SUNDAY... Coffee and Cake

New Prints On Etsy - Click Images to Visit Listing




Sunday - Coffee and Cake



Hello!

I'm a bit rushed today, as so far my week has been a mixture of battling through a never ending crashing PC, new ideas for my Etsy store, and tasks unrelated to the stuff I do online. So being VERY behind is an understatement. In the long run however I'm hoping that I shall achieve peace with my computer and digital files on my Etsy store. For now my focus is today's article which I know is a week late! Apologies!

For today this is more of an opinion than anything that is of the record, but I hope that my little insight is worthy of consideration. I'm certain that what I am going to write about has been said before as with most things everyone has their own way of taking on board information and then displaying it for others to see. So this is just my take on things.

Objective Thinking : I am one of those people who have a firm belief in what is known as "The Secret", although I have been well aware of the Law Of Attraction for many years having being blessed with the freedom to find my own way through my mind. My mum is a very Spiritual person so naturally for me I was left open to think objectively about the world, without too much influence of my mums ideas but having the freedom to choose to take them on board if i wanted to.

Without thinking about it consciously, I always found myself taking on board new ideas without taking them on board, if that makes any sense? I think in order to have a point of view that is unhindered by bias or immediate belief, you must have a strong sense of self. Not necessarily eradicating self consciousness which in New Age society is the "thing" to do in order to be completely "self aware", but to have love for your ideas is actually part of the journey to loving yourself. The thing that is most important about having "your own" ideas is that any incoming ideas trigger conscious thinking on your part, and not any sort of immediate lemming response "without" conscious thought. Not to say that everyone is a lemming, but in a lot of instances when you think about it no-one really has an idea that is their own as we are born into a world that likes to impose itself on us from birth, and we have to rely on our teachers and elders to show us the path to making the right choices in our lives. In order to do that, we also have to be able to 'identify' with these people in order for their ideas/ways etc to have that sort of impact on us. Even if you're the most lonesome person in the world that doesn't really talk to anyone that maybe does form ideas of your own, the place that you're in didnt happen by mistake and more than likely your life events, choices and surrounding entourage from the earliest of your days will have lead you to that point of existance (or non existance if you find yourself completely absent from any social interaction.)
It's not something we think about either, as we all know babies are like sponges, and you too were once a squidgy porous little thing that literally sucked up everything that displayed itself infront of you. So I guess the first thing to realise when trying to work out the beginnings of where you may pick up things from is truely within yourself. Unfortunately as a baby you can't really stand up and know who you are to the point where your ideas can really do great things, but 'Knowing' who you are and having confidence in that is where you can say that maybe more than a person that follows the crowd, you have more potential to be a dream weaver and know that your ideas are influential to others. Until you can think for yourself you are not really able to think objectively. Without being able to think objectively you will more than likely always have finality, bias and judgment ready to leap out and do the talking, when in reality being able to embrace both polarities from a neutral perspective without being clouded by immediate responses will lead you one step closer to freeing your mind and helping you feel more confident in your descisions. Ultimately without a mindful attitude, how can you be sure of anything?

SUNDAY... Coffee and Cake

New Note Cards and Prints On Etsy - Click Images to Visit Listings




Sunday - Coffee and Cake



Hello again :)

My son is currently asleep, and the other half is a busy bee dealing with some things that have cropped up this week, which has left me this short space of time to get on with todays article.

I have spend 5 weeks so far discussing the various things I have found to be helpful throughout my networking journey, to bring awareness of my work and other things like this blog for example. I think that I have pretty much covered everything i have tried and tested, and have found that some of these things have worked for my readers too, after getting some lovely responses to my posts ^_^ So for that I'm glad, that's what makes sharing this info so worthwhile! Unfortunately I have come to an end (new topic starting next week), with today being the last of the Networking articles but you can always catch up with the past Networking posts by clicking here, or searching for the tag "Coffee and Cake" within my blog.


Today, I will focus on something that initially won't help you spread you name around online, but in the long run will do just that. That is "Tagging" appropriately, whatever it is you are trying to bring to peoples awareness, be it an item in your Etsy store or a blog post, Tweet, or even MetaTags for a website.


Networking Part 6 : Tagging, for good SEO (search engine optimisation) is essential if you want to get yourselves listed into the search engines, to put yourself close to the top of the pile and to make easy navigation in things that may have it's own internal search engine. I think nowdays that the search engines automatically search around for pages to link to with the use of spider bots, which is why it's important to be prepared by tagging appropriately, as lack of tagging or bad tagging isn't going to do much for you in the competative world of website listing. You still get the option to manually list sites anyway, but even still, if these spiders think you site is spammy (based on how you incorporate SEO), or if it thinks the content is lacking, you'll find yourself in the back of the queue (or worse, blacklisted) when your ultimate goal should be to aim as high as you can! Tagging is pretty easy and like I say, can even help people navigate your pages/sites/items much easier than to have them go through pages and pages to find what it is they're looking for.


With Meta tagging for example (on a website) you'll find there are 2 places in the HTML coding that is worth putting a few words about your site. Those are literally the Meta Tags, and Meta Descriptions. You don't want to write paragraphs as the spider bots only pick up a small amount of text from what is left there. I'm uncertain of the exact number but think Twitter and call it 140 characters for each... it may be more, it could be less... but it's not a lot when you could go on for days about what it is you're trying to describe! So you need to be clever about it. Use words that aren't too unsual and infact try and think of what you reckon people will will look for that is relatable to your content, but also try and make a name for yourself. Summerise your business or site, and throw in as many keywords as you can in the description. The more "keywords" you can use, the better really.


Some people, when writing on the body section of their homepage like to include a more detailed welcoming description that I believe can also be used to optimise your pages for searching. This applies to everything I guess, like with Etsy you get a measly 14 tags per item, yet if you can use a bit of flair with your descriptions, or better yet try and put yourselves in the shoes of a search-ready customer, predicting what kinds of words someone would use to lead them to your product, something like that could change the way you would initially have written your tags to begin with. Tagging is more than just describing and catagorising your item, it should be about identifying with what your customers want.


On Etsy, Artfire, Misi, etc... the shop home should be reasonably descriptive, but not necessarily over done (not just for SEO but I found a lot of people get put off by reams and reams of writing before they see your items. Only recently!). That will help your shop gain more web presence for sure. and anything else really that gives you opportunities to tag and write descriptions, use them! you dont have to be a poet, but an intelligent use of descriptive words will always help. There are so many places to take advantage of for this. Blogger is one of them! Myspace! Indiepublic and We Love Etsy on Ning.com! I've even caught Tweets in the search engine, and particularly picked up via third party twitter sites! At the end of it, the way people find things online is if they search for it, unless they already know where they are going! If they don't then they will describe what they want and click search, and you want to be nearest the top of the end of that search as you can be! Remember you don't have to write novels. Just give good descriptions and tags!


That's all. Until next week, Coffee and Cake will be introducing a new topic of discussion! Look forward to it. :)


moonangelnay x