#trying the bolding some words thing that i've seen some blogs do for longer posts

[helium-rambles]

My Favorite Perfumes

Ahh, thank you!! Excuse to ramble!

First off @moth-time YES! They are SO much nicer than alcohol, in my opinion. They make some oil perfumes that are still sprays, but I go for the ones that are roll on or just dabbed onto the skin. Sprays have a tendency to stick to clothes and thus last longer and have more projection, over something just on the skin that will evaporate from your body heat.

I shop indie perfumes as it's easier to find oil based ones (and it's usually significantly cheaper!)

Of all the indie perfumes houses I've tried, so far my favorite is Cherry-ka's Trunk on Etsy. They make fragrances inspired by fandoms and horror tropes and the wild west and overall are just really cool. I found them by looking up a fandom thing on etsy and was confused as to why a fragrance showed up. Eventually curiosity got the better of me and I tried some, and have been in love ever since.

I've now sampled 55 of their scents. Of those, I have destashed 17 of them to my roommate, am currently sampling 7, and the rest I liked enough to finish up the sample and some I'll full-size (or have already full-sized). Also worth noting that they're gender-inclusive! All their scents are for people of any gender! (Some indie perfumers tend to label feminine or masculine or unisex perfumes, which is apparently an indicator for people who are into mainstream perfumes to get an idea of a scent profile. But as someone who doesn't have the baseline knowledge of what that means, I feel a little off-put on trying some of those scents.)

My absolute favorite from Cherry-ka's Trunk (and of every fragrance I've ever tried) is Flying which has notes of fir, mint, and florals. This is also the one that taught me about resting oils. When I first got it, it pretty much just smelled like mint to me. I liked it (in fact, I will wear almost anything with mint in it) but it was pretty plain mint. Then as I used up the sample, the other notes became more pronounced. When you first apply it, it's still mostly mint, but the florals add some sweetness to it, and as the scent dries down, there is the astringent woody quality of the fir.

I didn't even notice the change as I used up the sample, but once I finished the sample, I found myself missing it so I bought a full-size. When I finally got it in the mail I was disappointed to sniff it and only get mint. Why did I want to full-size this again? I put it at the back of my perfumes and forgot about it for a month, only to try it again and be like WOW! I LOVE THIS! I waited until I used up my 5ml to purchase another, and I regretted waiting it, because I had to wait another month for it to become as beautiful as it gets. Next time, I'm ordering as soon as my bottle starts running low!

Other ones I've full sized from them are...

Pronounced (metal, green tea, paint, musk ) This smells strongly of metal to begin with! If you do not like the scent of metal, I don't recommend this. The metal fades away into a beautiful musk. I'm addicting to their musk. It's not an overy dirty musk, nor the laundry detergent musk. I don't know what type of musk it is, but I know I'm the most attractive person alive while wearing it. Oddly enough, I've found this is a summer scent for me.

Two Queens (lavender, coffee, musk, aftershave) Honestly, I got this for the coffee note, but don't smell any coffee in this. I do get a very herbal lavender, that reminds my of motel linen (fitting because of the inspiration for this perfume) and it dries down into that amazing musk. This musk is a little brighter(?) than Pronounced but still very good. I huff this scent until my nose wears out.

Conman (chamomile, blueberry, muguet) This blueberry.....I usually find blueberries too tart and sour, but this smells the way I want blueberries to taste. It's sweet, but not sugary. It's nicely supported by the herbiness of the chamomile. Kinda like a dried grass smell. I'm also very tickled by the name of this. I'm unfamiliar with the character it's based on, but I wear this when I want my own conman confidence.

And I will cut my rambles there for now! I'm not sure if this answers the question of what sorts are my favorites, cuz the only real pattern I've noticed in my collection is that I like mint and (some) musks. And I like metal and leather scents for summer. Thanks again for the excuse to ramble!

[thesomewhatliterateaxolotl]

Hi!! Question, since you do a lot of IDs (image descriptions) do you have any resources or tips for someone who wants to start writing them as well? What to pay special attention to, what is irrelevant, checklists etc?

Hi Anon!! This made me so happy to see. I'm glad you're interested in writing ID's!!

It's definitely not as overwhelming as it may seem. I will say I'm still learning myself, but here's my process. I boiled down my steps into a basic checklist to get you started:

Describe the category of image (digital/traditional art, photo, social media screenshot, etc.), unless it's already stated in the post.

Next, the summary. Pretend you're explaining the image to a friend (since that's pretty much the goal). You'll find yourself naturally starting out with the broadest/most obvious things. If it's a drawing or a photo, for example, that'll be the main subject[s] and whatever they're doing: "[Character] holds a bouquet of roses." "A fluffy cat blinks at the camera." OneLook Reverse Dictionary is your friend if you can't find the word for an action or pose.

Then, once you have your super basic one-to-two sentences, you can start on the details. When I'm low on energy or time, I stick to describing the most punchy details of the image: "A heart-shaped frame surrounds the characters. The piece uses pinks and reds." I also found this site for identifying drawing styles. For art, pay attention to color (or lack thereof), presence/absence of line art, and shading. For photos, describe style, mood, and color if you think it's relevant. It might be for artistic photography, not so much for a news article or a meme.*

There are different ways to demarcate your ID. You've probably seen that I use brackets around the description ( [ ] ) and sometimes a slash ( / ) right before writing "end ID." I've heard these aren't required, but lots of people prefer the visual distinction.

Use plain text (normal-sized font, no fancy formatting). You'd think it'd go without saying, but I've seen far too many people write their ID's in tiny font. Bold text at the beginning and end is fine, but that's about it.

Some subjective language is fine for describing mood (melancholy, cheerful, etc.), but don't overdo it. Don't add jokes that aren't in the image itself.

*For fictional characters, I usually only describe their outfits and features if they deviate from canon. For real people, I use my judgement on whether describing these details is relevant: Without those details, would they miss out on something important?

As for what's irrelevant, people have different preferences. I've heard from some blind and low vision people that they prefer really straightforward descriptions, while others prefer the detailed ones because they give them an equal or equivalent experience to what a sighted person would have.

I try to strike a balance, writing shorter descriptions for memes/informational images and longer ones for art. Active voice can help simplify your ID, though this isn't a strict rule.

What I have almost universally heard, though, is this: Even the most basic ID is better than none. If all you can do is a quick one-sentence description, that's ok! You've still opened up a previously inaccessible image to a new audience.

Now for resources:

Image Desc. Guidelines - This helped me out a lot when I started out!

Writing Image Descriptions

Giant Google Doc for Describing Memes

Resource for Video Desc. (I'm still learning how to improve my VD's myself)

Lastly, I know not everyone likes joining discord servers to ask questions, but The People's Accessibility Server is a great resource. (I removed the link because I couldn't find a way to hide my discord # from the invite, and I don't want to just put it out there, but here's this invite via keplercryptid's blog.) You can ask for advice, for someone to review your ID's, or even for someone to write them for you. You can DM me as well if you're comfortable with that.

I hope this is a good starting point for you, anon!! Best of luck <3

[dweemeister]

An embarrassing (?), incomplete list of popular films I've not seen

Yes, this is a film blog... albeit a blog dedicated to older movies. I try to watch more pre-1980 movies than post-1980 movies each year, so this of course means there are major newer titles that I have never gotten around to and are somehow still on my watchlist. So I guess that’s sort of embarrassing? My rationale sometimes is that those truly popular post-1980 movies - because they are on TV so much - make me think: “Oh, they’ll always be on TV so I can wait a bit longer.” Movies that are the beginning of long franchises I haven’t begun are things I avoid for some strange reason. The 1980s are also my least favorite decade of filmmaking. In addition, it should be noted I was a sensitive child. There are many R-rated movies from the 1980s-late 2000s I’ve never seen because I was sheltered and I was easily scared.

For my energetic, vocal followers who are versed in Indian cinema... there are no Indian movies down here. I’m not embarrassed over my lack of knowledge in Indian cinema because the lack of availability and platforms to access in the U.S.

Anyways I’m rambling. Here’s a list of movies I’m sort of embarrassed - I really shouldn’t be, though - to not have seen by this point. I’ve done this sort of list before, but I can’t find the post. So I expect all of you to lose trust in my movie tastes and expertise after reading this! I’ll try to explain what’s preventing me from seeing some of these, too. Without further ado (in chronological order and most embarrassing bolded... so I guess the juiciest stuff that most of my followers will be aghast at will be at the bottom):

Little Caesar (1931)... “Is this the end of Rico?” I wouldn’t know! This iconic gangster movie’s been on my watchlist forever.

Tarzan the Ape Man (1932)... The Weissmuller Tarzan is on TCM so often. Because I know it’s a long-running series makes me less-hesitant to get into it.

Screwball comedies including: Libeled Lady (1936), My Man Godfrey (1936), The Philadelphia Story (1940; oh my god it’s always on TCM too)

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)

Sansho the Bailiff (1954, Japan)... so. much. praise.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)... I mean, knowing the premise, I’m preparing for it to be really meh despite Stanley Donen directing (if you say so @halfwaythruthedark)

Oklahoma! (1955)... not really familiar with this R&H musical in the first place

Two Federico Fellini films in particular: La Dolce Vita (1960, Italy) and 8½ (1963, Italy)... I’ve seen plenty of his stuff but these are glaring holes

It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)

Andrei Rublev (1966, Soviet Union)

The Omen (1976)

Animal House (1978)... okay okay Little Red Reading Hood (you know who you are) get ready to be horrified even more in a few moments

Caddyshack (1980)

The Shining (1980)... I’ve seen bits and parts but otherwise I’ve refused to watch it because I don’t want it being chopped up by commercials

The Thing (1982)... because I really like the original and I’m meh on John Carpenter

Flashdance (1983)... because if there’s anything that can make me roll my eyes and sort of enjoy at the same time... it’s ‘80s power ballads. Like Seven Brides, I’m expecting this to suck hard.

Footloose (1984)... ffs

GhostBusters (1984)... never been a Bill Murray fan and it’s ALWAYS on television (I’m procrastinating, remember)

The NeverEnding Story (1984)... too many friends have grown up with it and I’ve never gotten around to it

Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

The Black Cauldron (1985)... here only because I wanna stick it to my Disney-loving friends

Blue Velvet (1986)... not a fan of David Lynch... so am I missing out on something?

Top Gun (1986)... great soundtrack but... do I have to? :|

Dirty Dancing (1987)... *grumbles about ‘80s power ballads again*

Full Metal Jacket (1987)... seen in parts. I’m Viet-American and I hate Vietnam War movies. And I do not like the parts that I have seen.

Die Hard (1988)... the recent movement proclaiming this as the best Christmas movie ever is pissing the hell off of me. I don’t care if this might be the action movie ever... that kind of fanboyish behavior is off-putting.

Ghost (1990)... because all of the folks a generation above me in the family have seen it. Whoopi is always a plus, but I don’t care for Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore?

Free Willy (1993)

Groundhog Day (1993)... see GhostBusters

Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)... I’ve seen more than half of it but never all the way through

Chungking Express (1994, Hong Kong)

Dumb and Dumber (1994)... I don’t like Jim Carrey. It’s something that will come up later in this list.

Braveheart (1995)... referenced so often but Mel Gibson? *sigh*

Casper (1995)

Ghost in the Shell (1995, Japan)... a lot of anime-centric fans have badgered me with this one over the years

Jumanji (1995)... it scared the heck out of me when I was younger and I never completed it

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)... haven’t seen a single Austin Powers movie all the way through. Something tells me it may not be worth it.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)... I actually only saw the first movie in late 2013. Too frightened of dinosaurs when I was younger. And a lot of people I know have seen the sequel. 

The Big Lebowski (1998)... this is a biggie. I know it’s Coen Brothers. I know it’s supposed to be really funny, but it’s really hard for me to like a raunchy comedy... is it witty and intelligent? Maybe a good message?

The Truman Show (1998)... people have tried to describe this to me but it never makes any sense each time they try. I dislike Jim Carrey and think his brand of humor is on the cruel, hyperactive side.

Fight Club (1999)... because fuck David Fincher (those are three words that could get me in serious trouble with fanboys) and all the toxic masculinity in his movies not nearly as well-critiqued as people think

The Green Mile (1999)... it was big with dad and my uncles back in the day... the 3+ hour runtime for a movie that isn’t an epic is keeping me away

The Sixth Sense (1999)... Remember I was a sheltered, easily-scareable kid!

X-Men (2000)... I’ve never seen the one that started it all. Superhero media has never been something I’ve sought too much. Even as a young kid.

Amélie (2001, France)... it’s just not been available on any platform that I have access to and I prefer to see non-English language movies legally if I can (supehero movies though? fuck it I’ll theater hop; Marvel doesn’t need more money)

Moulin Rouge! (2001)... a few of my friends love it. I’m skeptical of Baz Luhrmann movies always.

City of God (2002, Brazil)... see explanation for Amélie

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)... chalk it up to Jim Carrey and me being sheltered

Rent (2005)... lots of girls in middle school and high school liked this movie. Its popularity drew me away from it.

Before you doth protest too much, remember that this blog is concentrated on pre-1980 stuff and I limit my post-1980 movie consumption so that I’m well-rounded chronologically and can understand film history better. I’ve seen plenty of obscure stuff that should find a larger audience, regardless of how old that movie is, and I promote those movies a lot. And considering Roger Ebert passed away having never seen The Sound of Music (1965) and I’m only in my mid-20s? I’m not doing too bad.

[topicprinter]

A lot of you asked that I post the content I linked a few days ago so here you go! I left out a large overview of this post so I'll include a link to the full blog post here. If you're just interested in how to produce quality content and some different strategies to market that content, the info below should help. Please let me know any thoughts of feedback and let me know if you have any questions. Always happy to help!How to Produce Great ContentI’m sure you’ve heard it before, if you produce quality content, you’ll have a chance to rank on Google. Or rather, if you don’t produce good content, you’ll never rank on Google and have wasted your time. Well, something is better than nothing so that’s not completely true. Let’s make sure you don’t just produce “something” and actually produce great content for your content marketing strategy. Let’s continue with another list. Not just because they are easy to follow and liked by readers, but Google likes them too!Let’s start with the first thing someone sees, the title - Please do yourself a favor and don’t just create a random title. Your title should be relevant to the content you produce and include a few searchable keywords. I know the title on this blog isn’t the best example, but we try to tailor our titles to exact terms that people will search for. This blog: 8 Kitchen Backsplash Trends for 2017 is rich with keywords and people might actually search for something like “kitchen backsplash trends 2017” or “backsplash trends 2017”. Go ahead and try for yourself and you should find us on the first page with big name companies like HGTV, Lowes, Angieslist, and others. In just one month, we have managed to rank #5 out of the 4.5 million possible results. Remember how I brought up trust earlier? I hope I’m gaining yours and I’ll continue to explain how we are ranking so high and so fast.IMAGE REFERENCING BLOG HEREPut numbers somewhere! Especially in the title - I’ll keep this one short since I didn’t want it to drag on with the “title” section, but it still relates. People love to see numbers. We love putting numbers in our title whether it’s to emphasize some sort of list or even a specific year. Notice how many titles have numbers in the image above? All of them except 1! Numbers are eye catching and readers love to see them. Of course, not every title will have a number and not all of ours do, but it is suggested when you can include them. Don’t ignore using lists and bullet points - The structure of your content shouldn’t be ignored. It may sound silly, but Google’s ranking algorithm likes to see some different formatting other than a 5 paragraph essay. Get creative and make a few lists, make a few bullet points, just try to do something! If you had a chance to click our blog above about the backsplash trends, you’ll see some lists, some bullets, and even bolded words. Not to mention, different things make your content easier to read and only benefits the reader. That brings me to my next point.Embed some videos in your content - A lot of SEO “specialists” will claim videos have no effect on a site’s overall SEO. While videos might not optimize a page’s SEO presence, they give a user the opportunity to stay on the page longer. One factor that will allow you to rank on Google are statistics of how long a user stays on your page and if they click around to other pages on your website. Ultimately, these stats show your content is valuable and relevant to your visitors. If you produce your own video content, you can double-dip on your end by embedding those videos directly on blog content. If you’re generating enough traffic, you’ll get quite a few video hits and those videos will additionally rank on Youtube’s search page.Internal links to your website and other content - An internal link is a link to another web page within the same website. It is important to use relevant links for the reader so they can continue navigating through your site. For example, if you’ve read through the blog to this point, you might want to open the first part of how we generate leads in another tab. Assuming what you’ve read up to this point has been valuable, you might have clicked that link which is ultimately good for us. It shows Google (and other search engines) that the content was a high enough quality to invoke some sort of additional interaction. All of these things tie together and play a role in being seen on search engines. Make sure internal links are not all to the home page or a “contact us” page either. It’s okay to have some links to those pages, but it’s also important to spread the links so all of your website’s authority isn’t focused on just a few pages.How long should your content be? - If you’ve read up until this point, you should know you can publish quality that isn’t quite this long. As long as you are above 500 words and include a few pictures, you should be good to rank. We try to produce content that is at least 750 words. So I’m sure you’re thinking, “okay, I know why content is important, I know how to produce, how to I market it effectively?”How to Market Your ContentThe best content strategists have the total package. The most difficult part of a content strategy for most is the marketing side. Being able to effectively drive traffic to content will allow it to rank much faster. If done correctly, you could have thousands of visitors to your content just in the first few days. Now, this might not happen on every blog or video you produce, but it can be accomplished for some. Treat every piece of content as if you are launching your website or company. Grow an audience and viewers with different strategies for each blog or video. Let’s continue with another list of things to do.Create social shares and social signals - Google’s SEO algorithm looks your social presence and how often your content is shared, tweeted, pinned, etc. If you’re going to spend some sort of budget on marketing your content, don’t spend it on anything other than Facebook. Facebook’s advertising tools are the most lucrative and affordable to give you the highest return on investment. To get social signals to your content, share the content on your company’s Facebook page and “boost” that post. Even $10-$20 will provide you with some results if done correctly. In the post below, we spent $20 to boost this piece of content. This is a pretty small amount to spend, but we can squeeze every penny out of the value and receive a healthy return on investment. I’ll elaborate on my next point how to fully capitalize on boosted content.BOOSTED CONTENT IMAGECapitalize on boosted Facebook content - As you can see above, the post received 50+ likes and additional shares. The dark orange line signifies impressions that we PAID for and the light orange shows the ORGANIC impressions that were generated. The organic views come from people who already like our page, but the majority of organic views come from the friends of the people who liked this post. Essentially, every like is almost as valuable as a share (not quite, though). Overall, we were happy with those numbers. The $20 we spent was enough to generate a few project leads on Great Pros and generate some additional website traffic. Mission accomplished right? Well, not completely. Each person who likes a piece of boosted content should be personally invited to like your Facebook page. Out of the 50 likes, you should get 1-3 people to like your page. It may not sound like much, but over time this will add up and it takes less than 1 minute to do. Lastly, make sure your blog post has some way of capturing how many social shares are taking place. This shouldn’t be hard to implement, but it can’t be ignored. Below is what ours looks like.IMAGE I REFERENCED ABOVEUse internet forums...the right way - Using internet forums to generate traffic can be the most effective strategy if done correctly. You may have heard people say, “yeah just post your content all over the internet. Someone will see it!” Well, you might get a few clicks, but it won’t get you very far. You’ll need to do some homework and see where your target audience is going on the internet. Find those sources and see if there is a way to interact and get those users to your website. You should be able to find plenty of sources. One of the best internet forums that anyone industry can use, is Reddit. In a nutshell, Reddit is a massive internet forum with thousands of smaller forums within the website. Be aware, when you post on Reddit, or any forum, you need to deliver your content effectively so it is received positively by the audience. The example below is exactly how your marketed content should be written. How do I know? I wrote this piece of content for a past client who sold suits and wrote the content on the forum so it would be received well. I’ve repeated this success multiple times and I’ve also done this unsuccessfully. My suggestions to be successful, keep it short, ask for feedback, reference that you wrote the content (you can be vague instead of saying it upfront), provide an overview of what it’s about, and say thank you. This method can be a hit or miss depending on the quality of your content and what you wrote in your forum post. I’ve had instances where I’ve generated 3000+ page views in a 3 day span (like with this example) and I’ve seen as low 10 page views.EXAMPLE OF HOW TO WRITE FORUM CONTENTYou need email marketing tools - Your website needs some sort of mechanism to capture user emails. It doesn’t necessarily have to be on your blog (by all means it can), but you need to capture it somehow. Capturing profile information is a great way to do this. There are free tools, like Mailchimp, that you can incorporate into your marketing campaign for your first few thousand emails. In order to capitalize on repeat business, use those emails and send your content to your past customers. Be careful not to spam emails. 2 emails a week or once every 3 days can be very effective and not too intrusive.Educate yourself on other major traffic sources - Traffic on the internet is virtually unlimited. You need to continue educating yourself where you can capitalize and capture some of that traffic. If I wrote about every source to pull traffic from, this blog wouldn’t even be halfway done. I’m going to include two additional resources that you may find helpful if you want to continue doing your homework and learn about marketing your content. The first is an overview to generate traffic on Quora. This trick isn’t all that difficult, but it will take some time to master and reap the rewards. The second tip I would suggest is learning how to use LinkedIn to drive traffic. It has been proven through case studies that LinkedIn is the best source to drive B2B business. If you’re in B2B, I’d suggest reading this guide about LinkedIn.FULL BLOG POST HERE

[topicprinter]

A lot of you asked that I post the content I linked a few days ago so here you go! I left out a large overview of this post so I'll include a link to the full blog post here. If you're just interested in how to produce quality content and some different strategies to market that content, the info below should help. Please let me know any thoughts of feedback and let me know if you have any questions. Always happy to help!How to Produce Great ContentI’m sure you’ve heard it before, if you produce quality content, you’ll have a chance to rank on Google. Or rather, if you don’t produce good content, you’ll never rank on Google and have wasted your time. Well, something is better than nothing so that’s not completely true. Let’s make sure you don’t just produce “something” and actually produce great content for your content marketing strategy. Let’s continue with another list. Not just because they are easy to follow and liked by readers, but Google likes them too!Let’s start with the first thing someone sees, the title - Please do yourself a favor and don’t just create a random title. Your title should be relevant to the content you produce and include a few searchable keywords. I know the title on this blog isn’t the best example, but we try to tailor our titles to exact terms that people will search for. This blog: 8 Kitchen Backsplash Trends for 2017 is rich with keywords and people might actually search for something like “kitchen backsplash trends 2017” or “backsplash trends 2017”. Go ahead and try for yourself and you should find us on the first page with big name companies like HGTV, Lowes, Angieslist, and others. In just one month, we have managed to rank #5 out of the 4.5 million possible results. Remember how I brought up trust earlier? I hope I’m gaining yours and I’ll continue to explain how we are ranking so high and so fast.IMAGE REFERENCING BLOG HEREPut numbers somewhere! Especially in the title - I’ll keep this one short since I didn’t want it to drag on with the “title” section, but it still relates. People love to see numbers. We love putting numbers in our title whether it’s to emphasize some sort of list or even a specific year. Notice how many titles have numbers in the image above? All of them except 1! Numbers are eye catching and readers love to see them. Of course, not every title will have a number and not all of ours do, but it is suggested when you can include them. Don’t ignore using lists and bullet points - The structure of your content shouldn’t be ignored. It may sound silly, but Google’s ranking algorithm likes to see some different formatting other than a 5 paragraph essay. Get creative and make a few lists, make a few bullet points, just try to do something! If you had a chance to click our blog above about the backsplash trends, you’ll see some lists, some bullets, and even bolded words. Not to mention, different things make your content easier to read and only benefits the reader. That brings me to my next point.Embed some videos in your content - A lot of SEO “specialists” will claim videos have no effect on a site’s overall SEO. While videos might not optimize a page’s SEO presence, they give a user the opportunity to stay on the page longer. One factor that will allow you to rank on Google are statistics of how long a user stays on your page and if they click around to other pages on your website. Ultimately, these stats show your content is valuable and relevant to your visitors. If you produce your own video content, you can double-dip on your end by embedding those videos directly on blog content. If you’re generating enough traffic, you’ll get quite a few video hits and those videos will additionally rank on Youtube’s search page.Internal links to your website and other content - An internal link is a link to another web page within the same website. It is important to use relevant links for the reader so they can continue navigating through your site. For example, if you’ve read through the blog to this point, you might want to open the first part of how we generate leads in another tab. Assuming what you’ve read up to this point has been valuable, you might have clicked that link which is ultimately good for us. It shows Google (and other search engines) that the content was a high enough quality to invoke some sort of additional interaction. All of these things tie together and play a role in being seen on search engines. Make sure internal links are not all to the home page or a “contact us” page either. It’s okay to have some links to those pages, but it’s also important to spread the links so all of your website’s authority isn’t focused on just a few pages.How long should your content be? - If you’ve read up until this point, you should know you can publish quality that isn’t quite this long. As long as you are above 500 words and include a few pictures, you should be good to rank. We try to produce content that is at least 750 words. So I’m sure you’re thinking, “okay, I know why content is important, I know how to produce, how to I market it effectively?”How to Market Your ContentThe best content strategists have the total package. The most difficult part of a content strategy for most is the marketing side. Being able to effectively drive traffic to content will allow it to rank much faster. If done correctly, you could have thousands of visitors to your content just in the first few days. Now, this might not happen on every blog or video you produce, but it can be accomplished for some. Treat every piece of content as if you are launching your website or company. Grow an audience and viewers with different strategies for each blog or video. Let’s continue with another list of things to do.Create social shares and social signals - Google’s SEO algorithm looks your social presence and how often your content is shared, tweeted, pinned, etc. If you’re going to spend some sort of budget on marketing your content, don’t spend it on anything other than Facebook. Facebook’s advertising tools are the most lucrative and affordable to give you the highest return on investment. To get social signals to your content, share the content on your company’s Facebook page and “boost” that post. Even $10-$20 will provide you with some results if done correctly. In the post below, we spent $20 to boost this piece of content. This is a pretty small amount to spend, but we can squeeze every penny out of the value and receive a healthy return on investment. I’ll elaborate on my next point how to fully capitalize on boosted content.BOOSTED CONTENT IMAGECapitalize on boosted Facebook content - As you can see above, the post received 50+ likes and additional shares. The dark orange line signifies impressions that we PAID for and the light orange shows the ORGANIC impressions that were generated. The organic views come from people who already like our page, but the majority of organic views come from the friends of the people who liked this post. Essentially, every like is almost as valuable as a share (not quite, though). Overall, we were happy with those numbers. The $20 we spent was enough to generate a few project leads on Great Pros and generate some additional website traffic. Mission accomplished right? Well, not completely. Each person who likes a piece of boosted content should be personally invited to like your Facebook page. Out of the 50 likes, you should get 1-3 people to like your page. It may not sound like much, but over time this will add up and it takes less than 1 minute to do. Lastly, make sure your blog post has some way of capturing how many social shares are taking place. This shouldn’t be hard to implement, but it can’t be ignored. Below is what ours looks like.IMAGE I REFERENCED ABOVEUse internet forums...the right way - Using internet forums to generate traffic can be the most effective strategy if done correctly. You may have heard people say, “yeah just post your content all over the internet. Someone will see it!” Well, you might get a few clicks, but it won’t get you very far. You’ll need to do some homework and see where your target audience is going on the internet. Find those sources and see if there is a way to interact and get those users to your website. You should be able to find plenty of sources. One of the best internet forums that anyone industry can use, is Reddit. In a nutshell, Reddit is a massive internet forum with thousands of smaller forums within the website. Be aware, when you post on Reddit, or any forum, you need to deliver your content effectively so it is received positively by the audience. The example below is exactly how your marketed content should be written. How do I know? I wrote this piece of content for a past client who sold suits and wrote the content on the forum so it would be received well. I’ve repeated this success multiple times and I’ve also done this unsuccessfully. My suggestions to be successful, keep it short, ask for feedback, reference that you wrote the content (you can be vague instead of saying it upfront), provide an overview of what it’s about, and say thank you. This method can be a hit or miss depending on the quality of your content and what you wrote in your forum post. I’ve had instances where I’ve generated 3000+ page views in a 3 day span (like with this example) and I’ve seen as low 10 page views.EXAMPLE OF HOW TO WRITE FORUM CONTENTYou need email marketing tools - Your website needs some sort of mechanism to capture user emails. It doesn’t necessarily have to be on your blog (by all means it can), but you need to capture it somehow. Capturing profile information is a great way to do this. There are free tools, like Mailchimp, that you can incorporate into your marketing campaign for your first few thousand emails. In order to capitalize on repeat business, use those emails and send your content to your past customers. Be careful not to spam emails. 2 emails a week or once every 3 days can be very effective and not too intrusive.Educate yourself on other major traffic sources - Traffic on the internet is virtually unlimited. You need to continue educating yourself where you can capitalize and capture some of that traffic. If I wrote about every source to pull traffic from, this blog wouldn’t even be halfway done. I’m going to include two additional resources that you may find helpful if you want to continue doing your homework and learn about marketing your content. The first is an overview to generate traffic on Quora. This trick isn’t all that difficult, but it will take some time to master and reap the rewards. The second tip I would suggest is learning how to use LinkedIn to drive traffic. It has been proven through case studies that LinkedIn is the best source to drive B2B business. If you’re in B2B, I’d suggest reading this guide about LinkedIn.FULL BLOG POST HERE