My first WordCamp. And I didn’t really know what to expect. I was on my own – didn’t know anyone. But I found the WordCamp folks to be a lovely bunch of people.
Here’s my notes, mainly for myself so I can keep track of all the things I learned and people I thought were truly inspirational.
A topic many Cybermummy 2011 delegates wanted more details on…
My private obsession: data visualisations.
It’s not the tools themselves, but using them right that matters in social media land. Here’s some ideas from the Future of marketing micro-conference in November 2010. read more »
I was lucky to catch William Gibson speak in London in October 2010.
He talked about his new book ‘Zero History’ and about writing science fiction and writing in general. William is my favourite source of quotes when teaching. “The future is here, its just not evenly distributed” being one of my favourites when I teach social media. And of course he invented the term ‘cyberspace‘. read more »
Google instant search was rolled out to all users of the Google search engine on 9 September 2010.
As soon as you start typing your query, search results are shown to you right away (even before you press the ‘Enter’ or ‘Search’ button). As you type, the search results change based on whatever you have typed so far. Google tries to be smart and presents you search results based on your search string, location, previous searches and many other parameters.
ACF interview
In June 2010 I was featured in several interviews with grant-making trusts in the Association of Charitable Foundations Journal.
Here’s a great article on Tips for setting up a website (PDF) aimed at grantmaking trusts.
LinkedIn is perfect for web writers.
Groups are essential for keeping abreast of topics.
Here’s some worthwhile LinkedIn Groups for web writers to join:
The Content Wrangler Community
Seasoned writing and editing pros
The National Union of Journalists
So, you’ve done your research: asked potential readers how they would search for the things you are writing about, consulted a thesaurus for synonyms, looked at competitors’ websites, checked out your hunches with Google’s Keyword Tool. You’ve now got a long list of words and phrases to use on your web pages.
But which keywords are best? read more »
Whenever I teach I’m often asked how I set up on my own, how I am surviving in these harsh economic times, how to set up as a self-employed web writer and designer.
These last few months have seen me work on numerous site launches, email newsletters and courses for my clients. I have never been busier. But there’s no denying that starting up is tricky when budgets are particularly tight for clients.
This is a round-up of some recent articles and forthcoming courses that look helpful, whether you’ve chosen to go freelance or are forced to be self-employed (in other words, have been made redundant).