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cupofsorrows · 5 years

Text

A Conceptual Post About Pokémon as D&D Monsters

I know, I know, it’s been done before, but I’ve been having a lot of ideas about D&D lately and it occurred to me that it might be fun to try to adapt Pokemon to the standard dnd setting(s) - that is, not just copying them wholesale as in, “you open the dungeon door and see a pikachu” but taking the concept of the creature and placing it in your world as something that genuinely belonged there. Like, say, You confront your party with a large turtle-monster that sprays high-powered water jets as its primary mode of attack. It’s essentially a blastoise, but that isn’t what it’s called and it doesn’t necessarily have to follow the rules that an actual blastoise would in the pokemon games. I’ve seen pokemon stat block writeups before, but they’re usually pretty straightforward “this is a psyduck” type deals, and what I’m interested in is retooling the monster to fit in a different world (while keeping the core of it intact). What’s it called (if it has a different name)? Where does it come from in your world, and where does it live? If the original had evolutions, does this version? Lots of potential there. To that end, here are a few pokemon that I think have particularly interesting concepts:

Phantump: Honestly all of the ghost pokemon have interesting concepts but I didn’t want to have a disproportionate number of ghost-types so I chose this one. Core concept is a furtive little forest spirit that uses old tree stumps (or perhaps fallen logs) as surrogate bodies/protective shells. Canon lore says they’re supposedly the spirits of children who died in the forest, so take or leave that as you please. Now, none of these suggestions have to look exactly like their inspirations as long as they convey the idea - for instance I sort of imagine these guys as little humanoid figures made of gnarled wood, which also gives me distinct skull-kid-from-LoZ vibes (but maybe that should be a separate post...)

Heliolisk: I don’t really know what drew me to this critter in particular, except that ‘solar-powered lizard that can shoot electricity and stuff’ is just a good creature to put in a made-up world (probably in a desert region). It even has “-lisk” in its name, like the more infamous basilisk, so it already sounds like it SHOULD be a mythical creature. As I’m writing this I realize that it strongly resembles the already-in-dnd shocker lizard, but come on, this thing is way more badass. Also I was just reading about it on Bulbapedia and apparently it can run super-fast? so... that’s in there, too.

Snorlax or Slaking: Look I just like the concept of a big hairy beast that’s super strong but spends almost all of its time asleep. Not even sure that would affect its stats but it’s great flavor.

Zygarde: A host of tiny organisms - maybe even single-celled - which can come together to form larger gestalt creatures (most famously a massive serpent/worm, but even more powerful forms may be possible). Should be a very powerful, possibly unique, individual, since it is a legendary pokemon.

Dhelmise: Sentient algae that uses marine detritus as a ‘skeleton’? The ghost type delivers again! I imagine that before humans were responsible for so much stuff being in the ocean these must have used a lot of animal bones (and maybe some driftwood) instead.

Seismitoad: I think there are already frog monsters with sonic attacks, but that was only half of the appeal for me here, the other half being ‘large bipedal frog’. I hold this as being very different from bullywugs, grippli, or any other amphibian-based humanoids: While froglike, those are all still fundamentally types of people, whereas this beast is first and foremost a frog. A frog that walks upright and has opposable thumbs. This also works with poliwhirl/poliwrath and croagunk/toxicroak, but then the sonic/vibration stuff won this one out for me by a slim margin. (Addendum: I have come to the realization that seismitoad and croagunk don’t actually have opposable thumbs according to their artwork. Whatever, just fudge it.)

Tropius: This one’s just plain weird. Like, almost exeggcutor-level weird (dang, maybe I should have chosen exeggcutor instead. But tropius is less famously weird. Side note: what’s up with pokemon based on palmlike plants?) It’s part small sauropod dinosaur, part banana tree, and while I’m not sure whether it should be classified as a plant or not, I do know that it can definitely fly. Also, it produces delicious fruit you can eat!

Parasect: You probably figured I was going to mention this one. Everyone thinks of paras and parasect when they think of pokemon with weird but cool concepts. MY take is that the fungus could infest different types of giant vermin, perhaps making it the basis for a template. Or not; these are just suggestions. Do whatever.

Larvesta and Volcarona: Maybe I’m just on a kick from all the GKOTM fanart I’ve been seeing, but giant fire-spitting caterpillar + giant fiery moth adult seems like a creature idea worth exploring. Larvesta also takes longer to evolve than any other stage-one pokemon, which I see as representing a long time spent in larval form (or pupated), which in turn resembles kaiju’s long periods of ‘dormancy’, bringing us back to Mothra (as all things must). Also, I think larvesta/volcarona are the only bug/fire types in the whole series so far? That’s nuts to me but it just makes them even more special.

Abra: Honestly the way this guy looks is like 90% of the appeal for me here. Abra looks like an armadillo tried to evolve into a monkey and somehow ended up with psychic powers in the process. It levitates and teleports, and according to the lore it’s usually asleep but thanks to its psychic powers is still aware of its surroundings. That’s right, its eyes aren’t really narrow, they’re just closed all the time. Do any images of abra with its eyes open exist? If they do, are we prepared to see them? As always, don’t feel like you have to give any of these guys evolved forms just because they evolve in the games. I’m definitely not saying this here specifically because I like abra’s design more than its evolutions, no sir.

Pinsir or Heracross: Pretty much the same as with the toads a few entries above. Clearly not people, but just vaguely reminiscent enough to maybe be just a little unsettling. C’mon, I know they’re cute in the games and the show but tell me you wouldn’t be at least slightly perturbed if you saw a real-life beetle the size of a 10-year-old trundling around on two legs. Even if you thought it was rad as hell you’d still get out of there pretty quick if it started trundling towards you.

Slowpoke: Listen if you don’t get the appeal of a semi-aquatic, ambiguously mammalian quadruped that has psychic capabilities but is also comically oblivious to external stimuli then I just don’t know what to tell you.

Barbaracle: Colonial organism sort of like Zygarde, except the individual parts are bigger. It could even be modular, with the various ‘limbs’ combining in different ways, although that could also complicate the stat block.

Gothitelle: Conceptually I suppose this is just another humanoid psychic creature, but a while ago I saw someone point out how its frills and whatnot are sort of reminiscent of a sea slug, and damned if ‘anthropomorphic nudibranch’ doesn’t get my blood flowing.

Rapidash: Pretty simple, a unicorn variant/non-evil fire horse. Who wouldn’t want one of those?

Necrozma: I never actually played Sun and Moon 2, nor did I get too deep into the postgame ultra beast stuff in SuMo 1, so regrettably I missed out on a lot of the wonderful interdimensional weirdness. While each ultra beast is appealing in its own way, Necrozma is practically a Lovecraftian Great Old One already what with how it was once an interstellar being of heat and light but was somehow injured or depleted and has now become a completely different creature that travels from world to world absorbing all light. That’s a pretty raw concept for any story, let alone a cute kid’s game. And it’s always a plus when something can be cool and threatening while still being safe for a G rating! You could also do what SuMo2 did and take your heroes to a world that’s already had its light stolen by the beast, to explore how the inhabitants of that world have been affected as well as show what awaits the heroes’ world... or just as a nice change of scenery. Lastly there’s the possibility that Necrozma must ultimately be defeated not through violence, but by figuring out how to restore it to its original form. It isn’t too often that the cosmic monstrosity could actually use your help, and it might leave the PCs feeling like they really accomplished something epic. Alternately, it returning to its original form also makes a great homage to the multiple forms of every JRPG final boss ever, a trope that has been under-represented in D&D for TOO LONG.

...and that’s it, at least for now. Naturally, there are about a thousand other possibilities, including different ways of interpreting the examples I’ve provided here. I suppose they could also be used for purposes besides D&D, although if you’re going to put any of this in the fantasy novel you’ve been working on I suggest you be extra diligent in obfuscating the creatures’ actual origins so as to avoid a visit from any lawyers. I don’t know if anybody is actually even going to see this post at all, but if it does end up getting around, then I fully encourage all of you to put your own spins on this if you’re inspired to do so! I’d love to see what other people might come up with.

#pokemon #dnd #d&d #creature design #monsters

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wizardessheart-sideb · 5 years

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This week’s episode is here! It was a bit of a downer, but next week we’ll have some fun! As usual, transcript under the read more.

HEWWO

Hello everyone, welcome to Royal Magic Academy Radio, a podcast about Wizardess Heart. I’m your host, Mari. I’m home from Anime Expo and ready to start working on this stuff again. My trip was pretty crazy and I needed more downtime than I expected, so thank you everyone for being patient with me. And since a lot has happened and I had a lot to say anyways, this episode’s gonna be fairly long. So, let’s get on with the show.

GAMING NEWS

We have a LOT of gaming news. The new collection event, Touch the Stars. We also got new items in the Make a Dates. And we got a brand new route featuring the newest love option, creepy ghost I mean Gray! We also got confirmation that Wizardess will be getting a season 10, which I’m personally far more excited for! We also have a special log-in bonus going on and it’s ghost-themed, so I’m already obsessed with it.

And finally, we have a brand new feature in the game! With Gray’s route and on, there will be an option to get reminded of what happened in the last chapter. I think this is an amazing feature and although the past routes, as of now, aren’t going to implement it, I still think it’s a really nice thing to have because let’s face it, sometimes you drop games for a month or more and need to get reminded about stuff. Or you’re like me and you never remember anything ever.

ANIME EXPO

Now, I'm sure a lot of you are eager to hear about Anime Expo this year, especially since I've been pretty quiet about it on all my social media. I always get really tired after cons since they're so over-stimulating in the first place, but this year was. Well.

I would love to say that AX was amazing this year. I'd love to tell you guys that it was so much fun, so well-organized, etc. But that'd be lying. And also you can't use the words "AX" and "well-organized" in the same sentence unless the word "isn't" is between them. This year's con was a god damn nightmare.

I've been going to AX for a couple of years now. This was my sixth year and I have to say this was the WORST Anime Expo I've been to.

Let's start with the lines. Now, it's always a joke that Anime Expo gets called LineCon because the lines are insane. Now, those lines are usually for panels, food trucks, and badge pickup/registration. AX didn't start mailing general admission badges until last year, and that was the year they started doing RFID badges. Last year was their FIRST YEAR using these and it went fine! This year however, no.

They didn't have enough security for 100,000 attendees and lines to get in were hours long. I was lucky it only took me 2 and a half hours. Some of my friends waited in line for 4 hours. Some people on twitter were saying as much as 8 hours. The next day they fixed it but it was disgusting to see a con that could clearly handle this situation well, as entry lines last year were fine, handle it so poorly.

And then there's staff and volunteers. Normally, I've only ever had issues with the convention center staff. Some of them are rude and misgender a lot of attendees. Which for me personally, I get it, since I'm biologically female, I present super femininely, and I don't wear pronoun pins. But I've seen staff misgender people with pronoun buttons the size of a baby's head and with bold text on it. While facing them dead on. And I can't really forgive that.

But this year some volunteers were hella rude which. I've honestly never experienced before it was pretty shocking hearing the stories. I don't blame volunteers for being frustrated considering how shitty this con is ran, but I don't think taking that frustration out on anyone is okay.

This con is the biggest in the US. I'd be far more forgiving of the hiccups if

1) The con was just starting out.

2) They were small.

3) They didn't have it under control last year.

4) The con didn’t passive aggressively blame attendees for their own incompetence, like they did with the long lines Day 1.

But that's not the case. This con is huge and has been going on for years. I know every con is going to have their struggles and that's fine. It's expected and it's totes okay. But this year was awful. They seemingly went back on things and it was worse than last year. Especially considering lines and security. That is unacceptable considering it was totally fine last year. I just. I do not understand how you can regress so much. This year's con was terrible and I'm not going back next year.

And now that we have the salt out of the way, we can talk about the good things. And I'll play some footage of the con in the background, so if you want to see it and you're just playing this in the background, go ahead and switch over, but I will try and describe Solmare's booth the best I can. I'd also like to thank some of the team members from Ceragon Dubs for joining me in this segment! Originally we were all gonna vlog together but. It was my first time vlogging so I was pretty lost so we're just gonna use the footage and not include audio. Enjoy my horrible cinnamon topography, guys.

It was honestly a really lovely booth and I really enjoyed it. It was just. So beautiful and I know that's really silly, but I loved it. The walls were lined with concept art for Obey Me! on one side, manga on the other, and then Moe Ninja Girls. The front section of the booth was tall and had banners for Obey Me and Moe Ninja Girls hanging and it was just. Idk why, it was such a unique design and to be honest, a lot of booths at AX are kinda the same-looking. The booth essentially had 4 parts: a survey area, the area for the Moe demo, a place for a small Obey Me demo, and a place to take a picture with the Obey Me cosplayer they had.

I played a couple of the Obey Me demos and I’m honestly excited for it. I do have to stay tho there wasn’t anything outside of Obey Me or Moe, so that kinda sucked. Although I do think they were handing out the Klaus headbands from last year one day, since I saw some people wearing them when my friends and I were outside rehearsing for our performance.

Also, this isn't an Ikemen fan account, but I have to give HUGE props to their company for the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. So there’s a space issue with AX and you’re not allowed to sit in the exhibitor’s hall, and there used to be two halls were you could sit and AX stupidly made one into the 21+ lounge, so there’s really only one place to sit. Ikemen had like. One third of their booth as a merch shop and the other ⅔ were a sitting area where they were playing their dubbed animated shorts and honestly, it was so nice have a place to unwind and it was great. I don’t think I got any pictures of it, but it was sooooo wonderful.

But anyway, that was Anime Expo. I’m not going next year, and this year kinda sucked as a last hurrah, but it’s like that sometimes.

ROUTE REVIEW

Okay, so let’s shift gears a bit. It’s time for a route review, yay!!! Today we’re gonna be talking about Hugo’s route! Now, we all know Hugo is one of my favorite dudes, but I have to say, his route was so incredibly well done.

It was well-written, the plot was compelling, and all the loose ends were tied up or had a satisfying ending. Not to mention they had a lot of good foreshadowing. The one that stays with me is them winning the promise pendants in a game competition and those necklaces later coming handy towards the end. Everything is cohesive and although it’s definitely not what I expected, it’s hands down one of my favorite routes in the game. It does jump around to places and the plot itself is kind of weird, but the writing team makes it work and make sense. But the way things tie into each other is well done and I love it for that.

I also love the romance in it. Sometimes you love a character, but their route doesn’t really do them justice. Falling in love with Hugo felt natural and I definitely fell for him while reading, and all this time later, I’m still as smitten with him as I was when I first read his route. The romance was also pretty cutesy, but then again I just love the whole bodyguard and protectee falling in love trope, but still.

So bottom line, Hugo’s route is one of my favorites in the game and I definitely recommend reading it.

CONCLUSION

Whew, we had a lot to talk about today! From here on, I’ll be back to my regular uploading schedule, so unless major things happen in a week, we won’t have long-ass episodes like this. I know this episode is kinda negative and I'm sorry but... you know, I had to, you know... Call out Anime Expo. As you guys know, I don't really like being negative, especially on the podcast but... I would be lying not to mention all the shitty things that happened and... I know a lot of you probably are interested in Anime Expo, since it is the biggest con in the US and it's in LA, which, I love LA. So I want you guys to know the full story of the con even though a lot of things were really terrible and I had a really bad experience this year. And next episode, I'm gonna make sure that everything's a lot more light-hearted and fun and positive and stuff, and kinda, you know, make up for this episode. But anyway. Thank you everyone for listening in this week! This is Mari, signing off.

#wizardess heart #shall we date wizardess heart #wizardess heart+#shall we date wizardess

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ninnetta153gaming · 4 years

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How to setup a lan network for gaming

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sacha616gaming-blog · 5 years

Text

VIDEO GAME Is Essential For the Achievements. Examine This particular To Find Out Precisely why

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terabitweb · 5 years

Text

Original Post from Amazon Security Author: Becca Crockett

Mark Ryland at the AWS Summit Berlin keynote

In the weeks leading up to re:Inforce, we’ll share conversations we’ve had with people at AWS who will be presenting at the event so you can learn more about them and some of the interesting work that they’re doing.

How long have you been at AWS and what’s your current role?

I’ve been at AWS for almost eight years. For the first six and a half years, I built the Solutions Architecture and Professional Services teams for AWS’s worldwide public sector sales organization—from five people when I joined, to many hundreds some years later. It was an amazing ride to build such a great team of cloud technology experts.

About a year and a half ago, I transitioned to the AWS Security team. On the Security team, I run a much smaller team called the Office of the CISO. We help manage interaction between our customers and the leadership team for AWS Security. In addition, we have a number of internal projects that we work on to improve interaction and information flow between the Security team and various AWS service teams, and between the AWS security team and the Amazon.com security team.

Why is your team called “the Office of the CISO”?

A lot of people want to talk to Steve Schmidt, our Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at AWS. If you want to talk to him, it’s very likely that you’re going to talk to me or to my team as a part of that process. There’s only one of him, and there are a few of us. We help Steve scale a bit, and help more customers have direct interaction with senior leadership in AWS Security.

We also provide guidance and leadership to the broader AWS security community, especially to the customer-facing side of AWS. For example, we’re leaders of the Security and Compliance Technical Field Community (TFC) for AWS. The Security TFC is made up of subject matter experts in solutions architecture, professional services, technical account management, and other technical disciplines. We help them to understand and communicate effectively with customers about important security and compliance topics, and to gather customer requirements and funnel them to the right places.

What’s your favorite part of your job?

I love communicating about technology — first diving deep to figure it out for myself, and then explaining it to others. And I love interacting with our customers, both to explain our platform and what we do, and, equally important, to get their feedback. We constantly get great input and great ideas from customers, and we try to leverage that feedback into continuous improvement of our products and services.

What does cloud security mean to you, personally? Why is it a topic you’re passionate about?

I remember being at a private conference on cybersecurity. It was government-oriented, and organized by a Washington DC-based think-tank. A number of senior government officials were talking about challenges in cybersecurity. In the middle of an intense discussion about the big challenges facing the industry, a former, very senior official in the U.S. Government intelligence community said (using a golfing colloquialism), “The great thing about the cloud is that it’s a Mulligan; it’s a do-over. When we make the cloud transition, we can finally do the right things when it comes to cybersecurity.”

There’s a lot of truth to that, just in terms of general IT modernization. The cloud simply makes security easier. Not “easy” — there are still challenges. But you’re much more equipped to do the right thing—to build automation, to build tooling, and to take full advantage of the base protections that are built into the platform. With a little bit of care, what you do is going to be better than what you did before. The responsibility that remains for you as the customer is still significant, but because everything is software-defined, you get far more visibility and control. Because everything is API-driven, you can automate just about everything.

Challenges remain; I want to reiterate that it’s never easy to do security right. But it’s so much easier when you don’t have to run the entire stack from the concrete floor up to the application, and when you can rely on the inherent visibility and control provided by a software-defined environment. In short, cloud migration represents the industry’s best opportunity for making big improvements in IT security. I love being in the center of that change for the better, and helping to make it real.

What initiatives are you currently working on that you’re particularly excited about?

Two things. First, we’re laser-focused on improving our AWS Identity and Access Management capabilities. They’re already very sophisticated and very powerful, but they are somewhat uneven across our services, and not as easy to use as they should be. I’m on the periphery of that work, but I’m actively involved in scoping out improvements. One recent example is a big advance in the capabilities of Service Control Policies (SCPs) within AWS Organizations. These now allow extremely fine-grained controls — as expressive as IAM polices—that can easily be applied globally across dozens or hundreds of AWS accounts. For example, you can express a global policy like “nobody but [some very special role] can attach an internet gateway to my VPCs, full stop.”

I’m also a networking geek, and another area I’ve been actively working on is improvements to our built-in networking security features. People have been asking for greater visibility and control over their VPCs. We have a lot of great features like security groups and network ACLs, but there’s a lot more we can and will do. For example, customers are looking for more visibility into what’s going on inside their VPCs beyond our existing VPC Flow Logs feature. We have an exciting announcement at our re:Inforce conference this week about some new capabilities in this area!

You’ll be speaking at re:Inforce about the security benefits of running EC2 instances on the AWS Nitro architecture. At a high level, what’s so innovative about Nitro, and how does it enable better security?

The EC2 Nitro architecture is a fundamental re-imagining of the best way to build a secure virtualization platform. I don’t think there’s anything else like it in the industry. We’ve taken a lot of the complicated software that’s needed for virtualization, which normally runs in a privileged copy of an operating system — the “domain 0,” or “dom0” to use Xen terminology, but present in all modern hypervisors — and we’ve completely eliminated it. All those features are now implemented by custom software and hardware in a set of powerful co-processor computers inside the same physical box as the main Intel processor system board. The Nitro computers present virtual devices to the mainboard as if they were actual hardware devices. You might say the main system board — despite its powerful Intel Xeon processor and big chunks of memory — is really the “co-processor” in these systems; I call it the “customer workload co-processor!” It’s the main Nitro controller and not the system mainboard that’s fundamentally in charge of the overall system, providing a root of trust and a secure layer between the mainboard and the outside world.

There are bunch of great security benefits that flow from this redesign. For example, with the elimination of the dom0 trusted operating system running on the mainboard, we’ve completely eliminated interactive access to these hosts. There’s no SSH, no RDP, no interactive software mechanisms that allow direct human access. I could go on and on, but I’ll stop there — you’ll have to come to my talk on Wednesday! And of course, we’ll post the video online afterward.

You’re also involved with a session to encourage customers to set up “state-of-the-art encryption.” In your view, what are some of the key elements of a “state-of-the-art” approach to encryption?

I came up with the original idea for the session, but was able to hand it off to an even better-suited speaker, so now I’ll just be there to enjoy it. Colm MacCarthaigh will be presenting. Colm is a senior principal engineer in the EC2 networking team, but he’s also the genius behind a number of important innovations in security and networking across AWS. For example, he did some of the original design work on the “shuffle sharding” techniques we use broadly, across AWS, to improve availability and resiliency for multi-tenanted services. Later, he came up with the idea, and, in a few weeks of intense coding, wrote the first version of S2N, our open source TLS implementation that provides far better security than the implementations typically used in the industry. He was also a significant contributor to the TLS 1.3 specification. I encourage everyone to follow him on Twitter, where you’ll learn all kinds of interesting things about cryptography, networking, and the like.

Now, to finally answer your question: Colm will be talking about how AWS does more and more encryption for you automatically, and how multiple layers of encryption can help address different kinds of threats. For example, without actually breaking TLS encryption, researchers have shown that they can figure out the content of an encrypted voice-over-IP (VOIP) call simply by analyzing the timing and size of the packets. So, wrapping TLS sessions inside of other encryption layers is a really good idea. Colm will talk about the importance of layered encryption, plus a bunch of other great topics: how AWS makes it easy to use encryption; where we do it automatically even if you don’t ask for it; how we’re inventing new, more secure means for key distribution; and fun stuff like that. It will be a blast!

What changes do you hope we’ll see across the global security and compliance landscape over the next 5 years?

I think that with innovations like the Nitro architecture for EC2, and with our commitment to continually improving and strengthening other security features and enabling greater automation around things like identity management and anomaly detection, we will come to a point where people will realize that the cloud, in almost every case, is more secure than an on-premises environment. I don’t mean to say that you couldn’t go outside of the cloud and build something secure (as long as you are willing to spend a ton of money). But as a general matter, cloud will become the default option for secure processing of very sensitive data.

We’re not quite there yet, in terms of widespread perception and understanding. There are still quite a few people who haven’t dug very far below the surface of “what is cloud.” There is still a common, visceral reaction to the idea of “public cloud” as being risky. People object to ideas like multitenancy, where you’re sharing physical infrastructure with other customers, as if it’s somehow inherently risky. There are risks, but they are so well mitigated, and we have so much experience controlling those risks, that they’re far outweighed by the big security benefits. Very consistently, as customers become more educated and experienced with the cloud, they tell us that they feel more secure in their cloud infrastructure than they did in their on-premises world. Still, that’s not currently the first reaction. People still start by thinking of the cloud as risky, and it takes time to educate them and change that perspective. So there’s still some important work ahead of us.

What’s your favorite way to relax?

It’s funny, now that I’m getting old, I’m reverting to some of the pursuits and hobbies of my youth. When I was a teenager I was passionate about cycling. I raced bicycles extensively at the regional and national level on both road and track from ages 14 to 18. A few minutes of my claim to 15 minutes of Warholian fame was used up by being in a two-man breakaway with 17-year-old Greg LeMond in a road race in Arizona, although he beat me and everyone else resoundingly in the end! I’ve ridden road bikes and done a bit of mountain biking over the years, but I’m getting back into it now and enjoying it immensely. Of course, there’s far more technology to play with these days, and I can’t resist. I splurged on an expensive pair of pedals with power meters built in, and so now I get detailed data from every ride that I can analyze to prove mathematically that I’m not in very good shape.

One of my other hobbies back in my teenage years was playing guitar — mostly folk-rock acoustic, but also electric and bass guitar in garage bands. That’s another activity I’ve started again. Fortunately, my kids, who are now around college-age plus or minus, all love the music from the 60s and 70s that I dust off and play, and they have great voices, so we have a lot of fun jamming and singing harmonies together.

What’s one thing that a visitor to your hometown of Washington, DC should experience?

The Washington DC area is famous for lots of great tourist attractions. But if you enjoy Michelin Guide-level dining experiences, I’d recommend a restaurant right in my neighborhood. It’s called L’Auberge Chez François, and it’s quite famous. It features Alsatian food (from the eastern region of France, along the German border). It’s an amazing restaurant that’s been there for almost 50 years, and it continues to draw a clientele from across the region and around the world. It’s always packed, so get reservations well in advance!

Want more AWS Security how-to content, news, and feature announcements? Follow us on Twitter.

Mark Ryland

Mark is the director of the Office of the CISO for AWS. He has more than 28 years of experience in the technology industry and has served in leadership roles in cybersecurity, software engineering, distributed systems, technology standardization and public policy. Prior to his current role, he served as the Director of Solution Architecture and Professional Services for the AWS World Public Sector team.

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Go to Source Author: Becca Crockett AWS Security Profiles: Mark Ryland, Director, Office of the CISO Original Post from Amazon Security Author: Becca Crockett In the weeks leading up to re:Inforce, we’ll share conversations we’ve had with people at AWS who will be presenting at the event so you can learn more about them and some of the interesting work that they’re doing.

#Amazon Security

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dorothydelgadillo · 6 years

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"Killer Inbound Results in the Most Competitive Industry Ft. Brian Greenberg" (Inbound Success Ep. 67)

How can a small business dominate digital lead gen in the most competitive industry when it comes to online marketing?

Brian J. Greenberg

This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, entrepreneur and author Brian J. Greenberg shares the digital marketing formula he used to take on the giants of the life insurance industry and drive growth for his small insurance startup.

Brian has documented his process in his book, "The Salesman Who Doesn't Sell," but you can learn all about them in today's episode.

Special Offer for Inbound Success Podcast Listeners:

Click here to get your free audio copy of "The Salesman Who Doesn't Sell"

Some highlights from our discussion include:

The life insurance industry is one of the top four most competitive industries to rank for in Google, but Brian has successfully grown traffic and leads to his website, often outranking major brand name competitors.

Inspired by a talk given by Will Reynolds of Seer Interactive, Brian focuses on doing "really company stuff" in his internet marketing (basically, he doesn't try and game the system).

He starts by building his website's link profile through high quality back links.

Using freelancers he finds through Upwork.com, Brian writes keyword-rich articles that he gets placed on third party websites through his online PR efforts.

He then shares those articles by linking to them on his website press page.

Brian doesn't mind paying outsourced writers or PR experts because he knows the value of a high quality backlink (which he measures using SEMRush).

He has a very thorough process for vetting outsourced writers that he uses to help with content creation.

Brian is a contributor to online publications like Entrepreneur and Forbes and those sites have given him very high quality backlinks.

He also writes long form answers on Quora and has found that these gain the attention of publications that then request to republish them.

Brian uses cash incentives to encourage his staff to solicit online reviews and testimonials as a way of establishing site authority and boosting lead conversions.

Brian measures ROI by determining the exact dollar value of a new backlink or online review.

His marketing system has resulted in True Blue Life Insurance having a lead to customer conversion rate that is 10x that of its competitors.

Listen to the podcast to learn, step-by-step, how to get killer inbound marketing results just like Brian has.

Transcript

Kathleen Booth (Host):Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. My name's Kathleen Booth and I am your host and today my guest is Brian Greenberg, who is the CEO and founder at True Blue Life Insurance and the author of, "The Salesman Who Doesn't Sell." Welcome, Brian.

Brian Greenberg (Guest): Hey, thanks for having me, Kathleen.

Brian and Kathleen recording this episode

Kathleen: Yeah, my pleasure. I got a little tongue tied there around saying True Blue. I think if I said it six times fast it would be a big jumble.

Brian, I was excited to have you because I've been an agency owner for many years prior to joining Impact, and in that time I've worked with a number of insurance agencies and brokerages. I really came to appreciate that from an Inbound marketing and even just a broader digital marketing standpoint, it's one of, if not the most competitive industries. Because so much money is poured into digital marketing in insurance. There's so many 800 pound gorillas in the industry, and especially for independent brokerages, it can be very, very difficult to rank and to succeed with digital.

You're somebody whose kind of figured it out, so much so that you've now written a book about what you're doing. So, before we dive too far into that, let's start by having you tell our audience a little bit about yourself and your background and what brought you here today.

About Brian Greenberg

Brian: Sure. I started in the internet marketing business back in 2003, so I'd kind of seen a lot of the evolution.

Now I've always earned my money, been a business owner and passive income, by bringing in traffic through Google and Yahoo and MSN. I've always been able to rank real well in any of the main key words I've been able to do in the past.

I have owned an organic internet marketing agency. I've owned several e-commerce agencies, there was one point where I owned about 8 different businesses at the same time. Kind of cut down on that, Kathleen.

Kathleen: I was going to say

Brian: Right now, I went into...

Kathleen: You had eight businesses at once? I had one and that was enough to keep me up at night.

About True Blue Life Insurance

Brian: Yeah. Then I decided to go into True Blue life insurance - the life insurance industry, which is very profitable. It's one of the top four most competitive industries on the internet and it was a big challenge.

I started a website a long time ago that had success and now I focus on it 100%. I am competing against a lot of big guys with a lot of deep pockets and knock on wood, I've been able to it very successfully for a long time now.

Kathleen: That's amazing. You know, I think what's interesting to me is there are so many other business owners out there. I have a lot of listeners who are business owners. Who are naturally interested in marketing, either because they have to be, or because their businesses are a size where they can't afford not to be. There's a lot of marketing folks who are helping to grow smaller businesses.

So, for somebody who's in a competitive industry, and looking at trying to get found online and to carve out a niche in the digital world, where do you start these days? You did it in life insurance, but again if you can do it there, I feel like you can do it anywhere. So walk me through what your approach is.

Brian's Approach to Inbound Marketing

Brian: Sure. The first thing I want to say you know, it was back in 2012 when Google came out with this penguin update and it kind of wiped out so many people that were doing too much organic SEO marketing.

So Will Reynolds, he's the owner of Seer Interactive, he did this beautiful presentation, where he said from now on you have to do real company stuff. He had the abbreviation RCS. He had a profanity at the end of it, but it's RCS and what it means is that you should only be doing things that a real company would do.

So, if you get offered somebody who is just going to do excessive log commenting or they're going to be spinning articles or they're going to put you in a private log network. You have to think, is that something a real company would do? So that's the first thing.

Kathleen: Its seems like an obvious one right but it's surprising how many people don't get that one.

Brian: Because people are contacted so often by SEO agencies that don't do things white hat. These days if you do things wrong you could actually end up hurting yourself, which is a terrible thing that I don't want people to do.

So what I like to do is kind of build a website's link profile. Alright, so you're kind of building a foundation. You know, obviously you have content but below that I believe you have links and I'm trying to build up an authority website.

So the first thing you should do is, you should go after all the easy links, all the directories in your markets, try to hit all the competitors. I don't know, get a listing on the better business bureau. Hit all the local directories and start getting known. And start getting those basic links and I think that's the good beginning of a link profile.

Kathleen: Yeah, you know I had the CMO of Yext, Jeff Rohrs on the podcast a few months back. They're such a great service for doing exactly what you just described, which is getting started, getting your directory links set up, doing it right, making sure they're clean and all the information is consistent across them. And it's so reasonable. So, easy way to get started.

So, let's say you've tackled that stage in the process, then what?

Building Site Authority Through Back Links

Brian: You want to start going after more authority links. High quality links. Now these days you don't need that many.

So, you want to pose yourself as an expert. I am a big fan of doing online PR these days. Now online PR, you kind of gotta put yourself out there a little bit, but what I like doing is writing articles. Articles that I basically have a PR person, or I got on to Upwork and I have them release it to all the blogs, all the media outlets, and do my best to get those published.

Now, there's a couple tricks on how to write these articles, to make them attractive to a lot of editors. Number one, you should always use a number in them if you can. It's definitely very helpful. "The Seven Ways This,"... "The Eight Ways This."

I'm writing an article right now, "The Five Life Insurance Game Changers for 2019."

I also recommend you use a catchy headline. I use a site called headlines.sharethrough.com. It is a free website, I have no idea why it's free, Kathleen. It's that good. You just kind of put your headline in there and it will give you a score, and it will also make suggestions on how to make it better. I've had great success with that.

But if you give that to a PR person who has a good Rolodex, they have a good list, and you shop the around, it's wonderful to see it get picked up. And sometimes you'll get some interviews coming in as well. That's a great basis to put yourself out there.

But you do as a business owner have to put yourself out there. It takes a little Chutzpah, to go after these types of links.

Using Online PR to Get Back Links

Kathleen: Now, you're writing these articles, do you have to already have published on your own site? Do you need to have examples of your work or are you really getting these articles published based purely on the merit of the article itself?

Brian: Primarily based on the merit of the article to start. You know, once you start getting these published, you start building up a press page.

I think that's a very important thing. I see so many people they'll get a great listing on Entrepreneur, or they'll do an interview at their local news station, but they won't put it on their website, which is a huge mistake.

Those things are worth a lot of money. Because look, people see that on your website, it builds credibility and it lasts for such a long time. Especially if you can get it in some sort of interview on video, it's nice.

I just want to stress the importance of putting up a press page and listing all the placements you've got. It is not a form of bragging, it is an absolute must, to make it easier to get more pick ups.

Kathleen: Yeah. You mentioned using either a PR firm or even going on Upwork and finding somebody who can distribute this kind of thing for you. I think for some small businesses, certainly working with PR firms can seem intimidating or it might seem too expensive.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you've done it, what has the cost been to get placements? What should someone expect to spend and are there reasonably priced ways to go about doing this?

Brian: The answer is yes. I think so many people who go to a big PR firm and people will charge you know at least $10,000.00 a month to take you on. You don't have to do that. There's so many people on free lancer websites, and that's a great way to find people. A lot of these people do have their own kind of websites that they do PR.

Although, I can do a release for about $2,000.00. But more importantly, I get the people to guarantee me a certain amount of pick ups.

So, I'll do a release, I use a company that's really good but I pay them $5,000.00, but they guarantee me at least 15 pickups, from authority websites that are real links back. Not just pickups that are a copy of a press release. They're real pickups.

So, if you do that you can value how much those links are.

Now in my book, a good link from a press release from an authority place is worth about $1,000.00 dollars to me. So I know how much I'm willing to pay for the links, and if you can get a PR firm to guarantee you a certain amount of links and they'll keep going until they get them, it's very hard to lose on that Kathleen.

Kathleen: Now, how are you measuring authority of these links?

Measuring Link Authority

Brian: I'm not too strict on them. I like to use SEMrush. I have one of the toolbars that I keep open. As long as the website has basically organic traffic cost. I love this statistic.

I use SEMrush and you know what they do? They take the keywords that you rank for and they convert it to if you were to pay for it on paper click, how much it's worth. So I know if the website is getting some traffic, if they're indexed, it's a valuable link. But more importantly Kathleen, it's an organic link, okay?

So, even if it's not on that great of a website or that much of an authority of a website, it's a natural link and starts building up that link profile and it's worth actually a lot.

Even these podcasts that I'm doing, Kathleen, is a way to build links. So you know a lot of people that run podcasts, they post the article and they'll link to my websites. Those are extremely valuable links that real companies do.

Kathleen: Alright, I'm so glad you brought that up because, it's interesting, the push back that I often hear from business owners, when you say things like you need to write an article and get it published out there, a lot of times what I hear is, but I'm not a great writer. Or I don't like to write, or I can't write. And you know, I think it's great to know that there are options.

Using Outsourced Writers

Kathleen: You don't have to always write. You could go on podcasts and be a guest, if you find the right podcast with the right fit. And that's another way of doing this, so. Good point that you made there.

Brian: I also want to say this. As a business owner you maybe a great writer, you may not. You don't have to write all your own articles. You know I have to have a knowledge of how to write articles. I read some books on writing and I practiced it. I love the book by Stephen King on writing well. Great book. But I hire free lancers to write articles. I do. Alright.

You know it's very hard to keep generating these articles and run a business. I like to find freelancers. I do it on Upwork.com. You hire these people very similar to hiring normal employees.

I like to get them on the phone. I interview them. When I give them an article, I'll actually have a phone call with them, for about a half an hour or an hour, and I'll go over all the content, and they'll provide it back to me. We'll massage it and make sure it's great, and then release it, because they're writing in your voice. You have to make sure you can edit it.

But yes, you don't have to write them yourself, Kathleen. You can hire free lancers. There's a lot of firms that do so. So I definitely encourage people to do that.

Kathleen: I'm glad you brought that up as well, because I think there's different ways of outsourcing article creation, and I've certainly had my experience with most of them.

What I've seen is that where business owners outsource and they say, for example your article, Seven Insurance Game Changers for 2019. You know, if you just put something on Upwork and said I want somebody to write something on this, and you said go and write it, what you would get back would probably be, forgive my language, but total crap.

Whereas, if you're outsourcing writing and you're willing to either write an outline with your key points, you are after all the subject matter expert, or if you're willing to be interviewed and find a writer who has a journalism background, often they can tease it out of you. I think taking a completely hands off approach is a tremendous, tremendous mistake.

Brian: Yeah. You know it's about quality, not quantity. Absolutely.

And yeah, I've made those mistakes too, Kathleen. I've hired people on a lot of these platforms iwriter, I don't know a bunch of them. You can't really just give somebody a topic and let them run with it. It's just not a good practice.

What I've learned is that you want to find somebody you have a rapport with. And absolutely speak with them. If you're not going to be speaking with them verbally over the telephone, it's not really worth doing. You have to treat them almost like they're an employee.

I like to find people that are quality writers, and I stick with them. Right. All these freelancers want long term relationships, and I find a couple and I stick with them.

And absolutely keep having phone calls, get them on video, get them on zoom, and build a relationship with a writer because its so important if they write in your voice.

And again, it's not about quantity. You don't want to pump these out. They have to be quality. Not little short blog posts, either. I like to write actual pages between 800 words and 1500 words.

Kathleen: Yeah. Amen, on sticking with the writers, because it's like hiring anybody. Having that ramp up period can be painful and expensive and once you've gotten somebody to the point where they're doing the job you need them to do, hold on to them.

So, alright. You're working on your back links, you're producing these articles, you're getting somebody to help distribute them out, so that you can get published elsewhere. What comes next?

Contributing Guest Articles as a Back Linking Strategy

Brian: Once you start building up that press page, there's a few different things you can do.

I like to apply to become an editor, or a contributor. So right now I'm a contributor at Entrepeneur.com. And I am also on Forbes.com. There's a couple industry magazines that kind of come to me as well.

I like to join organizations. If you can qualify for an organization, do it. I'm a member of the Million Dollar Roundtable of Insurance. Top 1% of financial advisors in the world. They keep coming to me and I write articles for them or they interview me for articles.

I'm a member of the Young Entrepreneurship Council. They also have the Forbes Council. On those they have questions you can answer and you can get them published all over the web.

So join organizations.

I think sponsoring people is another great thing that you can do. You can just do a Google search for sponsors and find something locally, but make sure that they give you a link.

One of the main things is I want to see if they're giving me a back link. I'll write testimonials for all the companies I do business with and I'll value them higher if they'll give me a link. I'm always after them.

Now, some people say, “Oh, don't go after no follow links.” I'm kind of from the thinking of that I'm fine with no follow links.

Do they help? I think they do. I think they build up your overall link profile. If you don't have a certain amount of no follow links, you're going to stand out in the Google algorithm as an unnatural link profile. No follow, follow, doesn't matter.

Redirects, you'll want redirects. If you hover over that link, you want it to go to your website not a redirect. But every link that you build, everything you do, all I can say is everything I do, I'm looking for those link backs.

Participating in Contributor Programs

Kathleen: So let's go back to the beginning of what you just said, which was that you apply to be a contributor. And you talked about Entrepreneur and Forbes and those are two very well known, well regarded publications. I would imagine most business owners would be really excited to be able to contribute articles there.

How hard is that to do? What's involved in that process?

Brian: You have to have a little body of work. Again, it's so much as the press page. All these places they actually have a forum you'd be so surprised that you can apply to become a contributor. They don't hide it. You can say what your expertise is if you have an expertise in a certain niche, all the better. And if you have a body of work, these people want content.

The other thing they're looking for Kathleen is what kind of following do you have? If you write an article they want people to come to the website.

So if I'm building up a social media profile or my email list, I have 30,000 Twitter followers and 4,000 Facebook followers and I have an email list of 40,000, let these guys know then in the application. Huge.

So those are the kinds of things that they're looking for to become a contributor. I do want to say, well a couple of other things, but I just want to make sure that I give you a chance in case you have questions.

Kathleen: I'm curious about this because I've looked into these contributor programs before and what has stopped me from digging further is, well number one, I'm not sure that I could generate enough articles with enough frequency on top of doing my podcast.

So I'm curious is there an expectation for how often you contribute? Is it however often you want to? How does the program work once you're in? And is it different from publication?

Brian: I think they do want to a regular contributor, I would definitely say you're willing to do it for a month to begin. Use a freelancer to get started. What I found is though they don't really hold you to it.

So if you give them a couple of articles, you can take a break for three months. Once you're in, you're in. They give you access to their admin console and you can submit articles whenever you want. So let them know that you want to do it for a month to begin. I just want to let people know that I've never had anyone holds me to it.

Kathleen: That's good to know. So you said you had a few more things you wanted to add and I kind of interrupted you there. Let's go with what you were going to say.

Other Back Linking Shortcuts

Brian: All right. There's a couple of shortcuts that I've been using lately.

One is Quora. Quora is becoming a wonderful place to submit and contribute content. If you can write a really nice answer and format it a certain way, it actually gets picked up. I've had pick ups across the board on Forbes and sometimes you get picked up on Time, you get picked up on AOL. It's amazing how many people pick up Quora articles.

You could also publish them on Medium and then you can build up a profile that way. So you don't really necessarily have to be a contributor to build up your kind of portfolio of work.

When you're going on Quora, it's worth learning and you can see the people that are getting picked up, see the format that they're using and you put a link in those and you put a link back to your website and they let you have that.

So I've gotten so many articles also published using Quora. Huge. I think it's kind of a secret that not many people talk about, but I'd like to share it with your listeners.

The other is, I know it's kind of an old thing, but Help A Reporter Out (HARO), you can get a lot of pickups from that. It's such a pain to keep up with it. Although if you outsource it to a freelancer that really speaks in your voice and at least let them run with it, you can get pickups that way.

Kathleen: Yeah, I get those HARO emails several times a day and they are gold mines and I have definitely gotten written up in some pretty big publications, but man, is it like drinking from the firehose?

So now we can't keep going without stopping for a minute and I got to ask you to go into a little bit more detail on this Quora stuff because you are actually the first person who's talked about this on my podcast and I am always a sucker for these new channels and new strategies.

So when you say you got to look at the way they format it, can you get detailed for a minute there and talk through that?

Brian: Yeah, you have to format it. It's coming from you, so it has to be I and pose yourself as the expert. Those are huge.

So right when the beginning you can say, look I've been doing this for 15 years. I've earned $50 million in revenue. Pose yourself as the expert and then organize it like a very good article.

Now, there's a limit. You never want to go over a thousand words. The sweet spot is about 800 words.

You want to give specifics, you want to organize it kind of with the headings on there and then they have kind of like internal blogs on Quora and you can submit it there as well.

So that's the secondary thing you should do. They kind of have industry specific blogs in core that you can post your stuff.

And then I just got to tell you, you'd be so surprised of how many editors and online publications are just monitoring Quora. It's so surprising, but go through some of these people that are contributing quite a bit and you can look in their profile and you can see what articles were picked up. They let you see it. And not only that Kathleen, I mean the traffic they can come from it is immense.

It is kind of a lot of people may answer a question and you may not get the top spot but sometimes you will and when you do it it's so worth it.

Yeah, go through there, find a question that you could answer, do your best. Have a freelancer help you with it and it's a great way to get those very elusive links without having to become a contributor.

Now, you're not going to get published every time, but I'd say for me it's been about 50% of the time.

Kathleen: Wow. Now, are you always creating original content for Quora or are you ever taking content you've published on your own website, for example, and repurposing it?

Brian: I like to do original content and what I'll also do is I'll edit the article a little bit and also post it on Medium and that seems to be the formula.

There's a few internet marketing firms, SEO firms that are kind of doing this under the radar and this is the ingredients to do so. Quora, then Medium, and then you also publish on your LinkedIn.

All right, that's another group I think. Connect with all the editors. It's a simple thing. Very few people turn people down on LinkedIn and then you post it on your LinkedIn and that's a good thing. Also post it on your Twitter and Facebook and boom, let it run from there.

Kathleen: Yeah, that's just so interesting. I'm going to have to test this out now because I have answered questions on Quora, but I've never really written them up like an article, so I'm curious to see what's going to happen if I try that. All right, what's the next step? We got our guest posts, we got our our back links, our press page. What comes next?

Brian: You're starting to build up an authority website and most people are not in that competitive industry like I am. So just a few of those links and you're going to be way ahead of your competitors. You put a little bit of work and then you hired some writers, maybe hired some PR people to distribute.

The next thing is working on your website and conversion rate optimization. I like building up reviews, that's my thing. I'm in the insurance industry and people stereotypically have a terrible reputation.

Using Online Reviews to Drive Conversions

Brian: I want to be the good guy in the industry. So I've always gone after reviews and the more I get the better.

I value a review that on my own website at about $100 a piece and once I get a good review on my website I give them that exact same comment and I ask them to put it on Google Business or the Better Business Bureau. Those are my two, sometimes Facebook. Same comment, just give it to them and overwhelmingly people will give me additional reviews.

Kathleen: Now you've mentioned about Better Business Bureau twice and I have to ask you, why the BBB? And I think I might know the answer, but I'm curious to see what you say.

Brian: Well people have done studies and I've actually done a study myself. I paid 1500 people to do a survey and I asked them what is the most credible source that you would go to? Which one has the most weight? And I did Yelp, then I did a Google Business, the Better Business Bureau, Facebook.

Better Business Bureau wins overwhelmingly. Not only that, it's inexpensive to get in. It's like $550 to get a membership, although they give you a seal. A beautiful seal on your website and that seal is one of the best seals you can get to increase conversion rates. So it's a double pop there.

And then if you can start getting reviews on the Better Business Bureau and an A plus rating, which you kind of get automatically at start, when people look your business up and overwhelmingly people will, they'll still look up your name followed by reviews or complaints.

I've done studies on this and they do do that and the Better Business Bureau comes up number one and two and they'll also display the stars. And usually that's the tipping point.

They'll read your website, they'll read your services, they'll look you up. And then boom, Better Business Bureau wonderful. I trust this company.

Kathleen: Yeah, it's interesting. There's been a lot of chatter in search engine optimization forums lately about whether Google is factoring in particularly Better Business Bureau reviews into its ranking algorithm. And I just read recently that they said they're not, but then there's all these SEOs who are saying, well, they might say that, but the data shows that they are. And so it's something that's been on my radar of, Oh, I kind of need to keep watching this because it's an interesting area that not a lot of companies focus, which if it is a ranking factor, it could be a major opportunity.

Brian: I don't want to speculate on that Kathleen. I do believe so. I know the Better Business Bureau gives a link back and I do believe that that link back is very valuable.

I'd be surprised if they didn't look at the ratings and I'd be surprised if they didn't look at the report, whether it's an A, B or C company and how many complaints. It'd be smart for them to do so. I

also have the beliefs that Google actually ranks websites higher on the website statistics of how many people come to your website and stay on your website and how many page views and whether they go back and do another search for another company.

Back in the day and Google I think it was called In The Plex, where they Google would measure what is a successful search? A successful search is when people type something into Google, go to a website and don't do another search. They found what they were looking for. And I've had pages on my website that I've had great statistics on into how many pages and time and those pages for me rank the best, they just do.

Kathleen: Yeah. I always like to say that Google's in the business of delivering the best answer the fastest and that's why page load times and quality of information, which you spoke to and that they measure quality of information, exactly by what you said, which is how many people bounce, how long do they spend on the page, that sort of thing.

Those are really key metrics for them because they're in a competitive business just like we are even though they're completely killing it, but that's the reason they're killing it, is that they look at that stuff.

Brian: I agree. I think in the past so many people were thinking about technical SEO and in this one bothers me to do technical SEO, although I think Google keeps moving away from it a little bit. They're looking more at those statistics and how it serves the user.

So I like to do a link profile and then the quality content that I want to answer the user's question, I want them to stay on my website. And the more I do that, the higher rank.

I'm ranking against big companies, MetLife and State Farm and then also companies that have been getting funding, getting $180 million in funding, one of my competitors got. The other one got $50 million and I'm able to compete with them.

So it's an even playing field on the internet and you could have a lot of fun if you put a little bit of work in it.

Kathleen: Yeah, and I think time and time again, the data shows and the results show that if you solve for the user, you get better results than if you try and solve for the search engine. Because search engines change their rules all the time.

You talked about testimonials. Do you have a process for getting testimonials because I know lots of companies like the idea of getting them, but then they freeze and sort of fall into paralysis at the thought of how they're going to get them.

Brian: I touched on them a little bit. I value a review that comes into my website at $100 and these are reviews that I control. If someone gives me a bad review, I can fix it. I can contact the customer or I can choose not to display it on my website.

I think that's something that everyone should do. I think so many people are scared to go out and ask them to review on my Google Business, to the Better Business Bureau because the fear of getting a bad review.

Now, I also want to say I value a review on the Better Business Bureau or Google or any of these third party websites at $250 a piece plus maybe $50 each additional year because they stay on there.

So I like to incentivize my team, my employees. I bonus them on the reviews that they get. I do believe that if you have a business that you focus on getting reviews, you're almost kind of like required to do a great ethical, honest and transparent business focused on customer service and I love that. So I like it when the more people that focus on reviews.

I let my customers ask for the reviews. I have an automated process, but it comes from my sales team. I use ActiveCampaign. After I've delivered the service, I send them an email on the fourth, the eighth, and the twelfth day, and I make it very easy in the email.

I have little stars, and if they click a star, they go to the review page. Alright? I have them enter in a comment. I like the stars and the comment, that way on my website I can include schema, or rich snippets, that show up in the search engines.

And if they give me a five star review, I give them that exact comment in another email from the agent, automated, Kathleen. And it has the exact link for them enter in the review. Don't send them to your main Better Business Bureau page or just do a Google search.

There's particular URLs that you can give so it gives them the pop-up right then and there, so they can put the star and the comment. Don't make people click around. The easier it is, the better.

And if you deliver great service, it invokes the theory of reciprocity and people want to help you. And especially if it comes from the person that helped them, and it's a personal thing, and they built a relationship, they're worth so much, Kathleen.

I have seen my conversion rates, and I have seen so many customers call me and say they chose me, they chose our company, because of all the great reviews.

Measuring ROI

Kathleen: Now, one thing that I find really interesting is that a couple of times now, you've referenced whether it's what a review is worth to you, or what an article or a backlink is worth to you. How important is it to your process, to understand the value of those things?

Brian: It's so important. I think it's hard to measure ROI on these things, right? There's a lot of studies. Let's say you get a few five star reviews on Yelp, it'll increase the reservations of a restaurant by 10%. Look at Amazon, people are just scurrying to get reviews for their products to increase their sales.

I like putting a value in there so people know the value of it. For me, look, if I'm getting a hundred dollars for each review, and 250 dollars for another review, I measure on the increased conversion rate, but I also know how much I can bonus my employees for it.

I'll run a special for my employees that equates to about 50 dollars per review that they get from their clients. Normally, it's 25 dollars. But it's a great bonus for my team, and I track it, and I let people know who's winning.

It's definitely an initiative and a main thing in my business. And if you know the value, I think that you can encourage your team to do so and make it more of an initiative for your company.

Kathleen: Yeah. I see, very often, companies that offer customers some sort of bonus, whether it's a gift card or what have you, for leaving a review. But I really like the approach of offering that to your employees. Because ultimately if your customer is giving the review and not getting paid, it certainly is more authentic.

You're going to probably get better reviews because they'll be from people who actually really care about your business, and it's great to have your team really invested.

Brian: Absolutely. Look, I've tried the incentives, and it's a tricky path. I'll offer the incentives for an honest review, but I'll only do it for the review on my own website. But yeah, you're exactly right. I found so much more value in bonusing my team, rather than incentivizing the customer.

I don't know the logic behind it, I think has to do a lot with the reciprocity principle. But yeah, boy, it's a great way to do it.

And also, you want to bonus your team so they have the focus of giving great customer service, and that's what builds the relationship, and it builds lifetime value to the customers, and it starts building and growing your business for the longterm.

Brian's Results

Kathleen: You've talked about so many different and really interesting ways that you've built up your website's authority, and that's really how you get the traffic to the site, and then building up your credibility through reviews and testimonials.

Can you talk a little bit about the results you've gotten from this? When did you start doing this for True Blue? How long did it take for you to start to see results in, and what do those results look like today in your very competitive industry?

Brian: Look, I've seen growth every year, right? I think a few years ago, I was doing a million dollars in revenue. Now I'm doing five, six million dollars in revenue, and it's very profitable. Every time it goes up.

Now one of the ways to keep it going up is increased conversion rates. Kathleen, my conversion rate compared to my competitor's is about 10 times more.

Kathleen: Wow.

Brian: A lot of my competitors are lead generators, and they'll just collect someone's name, email, and phone, to run an insurance quote and those leads aren't worth very much. They'll close maybe 7% of those.

In my business, I collect application requests. I let people run a quote, I give them all the information, I let them view all the reviews. Not only from the customers, but I have people review the actual insurance companies that they buy from.

They're able to do a lot of the research, similar to how they would do it on Amazon when picking a product. So when I get somebody apply, I'm closing about 25 to 30% of them.

Kathleen: You're talking about, now, lead to customer conversion?

Brian: Lead to customer, yes. Exactly. While my competitors are closing seven, I'm closing close to 30, which means I don't have to have that many salespeople. My competitors need to have four or five times more salespeople just to handle that volume.

I got happier employees, my employees love working for us. We're dealing with customers that want to buy from us, too. We're not chasing down customers. They're happy with us, and they've chosen us. So it's a great way to do business.

Kathleen: Now, you've got this really high lead to customer conversion rate, and it sounds like a good part of what's contributing to that is the way you've built out your site and the fact that you've really turned it into a resource center for them to do their research, and you're keeping them on your site while they're doing it which is always a great thing.

How much of that conversion rate is being influenced by any sort of automated lead nurturing you're doing, and how much is being influenced by direct sales with your team?

Brian: It's a little cyclical in my company. Sometimes they have insurance products that are agent-less. Those are great, Kathleen. People go online and they'll do it. It's an easy sale. You don't really have to pay commissions to anybody, you get them all.

Most of the leads that come in, I have one of my sales team collect all the information, just because there's private information that we collect; social security number, and drivers license, and health histories, certain things we don't really want to ask online.

As far as nurturing, yeah, look, we're asking for a lot of personal information for insurance so we let people save their quotes. We'll have them enter their email but not their phone.

We want to be the good guys, and we'll send them a series of emails. We have a series of emails that goes out to everybody, even the people that applied that we couldn't contact. The more emails, the better. The more honest they are, the better. The more personable they are, the better.

I like to assign an agent to somebody, I like to give them a picture of the agent. I like to give them the agent's LinkedIn profile. I like to let them see all the reviews that that agent has gotten, and I'll also include links to the Better Business Bureau and Google.

But yeah, you have to have an automated system to chase down those customers. I'm constantly surprised at how many people respond to the tenth email or the eighth call.

Kathleen: Yeah, persistence pays off, as long as it's done in a way that's not really annoying. Well, fascinating. And you've actually written about a lot of what you're talking about now in your book, correct?

The Salesman Who Doesn't Sell

Brian: Absolutely. I've leveraged the book to do a lot of marketing for my businesses. My goal necessarily wasn't to make a lot of money selling the book. I just wanted to give out the information. I've been very generous and liberal in giving out all the secrets. I don't want people to say, "Oh, he was too general." So I've given away as much as I can.

I want to give your listeners a free copy of the audiobook, my website brianjgreenberg.com/inboundsuccess.

Kathleen: Awesome.

Brian: For anybody that wants to go in there, download the book, I hope they find value from it.

Kathleen: Well, I'll download it because I love audiobooks. I listen to everything on Audible at 2x speeds. I'll hear what you sound like talking very fast.

The book is The Salesman Who Doesn't Sell. So if anybody is really curious about an actionable way to do some of what Brian's doing, that's a great thing to check out, and I will put the link that you just mentioned in the show notes.

Get your free audio copy of "The Salesman Who Doesn't Sell" at brianjgreenberg.com/inboundsuccess

Kathleen's Two Questions

Kathleen: Before we wrap up, I've got two questions for you that I always ask everyone I interview. And I'm interested to hear what you have to say as somebody who's come from an insurance background, even though it sounds like you're a better marketer than a lot of marketers.

The first one is, a company or individual, who do you think is doing, in non-marketing, really well right now?

Brian: In my business, there's a company called NerdWallet, and they started doing commercials right now. They're giving away such customer-friendly content. I love it when people give tables, and graphs, and they give recommendations. And they've been doing such a good job with it and building up so much of a link profile, and they get picked up so often from great publications, and they're ranking so well. It's almost bothersome to me. They've got a great team of content writers, and I have a lot of respect for them.

Kathleen: So check out NerdWallet if you want to see a really good example.

And then the next question is ... And this one's going to be really interesting, for me at least. The thing that I've observed is that the world of digital marketing just changes so fast. As soon as you figure out how to do SEO, the rules of the game change, et cetera. And I'm in marketing, so it's my job to be on top of it all day every day, and I still find it challenging.

So for a guy whose business is not in marketing, although you certainly have mastered it, how do you make sure that you stay up to date and on top of all the latest thinking in the world of digital marketing?

Brian: Good question. I watch Barry Schwartz's weekly video recaps on Fridays. I think he does a great job. I like seeing everything that's coming out, and I get most of my news that way, Kathleen. What I like to do is, I like to do everything per Google's guidelines and do everything on the up and up. That way, every time Google comes out with an algorithm update ... knock on wood ... The majority of time, I'll see my website go up.

I don't want the stress of having these Google updates and having myself be penalized. I don't want it. So I play the longterm game, and I think as long as you're doing everything that real companies do, real company stuff, you're going to be alright. I don't follow too many people, I'm not on everything all the time. But I like to do a general swipe of it, and I get most of it from Barry Schwartz.

Kathleen: Yeah. I follow Barry Schwartz as well, and he is with, if I'm remembering correctly ... Is it Search Engine Roundtable?

Brian: Yeah, Search Engine Roundtable.

Kathleen: He has a phenomenal email newsletter, and I definitely follow him on Twitter. Because if you want the breaking SEO news, that guy manages to somehow be everywhere at once, and he knows everything that's going on with Google, at least it feels like.

Brian: Yeah, he knows everybody there.

Kathleen: He does, he does. He also posts some really cool pictures of different Google offices around the world, which I always think are fun to see.

Brian: I think Moz's Whiteboard Friday is really good. I've kind of stopped watching those since Rand left, a little bit.

Kathleen: I know. But do you follow him at his new website, SparkToro?

Brian: I do. Yeah, he has some great posts. I definitely am on his newsletter, and I don't miss those. He's such an honest guy.

Kathleen: Oh, he is.

Brian: Such inside info.

Kathleen: He's writing some of the best thought leadership on no-click searches right now, or what he likes to call usurp SEO. It's so good.

Brian: Interesting.

Kathleen: I could geek-out over this for hours, but we must wrap up.

How to Reach Brian

Kathleen: So if someone wants to talk to you, learn more about what you've done, you've shared the URL. I'm going to ask you to say it again, and then any other information you want to share about the best way for people to find you online.

Brian: Sure, brianjgreenberg.com/inboundsuccess and my main website, truebluelifeinsurance.com. You can see what we're doing over there and how we're leveraging the reviews and putting people in the sales funnel.

Kathleen: Thank you, that's great, and this has been a lot of fun. I've definitely learned a few new things that I'm going to try out, including Quora for sure. I appreciate it, Brian.

Kathleen: If you're listening, and you found this valuable, you know what to do. Please leave the podcast a review on Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice. And as always, if you know someone else doing kick-ass inbound marketing work, Tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Thanks, Brian.

Brian: Thank you.

Want to stay updated when the podcast is released?

Drop us your name and email address below and we’ll send you the show notes every Monday!

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/inbound-marketing-results-competitive-industry-brian-greenberg

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Top 10 Things To Do in Karakol (That Don’t Involve Trekking)

Karakol is the main city in the Issyk-Kul region of Kyrgyzstan and is mostly known for being a jumping-off point for the surrounding Tian Shan Mountains and the popular treks to Ala-Kul lake, Altyn Arashan hot springs and the new treks in the village of Jyrgalan.

But, there are so many things to do in Karakol itself, many of which don’t even involve trekking!

I have to admit, when we first visited Karakol in 2013, we were there to do what most people do – spend the night and go trekking in the mountains the next day. However, having returned to the city this year, we’ve now learned about some new (and really cool) things to see and do in and around Karakol.

Whether you’re a trekker, or not, spend a couple of days and soak up all that the city and its surroundings have to offer. Here’s my list of 10 non-trekking things to check out when you’re in Karakol, Kyrgyzstan.

“Ok, Nick, that’s enough noodles!” Learning to make ashlanfu with Hamida was a highlight of our trip to Karakol

1. Visit a Dungan Village & Have a Feast

Did you know that many of the residents of Karakol are actually Dungan people? These are a group of Arab-Chinese Muslims who fled their homes in China during the revolution against the Buddhists in 1877. They crossed the towering Tian Shan Mountain range and arrived in Karakol. With them, they brought religion, culture and cuisine.

In just 15 minutes by car, you’ll arrive in the Dungan village of Yrdyk, with a population of 3,000 people. This day tour brings you to the local mosque (only men are allowed inside), the Dungan museum which is run by the sweetest old man, and finally, to a family home for a feast with Hamida as the host.

Mosque in the Village of Yrdyk

First, you’ll be able to see how the popular (and delicious!) local ashlamfu noodle dish is made, and will be able to construct one yourself. From there, you’ll make your way into Hamida’s living room where you’ll sit on colourful carpets and wait for your feast to arrive.

There are a minimum of 8 homemade dishes served, all of which are incredibly flavourful and completely different from traditional Kyrgyz food. You will be absolutely stuffed and satisfied after this meal!

Don’t miss this tour to the Dungan Village of Yrdyk, we highly recommend it.

Look at this massive spread of food! The feast at Hamida’s home was delicious

To book this tour, contact the wonderful people at Destination Karakol, either by phone (+996 558 508 808), Facebook Message, or by visiting their office, which is located right next to Fat Cat Cafe at 22, Gagarin Street. The cost of the tour, including guide, transportation, mosque visit, museum visit and traditional Dungan meal is $20 / person.

2. Sip Coffee & Beer at Fat Cat Cafe

Since opening in 2016, Fat Cat Cafe has proved itself to be an excellent addition to the food and drink scene in Karakol. Here you can order a latte, homemade pizza, chocolate cake, or even an IPA craft beer! All of which can be enjoyed on the outdoor patio.

Zhamilia is the owner, and although she is Kyrgyz, she spent some years living in Germany earning her Masters Degree. When you eat or drink at this cafe, not only will you be impressed by the food and drinks, but, you’ll be putting your money towards the dreams of a wonderful woman, and the community she supports.

The beautiful Zhamilia at Fat Cat Cafe

Among other things, Fat Cat Cafe supports the school supply drive for underprivileged kids in the nearby villages, and teaches baking skills to women who are victims of domestic abuse. In fact, Zhamilia’s mother opened the NGO to empower, educate and encourage women.

The motto at Fat Cat Cafe is ““Coffee, Food and Giving Back”.

Although there are a few cafes in Karakol, we recommend Fat Cat for all of the reasons listed above! A latte at the cafe goes for $2, while a 500ml IPA beer will set you back just $2 as well! The prices here are very fair. To learn more about Fat Cat Cafe, check out their Facebook Page or call them at +996 777 066 603. This cafe is located right beside the Destination Karakol office

3. Hop On a Boat For a Sunset Cruise

Lake Issyk-Kul is the second largest lake in the world, and is the most popular tourist site in Kyrgyzstan, for good reason. The lake is absolutely gorgeous and is a great place to cool off during those hot Kyrgyzstan summers.

Even though Lake Issyk-Kul is surrounded by snow-capped mountains, this endoheric lake never freezes!

The sandy beaches and rocky shoreline are beautiful, but getting out on the water is what it’s all about. Grab some friends and head out on a sunset cruise. Sip on a beer and watch the sun dip behind the mountains.

Sunset with beers on the lake, nothing better than that!

This is the perfect way to end the day in Karakol.

Sunset cruises can be organized and booked through the Destination Karakol office in town. Call them at +996 558 508 808, send them an email [email protected], or check out their Facebook Page. In general, the cruise costs 1,200 som ($17) / person, which includes a free beer and transport from your hotel. A minimum of 8 people are required, with the maximum being 50!

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4. Go On a Free Walking Tour

A great way to see all of the top monuments and neighbourhoods of Karakol is by joining the new free walking tour on offer with Destination Karakol. Free walking tours have been available all over the world for a very long time, and finally there is one in here! Each time we’ve joined a walking tour around the world, we’ve learned something new and had a great experience, and it was no different with this one.

Dungan Mosque in the city of Karakol – it was built without using any nails!

Now, it’s true that Karakol may not have as many must-see sights or historic buildings as, say, Edinburgh, Salta, Berlin or Medellín, but there are still many hidden gems in the city.

Meet up with your guide and set off to see the Dungan Mosque which took 3 years to build…without using a single nail! You’ll also visit the Russian Orthodox Holy Trinity Church, an antique shop, the fruit and vegetable market and the Russian Quarter with its gingerbread looking houses.

The Russian Orthodox Holy Trinity church on a cloudy day in Karakol

The walking tour is a good way to get your bearings of the city, while learning about some of the history of Karakol as well.

Although the Free Walking Tour is “free”, tips are appreciated if you were happy with the service. You can sign up for the tour at the Destination Karakol office. Visit them at 22, Gagarin Street, call them at+996 558 508 808, or check out their Facebook Page.

5. Make (and Eat) Laghman Noodles

Laghman noodles can be found all around Central Asia, and in parts of China as well. We ate countless bowls of laghman soup with mutton when we were teaching English in Yangzhou, China. It was our go-to meal!

This special type of noodle is rolled very thin before being pulled and stretched over and over again, resulting in a very long noodle that looks like a string. The noodles are added to spicy broths to make a delicious soup, or fried with sauce, vegetables and meat. No matter which type of laghman you choose to eat, it’ll be tasty!

Watching the expert stretch out the noodles for laghman soup, before giving it a try ourselves

If you’ve never seen laghman noodles rolled, pulled and stretched (of if you’ve never sampled laghman soup) then you definitely need to check out this tour.

You’ll meet up with Gulya the host who will give you a demonstration about noodle stretching, before you’re able to give it a try yourself! Once all of the noodles are pulled, Gulya will create a delicious beef laghman soup for you, plus you’ll enjoy some mantis, vegetables and bread.

If you’re interested in making laghman noodles, and eating the delicious soup, you can arrange this tour with Destination Karakol. The tour includes transportation, the noodle rolling lesson and the meal itself. The cost is $15 / person.

6. Barter For Cattle at the Animal Market

Try to time your trip to Karakol for a weekend! Every Sunday, around 2 kilometers outside of the city, you’ll find hundreds of Kyrgyz people selling, swapping and bartering for livestock. Although you’re probably not in the market for any goats, sheep, cows, pigs and horses (or are you?), this is a unique experience showcasing traditional Kyrgyz life, an experience that shouldn’t be missed.

Try to arrive at the market before 8:00am if you can. Everything is packed up and finished by around 10:00am. The grounds can be a bit messy with mud and manure, so don’t wear your best clothing or shoes.

A taxi from the center of town shouldn’t cost you more than 100 som ($1.50).

7. Shop For Random Items at The Antique Shop

If purchasing a horse isn’t your thing, maybe you’ll find something you like at an antique shop! Basically, anything and everything you can imagine from the Soviet times will be laid out on display in the shop on the corner of Zhamansarieva and Toktogula. This is the ultimate spot for kitschy Soviet memorabilia.

Want an old police cap or some figurines? How about some camera gear or a typewriter? Better yet, some old coins and Soviet pins… or maybe a creepy doll? All of this and (much) more can be found at the antique shop. Definitely stop in and take a look.

This antique shop is packed with items from Soviet times

8. Stuff Your Face With Shashlyk (and more) at Cafe Zarina

Fat Cat Cafe is the place to go for coffee, beer and western food, but if you’re looking for some amazing local food, then check out Zarina Restaurant. The wooden interior and picnic table style seating makes you feel like you’re dining in a cozy log cabin.

When we first arrived in Karakol this year, this was the first restaurant we ate at. In fact, the waiter at Zarina recommended we try the local speciality, ashlanfu, and from then on, we’ve been hooked on the dish! We made our own and devoured a bowl at the Dungan Village tour and we ordered it many times during our Karakol trip. (Note: if you want more ashlanfu there is actually an alley in the small bazaar that is basically devoted to this dish.)

Ashlanfu is just one of the many delicious dishes you can order at Zarina

We returned to Cafe Zarina two times during our trip to Karakol and can vouch for the delicious chicken and lamb shashlyk, the spicy beef tongue, the fried laghman noodles (and the laghman soup), and finally, the ashlanfu. The prices here are fair and the service was good as well. Click here for directions to Zarina.

9. Learn About Traditional Handicrafts, and Buy Some Souvenirs

Karakol is an excellent example of sustainable and community based tourism in action. From the incredible work being done by Zhamilia of Fat Cat Cafe, and her mother at the local NGO for women, to the new tours and products in place by Destination Karakol, there are so many ways that you as a tourist can help spread around your dollars and support these initiatives!

Another way to put your money to good use is to have a look at (and purchase) some of the traditional products on offer at the One Village, One Product Association, which is a Japanese funded rural woman’s development project. At this shop you’ll find inventive items created by village women, using locally sourced products.

Don’t miss the beautiful handmade felt shyrdaks, the tasty pine, sea buckthorn and walnut jams, the local honey, and the all-natural soaps. If you’re looking for a souvenir from Kyrgyzstan, definitely check out this wonderful shop. Click here for directions, or check out their Facebook Page.

10. Soak Your Body and Ease Your Muscles

Trekking or not, everyone loves to soak their muscles in a relaxing banya or natural hot spring! A Banya is a traditional Russian Bathhouse, something that is commonly found all around Central Asia.

We’ve visited these bath houses in Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, but surprisingly, we didn’t have a chance to check out one in Kyrgyzstan! Luckily, our friends Dan and Audrey from Uncornered Market did, and they recommend Karkyra banya (Баня «Каркыра») on Karasaev Street, which costs around $1.50/hour. You’ll need to take a taxi here (around 70 som, $1). It’s also possible to have beers while you soak – gotta love that!

Another option is to visit the nearby natural hot springs. The springs at Altyn Arashan are too far away to be a day trip, and they’re best visited as a reward for trekking all the way from Karakol via Ala Kul Lake!

But, don’t worry, the Ak-Suu hot springs are located just 15 kilometers from Karakol, making for a great day trip. To get here, take martshuka (mini-bus) #350 from the bazaar. The cost of the bus is around $0.50, while the hot spring ticket will set you back $0.70.

Practical Advice For a Trip to Karakol

If you’re looking to book any of the tours I’ve mentioned in this post, or if you need any information about things to see and do in Karakol, advice about transportation or accommodation, speak to the people at Destination Karakol. Click here for their Facebook Page, email them at [email protected], or call them at 996 558 508 808.

To get to Karakol from Bishkek you’ll need to hop on a marshrutka (minibus) which will take roughly 8 hours and cost you around $5. If you’re coming from the popular town of Cholpon-Ata, just hop on one of the many minibuses bound for Karakol. To get to Karakol from the Village of Jyrgalan, a minibus will take around 45 minutes and cost $1.

There are numerous hostels, homestays and hotels in the city. Click here to find one that you like. Although we’ve never stayed here ourselves, our friend Tynch owns the beautiful Happy Nomads Yurt Camp with positive reviews from travellers. Click here to learn more about his place.

For eating and drinking, we recommend Fat Cat Cafe, Zarina Restaurant, Cafe Dastorkon, the massive Dungan meal in Yrdyk, and eating at the street markets.

There are numerous ATMs in the city, and a couple of decent-sized grocery stores as well if you’re looking to self-cater.

We also highly suggest that you have travel insurance before embarking on a trip to Kyrgyzstan. World Nomads covers everything from adventurous activities, such as trekking and camping out in the wilderness, to a quick trip to the emergency room. Always do your research and find the best insurance policy for the activities you plan to do.

Want More Kyrgyzstan Articles?!

Trekking in Kyrgyzstan: A How-To Guide For The Keskenkija Trail in Jyrgalan

Our Experience Marking the New Keskenkija Trail in Jyrgalan

How To Hike Ala Kul and Altyn Arashan Without a Guide

Our Experience Hiking Ala Kul and Altyn Arashan

Lake Song Kul: Horse Trekking High in The Mountains of Kyrgyzstan

The Ultimate Guide to Backpacking Kyrgyzstan

Arslanbob: Village Life at Its Finest

The Start of the Pamir Highway: Osh to Sary Mogul

Disclaimer: We feel so honoured to have been invited by Discover Kyrgyzstan and USAID-BGI to explore Karakol and share our experience with you. Although this was a press trip, if you’ve been following our blog, you’ll know that we’ve loved Kyrgyzstan ever since we visited back in 2013, and that all opinions in this article are entirely our own.

This trip was made possible by the support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents are the sole responsibility of myself, the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.

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