Make your texts more attractive using vivid comparisons

Your posts will look better if you use vivid comparisons.

Here is a remarkable quote from “The Invisible Man” by Wells:

“His feet, save for socks of irregular open-work, were bare, his big toes were broad, and pricked like the ears of a watchful dog.”

“Big toes are ears of a watchful dog” is a smart parallel.

Kipling wrote in his “Puck of Pook's Hill”:

“Then he showed us how to hunt wolves and those great red deer with horns like Jewish candlesticks.”

This unexpected turn makes me imagine a deer with Jewish candlesticks instead of horns. And maybe it’s a good idea for some photoshop.

I remember one great comparison from Marc Chagall’s “My life”. He described a hut as a potato wetted in a pickle. It’s quite marginal, isn’t it?

So I offer you to comment this post using some your great comparisons. It may be a good exercise if you are thinking of how to improve your writing style.

And here is one more thing. I’ve an idea of making a series of such exercises in this blog. So, you’re welcome.

Tags: writing - writing exercises - exercises - creativity - write - books - tips - writing tips - quotes - comparisons

Researching bookmarks. Part 3. Conclusion

4. I noticed that about 15% of my bookmarks concerning me in person. Mean sometimes I save links to outstanding discussions where I’ve participated, to sites where I’ve done something. And also I’ve bookmarked my accounts at last.fm, flickr.com, plime.com and so on.

So in theory involving people in your blog processes, asking them to do something engaging for your site stimulate visitors to bookmark. Readers may get your RSS feeds, and maybe it’s even better, than bookmarking.

5. Everybody has some just cool links. For example it can be web comics’ page.

If you’ve managed to do something great, and somebody except you admits it, try to reflect it in your blog. You may find some unexpected associate. Well, if you’ve really done cool thing, you’re lucky :) My compliments

You’ve noticed for sure that I haven’t too much shocking facts about bookmarking. But here’s short conclusion. If you follow it you’ll have some more chances to be bookmarked.

1. Arrange useful reference lists.
2. Post concrete and particularized stuff.
3. Keep your blog carefully.
4. Involve visitors in discussions and contests.
5. Write cool :)

Tags: bookmark - bookmarking - research - conclusion - analysis - analyse - browser - involve - cool - stuff

Bookmarking research. Part 2

Let’s continue bookmarking analysis.

2. Everybody likes entertainments but also has a list of interests. For example, I’m interested in web-development, blogging, Internet on the whole, computer role-playing games, roller skating and so about 70% of my bookmarks are quite particularized. Remaining 30% are quite heterogeneous, mixed and casual.

Resume: suppose people bookmark something of a particular speciality, specific and concrete. I’d rather bookmark some blog on post-rock than just cool music blog without any specialization.

3. I’d say that about 60% of web pages I’ve bookmarked contain articles or stories. 40% are site roots (home pages). The first means I’ll return to particular page once or twice to refresh some facts in my mind. Or maybe I’ll send link to this page to my friends.

The second means I’m interested in the site and its various contents and I’ll visit it again and again without any concrete purpose hoping to discover something worthy (e. g. http://www.pitchforkmedia.com).

I think that the second variant is much better. So write good posts and make your blog history attractive :)

To be continued…

Tags: blogging - bookarking - bookmarks - research - analysis - analyse - facts - visit - posts - attractive

Some facts about user's bookmarks. Bookmarks research. Part 1

Someday I’ll write about blog success measurement. And now I just say that one of the best indicators of your blog’s success is a quantity of people who visit your blog typing address in or using bookmarks.

So my desire to find out what people usually bookmark is quite natural. I’ll start my research analyzing my own browser bookmarks. Here’re some facts about my 110 Opera bookmarks which may somehow help to understand bookmarking psychology.

1. I have some links to online blogging tools: http://co.mments.com, http://blogsearch.google.com, Technorati Tag Maker at http://www.speciousreasoning.com/tags/ and so on.
2. 9 links to documentation resources (e. g. http://wiki.cakephp.org)
3. 1 link to webcomics (http://www.qwantz.com/) and 5 links to some amazing pages (http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, http://totallyabsurd.com/archive.htm)
4. 5 links to libraries and book lists.
5. 9 links to my site accounts at http://del.icio.us, http://worth1000.com, http://last.fm and so on.
6. 6 RPG-related links.
7. 10 links to blogs (7 are themed blogs)
8. About 20 links for webmasters (e. g. http://urlinvestigator.com, http://google.com/addurl, http://abouturl.com, http://sitemeter.com)
9. The other links are just cool links, which are difficult to categorize :)

And here follows some analysis.

1. I have about 10 links to pronounced lists and tops (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-apocalyptic or http://www.alvit.de/blog/article/nifty-tools-and-tutorials-for-creating-diagrams-charts-and-chart-flows). I’ve run into them some time and have decided they were very useful. But unfortunately I’ve not much time to explore them. So I visit half of these links rarely. The other half is waiting for consideration.

Resume: you may compose lists and post them in your blog, readers will bookmark them, but don’t hope they’ll return again and again just to reread this list. Some solution: you may update your list constantly or you may write more interesting posts in your blog.

To be continued…

Tags: bookmarks - bookmarking - research - analysis - exploration - investigation - blog - blogging - success - facts

Writing thoughts: how to become a great writer :)

1. To write charming texts you need subjects. You can draw ideas from your experience or you can just imagine. Both methods are quite effective. For example Ernest Hemingway wrote “Green Hills of Africa” based on his personal experience which he got hunting in Africa. Jules Verne was a great dreamer, he didn’t travel, but he read books, imagined and improvised.

You need some sources of information, that’s for sure that. It can be your own biography, school lessons, books, Internet, canvases in museum or anything else. So you need some food for thoughts, starting points for your imagination.

2. A good way to learn some writers’ tricks is reading books and articles on writing (quite smart, heh). For example I’ve read “Hot Text! Web Writing that Works” by Jonathan and Lisa Price and have found it very useful (their site is useful too). It would be generously of you to share you materials on this subject in comments.

3. Here’s one more frequent advice: show your texts to your friends and relatives and ask for critics. There’re some sites focusing upon this. This method is often mentioned but is rarely used.

4. Of course you’re to practice a lot, to write everyday. Good practice is revising your works again and again. Even if you read your text the next day you wrote it, you’ll improve something for sure.

Tags: writing - web - book - article - become - writer - imagination - experience - advice - critics

Searching for a blogging client

I continue searching for some functioning offline blog editor and have discovered promising Bleezer but haven’t be able to make it connect to Blogger Beta account.

It seems strange, that the creators of blogging clients are so inert that until now most of their software has problems with Blogger Beta accounts. But I’ve read one post and have seen the other side. So the reason of this odd situation is in a poor state of blogging services APIs. It sounds quite realistic.

And here is a list of popular blogging clients and some explanations why no one client can upload images to Blogger.

Tags: API - blog - blogging - tools - client - search - searching - Bleezer - service - Blogger Beta

What is a “homepage” nowadays? Corporate blogs instead of corporate sites.

Term “homepage” was popular at the dawn of Internet. Now it’s not so widespread. To my mind nowadays “homepage” is generally equal to “personal blog”. In fact blogging services provide all that is needed for a simple site. And of course you can customize your blog’s template to approach “your personal ideal site format”.

I noticed that a lot of small companies actually don’t need a site and simple blog would be enough for them. Actually I can’t find any disadvantages of this turn. Maybe sometimes blog format isn’t flexible. But having blog instead of small corporate site is much cheaper (you can start your blog without any investment), safer, more flexible. Now corporate blogs came into fashion. Corporate blogging is quite an easy way to get the image of a progressive and modern company.

Tags: blogging - homepage - site - corporate - blog - modern - progressive - image - advantages - advantage