This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing consultant for a company that offers to-do list tool applications for individuals and businesses, and who also consults at a psd to html company.

*    *    * 

Whether you maintain a blog or develop user-friendly content for business websites, every writer fears getting stuck on a topic or a particular post. Fresh, relevant content is a critical component of any SEO strategy, and maintaining a steady and sustainable writing pace is essential.

Here are six strategies for overcoming writing setbacks you might encounter.
   
   
1. Learn How to Generate Content Writing Ideas

The best way to avoid a setback is to plan and brainstorm a wide variety of ideas. You should have a collection of writing topics handy so you only pick the ones that are most interesting and relevant for your website. Keeping a notebook or running list on your cell phone can help you accumulate writing ideas so that you can hit a blank page with a good deal of momentum.

Blogger and author Marelesa Fabrage shares some places where she finds ideas:

• A question a client asks you.
     
• A comment your 2-year-old makes as she is trying to avoid eating her vegetables.
     
• A slogan you read on a billboard.
     
• An article you read on another blog during a coffee break.

Inspiration can strike just about anywhere. Be ready for it!
   
   
2. Focus on the Goal for Content Writing

When writing content for a website, you can fill up your website with information and ideas. An idea doesn’t engage readers, deliver on any kind of promise, or provide a clear focus for your writing.

Brian Clark writes at Copyblogger:

“You have an idea, but what’s the goal? From a content marketing standpoint, you’re usually seeking to educate or persuade.” A clear goal will help you cut away the parts of your content that don’t belong.
   
   
3. Don’t Mistake Facts for Benefits

Before writing, you’ll need to clearly understand how your post will make a customer’s life better, translating your information into benefits. If your goal is to educate customers about your industry and to hopefully convert them into customers, make a list of benefits that directly meet the needs of readers. According the site Improve the Web,“The more benefits you describe, the more you connect your content to the needs, interests and reasons people buy from you, the more efficient your website content will be.”
   
   
4. Focus on Writing a Compelling Title

No matter how hard you focus on identifying a goal and the benefits your content offers, you still need to think of ways to draw the attention of your readers. A solid title that hooks readers may provide the path forward that you need.

Some benefits to crafting a solid title are explained at the Allison Jones blog: “Crafting the title allows me to refine my topic and figure out the structure of my post.”  Learn how to writen effective title at ProBlogger.

   
   
5. Write with an Outline and Bullet Points

If you’re having a hard time figuring out what to write about your chosen topic, experiment with either an outline of sub-headings or even a series of bullet points. Jim Estill writes at CopybBlogger, “Bullet points… can make writing an article a lot simpler in terms of organization because you no longer have to figure out transitions from one idea to the next.”

Work with the most basic parts of your post to create a skeleton before filling in the gaps. You also may find that a skeleton is exactly what you need for your website or blog content.
   
   
6. Focus on a Specific Topic You Understand

If your writing is stalled, the problem may be with your focus. Are you trying to address a topic that is too broad? A stalled writing project is typically a symptom of not understanding a topic well enough.

The solution is to conduct research in order to sharpen your knowledge and to improve the quality of your content. Christopher Auman shares at Blog Critics, “If you try to cover a large topic in a mediocre or unconvincing way, people will probably not bookmark and return or even worse they many not even finish reading and move on.

If you’re still stuck after trying out these tips, don’t worry. There are plenty of ideas for writing effective content. Check out this list of 37 things to keep in mind when writing content for starters. Writing is a craft that requires practice and patience. Give yourself a few months of practice and you’ll be amazed at the progress you can make with your website content writing!

When sixth-grader Sophie Paterson of New Zealand announced that farting was the topic of her speech during a speech competition last fall, the audience snapped to attention.

With her younger brother, Ben, nearby, ready to hold up diagrams that further explained her topic, Sophie launched into her speech:

Most of the time, when friends email me things like this, I try to ignore them. But I couldn’t resist looking at this one. As I read Sophie’s speech, I struck by how many lessons it offers for authors, speakers, writers and others who want publicity. Here are the lessons I found buried in her winning speech on farting:   
   

1. Get outside your comfort zone.

Write about, speak about, and be passionate about topics that are controversial, prickly or yucky. A sixth-grader can certainly muster a lot more enthusiasm for the topic of farting than you and I could, but she not only loves the topic, she embraces it. 
     
     
2. Use visuals.

Whether you’re speaking from the platform, writing ebooks, hosting webinars, or writing press releases, visuals make words come alive. I don’t know what the diagrams looked like on the cards that Sophie’s little brother held up in front of the audience, but I’ll bet they were a scream.     
   
   
3.  Use lists. 

Sophie’s Top 10 list of animals that fart was educational. And priceless. I love how she included “Zebras and my pony Free” in the Number 3 spot.
   
   
 4. Use statistics.

Who knew that the average person farts 14 times a day, expels a half liter of gas, or that hydrogern sulphide is the compound that makes them stink?

Statistics give your topic perspective. The Internet makes it easy to obtain statistics on any topic, within seconds. 
   
   
5.  End with a funny poem:

A fart can be useful
It gives the body ease,
It warms the bed in winter
And suffocates the fleas. 

Did you see any other lessons in her first-place speech about farts?  

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow me on Twitter.

Prevent the “lago effect” from dooming your CEO who tries to “help” during a crisis. http://paper.li/clayedwardspr/pr-pros-paper

How Restaurants Are Using Social Media to Their Advantage. http://tinyurl.com/8xbuyuo

How to Use Great Testimonials, Once You Get Them. http://ow.ly/8b2LS

Get Blog Results for Business | Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad | Writing On The Web. http://tinyurl.com/7dzodzr

Top 50 Women Entrepreneur Experts to Follow on Twitter. http://ow.ly/8dj2U

Nice year-end gift for your clients. Free ebook with 2 dozen publicity/social media tips. http://ow.ly/8dj8Z

5 clever uses of LinkedIn’s brand new “group polls” feature. http://ow.ly/8dkJL

5-part strategy for cashing in on content and social media marketing in 2012. http://ow.ly/8dTU6

Freelancers: Pick up some extra cash in 2012. Pitch articles to these paying markets. http://ow.ly/8dUTu

Authors: Compare major print-on-demand companies. http://ow.ly/8dV2u

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow @PublicityHound on Twitter.

Twitter and Facebook tips for food trucks.  http://ow.ly/7MOeO RT@mysurveyexpert #foodtrucks

Are women in PR just grown up “mean girls”? Weigh in athttp://ow.ly/7LXGe

Want a story in Fast Company? Writer says you must answer these 4 questions first: http://ow.ly/7LaI1

How to bait your hook for retweets. http://ow.ly/7JrsU

Why You Can’t Read a Kindle During Take-off—4 Theories.http://ow.ly/7IWGf

7 reasons to embrace nasty comments at your blog.http://ow.ly/7HZZI #blogging

10 types of writer’s block and how to overcome them.http://ow.ly/7HdpL #writingtips

Top 15 tech bloggers and tweeters in 2011. (PR people, save this list.) http://ow.ly/7JS8m

Pitching journalists? Google their name. You’ll find valuable tidbits you can weave into yr pitch. #publicity

Website traffic shouldn’t be the goal of your blog. [I disagree! Read my comment] http://ow.ly/7MO6R #seo #blogs

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow me on Twitter.
    
How to improve your Facebook marketing for the holidays
http://ow.ly/7DjbU 
     
    
50 tools that can help you write
http://ow.ly/7BtSv
     
    
The care and feeding of the press: Super tips from the Internet Press Guild
http://ow.ly/7BtCU
     
    
Publicity Tip: Contact a media outlet that already covered you & suggest a “follow up story” to the original one
     
    
6 tips for making your press release Twitter-friendly
http://ow.ly/7AqL8
     
    
Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. ~William Arthur Ward
     
     
10 words that can help or hurt your click-through rate on Twitter.
http://ow.ly/7xNfu RT @DanZarrella [Testing is powerful]
    
    
Social bookmarking tips to pull traffic to your blog or website
http://ow.ly/7BzRk

      
 ”I love Thanksgiving turkey. It’s the only time in Los Angeles that you see natural breasts.” ~Arnold Schwarzenegger
     
    
6 ways to help people find your press releases
 http://ow.ly/7FkmY 

Do you already follow me, but you’d like to read tweets about certain PR, publicity and social media topics? Which ones?

Does your nonprofit tell visitors at your website all the ways they can donate?

During the webinar I hosted yesterday on nonprofit marketing, PR and publicity with nonprofit marketing expert Sandy Rees, one of the participants asked if she should include a “Donate” button on every page of her agency’s website.

Uh, of course, we answered. (No-brainer.)

I wish I had seen the “Ways to Give” page at the Wikimedia Foundation’s website, which I just stumbled across this afternoon. That’s the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, the world’s mammoth online encyclopedia.

It lists these nine ways to give:

1. Credit card or Paypal
     
2. Via regular mail
     
3. Monthly recurring giving
     
4. Stock donation
     
5. Direct deposit
     
6. Combined Federal Campaign
     
7. Corporate Matching Gift
     
8. Moneybookers
     
9. Payroll deductions

Especially helpful are the detailed instructions. Brilliant! Nonprofits could link to a list like this from the end of articles they write, from blog posts or from press releases.  

What other ways can your donors give? And how do you let them know? 

The next time you’re struggling with a headline for an article, press release, blog post, a page at your website or a paid ad, whip out this handy five-page cheat sheet and steal one of the 102 headline-writing formulas.

Fill in the blank, and you’ve got a killer headline.

It’s courtesy of blogger Chris Garrett, and it could be one of the most valuable tools in your office. Download it here.
     

Why Writing Great Headlines Is Important 

Killer headlines pull people into your copy. They beg to be retweeted. And they often tell the reader, “You have a problem and this article will solve it.”

For added oomph, choose several other headlines from the list and place them throughout your article or blog post as sub-heads, like I’ve done in this blog post. Sub-heads are great for scanners, who often won’t take the time to read every word. They’re visual clues that tell readers what else they’ll find within an article.
     
     
Sample Headlines 

Here are examples of headlines from this free report:

Get Rid of Your ___________ Once and For All

What Your _____________ is Not Telling You About _____________

10 Lies We Tell Our ________________

How to Spot a Fake ________________

5 Reasons _____________ is Better Than _________________

If those don’t fit the article or blog post you’re writing, you’ll find several that will.
     
    
More Tools to Help You

This report is one of 60 free or inexpensive tools I shared during the webinar “60 Ideas in 60 Minutes:  Free (or Practically Free) Tips, Tricks, Tools & Tutorials for Publicity & Social Media.” Click here to read more about what it includes and how to access the video replay and the handouts.

I’ve listed several ways you can use these headlines. How else would you use them?

Recruitment & Retention Tips Booklets

Information products can become out of date so quickly, particularly those dealing with social media sites or any type of technology.

For that reason, I’m cleaning out my massive inventory and practically giving away more than 20 titles.

CD and transcripts, regularly $39.95, are only $5 each, plus shipping.  Tips booklets on employee recruitment and retention, regularly $5 each, are $1.35, and include shipping.

Even though many of the products are out of date, all of them include valuable tips that are still as good today as they were when I created the them. Topics include Facebook, how to get PR clients, press releases, nonprofit publicity, how to get your own TV show, special event planning and promotion, employee recruitment and retention, and more.  Here’s the complete list of titles.

Some of the CD titles are gone already, and we aren’t reordering, but you can still order the transcripts. Grab them while you have the chance. 

Questions? Contact my assistant, Christine Buffaloe, at 619-955-5772 or Chris (at) SerenityVA.com.

This month’s guest blogger is Brad Phillips, the author of the Mr. Media Training Blog, which offers daily media and presentation training tips. His firm, Phillips Media Relations, specializes in media and presentation training.
    
    
    

By Brad Phillips
Guest Blogger

If you’re of a certain age, you probably remember those old television commercials for the Christian Children’s Fund. In them, actress Sally Struthers sold viewers the promise of saving a child for “the price of a cup of coffee.”

A quarter-century later, those ads are still memorable. And the way Ms. Struthers used numbers in those commercials is a big part of the reason why.

Imagine if she had instead said, “You can save a child for just $255 a year.”

Few people would have anted up, and it certainly wouldn’t have stuck in your memory. Instead, she said, “For about 70 cents, you can buy a can of soda, regular or diet. In Ethiopia, for just 70 cents a day, you can feed a child like Jamal nourishing meals.”

Statistics can be beautiful things, but too many press releases and media interviews are buried in data that offer no context. As a result, they’re rarely effective.
     
    
5 Ways to Help Your Numbers Jump Off the Page

1. Create a Mental Picture:  There are 1.37 million homeless children in the United States. No one will remember that specific number. Instead, try saying this:
        
   Yankee Stadium seats 52,000 people. Imagine that stadium completely sold out, not a single  empty seat in the house. Now imagine 26 of those stadiums, side-by-side, each completely full.  That’s the number of children who will be homeless in America sometime this year.
     
2. Make Numbers Personal: Numbers are often best when they’re reduced to a personal or familial level. So instead of saying a tax cut would save the American people $100 billion this year, say the average family of four would receive $1,250 in tax relief.
     
3. Don’t Rely on Percentages: Instead of proclaiming that your plant’s new energy efficient manufacturing equipment will cut your company’s carbon footprint by 35 percent, tell your audience what that means. Does your new efficiency mean that you will save 20,000 barrels of oil this year? Say so!
     
4. Use Ratios: 170,000 people in Washington, D.C. are functionally illiterate. But that number doesn’t tell you much, especially if you have no sense of the overall population. Instead, why not say:One in three adults living in Washington, DC is functionally illiterate. Next time you’re on the  Metro, look around you. Odds are that the person to your left or right can’t read a newspaper.
     
5. Provide Relative Distance: If you’re a car company announcing increased fuel efficiency, you’d be proud to announce that this year’s model gets four miles more per gallon. But you’d probably get even more traction if you said, “That’s enough to get from Maine to Miami – without spending an extra penny on gas.”

These five ideas may get you started, but keep looking. You’ll find other great examples on television commercials, in marketing solicitations, even pasted onto billboards.

So take out those statistics you keep using year-after-year, and use these ideas to help freshen them up. Challenge yourself by inserting one of these context-rich statistics into your next press release or media interview. You may be surprised to find it’s the thing your audience remembers the most.