We’re a little less than 2 weeks from our baby boy’s due date!
And while I’ve shared about my pregnancy a little bit on social media and in my newsletter, I think this might be the first time I’ve mentioned it on the blog.
I’m thrilled to embark on this new chapter and plan to take 3 months off to soak it all in and adjust to life with a little one.
I have exciting plans for my return (like website updates and a new Squarespace series!), but I wanted to share how I’m preparing for some time away before I disappear for a few months.
However. Before I dive in, a disclaimer might be in order.
I’m very much a planner.
But with my husband graduating from seminary this past May, moving to a new state in August, finding out I was pregnant a few days after the move, and adjusting to our new life in Florence, I’ve learned to be flexible with my plans.
(Hence the fewer number of blog posts and newsletters lately!)
I have absolutely no idea what maternity leave will look like, and it’s been difficult to plan with so many unknowns.
So I reached out for tips and advice from other moms in the industry and landed on this super helpful blog post from Nancy Ray Photography on how she planned for time off.
Nancy has taken time off after having each of her two little girls and also has experience leading a team during a time of transition, and I found her tips to be very practical. I took a lot away from her as I came up with my own “plan.”
I know that I may not follow this plan to a T.
But I also know that a little preparation and goal setting will be helpful for truly stepping away and getting back in the swing of things in July.
So that said, here’s how I’m going about it!
1 | Setting dates
The first step. How much time to take off?
Our baby’s due date is April 7th, so I’ve decided to officially go on leave April 1st (unless he surprises us and comes ahead of schedule!).
In all honesty, I’ve already started cutting back on the number of hours I’ve been working, taking on less client work and finishing up the latest round of my Adobe Illustrator Basics course.
But come April 1st, I’m going to close my laptop and take a solid 3 months off. I plan to return at the start of July.
I know it will take time to adjust to a new routine (or lack thereof!) with a little one, and I didn’t want the pressure of getting back to work to loom over me.
But what a blessing it is to work for myself and be able to choose! One of the many things I’m grateful for about running my own business.
2 | Handling emails
My inbox can get a little out of hand as it is. Even with the help of my assistants, I often get a little overwhelmed by it and want to avoid it altogether.
So I was a little leery of simply putting up an autoresponder and coming back to goodness-knows-how-many emails that would need to be addressed.
Then I read that blog post from Nancy Ray and saw her approach to emails during her time off.
I crafted a similar autoresponder:
---
Hey there!
Thanks so much for your email. I am currently on maternity leave until July 2, 2018. We are so excited to welcome our baby boy into our family this April!
If you are a current or potential client or affiliate, you are very important to us! You will hear from my team within 72 hours. If you are inquiring about coaching or branding services, I am still accepting bookings during this time and my team looks forward to connecting with you!
All other emails received will be deleted from my inbox, which may seem extreme. But I know how important it is to completely step away from my business in order to be fully present with my family during this time. If you would like to get in touch with me, please resend your email when I’m back at work beginning in July.
Thank you so much for your understanding!
Best,
Lauren
---
I know, I thought it was a little extreme to say I’ll be deleting all other emails. But it will set an expectation for those who get in contact with me and it will be so nice to come back to a clean inbox in July!
In the meantime, my assistants are helping me get back down to inbox 0, and one of them will be checking, responding, and sorting through my inbox while I’m gone.
3 | Communicating with my team
I have two part-time assistants who’ve been helping me for well over a year now. Each of them works for me remotely.
One of them is my best friend, Jenny, who just so happens to be pregnant and due with her first baby just 8 days after me. And my other assistant, Marisa, is busy planning for a wedding this summer.
Needless to say, it’s an exciting year for the Elle & Company team!
Because Jenny and I will be on maternity leave, Marisa will be running the show for the next 3 months.
I knew it would be important to set expectations ahead of time and determine how we would communicate with each other during my time off.
Marisa and I decided to start having weekly check-in phone calls on the same day and time after our little one is a few weeks old, and we’ll continue to communicate on Slack (which is how we communicate 90% of the time now) for quick questions and feedback.
4 | Taking a break from content
Back in the fall, I had dreams of getting far ahead on content and having blog posts, social media posts, and newsletters written and scheduled while I’m taking time off.
That didn’t happen, but it might be a blessing in disguise.
When I post new content, I like to be actively engaged in promoting it and getting back with comments. Automation is a great thing, but when I automate and schedule posts I often feel disconnected with those of you on the other side of the screen.
I’ve also written over 400 blog posts in the past 4 years, and this will be my first break from writing.
I’ll definitely miss it, but it will give me something to look forward to when I return!
5 | Setting exciting goals for my return
Speaking of things to look forward to, I knew that it might be hard to come back to work after 3 full months off with our baby boy.
But I have some exciting things in the works that already have me looking forward to my return in July.
I have some new website updates that I’ve been working on for the last couple months, and they involve making the website even more resourceful and user-friendly for you.
There’s also a brand new Squarespace series in the works! My Squarespace posts are nearly 3 years old, but they continue to be some of the most popular posts on this site. I plan to expand on the how-to posts, include new updates, and share about topics I haven’t covered in the past. Those of you who use Squarespace, are interested in making the switch, or plan to start your website in the upcoming months will want to stay tuned!
And the launch of next round of my signature course, Freelance Academy, will be right around the corner come July. So I’m excited to dive into updates and all the work that goes into registration and kicking it off for the third time.
So there you have it! A look at how I’m planning for extended time off with my little one.
But in the meantime, here are some Elle & Company favorites to keep you busy while I’m gone:
It’s a Wednesday evening and you’re scrolling through Pinterest looking for inspiration, when all of the sudden a pretty blog post graphic catches your eye.
The title of the post is catchy and addresses a topic you’re interested in, so you click through to read it. You consume the entire thing, soaking up the content, and find yourself reading more and more posts on that blog.
After an hour or so, you bookmark that site in order to remember it and return back to it later.
Isn’t that the experience every blogger hopes for with new readers?
But while everyone can spot a great blog post, not everyone can identify (let alone implement) the characteristics that make a blog post great.
So what is it that makes some blog posts more engaging and fun to read than others? Is there some sort of secret formula for writing great blog posts, regardless of what industry you’re in?
Yes, there is! And I’m spilling the beans about it in this post.
People are always shocked to learn the reason Elle & Company grew exponentially in my first year of business.
It wasn’t through Instagram (although social media is a fantastic marketing tool).
It wasn’t through networking with the right people (although word of mouth and recommendations from trusted sources is helpful).
And it definitely wasn’t through some sort of big break (although that would have definitely been nice).
It was through blogging.
"I fall behind on my blog posts all the time, I'd love to learn how to streamline blogging and keep on top of it!"
"How to write more content. I hate writing and I'm not good at it, so I avoid it even though I KNOW content is what will help me succeed."
"More on the practicalities of blogging. Choosing images for posts."
I recently conducted my annual reader survey. These were some of the responses I received to the question “What would you like to learn more about from Elle & Company?”
I was surprised to learn that many of you want to learn about my blogging process and how I am able to consistently blog. Many of you recognize the importance of blogging, but identified it as a struggle (which I totally empathize with).
Blogging isn’t quite so difficult if you have a clear-cut process. So today I’m sharing a behind-the-scenes look at my blogging process.
Content creation is at the heart of Elle & Company.
Between blog posts, weekly newsletters, Ellechats, social media posts, and Library additions, I spend a lot of time pumping out new content each week.
But here’s the thing about new content: it has a shelf life.
Newsletters get buried in inboxes. Blog posts get buried in archives. Social media posts quickly fade away from the feeds of your followers. Webinars end.
The content you create (along with the time and energy you put into them) quickly gets buried under your newer content.
But don’t be fooled; you didn’t labor in vain!
Enter, the art of repurposing content.
In order for people to buy from you, they have to trust you.
And one of the best ways to build trust among potential customers is through blogging.
Blogging allows you to share your expertise, highlight testimonials and success stories, give insight into your process, answer commonly asked questions, and more.
But one of the biggest blogging hangups for business owners - especially those who run product-based businesses - is figuring out what to write about and coming up with high-quality blog post ideas.
Can you relate?
If so, I’ve got you covered.
People are always shocked when I tell them the primary reason my business grew quickly.
It wasn’t pouring all of my time and effort into curating a visually pleasing Instagram feed.
It wasn’t going to conferences and networking with the big shots.
And it definitely wasn’t through some big break.
“How else did you grow your business?” they ask me.
Few people want to believe that apart from blogging, my business would’ve failed soon after it started.
And they definitely don’t want to give it a go and make it work for their own businesses.
Maybe it’s because they don’t know how to use their blog.
Maybe they just don’t want to spend the time writing and growing their blog.
But I think the real problem lies with not being aware of the countless benefits that blogging can have for a business.
Content creation is at the heart of Elle & Company.
Between blog posts, weekly newsletters, Ellechats, and Library additions, I spend a large majority of my work week not only creating content, but keeping up with the tasks that come along with it (like editing, scheduling, and promoting).
In the past, I’ve used several different methods to organize my content and keep up with these tasks. I’ve tried mapping it out in Google Calendar. I’ve set up Trello boards. I’ve created Asana tasks.
But I couldn’t seem to find an all-in-one system that allowed me to visually organize my upcoming content and keep up with all the tasks involved.
That is, until a month or two ago when Asana upped their game and began offering boards that look and function almost exactly like Trello boards.
What’s free, easy, and can make you money in your sleep?
Affiliate marketing.
I know, it sounds kind of complicated and possibly even a little boring.
For some of you, it might conjure up images of salesy Instagram posts or sponsored blog articles.
For others, affiliate marketing may have lost its luster because you don’t know how to utilize your links.
And for the rest of you, you’re probably wondering what in the world affiliate marketing is in the first place.
So you started a mailing list.
You heard about the benefits, chose a platform, and you have a general idea of what you’re going to send out to your subscribers. You even placed your opt-ins in prominent places.
The trouble is…. no one is subscribing.
If this sounds all too familiar, I have one question for you: Why should someone sign up for your list?
Because the truth is that you could have the best newsletter content and the most prominent opt-ins and still have trouble gaining subscribers.
Website visitors often need a little more coaxing to sign up for your list. And that’s where content upgrades come in.
It’s been a minute since I posted here.
I could tell you that I traveled the world, worked on some big secret project, or had another baby. All sound like exciting, legitimate reasons for disappearing for 5 months.
But the truth is that I needed a break from all the noise.
We live in a world of constant notifications, influx of information, posts, tweets, videos, ads, emails, and texts.
Our lives are spent looking at screens, whether we’re working on a computer, watching TV, or staring at our smartphones for an average of 5.5 hours a day (that’s a true statistic, by the way).
We’re “digitally caffeinated,” wired on the messages, entertainment, and information that are always at our fingertips.
And as a business owner I felt the pressure of not only keeping up with the noise, but contributing to it.
With the increasingly louder “hum” of the digital world building in the background, I was also trying to figure out what life looked like not only as a business owner, but as a new mom and a pastor’s wife.
I needed time to get my priorities in order, find a new rhythm, and gain some clarity about what Elle & Company would look like in this new season.
So I went dark.
You can do a killer job on all of the steps we’ve covered over the past 3 weeks.
But if your photos are amateur or inconsistent with the rest of your brand, your brand will fall short. Every. Single. Time.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Your colors are all set! Now it’s time to dive into fonts.
But finding, choosing, and pairing fonts for your brand isn’t as simple as grabbing Comic Sans and Baskerville from the list of included fonts on your computer and calling it a day.
Actually, please don’t use Comic Sans as a brand font. Ever.
Today’s action step and blog post will walk you through what to consider and how to go about choosing fonts for your one-of-a-kind brand.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
I always start out the year with high hopes and great aspirations (as evidenced by my last few blog posts and emails).
I love planning and goal setting, but it’s often the easiest part of the process. It’s fun scheming up ideas and making plans; it’s much harder to actually take action and bring them to fruition.
So in today’s post, I’m following up on my goals and plans from last year and giving you a transparent look at how they panned out.
The New Year marks a clean slate. It’s prime time for planning and goal setting, and while you may plan and set goals with good intentions, you won’t be able to carry them out if you aren’t productive. So in this first Ellechat podcast episode of 2019, I’m sharing 7 of my best productivity tips to help you start this year off on the right foot and actually make progress toward your business goals.
It’s that time of year!
Tomorrow marks the start of 2019 and I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for the fresh start and clean slate that January 1st brings.
I’ve tried my hand at many different goal-setting planners, journals, and apps for both business and personal use in the past, like the Best Self Journal, Cultivate What Matters PowerSheets, and the 5 Second Journal. And all of them worked well for the season I used them in.
But this year I’m paring down and taking a slightly different approach to setting goals, mapping out my time, and keeping up with my schedule.
I know there’s nothing magical about January 1st.
But every time December rolls around, I can’t help but look forward to the fresh start that a new year brings. Especially this year.
2018 was a year of many firsts for us with having our first baby and buying/renovating our first house, and I underestimated how long it would take to get into a regular rhythm for Elle & Company.
Now that my son is 8 months old and we’re all moved into our house, I finally feel like we’re reaching a new normal. The new year couldn’t be coming at a better time.
But before I dive into some exciting new ideas and projects, there are 7 things I’m doing to tie up loose ends, cap off the year, and start 2019 with a clean slate.
Hi! My name is Marisa and I am one of Lauren’s assistants. I graduated with my degree in Public Relations and Marketing in 2015. I currently work full time as a Communications/Marketing Specialist in higher education (at my alma mater) and work for Elle & Company as the Content Marketing Manager part time.
Like you, I used to avidly read the Elle & Company blog.
I first stumbled across Elle & Company in the Fall of 2015 when I was researching SEO for Squarespace.
I came across The Truth About Squarespace SEO blog post and instantly become obsessed with reading all of Lauren’s blog posts and soaking in her colorful graphic design style all over her website.
As I continued to devour blog posts, I came across 20 Business Tasks You Could Be Delegating and I thought to myself, “Hey! I could do/have done all of this stuff.”
In a moment of bravery, I reached out to Lauren, pitched myself, and asked her if she needed an assistant. At the time, she had just hired her first assistant, Jenny, and wasn’t looking to hire someone else so quickly.
So I continued to read her blog posts and newsletters, I subscribed to the Library, and I tuned into Ellechats when I could.
About a year went by and Lauren had just launched her Freelance Academy course for the first time and I wondered if she could use any extra help. So I emailed her again, thinking it would be a long shot.
But to my surprise she emailed me back within an hour with the craziest story! She had been meaning to reach out to me for weeks to see if I might still be interested in the assistant position - she even had the email sitting in her drafts folder but had been too busy to push send.
Before I started freelancing for Elle & Company, I was so curious as to how Lauren ran things behind the scenes and always wished she would share more “intimate business details”. Now that I’m on the other side, I constantly see requests from readers for this very thing. So today I’m taking you “behind the scenes” to talk to you about Elle & Company from my perspective.
There are a lot of great tools and apps out there to help you manage an online business. So many, in fact, that it can be hard to know which ones to use!
And that’s probably why I receive so many questions related to the tools and resources I use and recommend for starting and scaling an online business.
I’m a big fan of sharing tools that work and don’t work for me. But nonetheless, I’ve curated a list of my most highly recommend tools and resources for an online business so you can view them all in one place.
In all transparency, I do receive compensation for mentioning some of these resources and any commission I earn comes at no additional cost to you. But I never recommend tools that I don’t use, love, and believe to be extremely beneficial for starting and scaling an online business.
Have you ever been scrolling through Buzzfeed or Facebook and got sucked into taking a quiz about “Which Friends Character Are You?” or “What City Should You Actually Live In?”
Quizzes can be addicting because when taken, with a grain of salt, quizzes can give you insights about yourself. And we love learning more about ourselves and our preferences.
So it’s no wonder that businesses are now creating quizzes similar to those found on Buzzfeed and Facebook as a means for generating leads, driving traffic, and segmenting your audience.
I recently jumped on the quiz as a content upgrade bandwagon and created my “Which Squarespace template is right for you?” quiz. I used Interact to create it and in this post, I’m taking you behind my screen to show you how I did it.
These past couple weeks I’ve been working with one of my first official freelance design clients, making small updates to the original brand and website I created for her 5 years ago.
As I’ve revisited fonts and tweaked colors, I’ve found myself subconsciously using designer tricks that I’ve learned both in design school and by experience.
I haven’t been shy in sharing these design secrets. In fact, you’ll find many of them scattered throughout past Elle & Company blog posts.
But I’ve never compiled them all in one place.
Whether you’ve designed your own brand, hired a designer to create the elements of your brand for you, or you’re a self-taught designer trying to improve your design skills, implementing these insider tricks will help you create a more cohesive, professional brand.
We just wrapped up the 2019 Brand Challenge last week, and over 1,300 business owners took part to create a one-of-a-kind brand from start to finish!
Fonts, colors, logos, photos, icons - we left no stone unturned.
But creating a brand is really just the beginning. From here on out, your days will be spent implementing it.
Whether you took part in the challenge or not, every business owner who can’t delegate their design work is faced with the important task of choosing an app to help them create their graphics.
The two most popular options at the moment? Canva and Adobe Illustrator.
Both apps are helpful, but they aren’t created equal. So in today’s post, I’m highlighting the biggest differences between the two so you can figure out which program is the best fit for your design needs.
Did you miss out on the Brand Challenge? It’s never too late to jump in and take part! Visit this page to sign up and get started.
Congratulations! You’ve officially made it through Elle & Company’s Brand Challenge.
But before you start implementing your new brand on your website and collateral items, take some time to compile all of your hard work and create a beautiful reference for your brand by creating a brand style guide.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
You can do a killer job on all of the steps we’ve covered over the past 3 weeks.
But if your photos are amateur or inconsistent with the rest of your brand, your brand will fall short. Every. Single. Time.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Just like icons, patterns are another fun way to add interest to your brand and make it more memorable.
When you create a custom pattern that’s unique to your brand alone, you have the opportunity to stand out from competitors, communicate the message of your brand, and add some flair to your stationery, packaging, designs, and website.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Differentiation is all in the details.
While borders and backgrounds may seem insignificant and small compared to logos and color palettes, they can have a large impact on the consistency and professionalism of your brand.
You already determined your graphic style last week, so considering your borders and backgrounds should be a fairly easy task.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Your logo is taken care of, your fonts and colors are good to go.
Next up: graphics.
Something as simple as an icon or a border can make your brand distinct and memorable. Much of branding is considering and accounting for the small details.
But before you create fun brand assets like icons, patterns, and borders, you need to consider the overall style of your graphics.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Your colors are all set! Now it’s time to dive into fonts.
But finding, choosing, and pairing fonts for your brand isn’t as simple as grabbing Comic Sans and Baskerville from the list of included fonts on your computer and calling it a day.
Actually, please don’t use Comic Sans as a brand font. Ever.
Today’s action step and blog post will walk you through what to consider and how to go about choosing fonts for your one-of-a-kind brand.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Remember those black and white primary logo and alternative logos you refined/created last week?
It’s finally time to add some color to them.
(And now that you’ve already outlined your color system, this step should be easy!)
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Now that you’ve determined your color palette, it’s time to create your color system.
I know what you’re thinking, “What in the world is a color system?”
Let me explain.
Your whole brand should be viewed as a system.
It’s sort of like an equation; you plug in the values to the framework and you get the right answer.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
These past couple weeks I’ve been working with one of my first official freelance design clients, making small updates to the original brand and website I created for her 5 years ago.
As I’ve revisited fonts and tweaked colors, I’ve found myself subconsciously using designer tricks that I’ve learned both in design school and by experience.
I haven’t been shy in sharing these design secrets. In fact, you’ll find many of them scattered throughout past Elle & Company blog posts.
But I’ve never compiled them all in one place.
Whether you’ve designed your own brand, hired a designer to create the elements of your brand for you, or you’re a self-taught designer trying to improve your design skills, implementing these insider tricks will help you create a more cohesive, professional brand.
Congratulations! You’ve officially made it through Elle & Company’s Brand Challenge.
But before you start implementing your new brand on your website and collateral items, take some time to compile all of your hard work and create a beautiful reference for your brand by creating a brand style guide.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Just like icons, patterns are another fun way to add interest to your brand and make it more memorable.
When you create a custom pattern that’s unique to your brand alone, you have the opportunity to stand out from competitors, communicate the message of your brand, and add some flair to your stationery, packaging, designs, and website.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Differentiation is all in the details.
While borders and backgrounds may seem insignificant and small compared to logos and color palettes, they can have a large impact on the consistency and professionalism of your brand.
You already determined your graphic style last week, so considering your borders and backgrounds should be a fairly easy task.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Your logo is taken care of, your fonts and colors are good to go.
Next up: graphics.
Something as simple as an icon or a border can make your brand distinct and memorable. Much of branding is considering and accounting for the small details.
But before you create fun brand assets like icons, patterns, and borders, you need to consider the overall style of your graphics.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Remember those black and white primary logo and alternative logos you refined/created last week?
It’s finally time to add some color to them.
(And now that you’ve already outlined your color system, this step should be easy!)
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Now that you’ve determined your color palette, it’s time to create your color system.
I know what you’re thinking, “What in the world is a color system?”
Let me explain.
Your whole brand should be viewed as a system.
It’s sort of like an equation; you plug in the values to the framework and you get the right answer.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Color is a great way to distinguish your brand and create recognition.
In fact, color increases brand recognition by up to 80%.
Think about Home Depot, Target, and T-Mobile. Did their brand colors (orange, red, and pink) automatically pop into your mind? Of course they did!
The same should be true for your brand.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Whenever I’m designing a logo, I’m constantly thinking about how each element (like fonts, colors, and illustrations) can be pulled apart and used elsewhere in the brand to create consistency.
Especially for logo variations.
Chances are, the logo you just created/refined in Day 9 either fits well in a horizontal format or a perfect circle; but not both.
And that’s where today’s action step comes in.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
While a logo isn’t a brand, it is one of the most memorable and recognizable components of a brand.
But where do you even begin to create a logo? What do you need to keep in mind? And if you already have a logo, how do you know if it’s up to par?
Today’s action step and how-to will help you create your logo from scratch if you don’t have one, or give you some important things to consider to see if your current logo needs revising.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Squarespace officially rolled out their new email campaign feature on Wednesday.
Up until then, users have had to use a third-party platform (like Mailchimp or ConvertKit) and sync it up to their website either by a form block or a piece of code.
But not anymore!
Squarespace now offers beautifully designed email campaigns that are easy to create, edit, and automate. It’s just one more way that the website builder is helping people create a beautiful online presence.
This new feature will be beneficial for a lot of Squarespace users. But is it right for you?
Before you ditch your current email marketing platform, consider these pros and cons.
With all the Squarespace blog posts I’ve written in the past, I can’t believe I’ve never written a blog post rounding up all the Squarespace resources out there.
When I first had the idea to write this post to finish out my Squarespace series I imagined this list would be bursting at the seams with resources.
But when I started doing my research for this post I found it difficult to find quality and consistently updated Squarespace resources.
Here are the 8 resources I found!
You did it!
Your Squarespace site is finally live and up for the world to see.
If you’re anything like me, you’re probably feeling a huge sense of relief, but also a bit of panic over what you may have left undone before launching. So here’s 10 things to do and check after your Squarespace site is live.
In addition to being a beautiful website builder and an easy-to-use blogging platform, your Squarespace website can also serve as an online shop. The Squarespace commerce plans (Business, Commerce Basic, and Commerce Advanced) offer a set of features for selling products and managing orders online.
If you’ve spent any real time on my blog, you’ll know I’m a huge advocate of blogging (and I have 30+ blog posts about blogging to prove it).
People are always shocked to learn the reason Elle & Company grew exponentially in my first year of business was because of my blogging efforts.
As I tried to attract new design clients, I committed to sharing high-quality content on this blog every weekday for the first year and a half of my business. I learned a lot during that year and a half, including how important your blogging platform is to your overall blogging efforts.
I made the switch to Squarespace from WordPress and Blogger because I needed a backend that was user-friendly. I’ve never looked back or regretted my decision, and I highly suggest Squarespace to each of my clients.
Many of my blog posts about blogging revolve around blogging on the Squarespace platform, so it’s no surprise that I often get asked questions about blogging on Squarespace specifically. Today I’m going to walk through how to blog like a pro on Squarespace and some of the questions I get asked about blogging on this platform most often.
Squarespace SEO (Search Engine Optimization) seems to be one of the most polarizing Squarespace topics out there.
Most can agree Squarespace is an easy-to-use content management system with beautiful templates. But for some reason, Squarespace can’t shake the perception that it has poor SEO capabilities, despite the fact that the platform has been around for well over a decade and builds known SEO practices into every Squarespace site.
But let’s get one thing straight before we get into this post, if you want ultimate control over the optimization of your site, Squarespace may not be for you.
But, as a creative small business owner, I doubt you’re chomping at the bit to dig into intense SEO practices. I’m sure you’d rather have something that gets the job done well without having to dedicate much time to it. If that sounds more like it, then Squarespace’s SEO capabilities are all you need.
Now that you’ve started your Squarespace trial and set up your Squarespace website, it’s time to start customizing the site to your needs.
But before you dive into the design, you’ll need to build a foundation for your new site by setting up your navigation menu, adding pages, and filling out those pages using blocks.
This post will walk you through how simple it is to build a foundation for your website using Squarespace.
I love Squarespace for many reasons. It’s easy on the eyes, user friendly, affordable, compatible across all devices, and easy to edit. One of the other features Squarespace offers is a free 14 day trial.
Squarespace’s free 14 day trial allows you to try out the platform and get to know the features before subscribing. And they don't even require a credit card to start your trial!
But you may be wondering what features you should check out and what you should investigate before you take the plunge. So here’s 5 things to investigate during your 14 day Squarespace trial.
I wrote my first Squarespace blog post series back in 2015.
I covered everything from how to set up pages and navigation to how to use Squarespace blocks, Squarespace SEO and metrics, setting up a blog and shop, and customizing your Squarespace website.
And even though these posts are 3 years old, they continue to be some of the most popular on my site. You may have even stumbled across Elle & Company for the first time through one of them!
But Squarespace has continued to change and grow since then, so it’s time for an update.
Over the next several weeks I’ll be walking you through a brand new Squarespace series. I’ll expand on the how-to posts, include new updates, and share about topics I haven’t yet covered.
If you’re currently using Squarespace for your website or plan to get your Squarespace site up and running in the coming months, you won’t want to miss these posts!
Beautiful templates are one of the many benefits of using Squarespace for your website.
I like to joke around with clients and peers that it’s hard to create an ugly site with Squarespace for that very reason.
But with so many great templates to choose from, it can be overwhelming to determine which one will work best for your website. Or you may even find it difficult to choose just one.
Over the past 3 ½ years, I’ve spent countless hours researching and testing out different Squarespace templates for my design clients, and I’ve discovered some favorites along the way.
I’ve rounded up 8 of my go-to Squarespace templates to help you in your search and hopefully make this stage of the website-building process a little less stressful.
Pinterest is one of my top website referrals.
With nearly 1 million monthly viewers, 30,000+ followers, and 100,000+ website visits from Pinterest each year, you might be surprised that I don’t put any effort into the platform.
You might also be surprised to learn that my Pinterest strategy doesn’t even involve Pinterest.
So how do I reap the benefits of Pinterest without putting in the work? Better yet, how can you reap the benefits of Pinterest without putting in the work?
Here’s my secret.
While pretty photos and curated feeds are helpful for catching the eye of potential customers, great content is the key to generating engagement and reaching a larger audience on Instagram.
But coming up with high-quality posts on a regular basis is no easy task.
So I rounded up 50 engaging ideas for your Instagram feed (along with examples) that will benefit your followers, drive traffic to your website, and keep people interested in your online business.
As creative entrepreneurs, we understand the importance of visuals on making a great first impression on potential clients and customers.
So naturally, we tend to put a lot of emphasis on curating our social media feeds and making sure all of our photos look styled, branded, and professional.
But social media is changing.
It isn’t enough to have a beautiful feed anymore. Your potential clients and customers (and apps like Instagram and Facebook, themselves) are becoming less interested in pretty photos and more interested in one specific thing.
What is it and how can you implement it? Keep reading.
I don't know about you, but when Instagram stories launched several months ago, I was both excited and overwhelmed.
I was excited at the idea of a new way to connect with my followers.
But overwhelmed by the though of having to create more content on top of regular Instagram posts, Facebook, Twitter, blog posts, and all the other content that I create week after week for Elle & Company.
So I kind of sat on it and put it off until I could put my own unique spin on it, until I could figure out how I could really use Instagram stories to benefit my business, and how I could use Instagram stories realistically. I didn't want to start off with a bang, with all these bright ideas and then not have the time to actually follow through with them all.
I sat on it for a while and then started coming up with a list of clever content ideas.
So today I'm going to share 15 clever content ideas to use Instgaram stories to promote your business.
Pinterest has been one of the most helpful free marketing tools for driving traffic to the Elle & Company website.
In fact, 20% of my overall blog traffic and 78% of my overall social media traffic to my blog comes directly from Pinterest.
Not only is Pinterest visual (which is especially helpful for creative business owners), but pins have a longer lifespan than other social media posts like tweets and Facebook shares. An image that was pinned months ago will continue to show up in other people’s feeds for months and drive traffic to your website.
But as with any social media platform, it takes time to keep up with Pinterest. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time in my busy work week to devote hours and hours to pinning.
This is problematic because we know a few things about Pinterest:
- Pinterest works in your favor when you pin a lot
- Pinterest likes it when you post other people’s content, not just your own
- You’ll see more consistent traffic if you pin over a period of time instead of all at once with weeks in between
Enter Board Booster.
You know those inconvenient tasks that always seem to creep up on you?
Maybe it’s an email reply you always find yourself sending or a URL you often visit but can never remember.
In instances like these, it’s beneficial to keep that information in a helpful place, create a template or bookmark it so you can easily refer back to it later and save yourself a headache.
That’s why I wrote this blog post.
It seems I’m constantly trying to track down image sizes for social media, both for Elle & Company graphics and client design projects.
And surely you’ve found yourself hunting down image sizes for your social media accounts, too.
So I decided to make it easier on all of us by rounding up ideal image sizes for blog posts and social media and creating an infographic.
Feel free to bookmark this post or pin it to Pinterest for future reference!
Imagine this.
It’s 8pm on a Sunday evening. Tomorrow is Monday, which means the craziness of juggling clients, projects and business tasks is about to crank back up. And the thought just occurred to you that you haven’t yet scheduled posts for each of your social media platforms for the coming week.
So you pull out your laptop and spend the last 2 hours of your Sunday brainstorming about what the heck you’re going to post on social media.
You browse through old blog posts and choose a few at random to feature for the upcoming week. You spend forever digging through your Bloglovin’ and Twitter feeds to find articles to highlight from other industry peers. You save images to your desktop until you can no longer see your screensaver and you have a field day shortening links with bit.ly.
Finally, 10:30pm rolls around and your Buffer queue is filled for the week…until next Sunday, that is.
What if I told you the rat race of social media scheduling could finally end? What if you never had to schedule social media again?
I’ve started using a tool that takes those questions out of the hypothetical and makes them a reality.
You know Instagram is working for your creative business when:
- You’ve found a way to stand out in an oversaturated industry when everyone else seems to be doing the same thing.
- You’re attracting the right kind of followers who are not only interested your products and services, but they’re actually purchasing them.
- Your following is consistently growing.
- Your Instagram followers turn into clients and customers.
The good news is that you can do all of the above without being pushy or salesy.
In fact, Instagram is a fantastic way to unobtrusively market your business on Instagram without being salesy.
Instagram seems to be the social media platform of choice for creative business owners.
It’s visual, business accounts easily blend in with personal accounts, and - unlike Facebook - posts show up in chronological order.
Well, they used to show up in chronological order.
On March 15th, Instagram announced that posts would “soon be ordered to show the moments we believe you will care about the most.”
In other words, they’re following Facebook’s footsteps and displaying posts in your feed according to engagement. Posts will no longer appear in chronological order. Business owners aren’t guaranteed that their posts will appear in the feeds of their followers.
So it’s no surprise that this recent announcement has caused widespread panic in the creative community.
However, I saw this one coming. I predicted it would happen several months ago in this post.
While these recent changes might change the way we approach our Instagram marketing strategies, they shouldn’t be causing business owners to freak out.
Here’s why they don’t scare me (and certainly shouldn’t scare you).
The benefits of using social media for business are obvious.
Social media platforms allow you to reach your target audience in the places where they hang out the most. They help you network with others in your industry (and stay up to date/keep an eye on what they’re up to). They give your audience the opportunity to follow along with you and it give you the opportunity to engage and communicate with them.
And, oh yeah, social media accounts are free.
But despite all of these excellent benefits, there’s one glaring issue with using social media for business.
I would love to hear from you!
We’ll be doing a lot of content planning during my maternity leave so that we can jump right back into weekly blog posts, newsletters, and Ellechats in July.
With that being said, I'd love to hear from you! I've created a content questionnaire to help inform my content for the rest of 2018. Would you consider taking the survey?
I would love to hear from you!
Pinterest is one of my top website referrals.
With nearly 1 million monthly viewers, 30,000+ followers, and 100,000+ website visits from Pinterest each year, you might be surprised that I don’t put any effort into the platform.
You might also be surprised to learn that my Pinterest strategy doesn’t even involve Pinterest.
So how do I reap the benefits of Pinterest without putting in the work? Better yet, how can you reap the benefits of Pinterest without putting in the work?
Here’s my secret.