For many writers, it is the easiest content form due to the margin of creativity they can show off while discussing any topic. If you are new to writing and wish to learn about writing a compelling blog post, then you are at the right spot.

In this guide, we will highlight 5 steps that can help you write an effective blog post. So let’s start discussing the first step without any further delay. 

1. Conduct in-depth Research

The first step for writing an effective blog post is to dig deeper into the topic. Without extensive research, you won’t be able to produce a valuable blog. In the research part, you need to collect data regarding the insights of the topic. It will help you clear your thoughts about it, and as a result, you’ll be able to write words that capture the readers’ attention. It will help if you remember that a blog shouldn’t be confused with a college essay, where you build up a story with no straight ends. A blog should be written so that people get introduced to the topic, understand its crux, and come to a conclusion. This can only be done if you conduct in-depth research. It will also help you build a narrative and stick to what you discuss.

2. Find and Use Keywords Strategically

Keywords have a crucial role in blogs, mediating between users’ search queries and your content. Therefore, it’s essential to find the right keywords for your blog to make it effective. The primary reason for writing a blog is to expose your business to the audience. If the keywords are missing from the blogs, the readers won’t be able to connect with the idea you are selling to them. Hence, it would help if you listed keywords that should be appropriately used throughout the blog. The keywords will also help you rank on the search engine result pages. However, it would help if you remember that the key phrases must be used naturally in the content. If you opt to overstuff keywords in the blog, its overall quality and worth will decline in the eyes of both the search engines and the audience.

3. Come up with Original Content

Originality is the actual key to success in writing an effective blog post. In the research process, you must create a mind map to get things aligned and discuss everything relevant to the topic. However, you should never steal others’ words and present them in your blog. While going through different sources, some words or sentences may stick in your mind, and there is a possibility that you use them unintentionally. To avoid such an instance, you can use a reliable plagiarism checker to check plagiarism online. This tool allows you to find instances of plagiarism existing in your content.

Tip: Save Time in Removing Plagiarism

After detecting plagiarism, if you wish to steer clear of it without wasting time, you can access a paraphrase tool. A paraphrasing tool is an AI-based utility that helps you create unique content from existing text without investing time and effort.

4. Avoid Jargon

A crucial factor to take care of while writing a blog post is to keep it easy to read for all kinds of readers. When you publish a blog, it is meant to be discovered by everyone, from a novice to a veteran. The usage of jargon will work in the opposite direction; you must refrain from using hard-to-understand terminologies in the blog post. To make the readers go through your article in the flow, you must refrain from using terms they might not be aware of. If the readers’ flow is disturbed, they may leave your blog and find a more accessible option to clear their thoughts about the topic. Therefore, you should keep your blogs jargon-free and make them reader-friendly.

5. Proofread

The final step to ensure effectiveness in the blog post is to proofread the final draft thoroughly. Once you write the blog, your job isn’t done here. It would help if you thoroughly went through the entire text to determine the errors that can hurt its reputation or performance. From sentence structure to grammar, spelling, and punctuation, everything should be flawless in your blog. You can rely on an online grammar check facility to proofread your blogs. This tool is specifically designed to aid writers in the detection and correction of grammatical mistakes.

The post <strong>The Essential Guide to Write an Effective Blog Post in 5 Steps</strong> appeared first on InspireFirst: Teaching You How to Be a Better Writer.

However, if you want to start a blog, you have to go through the steps and do the work. And if you’re diligent your blog can perform well and earn more revenue with your blog. This article is about starting and running an effective blog business to earn a little extra income.

Here are the 10 steps for how to start a blog and make money online:

1. Choose a suitable niche

Before you plan to develop a blog, you should decide on the blog’s niche. At this stage, some research may be needed on the market/niche because domain knowledge is necessary to write and run a niche blog.

Several niches can be used for your blogs, but you should plan to choose just one that’s dear to your heart and interests. If you choose a competitive niche, then it can be difficult for you to rank on search engines against your peers. Don’t be afraid of this. Some of the more common niches are written as follows:

• Fashion
• Health & Fitness
• Sports
• Education
• Technology
• Marketing
• News
  

2. Choose a conspicuous brand name for your blog

Blogging is a real business in which you invest your money, time, and effort. In this regard, you need to consider branding your blog by giving it a professional, creative name. A good name could attract the audience to read your blog when the name is discussed. Once you have selected the niche, you should focus on choosing the best name that fits your niche and attracts the attention of the user.

Remember that the name you select must be unique and interesting. Hopefully, the domain will be available for your blog that matches your desired blog name. Finally, the name should fully describe your brand and be inviting to your target demographic.

3. Buy a domain and hosting

The domain is the name used by users and search engines to recognize and access your blog while hosting is the server on which all your files are stored. There are thousands of domain registrars and website hosting companies. But allow me to make your search easier.

Register your domain(s) at Porkbun. They have great prices, security, and customer service.

Host your website at SiteGround. They have reliable uptime, blazing speed, and great customer service as well.

The task is to find the best domain registrar and hosting provider because bad hosting will cause a lot of problems for your blog. The main concerns would be the speed and security of your blog. If your website’s page speed is not fast, search engines won’t rank your site higher than your competitors.

4. Choose a platform for your blog

Here are two ways to create your blog–use a content management system (CMS) and or code it from the ground up. If you know how to code, you can create your own blog, but it could be complex and time-consuming to create an appealing blog this way.

The CMS is the most popular option and WordPress is the most commonly used CMS. WordPress is one of the best options for making your blog because it provides the themes and plugins that will help you develop and launch your site quickly. Besides, you can change the colors of your blog, header, footer, or add the post to WordPress quickly and very easily. If that’s not enough, WordPress is available on the cPanel of most web hosting platforms.

5. How to Start a Blog: Customize

In this step, you need to install a WordPress theme or develop it yourself. After that, you have to choose the colors you want for your blog and generally customize it. The best combination of colors increases the interest of readers. If you use WordPress, you can add neat widgets on your header, body, sidebar, and footers to improve the user experience.

6. Create a content strategy

By this point, your blog’s done and the steps to operation and monetization begin! Now, you can create some of the effective strategies for the regular writing of your content. The content should be unique, informative, and inviting to the reader and if you are successful with your content strategy, your visitor will become loyal readers! In addition to writing, make strategies to organize your content with a content calendar, optimize your content, and share it via your social media channels. You won’t regret it.

Power tip: Use a duplicate content checker before publishing content from another writer on your blog.

7. Search Engine Optimization

To reach the top position on SERPs (search engine result pages), you should apply SEO optimization to your blog in the following ways:

• On-Page SEO
• Off-Page SEO
• Technical SEO
• Backlinking
• Keyword research
• Social Media Marketing
• Search Engine Marketing
  

8. Apply for AdSense and other sources of income

There are many ways to earn money from your blog, including ads, affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, and event blogging. A couple of these options are briefly explained below:

Display Ads

The best-known brand for displaying the ads is Google AdSense, which pays you according to clicks and impressions on your website. You should apply after you have read the Terms of Use and after your blog is six months old. You can also apply for Ezoic after your website reaches 10,000 sessions per month or Mediavine after your blog reaches 50,000 sessions per month.

Affiliate Marketing 

Affiliate marketing is to sell someone’s product, but by displaying and discussing the product on your blog. If your site visitor buys a service or product after clicking an affiliate link on your blog, you will receive a commission under the agreement. Cha-ching! You can look into making an affiliate account with companies like Amazon and eBay.

9. Social Media Marketing

We all know the importance of social media in today’s world, and if you (or someone on your team) are not active on social media then you are missing a big opportunity to share your content. Your readers and competitors are on social media and you should be too. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Instagram -even TikTok are all places you can build your brand and promote your blog.

10. Analytics

Analytics are kind of like having exam results year-round. Analytics helps you measure the success rate of your campaigns, whether on your blogging, link building, or social media marketing. Analytics help you to know the views, bounce rate, and session time of your website. If you’re not measuring your traffic via analytics then you don’t know where you stand. Don’t skip this last important step for starting a blog.

Use Google Analytics to track website analytics for your blog and Hotjar to track how visitors interact with your website. That’s it. No unnecessary conclusion needed. Get to work now by choosing your blog’s niche.

Now you know how to start a blog, so get started and comment to let us know about your experience!

This post was proofread by Grammarly Premium.

The post 10 Steps to Start a Blog and Make Money Online appeared first on InspireFirst: Teaching You How to Be a Better Writer.

Who is Toni Morrison?

Before we dive in, let’s briefly give some context and background to who Toni Morrison really was. She was born Chloe Ardelia Wofford in Ohio in 1931. Like many black women and men during that time in America, she was surrounded by the institutions of Jim Crow laws and racism. However, Morrison’s parents had established an important sense of heritage and language in their daughter through songs and stories.

She went to and graduated from Howard University in DC and then went on to study at Cornell University where she got her Masters of Arts. She then taught English as a professor for a while after that while raising two children as a single mother. It was at age 39, a few years after, she began writing her breakthrough fiction novel, The Bluest Eye.

Then she wrote Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise which is looked at as the iconic trilogy of Toni Morrison books. Beloved was adapted into a screenplay starring Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey and the rest was history. Morrison’s written work not only made her one of the more recognized black female authors of her day, but one of the more famous female authors of all time! Before finishing up Paradise, she was honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature in ‘93.

She received the President’s Medal of Freedom in 2016 from Barack Obama. In 2019, she passed away at the age of 88.

Toni Morrison’s most famous quote that stuck with the world might be one that is directed straight to writers:

“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” – Toni Morrison

As one of the best Toni Morisson quotes, it can inspire any creative – not just writers. If there is a song in your head that you wish to hear, but it hasn’t been written yet. If there’s a film plot that you wish someone would create, but no one has created it yet. You must create it. This is one of the more motivational quotes as it is very simple, yet emphatically demanding of one’s initiative.

9 more inspiring Toni Morrison quotes

1. “The function of freedom is to free someone else.”

2. “You are your best thing.”

3. “Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind.”

4.  “Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.”

5. “Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

This here quote is one of Toni Morrison’s most quoted lines from her novel, Beloved, distinguishing freedom and ownership.

6. “At some point in life, the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.”

7. “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”

8. “In this country, American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.”

Toni Morrison was absolutely one to not shy away from the subject of racism. Many of her novels spoke to black experiences and black plights. This quote explains her thoughts on ‘whiteness’ being America’s clean slate, blank canvas. To Toni, all other kinds of American people were asterisks – not considered the true American standard.

9. “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”

This is one of the best Toni Morrison quotes for ultimate life purpose. We all are here to live and to die, but language is a means to live with connection. How can we live on this round planet together? How can we communicate with each other? In what ways do we connect to each other. That may be the measure of our lives.

In Conclusion

If you’re an aspiring author or poet, take a look at the work of Toni Morrison. Read some of the fan favorites. And whether or not you’re a writer, take a moment every once in a while and return to these 10 Toni Morrison quotes for motivation and inspirational reminders. While you’re at it, we recommend you also visit our article that features the best C.S. Lewis quotes.

The post The 10 Best Toni Morrison Quotes for Your Inspiration appeared first on InspireFirst: Teaching You How to Be a Better Writer.

What is a Haiku?

The best way to understand them is to explore the haiku definition and examples. Traditional haikus are an expressive form that seeks to capture the essence of a moment or experience. It is like looking through a tiny window into a much larger concept or experience. Many focus on the structure of the haiku, but this is only the tip of an art form that goes much deeper.

Understanding the 5-7-5 structure is essential to the construction of haiku poetry, so what is a 5-7-5 syllable pattern? The haiku contains three lines and is unrhymed. The first line contains 5 syllables, the second contains 7, and the third line ends with 5 syllables. The best way to understand the syllable structure is to read a haiku aloud and count the syllables with your fingers.

Scholars argue about a few nuances that result from differences between the Japanese and English languages. An English haiku contains a total of 17 syllables, and some argue that 12 syllables would be closer to the true Japanese form. Also, Japanese poets write the entire haiku straight across in one line, but English writers use three lines. For this exercise, the 17 syllables, three-line version is used. Let’s see how to write a haiku.

5 Steps to Writing a Haiku

The only formal haiku rules you need to be concerned about are the number of syllables in each line. Here are the steps of how to write a haiku poem.

1. Choose a theme

The first step in writing a haiku is choosing a theme. The most common theme in traditional haiku is nature. Seasonal changes are a popular topic, but you can write on anything that you wish to describe in your own world.

2. Choose a kigo

A kigo is a single word that gives you a clue to the season or time of day. Traditional haiku includes cherry blossoms for spring, wisteria for summer, the moon for fall, and cold for winter. The beauty of haiku is that you can choose something from your immediate environment to give it a unique personality. For instance, you might use daffodils, sunshine, leaves falling, or snow.

3. Include a kireji

A kireji is known as the “cutting word.” This word creates a pause or break in the rhythm. It often separates two images. This feature is not always found in English haiku, but it is a common feature of the traditional Japanese form. Using a kireji gives the poem impact and is a fun way to challenge yourself.

4. Create a surprise ending

Another characteristic of the haiku is its surprise ending. The first two lines flow into a theme. The third line can change the subject of the poem completely to create a twist in the theme. It can be a surprise action by the subject, or it can be about something completely different.

5. Look for future inspiration

A fun thing to do is to carry a journal around with you so you can try to create a haiku anywhere you go. You can find inspiration anywhere, even in the smallest things. Writing haiku can help you develop a greater appreciation for the world around you as you look closely for the subject of your next poem. This is an excellent way to keep your creativity growing and to take time to pay attention to the small details in your world.

Haiku Examples

One of the best ways to understand haiku form is the look at some famous examples. Here are a few of our favorites. See if you can pick out the season or time signal, kigo, and kireji in each one.

English examples

These examples have been translated from the masters in a way that keeps the proper 5-7-5 structure.

1. An old silent pond…
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again.
– Basho (1644-1694)

2. Whitecaps on the bay:
A broken signboard banging
In the April wind.
Richard Wright (1908-1960)

3. First autumn morning
the mirror I stare into
shows my father’s face.
– Murakami Kijo

4. Toward those short trees
We saw a hawk descending
On a day in spring.
– Masaoka Shiki

Traditional Japanese examples

The next set of haiku have the correct form in Japanese, but they lose the syllable structure when translated into English. They are beautiful and capture the essence of the poetic form.

1. Oh, tranquility!
Penetrating the very rock,
A cicada’s voice.
-Translated by Helen Craig Mccullough

2. A world of dew,
And within every dewdrop
A world of struggle.
– “A World of Dew” by Kobayashi Issa

3. I write, erase, rewrite
Erase again, and then
A poppy blooms.
-“A Poppy Blooms” by Katsushika Hokusai

4. In the moonlight,
The color and scent of the wisteria
Seems far away.
-Yosa Buson

These haikus give you an idea of the essence and feeling that the Japanese form tries to capture and how it translates into English. You can find thousands of examples online to serve as inspiration for your own haiku adventures. Of course, you could keep them to yourself, but that would hardly do them justice. Be sure to share the haikus you write with others because that is half the fun.

Now, you know how to write a haiku poem and have a few examples to get you started. If you had fun with this exercise, you might want to explore how to write a diamante, sestina, or Shakespearean sonnet. The next thing you need to do is to get out your journal and look around for something that inspires you. And the most important thing to remember about writing haikus? Simple: have fun!

The post How to Write a Haiku Poem appeared first on InspireFirst: Teaching You How to Be a Better Writer.

What is SEO and why does it matter?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It all has to do with how to get people to see the fabulous website that you built so that they can take advantage of your services. People have become accustomed to search engines that can meet their requests so precisely that they hardly scroll past the third page of search results.

If your website does not appear on the first couple pages of search results, it is like having your business stashed in a back alley with no signage or any way to find it. Getting your webpage to rank among those coveted top spots on the first page is where SEO strategy comes into play. First, let’s explain a little bit about how search engines match websites with queries.

Google depends on the relevancy of the results that it returns for its customers. If the person types in, “plumber Houston”, Google wants to make sure that they do not get search results that include electricians in New York. This would be frustrating for the user and would not be of much use. To ensure that Google provides searchers with what they want, they have developed a list of criteria that help them rank websites for certain search terms.

What all of this means for you is that if you are putting up a new website, getting the SEO for new site rank correct will help you drive traffic and get your business placed in front of those who need it the most. Google places emphasis on quality content when it comes to page rank. If you want to drive your business in 2021, you must be on top of your game when it comes to SEO for your new website.

The Ultimate SEO Checklist for 2022

The next question is how to use this information to get your page into the top search engine ranks. SEO in 2021 has become complex and involves many different working parts. Google continually updates its algorithm, so it can provide more precise search engine results to a tech-savvy audience that expects it. I have put together this checklist to help you understand the areas you need to address and some of the items that can help you improve your rank and grow your business in 2022.

How to use this SEO checklist

SEO activities can be divided into five different categories. This list was developed so that you can go through each section and see how your site stands up. Not all of the items on this list will be relevant to your website, but some portion of each of the key areas will be to some degree. You can use this list as a step-by-step guide to help fix the issues in each category and check the items off of your list.

Of course, the more items you can check off, the better your page rank will be. If this is a new site, you can start from the beginning and use this list as a final check before you launch. If you do not understand a certain category or items on this list, there are plenty of professionals available who are willing to give you a hand in getting your site up to Google’s standards. Now, let’s get into the five areas of our Ultimate SEO Checklist for 2022.

1. Basics for every page

Certain basics are important for every site. If these items are not taken care of, it will be difficult for you to rank for the search terms that you want, even if everything else on the list has been checked off.

1. Set up the right tools. Google and Bing are the two biggest search engines on the web. They have provided a set of tools that give you a wealth of data for free. The first thing that you should do is set up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools on your site.
   
2. Connect with Google Analytics. Google Analytics lets you know a little more about your target audience. It gives you information about who they are and how they are interacting with it. This allows you to better plan future strategies and campaigns.
   
3. Use an SEO plugin. If you are using WordPress as your content management system (CMS), then you should take advantage of one of their free plug-ins to help analyze your content. There are many good ones out there available, but I would choose between Yoast and RankMath.
   
4. Make a sitemap. A sitemap is simply a list of URLs of what you think are the most important pages on your website. Submitting this list to Google tells the crawler which pages it should ignore when ranking for keywords. It also tells the crawler how often you update your website. Those silly crawlers love websites that are updated often!

P.S. – Both Yoast and RankMath can create sitemaps for you. Submit your sitemap to Google by using the Google Search Console tool.

5. Make a Robots.txt file. If there are certain pages of your website that should not be crawled, this file will tell the crawler to ignore them. Some SEO plug-ins will create one for you, but some people have to create one manually.
   
6. Keep up with spam. Another plug-in that you should consider for your website is an anti-spam plug-in. If people place spam on your website, this can cause you to drop in rank. You need to make sure that you keep up with deleting it. A good plug-in can help you keep up with the load.
   
7. Make sure Google indexes your site. Some technical issues can cause your site to not be indexed by Google. You can see these in the technical categories of the checklist, consult a professional, or use other troubleshooting methods to find the problem.

2. Keyword research

You probably have several search terms that you want to rank for that are related to your business. If you do not rank for the right search terms, you will probably not turn visits into sales. You need to know the right keywords to include that are related to your business, and you need to develop a strategy for trying to rank for the right keywords and target audience. Here are a few suggestions to help you get started.

1. Know your competitors. This is a basic task for any business plan, and SEO optimization is no exception. You need to identify your competitors and enter their sites into an optimization tool that tells you which keywords they rank for and how they are using them. This might give you a few more ideas to expand the keywords you intend to use for your own site.
   
2. Know your most important keywords. You need to know which keywords will be the most profitable for you. Free keyword tools are available that will allow you to search for keywords related to your primary products and services. Ranking for these keywords is likely to bring the right customers to your website who are ready to buy your products and services.
   
3. Use long-tail keywords. Finding your main keywords will help you connect with your main audience. The problem is that your competitors are also trying to rank for these keywords. Long-tail keywords are targeted and help you connect with an audience that is looking for more specific information.
   
   For instance, if you are a seed company, you could expect that many people would be searching for “carrot seeds”. This search is likely to return hundreds of thousands of results and hundreds of pages. If you try to rank for “microgreen carrot seeds for warm climates,” then you are more likely to attract a slice of the audience looking for carrot seeds because your competition may not have tried to rank for those terms.

Power tip: Start with general blog topics and then use a tool like the SEMrush Keyword Magic tool to turn those topics into long-tail keyword ideas.

4. Create an organized strategy. Next, you need to create an outline that tells you which keywords will be connected to specific pages on your website. You also need to identify questions that searchers ask. Using the carrot seeds example, searchers may ask, “When should I plant carrots in the spring in Tennessee?” Questions such as these can give you great ideas for content that helps solve an issue for your customers and helps you achieve a higher search rank.
   
5. Prioritize your keywords. You need to know the difficulty of achieving rank for each of the keywords that you have identified and develop a calendar for the content that you create.
   
6. Create a content calendar. Search engines reward websites that add fresh, new content regularly. If you are not a professional writer, it is easy to sit staring at a blank screen and have no idea what to write. This is where a content calendar can be your best friend. Your content calendar can align your keyword strategy and serve as a guidepost in creating regular, consistent content. The importance of a content plan was a key topic at the Content Marketing World 2020.

3. On-page SEO

On-page SEO refers to the content that you produce. Of course, you want to make sure that you’re writing for humans instead of search engines. This means that using your keyword terms naturally and avoiding any language that makes you sound awkward.

Long-form content is king when it comes to driving organic traffic to your website. According to SEMrush’s State of Content Marketing Report, long-form content of 3000 words and longer get 3x more traffic and 4x more social media shares than shorter content. Also, long-form content gets 3.5x more backlinks than standard-length articles (901 to 1200 words).

Do you need help with creating long-form content, call on the team at NeoLuxe Marketing.

Some other things can affect your search rank. Here are a few of the most important ones that you should take care of to maintain your rank.

1. Fix title tags. Make sure to close your HTML tags in your H1 titles. This is what the search engine looks for to decide what the page is about. Make sure you have no duplicate titles or titles that are too long. Including keywords in your main title will also help your rank.
   
2. Fix meta descriptions. The same principle applies to your meta descriptions that apply to your title. You should look for any duplicates and make sure that every article has a meta description. If you don’t know what this is, the meta description is the little snippet of your article that appears below your title on the Google page. This is the information that will encourage someone to click on the article and read it, and it should also contain appropriate keywords.
   
3. Optimize all page content. All page content, including the articles, tags, title, and meta tags should be optimized for appropriate keywords.
   
4. Use ALT tags for images. Images play an important role in page rank. You should make sure that each of them has an appropriate description, has been sized appropriately, and are of good quality.
   
5. Internal linking. Internal links are one of the ways that you can begin to experience gains quickly. Including one or two links to high-quality pages on your own website can significantly improve your search results.
   
6. Fix orphaned pages. Every one of your pages should be linked to at least one other page. If Google can’t crawl through to other pages through your website, it will not consider your content to be an authority on the topic. All pages on your site map should be accessible through at least one other page.
   
7. Keep it fresh and updated. Google likes to see that you add new information to your page regularly. Even updating old articles can help improve your rank. It is a good idea to include this item in a regular audit.
   
8. Audit and prune. You should schedule regular audits to evaluate your content and all the points of on-page SEO. Some sites have found benefit in removing content that doesn’t rank or doesn’t add value to the site. Google wants to provide searchers quality, so make sure that yours fits this description.

4. Technical SEO

The technical side of SEO refers to how well your website performs. Here are a few of the key points to check for on your site.

1. Secure your site. Make sure that you are using HTTPS and not HTTP. Google now considers this an important factor.
   
2. Check for duplicate versions. If you have done a website upgrade, you might have old versions of your site hanging around. If you can’t eliminate them from being found, then make sure to use a 302 redirect to point them to a single page.
   
3. Fix crawl errors. Use Google Search Console to identify and fix any crawl errors.
   
4. Speed is important. If your page loads slowly, you need to take action to correct this issue. Google likes sites that give quick results to its users.
   
5. Fix broken links. It should seem obvious, but you need to fix any broken internal and outbound links. It is a good idea to run a regular audit to make sure that they are all accurate and working.
   
6. Mobile friendly. Check your website to make sure that it is mobile-friendly. A majority of searches now come from mobile devices instead of PCs.
   
7. Use SEO-friendly URL structure. Make sure that your URLs have keywords rather than search query strings.
   
8. Check page depth. Another factor to keep in mind is that no page should ever be more than three clicks into the website.

5. Off-Page SEO

Outbound links to authority pages and inbound links to your page tell Google that others consider your content to be valuable for a particular topic. Here are a few tips to improve your off-page SEO.

1. Competitor link analysis. This is another area where your competition can give you insights that can help you with your own link strategies. Analyze their pages to see if they are taking advantage of certain authoritative sites that you are not.
   
2. Search for new link building opportunities. Always search for new opportunities to link to authority pages outside of your own. For instance, if your organization was mentioned in a news article, it is an excellent opportunity to build an outbound blank.

Now you have the ultimate SEO checklist for 2022, and you are ready to get started improving your search rank and helping your business grow. This list covers the basics that you need to begin to see big leaps in your search rank. Of course, it is all up to you and how many of these factors you decide to include in your search engine strategy. Now, is the time to begin making 2022 the best year ever for your business.

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Let’s get into what it takes to grow your blog traffic and readership. There’s over 50 tips below, so grab a glass of water and get comfortable. Let’s go!

Support and Work with Others

It’s not good for man to be alone.

If you want to go far with your blog, you can’t go alone. This is why I believe deeply in networking with other writers and bloggers and growing a team to help accelerate blog growth.

Support Other Writers and Embrace Community

Reading other people’s content is one of the best ways to grow as a writer. This isn’t to say that you will jack their style, but it will open you up to new words and ways to approach a topic. Reading and supporting other writers will also open you up to new networks of support for your content. This opens up more opportunities for other writers to share your work with their readers and followers…and yes, this will yield more readers and traffic for your blog! 

Support another writer’s content without expecting them to support yours. When a community sees that you regularly support your fellow members, people will support your quality content.

For more on this topic of writing communities, check out our recent post on communities for writers.

A great writer’s community that I’m loving is the Medium writing community. There are so many talented writers there. Read, clap up, and share quality content from other writers (especially writers who support your content). If you like the writer’s stuff enough, give them a follow as well.

Grow a Team and Delegate Tasks

Another great way to scale your efforts as a blogger is by growing from the inside. I’m talking about growing your own team of writers, editors, researchers, website managers, and assistants.

If your budget permits, delegate tasks that you don’t do well. Even more, you should try to delegate tasks of things that you do well (and enjoy in some cases) if it makes business sense for your time and energy to be put into other things. In my personal case, I love writing but sometimes it makes more sense for me to craft an outline for an article and pass it off to a writer on my team.

Here are seven things that you can delegate on your blog:

• Keyword research
• Proofreading and copy editing
• Graphic design
• Blog / WordPress management
• Blog distribution / Social media marketing
• Link building
• Writing! (yup, I said it)
  

Write Better Headlines

I used to write my headlines or titles after I started my article, but now I craft the various headlines that I need before working on my article’s first draft. This helps me keep the headline and the purpose of the article in mind as I work on the body of the post.

I recently read about a writer who has focused headline writing sessions! This shows how seriously professional bloggers take writing headlines.

Remember that there are three different types of headlines to produce. You will need a good SEO Title, an H1 title or headline for on-page, and you will also need a title for social media sharing. Sure, all of these can be the same title, but they all serve a different purpose and have different roles in getting you more readers.

Power Tip: Craft a different headline for your Medium articles if you import/syndicate articles from your blog to Medium. Medium headlines and subheadlines tend to be more “catchy” than standard blog headlines.

Here are two neat tools that can help you write better headlines:

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

Emotional Marketing Headline Analyzer

Do Keyword Research

Doing keyword research before you write helps you match your interests and passions with the public’s actual (not perceived) interests.

Skipping keyword research is the biggest mistake that new bloggers can make. The danger is being discouraged by putting your heart, soul, and sweat into a blog post that no one will ever find.

The general rule is to find low competition, long tail keywords (3+ words) that have a relatively high search volume. I go deeper into this process in our Semrush keyword research tutorial.

Of course, the keyword research is only half of the battle. You should work your focus keyword into your SEO title, meta description, and within the body of your article 2-4x depending on its length. You should also find 2-3 secondary keywords that relate to your article. Work your secondary keywords 2-3x depending on the length of your article. Doing this consistently with all of your content will yield excellent organic traffic results.

Here are several more benefits of doing keyword research:

• It helps you organize your editorial calendar and prioritize your blog topics.
• Your content will be more targeted and helpful to your readers.
• Your Google pagerank position will improve over time.
• Increased organic traffic will lead to more conversions on your website.
• You will find keywords that your competitors are ranking for.
• Your positive results will inspire you to publish more good content, which will lead to more blog traffic!
  

Don’t do guesswork when it comes to the keywords that you use. Get real data on what the public wants to read about.

Here are some resources that will help you find some relevant keywords for your blog and articles:

Semrush

Semrush’s mission is to make online competition fair and transparent, with equal opportunities for everyone. Semrush is more than a keyword research tool. It is a competitive research service for online marketing.

Check out our Semrush keyword research tutorial for more detailed help.

Answer the Public

Answer the Public is a handy keyword research tool that gives you a visual representation of questions asked by the public based on the seed terms (one to two words) entered by curious keyword researchers like you. Use the questions that Answer the Public returns for ideas for questions to answer in your blog content.

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a keyword research tool that was developed by Neil Patel and his team. Ubersuggest is a great tool for tracking your blog’s organic traffic growth and reverse engineering your competitor’s keywords. If you find some great keyword ideas, you can use them for your next batch of content.

Quora

Quora is a social network founded by Adam D’Angelo that is built around questions and answers. It’s a hidden gem for finding keywords and blog topic ideas. Read our helpful Quora keyword research article to learn how to use it for keyword research.

Write and Publish Consistently

You have to love the writing grind to get more consistent with your craft. That’s why it’s crucial that you develop a daily writing habit.

I’m writing this section while in bed, under the weather. My eyelids are heavy and my body is fatigued. I will get some rest soon, but I’m determined to get in these words right now.

If writing your own articles is necessary but you don’t enjoy it, work to get through the inertia. Once you get over that hurdle, you will enter a state of flow. The words will come easier. Writing is like exercising…you’ll get stronger the more you do it.

One thing’s for sure…you need to get far away from your smartphone during writing sessions (unless you’re writing on it like I am now – haha). Put that demon of distraction in a different room and make sure it’s on silent/no notifications.

Here are some key tips for writing more consistently:

1. Set goals
2. Follow a daily routine
3. Write at a dedicated writing space (switch it up from time-to-time for inspiration)
4. Try different writing methods
   

Give our 3×3 writing process a try to help you get an organized routine for writing. You’ll be writing with confidence and consistency before you know it.

Make Your Writing More Personal and Rhythmic

Write in a way that connects with human beings by sharing stories and being more transparent. People love sharing good stories with others. My personal experiences are mine and not anyone else’s. This differentiates my content from other writers, even if we’re writing about the same topic. Help your readers get to know you and watch how it positively impacts your blog’s traffic.

Also, good writing flows and bounces like a good song. It has a rhythm and cadence that satisfies the mind while the reader’s brain is informed.

Mastering how to grow your blog traffic has just as much to do with improving your writing style and skills as any SEO or social media tactic. At the end of the day, people want to enjoy what they’re reading.

Here are some writing tips that will help you improve your writing style:

• Read more
• Mix up the length of your sentences in your posts. This helps create a cadence.
• Write to music that helps your words flow
• Try to eliminate filler words (especially adverbs)
• Read what you write out loud 
• Find a trusted and experienced editor
  

Bonus Tip: Write like the way you speak. This will make your writing more human and more enjoyable. If you want to increase your blog’s readership, craft your content to read like a heart-felt conversation.

Serve the Audience That You Already Have

Don’t always be on the search for more or something/someone new. Appreciate the audience that you have. Yes, it’s good to measure traffic or email list growth from time-to-time, but doing that too much can take you away from your mission of serving your current audience with your writing.

Your audience, your tribe loves your content and writing style. Your community responds to and appreciates your articles and email messages. I’m not saying that you should never experiment with different styles of writing, but I am saying that you should be grateful that your community loves what you do.

A great way to serve your audience is by sharing helpful content with your email newsletter subscribers. And that’s what I’ll be covering next.

Grow Your Email List with Lead Magnets and Opt-in Forms

Growing your email list is one of the successful blogging tips that will have the most long-term impact on your blog’s traffic. You see, you own your email list. You can export your email list (something that you should do often) and take it to whichever service you please (we prefer ConvertKit).

Strategically place email opt-in forms on your blog to grow your email list. You must have something of value to offer in order for people to sign up for your list. For instance, we offer our Go Long: Getting Big Wins with Long-form Blog Content eBook as a lead magnet to encourage visitors to join our email list.

Here are the various email forms that ConvertKit offers:

• Exit intent forms
• In-line content forms
• Slide-in forms
• Header and footer forms
• Landing pages
  

Communicate Regularly with Your Email List

You might be wondering how to grow your blog traffic specifically through your email list. The answer is simple: engage with them regularly through email messages.

Once people are on your list, you should nurture those relationships by sending them newsletter content once per week at a minimum.

I know what you’re going to say, “I don’t have time to create MORE content for a newsletter.” Well, there’s good news. You can make a loophole by tweaking portions of your blog copy and using it for your newsletter. Also, include relevant links to your blog within your newsletter broadcasts. This will help bring traffic to your blog and turn more people into loyal readers.

Sign up for ConvertKit for email marketing

Promote Your Blog and Repurpose Your Content

Your work isn’t over when you hit publish on a new blog post. Actually, the next phase of work is just beginning! You have to be creative to get your blog out there. At this point you need to repurpose your blog content to different channels. It’s a pretty fun process.

One of my favorite experts on this topic is Ross Simmonds of Foundation. His platform’s foundation (pun intended) is content distribution. He famously coined the acronym D.R.E.A.M. (Distribution Rules Everything Around Me). What he promotes is true. Check out this great tweet by him:

What can you turn that old blog post into?

One post = 8 Tweets
One post = 5 Linkedin posts
One post = 3 Quora answers
One post = 2 YouTube videos
One post = 1 PDF for download
One post = 1 Slideshow

Repurpose your content and give it more life.

— Ross Simmonds (@TheCoolestCool) February 29, 2020

One blog post can go a long way and touch a lot of people if you commit to repurposing it on various platforms. Just remember that each platform has its own vibe and rules of engagement. The big thing to remember is that most social media platforms don’t like their users to leave their website, so craft repurposed copy that can be enjoyed natively without sending traffic away. Your engagement is the product!

Join the Medium Partner Program

My writing career took another step forward when I decided to join Medium’s Partner Program. The Partner Program allows your published articles to be curated by Medium’s curators and shared via multiple channels for specific topics. The Partner Program also allows your content to be monetized because your stories are shared with Medium’s paid members. The more that paid members read your distributed content, the more money you make.

If you tastefully link back to your blog’s content within your distributed content, this will help new readers find your blog. Also, you can link to your email newsletter and/or blog within your Medium profile bio. The more your content is viewed (the more people you help), the more visibility you’ll have for your blog.

Important Tip: If you’re syndicating a blog post from your blog, use Medium’s import feature. It will bring over the formatting of your blog post and automatically use your blog post’s URL as the canonical link.

Nuclear Power Tip: After you join the Partner Program, submit some of your article drafts to the popular publications on Medium. If your articles get picked up by curators, some publications might reach out to you. Popular Medium publications have large followings that can bring a lot of attention to your articles. Just realize that many Medium publications won’t allow you to link back to your blog within the body of your article. But that’s okay because your profile bio is still great real estate for linking to your blog and newsletter as I discussed earlier.

Promote Your Content on Social Media Platforms

I admit that I don’t do this myself. InspireFirst as a team distributes our published content across our various social media channels (Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook). Remember: delegate.

Repurpose your content in a way that makes sense for each channel and its audience. Twitter is great for bulleted summaries of your content. Facebook is great for relatable content…content with a narrative that you can send paid traffic to. LinkedIn is great for repurposing your content into a shortened 3-4 paragraph post that’s accompanied by an image or a video.

You can use Markup Hero to create innovative and engaging visuals to market your content.

But I haven’t mentioned my favorite social media opportunity. Pinterest is my top recommended “social network” to engage on for bloggers. I put “social network” in quotations because Pinterest is more of a search engine than a social network. Sure, you can follow people, but people really use Pinterest to find and save images that relate to their interests. The majority of InspireFirst’s social media traffic comes from our Pinterest activity.

Here are five tips for how to grow your blog traffic with Pinterest:

1. Design and natively pin good looking images. If your image or design quality is low, people won’t click on them.
2. Add a link to your blog (post) to every pin.
3. Write excellent pin titles and descriptions. Include relevant keywords in your pin copy.
4. Sign up for Tailwind and help your tribe by sharing their pins (your fellow tribe members will share your pins if they look good — good design is really important).
5. Follow other Pinterest members’ relevant boards. Some of the people that you follow will follow you back and likely re-share from your boards.
   

Pinterest Power Play: Promoted pin – I prefer promoting a quality pin over boosting a Facebook post any day. It’s more cost effective, easier to get started, and you have a better chance of getting your content in front of people who are genuinely interested in your content. According to our recent promoted pin campaigns, InspireFirst paid $.20 (that’s twenty cents) for every person who visited/clicked to our website. That’s unbelievable value!

More Successful Blogging Tips

You thought I was done? Here are a few more successful blogging tips as you dig into how to grow your blog traffic.

Put Your Blog’s URL in Your Email Signature

Get more blog readers by simply putting a link to your blog in your email signature. This is an easy passive way to get more traffic.

Here is a screenshot of my email signature. Not anything fancy.

Put Social Media Sharing Buttons on Your Blog

Give your readers an opportunity to share your content with their network. This is a great way to passively introduce your blog to new readers and increase social media signals.

You want a plugin that hosts the social media sharing buttons. This will help keep your page speed fast. Grow by Mediavine (formerly Social Pug) is InspireFirst‘s social media button plugin of choice.

Write and Feature Guest Posts

You have to spread the love, y’all. If you’re a good writer with a topic that fills a void on another blogger’s website, approach them about crafting a guest post. Focus on serving their interests first. After all, it is more blessed to give than to receive. If things like up well, one guest post can drive a good amount of traffic back to your blog.

Be sure to adhere to the other blog’s rules and guidelines. If they only allow one link back to your website, don’t try to sneak in an extra one. Dishonesty is not a good look. If they require blog posts to be at least 1000 words, give them 1500 words of excellent content. Make a great first impression and they might ask you to write for them again! 

Here are more ways to crush your guest blogging efforts:

• Make sure your guest post is 100% original and not published anywhere else.
• Do keyword research and find a focus keyword and secondary keywords for your guest post.
• Proofread and edit your copy before submitting it. The 3×3 writing process will help.
• Show that you’re paying attention to their blog by working links to their other content within your guest post.
• Design or source a featured image that fits with the design of their site (realizing that they have the right to go another direction).
  

The more guest posts that you land, the more links you’ll get back to your blog! Read more here.

Have Others Write Guest Posts on Your Blog

Bring the loyal readers of other writers to your blog by inviting them to write on your blog. This is an attractive offer to bloggers if your blog has a high domain authority score. Plus, they’ll love to get a link to their site on your blog.

The benefit for you is that this opens up your blog to your guest’s social media followers and email list subscribers if they decide to share their post with their community (which is something that you should encourage them to do). Also, this will help you fill out your editorial calendar with more quality content. We know that consistently publishing great content is an answer for how to grow your blog traffic.

Put SEO Basics into Action

Executing white hat SEO best practices (along with publishing quality content) is the safest and most effective way to grow your organic traffic. It will take an investment of time and money (likely) to get your SEO in order, but getting it done will pay off. Once the search engines trust you, you’ll be in good shape as long as you don’t pivot to breaking rules.

Here is a quick list of successful blogging tips of SEO basics that you should put into action to grow your blog traffic:

1. Make your website mobile-friendly. Google won’t rank sites that aren’t responsive. Check out AMP if you want to nerd out on great web/mobile experiences.
2. As I mentioned earlier, do keyword research like your life depends on it.
3. Write a healthy amount of long-form blog content (1200 words or longer). The value that you provide will keep readers on your page longer (dwell time – which is a factor for SEO).
4. Install the Yoast SEO plugin and satisfy its suggestions until you get a happy green face (you’ll find out what I’m talking about).
5. Link to your other posts within your blog posts. These are called internal links. Mix in a quality external link (that opens in a new tab) here and there to keep your link profile nice and healthy.
6. Pitch answers on HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to score links from high authority websites. This is one of my favorite forms of link building.
7. Optimize your blog images before and after uploading them to WordPress. This helps improve your pagespeed.
   

Nerdy Power Tip: Look into schema markup (also called structured data). Schema is basically a language that search engines understand. Look, I’m no expert here but I know this stuff is growing in importance. You can apply schema markup to different pages or posts based on the type of content it contains. This will help the search engine better understand what’s on the page and display relevant information from the page (i.e. product ratings). Learn more about schema for WordPress and find your site’s schema markup by using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.

In Conclusion

Wow! We’ve covered a load today. You won’t have to read another successful blogging tips post for a while! Take it all in and join our newsletter to get connected and ask your questions (you’ll also get our latest eBook when you do).

This post was proofread by Grammarly Premium.

The post 50 Successful Blogging Tips for How to Grow Your Blog Traffic appeared first on InspireFirst: Teaching You How to Be a Better Writer.

What should I gift a bookworm?

We know that getting your bookworm another book is not the best option, unless you get them an Amazon gift card, but that just might not seem personal enough for you. When it comes to choosing a gift for someone who likes books, you need to think about things that will make their life easier. You also need to think about ways they can find more time to get other tasks out of the way, so they can enjoy more time for their favorite hobby. Something to make their reading space cozier is also a good idea.

What do bookworms like?

To answer this question, the short answer is that readers like anything that allows them to spend more time doing what they love and that makes it easier. The best gifts for bookworms include anything that allows them to enjoy reading even more. When choosing the best unique gifts for readers, You need to think about the person and any special needs that they might have. For instance, do they need help seeing, or do you know that their feet and hands are always cold? Asking these questions will help you get on the path to finding a gift that says you care about them this year.

11 of our Favorite Gifts for Bookworms

When it comes to literary gifts Amazon is an excellent source for finding bookish gifts for that special person in your life. Here is a list of our favorite gifts for book lovers to help you start your search.

1. Hooga Book Light

Lighting is always a good choice for those who like to stay up late reading a few of their favorite literary quotes. This light clips onto the book or their favorite reading device to help reduce eyestrain. It has three brightness levels and blocks blue light to promote better sleep. It is an excellent gift for students, children, and book lovers of all types.

2. Beats Solo3 Wireless Headphones

Wireless headphones are always a good choice for a reader. They can take them anywhere and listen to their favorite chill music as they enjoy one of their favorite books, or they can enjoy an audiobook. This set is comfortable, lightweight, and allows you to enjoy up to forty hours of listening on a single charge. It is also compatible with both Android and iOS devices.

3. Kindle Paperwhite Reader

We know that some bookworms just love the smell of old books and enjoy the feel of turning the pages, but there are times when this is not always convenient. A Kindle Reader is an excellent solution that you can take anywhere. Kindle Paperwhite is made to be glare-free, so you can see the page clearly even in bright light. It is made to give you an experience that is as close to a physical book as possible.

4. Doyzant Bamboo Bathtub Tray

There is nothing more relaxing than soaking in a tub and enjoying your favorite book. This bamboo bathtub tray has a book rest, a place for your phone, and a place for your favorite beverage. This tray would also be perfect for lounging in bed or relaxing on the sofa.

5. Himini Bamboo Laptop Desk

While we are on the topic of finding places to enjoy reading in a relaxing setting, this bamboo laptop desk is another great idea. We like this one because it tilts and has a drawer where you can put your phone or favorite highlighters. It has adjustable legs and can fold up to be stored away in little space.

6. Ricco Bello Journal

Every book lover loves to journal and take notes about their favorites. This is a great way to reflect and have something to contribute at their next book club gathering. While you’re at it, you might want to also add a fine pen.

7. STET! Dreyer’s English Language Game

How about giving your bookworm or writer a gift that will help them improve their skills. Dreyer’s is the authority on grammar, and there is not a bibliophile around who will not love to improve their skills. This gives them a fun way to do it with this unique card game.

8. O’Bright Dimmable LED Pharmacy Floor Lamp

One thing every bookworm must have is a good light. We like this one because you can swing it 360 degrees and adjust its height. You can place it next to a desk or table, or next to your coziest reading chair. This lamp is an excellent choice to reduce eyestrain and make sure your book lover gets the most from their hobby.

9. Waldo Brown Leather Reading Chair

This brown leather reading chair is the perfect spot for enjoying turning a few pages. Every avid reader needs the perfect chair for curling up with a favorite book on a long winter’s night. This one is a recliner, so you can be sure that your bookworm will be comfortable and happy.

10. Eddie Bauer Home Plush Sherpa Fleece Throw

Now that your favorite reader has the perfect reading lamp and chair, the only thing they need to round out a cozy evening of reading is this Eddie Bauer Sherpa fleece to keep the chill off. Now, they have everything they need for an evening of enjoying their favorite genre.

11. Novel Teas

Oh yes, we did forget one thing to make the perfect evening of reading. Every reader needs a set of Novel Teas to have in their favorite mug. These teas are made with only the finest Earl Grey breakfast tea and are something every literary fan will love.

Now you have some of our best ideas for gifts for bookworms that are not books. We invite you to explore more gift ideas for office and home reorganization and gifts for writers on your list. Holidays are a special time, and hopefully, some of these ideas will help make your holiday shopping a little easier.

The post 11 Best Gifts for Bookworms appeared first on InspireFirst: Teaching You How to Be a Better Writer.

More About Daniel Lamb

Daniel Lamb is a copywriter, web designer, and web developer all in one person! He is the founder of Holland Creative, a copywriting and design strategy company here in Atlanta.

Download Daniel’s content planning resource–exclusively for InspireFirst Podcast listeners!

Daniel Lamb Recommendations

Podcast: Copywriter Club Podcast
Music: Christopher O’Reily
Books: Profit First by Mike Michalowicz & Atomic Habits by James Clear

While I’m working I like to listen to instrumental music, because it helps me focus. I don’t get distracted by the lyrics and it helps me keep my energy levels in the right place.

Daniel Lamb

Email the show with questions, comments, and ideas at chris@inspirefirst.com.

Leave us a voicemail at 855.932.7263.

Please indicate if you want your email or voicemail to be read or played during the show.

This post was proofread by Grammarly Premium.

Interview Transcription

This interview was transcribed via AI, so it may not be 100% accurate.

Speaker 1: (00:01)
Now listening to InspireFirst podcast, where we discuss the art and science of good writing. Our mission is to inspire you to succeed within your writing and publishing goals through in-depth interviews, and expert insights. Get ready to grow as an author, blogger, and marketer with our host, whose content is reaching millions of readers worldwide. Chris Craft.

Chris Craft: (00:23)
Hey, Hey, what’s going on friends. Welcome to episode six of the InspireFirst Podcast. I’m elated to be joined by my friend, Daniel Lamb of Holland Creative. He’s a copywriter, a web designer, and a web developer. He does it all. And we talk a lot about productivity, his creative process, and how he was inspired to write. If you enjoyed today’s show, rate us five stars and give us a good review wherever you’re listening to this podcast and check us out online at inspirefirst.com. That’s inspirefirst.com. Now on to today’s show. 

Chris Craft: (01:01)
Daniel Lamb is a copywriter, web designer, and web developer, all in one person. He’s the founder of Holland Creative, a copywriting and design strategy company here in the Atlanta area. Welcome to the show, Daniel, how are you, man? 

(01:17)
Chris, thank you so much for having me. I’m doing really well today. I’m excited to dig into this conversation with you. 

Chris Craft: (01:23)
Me too. You feel like an old friend, but we literally just met like a week ago. 

(01:29)
Isn’t it funny how when you meet somebody and you’re just start vibing like that, that it feels like a lived in relationship, even though you really are just starting to get to know each other. 

Chris Craft: (01:38)
Exactly. Exactly. So it’s really cool, man. Um, I always like to start with people’s story, so let’s start there. Who is Daniel Lamb. 

(01:49)
Okay. Alright. hang onto your hang onto your seat. All right. 

(01:52)
So, as you mentioned, I’m the CEO of Holland creative. We’re a marketing agency based here in Atlanta, which is pretty cool, you know, considering that I’m from a little dirt road town in middle Georgia. So let me back up a little bit and tell you a little bit more about who I am. So I, I grew up in a place called Perry, Georgia, which is a small town, um, in the middle of the state. So a little bit about my, the name of my agency is called Holland creative. And the reason I call it that is because I grew up on a street called Holland road, which was a dirt road. It was a dirt road, like red clay, Georgia dirt. And it wasn’t paved until I was getting ready to leave for college at 18. So my first 18 years were living in the woods with my grandparents on a dirt road, um, which is very, you know, to in these days terms, it sounds really odd compared to the fast-paced digital life that a lot of us live, you know? Um, and so, yeah, I, I was raised by my grandparents, um, in middle Georgia. As you can imagine, they, you know, born in the thirties and the twenties. And so I, I was raised very traditionally, um, by very, um, you know, old school people who had very high standards. You know, I was I was always held to a super high standard in school. Um, you know, if I got a B, if the question was, why didn’t you get an A, and if I got an, a, the question was, why didn’t you get that A+? 

Daniel Lamb: (03:31)
Okay. Yeah. My grandma was a really, a really hard nose lady. Um, she was, uh, in collections, she worked for the Sears company back in the day and she was a collections agent. So she understood how to push people’s buttons and get results. I mean, today she could have been in crazy awesome direct response marketer, but, um, but yeah, so, you know, growing up with her, um, she was always making me do my homework and pushing me to, to do better and better and better, which probably gave me a bit of a perfectionist complex, um, which I can own that. I am probably my strongest critic today. Most people are always easier on me than I am on myself. So I have her to thank for that. That really has served me pretty well, being an entrepreneur though, because there’s nobody, you know, when you don’t have a boss, there’s no one to, to check up on you and say, Daniel, are you, are you performing at your highest? Are you getting things done or are you delivering on time or are you pushing for a better results? No, the answer is no. I credit her with that. My grandfather on the other hand was a little bit more laid back. Um, he, he was a, um, a government employee. He worked for the local air force base as a civilian. Um, and he worked on aircraft and stuff like that. And so he was really technically savvy. Like he always, he was always tinkering around with electronics and like wiring up like switches and like electrical schematics, but he was also really into gardening. One of my favorite memories of growing up there on Holland road was getting to garden with my grandfather. So growing tomatoes and vegetables out there in the garden with him and, um, you know, canning the summer with my grandparents. 

Daniel Lamb: (05:38)
And, um, it really, it was a lifestyle that, um, you know, that at the time I thought it was really lame. Um, but now there are some of my most cherished memories. Um, and yeah, so, um, you know, fast forward a bit. Yeah. I, um, I got into copywriting sort of accidentally, um, you know, growing up down there, I had no ambition to become a, you know, a marketer or a copywriter. Uh, the family’s plan for me was always to become a lawyer or maybe a doctor. Even that I was always sort of into words and talking and conversations and stories. Um, you know, they said Daniel will always make you’ll, you’ll make a great lawyer or a politician one day. And to me that just sounded gross. I never wanted to be a lawyer or a politician. I never thought of them as good role models. 

Chris Craft: (06:36)
But any who, um, my friends, my first jobs in the world were working as, um, really random things. Uh, I never really had a professional goal in mind growing up. I just kind of found my way into random jobs. So I was like, yeah, filing clerk at a doctor’s office. I worked as a pool cleaner, a pool boy. After all that, I taught music lessons after music school. Well, that’s another part of my story that we can dig into, um, Madonna where both me, but my main job experience before getting into marketing was in restaurants. So as I’m as a server, a delivery person, a dishwasher, I did all those things. Eventually it became a manager and a team leader there. So, I did all that working my way through college and, yeah, eventually graduated with an English degree. 

Chris Craft: (07:37)
And, uh, one of the great things about working in the restaurant industry is you meet all sorts of people every day. Yeah. And, um, I knew that, uh, in order to get a job, the competitive field like marketing, I needed to network. And so I spent the last few years of my, uh, time in the, in the restaurant industry, really networking and getting to know my customers, my people focusing on, um, yeah, cultivating some leadership skills and some networking skills. And so by the time I finished college, I was able to get a job at a small agency here in Atlanta. And so I was there for about four years and that’s where I kind of cut my teeth on content, writing SEO, copywriting, and, you know, the world of marketing, which college did you go to? Um, so my first foray into college was at the university of Georgia. 

Daniel Lamb: (08:27)
And I believe that I cursed myself by walking under the arch there at UGA. They say, you’re supposed to walk under the arch lest you fail at your collegiate endeavors. And so really I went there for about three semesters and I just wasn’t serious as an 18 year old, you know, out on his own for the first time. I was more interested in playing my guitar. So, I dropped out of UGA and then went to Institute of music and studied guitar and graduated from there and just kind of got into the lessons, teaching world and gigging and, um, working in restaurants, trying to do the music thing. Eventually that took me back into school because I realized that wasn’t super sustainable or lucrative. I ended up graduating from Georgia state with a degree in rhetoric and composition. 

Daniel Lamb: (09:17)
I finally made my way back to my high performance roots and graduated Summa cum laude there and, and did a bunch of extra, you know, distinction projects and things like that. So I was really gung ho for school. I think I thought that I was going to go into academia at first. Then when I started doing my research on the academic job market, I thought maybe I should look into other means of making it as a writer because teaching as a university professor might not be the, the, you know, the life that I’m actually trying to cultivate, 

Chris Craft: (09:49)
We’re talking about this offline, but, uh, you know, obviously that, that teaching aspect, um, your, your talent for it is still in play today. 

Daniel Lamb: (10:00)
Yeah, absolutely. I love teaching. And so, um, I’ve been able to parlay that into a few different, um, a few different things. Um, in my career, um, I started teaching workshops at general assembly about a year and a half ago. So we were doing SEO workshops and copywriting workshops. Um, um, like once a month there, those little two hour intensives, which I eventually turned into an online course called the copywriters field guide to SEO. And so that was a little beta launch I did earlier this year when the pandemic kind of set in. I was looking for something else to do. So I had a small launch on that, which was really great. I learned a lot from doing that. And then, um, this summer I have started, um, as an instructor at Creative Circus here in Atlanta. Which is, if you don’t know, that’s a portfolio school for people in advertising, so copywriters and art directors. And so I am, we’re about halfway through our first quarter. I’m really enjoying working with these up-and-coming copywriters and bringing something a little bit different to the table for them, where they’re really invested in brand copywriting. I’m, you know, more from the direct response and SEO background. So it’s been a lot of fun working with these young people. 

Chris Craft: (11:19)
That’s cool. So you mentioned during your story that you always had a way with words and you love words. When did you first realize that you had a love for words? 

Chris Craft: (11:30)
This is gonna sound funny, but I think it goes back to the Scholastic book fairs in elementary school. And I don’t know if you had this where you grew up, but we had a book club with, which was partnered with pizza hut. And so if you read a certain number of books, you could get a free like kids pizza. And so I was always trying to get that pizza. There you go. We are 

Speaker 3: (11:54)
Motivated by rewards. I love it. 

Chris Craft: (11:56)
So I was always with a, with a Scholastic program. I was always begging for extra money to go and buy books at the Scholastic fairs. Cause we didn’t have, you know, growing up in a small town, we didn’t have a great library or a great, um, a great, uh, what’s the word bookstore. Um, so it was the school library that I was always checking out tons of books from, and then, you know, going in hard with that Scholastic book fair and getting as many books as I could for the money that my grandparents would give me for that. Um, and so I’ve always been motivated by books and pizza. And so really not a lot has changed since kindergarten, but when I started to realize that I was into writing, it was probably high school, um, around the time. So I started playing guitar when I was 13 and I started becoming more interested in creativity and writing like music and writing lyrics and things like that. 

Chris Craft: (12:50)
So I started writing lyrics and poems, you know, around like late middle school, early high school. And, um, and so I think naturally I gravitated towards in school, like English class and history class, where it was more about the written word and story. And so I became like the GoTo person that people would come to for help with their, you know, their high school papers, you know, for editing for content. Um, and so I think, you know, by that time I knew that I had, um, sort of a, a love for the word, the written word by then. 

Speaker 3: (13:25)
That’s cool. Um, you mentioned your involvement with, you know, um, direct response and SEO. Uh, do you have a favorite copywriting success story from some of your past projects? 

Daniel Lamb: (13:39)
Yeah, absolutely. Um, so, so one of my favorite stories is from the very unsexy world of SEO copywriting and, you know, SEO gets a bad rap in the conversion copy world because of SEO is focused on keywords, keyword inclusion, and those kinds of tactics, but at a previous agency job, um, my first job in the field, we were working with a big online clothing retailer in the workforce space and they had these annual goals that at the time we thought were insane. They wanted to go from one year hitting 18 million in organic revenue to the next year hitting 30 million in organic revenue. And so me as the copywriter, working with the SEO team, we were stressed. We were like, how are we going to do this? And so, um, I was working with my boss’s strategist. And so we came up with, um, you know, a year long plan to do a bunch of H-tag optimization. 

Daniel Lamb: (14:36)
So, headlines on the pages that were more relevant for, you know, the copy, the copy was more relevant for the products they were selling top of the funnel content. So we were doing lifestyle content about outdoor activities out their lifestyle and, and then also a category page content blocks. So, you know, for the different types of, um, product categories, we were optimizing those pages using keyword rich copy in block form. So usually those live at the bottom of the page, but anyway, so through, through all these sort of various tactics, we were able to make them that actually exceed those revenue goals, um, year over year. And we did it, uh, I think for the time that I was at that agency, we hit our goals or exceeded them year over year for three years running. Um, which was really cool. It was really cool because, you know, mainly that that company was focused on search. And so we were always happy to get some bragging rights for, you know, content and SEO, because you know, the spotlight was always on the media buyers.

Chris Craft: (15:45)
And that’s the question that comes up all the time. You know, how do you, um, resolve the ROI of organic content and your story, you know, spoke directly to that. I appreciate you given the, the strategy and the tactics from it, from that story that was, that’s really inspiring to me. And I’m sure it is to our listeners. 

Daniel Lamb: (16:05)
Yeah, it’s, it’s tough sometimes to, to measure content marketing on an ROI basis. But I think that the best way to do that is to look at how content is feeding the top of the funnel. So while your metrics might be, you know, new viewers or time on page being longer, whatever it is that you choose as a KPI, I think it just has to be contextualized with the rest of your metrics, because it’s like, like, think about a paid traffic funnel. Like if you don’t turn traffic on and put people into that funnel, your bottom line metrics, aren’t going to look so good. And so if you’re using an organic mechanism like SEO or content marketing to push traffic into your funnel, you can look at it through the same lens as your paid advertising cost, the cost to create and amplify that organic content. You could look at it like ad spend. Rather than trying to say that this piece, one piece of content, you know, resulted in this many sales, you could look at it through that lens of, well, we created this batch of organic content. It costs us this much. And now that it’s pushing into our funnel, we’re seeing, you know, that ROI calculation on the back end, based on the, the, the whole, you know, efficiency of the funnel, if that makes sense, 

Chris Craft: (17:28)
Very smart. Who are some or of your past mentors or current mentors in the copywriting world? 

Daniel Lamb: (17:37)
You know, I would have to say, um, my first mentor that I really looked up to in marketing, wasn’t a copywriter. Um, he was the CEO of my first job, Response Mind Interactive here in Atlanta. His name is Ken Robbins. And the reason that I bring him up is because he was sort of like a, like a connector and a gatekeeper. He turned me on to all of the old school founders of marketing, like, um, like Claude Hopkins and John Caples, and like so all these like basically copywriters who more or less defined the era that proceeded the one we’re in now with all their measurability stories and the ways that they talk to customers to find out the unique mechanisms that would sell these products. But Ken was always encouraging his employees to read, read, read, read, read, and read widely. 

Daniel Lamb: (18:32)
So not just copywriting books, but books about cognitive psychology about, you know, um, the theory of constraints, um, all these different topics that have really informed how I go about doing business. Um, but that said, I think some of the copywriters that I look to today and have looked to over the past couple of years, um, number one, I would definitely recommend checking out Joanna Wiebe from copy hackers. Uh, she has so much great educational content for free and for, for a fee. Her methodologies are really solid. Um, and, uh, she’s a great person, um, for more of the traditional sales copy, like the, you know, the direct response stuff. I would say that right now, there’s no one better to look at it than Stephan Jorgi. He has a program called the RNBC method and it is insanely effective. 

Daniel Lamb: (19:28)
There’s also some free content from him that you can get and start to, to understand how it works. But basically he has systematized the whole long form sales letter process into some concrete steps that you can put to work. And even if you’re not writing long form content, like looking through those lenses isn’t is really, really helpful in terms of, um, figuring out your way into, um, that sort of direct response copy. Um, and then for like the personality driven copy and conversion copy based on personality brands, it’s actually a peer of mine. Uh, my friend, Brittany McBean. She is working with some really great some of the top names in our field right now on their website copy and, and, and, um, she has a great handle on how to translate, you know, that sort of hyper, current, like cheeky, punchy stuff into good copy.

Daniel Lamb: (20:28)
You know, we’re, we’re in a really great place right now with social media and, and, um, online groups that all these people are actually really accessible. If you want to learn from them, there’s nothing stopping you. 

Chris Craft: (20:42)
Wow. Great, great feedback. Thank you. What does your in a writing routine, but like on the personal level? 

Daniel Lamb: (20:51)
Oh man, that’s a great question. I love starting with the free stuff. Especially if you aren’t already in an agency or getting paid to do big SEO projects where you have all the fancy expensive tools. One of the great things to do is just to go start a Google account, um, and get into keyword planner, get into trends, get into search console, Google analytics. Um, if you can get into these tools, there are a lot of ways you can use them to find out what sort of competition levels are going on for keywords, what sort of, data you can find by location. 

Daniel Lamb: (21:26)
So if you’re trying to do local marketing, Google is great about giving you data based on where the searches are coming from and the volume of searches based on location. Um, but if you’re not looking for, you know, that kind of data, Google trends is great to find out what people are talking about right now of trends. Yeah. Yeah. So unpacking like different ways to use that tool. I’d definitely recommend if you don’t know how to use the tools, go to YouTube and just look up tutorials on how to use these things, because sometimes it’s not apparent to, you know, just jump into the interface and figure it out, but find these free videos. They’ll make your process a lot faster. When I’m looking for voice of customer data, and trying to figure out, you know, what my unique way into a topic is, I love going into a few different places. 

Daniel Lamb: (22:15)
Obviously customer interviews are going to give you the best one to one information. So if you’re working with a client who will give you access to their customers, definitely interviewed them directly. I mean, this, this is a tactic that goes back to the founders of marketing. Um, uh, talking directly to the customer is, is pure gold, but if you don’t have direct access to customers, find where they have written their thoughts down. So go onto Reddit, uh, look at subreddits for different types of topics. Like for instance, if you’re writing about healthcare, not healthcare, but health routines, health supplements, or exercise, like Reddit has subreddits on paleo, on Kito on all these different things. If you’re in the product space, I would recommend going to places like Amazon or other online retailers and reading through, um, product review is, um, and then when it comes to, if you’re trying to research for things that aren’t necessarily reviewed on Reddit or Amazon or Google, I would say go to competitors’ sales funnels and copy. 

Daniel Lamb: (23:27)
So, look at what the competition is doing from a messaging standpoint, find the top number. I mean, the top, the number one, number two, number three, people in a space and look at their copy and see what sort of, you know, persuasion mechanisms are built into what they have to say. Um, and so those are just a few of the ways I could say, start getting into the research. There are a few other tools out there as well that you might want to check out, uh, like Answer the Public, Quora. There’s no shortage of places to find information. 

Chris Craft: (24:03)
Yeah. Without a doubt, without a doubt as far as, Oh, and that was going to say you, as far as your writing, are you, uh, you know, jot your ideas down on paper guy first, are you an outline-guy first or just open up a blank, uh, document and let your words spill out and then she put up later, how do you approach the writing part? 

Daniel Lamb: (24:26)
It kind of depends on what project I’m getting into. Um, if it’s a, you know, if it’s a sales letter, I, I have a sort of fill in the blanks process that I start with where I put my research in different places. I sort of figure out which, which ideas are going to go for different sections of the letter and sort of a mad lib, a little bit with a sort of a swipe that I have created for myself. But I use that to then sort of go into the writing process. So I like to have all of my research and quotes and data’s sort of sourced into one document. Then I will use that to create a fresh one. So side-by-side, I like working with side by side windows, um, for that reason. Um, and so then for, for more of the tactical writing where it’s like SEO writing and stuff like that, um, I have built myself a few templates that I work out of. Um, and so those are sort of optimized account characters for me to, um, to format [inaudible] and so on, um, and to, to basically sort of wrangle and all that, all the specs for me. And so those are more done, more mechanically. 

Chris Craft: (25:48)
So, as writers and marketers, you know, remaining productive is very important. Um, do you have any tools or recommendations or productivity hacks that you can tell to our listeners? Daniel? 

Daniel Lamb: (26:03)
Sure. I’m, I’m kind of a productivity geek, so I’m glad you asked this question. I started getting into productivity a couple of years ago and reading some books on the, on the subject. One of my favorite ones, um, was the perfect day formula by Craig Ballantine. Um, show notes for sure. Yeah. Yeah. He’s a business coach. He mainly works with like fitness coaches and stuff, but he also works with marketers. But one of his tips was to create this thing called magictime. Magictime is real a similar concept to Cal Newport’s Deepwork and creating these focus blocks of time. Basically, productivity for me starts with intention. So, I like to plan my day on the evening before so that when I get up and get into my, into my work, that it’s already scaffolded for me planned out for me so that I know I like to start with the highest value tasks first. 

Daniel Lamb: (27:09)
So working on the things, you know, if it’s, if you’re a business owner it’s working on those income producing activities, like prospecting building content, um, you know, reaching out to people for sales stuff, if you’re an employee and you’re trying to uplevel, I would say focus on the things that will make you better in your craft. Like working on, you know, your, your learnings, um, but then there’s also a rule that I like to follow. It’s called ten-three-two-one-zero. This is more about like mind body, but 10 hours before bed don’t drink any more caffeine or any stimulating, um, drinks, uh, three hours before bed, no food, no alcohol, two hours before bed, no work one hour before bed, no more screen time.Then zero, zero is zero times. 

Daniel Lamb: (28:11)
We press the snooze button. So no snooze button. That ten-three-two-one-zero is another thing I learned from Craig Valentine, but those things just the magictime or the deepwork. And then following that, that structure for, backing out of things in the day has been really helpful in terms of systematizing the way I go about my work and about my, you know, my own habits. Outside of that, I think it’s really important to have systems and processes. So, one of the things that I’ve invested in is simplifying that stuff down. Rather than having a billion different places where I have things written down and tools and stuff, I’ve simplified it down to three. Um, my project management is all in Asana. So, I have built out a system for myself where I track all my deliverables and communications about deliverables there. 

Daniel Lamb: (29:10)
Instead of using paper, I got myself one of these RocketBook things. So if you’re not familiar with Rocketbook, it’s basically reusable paper that you can then scan into an app. That will let you put it wherever you want it, and you can also use it to, whiteboard in real-time. So, there’s like these little beacons you can hook up and do, um, lessons on, um, you know, in real-time with that. Um, so that’s been helpful in terms of cutting down the paper and, and not having so many notebooks and random things hanging out. Um, and then the other thing is, is really blocking out time on my calendar for different things. So there, I have a theme for each day in my business. I like to stack client meetings on Mondays and some times on Tuesdays if there were a lot of them. Wednesdays are completely blocked out for execution focus, work, basically content delivery, client delivery. Fridays are usually reserved for doing podcast interviews like this, and then working on business systems. So, you know, my onboarding processes, my, you know, email swipes, uh, finance, that kind of stuff. So basically just kind of carving up my week into different sections so that, um, I am more able to focus on the things that are important when I need to.

Chris Craft: (30:37)
We’re on with Daniel Lamb of Holland creative follow up question about that. I have children. Do you have dogs? They’re needy distractions happen? How do you handle or manage the distractions? 

Daniel Lamb: (30:51)
Well, it’s always a work in progress and it’s not about perfection. It’s about, it’s about, I think, first being, being gentle with your children and gentle with your dogs and gentle with yourself and understanding that, you know, what, we’re in a situation now where we can’t always escape. Um, we can’t always escape distractions and we can’t always escape disruptions. So, one of the things that I do is I get up very early, uh, earlier than most. And so having that early morning time is really helpful for my productivity. Um, so I get up at 3:57 AM every day, which might sound extreme, but I also go to bed early. And so it works out. I get enough sleep, but getting up early helps me knock out those main important things that really have to get done right away. Um, but in terms of actually managing, you know, those distractions in real time, I think, I think having a few tactics lined up are helpful. 

Daniel Lamb: (31:53)
One, I have my office in a separate room, you know, I don’t, I don’t do work in their living room or the dining room or the bedroom. I haven’t, I have a home office, um, obviously today, uh, because of the dogs, I am recording this interview on my patio. Being flexible is a big part of that as well. And, I think in terms of being flexible, it’s also important to, to not be too, too hard on yourself, if things did go wrong, you know, tomorrow’s another day. Then in terms of like working with clients and working with, with colleagues, we’re all in this boat. So, with my students, with my colleagues, if dogs are being bad, I’ll tell them up front on the call, Hey, I’m going to do my best to keep my mic off when you’re talking. Uh, but I can’t, you know, I can’t help that my dogs have been, um, you know, cooped up because we just got them fixed last week. So they’ve been incredibly, incredibly, um, incredibly cagey this week because of that. So, um, just being upfront with people and setting those expectations, um, I think that people don’t like disruption, but if they expect it, it’s not really disruption. It’s just, you know, it’s just, um, you know, by-product background noise 

Chris Craft: (33:10)
To be fair. Uh, I will be irritable if I got fixed too, so.

Daniel Lamb: (33:14)
Yeah. Yeah. If you got fixed and then you had to stay inside and not do anything fun, I think, I think dogs are kind of like kids too. Like this concept of time is much more, much more visceral for a dog or a small child than it is for an adult. You know, that framing of, uh, an hour to a two year old an hour is a really long expansive time since you’ve only been on the world for two years. Um, and for a dog as well, uh, for us two hours is like, you know, it’s a matinee. 

Chris Craft: (33:45)
It is it’s, it’s nothing. You work a lot with coaches and course creators. Why that niche? Why is that appealing to you? 

Daniel Lamb: (33:56)
Yeah, so, so for me, um, obviously I’m naturally a teacher and I’m naturally a helper. I’m always been one of those people who maybe even to a fault and against his own better judgment will go out of his way to help other people, even if it’s inconvenient or maybe not even smart. Um, but you know, in marketing, we have this power to persuade people and to influence behavior. And, you know, obviously marketing gets a bad rap in a lot of circles for pushing agendas, products, and people that are necessarily aligned with the greatest good. But the reason I work with copy, I mean, I’m not copywriters, but, uh, content creators, or course creators and coaches is because it’s about a mission. It’s about a mission to create a better world through, you know, educating people, helping people overcome their struggles and, um, you know, leading, leading the charge on, you know, being healthier, being smarter, being more equipped to deal with what’s going on in the world around us. And so, um, that’s why I love working with fitness coaches, mindset coaches, course creators, um, who are, you know, driven to help other people, um, you know, take their life in the right direction. 

Chris Craft: (35:25)
I love it. What is your favorite marketing strategy or tactic that leads to growth for your clients? I know, I know the tactic, tactic, tactic, but the listeners love to hear this type of stuff. And, uh, you know, I’d like to learn too. So, I was just wondering, you know, what stands out to you from your experiences? 

Daniel Lamb: (35:47)
So, I think that for a lot of clients, it starts out with this question of, we need to get more customers or we need to spend less money on paid advertising or whatever the pain point is. Um, invariably what I almost always find is that it’s not a marketing tactic that they lack because they’re already doing all the things. It seems like we’re always doing all the things all the time. And so the biggest thing is to create a, is it create a process, really, um, a process that will allow all these tactics to come into concert with one another. I think another word for this, a buzzword for this is a funnel. If you’ve read any of Russell Brunson’s books like Traffic Secrets or Expert Secrets or Dot Com Secrets, it’s all about creating, um, mechanisms by which people can get to know you and buy from you and then how to ascend them through your value ladder or, you know, basically create more value for those customers and keep them engaged. 

Daniel Lamb: (37:05)
One way to interpret that would be to create a funnel. If you don’t have a funnel in your business, I think the first step is to start by asking yourself the question, like, who am I serving and what am I giving them? I think then the second question is how can I deliver more value? And so the transition, um, and the translation from those questions would be something that looks more like a traditional funnel. Step one is giving away something for free, like a piece of content right now, translating content into a funnel means, you know, creating, an opt in or somehow, you know, a way to keep someone engaged after they read that one piece of content or download that one, you know, um, resource for them. And then from there, you know, that one thing solves a problem. 

Daniel Lamb: (38:01)
And then the next lead in is a, is to solve a bigger problem that maybe is a paid product. I paid workshop or, um, some sort of memberships, some sort of, you know, tangible paid offering that is an entry level buy. Then from there, you know, you can ascend to more higher value, higher complexity problems that he saw, whether that’s an actual product or a done for you service. Um, but looking at that through the lens of the funnel, um, and the value ladder, I think the is one of the big missing pieces for a lot of businesses. The cool thing about that is it really frees you up to think about goals and a little bit less about, okay, should we be running Facebook ads or should we be doing SEO or should we be creating landing pages. Because chances are you kind of need a little bit of everything. 

Chris Craft: (38:55)
Yep. That’s right.

Daniel Lamb: (38:56)
So like looking at it through the lens of a funnel helps sort of tap down some of the noise of which tactics do we need and focus on a bigger goal and a bigger, um, a bigger idea. 

Chris Craft: (39:10)
Great, great answer. Well, Daniel Lamb, one of my favorite names, by the way, Daniel Lamb, your, your name is cool man, uh, of Holland creatives. Um, we were talking about this the other day, dude, you have a rare combination of talents, you, right? You design and you develop, how do you balance it all? 

Daniel Lamb: (39:30)
I think the balance comes from looking at the sort of the 80-20 rule, which is 20% of my activities produce 80% of my results. While I do know how to do a lot of things, the decision then comes down to what should I be doing? So, you know, I’ve had to learn how to take some of the focus off of low-value activities and, and, and, um, you know, hire developers, hire other writers, and hire designers where it makes sense so that I can focus on the things that you know, are inside my zone of genius as it were. But you know, I think back into the idea of creating those daily themes or time blocks to focus on different things. I think that you know, the biggest, the biggest, advantage that I’ve found is to limit task switching because each one of those, you know, each one of those focuses writing, developing, and designing sort of tap into different, um, different brain frequencies, different, you know, different types of focus. So, isolating them and working on them one at a time is really, I’d say the biggest thing that I would recommend if you’re a multidisciplinary practitioner 

Chris Craft: (40:59)
And follow up question, um, you kinda talked about this with your, your weekly blocks. How do you, cause you’re a solopreneur essentially. I think you have a couple of VA’s, but how do you balance the, the, your creative responsibility and the more administrative things like sending invoices and receiving invoices from your VA’s processing them, et cetera. 

Daniel Lamb: (41:22)
Yeah. Um, so two things on that one. I invested in, um, a resource called HoneyBook. Before I was in HoneyBook, I was using one invoice software, different emails to, you know, do prospecting and client communications, uh, and then Asana to project manage. Um, and then there’s the question of how to project manage between myself and the client? Well, one of the people that I mentioned earlier turned me on to HoneyBook and, basically that will allow me to invoice, allow me to take pay minutes, allow me to do onboarding, offboarding, and project management on the client facing side, all in one place and manage my sales pipeline. So, that has been really helpful. It was not as expensive as I thought it would be, I think like a year subscriptions, only a couple hundred bucks, but, in terms of time savings, like having that tool has cut down on a lot of, uh, of the piecemeal work that goes into that. 

Daniel Lamb: (42:31)
Then in terms of processing all these different things, uh, you know, and communicating, it comes down to blocking off the calendar and picking when I’m going to do those things. Um, I generally will process like payout invoices on a net 30 basis. So once a month I pay all my BAS and subcontractors that are working for me. That also makes it easier to, uh, you know, plan for cashflow and things like that. So having a process, whether that’s net 15, that 30 or whatever, you know, works for your business, I think figuring out how to, how to manage cashflow and how to manage your time around that stuff is essential to maintain your sanity and, creating some efficiencies that will allow you to then replicate scale if that’s what you want. 

Chris Craft: (43:24)
I love it. Um, you mentioned some good books, um, during our talks a day. Uh, but what are you reading right now? Or what are you listening to right now in terms of books or podcasts? 

Daniel Lamb: (43:34)
Man, I listened to so many podcasts and it’s hard to, it’s hard to whittle it down, but I would say 

Chris Craft: (43:42)
Before you answer, when do you consume content? Right? Um, yeah. 

Daniel Lamb: (43:49)
Um, so I listened to podcasts, usually when I am doing things that require my hands. So if I’m washing dishes, cooking out on walks with my dogs, or, you know, if I’m exercising, um, you know, driving any time that I, that I need to be doing something that isn’t, work-related, I’ll usually listen to podcasts because I like to, you know, I like to make the best of my time. Um, but I also can’t listen to them when I’m working, because then I just get distracted by the podcast. And I can’t. Um, so that’s actually, that actually brings up another productivity hack that I didn’t before, but I listened to instrumental music while I play while I work, not play, I guess it’s kind of like play sometimes, but, you know, while I’m working, I like to listen to instrumental music because, um, it, it helps me focus and then I don’t get distracted by the lyrics. Um, and so it also helps me keep like my energy level in the right place. So my vibes and the good place, sometimes music with lyrics skin, like push me in one direction or the other. So I listened to instrumental music when I, when I write. Um, and I don’t listen to podcasts or audio books when I write, because it’s distracting.

Chris Craft: (45:07)
One of my hacks, yeah. One of my hacks is I’m a big Radiohead fan. 

Daniel Lamb: (45:11)
Oh, me too. I didn’t know that about you. Yeah. 

Chris Craft: (45:13)
Yeah. So I think kid a is the best album with vocals 

Daniel Lamb: (45:21)
For writing. Oh yeah. Yeah. It’s great. That both kid a and Amnesiac are like fantastic records for writing. If you want, I don’t know if you know about this guy, but Christopher O’Reilly plays Radiohead on piano. And so it’s all radio. He does a lot of different artists, but his radio had, um, performances are amazing and it’s all instrumental piano music. And so it’s really intense and complex if you’re into piano music, but Christopher Wiley is a killer pianist. His Radiohead stuff is fantastic. 

Chris Craft: (45:56)
Yeah, we’re definitely gonna, I’m definitely gonna look that up and listeners look out for our, um, instrumental only, uh, inspire first Spotify playlist here, coming up soon, we’re going to be marketing that and putting it out there for our writing community, but I totally took you down a rabbit hole, man, your podcast and your books that you love to listen to. Oh, sorry about that. 

Daniel Lamb: (46:18)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So a couple of go-to podcasts. So two of my mentors, um, Rob Marsh and Kira Hug, they are great copywriters and good friends. They have a podcast called the Copywriter Club podcast, um, and that comes out every Tuesday. They have a really rich library of great interviews with copywriters and business experts. I definitely recommend checking that out. Let’s see, other than that, um, I really liked the Minimalists podcast. Josh Fields, Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. They, they have some great conversations on there about, about like intentional living. That one’s more for inspiration. In terms of books that I, that I’ve been reading lately, um, goodness, um, I’d say right now I’m focusing on reading Mike McCallowitz’s Profit First book, which any of anybody who’s in business for themselves should probably read that book. It’s got a lot of great insights on how to structure your business and how to prioritize your business finances. What else… Atomic Habits by James Clear. That’s really great on being intentional about cultivating practices and habits in your life and sort of how to structure your approach to that. Creating habits that stick. 

Chris Craft: (47:49)
I love it. Daniel, you have been a rich resource to me and to our listeners and to our community. I really, really appreciate you, man. Um, so thank you for joining us. Where can our listeners learn more about you and Holland Creative and all that you’re doing? 

Daniel Lamb: (48:09)
Yeah, absolutely. So, my website is Hollandcreative.io and, uh, for people who are tuning in today, I do have a special little thing for you. So, a lot of the tools and things we mentioned, I’ve put together a resource. Um, and so I’d like to offer that to you. Um, if you go to, hollandcreative.io/inspirefirst, you’ll see a page there where you can download a guide that will help you plan your content better. It’ll show you some of the tools we’ve been talking about for research planning and SEO and, and productivity. There’ll be a video in there as well. That will kind of walk you through the whole process. Um, if you want to use that and how to integrate it in your business. 

Chris Craft: (48:54)
Hey, I have a strong feeling that this won’t be the last time, uh, Lord willing that we’ll have you on the show, but until then be blessed and have a great weekend. We’re recording this on a Friday. We’re right up against the weekend, man. 

Daniel Lamb: (49:08)
Yeah, absolutely. It is going to be nice tomorrow. I’m hoping to get out for a hike. Thank you so much for having me today, Chris, this has been fantastic. 

Chris Craft: (49:17)
I appreciate you. All right. Thank you for listening to the Inspirefirst podcast until next time. I hope you enjoy today’s episode of the Inspirefirst Podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to give us a good review and give us a good rating wherever you’re listening to the podcast. If you want to learn more about Inspirefirst, check us out online@inspirefirst.com. That’s inspirefirst.com and send us a tweet. Hit us on Twitter @inspire_first, until next time.

The post The World of Creative Copywriting with Daniel Lamb appeared first on InspireFirst: Teaching You How to Be a Better Writer.

This article is for you if you… 

• Spend a full workday (8 hours) writing novels, articles, or blog posts.

• Microblog on social media.

• Do UX writing/design and need a laptop powerful enough to handle a lot of graphics.

The ideal laptop specs for you will be different for you depending on various factors like your average daily writing time and the software/applications that you plan to run. This guide will provide you with the most important features of a great laptop for writers so that you can make the right purchase for your writing career.

What are the must-have features and minimum requirements for a laptop for writers?

With so many choices out there, how do you decide which laptop is best for you? It all depends on your specific needs. Let’s get into what you need as a writer from your laptop. Here are the must-have features and minimum requirements for your next laptop.

Keyboard

It’s important that you find a laptop with a comfortable keyboard that works well when writing in low-light (backlit keyboards are great for this).

Unlike desktop computer keyboards, good laptop keyboards don’t have number pads on the right side of the keyboard. Letters should be your focus and keyboards that pack too much into a small space make typing less comfortable and harder to find and access important keys (like delete or arrow keys) during fast typing.

When purchasing the best laptop for writers, you’ll find that the most quality laptop keyboard will have a comfortable layout, full-sized keys, and space around the arrow keys for optimum productivity.

Portability, Design, and Screen Size

Size and weight: Unless you plan for your laptop to be a stationary part of your home office setup, go for a lightweight option (4 pounds or less).

Screen size and quality: Laptops screen sizes usually range from 11.6 in – 17.3 in, but a screen size anywhere between 13-15 inches is suitable for writers. You want the screen to be large enough so that you won’t have to strain, but not so big that it makes the laptop too bulky to move around with ease.

Chances are you’ll be staring at a screen all day while writing, so glossy screens that are susceptible to reflecting light aren’t a good choice for writers. The glossy screens (most touchscreen laptops) look good but the reflected light can be harsh on the eyes, especially if you’re writing outdoors. I recommend going with a matte screen with 1920x1080px resolution (Full HD).

Battery Life

Laptop battery life is crucial for writers. There’s no guarantee that you’ll have access to an electrical outlet when you’re writing at the coffee shop.

So many things can affect battery life — the brightness of your screen, WiFi, Bluetooth activity, keyboard backlight brightness, which operating system you’re running, how many applications you’re running at once, and more; it all depends on how you use your laptop while working.

A good rule of thumb is to select a laptop that provides 5-8 hours of battery life after a single charge. Again, it all depends on how you use your laptop and where you plan to use it. Will you be writing in coffee shops and diners or in your home office where you can keep your laptop plugged in?

Solid State vs. Hard Drive Durability

If you plan on traveling with your laptop and if speed is a concern, then a writer’s laptop with a solid-state drive (SSD) is the best type of laptop to purchase. A solid-state drive is a storage device that uses integrated circuits to store data using flash memory instead of a spinning disk like a traditional hard drive (HDD). 

If a laptop with a hard disk drive is dropped or roughly handled, the HDD could break and all of its data could be lost. On that note concerning durability, invest in a good laptop case, bag, and/or backpack that fits your laptop’s size and weight.

Storage, RAM, and CPU

Storage: While standard hard drives (HDD) offer more capacity and are cheaper than solid-state drives, go with a solid-state drive because they keep laptops fast, thin, and lightweight.

As far as capacity/storage, 256 GB SSD is the ideal drive type and size for a writer’s laptop. This will give you enough room for additional software and storage for larger files like podcast audio and videos. You may find laptops with a combination of hard drive and solid-state drive. This combo cuts down on the cost of an all SSD storage laptop but doesn’t compromise too much on speed.

RAM: 4 GB of RAM (random access memory) should be the absolute minimum for a laptop that will be used ONLY for writing. Go with 8 or 16 GB if you use your laptop for more tasks like graphic design, video work, and podcasting. The more RAM that your laptop has, the more applications that it can run simultaneously.

CPU: An Intel Core i5 processor is a nice CPU to have inside your writing laptop but an i7 is even better if you want your laptop to perform at its best. Be warned, however, i7 processors could cause your laptop base to get hot and have cooling issues, which isn’t good for long-term use or product life. A hot laptop isn’t the best for comfort and productivity if you’re a writer who likes to write with your laptop on your lap.

Customer Service and Warranties

No matter how great your laptop is, accidents happen. It is a machine, after all, and it could break down before or after the warranty period. As a writer, you can’t afford to be without your laptop for a long period of time!

Look into the details of the manufacturer’s warranty:

• How long will the laptop be covered? 
• What parts of the laptop are covered by the warranty?
• Can you purchase an extended warranty for the laptop?
• What kind of access do you have to customer service — 24/7, chat support, phone, email? 

Warranties are especially important if you’re purchasing a refurbished or used laptop.

Price

Going back to durability, you want to invest in a laptop that will work for you for at least 3-5 years. That doesn’t mean that you need to fork up a ton of money in every situation to find the best laptops for authors, bloggers, journalists, etc. A laptop below $1000 could fit your needs perfectly! In general, great quality laptops for writers can be found at various price points between $350-1200. 

Brand names aside, the type of processor a laptop has plays a major part in the cost. Laptops with the fastest processors usually cost the most. If you plan on doing graphic design work, audio work, and/or video work, you’ll want to invest in a laptop with a fast processor (i5 or i7).

How to Shop for the Best Laptop for Writers

I know that there are a lot of features to keep in mind, so start with YOUR top 3-4 must-haves in your writer’s laptop. Is your list big screen size, long battery life, and large drive storage?

Start right here in this article and spend some time researching the laptops out there that work for your situation and use your list of must-haves as a guide. Make a list of your top three laptops and do the following:

1. Write a good ol’ fashioned pros and cons list and compare the laptops to each other
2. Read reviews from different sites and ask other writers in your community for their opinion
3. Double-check the laptop’s warranty information and make sure you get a great insurance plan to keep you covered

The 9 Best Laptops for Writers

Based on our research, here are the 9 best laptops for writers like you. We have a nice range of laptops for you to pick from $350 to $1200.

1. Apple MacBook Air

The Apple MacBook Air owns the crown as the best laptop for writers because of its speed, durability, and up to 18 hours of battery life! All of this helps the MacBook Air be the best MacBook for writers. And if you’re looking for laptops with the best battery life, you can’t get any better than the MacBook Air.

You’ll fit right in at your local coffee shop with this writing laptop. It may not be the best laptop for writers on a budget, but it’s the most powerful and aesthetically pleasing machine on our list. Also, the Mac OS is way more intuitive than Windows (in my opinion). So if you’re looking for the best laptop for journalists, then the MacBook Air is for you.

Make the Apple MacBook Air your writing laptop.

2. ASUS Chromebook Flip C433

Can I tell you how much I love Chromebooks as writing laptops? I think they make the best laptop for blogging especially because it ranks highly among the lightweight laptops, has the super-fast and easy-to-use Chrome OS, possesses elite battery life, and delivers a seamless connection to Google Docs and Google Cloud.

I use an older version of the ASUS Chromebook Flip C433 when I’m writing at the coffee shop. My Chromebook is my go-to portable laptop that helps me write with confidence when I’m surrounded by other writers typing away on their Apple MacBook Air.

Make the ASUS Chromebook Flip C433 your writing laptop.

3. HP 14” Touchscreen Home and Business Laptop Ryzen 3-3200U

The HP 14” Touchscreen Home and Business Laptop Ryzen 3-3200U is the best cheap laptop for writers on a budget. It almost serves as a 2-in-1 laptop because of its 14” touchscreen display. There’s a lot to love about a laptop offering that gives you 8GB of RAM, SSD, and 6 hours of battery life for under $600.

Make the HP 14” Touchscreen Home and Business Laptop Ryzen 3-3200U your writing laptop.

4. Acer Aspire 5 Slim Laptop

The Acer Aspire 5 Slim Laptop is a popular, highly rated budget laptop that’s perfect for writers. The backlit keyboard and long battery life help you have long writing sessions deep into the night.

Make the Acer Aspire 5 Slim Laptop your writing laptop.

5. Lenovo IdeaPad 3

With the Lenovo IdeaPad 3, you get 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and a long battery life for under $550. Sign me up.

Make the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 your writing laptop.

6. 2021 Newest Dell Inspiron 15

The 2021 Newest Dell Inspiron 15 is a perfect laptop for writers who also work with graphic design, video editing, and/or podcast editing. Its 16GB of AMD 3rd Generation Ryzen 5 3450U Quad-Core CPU, and large capacity 512GB SSD makes it a good multimedia laptop for the creative who’s on a budget.

Make the 2021 Newest Dell Inspiron 15 your writing laptop.

7. HP 15-inch Laptop, 11th Generation

Get more done with the HP 15-inch Laptop, 11th Generation and its ample storage. This reasonably priced laptop is a popular seller for good reason.

Make the HP 15-inch Laptop, 11th Generation your writing laptop.

8. Lenovo ThinkPad 3 Laptop

The Lenovo ThinkPad T15 is a good laptop for writers who want to repurpose their content into audio and/or video. They also make a point of being climate pledge friendly.

Make the Lenovo ThinkPad T15 your writing laptop.

9. HP Pavilion

When considering the best laptop for writers, you have to check out the deal on the HP Pavillion for under $500.

Make the HP Pavillion your writing laptop.

In Conclusion: Which laptop should you buy?

We’ve given you nine great laptop offerings to choose from. Now it’s up to you! 

You’re equipped with the intel you need to select the best laptop for you.

• Make a list of your 3-5 must-have features
• Do tons of research (like reading this article) and compare models
• Get the extended warranty!

So when considering the best laptop for writers…whether you purchase the Apple MacBook Air or ASUS Chromebook Flip C433, I trust that you will make the right decision for your needs.

The post The Best Laptop for Writers [2021 Update] appeared first on InspireFirst: Teaching You How to Be a Better Writer.

How to value an online business

When valuing brick-and-mortar businesses, you can find disagreement as to how to do it. The three most popular methods include discount cash flow analysis, precedent transactions, and the earnings multiple method. Each of these involves complex mathematical calculations, and they still struggle to produce meaningful results. Here are some other factors that make valuing a blog even more complicated:

• Demographics of the audience
• Subscription and newsletter subscribers
• Potential for new markets and niches
• Brand value
• Social media reputation and shares

There are probably many more that could be listed, but you can see how the value of a blog is more than its bottom line. Fortunately, some tools are available to help.

Flippa’s free online business valuation tool

Your website is worth money, and if you are thinking about starting a new enterprise and abandoning an old one, you might want to consider selling it on Flippa.com. You can use Flippa’s online business calculator to get an estimate of what your blog is worth. Flippa uses a combination of comparable blogs, your business model, age, blog category, and many other factors to come up with a real-dollar value. If you like the estimate, you can sell it, or you can just use the tool to get an idea of valuation for other purposes, like applying for business credit.

Quick tips for increasing your blog’s value

Now that you know some of the things that are involved in valuing your blog, you might wonder how to increase its worth. If you are a solopreneur, you might consider delegating some of these tasks, so you can spend more time producing excellent content.

1. Grow your traffic
2. Increase your search rank
3. Improve conversion rates
4. Get a high-value premium domain name
5. Create high quality content
6. Showcase testimonials and ratings
7. Build backlinks
8. Build an email and newsletter list
9. Make sure it has an SSL certificate
10. Pay attention to user interface design
11. Make it mobile friendly
12. Build up your blog’s presence on social media

Before you decide to sell your website or use it to apply for a business loan, make sure it is ready first. Building a good website takes time. Outsource tasks that are outside your area of expertise to other professionals. Teamwork makes the dream work!

Now you have some practical ideas for how to value an online business and some ways to increase the value of your blog. You can use Flippa’s valuation tool to track your progress. After all, your blog is a valuable asset, and it is time for you to set some real goals for your blog value and get to work.

The post How to Value an Online Business: 12 Tips for Increasing Blog Value appeared first on InspireFirst: Teaching You How to Be a Better Writer.

Finding the best wall bookshelves

You have many different options when it comes to bookshelves that hang on the wall. When it comes to wall bookshelves ideas, you can find almost any style from minimalist to industrial or traditional. Floating bookshelves serve as wall art and as a way to get the most from small spaces.

Is it cheaper to buy or build a bookshelf?

Many DIY types immediately think that it is cheaper to build wall mounted bookshelves, but this is not always the case. You can purchase cheap wood and hardware, but by the time you sand it, stain or paint it, and mount it, it can be time-consuming. You also have to know how to build bookshelves on wall structures without destroying the wall surface. You will need tools like a cordless drill, the proper fasteners, a spirit level, tape measure, pens, and special anchors according to the type of wall material you have.

10 of our favorite wall bookshelves

Finding unique wall bookshelves can be tricky, but we have collected a few of our favorites to help you along with your search. These bookshelves are a few of our picks.

1. Industrial floating reclaimed bookshelf

Let’s start with one that is perfect for a set of office bookshelves. This four-tier bookshelf has a rustic feel and attaches securely to the wall with a single set of mounts. It has a classic look with reclaimed wood shelves and iron mounts. It is perfect for the bathroom, bedroom, office, kitchen, or any room of the home.

2. White floating bookshelves

This simple set of white floating bookshelves is perfect for a children’s room or any room of the home. They have a bar in front to keep things from unexpectedly falling off. They are easy to assemble and come with all of the mounting hardware you will need.

3. Modern corner bookshelf

This bookshelf is perfect for any style décor and allows you to take advantage of spaces that are typically not usable. These bookshelves can hold up to 20 pounds of books or anything else you wish to put on them. They have a retro style that is perfect for contemporary spaces.

4. Light wood floating bookshelves

These beautiful light wood bookshelves are minimalist and modern. They are easy to mount and are the perfect complement for lighter, neutral colors. They give a warm natural look to the room and will highlight your favorite reading collection.

5. Hexagonal honeycomb shelves

These deep wood-toned hexagonal honeycomb shelves are perfect for creating a unique piece of wall art that will match most modern styles. They are unusual and allow you to create a unique look in your space. You can use them in any room of the home, and you can arrange them to suit your space.

6. Spine bookshelf for small spaces

This spine bookshelf is perfect for maximizing small spaces. Its small size means you can tuck it anywhere and get more from your vertical space. They are perfect for a dorm room or small home office space that is tucked into a corner or even a closet.

7. Clear acrylic bookshelves

This set of clear acrylic bookshelves is narrow and perfect for displaying a few of your favorite front covers. You can also use them for a combination of pictures and books or a child’s collection of favorite small toys. These shelves are easy to mount and allow you to show off your collection.

8. Adjustable bookshelves

This set of bookshelves had to be included because they are adjustable. They have a classic design, and you can configure them any way you wish as your needs change. This is an excellent idea for office wall bookshelves or for a writing nook.

9. U-shaped solid wood bookshelves

These solid oak bookshelves are versatile, and you can arrange them in any configuration that you please. They are the perfect choice for the book collector, and you can purchase as many as you need for those occasional impulse buys in the best-sellers section of your local bookstore. This is also an excellent set for a home office or as a decorative shelf in any room

10. Wall mounted desk

Not everyone has space for a desk. This is the perfect solution for those who need just a bit of workspace and a few drawers. It has a modern, industrial design with plenty of space for books, office supplies, or a few of your collectibles.

Now you have a few ideas for wall bookshelves for a holiday gift or for reorganizing your space. If you still need more ideas you might want to check out these useful writing tools or best desk lamps for artists and writers. Sometimes, the gift of organization is the best gift you can give someone else or give yourself for starting the new year off right.

The post 10 Best Wall Bookshelves appeared first on InspireFirst: Teaching You How to Be a Better Writer.