Make Blogging Faster, Easier

Issue #730 July 2, 2013
Publisher: Joan Stewart

“Tips, Tricks and Tools for Free Publicity”

In This Issue

1. Make Blogging Faster, Easier
2. Changes on Pinterest
3. Help This Hound
4. Hound Video of the Week

This Week in the Hound House:

Turns out that glow-in-the-dark walkway I told you about here on
Saturday isn’t made from Rust-Oleum paint. That’s one of several
myths being passed around on Pinterest. In fact, there’s so much
misinformation on Pinterest that there’s now a website devoted to
setting the record straight, sort of like the Snopes for
Pinterest.

1. Make Blogging Faster, Easier

When you take vacation, don’t let your blog take a rest.

Keep it working for you by writing a few quick blog posts before
you leave. Here are three ideas:

–Find the best content on the web on an important problem or
topic. Cut your research time by doing a Google search and
linking to the best articles on Page 1 in the search results. You
don’t even have to provide a long commentary, just a short
sentence or two summarizing each one. Readers love this!

–When you return from a networking event, industry conference,
speech, workshop or other event, write “5 Things I Learned
at….” Find a free stock photo at FreeDigitalPhotos.net and
publish it.

–Write about a cool tool you discovered. One of the very best
gems I’ve found so far this year is the Social Media Image Maker,
a free tool that resizes and retouches your social media images
like your Twitter profile image, Facebook cover image and Google+
background image. I wrote a fairly long post on it and
illustrated how it works. But you don’t have to go through all
that trouble. Just write a paragraph or two and link to the tool.

Those are only three of the ideas I shared during the webinar “21
Quick and Dirty Blog Posts When You Don’t Have Time to Write.” I
came up with two more while creating the presentation, so you’ll
get 23 ideas in all, plus 10 valuable “fill in the blank”
templates.

2. Changes on Pinterest

If you don’t visit Pinterest regularly, you may not be aware of
eight recent changes.

They include no more hashtags or URLs in pin descriptions, the
new “go to website” button, shorter profiles and no more “liking”
boards from Facebook.

Read them all in the post “Pinterest is Changing…Are You
Ready?” at Kim Garst’s blog.

She has another very helpful post with step-by-step directions on
“How to Make Sharing Blog Photos on Pinterest Easy.”

Are you ready to host a Pinterest contest? It’s a great way to
grow your email list, build your fan base and sell more products
and services.

Beth Hayden walks you through all the steps on how to host a
Pinterest contest, from beginning to end, in the video replay you
can access.

3. Help This Hound

Katie Schwartz, president of the Corporate Speech Pathology
Network, asks:

“I wanted to let you know that I have just publicized your
business to over 70 corporate speech pathologists. We work as
consultants to the business community. We come from four
countries, although primarily the U.S.

“One of the services most of us provide is foreign (and regional)
accent modification. The new immigration pathways to citizenship
in the U.S. seem to present a real opportunity to corporate
speech pathologists who often provide accent modification
services to professionals.

“How do you suggest we take advantage of this opportunity and get
publicity regarding our services?”

The Publicity Hound says:

What a timely question! Hounds with marketing ideas can post
them in the Comments section at my blog.

4. Hound Video of the Week

Thanks to Publicity Hound Kathleen Mahan of San Juan Capistrano,
Calif., for this “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”
video. (I wonder if this is a Vine video that loops.)