marketing posts
Creating a stand-out brand goes beyond the visual side of your business. You have to prioritize strategy, pinpoint your message, create consistent content, and have attention-grabbing visuals that tie it all together.
With each year that passes, and as industries get increasingly saturated, it becomes more and more important to create a distinct brand for your creative business. It can feel like the visual edge of the competition increases each day meanwhile your own brand identity lags behind and isn’t in the game.
If your biz is struggling with outdated or sub-par design, or if it’s simply time for a spruce, this post is here to help you!
As a brand strategist and designer, I have a lot to share on the topic of branding. So today, I’m walking you through 6 simple steps to create a stand-out brand—from strategy to social media.
Quizzes. We’ve all heard of them. We’ve all taken at least one. But have you ever used a quiz for your business?
The power of quizzes is no joke. Even the experts sing the praises of a good quiz for small business growth and success.
And with amazing software in these modern days, creating a quiz is almost as easy as waving a wand. Well, that plus a little bit of creativity and planning.
So get ready because I’m about to walk you through the exact steps to follow to create a quiz that will skyrocket your email list growth and Instagram engagement.
A quiz is one of the best methods to turn Instagram followers into subscribers while you sleep—and no, I’m not talking about an Instagram sticker poll.
With Instagram’s latest updates, it’s easier than ever to share a full-fledged quiz with your audience. So hop on board today, and take advantage of this quick-growth quiz strategy to boost your brand and ensure long-term progress—instead of a plummet.
You put a lot of time into creating social media content. But with the constant changes to Instagram and the chronic algorithm shifts, Instagram growth and engagement can be a rocky road.
And for small businesses who rely on Instagram to reach their audience and make money, it can be detrimental to your income.
There’s no telling what Instagram will toss our way next, so we need to be prepared for anything.
If you’re wondering what is the best way to ensure your business doesn’t get forgotten, it’s simple:
Prioritize growing and nurturing your email subscriber list alongside Instagram.
It can take as little as 30 minutes a week to implement this incredible business strategy, so you really have nothing to lose but everything to gain.
If you’re just starting out with your newsletter list, or if you already have a steady stream of subscribers, this blog post will show you exactly how to start gaining significant traction with your email marketing list today.
This way, you’ll always be able to reach your followers—whether Instagram decides to show your content or not.
I find the most difficult part of being a creative entrepreneur is managing the constant flow of new ideas. Everyday, I think of more and more possibilities and directions to explore for my business, and it can be quite a task to manage, analyze, and sort through them all.
The largest stream of ideas is usually for my blog content. There are so many things I want to share on my blog, but it often seems impossible to check each one off my never-ending list. Which posts should I write first? Which ones will be most strategic for my business? Which posts will be most helpful for my audience?
With a huge number of tentative posts, topics, and tips to create, it can be a bit overwhelming to figure out which blogs to write—especially while juggling other areas of business, such as client work, social media marketing, newsletter content, product development, and so on.
It takes a lot of time and energy to think through every blog post possibility, decide which ones to write each month, and map out titles into an editorial calendar.
In a panic, it can be easy select and write posts on a whim because we know creating content is key to growing a successful business. Gotta stay consistent. Gotta show up. Gotta build that SEO.
But this frantic approach leads to “idea clutter,” and it can quickly cause your business to crash and burn. Your posts are all over the place. They’re hard to write. They don’t grow your readership. They feel like a complete and utter waste.
And yet, you keep on blogging because you’re still hoping to strike gold one day.
But take a deep breath because today I have a simple solution to make blogging easy again. In this post, I’m going to show you how to cut the clutter, get to the point, and create blog posts that convert.
It’s time to whip your blog into shape so it can become a powerhouse for your business—instead of a burden.
Let’s begin!
Tackle your instagram strategy and content this year.
It's an exciting day because it's time for the Instagram Challenge to begin this Monday at 10:30am EST over on Instagram @PonderTrail.
Let's dive into all the details for how the challenge works, how to begin, and what to expect.
And if you haven't signed up yet, there's still time. Sign up here.
Over the past few years, I’ve discovered the value of adopting a laser-focused mindset. It creates clarity and an open runway to brainstorm and bring your ideas to life. It gives you space to think strategically, create a plan, and stay on track. It cultivates productivity, action, and progress like nothing else.
Once I switched my approach and dedicated my attention to one part of my strategy, I started saving time, seeing more progress, and finally getting in the groove. And I haven’t looked back since.
I started seeing the difference it made in my business first-hand, so I set out to help other creatives do the same. And after coaching brand strategy clients one-on-one for over a year, I wanted to find a way to help even more creatives.
So I landed on the perfect idea: a self-paced membership program. It’s a brand strategy subscription that’s part-course, part-service, and part-library, so it meets the best of all worlds for entrepreneurs who are looking to take action in their businesses.
I’m calling it the Brand Strategy Treehouse.
It’s my all-new signature membership, and it’s available to you today!
As we approach the new year, we start to plan and dream about where we can take our business in 2021. At the top of that list for many creative entrepreneurs is growing our Instagram accounts.
With all of the users on Instagram, most brands have thousands of potential clients and customers hanging out on the social media platform. But it seems to become ever more difficult to grow our accounts due to industry saturation, algorithms, and just plain overwhelm.
Despite the odds, we sometimes discover new accounts who are surging with popularity.
How are they getting so much traction? What are they doing to gain followers so easily? How are they completely sold out after each product launch or shop update? What magic beans do they have that my brand is missing out on? There must be strategies they follow.
Can you relate to some of these questions and thoughts?
Well, today, I’m sharing the best methods for growing quickly and authentically on Instagram. They’re the simple techniques that all thriving accounts utilize, and I can’t wait to spill the beans with you in this blog post!
P.S. I’m hosting an Instagram Challenge starting January 4th. Sign up to grow your account and reach your Instagram goals in 2021.
Instagram has been one of the best tools for small business owners for over five years. And while the features keep getting bigger and better, many creators find that their engagement is declining. When Instagram introduced their non-chronological algorithm several years ago, it caused many brands to lose their reach and become out-of-touch with their audience.
Instagram has amazing benefits, though it can be an overwhelming or dreaded task if you aren’t seeing results. It can be a lot of work to get the ball rolling and to keep the momentum going if you don’t have a simple strategy in place.
So the last thing a creative entrepreneur wants to do is lose all of that hard work by making the algorithm—or their audience—unhappy.
That’s what this January challenge is all about: how to grow a loyal and engaged audience on Instagram and how to keep the platform happy—all without using up hours of your day.
I am so excited to launch my new social media planner for Instagram. I’ve been working on it for quite some time. I wanted a straightforward tool that would . . .
help with staying on track with Instagram goals
take the guesswork out of posting
make connections that help build a profitable account
grow an audience without frustration
create a clear step-by-step routine with daily actions
save hours and hours each week
Enter the planner!
If I could only give you one tip for growing your business, it would be to show up consistently. Throughout the years of entrepreneurship, I have been convinced more and more that one of the top keys to growth is to simply show up for your audience each day.
Consistency gives you a steady stream of value to share, it demonstrates your expertise, and it shows that you truly care about your followers, thus building a trustworthy brand.
It sounds simple enough, but it isn’t always easy to show up every day. In fact, it’s quite difficult at times. And with all of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into running an online business, it can be easy to prioritize the front-end of your brand—especially for those of us who are on the introverted side of things. (Can anyone else relate?)
However, the audiences have voted, and it’s confirmed that you can’t grow a business without showing up consistently.
So today, I’ve narrowed down 3 easy ways to revolutionize your consistency. These simple things will help you get rid of the road blocks and keep you ahead of the game so you can show up each day and build a loyal and engaged audience.
Goals.
We set them. We plan them. We reach them, too.
Or at least, we hope we do.
Some goals propel our business forward and help us reach new grounds, while others are critical for simply keeping our business above the water.
There’s something thrilling about reaching a goal—especially after working hard for it day after day. The feeling you get when you finally check one off of your list creates a strong sense of accomplishment and a surge of motivation.
But it can be quite discouraging when you find yourself transferring the same unmet goal over to next month’s planner pages, time and time again, to no avail.
“Maybe next month will be different. Maybe I’ll finally check that one off,” we hope, once again.
But when we are stuck in a cycle and struggle to reach our goals, it’s time to try a different approach.
Last January, while thinking deeply on this subject, I had an epiphany. I figured out the secret to reaching goals—or at least the key I had been missing for years.
I realized there were actually two distinct types of goals, and I was completely missing the mindset behind one of them.
It completely transformed the way I think of goals, how I set them, and how I map them out as a creative entrepreneur.
This blog post sheds light on that secret, and I can’t wait to share it with you!
video + blog post
There’s so much noise online about what you need to do before you launch a business, but today I’m taking the stand and saying there’s a Top 2.
In fact, if I had known and followed them before I ventured out and launched my first business (a handmade knitwear company), these two strategies alone would have saved me from running around in time-wasting circles, and my business would have taken off much faster.
One of them is a fundamental, yet often unnoted step to ensuring your business doesn't dwindle away from you and fail due to a simple overlook.
The other is a new, growing need I’ve noticed in recent months and is a byproduct of the modern online business era. But I’m not sure how a business can survive in 2019 and onward without implementing this strategy.
While extremely effective, the are both simple methods to follow and only require a bit of creative brainstorming time with you, paper, and a pen.
So here’s what I would say if I could tell every creative entrepreneur only 2 things I wish I did when starting and growing a business . . .
Missed joining this one live? Register for next week’s Ponderstream webinar here.
I was featured on the Interact Blog today! Here is the free quiz-planning template that goes along with my post.
While it’s easy to come up with a great concept for a quiz, it’s often difficult to translate that into questions, answers, and results.
This is where implementing an effective planning method comes into play.
I created a Quiz-Planning Template to make it even easier.
Planning Instagram content 30 days in advance has many benefits.
It allows you to create and prepare everything so you only need to spend a few minutes on Instagram each day.
It helps you to “show up” consistently without Instagram becoming your full-time job.
It saves so much time and lets you create an Instagram routine that works with your busy life.
And, you never again have to stress out about throwing a post together last-minute.
If you’re wishing for a better posting strategy, or if you’re just curious about this whole “planning” thing, you’ve come to the right place. Because today, I’m sharing my simple step-by-step process for intentionally planning 30 days of Instagram content.
Everyone loves a good quiz. They are interest-peaking, interactive, and often informative.
But quizzes don’t have to be “just for fun;” they can be a great tool for growing an online business, too.
A quiz can offer a solution to the first step of a problem. It can shed light on the value of your products and services. It can be a great opportunity to build trust with your audience and demonstrate your expertise. And a quiz is the perfect way to grow your email list.
I recently created my first quiz for Ponder Trail. I used Interact for the platform and was impressed with how easy it was to use.
I’m excited to show you my step-by-step process for creating a quiz: from brainstorming ideas and implementing strategy—all the way to building it in Interact and embedding it into your website. Here’s how:
It’s that time of year again—when everything feels fresh and new. Goals swirl around our minds with ever-growing excitement about what we hope to accomplish in the new year.
We dream big about our businesses and can’t wait to get started on our latest and greatest ideas.
But without a methodical way to set and reach goals, there isn’t much hope for success.
So today, I’m giving you my step-by-step process to effectively plan for a successful and productive year. This is an in-depth blog post you won’t want to miss.
I wanted to try something new going into January this year: get a head-start.
The first few weeks of January usually get away from me, and before I know it, I’m halfway through February.
So I brainstormed ways to set myself up for success this year, and I’m happy to announce it’s made a huge difference so far. They are strategies I plan to continue implementing for the rest of the year, and I recommend you try them out, too.
This is what I did:
The “newsletter” and the “email list” are talked about a lot these days. And it’s no wonder because they come with countless benefits.
Even if you aren’t quite sure what they do or why you need them, you’ve likely come in contact with these tools before. (Ever get emails from your favorite stores?)
But newsletters aren’t just for big, established businesses.
In fact, they’re one of the best tools for creative small businesses and start-ups, too. And the sooner you start building yours, the better off your business will be.
Read on to learn the principles of a newsletter and an email list.
And if you still aren’t convinced or simply haven’t jumped on board, I’m also sharing 15 indisputable reasons to start your newsletter today!
It’s no secret that every business in 2018 needs a website.
It’s the best place to build your online presence because you own and control your website.
. . . And because you won’t have to worry about changes to algorithms on social media.
While the possibilities are endless for designing and setting up your brand’s website, there are 7 pages in particular that are critical for a successful site.
Keep reading to learn how you can implement these essential pages on your business’s website.
Who is your audience?
It’s perhaps the most important question you will ever answer about your business.
Your audience is the group of people who are ecstatic about your brand and want to buy your products or book your services. They’re your potential customer or clients.
If you want to have a profitable business, you need to reach and connect with them. And every element of your business needs to be designed and intended for that market.
Until you know your audience, you won’t have complete clarity or get the full potential out of the work you put into your business.
You’ll miss opportunities to speak to your potential customers or clients through intentional branding and messaging.
And you’ll likely put time into creating content that isn’t effective.
But once you follow the steps in today’s blog post, you’ll be on your way to building a loyal following for your creative business.
