allume

real light living

Are The Blogging Rules Robbing Your Authenticity?

By

Don't give up your passion, your voice, for the sake of following the blogging rules. We need your authenticity.

People crave to see others like themselves. They long to find a sense of “normal” among those they also consider “elite”. But when it comes to blogging and making yourself known and heard, the blogging rules can start robbing your voice and passion.

When I first began blogging, I didn’t know any blogging rules. I just wanted to write what was on my heart, and I did. I remember reading some of those early posts and being shocked that I wrote them. But as time went on, people grew successful in gaining an audience and they began to share their tricks.

Over time, blogging evolved from sharing your passion and stories to putting many voices in a box merely to reach the masses. We needed to write in a certain way, in a certain format, in order to attract many people.

But should that really be our goal? Because when we strip ourselves, our voice, our passion away in order to reach the masses, we lose our authenticity.

Do we really want to write another “7 Steps to a Better Life” post? The majority may want to hear that, but is that what we really want to write? Can we truly have a “better life” in seven steps? Further, is that really the life we want to encourage people to live? Not only do we sell our voice, we sell our principals.

As a Christian, I am called to lose my life for the sake of Christ. As a writer with a Christian audience, am I conveying this same message to the few who will grab hold of it? Because let’s be real…not many people want to be told they need to lose their life by making major sacrifices of themselves for others. This is not a popular message.

Remember the old days of blogging that were more about story telling then offering advice? I can’t tell you how many readers have talked about missing those days and those blogs.

Many people don’t need another “how to” post. They need to hear from people who are living lives according to His Word, not the way some self-help book has it laid out. 

And the beautiful thing about living out God’s Word, is we can all do it and it will still look different—that’s the power of the authenticity of God! He made us each unique, with different experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives, with one Gospel that unifies us all.

Friend, use the voice God gave you—don’t allow the blogging rules to cut out the most passionate, authentic parts of yourself just to reach the masses. I am not saying this is true of all bloggers who made it big — hello, Ann Voskamp. But Ann doesn’t follow the blogging rules, far as I can tell. Her posts are long and often require a bit of deciphering. They require careful thought. Whereas the blogging rules say, keep it short, to the point, and plain as day.

Throw out the blogging rules…allow your voice and passion to be free to be YOU.

Curious — do you miss the days of blogging when there was more story-telling and less “how to” posts?

Seven Signs of a Successful Blogger

By

Blogging Connects Us

If we asked seven people for their definition of a “successful blogger,” we’d likely get seven different responses. Because every blogger is unique. Our reasons for blogging are different too.

A successful blogger is oftentimes categorized by virtue of certain statistics. This data reflects the way a post is resonating with readers, and we can appreciate the information these numbers provide. But there’s more to blogging than statistics. Much more.

We blog because we want to share a part of ourselves with others. Blogging has become an amazing way to build bridges with folks we might not have ever met otherwise.

Blogging connects us in ways we couldn’t have ever imagined. <Tweet this!>

This is why we enjoy gathering once a year. The Allume Conference is a place where all of our online bridges connect for one special weekend of real togetherness. My favorite part of the conference has always been the people — people who share a love of words and a love for God and a love for reaching others with the Light of Christ.

Blogging is one way we get to share our soul’s message of hope and freedom. And we want to blog with excellence. So what does that look like? What does a successful blogger look like?

While statistics have become a basic measuring stick for bloggers, there are key qualities in a successful blogger that can’t be easily quantified. Here are seven signs of a successful blogger that you won’t find on a bar graph anywhere:

1. Successful bloggers can look back at their earliest blog posts and see considerable improvement in their writing.

Blogging provides a wonderful venue for practicing the craft of writing. We improve with time and practice. When you read your first posts, do you notice a difference in the way you write today? How has your voice developed and changed?

2. Successful bloggers continue to refine their purpose for writing online.

The more we write, the more we grow. And as we grow, our purpose for writing continues to come into focus. Sometimes we begin writing about one topic, but we end up writing about another. That’s part of the process. We gain greater clarity as we write through the years.

3. Successful bloggers persevere through the inevitable ups and downs that accompany the blogging life, and they find their own rhythm.

Every blogger, at some point, entertains the idea of quitting. Blogging takes effort. Sustained effort. Yes, bloggers will take a break every now and then. Maybe even a really long break. But eventually, successful bloggers settle on a pace that works for them, and they stick with it.

4. Successful bloggers build relationships with other bloggers.

The beauty of blogging comes from the people we meet. At first, we might distinguish our “real life friends” from our “online friends.” With time, however, we discover that our online friends have become our real life friends too. There’s no longer a distinction. These online relationships span continents and oceans, and they become the truest testimony of our “success” as a blogger.

5. Successful bloggers create a body of perennial work they can point new readers to.

A perennial flower is like an evergreen tree. It’s flush with life, all year round. In the same way, successful bloggers can direct new readers toward a ready collection of posts that represent the best of their years as a blogger. This isn’t just a list of archives either. These posts are their penultimate work. They enable new readers to get to know them and what their blog is about relatively quickly.

6. Successful bloggers connect with readers and make a positive impact on their lives.

This is the most important part of blogging — making a difference. A truly successful blogger is someone whose life and writing have changed someone else for the better. Maybe it’s a comment on a thread. Or maybe it’s a private message sent. When readers reach out to tell you that your words have touched them in some way, that is the best thing about blogging.

7. Successful bloggers begin to mentor newer bloggers.

Successful leaders never hoard information. Part of what lends to their success is their ability to share what they’ve learned with others. Success always multiplies itself. Successful bloggers are generous with the tips and tricks and tools of the trade. They’ll come alongside newer bloggers and share what has worked for them and what hasn’t. One person, of course, can’t possibly be available to everyone on the internet, but one person can establish mentor relationships with at least a few other bloggers who would love to learn and grow.

So if we extracted the key verbs from each of these seven signs, it would look something like this:

A successful blogger will . . .

Look Back
Refine
Persevere
Build
Create
Connect
Impact
Mentor

That’s the definition of success.

What would you add to this definition of a successful blogger?

 

How to Blog with Focus

By

Our Purpose As Artists
I teach in a building next to the School of Music. So it’s not uncommon for college students to practice their instruments in the adjoining courtyard. On any given day, multiple melodies fill the atmosphere. But in the early morning, when I’m arriving for work, I hear the sounds of a lone clarinet drifting through the hallway.

I pause to listen.

At first, the notes are scales — ascending and descending. Soon, the notes transform into familiar refrains by Beethoven and Bach. Eventually, the young clarinet player abandons the notes on the page and begins to improvise. He creates an aural art, a cadence pregnant with mystery, uncertain of where it will lead.

The clarinet player in the courtyard has no idea how much a writing professor down the hall enjoys his musical gift.

I wonder how many bloggers can relate to this clarinet player.

As bloggers, we sometimes wonder:

  • Is anyone even listening?
  • Is all this blogging worth the effort?
  • Does my presence online make any difference?
  • Am I just another voice in a cacophony of noise?

When we ask ourselves these questions, we open ourselves to self-doubt and become susceptible to false ideals about blogging. We start to listen to other voices — voices that talk about numbers.

Subscribers. Visitors. Page views. Comments. Likes. Shares. There’s a statistic for everything.

In a sincere effort to increase readership, it’s not uncommon for bloggers to start chasing these numbers. A blogger begins, writing from the heart, and she finds a small but receptive audience who appreciates her work. Then she reads advice online — a prescribed methodology for blogging success. As she emulates these “best practices,” she becomes a clone of other bloggers. What made her unique in the first place has dissipated.

The fastest way for a blogger to lose her focus is to focus on numbers.  {Share on Twitter}

That’s not to say all numbers are bad. The information we glean from statistics can be helpful. A well-frequented post can tell us what strikes a resounding chord with readers. A weekly tracking of page views might reveal which days of the week are more likely to receive visits. Such data can inform our strategies and guide our blogging decisions.

Bloggers are wise, however, to view their statistics with discernment. Because numbers abide by the law of diminishing returns. Once we’ve achieved a numeric goal, we simply up the ante with another number. This never-ending chase perpetuates a cycle that saps a blogger’s creativity, resulting in a spiritless body of work.

We must decide ahead of time what kind of blogger we want to become and what kind of reader we want to reach.

Yes, the allure of bigger numbers is an ever-present reality. Our society revolves around numbers because we’re conditioned to believe that numbers translate into happiness or beauty or success. We’re told bigger statistics will provide access to better opportunities. Which may or may not be true.

But I do know one thing that is true:

Numbers neither define me nor fulfill me.
Numbers neither determine my worth nor control my fate.

Whether we have many readers or few, we overcome the seduction of numbers when we’ve already settled within ourselves a sense of purpose.

When we know our purpose as artists, we retain our focus as bloggers.  {Share on Twitter}

I want to blog with the same focus as the clarinet player. He’s committed to developing his craft, and he’s not following the noisy crowd. Nor is he playing louder in an attempt to be heard. In fact, he doesn’t seem concerned with being noticed for his talent. He’s found his own space, and he creates music because that’s what he does. It’s inside him. He may have dreams of playing in an orchestra someday, but whether that dream ever comes true or not, he’s a musician.

And a true musician will continue to play his instrument for the simple love of music.

Are You Struggling to Find Your Niche?

By

Are You Struggling to Find Your Niche

There are some high school graduates that walk off the stage, diploma in hand, knowing exactly what they want to do with their life. They enter college, declare their major, and go on to have the successful career of which they dreamed.

There are some bloggers who start a blog knowing exactly what they want to blog about and they go on to have the successful blog of which they dreamed.

I started out writing about attachment parenting and that turned into natural living and a little bit of crafting and then my kids got older and I became interested in education and homeschooling, so I wrote about that. I also dabbled in photography and decorating and DIY. But then I wanted to give myself room to write more about faith and motherhood, so I started a new blog and declared myself a writer. And then I was thrust into this whole new world of writing niches and genres and I found myself occasionally (okay, often) at a loss for words, just wanting to share a few pictures of my kids.

Welcome to my blogging identity crisis.

Most blogging courses or ebooks will tell you that identifying your niche is one of the first steps to successfully growing a blog. And that makes a lot of sense if you know that you want to write about one of your specific passions or interests and leave the rest of your life out of the public eye.

But if you are like me, and you tend to write about the big picture of your life and your family and what the Father is teaching you as you observe His hand at work in the everyday, trying to choose a niche can feel rather stressful and burdensome.

Some of my very favorite blogs have been around a while and are, what I would call, niche-less bloggers.  In fact, many of my top blogs break all the rules. They have very disorganized categories or (gasp) no categories at all, they have no tagline, they have a vague About Me section, and some of them don’t even have a Facebook Page. They seem to be doing everything wrong, and yet myself and thousands of other readers never miss a post.

I think we can learn a few lessons from the first generation of bloggers.

They started blogging before there were e-books and online courses and conferences on how to grow a blog. They blogged before blogging became all about branding and niches and platforms and networking.

They started blogging simply to have a creative outlet in which to write and to share their voice and their lives, and as a result, their blogs grew in this grass-roots, organic sort of way. I love to look through the archives of some of these bloggers to see how their blogs have evolved and changed over the years as they gave themselves the freedom to write out of the season in which they were living. 

If you are struggling to find your niche, I encourage you to try a new approach:

  1. Stop over thinking it and just write. Write about what you are passionate about right now. Write as the Holy Spirit prompts, even if it means you are writing about something that you don’t consider your niche or expertise.
  2. Stop looking to other blogs to define yours. You are a unique creation of God and your personality and your life and therefore your blog are also going to be unique. Don’t be afraid to let your blog be the first of it’s kind!
  3. Break some rules! If your tagline is stressing you out, don’t have a tagline. If you are obsessing too much about the name of your blog, just use your real name. Focus more on content and less on branding, and soon your blog will speak for itself.

After a while of giving yourself this kind of blogging freedom, your niche may simply find you.

Or maybe it won’t and we’ll just link arms and be niche-less bloggers together.

And that’s perfectly okay.

Post from the archives; authored by Amanda

The Trap of Stats {Smaller Bloggers}

By

Look Beyond Stats

What defines a “smaller blogger”. There really is no “formal” answer but many people define themselves by their stats. So what exactly constitutes a “smaller blogger”?

It’s the mindset of the blogger.

When you play the comparison game, there will always be someone to stand next to you who has more readers, more likes, more follows than you do.

When we define ourselves (or others) by stats, we create barriers in various areas. When we use stats to define the value of a person (including ourselves) we put up walls and create stereotypes based on stats. We may not even realize we’re doing it! Yet, what happens is we start to make assumptions about people based on their stats. We think less of our ministry when our stats don’t mirror someone else’s. We become discontent with what we’ve been given.

Take a moment to watch this video that helps illustrate well what I mean. Click here if you’re reading in email or a reader.

Until we can look beyond our stats, all we’re going to see is stats. We are going to miss the ministry God has placed in front of us because we are too busy chasing after what someone else has.

There are many factors which lead to why stats look the way they do for different people. Some examples include:

  • time invested
  • goals/mission/vision of blogger
  • God’s vision (!!!)
  • unique gifts
  • reach
  • education (and I don’t mean a college degree, but willingness to seek out and learn)
  • consistency of blogging

These are just a few things. The goal today isn’t to overwhelm you — in fact, the overall goal for this entire series is to keep the information simple and straightforward. The last thing we want you to do is throw your hands up and think it’s hopeless based on this list. It’s not!

Our goal, however, is to make you aware of the elements involved in what creates these stats. The one thing you need to know about “bigger bloggers” is that they were once “smaller bloggers”. So when you see them write or hear them speak on topics like stats, they are doing it from a position of experience, not arrogance.

If you think you’ve hit a wall, don’t waste anymore time running into it. If you’ve done all you can and you believe you’re getting nowhere, it might be time to think about starting fresh. It might be time to dream again; to revisit your vision and goals.

It is important to understand that building a blog and extending your reach takes dedicated, consistent work. It requires that we stretch beyond what we know and be open to learning new things constantly. We must be willing to grow if we want our blog to grow. Growth involves more then merely stats. It includes the development of your writing, and your willingness to learn beyond the basics. It requires some investment.

This week, we want to challenge you to break the barriers of defining yourself and other people by their stats.  Blogging is not a popularity contest; it’s a community where we work together.

 

*Post from the archives, authored by Christin

the single most important metric for website success

By

time on page, google analytics

Everyone wants to know what blogging success looks like. And the list of measurements most people look to contain the usual suspects… page views, social media likes/shares, number of followers on social media, and number of subscribers. Understandably, those metrics are simple numbers which show how visible your content is.

But, one number is likely a better gauge of success than any of the others most think about. Work on this one measurement, and you’ll launch your blog to new levels. What metric is it?

Time on page.

This one measurement can tell you more about the behavior of your readers than anything else. Think about it. You write a 600 word post that gets 100 page views, and it gets an average time on page of 30 seconds. Since the average adult reads approximately 250-300 words per minute, then that means most people hitting your post aren’t reading very much of it. That realization can hurt when you know you’ve poured out your heart and soul to write something you think is amazing.

On the other hand, imagine the same post had an average time on page of 1:30 or more. Some readers lose interest and drop, but this would definitely indicate that what you wrote is resonating more with your readers.

Why is this important?

Two reasons, really. First, time on page speaks to the quality of your content. Increase this metric, and you’re probably getting at a more engaged, connected reader. Second, it’s a metric that Facebook is looking at in their algorithms to determine which link posts get pushed up/down in people’s news feeds. It’s a way for them to battle click-bait links, and push up good quality content.

Increase the time on page, and you’ll likely increase the number of visitors coming to your site. [Tweet this!]

Here are a few tips on how you can improve your time on page:

(1) write great titles

Your first, and most important task is to write great titles. The reader should be able to look at the title of the post, and anticipate what they’ll find when they click-through to read it. It also helps if the title contains some sort of emotional connection or value statement. What will they get out of reading your post? Not only does this help get them to click-through in the first place, but it also sets proper expectations. If they know what they’ll be getting, then they’re much more likely to stay on the post long enough to actually get it.

(2) write an amazing first paragraph

Once you have them on the post, then it’s the first paragraph which will set the tone for everything else. Your opening statement should hook the reader and give them even more reason to keep reading. If the title left any question on how long they should stick around, then the first paragraph should solidify that buy-in. Don’t feel like you have to give everything away up front. But sell your big idea right away, and make sure the reader knows what’s in it for them.

(3) improve the graphic appeal of the post (and whole website)

Using strong images has proven to increase the reader’s time on page. Think about the images your add to your blog post like adding art to the wall in a museum or art gallery. Good art will cause someone to stop, and spend time just looking deeply into to piece. They’ll analyze the colors and different parts in the work. They’ll try to figure out what it means, and what message it sends. If a picture is like a thousand words, then try using one that will get them to spend the time on your page equivalent to how long it would take them to read a thousand words. In addition to strong post images, there’s much to be said for keeping the overall visual appeal of your site clean too. Having a cluttered sidebar (or two) can create visual noise for readers, and cause them to disengage with the content.

(4) use embedded video

Having a video embedded in your post is not only a great way to bring in a different style of communication alongside your writing, it’s also a great way to easily boost the time on page. Even adding a one-minute video could quickly double the average time on page. But don’t just add any video. Make sure it’s relevant and engaging. Having a five-minute video on the page doesn’t add as much value if people are only watching the first 30 seconds. So filter this in the same way you would any other content. Make sure the reader has enough buy-in to stick through the whole video.

(5) make it easy to read

Lots of really long paragraphs can tire your reader and cause them to lose interest. One of the best things you can do is offer regular visual breaks and work on making the content easily scannable. Breaks can be created by using images or header tagged breaks. In fact, getting some of your desired keywords into H2 (or Heading 2) format can be good for your SEO. These breaks makes the content which follows them easier to read because it’s a smaller piece of content to consume, which increases the likelihood they will continue to work through it. This is particularly effective with long-form content.

last thought…

As you look at your average time on page metrics (or any others), it’s important to have benchmarks. One trap to avoid when benchmarking is comparing yourself to others or a magical standard published by some social media “guru”. The best numbers to measure yourself against are your own. I’m not going to tell you that ___ number of minutes on the page is what you should target. Instead, figure out where you are now, and simply try to improve that by 10%. When you reach that number, then try to improve by another 10%. Keep pushing yourself for a personal best, and make whatever adjustments are needed in order to get you to the next level. That’s when you’ll start to realize the greatest success with your website.

From Bandwagon Blogger to Blog-Trail Blazer

By

Social media concept in word tag cloud on white background

The most popular girl in school strode past my locker. She carried an air of confidence — the kind that eluded me. I wondered if the mysterious patch on her jeans had anything to do with it. There was something about that triangular patch. You know, the one with the question mark?

Within a few weeks, more girls showed up at school proudly wearing the question mark on their right buttocks. This newfound patch assumed the supposed weight of popularity. But I couldn’t begin to guess why.

Nevertheless, I begged my parents until I too owned a single pair of Guess Jeans. Except they didn’t make me more popular. They didn’t even feel different.

The whole affair struck me as silly. I followed the crowd without knowing why.

Today, I give thanks to God in heaven I’m no longer in high school. It took me awhile, but eventually, I found my own way. And it didn’t involve following the crowd.

Trends, of course, still come and go — whether we’re in high school or not.

In the blogging world, a new trend can permeate the online scene with great force. Blogging gurus inundate us with innovative ideas and vogue plugins. Many of their suggestions are great too. But sometimes the constant tide of new technology leaves us feeling like we’re electronically etched in the dark ages of blogging if we’re not mastering the latest technological gizmo.

For instance, when I visit other blogs, I see a variety of social media icons. They’re usually in the upper right corner of a blog. And they represent the various places we can connect with that blogger.

So when I had my website redesigned earlier this year, I wanted the full plethora of social media icons in the upper right corner of my blog too. Clearly, this was the “in” thing to do. These icons, of course, would need to link with real social media outlets.

So I made a list of blogging goals for 2014:

      • Begin participating in Instagram.
      • Figure out Pinterest.
      • Investigate Tumbler and Linked-In.
      • Upload some videos on You-Tube.
      • Learn how to schedule tweets and Facebook posts on Buffer or Hootesuite.

Across the bottom of my list, I penned my biggest and best goal of all:

      • Hire a virtual assistant who can do all of the above for me.

Well, we’re midway through September, and I’ve done none of the above. Because I had to ask myself:

Why do I feel this pressure
to have an online presence on every social platform?

Am I following the crowd because that’s what trendy blogging looks like?

There’s nothing wrong with participating in any of these social media venues, as long as we’re doing so with a genuine desire to connect with the people there. But I’m afraid my cute little icons in the corner of my blog had become a new patch for me — just like the patch with a question mark that my friends wore in high school.

What’s more, I wondered if my desire to be in every social sphere online was really an attempt to become omnipresent.

Has the Eve-old sin of trying to be like God re-fashioned itself in my generation’s attempt to be in all places at all times?

Only God is omnipresent.

So what’s my real goal here?

After reflecting on my real purpose for writing — to bring glory to God’s name — I decided that I don’t need my name everywhere. I need to be true to who I am. I’m a writer, yes, but I’m also a mom and a full-time English teacher.

As bloggers, we need to invest our time wisely because we are not limitless beings.

I’m comfortable with Twitter and Facebook, so for now, that’s where I’ll connect online.

We all have a unique set of strengths, and the most “successful strategy” for any blogger is to stay true to who we are.

Some bloggers are savvy with social media.
Some bloggers are awesome with affiliates.
Some bloggers are terrific with technology.
Some bloggers have a way with words.

Blogging trends come and go. But who we are — at our core — remains the same. I don’t want to be a bandwagon blogger. I want to be a blog-trail blazer. And the only way to do that is to stay true to who I am.

I no longer run out and buy a new pair of Guess Jeans just because everyone else is buying a pair. I don’t generally follow the blogging masses either. Instead, I stay informed. Sometimes the latest blogging hype is just that. Hype. But sometimes the newest gadget, or widget, is a fantastic feature that enables bloggers to accomplish online feats they never thought possible.

The blogging world doesn’t have to be a re-creation of an old high school soirée, where the “in crowd” knew all the best brands. You and I can make a difference. No matter how big or small our blogs may be. Our voice matters. And a lack of technical expertise or social media experience shouldn’t prevent anyone from starting.

We can master this crazy world of blogging we’ve grown to love. And going to conferences like Allume is the perfect way to get a jumpstart on all things blogging!

I’ll be there. And I’d love to meet you there too.

Which social media venues do you enjoy the most?

 

From Bandwagon Blogger to Blog-Trail Blazer @Allume <Tweet this!>

The most “successful strategy” for any blogger is to stay true to who we are.  <Tweet this!>

Blogging trends come and go. But who we are — at our core — remains the same.  <Tweet this!>

Nine Ways to Reset Your Blog

By

Nine Ways to Reset Your Blog

The beginning of September is like hitting the reset button.

The pool is closed. School has been in session for a few weeks & we are settling into the rhythm of alarm clocks & school bus schedules & date nights & football games & car pools & homework & meal planning.

We need a season reset.

We can do the same thing for our blogs can’t we?

Here are a nine ways {because September is the 9th month} we can the hit reset buttons for our blogs:

1. Reevaluate the purpose statement of your blog & for your readers. Don’t have one? Read Why Your Blog Needs a Purpose Statement Now.

2. Refresh your About Page with fresh pictures & new links to current posts that you want to highlight.

3. If you are a shop owner, highlight a new product or have an amazing sale to get ready for new product for the fall.

4. Take a look at your sidebar. Is it crowded? Is it pretty or annoying? Take some time to evaluate it & rearrange accordingly.

5. Do you have a writing schedule for the fall? Look at the calendar and map out your posts.

6. Evaluate your social media pages. Consider making every profile picture the same so you’re recognizable across all social media pages. Put that picture on your about page too. Maybe your Facebook & Twitter cover photos need to be refreshed?

7.  Still working on that Media Kit? Set aside some time to tweak it & send it out or put it on your site. {Check out The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Media Kit for a ton of information}.

8. Are you attending Allume {I hope so & I can’t wait to meet you!} or another conference this fall? Get your business cards ready! Moo.com has some fun sizes. I just had some made from my Instagram pictures & the business cards are square too!

9. Streamline the apps on your mobile device to optimize your time when you use your mobile device to promote your blog. Have you heard of IFTTT? It stands for If This Then That. Use this app to create “Recipes” for a certain action. For instance, I want my Instagram picture to show up on my Twitter feed when I post a new picture. Doesn’t it already do that? Yes and no. Since Instagram & Twitter stopped being BFFs, the tweet wouldn’t show the picture, just a link to the picture. Browsing through IFTTT, I found a “recipe” that when I post a picture to Instagram it will tweet the picture AND it will show up in the twitter feed. No extra clicking. That’s just one of many ways that you can streamline your mobile device with this app!

I hope you have a great September! I’d love to hear how you have hit the reset button for your blog – share it in the comments below.

Measuring Sticks, Insecurity, and Some Conference Advice

By

Size Platform Measure Worth 2

I begin in the west and fly halfway across the country before I finally arrive for the conference. The driver picks me up at the airport and I’m reunited with my online friend who started her journey this morning in the east.

We chat a mile a minute and look forward to seeing our “smaller” blogger friends and many of our “bigger” blogger friends too.

During the conference I meander through sessions with my “smaller” blogger friends, all the while casually noticing who’s interacting with whom. I watch the “bigger” bloggers interact with their own circles of friends, while I engage with mine—looking them in the eye, listening, and relating.

But I deceive myself, because while I think I’m fully present in each conversation, in reality I’m partly absent. And as the conference presses on, I realize I’m disappointed when my “bigger” blogger friends have not initiated a fuller connection with me.

And it’s the last day of the conference when God convicts me of a cold hard truth.

My disappointment is a symptom of my illness—the virus of insecurity—hovering like a flu.

It has infected me. And I ache with its uncertainty while questions linger…

Do I matter?

Do I fit in?

Do “they” notice me or even want to be my real friend?

That last afternoon I leave the lunch table with my friend Alia, and make my way across the room toward our other roommate Amy—my in-real-life friend and newbie blogger—who has come with me to the conference.

And as we approach, she immediately turns to us, as if our timing is perfect.

“Hey guys! There’s someone I want you to meet.
This is Jennifer, another newbie.
And at lunch I asked her which of the “bigger” bloggers she most wanted to meet here.
And you know who she said?
Jacque Watkins and Alia Joy.
So I told her I could probably hook her up, since you guys are my roommates.”

I startle, like a deer caught in headlights.

Did she actually just say my name with the phrase “bigger” blogger?

Shocked on the inside, I greet Jennifer with a smile, flattered and completely stunned anyone would consider me a “bigger” blogger. She is sweet and gracious—a tea-drinking mama of four. And after our delightful interaction, I’m better for having met her.

As I fly home, reflecting on the conference, the Holy Spirit woos and convicts me again.

During the conference I wasted so much mental time, and internal dialogue, wondering if I’d get to build deeper relationships with  “bigger” bloggers.

While probably there were others there, who would’ve loved to build a deeper relationship with me.

And the recognition of this truth is like medicine for my ill and insecure heart.

Could it be possible everyone thinks of themselves as a “smaller blogger” and is waiting for that “bigger blogger” to initiate a connection?

Could it be that no matter who we are, there will always be someone “bigger”  to look to? That the one we see as a “bigger” blogger has an even “bigger-blogger” person they’d love to be pursued by too?

And could it be, that to someone, somewhere in the world, YOU are the “bigger blogger”?

That there is one someone scanning the room–looking for you—wishing they could meet YOU?

Hoping YOU’D go out of your way to pursue a connection with THEM?

No matter the size of our platform, we are all asking the same questions at our core:

Do I matter?

Do I fit in?

Would they really want to be my friend?

And the real truth is, our worth and purpose and significance is not dependent on whether a “bigger” blogger knows our name or pursues a friendship with us.

And we need the real truth to sink deep into the crevices of our hearts:

We all matter and fit in because we are His.

He chose us.

And He has great things planned for each of us to do.

So what if, instead of finding our validation from the “bigger bloggers” in our lives, we find our soul’s validation in our time spent with Jesus?

Allowing His Word to inform our starving souls of who He is,

And the truth of who we are because of Him…

Chosen.

Beloved.

Redeemed.

The child of God.

We are eternally valuable regardless of the size of our platform. 

And the size of our platform does not measure the worth of our soul. 

[Tweet that]

So when we set foot inside the walls of the Allume conference this October…

What if we become the initiators of connection because our security in Christ compels us to do so with whomever God places in our path?

What if we say hi first? Flash a smile first? Begin the conversation first, as a people who love in His name?

What if we stay fully present with whomever we’re with—refusing to allow our minds to be “noticing” the room?

And what if we make an effort, to not only hang out with our “people,” but to branch out to new circles of beautiful people? So that no one leaves feeling small and alone.

May we remember we are in this together…

Cheering for each other,

Fighting to believe who He says we are,

And really knowing we ARE already enough because of Him.

I can’t wait to see you at Allume!

Will you be there?

 

What’s Your End Game in Blogging?

By

blogging

I did it. I took the plunge this summer and did the unthinkable in the blog world.

I STOPPED. I took a summer break, and only posted on contributor sites that I had committed to.

But my own space fell silent. Why? For a girl since her first grade journal that has always had “too much to say”, I felt somewhat overwhelmed by all of the noise online, the constant rat race of keeping with blogging tips and tricks, and what I felt like was “supposed to be said” and what blogging goals were “supposed to be met”.

And out of all of that confusion, the one thing that kept rolling around in my mind was this:

What’s your end game in blogging? What is the ultimate goal you hope to accomplish with this?

I have been blogging for six years, which in blogland is pretty much rights to earn an AARP card or a senior coffee at McDonald’s. While I am mostly an unknown in the online world, six years is a LONG time to commit to something without really knowing what your end game, or ultimate goal, may be.

For some it is selling a beautiful product, making extra income for your family, driving toward a book deal, or just getting the words out there for other people to read. Those are awesome end games. But there was still something missing for me.

But one day this summer, while my blog lay dormant and I sat on a porch chair, just rocking away, watching the kids play in the tall grass and yelling at the crows that are bent on feasting on our garden (told you I was like an old woman in a thirty-something’s body..) it hit me:

The goal? The END GAME for ALL bloggers and writers that are believers is the same:

THE GOSPEL. The goal is the GOSPEL.

The goal is the gospel if you are a writer, a doctor, a mother, a baker, a janitor, a soccer coach,  a chef.

The goal is the gospel if you are a missionary, a visionary, a secretary. A college student, a babysitter, a waitress. A cop, a firefighter, a construction worker.

For those who believe in the cause of Christ? The goal is the gospel.

We can write beautiful words all day long. We can share pinnable images, have posts go wild online because people see themselves in them, or sell a billion copies of an amazing book. And nothing is wrong with that. But if our ultimate “end game”, our ultimate goal is to make much of us and not much of Christ, than we have missed the entire point:

For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.  Galatians 1:10

My end game is the gospel. Finally, after six years, things are starting to make sense. And if you are reading this and not a believer? Let’s sit on those porch chairs and talk. I would love to share that end game with you.

6 steps to growing your platform with self-publishing

By

self-publishing, platform, writing

Thirty-nine. Treinta y nueve. Trente-neuf. Thelathini na tisa.

No matter how you say it, that was the number. After months of hard work and promotion, my first month of sales on my first self-published book netted me the whopping sales total of 39 copies. I wanted to give up. But I believed in the story too much. And I’m glad I didn’t quit. That little book has now reached over 8,500 people, and has been #1 on Amazon’s best seller list for books in Christian Evangelism (multiple times). Better yet, it’s helped me grow my platform and reach many new readers who I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with several authors and dozens of self-publishing projects in recent years. One particular client has about a dozen books released, and some do really well, while others flop. The crazy thing is when we think we hit on an idea that will really resonate with readers, often they flop. Meanwhile, other less scintillating e-books quietly bring in the sales, anchoring an impressive library of content.

I think where some aspiring writers fall short is by giving up too easily or not thinking enough about long-term strategy when it comes to publishing. Here’s the thing…

You should never, EVER give up on the message God has given you to share! (Tweet that!)

With that in mind, here are a few pointers which may help you maximize the reach of your message, and build your platform to share whatever it is God puts on your heart next.

(1) growing your e-mail list

Especially with a first-time author project, I usually recommend launching the book in Kindle and PDF format. We get it out there on Amazon to start selling, but the big strategic move is leveraging the project to build a mailing list. Offering the free download get’s people on your list so you can continue to share through your blog what God is putting on your heart.

More importantly, it gives you the chance to continue to market your stuff down the road. You may reach out later to tell them about special Kindle promos, the project becoming available in other formats, additional study and small group resources, and new projects you’re launching.

The ROI of email is typically higher than any other platform, so using the project to get emails should be at the foundation of your long-term publishing strategy.

(2) using the free download to promote paid sales

One of the differences between PDF and other formats of the book is that the PDF should clearly inform the reader that it’s also available on Amazon. PDF is a great way give them the content, but it’s not as convenient to read, especially on mobile devices. So letting the reader know the book is available in a more friendly format (along with the link to go purchase it) is a simple way to drive sales. Many readers will register to download the free version, start reading it, and then when they decide they like it, they’ll go buy it in the more convenient format.

(3) switching to kdp select

Whenever I do the free download, I usually do it for a limited time. The length of time depends on how well it’s driving email subscribers for you. Then at some point you’ll want to pull it down and switch to a Kindle-only strategy for the e-book. Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) has a program called KDP Select. The idea is that when you enroll your book into KDP Select, you are committing to at least 90 days of it being exclusive (in electronic format) to Amazon.

In return, you’ll get some sweet benefits. One is that it can be made available to Amazon Prime members in the lending library. They get it for “free” as part of their membership, but the author still gets paid a cut of the fund Amazon dedicates to participating books. Sometimes, you even get paid more than the sales price of the book!

Then there’s also the opportunity to stimulate sales with a discounted or free promotion.

(4) using free kindle downloads to increase paid sales

One of the most important factors of success on Amazon is understanding the Amazon ecosystem. You can certainly promote your stuff to the people who already follow you, but your goal is to gain new audience by getting your work in front of people who don’t know you. There are some key triggers in Amazon that will lead to your book being found. One is the reviews, especially by those with a “verified purchase”. The other is getting into the “customers who bought this also bought” rotation for other books.

The KDP Select program allows you to offer 5 days of free download every 90 day enrollment period. You should use every single one in every single enrollment period!

The math is simple. The more people who get the book in their hands (with a verified purchase), the more likely you are to get reviews on the book. Additionally, when an Amazon customer gets your book for free, they’re still “buying” it. Their purchase price was $0.00, but they still bought the book, which makes it part of their purchase history, which means it’ll build up sales to become part of that “customers who bought this” rotation for other books those readers have purchased.

I regularly see that when we’re not doing free promos, paid sales dip. And when we do the promos, paid sales rise.

(5) never stop selling it

This one is tricky, but it gets down to this question… How much do you believe in the message God has put on your heart? If the answer is “a lot,” then you won’t give up on it. And selling doesn’t have to be an annoying thing. Often it can be done simply by talking about milestones. I’ll share on social media when one of my books hits the top of a sales chart, or when I get a review that fires me up…

I’ve just seem too many examples of books going completely against the traditional sales spike in the first 60-90 days from launch to think that we should stop telling a certain story after sales settle. In fact, I’ve seen sales rise substantially after 6 months or a year on the market. But it won’t rise if you give up on it.

(6) never stop creating new content

If you’re a writer, then chances are you’re not going to be done writing after you got that one project out. In fact, you probably can’t imagine NOT writing. So keep it up! Keep working on new projects. This is another simple math deal. The more publishing projects you have out there, then more potential “entry points” you have for someone to discover your writing, and to connect with everything else you do. Some will hit big, and some won’t. So just keep moving forward with this as part of your regular writing strategy.

Set a goal for yourself. Maybe it’s one new e-book every 3-6 months. Just set a schedule and commit to it, just like you do with your other (daily?) blogging.

last thought…

Here’s the key to all of this. Too often writers look at getting something published as an end goal. We work to get published so that one day we can make money from our craft. Wrong. We write because we have something to communicate, we have a story to tell. And self-publishing is one of the tools that can be used to help you do that. It also happens to be one that could generate income. More importantly, it’s a tool you can use to share ideas and whatever God puts on your heart. If you approach self-publishing with a solid strategy to guide you, then you can substantially expand the reach of your voice.

3 ways to use google+ to boost your platform

By

g+, google+, google plus

Google+ is probably one of the most mis-understood and underused of the social media platforms. However, when you recognize that Google+ is an extension of the dominant (by far) search tool, then it suddenly becomes more important. Not to mention that YouTube, the #2 search engine, is owned by Google (more on the relevance of this in a minute). The bottom line is that if you’re not paying attention to Google+, then you’re missing some big opportunities for your platform.

When it launched, the perception was that it was Google’s version of Facebook. And while there’s an element of truth there, it’s also not true at all. In order to understand the role of Google+ in your social media toolkit, it helps to know the role of each of the major platforms.

In his book, What the Plus! Google+ for the Rest of Us, Guy Kawasaki identifies the roles of each platform as:

  • Twitter = Perceptions – Think news, events, trending topics.
  • Facebook = People – Friends and family, it’s where we connect.
  • Pinterest = Pictures – ‘Nuff said!
  • Google+ = Passions – Circles, communities, hashtags… all ways to connect on various topics.

Aside from the +1, which Google uses as a social signal to identify popular content for search results, there are a few features of Google+ you should be familiar with.

(1)  Set up Google Authorship with EVERYTHING you write

One way Google+ is working to gain acceptance is by targeting writers. With Google Authorship, you can link everything you write around the web to your Google+ profile. If everything is set up right, then it’ll even impact the search engine results page with a mention of your name in the description of the result.

google+, g+, google authorship

Setting it up is fairly simple, if you know what you’re looking for. Essentially, there are two elements to set up:

  1. A reference to your Google+ profile on post you’re writing (whether on your blog, or somewhere else). Some sites have plugins (like Jetpack) that manage this side of the connection, and you may see a place to link to your G+ profile in your profile on the blog. Otherwise, a simple link on your name in a bio at the end of the post pointing to your G+ profile will suffice (like this… Dan King). The key to linking your name is that it contains the addition of “?rel=author” at the end of it (see instructions).
  2. A reference to the site you are contributing to on your Google+ profile (in the “Contributor to” section of Links on your About page on G+). This will close the loop so that G+ knows which sites contain your writing (as opposed to someone just linking to your profile in a post).

If you want to make sure a post is set up right, then you can check the Google Structured Data Testing Tool with your link, and it’ll tell you if it’s set up right or not. It’ll report back a bunch of the code stuff, but what you’re looking for is the green or red bolded text telling you either everything is okay, or something isn’t set up right.

If you have questions, or want to keep up with the current conversations about Google Authorship, then you can also check out the G+ communities where people are talking about this subject. A couple I follow are:

Speaking of communities…

(2) Get involved in Communities

communitiesMy experience with this is anecdotal, but it seems to hold true to the idea that Google+ is about passions. Simply put, Google+ Communities seem to be where it’s at. There are two things that prompt me make a statement like this:

First, new followers seem to come at a faster rate when I’m active in communities. It’s like the difference between staying home and going to a party. You’ve got to go to where the people are. And the best part of it is that G+ makes it easy by listing all of the different parties going on so you can hang out in the right place.

If you have an interest, then there’s probably a community for it. But just like any party, you may show up and realize that all of the people there are whacked-out. If that happens, leave and find another one to participate in. And if you don’t like any of them, then start a new one. The bottom line is that being active in these places where people are talking about the same things you are will expose your stuff to a targeted audience with a like mind.

Second, +1’s, comments, and re-shares seem to happen more often when I post to communities. But that’s simple math. If I have 500 people in my circles (or who circle me), and I drop a link to a blog post, then some of those 500 will see my post. But If I share the link in a community with 5,000 people in it, then many more people will have the opportunity to see it.

However, keep an eye on the rules of engagement for each community. Some are more open with sharing links. Others can be a bit more strict. Many community managers do that in order to maintain a higher level of quality of content.

The secret here is simply to choose what feels right for you, and get engaged. You’ll find new readers, I promise.

(3) Three words: Hangouts On Air

Hangout-on-air-600x312Google+ Hangouts is a cool Skype-like tool that allows you to meet with multiple people in one online meeting room. Google+ Hangouts On Air is a way to broadcast those meetings so larger groups of people can watch live, and even catch a replay later via the (automatically) recorded YouTube video.

Believe it or not, the SEO impacts using a tools like this can be significant. Think about it, the videos you make are recorded onto YouTube (owned by Google, remember?). So if you have YouTube videos in your post, then it’s likely it’ll get a bit of a boost in the search engine value. Even more so if that video is loaded with keyword tags that align with the content in your blog post. Creating focused, relevant video content which gets posted on your blog is a good thing for your search engine value.

There are lots of ways you can use a tool like this, including, but not limited to:

  • Author interviews
  • Roundtable discussions
  • Video podcasts
  • Instructional videos
  • Conversation around a blog series

Hangouts On Air brings you another way to engage with your audience. If you’re not sure how to use this tool, then make a point to watch others to see how they’re using it. Then make plans to run one yourself and extend the conversations you covet in new ways.

Last thought…

The craft of blogging has changed substantially in several years. The tools are changing and offering new opportunity to reach new audience in new ways. If you are attempting to grow your platform, then you should give Google+ a serious look.

declutter (your blog, not your house)

By

declutter your blog - allumeFor quite a while now, I’ve noticed a trend among bloggers, especially those who have been blogging for a few years. And though I don’t really blog regularly, I feel it too. It’s a desire to simplify, to get rid of the clutter. The online world can get pretty noisy after a while.

This expresses itself in different ways. For some, it means decluttering their home or cutting out particular social media outlets or setting aside a day of the week for an internet sabbath. There are many personal changes we can (and often need to) make in our own lives to create a more peaceful environment.

But today, let’s talk about your online home … your blog or website.  Take off your “blogger” hat for a few minutes, and pretend it isn’t your blog at all. It’s someone else’s, and you just stopped by for the first time.

Clutter is the enemy.

In real life, I’m not a very neat and tidy person. I wish I was, believe me. But truthfully, I pile all sorts of papers on my desk … on the desk itself, on top of the printer (yes, this makes it harder to make copies, but if you lift the lid just right while holding onto the papers on the top, you can slide the paper in and make it work) …  the list goes on. Sometimes the situation on my desk get so out of control that the stack of papers avalanche right off the desk and into the trash can. Just being transparent here. If you don’t believe me, just ask @philulrich. The poor guy has to share an office with me.

It happens gradually though. My desk doesn’t go from being neat and clean to piles of paper horror in an instant. The same is usually true of blogs. You start out with only the necessities, and end up with much, much more. It’s the nature of the beast. Platforms like WordPress (and others) have made it so easy for us to add items to a sidebar, a navigation menu, and the area below each post. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.

But don’t forget, clutter is the enemy.

If left unchecked, the very tools that make blogging today more rich and effective can overrun your site. What happens then? Your content gets lost in the shuffle.

How sad is that? Someone arrives at your site for the first time, and she really can’t find what she is looking for. Or maybe she isn’t looking for anything in particular. She just wants to know what your site has to offer. After a few seconds … yes, that’s about all you have to capture her attention … or maybe a few minutes (if she’s incredibly persistent and her baby doesn’t start crying), she clicks away, because there was so much “stuff” on the site that she felt overwhelmed.

It’s never too late.

When it comes to clutter, there are four “problem areas” on most blogs. So let’s spend a few minutes talking about those and what you can do to clean them up.

navigation menus

It’s easy to start adding items to your menu. Maybe your theme or template even does it automatically when you create a new page. Take a look at what’s there. The goal here is to get rid of all but the essentials. What those essentials are will be different for each site. Here’s a couple that are a must, in my opinion:

  • about
  • contact

In addition to those two, you may want to feature a couple of key blog post categories, or your store, or a page about speaking. It’s up to you. Just make sure what you have in the menu is important enough to be there. Unnecessary menu items just make it harder for the reader to find what they need.

sidebars

Your sidebar is likely the biggest contributor to blog clutter. Add a widget for this, a widget for that, and you end up with a great big mess. Again, the question is, what really needs to be here? It might include:

  • social media icons
  • your photo and a very short blurb linking to your about page
  • search
  • email subscription option
  • ads
  • recent posts
  • post categories
  • recent tweets
  • Facebook or Google+ widget
  • Pinterest widget

That’s a pretty long list, so you really need to consider what is vital for your particular blog.

A few years ago, it was very popular to have all your friends’ blog buttons in the sidebar. These days, not so much. If you still have a large number of buttons in the sidebar, consider removing almost all of them. There may be a couple that really serve a purpose, but odds are, most (if not all) of them really need to go.

after post area

There are really only three things I would recommend putting at the bottom of your posts:

  • social sharing buttons
  • one call to action (this might be an option to subscribe to your blog or an ad for your latest ebook)
  • author  bio box (if you’re the only person who writes on your blog, this probably isn’t even necessary)

footer

The footer area can kind of become the catch all for items you don’t want in your sidebar. Don’t let this happen! Jennifer at Bourn Creative has written an excellent article on ways to use your footer area most effectively. I highly recommend you taking a few minutes to read it.

It’s time.

Cleaning up those four areas of your site will make a huge difference in a reader’s experience. Remember, your blog is your online home, and you want them to feel comfortable.

Hop over to your blog now and take a fresh look. While you’re doing that, I’ll be here cleaning off my desk.

Confessions of An Affiliate Flop

By

confessions of an affiliate flop

Hi, my name is Caroline and I am an affiliate flop.

It feels so good to write that out and let it be known that I have failed in 99% of the affiliate programs that I have signed up for on my personal site and I was even rejected by Amazon. Yep. I’ll talk more about that in a minute.

Some of you may be asking the question that I know I asked myself at first, “What is an affiliate program?”

An affiliate program is an agreement between you & the product owner that pays you a commission when people buy that product having found that product on your blog.

If you are an avid blog reader, I’m sure you have seen your favorite bloggers mention at the bottom of their post with a little * or within quotes stating “this post contains affiliate links, thank you for supporting _____”.  My curiosity took over and I started reading all I could about affiliate programs. At this point {and still today} selling ads on my blog wasn’t an option because, well, I’m nowhere close to offering that on my blog, but signing up for an affiliate program where I could earn a few $ here and there seemed like such a great idea.

After some research, I decided to give it a try. I found some affiliate programs that I was interested in and signed up. From digital photography e-books to iPhone e-books to camera bags to clothing to Amazon. In the past 3 years, I’ve tried at least 10.

Only one of those turned into being a tiny bit successful.

I even failed at being an Amazon Associate. I was so excited earlier this year when becoming an Amazon Associate finally became available in Illinois. I immediately signed up & added widgets to my sidebar highlighting some of my favorite products & books on Amazon. I even added some affiliate links in a few of my posts. Did you know there’s a 90 day trial period with Amazon Associates? If you do not generate a referral in 90 days, your account will be rejected. The email actually says “We are writing to notify you that your Associates Program application has been rejected.” Rejected.

I thought I was following all the right “rules”.

So, why am I here to share my affiliate flop & rejection? To encourage you – especially those of you that are like me and do not have a large audience of readers.

I want to encourage you that it is ok to try a few different affiliate programs until you find one that works for you & fits your blog. I also want to encourage you that it is ok to flop.

Lessons You Can Learn from an Affiliate Flop:

1. Research. My go to resources on this topic: Amy Lynn Andrews & Darren Rowse. {Click their names & the links will take you to their series on affiliate opportunities. Really, the possibilities are endless for you & they have done a ton of research for you on how to get started}.

2. Do not sign up for an affiliate marketing campaign for personal reasons. If I’m 100% honest, I was looking out for personal gain. “If someone clicks on my affiliate link & makes a purchase maybe I’ll have enough money to get ______.” My focus should have been their incredible product, not my personal gain.

3. Do not be discouraged if it flops. Send me an email & we’ll share our flop stories & if you get rejected by Amazon then we’ll be instant friends.

4. Know your audience. Find out what your readers are interested in hearing you talk about. This is another reason my affiliate programs flopped. I loved the products & assumed my readers would love them as well.  But, it was all about me {see #2 again}.

5. Find a mentor. I value the opinion of those who have cleared the trail of ahead of me in the blogging community. I asked a few of them to share with me their thoughts on affiliate programs:

Commit to a strategy and see it through. My best performing affiliate posts are gift list posts with all affiliate links and best wardrobe pieces for particular stores. But, with both of those I have to make sure they are well promoted. I spend lots of time making the post beautiful, convincing, and then finish it well by making sure there are enough eyeballs on it.
Hayley Morgan

I believe there’s value in just hearing about a site, clicking over, seeing a ware used in a creative way. They say you have to see something 7 or 8 times before it resonates… So for me, affiliates can feel like free advertising.
Myquillyn Smith

Last week, Denise encouraged us, “The great thing about blogging is the fact that there isn’t one correct way to do things.”  The same applies to affiliate programs. Figure out what works best for you & your blog audience and go from there.

What about you, have you had success with affiliate programs? If so, would you care to share with us a few of your tips? Or are you an affiliate flop like me that could use a little encouragement?

Is a Picture Really Worth a Thousand Words?

By

Is a Picture Worth a Thousands Words?
A fellow blogger recently asked me:

Is it absolutely necessary to include a photo or graphic with every post?

Graphics are usually a major component of blogging, but they don’t have to be the central focus. I know of some high-volume blogs that don’t use any pictures. People are drawn to these text-only blogs because they enjoy the content.

At the same time, the blogging world is inherently more visual than other types of writing. So the photo-option is really up to the individual blogger and the kind of audience he or she is trying to attract.

When I started blogging, I didn’t bother with pictures. I considered pictures to be superfluous. I was only interested in the writing. Well, in my earnest effort to focus on the writing, I failed to recognize that some readers are naturally drawn to the visual elements. By neglecting to include a picture or a graphic, I was unintentionally neglecting the readers who brightly respond to sight and color.

Over time I’ve come to appreciate the beauty of a nice photo or two, here and there. Instead of seeing them as “filler,” I now see them as additional agents of communication.

So the use of pictures really depends on two things:

  1. What is the purpose of your blog?
  2. Who is the audience of your blog?

The purpose of my blog has always been to share the light of Christ through the stories He has written in my life. Photographs are not necessary for me to write these stories, but they can enhance the reader’s experience.

An apt picture or graphic can help communicate the message I want to share.

Of course, not every blog is devoted solely to communicating a message. Many blogs simply wish to inspire others. And beauty is inspiring.

What is the purpose of your blog? To communicate? To inspire? Or both?

The great thing about blogging is the fact that there isn’t one correct way to do things. <Tweet this!>

Blogging offers many options. Part of the fun is creating a blog space that’s unique to you.

If you’re drawn to the visual beauty of pictures, then it would be wise to include them. If you’re drawn to the words more than pictures, then create a blog space that works for you.

For some, too many photos could be distracting. For others, not enough photos could be boring.

Most of the time, “like is drawn to like.” In other words, we tend to attract readers who like the same things we like, who enjoy the same kinds of things we enjoy.

If you’re a blogger who would like to experiment more with pictures on your blog, you don’t need one of those crazy expensive cameras with telescope-type lenses either. The camera on your phone works just fine.

Free photo-editing is available online too. Do you want to crop a photo? Add text to it? Or brighten it up a bit? Check out www.picmonkey.com. Upload a photo and try out the different options. It’s an easy way to polish your photos.

Also, last year at Allume the amazing photographer David Molnar taught a session where he shared a lot of the basics of photography. You can check out last year’s session here!

Is a picture really worth a thousand words? It can be. It’s all up to you.

Do you enjoy including pictures with your blog posts?

Do you prefer more text-only kinds of blogs?

Blog Ads :: From the Perspective of an Ad Manager

By

blog_ads_allume_post

Three years ago, God took my gift of encouragement & helping others & my tiny knowledge of blogging & gave me the opportunity to use those gifts in a new way as an Ad Manager for a dear friend. I had ZERO experience but my friend took a chance & it has been so much fun!

In my everyday life, when the topic of “Do you work?” comes up & I tell them what I do, 95% are shocked that bloggers can earn money. To those of us in the blogging world it is commonplace & a topic of conversation but it can still generate some confusion.

Deciding whether or not to sell or buy advertising can be challenging. There are so many resources out there {I listed some below that are amazing!} & I think something new pops up every day in the blogging world. It is constantly changing and growing.

Just to clarify, I am talking about buying and selling Private Ads :: a relationship between a blogger {the Ad Seller} and someone with a cottage industry type business {the Ad Buyer} like an Etsy shop that makes handmade pillows who work together directly (or though an Ad Manager) to build a partnership. There’s a whole other world of Ad Networks & Affiliate Marketing that I’m not even going to try to jump into today.

Here are a few things that I have learned over the past three years from the perspective of an Ad Manager that may helpful as you venture into the business of buying and selling Private Ads:

To the Ad Seller {the one selling advertising}:

  • Media kits are helpful but not necessary
  • clearly communicate your expectations with your ad buyer
  • consider offering an incentive for their ad purchase {a Facebook mention, Tweet, Pinterest pin, giveaway or a lovely combination of any or all}
  • do not be afraid to say “no thanks” & try to refer them to someone else in their niche

To the Ad Buyer {the one buying advertising}:

  • clearly communicate to the Ad Seller why you believe your product or website would be a good fit for their site
  • an amazing pixel creative {a.k.a. your ad button} is necessary & ask yourself “What makes you click on an ad?” when you’re visiting other websites. Expect the Ad Seller to have certain opinions about the appearance of your ad button. They have put in a considerable amount of thought {& resources} in to the “look” of their website. If your ad button doesn’t fit their blog aesthetic, they may ask for a new one.
  • offer discounts to the readers and/or consider making a landing page just for them
  • do not take it personally when you are rejected; realize their honesty probably saved you some money
  • be a responsible bill payer {Ad Managers hate to send payment reminders}

Being an Ad Manager has been an amazing journey for me & it really is about building a relationship with these incredible shop owners. Most start out as a partnership about working together to be a voice for their product but so many of the shop owners that I have had the privilege to work with have become some of my favorite places to shop!

 

Resources worth checking out:

Amy Lynn Andrews {everything she writes about is incredibly helpful}
How to Blog for Profit Without Selling Your Soul by Ruth Soukup
How They Blog
Blog Life e-Course by A Beautiful Mess

how to share your blog posts on social media like a boss

By

social media, blog posts, like a boss, share blog posts

If blogging had a secret sauce or magic potion, this would be it. By far, this is the most common question I get asked about blogging and social media.

When is right time to share blog posts on social media?

I can confidently respond without hesitation…

It depends.

I’ll be honest. I really wish I could tell you an exact formula for sharing your (amazing) blog posts so they reach the millions of people who need to be reading them. But the reality is that there isn’t a formula.

With that said, there are some things you can do that’ll help you figure it out. With a little bit if testing, measuring, and retesting, you’ll find the right answer for you pretty quickly. In no time at all, you’ll be able to share blog posts like a boss.

The First Key to Social Media Success

It’s not about you.

First and foremost, the success of your blog posts in the world of social media has nothing to do with you. Well, maybe a little bit. Many bloggers misunderstand social media success as having to do with getting the right mix with when and how they post their content. However, if it only depended on your sharing, then it’s not really social is it?

If you want to find success in social media, then you need to be thinking about how other people share your content. Your role in that is two-fold:

  1. Create content that’s share-worthy. Think about blog post titles that make readers want to click. Think about eye-popping images that catch their attention. Think about writing content that would make them want to share with their friends because of how it moved them.
  2. Make it easy for them to share. I’m amazed at how many websites I visit where I can’t find social sharing buttons. Sure, I could copy/paste the blog post URL, but if I have to go to that much effort, you’ve already lost me. Share buttons should be highly visible and easy to use.

Finding the Right Times

While most of your success comes from how other people share your content, you’ll still want to optimize how you share your blog posts for maixmum reach. This is where you’ll want to experiment with different types of posts (text, images, links, and videos) at different times of day.

Social media gurus will look at the data and tell you that you should be posting your content at 2pm on Thursday afternoons (or some other flavor of the month). However, that’s based on meta-data from thousands of accounts, not your data.

So how do you find the optimum times for your accounts?

For Facebook

If you run a Facebook page for your website, then you’ll have access to Insights for your page.

facebook-insights

In your Insights, you’ll find “When Your Fans Are Online” on the Posts tab. The initial chart shows general population volume, but when you mouse over different days of the week you’ll see when your fans are online that day. This is based on recent data specific to the people who are fans of your page. Note that when your followers are online will vary from day to day.

facebook, best time to post

For Twitter

You can find similar data for Twitter using third-party tools, like Follwerwonk. Once you sign in with your Twitter account, you’ll be able to analyze followers… both those who follow you, and those who you follow. You’ll get a great deal of demographic information about your followers, and a detailed chart of when they are most active on Twitter.

twitter, analyze followers

I want to draw special attention to that “Schedule at Buffer” button below the top chart. That brings me to my next point…

Buffering Your Way to Success

Once you’ve figured out the best times to schedule your posts, then you can plug that information into a tool like Buffer. In Buffer you’ll be able to create a custom schedule for each of your social media profiles, and set the times you want to post. You can even schedule different frequency and posting times for each day of the week. In the example below, you’ll see that I set my schedule to reflect the peak times for my Facebook page on Tuesdays.

buffer, scheduling posts

This is where that “Schedule at Buffer” button in Followerwonk comes in handy. You can select a frequency for scheduled posts in a day, and automatically import an optimum posting schedule into Buffer.

One of my favorite parts of Buffer is the analytics for the posts you share (only through Buffer). Based on interaction threshholds, you’ll get a good idea of what kinds of social media posts are resonating the most with your audience.

buffer analytics

It’s important to note here that using Buffer for scheduled posts doesn’t mean that everything you do on social media needs to be scheduled through Buffer. It is, however, a great tool that will help you push your blog posts out to different platforms at predetermined times, making sharing much simpler.

CoSchedule: A Premium Solution

If your blog is on (self-hosted) WordPress, then you can use some cool tools like CoSchedule. This WordPress plugin comes with a small monthly fee, but it has some pretty slick scheduling functionality. Basically, while you in your Edit Post mode, you can also create your social media posts to publish at whatever times you specify. Create, text, image, and link posts to run at the same time that your blog posts publishes. And then run a different kind of social media post at x-number of hours after the blog post publishes.

coschedule

If you publish your blog post at 6am, you can publish a link post to Facebook at 6am, then an image post 5 hours later, and a text post 10 hours later. Then think about the Twitter and Google+ posts you want to send out in order to get the best coverage for when your followers are most likely to see it. Everything is triggered automatically based on the publishing of the blog post. CoSchedule even has a slick calendar that shows you all scheduled blog and social media posts for easy management.

Last thought…

The best thing you can do to determine what social media posting methods and schedules are best for you is to test, measure, adjust, and test again. When you share blog posts, pay attention to the types of social media posts you run at different times, and how well each of those resonate with your followers. Before long, you should be able to pick up on some trends and patterns with your followers that will help you optimize every post you make…

Like a boss.

design is only skin deep

By

design is only skin deep - allume

I thought long and hard about what to share with you in this post, my first on the Allume blog. I’ve been part of the Allume community since the first year of Relevant, when some incredible blogging friends I’d never even met in real life surprised me with a ticket and hotel room for a conference I had only dreamed of attending.

That seems like ages ago. And now I’m on the schedule to write something techy or designy to help you become a better blogger. Only I’m struggling to find the right place to start.

Because at the end of the day, design isn’t the most important thing.

I know you’ve heard that before … but you may not have expected to hear it from me. Phil and I have built a business around quality design and solidly developed sites. So you know it matters to me. I want the whole internet to be beautiful—I truly do. But you can spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on your blog and still fall incredibly short. Because really, it’s the foundation of things that’s the most important, and I’m not talking about what blogging platform you use.

Most of us in the Allume community spend a lot of time at this online, blogging, social media thing. It’s easy to see the stream flowing by and jump in with both feet. Sometimes we don’t even know where we want it to take us. Other times, we know where we want to go but get a little lost along the way. It can get overwhelming and hectic and loud. Maybe you feel it, too. Or maybe you’re swimming so hard and fast you haven’t even noticed.

Can you relate?

If you do, just pause with me for a minute. Whether you’ve been blogging for a 5 minutes or 5 years, it’s so worth it to take some time to talk to the Lord about your blog. Ask Him for His perspective. He’s such a good Father, and if we ask for wisdom, He will give it (James 1:5). Maybe the answers will confirm what you’re already doing, or maybe they will be a surprise that requires you to make a change. Either way, find peace in knowing why you’re spending the time and effort you do in building your blog. Don’t be afraid to step out of the stream for a season if you need to get clarity. It’s a lot easier to find your place in that fast-flowing stream when you know who you are and what you’re doing there.

And the good news is that having clear direction and purpose is an important first step when you’re considering what you want your blog to look like. Design tells a story, and you need to know what the story is to implement an the right look and feel on your site. This is true whether you’re designing your own site or hiring someone else to do so.

Here are some questions to consider:

  • Can you clearly communicate your blog’s purpose?
  • Does the look and feel of your site fit with this purpose?
  • Does your writing clearly communicate the message?
  • Does your site feel clean and fresh, or is it so cluttered that your content doesn’t have room to shine?
  • When a person visits your site for the first time, what is their initial impression? (You’ll need to ask someone else to answer this one!)

If the answers feel discouraging, start with some small, doable steps. Don’t feel the pressure to fix everything at once. We’re all in the process of learning as we navigate this blogging journey.

A solid design and well laid out site go a long way when it comes to attracting and keeping readers. We all want our blogs to function well and be easy to navigate. These are all things to work on improving. But most importantly don’t forget to have clear understanding of your purpose, lay a solid foundation, and build quality content that communicates your message, because a blog design really is only skin deep.

Four Questions a Blog’s Home Page Should Answer

By

Four Questions
Since I teach writing to college students, you would think that writing for a blog would be a natural fit.

After all, I love words. And I know the rules of grammar fairly well. How hard could it be?

Needless to say, when I started blogging five years ago, I committed just about every “blogging sin” possible.

  • I wrote long paragraphs.
  • I wrote even longer posts.
  • I followed all the grammar rules I learned in school.
  • I covered three to four different points in each post.
  • I neglected to engage my readers with a call to action.
  • And I never bothered to include a picture.

Basically, I treated online writing the same as regular writing — with black words on a white background. I didn’t see the need for a header or a tagline or even an About page. I’m a word-girl, so I wanted to write words. Lots and lots of words.

Yet, in my earnest effort to focus on the craft, I made the most critical error of all:
I failed to connect my words to a larger message.

Without a core message, our words float adrift on an endless sea of meaningless syllables.

As writers and bloggers, our words should have a destination. They need to lead somewhere.

This is why it’s so important for blog-writers to have a header and a tagline and an About page. A reader wants to know who we are and what we’re about and where we’re going.

As a reader, whenever I visit a blog for the first time, I instinctively ask the following four questions. And I look for the answers to these four questions on the home page, preferably “above the fold,” which means I shouldn’t have to scroll down in order to find the answers to these four questions.

1. What is this blog about?

The theme of a blog should be apparent. Is this a food blog? A DIY blog? A mommy blog? A faith blog?

Since our eyes are naturally drawn to the header across the top, it makes the most sense for our blog’s theme to be evident in the header. I realize, of course, that many bloggers (including myself) use our name for our blog’s domain. When this is the case, the tagline becomes especially important.

A reader should be able to glance at the top of a blog and know immediately what the blog is about.

2. Who is the writer behind these words?

When I started blogging, I loathed the idea of putting a picture of myself on my blog, much less any information about me. I wanted my blog to be about the writing, not about me. It dawned on me, though, that when words are divorced from the context of the writer, they are nothing more than mere words.

A person and a person’s words are inseparable. How can I expect a reader to take my words to heart if I’m not willing to put a face to mine?

Every blog should have an About page that introduces the writer. However, it’s wise to briefly introduce yourself on the home page too. The sidebar is a good place for this. Then invite your readers to learn more about you by providing a link to your About page.

3. Why should I come back?

This is the most important question every first-time reader asks, and it’s the content of our writing that makes a reader come back.

A blog is more than an online writing space. It’s a doorway into a writer’s life.
<Tweet this!>

With a blog, we can share our lives and experiences. We can encourage others who may be in similar situations. We can help people know they’re not alone.

Readers come back when they feel like they connect with the writer and they benefit from the writing. <Tweet this!>

4. How can I subscribe?

If we want our readers to come back, then we need to invite them to join us on our writing journeys. So we should make subscribing easy.

For further connection, invite your readers to connect with you through Twitter or Facebook or whichever social media venue works best for you.

Blogging is at its best when it’s about connecting with people through great messages. <Tweet this!>

●  ●  ●  ●  ●

As a writer, my own blogging journey meandered awhile. And that’s okay too. But once I was able to address these four questions on my blog, my online writing experienced a major course correction. And my blog-writing all of the sudden had a defined destination.

Does your blog answer these four questions on your home page?

Have I Told You About My Love–Hate Relationship with Facebook?

By

I want to quit.

That’s how I feel about Facebook, every day of my life. I don’t know if I can take another algorithm change. And it seems like the wounds from the last one haven’t even healed yet when another comes along and rips in even more. Sometimes I don’t think I’ll ever recover, and walking away seems to be the best option.

But then I look at the data.

Facebook is one of the top drivers of traffic to my websites, second only to Google. And the quality of the traffic coming from Facebook has been much more engaged than other sources, making it probably the single most valuable referer of people checking out my work.

So are all the headaches worth it? Well, it depends.

I read somewhere recently that all the algorithm changes aren’t a reason to jump ship right away, that is unless your strategy is a shallow one. The article pointed out that the opportunity is still great for smart marketers.

Challenge accepted.

Here’s the deal… Your success or failure depends on your ability to understand the platform and leverage its strengths. (Tweet that!) It’s not about tricking the system, or developing elaborate systems to make it do what you want.

facebook

The first thing you need to understand

Facebook is about people. It sounds simple, but we quickly forget as we try to focus on numbers for reach, likes, shares, and comments. When we post something, we want it to be seen by as many people as possible. But the second we start thinking about numbers, we start to lose sight of people.

Many feel like Facebook’s attempts to limit the visibility of brand page content is merely an attempt to force people to pay for views. While there may be an element of truth to that, think about what your news feed would look like if brands weren’t limited in any way. It would be overflowing with “commercials” from brands trying to get you to buy something. And I don’t know anyone who gets on Facebook to sort through a steady stream of advertising hell. And Facebook is more likely to keep people on the platform when it can keep the focus on people.

People.

That’s what we want to see when we sign onto Facebook. So next time you sign in and can see your in-laws awesome vacation photos, thank Facebook for changing their algorithms. Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the best example, but I’m sure you get what I mean. #fistbump

Personal Profiles vs. Brand Page (Which is right for me?)

No lie. This is one of the most frequently asked questions I get when I talk to people about social media. With all of the talk about Facebook pushing down the reach of pages (unless you pay-to-play), it’s difficult to see a brand page adding value. At the same time, many book publishers look for fan page numbers as evidence of an author’s platform. Ultimately, a brand page can add value… as long as you understand it’s strengths and limitations. But the greatest traction you get on Facebook will come when you post to your personal profile.

I recently did an informal study of engagement on some brand pages. One of the pages I looked at is an author page belonging to a popular New York Times Best Seller. Averaging 1,383 likes per post, there’s enough engagement to make the best of us covet our neighbor’s social media platform. But then consider that this person’s page has over 146,000 followers. The average engagement rate turns out to be only 0.9% of the total fan base. And that’s actually a good rate of engagement!

Remember, the platform is about people. So any successful strategy should be centered on how you use your personal profile to get the better reach.

In another informal study, I’ve posted new content to my brand pages and watched the rate of engagement for the first few hours. Often my efforts make me feel like I’m watching the proverbial pot of water waiting to boil. But after a period of low organic engagement on the page post, I’ll share the post from the page onto my personal profile. Usually within minutes I see 5-10 times the engagement. The point is that IF you decide to use a brand page, it’s re-sharing your content to your personal profile that will drive the greatest organic reach. And if you can get a few other people to share it as well, then your organic reach expands exponentially.

I think it speaks volumes that Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, doesn’t post to a brand page. Instead he allows people to subscribe to his personal profile (where he has over 27 million followers), and posts everything there (some posts only to friends, and others to the public for all followers). #justsayin

Tools to help you maximize your impact

I always, always, always advise people to follow the data. Don’t base decisions for how to manage your Facebook presence on emotion, feelings, what someone said works for them, and what some “guru” said you should do. Even if it worked for someone else, it doesn’t mean that it’ll work for you.

One of the strengths of brand pages is the Insights tool. It’ll give you a wealth of information about your audience, and how they’re engaging (or not engaging) with your content. You can even find out when your fans are online (which should give you a good idea of when to post). So it’s a good idea to review your page Insights on a regular basis (maybe once every week or two), and ask yourself how you think you need to revise your strategy based on what you’re seeing there.

Unfortunately, personal profiles don’t have the same Insights tools. That’s why I like to use a tool like Buffer to post content that I want to measure. Buffer uses special tracking measures that give us better insight into what’s working and what’s not. In addition to that, it makes it easy to schedule content for specific and/or preset times which help you take advantage of waves and cycles of visibility.

Last thought…

Facebook presents us with a tremendous opportunity to engage and connect with people, and to share ideas. And when it comes to building your brand on Facebook, you should stop thinking like a brand, and focus on thinking like a person.

 

How to Make Graphics on Your Phone

By

How to make graphics on your phone by Alli WorthingtonHave you noticed how the web is becoming more and more image based?  The best way to get noticed online is to provide amazingly useful content and have a strong visual strategy. Today I’m giving you some of my favorite apps that will let you create amazing graphics with your iPhone.

One thing that stops many people from making their own graphics is the fear that their pictures ‘aren’t good enough’. The good news is taking a picture that will be used for a background is much easier than you think. Try getting close up to any interesting texture or capturing the sky during a sunset.

You also do not have to use your own images. I purchase royalty-free images that do not need attribution and keep them in a folder on my iPhone. That way I always have background images to choose from when I’m on the go.

LetterGlow

Not by Works from Alli WorthingtonLetterGlow knows what a photographer and graphic creator wants; it allows full resolution exports and you can upload your own fonts. You can create and save custom overlays (great for keeping your logo handy) and export directly to a WordPress media library.

 

 

 

WordSwag

Wordswag example from Alli WorthingtonThe makers of WordSwag are my app heroes for developing this typographical masterpiece. Somehow the words you type in for your image are rearranged in a beautiful artistic display.

The Hellen Keller quote graphic and the featured image at the top of this article were both made with Wordswag.

Tip- I used the Snapseed app to crop the featured image into a vertical size to make it more Pinterest-friendly.

Rhonna Designs

Wallpaper from Alli WorthingtonThe Rhonna app is my favorite way to make custom wallpaper.

(Click the wallpaper image on the left and you will be able to download the full-sized wallpaper for your phone.)

There are tons of well designed quotes, add-on graphics and features that make Rhonna the best app for making beautiful pictures quickly.

 

 

You can find more tips for creating  graphics on your phone here. 

 

These are three of my favorite apps to create graphics on the go. What apps do you use?

 

Community Begins with Your Unique Voice

By

Community Begins With Your Unique Voice

Since this is our inaugural post for the Allume Community Writers, we would like to introduce ourselves first.

community_unique2Hi! I’m Caroline.  And this is my friend Karrie.

We met each other almost 11 years ago in Akron, Ohio.  Karrie was in high school & I was a sleep-deprived mother of 2 toddlers at the time.  Karrie quickly became a necessity in my life as a babysitter & sanity saver.  2 more kids later & 16 moves between the two of us, Karrie is no longer our babysitter, but she’s still my sanity saver!

Karrie & the TeSelle kids circa 2009

Karrie & the TeSelle kids circa 2009

From the very beginning, we have done life together & built community – sharing the good, the bad & the ugly.  We have not let geography or our 15-year age difference hinder that.

It was because of our friendship & life built around community & our desire to help others that led us to start working together as virtual assistants.

What does all of this have to do with being a part of the Allume community?

Community begins with your unique voice.

We recognize that you have a unique voice in this world.  Your life and your experiences are uniquely you. You’re here because you have recognized the opportunity to share that with the world through the avenue of blogging.

What is our unique voice?

Our unique voice is to help & encourage others.  Right now, we’re doing that in a virtual way.  We are here as a part of the Allume community to HELP YOU.

We see this as an opportunity to get to know you {build community}, hear your dream {encourage your unique voice}, then point you in a direction of figuring out how to achieve that dream {grow your influence}.

In the coming months, we will cover topics ranging from writing a great purpose statement for your blog, interviews with the experts, working with affiliates, widgets we love & much more.

…our heart here in this space is that we walk together into living well and full, and from that place we write and blog and make a difference in the world in which we live. Logan Wolfram

Most importantly, we’re here for the community, sharing the good, the bad & the ugly. Walking together, living well & full – that’s community.  Building upon those relationships will help grow your influence & make a difference in this world.

We’ve introduced ourselves, now it’s your turn. We want to get to know you better.

Take that first step of walking together in this community.

What is your unique voice?  Share it with us in the comments below.

When Your Voice is an Idol

By

We spend more time analyzing ourselves than ever before. With the rapid expansion of social media and technology, we live in a world constantly bombarded with self.

Which profile picture will I use for my avatar? What do my liked pages say about me? What interests do I showcase that make me look good?

We live in a culture that capitalizes on more than our personal tastes, it capitalizes on our persona, our brand. 

Whether it’s the TV shows we like, the books we read, the stores we frequent, or the places we go, there is a growing desire to share bits of who we are with others. You can tweet during your favorite shows, share excerpts of the books you read, capture your pumpkin spice latte and map your location down to your favorite neighborhood Starbucks.

Some would argue that this narcissistic bent is why connection is often difficult, why comparison and insecurity arise when everyone else’s Instagrams are so much cooler than yours, because you never eat watermelon in cowboy boots and a floral dress whilst leaning over a vintage table with the perfect yesteryear wash bathing the photo in golden hues. You just stand at the counter in your faded yoga pants and spit seeds into the garbage pail next to the pile of dirty dishes you have yet to get to.

And maybe you’re doing it wrong. Maybe the life you live is less than. Or maybe you are the girl with the cute boots and impeccable taste Instagramming away your seamless life? Even you know there’s more to your story than the pictures you share.

default of the heart

But social media or not, I think the human heart always seeks to compare. Our default is to be concerned and consumed by our own glory. If ever there were an idol of our times in the blog world, I believe it is our voice. Our need to always be heard saying something.

There are the shock value bloggers capitalizing on every current event, every controversial divisive line needing to be parsed and severed and inspected with scathing sarcasm and open letter rants.

There is the desire for our words to reach further, to impact more, to challenge or encourage or matter. But there is a grace-less way about always needing to have our voice heard. And there is the quiet despair for those who faithfully share their voice and stories to the humble reception of silence and wonder if they matter at all.

We gather at conferences and wonder about the elevator speeches we’re supposed to prepare summarizing who we are and what we offer. And sometimes I think we’re too practiced at saying all the right things that we never stop to listen.

Because at the heart of it all, we tie our performance with words and platform and branding to our worth. If our story doesn’t matter, maybe we don’t either?

And I know I’m not the only one, but I’m tired of it.  I’ve felt the sticky fingered lure of candy coating what is, at it’s core, pride. The syrupy tongued words that pave the way to a bigger audience have sent me writhing back to silence, like a child found in bloated emptiness amid a flurry of candy wrappers the day after Halloween.

I’m an advocate for story because I believe the word of God’s people, the testimony of His beloved brings glory to Him, connection to the body, and light in the darkness but there will always be the temptation to focus so much on ourselves, our story, our path, our contribution to this writing world, that we forget that to live a good story, we’d be wise to listen and slow to speak.

Because grace happens in the pauses, when we stop to soak in words that are not our own. We live better questions when we stop reciting what we have to offer and start to champion other people’s voices. Start to believe in the storyteller who’s writing our moments with a master’s precision. When we find our humanity not just in the words we craft but also in the words we cultivate. When we worry less about our own voices being heard and allow God to speak.

crafting words

 I will always champion God’s people using their voice, but let us also learn to hold our tongues and listen with bold ears and hearts wide open, and maybe then, God will speak and our words will be tinged with grace, soothing to our souls, and full of life.

for when we long to be accepted

By

Hi. I’m the one person on the planet not going to Allume this year. Blah. Which is sad to me because I love my bloggin’ sistas. I love the late nights of talking and the sessions full of Divine wisdom and the photo booth thingy and the make-me-hyper coffee!

So I prayed about what I could possibly say to all of you amazing bloggers who do get to go to the conference, as well as to those who don’t get to go. And the word that came to me was “acceptance”. Acceptance.

 
Accepted
 

We all so desperately want to be accepted. That’s partly why I’m disappointed that I don’t get to go this year. I don’t want to miss anything. It’s also partly why I’m guessing some of you are nervous about going. You don’t want to feel left out.

I know that I know that some of you are spending sweet time worrying about what cutie outfits you will wear, because I’ve done that. Or worrying about what you will say, because I’ve done that too. Or worrying about what people will think of your wanna-be-rapping skills, maybe that one’s just me. When at the root of all that time and energy is a longing to be accepted.

But we get it sooooooo twisted. SO twisted. Because here it is. You ready? You and I will never ever find our ultimate acceptance in other humans. It isn’t possible. People are too volatile, short-sighted, and self-focused, just like us. And if we spend our energies looking to other humans for our acceptance and our identity, we will never truly embrace the woman that God created us to be. What a travesty.

If there’s anything I hope we each prepare before jumping into new things or jumping onto flights to new places, I pray we prepare our hearts. Let’s spend time looking at our Maker. Spend time meditating on the things He says about us. Spend time reveling in the beauty He whispers.

When we truly embrace who we are in Christ, we’re empowered to walk confident into a room of hundreds of other women that we’ve never personally met. Not because we have some haughty view of self. We can walk confident because we know WHOSE we are. And when we know WHOSE we are, we can know who we are — accepted and beloved, regardless of whether we’re wearing the trendiest pair of boots.

I don’t get to go to Allume this year — unless crazy, unexpected things happen. But I’m fighting those “missing out” feelings with truths that my God declares over me. The same truths He declares over you.

 
How have you wrestled against that nervous feeling of wanting to “fit in”?
What does our God say about us as His daughters?
 

Skyscrapers are Moved When Dominoes Fall

By

Skyscrapers are moved when dominoes fall

Sometimes in life, we exist as one domino in a row of many, poised and positioned to fall in the most glorious ways … changing one another’s lives forever.

She emails to tell me of the farm lady with the blog. But I know nothing of blogs in January of 2011. And it’s not until I’m standing in line at the Ft. Lauderdale airport I pay attention. It’s her text this time, “You HAVE to get this book for your flight home….”

I download the book before I board the plane, and the five-hour flight seems only five minutes long as I pour over her profound and poetic words.

I scour her site and read every word, and it’s at the bottom I see it: a link to a place called (in)courage. I click on it, and am ushered into a world of writing I’ve never known before…

One which will change so much for me.

One  in which He’ll use even me, to give hope to other broken hearts.

“Because God intends to use each one of us to change the world.” ~@RichStearns [Tweet that]

I discover blogs. Countless blogs. With words, link-ups, and communities of real people.

But it’s not until September when I learn of The Relevant Conference (now called Allume). A conference for bloggers who long to be used in real and relevant ways, to bring the light of Christ to the world through their writing.

And the conference is already sold out.

But little did I know, even God can use Twitter to accomplish His plans.

collage1

I stalk the Twitter stream and gain enough courage to send a tweet: “If you’re needing to sell your ticket, I’d love to buy one…”

And it’s a stranger named Denise in Bloom who responds. She doesn’t know me at all, but sweetly offers to watch for a ticket. And it’s through her help, a way is opened for me to go.

Less than two days later, with a last-minute conference ticket in hand, I quietly tweet to ask if anyone needs a roommate.

And this time it’s Annie at Home from New York who replies. She’d been on the waiting list and obtained a last-minute conference ticket too. We chat on the phone and it doesn’t take long to feel like we’ve always been friends.

But since Annie is driving to the conference, she won’t be there the first night I arrive.

So I meander onto Twitter again, to ask if anyone has room for me to stay with them for one night.

And it’s Erin from Home with the Boys who tweets back, generously offering me to stay with her and Brooke—two close friends offering to open up their room to welcome me, a complete stranger! Their kindness overwhelms.

Airplane Flying Over the Clouds

Before I know it I’m on a plane to Pennsylvania for my first blogging conference ever. I know no one and have only read a couple of blogs. And as the plane lands, I have no idea I’m about to encounter some of the most generous and kind women on the planet. Women whose dominoes are about to fall into mine.

“God creates elaborate plans with spiritual dominoes, and the chain reaction begins with one domino at a time.” ~@RichStearns [Tweet that]

We stand at baggage claim and watch the suitcases circle around. She tells me her name is Kat, and that she’s from Texas. And standing with her weight on one foot, she leans against her suitcase and asks about me. I tell her I’ve been blogging only 3 months about mercy and grace. And she fills my heart with encouraging words. Welcoming me to the blogging world and inspiring me to write as God leads.

I go to dinner that night with my new friend Annie, and we inconspicuously sit at a table in the back. But they’ve seated speakers at each table who rotate tables to meet us. And at our table I’m introduced to the down-to-earth and inviting Emily Freeman, the good girl full of grace, who interacts with us just like a close friend.

After dinner a woman with a smile as wide as Colorado tells me her name is Kristen. I tell her I’m new, and she tells me not to worry about that. Not one. little. bit. And throughout the conference, she tracks me down, and hugs me tight, time and time again. As if it’s her personal mission to make me feel like I matter and know I really belong.

Allume friends

At lunch the next day, I sit by a quiet girl with long flowing hair, who subtly leans over to say hi, and tells me our names rhyme: Myquillyn and Jacqueline. And we commiserate over the spelling challenges of our names and chuckle about the ways people get them wrong most every time. We chat about everyday down-to-earth things over salad and chicken, and I leave feeling better for having crossed her path.

With such an unusual name, I wonder if she blogs. And it’s then someone tells me that the Myquillyn I met, whose name rhymed with mine, is none other than The Nester. Who is also the sister of Emily Freeman. I had no. idea. And neither did she find the need to tell me. What humility and grace.

I work up my courage to approach Lisa Jo Baker, the host of Five Minute Friday. As a new blogger I’ve been learning to write with her community, and I blurt out my confession as soon as we meet face to face, as if to alleviate the secret guilt I’ve been carrying all three months of my blogging life.

“I have to admit to you I cheat on FMF posts,” I confess. “…I set the timer for five minutes, pause it every so often to think, and turn it back on to furiously type.”

She throws her head back in laughter, and hugs me tight like we’ve been friends for a decade, melting my anxiety into a puddle on the floor.

And across the room I recognize Christin in the lounge. Hers is one of the few blogs I’ve read. And I rush over to thank her for her words at Joyful Mothering. We eat cupcakes and talk into the evening.

Ann and Jacque 2011And it’s the next day, I meet the farm girl. Ann, full of grace. I wait at the end of the line, and when we talk, I cry the entire time. Eyes-pufffy, tears-pouring cry. And she locks her eyes on mine, as if I’m the only one in the room. And she tells me I am loved … that God wants to use me too.

Oh the grace and kindness of each heart I encounter.

Rich Stearns, president of World Vision, U.S. describes how God has big plans for us all … how He always uses ordinary people to change the world.

Yet in God’s story, we are dependent on one another. Because together we can do things we could never accomplish alone.

Did you know it’s been shown that if you create a chain of dominoes, each one 1 1/2 times the size of the previous one, the cumulative effect of their fall is exponential. So much so, that if the first domino in the chain is a mere 5mm high and 1mm thick, the 29th domino to fall would be the height of the Empire State Building?

One tiny domino falling with the tiniest force, has the potential to effect the kind of change that could fall a domino the size of the Empire State Building!

“Only God can multiply seemingly insignificant things to knock over skyscrapers.” ~@RichStearns

In His plan, God places us in the right place, perched and ready to fall at the right time, by His Divine providence alone.

And as He sends us opportunities, He whispers:

Lean in. And fall.

And when we do, He magnifies the results to accomplish things we never dreamed were possible.

Introductions and smiles, and conversations at meals … all of them connections.

One domino leaning over to fall the next, as God orchestrates it all in His time.

I become friends with Denise in Bloom, and in time become a contributing writer at Sisters in Bloom. I find sweet friends among the writing team there. And it is Amy Bayliss, one of those Sisters in Bloom, who gives me the life-changing advice and push I need to share my story of how Mercy Found Me.

“You are a domino precious in His sight. Be willing and say yes … be available to be used.” @RichStearns [Tweet that]

Through the random kindness of Erin and Brooke, we become friends. And in time I begin to write for The MOB Society, and later for Team Hope, the team of women who encourage weary mama-hearts at Brooke and Stacey’s place, Hope for the Weary Mom.

In time I figure out who Kat is and find the Hello Mornings community.

And I continue to receive Skype calls and cheerleading from the sweet and generous Kristen Strong.

Because of Lisa Jo, I become connected with (in)courage, leading an (in)couragers group. And I’m honored to participate in the video footage for (in)RL 2013, sharing my passion for community. And in more time, Christin emails me and invites me to write for the Allume blog.

Certainly when I arrived at the conference in 2011, I never anticipated how it would change my life. I never imagined how I’d encounter such gracious and humble women–women and writers without pretense, who display such a pure love for Christ.

His love compelled them to reach out in kindness to even me–a newcomer and nurse who never imagined she’d be a writer at all.

We are dominoes falling into one another, with skyscraper moments ahead.

“Because skyscrapers are moved when dominoes fall.” @RichStearns [Tweet that]

Are you ready for Allume?

Are you standing tall in your domino spot?

Are you ready to lean in and fall, that your life may change another?

As you prepare for Allume, poised and positioned in the exact place God intends, get ready sweet sisters.

Get ready for the divine appointments He has waiting for you.

May you expect them,

Watch for them,

And find them.

And as you do, may we one day see the skyscraper-size impact He accomplishes through each and every one of us.

One smile, one hug, and one conversation at a time.

I can’t wait to see you there!

 

How have you been changed by Allume?

What are you most looking forward to?

 

Photo Credit 

The Seasons of a Dream

By

I’ve neglected my children.

I made allowances for my need to write, to follow hard after dreams. But I’ve done it all wrong.

Because a vacancy moved into their lives as the rabbit’s hole of my laptop screen beckoned and swallowed me up.

But didn’t my ministry and passion need to be tended too? The reading and interacting. The tweets and status updates and link-ups. The silence and time to write.

It seemed I killed my blog just when I was seeing fruit. Just when I had built up subscribers and was feeling like the hard work was paying off.

God was being glorified, right? This is after all, the dream He gave me. The call I was responding to. The call I felt God confirmed in so many different ways. 

She told me I have the potential to be great. That I’ve got a voice and skill and passion and that if I learned to combine those with a little direction, I could really rock this whole writer thing. Maybe get published and have a real book on a real shelf instead of piles of journals stacked in old boxes in the garage.

She said that as an encouragement to me, her eyes warm and expressive, the kind that make you nod like a puppy and lap up anything she says, because after all, she is living this dream. And when my feet finally landed back on earth, I was giddy with dreams I’d always held but never dared speak aloud.

I wanted to rip her words from the air and type them into a crisp contract I could present to God to sign.

After all, everything I’m passionate about, everything that makes my fingers fly at the keyboard, everything that inspires me and draws me out to splash around on a canvas of words starts with God’s glorious inspiration.

The breathing of words and story into the wounds of my past, the joys of my present, the fears in my moments, and the dreams of my future. It only seemed right that any platform built is going to shine directly on Him.

 But I couldn’t get past the Holy Spirits prompting that I was getting it wrong. Again.

I’ve found myself failing at the dream.

The time to write and pour myself into this ministry of words is spotty at best. The time to invest in those dreams, spaced and erratic.

And the kids are ready to be tucked in and pleading for one more story and I’ll lay there resenting my time  being used up on another rendition of “If You Give A Mouse a Muffin.”

Bed time

Because I feel like the poor child in the story, being overrun with requests, each one leading to another. If you put your child in pajamas, they will decide they only want to wear the batman ones, and you will remember those are in the wash, so you will bribe him with another story, and if you read him another story, he will fall asleep on you, so you will have to carry him to his bed, and if you carry him to his bed, he will wake up and want another story…

And I’ve bought into the urgency of now.

I see other bloggers succeeding, and I know they deserve it, but I’m also grieving and feeling left out.

I can’t keep up with the pace or demands of blogging, and mothering, and homeschooling, and ministry, and mentoring, and being a good wife. If you add in showering, cooking, and keeping house, you have the trifecta of failure.

I’m looking for dead weight to cut and I see nothing but my words. So the blog often goes silent. And numbers dive.

And I’m mourning the dream, pity washing over me when I remember, “It’s not a loss, it’s a sacrifice.”

It is laying my dreams and promises of God on the altar, trusting that in His time He will provide.

It is trusting that the path I’m on isn’t a race to the finish line but a slow steady obedience, each step moving me forward closer to Him, where dreams are birthed. It is trusting that blogs can be resurrected from the dead or slaughtered completely and it makes no difference as long as I’m faithful.

I have friends waiting on the Lord. Bleary-eyed new mothers craving a full nights sleep and shirts free from spit-up and days when they’ll have the energy to fix their hair again. Women facing vacant rooms in a once loud house, longing for Thanksgiving break, knowing  their kids will be visiting instead of just home. Friends who long for things I so easily take for granted, when kids climb up onto my lap asking for more of mommy.

I forget God created seasons. We brush past eternity every time we stop to really see where God is in each one. And that, when we choose what might seem like a sacrifice, it’s not a loss at all, because nothing is lost which is released into His hands.

When Comparison Crushes Your Heart and Steals Your Joy

By

When Comparison Crushes Your Heart and Steals Your Joy

It’s close to noon and she’s huffing and puffing, feeling the pressure to push.

Another nurse gives me a break, so I can inhale my food in the nurse’s lounge before my patient delivers. I escape for a while and open Feedly, to catch up on words I love, written by writers who make me better for reading.

And it’s the title of the last post I read, which stirs feelings that are always residing just beneath the surface: Comparisons Will Kick You in the Teeth and Hijack Your Dreams Every Time.

It reaches out and grabs me by the throat. And wouldn’t that title trigger a tsunami within any woman? As if comparison is one of the genes on the x chromosome.

I finish her post and I’m a mess–a tears-streaming, nose-running mess, as I realize my teeth have been kicked and my dreams are being hijacked. And it’s been happening for a long time.

Thankful I’ve eaten alone, I do my best to pull it together. Because when someone’s having a once-in-a-lifetime birth moment, it’s never good to lose your I’m-so-happy-for-you presence.

Her delivery ends up being all she hoped for–a moving moment without a dry eye in the room. But as I wipe off her squiggly vernix-covered newborn, crying and squinting under the warmer’s bright lights, my mind still ponders the post and questions still simmer in my mind…

Do I matter?

Am I good enough?

Do the words I write make any difference at all?

But the words of her post echo, pushing against my questions with the resistance of a fierce wind…

Don’t waste even a moment of your own beautiful life comparing it to mine…
Let’s choose to rejoice with one another…
Let’s not trample what we’ve been given in order to get to what we wish we’d got…

I marinate in her words for a few days, letting them soak and tenderize places deep inside.

And it’s on a walk, a few days later, I pass a planter filled with flowers of different sizes and at different stages; some budding, some blooming, and some just finishing their bloom.

When Comparison Steals Your Joy

And it’s as if God screams it to my heart:

Flowers don’t bloom all at the same time, and neither do any of you.

I stand stunned at the realization; convicted and relieved at the same time.

Convicted because comparison’s been crushing my heart and stealing my joy.

Why do I assume I should bloom alongside everyone else?

Why do I think I’m further behind than I should be?

Why am I never fully satisfied right where I am?

Yet relieved because I’ve been asking all the wrong questions … trampling all I’ve been given in an effort to try to get to what I wish I’d gotten, and failing to see the beauty that is my now.

The truth is, I’m in my own stage of development, and SO ARE YOU–the very stage God has planned from the beginning of time, for each one us. For now.

And when we long for the next thing, we are rejecting the now thing He gives. [Tweet that]

There are invisible moments before a bloom … preparation and work and cultivation … a maturing God longs to accomplish before the full beauty of our blooms can be realized.

God prepares all things and all circumstances.

He sets blooms in His time and in His way, to bless and beautify the whole world.

He cultivates a garden of alternating blooms, so their beauty will last over the longest time,

To bless the greatest number of people, for His purpose alone.

She was right. Comparison does kick us in the teeth and hijack our dreams. Every. Single. Time.

So will you join me?

Let’s save our teeth, and keep our dreams.

Let’s embrace our stage in God’s garden, allowing Him to bring our blooms in His time.

Let’s be faithful in our now thing and stop longing for our next thing… [Tweet that]

Each of us a member of a body…

Functioning together…

To bring the most glory to His name.

May we surrender our comparison, to be used by Him in the now thing He has planned for us, whatever that may be.

 

What does comparison do to your heart?

What is the now thing God is asking you to do?

How can we cheer you on?

He Calls Me By Name: A Fresh Perspective on Personal Branding

By

A Fresh Perspective on Personal Branding“Hi there! I’m Gretchen.”

It’s how I introduced myself the first year I attended Allume. But no one recognized my name.

Until they saw my blog address scrawled on my nametag.

“Oh, you’re the little pink house!”

Well, actually, I am not the little pink house. That’s what I called my blog, because that was the color of our house when we got married.

But I smiled and said yes. In the sea of vaguely familiar faces, I was just glad to find someone who knew me–even if it wasn’t by name.

It didn’t take long before my Allume roomie Trina Holden started trying to convince me to rebrand as myself. And, despite several objections I had to the idea of rebranding, I began to consider the idea.

If you’ve wondered whether personal branding is right for you, perhaps you’ve asked these same questions, too.

Why would I use my name?

When I began to consider embracing my personal identity online, the verses about how Jesus calls His sheep by name kept echoing through my head. As I thought about the importance God placed on names throughout Scripture, I realized the significance of embracing my name as my brand. If names are that important to God, then wouldn’t He be glorified by my use of the name He impressed upon my parents’ hearts as my own?

“My name is not only known to Him—it is precious to Him. He is not only acquainted with but passionately interested in the details that make up my life. Nothing is too unpleasant a task for His ministering hand. He cares for me every bit as tenderly as I do my flock of seven [sheep]—every bit and a universe’s worth of more. And when I follow Him, my joy is second only to His.”
–Lanier Ivester in “He Calls Them By Name” on Kindred Grace

Our names are important to God.

With God we’re not a number, we’re a name He chose before we were born. In Biblical times, some parents were able to name their child without the help of today’s gender-revealing sonogram because God told them what they were having and what the child’s name would be (think Isaac, Solomon, John, and Jesus). Branding with my own name was simply an acknowledgement of His creation of me as a unique individual. (Click to Tweet that.)

“I chose personal branding because God’ vision for my words and my life is constantly evolving – by not choosing a ‘niche’ specific name, I have the freedom to grow my brand in any direction without starting fresh every time. Also, it has helped people identify me with my writing and my passions when we meet in real life – they put a literal ‘face’ to my online ‘name.'”
–Crystal Stine

Is using my name prideful?

It felt strange, almost prideful, to think about using my own name for my blog domain. And yet, I wondered if it was even more pretentious to bestow a “brand” upon my blog. Anything I could think of either lacked originality or would be as outdated as my “little pink house” within five years. Branding as myself was the simple answer. I sign my name on every email I write. I put my name in the return address of every letter I mail. Why should my blog be any different?

“When I started blogging in 2003, it seemed an obvious choice to connect my online presence with my name, like people would be meeting me online. I never thought of it as ‘branding’ nor did I think I was pointing a big finger at me rather than God. I felt that the online me was pretty similar to the real-life me, and that felt genuine. Sometimes I write blatantly about God just like I sometimes talk blatantly about God, and sometimes I talk and write about iron skillets. That’s Ann Kroeker, online or off.”
–Ann Kroeker

God’s Writers Have Used Personal Branding for Centuries

Biblical authors like Paul needed no explanation or certification except, “I, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ.” There was nothing trendy about Paul: his tagline was the same as all the others. He was honest, straightforward, and humble. Paul’s name was what set him apart from the other apostles. And two thousand years later, we still know their books by their names. It’s not pride to let your work be associated with your name, it’s simply practical. (Click to Tweet that!)

“I am growing in my understanding of God’s vision for my life. Following Him is a day-by-day, walk by faith and that is as true in my personal life and family as it is in my ministry in this online space. In addition to a writing ministry, God has opened doors for speaking and teaching. Using a name specific domain erases some of the limits I tend to put on myself and allows me to follow whichever direction God leads.”
–Erika Dawson

Is now the time to rebrand using my name?

It was overwhelming to think about the rebranding process, but I knew it was time–and that it was easier to do it sooner than later. My first blogging conference signified a new season in both my blogging and my business, and my rebranding represented that change. Why shouldn’t my blog become a true extension of myself in name as well as in content?

“From a business perspective, it makes sense for the name on my book cover to match the name on my blog. For me, the move to personal branding was one way to be a good steward of my word-ministry. For years, my name was attached, as a byline, to news stories in many metro newspapers. Now, it’s attached to the Good News.”
–Jennifer Dukes Lee

God often changed people’s names to signify a new season or calling.

In the Bible, God changed people’s names to signify a change in direction, a new phase in their walk with Him. Sarai became Sarah at God’s command, her new name representing the coming fruit of her womb. Ruth’s mother-in-law Naomi changed her name to Mara to signify a season of mourning. Jacob became Israel when God revealed that He would be the father of a nation God would call His own. Changing my blog domain to my own name became a memorial stone on my blogging journey.

“Rebranding can actually be a very natural part of taking the next step in what He’s called you to online. And, if done correctly it can actually strengthen your presence and impact online. Introducing yourself by name brings an authenticity to your online presence, and authenticity is a hot commodity.” (Click to Tweet that.)
–Trina Holden

Find out why @GretLouise @TrinaHolden and @AmandaMedlin_ chose personal branding!

Gretchen Louise:
“I wanted the freedom to just by myself online, whether interacting with clients or connecting with readers. Now that I’ve rebranded I don’t have to fit my posts to my blog’s brand or theme–my blog is a representation of me and everything I’m interested in, an extension of myself in name as well as content.”

Trina Holden:
“We are here to build relationship. We need to introduce ourselves the same way we do in real life—by announcing our name. I know this can sound a bit egotistical, but really, it’s not. You’re simply removing barriers and making it easy for people to find you and talk to you. It’s a favor to your friends and anyone you meet online to be consistent in your online identities. Having a solid brand is as simple as just being yourself wherever you go.” (from “The Best Personal Branding Advice I Ever Got Or Gave“)

Amanda Medlin:
“As a blogger, I struggled to find my niche. Although I loved my blog’s name, I sometimes felt trapped by it, as though I could only blog about natural living and natural parenting. Those are both very much a part of who I am, but just a part. When I chose to rebrand using my name I finally felt the freedom to blog from the season of life I found myself in, rather than trying to keep up with a specific theme or genre.”

Beginning Branding Tips

  • Choosing a domain name is a long-term decision. Use something you’ll still want to be known by in five or ten years. (If you’re single and hoping to be married, this may mean using your middle name rather than a last name.)
  • It’s a lot of work to change your domain name, but it’s easy to change the name or tagline on your website. Just because your blog address is yourname.com doesn’t mean you can’t use a different title or tagline for your blog!
  • There is no one size fits all branding advice. But it’s easier to start with your name than change to it later. As Trina says, “using your name will help you when and if the Lord calls you to opportunities beyond your blog.” (Click to Tweet that.)
  • Click here for more personal branding tips and resources.

“As an author, I have plans for many series and many books. I want my brand to extend past one book or one series and encompass anything I might write. It seemed easier to use my name as a umbrella to cover anywhere my imagination may take me!”
–Vicki V. Lucas

I rebranded in 2012 as Gretchen Louise, choosing just my first and middle names because it took Trina two years to learn how to spell my last name, let alone pronounce it. I changed my blog domain and redirected my old domain to my new one, changed my social media usernames (creating new accounts as necessary), and set up a new email address. It was a long process, but it was worth it to feel like I could truly be myself on my blog. And because I used my name this time, I don’t have to worry about rebranding again!

I’ve come to wholeheartedly embrace personal branding, and encourage my clients and anyone looking to solidify their brand to consider the practical simplicity of going by their God-given name. (Click to Tweet that.)

How about you–have you embraced personal branding?

I’d love to hear why!

Sincerely,
Gretchen Louise

Graphics and editorial input by Trina Holden.

3 Ways to Kickstart Your Writing

By

This summer, I took an extended blogging break. We were moving from one end of California to the other, and between toddler-chasing and baby-growing, I had to let writing go for a season.

Even more, though, I felt the Lord calling me into something new. To focus fully on my family, accept my limits, and trust that I wouldn’t lose all of my readers if I decided to be quiet for a time.

So, I obeyed. It was hard, but wonderful.

Now, though, that season has come to an end. We’re all settled in (except for a few pesky boxes), and I’ve got the writing itch again. But where to start? What to say? When to write? I’m in a place where I’ve got to find my blogging groove all over again.

As summer comes to an end, I’m guessing many of you are in a similar place. So, today, I’d like to share three ways to kickstart your writing. Whether you’re coming out of a quiet season, like me, or just need a renewed focus, there are three key things you can do.

kickstart your writing

1. Pray

When you’re getting ready to craft words and pour your heart onto the page again, it’s hard to figure out where to begin. Prayer is essential! Bring your quiet heart, your empty hands, and your will to the feet of the cross. Ask God for your message, your story. It’s His name and His glory we’re writing for in the first place – He will direct our steps.

2. Plan

Oooh, planning is my favorite part! Once you’re back in the writing frame of mind, the ideas might be flowing like crazy! What does your first post back say? Do you start a new series? A new eBook project? There’s a lot to figure out. Take a few hours away if you can, and devote some time to planning what your writing is going to look like now. After a season of quiet, chances are your writing is going to look different than it did before. Allow yourself some grace, and give yourself the freedom to take things in a new direction or keep a new schedule.

My two favorite blog planning tools are Intentional Blogger and the “How They Blog” Blog Planning Kit.  These resources both have great printable worksheets for you to go through to create a mission statement, writing schedule, project planning, and more! I took both of these to Panera (along with some fun colored pens, of course!) for a blog planning evening. Afterwards, I had so much more focus and direction for where God wanted me to take my writing ministry. Planning is priceless!

3. Persist

Like I said, things are going to look different after a break. During my own writing break, my stats dwindled a bit, and gmail tabs were introduced. Both of those events meant that my readership was not as engaged as they previously had been. I now needed to cultivate that sense of community again, provide solid content, and give people a reason to read. I’m still working on rebuilding a bit, and some days it would be easy to just throw up my hands and give up. But I know, without a doubt, that writing is an important part of walking in God’s will for my life. So, persistence is key. It’s important that I keep doing what He’s asked me to be doing, no matter what the numbers look like!

Now it’s your turn! Tell us, did you take a writing break over the summer? What did you learn in the quiet? What’s your best tip for returning to the blogging world?

A story and a blogger’s prayer…

By

A Blogger's Prayer via @Allume

I was nervous when I attended Allume last year. In preparing myself to go, imagining meeting blogging friends included fighting feelings of being in middle school again, petrified at the thought of seeing everyone in real life and them not liking what they see, when they see me, and fearing being left on the outside of the circle — echoes from junior-high taunting still haunting

Yet, as real as those paralyzing fears may be, they weren’t my greatest concern. The condition of my heart was. Would I leave Allume wanting to make a name for myself? Would I leave feeling small and shameful about it, with the only way to rectify it being — pursue becoming big?

My fears weren’t realized, in no accounts, especially with the matters of my heart. The people I met were people. Just people, and beautiful ones, too. Realizing that dispelled most of my insecurities. And, I left Allume last year with new friendships made, and a greater desire to serve God, my family, and the readers I already had.

I don’t know how they did it. Every keynote speaker, and breakout session speaker, big bloggers and smaller ones alike, had woven into each of their talks the same message — your relationship with God and people, especially the ones in your own household, are the most important things to focus on. Period. Only the Holy Spirit could have orchestrated such unity.

 

At the end, my heart’s cry wasn’t for greater numbers, it was for a greater passion to seek and please God.

 

Yet, I’m human and broken. In the seasons between, I let go of what I knew to be true. Somewhere along the way I gave my blog away. In my effort to do what I thought I was supposed to do as a blogger, I began to sacrifice too many of the wrong things.

I lost control of my yes and no. I was saying yes for all the wrong reasons and saying no to all the wrong things, with people-pleasing all mixed in to create a toxic mess. I sacrificed things I was never meant to; my walk with God, my health, my children, my husband, my home, my true self. This summer, my one week blog break turned into two months, and I’ve slowly come back to blogging. Though, I am not the same.

Blogging has a different purpose for us individually, and collectively the same for all of us who call ourselves Jesus followers. Everything we do should be motivated by a desire to bring God glory. We live our purpose to represent Him on this earth, so others would know that Jesus was sent by the Father. It’s our holy privilege, even in blogging. We differ in how we go about it, and that depends on how we were designed by our Creator. But that’s another post, entirely.

Today, I surrender, again. I surrender it all. My prayer has become more fervent, “Let Your will be done in this place, and not mine, Lord.”

 

And maybe you can make it a blogger’s prayer for you, too?

 

May my blog be where others may find the Way, the Truth and the Life. 

May my blog never deplete my relationship with You, God, nor my family.

May it only ever point the way to the cross, and be a beacon of light for those who have lost their way to You.

May I be a faithful servant to the precious readers you have entrusted, no matter if they read quiet, and no matter how long they may stay. And as they grace these pages may it be Your grace they find.

And no matter where You may take me from here, no matter what I may find along the way, and I know there will be many distractions vying for my turn to the left or the right, may my most passionate pursuit always be of You.

And to the Father, I echo Your words, Jesus. “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me. And to finish His work.” John 4:34 

“May I glorify You on earth
By completing down to the last detail
What You assigned me to do.”

John 17:4 MSG

In Jesus Name. Amen.


Still living a life surrendered,

Michele-Lyn

Why Every Blogger Needs an Email Newsletter

By

Why Ever Blogger Needs an Email Newsletter by @TrinaHolden on #Allume

When you read yet another post enthusiastically encouraging you to start a newsletter, what do you think?

Probably the same thing I did for a long time: “That’s advice for bigger bloggers, bloggers who are marketing something, or bloggers with a clear idea of where they’re going online. But definitely not for me.”

But today I’m going to give you two key reasons why any blogger, big or small, casual or focused, ministry or marketing minded, would both enjoy and benefit from creating a newsletter. And then I’m gonna tell you exactly how to get started with the help of my techie, friend, Gretchen. Are you ready? Here we go!

1. Email is Tried and True

In the busy summer months, or anytime you don’t have a lot of time for the computer, what’s the last thing you hang on to? That’s right—your inbox. Facebook may get neglected, your favorite blogs pile up in your RSS reader, but when you just have a few moments, you still check your email faithfully. Why? Because email remains the most trustworthy way for people to contact you, and for you to collect information that’s important to you.

It’s also the most assured way that you can get in touch with your readers. Facebook’s algorithms may squeeze your statuses out of their feed, they may have forgotten to switch their RSS reader when Google reader died, but email remains steadfast. You don’t have to fight to be heard on Twitter or seen on Pinterest—when you offer your readers the chance to connect with you via a newsletter, they’re asking you right into their private inbox where it’s much quieter, and a personal note from a friend or blogger they enjoy will probably get top billing. Instead of fighting for attention on a busy street, you’ve been invited to the kitchen table to share your heart over a cup of coffee.

2. Email is Personal and Private

Have you struggled to connect deeper with your audience, pouring words out of your heart, but rarely hear even an echo back? There are several reasons (besides the hurry of life) that keep people from giving feedback on posts.

  • Your reader may not be as tech savvy as you and has trouble commenting no matter how easy you make it (a very dear relation of mine would certainly fall into this category!).
  • Your reader may have been too deeply moved by your post to be comfortable pouring their heart out in a place as public as a comment form.
  • Your reader may have a question or a concern they don’t feel like airing publicly.

Email resolves all of these issues, encouraging your readers to respond to you in a way that is familiar (“simply reply to this message!”) and private. When they realize that their communication with you will go straight to you and no one else, you may be amazed at how they open up, feedback increases, and relationship deepens.

Do you begin to see how even you and your audience may benefit from an email exchange? It’s the perfect tool for a deeper, more reliable communication with your audience. With a newsletter you can transition from one-way communication to a rich, personal dialogue with your readers in the comfort of your inboxes. So, let’s get started!

Gretchen Answers Your Newsletter FAQ

I know by now your head is full of questions about how this works and how much it costs. So my friend Gretchen is here to answer your questions:

How much does it cost to build an email list?

It’s free! I recommend MailChimp or Mad Mimi, and both are free for limited emails per month to less than 2,000 subscribers. (Check out the price breakdowns for more frequent emails and other services here.)

Isn’t this what FeedBurner or Jetpack already does with my latest posts?

Yes and no. You can use MailChimp or Mad Mimi to send out your posts by email (it’s called RSS to email). But what Trina is talking about here is offering an additional subscription option, a personal newsletter, directly from you to your readers’ inboxes.

I don’t know anything about coding—will I be able to set this up?

Both MailChimp and Mad Mimi are super easy to use, and have great tech support and helpful tutorials. Advanced signup form configuration may require coding help from a VA or designer, but setting up an email list and sending out a newsletter is pretty simple.

How do I get people to subscribe?

Put the signup form in your blog sidebar and on your Facebook page, create a special “subscribe” page on your site, Tweet about your newsletter from time to time, offer a free download exclusively to your subscribers, etc.

How do I get started?

Choose a service like MailChimp or Mad Mimi, set up your “list”, and get started creating your first campaign (that’s the fancy term for “newsletter”)!

Click here to check out Gretchen’s detailed guide to creating and building an email list over at gretchenlouise.com.

Now, what to put in this here letter?

Well, there are many types of newsletters, but the goal of most of the good ones I’ve received seems to be to serve the reader either info, inspiration, or a juicy combination of both.

The Informational Newsletter

Includes tips and tricks your audience would expect to get from you, plus multiple links to further content on the subject of the email, either from your blog or other’s. (Example: Amy Lynn Andrews)

The Inspirational Newsletter

Got a really special message the Lord has put on your heart for your readers this month, or a great new idea that’s helping you on your journey? Choose to make it newsletter content over a blog post. Perhaps include links to other related posts on your blog or books that have been inspiring you this month. (Example: Emily Freeman)

The Blog Wrap Up Newsletter

This newsletter, which is basically a synopsis of what your blog has offered in the last week or month, is a great way to serve your reader who’s been too busy to visit your blog every day or keep up with their RSS feed. Give them a brief rundown of what you’ve been writing about, and let them choose the links they follow. It can be automated through RSS to email campaigns, or you can code it yourself. (Example: Jeff Goins is one of many bloggers who offer this option in addition to his weekly Inspirational-style Newsletter.)

The Personal Update Newsletter

Do you have news or thoughts you’d rather not broadcast to the whole world, but still want your readers to know about? Consider using your newsletter in it’s simplest form—a traditional, newsy, heartfelt letter, just what you’d share if you were having coffee together. (Example: My newsletter falls into this category, though I’ve been inspired by all of the above styles at one time or another in the past year since I’ve been sending a newsletter.) If you do want your news to stay private to people’s inboxes, MailChimp gives you the option to disable social sharing, etc.

As you can see, there’s a whole slew of options to mix and match into the newsletter you’re uniquely equipped to write to your readers.  Once you decide what you want to convey, let the fun of deeper connection begin!

My Best Tip for Learning to Craft a Great Newsletter

My final tip for creating a good newsletter is to subscribe to some great ones! Besides the ones mentioned above, you may enjoy the newsletters offered by some of our very own Allume writers: Erika, Gretchen, Jill, Kayse, Kris, Natasha, Tricia, and yours truly. (And if you’re an Allume attendee this year, don’t forget to sign up for Allume’s own newsletter!)

Do you receive a newsletter you love? Please share the sender’s blog address in the comments, as I’m looking to fill my inbox with fresh inspiration! And if you have a newsletter, do tell us where we can sign up!

 

Tweetables:
  • Email was the first way to connect online, and it remains the best method to get in touch with people. (Click to Tweet)
  • Newsletters: Not just for bigger bloggers! (Click to Tweet)
  • Want to connect more deeply with your readers? Try a Newsletter!  (Click to Tweet)

5 Ways You Know You’re Doing Too Much

By

 

nest

I am a “go-go-go” person. I seem to somehow involve myself in everything. If I see a need, I usually volunteer. This isn’t a practice I’m encouraging you to emulate-but instead it’s something I’ve lately realized is quite a problem. After years of overcommitting myself, I now see a pattern. It’s a cycle of “go-go-go” followed by a swift crash and burn. When I fill my calendar to the max, my body eventually becomes physically spent and my motivation to be involved in anything outside of sleep waivers.

As writers, mom’s working inside or outside the home, wives, friends, daughters, disciples, and countless other roles, we tend to get involved everywhere, don’t we? We see a need, and we jump in.

And I wonder, have you stopped to look at how this lifestyle is affecting you and those around you? Do you burn-out? Do you recognize when a burn-out is around the corner? Do you recognize when you’ve overcommitted yourself? Only recently have I begun to slow down and truly seek His agenda for my time and energy. With that said:

Here are 5 Ways you know you’ve committed to too much….

  1. You feel like you’re just ‘going through the motions’
  2. You neglect other responsibilities {family, home, job, etc.}
  3. You start to dread the things you normally love
  4. Your body tells you so {‘Can I just get a nap, please?’}
  5. You neglect your time with Jesus

A few years ago I had a very wise friend tell me (and I’m paraphrasing), “a need doesn’t constitute a calling“. This phrase runs through my head often. I now realize that I must sift very carefully through the needs and opportunities laid before me. Just because a ministry volunteer position opened up or someone needs a leader for VBS, doesn’t mean it is my duty, or my calling to step into those roles {even if it is a passion of mine!}. We must go to the Lord over each opportunity presented to us.

Sometimes us ‘go-getter’ types can get caught filling our calendars with what others think we’re supposed to be doing, rather than with what we really should be doing. Sometimes we neglect to pray about who He may want leading a particular ministry, or contributing to specific blog. Maybe He has that role reserved for someone else, and it’s our responsibility to turn down the opportunity on their behalf. Not only will this bless this intended participant, but it could also bless your life in ways not immediately apparent. Perhaps He wants to give you some much needed time to breathe and focus on your family. Maybe He wants you to focus more on your personal blog. Have you thought about that? Sometimes it is our job to pass on opportunities in favor of other women, women who may need the encouragement of another to step up and lead.

If you understand your purpose, it is easier to set boundaries.

-Hula Hoop Girl, by September McCarthy

Each season of life brings new opportunities and new limitations. Because He is the ultimate Ruler in our lives, He deserves to control our schedule, honing in on what we’re called to do for Him in each season. We must ask Him to show us when and how we can step back, give another an opportunity, and determine when He has truly opened a door He wants us to walk through.  We must properly sift through what’s on our respective plates, for if we do, He will not neglect to lead us exactly to where He wants us!

Happy sifting, sisters!

By,  Mandy Scarr

 

Ripening or Replicating: How are we growing as writers?

By

When I first started blogging, I often heard,” Don’t compare your middle to someone else’s end.“  This was usually said at conferences by bloggers with platforms, RSS feeds bursting with subscribers, and years of experience being social media ninjas. As someone just starting out, I’d look at my one or two comments and think, I’m just not there yet, with yet being the operative word.

If I’d started in 2006 when the competition and noise on the internet felt more like the mingling at a cocktail party than an olympic stadium with the roar of the crowd drowning out the clacking of my keys, then I’d be further along too. I’d scribble the line in my notebook, or tweet it to my 25 followers, nodding my head because everyone knows comparison in blogging will make you . Once you go down that path, you may as well break out the duct tape to gag and bind yourself, because it’s pretty hard to write authentically while trying to replicate someone else’s success.

So I’d plod along faithfully, wrestling contentment down with each post, imagining when my “end” would come and I’d have arrived. When I could count myself a writer. Maybe get a book published or reach a certain number of subscribers. When I’d be the one dispensing anecdotes about the good old days of blogging and tips for building your platform. I’d dream of a time when my voice would matter.

 We often think of growth as a linear thing.

We back kids against door frames and etch pencil scratches along the years as the tops of their head stretch upward from chubby thighed toddlers to gangly teens. Failure to thrive would be, well, failure.  We think of growth as the raise you get after each faithful year on the job or the beater car with the tricky alternator that turns into the minivan or new SUV as each new child comes along. The dorm room of your college years to the 4 bedroom 3 and one half bath home with the wrap-around porch.  Growth means bigger, and bigger means better.

But what if growth isn’t always linear?

What if my end never looks like theirs because my journey isn’t taking me in that direction? What if growth was less about replicating and more about ripening ? Less about measuring up and more about pouring out?

file000986939609

Because lately, I’ve been looking down the road and I don’t see the horizon brimming with the things I once thought I was headed for. Even the things I thought I wanted. And I’m realizing there is a great freedom in that. That in my corner of the internet, my words are enough, no matter how small.

I feel a collective pull of my writer friends, back into their lives, to write what they love, not just what gets tweeted or shared. There is a dedication to the seeking of words and story and truth that all writers wrestle with, but there is a calm too.

So many of us, who started with God sized Dreams of doing the big things, have learned that God works those out in the small things. That growth often comes in the deep blush of fruit swollen and ripe, and not just the arching branches seen from miles away saluting the skies. It comes in tiny rings spreading modestly across a trunk year after year, no more than the width of a fingernail. It comes in pruning season and it comes in harvest. It comes in roots grown wide and long under scorched earth, seeking out water and life and bedrock with which to sustain it’s might.

We don’t always see it. We just sink our teeth in, letting the juice gush lavishly down our chins, we taste and know it’s good.

psalm 348

3 Truths About Social Media

By

3 Truths About Social Media

I hear the rumbles every time Facebook makes a change. I’m going to quit Facebook. I like Google+ way better.

And just like that, bloggers everywhere are ready to drop one of the most popular social media networks. Not because their readers have abandoned it, but because the bloggers themselves are fed up with it.

I shake my head and smile. Next month they will be frustrated with the new social media network they’ve chosen, because no one is on there.

The truth is, social media is consumer-driven. It is all about the relationships you are building with the people who are already there. And you can’t have social media relationships with your readers if you abandon the place they like best to hang out.

Of course, when it comes to complaining about social media, it’s not only Facebook that gets the blame. Twitter isn’t conversational any more. Everyone preschedules their Tweets: no one is ever really “there”. And too often, the negativity is what drowns out everything else. But as Christian bloggers, we need to lead the way in shining Christ’s light in social media as well as everywhere else we go online.

Here are three truths about social media to remember when we start to feel disillusioned:

1. Social media is consumer-driven.

It doesn’t matter how many fabulous posts I make over at Google+ if my tribe isn’t there to read them. The first rule of choosing a social media network is to find out where your readers are, and go there. Social media is about where the consumer is, not about where the producer would rather be.

When the majority of my friends and family are on Google+, then I will consider hanging out there more than Facebook. But maybe your tribe is on Twitter and never hangs out on Facebook. Perhaps LinkedIn is where you need to be making contacts. Or it just might be that those up and coming Google+ users are the readers for you. Wherever your readers are, go there. But unless they are techies, don’t expect them all to follow you somewhere new: another social media network is the last thing most people want.

2. The purpose of social media is to build relationships.

No matter which social media network we’re on, we need to remember the primary purpose of social media is about building relationships. It’s not about getting the most likes or the greatest interaction as judged by a computer: it’s about the real interaction of conversation and relationships.

Yes, it behooves bloggers to be good stewards of their platforms. It’s a good use of time to study Facebook marketing techniques and best Twitter practices. But no algorithm can measure the eternal heart-impact of a Facebook post. No graph can show the value of relationships formed through social media.

3. Social media needs good leaders.

What social media really needs is good leaders, who will do what they wish others would do, right where they are at. Miss the conversations that used to happen on Twitter? Bring them back. Feel like no one is sharing your Facebook photos? Share the photos of others.

No one wants to listen to a whiner. Negativity isn’t going to generate more likes, and complaining about one social media network isn’t going to gain you follows on another. Let’s raise the bar for the content we’re creating and sharing. Let’s set the standard high for our social media posts. Let’s lead the way in being positive and “doing unto others” right where we are in social media. 

Tweetables:
  • 3 Truths About Social Media – to remember when we start to feel disillusioned (Click to Tweet)
  • Social media is consumer-driven. (Click to Tweet)
  • No algorithm can measure the eternal heart-impact of a Facebook post. (Click to Tweet)
  • Let’s lead the way in being positive right where we are in social media. (Click to Tweet)

On Ordinary Art

By

I tell my son to be careful not to paint the table.

I’ve laid out plastic and my four and eight year old have the watercolors and a collection of rocks to recreate into swirling florals and all manner of messiness.

My daughter has a paint by numbers that is sectioned into tiny slivers awaiting their chosen colors, the end result being a Panda.  I’ve unleashed their brushes and their tiny fingers lead them in pirouettes across the stones and canvas.

I open my laptop next to them and stare at the cursor flashing on the blank page.

And then my son has finished his first rock, a black swirl of paint on a smooth round stone. He tells me it’s a wabbit.

My daughter is leaning close to the canvas, hand steady trying to get the paint into the designated spots. I see the Panda’s face beginning to form. She bites her lip and tilts her head to the side inspecting her work.

“Mommy, I can’t get the yellow to mix right. I think I made it look weird.” She is becoming her own worst critic.

AliaJoy Art/writing

Meanwhile my son has cranked out several more rock paintings and has graduated to paper. He holds up a painting in hot pink, a large circle with two lines sticking out the bottom.

“This is you, mommy, ” he announces proudly. Although, I do have a potato-esque shape, I don’t  see the resemblance. I move it to the counter to dry alongside the line and two dots which is my husband and the green circle which is our house.

And I think about my blank screen and my inner critic and my need to make the words just right.

I think about my children’s fingers dappled with paint.

Young children lack the skill to create with precision but what they lack in ability they more than make up in confidence. Young children still see the world with every possibility because nothing is fantastical yet. Pioneers in their journey of discovery, everything is new, therefore everything holds equal fascination and monotony.

When we pause at the painted hills, the striated rock colorations etched golden-red like tiger stripes, we all stop to take in the glory. But the young child runs along merrily, picking up rocks without discrimination of their ordinariness. He squats down to watch an ant barrel along while the valley stretches wide beside him, unnoticed.

We learn to classify the ordinary and monotonous in direct contrast to the extraordinary and magnificent.

G.K. Chesterton states, “The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese…”  Yes, cheese may not inspire sonnets, although I do have a baked brie recipe that makes me believe there is a God who loves me. What I believe Chesterton is getting at is that we find ordinary things uninspiring.  Mundane things like diaper changes and Math lessons, grocery shopping, and spreadsheets.

We forget as writers, that eventually, everything becomes monotonous to those who can no longer see the simple and ordinary graces among us.

Yes, we all want to write that post. The profound one that goes viral. Yet we often lose the pure in the pursuit of the profound.

Simplicity comes before the numbers and the lines. Before you know what the picture is supposed to look like. When you have the ability to splash in the paint tray and mix the colors.

Because the Lord sees beauty in your words when they’re full of wonder and praise. When we silence the critic and let our fingertips dance on the keys without always knowing what picture we’re painting. When we make art in a world full of ordinary, we paint in God’s glory.

Alia Joy writing at Narrow Paths to Higher Places

 

5 Ways to Honor your Husband with your Writing

By

allumephoto with logo

When J and I got married (4 years ago today!), God gave us a story. Yes, He gave us the story of how we met {totally ordained by Him}, but He also gave us a story from our honeymoon. I knew this testimony was not something I was to keep inside and knew God wanted me to share it. I knew He was supposed to gain glory from His redemptive work. But how would J feel about me airing our ‘dirty laundry’?

For a few years after our honeymoon, I prayed and I waited. J fully agreed that I was supposed to share this story, he just needed some time to process it. After a time of prayer one day, God gave me the go-ahead to ask J for permission. I wasn’t a blogger at that point, but I was and always have been a writer. I knew God wanted me to write about it, I knew He wanted me to share, but would J be on board with it? After a discussion, J gave me permission to begin sharing our story with the world, but I knew I needed to set some boundaries for my writing that would honor him.

My man is a quiet man. He’s personable, and does enjoy being around people, but he certainly isn’t an open book like his extroverted wife. I knew he was ok with me sharing this particular story, but beyond that I needed to be careful how deeply I allowed others to enter into our marriage. So here are some writing boundaries that I came up with and now follow:

 

5 ways I work to honor my husband with my writing:

1. Pray. If I feel called to share something about our marriage, or about my man, I pray about it first. Sometimes God gives my heart a peace about it, but other times God gives me a restless feeling which causes me to realize He’s closing the door on that topic {at least for now}. Going to the Lord first makes #2 a whole lot easier.

2. Talk to your man. If I feel called to share about an aspect of our marriage, I ask J if it’s ok. Being the analyzer that he is, he usually asks me a few questions {and sometimes requests to read the rough draft before I hit publish}, but ultimately he’s grown to trust my words. I believe that trust has been built because I have never posted about him without his permission.

3. Beware of social media. My man isn’t a huge fan of me posting his picture all over the social media sites I utilize. I try not to post too much about him on social media in general. Occasionally I post a picture of him on Facebook, but I try to ask him before I do that.

4. Don’t embarrass him online. My man can say some pretty funny stuff. He’s actually quite the comedian, but his introverted self can keep it bottled up when we’re outside the walls of our own home. There are times I would LOVE to share the funny things that J says. Occasionally he’s ok with it, but usually he gives me the, “are you sure you really need to share that?” look when I request permission to share it with my online friends. Despite my desperate desire to share with ya’ll how funny he really is, I realize that honoring him is more important than sharing a good laugh.

5. Don’t make him look like prince charming. I believe that by being honest about our marriage I am honoring God and honoring J. I don’t try to paint a picture of the perfect marriage, because Lord knows, we’ve had our trials. It doesn’t honor J if I paint him as perfect. He sees himself as a sinner saved by the glorious grace of God. He doesn’t want me to make him seem perfect, because if I did, that wouldn’t honor his Savior. In the process of portraying the real J, however, I must be respectful and invite him into the process so the trust we’ve built can continue.

I find that when I honor my man and respect who he is, the intimacy in our marriage increases. I have been known to slip up and break these boundaries from time-to-time, but I find that when I invite him into my writing, J is honored and God is glorified–it’s a win-win situation!

What boundaries have you set for yourself in this online world? How do you protect your husband and your marriage in your blog posts?

by, Mandy Scarr

 

 

How to Handle the Social Media Egg Basket

By

How to Handle the Social Media Egg Basket - @GretLouise on #Allume

Everyone knows it’s not a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket. But sometimes, I think we’re trying to carry too many baskets — especially when it comes to social media.

There’s always a new social media network. Something to try, something to learn. A new opportunity to get lots of followers and rise to the top of the crowd.

But sometimes, we spread ourselves too thin. In trying to be everywhere, we are nowhere. And the eggs break just as quickly when they hit the ground, whether we are carrying them all in one basket or spread out into more baskets than we can hold.

I love Twitter. Facebook is where my grandma is, so I’m not leaving it any time soon. Pinterest is pretty and easy to organize. And I know Google Plus is  a necessary evil for bloggers.

But I forget to use Delicious. I tried Tumblr to see if it was a more social version of a bookmark and quote site, but I never remember to use it. Instagram is fun but without a smart phone it’s a three-step-process to a #latergram if I’m not at home with tablet in hand. And Digg? StumbleUpon? Never even used them.

Whenever I start forgetting to post to a social network, I know it’s lost the social aspect. And when I stop visiting anywhere but private Facebook groups, I know I’ve spread myself too thin.

It’s then I remember the tried and true advice of those with more followers than I: find a few social media networks you love, and become good at them. You and I are each only one person. Unless we have a team of bloggers working with us, or a good social media manager behind us, we can only do so much.

And it’s when I pull back and enjoy the process of just hanging out on my favorite social media networks that I actually see fruit from my time spent there. It’s when I view social media as a place to connect with my friends rather than an item on my to do list that the benefits can be seen — and in more than just numbers.

Tips

  • Choose one day a week to hang out on less popular social networks (for me it’s Google Plus and Tumblr). You don’t have to be on any given social media network every hour of every day to have a presence there.
  • Ask questions on Facebook. Get to know your followers there again.
  • Use scheduler apps like Buffer for Twitter and Facebook’s built-in schedule feature so that you can be there without being there all the time.
  • Use plugins like Tweetily (to Tweet old posts) and Jetpack’s “Publicize” (to Tweet new posts) to automate your blog’s presence on Twitter (just don’t spam your followers!) so that you don’t have to worry about your blog when you get on Twitter, you can just be you.
  • Don’t just Tweet and Retweet — remember how much fun it was to have conversations on Twitter?
  • Stay off Pinterest.com and just pin from the sites you visit to avoid the Pinterest time trap.

How do you keep a handle on your social media involvement?

Tweetables:
  • Sometimes, we spread ourselves too thin on social media. In trying to be everywhere, we are nowhere. (Click to Tweet)
  • Whenever I start forgetting to post to a social network, I know it’s lost the social aspect. (Click to Tweet)
  • How do you keep a handle on your social media involvement? (Click to Tweet)

Photo Credit: Kateri Fahey of Dandelion Haven

The Benefit of a Blogging Mentor

By

allume

 

Do you have a life mentor? Do you have someone who pours their heart, wisdom, prayers, and love into your life?

Mentors have played a tremendous role in my life as a Christian. Over the course of my new life in Christ I’ve had a couple of different mentors. Each of these mentors has breathed life into my soul, showered me with their wisdom and loved me in a way I never could have expected.

After I began blogging I began to see that, just as in life, I had a lot to learn. I not only needed a deeper understanding of the technical aspects of blogs, but my writing required greater depth and insight. I wanted feedback and I craved constructive criticism that would help me progress toward my writing goals.

At first I started to “stalk” some of my favorite bloggers. I would look at the format of their blogs, watch how they hosted guests, ran giveaways, and shared their heart. Closely following these amazing bloggers taught me a lot, but I was unable to receive the personal one-on-one help I was craving.  

And that’s when I decided to step out.

I am blessed that I have an in-real-life friend who is already several steps ahead of me in the blogging world. I admire her writing, her passion, and her professionalism. I wanted to learn everything I could from her, and so I took a chance and asked her to be my blogging mentor. Although she is a close friend, I was nervous about asking her. She has numerous kiddos, multiple writing projects on her plate, and many professional business projects in the works. I was worried she would see me as another addition to her already highly committed schedule.

But after a few days of praying about it, she agreed to be my mentor.

This new phase of our relationship has been a huge support to me. Although we don’t talk about blogging on a weekly or sometimes even monthly schedule, I am grateful to her for the time and feedback she gives me. I have learned a tremendous amount from my seasoned blogging mentor, and I know I wouldn’t have grown as much as I have over the last year without her.

It was easy in the begining to “stalk” different bloggers, trying to learn what they were doing and why they were making the writing/blogging decisions that they were. As my blog grew, and as my dreams came into greater focus, I realized the importance of running my blogging/professional world just as I run my life – with intentionality.

Having a mentor who is willing to pour their wisdom and insight into me has allowed for me to become more intentional in all aspects of my life, and so I am grateful to have found a blogging mentor to help me find that same focus and intentionality in my writing and professional pursuits.

And so I wonder, sweet blogging friend, do you have a blogging mentor?

Sure, maybe you “stalk” other blogs like so many of us do, but do you have someone who you can boldly ask for their guidance? Maybe this person doesn’t yet know you exist, and that’s ok. Take some time to pray about whether or not this person is worth pursuing as a blogging mentor, and if the Lord is fine with it, I encourage you to humbly reach out to them about it.

You may not be able to find someone who can commit to mentoring you right away, but don’t get discouraged! Just continue to pray that the Lord may reveal someone who would fill that role. If you’re anything like me, this relationship is sure to help you grow.

By, Mandy Scarr

 

 

 

What a Christian Writer Does with Self-doubt

By

I’m an Allume contributor, in the company of brilliant, beautiful writers. And perhaps that sets me apart in your mind, somehow better than you because I’m here. Maybe?

I have thought it before, and still do at times. I see a fellow blogger and friend get chosen for an opportunity that I would have liked, and the first thought that triggers an avalanche of negative others is, “What’s wrong with me that I wasn’t chosen? Am I not good enough?”

But what if I told you I’ve written my post 3 times? As in, I have 3 distinctly different drafts written for the one that was due today. None of them made it here. This one did.

The reason there are 3 drafts is not because I’m a terrific writer, but more like a terrified one. And it’s failure I’m afraid of. And the problem with fear is that it’s not from God.

What if I told you I feel like a tidal wave of self-doubt has overwhelmed me, and rather than be writing right now, I want to run and hide my words? Would you still think being an Allume blogger makes me better than you? Oh, I hope not, friend. I hope that you find I’m just a person like you. I’m a women who still struggles with self-doubt, comparison, distraction, and competition.

I confessed it to a friend, though it scared me to, “I have a love-hate relationship with being a contributor or guest posting because I feel pressure to please and perform. The numbers, the Facebook likes and shares, tweets and pins, they show everyone, and boast my success or shout my failure.”

It’s not because anyone else has imposed that pressure, but because I have. It’s debilitating and draining, and I know it’s prideful, wayward thinking, self-doubt and fear talking. And I can’t be passive about it.

What do I do when there are moments and months when self-doubt hovers like a heavy dark, brooding cloud over head? There are lies that incessantly seek to penetrate my mind, and beckon to be believed and acted upon to lead me to an end. To end this race I’m running. And to end writing about it.

I must look at my fear, not only as a weakness on my part, but an attack, and a very real temptation to be overthrown.  <– Tweet

While I’d like to tell you the battle is over, I cannot. But I’m going forward — courageously afraid. And this is part of what a Christian writer can do with self-doubt. I’m practicing.

  • Speak Truth: God’s word is our only offensive weapon listed in our Armor, so wield the sword of the Spirit. (Eph 6:17) Speak aloud His word because faith comes by hearing it. (Rom 10:17) And it renews our mind, as we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Cor 10:5) “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” (Rom 8:37)
  • Go Low: Surrender it all daily, hourly if necessary. Sometimes we really are in the midst of a spiritual attack and the devil prowls like a lion seeking whom he may devour. (1Pet 5:8) After we submit to God resist the devil because he must flee. And “…don’t try to impress others. Be humble.” (Phil 2:3) For God gives grace to the humble. (James 4:6)
  • Obey God: If God has called us to do something than our success is as sure as our obedience, though He measures success differently than us. I’m almost certain He’s not counting our Facebook likes, but rather lost souls that have found Him because of our courage to write His message.
  • Be You: We don’t need to try and be anyone except who God created us to be. When we do, the world misses out on the facet of God that He’s chosen us to display. We are accountable to live the life He gave us, and no one else’s.
  • Be Vulnerable: Hiding our weaknesses can isolate us, because we are afraid God or others will see them and wound or judge us by it. But we need to know we are not the only ones struggling. “Our vulnerability draws God to us. Our helplessness reveals His Presence. Our weakness makes known His strength. Our confessions prompt His grace.” — Dr. Les Parrott
  • Write Afraid: Sometimes what we fear sharing most, is what’s most important to share. “We are more naked and needy before words that we write than perhaps anywhere else. We fear this, so we avoid it. But reality is where God shows up. Reality may be painful, but if we want to meet God we have to go there.” — Dan B. Allender

Do you ever struggle with fear or the temptation to quit writing? Will you tell us how you overcome?

 

I’m trusting Him,

Michele-Lyn at A Life Surrendered

 

5 Reasons to Write What is Real {not just what sells}

By

blog3

I was all set, fixed right up with a shiny-new email list powered through mailchimp.com. Now I just had to figure out what to giveaway (like the experts tell us) to convince people to part with their email addresses so that my platform could grow.

I thought about writing a mini ebook on meal planning. I could picture this beautiful cover:

mock-cover @allume

Except people would probably be a little bit disappointed when they read my meal planning advice:

1. Open cupboard. 2. Pull out some type of starch (bread, pasta, potatoes, squash, beans). 3. Open fridge. 4. Pull out some type of meat and two vegetables. 5. Cook. 6. In four hours, repeat process.

Okay. Scrap that idea.

I thought about writing a book about scheduling. Oh, it would be glorious! I could create these beautiful printouts except, well, I probably wouldn’t have time for all that since I’m the worst scheduler ever.

Oooh, cleaning! Cleaning books go over really well. But then I looked over at the chair piled high with papers and books. Bad, bad idea.

My shiny-new email list sat for some time. Oh, I sent out a few fluttering newsletters. Ten faithful followers took the time to open and read them. (Dear, dear, people.) 

Then a neighbor and friend asked if I would be willing to speak at a women’s banquet about my book Pain Redeemed. It’s not a fun book, you know. There aren’t any pretty printables and there certainly aren’t 6 easy steps to anything in it. People haven’t lined up on my blog (hilarious word picture there, just in case you missed it) to purchase a copy.

It’s a book about pain. A book where I peel back the layers of my heart and brutally, honestly, share about my walk through infertility. It’s the book that God called me to write last year. The one I faithfully wrote and self-published because I knew that I needed to share the story now, while I was still clawing my way through the darkness.

And when I stood there, in front of 120 women from my in-real-life community, and shared about where God was in the middle of my sorrow, as we cried together and connected, I knew. I knew exactly what I was suppose to write and give away.

Dying of Thirst at the Side of a WellSo I sat down and wrote a really long poem, then wrapped it all up into a mini ebook.

It isn’t going to go viral, folks. I know that.

But I want to give my readers something real. Something of me. And this is me. 

Here are five reasons for you write what is real about YOU:

  • Real = Lasting

When you sit down and create something out of who you are (not just what is pretty or sells well) it will last. In your life. In the lives of those who read it. {and I’ll add in right here: if who you are is someone who creates awesome meal-planning lists– write a book about it! I’d love to read it. And if you need a cover, we can tweak this one up for you. :)}

  • Any decent writer can create “what sells” but only you can write the real things from your heart

I’m the only one who can share about my journey through infertility. It might not be popular, but I know from personal experience that it can be profoundly moving to the one who needs it. 

  • It requires more than your own strength

For me, to write about one of the subjects I mentioned would be simple. I could just design lovely printables to go with my 6 easy steps to whatever. But it wouldn’t require much of God in the process because it wouldn’t be tapping into who I really am. When I write real, I am forced to depend on Christ. I’d be too afraid to press publish otherwise.

  • Your readers will keep coming back

If you write real, readers will keep returning. They’ll read a little sample and then come to your blog and keep coming back. Maybe it will only be 10 faithful followers at first. But ten who return are better than 10,000 who take your freebie and then disappear.

  • It’s honest

I have at least 3 speaking engagements coming up this year, and possibly more, all based on my book. What if I had written a book on a subject I didn’t really care about? What if I had created something that didn’t interest me or mesh with who I was in real life? Ouch. 

Last year at Allume, Kat Lee shared a session on Blogging as a Ministry. She told a story about something her soccer coach told her when she offered to switch positions with another girl. He gently turned her down and said,

I really need someone in that spot who knows her position and isn’t going to constantly chase after the ball.

Play your position. Write what God calls you to. Faithfully, consistently. Don’t run around and chase after what looks shiny or fun.

We are all given passions and stories. If your passion is cleaning, then write about cleaning! If your story involves meal-planning or scheduling then write about it. If, like me, you have a story that scrapes raw don’t hide your real-story to tell one that sells better. 

Don’t waste your time on things that aren’t really a part of who you are. Because who you are is enough story and passion in itself. God created you. Write the words He has inscribed into your DNA. Be you. 

still striving to write as real as possible,

Natasha

The Super Easy Switch From Google Reader to Feedly

By

When my Mom called me in February to ask what I was going to do now that Google Reader is shutting down, I laughed in her face. Not the most respectful or gracious reaction, I realize, but the demise of Google Reader seemed an impossibility, nothing more than a ridiculous rumor.

I’m still not sure how she found out about the demise of Reader several weeks before the official announcement, but she did.

The rumor has been substantiated and the impossible is definitely happening.

I think I’ll cry now. Google Reader is part of my daily life. Hourly, if you want to be real about it. I follow so many blogs right now, there is absolutely no way on earth I am willing to go back to clicking on each of my bookmarks to see if thereís something new. No. Never. Ew.

But somewhere between crying over a techno-gadget and feeling lame for mourning a website’s demise, I found the solution! And guess what? It’s going to be so easy, even my Mom will be able to make the transition easily.

Step One:

Go to Feedly.com

meetfeedly

Step Two:

Click the maroon button that says “Get Feedly For [Insert Your Browser Name Here]” (it will detect automatically) and allow the program to install. (The Browser App is available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari as well as Android, and iOS.)

(Note: you may have to click a few extra times to confirm you want to install, to bypass your security settings, and to allow popups, depending on your browser’s settings.)

Step Three:

Restart your browser when prompted.

timetorestart

Step four:

Sign into your Google account (easiest will usuallly be to simply open your Gmail) and then click on the little green Feedly button that has now appeared right next to your address bar. Feedly and Google will communicate and then ask you whether you want to allow Feedly to have access to your Google Reader Data. You do.

logintofeedly

requestingtoaccessreaderdata

Step five:

You’re done!

 

Yes, it was that easy.

In the first seven hours after I installed Feedly to Firefox and downloaded the App for my Nexus 7 Tablet, I already understood why Google decided to do away with Reader and why their usage has declined. Anyone still using Reader is stuck in the dark ages: Feedly is BETTER! (And Iím pretty sure thatís the first time Iíve said anything negative about any Google product.)

 

I love the aesthetically pleasing layout — there are photos and blurbs, not just lines of text!

feedlyispictures

Feedly doesnít merely give new content in chronological order, it automatically is filtering by popularity and ranking; I know at a glance which posts I need to read first and which can wait until another time. (How they do this? I have no clue. Iíll leave it to their masterminding.)

(But if you still want to see only the most recent posts, you can view by “Most Recent” and see only a list of post titles that looks exactly like Reader.)

justlikereader

Oh, and Feedly integrates fully and seamlessly with Twitter and Facebook, allowing for easier sharing to those platforms and allowing me to following what my Facebook and Twitter peeps are sharing with me.

Plus, Feedly is fast. Way fast. The same pages on the same internet on the same tablet load in half the time on Feedly. Not sure how, but it does. Itís also faster and easier to email links to my friends straight from Feedly.

See? Absolutely no trouble at all.

 Jennifer Head Shot
Jennifer is a daughter, a sister, a wife, a photographer, a storyteller, an adventurer, and (most recently) a patriotic America learning to love her new home in Canadaland

When You Write

By

Sword of the Spirit

When you write what the Spirit whispers, all the hosts in the heavenlies bend to listen and adore to the praises of their King.  On coal-burnished lips they whisper holy over the soft sound of beating wings.  The word echoes through eternity in unending repetition, holy, holy, holy.

But in the shadows where the light has cut the line and fenced the darkness, the hosts of hell take up arms.  It is not their habit to let a battle-cry go unanswered, and you have raised the colors of an enemy King when you wrote His words.

This is war, whether you realize it or not.  The battle rages in highest heaven and deepest earth and you have been uniquely equipped for a place in the battle by the power of your pen.  It is a pen that shreds the veil and open eyes because they are not your words, they are His, and His words have the power to ruin and restore with a single thrust.

Do you take that task lightly?  It is no light task to listen to what the Spirit whispers and to write “Thus sayeth the Lord.”  When you write those words, eyes are opened and swords are drawn.

God’s Word is powerful.  Effective.  Game-changing.  It is no less powerful in the hands of little-known writers or back-woods pastors.

Sword of the Spirit

And that is the truth that makes the underlings rise when you dare to lift your pen.  Because oh, if you realize how sharp is your sword and how mighty is He who is on your side, their ruin would be sure.

Their ruin is sure.

So they respond with the coarse whispers of those who must crawl on their bellies and grovel at the gates of the Kingdom.  They must speak in lies and half-truths because there is no truth in them, and no love.  Where there is no love there is only fear, so it is with fearful words they speak.

You must not listen.

But then, you will not hear them, not with your ears.  You will feel it with your heart and with your emotions and even with your will.  And if you listen, those lies will work their fear into you and fell you.  They will keep you on the ground when God has called you to arm yourself.

They will keep you from your sword.

You have been there, perhaps more often than you wish.  You have been crushed by something you cannot see.  But it is no less real.

When you cannot get up, when you cannot write more, it is because deep inside, you heard the cadence of lying tongues and in your weakness, you believed it, and they won.

Ephesians 6 12

Listen, Writer, from your place on the ground and know this: the power they hold over you is nothing like the power that lifts you up. 

That is what they fear, those demons who lurk in the shadows, working the truth over forked tongues and causing you to believe you are nothing more than a writer with a word.  They fear that one day, you will come to understand the truth of your calling.

You are a writer with The Word. 

You are armed with a sword that always hits its mark.  It has never returned to its sheath in shame, and it never will.  When you pen truth, you thrust that sword right into the den of the liars.

They will claw and fight when they find you there, and you will feel the blows.

But this is not the time to shrink back.  You must get back up.  Secure your armor, take up your pen, and write.

 –Yours in the fight,

Kristen

Confessions of a Twitter Adolescent

By

Confessions of a Twitter Adolescent @allume

 

image source

I’m not very birdlike.
I mean, seriously, the only feathers I have are safely tucked away in my down-comforter.

When my Mastermind Group decided to discuss our Twitter presence last year, I had to go dust off my account and click that “forgot password” button.

I decided to really work hard at establishing this so-called Twitter presence, which was a great ambition but completely comical since I didn’t have any idea what I was doing. All those # and @ signs meant so little to me. In fact, they mostly annoyed me. I would try to read someone’s status and BAM #@?! Which immediately made me think that all these tweeters really needed to watch their mouths. I mean, it was great that they substituted symbols instead of writing out the actual words, but seriously guys, learn to talk proper. Errr, tweet.

The good news for anyone else who is still sitting there cross-eyed from all the hashtags and @ symbols, you do eventually learn to read around them.

#TwitterAdolescent

 

image source

I have this friend, Mandy, who is like, the awesomest tweeter ever. (Yes, I understand that “awesomest” isn’t a word, but you have to know Mandy.) I love reading her tweets. I love it when she goes to a conference and is constantly sharing tidbits of wisdom. (Hello, I pretty much stalked her Twitter feed during Allume last year. It was almost like being there!)

And I’ve thought (many times) “Oh, to be a grown-up tweeter like her!”

But, the thing is, I probably won’t ever be. I don’t have a smart phone and don’t see myself getting one in the near future. I don’t carry my laptop around with me (mainly because the battery dies in like 2.03 seconds). And, honestly, my farming life isn’t set up for being able to type out 140 character comments at the drop of a hat. (Well, I guess I could but then my phone would permanently smell like manure, which doesn’t seem like a good option.)

But I have learned to use Twitter.

confessions of a Twitter adolescent

image source

Oh, I don’t follow rules very well. And sometimes weeks or months go by with only my blog post tweets going up. (I know, I know. That is way bad. I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be like 20-80. 20% your promotion and 80% promoting other people or creating witty one-liners or asking thoughtful questions, or, well, something like that. Forgive me, dear followers. I’m not really as conceited as it may appear.)

And I tried to join a Twitter party once. Uhm. Yeah. That was a nightmare. We’ll just leave it at that.

I’ve come to a valuable place though. I’ve realized that I’m human.
And some humans can tweet pretty birdlike but I just don’t have that talent.

I try. I join in the game. But when my “tweets” come out sounding like an adolescent teenage prank, it’s okay.

I’ve learned to use buffer to spread things out (which is great because otherwise once a month my followers would have to wade through a whole slew of my favorite blog posts from around the web).

I’ve learned to do a little “chirp” now and then, asking questions, throwing out a Bible verse or two that helped me through my day and might help someone else.

And when I completely forget that Twitter even exists for three weeks at a time? That’s okay too.

Now it’s time for your confessions. Are you a Twitter baby? (i.e. you read this post and said, “Uhm… so, what’s Twitter?”) Or an adolescent like me? Maybe you’re all grown up? (If so, drop this novice a few tips, would ya?) 

Confessions of a Twitter Adolescent

image source

 

#stillalittlebitconfused,

@natashametzler

Fans Do Not Equal Friends {The Benefit Of A Smaller Blog}

By

“The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.”

C. S. Lewis

I think it’s safe to say, I’m a “smaller” blogger. I don’t like that phrase very much because sometimes that word, small, can sound like “insignificant” and sometimes, I believe that’s what it really means. But today, when I say small, please know I am only referring to subscriber counts. Let’s not let that little word make us feel less-than, okay?

I’ve been publicly blogging for 2 years now. In the grand scheme of things, 2 years is a sneeze. A blip. A blink. But the truth is, I have been tempted at times to fret over the growth (or lack of growth) of my blog. I’ve watched other bloggers skyrocket to having hundreds of thousands of subscribers in the time I’ve been blogging. This hasn’t been the case for me, but during a recent blogging break, I realized that I couldn’t be more thankful for where I am right now, in my blogging journey.

For the last ten days I went mostly offline. It’s been a challenging season for me, balancing writing and publishing my first book with homeschooling my 4 kids, Coordinating MOPS, being a wife, while still managing to keep everyone fed and in clean underwear. I hit a wall of exhaustion and had no choice but to sequester myself for a bit.

What I didn’t expect during this time, was the overwhelming support that came in the form of phone calls, text messages, tweets and private messages on Facebook. 

98% of the people who contacted me during this break were friends I have made online. Ya’ll were calling me. I got your sweet texts offering prayers and encouragement. My small blog has served as the conduit for these relationships. The size of my blog doesn’t matter to me–my friends matter. The people I have met and been able to get to know through having a smaller blog, that’s the stuff that gets me all goose-bumpy.

Not having  thousands of blog comments to sift through is a blessing because I am able to read and reply to the people who take the time to encourage me, or cheer me on in my writing endeavors. I don’t need a team to handle my correspondence. Having the ability to connect with my readers has turned so many into real-life friends. I don’t give my phone number out to everyone, but some of my readers, they have it because they are more than ‘fans’–they are my friends. 

God’s faithfulness in my blogging journey hasn’t looked like a subscriber list 2 miles long. It’s better than that. God has blessed me with specific people in my life who I have met through blogging, who now journey with me.

The greatest gift of having a small blog is the community you can enjoy. Lets be honest, no one has time to reply to hundreds of comments. I read a post earlier today that had over 1,273 comments and the first thing I thought was, how do you connect with that? And the reality is, you don’t–not really. Fans do not equal friends. 

As much as I want people to read my writing, I care more about hearts than head-counts. <–Tweet this!

Friends, whatever the size of your blog–please know that you are touching lives with your words. On the other side of that screen sits a real person, who cries real tears or laughs genuinely when they read your words. Treasure this season of small. Embrace the joys of actually connecting with people for purpose. God has given  you a community, it may be 5 or 5000. Whatever it is, recognize that He has you where you are for a reason–and it may look different than you imagined.  

Smaller blogger have a unique opportunity–community. Embrace your community. You never know how it will change in time. This is where God has you right now.

Get to know your readers–love them, and when you need it most, you’ll be amazed at how they love you right back. 

Is Your Blog Truly for Him?

By

2055959594_8024c2ceba_z

Photo Credit

God has been digging deep into my blogging world lately. He’s been digging into my heart, asking me to check my motives behind my writing. He’s been probing me to think about whether or not my blogging space, my online home, is really about Him. He’s been asking me to think about whether I promote Him, or I promote myself.

And although I’d like to say that He uncovered a heart purely for Him and a blog solely focused on His glory, that would not be the truth.

If we’re not careful, this blogging world can teach us that in order to “succeed” we must promote ourselves. It can teach us that we have to put ourselves out there to make our face and name known. Although I do believe most readers want to know about the writer they are connecting with, it’s easy for us to push Him to the side, making our online space about our own self-promotion, allowing for those ugly “self-hyphenated” words to get in our way of truly living for Him {Words like self-promotion, self-centered, self-sufficiency, self-absorption, self-exaltation, self-indulgence, etc}.

He has given each of us bloggers a platform, and whether it’s big or small, it is a platform. It is a place where He allows us to share inspired words with those willing to listen. It is a privilege.

It’s so easy for us to portray Him as the center of our words. It’s so easy for us to look as though He is the reason we are doing what we’re doing. But is He really? Our readers may not know our heart, but He certainly does.

“For He knows the secrets of the heart“- Psalm 44:21

We can so easily deceive ourselves into thinking we’re making it about Him, when really we soak up the comment love we receive as praise to ourselves, our skills and our words. We so easily claim His blessings and His favor as our own accomplishments.

I’m tired of it. I’m tired of relying on my online space to give me value. I’m tired of the number of comments I get or the number of shares I receive dictating my mood or the direction of my day.

His heart-check was successful, and He’s asking me to lay my heart {and blog} down before Him.

And so I’ve started laying these things before Him each time I sit at my computer. Every time I log on to disseminate thoughts and feelings to those who visit my online space, I give it over to Him. I ask Him to be in, through, and over my writing {Ephesians 4:6}. I ask Him to make my heart, my words and my motives purely about Him. I know it seems simple, but I’m so quick to claim the words I type on the page as my own, instead of asking Him to cover them, anoint them, and guard them.

And so I encourage you to go before Him every time you write. Ask Him to show you your heart. Ask Him to dissect your reasons for putting those words on the screen.

Is it for His glory, or is it for yours?

Because it you’re anything like me, you may desperately need a heart-check.

By Mandy Scarr

Why Encouragement Works

By

photo (7)

Encourage one another.

It seems so simple, doesn’t it? Would you like to know a secret? It has been the single most effective way for me to build my blog.

And also required the heaviest sifting of my heart to find.

It has brought me the most joy and has found me more often than not on my knees before the Father in tears. I have had to put my selfish pride behind me and do things – in blogging, online communities, and real life – that bring glory to God. And it’s hard.

My natural tendency is to strive. To have a goal and do everything in my power to make it happen. When it works, my pride grows. When it fails, my pride suffers and I become insecure, comparing and wondering why it worked for “her” but not me. And that, sweet friends, is an ugly path I have traveled down far too often.

It is only by the grace of God, a powerful refining, and a softened heart that I now know the full joy of offering praise for the success of others. It’s not always easy. It takes practice, reaching out to someone and celebrating their achievement when you wish it was yours. In a world where competition is the norm and women are expected to be catty, not congratulatory, it takes practice.

But I can promise you this. When you go out of your way to share someone else’s amazing blog post, leave an encouraging comment for a blogger you admire, or send another writer information about an opportunity you think they would be perfect for, you are doing a hard thing. You are choosing not to keep it all for yourself, you are choosing to admit that you are not the only one who can do this thing and you showing this world that Christ’s light shines brightly when we live for Him and not ourselves. As I’ve opened my heart to those around me, as I’ve joined community and sought ways to encourage others, He has blessed me in incredible and unexpected ways.

Today, my amazing writing friends, let’s give God the opportunity to poke some holes in our pride so He has more room to shine. Be a light. Love one another the way Christ has commanded us to and take this “light living” from the pages of Scripture to the screens of blogs and out into our daily lives.

Encourage one another.

Who is God calling you to encourage today?

Crystal Stine
http://www.crystalstine.me

Escape the noise. Find quiet. Find God.

By

“The fear of letting go is strangling the freedom of rest.” I read these words at Jacque’s place tonight as I was editing this write, and they served as confirmation.

It’s difficult to let go, unplug and walk away from online life, even if it’s just for a week. It takes faith. I wonder every time, but less and less, “Will my voice go unheard because I’m going quiet?”

Last summer I decided every seventh week, I’ll unplug. Six weeks of blogging and social networking, and the seventh week — rest. I schedule and plan around it.

  • Refresh and rejuvenation for my spirit and soul, drawing in close to God and waiting on Him to breathe new life.
  • Refocus to see clear the vision God has given me, turning my heart and actions to Jesus and His purpose for me.
  • Renew my devotion to the God, guarding my heart above all else, proving that I have a blog and the blog doesn’t have me. <–Tweet

It can be hard.

But it’s harder to write from a tired place. Everything is hard when tired. In that place, I find myself battling falsehoods I should be far from believing.

Feeling as if that blogger’s success amplifies my failure.

And why should I bother when there are a thousand others saying the same thing?

And how can my one voice be heard out of a million others?

Lies.

Before I can catch myself I’m being overrun by the waves that come crashing — rogue waves of discouragement. The pummeling pounds me down. I feel lost, shrouded in darkness that presses in on all sides. While trying to find my footing, I wonder, “What hit me?”

The un-likes, un-follows, and un-subscribes knock the wind out of these sails. Who am I kidding?

Knocks. Me. Over.

And I see the dishes have spilled out and over the sink — overtaking the counter tops, too. And mounds of clothes cascading out of their baskets and covering the laundry room floor slowly creeping their way into the hallway and kitchen. And they might knock me over, too.

And books sit shelved I’m to be reviewing, and friends I want to be tweeting, and kids I should be teaching, and maybe I’ll catch up on Dowton Abbey, instead.

I’m running this race, and perhaps I’ve entered the wrong one. Maybe I should go this way. Or perhaps — that? Being double-minded, tossed to and fro makes one unstable in all their ways. (James 1:8)

“And you should be writing right now,” I tell myself as I switch back and forth from Facebook and Twitter, and get swept into the never stagnant stream. And do I notice, my stream has become stagnant, and the river has stopped flowing and words have run dry?

And I falter under the weight of the burden I carry — wife, mama, daughter, sister, friend. I realize again I’ve taken the place of the Burden-bearer and have been doing it in my own strength.

I’ve gone off course as I’ve gone to the left and then right, eyes on what everyone else is doing rather than where God’s leading — His Voice growing more faint. And mine, too.

And can I say it? I. Want. More. Readers. But what about the audience of One?

Somewhere in the midst of the busy and the noise my loyalty to the One has been divided and the “one” un-like and the “one” un-subscribe steals the desire to hear the applause of the One I’m supposed to be writing for.

I pour out and I give. I give when I feel I have nothing left. What good am I to anyone in my family or even God, if I am running on empty? This is not light-living — becoming disconnected from the Vine, trying to connect to everyone else. <–Click to Tweet

And I’m confused, and I’m weary, and I’m maybe I should just quit. Just. Quit. Blogging.

And I know I’m missing the mark — His mark.

And when I’m in need of rest is when I struggle most.

“Jesus left the crowd and went into the house.” (Matt. 13:36 NCV)

Though surrounded by possibly twenty thousands fans, He turned away from them. Christ repeatedly escaped the noise of the crowd in order to hear the Voice of God.” — Max Lucado

And maybe we need to also. Every blogger — escape the noise — find quiet.

And find God.

I’m talking about burn-out here, and how I endeavor to prevent it. What about you, friends? How do you guard yourself and your family against it? I’d love to hear.

 

 

 

How to do What you are Called to Do Without Failing

By

How to do what you are called to doPhoto Source

As a blogger you can get pretty lost in all of the “to dos of blogging.” It’s a list that most blogging conferences, or blog posts on how to blog, confirm: promote your blog, use social media, comment on other blogs, guest post, connect, build relationship… It’s not a bad list and it does yield results but it may not yield the right kind of success if you aren’t supposed to be doing those things.

Over my 3 years of blogging I have watched blogger after blogger burn-out. They felt called to write at one point or another but then the demands of it took time away from their families and they couldn’t find the balance so they had to lay it down…completely. I admit to wondering time and time again if I should lay blogging down but every time I seek God about it I hear a clear “no.” I have had seasons of laying it down but have never felt the necessity of letting it go completely. However, It scares me, honestly, that there is such burn-out among bloggers, especially moms.

As I have watched so many bloggers struggle with the balance I could not help but be desperate for the answer to cure the epidemic. “God why do so many women struggle with this, myself included?” and what God spoke to me was a swift and absolute answer.

“Only Do what I told YOU to do.”

Oh! I get it. Too often we get caught up in what someone else is doing and attempt to follow their path. Sometimes that is the right thing to do because that’s what God has told us to do. But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes we are just chasing the success of someone else. If you’ve been told what to do then THAT is your path to being successful. If you haven’t been told {or haven’t taken time to ask} please make that a priority before moving on.

When I think back to the beginning of my blogging journey I remember that God called me to write. Every day. He said “Write every day. Live your life and blog along the way.” He never said to catch up with Mrs. Jones who has been blogging for years. He never said promote yourself like crazy. He never said “you have to connect.” He just said “write.”

And I remembered how God is interested in our hearts. Do we trust Him with what He has called us to? Will we be faithful to obey? Even if it isn’t the way it looks for someone else?

Of course I had the potential to burn-out because I cannot expect that God will bless, protect and grow what He never asked me to do {also known as disobedience to what He HAS called me to do}. He equips us faithfully for our calling. We falter when we leave Him behind thinking that we’ve got it now and know how to do it.

{Please note that there is a difference between burning out because you are following the wrong path and God changing your path. And there is ALWAYS grace. I have missed the mark on this so many times and He lovingly brings me back to truth…every time.}

My calling may be different from yours. You may not even be called to blog. You may be called to blog and promote and work long hours to make money at it. You may be called to connect like crazy. BUT if you aren’t you should stop. I had to stop.

Let me leave you with a verse that God has been speaking to my heart over and over. Psalms 23:1 says:

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

Another version says …I have everything I need. Is the Lord your shepherd? You have everything you need. Your calling is enough for you. But get this: in Hebrew the word translated “want” also means to fail or (cause to) fail. So you could also read it like this: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not fail…

Make the Lord the shepherd over your calling. Do only what He asks you to do. Guard it and your time diligently and You cannot fail. He won’t let you.

Kristin Lemus
The Beautiful Deep

One Week to 3500 Subscribers { How I Built My Email List }

By

I am a smaller blogger, no doubt about it. I’ve got around 700 trusty readers and followers on Facebook. Not too shabby, but not BIG, by any means. Just a few months ago though, I had plateaued around 300 followers. My numbers grew slowly, if at all, and I began to look into how to reach more people.

Then, I heard about email lists.

messageministryemaillist

What’s the Big Deal About Email Lists?

According to blogging and social media gurus like Jeff Goins and Derek Halpern, your email list is the most important thing to focus on. The idea is that even if you’re not selling something, you’re still selling something – your content – and email continues to be the most direct form of marketing.

Even if your blog is a ministry, and you don’t receive any income at all from it, you have a message that you want to get out to the world. The hard truth is that your message isn’t going to get out there on it’s own, you have to market it. Sending out a monthly newsletter that includes exclusive content and a solid, relevant message is a great way to do that. Even if you’re not selling something right now, you may be in the future, and now is the time to build your audience.

Um, What IS an Email List?

I’m not talking about how many people sign up to receive your blog posts through feedburner. Email lists are built when people agree to give you their email address because they are interested in receiving what you are providing. They want MORE than just your weekly posts. Often, this comes in the form of a newsletter.

Ok, So How Do I Build An Email List?

First, you need a newsletter service. I love MailChimp. I’ve tried some of the more popular services, and this one takes the cake. Easy, effective, and FREE for up to 2,000 subscribers.

You can then install a sign-up form on your blog (MailChimp will walk you through that), and invite your readers to start signing up! Easy-peasy, you’ve got an email list going.

However, building your list that way takes a lot of time. And, honestly? People are more motivated to sign up for something when they get something out of it.

So, I wrote an eBook, and gave it away to subscribers. For free.

A year before, I had written a blog series on home management that turned out to be pretty popular. I took that series, revamped it a bit for the eBook, and included a complete set of home management printables. Sign up for my newsletter, get the eBook, including 30 printables, at no charge.

My goal was 1,000 subscribers.

I opened up the sign-ups for the newsletter, and launched my eBook on December 31. Word spread quickly thanks to a few blogging friends, and in six days I had 3,500 people sign up for my email list.

From zero to 3,500 in less than a week. I actually had to cut off the free eBooks because I had exceeded my goal, and needed to start charging for the book so I could pay for my MailChimp service!

My email list continues to grow, because the content I provide through my newsletter is exclusive and relevant. I try to throw a free printable in when I can, and share real, encouraging stories of faith and family. My newsletter sparks email conversations, and I am getting to know my readers on a more personal level than just through blog comments. Now I have a growing, invested audience, and a group of dedicated readers who will support my next project (like my book that’s coming soon).

Email lists. You need one. Give away something for free (anything you’ve got that is relevant and valuable!), and watch your numbers exceed your expectations. It will bless your socks off, I promise.

Blessings,
Kayse :: kaysepratt.com

 

*Disclosure: Affiliate link used.

Fostering Community on Contributor Blogs

By

One of the most beautiful thing about contributor blogs is the community found therein. But sometimes, especially if you’ve been managing the blog awhile, the community can begin to feel stymied and in need of being revived.  Here are a few ways I’ve used to help foster (and revive!) the community on a contributor blog.

4 Ways to Foster Community on a Contributor Blog

1. Make community the central goal.

It’s easy to think that once we’ve scheduled great quality posts, we’ve done our job.  And if we were only publishing a magazine, maybe we would be done.  But blogging has unlimited potential for building community in and around those posts, if only we can tap into it!

“The community surrounding your blog is what gives it life.”
-Christin Slade in Blog at Home Mom

In the comments.

I don’t expect any blogger to respond to every comment on every post, but it is nice — especially on a contributor blog — when the post author is interacting within the comment section on their post. Work with your contributors on the post scheduling date if necessary, to make sure they are around to promote their post and reply to the comments to it.  Then use plugins like Comment Reply Notification, Subscribe to Comments Reloaded, Jetpack, or the Disqus comment system to keep the conversation going.

Asking questions on social media.

Ann Voskamp’s Facebook page is a great example of people responding to simple questions on social media.  Ann will give a simple “Joy Dare” for the day and the comments pour in as people count and celebrate their “1000 Gifts”.

With link-ups.

Link-ups are a great way to generate community among your readers, but only if a large percentage of your readers are bloggers!  The Better Mom Mondays and Women Living Well Wednesdays are great examples of community link-ups.  SheLoves Magazine calls their link-ups “synchroblogs” — I love the descriptiveness of that term!

During Twitter parties.

The #FMFParty is a great example of a community developing around a blog and link-up through a Twitter party!  Each Thursday night Lisa-Jo Baker hangs out with people on Twitter for the hour before the Five-Minute Friday post topic is announced.

Through Twitter and Instagram hashtags.

The #Allume hashtag is one of my favorite places to hang out on Twitter.  I love the community that’s available within a six-letter hashtag named for my favorite conference!  On Instagram, #Togetherin10 brings together the busy moms in search of quick fashion ideas who read the Together in 10 blog.

2. Bring the contributors’ community into yours.

From their blog.
I’ve begun asking my contributors to publish a post on their own blog on the same day their post goes live, using a different title (for best SEO) and only a brief quote from their post, directing readers to the contributor blog to find the rest.  Not only does that bring fresh readers to our blog, but it brings their own regular readers into the comment section.

From their social media.

When Ruth Schwenk mentioned in her Allume session on “Building a Successful Contributor Blog” that she asks her authors to mention their posts on social media two to three times the day their post is published, I realized that was something I’d never asked my writers to do.  Sure, they did often share their posts, but it was okay for me to actually ask them to make sure to do so!  Only about half of my team is on Twitter, so I’ve just begun asking them to promote their posts on their own favorite forms of social media.  And it’s fun to watch the momentum build as their friends share the posts in turn as well.

3. Expand your horizons.

The contributor blog I manage is represented everywhere from Goodreads to Tumblr.  When a contributor asks about Kindred Grace being on some new form of social media, I’ll usually answer: of course, if you’ll do it! I don’t know the first thing about Tumblr, but our resident Tumblr fan does a beautiful job with our Tumblr account and shares our posts within a community we might not otherwise have reached.  And while I find Pinterest too time-consuming to hang out on, and too much to pay a VA for at this point, we’ve invited a few team members to contribute to our Pinterest boards to keep them active (after giving them clear guidelines, of course!).

Making the community a team effort has allowed us to expand our horizons without spreading ourselves too thin. Not only does delegating and crowdsourcing take the load off of the people in charge, but it frees them up to do the tasks that only they can do, while allowing each person on the team to focus on the areas that are truly their strengths.

4. Provide a method for contributor collaboration and brainstorming.

There’s nothing better than a unified contributor blog that feels like they are working together as a team.  Their unity spills out into the entire readership, creating a firm sense of community.  A private Facebook group or Google Plus community provides a great way for your contributors to collaborate and brainstorm — participation is not required, but there when they need it.

Private Facebook Groups

Everyone is on Facebook, even when they are supposed to be writing!  When we started a private Facebook group for our writing team, it harnessed all that Facebook time and turned it into productive brainstorming sessions.  The community within our team has really blossomed through the Facebook group.  It has also allowed new members to be welcomed with open arms and get to know the rest of the contributors on a more personal basis.

Google Plus Hangouts

Google Plus Communities offer a lot more organization of discussion threads if you’d rather do your brainstorming somewhere quieter than Facebook.  So far, I’ve only used Google Plus Communities for the purpose of organizing a Hangout.  When you don’t live close enough to meet face to face over coffee, Google Plus is a great alternative (and you can each bring the coffee!).

Conference Calls

There are many free conference call options that allow you to hear each other’s voice, without any need for webcams or fast internet.  As soon as we can figure out a time when most of our worldwide team will be awake, we’re going to have one.  The key will be for everyone not to talk at once!

E-mail

Don’t let group collaboration replace clear communication. Private social media groups might streamline communication with your writers, but they won’t replace regular email communication.  Make sure you don’t leave your contributors out of the loop just because they don’t spend all their time on Facebook: send out an email at least once a month in plenty of time to remind them of the upcoming deadline and mention future month’s topics.

I’ve met many of my closest friends through the community that has grown within the contributor blog I manage.  And my prayer is that our readers would experience that same friendly embrace each time they visit our contributor blog or one of our social media outlets.

What are your favorite ways to participate in a contributor blog community?

Thanks for sharing,
Gretchen Louise

Categories

Archives

Google+