John Cow dot Com » writing good content

Put Your Crappy Content Away, Ya Lazy Bum!

Jason Katzenback — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:55:25 +0000

The times, they are a changin’. Although it hasn’t officially happened yet, there have been whispers in quite a few places for a while now that things are changing in the world of article marketing, specifically in the article directories and very specifically, with Ezine Articles. And in my personal opinion, it’s a change for the better.

Here’s what’s rumored to be happening: submission standards are about to get a whole lot higher. To put it in a nutshell, the minimum standard for articles to get approved (which, historically, has been pretty darn low) is going to be longer and better. No longer will you be able to throw together a crappy 250 word article full of spelling and grammatical errors and call it a day. Soon, that kind of sloppy work won’t get approved any more.

And what’s more…

The changes are reportedly retroactive!

Meaning if you’ve got crappy articles approved in the past, unless you update them and make them acceptable, they’ll disappear.

What do I have to say about this?

Well, I say it’s about damn time. I’ve said many times, on this blog and on the other sites I own, that putting quality content out there is the real key to succeeding in online business. And I use article marketing to promote my products, but when I mention that I’m an article marketer, people lump me in with those other bozos littering the article directories with crap content and giving the rest of us a bad name.

For my own article marketing, I’ve long held a stipulation that all the articles I use be at least 400 words long, always be completely original, and have really useful information for the reader. Keyword density should be between 2-5%, but is usually around 2.5-3.5%. Because I’ve been doing things this way for a long time, I know that, when the changes do come, I don’t have to worry about any of my old articles being taken down.

HOT TIP –> The MOST IMPORTANT thing i do however, is write the content first and then go back and keyword optimize it. If you write for a keyword the content will suck… create a title first, write a worthwhile piece of content and then go back and keyword optimize it. Your content will get both published and read!

So that’s my advice for anybody using article marketing right now – if you’re not already, make the change and start writing quality articles NOW, before the new rules come into play. Do this for two reasons; one, because quality is always better than crappy (in terms of your reputation and your bottom line), and you should have been doing it this way all this time anyway; and secondly, so that when these changes do come you’ll be ahead of the game and not one of the people left in the lurch when all of their articles get dumped.

NEW Update: Just saw a new update to the ezinearticles guidelines as we speak…

Expert Authors can now earn the ability to link-up 4-word and 5-word phrases* by submitting lengthier (over 400 words) high-quality articles.

BOTTOM LINE:

If your article is shorter than 400 words, each text link may only contain a maximum of 3 words*

If your article is longer than 400 words, each text link may only contain a maximum of 5 words*

* Important Note: Any common words, including to, is, in, on, it, and, at, by, a, an and others will now be excluded from the word count.

PS – If you are wondering why i am focusing on EzineArticles here… cause they are the grand daddy of all article directories and you NEED to be using them (IMHO).

So what’s your thoughts?

How To Make Sure Your Blog Doesn’t Make You Sound Like An Idiot

Jason Katzenback — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:53:04 +0000

One of the easiest ways to look stupid on your blog, even if you have the most brilliant ideas ever, is to have spelling and grammar mistakes. We’ve all done it occasionally. The sentence that you thought made sense at 3am, or the word that both you and spell check missed. But if you’ve got habitual spelling and grammar mistakes on your site, it can affect the way people perceive you, and may keep them from treating you like an authority within your niche.

Now, I’m not saying that everything has to be perfect, or that you need to adhere to all the rules of grammar. It doesn’t really matter if you prefer to write ‘2’ rather than spell out ‘two’, no matter what the AP Style Guide says. As well, there are certain grammar rules that we all learned in school that you can disregard. I start sentences with ‘and’ and ‘because’ and use sentence fragments and ‘y’all’ and other colloquialisms, because I’m writing in a conversational tone, and I want it to sound like it would if I were talking.

But there are certain things you need to do, like make sure that you’re using the right word. Know the difference between then/than and affect/effect, not to mention their/there/they’re and your/you’re. If you’re not sure, check. In fact, it would be worthwhile to take a primer on the basic grammar laws – there are lots of resources out there, so you have no excuse.

And that’s what it really comes down to for a lot of us. We’re lazy. We either don’t bother proofreading at all, or we do it so quickly that it’s no surprise that mistakes make it through and get published on our sites.

Here are some guidelines to follow when proofreading to make sure you don’t look like an idiot:

Check your post the way your audience will be viewing it.
With web content, that means viewing it inside a browser. With blog posts especially, it means previewing it before publishing it. This can show you if your text is too dense, or the font is too small.

But don’t forget good old-fashioned paper, either.
There really is no substitute for printing out a hard copy and going over it with a pen. You can find a lot of mistakes this way that you probably missed when viewing it on your screen.

Read it out loud.
You might want to wait until you’re alone, but this is a really useful tool for finding those pesky typing mistakes where you thought you typed ‘through’ and you really typed ‘thought’. It won’t make sense when you read it out loud.

Read it backwards.
This is an old copy-editor trick. By going through something backwards, you’re forced to concentrate on the individual words, instead of the phrases and the meanings behind them. A lot of mistakes make it through because, when we read, we recognize the word that’s supposed to be there instead of the one that actually is.

Now, you can all post comments about all of the mistakes that I missed in this post… oh and while you are at it… why don’t you click here and retweet this message for me

The Five Characteristics of Good Blog Content

Jason Katzenback — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:01:32 +0000

You hear a lot of talk about having “good content” on a blog. You hear about how having good content increases your credibility with your reader, and how it helps your blog be successful. However, we don’t often talk about what exactly good content is. That’s exactly what I want to look at today.

Good blog content is purposeful

Every post you put up on your blog had better have a reason behind it. If you want people to take you seriously, you can’t just throw out a bunch of fluff and hope that some of it sticks. No, each and every post you write needs to have a purpose. That purpose might be to educate, inspire, assist, entertain, or inform, but you need to know the purpose going in.

Good content is well-written

Poor grammar and incorrect spellings detract from your overall message. A good blog post follows the rules of the language, and is easy to read because of it.

Good blog content is relevant

A good blog post meets a felt need. If you can’t provide something your readers can relate to, no one will want to read it. Make sure every post has something to say to your target audience about your chosen topic.

Good blog content is timely

While there certainly is value in covering the big picture and talking about general principles, fresh information is always better than stale information. Even when you’re blogging about a timeless topic, you can find ways to make it new and exciting.

Good blog content encourages thought and discussion

While you don’t want a post to lead to an all-out flame war in the comments section, you do want your readers to engage your topic. A provocative title or a controversial theory every now and again can really push your readers, and in the end they will thank you for it.

Traffic, Subscribers and Backlinks From Guest Posting

Jason Katzenback — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:16:32 +0000

This is a Guest Post by Shannon Lilly blogger over at CowBlogger.com. Check out his blog and subscribe to his mooalicious blog right now!

If you have any doubts about guest posting on another blog then today is your lucky day! I have guest posted on all the top blogs including JohnChow and A MarketingPilgrim among many smaller ones. I am a Guest Post Pro you could say, I have some useful tips for you to check out in regards to guest posting. Lets begin this mooalicious guest post!

The first point I want to make is how important it is to present the guest post in a quality manner. Anything other then a professional post simply will not do in the blogosphere today, if you want to be taken seriously you need to present it professionally. Remember when guest posting your main goal is to convince these people on another blog to give you a shot and click over to your blog and or subscribe to your RSS.

If you don’t present the post professionally you might as well forget the whole thing…

Secondly use the guest post to your advantage, link to your own blog in it but no more then 2 times or the post will most likely be rejected because bloggers don’t usually like to link-out to other blogs because they are competitors. Additionally don’t be afraid to take one of those 2 links andÂ ask the readers to subscribe to your RSS Feed directly from the guest-post. I have found this to work excellent and if you can get away with it (DO IT!).

If the post goes live on a popular blog you have the possibility of the RSS Feed being picked up by RSS Sites / Bots and of course gaining subscribers from the blog your posting on, especially if they use any FireFox RSS plugins!

The point is “Use the guest post to your advantage”.

Its sort of ironic that I would be making a guest post about guest posting is it not?

Thirdly bring something new to the table, take this guest post for example sure Guest Posting has been talked about for ages but what I did was bring a friendly twist to the subject and get you thinking about the guest posting you do.

I don’t know that I can say such a twist has ever been put on a guest post before, have you?

Guest posting really is all about being different, I can’t tell you how many great and negative comments I have had on my guest posts because of either bringing something new to the table or nothing new at all.

However don’t let that deter you, even if the post is not something 100% new or unique… If its published then its still a great way to get new bloggers to listen to your blogging voice!

They could very well have never heard about what your telling them. Don’t assume everyone knows something because the majority believes they do, there are people who don’t know anything and you could be the only source they find!

Plus a Guest Post can look great on a writers resume!

So how about it, do you believe guest posting is important? Would you attempt guest posting on smaller blogs or would you stick with the big ones only?

Moo below and let us know!

Using Content to get Traffic

Jason Katzenback — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 00:24:46 +0000

Using content to get subscribers, prospects, build reputations and get traffic to your blogs can be very powerful… but ONLY if done right!

We are not talking about content on your own blogs here, but rather posts and content that you use on other sites to promote yours.

In school, we are all taught to always finish a story with a closing paragraph and so when we start writing to promote ourselves online, we do just that, complete with a close. Let us ask you this (actually quoted from a good Australian friend of ours named Dean)…

“If you close your content, wouldn’t that satisfy the reader’s appetite in such a way that that there was no need for them to go any further.”

In other words, why would they need to take action on anything and search for further information about the topic if you already gave it to them?

We thought about this a lot and the more we did, the more it made sense. Your content needs to be crafted in such a way that if a reader wants a closing paragraph, then why shouldn’t we link to it so the reader has to take the action we want (such as visit our site).

Some of our favorite movies are those which don’t finish with a happy ending. No, we are not masochists but they finish in such a way that leaves us wondering whether there’s going to be a next installment. It’s like you’ve built to a crescendo and the hero appears to have won but the last scene reveals something sinister brewing beneath the surface. Then the end credits roll and we all think…

“What the…????”

We want to know what happens; we want to know more but we’re going to have to wait until version 2 hits the big screen. With your content, the reader doesn’t need to wait because there are a couple of live links in our content with specific call to action instructions they can click on to find out more. And that’s exactly what we want them to do… isn’t it?

We are not saying you should finish your content in such a way that it doesn’t make sense but instead do it in a way to entice the reader to take a look out of curiosity at what we have got to offer.

There is a fine line between readers just reading content as opposed to reading and clicking through and that fine line in our opinion is the closing paragraph. Yes, the entire content itself needs to be interesting enough for them to continue reading but if they get to the end then you can be rest assured they were interested. What a shame if you gave them that dreaded closing paragraph such as…

“And that folks is what you need to do when grooming a Norwegian Humpback. We hope you’ve enjoyed this post and thank you very much for reading it.”

Would we want to click on the link in the content with a finish like that. We know we wouldn’t. Maybe an ending like this would have been more appropriate…

“Want to know how to finish grooming the healthiest Norwegian Humpback in your neighborhood? Subscribe to our RSS Feed at “Insert Link Here” and we guarantee your Humpback will be the envy of everyone in your street! “

The end of your content needs to catch their attention…. or they are just not going to do what you want them to!

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