Self-typing AI typewriter feels like real magic (header from the original post)
As experiments with artificial intelligence go, making a magical typewriter that collaborates on fairy tales probably wouldn’t be your first idea. That’s just what Mercedes-Benz have made, however, as part of a demonstration of the power of AI. The result is both very “Harry Potter” and very cool.
It’s the handiwork of a team at the Mercedes-Benz Research and Development Center of North America, in Sunnyvale California. Usually, the engineers and programmers there are working on new infotainment designs, smarter dashboards which can predict where you might want to go and how hot you want the cabin to be, and integration with things like Google Home and Apple Watch.
To put a new artificial intelligence through its paces, though, they turned to a more entertaining concept. While this might look like an old-fashioned typewriter, and indeed operates as one, it also has a mind of its own.
They taught it very little to start with, basically that it should build up a text character by character. Then they fed it with a stack of old Brothers Grimm fairytales. The Ai doesn’t really know it’s writing a story, but it does know to take a prompt typed from a human and then interact with the story.
In practice, it means you type a few sentences and then pause, only to have the typewriter itself pick up the thread and add its own twist to the tale. Nothing is pre-programmed, with the artificial intelligence instead analyzing what its human co-author has written and attempting to come up with something that fits thematically.
As for the eye-catching typewriter design, while the Mercedes team could’ve had the whole thing working on a laptop display, the feeling was that this fit better with the gothic atmosphere of classically creepy fairy tales. The keys themselves are linked by cables to individual actuators, which pull them down to type. The engineers conceded that an electric typewriter mechanism would’ve been a whole lot easier to work with – you have to clear the occasional jam, just like in the old days – but then you wouldn’t have quite the same charm.
The stories themselves aren’t going to win any book awards for great literature, but the AI does a surprisingly good job of picking out characters, items, and topics introduced by human authors and taking those forward as it develops the tale. Fed with a somewhat tongue-in-cheek range of characters including a bear and an Uber, it managed to cling to its fairytale theme.
Of course, Mercedes isn’t planning to get into the ebook business. The automaker’s real goal is using artificial intelligence’s like these to build self-driving cars that can monitor the road around it for other traffic, pedestrians, and potential obstacles, and adapt in real-time rather than needing programming for every situation. Being able to react to unpredictable human drivers and pedestrians, not to mention changeable weather conditions, would give an autonomous vehicle an edge that even years of traditional engineering couldn’t achieve.
** This post first appeared on Slashgear.com on December 12, 2016 and written by Chris Davies. All images and the video are from the original post.
Whether you blog to share your experiences or to promote your business, blogging is the best way to connect with the outer world.
But blogging is definitely much more than writing.The work does not end when you hit publish. You should be able to attract your readers time and time again to your site, and keep them engaged.
Are you ever worried about maintaining an engaged blog audience?
It all starts with detailed research and using the right blogging tools.
Here is the deal: Tools alone won’t solve your problems, but they will help you get things done more efficiently.
With that being said, I have compiled a list of 21 free blogging tools that you can start using today. These tools are a great way to improve your performance as a blogger, in terms of workflow, writing quality and visuals.
A perfect topic can make or break your content workflow
It doesn’t matter how great you are at writing, every now and then you will fall into a blogger’s pit AKA blogger’s block.
According to Allee Creative, producing enough content and content that engages, are the two most difficult struggles that over 50% of B2B marketers face.
Creating enough content is proportional to blog topic ideas. If you can’t find topics to write about, you can’t fill up the content calendar.
These are the tools that will you help find blog topics every day.
Answer the Public is one of the coolest search query tools I have used in a while. This handy little tool fetches and maps suggestions based on visualization after you type in a keyword.
It breaks down keyword listings to three different parts:
Question: what, who, when, why?
Preposition: for, like, with
Alphabetical: keyword + a, keyword + b
With this tool, you can also get a ton of LSI keywords that you can easily sprinkle throughout your post.
What if you could find a topic that you know has the potential to go viral? That’s what BuzzSumo is all about.
It gives a list of posts that have got maximum amount of shares in a given period. This way you know the potential of the topic.
It’s easy to use interface is one of its many benefits that makes it one of my favorite tools. Not only does it hook you up with great data, it binds you to topical relevance. So, you don’t go off topic when searching for ideas.
Just looking at the above topics you can easily tell that list posts are the ones that get the most social love.
Meet Google’s most awesome and popular keyword tool, Keyword Planner. And Yeah, it’s totally free of cost.
In order to use this incredibly powerful keyword research tool, first of all you need to get an AdWords account. And then, you can start the journey to find the right keywords for your business.
Google Keyword Planner might not give you the exact keyword suggestions, but it surely gives you a pretty good number of variations to your keywords, followed by average monthly searches, level of competition (high, medium, or low), average cost per click, and much more.
Effective tip: You can find more blogging ideas by putting your competitor’s url into keyword planner’s landing page search box.
How can I leave out one of the most versatile tools, Google Trends?
Google Trends displays a list of the top hot searches and charts of the day. You can also see searches by category.
Like other keyword research tools, Google Trends does not give you the actual keyword search number. But, it does not mean that it is completely useless. You need to be smart here and use this tool with the Keyword Planner tool to get the best results.
Rule content marketing by writing captivating headlines
Headlines are the bread and butter of great content. A great headline not only grabs a reader’s attention, it’s the main source of increasing click through rate from organic traffic.
Impact blog title generator is a great tool for quickly coming up with blog ideas and titles. Just like any other headline generator, you need to type in your primary keyword. It will then pull out hundreds of enticing title options that you can use.
Hit the heart button if you like any given titles. It will then be transferred to a notebook which you can email later.
One of the creative and fun ways of dealing with writer’s block in this tool is the writer’s block option. Click it and start doodling.
If you are a WordPress blogger, you will absolutely love this simple but highly effective tool. Yes, it comes with a WP plugin, but the web version is equally as useful.
You can simply type in your keyword and get a bunch of blog ideas (it has its own pre-decided keyword categories).
Then, it pulls out a list of easy to use headlines. You can also modify it so that it looks more convincing.
To get more blog ideas, you have to put in your email. And, it will send the list directly to your inbox.
This is not a fancy tool with flashy visuals. However, as the name suggests it gets the job done. As a marketer, we need a headline that entices users to click.
Basically it pulls in headlines that can be a little buzzfeed-esque and targets click bait. If you are a blogger in an entertainment niche, you will fall in love with this tool. Some suggestions might be really insane but it gets the job done.
Although it’s not as colorful as the other tools in the market, it is easy to use and works perfectly. All you have to do is plug in the headline and choose an appropriate category. You will receive an EMV score that defines the emotional credibility of your headline.
37.50% may look bad as a number. But if you look closely, anything above 50% is considered the best. So, if you have anything within that range, you are doing great.
Add a touch of image beauty to make your blog attractive
Photos play an important role in making your blog visually stunning. If you have photography talent along with your writing skill, then trust me, you don’t need anything else.
The right post with the right photo is what audiences are looking for. But, in many cases, a blogger ignores the fact that images are an important component to user engagement and messes up with cheap stock images.
Finding free high quality images that perfectly match your blog content can be a challenging and daunting task. To help you with your free stock photo hunt, Pixabay offers millions of high quality images free.
Pixabay is a resource created with no copyright restrictions. You can use the images for whatever purposes you want, even for commercial purposes too.
A great thing about Pixabay is that there is no registration required. You can simply jump in, find photos and begin to use them.
Are you fed up with visiting websites in search of free stock photos? Well, here’s a solution for your problem.
Death to the Stock Photo sends you free high resolution photos of different categories to your email every month. All you need to do is submit an email address where you want to receive those images. Amazing, right?
Now, you can make your blog posts livelier and more visually appealing with the high quality resolution images that you receive from Death to the Stock Photo.
One of the best ways to grab images is through screenshots. And, one of the best tools in the market to do that is Evernote. It not only gives you sleek and clean graphics, it organizes your images in a proper format.
First go to evernote and sign up for a free account. Then, download it’s free chrome plugin. Now, whenever you need to take a screenshot, click the little elephant icon in the top right hand corner. You can select the part and save it. It automatically gets saved in your evernote account.
Are you looking for a photo editing tool which can spruce up your images and make your blog look attractive? PicMonkey is the best tool to check out.
You can use this fantastic photo editing tool without downloading it to your computer.
With its awesome photo edit, touch up, design and collage features, you have got everything that you need to make your ideas come to life.
PicMonkey also publishes awesome guides to help you create your own visually attractive images. So, if you are an amateur designer and don’t have good experience with editing tools, then PicMonkey is what you need to have.
Canva is one of the most used photo editing tools in the world. From its drag and drop feature, the professional layouts and amazing design graphics, Canva has everything that you need for creating your own stunning images.
Whether you are an experienced designer or just a beginner, Canva makes image creation super easy and fun.
With millions of images, hundreds of fonts, numbers of free icons and shapes, and amazing photo filters; Canva is without a doubt the most loved photo editing tool online.
Make writing faster and easier
Anyone can write a blog, but only an experienced and skilled blogger can write an extraordinary piece of content that offers valuable insights and attracts user engagement.
There are millions of amazing blog posts uploaded every second, which grab people’s attention and compel them to share on social media channels. If you want your content to receive such attention from readers, then you need to write amazing and original content.
Do you have a favorite blogging tool that helps you with this?
There are tons of writing tools available online and choosing the right one definitely takes lots of your time and effort. Here are a few tools that can help you with easy and fast writing.
Many bloggers use their blogging platform to write and edit their content. But, are you aware of the blog editing and posting features of Google Docs?
Yes, you heard me correctly. Google Docs can be used as a blog editor and you can post your blog entries directly from it.
Google Docs is my favorite blog editor. It allows you to collaborate with others and its amazing spelling and grammar checking tools are worth trying. Being a product of Google itself, you can directly research your queries from it.
Readable is one of the most interesting free blogging tools, which quickly analyzes your text for readability. This awesome tool takes your text and analyzes it by giving it a score for the most used readability indicators. So, your text is easier to understand.
It gives you flexible options to carry out a test; test by url, test by directly entering your text, and test by entering a referral link.
Is your content free from grammatical errors? Readers really hate to read content with grammatical errors.
Posts with many grammar errors can make a reader lose interest in reading further. They might not even bother reading your future blog posts. So, make sure to perform grammar checks before publishing your blog.
Grammarly is one of the most used online grammar checkers. It checks for spelling, sentence structure, style, punctuation, alternatives, etc. All you need to do is copy your content and paste it into Grammarly’s online grammar checker.
You can add this tool to your chrome browser and easily use it whenever you need to.
Get more engagement on social media
You just published a post, and you immediately share it to your social accounts. What you see after a few days rattles you.
Only a couple of people have engaged with your post. Sounds familiar?
One of the many reasons why you aren’t seeing any engagement on social media is because you are not doing it right.
For example, your preferred audience may be in a different time zone than yours. The frequency and timing of your post depends completely on the industry and brands.
You can take something from what the big brands do. Every brand has a different set of times to post on Facebook, Twitter or share it on other social accounts. Always check the analytics of your social account to get a better grip of your audience.
After you know the best time, you can schedule your post with these tools and save time.
17. Buffer
Buffer has to be one of the most efficient social media management tools I have ever used. Even though Hootsuite has more supported networks, and is bigger than Buffer, I feel Buffer is easier to use.
Just like any content scheduling tool, you can easily integrate your social media accounts and start scheduling your posts. It also gives you a brief analysis that lets you A/B test your headline versions.
Pinterest can been a great source of traffic for many bloggers. Unfortunately, if you aren’t using the paid version, it’s not possible to schedule Pinterest pins from Buffer.
Out comes Ahalogy to solve this problem. You can easily schedule all your pins to your personal and community boards.
However, the catch is you have to get accepted by Ahalogy to start using it.
Once you get accepted, you have to place a code to track your results. If this is something you don’t want to do, you can download the Ahalogy plugin and it automatically pushes your content to your Pinterest account.
Click to tweet are tweetable quotes that are used widely on numerous blogs. What it basically does is offer more traffic from twitter and gives an easy one click path for the user to share your content.
Working with click to tweet is really simple. All you need to do is sign up for a free account. On your dashboard, you can type in the message you would like to tweet. Then, it generates a new line of code. Copy and paste it into the post that you want to display it. You can also see the engagement of your audience and click through rate of that simple tweet button.
Improve your productivity
The tough part after starting a blog is maintaining its quality. If you are a professional blog writer, then you must know how hard it is to write a quality blog with valuable insights at a given time.
Do you want to write better and faster?
There’s a number of free blogging tools that will not only make your writing easier but also help with your time management problem. Check out the time tracking tools listed below which can help you write faster.
Egg Timer is a simple countdown timer, where you can enter the time that you want to work.
As a writer, you must know how easily time goes by once you start writing. You have no idea how much time you are giving to researching your work, editing or writing. With this free time tracking tool, you can find out how productive you are and manage time for each individual task.
To start, set the time for your task, hit the “Go” button to start time tracking. When the time’s up, you will see a pop-up appearing on the screen with the timer sound.
Toggle is a fun time tracking tool which can help boost your productivity.
This one-click time tracking tool allows you to add tasks, and after completing your work, check the dashboard to know how long you spent on each task.
If you are a writer who spends a lot of your time on research and writing, and are looking for a tool that can help you manage your time, Toogle is definitely worth a try.
Track visitors on your site
A thing that separates a good blogger from others is the way he or she keeps monitoring and tracking the web traffic they receive.
Yes, it is true that anyone can write, but not everyone is capable of writing a high quality user engaging blog. The problem seen in most startup bloggers is that they just keep writing blindly. They have no idea whether their blog is getting exposure or not.
To be a good blogger and improve your writing, you should know what is working, and what isn’t, so that you can make improvements.
With so many web traffic analyzer tools available online, you can easily track visitors and traffic to your blog.
Google Analytics (GA) is the most popular and most used visitor tracking tool. And yes, it is totally free of cost.
This amazing tool not only gives accurate statistics on traffic, but it also tracks almost everything a cookie can store on each unique visitor. You can also see the live traffic status of your blog through GA.
It provides a variety of features like monitoring visitor’s behavior, source of incoming traffic, social media buttons, number of visitors each day, unique visitors, returning visitors, most visited pages, and much more.
Sitemeter is another great analytics program which I use after Google Analytics. It comes in two versions: Free and Paid. You can simply use the free version as it offers almost all the tools a webmaster needs.
You can keep track of your visitors’ referral information and at the same time also find how many people are online on your blog.
Sitemeter allows you to see some of the most important information regarding your latest referring URLs, live visitors, and visitors from the last 1 hr, day and a week.
Wrapping up
Content creation should be the top priority of any blogger. I wish I could tell you that tools alone will make you a better writer, but that’s not true at all.
In fact, there are other key elements and methodologies that you need to implement to produce quality content. However, tools offer additional support and help you get things done more efficiently.
I hope these 23 free blogging tools can help you get through some tough times like they did for me.
Most college and university students who use closed captions and transcripts on video and multimedia find them helpful as a learning tool, despite them not regularly being made available, according to new research from Oregon State University.
One of the first surveys of its type, of 2,124 students across 15 public and private universities nationwide, found that 98.6 percent of students say captions are helpful, with 75 percent of them noting that they use captions as a learning aid in face-to-face and online classrooms. For video transcripts, students referenced the tool as a learning aid 85 percent of the time.
More than half of students surveyed said captions help by improving comprehension. The most common reasons students use captions are to help them focus, retain information and overcome the poor audio quality of the videos, while transcripts are often used as study guides and to find and retain information.
The national study, conducted by the Oregon State University Ecampus Research Unit in collaboration with 3Play Media, also shows that among the students surveyed, only 13 percent had registered with an office of disability services and less than 12 percent require academic accommodations. Of all respondents, 19 percent cited having difficulty with hearing and 37 percent have difficulty with vision.
"Many people associate the use of closed captions and transcripts only with disability accommodation, and that can mean they are not made widely available," said Katie Linder, director of the Oregon State University Ecampus Research Unit and author of the study. "One hope for this study was to help educate university administrators about how a range of students are using these tools, and that making them more available could help more learners."
According to Linder, closed captions and transcripts are now a legal obligation for universities that receive federal funding when they create videos for courses and for institutional purposes, to ensure that students with disabilities have equal access. "Despite this, many institutions do not understand the legal obligation, or they only associate these tools with disability accommodation and do not consider how they could be helpful to all students," Linder said.
The study found that almost 100 percent of survey respondents had at least one course, either face-to-face or online, that included some video content. However, more than one-quarter of respondents were unsure about the availability of closed captions and almost one in five were not sure about the availability of transcripts of the videos in their courses.
"Not only is captioning often necessary for accessibility compliance, but, as the study shows, 75 percent of students use captions as a learning aid to improve their focus, retention, engagement, and comprehension when watching videos for class," said Lily Bond, director of marketing at 3Play Media, a company that provides closed captioning, transcription and subtitling solutions.
"As the use of video in higher education becomes more commonplace, making captions and transcripts more widely available should be a priority for institutions."
The survey was voluntary, conducted online and contained 46 questions. All study participants were college and university undergraduate and graduate students, mainly undergraduate, over the age of 18, and the majority of them came from the public, four-year institutions.
"In many ways, this study is just scratching the surface of what we know about how students use and perceive closed captions and transcripts in the college and university classroom," Linder said. "Additional research related to student use and perceptions of closed captions and transcripts is welcomed and encouraged."
A summary of the findings is available online at http://bit.ly/2eKmswJ, as well as a downloadable version of the full report.
* This report first appeared on http://phys.org/news on the 1st November 2016. ** Header image designed by Virtuadmin
Traditional hiring processes take far too long when you need someone immediately who can take the load off your shoulders. Ideally, you want someone who can materialize, quickly get up to speed on what’s happening, handle the workload, and disappear until needed again.
This post originally appeared on Business 2 Community 13th October 2016, written by Jessica Vionas
After the webinar is done, I usually heave a huge sigh of relief (especially if there were no technical difficulties!). However, you just had a whole bunch of people engage with you for an hour—now is not the time to drop the ball!
Recording
Recording your webinar is super important for a variety of reasons, including:
Webinar registrants expect that a recording will be available after the event. If a meeting comes up or attendees must leave early, they expect to be able to catch the recording later.
After attending the live event, webinar attendees may want to recommend watching the recording to a colleague.
Recordings allow the marketer to get a transcription made.
This transcription helps in creating other pieces of content from the information in the webinar.
A transcription should also be uploaded to your website for SEO purposes.
A transcription also allows an option for hearing-impaired audience members to access to the content.
Recordings are another piece of gated content that can be offered on your website in perpetuity to convert new visitors into leads.
You can send a recording to potential speakers so they can see what your webinars are like and what previous presenters have covered.
New customers may find past webinars helpful in educating themselves on a particular topic.
Because of these reasons, the best practice is to always have one main recording mechanism as well as a backup in case the first fails. (I have had my laptop crash in the middle of recording a live webinar. It happens.) Many webinar software options now have a recording feature, so you can rely on that functionality as one method.
Sidebar: How do you put the recording on your website?
One of the methods I used for delivered the recording was to upload the video to YouTube as an unlisted video and then embed it on our website’s thank you page (this can also work with Wistia, Vimeo, or any other video hosting site). Another option would be to give visitors the ability to download the video file directly to their computers by uploading the raw MP4 or WAV file. You may decide to do both.
For the backup, have a non-presenting or participating employee record as an attendee using software such as Camtasia. Make sure this recorder turns off all notifications including email and chat, turns off all screen savers (and power save mode for laptops); turns off the microphone, and doesn’t use the computer at all during the webinar. This will result in the cleanest recording possible.
If you are able, test both recording mechanisms during one of your dry runs to make sure the quality and technology are working properly.
Once the webinar is over, review both recordings and select the one that is better. (Usually one will have superior sound compared with the other.) If any major faux pas occurred during the webinar (such as software crashing during a product demo or a question that didn’t make sense), they can be edited out, as can any dead space at the beginning or end.
Some companies choose to do a second session of the webinar for recording purposes only. This may lead to a more polished presentation because the speaker has already given the content once. Depending on how the live event goes, this may or may not be necessary. Another option is to replace a certain section of the webinar that didn’t go well and not the whole thing. When choosing this method, just be aware that sound differences will make this splice noticeable to the listeners, so choose wisely.
Post-Event Activities
If the speaker was external, call immediately after the webinar is over and thank him or her for presenting. (You may want to also send a gift, depending on if you agreed to an honorarium.)
Sending the registration and attendee spreadsheets to your sales team.
Sending any unanswered questions to the speaker and asking to respond to you with the answers so that you can get back to the attendees (unless the presenter doesn’t mind responding to the attendees directly, but usually, I have found that speakers prefer someone else handle it).
Editing and uploading the recording of the webinar to whichever hosting service you’ll be using.
Sending the recording to a transcription service and then uploading the finished transcript to your website.
Updating your webinar registration page for the recording, or archiving the registration page and creating a new landing page for the recording.
Responding to any people who emailed you asking for access to the recording and/or slides.
Uploading the slides to SlideShare.
Going back to any blog posts you wrote about the upcoming webinar and either editing them to include the link to the recording or posting a comment with the link.
Updating the website announcements with revised wording to view the recording instead of registering for the event. Don’t forget to add the recording to your resources page on your website.
Creating CTAs for use at the end of blog posts on the topic.
Follow-Up
Follow-up after the webinar is just as important as promoting the webinar before the event.
Most post-webinar campaigns will usually include sending an email to all the registrants with a link to the recording and slides. (Send a slightly different email to those who attended and to those who didn’t.) For customers, this may be all that is needed.
Prior to the webinar, you should have already determined what you want the next steps to be for leads who attended. If the topic was educational, one option is to direct attendees to download an e-book or visit a blog post that ties the subject matter to your company and product (consideration or decision stage content).
For leads who are new to your database, lead nurturing over the next couple of weeks can help solidify your company as a source of educational content with the eventual goal of helping them down the buyer’s journey.
Other Post-Event Considerations
Webinars take a lot of time and work. Don’t let this effort go to the wayside: Think about how you can use the webinar content in other ways. Perhaps the speaker would be interested in writing a post on the topic they just covered. Or, take the transcript and develop your own blog post from it (a one-hour webinar can easily be repurposed into three blog posts). Was there a section of the content that would lend itself to an infographic? How about a podcast with your internal expert breaking down the webinar play-by-play? Even the Q&A section can be reused.
Transcription is one of the largest growing industries, not just in the Medical Industry but in many others. Digital technology advancements enable pretty much anyone, from an academic requiring interview transcription for their dissertation, to Entrepreneurs and small businesses to utilize online transcription services.
Creating a transcript from recorded audio does require a special set of skills, however. Everything from listening to the audio and listening in detail to an understanding of the language; having excellent spelling and grammar skills is important. One of the most important skills, though, is typing, preferably touch typing.
Keep reading to learn more about why typing speed is so important in the world of transcription whether you do it full-time or part-time.
Accuracy means efficiency for your client
For anybody doing transcription from dictation or recorded audio, the job requires a fair amount of speed, accuracy, and effort to create an accurate transcript. To make any decent amount of money this is an essential element. Why? Because the average transcriptionist that types approximately 70-80 words per minute, will take, depending on the number of speakers and audio quality, roughly 4-5 hours to transcribe.
That means that the ability to type quickly and accurately will improve the amount of money that you make performing an online transcription service like Virtuadmin. Sending back an as accurate a transcript as possible means less time for them having to check and correct mistakes. That inevitably means saving time means saving money. Delivering an accurate transcript on time, or earlier, also then sets you apart from other service providers.
Audio Transcription and Dictation
Transcription services can typically not be just copying-typing down text from one piece of paper or screen to another. Some of the audio transcription transcriptionists do every single day means typing exactly what you hear.
Most transcription jobs, though, are not ones where you are sitting in the same room with the person dictating, you would then be audio typing as the person dictating would be instructing you exactly where to put the punctuation. If they are not, however, then you are indeed transcribing.
Transcriptionists work with audio where you upload the recordings and transcribe what is being said. A transcriptionist, freelance or employed directly by a specialized transcription company, could be typing anything from market research notes to day-to-day activity logs. This type of transcription is essential for busy professionals who need notes and thoughts in written form.
Conclusion
Anybody can require their audio or video to be transcribed into text. It could be for a one-off call/meeting, interview, the reasons are endless. Equally, the ability to record what you need transcribing, has, through the new technological age, the ability to just record your conversation on your mobile, tablet, and now wristwatches.
With so many choices in ways to produce audio recordings, digital online audio transcription services are growing in demand day by day.
However, although it may seem attractive to be able to work from home, working when you want, the money may not be fantastic, especially at the start. It may not make your fortune.
If you enjoy listening and typing, that’s a good start to working in the transcription field, just be prepared to start working for low pay in the beginning, and work your way up to what could be a good wage. Maintaining a regular constant typing speed and accuracy is important, that is what will, at the end of the day determine how much you earn for that audio hour you are charging for.
To improve blog writing skills, one of the things you need to know are powerful words that can evoke emotions that you want. Here are some of those words.
Are you trying to take your blog to the next level by improving your writing skills? This is a great idea! Good writing is the foundation of a great blog. If you don’t have that, all of the videos and infographics in the world cannot help you.
One way to increase the effectiveness of your writing is to use power words. These are words and phrases that grab the reader’s attention and evoke an emotional reaction or a desire to take some kind of action. Here are 100 power words that you can begin incorporating into your blog, and some notes on how and why they are effective.
Improve Your Blog Writing
Power Words that Encourage
These words are words that create a sense of encouragement. When readers see these words they feel courageous, ready to take on a difficult task, and empowered. These are great words to use when you want readers to be certain that they are not limited by personal difficulties. These power words are perfect when you wish to provide assurance that a difficult event or period of time is not insurmountable. Many of these power words can be used to lead into a call for action. This is because your readers will feel energized and more motivated to take action. Here are a few power words that encourage:
Triumph
Bravery
Mind-blowing
Magical
Sensational
Fearless
Courage
Hope
These are by no means the only power words that bring people encouragement, but they are quite powerful. Hopefully, knowing these words will help you to identify other power words that you can use when you want people reading your blog to feel encouraged and empowered. If you are posting on a subject that is heartbreaking or upsetting, you may find that these power words provide a needed balance to the news you are delivering.
Power Words that Make People Angry
Why would you want to make your readers angry? Actually, there are many reasons. Are you blogging about social issues? Are you trying to make your readers passionate about doing something to eradicate some horrible disease? Is there an injustice somewhere that you want to motivate your readers to address? Well, you do that by using power words that make them angry about the issue and ready to take meaningful action. Is your blog something that you use to market your products and services?
If so, do not skip this section. You too can benefit from using power words that make readers angry. Shouldn’t they be angry if they have been receiving poor customer service from your competitors? Shouldn’t they be angry if they have been overcharged all this time? Take a look at these power words that evoke a healthy sense of anger:
Arrogant
Bully
Underhanded
Disrespectful
Loathsome
Crooked
Foul
Deceitful
Lying
Taken advantage of
Misleading
Hopefully, when people see these words in your blog they feel the kind of anger that motivates them to get out and make changes. Try using these words in your blog posts, and you can motivate your readership to do anything from donating to a cause, writing a letter to the editor, or converting to your products and services.
You may wish to combine these power words with some power words that cause encouragement. After all, who is more effective than a person who is justifiably angry and who believes that they are capable of making a difference?
Power Words that Tempt People
Everybody wants to be in on a secret. They want to access to information that others do not have. They want to do things that are ‘forbidden’. They want to see themselves as insiders, and as part of an elite, exclusive group.
Power words that tempt people evoke curiosity. It makes them want to find out more. It encourages them to find out what it is that they might be missing out on. These are some of the strongest call-to-action words that any blogger can use. Here are the power words that tempt:
Unauthorized
What they don’t want you to know
Off limits
Limited Access
Elite
Behind the Scenes
Secret
Banned
Black market
Insider
Controversial
Concealed
Locked Away
Cover up
Confidential
Limited Edition
Insiders Only
Forbidden
These power words are very effective if you want to attract more readers to your content, to create viral content, and to publish content that starts conversations. Have you ever played with the idea of using special rewards and the promise of access to premium content in order to get new subscribers and followers?
These power words do an amazing job of sending out a call to action to those who crave VIP status, and who love being the first among their friends to get the insider information. Of course, if you promise insider deals, special access, or to reveal secrets, you have to follow through.
Power Words that Evoke a Love of Money
Who doesn’t like getting something for free, or at least at a deep discount? People love feeling as if they are getting a great deal, or as if they will be getting something for nothing. Power words that manipulate people’s desire for freebies and special deals have been in use for years.
In fact, you will probably recognize many of these words from advertisements that you watched your entire life. Some of them may seem a bit corny, but they do work. Check out these greed inducing power words that you can use on your next blog:
Skyrocket
Freebie
Giveaway
BOGO
Rewards
Discount
Free
Jackpot
Markdown
Savings
Rock Bottom
Barely Used
Employee Discount
Insider Discount
Special
Pennies
Dollar
Cheap
Slashed
Limited Time
One Time Only
Just for Loyal Customers
Inexpensive
Gift
Fortune
Advantage
Triple
Double
Prize
Gift
People love sales, free offers, door prizes, deep discounts, and coupons. Use these power words and you’ll keep your sales staff busy for days as they field calls and inquiries. If you are creating a post announcing a future sales event, you will gain significant traction with your audience if you incorporate just a few of these words in your posts.
Power Words that Evoke Feelings of Fear and Terror
Fear words are extremely effective in grabbing and keeping the attention of your readers. After all, fear words are what many media outlets use to keep people watching. Fear can be used as a call to action. It can be used to convince people that something deserves their attention. Fear can also be used to convince people that they will miss out on something if they do not continue reading.
There is definitely a danger of abusing these words and using them to unfairly manipulate your audience. But, as long as they are used judiciously and you are honest with any facts that you present, these words can really make your blog ‘pop’. Here are some fear mongering power words that you may be able to use when writing blogs in the future:
Refugee
Banished
Backlash
Abuse
Hurricane
Gullible
Revenge
Victimized
Crime
Assault
Prison
Horrific
Scream
Risky
Tainted
Prison
Jail
Taxes
Debt
Lurking
Terrorists
Shadowy
Instability
Lawsuit
IRS
Nightmare
Devastating
Virus
Infectious
Inflicted
Heinous
Shocking
Toxic
These words don’t just evoke fear. They evoke a desire to learn more, to stay tuned, and to get more information. Fear words may be initially shocking to read, but eventually shock will turn into a desire to take action. You can use these words to create a formula that moves your readers from shock and fear to action. Then, your job is to simply guide them to the action that you would like them to take.
A Final Note on Power Words
It may be difficult to imagine how 100 words and phrases can have such an emotional impact, but the truth is these words create responses in ways that other words don’t. If you combine the use of power words with other marketing techniques that are used to promote and market blogs/websites online, increase user engagement and make content viral (SEO, mobile friendly, social media, right keywords, etc.), you will be well on your way to increasing your readership and your internet presence.
So, why not give a few of these words a try on your next few blog posts. Then, take a few measurements. You will likely find that shares and comments increase. If you don’t see results right away, don’t be discouraged. It can take time to get into the groove when it comes to using power words effectively.
Semicolons help clarify construction of sentences. Using the punctuation mark, employed as either a comma on steroids or a strategically flexible period, is usually just one of two or more possible solutions, but though it has a stuffy reputation and many writers are confused about its applications, it often is the best choice.
1. This issue is not cut and dried, it’s actually fairly complicated.
This sentence demonstrates the simplest and perhaps most common error related to the role of the semicolon: the failure to use it when needed in the weak period function. This pair of independent clauses must be separated by a semicolon: “This issue is not cut and dried; it’s actually fairly complicated.”
Replacing the comma with a dash or beginning a new sentence with it’s are alternative strategies, though the
statement does not include a sharp break in thought (which a dash is intended to signal) and does not constitute two distinct ideas meriting separate sentences, so the semicolon is the most suitable solution.
2. For breakfast, he had eggs the way he liked them, over easy, bacon, locally raised, of course, toast, and coffee, which he always stirred exactly 10 times to blend in the milk.
This sentence requires semicolons to clearly organize a rambling list of words and phrases that constitute a menu: “For breakfast, he had eggs the way he liked them, over easy; bacon, locally raised, of course; toast; and coffee, which he always stirred exactly 10 times to blend in the milk.”
However, the preparation details can also be presented enclosed in parentheses, which renders semicolons unnecessary: “For breakfast, he had eggs the way he liked them (over easy), bacon (locally raised, of course), toast, and coffee (which he always stirred exactly 10 times to blend in the milk).” For consistency and to enhance sentence balance and rhythm, better yet, a corresponding detail about the toast should be inserted.
3. The act offers protection from lawsuits arising from monitoring information systems, including employee email, cyberthreat-related disclosures, and sharing of that information with other companies.
This sentence requires semicolons because even though “including employee email” seems obviously related to the preceding phrase, the sentence can also be read as if employee email, cyberthreats-related disclosures, and sharing of that information with other companies are being offered as examples of information systems. Use the stronger punctuation mark in such sentences so that the sentence organization is unambiguous: “The act offers protection from lawsuits arising from monitoring information systems, including employee email; cyberthreat-related disclosures; and sharing of that information with other companies.”
Cases of Semicolon Overkill
Semicolons serve a useful function in helping distinguish between elements of complex sentences, but lengthy sentences with long phrases do not necessarily require the support semicolons provide. These three sentences demonstrate an unnecessary application of the semicolon as a comma on steroids.
1. Electrical shock may cause serious burns; injuries to internal organs, such as your heart; and even death.
Semicolons should generally be employed as strong commas when elements of a list themselves include lists or otherwise include commas of their own. Here, however, the sentence construction is clear and simple; “such as your heart” is obviously part of the list element pertaining to injuries to internal organs (and doesn’t necessarily need to be set off from the rest of the phrase anyway): “Electrical shock may cause serious burns, injuries to internal organs, such as your heart, and even death.”
2. Examples of enhancements might include reporting on the status of critical enterprise risks; changes in key external variables impacting the validity of the organization’s strategic assumptions; significant emerging risks; the capabilities for managing other important business risks; and the status of initiatives to improve capabilities.
The elements of this list are wordy but not complex, so “super coma” semicolons are an excessive measure: “Examples of enhancements might include reporting on the status of critical enterprise risks, changes in key external variables impacting the validity of the organization’s strategic assumptions, significant emerging risks, the capabilities for managing other important business risks, and the status of initiatives to improve capabilities.”
3. The basketball star’s legendary moves—aerial assaults; triple-clutch reverse layups; facials on seven-footers; one-handed rebounds or ball fakes; opposing shots stolen from the sky; big-game buzzer beaters at any time—couldn’t be replicated.
As in the previous example, the use of semicolons in this sentence is overkill: “The basketball star’s legendary moves—aerial assaults, triple-clutch reverse layups, facials on seven-footers, one-handed rebounds or ball fakes, opposing shots stolen from the sky, big-game buzzer beaters at any time—couldn’t be replicated.”
I love writing. To me, there is nothing more cathartic or soothing than turning off the rest of the world and putting my thoughts to paper. This passion has made it easy for me to create content for Duct Tape…
I love writing. To me, there is nothing more cathartic or soothing than turning off the rest of the world and putting my thoughts to paper. This passion has made it easy for me to create content for Duct Tape Marketing. I don’t see it as a chore, I see it as an opportunity to relax. And once the blog post is written, I can look back upon it and smile with a sense of accomplishment.
But I do understand that many business owners don’t feel the same way about writing, or marketing in general. For some of you, writing content is a bore at best, an extreme source of anxiety at worst. I get it, the first few times I wrote something, I was nervous to share it with the world. Putting your content out on the Internet can make you feel vulnerable, particularly when the stereotype of Internet commenters is that they are demeaning and combative.
The truth is, the community on the Internet isn’t nearly what you think it is. In my experience, you all have been supportive and even empowering. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to put your best foot forward when producing content.
That’s why I’ve collected these 4 handy tools that will help you become a better writer of great content. Of course, nothing replaces practice, but these tools will make it easier to recognize your writing style, polish your finished product, and even help you focus.
GRAMMARLY
The English language is one of the most complex languages in the world. There are thousands of rules to remember, most of which people ignore on a daily basis in conversation. It’s easy enough to forget obscure grammar rules from back in high school, let alone specific writing conventions you may just be learning. Grammarly will make your writing better by helping you catch all of the errors you don’t even know you’re making.
Grammarly is extremely effective at catching small errors like correctly spelled, but misused words that spell check doesn’t, and even identifies advanced grammar errors. Grammarly also analyzes your writing patterns and helps you improve by identifying things like use of passive voice and overused words.
You can download Grammarly for your browser and even download it for your word processing program. Of course, you can also upgrade to the paid version and get even more advanced insights to your writing style.
SCRIVENER
If you’re just creating one or two pieces of content a month, Scrivener may not be for you, but it is without a doubt my favorite word processing program. Scrivener allows you to collect research, notes and your writing all in one file.
Do you like to use physical notes to collect your thoughts before writing? Scrivener allows you to outline your project with notecards and outlines. For instance, I used it to create digital notecards for each tool I was considering in this post and arranged them to turn them into a full outline. By the time I actually sit down to write, the words flow quickly from my keyboard.
Again, this isn’t for everyone, but if you’re serious about writing you may want to give it a try.
HEMMINGWAY
Earnest Hemmingway was well known for his short, easy to read sentences. It made his works surprisingly easy to read despite the thematic complexity. The appropriately named Hemmingway tool analyzes your writing and helps identify ways to shorten your sentences and make it easier to read.
It is important to make your web content as easy to read as possible. Breaking up your text into sections with sub headlines is a great way to make your content skimmable, but the body of your text will keep them. If your readers lose your train of thought because your sentences are too complex, they won’t stick around for you to make your point.
Grammarly will help you polish your writing and make it better. Hemmingway will make it easier to read.
FOCUS
I don’t know about you, but when I’m writing, I like to tune out the rest of the world. When you can just focus on the task at hand, it makes it much easier to complete it. That’s why I use Focus while I write.
Focus allows you to temporarily block time-wasting websites while you work. We all get writer’s block or are forced to take a moment to think about what we’re going to say next. At least for me, it’s pretty easy to take a break, go to Facebook, then suddenly lose some time looking at pictures of my friends’ pets. With Focus, you can prevent this, so the time you spend thinking about your content is actually spent thinking about your content.
If writing the draft takes less time to complete, you’ll have more time to edit and redraft. You spend less time making the content and more time making the content better.
This goes beyond writing content too. You can use it to block websites as you reach an important deadline or as you approach a new project. Focus is a great all-around tool for the easily distracted entrepreneur, as many of us tend to be.
What tools do you use to write? Do you have any secret weapons that help you create better content? Let me know in the comments below.
Alex Boyer is a Community Manager and Content Ninja for Duct Tape Marketing. You can connect with him on Twitter@AlexBoyerKC
Today I’m sharing a list of 25 visual content marketing tools to engage your audience. It will help you to enrich the storytelling experience you’re creating.
Desygner is an online design tool that lets you create banners, posters, invitations, Facebook covers, social media posts and more, all for free.
Snappa is on of the easiest graphic design tools you’ll ever use. It allows you to create amazing designs without the help of a graphic designer.
Canva makes it super easy to create graphics that get engagement on social media. There’s plenty of templates for marketers from email headers to blog graphics.
Piktochart is an easy-to-use infographic maker. It will take your visual communication to the next level, without hiring a professional designer.
Prezi makes presentations stand out and get remembered. Unlike static slides, it combines motion, zoom, and spatial relationships to engage your audience and help them remember your message.
Visage is a design and visual content creation tool for content marketers who need to create a lot of visual content.
Curalate is a visual commerce platform that connects content to commerce throughout the customer journey to generate awareness, increase engagement and drive revenue.
Storify gives you the tools to create the best evergreen and live blog stories, uniting traditional storytelling with engaged audiences.
PlaceIt lets you upload images of your product or website and insert them into high-quality photos for free. No Photoshop needed.
Silk is a data publishing platform. It lets anyone create interactive data visualizations, publish websites, and tell interactive stories.
ThingLink lets you create custom interactive images by adding clickable icons to links, video, text, music, other images, you name it.
Pablo by Buffer is a simple yet powerful design tool to help you become a better social media marketer. It’s designed for social sharing and makes it very easy to capture images to share directly to social networks or to add to your social content.
SlideShare is the biggest slide hosting service in the world. While it doesn’t provide creation tools, it’s a perfect place to find inspiration for your visual content or upload your own documents, presentations, infographics and more.
Polarr is free and powerful online photo editor. Simply put it’s the pro photo editor for everyone. From high-precision color tools to advanced clarity and dehaze filters, Polarr brings free pro photo editing tools to your mobile device.
ChartBlocks is an online chart building tool. You can easily design and share a chart in minutes. Import your data, design your chart and then start sharing it.
Infogr.am is the world’s most popular infographics creator. You can easily add graphs, maps, text, and even playable videos without diving deep into a design program.
Datawrapper empowers you to create amazing visualizations in seconds. You can use visuals to reflect numbers-related content by creating engaging presentations and infographics.
InVision is the world’s leading prototyping, collaboration & workflow platform. It’s a great solution for publishing clickable and interactive high-fidelity prototypes in minutes.
Venngage is another great online tool for creating beautiful infographics. To get started choose from hundreds of professional templates for infographics, reports, posters, promotions and social media posts.
Easel.ly lets you create and share visual ideas. You can choose from thousands of reporting, timeline, resume and process templates.
Issuu is the largest collection of free-to-read publications from incredible publishers around the globe. You can publish content such as magazines, catalogs, eBooks and more on this free platform.
Adobe Post empowers you to create stunning social graphics in seconds. A perfect tool for content marketers on the go.
Uberflip is a content experience platform that aggregates all of your content (blog articles, eBooks, videos, white papers, and more) so you can create, manage, and optimize tailored content experiences for every stage of the buyer journey.
Apester is a digital storytelling platform that allows you to create and embed surveys, personality tests, video quizzes and polls into your social posts.
Mapme is one of the most powerful map creators out there. You can easily create, customize, grow and promote your maps. The best part? No coding needed.
What’s your tool of choice?
That’s a big list to choose from. What tools do you use for your visual content marketing needs? Share them by leaving a comment or tweet me @tomaslau.
*This post by Tomas Laurinavicius first appeared on Forbes Tech on 11th May 2016.
Today, in May 2016 advancements in technology have progressed very rapidly over the last 10 – 20 years. Being from a time before computers and mobile phones, I am very glad for the progression of the internet.
For me it has meant I no longer travel out to work in an office transcribing, I can now freelance from home turning recorded audio into a digital Word document or Text file for videos. It is not easy always writing proposals for transcription work on freelance sites like People Per Hour and Fivesquid. It’s also not easy requiring to be paid in pounds and not dollars. Audio or video transcription is usually charged by the audio minute or audio hour. Some transcription companies charge by the line or page, but for me, it is easier for potential customers to know what they are going to be paying for their audio or video to be transcribed. Charging by the line or page it is not possible to know what you are going to pay until the audio or video has been transcribed.
Because of advancements in technology, it is there much easier to record speech, seminars, interviews…well just about anything really. Anything that is recorded that contains speech, or videoed and contains speech can be now transcribed digitally. It takes a matter of minutes for the transcriptionist to download an audio in mp3 format or a video even in mp4. They will upload this digital file to their professional software and start producing your transcript.
The value of a transcript
One of the advantages of a transcript giving it value is that you then have a permanent digital record, or if you choose to print the transcript off, you have a permanent hard-copy of the recorded audio. The audio may get corrupted or accidentally deleted for example, but by having a transcript you will always have the information from the content of that audio or video.
Another valuable aspect of a transcript is that you have something to refer to, make notes on, instead of trying playing and fast forwarding trying to find that certain part of the audio that you are looking for.
You can add a transcript produced in a .txt text file format to your video. This is an especially economical “do-it-yourself” method of enhancing your video’s search engine optimisation. Why? Because the transcript will be keyword rich and full of content that is relevant to you niche because of the nature of the speech contained in that video. Search engine bots and crawlers have a lot more information from the text transcript that has been uploaded to your video. It doesn’t have to rely on just a headline and possibly sub-headline, it has a whole transcript to know what your niche subject area is. Because of the transcript SEO bots will then rank your video higher in search results in your niche.
If you are a mentor or coach, a transcript is something that could be offered as an incentive for potential clients. They would be able to build up the mentoring or coaching session transcripts as a course for themselves to have and always refer to, for whatever reason they hired your mentoring or coaching services in the first place.
A transcript is a great way to get new blog post ideas from or social media posts. Say you listened to a great podcast, if you go that podcast transcribed you would always have that knowledge from the podcast to refer to. It’s certainly easier visually to find a certain part of the audio than playing back and forth.
Meetings that are recorded and then transcribed are a fantastic way of ensuring that what was discussed in the meeting is carried out in full. No excuses for the participants to say they didn’t make the notes correctly of what they were supposed to be doing. Everything from that meeting would be in a transcript to enable the better efficiency of duties to be undertaken.
Transcripts are especially helpful for the partially or totally deaf community. They are so valuable to be able to also understand what was in the webinar, podcast, interview along with everyone else. A text file added to a video with then automatically produced closed captions. These can be turned on during any part of the video; very helpful for deaf people. You may have created a marketing video with a voice over, having the option to have closed captions not only gives the deaf or hard-of-hearing community the opportunity to read what your video has to say, but at the same time it will automatically rank high in Google’s search results because the information gives the crawlers more information, as I described earlier.
Conclusion
Those are just a few examples of the reason why getting your audio or video transcribed is so important and it shouldn’t cost you the earth. See my infographic 7 questions to ask your prospective freelance transcriptionist. It’s an infographic to help anyone out there considering using a freelancer. The aim is to help you filter out the amateurs that could potentially cost you time and money, to hire a professional and get value for money.
Digital transcription is a growing industry, but there are people out there trying to make extra money typing and not really understanding that transcription is a professional skill and art. It takes many years of touch typing practice to be able to type at the same time as what is being spoken.
Transcripts can take certain formats; a one speaker audio would be set-out in a Word document differently to say an interview with two or three people. A professional will know from the start of the audio or video how to set out the document, whereas an amateur may not. If you get a poor, inaccurate transcript then it is going to be pretty useless to you, it will also have been a waste of time and money.
As a freelance transcriptionist working as Virtuadmin Transcription service my rates start at 50p per audio minute for up to 2 speakers in the audio or video. So an hour’s audio or video would cost you £30 to be transcribed. What the freelancer charges per audio minute or audio hour is entirely up to them and how they value their skill. I type at 70-80 words per minute with 98% accuracy and could charge more, but I’m here as a freelancer to be fair in my pricing whilst delivering the most accurate transcript in the best turnaround time possible.
One hour’s audio that is of good clear audio quality, no more than 2 speakers and no background with good speech clarity, would take me approximately 4 hours to transcribe. So I would advise any potential customers that it would be delivered in 24 hours. If I have queued audio’s I communicate this straight away to you so that you are not left wondering when to expect your transcript.
I love my job helping anyone and everyone either enhance their SEO for their video or producing a transcript from audio, I really do enjoy listening and typing. If you would like to get a quote for an audio or video, or even hire my transcription skills directly please click here>>>http://bit.ly/1TqN9j1
Can you think of any other valuable uses for an audio or video transcript? Please feel free to comment below this post. Thanks for reading and hope it has helped put the value of a transcript into some sort of perspective.
Written by: Virtuadmin
Date: 10th May 2016
If you have never outsourced your recorded audio or video to a transcription service or hired a freelance transcriptionist before, this Infographic should be of some help.
Many people think they can type and it’s easy to listen and type what is being spoken, take it from a freelance professional transcriptionist, it’s not. Transcriptionists also have to insert the correct grammar and spelling at the same time as intelligently paragraphing and making sure everything reads sensibly.
Equally, anybody that thinks they can type and that it’s going to be easy to earn extra money transcribing, either directly with clients or via freelancing websites, is probably going to end up costing their client requiring the audio or video transcription, time and money.
For entrepreneurs or small businesses, for example, that are on a tight budget, hiring a freelancer can be very attractive due to the economical costs. Established transcription services have websites with reviews from satisfied clients you have used their services. These services can be expensive and not so easily affordable for entrepreneurs or small businesses.
Established transcription services have websites with their reviews from satisfied clients you have used their services. These services can be expensive and not so easily affordable.
Freelancing to a professional freelancer can help you cut costs and retain the quality that you need and expect from your transcript. By outsourcing your transcription requirements to a freelance transcriptionist, that is professional touch typist with experience in listening and typing and what is spoken, hopefully not someone that is trying to scam you.
To guide you through your journey of outsourcing your recorded audio, video, podcast or webinar for transcription, I have created this infographic to help you find the best freelance transcriptionist, for a budget you can afford.
Save
Save
Save
Hire the Best Transcriber
I am a freelance transcriber outsourcing my skills and 20 years of experience, that also helped me create this infographic.
With the advancement of digital technology, audio and video transcription has grown in demand significantly. If you need a transcriptionist that is reliable, fast and accurate then please do not hesitate to contact me.
Hire the Best Transcriber
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