October 5th, 2010
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As the editor of MakeUseOf.com, a big popular tech blog, I get approached every day from people wanting to work for us. These approaches either come in the form of an email, a Facebook message, a Skype message or a Twitter private message. But the majority of them are rejected for one reason or another, mainly because they don’t follow correct procedures, which irritates the hell out of me.
I am probably going to regret this because it will mean everyone will finally be doing it right so I will have more prospective applications to deal with, but here’s the RIGHT way to get the attention of a busy blog editor like myself. I say “I” throughout, but I am sure you can apply these situations to ANY busy blog editor.
1. Don’t flood my email inbox with repeated queries
The people on my permanent black list are those who email every couple of days. They start off politely enough, asking for a job. Then a couple of days later, they email again, asking “did you get my previous email? If not, here it is again”. The next one is a little more tense with “I’m sure you’ve been trying to get a hold of me. When can we arrange to talk?”.
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October 4th, 2010
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Blogging can help children further their literacy learning by providing an outlet for personal thoughts and ideas. Blogging is the act of writing consistent articles creating a website about a topic or personal experience.
People write blogs to provide others with information or to keep a sort of journal about their lives. The format and technical aspect of blogging encourages children to write more often. Children gain a sense of accomplishment when they see their own words appear on the internet.
This is a great project for the homeschooled child in that it can be checked by the parent, provides feedback from other readers and allows children to conduct research from home.
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October 1st, 2010
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A few years back, a friend came to me, highly agitated. His father had died recently and he had been asked by his mother to give a eulogy at the funeral the next day. But he didn’t know what to say or how to write a eulogy.
Of course, he knew his father very well but when it came to putting it into words, he was totally lost. With the funeral 24 hours away, he was starting to panic at the thought of making a fool out of himself and upsetting his mother more than she already was. In short, he needed my help.
The next 24 hours was a blur of story telling, rapid note taking and even faster typing. By the end, we had a eulogy which he could use the next day and in the end, everything worked out OK. Here’s how we did it.
Outline the Person’s Life
We started out by writing down his father’s life, from the moment he was born to the moment he died. Obviously not everything, but more the highlights.
A eulogy shouldn’t really be any more than 5 minutes, 10 at the most. Make it any more and people start fidgeting on the uncomfortable church pews and start to get bored. Plus, the person delivering the eulogy is probably going to be very emotional, so delivering such a long speech is probably going to be impossible for them. Keep it short and snappy.
By noting down the highlights of his life – his childhood, his wartime service in the German Air Force, his subsequent career as a postman, his being a father and grandfather and finally his death, we more or less established a framework for the eulogy with all the different areas we needed to cover.
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September 30th, 2010
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If you have a website that you’ve just started and you’re struggling with battling your way up the search engine rankings, I’m going to share probably the single most important tip that will lead to significant page rank improvement for your site.
I have a secret that I’m going to share with you today that you can use to throw everything else you’ve heard about SEO optimizing out the window. It all sounds pretty convoluted and a lot of work anyway, doesn’t it.
While keyword optimizing, keyword analysis, page layout and visitor analysis all certainly plays an important part in boosting your traffic - there is one thing that any website owner can do right now that will result in nearly immediate page rank improvement, and definitely a dramatic improvement over the long term.
Don’t Stay Buried in Search Results
Here’s what happens to most website owners. They have a website that makes up a part of a particular market. Maybe you’ve found a niche and maybe you haven’t - but regardless, you’re going to have to deal with the competition. There’s always going to be competition for the top spot in search results.
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September 30th, 2010
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One of the hardest decisions you may ever have to make in your life is whether or not to leave your job. And if you decide to resign, the method in which you leave is very important, and will play a big factor in determining whether you get a new job elsewhere.
Hollywood is a bad influence in this area. A lot of movies glamorise the idea of striding into a boss’s office and telling him where to stick his job.
Two movies immediately spring to mind – Office Space and American Beauty. While both movies are enjoyable, I feel it kind of sends the wrong message to people. Flipping off the boss and pissing him off is not going to ensure a comfortable transition to the next place of employment.
And when potential future employers are considering you for a position, guess who they are going to approach for a character reference? That’s right, your former boss. So it pays to depart a company the right way. Departing the wrong way could make you permanently unemployable.
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September 29th, 2010
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Everyone needs inspiration now and then… The written word supplies people with quotes to remember and live by.
One may keep a special journal of quotes, post them on a bulletin board or computer desktop or simply recite them by memory. The following are a number of quotes that are meant to inspire:
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September 28th, 2010
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For some people, writing a letter of complaint is an art form. There is a world of difference between someone who articulates their complaint in a straightforward constructive manner and someone who rants and raves like a madman off their medication.
Learning how to write a complaint letter and getting it right is the key to your complaint being taken seriously and acted upon. Getting it wrong is the key to be labelled a lunatic and ignored.
As someone who has some extensive experience in this area, I have 7 tips on writing that perfect complaint letter.
1) Take a while to cool off - The worst thing you can do, when writing a letter of complaint, is to let your feelings cloud your judgment. That’s why, when something goes wrong, it’s best to wait a few days before acting upon it. If you jump right into complaining while emotions are high and tempers are frayed, then the chances of you presenting a calm and reasoned argument will be minimal. You need to be calm, rational and lucid if you want the other party to take you seriously.
2) Find out who you need to speak to - When it’s time to make your letter of complaint, you need to make sure it gets to a person who is in a position of authority to do something for you. There’s no point going to a lot of effort with writing a complaint, only for it to be bounced around from department to department for the next six months and never getting looked at. Getting it into the hands of someone with authority is vital. So contact the place you wish to complain to and calmly state you wish to make a complaint, and who should you address your letter to? Make sure you get their full name and full job title.
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September 24th, 2010
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It’s an exciting time for children when they learn their ABC’s. Worksheets help them practice their new skills. Educators and parents alike can find an endless number of these ABC worksheets on the internet.
They include pictures, capital and lowercase letters, games and puzzles. There are worksheets available for the entire alphabet or one sheet for each letter.
To make the task of finding such ABC worksheets easier, check-out the following recommended links:
- first-school: coloring sheets, alphabet word-search, alphabet flashcards, bible-themed alphabet, alphabet mini-books and more.
- abcteach: abc booklets, dot-to-dots, and abc posters.
- tlsbooks : abc coloring pages, abc mazes, Halloween letter match, and letter concepts worksheets.
- beginning reading: worksheets of alphabet sets and abc flashcards.
- abcschoolhelp: alphabet worksheets 1-6.
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September 23rd, 2010
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A big part of writing on the web is not so much getting your writing published, but getting it noticed. That’s why so many people want to find out how to get a blog review. Your blog is your showcase - it’s where people can see samples of your writing skill and it’s one of the best ways to get your work noticed…but only if you can get your writing in front of the eyes of the right people.
Sitting at the bottom of the Google results won’t get you anywhere. I’ve covered proper keyword analysis and keyword optimization on my previous FreeWritingCenter articles, but there are so many other elements that go into your site traffic and results ranking. Second to proper keyword optimizing is incoming links. Actually, come to think of it, incoming links are probably the most important item that should be on your to-do list for your blog.
3 Ways How to Get a Blog Review
In the early days of the web, you could find Internet directories where you could simply type your own website URL into a field and get it listed in the directory almost immediately. As search engines advanced and “link juice” became so critical to your search engine rank, those directories started to change how they operated.
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September 21st, 2010
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One of the primary elements of Internet behavior that drive search engine optimization efforts is search patterns, but is Google Instant going to change search patterns? The bottom line is that when a majority of people search for a specific keyword phrase, that is a phrase that’s at the top of the list for most SEO experts. Obviously, that’s only the starting point.
Some phrases are difficult to compete for - because everyone else is trying to rank highly on those terms as well. So, ultimately you have some winners and some losers - depending on who has better information as to how the search engines choose the sites to list first, and who is better positioned (already popular sites) to compete more effectively.
Search Patterns Have Held Constant
Up until now, search patterns have held pretty constant. Other than the hot news stories or events that crop up from time to time, there are certain phrases that are just always heavy hitters. These are keywords that don’t really change much from year to year - but instead reflect large-scale, general interests of the overall Internet population.
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