ABC Article Directory Blog

Some would-be writers think they can dash off an article without bothering to learn the basic rules of grammar. But just as any craftsperson spends time honing his skills to make the perfect piece of craft, so must a writer work hard to present an article that will be a pleasure to read and not shame him for its sloppy grammar and punctuation. True, some errors are typos, but doesn’t that reflect a certain laziness on the author’s part? An article should be closely examined for typos before it is sent off or uploaded.

Don’t trust your spell checker. No automated spell-checker can alert you to every error. Whose and who’s, lose and loose, quiet and quite, its and it’s are all legitimate words, so there will be no red line under them. Spell-checkers are not clever enough yet to tell which one you meant to use. And if the error is not due to a typo, it means you need to keep a dictionary on hand to check anything you are uncertain of.

Remember that when a word ends in “ ‘s” it means there is a letter missing. “It’s” means “it is”. If you are unsure which one you should be using, try saying the sentence both ways.

For instance…

“ It’s a good day today/ It is a good day today”. The latter example makes perfect sense, so it is okay to use “it’s”.

But….

“Here is a rabbit. Its burrow is over there.”

Does, “It is burrow is over there”, make sense? No.

Of course if you said, “The rabbit’s burrow is over there,” then the apostrophe denotes possession (and only one rabbit), not a missing letter. Continue reading »

It’s been a pretty busy couple of weeks here at the ABC Article Directory. If any of you have been following us closely, you would definitely have noticed that we were offline for 3 days in the first week of February. We experienced technical difficulties in the form of configuration inadequacies that were outstripping the ability of our server to process queries.

We acted quickly to secure a brand new dedicated server with sufficient disk and memory upgrades  to handle the heavy load that accompanies a high traffic website with a significant volume of content. Web development efforts that were previously undertaken to upgrade  our current scripting and sql optimization were unfortunately found wanting. Thanks to efforts from various individuals, especially Mike Mikosic, of Articlecell.com, my new Australian mate, who went above and beyond to help with the outdated Article Dashboard script.

Apparently Mike and I, as the Editor,  had the good fortune/misfortune to have hired the same web developer to work on our sites. although some things that were tweaked did not prove to be sufficient for our needs. He had a much more functional set of  working files that stabilized the server load, streamlined the transfer/storage of data  and generally made the site work like it should. Right now, the ABC Article Directory is pumping out page requests at a significantly high rate of speed. Continue reading »

I give up trying to come to grips with the fact that there are actually people out there that give any kind of relevancy to Alexa pagerank. It is my understanding that it represents a ‘measuring stick’ as to the popularity of any particular website. Unfortunately, it is based on the hit and miss visits from people that happen to have the Alexa toolbar installed on their browser (not all browsers are compatible with Alexa toolbar).

I know for a fact that it does not fairly represent traffic flowing into a website. I happen to use Seoquake’s Firefox plugin to monitor statistics for various websites of interest to me and am baffled by the sheer stupidity of some of the numbers I see. I know for an absolute fact that another article directory(no names needed) has 25% of the traffic the abcarticledirectory has and has a superior Alexa pagerank….go figure that one out.

This was not the first time I made a comment about Alexa’s page ranking system but it will be my last. I am done with it for good. I’ll stick with Google’s pr even if it is not the best. It at least gives some idea of a site’s popularity based on some actual measurable statistics….not on whether or not you have a Google toobar installed on your browser.

by Silvia Pencak

I’m a Twitter enthusiast. I use it on a daily basis to both, connect with other like-minded people out there and promote my business to those who might benefit from working with me. Even though I use other social media sites as well, I still find Twitter the most powerful tool out there for those who market to businesses.

If you use Twitter daily like me, you might as well start using some of the smart tools and resources to get the most out of your time.

1. Hashtags
Hashtags or “#” help group tweets within the same topic. They’re great if you’re looking to promote your event or connect with audience interested in specific theme. For example, you can use hashtag #quote when posting a quote and quote lovers will find it way easier. As a brand strategist I like to use hashtags like #brand, #branding, #strategy, #MagneticBrand etc. You can also use hashtags mentioning brands #coke, #starbucks; places #Hilton, #Toronto; hobbies #swimming #blog; events, or anything else. You can search for a specific hashtag to connect with people with similar interests to yours.

2. Tweet Chat
Tweet chat is a great way to find other people who talk about topics that interest you and build lasting relationships. There are dozens of tweet chats running almost simultaneously. Simply find your favorite, ask about the schedule and enjoy. Some of my favorite: #leadfromwithin, #bizforum, #smallbizchat. Share your favorite tweet chat in the comment section below.

3. @ (“AT”) Messages
Connect with others out there by sending them a public tweet. Compliment them for something they recently did, whether it’s a blog post, book or event; share your insight or feedback, answer their question or recommend a great resource. AT messages are your ticket to getting noticed on this crowded network and building relationships that make a difference in your business.

4. Retweets (RT)
This is yet another great tool to help you both, share great content and gain attention of people you’d like to connect with. With over 20K twitter followers it’s very hard (and almost impossible) for me to stay in touch with everyone personally, but trust me, when people retweet my stuff, they get my attention. I usually check their profiles, mention them in my own tweets, send them a quick helpful tip or idea, or even add them to one of my lists. I believe many out there do it similarly. Remember, reaching out on social media helps you get noticed much faster. Continue reading »

I’m too young for World War II, too white and well off to join the native street life, and I’ve never stepped on the back of an Iditarod dog sled, either coming or going. Never lived in a native village in the bush of Alaska or walked ninety miles through the wilderness.

But I know about them.

When my novel required me to be able to present the difficulties, dangers, and human frustrations of the protagonist who did know these things I had to find out what he went through and how he felt and thought and acted in these circumstances.

Books, and doing a portion of each of these, got me through.

I’ve never hunted bear, but I have hunted for sixty years, so hunting the bear was just one step from where I had been. I have seen hundreds of bears while hunting in Alaska, black and brown, but never had the desire to shoot one. You won’t talk to many Alaska bear hunters before you hear about a grizzly that caught and killed a black bear and ate it right there. They also kill and eat smaller brown bears. The grizzly bear is at the top of the food chain until you introduce mankind with a .300 Winchester rifle.

Then, when my protagonist decided to walk ninety miles on a trail along the Chandalar River from Arctic Village to Venetie I fell back on two hikes I have made. One was around and around a municipal track for twenty-four hours for the Walk for Life where I walked fifty-one miles. Another was to hike Resurrection Pass Trail which is either thirty-eight or forty-two miles, depending on which sign you believe, on the longest day of the year-straight through-without camping-in twenty hours. The blisters, dehydration, exhaustion, sour taste of food and water, dullness, and the experience of night travel all come to play in those. Now I’ll admit, forty-two miles isn’t ninety, and one day isn’t four or five days, but you can extrapolate from that and get to the thoughts, feelings, and conditions of someone who did it.

The book shelves in my library/den contain about eighty books on WWII, including Time/Life photo books which depict the photographer’s detail of actions in dreary weather, snow cover, and the weariness of the soldiers. I read six books about the Battle of the Bulge, the Golden Lions Division, and the end of the war in Europe. I also contacted a researcher who sent me details of the POW camps on the Rhine River, and the kind of trees (poplars and willows) that would have been blooming on May 7th, 1945 at the end of the war in Europe.

About fifteen years before I wrote the book I was a passenger in a small plane that landed at Arctic Village. The Chandalar River, the village setting, and the remoteness stayed in my mind after we dropped off a young man who was to meet one of his school teachers and kayak down the river.

There is a giant file cabinet in a writer’s mind that holds things like the smell of the dust on the road into town, the hordes of mosquitoes, the easy laughter and humor of the resident natives, the one store and the squeak of the screen door spring. These mental scenes were added to, cut up, and reassembled into the village life of my protagonist.

Most of the questions from readers come from the native street life and the Iditarod. Did I participate in each of these? No. I didn’t and don’t want to either. But I did watch and follow their actions from my car and on foot. Continue reading »

If you want to work online, you’ve probably run into many philosophies about niche marketing. A niche is a narrowly focused, highly defined subject. When you write for a niche, your writing can be very deep, but it cannot be broad. For instance, sports is not a niche. Tennis is not even a niche. But if you wanted to write about learning to play tennis after the age 50, you have a niche. Another great niche might be how to teach your young child how to play great tennis.

Many writers have the wrong idea about niches. As writers, we tend to go for the scoop. We seek the unusual story and the odd angle no one has ever used before. We writers cross article ideas off the list as soon as we see other people writing about them.

After all, in the ink-on-paper world, the fastest way to get a rejection is to propose an article on a subject that a competitive publication recently wrote about. If you’re writing for a magazine or newspaper, a very unusual, one-of-a-kind story can be an easy sale.

Internet marketing does not work like that.

When you write for online sources, your work can be deep, but it has to be narrow. The Internet has become the medium for specialists. It’s the best place to get information on how to grow roses in the tropics or make your own yogurt or learn about the symptoms of Brugada’s disease.

The risk in focusing so sharply on a specific subject is that it is much easier to miss the mark than to hit it.

A good writer is looking for readers and a good online writer is looking for customers. So online writers need to become marketers in terms of finding their niches.

Most online marketers research niches to find traffic before they embark on projects. The idea is that you don’t want to venture into a niche where there isn’t already at least some conversation and activity going on.

That’s right, online marketers want to find competition in their niches of choice, because competition means there is already interest, buzz, and business in that sector. Continue reading »

Just thought I’d add a little note to tell all the great members of the ABC Article Directory that I’m extremely proud of their contributions in making this article directory such a success.

Our traffic numbers continue to rise and the good news is that it is largely organic. Google, Yahoo and Bing still make up a huge portion of our traffic and our articles are continually being indexed and added to these search engines immediately after acceptance.

Spam authors and spam articles continue to be a problem but that is the nature of the beast. I weed these out as best I can in order to salvage the integrity of the content that is available for visitors to view.

Alexa page rank is still a mystery to me as our numbers get lower as our traffic increases. I suspect that their ranking system is a mystery to other website owners as well.

To all the great authors making a concerted effort to submit high quality articles to this directory…a sincere Thank You.

To all the great people that visit our site on a regular basis for their content needs….Thank You.

To all the great people that visit us occasionally….Thank You and come back.

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Sincerely,
Emmanuel DeFreitas
Editor
http://www.abcarticledirectory.com

In this  post I try and show, once again, that you can easily add floating social media buttons to your website without any special  programming skills whatsoever. Believe me….if I can do it, anybody can do it. The full article can be seen at http://www.abcarticledirectory.com/Article/The-Vertical-Floating-Social-Buttons-Bar-For-Websites/1369991

Remember…this is for websites…not blogs.

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I had been looking to get this social buttons script for a while and was fortunate enough to come across something that I could fiddle with and adapt to my abcarticledirectory.com script. I first saw this vertical floating collection of social media share buttons on Mashable.com and immediately said to myself “I gotta have this a.s.a.p”. Continue reading »

One of the greatest obstacles many writers face when attempting to start a new project is how to format the article. I know I used to spend a great deal of my preparation and brainstorming time trying to sort out the answer to that very question. Similarly many of the writers that I work with as a writing instructor and consultant were struggling with the same issue. If you are reading this article then probably you have as well.

Writing a short article can be even more challenging because you need to stay focused and organized, however writing a short article really can be very easy if you work with a simple structure. In fact it only involves three steps:

Step One: Write a thesis statement

I know you just had an ugly flashback to freshman composition class and I apologize for springing it on you like that, but really your English teacher did know what he or she was talking about when they insisted you have a thesis sentence for your essays. A thesis is key to all successful essays and articles because it is the heart of your paper. It is simply the main point you are trying to make with your article. As the central or controlling idea, your thesis statement holds the article together. Your thesis statement is a promise to your reader””I am going to say this”. If you do not have a strong thesis you run the risk of confusing your reader or even losing the reader entirely. Continue reading »

Everyone is an expert at something.  Whatever product or service you provide in your business is your area of expertise.  Writing articles about what you are an expert at and distributing those articles online through various article submission directories is a valuable marketing strategy called Article Marketing.

How will writing and submitting articles help your business?

Here’s how it works.  You will:

Gain more exposure - When you write an article and submit it to various article directories it will be posted online for anyone to read.  Surfers find your articles when they type related keywords into search engines to find what they’re looking for.

Generate more traffic to your site - You will create a ‘resource box’ that is included at the end of each article you submit.  The resource box is a short bio about you, the author, with a link to your website.  When someone reads your article and wants to find out more about you, they will click thru the article resource box at the end of your article & will be taken to your website.

Build trust - When you provide value to the reader by sharing information on your expertise through your articles, you gain their confidence in you, your products and services.

Grow your list - Make sure you have a ‘call to action’ in your resource box and a sign up form on your site to capture names and email addresses of those who visit.  Offer a free report or a subscription to a newsletter that visitors can sign up for.

Boost business - When you build your market reach, name recognition and credibility, an increase in business is sure to follow.

Remember, no sales pitches.  The directories are looking for content-rich articles of about 400-750 words.  The only place you can promote yourself is within the resource box.

But what do you write about? Continue reading »