Lessons
Develop a Writing Mindset and Learning the Tools to Get Started
1Class Introduction
08:21 2The Blogging Training Process
08:26 3Conversational Writing & Research
18:01 4Define Your Voice, Style, & Tone
15:39 5Logistics for Getting Started
25:36Writing Great Content that Drives Traffic
6What Makes a Great Story?
15:22Lesson Info
Class Introduction
go. And welcome to Creativelive. My name's Joseph Abella. I am your host along with Chris Jennings for how to write a block post that drives traffic with Darren Murph. Now, for those of you who aren't familiar, Darren was the managing editor over at Engadget, where he received a Guinness World record for blogging. Eso Please, guys, let me give a warm welcome to Darren Murph. Hey, how are you doing? Great, good. So, So happy to have you here. Thank you. I know we have a lot of exciting content. We're gonna kind of dive into here in a minute. I just want to start off by asking you what it was like over and Gadget kind of, you know, having to manage all of the different voices that were going on. You know, it was an ongoing challenge, but an exciting one. Over the eight years that I was there, I trained people that had no writing experience at all. We re brought in people from other publications that had unlearned certain things and fit the tone and style that we were at. So I've seen a l...
ot. I've worked with a lot of people and I'm hoping that today some of the content will share will help you, regardless of what stage you're at. I think it definitely well, it's definitely cool. Thank you so much daring once again just for being here. I'm gonna go ahead and let you take it away. All right. Thank you so much. Thanks, everybody, for being here and for everyone watching online, as Joseph so eloquently said, I am Daryn Murph. I spent eight years at Engadget, and so just to give you an idea of what Engadget is and, uh, Waas, it is an online publication where we published 40 to 50 articles a day. So it is 24 7 It's nonstop, it's it's frantic. You barely have time to think, let alone think about if you're writing is great or not on. So when I got in early on, I had had no writing background whatsoever. I didn't go to school for writing the one English class I did take disliked very much now and so how did I end up in writing and end up doing okay in it? You know, I was just passionate about technology and I saw a block post on Engadget that said, Hey, we're looking for new freelance writers and I thought, I'm going to give that a shot. So a few months later, I got into the into the chat room with my editor. Here's a post. Let's do this thing five painstaking hours later it was done. And so I say all of that to say If you can take a guy who went from taking five hours to write, opposed to now having a world record in being able to write quickly, anybody can do it. So if you have any fears, let those be pushed aside. Let's talk about why we're here. Where do I start? That's something I hear from writers and bloggers who are aspiring bloggers all the time. Where do I even begin? It's very, very daunting to look at a blank word document, and the cursor is just blinking and there's no other words on it, and it's totally on you to start pressing something on the keyboard and make something happen. So I want to address that fear. Talk about where you can start, build a foundation and give you some confidence there. Um, we also want to talk about connecting with your audience, figuring out who your audience is, who you want to target, who you want to write to. It's very important to get inside the head of whoever you're going to be writing. Teoh. If you want to connect with them, who benefits? Hopefully the folks that are here and the folks that are joining online. I'm gonna talk pretty broadly today. I'm gonna focus on creatives, small business owners and also freelancers that maybe want to get into blogging just to test the waters and potentially make a career out of it. When I began, I just started as a freelancer. I worked a day job all day, came home at night and blogged as hard as I could until I fell asleep and rinse and repeat. But given enough time, I fell in love with it, and I really enjoyed the life style of writing, and that became my full time work for many, many years. So I want to ask you guys, and if anybody was the chime in on the chat room, I'd be interested to know as well why are you here? And I'm asking this because people come from all kinds of different backgrounds. There are many reasons why you would want to write Andi. Want to learn how to block? You don't necessarily have to want to make it your career. I'm just interested. Does anybody want to make it their career? Or where are you at in your life for your small business that you think this might help you guys out? Start? Yeah. Go for it. Ah, sir, I have no experience with blogging. And that was something I've been thinking for a while on. I would love to maybe start, try or do you have? Ah. Do you have a small business of your own? You just have the designer designer for lancer suit design. Maybe somehow help my career. Okay, It helps. You know you're in the right place. That's great. Anybody else? Yeah, sure. I was drawn by the title. How to drive traffic to your block right on beyond social networks. How do I reach out and get people to my law? Very cool. Okay, So I have an active blogger for writers by writers and eso already have people writing for me. And then I write content. I really want to drive traffic. I think driving traffic is my main concern because I offer classes and consultations and coaching to help novelists write their novels. And we don't have a lot of activity. We have a lot of interests, but not activity, right? Yeah. Okay. Very cool on being a perfectionist. So I think I've got a pretty good, compelling voice when I can get past those things, which sometimes you're challenging. Yeah. Okay, Yeah, I do marketing for a hotel here in the city. Very nice. So I think that's what drew me to the class, was learning how Teoh, Right? In a way, that kind of, you know, hits the bottom line goals. Which is like driving people to our website. Sure. Okay. Very cool. Good. Okay, well, that's that's good to hear. No crazy, crazy oddball answers. No, I'm just kidding. But I think I think you're in good hands. So here's my promise to you and everybody watching at home. We're gonna learn how to define your target audience and really key in on who you want to talk to. A lot of driving traffic is really understanding who you want to read. It's very a specific skill, And if you don't have a good target. You just try to broadly say we want. We want to target everyone you are going to get very far. We're gonna recognize great writing. We're gonna take a look at some examples of some poor riding. Knowing what not to do is oftentimes just as important as knowing what today learn how to write more quickly. So over the years, like I said, five hours to write one post and now I could do it a lot more quickly. It took some time, but thankfully, five hours those days are long over. We're gonna realize how content fits into marketing. So as you said, we content, it can be exciting. It could be exhilarating. It could be compelling. But there's a lot of business objectives that end up getting connected to content. So we want to make sure we tap into that. And of course, draft traffic and interest to whatever you bought. We want to make sure you don't block for for no one. If you're gonna put the effort into it, we want to make sure it's worthwhile. So I just wanna give you ah bit of comic relief here. If you really want to be a professional blogger? Thistles The future you have to look forward to. No, I'm just getting. But in all seriousness, this is a few years ago at Engadget, me and 50 of my crazy blogging friends at Uncredible E Insane Trade Show in Las Vegas. And we had we all had to be there for a week covering news. On some days we would write to hunt this trailer of people would write 200 post in one day, so many that I couldn't even read them all. This is me at the end, and I just want to point out that some blogging stereotypes are very true. Um, half of us are in what most would be considered pajamas, and we're all being fueled by in and out fries if you can see there so very delicious and hearty foods. But now, if you want to go this route, this is actually an incredibly great, lucrative, fun, exhilarating, exhausting route. But all blogging doesn't necessarily look like this, but this does happen
Class Materials
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Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
I have been blogging for more than 20 years. I started out with personal blogs then eventually shifted into blogging and other forms of content creation professionally (part time) in the areas of fitness, nutrition, and wellness while I also train and teach classes. I took this course because I've been contemplating make this my full time work. This was a great review of some blogging basics AND I learned a few new tips and tricks that I plan to implement right away. I particularly enjoyed the discussion about LinkedIn blogging. What a great way to add portfolio pieces that can be viewed by potential clients/employers! Great class! I highly recommend it!r
Tom Jamieson
As a new writer, I found this fantastic. Darren was a pleasure to listen to and I would happily recommend this to anyone who is starting out writing for the first time in regards to a small business blog, which is the area that I am coming from. He probably has taught me to use fewer words, but that can wait until tomorrow. Great class Darren
a Creativelive Student
I thought this was a good course on writing effective blog posts. It didn't seem to be too focused on driving traffic, however, his way of presenting his thoughts and tips were easy to watch in a single shot. Great course for non-writers who are trying to become writers!