Top Misc Content on Internet

How Instructional Design Helps Content Writers, Instructional Designers, Trainers, Academicians, and Technical Writers?
Business Brokers Cannot Sell Any Business
How to File Your Federal and State Taxes For Free
Buyers: Know the Difference Between REO and Foreclosure
Does Writing for People Work for SEO?

How Instructional Design Helps Content Writers, Instructional Designers, Trainers, Academicians, and Technical Writers?

Posted: 09 Feb 2010 03:49 PM PST

This past Sunday, I conducted a three-hour Free Instructional Design Orientation session for individuals who wish to map their competencies to Instructional Design. Wavelength organizes these sessions 3 to 4 times a year and they give me an opportunity to understand the nature of questions that baffles many who wish to change their career path or improve their growth prospects by acquiring the knowledge of ID. The most common of these questions is – "How the knowledge of instructional design helps?"

This question originates from the term "instructional design" appearing in the employment advertisements for the professions indicated in the following list.

Let us see how this "set of skills" help:

Content Writers and Instructional Designers
Trainers
Teachers and Other Academicians
Technical Writers

Let me begin by establishing a contextually relevant definition of instructional design.

"Instructional Design is a set of cognitive skills that enable you to impart learning effectively."

Content Writers and Instructional Designers:

Content Writers and Instructional Designers often engage in creating learning content for their audience. They use instructional design to ensure that the learning happens fast and stays anchored. Instructional design helps you achieve this effectiveness and efficiency, whether you write content for eLearning or for classroom delivery.

Trainers:

Trainers often create their own training plans and design their training programs in terms of activities, examples, and assessments. Instructional design could equip you with the cognitive psychology principles, and assist you in designing, developing, and implementing more effective training programs.

Teachers and Other Academicians:

Teachers of all disciplines, and at all levels, can apply the instructional design principles to ensure that their audience's attention doesn't stray and that the knowledge-transfer happens effectively and efficiently. ID enables you to create a balance between your passion for the subject and the learning needs of your learners.

Technical Writers:

This group of professionals, engage in creating the "How-To" literature for any product (hardware, software, or any device that operates in a specific manner.) Though as a technical writer you write crisp directions for your users, you can make their content even more relevant, efficient, and easy to understand/apply, if you can apply instructional design.

So, this is how instructional design finds application in the professions outlined about.

Another related question is – "What are the skills that you need to have, if you want to gain the most from the knowledge of instructional design?"
My next post will answer this question. You might want to return in a few days.

Business Brokers Cannot Sell Any Business

Posted: 06 Feb 2010 09:00 PM PST

A business broker will only take on a listing if they feel it has a reasonably strong chance of selling. A professional intermediary may turn down up to five business listings for every one they decide to take on as a client.

How to File Your Federal and State Taxes For Free

Posted: 06 Feb 2010 09:00 PM PST

Each year all Americans who worked a job are required to file their taxes. Filing taxes for many people is time consuming and confusing. While there are many professional organizations that are willing to file someone's taxes for them, they often charge accounting fees of a few hundred dollars or more. Luckily there are various easy ways to file your taxes for free. ..

Buyers: Know the Difference Between REO and Foreclosure

Posted: 06 Feb 2010 09:00 PM PST

REO is an acronym that stands for real estate owned, and it is a property that is classified as being owned by a bank, mortgage, or other type of lender. A foreclosure, on the other hand, is the professional and legal proceeding in which the lender, bank or any other lien holder gets a court order to terminate the mortgagor's equitable right of redemption.

Does Writing for People Work for SEO?

Posted: 09 Feb 2010 08:16 AM PST

image of Simple SEO Copywriting

Hang around web writing circles for any length of time, and the inevitable "write for search engines or write for people" debate comes up. It's a bit strange, really.

Last time I checked, it's people who use search engines, not some other life form. So you're always writing for people.

Obviously, the debate stems from the fact that search engines are powered by computer algorithms. But as search engines have gotten smarter, writing that pleases people and satisfies spiders is not that far apart, if at all.

Let's look at four factors that work well for SEO and see how well they cater to the needs of people.

1. Compelling Content

As we saw in Does SEO Copywriting Still Matter?, link attraction is the biggest aspect of today's practice of search engine optimization. Google looks at the links pointing at your domain, and those pointing at particular pages, as votes of legitimacy. Taking it a step further, Google also takes into account the words people use when linking to you (anchor text) as a trusted signal of keyword relevance.

While it's still possible to buy links (just don't get caught), there's no way to "trick" someone into linking to you. People link because there's something in it for them in some way, and because something about your content compels them to do it. The smartest SEOs create content that's remarkable because it's valuable, controversial, funny, opinionated, engaging, enlightened, etc.

Because Google has tons of information thanks to AdWords, AdSense, Analytics, Google Reader, Tool Bar and Website Optimizer, some see search algorithms moving away from links and more to site usage data (how people actually interact with content). Whether that's the case or not, content that people find compelling will continue to constitute the biggest factor in search engine optimization.

Good for SEO? – Check
Good for People? – Check

2. Content landing pages

One smart strategy for content marketing and anyone building an authority site is to create valuable content resources related to the most important topics you discuss. I call this cornerstone content, because it's the fundamental information your site is built on.

An example of this on Copyblogger is Copywriting 101. You'll notice that instead of a single post, I did a 10-part tutorial series and aggregated it on what's known as a content landing page that's clearly focused on the keyword "copywriting."

This is a strong SEO strategy because I'm aggregating a bunch of content on one search optimized page. This directs the majority of links to that page instead of the individual parts, allows for easy cross-linking in future content, and prompts social bookmarking and sharing due to the scope of the resource.

But the real reason it works is because it's people friendly. Given the usual scattered backward chronological nature of a blog, the page is highly usable and useful as a resource for people new to copywriting.

Good for SEO? – Check
Good for People? – Check

3. Speaking the language of the audience

Whether Google ever moves to usage data over links remains to be seen. But one song remains the same – Google must match up what a page is about with what people are searching for. Which means your words must match up with the way the people you hope to reach most like to talk about it.

Keyword research and the use of keyword phrases within content is the one area where some web writers and bloggers seem to push back, and I've never understood it. Anyone who's not interested in understanding and mirroring the language used by their intended audience is simply not interested in being an effective communicator, search engine traffic or not.

As I've said, telling search engines that what you're talking about is the same as what people are looking for is what SEO really is. But even if search engines didn't deliver traffic at all, the ability to know and mirror the language of the audience is an amazing gift we've been given thanks to search data. Why not use it when people respond well to it?

Good for SEO? – Check
Good for People? – Check

4. Enhanced readability

What? Good SEO makes content more readable? Surely I've lost it on this one.

It's true. When you implement the whole range of SEO best practices, you rank well with exceptionally reader-friendly content (and that's why it got links in the first place). Keyword stuffing is not what Google wants. And neither do people.

Let me make a confession. I used this new WordPress search optimization service to evaluate the content landing pages that matter most to me, and I was shocked by what I discovered.

I had gone a tad overboard with my keyword frequency. Not by much, but a tad. That's right, Mister "write-for-people-first" had not been getting it completely right.

I'm not embarrassed to admit that mistake if it helps you. So there.

When you approach SEO copywriting in a logical, informed fashion, your content isn't keyword stuffed. It's natural, and compelling, and artful.

Good for SEO? – Check
Good for People? – Check

What's that?

You want to know more about that WordPress SEO service I used?

Apparently, I can't slip anything by you.

Well, I'll be talking about that new service very soon. Of course, Internet Marketing for Smart People subscribers will find out first, which is what we've always promised.

Stay tuned.

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and CEO of Unglued Media. Get more from Brian on Twitter.