Bounty

One of the more interesting differences between paper books and web pages is trust.

We trust paper books to have a fairly well-defined kind of information.
Books usually have a quite well-known manner of presentation.
Given cover/jacket, Summary, and marketing, the book is effectively static.
You can trust a book to be and do what a book is.

Blogs are different; there are far less constraints to presentation.
Content, too, has no guarantee of consistency.
And, although both receive marketing, blogs get less of it and for good reason.
Blogs are more of a gamble.


You can, then, think of your readers as seeking buried treasure.
Marketing simply becomes a treasure map.
And your job is to reward them for finding you blog.


Be bountiful!

Apprise

Part of your daily challenge is nicely captured thusly:

Your job is to inform your readers.

In fact, a best-case scenarios would be to provide a crucial piece of information.

Presuming you've

• read up on your niche's state-of-the-art
• learned of any active bargains
• identified something distinctive worth sharing

Then your task is dissemination.

A well-connected blog will necessarily be part of a network.

Part of that will be links to and from your blog.
Others can be other forms of media (video, audio, and the like).
And you will find many, many readers by apprisal through social network.

Thus posting on twitter, tumblr, LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc will also help apprise.

And remember:
Without value-laden content, apprisal will often discredit you.
With value-laden content, apprisal will increase your portfolio.

Abbreviation

A powerful component to your posts is brevity.

Learn what to say with the least words is a powerful tool.

From a screen real-estate perspective it
* draws attention
* reduces scrolling
* promotes information absorption



This can be as simple as using short sentences.

It can also be the number of sentences.

In the end: optimize.

Your readers will thank you by visiting.

Access

At a most rudimentary level, information is about awareness and access.
As previously discussed, awareness speaks of knowing your niche.
One can also approach awareness from the other end.

Reaching the point where you have more content than your distribution means,
you have the potential for duplication of attention.

And if you've monetized your blog, this transfers to sales.
Access, then, becomes relevant.

And one of the most effective salability tools is offered through trade.

Simply do the following:
i)   Take seven or nine of your most relevant and useful bits of information.
ii)  Add details, format, and collate into a ten-page pdf.
iii) Add a cover (to summarize and present the value contained therein)
iv)  And offer this as a product, in exchange for the viewer's email.

This funnels access and gives you the opportunity to recognize your core audience.

It also gives you something exceptionally useful in the niche-sphere:
an email mailing list.

Done well, you have a list of trusting customers and they have a reputable resource.

Aware

One of the challenges you will face is simply awareness.

Being aware of your niche-specific

• current trends
• active history
• unspoken presumptions

will help you understand what to broach and what to drop.

It will also aid in identifying what your niche will value.

Part of this can be solved by immersion.

Another will be to try thinking in unusual ways about your niche.

Your earlier preparation will help identify what questions have been asked.
It will also help you realize what questions still need to be asked.

Become aware.

Apathy

One of your greatest informational foes will be apathy.

This can come from site visitors.

Whether due to excessive information
- or lack of apparent relevance -
you can most-easily lose viewers through their lack of interest.

Likewise, this can come from YOU.

There will always be moments when you

• don't wish to contribute
• no longer care about your niche
• find other things more important

Your single-greatest asset is regular, genuine, fresh content.
Your voice is created, daily, through your shared thoughts.

Choose never to be apathetic!

Accent

Languages can be said to be groups of phonemes.

Groups of people can be identified by the pronunciation of those phonemes.


Of interest is how those phonemes are heard by others.



This is where accent comes in:
                     
Accent is what someone, familiar with a phoneme, hears when it sounds different.

Said another way - if you know a language, you can hear when someone sounds different.


Learn the language of your niche.

Simply being passionate about the niche will give you some of the basic words.

Studying it will give you more.


Your goal is to speak the language of your niche with no accent.

Mastering this will contribute to your being seen as a legitimate source.


Be without accent!

Argue

This is the last in the series of posts on innovation.

Looking for a way to promote creativity and stimulate the neurons?
Talk!

All four of the other innovation tools are solitary in nature.
This one is social - find someone to speak with!

Pick a topic about which the both of you are passionate and share.
Nod your head and engage them about aspects with which you both agree.

Stand your ground about points upon which you disagree.
Be considerate, speak your position well - but engage!

The point here is that innovation can come from impassioned interaction.

Let today be an opportunity to get energized and excited about your niche!
Communicate with peers, neighbors, friends, and others.

Argue!

Sing

Today's source of inspiration is singing!

One of most common ways to improve one's writing is simply to write.

Another, not often disclosed, is to speak.

This is because most of us write similarly to how we speak.

The better we speak, the better we write!

That is where singing comes in:

singing draws out the ability to speak and naturally engages ones passions.

Singing has been long known to help people who stutter.

Some, who are unable to simply speak, can sing melodiously.

Breaking out in song can help draw out your creative spark.

Sing!

Dance

Day three in sources-of-inspiration is all about motion!

A solid reason why many lack inspiration is due to lack of movement.

Faking it until you make it is a well-known example.
If you're having a bad day - smile!
Simply engaging the muscles associated with smiling can cause happiness!

In the same way, simply moving around can get your brain juices flowing.

This can be simply:
Going out for a walk.
Visiting a dog park, breathing, and enjoying the scenery.
Putting on some back-beat and moving!
Or running around a few blocks.

The key is to get out there and move!

Dance!

Sleep

A few weeks back I mentioned several sources of inspiration.
Today's topic is actual sleep.

It has been called various things; basically, your brain needs rest.
The opportunity to:

• reset the clock
• parse and evaluate your day
• consider the ethical and moral implications to your life
• heal
• and mix it up.

It is that last bit that we take for granted.

Genuine innovation is remarkably difficult.

Genuine inspiration is as well.

But - you can learn to do it better.

And you can learn to do it on purpose.

Experience will teach you how to filter out the circular inspiration.

And joy will teach you how to appreciate the great.

Go take a nap!

Read

A previous post spoke about ways in which one can be inspired to blog.
Today's post will be one of several breaking those items down.

Reading was recommended as a useful source of inspiration.

The challenge, then, is in identifying what should be read.

The glib answer is: everything!

In reality, each niche will have specific sources of value.

Part of your job, as information provider, is to know these sources.
If you do your job well, your niche will see YOU as one of these.

As for ways to find relevant sources, there are many:

1. Popular niches always have books and magazines
   There is a reason there are dozens of magazines dedicated to sports
2. Popular social niches also have twitter-feeds and blogs
   The desire to share, collaborate, and grow is universal
3. Popular technical niches tend to have Linked-In posts and such
   Many, many sources exist for technical niches.
4. Lastly, don't forget everything is connected.
   Most niches have other parallel subjects from which to draw

So go read - then share what you've learned!

Hide

Take a look at the image above; then look again.

See the "hidden" man near the center.

A key component to a well-written blog is shown above:

Get out of the way of your niche!

One of the most-effective ways of destroying your own credibility and relevance is ego.

As much as you are able:
* ensure each posts adds distinctive value

* be comfortable drawing attention to your niche instead of yourself

Note:

Full credit for the photo goes to this site:
http://www.graphicdesignblog.org/photos-of-invisible-man/

Spacing

One of the more subtle aspects of presentation is spacing.

This can be as simple as ensuring sentences are only a certain width.
It can incorporate space distance between clauses, paragraphs, etc.

Do your best to have text not wrap.

Too, although this clearly isn't a deal breaker:
sentence-wrapping is dissonant.
Dissonance can detract from comprehension.

Certainly it can reduce reading speed at the least.

Take the time to choose the right spacing:
It will increase readibility by something like 5%.

And each of these small improvements will, aggregately, bear fruit.

Niche

Numerous previous posts have made mention of "niche".

In summary, niche is:

* Your over-arching blog focus
* The core theme of each blog post
* The general category to which your posts add value

Thus, if most of your posts are about cheese.
Then perhaps your niche is just "cheese".
It may, instead, be about cheddar.
Or, it may be "about cheddar that has been aged fifteen years".

Having a niche isn't difficult.
Knowing your preferred and precise niche can be.

This is especially true if your blog migrates topicality.

Tools exist which can help identify desirable niches.

Regardless - know your niche!

Timing

One of the hardest things to master in presentation is timing.

It can, in fact, be argued that anything well-timed will be well-received.

The same is true for a blog: a well-timed post can sometimes make a blog.

From an immediate-impact standpoint, content that best matches your audience is ideal.


And this is the secret to giving your blog the appearance of having well-timed content:

Have content.


It really is as simple and powerful as you may think.

The more content you've created (and the better it is tagged) the more you'll sync.

The more you sync, the more you'll appear to be providing just what your customer needs.


Remember:
It can take 10 years to have an overnight success.

Value

Implicit to the point of blogging is the idea of value.

There are different kinds of blogs; some are public, others aren't.

The ability to draw eyes is specifically associated with the value provided.

You could simply be journaling your own thoughts.

Value there would be the capture and dissemination of your voice.

You could be reviewing car dealerships.

Value there would generally be found in your offering a distinctive, useful perspective.

Again, it would be the capture and dissemination of your voice.

You could be sharing yarn and knitting patterns.

Value might be in how the patterns fit together and perhaps unique kinds of thread/yarn.

So, too, would value be provided through asserting your unique identity.

It is also true that the absence of voice removes value.

Without a reason to stand out, to identify and provide a unique voice, value is lost.

One could even say that genuine value ceases to exist when voice absent.

Provide value.