I have been fortunate to connect with several talented and ingenuitive entrepreneurs and small business owners in the last few years. I love supporting fellow entrepreneurs and believe in collaboration over competition. To show my support, I will be featuring BC based small businesses on my social media pages and website for all of 2022. If you'd like to be featured or know of an awesome business you'd like to see featured, send me a direct message! What is the name of your business and who is the owner? Tell us a little about your background.
yuuxDesign - A creative agency focusing on web design, branding and SEO. Owner: Yuu Ewan Shinozaki. I began my career in customer service, but a few years ago, I was drawn to the design space, especially website. I've always been skilled at listening to people's problems and work with them to reach a solution. My experience successfully leading teams and managing customer expectation led me to consider creative design, and I've been building a career as a driven designer for the last 3 years. How long have you been operating? 3 + years What motivated you to start your own business? I decided to become a brand and web designer because I love designing visual identity, the art of it – and the craft. The way you can design and utilizes emotions to create a connection with consumers and brand loyalty over time. When I and my team design, a sense of brand connection is felt. I felt like this is what I am supposed to do, to help businesses connect with their clients personally and to tell their story. Please describe the services/products you offer: yuuxDesign is a creative agency that helps solid brands get noticed online. We do this through:
What makes your business stand out from other businesses offering similar services or products? We prize ourselves on being storytellers for our clients' brands. Whether through websites, branding or content creation, their customers are able to connect with our clients personally and become loyal followers. Our clients have been featured on magazines, Netflix mainly from websites we created for them. When it comes to online marketing (especially when working remote), building trust with our clients is priority #1. We treat clients as if we will be working together for the next 30 years and that's our goal! We always strive to deliver more than promised. We never leave a project unfinished and we never allow a campaign to be anything less than fantastic. What are your plans for the future of your business? Ultimately our plan is to be the most relevant business we can. I believe the pandemic has shifted the face-to-face environment that business was still following. Customers want the best possible experience with brands online, whether that’s social media or using a website. Customers are demanding to see more of the business online through photography, video, web content, etc... To help our clients meet that demand, we plan to expand to a physical studio offering our clients spaces and equipments for product photography, video production and content marketing to further promote their brand and products/services. Find yuuxDesign online at: https://www.yuux.design @yuuxdesign Are you looking to start a blog with the idea to make a difference in the world? Or maybe you have been blogging for a while and are feeling frustrated that few people are interacting with your posts that aim to propel society forward in some way? If you are ultimately asking yourself if blogging for change is possible, I’m here to answer the question. Yes, when you put in the hard work. Let me explain. My Experience with Wanting to Make a Difference Let’s face it, some people are great at sports, and others are awesome at making people laugh. For me, it’s my writing that I feel is my top skill. And so I want to use it to leave my stamp on the world. That’s why I started When Women Inspire and publish posts like how to ace a job interview. The goal of posts like this one and others is to help women improve their lives, personally and professionally. And it hasn’t always been an easy road to reach the 11,000 email subscriber mark! I’ve had moments when I wanted to give up because someone mocked the newest post for being fluff or a tech glitch behind the scenes of the blog set me back hours in my day. But now I have learned a few valuable things to keep in mind as I remind myself that YES blogging for change is possible. Here’s proof: Comments from Readers When I receive a “great post!” it tells me I’m on the right track with grabbing the audience’s attention. But something I’ve learned too over my years of blogging for change is that the critical comments are just as valuable, if not more. If the reader offers another viewpoint, I hadn’t considered, that makes it one of my favorite reads of the day! I’m geeky and love to learn so then I get to research or think more about what the reader suggested to me. But please note this type of commenter doesn’t disrespect me – the ones who personally attack me aren’t among my faves, obviously. Also, even receiving any comments from readers of your blog is a good sign that you have the potential to make a difference, if you’re not already doing so. A comment means that the reader thought enough about what you wrote to respond to it. Your blog posts can encourage positive change! Insider Tip: Not receiving comments on your blog posts? Make sure you learn how to SEO optimize your posts with keywords, add catchy titles, share it on social media, and do other activities that get more eyeballs on your written content. After all, you want people to know about you so you can encourage more of them to act on your blog message, right?! Stay Focused on Blogging for Change If you only write a blog post a month, you’re less likely to inspire your readers. But if you churn out quality content regularly then blogging for change is easier because you build an active readership. Of course, your life is busy, and I totally get that. Right now our two cats are telling me they want to play. You might have kids, a full-time job aside from your blog, and other obligations. So, here are great ways to stay focused on your blog:
How to Gauge Your Success In this case, it’s not all about the money. While you might be blogging to help bring in income, blogging for change has action at its heart. Gauging whether you are a success probably isn’t about how much $$$ you’re bringing in – except for a charity fundraiser and similar. Instead, it’s about things like how many people are now recycling after you’ve been writing for six months about ways for them to do so. Oh and here’s one very important final point. You won’t always know every time you make a change. While comments are helpful for telling you which blog posts resonate with readers, you might also find that you get several views on a post that has few comments. Not everyone will stop by and tell you how your writing is impacting them. But if you keep blogging for change as your focus, while building your online audience and gaining loyal readers, you can bet that you have the potential to help a cause that matters to you. Are you blogging for change and, if so, what cause or causes do you focus on? Also, what keeps you going when you don’t feel like writing one week?  Christy Birmingham is passionate about women’s issues and focuses on providing tips on all facets of life, including health and lifestyle at When Women Inspire. She also runs When Business Inspires to offer strategies for growth and industry updates to entrepreneurs and organizations.  If you find yourself opening your social media apps every day, only to exit back out with nothing new to post, you may have social media writers block. What is social media writer's block, you ask? It's no different than writer's block, the dreaded moment that writers suddenly run out of any kind of inspiration or ideas on what to write. The difference? You've run out of ideas for your social media. Don't worry, we've all been there and there are tons of ways to reignite your creativity! Get Inspired What do you love? Often our audience loves the same things we do, and you may be overthinking your posts. Take a look at your feed and see if there's anything YOU would love to see. It could be a favourite quote, aesthetic picture or something that inspires you. You can relate it to your product or business, or be totally random. It's fine to switch it up once in a while. There are plenty of places online to get inspiration for Social Media posts. Pinterest is a huge one, with posts on just about every topic imaginable. Give yourself a 10 minute break with a coffee and scroll Pinterest for some ideas (you may even find a dinner recipe while you're at it ) that you haven't tried yet. Ask your audience what they want to see. Jump onto your stories and create a poll (or a few) giving your audience some options on what they'd like to see. Not only does this help with your engagement, it also makes your audience feel that you're listening to what the want as well. Not many people can scroll through an instagram story and resist clicking a poll button, myself included! Get a 30 Day Social Media Content Calendar loaded with a unique idea every day, taking the guesswork out of posting. The best part? You can reuse them month after month, just switch up the content theme for each month. One great way to switch up content theme is by using seasons and holidays to base your content creation around. Fall, Halloween, Christmas, Spring, Summer and all the holidays in offer you plenty of opportunities to create content based around what people are thinking about right now. The usual holidays are just the tip of the iceberg. Did you know there is a National Whipped Cream Day, National Bubble Bath Day and even a National Penguin Awareness day? Neither did I! I linked the list of weird holidays here! As you can imagine, knowing these quirky holidays would be hilarious and entertaining to tie into your Social Media and maybe even relevant to your business, depending what you offer. Dont Be Afraid! Have you ever created a post, only to stare at it for 5 minutes, contemplating whether or not you should post it? STOP IT! It's normal to strive for perfection but sometimes overthinking can hold us back from growing creatively and learning new things. So you post it and it's a flop. But what if it's not? What if your audience loves it? You'll never know if you don't try. Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone can teach you a lot and maybe even appeal to a new crowd online. Try new ways of engaging on your social media. Creating posts is fun and informative but with features like reels and going live at your fingertips, why not diversify? Try new things every day! I hate being ignored. We all do. There are many reasons your emails either aren't being opened, or your readers aren't taking action after reading them. Are you sending emails too often? Nothing will get you flagged as junk faster than filling a customers inbox daily (or more) with marketing emails. Send better quality content, less often. Grammatical errors will not only make you look unprofessional, they'll also grate on the nerves of your grammar police readers and be a major turn off. Double check everything you send out. Chrome extensions like Grammarly take the guessing game out of grammar checks, allowing you to send out polished emails, every time. If you're still getting the cold shoulder, maybe its time to rethink your subject lines. Having irresistible subject lines will give people no choice but to open your email and read what you have to say. 1. Numbers & Lists Numbers are appealing to people, (even those bad at math.. ahem, guilty here!) especially if they’re odd numbers. Some examples of headlines that work with numbers are:
2. Shock Value In the mundanity of day to day life, who doesn’t love a little shock and surprise? It’s why people gobble up racy reality tv and scroll gossip sites for hours. People LOVE to be shocked! So, mix it up. Grab their attention from the moment they open their inbox, dying to know what your shocker subject line means. Try these:
 Email Marketing allows you to connect with your customer directly using words, pictures and a strong call to action.
3. Appeal to Vanity
This one is not only simple, it's also irresistible to your readers. Everyone wants to look and feel great. It’s human nature. Use the lure of helping your customer with subject lines like:
4. Create urgency “Last one to the playground is a rotten egg!” Do you remember hearing that in elementary school? EVERYONE took off running. No one wanted to be the rotten egg. And guess what? The same thinking still applies in adulthood. When you create urgency, it creates excitement and makes people act fast. Hinting to a negative outcome makes people take action quickly. Here are two examples:
5. Ask A Question Draw readers in by asking an engaging question. Asking an engaging question will pique your customers curiosity but make sure that it can only be answered by opening the email. From there, you have their attention to draw them in again with your first couple lines in the email.
Both of these questions build curiosity and are left open-ended... there is really no way to know the answer unless the customer opens the email. What are your favourite email subject line strategies? What would you add to this list? Comment below to let me know some of the best email subject line strategies that have worked for you! The internet is chock full of valuable information and data that can be useful for your business. Keyword research is vital to your SEO performance and can help direct customers to your page when paired with great content. I am sharing these two invaluable websites as tools for your business. Both offer information on any topic and can be used for keyword research, growing trends and offer insight to what consumers are looking for. Answer The Public Answer the public is an online keyword research site. Input any topic, brand or product and select the country for which you want the data and Answer The public will generate a series of search clouds with variations of your topic. These variations include:
All information on Answer the public is downloadable, so you can use the information later or share it easily. The generated information allows you to find long tail keywords, searches and their popularity as well as ideas for content creation.
ExplodingTopics.com Exploding topics is a great place to start if you need data backed ideas, want to see the growth of a topic, or just want to see which products, brands or topics are about to explode in popularity. Pick a time frame between 1 month - 15 years and choose from a list of topics like, beauty, business, design, e-commerce, finance and sales, or input your own. The options are endless. You’ll be shown a graph displaying growth on your topic for the time frame you chose, along with how many searches it has per month and the percentage rate of growth. This is not only great to source keywords and see their popularity by search but also an amazing tool if you’re researching niches to get into, or explore the demand for a product you may be thinking of selling.
Both Answer The Public and Exploding Topics are a great place to start for your keyword or SEO research, content creation or crafting a top-performing landing page for your business.
What are Power Words? Have you ever wondered why some business and product copy bores you to death, while others makes you immediately want to click, buy or read more? It’s all in the words the marketing writer has used in the copy. Not all words are created equally. Take these two words for example: -View -Witness Two words that could have very similar meanings, but probably invoked a very different meaning to you. View could mean looking out the window at a beautiful skyline, while witness makes you wonder, was there an element of crime? Words are powerful and each one makes us feel differently, depending on how we perceive it. Power words have that effect, and when used in a marketing format, they can be highly effective in making your customer react in the way that you want them to. There are 5 different kinds of power words:
Words that aren’t used commonly cause your reader to pause, react emotionally and act accordingly. Consumers are inundated all day, every day with advertisements in every form, so copy that contains effective power words is imperative for standing out from the hundreds of other ads and copy they see regularly.  So, which power words do you need to use? And how? Well, that depends on what you want your customer to do and what THEY want to do. By thinking about the natural tendencies we all have, you can write directly to the subconscious of your customer.
Heres an example. Let’s say you’re an online business owner, selling software that helps other businesses manage their employees schedules and productivity. Some of the power words you may want to use to appeal to your target customer could be:
These words will appeal to an overwhelmed business owner, looking to streamline his employee management, reduce his workload and extend his budget. Conclusion Implementing power words in your website, product copy and headlines isn’t just a gimmick, its proven to be effective. For a free list of 200 power words you can use to transform your writing and appeal to your target audience, click here, email me with POWER WORDS in the subject line, and I’ll email it to you right away! Don’t just write more, craft writing that packs a punch and see the results you want! -Heidi It’s no secret that people are glued to their phones, laptops and tablets for hours a day. Whether they’re skimming Facebook or looking at pictures on Instagram, people spend a huge chunk of their time on social media. So, is your business on social media? If not, you could be missing out on a huge customer base. Whether you’re just not social media savvy, don’t have time or just don’t know which platforms you should be focusing your energy on, a strong social media presence is a huge asset in todays business world. There are so many platforms to choose from and each has their own unique way of allowing its user to interact and share content. So you’ll need to narrow down which ones will work best for you and your brand and which ones have the highest number of users from your target market. Some of the biggest platforms today are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest, with several others on the rise. The platforms that will work best for your business depend on your brand, your goals and how you want to interact with your customer base.  Social media presence allows you to reach your customers daily, on a platform they’re already using, allowing them to interact with you, be informed about new products and for you to let them now about promotions or information relative to your brand.
It allows you to attract new customers, and expose your brand to a demographic that you didn’t know were potential customers. You have an opportunity to learn about the needs of your customers, the trends they follow and gives you more insight on the kind of content you should be creating to relate to them. Social media is instrumental for any business looking to gain exposure, generate more web traffic or connect with customers, locally and worldwide. For help with your social media presence email info@heidiklein.ca Growth Mindset - What is it? 2020 has been one heck of a year. With Covid-19 upon us, many have struggled with uncertainty in their jobs, family life and health. Worldwide, people have felt the effects of the year. But has it been all bad? Some have used the time at home to bond with family, start a new small business or do some introspection. How each person handles challenges in life differs for everyone, but is ultimately your choice.
This year has had me thinking a lot about how we perceive challenges, how face adversity and allow it to shape our lives, our choices and our character. “Knowing what you need to do to improve your life takes wisdom. Pushing yourself to do it takes courage” — Mel Robbins This led me to do some personal growth research. I’ve spent time reading books on the topic and I’m a firm believer in people having autonomy over their lives to become the person they truly want to be, to design the life they want— if they’re willing to GROW. If you want to do some reading on personal growth, how to challenge yourself or change your life and achieve your goals, here are a few of the books I recommend. Mel Robbins, The 5 Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom Louise Hay, The Power Is Within You |
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