7 Writing & Marketing Links You Need to Click

This week on The Lede …
7 Steps to Instantly Better Writing
How To Accomplish More By Doing Less
33 Questions to Ask Before Hitting “Publish”
The Future of Storytelling
10 Things Your Customers Wished You Knew About Them
How to Be a Better Procrastinator
Charles Bukowski on Committment to Your Craft
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7 Steps to Instantly Better Writing
I’m worried. The publishing revolution is relentlessly moving forward. Everyone’s a publisher now, or can be. Are we witnessing the democratization of art and commerce, or — as Andrew Keen puts it — are we simply devolving into a meaningless cacophony of text? The only way through, to something meaningful, is mastery. Are you a great, persuasive writer who takes her craft seriously? Or are you only after more and more empty pageviews, at any cost? Ms. Jaksch offers a useful (starting) list for those of you seeking the former path.
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How To Accomplish More By Doing Less
What if more hours at the desk do not necessarily equate to more (and better) work? If you’re creating original content to benefit and grow your business, the answer is obvious — “It’s not just the number of hours we sit at a desk that determines the value we generate.” This idea keeps coming up again and again, for good reason. Mr. Schwartz lays out the argument for less, as well as an encouraging, specific example of it playing out in his own professional life.
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33 Questions to Ask Before Hitting “Publish”
We all know that anything published to the Internet is published to the Internet … forever. If you don’t yet know that little fact, well, now is a great time to start thinking twice about what you’re putting on Facebook, et al. In the context of creating serious content to build an audience, we find ourselves in a more subtle situation. Things like relevance, grammar, clarity, law, and formatting come into play. Commercially speaking, these elements are vital to a content plan that works. Allow Ms. Jones to take you through this 33-point content checklist, and allow yourself to absorb it, putting it to use every time you hit that publish button.
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The Future of Storytelling
I utterly disagree with Mr. Ifeanyi that stories will/must evolve. He knows as well as I do that storytelling is an ancient art, the basic structure of which was established thousands of years ago, and will remain for thousands more. Performance and political “artists” need not apply. Of course, the platforms on which our stories are told are obviously evolving, which is where I find the value in this article. Keep your eyes open. Watch. If an emerging platform can be useful to your goals, think deeply about how you can use it to tell your story. One good example of this is how Steve Martin is using Twitter and Facebook. He’s remade his act for the digital medium, embracing it, using entirely new platforms to tell the stories he’s always told.
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10 Things Your Customers Wished You Knew About Them
Every email. Every answered question. Every phone call. Every line of code. Every line of copy. Every color on your website. The fonts. The tweets. The likes. It is all selling. What does your customer want? Read on …
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How to Be a Better Procrastinator
Four bits of unconventional advice for those procrastinators who’ve given up hope. According to Mr. Perry, there is hope, and it can appear the moment you stop trying to stop procrastinating. Oh yes, my friends, you read that correctly.
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Charles Bukowski on Committment to Your Craft
In honor of what would have been Mr. Bukowski’s 92nd birthday recently, a short passage from his novel Factotum. If you’ve ever questioned your calling as a writer, your calling to this bitch of a craft, soak this one in. You may disagree with the particulars of his directive, but I doubt you can dismiss the principle. Carry on.
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About the Author: Robert Bruce is VP of Marketing for Copyblogger Media, as well as its Resident Recluse. Get very short stories from Robert on Twitter and Google+.