Linkswitch #74, Creative Blogging, Guide to Google+, Inspirational Writing

Creatives need a detailed brief. Without it we are feeling in the dark, with little clue of our destination.

We need targeted information from our clients to deliver high quality finished work that meets the client’s expectations. We want to deliver polished work and we need the right information to do that.

It doesn’t take a genius to stroll around cyberspace and quickly find that the World Wide Web is littered with junk. There is a lot of “stuff” out there, most of which isn’t very good. On the flip side, though, there are still many amazing gems hidden beneath the rubble. The magical ingredient that marks the divide is creativity. Creativity isn’t just part of a fairytale that only children believe in. It really exists, and is the one thing that will polish you into a masterful blogger.

What’s it like when you remember a moment in time when you read a book or an article that made your heart sing? There was something about the writing that touched something deep inside and inspired you to view the world from a different perspective. Inspirational writing is something every writer is capable of. Yes, that means you, too.

You can’t connect a billion people without having them form some long-term habits for sharing and online interaction. We’ve all learned how to use Twitter and Facebook, so starting over with a new network can be daunting. Google+ has taken the world by storm over the past couple of days, and a number of people were able to get early access to it. After using it, it’s easy to see that Google has put an incredible amount of time and thought into designing their answer to Facebook. It brings many of the social features you’d expect from a network together in a way that just might make it the ideal network.

When was the last time you cleared up your clutter? I don’t mean office clutter (though you should probably take care of that; it’s been a while since the last time you tidied up). I mean mental clutter: ideas you’re never going to action.

It’s all well and good to tweet about what you had for lunch, or share party pics on Facebook, but what if you want to use social media to achieve a specific goal? Perhaps to garner support for a creative project, or build awareness about a product you’re launching. How then do you wade through all the social media speak and interact with people in a way that will make a difference to your mission, not just create more idle chatter?

No matter how brilliant a website’s design, no matter how elegant its navigation, sooner or later visitors will decide whether to take action because of something they read. In the end, the effectiveness with which a website converts visitors hinges on words. If a new website is going to hit all the right notes, its content must be just as well crafted as its design and programming.

As Twitter continues to grow, tools to enhance your Twitter experience and measure your influence are popping up all over the web. In this article, I’ll highlight five free tools that offer easy ways to keep track of your influence on Twitter and beyond.

In written composition, tone is often defined as what the author (rather than the reader) feels about the subject. (What the reader feels about it, by contrast, is referred to as the mood.) Tone is also sometimes confused with voice, which can be explained as the author’s personality expressed in writing.

There’s no reason why you, as a freelancer, can’t review your own performance. In fact, conducting a self-review from to time is a really good idea. In this post, I share fifty questions that you can answer on your own to evaluate your freelancing business.