[This is all the space you have to grab a reader's attention when your post is promoted on social media. Sometimes you have] a little more space, sometimes you don’t. It works the same way as the first paragraph of a novel, if you don’t hook the reader in that “prime real estate,” you lose their interest.
Let me give you an example or two. When you post a link on Facebook, whether on your timeline or page, you get an image and the best part of a long sentence.
If you use this space to say, “This is part 28 of my series on books…” your blog post may not come across as appealing to read. The same works for guest posts where you introduce people, rather than letting their message pull in interest. “Joining me today as part of the “Lessons from the Writing Life” Guest Post series is Molly Jones…” I am out of promotional space. No one sees who Molly is, or why they should use their limited time to read the post.
Google Plus works the same way. Unless you write an introductory comment to attract attention, you get a blue hotlink and the first sentence. That’s all.
Please do visit Sonia’s blog, Gutsy Living. It’s awesome. http://soniamarsh.com That wasn’t enough either was it? Again, so much of our success in gaining promotion comes from great tag lines. “Sonia’s blog features ordinary people who overcome the challenges in their lives. It empowers me when I read it.”
If you are a Triberr user, you have yet another problem. The tag line from your blog can get in the way of Triberr promoting the first line of your post. All the readers will see for any post is “CommuniCATE features resources for writers which are published twice weekly.” That is useless. Because of this, I deleted my tag line. I noticed my share stats had dwindled and this was why. Here is what a well done post on Triberr looks like. (You may prefer no hashtags in the title.)
So think about what you put in that all important space. It will make a significant difference.
This blog post by Cate Russell-Cole is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You are free to share and adapt it.
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You know you’ve been meaning to… this week, your love task is to go buy that writing friends book you’ve planned to, but didn’t get around to.
Experts have termed this practice of waiting “creative gestation,” and much like the shaping of a child in the womb, producing quality work requires a degree of time, no matter what genre. By coming back to your writing later on, you’ll find that certain word choices can be improved, images can be sharpened, and other enhancements can refine your work even further. Rather than sending an immature, embryotic creation to editors, you’re handing over “your baby,” fully developed, delivered, and ready.
John Davis Jr. is a Florida poet whose work has been published in literary venues internationally. His poems have recently appeared in Deep South magazine, Saw Palm magazine, and Touch: The Journal of Healing, and he has forthcoming poetry in The Wayfarer. His book, Growing Moon, Growing Soil: Poems of my Native Land, is available through Amazon and other fine retailers. His website is: 
“Pay yourself first,” was the solid advice I was given with business book keeping: and face it, writing is a business, even if you work at it recreationally. If the IRS wants a share, it’s not necessarily a carefree hobby any longer…
Sandra was raised in Montreal, Québec, and graduated from McGill University. As a young girl, she loved reading the Nancy Drew mystery series and was determined to write her own stories one day. Her career choices didn’t exactly lead her along the “yellow brick road” to writing mystery novels—though working in a bank and experiencing a string of armed robberies did ingrain terrifying memories worthy of a story!
This is indeed not what the 
When I was fourteen, I wanted to sit at a battered Olivetti, with my fedora perched on the back of my head, and rattle off gritty sci-fi novels of intergalactic adventure. Instead I would rattle off essays on the meaning of life, and novels based on the imagined future lives of my friends.
My break came when I was told to go out and meet people. I joined a Theatre Club and they were looking for a play to enter in a performance competition. They had heard I was a writer, and asked me to write a play for them. I had never written a play before, though I had spent some time in amateur dramatics in my youth. Since I was a writer having trouble getting a novel finished, I wrote a play about a writer having trouble getting a novel finished. We took the play on to the competition and won an award.
I am a writer now. Despite the half-dozen odd jobs I’ve taken on since those early days, writing is what I do. I don’t make the money of a JK Rowling, or an E.L. James. Although I believe that quality is vital, that you should strive to produce the very best work you can, there are other factors that influence success. One is chance, which you can’t manipulate. You can’t ensure that your manuscript is picked up by the right person on the day they’re ready for a story like yours. But you CAN do things to increase that likelihood : You can polish your manuscript until it’s as near perfect as possible. Check the submission guidelines to avoid falling at the first fence. Look for an agent to give your submission more appeal. Be open to other forms of writing: you don’t HAVE to be a novelist, you know!
The last few weeks have left me feeling like I am on the crazy train. I’ve dealt with inane and unnecessary obscenities, being force-fed gay porn (don’t ask!), people who are leaving comments editing other people’s comments… yup… and that is the start! I am getting over days of migraine pain and I have really had enough.
There are billions of people on this planet; there should be multiple opinions, it makes the world a greater place. However, we struggle with being able to tolerate anyone who thinks differently. Human nature has this obsession with wanting to herd everyone into line, like sheep dogs.
