Something else that is a big thing in blog marketing that is frequently overlooked is using SEO on your blog, which stands for search engine optimization. SEO will help get your blog out there and read, and will also help you get a better ranking with Google. Being as high as you can be in the Google search engine results is something that you want. Doing this will allow your blog to get out there so that people searching for things that are relevant can find it.While there are many aspects of blog marketing, you are going to see that these are all the most important. If you have all of these tools and techniques in place, then chances are you are getting some great traffic. If not, just keep working on it. Your hard work is going to pay off and you will be glad that you did.

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