Tag Archive for 'tip of the day'

Tip of the Day: Check your links before submitting your article

Published
by
Talia
on June 14, 2009
in Tips and Writing
. 8 Comments

Tip of the DayAs you have probably noticed, many of you have had articles rejected over tiny details, such as broken links.

You’re probably thinking, “but correcting a broken link is so easy!” You’re right. But while correcting a broken link is easy for us to do, each broken links adds up for us.

Thousands of articles are submitted to ArticlesBase every day, and as you know, it takes a while to get approved (usually within 48 hours). The percentage of articles submitted with broken links, bolded texts, or other tiny mistakes is high enough that correcting each article manually would result in a larger delay in having your articles published.

Before you submit your article, quickly look at your code and make sure the links are correct. While you’re at it, make sure you didn’t accidentally bold the entire article, and break your article into short paragraphs.

Tip of the Day: Saving your articles before you post them

Published
by
Talia
on May 14, 2009
in Tips and Writing
. 1 Comment

Tip of the DayOne of the common support requests we receive relates to lost articles. While we do our best to make sure our system works as efficiently as possible, there are bound to be slip ups - your session logs out, your computer restarts, or you accidentally navigated away from the page.

I’d like to suggest that you write your articles in a text editor, save them, and only then post them to ArticlesBase. If you have a lot of formatting in your article, go ahead and copy the HTML into a text editor before you save your article, just in case.

Let me reiterate: Always save a local copy of your article on your hard drive.

The first few times that you save your articles, it will be a bit of a bother, but soon enough it will become an involuntary action like CTRL-S.

If you go back and edit your article at any point, copy and paste the edited version and save it, too. It’s 30 seconds of work that can save you hours of frustration.

Affect vs. Effect - Grammar Tip

Published
by
Talia
on May 10, 2009
in Grammar Tips, Marketing and Writing
. 5 Comments

Last week I posted a tip about the difference between you’re and your. I was so excited about the response to the post! People commented on the blog post, on our Facebook fan page, and our Twitter account (some were DMs so you won’t be able to see them), and many made requests and suggestions.

Today’s suggestion comes from one of the commentors on our post- Markk.

The difference between “affect” and “effect” is hard on native English speakers, not just those who do not speak English as a mother tongue.

The easiest way to differentiate between the two, in my opinion, is to remember that affect is generally a verb, and effect is a noun. In other words, the way you affect someone could have an effect on them.

An effect is generally a result:

“Setting low speed limits were supposed to change driving behavior, but it had the opposite effect - more people are breaking the law by driving faster than the speed limit.”

To affect is to make a difference to or create change in something:

“Using margarine instead of butter will affect the final flavor of the cake - it won’t taste the same.”

In other words, when you affect something, you product an effect on it.

Are there any grammar questions you’d like answered? Or tips you think your fellow writers would find helpful? Let us know in the comments!

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You’re vs. your - Grammar Tip

Published
by
Talia
on May 6, 2009
in Grammar Tips, Tips and Writing
. 9 Comments

AB Grammar LogoLike I previously mentioned, I am a bit of grammar freak when it comes to professional writing. As such, I’d like to begin giving you short tips that will help you avoid grammar mistakes that may not show up on a regular spell check.

Today’s tip is one of my all-time pet peeves - the difference between your and you’re.

Your is possessive - it shows ownership. Your towel. Your hat. Your mistake.

You’re is a contraction - it means you are. You’re nice. You’re talented. You’re insane.

As a general rule with contractions, if I’m personally not sure if a contraction is necessary (i.e. you’re instead of your), I break up the word. Since the apostrophe stands for one or more missing letters, I check if the word is actually two words:

“Your my sunshine” = You are my sunshine = You’re is the correct form.

When I write in 140 characters or less, I tend, out of necessity, to shorten words (U instead of you) or use symbols (& instead of and), however Twitter (and Facebook statuses and other social media) do not require the same level of professionalism that your articles require.

I will be tagging grammar tips with a “grammar tips” tag so you can sift through our various tips whenever you’d like. Keep in mind that this was number one, so it may take a while to accumulate many tips. :-)

Tip of the Day: Submit many articles

Published
by
Talia
on April 5, 2009
in Tips and Writing
. 1 Comment

Tip of the DayOK, so it sounds pretty obvious, but bare with me. Clearly, having more articles online makes you look like more of an expert. However, by increasing the number of articles you have submitted, you are no only giving yourself credibility, but giving more people a chance of finding your work.

If you look at your statistics per article (more on utilizing your statistics on another post), you will see that each article received traffic from certain keywords.

It’s a very simple formula:

More articles = more keywords = greater chance to appear in search results = more clicks on your articles

Many of you out there have more articles sitting on your hard drive - go ahead and post them on ArticlesBase and increase you momentum.

Tip of the Day: Keyword research to offset writer’s block

Published
by
Talia
on March 31, 2009
in News
. 2 Comments

Tip of the DaySometimes you know you want to write, but you just can’t think of a topic or angle you haven’t covered. I suggest you perform a keyword search to see what people in your niche are searching for at that time.

Keyword searches can both pull you out of your temporary writer’s block and give you a boost by identifying topics that relevant to your niche. Tools such as Keyword Discovery, Word Tracker, Goodkeywords, Backtype, and Wordze are popular search tools that can help get you started.

Do you use any of these tools? Do you use other tools? Let us know in the comments.

P.S. Google AdWords’ Keyword Tool was recommended to me on Twitter by @wordsyouwant and @Matt_Siltala - thanks!

Tip of the Day - KISS (Keep it simple and short)

Published
by
Talia
on March 30, 2009
in News, Tips and Writing
. 0 Comments

OK, so I slightly rewrote the phrase, but the point is the same.Tip of the Day

In these days of information overload, for better or worse, time is a very precious commodity. When people search for information, they are usually looking for a quick fix - the information they want quickly.

Short articles (under 250 words) lose credibility - but long articles lose readers. We suggest you write articles around 500 words long. It should be enough to show your expertise and get your point across, but not too long where you’ll lose readers.

If your topic requires more than 500 words, how about splitting it up into a series? This will both keep it short, and get your reader coming back for more.

Subscribe by RSS to your favorite authors and categories

Published
by
Talia
on March 29, 2009
in Features, News and Tips
. 0 Comments

Did you know you can subscribe to your favorite authors and article categories?

If you click on any category or subcategory, you will see a little orange RSS icon by the category title. Click on the button and choose your favorite RSS reader.

RSS icon

You can do the same with your favorite authors - and your readers can do the same with you!

You can add an RSS feed of your favorite topics and/or authors to your website, and drive more traffic to your own articles as well.

So go out and let your readers know they are able to subscribe to your articles and make sure your fans come back for more.

Tip of the day: Edit your profile to increase your viewership!

Published
by
Talia
on March 22, 2009
in Features and Tips
. 1 Comment

Yes, I realize it sounds funny, but editing your profile and even just adding a picture can greatly increase your exposure.

Your profile says a lot about you - who you are, what you do, and how people can contact you. If you include a biography, your readers will know you better and will be more likely to follow you to your own website. Explaning why you are an expert on the topic you are writing about will give you more credibility, and this, too, will increase the chances of your readers clicking through to your website.Tip of the Day

We recommend including the following information (in whichever order you’d like to present it):

  1. Why you are an expert in the field you are writing about (education, skills, and/or qualifications)
  2. A photo
  3. A link to your website(s)
  4. Contact information
  5. Publications - if you have been published or interviewed in know publications, mention or link to them.

Remember to keep it short, yet informative. Pretend it’s an elevator pitch - and you have one floor to travel.