Lowell, MI-Happiness comes in many forms. What brings a smile to your face?
A WordPress happiness engineer brought a smile back to my face.
I panicked after I lost two-thirds of followers of EW Emma’s Writings on Monday. The photo below depicts exactly what I felt like. The caricature is by Olin Pink
Emma Palova deals with a technical hiccup.
“Losing followers, including shares and subscriptions, is like losing gold or accounts,” I wrote in the original story that I have decided to completely rewrite.
The help I received was efficient, fast, analytical and comforting. Each email ended with “Cheers.”
I got links that narrowed down the problem and finally resolved it with a best wishes farewell.
Happiness engineering is like Russian nesting dolls
Happiness engineering reminds me of Russian nesting dolls. Happiness engineers work to narrow down the problem and what caused it.
The happiness engineers around the world work as a team until the problem is solved.
The WordPress support distributed team works in a similar environment like the users, according to a presentation by happiness engineer Andrew Spittle. Here is an excerpt from Spittle’s talk at a 2013 conference in San Francisco.
The second principle I hold to be true is that happy people are most inclined to share and spread that happiness.
We’re Happiness Engineers, right? We don’t want to create a culture of sadness. That’s not going to help our users. If we can orient decisions toward increasing our happiness then it will also inevitably increase our users’ happiness.
We can step back from the pressure, trends, and isolation of any particular geographic area. There isn’t a central, geographic ideology that’s predominant. The languages, values, ideas, and lifestyles of our team are distributed around the world, just like our users.
That built-in geographic distribution, what I earlier called being location-agnostic, means we can say No to a lot of things. A lot of things people assume to be required of a customer support gig we don’t need to worry about. In our day-to-day work we have:
We have no set shifts. We prescribe no particular schedule. And we ensure that no one pulls a graveyard shift.
Thanks to the entire support team and especially to the angel happiness engineer somewhere out there in that vast Internet space.
“It will increase traffic to the blog a lot,” said editor Lori Kilchermann. “I will do some promos in the coming days and weeks.”
This has been my goal for a long time. I finally feel like I have stepped into the future. I worked for the Sentinel from 1998 to 2003, and I received several awards for community and mental health reporting. Internet was still a baby at the time and so were RSS feeds, content writing and social media.
EW blog on the Ionia Sentinel-Standard daily newspaper
The EW Emma’s Writings blog on the WordPress platform features a mix of local and international stories in support of the publication of my memoir Greenwich Meridian where East meets west. The memoir is about our family immigration saga now spanning three generations. I will dedicate the memoir to my mother Ella Konecny who suffered the most with immigration.
I established the blog in January of 2013 to increase exposure on the Internet. It has been steadily growing both in audience and content. The page About People is just like its title suggests about interesting people from the area such as Connie Elsasser with her carriage rides, the Ionia Community Mental Health director Bob Lathers or the Kropf apple legend.
EW blog on WordPress
I update the blog twice a week and use my photography. Other users of WordPress include CNN, Bangor Daily, TechCrunch, Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart.
I use WordPress themes 2014, Skylark, Hemingway re-written, Splendio and more.
I also started to write and design blogs for other people. Blogs are dynamic, fast and versatile. Search engines like them and they drive traffic to sites. If you want me to design and write your blog e-mail me at emmapalova@yahoo.com for a quote. I can also teach you how to blog to drive traffic to your business and websites.
I love blogging because of the great feedback I get my readers.
I hope you will enjoy my writings and photography also on http://emmapalova.com and editionemma.wordpress.com
Watch for my stories from the Mississippi River. I now accomplished 127 posts on WordPress. I am looking forward to the next 100.
Lowell, MI- Three things prompted me to think about the writing business: 101 Challenge by WordPress, 100 Posts & beyond that I have achieved in a year and my worsening eyesight.
Sometimes people ask me what would I be if I wasn’t a writer.
“I’d be a queen,” I answer laughing. “The queen of hearts.”
First of all writing is a business and it should be approached as such. I never quite got the idea of some of the Internet writers’ magazines screaming out loud on Facebook:
“Writers, do you want to get paid for writing?”
How is writing any different than going to get your groceries and paying for them? Or gas at the local station? Air ticket?
I love to blog
Actually it should be paid higher than your average retail position because the fact of the matter remains that minority entertains the majority.
“People would die of boredom if it wasn’t for writers and artists,” I always say. “What would you do without us?”
But, there does come a time when you feel like giving up after all the ups and downs, the encouragements and the discouragements.
It is that time when you’re bombarded by self-publishing houses that want your credit card number for your book on demand; by your spouses who want you to make money rather than use it on print cartridges, your aging parents who want to hold that long dreamt about book.
Then, kicks in the thing about driving traffic to your Internet sites and likes, which somehow magically will transfer into sales.
Not to forget about traditional publishers who want everything by snail mail, and 10 months later they still haven’t responded to you.
I don’t know how to change things to get different results or more likes and followers.
I like to encourage others to keep on trying doing the things they want along with the wanted outcomes.
100 Posts on WordPress
My wanted outcomes are the publishing of my memoir and a book, but I seem to be lost in a sea of unexpected results on winding paths. This is not always bad, it’s just something else than you wanted.
It’s like going into the woods to get morels, and instead you bring back blackberries.
“It leads to new discoveries,” I say.
Like in this typical example of having a blog to increase your online presence and publishing capabilities while writing your memoir.
Well, accidentally you pick out WordPress, the best of the bunch. You are a perfect match, and you’re on your way.
“I love doing the blog more than writing my memoir,” I told my husband the other day.
There’s better and instant feedback, the constant challenge of maintaining the blog and coming up with new things, new challenges.
Then in turn you get picked up by other Internet giants and you’re headed into the unknown, like on a spaceship.
In the spirit of 101 Challenge: The Commons I wanted to write about finding your feature niche II for your blog yesterday. I wanted to thank everybody for participating in the challenge yesterday. I wanted to write about the month of May being the mental health awareness month and my friend CEO of Ionia County Community Mental Health (ICCMH). I wanted to do everything yesterday.
Writing with a magnifying glass
But destiny wanted something else.
I can hardly see the screen. Yesterday, I couldn’t see at all. I couldn’t write. The screen was dipped in a faraway 3=D mist. Google was floating somewhere in a distance.
I barely made it back home from town with my medication as I couldn’t see the oncoming cars.
I went to see the eye doctor this morning. Eyes are the second most precious asset that I have.
“What brings you here on a Friday,” asks the eye doc.
“I couldn’t see yesterday, it was creepy,” I said.
The eye doc conducts a thorough exam and says:
“Putting something in front of the foggy lens is not going to solve your problem,” he said. “You have cataracts in both eyes at a young age. It’s very progressive.”
“Does it run in the family?”
“Most definitely,” he said.
“I need to see Dr.Verdier,” I said.
“You know him,” asks the eye doc looking at me through his spectacles.
“I wrote about him,” I said. “He travels around the world fixing eyes.”
“Did you write that article about him on the Orbitz plane,”asks the eye doc.
“I did.”
“Then you know he’s worth waiting for,” says the eye doc.
The first consult appointment with Dr. Verdier is on Aug. 22. I still have to write. I have a book deal in the making, but I need to see.
Lowell, MI- As I write this I am probably on my 107th post or more between my rolling portfolio of Emma’s Blogs.
I get my ideas from nature, from other people, art and sometimes from press releases.
“Get out of the office, go and talk to people, shoot some bull,” a presenter said at a writing conference in 1998 at Central Michigan University (CMU) in Mount Pleasant. In a million years, I could not have received better advice. I live by it. I swear by it.
100 Posts on WordPress
A story is not going to walk into your office or into your space whatever or wherever that may be. You have to seek it out. If it does walk in, excellent. But, you still have to explore it in 3D. Otherwise you have a dry piece without juice and atmosphere. In sales, it’s called “drumming up business.”
My second editor Dave Trinka of Allegan County News, awesome photographer, told me that I should just do a drive around and get some photos. Well, with the photos usually comes a story idea, and you get a bonus break from the screen, the keyboard, and the editor. Sorry, Dave, Valerie and Jeanne.
“Ask yourself questions,” the presenter encouraged in that pivotal CMU conference.
Go to your local coffee shop and listen to what people are talking about. What is the talk of the town? Is it you? Or why has that coffee shop changed hands so many times? Why is it doing so well now? Once a co-pastor of a local church owned the coffee shop under the name Kava Klatch.
What happened to the pastor who just wanted to try it out for the sake of trying, used a fancy foreign name, and three month later went out of business?
About people blog
Well, he’s a successful pastor at a successful growing church. Does that warrant a story about the evolution from church to coffee shop and back to church?
Interesting, isn’t it?
My second favorite stories are enterprising stories. They’re up for grabs, they’re that low-hanging fruit.
“What would Big Rapids or Mount Pleasant be without their sacred cows? Or better, what would Rome be without the Vatican? What would WordPress be without its users?
Can anyone guess what those sacred cows are?
They’re the anchor institutions or businesses in communities. Every community around the world has them.
“Find your sacred cow. What has she been up to lately?”
No. 1 HUMAN INTEREST STORIES
Everybody loves them. They are about people for the people. The subject of these does not necessarily have to be George Clooney or Brad Pitt. That’s been done million times all over the planet. You can get that anywhere. You probably see it on my site http://emmapalova.com
It does not have to be about your local habitual offender. That’s too easy. The news organizations got that from a massive press release from the police department. You don’t even have to change anything. The police chief probably sweated long hours over it.
“The easiest beat you can get is the police,” said former editor of the Ionia Sentinel-Standard Roger Harnack.
It does not have to be about the NBA franchise owner Donald Sterling who got into trouble for his racial comments. The TV and the Internet have us covered for the next 100 years on this one.
Look deeper inside your own community. Again ask yourself questions. Follow through and study your subject of interest.
Who is the woman behind the successful events drawing people into the community? What kind of a difference has she made? What is her impact on the community? Why does she care?
“She keeps reinventing herself,” said owner of Ace Hardware Charlie Bernard about the Lowell Area Chamber of Commerce director.
That warrants a story on many different levels in spite of the fact that she is on every press release and in photos sitting on Santa’s lap promoting Christmas picture taking.
Why? Because she is different. She boldly stands apart from the crowd.
What happened to the former editor who got canned from two newspapers? Well, today, as we speak, he is walking the aisle to accept his doctoral diploma in communications.
“I’ll be walking tomorrow,” he posted on LinkedIn. “I still have to make a few corrections to my dissertation.”
What is the active ingredient in the Tazo tea that makes you go to sleep? Among the proprietary blend of 13 ingredients, the Valerian Root stands out. So, you pick it and write about it.
Follow Emma’s Writings for insight and fun. Learn how to write, learn how to blog and design. Be your own journalist. Learn how to express your voice. Shout out loud.
100 Posts on WordPress
Advertise your work and brand on my rolling portfolio of spring blogs.
I embarked on this journey through my memories called “Greenwich Meridian where East meets West” on December 12, 2012 after being asked by many colleagues, friends and acquaintances to write our story. I have attempted several times to pen our immigration saga now spanning three generations. I saved evidence of such attempts like the personal essay, “Fire on Water.” I used the same title for my novel based on the communist experience from former Czechoslovakia. Some trace elements of the story can be found in a newspaper article about my naturalization as a U.S. citizen in 1999, “Lowell woman gets naturalized.” It was syndicated by the Associated Press and well received by the audience. I got phone calls from all over Michigan. Finally, I decided to pursue my lifelong dream of writing for the pleasure of others. Until recently I have been writing mostly for information capturing tragedies, disasters, events, politics and corrupt police chiefs or superintendents. However, my forte are human interest stories often about ordinary people doing unusual things either by their own will or against it. The memoir is a true work of creative non-fiction in which I combine real life exotic settings like Africa with real life people, who are either put in a bizarre situation or get into one by their own doings. Today, on this Mothers Day, I dedicate the book to my mother Ella Konecny who suffered the most in immigration because as Mr. Jan Skvor said at a Czechoslovak Conference for Arts and Science in Emigration in Horgen, Switzerland, 1970. “Immigration is not for missies.” For me immigration has been one of the toughest things I’ve ever done in my entire life. And that includes studying calculus, seeing my grandparents through their illness to the end and living by myself with two young children, so I could leave the country to join my husband. And now by writing about it, I am reliving it. But, I want to preserve some of the events, and to a certain point even history. I have no regrets. America has helped me realize my dream of writing. I would do it all over again. I have a Daruma doll used by Japanese businessmen for motivation and to stay on task. One of my former editors gave it to me when I was facing a tough project. When things are not going your way, you just knock it down. A little steel ball at the bottom makes it bounce back. You also color only one eye, and once the project is complete you color the other eye. So, Daruma has been watching me pounding away on my keyboard at early morning hours chapter after chapter.
“Life went by so fast,” said mom when we talked about immigration in Venice, Florida and at the Selby Gardens.
Hi to all my friends,
I will be talking on the Internet with wlhs radio tomorrow at 3 p.m. EST USA about my writing projects at the Lowell High School. The show is with Joe Ryder and Al Eckman. Go to http://www.wlhsradio.org.
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