I have to admit, the idea of blogging, twitting, oops, I meet twittering. tweeting, digging, stumbling...... etc., all seemed so, well, useless.
I read Liz Strauss' post about "What Possible Benefit Could Anyone Possibly Get From a Blog?" (see my blog link at the right) and really identified with the audience she is describing! Mention the word blogging and my eyes began glassing over. I saw the internet as a tool to gather information FOR ME! I never looked at it as a tool to give information. I was just busy getting, soaking, gathering and gleaning!
Well, all that information going IN is like a sponge that just sits in water. It soaks it up and eventually begins to mildew.
Whew, I was beginning to be a stinky sponge.
Now, I don't have aspirations of becoming a world-wide known blogger, or an in demand speaker for sold-out conventions. But, the information needed to come out and I just wanted a way to share what I have learned.
Bingo, self! What a brilliant idea - use the internet. Document what you are doing. Forge a path. And, of course leave giant chocolate cookie crumbs for others to follow along the way, should they so choose.
My first goal: I set the goal of writing and submitting at least one article. So, what did I do?
First Step was to I research some free sights to submit articles (take a look at my Resource page for sites).
- I looked at the articles under the topics I would be interested in and read the most frequently read
articles. I read several of the same authors articles.
- I made note of what titles interested me and made me click on them.
- I read the guidelines for submitting articles to each of the sites.
Second Step was to determine what I am going to write. I have the goal of inspiring others to take action, so I want to write articles along that line.
- I brainstormed on the reasons (or more appropriately excuses) we have for not taking action
- I came up with 3 ideas for article topics
- I wrote bullet points the first one
- I wrote for 20 min straight without editing, rereading or changing anything.
- I then edited and looked at the word count
- I repeated the above 3 steps for the remaining 2 topics.
Doing this, I was able to get 3 articles written in less than 2 hours (well, research took a little longer, but I still have ideas for even more articles). These were not dissertations for my master's degree. Just little, content-rich, blurbs really! So fun. I really can do this.
Now, I am going to submit them. Stay tuned. Hopefully it will be a totally undisastrous, un-"story-worthy" event. But with great results!!
You know, to get water out of that sponge, you have to squeeze. And a lot of us are scared of pain.
But, I am here to report - the squeeze really felt more like a massage. And I felt excellent when it was over with!
Let me Inspire YOU! Tell me how I can in my 3 question survey: Inspire Me, Please!