Category Archives: Article

4 Common New Blogger Limiting Beliefs to Release

Being a new blogger is exciting, overwhelming and about 50 emotions in between.

I vividly recall buying my domain and hosting 10 years ago.

Day 1 seemed like the best day of my life. I had uncovered a seeming goldmine! Mansions were picked out. Did I want a red Ferrari or Porsche Carrera GT in the driveway? The possibilities were endless.

I almost quit blogging on Day 2.

How could everything change in 24 hours? I panicked. Who was I to blog? I had just been fired from my security guard job. I had no entrepreneurial bones in my body. I did not know what a blog was. I just bought something called a “domain and hosting” because some guy online told me to do it.

Continue reading 4 Common New Blogger Limiting Beliefs to Release

4 Tips to Develop a Successful Blogger Mindset

As within, so without.

Ancient wisdom dictates we see success if we BE success.

Every practical writing and blogging tip in the world does you no good if you do not have eyes to see, seize and use these tips. Failure conscious bloggers blind themselves from doing and being what it takes to succeed.

Developing a successful blogger mindset inspires you to think, feel and act like a successful blogger. As an added bonus, even though the journey feels uncomfortable at times, blogging does get easier and easier as you proceed from a success conscious energy.

Continue reading 4 Tips to Develop a Successful Blogger Mindset

At Every Milestone of Your Creative Journey Awaits a Better and Faster Vehicle

It’s live! Congrats! High fives all around!

You have set out on your looooooong creative journey! Yay!

Now imagine that at certain milestones, for every set amount of distance you travel, awaits better and faster hypothetical vehicle that you can hop onto — or into.

You, along with everyone else, start off in the very beginning on foot. At first, as you start strolling along, short distances seem to take forever to get through.

But after a few wins and met goals, you’re greeted by a tricycle. Then a few more and you get to a bicycle. Next up is an electric scooter, and so on.

As you keep moving forward and progressing in your journey, you keep upgrading via countless faster bikes, then cars, then planes, then jets until you finally–and I’m talking several years here–go far enough to reach a spaceship and can shoot for the stars.

Continue reading At Every Milestone of Your Creative Journey Awaits a Better and Faster Vehicle

Avoiding this common fallacy will double your creative output

Series Explainer: Every couple months we pick a theme based on the posts and community discussions happening at our GrindZero tribe. We then laser focus extensively on this particular topic to gather ideas, experiences, and opinions from active participants and then brainstorm and discuss so that we can throw our own personal insights into the hat. A deep-dive into a topic that we as creatives confront on a daily basis if you will. All executed in a coherent fashion and layered into a unique blog post for your reading pleasure.

When we first came up with this concept of a bi-monthly themed series, we were striving to create and follow a unique recipe that involved our growing community of bloggers and other creatives on Snapzu. All the extra help is invaluable and we are extremely grateful to every single one of you, especially those who joined in and participated!

After just the first post, which let’s just say took a lot longer than we’d hoped for, we were reaffirmed that while we obviously want to have well thought-out, engaging, and timely content, it absolutely does not have to be anywhere near perfect, as that would take forever. And I don’t mean that as hyperbole.

With that being said, our 2nd theme, aptly named “Fuck Perfection” was born!

Continue reading Avoiding this common fallacy will double your creative output

Calculated risks help us thrive as creatives, but we must avoid this one naive risk at all costs

In our continued pursuit to innovate the content we produce on this blog, we decided to try something new. To be more specific, a theme based bi-monthly series!

Prologue: Here is what it’s all about and what we’re hoping to achieve!

Every couple months we pick a theme based on the posts and community discussions happening at our GrindZero tribe. We then laser focus extensively on this particular topic to gather ideas, experiences, and opinions from active participants and then brainstorm and discuss so that we can throw our own personal insights into the hat. A deep-dive into a topic that we as creatives confront on a daily basis if you will. All executed in a coherent fashion and layered into a unique blog post for your reading pleasure. Continue reading Calculated risks help us thrive as creatives, but we must avoid this one naive risk at all costs

Do you speak like an Aristocrat? Probably not, so why the hell write like one.

Firstly, I mean no offense to any of you “aristocrats” out there! I’m sure you’re all very lovely people. And if one of you ever invited me over to your lai–err–castle, I would without question and with a sense of excitement enjoy a cup of tea and crumpets as I listened to you recount your recent fox hunt extravaganza. But lets be real here, birds of the feather stick together, and us mere peasant types don’t share much in common.

OK, my apologies, I kid I kid, please don’t sic the hounds!

And yet, it’s VERY unlikely that even a single noble blooded aristocrat will ever get offended by reading this. So I doubt I hurt too many feelings — which is precisely my point! Artificially adjusting the way I write to appeal to that specific demographic of readers is just as childishly silly as changing the way I express myself to impress my colleagues. Continue reading Do you speak like an Aristocrat? Probably not, so why the hell write like one.

You Can Master Most of Any Social Media Platform in Two Hours

If there’s one main thing I’ve learned over the past few months trying to grow this blog, it’s that to have a fighting chance and get real results you need to have a legitimate presence on all the social platforms.

Not just Twitter, or just Instagram, or just Pinterest — ALL of them. And yes, I know there’s a lot, but that’s actually a good thing! It gives anyone plenty of opportunity to have a legitimate chance to get their name out.

Cover All The Bases.

I’m assuming that you’ve heard of Gary Vaynerchuk, or GaryVee as most people know him as. He’s the perfect example because he’s self-made and has already “blown up”. And much of that success is attributed to the simple fact that he’s basically everywhere, and has been for a long time. Continue reading You Can Master Most of Any Social Media Platform in Two Hours

Lack Engagement? It’s all about turning your blog into an effective rabbit hole.

OK. Firstly, let me clarify! The term I’m talking about is of course from the 1951 animated film Alice in Wonderland. So when I say, “rabbit hole”, I’m referring to the deep and colorful scenarios that Alice, our protagonist encounters as she gets lost in Wonderland. The movie pulls you in with a unique and original story line, and before you know it, you’re taken from one fantastical scenario to the next with nothing less than amazement and awe.

Engagement is all about getting immersed in your content!

If you haven’t watched this Disney classic, I highly suggest you do, it’s just too bad you’re not an 8 year old, as that would have truly blown your mind – either way I digress…

By applying the same approach to any blog and organizing the writing to follow a similar concept is key to keeping readers engaged and hungry for more. Below I will cover three key elements that can turn a blog into an effective rabbit hole. Continue reading Lack Engagement? It’s all about turning your blog into an effective rabbit hole.

Struggling to grow your mailing list? It’s your opt-in incentives (or lack thereof)

The team and I have been extremely busy with a super duper secret project that we’ve been working on lately and are revealing today — in this post actually!

A quick background story…

A few short years ago a few colleagues and I launched  a community link sharing and discussion platform called Snapzu.

Continue reading Struggling to grow your mailing list? It’s your opt-in incentives (or lack thereof)

Step 1: Craft a blog post. Step 2, 3, 4 and 5: Promote said blog post.

Alright, I admit. I’m a huge “data” nerd! I enjoy gathering it, organizing it, and using it to help me make the right decisions.  Over the years I’ve collected a wide range of data points, but answers to one question in particular really fascinate me.

“Why did you start blogging?”

I put together a top 10 list of the most common replies based on the personal aspirations and distinctive individuality of each blogger I chat with. Can you guess the most popular reason by far? Continue reading Step 1: Craft a blog post. Step 2, 3, 4 and 5: Promote said blog post.

Compound growth: Why every win — no matter how big or small — counts in the long run

By now you should be well aware that when you’re just starting out, to grow your initial audience and influence, you have to do things that don’t scale.

There’s no getting around it — unless you can throw wads of money at your problems, and most of us can’t, or have massive connections with several famous influencers, and most of us don’t. This means there’s really only one realistic option; you have to go out there and hustle, because — and pay close attention — NO ONE WILL DO IT FOR YOU.

Continue reading Compound growth: Why every win — no matter how big or small — counts in the long run

Leading by example: Eight awesome ways our blog community helps us grow audience, better our blog, and save time.

The /t/BES community (this blog’s official community) exists for two main reasons:

Firstly, there is no communities of this kind out there. I believe it can greatly benefit curators and content creators such as bloggers, vloggers, and podcasters.

Secondly, my team and I built a platform called Snapzu that allows anyone to run a web community (and/or knowledge base) about any subject, topic, or idea. We are taking center stage and leading by example by running our own community and utilizing the age old concept of “strength in numbers” to help us. Continue reading Leading by example: Eight awesome ways our blog community helps us grow audience, better our blog, and save time.

Modern social media platforms are kicking your blog’s ass. Here is how you can fight back.

Even though the concept of blogging is nothing new, it’s always exciting to setup up a shiny new blog, tinker with the layout, install those popular widgets, and let it rip! We spend months brainstorming ideas and investing countless hours carefully crafting our word babies. We work tirelessly building our social media presence, link exchanging, and optimizing our blog so that one day the posts we publish can be read by the masses. We strive for success, right? But are we in a position to achieve it? Continue reading Modern social media platforms are kicking your blog’s ass. Here is how you can fight back.