Here’s a supply of practically minded blog posts that offer helpful advice and tools. These include downloadable tip sheets, guidelines, and samples based on material from our consulting projects, conference presentations, and training seminars. We add to this list regularly, so please check back. (Or sign up for our e-newsletter so we can give you a heads-up.)
RESOURCE-RICH BLOG POSTS
- Guerilla User Testing: Give Your Site a Reality Check - There's no head slap like the head slap you give yourself while watching an innocent visitor stumble through ... Read more.
- The Assignment Letter, An Editor’s Best Friend - Update: Ever since this article first appeared on our site back in 2004, it has consistently drawn more ... Read more.
- 10 Tips for Launching Almost Anything - Recently I spoke to a meeting of the Left Coast Writers at the Book Passage in Corte Madera, ... Read more.
- Tapping the Power of Social Media (MagsU 2009) - How should publishers be using microblogs, social networks, wikis, and similar social media tools? I explored that question ... Read more.
- How to Write Text Links (Think Display Copy) - If your site uses a conventional, easily recognized visual scheme for text links—and it should—the words making up ... Read more.
- Nine Steps to a Successful Website Redesign - 1. Read the tea leaves | 2. Set goals | 3. Get the big buy-in | 4. Spin ... Read more.
- Perfecting the Paragraph - Here are the keys to well-built paragraphs: A paragraph should have only one point. Structure a paragraph to ... Read more.
- The Well-Structured Sentence - Great articles are built of great sentences. Here’s some assembly advice from a recent editing workshop we presented ... Read more.
- Four Mistakes Web Sites Still Make, And How to Fix Them - Next month at Stanford’s Publishing on the Web Conference, we’ll be giving a talk titled “10 Mistakes Web ... Read more.
- The Rewrite Letter, a Model for Editors - We (editors) have all been there. The first draft of the article you assigned comes in off-target. It's ... Read more.
- Make Your Site User-Friendly - Here are a few annotated website screen shots that we've created over the years to help Web publishers ... Read more.
- Six Signs That It’s Time to Reposition - Everything needs a little sprucing up now and then—your wardrobe, your garage, your magazine. It's easy to tell ... Read more.
- Map Your Competitors - Here’s a handy way to get your magazine team thinking and talking about the competition: Make a map. ... Read more.
- Clarify Your Magazine’s Mission Statement - On January 29, 2005, I spoke to the Independent Press Association’s convention on "Sharpening Your Editorial Mission." I ... Read more.
- Get the Most Out of Freeelance Writers–Humanely - Some editors, for inexplicable reasons, have a policy of treating freelance writers poorly. Low pay, lousy communications, a ... Read more.
- Checklist for Good Structure - An article with a clear, sensible structure goes effortlessly into the reader's brain and is a pleasure to ... Read more.
- Editorial Packaging: Turn an Article Into a Bundle of Hooks - This technique recasts a single article into a package of components that work together to offer easy access ... Read more.
