Mommy Ginger
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Blog Carnival: Come and Join the Conversation!

Hi everyone! Some of the freelancers in the Freelancers Hub Philippines Group have decided to bring you amazing content every month through a blog carnival. There will be a chosen topic per month and a host blog or platform per month. Everyone who wishes to be part of the carnival for that month can sign up using the form created by the host.

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For those who are wondering, a blog carnival is an online event where bloggers/content providers/publishers come together to write/create a video or podcast about a specific theme or topic.

For 2017, here are the topics that we have set.

Here is the Step-by-Step Guide on how to join the Blog Carnival for the Month of May (hosted by Ginger Arboleda, http://mommyginger.com)

1. Write a blog post within the month of May about the topic or anything related to the topic above: Monetizing a Passion / Why Freelancing? / Why “my passion”?

2. You can create more than one entry. There will not be any minimum number of words for articles nor duration for videos or podcasts, but the content needs to be something that readers or viewers will find value in reading

3. The article / post should contain the link to the mechanics of the blog carnival (http://mommyginger.com/2017/04/blog-carnival-freelancers.html); For all social shares, please use #freelancershub, #freelancing and the host’s hashtag #mommyginger.

4. Posts need to be published and submitted via the form by May 10, 2017, 11:59pm. After you have published your blog post, please fill out this form:

5. The host will keep track of all the submissions and will publish it on the mechanics page in her blog/website. All links will be posted by May 11, 2017.

6. Once links have been posted, all participants are required to visit each of the link and comment on the comments section of the post. If you’re done visiting the links, please comment “DONE!” on the comments section below!

7. For May, the host (@GingerArboleda) will choose the best post and will give out a Multi Function Bluetooth Selfie Sticks + Monopod to the best post.

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8. The host will choose the best post on May 31, 2017!

Good luck! 🙂

Here are the links to the posts!

Rey Baguio http://reymbaguio.me/being-passionately-be-your-best-to-succeed/
Ginger Arboleda http://mommyginger.com/2017/04/are-we-all-passionate-people.html
Mahesh Kumar http://blog.transcriptioncertificationinstitute.org/make-money-online-touch-typing-skills/
Liberty Baldovino http://www.theyouthfulgrannyva.com/freelancing-turning-my-passion-into-something-unexpectedly-beautiful-and-profitable-too/
Charlie Aquino http://www.upskillvideos.com/discover-your-passion/

Please visit each one and share their stories! 🙂

 

Startup Marketing Plan vs. Blog Marketing Plan

MG Blog Series

I was about to skip blog writing today for my blog series. A terrible headache hit me the other day. I had to catch up on a lot of things. One of the things that crossed my mind and had to think about was the growth strategy of Taxumo (startup marketing plan, etc.). For those who have been reading my blog, you would know that Taxumo is the startup company that we built. Taxumo takes care of computing, filling out the forms and submitting the data and payment to the BIR, which is the tax ministry here in the Philippines and to an authorized bank. Entrepreneur magazine featured us just this week:

Filing taxes? There’s an app for that

I was inspired to write about marketing plans and strategies for both startups and blogs. Yesterday, I was studying more about Facebook ads and optimizing these advertisements that I create. I am amazed at the numbers and metrics involved. I think this is what people don’t see and get — that marketing, especially nowadays is a “numbers” game.

We all meet marketers and all of them look like extroverted individuals, who probably just love talking to people and hate math. Haha! I know how people think and have been branded to be such also. I took marketing in college, but ended up in banking, which made people wonder A LOT. But after years of marketing different products and services, as a marketer, the lesson that I learned is we gotta love numbers! Metrics show the real picture. Conversions, engagement, leads, sales — all of these are all measured using numbers.

Now, since we are talking more about blogging in this blog series, how do you effectively market your blog. Obviously, one is to tell everyone you meet that you have a blog, but that would take forever. If we talk to each one, multiply it by the number of minutes, that would take forever to reach a goal of having just 500 visitors a day in your site. Now, this is why I thought about startup marketing plans.

The objective of a startup is to have speedy and steady growth especially for the first year or so. They employ strategies that would result to achieving this. Of course not all strategies are “one-size-fits-all”, but some should be evident in each of the marketing strategies of different startups.

1. Among all the people in the world, it SHOULD BE ME!
People love being the first to tell their friends about this cool thing, this new place, this great deal, etc. In the startup world, we seek for beta testers. These are usually our early adopters. Our early adopters should be able to validate that our guess of who are market is is correct. An example of this is how my friends at Cape marketed their product. I actually want to conduct this experiment and test who among my friends and readers value cheap flights!

IF YOU WANT CHEAP FLIGHTS AT AROUND 50-70% OFF, CLICK ON THIS IMAGE AND SIGN UP!

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Now, obviously, I will be able to tell how many of you signed up for Cape’s service because I was given a code to track down how many signed up. Sometimes, these codes can also monitor sales. And if sales are monitored, commissions can also be monitored. This is the reason why there is such a thing as affiliate marketing. This is the gist of what affiliate marketing is (but let’s discuss this topic for another time).

You can employ the same strategy with you blogs. You can announce that you are giving some readers access to something valuable in your site in exchange for their emails. In this environment, emails are very valuable. It allows you to connect with your readers again and again.

2. STAND UP, BE HEARD AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

Since early this year, for Taxumo, we have been conducting a lot of FREE taxation workshops. We do this, because we genuinely believe that all you need as taxpayers is an entity who will understand and listen to you, know what your going through, and actually take time out to explain things that you don’t understand about taxes. Once you get it, it’s up to you to use or not use our system. But most of them really do use the system, since the Taxumo team is genuinely there to help them!

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If you want to increase engagement in your blog, take time out to reply to your readers. With the plethora of things that I have to do, I still find the time to talk to people who chat me up on messenger, email me, etc. Seriously! You can ask different people. I always try to find time to answer if time permits. Actively engaging with your readers make them loyal followers!

3. Understand the CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Intimately know what they want and what they need. If it’s a blog, intimately know what they want to read about, where they read, when they would read or search for an article and then be there! Bloggers are mind readers. We should know exactly what our readers want even before they search for it!

These are just some of the things that I thought of when thinking about the similarities of creating a startup marketing plan and a blog marketing plan. As for the latter, I think I’ll try to expound on that more in the next posts for this series.

If there is anything you would want to add, please feel free to leave your comment below. Have a great day, peeps!

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Best Place to Start a Blog When you Want to Monetize It

The best place to start a blog when you want to monetize it is to think of it as a business.

MG Blog Series

The best place to start a blog when you want to monetize it is to have that mindset that it will really be a business. You need to be profitable in order for you to sustain a business. On the on set, if you really want to make blogging your main source of income, you should be committed to do everything you can, learn everything you can, and make a living out of it.

People would think it’s taboo to talk about money when you are talking about passion. As bloggers who are in business, we need to realize early on that we shouldn’t be allergic to talk about money in exchange for the value that we give. There is nothing bad about earning from blogging. Blogging is a legitimate profession — that is why there is a growing number of professional bloggers out there. And when you think about it, it’s great that these people wake up every day, do something that they are passionate about, and earn from it.

I have been silently analyzing different kinds of bloggers for the longest time and I have observed something quite interesting. Those bloggers who earn figures that you wouldn’t believe is possible are those who love numbers and charts. Haha! I’m not generalizing, but since the time that I have been intrigued by quant-based marketing, I have slowly seen the difference. These bloggers who earn huge amounts, in thousands of dollars, do not realize that they are experts in quant-based marketing. They take time to undertand trends, charts, ups and downs of their clicks, visits, and even bids. What they do is very interesting!

Another interesting characteristic of these people is that they don’t stop learning. They search online and try to understand how to make their blogs more engaging to their audience. These bloggers take time to understand what their readers want. They painstakingly go through each report on Google Analytics to see whether their performance is better than what it was yesterday.

So the best place to start a blog is really when you know clearly what your objective is for having the blog. If it’s about monetization, then go all-out!

Love lots,

Mommy Ginger

Mommy Ginger

 

 

 

 

PS. See you tomorrow at The Freelancer Fair!

PPS. See you on November 29 for Payoneer’s Freelancer Forum

How to Write Interesting Articles for your Blog

MG Blog Series

I am sitting in a coffee shop across two people. One of the guys is in his twenties and he’s wearing a red jacket and the other is an elderly fellow who is probably in his late 30s. Both of them are playing chess, and they seem very engrossed with the game. Occasionally, they would raise their voices. This made me think if chess was really that exciting.

We often form judgements, even for the things that we have never tried before. For blogging, we think that it’s only for people who know how to construct perfect sentences. My personal opinion though of blogging is that it can also just be a personal diary — where you write down your own thoughts and feelings. When you have trouble relaying thoughts using sentences, I’m sure you research about how to write it and, then, you learn something new. Writing and blogging consistently makes you a better writer, a better blogger.

Consistency is the name of the game. But, if you write posts every day or even every week, won’t you run out of things to say? How do you write interesting topics for your blog? How do you come up with new ideas?

For today’s post, I will share some tips on how I do it.

1) First, I think of topics and articles that I would want to read about. If you write about topics that you yourself will not be interested in reading, then don’t expect your audience to be interested in reading it, too!

2) Next, write articles in an tone that fits your brand personality. If you usually use a serious tone with a bit of wit, then write that topic that way. If you speak street slang, then inject some words in street slang. The important thing is that the type of audience that you want to attract will probably speak the same language as you, so use the same tone.

3) Write articles in an angle that your market will want to know more about. I, personally, admit that I am a nerd. I love writing articles with a business or marketing angle. Even when I review (haha!), I write it in an angle that would be appealing to aspiring entrepreneurs or current start-up founders or marketing professionals. I do this, because I know that my market is someone who would be interested in reading these stuff, that I find interesting.

4) Lastly, try not to sound like the writer of other articles that talk about the same topic. I know that avoiding reading other articles or blog posts of the same topic is hard. You need to do it for research, etc. I notice though that when I read other stuff, I tend to sound like the writer that I just read. So what I do is I take down notes, and then write my own article the next day and not on the same day of my research.

So those are my blogging tips for this Friday. I hope that I gave you helpful tips on how to write interesting articles for your blog. Before I say goodbye today, I would like to invite you to join me and Marv for a webinar on November 4. The webinar is 7 Steps to Make Money from your Blog.

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I’m sure this will be helpful to all of you, my loyal readers, especially to those who already have blogs or those who are thinking of starting a blog so that they can earn extra income. All you need to do is to register. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.

Talk to you again on Friday! 🙂

 

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How to Write Relatable Blog Titles

MG Blog Series

It’s been a few days that my blog has been wonky. I told my husband to help me move my blog to a new host, either to Bluehost or to a new Hostgator account. He has been so busy lately that he doesn’t have time for it. I may seem like I know the technical side of blogging (sure I now how widgets work and how plug-ins work), but I don’t — REALLY. But, what I know also is that the success of one’s blog relies heavily on the understanding or your audience. It relies deeply on how interesting or engaging your posts are. Sure, I can get someone to teach you get-rich-quickly tips on blogging, but they would all say that it those that create great content will still have an advantage.

So for the next few weeks, hopefully every Friday (if my time permits), I will write something that I know about blogging. I will create my own blog series! For today, I am bent on teaching you how to create relatable titles.

I love the word RELATABLE. It is a word that we take for granted, but in my eyes, being relatable is very important when you are creating an engaging blog title. Relatable means that you really understand your readers, and you give them the content that they want and they deserve. In blogging, we take titles for granted, but it’s really the first thing that the readers sees. If they see and like the article, they click and read further. Okay, so how do we create relatable titles?

Step 1: Listen to how your readers sound. Assuming that you know your specific market, look for at least 3-5 samples from your reader base, and talk to them about the topic that you have in mind. Be very observant of the words that they use. Write words that stood out in the conversation — what word or group of words did they use.

Step 2: Now that you know “how” they sound, it’s time to empathize. Put yourself in the shoes of your reader. If they were searching about the topic online, what do you think they will type? What words or what set of words would they use. This particular method is also a rough way on how to identify keywords. Write these words or set of words.

Step 3: Identify the kind of content that they are looking for when they search for the topic at hand. Will they search for steps, tips, photos, experiences, etc. Keep this in mind!

Step 4: Mix and jumble words and come up with combinations that they would think would be unique and catchy enough to read. Also infuse the kind or type of article that they would look for. If they are searching for a guide, try to use the word “GUIDE”. For those looking for method or process, try to us “STEPS”. If they want to learn about a particular topic, you can use “HOW TO” (this the reason why I used the title above).

These are the ways on how I come up with the titles that I use for my blogpost. There are some titles, too, that are a bit overly dramatic or vague, but these titles that I use are intentionally used and crafted to be that way. Most of those will probably contain personal thoughts and feelings (wherein I wouldn’t really care about SEO or rankings).

Just as a thank you for watching this, I am giving you a FREE VIDEO where my friend Marv De Leon talks about (Click on this: The Essentials of an Epic Blog.) I’d like to think that we are all striving to be one!

Hope you enjoyed my post today! Until next Friday for another entry for my Blog Series!

 

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