#hopefully that emoji can suffice :]

[madwickedawesome]

GIVE ME AN ANON TAG!!! pretty please🥺 -galaxy anon

im gonna catch up w these ones YES OK !!! since u asked so nicely

[gatheredfates]

WELCOME to Sea's Catch Up (For) Starlight Challenge! Also know as 'A FFIX Prompt?' (I just woke up), 'Is it Cosy or Cozy in Australia?' (Cosy) and bEANS (bEANS!).

Suffice it to say, there have been a lot of challenges this year—Gpose challenges, FFXIV Write, Down to Dawntrail and Seafloor Saints Wake (just to name ours)! I know from personal experience that I haven't had the time to get to every single prompt... but I've wanted to. I also know it can be really disheartening to miss out on prompts and feel like you're being weird for engaging with it later on in the year.

To that end, I wanted to open a challenge that encourages people to either tackle an existing prompt from any gpose/writing/art challenge that was hosted during the year (under the excuse of it being for this challenge) OR pick from one of the prompts above to make a Starlight-themed creative piece!

All of these words were chosen by various people within the SEAFLOOR Discord, and i have tried not to tie them too closely to Christmas so people who don't celebrate the holiday don't feel left out. If you want to change a word that is more applicable to your culture, but still embodies the same spirit of the holiday through family, humanity, spending time with your loved ones, etc. I highly encourage you to do so!

This challenge will run the entirety of the month of December and can be tackled in any way you see fit. If you want to do a prompt a day and mix in the words in amongst working on your old project(s), go for it! If you want to select some words and not others, cool! If you want to only work on your old stuff and leave this list in the dust, a okay! It's all about giving you a low-stakes way to engage with your creativity and an excuse to go back to stuff you might have missed, or take some time to celebrate the season and people who mean a lot to you (and your ocs)!

Please use the tag #catch up (for) starlight if you participate and consider joining our community! A more comprehensive FAQ is contained in the read more below. ☃️

But also:

Is the use of mods/shades/tools okay? Yes, of course! Whatever works for you to make your creative dreams come true.

What about NSFW (gore, sexual or otherwise)? Use common sense and appropriate tags as necessary, especially for common fears and phobias. I obviously cannot control what Tumblr sees as being too much, but the general rules for SEAFLOOR apply where possible. If your conservative boss wouldn't like to see it, consider tagging and content warning were necessary.

Where do I post works? Hopefully your Tumblr blog, silly, but you can also reblog them to the SEAFLOOR Tumblr Community or join us on Discord! If someone posts their work in either of those spaces, consider reacting with a wintery-themed emoji! It just lets people know you enjoyed it. ❄️ I am going to do my best to reblog prompts when I see them, but I am going away during the Christmas period so I may not be contactable in that time.

Is there a prize? There might be this time around, though I haven't given it much thought. Seafloor members will get a fancy cosmetic title.

[headmate-smoothie-bar]

hello!! (minecraft) rabbit hybrid headmate with a winter and space theme? :3? level 2 + typing quirk/s and a song or three. and without signoffs and role.

for specific things on your template!!! age: 15-19? gender/s: feminine and something else please! orientation/s: attracted to women and on aro and/or ace spectrums. personality: cheerful! faceclaim/s: we are bodily poc! light-medium brown skin! and please Long White Hair with bunny ears. the rest is up to u!!

a bunch of emojis for vibe!! ❄☁️🌨☃️🌠🪐🌙🌤🌲🐇💠🤍💭

thank you!! sorry if this is too much!! i adore this blog it has such a nice theme!!!

here!! sorry that this took a while, we had a bit of trouble finding things for luna, but hopefully frost works well! remember that beings may not always turn out as described, but we hope you like her!

name milo, selene, fiona

3rdp pronouns she/her, lop/lops, lun/luna, flur/flurry, frost/frosts (links)

age 15-19

species half rabbit

source minecraft (brainmade?)

gender/s flowercute, bunnysweetie, starclusteric, femmtint (links)

orientation/s sapphic reciproromantic ace-jump (links)

other ids bun/bunny xenintation, spacefriend (links)

personality she is a very cheerful person! lop’s always happy, and brings a smile to everybody’s face. lun can be a little reserved at times, but will always be there for other alters when they need it. despite flurrys friendliness, lop may struggle to voice lops true feelings on things. but once you get to know frost, she is happy to talk about anything and everything, so long as you’re cheerful too!

other notes lun may be a little more sensitive compared to other alters, but don’t take it to heart, she’s trying her best for everyone.

2ndp pronouns sta/star/stars/starself, lu/lur/lurs/lurself

1stp pronouns vi/ve/vy/vyne/vyself

likes & dislikes likes: snow, space, shiny things dislikes: hot days, darkness, loud noises

aesthetics winter, cabincore

faceclaim/s we couldn’t find an image of what we envisioned from your description, so hopefully this picrew suffices!

typing quirk/s lop might add “…” between each part of lunas sentences. frost also rarely uses apostrophes (e.g. i’m —> im, don’t —> dont).

a song or three jelly - supast4r soldier, poet, king - the oh hellos sweater weather - the neighbourhood 

thanks for ordering from the smoothie bar! we're very happy with how flur turned out, so we hope you like luna too! take good care of lop for us!!

[disabled-dragoon]

😃 [smiling face emoji]

Give me a couple of hours and I can mock up a big list of non fiction (and some fiction) books for you!

In the mean time, I've got some articles that may be of interest:

(My field of study is literature, so these are very much literature and history based for now)

The Drifting Language of Architectural Accessibility in Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris, Essaka Joshua, 2012

Early Modern Literature and Disability Studies, Allison P. Hobgood, David Houston Wood, 2017

Making Do with What You Don't Have: Disabled Black Motherhood in Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, Anna Hinton, 2018

Witchcraft and deformity in early modern English Literature, Scott Eaton, 2020

I'll add more later, but hopefully this should suffice for now!

Good luck!

my mom is creating a homeschool curriculum based on the months of the year, eg. this month is Black history month, next month is women's history month, etc. does anyone have recommendations for things we can read in July for Disability Pride month? I'm trying to liberalize my mother MORE than she is already lol

[jrueships]

absolutely obsessed with ur drawing of Scottie, he just looks so perfect 🫠

OMG thank u !!!!! as a token of my appreciation, i gave him his favorite lil buddy to hangout with !!

[haikyupid]

Frequently used emojis:

👍🤡🎂✅👌😃😚😘😊😆😩🤠😀😱😭😔🧙‍♂️😫😉😡🙁🤔🙃😗❤🥰😎😤 I hope these suffice I’m submitting over mobile because I dont know how to emoji other wise.

Why follow:

First and foremost I saw you write cute prompts with cute guys and I thought the request system was pretty neat. And correct me if I’m wrong because it wasn’t explicitly stated in the order but you don’t seem to mind making a fic Gender neutral or even doing a fic for male!characterxmale!reader which is something I really appreciate.

Reasons to start and stay:

I can’t for the life of my remember where I first saw Haikyuu I know I heard of it before watching it. It was probably as simple as earnest sport boys are hot so watch this anime. Still reeling on a single reason I stayed since so many of the guys are just so pretty or hot or both.

Why them:

Full disclosure I had no one in mind when I started writing this submission so most of my brain power is thinking of my favorite character right now. There is so many to choose from but upon further consideration it is Bokuto koutarou (as I typed his last name his first came up in the suggestion bar lol) he is so energetic and screenshots from the manga make him BEEFY he has my heart in his hands. I’m trying really hard to put to words what else is great about my sweet owl boyfriend something about his hair probably.

Letter to you:

You run a very cute blog and I respect your positive attitude even when you’re a user of this hell site. Hopefully it’s not presumptuous that you male x male reader inserts although it would be a lie if I said I don’t care if you do. I hate to seem rude but I hope I actually qualify for this lol I’d feel silly if I didn’t hop on this train soon enough.

I hope this is both sufficient and legible ‘cuz right now I want to thirst a bit over the runner ups for the KING of my heart. To gush a bit more on Bokuto I love art when his shorts ride up and the knee guards have some uncovered skin showing as I have a weakness for thighs TBH. I love the fukurodani boys Akashi and Bokuto are both beautiful, Nekoma has Kuroo the smug sexy noodle boy and Yaku who was this close to catching my heart. I’ll put an end to this here and I hope and pray this all makes sense English is my first and only language but I am not a smart man if I am to be honest.

NOW PLAYING ◃◃   ❙ ❙ ▹▹ CHANGE MY MIND

for bokuto — when his heart long for yours. when your laughter and words evoke a feeling so foreign, yet he welcomes it as the flutter in his stomach continues to intensify. when thoughts of you cloud his mind, leaving him staring blankly at the ceiling of his bedroom wondering if you’re doing the same. when he screams into his pillow at 2 in the early mornings, as the feelings overflow and threaten to burst at any given moment.

ılı.lıllılı.ıllı.

Perhaps it’s the glow of the sunset that makes your features stand out with a tint of gold that makes it hard for me to look away from you. Maybe it’s because of my tendency to want to be surrounded by loud noises that I end up intently listening to you speak, as the two of us walk along the quiet neighborhood with only the muffled sounds of sputtering engines accompanying your voice. It could be that your smile is contagious, and I find myself laughing along with you every time.

But there has to be a reason why I always find myself wanting to be near you- no, to be with you. But what is it? Why am I always longing for your presence?

“Bokuto.”

My eyes go wide from your sudden call of my name. I gulp, and I hope you don’t notice the nervous lump on my throat. “Yeah?” I curse myself as the word comes out in a tremble.

You tilt your head. That’s all you do, but my heart feels as though it’s intoxicated by you, and it suddenly hurts. My heart thumps louder than ever before.

“This is me.” You gesture at the familiar front of your house.

I find myself paralyzed. I can’t move — I refuse to move. I need to hear the words I’ve been longing for you to say to me; for you to say the word ‘stay’ with your lips no longer curved into a smile of farewell, but one that invites me in.

I feel my fingers twitch in an attempt to grab a hold of you and beg you to explain the feelings that continue to beautifully haunt my every waking moment. You should know, you’re the cause of it.

Please, tell me to stay. Then tell me that you crave my presence like I do with yours. That your soul feels lost when you’re not with me. That you want me to hold you in arms while I confess the foreign feelings that I have for you.

“Stay,” I say all of sudden. Shit, shit, shit! Please don’t think I’m weird. Damn this mouth of mine that never shuts.

Silence dawns upon us. It’s awkward, at least for me it is. I can’t bare to meet your eyes — I don’t know if I’ll be star-struck like before, or become too flustered and run far away from where we stand.

You finally break the silence with a: “so, are you going to say something?” You end the sentence with a lighthearted chuckle. You always knew how to lighten the mood, to lessen the awkwardness that I seem to always bring between us. Maybe it’s one of the reasons why you draw me in, like a tidal wave that leads you to a sea of happiness— and I wish for nothing but to be pulled in.

It’s now or never.

I huff in, my chest puffing out as it would in confidence, except I’m doing my best to feint mine. “Please, ask me to stay!” I don’t mean to scream, but the feelings that bubble up inside continue to intensify. I’m afraid that I can only speak ‘shouts’ at this point.

Please, please, please say the word. I need to know if you feel the same. I don’t think I can handle this foreign feelings any longer — I’d burst. So please, say it. Say that you want me to be with you a little while longer. Ask me to stay with you, and tell me… that you love me.

I search for a sign that blatantly tells me that my thoughts are wrong; but as you smile at me differently — one no longer meant for farewells — I find the gears that connects through my heart and mind finally working, and I now know— I now realize that these ‘foreign’ feelings are derived from the love that I feel only for you.

“Stay, Koutarou.” My heart finally bursts.

NOW PLAYING ◃◃   ❙ ❙ ▹▹ NEVER ENOUGH

for bokuto — when his lips linger on yours just for a split second longer than usual, and his mind is suddenly clouded by you and you only, disregarding everything else that was, and comes to mind. when his arms wrap around your waist like a man starved of your presence, but gentle enough as though he wants to protect and cherish you being in his grasp for as long as life allows him; and when his expression perfectly conveys the pure love and adoration that he feels for you, because to him, words are simply not enough to describe it.

ılı.lıllılı.ıllı.

“Koutarou…”

Your voice puts me in a hypnotic haze, one that I want nothing more but to be surrounded by, every second of the day. It doesn’t matter if it leads me to danger, if the true meaning behind your words hide behind a sweet facade, you could coax me to do just about anything with those words and tone of yours.

“You need to leave now.”

Everything except that.

I feel the strings of my heart tug harshly from one direction to another. How is it that your voice, so sweet and alluring like pure honey, is able to produce words that elicits nothing but hurt from within me?

My heart agonizingly aches, yet your smile — that damned smile of yours that I’ve loved and yearned for years — shows nothing but amusement. How?

Do you not love me enough? Am I not worth your time? Do you want me to leave that badly? Have I done something wrong to make you say those—

“Kou,” your hands find itself on each side of my cheeks, cupping it in the most gentle caress only you can convey, “if you don’t leave now, you’ll be late. Akaashi and the team will start worrying, and they’ll end up spamming my messages.”

Oh.

The cooling relief that rushes through my racing heart and mind greatly contrasts the rising heat that climbs from my neck to my flushed cheeks. Can you see the effect you have on me?

Could you possibly blame me for reacting this way? I love you too much. I wouldn’t mind having my heart ache like this if it means that you’re the cause. I won’t have it any other way.

“I’m sorry.” My eyes close, and I instinctively kiss your lips. I hope that through it, you’ll feel the love that overpowers every other emotion that I’m meant to feel. Every responsibility other than deeply loving you being disregarded in mere seconds.

For once, I let my lips linger longer on yours. You don’t pull back, and I hope you never do. If only time will allow it — could we stay like this forever?

My lips are close enough to feel the small tug on the corners of you lips, indicating a small smile is forming. This is familiar, as it’s often followed by a gentle push by your hands that rest on my chest and a “go, you’re going to be late” — but no; this time, you close the gap in a rushed and delicate kiss.

It doesn’t even last a second before you pull away. I long for more. “Please,” I beg you once more.

“No,” you chuckle and suddenly, everything in my vision becomes much brighter and colourful, “you’re going to be late for practice. Just go, and I’ll give you more when you come back.”

“You promise?” I know you always uphold each one, but hearing you say it makes it that much more meaningful to me. A reassurance that I’m the only person to make these kinds of promises with you.

The sides of your eyes crinkle as you grin at me. “I promise,” you say with a honey-like tone. It evokes a different feeling from earlier, this time, it’s warmth.

A breath of relief, one I didn’t know that I’ve been holding in, leaves my body. And as my chest heaves down, I feel the grin only you can make appear decorate my face, and suddenly, I feel like everything’s going how I want it to; as if the world’s on my side.

I love you. I promise to, for as long as the universe lets me. I’ll never get enough of you, in this life and in another.

0 : 00 ──────────♡─ E : ND

bwahahahhaha, i can tell that you most definitely write better than i do even if i haven’t seen an example — but, hopefully you still liked this one. i’m not good at writing at all and i’m not used creating them, but hopefully this was at the very least decent enough for you. forgive me if it’s not…

you’re so nice 🥺👉👈 also, ik we haven’t talked much like at all, but your personality, i love it! the ‘oh, howdy’ had me wanting to talk to you more 🤣 i haven’t been greeted like that in so, so long, i missed it so much. and you do not seem rude at all! ik i haven’t explicitly said that i’m open to writing for every gender, only bcause i thought it was supposed to be common sense? clearly i was being quite ignorant, so i’m really and deeply sorry about that. but yes, i try to cater my content for all genders, unless the requester explicitly asks for their gender/pronouns to be used.

THIGHS FOR LIFE, HECK YEAH! i loooove that akaashi scene where it’s angled from under him and we get a view of his toned thighs and i’m just like 🤤💛💛 yeah, so now i simp for kuroo and akaashi bcause i’ve seen their beautiful thighs; but when i tell you that i’m willing to do anything to get a peak of bokuto’s bare thighs from under those knee guards, i mean it ahahahaha!

[every1studio]

REACTS TO: “late night conversations + crushes” [ateez]

genre: fluff + comedy + misc.

ficstyle: reactions + bullepoints + oneshots 

request: “ ateez reaction/scenario midnight chat (These talks at 2/3am on bed when you just can’t sleep) “

note: (DOCTOR ANON) blessed me with not one BUT TWO requests + please forgive me I switched up your request a little bit since I don’t do chat edits; hope you still enjoy this though~

You were tired but you couldn’t fall asleep. Tossing and turning did nothing for you and at this point, you were ready to knock yourself out to physically get you to sleep. DING. You got a notification; when you picked up your phone.. you smiled..

HONGJOONG

-Are the goggles on Minions part of them or are they an accessory? Do you know if they can see without them on?

you literally could not even handle this boy right now

he was your best friend

and he had IMPECCABLE timing

he always messages you random things throughout the day but especially when you can’t sleep at night

but how could he not? he was also your neighbor and his room was right across from you

your windows blinds are always open

he usually stays up to write songs so he can see when you are tossing and turning 

Hongjoong can see you smile at the light of your cellphone screen as you both constantly text each other back and forth

sometimes, it will cause you to get up from your bed and open your balcony window to talk to him face to face

he was smitten by you

you were his muse and if these little things are what makes you smile; he’ll continue to do so until he’s confident enough to confess to you 

SEONGHWA

-I hope you know, I finished the homework for tomorrow and I’m gonna be nice and let you copy it. Let’s meet up before class?

he is your classmate in your pre-calculus class

he’s definitely the most good-looking guy in your school 

and you were blessed to have an eye candy like him to be your seatmate 

you wouldn’t talk to him in class because you know how serious he takes his education 

you got close to him when he was assigned to be your partner to check over your worksheet

since then, you both only text each other about classwork

but honestly, you two both liked each other but never knew what to converse about but math and school in general

hopefully, he can come up with some conversation starters before class tomorrow

maybe then, you guys can text outside of the subjects of school

YUNHO

-I can see your boogers :P

your smile immediately dropped when you saw this

you look over to Yunho

Yunho was sleeping over on your couch

why?

he’s a family friend; your mom loved him

and she wasn’t going to give him the uncomfortable sofa in the living room

initially she wanted him to take your bed, but he said he would suffice with the convertible sofa/bed in your room 

you’ve known him all your life and honestly, being with him makes you know what it feels like to be in a 10 year long marriage 

you see him twitch in his “sleep,” you throw a pillow at him

he smiles as he tosses it back to you, “can’t sleep?”

how can someone know you so well?

yet not know your feelings for them...

is what both of you thought when you got comfy for some late night talks

YEOSANG

-I just want you to know that, I appreciate you so much. I know you’re probably unable to sleep rn but I just wanna let you know that you’re a beautiful human being...but you’ll never be as pretty as me~

you sent Yeosang a middle finger emoji followed by a heart emoji through a smile

you guys were inseparable; being the best of friends since high school

even after you separated ways with your other “friends,” Yeosang stayed by your side all these years

although he is known for being quiet, he’s pretty sassy with you

Yeosang had a hard time being his true self; but never with you 

he’s one text away from confessing to you 

better late than never right?

SAN

-The forecast says that it’s gonna super sunny tomorrow. I just wanted to let you know.

that was a big lie; you just checked the forecast for tomorrow before bed and it was going to rain

San had plan for you to come to school without an umbrella or a raincoat so that he can share an umbrella with you

he’s been trying to shoot his shot at you for the longest time but you were way to oblivious to tell 

San is always sending pick up lines but you couldn’t make sense of any of them

sends you random trivia instead when the pick up lines don’t work 

he really has to be more straightforward

he can’t help that he gets so shy and speechless when he’s with you 

MINGI

-If you’re interested, your bro and I are gonna have a game tomorrow.. come thru if you want

he is your brother’s best friend and they are both on the basketball team 

lowkey uses your brother as a conversation starter

-your bro wants to know if you want to wait for us to finish practice so we can walk you home

-your bro and I are getting ice-cream, wanna go with?

although you feel like you’re third-wheeling with him and your brother

your brother feels like it’s the opposite just because he knows how much Mingi likes you

Mingi has to do better than to text you about your brother if he wants to get to know you more

WOOYOUNG

-I saw on SC that you wanted to go to the bay. Wanna go tomorrow?

Wooyoung quick added you on snapchat; knowing that you both had mutual friends... and that he thought you were cute

you thought he just added you because he was just a friendly guy that all your friends talked about

small talk became deep conversations

always responds to your stories and lowkey blames on his “butterfingers” for screenshotting sometimes

but he has a hard time talking to you in person, not because it seemed like he pretended not to know you in public but because has no confidence in talking to you face to face

there’s something comforting about talking to you through a screen

but he wants to be able to talk to you more

maybe with that text, he can finally tell you why he wants you to be more than a 437 day streak and a best friend on snapchat 

JONGHO

-Did you listen to BTS’s new album? it’s fire~ but knowing that you aren’t sleeping rn, don’t listen to it, you’ll get too hype and then you’ll stay up until the sunrises (:

Jongho was your gym partner since you both took weight-training your senior year of high school; his freshman year

you guys talk about music and fitness; what songs should be placed in your workout playlist or what workouts are the best for the booty

it all started when Jongho sees you struggling with your form on the squat bars

without actually registering it was you, he placed his hands on your waist and tells you what you need to fix; when he realizes that it’s you, he clears his throat and leaves you be

you got his number from a freshman friend and asked if he could help you fix your form

you’ve always been an upperclassman he admires, but can it move on from just admiration to a crush?

~end

[impossible-rat-babies]

❄️❤️🔥 for my guy, Pollux

Thank you Madison! :D

❄️ What makes your OC sad, so sad that they can’t help but cry all day? How do they cheer themself up? Does their sadness upset any of their loved ones too?

When he gets too wrapped up in his head thinking about all the what ifs like what if he had been born? Had a family? Family is one of those things that acutely stabs him in the stomach with jealously and just sadness. Or he’ll get wrapped up thinking about the sidestep days, when it was just saving people and how that felt good. Or vicious nightmares will leave him curled up in bed with all of his blankets crying a lot. He’s pretty good at keeping the worst of the sadness tucked away around others; people ask too many questions when he’s sad and he’s never in the mood to talk about it. It doesn’t stop people like Ortega, but he still tries. 

He’ll smoke to cheer himself up, take the edge off of things. Or he’ll sit and cuddle his stuffed duck for a while, fussing with its funny little duck face. A hot shower in the dark helps too. 

❤️ What would your OC’s ideal lover be like? Appearance, personality, voice? Would their family approve or would it be civil war?

Pollux never had an idea of what an ideal lover would be like, beyond someone who is kind, fair and all those other sort of traits people find desirable in others. He still doesn’t have any idea what an ideal lover would be like, if that says anything about his standards. He’s gotten better at knowing what he would like out of someone to have that sort of relationship with, but he’s still working on the whole “I can have a lover and call that person my lover and not panic about it.” 

Suffice to say there’s no real family to approve or disapprove. And tia Elena already likes him even though seeing her again is going to be....be a trip for sure.

🔥 If your OC known for having temper tantrums? If not, what gets them really angry? What makes their blood BOIL? Is there anyway to calm them down or are they unstoppable? What are they like when they’re angry? Do they take it out on their loved ones?

Pollux isn’t known for temper tantrums, but that doesn’t stop him from being angry. He gets passive aggressive when he’s angry, never saying what he means, rolling his eyes, huffing in frustration, looks of frustration, etc. He doesn’t usually raise his voice first, but he will match someone’s tone toe to toe. There have been times in the past where he has gotten incredibly angry, but high stakes emotions aren’t good when it’s so easy to have it leak into his abilities. Once or twice he got angry enough to be just utterly silent.

He had a few times on the Farm where he got incredibly angry and it never ended well for anyone; he knows what he can do when he’s fueled by anger and the knowledge of how one goes about tweaking how you breathe, your heart beating, body moving.

As for taking it out on loved ones, never. Not like back then. Hopefully he’ll never be angry enough to do that to the people he loves. Hopefully.

--

[oc emoji questions]

[insanityvirus13]

My Red String Story

I’ve been getting back into the “Red String of Fate” thing, and I decided to create a little short story. I would make a comic, but I know I’d take years to finish it XD So my bad story-writing skills will have to suffice.

Dedicated to 2 beautiful people;

Sam - My Boyfriend of 2 months now

Derin - The original “Lover boy.” I’ll never forget you.

My Red String was cut. Might as well rip that band-aid off now. Yup, my red string was cut. Not exactly in the way you think, but it was cut.

I used to have a soulmate. We met as teens, and he was wonderful. He was like how everyone talked about their soulmates. Funny, sweet, kind, carefree, adventurous, caring, loving, and just absolutely, wonderfully perfect. I loved him so much. I still love him. I’ll love him until the end of time itself and than some. He was taken from me though. The man who was my very life and soul was taken from me. The man who gave me a reason to live was taken from my life... and I can’t ever get him back.

A hit and run. It was supposed to be me but he... he saved me. He threw me out of the way. While I was left with cuts, scrapes and a sprained ankle & wrist, he was left for dead. I was at least there for the final goodbye but that didn’t stop my heart from dying that day and my string disappearing.

When he died... our string snapped in two.  That day now left me without 3 things. I was now left without a soulmate, a string, and a heart.

I didn’t love anyone for a long time. I loved family and friends in the way everyone does, yes. But romantically, my love for anyone was just non-existent. Believe me when I say I tried. I tried so damn hard. I tried to believe the men and women who said they could “fix me.” I tried to make myself believe their attempts we’re working. I tried to force myself to love the few people who had affections for me. After a while though, I just gave up. I gave up on trying to let people “fix me” and just gave up on trying to fill the hole in my heart. 

I was always pestered about not moving on, about not trying to find a new potential soulmate, that I HAD to have another one. That I HAD to love someone. While I got used to it, I also started to get really sick of it. I HAD a soulmate once, and now he’s gone now. What else did you want from me? I had no string to guide me, no path to follow. I was all alone.

I was fine on my own. Don’t get me wrong, I did get lonely, but that’s normal for anyone. I did miss the man who used to make me whole. I missed him every single day and I still miss him, but I learned to move on. For him, his memory, my love for him - I learned to survive on my own.

For almost a decade, I was on my own. For a decade, I had to deal with people talking about their soulmates or future soulmates. For a decade, I had to be alone. For a decade, I had to fake a smile and talk about my own “future soulmate.” For a decade, I actually forgot what it was like to genuinely love someone.

....

And than he came running into my life.

We met in a semi-peculiar way. I was on Discord talking with a few friends of mine, when one of them invited me to a sever. He knew I was really into anime and all things geeky and said he thought it would “fit my style.” I decided to give it a go. The name of the server was “The Anime Grail” and it was pretty much just a NSFW server for anime. It did have SFW chats and a “General Chat” that was meant to stay mostly SFW, but it’s purpose remained the same. As weird as the server was to me, I was bored anyway and needed something to occupy my time. After all, gaming & drawing did get boring after a while and Youtube can only occupy you for so long.

When I joined the server, the first 2 people I met we’re the founders of the server.

Alt and Prime

While Alt was definitely nice, and we’d soon become good friends, it was Prime who I became quickly interested in. Somehow, me and Prime just... clicked. We got along so well, you’d think we’d known each other since grade-school. We became very fast friends and talked almost everyday.

If I’m to be honest, I’m kind of surprised I hadn’t realized sooner the affect he was having on me at the time.

I became happier and more cheerful, more optimistic. I was more hopeful and even had some confidence in myself - something I hadn’t had in God knows how long. I always looked forward to get on, always eagerly awaiting every message from him. Even just the simplest heart emoji brought a smile to my face. Hell, if I was ever in a crap mood, just hearing his name brought my spirit up.

Than one day, he complimented my figure. I finally decided to post a slightly revealing selfie cause I was feeling bored and confident, and he told me how much he loved the way I look. He loved my every look and wish he was there with me.

You’d think I’m sick with how red I got, haha. But what got me was the way my heart was skipping a beat.

My heart was doing somersaults, I had a horde of butterflies flying in my stomach, and all I could think about was him loving me. It just hit me like a sack of bricks.

I wanted him. I wanted, him so much, and I wanted him and only him. I never wanted someone so damn much since...

I was scared at first. I shouldn’t be falling for him like this. He already has a soulmate. I’m not his soulmate. He’s in love with someone else. Somebody’s waiting on him. But... I stopped caring. I have no idea why but, I just stopped caring. I didn’t care. The less I cared about those thoughts, the deeper I fell for him. It became bliss, really.

The tension was high with us. We always found a way to flirt with each other, get revealing, “joke” about... other things, etc. Our friends always teased us that we should get together. It took my best friend, Wolfe - bless her for doing this, really - to make us face the question when she asked us both directly.

What were we?

I was so afraid of this moment. So afraid of rejection. So afraid to be let down. So afraid for my heart to be broken once again. But than, by God’s hand, it went like this;

Prime: I mean, it feels a bit empty to just call it Friends w/ Benefits, don’t you think?

Absentia: In all honesty, it kind of does... I don’t know. What do you wanna define as us?

Prime:  I mean, I don’t... I... Do you... want... to make this something more?

I hovered over the my keyboard. How the hell do I respond to that? I subconsciously looked to my ring finger, where the old string lied. I followed the string and noticed  something strange... I couldn’t see the end of it. It was... blurry to me. I furrowed my brow in confusion and looked back to the screen, staring at the message. Absentia: You don’t... have someone else?

Prime: No.

Absentia: No soulmate?

Prime: I’ve never had a soulmate. My string’s never lead anywhere.

Absentia: I can relate in a way

Prime: How so?

Absentia: Mine.... isn’t here anymore. My string leads nowhere anymore.

Prime: I’m sorry. He must’ve been good to you.

Absentia: ...Everyone’s tried to “Fix Me” after that one.

Prime: Only you can “fix” yourself. I just want to be there when you need a helping hand...and, hopefully be something more to you if you’re ready for it.

Absentia: Are you asking what I think you’re asking?

Prime: Will you be mine?

Absentia: Yes!

I never loved someone more that day. It really was the happiest day of my life. I was close to tears. I didn’t think it could get better.

Than my hand got pulled.

I looked down and saw my string. I stood up and got pulled out of my chair towards the window. I looked at the string, and couldn’t see the end! It went on for miles, and I realized.

Prime: What the fuck?!? My string just pulled me!

Absentia: OMG SAME!

Prime: You don’t think...?

Absentia: HOW YA BEEN SOULMATE! 💞

Prime: HOLY SHIT 😃💘

I never thought I could love again. I never thought I’d be truly happy again. I never thought... I’d have someone like him in my life again. But you changed all that. You two are so similar in so many ways and yet so different. Don’t worry, I know you’re not him, but you really do remind him. And I thank you for that, for just being you.

I know he’d be happy for me that I could finally move on. That I finally have someone again who can care for me as much as he did, and vice versa.  

I loved you Devilin, I always have and always will. Thank you for making my life beautiful when you did. And I love you Sam. Thank you for making my life absolutely wonderful, and I can’t wait to see you~ 💛💜

After Note

I’ve been alone all my life, and I truly though it would stay that way. I fell in love once but... well, let’s just say this story is from real-life experiences. I thought I would never love again, but than you came spiraling into my life in the strangest way possible. How I fell in love in such a short time after we met I will never know. How you felt the same is an even bigger mystery. But when we met, we clicked like we knew each other for decades, and... heh. Well, I guess I’ll just leave it at this.

I’m thanking God everyday that I got to meet you and be yours~

I��m also starting to wonder if I should believe that the Red Thread of Fate is real... 

You’re to thank for that 💘

[theblognobodyfoundlastyear]

The freedom of limitations

Once every hundred-thousand years or so, when the sun doth shine and the moon doth glow, a random thought comes to mind that vaguely warrants a wall of text that more often than not over-complicates the original idea. And this is certainly no different. But I guess that’s one of the few ways one can retain a record that maybe, just maybe, one can finally reach the finish line and hear the words “Well done, good and faithful servant...“. Until then, we be stumbling, crashing and bamboozling our way through the nonsensical ride called Life.

With the last few posts being a sort of meta-analysis of the abstract problems being faced in times recent, here’s a thought-provoking, mind-blowing corollary: “The more limitations there are in place, the more freedoms are exerted within those limitations”. Seems like a strange statement, though I vaguely recall a teacher trying to get his students to complete a short creative writing project. At first, he allowed them to write about anything, to which most students struggled because they were self-critical about what they would ultimately present. He then limited the theme to anything within the town, which students managed to produce some item of work. He continually shrank the scope of possible topics to the point where students had to write about a particular spot on a brick wall, in which the most creative and innovative material had manifested, or so he alleges. And perhaps that allegory has some parallels with the world at large today. Even just 15 years ago, we were still using flip-phones or those newfangled ones with the built in keyboards, but even with those limitations, shorthand text and emoticons were rampant as a means of communication using text in the most concise ways possible. And now? Sure, we’ve got Emojis and Unicode characters and keyboards that appear on the phone screen, but one may argue that finding that perfect Emoji for that one situation is slower than actually just texting the words one would be experiencing. Now that is by no means a good example, as innovation and creativity change as the ages go by, but I would suppose there is value in being in an environment that limits one’s resources if the goal is to produce an innovative work or to force oneself achieve a given result with few resources. A “challenge mode” for real life, if you will.

I mean, why do you suppose things like game jams and hackathons are popular? If anyone wanted to work for 48 hours straight on a single project, the I.T. industry will certainly welcome you with open arms. Most people would conclude that those sort of activities are aimed at specific people with a certain interest in those events. I would add that by putting yourself in a situation that deliberately limits your resources, you are effectively forced to create something purely out of challenge. After all, it is by adversity that a character is grown and harnessed. Even looking at the average man now. He has all the resources to achieve almost any goal in the secular world. Get fit, learn Spanish, get in touch with one’s spiritual side and eat one of those hard to get ghost pepper Mamee Noodle snacks. And yet? Here he is, slumped into his beanbag chair scrolling through Instagram and beating all those Like buttons into submission. Isn’t this just a lack of motivation? Perhaps that is one valid way of perceiving the situation. But what if we were to frame it from a resourcing perspective? Succinctly put: Man has too many tools and resources on hand to make a singular decision about what to do, and as such, evaluates the task with least effort before deciding his next ambition.

This is likely why it is so important for one to remove all possible distractions when aiming for a particular goal that has some level of urgency. Remember when I used to talk about going through the HSC and the measures I’d go to ensure I would only focus on that task? It’s, in a sense, forcing the brain to assess what it can do and drawing the conclusion that the only resources on hand are to focus on the HSC, therefore the task to do is to focus on the HSC. That’s not so say that having tunnel vision is completely beneficial, one should carefully tread the tightrope between a shotgun approach to completing tasks versus singling out one task to fulfill to completion. It’s always going to be a balancing act with these things, and different stages of life decidedly call for different approaches to the various problems laid out before oneself. But it’s also equally important to get that environment right so that the correct approach is properly optimised.

But can an environment be too limiting? Suppose you have to give a presentation within 15 seconds to summarise 15 years of work? Well, you could just basically say “I completed this project and these two other things” and that may very well suffice. Perhaps, for the adventurous, one may go down the more philosophical route and say “I rediscovered myself and my ambitions” and also be equally valid. One may even conclude that output produced in an environment of limiting factors is more interesting because one has to carefully consider how to solve a certain problems with meticulous consideration for the items used to represent such a solution. And the fact that such a result could be equally achieved with more resources on hand, while not to the same standard, even shows a little something about the person in the process.

Of course, this is by no means to justify the under-provisioning of resources to the average countryman, rather there may be some situations where you need to specially craft the correct environment, be it many or few resources of a specific kind, in order to create that environment for producing a certain outcome. Here’s another example: Growing a durian tree. Even with all the resources on hand, you very well can’t do a whole lot if you only have a slab of concrete to work with as your working land. Likewise, given an entire city, the problem could be equally difficult in just finding the best place to start growing. But what if you just started in the corner of a public park, say a 1 metre by 1 metre square of land? Well, you don’t need to choose a location anymore as it’s pre-selected and the land is hopefully fertile enough to actually grow stuff in. So you work in that 1 square metre of land until something sprouts. You may also find that you happened to be placed next to a fence, which provides shade at non-optimal times of the day. So what then? You go and tear down said fence as one option, or try to grow the durian tree such that it exceeds its orignal bounds and gets sufficient sunlight. But these solutions may not manifest when given the general problem of “This tree is not receiving sunlight - Fix it.“ and so by defining some actual boundaries and parameters to the actual problem, a workable solution can be obtained.

It seems that this week’s post is more on examples than arbitrary talk, so I think (therefore I have?) demonstrated the point as clear as methylamine: If you want a solution, you gotta get the approach right. And to genuinely find that right approach, you gotta get the environment right. And to really get that environment right, sometimes you just have to reduce the number of available resources on hand so you don’t end up sidetracked and distracted.

‘Til next time, young padawan.

As I said to someone before: “How is this a chidrens’ snack?!”

[quastills-doowit-beebee]

WHAT TO DO AT AN ICE CHECKPOINT: ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE A WHITE CITIZEN 🗣

Hello, I saw someone on here post that they encountered an ICE checkpoint in NYC. Here's the deal:

🔘 Border Patrol can verify citizenship within 100 miles of a border or "external boundary." This includes coastlines, so NYC, Philadelphia, and all of NJ are within the 100-mile zone.

🔘 Border patrol can only ask brief questions about citizenship, and they cannot hold you for an extended time without cause.

🔘 You always have the right to remain silent. You do not need to answer their questions.

🔘 WITH THAT SAID, IF YOU ARE A BORN CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES AND ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE WHITE, YOU NEED TO SPEAK THE FUCK UP. 🗣

🔘 The most important acts of resistance are the small ones. Make it difficult and uncomfortable for ICE agents to do their jobs. They are counting on citizens to turn a blind eye and allow them to deport undocumented citizens without challenge. Disabuse of that notion.

🔘 If you are on a train, bus, or anything else and ICE or CBP boards, you need to stand up and loudly let everyone know that they have the right to remain silent or only answer questions in the presence of an attorney, no matter their citizenship or immigration status. There have been numerous reports that confronting the agents in this way has caused them to leave without verifying citizenship. THIS CAN SAVE LIVES. 🙌

🔘 If you see anyone being held up by immigration, loudly ask if they are being detained and if they are free to go.

🔘 Immigration officers cannot detain anyone without reasonable suspicion, an agent must have specific facts about you that make it reasonable to believe you are committing or committed, a violation of immigration law or federal law. If an agent detains you, you can ask for their basis for reasonable suspicion, and they should tell you.

🔘 Always say no to a search and let everyone know that they can and should refuse consent to a search.

🔘 They cannot search or arrest anyone without facts about that make it probable that they are committing, or committed, a violation of immigration law or federal law.

🔘 Silence alone meets neither of these standards. Nor does race or ethnicity alone suffice for either probable cause or reasonable suspicion

🔘 As white citizens, we have a level of privilege which protects us from retaliation from ICE for being "rude" and making a scene, which makes it our DUTY to speak up and make sure people without the same privilege know their rights. GET LOUD. YELL. YELL IN SPANISH IF YOU KNOW IT. LET PEOPLE KNOW THEY DON'T HAVE TO SAY SHIT. MAKE ICE UNCOMFORTABLE. THROW SAND IN THE GEARS OF WHITE SUPREMACY.

⭐️ Bonus info- ⭐️

🔘It is perfectly legal to record immigration agents as long as you are not on government property or at a port of entry. If your train/bus gets board, pull your phone out and start videotaping immediately.

🔘 If you are detained or see someone getting detained, get the agent's name, number, and any other identifying information. Get it on tape.

🔘 Contact the ACLU if you see someone's rights being violated.

(this has been copy and pasted, emoji's added to hopefully make it a little easier to read)

[koffeefrkeleven]

Helpful Info.

Fuck ICE. Make it difficult for them:  WHAT TO DO AT AN ICE CHECKPOINT: ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE A WHITE CITIZEN 🗣Hello, I saw someone on here post that they encountered an ICE checkpoint in NYC. Here's the deal:🔘 Border Patrol can verify citizenship within 100 miles of a border or "external boundary." This includes coastlines, so NYC, Philadelphia, and all of NJ are within the 100-mile zone.🔘 Border patrol can only ask brief questions about citizenship, and they cannot hold you for an extended time without cause.🔘 You always have the right to remain silent. You do not need to answer their questions.🔘 WITH THAT SAID, IF YOU ARE A BORN CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES AND ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE WHITE, YOU NEED TO SPEAK THE FUCK UP. 🗣🔘 The most important acts of resistance are the small ones. Make it difficult and uncomfortable for ICE agents to do their jobs. They are counting on citizens to turn a blind eye and allow them to deport undocumented citizens without challenge. Disabuse of that notion.🔘 If you are on a train, bus, or anything else and ICE or CBP boards, you need to stand up and loudly let everyone know that they have the right to remain silent or only answer questions in the presence of an attorney, no matter their citizenship or immigration status. There have been numerous reports that confronting the agents in this way has caused them to leave without verifying citizenship. THIS CAN SAVE LIVES. 🙌🔘 If you see anyone being held up by immigration, loudly ask if they are being detained and if they are free to go.🔘 Immigration officers cannot detain anyone without reasonable suspicion, an agent must have specific facts about you that make it reasonable to believe you are committing or committed, a violation of immigration law or federal law. If an agent detains you, you can ask for their basis for reasonable suspicion, and they should tell you.🔘 Always say no to a search and let everyone know that they can and should refuse consent to a search.🔘 They cannot search or arrest anyone without facts about that make it probable that they are committing, or committed, a violation of immigration law or federal law.🔘 Silence alone meets neither of these standards. Nor does race or ethnicity alone suffice for either probable cause or reasonable suspicion🔘 As white citizens, we have a level of privilege which protects us from retaliation from ICE for being "rude" and making a scene, which makes it our DUTY to speak up and make sure people without the same privilege know their rights. GET LOUD. YELL. YELL IN SPANISH IF YOU KNOW IT. LET PEOPLE KNOW THEY DON'T HAVE TO SAY SHIT. MAKE ICE UNCOMFORTABLE. THROW SAND IN THE GEARS OF WHITE SUPREMACY.⭐️ Bonus info- ⭐️ 🔘It is perfectly legal to record immigration agents as long as you are not on government property or at a port of entry. If your train/bus gets board, pull your phone out and start videotaping immediately.🔘 If you are detained or see someone getting detained, get the agent's name, number, and any other identifying information. Get it on tape.🔘 Contact the ACLU if you see someone's rights being violated.(this has been copy and pasted, emoji's added to hopefully make it a little easier to read)

[onlinemarketingcourses]

Lessons learned from launching 100+ content-led link building campaigns Search Engine Watch

Throughout 2018, I was responsible for the launch of just over 100 content-led link building campaigns.

They all had a shared goal of earning links and coverage from the world’s biggest publishers for clients across retail, travel, finance, and other sectors.

Here’s a small selection of publications where I earned links from across the year:

These links, however, came from articles based around content campaigns.

They ran with headlines such as:

In total, upon looking back on the year, I earned over 2,500 links from a whole host of publications. That taught me a fair few things about link building.

You see, link building, especially when using digital PR as the primary tactic, evolves quickly.

Some approaches which worked two years ago aren’t worth bothering about today. And even those tactics which do still deliver keep changing on an almost continual basis.

So how do you make sure that, as a link builder, you’re continuing to stay ahead of your competitors?

It’s simple; you run a fairly large number of campaigns, analyze the data you collected from these and refine your approaches.

I looked back at 2018 and did just that, and below you’ll see the key lessons which I’ve pulled out and learned.

1. Journalists cover stories, not content

Ask a journalist what their job role is, and they’ll likely respond that it’s to tell stories to their audience — not to cover content produced by marketing agencies.

When creating and promoting content campaigns, you need to know what your story is. What headlines could a journalist take from a campaign?

“Brand X Launches An Infographic Which Shows How Much Kim Kardashian Earns” is NOT a story. It’s simply a statement about a format.

“Kim Kardashian Earns The Average UK Salary In 6 Hours” on the other hand, IS a story.

Don’t lose focus on the stories in a campaign and keep asking yourself what these are whilst it evolves. Without stories and enticing headlines, you’ll struggle to land coverage and links.

2. Forget about content formats until you’ve found your headlines

One of the biggest mistakes made in ideation and brainstorming sessions is to go in with a format-first approach.

By this, I mean adopting a mindset where you make a decision to design an infographic or launch an interactive asset before you know the story behind it.

As far as I’m concerned, this often leads to underperforming campaigns, for the simple reason that focus moves away from the story onto the format.

If you’ve got a great story to tell, the format becomes less important and can often be executed in a number of different ways. It’s the whole concept of letting the story do the talking.

Avoid talking about formats until you’ve got a solid story in place. You’ll ensure your primary focus remains on headlines and hooks to publishers whilst coming up with concepts.

3. Campaign concepts need to be validated

There’s nothing more frustrating than having a great concept for it to later be stopped in its tracks for a reason you hadn’t considered.

Trust me when I say I’ve learned the hard way here.

It’s important that you take the time to validate ideas with key stakeholders to prevent delays or roadblocks further down the line.

Common roadblocks to campaigns and things which need to be checked before investing too much into a campaign include:

Data sources – is the data which you need for your campaign available? Great sources include public data, social statistics, internal company data and research, surveys and more. You just need to make sure you can get what you need and, if you can’t, there’s a way to collect this within your budget and other restrictions.

Legal restrictions – be sure to have a chat with your own (or your client’s) legal team to validate concepts. If let’s say, the campaign is being run for a financially regulated brand, there may be things to take into consideration which a marketer wouldn’t usually think of. Also, legal teams are a great way to double check that there are no restrictions on the data you want to use.

Brand restrictions – whilst you need to fully understand that content marketing or digital PR and advertising aren’t the same things, there’s often a requirement to adhere to brand guidelines. Again, get feedback from various teams at the start of a campaign and everyone’s input can be considered as it moves forward.

An audience of journalists – is there an active pool of journalists who regularly write about topics relating to your campaign concept? If not, ask yourself who you’re going to outreach to. There’s nothing wrong with launching campaigns in small niches, there’s often less noise to cut through which can maximize performance. However, you need to understand the link potential and be realistic on this stance before investing heavily. Unless there’s an active audience of journalists and publications, be mindful that this can present further challenges at the outreach stage.

4. The wider your audience, the more potential to earn links

Are you limiting the impact which your campaign can have in terms of the number of quality links earned by not thinking wide enough?

As an agency, over 60% of the links we earn come from international publications; for us, that means those based outside of the UK.

With this in mind, always consider how you can make a campaign appeal to a wider audience simply by thinking a little bigger.

To bring in a working example:

The best London boroughs for foodie tourists – has the potential to pitch to niche food, London travel, and regional news publications.

Best city in the UK for foodie tourists – has the potential to pitch to the above as well as national news publications too.

The best country in the world for foodie tourists – has the potential to pitch to all of the above as well as international and global publications.

The base concept on these is the same: studying the best locations for foodie tourists.

You can clearly see, however, how the audience can be maximized (and, as such, the link potential) by widening the focus of the campaign.

You can also achieve this be thinking, at the ideation stage, on how you can take a campaign out to other verticals.

5. Your campaign needs to be linkable

Despite what many say, a journalist doesn’t owe you a link. Not even if they cover your campaign.

Of course, as SEOs, we place great value on links and that’s often the end goal. However, it’s easy to forget that in order to earn links, a campaign must actually be linkable.

During ideation and production, you need to consider a campaign’s linkability throughout.

What do I mean by this?

If there’s nothing worth linking to (not referencing stats and quotes and the like here), why should a journalist link? A brand mention would suffice.

A press release isn’t usually linkable, neither is an infographic hosted on your blog (a publisher could take the visual, upload to their own CMS and reference you as the creator).

A link needs to make sense to the story and become a vital part of any article which is published.

Launched a tool or interactive which is being written about? It’s hard to tell the story without a link being in place. Carried out a data study with multiple angles? It’s likely that a journalist has covered one hook and a link adds value, allowing a reader to study the findings in more depth.

The more a link makes sense to be included, the easier you’ll find it to minimize unlinked brand mentions.

6. You need to spend time optimizing & testing different outreach email subject lines

Too many people focus their efforts on writing a great outreach email. But if it’s not being opened, no one is reading it.

The most important element of any outreach email, in my opinion, and experience, is the subject line. The more opens you get, the more people are reading the email and, hopefully, click through to the campaign.

If a journalist hasn’t opened your email, they’re not going to see your campaign and, of course, certainly won’t be linking.

How can you improve open rates, however?

Use emojis – it may sound simple but in a busy inbox, you need to stand out. We’ve found the inclusion of emojis to be a great way to do this. Don’t go overboard, but clever inclusion can draw eyes to your email over others’.

Don’t be cryptic – it’s tempting to try and engage a journalist to open your email by being cryptic and using mysterious subject lines which try to use intrigue. But this rarely works. Journalists are busy people and we need to accept this. Get straight to the point with subject lines.

Use key statistics – Include key campaign statistics in subject lines to make it instantly clear what your story is. Lead with the most shocking and surprising stats and use this as a way to gain opens. If you’ve got a great story and headline, this is where it’s the most effective.

Use coverage headlines – if you’ve already had some early coverage on a campaign, test the headline published from one of these as your subject line. Journalists are often better at writing enticing headlines than marketers so don’t be afraid to try this out. It’s often successful at landing further links!

7. Not every campaign earns hundreds of links

When you’ve had a great campaign idea it’s easy to set your sights on viral success. However, the biggest lesson we all need to learn is that this isn’t the norm.

Yes, I’ve had campaigns which have earned link volumes into the thousands in just a few weeks, but it’s not how most campaigns play out and that’s OK.

Link building is hard, and it’s only getting harder.

Does that mean that links are becoming less impactful? In my opinion, not at all. The exact opposite, in fact.

Whereas a few years back it was relatively easy to earn links from top-tier media with sub-par infographics and listicles, times have changed.

A campaign doesn’t need to earn hundreds of links to be successful and deliver the results which it needs to.

Be realistic.

Our average link acquisition per campaign in 2018 was 32 unique domains.

However, our focus is typically not upon straight numbers earned. There has to be consideration towards the quality of the links you’re building. Trust me when I say that 10 links from top-tier publications will do far more for your brand than 50 from bloggers.

Stop placing a focus on the number of links you’re earning but start to look at other metrics which reflect the quality of the publications.

8. Sustainable link building > One viral campaign

Taking the above point into consideration, it’s important that you’re working on a sustained link building strategy.

A one-off viral hit of links is nice for your ego. But does it really have the impact on your search engine visibility that you’re focusing upon?

Rarely.

Link building needs to be a sustained activity and the most effective campaigns are those which earn links month in month out, not once.

Take the time to map out a strategy which earns links on an ongoing basis and you’ll see more benefit to your brand. If one of those campaigns goes viral and earns hundreds of links, that’s fantastic (and as part of a wider campaign there’s absolutely benefits to be had there). But you need to ensure your primary focus is upon a long-term strategy for continued results.

Above all else, you need to make sure you’re collecting data around your own campaigns and using this to evolve your approach.

These are the lessons which I took away this past year from our own campaigns, but they may not be the same for everyone. Use them as inspiration to gather thoughts around areas to test and changes to make, and combine with your own ideas and thoughts to continue to push your campaigns forwards.

James Brockbank is the Managing Director of Digitaloft.

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[alanajacksontx]

Lessons learned from launching 100+ content-led link building campaigns

Throughout 2018, I was responsible for the launch of just over 100 content-led link building campaigns.

They all had a shared goal of earning links and coverage from the world’s biggest publishers for clients across retail, travel, finance, and other sectors.

Here’s a small selection of publications where I earned links from across the year:

These links, however, came from articles based around content campaigns.

They ran with headlines such as:

In total, upon looking back on the year, I earned over 2,500 links from a whole host of publications. That taught me a fair few things about link building.

You see, link building, especially when using digital PR as the primary tactic, evolves quickly.

Some approaches which worked two years ago aren’t worth bothering about today. And even those tactics which do still deliver keep changing on an almost continual basis.

So how do you make sure that, as a link builder, you’re continuing to stay ahead of your competitors?

It’s simple; you run a fairly large number of campaigns, analyze the data you collected from these and refine your approaches.

I looked back at 2018 and did just that, and below you’ll see the key lessons which I���ve pulled out and learned.

1. Journalists cover stories, not content

Ask a journalist what their job role is, and they’ll likely respond that it’s to tell stories to their audience — not to cover content produced by marketing agencies.

When creating and promoting content campaigns, you need to know what your story is. What headlines could a journalist take from a campaign?

“Brand X Launches An Infographic Which Shows How Much Kim Kardashian Earns” is NOT a story. It’s simply a statement about a format.

“Kim Kardashian Earns The Average UK Salary In 6 Hours” on the other hand, IS a story.

Don’t lose focus on the stories in a campaign and keep asking yourself what these are whilst it evolves. Without stories and enticing headlines, you’ll struggle to land coverage and links.

2. Forget about content formats until you’ve found your headlines

One of the biggest mistakes made in ideation and brainstorming sessions is to go in with a format-first approach.

By this, I mean adopting a mindset where you make a decision to design an infographic or launch an interactive asset before you know the story behind it.

As far as I’m concerned, this often leads to underperforming campaigns, for the simple reason that focus moves away from the story onto the format.

If you’ve got a great story to tell, the format becomes less important and can often be executed in a number of different ways. It’s the whole concept of letting the story do the talking.

Avoid talking about formats until you’ve got a solid story in place. You’ll ensure your primary focus remains on headlines and hooks to publishers whilst coming up with concepts.

3. Campaign concepts need to be validated

There’s nothing more frustrating than having a great concept for it to later be stopped in its tracks for a reason you hadn’t considered.

Trust me when I say I’ve learned the hard way here.

It’s important that you take the time to validate ideas with key stakeholders to prevent delays or roadblocks further down the line.

Common roadblocks to campaigns and things which need to be checked before investing too much into a campaign include:

Data sources – is the data which you need for your campaign available? Great sources include public data, social statistics, internal company data and research, surveys and more. You just need to make sure you can get what you need and, if you can’t, there’s a way to collect this within your budget and other restrictions.

Legal restrictions – be sure to have a chat with your own (or your client’s) legal team to validate concepts. If let’s say, the campaign is being run for a financially regulated brand, there may be things to take into consideration which a marketer wouldn’t usually think of. Also, legal teams are a great way to double check that there are no restrictions on the data you want to use.

Brand restrictions – whilst you need to fully understand that content marketing or digital PR and advertising aren’t the same things, there’s often a requirement to adhere to brand guidelines. Again, get feedback from various teams at the start of a campaign and everyone’s input can be considered as it moves forward.

An audience of journalists – is there an active pool of journalists who regularly write about topics relating to your campaign concept? If not, ask yourself who you’re going to outreach to. There’s nothing wrong with launching campaigns in small niches, there’s often less noise to cut through which can maximize performance. However, you need to understand the link potential and be realistic on this stance before investing heavily. Unless there’s an active audience of journalists and publications, be mindful that this can present further challenges at the outreach stage.

4. The wider your audience, the more potential to earn links

Are you limiting the impact which your campaign can have in terms of the number of quality links earned by not thinking wide enough?

As an agency, over 60% of the links we earn come from international publications; for us, that means those based outside of the UK.

With this in mind, always consider how you can make a campaign appeal to a wider audience simply by thinking a little bigger.

To bring in a working example:

The best London boroughs for foodie tourists – has the potential to pitch to niche food, London travel, and regional news publications.

Best city in the UK for foodie tourists – has the potential to pitch to the above as well as national news publications too.

The best country in the world for foodie tourists – has the potential to pitch to all of the above as well as international and global publications.

The base concept on these is the same: studying the best locations for foodie tourists.

You can clearly see, however, how the audience can be maximized (and, as such, the link potential) by widening the focus of the campaign.

You can also achieve this be thinking, at the ideation stage, on how you can take a campaign out to other verticals.

5. Your campaign needs to be linkable

Despite what many say, a journalist doesn’t owe you a link. Not even if they cover your campaign.

Of course, as SEOs, we place great value on links and that’s often the end goal. However, it’s easy to forget that in order to earn links, a campaign must actually be linkable.

During ideation and production, you need to consider a campaign’s linkability throughout.

What do I mean by this?

If there’s nothing worth linking to (not referencing stats and quotes and the like here), why should a journalist link? A brand mention would suffice.

A press release isn’t usually linkable, neither is an infographic hosted on your blog (a publisher could take the visual, upload to their own CMS and reference you as the creator).

A link needs to make sense to the story and become a vital part of any article which is published.

Launched a tool or interactive which is being written about? It’s hard to tell the story without a link being in place. Carried out a data study with multiple angles? It’s likely that a journalist has covered one hook and a link adds value, allowing a reader to study the findings in more depth.

The more a link makes sense to be included, the easier you’ll find it to minimize unlinked brand mentions.

6. You need to spend time optimizing & testing different outreach email subject lines

Too many people focus their efforts on writing a great outreach email. But if it’s not being opened, no one is reading it.

The most important element of any outreach email, in my opinion, and experience, is the subject line. The more opens you get, the more people are reading the email and, hopefully, click through to the campaign.

If a journalist hasn’t opened your email, they’re not going to see your campaign and, of course, certainly won’t be linking.

How can you improve open rates, however?

Use emojis – it may sound simple but in a busy inbox, you need to stand out. We’ve found the inclusion of emojis to be a great way to do this. Don’t go overboard, but clever inclusion can draw eyes to your email over others’.

Don’t be cryptic – it’s tempting to try and engage a journalist to open your email by being cryptic and using mysterious subject lines which try to use intrigue. But this rarely works. Journalists are busy people and we need to accept this. Get straight to the point with subject lines.

Use key statistics – Include key campaign statistics in subject lines to make it instantly clear what your story is. Lead with the most shocking and surprising stats and use this as a way to gain opens. If you’ve got a great story and headline, this is where it’s the most effective.

Use coverage headlines – if you’ve already had some early coverage on a campaign, test the headline published from one of these as your subject line. Journalists are often better at writing enticing headlines than marketers so don’t be afraid to try this out. It’s often successful at landing further links!

7. Not every campaign earns hundreds of links

When you’ve had a great campaign idea it’s easy to set your sights on viral success. However, the biggest lesson we all need to learn is that this isn’t the norm.

Yes, I’ve had campaigns which have earned link volumes into the thousands in just a few weeks, but it’s not how most campaigns play out and that’s OK.

Link building is hard, and it’s only getting harder.

Does that mean that links are becoming less impactful? In my opinion, not at all. The exact opposite, in fact.

Whereas a few years back it was relatively easy to earn links from top-tier media with sub-par infographics and listicles, times have changed.

A campaign doesn’t need to earn hundreds of links to be successful and deliver the results which it needs to.

Be realistic.

Our average link acquisition per campaign in 2018 was 32 unique domains.

However, our focus is typically not upon straight numbers earned. There has to be consideration towards the quality of the links you’re building. Trust me when I say that 10 links from top-tier publications will do far more for your brand than 50 from bloggers.

Stop placing a focus on the number of links you’re earning but start to look at other metrics which reflect the quality of the publications.

8. Sustainable link building > One viral campaign

Taking the above point into consideration, it’s important that you’re working on a sustained link building strategy.

A one-off viral hit of links is nice for your ego. But does it really have the impact on your search engine visibility that you’re focusing upon?

Rarely.

Link building needs to be a sustained activity and the most effective campaigns are those which earn links month in month out, not once.

Take the time to map out a strategy which earns links on an ongoing basis and you’ll see more benefit to your brand. If one of those campaigns goes viral and earns hundreds of links, that’s fantastic (and as part of a wider campaign there’s absolutely benefits to be had there). But you need to ensure your primary focus is upon a long-term strategy for continued results.

Above all else, you need to make sure you’re collecting data around your own campaigns and using this to evolve your approach.

These are the lessons which I took away this past year from our own campaigns, but they may not be the same for everyone. Use them as inspiration to gather thoughts around areas to test and changes to make, and combine with your own ideas and thoughts to continue to push your campaigns forwards.

James Brockbank is the Managing Director of Digitaloft.

The post Lessons learned from launching 100+ content-led link building campaigns appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from IM Tips And Tricks https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/14/lessons-learned-from-launching-100-content-led-link-building-campaigns/ from Rising Phoenix SEO https://risingphxseo.tumblr.com/post/182981406435

[kellykperez]

Lessons learned from launching 100+ content-led link building campaigns

Throughout 2018, I was responsible for the launch of just over 100 content-led link building campaigns.

They all had a shared goal of earning links and coverage from the world’s biggest publishers for clients across retail, travel, finance, and other sectors.

Here’s a small selection of publications where I earned links from across the year:

These links, however, came from articles based around content campaigns.

They ran with headlines such as:

In total, upon looking back on the year, I earned over 2,500 links from a whole host of publications. That taught me a fair few things about link building.

You see, link building, especially when using digital PR as the primary tactic, evolves quickly.

Some approaches which worked two years ago aren’t worth bothering about today. And even those tactics which do still deliver keep changing on an almost continual basis.

So how do you make sure that, as a link builder, you’re continuing to stay ahead of your competitors?

It’s simple; you run a fairly large number of campaigns, analyze the data you collected from these and refine your approaches.

I looked back at 2018 and did just that, and below you’ll see the key lessons which I’ve pulled out and learned.

1. Journalists cover stories, not content

Ask a journalist what their job role is, and they’ll likely respond that it’s to tell stories to their audience — not to cover content produced by marketing agencies.

When creating and promoting content campaigns, you need to know what your story is. What headlines could a journalist take from a campaign?

“Brand X Launches An Infographic Which Shows How Much Kim Kardashian Earns” is NOT a story. It’s simply a statement about a format.

“Kim Kardashian Earns The Average UK Salary In 6 Hours” on the other hand, IS a story.

Don’t lose focus on the stories in a campaign and keep asking yourself what these are whilst it evolves. Without stories and enticing headlines, you’ll struggle to land coverage and links.

2. Forget about content formats until you’ve found your headlines

One of the biggest mistakes made in ideation and brainstorming sessions is to go in with a format-first approach.

By this, I mean adopting a mindset where you make a decision to design an infographic or launch an interactive asset before you know the story behind it.

As far as I’m concerned, this often leads to underperforming campaigns, for the simple reason that focus moves away from the story onto the format.

If you’ve got a great story to tell, the format becomes less important and can often be executed in a number of different ways. It’s the whole concept of letting the story do the talking.

Avoid talking about formats until you’ve got a solid story in place. You’ll ensure your primary focus remains on headlines and hooks to publishers whilst coming up with concepts.

3. Campaign concepts need to be validated

There’s nothing more frustrating than having a great concept for it to later be stopped in its tracks for a reason you hadn’t considered.

Trust me when I say I’ve learned the hard way here.

It’s important that you take the time to validate ideas with key stakeholders to prevent delays or roadblocks further down the line.

Common roadblocks to campaigns and things which need to be checked before investing too much into a campaign include:

Data sources – is the data which you need for your campaign available? Great sources include public data, social statistics, internal company data and research, surveys and more. You just need to make sure you can get what you need and, if you can’t, there’s a way to collect this within your budget and other restrictions.

Legal restrictions – be sure to have a chat with your own (or your client’s) legal team to validate concepts. If let’s say, the campaign is being run for a financially regulated brand, there may be things to take into consideration which a marketer wouldn’t usually think of. Also, legal teams are a great way to double check that there are no restrictions on the data you want to use.

Brand restrictions – whilst you need to fully understand that content marketing or digital PR and advertising aren’t the same things, there’s often a requirement to adhere to brand guidelines. Again, get feedback from various teams at the start of a campaign and everyone’s input can be considered as it moves forward.

An audience of journalists – is there an active pool of journalists who regularly write about topics relating to your campaign concept? If not, ask yourself who you’re going to outreach to. There’s nothing wrong with launching campaigns in small niches, there’s often less noise to cut through which can maximize performance. However, you need to understand the link potential and be realistic on this stance before investing heavily. Unless there’s an active audience of journalists and publications, be mindful that this can present further challenges at the outreach stage.

4. The wider your audience, the more potential to earn links

Are you limiting the impact which your campaign can have in terms of the number of quality links earned by not thinking wide enough?

As an agency, over 60% of the links we earn come from international publications; for us, that means those based outside of the UK.

With this in mind, always consider how you can make a campaign appeal to a wider audience simply by thinking a little bigger.

To bring in a working example:

The best London boroughs for foodie tourists – has the potential to pitch to niche food, London travel, and regional news publications.

Best city in the UK for foodie tourists – has the potential to pitch to the above as well as national news publications too.

The best country in the world for foodie tourists – has the potential to pitch to all of the above as well as international and global publications.

The base concept on these is the same: studying the best locations for foodie tourists.

You can clearly see, however, how the audience can be maximized (and, as such, the link potential) by widening the focus of the campaign.

You can also achieve this be thinking, at the ideation stage, on how you can take a campaign out to other verticals.

5. Your campaign needs to be linkable

Despite what many say, a journalist doesn’t owe you a link. Not even if they cover your campaign.

Of course, as SEOs, we place great value on links and that’s often the end goal. However, it’s easy to forget that in order to earn links, a campaign must actually be linkable.

During ideation and production, you need to consider a campaign’s linkability throughout.

What do I mean by this?

If there’s nothing worth linking to (not referencing stats and quotes and the like here), why should a journalist link? A brand mention would suffice.

A press release isn’t usually linkable, neither is an infographic hosted on your blog (a publisher could take the visual, upload to their own CMS and reference you as the creator).

A link needs to make sense to the story and become a vital part of any article which is published.

Launched a tool or interactive which is being written about? It’s hard to tell the story without a link being in place. Carried out a data study with multiple angles? It’s likely that a journalist has covered one hook and a link adds value, allowing a reader to study the findings in more depth.

The more a link makes sense to be included, the easier you’ll find it to minimize unlinked brand mentions.

6. You need to spend time optimizing & testing different outreach email subject lines

Too many people focus their efforts on writing a great outreach email. But if it’s not being opened, no one is reading it.

The most important element of any outreach email, in my opinion, and experience, is the subject line. The more opens you get, the more people are reading the email and, hopefully, click through to the campaign.

If a journalist hasn’t opened your email, they’re not going to see your campaign and, of course, certainly won’t be linking.

How can you improve open rates, however?

Use emojis – it may sound simple but in a busy inbox, you need to stand out. We’ve found the inclusion of emojis to be a great way to do this. Don’t go overboard, but clever inclusion can draw eyes to your email over others’.

Don’t be cryptic – it’s tempting to try and engage a journalist to open your email by being cryptic and using mysterious subject lines which try to use intrigue. But this rarely works. Journalists are busy people and we need to accept this. Get straight to the point with subject lines.

Use key statistics – Include key campaign statistics in subject lines to make it instantly clear what your story is. Lead with the most shocking and surprising stats and use this as a way to gain opens. If you’ve got a great story and headline, this is where it’s the most effective.

Use coverage headlines – if you’ve already had some early coverage on a campaign, test the headline published from one of these as your subject line. Journalists are often better at writing enticing headlines than marketers so don’t be afraid to try this out. It’s often successful at landing further links!

7. Not every campaign earns hundreds of links

When you’ve had a great campaign idea it’s easy to set your sights on viral success. However, the biggest lesson we all need to learn is that this isn’t the norm.

Yes, I’ve had campaigns which have earned link volumes into the thousands in just a few weeks, but it’s not how most campaigns play out and that’s OK.

Link building is hard, and it’s only getting harder.

Does that mean that links are becoming less impactful? In my opinion, not at all. The exact opposite, in fact.

Whereas a few years back it was relatively easy to earn links from top-tier media with sub-par infographics and listicles, times have changed.

A campaign doesn’t need to earn hundreds of links to be successful and deliver the results which it needs to.

Be realistic.

Our average link acquisition per campaign in 2018 was 32 unique domains.

However, our focus is typically not upon straight numbers earned. There has to be consideration towards the quality of the links you’re building. Trust me when I say that 10 links from top-tier publications will do far more for your brand than 50 from bloggers.

Stop placing a focus on the number of links you’re earning but start to look at other metrics which reflect the quality of the publications.

8. Sustainable link building > One viral campaign

Taking the above point into consideration, it’s important that you’re working on a sustained link building strategy.

A one-off viral hit of links is nice for your ego. But does it really have the impact on your search engine visibility that you’re focusing upon?

Rarely.

Link building needs to be a sustained activity and the most effective campaigns are those which earn links month in month out, not once.

Take the time to map out a strategy which earns links on an ongoing basis and you’ll see more benefit to your brand. If one of those campaigns goes viral and earns hundreds of links, that’s fantastic (and as part of a wider campaign there’s absolutely benefits to be had there). But you need to ensure your primary focus is upon a long-term strategy for continued results.

Above all else, you need to make sure you’re collecting data around your own campaigns and using this to evolve your approach.

These are the lessons which I took away this past year from our own campaigns, but they may not be the same for everyone. Use them as inspiration to gather thoughts around areas to test and changes to make, and combine with your own ideas and thoughts to continue to push your campaigns forwards.

James Brockbank is the Managing Director of Digitaloft.

The post Lessons learned from launching 100+ content-led link building campaigns appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/14/lessons-learned-from-launching-100-content-led-link-building-campaigns/ from Rising Phoenix SEO http://risingphoenixseo.blogspot.com/2019/02/lessons-learned-from-launching-100.html

[bambiguertinus]

Lessons learned from launching 100+ content-led link building campaigns

Throughout 2018, I was responsible for the launch of just over 100 content-led link building campaigns.

They all had a shared goal of earning links and coverage from the world’s biggest publishers for clients across retail, travel, finance, and other sectors.

Here’s a small selection of publications where I earned links from across the year:

These links, however, came from articles based around content campaigns.

They ran with headlines such as:

In total, upon looking back on the year, I earned over 2,500 links from a whole host of publications. That taught me a fair few things about link building.

You see, link building, especially when using digital PR as the primary tactic, evolves quickly.

Some approaches which worked two years ago aren’t worth bothering about today. And even those tactics which do still deliver keep changing on an almost continual basis.

So how do you make sure that, as a link builder, you’re continuing to stay ahead of your competitors?

It’s simple; you run a fairly large number of campaigns, analyze the data you collected from these and refine your approaches.

I looked back at 2018 and did just that, and below you’ll see the key lessons which I’ve pulled out and learned.

1. Journalists cover stories, not content

Ask a journalist what their job role is, and they’ll likely respond that it’s to tell stories to their audience — not to cover content produced by marketing agencies.

When creating and promoting content campaigns, you need to know what your story is. What headlines could a journalist take from a campaign?

“Brand X Launches An Infographic Which Shows How Much Kim Kardashian Earns” is NOT a story. It’s simply a statement about a format.

“Kim Kardashian Earns The Average UK Salary In 6 Hours” on the other hand, IS a story.

Don’t lose focus on the stories in a campaign and keep asking yourself what these are whilst it evolves. Without stories and enticing headlines, you’ll struggle to land coverage and links.

2. Forget about content formats until you’ve found your headlines

One of the biggest mistakes made in ideation and brainstorming sessions is to go in with a format-first approach.

By this, I mean adopting a mindset where you make a decision to design an infographic or launch an interactive asset before you know the story behind it.

As far as I’m concerned, this often leads to underperforming campaigns, for the simple reason that focus moves away from the story onto the format.

If you’ve got a great story to tell, the format becomes less important and can often be executed in a number of different ways. It’s the whole concept of letting the story do the talking.

Avoid talking about formats until you’ve got a solid story in place. You’ll ensure your primary focus remains on headlines and hooks to publishers whilst coming up with concepts.

3. Campaign concepts need to be validated

There’s nothing more frustrating than having a great concept for it to later be stopped in its tracks for a reason you hadn’t considered.

Trust me when I say I’ve learned the hard way here.

It’s important that you take the time to validate ideas with key stakeholders to prevent delays or roadblocks further down the line.

Common roadblocks to campaigns and things which need to be checked before investing too much into a campaign include:

Data sources – is the data which you need for your campaign available? Great sources include public data, social statistics, internal company data and research, surveys and more. You just need to make sure you can get what you need and, if you can’t, there’s a way to collect this within your budget and other restrictions.

Legal restrictions – be sure to have a chat with your own (or your client’s) legal team to validate concepts. If let’s say, the campaign is being run for a financially regulated brand, there may be things to take into consideration which a marketer wouldn’t usually think of. Also, legal teams are a great way to double check that there are no restrictions on the data you want to use.

Brand restrictions – whilst you need to fully understand that content marketing or digital PR and advertising aren’t the same things, there’s often a requirement to adhere to brand guidelines. Again, get feedback from various teams at the start of a campaign and everyone’s input can be considered as it moves forward.

An audience of journalists – is there an active pool of journalists who regularly write about topics relating to your campaign concept? If not, ask yourself who you’re going to outreach to. There’s nothing wrong with launching campaigns in small niches, there’s often less noise to cut through which can maximize performance. However, you need to understand the link potential and be realistic on this stance before investing heavily. Unless there’s an active audience of journalists and publications, be mindful that this can present further challenges at the outreach stage.

4. The wider your audience, the more potential to earn links

Are you limiting the impact which your campaign can have in terms of the number of quality links earned by not thinking wide enough?

As an agency, over 60% of the links we earn come from international publications; for us, that means those based outside of the UK.

With this in mind, always consider how you can make a campaign appeal to a wider audience simply by thinking a little bigger.

To bring in a working example:

The best London boroughs for foodie tourists – has the potential to pitch to niche food, London travel, and regional news publications.

Best city in the UK for foodie tourists – has the potential to pitch to the above as well as national news publications too.

The best country in the world for foodie tourists – has the potential to pitch to all of the above as well as international and global publications.

The base concept on these is the same: studying the best locations for foodie tourists.

You can clearly see, however, how the audience can be maximized (and, as such, the link potential) by widening the focus of the campaign.

You can also achieve this be thinking, at the ideation stage, on how you can take a campaign out to other verticals.

5. Your campaign needs to be linkable

Despite what many say, a journalist doesn’t owe you a link. Not even if they cover your campaign.

Of course, as SEOs, we place great value on links and that’s often the end goal. However, it’s easy to forget that in order to earn links, a campaign must actually be linkable.

During ideation and production, you need to consider a campaign’s linkability throughout.

What do I mean by this?

If there’s nothing worth linking to (not referencing stats and quotes and the like here), why should a journalist link? A brand mention would suffice.

A press release isn’t usually linkable, neither is an infographic hosted on your blog (a publisher could take the visual, upload to their own CMS and reference you as the creator).

A link needs to make sense to the story and become a vital part of any article which is published.

Launched a tool or interactive which is being written about? It’s hard to tell the story without a link being in place. Carried out a data study with multiple angles? It’s likely that a journalist has covered one hook and a link adds value, allowing a reader to study the findings in more depth.

The more a link makes sense to be included, the easier you’ll find it to minimize unlinked brand mentions.

6. You need to spend time optimizing & testing different outreach email subject lines

Too many people focus their efforts on writing a great outreach email. But if it’s not being opened, no one is reading it.

The most important element of any outreach email, in my opinion, and experience, is the subject line. The more opens you get, the more people are reading the email and, hopefully, click through to the campaign.

If a journalist hasn’t opened your email, they’re not going to see your campaign and, of course, certainly won’t be linking.

How can you improve open rates, however?

Use emojis – it may sound simple but in a busy inbox, you need to stand out. We’ve found the inclusion of emojis to be a great way to do this. Don’t go overboard, but clever inclusion can draw eyes to your email over others’.

Don’t be cryptic – it’s tempting to try and engage a journalist to open your email by being cryptic and using mysterious subject lines which try to use intrigue. But this rarely works. Journalists are busy people and we need to accept this. Get straight to the point with subject lines.

Use key statistics – Include key campaign statistics in subject lines to make it instantly clear what your story is. Lead with the most shocking and surprising stats and use this as a way to gain opens. If you’ve got a great story and headline, this is where it’s the most effective.

Use coverage headlines – if you’ve already had some early coverage on a campaign, test the headline published from one of these as your subject line. Journalists are often better at writing enticing headlines than marketers so don’t be afraid to try this out. It’s often successful at landing further links!

7. Not every campaign earns hundreds of links

When you’ve had a great campaign idea it’s easy to set your sights on viral success. However, the biggest lesson we all need to learn is that this isn’t the norm.

Yes, I’ve had campaigns which have earned link volumes into the thousands in just a few weeks, but it’s not how most campaigns play out and that’s OK.

Link building is hard, and it’s only getting harder.

Does that mean that links are becoming less impactful? In my opinion, not at all. The exact opposite, in fact.

Whereas a few years back it was relatively easy to earn links from top-tier media with sub-par infographics and listicles, times have changed.

A campaign doesn’t need to earn hundreds of links to be successful and deliver the results which it needs to.

Be realistic.

Our average link acquisition per campaign in 2018 was 32 unique domains.

However, our focus is typically not upon straight numbers earned. There has to be consideration towards the quality of the links you’re building. Trust me when I say that 10 links from top-tier publications will do far more for your brand than 50 from bloggers.

Stop placing a focus on the number of links you’re earning but start to look at other metrics which reflect the quality of the publications.

8. Sustainable link building > One viral campaign

Taking the above point into consideration, it’s important that you’re working on a sustained link building strategy.

A one-off viral hit of links is nice for your ego. But does it really have the impact on your search engine visibility that you’re focusing upon?

Rarely.

Link building needs to be a sustained activity and the most effective campaigns are those which earn links month in month out, not once.

Take the time to map out a strategy which earns links on an ongoing basis and you’ll see more benefit to your brand. If one of those campaigns goes viral and earns hundreds of links, that’s fantastic (and as part of a wider campaign there’s absolutely benefits to be had there). But you need to ensure your primary focus is upon a long-term strategy for continued results.

Above all else, you need to make sure you’re collecting data around your own campaigns and using this to evolve your approach.

These are the lessons which I took away this past year from our own campaigns, but they may not be the same for everyone. Use them as inspiration to gather thoughts around areas to test and changes to make, and combine with your own ideas and thoughts to continue to push your campaigns forwards.

James Brockbank is the Managing Director of Digitaloft.

The post Lessons learned from launching 100+ content-led link building campaigns appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digtal Marketing News https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/14/lessons-learned-from-launching-100-content-led-link-building-campaigns/