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Cheap web content could cost you your search engine ranking.
A prospect recently asked me why she should spend so much money for original articles on her site, when she can just copy whatever she needs from the rest of the web. It’s easy to write off a business owner who thinks that way as being cheap or as someone who doesn’t understand how the…
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Authorship and brand voice.
Ryan Smith has ignited a debate in newsrooms and marketing agencies across America, in the wake of exposing his (now former) employer, Journatic. Stressed-out newspapers have hired Journatic (and companies like it) to “mechanical turk” many of the articles that once formed the backbone of print dailies: real estate transaction summaries, obituaries, even local sports…
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On paying by the word for web copy.
For all the posturing we make about being casual and transparent online, web copywriters don’t always make their pricing clear. We’ve had good reasons to keep our rates a trade secret. Post how much you charge per word, and you’re suddenly playing a commodity game. That’s bad for both writers and their clients. Focus too…
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Surviving chaos.
Researching a freelance writing assignment for a client, I ended up on a website run by survivalists. I’m hesitant to even link to it, because there’s some crazy stuff going on over there. However, I did catch something interesting among all the fear and paranoia on that website. The authors wrote passionately about how the…
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Happy Independence Day.
Happy Fourth of July! Before I head out to enjoy some red velvet pancakes, parades, and fireworks, I’m going to explain what’s happening here. For more than a decade, I’ve been ghost writing blogs, articles, and even books for clients all over the United States. I’ve done it under the cover of various “day jobs,”…
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Multiple Audiences, Multiple Networks
When I helped relaunch XPN‘s online presence over 10 years ago, our biggest concern was unifying the experience across multiple platforms. At the time, it still felt strange to shepherd your audience from your on-air stream to your online content. Moving somebody from an FM signal to a blog page felt wrong, and I know…
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Why we never cut the cord.
I declared victory over the need to get a cable box in the new apartment in this post from a few months back. You might be among the dozens of folks who’ve been asking me about what happened since then. Turns out, it’s not as easy as you might think to totally cut the cord.…
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I’m starting my New Year’s Resolutions a few weeks early.
Attending Barcamp Philly inspired me to solidify a lot of these ideas. There’s a JFDI attitude in this town that I find myself connecting with more and more. Now that I’m settled in from our move to Center City, I’m no longer content to wait until 2011 to make some changes. 1. Add more white…
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I’m a Ghost Blogger and I’m Proud of It
Sometimes, when I’m not griping about still having to pay down my student loan, I think about what I really got for my money when I attended Ithaca College. I may not be working in either of the two media mentioned in my major concentration (“radio” or “television”), but I sure do a heck of…
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Snow’s Melting
Almost two weeks later, and the snow still reminds me more of Ithaca than of anything I grew up with around here.
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spinme.com Updates: Social Media, Mailbag
Things are picking back up at the music business blog, now that I’m shifting back from book-writing mode and into blogging mode. Recent headlines: Social Media Tools that Grow Your Audience I hear echoes of what I wrote five years ago in Zach Pentel’s dismissive comments about MySpace Music in this Mashable writeup of music…
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Christmas Eve in Athens, GA: Five Years Later
Five years ago tonight, I posted the original version of this image to my Flickr stream. This is what you see when you drive through the center of town at midnight on Christmas Eve: festive decorations, welcoming shop windows, and no people. I found myself at this intersection on the way home from the hospital,…