I don’t do it often, but this weekend I finally got around to giving the blog a slightly different look. I’m considering a background and a header image, but for right now I was happy to get a happier looking layout going on the blog. Each time I do this I discover a few favorite plugin to help me, so I wanted to share the new one.
The Google Fonts plugin easily allows you to add fonts from the Google Fonts Directory to your blog. So if you’re not the most technically inclined like myself and tend to forget to dot your i’s and cross your t’s in CSS stylesheets, this is a good match for you. It let’s you select the exact text (H1, H2) you want to customize and pick the font you want to change it too. They also give you a little CSS box for you to put any additional stuff in – like bolded or uppercase styling.
I wish they showed an actual preview of the font in the WP admin panel so I would know what I was selecting without having to keep an additional tab open for the Google Fonts Directory. But still, it made the font selection process a whole lot easier than it has been before so I’m happy with it.
This was a very good, basic blogging reminder for me: if there is something you want to do with your blog with design or widgets or features, there’s probably a plugin that will take care of it for you! Don’t work hard, work smart. And get back to blogging.
Tonight I was in Central Square at a startup event for my friend’s company. I was with some of my favorite people, ones I love to spend time with the most. I left and walked to the T stop. I strolled along the side of Massachusetts Avenue in front of my old office where my ex-boyfriend used to drop me off on Monday mornings after a weekend together. I was always grateful for the ride to work, really thankful for his time. This will sound awful, but genuine appreciation aside, this other part of me felt relieved to get back to my weekday life, which felt more natural to me: sarcasm, work, startups, my friends, internet, the gym. Space. I wanted to want that weekend life, but I didn’t. It’s not my perfect life, and that’s ok. It’s ok.
Before I crossed the street tonight to get the necessary ingredients for my comfort food protein shake at Clear Conscience Cafe, I looked up at my old office where I met my next ex-boyfriend at a company party. I squinted at the window, noticing its fresh paint and new walls dividing the once open space into tiny separate offices. It looked a lot different. But I imagined what it used to look like, what it looked like the day I got a ZipCar on a Saturday morning to move out after we got acquired. I walked loads of office supplies and startupy knicknacks (ie, the Seth Godin marketing action figure) up and down the stairs.
I soaked it all in. It was a lot to take in. I would never come there to work again. So much had just happened.
Before I left, I stood in the exact spot in the universe where I first met him and took this picture.
“The most important career decision you’re going to make is whether or not you have a life partner and who that partner is. If you pick someone who’s willing to share the burdens and the joys of your personal life, you’re going to go further.”
I think this might be true.
Relationships can be motivating, and they can also be distracting and negative. Point blank, it’s homelife, and that impacts your mindset and the level to which you can focus on work. (For a romantic take, I strongly recommend John Steinbeck’s impossibly beautiful and timeless letter about love here.)
As I’m clearly unmarried, I don’t have much of an opinion on the stay-at-home dad discussion that Sheryl’s point often sparks. But what I do know is that who you date impacts your career in many ways, but in the simplest way because it impacts how you spend your time. Not all significant others are cool with you going to a tech networking event and hanging out with a bunch of other dudes, and not everyone thinks a great Sunday afternoon involves getting ahead on work for the week. But these are aspects of a certain lifestyle and career track. 50 coffees, right? A lot of people are less likely to achieve 50 coffees if they’re always worried about that awkward jealously argument before or after Starbucks. Dark roast, dark times. And even if there is no tension about jealously, those are 50 coffees you’re not having with the significant other. There’s only so much time to go around.
On a practical level, the relationships I admire set expectations and plan when to see each other. If you have work to do on a Saturday or have an event to go to on a Thursday, say so. But this stuff is also about compromise, right? So say when you’ll be done if you’re still going to see that person that night. It’s amazing what setting expectations can do to build trust. From the outside looking in, that seems to allow people to still pursue the things they want to as individuals (like careers, or hobbies) but not neglect each other.
Looking back even to my internship days, I wish I’d put my intentions on the table more in relationships. I wish I didn’t ask if I could go to an event or spend some time working. I wish I just presented it as something I needed to take care of. If I could go back, I would have compromised my time less and made it clear that these things were simply a part of my life. It would have been more fair to both sides.
But had I not been a late bloomer and just done this stuff in the first place, I wouldn’t be so complicated, interesting and choke-full of excuses to play this song and whatever cliche songs I want this week. Right? Right?
To finish these thoughts, I really wanted to make a joke about hiring fast and firing fast, recruiting A-players to your team, something witty about cofounders, probably something about dating/generating leads/sales funnels and maybe something dirty about conversion rates. Then finally I wanted to find a charming excuse to link to this post by Fred Wilson talking about the importance of family – because that guy blogs like six times a day and I heard he blogs like, on his Blackberry while on the treadmill while on the subway and if an overachieving badass yet also probably workaholic like him recognizes the importance of this stuff then. well. shit. We all should.
But I’ve got nothing. Just… fellow 20-something ladies, don’t be impressed so easily. Your attention and time is valuable – not to mention your heart. Texting you back isn’t a grand gesture. It’s just asking what time you’re coming over.
By the way, someone’s reading that freaking letter at my wedding one day. Whenever that day comes.
I have drafts and drafts of unpublished posts reflecting on lessons learned. After oneforty, then HubSpot and now being at Shareaholic, I’ve definitely come out with some new wisdom that has made me happier and more productive. Some posts explaining this learning process ramble off topic and become too personal. Those posts get retired to the WordPress trash bin. Others haven’t been thought out enough. But these tips have been consistent from draft to draft, and I didn’t want to wait on sharing them any longer.
1. Blog First
When you’re starting a marketing plan from absolute scratch, it’s tough to know where you should invest your time in social media. Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? Figuring out where your audience is why monitoring and listening is so important. No matter what platform you focus on, a great blog will give you content to share on that platform and will give people a reason to follow you. It also has the most clear business benefit from an SEO, brand messaging and conversion standpoint. So when it comes to prioritizing marketing tasks, think about your own content first.
2. Remember to Play
I crank out a ton of content each week between blog posts and newsletters. Writing compelling Tweets and Facebook posts to optimize for engagement is also a form of content creation. With so much to create, it’s tough to also consume content. This may sound silly, but I try to take time to just look at other brands’ Facebook pages, other Twitter accounts and other blogs to get inspiration. I even look at ones that have nothing to do with Shareaholic. More than any blog or conference I’ve attended (although Unconference was pretty sweet), there is nothing like taking time to “play” to rejuvenate my love for marketing and make me excited to create content.
3. It’s Not a Matter of Just One Thing
In marketing it can be easy to get stressed out about one campaign. However, it’s not one article, event or blog post that makes or breaks your entire marketing plan. It’s the culmination of ongoing content, PR and engagement that gets the message out there and draws signups for a product. Don’t be short-sighted. I’ve had to learn to look at the big picture things, like how we’ll engage attendees from an event rather than fret about the number of drink tickets we sponsor. Looking at each project as one piece of a big puzzle is helping me make decisions faster. (And this is coming from someone who took three months to pick out a duvet cover.)
4. Timebox Your Ish
This one is my favorite because it had the most influence on me. It’s not just for marketers, but for employees in general.
Learning to timebox my projects better is something I’ve worked hard on over the past year. I used to work crazy hours during the week and then try to work all day Saturday and Sunday too. Then I realized something: I’m not actually getting anything done. I’m falling asleep. I would be trying to read a blog post as part of research to write a blog post, and it’d take me forever. I couldn’t focus. What I accomplished over seven days could easily have been produced Monday through Friday, leaving me my weekends to either get more done or spend time with friends.
A ton has been discussed about work/life balance in startupland. I’m trying to timebox things Monday-Friday, take Saturdays off and then get ahead on Sundays. It is very very difficult for me to discipline myself to put a hard stop to things on Friday. However, I try to do it so I can take Saturdays off.
At some point I decided that Saturdays were friend days. I check email but don’t touch the computer. I walk around Newbury St. Sometimes I drink bloodys at brunch, go to yoga and coffee, nap, tan and get ready to go out for the night. They are my favorite days and these days with my friends have enriched my life with interesting conversations, laughs and memories.
(I love you people.)
The time I spent away from work over the past year or so helped me grow into the best employee I’ve ever been. These relationships helped me become a calmer, more confident and actually more productive person. I’m not so paralyzed by my own edginess.
We all have our thresholds and each startup employee has to discover hers. Having my Saturdays was key for me.
What little nuggets of wisdom do you have to share with the class? Let me know in the comments.
Clearly Pinterest has gotten its due hype lately, and the data my company has discovered has added to such coverage. Pinterest is on a tear! While I’m happy for them, I do find it necessary to call out a strange little nugget of the site that causes me huge concern. There’s a trend of “Thinso” or “Thinspiration” boards that seem to glorify unrealistic body images and I think it’s a negative thing for the Pinterest users.
Back in the days of Xanga and Live Journal, “Pro-Ana” or Pro-Anorexia sites sprung up around the internet. On these kinds of sites, people with eating disorders wouldn’t gather for support or treatment, but rather, to encourage each other to pursue a lifestyle of starvation by posting pictures of skeletal models and odd motivational statements to discourage eating. It wasn’t good.
Being that fitness is one of the categories of boards and people I searched for to get started on Pinterest, I definitely found some weird stuff and it has me concerned. I love the visual posts showing instructions of exercise moves and pictures of healthy recipes. Those are actions you can take toward a heathy lifestyle or even a goal of losing a few pounds. But just staring at a skeletal, photoshopped picture of a model is anything but inspiring – it’s defeating and most of all is unhealthy and unrealistic.
Luckily I’ve seen the community policing itself. I’ve seen people posting on those hashtags asking people to stop with those kinds of images. I hope people continue to police it and continue to realize that this is a negative thing. Pinterest seems to be so popular among young women and that also is the demographic that can be more prone to eating disorders. We need to watch out for each other.
National Eating Disorders Awareness Week is February 26-March 3. There’s no time like the present to be self-aware of how the images we surround ourselves with online influence how we feel about ourselves. I love nutrition and health, and I think we need more of that and less of these bizarre, fake pictures. I encourage us all to surround ourselves and our fellow pinners with positivity – visuals of actions we can take towards healthy lifestyles (recipes, workouts) rather than self-defeating unrealistic photos of models.
