Yael WritesYael Writes

Freelance writing services from Yael Grauer

  • About
  • Writing Portfolio
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Resume
You are here: Home / Archives for tech

The Elephant in the Room Episode 1: Net Neutrality

May 12, 2014 By Yael Grauer 1 Comment

photo courtesy of Public Knowledge
image courtesy of Public Knowledge

If you’re worried about supporting net neutrality because you think it’ll mean you’ll be eternally relegated to refreshing frozen video feed when watching House of Cards, I’ve got good news for you. An open internet actually benefits you as a consumer as well as a business owner. Bartees Cox, Director of Media Relations at Public Knowledge, joined me for the inaugural episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast to explain what net neutrality is, what all the fuss is about, and what you need to do to save it. We discussed:

  • What is net neutrality?
  • Why shouldn’t Netflix pay more if they use more bandwidth than other sites?
  • Would net neutrality slow down internet access to high-traffic sites?
  • Why are cable companies so opposed to net neutrality?
  • How can we criticize a proposal that nobody’s seen?
  • What does title 2 classification mean, and what would it do?
  • Is net neutrality dead already?
  • Why are people writing the White House about an FCC proposal?

Take action:

  • Email FCC chair Tom Wheeler: Tom.Wheeler@fcc.gov
  • Contact your elected officials
  • Join the Rally to Save the Internet in DC

Information from Public Knowledge:

  • Will the FCC Create an Internet for the 1 Percent?
  • FCC Chairman Reiterates Net Neutrality Proposal at Cable Show
  • Public Knowledge Encouraged by FCC Recognition of Meaningful Net Neutrality Rules

Further analysis:

  • Creating A Two-Speed Internet (New York Times) 
  • Net Neutrality, Monopoly and the Death of the Open Internet (Motherboard) 
  • What Net Neutrality Means For Your Business, And What You Can Do To Save It (Copyblogger)

Filed Under: business, marketing and PR, podcast, tech Tagged With: Bartees Cox, FCC, net neutrality, Tom Wheeler

Top 13 posts of 2013

December 23, 2013 By Yael Grauer Leave a Comment

imgresEach year around this time, I write a series of posts recapping the year. To start, I’d like to repost my most popular pieces this year, based on Google Analytics data.

This year, I taught a workshop on PR for startups, and put a lot of time behind the content to promote the event as well as the video course. Some of the posts around this resonated.

  • Does your PR strategy suck? Here’s how to fix it (without hiring a firm)
  • Why your press release got deleted (and what you can do about it) 
  • How to put on a worksop (that people go to)

I did a bit of self-reflection…

  • Four years of freelancing: 20 things I learned the hard way
  • I spent a week prioritizing myself (and the word kept spinning)

…and even wrote about some dental work I unfortunately needed.

  • What it’s like to get a root canal (and crown)

On a brighter note, I also wrote about some products I like, including some interviews.

  • Why you need Draft (the sexiest web app for writers and editors)
  • Prism glasses and Buddha boards (my quarterly Quarterly.co review)
  • Surviving the zombie apocalypse (for a kit–which is sold out now, sorry!)

I use this blog as a forum to delve into political issues, and this year that included some writing about sexual assault…

  • My response to the Lloyd Irvin student rape case
  • Some thoughts on accountability

..as well as a post in memory of a dear friend who died, and a fundraiser for a local non-profit organization I support. This wasn’t as big as last year’s fundraiser for Children of the Night, to support child victims of human trafficking in the US, but it was still significant. Thank you to those who donated in Chris’ name.

  • Remembering Chris McBride 

Last but not least, remember that you’re beautiful with this poem!

  • Poem of the month: Oh How Beautiful You Are!

That concludes the top 13 of 2013. I’ll be posting some of my top posts and articles on other sites (and magazines) soon, so stay tuned.

Filed Under: BJJ, marketing and PR, musings, stuff I wrote, tech, week in review, writing

Stuff I Wrote: Social Media Marketing, Small Biz Tactics, Food and Sport

September 2, 2013 By Yael Grauer Leave a Comment

Writing Fountain pen

If you’re like me, you can barely keep up with your overflowing email inbox, let alone the various social media platforms competing for your attention. As such, I regularly compile all of the articles and posts I’ve written and put them in one place, by category. I usually do this monthly, but this edition is a double-whammy. Check it out.

Social Media Marketing

  • Go Beyond ‘Vanity’ Metrics With Your Marketing (VerticalResponse). Brant Cooper explains what that means, exactly.
  • How To Go Out on a Vine For Social Media (VerticalResponse). Six-second videos!
  • How Your Biz Can Break Through Facebook Clutter (VerticalResponse). Mana Ionescu talks tactics.
  • Cover Your Business on Twitter Like a Journalist (VerticalResponse). Tara Swiger shares her knowledge.
  • How To Email Often Without  Losing Readers (VerticalResponse). Derek Halpern keeping it real.
  • Infographics Dos, Don’t & Must Haves (VerticalResponse). Wisdom from Caitlin Rogers at Simplicity Metrics.
  • After Google Readers’ Demise, Does RSS Matter To Your Business? (VerticalResponse). And some alternatives.

Small Biz

  • 5 Search-Savvy Secrets to Google Map Listings. (VerticalResponse). Good stuff from Booyah for brick and mortar businesses.
  • How To Validate Your Business Idea Before It’s Too Late (Graziadio Voice). More from Brant Cooper.
  • How To Make A Living Writing: 7 Freelance Tips (Writer’s Block). I gave away all my secrets before a workshop at the Loft Literary Center.
  • Scaling Ruby on Rails: Practical Advice (Dice.com). For the developers reading this.
  • Five Ways To Use Video To Promote Your Business (Freelance Switch). I didn’t write this, but I was quoted in it…

Food

  • A Protein Rich Potato Chip Alternative That Tastes Good (Men’s Journal). My blurb on iPS.
  • The Best Breakfast For A Hot Day (Men’s Journal). Paleo enthusiasts: consider it a cheat meal.
  • Ch-ch-ch-chia! (Costco Connection). And another cheat meal for the cavemen amongst us.

Sport

  • Marathoners: Train To Protect Your Heart. (Men’s Journal). Sort of intuitive, but good to know.
  • 16 Questions With Chris Kluwe (Performance Menu). This one costs three bucks.
  • The Serious Side of Josh Barnett (Sherdog). A profile on ‘The Warmaster’.
  • Matchmaking Matters (Sherdog). Invicta Fighting Championships building their brand by giving fighters the matches they want when they want them.
  • Beating the Odds: UFC 162 (Sherdog). Upsets by Weidman (!!) and Melancon.
  • Beating the Odds: UFC 163 (Sherdog). Davis, Parosh and Barrosa.

Video Interviews From Invicta Fighting Championships

I was lucky enough to get to speak with fighters Cris ‘Cyborg’ Justino, Leslie “the Peacemaker” Smith, Jessica Pene and Tecia ‘Little Tornado’ Torres at Invicta Fighting Championships 6 in Kansas City. Here are the interviews.

Filed Under: combat sports, food, food politics, health, marketing and PR, stuff I wrote, tech, wellness, writing

Why You Need Draft (The Sexiest Web App For Writers and Editors)

August 16, 2013 By Yael Grauer Leave a Comment

If you’ve ever gone through editing hell trying to read and assimilate feedback using Google Docs or Microsoft Word’s track changes feature, you’ll immediately fall in love with Draft, just like I did. The program’s so user-friendly and nice to look at that I’m trying to think of ways to get every writer and editor I work with to use it, so let me describe it for a second before we talk about the guy who made it. (Right now it takes two to tango, so if you collaborate on writing with me, make sure to read ’til the end for a special bonus.)

Draft is this amazing (and free) program that lets you write text on a clean, grey screen, and then share it with an editor. When they give you feedback, you can actually see it. Their deletions show up with pink highlights. New text is highlighted in green. Here’s an example from my own writing, edited by the amazing Maartje Gorte, who I sometimes hire as a freelance editor when I really want a piece to shine. As you can see, her changes are in green, and the deletions are in red.

Screen Shot 2013-08-16 at 8.23.00 AM

I can easily accept or reject the changes. Comments aren’t stored in tiny bubbles or blocks of text far off the screen, making it virtually impossible to edit other people’s work or assimilate any changes they’ve made (*cough*  Microsoft Word *cough), nor are they written over an original draft like in  Google Docs. Changes and comments are startlingly  easy to see. You can accept or ignore each individual change. You can even look at multiple versions side by side. Here’s an example from the Draft website.

Screen Shot 2013-08-16 at 2.27.12 AM

Draft founder Nate Kontny describes it as version control for writers. What’s version control? It’s tech-speak for keeping old copies (electronically), and with Draft you can use it without having to learn a word of code. It’s just a way to record various changes you’ve made, so you can go back to the second version if you have a sudden change of heart, for example.

There’s also a character count, some analytics, options to help with everything from to-do lists to transcribing interviews, a Chrome extension, and more. You can sync your Draft document with cloud services, publish it in multiple locations, and mark major versions of your old work so you can find ’em and compare changes over time.

Additionally, you can pay a small amount of money to get your post proofread by a professional ($4-5 for 15 minutes or $12 to $15 for 45 minutes…depending on whether you decide to support Draft by subscribing to Draft Yearly, which is $39.99/year.)

image1327095694

It’s always fun to talk to people who make things you use, so I was thrilled to be able to get Nate on Skype to ask him some questions about Draft. He definitely defies the stereotypes of both programmers and grammarians. I would describe him first and foremost as experimental.

Here’s an example. For fun, Nate used to host a reality cooking show where he’d experiment with complicated recipes with friends. “We’d pick things we weren’t familiar with that we knew we didn’t have the right equipment for. We were going to improvise,” Nate said. In one episode, they cooked Indian food and struggled with whether to buy cardamom seeds or pods, and other steps in the process. “It turned out really kind of terrible,” he explains. “It was actually kind of hilarious.” Another episode actually made it onto the show Next Food Network Star as an example of what not to do. “We had managed to light our sushi rice on fire,” he explains. Apparently playing video games while boiling vinegar as part of the ginger pickling process is inadvisable.

Luckily, Nate is better at programming than he is at experimental cooking. He created Draft for himself, first and foremost. The need came largely from wanting his wife Lynette to easily edit the writing he did for his blog, Ninjas and Robots. “I’d email her a link and she’d end up copying and pasting the stuff into Word, and then do track changes in Word and send me the Word document back. Then I’d have to deal with Word and paste it back into the blog,” he recalls. So he created Draft to give her tools to edit his work more easily.

Then he started sending it to friends at tech accelerator Y Combinator, where he’d previously worked on two projects–one focused on social predictions and one on branded games. He also showed Draft to friends on the tech team he worked on as a software engineer for Obama’s re-election campaign.

Next, he started pulling together paid editors so people could pay a small fee to have someone proofread their work. He was recently struck by the realization that many students have never read an entire draft of their own papers, something a teacher friend pointed out to him. “How many people who write blog posts never actually read through it to see if there’s mistakes or poor wording?” he wondered. A quick fix is having a friend look at your draft, or paying to have an editor look at text directly in Draft. The next iteration for this would be an editing option that’s more in-depth. “The editing service we have is a lot like Hoover Taxi; a lot of grammar fixes, a friend’s eye, a quick glance… I’m looking at something that’s the next level, that’s uber black…”

Other features he’s considering adding include an option to take someone’s email or post and edit it in Draft and show them the edits you make, without the owner of the document using Draft first, as well as easier ways to import text into Word. Draft becoming more mainstream could really revolutionize the writing and editing process as we know it, and I’m really crossing my fingers in hopes that it will establish itself as a service for writing alongside Microsoft Word and Google Docs.

Until then, individuals can work within Draft to improve their own writing, following Nate’s example. Writing isn’t exactly something that’s always considered important for software developers. “Looking at my own career, writing hasn’t been a focus for my employers, so it’s been on me to work hard and try to improve,” Nate explains. But he enjoys writing on his blog and for Fast Company Labs, and just wants to get better. “I don’t want to waste people’s time when they’re reading my site,” he explains. “I get a lot out of trying to make posts insanely inspirational or trying to teach something I’ve learned. I want to get better at it so people don’t ignore it and can get more out of it.”

Check out Nate’s great writing on his blog,  http://ninjasandrobots.com/, and start using Draft for your own version control or collaborative projects right here: https://draftin.com/. If you’ve used Draft in the past or just started using it, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

And here’s the bonus I promised…. I really want more people to play with Draft with me, but right now it takes two to tango. I’d have to send documents in Draft for others to edit, or someone has to send me their file in Draft. So if you’re one of my writers who I edit, or if I write for you and you’d like to switch from Microsoft Word or Google Docs to Draft…I will send you a bag of jellybeans. (I was going to send chocolate, but it’s melty season, even here in Minneapolis.) Obviously, I can’t send jellybeans to the whole world forever, so this is a limited time offer for the first five Draftees. (See what I did there?) Drop me a line in the comments, on Twitter or vie email if you want to be one of the lucky five.

Filed Under: tech, writing

Why Your Press Release Got Deleted (And What You Can Do About It)

May 1, 2013 By Yael Grauer 3 Comments

Depositphotos_19834643_xsEver sent a journalist or blogger an important press release and heard only crickets?

Perhaps it was about that big product you’re launching, or one that’s been around for a while but has never gotten any media play. Maybe it’s about a service you provide that would be of great interest to their readers.

You  know your message is on point. You spent several hours making sure that it was. You painstakingly compiled a list of media contacts who you’re SURE should be writing about your service or product. But none of them did. None of them even contacted you back at all.

You pick up the phone to make sure they received your email, but find that people are short and curt, and all of your follow-up messages are ignored. This is the tough part. You’ve gotten so little feedback that you’re not sure how to react next. Do you continue to push, calling again until you hear from someone? (They haven’t said no, have they?) Or do you just give up, resigned to the fact that you’ll get passed over for media opportunities that your competitors are somehow snatching up?

The answer is …neither

It’s like sales. When have you ever bought something because someone pestered you about it? The way to success is to find people who are dying for a solution to a problem, and providing it for them, not convincing someone to get something they don’t want or need.

Dating is another example. That guy or gal you’re into who’s not calling back? Relentless persistence is typically not the best option, but neither is resigning yourself to a life of solitude, sitting at home with your pint of Phish Food and Janis Ian playlist.

Instead, you’ll want to position yourself in a way that’s appealing, so you’ll be the one fending off phone calls.

So let go of the false dichotomy. You don’t have to choose between harassing people or giving up on your goals. The best way to get media attention?

  • find journalists and bloggers who are looking for you and your expertise
  • create a compelling narrative that people can’t help but write about
  • help writers (and readers) put trending industry news in perspective

Share the right message with the right people in the way they want to hear it, and you’ll never have to sit at home, deciding whether to make another follow-up phone call or simply throw in the towel.

Need more details on the specifics? I’ve created a video course to help with just that. PR For Startups is for you if you’re a small business owner, consultant, marketer or entrepreneur with an active business earning $1000/month or more, and you want to get some media play, without wasting time spinning your wheels or spending money on an overpriced and ineffective PR firm.

The video, rich with examples and screencasts, is over 2 hours long. Here’s what’s in it:

  • what you need to have in place BEFORE contacting the media
  • what media will NOT do for you–and what you can do instead
  • writing press releases that don’t suck
  • how to build a media list all of your own
  • The top five ways to get your name in print–they’re not what you think
  • apps and services that’ll help you up your PR game–without breaking the bank

Don’t want to take notes while watching? No problem. You’ll also get a handy Google doc with all of the apps and articles discussed. AND if you buy before May 10th, you’ll be invited to a Q+A session by phone so you can get your specific questions answered. (I’ll take these in advance via email, in case you can’t make the call.)

Interested in learning the strategies you need instead of spinning your wheels? Purchase the course below. At $25, it’s a steal, though we’ll be doubling this price in June.

Add to Cart

Filed Under: marketing and PR, tech, writing

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next Page »

Subscribe!

Subscribe using an RSS Reader
Close

Join Me On

survive-the-internet

Professional Organizations

ire-logo ona-logo

Publication Credits

yael-wired

yael-forbes

yael-slate

yael-takepart

yael-mensjournal

yael-vice

yael-experience

yael-performance

yael-readwrite

yael-sherdog

Copyright © 2021 Yael Grauer · Log in