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The Online Writing Insider – HubPages Blog
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The Online Writing Insider – HubPages Blog episodes
- How to Regularly Publish When You’re Crazy Busy
Chances are you’re incredibly busy. So are we! That said, just because we have a lot of responsibilities does not mean that we have to sideline our writing careers. There are plenty of ways in which one can regularly publish online articles while still managing a rigorous work and home life. In this week’s podcast (Creating Hubs while Crazy Busy), we outline three ways in which this can be easily done:
- Make use of your old work by converting essays and research papers into rich online articles: We outlined this process in last week’s podcast. It’s quite easy, and is a great way to make the most of great work you’ve already done!
- As you explain something to a friend, colleague, or family member, record your explanation for use in a Hub: You can do this by copying the text that you wrote in a letter or email, or turning on a dictation app when you’re explaining something to a friend verbally. Doing so kills two birds with one stone, and also makes it easier for your friend to find your advice should they forget it! Besides, if your tips are useful for one person, they’re more than likely useful to many people, which means that Hubs you create in this manner may get a decent amount of search traffic.
- Write your articles while you wait: Make the most of your commute, time spent queueing, and hours wiled away in waiting rooms and airport lounges by pulling out a notebook, laptop, tablet, or smartphone and writing drafts for Hubs. You’ll be staving off boredom AND getting in some much-anticipated writing.
Here’s one more bonus tip in regard to getting great videos and images for your Hubs: ask friends and family members to do the photography and videography for you! If you’re making dinner for your family, ask one of your kids to film you in the kitchen. If you’re teaching your child how to ride a bike, ask a neighbor to snap a photo for you. Usually, people appreciate being involved in your writing process, and as an added bonus, they may be more likely to share your article once it’s published because they have a stake in its success.
On a somewhat unrelated note, we have decided to put the Online Writing Insider podcast on hiatus. We have had a blast creating these podcasts, but we’re running out of online writing issues to cover. What would you like us to focus on in future blog posts? Let us know in the comments below!
0 min - Giving a New Life to Old Papers, Articles, and Reports
While most of the Hubs people publish are shiny and new, we still encourage you to draw on older bodies of work when creating online articles. Many of us are sitting on a sizable body of old newsletters, guides, articles, essays, and college research papers that are filled with useful information. Why not give these dinosaurs a new lease on life by updating them and publishing them in Hub form? In this week’s podcast (Converting Papers to Hubs), we offer tips on doing just that.
Here is the basic process we recommend:
- Go through your computer’s archive and find old research, newsletters, letters, and college papers that you think contain information that people might find to be interesting and useful.
- Edit your papers to make sure that the information they share is up to date.
- Create search-friendly titles for these compositions (something that reflects what people would type into Google when conducting searches on the subject).
- Break the papers into multiple sub-sections with descriptive, search-friendly subheaders (to make it easy for readers to skip around and find exactly what they’re looking for)
- Add images, videos, tables, maps, polls, quizzes, and more to convert what was once a simple paper into a rich, multimedia online resource
By doing these things, you are:
- Sharing useful information
- Making the most of work that you’ve already done
- Giving yourself an excuse to review your old work
- Making it easier to find, share, and reference your old work
- Giving yourself the opportunity to get more credit from your old wrok
- Giving yourself the opportunity to earn money from your old work
As you can see, the process of converting your old work into great online articles is quite simple, and there are quite a few benefits! We hope we’ve inspired you to dig through your own personal archives and pull out a few jewels.
0 min - Creative Hubbing: What to Expect
This week’s Online Writing Insider is inspired by Anish Patel, who sent in the following question:
What does HubPages think about fictional Hubs or other creative Hubs? (spoofs, funny hubs, short stories, poetry, comic strips etc.) Is it a good idea?
Of course publishing creative writing and art on HubPages is a great idea! We hosted the HubPatron of the Arts Contest last November just to highlight these types of Hubs, and we absolutely love the fiction, photos, art, and poetry people regularly share in our community.
That said, publishing creative content on HubPages is a very different experience from publishing informative Hubs. We cover these differences in this week’s podcast (The Gist of Creative Writing Online), though the gist is this:
- HubPages is a great place to develop your skills and get feedback on your work
- HubPages is a wonderful place to showcase your work and host an online portfolio
- HubPages is a splendid place to build a following
BUT…
- Creative Hubs don’t typically earn significant ad revenue
- Creative Hubs won’t be found on their own- you have to share them and promote them if you want them to be read
With reasonable expectations, we think any creative type could have a blast on HubPages- plus make a bunch of meaningful connections! Thanks for the great question, Anish.
0 min - How to Deal with Online Drama
As HubPages staff, we get a lot of questions, and a surprising number of them have to do with online drama. Unfortunately, if you write online or are active on one or more social networks, it is likely that at some point you will become caught up in some sort of drama. In this week’s podcast (How to Deal with Online Drama), we share some advice on dealing with it in the most classy and effective manner possible.
Here are our basic tips:
- In general, be careful how you word things online. If you are not very kind and courteous, people may misinterpret your behavior as hostile and lash back with a full out attack.
- If someone insults, attacks, or criticizes you online in a way that bothers you, do not respond.
- If someone leaves a comment on your writing that you find to be insulting or hurtful, feel free to delete it.
- If you feel as though you MUST respond to someone who attacks or insults you online, kill them with kindness. Only say nice and mature things. That said, in the vast majority of cases (especially personal cases) any response at all is a very bad idea.
- If someone insults, attacks, or criticizes someone very close to you, do not engage, and encourage that person to not respond, either.
- Keep in mind that unkind words that someone says only have as much power as you give them.
- The vast, vast majority of people (even very active ones) within a given online community will not give any credence to mean things someone else says about you. Try to remember that nobody cares.
- When you feel yourself getting emotional, walk away from your computer, go for a walk, finish some chores, or do something nice for a friend. This will help you put everything into perspective.
Just remember this, Hubbers: Don’t feed the trolls!
0 min - How to Create a Deliciously Good Online Recipe
Recipes are extremely popular on HubPages and the new Special Layout Options we offer can make these mouthwatering guides better than ever! As you give the new Recipe Capsules a try, we would like to share some best practices with you when it comes to crafting and sharing online recipes. Listen in to this week’s podcast (How to Write Great Recipes) for our expert advice on creating successful recipe Hubs.
Our top tips:
- Only make a Recipe Hub if you have made that particular dish. The more you can convey the fact that you’ve actually made a dish, the better.
- Make your instructions as original and detailed as possible. It is very difficult to defend the copyright of things like ingredients lists, however you can easily defend original, detailed instructions.
- When you prepare a dish at home, photograph it! Original photos make a big difference, and it is much easier to get them before you start your Recipe Hub.
- When taking photos for recipe Hubs, opt for natural light, avoid flash, and take photos of the preparation process as well as the finished dish.
- Make sure that the first photo you display in a recipe Hub shows the finished dish.
- When using the Recipe Capsules on HubPages, be sure to use the Ratings Capsule (set to a Recipe Rating). That part is mandatory if you want your Hub to enjoy special treatment in search engine results.
- If you are writing a complicated recipe, use the Recipe Capsules to summarize ingredients and basic instructions at the top of your Hub, then go into detail below using Text Capsules (Special Layout Options capsules are best for short summaries).
- Only use the Nutrition Capsule on HubPages if you can create an accurate calculation.
To learn more about using our dedicated tools for recipe Hubs, check out our Learning Center guides on Special Layout Options, the Recipe Capsules, and writing successful recipe Hubs. If you’re interested in writing recipe Hubs with a more social, kid-friendly skew to them, you might be interested in Kids Cook Monday. To join in on the fun, have a look at Maddie’s blog post with guidelines on participation.
Is there another specific type of other online article that you would like some tips on writing? Tell us about it! Send questions, suggestions, and comments to podcast-at-HubPages-dot-com.
0 min - Easy Hub Fixes & Common Blunders
Several times a day, I’ll run across a useful, interesting, well-written article that is shooting itself in the foot because of one or two small blunders. In an effort to rescue Hubs that are hindering their own success, we’ve decided to share an overview of common blunders that can be easily avoided. The small changes we outline in this week’s podcast (Common Blunders to Avoid) can make a big difference.
Here’s a summary of the top small tweaks you can apply to your Hubs that will vastly improve your readers’ experience
- Make sure your titles are search-friendly
- Don’t title Hubs with parts (e.g. Part 1, Part 2)
- Don’t assume that your readers are familiar with your previous work when referencing related articles
- Hyperlink to your references as you reference them (e.g. On our Facebook page, we share great Hubs and important updates, not On on our Facebook page, we share great Hubs and important updates. You can visit it by clicking here.)
- Avoid putting extensive lists links at the end of the Hub
- Make sure that the images you include in your Hub are not pixelated
- Break your text up (into different Text Capsules with sub headers, paragraphs, bullets, and lists)
- Read through each Hub at least once before publishing
What are your pet peeves with online articles? Did we miss something important? Tell us about it! Send an email to podcast-at-HubPages-dot-com.
0 min - How to Write Successful Online Reviews
Because we offer a special new capsule in the HubTool that augments reviews on HubPages with star ratings (which can feature either an author’s rating or readers’ ratings), you may be thinking about publishing some review Hubs. Before you proceed, keep in mind that it is not necessarily easy for online reviews to succeed. Reviews are a very competitive type of online content. Many sites have established clear dominance over specific review types and it can be very difficult to outrank these established experts. That said, there are quite a few simple things you can do to work around these barriers and create better, smarter, more successful resources. In this week’s Online Writing Insider (How to Write a Successful Online Review), we share some tips on doing just that. We hope you find them to be helpful!
General Review Tips:
- Write reviews on products, places, and services that are not already extensively reviewed online.
- Only write reviews on products, places, and services that you have experienced firsthand- be genuine!
- Make sure the words you use in your review reflect the words people would search for when looking for information on this product, place, or service.
- Make it on a collection of things and write a more thorough review on the best product.
- Write the review from the perspective of an audience that is potentially interested (e.g. mothers, students, whoever you are).
- Do competitive research before: see what reviews already exist.
Product Review Tips:
- Include as many original photos as possible.
- Add a specific slant to your review (e.g. Can the X Phone Survive a Mother of 3? An Honest Review).
Place Review Tip:
- Instead of making your review just about a place (high competition) address the type of place (e.g. dog friendly restaurants).
Service Review Tip:
- Make your review for the service as specific as possible – if it is part of a chain, be sure to specify which local area in you received this service.
Are there any other article types you would like some tips on writing? Tell us about them! Send us suggestions, questions, and feedback in an email to podcast-at-HubPages-dot-com. We hope to hear from you!
0 min - Why do Microformats Matter?
Microformats are, simply put, open data formats built upon widely accepted standards. Microformats are somewhat like MLA bibliographies in that MLA-style bibliographies share different specific pieces of information (such as citations to movies, books, radio shows, talks, etc.), while following a common, standardized format.
In the case of microformats, the common standards involve specific tags that are added to particular types of information, such as thumbnails in videos, star ratings in reviews, ingredients, instructions, nutrition, and cook time information in recipes, dates and times in calendar events, and names and employers resumes. These tags make it easier for search engines to recognize and present (not to mention filter) this format-specific information.
Online videos, recipes, reviews, and other articles and posts that incorporate microformat tags enjoy several benefits, especially when it comes to the attractiveness of your work in search results. Listen in to this week’s podcast (Why Microformats Matter) to learn more about these perks.
We hope this podcast gets you excited about microformats, and that you take advantage of the easy-to-use special layout options we’ll soon be offering that make it easy to add review and recipe microformat tags to recipe and review Hubs!
Is there another online-related vocabulary word or standard that you’re unfamiliar with? Tell us about it in an email to podcast-at-HubPages-dot-com! We may very well discuss it in a future podcast.
0 min - How to Choose Topics to Write About
We often hear from Hubbers that the hardest aspect of online writing is finding topics to write about. When in doubt, we recommend writing on…
- Your areas of expertise (specifically skills, hobbies, and activities in which there is significant interest online)
- Day-to-day tasks and activities in your life (such as fixing healthy meals for teens, improving your swimming skills, and learning how to housetrain new pets)
- A subject of which you have many photos and images (chances are you already have great photos- why not create Hubs that put them to good use?)
- A subject on which you have already done research (for example, a major purchase you made, the subject of a recent college paper, or the focus of a lot of inquisitive Googling)
- A subject that you have searched for online that is not well-addressed by existing online articles
For a more detailed explanation of these areas, listen in to this week’s podcast (Choosing Topics to Write About). Here’s hoping your writer’s block is short and fleeting.
Is there some other online writing issue that is keeping you from happily writing new Hubs? Tell us about it! Email questions, comments, and suggestions for future podcasts to podcast-at-HubPages-dot-com.
0 min - How to Ask Good Questions
Because you now have the opportunity to earn ad revenue from Questions you ask on HubPages, you might be wondering what sorts of Questions are most likely to find success (and make money) over time.
After all, some online questions see a lot of traffic and evolve into very useful resources while others flounder in obscurity. What differentiates good questions from bad ones?
As it happens, just a few small details separate the majority of great and dismal Questions (on HubPages and elsewhere online). To make sure the Questions you ask fall into the former category, we recommend:
- Asking Questions in complete, grammatically correct sentences (that begin with capital letters end end with question marks)
- Avoiding discussion Questions
- Avoiding personal Questions
- Avoiding Questions that can be answered with one word or sentence
- Asking specific Questions
- Asking information-based Questions
- Asking Questions for which there are not good answers online (if you Google something and don’t find a sufficient article or website addressing your query, this is a great time to ask a Question!)
For more details on these points, listen in to this week’s Online Writing Insider (Asking Good Questions). We hope you find our question-asking advice to be helpful. If there are any other details of the online writing world that you’d like us to cover, tell us about them! Email your comments, requests, and questions to podcast-at-HubPages-dot-com.
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