By the way, I love these lines: “No one really cares about all the things you know. What they do care about is what they WANT to know.” I’ve heard the old “write what you know” advice dozens of times and it’s never helped me write a coherent, interesting post. Sometimes I’M not even interested in what I know! And if the content I write is boring to me, then what in the world are readers/customers going to think?!?

I got a comment yesterday from a client: “Fantastic! I really like all the pages.
I can’t believe how quickly you’ve managed to do all the web pages with the sketchy info I provided you with”. There;s no doubt in my mind that had I been listening to my top 20 tunes or the radio I’d still be working on it. Does a brain surgeon listen to music? Nah.

I told one of my clients to just jot down a few bullet points and what kind of conclusion their post was going to take. I would do the rest of the work and the result would be a well written blog post with a nice headline and appropriate keywords.

But that didn’t happen. Apparently, one does not simply write down in bullet points. Either its nothing or a full blown post.

I read my stuff out loud. I try to keep the rhetoric down, punch out the passive voice and basically follow the rules laid down by William Zinsser in “On Writing Well”.

FWIW I have even written a post on the topic http://www.pixelsandclicks.net/2011/07/10-copywriting-tips-from-william-zinsser-from-my-homework-notes/

I still slip. However, no pain no gain, right?

I largely agree with this article, as someone who went from hating writing/proofing/editing to someone who writes/proofs/edits daily and loves it, however!

Two BIG mistakes here;

1. You imply that people don’t like jazz or classical. I’m an 5 year SEO veteran and absolutely LOVE jazz, in fact I recorded an album yesterday *cough* check my website in two weeks *cough*

2. You imply that music without words wont break your concentration. This isn’t true!

Anything that you recognise will break your concentration. This is why I can’t listen to jazz while writing, or doing any creative exercises.

The fact that most people wont recognise certain musical nuances, licks or patterns (even changes) in jazz and classical is why this myth has been perpetuated.

Yes, this is good idea. But, there is the almost the same value idea, namely, to write and tell customers about things, which are not known at all. Let’s name that setting a trend. And you are first, and, probably alone on … the very top of Google search result. What about that :)