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1. A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. 2. The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help develop it. 3. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. 4. The personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. 5. When the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. 6. When the author describes the character of a personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description. 7. When a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a Negro minstrel at the end of it. 8. Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader by either the author or the people in the tale. 9. The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausably set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. 10. The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. 11. The characters in tale be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency.

Most of the “rules” about writing for ezines and newsletters apply to writing posts for your blog, but there are some important differences. Keep these 10 tips in mind and you’ll be publishing great blog content that attracts prospects and clients in your niche market. “Keep in mind the journalist’s rule of 5 W’s in the first paragraph: who, what, why, when and where…. and … Did you remember to ask your readers a question at the end, or something to stimulate readers to comment?”

A panel run by David Armano on Social Media in a B2B world had a panelist from Leopardo Construction, Todd Andrilik. Todd, who’s the company’s director of marketing and PR, is using a wordpress blog as a newsroom .

It was a huge event, with close to 2,000 participants and a palpable energy and a sense of - finally - progress. The conference was attended by the ministers for energy or senior political representatives  from several countries (the UK, Germany, several Nordic countries - see the link above) and happened at the same time as an important German government meeting that decided to increase offshore tariffs to 14c/kWh, a strongly supportive measure which is likely to be the starting point of a massive wave of investment in the sector in that country. Interestingly, despite that decision, and the excitement it generated, the UK market is still seen as likely to be bigger than the German one over the next 10-15 years, with all other markets being somewhat smaller.

With tongue in cheek and apologies to the Wal-Mart version we have all heard, please consider these thoughts that are sure to help us NOT achieve sustainability in 2008.

Dan Roam’s “The Back of the Napkin” invites its readers to give up slides altogether, and use flipcharts and blackboards instead. The central idea is visual thinking, drawing graphics as you explain them, rather than taking audiences through endless bullet points. The book is full of practical advice for doing this. A must read. Garr Reynold’s “Presentationzen” is a plea for preparing your presentation offline. Rather than a method, it introduces a presentation philosophy, heavily influenced by Asian culture. The central idea is simplicity. While obviously influencing many of today’s speakers, the concept of presentationzen is relatively unproven for complex subjects, such as science or technology. Nevertheless, a must read.

So good news overall. We’re getting much better tools and more interest, while we can continue to experiment and learn. But with increasing competition, we’ll have to work even harder to deserve and retain reader attention through relevant quality content. Do you agree, or better, disagree? I’d love to hear from you on your views where (business) blogging is going.

Sites that serve as a comprehensive and reliable filter of information on a topic will be read, but they’ll always have to compete with other fast-paced news publishers. To aggregate information is incredibly easy. To process, analyze and situate it within a big picture context while offering an intriguing/unique perspective is considerably more difficult. Those who can do so will be trusted: they are a valuable knowledge asset for any reader. Detailed, unique content immediately stands out on its own, even without extensive  marketing efforts. People don’t just want to be informed, they want to better grasp a topic in all its nuances. The joy of consumption lies not only in the skimming of a news story but the processing of new perspectives to enrich a personal worldview or professional need.

I manage to slowly integrated this concept of building a loyal group of subscribers on my RSS by allowing them to trust me in providing them with good quality post, some of my explosive post i written have already proven it's credibility in feeding only the best to my loyal subscribers and readers.

Today, MarketingSherpa released the 2008 edition of its Email Marketing Benchmark Guide. According to the press release: "the updated guide delivers exclusive results data from real-life marketers' campaigns. Containing 260-charts and tables, this is the largest and most comprehensive study ever conducted with professional email marketers. Readers will learn how the impact of email marketing has changed over the past year and how to overcome various future challenges of email marketing."

a good list of the ten online tools that he just can't live without: Firefox, ScribeFire, and Skype among others. It's amazing how much we can get done using the various fantastic tools that are available to us free and clear on the web

Will the popularity of blogging lead to its demise? Presently on the internet there are blogs in existence for almost every subject, every demographic, and every topic imaginable and more being created every minute. Lately as I peruse websites looking for useful information I have come to the realization that there are just too many blogs on the internet. While this might not be a popular view it certainly feels good to get that perspective out there amongst ProBlogger readers for debate. It also got me to thinking, will the popularity of blogging lead to its eventual downfall?

We made this video for our friends (and yours) that haven't yet felt the power of our friend the RSS reader. We want to convert people and if you know someone who would love RSS and hasn't yet tried it, point them here for 3.5 minutes.

In this post I’ll share readers comments on the topic of Blog Hosting, Domains and Platforms and will share some of my own experiences and advice.