Architect & Independant writer

[husamtalib]

3 effective methods to get new followers on twitter for self-publishers

Tagging

Retweeting anyone who likes or retweet your tweets

Mentioning of followers and non followers

Any experienced self-publisher will advise not to use social media much and to concentrate on writing on your blog or new book. Connecting with the same genre writers and tweeting within their cycle and even following influencers will not bring much positive results only after long time because of competition. My experience with twitter since the end of 2020 revealed several positive rules of thumb to use twitter effectively and gain positive results. Self publishers normally tweet their book ads on a tweet as a freebie or discounted or normal sale. Using hashtags in the tweet makes the tweet connect with other writers or readers, but in my test it really brings results in the long run when users search for specific content.

All self publishers would want to increase reader’s circle in their account that is achieved through using hashtags for readers. In reality readers do not come on twitter for long time but occasionally. People use twitter to enjoy their time and connect with others to see new ideas, new event, news, and to share something they admire. So where do readers really go and how to connect with them on twitter? Many readers’ platforms have an account on twitter like Goodreads and many others. Let’s be more specific in my case for architecture there are many accounts that gather architects, architecture, and relevant disciplines. Following them and connecting with them from time to time brings positive results in increasing followers, but not on a large scale. Your account will be more visible to others in the same field and start to connect with you.

So what are the methods to increase the twitter account followers for self publishers when following same genre accounts?

Tagging

Twitter provided a very useful way to communicate with followers and non followers by tagging. You can tag by using the @ sign in the middle of tweets to mention one in conversation or in the beginning of a tweet to direct the tweet to a specific account. Tagging is one of the most powerful methods for an account to become visible and to gain followers. I have tagged many account followers of my followers accounts for example Goodreads followers on occasional basis and other followers account I follow in the same genre I write for. This method increases my account visibility and obtained automatic followers from time to time. When using this method, you see your followers grow steadily.

Tagging another account by using one of his tweets as a base for occasional tweets brings a dramatic increase in followers not only from non followers but from other account followers.

Retweeting anyone who likes or retweet your tweets.

Many specialists in digital marketing published studies and test on this method for increasing twitter account followers. For example, buffer software specialists published an article on increasing twitter account by this method, but by retweeting your account tweets that has previous engagement. Here results from their test:

“On average, our retweeted tweets received 122 percent more impressions, 87 percent more engagements, and 90 percent more link clicks. The three tweets with video also had an average boost of video views by 92 percent,”

Neil Patel another specialist in digital marketing say for retweeting other accounts tweets:

“Again, it’s a long-game way to build your following, and there’s no guarantee that every post you share successfully gain you new followers,”

So the studies either retweet your own tweets or other accounts tweets but the results vary. My method is to retweet at least 1-3 tweets from the account that retweeted my tweet or liked my tweet whether he/she is a follower or non follower. This method brings a steady increase in followers and makes the account more visible.

Mentioning of followers and non followers

This method I invented that brought delightful results in engagement with followers I hardly know their names and an increase in retweet, thanks, and likes. For accounts I mentioned that do not follow me they showed happiness in mentioning and started to engage more with my tweets and retweets and likes. I have used this method to increase visibility and followers by tweeting a mention about an account I liked in terms of content and that content that followers look for and engage with on occasional basis. Below is an example of a tweet mention from my account:

Author- Senior Architect-Critic and Urbanist

Read weekly articles in: architecture, urban planning, professional practice, book reviews, paper reviews, book publication and free resourc

[husamtalib]

The 2 major factors that increase writing readability Index

Readability Index high score is a measure of a good quality of web writing content. It’s one of three methods as Stephen Spencer and others indicate in their book “ The Art of SEO “.Author’s and bloggers realize this because it affects web page ranking. Google search engine crawl web page to search for unique key phrases in the web page writing. Semrush latest report shows that improving readability increase SEO score. For that, the page has a great chance to hit the top 10 articles online see figure 1 below.

From personal experience in writing on my website and using AIOSEO plug-in for word press, it affects 10–15%. My writings articles, book reviews, paper reviews, and published book readability index is between 45–54. Online writing should have a high readability index score to increase SEO score. Increasing SEO score affects web page appearance in google search.

Research on my writings showed that there are two major factors affecting readability index scores. These are Increasing the number of sentences, and reducing the number of words in a sentence. The formula to calculate the readability index is the Flesch readability ease index.

RE= 206.835-(1.015XASL)-(84.6XASW)

ASL= average sentence length –( the number of words divided by the number of sentences)

ASW= average number of syllables per word –(the number of syllables divided by the number of words

Taking these two paragraphs from my recent book I am writing see below:

“ This chapter is not intended to explain the process of government approvals to establish a business in the middle east though there is a discussion where it is required within the chapter subjects. I have discussed from the first chapter if someone is planning to study architecture what he needs to know. In the following chapters, I have discussed the architect’s choices to work in the path of design, supervision, or construction in professional practice.”

Studying this text shows the paragraphs include: 113 words 4 sentences 183 syllables.

In applying this data in the formula we get a readability index score of = 40.4

Doing small changes to the text in the sentences by increasing the number of sentences and reducing sentences words see below:

“This chapter is not planned to explain the process of government approvals to establish a business in the middle east. But there is a discussion of it where it is required within the chapter subjects. I have discussed in the first chapter if someone is planning to study architecture what he needs to know. In the following chapters, I have discussed several architect’s choices paths to work in. The path of design, supervision, or construction in professional practice.

This chapter goal is to show the long path an architect goes through to build and prepare for establishing his business. A path starts from the first steps of his career and even before entering the architectural department for studying architecture”

The study of the text shows the paragraphs include: 119 words 6 sentences 183 syllables.

In applying this data in the formula we get a readability index score of = 59.3

Many writers concentrate on using simple words in the paragraphs that have a very good effect on the readability index. But in many writing subjects like architecture, engineering, economics, and environment it is necessary to use some relevant to the field complex words. You can read my various writings to stand on the importance of the readability index in my website articles

For more Blog writings you can visit https://husamtalib.com/blog/

And for more details about my book publications visit : http://husamtalib.com

[husamtalib]

EXPERIENCE: what matters in architecture, urban design and planning

Experience in architecture, urban design, and planning is my recent publication. This article highlights the major benefits of reading this book.

To start with being an architect is a rewarding profession because it brings happiness to people at home, and in the workplace. Architects negotiate and participate in dialogue with all society about what the urban environment should look like, thus architect's job is part of society's everyday life and activity.

At the beginning of the book, I discuss what qualities and capabilities an individual should have to think of enrolling in an architecture program to become an architect, this is supplied by images and real-world project examples. The person who plans to become an architect should expect a field to work in, I discuss the various fields he/she could work after graduation with illustrations. Enrolling in an architecture graduate program is easy if you have the qualities and capabilities ( though you can enhance them by training before enrollment) here I highlight and discuss the various schools of architecture in the world in terms of programs and the way design is taught and its effect on architects work after graduation.

In the various other chapters, I discuss the paths the architect work in professional practice like design, supervision, and construction. In each path what will the architect face in practice on daily basis by illustrating examples of situations I have experienced or my close friends in architectural work in the Arab gulf. What lessons do these examples bring to the reader and their benefit in professional practice. I illustrate the various methods to avoid failure in work and how to achieve success in the specific path the architect choose to work. Every architect concentrates on fulfilling the company instructions to do efficient work but rarely concentrates on how to build an appropriate expierence for future use specifically when thinking to start a business. What areas of work to concentrate on in professional practice are introduced in the various chapters of the book to help the reader benefit from it in his career. The book is supplied by important method that is used in practice. The method is a reflection to the design process in terms of academic requirements and business requirements and also governmental and regulations requirements to obtain projects approvals from the design basis. In the construction phase also described and discussed what is required to proceed from client and government approval and gto the construction phase approval process. the integrated process of obtaining the building permit between the design phase and construction phase. After obtaining the building permit the architect go through another complex period in the project lifecycle is the supervision that witness various interactions with design and construction phase approvals that might need adjustments and alterations.

Finally, the book shows the government requirements to establish a business in the Arab gulf by guiding the requirements and how to obtain these requirements to start a business. The major thing in the last chapter is the variety of ways to obtain jobs for the company after establishment that will reduce the time and money for running the company efficiently.   The book is an essential read for people who are thinking to become an architect, for students who graduated and want to know more details about professional practice and the paths of work an architect selects, and if you are an overseas architect and thinking of establishing a business in the Arab gulf like UAE, QATAR, SAUDI ARABIA and so on this a very good reference to help build the business fast without losing lots of money and time.

You can find the book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/EXPIERENCE-Matters-Architecture-design-Planning/dp/B0B2TP5ZT1/

You can find my other publications, writing, blog : http://husamtalib.com

[husamtalib]

Writing; creation or reproduction?

Before diving into analyzing writing as a creation or reproduction, it’s important to characterize and understand the writer’s population in the world. According to studentscholerships.org there are 281,300 thousand authors, writers and editors. Statista illustrates progress in the amount of writers in USA between the years 2011-2020 (figure 1).The amount of writers in America jumped to 44,240 writers and authors.

Figure 1. Number of writers and authors in USA.

The ICEF monitor shows a projection of students around the globe by region for the years 2000-2040. Our discussion is around the present student population involved in the writing activity as they are in the higher education degree. 250.7 million Student in the higher education in all regions of the world as presented in figure 2.

Figure 2. Worldwide higher education enrolment by global region, actual from 2000 to 2015 and projected to 2040. Source: Calderon, UNESCO.

World population according to data from worldometer is 7,794,798,739. The amount of educated population in the world has reduced from year 2000 (80%) while in year 2016 (20%) as shown in figure 3.

Figure 3. World educated population.

80% of world population is 6.23 billion are educated people. The amount of students in the higher education is 270.5 million, means 5% of the student educated people use writing in the daily life.

Returning to Google data and hosting tribunal there are 500 million blogs on the internet out of 1.7 billion commercial websites. This gives us a full picture of the amount of people in the world using writing in their daily life. As a total 10% of the educated population in the world use writing.

The writer’s population is divided into two half’s, first half is in the education arena while the second half use writing for business.

First here it is essential to identify what is creation? And what is reproduction?

Production in the writing field comprises using the language tools and skills to present a literature work whether it is to present an existing idea, or a business related activity. And reproduction is to collect these ideas and present it in a different way. Creation is defined as the act of turning the invention into reality. Invention includes a new idea, effective device, new process, new product, new method, new value, and better solution to meet required goals- into reality.

So we have here writers in the education field and writers in the business field. In the education arena, writers use writing to present reports, essays, research. These activities comprise various tasks related to writing such as a writing plan, collecting data, grouping and analysis, and finally writing the findings. Writer in this process uses the language principals of grammar & style, structure, sentences, readability, consistency, plagiarism and proper referencing. For that, the writer here collects ideas from others and presents his perspective of the research, essay, or report subject. As shown here, if the outcomes is not an invention then all the work here falls in the reproduction area.

In the business field, writing is used to present the business product. Writing here does not illustrate a creative act as most business individuals write using the same procedure, tools and skills.

Finally, writing is creative when it is used to present a new idea, method, process, and a new solution for a problem to achieve certain goals. Mostly writing in art, literature such as novel and poetry writing, social science and architecture where new ideas and methods are presented comprise creative work. I have included in my book one chapter for defining creative writing criteria and how to make writing easy.

[husamtalib]

A book five star rating system.

A book five start rating system is widely used in sales platforms to give an indication of the book content value. The first book I read was in 1988 “the animal farm” by George Orwell. To tell you frankly I did not enjoy it much because I was rushing for every couple of statement to oxford dictionary to find an explanation for a certain word. Though the book is writing in moderate English level but still my English level capacity was not supporting me. To get to the point my dad, a university teacher specialized in Semitic languages, asked me how did you find the book? In my country, because of politics, the country was super shut down to the world; there were no computers and no internet and NO RATING SYSTEM. I told my dad that the book was nice but a little difficult to understand as my concentration and mind gets disturbed whenever I find a word to fetch for in the dictionary.

Nowadays the rating system is part of people’s everyday life use. When you buy any product, you rush to write your experiences with the product and to give it a rate. These rates you give for any purchased product provide several advantages: the product reliability, its durability, feasibility, and most important the purchase location. Every person in the world rates a product in a similar way, but there is a hidden reason that drives a person to buy a product rather than another and that is not the cost always. I prefer to buy apple mobiles because I got used to it and I know every detail about using it regardless of its high cost and sometimes it is annoying in security issues.

When I started my journey with self publishing and writing I read 25 books about self publishing. The methods used to market and distribute my books as new author but not new to writing (holding two master degrees from UK). One of the powerful methods is to write book reviews on platforms that attract lots of readers and here I mention Goodreads and LibraryThing. I have found that writing a book review should cover various factors and criteria in order to serve the reader well. You can find my previous article about writing a book review here. After writing several book reviews, I found that even these criteria are not fair in many cases. Using these criteria to evaluate an author book who spends a lot of his valuable time to write it affects his sales and book reputation widely.

According to the usual and my book review criteria, I have found that the rating system still needs reconsidering because it creates a loss for many authors. My first book review for an urban design book article here got 5 star rating. The urban design field is a multidisciplinary field comprises economics, politics, environment, engineering, architecture, landscape, and art. The author put great effort into covering all the disciplines involved regardless the percentage of coverage. At the end I have declared that this book is useful for individuals new to the field and students in university regardless of the 5 star rating I gave. Another book I reviewed also in the same field that got 3 star rating article here. When I read the book, I found that the author in many areas of the book is describing either the city he lives in or a certain environmental problem that the city faces from time to time. In one area of the book, he provides a practical framework for urban design work in practice from an environmental perspective which I found interesting. The third book I reviewed was about urbanism merely got 2 star article here. The book got a low rating because I found that the author reused most of the book content from other books. And the ideas he presented are regenerated to serve the subject of the book and the location of application.

Let’s look at the table below before I discuss the key factor that most readers should consider when reading a book review. The table below illustrates book content vs. its structure chapters. The book is about urban design.

It is rational that the book reader should allocate more rating depending on how much the book has covered from the disciplines it comprise in all the book chapters. For sure as I did, when a book covers one topic of the field like environmental planning, the reader allocates less rating. Meaning the more knowledge about the subject influence the book rating allocated as more knowledge will decrease the rating given to a book.

In analyzing many book reviews including mine, I found many book reviews regardless its short form or long form depends on one factor I could say (supply and demand). When a book supplies a certain topic in extreme detail and the reader, by chance or not, is looking for that type of knowledge and information that makes it very useful for him; according to that, the reader allocates a high rating for the book. This scenario I believe and I support to follow for every book review rating from any reader including me.

My book above link here: Architecture: Writing, Publishing, Marketing | Universal Book Links Help You Find Books at Your Favorite Store! (books2read.com)

[husamtalib]

6 Effective steps to write a book review

A book review is intended to help friends or others to distinguish if the book is worth buying and reading; the book should comprise the reader’s desire in terms of required and reliable content. The book market is full of books teaching students and others how to write an appropriate book review. A review should cover 6 main criteria: organization and layout, visual aids, bibliography/table of context/index, sources creditability, writing style, and writer creditability. Many book publishing and reading platform allow the members to write a review of not more than 400 words and may be less. In Amazon for example, you can find irrelevant reviews like the one below

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 22, 2017

Verified Purchase

An extremely important book for anyone wanting to understand the field of urban planning. Beautifully written.

The reader here gave a 5 star to a book (Cities of tomorrow) in a very simple statement covering nothing of the proper book review. Moreover, you can find a lot of reviews comprising two or three words; saying the book is a great read or brilliant book. The amazing thing is a huge amount of readers buy the books based on these types of reviews and the books hit high ranking in sales and become best sellers regardless if the content is worth the purchase. Authors become proud because their book was downloaded for 50,000 times by asking friends and there colleagues to download their books to serve the marketing and sales strategy leaving books with excellent content on web-shelves with limited purchase. Moreover, Amazon and some other sites restrict excellent book reviewers from posting reviews because they haven’t passed the purchase limit $50.

In my recent year living in UK, I read 56 book subjects varied from urban design topics, urban planning topics, political economy, environment, geography, and architecture. All these books were purchased from: Amazon, Abe books, thrift, world of books, and retail stores in the market. I never missed the content that I wanted to read, but only one book from these 56 collections. I never read a book review on Amazon or any other platform produce book reviews like Goodreads, Librarything, Anobii, and others; all the books were worth the purchase and gave the relevant content I am searching for. Like other readers I look for specific content in a book on the contrary other readers might be looking just for a book to get an idea about specific subject or filed of knowledge. It becomes irritating to read these book reviews, including a couple of words in a world that produces a million titles per year and you can imagine how many books in specific field are there in the market. In this event readers lose not only valuable time in reading these types of worthless reviews but also a great amount of money if we consider a 50 book purchase per year.

When I was a student and i am looking for a book, I always write exactly what are the criteria, sub-subjects, and related intervening fields whether its architecture or engineering. I look for the book subject in general for example sustainability and looking for criteria like densities, green space, developing on deprived land, building orientation, building systems design, and many other criteria. In terms of this example how transport planning intervene sustainable architecture, external services impact on open space and building. Most times, to get to the point I read the introduction and specifically the writer’s introduction and look for what I am looking for; and this approach proved its success, and I never bought a book that was not worth the price.

My approach in assessing the book I need is more efficient than most methods written in English literature concerning writing a book review. The 6 steps of writing a book review do not cover if compared to my method if it were planned to write a book review but only one step the book information creditability. Lot of professionals write books on specific subject in their genre field without even having a higher education degree; the book content is based on the knowledge collected from long year’s experience that does not relate to any creditable research lab, renown world organization publication and surveys like WHO, or from research published by famous publishing houses like McGraw-Hill publishing. Even creditability could be questioned and doubted in written reviews.

After long work experience in architecture, I have developed a new method that helps students and professionals decide what to search for and what to read. The method is developed from my approach in looking for books to read and my method of writing (My book Here about writing). The book review should cover various points; these points are in the answers of following questions.

· The writer and his relevant educational background and experience in the field?

· Who is the book for, the audience?

· What is the book theme?

· What message to the reader does the introduction give?

· Is it for educational purpose means it’s a research, theory related, or content for professional practice?

· How the ideas in the chapters are connected?

· The ideas of every chapter it’s to date relevance; how it is conveyed Graphs, statistics, numbers, studies?

· Does the book content reflect the title name?

· Does the book index give a clear idea on the book content?

· References are they from relevant studies, organizations publications, references from universities, best practices, and guidelines?

· Why am I reading this book? And what am I looking for?

These questions will not only help readers who intend to write reviews but for anyone to assess book content he is searching for. One of the great books I read in the beginning of my career is the urban design process, which I have applied this method when I wrote the book review; you can read the full book review here.