Personal Voice and American 'Dialect'

I am in the midst of an online discussion with some writer friends about local American dialects of the English language. It's surprising that the country can communicate at all.


Personally, I enjoy visiting with the locals when I'm traveling simply to catch the quaint phrases of the area. I enjoy reading novels set in small communities where the local flavor is expressed through dialog. So, I have a question as a freelance writer:


Are we missing the boat by trying to follow established grammar rules when writing our blogs?


We're told to find our own voice when writing to give our work more power. Wouldn't cha think that meant writing the way we talk? Wouldn't that give our work a bit of character, maybe some more interest, don't cha know? Well, maybe it wouldn't be such a great idea to be as obvious as that, but really. A blog and an informative article used for reference are two different things.


I follow blogs because I like the content of the blog. Some of the blogs I follow are written by bloggers who have a wealth of experience and are sharing valuable, personal tips. I value their articles, and think I would trust them no matter how 'real' their way of expressing themselves on their blogs appeared.


Other blogs are written as mini informative web sites. I know the difference. I follow them, after all.


So, bloggers and wanna be bloggers? What's your take on the whole thing?




All written content 2010 Patrice Campbell unless otherwise noted.

I’m Just a Content Mill Writer

I just found a group on Facebook called Content Mill Writers Unite, and it again reminded me again how the old fashioned print writers tend to look down on those of us who freelance online. Once again, I’m ticked off.

I went back to school 12 years ago and earned an AA in Multimedia and Interactive Technology, a fancy name for webmaster. That was before the wonderful template packages that set up beautiful websites with click and drag.

In addition to learning too many computer programming languages, the degree requirements included art, photography, digital photography, graphics, journalism, creative writing, web writing and presentation layout and marketing.

One of the best things I learned was the difference between writing for print and writing online content. It makes me wonder if labeling freelance online writers as content mill writers is just a lashing out of  former print writers facing dwindling print opportunities and having a hard time making the transition to the Internet.

When writing for print, you have to write a thorough yet concise article with word limitations of 1,000 to 1,500 words. The limit on words is a challenge for the writing for print writer. Our words are crafted to bring enlightenment to readers we imagine relaxing with a beverage, feet raised, enjoying the rhythm of our sentences and the creative way we present our information. Cutting any of the magic from our work to meet the 1,500, or yikes, 1,000 word limit of our piece of genius is like cutting the baby curls from the head of our first born child.

Writers of online content have to write a thorough yet concise article with word limitations of 350 to 600 words. We know our audience usually isn’t reading for pleasure, but searching for information and demanding it in a hurry.

Print publication are usually on a monthly basis with assignments listed at least three months in advance. This gives the writer for print plenty of time to form ideas and study them from different angles. I often pictured my assignments as a sphere I could hold in my hands, rotating it and letting the light and shadows play across the surface until a picture of the way I would write the article suddenly appeared. The deadline for the print article was weeks away, giving me the time my muse demanded.

Writers of online content publish seven to 20 times a day in order to be successful. If we’re lucky, we have a list of titles on the to do list for the next day before we go to bed, giving us time to think about how we will write each article as we toss and turn, wondering why we can’t go to sleep.

A print magazine has an art department who will lay out the article according to the needs of the pages it will occupy. If there is an empty spot on the page, a box with an important article point, a related piece of artwork or a sidebar with an overview will magically appear to surprise and delight the writer when the tear sheets arrive.

An online writer has to write the article with layout in mind, remembering to use white space to make it easier for the reader to follow on the computer screen. We also have to search out and credit appropriate art work to accompany the article, format the piece presentation style and write an overview of approximately 300 to 500 characters to convince our potential readers that our article has the information they are looking for.

A print magazine has marketing, advertising and circulation departments. Freelancers don’t have to be told that these jobs now belong to them. Self Promotion is a major part of the freelancers day.

I’ve gone over my word limit. I guess it’s not a good article. But then, I’m just a content mill writer.

Please share your thoughts.

All written content 2010 Patrice Campbell unless otherwise noted.

Self Promotion for the Freelance Writer

Freelance writers soon learn that self promotion is the only way they’ll turn their writing into money. You can write 30 articles a day and publish them on popular sites, but if no one is aware that you’ve written them, no one is going to read them unless you’re lucky enough to gain rank on the search engine result page.

The most popular social media sites for self promotion are Facebook and Twitter. Both of these sites offer seemingly limitless opportunities to meet and communicate with strangers who share common interests.

The need for Facebook friends and Twitter followers is obvious. You’re looking for people who are interested in you and the work you do. These are the people who may just click on your link and read your article. If they like what they read, they might start following your work. They may even recommend your article to their friends.

If you’re lucky, you may even discover people who’ll become your mentors. I’ve found many fellow writers on Facebook who have not only clicked on my links and commented, but shared my articles with their friends.

The same is true with Twitter. As followers learn to recognize the value of your Tweets and links, they will retweet your tweets to their followers, greatly increasing the chances that someone will click.

When looking for Facebook friends and Twitter followers, be careful that you don’t limit your possibilities. You may have already identified friends and followers in the writing site forums where you publish. These contacts are very valuable as business contacts, but that doesn’t mean that they are actually interested in your subject matter.

You want to add Twitter followers and Facebook friends who are interested in the article that you write. If you write about history, you want to identify people who read about history. Check out history groups on Facebook and join them. Friend other group members. These are the people who are your intended audience, after all.

The same is true with Twitter. Use the hashtag (#) and run a search of history topics. Follow the Tweeters who tweet on the subject. They might just follow you back and each time you post a link, they will have the opportunity to follow it.

Grow your online social community, continue to write valuable content, self promote at every opportunity, and you may just be lucky enough to become one of the successful freelance writers on the internet.

Promote Yourself with Twitter Hashtags

Twitter is an important part of any social media promotion campaign and there are a variety of methods to get yourself and your articles out there. One of the best is the use of hashtags.

The Twitter hashtag, "#" is used like a keyword. The hashtag is a convenient way for users to categorize their tweets so that the tweet reaches a broader community.

If your Twitter account is public and someone who is not one of your followers does a search on the word you have preceded with a hashtag, your tweet will come up in the search results.

As an example, once I publish this article, I'm going to promote it on Twitter. The name of the article and the url will be shown in the tweet. Depending on the number of characters I still have available, I will add #freelance, #writer tips, #socmedia, #income or perhaps one of the writers groups I belong to. That way, if someone is searching twitterland for information on any of those topics, my tweet will show up with the link to the article.

Use of the valuable search and hashtag ability of Twitter is also a valuable tool in research. If you're working on a series of articles on growing trends, like living on a reduced income, search #frugal. This will bring up tweets of complete strangers who have tweeted about the subject. If you can identify a credible tweeter, you can follow the person (who will then probably follow you back) and often find valuable information to use in your article.

Don't use too many hashtags in your tweets, and don't use hashtags that don't pertain to your tweets. For instance, if I tried to lure sports fans to click my link by using the term #football, I stand to lose any credibility with my established followers. If there is room at the end of the tweet for several hashtags, focus on who you're targeting your article to, and what terms they may be searching for.

Writing Site Forums

Forums on writing sites can he wonderfully enlightening or nightmarishly dismal tunnels of hopelessness. When a new writer is accepted at a site, they often spend a lot of time reading the articles already posted on the site to get the feel of it, and then venture into the writers forum.

This is where a lot of writers hang out. 

The Site Forum

As a freelance writer who writes for many content sites, I often go to the forums in search of answers to site specific questions. More and more, I escape without answers and with lower moral.

When did it get to be this way? When I first started freelance writing online, I was lucky enough to write for a site with a community of wonderful writers who shared their experiences and tips. I still follow these people who I consider mentors, and promote their work whenever I can.

As I've spread my wings and branched out, I've been dismayed at how much the forums have changed.

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Make Time for Everything

Those who know me best will just shake their heads when they see I've another blog to my schedule. But this is just what a freelancer does. If you have something to say but no logical place to say it, you create your own place.

And I have something to say.

Eleanor Roosevelt said that we should learn from the mistakes of others as we won't live long enough to make all the mistakes on our own.  I've been freelancing full time for almost three years now, and finally feel confident that I have learned a lot from my own mistakes and the mistakes of others.

I have stories to share that can be of value to other writers just venturing into the unknown freelance world. I also have a few pet peeves and gripes that I'd like to share with my fellow veteran writers who may find them amusing.

Maybe most important of all, I can introduce new writers to mentors who I have met along the way by sharing links to their informative articles, their blogs and their websites.

As the neighborhood kids went back to the structured environment of the school day, I decided that it was time for me to a bit more structure into my work days. I had let the long afternoons of summer pull me off track, writing just as much as I had to and no more, eager to flee my office and enjoy the sun. I was my own boss, after all.

But there is more to freelance writing than just writing. Once the research and editing has been done and invoices sent, the beginner might think the work is finished. But only the fun part is finished. Somehow I’d pushed one of the most important things a freelance writer needs to know from my mind.

You will have days when you'll work and earn nothing doing important tasks that are all part of running a business. And they have to be done. Freelance writing is a business. The paperwork and networking will pile up until you don't know where to start to pull yourself out of the deep hole you have dug.

And that’s where I found myself last week, overwhelmed with loose ends that had to be tied up in order for me to be successful. The only money I earned was from residual income on revenue sharing sites for articles I had previously written, but I got myself out from under the neglected record keeping.

Determined to regain my self discipline, I organized my email and calendar and was surprised to find I could find the time to fit a new writing blog into my schedule. I love blogging. It gives a writer the opportunity to write freely, with their own voice. Blogging makes you feel like a writer.

So, here we are. Ideas of topics to share are forming in my head faster than my fingers can type, but that’s the idea of a blog. I’ll share one blog post at a time.