#where there are these arts opportunities. the traffic boxes specifically are a popular thing here in recent years so idk abt other places

[keymintt]

Not sure if this has been asked before but, how did you start doing professional work for traffic cabinets? Was there some sort of job fair or exhibit that you advertised your art at and the city decides "this guy is really good, let's get his art in public"?

OKAY so the thing with public art is it's all local and every city kinda does it differently, but so far in my career all of the public art stuff i've done has been application-based

this got long so i'll go into details about what the searching/application process looks like under the cut but tldr: a big part of finding work like this is knowing where to look for local opportunities and submitting applications

generally the cities/towns/whatever will put out a call for artists (also sometimes called a request for qualifications or RFQ) that's basically like "hey we need some artists to do this, this is how much we'll pay you and the details for the project" and from there they'll link a form (or sometimes give you an email address) to apply to where you submit stuff like your contact info, resume/portfolio, sometimes references, and usually a letter of interest on the project

because i submit applications to things pretty regularly, i'm usually good about keeping track of what i use to apply to things—this includes what i've written for applications and stuff like image descriptions—so when I apply to new things it's a lot of copypasting and editing things to explain how i'm a fit for the specific project yadda yadda it's cover letters. it's basically cover letters. pain and agony

in terms of finding the applications, i'm signed up for several local newsletters and arts organizations, but i also check sites like the az commission of the arts (bc i'm az-based) for their updated list of opportunities pretty regularly, as well as searching for stuff like [city] arts and culture and poking around the .gov sites to see if they have an arts opportunities page. in all honesty a pretty big component of finding this work is knowing where to look, and unfortunately if you're doing public art a) it's not always listed on social media b) the best places to look/start are local, and that differs for everyone so i can't say like "oh look here and you'll find something"

once you apply it usually takes awhile to hear back (they usually give you a timeline on the initial application of how long it takes to review all the applications), but i've found people in these fields are good about letting you know when you didn't get something so you can move on with your life lol. atm i'm waiting to hear back from....over five things so i'm kind of always doing this "applying to projects while i'm working on other projects" song and dance which is honestly just...kind of the freelance artist experience?

i feel the need to mention that public art stuff like this consists of about...2/5 of my yearly income...? i'm not solely making a living off of doing these things bc i also usually have teaching and ttrpg illustration stuff in the mix BUT there are artists who can and do make a living off public art and murals and whatnot. i simply cannot resist the urge to stick my finger into any pie i'm even remotely qualified for

working with public art stuff is also that same thing with a lot of fields where once you get some sort of experience, it's easier to get more jobs, BUT as an artist your portfolio can do a lot of speaking for you, even if you don't have experience with public art specifically. take my traffic boxes for example: i've done three of them now and have a fourth lined up, i know that if there's an application for one i have the exact experience they're looking for and will in all likelihood be one of the selected artists at this point. however with my very first one, i obviously didn't have a traffic box in my portfolio so i included a digitally illustrated city banner i designed, several other digital illustrations of mine (bc they wanted a digital artist), and a mural i had painted on a 3d object (to demonstrate i could design with 3d forms in mind), and together these things all helped my credibility as someone who could do this project. as much as i loathe writing letters of interest these are also good places to elaborate on how your portfolio can connect to the project

also with public art starting local is also your best bet at first (not to say you can't land other opportunities right off the bat though), bc people like their artists to know the local scene. i have the experience to back me up more nowadays, but when i was first applying to things you bet your ass i was all like 'i love it here and want to give art back to my local community bc i'm an artist and i'm fresh out of college yaaaaayyyy' you don't have to mean this when you say it, but they don't have to know

thank you for the ask !! and best of luck with any of your potential artistic endeavors (to anyone reading this)!! feel free to ask any more questions, i'm happy to elaborate on anythin btw for anyone :>

[mamidimahesh-blog]

THIS IS MY FIRST BLOG

What is a Blog? – The Definition of Blog, Blogging, and Blogger

(Published on: April 8th, 2018 Last updated: July 29th, 2020)

Posted in:

Blogging

93 Comments

Written by

Anya Skrba

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Do you know what a blog is? If you don’t, then you’ve come to the right place. In 1994, when blogs began, a blog was more of a personal diary that people shared online. In this online journal, you could talk about your daily life or share about things that you were doing. Then, people saw an opportunity to communicate information in a new way online. Thus began the beautiful world of blogging.

Table of contents

Today, there are more than 600 million blogs on the web. The number of bloggers in the United States alone is set to reach 31.7 million users by 2020.

What is a Blog?

Definition of blog

A blog (a shortened version of “weblog”) is an online journal or informational website displaying information in the reverse chronological order, with the latest posts appearing first, at the top. It is a platform where a writer or a group of writers share their views on an individual subject.

What is the purpose of a blog?

There are many reasons to start a blog for personal use and only a handful of strong ones for business blogging. Blogging for business, projects, or anything else that might bring you money has a very straightforward purpose – to rank your website higher in Google SERPs, a.k.a. increase your visibility.

As a business, you rely on consumers to keep buying your products and services. As a new business, you rely on blogging to help you get to potential consumers and grab their attention. Without blogging, your website would remain invisible, whereas running a blog makes you searchable and competitive.

So, the main purpose of a blog is to connect you to the relevant audience. Another one is to boost your traffic and send quality leads to your website.

The more frequent and better your blog posts are, the higher the chances for your website to get discovered and visited by your target audience. This means that a blog is an effective lead generation tool. Add a great call to action (CTA) to your content, and it will convert your website traffic into high-quality leads. A blog also allows you to showcase your niche authority and build a brand.

When you use your niche knowledge for creating informative and engaging posts, it builds trust with your audience. Great blogging makes your business look more credible, which is especially important if your brand is still young and fairly unknown. It ensures presence online and niche authority at the same time.

Blog structure

The appearance of blogs has changed over time, and these days blogs include a wide variety of items and widgets. However, most blogs still include some standard features and structure.

Here are common features that a typical blog will include:

Header with the menu or navigation bar.

Main content area with highlighted or latest blog posts.

Sidebar with social profiles, favorite content, or call-to-action.

Footer with relevant links like a disclaimer, privacy policy, contact page, etc.

The above example is the basic structure of the average blog. Each item has its own importance and helps visitors to navigate through your blog.

Blogs and websites

Many people still wonder if there is any difference between a blog and a website. What is a blog and what is a website? It’s even more challenging to differentiate between the two today. Many companies are integrating blogs into their websites as well, which further confuses the two.

What differentiates blogs from websites?

Blogs need frequent updates. Good examples of this include a food blog sharing meal recipes or a company writing about their industry news.

Blogs also promote reader engagement. Readers have a chance to comment and voice their different concerns and thoughts to the community. Blog owners update their site with new blog posts on a regular basis.

Read more: How to Start a Blog (in 2020): The Free Beginner’s Guide

On the other hand, websites consist of the content presented on static pages. Static website owners rarely update their pages.

Read more: How to Make a Website (in 2020): The Beginner’s Guide

Key elements that identify a blog post from a static website page include a publishing date, author reference, categories, and tags within a byline. While not all blog posts have all of those byline elements, static website pages do not have any of these items. From a visitor perspective, the content on a static site will not change from one visit to the next. However, depending on the blog owner’s publishing schedule, the content on a blog will offer something new each day, week, or month.

What is blogging?

In the early 2000s, blogging emerged in a variety of forms when several political blogs were born. Blogs with how-to manuals also began to appear. Established institutions began to note the difference between journalism and blogging.

Definition of blogging

Blogging is a collection of skills that one needs to run and supervise a blog. This entails equipping a web page with tools to make the process of writing, posting, linking, and sharing content easier on the internet.

Why is blogging so popular?

It’s important to mention that the popularity of blogging grows with each passing day! To answer the question ‘what is blogging’, we need to look at the factors behind its rise.

In the early stages, blogs became mainstream, as news services began using them as tools for outreach and opinion forming. They became a new source of information.

Through blogging, businesses saw a positive way to improve their customer’s level of satisfaction. Blogs assist companies in keeping clients and customers up to date. Also, the more people that visit your blog, the more exposure and trust your brand gets.

Personal and niche bloggers saw the potential to reach more people interested in specific topics. Through a blog, visitors can comment and interact with you or your brand which helps you to create a network of loyal followers.

Did you know that you could earn money through blogging? Once your blog receives enough attention and fans, you can investigate ways of monetizing your blog. Through the blog, you can offer your services and sell products.

Who is a blogger?

In recent times, bloggers have become famous for various reasons. Blogging has become an alternative career or side gig to many. Seeing this, even more people are choosing to join the blogging ranks.

So who are bloggers? Bloggers are individuals who love sharing parts of their lives with you. They post on various topics from arts, home designs, carpentry, and finance articles. Bloggers are mobile and don’t need to be in one place. They live on the internet!

Definition of a blogger

A blogger is someone who runs and controls a blog. He or she shares his or her opinion and knowledge on different topics for a target audience.

Why are many people blogging today?

Would you want to have a blog of your own? Yes!

Most people today are creating blogs for a variety of reasons. Every human being has their own story to tell. Through the internet, bloggers can communicate to a massive number of people.

Why is blogging so popular?

Blogs allow you to talk about any topic you are interested in and express your opinion. You’ll find some bloggers writing on every activity that took place during their day. These activities may range from small things like waking up to major issues like human rights and climate change! Remember that as a blogger running your own blog, you need to focus on the topics that you are passionate about and through that focus strive to become one of the best blogs on the web.

Are bloggers getting paid?

Bloggers do earn money, but this is not a get-rich-quick kind of profession. Before you can start monetizing your blog, you need to build both your Google SERPs ranking and your niche influence. Those tasks take a lot of time and quality content. Money-making opportunities won’t present themselves until you’ve gained some credibility in the field. So, get down to business.

Here’s how you can make good money as a top-ranked niche blogger:

Selling ad space on your blog privately or via Google AdSense.

Becoming an affiliate partner privately or through ad networks.

Selling your own digital products such as eBooks and tutorials.

Selling memberships for access to exclusive content or advice.

Using your blog as a content marketing tool for your business.

If you’re starting a blog as a way to market and boost your existing business, you probably won’t be selling ad space or memberships. However, you can create and start offering exclusive digital products such as eBooks, guides, or online courses as a lead capturing tool in exchange for visitors’ email addresses. That way, you’ll nudge them one step further down your sales funnel.

Want to start a blog on your own?

Creating your own personal blog takes a few steps. First, you need to decide on a name for your blog, also called a domain name. Then, you need to choose the best blogging platform for your needs. We recommend going with a self-hosted platform. There are a few choices when it comes to self-hosted platforms, but the most popular is WordPress.org.

The next step is to choose a web hosting service. For new bloggers, we strongly recommend Bluehost, a company that powers over 2 million websites worldwide. You will get a Free domain name when you sign up with them and if you don’t like their services, they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Disclosure: FirstSiteGuide is supported by our readers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. We test and try all the products that we recommend.

Recommended tool:

Type in the desired domain in the “new domain” box and BlueHost will show you whether it’s available or not. If not, it will provide you with a list of similar names for you to choose from.

Conclusion

We hope that you’ve learned some helpful information about the world of blogging. If you’ve managed to start a blog, then your next step is to work on your blog content in order to keep your future readers satisfied and engaged. Feel free to check out our extensive list of blogging resources which will help you to run and grow your new blog!

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What Is Copywriting? Who Is a Copywriter?

What Is Blog Marketing?

Ten Characteristics of a Blog and a Quality Blog Post

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START YOUR OWN BLOG

This guide is an introduction to mastering the art of blogging. It provides easy to follow steps to start, maintain, and grow your blog.

Read the guide

93 comments on “What is a Blog? – The Definition of Blog, Blogging, and Blogger”

Terrence McKennaJuly 27, 2020 at 4:54 amReply

Deon ChristieJuly 25, 2020 at 11:12 amReply

FrankJanuary 16, 2020 at 6:19 amReply

Robin BellJanuary 10, 2020 at 2:22 pmReply

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RyanDecember 10, 2019 at 10:53 amReply

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mazegyptOctober 21, 2014 at 11:41 pmReply

Hi Anya. I really like the way you explain how to start a blog on your website firstsiteguide. In particular, the pictures of the basic blog structure. I wanted to get your permission to use it in my class as I am a teacher, developing a unit on how to start a blog for my grade 6 students. It would be part of their year 6 English curriculum.

Anya SkrbaJuly 28, 2020 at 9:08 amReply

Hi Terrence, it’s not a problem at all. A simple credit would be appreciated. Thanks!

Outstanding post. Well done Anya! And I couldn’t agree more with Bluehost, and then simply install WordPress as the site builder. In fact, over the years I have eventually moved all my domains to Bluehost. I have also started using the Gutenberg Blocks Editor plugin for WordPress. Works really well to make your content more understandable to both readers and search engines. And seeing that user experience along with site load speed are major SEO ranking factors? The Gutenberg WP Blocks Editor really contribute hugely to user experience.

Nice post and I really appreciate your hard work. Blog commenting is also the best medium to share our views. Nice article you have shared.

Anya SkrbaJanuary 17, 2020 at 10:07 amReply

John SteveJanuary 17, 2020 at 3:04 pmReply

I appreciate your support Frank. Thanks!

You can also start your own social media marketing business and start earning from Instagram marketing and Youtube marketing.

A blog is a great platform to learn a lot and your articles are great

Anya SkrbaJanuary 10, 2020 at 2:28 pmReply

Thanks a lot Robin!

Robin BellJanuary 14, 2020 at 12:04 pmReply

Glad you can reply to me, I am very happy, your website design is very beautiful, I like it very much!

I was so happy to finally have my blog published then decided to take it down. My big mistake I didn’t do a lot of research. I used wix and found out they don’t have a working comment feature that will not allow visitors to log in. I’m late for 14days for full refund so I was charged for full year tried to ask for partial refund got denied. Wix is easy to use but stay away from them. I’m trying to learn how to use wordpress coz last time I made website was during college years

Anya SkrbaJanuary 10, 2020 at 2:22 pmReply

Thanks for your comment Tess. Let me know if you need any help with WordPress. All the best with your blogging journey!

Thank you for the article. I have been meaning to start a blog for a long time.

Thank you so much for this valuable post. This is what I was actually looking for. I will also bookmark this page for future help.

Anya SkrbaDecember 17, 2019 at 3:25 pmReply

Thanks for reading it Ryan, and thank you for your kind words.

I love the Star Wars style picture for this post! Very creative!

Anya SkrbaDecember 17, 2019 at 3:32 pmReply

Thanks Wayne!

Very good blog! Do you have any helpful hints ffor aspiring writers? I’m planning to start my own siite soon but I’m a little lost on everything. Would you recommend starting with a free platform like WordPress or go for a paid option? There are soo many options out there that I’m completely confused .. Any ideas? Thanks a lot!

Anya SkrbaNovember 12, 2019 at 2:27 pmReply

BillDecember 1, 2019 at 12:15 pmReply

Hi Notizie,

Self-hosted platforms allow you to run a blog using your own domain. Aside from following your domain registrar and web hosting company’s rules, you’re fully in charge of your blog and its contents. You have a number of choices when it comes to self-hosted systems (also called a Content Management System or CMS). The most popular is WordPress.org.

Start with using a spell checker and a grammar checker.

Time + good content + honesty + a fresh attitude = a readable blog.

Start where you are. Write every day, find someone to edit your stuff.

The sooner you start, the quicker you fail and failures is where we learn about successes.

Anya SkrbaDecember 17, 2019 at 3:31 pmReply

Good points Bill!

Thanks for the content…it really helped me in school!

Nice Article, I love the way, you have written such a excellent post!! Perfect design!!

Anya SkrbaOctober 29, 2019 at 8:38 amReply

Thanks Aman!

Thank you for this great article on what blog is and the entire process of blogging. Indeed this helped me a lot as I am a very new person to blogging. The article gave me a clear insight of the blog and it will help me in an online course where I am supposed to participate in a blog discussion. Eventually, I will think of establishing my own blog.

Cheers

Salome

Anya SkrbaOctober 29, 2019 at 8:40 amReply

You’re welcome Salome. Good luck with your online course.

I think this is one of the most significant information for me. And i’m glad reading your article. I really enjoyed this post. Big fan, thank you!

Anya SkrbaOctober 11, 2019 at 8:25 amReply

Thanks James! Glad you like it.

Very impressive!

Anya SkrbaSeptember 23, 2019 at 9:35 amReply

Thanks a lot!

Hi! I have been wanting to start a blog. My roadblocks are being afraid of failure as I know I need to constantly create new content, but I guess my question is how often? (every day? once a week?) and I also need a niche. I would like a lifestyle blog that I can blog about being a military wife with a job and everything that is going on in my life etc, which can include almost everything. But I don’t want to seem too scattered at the same time. I would also want to create new content that is engaging! help! 🙂

Anya SkrbaAugust 23, 2019 at 9:23 amReply

Hey Sarah,

I think it’s great that you want to start a blog! I like the idea of a lifestyle blog – we have a great guide that can lead you through the entire process of starting a lifestyle blog (with a few great examples of lifestyle blogs you can find inspiration from)! Or we can do it for you for free – if you’re interested in that write to use at hello@firstsiteguide.com

Regarding your question about content creation – you need to know that this is going to be YOUR blog, which means YOU decide how much content you want to publish and what kind of content you’re going to create! Your first post should be about you – give your future readers a little introduction about yourself, your idea behind the blog, etc and later you can let the story leads you further. Experiment a bit, write about different things that you find to be valuable for sharing. In the beginning, you don’t have to have a content publishing schedule – whenever you feel like writing do it and press publish. Just feel free to practice – it’s your first time being a blogger, the world of blogging is a new thing for you and making mistakes is just fine! No blogger started without making mistakes and no blogger exists without making mistakes because you learn from them 🙂

Your blog is YOUR online space – you have total freedom on doing whatever you wish with it and from all of us here at FirstSiteGuide you have full support! 🙂

Goodluck with your blog Sarah, and if you need any help we’re always here for you!

PS. see blogs of other military wives like The Frugal Navy Wife, The Military Wife and Mom, Army Wife 101, etc

This was a fantastic blog. A lot of very good information given, I had no idea what a blog was or how to start one. I will definitely use this information in the very near future. I have saved this link and will return in a couple of months, when I need to build my first blog. Thank you for the information.

Hi, Thank you for the useful tips on how to start a blog. I especially agree with the sentence, “Every human being has its story to tell”. Blogging is a lot of work but what a great way to record your story and share with others. Thank you for sharing!

Great post, blogging is hard. We run a travel blog and I think the most important thing we tell people is to travel with a purpose, Do not just wander around the world aimlessly. So many travel blogs do not really have a purpose or a niche. Niche is key and many miss out on that because they want to cover and do it all. Do not just start a blog because you think you will get rich quick and be able to travel the world. It takes a lot of work and lots of time.

it is a very useful article……now I’m gonna create a blog.

Ogi DjuraskovicApril 12, 2019 at 12:53 pmReply

Good luck Aneesha!

Fantastic piece, well tailored…. You sort of cleared my phobias… Now I can give it a shot… I pray I don’t run out of contents!…a big kudos

Ogi DjuraskovicApril 12, 2019 at 12:54 pmReply

Good luck!

Thank you so much. This article cleared my basic confusions about the blog. It is very helpful in learning basic concepts.

This is the best article on the concept of blogging. I am writing on blogging and I wanted insight. That, I got. The scope of the article is valid. Well done. Will revisit soon.

Hello, Bravo! This is a very valuable article. I will now start my blog without any difficulty. Thank you…

Thanks for sharing information about “Blog” & “Blogging”, can you please also guide me about Academic Blog Writing? Or what tips/rules should I follow to increase my viewers on my Academic blogs? I really appreciate it as you made blogging easier. Keep sharing such informative articles.

DeeApril 3, 2019 at 9:33 pmReply

Thanks, really helpful

I think I should start blogging, thanks for your awesome post.

Thanks for these useful tips.

I want to start a blog .. thank you

Nice post shared here. Good work and keep it up. Wishing you a very warm and blessed Happy New Year 2019.

Clean and nice explanations, thank you!

I am planning to start Blog, Nice article it helps lot. Thank you

Thanks for your article. Really helpful.

Good article. Great to know.

Very useful 👍

Thank you for sharing this great information. This information is very helpful for me.

Really helpful article for newbie and I’m too.. Your article is very productive to create a blog…All the steps are very important for the structure of a blog. Thank you for sharing this post. Now I will share this post…

Good article. All the points and steps are very clearly explained. It is very informative and interesting to read.

Nice article, very informative. Keep the good work going.

Hi Admin. Great Article, Thanks For Sharing.

Great Post! All the points and steps are very clearly explained. It is very informative and interesting to read.

It was so fun reading your article and have provided much information needed for the industry.

Iam using Blogspot as my professional platform. I love it, it is simple and easy to use. Plus benefit is Blogspot is owned by Google so basically, u have more chances to rank ur site in google. Thanks for the post mate. keep posting such kind of stuffs.

Thanks for this, it is informative for new ones.

mark coApril 25, 2018 at 4:30 pmReply

Definitely a Good guide for bloggers. I would recommend this article to beginners and experts in their field.

This is something great and perfectly described. These tips and way of explanation will surely help those newbies. Keep posting such kind of kinds of stuff, Thanks a lot mate!

Ogi DjuraskovicApril 13, 2018 at 9:10 amReply

Thanks Komal for your kind words!

Thanks for this, useful tips to get started

Ogi DjuraskovicApril 13, 2018 at 9:11 amReply

Thanks Craig.

Hey Admin, your blog post is very useful and informative, especially for those who are new in the blogging field and don’t know much about blog writing.

Waoo Coool

So, blogging turns 18 this year :)) yeah, everyone wants to start blogging, until they start blogging 🙂 it’s not all fun&games, you need to keep a regular posting schedule, post quality (educational) content, engage with your readers…

Ogi DjuraskovicApril 11, 2018 at 2:19 pmReply

Mrs AMarch 19, 2019 at 3:45 pmReply

Good points Jonathan. Thanks!

Love that you shared those three simple do’s, Johnathan. I’m going to keep those as my focus weekly.

Your list of blogging ideas is practically inexhaustible! 😀 It will take me ages to go through all the blogs you mentioned there but I’m sure that after that I’ll know everything there is to take this exciting online journey called blogging 🙂

Ogi DjuraskovicApril 11, 2018 at 10:44 amReply

Good luck with your blogging journey!

Thanks to the people who blog, I found so many amazing people with similar interests like mine. There were so many situations they helped me get out of the limbo when I was stuck and I try whenever I can to do the same for those who a little push. That’s the true power of blogosphere if you ask me 🙂

Ogi DjuraskovicApril 10, 2018 at 9:59 amReply

I agree…it is a true power of the blogosphere. Thanks for following our blog!

If you ask me, if there were no blogs – there would be no Internet :)))) ps. BTW, love that you listed a few blogging ideas here!

Ogi DjuraskovicApril 9, 2018 at 3:12 pmReply

Glad that you like the post Janis.

Thanks for sharing these amazing tips! I was looking for a side-job idea for a while now and thanks to you my search is now ended 🙂

This is great, I haven’t realized blogging has been around for that long. That Bradley’s video cleared up some things for me!

Ogi DjuraskovicApril 9, 2018 at 2:29 pmReply

Thanks for your comment, Daniel. Glad that you liked the video!

Useful article for future bloggers!

Ogi DjuraskovicApril 9, 2018 at 2:29 pmReply

Thanks Mike. Glad you find it useful!

Vivek SinghApril 11, 2018 at 9:48 amReply

good

Clear explaination 👍

Bookmarking the blog for future reference.

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Great and useful post, Thanks for sharing

Vivek SinghApril 11, 2018 at 7:35 amReply

good

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[dayaclassdemy-blog]

What is a Blog? – The Definition of Blog, Blogging, and Blogger..

Do you know what blogs are? If you don’t, then you’ve come to the right place. In the beginning, a blog was more of a personal diary that people shared online, and it goes back to 1994. In this online journal, you could talk about your daily life or share things you do. But, people saw an opportunity to communicate any information in a new way. So began the beautiful world of blogging.

What is a Blog?

Definition of blog

A blog (shortening of “weblog”) is an online journal or informational website displaying information in the reverse chronological order, with the latest posts appearing first. It is a platform where a writer or even a group of writers share their views on an individual subject.

What is the purpose of a blog?

There are many reasons to start a blog for personal use and only a handful of strong ones for business blogging. Blogging for business, projects, or anything else that might bring you money has a very straightforward purpose – to rank your website higher in Google SERPs, a.k.a. increase your visibility.

As a business, you rely on consumers to keep buying your products and services. As a new business, you rely on blogging to help you get to these consumers and grab their attention. Without blogging, your website would remain invisible, whereas running a blog makes you searchable and competitive.

So, the main purpose of a blog is to connect you to the relevant audience. Another one is to boost your traffic and send quality leads to your website.

The more frequent and better your blog posts are, the higher the chances for your website to get discovered and visited by your target audience. Which means, a blog is an effective lead generation tool. Add a great call to action (CTA), and it will convert your website traffic into high-quality leads. But a blog also allows you to showcase your authority and build a brand.

When you use your niche knowledge for creating informative and engaging posts, it builds trust with your audience. Great blogging makes your business looks more credible, which is especially important if your brand is still young and fairly unknown. It ensures presence and authority at the same time.

Blog structure

The appearance of blogs changed over time, and nowadays blogs include different items. But, most blogs include some standard features and structure. Here are common features that a typical blog will include:

Header with the menu or navigation bar

Main content area with highlighted or latest blog posts

Sidebar with social profiles, favorite content, or call-to-action

Footer with relevant links like a disclaimer, privacy policy, contact page, etc.

Feel free to use this template on your site

The above example is the basic structure of the blog. Each item has its own importance and helps visitors to navigate through your blog.

Blogs and websites

A majority of people still wonder whether there is any difference between a blog and a website. What is a blog and what is a website? It’s even more challenging to differentiate between the two today. Many companies are integrating blogs into their sites to perform the same function.

What differentiates blogs from websites?

Blogs need frequent updates. Good examples include a food blog sharing meal recipes or a company writing about their industry news.

Blogs promote perfect reader engagement. Readers get a chance to comment and voice their different concerns to the viewer. Static websites, on the other hand, consists of the content presented on static pages. Static website owners rarely update their pages. Blog owners update their site with new blog posts on a regular basis.

Key elements that identify a blog post from a static page include a publishing date, author reference, categories, and tags within a byline. While not all blog posts have all those byline elements, static website pages do not have any of these items. From a visitor perspective, the content on a static site will not change from one visit to the next. The content on a blog, yet, has the potential to offer something new each day, week, or month. Depending on the blog owner’s publishing schedule.

What is blogging?

In the early 2000s, blogging emerged in all different phases when several political blogs were born. Also, blogs with how-to manuals began to appear. Established institutions began to note the difference between journalism and blogging. The number of bloggers in the United States is set to reach 31.7 million users in 2020.

Definition of blogging

Blogging is the set of many skills that one needs to run and control a blog. Equipping web page with tools to make the process of writing, posting, linking, and sharing content easier on the internet.

Why is blogging so popular?

It’s important to mention that blogging grows with each passing day! Hence, to answer the question ‘what is blogging’ we need to look at the factors behind its rise.

In the early stages, blogs became mainstream, as news services began using them as tools for outreach and opinion forming. It became a new source of information.

Businesses saw a good way to improve the customer’s level of satisfaction. Through blogging, companies keep clients and customers up to date. The more people visit your blog, the more exposure and trust your brand gets.

Personal and niche bloggers, saw the potential to reach more people interested in specific topics. Through a blog, visitors can comment and interact with you or your brand which helps you create a network of loyal followers.

Did you know you could earn money through blogging? Once your blog gets enough attention and fans, you can look into ways of monetizing your blog. Through the blog, you can offer your services and sell products.

Who is a blogger?

In recent times, bloggers have become famous for various reasons. An alternative career or job to many, more people are choosing to join the ranks. So who are bloggers? These are individuals who love sharing parts of their lives with you. They post various topics from arts, home designs, carpentry, and finance articles. Bloggers are mobile and don’t need to be in one place. They live on the internet!

Definition of blogger

A blogger is someone who runs and controls a blog. He or she shares his or her opinion on different topics for a target audience.

Why are many people blogging today?

Would you want to have a blog of your own? Yes! Most people today are creating a blog for various reasons. Every human being has its story to tell. Hence, through the internet, bloggers can communicate to a larger group of people.

Why is blogging so popular? Blogs allow you to talk about any topics and express your opinion. You’ll find some bloggers writing on every activity that took place during the day. These may range from small issues such as waking up, to major issues like human rights and climate changes! Remember that as a blogger running your own blog, you need to rely on the topics that you love and strive to become one of the best blogs on the web.

Are bloggers getting paid?

Bloggers do earn money, but this is not a get-rich-quick kind of profession.

Before you can start monetizing your blog, you need to build both your Google SERPs ranking and your niche influence. And that takes plenty of time and quality content. Money-making opportunities won’t present themselves until you’ve gained some credibility in the field. So, get down to business.

Here’s how you can make good money as a top-ranked niche blogger:

Selling ad space on your blog privately or via Google AdSense.

Becoming an affiliate partner privately or through ad networks.

Selling your own digital products such as eBooks and tutorials.

Selling memberships for access to exclusive content or advice.

Using your blog as a content marketing tool for your business.

If you’re starting a blog as a way to market and boost your existing business, you probably won’t be selling ad space or memberships. But you can create and start offering exclusive digital products such as eBooks, guides, or online courses as a lead capturing tool in exchange for visitors’ email addresses. That way, you’ll nudge them one step further down your sales funnel.

Want to start a blog on your own?

Creating your own personal blog takes a few steps. First, you need to decide on a name for your blog also called a domain name, and choose the best blogging platform. We recommend going with the self-hosted platform. There are few choices when it comes to self-hosted platforms but the most popular is WordPress.org.

Then you need to choose a web hosting service and for new bloggers, we strongly recommend Bluehost, a company that powers over 2 million websites worldwide. You will get a Free domain name when you sign up with them and if you don’t like their services, they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Step One

Click on this link and you will go to the “Exclusive Offer” page reserved for our fans. Once you get there click on “Get Started Now”.

Step Two

If this is your first hosting account ever, you should start with the basic plan, because you will need time to determine your needs and options. The basic plan has everything any beginner needs to set up a new blog. Consider other plans later when your blog takes off and your needs become greater.

Step Three

Your domain name will play a vital role in the future development of your blog and this is why it is important to take your time and figure out a good domain name. Once you’ve done that, enter the name in the “new domain” column and choose your Top-Level Domain.

Recommended tool:

Just type in the desired domain in this “new domain” box and BlueHost will show you whether it’s available or not. If not, it will provide you with a list of similar names for you to choose from.

Conclusion

We hope that you’ve learned something important when it comes to the world of blogging. If you’ve managed to start a blog then your next step is to work on your blog content in order to keep your future readers satisfied and engaged. Feel free to check out our extensive list of blogging resources which will help you run and grow your new blog.

[tingkering-blog]

What is Design Thinking and Why Is It So Popular?

Original Article: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/what-is-design-thinking-and-why-is-it-so-popular

Design Thinking is not an exclusive property of designers—all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering, and business have practiced it. So, why call it Design Thinking? What’s special about Design Thinking is that designers’ work processes can help us systematically extract, teach, learn and apply these human-centered techniques to solve problems in a creative and innovative way – in our designs, in our businesses, in our countries, in our lives.

Some of the world’s leading brands, such as Apple, Google, Samsung and GE, have rapidly adopted the Design Thinking approach, and Design Thinking is being taught at leading universities around the world, including d.school, Stanford, Harvard and MIT. But do you know what Design Thinking is? And why it’s so popular? Here, we’ll cut to the chase and tell you what it is and why it’s so in demand.

What is Design Thinking?

Design Thinking is an iterative process in which we seek to understand the user, challenge assumptions, and redefine problems in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding. At the same time, Design Thinking provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It is a way of thinking and working as well as a collection of hands-on methods.

Design Thinking revolves around a deep interest in developing an understanding of the people for whom we’re designing the products or services. It helps us observe and develop empathy with the target user. Design Thinking helps us in the process of questioning: questioning the problem, questioning the assumptions, and questioning the implications. Design Thinking is extremely useful in tackling problems that are ill-defined or unknown, by re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions, and adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping and testing. Design Thinking also involves ongoing experimentation: sketching, prototyping, testing, and trying out concepts and ideas.

Design Thinking’s Phases

There are many variants of the Design Thinking process in use today, and they have from three to seven phases, stages, or modes. However, all variants of Design Thinking are very similar. All variants of Design Thinking embody the same principles, which were first described by Nobel Prize laureate Herbert Simon in The Sciences of the Artificial in 1969. Here, we will focus on the five-phase model proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, which is also known as d.school. We’ve chosen d.school’s approach because they’re at the forefront of applying and teaching Design Thinking. The five phases of Design Thinking, according to d.school, are as follows:

Empathise – with your users

Define – your users’ needs, their problem, and your insights

Ideate – by challenging assumptions and creating ideas for innovative solutions

Prototype – to start creating solutions

Test – solutions

It is important to note that the five phases, stages, or modes are not always sequential. They do not have to follow any specific order and can often occur in parallel and repeat iteratively. Given that, you should not understand the phases as a hierarchal or step-by-step process. Instead, you should look at it as an overview of the modes or phases that contribute to an innovative project, rather than sequential steps.

Author/Copyright holder: Pixabay. Copyright terms and licence: Free to Use

To help you understand Design Thinking, we have broken the process into five phases or modes, which are: 1. Empathise, 2. Define, 3. Ideate, 4. Prototype, and 5. Test. What’s special about Design Thinking is that designers’ work processes can help us systematically extract, teach, learn, and apply these human-centered techniques to solve problems in a creative and innovative way – in our designs, in our businesses, in our nations (and eventually, if things go really well, beyond), in our lives. Nevertheless, a great artist like Auguste Rodin, who created this famous sculpture called “The Thinker” and originally “Le Penseur”, would most likely have used the very same innovative processes in his artwork. In the same way, all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering and business have practiced it and still practice it.

The Problem with Ingrained Patterns of Thinking

Sometimes, the easiest way to understand something intangible, such as Design Thinking, is by understanding what it is not.

Humans naturally develop patterns of thinking modeled on repetitive activities and commonly accessed knowledge. These assist us in quickly applying the same actions and knowledge in similar or familiar situations, but they also have the potential to prevent us from quickly and easily accessing or developing new ways of seeing, understanding and solving problems. These patterns of thinking are often referred to as schemas, which are organized sets of information and relationships between things, actions and thoughts that are stimulated and initiated in the human mind when we encounter some environmental stimuli. A single schema can contain a vast amount of information. For example, we have a schema for dogs which encompasses the presence of four legs, fur, sharp teeth, a tail, paws, and a number of other perceptible characteristics. When the environmental stimuli match this schema — even when there is a tenuous link or only a few of the characteristics are present — the same pattern of thought is brought into the mind. As these schemas are stimulated automatically, this can obstruct a more fitting impression of the situation or prevent us from seeing a problem in a way that will enable a new problem-solving strategy. Innovative problem solving is also known as “thinking outside of the box”.

An Example of Problem solving: The Encumbered Vs. The Fresh Mind

Thinking outside of the box can provide an innovative solution to a sticky problem. However, thinking outside of the box can be a real challenge as we naturally develop patterns of thinking that are modeled on the repetitive activities and commonly accessed knowledge we surround ourselves with.

Some years ago, an incident occurred where a truck driver tried to pass under a low bridge. But he failed, and the truck was lodged firmly under the bridge. The driver was unable to continue driving through or reverse out.

The story goes that as the truck became stuck, it caused massive traffic problems, which resulted in emergency personnel, engineers, firefighters and truck drivers gathering to devise and negotiate various solutions for dislodging the trapped vehicle.

Emergency workers were debating whether to dismantle parts of the truck or chip away at parts of the bridge. Each spoke of a solution which fitted within his or her respective level of expertise.

A boy walking by and witnessing the intense debate looked at the truck, at the bridge, then looked at the road and said nonchalantly, "Why not just let the air out of the tires?" to the absolute amazement of all the specialists and experts trying to unpick the problem.

When the solution was tested, the truck was able to drive free with ease, having suffered only the damage caused by its initial attempt to pass underneath the bridge. The story symbolizes the struggles we face where oftentimes the most obvious solutions are the ones hardest to come by because of the self-imposed constraints we work within.

Copyright holder: Wystan, Flickr. Copyright terms and license: CC BY 2.0

It’s often difficult for us humans to challenge our assumptions and everyday knowledge, because we rely on building patterns of thinking in order to not have to learn everything from scratch every time. We rely on doing everyday processes more or less unconsciously — for example, when we get up in the morning, eat, walk, and read — but also when we assess challenges at work and in our private lives. In particular, experts and specialists rely on their solid thought patterns, and it can be very challenging and difficult for experts to start questioning their knowledge.

The Power of Storytelling

Why did we tell you this story? Telling stories can help us inspire opportunities, ideas and solutions. Stories are framed around real people and their lives. Stories are important because they are accounts of specific events, not general statements. They provide us with concrete details that help us imagine solutions to particular problems. While we’re at it, please watch this 1-minute video to help you get started understanding what Design Thinking is about.

Design Thinking is often referred to as ‘outside the box’ thinking. This child shows us why it’s important to challenge our assumptions and find new ways to solve our problems.

Design Thinking or 'Outside the Box' Thinking

Design Thinking is often referred to as ‘outside the box’ thinking, as designers are attempting to develop new ways of thinking that do not abide by the dominant or more common problem-solving methods.

At the heart of Design Thinking is the intention to improve products by analyzing and understanding how users interact with products and investigating the conditions in which they operate. At the heart of Design Thinking lies also the interest and ability to ask significant questions and challenging assumptions. One element of outside the box thinking is to falsify previous assumptions – i.e., to make it possible to prove whether they are valid or not. Once we have questioned and investigated the conditions of a problem, the solution-generation process will help us produce ideas that reflect the genuine constraints and facets of that particular problem. Design Thinking offers us a means of digging that bit deeper; it helps us to do the right kind of research and to prototype and test our products and services so as to uncover new ways of improving the product, service or design.

Grand Old Man of User Experience, Don Norman, who also coined the very term User Experience, explains what Design Thinking is and what’s so special about it:

“…the more I pondered the nature of design and reflected on my recent encounters with engineers, business people and others who blindly solved the problems they thought they were facing without question or further study, I realized that these people could benefit from a good dose of design thinking. Designers have developed a number of techniques to avoid being captured by too facile a solution. They take the original problem as a suggestion, not as a final statement, then think broadly about what the real issues underlying this problem statement might really be (for example by using the "Five Whys" approach to get at root causes). Most important of all, is that the process is iterative and expansive. Designers resist the temptation to jump immediately to a solution to the stated problem. Instead, they first spend time determining what the basic, fundamental (root) issue is that needs to be addressed. They don't try to search for a solution until they have determined the real problem, and even then, instead of solving that problem, they stop to consider a wide range of potential solutions. Only then will they finally converge upon their proposal. This process is called "Design Thinking." – Don Norman, Rethinking Design Thinking

Design Thinking is an Essential Tool – and A Third Way

The design process often involves a number of different groups of people in different departments; for this reason, developing, categorizing, and organizing ideas and problem solutions can be difficult. One way of keeping a design project on track and organizing the core ideas is using a Design Thinking approach.

Tim Brown, CEO of the celebrated innovation and design firm IDEO, shows in his successful book Change by Design that Design Thinking is firmly based on generating a holistic and empathic understanding of the problems that people face, and that it involves ambiguous or inherently subjective concepts such as emotions, needs, motivations, and drivers of behaviors. This contrasts with a solely scientific approach, where there’s more of a distance in the process of understanding and testing the user’s needs and emotions — e.g., via quantitative research. Tim Brown sums up that Design Thinking is a third way: Design Thinking is essentially a problem-solving approach, crystalized in the field of design, which combines a holistic user-centered perspective with rational and analytical research with the goal of creating innovative solutions.

“Design thinking taps into capacities we all have but that are overlooked by more conventional problem-solving practices. It is not only human-centered; it is deeply human in and of itself. Design thinking relies on our ability to be intuitive, to recognize patterns, to construct ideas that have emotional meaning as well as functionality, to express ourselves in media other than words or symbols. Nobody wants to run a business based on feeling, intuition, and inspiration, but an overreliance on the rational and the analytical can be just as dangerous. The integrated approach at the core of the design process suggests a ‘third way.’ “ – Tim Brown, Change by Design, Introduction

Science and Rationality in Design Thinking

Some of the scientific activities will include analyzing how users interact with products and investigating the conditions in which they operate: researching user needs, pooling experience from previous projects, considering present and future conditions specific to the product, testing the parameters of the problem, and testing the practical application of alternative problem solutions. Unlike a solely scientific approach, where the majority of known qualities, characteristics, etc. of the problem are tested so as to arrive at a problem solution, Design Thinking investigations include ambiguous elements of the problem to reveal previously unknown parameters and uncover alternative strategies.

After arriving at a number of potential problem solutions, the selection process is underpinned by rationality. Designers are encouraged to analyze and falsify these problem solutions so that they can arrive at the best available option for each problem or obstacle identified during each phase of the design process.

With this in mind, it may be more correct to say that Design Thinking is not about thinking outside of the box, but on its edge, its corner, its flap, and under its barcode, as Clint Runge put it.

Copyright holder: Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright terms and license: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Clint Runge is Founder and Managing Director of Archrival, a distinguished youth marketing agency, and adjunct Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Generating Creative Ideas and Solutions by Holistically Understanding Humans

With a solid foundation in science and rationality, Design Thinking seeks to generate a holistic and empathetic understanding of the problems that people face. Design thinking tries to empathize with human beings. That involves ambiguous or inherently subjective concepts such as emotions, needs, motivations, and drivers of behaviors. The nature of generating ideas and solutions in Design Thinking means this approach is typically more sensitive to and interested in the context in which users operate and the problems and obstacles they might face when interacting with a product. The creative element of Design Thinking is found in the methods used to generate problem solutions and insights into the practices, actions, and thoughts of real users.

Design Thinking is an Iterative and Non-linear Process

Copyright holder: Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright terms and license: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Design Thinking is an iterative and non-linear process. This simply means that the design team continuously use their results to review, question and improve their initial assumptions, understandings and results. Results from the final stage of the initial work process inform our understanding of the problem, help us determine the parameters of the problem, enable us to redefine the problem, and, perhaps most importantly, provide us with new insights so we can see any alternative solutions that might not have been available with our previous level of understanding.

Design Thinking is for Everybody

Tim Brown also emphasizes that Design Thinking techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of a business. Design thinking is not only for designers but also for creative employees, freelancers, and leaders who seek to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product or service in order to drive new alternatives for business and society.

“Design thinking begins with skills designers have learned over many decades in their quest to match human needs with available technical resources within the practical constraints of business. By integrating what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable, designers have been able to create the products we enjoy today. Design thinking takes the next step, which is to put these tools into the hands of people who may have never thought of themselves as designers and apply them to a vastly greater range of problems.” – Tim Brown, Change by Design, Introduction

Copyright holder: Daniel Lobo, Flickr. Copyright terms and license: CC BY 2.0

Design Thinking is essentially a problem-solving approach, crystallized in the field of design, which combines a user-centered perspective with rational and analytical research with the goal of creating innovative solutions.

The Take Away

Design Thinking is essentially a problem-solving approach specific to design, which involves assessing known aspects of a problem and identifying the more ambiguous or peripheral factors that contribute to the conditions of a problem. This contrasts with a more scientific approach where the concrete and known aspects are tested in order to arrive at a solution. Design Thinking is an iterative process in which knowledge is constantly being questioned and acquired so it can help us redefine a problem in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding. Design Thinking is often referred to as ‘outside the box thinking’, as designers are attempting to develop new ways of thinking that do not abide by the dominant or more common problem-solving methods – just like artists do. At the heart of Design Thinking is the intention to improve products by analyzing how users interact with them and investigating the conditions in which they operate. Design Thinking offers us a means of digging that bit deeper to uncover ways of improving user experiences.

“The ‘Design Thinking’ label is not a myth. It is a description of the application of well-tried design process to new challenges and opportunities, used by people from both design and non-design backgrounds. I welcome the recognition of the term and hope that its use continues to expand and be more universally understood, so that eventually every leader knows how to use design and design thinking for innovation and better results.” – Bill Moggridge, co-founder of IDEO, in Design Thinking: Dear Don

References & Where to Learn More

Hero Image: Copyright holder: Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright terms and license: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Course: Design Thinking - The Beginner's Guide: https://www.interaction-design.org/courses/design-thinking-the-beginner-s-guide

Don Norman. “Rethinking Design Thinking”, 2013: http://www.core77.com/posts/24579/rethinking-design-thinking-24579

Tim Brown, Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation Introduction, 2009

Bill Moggridge, “Design Thinking: Dear Don”, 2010: http://www.core77.com/posts/17042/design-thinking-dear-don-17042

[zanytimetravelenthusiast-blog]

Kuicklist Review Discount And Huge Bonus

Kuicklist Review

Just how To Construct An Email List: 60 Free Ways You Can Utilize Right Now (Part 1)

You have an on-line Kuicklist company, as well as currently you prepare to construct an e-mail checklist.

However where do you begin?

In this blog post, we at Sumo placed our heads together to come up with 60 means to do simply that.

In fact, we listed every available way to develop your email listing, so you do not need to do any kind of guesswork.

Hey Sumolings, Dean below.

This article was first created and also published by Sarah Peterson and also Sean Bestor. We recently made an update so it extra relevant and also beneficial to you.

Dean, Head of Material

Allow's dive in!

1. DEVELOP A LANDING WEB PAGE

Touchdown web pages are among the most tested methods to construct your checklist. They're web pages whose sole purpose is to complete one activity-- be it a purchase, a share, or, for our instance, a sign-up.

When you're requesting for an email address, you're generally giving something away called a content upgrade. These upgrades can be ebooks, overviews, videos, or any kind of piece of beneficial web content you do not usually hand out.

These touchdown web pages typically depend on their very own-- they're not obtainable via your primary Kuicklist navigation. You can make use of landing web pages in really specific ways (some people produce a landing web page for each banner ad they produce).

Services like MailChimp, ConvertKit, and a lot more supply such attributes for their customers to develop touchdown web pages aimed to collect e-mails.

The services stated are the a lot more standard of the alternatives as for landing web pages go. What you're doing is creating a page then installing a sign-up form directly into the body of the page.

The biggest advantage to this approach is you'll be forced to produce a checklist in your ESP that the kind will be linked to.

2. CREATE A HOMEPAGE SIGN-UP BOX

A lot of your website's page sights start at the homepage.

And why shouldn't they? It is just one of one of the most essential pages on your site. It's the store window right into your service.

Because that's where the action occurs, you'll wish to make sure you're capturing email addresses while those site visitors are curious.

You can build on that inquisitiveness and authority by asking the visitor for their e-mail address right away:

Right here's what Brian Dean of Backlinko does to grow his checklist. The very first thing you see on his homepage is a possibility to register for SEO tips. [*] Since Brian is a freaking wizard at the art of backlinking, this is a powerful deal as soon as possible. He's offering his site visitors the Kuicklist opportunity to get his proven SEO as well as traffic ideas.

Considering that the first fold is the most-viewed section of a web page, Brian makes certain 100% of his homepage traffic has the opportunity to register.

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Item: Kuicklist

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Time Of Launch: 11:00 EDT

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Sales Page: https://www.socialleadfreak.com/kuicklist-review/

Particular Niche: Checklist Building

What Is Kuicklist?

I am sure now you have actually heard the stating that "the money is in the list". It is been regurgitated a lot that it is virtually like an echo or steroids. Anyway that declaration isn't entirely real.

See, it isn't that the money is in the list, but in the RESPONSIVE list. I suggest, that cares about getting on your checklist if they never ever open your emails?

Which is why you can not half-step when it concerns giving away a lead magnet that wows as well as educates your customers to open your e-mails due to the fact that they see that you supply real worth.

So how can you do that exactly?

Checklists. Well, none ol' lists, yet INTERACTIVE ones.

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You will certainly be surprised at how web traffic can't withstand these types of lead magnets. It resembles the mouse that simply needs to have the cheese.

Best of all, Kuicklist is basic to utilize so there is no massive understanding contour for those that aren't as technically smart, but want to begin building their own profitable and also responsive listings as well.

Kuicklist Funnels

Front End: Kuicklist features self-hosting, iframe embedding & Wordpress plugin, incorporates with your favorite email autoresponder and also Segmate for messenger advertising and marketing.

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You can include VA Sub-Users and also remove Branding + Unlimited Sections + Webhooks + Public Checklists. Also you can clone/duplicate a readily available list to your account.

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[keremulusoy]

The word “festival” came to Turkish from the Latin word “festivus” briefly means carnival, entertainment, and feast. As we look at the festivals in Turkey and around the World nowadays, we can call “pre-planned art, culture, entertainment shows series” for the special headlines like the geographical structure of the region, its cultural inheritance, beliefs, a specific product or food.

The increase in the number of people who plan their travels according to the festival’s dates clearly shows the importance of the festivals today. The festivals, which have very beautiful and important functions in order to show the history, traditions and customs of the region, their cultural values, and even turn the geographical structure to advantage of which is seen as disadvantage, and transfer them from generation to generation, take place under different topics in many countries in the world. And in these winter days which the day time is shorter, gets darker earlier and the sun heating us is seen less, we wanted to talk about the winter festivals in the world and in our country, ice and snow sculptures which will enrich our eyes upon, and the richness and colorfulness added to these regions by the different life styles and climate conditions.  We wanted to start from Russia and China and take you to Çıldır Lake

To International Harbin Ice and Snow Festival… Even the activities start slowly from the middle of December, especially on Christmas time, The festival, which officially started on January 5 and continued until the end of February, welcomes its visitors for the 35th time this year. With its giant snow sculptures, skiing and swimming races in the Songhua River, lighthouse regiments and concerts, it promises approximately 10 to 15 million visitors a colorful and filled winter festival. In the snow sculpture section of the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival, some sculptures exceed 40 meters. Even when considering snow or ice sculptures, many world records were broken here. For example, the Kremlin sculpture in 2015 was 48 meters high. Nearly 10,000 workers work on carrying and cutting snow blocks in the festival. Artists begin to make sculptures from mid-december for the festival, which is full of winter activities; pure water is used for ice parts that give a glass appearance. What makes Harbin different from all other festivals in the world such as Sapparo in Japan, Norway and Canada Quebec is the illumination of the snow sculptures as well as the latest technology. Sculptures are made with LED lights including computer controlled different light and color games and animations.

Light and Color Games Festival events take place in 4 different theme parks. But beware tickets for each venue and the appropriate visiting hours are different. For example, it is more convenient to visit the sculptures in the Sun Island International Snow Sculpture Art Expo during the daytime. It will be more enjoyable to visit The Ice and Snow World, with larger sculptures such as palaces or the Great Wall of China, in the evening, where light plays can be watched. The Zhaolin Park Ice Lantern Fair Park with its magical atmosphere and the Wanda Ice Lantern World are among the most preferred areas for families with children, as there are inner illuminated ice lanterns, animal or mystical figures, and an area for sled skate.

Although the city of Harbin is located at the borders of China, it is a hybrid city that has melted Chinese and Russian cultures in a pot. The city is known as “Little Moscow”, even if it is several kilometers away from Moscow and 5 hour time difference between them. Because the Russians, who fled the Bolshevik regime and settled in these lands some 100 years ago, established a mixed culture. You can see the intense Russian influence in the city’s local cuisine, as well as in souvenirs and architecture.

Talking about architecture, how about wandering around the city’s streets smelling history? Perhaps the most important historical building from the refugees fleeing Russia is the Church of Hagia Sophia, which is an Orthodox church. The building can be visited today as a history museum. Also it can be counted as the things to do to walk around the shops and the souvenir shops in Zhongyang Street which dates back to 1900s and closed to car traffic. It is also possible to find Western-style food as there are Russian or Chinese dishes for dining on this street. There are cafes and bars for those who are too cold, want to have a warm break or who want to taste Harbin’s 100-year-old beer. Even though festival events take place in 4 main locations, it won’t be surprising for you’re to see ice sculptures on Zhonyang Street, on the riverside or in front of the Hagia Sophia Church. The Songhua River and its surroundings are also a fairground, which has swimming races in it within the scope of the festival. On the river, which has become an ice rink since it was frozen, such activities as dog sleds, horse-drawn carriages, battery-powered little cars, bicycles attract the attention of both locals and tourists. Briefly, Harbin offers winter lovers a combination of art and entertainment in cultural and historical background.

Russian Winter Festival Warming People’s Inside In The Freezing Cold Of Moscow Let’s go to the Real Moscow, instead of Little Moscow, to the Russian Winter Festival. The Russian Winter Festival, held every year from mid-december to mid-january, is a great opportunity to meet the New Year. In fact, Russia has winter festivals in many regions on the same date due to the climate of the winter season. The Russian Winter Festival in Moscow is one of the most popular of them. Russians also show great interest in the festival, which hosts tens of thousands of visitors from different countries of the world. The festival includes a full festive atmosphere as it includes the Russian Christmas, the Russian New Year and the celebrations of the Saint Svyatki Days. In the days of the Russian Winter Festival, Moscow turning into a real wonderland that gives pleasure in the cold days while shining with ornaments that illuminate the dark winter evenings, the festival offers a great opportunity to discover and experience Russian culture through food, drink, music, dance, art, craft, play and other activities.

The Christmas Fair at the Red Square during the festival creates a great atmosphere with its colourful appearance. It is a great place to buy traditional Russian Christmas presents from Russian matryoshka first comes to mind, to wooden toys, from lacquer painted boxes to Russian scarf which warms people’s inside and to valenky which is even resistant to Moscow’s cold. Russian Winter Festival is a good opportunity to try traditional Russian dishes such as bagel bread, jam and tea but the most attractive one is to see the examples of a Russian ice sculpture that is beyond the borders.  From sculptures of symbols of Russian culture to an animal, cathedral sculptures, huge ice sculptures stop your breath. A giant ice chess game has become an integral part of the Russian Winter Festival. When you walk among the ice sculptures, you can see Ded Moroz, the Russian’s Santa Claus, who is differentiated by his embroidered clothing. It won’t be good not to share with the spiritual evolution of Ded Moroz who was a bad wizard kidnapping kid and demanding ransom before.  Moreover, the Santa Claus of Russia is not alone like other Santas. Ded Moroz never leaves “Snegurochka” the snow girl known as his granddaughter. You will never know what aspects of Russian culture you will meet at the Russian Winter Festival where you will find another surprise, another fun, another feeling in every corner!

Winter Festival in Quebec, the Largest State in Canada The Quebec Winter Festival in Quebec, the largest province in Canada, known for its cold weather in North America, welcomes thousands of tourists every year in january and february. The main name of the festival in the French language is Carnaval de Québec but don’t worry if you don’t speak French because everybody knows and speaks English. The festival, which took place in 1894, was held at regular intervals until 1955. Since 1955 even it has been named as the Bonhomme Carnival, today it is one of the top ten most famous festivals in the world as the Quebec Winter Festival. Bonhomme is the mascot and official representative of the festival. Bonhomme, a snowman with his red cap in whites, represents the heroism of the past generations. You can come across Bonhomme in festival areas, an ice palace, in short, all over the city, and get your camera ready. Since the beginning of January, preparations start in Quebec City the capital city of the state. Ice sculptures carved by architects, places where national flavors are tasted are built; a huge movement and entertainment season is starting for the public. Red beret snowmen all around the city are especially children’s greatest entertainment. There are so many activities and colorful festivals to be seen waiting for you at the Quebec Winter Festival. The parade of sparkling fireworks and ice sculptures on the opening night is like a unique visual show that will warm you up despite the cold of the weather.

BONHOMME’S OFFICIAL RESIDENCE ICE PALACE Each year since 1955, the city’s famous architects came together to make the Ice Palace which is one of the most interesting festival symbols. The palace, which is also considered as the official residence of Bonhomme, is located just opposite the Quebec Parliament Building. Don’t be surprised that you will often meet Bonhomme in the Ice Palace. Engraved snow and ice sculptures are art masterpieces which show how endless man’s extraordinary dexterity and imagination are. Every year thousands of local and foreign tourists come to see just these statues as they visit the historical city and bring great vitality to the economy and the agenda. Dog sled racing, canoeing tournaments on the frozen St Laurence River, giant ice-park and playgrounds set up in the city square offer exciting and fun alternatives for families in winter and show pleasant living spaces in cold climate.

Çıldır for the Ones Who Say Necessarily My Country We are very fortunate to be living in the geography where many events can be held in four seasons. In our country, Çıldır Lake which is in Çıldır District of Ardahan Province located in Eastern Anatolia Region and one of the biggest freshwater lakes of Turkey, is hosting the International Çıldır Lake Winter Festival When the feeling of peace and simplicity of white and the life and hope-giving image of blue are combined, you will not get enough of watching Çıldır Lake. A frozen and white top lake between the mountains surrounding itself. Natural igloos, horse sleighs, and black horses garnished in every color, and a shabby fisherman looking at them from a little bit above. The man thinks he’s in heaven, dressed in white. If you think that every season of the year, the fishing will be interrupted in the cold until the minus forty in winter, you should see the “carp fish” which were hunted by opening a hole on ice in Çıldır Lake. While the festival which is made on the Çıldır Lake the only Freezing lake of Turkey, was before a national festival made by the local citizens and the organizations, federations, municipalities and other constitutions, today, thanks to the ease of transportation and especially with the option of transportation by airlines, it has become an international festival, which is popular with foreign tourists from many different countries. The Çıldır Lake Winter Festival is organized every year according to the thickness and quality of ice. To make the festival on the lake, the ice thickness should be 40 cm. For this, usually the best time is february. The snow and the desired thickness of the ice are very important for the people of the region who make great gains in the material and spiritual sense from the festival. Although the weather and snow, ice, and perhaps ice are perceived as great distress for the western population, it is very important for Çıldır to contribute to the economy of the city as well as for the fun of the people.

On the Ice Horseback Javelin Shows It is admirable for the festival which has a great mission on local people and the local tourists to know the values of the region, to introduce the Eastern Region of Turkey to the foreign tourists.  Because of the festival bringing an important vitality to not only Çıldır, but also the cities of Kars and Ardahan, the richness of the region is coming to light. Kars kashar cheese, Ardahan Damal baby, Kars goose, Ardahan honey and many other products are purchased from domestic and foreign tourists and an added-value economy is emerging. Thanks to concerts and competitions, people who are more entertained by feeling themselves part of the festival, are starting to make festival plans for the next year. Besides the snowmobile, the lake tour with the sleigh will definitely be one of the most memorable experiences in your life. In particular, if you coincide with the sleigh driver Tuncay Aydemir, the dose of the conversation will warm your heart. In addition to being able to transport by land and air, railway experience is also an important factor in the privilege of the International Çıldır Festival. Coming to Kars with the Nostalgic Eastern Express train, along the way, seeing many cities along with the ever-changing landscapes and sipping your tea, and having a chat with your favorite companions is one of the most popular reasons for the festival. 40 km from Kars-Çıldır Lake. and if you have a car or a crowded group with a bus ride, you can have a very white journey.

Kars/Çıldır Lake

Kars/Çıldır Lake

Kars/Çıldır Lake

Kars/Çıldır Lake

Kars/Çıldır Lake

Kars/Çıldır Lake

Kars/Çıldır Lake

Kars/Çıldır Lake

Kars/Çıldır Lake

  NOTE:

World’s most famous snow and ice festivals;

Harbin International Snow and Ice Sculpture Festival, CHINA

Krasnoyarsk International Snow and Ice Sculpture Festival, RUSSIA

Ice On Whyte Festival, Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA

Sapporo Snow Festival, Hokkaido, Japan

Budweiser International Snow Sculpture Festival, Breckenridge, Colorado, USA

Quebec Winter Festival, CANADA

International Ice Sculpture Festival, Jelgava, LATVIA

BP World Ice Art Championship, Alaska, USA

Snowking Winter Festival, Territories, CANADA

Ice Music Festival, Geilo, NORWAY

Harbin Winter Festival: A Splendid Feast Spread Over An Area Of 600 Thousand M2 Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang province, which is the northernmost of China, is one of the cities where the winter conditions are most challenging and Siberia effect is felt most intensely. In winter the average temperature is around -17 degrees, decreasing to -38 degrees. This is why it is home to one of the biggest winter festivals. Gorky Central Culture and Leisure Park, which is frequented by the Moscow People, is also part of the Russian Winter Festival. Since the main entrance of the park is right next to the metro station’s exit, transportation is also quite easy. The park is named after the famous writer Maxim Gorky, and extends to the edges of the Moscow River. The park, where you dive into the colorful world of flowers in spring, is covered with a green blanket in the summer and takes on white in the winter months. In the park it is also possible to skate in the serenity of the white. The park is decorated with ice sculptures at the festival, even it is very beautiful in the day, it is sparkling under the lights of the night.

Krasnoyarsk International Snow and Ice Sculpture Festival  If you have seen the Russian Winter Festival in Moscow or if you say that you are good with cold, we recommend the Krasnoyarsk International Snow and Ice Sculpture Festival in Siberia, which is on the list of the most famous festivals in the world. The charming atmosphere of the ice and snow festival in Krasnoyarsk, Russia is breathtaking. In the festival where the gigantic ice sculptures, buildings, slides and chateaus are exhibited, while some of the professional ice sculptors create their sculptures with the latest laser technologies, others reveal their art with the oldest ice carving techniques. The Krasnoyarsk International Snow and Ice Sculpture Festival is the only festival in which snow and ice sculptors compete. But for those attending the festival, the main surprise is the sculpture competitions organized among families and children. A very special opportunity to awaken your inner ability… On the ice-rising Çıldır Lake, horseback javelin shows, Caucasian dances, sleigh races and a variety of animations are made and a festival of colors is presented to the participants.

By: Banu Tozluyurt

Photo : Aykut Fırat – Selim Taman – Vacit Arman

*This article was  published in the  January– February issue of Marmara Life. 

Around The World Cities Of Ice The word “festival” came to Turkish from the Latin word “festivus” briefly means carnival, entertainment, and feast.

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Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with Jeff Phillips of Grown Eyewear, a brand that sells wooden sunglasses.Some stats:Product: Wooden sunglasses.Revenue/mo: $25,000Started: June 2011Location: Byron Bay, AustraliaFounders: 1Employees: 5Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hi everyone, my name is Jeff Phillips and I am the founder of GROWN® Eyewear. We focus on designing, manufacturing and selling handcrafted & sustainable wood and bamboo sunglasses.We’re proud to say that we are Australia’s Original sustainable sunglasses company too! As part of our mission, for every pair sold through our North America or European shops we fully fund sight-restoring eye Surgery for 1 person or diagnostic eye exams for 12 children through our giving partner in SEVA.Similarly, in Australia each pair sold will fund nutritional needs for orphaned or injured animals through our Australian partner, WIRES.Our average monthly revenue is $25,000.What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?I was a teacher and would find my mind wandering to product ideas in class. I would say I was a good teacher and liked doing it, but it was clear that it wasn’t quite enough. In 2009 I had launched a headwear brand (Beardo®) and it was going quite well, but I had an urge to do something that would do good. So odd as it seems, the idea to create a company that ‘did only good’ came long before the actual product idea.I didn’t know what I was going to sell, only that the profits would go to help others. I was first inspired by a documentary I saw on TV in Australia about an eye doctor named Fred Hollows.He was an extremely selfless man who travelled to poor countries to give free eye treatments to communities in need. People would literally travel for days by foot to see him and he was able to give back sight to many people who had been afflicted by treatable issues like cataracts. That’s where it all started for me. It touched deeply and from there I decided to find a way so that I could give back something.From there I decided that creating a brand based around a high quality and sustainable product would be a great match. Because we were dealing with eyes and cataract issues, naturally sunglasses were an easy product choice, but as mentioned, I wanted it to be sustainable.There was no sense to me in creating a product to give back to those in need while burning oil and pollutants to make plastic products. That is when I started researching fibre and other materials to use. Wood was a good choice as I had seen others in Europe trying it, and by using only FSC certified wood and bamboo I could ensure that the materials were grown in registered plantations and sustainably sourced.Though sunglasses were a seasonal product for most of the World, in Australia it’s always sunny and I knew wood sunglasses were something that others would also be interested in. It seemed to me that the whole world was growing more aware of personal impacts on the environment and the timing was just right.Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing the product.DesignEarly prototypes were a bit hard, my friends and I were running some old CNC machines and they did the trick but we quickly discovered that without the right material and methods, the sunglasses would not be stable. Where plastic glasses can be molded and stamped out perfectly, the handcrafting method of wood sunglasses was a bit trickier and each pair was truly different.We discovered that wood truly does breathe and to create strong sunglasses we needed to cross layer the wood, in at least 4 layers. That would ensure that humidity levels in the areas that we shipped the glasses would have no effect. This was the moment we knew we had something special, that nobody had been able to perfect, but we did!WebsiteTrademarks and startup costs were fairly minimal and the real output was in time, research and trial and error. We setup a shop on Bigcartel, but pretty quickly realized it was limiting.There were a few bugs that kept popping up and our suggestions the Bigcartel for new apps and features that we saw on Shopify were not being responded to. Also we found that reporting sections could be much better to help keep us on track.Shopify seemed to be reading our mind with their improvements and new features so was a good choice and I am extremely happy with the look and feel of the site now.PackagingPackaging was another challenge early on.Everyone selling plastic glasses were using rectangular boxes. We wanted to be different, but we also wanted to rethink this method to ensure strong packaging for online sales. Afterall, you never know what happens behind the scenes at a mail processing facility!I was looking at all kinds of options and designs, but when I was at a local liquor store I had an ‘AHA!” moment. I saw that a lot of wine bottles were shipped in lightweight cardboard tubes. That was it! Exactly what we needed. Lightweight, sustainable and nearly crush-proof.Describe the process of launching the business.I had a bit of savings in the bank and financing was luckily not a big issue, it wasn’t an extreme amount of money, but I had about $15,000 to get things moving. It helps to have friends in the SEO and website field who were happy to pitch in and truly believed in the project.Due to the fact that GROWN® was the first wood sunglasses company in Australia, it was easy to appear in the top search spot for all of our keywords! There was simply no competition! Getting in early like this has also helped retain the #1 search position since launch. I am pretty sure that google looks at both our keywords and age of the site, which helps to keep us at the top.Launching any business is hard though and each one always brings unique hurdles. For us it was just a matter of reaching out to bloggers, news and media who would appreciate the focus on sustainability. Back then, there were a few hot words that everyone was throwing around like ‘Eco-friendly’ and we helped ourselves by integrating some of those trending words into our pitches.A few years after launch things were going pretty good and we were starting to make a name for ourselves. I had a 1962 Holden EK which I painted our logo on and that started getting alot of heads turning too! It was also great for photo shoots.Shark TankI had heard that the tv show ‘Shark Tank’ was filming for its first Australian season and thought that would be a great chance to get a partner and possibly go mainstream.I never got a call and thought they just weren’t interested, but about 3 days before they were set to film, one of the producers called. They said they would like to put GROWN® on a waiting list and that if interested, I would have to fly to Sydney at the drop of a hat sometime over the next 3 weeks.I said “absolutely’ and picked up my sandwich to continue eating lunch. Before I could take another bite, he called back and said I need to pack up and get to the airport!I knew this would be a great opportunity so I got moving! The pitch went great and in the end I accepted an offer from 2 Sharks (Naomi Simpson and John McGrath) who had ties to the World’s largest eyewear retail mogul, Luxottica.I was excited to get into stores like Sunglass Hut, and OPSM, but in the end their contact was simply not interested in getting into sustainable products and we mutually parted ways.That was a bit of a bummer, but the brand had exploded in Australia and thanks to the airing of the Shark Tank Episode, traffic spiked and we had over 24,000 visitors on the site during the first 20 minutes of the episode airing. GROWN® was very popular and the press couldn’t get enough of our story!Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?We have played with running ads and retargeting and find that most of our customers are coming to us organically, we have the unique opportunity to keep ad costs minimal.This works just fine for us, so we keep focusing on SEO and allowing our potential customers to find us, rather than trying to throw out a wide net. That would cost a lot and let’s be honest, not everyone wants wood or bamboo sunglasses!Specifically, we make sure we know what people are searching for. In Australia for example, potential customers search for ‘wooden sunglasses’ while in North America ‘Wood Sunglasses’ is used as the search term much more.This kind of understanding of our keywords only comes with time and research, and it does change also! We apply the keywords to the site in an organic and non-forced way by integrating into descriptions and page names.While this may seem like SEO 101, there is an art to it and making sure you aren’t too heavy on your keywords or placements.We have 25k fans on Facebook and about 10k on Instagram (@growndesigns) and while the facebook and Instagram algorithm changes has affected every brand, we don’t let it get to us. We never boost posts as we find it’s not effective and we rarely run anything more than a retargeting ad.Our following was sitting around 10k on Instagram but after the airing of our shark tank appearance we gained a lot of new fans who were just interested in following our story. We aren’t focused on the fanbase to be honest.It’s an important method to reach your current fans and customers with paid ads, but by no means as important as it was 2-4 years ago. People are now bombarded with ads on social media and banner blindness is more prevalent than ever.Our goal is to retain existing customers and to make sure their shopping experience is a good one. Sunglasses are a funny item, one day they are on your table, the next they have vanished. Or as one of our customers discovered, running over them with a car isn’t a good idea! While we test our wood sunglasses heavily and even include a lens ball drop test, and a 20 foot free-fall onto concrete, running them over or sitting on them will usually end in tears!We know accidents happen and because we found ourselves giving our family and friend discount to customers who had accidents, I thought we should change the game. That’s why I started the ‘DAMN COVERAGE’ program. It means that no matter what you do, if your glasses break within a year we will give you 40% off a new pair. That is also on top of our regular manufacturers warranty.By doing this, we are happy that our customers are happy and their minds are left at ease if they have another accident! People really like that program and our customer retention has gone up significantly.How are you doing today and what does the future look like?The future looks good for GROWN, we are developing some new sunglasses lines. They will be sustainable of course, but these will not be wood. It’s all very top-secret right now as this has never been done before, but just know that good things are coming!We may revisit putting GROWN sunglasses back into retail shops. We had previously stopped putting them in stores as it opened up a whole different list of issues and was a lot harder to manage.We had our sunglasses in a few chains like Patagonia and Golden Breed, but pulled them out because we wanted to have the ability to offer exclusivity to a large distributor, and we simply couldn’t do that with hundreds of accounts already open.We don’t use Amazon yet but may be open to that in the future as well. We find that our direct and organic search traffic is quite steady, but Amazon may help put us in front of some new eyes too.We get roughly 10k unique visitors a month and a conversion rate of nearly 4%. Over 80% of cart adds end in a conversion, which is great to see, but it’s also telling us that customers know what they want, our site is laid out in an easy to navigate way and that Free Shipping is great for avoiding dropouts.Our goal for the site was to make it easy to navigate, and more importantly, easy to checkout.Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?It pays to get things right the first time and not rushing to market, though you don’t want to develop a fear of launching either. I’ve seen both! Make a plan when you first start out, it could be a full business plan or just a list of goals for this launch. I find this helps to look back on, to see how far you’ve come and to keep you on track.Be stubborn in your pursuits, but not so stubborn that you won’t humor the idea of changing paths if something isn’t likely to work.As for skills, I find that the basic skills are useful to monitor your sales, and make sure you are hitting targets. Also a working knowledge of design, photoshop and photography can be really useful, especially early on.Photoshoots are not cheap and by knowing what you want, it can help you negotiate a good shoot rate, and cut out a lot of wasted time and energy. Good photos are very important and I think having a strong idea about style will help solidify the brand image.What platform/tools do you use for your business?We use Shopify as mentioned, fulfilment is managed in house and we have no smaller items which warrants an upsell feature, though this is something I think is valuable if you can implement it.We use MailChimp for our emails as they are clean to design and affordable. We don’t discount our products often, maybe once a year, but when we do, our customers are very willing to buy.That is something I think a lot of brands do to much. If you discount your product a lot, you are basically saying that you have too much stock or you’ve overpriced to begin with. It can look terrible if not done right.What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?I really was inspired by Tim Ferris’ The 4 Hour Workweek. It’s got a not of insight and tricks of the trade.Some of the resources are a bit outdated that he mentions, but it’s very relatable for any entrepreneur and I find it opens my mind up to other possibilities and other ways of doing things.It gets you thinking a bit laterally.Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?If you are looking to start out online, you should remember that simple is better. When designing your website try to make it as clean and smooth as possible. That goes for product design, packaging and ads too. Simple is better and trial and error is the key, so keep testing.Some issues I see are things like spending too much money before you have even started selling.Take a chance and follow your gut. If you have an idea and you really do like it, chances are other out there will too. Go for it!Where can we go to learn more?growndesigns.comfacebook.com/growndesignsinstagram.com/growndesignsLiked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM

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How to Drive More Traffic to Your Website with These 11 Types of Blog Posts

Those of you who know me know how much I promote blogging.

I’ve been doing it for years, and I use blogging as a tool for lead generation. But having a blog has many other benefits as well.

Driving more traffic to your website is arguably one of the most important reasons for running a blog.

Think of it like this. How often would you say the same person comes back to your website?

Depending on the nature of your site and your brand, it may not be too often. This is especially true if you have an ecommerce site.

People don’t want to buy things from you on a daily basis. Sure, you may have had some success by implementing customer loyalty strategies, but even the most loyal customers probably won’t visit your site every day.

Blogging gives people a reason to come back to view your site on a regular basis.

If you can establish a steady audience of readers, they will continue to visit your site to read your blog. Once they’re on the site, they will be more likely to convert into buyers.

Research shows that the publishing frequency of your blog posts has a direct impact on customer acquisition:

But if you want to publish posts frequently, you’ll need to mix up your content.

Blogging about the same thing over and over again is boring. That’s why you need to learn how to write different posts to keep your readers interested and engaged.

Here are the top 11 types of posts that will drive traffic to your website.

Use this guide as a reference so you can always come up with fresh ideas for your blog.

1. Informative guides

Stick to the basics. Informative posts or “how to” guides are some of the most popular types of posts on the Internet.

You have to understand how people search for content online. If you’re trying to drive traffic to your website organically, your blog posts need to be SEO-friendly.

When someone wants to learn how to do something, they will literally type “how to” into the search engine to find information about it.

If your post appears as a top result, you’ll get more traffic to your site. But to get ranked toward the top of the list, your guides must be helpful.

Getting more people to read your posts and spend time on the page will improve your search ranking.

Here’s a great example of these types of posts on the HubSpot website:

As you can see, three of the top six featured posts on the homepage of its marketing blog explain how to do something.

If you’re writing these types of posts, you need to make sure your explanation is clear.

Describe each step in a separate subsection with its own subheading. Take screenshots, and use boxes, arrows, and other annotations so readers can see what you’re talking about.

2. Video blogs

If writing comes naturally to you, it will help you tremendously when it comes to blogging.

But some people have trouble translating their thoughts into words on the page. If you think you’re a better speaker than writer, you may want to consider running a video blog.

As a marketer, you need to recognize how video content drives results:

Video content will increase your organic search traffic by 157% and also increase the time people spend on your site.

People probably won’t read your posts word for word. They’ll just skim through them.

But videos keep people engaged. Your video blogs have seemingly endless opportunities.

The content of each video is completely up to you. You may even consider turning an informative “how to” post, which I previously discussed, into a video tutorial.

Video blogs don’t need to stand on their own. You can mix in video posts with your conventional written blog posts.

Here’s an example of how I do this on the Neil Patel blog:

As you can see, the post on the left is a video blog. But the blog published on the right is a regular post.

3. Guest posts

Guest blogging has tons of benefits. If websites give you the opportunity to blog for them, don’t turn them down.

Bloggers have the wrong mentality when it comes to guests posts. I see this problem all the time.

They would much rather focus on producing new content for their own sites as opposed to someone else’s.

But they don’t realize how writing for another site can benefit them. Allow me to explain.

The people who currently read your blog are already familiar with your voice and content. That’s what keeps them coming back.

However, other people might also enjoy your content, but they don’t know you yet. Getting featured on another website through a guest post will expose you and your brand to a new audience.

If you can impress these readers, they may be more likely to visit your site in the future.

Plus, you can build backlinks through your guest posts that drive more traffic to your website and ultimately improve your SEO as well. This will help you get more organic search traffic moving forward.

4. Long blogs

If you’re writing short posts just to save time and put out as much content as possible, it’s probably not working to your advantage.

Your blog posts should be long.

There are a few reasons for this. First of all, the length of your content is linked to search engine optimization.

Longer posts will give you the opportunity to add more links, images, and keywords to your posts. Google will reward you for this.

Furthermore, a higher percentage of bloggers who publish longer posts reported stronger results from these efforts:

If you are not taking the word length into consideration when you’re writing, you need to reevaluate your strategy.

I’d recommend publishing content that is 1,500 words at a minimum. But you can even shoot for 2,000 or 2,500+ words for certain posts.

Again, people won’t read your posts word for word. So don’t have really long paragraphs in these posts.

Use short sentences, headers, and visual elements to break up your content. This is especially important for longer blog posts.

5. Lists

Lists are another common type of blog post.

I use lists all the time. In fact, what you’re reading right now is one of my lists.

One of the reasons why list posts are so popular is that your readers know what to expect. They can scroll through each point on the list without having to read through the entire thing.

Readers like it when content is straightforward and organized.

Vary the formula for writing titles of list posts. Here are some examples to show you what I’m talking about:

21 Ways to Prepare Chicken

the Top 6 Types of Bicycle Tires

How to Travel on a Budget with These 13 Tips

The list goes on and on, pun intended. But you get the point.

Changing the position of the number within the title of your list ensures your content doesn’t appear stale. If someone looks through your blog and sees that each title starts with a number, they may not be interested in reading it.

Switch up the numbers as well. While top ten lists may be popular, they can get boring too.

Google the topic before you start writing. Try to come up with a list longer than other lists in the search query. This will give you an advantage over your competitors.

6. Product reviews

Reviewing products and services is another great way to drive traffic to your blog.

As we’ve said before, you need to understand how people search for content on the Internet. If they are interested in a product, they’ll want to read reviews about it.

Here’s an example of a recent blog post from TechRadar that reviews multiple products in the same post:

There are a few different ways to decide what products to review.

For starters, you could review items your company sells. The only issue with this strategy is that people will know your opinion is biased. You won’t post an unfavorable review about something you’re selling.

But if your blog covers a specific industry, you can review new releases. Make sure the reviews are relevant.

Refer back to the example above. The article is reviewing the most recent iPhone products. It wouldn’t make sense to review models released five years ago.

If you decide to review products on a regular basis, establish a flow to such posts so your readers know what to expect.

Start with a product overview, and explain what the product does. Then, you can discuss specifications and other details. List the price and where it can be purchased.

The review should have some form of a pros and cons list. Reviews should ultimately express your stance on the item. For example, you can explain which people would benefit most from the product.

7. Infographics

As I’ve said before, you need to incorporate visual content into your blog posts.

But you can take this strategy to the next level by publishing blog posts that are almost exclusively infographics.

Creating custom infographics can help you build more backlinks as well. Here’s why.

Other websites are always looking for content that will help improve their blog posts. If you can come up with relevant, accurate, and visually appealing infographics, these sites will use them in their blogs.

As a result, you’ll get credit for the image source.

People who see your infographics on other sites may be inclined to click the link to visit your website. Furthermore, these links will also improve your SEO ranking, which I’ve previously discussed.

8. Stories

Learning how to tell a story is an art. Once you master this skill, the quality of your blog posts will improve.

A great story will keep your readers on the edge of their seats.

You need to understand the impact storytelling has on our brains:

When readers have an emotional response to your story, dopamine gets released from their brains.

Use this information to your advantage. The best stories are written to elicit some type of emotion, whatever that may be.

The choice is up to you. Maybe you want your readers to feel sad or angry while they’re reading your posts. And some of you may prefer to evoke joy, surprise, or love.

If you can make your readers feel emotions, they’ll be more likely to continue reading the blog.

As a result, they’ll come back to read more in the future.

Depending on the nature of your story, it can also generate traffic based on curiosity alone. For example, if I saw a blog post that said something like “How I Caught a Shark With a Pair of Jeans,” I would be very inclined to click on it to find out what happened.

9. Controversial posts

Controversy can spark some interest. This interest will lead to website traffic.

That said, you need to tread carefully with this approach.

Depending on what stance you take on a particular topic, you could potentially destroy your brand’s image. You don’t want this strategy to backfire.

It’s best to avoid topics such as race, religion, and politics. Don’t say anything that would offend someone.

When writing a controversial blog post, try not to pick a side. Instead, bring up the issue and try to generate a discussion in the comments section.

Truthfully, I wouldn’t recommend this strategy to all websites. But for some of you, this type of blog post may fit well with your brand image and target audience.

10. Breaking news

Use your blog to discuss breaking news topics.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you should try to compete with actual news outlets. But you can still write about recent events.

When it comes to breaking news, timing is everything. Being the first one to break a story isn’t always the best.

Sometimes you’re better off waiting to publish your content until all the facts are straight. You don’t want to get a reputation for posting unreliable information.

Here’s an example of a news story published on the TechCrunch blog:

Make sure your news story is relevant to your business.

For example, let’s say you run a fashion blog. A breaking news story about a technological advancement isn’t related to your brand, so don’t write about it.

11. Data-driven guides

Whenever you’re writing an informative guide, back it up with statistics.

Use data only from authority sources, and give them credit for the information.

Adding data to your guides shows your readers your content is legitimate.

You didn’t just pull ideas out of thin air. You took the time to conduct research and then formed opinions based on your findings.

I use this strategy all the time. Before I take a stance or give advice, I find numbers to back up my claims.

If you are interested in doing original research, consider highlighting your case studies in a blog post.

This will help you get traffic from organic searches as well as through backlinks whenever another site uses your study as a source of information.

Conclusion

Your website needs a blog. But having a blog alone won’t necessarily drive traffic to your website.

Producing the same type of content for each post is boring and won’t deliver the results you’re looking for.

That’s why you need to learn how to write different types of blog posts.

Some of your posts may not even need to be text-heavy. You can use video blogs and infographics to enhance your content.

Anyone with a blog can benefit from using this guide as a reference. Adding these 11 types of posts to your website will increase your overall site traffic.

What types of posts are you using to drive traffic to your website?

https://www.quicksprout.com/2018/08/20/how-to-drive-more-traffic-to-your-website-with-these-11-types-of-blog-posts/ Read more here - http://review-and-bonuss.blogspot.com/2018/08/how-to-drive-more-traffic-to-your.html

[digitalmark18-blog]

5 Underrated Social Media Platforms to Boost your Online Presence

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/5-underrated-social-media-platforms-to-boost-your-online-presence/

5 Underrated Social Media Platforms to Boost your Online Presence

Social media platforms play a crucial role in online marketing. Marketers usually target the old reliables like Facebook and Twitter. Here are 5 other less known platforms that can be far more effective when it comes to building brand awareness.

There are currently 2.62 billion social media users. Theoretically, that’s 2.62 billion people your social media marketing campaign can reach.

In 2018, you would be insane not to make the most of the marketing opportunities social media has to offer. With 50 percent of marketers agreeing that social media improved their sales, every business, no matter how big or small, should be investing time and energy in social media marketing.

The obvious candidates most marketers target are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. These social media platforms should be part of your marketing campaign. However, lesser-known platforms should not be underestimated.

Of course, the most popular social media platforms will have the most users. On the other hand, they also have rigorous algorithms that can work against your marketing efforts.

New businesses or smaller startups can really struggle to be seen on large social media platforms. It can be difficult to ensure that your content reaches your audience. It can also be almost impossible to make sure that your content is helping you to expand your audience.

Being a small fish in a huge pond isn’t always the most effective way to raise brand awareness. Your business might be more visible on a smaller site, which is likely to make your marketing campaign all the more effective.

Underestimated social media platforms could open you up to a whole new customer base. They also provide a place to enhance user engagement and build brand credibility.

So let’s get to it, here are five social media platforms that are extremely under-rated when it comes to building your online presence.

1. Pinterest

Why it’s useful: You can showcase your product, build links, and easily get your brand name out there.

Pinterest is an under-rated social media platform where you can increase your online presence. | Shutterstock

Having a Pinterest account for your business is a great way to showcase your products. Every Pinterest post gives you an extra opportunity to link to your website.  If your product is a service, you can still use Pinterest to build your online presence. On the platform, you can share snippets of information and expertise in the form of infographics.

Take Micheals, the craft store, as an example of successful Pinterest marketing. The company has really mastered the art of using Pinterest for online marketing. They create boards with craft ideas for different occasions. These boards provide their target audience with limitless inspiration and ideas. But, where will their Pinterest followers get the necessary supplies for their DIY projects? Micheals of course!

On Pinterest, you can showcase how your potential customers can use your product or services while increasing your brand’s online presence.

Top tips for using Pinterest for establishing a strong online presence:

Create boards specifically relating to your industry, product, and niche.

Make sure any original images you add are in portrait format.

Ideally, images for Pinterest should be 736 pixels wide or a 2:3 aspect ratio.

Read More: 5 Reasons why your Brand Should use Pinterest

2. Quora

Why it’s useful: Quora is a place to establish your brand identity and show-off your industry expertise.

Perhaps it’s because Quora is quite different from the usual social media sites, but its marketing power often goes unrecognized.

For those who are unfamiliar, Quora is a social media platform that runs on sharing knowledge and active engagement.

You can create a profile that outlines your expertise, professional resume, and education history. A major benefit of having a Quora profile is that it’s an extra opportunity to establish yourself or the leader of your brand as an expert in your niche. Then you can build up credibility and connections by answering questions and engaging with other users.

Quora offers a place where you can get your voice out there, which is essential to building brand identity. Questions asked on Quora can be professional, personal, or about personal experiences so they can really help you to demonstrate your business’s core values and tell your story.

SEO expert Neil Patel often answers questions on Quora which has helped him to position himself as an industry expert. As you can see above he has answered 278 questions which have been viewed 1.7 million times. He is a great example of someone who has used Quora to strengthen their online presence.

Quora also provides your customers with an additional place to turn to for advice or inquiries about your products or services.

The more interesting and informative your answers are, the more ‘upvotes’ they will get allowing your message to reach a wider audience.

Another brilliant feature of Quora is that it lets you link keywords to applicable pages, such as your company’s website or blog. This is not only good for link-building but helps to drive traffic to your website.

3. Facebook Messenger

Why it’s useful: Chatbots allow you to improve customer service, the plugin can be integrated into your existing website.

Facebook messenger is a platform that can be used to boost online presence. | Shutterstock

The biggest advantage of using Facebook Messenger to build your online presence is that it offers chatbot opportunities that can be integrated into your website.

Using efficient chatbots can help to create a community feeling and create a better customer service experience on your website.

If customers don’t get help from brands when they ask, they won’t return to your business. In comparison, when customers get the help they need, they feel valued and will remember dealing with your company as a positive experience. This is why Facebook Messenger is a wonderful social media platform that can cultivate a loyal customer base that comes back for more.

On the Facebook Messenger Plugin website, you can choose options that suit your site. They offer everything from simple buttons to pop-up windows. Try to integrate the Facebook messenger app so that it blends in well with your existing website. That means aesthetically and in regards to user experience.

4. Flickr

What it’s good for: Reaching your demographic, directing traffic to your website.

Flickr often gets overlooked, but it’s a great place to build your online presence. | Shutterstock

Images are powerful tools when it comes to building your brand’s online presence. That’s where Flickr really comes in handy.

Many marketers may be under the impression that Flickr is nothing more than an online collection of photos. However, this view is misconceived.

As well as being the perfect place to showcase high-quality imagery and infographics, Flickr offers topic-based image and discussion groups. This means that brands can easily reach their target audience who are most likely to be interested in your products or services. The discussion groups also provide an extra opportunity for engagement and fostering a community.

Flickr allows you to include links back to your website and descriptions with your photos. This lets you build brand awareness and encourages other users to follow your links.

Perhaps what is most useful about Flickr is that it pre-targets your particular demographic with minimal effort on your part.

Read More: 7 Websites to Get Free Stock Videos for Your Content

5. Minds

Why it’s useful: Minds is more transparent than other social media sites, and offers new influencer marketing opportunities.

Minds is a recent newcomer on the social media scene, and, so far, it’s making waves. Founded by Bill Ottman, Minds is doing things a bit differently to your traditional social media platforms. Minds uses blockchain technology to ensure optimal transparency and attracts users using a cryptocurrency.

Read More: Minds Uses Blockchain and a Decentralized Platform to Revolutionize Social Media

Promoting your business on Minds could give you that edge and showcase that you’re ahead of the trends. This is especially important if you’re in the tech, online, or SEO business.

Being on Minds could also open your business up to a whole new world of influencer marketing.

Another thing that makes Minds stand apart from the usual social media platforms like Facebook is that they don’t use audience targeting. Minds also doesn’t use surveillance to offer “personalized ads” like Twitter and Google do.

This means that you have more control over where your content goes and harnesses trust between your brand and your target audience.

Read More: Why Most Paid Ads Fail

Although Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are social media powerhouses when it comes to boosting your online presence, there’s no harm in broadening your horizons.

When it comes to social media marketing, thinking outside the box could really pay off. Taking the road less traveled and experimenting with less popular (and less crowded!) social media platforms will maximize your chances of success. And who knows, you might just find the niche market you’ve been looking for!

What social media platforms do you use to build your online presence? 

Source: https://edgylabs.com/5-underrated-social-media-platforms-to-boost-your-online-presence

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

Your game’s target audience is the demographics and interests of the majority of it’s players. For example if you’re launching a match-3 puzzle game, your target audience is likely female, 35 years of age, and cares mostly about achievement over all other aspects of the game.

This article was originally posted on Launch Your Indie Game.

But before you’ve launched your game, before you’ve gathered any real player data, you’ll need to make an educated guess about who your players might be, so that you can make and market your game to attract them.

Contrary to popular belief, not all games benefit from the same marketing channels, tactics and strategies.

And investing what little time and money you have on marketing the wrong way can lead to devastating losses, if not failure.

In fact, it’s such an important part of launching games that AAA publishers spend exorbitant amounts of money building in-house teams whose sole responsibility is to gather this research and use it to decide whether or not they should move forward with even making games that are in the conceptual phases of development.

However if you’re a bootstrapping indie game developer, you probably don’t have access to those teams or their tools. But you still need some idea of who your target audience is.

So I’m going to unpack for you why target audience research is so important before you launch, then I’ll illustrate my signature strategy for getting that research, and finally I’ll show you my process to build a tentative target audience profile for zero cost.

In other words, you don’t need to be a AAA publisher to make an educated guess about your game’s target audience.

Why It’s Important to Research Your Game’s Target Audience Before You Launch

Before you launch your game, you’re no doubt going to spend a lot of time and money on marketing. If not in actual dollars, then definitely in sweat equity. Think about all the time you’ve spent just on things like your website or social media. Now add in trailers, a press kit, media outreach, newsletters, conferences, and all those other marketing efforts that everyone else is doing.

Marketing games, even small indie games, is time-consuming.

Making an educated guess about who your game’s target audience will be helps you increase the efficiency and effectiveness of what you spend to choose your time and money on.

For example, let’s say you’re planning to experiment with some Facebook ads at launch. You could lose a lot of money by failing to hyper-target your ad campaigns based on very specific demographic and interest data. Even the seemingly trivial chasm between shooters and WWII shooters is wide enough to lose all your money in.

Or let’s say you’re spending the weeks leading up to launch promoting your game on various game development forums, but your game’s target audience isn’t actually other game developers.

The colossal waste of time and money is painfully obvious, not to mention the opportunity cost you will miss at launch.

Conducting target audience research before you launch helps you design the right marketing foundation to launch upon. That way, when you begin collecting actual in-game analytics, you can optimize your marketing strategy based on that real player data.

The Lookalike Target Audience Research Method

One of the biggest mistakes that indie game developers make is believing that their target audience is made up of people who are just like them. After all, they typically make the games they want to play. And that’s ok, a lot of great games are made that way, but it doesn’t necessarily mean your target audience is anything like you.

You and your games are far better served with the more data-driven approach of measuring the audiences of games that are similar to yours. It’s called a lookalike audience, as in your-audience-probably-looks-like-their-audience.

Here’s the gist of what you’ll be doing:

The first thing you’ll do is make a list of your game’s 3 biggest competitors

Then you mine their audiences for demographics and interests, documenting the results along the way

And finally you’ll note the overlap to find your game’s tentative target audience

I call this the Lookalike Target Audience Research Method.

Obviously, it’s not rocket science. It’s just common sense, and you’ve probably already been thinking this way.

Unfortunately, there’s no empirical way to prove your game’s target audience before you launch. All assumptions, by you or big AAA publishers, are still assumptions. Building a target audience profile from competitor data is the best way to make a best guess about who your game’s target audience might be.

And that’s really all you need to move forward with.

You don’t really need teams of people, data warehouse subscriptions, and keynote presentation decks being pitched to people in suits. Sure, those help. But they’re nice-to-haves, and not really need-to-haves for where you’re at.

So here’s exactly how I execute this strategy:

1. Create a list of 3 competitors, and prepare a spreadsheet to collect their demographics and interests data

Who are your game’s 3 biggest competitors?

What we’re looking for here is to match your game with other games in the same genre, with the same mechanics, done in the same style or art direction, and that have similar pricing or business models.

You might not be able to find exact matches (unless you’re making a clone), but do the best you can with those requirements.

If you find that your game is unlike literally any other game out there, that you have zero competitors, that’s a big red flag. 9/10 times that means your game is going to flop. Just throwing that out there.

Make a copy of the Google Sheets spreadsheet I use to do target audience research. The pre-populated data is from researching the target audience for a new multiplayer first person shooter.

My Google Sheet spreadsheet for researching game target audiences.

Think of this like making your own personal finance budget, where there are some staples (such as housing costs), but no two budgets are the same, nor should they be. Use your experience and instinct to choose which categories of data to focus on depending on your game.

Now that we’ve got our spreadsheet set up, we need to go out and find your competitor’s demographics, interests and behaviors.

2. Mine and collect the demographics and interests of those 3 games in your spreadsheet

Demographics are the age, gender, and race of players. Interests are, well, categories or things they’re interested in. And behaviors are activities they do either online or offline.

For example again using the match-3 puzzle game illustration, and having already talked about their demographics, their interests would be things such as other games by King, women’s health brands, and the Hallmark Channel. And their behaviors would be things such as dining out, buying pet products, and clicking mobile ads.

So if you’re making a very colorful and cute match-3 puzzle game, I’ve pretty much done your work for you.

But for those of you who aren’t, let’s mine some data!

1. GOOGLE ADWORDS DISPLAY PLANNER

Most official game websites and app traffic comes from organic search. And Google is the king of search. Thankfully, they make the demographic and interest data of certain keywords and websites available to you for free in Google AdWords.

If you don’t already have a free Google account, grab one and head on over to Google Adwords. Log in to your dashboard and navigate to Tools > Display Planner.

Then type a competing game’s official website domain in the “Your landing page” input box.

I’m using Candy Crush Saga for my search:

Don’t forget to consider region. If you’re soft-launching in Spain, filter for Spain otherwise your results will be useless.

As you can see you’re not only getting juicy demographics for over 10 billion impressions, you’re also getting interests and specifically where they’re running display ads, if at all.

Here’s a fun side note: The Display Planner shows an affinity audienceof “Fast Food Cravers” for Candy Crush Saga. Looks like candy isn’t the only thing they like!

I mean, who doesn’t? McDoubles are crazy cheap. Just saying.

2. FACEBOOK ADVERTISING AUDIENCE INSIGHTS

Almost 17 million people like Clash of Clans on Facebook. What if I told you that Facebook makes all that demographic and interest data available to you for free?

It’s totally true, all through the magic of Facebook Advertising Audience Insights. Grab a Facebook account and head on over to the dashboard for Facebook Advertising.

Go back to your home dashboard and click the new “Ads Manager” menu item on the left-hand side of your screen.

On your Ads Manager dashboard and navigate to Tools > Audience Insights.

Once you arrive on the Audience Insights page, you’ll notice the general demographics and interests for all of Facebook have already been pre-populated.

But we want to narrow that data down by interest. On the left-hand side of the screen you’ll notice a section appropriately named, “Interests”. Start typing “clash of clans” in that input box.

And there you have it, the demographics and interests for all 17 million people who like the official Clash of Clans Facebook page. Boom!

This technique can also be used to display your own Facebook ads to their audience. Yes you read that, you could put your game in front of 17 million Clash of Clans fans if you wanted to run some ads.

3. SIMILARWEB TRAFFIC ANALYTICS & BEHAVIORS

SimilarWeb gives you insight into the Web traffic analytics any domain name or mobile app in the world.

The mobile app analytics are meh. I recommend sticking to domains for the best information.

While there’s no demographic data, it’s fantastic insight into behavior and interest data. Reports show modules such as social network referral numbers, ranking keywords, referring domains, traffic from organic search, display ads, categorical interests and more.

Simply visit SimilarWeb and perform a search for any competing game’s domain name.

Once it finds the domain and creates the report it should look something like this:

Take the social network data alone. It’s a clear picture of where you may want to consider focusing your initial efforts. And equally important, where not to.

Now that you have all this data drop it in a spreadsheet and start comparing and contrasting your results.

But there’s one more thing.

Don’t forget to consider the personality of your game. For example, let’s say your game is about survivalism. It may be a good idea to dig up any available research on the survivalist community as a clue to how you might better market your games or segment your overall research.

3. Analyze the data, identify the overlaps, and draft a target audience profile for your game

Now that the tedious work is done, it’s time to start analyzing your data for overlaps.

Again, it’s not rocket science. You should be able to pretty much eyeball it, especially if you were able to find 3 solid competing games. The overlap should be deafening.

However, if the game you’re making is more obscure game, or unlike much that’s out there, then connecting the dots with your data is probably going to be more difficult. It’s possible that you complete this process, stand back, and are confused by what you’ve found.

In any case, I would put your trust in that data.

There’s only one, big trick I have for finding overlaps when it comes to Interests and Behavior data, and that’s to use a word-analyzing tool such as Spokeforge’s Word Counter & Text Analyzer to identify duplicate terms and phrases. Otherwise you’re going to be squinting at spreadsheet cells trying to find all the overlaps (and missing some).

No one has time for that mess, just use the analyzer.

Profiling Your Game’s Target Audience Is Just the Beginning

Congratulations, you now have a really great idea of who your game’s target audience is going to be.

The next step is to start using your new profile to begin planning your game’s launch marketing strategy, choosing the channels and projects that you’ll be executing for that strategy.

Whatever you do, don’t forget to track the analytics of your game or your game’s marketing. Otherwise, you might as well just have not read this article because you’re not going to have any data to compare it against.

After all, Google Analytics is free.

Also, don’t forget to enable demographics and interest tracking. But note that there is some legal requirements in doing so.

Basically your game’s analytics will tell you who’s really playing your game.

And that data will either validate or disprove your best guess here. It will probably be really close (it would be rare to miss the mark completely), but make sure you use the overlap to optimize your game’s marketing strategy.

Creating a tentative profile of your game’s target audience is just the beginning, but I can tell you first-hand that if you take the time to do that, you’re already lightyears ahead of most other indie game developers.

What did you find most interesting about profiling your game’s target audience? And how have you used that to successfully influence what you’ve done for your game’s marketing?

Justin Carroll writes about indie game marketing at Launch Your Indie Game. Get his free email newsletter for help launching games and growing a business.

[makeitwithmike]

7 Incredibly Effective WordPress Lead Generation Plugins

By Ravi Bhatt

Does it ever feel like you are doing everything you “should” be doing with digital marketing, but you’re still left with no leads?

Generating leads online is no easy task, especially if you’re not sure which of your efforts will have the biggest impact on your business. But it’s not as hard as most people make it.

Whenever someone outside the marketing world asks me what I do, I can’t simply say, “I am working to improve lead generation on my website.” It’d be totally lost on them, and I’d get some really confused looks.

So instead, I say, “I am planning unique ways to attract people to my business”.

That generally sounds better, and that’s exactly what lead generation is. It’s a way of warming up complete strangers to your business and getting them on the path to finally buying.

Without lead generation, it’s virtually impossible to discover new opportunities and interact with loyal customers.

When it comes to your website, lead generation really comes down to how many people you can convert into email subscribers. They become your leads.

The great thing about the modern digital world is that literally anyone can set up high-converting lead generation forms on their site, even if they don’t have technical skills to do so.

This is especially easy if you run a WordPress site, because there are a number of lead generation plugins that you can get set up in as little as a few minutes. Here are 7 of the best ones.

1. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the grandfather of all lead generation plugins created for WordPress. Launched in 2013 and having more than 100k+ active downloads shows its success story. It offers great features that make it easy for bloggers (marketers) to acquire new leads and customers.

It became famous because it features a wide variety of lead collection options depending on your own taste for pop-up boxes. It covers the traditional pop-up, a footer bar or slide-in at the bottom of the web page, or a simple widget that shows up at the end of a content.

In my experience, I have found this plugin is the best and easiest to use. I definitely recommend trying it.

Features that make it powerful include:

A drag and drop form builder

Integrates with popular email marketing tools like MailChimp, AWeber

Exit intent technology

Show specific messages for different campaigns

A/B Testing – To compare different versions of your lead form

Built-in analytics

Animated options

Page level targeting

However, it’s not a free plugin. There are three plans available for OptinMonster, starting at $9 per month.

2. Sumo

I’ve been using Sumo for over a year now, and I must confess that it’s one of the most awesome plugins I’ve ever seen for lead generation. It’s not just for generating leads, but also to improve traffic on your website.

Think of any type of pop-up box you want to add to your site and Sumo has got you covered. Just like OptinMonster, it is compatible with email marketing providers and also has a smart feature called – Exit intent option.

You get attractive popup forms, scroll boxes, floating bars, and something called a smart welcome mat – an opt in form that takes up the entire screen.

Over 500,000 websites are currently using Sumo, including some famous ones such as: Airbnb, Complex, Canva, The Art of Manliness, and BarkPost.

Key features of Sumo:

Easy to customize popup forms with a nice set of templates

Customizable floating bar form

A/B testing

Exit intent technology

Smart display mode – Decide the best time to display forms to visitors automatically

Scroll-box form

Welcome mat – full-screen form on arrival

Sumo is quite expensive if you want to have all features enabled ($119/month), but there is a free option too.

3. LeadPages

LeadPages is more than just a lead generation plugin for WordPress, but it definitely serves that purpose well.

It comes with a new timed popup box and exit-intent popup to repeatedly turn strangers into email subscribers.

While most plugins focus on letting you generate a couple of catchy forms to capture email addresses, LeadPages goes a lot further. The other plugins on this list are about individual opt in forms, LeadPages helps you create landing pages as well.

LeadPages advanced features:

Attractive lead capture pop-ups

Integrates with popular email service providers

Drag-and-drop customization (No coding skills required)

A/B testing

Hosts your landing pages for you

Easy tracking and analytics

Designs are mobile-friendly and responsive

One-click triggered forms

SMS opt-in codes & 1-click signup links

The price starts from $25/month, there are also two more plans are available.

4. Thrive Leads

Thrive Leads enables you to handle everything inside your WordPress dashboard and create new opt in forms within minutes.

It updates its software frequently, which delivers new and better features every time.

There are multiple types of lead generating form templates available like smart pop-ups, slide-ins, floating bars, widget forms, and in-content forms. It’s a robust plugin that will allow you to generate more leads in a highly efficient and actionable way.

Key features of this plugin include:

Drag-and-drop form editor

A/B testing

Exit-intent triggering

Full-screen forms

Fully editable form designs

Short codes to save your time

Every form is mobile friendly

Great tracking and analytics option

Affordable due to the one-time payment

The price starts from $67 with one full year of customer support.

5. Hybrid Connect

Hybrid content comes with a wide variety of smart options to create and configure popups form your WordPress page or blog.

This plugin can be used as a pop-up, sidebar widget, or a footer widget for you at the bottom of a post.

It has an interesting GoToMeeting integration, which is a master feature that suits the websites which contain large numbers of webinars or live events.

Another excellent feature is its Facebook connect feature, which will allow site owners to show a smart Facebook connect button only to visitors who are logged into Facebook. With the button, they can easily become your subscribers in just two clicks!

Key features of this plugin include:

Wide variety of popup form

A/B testing ability

GoToMeeting integration option

Smart Facebook connect

6. Icegram

The free version of Icegram is one of the most powerful free WordPress plugins to acquire subscribers on your website in this list.

Key features of Icegram:

Advanced targeting and retargeting

Simple A/B testing

Exit intent

Multiple message types (12 types of messages)

High converting templates

Actionable reports and insights

Call to action targeting

Geo targeting

Beginner plans start from $9/year.

7. Popup Domination

Popup Domination comes with a wide variety of great options to create and configure popups on your WordPress page or blog. It’s super lightweight, which means a lot less load time on your website and a better user experience.

The latest version of this plugin also has in built stats that let you see a whole bunch of data about what is working and what is failing with your pop up design. Extra features are the ability to show different ads to different pages.

Key features of Popup Domination:

Countdown themes for urgency

Exit popups

Popup triggers

Responsive mobile version

Page specific popups

Geo targeting

Custom HTML/CSS

Detailed analytics

A/B testing

There are four plans available for Popup Domination, starting at $9 per month.

Wrap-up

Lead generation is a really important part about being a WordPress website owner.

I understand that there is still lots of other incredible lead generation plugins out there like Hello Bar, Foo Bar, leadboxer, Leadin, Gravity Forms, etc. but the smart way is to pick one immediately and start working with it.

When implementing a new lead collection method (regardless of your plugin of choice) it is important to test it against other options. For example, does a below content pop up collect just as many leads as a sidebar option? Try all possible ways and analyze which best suits your website over time.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this via the comment section, and if you like this post, please share it with your friends as they might also find it valuable.

Do you know of any other plugins that can help you generate huge leads on WordPress?

Guest Author: Ravi Bhatt is a crazy freelance writer – founder of MeetRV where he accepts and publish news and information about various concepts. He aims to help bloggers and readers with his latest SEO Tips.

The post 7 Incredibly Effective WordPress Lead Generation Plugins appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.

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