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How to Write Better SEO With These 4 Free Tools (Spiritual Biz Too!)

How to Write Better SEO With These 4 Free Tools (Spiritual Biz Too!)

how to write better SEO with these 4 free tools

How to Write Better SEO With These 4 Free Tools (Spiritual Biz Too!)

​Writing is not everyone’s favorite thing – and I get that. It can feel overwhelming and complicated and many people want to skip it altogether (like the way I feel about helping my kids with common core math!).

​But, if you’re running any kind of online business, you either need to polish your writing skills (no, I don’t mean make them sound “fancy”) OR use some tools to help you.

And if you love writing, even better! You may need help figuring out the more complicated stuff like SEO keywords for your title, and who doesn’t need help when it comes to proofreading?

In any case, there are some free tools on the Internet that you will thank me for sharing. These are the tools I wish I’d known about years ago! It takes so much of the guesswork out of writing and allows you to spend your brainpower on the creative part – which is where you probably shine, right?

You can use these in any order, but I would love to suggest the order that has worked well for me that you can try out before you find your favorite way.

Where to use these tools?

Everywhere! But this post will take you through how to use them specifically for a title of a blog post and the content – and then you can apply that to other places as the mood strikes you. Think email subject lines, social media ads, Instagram posts… you name it!

So let’s get to it.

The title is the most important thing you do.

​Your title is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing when you are writing.

There is a saying in copywriting that the title is there to get the person to read the first sentence. If the title isn’t great, no one will ever know what the next sentence is that follows.

It also helps shape your content and keep a unified theme so you don’t have scope creep all over your message.

And I don’t just mean any title. These tools will talk a well-crafted Search Engine Optimized (SEO) title – and who doesn’t want that?

Now, the funny thing is that I’m an Intuitive Writer, so my words often come to me. They just show up in a flash or in a voice that is speaking in blog posts that wakes me in the middle of the night.

And that voice used to give me some cool blog post names like “You did not come here to play it safe. Not. This. Time.” Well… that’s great and all, but it pretty much explains what I’m going to say right in the title (no need to read it) and unfortunately, as far as organic traffic goes (traffic coming via people searching for something in google) – well no one is searching “Did I come here to play it safe?”

It sounded great but wasn’t very discoverable outside of when I shared it on social media.

When you want to be FOUND, it helps to use keywords that connect the reader to your blog post.

I’m not saying don’t ever use the clever title or the one near and dear to your heart, just don’t expect the same results as a well-crafted title that uses keywords.

People find you because they are looking for something in a search bar. Connecting to what they are looking for is what connects them to you.

Take time on your title. It’s the most important thing!

These two tools for your title when combined will make you more discoverable.

​Ubersuggest and CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer work together to create powerful titles.

It took me years to understand this and I’m excited to share it with you. I’m going to walk you through how I chose the title for this post as a real-life example so it will make the most sense.

I knew I wanted to talk about these four tools that help me personally with my writing so I tried out combinations of “write better” and “better writer”.

I headed over to Ubersuggest to understand what people are looking for when it comes to writing and what words they are using to search. It helps to create a free account and it will give you the ability to search 10 keywords each day.

Keywords are those important words people are putting into the Google search bar when they need answers or guidance.

With Ubersuggest, keywords no longer need to be like throwing darts at a dartboard and hoping they stick! When you are trying to figure out what people are actively searching for on the Internet – Ubersuggest is your BFF! (You can read about keywords in more detail HERE).

Simply click “keyword ideas” in the sidebar on the left and enter your subject as a keyword. In this case, I used “write better” to see how it would do.

Click “Keywords” on the left:

How to Write Better With These 4 Free Tools

​Enter the keyword or words that pertain to your subject:

How to Write Better With These 4 Free Tools

​This can get complicated quickly and you can go down the rabbit hole of SEO if you really want to, but there are two things that are easy to look for that I think help immensely with your titles and would make a great start for you. No need to go so deep just yet, first get comfortable with these two things:

1. Does the SEO score show up in the green? You can find it in the column labeled SD on the far right.​

SD stands for SEO difficulty. That means, how competitive it is to show up on Google’s page one when someone searches that keyword. If it’s in the green – that’s good! You want the lowest number for SEO difficulty possible.

How to Write Better With These 4 Free Tools

You can see the difference when I put in the keyword “Writer” by itself.

How to Write Better With These 4 Free Tools

When you see those high numbers in the dark yellow, it clues you in that it will likely land you on page 13 of the google search results. No one looks at page 13…

It’s very hard to “rank” or show up closer to the top with the keywords in yellow.

2. Are people paying for that keyword?

The second thing to look for is whether or not people are paying for this keyword.

This does not mean YOU should pay for the keyword. It means that it’s in high demand and people are paying a premium for it. That suggests it’s a keyword that converts to something. People are paying for it as a keyword in Google because it’s adding SOME sort of value for them.

If you look at the CPC (cost per click) column, you can see what people are paying Google for when they advertise using that keyword.

How to Write Better With These 4 Free Tools

So in this case, “how write better” is a great option for my title rather than just using the term “writer” or even copywriter. It is 17 for SEO difficulty, whereas “write better” is at 32.

And the CPC is a little higher than “write better”.

So I had a winner – “how write better”.

And of course, I can’t actually put “how write better” in my title as is, so the next step is important too!

Time to Craft Your Title

Now you want to take your winning keywords to another tool to craft your title. The best keyword placement is toward the front of your title (except if it makes your title sound terrible).

CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer is very helpful when it comes to creating a title that stands out and makes people click to read what you have to say.

It breaks your title down into categories and once you get the hang of it, you’ll find your titles will improve. You’ll get a sense of which ones will do well and which ones will go unnoticed.

To use CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer, you simply set up a free profile and start plugging in title options in the analyze bar.

Please know that with this tool getting in the 70s is VERY good! I try to always have every title be in the 70s and find it near impossible to get in the 80s. I’ve even tested headlines from the front page of the news feeds on the internet and haven’t seen an 80!

Aim for the 70s with your keywords in the title and you should start to see an improvement in your click rate.

In this case, I tried two options: “These free resources can make anyone a better writer” and “How to write better with these 4 free tools”.

How to Write Better With These 4 Free Tools

The keywords “how write better” had better SEO difficulty and higher cost per click in Ubersuggest and also when used toward the front of a title received a 77 in CoSchedule. Mic drop!

For my fellow intuitives who “receive” their writing too, after using these tools for a while, my titles now come intuitively to me and SEO friendly  – thank goodness! You can still write intuitively as you craft your titles to connect to a wider audience, it won’t be like you are giving up your sacred connection.

I used to spend hours struggling with the Co-Schedule’s Headline Analyzer to figure out a title in the 70s and now it takes all of 10 minutes.

This is worth investing time in.

Organic traffic, traffic coming from people searching for solutions on the Internet, is the best thing that can happen to your business. Then you aren’t dependent on Facebook algorithms or Pinterest not marking you for spam. We need as many people finding us in as many ways as possible.

Crafting your titles this way makes them catchy for Social Media in the process anyway – win-win!

The bonus is the connection to your soul mate client this creates. You will know people are looking for something you offer when they find you. They are actively looking for a solution or information you have.

Which is time well spent, if you ask me.

Use a title capitalizer.

Once you’ve come up with a title you are happy with, head over to THIS link and let it capitalize it for you. No guesswork, no looking up the rules when it comes to which are letters are upper case and which are lower (why aren’t all the first letters upper case? Who knows!).

You put it in the bar and it does the work for you.

How to Write Better With These 4 Free Tools

Woo hoo! Now you have a great title that is SEO powerful and there’s one last tool that will help after you write the content for the blog post.

​A free online grammar check –  You will thank me for this one!

The last step, but definitely not the least, is a free online grammar checker. By now you have your analyzed title with CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer after you carefully chose your keywords with Ubersuggest and you’ve written your blog post. It’s time to check for errors.

The free version of Grammarly is awesome! I used to have friends and family proofread my writing and we all would miss typos and those hard to find errors where you accidentally skip a word.

Enter Grammarly into my life – bliss!

It analyzes and finds your errors so thoroughly that I get to skip the wait time for my proofreaders (who often wanted to comment on the content and didn’t see the typos anyway).

There are two easy ways to use this (I know my kids say I sound like a commercial they hear on YouTube for Grammarly because I love it so much), you can copy and paste it into a document, or you can upload it.

2 ways to upload grammarly

Unlike CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer where the 70s is good, with Grammarly you want to be in the mid 80s or 90s. If you don’t get in the mid 80s or 90s, you’ll want to make some revisions and then try again because something is probably off.

grammarly score

Grammarly will offer a premium version, but I think you’ll find the free version will enhance your writing just fine. Especially if you start getting into the 90s with your scores!

I do want to take some pressure off you and say that even the best bloggers with high levels of traffic have the occasional typos (see: Forget the Rules When It Comes to Authentic Writing). If we try to be perfect we will put too much pressure on ourselves and make a mistake.

As you grow, you can think about hiring a proofreader or VA to help you – otherwise, just roll with it, use Grammarly, and do your best.

So there you have it. Four free resources to take your blog or email content writing to the next level.

Co-Schedule’s Headline Analyzer

Ubersuggest

Capitalize My Title

Grammarly

If you do want to take your writing a step further, and you start getting more into conversion, there are a few books that I recommend that you can either purchase or get from the library.

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure for more info.

I recommend these if you are writing copy that is trying to get people to take an action – like sign up for your opt-in, buy your service, or schedule a call with you.

This Book Will Teach You How to Write Better.

The Adweek Copywriting Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy from One of America’s Top Copywriters.

Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen.

This Book Will Teach You How to Write Better is a quick read but it summed up the main content I had learned from an entire copywriting course in a small book! It will feel simple, and almost too easy when you read it, but it is complex principles in a digestible format.

It also emphasizes writing how you actually sound and talk – rather than how you think it should sound – a key distinction! It’s usually around $5 on amazon – an easy investment.

The Adweek Copywriting Handbook is often cited as “the book” in copywriting. It does go deep, it is thorough and it’s helpful. It’s not as easy a read as This Book Will Teach You How to Write Better, but it gives you more insight into copywriting – which is basically writing that inspires people to take an action. If you’re an online marketer, inspiring people to take action is key!

Building a StoryBrand – shows you how to make your website pages and copy more exciting with story. It’s a very interesting way to write, making your website visitor the “hero” of the story and you are a trusted guide with the solution (it sounds strange but it’s well explained in this book). It’s worth understanding to see if it’s a fit for your website or any copy you are working on. It’s not as easy to adopt and implement, but it’s powerful if you can get the hang of it.

​These three books combined are helpful for your writing needs to understand options when it comes to writing and also allow you to feel free to write more personally – writing more conversationally and less “stuffy”. Those well-polished pages look great, but do they convert to people understanding what you are saying and wanting to invest their time, money, or even email address with you?

You have to be the judge of that.

I sincerely want your words to be read and know a great title followed by good content will get you far.

These tools will help you create more ease of people finding you and connecting to your message. It’s worth taking the time to have your content read by your soul mate audience, isn’t it?

XOXO,

P.S. Did I miss anything? If you have a tool you love for writing pop it in the comments below.

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How to write better SEO with these 4 free tools

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Forget the Rules When It Comes to Authentic Writing

Forget the Rules When It Comes to Authentic Writing

Forget the Rules When It Comes to Authentic Writing

Forget formal when it comes to writing

To some extent, I think it’s our English teacher’s fault that so many of you say you’re “not a writer” (bear with me, I don’t hate teachers).

Not all English teachers, mind you, just the strict ones who make writing about grammar and typos and leave out the part about free flow and communication.

The result? Generations of people with something to say but an icky feeling about writing and the belief that they can’t.

I’ll give you an example. My sister and I once took a college English writing class during the summer. It applied to my major but she just needed a class for additional credits and we wanted to do something together.

We got this teacher that was a total nightmare with his grading and his hatred of comma splices.

I don’t know why, but my brain doesn’t understand what a comma splice is but according to this teacher it was pretty offensive to use them. Your paper could be well written, well researched, have a good flow to it but God forbid if there was a comma splice and he would knock you down to a “C-”. (To this day I don’t understand comma splices!)

I figured out that the way around it was to leave out the comma and be slightly marked down for not using one rather than use it “incorrectly” and be heavily penalized.

It was so stressful and frustrating that I’m sure my sister never took another class like that and we were both miserable trying to get through it with a decent grade.

It could make you HATE writing if you weren’t passionate about it.

Forget formal when it comes to writing

By the time I got into my upper classes, I had such a fear of using commas! I often employed the same strategy of omitting them where I thought they should be rather than getting marked down for using them wrong (it was a good strategy by the way, as so many teachers seem more angered by the incorrect usage than the omission of them). Maybe because not using one makes them feel you just didn’t think it needed it but using it incorrectly means you didn’t know HOW to use it.

Now I don’t think that teacher was trying to make it so the majority of the class never wanted to write anything ever again… he obviously had a pet peeve and he took it out on us.

The problem with this, and with so many teachers like him, is the grammar and punctuation are there to SUPPORT the writing, NOT the other way around.

The most perfect grammar and punctuation on a paper can’t exist without the words.

And if the words are boring… well, I don’t have to tell you that you aren’t going to read them!!!

The sad thing is that the extra pressure to be grammatically correct and perfect makes many of you who are feeling this desire to write feel an immediate “Nope!” instead.

Or “That’s not for me”.

Because writing formally, stuffy, so different than the way you speak IS NOT for you.

You are right.

But writing from the heart, speaking about your dreams, desires, perhaps sharing something you’ve learned so others can possibly have an easier journey – THAT, that is likely what is calling you.

Not the old-fashioned, boring, beat-a-dead-horse kind of writing.

Oh! And I recently read a post about someone whose editor HATED clichés and trained it out of him. And here I am using them, ha!

Sometimes clichés and overused expressions capture my intent and tell you what I’m thinking, feeling, seeing, and hearing in a way that leaving it out just can’t.

So look at me over here breaking all the rules and I still have a website, I still have a blog, a professional writing career AND I still get to write to people via email that subscribe to me.

The writing police haven’t shown up.

Every once in a while I will have an email subscriber write to me and say there was one typo in my email.

Instead of taking it personally I just think, “Wow. That person must not give themselves grace!” Because one typo out of my many emails, well that’s just nitpicky.

I’m going to be honest with you – No one is going to have NONE without a proofreader or two.

I see grammar and punctuation as the accessories to your outfit. They can take it to the next level but without your clothes you’re naked!

The content is most important. You can always hire a proofreader and use Grammarly.

Writing needs personality and creativity. You can’t smother that with rules and have it still be engaging and feel good.

So I tell anyone who will listen just to write. Let it FLOW. See where it takes you. See what it wants you to know!

Then worry about editing it, but whatever you do, don’t make it sound different or ruin it (I used to be guilty of editing my blog posts until they no longer even sounded the same!).

Now I don’t want you to hate on your English teachers because they’re doing their jobs and they THINK good grammar and good punctuation is the way to educate you.

I just wish they would place the higher importance on content, and the lower importance on proofreading. Allowing the students to find their authentic voice and their writing style.

Once writing style is achieved, if you have a passion for it or need writing as a tool in your biz, you would just automatically want to support it with better grammar and good punctuation, IMHO.

Let it flow… don’t worry about why or who will read it.

I give you permission to forget the rules for a while or intentionally break them.

REBEL.

Why not, right?

Let me know in the comments if you had a teacher like the one I mentioned who was hard on the proofreading. Did it affect you for life?

XOXO,

Forget formal when it comes to writing

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I Did a Social Media Influencer 30-Day Challenge and Here’s What Happened

I Did a Social Media Influencer 30-Day Challenge and Here’s What Happened

I did a social media challenge for 30 days

I Did a Social Media Influencer 30-Day Challenge and Here’s What Happened

I’m a writer at heart. I LOVE to write. It lights me up like no other and I can spend the day talking about it if anyone is willing to discuss it.

I often share how I think it’s healing… how I think it’s therapeutic…how I feel we connect to people through writing and how we can inspire people to feel things through writing (see: Does Your Writing make you Cry?).

But, being a full-time writer I also like to hermit. I go through these intense and self-reflective periods where I don’t like to be on social media or say how I’m feeling until I’m through it.

Otherwise, it would look like this:

“OMG, today I’m overwhelmed by the energy in the world and in my house.”

“Hey guys I’m happy, grateful, life is good.”

“OMG, today I’m overwhelmed by the energy in the world and in my house.”

“Hey guys I’m happy, grateful, life is good.”

“OMG, today I’m overwhelmed by the energy in the world and in my house.”

“Hey guys I’m happy, grateful, life is good.”

It wouldn’t look pretty in other words and I wouldn’t feel good sharing it.

I know that being real and authentic is important. And people like the “realness” we can show even on social media, but for me – I just want to figure my sh*t out and I don’t want to consistently do it in front of people.

I need my quiet self-retreat time.

I usually write my way through it and share it but I want to be able to edit it.

However, this makes it hard to grow an online business if I don’t show up on occasion or consistently.

The Challenge.

what is social media

When I heard Deb LaFlamme on THIS podcast with Emily Aarons, I immediately connected with her and her message.

She is so passionate about social media, how to grow it but in a way that feels good for you and the audience.

She teaches how to get engagement and growth and I highly recommend her 30-day challenge if you see it come up again (you’ll see why below).

It seemed like if this person can’t help me figure out social media – no one can!

I committed.

I committed to showing up on social media for 30-days in a row. I took a picture of how many followers I had in the beginning (as is part of the challenge) and I dug deep to follow the suggested prompts, put out content every day for 30 days (or schedule it in advance to be present for 30 days), and be part of this challenge.

I can tell you that I felt inspired by Deb’s daily posts and we engaged by sharing ours with each other. I chose Facebook as my platform (the challenge has you choose one) and I engaged in the comments.

People were in engaging with my posts. I had a few comments from people I hadn’t seen before and they said they felt connected to what I was sharing, but…

The results.

My following did not grow, even with all this effort.

I felt depleted.

It took me quite a while to come up with an image for the posts each day because I feel those catch more attention than words alone.

My personal and professional writing took a back seat to this challenge.

I didn’t see how this would lead to more copywriting or editing work for me at this rate.

It was time to look at some hard truths.

My personal takeaway on being a social media influencer.

what if I can't do social media

Most of the time I’m not a high energy or bubbly person. I’m passionate about writing, sure, but my way of expressing that is to write.

I LOVE to write blog posts and I LOVE to share them on Pinterest which has been a nice source of traffic for me along with organic traffic via google.

I believe my social media following didn’t grow because my heart isn’t in posting on social media every day or thinking up 30-days worth of content to schedule.

It’s like this – when my kids were much younger, I used to accidentally dress us all in the same color. We’d be at the park and I would notice we were all in blue, or red (or someone would comment how cute it was that we were all in the same color).

I finally figured out that I dressed us in the same color because I dressed in how I felt. So if I was feeling red that day, we were all in red. Yellow, same.

Social media is like that for me. I have days when I crave connection and am dying to share insight or something inspiring, and there are simply days when I don’t.

And I don’t know which day I will feel which way.

Social media influencer, I am not.

“I’m not cut out to be consistent on social media and I suck at scheduling it out in advance.”

There it is. The bottom line.

 

What if I can’t DO social media?

will they still like me

Here’s what I will say, I’m grateful for the challenge because it was the incentive and inspiration I needed to really look at how I spend my time.

Knowing that I don’t want to show up every day on social media, it inspired me to look at where I DO want to show up.

It permitted me to FINALLY accept that it isn’t for me to be “out there” all the time, though I have nothing against others that do and appreciate that they can do it.

But I also know if I’m going to have an online business, I do need to find my happy medium between all or none.

Otherwise, people can’t find you!

For me, that means spending time on Pinterest pins and posting, nurturing my email subs, and spending more time on SEO and keywords.

That way I can show up when I’m feeling it, and skip it when I’m not feeling it.

I just don’t want it to be fake for the sake of a marketing strategy.

We’ve all seen the people putting out videos and lives where they are so uncomfortable and you just feel so bad for them. If they allowed themselves to believe that there were other marketing strategies then they wouldn’t push to be live before they were ready. They could record (and rerecord) videos having fun with it until they were ready to go live.

 

The interesting part.

 

When I gave myself permission to let go of social media as a self-imposed requirement, my word-of-mouth business started growing. I believe it’s because I just focused on what I’m good at (writing!), and stopped my worry-induced-social-media-growth strategy.

To be SUPER clear – I AM a fan of social media and all it provides (I’m tentatively stepping into Instagram). But if you’re like me, you may need to write down a bunch of content and hire it out or get someone to manage yours who is great at it if it’s not your thing.

I also think being a social media influencer is awesome and I encourage doing anything you are passionate about – anything.

I’m just saying if you don’t feel connected to it, if it makes you uncomfortable, if it doesn’t feel good to you – then there are other marketing strategies and other ways to grow your business.

Having a great opt-in and good email sequence may be more valuable and more lucrative than Facebook. And something about writing emails to people who have opted into my freebie that interested them connects more to my soul as a writer – even if the emails are occasionally automated.

We’re all different and I don’t think there’s a one size fits all approach to digital marketing – but I have learned that we need to know our strengths and weakness and stop FORCING it.

Whew.

Such a freeing feeling when we just admit where we shine and where we don’t, isn’t it?

I’d love to hear from you. What areas do you force yourself to show up in your business and have you stopped to wonder if you TRULY have to? Can you hire it out or let it go???

Let me know in the comments.

XOXO,

P.S. If you are ready to grow your social media influence with Facebook or Instagram (is Twitter still a thing?) I highly recommend Deb LaFlamme – her name has the word “flame” in it for goodness sakes. I feel she is a breath of fresh air in this area and that’s how I could confidently say that this wasn’t for me right now (because I felt it was the best I could do!). Worst case, you’ll know if you are in or out when it comes to being a social media influencer.

 

I did a 30 day challenge and heres what happened

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Does Your Writing Make You Cry?

Does Your Writing Make You Cry?

Does Your Writing Make You Cry?

But does your writing make you cry

I went to a conference where I heard a speaker say something about copywriting that really confused me.

She said that when she writes something for a client, if it doesn’t make her cry she throws it out and starts over.

At first I thought, “How can everything make you cry?” but as the months went on I’ve come to understand it.

I feel she’s talking about evoking the emotion in HER. Is she that connected to it? Does it make her feel something? If it makes her teary-eyed, chances are it evokes emotion in the reader, or a connection rather.

I thought about this as we were buying our house. We did not agree on a price with the sellers initially and we had walked away. A few weeks later I KNEW this was our house and we should take a risk to get it.

I wrote a letter. I got interrupted. My boys needed dinner. My husband kept talking each time I tried to type. It just didn’t come out right…

Finally, my husband tried to finish it for me when he saw I was frustrated and said it was “good enough”.

But it didn’t make me cry.

I put the kids to bed, sat down in the quiet, and wrote a sincere, heartfelt letter that did make me cry. I wrote about our long journey to homeownership and how we wanted a place to grow roots and raise our boys the rest of the years until they go to college and I believed this home was the one we’d been waiting for.

I made sure that they understood that our price offering wasn’t a reflection of the value we placed on the home.

They ended up accepting our offer after reading the letter and canceling the scheduled open house –saying my letter had touched them. Turns out they had also raised their boys here starting around the same ages and the personal information I’d added is what reached them the most.

The day we moved in, there was an envelope on our front gate. The sellers had written us a letter telling us about the great features of the house and what they had loved about it.

She spoke of how we had one of the few houses in our community with a front window and how the Christmas tree looks beautiful there during the holidays. She spoke of the parties they had and that’s why they had offered us their patio furniture so we too could have gatherings. She referenced a big plant they had left that they felt belonged to the house (it does!) and the wonderful breeze we would get in the summer.

Without my letter and her letter, the house may have worked out the same.

But the power of the letters made it feel instead as if she was passing the house to me. Their family to ours.

I’m sharing this with you because I think writing is more than just words on a page, so much more.

It can be therapeutic, heal energy, and also connect us in a way that evokes emotion and connection.

It’s more than just words on a page…

So when you write something heartfelt or persuasive, you just might take the time to ask yourself if it makes you cry.

Even tears of joy would be welcome.

Creating a connection through our writing is a gift we all have the ability to do. Or through your art, speaking, how ever you do YOU.

For me, it’s writing.

How about you? Do you remember a piece of writing that moved you to tears? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

XOXO,

nicole strychaz

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But does your writing make you cry

Are You Scattering Your Energy in Your Biz?

Are You Scattering Your Energy in Your Biz?

It can be subtle. You may not even know it. But I’ve come to the realization I’ve been scattering my energy (for years!) and I want to point it out to you in case you are too so that you too can get the heck passed it!

I first heard the term “don’t scatter your energy” in yoga.

We were coming up from shavasana and the teacher said, “Keep your eyes closed for now, you don’t want to scatter your energy.”

At first I thought, “What? How is that scattering our energy to see what we are doing???”

But the more I practiced sitting up with my eyes closed and keeping them that way until we bowed with our final “Namaste,” I felt the difference. I felt how much more focused the end of class could feel if I waited to open my eyes until my yoga practice for the day was complete.

I didn’t realize I was doing the same thing in my business until very recently.

 

Are You Scattering Your Energy in Your Biz?

I had heard that I needed to be focused (I’m clairaudient). That message was making its way to me on the regular… but I didn’t see how I wasn’t completely focused!

You see, because my business has always felt like a a calling, I thought the universe would fully support it if I made the effort to show up. If I remained a clear channel (which is no small amount of dedication believe me!) and put out consistently good content and advice, the traffic would come to my website and I would be financially supported.

I worked on my abundance blocks. 🧘

I healed my inner child.👶

And the traffic came in a very small trickle compared to a mountain of effort I was making.

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

I see it so often. People start their websites or Instagram accounts and say, “You guys I’m so excited! I’m out of the spiritual closet and I created this!”

And I always think the same thing. “If only they knew that those first few steps end up being the easiest part of making a living if your calling is your business.” It’s a very important, critical step in your healing journey, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t just end up being effortless and easy in most cases. In fact, I don’t personally know anyone where it’s been that easy but I’m sure there are some out there… maybe???

Instead, it’s so much more.

I recently heard the term “hope marketing” and realized that yes, that has been my strategy. I put myself out there and I hoped it worked.

The video where I heard the term said, “Hope marketing never works.”* Yikes!

It certainly didn’t work for me and last May I started to hear and ever present “Change or Die.”** It was a reference to a book I read in Grad School and I finally understood that if I didn’t learn marketing and sales I would have to give up on my dreams.

That simple.

“Change or Die.”

Are You Scattering Your Energy in Your Biz?

What it comes down to is putting out effort and energy can be like the shotgun effect. Scattered everywhere and hoping it lands on something that works.

And believe me, I mediated every day and made sure I was listening to my inner guidance with ALL my content.

It wasn’t enough, it was scattered energy and hope marketing for YEARS!

Not to depress you, instead I want you to think in terms of strategy.

The question to ask yourself is, “Is the effort I’m putting out, coming back to me as something fulfilling and/or lucrative?”

If you are putting out a blog post, is it coming back as traffic to your website?

If you are getting the traffic to your website, is it turning into something that financially supports you?

It doesn’t have to be icky which is where I was really stuck for awhile (see my thoughts on the creepy email marketing HERE). Instead, it should be a seamless route to your words of wisdom for those who will benefit from it and it in turn has a means to financially support you.

Whatever you want to do has a means to financially support you – that’s why it’s coming to YOU.

There is a way to do it and now that I’ve learned it, I understand that almost every book I’ve bought, every eCourse, every free seminar that I’ve signed up for which lead to a sale – has been employing the exact same methods.

Not because they are slimy or salesy, but because they work!

And the reason it works is not because it’s a gimmick. It works because people get to know you and how you think and how you can support them BEFORE you offer a product or service.

It’s about trust and relationship building.

If you are putting out your words of wisdom, your healing energy, your great advice all over the place without a plan, it may or may not reach anyone… Maybe a few.

Whereas if you know how to tie everything together you will see that the energy has a focus, an intent, and a way to really get out there and reach people.

You have to understand your target and learn how to aim.

Of course there is a healing component to this.

If you are not ready to be heard, you probably won’t be.

I have no doubt the information I needed to understand how to market and sell came at a time when I had healed the parts of me that weren’t ready before.

Which is why I say that any action is good action because you are moving forward and you have to start somewhere. By the time I had this understanding, I’m shocked by the amount of content I have to turn into eBooks, blog posts and eCourses. It’s all written and because I showed up every day dedicated to writing it’s all there and some of it I don’t even remember writing! So cool…

So when you are ready, really ready to be an entrepreneur or in the career of your dreams, it really does become about “focused thought” and where your attention is going.

That’s the difference between supporting yourself and pushing until you burnout (see: You can HAVE it all, but not if you DO it all, aka “Burnout.”).

“Change or die.”

change

It doesn’t mean actually die. It means your dream.

It should be “change so you don’t have to give up your dream!” Right?

How about you?

Is your dream falling into place or are you too scattering your energy?

I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

XOXO,

nicole strychaz

*Jeff Walker “Product Launch Formula” webcast.

**Book referenced Good to Great. Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t.

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