Showing posts with label #lrose. Show all posts
How to Write a Blog Post in One Hour That Is Guaranteed to be Published, Get Noticed and Even Go Viral!
If you are not an expert blogger who blogs for a living, on your own expertise, have tried out all of the advice and still wonder how some people like Andrew Sullivan consistently post pieces the rest of the world go gaga about, this may be for you.
The truth is, writing a good and interesting post is not all that difficult, if you don't worry too much about it.
Chances are you may be already doing most of the work as a matter of routine.
Unlike all those numbered instructions and steps from the tipsters and experts, which sound like a chore and a pain in the butt you would rather put off, writing good blog posts can be real fun. You may think this is a The Onion post, but it isn't.
The trick is to keep constructing your article or blog post as you keep spending your time browsing. Unless you are an expert on something you blog about, that is when you really get the seeds of your post.
You are likely to spend most of your browsing time on topics, events, people, objects, places and sites of interest to you, on things closer to your heart or something you are passionate about. You may even be a practitioner or dream to achieve great things in whatever that may be. So there you are, you already have the most important ingredient for a great post -- your own emotional involvement and commitment!
No doubt, you get hooked on to the screen when you feel very strongly about something, most probably something just happening and catching big headlines. You may be subjected to a strong positive emotion, like joy, like when your favorite team won a game or negative one like in the aftermath of a tragic event. You want to shout out and get it out of your chest. Your headline!
Now is the time to open your favorite word processor, unless it is already open, and just type in what you wanted to get out of your chest and save the document. You see, your blog post is nearly ready because all gurus on blogging will tell you that the headline is the most important part of your post.
If you are really perturbed by the subject matter, you are likely to persist and read more either immediately or over a period of a few days and follow up on the event to satisfy your own information crunch and driven by your own emotion. You may even save an article or picture or video for a future look if you don't have time. Actually you are unknowingly preparing great content for your blog post.
All you have to do is to keep adding all that on the document you have saved, under the headline you just typed in. The best thing is to copy and paste the URLs from the address bar under your headline so that you can reopen the page at a later time with all its content. It will be a good idea to copy any vital quotes, opinions or tweets that you agree with or that upset you, as you continue to read so you don't have to go all over again.
Of course you can keep adding on bits and pieces you feel like blurting out from time to time to all those stuff you are adding while browsing. Very soon, you will see you have already a great part of it your post.
If you are someone who likes to dig deeper, you are likely to do some search as you go along. Those might exactly be the stuff anyone who reads your articles may be searching for. So you have also your keywords for your SEO. Just keep adding all those links to the bottom of your post.
So you see, you now have not only the skeleton but also some body for a emotionally driven, compelling content you want to share with your readers. The best thing to do now is put it away and forget it till you are ready to spend that one hour adding more and refining what you have to say, annotating and referencing with the links you have collected and embellishing with the quotes and tweets you have copied.
Now that you have your post in front of you, it is time to apply all those check lists the experts have recommended, to refine and fine tune your article. Almost certainly you will find that your post already takes care of most of them and "improving" further might destroy the natural flow and readability of your content.
If you are looking to get your post published elsewhere, chances are your post will be accepted by any sensible editor, as it will have great content supported by relevant references as well as interesting and current information everyone is talking about.
If you are aiming to get your post go viral, a check with the following checklist and guidelines of Carson Ward from SEOMOZ, detailed in his brilliant article can help.
A viral checklistTwo months from now it's going to be easy to sit down and create content in the same habits we always have. Not all content needs to be viral, but when that's the goal, make sure that you accomplish all of the following.Did you sufficiently cover the topic? Is it long enough? (24)
Does the content inspire a high-energy emotion like awe (16), anger(18), or anxiety (18)?
Did your tone convey emotion? (12)
Is it practically useful? (16)
Is it interesting? (14)
Is it surprising? (8)
Does the author have fame/credibility? (8)
If it's supposed to be funny, is it actually funny? Are you sure your friends aren't just being nice? (∞)You can't always have all of these factors, so I've added a maximum score in parenthesis to help prioritize those factors that research has shown to be most important to sharing. If you rate your content at or near 100, it's likely that it has a far greater chance of going viral.
You will be surprised to see that the post you just put together has a lot of the essential ingredients listed above as it will have an emotionally charged Headline with relevant key words and content which your readers will find interesting.
What you need to remember is that you can always go back to the post and fine tune it in most cases even after you post it, before it goes live. But what is important is that you are able to write your post without putting it off and carrying an unpleasant burden of an undone job.
As an example of putting all these in practice, you can check out this post which started as a bit of scrap like the picture of the draft above and the post published by HuffPost.
White Goat and Caged Parrot - How the Indian Media Failed to See Facts From Fiction.
Though in a country of 1.3 Billion people, the direct influence of these channels remain restricted to the urban elite and is minuscule, their viewership and influence now stretch globally thanks to the internet. Besides what they show on a daily basis becomes the fodder for a huge number of local channels and printed media the next day, often adding more colour and crazy interpretation when translated in to local languages, as can be seen from some weird postings on facebook.
The Indian Supreme Court and The Caged Parrot.
During a hearing last week on the progress of investigation by CBI (Indian equivalent of the FBI) the Supreme court of India made a few euphemistic references to assert that the CBI should operate independently, comparing it to a caged parrot which merely repeats the voices of its different masters, the supreme court itself also being one of them.
The Indian media at large latched on to the 'Caged Parrot' euphemism, for its dramatic and mass consumption effect, merely repeating it like a parrot though the reference itself doesn't mean anything in itself without the reference to the masters or the events leading up to it.
Though agencies like Reuters reported factually, no one in the Media had shown any understanding of the deeper and under lying checks and balances of the Indian constitution which squarely place the agency under a government of elected representatives, to ensure its power is limited and subject to control.
In fact only a few months back, the independence of the CBI was the bone of contention of the anti graft agitators and the opposition who wanted to place it under the Lokpal, a new constructional body with unlimited powers, clearly removing all powers to control it from the elected representative of the people and subverting the essence of Indian democracy.
Though the current government led by Sonia Gandhi's UPA and Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh has adopted a ' laissez-faire ' policy with the agency, overseeing the work of CBI is clearly the prerogative of the government despite instances of nepotism, which the CBI is investigating. Its director had asserted that neither the central theme of status reports got changed after meetings nor any deletion of any evidence against any suspect or accused took place.
The Media has failed to impartially report the whole issue, which has relevance to the so called Coalgate scam and loss to the government, which in itself is wrong interpretation by the CAG of government policy of allocating coal resources without auction, which began way back in 1993.
The government actually has every right to see that the investigating agency take cognisance of these facts in its reports and has only ensured that as was done in all previous cases before the supreme court.
The fact that the CBI is investigating execution of a government policy for incidence of corruption can't take its democratic duties away as being demanded by the judiciary.
As the fourth pillar of democracy, it is the duty of the Media to expose and bring such anomalies for public scrutiny and debate and there is no sign of such mature conduct other than blatant sensationalism.
White Goat which has gone viral!
No one knows if a goat which was noticed in the compound of the Indian Railway Minister Bansal only a few hours before he was sacked has anything to do with Goat sacrificed for Chicago Cubs curse.It probably had more to do with Hindu astrology and its remedial measures of donating animals to ward off evils. But this goat whether it knew or not, soon became not only a 'scape goat' for the minister's sins to be fed first and then to be sacrificed by him but also internationally famous!
The sensation hungry India media, showed live coverage of the goat and the video reporting by leading channels, who had no clue of what was going on but chose to assume and report it as some sort of animal sacrifice went viral.
Such reporting, which was clearly intrusion of privacy of the minister, without permission and devoid of facts was clearly unprofessional, even if such acts are part of a culturally diverse Indian life.
http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/390829/railway-bribery-case-pawan-bansal-feeds-goat-to-ward-off-bad-luck.html
Timing and political intrigue of last week's events.
While drawing conclusions, the channels have clearly failed to analyse the week's events in context and look deeper in to why they happened, choosing for wild guesses instead.
IBN18 Editor-in-Chief Rajdeep Sardesai says that by sacking Ashwani Kumar and Pawan Kumar Bansal, the government has made a last ditch attempt to restore its fading credibility. Clearly serious questions will be asked as to just why the Prime Minister took so long to take this decision to sack his ministers. "Clearly there will also be questions as to whether the Prime Minister can completely insulate himself after the sacking of Ashwani Kumar,"A deeper analysis would have proved that , the government action was a well derived strategy in the wake of the regional elections in the state of Karnataka. which took place in the week.
The fact that the opposition which lost the state election had every reason to draw political punches to upset the Government on the eve of the elections and the UPA government managed to successfully thwart the opposition ploy and win the election can explain last week's events more logically.
The media would have done much better by digging in to those questions of why the CBI chose to bring out the Bansal case which they had been investigating for long just on the eve of the election rather than surmising on the plight of a Prime Minister who had no compunctions to resign from his post for lesser things like getting his way on the Nuclear Pact with the USA against stringent parliamentary opposition.
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Is Andrew Sullivan's Way the Only Way for Bloggers Who Want to Make Real Money?
Amidst a raging debate, stemming from a recent PEW report on the state of News Media, whether it is theGolden Age of journalism or it is barely breathing its last, the journalistic world is keenly watching Andrew Sullivan's recent 'pay wall' experiment with his famous blog, 'The Dish'.
Though the unfulfilled expectations in advertising revenues of main stream digital news media is widely perceived as the motivation for this venture, the Blogoshphere, at large, is not holding breath, thanks to the respect bloggers are gaining as influencers in brand promotion.
Contrary to the gloom and doom perception among News bloggers, a Technorati report on digital influence in 2013 place Bloggers as an influential tribe on the up, whose real value is not grasped by those who splurge massive budgets on brand promotions.
Though blogs and influencers don't get a large portion of brands' digital spend, they rank high with consumers for trust, popularity and influence. When making overall purchase decisions, for consumers, blogs trail only behind retail and brand sites.
In fact, like the state of the media, there is much overlapping here thought he Technorati report doesn't seem to draw any distinction.
However, there is much convergence in the findings of the two reports as to the diversion of digital advertising resources from digital news media to other the digital media including blogs, with display ads, video and search claiming bulk of the spending.
Though the Technorati report further identify the preference for mobile, social and video, where the buck gets the maximum bang, as the preferred technologies, Blogging has a 30% share, only behind Facebook, twitter and Youtube.
Clearly there is huge distinction between Blogging in journalism like that of Andrew Sullivan's, which influence politics, at least in the developed world, and hugely contributes to focus on issues and change the shape of the world and Blogging as a channel to stream world's accumulated expertise for the benefit of consumers, which seem to benefit from the current trend.
In reality, with the sticky amalgam, which the TV, Print and Digital media as well as the social web tend to become, bloggers as a tribe, to remain to remain influential, may find it necessary to go behind a pay wall to win back credibility, the fundamental virtue in journalism, something money can't buy.
In fair criticism of the erosion of professionalism and standards which over a period of time will only destroy the trust, much like the paper advertisement lost its mettle decades ago for the same reasons, Bob Garfield of the Guardian rightly states:
All of that fantastic content Yglesias was gushing about is paid for by venture capitalists making bad bets, established media companies digging into their savings accounts to pay the bills, displaced workers earning peanuts, amateurs, semi-pros, volunteers and monks.
Then, there's e-payola: pay-per-post, pay-per-tweet, pay-per-review - and their cousin, affiliate advertising, which gives bloggers and tweeters incentive to steer readers toward transaction. In broadcast TV, there's the serial incest between the news divisions and entertainment divisions, and on local TV, video news releases camouflaged as reportage.
Yet, none of these gimmicks is on the way out. Au contraire, they're all growing. Which is terrifying, for what they all have in common is that, to one degree or another, they compromise editorial integrity. Readers and viewers have no way of knowing that they are being marketed to, or that the content is inherently untrustworthy.
If anything, the social web, which in the case of Facebook which has grown over one billion members only accelerate this pernicious erosion of integrity.
For example, information put on the web can go viral irrespective of its factual nature merely by human and emotional reaction, very often producing unjustified results. This is further complicated by the level of education and evolution of the society.
However, over a long term the trust deficit from this onslaught volume over quality will be compensated by economic reasons, much like the manufacturing industry is slowly returning from China.
The demand for quality and veracity will inevitably grow due to scarcity and bloggers will be no exception to this trend. This of course implies that not only News Bloggers like Andrew Sullivan but anyone who wants to keep high standards and quality will have to start expecting to be paid for it in some manner.
When Bulls, Hawks, Cubs and Bears Start Playing Hail Mary Like Lady Gaga, It Is a Different Ball Game!
CSN Chicago, a part of NBC Sports Regional Networks, is changing the meaning of sports forever!
Sports used to be something a few celebrities engaged in for the rest of us to watch and the press used to have a field day about.
The nature of sports and its explosive emotional upheaval has changed a long time ago by the infusion of music which has immense mass appeal. The emotional swaying power of music and its celebrity creators have blended well with the turmoil of sports, taking it to exhilarating heights in the past.
The Three Tenors Concert of Los angel Super bowl remains a musical moment etched in the history of sports. Numbers like We will Rock you by Queen still reverberate in stadiums around the world. The bears have even turned music celebrities in the past by performing Super bowl Shuffle for charity.
It is the genius of music celebrities like Lady Gaga in turning technology and the immense influential power of the ever expanding social web, to pamper and keep hold on their fan base, which the giants of sports have borrowed this time.
#Kobe Bryant: Heart of a lion.Derrick Rose: Heart of a shivering chihuahua.notsportscenter.com/koberosefacebo…
— Haceb Ehcen (@Possessed_OG) April 14, 2013
The interactive social experiences technology CSN Chicago sought out for their new social engaging feature Team Pulse is the same as the one which Lady Gaga employed with great success to engage with her fans in real time through her website, provided by ARKTAN, specialised in creating engaging user experiences on the social web and TV.
However, unlike the massive benefits such interactive features bring to celebrities like Lady Gaga in the entertainment field, the Team plus feature of CSN has far deeper and wide reaching power to convert all sports to mass sports.
For example, real time interactive facilities provided for the 'Bulls Pulse', the official site of BULLS, include real time curated time lines of Bulls Talk for fans, Press Box, Player Tweets, Official Bulls & NBA and Instagram photos. The feature also includes a Trending list of players with mentions each get during the event.
What this means is that everyone involved and watching a game live and all those away from the venue but engaged through TV or other media can express their views, opinions and criticisms, which everyone else can see and react to, anywhere around the world.
The revolution in smart phones and tablets, which has rendered such interaction easy and enjoyable and platforms on the social web like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and numerous Blogs and forums take the game to the level of a global event.
What does this mean in reality? Spectators can now influence players during the game. Someone can pass a valuable tip or advice the coach is missing. The commentator can see the trend and focus on a player if he is doing well or making mistakes because the tweets are benign or nasty. Everyone can see how much attention the game is catching so everything including the live ads can be changed. See where this is going ?
In fact the Instagram stream brings much fun to the experience by letting everyone express their feelings of the 'moment' before, during and after the event in an unprecedented and unique way, giving a sense of one to one community participation in the event.
Adding short video streams like 'vine' can add depth to this experience if added to the page, leveraging on the immense addictive power of this new social media platform, something CSN and the technology provider need to consider.
Further making the streams scrollable can enhance participants experience by being able to revisit and 'miss' nothing, especially if they want to share at a later time.
It is only just the beginning of a trend how the sporting world is going to change. Pretty soon, such features can become standard for several other games like football and cricket, basket ball and hockey popular in other parts of the world.
The impact of interactive features like Team pulse can be much far reaching changing the laws of the games, their engagement, betting industry, entertainment and TV and even the popularity.
Pretty soon, like Psy of South Korea who has taken the world by storm with his 'Gagnam Style' and now his follow on 'Gentleman' which had over 10 million Youtube hits under 24 Hrs, locales and national boundaries will disappear for sporting events.
One thing is sure. The way people will live and relax during weekends will certainly change. There may be nothing of interest about a game you watched over the weekend to talk about aound the Monday morning coffee in the office!
Is Sonia Gandhi a Real Indian Saint Accused as an Italian Carpet Bagger?
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| Rajiv - Sonia File Photo Courtsey https://www.facebook.com/malayalamlive |
In fact, the personal and emotional turmoil Sonia was forced to face on account of her own personal choices are harsher than those experienced by many of India's great saints.
Today, Sonia Gandhi, like her countryman Caesar, had to do the ultimate sacrifice by taking a double stab for the sake of India, a country of saints, which must earn her sainthood.
In a single speech, Sonia had to acknowledge the cause of the Tamils who murdered her husband for their cause and denounce Italy, her country of birth which is in a dispute with India, a country she has adopted.
Italian waitress
Many in India believe, based on the western media which has proclaimed her the 4th richest politician and powerful woman in the world, that Sonia is a corrupt foreign intruder, out to destroy India. Her detractors however cannot explain what she and her family are doing in the heat and dust of Delhi, leading a frugal lifestyle, rather than basking on a sunny Mediterranean Island if she owns billions.
Not a lot is known about the circumstances in which Sonia met Rajiv, the scion of the Gandhi family and agreed to marry him despite great cultural and social differences. For a young Italian bride, hardly aware of the prejudice and taboo of archaic India, the very thought should have given nightmares.
Yet, to the credit of the young Rajiv, who made good on his promise and took her home, it turned out to be a story of great romance, sacrifice, tolerance and a great Indian tradition of welcome and acceptance of foreigners as their own.
No one called Sonia an Italian waitress at that time. If anything, it is a measure of how much the Indian society has reneged in to narrow minded nationalism and its insecurity that, fanned by parochial politics and ill education, Sonia is often referred to as an Italian waitress, especially on the social media.
In a country where hardly any work is respected and students, pampered by parents, never have to work to pay for their own education, it is relatively unknown that if you visit Cambridge, the waitress who serves you could be a student of the great university, though Sonia was just a language student.
If you are the leader of the ruling alliance, it is doubtful which Indian will stand being abused like that.
Oh My God! My Mother in law is shot and dying in my lap!
Not many women had to cry that out to themselves, except during the wars.
When you are close to the pinnacle of power and personal security is something one takes for granted, the enormous shock of something like the assassination of Mrs Gandhi is not something many Indian women would have taken.
Instead of fainting herself, Sonia had the courage and presence of mind to carry and rush her to the hospital revealing the innate strength of her personality to face toughest of situations in life.
However, no can correctly fathom the personal trauma the family had to undergo, though the anger of the collective nation against the Sikh community who members committed the assassination and the angst of the world on that day will never be erased from living memory.
Yet, when the time and need arose years later, Sonia showed no compunctions in renunciation of the power of the Prime minister and in foisting a very deserving Dr Man Mohan Singh, a Sikh, to that position without batting an eye lid.
There aren't many saints who can be credited with much lesser personal sacrifice.
It is your husband madam, in the bag!
Lightening strikes once in many peoples lives.
But in the case of Sonia it struck twice, with the assassination of her Husband Rajiv Gandhi by the Tamil militants of neighbouring Sri Lanka. (One might say it struck thrice with the accidental death of Sanjay Gandhi, her brother in law and brother of Rajiv).
Not many women had to welcome husbands literally in parts, in a body bag. Not many people can even take a guess of what might have gone through the mind of Sonia Gandhi on that fateful day, especially about the Tamil terrorists who sent her husband in smithereens.
Still, over the years, Sonia and her children have publicly come to terms with the Tamil Elam issue and, Sonia's daughter Priyanka has even visited the culprits in prison, in a sign of conciliation and forgiveness.
It is a real tragedy that despite all that, Sonia Gandhi, as the chair person of the ruling alliance has to undergo the political brinkmanship of an alliance partner, who has decided to leave in support of the very Tamil issue which took her husband's life.
The fact that Sonia Gandhi had to take the brunt of the political manipulation of a party who was the sole source of corruption charges which put her own Congress party in great difficulties and stalled her programmes for the poor of the country is a real personal tragedy, only compounded by the fact that they stand for her husband's assassinators.
What can you call this lady who perhaps is bearing a cross heavier than the one Jesus himself carried?
You too Brutus?
If all that is not enough, Sonia has finally put an end to "You are Italian" cry of hysteria of the Indian masses, heightened by the recent diplomatic stand off between India and Italy by publicly warning |Italy not to take India for granted.
The fact that, Italy actually has case in its favour against India, from the fact that its marines were just doing a job protecting from Somali Pirates, in international waters, makes Sonia's sacrifice even more adorable.
No woman of any country ever had to take such a stance against her country of birth for the sake of the country of her dead spouse.
History will no doubt one day record that as the perfect love of a leader for her people, worthy of sainthood, though the current generation of Indians can't see because they refuse to see.
