#crafted yoyos with balloons

[knighted-princess]

Reminds me of a roundabout in the capital of Nicaragua. (Several years ago.) My first roundabout ever, and it was FIVE LANES and PEOPLE WERE WALKING IN BETWEEN THE CARS SELLING FOOD!

(It was related to some political event, but I am not sure what it was.)

The driver was calm, but I was scared. AAAAHHH!!!

Easily, one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.

Years later, my town got roundabouts. A single lane for each, but it was a new concept to town. They have one that overlaps with a rail road track. The first week, I saw headlight fragments on the street. Haven't seen a lot of issues since.

It is such an odd concept when you are new to them, but as long as you can watch your surroundings, pay attention to the other drivers, and go in the correct direction, you can also face and conquer roundabouts!

The rock makes more sense after reading the tags.

[topicprinter]

Growth hacking requires more and more unique approaches to be successful. Methods published on viral blogs are getting saturated within months or even weeks. Blog stars like Neil Patel, Noah Kagan, and Brian Balfour have made growth hacking mainstream, driving hordes of marketing professionals to it and thus, increasing the difficulty of standing out. More competition causes known methods to get saturated quickly while increasing the overall complexity of it. This makes, for some, the growth hacking way too complicated. I have created a list of few, simple to follow, yet unsaturated methods for getting massive results with minimum effort. I have used this for my own project with great success.Turn your content into engaging videos.The video is becoming the primary medium on the world wide web. But often, the cost of entry is quite high. Hiring a professional to create a video that is better than a slideshow, ends up getting ridiculously expensive. Often, for smaller businesses, it is hard to justify paying hundreds of dollars for one-off promotion. Understandable, those with a limited budget are less likely to take the leap and make a bet that could limit their operations. Imagine spending $500 on a video, then another $300 on promoting it, and failing to receive expected results, when your monthly marketing budget is $900. That will be a massive blow to a small business, right? Worry not, we are in 2018, and you can get some high class AI to help you out with the video production. With Lumen5, Rocketium or Showbox you can pick the content of your blog (existing or a future one), switch few options, and within minutes you will have an engaging, crisp video with your content embed. Seriously, this will allow you to double the results of your content. You will open up yourself to the new platforms for promotion (like YouTube, DailyMotion, Facebook Video, and Snapchat). Bonus - you can use budget-friendly services to submit your video to multiple less known platforms to boost your engagement.Your site must be an app.You are just a few clicks away from turning your website into an app. And you do not need to be a developer to do that. With Ludei Cocoon you can create a mobile app quickly and for free. Just feed the tool with URL of your site, and a few minutes later you will have a fully functional app. Besides the usual Google Play and Apple Store, you should look for more niche way of getting some eyeballs on your new creation. There are hundreds of websites giving you the possibility to submit your app to their directory. Besides visitors and users, those sites usually give you a powerful backlink as well, meaning it is all in one package. While this is a method, that was quite popular a few years ago, here is a twist. Your app can be named the same, as the main keyword you want to rank for. This means you will get dozens of backlinks from pages titled as your keywords, thus helping your SEO efforts greatly!Activate your old leads.Growth hacking is a constant game of chase and catch. The more you grow, the higher will be your churn. The equation is as simple as that. Majority of website owners will treat all the inactive users as a lost cause, or at best, they will send them some mass emails until the unsubscribe button is clicked. Now, the frustration is real - you need to move ahead, yet you might be wondering why the users are not there anymore, why they are running elsewhere and what you could do to keep them. Sure - you cannot make everyone happy, but you can at least try to get some invaluable feedback. For this reason, you should reach out to them. There are many ways to do that, but nothing beats a manual, typed in emails. Well, unless you can get semi-automatic emails sent from a tool, that was created especially to help you reach out to the "cold" leads and act like it was manually made, right? With the solution providers like Woodpecker, Reply and SaleShandy, you can use your personal email (or name @ your company email) to work for you when you are not around. Those tools were designed to work on your behalf and to assist you while contacting (even cold) leads. But instead of using them for reaching out to new, potential users, you can empower their abilities to reach out to your churned database. Start with sending friendly "Hi, can you help us improve" etc. email. Then follow up using the state of art tools. Use personalization to achieve your goals - while you should avoid curse words (you never know who is watching the email); you can be more on a personal side. Saying something like "Hi Anna. Can you let us know if we screwed up in any way? We are sorry to see you go..." is not offensive, not too emotional and leaves no lousy taste on your brand. It asks for feedback in a humanly way. Sure, some might not like it, but it will be marginal. So, how this is a growth hack? Feeling taken care of, needed - make people friendlier. And friendlier people usually come back as customers (since you have heard their issues and addressed them) or at least hold off with bad reviews (so your strategy is not crippled by some nasty, five-page long negative review somewhere on the web).Physical mail will make you famous.In an all-digital world, physical connections are priceless. Did you know, that Wufoo, the form creation platform created massive hype and distanced itself from the competitors, by sending hand-drawn notes to its early users? Those users were so touched so they would post about it on social media, private chats and bring it to the real world, increasing the outreach. This made Wufoo an unforgettable company. People wanted to use it, work for it, invest in it. They ended up becoming a part of MailChimp while bringing sacks of gold back home. So, before you jump into writing postcards, you need to know, that deliverability on those is quite low for the effort you will put (and you do not want a generic print out sent!). To the rescue comes LumpyMail and 3DMailResults - services that will send your mail in an unstackable, unforgettable packaging. For example as an enormous thumb, hand, hat, yoyo, shipwreck survivor bottle, a treasure chest, Rubik's cube, or a balloon. Talk about unforgettable mail delivery! Best part - those mail pieces get viral pretty quickly. So you not only build a better relationship with your existing customer, but you will also get access to potentially untapped users through natural viral marketing.Use visitor triggered notifications."We are happy to see you on our FAQ page. Do you have some unanswered questions? Click >here< to contact us. We would love to chat!" - notification like that after the third click of the new website visitor on FAQ page can boost your conversion rates. What's the meaning of all the growth hacking, if you cannot convert potential leads properly? People increasingly get annoyed with the often obtrusive pop-ups for sales chats, like Intercome, Crisp and LiveChat. The solution to that? Add a user triggered notifications that will present a softly crafted sales pitch. I have used a Notifia for this as it was best for what I wanted, but there are other alternatives on the market as well. Additionally, you can add an exit splash page (you know, one of those that trigger when the user hovers his mouse out of the browser window). But a real one, that does not seem robotic. Instead of blatantly asking for visitor email, or offering a ridiculous discount, tell him a joke or get him emotionally while trying to get his email. Saying something along the lines of "You are leaving already? Can you save us from head-scratching and >tell us why". Get personal, get mildly funny, but completely non-aggressive. Most of us have this one friend, that is delightfully funny, no matter what. Use one of his non-situational phrases to get the attention of the potential leads. Use your offline experiences to build realistic web connections.

[foamingkitty]

Recap of our London Christmas ShopUp 2017

Last Sunday and Monday we had our 5th annual London ShopUp, and boy, was it fun!  More than 40 shops, fantastic food, and fun activities. All this under one beautiful roof at Chelsea Old Town Hall, the perfect holiday location.  Here are some gorgeous photos we wanted to share, along with some of the highlights of the event.

With a wonderful selection of shops, everyone was spoilt for choice!  While the parents shopped, the kiddos were entertained with holiday crafts from Paperbirds on Sunday and The Little Top on Monday.  Children also did a fun treasure hunt — look for the candy canes — (thanks Bear Nibbles for the YoYo Bear prizes!), and enjoyed amazing balloon animals from Mr Baudruche and glitter face paint from Eco Glitter Fun, along with visits to the real Father Christmas!

Maud Fontein was on hand to do sparkly family portraits on both days too.  Sunday afternoon, we loved our happy hour with music by Wilford Social and nibbles and prosecco from Wild Child Kitchen.  Shoppers relaxed and refueled with delicious meals and treats from Deliciously Ella in the cafe.  And Monday afternoon, The Little London Music School came by to offer a toddler music class and fill the gorgeous town hall with holiday tunes.

We were happy to have Little Dish back again this year to provide yummy, healthy snacks for the little ones, and Fifi & Friends were there to show off their lovely new baby skin care line.  Mamas were treated to some luxury fashion with Vestiaire Collective and learned about their closet detox service.  Powder Byrne was an event partner again as well- check out their site for some of the best family holidays around.

Thank you to all our amazing boutiques who joined us from near and far. (And thanks to Pip Organic for keeping us all hydrated!) We love working with so many incredible brands and bringing them together in one room is such a special treat.

Thanks to our photographer Nadine Brandt from Parentville Parties for all the photos above.

Last but not least, we’d like to thank Peanut, who partnered with Babyccino for our 10th birthday party.  Peanut is an app all about connecting mamas together, which we love!

Thanks London for another great event! And our ShopUp holiday tour continues December 10 & 11 in Brooklyn, New York at 501 Union Street.

The post Recap of our London Christmas ShopUp 2017 appeared first on Babyccino Kids: Daily tips, Children's products, Craft ideas, Recipes & More.

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