Lesson 9 - Your Past and Future Self

There are three key ways your capstone project can be used: 

  1. Long form blog writing for a website profile
  2. A series of social media posts or videos
  3. An email campaign to your contacts

In this lesson we will explore long form blog writing. 

A topic cluster is a very popular and effective way to attract visitors to your blog and keep them engaged. The topic cluster is just like the wheel you have been building. A number of blogs revolve around one primary idea, event, or story. 

Your capstone blog project will include an introduction, a small excerpt from each of your blogs, a conclusion, and a call to action. 

Activation 9

In this activation we will write the introduction on the theme of Freedom. This theme can mean many things: 

  • Freedom to share your story
  • Freedom to live in faith
  • Freedom to explore the world
  • And many more ideas.

You might look back at your drawing from the last activation and consider inspiration from the main topics of each spoke on the wheel. The introduction should simply state your main idea and explain a few key points about what you will share within the rest of your capstone.

FREEDOM Psalm 32:7 You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.

Once your introduction is written, write the main points of each spoke from your wheel drawing. These will be headers within your capstone blog. Remember the lessons of Lesson 6 when organizing your headings and structure.

Under each of these headers, you will write a few sentences summarizing  the corresponding blog. When a blog is published to your website or portfolio, you will link this long blog to each blog. You will also link from each blog to this main page. 

Just like a wheel strengthened by spokes, your long form blog post is stronger when supported by a series of corresponding blogs. When someone visits your blog, navigating to all of your stories is easier. Both visitors and search engines are more likely to share your website when you have it organized.

The final benefit you will discover as a content creator is how much easier writing long content is because we followed an organized practice of journaling and blogging along the way. When you complete this activation you will have almost your entire capstone drafted in a blog format!