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When to be Redundant, Repetitive, and
Say the Same Thing Twice

Repetition

Remember your fifth grade “What I did on my summer vacation” paper, where you used the words “pool,” “baseball” and “bike” 100 times apiece? And your English teacher dutifully marked your paper up with her red pen. Redundant. Don’t repeat yourself. Choose a new word.

Bloggers sometimes get so fearful about repeating ourselves that our message can get completely lost. The truth is, after fifth grade is over, there are times when you want to repeat yourself to make sure your point comes across. Here’s how you can tell if your content could benefit from a little strategic repetition.

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Master the 4 Cs of Quality Content to
Create Sparkling Results

Diamond

Most of us know that diamonds are just well-organized carbon. There are 4 Cs that differentiate a fabulously expensive, brilliant diamond from an industrial-grade one:

  • clarity
  • cut
  • color
  • carats

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Are You Trustworthy?

Can you trust this dog?

Business and personal bloggers might seem to be on two ends of a spectrum. On the one side: logic, strategy and profits. On the other: empathy, passion and heart. Never the twain shall meet, right?

There’s one point where they do come together, though. Whatever moves you to build an audience for your content, you need to inspire one key response.

More than admiration, money or attention, you need to earn your audience’s trust.

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The 3 Secrets to Massive
Online Marketing Success

Success

If you’re trying to sell products and services online, you’re probably looking for that one magic key to make your business work.

You buy CDs and DVDs that will tell you the secret.

You subscribe to sites like Copyblogger to study the secret.

You look at mega-successful sites in your market and try to reverse engineer the secret.

After all of this searching, you may be tempted to believe there is no secret. But the secret is real.

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The Mr. Spock Guide to Effective Blogging

Mr. Spock

It is curious how often you humans manage to obtain that which you do not want. ~Spock

The Star Trek franchise has created dozens of memorable characters and inspired an incredible degree of connection and passion in its fans. One of its most enduring characters is Mr. Spock, the eminently logical half-Vulcan first officer in the original series.

Spock’s controlled, cool demeanor won him legions of fans, including millions of women who wanted to Pon Farr his pointy ears off. When I sat down to write about the need for rational, logical planning for your blog, what better model could I have found?

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Are You Throwing Away Your
Best Content Ideas?

trash can

Imagine this, if you will.

An old woman, near the end of her life. Shivering in a fleabag apartment without heat in the winter. Walking four miles each way to the food bank, to carry home unmarked cans of mystery meat. Not even a cat to keep her company, because cat food is expensive.

Then one day she dies, and the neighbors find $2.7 million wadded up in her mattress.

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