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pynkhues · 3 years

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Hi Sophie! I’m an aspiring writer and I had a question for you!! How did you go on about finding an agent? Also how does one find job postings related to writing? (Tv, etc.) I’m very inspired by you and how talented you are!!!

Hi, anon! Thank you for your kind words, and it’s so exciting that you’re an aspiring writer! I think knowing that you want to write really is the first step on a pretty incredible journey, and it’s one that it helps have to have tools on. Knowing how to ask questions, like you did, is a great way to start building that toolkit too.

Especially because your writing toolkit will be something you build, because there’s not really one answer to either of your questions. I really mean it when I say writing and publishing is a journey, and as a part of that, the pathways people choose to take (and the pathways available to them) often vary a lot, and are impacted by so many things, from where you live to the genre and medium you write in to the networks you have access to.

I’m going to try to answer that for you as well as I can here which I hope will be a useful starting point for you, but I will be contextualizing it a bit with the fact that a) I’m in Australia, which has a bit of a different industry to many parts of the world (in no small part because we have a very small population), and b) that I worked in the industry before I started having my work published, which did give me a jump start and a pretty good network of professional and personal support.

Okay!

So let’s jump in.

Behind a cut because this got a bit long.

How did I get an agent?

Well! I was rejected by four agents before I got one, haha, so that in itself was a bit of an adventure. It meant that I was effectively my own agent for quite a while (something that’s quite normal in Australia for reasons I’ll talk about later), which meant doing everything from pitching works to teaching myself enough legal vocabulary to negotiate contracts (not my strong suit honestly, haha).

The first two agents I ever spoke to were both agents that weren’t open for unsolicited submissions. This is an important term in the industry, because what that means is that they’re not reading any new writers who:

they didn’t invite to submit (usually this would be after you’d won a prize, or they’d read your short story or essay in a journal or magazine, loved it and got in touch)

didn’t come recommended by colleagues; or

didn’t come through their existing networks.

Does that mean you can’t get your work in front of them? It doesn’t actually. Usually when agents aren’t open for unsolicited submissions, they’ll still be interested in work. It just usually means they don’t have the time for a massive slush pile. What they frequently do in these instances instead is that they’ll attend conferences, festivals, workshops or events and do pitching sessions a couple of times a year. That usually looks like you booking a five, ten or fifteen minute window, generally for free (be cautious if they’re charging extra on top of your event ticket) and doing a verbal pitch of your project.

I’ve done a lot of these at various events in various contexts (it’s always hell, haha), but only twice to agents. Once was at the CYA Conference in Brisbane (which is a charged pitch but the money’s a donation towards the Children’s Book Council), where I pitched a YA manuscript I’ve since put in my bottom-drawer, and Emerging Writers Festival in Melbourne, where I pitched The Rabbits, which is my novel which came out in July with Penguin Australia.

Those pitching sessions went just okay. Both liked my pitches, but the agent at CYA had a full stable of YA authors and was more looking for middle-grade fiction, which meant my story skewed too old. She gave me her card if I ever wrote for a younger audience, but otherwise declined to invite me to submit. Again, this is frequently actually why an agent might be closed to submissions or they might reject your work even if they like it – they're just at capacity with what you're pitching.

The one at EWF went better and I was invited to submit my complete manuscript, but she told me that while she thought I was a good writer, she didn’t personally like my writing style and therefore didn’t think she could sell it. She did actually invite me to submit something else if I had something more commercial, but I really figured that if she didn’t like my writing style, she probably wasn’t going to like whatever else I sent her, so I ended up declining because I thought it would be a waste of both our time.

The other two agents I submit to were both open for unsolicited submissions so I didn’t have to go through events. In both cases, I did cold submissions, which just means we’d never spoken before, so when you do that you need to put together a query packet because - - well. They don’t know who you are, haha. All publishers and agents have different requirements for their query packet and these should be listed on their website (if they’re not, feel really empowered to email and ask – in all of my industry experience, they have always infinitely preferred you doing that to guessing. It shows you know the etiquette and want to get it right).

Generally speaking though, what you're looking at pulling together for a packet is usually:

A cover letter explaining who you are, why you’re interested in them being your agent (being familiar with who else they represent is a good thing to highlight), and what story you’re selling them on.

A one-page synopsis of your manuscript.

A writing CV if you have one, or another relevant CV (i.e. if you're pitching a non-fiction book on being a nurse in the pandemic, attaching your nursing CV so they can see you're legitimate is important).

And usually either the first 50 pages or the first three chapters of your novel.

You generally email that to them, it goes into a slush pile, and they’ll read through it when they get the chance. I got a personalized rejection from one, which is pretty lovely (getting a personal rejection instead of one that’s clearly an email template from agents, editors and publishers might sound silly, but they’re actually pretty significant. These are people who get thousands of manuscripts a year, and taking the time to write a reply usually means your work resonated enough that they want to give you that encouragement even if the answer’s still no), and the other, I never heard back from, and my follow up email was ignored. Less lovely, haha, but unfortunately not uncommon.

So yeah, I took a bit of a break from seeking out an agent then, which I could do in Australia. One of the benefits of having a small industry here is that there’s a very limited number of agents (we’re talking literally about 25), which means submissions outside of agents and agencies are pretty normal. My understanding in the US and the UK is that you’re not really going to get a look-in without an agent, but in Australia you can submit direct, having an agent just makes it a lot easier.

So I didn’t have an agent when I actually got offered my book deal. I’d submit The Rabbits to a few different publishers, it had been rejected already by a couple and was still in the slush pile at one when I submit it to the Penguin Literary Prize. It won (yay!), Penguin offered me a book deal, and when the news broke in industry news, I was approached by six different agents, including, hilariously, the agent who said she didn’t like my writing style, haha.

I ended up talking to a few of them, but I went with a fairly new agent who I’d known through industry work, and I went with her because she had a really strong legal background which is what I was personally interested in.

Because that’s an important thing to consider too.

Why do you want an agent?

I actually knew that I didn’t really need an agent to sell my work. I’d been doing that for ten years already, I have over twenty short stories and a novella published, I’d sold my book, and I’d sold the rights to a screenplay already on my own, so the ability for an agent to sell work wasn’t so important to me. What was important to me was having someone who had a background in publishing law (my agent actually worked in the rights team in-house at a top five publisher before she became an agent), and understood rights management particularly in digital rights and international rights, because it makes my head spin, haha.

So that’s why I went with her!

But how do you find agents?

You didn’t ask this question exactly, but I think this is a very relevant question. There are databases of agents and publishers out there – Duotrope is probably the best known and I know people rave about it. One of the things that’s useful about it is that it’ll do a bit of a breakdown listing what genres the agent reads, if they’re currently open to unsolicited submissions, and their requirements. Take a look at Ginger Clark’s page for example (she’s not my agent – she’s American for starters, haha – but I have worked with her before and she’s a gem. Her most famous client is probably Ursula K. Le Guin, but she reps tons of other people too).

So yeah! Duotrope’s really useful. It has free info but also a paywall for certain things, and I personally find it kinda difficult to navigate?

I'd actually instead just recommend you take a look at writers you like and admire, especially ones who write similar genres to you, and just Google who their agent is. They all have websites, so they’re a lot easier to find these days than they were. 😊

How do you find job postings related to writing?

This is a tricky one, anon, as it depends on what sort of jobs you’re looking at. If you’re looking for copywriting opportunities, outlets for articles, short stories, poetry or essays, publishers who are posting open calls for manuscripts, or even cultural production jobs, those are all pretty different things. SO! I’m going to answer this one a little more broadly.

Writers Centres are your friends. Full disclaimer, I worked at one for five and a half years, and have been a member of Writers Victoria since I moved to Melbourne. They’re incredible resources for not only opportunities, but workshops, pitching, professional and creative development, community, networking and advice. They literally exist to help you achieve your goals.

- Writers Victoria maintains a free calendar of Opportunities and Competitions, but publishes more in their quarterly magazine which is a member perk. They’ll also often share job opportunities through their social media channels. I also still get the free e-news for Queensland Writers Centre and Writing NSW too because sometimes they share different stuff.

- I’ve heard Gotham Writers in New York is good too if you’re in America, but really I’d just suggest googling where you live and writers centre and seeing what comes up!

- Similarly festivals. I’ve worked at Brisbane Writers Festival and National Young Writers Festival here in Australia (the latter’s on online right now if you want to check out their free program!) Sign up to your local festival’s e-news, follow them on social media, they’ll usually share stuff.

- Speaking of! Social media! Haha. Twitter is often good for sharing jobs, competitions and opportunities, but I find it can be a bit of a cesspool too where people bombard the hashtags with self-promotion, so approach with caution. I find Facebook groups are way better for it personally, especially as there are a lot of specialized groups that are focused in certain or on certain writers. I know there’s lots for BIPOC writers for instance, I’m personally in a few and recommend:

Binders Full of WRITING JOBS

Binger Full of Copywriters

Style Binders – Writers in Fashion, Lifestyle and Beauty

Binder Full of Editors Seeking their Freelance Writers and Vice Versa

If you’re in Australia though, I’d especially recommend:

Women in Arts Management Collective (particularly if you’re interested in cultural production work)

Film and TV Networking Australia

Melbourne Women in Film

Writers Victoria Members

Australian Binder Full of Women Writers

Australian Arts Amidst COVID-19

Young Australian Writers

I think most of these are searchable, so just have a look, but also google your city or state + writer and see what pops up.

Otherwise, as much as it sucks to say it, a lot of the industry is who you know, so try and find ways to connect and meet with people and forge your own little community. Go to events – festivals, book launches, book clubs, join Facebook groups and in particular, if there are journals or magazines that are made in your local area, go to their launches and the events they run, no matter how big or small, and just chat to people there. As you get more established, you can be more discerning about what you go to, but when you're starting out, these are powderkegs of community and connection, and they breed suppport and, if you find the right people, you'll grow and develop together too.

Being a writer can often be pretty lonely, but being a part of supportive industry really makes all the difference, and as an old mentor of mine said – creative karma is real. You support the people coming up around you, and you’ll not only be creating a better, more inclusive and welcoming industry, but an industry that supports you right back. 😊

#i hope this is a help anon!#let me know if you have any other questions #learn from my gruelling experience haha #writing advice #writing #welcome to my ama

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sisi-learns-languages · 4 years

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What’s on My Phone: Language Edition

Not sure if this is already a thing or not but I thought it’d be fun! A lot of people post “What’s on My Phone” and show their apps and stuff like that, so I figured I’d do one but for learning languages! I’ll give the app name then give a quick little description of how it helps me! If you see this, you should post your own too!

Duolingo: Of course, this is the Holy Grail of language learning. It’s the reason we all are trying to learn tens of languages at once— this app makes it so easy to pick up your phone and start building a linguistic foundation in almost any language you can think of! This is a free app.

Notebook: As someone who really struggles with organization this app is a lifesaver! I can’t just have a list of links or PDFs filled with resources— I need some sort of rhyme or reason to the mess. Notebook is amazing in the sense that you can create an individual notebook for each section (and make cute little covers for them!) and add virtually whatever you want to them. You can do handwritten notes (which is great if you have an iPad with an Apple Pencil) or typed notes/lists, and even URLs if you don’t have the info immediately typed up (I love adding URLs to helpful posts from Tumblr so that I have them saved for future reference). You can even lock notes for added privacy. There are lots of features to this app so I promise it’s amazing! This is a free app.

Tinycards: This kind of goes hand in hand with Duolingo. The words you encounter in lessons will be readily available on this app for you to study! Love it! This is a free app.

Quizlet: Great app that you can work on memorizing phrases (or literally anything else) that you can make more personalized to your learning style. Also, you can search through tons of premade sets from just about any topic if that’s what you prefer. This is a free app.

Wordreference: Hands down, best dictionary app I’ve used. I utilize this primarily when I am practicing Spanish, French, or Italian but there are TONS of other languages to choose from. It gives context for the words, slang, and even phrases containing that word. It really is a comprehensive dictionary. This is a free app.

Books: If you have an iPhone, this comes built into your phone. I use this to download PDFs and read them in an easy-to-view setting. I primarily use it to download books in my target language, but you can download just about anything you want to read. This is a free app.

Notability: This app not only is amazing for language learning but for regular school as well. It is designed to work with the Apple iPad and Apple Pencil, where you can take handwritten notes on blank, lined, graph, etc paper. You can even download templates (calendars, agendas, etc) or PDFs to markup/write on. I use this a lot for Russian because I download a visual of the Cyrillic alphabet and practice writing the letters right on the PDF. This is also great if you download worksheets for yourself because it’s easy to fill out. You can also type and audio record, along with a million other cool features. I can’t say enough great things about this app. Highly recommend. This app costs $8.99.

Pinterest: Kind of an odd resource I know, but I find lots of cute templates for studying or even language worksheets on here. It has tons of PDFs that could be super helpful. This is a free app.

So that concludes my list of apps that I use to study languages, although I’m sure there are some that I’m forgetting, and in that case I’ll edit them in later. This is a very general list because it’s meant to help people who are studying any language, not just the ones I study. I also am open to suggestions about any apps you would recommend and please feel free to make your own post about this and tag me in it! Hope this was helpful!

-S

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rex101111 · 4 years

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2, 3, 7, 11, 15, and 19 for meta fanfiction asks!

2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

Once I have more time on my hands, I really wanna get back to writing the second chapter of “She is the moonlight”, like there’s so many fun scenes in my head I wanna write down (as you should know becc;D) and I really wanna get back to it.

Also I had a few Eri ideas and it has been ages since I wrote for my daughter, which is a travesty, and I need to get back on that XD

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

gaaaah which one??? Like, there’s one where Bakugou grows a moral center and gets on his hands and knees for deku to forgive him for telling him to kill himself (but that would take an entire fic’s worth of set up to properly build up and fuuu-).

Or I would really like to write this like short inbetween scene with Inko. Just after they get the news from UA that the students will move to the dorms but the night before All Might comes to visit to convince Inko it’s a good idea, but I wanna write a bunch about Inko’s life before that, maybe expand on her own personal experience with heroes? Maybe give her some prior reason to doubt Izuku would be safe with UA? Nana cameo to explain her earlier hairstyle like maybe Inko was a hero fan but grew out of it and saw a bunch of heroes get hurt and-...fuck it:

“Are you sure it’s okay?”

It isn’t. It isn’t even slightly okay, but Izuku has that smile on his face. That fragile one, the kind she’s broken before. She remembers that night, as clear as if it were yesterday; her little boy crying and shaking in front of a computer screen after being told all his dreams were worthless.

There’s a pit in the bottom of her stomach, and as it grows the urge to tell him no grows with it. She felt Kamino from her kitchen, her TV screen a peak into the apocalypse.

Not even a week before he son was on a hospital bed with his arms broken in two dozen places, and then his teachers, and even some of his friends, were neck deep in something even worse.

She should say no.

She has every right to tell him no.

But he has that smile on his face.

“Of course dear.” Her mouth is full of lead, her smile feels heavy and fetid on her face. “Go see what you need to pack.”

He hugs her, kisses her cheek, rushes off to his room while calling her the best, and she can barely register any of it. She finds her way, somehow, to her couch, and puts her face in her hands.

Heroes die Inko, her mother’s voice echoes out, cold but afraid, they help and they save and they win, but at the end they die.

She was young before All Might showed up, very young, be she had memories of before; of early heroes crashing against overwhelming odds, of mass funerals and of hero agencies closing down not from lack of funding but lack of personal.

She thinks back to the summer camp (do you really need to come back?), to the shopping mall (he’s smiling put keeps putting a hand to his neck), to the sports festival (his fingers are a shade of purple so vivid she can see it even when they zoom out), to that last week before middle school graduation (Where did all that confidence come from, she thought she broke it all...). She remembers her little boy, covered in bruises and wiping away his tears (Mitsuki asking what her “brat” did this time, Inko doesn’t know what to say).

She thinks of him smiling and crying as he showed her his acceptance letter, of him pouring over his homework every morning, of unwrapping bandages from his broken fingers as he promises her (again) that he’ll be more careful.

She sees, as clear as day, her son, her baby, her Izuku, motionless and bleeding as the world burned around him and some monster without a face and without a heart laughs at him.

(All Might barely made it out alive. Kamino is a warzone. Her son, with broken arms and a broken smile and broken-and broken-and broken-)

She gets up from the couch in a rush, races for the faucet in her kitchen, and vomits so powerfully she starts coughing and tearing up.

She breathes heavily for a few moments, silently wiping her mouth as she waits for Izuku to rush down the stairs to check on her. He doesn’t, mercifully he didn’t hear her. She rinses the taste from her mouth, cleans her face, sobs, cleans her face again, and then goes to her computer with a stomp in her step and her lips in a thin line.

With a heavy heart but a steady, determined hand she types in “Hero School admittance and transfer” into the search engine and spends the next two hours reading about Shiketsu, and Ketsubutsu, and Isamu, and a hundred other names she only heard about in vague news snippets.

She’ll break his heart, that smile, like ten years didn’t pass and nothing changed, but she forges onward. He’ll feel betrayed, he’ll feel lied to, but she is done with UA, she is done with her son coming home with broken bones.

She is done and she afraid and she will not let her son be chewed up and spat out like he means nothing, like he’s just another sacrifice for the system that promises All Might but only fills out graves.

She won’t take his dream, he needs to know she still believes in him, but Inko Midoriya is done trusting her child’s safety to someone else who doesn’t know him, doesn’t know his wounds and scars like she does, doesn’t know his hopes and his heart and all the tiny little things that makes Izuku who he is like she does.

She doesn’t know who will come in a few days to convince her, but they will be wasting their time. She feels guilty for that, but only for a moment. She made a list, it has a dozen or so names on it. Options, choices, for Izuku to decide and not her.

She raises from her computer chair with a groan and a pain in her lower back and the bottom of her chest. She climbs the stairs to her bedroom, stopping briefly to look at Izuku’s door. The same childish All Might sticker proudly staring back at her. There’s no noise behind the door, he’s asleep, and after everything the last few days had thrown at him, she doesn’t have the heart to take even a minute of sleep away from him.

She lays down on top of the covers without changing out of her day clothes, exhaustion in her bones. She looks at her bedside table, sees the one picture she still has of her husband. A hand on her shoulder and a baby with grass green hair in her hands.

He’s smiling widely at the camera, reaching for it with his hands.

She buries her face in her pillow and waits for sleep to take her.

(FUCK DONE HERE HAVE IT BLAH)

7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree?

Personally I think my style is descriptive. Like most of the time I describe what’s going on in like a “third person narrator” sort of way and dialog is actually relatively short and to the point. Like, there’s a lead up to what a person says, their expression and body language plus an action, the line, and then a follow through on that and then repeating with the next person and so on.

Also I can go on tangents if a story is character-centric, like focuses on a single character then I go ham on introspection...as demonstrated by the above ^^;

11. What do you envy in other writers?

The ability to write down and rely on an outline. Like, I just cannot for the life of me really stick to a plan for too long, like I have the general idea and just add to it as I go. Writing by the seat of my pants is the only way I know how and it either gets me something I like the look of or it doesn’t get me anything at all.

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Titles are the last thing I think of, so I guess that XD I usually try not to stress out about summaries too much, usually I just either pick an interesting line from the fic, say something vaguely deep, or depend on a template. Like with my Eri shorts I always use that Two Lines for the summary, “character does something, the result of that action in as vague wording as possible”

Tags are also kinda confusing, like, do I tag everything about it XDD that’d take me longer than it took to write the damn thing!

19. s there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?)

Adding shit (like this) is so much fun, though I try not to over indulge XD Also a smile either “crawls” or “forms” on someone’s face, that’s the only way. Also long sentences. Also lots of “,”

Lots of short sentences describing something vaguely.

(Long paragraphs in parenthesis describing something that happened in the past or a character having deep thoughts because that shit can’t just be a fluid part of the text nooo it needs to be it’s own separate things it needs to break up the flow for a second that’s the whole point-)

and that’s what I can think of XD Call me out on other stuff I’m sure I’m blind to plenty of my bullshit XD

Thanks a lot Becc!

#imbeccablee #answers

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bonesandblood-sunandmoon · 5 years

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Pre-Therapy Isolation

CoA prompt for Oct 2019 - “Aromanticism and Aloneness” [Call for Submissions]. Under a cut due to length. Heads up: There’s a mention of a past history of suicidal episodes, but there are zero details.

Sections: 1) Therapeutic Context, 2) Aloneness, Isolation, and Loneliness, 3) Convergence of Mental Illness & Aro-spec Identity, and 4) Disclosure.

Therapeutic Context

I have bounced around from draft to draft and tangent to tangent this past month in part because other issues have required a higher priority ranking in the mental queue. Among the various topics brought up with/by my new general practitioner [GP] during this month’s follow-up was counseling intake, which will feature a bunch of questions off a template and hopefully some relevant questions about the diagnosis I’d like to confirm (or figure out my symptoms are actually from X) over a few appointments.

(For non-regular readers, I haven’t had health insurance since undergrad ended in 2016, so there have been a few changes to the identities I tote around. The Counseling and Psychological Services [CPS] offered on-campus did include therapy, but I’m not quite a good fit with Grad students who change every semester and require reintroductions, re-explaining, and ignoring personal details when I just don’t want to bother with an LGBTQIA+ primer. My last therapy visit with CPS that wasn’t a ‘the semester started’ drop-in was in the later part of the spring semester of 2015.)

I did ask to not be paired with someone who’s never had a trans patient before because I’m just not up to walking my therapist through the bare bones of Trans 101, but I won’t really know their familiarity with LGBTQIA+ basics until the first intake appointment in November. It’s possible they might know some identities but not all of them, and I may still need to break out a little 101 even for relatively more established identities (ex. nonbinary). However, the most relevant of my letters collected for this post is the A for aro-spec (specifically quoi/greyro), which is currently the most recent personal identity (2019) and, afaik, the youngest community when it comes to awareness.

Aloneness, Isolation, and Loneliness

On a literal, physical level, the prospect of going to therapy doesn’t really fit with being alone (“having no one else present”) or aloneness (“a disposition toward being alone”). But it edges along a nebulous mixture of talking about being alone, geographic isolation, and possible loneliness or isolation. The bridge connecting this nebulous alone/isolation idea with being aro-spec and facing intake for counseling:

Talking about being alone. It’s going to be a smidge related to context for past events, but it’s like a cloud on the horizon that I’m trying to ignore when it comes to talking about the future and/or future goals. I’m going to have to admit that it’s currently unwise to live on my own to someone’s face, so I don’t want that to be a goal of our sessions. Like, I’m really going to have to admit that my symptoms have gotten bad enough in the past that I would rather plan on having a roommate than risk being a danger to myself again.

The geographic isolation specific to living in a rural area that’s not exactly the intended ‘local’ area for the closest LGBTQIA+ resources and communities, especially if you get a-spec specific. It can range from some resources not being applicable when you live in a different county to inconvenient differences in meetups (it’s great to only have a 5 minute walk to a coffee shop for a casual meetup for the locals, but if I live over an hour’s drive away, I expect something a little more substantial to justify the driving and need enough advanced notice to actually drive there).

It doesn’t really feel like loneliness, but it doesn’t quite seem like a type of isolation, and it’s just this mixed feeling that I’m not going to have a choice but to be a teaching moment because I’m going to be the first aro-spec patient for this therapist. True, I have no way of knowing how many other aros are in this area, but unfortunately, I have no way of knowing if I’m the only aro-spec person around. It feels unbalanced and isolating that I can’t just walk in as an individual, and I now have to be careful as an ambassador of sorts.

Convergence of Mental Illness & Aro-spec Identity

Based on a quick search of Arocalypse, I wouldn’t go so far as to say this is a unique feeling to me, but that greyro pov post included revealing my connection between my mental health and feeling like I’ve become aro-spec. (Link covers why I’d rather not directly link to the post in question, namely personal growth. With a dash of embarrassment.) And yes, I said that I feel like I’ve become aro-spec instead of feeling like it’s been a static identity that I’ve always had.

I think the life events I went through - most strongly noticed after surviving suicidal shit - were the equivalent of the body prioritizing heating the core instead of the extremities in extreme cold. The vital to living parts of me made it through.

My ability to correctly interpret romantic attraction when signaled in media? It’s not impossible, but it’s usually particularly scripted examples. My ability to correctly interpret romantic attraction signaled in other people? I still have a chance at getting that right, but it’s not guaranteed. My ability to correctly interpret romantic attraction when I might be experiencing it? Nope, that didn’t make it through. It’s like a fixed red-blue-purple color array that’s suddenly showing orange. It’s like looking down at your phone one day and realizing everything’s been switched to a language you only know a limited amount of (for me, Spanish). It’s like trying to wrap your head around imaginary numbers after you thought you were keeping up in Algebra II.

At this point, romantic attraction is a rather distant memory and feels like it happened to a different person. I’ve made peace with not knowing if I’m orange or red-orange, and I could stumble through figuring out more words in Spanish, but I don’t think proper management of my symptoms will “restore” what’s been lost. No amount of talk therapy is going to unlock those memories, and the right medication isn’t going to lift the fog of confusion. Maybe red-orange is close enough to red to count (non-normative romance factoring into maybe, sometimes experiencing something close to romantic attraction a la greyro), but I don’t want to pretend I know what i means.

Disclosure

I don’t want a therapist to get sidetracked by “fixing” me because I’m alright chilling out here on the aro spectrum. Maybe I’ll be able to live on my own at some point, or maybe I’ll have a roommate. Maybe the stars will align and I’ll find someone who’s alright with me being red-orange and mostly confused as long as we figure out each other’s love language(s), so to speak. Maybe I’ll have a collection of friends, but I won’t ever really partner with someone. I’m not sure. Those questions are too complicated and too far off into the future for me to answer when I’ve got to douse the embers my brain decided to light in its resident dumpster before they grow into a full fledged fire.

However, based on my experience with CPS, I need to be prepared for questions about my relationship status. Their intake process included screening for domestic violence, if my memory serves me right (single = skip that section), but I also remember a soft inquiry into who might be involved in my support network where it was relevant to establish that I had friends but no romantic partners to warrant referring to my significant other. Just based on the preliminary paperwork that’s a copy of what I had to fill out for GP, there’s a section for choosing from their offered gender and sexuality options [includes Other and lines to write in responses].

I didn’t really feel like getting into a ton of detail with GP, but it feels different when it comes to counseling and eventually a psychiatrist consult. If I’m going to compile a bullet point list of my identities, offer brief explanations, and point towards aro resources, I’d rather get that all out of the way in the beginning. Once it’s all on the table, I don’t have to dance around topics or play the rephrasing game where I avoid coming out part way through an answer. Maybe me offering up AUREA can make it a little easier for the next patient who’s aro.

Maybe I don’t want to ignore or downplay my connection to an online aro community, as tenuous as it may be at times, because I feel a little less alone. I don’t have to frame changes in romantic orientation as being broken. I have an alternative narrative for being the heartless monster who’s a bit too cold and less than human. I don’t have to take the negative impression that an inability to romantically love someone (or an unclear answer) means that any sexual attraction, desire, or activities amount to manipulative ‘using’ as truth. (The social connection to a community can be used to whack a self-isolating brain.)

Ultimately, prepare for disclosure, so I don’t feel caught off guard or forget differences in how resources define a word and how I relate to it. I can play it by ear during the intake process, and if I don’t actually want to disclose to the therapist, I don’t have to.

#My writing #therapy #aro spectrum

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fernandoelly12-blog · 5 years

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The Number One Question You Must Ask for Sandals Women's Fashion

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Ideally, a customer request is going to be solved the very first time round. Segmenting your emails will say that. Compare how you describe yourself to the way that your customer describes you.

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nummero123 · 3 years

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Inbound Link Building Strategies to Help Your Site Rank Higher

Building high-quality inbound links to your website are undeniably difficult.

While many website owners resort to spamming blog comment areas in order to obtain backlinks,

this is not essential nor useful for your SEO efforts.

Although there is a lot of discourse about building inbound connections, the specifics of how to do so are rarely covered.

Fortunately, Link Building Strategies aren't as difficult to deploy as many people claim.

Consider it like social media: if you have amazing material and get it in front of the appropriate people, they will share it.

With that in mind, we'll get you started with tried-and-true methods for generating respectable income.

What is link building?

Link building is the practice of increasing the number and quality of inbound links to your website to increase referral traffic,

domain authority and search engine results.

What are backlinks?

Backlinks, also known as inbound links and incoming links,

are a type of off-page SEO in which you obtain links from other websites that bring readers to your own.

The individual who receives the link refers to a link as a backlink.

Backlinks differ from outbound links (links from your website to another website)

and internal links (links from your website to another website)

(links from one page on your website to another).

The appropriate backlinks can help your website in two ways:

They can bring visitors to your website. If someone places a backlink to your website on their website or blog, their visitors may click on it, and you will benefit from that referral traffic.

They can assist you in ranking better in search results. Backlinks indicate to search engines that your website is an authority on a particular subject; hence, the more backlinks you receive from high-quality, high-authority sites, the higher your website will rank in search engine results pages (SERPs).

An excellent inbound link originates from a reputable website

and employs natural anchor text. The text copy that hyperlinked is known as anchor text.

For instance, if I link to our blog post about backlink methods, the anchor text will be backlink strategies.

Natural anchor text implies that you are not simply hyperlinking keywords left and right.

Because Google recognizes link context, more generic "learn more" and "click here"

anchor language can be just as beneficial as keyword-optimized anchor text.

Link Building Strategies

1. Maintain a steady blog with great content.

One of the most tried and tested methods for organically generating inbound links

Is to consistently create quality blog content that people naturally want to connect to.

You should only publish content that directly linked to your sector.

And that will benefit your reader.

They will feel driven to communicate it this way.

They may even include a link to it on their website if they have one.

2. Link to other blogs on your blog.

A blog intended to use as a social tool.

The more you link to others, especially in a consistent, opportunity-driven manner,

the more likely it is that one of those bloggers will return the favour.

Furthermore, you can't cover everything on your blog.

It makes sense to take advantage of the plethora of resources available on the internet to improve and reward your blog's visitors' experience.

3. Write guest blog posts.

Create an excellent blog post and distribute it to blogs that would be a good fit for it.

If they accept, they should be willing to provide you with an inbound link in the post.

Guest blogging is an excellent strategy to promote your knowledge while also earning high-quality white-hat links.

Don't know who to address your letter to?

Most news organizations allow anyone to submit original stories on issues of interest to their readers.

You should get started.

However, with publications that are directly related to your area.

If you are a branding agency, you should contact branding publications.

4. Curate and publish helpful resource lists.

Resource lists are excellent link bait as well as useful information for your viewers.

If you produce a comprehensive resource list,

Other writers will be able to easily link to it in their blogs rather than rehashing and curating all of that stuff themselves.

Here's an example of a list of resources we prepared for newbie SEOs to give you an idea of what one would look like.

5. Do expert roundups to build relationships.

Expert roundups can be a powerful tool for connecting with influencers.

While these roundups may not result in a large number of inbound links or leads right away.

Developing relationships with influencers can help you obtain reliable backlinks from authoritative sources in the future.

After they contribute to your roundup, you can contact them later to inquire about a guest post possibility or something else,

While also thanking them for their contribution to the prior expert roundup.

6. Write newsjack posts.

When you use the popularity of a news story to boost your sales and marketing success, this is known as newsjacking.

Because of the "freshness" component of Google's algorithm.

If you're the first blogger to remark on a major event, you'll jump to the top of the SERPs.

And others will link to your content in their versions of the story.

7. Create case studies about your most impressive clients.

You can be sure that if you make your clients appear good in case studies about their business, they'll connect to your site.

But you must make them good. This entails selecting organizations.

That have achieved the best results, are enthusiastic, and are well-versed in your product or service.

It also entails asking the correct questions and presenting the case study in an appealing, thorough manner.

8. Volunteer to be the subject of a case study.

Why not take advantage of the case study link affection on the other side?

Companies are constantly on the lookout for consumers ready to be the topic of a case study.

Volunteer for one of your key vendors in exchange for a backlink from the case study after it's released.

9. Administer surveys.

If you undertake research, commit to sharing the results with others.

If you collect and crunch the data and then give some high authority sites access to the results.

You can guarantee they'll perform some promotion and inbound linking for you to ensure you have a large sample size.

10. Write book reviews.

If you write a thorough evaluation of another author's stuff, there's a strong possibility they'll (and others) link to it.

11. Conduct free webinars, and post archived copies online.

Your attendees will undoubtedly share it if it is informative.

Turning your PowerPoint presentation slides into a SlideShare presentation and then embedding.

That presentation into a blog post is one simple way to accomplish this.

You may also include it on the webinar's landing page so that anyone wishing to join up for an

an already completed webinar can view the presentation.

Partner with another organization, brand, or influence

for the webinar to increase your chances of getting backlinks to these archived webinar pages.

Not only will two well-aligned brands make for a great presentation.

But it will also broaden the audience — long after the webinar has ended.

12. Create free tools.

Remember when I said you should curate and publish resource lists for your blog?

What do you suppose people put on those resource lists and where do they connect to?

One of the most important is the availability of free tools.

You may get on the other side of those resource lists by offering free tools that your target clients will find extremely useful.

13. Create shareable templates.

Templates, like free tools, are something that others will find valuable enough to link to.

Consider what kinds of templates might make people's jobs easier before creating one.

A designer, for example, could establish a library of downloadable business card templates that others may go to repeatedly.

Bookmarkable content is frequently the type of material that receives a large number of inbound links.

14. Create compelling infographics.

People adore disseminating infographics.

People will link back to you as the source if you develop an original infographic.

You may also share your design with the sources you quoted and make the embed code for your infographic easily accessible to boost the likelihood of an incoming link.

You're not a designer?

With designs like these free infographic templates, anyone can create professional-looking,

high-quality infographics rapidly.

Before developing an infographic,

you should think of a topic that can be depicted and is relevant to your market.

15. Create other forms of visual content.

Cartoons, content visualizations, charts and graphs, and other visual content marketing tools

Are vital aspects of a visual content marketing strategy and a wonderful way to gain inbound connections.

Because they cost time and money to create,

Others are likely to forego the hassle of developing their visual content and instead link to yours.

16. Create SlideShare presentations.

Cut up one of your infographics or adapt one from a previous speaking engagement.

You can post these on your blog, in the resource part of your website, or even on a SlideShare account for more links.

Keep in mind that the most compelling presentations are the most shared.

That entails amazing content as well as outstanding design.

17. Do something funny.

Things that are amusing spread like wildfire.

Consider the amusing internal jokes in your sector and capitalize on them with some linkable humorous material.

You can make a meme, a short video, or a tweet that summarises the joke.

Just make sure you understand your audience and how they're likely to react so that nothing comes across as offensive.

18. Write press releases about interesting company news.

By transforming your PR strategy into an inbound one, you open up previously untapped prospects and carve out a niche for your brand.

While also gaining important mindshare with your target audiences.

Once you've written a superb press release,

Post it on your website and then send it to one of the major newswires to gain more visibility.

19. Send out a joint press release when your news involves another company.

This can help you reach thousands of other connected sites that may not have linked to your site in a press release about only your firm.

This will allow you to reach a bigger number of individuals and, as a result, gain more backlinks.

20. Do some outreach when you have big news or a great piece of content.

Getting press attention and being featured in industry journals can help you establish your brand.

Expand your visible expertise, boost your credibility, and, of course, gain backlinks from authoritative sites.

To begin, build a dedicated page on the story on your website to which they can link.

Then, contact a few journalists and/or media that you believe would be interested in your story.

Make sure your request is contextual,

That you obey their guidelines, that you compose an engaging subject line in your pitch email,

And that you are helpful rather than boastful.

21. Set up press request alerts and look for opportunities to send quotes.

Press request alerts are requests for information sources from journalists.

These journalists are continuously on the lookout for quotes from specific people to include in their articles,

And they use a variety of channels to convey requests and find those quotes.

22. Write and pitch op-ed articles.

If you have an intriguing point of view to share and can communicate it clearly and effectively in an op-ed piece.

you may be able to reach a large number of people, gain notoriety for yourself and your organization. And obtain authoritative backlinks to your website.

The most effective op-ed pieces, in my opinion, make a single point.

Embrace the author's perspective, and then provide specific recommendations.

After you've written the piece, seek online editions of industry newspapers and magazines for a very desirable inbound link.

Conclusion

You're well on your way to developing high-quality backlinks the white-hat approach with the suggestions and methods I've offered.

As more links point to your site, you will rise in the SERPs, increasing organic traffic and drawing more prospective leads and consumers.

You can contact Nummero, the best web design company in Bangalore.

#Inbound Link Building Strategies #digital marketing company

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elizabethrobertajones · 7 years

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I think Destiel is the show's end game but they want it to be the very last thing. So they set up the story around season 8/9 because they didn't really know if they were gonna get picked up and they had to dial it back up when it continued. Now it started again during season 12 knowing the show is gonna end in the next couple of years for sure without it being cancelled. Maybe? Thoughts? Love your meta!

Hi! Love you too!

I weirdly had a conversation about this yesterday in private so I’ve managed to actually coalesce some thoughts about this… Lots of thoughts.

Seeing as I joined fandom in the end of season 9, I basically joined a fandom that had been pretty hurt by the spec that season 8 might have been endgame if the show was cancelled… Obviously we’re never going to get any sort of statement on it until after we know the definitive line on whatever else they were doing with Destiel after the point it matters, so it’s going to be small potatoes if it was or not.

But I don’t particularly think that it actually WAS - and the different way Cas, and his and Dean’s relationship, was portrayed in season 8 immediately threw a whole bunch of fuel on the fire but it was shocking in a way that it was being given attention rather than specifically being romantic, and it’s hard to tell the two apart, especially when you’re looking in the subtext and seeing romantic stuff, which when you’re a starving shipper suddenly seems like a feast of both charged interaction AND the old subtext, which is suddenly slathered all over everything when Cas is a major part of Dean’s emotional arc for the first time (in a good way).

(LOTS more under the cut)

Whether there was an intent or not, season 8 changed the game and without knowing what they were doing or where it would lead (aka hello I am Hindsight from the future) it would look pretty shocking and suggestive that something might come of it. Because I know I’d flip out in the same scenario just from wondering, and kind of feel like I’m in the same place after season 12, because again it feels like the game changed.

I’m trying hard not to leap to conclusions to be honest, and I do *not* want to be in the middle of it which is partially why I’ve reacted so strongly to twice in the last month people using me as some sort of fandom leader whose words mean more than others’, because I really really hope not and I wish I didn’t have to disclaimer it because it makes my ego look enormous but on the other hand twice in a month is a pretty frightening wake up call about how people see me?

So.

Even if it was written with intent in season 8, we’re so far past the point that if that was their plan they could have delayed it over and over without doing something substantial *in Carver era* about it, that it twists the fandom narrative about this into the show being very cruel. This narrative is a great one for people who feel wanky, to feel like they’ve got justified reasons to be upset that it didn’t happen and that they’re getting strung along. I’m not saying everyone who thinks that Destiel was slated to go canon in season 8 does, but it is a great narrative for those who do to feel somewhat certain the show is deliberately dangling and then holding back on Destiel, because nothing bonds a community like feeling as if some more important group of people is mistreating them. Justified rage and all that. If you don’t like the show because you feel it got kinda shitty over the last few years but instead need to take it as a personal betrayal in order to break up with the show, it’s a great thing to get riled up about. The bait and switch seems clear to them, and there’s been many discussions of the way they seem to build up only to yank away, in every season since 8. And part of the build up is meta writers freaking out about how canon it all looks and being naturally excited to see what happens with the story they’ve been reading positively (and this isn’t our fault, though some people think we’re complicit in queerbaiting just by wanting to analyse the show and give any credit to teasing the ship by pointing out its structural integrity).

Some people who see the idea it was going to be canon in season 8 positively also tell this as a way of making themselves feel good that it has been on the books and therefore has a chance of going canon in the future.

You can get the same story of the show’s intent in two different places, but the ONLY way we can ever construct this narrative is by reading into the show and trying to guess at what they’re doing because they’ve never admitted to writing a Destiel narrative.

A side effect of the 9x03 wank was a bemused message from someone waaaay up the chain and out of the writers’ room, who said they’d never been pitched the story. I’m inclined to believe that, because I don’t believe in any conspiracy except for the NHI (shh don’t ask if you don’t remember :P), meaning that at no point in season 8 was it EVER anything more than subtextual fun from the writers among themselves. And nothing that was on the books at least in the first half of season 9. Like, at the most generous thought that it might be later if you REALLY want to go hard on theorising about what they’re up to, it wasn’t at that point.

(The NHI sprang from 10x10 so I’m covered there.)

(Also if you see people handwave 9x03′s wank as a conspiracy to cover it up and that it HAD been real but NDAs mean they’d say it wasn’t, don’t use a pinch of salt, put a whole salt circle around that thought and run away.)

Another thing about this sort of expectation or narrative is that I feel the recent meta writers wank has made it really obvious there’s still people in fandom hanging on for fanon content and character stanning who really don’t need more canon to unfurl, ever, and are only going to get more angry about it, and were hurt at some point in one of these mass-wanks about the show, probably one of these early positivity bubble bursts, but who nevertheless feel like meta still has some sort of mystical power or social influence or… something or other… that from how it sounds, seems like they were once all in on the “it should be canon at the end of season 8″ hype or equivalent for their season, and of course were shattered when it didn’t happen.

And if season 8 didn’t finish them off, later things did - season 9 was a horrific obstacle course even just with 9x03′s wank and then JIB at the end of the year and the “we don’t play it that way” comment. Which I am contractually obliged to repeat every time I quote Jensen to give context of “as in a secret relationship where they’ve been fucking off screen as per whatever dirty fanart he was shown to get the concept of what he thought Destiel was”

I am fairly certain that season 8 hype was partially manufactured (a Known Fandom Cultist was in the mix and the heady combination of a new big fandom flooding tumblr from Netflix and all the season 8 subtext AND the chance for attention and followers is a wonderful mix for exploitation when the fandom hasn’t been hurt before from this particular direction), and definitely this hype was used to whip the fandom up into a frenzy of expectation that a lot of people either innocently repeated or expanded on in their own meta because the idea sounded interesting or halfway plausible based on their theories (as it was a positive growth of Destiel subtext and narrative ANYWAY) or they thought we deserved the best world of the show, or else they weren’t meta writers and just read it and bought into it and allowed this narrative to have *incredible* power over them by putting all their thoughts into someone else’s basket, and sharing the ideas and being excited in gifsets and fic and other fandom contributions for how the show had become a romance overnight.

(Spoilers: it hadn’t.)

I don’t like theories which use abstract examples to hold up to the show like basic plot structures, character arc templates, etc, pretty much exactly for this reason, because you can ONLY apply those as analysis backwards on finished arcs without immediately being wrong about something, and that’s a generous thought for if you’re not trying to whip up a frenzy of enthusiasm for fake emotional currency of Tumblr followers :P Essentially I have no problem with meta written about this sort of thing so long as it isn’t “they ARE using this trope so this HAS TO MEAN that this WILL happen,” or “they ARE employing such and such narrative structure and that means they WILL do this next step exactly as it says here”

… I could crack open my copy of The Seven Basic Plots right, now, pick one at random, apply it to the season 13 spoilers with dead certainty that it all adds up to Destiel and cash in my entire reputation on a 1/7 chance of being utterly right that the structure will look like it’s going that way to the letter, and hope I’d only lose a third of my new followers in the resulting storm when I’m not right about the pay off :P

If you just think it’s interesting and might be USEFUL to try and UNDERSTAND what will happen next, then by all means as long as you’re not using it and hoping that it sounds academic will mean people without a good grounding in rationalising these things for themselves will just assume you’re smart and know what you’re talking about. And then you use it to push home ideas which you can’t possibly know like that Destiel is being built up to go canon at the end of the season/endgame or whatever, some people will go right along with it because it’s tantalising.

Whatever happened, though, I have heard more than enough since joining fandom about the end of season 8 wank and people quitting the fandom and basically the first positivity bubble shattering (over an episode I feel does no harm and considerable good to the ship without making it canon), so that even before season 9 the wank and bitterness about many things such as the disproportionate freak out about Tracey Bell being a love interest or rumours spread that April or Nora would be multi-episode love interests for Cas, had everyone behaving like the way fandom does before every season or character announcement now. Which is to get disproportionately upset about things which have not yet happened, because they’re already feeling *so hurt* by the things which have, for not living up to the expectations, that surely everything is IT, the END, the thing that will kill Destiel out of the show forever. Every female character is a threat and everyone’s always certain the show is out to damage the thing they love just out of spite.

(I know some people will pop up like, it’s not about the ship, it’s about Cas! but I really can not help feeling that it’s just a sliding of feelings from the ship, because of feeling Dean was horrible to Cas over season 9 and 10 for example, to being over-protective of Cas in particular, and, like, I get it. I do. I don’t feel it that way because I never got invested in any particular pay off that I then didn’t feel happened, and that by whatever point, Cas should be living with them or getting his own episodes on the regular or that Dean should have apologised for whatever, or that they should now be dating. I have a personal investment in this tailored to look for positive things and see good changes like Cas getting more episodes ABOUT him, a strong place in the narrative, a in-depth personal arc, and love from the cast and show. For others, almost nothing will go far enough towards what they want, so even these huge positive changes from what I experienced in season 10 as a Cas fan will get over the hurdle.)

I also think there’s a serious secondary problem that for some people the promise of “it’s going canon at the end of season 8″ turned into “well of course it got renewed so it’ll be whenever the show ends INSTEAD” but carried on essentially giving the same super positive message that Destiel was absolutely 100% on the mind of all the writers all the time as the overall conclusion of the character arc. Which is something you can almost never tell when people write about it and I think again is more like an idea that moved into general conversation so I don’t think there’s really anyone out there I encounter who is angling for anything. But it can be misleading about the concept that just because meta writers find a consistent narrative and are optimistic it will continue and be honoured through the show, that we’re saying that there’s a guaranteed endgame and everyone ought to hang onto it.

Honestly if you can’t hack the wait, I’d much rather people went full-fanon, didn’t cast opinions on the show at all, put away the negativity in favour of enjoying the stuff they like - fics, art, canon-free headcanons, etc, and when the end of the show came, if they even halfway liked the sound of what people were saying about it, went and re-watched from the start to re-immerse themselves and try a positive take on it knowing what they were in for, canon or not. I’ve stopped watching several times out of DGAF feelings towards the show (weird dog episodes :|) and come back and again I can’t really claim to have the most healthy attitude, everyone follow my lead, but I do think I can be objective and careful about how I engage with it and try and not get sucked into negativity OR positivity rollercoasters that only go to hurt town. >.>

I mean, I honestly feel in season 12, it’s the first time we’ve had an entire writers’ room of writers I even think *know* about it as a solid narrative construct (and yes I am including Buckleming because they DO write Destiel into the show, they just also write all the racism and rape and whatever else in along with it :P) Between the scattered application of serious subtext through Carver era and the approach to canon they occasionally winked at, they never seemed particularly competent at the work needed to actually make Destiel canon if it was EVER supposed to be building up towards it. I think the bait and switch yank away is too clever for them and their handling of the narrative :P I don’t think they’re stupid but, NHI aside, they are not up for complicated conspiracies.

To be serious, though… I know people say they saw it all the time from space, and their casual viewer mom did etc, but the fact remains they never wrote a CLEAR romance narrative except for the splitting Dean and Cas at the start of season 10 and *paralleling* their narratives with Crowley and Hannah, while everything else has been situational tropes or strong emotional narratives which could work either way. A slow burn romance in a show that will admit it’s one will use many similar tropes but also ones which expressly make it a romance that everyone’s supposed to read as happening, usually quite corny, on the nose ones, and Destiel has more of the subtextual or emotionally bonding romantic tropes than like… anything else ever… but very few of the “oops walked in on him changing, let me just accidentally turn around again on the way out the door” type nonsense that broadcasts to people on Mars that they’re going to bang, and probably soon. I say very few because there’s little outliers like the boner scene or “i can’t let you do this” which are copy pasted from corny romance, but of ALL the Destiel that happened in season 12, ONLY the mixtape crosses boundaries like that and even so people CAN argue it’s platonic love, and the only thing we can really say is nonsense is that it’s not conveying any love at all.

Something like Crowley mourning his romance with demon!Dean and looking at photos to some sort of “all by myself” level song was very clearly a rom com trope and the one that for me sealed the deal that Drowley was intentionally meant to be seen in canon. Something like Dean and Aaron is disproportionately powerful because their main interpersonal interaction was literally described as being something from a rom com BY the director’s commentary :P Destiel is a 10 year old behemoth, largely NOT defined by rom com tropes, but with a few peppered here and there in a low enough concentration that it’s not the absolute norm to assume it’s going to happen.

But in season 12, like in season 8, Cas got a LOT of attention in the story, a good chunk of that was through Dean because Dean’s got the old profound bond, and Cas and Dean are intrinsically and inseparably connected in some ways that no amount of bro-ing up with Sam or forging a tentative friendship with Mary will do to NOT make it seem like Cas is talking to Dean first and foremost, especially when all 3 Winchesters pile through the door and Cas just says “Dean” :P

This season has a STRONG narrative about Cas’s relationship to the Winchesters and through Dean in particular, and there’s one of the stand out romantic tropes in basically ever in this season, along with several other hallmarks of the things that made season 8 such fertile ground.

12x10 had the crypt scene rehash to hopefully end these loops around Dean and Cas with the positive conclusion it needed, and a lot of the meta about season 8 flipped out about the human/supernatural relationships (with Charlie and Gilda foreshadowing the crypt scene perfectly, because Robbie) so 12x10 filled in a missing link from season 8, of a story about how angels might be into humans too.

And it was the season with Aaron which was Dean’s personal stand out bi moment which made a lot of people feel the show was going to start taking it seriously on his behalf, and season 12 had Aaron back, even if it was only one scene, it was a reminder he existed and the main interesting context for most people was him and Dean.

And season 8 had the angel fall spell, including the cupid nonsense in 8x23, and the nephilim which was the early forerunner of the suggestion of 12x10, that angels and humans can couple up, while in season 12 the angel fall spell was directly mentioned, 12x15 mirrored the first Hell trial, nephilim were back, and Crowley offered to close the gates of Hell. So season 8′s mytharc was slathered all over the season.

And in the crypt scene Dean was supposed to say “I love you” and in 12x12 they found a way to make Cas say it instead, which I agree was the more logical progression, that Cas would crack first :P

Anyway, season 8 was all over this season but season 12 felt amped up and going places season 8 didn’t, going several steps further and as I’ve said before to go straight from season 8 meta mindset to season 12, would utterly blow your mind.

BUT to go right back to the start, I don’t think season 8 was building to canon Destiel ever, not even as a failsafe for cancelleation. I don’t think that the planned “I love you” was going to do more than make the fight about canon that much more bloody if it aired and doesn’t help even without it airing, knowing it was going to happen. Jensen was the one who argued it away, and they agreed for character reasons supposedly, so there was no meddling from above to say, wait, hit the brakes, we can’t barrel right into the canon build up.

I think season 8 was supposed to be used to bring Cas back in from the cold - kind of literally with using Purgatory to stagger his return - because after season 6 & 7 showing Dean cared about him in ANY way was important, and to establish that whatever Cas had done, Dean would forgive and want to rescue him and have him back in the family. I don’t think season 8 is a clean slate for Cas despite his attempt to put on the old uniform and carve a new path for himself in like… 2 episodes after he got back while he was still being fucked around with by Heaven unknowingly to him. He’s still burdened with guilt, and if anything, the season renewal is probably more to blame for stretching out Dean forgiving him than smooching him, with a lil more manufactured drama and Dean lashing out at him for season 6 & 7 in 8x22. He lashes out again in 9x22, but by season 10 he’s pretty much moved on, to be angry about like… everything else to push Cas away at the end of the season. I guess they’re living in the moment rather than the past by 10x22 :P Pfft. Sorry, got to be facetious about some things here.

I think the focus on Cas in season 8 was much more about his repentance and forgiveness from others - Metatron snags him by seeing he still wants to repent for Heaven, WHILE he’s in the gas station trying to buy stuff to repent to Dean for OTHER stuff. I think it makes perfect sense to read the season 8 narrative as a strong emotional narrative between Dean and Cas specifically engineered to delve into their relationship issues, let Cas back in to TFW, let him back into Dean’s heart, and try and establish for US what Cas is truly like as we’ve never been so deep in his head as in season 8 as a whole, except for in 6x20 where we learned A: he loved them and Dean in particular, and B: he was busy lying and betraying them and justifying it all on the slimmest reasons to keep himself going. If you love Cas, 6x20 is a goldmine. If you’re indifferent or don’t like him, as a one episode event, it might not warm your heart especially with the end of season 6 and his resulting failures, especially perceived moral ones against his friends.

Season 8 let us right into Cas and showed us his inner processes, desires, and a narrative about how he wanted to do penance for season 6 and 7, and a feeling that Sam and Dean love him back, of course, but to them Cas is still a shaky person to depend on and Dean is going a great deal on faith that Cas is good even while thinking he’s sketchy and lying the entire time between 8x07 and 8x17, showing a conflict between Dean’s baseline faith in Cas and Cas’s behaviour towards them. Being in his head and seeing Naomi all season makes US insiders to Cas’s issues and puts us on his side firmly by knowing WHY he’s acting this way, so it’s a good storyline to nurture us through Dean’s issues with Cas while being given an inside line to being sympathetic to Cas since we know what Dean doesn’t about how he’s being controlled the entire time.

Taken in that spirit, I can see the show just wanting to reconcile TFW and Dean and Cas in particular as a goal to shoot towards and the conclusion might just have been that they all make it good before whatever ending they had in mind for the main plot stuff. Along with a healthy dose of subtext to keep you guessing about how that relationship was.

Anyway, as I said, I don’t like subscribing to theories which are too speculative and treating them like they’re too real and like… definitely what the show is doing… makes me really itchy for the above reasons in the fan wank section of this reply… so the one that Destiel is now being woven into season 12 to the same way it was in season 8 to the eventual aim of canon puts me off for the reasons I hope you can guess from all that rambling :P

Even if I have hope that it MIGHT be on the books doesn’t mean I’ll really commit to saying it’s narratively going anywhere for sure, because that seems like a great way to start a cult and end up in the shame bin and reviled by people one day. I want to see fandom through to the end of the show and see what happens with you all, so short-sighted plans about building a rocket to Mars in my back yard seems like a great way to end up sitting in a fizzled out rocket still on the ground in my yard with a bunch of people who want their money back :D

I do think the endgame the show is working towards is going to be positive for Destiel fans and probably at the very least a good final touching moment, although I think the show will pretty much certainly end on Sam and Dean together as the sign off moment, even if the moment before that is Dean smooching Cas in the kitchen before grabbing a couple of beers to go hang with his brother just the 2 of them out on the front porch of their weirdo hunter commune house. Or whatever happens. But you know, even in the Destiel is totally canon and it all ends happily world, it’s not ABOUT them, it’s about Sam and Dean and as much as it’s about everyone else they love too, they’d be there to show there’s a world for them to save/that they have saved and can retire to, if Mary and Cas survive to the end.

But there are many subtextual ways between that hazy dream ending and, like, total character death save the world through mass sacrifice kinda ending, and all of which can make Destiel look like it was where things were/would have gone. At the current point in canon you can say the exact same thing, which is the point I was making that went right over some heads where they got fixated on me dancing gleefully around Cas’s dead body fulfilling my prophecy or whatever. If the show ended there, with the way Dean and Cas were connected over the season, you could argue their hearts belonged to each other, but they never got a chance to really do anything about it.

It’s the shitty subtextual Cas is dead ending I’d always dreaded if the show really wanted to fuck with us, but it’s one they could have done, and it would have left things open ended enough for academics and fans and whoever else to yell forever about if it had all meant what we thought it did, to a collection of contradictory comments from cast and crew.

The only way is up from here for Cas’s personal development, seeing as he’s finally doing the truly transformative death experience, and Cas’s personal development is where Destiel subtext is most closely tied, while Dean’s personal development has been a mess of performing Dean and bi Dean and issues with his parents and the codependency, and he’s opening up like a beautiful flower, but it’s still largely a sort of concept that Destiel can just sort of happen when Dean’s got far enough down the line on dealing with all these issues as a kind of lump problem, and Cas’s arc is much more mythological, tied into identity and belonging, but the target has been clear since like… 4x22… (and I mean “clear” rather than “oh shit it’s going to haaaappen” like it is from the start of the season :P) that it’s going to all land on Dean. And clear since like… idk, 6x20? that the feeling is pretty romantic from his end so in an ideal world he lands on Dean romantically.

And all subsequent positive development on the ship’s possibility has been clearing hurdles and tidying up character development that’s all pretty much check lists made back in season 8 or after the wank when with clearer heads people began to wonder just what was standing in the way of them if they were going to go canon, but not right then. Stuff like Claire and the vessel occupancy issue. Or the slow progress of Cas putting words to his family to call them that and the Bunker home and so on. Steps that all the stretching of the story has let them explore in minute detail.

So I can see that it’s possible that this all develops into something that works incredibly well for the chances of Destiel and since season 10 I’ve had the suspicion, thanks to Claire and the Dean-focused character development episodes, that they were working on the same tick list as us. But I’m not sure if it will pay off exactly as we want to see, while at the same time being over the moon delighted when another step forward happens. And season 12 moved a lot of ground, some of it unexpectedly quickly, and other things like, unburying them from ruts they’d been stuck in forever.

I don’t think going on from here season 13 will be immediately disappointing if Cas and Dean aren’t desperately romantically linked all the time because the show still acts like they have their own personal dramas when it’s not letting them see each other as the only people in a room. I don’t think it would be very productive to tally up events as if they’re constructing a narrative where we have to wait for pay off at a very set date, because even though I think that pay off will come at a very set date if we’re lucky and they honour their subtext. The show doesn’t seem to have an end, I honestly don’t trust Dabb as far as I can throw him not to just randomly make Destiel canon because he thinks it’ll be funny and make us happy because I have no grasp on his showrunning except he’s a massive troll with his finger on the fandom pulse. And honestly I don’t get much pleasure from constructing the elaborate forward narratives when I can be much more excited about the immediate stuff, living in the moment, and taking the Destiel subtext as it comes.

After the mixtape moment there was a lot of spec about if we’d see it again or what it meant building forwards, and I felt it wasn’t going to be mentioned again, and that it was much more valuable for that moment and what it told us about Dean and Cas, than using it for a forwards sign, which to me often just means taking quick stock of a thing happening in present canon then barrelling ahead into the future. While to me the richness in the story is wallowing in what has been opened up about the past, about Dean making the mixtape, when he gave it to Cas, and all the backstory implied by the 5 second moment of that exchange, because it implies so much more going backwards than it ever meant going forwards, as it wasn’t mentioned again all season. We could go forwards knowing Dean and Cas were at the sort of stage of the relationship where mixtapes happen in such a way, but we can’t use it to divine an entire forward plot about it, because that way lies the sort of “make everything Cas ever does about guinea pigs and bees” nonsense because fixating on passing moments as information about character stuff we need to know for later, that there’ll be a bigger pay off later, to me does sort of ruin the fun of the present.

There’s manageable foreshadowing and speculation like guessing what the turducken sign is all about, because its original context was very Destiel, and there’s stuff like guessing about the PB&J where it has so many contexts that even when it connects to Cas I saw that as somewhat connecting him with *Kevin* and lil baby Sam in 9x07 when Cas was eating it in 9x11, and the Destiel connection was the link to humanity, and Dean as being somewhat connected as the PB&J provider to their weirdo family. But he also brought Kevin prune juice as a far more loving gesture, you know? :P Until we have context on these things I hate to get invested in many forward spec things as Destiel related or feeding a larger narrative.

I also think there’s a big difference between meta and spec and I am much more comfortable offering analysis of what has already happened and maybe venturing an idea of how things will play out but not wedding myself to it, especially as that’s how I’ve seen people get fandom burn out, and also I hate looking wrong :P So for my own ego, again, it’s nice to sit and enjoy spec as entertainment but not get so involved I’m writing convoluted theories about it.

Tl;dr, I’m hopefully understandably wary about what canon positivity can do to a fandom, even just from second-hand tales and snooping old blogs back in season 9 when it was all a bit closer to the surface. I have a very comfortable place I’m sitting, which has been rocked about a bit by how on the nose season 12 was, but until I can be sure I really do not want to ever commit to a speculation about anything being set up for canon that we can see in the narrative. I think we’re at an AMAZING place with where we’ve progressed in canon but I’m trying so so hard to keep it contained as if season 12 is where it all ends for now, and I will try and take each episode as it comes when it’s what people might read about what happens next with Destiel, because none of us are qualified to answer it. And the meta community seems to be in a really weird place again with an up surge in positivity that’s making the gold standard of speculation rise, and I’d rather learn from the past and be OVER CAREFUL than get involved in a huge fandom fuck up about all this :P And I hope if I really am supposedly that influential, I can try and be an example of not counting chickens, even when I think I’m holding a very full basket.

#Asks #riverboat gambling #you could probably scroll that tag to see me wizening up like a walnut #season 13 speculation #destiel

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flyingvgroupca · 4 years

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The Secret to Creating Content of Value as a Busy Real Estate Agent or CEO.

Transform your real estate agency into a micro multi-media agency. Here’s how to accomplish this: Start by producing micro-video content. This less-practiced method saves you plenty of time because you don’t have to manually type in new content. The simple solution is to jot down some ideas, create 3 slides, and expand on the pillar concepts, while you record your screen and speak. Imagine this. 10 minutes worth of recorded video can provide you with enough content for multiple blog posts and short email follow-ups. You can load these into your autoresponder service or CRM to convert prospects into leads, and transform leads into customers, via email and SMS, for many months to come. Here’s what you need to do: You can simply answer the most common and frequently asked questions from your target audience while recording yourself with Screencastify, or other screencast recording platforms. They’re so easy to use and make you look and sound professional, without costing an arm and a leg. The free version has some limitations, but you’re ready to go within seconds to start broadcasting your way to the top. This video content may include questions on what to consider when processing approvals for loans, searching for a house, or even buying a new apartment in your city or county. You get the idea, but you know your audience better than I do, so you’ll know what their requirements are or what key topics to focus on. Prepare a list of the most common questions that prospects might have about your service and listed properties, within the realm of your specific Real Estate location. Here is one simple and proven tool (website) that can help you come up with quick ideas for your top FAQ list: visit Quora. With Quora, you can search for questions and the results will show the responses of others. You can identify the related questions, and get an idea of what people are asking.

Next, record yourself for an hour at the beginning of each month, and answer all the relevant questions. You’ll have enough content for 30+ days to post to your website or blog. You can take this idea a step further, and hire a VA or have someone from your team distribute this content to your YouTube channel, as well as engage with prospects via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. The best invention ever is social media. If used correctly, it can capture attention your target market attention and start significant conversations. All you have to do is hit the record button, and start sharing your screen and slides (you can find lots of slide templates online for free). Ultimately, these amazing video messages will be your best lead generator and traffic machines. Here are some amazing additional content ideas to help you create premium video content and blog posts to attract your ideal audience. Using these, you can convert prospects into leads, and turn leads into customers - for many years. 100+ Topics and Ideas for Your Real Estate Blog 72 Rock Solid Real Estate Blogging Ideas With Examples 25 Best Real Estate Blog Ideas & Examples (Expert Insights) 7 creative ideas for successful real estate blog posts Real Estate Blog Topics You Can Write About in Less than 30 Minutes Your video content should encourage and entice your prospects to join your lead magnet, and subscribe to your mailing list. This is where most real estate marketers fail miserably. They have their website, location and phone number listed in the video description, or at the end of the video presentation. However, they lack a lead capture offer, or button in the video itself. So, they get stuck, unable to comprehend why their video marketing generate only minimal or no results. However, setting up this lead gen machine doesn’t mean your done. Most automated email campaigns fail, due to multiple reasons. I’ll cover one of the most important ones next.

Here’s why the standard follow-up ‘drip email’ strategy is exceedingly ineffective, and how to create high-converting emails for your real estate campaigns instead

Plenty of these emails are written in an extremely professional way but lack a personal touch. Drip emails are automated and really reduces you to feeling like a number in a mailing queue. If you are sending these emails, the person on the receiving end will not feel any warmth or love, and will definitely know that no-one took the time to craft the message with care. With the rapid development of automation and artificial intelligence, you need to separate yourself from all the other real estate professionals, while using the same technology.

Here’s how to make this strategy work for you instead, and increase your chance to bond create trust, and forge new relationships with leads, from day one, week after week, month after month: Stop trying to be perfect. Consider the tone of the email, and create it to sound like it’s meant for a human, instead of creating a mechanical ‘do this, or else…’ demand that will just end up in the ‘deleted’ folder or recycle bin. Therefore, your prospects should feel respected, and not like their intelligence is being underestimated. Use very short, personal email messages. These friendly ‘letters’ will create a personal connection with your prospects or previous clients. This will exude an aura of ‘they care about me’ and would encourage the person to respond, attend your event or refer a friend, colleague or family member. Here are some examples of brief and friendly email messages you can model that actually have a chance of receiving that “tell me more!” reply:

You can also send out these messages via text / SMS to further build trust and remain in the mind of your prospects, for longer than those from your competitors. Long gone are the days when real estate CEOs and agents wanted to sound like a big corporations whose only intention was to impress and ‘close the sale’ as fast as possible. What happens if people still don’t respond? Or, how do you reactivate previous clients or lost leads? What is the secret, really? The answer may surprise you. It is so simple, yet you rarely hear that real estate agents use it with any significant results. Here’s what I’m referring to...

How to Bring Real Estate Leads Back from the ‘Dead’

The tips I’m sharing with you to help revive leads that have point blank refused to move forward with you before, are often overlooked by most real estate professionals since they are more interested in generating new leads, instead of taking care of lost opportunities. That goldmine sitting right under your nose can be your most precious asset. Call them. As simple as that, it works wonders. In the conversation, you should always share how you acquired the lead, whether from Trulia, Realtor or maybe Facebook. This will remind the lead that they once inquired about buying a home, finding a location, etc. Be ultra-specific, relaxed, and don’t hide the context. This may lead you to responses like, ‘Already bought a home,’ ‘Still saving my money for a down payment,’ or ‘Fixing my credit.’ With these clients, there is a possibility that they will buy, dive or unsubscribe. It should be noted that there is a small fortune to be had if the follow-up is done right, with a proven strategy on paper, and kept consistent. That’s the KEY. What to do if bad things happen. Like for e.g., … It often occurs that the lead does not pick up your call, in which case you should leave a voicemail. Despite their busy schedule, the lead might find time to listen to your message and act on it. Voice mail messages can make or break your lead gen campaign. That’s why it is so crucial for you to spend a few minutes, maybe half an hour to perfect the irresistible voicemail message, as well as additional follow-ups. Over time you’ll get better and learn to structure these messages more naturally, while improving your response rate as you advance through life and business.

Private message (PM) leads on their most active social media platform.

Some individuals are faster to reach on Twitter, or Linkedin, while others may prefer Facebook. Take advantage of all platforms, go ‘fishing’ where they can easily be found. Testing your message across all these different channels will help you make an informed decision, while eventually perfecting your approach. This method will help you address the fast-paced life of leads and everyone else. If somebody is active and ready to go, they will reach out to you. If not, there are enough leads for you to consider, and you’ll never look back.

What to say in order to catch the fishes and profit from leads:

Offer time-sensitive or exclusive information that is not available on the top sites or in the local markets. This will pique their interest since everyone would like to be the first to acquire the information before it is distributed to the rest. Be a natural ‘actor,’ improve your role playing, and show passion when delivering your messages, one person at a time. If you know someone who does not know what to do with their list of ‘dead’ leads, you may consider buying the list from them, and apply the above tips to win and/or revive some of these back into your funnel. Or, you can partner up with them, and create a joint venture where you split the profits from all revenue generated. Sounds like a win-win situation, right? There is money and opportunities in ‘dead’ leads. Get out there with a simple, and consistent plan. Use the best CRM available for real estate and follow-up extensively. Here are some more drip email & follow-up ideas: 17 Best Real Estate Email Templates & Scripts (I simply love the 2nd idea!) 14 Real Estate Email Templates to Use (Hubspot knows their game) 10 Real Estate Email Templates for Building Leads & Selling Listings (you may want to pay close attention to the very first template because it usually gets the highest response rate) 10 Real Estate Lead Conversion Emails (don’t overlook the first two examples) From learning about…

What NEVER to Publish on a Real Estate Company Site or Blog

You’ve discovered how to rapidly create high-quality content, using the 10-minute micro-video formula. More importantly, you learned how to properly follow-up with prospects and leads - even during busy days. This is one of the best ways to stand out in a crowded, busy, and mechanical real estate market. Remember: make it your #1 goal and vision to transform your real estate company into a micro-content multi-media agency. Thank you so much for reading What NEVER to Publish on a Real Estate Company Site or Blog. We really appreciate it! If you have any questions about our article, or can suggest any other topics you think we should explore, feel free to let us know. Be sure to sign-up for our newsletter to receive monthly emails on all of the latest trends and happenings in the digital marketing space. You will also receive our FREE E-Book with the Amazing Marketing Tools for Powerful Business Growth. Sign-up below! Also, if you received some value out of this article, please share with your friends or colleagues, or leave a comment/question below. We really appreciate you reading our blog and every share/comment means the world to us and allows us to continue producing valuable tools to help you grow your business! Share this PostAbout the Author

Robb Fahrion Facebook Twitter Google+Robb Fahrion is the Co-Founder and a Partner of Flying V Group. He is passionate about helping businesses grow using the power of the internet. Robb graduated from Chapman University in Orange, CA and currently resides in Costa Mesa, CA. Robb enjoys writing about digital marketing, helping his clients turn their dreams into reality, and is a HUGE Mike Trout fan. The Best Strategy to Increase Traffic and Leads to Your Real Estate Website without Any Referrals, Facebook or Paid AdsNovember 25, 2019What NEVER to Publish on a Real Estate Company Site or BlogNovember 19, 2019Real Estate SEO Tools Exposed: SEMrush vs Ahrefs vs MozPro Review (2019)November 11, 2019

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How To Plan an Online Teaching Lesson (With Examples)

As you embark on your journey to become an online English teacher, you might be wondering how to plan a teaching lesson. Lesson planning for an online English class is fun and allows you to use your creativity.

This post will cover the key elements of a good online English lesson plan, as well as a few sample lessons you can use in your own classroom!

If you’ve taken your TEFL course with a reputable company, or if you’re teaching English online with big-name online English teaching companies like VIPKID and QKids, they’ll provide you with lesson plans and curriculum.

However, you might find yourself working for a company that doesn’t offer this support. That’s okay though, with a little practice, and after reading this article, you’ll be able to write an engaging lesson plan in your sleep!

How to Plan an Online English Teaching Lesson

Creating and executing your online teaching lessons will go much smoother if you are prepared. Winging it for 25 minutes in front of the camera won’t be very fun for you or your students, so make sure you have the following components to your lessons.

Good lessons typically have:

One main objective which outlines what the student will be able to do by the end of the lesson

Key vocabulary words that will be taught to the student

Target sentence frames that the students will be able to use in context

Plenty of opportunities for the student to practice speaking

Visual and audio elements to enhance understanding

Lesson Objectives

When I was teaching in a traditional classroom, I often wrote the lesson objectives for the day on a sticky note and stuck it to my computer. This helped me make sure I wasn’t getting sidetracked throughout the class.

You can use the same strategy with an online teaching lesson. Write the objective as an “I Can” statement from the student’s perspective on a sticky note and stick it onto your computer.

For example, if you wanted to teach the student how to introduce themself, you might write: “I can introduce myself to the teacher and tell my age and where I’m from.”

Throughout the lesson, reference this main objective to make sure your conversations are pointing the student to this outcome.

☞ SEE ALSO: Working As A VIPKID Teacher: An Insider’s Review

Dry Erase Board

A dry-erase board is useful for creating visual aids during your online teaching lesson. Before the lesson, you can write key vocabulary words and target sentence frames on the board.

If you’re feeling really creative, you can write the key vocabulary words for the lesson in one color and write the target sentence frames in another color.

Dry erase boards help you reach more types of learners and give students a reference point they can use throughout the lesson until they are confident they have mastered the material.

Props and Visual Elements

As you create your online teaching lesson plan, think about which visual teaching aids you can incorporate. Many props can be found just by looking around your house.

For example, if you’re teaching a lesson about food, dig through your cupboards to find some relevant snacks, fruits, and vegetables you can show your student.

If you’re teaching a lesson about clothing, grab a few clothing items from your closet to show the student.

It’s also helpful to have a set of ABC flashcards. Try to get a set that has illustrations for each letter because you can use these pictures to teach other concepts. I found a pack of ABC flashcards that had animals for each letter at the Dollar Store. I use them all the time for teaching letters and teaching animals.

☞ SEE ALSO: 15 Pros and Cons Of Being An Online English Teacher

Audio Elements

Depending on the age of your students, audio elements can also be helpful in enhancing an online teaching lesson. Songs and video clips can demonstrate concepts in a way that reading can’t.

Just remember that if you plan to use a song or video, download it before the lesson time and make sure you can pull it up quickly.

☞ SEE ALSO: Essential Equipment For Online English Teachers

Topics You Can Cover in an Online Lesson

Depending on the level of your student, the possibilities for what topics to cover in your lesson might feel endless. Below are some common English concepts that you could consider covering.

Vocabulary Words

Teach students useful and common vocabulary words. Focus on pronunciation and make sure the student repeats the word at least three times.

You can also have the student practice by reading definitions of key vocabulary words and by spelling their vocabulary words.

Speaking And Conversation Skills

This is one of the most important parts of an English lesson! Most students take classes because they want to be able to converse naturally in the language.

Ask the student simple, open-ended questions whenever possible to encourage them to speak independently.

One way to correct students if they answer with one-word answers is to say the full sentence you’d like them to say, then pause and cup your hand to your ear indicating that you’d like them to repeat.

Grammar

Grammar skills can be taught to more advanced online English students. Cover topics like verb usage and verb tenses to propel student understanding.

To teach grammar, using verb charts is a great start! A simple one looks like this for the verb [to have].

I have

You have

He/She/It has

We have

You have

They have

After you’ve reviewed this chart with the student and read some practice sentences together, encourage the student to practice independently.

One way to help students practice their new grammar skills is to make a worksheet with a word bank and sentences that you can hold up to the camera. For example, the worksheet might have [has] and [have] written at the top. Below, write the following sentences:

He ____ a ball.

I _____ a yellow hat.

She _____ three apples.

Have the student read the sentences and verbally fill in the correct word, [have] or [has].

Reading Skills

Reading skills can be practiced by showing the student sentences or a short reading passage. Depending on the platform you’re using, you could also send your student a small reading passage a few days before the lesson so they can practice.

When the student is reading, make a note of words or phrases that are challenging. After the student finishes, review these words and phrases together by reading them correctly and having the student repeat.

Listening Skills

A fun way to practice listening skills is to show the student a short video or audio clip. After playing the clip 1-2 times, ask the student questions about what they heard.

Advanced Skills

If you teach adult learners or more advanced students, they might want to discuss topics like business English or interview skills.

Practice holding mock interviews and mock meetings with advanced vocabulary to allow your students to prepare for these situations.

☞ SEE ALSO: 10 Things To Know Before Becoming an Online English Teacher

Components of a Good Online Teaching Lesson Plan

I learned this lesson planning format when I was teaching science in a traditional classroom. Even though I used these steps for science lessons, they apply well to online English lessons as well!

For each lesson you teach, you should plan to include each of these steps.

Engage (Warm-Up)

The first thing you want to do in your online teaching lesson is to engage the student by activating their prior learning. Get their mind thinking in English and have them use their existing knowledge right away.

Engage activities are good warm-ups. You can play a little game, teach a song, or have the student repeat a chant based on their level.

Explain (Teacher Does)

During the explain stage, you’ll introduce your student to new material and vocabulary. If you’re teaching vocabulary words, pronounce them first and have your student repeat them. For more advanced students, you can also teach the meaning of different words.

If you’re teaching grammar topics like verb tenses, introduce them to the student here. This is also a great time to pre-teach any difficult words or concepts in a reading passage.

Elaborate (We Do Together)

Give your students a chance to explore the material with your guidance. This could be a reading passage about the topic, a matching game, or a video that the student watches and describes.

During this phase, you should encourage the student to speak independently, but you can assist if they are struggling.

Evaluate (Student Does Independently)

At the end of the class, give the student a chance to show you what they’ve learned. This is an unguided practice where the student shows you that they can use the information they have learned independently.

☞ SEE ALSO: How To Money Teaching Online With EF Education First

Sample Online English Lesson Plans

It’s a bit easier to understand how each of these steps work when you see them in practice. So to demonstrate how these steps look in a real lesson, I’ve put together two lesson plans, one beginner and one intermediate, for you to use as a template.

These lessons are intended to be taught in a one-on-one environment and last about 25 minutes.

Beginner Sample Lesson: Colors

Materials Needed: Index cards with the colors “red,” “yellow,” “blue,” and “green” written on them in the correct color. Several small items and toys in those colors.

Objective: The student will be able to say the color of different items using complete sentences.

Vocabulary Words: Red, Blue, Green, Yellow

Target Sentence Frames:

What color is it? It is ____

What color do you see? I see _____

Engage

For beginner lessons, I like to engage prior English knowledge by asking the student some basic introduction questions in English. I would spend a few minutes asking “What is your name?” “How old are you?” and “Where are you from?”

Encourage students to respond in full sentences answers. For example, instead of just responding with their name, encourage the student to say, “My name is Sally.”

You can demonstrate this by saying the full sentence yourself and pointing to the student to indicate that they should repeat you. Then ask the question again to give them the chance to use the full sentence.

Explain

Show the student each flashcard one at a time. For each card, touch the color and say clearly the color word in isolation.

Point to the student to indicate that they should repeat after you. Have the student repeat the vocabulary word several times.

Practice spelling the new word by demonstrating first, “R-E-D, Red.” Have the student repeat 2-3 times.

Do this for each of the color words in the lesson.

Check for understanding by showing the student a flashcard, pointing to the color, and shrugging your shoulders to indicate that you want them to name the color.

For beginners, using a simple sentence like “What do you see?” also works well. The student should be able to name each color on the flashcard.

Repeat any colors that are challenging.

Elaborate

Now it’s time to extend the vocabulary into full sentences. The student knows the colors, so now you’ll practice using the colors in sentences. Some good sentences to review are:

“What color do you see?”

“I see Green.”

“What color is it?”

“It is Red.”

To teach full sentences, I like to have the target sentence frames written on my dry erase board in advance so I can point to the response I want the student to give. Here’s how this looks in practice.

The teacher holds up a red flashcard and says, “What color do you see? I see red.”

The teacher points to the student, still holding red flashcard, “What color do you see?” Then the teachers should cup a hand to the ear to indicate that the student should respond.

Practice these sentences for every color. Then, teach the second sentence, “What do you see?” using the same system.

After the student had practiced both sentence frames for all four colors, it’s time to extend further.

Hold up a red toy or household object like an apple. Ask the student, “What do you see?” At this stage, it’s okay to assist the student if they are struggling to come up with the full sentence. It’s also a good idea to hold up your dry erase board with the target sentence frames written down so the student can reference the correct response.

Practice holding up different color items, asking the student a sentence, and assisting the student if they need help. The student should be able to respond in complete sentences by the end of this phase in the lesson.

☞ SEE ALSO: Teach English With Qkids: A Step-By-Step Guide

Evaluate

When you have about 5 minutes left in the lesson, it’s time to ensure that the student understands all the material. You’ll end the class by evaluating the student on what they’ve learned.

Hold up each of the flashcards from the beginning of the lesson one by one. Ask the student “What color is this?” or “What color do you see?” and wait for their response.

At this stage, the student should be able to answer the question independently without prompting. However, if the student does struggle, you can always use your handy dry erase board to give them a hint.

It’s always a good idea to end the lesson on a high note. After your student shows what they’ve learned, give them lots of praise, high fives, and tell them they did a good job. I like to reward my students by singing a silly song together or by playing a game of Tic-Tac-Toe.

No matter what you decide, make sure your student leaves your online classroom feeling good about their efforts.

Homework

If you’re able to assign homework to your students, use their performance in the classroom to create an assignment. If your student struggled with one particular word, send them a link to a video with that word being pronounced so they can practice.

For the lesson above, I would create a quick worksheet with different colored pictures on it. Next to each picture, I’d write “What color is this?” or “What color do you see?” and a line for the student to answer.

For younger students, you can write the words in a word bank and have the student match the color to the picture.

Intermediate Sample Lesson: My Favorite Foods

Materials Needed:

Pictures of foods or actual foods from around your house, a dry erase board to write target sentence frames.

Drawing of a verb tense chart for eat/eats.

Pictures of people eating different foods.

Flashcards made from index cards with the following words and pictures: Spicy – chilly pepper, Sweet – cake, Sour – Lemon, Salty – chips

Objective: The student will be able to describe the flavor of different foods and explain in detail which foods they like and dislike.

Vocabulary Words: Spicy, Sweet, Salty, Sour

Target Sentences Frames:

“How does ____ taste?” The ___ tastes ___.

What do you like to eat? I like to eat ____ because ____.

Grammar:

I/you/we/they eat

He/she/it eats

Engage

For intermediate to advanced students, I welcome them to class and ask them questions about their day during the. engage portion. Questions that work well for starting a conversation are:

How are you?

What did you do today? (remember to correct answers to past tense if needed)

What will you do this weekend?

Did you go to school today?

What is your favorite class at school?

Did you see your friends today?

What do you like to do with your friends?

For this particular lesson, I’d ask a few of the questions above and then ask the following engage question to see what the student already knows:

“What foods do you like?”

Usually, the student will be able to name a few foods that they enjoy. The goal of this lesson is to expand their descriptive vocabulary when talking about foods and help them articulate other types of foods they like.

Explain 1

In this section, you will teach the student different flavor vocabulary words. Start by showing the student each flashcard and pronouncing the flavor word one by one. Have the student repeat each word several times.

Next, guide the student to spell each new vocabulary word. Show them the word on the flashcard and spell the word slowly. Then point to them indicating that you want them to do the same.

If they’ve got it down, you can have the student close their eyes and practice spelling the word from memory.

After the student has a good understanding of how to pronounce each word, you can play a little game to help with their pronunciation. Say, “When I show you the picture, read the word as fast as you can.” Then show the student each flavor flashcard and see how fast they can read the word.

My students love to see how fast they can go and usually find this activity very funny.

☞ SEE ALSO: 6 Best TEFL Courses For English Teachers

Elaborate 1

Now that the students have a good understanding of each vocabulary word, we will practice matching the words to different foods. We will also practice using the target sentence frames in this lesson.

First, hold up a lemon or other sour food. Hold up the “Sour” flashcard as well. Demonstrate the sentence frame by saying, “How does the lemon taste? The lemon tastes sour.” Then point to the student and ask “How does the lemon taste?” Cup your hand to your ear to indicate that you are listening for their response.

The student should respond using the target sentence frame you just taught them.

If your student struggles to say the sentence correctly, this is a good chance to bring out your handy dry erase board. Write the question and answer frames that your student should use and hold it up to visually prompt the student.

Repeat this for several different foods, asking the student how they taste and prompting them with the flashcards. Once your student seems to have it down, try asking the sentences without holding up the flavor flashcards.

For the second part of the lesson, the student will use these flavor words to elaborate on their opinions about certain foods.

Start by demonstrating the question and answer frame to the student. Say, “What do you like to eat? I like to eat pizza.” Then point to the student and say, “What do you like to eat?”

The student will tell you about the food they like, and from there you can ask follow up questions like, “How does ___ taste?” The student should be able to use their flavor words from earlier to explain how their favorite foods taste.

You can also ask questions like

What is your favorite sweet/salty/sour/spicy food?

Do you like spicy food?

Name three salty foods

How does a cookie taste?

☞ SEE ALSO: Teach English in Japan – A Guide to Finding Jobs

Explain 2

Next, you’ll introduce the student to the new grammar in this lesson by showing them the verb chart for the present tense verb: to eat.

Read the following while pointing to the line in the verb chart and have the student repeat

I eat

You eat

He eats

She eats

It eats

You eat

We eat

They eat

Elaborate 2

Practice using the verb tenses by asking the student questions while showing them the verb chart. Hold up the picture of people eating different foods.

Point to different people in the picture and ask:

What does he eat?

What does she eat?

Mime eating foods from Part 1. Ask the student, “What do I eat?”

Make sure the student is answering using the correct verb tense. If they make a mistake, hold up the verb chart and point to the correct answer while reading it yourself. Then point to the student to indicate that they should repeat after you.

Evaluate

To evaluate the students’ learning in the lesson, start by holding up different food items and asking the student, “How does __ taste?” The student should be able to answer using the flavor vocabulary words from the lesson, but if they struggle you can hold up your dry erase board with the sentence frames or your flashcards to assist them.

Show the picture of people eating one more time and ask, “What does he eat?” or “What does she eat” while pointing to people in the image.

Conclude class by asking, “What do you like to eat? and follow up with “How does __ taste?” Remember to praise the student for a job well done and end class on a high note with a song, game, or reward.

For older students, the rewards range from a game of tic tac toe or rock paper scissors to me showing them pictures of my pets. After you’ve had a few classes with a student you’ll start to learn what motivates them.

Homework

If you want to give your students an interactive homework assignment, tell them to write down the foods they ate for dinner and label the foods as salty, spicy, sweet, or sour. Have them share their dinner flavors with you in the next class.

Final Tips To Remember

Planning your own online English lessons can be very fulfilling and allow you to give your students more customization than the standard curriculum provided by companies. Remember these tips to give your lessons some extra flair.

Body Language Is Key

Use plenty of body language to communicate with your students. Show them that you’re listening for them to speak by cupping your hand to your ear and pointing to them.

If you don’t have a certain prop for a lesson, mime it as best as you can.

Pictures and Images Go a Long Way

Find a few pictures to accompany each lesson. This can go a long way in helping your students understand the material.

These can also help if your student does very well and finishes the lesson early. You can ask them endless questions about what they see in the image and their opinions of it.

Always Prepare Extra Activities

Like I mentioned above, it’s a good idea to have extra activities on hand in case the student moves quickly through the lesson. Parents are often paying you for a set amount of time. This means that they expect instruction for the entire duration of the class.

Here are a few quick activities you can keep on hand:

Make a tic-tac-toe game with vocabulary words in each space. Show it to the student and they have to read the word to put their mark in a space

Have extra pictures of the lesson topic to discuss with the student.

Write all the lesson vocabulary words and definitions on a piece of paper. Hold it up and have the student match the two.

Have Fun!

Online teaching can be a very fun experience for teachers and students! Make sure you’re prepared and remember to go with the flow. Write lessons about topics that interest you and your students will be thrilled to see what you create.

Images in this post are courtesy of Shutterstock, a website filled with beautiful royalty-free images and videos. Click here to learn more about Shutterstock.

The post How To Plan an Online Teaching Lesson (With Examples) appeared first on Goats On The Road.

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kennethherrerablog · 5 years

Text

This Easy Three-Step Guide Will Help You Nail Your Next Cover Letter

When you’re writing a cover letter, all of your deepest insecurities can surface.

You start to question your writing skills, your professional experience and, really, your entire life.

How do you introduce yourself? Do you repeat what’s on your resume? How much should you talk about yourself? How can you mirror your whole being on to this one page?

We talked to several career-advice specialists who say a cover letter is really only as complicated as you make it. To tackle yours head on, you first need to understand its purpose.

What Is a Cover Letter?

All those questions swimming in your head? They’ll settle down when you start to understand the purpose of your cover letter.

First, think about a cover letter just as it is: It’s a one-page brief that physically (or virtually) covers a copy of your resume.

Second, think about your cover letter as a way to emphasize the most relevant points presented in your resume and to provide extra context. Your resume should point out your transferable skills; those are the skills or experiences you have that will translate to your success.

Your cover letter then explains those skills with a little more flavor, color and personality. It also proves you have the communication skills you need for the job.

Think of the cover letter as you would a short commercial, as a quick piece that captures your audience’s attention, says Loren Margolis, CEO of Training Leadership Success, a global consulting firm specializing in executive coaching and leadership development.

As creepy as it might sound, Margolis says you want it to be like you’re whispering in the reader’s ear: “Hey! Look at this! Look at me!”

Three Types of Cover Letters

You’re probably familiar with the classic cover letter you send when applying for a particular job. But there are actually three types you might write during a job search.

“You can call them all cover letters,” said Erica Stallings, program director for career advising and counseling at Florida State University. “And typically they’re all going to be followed by your resume.”

But they all serve different aims.

Networking Cover Letter

This is a more personalized version of a cover letter that you would send to someone with which you are trying to forge or strengthen a connection. It could be a LinkedIn message or body of an email — with your resume attached, of course — so it should be short and to the point.

“You don’t want to write a dissertation in an email,” Stallings said.

In it, you might request an informal coffee meeting to discuss how they landed a job, inquire about having that person become your mentor or ask if you can shadow them on the job. Keep it personal, and be specific about what you want from the letter.

Prospecting Cover Letter

A prospecting cover letter is aimed at helping you develop a connection at a company and let’s you inquire about a variety of open positions — not just a single job posting. It should be about a page long and be addressed to the recruiter or HR manager at the firm in which you are interested, Stallings said.

Basically, you’re reaching out to see if a company has any openings rather than targeting a specific job description you might have seen.

Traditional Cover Letter

This is what you’ve probably attached to your resume when applying to jobs in the past. And this is the type we’re focusing on in this how-to guide.

How to Format Your Cover Letter

With cover letters, it’s easy to get hung up in the details. Many of us are really good at that.

For that, here are some important details to consider before diving into the meat of the letter:

Set your document to 1-inch margins. Stick with the traditional 12-point font, though you don’t have to opt for the classic Times New Roman. You can mix it up — perhaps with Georgia or Cambria.

Either way, make sure the font you choose matches your resume. If you’re in a more creative field like graphic design, put your skills to work — just don’t get too crazy with, like, Comic Sans (*shudders*).

If you’re attaching your cover letter to an email (preferably in the same document as your resume — your cover letter on the first page, resume on the second), you’ll want it to read like a letter. For that, add your traditional headings: your name and your contact information, the date and the company’s name and its contact information.

If you’re simply copying and pasting the cover letter into the body of an email, which is fine, go ahead and delete all that other stuff and start with “Dear…”

Speaking of “Dear,” always, always personalize your cover letter. Never write “Dear Sir or Madam.”

“That’s just so spammy,” Margolis says. Instead, find the hiring manager’s name.

If you’ve exhausted your search, opt for the name of the recruiter. Or you could even go as far as calling the company and its hiring department and asking who the hiring manager is.

“Even if it’s the wrong person, have a name,” Margolis says. “You have to have a name.”

But don’t just make it up. Say you’re applying for a brand manager position but can’t find the brand director. Maybe the vice president of the department is listed on LinkedIn. Go with that name.

Or, if you’re not comfortable with that, just direct it to the specific department, said Alaina Rahaim, assistant director of career readiness at the University of Tampa.

Sign off with a simple “Sincerely” or “Best regards.” Don’t take a chance hitting a nerve with your reader. Even “Warm regards” could feel too touchy-feely.

Keep it all to a page — or less, even. Remember, this is your commercial. How long do you pay attention to a commercial? No more than 20 seconds — two minutes if it’s the Super Bowl. Many times, hiring managers won’t even look at a cover letter if it’s over a page.

How to Write a Cover Letter in Three Simple Steps

Google “cover letter,” and you’ll get pages upon pages of templates and best practices and theories and expert opinions.

So, no, there’s no singular universal answer as to the best way to write a cover letter. But there’s no need to make it more difficult than it has to be.

A Quick Note About Keywords

If you’ve read our advice on how to write a resume, then you probably understand the importance of keywords — important words or phrases repeated throughout a job listing. You should also include these throughout your cover letter.

To keep it simple, Margolis suggests a three-paragraph “You, Me, We” approach.

Paragraph 1: You

“One of the biggest errors people make is that they talk all about themselves,” Margolis says.

However, your first paragraph should be about you — as in the recipient, the potential employer, the company.

If someone referred you for the position or you have some sort of connection to the company, mention that in the first sentence, Margolis says. That could be something like: “So and so, from this-and-that company, recommended I apply for this role.” But mention the specific role. This is important.

So name drop. That hooks ’em. It’s called networking.

If you weren’t referred, just start by saying you’re excited, pleased or delighted to apply for the position.

Next, state how you found out about the position. Was it your connection? A LinkedIn posting? The company’s website?

Now, mention what excites you about the company. You’ll need to do some research on this part. Is the company a leader in the marketplace? Known for its innovative products? Perhaps it was recently ranked on a “Best Places to Work” list. Or maybe it won an award. Then get more specific about the department and what it’s doing.

Bottom line: This part has to be tailored to the company and the position.

Paragraph 2: Me

That’s you now!

For this paragraph, Margolis suggests choosing two to three transferable skills. Remember, those are the skills that can easily translate to your success in this new role.

And start bragging.

“It’s the gracious brag, graciously patting yourself on the back and saying, ‘I believe my two years of experience in x will lend to success with your team,’” Margolis says as an example.

You want to use more concrete, specific examples in this section, too, offering more details than your resume. Be as straightforward as saying, “For example…”

“It’s OK to repeat your resume; you’re just shedding a different form of light on it,” Margolis says.

Tie this paragraph up with a nice little bow of a conclusion sentence, something as simple as, “I’d be excited to bring these skills to your team.”

Paragraph 3: We

Margolis says there’s not a whole lot left to say in the paragraph. Even two sentences, done right, can suffice.

This is where you tie it all together. You plus me. We.

Discuss how your skills and ambition align with the company’s goals and values — and make sure you do your homework so you really stand out, said Rahaim.

Talk about the next steps. Mention meeting for an interview or attending the company’s open house.

Then mention how you’ll follow up. Will you call next week? Email?

If that doesn’t feel appropriate, you can always thank the recruiter or manager for their time.

6 Things to Avoid in Your Cover Letter

We’ve all heard those cover letter horror stories and the “Crap, I didn’t attach it” mutterings.

These, however, are six simple things Margolis encourages applicants avoid.

1. Jargon and/or Acronyms

Just write it out.

Even if you’re entering a job in healthcare policy, Margolis says by way of example, don’t use ACA — just write out the Affordable Care Act.

2. Slang or Shortcuts

LOL.

This doesn’t work. Ever. Even if you’re using it ironically.

3. Contractions

Although brevity is the soul of wit, you’ll you will want to avoid contractions so you come off as polished as possible.

“I think it’s more professional to spell it out,” said Rahaim.

4. Negative Comments

Even if it’s intended to be positive, avoid the “I’ve seen reports of your company’s poor culture in the news, and I really think I can help” comments. Further, don’t mistakenly say anything negative about yourself, such as: “Although I haven’t done this type of work before, I am willing to learn.”

“I think that’s sad,” said Rahaim. “Off the bat you’re focusing on the fact that you’ve ever worked in the field.”

Just leave it sunshine and roses.

5. An Old AOL Email Address

Whatever you do, be sure to send your cover letter from a professional email address. This could be some combination of your first and last name.

Not [email protected].

6. Silliness or attempts at humor

It might be tempting to flex your witty wordplay to catch a recruiter’s eye, but using humor or silliness can also backfire for job hunters. Without verbal or physical cues, jokes can lack context and come off as weird nonsequieters.

“When you’re writing it and someone’s reading it there’s no guarantee how someone will take it,” said Rahaim.

Final Words of Cover Letter Advice

Remember: Every cover letter is going to be different, depending on your field, your position and you.

However, Margolis suggests always asking yourself two questions before submitting your cover letter:

1. “If I were the recipient of this letter, would I want to read it?”

You should feel proud of your cover letter — not like it’s an extra burden you’ve slapped on top of your resume.

2. “Can I use the ‘Three Cs’ to describe it?”

The “Three Cs” are concise, compelling and effectively communicating your value.

Check, check and check?

Spend some time proofreading and revising. Read your cover letter aloud (a trick I use in all my writing) or have a friend or family member read it.

Then, stop banging your head against the desk and overthinking it — just send it!

Carson Kohler (@CarsonKohler) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder.

Data journalist Alex Mahadevan (@AlexMahadevan) contributed to this post.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

This Easy Three-Step Guide Will Help You Nail Your Next Cover Letter published first on https://justinbetreviews.tumblr.com/

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readersforum · 5 years

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10 Cover Letter Templates to Perfect Your Next Job Application

New Post has been published on http://www.readersforum.tk/10-cover-letter-templates-to-perfect-your-next-job-application/

10 Cover Letter Templates to Perfect Your Next Job Application

No one seems to agree on cover letters. How much time do you need to spend perfecting them? Do hiring managers even read them? Is it better to just send in your resume and call it a day?

I’m not in HR, but I’ve been approached by applicants who wondered whether their cover letter would actually be read. My answer is one not many of them wanted to hear: “sometimes.” Sometimes it will be read. Other times, you can get away with just sending in your resume — like when you network your way into applying for a position.

The truth is, you can’t really predict on a case-by-case basis — and you’re better safe than sorry. For the most part, having a cover letter will give you an upper hand in ways your resume doesn’t. It allows you to show off your writing skills, provide details that you couldn’t fit on your resume, demonstrate your passion, and show your willingness to put in as much time and effort as possible.

Application Letter

An application letter is a written document addressed to an employer by a job applicant, explaining why they’re interested in and qualified for an open position. More commonly known as a cover letter, this document can come in the form of an email, MS Word document, or similar application template offered by the employer.

Seems fairly basic, right? Cover letters can hold different levels of importance to an employer depending on the industry you’re in and the job you’re applying for. If you do plan to write a cover letter, keep in mind there are certain qualities it should have that are not included in the definition above.

What to Include in a Cover Letter

So, what should you include? We’ll let the 10 templates below this list do most of the talking. No matter which one you download, pay attention to the following elements — all of which should shine through in the letter you send to your future manager.

Contact Information

Cover letters shouldn’t just carry your contact information, but also that of the company to which you’re applying. Contact info includes your phone number, email address, and any social media accounts you’re willing to share and receive connections to.

Home addresses aren’t required, but they can be a helpful reassurance to the employer that you already live nearby and would have no trouble coming into the office.

Avoid offering phone numbers, email addresses, or actual addresses that belong to your current employer. Using your personal Gmail address over your work email, for example, ensures your correspondence with recruiters remains separate from all of your current work communication.

A Personal Address Line

For as often as you see “to whom it may concern” at the top of cover letters today, do your best to avoid writing this exhausted line.

Address lines that specify a person or company grab your reader’s attention much more quickly, and show the employer that you’ve taken the time to tailor your application letter to them. Don’t have the name of the hiring manager? “Employers at [company name]” will do just fine.

A Hook

A “hook” is a clever introduction that “hooks” your reader into wanting to learn more. Think about yourself as a job candidate — what makes you unique? What about your career might a recruiter be intrigued by that you can package into an interesting first sentence?

Why You’re Qualified

It’s a no-brainer that you should summarize your professional experience in your cover letter. However, today’s best applications describe why this experience qualifies the applicant for the job they’re applying for. For example, don’t just state that you spent three years writing for a company blog. Explain that this type of work lends itself to managing your new potential employer’s content calendar every week.

General Knowledge of the Business

Grammatical errors could mean your application is thrown in the trash, but that’s not the only thing that could get your letter tossed aside. Using a generic “one-size-fits-all” cover letter — especially if you forget to change the name of the company — will also hurt your chances of landing an interview.

So, if you take the time to write a cover letter, take the time to comment on the business itself. Why are you applying to this company? What about their business stuck out to you as a professional?

Now, let’s take a look at an example cover letter template, what makes it effective, along with nine more cover letters you can download or draw inspiration from.

10 Free Cover Letter Templates for Your Next Job Application

Template 1: Basic

The example above is a basic (but great) cover letter. The numbered sections are explained in more detail below.

Why This Cover Letter Works

1. Header

The level of formality your header has will depend on the company to which you apply. If you’re applying to a formal business, it’s important to use a formal header to open your cover letter, like in the sample above. Put your address, the date, and the company’s address. But if you’re applying to a company that isn’t as formal, you don’t need to include yours and the company’s addresses. You can still include the date, though.

2. Greeting

Using “To Whom It May Concern” is okay, but you may want to take the time to research the name of the recruiter or hiring manager online. If you do your research and aren’t confident you found the right name, then you should definitely use the generic greeting — but if you are sure, then it shows you put in the effort to find their name and it will catch the recruiter’s eye.

If you have the recruiter’s name, do you greet them by their full name, or by their courtesy title (i.e. Mr., Ms., or Mrs.)? Similar to the header, it depends on the company’s level of formality. If you’re applying to a corporate business, you may want to consider using “Mr. Snaper” instead of “Jon Snaper.” If you’re applying to a start-up or a business with a more casual culture, you can use “Jon Snaper,” as shown in the example.

3. Introduction

Your opening paragraph should, in 1-3 sentences, state why you’re excited to apply and what makes you the perfect candidate. Get right to the point, and don’t worry about explaining where you found the posting or who you know at the company. This isn’t a place to go into detail about why you’re a great candidate — that’s for the second paragraph. Here, simply list a few key reasons in one sentence to set up the rest of your letter. Keep in mind that the recruiter may cross-reference your cover letter with your resume, so make sure the two sync up.

4. Paragraph 2: Why You’re a Great Fit for the Job

Next, sell yourself and your experience by choosing one or two concrete examples that show why you’re a great fit for the position. What did you do at a previous company that gave you relevant experience? Which projects have you worked on that would benefit the new company? How will your prior experience help this company grow? Stay humble in your explanation of credentials while still showing that you would be an asset to the team. Use this paragraph to show you’re genuinely excited and interested in the position.

5. Third Paragraph: Why the Company Is a Great Fit for You

While it’s certainly important you’re a good fit for the job, it’s also important that the company is a good fit for you. “A cover letter typically describes why you’re great for a company — but how will you benefit from getting hired?” asks Emily MacIntyre, a Team Development Manager at HubSpot. “We want to know why our company appeals to you, and how it will be a mutually beneficial working relationship.”

In the third paragraph, show you’re serious about growing and developing your career at this new company. What impresses and excites you about the company? Is there something that you feel strongly about that aligns with the company’s goals? For example, the candidate in the sample letter used this space to show his personal commitment to environmental causes aligns with the company’s green initiatives.

6. Strong Closer and Signature

Don’t get lazy in the final few sentences of your cover letter — it’s important to finish strong. Be straightforward about your interest and enthusiasm about the new position, and tell them you’re available to talk about the opportunity at any time. Be sure to include your phone number and email address. At this point, the ball is (rightly) in the recruiter’s court to decide how to follow up.

Last but certainly not least, thank them for their time and consideration. Use a formal sign-off like “Best,” “All the best,” or “Sincerely,” and finish by typing out your full name. You don’t need to sign it with a pen.

Template 2. Data-Driven Marketing Cover Letter

Get it here.

When applying to a data-driven position, it might be tempting to inject your cover letter with, well, the data to describe what you’ve done for other employers. But in an application letter — particularly for the marketing industry — how you convey this data is just as important as the data itself.

The cover letter template above, which we created here at HubSpot, can help you present the data that’s most important to you as a candidate such that it’ll matter to your future employer.

Notice the three bullet points near the center of the letter above, preceded by the statement: “… I’ve developed a strategy that has helped the company achieve …” This setup is important, because while you can add as many statistics as you want to this template, your data points should describe how your current/former business benefited from your work, rather than how you, yourself, benefited.

Template 3. Straight-to-the-Point Cover Letter

Get it here.

Harvard Business Review contributor David Silverman hailed the above cover letter example as “The Best Cover Letter I Ever Received.” For context, Silverman believes there are only a handful of times when writing a cover letter is actually necessary:

When you know the name of the hiring manager.

When you know something about what the job requires.

When you’ve been referred to the job personally.

Under those three circumstances, a straight-to-the-point cover letter like the one above could be your best bet. Because it’s so concise, however, make a point to add your own letterhead above the message itself. It might be easy for a recruiter to sift through a short and sweet cover letter like the one above, but it’s just as easy for it to get lost in the shuffle of their application list without a unique design or format.

Template 4. Referral Cover Letter

Get it here.

Just because a friend or colleague recommended you for a job doesn’t mean the company is all set to hire you. Therefore, the cover letter template above is written specifically for referrals. We made this one here at HubSpot. Download it here (it comes with four other cover letter templates, too).

As you can see in the picture above, the first paragraph of the cover letter is dedicated entirely to acknowledging the circumstances of your applying: You know someone who works there — no harm in that. But there might be harm in not mentioning it to the hiring manager. Telling the reader about your connection at the company shows you’re aware and confident of the actions you take to get the opportunities you’re interested it.

Ultimately, it’s better than the recruiter hearing about your employee connection from somebody else.

As for the rest of the cover letter, treat your message the same way you would if you had applied with no connection from within. Your skills and successes are no less important because of your internal referral.

Template 5. Photo Letterhead Cover Letter

Get it here.

The cover letter template above was designed by Microsoft Office, and as comprehensive as it looks, it’s completely free to download and modify.

As it looks right now, this cover letter contains about half photo, half text. Feel free to shrink (and change) the image to give yourself more room to tell your story. Of course, a nice washed-out image that expresses who you are can be part of that story …

Template 6. Social Media Marketing Cover Letter

Get it here.

This fourth template gets even more specific within the marketing industry: It’s a cover letter just for social media professionals.

As you personalize this letter with your own experience, make note of the social networks and industry software included in this template. You’ll see that Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram are all mentioned the letter for your reference, making it easy to write about your focus and expertise in each one.

The fourth paragraph in the above template allows you to express the value that your social media expertise delivers to the larger organization: “It’s the key to developing relationships with consumers.” Businesses use social media in diverse ways, and remarks like the one above help your potential employer imagine how you’ll benefit their marketing campaigns.

Template 7. Marketing Manager Cover Letter

Get it here.

Our fourth cover letter comes from Monster.com. This cover letter, shown above, is focused specifically on a marketing role.

Notice how the writer includes references to important marketing metrics and terminology. If you’re applying to a data-driven role, you might not want to fill the page with a story of your experience in paragraph form, like Template 1 does at the beginning of this article. Instead, consider highlighting three (or four, or five) of your successes that you believe the hiring manager would resonate most with, in bulleted form.

As a marketing professional, breaking up your letter with bulleted details like the ones above shows a respect for the hiring manager’s limited time — a mentality that all marketers must understand when communicating with a brand’s audience.

Template 8: Career Day Follow-Up Cover Letter

Get it here.

This is a unique kind of cover letter from Princeton University.

CareerBuilder, Monster, and Indeed might take the lion’s share of your job searches online, but still some employment opportunities come out of a trade show, job fair, or similar networking event. For those occurrences, you have the follow-up cover letter template above.

This cover letter has everything you need to help an employer recall a conversation you had with him/her at a career fair. As you can see in the second paragraph, the letter is particularly useful to people who are about to graduate college.

Template 9. Logo and Watermarked Cover Letter

Get it here.

Here’s another cover letter template from Microsoft Office. This one has a light touch of color in the design just above the letterhead, but make no mistake — the template caters to any professional looking to make a good first impression on their future employer.

Don’t let the logo space on the top-right of the page confuse you. This can be the logo of the company to which you’re applying — to quickly get the attention of the recruiter — or your own logo. Perhaps you freelance on the side or simply like branding yourself. This cover letter template is meant for customization.

Template 10. Marketing Assistant Cover Letter

Get it here.

Offered by ResumeGenius, the cover letter template above is perfect for entry- and mid-level marketers who want to show a little extra professionalism in their opening note to a potential employer.

The orange header (you can change the color if you wish) can go quite well with a resume of the same style. If you don’t have enough experience to fill the entire page, don’t worry. Feel free to write to a length you think is representative of who you are and what the hiring manager wants to see.

No matter how long your final cover letter is, the above template is your opportunity to show your attention to detail — from your contact information in the top header, to the personalized address line where you can include the name of the hiring manager. Like we said, “to whom it may concern” is pretty outdated, anyway.

Writing a cover letter is easier said than done. Don’t hesitate to spend a lot of time writing and editing it. Or, ask a friend or family member to read it over and give you feedback. If the recruiter does end up reading it, you’ll be thankful you did.

0 notes

lindyhunt · 5 years

Text

10 Cover Letter Templates to Perfect Your Next Job Application

No one seems to agree on cover letters. How much time do you need to spend perfecting them? Do hiring managers even read them? Is it better to just send in your resume and call it a day?

I'm not in HR, but I've been approached by applicants who wondered whether their cover letter would actually be read. My answer is one not many of them wanted to hear: "sometimes." Sometimes it will be read. Other times, you can get away with just sending in your resume -- like when you network your way into applying for a position.

The truth is, you can't really predict on a case-by-case basis -- and you're better safe than sorry. For the most part, having a cover letter will give you an upper hand in ways your resume doesn't. It allows you to show off your writing skills, provide details that you couldn't fit on your resume, demonstrate your passion, and show your willingness to put in as much time and effort as possible.

Application Letter

An application letter is a written document addressed to an employer by a job applicant, explaining why they're interested in and qualified for an open position. More commonly known as a cover letter, this document can come in the form of an email, MS Word document, or similar application template offered by the employer.

Seems fairly basic, right? Cover letters can hold different levels of importance to an employer depending on the industry you're in and the job you're applying for. If you do plan to write a cover letter, keep in mind there are certain qualities it should have that are not included in the definition above.

What to Include in a Cover Letter

So, what should you include? We'll let the 10 templates below this list do most of the talking. No matter which one you download, pay attention to the following elements -- all of which should shine through in the letter you send to your future manager.

Contact Information

Cover letters shouldn't just carry your contact information, but also that of the company to which you're applying. Contact info includes your phone number, email address, and any social media accounts you're willing to share and receive connections to.

Home addresses aren't required, but they can be a helpful reassurance to the employer that you already live nearby and would have no trouble coming into the office.

A Personal Address Line

For as often as you see "to whom it may concern" at the top of cover letters today, do your best to avoid writing this exhausted line.

Address lines that specify a person or company grab your reader's attention much more quickly, and show the employer that you've taken the time to tailor your application letter to them. Don't have the name of the hiring manager? "Employers at [company name]" will do just fine.

A Hook

A "hook" is a clever introduction that "hooks" your reader into wanting to learn more. Think about yourself as a job candidate -- what makes you unique? What about your career might a recruiter be intrigued by that you can package into an interesting first sentence?

Why You're Qualified

It's a no-brainer that you should summarize your professional experience in your cover letter. However, today's best applications describe why this experience qualifies the applicant for the job they're applying for. For example, don't just state that you spent three years writing for a company blog. Explain that this type of work lends itself to managing your new potential employer's content calendar every week.

General Knowledge of the Business

Grammatical errors could mean your application is thrown in the trash, but that's not the only thing that could get your letter tossed aside. Using a generic "one-size-fits-all" cover letter -- especially if you forget to change the name of the company -- will also hurt your chances of landing an interview.

So, if you take the time to write a cover letter, take the time to comment on the business itself. Why are you applying to this company? What about their business stuck out to you as a professional?

Now, let's take a look at an example cover letter template, what makes it effective, along with nine more cover letters you can download or draw inspiration from.

10 Free Cover Letter Templates for Your Next Job Application

Template 1: Basic

The example above is a basic (but great) cover letter. The numbered sections are explained in more detail below.

Why This Cover Letter Works

1. Header

The level of formality your header has will depend on the company to which you apply. If you're applying to a formal business, it's important to use a formal header to open your cover letter, like in the sample above. Put your address, the date, and the company's address. But if you're applying to a company that isn't as formal, you don't need to include yours and the company's addresses. You can still include the date, though.

2. Greeting

Using "To Whom It May Concern" is okay, but you may want to take the time to research the name of the recruiter or hiring manager online. If you do your research and aren't confident you found the right name, then you should definitely use the generic greeting -- but if you are sure, then it shows you put in the effort to find their name and it will catch the recruiter's eye.

If you have the recruiter's name, do you greet them by their full name, or by their courtesy title (i.e. Mr., Ms., or Mrs.)? Similar to the header, it depends on the company's level of formality. If you're applying to a corporate business, you may want to consider using "Mr. Snaper" instead of "Jon Snaper." If you're applying to a start-up or a business with a more casual culture, you can use "Jon Snaper," as shown in the example.

3. Introduction

Your opening paragraph should, in 1-3 sentences, state why you're excited to apply and what makes you the perfect candidate. Get right to the point, and don't worry about explaining where you found the posting or who you know at the company. This isn't a place to go into detail about why you're a great candidate -- that's for the second paragraph. Here, simply list a few key reasons in one sentence to set up the rest of your letter. Keep in mind that the recruiter may cross-reference your cover letter with your resume, so make sure the two sync up.

4. Paragraph 2: Why You're a Great Fit for the Job

Next, sell yourself and your experience by choosing one or two concrete examples that show why you're a great fit for the position. What did you do at a previous company that gave you relevant experience? Which projects have you worked on that would benefit the new company? How will your prior experience help this company grow? Stay humble in your explanation of credentials while still showing that you would be an asset to the team. Use this paragraph to show you're genuinely excited and interested in the position.

5. Third Paragraph: Why the Company Is a Great Fit for You

While it's certainly important you're a good fit for the job, it's also important that the company is a good fit for you. "A cover letter typically describes why you're great for a company -- but how will you benefit from getting hired?" asks Emily MacIntyre, a Team Development Manager at HubSpot. "We want to know why our company appeals to you, and how it will be a mutually beneficial working relationship."

In the third paragraph, show you're serious about growing and developing your career at this new company. What impresses and excites you about the company? Is there something that you feel strongly about that aligns with the company's goals? For example, the candidate in the sample letter used this space to show his personal commitment to environmental causes aligns with the company's green initiatives.

6. Strong Closer and Signature

Don't get lazy in the final few sentences of your cover letter -- it's important to finish strong. Be straightforward about your interest and enthusiasm about the new position, and tell them you're available to talk about the opportunity at any time. Be sure to include your phone number and email address. At this point, the ball is (rightly) in the recruiter's court to decide how to follow up.

Last but certainly not least, thank them for their time and consideration. Use a formal sign-off like "Best," "All the best," or "Sincerely," and finish by typing out your full name. You don't need to sign it with a pen.

Template 2. Data-Driven Marketing Cover Letter

Get it here.

When applying to a data-driven position, it might be tempting to inject your cover letter with, well, the data to describe what you've done for other employers. But in an application letter -- particularly for the marketing industry -- how you convey this data is just as important as the data itself.

The cover letter template above, which we created here at HubSpot, can help you present the data that's most important to you as a candidate such that it'll matter to your future employer.

Notice the three bullet points near the center of the letter above, preceded by the statement: "... I've developed a strategy that has helped the company achieve ..." This setup is important, because while you can add as many statistics as you want to this template, your data points should describe how your current/former business benefited from your work, rather than how you, yourself, benefited.

Template 3. Straight-to-the-Point Cover Letter

Get it here.

Harvard Business Review contributor David Silverman hailed the above cover letter example as "The Best Cover Letter I Ever Received." For context, Silverman believes there are only a handful of times when writing a cover letter is actually necessary:

When you know the name of the hiring manager.

When you know something about what the job requires.

When you've been referred to the job personally.

Under those three circumstances, a straight-to-the-point cover letter like the one above could be your best bet. Because it's so concise, however, make a point to add your own letterhead above the message itself. It might be easy for a recruiter to sift through a short and sweet cover letter like the one above, but it's just as easy for it to get lost in the shuffle of their application list without a unique design or format.

Template 4. Referral Cover Letter

Get it here.

Just because a friend or colleague recommended you for a job doesn't mean the company is all set to hire you. Therefore, the cover letter template above is written specifically for referrals. We made this one here at HubSpot. Download it here (it comes with four other cover letter templates, too).

As you can see in the picture above, the first paragraph of the cover letter is dedicated entirely to acknowledging the circumstances of your applying: You know someone who works there -- no harm in that. But there might be harm in not mentioning it to the hiring manager. Telling the reader about your connection at the company shows you're aware and confident of the actions you take to get the opportunities you're interested it.

Ultimately, it's better than the recruiter hearing about your employee connection from somebody else.

Template 5. Photo Letterhead Cover Letter

Get it here.

The cover letter template above was designed by Microsoft Office, and as comprehensive as it looks, it's completely free to download and modify.

Template 6. Social Media Marketing Cover Letter

Get it here.

This fourth template gets even more specific within the marketing industry: It's a cover letter just for social media professionals.

As you personalize this letter with your own experience, make note of the social networks and industry software included in this template. You'll see that Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram are all mentioned the letter for your reference, making it easy to write about your focus and expertise in each one.

The fourth paragraph in the above template allows you to express the value that your social media expertise delivers to the larger organization: "It's the key to developing relationships with consumers." Businesses use social media in diverse ways, and remarks like the one above help your potential employer imagine how you'll benefit their marketing campaigns.

Template 7. Marketing Manager Cover Letter

Get it here.

Our fourth cover letter comes from Monster.com. This cover letter, shown above, is focused specifically on a marketing role.

Notice how the writer includes references to important marketing metrics and terminology. If you're applying to a data-driven role, you might not want to fill the page with a story of your experience in paragraph form, like Template 1 does at the beginning of this article. Instead, consider highlighting three (or four, or five) of your successes that you believe the hiring manager would resonate most with, in bulleted form.

As a marketing professional, breaking up your letter with bulleted details like the ones above shows a respect for the hiring manager's limited time -- a mentality that all marketers must understand when communicating with a brand's audience.

Template 8: Career Day Follow-Up Cover Letter

Get it here.

This is a unique kind of cover letter from Princeton University.

CareerBuilder, Monster, and Indeed might take the lion's share of your job searches online, but still some employment opportunities come out of a trade show, job fair, or similar networking event. For those occurrences, you have the follow-up cover letter template above.

Template 9. Logo and Watermarked Cover Letter

Get it here.

Here's another cover letter template from Microsoft Office. This one has a light touch of color in the design just above the letterhead, but make no mistake -- the template caters to any professional looking to make a good first impression on their future employer.

Don't let the logo space on the top-right of the page confuse you. This can be the logo of the company to which you're applying -- to quickly get the attention of the recruiter -- or your own logo. Perhaps you freelance on the side or simply like branding yourself. This cover letter template is meant for customization.

Template 10. Marketing Assistant Cover Letter

Get it here.

Offered by ResumeGenius, the cover letter template above is perfect for entry- and mid-level marketers who want to show a little extra professionalism in their opening note to a potential employer.

The orange header (you can change the color if you wish) can go quite well with a resume of the same style. If you don't have enough experience to fill the entire page, don't worry. Feel free to write to a length you think is representative of who you are and what the hiring manager wants to see.

No matter how long your final cover letter is, the above template is your opportunity to show your attention to detail -- from your contact information in the top header, to the personalized address line where you can include the name of the hiring manager. Like we said, "to whom it may concern" is pretty outdated, anyway.

Writing a cover letter is easier said than done. Don't hesitate to spend a lot of time writing and editing it. Or, ask a friend or family member to read it over and give you feedback. If the recruiter does end up reading it, you'll be thankful you did.

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unixcommerce · 6 years

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Grid Vs Flexbox: Which Should You Choose?

CSS Grid and CSS Flexbox are complimentary web layout technologies that have been hotly anticipated for years. However, despite some superficial similarities they are actually used for very different tasks; they each solve a very different set of problems.

In an ideal scenario, you may find that you employ both for different layout tasks. In this post we’ll look at their differences, look at how they solve various layout problems, and help you choose which (if either) is the right solution for your problem.

Grid is Container-Based, Flexbox is Content-Based

In flexbox layout, the size of a cell (flex-item) is defined inside the flex-item itself, and in the grid layout, the size of a cell (grid-item) is defined inside the grid-container.

Confusing?

Let’s look at an example, here’s the HTML to create a row of elements:

And we style this using flexbox like so:

.row { margin: 20px auto; max-width: 300px; display: flex; } .row > div { border: 1px dashed gray; flex: 1 1 auto; /* Size of items defined inside items */ text-align: center; padding: 12px; }

We defined the size of the cells inside the flex-item by setting flex: 1 1 auto;. The flex property is shorthand to set flex-grow, flex-shrink, and flex-basis properties in one statement; its default value is 0 1 auto. Notice the “row” div is the flex-container, and we don’t set the size of the items there. We set the size inside the flex-item.

When previewed in a browser we get a row of boxes, as you would expect:

Now let’s see how we can generate the same output using grid:

.row { margin: 20px auto; max-width: 300px; display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr 1fr 1fr; /* Size of items defined inside container */ } .row div { border: 1px dashed gray; text-align: center; padding: 12px; }

Above code will give us exactly the same output.

Notice, now we are defining the cell’s size using grid-template-columns inside the grid-container (.row), not the grid-item.

This is an important difference. It shows that the flexbox layout is calculated after its content is loaded whereas the grid layout is calculated regardless of the content inside it. So, if possible, avoid using flexbox to build the overall layout of your website.

Grid Has a “Gap” Property, Flexbox Doesn’t

You can argue that a major difference between flexbox and grid is that in the latter we can create gutters between grid-items using grid-column-gap, like so:

In order to achieve the same result in flexbox we would have to use padding and nested containers, or increase the width of the flex-container and use the justify-content property to spread the flex-items.

We have to take a circuitous route in flexbox because it doesn’t have a gap property. However, it is on the way; the CSS Box Alignment Module 3 contains CSS features relating to alignment of boxes in all layout modes: block layout, table layout, flex layout, and grid layout. The Box Alignment module collects properties from flexbox, grid, and multi-column which can be used consistently across all the layout models. Eventually we’ll be able to add gaps with row-gap and column-gap properties, but not yet.

Flexbox is One Dimensional, Grid is Two Dimensional

We’ve been arranging elements as rows and columns on the web since we used tables for layout. Both flexbox and grid are based on this concept. Flexbox is best for arranging elements in either a single row, or a single column. Grid is best for arranging elements in multiple rows and columns.

In other words, Flexbox is one dimensional, and Grid is two dimensional. Let’s look at a commonly used one dimensional layout – the social share buttons:

All the elements are in a single row. We can implement this using Flexbox like this:

.social-icons { display: flex; list-style: none; justify-content: space-around; }

The justify-content property determines how the extra space of the flex-container is distributed to the flex-items. The space-around value distributes the space in such a way that the flex-items get placed evenly with equal amount of space around them.

Next, let’s take a look at a commonly used 2-dimensional layout:

We can’t implement this layout with a single row or a single column, we need multiple rows and columns to do that, and that’s where we use CSS Grids. Let’s make it using CSS Grid:

Header

Main

Aside

Footer

and the CSS:

.container { max-width: 800px; margin: 2em auto; display: grid; grid-template-columns: 3fr 1fr; grid-template-rows: repeat(3,auto); grid-gap: 1rem; } .container header { grid-area: 1/1/2/3; } .container main { grid-area: 2/1/3/2; } .container aside { grid-area: 2/2/3/3; } .container footer { grid-area: 3/1/4/3; } .container > * { background-color: #ddd; padding: 1rem; }

We are creating two columns using the grid-template-columns property, and three rows using grid-template-rows property. The repeat() function creates 3 rows with auto height.

Then, inside the grid-items (header, main, aside, and footer) we define how much area those grid-items will cover using the grid-area property.

Flexbox Wraps vs Grid Wraps

When the total width of items inside the container is greater than the width of the container, in that case both the layout models have the option to wrap the items to a new row. However, the way both handle wrapping is different.

Let’s look at that difference by building an sample layout. Create two rows and place 6 divs inside each row:

Flexbox

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

Grid

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

Now, we will use Flexbox to layout the first row and Grid for second:

/* Flexbox row styles */ .row-flex { margin: 40px auto; max-width: 600px; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; } .row-flex div { border: 1px dashed gray; flex: 1 1 100px; text-align: center; padding: 12px; } /* Grid row styles */ .row-grid { margin: 40px auto; max-width: 600px; display: grid; grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fill, minmax(100px, 1fr)); } .row-grid div { border: 1px dashed gray; text-align: center; padding: 12px; }

For the first row, we are using flex: 1 1 100px to give the flex-items a base width of 100px and allow it to grow and shrink.

We are also enabling wrapping of flex-items inside the flex-container by setting the flex-wrap property to wrap, its default value is nowrap.

For the second row, we are using the grid-template-columns property to create columns with minimum width 100px set by the minmax() function. We are using repeat() function to create columns repeatedly.

You can see the beauty of Grid and Flexbox lies in the ability to stretch and squeeze the items based on the amount of space available. Flexbox achieves this using flex-grow and flex-shrink properties, and Grid achieves this using a combination of minmax and auto-fill functions inside the grid-template-columns property.

However, look carefully at the cell 5 and cell 6 as they are pushed down. In the case of Flexbox, the cell 5 and 6 are not the same size as other cells when pushed down. While in case of Grid, they retain the same size as all other cells in the grid.

This happens because when a flex-item is wrapped and pushed in a new row, the Flexbox layout algorithm treats it as a part of a different flex-container. Hence the pushed item loses its context.

This behavior could be used in some use cases, for example, an email subscriber form:

Let’s build this subscriber form:

and give it some styles in our CSS:

.subscriber-form-container { max-width: 650px; margin: 40px auto; border: 1px dashed gray; box-sizing: border-box; } .subscriber-form-container form { display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; } .subscriber-form-container form input { margin: 6px; padding: 0.4rem; box-sizing: border-box; } .subscriber-form-container form input{ flex: 1 1 150px; } .subscriber-form-container form input[type="email"] { flex: 2 1 300px; }

The flex property is the shorthand for three properties: flex-grow, flex-shrink, and flex-basis. We want the width of the “email” field to be double the width of other two input elements, and we achieve this by using its “flex-grow” and “flex-basis”.

The “flex-grow” property of input elements is set to “1”, but that of email input element is set to 2. So, when there is extra space available, the email input element will grow twice compared to other input elements.

Flexbox outperforms Grid in this use case. Yes, you could use some hack to get CSS Grid replicate this behavior using minmax() function, but Flexbox is well-suited for this kind of single dimensional layouts.

However, if you want a multi-dimensional layout with the wrapped elements maintaining their widths, for example, an image gallery, then Grid is the best choice:

One more thing, did you notice we are not using any media queries here. That’s because Flexbox and Grid layouts are built on concept of responsiveness and hence reduce the use of Media Queries.

Will CSS Grid make Flexbox Obsolete in the Future?

Absolutely not.

In fact, that’s what this article was about. CSS grid and Flexbox, both are designed to solve a different set of problems.

Currently, CSS Grid doesn’t have enough support across the browsers to make production ready websites. The general rule of thumb I use is that a feature must cover more than 95% of global usage. Only then I use that feature in real websites. Currently, Flexbox covers 95% of global usage, and Grid covers 87% of global usage.

Soon Grid will also get good support among the browsers, and we will use a mix of Grids and Flexboxes to make amazing website layouts that previously weren’t possible.

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diannesimpkinson-blog · 6 years

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lucyariablog · 6 years

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How to Set Your Content Free for a Mobile, Voice, Ready-for-Anything Future

Do you tune out when people talk about structured content? The conversations can get stunningly abstract. Stodgy even. And the way some people talk about structured content, it can come off as a miracle cure: Lower costs! Happier audiences! Efficiency! Accuracy! Consistency! Set your content free!

Hard to picture? Sound too good to be true?

Having worked with structured content as a technical writer (creating user manuals for medical devices), I’m here to tell you this approach can deliver on its promises. Yes, you must update your processes. Yes, you must determine what kind of structure makes sense for your content and your customers. Yes, you may need a new CMS and maybe even new team members.

And yes, you may look back and declare all those changes worth making.

In her Content Marketing World talk, Structuring Content for Dynamic Storytelling, content strategist Carrie Hane details what it means to set your content free by structuring it – and why marketers should care. In this post, I share some of her insights.

Structured content: A recap

As Carrie defines it, structured content is “information that is planned, developed, and connected outside of an interface.” It’s ready to be used in any interface with any style. It enables both people and machines to manipulate and consume content.

Rather than create content in a formatted blob, as shown in this typical blog-post entry screen …

… you create content in unformatted, labeled chunks that resemble fields on a form.

Structured content is unformatted, label chunks that resemble fields on a form, says @CarrieHD. Click To Tweet

In Carrie’s structured example, the system recognizes the text string “Kristina Halvorson” as the name of a conference speaker. That chunk of content may appear in any number of places on the conference website, formatted independently each time. Same goes for all the other labeled chunks in this example: bio, session title, description, takeaways.

With structured content, those content chunks are like pieces in a Chinese tangram that can be configured in various ways. Imagine the text string “Kristina Halvorson” as a red square, her bio as a yellow circle, her session title as a green parallelogram. Those atoms of content can show up any number of places throughout a conference website, fitting into a different configuration each time.

This metaphor quickly reaches the breaking point – and it’s wonderful that it does. Tangrams are not single sourced. You can’t modify one red square (let’s say you want a white stripe down the middle) and have all the other red squares instantly reflect that change.

But with structured content, that’s exactly the kind of efficiency you get. If you need to update Kristina’s bio, you make the change once and the update appears instantly everywhere.

Structured content means you can make one change and it updates everywhere that content appears. @CarrieHD Click To Tweet

Another way structured content breaks the tangram metaphor is that, while tangram pieces have a fixed format (size, shape, and color), structured content is unformatted. Carrie calls this approach “resource before representation.” When you create structured content (the resource), you don’t concern yourself with the look and feel of the various outputs (representation).

If you think, ‘Oh, we need a web page on x,’ you’re thinking about representation first. If you think, ‘Our customers need a way to find out about x,’ you’re thinking about the resource first.

As James Mathewson, a speaker at 2017 Intelligent Content Conference, says,

By structured content, we mean small content modules that are tagged for use by different devices, applications, or media types. Structured content is fast emerging as a necessity for content marketers.

Structured content is fast emerging as a necessity for content marketers. @James_Mathewson #contentstrategy Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Getting Started With Structured Content

Why would content marketers need structured content?

Structured content scales. It makes business sense. By getting content out of silos, Carrie says, this approach “reduces duplication of the effort and cost to create and publish content.”

Content marketer Henry Kogan identifies five benefits of structured content:

Publishes to multiple platforms automatically

Provides innovative ways to monetize

Simplifies the translation process

Enables readers to discover info more easily

Enables content to adapt to the needs of the person consuming it

Structured content enables readers to discover info more easily, says @henrykogan. Read more >> Click To Tweet

Example: Let’s say you have a collection of pieces of gated content – e-books, maybe. Imagine that each e-book includes a summary paragraph. If the e-book is structured, you can use each summary as a standalone chunk. You might post each summary on a web page as an ungated enticement to download the whole (gated) piece. You might also create a list of summaries of all your e-books. Those summaries could show up any number of places throughout your digital repository, always pulling from the same source, automatically formatted to fit each context.

The more you nod your head at the following questions, the more likely your company is to benefit from structured content:

Do you need to give people access to your content the way they want it on whatever device they’re using without having to recreate it for each type of output (a web page, an app, a watch, Alexa, and so on)?

Is your content translated into other languages?

Could many of your topics be organized into template-like structures?

Can you envision chunks of your content being reused in various outputs, mixed and matched, and single sourced so that any changes you make ripple automatically through your content set?

If your content is translated into other languages, you would benefit from structured content. @marciarjohnston Click To Tweet

How structure sets your content free

Most content strategists, at least those who concern themselves with the CMS back end, eventually say something like this: Structure sets your content free.

Carrie is no exception. And no wonder. Structure liberates content from formatting and device-specific constraints. She makes this point with a Dr. Who reference:

You create flexibility by breaking content into chunks. Then it can travel through time and across space and wherever it needs to go, and it doesn’t even need a Tardis.

Structure enables the same bit of content to be delivered to your wrist (via a smartwatch), to your living room (via a chatbot like Alexa, Amazon Echo’s voice-driven assistant), or to anyplace else you choose to receive information via a nearly infinite number of channels and devices.

Where could your content go if it were that free?

Structure sets your content free, says @CarrieHD. #contentstrategy Read more >> Click To Tweet

Example in the wild: BBC Nature website

What symbolizes freedom more perfectly than a butterfly? Carrie chooses such a creature in giving us a peek into the BBC Nature website.

With a website as sprawling as this one, it’s easy to imagine a vast resource of nature-related content chunks – videos, photos, titles, descriptions, scientific names, and so on – that appear on any number of pages as needed, assembled dynamically in each moment of use.

For example, the Peacock butterfly page (shown below) includes most of the content chunks listed above, arranged the same way as all the pages in the wildlife collection. Notice that the letters in “Peacock butterfly” are white so that they stand out against the black background.

When you go to the mountain grassland page (shown below) and scroll down, you see the same photo and the title “Peacock butterfly.” In this case, the letters come up as green text on a white background.

When you go to the collection sensational summer wildlife (shown below), you find yet another content chunk related to the peacock butterfly: a video. Every page that mentions the peacock butterfly has autopopulated content pulled from a rich underlying structure for each topic in the repository.

What opportunities do you see for creating rich cross-references like those on the BBC Nature site – cross-references that would keep your viewers engaged in your site longer and maybe even make your content more bingeable?

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Why Automation Is the Future of Content Creation

Conclusion

While structured content has, for decades, proven its value in technical documentation, many marketers are now awakening to the potential it has for their content.

If you’re already structuring your content, what lessons have you learned? How have your audiences – and your company – benefited from your content being set free by structure?

If you’re not structuring your content, what’s holding you back? What would you like to hear about in future posts that would help you see the value of this approach for your team?

Here’s an excerpt from Carrie’s talk:

youtube

Get more serious about educating yourself on structured content and the many opportunities it presents for your content marketing program. Attend Intelligent Content Conference March 20-22 in Las Vegas. And join us at Content Marketing World this September.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post How to Set Your Content Free for a Mobile, Voice, Ready-for-Anything Future appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/02/content-mobile-voice/

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