Change your thoughts» Blogging

5 Ways Blogging Can Save Your Sanity

Lisis Blackston — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:00:55 +0000

I love to encourage others to start blogging, even if it is just as a means of self-discovery and free therapy. It’s true… blogging is incredibly effective as a method for handling our daily sources of stress and suffering.

Here’s why:

1. You find yourself constantly emptying your brain.

There is nothing worse than getting stuck inside your own head, in endless loops of self-defeating thoughts. When you are blogging, you get in the habit of writing things down in journals, notebooks, in the margins of your books, anywhere really. You observe something that happens in your life (or in your thoughts), you react on an personal level, and you write it down for a release. This is infinitely healthier than holding it all in.

2. It changes the way you view the world.

Once you start blogging, you begin to pay closer attention to the world around you. You notice the details, live in the present moment, and relish the life lessons, because these become the themes you will write about. You stop going through the motions, living your life on auto-pilot, and instead fully engage in everything that happens. This simple shift in your approach improves the quality of your life in unimaginable ways.

3. Blogging reminds you that you are not alone.

If you isolate yourself when you’re feeling down, you might find yourself thinking no one else out there could be as unfortunate as you are. By comparing yourself to all sorts of unrealistic standards and fantasies, you could easily become convinced that your life is hardly worth living.

But once you start writing about your issues, values, and concerns, and sharing them with the world, you’ll soon meet all sorts of people who “get” who you are, and where you’ve been. Communities form, friendships blossom, and as you start to feel understood, you cannot help but feel better about yourself.

4. Readers hold you accountable.

If you announce to your readers that you are going to lose 50 pounds, or quit smoking, or give up drinking, or donate $100 per day for the next 30 days, you are far more likely to do it than if you just think about these goals. You don’t want to have to report back to your readers that you failed, or gave up, or just got lazy.

Your readers become your cheerleaders and primary supporters, so you find yourself following through on your promises, dreams and goals (for a change). You stop feeling like a quitter, or a failure, and start enjoying your small victories. This gets you well on your way to greater victories down the road.

5. Helping others distracts you from your own issues.

Soon enough you will find yourself in the position of being a role model, friend, or therapist. The bonds you form through blogging run deep, and you end up helping your readers as much as they help you. As you become involved in their issues and challenges, you think less and less of your own. Once again, getting out of your own head minimizes the power of self-defeating thoughts. By helping others you allow new thoughts, positive thoughts, to take the place of the old, unhelpful ones. Optimism becomes your new, every day way of thinking.

So, even if you aren’t looking to become a career blogger, if you are struggling through personal challenges, or stressful situations, consider starting a free hobby blog as one of many possible techniques to help you get back on track.

What do you think? Is it worth a shot?

If you are a blogger, have you found this to be true?

How To Write Headlines That Grab Attention

Steven Aitchison — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 05:54:00 +0000

This is the follow up to ‘The Art of Writing Great Blog Posts’ series

Not all great blog posts get the recognition they deserve. There are literally thousands of blog posts out there swimming in a sea of social media that haven’t gained their owners the credit they deserve. However, 1 great blog post does not make a great blogger, you have to consistently write great posts and eventually you will be recognized for your craft. I will give you some great bloggers to follow and emulate their style until you find your own blogging voice.

The second in this series concentrates on the headline of your blog post.

How To Write Great Headlines For Your Blog Posts

Imagine you are driving a car on an empty motorway at 70 miles per hour and there are hundreds of billboards lining the motorway, all with various types of headlines on them. You are not really reading, you are skimming them as you concentrate on the road. There are headlines like:

Here is a picture of my cute little cat making a funny face looking like Robert De Niro
If you try and know everything in the world here is what will happen
Books
How to write like Seth Godin
Great films to see by the time you reach the age of fifty

If you are on a motorway driving at 70 miles per hour, which one of the headlines will stand out the most? I would say that most people would say 3 and 4, the others are too long. Out of 3 and 4 the one that gives us the most information is 4, it tells us exactly what the post is going to be about. Number 3 could be about anything to do with books and has too little information so titles like this, unless we know the blogger well, will be bypassed.

There are millions of blog posts out there and readers are skimming their RSS readers to look for great posts. Nobody has the time to read a long headline, click on it, wait for the page loading and then find out that the post is not what they wanted to read.

Your headline must grab the readers attentions from the very first word.

Chunking and Highlighting

Chunking

When we are reading at high speeds we are either chunking or highlighting the words. Chunking means that we are grouping the words together in blocks of 3-5. When people are doing this it would make sense to only have one or two chunks to read. As I look at my Google reader just now and look under the folder ‘Personal Development’ I see 4 posts that immediately stand out:

Value Your Self Worth
The Short But Powerful Guide To Finding Your Passion
How to Kill Your Disappointment
The Keys to Great Digestive Health

When we chunk the headlines above we see that most of them have two chunks with the exception of headline 2, which is a 3-4 chunker.

Ideally 2-3 chunks would be best, so here we look at how to make the most of the two chunks:

1st chunk – Introduce your article to the reader but make them want more:

How To, 10 Ways To, The Keys, The Top 10 Ways, The Secret To, The Real Truth, Shortcuts to

So you are piquing the readers interest with your first 3-4 words. Look at the headlines above and look at the first 3-4 words, if you are chunking your brain will naturally ask the questions:

Value your self what?

The Short But Powerful Guide to what?

How to Kill What?

The keys To Great what?

The skimmer and reader wants to know more and keep reading the headline.

2nd chunk – Tell your reader or skimmer exactly what you are going to talk about. and leave out no room for guessing.

The headline ‘How To Make Sunshine’ does not tell the reader anything on the second chunk and leaves them asking another question.

The headline, ‘How To Make Colored Candles’, tells the reader exactly what the post is about and leaves no room for questions.

Highlighting

The other type of reader and skimmer will highlight certain words rather than chunking them. For example in the headline:

‘Markets Plunge As Shares Go Into Freefall’

The words that stand out are ‘Plunge’ and ‘Freefall’

So with the reader who highlights it best to use strong verbs and nouns which appeal to their emotions and curiosity. This happens when we read in general, when we read newspapers, we skim the headlines, when we look at books in a bookshop we skim the title. You can see how important it is to get a great headline that will appeal to as many people as possible.

Verbs, Nouns and Adjectives

Verbs

If you are going to use longer headlines make sure you have a few strong verbs in there. The verbs will help the headline stand out from the crowd. Strong verbs help create a visual image in the readers mind and therefore grabs their attention and makes them stop, very briefly. In that moment of stopping, the decision is made whether or not to continue reading the article or not.

As in the example above:

‘Markets Plunge As Shares Go Into Freefall’

The verbs; ‘Plunge’ and ‘Freefall’, make the headline stand out and convey a sense of urgency and pique the readers interest.

Nouns

Nouns are a way to convey to a reader the importance of something and readers who highlight when reading headlines, will also be attracted to nouns that announce something important like:

‘Disaster Causes Global Economy To Crumble’

The word disaster conveys something important has happened and makes the reader want to know more.

Adjectives

Verbs are as great way of catching a readers attention, however they might not catch the readers emotion, which can be another motivating factor for a reader wanting to read past a headline when they are highlighting words.

Look at these headlines:

How To Keep Your Children Safe At Night
How To Feel Energized Every Morning

They play to our emotions by using adjectives such as ‘Safe’ and ‘Energized’

Conclusion

Headlines are a major part of your blog post and it will determine if a reader will go on to look at the rest of the article or not so it is best to take some time over your headlines. When you have a few hundred articles under your belt you will instinctively know what will work and what won’t and you won’t have to go through this process every single time.

Next week we will look at using images in your blog post. You might not think there’s a lot to say about this however you will be surprised.

The Art Of Writing Great Blog Posts

Steven Aitchison — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:40:44 +0000

This is the first in a two part series looking at how to write for your blog and share what I have learned over the last 3 years.

Writing is either something you love doing or hate doing. I think I fall into the latter category, I hate it but I love the creative process of writing and I love it when the words just quickly spill out onto the page.

Sometimes it’s like I’ve connected my mind Via USB cable to the computer and my thoughts just write themselves. Other times the USB has definitely been disconnected and there is an error in the system and it takes me a while to reconnect.

This post will show how I cope with the ups and downs of writing articles for blogs and hopefully give you some advice of how you can cope with writing and become better at it.

Know The Demographics

This may sound a little strange but you have to know the audience you are writing for. You wouldn’t get the comedian Billy Connelly playing to an audience of the women’s guild club. So it is with your blog, you have to know the people you are writing for.

The best way to do this, for me, is to think of a man and the woman who is going to read your blog. Now, describe them and ask the following questions:

What age are they?

What type of job do they have?

What is their income?

Do they have children?

What type of house do they have?

The reason why we do this is to get a picture in our head of the type of articles we should be writing, and we should always keep this in mind with every article we write. I wouldn’t write an article ‘WordPress For The Advanced User’ if the demographics of my audience were aged 85, retired,and have little or no computer knowledge.

Similarly I wouldn’t write an article ‘WordPress for beginners’ to an audience of computer geeks.

The reason I imagine a man and a woman, rather than just one person, is that men and women obviously think differently particularly with styles of humour. It is predominantly men who find jokes about farting funny whereas women, generally, don’t. So, we have to look at two sides when we are writing.

This might sound like hard work but believe me when you are practiced you will do these things automatically and it will become second nature to you.

Don’t Be Afraid To Drop Some Readers

You cannot please every reader who comes to your blog so there’s no point in trying. If you want to be contrarian and go against the crowd then do it. You might lose a few readers on the way however the people that do follow you will be loyal.

I made this mistake early on and am only now beginning to write the articles I really want to write and am prepared to lose a few readers who don’t like what I have to say. However, If I had started out this way I believe I would have built a better blog in a lot quicker time and honed the writing to a smaller smaller group of people who were more loyal.

I love reading Naomi Dunford’s Ittybiz because she writes the way she speaks. She curses and swears but does not care, her motto is if you don’t like it don’t read it. She has a great following who are very loyal and she has a great blog and business because of this.

This is true of life. We cannot please everybody, it’s absolutely impossible, so why bother trying. Develop the role of the type of person you want to be and be comfortable in that role. If you are not comfortable then change it. Who says our personalities have to be sticky, they don’t. If you don’t like something about yourself then change it and adapt to your new role.

Write Authentically

Writing authentically should always be your main goal when trying to connect with your readers. If you are not authentic it will definitely show in your writing. This Cannot really be said if you write articles for magazines as there is a certain style you have tow write in, however, if it’s your own blog you want your personality to shine through in your writing.

Using some slang is also not a bad thing to get your point across, but using it all the time would put a lot of readers off unless all your audience is from the same area as yourself and using local slang is permissible. Generally if you are trying to build a large audience you will have a lot of readers from outside your local area.

Be Different

Your posts are not going to stand out if you write another ‘Here is my cute little dog’ post, although that type of post gets a lot of hits for some reason

Being different doesn’t mean to say you have to be totally original, if that were the case there would only be a handful of blogs on the internet.

Blog posts will generally fall into 5 categories:

5 Common Types of Blog Post

Useful - This is when you are teaching somebody something that will help them in their life. This blog is written based on this type of post. If your blog is ‘Useful’ based try and make it stand out from the other useful crowds. It could be the way you write, or presenting it in a different way.
Funny - This type of post can be incorporated into many other styles of post. For example there are two great personal development bloggers Tim Brownson and Craig Harper who write about personal development but what makes them stand out is their style of writing. Craig is self deprecating and funny and Tim’s writing style is of a very conversational and funny.
Breaking News – Most bloggers will not get to break big news so it won’t apply to most bloggers. However, if you want to write this type of post you will certainly be different and newsworthy and will be linked to a lot.
Personal – The personal post is how most bloggers start off, unless they treat it as a business from the start. I am embarrassed to say I wrote a post entitled ‘Tips to Reduce Farting’ which was a personal post, it might have been considered useful to a few people but I would never write a post like this now.As soon as you start writing for a blog treat it as a business from the very start, even if you want to write personal stories about your little cat, you never know where it might lead.
Debate – This can be a great way to write blog posts and throwing one in every now and again is recommended. Writing a post where you play devils advocate and get a debate going in the comments section of the post can bring a lot of new readers to your blog

In part 2 of The Art Of Writing Great Blog Posts I will look at the

Anatomy Of A Great Blog Post

Sunday Siesta – All About Blogging

Steven Aitchison — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:14:53 +0000

I wanted to mix it up a little this week and have another theme. This weeks theme is going to be about blogging, whether you are a beginner or a seasoned pro it’s always useful to read about other successful bloggers and hear some of their advice. Here are a handful of great blog posts from last week that you might find interesting.

12 Fantastic Posts about Blogging from 18th – 24th October

5 Plugins To Make Your WordPress Blog Blazing Fast- ProBlogger.net - This is a great post from Darren Rowse giving a rundown of 5 plugins to make your blog a lot faster. I have not heard of 3 of them so it was a very useful article.

Steal This Trick: The #1
Secret of Confident Bloggers – Sonia Simone @ CopyBlogger.com – This is an article for bloggers who are still trying to figure out what niche to get into and how to stand out from the crowd and there is still some useful stuff in there for seasoned bloggers.

How To Keep Your Blog Running Smoothly When Traffic Spikes- BloggerDesign.com – This is another post talking about plugins, the Wp-Super Cache Plugin to be exact.

Should My Blog Go In the Root of My Company Website? DailyBlogTips- One of my favorite blogger blogs. Daniel Scocco answers an often asked question by bloggers.

The Truth About SEO- TopRankBlog.com – This is a fantastic post by Lee Odden about the importance of SEO, which has been minimized over the last few tears. Some great statistics in here.

5 Out-of-the-Box Keyword List Strategies That Work – QuickOnlineTips.com – I use keyword strategies when constructing my headlines so this article caught my eye and is pretty useful for bloggers and marketers alike.

The Tarot as a Tool for Writing Your Novel Guest post by Marelisa Fábrega on Write To Done – Not really about blogging but it caught my eye as I used to love doing the tarot, had the Norse Tarot deck. Marelisa speaks about NaNoWriMo and gives a novel idea on constructing a novel.

3 Marketing Strategies For Bloggers With Limited Time – Performancing.com – This is a useful guide for beginners in the blogging world.

How 1 Year of Blogging Change My Life – Wordful.com – A great post for any bloggers out there thinking it is easy. Charles Bohannan sums up his year in blogging and gives a useful guide for nebbish coming into the field.

How better writing boosts your blog’s image (5 writing tips) – Guest post by Laura Helen walsh on BlogForProfit.com - Some great tips by Laura on how to write for your blog.

Words For Sale – Blogging Without A Blog – BarbaraSwafford asks the question how much is your blog worth and what knowledge have we gained that we could monetize. My blog is worth $114,000, not bad

The Power of Giving – David Risley – A very quick 2 minute video on the power of giving. This is a great reminder of why we are in the business we are in.

12 Great personal development posts this week

Steven Aitchison — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 07:57:32 +0000

I read a lot of personal development posts throughout the week, mainly to keep up to date with fellow bloggers, to get some ideas and to stay up to date with information.

I thought I would share 12 of the best posts I have read this week:

9 things you can do to increase your income – Dumb Little Man

Learn the first steps to become an ‘unclutterer’ – Lifehacker.com

Simplifying your information intake – Lifehack.org

How to speed up highly creative tasks – ScottHYoung.com

How to turn rejection into triumph – Lifedev.net

Hopeless situations – StevePavlina.com

How are you programming yourself everyday – Goal Setting College

Beating the morning rush: The 3 minute ‘slow carb’ breakfast – FourHourworkweek.com

An interview with Jon of Freelancefolder.com – Blogclout.com

45 Tips for a happier, Simpler and More Productive Life – thenext45years.com

10 Curiously strong ways to declutter your car – alexshalman.com

The worlds youngest billionaire – Zacjohnson.com

Blogging highlights and earnings for 2007

Steven Aitchison — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:41:30 +0000

This has been a great year for change your thoughts and it has gone from strength to strength and it’s all down to you.

I thought I would share the highlights and show what can be achieved in a year.

Statistics:

Traffic: unique Visitors

RSS Subscribers

Traffic

I am very pleased with the amount of traffic I am getting just now and I have to say that if it wasn’t for stumbleupon I would have had half the traffic. I have started to optimize the blog for SEO to get more search traffic as I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket. Organic search is accounting for about 20% of all traffic which is quite good.

Earnings from blog related activities	Amount
Earnings from writing for another blog:	£3,600 ($6,840)
Earnings from Google Adsense:	£423 ($803)
Earnings from affiliate marketing:	£1,200 ($2,280)
Total	£5,223 ($9,923)
Expenditure (advertising etc)	£1,730 ($3,287)

Net profit from blog related activities	£3,493 ($6636)

Thank you

I would like to thank all the readers of this blog and everyone who has commented and made contributions to the discussions. I would also like to thank everyone who has stumbled and dugg my articles and I hope this continues throughout 2008 as I know I will be using stumbleupon a lot more in 2008.

I would particularly like to thank:

Jim Bouchard – Jim has contributed 5 articles to this site and they have all been excellent and he has provided a fantastic free download for the readers of Change your thoughts,

Grigor Ćorić – Grigor wrote another fantastic article ‘Three pillars of creativity‘ which brought my second front page on Digg and it received over 10,000 visits in a 24 hour period.

Alex Blackwell – Alex contributed a great article for change your thoughts and I hope to see more from him in the future.

Alexander Kjerulf (the chief happiness officer) – Alexander submitted another one of his great articles to Change your thoughts and it was received very well. Alexander is one of my favorite bloggers.

Aaron Potts – Another one of my favorite bloggers helped me out by guest authoring whilst I was on holiday last year.

Jospeph Bernard - Joseph was the first guest author for Change your thoughts which ultimately led me to seek out more quality authors for the site.

Laura Young – Laura kindly stood in for me whilst i was away on holiday and wrote a great article on Becoming more disciplined

Lodewijk van den Broek – Lodewijk was another one of the early guest authors and wrote another cracker of an article ‘Your vision of the future’

Ponn Sabra – Is an inspirational woman and an inspirational blogger who wrote a great article in September.

Michael Pollok – Michael is the guy who designed the current version of change your thoughts theme and it was a god send when i was in a panic about my site supposedly being hacked.

The PBN Network – The Positive Blog network has been fantastic this year and i have made some great contacts through it. It will hopefully get stronger this year.

Gleb Reys – I would like to thank Gleb for helping me out this year in a lot of ways notleast of all taking a look at my hosting when there were problems, thanks mate.

Finally I would like to thank all of the regular readers of this blog and i hope 2008 is your best year yet.