Hub Pages Benefit Your Websites and Blogs

 A couple ideas for writers to make good use of their hubs occurred to me after reading a comment on one of my hubs.  The commenter wanted to know if he should hub the first chapter of his book.

My response was that if that chapter was not fully edited and ready to go, he most likely would not get the 'tough' critical feedback needed to make the writing stronger.  Few people care to publicly critique a writer's work unless its in a 'critique group' setting.  Hub Pages is very public and as I've noted after eleven days, a very positive, supportive community.

Unfortunately for the writer, he or she desperately needs critical (not cruel) input on what they've written so as to tighten the writing up and giving the writing its strongest possible impact.  I suggested he find an online writer's critique group or join a physical group local to where he lives.

Here's where Hub Pages may be helpful.  The guideliness state that you are not supposed to directly promote a product, which I read as no sales pitches.  Hub Pages are supposed to be informative, educational and more article related.

My suggestion to the gentleman who wishes feedback on the first chapter of his book is to write an article about the need for critical feedback or how tough it is to get good constructive advice on writing or some of the trials of a first-draft manuscript.

At the end of his Hub he can place his website or blog that contains the chapter he wants feedback on as an example of what his article is referring to.  This allows the reader of the Hub to make a personal choice to go to a more private setting and give feedback.

While, in a way, this is self-serving to the writer who desires the critique, if he writes the Hub well, he will have educated Hubbers on the need and importance of solid, critical feedback in writing.  He will have done his job in adhering to Hub Pages guidelines (which I totally agree with).  He will also get the feedback from those interested in quality writing.

Another excellent aspect of Hub Pages is their unique article web-address feature.  I'm sure this is available on other article depositories, but Hub Pages places this address in your face every time you create a new Hub.  For those of us who are slow (I'm eleven days into this and just realizing the importance of this feature), we should add a page to our websites and blogs devoted solely to our Hub articles.

We can separate the article links on our sites by subject so that people visiting our sites can go directly to articles that will help them out in the subject they're researching.  This is so simple, I feel stupid for not thinking of this from day one.  I have loads of articles written on Ezine Articles with which I could do the same thing.  I also have transcriptions of speeches I've given at Toastmasters and various organizations.

I used the picture of a ship's wheel to illustrate how we need to interconnect our writing to one central location, preferably a business site.  The outer spokes of the wheel represent one-page websites, blogs, articles (like on Hub Pages), Tweets and any other online avenue for our writing.  The center of the wheel is where everything should connect at some point.  Like the outer circle of the wheel, the blogs, peripheral sites, article sites, etc., can and should interconnect as well.  We all want/need to drive traffic to our own areas of expertise and passion.  I am thoroughly impressed with Hub Pages, the Hub Pages community and the quality of information flying (not floating) around here.  Hub Pages should definitely be a spoke in your business wheel.

I hope the gentleman who asked about putting his manuscript on Hub Pages considers this option.  I am a firm believer in constructive criticism when it comes to writing - heck when it comes to MOST areas of life in general.  The education he can offer new writers in that area alone is well worth a Hub.

There must be thousands of avenues of benefits for writers on Hub Pages.  All my posts are writing related.  The last observation I will make on this Hub is about the Hubs themselves. 

Each day my workload presents itself as a mountain of jumbled words threatening to avalanche.  Whether these words take the form of writing assignments, reading for pleasure (hey guys, this is still 'work' related for writers), or work related reading makes no difference.  The fact remains I face more demands on my time than I can ever hope to satisfy.

Hence, I do not have the time to place a thorough, pristine edit on all my posts.  This bothers me until I read other posts.  The passion behind the Hubs I read, and the information contained therein more than overcome the typos, misspellings and grammar errors.  They're out there and a fact of life.  Thus far, I have seen no one up in arms over typos when the content being presented is valuable.

This feature is critical to enabling writers to get information out to people at the pace our society lives today.  I'm all for tight, edited writing.  A forum that allows quality of content to rule allows more passionate and detailed writing to come to the fore. 

Toastmasters teaches you should never apologize in the middle of a speech (or afterward, for that matter).  I'm sure the same should apply to writing.  After all, when we put ourselves out here in a public forum, we take on a gauntlet of challenges.  This benefit to writers of being able to get our information out quickly and with energy and passion is huge. 

Therefore writers - write it clean as best you can within your time frames, produce quality-driven, informative articles, and don't be reticent to point readers to your sites.  That's one of the reasons we're driving content on these pages.