Stop Reading Other People's Silly Blogs

The more time you spend reading other people's silly blogs the less chance you have of actually developing a voice. In the writing world you either do something first or you do it best.

All these ridiculous blog posts about how to write well, short, long, tall, best, etc. are fluff and weasel juice. Read a few, take in the important stuff and then just stop looking at them altogether!

The on-line world of writing about writing, blogging about blogging, and networking for the sale of networking is a merry-go-round of mediocrity that will get you nowhere. 

99 percent of PDF eBooks are garbage. Especially if they sell for 29.99.

Consider your blog as your Curriculum: A reflection of your style and your unique viewpoint. When it's good enough people will come to you. If after about five years nobody comes along, do something else!

Social Media To Continue Expanding Infinitely And For Ever And Ever And Ever

Social media growth defies gravity. Can it last?

A fascinating study by the University of Waffle and Lettuce has revealed that Social Media is set to continue expanding. Eventually,  the entire universe will be one humongous Tweet. The study, commissioned by the SEO Marketing PDF eBook Guru Institute, also found that SEO gurus and in-bound marketers will soon rule the world. From their parent's basements!


With Facebook set to debut on the stock markets with a value of a gazillion dollars, some old-fashioned, fuddy-duddies are daring to suggest that social media and social networks are turning into a bubble. These Luddite fools, who still own pens, and even use them to make words, are of course, completely wrong. Their absurd notions of ROI and cost-effective marketing are now obsolete.  If someone doesn't understand the true value of millions of people wasting their time sending by each other videos of cats, simply unfriend them and move on.


The unprecedented growth of social networks will soon spread from people to devices, such as fridges, cars and sex toys. This future "Internet of things" will make social networks better:  Most of the tweets between inanimate objects will be less banal than the ones between humans.  

Blogging Tips: Make Your Readers Feel Like Crap By Reminding Them How Much Richer and Cleverer and Betterer Than Them You Are

Stop with the negative blogging!

Blogging used to be a nice, friendly backwater where a load of lonely people told each other about their cats, children and gardens. Then, one rainy day, some Smart Alec came along and realised that they could make money by blogging. The blogosphere has been going downhill ever since. 


Instead of well meaning, albeit damn boring, posts and personal musings, now we are inundated by pro-blogger mailouts full of barely concealed affiliate links, ridiculous PDF eBooks, and insufferable, badly-filmed video tutorials. Worst of all, they are almost all as boring as the original blogs about cats!


There is one specific element of the pro-blogger industry that has got me in enough of a tizzy to get off the sofa and write a post of my own.


First, here is a spoof link to my own non-existent affiliate link. Click here, and don't get a completely stale and utterly useless PDF eBook!


Because most pro-bloggers and on-line marketers don't have any original ideas whatsoever, they tend to rely on dreadful content to attract suckers traffic. This tends to be in the form of articles with depressingly unoriginal titles containing such monuments to banality as "top ten ways to", "five reason why", and "are you making this mistake". 


Open one of these totems of triviality and you get reams of re-hashed old ideas, ridiculous suggestions, and patronising, bad advice. The future of in-bound marketing is in the hands of people who advise you "tidy up your desk to boost productivity", "blog regularly to increase traffic", "stop looking like an idiot by learning some grammar", and "avoid Elephantiasis by not having sex with pachyderms". That last one may not be a real quote, the first three come from my inbox today!


More insidious, and more damaging to the blogosphere in the long term, is the rising tide of negative in-bound marketing designed to prey on people's insecurities. 


Today's examples of this include the "stop looking like an idiot" quote mentioned above, and other gems such as "why most freelancers suck", and "the main reason why you are not earning as much as me".


There is, of course, a place for this sort of weasely negative content. 


THE BIN!! 


Negative inbound marketing may get you reads in the short term, as you stick hot knives into people's insecurities, and remind them of their inadequacies. However, any negativity has to be tempered with genuinely useful, highly original content. I don't mind being told that I am a lazy, messy, barely literate loser by a semi-anonymous blogger, provided that I get something worthwhile in return. In my book at least, being told to tidy my desk and learn how to use the semicolon doesn't really cut the mustard.


Constant negative blog posts and mailshots is in serious danger of ruining blogging for everyone. Wannabee pro bloggers seem to spend so much time leaving insincere comments on each other's posts that they forget that blogging only works if you have readers. Not everyone who reads a b log is a pro-blogger with an affiliate deal, or a PDF eBook-peddling weasel. 


It is time to move away from negative titles, preachy content, and the unrelenting drive towards conversions and profit. Stop telling me why I am inadequate! That is what my wife is for!!


If you agree with me, click here for a super-secret page. If you don't, click here for a super-secret page full of free PDF eBooks. 


Finally, click here if you knew that writing "click here" gets you 13% more conversions than writing "don't click here, it is poisonous".

Top Tips About Writing Top Tips Articles

God help me! Not another top ten tips article!

The “Top Tips About” or “Best Ways To” article format is so common that everyone is sick to death of it. That doesn’t stop dozens of new versions appearing every day. Now that there are so many of them on the Internet you don’t even have to rehash your own boring, predictable tips. Just Google "Top Tips" for your niche and copy someone else’s feeble ideas!

Here are my top five tips for writing depressingly unoriginal top tips articles that make your readers want to cover themselves in mince and throw themselves into a tiger pit.

1) Never just write five tips if you do an article titled Top Five Tips. Always include a really irritating sixth tip. That way when the reader thinks that the pain is finally over they get a final slap in the face.

2) Spend no time thinking of original tips for your niche as your readers are not looking for interesting content. They will actually thank you for rehashing other people’s bad ideas and claiming them as your own.

3) Never include any detail in your top tips articles. Readers want them to be short and superficial with no content of genuine interest. You hardly have to bother about the last two as nobody reads that far anyway.

4) Be really original and witty and clever by reinventing the format and using letters instead of numbers.

5) This tip is rubbish because it is the last one and I am tired now and bored and don’t want to write any more.

6) Tip number six: IN YOUR FACE!!