Tag: google

Why I Set Blog Goals: A Message For Beginner Bloggers

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I don’t want to be stuck in the same place. I hear people talk a lot about how numbers don’t matter and to an extent yes, you don’t want your sole motivation of blogging to be riding on the back of followers and stats but at the same time, life is about evolving. As a student the idea is not for you to be forever learning at the foot of the professor. The idea is to learn, apply, and to grow. One of the greatest gifts a teacher can see is a student who has become a teacher. It shows that the student has applied the lessons and that the professor has done his or her job, for its one thing to know and an entirely different thing to pass on information so that others can understand it.

Why Do I Set Blog Goals? Because numbers don’t lie. They are not here to be ignored. And while they are also not here to lean too much on, they do serve a purpose in the end. That purpose is to market growth and development. This means that if we desire evolution then we must put those things in place that are necessary to get there. What I love about the blogging community is the excitement of seeing someone who has reached a certain viewership or follower number. I love this because if you don’t appreciate the little things in your life, then why are you deserving of more? You are not defined by your numbers, but they are there for you to measure improvement. Life in general is about learning and applying and evolving so it doesn’t make sense to me not to strive for excellence.

Deep down everyone knows that goals are the difference maker between so-so performance and stellar achievement.  Studies conclusively show that goal-setters routinely outperform their “wing-it” counterparts. – https://pushingsocial.com/3-goals-that-every-a-list-blogger-swears-by/

In no other area of your life can you grow or increase without a clear definition of where you want to go. You want to write a book but you have steps you need to get there. You want to start a blog. You want to grow a blog, but you need a clear vision of how you are going to get there. You can’t just sit back and wish for more interaction. Nor can you simply know what your goals are, but you need a clear plan on how to reach them. Setting a goal for your blog can be beneficial to increasing your number of views and subscribers, growing your brand, and taking you to that next level.

Quick Tip:

Selecting the right goals are just as critical as achieving them

https://pushingsocial.com/3-goals-that-every-a-list-blogger-swears-by/

There’s a lot I want to do with this blog, including purchasing a domain name for it. But, how do we get there? Some of you may wonder how to set goals for your blog and that’s a different post in itself because you don’t want to set just any goal. You want to set the right goals. Usually we say, “I want this many followers and this many views” or as I’ve just said, “I want my own domain name for my blog” but in my short experience as a blogger these are not the right questions, not in the beginning. Your first goal should be defining your audience. A bloggers strong understanding of their audience is a sure way to see results. Ask yourself: Who are they? What Problems do they have that my content offers (or will offer) solutions for? And as you go throughout the week, push the content that specifically answers these questions. These are the best posts and the ones of value. Just got high interaction on a post? Listen to it. Study it. What did it have that, let’s say your least successful post, did not?

The First Sentence

What is this post without its beginning? I have heard over the years how important you are and your contribution to the writing process but I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t always put you first. Don’t always put much thought into you. So you test my patience with the very need to begin. Times where my mind is far too cluttered with a hanging word waiting to be pushed to the middle of this screen. You see though I trust that I can give birth here, I have since remembered there is movement in stillness. I have since learned to cherish you as something more than a good morning greeting thrown into the air and smashing into walls. I promise to not turn my back or kiss you gently on the morning after. No longer can, “Hello”, or “What’s up my people?” prove sufficient, for you are the commencement. The beginning. The start of this post and worth more than just some nightly fling. For what is the cake without its icing? The cooking pot without its lid? What is a post without its opening sentence? Must I risk my words boiling over the edge of posts and spilling sloppily into WordPress readers? All this mess that a conclusion of a sentence won’t clean-up for me.

7 Thoughts on the New Roots

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When I first heard they were remaking Roots, I was skeptical. I thought, “Some movies do not need to be remade.” I admit, I was looking on the physical and thinking, “Maybe it won’t be as powerful as the first.” But after watching it I must say it remains one of the most powerful series on TV, followed by Underground.  But first, here’s a little History:

What is Roots?

Roots: The Saga of an American Family is a book published by Alex Haley in 1976 with a miniseries of the book that first premiered on television in 1977. During this post-civil rights era the show is about the ancestors of Alex Haley, particularly Kunta Kinte, who was kidnapped from his life in Africa and sold as a slave on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The Show was put out in a series of eight episodes to try and get it out the way as the networks didn’t think it would do well. However, the show proved them wrong, airing over the course of eight days and helping to galvanize a nation. See, to understand why Roots the remake is important in this day and time is to understand the history behind it and what it did to America. The TV series led to a renewed interest in genealogy from blacks who, due to slavery, felt robbed of their identity and cultural heritage:

If you weren’t there—if you’ve only known television in its post-Big Three networks era—it’s hard to understand the impact of the original Roots. Based on Alex Haley’s book of “faction,” the ABC miniseries’ 12 hours (with commercials) were spread across eight consecutive nights in January 1977, an unprecedented programming move that consolidated the show’s status as an event. The subsequent audience ratings were also unprecedented: 85% of television households, or 130 to 140 million Americans (more than half the U.S. population) saw at least part of the series; an estimated 100 million viewers tuned in for the two-hour finale on Sunday, January 30. – http://www.biography.com/news/alex-haley-roots-tv-show

1. Our Culture

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In the remake, it well represented the ancient culture of the African American. For centuries they have taught us we were animals running around naked with large hoops in our ears and swinging from trees. Taught that we were just Africans. While no TV show has gone as deep as to proclaim the unadulterated truth concerning our roots (not even Roots), I enjoyed the pieces of it sprinkled in the opening village scenes in the beginning because its an accurate portrayal of some of our culture. I loved that they showed the ancient garments, the head wraps and the midwives. Even the spreading of the palms to the heavens to pray. This is what we did and how we did it.

2. Stripped

By the time Kunta was on the slave ships he’s naked. Now we’ve seen this before in other shows, but what does it mean? This is highly significant of being stripped of your entire way of life. Gone is the beautiful blue garb, gone is the honor and the esteem, gone is the culture, and gone is the name that defines who you are.

3. Names

I don’t want y’all to sleep on the name part. Kizzy told Chicken George, “Your name is who you are. My daddy took beatings to protect his name”. Very powerful. People like to take names for granted. Often we look at them and they don’t hold any real significance but names are very important. Take away a persons name and you strip their entire identity. Your name is your character, and your persona. Your name is who you are. When we were stripped of our name, we were stripped of everything.
“People say what’s in a name? There’s a whole lot in a name. The African gets respect because he has an identity and cultural roots.” – Malcolm X

4. Biblical Insight

One of my most favorite scenes is when Chicken George introduced his mother Kizzy to his future wife and father-in-law and she said to him: “Massa don’t want you teaching about Exodus. About how the children of Israel walked across the red sea to freedom. He tore that right out the book.” Very powerful scene. Why? Because it’s the whole reason we weren’t allowed to read and write. Massa just didn’t say you couldn’t read because he thought you were an animal, an inhumane being. That’s only part of it. He didn’t want you to read because he didn’t want you to read the bible. Now why is that? Because the bible is black history.

5. Whites Persecuted

Another powerful thing this show portrayed is the persecution of Europeans who help blacks. This is also something they showed in the TV series Underground and I think its something that African Americans cannot sleep on. There are, and have always been, those of other nationalities who were wiling to help blacks to their deaths. Blacks were not the only ones lynched and maimed and murdered but also those who helped them.

6. Less is More

I didn’t like that they cut the series in half. I think it was too short. I also found it funny initially that Kunta’s character wasn’t switched out like in the first one so he looked the same throughout the series. However, I noticed that instead of going verbatim to the original they filled in those parts of the story that were missing from the first part. This was smart I think of the directors because this version has its own original feel. I thought this new Roots wasn’t going to be good compared to the first one but in truth they each are separate shows. While they tell the same story, the new Roots has a modern feel to it. Lawrence Fishburne, T.I. and Mekhi Phifer make their appearance and Kunta is a beast!

7. Now or Then?

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I don’t think the new roots can compare to the original. To me, the 1977 version will always stand as a classic. I also do not think the original could speak to today’s youth like the new one can, which makes it an original of its own.

We have to consider that 2016 is not 1977. It’s a different world and the new roots is a fresh way of introducing to new generations the legacy of Roots.