#what you write without influence will create a baseline of what readers can expect from you

[paimonial-rage]

So I kinda want to start my own writing blog but I have like zero followers and idk where to really start? Ur one of the few blogs I look up too a lot! 😭 I just wanna know if u have any advice for a beginner like me?

Aw thank you so much! That’s really kind. ;u; <3 Funny thing about this question! I was kind of talking about this with a friend yesterday. Sorta. The difficult thing with creating is that like… people are like, “Don’t worry about other people! Create for you!” But at the same time, what’s the point in creating if it’s not for others to see? We create because we want to share with others, you know?

My theory on the matter is…. still what those people say. Just write and post your stories. If you create while worrying if people will notice you, you’re going to cage yourself into feeling you need to meet (what you perceive to be) their expectations of you. When it comes to creating, it’s one of those things that you just have to trust the process. When you create what you want to create without mind to others, people WILL notice that. They WILL get attracted to you and what you write. They WILL come to look forward to your posts. You just have to trust that they will.

Do your best not to get too caught up in the amount of notes you get for something. You’ll find that things you’ve tried really hard on will barely get any notes while things you wrote for fun will get a lot. It can get draining at times.

If you are still concerned with not having any followers, one thing that I think really helps is being the reader you want others to be for you. As a writer, there’s nothing more flattering than someone reblogging my stories with tags or sending in asks saying what specifically they liked about my story. Or well, honestly it doesn’t even need to be things they liked. When they simple share their thoughts and what it made them think about, it’s very flattering. And it makes me want to check out their own blogs and follow them back.

It’s scary to start writing, but once you start, you will get people that like your work. And they’ll stay for your work, even if you go weeks on end not writing. Just trust the process, you’ll definitely get there! And when you get that blog up, maybe you could drop me a line so I can check it out too, hm? ovo <3

[fishing-lesbian-catgirl]

There was a period in my life where I really didn’t understand why people write fanfiction when they could be writing their own stories and characters. But over time I eventually figured it out. People can’t see all the ideas in your head unless you write them, your characters need to have a substantial amount of writing and be of a certain quality for anyone to be able to get invested in them, and they have to be open to reading something completely foreign to them in the first place. But for fanfiction people are already invested in the characters, they already know stuff about the story and setting. The writer doesn’t have to do a ton of work setting all that up and can instead get right to writing the juicy scenes they want without committing to writing a whole bunch to establish everything. And at the end of the day theres no guarantee anyone else will like your characters, but if its a story about a character they already like then its so much easier to get people to read it. These definite advantages are very appealing.

That said, there are also disadvantages. Someone with no interest in the property it’s based on is more unlikely to read fanfiction than original work, both because they don’t have any interest in reading a work that is derived from something they have no connection to and because fanfiction expects reader to have at least a baseline understanding of the story. Another thing is that readers might disagree with your interpretations and headcanons about characters and events. It’s also harder to get published, and people who do “file the serial numbers off” a long fanfic are frequently looked down upon for understandable reasons. One of the major parts of it that I saw as a downside, which was the reason I used to not understand why people write it, is that it is ultimately a derivative work that cannot exist without its source material, and it is not a purely original work of your own creation.

That last part, about pure originality, is what eventually led to me realizing that “hey maybe a derivative fan work can still be valuable and gold”. As I was trying to work on my own things, and trying to be wholly original, I came to realize how impossible it is the come up with ideas that are not at least partially shaped by your perception of the world and how the things you’ve seen have affected your tastes. You can’t write a work of fantasy, sci fi, or any other fiction genre without reflecting the art in the genre that you have experience with. The most extreme version of realizing that no idea exists in a vacuum was when I was trying to come up with names for things. Coming up with a name for something without any outside influences is essentially impossible other than by throwing random syllables around and creating something that hasn’t been used by chance, and even then the syllables you choose will be reflective of the language you speak and other factors that influence your thoughts and who you are.

[arecomicsevengood]

A Year Of Reading Acknowledged Masterpieces #2: Saul Steinberg’s The Labyrinth

Maybe my most pointless worry is for how aliens, or whatever civilization comes after us, will struggle to learn anything from the jumble of signals that is this modern moment of our undoing. Our language and its referents cannot be understood without full immersion, and so much of what holds a privileged place in our culture, like religion or celebrity, correlates to daily existence in a confused and unclear manner. I dwell on this theoretical future because my far more pressing worries make art feel useless and decadent. As much as I love work that feels like it’s arrived as an artifact from a parallel universe, like Peter Greenaway’s The Falls or Ben Marcus’s Notable American Women, they only confuse the issue of an easily imagined not-too-distant future where everything recognizable is extinct, and even man’s many gestures at mimetic realism and journalistic explanations appear to the only prevailing consciousness as incomprehensible as the Codex Seraphinus.

It is in the context of this insane existential anxiety that Saul Steinberg’s work functions as a huge relief. Here the big ideas and our idle habits are captured in the same graceful line. It’s beautiful and funny, thoughtfully considered but never belabored. Everything feels like the platonic ideal of ideas being captured in a distilled form; if I were to liken it to music I would cite John Fahey. Fahey had a hit record with a Christmas LP, Steinberg’s work achieved a high circulation due to its placement in The New Yorker. The cartoons in that magazine seem vaguely notorious for being unfunny and inscrutable, at least to a generation that remembers vividly that one Seinfeld episode and was otherwise weaned on the gags in The Far Side. There are people who dismiss Christmas music as a concept as well. While Steinberg’s work definitely lives up to any rep for dry wit, I don’t really view any of it as being gags. Once you remove the expectation that this work is intended to elicit a laugh it becomes pretty easy to see it as just great art, and its placement in a widely-circulated magazine is just a better delivery system to the masses than art galleries are.

Here’s a Steinberg cartoon the New Yorker reprinted a few months back. It’s from a different time period than the stuff in The Labyrinth. It contains a caption, which none of the pieces in The Labyrinth do, though whether or not they did on their first publication is unknown to me.

The Labyrinth is an art book somewhere between a monograph and a sketchbook, edited and ordered for maximum readability as sets of ideas are explored. Many of those ideas are about drawing, and the drawing often feels close to doodling, as many pieces explore what you can do with a single line without removing pen from paper. It is arguably “not comics,” in that there isn’t a story you read from panel to panel, but the relationship to comics is pretty clear. If you are a maker of “avant-garde” or “art” comics, this book would be as informative to your process as reading E.C. Segar’s Popeye* would be for someone who writes Iron Man. Originally published in 1960, it was recently reprinted by NYRB, although not through their comics imprint, which has published artists whose work is prefigured here. Certain drawings seem to outline ideas that would be elaborated on in Pushwagner’s Soft City (drawn in the seventies, and published by NYRB a few years back), and drawings of people playing music, where the sound is rendered as various abstractions, bring to mind stuff in Blutch’s Total Jazz, published by Fantagraphics in 2018, though NYRB handled an English-language version of his book Peplum in 2016. There’s also stuff in the drawing that calls to mind Sasaki Maki’s Ding Dong Circus. All of these works are done by people outside of the U.S., and I can’t really assert with any historical certainty that those people saw the work in question before their own undertakings, though the amount of copies of The New Yorker that are printed make it seem not impossible. It also seems like Steinberg might’ve attained something of a celebrity status enough that potentially photographs of his drawings of women on bathtubs would’ve made it to Life magazine or something. As great as the drawing is, I’m not sure how much of it you would deliberately copy unless you were seeing individual images in isolation. Seeing so much collected in one place the takeaway is how unaffected it all is: It might inspire you to do more sketchbook drawing to see if you can capture the energy of life as effectively as Steinberg did, but you’re certainly not going to capture the verve of his line by studiously redrawing his work.

In terms of intent, Steinberg’s cartoons set a precedent for Jules Feiffer’s Explainers strips, which would run in The Village Voice a few years later. Feiffer, of course, was well-versed in various kinds of comics, having worked in Eisner’s studio, and his avid readership of the earliest comic books is documented in his book The Great Comic-Book Heroes, but there’s not really anything in that stuff suggestive of the sort of observational acuity of the middle-class that you get in his writing, that is present in Steinberg’s work. The depictions of playing music are rendered similarly his depicting to other forms of communication as outgrowth of power dynamics. The drawings of art galleries and artist’s studios exist alongside pieces that seem to primarily document his own drawing process, all of it capturing how much of mankind’s energy is spent choosing to willfully distract itself, how much we throw ourselves into art. In Feiffer you read these self-involved and circular monologues and dialogues of educated neurotics. Steinberg depicts what these people get up to when they’re not talking through their thoughts, but the reader can still intuit the neuroses through posture and gesture, and the depiction of the social settings that create them.

This is done largely without language. If on first publication they were accompanied by typeset lines of dialogue beneath them, those have been excised for posterity. When a selection of drawings of Russia appear, you recognize it by changes in architecture and fashion. Towards the end, however, there are a few pieces that use lettering as part of the landscape of a piece to convey the meaning of the word being used, i.e. a piece where the word “sick” is laid up in bed. The afterword, dating from the time of the first printing, calls these drawings “conceptual art,” a term which would soon after be applied to something else entirely, making this attempt at nomenclature the sort of historical footnote that’s funny to me. These pieces aren’t the best stuff in the work. They have this children’s book illustration quality that nonetheless brings home how beyond language the rest of the book is. It’s a lesson in expression being taught by someone impossibly fluent, a genius condescending to explain himself: I probably would not have come up with this piece’s introductory paragraph, explaining a way into the work, without their precedent. After readers have been shown what humans are, they’re bestowed tools to understand language. These pieces appear at the end because they’re a way out of the labyrinth, out of Steinberg’s system of association between drawings where lines go wild, and back into the world of humdrum communication.

I have read speculation that music’s initial evolutionary purpose involved soothing the young. A mother’s lullaby, like a cat’s purring, is its origin, and both language and instrumental ornamentation followed later. The musicality of Steinberg’s line, as presented here, follows a similar arc, where beginning from a baseline of recognition at shared humanity, and advancing through harmonic extemporizing with each new suite of drawings serving as a piece of counterpoint, becomes both more abstract and more articulate. The end result is something like an ethnography and something like a symphony.

(*: I’m probably going to talk about Popeye next month. At least one motivating factor behind this series is to get away from the promotional cycle of hype for the new, and look at work worth of being approached almost like items on a syllabus. I hope it doesn’t result in too much writing where I list influenced works to make a case for “historical importance.”)

[yoilitmag]

Frequently Asked Questions

This is the mobile version of our FAQ page. While this post will be edited whenever changes are made, the FAQ page will always be the most recent version.

About the Litmag

What is Shall We Read ? It is a recurring online literary magazine. Within each issue we aim to showcase the works of eighteen talented writers and eight brilliant artists within the YoI fandom! Following the Pilot, the issues released in 2018 will have a combined total of 54 writer and 24 artist slots available for content creators to fill.

What’s the point of a fandom litmag? Shall We Read aims to do three things:

Show appreciation for the fandom’s content creators via publication and monetary compensation.

Give content creators a chance to work on a zine project.

Give subscribers a chance to influence the content that may appear in the litmag’s issues.

All contributors will be paid for their hard work with the proceeds of that issue from sales on Itch.io. If you are interested in participating, see our writer and artist applications!

Who is behind this litmag? The litmag’s organisers are Lily, Wrath, Nica, Rae, and Robbie. You can get to know us better on our Staff page!

What kind of content will be in the litmag? A list of all the litmag’s issues can be found here. Each issue will offer both SFW and NSFW pieces. NSFW content will only be accessible by customers who pay 10 USD or higher.

SFW: approximately 14 writing pieces, 5 art pieces

NSFW appendix: approximately 4 writing pieces, 3 art pieces

Each issue will have a theme, though contributors are not obligated to follow it for their piece. Themes will act more as a foundation for kickstarting ideas as opposed to being a strict requirement.

Themes for the Pilot and the first two issues will be chosen by the litmag’s organisers. Subsequent issues’ themes will be chosen through a “theme lottery” from a pool of suggestions by our 5 USD and up customers. More information regarding theme lotteries will be available closer to the start of production for Issue 3.

Content will be varied. Warnings for potentially upsetting content such as major character death will be labeled above each piece, as well as mentioned in the issue’s table of contents.

What kind of content will not be in the litmag? Pieces featuring explicit shows of non-con, dub-con, and/or underage characters in sexually explicit scenarios will not be published in the litmag. Characters must be visibly depicted as adults in order to be placed in graphically sexual situations.

Double-checking: Will there be NSFW content? Yes, a NSFW Appendicks ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) will be available for as low as 10 USD. The bulk of the litmag is, however, SFW so as to not bar content creators below the age of 18 from participating.

Which ships and characters are allowed in the litmag? All ships and characters are welcome in the litmag. We will be providing labels for pairings and warnings for readers.

For Prospective Customers

How much will it cost? It’s up to you! Shall We Read is a publication that aims to be accessible to all fans. For 1 USD, the litmag’s Baseline tier grants you access to a SFW issue with approximately 19 SFW pieces (14 writing, 5 art). If you have the means to contribute more, we have higher tiers with greater perks such as the ability to offer prompts to litmag creators, longer previews of litmag pieces, and even—at our highest tiers—access to the NSFW appendix containing 7 additional pieces (4 writing, 3 art).

For more info on pricing, please visit our Store.

How do I access the NSFW version of the litmag? The NSFW Appendicks is only available to customers who pay 10 USD or more.

Why does the NSFW edition cost more than the SFW edition?  The difference between the SFW and the NSFW prices is that the baseline is to maximise accessibility, but the higher price of the NSFW is to help make sure our content creators are compensated fairly for their effort. 

We do strongly believe all of these pieces are worth more than 1 USD, but we also want to make sure everything is as reasonably accessible as we can make it.

For Prospective Participants

Who can participate? All writers and artists—regardless of age—who have created content for YoI, meet our minimum content creation requirements, and are open to creating more YoI works are welcome to apply for the SFW portion of the litmag. NSFW contributors must be at least 18 years old at the time of application.

What do I need when applying? You will be asked to provide samples of your work along with your application, which must be uploaded to the anonymous file hosting site we will provide in our application form in order to be considered. The submissions will only be viewed by our review team—no one else will be privy to your application, including your links.

Writer samples: Up to two (2) curated works, in a PDF file without your author name or any other identifying marks in the file or filename, showcasing your writing ability as well as the level of quality you will be contributing to this project.  

Samples must be written in English.

They should total no less than 1,000 and no more than 3,000 words.

At least 1 sample should feature characters from YoI. 

Artist samples: Three (3) completed art samples showcasing your style to the best of your ability, as well as the level of quality you will be contributing to this project.

1 piece should incorporate a complete, full background.

1 piece should have a person’s entire body. 

At least 1 piece should feature characters from YoI. 

Do I need anything extra to apply for a NSFW slot? Writers: One additional piece of 500-1,000 words that showcases your ability to write NSFW. It does not have to be YoI, though that is greatly preferred. An excerpt from a larger piece is acceptable.

Artists: One additional art piece that showcases your ability to draw NSFW. It does not have to be YoI, though that is greatly preferred.

As a reminder, applicants interested in a NSFW slot must be at least 18 years old at the time of application.

What is the expected length? Writers will be expected to write one (1) English YoI fanfiction with a minimum word count of 1,000 words (maximum 5,000). Artists will be expected to contribute either a single page drawing, a spread, or a comic.

What is the schedule? We are looking at (at least) three issues: one in April-May, one in June-July, and one in August-September. For specific dates, please visit our Schedule page.

How do I get to create NSFW content for the litmag? We will designate specific people for the NSFW Appendicks. Those people must be over 18 and have demonstrated through their application their ability to write/draw NSFW. For more details on the NSFW supplement of the application, please visit our Writer or Artist applications.

What do I get out of it? All contributors get their issue for free, as well as an equal cut of the profits from purchases of that issue, so the more friends you can convince to buy your issue, the more you get paid!

Relevant Posts

Addressing Litmag Concerns (trademark and copyright, period of exclusivity, usage of YoI official art in promotional materials, and contributor compensation)

If the FAQ doesn’t answer any questions you have, we encourage you to read through our #asks tag before directing any questions to our Ask Box (mobile version).

[imapplied]

5 Lessons You Can Learn From 1,000+ Bloggers to Improve Content

Every year, Orbit Media releases their “Blogging Statistics and Trends” survey.

To compile their findings, it’s sent to over 1,000 unique bloggers and content marketing specialists.

Naturally, it’s packed with valuable information, graphs, and tidbits that can transform your outlook on content creation.

But reading a 5,000+ word blog post and deciphering the meaning of dozens of graphs is time-consuming.

And remembering all of it down the line without taking copious, detailed notes? Slim chance.

So, I did it for you!

Here are the biggest takeaways you can learn from the 1,000+ bloggers surveyed to improve your content.

1. Start Spending More Time on Each Post

Most people spend somewhere between one and four hours on a given piece of content before sending it live, according to the Blogging Survey.

Unless you’ve been an expert in that specific field for the last 10 years, that isn’t enough.

The problem with spending only four hours on a single post is lack of research.

It’s nearly impossible to conduct impactful (deep) research, synthesize the information, and condense the key takeaways into 2,000 words in four hours or less.

A common issue then becomes the regurgitation of already existing content.

Essentially, just Googling the target keyword, pulling tips from top posts, and then calling it “new.”

That’s not original and it’s sure as heck not going to get results.

Some of the most interesting (and successful) content is months in the making before being published.

Prime example: SEJ’s 18-part 2019 SEO Guide.

Now go try to write a 2019 SEO guide in four hours and get back to me with the traffic and ranking results.

It ain’t gonna work.

Content is becoming incredible.

It’s more detailed than ever before.

It delves deeper into each subject’s subtopics and sub-subtopics.

It’s complete with tutorials, tips, studies, original research, and unique value.

If you want average results, spend the average 1-4 hours on your content.

But bloggers spending 6+ hours per post are 56 percent more likely to report stronger results.

And I’d be willing to wager that with each additional hour (up to a point), those results increase even more.

2. Stop Putting (Real) Editing on the Backburner

Most content out there is dead boring. It’s dry, nails on a chalkboard content.

Even if the copy is appetizing, it doesn’t mean squat if nobody can digest it.

Content should get people aroused and pique their senses.

It needs to be flawless in tone, style, and delivery. Without an editor, this becomes a fool’s errand.

You’ve just written 2,000+ words. The last thing your brain wants to do is re-read it five times to check for grammatically incorrect phrases or to see if every last sentence matches the tone of your target audience.

Are you editing your own work?

If so, you aren’t alone.

According to the survey, 46 percent of writers edit their own work.

Another 30 percent informally showcase it to one or two people.

Only 24 percent of writers have a formal editor.

And guess what? Those that use one or more formal editors report 50 percent better results.

Bad grammar and sloppy editing can damage your credibility and even hinders your likelihood of being promoted and accelerating job advancement.

Plus, the readers don’t lie:

42 percent of ‘em state that spelling errors give them a negative perception of brand and status.

And, according to the Blogging Survey, showing it to a friend isn’t good enough. You need serious editors dedicated to the task of content perfection.

There are countless sites like Fiverr and UpWork where you can hire quality editors:

Feeling frugal? There are dozens of grammar and editing tools online.

I never send off an article without running it through Grammarly:

It checks for plagiarism, spelling, grammar, punctuation, fluency, conciseness, formality, clarity, variety, and vocabulary.

Plus, you can customize goals to deliver more accurate editing suggestions based on what intent, style, and emotion you are going for:

This should serve as a baseline to editing your content. Once you do this, it’s time to run it by an editor.

Can’t find one? Grammarly even offers human proofreading services, so you have no excuse.

No matter what you do, always run your content through an editing tool and a professional editor.

Your readers can (and will) thank you later.

3. Stop Neglecting Old Content

Writing a top quality blog post takes hours. Days. Weeks.

Maybe even months if it’s a long guide with production quality visuals.

With so much time invested in a piece of content, it’s easy to hit the publish button and kick back in your chair.

You did it, right? Sort of. But not really. Content doesn’t just stay evergreen because you want it to.

Sure, planning in advance for more evergreen topics can help, but even still, nothing in digital marketing stays the same for long.

Once you hit publish, your work is only 75 percent of the way done. Posts can become outdated in just weeks.

Need proof?

Check out Brian Dean’s Skyscraper 2.0 where a single post of his went from #1 on SERPs to middle of the second page.

Why? He went on cruise control. And sadly, most people do this. I do too. Guilty!

According to the Blogging Statistics and Trends survey, 62 percent of content marketers aren’t updating their content after hitting that shiny, instantly gratifying publish button.

Yet those who do update old content are “twice as likely to report strong results.”

Updating content gives you the opportunity to grab low-hanging fruit and overtake posts above you if you fall behind, or ensure that competitors can’t do it to you.

Start by looking at your analytics for given posts. What rankings and traffic did you have when your post was at its peak?

Has traffic flatlined? Check to see if rankings have changed over time:

If they have, it’s time to update your post to fit searcher expectations.

Head to SERPs for the target keywords and examine the few posts ranking above yours.

Are they targeting Google’s machine learning by answering critically related questions?

Is their content more in-depth, longer, or contain more visuals than yours?

Does it touch on the latest updates and news to keep it relevant?

Ultimately ask yourself:

What are they doing that I haven’t?

Fix it, republish it, and reclaim your rightful SERP position.

4. Start Conducting Your Own Research for Backlink Goldmines

Infographics have long been touted as “link bait.”

But most are far too long, dense, and text-heavy to make a big impact.

Not to mention their cheesy illustrated graphics that we’ve all seen thousands of times over.

And now, good infographics are few and far between. Hootsuite wrote about the decline of infographics back in 2015.

And a study from 2010-2015 proved that infographics were declining in usage and impact.

So, what works to generate genuine backlinks now?

Original research – ironic, considering I’m writing an entire post about an original research study.

And it’s true: original research is killing it right now.

Case and point, the study I am deconstructing here has 4.28k backlinks already.

Plug in just about any reputable, informative, relevant, and statistically significant original research post and you’ll see similar results.

Tons of links. Tons of keywords. Tons of traffic. Tons of winning.

Why? Because anybody that writes good content knows research is critical to making your point stick.

Writers need data to back up claims, and marketers need data-driven strategies to maximize their budget.

Providing original research nails both with precision.

According to the Blogging Statistics and Trends survey, those who conduct and publish original studies report 2.9x better impact on their contents success.

Want to create better content that gets noticed?

Start developing original research on unique and trending topics in your niche.

Sure, it might cost you a few thousand bucks to do, but that’s why it works: you aren’t posting cookie-cutter content.

5. Start Doing What Everyone Else Isn’t Doing

It’s tempting to pump out a bunch of content for the sake of content.

It makes you feel great when you click to your blog and see dozens of long-form posts.

But, unless you are actively doing what most people are not doing, content is a total waste of time.

If you think that you can go write a cookie-cutter SEO tip post in the current age and generate good rankings, think again.

Today’s landscape is brutal. Even for the most obscure, low-traffic keywords.

Check out the SERPs for “International SEO,” a keyword with just 250 searches a month.

Moz, SEJ, SEL, Neil Patel, WordStream, SEMrush, and HubSpot. Not a single DA under 87.

Yikes.

Wanna rank for it without a DA above 87 and hundreds to thousands of backlinks over years of time?

Two thousands words ain’t gonna cut it. “Long-form” doesn’t mean jack if it’s not different in some fundamental way.

You’re gonna need much more, and most people are far too stingy or lazy to do it.

But that’s actually good news.

If everyone was doing it, you’d be stuck in the same position: unable to outrank the big players.

Thankfully, there are tons of strategies that most bloggers are not using, including said big players.

This gives you a powerful opportunity to capitalize on what readers (and Google) want to see:

Only 18 percent publish 2,000+ word posts: Increase your length, but make sure the content isn’t fluff. Actively research subtopics and provide value. Nobody wants to read 5,000 words if it doesn’t help them solve a problem.

Only 20 percent collaborate with influencers: Reach out to influencers for quotes to boost credibility. The benefit here is both credibility and the increased chance of these influencers sharing the content and linking back to it.

Only 19 percent add video content to their articles, and only 4 percent use audio, but they generate the biggest impacts: For just a few bucks, you can outsource video and audio summaries of your articles to freelancers on UpWork or Fiverr and add immense value for mobile users who enjoy video or want to listen podcast-style.

All of these strategies are listed as the least common tactics among 1,000+ bloggers.

And unsurprisingly, they also rank as the most effective.

Why? Because everything else is beaten to a pulp.

As tactics become more popular over time, receptiveness sinks like a rock (see: Law of Shitty Click-Throughs)

Want better content, better rankings, and better engagement? Invest in what most content creators are skipping.

Conclusion

With millions of blog posts being written, edited, and published on a daily basis, differentiation is the holy grail.

If you take anything away from this post, it should be this:

Do what other content creators fail to do…

Spend more time on each post (more research, more outlining, more flow development, and more writing)

Have multiple, dedicated editor third-parties edit and proofread your work. They are going to catch errors you simply can’t.

Start revamping your old content and be consistent. Once you hit publish, your job is far from done.

Start producing your own research studies. People love original research. Is it hard to produce? Duh. Is it time-consuming? You know the answer. Is it worth it? Data says yes, unequivocally.

Invest time and money into tactics that most content producers don’t: video, audio, influencer outreach, and more.

More than 1,000 bloggers can teach us that going the extra mile is the only hope in the noise of modern SERPs.

Image Credits

Featured Image: Pixabay All Screenshots taken by author, January 2019

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[asfeedin]

5 Blogging Tips to Help Boost Your Content Now

Every year, Orbit Media releases their Blogging Statistics and Trends survey.

To compile their findings, it’s sent to over 1,000 unique bloggers and content marketing specialists.

Naturally, it’s packed with valuable information, graphs, and tidbits that can transform your outlook on content creation.

But reading a 5,000+ word blog post and deciphering the meaning of dozens of graphs is time-consuming.

And remembering all of it down the line without taking copious, detailed notes? Slim chance.

So, I did it for you!

Here are the biggest takeaways you can learn from the 1,000+ bloggers surveyed to improve your content.

1. Start Spending More Time on Each Post

Most people spend an average of 3 hours and 57 minutes writing a blog post before sending it live, according to the Blogging Survey.

Unless you’ve been an expert in that specific field for the last 10 years, that still isn’t enough.

The problem with spending only four hours on a single post is lack of research.

It’s nearly impossible to conduct impactful (deep) research, synthesize the information, and condense the key takeaways into 2,000 words in four hours or less.

A common issue then becomes the regurgitation of already existing content.

Essentially, just Googling the target keyword, pulling tips from top posts, and then calling it “new.”

That’s not original and it’s sure as heck not going to get results.

Some of the most interesting (and successful) content is months in the making before being published.

Prime example: Search Engine Journal’s 18-part 2020 SEO Guide.

Now go try to write a 2020 SEO guide that matches the quality above in four hours and get back to me with the traffic and ranking results.

It ain’t gonna work.

Content is becoming incredible.

It’s more detailed than ever before.

It delves deeper into each subject’s subtopics and sub-subtopics.

It’s complete with tutorials, tips, studies, original research, and unique value.

If you want average results, spend the average 1-4 hours on your content.

But bloggers spending 6+ hours per post are 38% more likely to report stronger results.

And I’d be willing to wager that with each additional hour (up to a point), those results increase even more.

2. Stop Putting (Real) Editing on the Backburner

Most content out there is dead boring.

It’s dry, nails on a chalkboard content.

Even if the copy is appetizing, it doesn’t mean squat if nobody can digest it.

Content should get people aroused and pique their senses.

It needs to be flawless in tone, style, and delivery.

Without an editor, this becomes a fool’s errand.

You’ve just written 2,000+ words. The last thing your brain wants to do is re-read it five times to check for grammatically incorrect phrases or to see if every last sentence matches the tone of your target audience.

Are you editing your own work?

If so, you aren’t alone.

According to the survey, 41% of writers edit their own work.

Another 28% informally showcase it to one or two people.

Only 22% of writers have a formal editor.

And guess what? Those that use one or more formal editors report 38% better results.

Bad grammar and sloppy editing can damage your credibility and even hinders your likelihood of being promoted and accelerating job advancement.

Plus, the readers don’t lie:

42% of ‘em state that spelling errors give them a negative perception of brand and status.

And, according to the Blogging Survey, showing it to a friend isn’t good enough.

You need serious editors dedicated to the task of content perfection.

There are countless sites like Fiverr and UpWork where you can hire quality editors:

Feeling frugal?

There are dozens of grammar and editing tools online.

I never send off an article without running it through Grammarly:

It checks for plagiarism, spelling, grammar, punctuation, fluency, conciseness, formality, clarity, variety, and vocabulary.

Plus, you can customize goals to deliver more accurate editing suggestions based on what intent, style, and emotion you are going for:

This should serve as a baseline for editing your content.

Once you do this, it’s time to run it by an editor.

Can’t find one?

Grammarly even offers human proofreading services, so you have no excuse.

No matter what you do, always run your content through an editing tool and a professional editor.

Your readers can (and will) thank you later.

3. Stop Neglecting Old Content

Writing a top quality blog post takes hours. Days. Weeks.

Maybe even months if it’s a long guide with production quality visuals.

With so much time invested in a piece of content, it’s easy to hit the publish button and kick back in your chair.

You did it, right?

Sort of. But not really.

Content doesn’t just stay evergreen because you want it to.

Sure, planning in advance for more evergreen topics can help, but even still, nothing in digital marketing stays the same for long.

Once you hit publish, your work is only 75% of the way done. Posts can become outdated in just weeks.

According to the Blogging Statistics and Trends survey, over 33% of content marketers aren’t updating their content after hitting that shiny, instantly gratifying publish button.

I’ve been guilty of going on cruise control, too.

Yet those who do update old content are “2x more likely to report success.”

Updating content gives you the opportunity to grab low-hanging fruit and overtake posts above you if you fall behind, or ensure that competitors can’t do it to you.

Start by looking at your analytics for given posts.

What rankings and traffic did you have when your post was at its peak?

Has traffic flatlined?

Check to see if rankings have changed over time:

If they have, it’s time to update your post to fit searcher expectations.

Head to SERPs for the target keywords and examine the few posts ranking above yours.

Are they targeting Google’s machine learning by answering critically related questions?

Is their content more in-depth, longer, or contain more visuals than yours?

Does it touch on the latest updates and news to keep it relevant?

Ultimately ask yourself:

What are they doing that I haven’t?

Fix it, republish it, and reclaim your rightful SERP position.

4. Start Conducting Your Own Research for Backlink Goldmines

Infographics have long been touted as “link bait.”

But most are far too long, dense, and text-heavy to make a big impact.

Not to mention their cheesy illustrated graphics that we’ve all seen thousands of times over.

And now, good infographics are few and far between.

Hootsuite wrote about the decline of infographics back in 2015.

And a study from 2010-2015 proved that infographics were declining in usage and impact.

So, what works to generate genuine backlinks now?

Original research – ironic, considering I’m writing an entire post about an original research study.

And it’s true: original research is killing it right now.

Case and point, the study I am deconstructing here has 4.25k backlinks already.

Plug in just about any reputable, informative, relevant, and statistically significant original research post and you’ll see similar results.

Tons of:

Links.

Keywords.

Traffic.

Winning.

Why?

Because anybody that writes good content knows research is critical to making your point stick.

Writers need data to back up claims, and marketers need data-driven strategies to maximize their budget.

Providing original research nails both with precision.

According to the Blogging Statistics and Trends survey, 85% of those publishing original research report stronger results than traditional blogging.

Want to create better content that gets noticed?

Start developing original research on unique and trending topics in your niche.

Sure, it might cost you a few thousand bucks to do, but that’s why it works:

You aren’t posting cookie-cutter content.

5. Start Doing What Everyone Else Isn’t Doing

It’s tempting to pump out a bunch of content for the sake of content.

It makes you feel great when you click on your blog and see dozens of long-form posts.

But, unless you are actively doing what most people are not doing, content is a total waste of time.

If you think that you can go write a cookie-cutter SEO tip post in the current age and generate good rankings, think again.

Today’s landscape is brutal.

Even for the most obscure, low-traffic keywords.

Check out the SERPs for “International SEO,” a keyword with just 250 searches a month.

Moz, Search Engine Journal, SEL, Neil Patel, WordStream, SEMrush, and HubSpot. Not a single DA under 87.

Yikes.

Want to rank for it without a DA above 87 and hundreds to thousands of backlinks over years of time?

Two-thousand words ain’t gonna cut it.

“Long-form” doesn’t mean jack if it’s not different in some fundamental way.

You’re gonna need much more, and most people are far too stingy or lazy to do it.

But that’s actually good news.

If everyone was doing it, you’d be stuck in the same position: unable to outrank the big players.

Thankfully, there are tons of strategies that most bloggers are not using, including said big players.

This gives you a powerful opportunity to capitalize on what readers (and Google) want to see:

Only 11% publish 2,000+ word posts: Increase your length, but make sure the content isn’t fluff. Actively research subtopics and provide value. Nobody wants to read 5,000 words if it doesn’t help them solve a problem.

Only 1% collaborate with influencers: Reach out to influencers for quotes to boost credibility. The benefit here is both credibility and the increased chance of these influencers sharing the content and linking back to it.

Only 26% add video content to their articles, and only 7% use audio, but they generate the biggest impacts: For just a few bucks, you can outsource video and audio summaries of your articles to freelancers on UpWork or Fiverr and add immense value for mobile users who enjoy video or want to listen podcast-style.

All of these strategies are listed as the least common tactics among 1,000+ bloggers.

And unsurprisingly, they also rank as the most effective.

Why? Because everything else is beaten to a pulp.

As tactics become more popular over time, receptiveness sinks like a rock (see: Law of Shitty Click-Throughs)

Want better content, better rankings, and better engagement?

Invest in what most content creators are skipping.

Conclusion

With millions of blog posts being written, edited, and published on a daily basis, differentiation is the holy grail.

If you take anything away from this post, it should be this:

Do what other content creators fail to do.

Spend more time on each post (more research, more outlining, more flow development, and more writing).

Have multiple, dedicated editor third-parties edit and proofread your work. They are going to catch errors you simply can’t.

Start revamping your old content and be consistent. Once you hit publish, your job is far from done.

Start producing your own research studies. People love original research. Is it hard to produce? Duh. Is it time-consuming? You know the answer. Is it worth it? Data says yes, unequivocally.

Invest time and money into tactics that most content producers don’t: video, audio, influencer outreach, and more.

More than 1,000 bloggers can teach us that going the extra mile is the only hope in the noise of modern SERPs.

More Resources:

Image Credits

Featured Image: Pixabay All screenshots taken by author, April 2020

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Tackle Inactives by Designing for Their Buyer Personalities

It’s one of those perpetual questions: Why do so many subscribers go inactive?

We have lots of theories. We talk about frequency and content and optimizing sending times and opting down – everything but what I believe is one of the main causes:

Your email personality doesn’t appeal to them.

It’s like a Tinder date where your match looked so promising online, only to find out when you finally meet that your personalities don’t mesh.

This can happen when your marketing team is made up of people who share one personality type, such as impulse buyers, but your customers are methodical shoppers who need loads of data before they’ll click to buy.

We tend to create emails that appeal to us without checking to make sure they resonate with our customers. But you don’t have to replace your wildly creative designers and copywriters with I-dotters, T-crossers, bullet-pointers and fine-print experts.

Instead, find out how your customers read, shop and buy. Then, design emails that incorporate elements to appeal to each of four basic buyer personalities.

If your messages don’t motivate your customers to act, they’ll ignore your emails. Perhaps not enough to unsubscribe; they just won’t jump on your emails when your brand or subject line pops into the inbox.

In other words, they’re just not that into you.

But they used to be – hence, why they’re on your list. The solution? Design your emails to appeal to all four buyer personalities.

 The four distinct types of buyers

Greek classicism and modern marketing research combine to help us understand these four basic types:

 1. Hippocrates, the Greek physician, defined basic human personalities:

Choleric

Sanguine

Melancholic

Phlegmatic

 2. Marketing experts Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg gave us these modern versions:

Competitive

Spontaneous

Methodical

Humanistic

 3. Usability expert Jakob Nielsen identified four types of web searchers that mesh with these buyer personalities:

Search Dominant

Navigation Dominant

Tool Dominant

Successful

Blending this research together gives us these four shopper personalities:

 1. Competitive/Choleric/Search Dominant

Competitive buyers want to move fast. Give them the pertinent details. Let them click and convert effortlessly, and then get out of their way. They want products and services that will make them more effective.  Making fast, smart decisions is their competitive advantage.

  2. Spontaneous/Sanguine/Tool Dominant

These are your impulse buyers. If they like it, they’ll buy it without shopping around or scrutinizing the fine print. They love the emotional high that comes from pouncing on the perfect whatever, but they also expect superior customer service after the sale so you don’t kill their shopping high.

 3. Methodical/Melancholic/Navigation Dominant

Methodical buyers are your fine-print readers and the ultimate comparison shoppers. They will read every bit of technical information to assure themselves that they’re making the right choice and won’t move to convert until they have soaked up all the relevant information in your email.

 4. Humanistic/Phlegmatic/Successful

Humanistic buyers don’t just buy the product; they want to know about the company they’re buying from. They seek out social proof to approve their actions. What’s your mission? Are you trustworthy? Humanistic shoppers are hard to lock down. They likely won’t act on your emails right away. Once you earn their trust, however, they are loyal repeat shoppers.

 How the four personalities shop and research

This chart shows how these four personalities line up with buying styles as well as how they use the web and email. It also introduces the “fold” concept; that is, the best place in the message to put your offer.

  The challenge: designing for multiple customer personalities

As I said before, incorporating elements that would appeal to each of the four buyer personalities could help you reduce inactivity. It’s not that simple, of course, but it can be done without completely overhauling your email templates.

The issue, of course, is that your customers and subscribers aren’t all cut from the same bolt of personality cloth. They might also show a different personality with different products or services, or buying for business versus buying for personal reasons.

I’m more Spontaneous when shopping for personal items, yet Competitive when I’m in my business role. Emails from retailers and travel brands that appeal most to me have simple, punchy calls to action, luscious images and a clear direction that tells me what I need to do next.

I don’t need details. I don’t want highlights. Just tell me what I need to do. Emails like the one below make me say, “I want that! How do I get it?”

  A Methodical shopper, on the other hand, wants to see the fine print: exclusions, blackout dates and other restrictions.

 Decode your buyers’ personalities

  Assess your email personality. Ask people who aren’t as close to them as you and your team are, and figure out which of the four personalities your email reflects. Is it yours, your marketing team’s, your designers? Do outsiders like IT, your executives, even legal influence your creative content?

  Use email, search and web clues to determine your buyer personalities. These questions can point you in the right direction:

Do your customers usually click right to the landing page and convert?

Do they start at the landing page, click on detail tabs or look for buyer FAQs?

Do they visit the landing page again and again?

Do they click the “buy now” button but then let the product sit in the shopping cart for a few days before converting?

If you don’t get definitive answers there, your customer base probably is made up of all four personalities, which is standard and to be expected. You might be tempted to try segmenting customers based on your assumptions about which kind of buyer they are and targeting messages to each group, but that can get you into trouble if you guess wrong.

So, how do you deal with this?

 Design for all four personalities

Set up your email template to account for all four buyer personalities in your layout and copy. Add elements that would resonate with each personality throughout your email, using copy, images, positioning and navigation that could prompt each type to click through.

Here’s how it might play out:

Spontaneous shoppers might need just a gorgeous image, a paragraph of WIIFM (“what’s in it for me?”) copy and a clear and persuasive call to action to leap into action.

Competitive shoppers also want WIIFM copy, a clear benefit statement and a competitor comparison.

These two shoppers are the least likely to scroll through your email looking for the fine print. Hook them above the fold.

Humanistic shoppers look for social proof (via user content, testimonials, ratings etc.) that this is a great deal coming from a company they would like.

Methodical shoppers want all the facts about the product or service – materials, construction, warranty, guarantee, etc. The more bullet points, the better!

 Testing and automation for multiple-personality email

In an ideal world, you have data that accurately classifies your shoppers into one of the buyer categories and use a content management system that interprets that data to serve up the right dynamic content automatically.

However, that’s rarely the case; hence, why we design for all four personalities. Whilst broadcast emails are a typical starting point, your automated programs, such as cart or browse reminders and win-back/reactivation programs, can also provide long-term testing grounds that give you a baseline for more concrete results. Also, as your automated programs are ongoing valuable programs that deliver high ROI, you don’t want to leave them out of your redesign!

Testing with automation programs: A win-back or reactivation program is a good place to start testing your hypothesis about shopper personalities. Having regular activity from only a subset of your customer base could potentially be a symptom of personality disorder in your messages.

Because you’re continually sending win-back/reactivation campaign emails, they represent a fantastic opportunity, not just to find out what work best for that program to re-engage your customers, but also which personality-keyed elements (images, language, navigation, etc.) work best with your audience. It’s a win/win solution.

 Three steps to set up a testing program

Create a test message with layout and copy for all four buyer personalities.

Write four different subject lines, one for each personality.

Analyze to see how your results vary.

Different copy treatments: Some personalities mesh for information needs. Emotional, evocative copy is more likely to spur Spontaneous and Humanistic shoppers, while Competitive and Methodical shoppers want the facts, not the frills.

Borrow copy from your landing, FAQ or customer service pages, and mine your social media copy for social proof. Then, arrange your message elements to support each personality’s differing needs and querying styles in a way that would prompt more shoppers to click.

Once you have your baseline for results, you can start applying what you’ve learning all the way through your email programs.

 Add buyer personality to all email touch points 

Once you feel confident that your changes are building engagement and countering inactivity, you can begin to incorporate them throughout your email program:

1. Match the email to the landing page! Even as you add elements to appeal to each buyer personality, remember that your email’s main goal is to move shoppers to your landing page on your website.

That’s where the conversion happens. Use the page to shower your Methodicals and Humanistics with the information they crave. But, also provide the “buy now” link that will speed your Spontaneous and Competitive shoppers to purchase.

2. Add to all automated messaging: Although these are primarily service-based messages, they should also appeal to the four buyer personalities: benefits and competitive offerings at the top of the email for your Spontaneous and Competitive shoppers; testimonials for your Humanistics; details in bullet points for your Methodicals.

 Conclusions

We usually blame frequency and topic relevance for subscriber or customer inactivity, but a third source might also be in play here: your email personalities don’t mesh.

You can resolve this disconnect by adding elements to your email messages that resonate with different personalities: Spontaneous, Competitive, Humanistic and Methodical.

This includes automated messages such as confirmations and reminders. Automated messaging is an excellent testing ground because these programs run constantly in the background and generate plenty of data to test your hypothesis that tailoring email content to buyer personality will increase engagement and reduce inactivity.

Related posts

Customer Retention – The Lost Art (And Science) Of Marketing

Why All Online Marketers Should Master the Art of Negotiation

The post Tackle Inactives by Designing for Their Buyer Personalities appeared first on GetResponse Blog - Online Marketing Tips.