Any Shiny Thing - Life after 50

Midlife Fiction

Help! What’s Your Strategy for Managing Your Online Commitments?

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How many minutes (hours?) a day does it take you to properly attend to your platforming (i.e. social networking?) needs? By properly I mean interacting with online contacts, following their links and staying up to date on what’s happening in the writing world (like reading blogs from Jane Friedman, Chuck Sambuchino, Penelope Trunk, Janet Reid, etc.) Then there’s Twitter (and all the amazing and talented people I’m following) and Facebook. This all takes time, but as a business person it’s critical (and I enjoy it!!) One of my next moves will be to narrow my commitments to sites that seem most active and valuable (like Writer’s Digest Community).  So I’m looking for strategies. Let me know how you keep it under control?

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If You’re Serious About Blogging, You Need to Focus Your Topic

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My first blog was a tester. I wanted to get comfortable with the idea of blogging, so I started Any Shiny Thing and proposed to write about anything my hyperactive mind found attractive. I assumed that other people would find my topics attractive, too.

Brrrrrt! Wrong assumption. Let Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist tell you why it’s critical to make your blog about something specific.

Do you know that there are now more than FIFTY MILLION blogs on the Internet? With all those choices, why would anyone read yours (or mine)? I began to suspect Any Shiny Thing wasn’t a good idea when I’d explain what it was about, and my listener’s eyes would glaze over with polite boredom.  “Oh, just anything I find interesting” is not a compelling reason to go there. Denise Welch of Computerworks, Inc. has a related viewpoint. “You tell me, ‘Read my blog! read my blog! I don’t want to read your blog,” she says. Unless you are going to make it worth her while. In her view that means you have to GIVE something to the reader (beyond the pleasure of your company).

I hope I have given you a tool today for making your blog more effective.

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