#Pinterest literally doesn’t even have an email to reach them at. there’s nothing

[hedgewitchnecromancer]

Love that Pinterest just doesn’t accept any user feedback

[stressedoutpixie]

Write a story that involves a countdown. Start the story at ten and end at zero.

Ten. There are ten minutes that pass while she contemplates her existence in the shower. The water rains down around her, drowning out many sounds but failing to silence the endless cacophony of second guesses that is bouncing in her brain. She knows rocking back and forth on the floor of the shower is pointless; she should reach out to a friend or say something to her mom or literally do anything but sit here. She continues to let the water fall on and around her on the shower floor.

Nine. There are nine mistakes she made today. She stopped thinking while texting a friend and hurt them. She forgot to reach out to another friend. She didn’t do their laundry. She didn’t eat until three in the afternoon. She lied to her mom. She forgot to email her supervisor about something important. She left a mess on her bedroom floor. She made a hurtful comment to her dad. She lashed out at her significant other. She made too many mistakes today. She keeps replaying them over and over in the back of her mind, piling on top of the thousands of mistakes she’s made in the past. Why won’t her brain just stop for five minutes?

Eight. There are eight things she has to do tomorrow. She has to work on applying for scholarships, she has to email their supervisor which she forgot to do today, she has therapy in the morning, she has work in the afternoon, she needs to shower tomorrow, she needs to get up before eleven like she has been for the past week, she needs to clean her room, and she needs to write something. Out of those things, probably only four will get done despite the meticulous planning that is going on in her head to try and distract herself from the mistakes she’s made today.

Seven. There are seven tears that escape her eyes and mix with the cooling shower water. She knows there are seven because she felt each one slide down the bridge of her nose and drip off to meet its end in the swirling drain. The tears are meaningless in the shower. No one can see them, no one can hear them, they are only more water rushing down a drain to be forgotten as is spirals down pipe after pipe.

Six. There are six people she could talk to right now. Of those six, one is sleeping, one isn’t trustworthy, two have enough of their own problems, one isn’t on that level of friendship, and one doesn’t deserve to be given that burden. So of the six that could be shared with, there are none available. Reaching out does nothing if there is no one to reach out to to begin with.

Five. There are five more minutes that pass after the water has gone uncomfortably cold. She feels like she deserves the chill, deserves the pain, deserves to be forgotten in a cold shower. She tries to stand, she really does, but she simply can’t. Her legs are capable, she is tired of being cold, but the bickering that ensues between her logic and her emotion keep her tied down with invisible strings.

Four. There are four songs that come to mind. She clings to those four songs to drag her thought process out of the cycle of going over mistakes from eight hours ago to eight years ago. Those four songs play in her head all at once, lyrics flowing from one thought to the next, layering and twisting until she is unsure of where one song stops and where another starts. As she repeats them over and over, the doubts start to creep in through the spaces between words, the pauses between lines, and the silence between notes. The doubts are dark and have masks of people she cares about, but their smiles are too wide and their eyes are too dark. They are just right enough to be convincing but just wrong enough to be unsettling. When the doubts speak, they speak with the voices of the people she cares about. The doubts chant and chant and chant until the songs fade from memory and the lies are screaming in her ears.

Three. There are three reasons that led to her being crouched in her shower on a Wednesday night. One was her mistake. One was someone else’s death. One was someone else’s and her miscommunication. Those three reason seem pointless and stupid to anyone else but they took hold of her and dragged her under until the light she once held was wrenched from her fingers.

Two. There are two towels that surround her once she finally faces the world outside her shower. The towels are musty and at least a week old. One has a hole, one wasn’t even her towel to begin with. But they are dry and serve their purpose of absorbing water regardless of if it came from the shower head or her eyes.

One. There is one person who is broken and tired. Her phone says it is late, far too late for a shower and far too late for anyone to help. Despite this, she sends one desperate text to the one who is sleeping even though she knows he will not reply tonight and will get nothing out of her in the morning. There is one person who feels like it is her against the world and she feels so desolate and alone she fears she will never find her way on her own like this.

Zero. There are zero people there to comfort her as she lays in bed that night with wet hair soaking through a blue pillowcase. There is nothing but words written messily in a little black journal that no one is allowed to touch but her. There is nothing.

Only her, just as she’d feared. 

(writing prompt from www.sarahselecky.com via pinterest) 

[dee-vine]

Shutter Speed Ch.1

Amature Photographer in Need of Model for Experiemental Career Starter

Are you looking to get a jump into a modeling career? Or do you just like having pictures taken of you? If either of these apply to you, this listing is perfect for you!

I am an “amature photographer” looking to build up a portfolio, and I am in need of the perfect model for it.

You don’t need to have experience with modeling for this gig. I am not looking for a runway model or anything. You just need to be able to sit still and listen to any directions I may give you.

Dress and makeup will be left to your discretion. Details on that will be further discussed when chosen, as well as details on payment.

All I need from you right now is to reply to this with a sample picture (nothing fancy, just need to see how you look on camera), your first name and email address, and 3 facts about yourself.

Excited to meet you all through this lovely website.

-JJ

“Is this stupid? This has to be stupid, right?”

Archie doesn’t even look up from his spot on the couch, eyes trained on his phone. “No, Jughead. This is not stupid.”

“Do people even go on Craigslist anymore? Will people even answer? I probably sound creepy, honestly. Arch, this is stupid, why did you talk me into doing this? I’m horrid at photography!” Jughead throws his head down onto the desk, groaning loudly. Archie sighs heavily and gets up, walking over to his best friend and reading the ad over his shoulder.

“Jug, this sounds just fine. Yes, people still use Craigslist and no, you are a great photographer. You won the county fair’s photography contest three years in a row. You beat the photographer for the daily paper!” Archie slaps his friend’s back enthusiastically, eliciting yet another groan from him. He rolls his eyes and moves his finger to the mousepad on the laptop, hitting the post button before Jughead rethinks anything. “There -- the replies will come in in no time!”

Jughead lifts his head to look at the screen, groaning once more and slamming the laptop shut. He looks up at the tall redhead, shooting his best evil glare. “Have I ever told you that I hate you?”

Archie grins down at him, swiping the beanie off his head and ruffling his hair, earning a very manly squeal from Jughead. “You love me and can’t live without me. Now how about we order a pizza and play video games for the rest of the night?” He laughs as Jughead steals the hat back, already walking to the kitchen for the takeout menus they keep stashed in a drawer.

“Only if you’re buying!”

Five hour shifts at the cafe were hard enough without a headache. Betty woke up with a migraine that lasted even as she went to work. Now, as she unlocks the door to her apartment and steps in, she just wants to take a hot bath and go to bed early, but she has no such luck.

“Betty! You’re finally here, I’m so glad. I wanted to get your opinion on this patio set I found. The weather is getting nice again and we don’t have anywhere to sit out on the deck and I think this would totally --” Betty raises a hand to cut off the excited raven-haired girl. Veronica quickly shuts up, sensing her friend’s distress. “Are you okay? Was work not good today?”

“I have had the worst headache all day. And I know, I know we were supposed to go to that fondue place but I really just need to lie down. I’m sorry, V.” Betty moves to the couch and lays across it, closing her eyes and placing a pillow over her face. Veronica sits on the chair perpendicular to her, setting the laptop down on the coffee table and taking in her friend with concerned eyes.

“Don’t apologize Betty, it’s okay! We’ll stay in and have a girls night. I’ll let you use my aromatherapy soaps so you can take a nice bath, and I’ll make our own fondue and feed you chocolate covered strawberries while we watch romcoms. How does that sound?” Veronica replies giddily, taking the pillow from her face.

Betty peers over at her, her lips quirking up a bit.  “The lavender soaps?” she asks, her headache lessening at just the thought of them. Veronica nods and stands, holding her hands out to help Betty up. Betty takes the offer and follows her to the bathroom, letting Veronica set everything up for her. Before she leaves she thanks her with a hug, because she really couldn’t ask for a better best friend.

She met Veronica freshman year at NYU, being randomly paired with her as a roommate. When she first saw her, she was certain they wouldn’t get along. Veronica was visibly rich, wearing pearls with every outfit and flaunting her money. But she was also the kindest person that Betty had ever met. The moment she walked into the dorm, Veronica greeted her and complimented her outfit, even helping her organize all of her things. Betty had not expected it from her, but they instantly became best friends. Veronica showed her the ways of New York, which she very much needed considering she grew up in a small, boring town. They remained friends the whole year and decided to get an apartment together sophomore year, getting even closer because of it. They are going into their second year there now, staying in the city for the summer. The apartment was lavish because Veronica’s parents were paying for most of it, and Betty couldn’t really complain. Just a perk of having Veronica Lodge as her roommate and best friend.

A knock breaks Betty out of her relaxation, Veronica telling her that the fondue is waiting for her when she’s done with her bath. Betty reckons she spent long enough in the tub, her fingers pruny and her headache, thankfully, gone. She wraps a towel around herself as she steps out of the tub, draining the water and walking into her bedroom, thankful for the ensuite. She throws on a pair of pajama shorts and an oversized NYU sweatshirt before stepping out of her room. Veronica had set up the fondue on the coffee table, complete with strawberries, angel food cake, raspberries, bananas, and marshmallows. She is currently sitting on the couch, searching through a handful of DVDs for something to watch.

“Ronnie, did you really make all of this?” Betty asks, doubt in her voice. Veronica never really cooked growing up, always having things served to her.

The other girl looks up at her with the biggest smile on her face. “I did! I looked up a recipe on Pinterest. Although, I may have had to borrow some stuff from neighbors, but it was all me!” Veronica beams, seeming so proud of herself. Betty smiles and sits on the couch beside her, reaching over and dipping a strawberry in the melted chocolate. Veronica finally picks a movie, Leap Year, and settles back with her laptop again, chewing on a marshmallow. “You know that patio set I was telling you about? Well, I bought it; we have to pick it up next Wednesday. How exciting!”

Betty chuckles, picking another strawberry to eat. “Since when do you use Craigslist?”

“Since I found you can easily get cheap furniture to complete your home. Plus, it’s really fun to just browse! You never know what you can find.” Veronica types away at the keyboard, staring intently at the screen.

“Yes, exactly. You never know what you can find, V. There are creepy people on there.” She gives her a stern look, Veronica rolling her eyes and staring at her with an arched brow.

“Betty, I know what to look for. I am not going to get in any trouble, trust me.” Betty levels her with a look before turning back to the television, knowing when to back down from a fight. She’s heard the horror stories about websites like that, but she knows Veronica is both tough and smart. She watches the movie, munching on the treats and ignoring Veronica’s random comments about her Craigslist findings. In the movie, Anna and Declan are crashing the wedding when Veronica calls Betty’s name repeatedly, trying to get her attention.

“Ronnie, we really don’t need any more furniture. We have no place for it.” Betty says in a monotonous tone, keeping her eyes trained on the movie.

“It’s not furniture, Betty, it’s a gig!” Veronica exclaims, angling the laptop and pushing it towards her. “And you need to reply to it!”

This gets Betty’s attention and she snaps her head to look at the grinning girl, her face illuminated by the computer screen. “Why would I do that? I just told you how I feel about Craigslist.”

“Because,” Veronica says, dragging out the vowels, “This gig literally screams you. It’s an amature modeling gig --”

“Okay, now I know you’ve lost it because no part of that screams me,” she snorts, looking back at the movie.

“That’s exactly why it’s perfect for you! You don’t think you can do it, which is the reason that you should!” Veronica claps her hands to emphasize her statement, grinning at Betty. The latter turns back to her, officially thinking she has gone insane. She voices this, which causes Veronica to roll her eyes. “Betty. Think about it. This is an amature photographer, looking to build up a portfolio. Not professional, so not high-strung. The ad says you don’t need experience, and you just need to sit still and follow directions, which you are a pro at. You just need to send in any picture of you and then three facts about yourself. It’s as simple as that!”

“If it’s so simple, why don’t you do it then?” Betty mutters, glancing away from the laptop.

“Do you really think my ego needs that?” she questions, raising her eyebrows. Betty considers that and realizes that no, Veronica Lodge does not need any ego boosting.

“What if it’s a murderer? Or some crazy pervert?” she asks, her eyebrows knitting together in worry at all of the possible outcomes.

“I will make sure that doesn’t happen. I will do a full background check on him and will come with you if you really want me to,” Veronica assures, smiling again.

Betty bites her bottom lip, thinking it over. “I won’t get chosen,” she says quietly, bringing her knees up to her chest. “You know there is gonna be actual models replying to that. Or girls that should be models.”

“There’s no harm in trying,” Veronica reasons, sliding over to her.

She sighs, putting her legs back down. She looks at the laptop, reading over the ad again. “Only if you reply for me,” Betty finally agrees after a minute. A smile spreads across Veronica’s entire face, her eyes sparkling and face literally glowing.

“Yes! Yes, yes, yes, I most definitely will!” Veronica squeals, positioning the laptop back on her lap. “You are so gonna get this gig,” she mutters, a mischievous glint in her eyes. Betty instantly regrets her decision as soon as Veronica goes to her Facebook and searches through her photos. “We are gonna need to pick the best picture to send. And when I say best, I mean the hottest. And that is gonna be hard because you are always hot.”

She laughs at the wink Veronica throws her way. “You flatter me, V.”

“I’m serious, Betty. You are gorgeous and every photo is perfect,” she tells her, scrolling through countless photos. “But I think this one is a winner.”

Betty looks at the screen to see a photo from about a year ago. It was Christmas Eve and they were snowed in for days prior, not being able to go home for the holidays. The snow, however, did not stop Veronica Lodge from having a spectacular holiday bash with friends from their old dorm. They dressed in their cutest holiday outfits, per Veronica’s request, and of course pictures were taken. Veronica took this particular one because she could not stop complimenting Betty’s outfit. She had chosen a dark red turtleneck sweater with a leather skirt and tights, her hair styled up and her lips painted with dark red lipstick as a last minute decision. Looking back at the picture now, Betty can admit that she did look different, if anything. She normally strays away from lipstick and dark colors but in the picture, she looked good.

“I think you’re right,” Betty says quietly, staring at the picture.

Veronica smirks, copying the picture onto the post. “Knew it. You’re welcome for my amazing photography skills. Now for facts.” At this, she stops completely, her head snapping towards Betty. “Betty, you have to have the best facts. Like, incredibly interesting facts.”

“Wow, V, thanks for boosting my ego.” Betty rolls her eyes, occupying herself by dipping a slice of banana in the chocolate.

“Betty, you know that’s not what I meant! I just mean we have to really intrigue this person, okay? You can tell by their writing that they’re going to be picky. So you have to stand out.”

“Why can’t I just be me?” Betty asks, not taking her eyes off the movie.

“You can! You will! But you just have to pick the best facts about you. Three facts, Betty. I think you should choose something about your family, something you like to do or something that inspires you, and something unique about yourself.” Veronica taps her chin, staring at the computer screen in thought.

“Give it to me,” Betty tells her, reaching for the laptop. She hands it over and watches as Betty immediately starts typing away.

“What are you writing?” Veronica inquires, leaning over to see. She reads them as Betty finishes, smiling slowly. “Yes, these should be perfect. Make sure to remember me when you’re off in Paris, America’s Next Top Model.”

A few days have passed since Jughead even checked on his Craigslist ad, and for two good reasons. At first, he didn’t even want to see because he was mad at Archie for forcing him into it, and who knows who was going to answer. The second reason he didn’t check was because he honestly forgot without Archie bugging him about it. Four days after he posted it, he found himself on his computer, opening the website.

To his surprise, he actually has a lot of replies. He scrolls through them, seeing countless boring selfies with basic facts that are not at all intriguing.

“Wow, your favorite color is pink. And so is yours. And yours,” Jughead mutters to himself, shaking his head. There are a few mildly interesting ones, but selfies are not telling of how photogenic someone is. Nor is a professionally photoshopped photo, because do they think he’s an idiot?

He hears Archie come back from his run but doesn’t turn around. His eyes are stuck on the screen because suddenly, he has found the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. Her eyes are striking and Jughead finds himself lost in them, imagining how mesmerizing they’d look in person.

“She’s pretty,” he hears from behind.

Jughead snaps out of it, clearing his throat. “Uh, yeah. Pretty, yeah,” he stutters, trying not to stare at the picture too long. He scrolls a bit to look at the facts, hoping they stand out just like her eyes.

Hi! I’m Betty. I’m not normally asked for random facts, so not sure how great these are. For starters, I want to be a journalist and my literary hero is Toni Morrison. My parents are in charge of our smalltown newspaper back home, so when I was young I used to write up articles and they would pretend to publish them. And also, I love fixing up old cars and motorcycles with my dad. Not that interesting but that’s me. :)

Jughead smiles as he reads her post, trying not to be too endeared by the smiley face. She included her email at the end, as well as a “hope to hear from you!” to top it off.

“Is she the one, then? Since you’ve been staring for ten minutes, and all,” Archie smirks, poking his cheeks.

“Oh shut up,” Jughead grumbles, swatting his finger away.

Archie just laughs and leans closer, looking at the picture on the screen. “Well?” he asks, glancing expectantly at his best friend.

Jughead bites his lip, staring at the picture. He isn’t sure what exactly it is about her, but he is sold. “Yeah, yeah. She’s the one.”

Please let me know what you think! :) 

[itslikethatfrenchthing]

022: HOW TO CREATE LESS CONTENT WITH MORE IMPACT

iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud | Overcast | Spotify | TuneIn | Castbox

Today’s question for the podcast:

When starting: how do you navigate the need for content in order to get traffic, with the need for traffic to read your content? You can’t get traffic without content, yet it’s hard to stay motivated to write great content while nobody is reading it.

Quality matters more than quantity. To help you do this, I have an AMAZING freebie that you can grab: The Social Media Action Plan. Get it below.

You’ve probably heard me say this if you’ve ever tuned in but it’s worth repeating – there is nobody literally no one stalking your business, refreshing your news feed or seeing everything that you are putting out into the world the first time you’re sharing it.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CONTENT CREATION

Between social media algorithms, busy lives, and an overload of information, I can almost guarantee that most of your audience is missing your great information. Did you know that only 6% of your followers are actually seeing what you’re sharing? That’s pretty rubbish. In this episode I address growing a following and reaching into new audiences by getting mileage out of content that already exists.

   Today I am walking you through the lifecycle of my content, in the hopes that it will inspire you (and save a BUNCH of time) in the content creation process. One of the biggest shifts in my business has been from quantity to quality. When I look back over the years to look at how much content I really produced – I created simply for the fact of creating.

In this podcast we look at what would happen if we flip the script and put more energy into how we are sharing the content we create – and make sure that it gets in front of the right people.

We can find ourselves getting stuck doing things that aren’t actually making an impact or moving the needle forward in our business. So much time can be sucked up creating content, but not creating a plan for what to do with the content once it’s produced. So, here are 10 ideas that will help you revive, reuse or repurpose the content that you’re spending so much time on.

MAKE A BIGGER IMPACT WHILE CREATING LESS

#1 | Spend More Time Planning

Spend less time creating the content and focus on the how, when and where you’re going to share it. Just changing the way that you’re thinking about the actual creation process can have you marketing to the masses in a way that serves them without constantly feeling the need to create new stuff.  

When I switched it up, and let go of my type A tendencies, and I said – Okay, I can produce content, but I want this content to be shared to the masses, live on and to have a plan. It allowed me to be far more strategic about what I put out there, and I was no longer creating for the sake of creating.

#2 | Create “Evergreen” Content

When you create content, keep in mind that you intend for this content to be evergreen, live on for more than just one post. This is content that is pertinent a month from now, and not time sensitive. Keep it more general, remove specific dates or seasonal info; if someone were to land on this page in 6 months’ time, it would still be relevant for them.

I started to challenge myself, instead of creating all of this content that would only serve people for a week, what would it look like if I created intentional content that would be useful that would continue to serve my audience long after I first shared it?

Shifting the mindset of being timely to being evergreen helped reduce my workload, while being more intentional behind the creation process.

#3 | Check Your Links

Check them often... and re-check them. Let me be the first to say, I’m not the queen of linking. I’ll get emails saying: “hey this link is broken” or “this link is taking me to the wrong page.” So, I am not perfect at this; perfect is a word that doesn’t exist in my vocabulary… because it does not exist. Things happen, wires get crossed and pages change. In order to keep an elevated experience on your website, you want to make sure that things are working.

To do this, every once in a while I will do a “click test.” I’ll click through a page on my site, just to make sure that everything is taking people to the right spots. It is really important to test things out, and make sure that it is working properly. There is nothing worse than having this promising link to content that you want, only to discover that the link actually leads to nowhere.

#4 | Automation

Automation is my favourite thing. I love using sites like Buffer, Tailwind and the Plan app to help me automate, repurpose, and easily share old and new content alike. To do this, I create a content library, so I can see everything I created, everything I have, and get them scheduled to be pushed out so my audience has more than one chance to enjoy.

On a site like Meet Edgar, you can literally create a content library, write out posts, have different links to share, and select when and where they’re going to get shared to like Twitter, FB groups or your Facebook page.

Tailwind is a Pinterest app, that helps you schedule and loop pins. It’s AMAZING. I’ll spend about an hour a week on my Pinterest strategy, yet I’m dropping out pins every day throughout the week in a strategic way, even though I’m not manually pushing the button to do so.

You know me, I love Plan for my Instagram. I import in a handful of photos at once, rearrange my grid, and put out my posts and set reminders for when they need to go live. This helps so I’m not always needing to be in the content creation headspace. Things are already ready to go. When you batch work you are able to stay in that frame of mind in order to create intentional, meaningful content, that tells a story with consistently needing to do it day in and day out.

Having a content library, and schedule when to push posts out helps my audience (if they didn’t see it the first time) see content in the future.

#5 | Cross-Platform Sharing

I have different audiences from Facebook to Instagram and from Instagram to Pinterest and et cetera. Sometimes, sharing content that was shared on one platform to another is fresh for those people. Not a lot of people are following you on EVERY single channel. If they are, and they’re seeing duplicates of your content, it is just keeping you in the front of their mind.

I love to speak to my different audiences in different ways; sometimes just doing that can create an invitation to read the content. Maybe you have to change up the caption or formatting a little bit, but if you go in with the intention to share cross-platform, you can be far more strategic about how you speak about it, how you write about it, and how you invite others to engage with it.

#6 | Annual Strategy                                          

Look at your content calendar for the year as a whole. Do you have any upcoming launches, or busy seasons you had last year?  Could you reuse some of the blog posts or social media posts you made last year instead of constantly writing new ones?

When we look at things from a quarterly and annually perspective, it really helps us to be ahead of the game. One of the biggest mistakes I see people making is creating such timely content, that they’re not giving their audience a chance to be served or warm up to what they’re ultimately be selling

When you can see the content calendar, see the year at a glance, it can help you stay ahead of the game. You can look back and ask: what worked? What didn’t work? How can I repurpose what worked and use it again? Tweak and change what worked last year, without having to reinvent the wheel.

#7 | Promotion, Promotion, Promotion

Maybe you made a freebie and promoted it once or twice, but then it just died on social media. Do you have a freebie that you created and can promote in a new way? Instead of worrying about creating a new free offer for your audience, how can you talk about it in a new way and promote it again?

In my one-on-one client coaching online marketing sessions, I ALWAYS stress the importance of creating an email list. I know everyone wants a big Instagram following, but I want you to focus on your list.

Something I advise to do is to have two different opt-ins. Let’s say you’re a fitness coach, you can make a one-week workout guide, and a grocery shopping and food prep list. Some people fall into the trap of “I couldn’t possibly share this again, because people are going to be annoyed with me.” And I have to remind my clients: no one is refreshing your feed. Maybe they saw it last week, was in a busy spot, and didn’t opt in but wanted to (and forgot about it because life is busy). We have to get out of our own way and start being unapologetic about putting the right tools in the hands of people that need them.

A lot of times, well create incredible freebies, spend so much time on email opt-ins and maybe share them once or twice with the world. If you’re wondering: how the heck can I promote my freebies more, what can I do? Take a look at the Social Media Action Plan freebie I mentioned in the beginning of the podcast. It will walk you through how you can show up, and promote yourself on each platform, share your message, so you can serve you audience before you even go to sell to them. You can grab it below.

#8 | Focus on Analytics

When deciding which content to re-share, check out what is currently doing well. You can do this by looking at Google Analytics and your most visited pages. Once you find out the pages that are performing the best, make sure that you have a freebie attached to convert the traffic to your email list. I always ask my new clients to give me access to their analytics, so many people have it but don’t use it! It is a tool that I pop into at least once a week, because I want to see: what do people want? What are the interested in, excited about and clicking into? How can we have a plan for those people so we can serve them in bigger ways?

I let my Google Analytics dictate what content is coming next, how I’m using Pinterest to share that content with the world, and how it plays a role in my SEO strategy. You want to re-share the stuff that’s killing it. You created it once, now let it do the work for you.

#9 | Re-evaluate Your Content

Check out the pages that aren’t doing so well. Is there a reason why they’re flopping? Is there a way you can improve it? Switch out the title, change the image or flip the description or the way you’re speaking about it. There’s been so many times I’ve created something with the idea “this is going to kill it” and no one opts in for it. If I truly believe that its good, and maybe people just didn’t understand what I was trying to say, I’ll use these tactics. You want to move forward to make it a success (and not just scrap it).

#10 | Reuse Your Content

Would your content do well as a guest post for someone else? I often get approached to contribute content, or write for another person’s blog and I always check my catalogue of topics that’s already been written. The reason they’re reaching out is because the probably already know what I talk about, and so sometimes a fresh introduction and a spin on what’s been written is all I need to do to re-use my content.

Make sure you have new words and are not just copying and pasting an entire article, because that can knock you down in the SEO world. There is no reason to start from scratch.

I remember all of the days where I spent all of my time creating content, only to have that content live and die with the one FB post. Little did I know, my audience was missing out on the information that they wanted, and I wasn’t creating a system that was sustainable for what I wanted to do.

RECAP

When I shifted from quantity to quality, and focused more on promotion, I was able to get so much more mileage out of a post.  When you start creating content with a true plan, you’re going to stop spinning your wheels and you’re going to be able to get your content in the right hands. Focus on content that lasts and lives farther that just one social media post. Create with a sense of purpose.

After looking after all of the stuff I’ve created, and figured out a way I can share it with you in new ways, I’ve been able to dial back from spending all of my hours creating and allowed me to say: what does my audience need right now? Do not let content creation consume you, do not waste your days spending time reinventing the wheel... instead share that meaningful message, the purposeful, intentional message with the world and know that: people will appreciate it when you show up and serve them.

Don’t forget to grab your FREE Social Media Action Plan below!

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

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[topicprinter]

So you have a brand/business/startup that you think should test some Influencer Marketing? I agree, you probably should. In the past two years, depending on the project, almost nothing that has had a cheaper CPM (and sometimes CPI) for my clients than Influencer Marketing, but it’s taken me nearly 500 total engagements to figure it all out (you can google my username if you want to see my LinkedIn or verify me)A while ago it was the total Wild Wild West of Advertising, with rate fluctuation looking at like 300% for the same sized audiences. Brands were paying ridiculous rates to Influencers who built their followings with mostly bots and booty shorts, but that’s dying down now, and what’s left after that dust settles is an extremely authentic way to grow your brand, convert and literally influence people to use/try/buy your stuff. With that, I wanted to take the time to write out what I’ve learned about how you can do your own Influencer Marketing tests, even with minimal budgets, yourself. Firstly, I want to say, there are three major ways you can go about Influencer Marketing:​DIY (which is the purpose of this post so I won’t elaborate on what that means yet.Going through an agency like God and Beauty (I recommend them)Using a platform like Influence.com or the similarly named influence.co.The difference between these strategies basically is more money investment vs. more time investment for you and your team. For instance, if you go through an agency, they’ll do the heavy lifting for you from start to finish, but you’ll need to pay a decent percentage of your total budget to get that assistance. Agencies are also great if you’re starting out because you can benefit from people who have been in the trenches (like Kyle at G&B) for thousands of posts since the inception of the advertising channel. Basically, if you’re a bootstrapped, self-funded company, you’ll need to go the DIY approach, and my entire near 15-year career has been dedicated to helping early-stage businesses so, why stop now! Let me tell you how to do your own Influencer Campaign:Step 1) DiscoveryThe first thing I always do is develop a keyword list that I want to use to discover Influencers who will have an audience of our target users. For this exercise, I didn’t spend a ton of time developing this list, but I would obviously suggest you research this in-depth with more time. Let’s say I’m a healthy food delivery startup focused on affluent 25-45-year-olds. I won’t name any names, because they’re not paying me, but just pick one in your mind. Assume that after I wrote out all the keywords, I searched dozens of terms in the channels I want to advertise on and found these 5 to be the most accurate:Develop Influencer Keywords:“Healthy”“Medicine”“Wellness”“Fitness”“Organic”For the sake of this exercise, let’s imagine these 5 terms are super targeted to our users based on significant research. I’ll source and develop lists of Influencers for each term,(for this exercise I’ll just show 1 each) to test out an engagement and identify which “community” or keyword focus is best for us to scale up with this strategy.Identifying InfluencersI then go to various Social Media platforms, and/ or Influencer Platforms like Aspire, HeartBeat, Influence.co etc and search for users based on these keywords. Each user should have a solid blend of these three metrics:​Audience - How many total followers.Engagement - How active are followers.Activations - How many directly ask followers to purchase?Beyond the 3 mentioned above, do they have the audience your company wishes to target? This can be ascertained by looking at the keyword relevance of their profile, posts and their content. Their location is also important if your business is focused on specific geographies.Average Post EngagementThen I’m looking at the average engagement of their posts.This sheet has the formulas I use for determining the engagement ROI of an influencer before I engage them.FYI the rest is dummy content but shows you an example of the metrics and KPIs I look for.I’ve found that much of my Influencer Marketing success has come from smaller Influencers under 100k followers, not only because they have more engagement, but because they’re also less saturated, and have more interest in large partnerships including cross-platform and multipost campaigns.For this exercise, I’ll suggest larger partnerships with large Influencers only.Previous ActivationsThen I’m looking for previous activations that they’ve done with similarly aligned brands. I want to see SOME activations, showing the type of content and the average engagements but I don’t want to see too many. I like to look for at least one post a month but not more than 1 post a week.If they saturate too much then their “influence goes down quite a bit.'' Now, you also need to test various channels. You may already know that Instagram works best for your business organically, but I also like to look at a few other outlier platforms like Pinterest and Youtube or even industry-specific forums for test engagements, or if Influencers have diverse audiences across multiple platforms we can test cross-platform multi-post engagements as well. For the sake of this exercise, I’ll just pick 5 relevant Influencers on Instagram.Here are the 5 Influencers I chose in 2 minutes for the above keywords:See original post for photos:​Note: You would want to try several other search terms, even with multiple words.Step 2) PitchSo if I am not dealing with an agency or a platform I start with a very simple cold outreach message like the email below:Or via DM to get their email and add them to my list of Influencers: 📷📷​See original post for photos:Take a moment to brainstorm and see if you have something valuable to offer the Influencers besides just cash. Many of them will say no to anything besides financial reward, but some ideas of other things to offer are below. Reach out to them with short succinct messages that are valuable and your response rate will be decent. Focus on Influencers who are not doing a lot of paid posts as they’re more likely to be interested in other value.Other Things that are valuable:-Free merch-Giveaways-Content Ideas-ExclusivesThe pitch then becomes more focused on collaboration with strict guidelines for content to ensure success. What I’ve found with Influencers is that the larger their audience, the lazier they tend to be, so we want to make it exciting by pitching large partnerships, but also hold them accountable with strict guidelines so they can’t “slack off” on the content creation, often trying to reuse content they’ve already created…The bottom line for all of my influencer pitches is how can I make an engagement with my brand more valuable to their audience than other brands that reach out to them. We want them to feel like this is valuable for more than just financial reasons...so coming at them with creative ideas and fun ideas that will delight and impress their followers will be best at helping them be ok with not getting a big paycheck. This is especially true for the under-100k Influencer.Also, if you have an upcoming event you can invite them to, it’s even better. Influencers love free stuff and that means swag, and party/event invites too, so if you’re doing an event or launch party you can invite all press and all potential Influencers and the pitch becomes something like this:📷See original post for photos:Note: the average response rate of an invite is like 75% for me..vs 35% for other messages.Step 3: CreateThe secret tip to having a successful Influencer Marketing campaign, is having control over the content. The more guidelines you give the Influencer the better the outcome. In my experience, content like the below works best...that is created solely to promote our product, with product placement in the post, showing the influencer using it, and actually believable. This is ideal. To have maximum engagement we want Influencers who would actually use the product.📷On the other end of the spectrum, a poor Influencer post is often just a random photo of just the Influencer, with the focus on the Influencer's sexuality/body and even other products in the post.📷See the difference in the total engagements between the above posts, now guess what? The influencer in the second image has a larger following (slightly) and we paid both engagements the same amount. So know exactly what you want them to do ahead of time. It helps to create a PDF kit that you can just email them as you sign them up. This entire process should only take a week’s worth of work for everything from sourcing, messaging, following up, PayPaling them etc. You can easily start off with 20-30 of these and see how it works for your business before scaling up to larger Influencers, and working with Agencies and bigger platforms/engagements at scale.As I’m writing this I’m wondering about all the negative comments I’ll get from other Digital Marketers out there who still shun the thought of engaging in Influencer Marketing. But the data doesn’t lie, for certain brands, with certain target demographics, this stuff really works, and the key is knowing how to do it. I hope this helps you scale your business. If you’ve got questions please comment below. You can also reach me by Googling my username.See original post for photos:

[sempiternalsandpitturtle]

Paid content syndication: The complete guide for 2019

Don’t do it.

That’s our three-word assessment of paid content syndication in 2019. The search engine optimisation benefits are non-existent, the tactic is incredibly click-baity and it doesn’t work well for a modern audience.

Your money would be better spent on new mousepads for everyone in your office.

But don’t just take us at our word. Let’s examine the facts:

What is content syndication?

Content syndication (unpaid) is when you republish content that appeared on your company’s blog or website elsewhere on the web. The syndicated content could be a full article or a snippet that links back to the original piece.

This is different from guest blogging, which involves creating an exclusive piece of content for a third-party outlet; the guest article does not appear on your site. That said, some publishers have content syndication networks they might use to promote guest content.

The benefits of content syndication include reaching a larger audience through off-site distribution networks, earning links back to your original post to help build page authority, gaining brand recognition, improving traffic to your site and also expanding your social media presence.

A common path to free content syndication is to pitch articles to websites such as Business Insider, Huffington Post, Forbes, Lifehacker and other online sources that welcome contributor content. Often, the repurposed post will have a disclaimer stating, “This content originally appeared on [insert blog here],” that links back to the original article, video or graphic.

Businesses can also self-syndicate by republishing their blog posts on one or more of the following channels:

LinkedIn Pulse.

Medium.

Tumblr.

SlideShare.

WikiHow.

BuzzFeed Community (must use as an individual and not as brand).

Quora Blogs.

Business2Community.

Facebook Instant Articles.

Pinterest.

ZergNet.

YouTube.

Vimeo.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is another example of content syndication whereby users can receive updates from blogs. It was useful in the early days of the web – and it remains the distribution mechanism for podcasts – but social media and free aggregators have made it fairly easy for users to curate their content without RSS feeds or readers.

Content syndication may also refer to syndication of a headline whereby a link to the original post is listed on a third-party site. ZergNet is an example:

Each of the headlines and blurbs in the screenshot above links to a different content source.

This is different from, say, republishing on the Huffington Post. Content syndicated to HuffPost actually lives on the website. It adopts a HuffPost URL and uses the same font and header:

The fact that content syndication can refer to two very different things is a common source of confusion.

While both methods are valid, republishing content on a website or blog that’s well-respected in your space gives you the chance to tap into that source’s existing audience.

Case in point: More people reading this have probably heard of HuffPost than ZergNet.

What is paid content syndication?

Paid content syndication is content syndication that you pay for.

One example might be paying an online industry magazine to publish an article on the site as a means of building thought leadership and brand awareness.

This is perhaps the only form of content syndication that’s maybe worth the investment.

More commonly, though, paid content syndication refers to the use of services such as Taboola, Outbrain and Zemanta. You’ve probably noticed something like this at the bottom of an article before:

This is an example of paid content syndication via Outbrain. The cost-per-click service uses algorithms to determine which content channels (CNN in the example above) to advertise your blog content on.

Placement is typically based on inputs from the customer, such as ideal syndication partners. A headline and image that links back to the original content is then posted on channels that align with those expectations.

Relative to CPC for paid search, the expense is fairly low, with rates at around $0.25 to $0.50 per click in many cases. Each time a user clicks on paid content, the customer is charged, and the user is navigated to the original source.

Potential benefits of paid content syndication

Paid content syndication only works if you’re already creating original and useful content. Otherwise, you have nothing to distribute or promote.

Content creators attempting to get a new blog or resource center off the ground can use paid content syndication to earn early traffic through third-party sites that already see a lot of it.

Many other marketers might use content syndication to hit a monthly or quarterly traffic quota.

And that’s about it as far as benefits go.

The SEO downsides

Beyond potentially aiding in content discovery, there are few if any advantages of paid content syndication.

The reason? rel=“nofollow”.

Developers created this attribute to prevent advertisements from having an outsized influence on search rankings.

Paid content syndication is a form of native advertising, one that, because of the nofollow tag, does not affect organic search rankings.

In other words, paid content syndication networks like Outbrain and Taboola don’t give you any of that sweet, sweet link juice that will help you build page authority.

For the uninitiated, high-quality backlinks are critical in SEO. Google sees a link from any site that has high domain authority as an indicator of that content’s usefulness, credibility and trustworthiness.

All of that goes out the window with paid referrals thanks to the nofollow tag.

So while on paper it looks like CNN is linking to your content, Google doesn’t see it that way. Paid content syndication networks offer literally zero concrete SEO benefits.

Again, the one potential upside of paid content syndication is that it can generate traffic. More eyes on your content can theoretically mean more lead generation, especially if you’re using email-capture resources.

But paid traffic for the sake of traffic means very little if you’re not landing qualified leads, which is often the case since many syndication networks automatically generate headlines that don’t precisely match the content.

Content syndication services will nevertheless go to great lengths to convince you that your articles are getting in front of the right people.

A (weak) case can also be made that a user who sees a paid article from a website or blog may be more likely to click on organic links to your site in the future. However, this type of influence is incredibly difficult to measure.

Long story short, paid syndication makes a negligible contribution to inbound marketing and a non-existent one to SEO.

The other big pitfalls of paid syndication? It’s basically in-line spam to users

The average click-through-rate of a modern display ad is less than 0.1 percent, partly because of ad blockers, partly because users just don’t trust them. But the bigger culprit is banner blindness, which refers to a type of selective attention on the web.

Simply put, people have learned to ignore ads and ad-like content.

Eye-tracking research conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group found that many web users will instinctively overlook banners that resemble ads, including content that appears in the margins or bottom of the page. Incidentally, that’s where the bulk of paid content syndication links are displayed on desktop.

(You see where I’m going with this.)

The click-through rate for native advertising (including paid content syndication) is admittedly higher than display advertising, but still less than half a percent.

Why so low? Because paid content placement is easy to spot, and even easier to ignore, so much so that you probably don’t give those spammy articles a second thought. If anything, you run away from them.

Maybe this point is better phrased as a question: How often do you click on paid content featured on CNN.com?

Barring accidentally opening in-line paid articles while scrolling through a mobile news feed, probably never.

Is paid content syndication ever OK?

Other than maybe paying for a sponsored article in say, Forbes? Only on social media, and only if we reeaally stretch the definition of paid content syndication.

A sponsored post on Facebook or a promoted tweet on Twitter intended to call attention to your blog content serves a similar function to paid content syndication: to use an external or offsite platform to generate traffic to a piece of content.

The difference with social media is that you’re targeting an existing network of people who are ostensibly engaged with your brand for a reason.

The purpose of a sponsored post on Facebook, for example, is to “boost” that post so it appears more prominently in your followers’ or fans’ newsfeeds.

In this sense, you inherently have more control over who sees the post than you would with paid content syndication.

So does regular old content syndication help SEO?

It certainly has more potential than paid content syndication to provide real SEO value since it’s a form of organic content distribution.

Republished blog posts and videos, for example, typically link back to the original article.

When that link comes from a site with strong domain authority, you get some link juice. Referrals from that backlink (users clicking to see the original source of the article) gives you even more SEO value.

Your brand is also credited for the content, which helps make it more top of mind for readers.

As an added bonus, many content syndication sites have large social followings since that’s how they distribute and promote content. Consequently, you may see a potential boost in impressions and in overall social engagement.

Avoiding duplicate content penalties when syndicating

Duplicate content is generally bad news for SEO, so the idea of republishing your original content on another blog or website may seem counter-intuitive.

But it’s not.

Let’s go back to the tags. When syndicating content, make sure that the publisher featuring your article, video or graphic uses the rel=canonical tag. This tells Google which version is the original source of the content.

More importantly, the rel=canonical tag ensures that your website gets the search benefits generated from the syndicated article. This means:

You get the aforementioned link juice that the syndicated content will help to attract.

The syndicated posts don’t start to outrank or outperform the original content.

The other option to prevent your content syndication from backfiring is to use the meta “NoIndex” tag for the syndicated versions of posts. This informs Google not to index the content, meaning it won’t show up in search results.

Always try to go with rel=canonical tag over the NoIndex tag.

You may run into situations where the publisher refuses to use either. In those cases, transparent attribution and a backlink to original content is your last resort.

A note on content quality

You’ll have a much easier time syndicating content with third parties if your content is good. That means:

It needs to be relevant to the publisher’s audience and align nicely with reader intent.

The actual content needs to be well-researched and well-written.

The copy needs need to be accurate and clean.

Remember, content syndication with a third party is a two-way street. The third-party publisher is giving your content free exposure to their readers. Therefore, it needs to provide insights, instructive advice, thought leadership or some value to the audience that wasn’t already there.

Closing thoughts: Organic syndication beats paid in almost every way

We’ve made our feelings about paid content syndication abundantly clear. And while organic content syndication is demonstrably superior, it still represents a fraction of any content marketing strategy.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 27 percent of marketers use some form of syndication technology to assist in content marketing management. (The stat is admittedly vague about what qualifies as syndication technology.)

Granted, a little over a fourth is nothing to scoff at; however, the “ideal content marketing mix” is typically made up of 65 percent content creation, and 25 percent content curation (e.g., sharing relevant articles through a social media platform or curating user-generated content).

That leaves about about 10 percent for content syndication.

And again, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Content syndication can be a powerful distribution and promotion resource, and one that’s good for SEO to boot.

But it should never be the focus of a content marketing strategy.

More importantly, it should almost never be paid. Content marketing has come a long way since the days of keyword stuffing. Paid content syndication is, if anything, a step backward and away from well-rounded content strategy.

In the majority of cases, it does little to meaningfully contribute to inbound marketing, and even less to improve SEO.

This is all to say, be careful about how much you spend on paid content syndication in 2019.

Now about those mouse pads …

from http://bit.ly/2UZfzu0

[mariasolemarionqi]

13 Ingredients in the Perfect Social Media Contest

With the competition for attention online at an all-time high, the struggle to keep followers engaged with your company’s social channels is real, and ongoing. In addition to the smart use of visuals, businesses often turn to social media contests and promotions to stir excitement and drive activity from their audience.

It’s not as easy as tweeting “Who wants to win an iPad!?”, even though we’ve all clicked on that at one time or another. Excellent social media contests require substantial planning and nimble execution. They have many moving parts and potential points of failure.

Here’s a checklist of 13 ingredients you’ll need before launching the perfect social media contest:

1. Venue

Where will this contest take place? Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? Or will it be present in multiple venues, like a photo contest where participants can enter on Facebook or Instagram? Remember that each time you add a venue for participation, your oversight responsibilities grow geometrically.

2. Entry Mechanism

How do people qualify to enter your social media contest? There are hundreds of variations, but there are six main categories of participation mechanism. They are: Sweepstakes (nothing required—most common on Twitter); Connect (like/follow the company’s social account to enter); Like (like a particular piece of content to enter); Share (share a piece of content to enter); Vote (state preference from among multiple pieces of content to enter); Create (develop user-generated content and upload to enter).

Remember: The more you ask your audience to do, the fewer will do it. Remember too that the younger your audience, the more comfortable they will be creating content for your contest.

The more you ask your audience to do in a social media contest, the fewer will do it. Click To Tweet 3. Theme and Name

Is this contest seasonal? Does it tie into a particular product or service? Remember, the theme/name will guide the rest of the creative. Take some time to come up with something that resonates. Try to keep your contest name short, as long names eat up valuable characters in tweets and ad headlines.

4. Timeline

This is where you coordinate the major elements of the social media contest. The best approach here is to work backward from the date that you want to announce winners. From there, figure out when judging starts/ends (if applicable), when entries close, when entries open, when promotion starts, and other key milestones. Be sure to account for time to develop the creative, get approval for the contest rules, and any other internal hurdles that you need to cover before launch.

5. Visual Identity

In today’s social media landscape of visual billboards, you’ll need strong graphics and video to support your contest. Graphic needs may include cover and profile images, logos, headers, landing pages, emails, promoted posts, carousel images, or ad images (to name a few). Videos explaining and promoting the contest should be in both vertical (Snapchat, Instagram) and horizontal (YouTube, Facebook) formats, and likely various other lengths to maximize impact across different social channels. To make sure your design team doesn’t mutiny, use your timeline from step four and give them a single list of everything you need, including specific pixel dimensions and required language or copy. For Facebook, remember the 20 percent rule when creating graphics for promoted posts and ad images.

6. Prizes

What will winners receive? This is a place for you to be creative, and most social media contests are far too obvious here. (See “win an iPad” above.)

Remember, the prize itself can be the theme for the contest, as with the legendary “best job in the world” campaign from Tourism Queensland. The best contests have prizes that tie directly back to the company itself. This becomes particularly important when you consider the downstream results of this effort. You want to activate and attract people who are genuinely interested in your business, not just “contest hunters” who enter everything they can find. If you sell fishing gear, give away fishing gear as a prize, not an iPad.

7. Editorial Calendar

Here’s where you map out (via Excel, a custom Google calendar, and/or your social media management software) all the social media posts, email messages, advertising support, and other communications about your promotion. You don’t necessarily have to write all of the messages in advance—although it’s not a bad idea, and your legal team may require it. Remember that your social media contest (and corresponding communications) has five phases: pre-launch, launch, last chance, completion, and winners. You need to plan multiple messages across multiple platforms for each phase.

8. Seeding Strategy

This applies to the pre-launch and launch phases of your social media contest. This is where you figure out how to give your promotion the best chance of lift-off in the critical early days of the promotion. What you’re trying to do here is make sure that the people who already love you, and the people who have a disproportionate number of social connections, are fully aware of the contest and are ready to participate and spread the word the minute the promotion begins. This could include special “Shh, Coming Soon” emails to key customers and social influencers, making sure all employees are aware of the event and other opportunities.

Remember: You do not want to “soft launch” a contest. This is especially true on Facebook, where the algorithm dictates that slow starters get buried.

9. Amplification Strategy

With the exception of simple Twitter contests and basic Facebook contests that are managed within your timeline, you will probably need some sort of amplification to ensure that your contest has the reach (and garners the attention) you desire. This may include Facebook and Instagram ads (think about custom audiences ads shown only to your email subscribers), Facebook promoted posts, Twitter promoted tweets, ad opportunities on Pinterest, amplification networks like Outbrain, Taboola, and Stumble, and other options. Remember that even if your contest takes place on one platform, you can use multiple platforms to amplify it.

10. Rules

I purposefully put rules and legal advice tenth on this list because I have found it is much easier to have legal weigh in on the entirety of the program (including seeding, editorial, amplification) all at once, instead of having them look at the mechanism and prizes first, and then going back to them later with a second round of inquiries about the other elements. As with the design team, make legal’s job easier by giving them the total picture up-front. Be proactive by doing your research first on what each venue allows for contests, and have the links ready to share with legal. (Here’s Facebook’s Pages Terms.) It’ll make them happy, and you absolutely want to keep them on your side.

11. Community Management

Participants and prospective entrants will have questions and comments about your contest. Some will be easy to address. Others may not be so simple. It is absolutely critical (even for simple contests) that you have a defined plan for who is moderating and overseeing your social outposts. This doesn’t just mean the channels where the contest is located and normal business hours. What is your plan for coverage on nights and weekends? Your day-to-day community management realities will likely be modest compared to what you need to accomplish during a contest. Plan for this.

12. Crisis Plan

You should already have a social media crisis plan. If you’ve never created one, the launch of your new contest provides excellent leverage for getting it finished. Will something go massively awry with your contest, causing you to activate your crisis plan? Probably not. But if it does, and you don’t have that crisis plan to turn to in that critical moment, the chances you’ll ever get to do another contest are just about zero. Consider this to be the “I’m not about to get fired because of a contest” ingredient of this recipe. (See my popular “8 steps to manage a social media crisis” post and slides here.)

13. Software (Sometimes)

As with amplification, you may not need software if your social media contest is very straightforward. But for any sort of contest that requires data collection as part of the entry mechanism, you’ll need software to help build and manage the affair. There are literally dozens of software packages that help you do this, either as their sole function or as part of a larger suite of social media management capabilities. Here at Convince & Convert, we’re familiar with most of them but haven’t used them all first-hand.

Software I can personally recommend (please feel free to nominate others in the comments) includes:

Wyng: For mid-sized companies on Facebook and beyond, this software packs tons of campaign and content templates and ideas.

Shortstack: For small businesses up to large agencies, this is one of the legacy providers for contests on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Strutta: For medium/large companies hosting contests on Facebook, Instagram, or their own microsite, their DIY and custom packages make this software accessible for most.

Woobox: This software is designed for mid-sized companies and large brands that make Facebook a top priority.

Wishpond: This tool works best for medium/large companies connecting contests to lead generation.

Rafflecopter: This is one of the best options for bloggers and solopreneurs looking to run a simple giveaway with multiple entry points.

Those are the 13 ingredients of the perfect social media contest. What did I miss?

http://ift.tt/1tg08sx

[maryhare96]

13 Ingredients in the Perfect Social Media Contest

With the competition for attention online at an all-time high, the struggle to keep followers engaged with your company’s social channels is real, and ongoing. In addition to the smart use of visuals, businesses often turn to social media contests and promotions to stir excitement and drive activity from their audience.

It’s not as easy as tweeting “Who wants to win an iPad!?”, even though we’ve all clicked on that at one time or another. Excellent social media contests require substantial planning and nimble execution. They have many moving parts and potential points of failure.

Here’s a checklist of 13 ingredients you’ll need before launching the perfect social media contest:

1. Venue

Where will this contest take place? Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? Or will it be present in multiple venues, like a photo contest where participants can enter on Facebook or Instagram? Remember that each time you add a venue for participation, your oversight responsibilities grow geometrically.

2. Entry Mechanism

How do people qualify to enter your social media contest? There are hundreds of variations, but there are six main categories of participation mechanism. They are: Sweepstakes (nothing required—most common on Twitter); Connect (like/follow the company’s social account to enter); Like (like a particular piece of content to enter); Share (share a piece of content to enter); Vote (state preference from among multiple pieces of content to enter); Create (develop user-generated content and upload to enter).

Remember: The more you ask your audience to do, the fewer will do it. Remember too that the younger your audience, the more comfortable they will be creating content for your contest.

The more you ask your audience to do in a social media contest, the fewer will do it. Click To Tweet 3. Theme and Name

Is this contest seasonal? Does it tie into a particular product or service? Remember, the theme/name will guide the rest of the creative. Take some time to come up with something that resonates. Try to keep your contest name short, as long names eat up valuable characters in tweets and ad headlines.

4. Timeline

This is where you coordinate the major elements of the social media contest. The best approach here is to work backward from the date that you want to announce winners. From there, figure out when judging starts/ends (if applicable), when entries close, when entries open, when promotion starts, and other key milestones. Be sure to account for time to develop the creative, get approval for the contest rules, and any other internal hurdles that you need to cover before launch.

5. Visual Identity

In today’s social media landscape of visual billboards, you’ll need strong graphics and video to support your contest. Graphic needs may include cover and profile images, logos, headers, landing pages, emails, promoted posts, carousel images, or ad images (to name a few). Videos explaining and promoting the contest should be in both vertical (Snapchat, Instagram) and horizontal (YouTube, Facebook) formats, and likely various other lengths to maximize impact across different social channels. To make sure your design team doesn’t mutiny, use your timeline from step four and give them a single list of everything you need, including specific pixel dimensions and required language or copy. For Facebook, remember the 20 percent rule when creating graphics for promoted posts and ad images.

6. Prizes

What will winners receive? This is a place for you to be creative, and most social media contests are far too obvious here. (See “win an iPad” above.)

Remember, the prize itself can be the theme for the contest, as with the legendary “best job in the world” campaign from Tourism Queensland. The best contests have prizes that tie directly back to the company itself. This becomes particularly important when you consider the downstream results of this effort. You want to activate and attract people who are genuinely interested in your business, not just “contest hunters” who enter everything they can find. If you sell fishing gear, give away fishing gear as a prize, not an iPad.

7. Editorial Calendar

Here’s where you map out (via Excel, a custom Google calendar, and/or your social media management software) all the social media posts, email messages, advertising support, and other communications about your promotion. You don’t necessarily have to write all of the messages in advance—although it’s not a bad idea, and your legal team may require it. Remember that your social media contest (and corresponding communications) has five phases: pre-launch, launch, last chance, completion, and winners. You need to plan multiple messages across multiple platforms for each phase.

8. Seeding Strategy

This applies to the pre-launch and launch phases of your social media contest. This is where you figure out how to give your promotion the best chance of lift-off in the critical early days of the promotion. What you’re trying to do here is make sure that the people who already love you, and the people who have a disproportionate number of social connections, are fully aware of the contest and are ready to participate and spread the word the minute the promotion begins. This could include special “Shh, Coming Soon” emails to key customers and social influencers, making sure all employees are aware of the event and other opportunities.

Remember: You do not want to “soft launch” a contest. This is especially true on Facebook, where the algorithm dictates that slow starters get buried.

9. Amplification Strategy

With the exception of simple Twitter contests and basic Facebook contests that are managed within your timeline, you will probably need some sort of amplification to ensure that your contest has the reach (and garners the attention) you desire. This may include Facebook and Instagram ads (think about custom audiences ads shown only to your email subscribers), Facebook promoted posts, Twitter promoted tweets, ad opportunities on Pinterest, amplification networks like Outbrain, Taboola, and Stumble, and other options. Remember that even if your contest takes place on one platform, you can use multiple platforms to amplify it.

10. Rules

I purposefully put rules and legal advice tenth on this list because I have found it is much easier to have legal weigh in on the entirety of the program (including seeding, editorial, amplification) all at once, instead of having them look at the mechanism and prizes first, and then going back to them later with a second round of inquiries about the other elements. As with the design team, make legal’s job easier by giving them the total picture up-front. Be proactive by doing your research first on what each venue allows for contests, and have the links ready to share with legal. (Here’s Facebook’s Pages Terms.) It’ll make them happy, and you absolutely want to keep them on your side.

11. Community Management

Participants and prospective entrants will have questions and comments about your contest. Some will be easy to address. Others may not be so simple. It is absolutely critical (even for simple contests) that you have a defined plan for who is moderating and overseeing your social outposts. This doesn’t just mean the channels where the contest is located and normal business hours. What is your plan for coverage on nights and weekends? Your day-to-day community management realities will likely be modest compared to what you need to accomplish during a contest. Plan for this.

12. Crisis Plan

You should already have a social media crisis plan. If you’ve never created one, the launch of your new contest provides excellent leverage for getting it finished. Will something go massively awry with your contest, causing you to activate your crisis plan? Probably not. But if it does, and you don’t have that crisis plan to turn to in that critical moment, the chances you’ll ever get to do another contest are just about zero. Consider this to be the “I’m not about to get fired because of a contest” ingredient of this recipe. (See my popular “8 steps to manage a social media crisis” post and slides here.)

13. Software (Sometimes)

As with amplification, you may not need software if your social media contest is very straightforward. But for any sort of contest that requires data collection as part of the entry mechanism, you’ll need software to help build and manage the affair. There are literally dozens of software packages that help you do this, either as their sole function or as part of a larger suite of social media management capabilities. Here at Convince & Convert, we’re familiar with most of them but haven’t used them all first-hand.

Software I can personally recommend (please feel free to nominate others in the comments) includes:

Wyng: For mid-sized companies on Facebook and beyond, this software packs tons of campaign and content templates and ideas.

Shortstack: For small businesses up to large agencies, this is one of the legacy providers for contests on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Strutta: For medium/large companies hosting contests on Facebook, Instagram, or their own microsite, their DIY and custom packages make this software accessible for most.

Woobox: This software is designed for mid-sized companies and large brands that make Facebook a top priority.

Wishpond: This tool works best for medium/large companies connecting contests to lead generation.

Rafflecopter: This is one of the best options for bloggers and solopreneurs looking to run a simple giveaway with multiple entry points.

Those are the 13 ingredients of the perfect social media contest. What did I miss?

http://ift.tt/1tg08sx

[christinesumpmg]

13 Ingredients in the Perfect Social Media Contest

With the competition for attention online at an all-time high, the struggle to keep followers engaged with your company’s social channels is real, and ongoing. In addition to the smart use of visuals, businesses often turn to social media contests and promotions to stir excitement and drive activity from their audience.

It’s not as easy as tweeting “Who wants to win an iPad!?”, even though we’ve all clicked on that at one time or another. Excellent social media contests require substantial planning and nimble execution. They have many moving parts and potential points of failure.

Here’s a checklist of 13 ingredients you’ll need before launching the perfect social media contest:

1. Venue

Where will this contest take place? Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? Or will it be present in multiple venues, like a photo contest where participants can enter on Facebook or Instagram? Remember that each time you add a venue for participation, your oversight responsibilities grow geometrically.

2. Entry Mechanism

How do people qualify to enter your social media contest? There are hundreds of variations, but there are six main categories of participation mechanism. They are: Sweepstakes (nothing required—most common on Twitter); Connect (like/follow the company’s social account to enter); Like (like a particular piece of content to enter); Share (share a piece of content to enter); Vote (state preference from among multiple pieces of content to enter); Create (develop user-generated content and upload to enter).

Remember: The more you ask your audience to do, the fewer will do it. Remember too that the younger your audience, the more comfortable they will be creating content for your contest.

The more you ask your audience to do in a social media contest, the fewer will do it. Click To Tweet 3. Theme and Name

Is this contest seasonal? Does it tie into a particular product or service? Remember, the theme/name will guide the rest of the creative. Take some time to come up with something that resonates. Try to keep your contest name short, as long names eat up valuable characters in tweets and ad headlines.

4. Timeline

This is where you coordinate the major elements of the social media contest. The best approach here is to work backward from the date that you want to announce winners. From there, figure out when judging starts/ends (if applicable), when entries close, when entries open, when promotion starts, and other key milestones. Be sure to account for time to develop the creative, get approval for the contest rules, and any other internal hurdles that you need to cover before launch.

5. Visual Identity

In today’s social media landscape of visual billboards, you’ll need strong graphics and video to support your contest. Graphic needs may include cover and profile images, logos, headers, landing pages, emails, promoted posts, carousel images, or ad images (to name a few). Videos explaining and promoting the contest should be in both vertical (Snapchat, Instagram) and horizontal (YouTube, Facebook) formats, and likely various other lengths to maximize impact across different social channels. To make sure your design team doesn’t mutiny, use your timeline from step four and give them a single list of everything you need, including specific pixel dimensions and required language or copy. For Facebook, remember the 20 percent rule when creating graphics for promoted posts and ad images.

6. Prizes

What will winners receive? This is a place for you to be creative, and most social media contests are far too obvious here. (See “win an iPad” above.)

Remember, the prize itself can be the theme for the contest, as with the legendary “best job in the world” campaign from Tourism Queensland. The best contests have prizes that tie directly back to the company itself. This becomes particularly important when you consider the downstream results of this effort. You want to activate and attract people who are genuinely interested in your business, not just “contest hunters” who enter everything they can find. If you sell fishing gear, give away fishing gear as a prize, not an iPad.

7. Editorial Calendar

Here’s where you map out (via Excel, a custom Google calendar, and/or your social media management software) all the social media posts, email messages, advertising support, and other communications about your promotion. You don’t necessarily have to write all of the messages in advance—although it’s not a bad idea, and your legal team may require it. Remember that your social media contest (and corresponding communications) has five phases: pre-launch, launch, last chance, completion, and winners. You need to plan multiple messages across multiple platforms for each phase.

8. Seeding Strategy

This applies to the pre-launch and launch phases of your social media contest. This is where you figure out how to give your promotion the best chance of lift-off in the critical early days of the promotion. What you’re trying to do here is make sure that the people who already love you, and the people who have a disproportionate number of social connections, are fully aware of the contest and are ready to participate and spread the word the minute the promotion begins. This could include special “Shh, Coming Soon” emails to key customers and social influencers, making sure all employees are aware of the event and other opportunities.

Remember: You do not want to “soft launch” a contest. This is especially true on Facebook, where the algorithm dictates that slow starters get buried.

9. Amplification Strategy

With the exception of simple Twitter contests and basic Facebook contests that are managed within your timeline, you will probably need some sort of amplification to ensure that your contest has the reach (and garners the attention) you desire. This may include Facebook and Instagram ads (think about custom audiences ads shown only to your email subscribers), Facebook promoted posts, Twitter promoted tweets, ad opportunities on Pinterest, amplification networks like Outbrain, Taboola, and Stumble, and other options. Remember that even if your contest takes place on one platform, you can use multiple platforms to amplify it.

10. Rules

I purposefully put rules and legal advice tenth on this list because I have found it is much easier to have legal weigh in on the entirety of the program (including seeding, editorial, amplification) all at once, instead of having them look at the mechanism and prizes first, and then going back to them later with a second round of inquiries about the other elements. As with the design team, make legal’s job easier by giving them the total picture up-front. Be proactive by doing your research first on what each venue allows for contests, and have the links ready to share with legal. (Here’s Facebook’s Pages Terms.) It’ll make them happy, and you absolutely want to keep them on your side.

11. Community Management

Participants and prospective entrants will have questions and comments about your contest. Some will be easy to address. Others may not be so simple. It is absolutely critical (even for simple contests) that you have a defined plan for who is moderating and overseeing your social outposts. This doesn’t just mean the channels where the contest is located and normal business hours. What is your plan for coverage on nights and weekends? Your day-to-day community management realities will likely be modest compared to what you need to accomplish during a contest. Plan for this.

12. Crisis Plan

You should already have a social media crisis plan. If you’ve never created one, the launch of your new contest provides excellent leverage for getting it finished. Will something go massively awry with your contest, causing you to activate your crisis plan? Probably not. But if it does, and you don’t have that crisis plan to turn to in that critical moment, the chances you’ll ever get to do another contest are just about zero. Consider this to be the “I’m not about to get fired because of a contest” ingredient of this recipe. (See my popular “8 steps to manage a social media crisis” post and slides here.)

13. Software (Sometimes)

As with amplification, you may not need software if your social media contest is very straightforward. But for any sort of contest that requires data collection as part of the entry mechanism, you’ll need software to help build and manage the affair. There are literally dozens of software packages that help you do this, either as their sole function or as part of a larger suite of social media management capabilities. Here at Convince & Convert, we’re familiar with most of them but haven’t used them all first-hand.

Software I can personally recommend (please feel free to nominate others in the comments) includes:

Wyng: For mid-sized companies on Facebook and beyond, this software packs tons of campaign and content templates and ideas.

Shortstack: For small businesses up to large agencies, this is one of the legacy providers for contests on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Strutta: For medium/large companies hosting contests on Facebook, Instagram, or their own microsite, their DIY and custom packages make this software accessible for most.

Woobox: This software is designed for mid-sized companies and large brands that make Facebook a top priority.

Wishpond: This tool works best for medium/large companies connecting contests to lead generation.

Rafflecopter: This is one of the best options for bloggers and solopreneurs looking to run a simple giveaway with multiple entry points.

Those are the 13 ingredients of the perfect social media contest. What did I miss?

http://ift.tt/1tg08sx

[rodneyevesuarywk]

13 Ingredients in the Perfect Social Media Contest

With the competition for attention online at an all-time high, the struggle to keep followers engaged with your company’s social channels is real, and ongoing. In addition to the smart use of visuals, businesses often turn to social media contests and promotions to stir excitement and drive activity from their audience.

It’s not as easy as tweeting “Who wants to win an iPad!?”, even though we’ve all clicked on that at one time or another. Excellent social media contests require substantial planning and nimble execution. They have many moving parts and potential points of failure.

Here’s a checklist of 13 ingredients you’ll need before launching the perfect social media contest:

1. Venue

Where will this contest take place? Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? Or will it be present in multiple venues, like a photo contest where participants can enter on Facebook or Instagram? Remember that each time you add a venue for participation, your oversight responsibilities grow geometrically.

2. Entry Mechanism

How do people qualify to enter your social media contest? There are hundreds of variations, but there are six main categories of participation mechanism. They are: Sweepstakes (nothing required—most common on Twitter); Connect (like/follow the company’s social account to enter); Like (like a particular piece of content to enter); Share (share a piece of content to enter); Vote (state preference from among multiple pieces of content to enter); Create (develop user-generated content and upload to enter).

Remember: The more you ask your audience to do, the fewer will do it. Remember too that the younger your audience, the more comfortable they will be creating content for your contest.

The more you ask your audience to do in a social media contest, the fewer will do it. Click To Tweet 3. Theme and Name

Is this contest seasonal? Does it tie into a particular product or service? Remember, the theme/name will guide the rest of the creative. Take some time to come up with something that resonates. Try to keep your contest name short, as long names eat up valuable characters in tweets and ad headlines.

4. Timeline

This is where you coordinate the major elements of the social media contest. The best approach here is to work backward from the date that you want to announce winners. From there, figure out when judging starts/ends (if applicable), when entries close, when entries open, when promotion starts, and other key milestones. Be sure to account for time to develop the creative, get approval for the contest rules, and any other internal hurdles that you need to cover before launch.

5. Visual Identity

In today’s social media landscape of visual billboards, you’ll need strong graphics and video to support your contest. Graphic needs may include cover and profile images, logos, headers, landing pages, emails, promoted posts, carousel images, or ad images (to name a few). Videos explaining and promoting the contest should be in both vertical (Snapchat, Instagram) and horizontal (YouTube, Facebook) formats, and likely various other lengths to maximize impact across different social channels. To make sure your design team doesn’t mutiny, use your timeline from step four and give them a single list of everything you need, including specific pixel dimensions and required language or copy. For Facebook, remember the 20 percent rule when creating graphics for promoted posts and ad images.

6. Prizes

What will winners receive? This is a place for you to be creative, and most social media contests are far too obvious here. (See “win an iPad” above.)

Remember, the prize itself can be the theme for the contest, as with the legendary “best job in the world” campaign from Tourism Queensland. The best contests have prizes that tie directly back to the company itself. This becomes particularly important when you consider the downstream results of this effort. You want to activate and attract people who are genuinely interested in your business, not just “contest hunters” who enter everything they can find. If you sell fishing gear, give away fishing gear as a prize, not an iPad.

7. Editorial Calendar

Here’s where you map out (via Excel, a custom Google calendar, and/or your social media management software) all the social media posts, email messages, advertising support, and other communications about your promotion. You don’t necessarily have to write all of the messages in advance—although it’s not a bad idea, and your legal team may require it. Remember that your social media contest (and corresponding communications) has five phases: pre-launch, launch, last chance, completion, and winners. You need to plan multiple messages across multiple platforms for each phase.

8. Seeding Strategy

This applies to the pre-launch and launch phases of your social media contest. This is where you figure out how to give your promotion the best chance of lift-off in the critical early days of the promotion. What you’re trying to do here is make sure that the people who already love you, and the people who have a disproportionate number of social connections, are fully aware of the contest and are ready to participate and spread the word the minute the promotion begins. This could include special “Shh, Coming Soon” emails to key customers and social influencers, making sure all employees are aware of the event and other opportunities.

Remember: You do not want to “soft launch” a contest. This is especially true on Facebook, where the algorithm dictates that slow starters get buried.

9. Amplification Strategy

With the exception of simple Twitter contests and basic Facebook contests that are managed within your timeline, you will probably need some sort of amplification to ensure that your contest has the reach (and garners the attention) you desire. This may include Facebook and Instagram ads (think about custom audiences ads shown only to your email subscribers), Facebook promoted posts, Twitter promoted tweets, ad opportunities on Pinterest, amplification networks like Outbrain, Taboola, and Stumble, and other options. Remember that even if your contest takes place on one platform, you can use multiple platforms to amplify it.

10. Rules

I purposefully put rules and legal advice tenth on this list because I have found it is much easier to have legal weigh in on the entirety of the program (including seeding, editorial, amplification) all at once, instead of having them look at the mechanism and prizes first, and then going back to them later with a second round of inquiries about the other elements. As with the design team, make legal’s job easier by giving them the total picture up-front. Be proactive by doing your research first on what each venue allows for contests, and have the links ready to share with legal. (Here’s Facebook’s Pages Terms.) It’ll make them happy, and you absolutely want to keep them on your side.

11. Community Management

Participants and prospective entrants will have questions and comments about your contest. Some will be easy to address. Others may not be so simple. It is absolutely critical (even for simple contests) that you have a defined plan for who is moderating and overseeing your social outposts. This doesn’t just mean the channels where the contest is located and normal business hours. What is your plan for coverage on nights and weekends? Your day-to-day community management realities will likely be modest compared to what you need to accomplish during a contest. Plan for this.

12. Crisis Plan

You should already have a social media crisis plan. If you’ve never created one, the launch of your new contest provides excellent leverage for getting it finished. Will something go massively awry with your contest, causing you to activate your crisis plan? Probably not. But if it does, and you don’t have that crisis plan to turn to in that critical moment, the chances you’ll ever get to do another contest are just about zero. Consider this to be the “I’m not about to get fired because of a contest” ingredient of this recipe. (See my popular “8 steps to manage a social media crisis” post and slides here.)

13. Software (Sometimes)

As with amplification, you may not need software if your social media contest is very straightforward. But for any sort of contest that requires data collection as part of the entry mechanism, you’ll need software to help build and manage the affair. There are literally dozens of software packages that help you do this, either as their sole function or as part of a larger suite of social media management capabilities. Here at Convince & Convert, we’re familiar with most of them but haven’t used them all first-hand.

Software I can personally recommend (please feel free to nominate others in the comments) includes:

Wyng: For mid-sized companies on Facebook and beyond, this software packs tons of campaign and content templates and ideas.

Shortstack: For small businesses up to large agencies, this is one of the legacy providers for contests on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Strutta: For medium/large companies hosting contests on Facebook, Instagram, or their own microsite, their DIY and custom packages make this software accessible for most.

Woobox: This software is designed for mid-sized companies and large brands that make Facebook a top priority.

Wishpond: This tool works best for medium/large companies connecting contests to lead generation.

Rafflecopter: This is one of the best options for bloggers and solopreneurs looking to run a simple giveaway with multiple entry points.

Those are the 13 ingredients of the perfect social media contest. What did I miss?

http://ift.tt/1tg08sx

[sealiciousblogs]

Build a Profitable Blog Mariah Coz

Lesson 6: Marketing Your Blog Doesn't Have to Suck Traffic isn’t what determines how profitable your blog is, but it is important to get potential customers and readers to your site.The things you’ve implemented already, such as growing an email list and creating incredible content and blog posts, will all add up to creating the right environment for a profitable blog.Once you’ve got your email list growing, your pillar blog posts, and your products, it's time to expand with marketing.There are literally thousands of marketing tactics.I like to apply the 80/20 rule to my marketing efforts, because I don’t like to waste time on marketing that takes up time and doesn’t directly lead to new readers, customers, and sales.That’s why I’ve compiled the five most important things you need to do to market your blog. Guest Posting with Content Upgrades The best way to grow your blog and get new readers and subscribers is to guest post on blogs with similar audiences.Guest posting in and of itself is a solid tactic, but in order to really leverage each guest post, you need to give the readers a REAL reason to head over to your site. It needs to be more than just a byline with a link to your blog at the end. That’s where content upgrades come in.A content upgrade is a bonus download (like a PDF, swipe files, photoshop templates, or case study) that complements your guest post article.In your guest post, you tell the audience that you’ve created a special free bonus download for them over on your site. Link to a “squeeze” or landing page specifically for the content upgrade, and have them enter their email in order to receive the free download.People who loved your article will come and check out your blog because they want more, and some of them will become email subscribers.I do this with every single blog post I write. Yes it’s a lot of work. It doubles how much content you have to create for each guest post. But it results in more traffic to your site and more email subscribers, and it’s 100% worth it. Plus, when you're "slow blogging" like we discussed in Lesson 4, it makes it easier to create more effective content. [We teach 3 unique ways of guest posting in Your First 1K, and we include all the pitch scripts to send out too!] Joint Ventures Joint ventures are a great way to reach a targeted audience that would like your blog and business. Guest posting is like a casual joint venture, but there are ways to go deeper that benefit you and the other (probably more established) blogger. Some examples are:Co-teaching a workshopVirtual webinar with both of youVirtual interview with Q + A afterCreating a special offer for their email list (such as a discount only for them)The key to joint ventures is making sure both parties benefit.What do you have to offer a blogger with a larger but similar audience?What can you offer their audience that makes them look great and awesome?How can you help them?What skills or knowledge do you have that complements them but doesn’t encroach on their products?I love joint ventures. I might team up with someone who is also in the blogging industry but focuses more on social media growth, whereas I focus on product creation and profitable blogging.I’ve taught workshops with someone in my industry, where we both “sold” our products at the end of the workshop. Our products were completely different but for the same audience and target customer, so it worked out great. We offered a limited time discount (only valid during the workshop) to encourage people to purchase. Social Media - pick one and OWN it Social media can be a great way to reach out to customers, learn from them, and grow your audience.However, I also think a lot of people get lost with social media thinking that they have to do EVERYTHING. It feels overwhelming because how the heck are you supposed to grow your following on 4 platforms all at once? Yikes!Well, you’re not supposed to do that. And here’s a secret: the number of followers you have does not matter as much as some people tell you it does.Does it help you grow your business? Sure. But we already know that social media posts don’t convert well at all. People might follow you but most of them won’t become paying customers. I like to choose ONE major social network and really focus on it. Once you’ve mastered one, you can always expand later.One reason for this is that if you focus on growing one following instead of 4 or 5, you will be able to grow that following WAY faster.The other reason is that not every platform is a good fit for every business. I actually focus on completely different platforms depending on the business.I always create Pinnable graphics for blog posts, which helps all of my blogs, but I don’t pour a lot of energy into promoting on Pinterest. If you had a food blog, interior styling/decorating blog, or other very visual business, then it would be worth it for you to focus on Pinterest.It’s completely fine to have ALL of the social accounts for your business, but it’s a waste of time to try to grow ALL of your accounts at the same time and expect good results.Which social media platform will you choose to focus on and totally own?Where are your target customers and readers hanging out? What do people go to each platform to find, and are you a good fit for that? Affiliates - which is what we’ll talk about tomorrow.This takes marketing off of your plate while still growing your blog exponentially, even as a solopreneur.Lesson 7 is a really juicy one, so look for it in your inbox tomorrow! xxMariahLesson 1: The Four Elements of a Profitable Blog

What makes a blog profitable?

There are millions of blogs on the Internet. Only a tiny percentage of them make any money at all, and even less make a full-time income for the blogger.

If you study highly profitable blogs, they all share a few common traits. However different they are, they all share these four elements of a profitable blog.

Niche

Design

Native Products

Authority + Authenticity

Let’s break it down. I’ll explain how each of these areas contributes to how profitable your blog becomes.

But first - let me tell you something.

I started out knowing NOTHING when I began blogging.

Literally nothing. And I didn’t know that there were resources for bloggers. I didn’t seek them out. I just went along, for years, just doing things my way.

My blog was cluttered and formatted in a nonsensical way.

I wrote content that was specifically about what I had done that day or what I was doing - I didn’t understand what “evergreen” or “pillar” content was (now that’s all I write - you’ll learn why and how in Lesson 4).

I didn’t even know about making money blogging. If I think back to that, man I was such a mess. My blog was a mess. I had no clue what I was doing.

But when I started paying attention and “getting serious” about blogging so that I could create an income from it - I implemented a few of these elements of a profitable blog, and it really worked.

Suddenly my blog had authority, it had legitimacy, it had a professional feel and a really clear niche. I went from blogging in a vacuum making $0 (and not even trying to make anything) to making six figures.

These four areas are what make your blog stand out and become more than just a hobby.

1. Niche

We’ve got an entire lesson dedicated to this, coming up next, but for now let me just say this: professionals don’t blog about whatever they feel like whenever they feel like it. Blogs that make a lot of money have a very specific purpose, audience, and content.

You can’t have 20 categories in your blog. It’s all about CONVERGENCE and SYNTHESIS, baby.

2. Design

Like I said, my original blog design was super cringe-worthy. Sidebar banners were all different sizes, fonts didn’t match and looked terrible, I had a bright background color on the field that made it nearly impossible to read the posts. What the hell was I thinking?

I used to think that design, when it came to blogs, was about aesthetics. I thought it was about looking “pretty”.

It’s really not about that at all.

It’s about behavior. It’s about user experience. It’s about guiding your visitors and readers to take specific actions. It’s about giving them one single choice, and being intentional about that choice. Design makes it extremely intuitive for readers to find what they are looking for.

If a visitor comes to your blog and is greeted with a homepage or sidebar that offers too many choices, they will get overwhelmed, confused and leave.

So when it comes to design, less is more.

Figure out exactly what you want your readers to do (read your best posts? purchase your eBook? Sign up for your monthly Newsletter?) and give them explicit (visual) directions to do that.

I HIGHLY recommend you make gathering emails your #1 priority.

Why? Because most people will not buy your product the first time they visit, and if you direct them to a sales page you’ll lose out on a potential future customer. And you want someone to join your email list and become your fan, so that they buy ALL of your future books or products, not just the one you’re promoting right at that moment. Getting a customer for life is more valuable than getting someone who just came to your site to buy your product.

Let’s say you have 30 seconds during which a new visitor will decide if they like your blog or not. What two things do you want them to click on, do, or read before they decide to leave? Put your priority in the top of your sidebar (newsletter opt-in, banner for your product, or “best of” links, social follow links - whatever you decide).

Eliminate all the junk on your site. Eliminate sidebar clutter. Pick one or two fonts and colors and stick to them (until you re-brand). I know it might sound boring but it actually allows your awesome content to really SHINE once your blog design is cleaned up.

3. Your Own Products

Successful, profitable blogs have native products you can buy directly on their site. Whether it’s an eBook, a course, a “productized” service such as a coaching session, or membership subscription. There’s no reason not to have your own product on your blog.

This probably goes against what you’ve read before about building big, profitable blogs.

You’re thinking:

“What about selling ad space?”

“What about affiliate sales commissions?”

“What about multiple small income streams adding up to a full income?”

Yes, that’s all possible. But it’s not where the full-time income comes from.

Let me tell you something. It’s very important. Listen closely.

Creators, producers, and makers make more than the salesman or affiliate ever will.

This means that the people creating the products, writing the eBooks, and teaching the online courses are making way more than the affiliates taking a small percentage of sales, or the blogger selling ad space to the people that are actually selling their own product.

Affiliates can make good money, and so can other forms of revenue share (I’m an affiliate myself for a very select few products I have used myself, and it's nice side-income). But it’s not the same level as the producers, the creators, and the makers.

Think about it, if as an affiliate you’re getting 25% of the price of the product, the original producer of the product is making 4X more than you on that sale. And they have LOTS of affiliates like you.

Do the math! It pays to be on the creative side of that relationship.

Do you want to be the affiliate or the actual creator?

Do you want to work for pennies or a small percentage of someone else’s sale?

Or do you want to be the one CREATING, PRODUCING, and MAKING money happen? Do you want to promote someone else’s brand and products, or build your own empire of your OWN products and services? You decide.

If you want that high-level success, you have to be ready to put in the work to CREATE your own things to sell - not just hope to sell other people’s stuff or ad space to the creators and producers.

If you're here, it's because you know that already and you are ready to do what it takes.

Blogging has changed so much in the past few years, and having your own products has gone from a “nice thing to have” to a complete necessity.

My course, Your First 1K, shows you step by step exactly how to get your first 1000 email subscribers and make a tiny digital product.

If you're serious about your blog and business, it'll show you how to grow quickly without messing around with methods that don't work. You can get the enrollment details here!

4. Authority and Authenticity

How do you become an authority in your niche? Three ways.

1. You write the best most epic articles you possibly can.

Your blog posts should be EPIC. It’s the best way to show your authority and knowledge on a subject. Write comprehensive, detailed guides. Don’t be afraid to write a 5,000 word blog post.

Your long-form blog posts should blow your readers away. They should bookmark it for later, because they’ll need to read it twice it was so packed with helpful stuff.

Dive deep into your topic. Give case study examples. Talk about your own experience with it, give real figures, numbers, or visuals to go along with it. Include screenshots and photographs that show step by step how to do what you’re teaching. Go all out.

It’s better to post one really immensely helpful and incredible blog post per week than to publish 3 mediocre “top 5 blah blah blah” crap posts.

Lesson 4 is totally devoted to creating epic content - so we’ll touch on this again.

2. You create rad, badass stuff and give it to your readers for free.

Just like this. This is something I could have easily charged for. I could have easily charged $200-300 for this email course. This is not bullshit filler content in a free download - this is valuable stuff.

You should create content, guides, downloads, and more that could totally be a paid product - and then give it away for free. (You should get an email in exchange - we’ll talk about how and why to do this later).

Instead of making some money from these types of freebies, I’m doing something better. I’m using them to establish my authority. To show you how much I know about a topic in depth.

I’m creating a little connection between us. I’m hoping that you’ll like me and my blog - and come back for more - if you like the freebie I’ve given you.

3. You share 90% of what you know on your blog, and save the rest to create products and services with.

You can give away almost everything you know for free and still have enough “content” to make a living with.

Why?

Because people want help with your ideas AS IT APPLIES TO THEM.

For example, they read your latest blog post. It is super detailed, in depth case study with EXACT steps on how to do what you do best. You’re teaching your reader something awesome. It’s exactly what they need at that moment.

But a huge percentage of people reading won’t know how to put it into action, no matter HOW DETAILED you are. No matter how “action oriented” your instructions are, some people will want your help implementing it.

They will want your input on how it could apply to them specifically, because they are unique and their situation is special. They trust your method, you’ve laid it out - but they need someone to guide them through it.

That’s when you offer a premium personalized help session. A one-on-one coaching session. A high-end group program where they get the attention they want from you. You may have given them 90% of what you know for free, but you didn’t give them your ideas as it specifically relates to THEM and THEIR EXACT SITUATION.

To establish authority, you have to be generous. If you’re stingy with what you know, no one will recommend your blog and no one will know how smart you are.

Just to recap:

The four most important elements of a profitable blog are...

1. Niche:

You have to find focus. Be THE person known for doing THAT thing.

2. Design:

Make it stupid simple and obvious for your visitors to use your site. Reader-centric design is essential.

3. Native Products:

If you want to make a lot of money with your blog, you have to be ready to create, make, and produce your own products. Producers and creators make more than the affiliates and ad sellers.

4. Authority/Authenticity:

Share everything you know, build up your authority and act as big as you know you're going to be right from the get go. Meaning, if you want to be a world-renowned blogger, you need to start acting like it now.

Act like the big, badass blog and business that you want to be, even when you're not quite there yet.

Lesson 2 is all about finding your perfect, profitable niche. It will be in your inbox tomorrow!

xx

Mariah

Lesson 3: Email Essentials: Building Your List and Keeping it Warm

You wouldn’t build a house on someone else’s land, would you?

I mean, you could build the best, most beautiful home with all the furniture and plates and everything, and then the owner sells the land out from under you and you are left with nothing. That suuucks.

But this is what people do when they build up huge social media followings and rely on them to promote and market their business and blog to customers.

Maybe in 2004 you had 50,000 Myspace friends. What’s that worth now? Not much.

Whether you like it or not, the same thing will happen with every single social media site. Even the biggest ones - they will fall out of favor, they’ll start charging you to show up in follower’s feeds, and they’ll be replaced over time.

You know what’s a real pain though?

Changing your email address.

Why would you? People have been using email for decades and they’ll keep using email (most people spend about 20% of their day looking at emails - WHAT?!).

When you focus on building up your social followings, you’re building your house (your relationships with your customers and readers) on someone else’s land (platform).

Social media followings are great ways to communicate and meet new people. They're a powerful supplement.

But they aren’t "THE BIG THING".

The big thing is email.

You need an email list. You need to be collecting emails from visitors that are interested in you and your blog.

You own your email list. You don’t have to worry about a social media platform suddenly deciding to charge you to pay for promotion.

You don’t have to worry about your market leaving one platform for the next big thing.

You built your house on your own land.

Still not convinced?

How about this. Right now, you're probably thinking about how you can grow your blog traffic. How you can get more people to your blog. Having tons of traffic would be awesome, wouldn't it?

But here's the problem with "traffic" as a metric.

Every night at 12 AM, your daily traffic and page views reset. You have to start from ZERO every single day.

Email isn't like that. You don't have to start from zero every single day. Every single day, you're building on what subscribers you gathered the day before.

It comes down to this:

Someone has given you permission to contact them and market to them. Of course, that’s not ALL you’re going to do. 90% of the time your emails won’t be selling anything - just providing value (give, give, give, then ask). But they’ve opted in because they like you and WANT to hear from you - so they are the best potential customers.

So, how do you do this whole email list thing?

I get a lot of questions about it.

“What would I even send to my email list?”

“What system do I use to send emails?”

“Why would anyone sign up?”

Today, we’re just going to focus on the essentials, to keep the overwhelm to a minimum. More advanced strategies are at the end of this email.

There are TONS of tactics for email marketing - but I’ll just go through the few that REALLY work.

These are the things that have the highest ROI for me in my business.

From the beginning:

1. Set up your email list using ConvertKit. (We use Convertkit!).

2. Create a new list for your blog subscribers - you can always create more later, but all you need is your one main list for now.

3. Integrate your sign-up form, or “opt-in” into your website in at LEAST 5 places.

It should be obvious to the visitor that the ONE thing you want them to do is sign up for your email list.

This means putting an opt-in form in your header (if possible), your sidebar, your footer, at the bottom of each blog post, and on a landing page/newsletter sign-up page dedicated just to that purpose.

Some people have pop-up opt-ins, or sliding sidebar pop-ups that are less intrusive. You’re welcome to use these tactics, but make sure you’re not annoying or bothering your readers. I really think that the decision to use these types of opt-ins depends on the niche and content of your site. Some of my sites have pop-up forms and others do not - it just depends on what feels right.

Incentive

If you’re an amazing writer and your content is super duper awesome and valuable, you shouldn’t necessarily need an opt-in offer to get people to sign up. However, most people have some sort of incentive for signing up for their email list. Your incentive doesn’t have to be a freebie, it could be a discount, the promise of getting articles before they go public, or an invitation to a private online group.

Whatever your incentive for getting people to sign up - make sure it provides REAL value.

Offering a crappy 2-page PDF that took you 5 minutes to make is worse than nothing at all, truly. You want to create something that would make a great paid product, but that you’re giving away for free. (Kind of like something else you might be reading...right now!).

Show the value of signing up for your email newsletter. Let people know how it will help them or benefit them.

Warm it up

Now that you have a newsletter with a few subscribers, you’ll want to communicate with them consistently.

Regular email habits are essential. If you don’t email your list for a month, then one day show up trying to sell them something, you’ll get some annoyed readers and lots of unsubscribes.

You have to communicate on a regular basis. Choose one day a week to send out your newsletter and be consistent. Each newsletter should be focused. You’re sharing one article, asking one question, or telling them about one thing.

Here are a few things to include in your newsletters.

Behind the scenes looks at you and your blog

Updates on what you’re working on and how it’s going

Ask your readers questions or surveys

Excerpts and sneak previews from your upcoming work

New blog posts that have just been published

Special announcements

A weekly digest of your favorite articles/reading from the week.

Now when you’re ready to launch something on your blog to your readers and audience, you’ll have a community of excited fans who enjoy hearing from you every week.

It’s a good idea to keep a balance between promotion and providing valuable content. 80% content and 20% selling - or even 90% free content and 10% selling - is a good rule of thumb.

Growing your Email List

There are 5 major ways to grow your email list once you’ve got everything set up.

1. Have an awesome incentive, an engaging opt-in form, and the perfect call to action on your button.

"Submit" is not a call to action! Give people a valuable freebie and make the button POP! Once you’ve mastered the freebie, move onto more advanced growth strategies.

2. Create content upgrades for your top blog posts.

This is all explained in detail HERE. This is one of the methods I used to go from 0 to 1,000 email subscribers in less than 60 days.

3. Launch a product - and make sure there’s a clear opt in for people who aren’t quite ready to buy to enter their email.

This can be a tiny product - even a small eBook or a worksheet. Find a few people to help you share it and your list will grow.

4. Create a free email course and promote it on social media, ask your own followers to promote it, and ask other bloggers to mention it to their audiences.

If it’s a high-value email course without a big sell (i.e. it’s not just some flimsy marketing funnel) people will be happy to share it.

5. Host a webinar that requires an email sign up to join.

This is a great way to build your email list. We have a comprehensive guide to webinars here (it's free).

Email really is the foundation of building a profitable blog and business.

It might seem trivial now if you're not selling a product yet, but you can harness the real power of it over time, as your list grows and your relationship to your readers and subscribers grows deeper.

Want a step-by-step map that shows you exactly how to grow your email list (the RIGHT email list) quickly and effectively?

My course, Your First 1K, teaches you exactly how to get your first 1000 email subscribers and grow your audience online.

This is a step by step course that takes you through growing your email list of subscribers (using only the highest ROI strategies) and making your first tiny digital product.

Your First 1K is for bloggers who are frustrated with how slow their email list is growing and people who want to make and sell their own little digital product (like an email course or a download).

You can learn all about it and get more details here!

Actions! This lesson has some homework...

1. Set up a ConvertKit Account.

2. Place opt-in forms around your blog - sidebar, footer, header, and under each blog post.

3. Brainstorm and create a simple but valuable opt-in offer that your readers will love.

Lesson 4, which is all about creating EPIC content that drives traffic and creates customers, will be in your inbox tomorrow!

xx

Mariah

P.S. If you appreciate this email course, I would be super excited to have you share it with your friends. You're the best!

Lesson 4: How to Create Pillar, not Filler, Content

The key to building a profitable blog that brings in customers and quality readers is creating high-quality content.

Blog posts that are 250 words about some surface topic no longer cut it. Top 5 lists make me cringe. You can’t put minimal effort into your blog and expect it to turn into a profitable enterprise.

Epic, pillar content is fast becoming the “norm” among prolific bloggers.

It’s becoming more and more common to see regular 5,000+ word blog posts and detailed guides.

I know I would rather read one AMAZING blog post once a week (or even just twice a month), than three mediocre blog posts every week.

Pillar content has a long lifetime. It shows up in searches again and again because it’s relevant for many months or even years after you’ve published it.

Pillar content drives traffic to your site. It’s also highly shareable, as wowed readers will want to make sure their networks find your blog post.

I used to write a lot of posts that had a short lifespan. They explained what I had done that day or what I was doing or feeling, but they weren’t posts that I could point to again and again as useful, helpful, or epic.

Now, I make it a point to ONLY publish pillar content and evergreen blog posts, with very few exceptions.

I blog to teach - not to give personal updates on my life.

Some blogs are like diaries. But the most profitable ones are not. Pillar content is shareable, long-form blog posts that people read again and again. Your “pillar” posts become your “best of” or “most popular” posts.

How to create an “evergreen” or epic pillar blog post:

Educate your audience

Teach them something they are struggling with

Write a Comprehensive guide

Case studies

Real examples and details

Examples and stories

Timeless and relevant, doesn’t expire quickly

Screenshots and photographs

Your purpose is to wow your audience and readers. You want to make people feel like your content is so awesome and useful that they need to read it twice. They need to bookmark it and come back.

They need to join your email list so that they NEVER miss a new post, because missing out would be the worst thing to ever happen.

Focus on creating content that makes people feel like that, and you’re golden.

It’s not unusual for me to spend a week crafting my blog posts. They usually include a bonus download or some extra content as well. I’ll write a 5,000 word blog post and then include a complimentary 20-page guide, case study, example, script, or some other type of content to go along with it.

That blog post will have a high ROI for the time I put into it.

It will have a longer lifetime than a quick personal update type post. It will get shared and commented on more than filler or “update" posts. You can link back to it again and again because it remains relevant.

Blog posts ultimately help you gain more email subscribers and sell your products.

Blog posts often showcase something that relates to your products or shop, directing people to your product where they can “go deeper” or “learn more”. Make the most of your time writing these epic posts and make sure they have an email opt-in reminder and link to other relevant content from your blog.

These blog posts also show people your expertise and authority on your niche topic. Building a profitable blog is all about building trust.

"Slow blogging"

Usually when I tell my clients and other bloggers in my community to create epic, long-form educational content, they get nervous and want to know how the heck they are supposed to keep up with writing 10,000 word blog posts 3 to 5 times a week.

The answer is, you don't.

Slow blogging is the concept that you should post BETTER content, LESS often.

Many of my favorite bloggers only post once or twice a month, but you know that when they do it is going to be AMAZING, drool-inducing content.

You have to put quality before quantity. Otherwise you'll always be running on the treadmill, trying to churn out content that may not even serve you or your reader very well.

Creating fewer, more high-quality EPIC blog posts is better for you (because you get to stay sane, work on long term goals and projects instead of always trying to write a new post for tomorrow), and your reader (because they get super high-quality detailed content and information they need - not fluffy listicles).

Action!

Brainstorm and write 2-3 pillar blog posts that will draw in readers, be highly shareable, and undeniably epic.

Need help coming up with the best idea? Check out BuzzSumo. Type in your topic or niche keywords, and see what the most shared blog posts are for your topic. Now go be a one-upper and out-do that post!

Lesson 5 is all about creating products and services your readers will love. This is the very core of building a profitable blog, so look for it in your inbox tomorrow!

xx

Mariah

Lesson 5: Creating Products and Services Your Audience Will Love (and Buy!)

We’ve been talking a lot about how you make your blog super profitable: by building, creating, and selling your own products and packaged services.

Easier said than done right?

Well, it doesn’t have to be this huge, complicated “I’m so out of shape and trying to climb this mountain” problem to build and launch your products.

I know many people think it’s just too overwhelming to write a book, create a class, and package their services in a way that turns readers into customers.

I’ll tell you a secret.

It took me just a few weeks to create a product that earned six figures in a year.

I’ll tell you another secret:

I actually pre-sold that product before I even created it. Of course I didn’t make a big deal about this, like “Hey buy this thing that doesn’t technically exist yet”, but it’s true. I made thousands of dollars in a few days from nothing more than an idea, a description on my website, and a buy now button.

I wasn’t going to spend the effort building something without knowing people would love it.

And to be honest, I probably never would have been motivated enough to start creating it without the kick in the ass that is known as pre-orders.

Obviously, do not even think for a second about doing this unless you are positive you can deliver on what you promise.

That being said, you can absolutely do this (I know you can).

I’m telling you so that you can see that it’s not a crazy unrealistic dream or totally unattainable goal. It shouldn’t be insurmountable or overwhelming.

If you can write blog posts regularly, you can create something bigger too. Then you can charge for it.

But how? How do you go from zero to $______(you fill in the blank, you’re the boss baby!)?

That’s exactly what we go over in Your First 1K.

(If you want the program details and a special link to enroll, get on the waitlist to learn more now!)

Everything from coming up with the perfect product idea, actually creating it, pre-selling in a totally not-weird way, and marketing it with style - all while building the perfect audience of customers.

In this step-by step course (I literally tell you exactly what to do and when, in what order), you’ll get all the little details: my actual email and launch sequences, copy, scripts and tools, laid out for you to use yourself.

It took me years to figure all this stuff out - but yeah, that doesn’t mean it has to take you years before you start building an audience and earning the real money from your blog.

Here’s the basic breakdown of what you need to do:

Listen to your readers

You’re thinking, “yeah I’d love to do this but I don’t know what the heck to create a product about!”.

No worries. It’s not hard to come up with a good idea. It’s stupid simple, actually. How do you know your audience will love your new offering?

Why don’t you just ...ASK THEM?

Yep, just ask them. Ask your readers what they want. Send out a survey or a few suggestions or topics and ask them to tell you what they need.

One time I was struggling to choose which of three potential projects I should focus on creating and building for my audience.

I had three ideas that I thought were all pretty good and had strong potential. It hit me like a slap in the face - I don’t actually have to choose on my own. I had 3,000 people I could ask.

So I sent out an email with the three different project concepts - #1, #2, and #3. I asked readers to respond with a simple #, and let me know which they needed the most help with right now.

The response was overwhelming and it was immediately obvious which project I should be focusing on - it was almost unanimous. Now I know I’ve got an idea worth pursuing.

Pre-sell your product

Okay, so hearing from your audience that they want what you’ve got is pretty awesome. It’s a great start.

But, it doesn’t quite mean guaranteed cash in hand. We’re building a profitable blog, not a “hope this makes money someday” blog.

The only way to be sure is to actually open up the “cart" and take actual orders for your product.

This is surprisingly simple!

1. Create a new sales page on your website - This is just a page with details about your product, price, and buy now buttons. (We go through all the details of creating a sales page that speaks to your customers and gets them saying yes yes yes in Your First 1K, plus the anatomy of a sales page that converts.)

2. Let your blog readers know - Put a little banner link in your own sidebar linking to the page. Let your email list know. Publish a blog post or do a guest blog post about it. (We cover the best launch and marketing tactics and methods in Your First 1K, so you can sell out your offering or product the simple way.)

Use the right tools

The next step is creating your product, class, eBook, or package and delivering on it in a way that makes your customers, so that your customers and clients send you emails like this one:

“This class has changed my life forever and I am so thankful for it. The first lesson was worth the cost of the entire course. Thank you so much!”

Yeah, I get those kinds of emails on the daily. They make me feel warm and fuzzy. It’s awesome to know that you’re actually helping people in such a real, meaningful way.

In Your First 1K, I teach you how to create the sales page that sells your product before it’s even launched.

I show you what to email your audience when you open up your new product offering.

I’ll teach you all about launching, sales pages, and marketing in a simple but super effective way (I’ve found that simple methods yield amazing results).

Your First 1K is 8 weeks of guided step by step list building and blog monetization strategies (everything has been tried and tested by my students and I many times!).

It is a strategy and a system. It is replicable. I have done it myself multiple times, and continue to use my system when creating new products and businesses. It’s the result of years of testing, trying new things, experimentation and a-ha moments.

You have to get on the list here to get the enrollment details and the special link to join :)

Creators make money.

You know how I’ve been harping on the evils of putting other people’s ads in your sidebar or throwing some affiliate links in your blog posts?

THIS IS WHY.

Think about this for one second:

When you make money blogging by advertising other people’s stuff or by affiliate links, you are GETTING PAID FOR PEOPLE TO LEAVE YOUR SITE.

That’s right, you’re actively asking people to CLICK AWAY from your site.

The site you just spent so much time and effort getting visitors and traffic to. Now they're gone - off to go down someone else’s rabbit hole.

What the hell is that? That’s super backwards.

You want them in your rabbit hole - if you know what I mean.

If you want to make a living MAKING THINGS, you have to sell your own stuff. If you can CREATE (write, design, teach, build, paint, sing - whatever you do!) you can make a living.

Advertising other people’s businesses on your site dilutes YOUR brand.

YOU will make SO MUCH MORE MONEY as creator than the affiliates and ad-sellers ever will.

You will make more money selling your own products in your own sidebar than selling someone else’s.

All you need is an audience, a product, and guts.

You have that last one (I know you do or you wouldn’t be here).

If you’re struggling with building a perfect audience and making real money with your own products and offerings - Your First 1K was tailor-made for you.

Lesson 6 will show you how to market your blog without going insane. It will be in your inbox tomorrow!

xx

Mariah

Lesson 6: Marketing Your Blog Doesn't Have to Suck

Traffic isn’t what determines how profitable your blog is, but it is important to get potential customers and readers to your site.

The things you’ve implemented already, such as growing an email list and creating incredible content and blog posts, will all add up to creating the right environment for a profitable blog.

Once you’ve got your email list growing, your pillar blog posts, and your products, it's time to expand with marketing.

There are literally thousands of marketing tactics.

I like to apply the 80/20 rule to my marketing efforts, because I don’t like to waste time on marketing that takes up time and doesn’t directly lead to new readers, customers, and sales.

That’s why I’ve compiled the five most important things you need to do to market your blog.

Guest Posting with Content Upgrades

The best way to grow your blog and get new readers and subscribers is to guest post on blogs with similar audiences.

Guest posting in and of itself is a solid tactic, but in order to really leverage each guest post, you need to give the readers a REAL reason to head over to your site. It needs to be more than just a byline with a link to your blog at the end. That’s where content upgrades come in.

A content upgrade is a bonus download (like a PDF, swipe files, photoshop templates, or case study) that complements your guest post article.

In your guest post, you tell the audience that you’ve created a special free bonus download for them over on your site. Link to a “squeeze” or landing page specifically for the content upgrade, and have them enter their email in order to receive the free download.

People who loved your article will come and check out your blog because they want more, and some of them will become email subscribers.

I do this with every single blog post I write. Yes it’s a lot of work. It doubles how much content you have to create for each guest post. But it results in more traffic to your site and more email subscribers, and it’s 100% worth it. Plus, when you're "slow blogging" like we discussed in Lesson 4, it makes it easier to create more effective content.

[We teach 3 unique ways of guest posting in Your First 1K, and we include all the pitch scripts to send out too!]

Joint Ventures

Joint ventures are a great way to reach a targeted audience that would like your blog and business. Guest posting is like a casual joint venture, but there are ways to go deeper that benefit you and the other (probably more established) blogger. Some examples are:

Co-teaching a workshop

Virtual webinar with both of you

Virtual interview with Q + A after

Creating a special offer for their email list (such as a discount only for them)

The key to joint ventures is making sure both parties benefit.

What do you have to offer a blogger with a larger but similar audience?

What can you offer their audience that makes them look great and awesome?

How can you help them?

What skills or knowledge do you have that complements them but doesn’t encroach on their products?

I love joint ventures. I might team up with someone who is also in the blogging industry but focuses more on social media growth, whereas I focus on product creation and profitable blogging.

I’ve taught workshops with someone in my industry, where we both “sold” our products at the end of the workshop. Our products were completely different but for the same audience and target customer, so it worked out great. We offered a limited time discount (only valid during the workshop) to encourage people to purchase.

Social Media - pick one and OWN it

Social media can be a great way to reach out to customers, learn from them, and grow your audience.

However, I also think a lot of people get lost with social media thinking that they have to do EVERYTHING. It feels overwhelming because how the heck are you supposed to grow your following on 4 platforms all at once? Yikes!

Well, you’re not supposed to do that. And here’s a secret: the number of followers you have does not matter as much as some people tell you it does.

Does it help you grow your business? Sure. But we already know that social media posts don’t convert well at all. People might follow you but most of them won’t become paying customers.

I like to choose ONE major social network and really focus on it. Once you’ve mastered one, you can always expand later.

One reason for this is that if you focus on growing one following instead of 4 or 5, you will be able to grow that following WAY faster.

The other reason is that not every platform is a good fit for every business. I actually focus on completely different platforms depending on the business.

I always create Pinnable graphics for blog posts, which helps all of my blogs, but I don’t pour a lot of energy into promoting on Pinterest. If you had a food blog, interior styling/decorating blog, or other very visual business, then it would be worth it for you to focus on Pinterest.

It’s completely fine to have ALL of the social accounts for your business, but it’s a waste of time to try to grow ALL of your accounts at the same time and expect good results.

Which social media platform will you choose to focus on and totally own?

Where are your target customers and readers hanging out? What do people go to each platform to find, and are you a good fit for that?

Affiliates - which is what we’ll talk about tomorrow.

This takes marketing off of your plate while still growing your blog exponentially, even as a solopreneur.

Lesson 7 is a really juicy one, so look for it in your inbox tomorrow!

xx

Mariah

Lesson 8: Become a Chisel, Create Ruthlessly

If I had to give you only one piece of advice for building a profitable blog, it would be this.

You need to eliminate and create ruthlessly.

What the most profitable thing that you do?

Which activities have the highest ROI for you in terms of increasing revenue?

Do you actually know which actions lead to the greatest increase in customers and business for you?

What channels produce the most sales for your blog business?

Your job is to focus ruthlessly on those tasks.

Your job is to get high on the act of creating your products, whether those are words, artwork, physical crafts, books, digital graphics, or websites.

You need to effectively eliminate all but the essential actions that directly lead to sales, revenue, and growth for you, your blog, and your business.

Busy-ness does not equal Business

I used to be obsessed with busy-ness. I think that when you start out in business, you aren’t really sure WHAT will lead to success, so you try EVERYTHING.

You give EVERYTHING your attention.

You spend time trying to use every single social media platform.

You write tons of blog posts that no one sees.

You spend hours tweaking, fiddling, and busy-ing.

But in my years as a self-employed entrepreneur, I’ve noticed that only two things really matter. Everything else is extra.

You must create with fervor.

You must create every single day.

Creating more things - whatever things they are in your business - has the highest ROI for your time spent.

You could spend 2 hours on twitter, maybe get a few new casual readers, who knows.

Or you could spend 2 hours creating a video course / webinar that you can sell multiple times over the lifetime of your business.

Consuming other people's content can feel productive, but it isn't.

You must put yourself out there, but you don’t have to put yourself everywhere.

“Promotion” and “marketing” doesn’t have to consume your time or your business. We’ve already gone over how to implement an awesome affiliate strategy that helps sell your products for you.

Being picky is a good thing. If something you're spending an hour on every day isn’t showing you tangible results, stop doing it. Test, tweak, and try until you know exactly which one or two promotional activities really work for you in a big way. I’ve had great success with webinar broadcasts. And for some people, creating a sales funnel with a drip email course leads to the most amount of sales.

The point is, you don’t have to do EVERYTHING - you just have to do the one thing that really works for you, and focus on that.

Everything else is a waste of time.

80/20 Your Business

The 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, means that 80% of your output is a result of 20% of your input - Pareto’s example was that 80% of his peas come from just 20% of his peapods and plants.

As an example, 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers. In our case, you can do 20% of what you’re doing now for your business and reap 80% of the results (sales, revenue), as long as you’re doing the right things.

Basically, it’s become the foundation of “hacks” for your business - using your time and resources in a smart way to get the most ROI or benefit with less input.

To put it simply, only 20% of your actions lead to 80% of your revenue/profit/sales.

I have a few questions for you to get you thinking about applying the 80/20 rule to your business.

Where do the majority of your sales come from?

What promotion strategy is giving you the highest return?

How do most of your customers/readers find you and your blog?

I use this principle every single day in my business. I have limited time and lots to do - so I can’t waste time on non-essential tasks and actions.

If 80% of my sales are coming from Program A, and 20% are coming from Program B, and they both take the same amount of time, energy, and effort to run, I’m going to cut Program B and focus everything on growing Program A. Make sense?

How do you plan to 80/20 your business?

Creation/Promotion/Education

So what do you do if you’re not sure what constitutes busy work and what counts as real, creative, progressive work?

I use a system of Creation/Promotion/Education to keep me on track.

A few years ago I was feeling really frazzled. I had 4 businesses, one was just gaining traction, one was about to go through a major re-branding and relaunch, and one was just chugging along, business as usual. I was definitely feeling lost about what I should be working on.

Imagine that each of your businesses has it’s own set of 3 priorities - all of the sudden that’s more than you can handle in one day. I needed to a) take a step back and take some mental inventory, b) simplify everything to it’s most basic form and c) create a plan for handling this.

This is so important if you are growing your blog in addition to a day job. So many people ask me how to juggle it all - and the reality is that having to juggle it all forces you to be intentional about what you actually spend time on.

What I came up with is a system that I feel good about. Since I’ve implemented it, I’ve felt much more in control of my time and what I’m doing. No more days where I wonder “where did the time go?” or “What did I even do today?”.

This takes the idea of creating three priorities for the day to a new level. It’s just a little bit more... organized.

I also chose a loose time of day to work on each category - but that’s based on my personal preferences. Yours might be different. I am most creative/productive in the morning, and become less useful as the day goes on. What can I say, I’m only human.

The system I’ve implemented consists of four blocks:

1. Creation

2. Promotion

3. Education

4. Relaxation

Within each category, there are a bunch of potential activities and actions items. I’ve found that this is the right combination of structure and flexibility/choice for my needs at the time. I can do any number of things, as long as it’s within the schedule I’ve set for myself. And of course, I always give myself a little breathing room.

Each category has multiple action items + activities:

1. Creation:

Writing blog posts

Writing content for eBooks + Courses

Writing copy + sales pages

Creating websites

Interviews

Development + Brainstorming + Planning

Creating email courses for autoresponders, or other free materials

2. Promotion:

Guest posting

Connecting with others

List-Building Techniques

Designing Launch Sequences

Autoresponders

Giveaways

Contests

Affiliate Program Management

Approaching + Connecting with potential affiliates

3. Education:

Reading books, eBooks, and blog posts

Watching educational videos

podcasts + audiobooks

4. Relaxation:

Everything else!

Walking

Exercise

Reading for fun

Watching movies

Bowling

really, anything that helps me wind down + chill out

How you use these blocks or categories will be up to you. Right now, I’m noticing a breakdown like this:

40% Creation 30% Promotion 20% Education 10% Relaxation

I create in the morning (first thing!), then promote in the after-lunch period, then read and research in the afternoon when my ability to make and do productive things starts to die, then finally relax at night. There are always anomalies.

When I get stuck, I choose which thing I want to do today. Seeing it visually really has helped me focus. I feel like I have both direction, AND choice/flexibility.

Do you feel like your priority actions are becoming more clear to you? Profitable blogs have to have focus - both in that they need a niche and the blogger behind them needs to focus ruthlessly.

Profitable blogs are run by people who have to make decisions about what’s worth pursuing, putting effort into, and spending time on. You can’t do everything - in fact it’s silly to strive for that.

Your main priority is creating things for your business - whether that’s writing books, creating art, making hand-crafted items, or helping your clients. Then you have to get those things out there and in front of your fans in the best, most effective way possible.

But creating things can be difficult - in fact it’s probably the HARDEST thing to do.

Spending a few hours on Twitter and Facebook and calling it “work”? That’s easy.

Actually CREATING all of the profitable, revenue-generating products in your head? That’s freaking HARD.

But hey - you don’t ha

[learnspanishfans]

24 Time Hacking Tips from Language Hacker Benny Lewis

For busy language learners, it can feel like your constant thought is “I don’t have enough time!” I’d like to share some simple shifts you can make in your life so you can manage your time - and have more time available for language learning. Many of these we’ve shared on Fluent in 3 Months (Fi3M) before - and much of the advice comes from Fi3M founder Benny Lewis. Benny’s aim in creating Fi3M was to share language hacks - faster and smarter ways to learn a language. In other words, we want to help you learn a new language in less time - or in the small pockets of time you have available through your day. So, I thought it would be a good idea to have all our best advice on time management in one place. Before we begin, there’s a quote that’s popular on Pinterest, which I really like. You may have seen it.

“You have the same amount of hours in a day as Beyonce.”

While you can argue that your 24 hours aren’t the same as Beyonce’s - you don’t have assistants, teams, or stylists helping you out - you still have the same 1,440 minutes a day. The key is to make the most of each one of those minutes. Now, here are the tips from Fi3M’s Benny Lewis on just a few ways you can use the 24 hours you have each day more effectively when it comes to language learning. Let’s get started!

1. Get Feedback on Your Mistakes

If you want to be sure that you’re actually using the language correctly, talk with a native speaker who can provide feedback. Not only will you learn to use the language more effectively, you’ll get a better ear for it and start to pronounce it more closely to native speech.

From: How Adults Learn: 6 Important Things to Know

2. Create Personalised Vocabulary Lists

Instead of spending countless hours memorizing vocabulary lists from a textbook, I create my own personalized vocabulary list, ensuring that I’ll learn the words that I’ll need to know first.

From: Busted: 6 Common Myths About Polyglots and Language Learners

3. Avoid the “Just Do Something!” Mindset

A very popular way to kill time in language learning is to simply do ‘something’ and feel that it's at least dragging you in the general direction that you need to go. No! Sometimes doing ‘something’ is barely better than doing nothing. Do something worthwhile!

From: Solving specific problems rather than trying to learn everything

4. Focus on Learning What Matters

Trying to become a master of everything at once will not allow you to make progress on anything specific swiftly enough to feel progress, and you can get demotivated.

From: Why hard work isn’t what makes good learners

5. Apply the 80-20 Rule to get 80% of the Results from 20% of the Effort

Successful language learners find ways to use the little they know in the maximum possible ways; this adaptation of Pareto's principle is an absolute must for people focused on speaking well as quickly as possible.

From: The Pareto (80-20) principle in language learning

6. Count Hours, Not Years...

"Now add up your ‘hours’ based on this new system, but actually counting the time you put in and you will see a dramatic difference. ‘Five years’ of two hours of passive listening a day, four hours of grammar studying a week and two hours of actual practise with natives per month would give you about 364 ‘hours’ (based on my weighted units) of genuine work. That's fifteen days worth of work in your ‘five years’.”

From: How to learn a language in hours, not years

7. ...Or Count Minutes, Not Hours

If you’re suffering from guilt or stress about how behind you are on your study hours, then maybe you should stop counting how many hours you’re practising for a few days, and instead see how many more minutes you can squeeze into a day.

From: “I’ll Do It Tomorrow” – Solving 3 Mindtraps that Make You Put Off Language Learning

8. Use the 5 Minute Pockets in Your Day

I highly recommend micro-commitments and zoning out in your target language. Committing for five minutes is a lot easier than committing for thirty minutes, and after five minutes I often find myself thinking “this isn't so bad, just another five minutes”.

From Fi3M Team Member Joseph Lemien, in Learning a New Language: Secrets of Language Learning Pros

9. Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

If you charge into the frustration, embrace it, and fill up all your free time with it, then you WILL get to the other side much quicker.

From: The only way to get far quickly is to get out of your comfort zone

10. Avoid Useless Information

If you removed two hours of social media you’re just – let’s face it – not doing anything terribly productive, just consuming random bits of news and sound bytes, you could literally become a proficient [language learner] in that amount of time.

From: Intensive Language Learning and the Tim Ferriss Experiment

11. Stop Using “I’m Too Busy” as an Excuse

If you sleep eight hours a night, then you have 112 hours a week to play with. If you work full time for 40 hours a week, then there's still 72 hours left over.

From: How I Learned Fluent Italian While Working 60 Hours a Week

12. Can’t Find Time? Make Time!

No matter how busy you are, how much you work or socialise or devote your time to other important projects in your life… you always still have some time left over that you may be currently wasting!

From: How to make time if you are too busy

13. Go Public With Your Language Goals

One of the best ways to encourage progress is to tell others about your objectives. Making your mission public will also make it real. There will be more at stake and you won’t want to fail.

From: 5 Rituals to Help You Learn a Language Faster

14. Remember: There Are No “Perfect Conditions”

What I prefer to do is try to make things as ideal as they can possibly get and then handle problems quickly and swiftly, whenever possible, if they come my way so that I can stay on track.

From: Absolutely perfect learning conditions? An unrealistic pipe dream that holds you back

15. Eliminate “Time Sucks"

We are all very busy, but many of us still achieve great things because we organize the time we have control over much better, and remove things that suck time out of our day, like television.

From: The many reasons (32 so far) why we DON’T succeed in learning languages

16. Keep a To-Do List

What has worked better for me, has been setting up a to-do list of precisely everything that I need to do that day and deciding approximately how much time it will require.

From: 21 ways to work, socialise & sleep well, maintain inbox 0 with 400+ emails, AND intensively learn a language all in a day! Time hacking 2.0

17. Use the Pomodoro Technique

Use the Pomodoro time-hacking method to increase your productive sprints. By alternating 25 minute work sessions with 5 minute rests, you allow your brain to get some breathing room and are able to get in more focused work.

From: The CIA is Wrong: It Doesn’t Take 1,000 Hours to Learn a Language

18. Remove Distractions

If you’re going to sit down for a session of language learning, take a few moments to turn off all the electronic attention-hogs that surround you. Go away from your TV, turn off the wifi on your devices, and close down unnecessary applications or windows.

From: 5 Simple Research Proven Hacks to Stop Wasting Time and Start Learning Fast

19. Stop Comparing

If someone is a smarter language learner than you, has more free time than you or whatever, well good for them I suppose. But who cares when it comes to you and your situation?

From: Questions that waste your time

20. Focus on One Day at a Time

The question should never be “how long does it take one to learn a language” but “how long do you have?” or “How intensively are you willing to invest your time?”

From: How much time does it take to learn a language?

21. Immerse Yourself at Home

An immersion environment is all about finding opportunities to bring the language into your current lifestyle and activities.

From: Language Immersion: How to Create an Immersion Environment on Your Phone

22. Just Start!

What would you be doing right now if you really wanted to learn a new language? The key idea here is RIGHT NOW, and the answer is something. Anything. It really doesn't matter what you do, just start, and start now.

From: How to Start Learning a New Language (Right Now. Today. Seriously).

23. Try “Blending”

Think about what you actually do in your free time and try it entirely through your acquired language! I've played chess in Italian, read computer and men's health magazines in French, taken dance lessons in Spanish, windsurfing lessons in Portuguese, flirted with pretty girls in Esperanto and chatted in MSN and Skype in Irish Gaelic.

From: Combining learning languages with your hobbies

24. Use Mini-Missions

Apart from the actual benefits and doing something practical to reach your “end” goal, there is a great sense of achievement that you can feel every day in reaching your objective.

Will You Make the Time to Learn a Language?

We hope you enjoyed this collection of tips from Benny Lewis on how to learn a language even when you’re busy. We’d love to know how you find time to study language. Feel free to share your time management strategies in the comments below. Need a little extra help making time for language learning? We’re really excited to announce our new course on building solid language habits. Learn more about how you can fit language learning into your schedule.

The post 24 Time Hacking Tips from Language Hacker Benny Lewis appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

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[endlessarchite]

Announcing Contributors to the UDH!

Hey folks! I wanted to pop in today to announce a new twist on the blog that I’ve never done before: I’m adding a couple of fellow bloggers to the UDH team.

… Ok, so right away, I realize that’s kind of a lie, because I already posted one of Caroline’s posts this past month: 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces…

But I wanted to do it properly with an actual announcement too, to let you guys know more about what’s going on, and that other contributors are also in the pipeline.

Why Add Contributors to The UDH?

I realize how pretentious it is to both ask myself a question and answer it, but it did seem like I should in this case (maybe). It might seem like a random decision, which would then be fair to question. The answer has many personal reasons (that’s one of the answers, actually, ha!).

To better deal with unanticipated (or anticipated) hiccups.

The first reason is that mainly, from time to time, I get busy with a project that I am working on, but I have nothing worth posting about it until it reaches the next step. Or a project gets interrupted by something unexpected, like a plumbing problem, and while I’m putting out that fire (dude, I hope not literally), I have nothing to say (both because the frustration of it has made me silent/drunk or I’m internally panicking). Or for the first time since deciding to run the blog full-time, I am planning a vacation that will involve totally disconnecting from the backend duties of running the site (I tried to take a vacation last year and it was a disaster; I was gone for two weeks but didn’t really get more than a couple of true days “away”, and the mess I had to juggle when I got back added more stress than I relieved… pretty sure the site actually crashed, too, but I’ve blacked it out).

As a control freak, I also want to keep a somewhat regular flow of content on this site. When I first started blogging, there weren’t things like Instagram or Pinterest, so it made it less odd to have really short posts mixed into the longer tutorials; that doesn’t fit as well now. And simply being the nature of DIY home improvement tutorials needing to be somewhat long to go through steps properly (especially home repair), I spend a good deal of time whenever I work on the lengthier pieces (trying to make sure I’m accurate with instructions, if I have to look up manufacturer’s recommendations, etc.). The only way to make both sides of that coin happy (in my opinion), is to add a few more small DIY projects in advance. I could go ahead and try to create those myself for rainy days, and I am to a degree, but having enough of that requires a little more time than I seem to have anymore (someone, please tell me how I managed to renovate, go to grad school, run this blog, and have a regular job??… I can’t seem to remember how all that space existed). So, the simple solution is to add a great blog contributor (or two) who have some awesome ideas of their own to share. Thankfully, they’ve agreed to do that, and you’ll see these projects about once a month as long as I keep my shit together (I fully anticipate that this will be a learning process for me).

I like to experiment.

(My brain is already going to weird places; I’m tired.) Throughout this blog, I’ve thrown random things into the mix to see what works. I like trying new tools, new designs, new trends, new products. My writing style pretty much always reflects those moods. Doing these things is really the only way the blog has ever grown or kept me motivated to try again; some things work, and some things don’t. But I learn, and that’s fun for me. This is one of those things where I think it could be cool to add to the blog and see what happens… out of plain curiosity.

(I also wrote about a similar concept a long time ago, when I was in grad school; I read a book that really resonated with me that was all about taking these small steps to see where things go. Through experimenting, you can find momentum in the strangest places and build on it. I’ve tried it before, and that led me to invest time in my blog, to starting my own business, and more. It’s taught me to not be as afraid to try something and see if it works — paint my countertop: why not? turn a bowl into a light fixture? let’s see what happens!)

Also, on any given day, I will come up with an idea for a post but don’t have the time to research it well enough, such as a new design trend. That’s where my pal Caroline can come in. She will find cool design ideas, or a new artist, or take a new twist on a craft idea she did with a friend. Just seeing what she picks out of the same concept versus what I do has been really refreshing.

Burnout is just a thing; might as well embrace it.

As an enthusiastic home improvement addict with slight nerd tendencies, I love getting to do this. Every day. It’s ridiculously fun and cool. Even when it’s hard or things in my house break or it seems a lot more like a job than I ever realized (conference calls, signing contracts, constantly learning new tools as an entrepreneur, Facebook and Pinterest changing their rules or algorithms again, etc.). I don’t plan on jumping ship or totally burning out, but that’s not really a thing you can plan for either. In my heart of hearts, I’m a writer. I love storytelling. I love the journey this house has taken me on. I love connecting with people who are nuts for DIY like I am (both bloggers and non-blogging readers alike, despite how awkward I am to meet in person!). But writer’s block is a thing that still happens regardless of your efforts sometimes, and I’ve never found a successful way to avoid it completely. I can sense a difference in myself, my writing, and my creativity when I’ve had a chance to take a break and refresh. I need to feel inspired and sort of flush out the bad blockages that occur from time to time (ok, that metaphor was just plain gross and probably made you assume I was talking about plumbing again — mental blockages is what I mean).

I think adding some new, inspiring projects to the site will be fun. Fun for me to feel inspired from, and fun for you guys to get some fresh ideas!

I’ve started cooking.

*record scratch*

I know. Hell hath frozen over, and I bought an Instant Pot. Or the plain reality is that I’ve been wanting to save more money by cooking at home, and scrambled eggs on toast will only be delicious for so long (who am I kidding — it will be awesome, always). I have a few quick recipes from when I was in college and studied abroad — I had cravings for food I couldn’t find anywhere, and it created some things I still eat for dinner to this day when I am short on time. I have old recipes from my family, handwritten and handed down, and I’d really like to start learning them all, too. It was one of the things my Granny loved to do most when she was alive. And since I’m doing all of this anyway, why not share it from time to time?

great grannys handwritten cookie recipes

This blog has always been a very personal one, where I share a lot of ins and outs about what’s going on in my life. Cooking is something new I’ve added to that mix, but since it’s so new, I offered for one of my blog design clients to contribute some of their recipes as well (since my new Recipes page will be quite sparse by comparison to the 1200+ posts I have written so far about DIY). This will just give people who come to the site looking for food ideas to have a little more substance.

from Visiting Kit’s Black Feather Farm

Plus, she’s also giving me some new cocktail ideas to try. You know… for when that unanticipated renovation problem happens and I just really need to solve it with something other than beer or wine (or you know… throwing things).

  To make room.

I guess in some ways, this is a way to try to bring some “balance” into time I’m at home for work/DIY versus time I’m at home to just enjoy my home. I’ve been setting annual goals with similar intentions and this is part of realizing that. Working from home is awesome, except when you have a really difficult time pulling yourself away from work. I’m pretty bad at shutting the computer off.

And that’s how I wind up having to wear things like this.

As my home and each room reaches more and more of a completed state (and no longer needs as many huge overhauls from where I first started), I’m going to be looking for the next big project. It’s on my mind a lot. I expect that this will also mean new homes to renovate, or investment properties, or maybe even something a little more unconventional than that. But I need room to do those things, to think about these things, both as a business and for my own sense of what the future holds. So, adding contributors is one of the ways I can make that space and breathing room to figure out what’s next (it’s more of a mental thing than anything else).

What this doesn’t mean…

There are marketers, PR email lists, and freelance writers who email bloggers in droves to ask to “contribute helpful articles” as a means to advertise for free. This isn’t what I’m intending to do with contributors. I consider that “fluff” content and hate reading generic info guides; I am a blogger, but also a blog reader, and I don’t want to put things on the site that I wouldn’t want to read myself. You’re only going to see the small number of people I have personally hand-picked to contribute their own trend posts, DIY tutorials, or recipes, similar to how I post things from my own point of view.

What this means for you

I know I’ve said it before, but it really can’t be said enough: I really like you guys (*virtual hug* – or if you’re not the hugging type, *awkward side-hug and a dorky high five*). As much as writing a blog like this is a very personal thing, I also know that this blog wouldn’t be successful without your support and encouragement. It means a lot. A kind comment has the power to make my whole day/week/month. So, I also decided to add contributors to give you guys more inspiration and give you guys more great content. And I hope you’ll enjoy that and embrace these folks who are adding their awesome DIY and recipe ideas to the mix at the UDH. You rock. And they do too. Y’all should meet.

What this means for the site

In the coming days/weeks, you’ll be seeing posts that introduce these folks to you as well as their first posts that are getting rolled out. You’ll also see a new link at the top in the menu bar to add Recipes as its own thing and one of my favorite recipes that I may even be eating tonight (it doesn’t make much sense to have it in the Project Gallery, anyway). You’ll also be able to discover a new Contributors page when that gets finalized (I still need to add a few links and then you’ll see info on everyone), which will have contributor bios and links to their blogs. This will be a way to organize posts for each person (so that you can see the posts that belong to a specific contributor if you decide you like them and want to see more of what they’ve done).

That’s all for now… I have a coffee pot with my name on it and some dogs who need snuggling. I’ll have some new DIYs for you very soon (including the bathroom mood board!) and hope you’re having a wonderful and productive week!

The post Announcing Contributors to the UDH! appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

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[chocdono]

Announcing Contributors to the UDH!

Hey folks! I wanted to pop in today to announce a new twist on the blog that I’ve never done before: I’m adding a couple of fellow bloggers to the UDH team.

… Ok, so right away, I realize that’s kind of a lie, because I already posted one of Caroline’s posts this past month: 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces…

But I wanted to do it properly with an actual announcement too, to let you guys know more about what’s going on, and that other contributors are also in the pipeline.

Why Add Contributors to The UDH?

I realize how pretentious it is to both ask myself a question and answer it, but it did seem like I should in this case (maybe). It might seem like a random decision, which would then be fair to question. The answer has many personal reasons (that’s one of the answers, actually, ha!).

To better deal with unanticipated (or anticipated) hiccups.

The first reason is that mainly, from time to time, I get busy with a project that I am working on, but I have nothing worth posting about it until it reaches the next step. Or a project gets interrupted by something unexpected, like a plumbing problem, and while I’m putting out that fire (dude, I hope not literally), I have nothing to say (both because the frustration of it has made me silent/drunk or I’m internally panicking). Or for the first time since deciding to run the blog full-time, I am planning a vacation that will involve totally disconnecting from the backend duties of running the site (I tried to take a vacation last year and it was a disaster; I was gone for two weeks but didn’t really get more than a couple of true days “away”, and the mess I had to juggle when I got back added more stress than I relieved… pretty sure the site actually crashed, too, but I’ve blacked it out).

As a control freak, I also want to keep a somewhat regular flow of content on this site. When I first started blogging, there weren’t things like Instagram or Pinterest, so it made it less odd to have really short posts mixed into the longer tutorials; that doesn’t fit as well now. And simply being the nature of DIY home improvement tutorials needing to be somewhat long to go through steps properly (especially home repair), I spend a good deal of time whenever I work on the lengthier pieces (trying to make sure I’m accurate with instructions, if I have to look up manufacturer’s recommendations, etc.). The only way to make both sides of that coin happy (in my opinion), is to add a few more small DIY projects in advance. I could go ahead and try to create those myself for rainy days, and I am to a degree, but having enough of that requires a little more time than I seem to have anymore (someone, please tell me how I managed to renovate, go to grad school, run this blog, and have a regular job??… I can’t seem to remember how all that space existed). So, the simple solution is to add a great blog contributor (or two) who have some awesome ideas of their own to share. Thankfully, they’ve agreed to do that, and you’ll see these projects about once a month as long as I keep my shit together (I fully anticipate that this will be a learning process for me).

I like to experiment.

(My brain is already going to weird places; I’m tired.) Throughout this blog, I’ve thrown random things into the mix to see what works. I like trying new tools, new designs, new trends, new products. My writing style pretty much always reflects those moods. Doing these things is really the only way the blog has ever grown or kept me motivated to try again; some things work, and some things don’t. But I learn, and that’s fun for me. This is one of those things where I think it could be cool to add to the blog and see what happens… out of plain curiosity.

(I also wrote about a similar concept a long time ago, when I was in grad school; I read a book that really resonated with me that was all about taking these small steps to see where things go. Through experimenting, you can find momentum in the strangest places and build on it. I’ve tried it before, and that led me to invest time in my blog, to starting my own business, and more. It’s taught me to not be as afraid to try something and see if it works — paint my countertop: why not? turn a bowl into a light fixture? let’s see what happens!)

Also, on any given day, I will come up with an idea for a post but don’t have the time to research it well enough, such as a new design trend. That’s where my pal Caroline can come in. She will find cool design ideas, or a new artist, or take a new twist on a craft idea she did with a friend. Just seeing what she picks out of the same concept versus what I do has been really refreshing.

Burnout is just a thing; might as well embrace it.

As an enthusiastic home improvement addict with slight nerd tendencies, I love getting to do this. Every day. It’s ridiculously fun and cool. Even when it’s hard or things in my house break or it seems a lot more like a job than I ever realized (conference calls, signing contracts, constantly learning new tools as an entrepreneur, Facebook and Pinterest changing their rules or algorithms again, etc.). I don’t plan on jumping ship or totally burning out, but that’s not really a thing you can plan for either. In my heart of hearts, I’m a writer. I love storytelling. I love the journey this house has taken me on. I love connecting with people who are nuts for DIY like I am (both bloggers and non-blogging readers alike, despite how awkward I am to meet in person!). But writer’s block is a thing that still happens regardless of your efforts sometimes, and I’ve never found a successful way to avoid it completely. I can sense a difference in myself, my writing, and my creativity when I’ve had a chance to take a break and refresh. I need to feel inspired and sort of flush out the bad blockages that occur from time to time (ok, that metaphor was just plain gross and probably made you assume I was talking about plumbing again — mental blockages is what I mean).

I think adding some new, inspiring projects to the site will be fun. Fun for me to feel inspired from, and fun for you guys to get some fresh ideas!

I’ve started cooking.

*record scratch*

I know. Hell hath frozen over, and I bought an Instant Pot. Or the plain reality is that I’ve been wanting to save more money by cooking at home, and scrambled eggs on toast will only be delicious for so long (who am I kidding — it will be awesome, always). I have a few quick recipes from when I was in college and studied abroad — I had cravings for food I couldn’t find anywhere, and it created some things I still eat for dinner to this day when I am short on time. I have old recipes from my family, handwritten and handed down, and I’d really like to start learning them all, too. It was one of the things my Granny loved to do most when she was alive. And since I’m doing all of this anyway, why not share it from time to time?

great grannys handwritten cookie recipes

This blog has always been a very personal one, where I share a lot of ins and outs about what’s going on in my life. Cooking is something new I’ve added to that mix, but since it’s so new, I offered for one of my blog design clients to contribute some of their recipes as well (since my new Recipes page will be quite sparse by comparison to the 1200+ posts I have written so far about DIY). This will just give people who come to the site looking for food ideas to have a little more substance.

from Visiting Kit’s Black Feather Farm

Plus, she’s also giving me some new cocktail ideas to try. You know… for when that unanticipated renovation problem happens and I just really need to solve it with something other than beer or wine (or you know… throwing things).

  To make room.

I guess in some ways, this is a way to try to bring some “balance” into time I’m at home for work/DIY versus time I’m at home to just enjoy my home. I’ve been setting annual goals with similar intentions and this is part of realizing that. Working from home is awesome, except when you have a really difficult time pulling yourself away from work. I’m pretty bad at shutting the computer off.

And that’s how I wind up having to wear things like this.

As my home and each room reaches more and more of a completed state (and no longer needs as many huge overhauls from where I first started), I’m going to be looking for the next big project. It’s on my mind a lot. I expect that this will also mean new homes to renovate, or investment properties, or maybe even something a little more unconventional than that. But I need room to do those things, to think about these things, both as a business and for my own sense of what the future holds. So, adding contributors is one of the ways I can make that space and breathing room to figure out what’s next (it’s more of a mental thing than anything else).

What this doesn’t mean…

There are marketers, PR email lists, and freelance writers who email bloggers in droves to ask to “contribute helpful articles” as a means to advertise for free. This isn’t what I’m intending to do with contributors. I consider that “fluff” content and hate reading generic info guides; I am a blogger, but also a blog reader, and I don’t want to put things on the site that I wouldn’t want to read myself. You’re only going to see the small number of people I have personally hand-picked to contribute their own trend posts, DIY tutorials, or recipes, similar to how I post things from my own point of view.

What this means for you

I know I’ve said it before, but it really can’t be said enough: I really like you guys (*virtual hug* – or if you’re not the hugging type, *awkward side-hug and a dorky high five*). As much as writing a blog like this is a very personal thing, I also know that this blog wouldn’t be successful without your support and encouragement. It means a lot. A kind comment has the power to make my whole day/week/month. So, I also decided to add contributors to give you guys more inspiration and give you guys more great content. And I hope you’ll enjoy that and embrace these folks who are adding their awesome DIY and recipe ideas to the mix at the UDH. You rock. And they do too. Y’all should meet.

What this means for the site

In the coming days/weeks, you’ll be seeing posts that introduce these folks to you as well as their first posts that are getting rolled out. You’ll also see a new link at the top in the menu bar to add Recipes as its own thing and one of my favorite recipes that I may even be eating tonight (it doesn’t make much sense to have it in the Project Gallery, anyway). You’ll also be able to discover a new Contributors page when that gets finalized (I still need to add a few links and then you’ll see info on everyone), which will have contributor bios and links to their blogs. This will be a way to organize posts for each person (so that you can see the posts that belong to a specific contributor if you decide you like them and want to see more of what they’ve done).

That’s all for now… I have a coffee pot with my name on it and some dogs who need snuggling. I’ll have some new DIYs for you very soon (including the bathroom mood board!) and hope you’re having a wonderful and productive week!

The post Announcing Contributors to the UDH! appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

from mix1 http://ift.tt/2vNO8X5 via with this info

[sherlocklexa]

Announcing Contributors to the UDH!

Hey folks! I wanted to pop in today to announce a new twist on the blog that I’ve never done before: I’m adding a couple of fellow bloggers to the UDH team.

… Ok, so right away, I realize that’s kind of a lie, because I already posted one of Caroline’s posts this past month: 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces…

But I wanted to do it properly with an actual announcement too, to let you guys know more about what’s going on, and that other contributors are also in the pipeline.

Why Add Contributors to The UDH?

I realize how pretentious it is to both ask myself a question and answer it, but it did seem like I should in this case (maybe). It might seem like a random decision, which would then be fair to question. The answer has many personal reasons (that’s one of the answers, actually, ha!).

To better deal with unanticipated (or anticipated) hiccups.

The first reason is that mainly, from time to time, I get busy with a project that I am working on, but I have nothing worth posting about it until it reaches the next step. Or a project gets interrupted by something unexpected, like a plumbing problem, and while I’m putting out that fire (dude, I hope not literally), I have nothing to say (both because the frustration of it has made me silent/drunk or I’m internally panicking). Or for the first time since deciding to run the blog full-time, I am planning a vacation that will involve totally disconnecting from the backend duties of running the site (I tried to take a vacation last year and it was a disaster; I was gone for two weeks but didn’t really get more than a couple of true days “away”, and the mess I had to juggle when I got back added more stress than I relieved… pretty sure the site actually crashed, too, but I’ve blacked it out).

As a control freak, I also want to keep a somewhat regular flow of content on this site. When I first started blogging, there weren’t things like Instagram or Pinterest, so it made it less odd to have really short posts mixed into the longer tutorials; that doesn’t fit as well now. And simply being the nature of DIY home improvement tutorials needing to be somewhat long to go through steps properly (especially home repair), I spend a good deal of time whenever I work on the lengthier pieces (trying to make sure I’m accurate with instructions, if I have to look up manufacturer’s recommendations, etc.). The only way to make both sides of that coin happy (in my opinion), is to add a few more small DIY projects in advance. I could go ahead and try to create those myself for rainy days, and I am to a degree, but having enough of that requires a little more time than I seem to have anymore (someone, please tell me how I managed to renovate, go to grad school, run this blog, and have a regular job??… I can’t seem to remember how all that space existed). So, the simple solution is to add a great blog contributor (or two) who have some awesome ideas of their own to share. Thankfully, they’ve agreed to do that, and you’ll see these projects about once a month as long as I keep my shit together (I fully anticipate that this will be a learning process for me).

I like to experiment.

(My brain is already going to weird places; I’m tired.) Throughout this blog, I’ve thrown random things into the mix to see what works. I like trying new tools, new designs, new trends, new products. My writing style pretty much always reflects those moods. Doing these things is really the only way the blog has ever grown or kept me motivated to try again; some things work, and some things don’t. But I learn, and that’s fun for me. This is one of those things where I think it could be cool to add to the blog and see what happens… out of plain curiosity.

(I also wrote about a similar concept a long time ago, when I was in grad school; I read a book that really resonated with me that was all about taking these small steps to see where things go. Through experimenting, you can find momentum in the strangest places and build on it. I’ve tried it before, and that led me to invest time in my blog, to starting my own business, and more. It’s taught me to not be as afraid to try something and see if it works — paint my countertop: why not? turn a bowl into a light fixture? let’s see what happens!)

Also, on any given day, I will come up with an idea for a post but don’t have the time to research it well enough, such as a new design trend. That’s where my pal Caroline can come in. She will find cool design ideas, or a new artist, or take a new twist on a craft idea she did with a friend. Just seeing what she picks out of the same concept versus what I do has been really refreshing.

Burnout is just a thing; might as well embrace it.

As an enthusiastic home improvement addict with slight nerd tendencies, I love getting to do this. Every day. It’s ridiculously fun and cool. Even when it’s hard or things in my house break or it seems a lot more like a job than I ever realized (conference calls, signing contracts, constantly learning new tools as an entrepreneur, Facebook and Pinterest changing their rules or algorithms again, etc.). I don’t plan on jumping ship or totally burning out, but that’s not really a thing you can plan for either. In my heart of hearts, I’m a writer. I love storytelling. I love the journey this house has taken me on. I love connecting with people who are nuts for DIY like I am (both bloggers and non-blogging readers alike, despite how awkward I am to meet in person!). But writer’s block is a thing that still happens regardless of your efforts sometimes, and I’ve never found a successful way to avoid it completely. I can sense a difference in myself, my writing, and my creativity when I’ve had a chance to take a break and refresh. I need to feel inspired and sort of flush out the bad blockages that occur from time to time (ok, that metaphor was just plain gross and probably made you assume I was talking about plumbing again — mental blockages is what I mean).

I think adding some new, inspiring projects to the site will be fun. Fun for me to feel inspired from, and fun for you guys to get some fresh ideas!

I’ve started cooking.

*record scratch*

I know. Hell hath frozen over, and I bought an Instant Pot. Or the plain reality is that I’ve been wanting to save more money by cooking at home, and scrambled eggs on toast will only be delicious for so long (who am I kidding — it will be awesome, always). I have a few quick recipes from when I was in college and studied abroad — I had cravings for food I couldn’t find anywhere, and it created some things I still eat for dinner to this day when I am short on time. I have old recipes from my family, handwritten and handed down, and I’d really like to start learning them all, too. It was one of the things my Granny loved to do most when she was alive. And since I’m doing all of this anyway, why not share it from time to time?

great grannys handwritten cookie recipes

This blog has always been a very personal one, where I share a lot of ins and outs about what’s going on in my life. Cooking is something new I’ve added to that mix, but since it’s so new, I offered for one of my blog design clients to contribute some of their recipes as well (since my new Recipes page will be quite sparse by comparison to the 1200+ posts I have written so far about DIY). This will just give people who come to the site looking for food ideas to have a little more substance.

from Visiting Kit’s Black Feather Farm

Plus, she’s also giving me some new cocktail ideas to try. You know… for when that unanticipated renovation problem happens and I just really need to solve it with something other than beer or wine (or you know… throwing things).

  To make room.

I guess in some ways, this is a way to try to bring some “balance” into time I’m at home for work/DIY versus time I’m at home to just enjoy my home. I’ve been setting annual goals with similar intentions and this is part of realizing that. Working from home is awesome, except when you have a really difficult time pulling yourself away from work. I’m pretty bad at shutting the computer off.

And that’s how I wind up having to wear things like this.

As my home and each room reaches more and more of a completed state (and no longer needs as many huge overhauls from where I first started), I’m going to be looking for the next big project. It’s on my mind a lot. I expect that this will also mean new homes to renovate, or investment properties, or maybe even something a little more unconventional than that. But I need room to do those things, to think about these things, both as a business and for my own sense of what the future holds. So, adding contributors is one of the ways I can make that space and breathing room to figure out what’s next (it’s more of a mental thing than anything else).

What this doesn’t mean…

There are marketers, PR email lists, and freelance writers who email bloggers in droves to ask to “contribute helpful articles” as a means to advertise for free. This isn’t what I’m intending to do with contributors. I consider that “fluff” content and hate reading generic info guides; I am a blogger, but also a blog reader, and I don’t want to put things on the site that I wouldn’t want to read myself. You’re only going to see the small number of people I have personally hand-picked to contribute their own trend posts, DIY tutorials, or recipes, similar to how I post things from my own point of view.

What this means for you

I know I’ve said it before, but it really can’t be said enough: I really like you guys (*virtual hug* – or if you’re not the hugging type, *awkward side-hug and a dorky high five*). As much as writing a blog like this is a very personal thing, I also know that this blog wouldn’t be successful without your support and encouragement. It means a lot. A kind comment has the power to make my whole day/week/month. So, I also decided to add contributors to give you guys more inspiration and give you guys more great content. And I hope you’ll enjoy that and embrace these folks who are adding their awesome DIY and recipe ideas to the mix at the UDH. You rock. And they do too. Y’all should meet.

What this means for the site

In the coming days/weeks, you’ll be seeing posts that introduce these folks to you as well as their first posts that are getting rolled out. You’ll also see a new link at the top in the menu bar to add Recipes as its own thing and one of my favorite recipes that I may even be eating tonight (it doesn’t make much sense to have it in the Project Gallery, anyway). You’ll also be able to discover a new Contributors page when that gets finalized (I still need to add a few links and then you’ll see info on everyone), which will have contributor bios and links to their blogs. This will be a way to organize posts for each person (so that you can see the posts that belong to a specific contributor if you decide you like them and want to see more of what they’ve done).

That’s all for now… I have a coffee pot with my name on it and some dogs who need snuggling. I’ll have some new DIYs for you very soon (including the bathroom mood board!) and hope you’re having a wonderful and productive week!

The post Announcing Contributors to the UDH! appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

from car2 http://ift.tt/2vNO8X5 via as shown a lot

[prolistsite]

Announcing Contributors to the UDH!

Hey folks! I wanted to pop in today to announce a new twist on the blog that I’ve never done before: I’m adding a couple of fellow bloggers to the UDH team.

… Ok, so right away, I realize that’s kind of a lie, because I already posted one of Caroline’s posts this past month: 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces…

But I wanted to do it properly with an actual announcement too, to let you guys know more about what’s going on, and that other contributors are also in the pipeline.

Why Add Contributors to The UDH?

I realize how pretentious it is to both ask myself a question and answer it, but it did seem like I should in this case (maybe). It might seem like a random decision, which would then be fair to question. The answer has many personal reasons (that’s one of the answers, actually, ha!).

To better deal with unanticipated (or anticipated) hiccups.

The first reason is that mainly, from time to time, I get busy with a project that I am working on, but I have nothing worth posting about it until it reaches the next step. Or a project gets interrupted by something unexpected, like a plumbing problem, and while I’m putting out that fire (dude, I hope not literally), I have nothing to say (both because the frustration of it has made me silent/drunk or I’m internally panicking). Or for the first time since deciding to run the blog full-time, I am planning a vacation that will involve totally disconnecting from the backend duties of running the site (I tried to take a vacation last year and it was a disaster; I was gone for two weeks but didn’t really get more than a couple of true days “away”, and the mess I had to juggle when I got back added more stress than I relieved… pretty sure the site actually crashed, too, but I’ve blacked it out).

As a control freak, I also want to keep a somewhat regular flow of content on this site. When I first started blogging, there weren’t things like Instagram or Pinterest, so it made it less odd to have really short posts mixed into the longer tutorials; that doesn’t fit as well now. And simply being the nature of DIY home improvement tutorials needing to be somewhat long to go through steps properly (especially home repair), I spend a good deal of time whenever I work on the lengthier pieces (trying to make sure I’m accurate with instructions, if I have to look up manufacturer’s recommendations, etc.). The only way to make both sides of that coin happy (in my opinion), is to add a few more small DIY projects in advance. I could go ahead and try to create those myself for rainy days, and I am to a degree, but having enough of that requires a little more time than I seem to have anymore (someone, please tell me how I managed to renovate, go to grad school, run this blog, and have a regular job??… I can’t seem to remember how all that space existed). So, the simple solution is to add a great blog contributor (or two) who have some awesome ideas of their own to share. Thankfully, they’ve agreed to do that, and you’ll see these projects about once a month as long as I keep my shit together (I fully anticipate that this will be a learning process for me).

I like to experiment.

(My brain is already going to weird places; I’m tired.) Throughout this blog, I’ve thrown random things into the mix to see what works. I like trying new tools, new designs, new trends, new products. My writing style pretty much always reflects those moods. Doing these things is really the only way the blog has ever grown or kept me motivated to try again; some things work, and some things don’t. But I learn, and that’s fun for me. This is one of those things where I think it could be cool to add to the blog and see what happens… out of plain curiosity.

(I also wrote about a similar concept a long time ago, when I was in grad school; I read a book that really resonated with me that was all about taking these small steps to see where things go. Through experimenting, you can find momentum in the strangest places and build on it. I’ve tried it before, and that led me to invest time in my blog, to starting my own business, and more. It’s taught me to not be as afraid to try something and see if it works — paint my countertop: why not? turn a bowl into a light fixture? let’s see what happens!)

Also, on any given day, I will come up with an idea for a post but don’t have the time to research it well enough, such as a new design trend. That’s where my pal Caroline can come in. She will find cool design ideas, or a new artist, or take a new twist on a craft idea she did with a friend. Just seeing what she picks out of the same concept versus what I do has been really refreshing.

Burnout is just a thing; might as well embrace it.

As an enthusiastic home improvement addict with slight nerd tendencies, I love getting to do this. Every day. It’s ridiculously fun and cool. Even when it’s hard or things in my house break or it seems a lot more like a job than I ever realized (conference calls, signing contracts, constantly learning new tools as an entrepreneur, Facebook and Pinterest changing their rules or algorithms again, etc.). I don’t plan on jumping ship or totally burning out, but that’s not really a thing you can plan for either. In my heart of hearts, I’m a writer. I love storytelling. I love the journey this house has taken me on. I love connecting with people who are nuts for DIY like I am (both bloggers and non-blogging readers alike, despite how awkward I am to meet in person!). But writer’s block is a thing that still happens regardless of your efforts sometimes, and I’ve never found a successful way to avoid it completely. I can sense a difference in myself, my writing, and my creativity when I’ve had a chance to take a break and refresh. I need to feel inspired and sort of flush out the bad blockages that occur from time to time (ok, that metaphor was just plain gross and probably made you assume I was talking about plumbing again — mental blockages is what I mean).

I think adding some new, inspiring projects to the site will be fun. Fun for me to feel inspired from, and fun for you guys to get some fresh ideas!

I’ve started cooking.

*record scratch*

I know. Hell hath frozen over, and I bought an Instant Pot. Or the plain reality is that I’ve been wanting to save more money by cooking at home, and scrambled eggs on toast will only be delicious for so long (who am I kidding — it will be awesome, always). I have a few quick recipes from when I was in college and studied abroad — I had cravings for food I couldn’t find anywhere, and it created some things I still eat for dinner to this day when I am short on time. I have old recipes from my family, handwritten and handed down, and I’d really like to start learning them all, too. It was one of the things my Granny loved to do most when she was alive. And since I’m doing all of this anyway, why not share it from time to time?

great grannys handwritten cookie recipes

This blog has always been a very personal one, where I share a lot of ins and outs about what’s going on in my life. Cooking is something new I’ve added to that mix, but since it’s so new, I offered for one of my blog design clients to contribute some of their recipes as well (since my new Recipes page will be quite sparse by comparison to the 1200+ posts I have written so far about DIY). This will just give people who come to the site looking for food ideas to have a little more substance.

from Visiting Kit’s Black Feather Farm

Plus, she’s also giving me some new cocktail ideas to try. You know… for when that unanticipated renovation problem happens and I just really need to solve it with something other than beer or wine (or you know… throwing things).

  To make room.

I guess in some ways, this is a way to try to bring some “balance” into time I’m at home for work/DIY versus time I’m at home to just enjoy my home. I’ve been setting annual goals with similar intentions and this is part of realizing that. Working from home is awesome, except when you have a really difficult time pulling yourself away from work. I’m pretty bad at shutting the computer off.

And that’s how I wind up having to wear things like this.

As my home and each room reaches more and more of a completed state (and no longer needs as many huge overhauls from where I first started), I’m going to be looking for the next big project. It’s on my mind a lot. I expect that this will also mean new homes to renovate, or investment properties, or maybe even something a little more unconventional than that. But I need room to do those things, to think about these things, both as a business and for my own sense of what the future holds. So, adding contributors is one of the ways I can make that space and breathing room to figure out what’s next (it’s more of a mental thing than anything else).

What this doesn’t mean…

There are marketers, PR email lists, and freelance writers who email bloggers in droves to ask to “contribute helpful articles” as a means to advertise for free. This isn’t what I’m intending to do with contributors. I consider that “fluff” content and hate reading generic info guides; I am a blogger, but also a blog reader, and I don’t want to put things on the site that I wouldn’t want to read myself. You’re only going to see the small number of people I have personally hand-picked to contribute their own trend posts, DIY tutorials, or recipes, similar to how I post things from my own point of view.

What this means for you

I know I’ve said it before, but it really can’t be said enough: I really like you guys (*virtual hug* – or if you’re not the hugging type, *awkward side-hug and a dorky high five*). As much as writing a blog like this is a very personal thing, I also know that this blog wouldn’t be successful without your support and encouragement. It means a lot. A kind comment has the power to make my whole day/week/month. So, I also decided to add contributors to give you guys more inspiration and give you guys more great content. And I hope you’ll enjoy that and embrace these folks who are adding their awesome DIY and recipe ideas to the mix at the UDH. You rock. And they do too. Y’all should meet.

What this means for the site

In the coming days/weeks, you’ll be seeing posts that introduce these folks to you as well as their first posts that are getting rolled out. You’ll also see a new link at the top in the menu bar to add Recipes as its own thing and one of my favorite recipes that I may even be eating tonight (it doesn’t make much sense to have it in the Project Gallery, anyway). You’ll also be able to discover a new Contributors page when that gets finalized (I still need to add a few links and then you’ll see info on everyone), which will have contributor bios and links to their blogs. This will be a way to organize posts for each person (so that you can see the posts that belong to a specific contributor if you decide you like them and want to see more of what they’ve done).

That’s all for now… I have a coffee pot with my name on it and some dogs who need snuggling. I’ll have some new DIYs for you very soon (including the bathroom mood board!) and hope you’re having a wonderful and productive week!

The post Announcing Contributors to the UDH! appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

Read more http://ift.tt/2vNO8X5 Areas served: Winston-Salem, High Point, Yadkinville, Mocksville, Advance, Clemmons, Kernersville, Greensboro, Walnut Cove, Statesville, NC, North Carolina Services: House painting, roofing, deck building, landscaping, Carpentry, Flooring, tile, hardwood, remodeling, home improvement, interior, exterior