WritingThoughts

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Recently I read a comment from a social media specialist that mentioned wishing that blogging reciprocity would no longer be as important in 2012 as it has been in the past.

Blogging reciprocity, in case you were wondering, refers to the practice of visiting the blogs of your commenters and repaying a comment left on your blog by leaving a comment on their blog.

While I can see the social media specialist’s point, I have a different view of reciprocity.

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What exactly is an online community manager?

Before reading Deb Ng’s new book, Online Community Management for Dummies I really didn’t know. In fact, my original notions about the job (someone who plays a marketing role and may help with social media or online forums) fell far short of the truth.

Before I go any further, let me get the disclosures out of the way.

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Are rapid-fire social media changes making you tired? If you’re like me, you wish the big social media platforms (Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter) would stop changing things. Of course, they won’t because they’re all in competition with each other.

I wondered how the social media changes were affecting other freelancers, so I asked my Twitter and Google+ friends to answer the following question:

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There’s been a lot of talk about blogging lately. Some online personalities have stated publicly that as social media becomes more mature and starts to offer more features, there’s little reason to continue with their own blog.

Others haven’t made any such statement, but have constructively abandoned their own blog (not posting for weeks or, in some cases months) while keeping up with a steady social media presence.
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Yesterday, I created a Google+ page for this blog and then I created one for my freelance writing business. The whole process took less than ten minutes–but right now, they are only shells. It will take some work to add content and value.

If I could do it that quickly, you could too. But should you?

So, do freelance writers need a business page? I’ll examine that issue from the freelance writing perspective in this post.
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Are you looking for information about writing and other writing-related tips? You’ve come to the right place! I’ve packed this blog with writing information.

However, some of you may not be aware that I write on other blogs. Yet, some of those other posts also contain information that might be useful to writers. So today, I thought I’d share them with you.

Here are some links to some of my writing-related posts. Enjoy!

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I have a guilty little secret. I’ve found some great new writing blogs from fellow writers–but instead of sharing them with you, I’ve selfishly kept them to myself.

Well, today it’s time to pay it forward and share some of those writing resources.

I’m featuring a list of some of the blogs that I’ve enjoyed recently, plus a little bit about each blogger.

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If you’ve been following along for the past few weeks, you may have noticed that I’ve been listing the characteristics of a successful writer.

We started with how approachable you are as a writer, moved on to your visibility, and today we’re talking about the importance of being careful.

Why is being careful important to your freelance writing career?

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Too many freelance writers are invisible online, and it keeps them from getting the work they need.

Did you ever notice how some freelance writers seem to be everywhere? No matter what social media, what forum, or what blog you read they seem to have a very visible presence there. Naturally, these visible writers are also the first ones that clients turn to when they have a writing assignment. Clients like to work with freelancers they’ve heard of. But, how do you go from being an invisible writer to a highly visible writer?

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As a freelance writer, you want and need clients and prospective clients to contact you. Yet, some writers have made this contact nearly impossible.

In this post, I’ll explain what it means to be an approachable writer and then describe several ways that writers place barriers between themselves and their potential clients (often without realizing what they are doing).

Could you be one of those unapproachable writers?

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