Getting Started V: Documenting Progress

So let's recap what you've accomplished so far:

1. You've launched a blog,
2. Put together your social media sites, and
3. Pitched some content to 3rd party sites.

At this point you've already accomplished an incredible amount, IF you've actually started the process at this point. Many of you are still reading and researching, which is great. 

Now it's time to start leveraging your successes (real or planned). 

HTML for Bloggers Guide

So you’re ready to get into the technical side of blogging? HTML is a key to making sure your content is readable by both humans and search engines. Common blogging platforms like WordPress do most of the work for you, but you still need to know basic HTML to drill into the code to fix details that may need to be cleaned up. 

Getting Started IV - Guest Posting

Photo courtesy of  Celeste

Once you've written a fair amount of work on your own, developed your social media networks, and started building a platform, a powerful tool for quickly building your resume is through guest posting.

Guest posting is simply volunteering to write content for somebody else's site and getting author attribution in return. Some sites will even pay - and this is where you can really start earning an income. But don't expect to be paid for awhile. It takes time to earn the reputation that warrants getting paid.

Getting Started III: Building a Platform

Photo courtesy of Intersection Consulting

In the last post of this series, I talked about setting you social media networks. In this article I'll go over ways to leverage social media to build credibility and what publisher's call your "platform".

Keeping Busy and Life Separate

One of the tougher parts of using social media to build your own personal writing brand is keeping your family/friends and general personal stuff out of your business. For me, I use Facebook for personal and my Twitter, Google, and LinkedIn accounts for business. This helps me keep the two very different parts of my life separate. 

Using Images and Graphics

One of the most important tools you can use to promote your writing is through the use of images and graphics. Depending upon where you get your stats from, I've heard that a blog post with an image is as much as 10 times more likely to show up in search engine results.

But there are other reasons beyond the technical side: people love pictures! They just do. We are visual creatures and images help us connect ideas, concepts, and patterns more quickly.

Getting Started II: Setting Up for Success

Taking the time to get started is the first big step and the subject of Part 1 of this "Getting Started" series. In this article I'll discuss what you can do next to set yourself up for success using social media. Don't worry! You don't need thousands of followers and likes and people in your circles. But it does help to have your page in place so you can start leveraging social media to your advantage.

Social Media Sites that Matter

Of course, there are the big three: Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. You really can't survive as a writer without these three. It's just a simple matter of the way the web works.

Getting Started I - Checklist

Most of the people who ask me about being a professional writer haven't ever been published. So this is baby-steps guide to getting started. If you've been writing for awhile, I'll have some posts later that you can check out to see what the next steps are for you.

Bottom line: you're never going to have a career as a writer unless you start writing. I think that's the most effective advice I can give anyone - start writing today and building a reputation and resume. That's the key! You can plan, think, ponder, and research all you want; but until you sit down and start typing you've really not accomplished anything.

Quality Content Philosophy

My link building company, Creative Content Experts, really took off last year when I had to start working from home due to an illness. I already knew the basics of why and how to build back links, but the last year or so has been a wonderful journey of learning.

One of the big decisions we made early on was to write quality content. You might think this statement a bit obtuse, but there are other ways you could build links in a pre-Panda and Penguin world. We used to see article spinning, horrible, crappy content, and all sorts of absolute junk that was no help at all to search engine users.

Contact

Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, ideas, or are interested in submitting guest content to this site.

Justyn Hornor

Owner/Sr. Editor/Content Engineer
Creative Content Experts

Email: jphornor@gmail.com

Phone: 479-966-9369

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