Tag: goal

3 Simple Ways to Know If You Are Posting Valuable Blog Content

It’s time for another blogging tip!

We have already talked about one cool strategy for busy bloggers. I want to extend that conversation by making it easier for those new to blogging to discern if what you are posting is valuable and high quality.

For the record, I am not one of those who think you have to post every day, not on social media and not to the blog. Wasted time is like wasted money, so I will not post or recommend posting just for the sake of posting.

We are not doing all of that.

What we are doing is posting consistently enough to be present enough to serve our audience.

Whenever we post, we want to add value, and adding value only means educating, inspiring, or entertaining your people.

  • Educational
  • Inspirational/Uplifting
  • Entertaining

A fourth category could be Edutainment – Educating through entertainment. Thank me later.

To do this would mean that you must be deliberate about the content you publish.

What does this mean for blogging?

To be deliberate means to have an intentional and purposeful focus. It is the opposite of being fake and posting just to post. It means posting what is important to you and what is helpful, inspiring, or educational to others while somehow making sure it ties into your brand.

I published I am Soul on December 20, 2017. This was intentional, as December 20 is my late mother’s birthday. She was alive then, and I wanted the book to be a dedication because she had been through a lot that year.

I know value is a big buzzword these days, and sometimes it can sound so complicated, but it’s really not all that deep. Posting content of value means you are posting what will uplift, educate, or entertain. Some examples include:

  • Creative writing (poetry, short stories)
  • Promotion for Indie Authors
  • Posting a think piece on a hot topic
  • Sharing some life lessons and experiences (as it is relatable to your brand)
  • Posting a review of a book you read
  • Posting something funny

Blogging doesn’t have to be a waste of time, especially if you are not getting paid to be here. Suppose you are making money from your blog or using it as an author platform to connect with readers. In that case, you definitely don’t want to waste your time publishing ten posts a week that doesn’t add value to your life or the life of others.

Choose a few days a week you want to post and make sure you are entertaining, educating, or inspiring us.

That’s it.

For More Blog Tips Click Here.

Don’t forget to vote for the My Soul is a Witness Book Cover!

PS. This book is 99cents on Kindle! This is your chance to grab it if you don’t have it. Click the title linked above. 

>>Vote Here<<

The PBS Blog Podcast Ep 15 – Discipline and Consistency

If discipline is a form of self-love then a refusal to correct the things that are wrong in our lives is a form of self-hate. Let’s love ourselves better. Tune into today’s podcast to hear more.

Listen to Discipline and Consistency now on Soundcloud for more and be sure to subscribe for notification of new episodes.

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-573689310

Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-pbs-blog-podcast/id1344901312?mt=2

Twitter: https://twitter.com/pbsblogpodcast

IG: https://www.instagram.com/thepbsblog/

To follow my personal IG page @yecheilyah

Intention

It is the soul of our reasons why and the breath of purpose. It drips from our thoughts and can be smelled through the pores in our actions. Intention is the unseen fabric of the heart; the thing that either manifests dreams or turns them into nightmares. What will be is dependent upon its reason for creation. Intention is foresight. It marches ahead of now and reveals the future of an action. Are we cold hearts or warm ones? Bloody hands or clean ones washed in genuine? Intention is genuine and does not lie. Invisible though it may be it floats alongside us still and like a shadow reveals what is real versus what is being portrayed. A helpmate and a companion, intention is rib. Intention is Eve. Intention is by the side of action, the soul of our reasons why and the breath of purpose. The question is not what you will do. The question is, what’s your intention for doing it?

8 Ways to Avoid Stress

Woman laying in grass

  1. Take some time to sit quietly and appreciate everything that you have. Happiness is not in having more physical wealth but having less wants.
  1. Stop trying to change things that are beyond your control. Sometimes stress comes from not being able to alter those things outside of our control but trying to anyway. Stop that. You’re just going against the grain and you’re not going to win.
  1. Forgive yourself. If you make a mistake, get back up and forgive the less mature version of yourself who made it. Peace cannot exist around you if it does not first exist inside of you.
  1. Forgive those who hurt you the most. After you forgive yourself, forgive others. Instead of seeing what they did to cause you hurt, try and see them through the eyes of mercy. Sometimes people have been hurt and they pass that hurt on, try to see that. Look at them with the eyes of love instead of revenge. Excess pain is just baggage and in the words of Toni Morrison, “If you wanna fly, you gotta give up the stuff that weighs you down.”
  1. Learn to create balance in your life. Being busy is no excuse for surrendering your peace. We like to use the “I’m too busy” for everything but it just ends up being an excuse. Take breaks. Go on vacation. Date. Take some time to actually smell the flowers. In the words of Lena Horne, “It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.”
  1. In times of pressure, seek to be calm and centered instead of frustrated and angry. The calm person is the most productive person and makes the best decisions. Quick story. When I returned from a road trip last month, I thought I lost my USB or better yet, left it in Chicago, a 13 hour away drive from home. Upon realization that I’d lost the drive with all of my files and manuscript revisions (which I’d unwisely not saved anywhere else), I was actually too tired to worry about it! I literally put my worrying off. My exact words were, “I don’t have the energy to worry about this right now.” I didn’t even look for the drive. A few days went by and I knew that at some point I had to try and find it. Those things on that drive were very important after all. On the third or fourth day, I sat down in my chair and searched the place I last remembered it and found it. Just like that. By choosing to be calm and not worry instead of frenzied and out of control, I was capable of thinking clearly about where I’d last had it. I also learned a very valuable lesson. In remembering everything has a purpose, I understood that I should never save important files in just one spot.
  1. Don’t compare yourself to others, it’s the easiest way to fail. It is also the easiest way to cling to your fears. Sometimes you can be so sure something is for you until you look at how others are doing it, saying it, or have done or said it. Own what you know to be true and perfect being you. People don’t want to see how you can do something the same as others are doing it. They wanna see how you can do it differently.
  1. Speaking of comparisons, be true to yourself. Stop worrying about being accepted by others. This too can cause unnecessary stresses. Don’t dilute your light for something superficial. The light bulb may shine bright now, but it is in no comparison to the sun.

When Are You Done Succeeding?

I thought this was a great post by Shayla of Curiouser Editing:

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As an entrepreneur, do you consider yourself successful? Or do you feel like you’re not quite there yet? Do you sometimes say, “I’ll be happy/successful when I get to this point”?

In the business world, we are engrained with the mentality that success is defined by numbers. We are told that it is something measurable. We are not successful until we get more followers, get more clients, get more engagement, get more subscribers, get more money, get a dream house, getgetgetgetget…

And it’s still not enough.

Because we keep going and we keep pushing ourselves to get better and be all of these things that our inner child would think were nuts.

So when is it enough? When do we get to say, “I did it. I’m successful”? When does that happen?

When are you done?

When you get 10,000 Facebook followers? When you make $8,000 a month? When you can hire your first employee? Second? Third? When you land an interview with a multimillionaire exec?

Speaking of interviews, I recently read one with a millionaire shop owner. She said, “We haven’t succeeded yet. We’re not at a point where we’ll all take a deep breath. I don’t know when we’ll ever stop.”

A millionaire said that.

To someone, that kind of dynamic attitude is contagious. It’s always been for me. But then when a friend asked me, “When are you done?” I began to rethink the definition of success.

Success means, “the fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame.”

I believe it’s time to change the definition of success. I believe we are more than the numbers on our Facebook page. I believe we are more than the amount of subscribers who read our blogs. I believe we are more than something that can be measured on Google analytics.

Here’s a thought: We already are successful. We were successful the day we put ourselves out there and hustled for our dreams. We were successful ages ago, but for some reason, we thought it wasn’t enough.

We have already succeeded. No amount of fans, followers, likes, subscribers, clients, or dollar signs can ever change that.

Here’s my new definition of success:

The act of waking up each day and being in love with what you do and who you are as a person.

It took me longer than I want to admit to realize what success truly means. It is not a number. It is being happy with who we are and who we strive to be every day.

So are you successful?

Writer’s Quote Wednesday – If You Don’t Define Yourself

Yayy I’m back :). Time to get back into the swing of things. What better way to start than with Writer’s Quote Wednesday. This week, I take my inspiration from Audre Lorde. And since I just came back from a Stage Play, I thought it’d be fun to use the picture of me on the set in my costume right before going onstage lol.

Besty Mae

“If you don’t define yourself for yourself, you’d be crunched into other people’s fantasies of you and eaten alive.” – Audre Lorde

When it comes to writing, and also to life, what sets one person apart from another are those individual qualities that are specific to that person. There is uniqueness about each of us and our style of writing that defines our work and defines also who we are as individuals. It is a kind of branding that does not have to be created, it already exists. We just have to discover it. There is a lot of good advice out there and a lot of good living examples to follow, but if you do not yet know who you are as a person and as a writer; if you do not yet know what sets you apart from the rest; if you have yet to define yourself, it is easy to get lost in all the opinions and philosophies and false images of who everyone perceives or desires you to be. Many invoke what others are expected to see. As a result, they lose sight of a definition of self. They cannot find the voice that is exclusive to them because they are trying to be a mirror reflective of someone or something else.

While I disagree with many of Audre’s views, I enjoy this quote because it is a constant reminder, for both my personal as well as my writing life, to be true to myself no matter what. I also chose this particular quote because my next book deals with mixed ancestry and it is noted that Audre Lorde’s mother could pass for white, while her father was darker than the family would have liked. Lorde is therefore among many African Americans to have experienced in some way the question of the colored line.

About the Author:

220px-Audre_LordeLorde was born in New York City to Caribbean immigrants from Barbados and Carriacou, Frederick Byron Lorde and Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde, who settled in Harlem. Lorde’s mother was of mixed ancestry but could pass for white, a source of pride for her family. Lorde’s father was darker than the Belmar family liked and only allowed the couple to marry because of Byron Lorde’s charm, ambition, and persistence. Nearsighted to the point of being legally blind, and the youngest of three daughters, Audre Lorde grew up hearing her mother’s stories about the West Indies. She learned to talk while she learned to read, at the age of four, and her mother taught her to write at around the same time. She wrote her first poem when she was in eighth grade.

Audre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer, poet, essayist, etc. and her poetry was published very regularly during the 1960s — in Langston Hughes’ 1962 New Negro Poets, USA; in several foreign anthologies; and in black literary magazines. Her first volume of poetry, The First Cities (1968), was published by the Poet’s Press. She died in 1992 at the age of 58.

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That’s it for this week’s episode of Writer’s Quote Wednesday. Be sure to check out Silver Threading to join in on the fun. Just click on the pic below!

writers-quote-wednesday

http://silverthreading.com/2015/05/06/writers-quote-wednesday-the-buddha/