Tag: wordpress

4 Simple Ways Not to Headline Your Blog Post

Blog Posts

I’m writing you on my phone as I am in the midst of travel. This is my second city this weekend, transitioning from The Windy City to Memphis TN before back home again. So you’ll have to excuse any grammatical errors in this post. I’ll edit this later (don’t judge me).

Last year, I wrote an article on 5 Creative Ways to Headline Your Blog Post.

Today, I feel compelled to follow up. No, I’m not a blog expert. I am however tired of seeing poor blog headlines. A blog is not your personal diary. A blog is public. Yes, this means hundreds and thousands of people are potentially reading it. Yes, this means you may want to rethink your presentation. No, having thousands of followers doesn’t mean you’re doing it right either.

I know people blog for fun, that’s cool. I also know people blog privately. I don’t understand that. Blog and private just aren’t compatible. Nothing online is private, not even what you think you deleted. Think of a newspaper headline. Your blog is today’s newspaper. Its also your first impression.

#1. Capitalize

At minimum, be sure to capitalize the first letter in your first word and the first letter in your last word.

Ex. I love Cookies

I tend to capitalize the first letter in all of my words (with the exception of a “to” here or a “the” there). It looks neat and professional this way.

Ex. I Love Cookies

#2. Spelling

If you proofread nothing else, proofread your headlines. If words in your headline aren’t spelled correctly its a bad first impression to the rest of the article. Blog Headlines are the first thing that draw readers in. In every post I open daily, it begins with my interest in the title. What makes me click onto the blog site? The title alone begs me to ask one question: “Why should I read this NOW?”

#3. Ditch The Hashtags

I know I’m gonna get a lot of flak for this but it is what it is and like I say, there are no rules for blogging. At least not that I know of. However, too many Hashtags in a headline are annoying.

Hashtags are great when it comes to sharing on social media, yes, but when you read news articles online, rarely do they include hashtags. It just looks extremely unprofessional in my humble opinion. Hashtags don’t belong in blog titles, they belong in the tag section of the post. Will they drive more attention? For social sites like Twitter, sure. Like I said, I’m no expert so I’m not saying it doesn’t work. Yes, your post title will come up if someone searches that hashtag. Possibly. And yes, word on the street is that hashtags help with auto tweets. The question is, however, if it works, just how effective is it?

I have not, to date, discovered data that indicates usage of hashtags in the blog title increases the visibility of the post beyond the tags we already have. Understand what I am saying here. I am not saying they don’t increase visibility. I am saying that thought Hashtags makes it useful for social sharing, there is no data that I’ve seen that indicates this these Hashtags (those in the headline) produces a better result  than tagging your blog post the traditional way. That is, attaching them to the tag portion of the post in the WP dashboard. The problem is not one or maybe even two hashtags. The thing that makes them so unattractive is the four, five, and six hashtags as the headline to a post.

Four, five, and ten hashtags in a blog post is a turn off. One hashtag is OK if you must include tags.

I know we use them to draw more attention to our blogs, but coming up with attractive blog headlines is part of the experience and using hashtags just seems like a cop out, especially for writers. Writing is what you do. Come up with an attractive blog headline for your post instead of a bunch of sloppy looking and unexciting tags.

#4. Too Lengthy

Entire quotes, complete sentences, and whole paragraphs don’t belong in blog post headlines. Its extremely unattractive to readers and makes us exhausted before getting to the article. The purpose is to create blog headlines that make us click on to your blog site. If you’ve given us the entire post in a title, what’s the point? Keep in mind also that even if we like the quote, we can do this through the reader. This means though liking the post, we have not visited the blog which defeats the purpose or at least to me.

I don’t just want you to preview me, I want to gain views by producing quality content that compels readers to click on to my blog site. If readers enjoy their visit with me, I hope to gain subscribers. I am not here to play games. I am here to win. Are you?

Dear Poetry

Dear Poetry

I wish I can take your words
and carve them into the sky
as if you alone was the cement at the fingertips
of the Almighty
wish I can
breathe life into your nostrils like I held onto the strings
stapled to the backs of the wind
Dear poetry,
I wish I can copyright your metaphors,
& trademark your similes
Wish I could draw you away from every mouth
whose saliva has not promised to cherish your wisdom
like stomachs rejecting old food
You see I wish that your nutrition could be savored
only in the mouths of those who speak truth
I’m tired
tired of seeing Allegory’s
washed down the drain of unconscious minds who
seek only to dream fairy tales
bathed in rhetoric
to wake up wet with euphoric ignorance
I appeal to the relentless generosity of poetry
to drawback its compassion if it dares
and stop playing the violin on our hearts
like disobedient children that tap dances on their mother’s last nerve
cause
Poetry can change nothing if truth
can’t hit the concrete with a curve
I wish
Wish I could ensure that you are used only when truth spreads its wings like butterflies
nervously flapping inside the jaws of understanding
Like truth when it opens its legs to laws and commandments
and gives birth to obedience
In whose laughter resounds like the deadness of Sara’s womb
I wish
that deception can be buried inside the heavens
like the stars at noontime
that do not wish to be available
only so that our eyes may see something deep.

No, the Internet Has Not Killed the Printed Book

No, Technology Has Not Killed the Printed Book.
Books line the walls on at Common Grounds, in DeKalb, Ill., in August. KATIE SMITH / DAILY CHRONICLE, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

“Even with Facebook, Netflix and other digital distractions increasingly vying for time, Americans’ appetite for reading books — the ones you actually hold in your hands — has not slowed in recent years, according to a study by the Pew Research Center.

Sixty-five percent of adults in the United States said they had read a printed book in the past year, the same percentage that said so in 2012. When you add in ebooks and audiobooks, the number that said they had read a book in printed or electronic format in the past 12 months rose to 73 percent, compared with 74 percent in 2012.”

Click Here to Keep Reading

Writer’s Quote Wednesday Challenge – Comedy

Now yall know I love to laugh right? I’m sitting here wondering why I keep thinking about one more thing I needed to post today and then it hit me. Duh! It’s Writer’s Quote Wednesday!

So…welcome back to Writer’s Quote Wednesday hosted by Colleen of Silver Threading and Ronovan from Ronovan Writes. Today’s theme is Comedy.

There were so many quotes to choose from, including the one about how behind every just kidding is the truth. But, I’m sure we’ve all heard that one before. The quote that really stuck out to me above the others is this one:

So let me get this straight, if I laugh a lot, then my wrinkles will be on my cheeks? LOL

Comedy is a very powerful thing because it has the ability to heal as well as conceal. Laughter can uplift but it can also deceive and that’s the complex thing about comedy. Comedians tell the truth all the time, but because its a joke its not something many people take very seriously. This makes a comedian probably more powerful than a lot of professionals as they have lots of creative room which gives them space for the social messages many of them incorporate into their jokes. However, in the end a good laugh does wonders for the soul. According to an article in Laughter is the Best Medicine, “A good, hearty laugh relieves physical tension and stress, leaving your muscles relaxed for up to 45 minutes after.” That’s amazing.

“Your sense of humor is one of the most powerful tools you have to make certain that your daily mood and emotional state support good health.”

~ Paul E. McGhee, Ph.D.

This Month in History – August

THis MonthIn BlackHistory

  • 1834 – Slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire – Slavery Abolition Act 1833 came into effect.
  • August 2, 1850 – The start of The Underground Railroad, a network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century enslaved people in the United States in efforts to escape to free states and Canada. The Underground Railroad was neither underground nor a railroad. It got its name because its activities had to be carried out in secret, using darkness or disguise, and because railway terms were used by those involved with system to describe how it worked. Various routes were lines, stopping places were called stations, those who aided along the way were conductors and their charges were known as packages or freight.
  • August 2, 1924 – James Baldwin, author of Go Tell It On The Mountain, The Fire Next Time, and Another Country, is born.
  • August 3, 1800 – Gabriel Prosser, a literate enslaved blacksmith, planned a large slave rebellion in the Richmond  area in the summer of 1800. Information regarding the revolt was leaked prior to its execution, and he and twenty-five followers were taken captive and hanged in punishment.
  • August 4, 1901 – Jazz trumpet player Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Known as “Satchmo,” he appeared in many films and is best known for his renditions of It’s a Wonderful Worldand, Hello, Dolly.Three young civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were found murdered and buried in an earthen dam outside Philadelphia, Mississippi.
  • August 5, 1962 – Nelson Mandela imprisoned.
  • August 11, 1841– Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, spoke before an audience in the North for the first time.
  • August 11, 1965 – Watts Riots: In Los Angeles, racial tension reaches a breaking point after two white policemen fight with a black motorist suspected of drunk driving. An angry crowd gather near the corner of Avalon Boulevard and 116th Street to watch the arrest and soon grew angry by what they believe to be another incident of racially motivated abuse by the police. A riot kicks off and lasts for five days (ending on the 16th) with 34 dead and 1,032 injured.
  • Roots author Alex Haley was born in Ithaca, New York. His Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, published in 1976, explored seven generations of his family from its origins in Africa through slavery in America and eventual hard-fought freedom. Roots was translated into 37 languages and also became an eight-part TV miniseries in 1977 which attracted a record American audience and raised awareness concerning the legacy of slavery. A remake of Roots aired in on May 30, 2016.
  • August 18, 1859 – Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig is first novel published by a black writer.
  • August 20, 1619 – 1st known African Americans (approx. 20) land at Jamestown Virginia aboard Dutch vessel then sold or traded into servitude for supplies.
  • August 21-22 1831 – In Southampton County, Virginia, on August 21-22, 1831, Nat Turner, led the first slave revolt of magnitude. The revolt was crushed, but only after Turner and his band had killed some sixty whites and threw the South into panic. After hiding out, Turner was captured on October 30, 1831, and hanged in Jerusalem, Virginia, on November 11th. Thirty other blacks were also implicated and executed. It was not until John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859 that another slave revolt became known.
  • August 21, 1971 – George Jackson assassinated by prison guards during a Black prison rebellion at San Quentin on August 21, 1971. Three prison guards were also killed during that rebellion and prison officials charged six Black and Latino prisoners with the death of those guards. These six brothers became known as the San Quentin Six.
  • August 23, 1926 – Carter Woodson, historian, author, inaugurated Negro History Week and later producer of the Negro History Bulletin. Negro History Week would later be known, as it is today, as Black History Month.
  • August 25, 1908 – National Association of Colored Nurses founded.
  • August 26, 1900: Hall Woodruff was born. He was a nationally known print-maker, draftsman and painter and a leading artist of the Harlem Renaissance. He died in 1980.
  • August 27, 1935 – Mary McLeod Bethune founds the National Council of Negro Women.
  • August 28, 1955 – While visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till from Chicago, is brutally murdered for flirting with a white woman four days earlier. His assailants–the white woman’s husband and her brother–made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and then threw his body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river. (Duet. 28:49-50)
  • August 28, 1888 – Granville T. Woods patents railway telegraphy.
  • August 29, 1920 – Saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker born
  • August 30, 1967 – Thurgood Marshall ~ became first Black Supreme Court Justice
  • August 30, 1838 – The first African American magazine, Mirror of Freedom, begins publication in New York City.
  • August 31, 1836 – Henry Blair patents cotton planter (also patented a corn planter), and became the second African American to hold a United States patent.

Indie Book Convention in Tampa? Yes, please!

I’ve been looking for Indie conventions in the U.S. for a minute! If my schedule coincides with the date, I’ll support this for sure.

*Comments disabled here. Please comment on original post.*

LilaVale's avatarAuthor Lila Vale

I’d love to attend something close to home. Plus, Florida is awesome.

If you think you might be interested, please fill out this form. This will help the organizers get a tentative head count so they know what venues to look at to host us and what kinds of accommodations we might need. This is open to all genres!

Kyle also made a WordPress for the event for updates, etc. You can submit any questions you might have on the form or on the web page.

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