Big Good Tips From A Little Book And Other Stuff

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There’s lots of advice for writers out there today—books on how to write and what to write about, where to submit your work and how to get your literary foot in the front door when you want to be published. Some of the advice you can get is helpful and some is just thinly disguised advertising designed to get you to buy something someone has to sell.

It all comes around full circle in the end to a little book that I got way back in the day when we worked on typewriters and smoked in newsrooms. The Elements of Style by William Struck and E.B. White is a timeless manual for anyone that wants to be a writer because it is clear and concise and it tells you what you need to know about expressing yourself with the written word and leaves out what you don’t need.

And that brings me to other stuff. Has anyone else been following the social  media trending that been going on lately? I just read a study from the business experts at Deloitte that said while a fair percentage of new and forward thinking business is looking into social media, a large percentage still don’t understand what it’s all about and what kind of ROI they can expect on their investment. That makes me wonder if this is a real tool for business to use or just a fad that will slip from prominence eventually.

From a seo standpoint, Facebook or Twitter can drive traffic to your site but you need to be aware of the fact that these social media sites don’t work with keywords and links in the same manner that traditional seo does. Still, if enough people are talking about these sites being the next big thing, then they are bound to be some kind of self fulfilling prophecy in the sense that business will continue to flock to them regardless of their seo effectiveness.

So all that brings things back full circle. Regardless of whether you want to write for the social media or the seo world, you need to know how to write well. The medium doesn’t really matter in the end, it’s the message that counts. So here’s a few more techniques that you can use to make sure that your words attract attention.

Self editing always helps. I’ve just read an article that says you should read aloud when you’re proofing and only use a spell checker as a first screening. Remember too that Less is More. Usually the best way to write something is with the fewest words

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