I love to share great links, and I do a lot of that on Twitter. But many folks will never see those links for many reasons: time of day, different social media site than what they prefer, they don’t use social media quite so much… whatever.
So to bring you yummy links I’m creating a weekly Saturday link post called Link Journeys. I’ll list the best of the links I’ve collected throughout the week and why I think they’re important. You’re free to click on them (or not) and (dis)agree with me about what they mean.
I cast a wide net. If I don’t keep an eye on my feed reader, unread feeds will number over 400 before the day is done. These feelers help me stay on-pulse and you get the Reader’s Digest version of that, lucky you (extra points if you actually know what that joke means).
In other words, these links and why I think they’re relevant are going to be at kind of a high level, sometimes. You could call it the Big Picture Level.
Links for Saturday, Feb. 27
- Michael Bungay Stanier – Box of Crayons is a great site for creative inspiration (they focus on developing highly creative, great work at companies). Michael is bundle of enthusiastic, contagious energy. His new book, Do More Great Work
, just came out. I learned about Michael from Jonathan Fields’s interview with him.
- 10 rules for writing fiction – there’s a ton of blogging inspiration in these. Note the recurring themes of “just do the work,” and “read lots and write lots.”
- How to publish your ebook on Amazon Kindle – Anyone can sell on Kindle. George Angus shows you the steps. If you’re not thinking about Kindle/iPad publication, you should be. Mobile reading platforms are the future.
- Why Men Are Sexist Towards Avatars in Tight Shirts – More and more virtual representation in the form of an avatar will take place. Guys, watch yourselves. The onus is on US, not women. The avatars are not “asking for it.” Let’s be gentlemen, not pigs, and use our better judgement.
- Procrastination – Dig this short animated film on the nature of procrastination on Nathan Hangen’s Posterous (and of course, as you watch it, know you are procrastinating as you do).
- Campbell’s engages in neuromarketing for new label designs – Think about blog design and info product design as you read this.
- Setting up WordPress for SEO – this is simply a super-practical post that echoes much I’ve said in the past regarding WordPress SEO.
- How to Use YouTube to Drive Business – exactly what it sounds like. You’ll be facepalming, wondering why you didn’t think of some of these before.
- Penzu – If you ever wanted a super-secure ultra-private online journal, Penzu is for you. All the default settings are secure and private, no sharing. You can even get military-grade encryption on your entries if you like. Personal journaling is an excellent companion to public blogging, and Penzu has it all figured out.
- Scribe SEO Review – My review of the combo WordPress plugin and web service for better SEO copywriting on your blog. This thing is amazing, check out the screencast video I made of it in action.
Michael,
Ah, this is what blogging is supposed to be about!
Great list of resources! I need to get better about doing this kind of thing on my blog.
Thanks for the inspiration.
Bill
Thanks, glad you dig it.
I loved the “Why Men Are Sexist Towards Avatars in Tight Shirts” article. While I've never seen an “X” rated avatar when it comes to the blogs I visit, I'm a firm believer that blog readers (especially those who prowl the comments section) are quite visual and will follow an avatar (or gravatar) that displays a picture before they will click on the link of an avatar-less one.
It's true, which is why everyone should have a Gravatar.
Wow, this kind of linking out is really inline with what I talked about the other day on my personal blog http://dannycooper.org/backlinks
Nice work!
Smart bloggers never stopped linking, it's just that curation and context
matter. There are plenty of links that will never be seen here, only on
Twitter. When it's appropriate, I link to others in my posts. But I'm glad
you appreciate it. Thanks for your comment.
I really love Michael Bungay Stanier's interview series (the one where Jonathan Fields was interviewed).
He's my favorite new person (new to me, anyway).
I have to disagree with the smart bloggers comment. Even largely successful blogs such as Copyblogger rarely link out to other websites within their posts.
Every single guest post on Copyblogger (which is most of them nowadays) has
at least one link out to the the author in the body of the post.
I see the byline links as more of a 'thank you' than anything else.
Google sees it as an authority-passing link, the same as any other in the
main content of a page.
I didn't mean to imply the link was worthless, what I meant was the link is placed there as a courtesy for writing a guest post. It's not the same as someone finding a great piece of content and linking to it (although search engines still value it the same).
Yes, I understand your point perfectly. My point was that it still benefits the person being linked to because Google doesn't know or care about the author's intentions. In other words, I get what you're saying, but I'm not interested in whether or not somebody likes me.
enjoyed the “10 rules for writing fiction” and “using youtube to drive business”. looking forward to the next link journey!
Thanks for being my busy little researcher this week! (I just read today's post “Never Face Writer's Block again.”) Now I don't have to go digging for research for next week's posts & to-do list. Yeah! Michael gets a cookie!
Chocolate chip, please!
Yes, I understand your point perfectly. My point was that it still benefits the person being linked to because Google doesn't know or care about the author's intentions. In other words, I get what you're saying, but I'm not interested in whether or not somebody likes me.
Thanks for being my busy little researcher this week! (I just read today's post “Never Face Writer's Block again.”) Now I don't have to go digging for research for next week's posts & to-do list. Yeah! Michael gets a cookie!
Chocolate chip, please!