Tag Archives: words

How to Use Stories to Change the World

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If you have a blog, you tell stories. You may have dealt with the frustration of not having very many people see your stories, of not having enough subscribers or readers. Nevertheless, you keep on documenting your story in your blog posts, your Facebook status updates, your Twitter feed. You tell your stories and hope people will hear you. You’re lucky. The majority of people in Burma — a country that is brutally ruled by a military dictatorship — have no electricity, let alone access to the Internet. Which means it’s difficult to widely share stories about what they experience there. Right now, there are thousands of blogs detailing the difficulties of life as a single parent, but there aren’t many blogs describing what it’s like to live your entire life in a refugee camp or to survive a disaster like Cyclone Nargis, which killed more than 138,000 people in Burma. Those who manage to blog can suffer dire consequences for daring to do so. A 30-year-old blogger from Burma was sentenced to 20 years in prison for posting political satire. Weaving narratives about our lives is one of the things that makes us human The stories we tell are undeniably powerful. Stories allow us to connect with one another, to know each other as individuals rather than statistics. Yet those who are living through human rights crises have their stories written from a distance, in news blurbs and legal briefs. These stories rarely become as compelling as the ones you tell on your own blog, simply because they often lack the intimacy of a much fuller first-person narrative. Until now. Putting the human back into human rights My strategy to survive was to appease the soldiers and to make friends with them. I thought, if only we could make friends with these soldiers, then we would survive. But porters can die at any time. For example, if a soldier got angry and just shot me with his gun, nothing would happen to him. I would just die, like a chicken or a rat. To Tanintharyi Division, they send 500 porters every year. Of the 500, only 72 porters make it back to the prison. If you survive, you survive. I was a porter for nearly six months. ~ Lai Pa, 34-year-old man from Burma Perhaps you’ve read about the severe crackdown on monks protesting in the Saffron Revolution, or the destruction wrought by Cyclone Nargis. Although Burma is a hotbed of human rights abuses and repression, it is also home to 50 million individuals and exponentially more stories. This fall, Voice of Witness will release Nowhere to Be Home: Narratives from Survivors of Burma’s Military Regime . The book will delve into the diverse lives of people who have lived under Burma’s military junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). Voice of Witness is a nonprofit book series that empowers the men and women who have lived through human rights crises by letting them tell their stories in their own words. In Nowhere to Be Home , dozens of stories are told publically for the first time. Lai Pa was studying to become a preacher when he was imprisoned and forced to work as a porter for the military . Tang Mai, an LGBT rights activist talks about his strained relationship with his father, a famous ethnic Kachin rebel leader. Ye Myint Win was a former army general who fought against those very same rebels; his story is told alongside Tang Mai’s. You can read the short descriptions we’ve put here for you, but as you can see, they only scratch the surface as an introduction to the narrators. (All of those names, as you can imagine, have been changed to protect these people.) The book brings to light the voices of refugees, former political prisoners, migrant workers, farmers, artists, students, and activists. These vivid portraits do something that human rights reports don’t: they allow you to experience Burma through entire life stories of its people in their own words. Calling all bloggers: how can we share these stories? Bloggers are storytellers, and your stories give you power. We’re asking you to share some of what you’ve learned from your own experiences of telling your story publically, to help us imagine ways this book can extend beyond the reach of print. Tell us. How can we use the Internet to amplify the narratives in this book? How can we make their words echo as far and as wide as any post here on Copyblogger? We want to hear your thoughts about sharing stories, about how storytelling can change the world, and about how you would use social media to share these incredible stories collected from Burma. Please let us know in the comments! About the Authors : Maggie Lemere and Zoë West are the editors of Nowhere to Be Home: Narratives from Survivors of Burma’s Military Regime , the latest in the Voice of Witness book series. Voice of Witness was founded by author Dave Eggers and physician/human rights scholar Lola Vollen, and is the nonprofit division of McSweeney’s Books. If you’re inspired by the storytelling work done by the nonprofit book series Voice of Witness, you can make a donation here to support their work.

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How to Use Stories to Change the World

Clicks By The Number of Keywords

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The following data illustrates Pareto is alive and well vis-a-vis the number of searcher clicks containing four words or less – 80%. From Hitwise: Longer search queries, averaging searches of five to more than eight words in length, were flat between March 2010 and April 2010. The same time period showed that shorter search queries – those averaging one to four words long – also were flat from month to month. Two-word searches comprised the majority of searches, amounting to 23.06 percent of all queries, and increased 1 percent in April 2010. Clicks by Number of Keywords Whereas those with five, six, seven, eight or more words comprise less than 20% of all clicks. The Hitwise data merely confirms what I have been saying all along -  the Long Tail is a tall tale.

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Clicks By The Number of Keywords

Are You Too Lazy to Write Less?

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How long should an article or a blog post be? How about a sales letter? The answer is, of course: “As long as necessary. And no longer. ” Obvious, right? Most writers know that brevity is crucial. In writing, like many things in life, “less is more.” But in writing and in Texas BBQ, we tend to over-indulge. We don’t need the extra words any more than we need those surplus calories, delicious though they are. Why does brevity matter? In your content marketing , you might want to inform or you might want to entertain. If your audience is mentally screaming “Get to the point!” you’ve done neither. And no one will share your work if they don’t understand it, or if it bores them into a coma. For sales copy, brevity is even more important. Yes, long copy sells . But “long” means you cover all of the important facts your prospect needs to know. It does not mean you indulge your desire to natter. If you have ever silently waited, cash in hand, while a windbag salesperson droned on, you will recognize the issue here. It actually takes more work to write a short post. You may find you spend twice as much time editing as you do writing. But you owe it to your readers to cut the fat from your content. Bottom line: If you want your words to have impact, get to the point — then get out of the way! About the Author: Chris Garrett is a professional blogger and co-author of ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income . He is a man of few words, and many of those words can be found on his blog, chrisg.com .

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Are You Too Lazy to Write Less?

How Cornerstone Content Gets You Traffic and Subscribers

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Blogs are great resources. They let you publish high-quality content quickly, efficiently, and inexpensively. The problem is, the default functionality of blogging software makes it easy to show what’s new — but hard to show off the depth of what you’ve done over time. Blogging excels at presenting new content, but fails at aggregating old content in a way that works for people and search engines. So what can you do? How can you help both people and search engines find your content efficiently? Create some solid cornerstone content. If you’ve read Brian Clark’s new SEO copywriting report , you know how important this type of content is to attracting links and ranking for the terms that are central to your site. If you haven’t read Brian’s report, you should to get the full picture. But for now, it’s enough to know that a page hosting cornerstone content helps readers by pulling all of your content about a specific topic together in one place. In other words, each cornerstone page is a home for related content. If you want an example before I continue, check out Landing Pages or Copywriting 101 in the “resources” sidebar to the left of this post. Cornerstone pages let you highlight your most important archived content. They also help you attract links, get subscribers, and increase traffic. Keep reading to find out how. Cornerstone pages are great targets for link-building campaigns Remember, links matter first and foremost with search rankings. But complete, in-depth content on the topics you want people to find you for is important, too. When you group similar content into a home on a single page, you’ll have a keyword dense page which will rank in search engines when you build links to it. Sticking with the Copyblogger examples, do you think they chose phrases like “landing pages” and “SEO copywriting” by accident? Absolutely not. These are two popular keyword phrases that the Copyblogger crew wanted to rank well for in Google. And sure enough, they do. I know what you’re thinking. Copyblogger is a large site. They don’t need to focus on building links to each page, because they will gain links naturally over time. (Never mind the fact that, like every blog, Copyblogger started with no links and just one subscriber — which in this case was Brian.) That’s why cornerstone pages are even more important for new bloggers. These resource-rich pages are perfect for you to link when you do guest posts on other blogs. They’ll help you rank for specific keyword phrases and help you find new readers. 2. Cornerstone pages help you get subscribers People listen to authority figures. Brian also wrote a complete report on authority : why you want it, what it will do for you, and how to get it. People also tend to bookmark, share, and reference authoritative content. Cornerstone content is authoritative because it demonstrates your knowledge around a specific topic. And if it’s genuinely useful, people won’t hesitate to go further with your content, such as subscribing to your blog or signing up for an email newsletter. Does this strategy really work? Yes. How do you think Copyblogger became one of the top blogs? Scroll through the left sidebar and you’ll see all of the Copyblogger resources. Most of these are cornerstone pages, grouping several pieces of valuable content with a call to action to subscribe to the blog. 3. Cornerstone pages are shareable Since each piece of cornerstone content helps people address a specific need, they often remember it. For example, any time someone asks me how to write a great blog headline, there’s one resource that comes to mind . . . the Headline Writing series here on Copyblogger. Even though I first read it almost three years ago, I still refer back to it every time I need some inspiration. Whenever anyone asks me how to write a headline, I send them to this resource because of how helpful and complete it is. I don’t have to send them to five different sites, just one simple URL that’s easy to share. How do you create cornerstone content? There are two ways. One, you can start from scratch and write a blog series with the main goal of turning it into cornerstone content. This is a great way to kick off a blog, or to give your blog a boost. But if you’ve been blogging for a while, there’s a faster way to benefit from this strategy . . . without doing extensive content development. Let me explain. You probably have blog categories, right? Take a look through some of your more important categories. What if you hand-picked some of those category-specific articles and grouped them onto a cornerstone page? It would be easy, right? Now what would make this content effective? First, you’d want to do some basic keyword research to make sure you’re targeting a keyword phrase that makes sense. Then you’ll want to write a snappy, informative introduction that builds desire for your content, using smart SEO copywriting to make it search engine-friendly. And finally, you fill out the page with links to content you already have on your site. It’s that simple. Now get to work. If you focus, you can get your first cornerstone page posted in 30 minutes. And of course, the next time you write a guest post, make sure you link to your new cornerstone content page using the appropriate keywords as anchor text (Brian’s new report gives an example of this). How about you? Using any terrific cornerstone content on your own blog? Let us know where to find it in the comments. About the Author: Derek recently launched the blog Social Triggers . Check it out to learn how to use human psychology to get traffic, sales, and subscribers. Also, don’t miss out on his cornerstone content page, Online Sales 101 .

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Beyond Motivation: Getting to What Really Drives You

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What drives you to write? To earn some green-backs and keep the wolves from the door? To earn praise? Create a community? Or maybe you’re convinced your story will help someone else? Or that you can help other people find important information? Are you compelled to write because you’ll settle for nothing less than changing the world ? You know how to get to Carnegie Hall, right? Motivation, man, motivation. Okay, so I mangled the old joke, but the point remains — you won’t get far unless you’re motivated. Just any old motivation won’t do either – it has to be the right motivation and you have to be honest about what it is. If you’re writing to build a business, but your real motivation is attention and validation from peers , you’re going to go off the rails. Dan Pink, author of the terrific new book Drive , says that real, self-directed motivation is based on three things — autonomy, mastery, and purpose. When we’re motivated, we achieve all of these things. So why do we think it’s so normal to be unmotivated? Lack of motivation isn’t normal Notice when you’re not motivated. Don’t get used to it and teach yourself that it’s normal. It isn’t. When your motivation starts to slip, you need to address it immediately. It’s telling you something is wrong with the way you’re thinking about your work. Maybe you don’t feel like you have autonomy any more. Or that you’re not growing as a writer. Or that your work no longer has purpose. Let it slide and your declining motivation will strip your confidence until you forget why you ever wanted to write in the first place. How do you fix motivation that’s starting to slip? If you’re unmotivated, start by looking back to Pink’s three factors: 1. Give yourself more autonomy When you’re able to have a say over what you write, how you write it, and when you write it, your work becomes a task you can tackle with creativity and a greater sense of ease. That may mean you need to make room to work on your own projects , rather than spending all of your time on other people’s deadlines. Or it may just mean that you need to be more conscious of what kind of clients you’re working to attract. 2. Increase your sense of mastery If you’re able to increase your skills and capability as a result of your writing, then you’re really onto a winner. You get something done and you get better in the process. Work on your craft. Get passionate about the fine points of whatever kind of writing you do. Push yourself to get better every day. 3. Expand your sense of purpose If your work means something to you, it feels right, like you’re making a real contribution. Know that what you do is important. Know how it benefits your clients. Work on projects that support your values, rather than conflicting with them. But . . . motivation isn’t everything It’s nice to read about drive and passion. That message is everywhere. And while it might end up making you feel lovely inside, it doesn’t offer you any insight as to why passion and motivation aren’t enough . See, what Dan Pink didn’t mention is that while congruent motivation and the ability to course-correct are essential parts of success, no amount of motivation can be enough without a supporting belief. As Bruce Lee once said, water adapts to any container. In other words, your life shapes itself and adapts to the barriers you’ve set. It doesn’t matter if you pour 20,000 gallons or a glass of water into an empty swimming pool, the water is constrained by the dimensions of the pool. How big is your swimming pool? You could have all the motivation in the world to build your business, but if you have a belief that says you “can’t” or that you’re “not good enough,” then guess what? You’ve just built a wall that stops that motivation in its tracks, or at the very least turns it into one hell of a struggle. Your beliefs about your writing and your ability to build a meaningful business act like the circuit-breaker in your home, shutting down the power when there’s a perceived risk. But here’s the thing — you don’t need protecting. Those beliefs that limit you and keep you “safe” in your comfort zone aren’t necessary. If you were a house, you’d be one that can grow and move. You’d be a house that can add, remove, and re-order rooms as it needs to. You’d be a house that can rewire itself on the fly. You’d be a house that can repair itself and strengthen itself. You’d be a sentient house with arms and legs and hair and . . . okay, the house metaphor’s gone too far. Here’s what it boils down to: You’re more than a match for any challenge Your capability is bigger than any problem your business can throw at you. You are designed to take on meaningful challenges and learn what’s necessary to succeed. You’re great at stuff. Really, you are. But you won’t be able to do any of it until you reset the boundaries of your beliefs so that they allow your motivation to flow where it needs. Build a pool with no boundaries and what you’ve got is an ocean for your motivation to swim in. About the Author: As a leading confidence coach with clients around the world, Steve Errey has a reputation for talking sense and getting results. Get more from him at The Confidence Guy .

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Beyond Motivation: Getting to What Really Drives You