December, 2011

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What Hunter S. Thompson Can Teach You About Powerful Writing

Men With Pens

Hunter S. Thompson was the creator of Gonzo Journalism – or as he called himself, “the doctor of journalism” – and the writer of the infamous books Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas , Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga , and The Rum Diary. Thompson was known for his drug frenzy-filled stories, his use of powerful verbs and wild descriptions, and the ability to tell a story like a journalist.

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20 Bloggers to Watch in 2012

ProBlogger

This year, I tried to go outside of the social media echo-chamber and focus on people who are expanding beyond their blogs. As Michael Stelzner said at Blogworld, “You’re not a blogger, you’re a publisher!”. These are 20 people who stood out to me this year. There is no ranking, nor is there a competition. If you are after more variety, I’ve included links to other round-ups at the end of this post.

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Why You Should Never Write Like You Talk

Men With Pens

The worst piece of writing advice I ever heard was to write the way I talk. The next time you have a conversation, listen to yourself. If you wrote the way you talked, your writing would be riddled with space-filler words and phrases such as “like” and “um” and “you know what I mean?”. You’d rely on your inflection to make your meaning clear. Your vocabulary would go right down the toilet.

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Is It Time to Clean Up Your Tribe?

Men With Pens

This quote has been stalking me for weeks now: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” - Jim Rohn. It gets me. It really gets me. And here’s why: In the business books and blogs we all love, there is constant talk of finding our ‘tribe’, our most ideal clients. We create elaborate customer avatars to dig down into the demographics and psychology of our tribe.

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Marketing Operations in 2025: A New Framework for Success

Speaker: Mike Rizzo, Founder & CEO, MarketingOps.com and Darrell Alfonso, Director of Marketing Strategy and Operations, Indeed.com

Though rarely in the spotlight, marketing operations are the backbone of the efficiency, scalability, and alignment that define top-performing marketing teams. In this exclusive webinar led by industry visionaries Mike Rizzo and Darrell Alfonso, we’re giving marketing operations the recognition they deserve! We will dive into the 7 P Model —a powerful framework designed to assess and optimize your marketing operations function.

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Does Your Website Pass the Split-Second Test?

Men With Pens

We shouldn’t judge a book by its cover… but unfortunately, we do. All the time, every day. Hardwired for survival, we look at what’s around and make snap judgments. Is this safe? Will it hurt me? Can I trust it? In a split second, our brains hand back the answer. Yes. Or no. It’s as simple as that. While we like to think we’re more evolved than primal survival mode, the truth is quite different.

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What Gift Are You Giving Yourself This Year?

Men With Pens

The holidays are coming. You know it. I know it. I see Christmas lights going up faster that lightning strikes, and people have started asking me, “Bought your kids any gifts yet?”. I have. But before I planned what I’d buy for my family, I thought of what I’d buy for myself. This goes against popular thinking. Buy for yourself? No way. Other people are supposed to buy you gifts!

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Are You Building a Business That Stinks?

Men With Pens

It’s the middle of summer. You’re going camping, and you have the option of two campsites. One is by a running stream. The other is by a pond. Which do you choose? If you’ve ever had a run-in with mosquitoes before, you pick the stream. Running water doesn’t allow algae and rotten leaves to collect and rot on the surface, which means mosquitoes don’t have anywhere to lay their eggs.

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The Complete Bloggers Guide to Facebook Marketing

ProBlogger

This guide to Facebook Marketing is written by guest writer Amy Porterfield. Amy will be presenting with Darren Rowse and Lewis Howes in a free webinar for ProBlogger readers this Wednesday. Register to get access to this Webinar here now. One Billion. That’s the number of users Facebook will hit in a matter of months – if not sooner. The powerhouse network continues to climb.

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How to Establish Influence from Scratch

ProBlogger

This guest post is by Jonathan Goodman of the Personal Trainer Development Center. I’m a nobody. Scratch that; I was a nobody. I work as a personal trainer in Toronto; I had no connections, knew nothing about blogging, and hadn’t written anything since University. . What I did have was an idea and, with the right know-how, an idea is powerful enough to break through all barriers.

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The Simple Power of Asking

ProBlogger

This guest post is by Sanjeev Mohindra of Makewebworld. What is asking? It is a simple act of putting together a query in order to obtain the answer. Whether you get an answer or not depends on how a question has been framed and asked. Image used with permission Asking has an awesome power, yet it is one of the most unused methods of advancement. When you enter the blogging world, there are lots of things which you might want to know.

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Mastering Remote Onboarding: Proven Strategies for Seamless New Hire Integration

Speaker: Tim Buteyn, President of ThinkingKap Learning Solutions

Join this brand new webinar with Tim Buteyn to learn how you can master the art of remote onboarding! By the end of this session, you'll understand how to: Craft a Tailored Onboarding Checklist 📝 Develop a comprehensive, customized checklist that ensures every new hire has a smooth transition into your company, no matter where they are in the world.

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The Right-brain Thinker’s Guide to Beating Blogger’s Block

ProBlogger

This guest post is by Neil Patel of KISSmetrics. In his 2009 book A Whole New Mind , Daniel Pink explained that the new world of business is a great place to be a right-brain thinker. Right-brain thinkers are the creators and the empathizers. If you’re a blogger, you are probably a right-brained thinker … and you probably deal with blogger’s block on occasion.

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Infographic: What Makes Content Go Viral?

ProBlogger

This guest post is by Voltier Digital. Not every piece of content can go viral, but if you understand the basics behind what makes great content highly shareable, you will have a better chance of getting better exposure for each piece of content you create. The following infographic looks at some of the factors involved in making great content go viral, and what it takes to really hit a home run (click the image to enlarge it).

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How I Got 18 Times More ‘Likes’ on a Facebook Update

ProBlogger

Yesterday I hosted a free webinar for ProBlogger readers on the topic of using Facebook to help you grow your blog. In the webinar (attended by 1000 people) Amy Porterfield packed in over an hour’s worth of rich content. I learned a lot from it myself (I’ll share one thing that instantly had results for me below) and we had literally hundreds of comments from those attending saying how worthwhile it was.

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The most insane – and hottest – offer ever.

Men With Pens

It’s the end of 2011. Smart people are already making plans for the coming year. (The lazy and stupid are getting complacent for the holidays.). I’ve got news for you: The coming year? It’s YOUR year. Introducing the Men with Pens Insanity Sale. You might have put some effort into your website already. But deep down, you probably know it needs some attention.

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Do's and Don'ts: How to Pitch Your Press Release to Journalists

Speaker: Michelle Garrett, PR Consultant, Author, Speaker

Yes - press releases are still relevant in the world of public relations! 🎯 Ever wondered how to write a compelling press release, or what are current best practices for pitching your news to earn media coverage? In this exclusive webinar with Michelle Garrett, PR Consultant, we’ll cover tips and advice to help you get the most out of each piece of news you pitch!

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4 Post Headlines that are Guaranteed to Get Readers Excited

ProBlogger

This is a guest post by Gregory Ciotti. So, your content marketing and blogging efforts are falling flat on their face, are they? Your posts must be terrible. They aren’t getting shared or read by anyone, so they must be garbage… Or maybe you just don’t know how to catch people’s attention. When it comes to creating highly popular, viral posts for marketing and blog promotion purposes, we all know that the cornerstone is amazing content and excellent information.

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A Quick and Dirty Guide to Your First Guest Post

ProBlogger

This guest post is by Neil Patel of KISSmetrics. You can’t really turn anywhere these days and not hear somebody telling you that in order to grow your blog, you need to guest post. I know you’ve heard that before, but have you actually done it? Or are you looking for somebody to tell you how to actually go about creating a guest post content strategy, finding the right blogs to guest post for, approaching that blogger and actually writing that post?

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When Should You Launch Your New Blog? [Complete or On the Go?]

ProBlogger

I’m regularly asked this question by PreBloggers: “How much work should I do on my blog before I launch it?” How many posts should it already have live? How many posts should I have in reserve and ready to go? Should I have a customized or premium theme, or just start with a default one? Should I invest in a logo before I launch? The list of questions goes on, but they all boil down to the same thing: how complete should a blog be before it’s launched?

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Your “How-To” Post Will Fail If You Don’t Use These Techniques

ProBlogger

This guest post is by Neil Patel of KISSmetrics. Gone are the days when you could write a simple “how-to” blog post and rank in the top search results. Why is that? Two very good reasons. First, all of the general and highly-competitive posts like “how-to blog” or “how-to find a roommate” are already written. The other reason is Google Panda. Remember Google’s update this past year that took down a lot of the content farms?

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Data Modeling for Direct Mail: Boosting Multi-Channel Reach and Response

Speaker: Jesse Simms, VP at Giant Partners

This new, thought-provoking webinar will explore how even incremental efforts and investments in your data can have a tremendous impact on your direct mail and multi-channel marketing campaign results! Industry expert Jesse Simms, VP at Giant Partners, will share real-life case studies and best practices from client direct mail and digital campaigns where data modeling strategies pinpointed audience members, increasing their propensity to respond – and buy.

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9 Steps to a Daily Blogging Schedule

ProBlogger

This guest post is by Caz Makepeace of y Travel Blog. I publish almost daily on two blogs. I have many people comment and ask me how I manage to do it, especially since I have two children, one being three months old. While it is by no means easy, and I spend a lot of my sleeping time awake, there are still many strategies I employ to make it more manageable. 1.

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12 Essential Tips for Revitalising Your Blog in 2012

ProBlogger

This is a guest post by Gregory Ciotti of Sparring Mind. As 2011 comes to a close, now is a better time than ever to evaluate your blog, its performance, and most importantly, what you can do to improve your blog in 2012! A point I always like to drive home is that you will never find blogging success by turning into an “eternal student”, one who always consumes information but never creates or takes action.

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Infographic: Is it Time to Consider SEO Automation?

ProBlogger

This gust post is by SEO for Salesforce. Is it safe for bloggers to stop caring about SEO yet? Can we all just install an SEO plugin for WordPress and focus on creating quality content? If you read some of the problogger.net articles this year about how Google’s Panda updates sent some bloggers looking for a life boat , the answer is unfortunately no.

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4 Key Criteria to Build Your Dream Blog

ProBlogger

This guest post is by Matthew Setter of The Dreamers Manifesto. Have you wanted to start a blog, a website or an online business, but you’re not sure where to begin? Are you already putting in the hard yards to build one or the other or both, but you’re not sure if it’s going where you want it to go? Image copyright FotolEdhar - Fotolia.com Building blogs and online businesses is very exciting, but it’s a very challenging endeavor as well.

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Scan to Success: How to Leverage QR Codes for Offline and Online Marketing Power

Speaker: Corey Daugherty, Head of Business Development at Flowcode & Georgette Malitsis, Senior Customer Success Manager, Enterprise at Flowcode

Let's explore the transformative power of QR codes in bridging offline and online marketing worlds. 📲 This new webinar featuring Corey Daugherty and Georgette Malitsis of Flowcode will dive into how innovative QR technology not only enhances traditional marketing strategies, but also drives meaningful customer engagement and analytics. Register today to gain practical knowledge on using QR codes to increase conversion rates, optimize customer journeys, and ultimately unlock a new realm o

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The Technical Setup Behind My Videos on ProBlogger

ProBlogger

In my last video post I spoke about the benefits of using talking head video posts on a blog. Today in this video I want to respond to many questions I get about the technical setup that I use for my videos here on ProBlogger. My set up is very basic (and I’m sure it can be improved), but the results seem to work well. I get a lot of comments on them, and questions about factors like which camera I use, what lighting I have, whether I use a microphone, and so on.

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What to Do When Your Niche Blog Isn’t Making Money

ProBlogger

This guest post is by Blog Lady. There comes a time in your career as a blogger or website owner that you find yourself with a niche blog or site that isn’t meeting your expectations money-wise. That’s nothing to feel bad about. It happens to everybody, and if some say it’s never happened to them, they must be insanely lucky or they just haven’t been in the business long enough.

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Why You Should Wear The 6 Thinking Hats On Your Blog

ProBlogger

This guest post is by Nischala Murthy of Wipro.com. Wearing the 6 Thinking Hats on your blog helps in generating valuable, interesting and diverse content. What are the 6 Thinking Hats? Dr. Edward de Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats is a simple, effective parallel thinking process that helps people be more productive, focused, and mindfully involved. And once they’re learned, the tools can be applied immediately!

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6 Steps to a Loyal Blog Following

ProBlogger

This guest post is by Shari Lopatin of www.sharilopatin.com. I had a writer friend tell me the other day I have the best social network she’s ever seen. “What?” I asked, shocked. After all, I only have about 380 Twitter followers (I follow 200-something). “You should check out these people instead,” I offered, with three other usernames. “They have way more followers than me.”.

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How to Leverage Behavioral Science Insights for Direct Mail Success

Speaker: Neal Boornazian, President and Nancy Harhut, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer - HBT Marketing

Direct mail has consistently remained a powerful tool in the marketer's arsenal, but in an age of digital dominance, its effectiveness hinges on the strategic integration of behavioral science. 💡 When you incorporate powerful behavioral science principles into your direct mail marketing strategies, you can prompt the hardwired decision-making shortcuts your audience relies on — and that automatically unlocks new avenues for engagement, conversion, and brand loyalty.

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Listen to Your “Inner Crazy Voice”

ProBlogger

Sometimes I hear voices … they suggest I do crazy things … and sometimes they end up being the best things I’ve done! Speaking of 'Crazy Ideas' Okay, that’s one of the strangest first lines of a post that I’ve written but it struck me today as I was looking back over the past few years that some of the most successful things that I’ve done have often started out as a “crazy idea.” Perhaps it is just my personality type, but I’m a pr

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Easy Goal Setting for Your New Blog

ProBlogger

This guest post is by Aman Basanti of ageofmarketing.com. Ask any success guru out there and they will tell you that the most important part of becoming a successful blogger is to set clear goals. And that is good advice for people who know how they want to tackle problogging. It is good advice for bloggers who know how they want to create content, generate traffic and monetize their blog.

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How to Create Another Day a Week Just for Blogging

ProBlogger

This guest post is by Udi Tirosh of DIYPhotography. When you start blogging it seems that there is never enough time—especially if you aren’t blogging full time, and you’re doing it from home. You get phone calls that need to be picked up; the service guy for the dishwasher shows up; you must read that important mail. It is not uncommon for an entire day to go by only to find out you didn’t complete any of the tasks you set for yourself.

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No Matter What Your Blogging Goals for 2012 Are… We’ve got a 50% Off Deal For You

ProBlogger

Over the last week on Digital Photography School we’ve been running a 12 Deals of Christmas promotion where we’re offering some big deals on photography related products over 12 days (each lasting for 24 hours). A number of readers of both ProBlogger and dPS have asked whether we are going to run a similar promotion on ProBlogger – hoping to pick up some ProBlogger eBooks at a discount.

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The Resurgence of Direct Mail as a Growth Marketing Strategy

Speaker: Jeff Tarran, COO, Gunderson Direct & Margaret Pepe, Executive Director of Product Management, U.S. Postal Service

Learn the secrets to direct mail success for growth marketers! Industry veterans Jeff Tarran and Margaret Pepe are here to delve into how direct mail has completely evolved in recent years, and has rightfully earned a seat at the table alongside the email and digital marketing plans of SMBs, enterprise companies, and agencies as they look into strategy for 2024 and beyond.