The new Twitter alternative: Substack Notes
Contrasting the start of Twitter in 2006 and the start of Substack’s Notes in 2023
How we create
Writing, designing, and illustrating, for creators
Start a fun digital whiteboard for remote workers
With so many of us working remotely, we miss the small little things about sharing a common physical space. Things like the office whiteboard.
Does a tiny box yield tiny thoughts?
That Twitter composition box. The small field allows for only 280 characters. Is that restricting?
Forget titles, blog excerpts are what gets me to click
Everyone focuses on headlines. Optimize the headline! Make it enticing! Make it SEO friendly! But what often gets me to click is actually the excerpt. A short snappy excerpt will give me an idea of what the article is about. The excerpt in a blog post is like the subtitle in a book. The title …
Forget titles, blog excerpts are what gets me to click Read More »
Comment on EVERYBODY’s tweets for 24 hours
I love giving and receiving comments so much. It makes me miss people having blogs. I love checking my RSS reader to see if anyone has new blog posts. But these days, my RSS reader is much more quiet. Instead, these days conversations online happen on Facebook and Twitter. I find Facebook to be the …
Is it possible to think too much about your audience?
When considering your audience on Twitter, there are two main considerations: Don’t annoy your readers. Attract readers by being focused. Let’s start with the first point: 1. Don’t annoy your readers Do you ever think about what your Twitter followers would think of your tweets? I’m guessing many people do. Yeah, yeah, there are many …
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Thinking idea to idea, instead of word to word
Scripting your presentation makes you think word to word rather than idea to idea. Ever sit in a meeting where the presenter sounds like a robot reading from a script? The presenter is thinking word to word, rather than idea to idea. We want people to talk about their ideas—not a robotic script. The presenter …
You can say “rad” only 50 times in a Facebook comment
Go ahead and type “rad” in a comment on Facebook. The word “rad” will automatically be be colored pink by Facebook. Apparently, Facebook really wants to punch up the word “rad” with HOT PINK! Fun! Having “rad” turn a bold pink is rather addicting, so I used it several times in a comment. Here’s a …
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Categorizing your blog by your passions
Because I work in the media industry, I started this blog in January 2011 to share my thoughts on how to use media better. On the three-year anniversary the site became organized into four categories. How we create (Writing, designing, and illustrating, for creators) How we discover (Searching and discovery, for searchers) How we read …
How to make your numbered lists look normal in Microsoft Word
If your numbered list goes past nine items in Microsoft Word, you’ll need this trick to get your list to look professional. By default, Microsoft Word will align your numbered list by the first digit in the number. You’ll end up with an ugly list like this one: Notice how the periods after the number …
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The joy of mono-spaced fonts
A friend of mine has a great blog where he writes all his posts on a typewriter. Then he photographs the typed page and posts it, unedited. One of his recent posts he questions why the font on his typewriter has serifs for some characters, but not others. This question made me think about why …
How do you record quick notes?
Let’s say you are at working in front of your computer. You have something you need to quickly write down. Do you use a sticky note or a digital file? Ten years ago I used to jot quick things down on sticky notes or a paper notepad. But now I jot things down into a …
I have a problem with Evernote. I use it an archive, not as active in-progress writing.
When you write a blog post or a draft of something, where do you save it? I put all my blog posts into Evernote. It’s a great app to save documents and images. Having all my blog drafts together in one organized place is so handy. All the drafts are searchable. When you go to …
I have a problem with Evernote. I use it an archive, not as active in-progress writing. Read More »
Approaching the blog as log
I’m taking a new approach to my blogs where as soon as I write the blog post, I publish it. In the past, I would schedule the posts so they appeared one a day. I do like the idea of the consistency of a post per day, and having them spaced out. I’m putting the …
Blogging more helps me appreciate things in life
I was just thinking I would blog more if I had an app like Tweetdeck, but for WordPress where I can open a simple text edit window. Drag over one image, and boom. Blog post. And then I realized, Oh! There are MacOS WordPress apps! Instead of posting to Twitter, just do quick blog posts …
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Why Tweetdeck is better than Hootsuite
I was a paying Hootsuite user for five years, but I cancelled my service last year, and moved to Tweetdeck. Why? Both Hootsuite and Tweetdeck let you set up multiple columns to view live tweets from Twitter lists and searches. With either service, you can be a power-user of Twitter. But which service is better? Tweetdeck or …
What a very powerful–I mean–compelling list!
Imagine a WordPress plug-in that searched through all your posts and made suggestions for word selection changes based on this list. It would be like a spellcheck, but for very perfect—I mean flawless word choice. (Hat-tip to Leigh Hanlon posting this image on Facebook.)
Tweet or blog?
Do you find most your ideas end up on Twitter, because it’s much quicker than writing an entire blog post? I’ve certainly fell victim to that. To help myself blog more, I’m going to alter my tweeting procedure. Every time I have something I would like to tweet, instead of heading to Tweetdeck, I’m going …
Twitter could become universal commenting system
Twitter is considering expanding the twitter character limit to 10,000 characters. The average character length for words is 5.1, so that makes 1,960 words. Who would write 1,960 words in a tweet?! If they are going to extend the limit, at least make it a short-style blog post, like 300 words. For comparison, newspaper columns run …
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Six ways to kill writer’s block
Looking for ideas to blog about? Would you like to have over 900 blog drafts in your queue? On my spudart blog I gave six tips on how to have a continuous flow of ideas for your writing: Keep ALL your blog drafts in one place. Read and comment on other blogs. Prune your reading list …