Confident Writing Coach Joanna Young has hit upon a successful and well received method of engaging her readers. Her site, confidentwriting.com, invites visitors to join group writing projects that she designs. Writers then write their own blog post based on the writing project guidelines and link their post from her website.

Efforts like these are the basis of Web 2.0 and modern social media efforts – they engage readers
to participate in online discussions with like-minded others. For Young’s site these projects are particularly useful in helping readers improve their writing skills, the very reason visitors like me patronize her site.

Young’s most recent group writing project was particularly appealing for me. Since I’ve been developing my blog this past year, I often don’t have much time to go back and see “where I’ve been” in terms of archived blog posts. Young’s challenge this week encourages bloggers to review all their posts from the past year and to choose “Simply The Best” post of the year.

Once you’ve accomplished this effort, Young challenges you to finish the statement “This post is simply the best because…”. Not only must you complete the sentence, but you’re encouraged to do so in 30 words or less!

This unique approach allows participants to not only review their own writing progress over the past year, but also challenges them to discipline their minds by writing within the specified terms.

Efforts like Young’s can be not only helpful for traffic generation to and through her website, but are also fun ways of engaging others, meeting new like-minded individuals, and participating in a conversation of interest.

So, now that I’m hooked on Young’s approach, here’s my submission for this current project which Young has named “Simply The Best”.

The blog post I created this year that I consider my best is How YouTube has changed U.S. politics forever.

This post is simply the best because it illustrates how new technologies have allowed us to embrace online social communities that will forever change our political landscape and our view of ourselves and our world.

Now what could be more fun than that! How does your site engage readers and provide them with opportunities to participate, talk back, get involved in topical discussions? Share your thoughts below.

If your site provides a unique social environment let me know! I’ll review your site here and share your successes with others.