The Odd Places I like to GO- Philadelphia April 2015

April 28, 2015 by  
Filed under Featured Articles

I travel a lot and this year, I decided to start blogging about it!

1

My trip to Philadelphia was after 2 business trips to DC and a nice stop to hang with family on my way home. I really like South Street, the shops and trees in the spring are enchanting. I did not shop but I did get Pizza at Lorenzo’s. You know those giant slices that fill you up? Yeah! And I ate it walking down the street like a heathen!

2

There are all kinds of historical stops and I have done them over and over, but I happened to park near this W.E.B. Dubois sign and so I took that. The metal skeletal lady reminds me of something The Bloggess would want at her house! And one building was covered with art or intentional graffiti. 

3

I enjoy Phili a lot, partly because loved ones are there and partly because it “feels” so different from California. Everything in California is new compared to this. It’s just a different vibe. It was a sunny spring day, later that day it rained. The storm was fantastic! Lightening, Thunder! Pouring rain! The special effects department went all out. I love it.

Forget SEO focus on killer content

September 26, 2014 by  
Filed under Featured Articles, Front Page

English: The Open Share Icon is designed to he...

English: The Open Share Icon is designed to help users easily identify shareable content. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Peter Hanustiak

I used to write plenty of articles.

I thought at a time they were great and they were helping people, but they were just pure junk.

This was my process of writing:

  1. Find topic that relates to my product such as email marketing
  2. Come up with catchy headline (5 secret tips for awesome email marketing, Weird email tip that made me a lot of money, etc.)
  3. Google interesting articles and gather statistics
  4. Find some cheap stock picture
  5. Put it all together
  6. Insert links with proper keywords and images with proper alt tags and all of the other SEO stuff

I soon figured out that this wasn’t really working. People weren’t engaged. They were not talking about it and they were not sharing these articles.

I asked myself: “If I found my own article somewhere online, would I share it myself?” The answer was mostly no.

So what do people most gladly share with others?

  • They share full albums of pictures of themselves looking great.
  • They share pictures of wonderful meals they had on vacation in Bali.
  • They share funny stuff that will make others laugh.
  • They share inspirational stuff.
  • They share things that will change your life.
  • They share quotes that will motivate you.
  • They share videos that will make you cry.

Why do they do it? Because they want to look cool in the eyes of their peers.

The Internet is just flooded with content nowadays. Every single day millions of new blog posts, videos, and podcasts are being produced.

So unless you write some killer content you can forget about somebody sharing it.

Sorry, I won’t give you any secret formula with a step-by-step process on how to write killer content. But I can give you couple of things I observed to be present in many great articles:

Stop focusing on data and information

We are living in world of information. There is information everywhere around us and we are getting sick of it.

Sorry, I won’t get excited if you show me your super fancy pie chart.

Show your personality

Instead of information and data I want to know your story. I want you to share your experience with me.

It’s ok that you are not perfect. Share what mistakes you made (like I did for instance in the beginning of this article) and share what has worked for you.

Stick to one main idea

And build your point step-by-step.

Start by describing the problem your audience is having and show them how to solve it.

Don’t worry about the amount of words. It’s totally ok if it has just 50 words. And if it’s a killer content people will read it till the end even when it has several thousands of words.

Focus on transformation

Great articles don’t make you just think. They make you change your old behavior.

So how do you do that? Write about real world examples and case studies. First make them want it and then show them how to get it.

Instead of vague uninteresting information we all know such as “Focusing on customers helps to grow your business” write how you can change your own old ways when dealing with customers and how it helped to grow your business.

Make your text visually interesting

This one is getting more and more important these days.

People are too distracted. Remember that they are always one click away from never seeing you again.

I don’t know about you, but I totally hate to read large pieces of texts. I just sometimes think I don’t have time for that and I’m also too impatient.

Try to visually improve your text. Separate large paragraphs into smaller ones. Use bold texts and italics. Try to play with font sizes. Use headlines and bullet points.

About author

Peter Hanustiak is founder of Mail Masta email marketing plugin for WordPress. He is obsessed about good food and passionate traveller.