Writer's Blogs that I Love

Today, I thought I'd share some of my favorite blogs. Most are ones that I've been using since I started freelance writing, and they've been a tremendous help to me, and others I've started reading as I've progressed in my writing career. All are packed with great information, and the writers are terrific people.

• My favorite blog when I first started freelancing, and one that I still frequent almost daily, is Ask Allison by Allison Winn Scotch. Since I started reading her blog a couple of years ago, she has written and published two books and is writing a third. Prior to that (and still, I think) she wrote for several magazines, and her website archives have a ton of info for anyone aspiring to write for magazines. You could spend a month there!


• Another blog that I love is The Urban Muse. The writer, Susan Johnston, has recently moved to full-time freelancing, but has been writing for a living for a long time.


• My other favorite blogs include The Renegade Writer (they offer classes too), Men with Pens, Serenity for the Self-Employed and Inkthinker.


• One that I recently started reading is The Writer Mama Riffs by Christina Katz. Here I'm learning a lot about building a writing platform. Christina also offers some great classes.

Conficker Virus Apparently No Joke

Malware creators love to target April Fool's Day with their wares, and the latest worm, called Conficker C, could be one of the most damaging attacks we've seen in years according to Christopher Null: The Working Guy in an article titled, "Beware Conficker worm come April 1." The malicious program is thought to have already infected between 5 million and 10 million computers, and is such a great threat that there's a $250,000 bounty from Microsoft for anyone who catches the program's author.

In an article titled, "No joke in April Fool's Day computer worm," by John D. Sutter, one quick way to tell if your computer may have been infected is to check to see if you've gotten automatic updates from Windows in March. If so, your computer is probably fine. If not, you should go to http://safety.live.com/.

If you use antivirus software, you should check to see that you've received their latest updates as well. These programs may have also been disabled by Conficker C.

Remember, your best line of defense against computer crashes of any kind is to regularly back up all of your data.

Scared of Social Media Marketing? Don't Be!

So you'd like to delve into the social media marketing scene, but you're afraid... well, maybe not afraid, but you don't have the first clue where to start. I think you're in the boat with a lot of freelancers who haven't gotten their feet wet in the social media pool yet.

Because social media marketing seems so complicated--with a huge learning curve--a lot of people feel like it's a waste of their time to become informed. I beg to differ and so does Michael A. Stelzner. He's so commited to making people comfortable with Social Media Marketing, that he's written a report, AND he's giving it away for free!

In his report titled "SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING INDUSTRY REPORT, How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses" (March 2009), Michael has spent a lot of time and energy sharing the results of this industry report. He says,

If you're in charge of marketing your business, you'll want to closely examine what's on the following pages. My team turned over every rock, looking for the "not so obvious" findings among this content-rich data.

We set out to uncover the "who, what, where, when and why " of social media marketing with this report. Nearly 900 of your peers provided the kind of insight that previously has not existed.

If you're pondering starting social media marketing, it's my hope that these findings will help push you over the edge. If you're already onboard, feel free to examine what the really experienced marketers are doing (and use this study to persuade others.

Check out Michael's report. It's my hope that you'll begin to see that Social Media Marketing will be a great marketing avenue for your freelance writing career.