Juiced On Writing

The continuation of an occasional series where I select five posts, news items or sites I  find interesting. This time, I have a social media and productivity theme running through my selections with a post on blogging and writing for the web, two containing mindmapping – including a writing course – and three concerning social media aspects, and productivity tips for writers.

1. How to Effectively Educate Your Blog Readers

Darren Rowse [Problogger] writes an interesting post for anyone who writes a blog.  He gives some rules and links out to Jacob Neilsen’s site and a paper on web reading. Although I’m probably rubbish at following many of Problogger’s suggestions, I thankfully can admit that I’ve never been accused of being a link snob.

2. Unleashing the Book Inside You Home Study Course

Tom Evans has been on this blog very recently commenting about ebook structures. Little does he know, but I follow his Bookwright blog via a feed reader, so am partially aware of his work. Currently he is offering this Home Study Course at a discount. The course involves two hours of narration, plus some applications of mindmaps. As a licensed iMindMap trainer, you can be sure that with Tom you will receive tuition in the best use of mindmaps aka Tony Buzan.

Personally, I can’t yet afford the price of this course, but you can be sure that I keep it bookmarked as a priority to get to, even as a MindManager User myself.  Using Mindmapping for writing is one of the most fascinating aspects of my own writing journey, as readers of this blog will know.

3. Becoming a Writer – Seriously

Tom Colvin is another blogger I am well aware of, having subscribed and followed his blog for several months now. And again, he reminded me of his own precense with a couple of comments on this blog recently. Tom’s blog is full of productivity posts for writers, and is one of my favourite reads. He suggests in one of his comments that he’s re-thinking his website, and I would personally be incredibly saddened to see it go. I’m just a MindMapping / Productivity junkie kind of geek girl writer, I guess. There are a few blogs out there dealing with the technical / productivity side of being a writer, including my own posts on these subjects, and Tom’s is one of the best.

Becoming a Writer-Seriously’s latest post entitled, “Time Management for the Paper-Bound” introduces a spiral notebook system for time management called AutofocusTM. It’s a must-read for all of us looking for a simple system for reminders (and certainly for me, as I move haltingly between completely computerised systems to actually beginning to love a good notebook.

4. Mapping Your Social Networks for Maximum Productivity Online

The Mindjet blog features a post on Brian Solis, who is a prolific social media blogger, and has created a prism chart of social media conversations, and a MindManager mindmap of his own social media life. Now, Brian is one of the top bloggers and writers in this particular field, and from the look of his mindmap – an extremely busy but obviously organised man. I would never personally have the need to create such a map – but then I got thinking -

The recent post of mine sharing my own Social Media strategy involved a lot of links and thoughts. Putting those – including all the search links, statistics links etc, onto the one map would greatly cut down on time spent wondering what I had forgotten.

This is Mindjet’s Michael Deutch blogging towards this. Last time I mentioned one of his posts, he suggested he uses mindmaps for his own planning  and writing process. Now that, I’d like to see.

5. The Writing Base : 10 Twitter Tips and Tricks

Samar is a longtime blogger and recent freelance writer like myself. She has recently started a series on twitter. I know Twitter well myself, but am aware that a lot of writers don’t use Twitter to it’s fullest potential (and some over-extend the marketing aspects of it, for that matter – whoops a personal opinion just snuck in). Samar’s Writing Base gives good tips and posts on the use of Twitter.

These posts may also be of interest:

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