April 2022 – NEERA MAHAJAN

Three Kinds Of Energies

April 29, 2022October 2, 2023 Neera

Three kinds of energies are in play when you are working on a project.

When you start a new project, you are excited. It is like falling in love. You feel euphoric and invincible. You make announcements, start the project, and don’t mind working long hours. You are fuelled by what I call the Starting Energy.

As the time passes, the Starting Energy diminishes. You get into the thick of things and you feel less and less motivated. You’re still excited about the overall project, but you’re not so crazy about the nitty-gritty tasks that come as part of the project.

That is when you need the Keep-Going Energy. Keep-going energy does come by itself, you have to summon it. Every little bit you do during the keep-going phase counts toward realizing that end vision. You need your end vision to sustain this energy. If you lose that, the Keep Going energy fades away and you are left with an unfinished project.

Many people love to start new projects but don’t finish them. They lose the end vision.

It is when you need the third kind of energy – the Finishing Energy. The Finishing Energy doesn’t make you as euphoric as the Starting Energy does, but it gets lots done. Seeing your vision realized is a significant motivating factor that gets you to put in more effort than you usually would.

But when you can’t summon the Keep Going Energy or the Finishing Energy fails to appear you are left with many unfinished projects.

I, too, have several unfinished projects. Some are half done, others are in their infancy.

I have found a way to summon the Finishing Energy.

To assign them an end date just before the holidays.

I discovered this strategy by accident.

I am in Tasmania on an eight-day vacation. Before coming here I finished three projects.

Finished the book Writer’s Toolkit.
Finished conducting the ‘Write Your Book Sprint’ course.
Finished the first draft of the cookbook.

Rather than feeling stressed about projects during holidays, I have started giving myself deadlines to finish them before going on one.

Doing so helped me finish the projects in half the time. And it doubled holiday enjoyment. The elation of completing the work and the delight of no work during the break.

I am going to spend the next three weeks finishing some of my unfinished projects before going on overseas vacation on 21st of May.

Do you have projects that have been hanging on your neck for some time?

Here is what you can do to finish them.

Figure out which one you want to use. Not every project has to go to completion.
Set aside a month or a week (depending upon how much time you need) and work solely on finishing that project. Don’t start anything new.
Stop being a perfectionist. Get the project done first. You can always improve it later.
Make the project fun somehow. I have turned my cookbook into recipe cards that I will send to my readers sometime in the future. This fun idea helped me finish the cookbook project by igniting the Starting Energy once again.

Try it. You won’t regret it.

How To Write A Good LinkedIn Post

April 19, 2022April 19, 2022 Neera

There are three types of content you can write on LinkedIn:

Post
Articles
Newsletters

In today’s lesson, I will talk about posts that are the most important and leave articles and newsletters for future issues.

LinkedIn posts are kind of mini-blog posts and they don’t take too long to write. Unlike Medium, they are short, punchy, and attention-grabber. They have a specific format, though. Once you learn it, you can create a post in less than 20 minutes.

LinkedIn is more about life lessons and personal stories rather than long-form Medium articles. They get a lot of views (clicks), likes, and comments because they are quick to read and easy to comment. It is also very easy to send people an invitation to connect or to get them to follow you.

If you have followers or connections, your post will go in front of all of them in their Newsfeed. Unlike Medium, LinkedIn’s algorithm is very good.

The LinkedIn algorithm favors posts compared to videos, images, or articles. Videos used to be big on LinkedIn, not anymore.

LinkedIn has over 660 million registered users and out of that only, 1% create content. The rest are all consumers, ready to consume good content.

Let’s figure out how to write a good LinkedIn post. But before that, we need to dissect a LinkedIn post.

Anatomy of a LinkedIn Post

A good LinkedIn post has a special structure.

It has a First Line, a black line, a third line, and a ‘…see more’ button.

Let’s have a look at them one by one.

First Line

The first line is super important. It is usually a hook to grab the readers. Here are some examples:

The traditional path in life is broken:

Attention is the new digital currency.

The worst LinkedIn content is:

You’re looking at a quitter.

I almost quit blogging two weeks ago. — Tim Denning.

The first line could be a question as well. Here are some examples:

Have I told you this before?

Not a bad picture, right? — Niharika

Are you trapped in a ‘bullshit job’?

Second Line

Usually, after the grabbing statement, the second line is kept blank, intentionally. The reason is, that the LinkedIn feed shows only three lines. After that, there is a ‘…see more’ button. By keeping the second line blank and giving partial information in the third line the LinkedIn writers invite the readers to click the ‘…see more’ button.

Third Line

The third line is to inject drama into the equation. Give them a partial answer to the question. Or write a leading statement that intrigues the readers.

See More Button

The “…see more” button is on the right-hand side of the text. Your third-line statement should entice readers to click that button. When they do, it is counted as a view.

When readers click the ‘…see more’ button they see 3 to 10 short paragraphs of writing which they will gobble up in less than 30 seconds.

I will get to how to write those paragraphs in the ‘do’ part of this article but first I want to give you a list of ‘don’ts.’

Because the ‘don’ts’ are more important than ‘dos.’ They can mess up your posts and they will get lost in the vast sea that is LinkedIn.

But if you take the advice and don’t use any of the ‘don’t,’ your posts will be circulated to thousands of readers.

So here the are:

The ‘Don’ts’ Of LinkedIn Posts

There are a number of things you must not do on LinkedIn. I want to list them right in the beginning.

Don’t write a wall of text.
Don’t have big paragraphs. No more than 3 lines per paragraph.
Don’t write long posts. 1 to 10 paragraphs are the best.
Open with a powerful line or a question.
Don’t write more than one post a day.
Don’t use stock photos. Any photo which features you is great, including selfies. On LinkedIn, people want to see your real-self.
Don’t share other’s people’s stuff on LinkedIn. LinkedIn doesn’t promote those.
Don’t provide links in the body of the post.
Don’t share your Medium articles. A better strategy is to break them up and make several posts from them.

Now that we have got ‘don’t’ out of the way, let’s concentrate on ‘dos’ of LinkedIn

Types Of Posts You Can Write

Most people think LinkedIn is a platform for professionals and you can only write about work-related topics. That might have been true a few years ago. Not anymore. In the past few years, LinkedIn has become a platform for everyone. It is not like Facebook, thanks heaven for that, but you can write a variety of posts on it and get a lot more views and engagement than you ever can on Medium.

True, you get paid on Medium but on LinkedIn, you can sell your services and products through the power of content writing. No hard sell required. You just be yourself and share your knowledge. Soon, people see you as an authority in your field.

In the rest of the article, I share several examples from my writing to show the different kinds of posts you can write.

Once again, I am no LinkedIn guru and what I am sharing below is my humble opinion. To me, my success on the platform is phenomenal, but it is nothing compared to what others are experiencing.

With little ado, here they are:

1. Your Story

Your story is always a good point to start. Start with your story. The rest will flow from there.

2. Change Story

The other kind of stories you can tell are the change stories. Where you changed or something changed by the action you took. Here is an example:

3. Lessons Learned Story

This is the third kind of personal story you can tell, where you have gone through some tough times or experiences and learned lessons from them.

4. Your Industry Update

You can share snippets of information about your industry and educate the readers like that. These kinds of posts demonstrate your knowledge in your field and establish your expertise amongst your readers.

5. Polls

Polls do extremely well on LinkedIn. They get propagated a lot. I like them because they give you excellent real-time data from engaged viewers. The following two polls helped me design the ‘Write Your Book’ course.

6. Videos

Videos used to be huge on LinkedIn, but for some reason they do not have the same kind of reach as they used to. But they still have their uses. I created my first video ever to introduce myself.

You should try to create a video once a week or so, because it gets people to know you better. Seeing you in flesh and blood, sharing a tip, or showing a bit of your life is a great way to build a bond with your audience.

Anastasia Forrest, a realtor, and the author plays guitar and sings a song once a week.

7. Things From Everyday Life

You can pick any aspect of your life and write a short post about it. You never know which one is going to hit the cord with the audience. I wrote about my journal writing. I thought little of it as I have written about it on Medium so many times. But it turned out my most viewed post.

8. Travel Stories

Travel stories always generate a lot of interest. Going away on a holiday is not a problem at LinkedIn. With Medium, I had to pre-write a bunch of articles and schedule them before going on a vacation. But with LinkedIn, I can just share where I am and what I am doing. They not only make an interesting read but also give me an opportunity to write something different, or something off the cuff.

9. Inspirational Posts

Inspirational posts are big on LinkedIn. They always get a lot of engagement. People genuinely like reading them and feel inspired. And they are very easy to write.

Have a read of the one below. Pay special attention to the white space and word art (symmetry) which attracts the

10. Provide A Solution

11. Tell stories

Tell brief stories to illustrate your point or to entertain. They make people stop scrolling and read. Make sure they are not too long and don’t have big paragraphs. Here are two of mine. Apologies, I couldn’t fit the complete stories in the images. The links are below if you want to read them.

Story Of A Florist

Conclusion

I only have been writing on LinkedIn since January 2022, but in three and a half months I have written over 100 posts. In future articles, I will share more examples with you. But for the time being, I think I have given you enough to get started.

Now it is your turn.

Follow me on LinkedIn if you like. I will read your post and leave you a comment.

If you are interested, here is a list of my other articles about LinkedIn.

How To Get Started On LinkedIn

Lesson Learned During 30 Day LinkedIn Sprint

One Cool Way to Grow Your Audience Beyond Your Wildest Dream

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Photo by Jonathan Cooper on Unsplash

How To Get Started On LinkedIn

April 12, 2022April 12, 2022 Neera

Ever since I wrote the article, How I am Using LinkedIn To Establish Myself As A Writer three months ago (and the subsequent article Lesson Learned During 30 Day LinkedIn Sprint), I have been repeatedly told by readers that they want to write on LinkedIn but don’t know how to start.

Besides, many people don’t see LinkedIn as a writing platform and have no idea of its reach.

I have decided to write a series of articles to get you started and help you understand the platform a bit more.

I am not a LinkedIn Guru, but someone who took part in Tom Kueglar’s LinkedIn 30 Days Sprint and benefited a lot from it.

As a writer, you can’t ignore LinkedIn. If Medium is the place to practice your writing, then Linked is the place to market yourself as a writer. Without a market, you won’t be able to become a professional writer.

Before I give you the first lesson to get started on LinkedIn, let me bust a few myths.

Myth #1 LinkedIn is only for professionals.

That might have been the case a couple of years ago, but not anymore. Although it may still not be like Facebook, where you can post pictures of your cat and the patio flowers.

As per LinkedIn:

LinkedIn is a platform for anyone who is looking to advance their career. This can include people from various professional backgrounds, such as small business owners, students, and job seekers.

You can use it to:

Enhance your professional reputation
Get spotted by headhunters and CEOs
Build connections in your industry
Stay up to date with industry news
Increase the visibility of your brand
Stay in touch with colleagues
Find work as a freelancer
Do job searches
Sell your courses.

What LinkedIn provides you is a unique opportunity to showcase your expertise, whether it is as a writer, coach, business builder, stay-at-home mum, money manager, or fitness instructor.

If you want to sell your services, LinkedIn is the place where you can do it. Previously, you would build a website and have content there to establish yourself as an expert.

Well, we all know that nobody goes to websites anymore. There are far too many of them around for you to stand out.

On LinkedIn, you get noticed.

With over 660 million registered users worldwide (compared to 60 million on Medium), of which 303 million are active on a monthly basis, you can’t afford to ignore the platform.

Besides, 90 million of these users are senior-level influencers, and 63 million are in decision-making positions (Source: LinkedIn Statistics for 2022).

Myth #2 LinkedIn is only useful if you are looking for work.

The real purpose of being active on LinkedIn is to share your knowledge and expertise so that people see you as an expert in your field.

Where do you think the world’s best minds are active at? Two places – Twitter and LinkedIn.

“LinkedIn isn’t just a tool that’s used to search for a new job or connect with your employees. It’s a place for users to show off their expertise around a subject and grow relationships with like-minded people.” — Krystal Wu, HubSpot.

Even if you are not looking for work, startup CEOs and headhunters might be looking for you. You might find opportunities to collaborate which might not have crossed your mind before.

Myth #3 You should only post work-related content on LinkedIn

Surprisingly, the content that does well on LinkedIn is:

personal stories
life lessons
how-to information
industry news
quick tips

All this should be succinct and helpful. Topics that encourage productivity, leadership, and professional success also do well on LinkedIn. Information presented in the listicle format that is easily digestible also does well.

Here are a few examples:

A quick tip listicle — Image by the author

5 Easy Step To Get You Started

Okay, I am going to give you 5 step easy start. This week, just concentrate on these five things (four if you already have a LinkedIn account).

Create a LinkedIn account, if you haven’t got one already. Fill in as much information as you can to get started. (I will write a post about how to create a good LinkedIn profile a little later. At this point, keep your focus on getting started on the platform.
Each day spend 15 -20 minutes reading the posts you come across. As soon as you find one that you like, stop, read, and either ‘like or leave a comment. The LinkedIn algorithm will take notice of that and send you more posts like that.
Search the people whose work you like. Go to their profile and follow them. When you like any of their posts, take a moment and leave them a comment.
Write at least 10–20 comments a day on other people’s posts. Interacting with others on their posts is more important than writing on the platform.
Familiarise yourself with the platform before writing on it. Each platform has its own subtleties and nuances. You should get familiar with them.

In my next post, I will show you how to write posts on LinkedIn.

If you like, you can follow me on LinkedIn by clicking here.

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PS: If this article intrigued you, you might like these articles too.

Five Essential Tools For Writers

April 5, 2022April 5, 2022 Neera

Every profession has tools of the trade. Plumbers have it, carpenters do, and so do the surgeons and artists.

Writers do need tools too. But we never think of it that way.

For a long time, a pen and notebook were all you needed, to write.

When typewriters were invented, they were considered the only tool that a writer needed to write professionally.

When computers replaced the typewriters, writers were over the moon and reached heaven. Now they could make corrections on the go, write books directly on the keyboard and print several copies of their manuscript with the press of a button.

But that is where their investment in tools ended.

Unlike other professionals, we writers don’t like to invest money in tools. We like to do without than fork out a few hundred dollars or a regular subscription to produce our best work.

The next key to successful writing is having the right tools. Imagine a painter. Would he buy the cheap stuff to produce his masterpiece, or would he buy the artist-quality brushes and paint?

We might buy more gardening tools each year that we use a few times a year than the writing tools which we need every day.

As a writer and an artisan of the highest quality, you must find your tools. And you must master them.

There are 5 essential tools for writers.

1. Writing App

A writing app is the most important tool you will use all the time. I love Medium’s clean interface. Even though it has limited editing functionality, it still allows me to do all I need to do to write articles.

I also like Substack and use it to send my newsletter. It has recently added many more features to its interface.

For writing books, I used Reedsy’s Free Editor. It provides not only a clean interface but also formats and creates professional ePub (for publication) and print-ready files in seconds.

Other than these, there are many other apps that are useful for specific purposes.

Scrivener

If you are writing fiction, Scrivener is a popular application that allows the plotting, outlining, and formatting of a novel. It also provides templates for writing essays, recipe collections, screenplays, and comic books, making it a versatile application.

Ulysses

Whether you’re writing a blog post or a full-length novel, the seed of an idea doesn’t get too far without the ability to organize that idea into a cohesive piece of writing. That’s exactly what Ulysses allows you to do: organize your thoughts into a well-written work.

Ulysses boasts a slightly more clean and simple interface than Scrivener, so if ease of use is high on your priority list, Ulysses might be a better option for you.

In addition, Ulysses offers a very helpful WordPress and Medium integration, which bloggers love.

Reedsy Book Editor

Reedsy Book Editor is a free, online word processor that formats your book as you write. See your drafts automatically turn into a professional-looking, ready-to-publish manuscript — and allow this glimpse of your work as the final product to spur your motivation to write.

If you want a writing tool that takes care of formatting and conversion for you Reedsy Book Editor is it. And it is free.

Draft

If you need a tap on the shoulder to remind you to write your daily quota of words, then Draft is your tool. It will send you daily email reminders about your daily word count goals. So, if you want to build the habit of writing every day, Draft is the application for you.

It functions like Google Docs, allowing you to do track changes, collaborate via suggested edits, and make comments on the doc.

And it is FREE.

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is an open-source application for people who want to use Microsoft without paying the premium price. LibreOffice is free.

And it’s compatible with all of the regular file types people are used to, such as .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, and .pptx files.

If you like a classic word processor and a free one, try it.

Mellel

Mellel is for Mac users who want more than Mac’s inbuilt Pages app offers. From their website, “Mellel is the leading word processor for Mac. Powerful, flexible, and reliable, it will help you write your book, academic paper, or doctoral thesis — from outlining your ideas to a finished manuscript.”

Mellel is not free (and it’s only for Mac). It has more book-specific tools than traditional word processing — such as outlining and bibliography-making.

2. Editing Tools

If you are writing whether it is emails or social media posts, or articles, you need an editing tool. There are two good ones in the market. — Grammarly and ProWritingAid.

Grammarly

Grammarly is subscription-based and does spellcheck, punctuation, grammar, and sentence structure. It’s spellcheck real-time assistance to improve a content’s clarity, cohesiveness, fluency, and vocabulary. Its most significant benefit is that it will plug in wherever you are writing.

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid will proofread and spell-check your material for you, no matter where you’re writing. It will also offer suggestions to improve your overall language — outside of just grammatical technicalities. You can buy it with a one-off payment.

The difference between the two is that ProWriting Aid is tailored more towards fiction writers, while Grammarly is a slightly better fit for articles and essay writers.

Hemingway

Some writers swear by the Hemingway app. They claim that the application makes their writing concise and clear. It has several handy features, like a word counter and an automatic readability score. But its real use lies in making suggestions to your prose. It will highlight a complex sentence that’s hard to read and instances of passive voice, qualifiers, and adverbs.

Cliché Finder

If you want to avoid clichés like the plague, you can add Cliché Finder to your toolbox. And for free. It combs through your writing in search of clichés and then highlights them.

3. Notes Taking Tools

Taking notes and filing those in such a way that they are easily accessible when needed is the primary requirement of a writer. Good notes taking applications make the process seamless. Many writers struggle because they can’t remember the story or the case study or the perfect quote when they need it. A notes app solves that problem. There are several in the market.

Evernote

Evernote is perhaps the most known of the lot. It lets you quickly jot down thoughts, record audio notes, and save online articles you’re hoping to reference, and it will sync all of this information across all of your Evernote-installed devices. It has a free version with basic functionality and a paid version for premium users.

Notion

Notion is a project management and note-taking software. It is an all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, and databases. Basically, it’s a tool that you can use to organize your thoughts, projects, and information. Mainly used by companies, Notion is basically a product management tool that combines all collaborative and management applications in one. Many writers find it useful during collaborative writing projects.

Obsidian

Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files. Its strength lies in its simplicity and offline nature. You always have access to your files (markdown) and don’t have to rely on the internet. Also, there is no security threat or data being lost or transferred to third parties.

Roam Research

Roam Research is easy to use as a word document or bulleted list, and as powerful for finding, collecting, and connecting related ideas as a graph database. It is my favorite notes taking app. I really like its daily diary and ability to connect thoughts.

Milanote

Milanote is an easy-to-use creative writing app to organize your research, ideas, characters, and outline in one place. Designed particularly for novelists, it is suitable for plotters who prefer a flexible workspace to organize ideas and see a birds-eye view of how your story outline is coming together.

4. Newsletters Apps

As a writer, you need to build your reader base and communicate with them regularly. Newsletter Apps help you do exactly that. There are several newsletter apps in the market and all of them are fiddly and expensive.

MailChimp

MailChimp email marketing service for managing mailing lists and creating email marketing campaigns to send to customers. It was one of the first email marketing services and hence could grab a big share of the market for many years. It is fiddly and the most expensive of the lot. However, it offers much more in-depth analytics — especially with its Standard plan and above.

Convertkit

Convertkit is basically for creators and has better functionality and interface than MailChimp. But it is more expensive. Convetkit has great support and training for new users.

Mailerlite

Mailerlite is the most affordable of the three. It offers a simple reporting dashboard, and usual metrics for email campaign activity, subscriber engagement, devices, popular links, click maps, and opens by location.

Substack

Substack is not a newsletter like the above three, but it is a newsletter writing platform. It allows writers to communicate whatever they have written to their readers with the click of a button. It has a beautiful interface and is free to use as long as you are sending free newsletters. Once you start charging for your newsletter, Substack start taking a cut. It makes sense to use Substack to stay intact with your reader base.

5. Speech To Text

There was a time when Dragon Naturally Speaking was the only speech-to- text application. Now there are several. My favorite is Otter.ai, which is in fact an application to transcribe meetings. It has 98% accuracy, better than any other speech-to- text application. It has a free plan available which is enough for your needs as a writer.

To Sum Up

Now you know what tools are available, you can choose which one is right for you.

Subscribe to my newsletter at A Whimsical Writer for more tips and motivation.

4 Types Of Articles That Work Well On Medium

April 1, 2022April 1, 2022 Neera

It took me years to figure out what kind of articles to write on Medium.

After years of rambling, I have finally learned how to write articles that are beneficial to my readers and myself.

Medium articles are one of the most effective and valuable tools to build a following and generate material for your books/courses.

Both are necessary to build your online business.

Even when you don’t have a service or product to sell, you should be building a following in anticipation of having one in the future.

Your articles should either solve readers’ problems or entertain them, or both.

To effectively build a following on Medium, you should consider writing the four types of articles:

Educate
Entertain
Solve a problem
Make readers think

Let’s explore them one by one.

Educate

The easiest way to attract followers is to share your knowledge and expertise by teaching.

Articles that teach how to write, build an online business, or succeed on different platforms have been doing well on Medium for years and will continue to do so because everyone on the platform wants to learn these skills.

When teaching or educating, it pays to simplify things. Readers don’t have time to go through the fluff and decipher helpful information. Your ability to simplify things is proof that you’re a master of your domain.

Say less, convey more. Here are some of my articles that are short but carry helpful information.

Want To Write? Then Don’t Start A Blog

How To Write A Good Short Form Article

Entertain

Educating and teaching your audience is helpful, but if you hammer your audience with facts and teachings all the time, you risk boring them.

The bored audience tunes out. This is where entertainment comes in. Nothing is better than rolling education and entertainment into one. There is even a word for it, ‘edutainment.’

Here is one of my articles where I tried it.

I Am Writing A Cookbook

Solve A Problem

Articles that solve a problem do well. Pick one of the problems your readers face and provide solutions to that. This shows your readers that you understand their issues and care enough to help them solve them.

While solving a problem, empathize with your readers. This is because you have been there and faced the same issues. Using examples from your struggles builds a bond with your readers, turning them from followers to fans.

Here are two of my posts on solving problems by nailing empathy.

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Mediocre Writers

Stop Obsessing With Productivity

Make Readers Think

Outside of teaching and education, there are types of content that we all love. It is called philosophical or thoughtful content.

This type of content may not teach or may not entertain, but it makes your readers stop and react, “wow, I’ve never thought of it like this before…” or “Woah, what a great way to describe that….”

The content writers who do this incredibly well are people like Naval and Sahil Lavingia.

Here is one of Sahil’s articles that made me stop and think:

No Meetings, No Deadlines, No Full-Time Employees

Takeaway

In other words, to build a following (and your online business), people should see you in all these four forms.

This person teaches me.
This person entertains me.
This person solves my problems
This person makes me think.

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