What a creative place to get creative. And even though it's virtual, you can at least feel like you're on the beach! Click on the image to go directly to the Institute's website.
If you like a good murder mystery or love story, check out my novel, In Fashion's Web on Amazon.
What does it mean to be digital first? It means publishing your articles on the Internet before you publish them in any print products you have.
In the typical print-based strategy that manifested from the 1960s all the way to the early 2000s, companies would write articles and publish them in print materials such as magazines, newspapers and newsletters.
Enter the World Wide Web
The World Wide Web came along in 1995, and by 2000, most publishing companies had websites, although they were afterthoughts. On these websites, they would take articles that ran in their print publications and repost them online. This is a print-first, digital-second strategy.
But since 2000, and due more to the growth of cell phone usage than computers but both taking some credit, online media has become pervasive, while print is shrinking.
Today's digital-first strategy
In today's media world, the most progressive companies are reversing that business model—they're publishing online first, and then pulling from online content to build print products. This is a digital-first strategy.
But simply publishing online first is not the crux of the strategy. A digital first strategy depends on data gleaned from Google Analytics.
What Google Analytics does
Google Analytics collects viewership data on everything you post. It will rank number of views of all your articles for the life of the site, for a year, for a month, or just for a particular article.
But here's the holy grail: It also gives you the most searched keyword terms on your site. Perhaps you run a health site. You can look at these keyword terms and know that people are very interested in nutrition but not in breast cancer, or very interested in osteoporosis treatments but not so much in macular degeneration.
Why is this important? Because if you write about what people are looking for, they will find your content and read it, and you will get more views. If you simply write what you like to write or what you think people want to read, you may be surprised to find that you're not get the page views you desire.
If your site is advertising supported, then managing your content according to keyword strength is critical. The more you are able to provide the content that people are looking for, the more page views you will get, and the more ad sales you will generate.
See my previous article, How to Let Google Analytics Drive Your Digital Content.
And stay tuned for my next article, how to write for search engine optimization (i.e., Google).
If you like a good murder mystery or love story, check out my novel, In Fashion's Web on Amazon.
When you write for a website, you generally write what you want, or what someone else asks you to write. One thing most people don't do is write what visitors want to read.
How do you know what visitors want to read? Google Analytics (GA) will tell you.
If you have a website, it probably already has Google Analytics built in. If it doesn't, you can download it.
What does Google Analytics do?
Google Analytics records data about how visitors interact with your content. It will give you page views by article name; by time frame (i.e., the month of January) and by keywords.
This last one is the most important. Google Analytics will rank for you the most searched keyword terms on yourwebsite. For example, if you maintain a site about nutrition, people might search for terms such as recipes, eating for type 2 diabetes, low-salt meal ideas, sugar-free, quick dishes, microwavable meals, etc.
When you request a keyword report, you specify a time frame, so you might put in the first and last date of the previous month, for example, and then GA will rank them from "most searched" to "least searched". So your list might look like this:
recipes, 10,432
eating for type 2 diabetes, 9,807
low-salt meal ideas, 6,324
sugar-free, 3,965
quick dishes, 2,148
microwavable meals, 1,725
How to use this information
Once you have your keyword ranking in hand, you then can craft articles around those keyword topics. For more information on how to write articles around keyword themes, see my next article, "How to Write for a Digital First Strategy and Why You Should."
If you like a good murder mystery or love story, check out my novel, In Fashion's Web on Amazon.
When I first started my writing career back in the mid-1990s, technology involved in the process was pretty simple:
>>I either called or emailed someone to request and schedule an interview.
>>Interviews were done by phone while typing furiously to capture everything the person said. Thank God that I used to type 100 words a minute back then! Even so, I still missed a few comments and and got one or two things wrong.
Today, the process is completely different and much easier:
>>Email a request for an interview.
>>Set up a Zoom call.
>>Record the Zoom call.
>>Receive the transcript of the meeting in 5 minutes. Upload the transcript to an automated voice recognition transcription service. Get a link to the transcripted file in 5 minutes.
>>Download the transcript in a Word file and craft the transcript (or several transcripts from several interviews) into an article.
The benefits of today's modern technology are:
>>Less work (all that typing at 100 words a minute no longer exists!) and
>>Better accuracy of information (any confusion can be clarified by checking the audio or video file)
But for me, the real benefit of Zoom and transcript services is the ability to have a one-on-one conversation and focus all your attention on the interviewee. In the old days, all my attention was focused on typing. Often, I would have to say, could you repeat that last comment? because I didn't get it all. It's such a joy that those days are gone.
I'm excited to see how artifical intelligence like ChatGPT will help with future article writing, but I'm also cautious. Anything that you request from ChatGPT must be fully vetted and verified. Never assume it's accurate.
If you're currently using ChatGPT or another type of AI to help with writing and/or journalism, I would love to hear about your experiences. Leave comments below!
If you like a good murder mystery or love story, check out my novel, In Fashion's Web on Amazon.
You can find a link to the contest rules/deadlines etc. here.
ONE GRAND PRIZE WINNER WILL RECEIVE:
All Grand Prize and First Prize winners will receive:
Honorable Mention recipients will receive promotion on www.writersdigest.com and a special graphic for use in promoting your selection. All entrants will receive a brief commentary from one of the judges.
Enter or learn more about the competition here.
If you like a good murder mystery or love story, check out my novel, In Fashion's Web on Amazon.
The first thing you want to do is get your idea down on paper so you don't forget it.
But what if you've never written for the horror genre before and you're looking for some advice? You turn to the experts.
There are three levels of horror: The Gross-Out, Horror, and Terror. Stephen King, the 'king' of horror, published an article describing these three levels in 2019. Also, the best way to learn is to read the works of the best horror writers such as Stephen King.
Of course, before King, there was filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock and writer Edgar Allan Poe, who are often studied in writing and film classes. No training would be complete without learning everything you can about these two classics, who paved the way for people like King.
As you're reading books from the horror genre, make note of what you like and don't like, and if you were writing that book or movie script, what you would keep the same and what you would do differently. And it's likely that your mind will be racing with ideas as you read so be sure to write them down.
I discovered I wanted to be a novelist when I started reading The Other Side of Midnight by Sidney Sheldon. By the time I got to the third chapter, I thought, "he writes just like I do." I started analyzing the book from a writer's point of view in addition to enjoying it as a reader. Still to this day, he is my favorite author because of the affinity I feel for him.
Happy writing!
My book isn't in the horror genre, but it has plenty of crime, deceit, backstabbing, and of course, success and love. Please check out my novel, In Fashion's Web on Amazon. It's available in print, on Kindle and on Audible.
