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6 Benefits of Evernote for Bloggers (GUEST POST)

Whether you blog about marketing or cooking, Evernote has a lot to offer. As a suite of software and services focused on “notes,” Evernote gives you a tool to save any information you need, from sentences and photographs to webpages and voice memos. It syncs info across devices, makes organization easy, and saves you time. Have you thought about all the ways this tool can benefit bloggers? You should. Here are six specific ways to use Evernote to improve your blogging efforts:

1. Build Common Templates: If you’re like most bloggers, you write posts that follow specific formats. For food bloggers, that might mean photos with text, followed by a list of ingredients and a list of directions. For business bloggers, that might mean an introduction, followed by main points in an outline. Whatever the case, if you use a common format, why not create a template that you can easily copy from and fill in when you write new posts? This makes your writing more efficient and your processes simpler.

2. Save Post Ideas as Notes: Make it easy to track ideas for blog post topics by saving them in Evernote as notes, with as much information as you can at the time. Whether you save the idea on your phone while you’re on the go, or on your computer while you work, the ideas get saved in one single place. Anywhere you access your Evernote account, you’ll find them. This means when you start writing a new post, you don’t have to waste time trying to drum up new topics or wrack your brain looking for that idea you had earlier: They’re all saved and waiting for you.

3. Write Blog Drafts: Maybe you don’t have time to write a whole blog post, but you’ve got several topic ideas stored in Evernote and a half hour to kill. Start writing a rough draft for one of the topics and keep it saved there. When you are ready to publish a post, most of the work will already be done for you.

4. Save Inspirations: Read an article that you’d like to reference later? Save it to Evernote. Find a blogger who inspires you? Save the link to Evernote. With Evernote, you have an easy way to clip quotes, emails, Tweets, photos, links, articles, and more—all in one streamlined place. If you tag all of these notes with the same tag, like “inspirations,” for example, finding them is as simple as searching that word or phrase.

5. Share Ideas with Co-Bloggers: If you blog with other authors, make it easy to share ideas with each other by doing it through Evernote. The tool lets you share all content publicly or share it particularly with the people you select on social networks or via email.

6. Stay Motivated: There’s a reason so many bloggers abandon their sites over time—without regular encouragement or results of some kind, blogging can get discouraging. Be proactive against these feelings by setting up a note dubbed “Encouragement” or “Comments from fans.” Whenever a reader emails or comments with an encouraging word, save it in your note. Then, when you face those feelings of inadequacy or frustration, remind yourself of what’s been good.

Your Thoughts

Do you already use Evernote? Why or why not? If you’re looking for a way to stay more organized and productive, there’s no better time to try Evernote than now. Download Evernote to your devices at Evernote.com today.

Guest author Shanna Mallon is a writer for Straight North, a Web development company with headquarters in Chicago, providing SEO, Web development and other online marketing services to B2B clients.

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Bloggers Need to Act Professionally to be Taken Seriously

Yesterday, Deb Ng put a big smackdown on self-entitled bloggers who think that conference hotels need to fawn all over their guests or face the wrath of thousands of angry mommy bloggers armed with smartphones and hashtags.

I found a post filled with nothing but entitlement. The blogger, whose name is Jen, posted an open letter to the Sheraton Chicago who will be hosting BlogHer in a few weeks.  She wanted to prepare hotel management for what’s to come.

After explaining what a blogger is, because apparently hotel staff aren’t hip or in touch enough to know, Jen goes on to tell the hotel what to expect if BlogHer attendees aren’t treated super special.

Ng’s disgust is understandable. Bloggers want to be taken seriously as writers and journalists, and the problems Jen warns the Sheraton about make it that much harder. It doesn’t help when bloggers are on their worst behavior, not by being loud and obnoxious — every conference in every industry does that — but by being unreasonable and demanding.

If we want to be taken seriously as professionals, and not just a hobbyist with a laptop, we need to act like professionals. Here’s how:

1) Act Like You’re Supposed To Be There

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Media Center. I’ve covered the Indy 500 since 2009.
Don’t fawn, don’t gush, don’t geek out, don’t ask for autographs. Red Hot Mama, a baseball blogger, once told me the Cincinnati Reds won’t give access to bloggers anymore, because one blogger in the mid-2000s was given media access and instead acted like a total fanboy. He got pictures taken with players, asked for autographs, the whole works. He was the first and last blogger allowed in the clubhouse. Similarly, when I started covering the Indianapolis 500 for my personal blog, I was told the Speedway would yank the credentials of any journalist who ever asked a driver for an autograph or a photo.

Journalists don’t gush, they act like they’re supposed to be there. They have a job to do, and they get it done. Do the same. Act like this is your job, not a once-in-a-lifetime special treat. Because if you don’t, it truly will only happen once. Act like a pro and they’ll ask you back.

2) You’re Not Entitled To Anything

You don’t deserve the things you’re given. They’re not given to you because you’re special. They’re given to you as part of a media and PR campaign. You can’t march into a conference or special event and demand a swag bag or a VIP pass. (See “You’re Not A Celebrity” below.) Don’t act entitled, be humble. If someone gives you a gift, accept it in the spirit it’s given: it’s a gift. Be grateful for it.

This issue is a sticky wicket, because bloggers will often get free things that journalists are not allowed to receive. It’s one area of ethics that separates bloggers from the pros, and may need to change one day. But in the meantime, if you act like you deserve it, you’ll soon be blackballed by the people you’re trying to write about.

3) Don’t Tweet Your Tantrums

If you don’t get something you want, don’t be a passive-aggressive whiner. Don’t throw a Twitter tantrum. Be a mature and responsible adult. Speak to a real person about your complaint. If they don’t make it right, speak to a manager. If they still don’t make it right, then you can take it outside. Tweeting that a restaurant burned your meal or forgot to put cream in your coffee without giving them a chance to make it right first just makes you look like a brat.

There are a couple of times where going straight to Twitter is not a bad thing. Any company that has a Twitter customer service account can be more easily reached this way than spending 20 minutes on the phone. @Delta has fixed a couple of problems for me in the past this way. But publicly complaining about something that could have been fixed with a 15 second conversation is not the way to do it.

4) You’re Not A Celebrity

I’ve never known a journalist to play the “do you know who I am?” card. They don’t expect to be recognized. Many go out of their way to avoid it. Which means, they never threaten people with “exposure” in their newspaper or on their news program when they’re displeased.

Conversely, I’ve known bloggers and book authors who expect immediate name recognition, believing that people regularly peruse the blogosphere or study a bookstore’s shelves in the hopes that they’ll one day meet those writers. When that recognition doesn’t come, said writers will drop their job title or accomplishments about as casually as a college freshman trying not to act drunk, in the hopes of intimidating the other person into giving them free stuff.

You may have thousands of people who gush about you online or shake your hand after you speak at a conference, but until your face shows up on a gossip rag at the supermarket checkout, you’re not a real celebrity.

5) Don’t Be A Bully

When things don’t go your way, don’t be a bully (i.e. don’t play the “do you know who I am?” card here either). Don’t get all your friends to join forces and tweet someone else into submission.

I’m always amazed at the number of people who claim to be anti-bullying, but will gang up and publicly shame people who they think are deserving of their scorn. Companies that gave them a bad experience will soon be on the receiving end of several dozen, if not hundreds, of snotty comments on their Facebook page.

If you’re a consumer or social justice advocate, that’s one thing. But slashing people with the swift sword of Twitter justice just because you don’t like the coffee makes you a bully.

(No, seriously, that happens. The story Ng responded to included this little gem: “Don’t water down the coffee you serve us. Don’t. We’ll hunt you down and kill you with hashtags. #WheresTheCaffeineSheraton?” While Jen’s statement was supposed to be a joke, that actually happens way more than it ever should.)

We’re going to see a day when bloggers are seen and accepted as professionals, but that day is going to be a long time coming when they act like whiny little gits who expect the world to fall over themselves trying to please them. I’m not just picking on Jen or BlogHer, I’m talking to any blogger who has ever thought their 2,000 readers a month made them A Force To Be Reckoned With.

Treat people with respect, be kind, be polite, and act like you know what you’re doing. Everyone else knows what that should look like, and when you don’t, you just make the rest of us who are actually doing the work look bad.

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Attorneys Should Have Their Own Blog Content, Not Syndicated Content

Attorneys need to approach the use of syndicated blog content with care. Many times, syndicated posts are written as a one-size-fits-all approach, and you can make tweaks and changes as needed. But what if you don’t have time, or don’t know how, to make the changes? What problems could you see if you relied on syndicated content?

Here are three reasons we think attorneys should have their own blogs with their own content, instead of relying on syndicated content.

1. Syndicated content does not perform well in search.

If you buy a copy-and-paste content service, chances are it’s not going to be picked up by the search engines. That’s because Google has a “no duplicate content” rule they follow, meaning they don’t want to see a lot of websites using the same content over and over.

You may hear this described as the duplicate content penalty, but it’s not a penalty. Rather, Google just does not index the content. The Google bots see it and say, “we already saw this back at another website, so we’ll ignore this one.”

One of the primary reasons to have a blog is to rank high on the search engines, and it doesn’t make sense to pay for syndicated content if it’s not going to help you rank in the first place.

(That’s not to say that all content syndicates do this. The better ones don’t. The cheaper ones, not so much.)

2. You can localize your content.

Google is paying a lot more attention to local search, because they’re delivering local search results to their users. Check it out. Go to Google, and do a search for “Italian restaurant.” The results you’ll see will be for the city where you perform the search. That’s because Google can see where you are, and it wants to deliver the results you’ll be most interested in. If you’re in St. Louis, Google assumes you don’t care about Italian restaurants in Jacksonville, Florida, so they deliver the results you’re most likely to be interested in.

To that end, it’s more helpful to write localized articles about your areas of specialty and include your city or geographic practice area in things like the headline and body copy, so Google will know where they should have you listed.

  • Five Things to Look For In An Indianapolis Personal Injury Attorney
  • When Does a Startup Need a Chicago Intellectual Property Attorney?
  • Should I Hire a Florida Attorney to Plan My Estate?

You need to do this so when a potential client does a search online for an attorney, they find your page. Google is not going to return the best-optimized pages around the country. It’s going to show them the results from the pages in their city and/or state. If your site is properly optimized, clients will find you, not your competition.

3. Your Content Can Fit Your Readers’ Style

Syndicated blog content is written one way, and it may not be your style. But, you paid for it, so you might as well use it, right?

Wrong.

If you’re paying for it, you’re presenting your image in a style that doesn’t quite fit with you, or more importantly, may not appeal to your readers.

It’s important that you communicate with your readers in the way they want to be communicated with. And since you know your clients the best, you can best dictate the kinds of topics they want to read, the style, language, and even readability of the posts. You should even be able to decide the best keywords to write about that week or month.

Since you know your readers best, you need to create content that they will find and read, which will ultimately lead to them calling you when they need you.

Whether you write your own blog posts 2 – 3 times a week, or work with a ghost blogging service (which we recommend, given your hourly billing rates; otherwise, blogging will end up being your lowest priority), you need to have content that is geared toward your style, your geographic region, your clients, and can help you win search for your niche and your keywords.

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Some Bloggers Are Journalists. Get Over It

Should journalists be licensed? Should they be given some sort of special card that says they have undergone the rigorous training necessary to objectively report the news, and thus be given special access to government officials, sporting events, and other newsworthy goings-on?

Christine St-Pierre, Quebec’s culture minister, believes so. She is creating a plan for “a new model of regulation of Quebec media.”

In other words, she wants the government to determine who is worthy of being a “journalist,” and thus excluding people who don’t work for traditional media outlets.

As in, not bloggers.

It’s a familiar refrain: newspaper writers and other big-J Journalists don’t like bloggers. We’re not real journalists, they say. We haven’t had the education or training. We’re not held to the same rigorous editing and writing standards that they are. And so, this makes them the arbiter of deciding what is real journalism and what isn’t.

Australian writer and web developer Aaron Holesgrove echoes St-Pierre’s sentiments, claiming some moral high ground that bloggers may not occupy, simply because we don’t work for newspapers or TV stations.

We’re not objective. We present opinion as fact. We use anonymous sources.

I guess in that sense, most cable news stations aren’t journalism either. Neither Keith Olberman and Sean Hannity are objective, and both present opinion as fact. And as far as anonymous sources go, I see them quoted in news articles all the time. They’re the ones called “someone familiar with the facts” or “someone not at liberty to speak to the media.”

But there are plenty of bloggers who report the news objectively. They report on nothing but facts. They don’t use anonymous sources any more than the real newspapers. And when it comes to writing and editing, they’re the masters of their craft.

The American Reporter is an online-only newspaper that, by the strictest definition, could be considered a blog. They’re the first Internet-only newspaper, as well as the largest online alternative newspaper. But they’re a newspaper first, and a blog second. So what does that make them? (Full disclosure: I’ve been their humor columnist since 1997.)

Apparently You Lose Your Journalism Card When You Go Online

So what’s the deciding factor between a journalist and an online hack who is looked down upon by the very people he seeks to emulate? Is it the writer’s employer? Are we journalists because we’re paid by newspapers and TV stations? Are we non-journalists because we’re freelancers and free writers? Is it our education, or lack thereof? And what about the people who used to be journalists but aren’t any longer?

There are plenty of examples here in Central Indiana of people who took their work from the print and broadcast world to the online world. They were laid off or removed from their positions, found a home online, and became bloggers.

Ruth Holladay, former firecracker columnist for the Indianapolis Star has held her former employer’s feet to the fire for more than four years now on her own blog. Paul Poteet is a former meteorologist for WRTV, the local ABC affiliate, and found a second home online, parlaying his TV celebrityship into an online presence most of us would kill for.

But neither of them work for the large media conglomerates that once employed them. Does that mean that they are no longer worthy of the term “journalist?” Did Ruth have to hand in her journalist card when she started publishing her words online? Did Paul get suddenly struck stupid, and no longer able to read a weather map, when he left his TV station?

On the national scale, a couple years ago the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Denver Times became online-only newspapers. The P-I folded their print edition and went online only, while the Denver Times was born out of the ashes of the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News.

No one would (seriously and credibly) argue that these two newspapers are no longer journalistic sources just because they are online-only. And yet, there are people who will say that Holladay and Poteet are no longer journalists because they’re not employed by large media conglomerates.

So where does that line get drawn? I’m a professional blogger, but I’ve published a newspaper column for nearly 18 years. Am I only a journalist when my words appear on dead trees? Or do I carry that mantle and responsibility in every kind of writing, including here?

Bloggers Are the Pamphleteers of Old

Back in the 1700s, pamphleteers were those people who wanted to express their opinions to a large group of people, and did so in their own proprietary platform. Today’s bloggers are yesterday’s pamphleteers — we don’t have access to the machines or process to broadcast our opinions via mass media, but we do have the communication channels through WordPress, Blogger, Posterous, and about 40 other blog platforms.

We use blogs to express our opinions and stories, the same way Thomas Paine expressed his support for the Americans during the Revolutionary War.

Is blogging messy? Yes.

Is it prone to misuse and abuse? Of course.

Do we make mistakes or go overboard in our opinions? You bet.

I see the same thing from professional journalists too. Slanted news stories, over-hyping and sensationalizing news (and weather!), and even plagiarism and fabrication (anyone remember Jayson Blair?).

Still, I think journalists hold themselves to their self-imposed standards, while most bloggers do not. That’s what makes journalism an institution to be trusted as reporter and watchdog. But if bloggers want to be taken seriously as a form of communication, we need to step up and start following those practices as well.

In the meantime, you big-J journalists, blogging isn’t going to go away. No matter how much you deride the form, it’s only getting bigger and more powerful. You know what’s going away? Print media. You have a choice. Teach us how to do it right, teach us how to do it well, so you have a place to land when your employer figures out that two 20-somethings can do your job for a fraction of your salary.

To paraphrase an old quote by writer Rex Huppke, “It’s funny when journalists mock (blogging). It’s also funny when people about to be eaten by a bear mock the bear.”

Bloggers who want to be journalists need to step up their game. Journalists who are destined to be bloggers need to get over themselves. Because one day, just like newspapers replaced pamphleteers, blogging is going to do the same thing to the newspapers.

Photo credit: Manin The Moon (Flickr)

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The Newspaper Industry Isn’t in a Position to Sneer at the Blogosphere

The Indianapolis Star just suffered another round of layoffs this week, losing 81 jobs to Gannett’s ineptitude and bean counting. Of these cuts, 26 of them were in the newsroom — including 8 reporters and 12 editors — and 19 were unfilled jobs, all made in the name of budgetary concerns and profitability. The cuts were part of Gannett’s larger bloodletting of 700 employees nationwide.

Meanwhile, their CEO raked in $9.4 million in 2010, doubling his pay from 2009, including a $1.75 million blood moneybonus that was partly a result of his “restructuring costs and creating efficiencies.” Translation: ruin the lives of 700 people, and we’ll give you their salaries.

You

Believe me, even though I’ve called for more citizen journalism — and this is exactly why — I have complete sympathy for the Star employees who just lost their livelihood because Gannett wasn’t making enough of a profit. I worry about them and their families. Gannett seems to excel at accounting and numbers, but they suck at news reporting and suffer from a complete lack of understanding of community. Where Indianapolis readers see stories and personalities, Gannett sees dollar signs.

But Bobby King, president of the Indianapolis Newspaper Guild, managed to throw a damper on my sympathies stick his thumb in my eye with this line from his latest blog post.

So, the answer that Star publisher Karen Crotchfelt came up with was to gut suburban coverage, eliminate an entire layer of copy editors (that last line of defense which separates us from the animals in the blogosphere) and make a nip here and a tuck there to reduce expenses.

Animals in the blogosphere?

The one thing I can’t stand from journalists is the way they look down on bloggers with this sense of smug superiority. Look, you guys don’t have any special knowledge or skills that any other writer can’t get. You have editors who save you from misspellings and continuity issues. Without them, you’re no better than we are. You print your words on dead trees, we print ours on a free software platform. Your printers cost millions of dollars, and without them, you’re dead in the water. I run my entire corporate blogging business on a $1,000 laptop, and if it breaks, I can get another one and never miss a beat. Our industry is growing, yours is shrinking.

If journalists want to survive this, they’ll quit looking down on the blogosphere as the gathering of the great unwashed and recognize it’s the future of news. They’ll quit acting like the crew of the Titanic and sneering, “ew, a rescue boat? How droll.”

Look, Bobby, I know you’re pissed, and scared, and are watching the dismantling of a once-great newspaper by some clueless nimrod 1,000 miles away. But don’t attack bloggers or refer to us as animals. Sure, we didn’t go to J-school or spend 20 years honing our craft. But blogging is more than 15 years old, and there are some bloggers who can outwrite most newspaper reporters. Hell, a lot of reporters and columnists have found a new career and a new voice as a blogger. (And it wasn’t lost on me that your “animal” comment was made on a blog.) But these former journalists are the ones who make blogging better.

So you can sneer at bloggers all you want, but we’re going to be here for a long time. You can look down on us, or you can join us.

Photo credit: evelynyll (Flickr)

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Seeking Guest Designers and Guest Programmers

I’ve been enjoying being a guest blogger for a couple of years now. I don’t do it that often, but just recently joined Dan Schawbel’s Personal Branding blog as a contributing writer, and have written for Doug Karr’sMarketing Tech blog a couple of times. (I even started my career as a writer by writing a guest column for my friend Joel in our college newspaper.)

Can you work a computer? Then, oh boy, have we got an opportunity for you?!

In fact, I like the guest blogger program so much, I think we’re going to take it that next logical step forward, and invite people to be guest web designers and guest programmers for our Professional Blog Service website.

Think about it. As a guest blogger, I get to write a weekly blog post about whatever topic I want, as long as it falls within the editorial direction and guidelines of the host blog. People see my name, I get some backlinks to my own site, and I get to promote my own efforts, like my own personal branding book, Branding Yourself (affiliate link).

Our guest designers and guest programmers will get to feature their own work on our blog, where it can be seen by all of our visitors, who will ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ appropriately, marveling at the cleverness of your work and your skill. You’ll get viewers and consumers of your work, which could lead to some exciting new opportunities for you! Plus, we’ll create a backlink to your website on one of our blog posts. (Maybe the one about social media strategies for soil conservationists.)

While you are free to create or design anything, our goal is to specifically find guest providers who can:

  • Help us get the Agency theme working on the Genesis framework.
  • Write a WordPress plugin that will properly sync my speaking calendar to a sidebar Google calendar. (I can’t get any of the other ones to do it the way I want.)
  • Write a cool mobile app that lists all independent coffee shops in U.S. Sort of like the Starbucks app, but for indie shops. (Android only; you can create an iPhone version for yourself later.)

You know, simple stuff. However, unlike guest bloggers who don’t get anything, guest designers and programmers will get, I don’t know, a pound of coffee or a case of Mountain Dew. You guys like that caffeinated stuff, right?

So, if you’re as excited about this amazing opportunity as I am (if that’s possible), please leave us a comment and let us know what you would like to contribute.

The preceding was meant to be a feeble stab at humor, and not an actual call for designers or programmers. It’s also not a veiled slam against guest blogging, which I think is very valuable for bloggers. I was just in a weird mood this morning.

My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy.

Photo credit: National Museum of American History (Flickr)