Sweet Embeddable You, Both Before and After… Cool Agent Tips #3

Here is the Before…

Ok, so if you have been following along, you have seen that you really need both a self-hosted WordPress blog and an Active|Rain RainMaker blog.

You say, “OK there Skippy, now what?”

Well bunky, you need content… GREAT, compelling, addictive content.  And you need to present it in a great, compelling and addictive way.  Venture out from the wall of words and throw so fun at the wall and see if it sticks.

This post is actually what I call a second level post…  it is broken up into bite size chunks that are easier to chew than a straight up solid word wall, but it still lacks something.  Spice…

Where most people start is the first level post, a solid wall… not even a window.  No room for bites here, just a solid pile of words.  Now, if you happen to be Stephen King or Ayn Rand, that might be OK, but most of us aren’t.  And most of us aren’t packing 2000 pages of text into a package for our readers, either.  In fact, many readers will see the paragraph without end and they will click away so fast that they will barely make a dent on your Analytics Program (look for that tool coming up…).  They will see GIANT paragraphs of homogeneous type.  There won’t be any bold, and caps or anything else to break it up or draw interest.  And so there won’t be interest drawn.  Actually, after you write for a little while, this style starts to go away.  In fact, you might notice that it is hard for me to even write that way on purpose…  I write like I talk, and I get expressive… I take breaks (I have moments that are “aside” from the main theme of the conversation).  Writing like this is hard work.  And reading it is harder work.

Readers want…

• Bullet points…
• Lists
• Bold
• CAPS
• Variety

And there is something else they want…  They want RICH MEDIA CONTENT.  They want to see something more.  And sometimes the “something more” is graphics… or video… or photos… or even a presentation.  Embeddables.

The rest of the story is below…

Here is the After…

So, just a moment ago I posted the other half of this blog. I worked VERY hard to make it visually unappealing and kind of boring. I did that on purpose. For a purpose.

You see, there are SO many ways to add rich media to your WordPress and Active|Rain posts.

• YouTube (and dozens of other video sharing sites)
• SlideShare (and some other presentation sharing sites)
• Flickr (and the other photo sharing sites)
• MagToo (I don’t know of any other panorama sharing sites)
• Pictures
• Graphics

And most of them are free or nearly free. And they are easy to use.

you still need to have something compelling to say, but it is much more interesting (and WAY less pressure) if it is also presented in an interesting manner. Through the use of these cool tools, you will be able to better connect with your readers, and your readers will better connect with you.

Don’t let the little code snippets freak you out, they aren’t THAT hard to edit into a post. It needs to be done on the HTML side of both your WordPress and Active|Rain blogs. I would bet that there is already a tutorial on how to do this for A|R, and I know that there are scores of them for WordPress… But, one of the great things about blogging is playing and learning. And what better way to learn about code than to play in it a little…

Here is the WAY quick version (for A|R).

1. Write your blog without the embeddable media
2. Save it to draft
3. Open it back up and click on HTML
4. In another tab, open up the Embed code for the item you want to install
5. Copy the code
6. Paste it into your Active|Rain post where you want it to show up
7. Save it to Member’s Only or Public view
8. Make sure it works…

WordPress is pretty similar, except that you don’t have to save it in order to switch from WYSIWYG to HTML and back. Also, both tend to mess with the code if they are changed back and forth a few times… so, try to get the regular content right and then install the embeddable applications.

Enjoy…