The Summer is ending and this has been a busy one. Especially the last few weeks. I’ve been doing quite a bit of travelling, which has really thrown off my work schedule. This last week I combined a pleasure vacation with a business trip and drove down to Hilton Head, SC (business) and Savannah, GA (family). In Hilton Head, Dawn Josephson and I decided where to spend our advertising budget for our book, Write It Right: The Ground Rules for Self-Editing Like the Pros. Also discussed a few other business items and that wrapped up the business portion of my trip.
My co-horts (sons, 3 and 5) came with me and we enjoyed spending time with my parents while going to the beach at Tybee Island (beautiful and warm water!), and their community’s pool. They live in a gated community in Savannah with golf courses, pools, lagoons, etc., and it’s really lovely. Somehow I didn’t count on it being quite that hot! I’ve made a mental note to avoid summer vacations there. Winter would be much nicer!
We drove down and had a couple hairy incidents driving down I-95. On the journey to Savannah, a mini-van blew out a tire directly in front of me. FOrtunately, he was able to get to the shoulder while I had a tractor trailer right behind me. On the way home, another SUV/minivan type vehicle also blew out a tire. This vehicle was about 4 or 5 cars in front of me. All I could see was smoke, then this van fishtailing and spinning into the center median. How no other cars got hit, I have no idea. Traffic was quite heavy and there were cars all around him. At first I thought it was a collision, but fortunately I was wrong. It got me wondering what causes tires to blow out and I did a little research.
It seems that underinflating car tires, structural problems with the tires, high heat and fast driving conditions can all be contributing factors. For more information, click here.
So, driving safety aside, work beckons. I’m doing editing, research, more editing and more editing this week. I’m anxious to get back to the grind tomorrow.
Until next time.
Lauren Hidden, owner of The Hidden Helpers is a professional writer, author, editor, and writing coach. Working with professionals in a variety of industries, Lauren helps her clients get their messages across clearly, concisely, and persuasively.
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Lauren,
Marketing your and Dawn’s book through blogs is the way to go. My new book, “Our Fathers Who Art In Heaven…and What They Continue to Teach Us” (http://www.murak.blogs.com/ourfatherswhoartinheaven) now comes up as number one on a variety of searches on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and many others.
In May of this year, before “Our Fathers Who Art In Heaven” was even off the presses we ran a report on Google results and in a variety of searches that had Google results in excess of 750,000 we were in the top 10, 90% of the time! What is even more incredible in that same report, “Our Fathers Who Art In Heaven” was #1, 10 times or 26% of the time on search results of 750,000 or more!
Just yesterday someone searched Google for; “Words of encouragement to someone that lost a loved one”. Out of a possible 2,850,000 possible Google results we were number one!
Thanks to Yvonne DiVita and Tom Collins and their “Blogging Boot Camp” I am going to the Maui’s Writers Conference next week with confidence. This never would have happened with a web site.
There is no comparison between a blog and a website. Web sites have benefits but compared to blogs they are ancient history!
There’s another title for a book in my “Who Art In Heaven” series – “Our Websites that are in Heaven”.
Websites have a purpose but blogs are eating their lunch.
All of the Best to You and thank you very much for your “Hidden Help” with “Our Fathers Who Art In Heaven”.
Gerry
Lauren, I read your blog comment on not having enough blog comments on B.L. Ochman’s blog about how to write better blogs. Reading this particular comment out loud doesn’t make it sound any worse, but I can’t figure out how to make it sound better.
Sensibly nonsensical,
Karen