Your Photos Could Help You Break Into Journalism

Photo sharing is one of the ways social media has changed our world. Flickr, Instagram, Facebook or even personal blogs give people an opportunity to share their lives and experiences with their friends and with complete strangers.

However, this has had both positive and negative effects on professional journalists. In the past, everyone wasn't walking around with a camera in their pockets. We took our cameras to special events like trips, weddings and graduations or we took photos of our families at home.

Today when breaking news happens there's more likely to be a citizen journalist with a camera phone on the scene rather than a professional photographer. The photos may be grainy and poorly lit, but they tell the story and that's what's important.

When the Stanley Cup riots happened there was one photo that caught the attention of people world-wide. It seemed to be a photo of a couple "making out" in the road while the riot police both surrounded and ignored them (though, of course, they weren't really making out). It was taken by a professional photographer, Rich Lam.

But, there was also a video posted online of the couple being knocked down and a policeman looking as though he was about to hit them with a baton before he turned and ran away. This video was taken on a phone by someone standing on top of a car park. If it weren't for "citizen journalists," it never would have become part of the story.

Professional journalists can offer quality, but they can't be everywhere at once. However, one thing journalists can do is take the time to document the information in the photos. One could spend hours looking at great photos online, but often the information given is minimal. This can be a little frustrating. Journalists are trained to explain everything. A photo of kids playing in a backyard pool might have been taken because there was a heat wave that day. The fact that there was a heat wave will always be attached to that photo and when people see it, they'll remember that heat wave, if they were in the same region. This takes the photo out of the realm of a random image and puts it into the context of our lives.

If you want to be a professional reporter, learn to describe what it is you're photographing. Attach the names, dates, places and reasons why you took the image. You may be able to sell your image or include it in a portfolio.

Time Management With Writing

It is important in our busy lives to schedule time in our day to write. Our blogs are a gateway for our visitors to come and interact with us on a daily or weekly basis. Time management for our writing is very important, some of us are retailers, service providers, suppliers, manufacturers or combination of industries. Why should use time management techniques for our writing exercises?

Our writing habits often take a back seat, when it comes to handling business operations. It suffers throughout the day, unless we have a day off to focus on catching up on our blogs, articles and editing. Most of us may take the completely off and relax with the family or hangout at a movie or bar. Therefore, our writing goes back on the back burner again; yet we know we need to develop our blogs and other material. Sometimes our time management skills may need a fine adjustment.

Some of us are workaholics and use every second of the day to accomplish something. Talk about premature burnout! We tend to push the limits for a variety of reasons and our writing may suffer from overzealous ambitions to "get things done". I have been this way, especially providing services for my friends but I have learned to relax and unwind. There is nothing wrong with taking a 30-minute break between projects. This style has helped me relax before doing any personal writing for my website or for a creative episode.

Is there a fine balance of managing business and writing? Yes and it can be a difficult journey at first, but once a routine is established, it becomes easier. Especially for writing blogs, articles, business proposals, editing, graphical work, SEO related material. Here are a few ideas to help build a routine:

- Set a time in the morning, afternoon, evening to write

- 1-2 hours every day to write

- Wait for 30 minutes to Edit

- Drop any issue from the day and focus

- Focus on research and developing the topic

- Develop a sound structure > Topic, supporting info.

- Experiment with point of view

- Save your work and come back tomorrow

It will take time to build up endurance for lengthy writing and distractions are always there to throw us off target. It is not your fault; everyone gets dazed by something else but try to focus on the subject and type. Editing takes place after the first draft, take some time to unwind and then come back to editing the content matter. A fresh mind will uncover errors faster than an overworked soul.

Painting a Picture and Story Telling In Non-Fiction Business Online Articles

There are many ways to write online articles or develop content for your industry, or give information to the world by putting it out on the Internet, the greatest communication device ever created in the history of mankind. Every online article author has their own style, me included, one which I developed over an eight-year period. My style is unlike other authors, and theirs is much different than mine. That's a good thing, it shows that there is freedom of expression, and the political correctness has not invaded the online world of articles as deeply as it has in other venues of the media.

They say in fictional work that you need to paint a picture, to tell a story, to tap into the emotion of the reader, and to put them in a place, allowing them to suspend their belief system as if they were actually there. Not everyone can do that, but the good literary writers often do. Although I don't write a lot of fiction, I have written a bit, and I think just a little practice in the fictional realm will help a nonfiction online article author do even better with portraying facts and information about the real world. Let me explain.

You see, one of the things that I do in my style of writing is I often tell a story. Perhaps it is someone that I met, an idea I had, or something I had read. Then I couple it with other information that I've garnered through experience, education, research, or mere observation. In doing this I can draw the reader in to my world and see things through my eyes, as if they were standing next to me and we were having a conversation. What I'm doing is painting a picture and telling a story even though it's in a nonfiction article.

You can do the same thing in your articles, it isn't that difficult. In fact, I invite you to read some of the articles that I create each and every day, and very quickly you will see how I've developed my style, and perhaps there are components of it which can also work for you. Unlike many of the great literary writers of our time, I was not schooled in writing, I learned the hard way, and perhaps in many regards I learned incorrectly. It's taken a long time to get over some of those early mistakes I made, which unfortunately became part of the foundation of my writing.

But one thing is certain, painting a picture and telling a story works in nonfiction just as well as it does in a fictional work. I think you should try it. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.

How to Write an Article in 5 Steps

Many bloggers don't know how to write an article for human readers. Instead they are only interested in things like keyword density, spinning and taking advantage of the loopholes in Google's algorithm that will enable them to rank their low quality articles for any keyword they wish.

I've seen a lot of bad practices in article writing and it's really disappointing to see so many people focusing too much in search engine optimization, that they forget that what they really need is human readers.

People who publish low quality content realize after a while that no matter how much traffic they manage to get, nobody actually stays on their website. So if you want to build a real business online you must focus on quality content. There are no shortcuts.

After years of writing I have developed a certain process that helps me keep my articles quality, professional and compelling to read. By following this process I am able to write an article in less that an hour and it can bring a lot of traffic to my website.

here is the 5 step process I use to write an article:

1. Choosing a Topic

The first thing you'll need to do is to find what to write about and the best way to do that is by finding out what you are interested in. It goes without saying that your blog should be in a niche of your interest, otherwise you will always struggle finding topics to write about, and ultimately you will get disappointed and abandon your blog. So, don't over-complicate this step. just figure out what it is that you are passionate about and move on to the next step.

2. Keyword Research

Once you have decided about the topic of your article you should do some keyword research. if for example the topic of your article is "how to write a blog post" go to the Google keyword research tool and search for that keyword. that way you will get a list of a lot of keywords relevant to your topic. Choose one of the suggested keywords as your primary and also choose some more as secondary keywords.

Focus on long tail keywords. These are keywords longer that 3 words which get small traffic but are typically easier to rank for because there is little competition. You can use SEOquake to analyze competition. This is a free Firefox plug-in that displays a lot of SEO information on search results and it can help you determine which keyword is the easiest to rank for.

Once you have found all the relevant keywords for your article you can start using them in your article. Use your primary keyword in your title and in the main body of your article at about 2% keyword density. This will make your article optimized for search engines. Higher keyword density is not recommended because it will make your article look spammy and Google will penalize you.

3. Research your Topic

Before writing your article it's important to do some research. You have already compiled your list of keywords so start searching on Google for each of those keywords and read as much information as you can. Do not underestimate the importance of this step. Research can make your article stand out and will increase the likelihood of having your article syndicated which can bring you a lot of traffic. Only if you are very familiar with the topic you might skip this step.

4. Start Writing

Length
Now have all the information you need to start writing your article. But before you do that you will have first to decide on the length of your article. Most people recommend that you write about 500 words, but unlike what most people I will advice you to write at about 700-1000 words. There reason is that a quality 1000 word article will greatly increase the chances of syndication.

Structure
An article in order to be compelling has to have some structure. You can't just start placing one sentence after another. Every article I write consists of the following components:

Title: It's the most important component because it's the first impression a reader get from your article. If the title is not compelling enough chances are your reader will stop reading your article. Keep in mind that the title is what shows up on Google results and if it's not catchy enough you will not get people's attention. The tile also is an important factor for SEO so you have to include your keyword on your title if this is possible.
Introduction: first impressions matters. In the intro you will introduce your topic, mention all the main point you will discuss in your article, explain why you are writing this post, and provide a little background information if required. The primary aim of the introduction is to bring excitement so that your reader will continue reading. Also don't forget to include your primary keywords phrase once in a way that looks natural.
Body: You must choose a way to structure your information with bullet points or sub-headlines (like in this article). That way you break up your content into small pieces which are easier to read. Another way to make your article more pleasing for the eye, is to add images and a video. A video will also increase the user engagement with your site and enhance the user experience which is a big factor in SEO rankings.
Conclusion: Do not overlook this part because an improper conclusion can destroy the article. Do not mention anything new in the conclusion. Keep it short summarizing what you just said and explaining your reader how to find further information on that subject. The conclusion is also the best place to add a call to action which can be a link to your product or an incentive for your reader to join your newsletter or an invitation to leave a comment. A call to action is a must. I can't stress that enough. You will be amazed on how many people will respond to your invitation. do not overdo it though. Just one call to action on every post is enough.

5. Final Edits

Once you finish writing your post take some time to proof-read it by reading it out loud. This will help you find spelling and grammar mistakes. Also make sure you have included your keyword(s) in the title, the first paragraph and several times in the body of your post while making sure they do not look out of place or turn off human readers. If you target more than one keyword add your secondary keywords in your sub-headlines. Remember that you are writing for humans first and then for the search engines so make sure you are not affection the readability of your article by over-optimizing for the search engines.

How to Write Great Articles in 15 Minutes or Less

This article will show you how you can write great articles in 15 minutes or less. If you are anything like me, then you find that you work best when you work fast.

For some reason, when you take your time to do something, you wind up over thinking and the final product is nowhere as good as it would be if you just sat down and started cranking out your prose. However, fear may set in and you may have to slow down.

This article will show you some steps that you can employ to be able to write an article in 15 minute or less.

Create Your Basic Plan First - You do not want to have to go from 0 to 60 with no plan in place. Doing a few minutes of planning on the rules of engagement ahead of time will allow you to hit the ground running when you are ready to start writing. Here is what I mean -

· Have a list of ideas that you want to write about readily available.

· Have a list of keywords that you want to base your articles on available.

· Keep a notebook with new ideas that you can create.

Do Research Fast - I always have a bunch of topics handy that I can write about. When I sit down to write, I do a Google search for similar content. I will spend about 2 minutes reading quickly through 1 or two 2 articles to get some ideas that I can write about. Doing a quick skim triggers some ideas that you can write about but does not set your mind up to copy those ideas. In other words, do not copy somebody else's content. However, give credit if somebody else's work inspires your work.

Go with the low hanging fruit - Pick out an idea that is easy to write about in the moment. Do not save your best stuff for later, when you can spend more time on it. Your subconscious mind knows what it wants to do. Listen to it and you will find that the work that you create is better than the work that you will create if you save an idea.

Trust yourself - Especially in the beginning, you will talk yourself out of your ideas and will second guess what you did. If I second guess something that I write, then I will write another post later with my new thinking and an explanation of what changed. However, I will not pull back an idea that I had in the past, unless it is inaccurate.

OK, as we approach the 14 minute mark for this article, this should give you a taste of what to do on how to write great articles in 15 minutes.

Oh yeah, one more tip - You probably will not be very good in the beginning. Don't worry about it because you will find that you will get better very quickly and you will soon be able to write great articles in under 10 minutes.

What You Should Know About Real Writing Jobs Online

Are You More Productive With Your Article Writing During Daylight Savings Time?

The other day, I was talking to a fellow writer who happened to be working on her laptop at Starbucks. She looked intensively busy, for about 30 minutes straight, typing away. Then, she took a sip of her coffee, sat back and started gazing around the room. I told her I thought she might be working too hard. She laughed. She noted to me that she was a writer and was working on finishing up on a deadline. I explained to her that I was also a writer, and also self-employed, although in semi-retirement.

She asked me a very interesting question; "since we are now in daylight savings time, your productivity should increase, and you will have an hour extra per day to get work done." I thought this was funny, because quite frankly my production rate is fine, and I have something like 28,200 articles under my belt. Nevertheless, this was a rather intriguing line of conversation, and I wished to pursue it in case I might write an article about it; in fact, this is the article I wrote based on that conversation.

She explained to me that many creative writer types do their best work at night. When the sun goes down, things get quieter without all the distractions of the day. Daylight savings time means there's an extra hour of darkness during the nighttime hours when writers can be the most productive. This theory of hers made a lot of sense, and she said it was working for her, and always had. She noted that during the summertime and in the summer months she was not able to put out the volume she needed to, in order to really make ends meet.

Perhaps she is a starving writer, although she didn't say. I know for a fact that there are quite a few of those, and I guess it goes with the territory as the newspaper industry is cutting reporters, and there are more and more people trying to do freelance competing against each other. This drives the price down because of supply and demand; it's basically economics 101 you might say.

Interestingly enough, I did note that I was able to produce more content having more hours without daylight distraction. Along with this theory it would make sense that writers can produce more through the months of November, December, and January when there are the fewest hours of light because the days are shorter. That should work just fine unless you are working on solar electricity, because you wouldn't have enough time to charge the batteries to run your laptop to do the writing. Oh well, nothing in life is perfect.