Writing, Among Other Things

Category: Blogging (Page 6 of 16)

The "Elevator Pitch"

“An elevator pitch is an overview of an idea for a product, service, or project. The name reflects the fact that an elevator pitch can be delivered in the time span of an elevator ride (for example, thirty seconds or 100-150 words).”Wikipedia

The first task of the “31 days to build a better blog challenge” is to write an elevator pitch for your blog. The idea of having an elevator pitch for your blog is a good one, because many a times people will come up to you and ask, ” What is your blog about?”

If you don’t have an effective answer to the question, then any interest the person might have had in your blog will vanish into thin air. And we definitely do not want that to happen. Do we?

I started this blog to replace my blogger blog. But, I did not realise that I had grown to love that blog, and even after starting this blog, I could not stop posting on that blog. So, now I had two blogs on my hands, and both had similar content. Something needed to be changed.

So, I decided that this blog was going to have a niche. After going through a list of things that I could blog about, I decided to use this blog to focus on writing, and related issues.

Thus, was born, the tag line of this blog : Writing, among Other Things.

This tag line  is also my elevator pitch.

What is your elevator pitch?

Making this blog better in 31 days

Build a better blogDarren Rowse of Problogger fame is running a project during the month of April this year. The project is called “31 days to a better blog”.  In Darren’s own words,

The idea behind this is simply to have a group of bloggers setting aside a month of their time to work at improving their blogs. While we all want to have better blogs sometimes it becomes one of those things that we’re going to do…. one day.

I personally find that I improve (in all areas of my life) when I’m more intentional and set aside a specific time to make the improvements. That’s what this project is about.

The idea appealed to me as I have also been trying to make some changes to improve this blog for quite some time now, but, for one reason or another, I have always procrastinated. So, though this project comes at a time when I have quite a few obligations already lined up, I have signed up for the project and am looking forward to it.

The project was to start on April 1 (and it was no April fool’s joke), but as notified by Darren through an email, the project has been delayed and will start on April 6.  That means you still have time to join in the fun.  And if you are a skeptic, I will say, “Give it a shot, what harm can come of it?”

Use Kaizen to Improve your Writing

Kaizen is a Japanese management concept that many companies have used to improve their processes greatly. Kaizen is a combination of two Chinese words – “Kai” meaning change, and “Zen” meaning good.The essence of Kaizen lies in the fact that it is a continuous improvement activity. Usually we learn things in fits and starts. Then, we try to implement the thing we have learnt, and keep repeating it, until another change happens.

This is true for writing too. Writing by its very nature is a continuous activity. If you are not doing it on a continual basis, you are not doing justice to your writing. But just being continuous is not enough. You have to ensure that what you have written today is, in some way, better than what you wrote yesterday.

Continue reading

Why is Twitter so popular?

twitterI have never been a great fan of social networking sites, but that does not alter the fact that a recent report by Nielsen Online found that, Social networking has become a fundamental part of the global online experience.”

In fact, I am sure, many people these days get their first experience of the Internet through a social networking site.

The Nielsen report further states that, “Facebook – the world’s most popular social network – is visited monthly by three in every 10 people online across the nine markets in which Nielsen tracks social networking use.

Another social networking site that is making the news these days is twitter. Though, it seems, twitter has not made it into the report this year, but if it continues to grow at the rate it is growing, no report will be able to ignore it. So, one can’t help but wonder, what keeps twitter growing, even in the face of competitors like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut etc. Here are some reasons that I feel are contributing to the success of twitter, and set it apart from any other social networking site:

Continue reading

Feeling Guilty

Feeling GuiltyStarting a blog, as the cliche goes, is like giving birth to a baby. You give birth to it, take care of it, help it bloom, and hope it grows into an independent youth who can take care of himself.

But, if at some point you neglect  the baby, there is a good chance that it might not grow up to be “normal”. The same thing happens with a blog.

And when you know that you have neglected your baby, you feel guilty. That is how I feel right now, because I think I have been neglecting this blog for a very long time. Oft and again I have tried to get back on track with the blog, and oft and again I have failed.

But as they say, failure is no reason to give up. If anything, it is a reason to try harder.

So, once again, I am going to try and get the blog back on track. Hope this time it stays on track!

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 NeoBluePanther

Theme by Anders NorénUp ↑