You don’t want to publish any piece of content on your blog that isn’t screaming to be read.
But it can also be hard to keep churning out new, insightful content every month.
That’s why we’ve put together this concise, 7 step guide to help you craft awesome, readable content.
If you’re marketing using a blog, or if your blog is a large part of your business, then chances are you’ve heard of keywords.
Keywords do what they say on the tin – they’re the essence of what you’re writing about, and they’re also what Google uses to decide how and where to rank your content.
Now, the old way of thinking was very much “the more keywords the better” … but this doesn’t make for very good reading for humans, and Google has started to realise this. It’s already made changes to its algorithm to prioritise blogs that write for their users, and not for search engines.
Here are 5 tips for keeping your blog content keyword-rich, without ruining the reading experience and landing yourself a hefty penalty:
We all like to think we’re good at what we do. But that’s not to say we can’t get better!
We’ve rounded up 3 of the best free (yes, totally free) writing courses for you to grow, develop and generally become more awesome.
You’ll learn from a mixture of basic theory, script analysis and practical exercises. We will explore key principles as they’re expressed in great films, then immediately apply these concepts. Videos, articles and discussion steps will offer you the opportunity to learn and engage with other learners on key concepts and ideas.
By the end of the course, you will understand the key concepts necessary to write an effective screenplay and be fluent in the language used to discuss the form.
On this online course, established writers – including Louis de Bernières, Patricia Duncker, Alex Garland, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Tim Pears, Michèle Roberts and Monique Roffey – will talk about how they started writing.
You’ll consider the rituals of writing and keeping a journal; learn how to develop your ideas; reflect on your own writing and editing; hear writers talk about their approach to research; and start turning events into plot.
This course will take students through the process of writing from simple paragraphs to more complex writing structures and eventually research writing. Writing is often seen as something we do in order to remember grammatical forms and words to learn.
Writing is becoming increasingly important as we communicate even more online. And increasingly we have to communicate with people from other countries. This means that we have to be able to express our ideas clearly and in a way that people can understand. If you want to get more information on writing, this is the course for you.
Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.
Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com
So you wanna be a freelance writer? Awesome!
Chances are, you have no idea where to start. But that’s OK, because that’s where everyone starts out. Generally speaking you have a few options if you’re starting out freelance.
You can:
So let’s look at these one by one and break them down.
This will 100% be the slowest way of attaining business, so if earning money in the short-term is important for you (as I would imagine it probably is) I definitely don’t recommend this.
Brand building requires a few different balls to be in the air at once and it takes time to build up yourself, your audience and then convert that engagement into clients willing to pay money.
It also requires a lot of time and input commitment on your part – as you will need to be online, present and selling yourself regularly to maintain the footholds you’ve clawed out for yourself.
This is possibly the easiest way of getting some work initially, even though the application processes this way tend to be more time consuming for you, as you’re effectively applying for a job each time you’re bidding for work.
It’s a good idea to set up alerts on a few different websites, so that you can have a steady stream of options coming into your inbox (e.g. Reed, Indeed.) You can upload your CV and pre-write a covering letter on both of these, so they save you a bit of time.
Remote working gives you the same flexibility as freelance, as often they’ll contract you on a part time or project by project basis. You need to check each position before you apply, but some great sites for job hunting this way are Remotive, Remote.co)
Be careful with agencies. They take a cut of your earnings, so you’re never realising your full earning potential. However, they can be a good stop-gap to make sure you’ve got some money coming in while you get your ducks in a row applying for longer-term positions or trying to attract more clients.
You also need to see whether there’s a subscription fee, because this can often outweigh the potential benefit. Some examples include Contena, and Fiverr.
With agencies you need to make sure that it makes sense money wise. Sometimes the quantity of content you’d need to produce to be earning sufficiently versus the time it would take you to produce all that content doesn’t balance out.
Let’s have a look at the pros and cons of this:
You might get published
You might get paid
You might not get published
You might not get paid
You’ve still invested the time in producing a piece of content
If you need to build your portfolio then it’s definitely a good idea to send them work you’ve already invested your time in, perhaps work you’ve already self-published somewhere like LinkedIn or Medium. Don’t invest in new work unless you’re able to self-publish it as well. Your time is your money, so make sure you’re balancing the spending and earning in both senses.
Finally, here’s something extra that sounds obvious but that you should definitely do:
Mention it to them. Reach out to anyone that you think it would be relevant to.
In the words of Tesco: every little helps.
Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.
Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com
This May, new Data Protection laws will be coming into place, specifically, the Data Protection Act will be replaced by the General Data Protection Regulation.
What’s the difference? The GDPR will have new rules around the storage and handling of personal information and there will be stricter punishments in place for those who fail to comply.
Why the new law? The short answer is because hackers are more easily able to access data from small to medium businesses than they are to hack huge, well-protected corporate networks.
At the moment it’s sufficient to ask someone to tick or even to untick a box in order to consent to the storage of their data.
Under the new laws, consent means active agreement. This means you cannot pre-tick a ‘subscribe me’ button.
Not only this, but companies need to be able to show a clear audit trail of consent, including screen grabs or saved consent forms.
Individuals also have the right to withdraw consent at any time, and it has to be effective and efficient. When someone withdraws consent all of their personal data must be immediately and permanently erased. It is not enough to remove them from the mailing list.
If you are subject to a data breach, you also have to inform the relevant authorities immediately and you must notify all individuals affected within 72 hours of the initial breach.
If you have a newsletter that people subscribe to, or if you send e-mails to a database of people on whatever basis, this concerns you.
And it doesn’t just concern all the new data you might collect. It concerns all the data you currently have.
Any kind of personal data you keep has to follow these rules and you and you alone are responsible for being able to prove that someone has consented to have their data kept on file by you.
This means you can no longer capture e-mails through a competition and then add them into your mailing list, or you cannot auto-subscribe (for example) people that have bought a ticket to your show to your newsletter.
The GDPR applies to all enterprises. So if you run a business from home, or if your blog/website is engaged in “economic activity” i.e. you use it to make money – this applies to you.
It does not apply to people processing personal data in the course of a purely personal or household activity. I.e. if you have your plumber’s email address on file, that’s fine. If you’re sending your plumber an email telling him that you have a new kind of product available for sale, that’s not fine.
For every e-mail address in your system, you need to go back and seek explicit permission from the person to continue to send them whatever communication you are sending them.
If you cannot provide evidence of consent, you cannot send them emails and you must delete their data permanently.
This means you will need to launch a re-permission campaign and bring your entire database up to GDPR standards.
Fines. These are tiered based on the level of non-compliance and the severity of the violation, and they are capped at 4% of an annual turnover of €20million.
Ouch.
Check out our next post on how to run a GDPR compliant re-consent campaign.
Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.
Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com
If you read our previous blog, you’ll know that guest posting is the quickest and easiest way to drive new traffic through to your blog/website.
New traffic = more subscribers = more fans = more money.
(At least that’s what most marketing manuals will tell you.)
But what they don’t tell you is how to write a great pitch for a guest post.
Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if you’ve written something that spells out the meaning of life. If you can’t sell it, no one will read here.
So here’s our step by step guide to getting your guest post secured:
Think about it. If you had someone telling you how awesome your blog was, and then you realise they don’t even subscribe, you’ll be pretty peeved.
So once you’ve selected your list of targets, go through and subscribe to them all. You want them to know you’re serious – and invested – in the success of their blog. That’s going to sound a whole lot more convincing coming from someone that actually follows it.
Nine times out of ten, someone will have their name somewhere on their website. Use it. Addressing the email personally will mean it’s much more likely to get opened, if not read. “Hey, Tanya” is so much better than “Hey there” or (even worse) “To Whom It May Concern.”
Never start a pitch email with that, because whoever is reading it will automatically decide it probably doesn’t concern them.
Include some links in your pitch that are the best possible examples of your tone and writing style. You want to wow them with the quality content you’re creating, so send them your 2 or 3 best pieces of work.
If you’re lucky enough to have featured elsewhere already or have been interviewed, include one of these as a third link underneath your own work.
They will want two things. One of these things is a title, and the other is a reason why their readers are going to open that blog in the first place. This does not mean you have to send them the blog in its entirety.
What you should do is include a little 2-3 sentence outline so they know where the blog post is heading, like this:
How To Blog: A post focusing on the common pitfalls most bloggers make and how to avoid them. Your readers will walk away knowing how to write killer blog posts that bring in more traffic and convert that into paying customers.
I mean, sounds like a blog you want to read, right?
Right. That’s exactly what they want.
Gmail has some great extensions that you can download that track whether or not your email has been opened. Streak is awesome because it tells you when your email was viewed and when it was opened. It also keeps tabs on how often someone visits the conversation so you can see exactly what’s happening once you’ve sent your pitch into cyberspace.
Now that you’ve sent your emails, you don’t just want to sit there and wait.
No.
Like a flower, you need to tend to your precious pitches by watering them every now and then. Or, at the very least, following up with an email a week later.
People are busy, so you don’t want to harass them, but a simple chase email 7 days later is more than acceptable.
If your chase email doesn’t get a reply, you can cut that time in half and email again 3 or 4 days later.
So here’s what your chase schedule should look like:
You don’t want to nag them. After all, you’re asking for a favour, essentially, even if you’re creating awesome content for them.
So you need to keep your follow up emails short, sweet and to the point.
Make it easy for them to come back to you with a one word answer, a simple yay or nay reaction. Because we all have way too many emails and never enough time:
Hey Tanya,
Appreciate you must be super busy, just wanted to see if you had a quick yes/no based on my previous email?
I can get started on it straight away and wouldn’t need anything from your side at this point – other than the OK!
Thanks so much, hopefully catch up soon.
You’ve promised them the world – or at least a great blog post – so make sure you follow up and keep your word. Deliver on time, deliver with photos and deliver to whatever specifications they ask for (Google Doc, HTML or otherwise.)
Don’t fall at the last hurdle!
Have you got any tips you think we’ve missed? Let us know in the comments below!
Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.
Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com
So you’ve got a blog. Or perhaps even a whole website. And you’re using it to build your brand, build your audience and try and get your fans engaged.
But who’s reading your blog? Who’s looking at your website?
If you get a lot of repeat visitors, but not a lot of organic, new traffic, chances are you need to cast your net out a bit wider.
So now the big money question: How do I get new people to come and visit my blog?
The answer is what is always is: good quality content.
But if your blog is already full of lots of great, valuable content and it’s still not attracting the amount of new traffic you want, then you need to start thinking outside of the box.
Or, thinking inside another very exact box: Guest Posting.
Guest posting is when you give someone else some of your content to host on their blog. That’s right. You write a killer post that’s going to get tonnes of engagement and then you give it to someone else.
Why would you do this?
Because they then send your awesome blog out to all of their hard-earned subscribers and BAM. You’ve suddenly got a whole new pool of readers for your content.
Add into this that they’ll backlink to your website (which literally just means they will link back to you) meaning you’ll have a new funnel of traffic coming straight through to your blog.
This is especially good if their website has a higher domain authority to yours. A domain authority is basically a measure of how awesome Google thinks your site it. It’s based on how old your website is, how popular it is and how big it is. You can use a tool like Moz to figure out what you DA is, and what the DA of your targets are. A rule of thumb is this: always seek out websites with a higher DA than yours for guest posts.
Chances are, you already write some content. So you already know how to write witty, engaging blogs that people like to read. Which is great, because this is half the battle.
Now you need to start this process:
Think about what your fans might search for, or wider interests your fans might have. After all, you’re trying to appeal to a wider audience. Let’s say, for example, that you talk a lot about marketing, but you’re also a keen traveler. So you could look up traveling blogs as well as marketing blogs, and start making a list of some of the biggest ones.
You’re going to want to do a few guest posts, ideally, so it’s good to keep a list. My list looks something like this:
| Site Name | Domain Authority | Amount of Traffic | Summary | Blog Post Idea | Blog Post Pitch | |||
| Best Blog Ever | 31 | 125k | They blog about blogging | How To Write Great Blogs | Hey (Name), | Etc. |
You can use a tool called Moz to find out what the Domain Authority of a website is. You can also use a website called SimilarWeb to figure out how much traffic it gets.
Then you want to write yourself a little summary. This is basically a quick summation of what the website is about and what kinda things it talks about. It serves as a self-reminder, so when they reply you can check back at your notes and remind yourself this is the cat blog, not the dog blog (so no terrier jokes anyway they are terrier-ible! 🤣).
Arguably, the hardest part. Have a quick scan of their blog and see what kinds of posts they’ve covered already, because it’s no use you writing something that’s a carbon copy of something they already have. I don’t mean you need to trawl through every post, just check the titles. See what kinds of topics they talk about and have a think about what you can contribute. The key is that whatever you write has to bring value to their readers.
This deserves a lot more of a detailed look, which is why we’re going to cover it in the next post. Needless to say, after you’ve put all the effort into selecting your targets, figuring out their domain authority and done the research on their blogging styles, you don’t want your pitch to let you down.
Check back next time for our post on How To Write A Killer Guest Post Pitch.
You need to be able to turn your content around quickly. So it’s no good pitching a piece of work you know it’s going to take you months and months to pull together. Keep it within your realms of expertise, something you could knock together in a day – or less – and make sure they know that they have very little (or even better, nothing) to do at their end.
A new day, a new app update. Most of them don’t attract quite as much attention as Snapchat’s recent upgrade though.
Snap map allows people to see your location. It’s a bit like “find my friends” except slightly creepier as strangers can pinpoint your location to the metre. 
It’s been all over the news in relation to concerns that Snapchat aren’t doing enough to protect under 18’s – their biggest user. Picked up by national and local press, parents are being warned to educate themselves on the privacy issues it might cause for their children.
Age aside however, it’s an update that potentially spells trouble for individuals who use Snapchat as one of their content channels, too. Why? Because you’ve spent however many weeks or months asking strangers on the internet to follow you on snapchat and now they can actually follow you on snapchat.
How to find the Snap Map
I thought I had been immune to this update. I couldn’t see any icon saying “map” and thought – phew! Dodged that one!
Not so.
Turns out you access the snap map by opening your camera and then pinching the camera screen, like you’re trying to zoom out.
Snapchat describes it helpfully as “like this 👌“
BAM. Welcome to Snap Map.
Enabling Ghost Mode
This is actually pretty simple the first time you log into snap map. You tap ‘Only Me’ and your figure will come up like a little ghost. Nice.
If you panicked when you opened it for the first time, you can tap the little cog button and go into your settings to manually slide ghost mode on. Stealthy.
Finding your friends on the Snap Map
You have to be mutual friends to see each other’s location. Snapchat says “by default, only friends you’ve added on Snapchat can contact you directly or view your Story.”
Of course if you’re using Snapchat as a way to grow your followers, chances are you’ll have a lot of friends, so the selection tool will be quite handy.
You can also tap on their chats and it’ll come up with their location (because WhatsApp’s ‘last seen’ wasn’t stalker-y enough for us.)
Cool features of Snap Map
Once you get past the creeped-out stage though, Snap Map is pretty awesome! You can swipe around the map and double tap into hot spots (marked like a heat sensor, the ‘hottest’ regions are red and show the most activity) and then find out what people are posting to their Story in that location.
I mean, the first thing you’ll do is probably check out Snaps in your area (I literally pinpointed my road in London and watched a story about someone complaining about the loudness of their next door neighbour’s dishwasher) but you could also see what’s happening in – I don’t know – Sweden.
Pretty cool, huh?
Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.
Contact us any time for penguin chats via email: info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com
Penguin in the Room have been delighted to work with award-winning filmmaker D R Hood on her crowd-funding campaign for new feature This Family.
D R Hood’s critically acclaimed first feature Wreckers, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Claire Foy and Shaun Evans was nominated for best British debut at the London International Film Festival, won the Perspectives Competition at Moscow IFF, was screened on the BBC and has been seen worldwide. Wreckers was distributed by Artificial Eye in the UK who described it as:
“a debut which changed the face of British Cinema” – Artificial Eye
Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy in Wreckers
Hood’s second feature film This Family will be filming late spring, with Diana Quick and Robert Sheehan currently attached as part of a large ensemble cast. Hood is currently crowd funding to raise money to make the film, a story that has been close to her heart for over fifteen years.
Find out more and donate if you can here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1586367446/this-family
Follow D R Hood on twitter: @filmlikelystory
The lovely people at Guardian Masterclasses have asked us to lead two workshops on 23rd February on ‘Social Media for Creative Freelancers’ at BVE 2016 at Excel London.
They are one hour workshops for only £25 and you can book here:
Book Penguin in the Room Guardian Masterclass Now
This is how we feel about doing the workshops:
It’s going to be fun. See you there!
Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing are some penguins with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.
Contact us any time for penguin chats via email: info@penguinintheroom.com
or waddle over to the website: www.penguinintheroom.com
The Penguin in the Room Blog 