Unlikely content

This post is one of confession and admission.

I confess I haven’t officially made my New Year’s resolutions.
I admit that I’m not setting the blogosphere on fire with subscribers to this blog.

Enter this flyer. I’m not sure how it landed on my kitchen table, or why I was drawn to it while enjoying my usual bagel-and-peanut-butter breakfast (with a chocolate chaser). I’m glad I flipped through it, though. I found common-sense, easy-to-remember  nutrition info. And, it reminded me that healthy eating should be a no-brainer when it comes to resolutions.

I found this tidbit:

What is a whole grain? Wheat flour itself is not a whole grain so make sure that the product uses the word “whole” in front of wheat. Look at the ingredients for “enriched flour.” If it is the first listed ingredient, there is more white flour than any other flour in the product. Whole grain must be listed first for it to qualify.

And this:

“Look for items with at least 2.5 grams of fiber per serving. The adequate intake for fiber is 38 grams per day for men and 25 grams per day for women.

Use the % Daily Values as a guide for vitamins and minerals. 5% or less is low and 20% or more is high.”

Like you, I check food labels. However, I mostly check calorie counts or fat grams. These simple guidelines will help me better decipher  labels — and make healthier food choices.

The other lesson? Good content can stand on its own, no matter where it lives. Another resolution for me, then: Strive to write great content. Make sure it gives back and is worthy of the pixels or ink it requires, even if nobody reads it or it’s nestled among coupons.

Time Management (or the lack thereof)

 

(Guest blog post on www.lifemeetswork.com)

A funny thing happened on the way to my home office. Actually, it’s not all that funny. I’ve lost my knack for time management. Here’s why.

Read more here:  http://www.lifemeetswork.com/blog/blogdetail.asp?sectionID=3&articleID=150

Twitter for research

I wanted to pass along this great article on harnessing the information on Twitter, 50 useful Twitter tools for writers and researchers.  It breaks down how to gain solid information based on geographic location, topic, keywords — even through a Twitter yellow pages. By the way, I believe Barack Obama sent his first tweet on May 1 regarding the swine flu. Follow him: @whitehouse.

Also found this Mashable article useful regarding integrating social media and developing a social media start page, 7 Ways to Create Your Own Social Start Page.  I started with Twhirl and am now using Tweetdeck. I think using a Twitter application on Facebook might be the way to go. Time management is the biggest challenge.

If you’d like, follow me @lynnwoolf.

No more !

F. Scott Fitzgerald says that using an exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke. I have been doing exactly this in hundreds, even thousands of emails. I never dared to break the journalism rule re: exclamation points in news articles, but emails were open season.

How mortifying. Comedy is serious business at our house. I married my husband partly because he was the funniest person I ever met. To think that I’ve been doing a bad e-comedy routine…

To borrow from the Act of Contrition I say with my second-grader, who is preparing for his First Communion: “I firmly resolve with the help of the find-replace function to use exclamation points no more and to avoid the near occasion of exclamation points.”

Wonder if my emails will seem less friendly? Will a simple “Thanks.” seem tired? You tell me.

SearchWiki

I’m digging into Google’s SearchWiki and what it means for content I write. (A quick definition from Wikipedia: SearchWiki is a Google search feature which allows logged-in users to annotate and re-order search results.)

Read this from Joe Hunt at SearchNewz for why I’m looking forward to this new tool:
“In my opinion this means that SearchWiki will inadvertently help create a rise in the value of SEO. It will also force SEOs to be more focused on relevant high quality content.”

So, keywords continue to rule. However, infomative, relative content is still the backbone for any online communication.

Personalization

My 7-year-old wrote perfect “content” this morning. It was a simple “I love you mom” note. Why so perfect? It was straightforward — no message-confusion in those four words. It was personalized, with the crayon-written words in my favorite color, green. He drew a black border — makes his message stand out. Most importantly, he added the words “mom.” He was writing to me and only me. Perfect.

(OK… so maybe this post was a little corny. Love notes do that to a person! I’m laminating this one in prep for the “I hate you” notes, looks, etc., when he’s a teenager.)

Words matter

Thank goodness! As a writer, I couldn’t be happier that content is so important in today’s search-engine-driven, page-ranked world. And not just any content will do. Informative, engaging, value-added, pertinent, interesting…that’s what makes good content. Nothing new, right? It has always been about the story — and how that story is told. That’s good news for this writer, whether I’m writing for the web or traditional print media. And my challenge, too.