The Online World is without Boundaries… Make the Best of it.
In the past decade, the internet saw itself grow from a thing called as a singular line between two army bases in North America, to a global scale communications medium, of extremely high speeds and accuracy. The ARPANET, as it was coined back in the day, did a lot for the American Army, but the commercial use of the Internet just couldn’t be held back anymore and it finally broke lose into the hands of the common man. The Internet now is just flooded with too many blogs, websites, discussion forums and just about the same redundant opinion from one site to another, just in either active or passive voice. Getting heard online is not an easy job. You can just as easily get overshadowed by the big guns and never get a chance to be noticed.
To make yourself and your compelling opinion to be heard, you have to make use of the right tools, right attitude and the right ways. Keeping that aside, the content that you work upon, should be equally effective and should be captivating. Listed below are 10 unique and helpful techniques that will help you convey your opinions and messages to a very large audience, with almost none or very little effort. So, best of luck and start reading!
1. Form Your Own Appeals (Opinions, Concerns & Rants): Blogs
If you’re an avid writer, don’t let that stay dormant. Unleash the urge sitting within you to break free and start writing. Blogs are an exceptional way to get your point across to a decent crowd and get feedback on it just as easily. There are innumerable services available on the Internet, which allows any random user to register for free and get him a blog up and running, without any efforts absolutely. The major blogging platforms these days are Blogger, WordPress and Tumblr. If you are planning to cover on current news and events, time is crucial and you should have a group of authors for your blog, who can cover shifts, posting any news, the moment that it leaks out. Make sure to use appropriate keywords, tags and categories to make the post search engine friendly, hence get more audience.
2. Take Part in Discussions: Comment!
Not everyone is a born William Shakespeare. Being able to write good articles is a very difficult task, and some cannot get the necessary ‘edge’ required to get noticed. If you fall in this category, fear not. Just writing good articles is not the only way to get noticed, instead, you can take part in various discussions and debates via commenting on popular sites with the niche of your interest. There are plenty of popular blogs, usually run by senior journalists who have set up their blog to convey their views. You can head on over there, to express yourself as well. There are also a ton of discussion forums all over the internet, but be sure to follow the simple rules of netiquettes while you comment or post on such sites. Avoid getting into unnecessary debates or fights. It may get you a permanent ban from the site.
3. Confirm Opinions/Facts
Posting stuff online is easy. As easy as a few taps on the keyboard and click on ‘submit’. But how accurate the content is, is the key to success. Opinions are usually biased as they are actually a perception of a particular issue. And, in such cases, it is vital that you are aware and very well informed about the situation before you post about it online. Try to stay clear of sensitive topics and if you MUST talk about them, be sure to maintain consideration towards the readers and their thoughts. Always give the due credits for your information sources. You don’t want to be labeled as a plagiarist, now, would you?
4. Structuring Appropriate Statements & Correct Grammar
If you have successfully set up your blog, have a good knack over writing and have amassed a good amount of readers, then it’s time to start making sure that your content is well approved and checked beforehand. If you have a large reader base, then that implies that you have a large amount of RSS Feed subscribers. In this case, once you make a new post, the post is either mailed to them entirely or an excerpt is. Make sure that whatever you post on the blog is accurately checked for spelling and grammatical mistakes. Subsequent changes (edits and updates) you make to the post will not be resent to the subscribers, making your prior mistakes that you made in the blog permanent, giving a bad impression. So, to avoid such embarrassing situations, always use a powerful word processor such as Microsoft Word or a free alternative Open Office. Writing on a simple notepad won’t do.
5. Following Social Networks & News Portals
If you are inclined towards communicating with people via social networking websites such as Twitter or Facebook, you can quite as easily receive feeds from these networking sites instead of manually visiting them over and over again to get updates. Usually, most of the web portals and blogs have a ‘Connect with Facebook’ or ‘Follow us on Twitter’ button. You can click on it and receive periodic or dynamic updates from the particular site or source directly onto your Facebook Wall. As far as the Twitter’s tweets are concerned, you will receive them on your Twitter’s homepage as and when they update themselves. There are various TV shows on which you can even get showcased, by sending your tweets to using the ‘@’ tags. Getting on those TV shows would be an amazing way to get connected to a very very large audience, to share your opinions and thoughts. Also, using ‘#’ tags in front of important words in the tweets will help the search engines (Twitter Oriented) index you and get you noticed better.
The web is a huge and an undying source of communication. Being able to connect has never been easier. If done properly, the concept of ‘sharing opinions’ can be made profitable by using your site as a hotspot for advertising and promotions. With the above five simple concepts of voicing your opinion online, you can immerse yourself in an ocean of knowledge (gained from others) and invaluable experience. So, stop idling on your Facebook account playing FarmVille, get up and make a change in the world!