At the end of the Quitter Conference, we’re doing a writer’s Q&A. As I’ve started to think through that, a lot of ideas about writing and publishing have popped in my head.
I’ve written three books. I published Stuff Christians Like
After talking with a half dozen publishers, I learned that they tend to ask 3 fairly consistent questions when they look at a proposal from a new author:
Sometimes we like to complicate the answer to that question. When we look at our blogs and our traffic, we mystify the relationship between blog writer and blog reader.
But the answer to why people don’t read your blog is actually pretty simple. And it’s a question your readers would ask, if you gave them the opportunity. Here it is:
What is satire?
Let’s get that out of the way first.
Satire is just humor with a purpose.
That’s all. There’s no mystery involved. It’s not that complicated. Satire is a vehicle you use to take people somewhere.
How do you write it? Here are the 5 steps I use with my satire blog and book
This is a spoiler alert.
If you haven’t seen the episode of the Office where Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) leaves the show, you’re about to learn the ending. But, there was a tremendous blogging tip hidden in that episode that I don’t want any of us to miss.
One of the goals on Twitter is to get someone to retweet what you tweeted. So if I tweeted, “Buy my new book Quitter
There are two ways to get people to retweet you:
The first draft of the first chapter of my new book Quitter
What’s the biggest thing every blogger on the planet struggles with? What’s the one thing that kills more blogs than any other and how do we all make sure our blogs don’t fall victim to it. In this 3:44 video that’s exactly what I talk about. Check out the video after the jump:
When I help small businesses and individuals with social media, one of the first things they tell me is, “Our web traffic is horrible.”
And sometimes it is. Sometimes, something is broken and needs to be fixed. But more often than not, they’re just looking at the wrong number.
The problem is that we hear big web numbers like “Facebook has 300 million users,” and then we get depressed or overwhelmed at how small the traffic to our thing is. “I’m only having a 1,000 people visit my HVAC company website every month.” Or “I’ve only had 50 people on my personal blog this month. There are hundreds of millions of people online and I’ve got 50 visiting me each month.”
There are two parts to the things we write.
The islands and the bridges.
The islands are the core ideas. They are the central insights, the heart of what you’re writing. They are the main points in your story or your blog post or your email.