For the final Sunday of the blogathon, I’m dishing up not only the best of WordCount, but the best of the best – 101 of my best posts on blogging, writing, running a freelance writing business, and social media and tech tools for writers.

Blogging

1. Dear WordCount: How should I choose a blog topic?

2. Simple steps to starting a blog

3. The well-dressed blog post

4. 8 essential reasons to put links in blog posts

5. Write killer blog post titles

6. Dear WordCount: Someone linked to my blog, is that bad?

7. How to get more comments on your blog

8. Driving traffic to your blog

9. A writer’s guide to SEO basics

10. Bad beginnings: 10 newbie blogging mistakes and how to fix them

11. 25 ways to blog every day

12. 25 more ways to blog every day

13. Cheat your way into blogging every day

14. 10 sure cures for blogging burnout

15. Give under-appreciated blog posts a second chance

16. Why writers should blog: it’s not personal, it’s business

17. The long tail of blogging

18. 5 reasons why you should obsess over blog stats

19. 6 ways to find paid blogging gigs

20. 31 lessons from blogging 31 days

21. Should you put ads on your blog?

22. 3 questions you should be asking about your blog

23. A 10-step guide to making time to blog

24. The 500 blog posts that changed my life

25. Best of WordCount: Bloggers’ favorite places to write

Writing

26. Write like a pro

27. 10 great places writers can find story ideas

28. Asking the hard questions: top 10 interview tips

29. 12 insider interview tips from 2 accomplished writers

30. 5 secrets of successful interviewers, or how to get sources to tell you anything

31. A reporter’s convention survival guide

32. 25 tips for better writing

33. Writing basics: the deck

34. Writing basics: the nut graph

35. Writing basics: the quote

36. How to write fast

37. More tips for writing fast

38. A few words on writing short

39. When it comes to writing, economize

40. 7 steps to cutting a story that’s too long

41. How to handle rewrites without wanting to kill yourself or your editor

42. 10 tricks to get the words flowing again

43. Best time management tips for writers

44. The writer as content curator

45. Best blogs for writers

46. First v. best

47. 10 things J. K. Rowling taught me about writing

48. William Zinsser and ‘On Writing Well’

49. Why is ‘Mad Men’ so great? It’s the writing

50. My 5 favorite books on writing

Freelancing

51. Freelance 101: getting started as an independent writer

52. How writers can squeeze more money out of their work

53. 10 ways to make editors fall in love with your work

54. Are you a freelancer writer or journalist entrepreneur?

55. Beat the recession

56. Top 10 blogs for freelance writers

57. Promote yourself through your email signature

58. 10 more ways to promote your freelance writing

59. How to become a niche writer

60. Dear WordCount: What do newspapers pay?

61. Why ex-staff writers make good trade magazine freelancers

62. The freelancer’s guide to e-newsletters

63. How to write, produce and market an ebook

64. WordCount Q&A – One freelancer’s DIY book publishing success

65. How to know if you’re freelance editor material

66. Do you tell editors what you’re doing when you’re not writing for them?

67. Surefire ways to get editors to get back to you faster

68. Why freelance queries get rejected

69. Should writers blog about juicy subjects or save them for story pitches?

70. The race to the bottom

71. The great freelance rate debate continues

72. A guide to hyperlocal news

73. Novice freelancers, instead of Helium, try hyperlocal

74. AOL’s Patch hyperlocal hiring spree – boon or bane for writers?

75. Top 13 signs a magazine is going under

76. Making life work as a writer and mom

77. 10 businesses freelance writers can start today

Social Media & Tech Tools for Writers

78. Writers’ 6 top tech tools for getting work done

79. 10 basic web tools for freelancers

80. Goodbye Google: 8 Internet search alternatives

81. My favorite freelance technology innovation: Track Changes

82. Research This: Del.icio.us and Google News Alerts

83. What freelancers should know about podcasting

84. How writers can use LinkedIn

85. The secret to my LinkedIn success (The Renegade Writer guest post)

86. New ways to uses LinkedIn to find story sources

87. Link your WordPress, Six Apart blogs to your LinkedIn profile

88. Best WordPress plug ins for writers and bloggers

89. WordPress users can add ratings to posts, comments

90. How to use Facebook to promote your writing business

91. How not to out yourself on Facebook

92. Is it OK to friend your editor on Facebook?

93. A writer’s guide to getting the most out of Twitter

94. The use and abuse of Twitter to flog your blog

95. There is no such thing as a dumb Twitter question

96. When one Twitter account isn’t enough (TwiTip guest post)

97. 10 keys to hosting a successful Twitter chat

98. How to fit blogging, social networks into your writing day

99. Social media 101 for a small business

100. A little password protection goes a long way

101. 8 secrets for getting better HARO query results

Love Twitter?

Love Mad Men?

Whichever it is, tune into the WordCount Last Wednesday live chat tomorrow for a chance to meet the award-winning tweeter behind the @Peggy Olson Twitter account.

That would be Carri Bugbee, a Portland, Oregon, social media, marketing and public relations executive who took home a 2009 Shorty Award for anonymously tweeting as Olson.

Bugbee will lead a chat on how writers and bloggers can use Twitter to crowdsource and promote their work. She’ll also discuss some of the best Twitter apps for writers.

The one-hour chat takes place on Twitter at 8:30 a.m. Pacific time.  To follow along, use the hashtag #wclw.

The format of tomorrow’s live chat is as follows:

• 8:30 – Log on, introduce yourself with your name, city, type of writing you do and what Twitter-related topics you’d like the chat to cover.
• 8:35 to 8:40 – I’ll ask Carri a few questions to get things rolling.
• 9 a.m. – We’ll open it up to questions from the audience.
• 9:30 a.m. – The chat ends.

Although it’s possible to use the standard Twitter interface for a live chat, you might find it easier to follow along with an add-on application such as TweetGrid, TweetChat or HootSuite. This tutorial explains how to set them up.

If you’re afraid you’ll offend followers by tweeting too much during a chat, you can suggest they use an app called TwitterSnooze to temporarily turn off your tweets. In case you haven’t done this before, when the chat starts, tweet a message like this: “I’ll be in a live chat for the next hour; if you don’t want to follow, turn off my tweets with TwitterSnooze.com.”

Coming attractions

Stay tuned for more on tech tools for writers and running a writing business in coming months. Here’s what you can expect on the next few upcoming WordCount Last Wednesdays:

• August 25 – Using an e-newsletter to promote your business, with Susan Weiner, writer-editor, chartered financial analyst (CFA), blogger and author of a long-running monthly e-newsletter on investment and wealth management.
• September 29 – Facebook fan pages for fun and profit, with Tricia Lawrence, writer, blogger, social media strategist and instructor of an upcoming Writer’s Digest University class on social media strategy for authors.
• October 27 – Creating and marketing your self-published ebook, with Susan Johnson, writer, blogger at The Urban Museand author of the new ebook, The Urban Muse Guide to Online Writing Markets.

If you’ve got a suggestion for a subject you’d like to see covered, send it my way.

If you’re an expert in a particular aspect of freelance writing, running a freelance business or tech tools for writers and are interested in participating as a guest speaker, contact me.

Happy Twitter anniversary to me. I joined Twitter exactly one year ago today. It took a little convincing, but once I figured out how to incorporate it into my freelance business I never looked back.

Earlier today, I tweeted the following lessons learned from my first year on the microblogging service, 17 in honor of joining on Dec. 17, 2008. Every one of them is 140 characters or less.

What I’ve learned:

1 – Be real. People can see through a fake, even online. Therefore, don’t use auto–DMs.

2 – One note may work for a samba, but not online. Don’t tweet on same topic 24/7, even if you’re here for work.

3 – Don’t drink and tweet. But if you do, the next day, delete the tweets. (I got that tip from a Twitterati.)

4 – You don’t have to DM every new follower, esp. once you hit 2,000+. But do DM those you want to know better.

5 – Lists are great organizational tools, but if you follow a lot of people, building them’s a bear.

6 – While good in theory, #FF is hard to keep up, especially if like me, all deadlines seem to fall on Fridays.

7 – Twitter is just a tool. It will not find you customers or make you rich. You do that. All it does is help.

8 – As a writer, Twitter forces me to be concise and use colorful words and phrases. It’s my robo-copydesk.

9 – Twitter is not texting. Some people may be OK with abbreviating everything; for me, that’s too hard to read.

10 – Hashtags and conferences go together. There’s no better way to promote one or report from one. However…

11 – …As recent events have shown, Twitter at meetings can lead to mean-spirited back-channel snark.

12 – Saved Search is handy for tracking subjects you’ll be writing about. I use it like Google News alerts.

13 – Trending Topics is worthless, unless you use it as an obituary tracker. Otherwise, it’s too easy to game.

14 – Spam, porn, phishing, malware, scams: as Twitter’s user base has grown, so has its smarmy underbelly.

15 – Twitter is a conversation, which means you can’t do all the talking. Stop, look, listen, and retweet.

16 – Twitter collapses the space between you and that famous publisher or CEO, but you still gotta make your case.

17 – Blogging and Twitter go together like cheese and crackers: you can have one without the other but it’s not as good.

That’s it. If you’ve used Twitter a year or longer, what wisdom can you share?

By the way, I wrote the first draft of this on Twitter in real time. It was easier than I thought.