That’s an interesting mix of subjects that should resonate with most of our readers. I must admit, I’m starting to really enjoy this blogging thing. Sharing what I know and what I believe with a bunch of creative-minded biz friends is fun and challenging.

Blogging.
As I sit down at my keyboard tonight and begin to write this week’s posts I ponder about some things.

1) Should this blog and Oddpodz for that matter be more narrowly focused, our content, tools and offerings?
Today, we strive to give creative-minded business people and organizations, from a 1 person solo practice to a 500-person enterprise, good ideas, free tools and a network to find and connect with other valuable resources and people.

Is diversity a good thing? Or is a more laser-like target better? Please tell us what you think.

2) What does it take to build a power blog?
In general terms, we know it’s about good content, ongoing SEO efforts and participating in other high traffic communities and blogs. But what are the top 10 most powerful actions a blogger can do to significantly move the reader meter.

I’m going to post both of these questions in our forum and invite you to add your feedback. I’ve been using my Linkedin groups quite a bit to have discussions on a bunch of issues. I’ll be compiling these soon and sharing them with in Oddpodz.

Headlines.
It was my intention to next blog about my friend Dan Schawbel’s new book Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success

Me 2.0 teaches people how to use social media tools for personal brand building and is the first book of this kind written for the millennials generation. I suppose us older folks can also learn from this book, since we often act like we are 30 something. The book is great and I will be posting a review in the book review section in the Oddpodz forum and will dedicate our Tues. blog to some of the book’s highlights and the topic of personal branding.

Sorry, I got side tracked.
As I was crafting my blog title on personal branding, I discovered a very cool, free tool that analyzes headlines for its emotion marketing impact. As you know, reaching your customers in a deep and emotional way is a key to successful copywriting, and your headline is unquestionably the most important piece of copy you use to reach prospects.

The Advanced Marketing Institute provides the free headline analysis tool.
The Advanced Marketing Institute is a group of researchers, educators, and developers who have come together to provide real tools and knowledge to businesses and individuals who are tired of struggling to control their chaotic systems.

How does the Headline Analyzer work?
Simple go to: Headline Analyzer

Type in your headline. It must be under 20 words. Hit analyze this.
Your headline will be analyzed and scored based on the total number of Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) words it has in relation to the total number of words it contains. This will determine the EMV score of your headline. In addition to the EMV score, You will find out which emotion inside your customer’s your headline most impacts:

Intellectual
Words which are especially effective when offering products and services that require reasoning or careful evaluation.

Empathetic
Words which resonate in with Empathetic impact often bring out profound and strong positive emotional reactions in people.

Spiritual
Words which are especially effective when offering products and services that require reasoning or careful evaluation. Words which resonate in with Empathetic impact often bring out profound and strong positive emotional reactions in people. Words which have the strongest potential for influence and often appeal to people at a very deep emotional level.

So I tested out a few headlines. There is no limit to how many headlines you can get feedback on.

Remember this title is for a blog post for Dan Schawbel’s new book,and other personal branding insight.

My first headline: Be a business magnet Project Authority Earn trust Win Contracts
My Headline’s EMV Score: 40%

My 2nd headline: How to be a business magnet, project authority, earn trust and win contracts today
My Headline’s EMV Score: 42.86%

My 3rd headline: Stop losing opportunities. Be your strongest business magnet, exude authority, earn trust and win more clients today My Headline’s EMV Score: 52.94%

This score indicates that my headline has a total of 52.94% Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) Words. To put that in perspective, the English language contains approximately 20% EMV words. And for comparison, most professional copywriters’ headlines will have 30%-40% EMV Words in their headlines, while the most gifted copywriters will have 50%-75% EMV words in headlines.

Yahoo, I’m gifted! For at least a few minutes.
This is a cool tool and gets you really thinking about how to write more emotionally charged copy. But for a blog title, it also has me thinking search engine results. So my recommendation is: Headlines should be short and include keywords, use the highest rated title as a subtitle.

In closing, what does constipation have to do with any of this?
Well for starters, brilliant comedians have been leveraging this writing technique for years. It’s called a triple. Two words are normal, expected and could go together. The last word is goofy, unexpected and some times shocking. Which makes the choice and combination of these three words so effective in getting attention and hopefully a laugh. You can use this method when you are speaking or writing.

Last week I talked about dealing with creative brain freeze, which could also be described as creative constipation. This week I’ve been jamming, pumping out ideas and enjoying my favorite things, writing, thinking and problem solving. If my thawing your brain tips and the free ebook on creative productive we recommended didn’t help, start reading Mark McGuinness’ blog, it’s amazing! Or, eat more fiber.

The past few days I’ve suffered from a less than productive head. I absolutely could not get anything finished or even put a dent in a project. The more I tried, the less I achieved. It was like my brain was at a stop sign and then I ran out of gas. I could not think, create or solve any problems. After a couple hours of useless work, I started feeling very stressed and then I couldn’t even focus on what I was doing. Why does this happen? What can you do, when your brain feel less than productive?

This theory is not scientific. But for me, I think your brain gets clogged up and too many “ta does” and stress can actually immobilize your brain’s function. I noticed that when I stare at my computer screen for long periods of time, this brain freeze happens the most.

Get way from your computer and move around.

My good pal Doug Stevenson explains in his CD series on “How to Deliver a Dynamite Speech” that too much typing on your computer will keep your brain and your thoughts in the left sided, logical mode and will make solving problems and being creative a very difficult task. He suggests creative thinking should happen away from the computer. He also recommends moving around and that sitting still does not empower creative thinking. I agree with that idea. After I go for a run or play tennis my brain is on fire with fresh ideas. And I’m in great mood.

Manage disruptions and doing things tomorrow.
Another friend of Oddpodz is Mark McGuinness. Mark lives across the pond, is a poet and leads Wishfulthinking a consultancy for creative professionals, agencies and studios. Mark suggests managing disruptions like email and responding to clients, along with doing more things tomorrow and not today. Mark’s work and blog has been hugely helpful in moving me out of the brain freeze zone. Two of his brilliant pieces of work are featured in Oddpodz FREE Biz Findz. Both are FREE ebooks. One is called Time Management for Creative People and the other is called How to Motivate Creative People. I recommend both reading both of this and visiting his blog.

I’m out of the brain freeze now. Thank goodness. I know it will be back. I continue to battle this state of mind when my plate is very full. But, I am making progress. When I feel it happening, I change my environment, schedule uninterrupted time and get away from my computer.

That’s right, I’m your good friend, I’m a business partner and I am even your customer, but I’m opting out of you ezine mailing list. Because I get too much stuff, and a lot of what I get is light weight and not adding to my world. In fact, it just stresses me out.

Today I opted out of 50 ezines. I, like many of you, and loads of other subscribers, am feeling ezine overwhelmed.

Lose the guilt, don’t feel bad. You cannot afford the time to read every ezine out there.
Even if you are a close friend to the person sending the email, you have no extra time to be opening useless emails. And you, the companies that are sending them, need to ask yourself, it this really worth 30 seconds of brain time? If not, what can you do to make it right?

Here’s the reality. You buy something, download something free, register to be in community and BINGO you are opted in to someone’s list. OK, that’s the system. But after a few communications from them, if they are not making you feel smarter or happier, dump ‘em and opt-out of database dodge.

If you publish an ezine a newsletter, don’t freak out that you may lose a few subscribers. Be happy that those people who really don’t care about what you are saying are no longer polluting your list and hogging space. Now get going on improving your publication’s content, the subject line and visuals so people can’t get through a day without reading your awesome newsletter from top to bottom.

About the author: Karen Post, a.k.a. The Branding Diva® is an international authority on branding, marketing, and entrepreneurial matters. She is has been featured as a business expert in print publications; on TV, radio, and on Web channels. Karen authored the best-selling book Brain Tattoos, Creating Unique Brands That Stick in your Customers’ Minds and she is co-founder and CEO of Oddpodz.com, an idea engine for creative professionals and business. Her work has benefited large and small organizations in the United States and around the world.

by Karen Post, a.k.a. The Branding Diva®

Whether you are writing a blog post or a note to kick your romantic pal to the curb, your choice of words says a lot about you. Do you want be a mere lame, language lightweight or an author with personality and punch?

Here’s resource I use to keep my tongue tone, tantalizing.

Wordspy.com
My pal Paul McFedries is the brain behind this resource. His Web site archives over 2,500 current life, trend, culture and behavioral-centric words. You can sign up for a regular email dose, which I love.

Here’s a recent post:
white pollution n. Litter, particularly plastic bags, but also papers, cups, and food containers.

He also includes:
Example Citations
Earliest Citation
Related Words

I asked Paul how did this word resource get started?
Paul explained, “It amazes me that the language has this extraordinary capacity to generate neologisms. I view the language not as a solid mountain to be admired from afar, but rather as an active volcano to be studied up close. This volcano is constantly spewing out new words and phrases; some of them are mere ash and smoke that are blown away by the winds; others are linguistic lava that slides down the volcano and eventually hardens as a permanent part of the language. Both types of ejecta are inherently creative”.

His Word Spy work grew out of this. Word Spy began as a mailing list where each day he’s send out an interesting word to a collection of friends and readers. The first post to the Word Spy list was back on January 2, 1996. After he’d accumulated a few dozen words, he created the Web site to give people a record of what had been posted and to make it possible for other people to join the list. The list and site have grown by leaps and bounds since then: He gets over a million page views each month; the list has over 10,000 subscribers; and Word Spy has been cited or profiled in over 150 newspapers and magazines around the world.

He does accept suggestions, although prefers new words and phrases seen in the media, not neologisms that people have made up themselves.

About the author: Karen Post, a.k.a. The Branding Diva® is an international authority on branding, marketing, and entrepreneurial matters. She is has been featured as a business expert in print publications; on TV, radio, and on Web channels. Karen authored the best-selling book Brain Tattoos, Creating Unique Brands That Stick in your Customers’ Minds and she is co-founder and CEO of Oddpodz.com, an idea engine for creative professionals and business. Her work has benefited large and small organizations in the United States and around the world.

We’ve just transitioned to a new blog platform. While we are working on ironing out your kinks, we appreciate your patience. Stay tuned. We should be back with fresh new content shortly.

-Jocelyn, Karen and the Oddpodz team

Magnifying glass on the decline of civilization site Perezhilton isn’t known for its subtle approach to the finer subtleties of the written word; indeed, “Sperminated!” may someday come to replace “in a motherly way.”

But, one thing we have noticed and on which we begrudgingly compliment Mr. Hilton is his impressively appropriate use of “you’re” and “your” (see example below); impressive because it is one of the most infuriatingly common mistakes around.

After the jump, a small collection of disasters that you’re organization would be wise not to make. Read the rest of this entry »

…….?

Phil Villarreal is a writer.

Oddpodz: You write the blog Because I Told You So. You subtitled it “Free Porn” despite it having no porn. Besides disappointing me, what a genius SEO decision that is; can I steal it?

Read the rest of this entry »

by Karen Post aka the Branding Diva

Cutting through the clutter of sameness gets tougher every day. Message overload and disruptive and many times useless data are all trying to find a little space in the overstimulated, simpleminded brains of our market.

It’s not only a busy place, but the reality is there are a handful of very qualified choices other than you in your category competing for that sacred opportunity.

“Differentiate or die,” claims Jack Trout, one of the godfathers of branding. Tom Peters says, “Be distinct or be extinct” and I contend, “Run like the rest and you too will be road kill.” So what is the deal with all these companies and brands using the same old, tired phrases, vocabulary, and words to communicate to their markets, further confirming their zero degree of brand difference?

This is America, land of the free language, home of the brave. Last I heard, the word police were not writing citations and throwing brand managers in jail (at least not for this activity) and consumers were not boycotting overextreme creativity.

Original naming and adventurous word choice can be two of the most inexpensive and effective ways to brand better. If you believe you are not a commodity, it’s time to leverage your brand language. Yes, this will be scary for you over literary-conditioned, establishment-bound folks, but trust me on this — distinct jargon, unique names, and interesting terms can provide valuable momentum to your branding efforts.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back when I used to write press releases I always struggled to understand the concepts of embargos. I knew that there was some kind of unwritten agreement between PR agents and journalists that somehow governed the world of publicity; but I still thought that PR’s expectation of privacy or patience by the journalists was kind of… expecting a lot. Let’s face it; PR reps have nothing to lose by this agreement while journalists have everything to lose. I chalked it up to the fact that many journalists like to have their stories written ahead of time.

So I got back to thinking about this recently after getting turned down for an interview with The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich author Tim Ferris. I had contacted his PR rep as I thought, and still do, that he would make a great Oddpodz Pole Vaulter candidate. Apparently, I was alone in this opinion. But Amy’s response did raise an eyebrow (figuratively, as I do not possess The-Rock-like skill to raise one eyebrow). At the conclusion of her “We really appreciate your offer…” but not enough to cooperate- email there were three selections with one checked.

Thank you so much for reaching out to us. We wish you all the best in your future projects. Have a great weekend!

– Amy E.

this email is: [ ] blogable [x] ask first [ ] private

Clearly this raises a multitude of questions: Ask first? Is this a new form of publicist embargo? And if so, is this a request or a demand? Is there any expectation that emails exchanged, relating to business matters and not private ones, would assume any form of privacy?

And does the very assumption that her request be observed actually make a blogger MORE likely to not ask first?

(For the record, I did not “ask first” before writing this.)