Inspirational and (Actually) Helpful Resources for Starting a Instagram/Blog

Since I have started an Instagram account for makeup and beauty, I have looked into a few ways I can make some money form it sometime in the future. (Also because I have a cruddy job that I am looking to get out of, and I kind of have an entrepreneurial spirit. but mostly don’t want to work for a corporate business!) I feel like this are of Pinterest, Instagram, and blogging, is a center for clickbait and supposedly free tips which then turn into a slew of emails begging you to buy into their online course FOR ONLY 297$ Today only!!

Yeah not really for me when thats one whole paycheck for me…

I literally feel lied to when I click on a “free masterclass” and then get bombarded with emails. I know, not that smart because I even know what they’re doing but I put my email in anyway!

ANYWAY…

Here I have compiled a list of blogs, youtube videos, and podcasts that are mostly COMPLETELY FREE! No, I do not collaborate with these people, I just have been clicking and reading around and have found some great sites that I think you might enjoy as well! I will list some that are 100% free and let you know which ones to watch out for with hidden email marketing down the road… So lets get to the list!

Mostly COMPLETELY FREE Blog to Business Resources!

• Podcast by Amy Porterfield “Online Marketing Made Easy With Amy Porterfield” Available on Podcast app on iPhone.
• She also has a website with a lot of cool free stuff for you to download! Podcast linked on website as well. WARNING: She does sell webinars and courses so be cautious but they are high quality because she is super successful! It might be worth checking out.
• Whatever Is Lovely blog. I found this one from Pinterest while at work (hehehe 🙂 smug) and she has some great insights about how to get started! Here is the start of a great post series that expands on how to get started. Its all free!
• Elise Darma has great blog posts on her site and her free masterclass has a lot of great Instagram insights! But I put my email in and have gotten a blast of “buy me”, so theres that. elisedarma.com
• Miranda Gardley on Youtube has a series about working on Instagram that I thought was helpful. heres the link to the first part of the series.
• The Preview App’s website has some great articles about organizing your Instagram and how to grow a following. Heres a very helpful link for finding an attractive layout for your page from them. And some more articles… Instagram Shadowban and 2018 Instagram Hashtags Rules
• List of affiliate programs from HerPaperRoute

These are a small but growing list of places I’ve looked at and read and have found helpful insights! Please check out these resources for help growing your blog and Instagram!

Also, please drop any links to resources you have found helpful and a little blurb about the resource and how its helped you! I would love to branch out and find more resources and be able to provide them for you and readers as well!

Happy Blogging everyone!

So Many Things About Social Media I Didn’t Know Before This Week

This week I made some changes for my website so I could make it a more user friendly and informative experience. The biggest improvement I made was creating a Facebook and Instagram page for TopKnotch Knobs! I am really excited about this update! I think because I created the pages, it just made my business a whole lot more permanent. I am more committed to this business since I made pages for them and I want them to be high quality and functioning for the public.

topknotchknobs.com

Things I learned in the process

• Instagram has Analytics! So cool. I love that its simple and to the point and relatively inexpensive
• I really like posting from Instagram and connecting those posts to other pages. Visual is very important when trying to gain likes and impressions. More people respond to pictures and emojis in posts rather than text only posts.
• I included meta tags in my website for Google and that was a learning experience! I still don’t completely get how they work but I know they are important and will be looking to add more to my site code.
• Found out how to repost other peoples content and give them credit. I did it through a great app. Allows me to add content to my Instagram without coming up with all of it on my own and creates a community feel to the page
• Also found a post scheduling app, have yet to try it though…
• Trying to add content to all my pages- Facebook, Instagram, Website blog… then I will promote them through social media boosting.

Next improvement to check on- gotta make sure my POS is working right and that I can accept payments correctly! Should have taken care of that earlier but now ti more of a priority for me and I feel more knowledgeable about online business.

That’s what I learned this week! It was a lot of learning on my own and I think that was really effective. now that I have a good idea of what I am supposed t be doing I can research it and try things out and improve.  I love that I don’t have to take a formal class to make my pages greater, even though a BYUI class is where I got my start. Its awesome so far! Real world experience right on my laptop!

Thanks for reading- Please, if you have any suggestions for my blog or my website SHARE IN THE COMMENTS! I would love any constructive positive advice!

Making Your Business Social Media Friendly

SOCIAL MEDIA IS EVERYTHING. How else do you expect to be found and to grow? I think it is absolutely vital to have social media connections from your products site to your social media. If people find your site and want to see more they will got o your social media. If someone finds you on social media they may go to your site if they are really interested in what you have to offer. Websites are found through social media and through your network of friends. I rarely come across a random AWESOME site or product on my own, its usually through those I know and follow personally and online. To get your site’s social media off the ground, first you have to find out who is looking for your product or service. Who is in the market to buy? Now where do they go online? Is it Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, blogs, Pinterest, etc. Now what are they looking for and what do they like or not like, what are the demographics? This is important info to find if you want to be able to target your dream customer. You have to know them first!

Some important tools for finding out these things

• Google Trends- who is searching what at what time of year/week/day/hour and where are they at?
• Google Analytics form your website-this has tons of information for you to get to know your users.
• Search out the competition- what are they doing right and wrong? How can YOU do better? Then go make it happen

Other tips for creating Social Media content: If you want to get a greater following you have to be posting at least once every 2 days, once a day ideally. It also takes about a year to create a substantial amount of content for your site and to get going. You have to be dedicated to putting that work in. Always use action words in descriptions and ads, it invites potential customers to take action and to come and see what you are talking about. -Buy, Purchase, Subscribe, Share, Shop Now… etc.

 

These are all things to consider when starting out in social media marketing. Good luck to you and I!

Search Engine Optimization and Improvements

This week I learned that I need to learn some more about SEO! I was pretty unfamiliar with SEO terms and the programs associated. I did like learning about how to make small almost imperceptible changes to my site that gear customers to be more likely to buy. I thought it was so cool to learn that people scanning the website are more likely to look at things that the picture models on your page are looking at. It’s so true! I never knew this was like a formal strategy and before it would bug me if I saw people in pictures that were not looking at something, I thought it was dumb on their part. So I totally understand that this works because I’ve seen myself take note of it in the past.

Adwords Launched and Website Running

As you may have seen from my last post, my site is finally up and running! Still improving it and working on some parts but it is FUNCTIONAL! —–>   TOPKNOTCHKNOBS.COM   Its really exciting, I feel accomplished! The most exciting part about this week was seeing my Analytics actually be useful since there was some traffic to my site. it was also cool to see the stats on my Adwords campaign jump because I finally activated it and now my site shows up on Google! Launching Adwords was fairly easy once I got all my keywords in that I wanted and I learned how to write ads. Honestly I felt that I had good ads to start off with and I will be making more to practice and improve that skill. I think I learned the most this week with building my site and taking care of little details there. I had to do a ton of work on the site to get it going so that I could run my ads. I didn’t want to have a crappy site advertised on Google and have people be not impressed. They probably still aren’t haha because its an amateur site but it needed to be working. So i learned ab lot about working on a Wix site and visited many help pages! I learned how to implement Square and PayPal into my shopping carts, I learned how to implement an app that blocks people from right clicking on your images and saving them without your permission (I don’t have a ton of high quality work or anything but my photos of my products are mine and I don’t want others taking them). I learned so many things this week, from class and much more on my own. Lots going on and lots of new developments!

Online Store Now Live!

Hey guys, I have been working on my online store now for a while now and its finally up and working! Please feel free to check it out! This is what I have been working on with all my posts about Google AdWords and Analytics and similar things. Its been so cool to learn so much! I feel like I really have some useful tools under my belt now and its extremely exciting! I hope you will check it out. I love feedback, so don’t be shy to comment here or send me an email on my website about improvements or comments. Thanks for staying!

topknotchknobs.com

 

Google Analytics

Learning about Analytics this week was really great! I saw how powerful this tool can be. Not just for my site but also as a businessperson in general, if you know Analytics you can get certified and become a great asset wherever you go. I haven’t had too much traffic to my site so it was hard to comprehend exactly how valuable the program is but I know it’s very detailed, even more so than WordPress statistics which I monitor pretty often for my site here. Analytics was really easy to set up for Wix, my host site. I didn’t have to copy and paste and possibly mess up the code, I just typed in the short digit code from Analytics and it was ready to go. I also linked my Adwords account too, we will see how that goes when I get my ads going. All together it was a really great learning experience and I’m excited to learn more about it. 

Google Advertising

Learned a lot about using Google Adwords and creating advertisements to show on Google. Its such a. Simple thing to create but it is challenging to fit your whole company or product into 3 or 4 lines and make an impact on potential buyers! Every word has to be precise and clean and the phrases have to flow. Your condensed message really has to grab attention but also reflect what you are selling well enough for people to stay interested. Starting out, I found it the most easy to grab attention with a sale headline of 15% off. I couldn’t think of much else and I feel like people wouldn’t be interested in my new site unless I had something to offer and differentiate from already established sites and companies. As I publish more ads I will see what works and what doesn’t. It was cool to experiment with this important part of running an online business. 

Advertising on Google

Ad words is a very powerful tool to use for advertising. Advertising is wonderful on Google because people accept it much better than traditional advertising. Ad words is a great tool to attract traffic to your site through search terms. It is integral to have the correct type of keywords in your ad campaign. Ad words drive traffic. They are what congregate your audience to your products. 

Legalities and License Madness

This week was a lot more challenging for me. I can make changes on websites and I can be creative, but figuring out legal systems, taxes, and licenses was difficult. I learned about different types of business on a surface level and I learned that there is an endless amount of licenses and permits to apply for and tax numbers to get and apply. Its a mess! How do business owners figure it all out and assure that they have all the proper paperwork to run their business without incurring a fine? It seems like a ton of work! Thankfully online business is a bit easier to deal with, less to account for and require permits for and such.

The main material I learned this week as what an LLC and Sole Proprietorship is, and some basic ways to look up the requirements for a beginning business. LLC’s and Sole Proprietorship are how a business is structured. A SP is an individual who is self employed and the owner of a small business and one who takes on all the risk and responsibility of the business on their self. It is a simple way to run a business. You are the boss, you call the shots, you do all the work, you are in contact with customers, you pay taxes… and you also stand in for the business when something goes wrong. You ARE your business and if something goes wrong, if there are debts to pay or someone sues you, there is no buffer because you are the business entity. Bu there is very little paperwork to fill out and its very simple to get started and is a prime choice for those who have a low risk product and are operating on a small scale. Not much can go wrong there and its not too overwhelming. An LLC is a business structure that is a mix of a partnership and a corporation. It is a more flexible business model and is for a bigger operation and most likely more than one owner. I have chosen to go with a SP for my small online business because I don’t really need a partnership and I am very small beginning entity. I have a low risk product of drawer handles and cabinet  knobs. I think this will be the best way to go!

I have more research to do on obtaining the proper requirements for this business but there aren’t too many. Ready to go!