#you’re all great I support your themes and go tos so much

[astrumocs]

I see y’all rbing the Sunne ask meme and I’m sending asks in spirit…

[mab1905]

84 Questions

original: 

https://fuckyeahsurveys.tumblr.com/post/61049002526/84-questions

1. Put your music player of choice on shuffle and list the first 10 songs

Someone New (Hozier)

Cactus Tree (Joni Mitchell)

Budapest (George Ezra)

And Dream Of Sheep (Kate Bush)

Nancy Mulligan (Ed Sheeran)

And Then She Kissed Me (St. Vincent)

Level of Concern (Twenty One Pilots)

Lovefool (The Cardigans)

Best For Last (Adele)

Video Killed The Radio Star (The Buggles)

2. If you could spend a week anywhere in the world, where would it be and why? Would you take anyone with you?

Japan. I travel a lot and it’s been on my list for a while, I would really want to go to the Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli theme park, if it ever opens that is. I would bring my best friend, Layla. I also would love to go to Amsterdam again.

3. What is your preferred writing implement? (eg. Blue pen, pencil, green pen) 

My ink nib cartooning pen (similar to a quill, but without the feather)

4. Favourite month and why? 

October, not too hot, not too cold, and of course, Halloween!

5. Do you have connections to any celebrities (even minor)? List them.

Nope, met several, got to true connections though. 

6. Name 3 items you could pick up from where you are.

My iPad, my Leatherman Multitool, my collection of David Bowie postcards.

7. What brand logo is closest to you currently?

The Apple logo

8. Do you ever play board games or other non-computer games? Got any favourites?

Chess. Card games like Solitaire, Black-Jack, and Castle. A game that I can’t remember the name of but it’s essentially a board-game version of Capture The Flag. Mostly Chess.

9. A musical artist you love that isn’t well known

St. Vincent? I’m not sure if she’s well known or not.

10. A musical artist you love that is well known

David Bowie. 

11. What is your desktop background currently?

A picture of Apollo 11 accompanied by the words “It won’t fail because of me”

12. Last person you talked to, and through what you talked to them

My best friend Layla, through the iMessage app.

13. First colour name you can think of that isn’t in the rainbow

Salmon

14. What timekeeping devices are in the room you are currently in?

My iPad, my computer, my collection of vintage stopwatches

15. What kind of headphones do you use?

Sony, wireless, noise canceling, over-the ear 

16. What musical artists have you seen perform live?

Twenty One Pilots, Sylvan Esso

17. Does virginity matter to you?

I guess? I think it’s important, it’s certainly some kind of ‘milestone,’ but I don’t think it should be treated like the scale of a persons ‘purity.’ It’s important because it’s sex, and (hopefully) that means that you’re sharing a consensual, intimate experience that feels fucking great for both (or all, if it’s more then two) participants.

18. What gaming consoles do you or your family own?

Z e r o, although I’m hoping to buy a PS4 at some point so I can play Detroit Become Human.

19. What pets do you have? What are their names?

Juno is my cat, she is an adorable grey tiger-striped shorthair. She’s got little white mitten-paws and it’s absolutely ridiculous.

20. What’s the best job you’ve ever had?

Doing tech at a local theater

21. What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?

Teaching art to little kids (I like kids but it was just exhausting)

22. What magazines do you read, if any?

The New Yorker, and the National Geo if I’m like, waiting in my doctor’s office or something.

23. Inspiration behind your URL?

It’s just my initials and a year from the Edwardian era

24. Inspiration behind your blog title?

It’s just my initials 

25. Favourite item of clothing?

My reddish-brown knit sweater vest and my floral bow-tie (often paired together)

26. Are you friends with any exes?

I made a very conscious effort to cut my exe out of my life… we were not happy for a very long time to say the least

27. Name at least one book you loved as a child.

Strega Nona, it’s about an Italian witch that makes great pasta in a magic pasta pot. My dad would read it to me and my sibling in Italian.

28. What’s your native language? If that language has distinct regional variations, which variation? (eg. AU English, US English)

US English

29. What email service do you use?

Gmail

30. Is there anything hanging on the walls of the room you are currently in?

So many things. Here's the list:

A giant David Bowie poster, a plaque that says “David Bowie IS,” five David Bowie postcards, a giant Abbey Road poster, all of my patches from summer camp, polaroids of me, my friends, and my family (including my cat), ticket stubs from concerts and plays, two trail markers that I took off of fallen trees on two important cross-country backpacking trips I went on, playbills from a bunch of broadway shows I’ve seen, a poster that says “Stonewall was a riot,” a DC Comics poster, a Pink Floyd poster, a few paintings of mine, and a painting that I got for free from a street artist I befriended in Rome when I was twelve

31. What’s your favourite number, and why?

16, 24, 21, and 8, some numbers make me uncomfortable, but these are just very soft and light and nice 

32. Earliest moment in your life you can remember? 

A rocking chair with fruits painted on it sitting in a dark room and my great grandfathers brown leather loafers (I remember early early stuff in just images or stills, not full moments)

33. What did you have for dinner yesterday?

Pasta with shrimp

34. How often do you brush your teeth?

Usually twice a day, but I’ve been waking up later and later and sometimes forget in the mornings

35. What’s your favourite candy/chocolate?

I don’t know the name of it but it’s this chocolate bar that is stuffed with caramel, hot chili flakes, and crunchy bits of baked tortilla. It's one of the greatest things I’ve ever tasted.

36. Have you had other blogs on Tumblr? Do you have any other blogs currently?

I used to have one but I deleted it because I never used it

37. If you were suddenly really hungry, what would you choose to eat?

I would probably walk into the kitchen, realize that too eat something I would have to muster the effort to cook something instead, and then decide to just have a glass of milk instead.

38. What fandoms would you consider yourself a part of?

Downton Abbey (primarily Thommy)

Chernobyl HBO (as well as the Leonid Toptunov/Sasha Akimov subfandom)

Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit (books and movies)

CrankGamePlays

Buzzfeed Unsolved

Star Trek TOS

Philosophy Tube

The Dark Crystal and The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance

39. If you could study anything, what would it be?

If I had the energy to fully wrench my life in a completely different direction I would like to become a professional scuba diver and study the ocean. I already am a scuba diver, but it’s a hobby and not something I’m able to do very often at all.

40. Do you use anything on your lips? (eg. Chapstick, gloss, balm, lipstick)

I’ll wear chapstick if I have a cold

41. How would you describe your sense of humour?

Intellectual and dry

42. What things annoy you more than anything else?

People who think they’re better than everyone else and people who recognize a fault in themselves and then refuse to work to change it

43. What kind of position are you in at the moment?

I’m laying on my bed, hunched over my laptop

44. Do you wear much jewellery?

Occasionally I’ll wear a necklace or a few rings. I have a lot of non-traditional bracelets (I literally just have pieces of canvas and industrial tie-line wrapped around my wrist). I’m a gay guy and I like to sort-a walk the line between feminine and masculine (often leaning more towards the masc side), so it really depends on my mood.

45. Who is the leader of your country, currently? Any other levels of government with leaders? (State, region, province, county, district, municipality, etc)

A cheese-pizza flavored pringle is currently POTUS and every day the thought of that tears away at a piece of my soul. 

46. Last 3 blogs on your dashboard, not including any of your own

@shochmonster @velvet-of-the-night @panicsheerbloodypanic

47. What do you carry your money in?

My pocket, I have a wallet and I don’t use it

48. Do you enjoy driving? Why or why not?

It’s fine, don’t love it don’t hate it

49. Longest drive you have ever been on?

Three days

50. Furthest away from home you have ever been?

Went on a trip to Switzerland to visit family, I think that’s the farthest but I’m not entirely sure.

51. How many times have you moved house?

Twice

52. What is on the floor of the room you’re currently in, not including furniture?

Five paintings, stacks and stacks of books, boxes filled with stuff (mostly more books), plates, glasses, cutlery, clothes

53. How many devices do you own which can access the internet?

2, and iPad and a computer

54. Is there is anything that is guaranteed to always make you happy?

Listening to music

55. Is there anything that always makes you sad?

Thinking about my past for too long

56. What programs do you currently have open?

Google drive, I’m writing

57. What do you associate the colour red with?

Blood and fire

58. Last strong smell you can remember smelling?

Shrimp and butter

59. Last healthy thing you ate?

Three green olives and a handful of bean sprouts

60. Do you drink tea or coffee, and how much per day?

Used to drink coffee like it was life support (which it essentially was), now I’ll have the occasional cup of tea.

61. What do you associate the colour blue with?

Birds and rain

62. How long is the closest ruler you can find?

I don’t think I own one

63. What colour pants/skirt/etc are you currently wearing?

I am wearing olive green corduroy slacks

64. When was the last time you drank water?

30 minutes ago?

65. How often do you clear your browser history?

Never

66. Do you believe nude photos can be artistic, rather than erotic?

Nude anything can be artistic, it can also just be normal, eroticism is in the eye of the beholder.

67. Ever written fanfiction for anything?

Yes dear god so much fanfiction.

68. Last formal event you attended

I genuinely can’t remember, I am have extreme social anxiety and don’t go to events like that unless I absolutely have too

69. If you had to move your birthday to another date, which one would you choose and why?

I don’t care about birthdays

70. Would you prefer to be at a beach or in the countryside?

Beach, I love to swim, I’m also a surfer

71. Roughly how many people live in your town?

Uhm… eight times the number of people who live in the state of Montana and that doesn’t count daily commuters and tourists (New York City is essentially just a tin of sardines, except inside are 8.399 million sardines)

72. Do you know anyone with the same birthday as you?

No, but three of my friends were born on the day just after my birthday.

73. Favourite place to shop? Can be a certain store or a place where there are multiple stores

The Strand Bookstore, L Train Vintage, any antique shops in the town of Hudson, New York 

74. Do you have a smartphone? What kind? If you don’t, do you want one?

I used to have an iPhone 5SE but then it stopped working after a few weeks of quarantine and I haven’t gotten a new one (I’ve had it for about 5-6 years so it makes sense)

75. What is your least favourite colour, and why?

I don’t have a least favorite color, but my favorite color is prussian blue

76. How do you spell grey/gray?

Grey

77. Go to your dashboard and describe the image shown in the radar section (below the “Find blogs” link)

It’s anime fanart for a show I’ve never heard of

78. What difference is there between how many followers you have, and the number of blogs you follow?

3

79. How many posts do you have?

219

80. How many posts have you liked?

619

81. Do you post mainly reblogs, or your own content?

Mostly reblogs but I do my own content as well

82. Do you track any tags?

No, just blogs

83. What time is it currently?

10:39

84. Is there anything you should be doing right now?

writing

I’m not quite sure who to tag so it’s just open to anyone I guess?

[letterboxd]

Grand Gestures.

Casually breaking new ground for the rom-com genre, writer-director Natalie Krinsky tells Dominic Corry about creating her quietly revolutionary new film The Broken Hearts Gallery—while leading man Dacre Montgomery reveals his Letterboxd habits.

“Good, bad, ugly. The whole lot. I love reading the bad reviews. I’m all about it.” —Dacre Montgomery

An antidote to 2020 malaise if ever there was one, the upbeat, emotionally frank and unapologetically sentimental new big-screen romantic comedy The Broken Hearts Gallery is here to lift your spirits and mend your broken heart.

Blockers and Bad Education star Geraldine Viswanathan leads the film as Lucy, a New York art gallery assistant prone to hoarding physical memorabilia from past relationships. After being dumped and fired in quick succession, Lucy meet-cutes Nick (Stranger Things break-out Dacre Montgomery), an aspiring hotelier with a large empty space on his hands, in which Lucy decides to stage the titular pop-up exhibition, filled with objects representing lost loves.

Proving there are still plenty of new places to go in the well-worn rom-com genre, Krinsky’s film is generating passionate responses on Letterboxd, where fans are celebrating its contemporary sensibility. “Refreshingly modern,” writes Anne. “Diversity is easily achieved and there’s really no heteronormativity. People are just people, love is just love, and that’s what wins me over.”

“Definitely a very 2020 film,” writes Jovi. “It couldn’t have been written in the same way even ten years ago. It captures being in your twenties in the modern day perfectly.” “Bloody loved the female empowerment and the unconventional narrative and characters,” enthuses Meg.

Geraldine Viswanathan and Dacre Montgomery in ‘The Broken Hearts Gallery’.

Reading through the reviews, the most common reaction is praise for how unapologetically inclusive the film is, in a way that feels appallingly novel for a mainstream film. As Krinsky explains it, “I wanted to make a film that was reflective of the world that I see around me and the world that these characters would inhabit if they lived amongst us mortals.” Or, as Montgomery casually states, “I think it’s where we’re at in 2020 with casting and stuff.” The ease with which the film does this indicts most of modern cinema for its lack of representation.

Krinsky’s inclusive casting and characterization decisions stretch across the entire cast, encompassing that essential feature of modern rom-coms: the quirky ‘best friend’. As well as lending authenticity and personality to the leading characters’ lives, the bestie is often where the ‘com’ in rom-com comes in. The Broken Hearts Gallery has an abundance of quirksters, from Lucy’s roommates (who include Hamilton’s Phillipa Soo as saucy, serial heartbreaker Nadine) to Nick’s straight-talking BFF Marcos (a very funny Arturo Castro).

But the chemistry between the central couple is everything in romantic comedies, and The Broken Hearts Gallery benefits greatly from its fresh-faced, emerging-star leads, both of whom are Australian. “We had a rapport with each other much faster maybe than usual,” Montgomery says of his and Viswanathan’s shared background. “I haven't worked with an Australian actor or actress overseas so that was really nice. She’s a wildly talented, comedic actress. It was my first foray into this sort of genre. I was sort of shit-scared and she’s really held my hand through it.”

Geraldine Viswanathan and director Natalie Krinsky.

Krinksy, likewise, was blown away by Viswanathan’s talents, having seen her work in Blockers and Hala. “She does this great physical comedy in Blockers, and then in Hala, she plays this really vulnerable, dramatic teenage role. I was so taken by her ability to pull both of those completely different parts off. I just immediately had this feeling, which I hadn’t ever had before, of: ‘this is Lucy’. She’s got this comedic timing that is very much like Lucille Ball, it’s got this effervescence to it. She’s able to do so much without saying a word. And then she opens her mouth and it’s a gift.”

It’s no small thing for Viswanathan to have been cast as Lucy. Many an actor’s career has been made by a leading role in a romantic comedy, and—current industry upheaval notwithstanding—Viswanathan looks set to break out even further with her performance here. Montgomery’s and Krinsky’s enthusiasm for her work echoes a central theme in The Broken Hearts Gallery: when Montgomery first met with writer-director Krinsky about the film, she told him the story was somewhat inspired by the idea of seeing men support women in their careers, as Nick does with Lucy. “That was a big thing for me,” he explains, “because I have a lot of really strong women in my life that have supported me—my partner, my mum, my grandmother, so on and so forth.”

Those who know Montgomery from Stranger Things will be interested to learn why he pivoted to romantic comedy. He tells us he was looking for something diametrically opposed to his break-out performance in that show. “As a viewer, I love comedy. As an actor, can’t think of anything scarier. I function in this realm of ‘plan, prepare, do everything the way I know’. The great thing about this was it was ever-evolving. It really did force me to come out of my comfort zone.” (Montgomery will pivot again for his next role, which he says is “kind of a dream role. I can’t speak about it now… Again, it’s 180 degrees in the other direction, so it is a wild ride.”)

Krinsky is also switching things up, career-wise. The Broken Hearts Gallery is her first feature film, after cutting her teeth in television writers’ rooms (Gossip Girl, Grey’s Anatomy, 90210). She credits that environment for training her to fix storytelling problems on the fly. A story a decade in the making, Broken Hearts came from her own romantic aspirations and fears. “I had had many conversations like [the one Lucy has early in the film with Max (Utkarsh Ambudkar), where he dumps her after telling her she’s ‘a blast’]. So that certainly came from my life. I’d been fired from my job. I was moving apartments and I was going through the detritus of these past relationships and kind of trying to figure out what I was going to keep and what I was going to hold on to. You kind of pepper in those things [that are] reflective of relationships in your twenties.”

‘The Broken Hearts Gallery’ director Natalie Krinsky.

Going into the film, Krinsky was very conscious of trying to set it apart from rom-coms that have come before. “Making a good romantic comedy is actually quite difficult because it’s so well-trodden, and because there are beats that we want. We want to cheer for two people falling in love. Because of that, my philosophy going into this was very much centered around Lucy. We’ve seen a lot of romantic comedies in the past where we see a woman trying to fit herself into a mold in order to be with someone and ultimately realizing, ‘Oh, that mold isn’t who I am’. Lucy is a character who certainly has her foibles and has her anxieties and has her eccentricities, but she consistently asks the world to love her because she is weird, not despite the fact that she is weird. That messaging was really important to me.”

In another case of the film gently nudging the rom-com genre forward, it acknowledges how ridiculous grand romantic gestures can be, but still manages to include a few. Krinsky believes there is room for grand gestures in real life. “I certainly hope so. I would like a grand gesture every once in a while—wouldn’t we all? We deserve it. I’m a little bit hopelessly romantic in that way. And I will say I like the surprise. To be able to just, show up home and say, ‘I was walking around today and I saw this cactus. And I thought of you. And here it is.’ Maybe that’s not so grand, but it’s the gesture at least.”

We note that another unique aspect of The Broken Hearts Gallery is the feeling that it doesn’t seem like it’s going to live or die on whether or not the two main characters end up together. “I think they both needed to confront a little bit of who they were,” Krinksy agrees. “Which I always think is the truth about really falling in love, is that in order to have a good relationship, you need to have a good one with yourself first.”

Clearly a huge fan of the genre, we ask Krinsky to recommend her favorites from the canon. “I love some of our recent classics. When Harry Met Sally is a perfect romantic comedy. Bridget Jones’s Diary is a perfect romantic comedy. I love Clueless—even though it’s more com than rom. And then I really love some of the older ones. Broadcast News is one of my all time favorites. Going back even further two of my go-tos that hold up today are His Girl Friday and It Happened One Night. Those two, especially if you’re talking about the ‘strong female lead’, they held them in spades and that fast quippy dialogue I just really live for.”

Montgomery, meanwhile, turns out to be somewhat of a cinephile, something he cultivated as a teenager in the Australian suburbs. “I worked at McDonald’s and I spent all my money on going to [electronics and DVD store] JB Hi-Fi. That’s my childhood in a nutshell. Growing up, I was either at the cinema or in my room and spending all my money on DVDs. All my friends worked at video stores. That was kind of my jam.”

And then—mic drop—Montgomery casually shares the news that he has a secret Letterboxd account. Yes, dear reader, it appears that Dacre is a full-on ’boxd-head. “Oh yeah. I mean, that’s why I was so happy that this [interview] was coordinated. Other than obviously having a chance to talk to you just in general to chat about the platform, it’s a combination of a couple of things that I’m going to put quickly in a couple of words: obviously you can create watchlists on Disney+, Netflix and so on. But then you’ve got so many bloody platforms, all of your lists are in different spaces and all of your movies are spread out on different platforms.

“For me, the biggest role for [Letterboxd] is I can formulate everything in one place, on one platform and look at it. It’s just got so … much … stuff. If I’m up for a horror movie, but I want it set in the snow, I can log on there and it’s, like, The Thing, Hold The Dark. All these great movies. Which I love. And I can read reviews of them before or after.”

Montgomery’s partner is also on Letterboxd, as is his childhood best friend. “Every time we leave the cinema, he gets on Letterboxd and writes a review—his honest, immediate reaction to what he’s just seen. It’s the first thing he does. It’s a great outlet for him. He’s had filmmakers reach out to him, which is another lovely thing. I think a lot of the arts and creative community is actually active on that platform. My buddy just spent the $20 for the year thing and now he can see what his top actors are that he watches, what’s his most-watched decade. I love that sort of stuff. I’m such a cinephile, to be able to collate everything into one sort of succinct thing—that’s my dream.”

Naturally, we ask Montgomery to represent his home country and name-check some Aussie films and filmmakers. “Obviously I’m still quite young, but a lot of cinema like Felony, The Rover, Animal Kingdom, that whole sort of genre, like all the David Michôd films. That sort of realm, I loved growing up. Baz Luhrmann’s films, obviously. Don McAlpine, Australian cinematographer. Bruce Beresford. There’s such an amazing pedigree of actors as well, most recently, obviously the Edgertons [Joel and Nash], Ben Mendelsohn, Heath, obviously, and Naomi Watts and Nicole Kidman.”

Curious to learn more about why a bona-fide star would lurk on Letterboxd where his own performances are ranked, rated and reviewed, we ask Montgomery: what does he get out of it? “I don't have this in-built bias or expectation, even though you’d think I would to kind of go, ‘Why didn’t they like that?’ I love reading the bad reviews. I’m all about it. I’m just interested to see what they engaged with. I think that’s the great thing about Letterboxd as opposed to any other platform is that I can just kind of log in under my alias and read everyone’s uninhibited dialogue that’s come out just after they’ve seen the film. And I love that. Good, bad, ugly. The whole lot. I think it’s the coolest thing ever.”

So then, the final, obvious question: has he been reading the Broken Hearts reviews? “I love to look up the Broken Hearts Gallery page. I think people are just enjoying this level of escapism. If they had the ability to go to a drive-in or to the cinema, wherever they are, people are just kind of going ‘it was so nice to get out of my house and out of my head’. It’s what any cinema tries to do, that level of escapism. I think it couldn’t have come at a better time. Once it’s done its cinematic release, it’ll be on streamers and then people can have that level of escapism who weren’t able to go to the cinema, so that’s really nice.”

Prepare yourself for The Broken Hearts Gallery by checking out this extremely thorough Letterboxd list of romantic comedies, expand your romantic comedy horizons with this list of South Korean rom-coms, and get a feel for where Letterboxd members are at, rom-com-wise, with this romantic comedy showdown.

‘The Broken Hearts Gallery’ is in theaters where possible. Dacre Montgomery’s first book of poetry will be released in October. Comments have been edited for clarity and length.

[gumnut-logic]

Rescue Number Five

Title: Rescue Number Five

Author: Gumnut

28 - 29 Aug 2019

Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go 2015/ Thunderbirds TOS

Rating: Teen

Summary: He just wanted ice cream.

Word count: 2741

Spoilers & warnings: Plotless Virgil whump, I’m sorry :D

Timeline: Standalone

Author’s note: This is for @melmac78 for her birfday and for inadvertently inspiring it with this comment regarding my brain fry of late – ‘no need to collapse for it... save the fainting bit for Virgil stories. 😊’ Many thanks to @vegetacide for adding the ice cream to this and also for her wonderful support while I sob all over fandom with my woes :D (In fact, you’ve all been lovely regarding my whimpering, thank you ever so much for being such a wonderful fandom to play in). The only downside is that this fic reflects my current lack of brain and is little more than a scene with very little purpose other than to play with the above two prompt points :D I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Disclaimer: Mine? You’ve got to be kidding. Money? Don’t have any, don’t bother.

-o-o-o-

Rescue number five.

In twelve hours.

Non-stop.

Thunderbird Two hovered above a parkland in the middle of a city, right next to a stadium.

It was hot. The middle of the Australian summer. Midday.

The stadium was on fire.

A eucalypt stood at the entrance, its leaves alight and burning fiercely. The local MFS were well into the conflagration, but there was a serviceman stranded high up in one of the huge lights far above the grandstand.

That was why he was here.

Scott was on his way over. He wasn’t really needed, but he had ranted about those last twelve hours and claimed Virgil needed back up.

Virgil needed sleep.

He was hot, sweaty and he stunk. Hot weather was the theme for the southern hemisphere and today’s array of rescues. One on each major southern continent, bar Antarctica, one in New Zealand, just for a little backyard fun and this was the second one in Australia. Good old burn your ass off Australian summer, now thirty percent hotter thanks to climate change.

Antarctica was looking more attractive by the second.

But then give that continent another fifty years of that climate change and it might be positively balmy.

But, yes, stadium, on fire.

Rescuing someone from a high point in a relatively open area was no difficulty. Virgil swung himself and a harness out underneath his beautiful ‘bird and snagged the man from his perch. No injuries. Actually, the man was quite happy. Kept babbling on about meeting International Rescue and doing a great fanboy interpretation.

Usually, Virgil would have smiled graciously and let the man babble. But today, his head was aching and, to be honest, maybe Scott was right. Maybe he did need back up.

So this fan didn’t get much of a smile, just a few polite words from a very tired man.

He must have picked up on it, because his expression became concerned as Virgil helped him unstrap the harness once they were safely aboard Two.

“You okay, man?”

“I’m good. Are you sure you are uninjured?”

The guy shrugged. “I’m fine, thanks to you. Say, can I get your autograph? You are Virgil Tracy, aren’t you?”

“Uh, yeah, um, I guess.”

He got a good stare for that intellectual response.

“I’m sorry, sir, it has been a long day. I will land Thunderbird Two and we can get you seen to.”

“I’m fine, Mr Tracy.” Another frown. “But I’m not sure you are. You’re looking kinda pale.”

He so didn’t have time for this. Turning away, he didn’t answer, simply leading the rescuee to the cockpit. He made sure the man was strapped in and then took Two out of her hover and banked to land in a clearing outside the stadium.

Her landing gear clunked onto the lawn as smooth as ever and his ‘bird came to a rest.

Virgil let himself sink just that little more into his seat in sympathy.

The briefest of moments and then he was up and hustling the rescuee onto the hatch and lowering it onto the grass.

As always, a crowd had gathered at the sight of the great green Thunderbird, and Virgil had to beckon over the emergency services to assist the man protesting his health.

Another moment and Virgil was free of him and raising the hatch to shut the world out.

He technically could go home now, but...stadium, on fire.

It took two hours to put it out.

By the time the last of the smouldering was killed off, it was obvious that it was deliberately lit. Some asshole had lit a fire that had injured children.

Virgil was glad he had been called in because he had managed to save those children. A school group had been trapped and it had taken Virgil’s exo-suit to get them out. There were burns, tears and screaming, but they were all alive.

And the fire was out.

God, he was hot.

He didn’t have his fire suit with him. It was a forty-degree Celsius day and, well, fire was hot. He was currently standing waiting to report to the fire chief. Scott had arrived halfway through the rescue and was fielding the media on the other side of the park. Scott hated the media, but he had more patience at this moment than Virgil.

More of everything.

His exo-suit was heavy.

His shoulders were aching. In fact, all his joints were aching. There had been a point there where a roof had collapsed on him, but since it was the second roof today, he shook it off.

He just wanted to go home.

The fire chief was still talking to someone else.

He could interrupt.

“John, can we do a delayed incident report? I’m really tired.”

“Virgil?” He could hear the frown in John’s voice. It was an out of character request. Virgil was always pedantic about onsite communications in large multi-service incidents. “You okay?”

“I’m hot, tired and I haven’t had a chance to pee for the last five hours. Can I go home now?” There was an itch under his baldric that he knew he wouldn’t be able to reach. He could swear, but if he started, he didn’t think he could stop and extreme profanity wasn’t a role model thing.

“I will compile a report for the Adelaide Metropolitan Fire Service. You are officially free to go, Virgil.”

Thank god. “Great. Launch in five.”

He turned away from the huddle of fire specialists and took a step in the direction of his ‘bird. Every joint creaked.

His eyes passed a pink trailer.

Pink? His brain immediately delivered Lady Penelope as a first thought, but no, it was an ice cream truck.

Ice cream.

Cold, creamy, probably with chocolate, ice cream.

He needed ice cream.

If his sight narrowed to that pink truck, it was only because he was so hot and in need of the cool touch of iced confectionery.

Cool.

To be cool.

He was halfway there when the truck doubled. Wha-?

He stopped, his suit wheezing.

“Virgil?” John’s voice sounded worried. “Virgil, respond.”

“Uh?” He tried to raise his hand to his head, but it was trapped in the claw of his suit. It took a moment of thought to work out why.

“Virgil! I’m contacting Scott.”

Why? What for? He screwed up his eyes. God, now he was dizzy. So damned hot.

He needed some ice cream.

Ice cream.

A step and he was wobbling. He flung out an arm, attempting to keep his balance, but his arm was a giant claw and instead, it took him over.

The ground was hard.

His suit was heavy.

It hurt.

Too much.

He didn’t hear two brothers yelling his name.

-o-o-o-

Scott hated the press.

They always wanted the dirt, not the facts, the gossip, not the truth. It took everything to not explode in front of them.

“Mr Tracy, was International Rescue needed at this incident because the MFS just couldn’t meet the need?”

“International Rescue is available to assist in any extreme circumstance. This was such a circumstance and is not reflective on the efficiency of your fire service. Without your fire service many lives would have been lost today.”

“But why were you needed if the MFS could do the job?”

“An extra helping hand never hurts.”

“Thunderbird One?” John’s voice cut over the cacophony of reporters. “Thunderbird Two needs your assistance.”

The press immediately caught onto that with various versions of ‘what’s happening?’ and ‘where’s Virgil Tracy?’ popping up amongst the crowd.

He ignored them all. There was something in John’s voice.

He excused himself and, to the sound of their protests, turned away from the media and strode purposefully in the direction of the green bulk of TB2 in the distance.

“John, report.”

“Virgil...I’m not happy with his vitals. His heartrate is up, his body temperature is high and I’m not getting a very coherent response from him.”

Doing the obvious math in his head, Scott broke into a run. “Where is he?”

“He’s still wearing his suit. Approximately fifty metres at your one o’clock.” John swore. “He’s down and not responding.”

Shit.

A moment and Scott could see his brother, face down on the grass. Several people were milling around him, but no one was actually doing anything.

Scott’s grimy uniform got twin streaks of green as he slid to his knees beside his brother. “Virgil?” The exo-suit was heavy and Scott was hard put to turn him over. Virgil was pale and limp, his forehead resting against the plexiglass of his helmet. “Virgil?!”

“John, give me the numbers.”

His brother ranted off Virgil’s vitals. Overheating? Exhaustion? Hidden injury? Goddamnit, Virgil!

“Sc-t?”

Pale eyelashes were blinking ever so slowly.

“Virgil, are you injured?”

“Huh?” His brother attempted to sit up and frowned when he couldn’t. “Wha’ happen’d?” Another blink. “Hot.”

The sun was beating down on them. They needed to get into the shade. A crowd was gathering. They needed to get out of here.

“Ice cream. Wan’ ice cream.” Virgil frowned and rolled over, got his knees under him, pushed himself to his feet and wavered...

Scott leapt up and caught him before he could fall on his face again. “Virg, what the hell?”

“Want ice cream.” His eyes were glazed and it was obvious his brother wasn’t thinking straight.

“C’mon, we’ll get you back to Two and you can have as much ice cream as you like when we get home.”

“Want ice cream now.” A claw swung around and Scott had to back out of the way. Shit.

“Hey, hey, Virg, wouldn’t it be easier to get ice cream without the suit on?” The eyes of the crowd were on both of them. This could go from bad to very bad very quickly.

“Suit?”

Scott took a step closer to his brother. “C’mon, Virg, I’ll help you out.” He reached towards the suit controls, his fingers dancing over the release.

His brother gasped as the suit came free. Without the leg supports, its entire weight would be on his arms.

“Let it go, Virgil.” Scott grabbed the shoulder supports, taking some of the strain. “Let it go and we can get some ice cream.”

“Ice cream?” His brother let go.

The suit fell one way, Virgil the other. It was only some fancy footwork on Scott’s part that enabled him to catch his brother.

The crowd scampered backwards as the suit hit the ground.

Virgil groaned as Scott caught him, stumbling, attempting to stay upright and failing. Scott was hard put to keep both of them on their feet. “Virg, we need to get you into the shade.”

“Need ice cream.” He attempted to push past Scott, but nearly ended up on his face again.

Scott hung onto him. “Virgil!” His brother was heavy and his struggling didn’t help.

“Ice cream. Need to cool down.”

“We can cool you down on Two.”

“Ice cream. Please, Scott, need ice cream. Too hot.” He tried to wrench himself free, but his knees gave way, Scott stumbled and they both went down, Scott barely managing to catch his brother before he face-planted in the grass.

“God, Virg.” If this was heatstroke, which Scott was pretty sure it was, it could become life threatening.

“Sir?” An ice cream was held out, a young woman offering it.

Scott had never been more grateful for an offering in his life. “Thank you, ma’am. Virg, look, some ice cream.” He held it where his brother could see it, offering it like a parent to a distraught child.

“Ice cream?” On his hands and knees Virgil looked up hopefully, his eyes still glazed. Scott reached over, unclipped his helmet and gently tugged it off. Virgil’s eyes closed as the heat of the day touched his skin. “Sc-t?”

Virgil collapsed before Scott could catch him, slumping onto his side.

The ice cream was hurriedly passed back to the woman. “John, vitals!” Virgil’s skin was hot to the touch. Scott didn’t hesitate, hooking his hands under Virgil’s arms and dragging him into the shade of the nearest tree.

The crowd followed.

The numbers John threw at him were even worse than before. “You need one of the ambulance crews, Scott. I’m contacting them now.”

Scott couldn’t help but agree. Deft hands hurriedly started removing Virgil’s baldric and paraphernalia. By the time several paramedics reached them, he was unzipping his uniform, hurriedly yanking off the heavily padded material and exposing his black undershirt.

Efficient words were exchanged. Virgil’s boots were removed, socks, and with a further yank, his uniform pants.

The sounds of phone camera’s taking pictures hurt. “John.” He spat his brother’s name over comms almost under his breath. “Privacy protocol, fifty metre radius.”

“FAB.”

The advantages of an AI on the team were many. As Scott attended his brother, he knew Eos was all around them, slipping into phones and cameras, silently stealing away any and all photographs of their prone family member.

During all of this, Virgil did not stir at all.

The paramedics were efficient and within minutes, his brother was prepped for transport to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, little more than a kilometre away.

With a word to John to secure the Thunderbirds, Scott climbed into the back of an ambulance with his brother.

-o-o-o-

He was floating.

In ice cream.

Floating in ice cream?

He frowned. That couldn’t be right.

Could it?

His skin was cool, but not cold. Not cold enough.

Not ice cream.

He startled awake to the sounds of a busy hospital, his hands splashing in water?

“Hey, hey, Virgil, it’s okay. You’re safe.”

“Scott?” Ow, ow, ow, headache. What the hell? “What?” He squeezed his eyes shut, a hand rubbing a medicated smelling liquid onto his face. Ugh. A number of blinks as his brain came online and he realised he was floating in a tub of that same medical smelling stuff.

“I am so glad you are finally awake.”

More blinking and his eldest brother’s blue eyes came into focus. “What the hell happened?”

“Heatstroke, my dear little brother.”

Dear, little brother? His brain was just functioning enough to realise he was in shit deeper than the bath he was lying in. “What did I do?” A cough and he cleared his throat.

Scott handed him a cup with a plastic straw. “Drink. You need it.”

Short, sharp, caring but ominous. “What the hell did I do?”

“What do you remember?”

Another blink and he forced his brain back. “Work. Lots of work.”

“Would it hurt you to call in your brothers for help?”

“It was only one rescue!”

“It was five!”

“It just happened! People needed help. I helped!”

“You nearly killed yourself!”

Virgil stared at his brother. “What?”

“You overheated. You worked too hard. You know the symptoms. Why didn’t you stop?”

“I...” A frown. “I didn’t realise...”

“When was the last time you ate?”

“I...” Another frown. God, his head hurt.

“Exactly.”

“Um...”

“Why do you do this, Virgil?”

He stared at his brother. Scott was scared. Shit. What did he do? “What did I do?”

His brother mirrored his frown. “Virgil?”

“I’m sorry.” Whatever he did, he was sorry to have caused that expression on his brother’s face.

“Sorry is not enough!”

“Mr Tracy!”

Virgil jumped as a woman in white appeared at the end of his...bath, and rounded on Scott. “Your brother is ill. Please save your reprimands for later.”

Virgil blinked as a series of emotions rippled across Scott’s profile before he turned back to face him. His brother didn’t acknowledge the woman, simply turning his back to her. It was so unlike Scott to be that impolite that Virgil had the urge to climb out of the bath to comfort him.

“Scott, it’s going to be okay.” He reached out a wet hand and grabbed tense fingers, gripping them as if to massage the stress away. Fluid dripped on blue uniform.

“Yes, it will. And you will take better care of yourself.”

“Okay.” A slow blink and his eyelids were hard to open again. Scott was still staring at him with those worried elder brother eyes. “Where’s my ‘bird?”

“Where you left it. John has her secured.”

“Good.” It would be so easy to just go back to sleep.

“Go back to sleep, Virgil.”

“Uh-hmm.”

“You can rest now.”

“Mmm...” A frown. “Scott?’

“Yes, Virgil?”

“ Umm...can I have some ice cream?”

-o-o-o-

[iliketowrite1996]

Mistakes, Mismatches and Near Misses 3

TRIGGER WARNINGS AND THEMES- Heartache, burdens, jealousy secret-keeping, lying

Mistakes-

Shuri Udaku is very, very, very rarely wrong about many things. She knows what checmicals mixed with what toher chemicals will have what reactions. She knows that Peter Paker makes an excellent +lab parnet bercause heis helpful and supoortive, not controlling and demeaning. She knows that her cousin Erik would never in a million years let her live it down if she found out about her secret boy band obsession. Yes, Shuri Udaku is well-versed, and knows many a great things about many people and objects and such,.

She knows that Erik has a soft spot for Ramonda. He’s learning to at least tolerate T’Challa, and he likes her, but Auntie Ramonda has his whole heart. The fact that she was willing to make macaroni and cheese on his bitthday- something she’s never made before an had to have Suri look up- really softened up a spot for ehr in Erik’s otherwise pretty cold heart.

She knows that Ramonda considers Erik as another son, and you a another daughter. And Ramonda loves her children so, so much. They are her light, in a way- lightnening up even the darkest moments, such as losing her husband so suddenly.

Shuri knows that she’s pretty much T’Challa’s favorite person. And, not that she’d enver admit, he’s hers. She remebers, how ever vaguely, following him around the palace. Sitting on his lap during fabily events. Proudly showing off every invention, drawing, plan that she’d ever came up with, ready for his approval or ideas.

Shuri is certain of many, many things.

That she is smart, beautiful, and strong enough to stand on her own, but she likes the support behind her and all around her.

That you were too good for that last guy that you dated,a nd that you deserved better.

Yes. She is quite certain of many things.

But, sometimes, life does manage to throw her a curve ball.

Such as when T’Challa confessed that he was in love again, that she already knew the girl, that he’d never been so happy to finally be with this person in the way that he was mean to…

But… only… that person wasn’t you.

Isn’t you, she should say.

It’s Nakia.

Nakia, who is currently showing off her brand new engagment ring as T’Chalala stands by her side, hand on her waist and eyes gleaming and smiling proudly.

But maybe she should explain why she’s so surprised it’s not you standing there in Nakia’s coveted spot, ebxt to the king of Wakanda himself.

Shuri may not be the most emotional person, but she knows her brother. Or, well, she thoguth she did.

She culd see his attraction for you. The hushed whispers and gigglles, lunch dates and such. The way he looked at you. How could she not have thought that he had fallen for you?

And you were no better. You were a bit more subtle in your flirtaiton than T’Challa was, but it was still there.

And, okay, yes. She’d overheard your covnersation where the two fo you agreed to be friendly, but see where it goes. And she’d thoguht it ws going so well- flowers, complimment, discssions where the norm between the two of you, and it finally seemed that T’Challa was on to someone else that wasn’t, well… Nakia.

But she sees that she was wrong. She was oh, so wrong.

Shuri can deal with being wrong. She’s intelligent, but not all kowing. She knows this. She can forgive herself for the mistake…

But not the mismatch.

Because if she never would have hatched that plan to get the two of you together, you never would have had had your heart broken. You wouldntbe standing next to the table with your glass of champagne, staringa t the happy couple a\s everyone congratulates them.

Shuri sets her cup of water down, gliding over to you, abnormally timid for her.

‘’Hey,’’ you smile at your psuedo-yuonge-sister as she approaches you, ‘’What’s up?

‘’I’m sorry. I-I… I am sos oarry. Had I known,’’ she motions over to T’Challa and Shuri, ‘’I never would have… I-’’

‘’Shuri,’’ you set your glass on the table, taking both of her hands in yuors, ‘’None of this in your fault. T’Challa and I are adults, and things simply didn’t work out. I don’t want you blaming yourself for any of this.’’

‘’I know that, but… still. If I had never…’’

‘’Shuri, it was a mistake. We all made it. Now, I know you think that the world revolves around you, but that does not mean that you need to carry the weight of it on your houlders.’’

Shuri smiles at your joke, the first real smile since the news of the engagment brokw.

‘’You are one of a kind.’’

‘’I know,’’ you nudge her gently, ‘’Now go talk to your brother. Congratulate him, Shuri.’’

Shuri nods then, skipping off to speak to her brtoher and his fiancee’.

You’re rihgt. She shouldn’t be carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Because it already feels like you are.

Mismatches

‘’To be fair, you’re too coolf or T,’’ Erik nods toward where T’Challa and Nakia are speaking to M’Baku and his wife.

‘’You’re just sayingt hat becasue you don’t like him,;’’ you roll your eyes.

‘’I’m saying it because it’s true,’’ Erik mends, looking to where M’Baku, Nakia, and T’Challa are all laughing at somethign that M’Baku’s wife said, ‘’Something fishy is going on here.’’

‘’Nothing fishy is going on here, Erik. T’Challa is royalty, and I’m not. He loves Nakia, and I’m not here. We were jut friends. And even though I thought things could have worked out, they didn’t,’’y ou shrug, struglging tos eem nonchalant about the matter.

‘’Whatever you say,’’ Erik sighs, understanding that you no longer wish to discuss this, ‘’But, hey… you’re not as annoying as him. So if you need to talk, I am here for you.’’

‘’Thanks, Erik. I really appreciate that,’’ you smile at him, ‘’Now, go flirt wiht that girl over there. Tony Stark’s imprentice. The girl has been looking at you all night.’’

You adn Erik both glance to where Tony is standing wiht his own fiancee’ and his imprenticce, Monique, who is flipping her box braids over her shoulders.

‘’Don’t mind if I do,’’ he smirks before sliding off to talk to her.

And once again, you’re left alone to look at the couple.

If acceptance really is a road- it is- then it can bea bumpy road. Because you’re looking at T’Challa with his perfect mathc, while you were nithing but a mismatch. And it’s fine. It is. Not everything is meant ot turn out the way we want them to, and that’s fine.

That doesn’t stop it from hurting.

So you decide to say good ngiht to Shuri, Ramonda, and Erik before retreating to your quarters for the night.

There’ you tuck away the secret that you hope only you, Eirk and SHuri know- you are so incredibly in lvoe with T’Challa Udaku, for so menay reasons.

But, little did you know, that he watched you go, sadness laced into the seams of hisown heart.

Because T’Challa has a secret, too.

And only time will reveal what that is.

@ashanti-notthesinger @destinio1 @afraiddreamingandloving @starsshines-blog @airis-paris14 @syreanne @chaneajoyyy @90sinspiredgirl @shemiahsmelanin @zillmonger @skysynclair19 @marvelpotterlove @constantlycravingtheunknown @imaginewhoever @wakanda-inspired @pocmarvelworks @theunsweetenedtruth @dreampovx @adrioola21 @supremethunda @thisiskayesworld @mcusocialimagines @priya212  @kumkaniudaku  @airis-paris14 @alexundefined @fonville-designs   @mellowjellow6 @omg-itsnadi @maddiestudentwritergaines @dadinhas-heat @jozigrrl @kaykay0829 @nerd-lovely @babygotl01292003 @oceanscorazon @id-rather-be-an-outsider er @determinednot2fall

DISCLAIMERS- I do not own any Marvel Characters or their fictional worlds, countries, planets, galacxies, cities, etc

[shainethecat]

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I most likely don't need to tell you that building a successful Amazon.com associate internet site is except the chickenhearted.

It takes outrageous planning, a salacious amount of persistence and an exceptional capacity to break through barrier after barrier of consistent insecurity.

Yet if there's one point that'll slow you down faster than an asthmatic snail in a relay race, DFY Profitz is obtaining that "perfect" amazon associate web site setup prior to you can start working on in fact growing your organisation.

Whether it's spending hrs choosing a style ...

Countless days tweaking the layout until it's just right ...

Or weeks identifying the subtleties of all the "essential" technology ... ... it's usually a process that draws the life out of you prior to you even leave the starting line. And also the economic cost of delayed growth.

The option is basic.

Leverage the website configuration of someone that's currently combated and also agonized over every tiny detail of building that certain type of web site.

I'm talkin' concerning a total structure that enables you to concentrate on the core drivers of your business from day 1, and also bypass the time-suck that so many budding authority site as well as particular niche website builders obtain caught up in.

While there are a number of company versions you could base this sort of site build about, today, we're mosting likely to take a deep study the Amazon.com associate site version.

And, as the title of this blog post recommends, I'm not just mosting likely to reveal you just how to construct this framework yourself ...

... I'm additionally gon na directly GIVE it to you.

Just to be clear, this blog post is only mosting likely to be covering the technological element of site structure as well as not consist of things like keyword study, specific niche selection, content production, link building as well as various other facets that are essential to make a site effective.

If you are seeking the full plan, have a look at The Authority Site System where Perrin & & Gael cover it all.

However if you are looking for a fast site structure solution, allow's obtain shaking!

What Makes The "Perfect" Amazon.com Associate Website?

Before we get to all that, I rapidly want to go over the principles of the construct, and also what my thinking is behind DFY Profitz.

As we proceed through this, understand that every decision made has been done so with the details goals of a profit-driving affiliate website in mind.

( That's whatever from organizing, design, as well as also the private functions. It's all made up.).

In order to understand the build-- as well as it's recommend that you do-- you'll initially require to comprehend the key principles of a highly-optimized, successful Amazon.com affiliate internet site.

So, allow's break it down. This website must ...

1. Hosting

Be improved a steady and safe and secure web server that can permits at the very least 3,000 gos to monthly with possibility of a smooth upgrade in the future. (go to implementation).

2. Web content management

Offer a protected as well as functional atmosphere to house the site, too the ability to quickly produce and also manage large quantities of content. (go to implementation).

3. Motif

Offer a protected framework that's compatible with the remainder of the site build, consisting of all performance as well as layout elements. Support is likewise a strong element. (most likely to implementation).

4. Analytics

Have access to sophisticated data as well as tracking relating to internet site web traffic and page/post performance across the whole site. (go to execution).

5. Protection

Have the ability to identify as well as block attacks as well as identify any kind of possible susceptabilities. Site recuperation is also an extra however vital thing to take into consideration right here. (most likely to execution).

6. SEO

Be totally internet search engine optimized in order to rank both educational as well as industrial content, establishing a steady flow of natural web traffic. (go to application).

7. Web page Home builder

Fast and also easy to personalize the layout and design of your core pages as well as blog site content. (most likely to application).

8. Connect management

Be capable of arranging all your affiliate web links under one, easy to use roof covering, too being able to effectively switch out old associate links from one location. (most likely to implementation).

9. Product display screen

Have the ability to present linkable item boxes and contrast tables throughout your content, that likewise follow Amazon.com's ToS. (go to execution).

10. Link localization

Redirect DFY Profitz site visitors to the correct associate uses based on geographic area in order to take advantage of the majority of your web traffic. (most likely to execution).

11. Vehicle connecting (optional)

Instantly add affiliate web links within your content, based upon predefined keyword phrases, phrases and policies ... (most likely to execution).

Previewing The Build

View The Demo Website

Exactly how To Steal It

This build fulfills all the needs I have actually detailed above, as well as is what I would think about the leanest, most maximized and effective configuration for an effective Amazon.com associate web site you can perhaps start with.

The procedure can be broken up into 3 distinctive stages, which are:.

Stage # 1: The Structure (go to implementation)

Phase # 2: The Bolt-Ons (most likely to implementation)

Stage # 3: The Design (most likely to execution)

As well as right here's just how that views on a bigger range ...

So that's the big picture sight of what we'll be covering, now it's time to get down in the trenches and begin building this thing.

Ready?

Allow's do it ...

PHASE # 1: The Structure

This stage is all about laying the structure for the rest of the site, and also it integrates only the basic elements of the develop.

While these decisions have been made with the associate or particular niche website version in mind, the principles laid out right here are generally real, regardless of what type of website you're building.

Organizing (As Well As Domain)

Organizing is the primary step of any type of site build, and because DFY Profitz is also a solitary factor of failure for your entire company, it's easily among the most important choices you can make at this beginning.

DFY Profitz Review & Overview

Supplier: Mosh Bari

Item: DFY Profitz

Launch Day: 2019-Dec-01

Launch Time: 9:00 EST

Front-End Cost: $27

JV Page: https://www.socialleadfreak.com/dfy-profitz-review/

Particular niche: Software application

A lot more perfects for your service

Exactly How You Can Create Your Own Authority Affiliate Review Site

These websites are REALLY rewarding when effective.

First of all you are mosting likely to have to discover your niche.

Do not pick something vague like "modern technology" or something noticeable like "laptop computers".

A quick look for "modern technology assesses" or "finest laptop" will reveal you there is lots of competitors and also lots of big names out there.

Niche down and locate something a lot more focused and also with much less websites competition yet without being too unknown.

You can discover your perfect specific niche by using our 7 actions to locating your successful specific niche.

The more particular you can be the much better however do not go as particular as a 'small particular niche testimonial web site' that just reviews 1-- 5 products.

You desire your affiliate evaluation site to be in a specific niche where there is great deals of item launches & information so you can continue to insert brand-new content.

Final thought

"It's A Great Deal. Should I Invest Today?"

Not just are you getting accessibility to DFY Profitz for the best price ever used, yet additionally You're investing completely without danger. DFY Profitz includes a 30-day Cash Back Guarantee Policy. When you choose DFY Profitz, your fulfillment is ensured. If you are not totally satisfied with it for any type of reason within the very first one month, you're qualified to a complete reimbursement-- no doubt asked. You have actually got nothing to shed! What Are You Waiting for? Try It today and get The Complying with Benefit Now!

Ps: If you have any concerns you wish to ask me concerning DFY Profitz or you just want to offer your sensations as well as ideas about it. Please feel free to relay your remarks, pointers or corrections., I will certainly answer you wholeheartedly and attentively. Thanks!

[ethanfanfic]

Tough Week.

Hey guys!

The Ethan Dolan and Ana Mistopolis Saga continues. This one is a little upsetting. Some dark themes, which I have experienced in a similar situation!  If every you have a request or feedback, please let me know! 

Word Count: 1320

Synopsis: Ana gets some devastating news from home and decides to keep it to herself. The week gets harder and Ethan starts to get worried. What happens when the truth comes out?

It was a tough week. Possibly the worst. It was filled with exams, practice and studying. My support system of Ethan, Grayson and Caroline were still there thank goodness. But my host parents were visiting their daughter in Chicago. I had the house to myself. Besides the dog, Charlie. Sounds pretty good right? So why was it so bad? Back home, in Australia, my auntie was sick. Stomach cancer. And she was on her way out. Mum called me to let me know on Thursday after my last exam. Thank god Ethan, Grayson and Caroline all had their last exam on Friday. I just wanted to keep this to myself. But at practice on Friday, I may have screwed that up. I was on the last sprint giving more than my all. I finished first, smashing my personal best. Causing me to spew my cuts up from exhaustion. A lot of the other girls laughed. Caroline instantly came to my side and held my hair back.

“This is an example of dedication!” Coach Lane began. “A great example of how to purge.” Mia Porter giggled, causing a wave of sneering.

“Enough! Shower up!” Coach Lane dismissed them.

I had my hands on my knees. I was panting and sniffling. Caroline got my water and I rinsed my mouth out. “Hey, are you okay? You looked really worried whilst running, is everything all good?” Caroline asked. I didn’t know how to drop a bombshell like this. Although she’s been a good friend for a while now, I didn’t want to bring it up.

“Just determined to win.”

I went out with Ethan on Friday night. It was a great date night. So great that I forgot about everything. Until I heard an Australian accent, triggering me. I my smile faded and I slouched without even realising.

“What’s up!” He smiled at me.

I turned to him and smiled back. “The sky.”

He gave me an innocent smirk and chuckle. He wrapped one arm around me. “Seriously. You seem a little blue.”

I don’t know why I didn’t initially tell him. I guess I thought if I ignored it, it would go away.

“I’m just tired from this week. Plus, I’m on my period so I’m just off.” I lied. It killed me to, but I lied. Luckily he bought it though.

We spend the rest of the night by the beach in each other embrace before heading back to mine. When the truth all came out.

I jolted awake at exactly 03:07. I jolted enough to disturb Ethan a little. He groaned and wrapped his arms around me tighter. I waited for him to slowly start snoring again before I carefully released myself. I grabbed my phone and tip toed downstairs. Something felt off. I felt off. My chest began to tighten and it hurt to breathe. I quickly let Charlie inside and grabbed a glass of water. I sat on the couch with him and pat him. I tried to keep myself distracted. But then I got a message.

“Hey, are you up?” It was from my sister, Sila. I instantly thought of the worse case scenario. My aunt Mary was dead. I called her.

“Hey.” She sniffled.

“Sila.” I sighed.

“Ana,” she began. “I’m so sorry to tell you this over the phone. But Aunt Mary just passed a few moments ago.

I sat there shell shocked. I was frozen. A single tear rolled down my face and hit my arm to snap me back to reality. My mind switched to my cousins. Costas and Jamie weren’t much younger than me. I couldn’t imagine a life without my mum and now they were about to live it.

“Ana?” Sila whimpered.

“Sorry.” I sniffed. “Where are you?”

“At the hospital. Everyone’s here.”

“I’ll let you go. Send my love, please. Especially to dad and Costas and Jamie.”

“Of course of course.”

“Stay strong, Sila. I love you.”

“You too.”

I hung up the phone and took a few deep breaths. Put I couldn’t control myself. I started sobbing. I tried to keep quiet, I didn’t want to bother Ethan this early. Charlie ran off the couch. My sobs got more uncontrollable. I covered my mouth and continued crying.

“Ana?” I heard my name being called. Shit. I woke him.

“Hey, hey.” He said in a husky half awake voice. He opened his arms and I went into them, hysterically crying. I held onto him tight and pulled him in closer. I kept griping onto him, trying to pull him closer to me. I just needed to be held. I cried into his chest.

“What’s going on, are you hurt, do-do you need an ambulance?!” He was well and truly awake and alert at this point. I managed to shake my head. I tired to calm down.

I pulled away from him but left my arms around his neck.

“My-my-” I tried through sobs, but I struggled. I took a deep breath.

“My aunt just passed away.” I looked down and continued crying.

“Oh, Ana.” He scooped me back in and held him tighter than ever.

I kept sobbing. I couldn’t control myself at all. I stayed in his embrace sobbing for the next twenty minutes.

“Wanna talk.” Ethan said, as I pulled away.

I shook my head. I got my laptop which was on the coffee table and searched for urgent flights to Sydney. There was one in five hours.

“Anna, are you sure?” Ethan asked concerned.

I didn’t reply. I kept my eyes on the laptop.

“Ana stop. Think about it.”

“I don’t have time to think, Ethan!” I snapped. “My family is overseas, grieving and-and-and I’m here, being fucking selfish! Selfish! On exchange, living it up.” I broke down. My true emotions were now showing on how I felt. It was the ugly truth.

“Ana! You’re not being selfish! It’s not your fault!”

“I just feel like shit.” I slouched back into the couch. He mimicking my pose and pushed back. I sighed and pushed my hair up.

“It’s almost four. Sleep on it.”

“I’m sorry for snapping.” I whispered.

“I’m sorry for not noticing that you were upset.”

And with that, we went back to bed.

I woke up at nine. Ethan wasn’t there. I rolled over to find a packed suitcase. I got up and ran downstairs.

“E?” I yelled. He was downstairs, on the phone. He put his fingers on his lips and smiled. I was confused as hell.

“Thanks Lauren. You too.”

“Ethan, what’s going on?”

“That was Lauren, your visa officer. I told what happened and she’s contacting school and helping us out. You leave in six hours and returning in a week.” I stood there shell shocked. I didn’t know what to do.

“I love you.” I gushed, running into him and kissing him on the cheek.

“Call Paul and Linda. And your parents. I’ll continue packing.”

The next few hours were rushed. I called Paul and Linda and told what was happening. They were shocked and upset for me. I assured Charlie would be in safe hands with Ethan. I rung my parents and told them too. They were happy that I was coming but overcome with a great sadness obviously. Ethan drove me to the airport. Helped me through check in and walked me to the departure gate. I took his hands in mine and rested my forehead on his chin.

“I can’t thank you enough.” I sighed.

“I wish you told me earlier.” He sighed. I looked up to him and have him an eskimo kiss.

He laughed. He kissed me back.

“I got you something.” I said. I dug into my pocket and pulled out a necklace gain with my favourite ring around it. I put it around it his neck. He picked it up and smiled. I gave one last kiss and departed.

What did I do to deserve him.

[kiran-wears-science-blues]

Trek and Buffy: 1, 4, 9.

Buffy:

1. Analyze your favorite character. -- Done! I am also endlessly amused that every single one of you asked me this. :’D

4. Favorite Multi-Episode plot arc.  Can be more than one, go nuts!

There’s a couple I really like. 

It’s been a while since I’ve watched Becoming, but every time I see it in the fandom, it really touches me. The story of Buffy losing everything and still having herself is such a powerful one. 

I’m also such a sucker for Graduation Day because it did a wonderful job of pulling together so many little aspects from the three previous seasons. I love working together plotlines and YAS JONATHAN. Y’all catch him protecting Cordy from the blast? 

9. Talk about a major theme in the narrative and how that theme is developed throughout. Why is this theme important? How does it influence the narrative? 

I answered this before, but another theme in Buffy is found family. It starts with the small little core Scooby gang in the early seasons and slowly grows, to the point that in later seasons, found family literally replaces biological family for most of the characters. That’s fascinating. In some ways it’s a strength, as Buffy is an incredible story of friendship. However, in other ways, it bugs me. Particularly in how found family eclipses other relationships in the characters’ lives, eliminating discussion of bio families outside Buffy’s, which then extends to the rest of the town. 

Early in the series I feel there is more recognition of the serious dichotomy of the mortality rate and the behavior of the residents of Sunnydale (a la Oz’s commentary on the school newspapers’ obits), but as the show progresses, the narrative stops acknowledging this. The result is it stops being a humorous characterization of the town, and just starts becoming a town that doesn’t care that people are always dying. 

I don’t think I explained that well at all but yeah. I wish we saw more families in Sunnydale that lost people, and how they handled it. 

Trek: 

1. Analyze your favorite character. 

Data is another perfect example of my character type: awkward try-hards. Anyway, we all know Data - sweet and lovely and just wants so so so much to be human. To be honest, the narrative in Star Trek spends so much time on him that I don’t know how much there is for me to add, but there are a few things I’d like to address. 

His emotions: Data, I think, very clearly shows emotions throughout the show. They may not be human emotions, but he shows affective responses to events. On occasion, someone points this out - as Beverly does in The Offspring when she doubts Data doesn’t love Lal - but I overall think that the Enterprise crew does a poor job of recognizing and supporting a different species’ style of emoting. Because for all intents and purposes, Data is a new species. 

His relationship with Picard: Data is definitely Picard’s adoptive son. I love this. I wish there was more fanwork about it. However look for Data & Picard fic and you’ll find.... yeah. The curse of having non-romantic ships. 

Kids: GIVE DATA A KID. I’m so frustrated about how many kids Data had taken away. He would have been a GREAT DAD.

4. Favorite Multi-Episode plot arc.  Can be more than one, go nuts!

God. Um. There’s so many. Um. 

Can I say all of DS9? Because DS9 was such a coherent plot. But seriously the Dominion War was such a beautifully written arc, and I say this as someone who has a lot of issues with DS9. 

Also I loved a lot of the multi-episode arcs of Enterprise. I won’t say more since I know you’re mid-series, but I loved S4′s multi-episode storylines. I still want to write my fic that combined two of them. 

9. Talk about a major theme in the narrative and how that theme is developed throughout. Why is this theme important? How does it influence the narrative? 

The most important theme in Star Trek, in my opinion, is betterment. It is the defining trait that makes Star Trek the influential optimistic story that it is. Star Trek doesn’t believe things are perfect and all-wonderful right now, or even in the Star Trek universe itself, but in the constant journey toward a perfection that perhaps is always a little further beyond our reach. 

In TOS and TNG, the narrative did believe in a perfection having been reached perhaps, but still held onto betterment through characters such as Data who always strove to be more than he was. I think there was some quote about even a goal beyond reach being a worthy endeavor for the journey, but I can’t really figure out what it was again or where it came from. But anyway, in DS9, the show challenged that society as well had not yet achieved perfection, but that it was worthy to still continue to strive to be better. Sometimes I feel that DS9 lost sight of this theme by introducing Section 31 and that goddamn episode For the Uniform, but I do appreciate believing in extending the concept of betterment to a society that seems good but still has flaws. 

[siliconwebx]

Building an Online Community from the Ground Up

Unless you’re a natural social butterfly, building your own online community may sound a little daunting. However, if you plan correctly, you can set up a little section of the internet that you and yours can call home for years to come. In this post we’ll walk you though a few stages you’ll need to navigate in order to see your idea of a community become a reality.

Planning Stages

You cannot just jump head-first into building a community. Sometimes they just kind of organically emerge, but if you’re looking to start a purposeful group, you need a plan. Otherwise, things can get out of hand quickly. Not necessarily in a bad way — you might become the place to be and grow exponentially faster than you expected to. Whatever the case, approaching building your community purposefully is your best bet for success.

1. Why Do You Want to Build a Community?

To start off with, you need to know specifically why you’re building this community. It is very easy to get in over your head and let a project go sideways without a clear vision of why you’re doing it and where it’s going. So think on it, and ask yourself the hard question: how will this community benefit its members?

That’s a hard question to answer. Especially because there are a lot of communities out there already. The internet is a big place. Just look at Reddit with the massive amount of users and categories and subreddits that people participate in. So if you’re going to build a community from the ground up, what will it bring to the table?

As an example, when I started my first podcast, I talked with my partner a lot about this. What even made us start talking about the podcast to begin with was wanting a place to talk with people. We missed the old days of blogging where conversations happened in the comments sections instead of on social media. It didn’t feel as personal or as social to us.

We wanted to talk to people and make friends. It was as simple as that. We wanted to produce content that would bring people together and have a conversation.

So that was our why.

Determine Your ROI:

Just a quick note about running a community. Sometimes you might not make a profit on it. You may be spending money or time on building this up. It can be a lot of work, so you should ask yourself what return you want out of this. This return should be entirely separate from the community goals above.

You may want an increase in emails to blast mail in return for providing a space for folks to congregate. You may be looking to create a route for customer support and brand loyalty to increase. Your company might even be looking to use it as a recruitment tool, finding new talent from people passionate about your brand or project.

Basically, you want to make sure that you aren’t expending resources without getting anything in return. If taken seriously and done right, a community can be a lot of work, so you want to make sure that even if your motives are altruistic and for the good of your audience and users, there is still a return in some way for you.

2. Find a Concept (or Stay on Brand)

Once you know why you’re going to build your community, the next step is making sure you appeal to the right people. As one of my old bosses used to tell me, “you gotta find your schtick.” Basically, what I’m saying is that you need a brand identity. I really liked how this article from Brandisty put it: “Let me be clear: a brand is the relationship between an organization and an audience.”

With that in mind, I am not saying you need a logo or a 4-color palette for your media kit. I’m saying that you need to know what your community is going to represent to its members. At Elegant Themes, for instance, we work to represent style and empowerment for our users. We want people to see or hear the words Divi or Elegant Themes and think to themselves “Oh yeah, their stuff lets me do my job so much easier than before” or “Man, the photos in that latest layout pack are perfect for [Insert Big Client’s Name]’s site.”

Sure, we have beautiful logos and pretty colors, but those are secondary to what is really important: making your life better through excellent design.

Now, if you have a brand already (and you probably do), think about who your users are and what you want to be to them. What purpose will this community serve to them? For you, it will (hopefully) lead to increased revenue, higher brand awareness and reach, and improvements in your products or service. But what good does it do your users to be members?

As an example of that, with my podcast, my partner and I wanted the relationship between our listeners and our show to be that of a matchmaker. We wanted to facilitate people meeting new friends. So if they listened to our podcast, they would have ample opportunity to talk with like-minded people through our community that we worked on building. Same for Elegant Themes — we have a very active comments section here on the blog, a Meetup network of Divi Nation groups, and so on. We strive to make sure that you participating means you get some value that doesn’t come directly from the software itself.

That’s our brand. Now find yours.

3. Craft a Mission Statement

Yes, those dreaded words. Mission Statement. The only two words that can make a committee meeting even more dreadful. But you need one. It doesn’t have to be anything complex (it’s better if it’s not), but you need to get that concept behind your brand identity into writing. That’s all. Mission statements serve the purpose of giving you a cornerstone to look back on and make sure that you’re on track. And if not, you can easily course correct.

4. Where Will Your Community Gather?

Today, there are a ton of options to choose from, and depending on your type of brand or project, some may work better than others. There are really two things you have to keep in mind about this:

Do you want a completely free forum, or do you want to own and control your own platform?

Where does your audience already hang out?

The pros of going for a free forum is that most of the leg-work is done for you. Choosing an option like a Facebook Group is great because so many people already use it (so you show up where they already are), and you can get started in just a few clicks. It takes mere minutes to get Groups up and running on Facebook.

The cons of using an externally hosted platform is that you don’t have any control over it. Not really. You and your community are subject to their ToS and business model and lifespan and so on. However,

Controlling your own platform gives you freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want. But it comes at the cost of being yet another account your users have to sign up for. With forums and various membership site plugins for WordPress, you can absolutely go this route. But if you make the process too much of a chore, your community may never get off the ground.

Some Platform Options:

I want to list some of the more popular platforms to grow an online community, and in many cases, creators and brands choose multiples to reach different segments of their audience. For example, some people may spend the majority of their time online with Discord open in the background, but never log into Facebook. Or some people might be hardcore Redditors and Twitter influencers, but avoid group chat platforms altogether.

Discord – A group chat that is aimed at gamers, but robust enough to work for a variety of community types. Very handy if your user base is already using it, as your server could just be added to their list.

Slack – A group chat that many companies use for work, so people very likely already have this one installed. Setting up your own Slack server is free, and communities here thrive during the day since people can participate while looking like they’re hard at work.

Reddit – The largest community on the internet. Basically one giant forum, anyone can set up a subreddit (subforum), which anyone can subscribe to and participate in.

Facebook Groups – You’re probably already a member of a few Facebook groups. These groups can easily go viral, have lots of admin options, and take advantage of a place your people are already likely to be.

Twitter hashtags – Twitter hashtags can also be a community. Often taking the form of a chat (such as #bibchat or #codenewbies), these tend to be regular, moderated discussions that eventually grow into a tag folks use all the time to keep everyone connected.

YouTube comments – Despite their reputation, if you foster a healthy discussion in the comments of your videos, you can build a very active and thriving community there. People’s channels will follow and interact with one another, share playlists, and just generally grow together.

Live streams – If you regularly live stream, you will get a cadre of viewers who tune in. Those people then fill up the chats as you go, talking with you and each other, and then those comments continue after the stream is over. This is generally not the primary location for your community, but it’s a fantastic way to get people to interact and hang out together.

Forums and Message Boards – While on the decline in popularity, forums and message boards are the old standby for internet communities. Totally asynchronous messaging threads are incredibly useful for long, detailed discussions. However, because they are generally entirely separate from other accounts and platforms, people have to make an effort to check the boards to see new updates. If you decide to go this route, there are plenty of WordPress plugins available including bbPress.

Social Media Pages and Profiles – Simply having a Facebook page or a Twitter profile that interacts with other users in and of itself. Look at the Wendy’s Twitter account. Or Zappos. They keep their social media managers interacting with customers constantly, and their responses stay on brand. So people get involved. Again, this won’t be the primary platform, but it can be very important.

5. Lay Down The Law

You have to write down whatever rules and guidelines you want your members to follow. Communities go downhill fast if you have no rules to govern them. Even if they’re as simple as “no self-promotion, hate speech, or personal attacks will be tolerated.”

As the community manager, it’s your job to determine the bounds within which the members stay. They can be as rigid or as lenient as you want, but the important thing is that they exist and are posted for people to see. Well, and that they’re enforced, but we’ll get to that next.

Action Stages

A lot of the planning for a community is academic. You’re thinking and envisioning and trying to make sure all your ducks are in a row. After that, you get to put you feet to the pavement (or maybe fingers to the keyboard) and start dealing with people.

1. Start It Up

Okay, so take steps 1-5 under the planning stages and do them. It’s time to implement your plan. It’s time to start that Facebook Group or launch that Discord server. Take everything that you’ve been thinking about and make it real. It doesn’t matter that your users aren’t aware of it yet. That’s okay. You want to lay claim to your spot.

If you have been planning it for a while, you might have even told them that you were working on this. So long before you start inviting people, plant your flag and get it to waving. The important thing is that no one gets an Under Construction page or a broken URL. Once you start pointing people at where you want them to be, you want them to stay there. So get the forums up and running. Set the permissions and channels in Discord. Upload your emoji to Slack.

Take your idea and make it real.

2. Soft Launch

A soft launch will be your best bet for introducing people to your community. And by soft launch, I mean, not promoting it to the world at large. Just let people organically trickle in. Maybe you invite a handful of people or casually drop a note about it in your podcast or at the end of an email. Maybe even a Join our Community button on your website. But not putting effort into telling people about it.

Why?

Because of bugs and snags and all the thousands of things that could go wrong. You want to be able to work out the kinks before bringing in a boatload of people. If the first impression that people get of your community is that it’s shoddy, you probably won’t get a second one.

Especially if there’s any kind of premium price tag attached. If that’s the case, give a few free memberships or trials to some people to try out and get things rolling. They’ll feel special, it’ll be a soft launch, and you’ll hopefully get some free advertisement for when you do launch officially.

3. Recruit Staff and Assign Roles

Now this is a kind of iffy stage, to be honest. Some people don’t need this step at this point. Everyone will eventually, though. You can handle going solo, trying to build an online community all on your own (I’m thinking of Saron from CodeNewbie, who did it all by her lonesome at first). Some of you already have a staff or group of volunteers. Heck, some of you already have an audience who are clamoring to be more involved with you.

But if you don’t, it’s time to grease some palms. Figuratively, and maybe even literally.

You won’t need much. Just a few people to make sure things run smoothly. You will want people to moderate discussion, generally, and make sure the rules you set up are followed. Even if you start out doing it all by your lonesome, there will be people stepping up to enforce them for you. Even without you asking. These are perfect recruits. Additionally, you can see the people who engage the most and care about the community’s growth and health and ask them if they want to be involved in a greater capacity.

In the end, it’s the caring about the community’s growth and health that matters.

4. Really Launch and Promote Your Tail Off

This is the big moment. Once most of the outstanding bugs are taken care of, you are ready to get this show on the road. You can shout it from the rooftops and let the entire world know that your doors are open and welcoming to anyone who wants to be a part of something special.

And this is where you have to do most of the work. Because you need to get people interested and invested and actually participating in your community. All of your marketing energy will likely be spent going toward your community for a while, and that’s okay. It’ll pay off. (Remember earlier when we talked about your ROI?)

It depends entirely on your project and brand on what channels you promote through, but in general, you want to go overboard. Just to the point where you don’t annoy people.

Running Facebook ads or AdWords campaigns is a popular way to recruit. If you are a community of artists, Instagram ads would be perfect. Send out an email to all your lists. Then a few days later, segment it to those who didn’t open it. Schedule a lot of Tweets and Facebook posts using Hootsuite or Buffer. CoSchedule is another good option.

For the initial launch period, you may want to do a combination of live streams and interact with your audience or customers that way. Promote those personally. Even do giveaways if it’s a premium community. And use Facebook events, even if you’re not on Facebook. It’s hard to believe how much Virtual Launch Parties can help a project’s reach. Or really any virtual event, for that matter.

Maintenance Stage

So you’ve launched. You’re up and running. You have people visiting your community every day, and everything is going even better than you expected. So what now? Well, you maintain it. You keep on doing what works, and maybe throwing some new ideas in the mix to keep things fresh for your customers and audience.

Basically, to maintain a community, you go through most of the steps you did to launch it, just to a lesser degree.

Periodically look at the mission statement and purpose of your community to evaluate whether you are on track with your goals.

Make sure your ROI is on track. Check if you’re putting in enough effort or too much into keeping things going.

Always monitor the users and keep an eye on MVPs. You can never have too many people in your corner. Harvest the talent there for everyone’s gains.

You should also monitor your monitors. Make sure the rules you laid out are still being followed and that the community is still what you meant for it to be.

Continue marketing. You don’t want to go all-out like you did to launch it. To build an online community requires people hearing about it. Maintaining one is about retention and interactivity. But you will still need to keep it in your marketing rotation so it doesn’t become stagnant or insular.

That’s All There Is To It.

And isn’t that enough? If you are going to build an online community, it takes time, effort, and a lot of planning. But when it’s done right, there is really no better element you can add to your brand or company.  Positive interaction with your target audience is more valuable than pretty much anything else these days, and there’s not really anything more positive than inviting them to your own space that you made especially for them.

What have your experiences been with building an online community? Let’s talk about it in the comments!

Article featured image by O.darka / shutterstock.com

The post Building an Online Community from the Ground Up appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

from Elegant Themes Blog https://ift.tt/2BDVdAp via SiliconWebDesign

[jvzooproductsclub]

WP ShopAzon | Create Your Own WordPress Amazon Affiliate Store In Simple Steps

WP ShopAzon | Create Your Own WordPress Amazon Affiliate Store In Simple Steps

Learn more here: http://mattmartin.club/index.php/2018/05/25/wp-shopazon-create-your-own-wordpress-amazon-affiliate-store-in-simple-steps/

Welcome To MattMartin.Club!

Thank You So Much For Taking The Time In Checking Out My Review On "WP ShopAzon"

Hope You Will Enjoy It!

    Overview:

Product Creator Kurt Chrisler Product Name WP ShopAzon Front-End Price $47.00 Niche WP Plugin & Affiliate Marketing. Bonuses YES! Listed Below & Bonus Package Refund 30 Days Money Back Guarantee Recommendation Yes, 100% from Matt Martin 🙂 Launch Date 2018 – May – 25 @ 10:00 AM EST Official Website Checkout "WP ShopAzon" Official Site

Click Here @ 09 AM EST on 2018-May-25 To Get An Early Bird Discount On “WP ShopAzon” Along With My Exclusive Bonuses

  ABOUT AUTHOR

Kurt Chrisler is a top affiliate with many time award winning. Besides, he’s also a familiar vendor on JVZoo with many products such as WP StyleAzon, WP Quick Launch 3.0, Affiliazon DFY: Toy Edition, DSLR Camera PLR, Survival PLR Amazon Niche Pack, WP Product Comparison Plugin, AutoZON Builder 2.0, or Azon Hot List Builder. In fact, his Affiliazon DFY series has gained many favored responses from affiliates and you’ll see the drone edition is no less his brothers.

Kurt is also the owner of Fusion Marketing. Fusion Marketing provides online marketing services for small businesses to enable them to establish, maintain, promote and optimize their internet presence. They tailor their services to each specific business to help them reach more potential prospects and customers, increase repeat business and to stay in touch with current customers. Now, let’s look at the next part of this WP ShopAzon Review and find out its features.

FEATURES OF SHOPAZON

Take A Look At What WP ShopAzon Does Automatically For You:

Automatically Inserts Content

ShopAzon will automatically pull in the products features, description, price and image. All your content is done for you automatically.

Automatically Inserts the Product Name

WP ShopAzon will automatically add the title of the product for you with just a click.

Automatically Updating Prices

Not only does WP ShopAzon insert the price of the product directly from Amazon, but it will automatically update every 24 hours to make sure they are current (and comply with the Amazon TOS).

Automatically Inserts A Product Image

No need to go find images for your site, ShopAzon will insert a product image into each product page on your site automatically.

Automatically Inserts Your Affiliate Link

Worried about having to insert an affiliate link into every page on your site? Don’t worry, ShopAzon does it for you automatically! You even get to choose what “Call To Action” you would like to use.

Automatically Inserts A Relevant YouTube Video

ShopAzon will take the name of the product and find a relevant YouTube video and automatically insert that video into the product page. This is great for SEO and for the visitor engagement on your site.

Automatically Inserts Custom Ads

Want to promote related Amazon products or even non-Amazon products? Easy…ShopAzon gives you the ability to insert your own custom ad code to be show at the top and/or bottom of each product automatically.

Automatically Add A Category To Each Product

When importing your Amazon products, WP ShopAzon can automatically add categories to each new productas specified by the user. This is a huge time saver and allows you to organize your products on your site.

Automatically Schedule New Products To Be Added

Instead of creating all your product at once, WP ShopAzon allows you to schedule them for a future date. This allows your site to naturally grow over time and results in better search engine rankings.

And If That Wasn’t Already Enough, Check Out These Advanced Features!

Built In Automatic Content Spinning Integration

WP ShopAzon has built-in integration with The Best Spinner and Spin Rewriter. With this built-in integration the plugin will pull the product content from Amazon and automatically spin it before adding it to your site!

Built-In Automatic Traffic Generation

WP ShopAzon has built-in integration with OnlyWire.com and Snap AutoPost to submit your new content to social media sites. With this built-in integration, when you create a new product post it will automatically be submitted to social media getting you links and traffic on autopilot!

Supports 10 Different Amazon Locales

WP ShopAzon allows you to choose your Amazon locale. You can choose from USA, UK, Canada, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Japan, India, and China.

Responsive and Mobile Optimized

WP ShopAzon is completely mobile friendly and responsive. As long as the WordPress theme you are using is mobile optimized, your WP ShopAzon content will be as well!

Works On Any WordPress Theme

With WP ShopAzon you can completely control the look and feel of your site and it will run right on your current theme.

WHY SHOULD YOU GET IT?

It is simple. Let’s take a minute to recap 3 biggest benefits that you will get with this plugin:

Build Complete Amazon Affiliate Websites In Under 60 Seconds!

The Azon Profit Engine software allows users to build fully functional Amazon affiliate websites on complete autopilot.

Automates The Entire Process

This WordPress Plugin will AUTOMATICALLY:

Pull a list of Amazon products based on the keyword the user inputs

Create posts on each product that is selected

Insert the product features, description, price, image and video

Insert the users Amazon affiliate link into each post

Gets You Links and Traffic

In addition, the software has built in integration for content spinners and social media. So when the users adds a new product the plugin will automatically spin the content and submit it to social media sites!

If you are building niche sites that you monetize with the Amazon affiliate program or want to get started doing so this is for you. In short, It does all the hard works for you:

Find Amazon products to promote

Create a post for each product

Insert the product features & description

Add an image of the product

Insert the product price

Add a video for the product

Insert your Amazon affiliate link

In addition, you will be getting tons the vendor’s greatest bonuses for your fast action

Is it enough awesomeness for you? Because you will be also receiving my ULTIMATE huge bonuses. Those treasures are waiting for you at the end of this WP ShopAzon Review. And even though you do nothing but only read my WP ShopAzon Review, to thanks for your kind support, I still give you free bonuses. So keep reading then scroll your mouse down!

HOW DOES IT WORK?

WP ShopAzon Makes Creating Amazon Affiliate Stores As Easy As 1…2…3!

Enter Your Chosen Keyword To Find Products

Simply enter in any keyword you want and WP ShopAzon will bring back related products for you to choose from to add to your website.

Select Which Products You Want Added To Your Store

Simply click the desired products you want added to your site, and ShopAzon will do all the work for you.

Click “Add Posts” and Let WP ShopAzon Do All The Work

With the click of a button WP ShopAzon will create a new post for every product you select, import all the content you need, spin the content (optional) and submit it to social media sites (optional). It doesn’t get much easier than that!

  Checkout The Demo Video Below To See It In Action!

    Requirements: You will need hosting and a website with WordPress installed. WP ShopAzon is a WordPress Plugin so it takes about 30 seconds or less to install.

PRICE AND EVALUATION

For a limited time, you can grab WP ShopAzon with early bird discount price in these options below. Let’s pick the best suited options for you before this special offer gone!

Front-End: WP ShopAzon ($17)  

Unlimited Site License

OTO1: WP ShopAzon PRO ($47)  

Allows users to add affiliate products from eBay, CJ, Walmart and AliExpress.

OTO2: Developers License ($37)  

Allows users to sell the sites they create and use it on clients sites.

OTO3: DFY ($97) 

Done For You option where the creators build out the site for the customer.

Let’s act now, don’t delay and grab it now while it’s still at the lowest price possible! And Just feel free to give it a try, because You have a full 30 days to put this to the test and make sure that this is for you. If you do not see any results within this period then please reach out to them. The Helpdesk Team is always there to help you out and make sure that you have been following the correct procedures.

SHOPAZON REVIEW – CONCLUSION

In summary, I hope that all of the information in my WP ShopAzon Review can help you gain more understanding about this product and then be able to make a wise choice. If you’re ready to start making a real online income in the most passive way possible then click the button below before the price rises. I am look forward to seeing your success.

However, in case you are in need of any advice, please feel free to keep in touch with me anytime. Regardless, thank you for reading my WP ShopAzon Review. Goodbye, and see you again!

        Click Here @ 09 AM EST on 2018-May-25 To Get An Early Bird Discount On “WP ShopAzon” Along With My Exclusive Bonuses

    =>> Checkout The BONUSES I've Listed For You If You Purchase "WP ShopAzon" From Me!

            #Affiliate_Marketing, #Amazon_Affiliate, #Amazon_Autopilot, #Amazon_Marketing, #Amazon_Store, #Cloud_Based_App, #Internet_Marketing, #Jvzoo, #JVZoo_Launches, #JvzooProductReview, #JvzooProducts, #List_Building, #Online_MArketing, #Software, #Software_Tools, #Wordpress, #Wordpress_Affiliate_Plugin, #Wordpress_Affiliate_Store, #Wordpress_Amazon_Affiliate_Store, #WordPress_Amazon_Affiliate_Store_In_Simple_Steps, #Wordpress_Amazon_Store, #Wordpress_Plugin, #Wordpress_Plugins, #WordPress_Theme, #Wordpress_Themes, #WP_ShopAzon, #WP_ShopAzon_JVZoo, #WP_ShopAzon_Launch, #Wp_Store

[bizmediaweb]

How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar: Tips and Templates

Close your eyes and picture this: it’s May 3, end of day, all the designers have gone home and suddenly it hits you: tomorrow is Star Wars Day—May the 4th—a huge marketing opportunity and you’ve got nothing.

A mad scramble ensues to come up with a clever concept, create assets, and execute in time to ride the wave of lightsabre-filled fun. In some cases, it may be too late to do anything at all. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Enter the social media content calendar.

Content calendars are exactly what they sound like: a way to plan and organize upcoming content. There are, of course, different types. An editorial calendar is specifically for planning content assets such as blog posts and videos, while a social media content calendar—the primary focus of this post—is for planning content for social.

This blog post will cover why you should have a social media content calendar for your business and how to create one. We’ll also look at examples and provide you with two free content calendar templates to get you started.

Let’s jump in.

Table of contents

Why a social media content calendar is important for business

How to create a social media content calendar

Editorial and content calendar examples

Free editorial and social media content calendar templates

Bonus: Get the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence with Hootsuite.

6 reasons why a social media content calendar is important for business

A survey by the Content Marketing Institute found that a whopping 70 percent of B2B marketers plan to produce more content in 2017 versus the previous year.

With that expected increase, it’s more important now than ever to have a social media content calendar to support your greater social media marketing plan.

1. Never miss important dates

One of the key things a content calendar must contain is key dates that matter to your business—holidays, events, product launches, campaigns, and more.

This allows you to plan content for those dates and ensure that you don’t end up scrambling.

Additionally, a content calendar is a good place to document performance. For example, if your brand operates in the B2B space, you may find that the winter holidays result in click-throughs as your target audience isn’t at work.

Include this information in your content calendar so you can plan accordingly. For example, you might switch to a lower publishing volume or rely on reposting content rather than pushing new content.

2. Organize content

Social media content calendars help keep your publishing schedule organized. I know, I know. Obvious, right? But you’d be surprised—despite this very clear benefit—how many brands fail to use a content calendar.

Staying organized not only means you remember important dates, it also means that you know what you’re publishing, where, and when. Don’t underestimate the impact this kind of planning can have on the efficiency of your social media marketing plan.

Additionally, a content calendar helps you establish a regular cadence for each of your social channels and stick to it.

And, of course, any social media manager worth their salt knows that consistency is key. A content calendar can help ensure that you don’t run the risk of spamming one network while neglecting another.

3. Collaborate easily

Another great thing about social media content calendars? They make it easier to work with a team. Whether you’re sharing information with stakeholders or updating your team, this calendar serves as the single source of truth for what’s being published and when.

This is made especially easy if you host your calendar on a cloud platform designed to promote collaboration, such as Google Sheets or an Excel spreadsheet in Dropbox.

4. Save time

The inherent organization of content calendars fosters efficiency. Planning content ahead, knowing when you’re sharing evergreen assets, when you’re pushing new content, and when you’re curating items from other creators will save you time in the long run.

5. Effectively allocate resources

Rather than making last minute asks of your long-suffering copywriters and very patient video team, you can instead assign things well in advance, providing ample time for research and creation, thus ensuring you rarely miss a deadline.

Having a content calendar means you’re more likely to publish your content precisely when you intend to and at the quality level you expect.

6. Gain a deeper understanding of successful content

Careful planning of your social media content will also help you gain a better understanding of what makes a good piece of content, enabling you to increase your success rate and create more of what your audience wants to see.

How? First, it frees up time for you to devote to measurement instead of last-minute publishing. Secondly, it provides a clear framework and structure for your content activities, meaning you’re more likely to notice patterns. Perhaps content that goes out on Thursday does better, or your daily how-to post beats out all your other content.

This deeper understanding can help you determine optimal post times, who your audience is, and what they want to see. This will ultimately make it easier to duplicate what’s working.    

How to create a social media content calendar

1. Think about your audience

Good content should always start in the same place: your audience. That means knowing your audience inside and out.

The best way to understand your audience—and easily evaluate whether they’d be interested in a particular type of content—is to create audience personas. These archetypes provide a window into what your typical audience members look like, including demographic details about them as well as their wants, needs, goals, and pain points.

While it’s important to map out your existing audience members and think about what content they want to see, you can also explore who you want to have viewing your content. This information can be captured in aspirational personas that reflect your target audience.

Whether you’re looking at your existing audience or your target audience, your personas should inform the content you create. Not sure if you should create a certain piece of content? Ask yourself if it aligns to one of your personas. If it doesn’t, then you probably shouldn’t be investing resources into it.

2. Research what content resonates

In order to plan and create successful content, you need to know what success looks like. Start by looking at content you’ve produced in the past and examine what worked.

Ask yourself:

What content got the most likes?

What content got the most comments?

What content got the most shares?

What content got the most views?

What content got the highest engagement rate?

For a better understanding of what to measure and why, check out our posts about social media metrics that matter and video metrics that matter.

3. Audit existing content

Now that you know what works, look at what content you actually have.

Go through your existing library and identify types and categories. For example, in terms of content types, your business might create blog posts, videos, and webinars. In terms of content categories, you might have Q&As, how tos, and listicles.

Ask yourself the following questions:

What’s still useable?

What can be updated?

What can be repurposed?

What can’t be reused?

All items that fall into the first three categories have the potential to become evergreen content that will form the basis of your content calendar.

4. Create an overview of major events

Once you’ve taken stock of your content assets, set them aside (for now).

Create a calendar—this can take the form of a doc, spreadsheet, or even an actual calendar—and map out important events throughout the year, particularly those that you want to create content around.

Be sure to include:

Holidays (big and small)

Product launches

Campaigns

Annual events or features

Depending on your business, this calendar may also include fun offbeat holidays, such as National Trivia Day and National Donut Day (of which there are two).

If your business is affected by seasonality, be sure to include this in your calendar. For example, if you’re a B2B company and there tends to be a lull at the end of December, mark this on your calendar so that you can plan accordingly by reducing the amount of content published or saving top content for a higher traffic time.

5. Figure out calendar processes

You’ve got your evergreen content and you’ve got your bare bones calendar—now it’s time to figure out the nitty gritty of your schedule.

First, decide how often you’re going to publish on each social network.

Next, determine your content mix—that is, how much of each type and category of original content you’ll publish, as well as how much curated content you plan to share.

This should typically be expressed as a ratio. A good rule of thumb is the 80-20 rule: share 80 percent helpful and interesting content for every 20 percent of content where you’re trying to sell your product.

Additionally, determine how you’ll generate new content ideas and the process by which they’ll be made a reality. For example, here on the Hootsuite Blog, we hold monthly brainstorms, assign ideas to our internal content team, and plug those assignments into our editorial calendar.

From there, figure out a process for identifying and sharing quality curated content. Establish who on your team will be responsible for updating the calendar and who’s in charge of scheduling content to be publish on social networks.

7. Plan and schedule content ahead of publication

Now that you’ve marked all the important dates—and I do mean ALL—on your content calendar and set up a process for content planning, it’s time for the fun part: new content.

First off, strategize larger themes that you’d like to tackle. For example, you might have a beverage company and want to run a summer campaign about your newest flavor option.

Choose the themes you want to run with and map them onto your calendar. As you do this, keep in mind that it’s better to do a few things well than to do everything poorly. Narrow possible themes down to key priorities.

Once you have themes to go along with your dates, it’s time to figure out your individual content pieces.

Start with a brainstorm. Pull in creative people from across teams (after all, you don’t have to be a content creator to come up with great ideas). At Hootsuite we invite members of multiple teams in because we know they have different perspectives on the topics we’d like to cover. After our brainstorm session, we take the raw ideas, choose our favorites, refine them, assign them, and then add them to our content calendar.

If you have big upcoming events in your calendar that you want to plan content around, ensure that that’s reflected in the themes of your brainstorm sessions and, of course, that you leave adequate time for content tasks to be resourced. After all, you could have the best Christmas-themed campaign in mind, but no one will want to see it if you can’t finish it until January.

Plan your content, create your content, then schedule your content. Simple in theory, much harder in practice. But, with a little organization, you can maintain a social media content calendar that will help your team be more efficient and create better quality content—on time, every time.    

Editorial and content calendar examples

When it comes to long-term editorial planning, few organizations are more in tune than magazines. Because of their regular cadence, publishing restrictions, and reliance on annual features or seasonal topics, most major magazines plan themes—and even specific content—for an entire year in advance.

While the content you’re planning will likely be a tad different than the average magazine, seeing how this is done can be incredibly helpful.

And you’re in luck: because of the process by which magazines typically sell advertising, many actually make their editorial calendar available online. The following are just a few of the best content calendar examples I found on the web.

WIRED

This editorial calendar from tech magazine WIRED is a good example of what a simple overview calendar could look like.

This style would probably be best for mapping out key themes or events each month without much detail on how those concepts will be approached. This makes the calendar fairly flexible as specific details of each piece of content or campaign can easily be decided closer to the release date.

Image via WIRED.

National Geographic

While National Geographic has a standard editorial calendar—which includes details on key articles for each month’s issue—what sets their planning apart is the “Areas of Editorial Focus” document.

This part of their editorial calendar maps out four key themes the magazine plans to tackle over the course of the year, which issues they’ll talk about them in, and how they’ll approach each.

It’s an excellent example of what high-level thematic planning can look like and how it works together with a more traditional editorial calendar to create a comprehensive overview of upcoming content.

Image via National Geographic.

Cosmopolitan

Something that really sets beauty mag Cosmopolitan’s content calendar apart is that it not only indicates what the theme of this issue is, it also includes information about associated digital assets and social media content.

Image via Cosmopolitan.

Entrepreneur

Business magazine Entrepreneur’s editorial calendar may not be as beautiful as WIRED or Cosmopolitan’s, but what it lacks in creativity it makes up in information.

This calendar not only maps out broad themes for upcoming issues, but also lists specific pieces of content that will appear in each edition as well as related digital assets.

It’s a clean, minimal, and functional approach to an editorial calendar.

Image via Entrepreneur.

Forbes

Likewise, business Forbes’ editorial calendar maps out the overall theme for each issue and what key pieces of content will be included in each. This provides a good framework for planning.

Image via Forbes.

While the design elements in many of these editorial calendars are aesthetically appealing, they’re certainly not a requirement for a successful social media calendar.

When it comes to working with social, agility is often the name of the game, so I’d recommend focusing on function over artfulness. Having a calendar that’s easy to edit and update as changes are made is key. If you prefer doing this in a format that’s also beautiful—perhaps to get buy-in from higher-ups—that’s cool too, but not imperative.

For more inspiration, try searching for your favorite publication’s editorial calendar—there’s a lot out there. For instance, Meredith Direct Media—which puts out publications such as Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart Weddings, and Shape—has one mega editorial calendar PDF for all of their properties.    

Free editorial and social media content calendar templates

Now you know why your business needs a content calendar and how to use one, it’s time to create one and get moving.

The best part? We’ve done the hard work for you and created both editorial calendar and social media content calendar templates that you can use for your business. Simply open the link to the Google Sheets file for each, make a copy, and plan away. Below, find instructions on how to use these templates.

How to use the editorial calendar template

This template is intended for planning individual content assets, such as blog posts. It includes sections to fill in for the title of each item, the author, the topic area it covers, and the deadline, as well as the anticipated publication date and time.

Use our Editorial Calendar Template 

To use the template, simply click File in the upper left-hand corner, then select Make a copy from the drop-down menu. 

To use it, simply create a new tab for each month and fill in your content accordingly. The content from each week of the month is divided by colored bars for clear visual separation.

How to use the social media content calendar template

This template is intended to be the single source of truth for all of your social media publishing activities. Like the editorial calendar, it’s divided by week with different months separated into tabs.

Each week is further divided by network. The big four social networks have been included here for simplicity’s sake, but If you use any channels not listed here, you can easily swap them out or add space for them.

Use our Social Media Content Calendar Template

To use the template, simply click File in the upper left-hand corner, then select Make a copy from the drop-down menu. 

In addition to the above-mentioned columns for the week and network, the social media content calendar also includes space to designate the time of day the post will be published, the type of content being shared (such as a blog post or video), the topic covered by the post, the copy you plan to use for the post, and the link to the content being shared.

There is also a space for notes. This is a great place to include any additional information necessary, such as if there’s an image or GIF you plan to share with the link.

The social media content calendar also includes a tab for evergreen content. Have a blog post that always performs well? Add it to the evergreen tab.

This part of the template includes space to indicate what type of content the evergreen asset is, when it was originally published, its title, the topic covered in the piece, and the URL.

It also has space to include top performing social copy so you can also see at a glance how you’ve promoted the piece successfully in the past, as well as a spot to indicate what accompanying image has worked best.

Especially important here is the original publication date. You should schedule time for a regular review of your evergreen assets to ensure that they are up to date and appropriate to continue sharing. If something is dated, then it might be a good idea to plan an update for that piece of content so that you can continue to use it.

With these instructions and templates in hand, you’re ready to take the social media marketing world by storm. Once you’ve planned your content calendar, use Hootsuite to schedule all of your social media posts, engage with your followers, and track the success of your efforts.

Learn More

The post How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar: Tips and Templates appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.

How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar: Tips and Templates published first on http://ift.tt/2u73Z29

[makeitwithmike]

How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar: Tips and Templates

By Kendall Walters

Close your eyes and picture this: it’s May 3, end of day, all the designers have gone home and suddenly it hits you: tomorrow is Star Wars Day—May the 4th—a huge marketing opportunity and you’ve got nothing.

A mad scramble ensues to come up with a clever concept, create assets, and execute in time to ride the wave of lightsabre-filled fun. In some cases, it may be too late to do anything at all. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Enter the social media content calendar.

Content calendars are exactly what they sound like: a way to plan and organize upcoming content. There are, of course, different types. An editorial calendar is specifically for planning content assets such as blog posts and videos, while a social media content calendar—the primary focus of this post—is for planning content for social.

This blog post will cover why you should have a social media content calendar for your business and how to create one. We’ll also look at examples and provide you with two free content calendar templates to get you started.

Let’s jump in.

Let’s dive in.

Table of contents

Why a social media content calendar is important for business

How to create a social media content calendar

Editorial and content calendar examples

Free editorial and social media content calendar templates

Bonus: Get the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence with Hootsuite.

6 reasons why a social media content calendar is important for business

A survey by the Content Marketing Institute found that a whopping 70 percent of B2B marketers plan to produce more content in 2017 versus the previous year.

With that expected increase, it’s more important now than ever to have a social media content calendar to support your greater social media marketing plan.

1. Never miss important dates

One of the key things a content calendar must contain is key dates that matter to your business—holidays, events, product launches, campaigns, and more.

This allows you to plan content for those dates and ensure that you don’t end up scrambling.

Additionally, a content calendar is a good place to document performance. For example, if your brand operates in the B2B space, you may find that the winter holidays result in click-throughs as your target audience isn’t at work.

Include this information in your content calendar so you can plan accordingly. For example, you might switch to a lower publishing volume or rely on reposting content rather than pushing new content.

2. Organize content

Social media content calendars help keep your publishing schedule organized. I know, I know. Obvious, right? But you’d be surprised—despite this very clear benefit—how many brands fail to use a content calendar.

Staying organized not only means you remember important dates, it also means that you know what you’re publishing, where, and when. Don’t underestimate the impact this kind of planning can have on the efficiency of your social media marketing plan.

Additionally, a content calendar helps you establish a regular cadence for each of your social channels and stick to it.

And, of course, any social media manager worth their salt knows that consistency is key. A content calendar can help ensure that you don’t run the risk of spamming one network while neglecting another.

3. Collaborate easily

Another great thing about social media content calendars? They make it easier to work with a team. Whether you’re sharing information with stakeholders or updating your team, this calendar serves as the single source of truth for what’s being published and when.

This is made especially easy if you host your calendar on a cloud platform designed to promote collaboration, such as Google Sheets or an Excel spreadsheet in Dropbox.

4. Save time

The inherent organization of content calendars fosters efficiency. Planning content ahead, knowing when you’re sharing evergreen assets, when you’re pushing new content, and when you’re curating items from other creators will save you time in the long run.

5. Effectively allocate resources

Rather than making last minute asks of your long-suffering copywriters and very patient video team, you can instead assign things well in advance, providing ample time for research and creation, thus ensuring you rarely miss a deadline.

Having a content calendar means you’re more likely to publish your content precisely when you intend to and at the quality level you expect.

6. Gain a deeper understanding of successful content

Careful planning of your social media content will also help you gain a better understanding of what makes a good piece of content, enabling you to increase your success rate and create more of what your audience wants to see.

How? First, it frees up time for you to devote to measurement instead of last-minute publishing. Secondly, it provides a clear framework and structure for your content activities, meaning you’re more likely to notice patterns. Perhaps content that goes out on Thursday does better, or your daily how-to post beats out all your other content.

This deeper understanding can help you determine optimal post times, who your audience is, and what they want to see. This will ultimately make it easier to duplicate what’s working.

How to create a social media content calendar

1. Think about your audience

Good content should always start in the same place: your audience. That means knowing your audience inside and out.

The best way to understand your audience—and easily evaluate whether they’d be interested in a particular type of content—is to create audience personas. These archetypes provide a window into what your typical audience members look like, including demographic details about them as well as their wants, needs, goals, and pain points.

While it’s important to map out your existing audience members and think about what content they want to see, you can also explore who you want to have viewing your content. This information can be captured in aspirational personas that reflect your target audience.

Whether you’re looking at your existing audience or your target audience, your personas should inform the content you create. Not sure if you should create a certain piece of content? Ask yourself if it aligns to one of your personas. If it doesn’t, then you probably shouldn’t be investing resources into it.

2. Research what content resonates

In order to plan and create successful content, you need to know what success looks like. Start by looking at content you’ve produced in the past and examine what worked.

Ask yourself:

What content got the most likes?

What content got the most comments?

What content got the most shares?

What content got the most views?

What content got the highest engagement rate?

For a better understanding of what to measure and why, check out our posts about social media metrics that matter and video metrics that matter.

3. Audit existing content

Now that you know what works, look at what content you actually have.

Go through your existing library and identify types and categories. For example, in terms of content types, your business might create blog posts, videos, and webinars. In terms of content categories, you might have Q&As, how tos, and listicles.

Ask yourself the following questions:

What’s still useable?

What can be updated?

What can be repurposed?

What can’t be reused?

All items that fall into the first three categories have the potential to become evergreen content that will form the basis of your content calendar.

4. Create an overview of major events

Once you’ve taken stock of your content assets, set them aside (for now).

Create a calendar—this can take the form of a doc, spreadsheet, or even an actual calendar—and map out important events throughout the year, particularly those that you want to create content around.

Be sure to include:

Holidays (big and small)

Product launches

Campaigns

Annual events or features

Depending on your business, this calendar may also include fun offbeat holidays, such as National Trivia Day and National Donut Day (of which there are two).

If your business is affected by seasonality, be sure to include this in your calendar. For example, if you’re a B2B company and there tends to be a lull at the end of December, mark this on your calendar so that you can plan accordingly by reducing the amount of content published or saving top content for a higher traffic time.

5. Figure out calendar processes

You’ve got your evergreen content and you’ve got your bare bones calendar—now it’s time to figure out the nitty gritty of your schedule.

First, decide how often you’re going to publish on each social network.

Next, determine your content mix—that is, how much of each type and category of original content you’ll publish, as well as how much curated content you plan to share.

This should typically be expressed as a ratio. A good rule of thumb is the 80-20 rule: share 80 percent helpful and interesting content for every 20 percent of content where you’re trying to sell your product.

Additionally, determine how you’ll generate new content ideas and the process by which they’ll be made a reality. For example, here on the Hootsuite Blog, we hold monthly brainstorms, assign ideas to our internal content team, and plug those assignments into our editorial calendar.

From there, figure out a process for identifying and sharing quality curated content. Establish who on your team will be responsible for updating the calendar and who’s in charge of scheduling content to be publish on social networks.

7. Plan and schedule content ahead of publication

Now that you’ve marked all the important dates—and I do mean ALL—on your content calendar and set up a process for content planning, it’s time for the fun part: new content.

First off, strategize larger themes that you’d like to tackle. For example, you might have a beverage company and want to run a summer campaign about your newest flavor option.

Choose the themes you want to run with and map them onto your calendar. As you do this, keep in mind that it’s better to do a few things well than to do everything poorly. Narrow possible themes down to key priorities.

Once you have themes to go along with your dates, it’s time to figure out your individual content pieces.

Start with a brainstorm. Pull in creative people from across teams (after all, you don’t have to be a content creator to come up with great ideas). At Hootsuite we invite members of multiple teams in because we know they have different perspectives on the topics we’d like to cover. After our brainstorm session, we take the raw ideas, choose our favorites, refine them, assign them, and then add them to our content calendar.

If you have big upcoming events in your calendar that you want to plan content around, ensure that that’s reflected in the themes of your brainstorm sessions and, of course, that you leave adequate time for content tasks to be resourced. After all, you could have the best Christmas-themed campaign in mind, but no one will want to see it if you can’t finish it until January.

Plan your content, create your content, then schedule your content. Simple in theory, much harder in practice. But, with a little organization, you can maintain a social media content calendar that will help your team be more efficient and create better quality content—on time, every time.

Editorial and content calendar examples

When it comes to long-term editorial planning, few organizations are more in tune than magazines. Because of their regular cadence, publishing restrictions, and reliance on annual features or seasonal topics, most major magazines plan themes—and even specific content—for an entire year in advance.

While the content you’re planning will likely be a tad different than the average magazine, seeing how this is done can be incredibly helpful.

And you’re in luck: because of the process by which magazines typically sell advertising, many actually make their editorial calendar available online. The following are just a few of the best content calendar examples I found on the web.

WIRED

This editorial calendar from tech magazine WIRED is a good example of what a simple overview calendar could look like.

This style would probably be best for mapping out key themes or events each month without much detail on how those concepts will be approached. This makes the calendar fairly flexible as specific details of each piece of content or campaign can easily be decided closer to the release date.

Image via WIRED.

National Geographic

While National Geographic has a standard editorial calendar—which includes details on key articles for each month’s issue—what sets their planning apart is the “Areas of Editorial Focus” document.

This part of their editorial calendar maps out four key themes the magazine plans to tackle over the course of the year, which issues they’ll talk about them in, and how they’ll approach each.

It’s an excellent example of what high-level thematic planning can look like and how it works together with a more traditional editorial calendar to create a comprehensive overview of upcoming content.

Image via National Geographic.

Cosmopolitan

Something that really sets beauty mag Cosmopolitan’s content calendar apart is that it not only indicates what the theme of this issue is, it also includes information about associated digital assets and social media content.

Image via Cosmopolitan.

Entrepreneur

Business magazine Entrepreneur’s editorial calendar may not be as beautiful as WIRED or Cosmopolitan’s, but what it lacks in creativity it makes up in information.

This calendar not only maps out broad themes for upcoming issues, but also lists specific pieces of content that will appear in each edition as well as related digital assets.

It’s a clean, minimal, and functional approach to an editorial calendar.

Image via Entrepreneur.

Forbes

Likewise, business Forbes’ editorial calendar maps out the overall theme for each issue and what key pieces of content will be included in each. This provides a good framework for planning.

Image via Forbes.

While the design elements in many of these editorial calendars are aesthetically appealing, they’re certainly not a requirement for a successful social media calendar.

When it comes to working with social, agility is often the name of the game, so I’d recommend focusing on function over artfulness. Having a calendar that’s easy to edit and update as changes are made is key. If you prefer doing this in a format that’s also beautiful—perhaps to get buy-in from higher-ups—that’s cool too, but not imperative.

For more inspiration, try searching for your favorite publication’s editorial calendar—there’s a lot out there. For instance, Meredith Direct Media—which puts out publications such as Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart Weddings, and Shape—has one mega editorial calendar PDF for all of their properties.

Free editorial and social media content calendar templates

Now you know why your business needs a content calendar and how to use one, it’s time to create one and get moving.

The best part? We’ve done the hard work for you and created both editorial calendar and social media content calendar templates that you can use for your business. Simply open the link to the Google Sheets file for each, make a copy, and plan away. Below, find instructions on how to use these templates.

How to use the editorial calendar template

This template is intended for planning individual content assets, such as blog posts. It includes sections to fill in for the title of each item, the author, the topic area it covers, and the deadline, as well as the anticipated publication date and time.

Use our Editorial Calendar Template

To use it, simply create a new tab for each month and fill in your content accordingly. The content from each week of the month is divided by colored bars for clear visual separation.

How to use the social media content calendar template

This template is intended to be the single source of truth for all of your social media publishing activities. Like the editorial calendar, it’s divided by week with different months separated into tabs.

Each week is further divided by network. The big four social networks have been included here for simplicity’s sake, but If you use any channels not listed here, you can easily swap them out or add space for them.

Use our Social Media Content Calendar Template

In addition to the above-mentioned columns for the week and network, the social media content calendar also includes space to designate the time of day the post will be published, the type of content being shared (such as a blog post or video), the topic covered by the post, the copy you plan to use for the post, and the link to the content being shared.

There is also a space for notes. This is a great place to include any additional information necessary, such as if there’s an image or GIF you plan to share with the link.

The social media content calendar also includes a tab for evergreen content. Have a blog post that always performs well? Add it to the evergreen tab.

This part of the template includes space to indicate what type of content the evergreen asset is, when it was originally published, its title, the topic covered in the piece, and the URL.

It also has space to include top performing social copy so you can also see at a glance how you’ve promoted the piece successfully in the past, as well as a spot to indicate what accompanying image has worked best.

Especially important here is the original publication date. You should schedule time for a regular review of your evergreen assets to ensure that they are up to date and appropriate to continue sharing. If something is dated, then it might be a good idea to plan an update for that piece of content so that you can continue to use it.

With these instructions and templates in hand, you’re ready to take the social media marketing world by storm. Once you’ve planned your content calendar, use Hootsuite to schedule all of your social media posts, engage with your followers, and track the success of your efforts.

Learn More

The post How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar: Tips and Templates appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.

The post How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar: Tips and Templates appeared first on Make It With Michael.

from How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar: Tips and Templates

[unifiedsocialblog]

How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar: Tips and Templates

Close your eyes and picture this: it’s May 3, end of day, all the designers have gone home and suddenly it hits you: tomorrow is Star Wars Day—May the 4th—a huge marketing opportunity and you’ve got nothing.

A mad scramble ensues to come up with a clever concept, create assets, and execute in time to ride the wave of lightsabre-filled fun. In some cases, it may be too late to do anything at all. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Enter the social media content calendar.

Content calendars are exactly what they sound like: a way to plan and organize upcoming content. There are, of course, different types. An editorial calendar is specifically for planning content assets such as blog posts and videos, while a social media content calendar—the primary focus of this post—is for planning content for social.

This blog post will cover why you should have a social media content calendar for your business and how to create one. We’ll also look at examples and provide you with two free content calendar templates to get you started.

Let’s jump in.

Bonus: Get the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence with Hootsuite.

6 reasons why a social media content calendar is important for business

A survey by the Content Marketing Institute found that a whopping 70 percent of B2B marketers plan to produce more content in 2017 versus the previous year.

With that expected increase, it’s more important now than ever to have a social media content calendar to support your greater social media marketing plan.

1. Never miss important dates

One of the key things a content calendar must contain is key dates that matter to your business—holidays, events, product launches, campaigns, and more.

This allows you to plan content for those dates and ensure that you don’t end up scrambling.

Additionally, a content calendar is a good place to document performance. For example, if your brand operates in the B2B space, you may find that the winter holidays result in click-throughs as your target audience isn’t at work.

Include this information in your content calendar so you can plan accordingly. For example, you might switch to a lower publishing volume or rely on reposting content rather than pushing new content.

2. Organize content

Social media content calendars help keep your publishing schedule organized. I know, I know. Obvious, right? But you’d be surprised—despite this very clear benefit—how many brands fail to use a content calendar.

Staying organized not only means you remember important dates, it also means that you know what you’re publishing, where, and when. Don’t underestimate the impact this kind of planning can have on the efficiency of your social media marketing plan.

Additionally, a content calendar helps you establish a regular cadence for each of your social channels and stick to it.

And, of course, any social media manager worth their salt knows that consistency is key. A content calendar can help ensure that you don’t run the risk of spamming one network while neglecting another.

3. Collaborate easily

Another great thing about social media content calendars? They make it easier to work with a team. Whether you’re sharing information with stakeholders or updating your team, this calendar serves as the single source of truth for what’s being published and when.

This is made especially easy if you host your calendar on a cloud platform designed to promote collaboration, such as Google Sheets or an Excel spreadsheet in Dropbox.

4. Save time

The inherent organization of content calendars fosters efficiency. Planning content ahead, knowing when you’re sharing evergreen assets, when you’re pushing new content, and when you’re curating items from other creators will save you time in the long run.

5. Effectively allocate resources

Rather than making last minute asks of your long-suffering copywriters and very patient video team, you can instead assign things well in advance, providing ample time for research and creation, thus ensuring you rarely miss a deadline.

Having a content calendar means you’re more likely to publish your content precisely when you intend to and at the quality level you expect.

6. Gain a deeper understanding of successful content

Careful planning of your social media content will also help you gain a better understanding of what makes a good piece of content, enabling you to increase your success rate and create more of what your audience wants to see.

How? First, it frees up time for you to devote to measurement instead of last-minute publishing. Secondly, it provides a clear framework and structure for your content activities, meaning you’re more likely to notice patterns. Perhaps content that goes out on Thursday does better, or your daily how-to post beats out all your other content.

This deeper understanding can help you determine optimal post times, who your audience is, and what they want to see. This will ultimately make it easier to duplicate what’s working.

How to create a social media content calendar

1. Think about your audience

Good content should always start in the same place: your audience. That means knowing your audience inside and out.

The best way to understand your audience—and easily evaluate whether they’d be interested in a particular type of content—is to create audience personas. These archetypes provide a window into what your typical audience members look like, including demographic details about them as well as their wants, needs, goals, and pain points.

While it’s important to map out your existing audience members and think about what content they want to see, you can also explore who you want to have viewing your content. This information can be captured in aspirational personas that reflect your target audience.

Whether you’re looking at your existing audience or your target audience, your personas should inform the content you create. Not sure if you should create a certain piece of content? Ask yourself if it aligns to one of your personas. If it doesn’t, then you probably shouldn’t be investing resources into it.

2. Research what content resonates

In order to plan and create successful content, you need to know what success looks like. Start by looking at content you’ve produced in the past and examine what worked.

Ask yourself:

What content got the most likes?

What content got the most comments?

What content got the most shares?

What content got the most views?

What content got the highest engagement rate?

For a better understanding of what to measure and why, check out our posts about social media metrics that matter and video metrics that matter.

3. Audit existing content

Now that you know what works, look at what content you actually have.

Go through your existing library and identify types and categories. For example, in terms of content types, your business might create blog posts, videos, and webinars. In terms of content categories, you might have Q&As, how tos, and listicles.

Ask yourself the following questions:

What’s still useable?

What can be updated?

What can be repurposed?

What can’t be reused?

All items that fall into the first three categories have the potential to become evergreen content that will form the basis of your content calendar.

4. Create an overview of major events

Once you’ve taken stock of your content assets, set them aside (for now).

Create a calendar—this can take the form of a doc, spreadsheet, or even an actual calendar—and map out important events throughout the year, particularly those that you want to create content around.

Be sure to include:

Holidays (big and small)

Product launches

Campaigns

Annual events or features

Depending on your business, this calendar may also include fun offbeat holidays, such as National Trivia Day and National Donut Day (of which there are two).

If your business is affected by seasonality, be sure to include this in your calendar. For example, if you’re a B2B company and there tends to be a lull at the end of December, mark this on your calendar so that you can plan accordingly by reducing the amount of content published or saving top content for a higher traffic time.

5. Figure out calendar processes

You’ve got your evergreen content and you’ve got your bare bones calendar—now it’s time to figure out the nitty gritty of your schedule.

First, decide how often you’re going to publish on each social network.

Next, determine your content mix—that is, how much of each type and category of original content you’ll publish, as well as how much curated content you plan to share.

This should typically be expressed as a ratio. A good rule of thumb is the 80-20 rule: share 80 percent helpful and interesting content for every 20 percent of content where you’re trying to sell your product.

Additionally, determine how you’ll generate new content ideas and the process by which they’ll be made a reality. For example, here on the Hootsuite Blog, we hold monthly brainstorms, assign ideas to our internal content team, and plug those assignments into our editorial calendar.

From there, figure out a process for identifying and sharing quality curated content. Establish who on your team will be responsible for updating the calendar and who’s in charge of scheduling content to be publish on social networks.

7. Plan and schedule content ahead of publication

Now that you’ve marked all the important dates—and I do mean ALL—on your content calendar and set up a process for content planning, it’s time for the fun part: new content.

First off, strategize larger themes that you’d like to tackle. For example, you might have a beverage company and want to run a summer campaign about your newest flavor option.

Choose the themes you want to run with and map them onto your calendar. As you do this, keep in mind that it’s better to do a few things well than to do everything poorly. Narrow possible themes down to key priorities.

Once you have themes to go along with your dates, it’s time to figure out your individual content pieces.

Start with a brainstorm. Pull in creative people from across teams (after all, you don’t have to be a content creator to come up with great ideas). At Hootsuite we invite members of multiple teams in because we know they have different perspectives on the topics we’d like to cover. After our brainstorm session, we take the raw ideas, choose our favorites, refine them, assign them, and then add them to our content calendar.

If you have big upcoming events in your calendar that you want to plan content around, ensure that that’s reflected in the themes of your brainstorm sessions and, of course, that you leave adequate time for content tasks to be resourced. After all, you could have the best Christmas-themed campaign in mind, but no one will want to see it if you can’t finish it until January.

Plan your content, create your content, then schedule your content. Simple in theory, much harder in practice. But, with a little organization, you can maintain a social media content calendar that will help your team be more efficient and create better quality content—on time, every time.

Editorial and content calendar examples

When it comes to long-term editorial planning, few organizations are more in tune than magazines. Because of their regular cadence, publishing restrictions, and reliance on annual features or seasonal topics, most major magazines plan themes—and even specific content—for an entire year in advance.

While the content you’re planning will likely be a tad different than the average magazine, seeing how this is done can be incredibly helpful.

And you’re in luck: because of the process by which magazines typically sell advertising, many actually make their editorial calendar available online. The following are just a few of the best content calendar examples I found on the web.

WIRED

This editorial calendar from tech magazine WIRED is a good example of what a simple overview calendar could look like.

This style would probably be best for mapping out key themes or events each month without much detail on how those concepts will be approached. This makes the calendar fairly flexible as specific details of each piece of content or campaign can easily be decided closer to the release date.

Image via WIRED.

National Geographic

While National Geographic has a standard editorial calendar—which includes details on key articles for each month’s issue—what sets their planning apart is the “Areas of Editorial Focus” document.

This part of their editorial calendar maps out four key themes the magazine plans to tackle over the course of the year, which issues they’ll talk about them in, and how they’ll approach each.

It’s an excellent example of what high-level thematic planning can look like and how it works together with a more traditional editorial calendar to create a comprehensive overview of upcoming content.

Image via National Geographic.

Cosmopolitan

Something that really sets beauty mag Cosmopolitan’s content calendar apart is that it not only indicates what the theme of this issue is, it also includes information about associated digital assets and social media content.

Image via Cosmopolitan.

Entrepreneur

Business magazine Entrepreneur’s editorial calendar may not be as beautiful as WIRED or Cosmopolitan’s, but what it lacks in creativity it makes up in information.

This calendar not only maps out broad themes for upcoming issues, but also lists specific pieces of content that will appear in each edition as well as related digital assets.

It’s a clean, minimal, and functional approach to an editorial calendar.

Image via Entrepreneur.

Forbes

Likewise, business Forbes’ editorial calendar maps out the overall theme for each issue and what key pieces of content will be included in each. This provides a good framework for planning.

Image via Forbes.

While the design elements in many of these editorial calendars are aesthetically appealing, they’re certainly not a requirement for a successful social media calendar.

When it comes to working with social, agility is often the name of the game, so I’d recommend focusing on function over artfulness. Having a calendar that’s easy to edit and update as changes are made is key. If you prefer doing this in a format that’s also beautiful—perhaps to get buy-in from higher-ups—that’s cool too, but not imperative.

For more inspiration, try searching for your favorite publication’s editorial calendar—there’s a lot out there. For instance, Meredith Direct Media—which puts out publications such as Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart Weddings, and Shape—has one mega editorial calendar PDF for all of their properties.

Free editorial and social media content calendar templates

Now you know why your business needs a content calendar and how to use one, it’s time to create one and get moving.

The best part? We’ve done the hard work for you and created both editorial calendar and social media content calendar templates that you can use for your business. Simply open the link to the Google Sheets file for each, make a copy, and plan away. Below, find instructions on how to use these templates.

How to use the editorial calendar template

This template is intended for planning individual content assets, such as blog posts. It includes sections to fill in for the title of each item, the author, the topic area it covers, and the deadline, as well as the anticipated publication date and time.

Use our Editorial Calendar Template

To use it, simply create a new tab for each month and fill in your content accordingly. The content from each week of the month is divided by colored bars for clear visual separation.

How to use the social media content calendar template

This template is intended to be the single source of truth for all of your social media publishing activities. Like the editorial calendar, it’s divided by week with different months separated into tabs.

Each week is further divided by network. The big four social networks have been included here for simplicity’s sake, but If you use any channels not listed here, you can easily swap them out or add space for them.

Use our Social Media Content Calendar Template

In addition to the above-mentioned columns for the week and network, the social media content calendar also includes space to designate the time of day the post will be published, the type of content being shared (such as a blog post or video), the topic covered by the post, the copy you plan to use for the post, and the link to the content being shared.

There is also a space for notes. This is a great place to include any additional information necessary, such as if there’s an image or GIF you plan to share with the link.

The social media content calendar also includes a tab for evergreen content. Have a blog post that always performs well? Add it to the evergreen tab.

This part of the template includes space to indicate what type of content the evergreen asset is, when it was originally published, its title, the topic covered in the piece, and the URL.

It also has space to include top performing social copy so you can also see at a glance how you’ve promoted the piece successfully in the past, as well as a spot to indicate what accompanying image has worked best.

Especially important here is the original publication date. You should schedule time for a regular review of your evergreen assets to ensure that they are up to date and appropriate to continue sharing. If something is dated, then it might be a good idea to plan an update for that piece of content so that you can continue to use it.

With these instructions and templates in hand, you’re ready to take the social media marketing world by storm. Once you’ve planned your content calendar, use Hootsuite to schedule all of your social media posts, engage with your followers, and track the success of your efforts.

Learn More

The post How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar: Tips and Templates appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.

How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar: Tips and Templates published first on http://ift.tt/2rEvyAw

[sualkmedeiors]

Straight from the Champions’ Mouths: What to Look Forward to at Summit 2017

Author: Katie Pope

In just a few months, thousands of people will descend upon San Francisco for the Marketing Nation Summit.

This year, we’re bringing together the best and brightest minds in marketing, advertising, IT, services, and beyond for cutting-edge thought leadership, industry best practices, and unparalleled networking opportunities. The theme: leading in the Engagement Economy, which will inspire you to rethink the way your organization creates meaningful, lasting relationships with your customers to drive results that matter.

While we’re certainly excited for another great event, we understand that it can sound like we’re beating our own drum. So, don’t just take our word for it! Take it from Marketo Champions, our exceptional customers who are Marketo Certified experts, avid contributors in the social world, and have demonstrated outstanding leadership in the Marketo Community. In this blog, our Marketo Champions will share why they’ve attended past Summits and what they’re looking forward to this year:

1. Learning and Career Growth

Summit is a great opportunity to strengthen your current expertise, grow your Marketo knowledge, and expand your overall marketing knowledge. This year, more than ever before, we are broadening our focus on marketing as a whole beyond the Marketo Engagement Platform. Dabble in something new by crossing over to new areas of marketing and take your career to the next level!

Advice from Marketo Champions

Take advantage of the Champion Smart Bar, Q&A sessions, and the Nation of Nerds around you to solve some of the issues you and your department have been dealing with. Odds are someone will know the answer, and if not, they’ll know who to point you to.—Courtney Grimes, Senior Marketing, Automation and CRM Consultant at DemandLab

    The greatest benefit of attending Summit is the iron-sharpens-iron dynamic that happens when you’re surrounded by the best minds in marketing. At Summit, everyone wants to help you, and there’s no office politics or ulterior motives involved as to why. Just come ready to learn, and you’ll be edified; it’s practically a guarantee. Also, you’ll never have a more convenient time to become an official Marketo Certified Expert (MCE). Even if you don’t feel like you’re quite ready, you can catapult your understanding of the platform just by soaking up all the good knowledge and conversation from other MCEs, Champions, and every other practitioner you come across.—Joe Reitz, Strategist, Nurture Marketing at Fathom

    One of the most valuable things I learned at Summit last year was how to really take charge of my career with Marketo. I learned how I could network and be more involved in the Community, and be supported by and learn from a fantastic, brilliant group of peers. Now I’m in the Marketo Champions program, leading a MUG (Marketo User Group) in my area, and much more connected with other people all across the country who are doing the same things I am and figuring it out together (looking at you, #MyKrewe). And come home ready to own! I think anyone who has been to Summit can attest to the sheer volume of exciting ideas, strategies, and best practices that you inevitably end up mapping out on the plane ride home. I can’t wait to see what I learn at Summit make a real, measurable impact on my marketing department’s success.—Sydney Mulligan, Senior Marketing Operations Analyst at Phreesia

    Typically, the first time you attend (or when you’re simply very new to Marketo), you’re learning lots of how-tos and tips and tricks. But at some point, you begin to get the hang of Marketo and become known as the Marketo expert at your company. Continue to attend Summit each year to validate what you are doing is a best practice, learn how to enhance what you are doing, and stay ahead of the curve on upcoming trends and platform enhancements. After networking with the best-of-best at Summit, you will be able to quote users (aka Josh Hill) and well-known companies to justify your processes, budget, and even make a case for additional headcount.—Emily Dick, Director of Marketing at QuickMobile

  2. Sessions

Marketing Nation Summit has traditionally been a user conference, but this year, we’re up-leveling the content and you can learn what’s important to both your peers and executives. This year’s sessions will be led by industry influencers, executives, practitioners, and Marketo Champions for a well-rounded view of the marketing landscape.

Advice from Marketo Champions

This year’s speaker roster is going beyond the previous year’s by getting more strategic. For example, leaders from Gartner, IDC, SiriusDecisions, and Forrester are speaking this year. All Marketo daily users should encourage their executive team to participate and hear from these strategic leaders. It’s not just for marketing operations and Marketo consultants!—Danielle Balestra, Consultant at Ela Bean Marketing

    Be sure to focus on sessions that will help you to grow (Champion sessions are great for this!), but also sessions that give you insight into what CMOs, CEOs, and CROs need from Marketing. Summit is a great chance for you to grow your career! Also, plan in advance–in-between sessions is not the best time to decide where you want to go next.—Dory Viscogliosi, Senior Marketing Operations Manager at Datto

    Get out of your comfort zone! Often, people will attend sessions that are directly relevant to what they do on a daily basis, but now is a perfect time to try something new. Ops and analytics nerd? Attend a session on content! Marketing coordinator? Attend a session about marketing from a CMO’s perspective. You’ll get a chance to learn something new while still being familiar with the overall context.—Courtney Grimes, Senior Marketing, Automation and CRM Consultant at DemandLab

  3. Marketing Technology

Marketo LaunchPoint gives you access to hundreds of applications that complement and integrate into Marketo’s Engagement Platform, whether you’re looking for predictive analytics and big data solutions, content marketing solutions, or lead data providers. Learn about their offerings at Summit, and compare and contrast solutions.

Advice from Marketo Champions

As your technology stack (and hopefully budget) grows, so are the increasing offerings that marketers have. I use Summit as a place to catch up with current vendors, talk with up and coming vendors, and get demos of tools I’m actively shopping for. This saves you hours of initial research online and discovery calls. After a few high-level demos, you’ve got your shortlist to take back to your team. For bonus points, I’m not caught by surprise when my CEO mentions a new marketing technology.—Emily Dick, Director of Marketing at QuickMobile

    Stack shopping–it’s like going to the mall for MarTech. There are only a few conferences like Summit where you’ll have all the industry-leading integrators, solutions providers, and digital marketing agencies gathered in one place for your shopping pleasure. Compare, contrast, and make your favorite two agency consultants get into an arm wrestling/joust contest. It’d be a huge miss not to take advantage of the smorgasbord of professional talent that’s ready and eager to learn how they can possibly help your business drive forward.—Joe Reitz, Strategist, Nurture Marketing at Fathom

    Bringing Adweek, one of the main media outlets who is focused on advertising, to Summit is a great decision. I look forward to hearing their perspective of how AdTech, new regulations, and MarTech will continue to evolve. Coming from the publishing industry, I was very involved with AdTech, understanding how it works, and how to monetize from it. From a non-publishing/media perspective, marketers are only focused on their digital advertising objectives which can include retargeting, Google AdWords, and Facebook. But the AdTech ecosystem is deep and sometimes overwhelming. There are many regulations that are about to go into effect globally, which will continue to shift AdTech.—Danielle Balestra, Consultant at Ela Bean Marketing

  4. Networking

The Marketing Nation Summit is the one time of year the entire ecosystem of customers, partners, employees and prospects join together. What does this mean? Network, network, network. Take advantage of the opportunity because nothing beats meeting people face-to-face.

Advice from Marketo Champions

Make a point to speak to as many people as possible. While it’s tempting to just stick within the group that you came to Summit with (or people you already know, such as your local user group), the single biggest benefit of being at Summit is that everyone’s in one location! Chat up people you meet at sessions–Marketo employees, vendors. It’s the one time you’ll see everyone.—Courtney Grimes, Senior Marketing, Automation and CRM Consultant at DemandLab

    Nothing beats meeting people face-to-face to talk through a cool new project. I love meeting my clients, business partners, or job candidates in person. Summit is exactly that opportunity where everyone comes together.—Dan Radu, Founder and Principal Consultant at Macromator

    Professional networking and is certainly a big component of any big conference like Summit, but even better, you can forge real lifelong relationships with people who face the same kinds of pains and challenges you do, whether you’re a brand-side marketer or a dark-hearted consultant. Leverage the mobile app to connect with other folks you think you can learn from–and also just relax and have a good time with!—Joe Reitz, Strategist, Nurture Marketing at Fathom

    I cannot agree more with all my fellow Champions that networking is one of the greatest features of Summit. Every Summit I attend, I meet 25 to 50 new people who are doing amazing marketing from diverse industries, including some that I couldn’t really believe is using Marketo. Now add the more strategic focus of this year’s conference, hopefully, we will be meeting more SVPs and CMOs.—Danielle Balestra, Consultant at Ela Bean Marketing 

    Interact with Marketo employees that you have talked to. Put a face to the name.—Jackie Potts, Marketo Administrator at LI-COR Biosciences

    Spend time geeking out with so many like-minded people that don’t look at you blankly when you say ‘MQL, SQL, OMG’ and laugh hysterically.—Juli James, Assistant Professor of Marketing at St. Edward’s University

  5. Product Updates

Summit gives you exclusive access to Marketo’s product roadmap. Be the first to hear about the latest and greatest new features and developments to the platform!

Advice from Marketo Champions

The latest Marketo initiatives are always announced at the Summit first. In 2016, it was the account based-marketing (ABM) solution. That is what inspires me. I always come back with exciting ideas for the upcoming year.—Dan Radu, Founder and Principal Consultant at Macromator

    Each Summit, Marketo introduces the latest and greatest new features to their platform. I can recall being at Summit in 2014 when RTP was being demoed and we purchased it that year, and 2015 when mobile was introduced. I can’t wait to see what will be improved or introduced in 2017! I want to not only know but be on-site to test out the new product.—Danielle Balestra, Consultant at Ela Bean Marketing

    Get involved in early user testing to see what Marketo is planning for the future. It’s great knowing you are helping to shape the product roadmap.—Juli James, Assistant Professor of Marketing at St. Edward’s University

  6. Swag

There’s tons of swag to gather from the Expo Hall to the parties. Bring it back to the office or for your friends and family!

Advice from Marketo Champions

Pack your bags half-full. They’ll be overstuffed on the trip home if you have had a successful Summit. But, you will also have an opportunity to discuss the companies and products behind the swag which will improve your Marketing Tech stacks immeasurably (well, you should always be able to measure improvement, but you know).—Dory Viscogliosi, Senior Marketing Operations Manager at Datto

    There’s loads of great swag! I gravitate toward t-shirts (my favorite was one that says, “I like it when you talk data to me”) and things that are useful, like back-up battery backs. Those suckers come in handy when you’re walking around sessions all day!—Jenn DiMaria, Marketing Automation Consultant at RevEngine Marketing

    Let’s be honest: if you don’t get into some hijinx while at an international marketing conference, I’m going to have to confiscate your marketer ID card. There’s tons of swag to be gathered (like everyone else says, pack light, you’ll be going home with a full duffel), and all those after-hours parties and refreshments aren’t going to enjoy themselves…plus, nothing creates a bond (even solid professional ones) like blowing off a little steam at the end of a packed day.—Joe Reitz, Strategist, Nurture Marketing at Fathom

Did you enjoy these tips? Do you have any of your own to share? I’d love to hear in the comments below. And don’t forget to register for Marketing Nation Summit!

Interested in meeting our Marketo Champions? Reach out and connect with them at Summit!

Straight from the Champions’ Mouths: What to Look Forward to at Summit 2017 was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

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Straight from the Champions’ Mouths: What to Look Forward to at Summit 2017

Author: Katie Pope

In just a few months, thousands of people will descend upon San Francisco for the Marketing Nation Summit.

This year, we’re bringing together the best and brightest minds in marketing, advertising, IT, services, and beyond for cutting-edge thought leadership, industry best practices, and unparalleled networking opportunities. The theme: leading in the Engagement Economy, which will inspire you to rethink the way your organization creates meaningful, lasting relationships with your customers to drive results that matter.

While we’re certainly excited for another great event, we understand that it can sound like we’re beating our own drum. So, don’t just take our word for it! Take it from Marketo Champions, our exceptional customers who are Marketo Certified experts, avid contributors in the social world, and have demonstrated outstanding leadership in the Marketo Community. In this blog, our Marketo Champions will share why they’ve attended past Summits and what they’re looking forward to this year:

1. Learning and Career Growth

Summit is a great opportunity to strengthen your current expertise, grow your Marketo knowledge, and expand your overall marketing knowledge. This year, more than ever before, we are broadening our focus on marketing as a whole beyond the Marketo Engagement Platform. Dabble in something new by crossing over to new areas of marketing and take your career to the next level!

Advice from Marketo Champions

Take advantage of the Champion Smart Bar, Q&A sessions, and the Nation of Nerds around you to solve some of the issues you and your department have been dealing with. Odds are someone will know the answer, and if not, they’ll know who to point you to.—Courtney Grimes, Senior Marketing, Automation and CRM Consultant at DemandLab

    The greatest benefit of attending Summit is the iron-sharpens-iron dynamic that happens when you’re surrounded by the best minds in marketing. At Summit, everyone wants to help you, and there’s no office politics or ulterior motives involved as to why. Just come ready to learn, and you’ll be edified; it’s practically a guarantee. Also, you’ll never have a more convenient time to become an official Marketo Certified Expert (MCE). Even if you don’t feel like you’re quite ready, you can catapult your understanding of the platform just by soaking up all the good knowledge and conversation from other MCEs, Champions, and every other practitioner you come across.—Joe Reitz, Strategist, Nurture Marketing at Fathom

    One of the most valuable things I learned at Summit last year was how to really take charge of my career with Marketo. I learned how I could network and be more involved in the Community, and be supported by and learn from a fantastic, brilliant group of peers. Now I’m in the Marketo Champions program, leading a MUG (Marketo User Group) in my area, and much more connected with other people all across the country who are doing the same things I am and figuring it out together (looking at you, #MyKrewe). And come home ready to own! I think anyone who has been to Summit can attest to the sheer volume of exciting ideas, strategies, and best practices that you inevitably end up mapping out on the plane ride home. I can’t wait to see what I learn at Summit make a real, measurable impact on my marketing department’s success.—Sydney Mulligan, Senior Marketing Operations Analyst at Phreesia

    Typically, the first time you attend (or when you’re simply very new to Marketo), you’re learning lots of how-tos and tips and tricks. But at some point, you begin to get the hang of Marketo and become known as the Marketo expert at your company. Continue to attend Summit each year to validate what you are doing is a best practice, learn how to enhance what you are doing, and stay ahead of the curve on upcoming trends and platform enhancements. After networking with the best-of-best at Summit, you will be able to quote users (aka Josh Hill) and well-known companies to justify your processes, budget, and even make a case for additional headcount.—Emily Dick, Director of Marketing at QuickMobile

  2. Sessions

Marketing Nation Summit has traditionally been a user conference, but this year, we’re up-leveling the content and you can learn what’s important to both your peers and executives. This year’s sessions will be led by industry influencers, executives, practitioners, and Marketo Champions for a well-rounded view of the marketing landscape.

Advice from Marketo Champions

This year’s speaker roster is going beyond the previous year’s by getting more strategic. For example, leaders from Gartner, IDC, SiriusDecisions, and Forrester are speaking this year. All Marketo daily users should encourage their executive team to participate and hear from these strategic leaders. It’s not just for marketing operations and Marketo consultants!—Danielle Balestra, Consultant at Ela Bean Marketing

    Be sure to focus on sessions that will help you to grow (Champion sessions are great for this!), but also sessions that give you insight into what CMOs, CEOs, and CROs need from Marketing. Summit is a great chance for you to grow your career! Also, plan in advance–in-between sessions is not the best time to decide where you want to go next.—Dory Viscogliosi, Senior Marketing Operations Manager at Datto

    Get out of your comfort zone! Often, people will attend sessions that are directly relevant to what they do on a daily basis, but now is a perfect time to try something new. Ops and analytics nerd? Attend a session on content! Marketing coordinator? Attend a session about marketing from a CMO’s perspective. You’ll get a chance to learn something new while still being familiar with the overall context.—Courtney Grimes, Senior Marketing, Automation and CRM Consultant at DemandLab

  3. Marketing Technology

Marketo LaunchPoint gives you access to hundreds of applications that complement and integrate into Marketo’s Engagement Platform, whether you’re looking for predictive analytics and big data solutions, content marketing solutions, or lead data providers. Learn about their offerings at Summit, and compare and contrast solutions.

Advice from Marketo Champions

As your technology stack (and hopefully budget) grows, so are the increasing offerings that marketers have. I use Summit as a place to catch up with current vendors, talk with up and coming vendors, and get demos of tools I’m actively shopping for. This saves you hours of initial research online and discovery calls. After a few high-level demos, you’ve got your shortlist to take back to your team. For bonus points, I’m not caught by surprise when my CEO mentions a new marketing technology.—Emily Dick, Director of Marketing at QuickMobile

    Stack shopping–it’s like going to the mall for MarTech. There are only a few conferences like Summit where you’ll have all the industry-leading integrators, solutions providers, and digital marketing agencies gathered in one place for your shopping pleasure. Compare, contrast, and make your favorite two agency consultants get into an arm wrestling/joust contest. It’d be a huge miss not to take advantage of the smorgasbord of professional talent that’s ready and eager to learn how they can possibly help your business drive forward.—Joe Reitz, Strategist, Nurture Marketing at Fathom

    Bringing Adweek, one of the main media outlets who is focused on advertising, to Summit is a great decision. I look forward to hearing their perspective of how AdTech, new regulations, and MarTech will continue to evolve. Coming from the publishing industry, I was very involved with AdTech, understanding how it works, and how to monetize from it. From a non-publishing/media perspective, marketers are only focused on their digital advertising objectives which can include retargeting, Google AdWords, and Facebook. But the AdTech ecosystem is deep and sometimes overwhelming. There are many regulations that are about to go into effect globally, which will continue to shift AdTech.—Danielle Balestra, Consultant at Ela Bean Marketing

  4. Networking

The Marketing Nation Summit is the one time of year the entire ecosystem of customers, partners, employees and prospects join together. What does this mean? Network, network, network. Take advantage of the opportunity because nothing beats meeting people face-to-face.

Advice from Marketo Champions

Make a point to speak to as many people as possible. While it’s tempting to just stick within the group that you came to Summit with (or people you already know, such as your local user group), the single biggest benefit of being at Summit is that everyone’s in one location! Chat up people you meet at sessions–Marketo employees, vendors. It’s the one time you’ll see everyone.—Courtney Grimes, Senior Marketing, Automation and CRM Consultant at DemandLab

    Nothing beats meeting people face-to-face to talk through a cool new project. I love meeting my clients, business partners, or job candidates in person. Summit is exactly that opportunity where everyone comes together.—Dan Radu, Founder and Principal Consultant at Macromator

    Professional networking and is certainly a big component of any big conference like Summit, but even better, you can forge real lifelong relationships with people who face the same kinds of pains and challenges you do, whether you’re a brand-side marketer or a dark-hearted consultant. Leverage the mobile app to connect with other folks you think you can learn from–and also just relax and have a good time with!—Joe Reitz, Strategist, Nurture Marketing at Fathom

    I cannot agree more with all my fellow Champions that networking is one of the greatest features of Summit. Every Summit I attend, I meet 25 to 50 new people who are doing amazing marketing from diverse industries, including some that I couldn’t really believe is using Marketo. Now add the more strategic focus of this year’s conference, hopefully, we will be meeting more SVPs and CMOs.—Danielle Balestra, Consultant at Ela Bean Marketing 

    Interact with Marketo employees that you have talked to. Put a face to the name.—Jackie Potts, Marketo Administrator at LI-COR Biosciences

    Spend time geeking out with so many like-minded people that don’t look at you blankly when you say ‘MQL, SQL, OMG’ and laugh hysterically.—Juli James, Assistant Professor of Marketing at St. Edward’s University

  5. Product Updates

Summit gives you exclusive access to Marketo’s product roadmap. Be the first to hear about the latest and greatest new features and developments to the platform!

Advice from Marketo Champions

The latest Marketo initiatives are always announced at the Summit first. In 2016, it was the account based-marketing (ABM) solution. That is what inspires me. I always come back with exciting ideas for the upcoming year.—Dan Radu, Founder and Principal Consultant at Macromator

    Each Summit, Marketo introduces the latest and greatest new features to their platform. I can recall being at Summit in 2014 when RTP was being demoed and we purchased it that year, and 2015 when mobile was introduced. I can’t wait to see what will be improved or introduced in 2017! I want to not only know but be on-site to test out the new product.—Danielle Balestra, Consultant at Ela Bean Marketing

    Get involved in early user testing to see what Marketo is planning for the future. It’s great knowing you are helping to shape the product roadmap.—Juli James, Assistant Professor of Marketing at St. Edward’s University

  6. Swag

There’s tons of swag to gather from the Expo Hall to the parties. Bring it back to the office or for your friends and family!

Advice from Marketo Champions

Pack your bags half-full. They’ll be overstuffed on the trip home if you have had a successful Summit. But, you will also have an opportunity to discuss the companies and products behind the swag which will improve your Marketing Tech stacks immeasurably (well, you should always be able to measure improvement, but you know).—Dory Viscogliosi, Senior Marketing Operations Manager at Datto

    There’s loads of great swag! I gravitate toward t-shirts (my favorite was one that says, “I like it when you talk data to me”) and things that are useful, like back-up battery backs. Those suckers come in handy when you’re walking around sessions all day!—Jenn DiMaria, Marketing Automation Consultant at RevEngine Marketing

    Let’s be honest: if you don’t get into some hijinx while at an international marketing conference, I’m going to have to confiscate your marketer ID card. There’s tons of swag to be gathered (like everyone else says, pack light, you’ll be going home with a full duffel), and all those after-hours parties and refreshments aren’t going to enjoy themselves…plus, nothing creates a bond (even solid professional ones) like blowing off a little steam at the end of a packed day.—Joe Reitz, Strategist, Nurture Marketing at Fathom

Did you enjoy these tips? Do you have any of your own to share? I’d love to hear in the comments below. And don’t forget to register for Marketing Nation Summit!

Interested in meeting our Marketo Champions? Reach out and connect with them at Summit!

Straight from the Champions’ Mouths: What to Look Forward to at Summit 2017 was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

The post Straight from the Champions’ Mouths: What to Look Forward to at Summit 2017 appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

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