Group items tagged

Imagine again that you’re a blogger looking to leverage Facebook.  You begin to click on multiple posts titled “How to get more traffic using Facebook” and bunch of other variations. What happens?  All of the posts begin to run together becoming indecipherable to your brain.  Psychologists call this cognitive overload and you passively read post after post after post.  You never truly connect with the blogger or the message.

By adding a quantifiable benefit, you’re accomplishing two things.  First you’re laser targeting the type of reader you want to see the post.  And second, you’re giving them a realistic goal to strive for.

I’m a freelancer, but I have a couple of contract gigs that play a big role in my monthly and daily cycles. I’m the science editor at BoingBoing.net, a technology and culture blog with 6 million monthly readers. I also have a monthly column with The New York Times Magazine.

The rest of the day really varies a lot, depending on what I have on my plate at that given time. I have ADHD and it’s really easy for me to get distracted and be unproductive, so I have lots of little tricks I rely on to keep me focused throughout the day. I used to use a timer on my computer a lot, just to have something that, periodically, forced me to look up and think about what I was doing and what I had to do next. But I find now that the two hours between breast pump sessions actually does that job pretty well. I also jump back and forth between stuff on my to-do list, depending on what I feel motivated to do. If I just can’t get myself to write during a given two-hour block, I’m better off answering email or sending out interview requests than just sitting there, staring at a blank page.

Skype, Call Recorder, and Stickies.

Actionable verbs can be visualized and acted upon easily.

The Writer’s Market and Mediabistro’s How to Pitch guides both offer information on their listed magazines for what percentage of the publication is freelanced out, and of pay rates. If the magazine you want is in there, you’re set with the info you need.

Many magazines have their writer’s guidelines right on their website these days. Poke around there and see if you can turn up any “write for us” information.

Don’t overlook the insights the mighty search engine might bring you if you do a search on “pay at X magazine.”

But research on its long-term medical effects — and its impact on healthy individuals — has been hampered by the federal government’s stance on its legality, he continued. “Pharmaceutical development has been thwarted by the federal government’s seeming unwillingness to have new scientific discovery supplant long-standing ideology.”

If you have more time on your hands, you can of course choose to engage in more social networks. Just don’t overcommit and end up spreading yourself too thin!

Get 10 successful bloggers from different niches in a room and ask them which social networks are best for driving traffic to their blogs, and you’ll get a different answer from each one as to where their readers hang out in greatest numbers.

One of the things that I’d highly recommend you ponder when it comes to this is to think about developing a rhythm to your sharing.