Hillary DePiano's Blog, page 8

How To Utilize Social Networks in 2019

The following is a guest post from Karthik Reddy from SERPwatch.io. -TWS

If you plan to include social media in your digital marketing campaigns, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram are easily the top three choices for getting the largest reach.

With so many active users, Facebook still dominates the social media scene. YouTube is also a powerful tool not only for sharing video content but also for conducting online queries.

Meanwhile, Instagram is growing by leaps and bounds with a lot of feat...

I’m now officially available for speaking engagements and writing workshops

Photo courtesy of The Nutley Public Library For a long time now, I’ve offered talks and workshops to schools, libraries and writing groups on a variety of topics year-round from beginners who were just getting started with writing and playwrighting to more advanced topics like networking with bookstores and author branding to rave reviews from hosts and participants alike. I’m an energetic speaker with a massive amount of knowledge from writing and publishing to retail and marketing who can m...

The Love of Three Oranges changes lives (ok, fine, maybe just one life)

Did you see this awesome profile of J’Kalein Madison, a young actor making a splash in the local theatre scene in Waterloo, Iowa? What’s particularly cool is that Madison is a graduate of Waterloo West High School and had this to say about his theatre experience there: Madison originally planned to study law. That changed in his junior year when he played a role in the raucous comedy, “The Love of Three Oranges.”“It cemented for me that I loved performing and music.… Read more

The post The Lov...

A 2,500 word blog post?

I read an article the other day that said the best length for a blog post these days for all that SEO goodness is about 2,500 words. Other sources say 3,000+ is the sweet spot, the longer the better.

And, as a writer, I was like YESSS at last! How I have longed for this day! Because there is nothing I like more than to just dive into a topic and wallow around in there for a good long while, really beat the thing absolutely to death with my words.

Going on and on? Rambling endlessly? I love...

Pleexy is the missing link between Trello and Todoist

The two great loves of my productive life are Trello and Todoist.

I use Trello’s Kanban style boards to manage the big picture of my life. Trello is where I collect every project on my radar, do all my long term planning and work on the overall structure of my business and my life.

But I use Todoist’s GTD (that stands for Getting Things Done which is a very aptly named productivity method) style to do lists to manage the minutiae of my life. Todoist has just enough advanced features to hand...

Quickies: Talks and Names

As so often happens these days, I know I owe readers a big long status update and I sat down planning to write it but the baby is crying and I have mere minutes before I have to race up there so I’ll have to make this quick.

Talks and Workshops. I have been offering talks and workshops locally and via Skype and other video services for a while now about writing and publishing and have finally expanded that to include programs about e-commerce and eBay. While I will eventually set up a page on...

LitBit: Can fitness trackers mean more sleep, hydration and physical exercise for writers?

Fitbit for Writers Can fitness trackers mean more physical exercise for writers? Can having a little gadget strapped to our wrists really make us take better care of ourselves? I decided to try it out for myself. Writing is a very sedentary act. It involves sitting, often for very long periods of time, while we type until we damage our joints. In fact, one of the most common pieces of writing advice literally is: butt in chair. It’s not a very active pursuit.… Read more

The post LitBit: Can fi...

I quit Facebook. And by that I mean I’m still on Facebook because you can’t really quit Facebook.

I quit Facebook recently.

Which is to say I am still on Facebook because you can’t really quit Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has side-loaded it directly into our brains without our permission where it happily mines our personal traumas for ad revenue while soothing pop-ups jump in front of our childhood memories and assure us the Facebook values our privacy.

Do you know how many times I have Googled variations on “How to leave Facebook without really leaving Facebook?”

Do you know how many peo...

Did you know I offer free visits and video chats for schools doing my plays?

Photo courtesy of Rutgers Prep Are you performing one of my plays? I am happy to offer visits (either in-person or via video chat) to student groups of any age who are currently producing any of my plays free of charge. It’s a great opportunity for the cast and crew to ask questions about the play and their individual roles during the rehearsal process! Because schools so often put on plays where the author is long dead, it’s easy to forget that some of us are alive and well with internet acc...

Writing: it’s that easy, it’s that hard

Every few months I’ll be reading something and I’ll have this full stop epiphany moment where I’ll say to myself… Somebody just made this up and wrote it down. And I almost feel a bit betrayed for a second and then I immediately think… I could just make up any old random thing and write it down. This happens about an equal number of times if I’m reading something I’m enjoying or something I think is awful.… Read more

The post Writing: it’s that easy, it’s that hard appeared first on Hillary De...