Tag: #MondayBlogs

Your Playing Small Does Not Serve The World

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“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frighten us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
― Marianne Williamson

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.

Why I Use Images in (Almost) All My Blog Posts

Notebook, coffee mug, pencil

Almost because there are some posts where I haven’t used images so to say all just wouldn’t be honest now would it? Yall know I gotta keep it all the way real.

So anyway, I’ve always enjoyed the look of a post with pictures. Even when I would get zero likes on a post and no feedback, I’ve always loved pictures. In the beginning, it was just the aesthetic of it, I really just liked the way my posts looked with them. Today, though I still like the way the post looks with pictures, I also use them with a slightly greater outlook on the post itself and with more of a strategic edge. For one, I’m trying to step my blogging game up and to do that there are a few basics that must be accomplished. It all started a couple weeks ago when I did a google search.

I didn’t understand how vital images were to search engines but apparently they’re a big deal. Here’s a story: One day, while searching Google images, I saw a picture that I just couldn’t pass up. It peaked my interest as I wondered what the post associated with the image was about. I clicked on it and guess what? The photo was linked to The PBS Blog! That’s right, it was mine and linked to one of my blog posts. As a result of this experience I started paying more attention to images and top blog sites and guess what? When you examine the top blog sites and your favorite blog sites you’ll notice that all of the top, trending blogs have one thing in common: images. They all have images to go along with the post. I’ve also been noticing how my post looks when shared across social media.

I’ve discovered that images look really nice when blog posts are shared. I’ve recently been exploring Pinterest and having an image I already used in the post makes it super easy to share content. Otherwise, I find myself searching through images on my blog offered as suggestions by the Pinterest app. I love Twitter as yall already know (I’m at @ahouseofpoetry FYI…plug), and I just hate when that blank white space is there with no pic. I feel so incomplete, so that’s another plus of using images in your post.  And not to mention Facebook too which gives a nice preview but I’m sure we all knew that.

Images used in blog posts are also linked with that blog site and will show up in search engines like mine did. Recently, I’ve even taken it a step further and stopped ignoring the tagging part of the image. You know, you up load an image and there’s the title, alt, description, caption, and all that. Yea, I pretty much ignored that for a long time.

“The Title, Caption, Alt Text, and Description fields for images in WordPress are the most ignored and underutilized features that can improve your content and bring more people to your site. Images play an important role in web publishing, and WordPress makes it easy to add images to your content in several different ways. What you probably didn’t know is that taking a few extra minutes to fill in the “Attachment Details” for your images can improve their communicative value, create better user experiences for your visitors, and bring more people to your site.” – Morten Rand-Hendriksen

Only recently did I start to fill in the blanks here. Usually when I read about this stuff it just sounds like Chinese so I’ll let Morten explain:

“The alt attribute or “Alt text” is mandatory for images on the web but is often ignored because it seems unnecessary. This is unfortunate because the alt attribute is both important and powerful. The alt attribute is the text that displays when an image does not display. The general rule of thumb when applying alt text to an image is to describe in text what the image is communicating.”

Thanks Morten. For the image to this post, my alt text simply describes what’s in the picture: “Notebook, coffee cup, pencil.” < But I think this is wrong, hmm. I’ll figure it out.

“The alt text is there to describe image content and relate it to your overall content. While most visitors don’t see the alt text, search engines do and they index the images based on them. And as we move into a world of wearable devices that don’t always show images the alt text will become more important than ever before.”

(I’ve also discovered that this helps with people with special needs who can’t “see” the image).

Want to incorporate more images into your posts? Here’s what I use.

Unsplash – Images are licensed free to use. For that, unsplash pics make up the bulk of my post images.

Canva – Canva  helps me add my own unique touch using my own images. Usually seen during my EC Quote Friday Posts and my Guest Blog Posts.

Google Images – If you use Google Images, be sure your post is in accordance with the Fair Use Act. Because this blog is not monetized and contains educational content,  images that are used from Google are according to Fair Use. See my Copyright Page to learn more.

My Own Pics – I also use my own pictures which you’ll be able to tell are mine because I’m not a professional photographer. At all. Not even close.

Photoshop – I LOVE mock-ups! In fact, that’s what I used for the pic to this post. If you want to create your own professional looking images for your business or blog, Photoshop provides a great way to do this using mock-ups. You can then use these unique images on your blog. All it really takes is a $10/ mo account and there’s a lot you can do even if you don’t want to upgrade. I’m still working on a basic Photoshop tutorial. Stay tuned.

The PBS Blog
Cartoon EC is very excited to be mentioned in this post

Bitstrips – I also use bitstrips to cartoon myself and use them as blog pics. I fell in love with this last year (2015) when Colleen of Silver Threading (now Colleen Chesebro dot com) had me on her blog for the first time. She always uses silver cartoons and taught me how to use them. Since then, I’ve been obsessed with them. Now my cartoon mini me is incorporated into my blog which helps out a lot when I need a quick image and can’t really find one that’s available. It also adds a unique touch.

4 Simple Ways Not to Headline Your Blog Post

Blog Posts

I’m writing you on my phone as I am in the midst of travel. This is my second city this weekend, transitioning from The Windy City to Memphis TN before back home again. So you’ll have to excuse any grammatical errors in this post. I’ll edit this later (don’t judge me).

Last year, I wrote an article on 5 Creative Ways to Headline Your Blog Post.

Today, I feel compelled to follow up. No, I’m not a blog expert. I am however tired of seeing poor blog headlines. A blog is not your personal diary. A blog is public. Yes, this means hundreds and thousands of people are potentially reading it. Yes, this means you may want to rethink your presentation. No, having thousands of followers doesn’t mean you’re doing it right either.

I know people blog for fun, that’s cool. I also know people blog privately. I don’t understand that. Blog and private just aren’t compatible. Nothing online is private, not even what you think you deleted. Think of a newspaper headline. Your blog is today’s newspaper. Its also your first impression.

#1. Capitalize

At minimum, be sure to capitalize the first letter in your first word and the first letter in your last word.

Ex. I love Cookies

I tend to capitalize the first letter in all of my words (with the exception of a “to” here or a “the” there). It looks neat and professional this way.

Ex. I Love Cookies

#2. Spelling

If you proofread nothing else, proofread your headlines. If words in your headline aren’t spelled correctly its a bad first impression to the rest of the article. Blog Headlines are the first thing that draw readers in. In every post I open daily, it begins with my interest in the title. What makes me click onto the blog site? The title alone begs me to ask one question: “Why should I read this NOW?”

#3. Ditch The Hashtags

I know I’m gonna get a lot of flak for this but it is what it is and like I say, there are no rules for blogging. At least not that I know of. However, too many Hashtags in a headline are annoying.

Hashtags are great when it comes to sharing on social media, yes, but when you read news articles online, rarely do they include hashtags. It just looks extremely unprofessional in my humble opinion. Hashtags don’t belong in blog titles, they belong in the tag section of the post. Will they drive more attention? For social sites like Twitter, sure. Like I said, I’m no expert so I’m not saying it doesn’t work. Yes, your post title will come up if someone searches that hashtag. Possibly. And yes, word on the street is that hashtags help with auto tweets. The question is, however, if it works, just how effective is it?

I have not, to date, discovered data that indicates usage of hashtags in the blog title increases the visibility of the post beyond the tags we already have. Understand what I am saying here. I am not saying they don’t increase visibility. I am saying that thought Hashtags makes it useful for social sharing, there is no data that I’ve seen that indicates this these Hashtags (those in the headline) produces a better result  than tagging your blog post the traditional way. That is, attaching them to the tag portion of the post in the WP dashboard. The problem is not one or maybe even two hashtags. The thing that makes them so unattractive is the four, five, and six hashtags as the headline to a post.

Four, five, and ten hashtags in a blog post is a turn off. One hashtag is OK if you must include tags.

I know we use them to draw more attention to our blogs, but coming up with attractive blog headlines is part of the experience and using hashtags just seems like a cop out, especially for writers. Writing is what you do. Come up with an attractive blog headline for your post instead of a bunch of sloppy looking and unexciting tags.

#4. Too Lengthy

Entire quotes, complete sentences, and whole paragraphs don’t belong in blog post headlines. Its extremely unattractive to readers and makes us exhausted before getting to the article. The purpose is to create blog headlines that make us click on to your blog site. If you’ve given us the entire post in a title, what’s the point? Keep in mind also that even if we like the quote, we can do this through the reader. This means though liking the post, we have not visited the blog which defeats the purpose or at least to me.

I don’t just want you to preview me, I want to gain views by producing quality content that compels readers to click on to my blog site. If readers enjoy their visit with me, I hope to gain subscribers. I am not here to play games. I am here to win. Are you?

Dear Poetry

Dear Poetry

I wish I can take your words
and carve them into the sky
as if you alone was the cement at the fingertips
of the Almighty
wish I can
breathe life into your nostrils like I held onto the strings
stapled to the backs of the wind
Dear poetry,
I wish I can copyright your metaphors,
& trademark your similes
Wish I could draw you away from every mouth
whose saliva has not promised to cherish your wisdom
like stomachs rejecting old food
You see I wish that your nutrition could be savored
only in the mouths of those who speak truth
I’m tired
tired of seeing Allegory’s
washed down the drain of unconscious minds who
seek only to dream fairy tales
bathed in rhetoric
to wake up wet with euphoric ignorance
I appeal to the relentless generosity of poetry
to drawback its compassion if it dares
and stop playing the violin on our hearts
like disobedient children that tap dances on their mother’s last nerve
cause
Poetry can change nothing if truth
can’t hit the concrete with a curve
I wish
Wish I could ensure that you are used only when truth spreads its wings like butterflies
nervously flapping inside the jaws of understanding
Like truth when it opens its legs to laws and commandments
and gives birth to obedience
In whose laughter resounds like the deadness of Sara’s womb
I wish
that deception can be buried inside the heavens
like the stars at noontime
that do not wish to be available
only so that our eyes may see something deep.

Struggling authors, please read.

Fav Post Quote: ” If you can connect with one person a day, even one person a week as an author, you are doing fantastic. Being an author isn’t a race, and if you treat it like one, you’re setting yourself up for failure, because we don’t all run at the same speeds. Instead, take it slow, build real connections with real people, and they will love you as an author and be your fan for life. Hollow Facebook “likes” mean nothing over a true fan that admires you and your work, trust me.”

That’s what matters to me frfr. If I’ve reached ONE of you, I’ve done my job. Cheers. I’ll toast to that.

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Kyle Perkins's avatarAuthor Kyle Perkins

By Kyle Perkins.

So lately I have heard from a few people that they feel like they should just give up on writing because for whatever reason, they are feeling like it just isn’t worth it anymore. Whether they feel like they aren’t getting enough attention, don’t have enough fans, or whatever the case may be, they are wrong, and here’s why.

Writers and authors have a gift, and because we have that gift, we have an obligation, a responsibility to use it. We may “just” arrange words in such a fashion that people enjoy reading them, but a heart surgeon “just” transplants hearts, and astronauts “just” go to space. We need to stop treating writing like it is simply a hobby that “anyone” can do, because that’s not the case. We “just” take people to places they can’t go on their own, and give them a form of escapism…

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What Keeps You?

First, let me just take a few seconds to thank everyone who supports this blog for doing so. For reading, commenting, liking, re-blogging, and overall being apart of this journey with me.

As I sit back and I reflect on this part of my writing life, I know it’s not easy to endure with someone, be it a part of their blog or other more important aspects of their lives. That said, I am always thinking about growth, expansion, and elevation. Part of that process is to notice deficiencies and to admit mistakes. Even in blogging, without an acknowledgment of failure, no one can grow.

That said, my thoughts went on and I thought, when a blog grows, do the people who follow that blog ten and twenty followers in still find the content worthy three hundred and four hundred followers in? When your favorite blogs grow, what keeps you coming back? That said, what keeps you supporting this blog? What can I do better far as content is concerned that will keep you tuned in? I’d love to hear your insight!

In case some of you don’t want to comment, I’ve designed a poll. Don’t get me wrong, you can poll as well as comment but I have to have the poll as a back-up in case yall get all shy on me! Just choose the category that most intrigues you and that you’d like to see more of: