Writing challenges, from print to online

Are you a dedicated print journalist and you realized that you cannot continue without a consistent online presence?

Here are some useful tips about what you can do do enhance your performances and avoid the usual mistake made by those who did not realized clearly the differences between the two. 

If you wondered, it is not difficult and if you have the gift and passion of the writer, you will succeed. 

How to keep in touch with your audience

As an intensive blogger and avid reader of various media and books on different subjects, I know that sometimes it is hardly impossible to keep in touch with all my interests simply by the gentle search. It would mean to spend almost 3-4 hours the day or even more only by searching on the Internet after news. An impossible mission, as long as till now, I passionately blog for free and thus, I need to keep myself busy with jobs, family and other obligations in between.

Thus, how to continue writing while still on the run with other topics?

As in many other situations, you should know what your interests are and what your audience expects from you. Thereafter, you need to set up a list of keywords and set up as your Google search tools.

In addition, you need to find out newspapers, organizations and institutions that sent regularly updates with their news. Once something new appears, you will have it right in your inbox. It will help you to better manage your writing time and increase your efficiency. You can count on the spectacular searches and findings, but you need to increase audience, maybe some profits as well and be professional in a world of professionals. And if you want to play good, use the best resources for the best results. Most likely, you have more opportunities to communicate from time to time with those who are sending the updates and to establish better professional connections.

Of course, you should not forget to read your e-mail regularly and check up what is new in your professional inbox. If you have a blog, you should associate it with an e-mail address dedicated exclusively to the communication dedicated to this blogging activity. It is important that you check it at least twice the week - on Mondays and on Thursdays and try to plan your blogging activities up to this information. In this way, you will be able to navigate easier through the sea of news and try to be one of the first to inform your readers with the best quality of news.

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Tips for finding sponsors?

Do you have a blog that is open to various collaborations - for instance, book and product reviews, travel packages, photography, Internet and hi-tech products - and you do not know how to find out more companies keen to help you find new and exciting projects?

Honestly, because I have a background in journalism, I avoided to find out more about this type of activity because I considered - and still think it is - not necessarily an informative approach dedicated to share something with your readers. In the majority of cases, people are happy to wear and use different products without any financial effort.

However, it is very important that before you address a certain company, you check carefully the conditions of partnerships. Many of them are honest in expressing their desire to do not interfere with the blogger's impression and thus, you will be free of any obligation to write something nice about something that it is nothing like that. 

My main interest is in books and till now, I had the chance of good collaborations, and most probably I will be tempted to expand a bit my porfolio of services. I like to write, to share to my readers the latest news and thus, I am open to collaborations and new experiences.

There are, in my opinion, a couple of conditions and steps that you should accomplish for successful collaborations:

1. Your blog should be updated regularly - at least once the week.

2. Having additional exposure - on Instagram, Facebook, Google+ - will help you to qualify for the attention of the potential sponsors. Also, do not forget to mention on your blog the e-mail address where you can be found for eventual collaborations.

3. Previous collaborations with other companies will send a message about your credibility.

4. Contact companies and businesses that are included in your editorial interests. For instance, if you have a blog about books and you contact a company for coffee machines, it is clear that you are interested in getting something for free without too much interest for the company as such.

5. On the other hand, it is important the quality of your writing. Add pictures, YouTube tutorials and correctly written posts. In the previous case, you can write a story about how your coffee maker contributed to the overwhelming success of your new book!

6. A bilingual version of the site - especially if you are not writing in English - is a guarantee that you can reach an extended audience.

7. When you address the potential sponsors, be succint but careful to explain in detail why the company should collaborate with you. Try to adequate your message to the possible target group of the company. Explain in a few words how do you see your future collaboration. Mention your social media coverage and any statistics about your audience as well as information about the profile of your readers. Do not try to cheat because nowadays you can easily find out how famous and 

8. Keep in touch with the representatives of the company: write them when you received their products, let them know when you are supposed to post your review. Do not let them write you back to ask you two months after the first contact what happened to their products. Most probably, they will not be interested to work with you in the future. After your review is live, let them know and send a short 'thank you' message. It will not take more than 10 minutes, anyway. 

9. Be honest in your review and mention that you received the products for a free review. However, for the sake of your credibility, try to avoid big and enthusiastic words that do not send any information about the products. Be simple and present as neutral as possible what are the products about and how they could serve the needs of the customers. If there are shortages in terms of qualities, do not hesitate to write about them because the truth should follow your writing activities, although you are not a journalist.

Geek recommendations

I tried lately to read more about interesting tools that could help you have a happy professional online life.

Here are a couple of news I am glad to share with my readers:

Socialfixer.com is a tool that will help you manage your Facebook activity. It is a free browser extension that will help you improve the visibility of the feeds. 


PagePress App is about Facebook too: if you have a Wordpress blog, it helps you to automatically update your content on your Facebook Fan Page. 


Are you worried that your team is not working too hard for finishing the project in time? Maybe you are right, maybe not. If you want to have the real picture of the situation, you should use the advantages offered by your virtual project manager - Happytodos. You can not only prioritize your tasks but also see who is working on what.  


Good luck!

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YouTube or not

I dare confess that even though I am listening or watching regularly various YouTube videos, I am not very much familiar with this topic. I tried only once to record something as part of the marketing support for some dear friends, but I ended up by doing a completely different kind of job.

Or, I wasn't until a couple of weeks ago when as part of my customer service I have entered in touch with a lot of YouTube owners.

The subject of my documentation was related to various reviews of products and marketing suggestions.

 I have found a lot of interesting YouTube Channels with young and enthusiastic authors and a lot of audience. And as I want to learn from any of my experiences, here are my lessons learned from my YouTube experience:

--        If you want to reach a large audience, you should try to post the reviews in the language of the products in this language. In most cases, English is the best tool that will help you to find more and more people ready to use your expertise

-        - As in the case of blogging, you should post as many YouTube videos as possible

-        - Engaging with the audience and reading and answering carefully their feed-back it is also very important for promoting and developing your brand

-         - Many people who do not post too many videos on their YouTube channel explain the long time needed in order to edit and produce their own videos. However, as long as you are natural and have some basic knowledge about what and how to do it, you better post your video now that wait a month or two until you will be really happy with the results. If you have something interesting to say, sooner or later some nice production  company will find you and even offer a good price for a high-end job they are ready to do for you.

-      -  It is very important that your video is maximum 10 minutes. You think it is not enough? Think about the daily TV news: you should find the right words and images that will help you send the message fast. Eventually, prepare your discourse in advance and avoid at any price to talk in a YouTube video as you do one afternoon when gossiping with a friend. Try to watch for a couple of weeks what other people do and mainly, how do they do it. Learning in process... 

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Finding the right key words

As I am trying to get the best from my professional experiences, I've learned a lot lately from my SEO-related work and regardless of where my professional path will lead me to, it will help me to better sell my 'products'.

First, I knew that there are many tools that could use you to evaluate the density of required keywords on your website. This might work very well when it comes to the websites of the companies, but it applied as well to the blogs as you can easily outline your profile for your requested niche. 

Second lesson, but by far the most important relates to the keywords that you associate with your posts - the 'labels', for the users of Blogger. At the beginning of my blogging activity, I wanted to add the keywords that define my field of writing, but in a very general way - as, for instance, writing, blogging, marketing advertising etc. However, the key to increase the readership is to use very specific words that define exactly what you are writing about. People will not have time to read thousand of Google search results after typing a very general term: they need to be around very specific topics and thus, the more specific you are the better for being found exactly by people that are supposed to be interested in your work. It means as well that you should be very good and offer a good return to your first time visitors in order to encourage them to return on your page.