Linky Tuesday: October 7, 2008

Be more creative, more productive, more fearless about selling, more powerful in your writing, and laugh at a LOLcat.

• The Difference Between Great and Average Copy. A moving little film about the difference between what you say and how you say it. (A client sent this to me saying “this reminded me of your stuff,” which I thought was a pretty fabulous compliment. So a big <mwah> to Candace.) Don’t miss the follow-up post analyzing the specifics of why the story works the way it does, which in turn links to a terrific classic post from Monday Morning Memo about the art of what not to say.
• In all the current financial freefall craziness, a lot of us are seized up by fear, which is the sworn enemy of creativity. If you’d like to unleash the creative potential that is lying within you, visit Charlie Gilkin’s great post this week about Demystifying the Creative Process. It’s not some secret ritual guarded by the annointed–it’s something you can use today and tomorrow to start solving problems from a healthier, more joyful place.
• Productivity rock star Dave Navarro wrote a post that really jolted me out of some of my everyday assumptions, about what he calls mid-lining. If your wheels are spinning, this post just might be what you need to get some traction.
• Don’t forget that Blog Action Day is coming up in less than two weeks. This is a very cool project to herd the thousands of blogging cats out there to move in a single general direction, one day a year. This year’s theme is poverty, which is one I can see a thousand different ways to explore. (Content hint: try not to preach. I struggle with this one myself, but make the message relevant and useful to your readers, not just finger-wagging to donate more to charity.) Make a connection, open up, have a conversation.
• This week I re-stumbled across a classic post from A List Apart about Writing for the Living Web. This is a wise, enduring manifesto (it was written in 2002) about the nuances of writing for the “living web” (in other words, this content net we all happily swim around in).
• Since I didn’t manage to get a linky post up last week, I’ve got two Copyblogger posts for you this time. The first is a post on How to Stop Being Afraid to Sell, outlining some non-yucky techniques for you. As we’re all dealing with the fairly crappy economic situation and accompanying panic, it’s time to come to terms with our issues and start working to promote our businesses in healthy, respectful ways.
• And if that’s just too darned serious for you, you can decide which cheesy 60s starlet more closely resembles your blog, Ginger or Mary Ann, which may well be the silliest blog post I’ve ever written. (Bonus line/subhead for Remarkable Communication readers, which was cut from the Copyblogger version for decorum’s sake: “Mary Ann’s were real.”)
• And in honor of the general economic/panic stinkiness, sometimes nothing says it better than a LOLcat.

Flickr Creative Commons image by evanosherow