Blogging As I Learn It

The Real Secret Behind Increasing Blog Traffic that nobody talks about

2019-10-31T04:05:00.000-07:00

I'm going to spare you the "content is king" fluffy crap and get to some meat behind what brings traffic.

I'm in a few blogging groups on Facebook, just a few <looks to the side that FBI swears is a sign of a lie> and a lot of bloggers are going crazy trying to break the algorithms people seemingly have broken many times over with Pinterest and Google.

They are doing everything right.

They took the courses on Pinterest and SEO.

They optimized their words and pictures.

They Pin 75 pins a day.

They post on their blog once a week.

They are told to just give it time.

But when? How much time before they start seeing some viral activity?

The thing is, these other sites that tell you what you need to succeed only give half the picture. Most of them are not wrong.

For reference, I'm talking about these things...

Pinterest

Use keywords and search phrases in your descriptions
Make sure those keywords match the keywords in the article it links to --somewhat
Make the image pretty
Have more than one pinnable image
Use Pin description tag instead of alt tag
Pin regularly, like 30 to 75 pins a day
Use group boards (this is becoming outdated advice)
Only pin good pins that meet higher standards of descriptions and images
etc.

Google

Use keywords and keyword phrases in your article, especially once in the title and several of the headers.
Use lsi keywords
Link to sites with higher DA than yours in your niche within your article
Get people with good DA to link to you.
Write at least 2500 words
Aim for horizontal heirarchy of site links rather than vertical
Make sure your site loads quick enough
etc.

These are all important things. You can have the most amazing website in the world, and only luck will make things happen for it if you don't do those things.

One of my favorite articles about the basic things: 27 Easy Tips to Double Your Blog Traffic in 2019. Be prepared, she links to many articles regarding how to blog that sound fun to read.

But to drive traffic, there's a human component people don't always hit on. The only person I've seen do it is Rachel Miller with Moolah Marketing (I am not an affiliate, but I do recommend her for anyone wanting to up their Facebook game. You can download her Top 25 Viral Titles Cheat Sheet Here).

But the bottom line is

People Want, so They Buy

It doesn't matter if you aren't actually selling something. Just to get people to click through to your blog, you are asking them for an investment of their time and attention, and many people are much more stingy with their time and energy than they are their money. Those people are probably happier people.

But the point is, people don't usually try to get the things they don't consciously want.

And I mean consciously. There are a billion things we want and don't want subconsciously and our conscious mind screws it all up. So they don't have to actually really want it. They have to think that's what they want.

Now we can sit here and theorize about what people want for centuries and still not figure it out. Fortunately, there are a few things we do know that works most of the time. At least as far as the internet, and blogs, and social media are concerned.

And for the record, I do most of this all wrong. I aim for what's right, but I can't seem to control who I am to make it happen.

So please excuse my hypocrisy...

1. What is the bottom line? What is your offer?

People are always asking, "What's in it for me?"

Even when they aren't trying to be petty, there's a certain amount of selfishness that has to come into play for self preservation reasons. We are really in a kill or be killed environment, whether we are outside in the Savannah and a Lion thinks your daughter might be a delicious meal for her daughter, or whether we are in the vicious circle of the PTA with Karen who thinks your daughter's self worth would be a delicious meal for her daughter (and she wants to speak with the manager about it). So to survive, you kind of have to think about yourself and your needs because nobody else really is going to do that for you, and you won't accomplish much if you don't.

And that's on every level. Like for one, we really are in it for ourselves when we decide we need a pay check. But we also are that way for almost every dollar we spend of that pay check.

Same with time and energy.

So ask yourself these two questions

What's in it for your reader / customer?
How much is that going to cost them?

Because those are the questions they are trying to answer to decide to click.

That's your bottom line.

If you imagine scrolling through your Facebook newsfeed, what makes you read a person's entire status? What do you find yourself starting to read, and then skip?

Incentive / Investment

Every click has a bottom line that ends in what's in it for the person to invest. And most of their decision on whether or not to click that thing is based on whether or not they are interested in that bottom line at all and if they even have the investment to give it.

2. People Share their Identity... Not their true selves.

People who blog focus on the niche, but really, it's more about an identity.

For instance, a lot of moms deal with their kids coming home from school with head lice. Most moms deal with this. They look it up and ask close personal friends what to do. But they don't share it. They don't tell people, "Hey my kid has lice, how do I get rid of it?" Nope they are more like, "Hey my kid just won yet another trophy, how do I help teach him to be more humble about it? "

You gotta think about what people are wanting to boast about reading, or liking, or being a part of...

This is especially important for SHARING because the idea that makes things go viral is that people share it. Pinterest won't bring you traffic if people don't re-pin. Google won't bring you traffic if you can't get backlinks.

Rachel Miller (mentioned earlier) brings this up in her Facebook training quite a bit, and even though I was on this concept before I ever saw her on it, she worded it best and I like to attribute it to her, but she asks...

What is your bumper sticker? What's on your t-shirt? What is your flag?

It can be almost anything worthy of "bragging" about...

Rachel's example is Crazy Cat Lady

Nicole Knepper is Moms who Drink and Swear

Jenny Lawson is strange, dark humor, improve mental health, and intellectual. Her flag is the Giant Metal Rooster in the front lawn.

We really all are just a bunch of teenagers in old bodies. At 15, Susie was thinking about going Goth, at 35, she's thinking about being the crunchy mom but decided tattoo rebel mom is more her cup of spiked tea.

Just about everything has an identity and/or stereotype attached to it, like even the topic itself does.

Example: Frugal Living.

The identity usually associated with frugal living can go a route of financial management, money savvy, dependable, successful... The negative stereotypes associated with frugal living is "can't afford much because bad with money." So you want to go a Forbes / Fortune magazine concept more so than a Get out of Debt Ad.

3. Clickworthy Headlines

Now Headlines are slightly different than Article Titles for my purposes here. I'm not sure how other people do it, but the point I want to make for here...

Headlines are what people read and decide from that if they click or not
Titles are Names you give things like your article or book, and is used for SEO

You can have an article titled "10 Easy Recipes for a Southern BBQ" but have a Pinterest Pin with the headline, "The best fried chicken recipe ever!" The headline might be the exact same as the title, but it doesn't have to be.

Many times, the best SEO title isn't exactly the most compelling one that will make people click.

How to Organize and Payoff your Student Loans

That's a great title. It explains exactly what's in the article and the SEO is perfect.

But scrolling through Pinterest or Facebook, that doesn't sound as appealing. Even if you searched, "Pay Off Student Loans," that one is kind of bland in comparison to the 50 others titled something similar.

So the Pinterest Pins can be things like...

"Ladies! It's time to face this monster. College Debt."
"Are you ready to beat the debt out of Sallie Mae?"

Like advertisements for the article. Only difference is your ad is taking people to a free thing with instant gratification.

But it gets you thinking less on inform what's in the article, and more on hitting pain points and wording things in a way that makes people want to do something they procrastinate.

4. Shareworthy Headlines

Remember how I talked about identities? That's also relevant here.

Think about it. Imagine your social circle. Imagine some faces. Imagine some judgments and criticisms you know is going on. Imagine your haters. Now which article are you more apt to share with them?

How to get out of Debt and Pay those Stinking Bills!

The Investment Portfolio of your Dreams: how taking risks isn't necessary anymore.

The first implies you can't afford to pay your bills, the second implies that not only did you already pay your bills, but now you have extra money.

If you're humble enough to share the first, I'll probably respect you more for it, but most people....

I learned this lesson talking about sex. I wrote many great articles people LOVED with all the hearts and had to tell me how awesome they are, but because it's about sex, only like 1% of the readers were comfortable sharing it for reasons like

My parents are on my Facebook
My minister is on my Facebook
My kids can see my Facebook statuses
My boss frequently looks through my Facebook

And then there's me who is like...

Every single bully I had in high school is on my Facebook
Every single crush I had in my life is on my Facebook

So I'm like, "Do I share the whore article? Like that could go well for that audience, but my old minister is on there too and that might traumatize him that little Michelle likes to give blow jobs."

And not just the "Can I share this aspect of myself" dynamic is afoot.

Some women refuse to share ugly pictures, especially on Pinterest.

For most semi-professional pinners, and this includes just about anyone trying to "Grow their Pinterest," they are often told to only share good pins that meet standards that have some activity. So therefore, to get your pin shared, you need a good image that's vertical and pretty, has a pin description utilizing keywords, and has some activity to it.

I've wanted to pin so many amazing blog posts that I didn't pin simply because they didn't have a Pinterest Pin for it (vertical image with title overlay). I can't use a horizontal image on Pinterest. It just won't work right for me.

Instagram is turning out to be a place where some women are incredibly particular about the quality of the image. Sometimes it just has to be pretty, but for some, it has to match their brand / color scheme.

5. Connection

This is a big one that the details aren't really often tapped into. Most people tell you to "create a community" as opposed to a list of fans worshiping you, and that's usually said by people who want worship from their fans and delete people who disagree with them.

This is one I personally struggle with naturally, so the good news on that, I've been analyzing it like a science whereas someone who does this naturally would have no need to do that.

But if you notice the way I talk here, I'm kind of talking at you. That's a big no. It's just for me, I naturally think about concepts, over analyze thoughts, and you end up getting some kind of inner monologue as a result. (I'm on the autism spectrum, and I literally get sick sometimes trying to control myself on this monologue thing).

Most people are more social. They have these inner mechanisms that create and sever bonds for reasons that are not usually apparent. So you got to reach them on a more emotional level than an intellectual one.

A. Don't talk at people, talk to them

I personally think if I talk about myself, then I'm not talking about other people to be "gossip," and I can talk about other people via myself.

Such as, "I went through the same thing. I did the similar story you shared (credibility). It was awful (my way of saying I am validating your pain). I found this and this to help me (this can be your solution too if relevant but I can't speak for you)."

NOBODY ELSE SEES IT LIKE THIS AT ALL!

Instead, other people see it as, "Michelle's hijacking the thread. She's stealing your pain. She's making it about herself because she's an attention whore."

So I have found the best way to talk TO people (instead of at them) is to focus on the YOU aspect.

Think Barbara Walters. She wants to know YOUR story. She wants to ask the compelling questions that dig deeper into your psychological abyss to find out what is really happening here.

But it's more than that. I psychoanalyze people and dig deep and get their story, but I do it in a way they aren't aware of it. And that's probably unethical, but beyond that, it's bad because people have no idea they are getting attention.

They don't want you to figure them out. They want you to want to.

They want the experience of being questioned by Barbara Walters, not a monologue of Barbara's opinion of them.

B. Find a way to lean in

They talk about body language in a conversation. If you see two people talking, and their knees are facing away from each other, they aren't interested in each other. If their knees are facing each other, they are interested. If their knees are touching and occasionally rubbing each other, they probably will be sleeping together sometime in the near future.

It doesn't have to be romantic. But it is still intimate.

I know a guy who does this well. Usually not on purpose. But when he's interested in what you have to say, he's always leaning in, getting closer, making the conversation feel like secrets shared between two little girls who pinky promised not to tell a soul.

It's amazing how a 5 inch difference in the geographic location of your chest / neck / head makes such a huge impact on the connection.

It's difficult to lean in on the internet because you aren't face to face.

People who find a way to get people on the computer to meet them somewhere face-to-face like a book signing, a community event, or a convention or summit, they tend to build audiences faster and with a slightly more loyal sensation to it. Think about it. You love Jane the writer, but once you meet Jane, she's no longer a stranger and her posts about her next book now feels more like a family member posted that as opposed to a spammy ad who just wants your money.

But you can always be on the look-out for ways to "lean in" with your audience.

In video, when you're about to share something intimate, lean in a little more than your natural stance. And then go back when you're done sharing that intimate fun fact. And make sure you share something intimate, tell a secret, leaning in, ever so often in video.

C. Include your audience in your posts.

Occasionally remember they are listening, you, yeah you are reading this. It's like I forgot you were here. You are probably either sitting behind a computer at a desk, and your left butt cheek might have a cramp by now if you've read this much in one sitting.

The hard part about this is I have no idea what you're thinking, if you're actually at a computer instead of in the movie theater on your phone all rude like, you better not be driving at this moment please don't text and drive...

And if I assume you, that's kind of rude.

We've all seen it, "You're struggling with getting anyone to read your blog," no that's not us. That's not you. That's not me. But some blond chick on a website swears that's us, and for 3 payments of $39.99, we can get her masterclass that will solve that for us.

I don't want to be that woman so bad I might not mention you at all because I don't want to be wrong.

I'm safer with IF. But you don't feel connected to the word IF do you?

This is why I probably know your pain, but I'm not going to assume it's your pain.

Instead, I'll focus the YOU on the humor, the bright side, and the positive stuff.

The things where you don't care if I'm wrong.

Like...

Get your finger out of your nose right now. Am I really that boring you have to pick your nose?

I bet 100% of you were not picking your nose right at that moment in particular. But you don't care that I thought you might of been.

D. Be Inclusive in a way that feels Exclusive

This is a psychological phenomenon that goes in circles in an abstract confusing dizzy way, but getting the gist of it is usually enough. We don't really need to rewrite the theories like we're some kind of geniuses. The APA will figure that shit out for our children some day.

So for now, the important thing to know is...

People don't like to be excluded, but they like excluding people.

It sounds worse than what it is, but I give it the nasty taboo sound just because it doesn't sound bad enough to justify the pain of being excluded.

But really, the idea is that it makes you feel special when you are chosen.

If you are CHOSEN, you know it's because you ARE good enough. You are not shit. You are amazing. These people really do like you. They really do care.

If you are there by default, then none of that happens. You have to have it in you to decide that you're good enough.

Being part of an exclusive group builds up your self esteem, gets you excited for the niche / cause, helps you feel like you have found your people and where you belong, that you do belong somewhere, and it helps shape your identity that you will be a proud bearer of some day.

But excluding people does the opposite. It tears down their self esteem. It makes them feel like they don't belong anywhere. It makes them feel like they are wanting to be something they are not.

Excluding people is not a good business practice for that reason, so you want to be all inclusive. But the idea of being part of the exclusive club that's hard to get into, that really enhances the tribal community feel.

I've seen many ways this is done, some more ethical than others, but examples...

Rewards cards. I have so many of these in my purse right now, but when they first came out, the idea was to build a community for "loyal customers." Giving your loyal customers perks gives a sense of exclusiveness despite that it's all inclusive. Same with AAA's premium membership at a higher cost (as opposed to the basic / classic membership).

The one that feels more tribal is Kohl's. You just don't get a good deal at their store without being part of their loyal program with the app on your phone, and when you find other women with the same app, it's like something clicks where you feel more meant for each other than if she didn't have the Kohl's shopping app.

I've heard there's a similar thing happening between women who own / drive Jeeps. Something Daisy Duke, unwritten unspoken connection shared only between women who drive a Jeep.

Facebook groups where only members can see posts. Anyone can join. Asking questions gives a sensation that people might be getting denied entry so people feel a little special when their request to join is approved. Giving them deals they can't find anywhere else helps improve the sensation that they are VIP. Some people will say, "This stays ONLY in this group" in descriptions, within posts, etc., and that adds to the exclusivity of it, especially when it's something that benefits them like inside trade secrets and opportunities.

USAA. It's a bank that's military only. In order to get a checking account or amazing deals on your car insurance, you have to either be active duty military, a veteran, or a qualified family member. Now veterans usually have a tribal "you're a good fellow" sense about them when they meet other veterans, and being a USAA member does not really enhance it at all, but USAA is considered a perk for being part of the exclusive group of veterans or badasses.

Other examples that are less ethical (but not equal in unethical by any means) include the girls clubhouse with a sign that says NO BOYS ALLOWED, Gentlemen's clubs that don't allow women, Country Clubs, the bar where the bouncer only lets pretty people in, a party that's invite only, the Catholic Church where only Catholics get to do communion, the Illuminati where only incredibly wealthy people get to rule the world and decide the fate of existence (I wonder if they have to prove their income to join? I bet Donald Trump isn't in it because he refuses to show his tax records)....

6. Make it Fun if you can

Imagine if Charlie's Angels got together to talk about their budgets. There'd be some seriousness, but there'd also be some girly fun to it too. It would be a much more exciting budget meeting than say one with 3 male republican senators.

The Board Meeting would suck if it weren't for Robert's Shenanigans.

I personally struggle with this and the art of inciting excitement over boring topics, but for the most part, if you can get excited to talk about it, other people will pick up on that vibe.

I keep bringing up Rachel Miller, but she's the perfect example. When I watch videos of her, she's talking about Facebook, how to grow your pages, and often trying to sell you something she's selling with it. Now I've watched many a video on blogging, social media, and improving your blankety blank, and one more free webinar I might actually die of boredom, but there are a few characters who stand out to me and makes it less painful to learn things. Rachel is one.

When she talks about Facebook, she gets giddy. Like she smiles more, naturally, and you can see that she's getting excited to talk about it. Whether it's a performance or a natural thing, I don't care. I feel the vibe. I get kind of excited about tackling my Facebook issues for that moment (it doesn't last longer than a day after the fact unfortunately). Then when she starts talking about growing people's pages from 3 thousand to 300 thousand, she will subtly squirm like she wants to jump up in excitement but is controlling herself.

Another one is ByRegina with Beta and Beyond. She's a very get down to business person, but it's still exciting because she inspires... She definitely feels comfortable in front of the camera, and that vibe really comes through. She also talks with her hands a lot, but her hands are kind of guiding you into the logic operating as arrows in a diagram of her words. It makes it easier to follow. Her main thing though is she includes things you can do. Just about every video I've ever seen of her explains a concept like a textbook, shows credibility, shows relevancy, shows results and case studies... all of which are more practical and real than your average webinar... but then she follows through with what you can do on just about every concept that you walk away with an actionable to do list that you're kind of excited to get started. You almost cannot watch a video of hers and not take notes, and two sets of notes like half the sheet for things you're learning and the other half for ideas and things you want to do for yourself. Everything about her embraces the feeling you get before filling out a workbook of your hopes and dreams.

7. Minimalism and Timing

Not only is minimalism a huge graphic design concept that is trending and evergreen, it's an overall concept making it easier to navigate the internet and consume the information the internet offers.

One thing at a time.

People on the internet need to do one thing at a time.

When you're in your mom's kitchen, she can talk to you about your doctor's visit last week while cooking dinner, cleaning the kitchen, answering your sister's random questions, and in the back of her mind, planning out the evening and parts of the week. She might even think to let the dog out to pee in that conversation.

But she cannot do that on the internet.

If your article was about all those things, she'd lose her mind. It's so dizzying to see it in front of your face at once that I'm personally kind of nauseous thinking about an article that shows you how to cook something, clean something, it answers random questions like where can I find a pen and paper? and tells a story about what the writer did last week, and it has a spreadsheet to help you plan and schedule the week.

Even worse than seeing it is that nagging feeling that I'm neglecting those things just to be on the internet.

It's kind of harder (at least for me) to organize things in bite sized chunks, one thing at a time, because my brain is quite like google, it lists out all the possibilities at once and I can type a novel about ONE thing.

But I have noticed websites that keep things simple and minimal seem to fare better than ones that are overly complicated.

And you don't want to be too simple.

It really depends on what you are offering and who you're offering it to.

For instance...

Walmart and Amazon sell almost everything. When you browse, you see a grid with like 5 products in a row. When you search, you get one product per row. The scope of the products before you depend on where you're at in the buying process. It's like walking into a store, and telling the clerk, "I want something Electronics?" well then here's 50 Electronics on shelves as she points to the Electronic Section. Or are you at, "I want the new Amazon Fire," then she personally hands you a tablet, "We have This Fire, or let me point at That Fire, and don't forget THIS premium Fire."

So the timing also has to be right.

It's almost like a song. You have enough instruments to get the tune out beautifully, one melody at a time, maybe some harmony, where changes in key happen at a dramatic moment in the song, and changes in rhythm that break up the boring monotony don't happen so often nobody can dance to it.

It's like the difference between a song on Top 40 Radio and a Symphony.

The Symphony has a complicated melody making it almost impossible to play it with one key at a time on the piano. It encompasses so many different chords and keys and it almost has no actual rhythm where you can dance to it. The parts that repeat are about 3 to 5 minutes in length requiring quite a bit of memory to realize it's repeating. The reason is back in the day, you saw it like you would see a ballet. There was no competition for its attention. Top 40 predominantly uses the same 4 chords you hear in Heart and Soul. A very simple pattern. The melody can be played with one finger on the piano. The rhythm repeats in a way you can dance to it without ever hearing the song before in your life. The parts of the song that repeat are about 30 seconds in length. It's designed to listen to and enjoy and consume while driving, while watching TV, while writing poetry, while talking with your friends, or while drinking copious amounts of alcohol in a night club.

If you are writing a symphony, you want to put that in a book. If you're writing for the internet, you want to keep it down to a 4 chord song.

8. Trust

On a more minute level, so I'm checking my Facebook and I see, "10 Super Easy Recipes," and I click on it, my internet slows down, it takes 3 minutes for the page to load, 2 tabs go dead in the process, then they want my email, so I do that, and I go open the email page, again the internet is slower than usual, I spend 5 minutes trying to figure out where the email is, if it was sent, where Google put it.... and if I didn't get the email, or I did and the recipes aren't easy, I'm super bummed. It might be only 15 minutes of my life wasted away, but on the internet, that 15 minutes can add up to the rest of your life if you aren't careful.

Am I preaching to a choir here?

In this case, the person with the recipes tried to do everything right. They had an ad, a landing page, an email sign up, a free optin... I wanted what they offered. But then I hate them for it by the time it's over.

They say in most business cases, the bulk of your best business is repeat business. This is especially true for writers.

Part of that is building trust. Follow through on your promises. Make sure they can have access to it. Be transparent. Be ethical.

I offer free downloads on this blog (though I'm planning to change it a bit), and at some point, Google changed some things and broke all the links. I didn't know they did this. I don't know how many people tried to download their free thing and couldn't before I found out and tried to fix it.

Now it's not my fault this happened, but I'm accountable for it.

One guy even commented that I was just another spammy site.

Ooooh that hurt.

Now while I can forgive myself because I did the best I could, it's like that one guy may never forgive me. I broke his sacred trust by promising something and not being there when I said I would be there.

So you want to actively make sure your stuff is working the way it's supposed to whether you go through and do it, or find someone to pay or volunteer to swing through your site and give you some feedback on the user experience.

I am personally to a point when I decide to tweak and update the download and free optins, I think I'm going to provide the links on the Thank You page in case people don't get my email for it.

The real secret behind increasing blog traffic... it's about the people

The bottom line is it isn't about frequency, pinterest strategies, methods etc. though those do help, but really it's about people. It's about finding out what makes them tick. It's about appealing to their emotions and feel goods.

The best sales people in any given company are the ones who are sociopaths. They are usually the ones who can read people and figure them out. They will tell you things like, "I can tell this guy was a very logical type, so I just focused on facts with him, but his wife seemed very spontaneous and impulsive, so I knew if I appealed to her, she would sell the product for me to him." They look for things like, "Who is the decision maker? What influences their decision?"

But for the most part, in your case, for bloggers, your best bet is to think about your social presence offline (where you can observe nonverbal cues) and find what works for you naturally, and try to harness that social power online.

Where and when and what situations are you usually the center of attention?
Why do you think you are more the center of attention in those situations than in others?
What type of people do you end up talking to in any situation?
What type of friends do you usually attract?
When you are talking to your target reader, what seems to work well with them offline? What makes them get more engaged in what you're saying?

And there are social dynamics that's easy to get confused by because it's not an exact science, so frequently trying to analyze it in regards to you might bring you some epiphanies.

For instance, in my case, I always end up talking to men. Just about every party, the workplace and even a bar, I end up talking to men about things like military experience, football, business, etc. But I never become friends with them. All my BFF's are women, and very girly ones at that, who like pink and glitter and smelling good, and while some of them can hang in a conversation about football, they rarely ever want to talk about football.

For the longest time, I felt like I was screwing up by trying to write for a female demographic because I am usually the hit of the show around men. My most-read pieces that were not on my blog were on The Good Men Project, not Mamalode or Blunt Moms... But then I realize my blog (my old blog) is /was a place where I get intimate about my thoughts and feelings, where I say things I wouldn't say in a group of men, things reserved for my BFF, so I probably did things right with that.

There's just so many variables it's easy to miss some. There's a time and a place for things. It's obvious when you are really into BDSM and are wanting to avoid talking about that in your church lady's group, but not so obvious when you're into Photography and trying to decide what aspects to focus on in a group of business owners.

The conclusion part...

I think it's easy to get caught up in all the 50 gazillion things the internet sells us. But that's the thing. They are selling to us. Pinterest is selling to us. Google is selling to us. The places who offer paid courses are selling their courses, and part of that is selling the message in those courses. They all probably have "Bloggers" as a target market. And for the most part, they aren't wrong.

For the most part, their advice is good advice, and it's designed to appeal to our feel-goods which is why it's so popular, but in order to fully increase blog traffic to its fullest potential, the human component is a must-have in your foundation. They couldn't sell you that Pinterest drives traffic to your blog without that human component in their strategies. It's just unfortunate they don't really talk about that in their strategies.

But that shouldn't stop you from figuring it out, analyzing their methods, and trying to incorporate some of that into yours.

Pinterest and Instagram appeal to human visual senses, and as a result, pretty pictures attract women. If you think about that for a while, your brain will go places like...Women like beautiful things more than men do, so maybe I should feel more complimented when a woman calls me beautiful than when a man does... wow... but really if I want a site that appeals to women, it probably needs to be visually pretty. Matching colors. Coordinating accessories. ...

It's amazing where the mind can wander when it wonders. But eventually, you'll find a good FEEL for what's working for Pinterest, how it works, and why it works, and before you know it, you're kind of doing some of that with your site or blog without meaning to.

And don't stop at Pinterest. All the major companies are putting in loads of money and time evaluating their insights, performing studies, A/B testing with their stuff, the user experience... Time and money that is beyond what most of us can afford... So while they may not tell you the results of their studies, they show you. They are not going to make a change or update based on one guy's idiot idea. It will be based on research. Primarily human behavior.

And because everyone is different, it's going to be different for everyone, so you write content, see what's working, see what's not working, and keep writing and experimenting.

And remember, the internet is always evolving at a rapid pace.

Start Writing without a huge blog

2019-07-21T13:18:00.000-07:00

Do you want to write without having to do all the work of a website? Here are some tips to help you get started...

Running a blog is a lot of work and can easily become a full-time job. In essence, you are creating a website, so you end up needing to learn (or hire out) Wordpress, CSS, HTML, Graphic Design, UX / UI, Photography, etc. Most bloggers spend about 24 to 30 hours a week (sometimes in a power weekend) AFTER they already have their site up with things like writing content, visual strategy, social media strategy, etc.

That's a lot to do in addition to writing.

If you want to be a career writer, without the hassle of a wordpress site or blog, here's my recommended process to get started.

Step 1: Pick your Genre / Niche

The first question you should probably ask yourself if you don't already have an answer for it is WHAT do you want to write about?

Most writers end up writing about almost everything, and if you are good at research, that's very likely going to happen. But most writers also have specialties they excel at. For instance, the guy who published 5 books of poetry may have a small collection of plays and short stories. A guy who publishes biographies may also be a journalist or possibly a poet.

Picking your genre or niche is really about what you want to be known for as opposed to being what you know.

The idea is >> Stephen King, all his novels are similar. JK Rowling, same deal. So this would be more establishing oneself as a Career Writer, as opposed to blogging.

Life kind of writes itself, so there's a good chance you will be succeeding at something very different than your mindset here in the future, but we still make goals just to have a target.

Reasons you should ask yourself this question:

You need to know what to write your first piece about, and where you want to publish it
People are digging the niches
It helps you brand yourself, which will later make it easier to design your own site when ready for it
It helps decide what to share on your social media or any place you hope to collect followers / fans

I write about everything. I have no idea what I want to write about 10 years from now. It wasn't until recently did I notice most of the things I've published are humor mom. But the book I wanted to publish wasn't about being a humor mom. It's more mental health, mindfulness, spiritual thing, which is something moms want. Now I have this Facebook page called Michelle Grewe, Writer. It has no niche. It has no focus.

In contrast, one of my friends writes about fantasy romance with witches and dragons, and her Facebook page is all stars, black and red, it looks like a book of spells. You don't need words to describe what she writes about when you visit her Facebook page, you see it in the feels of her posts and design. But she does use words that match it talking about her fiction novels. So all of her readers are in to her book's topic. And all of her readers share enough commonalities that she knows her audience well. People searching for spells, and dragons, find her. People who like Harry Potter, Tarot Cards, and Paranormal often see her page as a suggested page by Facebook.

Having a niche really makes a difference in your overall strategy and function.

There are many ways to categorize writing, but for the most part, you want to

Know where you would find yourself in the book store
Know what dewey decimal your future books might have
Know what persona you should aim for: Are you the nonfiction expert of a certain field? Or a fictional character?
Know your overall goals (do you want to write a book? Or just get paid to write articles?)
If you plan to be published online, you would do great to know what Pinterest and Facebook categories you belong in that are not a "miscellaneous" type category.

Step 2: Write for Free

Basically, you want to find a place to build your portfolio. A place that will publish your work, and let you link to it in the future. A place that's like a blog.

The idea here is to "get published" without having to be approved so that you can show a writing history. You can do this with a full-on blog, but you can also accomplish this in other places on the internet.

There are many great websites that also act as a blog without requiring all the hassle of creating an entire website.

Here's a list of websites to check out in regards to this...

Free Wordpress

Free

I stipulate that this is the free one because there's 2 kinds of wordpress, but here you can create a blog for free, but you are very limited to design. It's a great place to get your written content on the internet for people's reading pleasure.

Blogger

Free

This one is very limited on design for beginners, and really only one of the free templates that comes with it looks decent (Notable is the name of the template), but it's a great place to just write.

Linked In

Free

When you go to your Linked In feed to write a post, you have the option to write an article. You can put images and what not in it. Then you post. People can also react and/or leave a comment. Keep in mind Linked In is a professional / job hunting / career vibe, so you can almost find publishing contacts and add them to your connections.

Svbtle

$6 / month

Write and Publish. That's it. All posts are simple black text on white background.

HubPages

Free

Just write.

Steemit

Free to ???

Sign up for free, but wait 2 weeks to get approved, or pay to bypass the wait. But in the end, you get a place to publish articles.

Write Freely with Write.as and/or writefreely.host

$1 + / month

Depending on what plan you want to go with, this platform offers two ways to blog. I suggest checking out all 3 links above because it's somewhat confusing.

telegra.ph

Free

You just simply write and post and then use telegram to help manage things.

Plume

Free

Similar to and works with Write Freely, you find or create an instance and write.

Medium

Freemium

Be careful as some of these become owners of your content, and some let you own your content.

If you want more control over the design, or to have your own domain such as yourname.com, then you want your own blog. Check out Start a Blog.

As I write this article, the trending thing is Podcasts (with video always being popular). With that said, if you have a great "reading voice," you may consider writing on your own computer and then publishing via a regular podcast, preferably one people can listen to while driving.

Step 3: Pitch and Pitch and Pitch

Once you get some articles up, share everywhere you can to bring some traffic and visibility to it. Then at some point when you're ready, pick your top 3 most popular ones (or your best), and put them in a Writer's Portfolio (mainly, a list of links you can copy and paste).

Decide where you want to pitch or submit. This is very dependent on your goals and the type of writing you do. Places to get ideas to pitch to...

Places where you read about your topic
Google "where to publish articles about _____" or "Parenting Magazines"
Freedom With Writing (I definitely recommend signing up for their email and making sure it goes to your inbox instead of the spam folder)
Writer's Market

Then you want to find out how to pitch or submit.

The easiest way to do that is to find their website, and look for Submissions, Writer's Guidelines, or something like that within the navigation menu or footer (it's usually in the footer).

If the place you're looking for doesn't have that, then you can google, "Writer's Guidelines for ______" or maybe "How to submit to ________." You may want to do this anyway as many places have secrets in regards to getting published with them.

The other option too, and it's usually the most recommended option, is to find the editor you want to pitch to, and while you can try to find their email and email directly, you are probably best to find them on their active social media and kind of befriend them for a few months with regular comments and engagement before pitching.

There are also many articles in regards to drafting a pitch or a coverletter for a submission. I've had the most luck with pitching more so than general submissions.

Once you pitch, you keep pitching. As often you'd like, but also as often as possible. Plan to get more rejections than acceptances (a LOT more).

Other Tips to Getting Published

Facebook groups that post paid writing opportunities (such as Binders full of Writing Jobs)

Check out freelancing sites for paid writing opportunities (such as Upwork)

Check out job boards for remote writing positions (such as indeed)

Become a member at International Association of Professional Writers and Editors

Check out Writer's Digest website (especially for pitch tips)

Follow Influencers in your Niche (they often offer opportunities)

Also pitch based on good ideas more so than your writing ability.

The easiest time I ever got something published was I found postcards my grandmother wrote something article worthy on in the 1970's during the Vietnam War, and she passed away in 1998. So when I found these, I pitched to an editor of the New York Times about it, she wanted to publish before she even saw what my grandmother wrote.

If you think about it, editors are really honed in on what people want to read, what's trending, what they have lots of, what they lack, so it's easier to sell them on the idea more so than the skill. Also, I've written a great article before on a topic that wasn't popular, and it just simply didn't get much traffic. The editors want traffic. And traffic doesn't come from great writing. It comes from great headlines. Of course, great writing creates loyal readers.

The process itself is a learning experience where you kind of learn as you go, find out what works for you... In my experience though, networking is probably one of the greatest factors. You can learn and find opportunities from peers and major influencers / celebrity authors. Find those people on the web. Follow their social media and check out their websites regularly. Take classes that entail meet and greets with classmates. But the important thing is to get your work out there and then show it off to the right people.

Let Pinterest Know about this article...

5 Photography Tips for Fantastical Fotos that will Make People be all Wow You're Amazing

2019-05-09T06:31:00.001-07:00

5 Tips for Beginner Photographers to improve artistic value, meaning, and overall discover amazing pictures taken with their own fingers.

When I was a kid, I did photography in 4H. I loved it. Part of it was because my grandfather and my aunt are both hobby photographers, so I had something I could talk about with them. Part of it was also that I enjoyed art and this was a new medium for me.

I remember I had a very old camera, 35 mm film, but it was like a Canon except all of it was manual. Even to take the film out of the camera, I had to rewind the film with a crank and listen for when it was finished, and I often removed the film while under a blanket in fear I didn't crank it far enough. For you young whippersnappers out there, if the film got touched by light, all your pictures would be ruined.

Fast forward 25 odd years, and I started blogging. Photography became a thing again for me. I didn't realize how much I suck at it. Apparently, 2 years doing photography in 4H isn't any kind of real professional training. But the good news is, being dumb at something just makes me want to learn more about it, so I did actually learn some things I'm going to share in list form from the top of my head.

PHOTOGRAPHY IS THE ABILITY TO READ LIGHT

This is my aunt Jo's definition of photography. She is a firm believer that it doesn't matter what kind of camera you have because the best photographs are ones that capture light well. Some of her best photographs were taken with a really cheap and almost useless camera, and honestly, it's best to learn that way because you learn the art form.

Painting is the same way. You are looking at objects, but you are also looking at how light interacts with those objects in a very Einsteinian Relativity sort of way. It's amazing like you start off learning to draw a cube and shading the sides, and draw an egg and blending the shadows, but then you get to really looking at things, and you see that even the darkest part of that egg has a flash of light somewhere along the edge.

So it's more than just "have amazing lighting." When I take pictures of things on black poster, outside lighting turns my black into gray. Strangely, when I did closeups of dandelions, my gray bumper came out dark raving black in the shadows of natural sunlight. Every texture is different under different lighting and different angles it truly is an art to get to know those textures and how light interacts with them in different scenarios.

This was taken on a red trash can...

But in a different angle with some different camera settings: same scenario and lighting...

So when you go to snap photos, I think it's easiest to try to envision what you're looking at as if you're about to put it on Photoshop, and what it would look like if you completely desaturated it to black and white because in painting, light and shadows are done via tints and shades and are generally considered "Without Color" like "black and white." The only time color exists is when you bend the light (rainbows!).

EVERY PHOTO HAS ITS OWN PURPOSE

As an Artist, I love photographs that have striking contrast, but as a graphic designer, photos that have little shadows are the easiest to manipulate. Most portraits and products tend to do best when there are no shadows on the product or face, often utilizing some kind of screen over the light sources whether you are talking a cloud overlay under the sun or a white sheet over the light bulbs, and then also some kind of reflector to keep shadows at bay.

The award winning photograph in National Geographic would probably look horrible on photos of products on a website, or even photos of models in an advertisement. Sometimes artistic photography is amazing in graphic design, but that's not always the case. I love Instagram filters, but would I want to watch Die Hard in XPROII filter? Probably not.

Not to mention, the worst time to make a huge emotional artistic statement about something political would be in the product shots for an advertisement.

But on the other hand, sometimes the message is communicated best via artistic photography that broke all the rules, that has intense shadows with serious juxtaposition to portray the sadness of a puppy abandoned alongside of the road in order to sell more Kibbles and Bits.

FOCUS ON ONE THING

I see so many photographers and bloggers taking pictures of objects for stock photographs, like a computer keyboard and mouse with a notebook and pen... or makeup and makeup brushes... just random objects placed neatly on a colorful background.

I wanted to play too.

I grabbed things from everywhere. I abused the Dollar General sales, found stuff in my house I forgot about, even cleaned some old clutter just to discover... I took hundreds of pictures. I found the better pictures focused heavily on one or two objects as opposed to pictures that used a lot of objects. Like to me, I had maybe 3-5 objects at a time, but it looked horrible without focusing on only one of those objects. I mean that both camera focus and my own mind's focus.

I do pay attention to all the things, and I do have photos of lots of things, but I focus on ONE thing. Like I can take a picture of this flower, focus on that one pollen cluster, but first look around is there a bug trying photobomb my flower? Oooh that leaf would be great blurred in the background, much better than the dead leaf. Back to the pollen cluster forget everything else while I hit this snap button.

It's like shooting a gun really. Breathe out as you pull the trigger. Try not to shoot when you have to pee or right after you had a strong cup of espresso.

But if I try to focus on all things like, "Ooh, you want that hair clip's corner, but also that thing, and the whole point of this photo shoot the other thing," I get overwhelmed, and that emotion comes through the picture. It's such a subtle difference that has an overall impact.

KIDS / PEOPLE ARE HORRIBLE ACTORS, GET THEM IN THE REAL

The best pictures interrupt life and invade privacy. Not like pictures of guys masturbating in the men's room. I mean the best pictures invade a person's moment like while they are laughing right before they say, "Hey I didn't know you were going to take a picture! I'm not ready!"

If you let people get ready and pose, you are going to get "EH" pictures.

This is why models do photo shoots, like the idea is to take a thousand pictures of a model standing in hopes to find an authentic, natural stand. Think Austin Powers.... Work with me baby.

I think the Brady Bunch had an episode on this and called it the "element of surprise." But the point is, you capture more authenticity if you can get the shot while people's smiles are genuine before their public relations smile, when you can get their bad side in good lighting... It's like when you take photos during sporting events, you want the moment the ball is going into the hoop and the basketball player is in the air, or the moment a guy leaps into the end zone with fierce determination derpy face... You kind of want that same thing in real life when kids are playing, when adults are interacting, and when life is being lived.

INSTEAD OF TAKING PICTURES, SEE YOURSELF AS MAKING PICTURES

I'm stealing this one from Olivier Duong because it's awesome, and I needed a link anyway to a similar post for SEO purposes, and I fell in love with his entire post all of it was awesome advice.

10 Photography Tips to Help You Take Your Photography Up a Level

But the point is if you're in the mindset to "take pictures," you are at best going to depict exactly what's in front of you. But Kodak didn't build a brand on "look at how well this photograph looks like the real deal!" Kodak built a brand around Kodak Moments, because the point of "taking pictures" is to capture a moment, preferably the unforgettable ones so that we don't accidentally forget things so important they are unforgettable, so with that, you kind of have to make a picture that captures the feelings.

Not to mention nobody gives a shit if you are taking really amazing pictures from a technical standpoint except other photographers who need the ego stroke to find flaws in your work. Most people just like the photos that make them feel the feels. Norman Rockwell was a master of understanding this concept as a Painter.

I'm still not the world's greatest photographer, but I get by.

To me, it's more of a life long mastery of light, one I take pretty seriously like I study light as an artist (photographs / paintings / compositioning), as a science (you know the speed of light is one of the few constants in this universe, like while traveling at the speed of light, time and space are relative to each other), and as a faith (Let there be Light). I also mix all 3 of this sometimes like I start thinking about light and darkness on a spiritual level, of Wiccan Magic and the difference between light and black magic, and the difference between emotions of the light and emotions of the darkness, and THEN start thinking about paintings and how light interacts on objects in our world and find similarities between that and Wicca and Christianity and Heaven and Hell like I don't need acid and weed to take me to this place my brain does this on its own.

But as far as my blogs and graphic design are concerned, I consider photography one of many artistic mediums, and I love mixing mediums. Everyone has their specialties and styles, and I'm still always looking for one to have or try on, but I love playing with it like a child coloring in her coloring book. So when my assignment is to create an ad for someone, I choose whether or not I want to go photographs or illustrations, raster or vector, hand painted and manipulated in Photoshop or mouse painted in Illustrator... Photography is a piece of that.

I will never be a photographer. I will always be an artist.

For more reading, I liked these 2 blog posts...

Top 10 Digital Photography Tips

This is a great basics for beginners using DSLR cameras trying to figure out ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed, and stuff like that. My favorite tip he gave was the "rule of the thirds," which basically you draw a tic tac toe on your picture and aim for your focal point to be on one of the dots. But if you really want to get into ideas like that, on an artistic level, you really want to study all the theories and use behind PHI (the ratio, not the symbol).

Not to get off on a tangent but I did so here we go, I found a free thing like this before on the internet for my daughter's project on the Golden Ratio, but I can't remember where it is, but they do have an app for this.... PhiMatrix

A Creative Exercise for Writing Good Copy that Sells without being Salesy

2018-09-18T09:58:00.001-07:00

With this exercise, you'll have lots of ideas for a concept strategy for your content, whether it's overall branding or trying to come up with metaphors to use in your blog post or sales copy.

The top recommendations experts tell you to write copy that sells is to use vivid words to...

Describe how awesome it would be to use your product.
Focus on the solution your product offers.
Provide analogies.
Tell a story.

While you're doing that, you also want to...

Goals in Writing Good Sales Copy

1. Tell a damn good story
2. Make people feel like they really want your product
3. Draw people in
4. Be original, less cliche, less salesy

I can be a pretty original writer often accused of being strange and random. Some people want to be more like that, so today I'm going to focus on an exercise I frequently do to help me find the creativeness within.

Warning: I'm just going to tell you from experience that people don't like "original" as much as what I call "cookie cutter" wording. They prefer cliches because they have a trust and comfort zone with them. When you veer too far from that, you make people less comfortable, and you consume more of their energy to read you. So use these concepts sparingly. Fill in original ideas with cliche. Try to blend in with the rest of the internet as much as possible.

The Goal of this Creative Exercise

The overall goal is to get to know your readers via empathy, and to find methods that intentionally invoke emotions to build a more intimate relationship with your readers or customers.

It's like a 17 year old knows her mom works hard to raise her, but she doesn't understand at all, not one iota, until she is older and has her own kids and is calling her mom up at midnight with a crying baby going, "Thank you."

I always personally struggled making this kind of connection, so I purposefully work on improving my game. Why? Because I see how other people have made this kind of connection as writers, and business owners, and it's like the thing the people who go viral seems to have that everyone else doesn't. They know their people on an intimate level.

Most people operate from an emotional aspect, they act on feelings, even someone like me who is pretty emotionally numb and kind of robotic with my thinking will act on an emotion. So it's really just a matter of learning how to play with people's emotions. I'm seriously constantly studying sociopaths like they are creatures on National Geographic for this reason. It's not my forte to appeal to emotions. I've always been a person who appeals to intellect. But if you can make people feel, you will reach people on a level intellectualism can't. You can communicate well with all cultures, all genders, all age groups, all levels of IQ...

Like if your words can get brains to build some dopamine, then you got it figured out. That's not a bad goal to aim for as a writer.

The Creative Exercise Steps

1. Ask yourself some key questions
2. Explore the thoughts by writing out answers
3. Go back and dig for gold

But as you go through these steps, you want to make a conscious effort to dig for some gold. Like when you are literally digging for gold, you blindly dig into the dirt and then see if there's gold there, but the entire time you are doing it, you are trying to find the gold. It's the same concept here.

Think of imagery that utilizes the most senses of your 5 senses as possible. In the world of writers, we are told not to tell you what happened, but to show you. Instead of saying, "It was night," we are to describe a setting so you can feel that it's night time, such as, "the light on the lamp post turns on, and the siren sounds for children's curfew. A cool, crisp breeze wraps around me, and I can't wait to snuggle into my soft, fuzzy blanket and read a book next to the fire place."

So let's do it.

So Sally is sick of using cliches and wanted ideas to hone into a more original concept. For instance, "Work from Anywhere," is kind of old to her. She wants a fresher idea to focus on...

Work from anywhere. And implied, Be Your Own Boss.

Most of the questions I list here are standard questions I ask myself when I'm brainstorming for anything related to sales copy such as defining my brand, defining my business, coming up with a marketing plan, writing content, etc. But, I also use a lot of these questions when developing characters for fiction and all of my writing where I'm trying to figure out what I'm really trying to say or a creative way to say it.

Questions to ask yourself:

What does that feel like?
What kind of stock photos would you use to describe that feeling?
What nouns are there?
What verbs are there?
What does it smell like?
What would it taste like if it were a food?
What food would it be?
What sounds would you hear in those scenarios?
What sounds make you feel that feeling?
What touch sensations makes you feel that feeling?

You can also add questions, like I sort of did in my example below. It changes based on my brain at the day, but you can ask yourself any kind of prompt to get to know your client better, to empathize more realistically, and to get into their psychological motivations.

So like with your clients, there's a before picture and an after picture. Or a before character and an after character. The before symbolizes the problems they face. The after is the person they become after resolving their problems. So you blog about "How to take amazing photographs," the before is an ugly photograph nobody wants to see on Pinterest, and the after is a person who is getting more traffic from Pinterest. You really want to focus on the after character because that's the aspiration, not to mention psychologists say the important thing is to focus on the solution. It's more positive.

Your client's AFTER character, what Disney Princess would they be? What superhero would they be? What fictional characters would they be? Why? What Bumper Sticker would they buy for their car? What are qualities they identify with? How do they want people to see them?

Other questions you can ask is what does this really mean? What are people really after? What would they brag about after doing this or reading this?

Now start to answer question 1, type it or write it out somewhere, and let your streams of consciousness flow. When you get to a dead end in your stream, move on to the next question. It's ok if you break to google something. The point is to let your brain explore these ideas. Go into weird places. If it's dumb, that's ok you can ignore it later, just spew your brain onto the page.

And keep that conscious effort to find the gold

1. Imagery
2. A story
3. Nouns and Verbs
4. Colors
5. Expressions

And you find it when you explore...

1. Motivations
2. Metaphors
3. Dream like symbols
4. Personality traits
5. Adjectives and Adverbs

So Work from Anywhere.

To me... It feels like freedom. Like I can finally breathe. Fresh air. Even if it's in my stinky house. Like an open window. More opportunities. I envision a woman standing in a field of yellow flowers with her arms out wide open, or a young hipster male in skinny jeans standing on top of a rock looking down on an ocean. Cliche but those are good feeling photos. While I envision yellow flowers, I think the color that makes people feel this feeling is Blue because blue skies, blue oceans, like blue is what we associate to airy feelings. It's airy. It's free spirit. It's your soul being able to fly. It's working at home with no pants. It's working from your car in the parking lot. To me, it's being able to smoke cigarettes while I work without having to take a break. But what other examples are there besides no pants? Like that's cliche now a days too? Just keep to questions and see if it flies out anywhere. The primary noun is YOU the customer, and so many things can be that YOU. If I were to write a fiction novel where my main character was someone who does work from home, he'd be more creative, less rigid with others, more spontaneous, like Steve Jobs or Tony Stark. In Alice in Wonderland, my character is the Cheshire Cat. Of the Disney Princesses, my character is Mulan or Moana because they were not confined to geographic location or rules. Superheroes.. I'm thinking kind of Catwoman. It's kind of rebellious to work from home when you think about it, but more like nerds skipping school to hit up the coffee house and do homework together because it's a beautiful snowy day with gargantuan snowflakes (so yeah that was me).It requires a certain amount of fearlessness and badassery. Courage. The verbs, these characters are breaking molds, breaking unwritten rules of society, doing things better than how they've always been done. They become guides to their new territories they found. Innovative. They work independently. Get more detailed verbs. Good verbs. Work and play become the same thing. Drinking lots of coffee. Or wine. Vodka and Juicy Juice for breakfast. (So that was me too at some point). Farting freely. Making doctor appointments anytime they want. Picking their kid up from school sick without getting a sick feeling to ask for permission. Taking sick days without getting "written up." No more getting "written up" for dumb things. Being late. Freedom to be late to work. Freedom to do a good job better than the next guy. Freedom to do it your way. It smells like fresh air. It tastes like cool mint. Peppermint Patty commercials. Coffee. Maybe more of a Cafe Mocha because you're free to chocolate anytime you want. Andes Mints. I also think of donuts, bagels, and breakfast as a food to describe this feeling, the early morning, the dawn of the day, the hope for a good day, the feelings of opportunities, excitement to do things you couldn't wait to do, you're not winding down at dusk, you're winding up to take on challenges and to conquer. So another stock photo, a woman in fuzzy slippers and a bathrobe leaning against sliding glass doors looking outside at a sunrise with a cup of coffee in her hand, and some essence of a fresh morning dew and foggy haze in the horizon. The sounds of these photographs is usually implied silence, the lack of the bustling noises of coworkers and office bull shit. But there's also freedom to blast music you're too embarrassed to claim you love like Madonna. Although I usually blast a gym workout like Rob Bailey and the Hustle Standard and 50 Cent. And it is a lot like going to the gym because it requires a certain amount of self-discipline to do. Pretty much all the gym terminology would be a great metaphor for this line of work. So thinking of Rachel Moolah's what is your clients Bumper Sticker? Like what bumper stickers would they buy for their car? The phrases for their locker? The identity they want to be? Let's google "gym motivation" and I get "Be your own hero... Excuses don't burn calories... Pain is temporary Pride is forever... Don't stop when you're tired, stop when you're done... Look in the mirror, that's your competition... Stop wishing, start doing... Be the girl who decided to go for it... If it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you... Life begins at the end of your comfort zone... Never Skip Monday... Prove them wrong... Now touch sensations... working from home is like a breeze, like wind flowing through your hair, like driving with the windows down, AND I'm back to the open window. Like a stop looking out the window, open it and climb out.

So you have lots of ideas there, and you can find some gold among that rubble of thought.

1. Overall Angle. You now have some metaphors to work with and choose from. Like how every "guru" has their own thing that they incorporate in all their videos, their articles, their books and their answers. So here you have oodles of those to kind of build from, like you can focus on motivating people via working out the gym angle, or you can focus on the open window concept...

2. Tag line. You can kind of throw in a tag line slogan from these ideas, like fart freely or wear your bathrobe to work. I know someone who did that with working pantless. She doesn't bring it up all the time, but she does go to that enough that I imagine her face when I say pantless even though she kind of took that concept from the internet as a whole. It's a little different than the guru thing because this isn't a framework. It's just a personality blip of many that can define you or your brand.

3. Reword the phrase... Well you can't totally reword it where it hasn't already been done in a way that explains it, like you got work from home, work from anywhere, remote jobs, be your own boss, set your own hours, etc. But you can incorporate some concepts, like "Fart freely in your home office," or "Dare to do it your way from home," or "You're allowed to be late for work if you work for yourself." Every day is Casual Friday in my Office... but you can also bounce from other concept. My noun list is pretty weak, but there's personality traits... so Rebel the System, don't get a job create your job, break up with your boss... Some of us adapt from workplace structures, but some of us choose to evolve from it and create our own workplace structure starting from home. ... Build it from the ground up... You are a self-made individual... or Be Self-Made.

4. You also now have stock photo ideas, branding ideas, video ideas, stories to tell... like you can make a sales video of some Honor Students skipping class because it's snowing to go to a coffee house and do homework together saying they can't wait to graduate and have their own business so they can do this more often. You know a stock photo of an open window might be appealing for a book cover, a quote meme, or featured post image.

So if you really want to write good copy that sells, compelling sales copy, you really want to focus on knowing your customers intimately and getting to know what makes them tick. And then you want to convey those concepts as realistically as possible via stories, imagery, descriptive language, amazing nouns and verbs, things you could turn into a movie without much narrative. You are not selling a product, you are selling the after-character, the aspiration.

Nobody buys toothpaste just to brush their teeth with it. They buy whitening toothpaste to be beautiful and feel loved and admired. They buy clinical strength to keep their mouths healthy. They buy baking soda to be more naturalistic and homeopathic. We have lots of personalities and aspirations here. That's your end game, to get people to feel that your product will make them the person they want to be. And you can do this by showing them a mirror of that person without using an actual mirror. SHOW, not tell.

How to Add Social Media Buttons in HTML + Free Social Media Icons Font

2018-08-16T08:49:00.000-07:00

Follow me. Stalk me. Let's be friends. Linking to your social media on your blog helps you gain repeat business, solidify your brand, and increase social media numbers that you might later use to impress people.

Here's some freebies if you need them... This is kind of a republished post, but shit my last post was in 2016, and I want to also give a tutorial on how to use them.

These are free for any use (personal and commercial), but in accordance with the trademarked use of the images. For instance, you can use Facebook wherever Facebook will let you use their F.

Basic Black Social Media Font

I've put the basic black images as a font together. Half of it is the black images on a clear background, and the other half are black circles with a clear social media image in the middle.

Pink Watercolor Social Media Icons

These are pink watercolor spots with social media icons on them. I did the spots by hand in Photoshop. Provided are the images as jpg's already optimized (but with a white background); however, the file complete with a Photoshop file with layers of all the social media icons is also provided.

There are two sets of pink because some blogs are more red pink, and others are more purple pink, and I made both because I didn't like the first pink I did on my blog.

Free for personal or commercial use; wherever the icons will let you have them.

Retro Red Social Media Icons

Social media icons that look like a red pillow with social icons on top for a different looking texture perfect for retro sites and those with a red color theme.

Get the Font and Source Files for the Social Media Icons

But how do you add social media buttons to your blog?

Good thing you asked that. Sorry it just seemed the perfect moment to sound like a door-to-door salesperson from 1957.

Some wordpress plugins allow you to upload your own image files, but the easiest way to do it is to code it. It's easy code.

Step 1: Open up Notepad

Open up Notepad or some kind of place to write your code that doesn't format. The problem with formatting is that it changes the " and the ' marks and ruins the code's ability to code.

Step 2: Upload your Images and List the URLs

Then upload the images you want to use to your blog. Copy and paste the Image URL to Notepad. Just list them for now. To find the image URL, in Wordpress, it shows that on the right of the image in the media library. It will be something like http://www.yourblog.com/nameofyourimage.jpg or it might end in a .png. In blogger, upload the image, insert into a post, set the size to the original size, right click, and Copy Image Address. Then paste into Notepad.

Step 3: List Social Media URLs

Go to each social media account's page you want linked to, and copy and paste the address into Notepad.

Step 4: Go into Notepad and Code

You can copy and paste this into Notepad. Then adjust the web addresses.

 <a href= "http://www.facebook.com" target="_blank">  
 <Img Src="http://www.image.jpg" width= "25 px"></a>

The code is really broken down into two parts:

The link.
The Image.

I would copy and then paste as many times as you have links. So if you got 5 social media links, paste that 5 times into notepad.

Copy the Facebook link, highlight from quotation to quotation in the top line's address without highlighting the quotation marks, and paste. Then copy the Facebook image, highlight from quotation to quotation in the second line's address without highlighting the quotation marks, and paste.

Repeat for each social media account.

You may end up playing with the width's pixel size to get the perfect size for your purposes.

But in the end, it should look like it does up there, but with the right web addresses in between the quote marks.

Step 5: Put the Code on your Site

Blogs

Go to your blog's layout or appearance where you would insert a widget or gadget. Create a new HTML or Text Widget. Copy and paste your code into it. Save and Save.

Websites

If you don't have a blog, wherever you enter your html code is where you would paste this.

Step 6: Save Your Code

If you already have it in Notepad now, save it so you can go back to it later. It's a thousand times easier if you can go back to it later for when you create new pages, create a new blog or site, or just want to update with new images.

Troubleshooting

You can test what you're doing on W3's Try It Editor

W3 Schools: You are in essence listing out images as a link. This is a great tutorial on html for images.

Make sure in your code for every a , there's an End A /a . And for every < , there's a closing > .

Make sure you have quotation marks before and after every link.

Make sure you have a wordCommand= "crapInQuotes.com" in between all the < >s

Check out these other methods

How to Create Social Media Buttons

How to Create a Sticky Social Bar (like I have on this site on the left)

Fancier How to Add Social Media Icons to Your Site with easy animations

Don't Forget to Get the Font and Source Files for the Social Media Icons

Very Pinteresting Indeed: Happy Pinning

Write Amazing Pinterest Board Descriptions with this Template

2018-07-10T22:34:00.000-07:00

What are we doing on Pinterest now for board descriptions? ...because I want to clean up my boards. Maybe this is a good time for you to do a Pinterest Quickie and check out these ideas, head over to your Pinterest, and do some tweaking.

So there are many things we can be doing to optimize our Pinterest for Best Pinteresting Activities, but Descriptions are a really big deal through the whole thing because Pinterest is a search engine, and it uses the words in the descriptions (as well as text overlays on images and image recognition) to help determine what kind of content is there for search reasons.

Pinterest offers many places to put words, like your Profile Description, Your Board Descriptions, and Your actual Pins, and while I'd say the Pin Description is probably the most important, the Board Description provides categorical keywords which are often the things Pinterest recommends in search.

For instance, say you want a crockpot recipe. You type it in search, a plethora of options are available, but Pinterest offers other options to click such as, "Easy Crockpot Recipes," and "Cheap Crockpot Recipes," and "Healthy Crockpot Recipes."

Pinterest Board SEO Hot Spots

The Boards have two primary places for SEO: the Title and the Description

Title

We have always been told to use a less creative and more SEO friendly title, and that is just as important now than it has ever been with this new search feature. BUT you want to make sure your title accurately matches the crap you're pinning to that board or you'll lose your Pinterest Credibility which is important to be seen in their new algorithm.

Description

The top boards in these searches have relevant keywords to the title, and are rich with keywords that accurately depict what is in those boards. I think the algorithm considers this when deciding "BEST" in their searches. Plus, it's a back-up part the algorithm looks at when determining pins to show up in people's searches.

Pinterest Board Description Breakdown

After looking through various Pinterest Boards, I think I've concocted a decent template. Here are some common things people are doing in their descriptions. Most don't have all of these, but the better ones have at least 2, and the best ones hit all 3 of these.

1. What Pins Will You Find?

PINS...

This is the basic in the most basic form. The Pins. Basically keywords of what pins you will find on that Pinterest Board in particular. Think one-word NOUNS.

So first you have the actual WHATs.

Some go broad: Tips, tricks, advice, ideas, recipes, crafts, DIY projects...

Some mix and match: Tips + Advice on...

Then you have TOPICAL WHATs

Some do a very specific keyword phrase: Social Media Marketing Tips, Easy Dinner Recipes...

2. What are people really trying to accomplish?

Pins TO ...

This is basically the outcome of what you'll get if you read these articles and look at these pins. Think VERBS.

It's amazing the things people search if you start searching for these terms. But the best way to start is to think of TO.

Social Media Tips To.... Grow your blog, become famous, sell dope...

Just to show that people actually search this part of life, here's some Pinterest Suggestions for basic thoughts...

and I find the next one just funny.

Just in case people weren't sure how to get pregnant, you can always become water.

3. Who will benefit the most from this?

Pins to... FOR...

People are obsessed with being some identity. We mock and condemn the idea of stereotypes, but people thrive on defining themselves in categories. It's like our brain's way to organize people. So with that said, people search for their identities a lot.

This can be anything like entrepreneurs, infopreneurs, fempreneurs, business owners, veterinarians, artists, brides to be, moms, the graduate...

Again, you can get an idea by playing in search and seeing what Pinterest recommends, such as searching things like For.

Examples

The best example I can find is from ByRegina who is one of the most amazing and inspiring people using the internet for a business. Her website design, her methods, her wording and descriptions, like she doesn't miss a beat.

But the social media template I already see being in use because several people have the exact same wording...

Template Ideas

This here is really the best template...

PINS TO... FOR...

But you can kind of play and mix things up... Here are some ideas, with each plus being optional.

Topic Nouns for Identities to KickAss Verbing.

Identities can KickAss Verb with these Topic Nouns

Kickass Verb with these Topic Nouns

Topic Nouns to KickAss Verb

This board covers List of Topics and Needs People Search

List Extra Search Phrases | Separated by symbols | Can use hearts instead

Group board members, please List of Rules. If you'd like to be added to this group board, please follow the board and email me@email.com.

Your Name: What You Are About On Pinterest in less than 5 words ♥ Profile Keyword | Profile Keyword | Profile Keyword ♥ website

Pinterest Board Descriptions are an integral part to the Pinterest Algorithm Experience, and the main thing is to have the keywords that people search for on Pinterest in all the places Pinterest lets you put words. You want some broad words, some narrowed, specific phrases, and some on your overall NICHE and others on the exact pin or board.

You can write it conversationally, or you can just separate keyword phrases with symbols.

And while you can read all the articles the web offers on the subject, you will learn the MOST from going on Pinterest, and playing. Search yourself. Search words that describe you. Search words that describe your board. See what other people are doing. Just like I've done above in this article, like if you're doing a board on Social Media, search Social Media, look at the boards, what are their descriptions? Then search Social Media to, and look at the recommended options. Maybe check those out. Then search Social Media for, and look at the recommended options. Maybe check some of those out. But you won't capture everything articles and tutorials are suggesting until you go on Pinterest and play with all the ways people would find you.

The Best Way to Make Money Blogging

2018-04-22T05:48:00.003-07:00

Advertised Free Webinars will sell you dreams of earning a six figure income while staying at home as a blogger, as a coach, as a butterfly... as something. And here's some real talk about this life.

Work from Home as a Blogger! For just 100 hours a week, you can earn up to $45 a month! But only if you're a good writer, and you apply yourself....

The Best Way to Make Money from Blogging Is a PayCheck

Most people I know who made something of themselves being a stay at home mom and blogger did so by not using their blog to make money, but using their blog as a tool to transition between careers. Many of the women I watched go from fuzzy worm into beautiful butterfly were stuck at home due to motherhood, and they were bored, so they started blogging. And in blogging, they found a new passion, positioned themselves as an expert in that passion, took some classes and did some workshops, and gained resume-friendly experience in that passion via the internet, the network of bloggers, and all the things that come with blogging.

For instance, one woman I know, she started blogging out of sheer boredom, and maybe some therapy as a way to release pent up frustrations motherhood brought to her table, and she found a thing with it. Her blog reached well over a million fans, incredibly loyal fans who would lick a turd if she asked them to, all looking for a mom to bitch and complain about motherhood. When her blog hit it big, she was harassed by corporations, smaller bloggers, and random guys who might have been Russian Bots, and she turned down offer after offer. Finally, we all talked her into accepting a few things, so she got a book deal, and she had a job writing tweets for a major corporation, and she was on CNN and a few radio shows. But she didn't like that stuff. She dropped it all to pursue life as a behavior specialist. Mental health was her thing, and her blog had nothing to do with mental health, but it gave her brain the break it needed from life to figure out what she really wants. But her resume now has "Published author" on it, and CNN interview, and writer.

Many bloggers I know started out as a blogger, they joined all the Facebook groups they could find on blogging, and they networked. In their circle of friends, they met better opportunities such as working full time for Salon Magazine, being a social media coordinator, working in television, etc. Most are published or featured somewhere in a book or on some major news network, and those things led to new opportunities.

So in my experience, the best way to work from home is to aim to get back out. The blogger's dream isn't in sales revenue, but in getting a better pay check and a job that is more in line with your passion as opposed to that thing you do so that way you can have electricity.

Nobody wants to work from home forever anyway.

For real, it's depressing being online all the time and not around real humans, and it requires something a regular job doesn't... I'm regurgitating my morning beverage when I say these words... Self. Discipline. Ohhhhhh it's awful. It's like cleaning the house: every day you have to bring yourself to DO a task that you would normally enjoy doing on a whim, but since you planned it (or worse, thanks to procrastination, it now just NEEDS to get done), now it's a task, and you have no real reason to do it besides your own will. You impress NO ONE with it. There is no glory. No benefit beyond a gamble. You could be wasting your time and your life, but you'll never know until you do it.

But Blogging is a Great Passive Income

But blogging also, in my experience supplies a nice passive income, meaning a secondary rainy day fund.

According to Blogging Basics 101, you can make money:

Google AdSense
Sell your own Ads
Affiliate Marketing
Sell Digital Products
Content Marketing for a Business
Sell Memberships
Build Credibility to Land a Better Job

Here's my take on some of this....

In my experience and observations, Ads require a high page view volume in order to really get anything worth your time, like you need at least half a million people checking out your site monthly, like you get a penny each time someone clicks those ads, so you need a lot of clicks. Most individual bloggers don't get that high traffic. Collaborative sites with multiple writers are usually what gets that, and that's after years of building a reputation. Most of them also spit out lots of articles in a short period of time (30 to 100 articles a week).

I've read articles about people building many free websites, like they will spend a week and build a site where they write 70 articles for that site in that niche, rich in SEO, and then they put up the Google AdSense and move on to another site doing the same thing in another niche. I don't know if that works well or not for them in reality, but it's not a bad idea. I can see how in a year or so, you could earn something.

Selling Stuff

Affiliate marketing and digital products are what I've seen people make a passive income doing.

Most people who do affiliate marketing tap in on many products, and the most successful ones I've seen blog about blogging while trying to sell affiliate hosting services among 3 to 5 other affiliate sales that are business / blogging related. So the trick there is to sell products that are in line with your niche, and are things your readers are going to want or need.

Direct Sales is another boat. Beauty bloggers could sell beauty products through places like Avon, Mary Kay, Limelight, Younique, Posh... They have diet, exercise, health foods, chemical free cleaning products, all types of things through a company already formed where you are the salesperson of their product. I don't see this done much, like most people who do these sales don't often blog about actual things related to it, and people who blog about it rarely sell stuff to go with it. But if my friends selling makeup would do tutorial videos, they would probably reel me in much more effectively than just adding me to their Facebook group where they post about their sales and parties.

There are many places and avenues to sell stuff. You can sell hand-made items on Etsy, graphic design items on Creative Market, t-shirts and coffee mugs that you design on Cafepress or Zazzle, books you write on Amazon, Ebooks on Kindle, services on Fiverr, courses on Udemy or your own courses, apps on wherever... Then the blog is just the content marketing strategy for your home business selling some other product.

Memberships

I don't know how well people do with this. The only time I've seen this done without an actual app is lately on LinkedIn, I've been getting a lot of messages from people with a site that sells memberships. The last guy who messaged me had a place for writers to hook up with publishers and editors, but it's a paid membership to get the good stuff. Of course, you can set up a free account. A lot of freelancing sites are requiring monthly paid memberships to reach more people. But most sites that offer this successfully offer an app or service, such as unlimited graphic design, stock photos, email services, things that will help improve list building and emails to supplement email services, etc.

I don't see online subscriptions toward writing to be a thing yet beyond library subscriptions. There's just too much free content online that you really need to offer more than just writing an article as a product. A lot of journals require a subscription to access their countless of scholarly studies beyond the abstract, and that's worth it for people like journalists who want to cite those studies, but for the most part, it's not a cash cow on the internet. Hell, anymore, you should do your own study just to get clicks to your blog let alone money.

Freelancing

This is where I've earned most of my money online. My blog had very little to do with this, but it gave me the network that brings me here. I tried sites like Freelancer (I've been meaning to try Upworks someday), but my main thing is I look for freelance job opportunities. Sometimes it's a friend in my network of bloggers I have just because I blog, and sometimes a friend in that network will post opportunities in Facebook for companies and what not, and sometimes it's an actual job listing. As a writer, I also can just submit to places who pay for articles.

The best places to find these opportunities are joining Facebook groups of professional bloggers, some are labeled writing opportunities, and signing up for email lists at places like Writer's Digest. Usually, it helps to land the client if you heard of them through someone they know as opposed to a cold application on Freelancer.

Looking for a Blog Link Up?

Finish the Sentence Friday has a link-up every Friday

Week 1: Finish the Sentence Writing Prompt

Week 2: Listicle

Week 3: Streams of Consciousness

Week 4: Photo Share

Finish the Sentence Friday is Hosted by Finding Ninee

10 Super Dope Graphic Design Trends for Artists

2017-11-24T21:33:00.000-08:00

I read a lot of articles predicting what will trend in the next year, and a lot of it is the same we've been doing, like "2018 will have more cropped texts," as I look at ads in 1920's that have cropped text. Even to write this post, I mapped out 10 things, and examples date back to the early 2000's, and that's fine. So I'm going to tell you some ideas people think will trend, or have been trending, that might just inspire the next big thing from your brain.

2018 THEME:

Psychogasm Visuals

People want to disappear into another world, like obviously with VR Googles, Video Gaming, and Social Media becoming a normal reality for most people, it just makes sense they, we, want to ESCAPE REALITY, and in this shitty economy, I can't blame them, us.

They want to be skull fucked with fantasy, optical illusions, depth, dimension and a little WTFness. Visuals one can jump into and explore will be the kind of images that stand out from the basic bitches of graphic design. People want to lose themselves into not only another world, but also another inner world, so aspirational appeal and graphics that induce a sense of role play will resonate.

Here are some of the expected trends from experts reworded into a paraphrase of 50 articles.

Optical Illusions

I don't mean the lines, shake your head, or stare at this thing for 30 seconds, or do you see a young woman or an old lady pictures. I mean MC Escher, Michael Parkes, Oleg Shupliak.

Some Optical Illusion Artists who are Famous Enough to be in a Round Up

This is art that takes reality and twists it, sometimes for metaphorical deep meaning, other times, just random abstracts. You can use any technique, medium... You may create a style of your own, but the thing is to shake up the laws of physics. Things like this paradoxical triangle...

But with way cooler special effects.

3D, Depth, and MORE

It's hard to dive into a 2 dimensional drawing. You really want your visual to have depth, and extreme depth by playing with perspective, layering objects over each other, interweaving objects between each other, good shadows, etc. It seems like the trend is adding depth to existing photographs to hyperbolic levels.

For those who like to think about deep things that blows your mind, try to incorporate some concepts from fantasy math like 4 Dimensional Objects.

Motion

While video and gifs are always a huge trend, we are now bringing motion into pictures in more creative ways: Cinemagraphs.

Sometimes, creating a sense of motion is just making the objects appear to flow in a stand still picture, but for the web, you want to add motions when you can, especially on websites.

But I knew this was coming when Netflix decided to turn Netflix Original posters into a cinemagraph. It's where you have a photograph, but some aspect is in motion taking you down a surreal nostalgic path you can get lost in.

I honestly think these would make the best social media ads.

Great Article about Cinemagraphs vs Plotographs and How to Make Cinemagraphs

Cinemagraphs For Windows

Emotional Illustrations and Characters

People want to feel feelings when they look at things, and they like seeing things that feel their feelings. Positive feelings rank better than negative feelings according to studies, but the important thing is that your characters have feelings like emojis.

A cute smiling paperclip just isn't going to impress people anymore. Microsoft's paperclip should now have a wow face (for when you insert a picture), a sad face (like every time you hit undo), a celebration dance (for when you hit save), and an angry face (during spell check).

Using Photographs as a Fill for Shapes and Typography

You can also do this with any kind of illustration, pattern, or what not, but photos as a fill is a new thing of awesome. It's like your LETTERS can tell a story in WORDS and PICTURES underneath the words. Turn a boring silhouette into a poem, like a face is more than just a face, there's a forest underneath.

Bold Colors in Photography

People are totally digging bold colors now over pastels (maybe not so much on Pinterest), and in a way where it doesn't look like a toddler's toy. While you can always splash colors everywhere, one easy thing to do is to take your photos, use the channel mixer in Photoshop, and give them colors or gradients.

Another thing is to give shadows color, like create a shadow by copying the human's shape, and filling with an opaque shadow of pink. Double it up with a blue on the other side as if it had two light sources.

Minimalism

This is still kicking ass in graphic design. Minimalism I think won't end anytime soon because in this information age, people get bombarded easily with too much clutter. Like back in the day when life was all newspapers and rocking chairs, we could handle a busy ad with a lot of things to do because we were bored and needed something to do, like explore a bunch of information. But now a days, we have so much information flying at us from every angle, it's visually appealing to see that information in a very quick, easy, open space.

Metallic Chic

When I noticed all the notebooks at my Walmart and Chic Office supplies were all black and white stripes with gold text, I knew it was beginning. I was doing the watercolor thing, the zen doodle thing, and the floral thing ahead of the game except for the part where I follow through, and now they are switching it up. FOIL is the next thing. Fempreneurs and Coaches targeting women on Pinterest, you are leading the way here. I'm kind of glad because it really is pretty.

Bringing Typography to Life

I think the new thing with typography is to make your letters come alive, not with eyeballs and face expressions, but make them characters in your pictures whether they dance around the objects in a photograph or have a personality by cropping out pieces.

Bright Gradients

Another article said it after I was already thinking it, but Instagram's new logo is now a gradient. Facebook offers gradient backgrounds. It's a thing now. And because two major social media places are incorporating this kind of gradient into their stuff, that means it's a warm concept, one people are comfortable seeing and find inviting and trustworthy.

While so many different techniques are claiming a trending phase for graphic artists, it's important to also think about marketing and creating visuals that serve a purpose. I think the trend that we need to focus on is the psychogasm aspect. Help people escape the problem that your visuals are supposed to solve through your visual. Like if you are selling deodorant, humor is a way to approach helping people get passed the awkward feelings they have with armpits and smelling badly. Life coaches on organization will find that minimalism provides the aspirational visual aid to their product. A blog post about a political cause may find that their photograph of a protest will stand out so much more if they turned it black and white and added bold colors to key places.

Anyway, these are great concepts to think about trying out if you haven't already. Stay tuned for some techniques on creating depth and fantasy.

Happy Mind Fucking :)

New Year. New Dreams. 5 Blogging Resolution Strategies

2016-12-28T05:01:00.001-08:00

Your blog wants to resolve things on New Years. Listen to it. Shhh. Yep it's whispering from the graves of writers, "Carpe Diem." Oh wait, that's Dead Poets Society. But it's probably saying things like, "I want to lose some weight, get rid of some of these plug ins," and "I need a total makeover, redo my entire design." Of course, "I want to increase my following, promote the shit out of me this year."

Countless of over-achieving humanoids have already started making their New Year Resolutions, but some of us in this world wait until the last minute to do things, including setting the goals in the first place. We will probably also procrastinate when we implement those resolutions as well.

But our blogs are a part of us, like another us, and it too may want to make some resolutions. Here are some ideas to get you started...

Let Go of the Negative Past

It's wise to think about last year. What worked on your blog? What didn't work on your blog? What are things you wish you could change about the last year with your blog?

Now the way to let that go is to make some plans and goals into a future you wanted last year. Don't dwell on the sour things, but use them as a guide to help steer you into the direction you want to go.

For instance, I personally missed just about every deadline last year for personal reasons. It's just that no matter how hard I tried, life kept me from achieving. This year, I want to change that, but I can't do that if I dwell on how much I suck because I did this last year, and I can't move forward if I believe I can't because I didn't last year. The only way to let go is to plan for a change, and make that plan my present dayness.

Embrace the Positive Past

I'm one of those personalities who is incapable of seeing my own success. Some people are quite the opposite as they tend to embrace failures as a success like they are drunk in optimism. They are better off in many ways because they feel like they are accomplishing accomplishment (a major motivation to keep swimming) and are positioning themselves in their mind (as well as their friends and followers) as a successful person. That's kind of important because people cling to and follow "success."

Take a look at the good things you accomplished last year and give yourself props for that. Like in my case, I have a book I did. It's not selling much. A lot of that is because I slacked on marketing all together. So I feel like a failure, but really it's still amazing that I did a book. I will only take time this year to market that book if I truly believe in my book as a product, and I can't do that if I already decided there's something wrong with the book instead of my marketing strategy.

Follow Your Heart

We read a billion gazillion things about what we need to be doing with our blogs, but the truth is, we only live once. The dead poets are telling you "Carpe Diem." Listen to that.

Do you. Do what you want to do. Follow your dreams. Otherwise you're work feels meaningless.

This might also be a good time to remind yourself what you are really trying to do. These aren't things like, "Make money and get more followers." These are things like, "Contribute to a greater good." This way, succeed or fail, you have a real reason to continue what you do, and your passion will shine through your work creating a better product.

Find a Balance between Over and Under in your Blog's New Years Resolutions

You don't want to overachieve in your goals, but you don't want to underachieve. Give yourself some doable challenges in baby steps.

If you overachieve too much in hopes to aim higher and maybe you'll land higher, you'll probably set yourself up to feel like a failure when you aren't. If you underachieve, you aren't challenging yourself, and you'll stay pretty stagnate.

Find a Balance between What you Want to Give and What your People Want to Take

Ask yourself questions about you and also questions about your readers.

Questions about you include things like:

What do I enjoy writing about the most?
What styles do I prefer to write?
What do I feel like I want to give people?
Do I enjoy doing my graphic design?
What are my biggest struggles?
What are my biggest weaknesses that I could work on?

Questions about your readers include things like:

Who is my target market?
What demographics are my readers?
What questions are they asking?
What solutions are they looking for?
What freebies could they really want?
What feelings do they want to feel?
Do they want things I don't like doing?

Then kind of reconcile those two.

Is your content and design target-market-friendly?
Are you giving your readers what they want? or what you want?
If your readers don't seem to dig your content you are passionate about, how can you find readers who will? Do you need a new target market?
How can you help readers feel what they want to feel when reading your work?
If you don't like doing things you know your readers want, can you contract that out? Maybe see if anyone on Fiverr or Freelancer can do it.
If something about you doesn't fit well with your readers, what can you do to change their perspective? People don't know what they want until you tell them. So if something about you isn't naturally clinging to people (like maybe you cuss), come up with a strategy to help them embrace that side of you.

Your New Year's Resolutions are supposed to be very personal and individualized tailor-fit to your wants, needs, personality and style. Don't do cookie cutter resolutions because everyone else is doing it. Pick one though from your tribe just for PR purposes, but really focus on you and what you really want.

Here's a little thing I made some random year ago, and you're more than welcome to print it out for some ideas or a place to start.

NO EMAIL REQUIRED!

15 Captivating Color Schemes for your Website

2016-09-10T13:50:00.001-07:00

In the spirit of designing material for the SheNeterprise store, I have found some captivating color schemes you can use for your website. I put these all on my ColourLovers profile, a place I recommend for finding color schemes, and the headings are the names of the color palette on that site.

Namale

From the Creations Namale designed by Phoenix

Hex Colors:

B2BCB3

747570

E4E1D0

FFFFFF

Legacy

From an interactive documentary on JFK: An Idea Lives On

Hex Colors:

C7B07C

B9B09F

C8BDA1

F4F4F4

252525

Cantina

From Cantina dei Colli Ripani who sells wine.

Hex Colors:

CA2D3E

E3E41E

6B1E42

1185BE

FFFFFF

Flamingo Dance

From a cute website of a flamingo dancing, Pablo the Flamingo.

Hex Colors:

FFAC34

FF7D62

CC1D00

43472C

116B6B

Mambo

From an older version of Mambo Mambo.

Hex Colors:

F7EE6B

64A084

475E8A

FEFEFF

84B87A

Havana

From a travelers photo on Trip Adviser for Havana, Cuba.

Hex Colors:

DC5305

EDC0A1

01772D

8AF1BA

BA8C5B

Barber of Revel

From pixelsetaromates.com, a very manly and classic color scheme designed to make text stand out.

Hex Colors:

DEDED6

B4AF9B

D6D3C4

CC1D2A

453424

Cat Ribs

From mariecatribs.com, a playful, fun pastel color scheme.

Hex Colors:

9DD4CE

FCFAEB

EB7C6B

FFE153

853C5A

1950s Romance

From the 1957 movie Funny Face, a classic scene exhibits a classy feminine color scheme.

Hex Colors:

0A0B06

515A57

9E9590

C17B93

CEA29F

Peacefully Pink

Based on a free graphic in public domain on Pixabay, a clean color scheme.

Hex Colors:

3D3D3D

BFBFBF

744B53

F1C3CE

Rebecca's Flowers

From Becca Stadtlander Flowers Print by Little Otsu -- bright vivid colors on a black background.

Hex Colors:

161A1D

B00D08

FF410D

D58931

A5B471

Bora Bora

From a tropical picture of an ocean I got on Pinterest, Bora Bora features bright, vivid colors that has with an exotic appeal.

Hex Colors:

005053

114835

39927E

C4292D

DF5030

Bohemian Love

Bright vivid colors from a photo I got from Pinterest.

Hex Colors:

B72A6F

DD4128

F5AD63

695793

91C293

Pink Sands

Derived from a picture of pink sands along a beach, this features ocean greens and sea blue with a touch of pink and mauve.

Hex Colors:

448E81

899F9D

BED5C1

AC5D60

FCBCBA

Peacock

Based on an image of a peacock, blues and greens come together like feathers.

Hex Colors:

2E7531

0029B5

0DA3DE

C97D4C

B4D35C

The Bear Necessities of a Kick Ass Blog

2016-09-02T04:29:00.001-07:00

Checklist for starting a new blog, and a double-check list for existing blogs: Design, Plugins, Pages, and more.

I keep starting blogs. It's like an addiction. I'm more interested in designing a site than writing at this point, so this is going to be interesting in the future when I design a beautiful site that has no content. This is my go-to page on creating a blog, but not the planning aspect. The bare necessities of a blog. The first things I must do, and must haves I should fulfill in blog design.

This is a great formula of things to include on your blog that are professional, useful, and at times, necessary. Most of this is for self-hosted wordpress blogs; however, any blogger can get use of some of these ideas for their blog. I mean the biggest difference is the plugins.

First Step: BRANDING and DESIGN

The first steps are pretty self explanatory and require very little information beyond writer's fluff...

The main step is to decide the overall look and feel of your blog, and implement the first steps of it. What are your colors going to be? You should probably stick to 2 maybe 3 colors. Another tip, avoid dark backgrounds and light text because it's hard on the eyes. How do you want the overall vibe to be? How can you create that in design?

Think of the following things...

Color Scheme
Type of Blog Layout (magazine vs list)
Header and Logo
Images you want for each post

While thinking about the overall feel of your blog, you may decide to create a protocol of the images you'll be using with your post, both featured images and social media images. Maybe only use black and white images, or vibrant colors... Do you want images to be a photograph or one with the title in it?

Some great design templates for featured images and social media images

You can also check out my KickAss University for more on Branding (as there's more to come, and I know I'm going to forget to come back to this post in particular and link to it, so it will go there when it's ready).

Some examples of a well thought out Blog Scheme include:

Head ♥ Heart ♥ Health

Katie Paul is a writer and graphic artist, like myself, except she's from Australia where animals are scarier and ocean water probably safer. On her site, she sticks to pink and gray for the most part. She's redesigned her site several times, but she always sticks to that color scheme and the "classic" look because she talks a lot about relationships, so you look at her site and it feels like you are trapped in the nostalgia of a 1950's romance. Her blog post images are similar in style and design. She is so big on keeping themes, her Pinterest even sticks to the same scheme. If you want Katie's advice, she often posts in her Facebook group, Blogging Anarchy. AND she offers Pinterest services on Fiverr (really affordable for what you get).

Melyssa Griffin

This woman always has the most up to date concepts in her site design, and she's also a great person to follow if you blog all the way around because her articles are actually helpful despite the fact that she's trying to sell something and help you make tons of money doing it. You know, most people try the "well if you want to make tons of money, you got to pay tons of money" and she's not one of them. She gives away a lot of good, free advice. But as of the update writing this, the newer concepts are simplistic minimalism because we are thrown so much info at once, we like more white space and simpler thoughts in bite sized pieces, one thought at a time in site of the screen.

MichelleGrewe.com

I just revamped my website entirely. When I first wrote this article, I had a watercolor look going. All pink. All drawings. You can see glimpses of it in my portfolio at that link under branding the old michellegrewe dot com, but this new site is more fun. I just basically decided to rebrand everything as more fun, brighter colors, happier feelings... A lot of it is because it's easy to get depressed when behind a computer all the time, so the bright colors makes me happier to stare at all the time and work with. Really that's it.

With all that said, the first steps for the bare bones are to...

Pick Theme Template
Customize Theme colors and layout
Design header (think logo use in the future with header) and upload
Design Favicon/site icon and upload

It looks simple, but really one could spend a month looking through theme templates, deciding between free themes and paid ones, and design an entire site with one theme to find out your hosting company doesn't like some of the code in the theme and the site keeps shutting down to start all over again. But these are the first decisions that need to be made, and the more well-thought-out they are, the easier life is in the future.

Plugins

Blogger blogs can skip this section except Share-A-Holic is available for Blogger. Also, if you Google "CommentLuv for Blogger," you'll get a plethora of articles that will show you some hacks to get that for blogger, but you can also consider Disqus for comments.

If you are new to blogging, you may not know all the essential plug ins everyone recommends for blogs. If you have been blogging for a while, make sure you got all these...

Plugins are used in Self-Hosted Wordpress... Once upon a time, if you were serious about blogging, you use self-hosted wordpress to give you more freedom with the site's design and capabilities. Now a days, it's not the only option for that anymore.

Basic Necessities

Aksimet (keep out the spam)
Google XML Sitemaps (best one for creating sitemaps)
Jetpack (everyone uses this because it's awesome)

SumoMe

This is a great plug in for sharing pictures and providing a subscription pop up window or scroll window. It's highly customizable, one that is seemingly most customizable for the free version.

Hello Bar

This is one of my favorite plugins. It puts a bar at the top of your blog for people to place their name and email to subscribe. It can forward the emails to most major email newsletter services including freebies like Mail Chimp and Vertical Response, as well as paid services like highly recommended AWeber. Actually, I found the plug in to not work well on my sites, so I entered the code manually. Just put the code they tell you above the /head part of your header.

SEO

I have found SEO plugins to be pretty useless for SEO. Blogger doesn't do plug-ins, but my blogger blogs receive more organic searches than my Wordpress blogs, even the ones with the SEO plugins where I'm utilizing all the time-consuming data entry the plug in offers. I also noticed that I never see my keywords I enter into those plugins in my analytics and statistics that tells me what search terms bring people to my blog. Most newer SEO articles will tell you that Google is veering away from keywords and is looking for more naturally flowing posts and articles. Meaning...

Your best bet for SEO performance is to consider the things in my SEO Audit article that talks about link usage, site speed, and so forth.

I have played with a lot of SEO plugins, and these are the most common and the best of the bunch... The main thing you should be looking for is supplying meta data to your posts, to your images, and to pages separately from the main meta data of the site in general. And it's VERY TIME CONSUMING to be entering all that data manually.

Be careful. A lot of these plugins offer their own sitemaps which isn't as good as the sitemaps plugin I mentioned earlier. You may have to find a way to turn off these plugins sitemaps.

SEO Ultimate

This one is probably my favorite of the SEO bunch because it lets you do the Title and Description for search, again in Open Graph for social media, and then it lets you do links and add meta keywords. It's the only one I found that provides both SEO and Open Graph.

Yoast

This one is the most popular among bloggers. I don't think it has open graph with it, so you will want to install something for that as well. Most bloggers swear by this one.

SEO By Squirrly

This is perfect for people who don't know SEO too well. If you know how to write for SEO, this is a great plug in to remind you to make sure you have everything. It gives tips and kind of skims your posts for ideas and needs in the same way Google does.

Social Media

You really need something open graph if you want to provide rich pins, and you want something that provides Twitter Cards. Most of the free stuff tells you that you can dictate what goes on each social media, but they lie. They don't dictate any of it. It's still hit or miss. You'll have to pay for an open graph plug in that will actually let you choose what image goes to Facebook and what image goes to Pinterest that also offers tech support when it doesn't work right.

SEO Ultimate

This one mentioned before has both open graph features plus SEO. It will get you rich pins.

WP Social SEO Booster

This is the best I can find for simple open graph. I haven't played with its Twitter Card capabilities because I use a separate plug-in for that (mentioned below).

JM Twitter Cards

This lets you set up your Twitter shares the way you want it. You can set it up so that when someone clicks the twitter icon to share, instead of just a text tweet, you can have a photograph and text. It can convert any tweet of the article to a graphic plus tweeted message. You don't see it until you tweet it.

Click to Tweet

Click to Tweet and Better Click to Tweet lets you make twitter tweets in your text where readers can click it to tweet that specific message. Make sure to watch the character limit once you add a link.

Facebook

Facebook has an official plug in for Facebook posting. I haven't found it useful for posting specific choices to Facebook; however, if you have this plugin, you can copy and paste a status or video from Facebook, and it will automatically show it as a linkable Facebook post (not viewable except in preview or once you publish). I think it's also required if you want to include Facebook comments.

ShareAHolic

This is a plug in to make nice share buttons at the end of a post. It's MY FAVORITE! Other plugins feature this sort of thing, but Share A Holic is so much nicer for it. Plus it can offer Related Posts at the bottom as well. This is the one that lets you put a message over it like, "Sharing is Caring." You can also make money with it, but you can set it up to be non-monetary and just you.

Comments

Comment Luv

This is one of my favorite perks to Wordpress. This plug in lets people enter the URL of their blog and links to their most recent post (or a post of their choosing). While it allows someone to shamelessly self promote, it's great for two reasons. One: It's awesome blogging etiquette to return comments from bloggers on their blogs. This makes it easier to do that without having to search for their content. Two: It advertises like-minded blogs to your readers. Most likely, if a blogger is enjoying your content enough to post a comment, their blog is similar to yours.

Facebook Comments

This is a plug in perfect for adding Facebook comment options. Some people use both this and Comment Luv, but you can do one or the other.

Downloads

This is for offering the ability to give people files they can download from your site, such as a free font. I used to use Download Manager to provide free downloads, but Wordpress updated and that plug in didn't, so now I'm entering actual code for downloads. Here's the How to Offer Downloads tutorial for it (it's way easier than it looks).

Widgets / Gadgets

Necessities:

Social Media Icons to Your Social Media (link to my post on it)
A Newsletter Sign Up
One or Two things you are advertising as image and link (another blog, a shop, a book)
Search

Other things to consider:

Featured posts

This is great if you have a magazine or newspaper style front page via Self-Hosted Wordpress because it becomes part of your page. If category based, consider creating a special category just for that column so that it doesn't repeat new posts that are already put at the top of the theme.

Author Picture and Blurb

People love to see the face of the writer, and a quick blurb can tell them what you and your blog is about.

Categories or Second Menu

This might be the easiest way to get people to navigate through your blog without getting lost in a lot of tags.

Pages and Menu

Necessities:

About Page
Contact Page
Thank You Page for Subscription (if applicable)
Privacy Policy

Other Options:

A list of links or resources
Categories as a page
About Extras like resume, portfolios, media kits, etc.
Shop (you can do an external link straight to a store or provide products directly on your site with a plug in)

Things To Do

Google Webmaster Tools / Google Search Console (name changed)

Add Property (you want to add both www.yourwebsite.com and yourwebsite.com)
Verify Site ... follow instructions on page
You can find these individually, or check your messages for Improving Search Presence, or go back to the Google Search Console and find one of the sites. Click SEE DETAILS TO IMPROVE SEARCH PRESENCE. Choose preferred site address (best to use preferred address as opposed to the unpreferred address), target country (if it will let you), and add a sitemap (see below for finding your sitemap). Repeat target country for the other domain.
Tip: If you are verifying via a tag before /head, in wordpress, that's usually under theme header. In Blogger, it's in Edit HTML. In both, you can click CTRL F and a little box should pop up in your upper right corner of your browser with a box and search button. Type in /head, and it will highlight where /head appears in your code. Then paste the snippet before the /head.

Bing Webmaster Tools

Sign in with Microsoft Account (create one if you don't have one)
Add Site
Get XML address from your blog (see below for finding your sitemap)
Verify Site... follow the instructions
Tip: If you are verifying via a tag before /head, in wordpress, that's usually under theme header. In Blogger, it's in Edit HTML. In both, you can click CTRL F and a little box should pop up in your upper right corner of your browser with a box and search button. Type in /head, and it will highlight where /head appears in your code. Then paste the snippet before the /head.

Finding Your Sitemap XML Address

To add a site map for Wordpress, just enter the address for your sitemap and click add. If you are using Google XML Sitemaps, go to settings on your dashboard on your blog, choose XML sitemap, copy the address, and enter the last part of the address and test or submit. Most of the time, it's webaddress/sitemap.xml. For Yoast, go to SEO and find XML Sitemap there and you can find the address from there.

To Add a Sitemap for Blogger, type in

after the url for your site. Such as https://mysite.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500

SEO Ultimate Has A Place to Enter the Meta Data

If you decided to go with this plug in that I recommended earlier, you can enter the meta data into the plug in. Go to SEO on the left. Click Miscellaneous. At the bottom, you can enter the meta data.

Analytics

Go to the Analytics website. Click the Admin tab. Under account, scroll down to click, "New Account." Fill in the information, and click "Get Tracking ID." Agree to the terms of service.

For Self Hosted Wordpress, some plug ins allow you to enter the tracking ID in the plug in; otherwise, you can copy and paste the universal code into your theme header above the /head.

For Blogger, copy the UA number. Go to your blogger dashboard, go to settings, and click Other on the left. Scroll down to Google Analytics, and then enter the UA number in the box on the right. Save settings.

You'll need to wait a couple days for tracking to start, but check back and make sure it's tracking your account. If not, you'll need to troubleshoot.

Rich Pins

Signing up for rich pins is easy for Wordpress blogs. I'm not sure how to do it with Blogger blogs or free wordpress blogs, but for Self-Hosted Wordpress, you first need a plug in that has an open graph. Once you are sure you got open graph on your site, go to Pinterest's Validator, and enter a page to your site (one blog post, not the site's main address), and then validate. If it works right, then you can click the request for rich pins. If not, you're going to have to troubleshoot your open graph.

Paid Services to Consider

I'm not getting any money for mentioning these. This is just what I'm learning is worth buying...

Newsletters and Email Marketing

I use AWeber for my email sign ups because it does what I want it to do for an affordable price, but ConvertKit looks very promising, though more expensive.

A paid email marketing service gives the following more than using a free service...

The main reason I sought paid services, to provide free downloads for your email
More design options for your email sign up form
Embed code for the designed form (not just the fields)
Automated Emails to be delivered after people sign up (in addition to campaign emails)
More insights and ability to control insights
Opt In and Opt Out for a lot of things like confirmation email requirements
Thank You page and other pages a link to your site as opposed to their thing

The free service I used most was VerticalResponse because MailChimp lost my entire list forcing me to start over. Back up that list.

Social Media Scheduling

I pay for both Tailwind for Pinterest and Buffer for all others.

Tailwind is just slightly better than Buffer for Pinterest as it lets you schedule multiple boards instead of just one board. The Pinterest Experts really recommend it if Pinterest is a place you wish to really penetrate. They have a free trial that does not expire, and paid services start at $10 a month.

Buffer is a low-cost scheduler that does all you really need it to do. If the picture is social media share friendly on any site, a little buffer button shows up when I hover over the image making it too easy to share on social media. Just make sure if you're wanting a link on Facebook to enter the link in the description as it only uploads the image on Facebook.

CoSchedule is more expensive than Buffer, but I really dig their blog that if my blogs actually made enough money to cover the expense, I'd opt for this instead.

Graphic Design List:

Header
Site Icon
Author Bio and Blurb
Newsletter Sign Up Form (special to the blog's design)
Ads for my things
Slider Pics if Sliding anything that isn't article based
Templates for Blog Post Graphics

REMEMBER IF YOU CHANGE YOUR THEME

Every time you change your theme, you're going to have to re-enter your snippets you pasted before /head. This includes Hello Bar, Webmaster Tools Verification, and Pinterest buttons.

This is more of a checklist to remind myself things, like don't forget the Privacy Policy. If you are wanting HOW TO DO THESE THINGS, well that would be a book. I truly suggest searching this blog or Google or Pinterest for ideas and tutorials.

Free Social Media Icons Font and Images

2016-08-16T08:33:00.005-07:00

I have blogged about the importance of having social media links on your blog. Mainly, you want repeat business, and you want numbers on your social media. Here's some freebies if you need them... These are free for any use (personal and commercial), but in accordance with the trademarked use of the images. For instance, you can use Facebook wherever Facebook will let you use their F.

Basic Black Social Media Font

I've put the basic black images as a font together. Half of it is the black images on a clear background, and the other half are black circles with a clear social media image in the middle.

Pink Watercolor Social Media Icons

These are pink watercolor spots with social media icons on them. I did the spots by hand in Photoshop. Provided are the images as jpg's already optimized; however, the file complete with a Photoshop file with layers of all the social media icons is also provided.

There are two sets of pink because some blogs are more red pink, and others are more purple pink, and I made both because I didn't like the first pink I did on my blog.

Free for personal or commercial use; wherever the icons will let you have them.

Retro Red Social Media Icons

Social media icons that look like a red pillow with social icons on top for a different looking texture perfect for retro sites and those with a red color theme.

Get the Font and Source Files for the Social Media Icons

Very Pinteresting Indeed: Happy Pinning

How to Create a Download Link on Wordpress and Blogger

2016-08-14T13:37:00.003-07:00

I keep wanting to give out free downloads, but I have struggled finding a way to provide downloads on a blog. Looking for an easy button like a plug-in has proven to be the hard way.

I've tried several plug ins for Wordpress, but every time Wordpress updates, they stop working. Not good. I also tried downloading from Google Drive, but they changed that so all my old links no longer work. That's the problem with depending on other places. They change things. Stuff stops working when they do.

People provide free downloads for many reasons, but the popular reason is to bribe people with a free thing for their email address.

Downloads you can provide include

PDF's
Music
Video
Photoshop Elements
Fonts
Word Document Templates

ANY COMPUTER FILE you find in your folders.

For purposes of this article, I'm trying to help people have a DOWNLOAD button that once clicked, it just downloads the file.

STEP 1: Get your File on the Internet and Get its Address

Name your file

MAKE SURE you name your file in your hard drive something that is internet friendly.

Use underscores instead of spaces
Avoid any characters besides text and numbers
Use all lower case
And for purposes of SEO, you probably want a keyword in the name.

You can get away with using symbols and upper case, but it's harder to remember, and depending on which method you go with, there's a chance you'll need to remember the exact file name.

Move Your File to the Internet

Most files that end with JPG, GIF, and PNG, you can upload as a media file in your blog's gallery. Wordpress also allows PDFs to be uploaded right into the media gallery.

Whatever file you want to provide for download, you upload the file to a server. Basically your computer has a storage space, but the internet can't access your computer's storage unless you somehow let them, but you don't want that. So you have to move it to a storage space that the internet can access, and since most of us are not hosting companies, the best thing is to find a place that's on the internet to store your stuff.

But the end result, your primary goal with this step is to obtain a web address that starts with html:// and ends with a file like .jpg or .mp3 or .docx.

FOR BLOGGER

Blogger blogs are hosted by Google for free, and they do not have a place to directly upload files to. You will have to find a 3rd party place to host your files.

I personally struggled finding any method that works well beyond DROPBOX. This is why...

Updated for June 2019... Why aren't my files downloading anymore?

Some things were updated in Spring of 2018 making it difficult or impossible to download things that have a different web address than the one you're on. See the problem is when you upload a photo to your blog, Blogger saves it to a completely different web domain than the one your blog is on. So all photos and just about any files you save at a 3rd party location (like Google Drive) is a cross origin problem in Blogger. HTML just doesn't like that shit anymore, or maybe it's Chrome because that would just be irony if the issue is only in Chrome.

Here's a quote from StackOverflow...

UPDATE: As of spring 2018 this is no longer possible for cross-origin hrefs. So if you want to create <a href="https://i.imgur.com/IskAzqA.jpg" download> on a domain other than imgur.com it will not work as intended. Chrome deprecations and removals announcement

I honestly am just completely too stupid to fully understand what that means. I've read several places talking about this, and NONE OF IT MAKES SENSE TO ME! So I 'm just going to skip the bull shit and give you the one hack that I managed to make work for Blogger.

The only hack I can find is to go Drop Box.

DropBox Hack -- Direct Download Links not Working

You can use DropBox's free plan.

Upload to DropBox
Click to Share
Create a Link
Copy Link

Paste your link the way they have it. After your file name like svg or doc, it should have a ? and some other stuff like

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kjphdfsvzxa6uzr/SocialMedia.otf?dl=0

Change the d1=0 to raw=1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kjphdfsvzxa6uzr/SocialMedia.otf?raw=1

And that should work.

You can upload almost any file to dropbox.

Now I will add that I found a blog post here that suggests washing Google Drive's shareable links through THIS TOOL in order to get a direct link. I've not tried it.

FOR SELF HOSTED

Some places that provide hosting provide access to your files or some kind of file manager. Some places do not. In my experience, Go Daddy and Dreamhost did NOT provide any kind of file manager and required that I use a 3rd party FTP. Lyrical Host DOES provide a file manager, and if you decide to switch you can save 10% with coupon code: BeHappy

Definitely make sure here that the file you wish to upload is named something internet friendly with no spaces. It's best to keep it to lowercase letters, numbers, and underscores. You can still do it if it's not, but it's easier without adding 20% to things.

FILE MANAGER

If your hosting company provides a place to access your website files, you can go there. You basically find the public folder usually titled HTML or at Lyrical Host, they call it Public_html ...

There you can choose to create a new folder for organization and ease reasons. I created one called DOWNLOADS. I also have FONTS (to install fonts on my site).

In the folder where you want your file to be, where you can find it again later if you want to, and try to be pretty decisive about this because moving the file will change the link's address, go ahead and upload the file to that folder.

The address is usually yoursite.com/folderinhtml/filename.file

So if you uploaded the file Foxy.TTF to your folder DOWNLOADS in your public_html or html folder, it will be

Yoursite.com/DOWNLOADS/foxy.ttf

If you named your folder BLUEBALLS it would be

Yoursite.com/BLUEBALLS/filename.file

In essence, it's

Yoursite.com/ENTIRE DIRECTORY or PATH OF FOLDERS IN HTML FOLDER/filename.file

but you don't include HTML or public_html's folder in it...

You may want to plug that in the navigation bar and go to that file just to make sure it works. If it's web page at all (usually files that end in html, svg, jpg, png, or pdf), it will open up as a page. If not (such as files like otf, docx), it will just automatically download it.

NO FILE MANAGER >>> 3rd PARTY FTP

A: Install Filezilla

For Self-Hosted Wordpress blogs, the best way to handle a means to upload and edit your website's direct files is through an FTP so that the file is stored on your server or hosting service. I use Filezilla.

B: Connect Filezilla

Once you've installed Filezilla, you may have to call your hosting to find out how to obtain the information you need to connect Filezilla from your computer to the files in your site, but most hosting providers show this on the website under your account somewhere.

The Filezilla program wants to know a few things (right under the toolbars before the status box)

Host
Username
Password
Port

In GoDaddy, I had to go to Gateway, From there, I click on my wordpress site's settings, from there, I click the tab SSH & SFTP, and there it lists those things. You have to click the toggle button to turn your password from stars/dots to an actual password before copying and pasting. Then just copy and paste the information to the right places.

In most sites, it's listed under anything that has the letters FTP, like on Go Daddy, it was SFTP. Some hosting providers lock your FTP, and you can request to unlock it for a certain amount of time. If you can't figure it out, you're probably going to have to contact customer service with your hosting provider, and it's a HOSTING thing, not a domain thing.

Once you have the information in place to connect filezilla, click the QuickConnect button.

You should then get four window boxes underneath the status box. The two on the left is your hard drive on your computer, and the two on the right is the drive on your web site. This kind of works like file explorer on your computer. The top windows are file folders while the bottom windows give actual files.

In navigating through Filezilla, double clicking on the folder with three dots/periods will take you back a folder. You can also single click the folder on the top box to open the contents in the bottom box.

C: Upload File

I'm not sure if it really matters where the folder is...

I generally have put my stuff in either the html folder, or the wp-content one. The wp-content folder should be in your html folder.

I also then create folders to organize what I'm about to upload as if I were just organizing folders on my computer's hard drive. This place is really just your website's hard drive.

The first time you do this, you probably want to create a Downloads folder that you can use in the future. Right click anywhere in the bottom right box, and choose "Create a New Directory." Name your file (maybe "downloads" all lower case, think html address). You do not have to create a new directory for each file you want to upload. This is just for the first time. After this, you can upload the file to this folder. If you plan on providing a lot of downloaded material, you may decide to make additional directories to organize your files, such as a directory for music and one for documents.

But you want to make sure you are organizing this just the way you want it because if you move these files, you will break your download buttons on your site. Of course, you can update the links on your site, but in my experience, it's a pain in the ass.

The next step is basically to drag the file into the folder. Open your destination folder on the right side. Find your file you want to upload in the bottom box on the left. Drag and drop that file from the left (your hard drive) to the right (your site).

D: Get File Address

I can't find an easy way to copy and paste your file address completely from filezilla, but here's how to obtain the file address.

You basically have to manually type out the address.

The address will start out with http://www.yoursite.com
Then forward slash all the file folders (AKA Directories) to your document/file.

Tip: Under where it says remote site in the top right hand of the boxes, you can highlight wp-content and all the information after that and paste it. BUT this is only good for the second half of the address. So you will have to type out the info with 1. and then paste the info for 2. Then forward slash and type in the name of the file.

So it could look something like this: http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/file.jpg

So if you uploaded the file Foxy.TTF to your folder DOWNLOADS in your public_html or html folder, it will be

Yoursite.com/DOWNLOADS/foxy.ttf

If you named your folder BLUEBALLS it would be

Yoursite.com/BLUEBALLS/foxy.ttf

If you use more than one folder such as putting BLUEBALLS into your wp-content folder, then it would be...

Yoursite.com/wp-content/BLUEBALLS/filename.file

In essence, it's

Yoursite.com/ENTIRE DIRECTORY or PATH OF FOLDERS IN HTML FOLDER/filename.file

but you don't include HTML or public_html's folder in it...

You may want to plug that in the navigation bar and go to that file just to make sure it works. If it's web page at all (usually files that end in html, svg, jpg, png, or pdf), it will open up as a page. If not (such as files like otf, docx), it will just automatically download it.

STEP 2: Create Code for Download

This is where life gets tricky. Essentially, if you just link to the file, the computer usually knows to just download that file.

Wherever you want the download to appear, in most places like blogs or pages in Wordpress or Blogger, just highlight the text and link to your file, and open link in new tab. At least that's how it used to be.

If you want to roll with html...

This goes in the HTML section of your blog post / page / widget...

If that doesn't fully work, you may need to add the word Download to it after the file as W3Schools suggested, but I haven't had to do that with any of my files yet.

This goes in the HTML section of your blog post / page / widget...

The other idea that works with this html5 structure is if you want to change the name of the download as it downloads you can do...

This goes in the HTML section of your blog post / page / widget...

 <a href="path_to_file" download="proposed_file_name">Download</a>

Here's an example of a font file using the dropbox hack...

DOWNLOAD FONT FROM FILE

Another code I have found that also works is...

This goes in the HTML section of your blog post / page / widget...

 <a download="socialmediafont" href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/kjphdfsvzxa6uzr/SocialMedia.otf?raw=1" target="_blank">

Do you want it to have a pretty Download Button?

All you got to do really is link your link to a picture instead of text. Or you can design a button in CSS and link that...

Create a Download Button

Draw a picture of a download button or find one on the web that you are allowed to use. Upload it to your pictures in your media gallery or insert picture on blogger. I'm going to use this picture from wikimedia commons....

That one shouldn't download anything.

To get the address of the image file...

You can get that on Blogger by uploading the image, and then insert it into your post, set it to original size, and then right click and choose copy image address, and then delete the image from your compose area. I actually keep an on-going blog post draft of images just to get the image address.

In wordpress, you can upload the image to your gallery and if you look at the details on the right, find the address after URL.

Code for Image and Download

Pick ONE of these to go in the HTML section of your blog post / page / widget...

Most places, this is fine...

 <a href="https://MyFileForDownload.mp3"><img src="MyImageURL.jpg"></a>

or other method I find working better on blogger though the top method does work...

 <a download="socialmediafont" href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/kjphdfsvzxa6uzr/SocialMedia.otf?raw=1" target="_blank"><img src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ir0fiQPW0vw/V7DOK2-iNtI/AAAAAAAADnU/Op4mS7oaPFcqwslUEb4vmsFk1SguCZuRgCLcB/s320/wikimedia%2Bcommons%2Bdowload%2Bbutton.png" /></a>

It should look and behave like this...

If you want to create a download button, you can use CSS for your whole website to design a button... First you want to create the CSS to style the button in your blog's main CSS. The following is the code for my buttons on this blog, and it pulls from the variable that lets me set the blog's color in "Customize" as opposed to html. You can change that $(scheme.color) to any #HEX.

THIS code is for CSS in your entire blog's theme. In blogger, it's usually in the bskin, and sometimes that's closed off with <bskin>...</bskin> and you have to click the 3 dots to get it to show all the codes. In Wordpress, it's usually in the theme's files, but most themes allow you to add CSS styles to the theme in the Customize section (or you can create a new CSS file in your directory / file manager with your hosting), and I recommend that because if you change your actual theme's CSS, you may lose those changes with every theme update.

 .button {  
      font: $(body.font);  
      text-transform: uppercase;  
      background-color: $(scheme.color);  
      padding: 7px 15px;  
      text-decoration: none !important;  
           border-radius: 2px;  
      overflow: hidden;  
      cursor: pointer;  
      display: inline-block;  
      color: #fff !important;  
 }

Then use html to apply the code... So the following code goes in the HTML section of your blog post / page / widget...

You can skip the div style by deleting the div style words in the <div style...> and delete the end div </div>, but I went ahead an added it so you can center your button without thought.

 <div style="text-align: center;">  
 <a class="button" a download="socialmediafont" href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/kjphdfsvzxa6uzr/SocialMedia.otf?raw=1" target="_blank">Download Social Media Icons Font</a></div>

SO it would look and behave like this...

Download Social Media Icons Font

Some Sources:

Stack Overflow: Chrome Download Attribute Not Working
Stack Overflow: How to Trigger a File Download
W3 Schools: How to Download Link
Where I found the DropBox Hack

10 Newish Trendy Commercial Free Fonts

2016-08-11T08:34:00.001-07:00

It's hard to find free fonts for commercial use, so here's a list of some of the best free fonts from befonts.com.

1. Mugemini

Mugemini

2. Playlist

Playlist

3. Solmet

Solmet

4. Coco

Coco

5. Debby

Debby

6. Firefly

Firefly

7. Keisatsu

Keisatsu

8. Sophia

Sophia

9. Waterlily

Waterlily

10. Ginebra

Ginebra

Amazing 10 Blogging Pinterest Profiles to Follow

2016-06-08T05:58:00.000-07:00

Did you know Pinterest is a great place to find resources on blogging? Some of the best articles I read are articles I found on Pinterest.

Learning about blogging is a lot of work and takes a lot of time. You can google specific topics, but you miss out on some of the best advice from real bloggers who blog more than just about blogging. Learning how to blog and improve your blogging methods is an on-going process, and it's really easy to follow some Pinterest boards on the topic and let the pins sporadically appear and choose titles that suit your fancy for that moment.

Here are some of the best boards for blogging and all things blogging.

My Boards: Basic Blogging

Of course I'm going to put myself on the top of the list, but I do pin a lot of blogging related articles. Most of them, I do read before repinning, so you know it's not useless. For once, I act as a filter.

My top boards for blogging include:

I also have other boards for things like graphic inspiration, inspirational quotes, and I'm trying to focus on blogging, art, business, and lifestyle blogs (I love sharing blogs I read).

Neil Patel: Content Marketing

One of the most popular and most informative voices on the web is Neil Patel. His Pinterest, of course, is geared to all things related to blogging.

Some of his blogging boards include:

CoSchedule: Social Media

CoSchedule is a company like Buffer who helps people schedule social media posts for a monthly fee. I highly suggest following them on social media and signing up for their emails. They have some of the best articles on social media. As of now, they only have 5 boards, but it isn't quantity that we need. It's quality we are looking for.

Tailwind Team: Blogging, Design, and Social Media

Tailwind is a company that helps you schedule Pinterest posts and Instagram Postings. Their Pinterest is a great place for resources on many aspects of blogging and Pinterest.

Some of their best boards include:

Other board topics include Pinterest, Social Media, and SEO.

Beyond Your Blog: Freelance Writing

Susan is one of the best providers of information to get published on other sites, which brings more traffic to your blog and possibly an extra income.

Some of her best boards include:

She has quite a few other boards on blogging, freelance writing, and writing.

Imka Web: General Blogging

She has so much on blogging and owning your own business on her Pinterest, and most of them are in lady like Pinteresty colors.

Some of her blogging boards include:

She has many more blogging boards and blogging community boards.

Summer Tannhauser: Pinterest and Female Entrepreneurs

While focusing on Pinterest and using Pinterest to your advantage, she has many other boards for social media and women in business.

Some of her best blogging boards include:

She also has a board for every social media and some general business boards such as branding, email and blog tips.

Uncork your Dork: Increase Blog Traffic

Everything blogging and nerd, in pink. Her primary focus is on increasing blog traffic.

Some of her best blogging boards include:

Other boards include small business, organization, blogging and inspiration.

Olyvia: Business + Blogging

She has oodles of blogging boards and pins frequently.

Some of her best blogging boards include:

She has a board for each social media outlet, female entrepreneurship, and more.

The Graphics Fairy: Vintage Graphic Design

One of the best websites to find Vintage art free to use is The Graphics Fairy. As a graphic designer, she cleans up the images and provides them for free.

Some of her best blogging boards include:

The Graphics Fairy

Printables

Vintage

Her Pinterest also features a lot of DIY, crafting and decorating.

So that was 10 people, but now that I've had to update this post, I want to link to 2 others I highly suggest.

ByRegina

She focuses on everything you need to start selling courses that focus on collaboration as opposed to a boring tutorial. But she also has mad ideas on using Facebook Advertising, creating a list, creating landing pages, and using Pinterest.

Melyssa Griffin

She focuses on growing your blog, and all the things you can do to help you grow.

Pinterest is a great place for resources beyond DIY perfect motherhood. Most bloggers who blog on blogging, especially those with a female demographic, have some sort of Pinterest profile to promote their posts, and the information they share is often priceless and sometimes necessary. Men, don't be afraid of the girlyness of these posts. The information is even helpful for you.

How Do You Make People Feel?

2016-05-27T10:45:00.000-07:00

Think about all your content on your blog and social media. What overall feeling do you think people feel with your content as a whole?

Summary:

People like to feel
Positive emotions are shared more frequently than negative emotions
People don't remember what you say as much as how you make them feel

How Do You Make People Feel?

This is a question we should all frequently ask ourselves now and then.

Take a look at your overall pattern of behaviors with feelings you convey in your work. You can probably almost make a text cloud of words that describe the emotions you convey, or words you wish to convey, or an automatic generation of used words from your domain, and if you like that, you have a great picture for your About Me section.

Tag Crowd will make a tag cloud based on word usage from pasted text or a web address. This is a great tool to find out what you are conveying right now on your blog.
Word it Out is a great one if you don't have a lot of words and don't want them repeated.
Image Chef will repeat words into a shape like, "Love You."
Word Clouds gives you more control over the font, shape, colors, size and file type.

Positive Emotions Get Shared More

Research in my post on Market Analysis showed that OKdork took a look at 100 million shared posts and labeled the types of emotions the pieces conveyed.

Awe, laughter, amusement and joy covers a little more than half of the pie graph of the results.

I think the reason for this is

People like to feel good. Feeling good feels good. Logical.
People like to make others feel good too, especially when they feel good.

How To Write More Positive

People also seem to like a balance of positive and negative emotions within a story. Too many bad things happening to you or a character without much good can leave the reader feeling sad, unmotivated, and tired. However, they do like the emotional roller coasters that, when finished, leaves them feeling something positive.

Think of it like math. You have negative numbers (anger, hurt, sadness) and positive numbers (happiness, awe, laughter). You can have negative numbers in your equation, but if you add your equation together, an answer with a positive number will leave people walking away with a feel-good vibe.

It's hard to remember to make a conscious effort to be more positive on the internet, especially when negative emotions make it really hard to see how negative we really are, nor at that point do we really give two sh.....

So I made this little FREE printable thingy to hang near my computer.

Things to Remember

A lot of it isn't the topic. It isn't in the perspective or other writing concepts you see taught in textbooks and college. But it is in the way you say it. For instance, there's a huge difference between, "I bit him," and "He got injured."

These are things I'm trying to remind myself...

Instead of saying things like YOU SHOULD, I need to be saying things like YOU CAN.
Instead of saying THIS IS AWFUL, I should be saying THE OPPOSITE OF THIS IS AWESOME!
Don't tell people what to do; instead, tell them the benefits of doing something.

A perfect illustration by

ORIGINAL CARTOON http://www.autostraddle.com/saturday-morning-cartoons-baopu-15-318590/

Ways to convey emotion without saying the emotion:

You want to be careful conveying too much emotion without flat out saying it. The internet is different than print in many ways including how you write. On the internet, people speed read and peruse more than not, so you want to make things as obvious as possible in as few words as possible. Some people also read word-for-word, and those people are more the type to follow someone who impressed them with their writing, so you also want to have some literary devices (like metaphor).

Use physical symptoms the emotion leaves behind--"His palms were sweaty, knees weak, arms heavy..." Eminem
Use dialogue--Instead of Donald Trump is racist, Donald Trump said, "Our great African American president hasn't exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore."
Describe a setting that would invoke emotions--"Mr. Blue Bird on my Shoulder... " or "I had 3 minutes to find those car keys."
Use metaphors--The sky falls on me

Communication is a two-way street: Speaking and Listening, but really, communication is about both the Speaker and the Listener. Many times, you probably leave out certain information assuming whoever you are talking to doesn't want to hear that part. Asking yourself "How do I make people feel?" is another way to consider the reader's needs when writing. The emotions you convey also defines you to your reader.

Exercises

Make a text cloud of feelings you convey for your About Me section of your blog.
Take this Quiz, most importantly, the question, "What is your favorite animal and why?" This is much more profound than a quiz from Cosmo, and it's short (3 questions).

Go Ahead and Pin this

WAKE UP YOUR BLOG: Business Plan

2016-05-25T03:01:00.000-07:00

Do you have no idea what you are doing, but you are doing it anyway?

When you start a business, the "experts" tell you that you MUST create a business plan because it's so crucial to the success of a business. Conventionally, business plans are primarily used to access funding such as a bank loan, but the important purpose of a business plan is to get you informed and focused. This post is part of the Series, "Wake Up Your Blog with a Morning Cup of Planning."

Experts recommend to anyone who starts their own business to have a business plan, and blogging can be a business (it can also be a hobby). Following expert advice and templates of business plans, Blogging As I Learn It give you a more customized version for writers, bloggers, graphic artists, and other internet endeavors.

So many blog posts and free printables and templates... This series could be an ebook. Oh wait! It will be some day. Check out the whole series below.

What is a business plan?

A business plan is a detailed outline of all the facets of your business. According to Wikipedia,

"A business plan is a formal statement of business goals, reasons they are attainable, and plans for reaching them. It may also contain background information about the organization or team attempting to reach those goals."

Why have a business plan?

For most businesses, the business plan is a vital role in receiving funding from third parties like bank loans and government grants, and most templates are geared to that audience in particular. For bloggers, however, it can also be a great supplement to send potential sponsors and people you want to work with.

The most important factor of a business plan is that it gives you vision and focus. Without thinking of all these things, one can easily be-bop around the internet clueless and lost, like a drunk girl at the club who can't find her friend and stops to talk to everyone along the way until she forgets she even has a friend with her. When you decide to get serious about your internet endeavors, the Business Plan is a great first step to help you grow.

Planning the Plan

I know it sounds crazy to say, "I have to plan my business plan?" but yes you do. It's a bunch of layers of planning like life and onions. This is the part where you decide what you really want. What are you going to do? Who are you doing it for? How much money do you want to make? How much money are you making?

Plan Organization

In most business plans, first half outlines WHAT YOU ARE DOING. The second half outlines WHAT YOU PLAN TO DO. What you are doing is there to guide you through making decisions on what you plan to do.

WHAT YOU ARE DOING serves two primary functions:

To inform readers who don't know all about you and establish credibility, reputation, history, and so forth.
To help yourself plan and put things in perspective

You want to list out a lot of what you have done and are currently doing when your readership wouldn't know that information, such as applying for a small business loan. If you are writing an informal plan, you may not need to write everything down that you are doing, but you do want to think about it and keep it in the back of your mind to give you perspective. What are you already doing? What is working? What isn't working?

WHAT YOU PLAN TO DO is the main point of creating a business plan. This provides you with a list of objectives, focus, and things to do. It's more than just a to-do list. If you do all the parts of this series, you'll have a great idea of who you are, who you want to be, and how to consistently incorporate all the facets of what you do into that focus. This will help with blog design, images for blog posts, social media posts, and so forth.

Components of the Plan

Many different kind of templates exist for a business plan with different headings and subheadings. The organization of your plan should be most determined by your needs. The SBA (Small Business Association) provides a very basic template that should cover most business needs.

For purposes of blogging, the final draft of a Business Plan COULD include any of the following topics. Consider these H1 Words.

Executive Summary
Mission Statement
Company Description
Organization and Management
Industry Analysis
Market Analysis
SWOT Analysis
Value Proposition
Marketing Plan
Funding Request
Financial Projections
Appendix

All the details of each of these sections can be found in the template provided.

Executive Summary

The executive summary is a basic summary of all the things you are doing, and probably should be written last. It's like the "In Conclusion" paragraph, but presented first in the final product.

The executive summary does the following:

Grabs attention
Convinces Success
Highlights the key areas of your plan
Defines what you will sell and who will buy it
Where you are and where you want to be
How you will help people

Mission Statement

The mission statement is a well crafted, short and simple elevator pitch. It includes the company's purpose, target market, the contribution to society and how it's distinct from competition.

Company Description

This gives an overview of your company. It shows how long you've been in business and highlights key areas of growth. It also shows how the company provides solutions to varying problems.

Organization and Management

This describes the business type (proprietorship or LLC), the owners, and bios of key management.

Industry Analysis

The industry analysis describes the playground in which your business is playing. It summarizes basic statistics and projections for the industry while taking note to future possible issues (like changes in the law).

Here is an industry analysis for 2016 for blogging.

Market Analysis

The market analysis describes the kids who are playing on the playground your business is playing. It summarizes who your customers are and what they are doing. This is where you decide a target market for both sales and readership.

Here is a basic market analysis for 2016 for blogging. You will have to add your own information for current readership and target market.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This takes a look at your competitive edge.

Value Proposition

The value proposition describes key features that makes you valuable to the world. It defines strengths and competitive distinction. The important proponent to the value proposition is to define who you are on an About Me page, and to define a pricing strategy (premium products or cheap ones?).

Marketing Plan

There are many ways to create a marketing plan, but the focus should be on the 4 P's of Marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Here you describe the various products you offer, their prices, the pricing strategy, the distribution channels of your products and how you plan to get seen and heard.

Funding Request

The funding request defines how much money you are looking to get, how you will spend it, and how you will pay it back. It also shows an exit plan in case things fail.

Financial Projections

If you are an existing business, here you provide 3 to 5 years of basic finance reports to show a historical view of your finances. Then you create 5 years of finance reports to show what you think you'll make in revenue and expend.

Appendix

The appendix is a place to show additional information beyond the Business Plan. It may include resumes, credit history, pictures, additional statistics, articles and source information on statistics and research, legal documents, contracts, intellectual property...

Go Ahead and Pin this to your Blogging Board

WAKE UP YOUR BLOG: Marketing Plan

2016-05-20T05:27:00.002-07:00

Are people missing out on you? Maximize your writing potential by creating a marketing plan designed to reach out to people who want to read your blog. In the sea of blogs on the internet, you need to market your work or people are not going to be able to find it. A marketing plan will help you come up with a good strategy to best utilize time and money. This is part of a series on how to prepare a Business Plan.

All the textbooks say there are 4 P’s in Marketing: Product, price, place, promotion. The product is what you are selling. Price, obviously for how much. Place is how you are getting your product to the person buying it. Promotion is getting people to want your product, awareness and engagement. A marketing plan should cover all of these concepts.

Keeping the following in mind while developing a marketing strategy will help you stay focused and consistent:

Product

In most marketing plans, the product is the thing that you sell for money. In blogging, there are usually two types of products we offer: products for readership, and products for purchase. The products for readership also often act as a distribution channel (otherwise known as place). Make sure to differentiate between what you offer your readership in your website as a product, and what you use to get that information to your readers as your place.

List out all the products you do offer and are planning to offer. Tell us where it is in the product cycle(Introduction? Growth? Maturity? Decline?). How do your products fill a need for your customer? What are the benefits of this product to a consumer? What are the competitive edges to your product?

This is also the place to mention intellectual property including things you plan to file a copyright or patent, and mention if it is classified as a trade secret.

When you are developing a business plan, you should stick to the business you are planning; however, for many writing at home, our income sources are all over the place. If your plan is about yourself at all, the product list is also a place to write out income sources because those are products you offer.

In the planning process, review your industry and market analysis, and ask yourself if your products fit well with where the industry is going and what your customers want. You may decide to eliminate some products or maybe alter some. You may decide to add products. But the point is to plan out your products you do offer and create a plan for the products you will be offering.

In your marketing plan, list out all the major products you offer, and decipher which big ones you plan to market most aggressively.

Price

This is where you discuss your pricing strategy, and you should work on this section as you work on other sections, in particular, branding and distribution.

First you want to compare your pricing with competition. Are you offering premium services? Or an existing product at a lower price?

PREMIUM. Generally, you want to charge more (15% above average) if you are offering top-tier, premium products in a place that has a solid demand (it doesn’t change much).
AVERAGE. Aim for average if there’s a lot of competition and you are slightly better than average. This strategy should focus on sales campaigns and differentiating your product for bigger prices. Eventually, this strategy can also offer premium services.
LOWEST PRICE. If the product is viewed more as a commodity, you want to price lower than average. Here the strategy is to consistently offer an existing product at a better price.

The second thing you want to do is define your costs. You want to make sure your pricing exceeds the cost, but also, consider if you have a limited inventory if the pricing meets your needs to make a profit AND is positioned properly for value. Generally, high inventory, lower costs. You may decide to increase inventory so you can price something lower.

Third, determine “price modifiers,” for things like discounts, rebates and fees. Also consider if you have a resell program the percentage paid to the person who sold your product for you.

For many things in blogging, price might be an email address or “free.” Try to use “free” to your best interest and explain how pricing that piece in particular for free is advantageous (such as the purpose is to create a higher email list).

As you do this, consider changes you can make to get you into the value bracket you desire. For instance, if you currently are priced low yet offer a premium service, you may decide to up your price; however, if you are priced low and offer an existing service you can get anywhere else, then you may want to position yourself in a campaign somewhere else on that totem pole to offer higher prices, or you might offer a different product by changing some aspects of it (like adding an additional service to the overall product).

You also want to consider how much you make per transaction, and compare with competition. For instance, are they upselling a basic product with accessories? Do they offer bundles that entice people to buy more at a perceived savings? These are things you might be able to do as well, or instead, but the point is to think about maximizing each purchase and develop a product, promotional and pricing strategy for such things.

In your marketing plan, you want to list out the prices for each product you offer and discuss your strategy behind those amounts.

Place

Place is the easy P-word for Distribution: how you plan to get your product to your buyer. Today’s marketing focuses heavily on being at the right place at the right time, so you want your site and location to be incredibly convenient, popping up exactly when people are looking for you or what you offer in particular.

If you were selling T-shirts, you’d have to decide your storefront, and if you are selling them wholesale, factory direct, or retail. Distribution gets more creative than that. Radio Stations with Advertising Salespeople. Avon with Avon Ladies. Amazon with an affiliate program. Victoria Secret and their catalogs. Did you know most doctors’ primary place to gain information on the drugs they prescribe comes from the pharmaceutical sales reps?

But there is much more to place than just that, especially for blogs where the blog’s distribution channel can also be a product to companies.

Place covers:

Location of your business or website
- Do you want to go from Name.blogspot.com to Name.com?
Location and how to reach your target market
- In what ways does your site reach your target market? Promotions? SEO?
- How convenient are you to your customers?
- Is there a market offline you’d like to reach? How can you make your place accessible to them?
Site design and functionality to appeal to target market
- Is your site easy to navigate? How do you think your target market is thinking for site design? For instance, if your target market is very Pinterest oriented, maybe a Pinterest looking site might do you better.
- Are you users using phones and tablets? How does your site operate on those?
- Does your site load quickly?
- What sharing methods do you have for your site?
- Is your site SEO friendly?
- Do you have amazing content?
Affiliate programs
Partnerships: Finding people who already reach your target market and teaming up
Call to Action
- Is it clear and concise on all your web pages?
- Do you make it easy for your customers to purchase?
- Do you make it easy for your customers to find the purchase page? With the least amount of clicks possible?
- Is it spelled out so easy your customer can find it drunk?
Value Proposition
- Do you have a value proposition page?

MarketingMo advises to evaluate the following:

How and where they prefer to buy
Whether they need personalized education and training
Whether they need additional products or services to be used along with yours
Whether your product needs to be customized or installed
Whether your product needs to be serviced

Providing easy, convenient distribution is a huge part of the marketing process. Think of ways to improve access to your product and incorporate it into your marketing plan.

Promotion

Promotion is about getting people hear about your product and want it. Advertising campaigns, guerrilla advertising, public events… all contribute to the promotional aspect of the business plan. Find audiences bigger than yours and establish a positive emotional connection with trust and dependability, asking questions and actively listening, empathy and shared experiences, and respect. Make sure your customers and readers know they are your top priority.

When deciding on promotional avenues, you have two choices. Take one pace and penetrate it aggressively, or barely touch multiple places. Find a balance between the two. You only have so much time to spend on promotion, so don’t give yourself too much to do. Penetrate each area and market just enough as too much marketing in one location can annoy people, and choose places you think will be most effective. The key is to find your market, not just anyone.

Free Promotion Ideas

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Social Media
Create an email list and send newsletters and emails
Guest Write on bigger sites (establish credibility in your industry)
Syndication (submit for republishing on things like Upworthy and Huffpost)
Submit for Publication New Content (check out Beyond your Blog for Places to Submit)
Speak at events
Find a tribe: comment, share and thank those who comment and share
Create a Tribe of a handful of bloggers your blog’s size, and all dedicate to share each other’s work aggressively
Leave comments on other blogs
Good headlines
Publish consistently
Host a Q&A or Podcast
Guest on a Podcast or someone else’s Q&A
Incorporate Sponsorships and Let them Know how to easily share the work
Find Influencers with the same target market as yours and establish a rapport with them by commenting on their posts and social media, and then tweet your work their direction.
Find people who write about your thing, who do round-up posts, and let them know about your work
Press Releases for Newsworthy Events
Facebook Groups designed to share work (but only when invited to share work, no link dropping)
Forums in your Niche to share work (but only when invited to share work, no link dropping)
Give away an ebook or infographics or printables
Offer an online class
Create a Webinar
Blog Hops and Link-Ups (join one or host one; temporary seasonal or long-term)
Offer coupon codes to give that extra nudge and entice people to shop now before it expires
Write for SEO companies and link to your own posts when applicable, and get paid to promote
Host a blogging contest or awards
Answer Questions on Quora and Yahoo Answers (throw in shameless self-promotion when applicable, answer questions that will improve your branding as an expert in your field)
Host a Challenge (blogging challenge, weight challenge, charity challenge)
List yourself on directories

Make sure

Everything links back to you on your profiles
Call to action on all your blog posts and emails
Social Media Ratio: 1 call to action, 3 original contents, 6 others’ content

Social Places to Post Work

Facebook
Twitter
Google Plus
Pinterest
Instagram
Linked In
Blog Lovin
Ello
YouTube
Tumblr
Friendster
MySpace
del.icio,us
Stumble Upon
Digg
Flickr
Quora
Foursquare
Polyvore
Reddit
Diigo
Blogger
Postach.io
SlideShare
Picasa
Photobucket
Hacker News
Storify
Contently

Syndicate and Press Releases

Mashable
Jezebel
Huffington Post
Bustle
Buzzfeed
Salon
BlogHer
Hub Pages
Yahoo News
Google News
Outbrain
Quick Sprouts Syndication List
Gawker / Kinja (goes to variety places)

Paid Promotion

Two major types of paid promotion:

Cost per click
Cost per Impression

Choose carefully between which is right for you. Use of banners and ad squares should be aimed specifically at the target market, especially if you can find a place where the users are already interested in your product such as advertising your blog on another blog in your niche (going directly to people who like to read blogs) or maybe showing up under specific search terms in Google.

Places for Promotion:

Google
Facebook
Linked In
Stumble Upon
Bing and AOL
Yahoo
Bigger Blogs and News Sites like The Bloggess or BuzzFeed

Giveaways

You can host a giveaway on your own, or you can find a group of 10 people who all donate toward the prize and decrease cost while increasing promotion of the giveaway.

Conferences

BlogU and BlogHer are great places to connect with other bloggers and find opportunities. Even better if you can be a sponsor at these events plus attend them.

Offline Promotion Ideas

Some of the bigger blogs’ biggest traffic comes from people in the community excited to read about a local’s perspective on the internet. Your local culture also shines through your work, and local people might find it more relateable and up their alley than people on the other side of the world.

Print a magnet for your car
Print business cards or promotional post cards and place them in area businesses and libraries and hand them out to people you meet
Print Flyers to hang around your community
Send press releases to local news sources (television and print)
Join your Chamber of Commerce and be involved in their promotional events
Create a Relay for Life Team and obtain emails for raffle tickets
Purchase radio advertising or try to guest on a local radio show
Host a promotional event or charity like a 5K
Get involved with the community; attend events and festivals geared up with promotional material
Host a Food Drive outside a store and offer free promotional materials or flyers as well a branding sign
Team up with local pizza and tape mini flyers or coupons to pizza boxes
Print up promotional door hangers and place them door to door
If you are published in a book, do book signings and readings, join book clubs, and donate your book to the libraries
Find your niche and join their community (like parenting blogs? Guest speak at a MOPS meeting).
Direct Mail and Face-to-Face Sales Calls to area businesses for B2B products (such as advertising on your blog)
Expand to other major cities near your area or in your state
Blog about Fashion? Host a fashion show. Blog about Beauty? Have make-up parties like Avon or Mary Kay. Blog about crafts? Go to craft shows and sell your products, or host arts and crafts time at your local seniors centers. Blog about parenting? Try getting a company in your niche like diapers, bottles, formula to give you products to give away through income-based charities.
Print some blog posts in a newsletter and leave in strategic areas like doctor waiting rooms (parent blogger? Aim for pediatricians).
Create partnerships with area businesses who have your target market or do something similar to what you do. For instance, if you write a lot about weddings, get involved with local wedding dress stores. Food blogs? See if you can get a grocery store to place your flyers at the end of the checkout or near their flyers. Write about finance? Maybe have a postcard mailed out with W-2’s for local businesses.
Hop into other people’s direct mail. Anyone mailing things to your target market might be interested in adding some of your promotional gear.

In your marketing plan, list out promotional events you plan to do, but also narrow down your social media strategy to where you visit a handful of sites daily and aggressively seek to build a following to one outlet at a time. Set goals such as, “Would like to increase Facebook Page to 1,000 followers by May.”

The Marketing Plan

So now we have defined Product, Price, Place, Promotion, Branding and Positioning. The next step is to put all this information into one place, all organized like. The planning process of any business facet involves setting objectives, planning out steps, implementing steps and monitoring results.

Objectives: Use your SWOT Analysis, Market Analysis, Industry Analysis and Value Proposition defined earlier to define concise, detailed objectives for your marketing strategy. Ask yourself where your customers or readers are currently going, and what got them there. Bloggers can ask other bloggers about their experiences.

Steps: Plan steps you need to take to accomplish your objectives. In many cases, more than one way can create a need to make decisions. Take note when you see that happening so whichever way you go, when you monitor results, you might replan with the other option on the next go at it. Make sure to plan for random giving room to adjust your strategy to the room’s temperature.

Implementation: Do the steps. Get excited about doing them, and be in a good mood for it because your mood always shines through your words, art, and endeavors. Do the things that require concentration when you’re most alert, and save things you can do tired for when you are tired.

Monitor Results: Many promotion opportunities and ideas are out there, enough to keep you busy for a few lifetimes. Focus on the effective techniques for time conservation by making sure you monitor results and stick to what is working and adapt what isn’t working.

In monitoring results, make sure you are receiving a return on your investment (ROI). If you spend 60 dollars to advertise and only make 30, then you probably need a new strategy; however, keep in mind, some things need to be nursed to see a ROI, and others won’t produce a real ROI unless you invest the right amount of money into it.

The internet makes it really easy to monitor results with insights and statistics. Pay attention to the following:

Page Views
Unique Visitors
Duration
Return Visits
Bounce Rate
Average pages viewed per visit
Social Media Shares
Referrals
Calls to Action (email sign ups and purchases)

Some Tips

Make sure to hit all major aspects of the marketing cycle: reaching out to new people, engaging people with calls to action (comment, purchase, sign up), and retention. Make sure to hit each step as they are all crucial, but you can also identify which objective you are trying to achieve within this cycle as you look at various steps, at least in the back of your mind, so that you don’t lose sight of what you are really trying to achieve specifically at that point in the game.

Consider your objective with your marketing plan. The marketing plan section is really dependent upon your needs for the business plan. If you are using the business plan and/or marketing plan to seek funding or sponsorship, or to give to any 3rd party, you really want to inform in great detail of what you are already doing and follow professional templates; however, if you are creating a marketing plan for your own guide, what you are already doing is a guide to helping you decide what to do, and the final product should focus on what you are planning to do and what you need to do. Also, if you are doing this just for yourself, something quick and easy to read will be more apt to be referenced later down the road again; however, the specific details of each step should be considered at some point in the game. You may have a lot of worksheets to help you decipher things as an appendix to a summary or To-Do list.

Do not spend more time than what you need. This is a lot of information for an in-depth marketing plan. If you don’t need to do something, don’t do it. Time is money, and the more time you spend chasing rainbows, you have an opportunity cost to better use your time (such as networking). Only hit the things that are important to you and your business goals. If you need to add to it later, then add to it then. You can also copy and paste parts of this article (or the whole thing) to save in your computer to reference later.

Are you a visual person? You may find it easiest to create a marketing plan on one sheet of paper. You can go by hand, utilizing visual elements like thought bubbles connected by lines and other mapping techniques, or maybe a computer print-out utilizing colors and font size. Then you can pin the paper next to your computer to reference regularly like a motivational picture.

Organization of Results. While a marketing calendar and to-do list is important, you may want to incorporate the aspects of your marketing to-do list into whatever method you use for a to-do list and calendar to mark important deadlines. You don’t want other projects interfering with your marketing objectives, so working on timing with your marketing objectives might be a give and take situation with other projects you have going.

Think about Holidays and seasonal aspects. Try to think the best time of the year to do different projects such as promoting a book on blogging might best be done between January and May when the winter/school months have everyone at the computer more often; however, promoting a book on DIY might be best during the Holidays when everyone is more apt to do extra crafts and decoration projects. Summer is a great time to do more offline promotions.

Be consistent with your Brand and Company. It’s one thing to say you are cutting edge, but if you don’t show cutting edge in your marketing, it would send mixed signals to your readership. Your brand, positioning, mission statement, and value proposition should shine through all your marketing endeavors.

Free Printables

Marketing Worksheet

Promotion Cheat Sheet

Go Ahead and Pin this to your Blogger Board

Sources:

How to Develop a Pricing Strategy on Marketing Mo

Pricing Strategy: Small Business Development Corporation

Sample Strategy and Implementation Section of a Business Plan

WAKE UP YOUR BLOG: Mission Statement

2016-05-20T05:15:00.001-07:00

Part of a series on creating a business plan, the Mission Statement is vital to establishing your overall objectives with your company. What are you really trying to do? What are you doing for your customers or readers? The mission statement prioritizes your overall objectives into an intended direction.

What is a Mission Statement?

A mission statement is a very well crafted short, simple elevator pitch of your business. It includes the following:

Company’s Purpose
Target Market
Contribution to Society
Distinction from Competition

Crafting a Mission Statement

This is very dependent on your goals and objectives. Most bloggers do not need to spend a lot of time crafting their mission statement like it’s life support for the blog as many business sites will make you believe. If you are following along the other posts, your mission statement should already be ready. If you haven’t been following, you’ll want to check out the other posts. All you have to do is put some pieces together. Your target market is established in the free printable provided here. Your contribution to society and distinction in your value proposition. Put the three together into a cohesive, short paragraph, and you’re done.

What to do with a Mission Statement

Put it on your blog in the About Us section. That’s about all most businesses do with their mission statement. But if you wanted to be textbook like, you can check back on it from time to time to make sure that’s what you’re doing. Getting ready to come up with a good marketing strategy? A good place to start is to read your mission statement. Want to redesign your site? First think about your mission statement.

SHORT EXAMPLES

TED: Spreading Ideas. (2 words)

Smithsonian: The increase and diffusion of knowledge.

USO lifts the spirits of America’s troops and their families.

Livestrong: To inspire and empower people affected by cancer.

Invisible Children: To bring a permanent end to LRA atrocities.

LONG EXAMPLES

AFLAC: To combine aggressive strategic marketing with quality products and services at competitive prices to provide the best insurance value for consumers.

Albertsons: Guided by relentless focus on our five imperatives, we will constantly strive to implement the critical initiatives required to achieve our vision. In doing this, we will deliver operational excellence in every corner of the Company and meet or exceed our commitments to the many constituencies we serve. All of our long-term strategies and short-term actions will be molded by a set of core values that are shared by each and every associate.

H&R Block: To help our clients achieve their financial objectives by serving as their tax and financial partner. As the world’s largest tax services company, H & R Block has one-to-one relationships with millions of clients, helping them benefit from all of the deductions and credits available to them and build a better financial future. It is the only major company that offers a full range of software, online and in-office tax solutions, combined with financial information and suggestions that enable clients to consider how they could achieve their financial objectives. This advice — the H &R Block Advantage — includes suggestions about retirement savings, home ownership, saving for their children’s college education, eligibility for government programs and other alternatives. When clients request in-depth financial plans and investment advice, their H &R Block tax professional refers them to H & R Block Financial Advisors Inc., which can assist them with a detailed investment plan and investment services. H &R Block Financial Advisors, member NYSE, SIPC, employs more than 1,000 financial advisors serving clients in more than 150 offices in the U.S. H & R Block Inc. is not a registered broker-dealer. Clients who request information about home mortgages are referred to H &R Block Mortgage Corp., which offers a full range of retail mortgage products. Our research shows that our H &R Block Advantage advice package along with related financial services increased client satisfaction with H & R Block’s tax services. H & R Block has long been a trusted tax partner to millions of taxpayers. Now we are enhancing the value of our tax services by helping clients as their tax and financial partner.

NWA: Workforce diversity gives us access to a world of different ideas and perspectives. Northwest Airlines is committed to maintaining a corporate culture where men and women of all ages, races, physical abilities, preferences and backgrounds are treated with dignity and respect. At Northwest Airlines we recognize that when diversity is valued and respected the results are improved service, customer satisfaction and a positive community image. We believe our employees make a world of difference and work to maintain an environment where diversity and inclusion is a critical component of our success. Our Diversity Vision To build a high performing environment where individual differences and contributions of employees, customers and business partners are respected and valued, the result of which is a business organization where fairness, trust and integrity govern relationships and the way we do business.

As you can see, a mission statement can be whatever you want it to be. Some use it more for public relations, and others live by it. If you are applying for funding, you’ll want something very professional; however, if it’s just for you or your image, you can get creative.

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WAKE UP YOUR BLOG: Target Market

2016-05-20T05:13:00.000-07:00

Defining your target market is defining WHO your customers are. For one, it helps you choose your customers, and two, it helps you know your customers. Defining your target market is a primary tool in your overall business plan as well as your marketing plan and other aspects of the business plan. You will use this in a million places as you run your business, for instance, approaching potential advertisers (if you share the same target market, you were meant for each other).

Defining your Target Market

Defining your target market can be determined by two primary methods.

Readers Who Already Exist: If you are blogging, you probably already have a current readership, and little research will tell you who is primarily already reading your work. You can also compare and contrast with insights from your social media accounts to find out who you are advertising to. Here your readers have determined aspects of your target market.
Readers Who COULD Exist: If you write a DIY blog, you may realize that while your current readers are not really into gardening, that the same very people interested in gardening might like your blog. You may decide that’s a worthy place of penetrating for new readers, so you decide to include gardening as an interest in your target market.

Defining your target market also entails:

Demographics: Gender, age range, income, language and geographic location.
Psychographics: Interests, habits, behaviors, shopping habits.

Big Example: Me

For instance, this blog’s target demographic is Female, 30-50, from the United States who are bloggers or graphic artists.

My submarkets include those 10 years older or younger than the primary age, and English Speaking communities like Canada, UK and Australia. I chose this based on the amount of bloggers in my circle of blogging who I’m writing this for in my head. I also chose English Speaking because that’s the only language I really know.

I choose my target market. My readers have a lot of interests like DIY and motherhood. Most are liberals and most are non-religious (though I do have a good percentage of Christians). For this blog, I focused on my psychographics of blogging and graphic design. While most of my readers are liberals, this blog in particular is to remain unbiased because that’s not a psychographic I’m interested in for this blog. It is a psychographic I consider for my Dribbles and Grits page where I share a lot of liberal agenda. On my personal Facebook profile, I share what I like. On Women of Ill Repute, I focus on feminism.

I find sub-interests based on the interests. From blogging and graphic design, I can choose some other psyschographics to help me find new people, like most of my readers are professionals (so I should be posting every post on my Linked In Account), have their own business and might need a graphic artist (it’s now a service I offer), are looking for readers of their own (which is why sharing and highlighting other bloggers is part of my future content concept).

I find interests based on what I’m already doing. In addition, I noticed a lot of DIY blogs exist where the bloggers are not necessarily wanting to spend a lot of time learning how to blog and want to focus more on their content, so they need an easy button. In addition, I know a lot of DIY blogs are looking for easy graphics to use in their projects like scrapbooking (something I already offer). Meanwhile, I happened to be creating a DIY blog of my own because it was a book I published and want to publish annually, so I can put all these ideas together and easily reach the DIY bloggers through my DIY blog that they might find on Pinterest to get ideas for their next project. There’s a sidebar I need an ad. I might decide to purchase advertising on the sidebar of a bigger DIY blog just to penetrate the DIY blogger market this year. Next year, I might decide to focus on Montessori Blogs.

Always consider the target market. I want to offer products they need, which is one reason why I started providing free images. I want something my competition is not doing (like providing free images and writing out the Blogging 101 posts in depth with all the research already done). I want to price for my customer, which is why I price modestly with graphic art services because I know most of my bloggers are not making big bucks like New York Times, and I don’t want to offer a price that’s outside of their budget. If my target market were places like The New York Times, I would adjust my prices to a more premium price because they aren’t trying to save money and will choose one of the more expensive graphic artists and choose paid pictures while avoiding public domain because of the perceived value behind price. When it comes to my value proposition, I want to be the premium service as affordable as possible breaking the business mold of value because my readers are always on the next trend, and they are all trying to do the same thing with their blogs and books. My place or distribution is mainly online because that’s where I’m going to find bloggers. Every facet of my business plan and marketing plan is geared for my target market. My personal blog (Crumpets and Bollocks) is all geared to me, and what I want and what I want to do. This blog was made for you, not me. So all of it has you in mind.

Get as specific as possible. I know if you are reading this, you wanted to learn about a marketing or business plan, and I don’t want to give you fluff. I want to give you all the tools you need in one place because I know that’s what you are looking for at this point if you are still reading. Other sites develop blog posts in cookie cutter formats because they aren’t trying to help you solve problems as much as get you to read their posts. While we are both writing to a lot of the same target market (same age, same interests), we are different in that they are writing for an existing email list who is looking for a quick, easy read just to learn one or two things to keep in mind. Conversely, I plan on getting most traffic to these in-depth posts from organic searches, so I am providing what I think someone searching for a marketing plan or business plan is looking for (someone specifically most likely trying to create their own marketing plan), which is very different than someone receiving an email about marketing plans (someone who might do a marketing plan down the road and when they do, will search on how to do a marketing plan). As a result, I’m providing all the tools, all the information, everything that’s important in one place, and I’ll place a strong emphasis on my SEO with this post in particular including sharing it with friends to increase visibility enough for SEO robots to rank it. On the other hand, when I write a shorter post highlighting bloggers or their projects, instead of focusing hard on SEO, I’ll be focusing hard on getting likes, shares, and views. In both cases I’m doing both, but I place my focus on one or the other to really hit that method.

Reaching new markets. My personality is a little rough around the edges and is very much Australia friendly. Being from the United States, I don’t have too many friends in Australia, but hooking up with an Australian blogger to share each other’s work or engage in a project together might change that. For my DIY blog, I noticed a huge Hispanic market for DIY, and I’d like to reach them as well, in which case, I might incorporate a Spanish Version of everything on that blog.

As you can see, the target market plays a huge role in all your planning and activities. It helps define what you are doing now, but also gives you ideas for what you want to do down the road.

Write Out Your Target Market

Here’s a free printable to help you define your target market. Just sign up and get all the Business Plan Guides (it's in there as a PDF)

Defining your target market will make it so much easier to figure out what people really want from you and define your business goals and strategy.

Go ahead and pin this to your blogging boards

Wake Up Your Blog: Branding and Positioning

2016-05-20T05:07:00.003-07:00

Part of the promotional strategy, Positioning and Branding focuses on how you want others to see you, like public relations and corporate image. You want to make sure your marketing plan and other areas of your business is in line with the way you want to be seen. Defining your brand and position will help you focus your efforts on a handful of things making it easier to remember you.

What is Branding and Positioning?

These two marketing concepts, Branding and Positioning, often are used interchangeably even though they shouldn’t. They technically can mean whatever you want them to mean. Google it. You’ll see everyone has a different definition for these terms. But the overall gist:

Branding is WHO you are according to everyone else.
Positioning is WHERE you are according to everyone else.

Branding: I am Salt. I want you to see me as a white bitter substance, not to be confused with sugar’s sweet. I want you to feel my bitterness on your tongue. I want you to taste sea water. I am branded as a flavor enhancer and take pride in my bitterness because it’s who I am. I am the thing that makes your food taste better. I am the thing that will help heal a wound and clean vegetables. I am the thing kids dare to eat large quantities of before taking a drink. I am Salt.

Positioning: If you see me in a salt shaker with an S on it, I want you to assume that S is going to be Salt and not Sugar. Why? I spent years positioning myself in that salt shaker, right next to pepper. You don’t see all those All Seasonings in a salt shaker. Nope. Not Garlic Salt. Just salt. Why? Because of all my competition, I’m the best one for the table. I beat sugar for the table top. Sugar can have a tray or the countertop. I’m at the table with the family, listening to them talk about their school day. Not bad for the most bitter substance in the kitchen to be in the most intimate of locations. This is why you find me in Norman Rockwell paintings, sitcom television shows, and any place someone is trying to portray a family dinner. And when you hear someone say, “Pass me the salt,” you know that person is somewhere at a dinner table with their family and not in the kitchen cooking.

The two concepts feed into each other. To think about one, you should think about the other.

Branding and Positioning aren’t necessarily based on fact. Macy’s and Walmart both sell a lot of the same products, but they each positioned themselves differently, and pricing is adjusted for it. Macy’s offers citizen watches at a higher price than Walmart because they positioned themselves as a premium service: luxury. You can see it with the other products they offer. Walmart has positioned themselves as a basic necessity at low prices. While both stores sell the same Citizen Watches at different prices, at Macy’s, you’re going to find products you can’t find at Walmart like Supima Cotton Sheets, and at Walmart you are going to find products you can’t find at Macy’s, like quality, more affordable sheets. Their product list and pricing strategy in both places support their Brand and Position.

Take this quiz to help you determine your Branding.

What is your favorite color? Why? Your blog, why did you choose that color scheme? Your business, what colors represent your company and why did you choose those colors?

What is your favorite animal? Why? If your “company” is different from yourself, what do you think would be your company’s favorite animal? If you could create an animal to be your logo or spokesperson, what would it be? Why?

Take a look at the results. Psychologically, we tend to think of our favorite color as a way to define who we are. For instance, my favorite color is light, all of the colors. Why? I am trying to live for God, who is light, who offered a rainbow of peace, who is love. To me, the entire spectrum represents all those things about me. Sometimes I’m a fiery, passionate red, but I’m also, at the exact same time, laid back as blue. In many ways, I’m a walking, talking paradox. This is who I am, not how I want others to see me.

Our favorite animal, in psychology, often represents the way we want to be seen. For instance, my favorite animal is the tiger because it’s fierce, strong, and graceful. Nobody messes with a tiger. It can passively sit aside and keep to its own business, but provoke it, and it will aggressively pursue you. While the real me is a peaceful person on the inside all about the light and the love, my relationships with other people will often change that about me temporarily. Some people bring out my inner beast, something that wouldn’t happen when it’s just me. I kind of want people to see me as such as a form of self-preservation.

When it comes to your business, you can compare and contrast your two lists. Maybe you can add to those lists now that you know what the questions mean and you have some perspective. Take the words from that list and choose 3 emotional words for who you are according to other people. Choose 3 images or icons to represent those words. For example, in my case, I might decide I want to brand myself as a gracefully ferocious, yet motherly, and passionate. My images to reflect that might be a tiger with cubs and a lot of red. I may otherwise decide I want to be gracefully ferocious and peaceful in one, and I’ll do that with tigers and rainbows.

Pursuing Position

Now your position is more of a luxury vs necessity. As a writer, you may want to position yourself as an expert in a field such as autism or marketing. You may want to be a fiction writer. Maybe a savvy liberal who delves into the controversy of politics. As a blogger, you may want to position yourself as top-notch writing with long, well-written essays that might be worth a Pulitzer some day. You may want to position yourself as a down-to-earth writer who writes shorter memoir on an easier reading level. Or maybe you want to hit mainstream with lists and quick reads.

Examples

Think about some famous people and how they have positioned themselves as a professional and a character.

Stephen Colbert, for instance, wears a suit on his show for a reason, and the glasses just add to that image of a smart, witty, sarcastic political guru. He has branded himself as smart, classy, and sarcastic. He has positioned himself as a semi-luxury item that I’m sure advertisers pay top dollar for, not quite as high as an ad during the Super Bowl, but not exactly Country Music Network.

A doctor of Psychology may write for journals and are highly esteemed in their field. On the flip side, Dr. Phil is not taken seriously by real professionals; however, mainstream people look up to him. One has positioned themselves as a Macy’s of Psychology while the other is the Walmart of Psychology.

My favorite comparison is between Toni Morrison and James Patterson. Both write fiction; however Toni is a Pulitzer Prize fiction writer, and her work is as difficult to read as Shakespeare. Her work will influence lives beyond her grave for years to come, and it will be chosen by professors as a required read in future college literature classes. James Patterson, on the other hand, write mainstream fiction. You can read one of his books in less than 2 hours with ease, and if you fell asleep during Chapter 10, you won’t miss much. His fan base, and I’m sure book sales, are considerably higher than Toni Morrison, but it would be very strange if a college professor required their class to read one of his books to study literature. Toni writes literary works. She has positioned herself there. James, he writes grocery store fiction. He has positioned himself there. Neither is better than the other because both have two totally different goals and brands.

Write it Out

It helps to write things out for purposes of focus. Getting a good idea of who you want to be and where you want to be helps guide you through marketing, design, and every facet of your business.

What are you looking for?

3 words to describe your overall emotion you want people to feel
3 words to describe you as a business or writer
3 images or icons that portray those words
A matching color scheme

You can use these for…

Keywords on your web site
Possible categories or tags
Marketing
Blog Design
Value Proposition
Business Plan
About Me Page
Personal Bio
Project Decisions (what to do next?)

Branding and Positioning helps keep a focus on what you want and improve your public relations. You’ll make it easier to remember you when you incorporate these images and concepts in all you do. Keep checking back for more in this series on creating a business plan. Don’t want to miss it when it’s done? Go ahead and subscribe.

Free Branding Worksheet

Get a free Word Template to help you define who you are and the emotions you portray. Plus other Business Plan Guides. It will look like this, perfect to print up and post near your computer.

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WAKE UP YOUR BLOG: Value Proposition

2016-05-08T12:58:00.000-07:00

A value proposition is where you define your value to your consumer, and it comes in handy for pricing, branding, positioning, and overall strategy.

According to Forbes, “In its simplest terms, a value proposition is a positioning statement that explains what benefit you provide for who and how you do it uniquely well. It describes your target buyer, the problem you solve, and why you’re distinctly better than the alternatives.”

When going through this process, consider the distinction between your readers and your sales. For example: Your readership may focus on QUANTITY of posts while your sales product (such as advertisements) focuses on quality as a result of the quantity. For instance, if you produce 2 posts per day, you are supplying mediocre products at high volume to your readers; however, you are supplying more pages for an advertiser in your sidebar giving them more visibility. If you blog and sell advertisements on your blog, you are probably going to want to do this for both products.

There is no right way to do this. The instructions here can be tweaked for your specific needs. You may come up with more than 3 bullet points, in which case, that’s ok. Go for it. You may decide to only have one main idea, or to eliminate descriptions.

First: List Your Awesomesauce

Let’s get started. First answer some of these questions and derive a list of things that make you more awesome than everyone else. List everything you can, but you are going to be looking for things that both your consumers really want or need (desire), and things that you can’t find too much in competition (exclusive). When brainstorming, you will probably want a list things your customers highly want and things you can’t find too much in competition and build from there.

You can also use Peter’s Printable to help you with this!

What are your main selling points?

Do you offer premium products? A quality that exceeds the norm? Something very different than your competition?

Do you offer a low price for an existing product?

What makes you so different from the competition?

Why should people go to you instead of someone else?

What are 10 words that make you stand out from everyone else?

What do you have that your customers want?

Which category do you fall under? Most Quality. Best bang for your buck. Luxury and Aspiration. Must Have.

If B2B, how do you address problems that are critical and blatant? If B2C, how do you address problems that are latent and aspirational?

What needs do you fulfill from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?

Derive this information from places like your SWOT Analysis and how it applies to your Industry and Market.

Second: Narrow the Awesomesauce

Now take all the points you have that make you valuable to your consumers, and decide how important it is to them.

MarketingExperiments.com suggests giving your value a ranking between 0 and 2 for Exclusivity and Desire. Multiply the two numbers together, and you want 3 line items that make a 2 or more.

For instance, one of your strengths might be “Daily postings.” First rank your Daily Postings between 0 and 2 on exclusivity, 2 for things that are hard to find and 0 for things that are easy to find elsewhere in your niche. In this case, let’s say the answer is a 2 for that niche in particular. Then rank your Daily Postings on what people want or desirability. In this case, let’s say the answer is a 1, like people in that niche (the target market) might be a 2 for DIY (can’t get enough of DIY), but a 1 on articles about blogging. Then multiply the two numbers together (2 times 1 equals 2), and because it’s at least a 2, Daily Postings might be a line item selling point if you don’t have too many 4’s up there.

One good tool to trying to decide how to rank these things is Google Keyword Planner where high competition of that keyword is a 0 and low competition is 2 for exclusivity, and high search amounts is a 2 for desire with low search counts a 0.

Narrow your highlight values into 3 line items. Think of this as the basis of a page or image on a page that advertises your actual products (for comparison with competition if someone is perusing 4 options), but not your branding image or emotional appeal.

For instance, you might do a Blog about Blogging where their branding image is a bird for “Freedom!,” but freedom isn’t a key selling point. A key selling point would be more like, “We offer long, detailed posts that are in-depth” or the opposite, “We offer short posts for quick reading.” In that case, “In-depth” or “Quick Read” is your line item.

Third: Define the Awesomesauce

Now let’s take your key points and organize them into useful pieces of information. You want to use conversational tone and easy words. The following should stand out, grab attention, entice interest, and suck people into your world.

Create a Headline

Create one Headline that encompasses all major points in your awesomesauce in as few words as possible using a key word for your overall product and a keyword for your overall value. This is your attention grabber that let’s SEO robots know what you are essentially about. It’s also your main idea that your awesomesauce is supporting.

Create a Subheadline

Create a Subheadline that encompasses all of 2 to 3 sentences (like a meta description) that again contains that one keyword about your overall product and highlights what you offer and why it’s useful.

Create 3 Bullet Points

Create 3 bullet points of value (the ones you listed above). In each point, have a headline (3 action words) of what makes you more awesome than everyone else from the list you created above. Then write a phrase about how you offer that.

For instance, EverNote’s bullet point:“Find things fast” can be your headline bullet point, and “Search by keyword, tag or even printed and handmade text inside images,” can be your phrase.

Find the Perfect Image

You want to find an image that embodies your overall message. It can be a picture of your product or something abstract.

What do you do with your Value Proposition?

Now you have this thing you can use in a variety of places.

You have created a title and meta data for your product landing page or About Me section.
You have created copy for that page.
You also have an image to use.
You can also use this in your media kit in a graphically appealing nature.
You also have something to help you determine your pricing strategy.
In addition, keep it in the back of your mind. You are focusing on these things, and it should be consistent with your marketing, branding, and even social media posts.
You also have something for your mission statement.

How the Value Proposition can be used in a Pricing Strategy

Use the value proposition to determine where you are in this tier of prices and where you want to be on this tier. Are you offering premium services? Or an existing product at a lower price?

PREMIUM. Generally, you want to charge more (15% above average) if you are offering top-tier, premium products in a place that has a solid demand (it doesn’t change much).
AVERAGE. Aim for average if there’s a lot of competition and you are slightly better than average. This strategy should focus on sales campaigns and differentiating your product for bigger prices. Eventually, this strategy can also offer premium services.
LOWEST PRICE. If the product is viewed more as a commodity, you want to price lower than average. Here the strategy is to consistently offer an existing product at a better price, usually in high volume.

Examples of Value Proposition in the Real World

Evernote’s page is probably my favorite because it’s easy to follow, pleasing to the eye, and very simple.

Geekdom created a statement that explains who they are, what they do, and a competitive edge (new kind). It’s very conversational. In addition, they found more than 3 bullet points that they wanted to list. This is fine, especially when you keep phrases short like they did.

Stripe added an emotional appeal; however, that is not part of their value proposition. We have a headline and subheadline of the product they offer, and then small paragraphs listing what makes them more special than everyone else.

Now that you have defined your value proposition, you are ready to use this in many facets of your entire planning. Your product focus and competitive edge is thus defined, and can be used repeatedly for consistency.

My main source for this article was ConversionXL and Peter Thomson. Other sources include Harvard Business Review,

GET YOUR FREE VALUE PROPOSITION PRINTABLE

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WAKE UP YOUR BLOG: SWOT Analysis

2016-05-08T07:48:00.000-07:00

Are you ready for the crap life throws at you in the near future? Trying to anticipate threats and manage your strengths to combat those threats are crucial to success.

My father owned a radio station for years. He purchased an AM station in the early 70’s, and in that time, it was one of the biggest radio stations in the area, and when FM radio came out, his station really took a blow. My father did a great job dodging all the obstacles FM threw at him. He was a great sales person, one of his biggest strengths. He could sell anything to anyone, and he did. Despite FM’s popularity, my father still had a great listening audience due to his high involvement in the community. But FM was a threat and not having an FM station was a weakness, and had he done a SWOT Analysis in the 80’s, he could have prepared himself for the future better with a plan to acquire an FM station. But he didn’t, so he gave his AM station to the church and got a job for an FM station… where the owner owned an AM station like him, but unlike him, acquired an FM station.

The SWOT Analysis is part of a series on building a business plan for your blog.

The SWOT Analysis takes a look at your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Strengths and weaknesses are internal while opportunities and threats are external.

In the blogosphere, bloggers generally have 2 customers: Readership and Sales. You may want to do a SWOT Analysis for both in order to best get an idea of where you are.

STRENGTHS

The strengths section of the SWOT analyzes the things that make you awesome to your target market in your industry.

Take a look at that closer. You want things that make you awesome. But you also want them to be things your target market actually wants. You also want them to be things nobody else is really doing in the industry. What is the point of having an awesome thing to offer people if they can get it anywhere else or if they don’t want it?

Questions to ask yourself:

What advantages do you have over anyone else?

What can you do better than anyone else?

What unique or low cost resource do you have access to that not many others have?

What factors actually “get you that sale”?

Examples:

Incredibly imaginative.
Great search capabilities.
Offers lots of free printables and templates
Unique combination of skills
A Graduate Degree
Field expert

Now you want to find ways to utilize those strengths. How can you re-enforce these strengths? What can you do to make them stronger? Stand out better? Are there any strengths you want to adapt better to the environment? Can you tweak a strength to be more exclusive to you? How much does your target market want your strengths? What emotion does your strength appeal to?

You can use your list of strengths for when you create a business plan, various aspects of a marketing plan and your value proposition.

WEAKNESSES

Weaknesses are internal things about you, your blog, and your business that could use a little work. While you want to try to list all the weak points you can find, you want to highlight the ones that are very important to your success.

For instance, a weakness for Moms Who Drink and Swear might be that she has really bad grammer, but it’s not necessary for her success to write with proper grammar. In fact, a lot of her reading base likes the bad grammar, and it adds to her unique style of writing. At the time of writing this, however, one of her weaknesses that she publicly professes is that she isn’t writing enough. She’s busy, and she doesn’t have the itch anymore to write, and she has explored ways to increase blog post and social media engagement during this temporary time in her life.

I love using Moms Who Drink and Swear as an example because she is the first to identify her own weaknesses with pride. She makes being less than perfect a cool, awesome thing. Better to be honest with ourselves than be delusional.

Questions to ask yourself:

What could you improve?

What should you avoid?

What factors “lose the sale”?

What is the competition doing that’s better than you?

What is a goal you are not achieving? How can you better achieve that goal?

What are you not doing? Or what can you do better?

Examples:

A lot of my posts lack a beginning, middle and end

I’m just not as funny as I wish I was

I don’t make my readers feel an emotion

I don’t have a social media page for my blog

I don’t have sharing buttons

My blog design is too busy

I smell like cheese (just kidding, that’s not really a weakness as much as an observation)

My numbers are low

I don’t have the money I’d like to invest in this, or I’m not making as much money as I’d like

My site is not much different than any other site in my niche

While answering these questions, if you find one item on your list that is a strength everywhere else (or not a weakness at all), it’s imperative you fix that weakness. For instance, if your weakness is that you don’t have a social media outlet for your blog such as a Facebook page or Twitter account people can hook up to find you, you might want to change that because everyone else is doing it on their blog, and a lot of readers expect that. Having the ability to share posts with a click of a button is also another thing everyone else is doing that you probably want to do with them because it’s annoying, as a reader, to waste time looking for a share button that’s not there.

So what weaknesses are everyone else doing well? What weaknesses are most interfering with your success? What weaknesses would your readers like to see improved? Can any of your weaknesses be turned into strengths? Is there a way to offer something slightly different that hurdles the weakness? What can you do to improve on the weaknesses? Is there anything you need to learn or find training opportunities?

You can use your list of weaknesses in product development, pricing strategies, goals and objectives.

OPPORUNITIES

Opportunities are external things that may present an opportunity for you to take advantage of. You are looking for cutting edge trends and things that are happening or about to happen within your industry and target market that you want to be on top of.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

What kind of opportunities do you see that you want to take advantage of?

Is there a huge deficiency in the industry to solve a consumer problem?

Is a new market revealing itself?

What do you think is going to be the next big thing?

What is something the competition really stinks at doing that you can do better?

Are there going to be any changes to technology or laws that you might be able to take advantage of?

Places to get ideas:

Your Industry Analysis. Your Market Analysis. Strengths (are their opportunities to use those?), weaknesses (are there opportunities if you eliminate a weakness?)…

Examples:

Tribe: Finding a tribe of bloggers (or belonging to one) for networking and writing opportunities. Example of a good tribe is Beyond your Blog for writers looking to get featured in other websites, or SITS Girls for bloggers seeking sponsorship opportunities.

Industry increase in computer users. From the Industry Analysis, we know that a good possibility exists for more users as the internet becomes more available. Most of these users will probably be in other countries, so the opportunity to reach a more global market is on the horizon.

Increase in tablets and mobile phone use. We know as these products are being improved and more available, opportunities exist to take advantage of the new trend in technology by catering more to mobile use such as Twitter Focus (mobile users seem to prefer Twitter when bored waiting somewhere because it’s short and quick). Optimizing your blog design for mobile use.

A gap in the industry serving consumer needs: For example, someone noticed the trend in adult coloring and noticed that nobody was making adult coloring pictures with cuss words on it, so that person made it happen.

In these opportunities, which ones do you want to take advantage of? How do you plan to do it? Which ones have you already taken advantage of? How are you doing it?

You can use the opportunities listed here when developing your value proposition, marketing campaigns, goals, web content, and product expansion.

THREATS

Threats are external things that threaten your ability to succeed. These are things you are going to want to have a plan to handle.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

What obstacles are there?

What are your competitors doing that might interfere with your success?

Is new technology threatening the way you do business (like how FM killed the AM radio star)?

Are there trends or laws requiring more than what you currently offer?

How is your cash flow?

Are any of your weaknesses threatening your success?

Examples:

Low barriers to entry for competition

High Competition

Low Demand

Piracy

New technology

Algorithm changes in places like Google and Facebook

Trends going against your grain (like if you blog about alcohol, an increase in anti-alcohol campaigns would pose as a threat).

Explain your strategy to hurdle through the threats. Is there any way to differentiate your product for a competitive edge? Or in case a trend interferes with your grain? Any marketing ideas to thwart issues before they arise? New products you might want to pursue? Like if you are still using Blogger, do you want to go to WordPress? Any goals you can make or a new focus? Can pricing affect the situation? Should up your price? Or reduce it?

Places to use your Threats List include product development, the marketing plan, goals and strategy.

Now you got through the SWOT Analysis, I hope you have a better idea of where you want to go with your blog or business.

FREE SWOT ANALYSIS WORD DOCUMENT AND PDF

Sources:

SWOT Analysis

SWOT ANALYSIS by Community Tool Box

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WAKE UP YOUR BLOG: Market Analysis

2016-05-08T07:35:00.004-07:00

What do my readers want? Trying to guess what people want to read and see and buy is a crazy game, but wait! Hold up! There’s a guide in front of my face under the button called “Insights” and “Analytics.”

This is part of a series on putting together a Business Plan for Bloggers, so let’s get to know our readers, customers, and our target market!

The Market Analysis section of a business plan takes a look at your target demographics and tries to forecast and configure basic behaviors to better understand your customers and readers, more specifically, what they want and need.

The best places for numbers are your own insights and analytics from your blog and social media. These will tell you everything you want to know about YOUR readers in particular.

Sometimes, more information about the internet as a whole might come in handy for planning or obtaining funding. Here are some general statistics and information.

When researching the basics of “Who is reading blogs,” keep in mind that you want the most current data available. The internet is changing faster than we can count.

Internet Users

According to Live Stats, “Around 40% of the world population has an internet connection today. In 1995, it was less than 1%. The number of internet users has increased tenfold from 1999 to 2013. The first billion was reached in 2005. The second billion in 2010. The third billion in 2014. The top countries using the internet are, respectively, China, The United States, India, Japan and Brazil.

You will find more statistics at Statista

The CIA has a wonderful Fact Book to get to know the gist of what people are doing by country, which is great information if you are delving to reach a market outside of your own geographic location. You can find summary information on Geography, people, government, economy, energy, communications….

For instance, United States Demographics

Ethnic Stats of US: white 79.96%, black 12.85%, Asian 4.43%, Amerindian and Alaska native 0.97%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.18%, two or more races 1.61% (July 2007 estimate)

Religion: Protestant 51.3%, Roman Catholic 23.9%, Mormon 1.7%, other Christian 1.6%, Jewish 1.7%, Buddhist 0.7%, Muslim 0.6%, other or unspecified 2.5%, unaffiliated 12.1%, none 4% (2007 est.)

Age:
0-14 years: 18.99% (male 31,171,623/female 29,845,713)
15-24 years: 13.64% (male 22,473,687/female 21,358,609)
25-54 years: 39.76% (male 63,838,086/female 63,947,036)
55-64 years: 12.73% (male 19,731,664/female 21,172,201)
65 years and over: 14.88% (male 21,129,978/female 26,700,267) (2015 est.)

Median Age:
total: 37.8 years
male: 36.5 years
female: 39.2 years (2015 est.)

Urban Population:
urban population: 81.6% of total population (2015)
rate of urbanization: 1.02% annual rate of change (2010-15 est.)

New York-Newark 18.593 million; Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana 12.31 million; Chicago 8.745 million; Miami 5.817 million; Dallas-Fort Worth 5.703 million; WASHINGTON, D.C. (capital) 4.955 million (2015)

Find more charts like this on PEW

How does the average American spend their time?

From BLS.Gov

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also provides quite a few tables and a summary, but one table that seems interesting is a break down of recreational time which consists of reading (if you are writing in books) as well as computer time and socializing. Wage tables show income for area, occupation, demographics, and industry. Forall the statistical data from the BLS.

Who are reading blogs?

For a general idea of what kind demographics are reading the top blogs of the industry; however, you can tell by findings that blogs are very NICHE and each blog reaches its own demographic. In essence, there are just as many blogs as there are demographic differences.

Senior Planet made a key observation in analyzing Pingdom’s article. Older people gravitate toward more serious and conservative sites like politics, finance, and discussion based blogs. Younger readers go for light-hearted, brash, and celebrity gossip.

Trends for Blog Posts

Content Length

Longer Word Count–> Google and Shares;
Short attention spans –> Readers.

According to Copypress, 2,416 is the average words for the top ranked posts in Google.

Speaking of quality content, Neil Patel did A/B testing on his site and found that his homepage with 1,292 words led to more leads – better leads – than a second webpage with only 488 words.

In addition, longer content got more shares (and were emailed) than shorter content in this study.

The key is to provide useful information that actually solves problems and answers questions. Most people Google for a quick answer, but they also want a useful answer.

But the same article suggested that the average attention span per user is 9 seconds. Other places say it’s more like 4 seconds and decreases every year.

Providing informative blog posts where an answer can be found in 9 seconds or less is a daunting task, but that’s what readers want.

Articles are best when they are Skim-Friendly. You want to break up articles into bite-sized, skimmable pieces without killing your page’s load time. Aim for texture with…

Headings and Subheadings
Pictures
Quotes
Embedded Social Media
Bullets and Lists
Table of Contents
Type of Content

The magic number for lists is 10.

Trust is also very important, so a byline and bio are important components to each post.

Better Graphics

Purpose of Graphics:

Remove the overwhelming nature of text
Increase views (content with images gets 94% more views than otherwise)
Enhance the experience
Sum up your post (the brain processes visuals 60,000X faster than it does text)
Social Media Friendly (63% of social media is comprised of images)
Entice Sharing (Tweets with images received 150% more retweets; 70% more with Facebook)

The experts say to offer a picture every 100 – 350 words (depending on the source). This helps break up text and remove the overwhelming nature of text on the screen.

To entice sharing from your blog and social media, the image is important. It’s the first impression. When sharing a post link, the image attracts clicks; however, sharing an image with a link to the post might expand social media virality. For this reason, you want something people want to share.

In addition, it’s important to pay careful attention to copyrights and usage.

Conveys Positive Emotions

Pretty much all shared content and clickable content conveys some sort of emotion. Okdork’s study showed the following emotions conveyed in 100 million pieces of content that was shared.

Why People Share Things on the Internet

Sharing acts as “information management”

85% say reading other people’s responses helps them understand and process information and events

73% say they process information more deeply, thoroughly and thoughtfully when they share it

To bring valuable and entertaining content to others; to enrich people

94% carefully consider how the information they share will be useful to the recipient

49% say sharing allows them to inform others of products they care about and potentially change opinions or encourage action

To define ourselves to others

68% share to give people a better sense of who they are and what they care about

“I try to share only information that will reinforce the image I’d like to present: thoughtful, reasoned, kind, interested and passionate about certain things.”

To grow and nourish our relationships

78% share information online because it lets them stay connected to people they may not otherwise stay in touch with

73% share information because it helps them connect with others who share their interests

Self-fulfillment

69% share information because it allows them to feel more involved in the world

To get the word out about causes or brands

84% share because it is a way to support causes or issues they care about

From New York Times

Social Media Stats

Get more charts like this from PEW

Jeffbullas.com has some interesting statistics about usage rates of each social media with an awesome infographic.

This is the who and the where of social media users.
72% of all internet users are now active on social media
18-29 year olds have an 89% usage
The 30-49 bracket sits at 72%
60 percent of 50 to 60 year olds are active on social media
In the 65 plus bracket, 43% are using social media
Time spent on Facebook per hour spent online by country. Here are the top three. USA citizens get the top gong at 16% followed by the Aussies at 14 minutes and the Brits at 13 minutes.
71% of users access social media from a mobile device.

The takeaway is that all age groups are starting to use social media, so you are safe to use social media for all ages.

Looking at the following chart he provides in his infographic…

Facebook and Google Plus and Twitter seem to have the most users, but the question is, how influential are the posts and how much time do users spend on each platform? Because of the high usership, you want to hit those social media channels, at least have some presence in those places. Facebook and Twitter are starting to moderate (though Facebook will probably continue to grow). The curve went up and is now going across. Google Plus, Instagram and Pinterest are just beginning to rise. It will most likely go up some more before leveling out. In social media, the biggest influencers are usually those who have been there the longest with fierce activity and penetration into that outlet. If you are going to create any social media plan, you want to pick one of the three growing to pursue as active as you are the ones that have already grown.

But keep in mind the strongest social media is probably still going to continue being Facebook. Pingdom says Facebook is steadily approaching to be the largest country on earth. It just keeps growing. 1.15 billion users!

Some random statistics

Basic Internet Statistics for 2012

If you don’t mind spending money on information, this website provides almost everything at a price.

To gather information on your own insights and analytics, check out my Free Word Template to create some charts of your information all in one place for multiple channels.

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WAKE UP YOUR BLOG: Industry Analysis

2016-05-08T06:53:00.000-07:00

What does the internet look like for people who provide content and services? What is going to look like? Originally published on The Write Moms.

Note: Most of this information comes from The Henry Report, and all charts were copied from there. The purpose of this article is to educate compiling information from various sources and customizing it for bloggers, and therefore, hopefully is considered fair use because I don’t have time to make a bunch of charts, and if I did, they would look the same because I would just plug in the numbers into Excel like they did.

The Internet Publishing Industry Summary

The Industry we shall analyze is labeled, “Internet Publishing.” Companies in this industry publish content and create websites online, and include social media and search engines, such as Google and Facebook in the United States, Baidu and Tencent in China, DeNA in Japan and NHN in South Korea.

These companies generally have two customers: The reader (comes for content) and the advertisers (comes for access to the readers).

Demand is driven by needs for information and entertainment. Profitability depends on ability to deliver the right content and offer desirable target markets to advertisers.

Large companies can save money on costs with high production and maintain multiple websites. Smaller companies generally compete by focusing on niche markets.

Top Players in the Internet Publishing Industry

Top Firms by Market Cap:

Google Inc. 365.21B
Facebook, Inc. 219.46B
Tencent 177.74B
Baidu 76.97B
Yahoo! 41.46B
IAC Interactive 5.07B
AOL, Inc. 3.49B
LinkedIn Corporation 33.61B
Apple 710.74B
Microsoft 349.48B

If the internet is the pie, market share tells you how big the pie slice is for each company. Here are some numbers for market share if you are curious or trying to get start-up money.

As you can see, this industry is highly concentrated as the top 50 companies account for 80% of the revenue; however, publishing and broadcasting (where bloggers fall) seems to be more fragmented than the larger companies who comprise most of the market share in the search engine arena.

“Companies that make up the “Other” 44% of the market share include social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn, Match.com or eHarmony; travel search sites including Expedia, Orbitz and Hotels.com; news aggregates and publishers like Huffington Post and Slate; as well as music and video services like Pandora, Spotify and Vimeo.” Source: Henry

Blogging Industry Playground

CLICK For the FULL INFOGRAPHIC

Industry Revenue

CLICK For the FULL INFOGRAPHIC

How do you make money from the internet? Well, let’s take a look at how most people in this industry make money.

Industry Revenue is made up of the following according to Hoover’s.

50% Advertising Sales
30% Digital Subscriptions
Unknown% Subscriptions and Licensing of proprietary products to other sites

IBIS World and Henry came up with different percentages, but we get a general idea of where the money is coming from for most companies.

Advertising Revenue

The bulk of internet advertising revenue comes from paid search results and display advertising (banners, buttons, video, rich media, and sponsorships).

But let’s take a look at how internet advertising hangs in all types of advertising spending.

Digital Media accounts for 28% of total ad spending (competing against TV, Radio and Print). This is a middle ground of percentages. It’s there because it has grown in the last decade, and it will probably continue to increase. We can safely assume it will grow to the largest percentage beating Television. The question is when? How long will that take? Keep in mind too that television advertising is also the most expensive advertising (meaning it can have less customers than the internet and still maintain it’s share of the market), but Radio and Print are also pricier than internet.

Other Revenue

Subscription Fees seem to work best for smaller, niche companies as most people do not want to pay for GENERAL CONTENT; however, they will pay for EXPERT CONTENT.

Smaller revenue streams include licensing and selling branded products.

Industry Forecasts

Industry in the Growth Stage

The industry is currently in the growth stage; however, it is beginning to moderate with an increase in competition for advertising revenue and low barriers to entry (meaning it doesn’t take much money to start up). Earnings are anticipated to grow a whopping 12% in the next 2 years, which means while everything is growing, you probably won’t notice much a difference between now and then.

More people are blogging. Most of your current large blogs started up right before everyone was doing it and are a huge reason why everyone is doing it. Now that everyone is doing it, it’s hard to get your name out there and to get people to remember your name over everyone else’s. Without the fat stacks of stats, it’s hard to get any fat stacks of cash.

But what goes around comes around. A large percentage of bloggers are realizing how much money they don’t make, and how much stats they aren’t getting, and will quit. The trend to blog will decrease at some point. What goes up must come down. However, advertising dollars is expected to keep growing for a while, so if you hang in there, in the next 5 years, the industry will be a different place, one where the blogs who have been around for 5 plus years will have more credibility with both its viewers and B2B (business-to-business) products.

This article from Debbie Weil took information from a paid marketing analysis and discovered that a lot of bloggers are now shortening their posts for social media instead of blogging (more readership that way; so much quicker for expressive posts), but the people reading blogs are increasing. She also noted that blogs that represent themselves as a media channel or website more so than a blog are showing more success because the word, “blog” is starting to have negative connotations. “I predict that in the near future the word blog will disappear from the main navigation of most sites. Good corporate sites will become interactive, real-time social sites, closely connected to the social web. And no one will know the difference.”

Advertising is where it’s at

Internet advertising is expected to increase 43% in the next 5 years approximating $42 billion. Search and social media will most apt make most of that revenue. Why do we think this will increase?
Digital advertising space is getting lest expensive–the supply of space has grown faster than the demand.
Internet Usage has increased, and is still expected to continue to increase
Greater ability to track ad effectiveness
Greater ability to target specific demographics

Sources are saying that companies looking to advertise need to continually make sure their products and services target people 25-40 years old, and they advise companies to keep an eye on who their users are due to rapid changes in adaptation life cycles and social trends. Because companies are being advised of such things, blogs looking to make advertising dollars should follow the same advice because the advice is geared to improving growth, but also, companies will be looking for this.

Expect More People on the Internet

Internet use will most likely increase due to steady growth in usage and times; it is forecasted to double from 2.9 billion in 2014 to 5.7 Billion in 2019.

A lot of sources are forecasting an increase in usage in developing countries.

One interesting thing to watch out for in tech news and innovation is SpaceX. Google has been rumored to be investing more into this company who is known for sending rockets into space, and according to their website, “with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.” It’s possible that they may be working to improve internet access.

Because he doesn’t have enough going on, Elon Musk—he of Tesla Motors, SpaceX, SolarCity, and the Hyperloop—is launching another project. Musk wants to build a second Internet in space and one day use it to connect people on Mars to the Web….

But he’ll also use the talk to announce his newest idea, which would launch a vast network of communication satellites to orbit earth. The network would do two things: speed up the general flow of data on the Internet and deliver high-speed, low-cost Internet services to the three billion-plus people who still have poor access to the Web. “Our focus is on creating a global communications system that would be larger than anything that has been talked about to date,” Musk told Bloomberg Businessweek ahead of the announcement. Read more about the project.

Regardless if you believe this guy can and will do this or not, the important thing to take away from this is that improving internet access is a big ticket vision for a lot of companies, and some improvements in technology to do such things are bound to take place in the near and distant future.

In addition to an increase in users, an increase in time spent on the internet is expected to increase an average of 5 hours per month by 2018. It seems like a rather small number, but we will probably notice more people online more often in the next few years.

Mobile Usage to Increase

Mobile usage is also on the rise. “Smartphones, tablets, and laptop sales are expected to continue to grow at CAGRs of 17%, 32%, and 5.3% through 2017 leading to an increasing number of Internet access platforms available as well a growing number of people that own an internet accessible device.”

Mobile Advertising Sales is also expected to rise; however, the cost of mobile advertising will probably increase in the next couple years due to smaller screen space and higher demand.

Currently, mobile advertising offers a better deal than desktop with a higher click thru rate and lower cost per click, making it all the more enticing for advertising.

Job Market Online

When it comes to finding jobs online for major websites, the industry is expected to grow. In the United States, the internet job market grew 40.3% from 2007 to 2011 with high concentration of jobs in California and New York and is expected to continue to rise with higher concentrations through the other states.

Industry Challenges

Slowing economy can affect growth rate.

Changes in government regulation can affect Net Neutrality.

“Advertising dollars are two‐thirds of the industry’s revenue and can be volatile. Finding other significant revenue sources would be extremely valuable.”

Major companies will be investing quite a bit into research and development, so smaller companies should be keeping up with latest technology.

“Monitoring and managing legal issues including intellectual property and copyright disputes, liability of online service for user’s behavior, privacy complaints and other lawsuits has become a costly reality for many of these companies.” Smaller companies need to make sure they are not infringing upon copyrights or privacy, and they will benefit for having some legal information on their site in regards to liability, warranty, content copyrights and a privacy policy.

ALL CHARTS IN THIS ARTICLE CAME FROM HENRY: Thank you Henry for all your FREE information.

Other Sources:

https://tippie.uiowa.edu/henry/reports15/internet.pdf

http://www.hoovers.com/industry-facts.internet-publishing-broadcasting-search-portals.1904.html

http://www.economicmodeling.com/2012/03/21/industry-report-internet-publishing-broadcasting-and-search-engines/

http://www.ibisworld.com/industry/default.aspx?indid=1974

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