TOP 5 DESIGN BLOGS

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Design Love Fest - "Bri Emery is an art director and the Los Angeles-based founder and editor of designlovefest, a lifestyle blog with an eye for design in style, DIY, food, travel, entertaining and more. With an enticing and recognizable aesthetic, Bri’s styling, creative direction and design has transformed the designlovefest studio into an arthouse creating original concept campaigns for countless brands. Bri has been featured in publications such as Elle Décor, Apartment Therapy, HGTV, Lucky Magazine, Martha Stewart Weddings, The Los Angeles times and more, and travels the world teaching photoshop to bloggers with her BLOGSHOP brand, founded in 2011."

Breanna Rose - "Breanna Rose is a graphic designer and art director living and working in Minneapolis, MN. She began her own design studio, Rowan Made, directly out of school and continues to focus on thoughtfully refined design for passionate creatives all around the world. Recently, Bre also co-founded Be Free, Lance, an online workshop for creatives looking to boost their freelancing game. And to top it off, she also curates this blog, sharing a unique behind the scenes look into both her personal and working life."

Jessie K Farris - "Currently working as a visual designer for IBM's Mobile Innovation Lab in Austin, TX. When not pushing pixels at her day job, she can be found blogging at By Jessie Kay or working on a freelance project. She's an avid distance runner and lover of the outdoors!"

Canary Grey - "Canary Grey Photography was launched in 2010 as an extension of the creative pursuits Wing has been passionate about since childhood. The result is a business that specializes in the lifestyle and wedding industry with a fine sense of style that isn’t afraid to go outside the lines in order to capture something truly authentic. Along with photography, Wing also partners with clients on art direction, styling and creative brand strategies."

Jenna McBride - "Jenna is a graphic designer living and working in the great city of Philadelphia. She has a BFA in Graphic and Interactive Design from Tyler School of Art. She loves to take inspiration from long walks down tiny streets, travel, parks, old houses and buildings, and vintage ephemera. She's a self-certified old-timey enthusiast. 

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Keep checking back for more of my blogging favourites…

- jessie may -

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING STRATEGIES

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After deciding that social media marketing was the avenue for my graduate career, I have been delving into the ins and outs of varying social strategies. These two categories of social media strategy can be called “outbound” and “inbound”. They shouldn’t be confused with inbound or outbound digital marketing strategies. In the case of these social media categories, we’re being a little more straight forward than that. An outbound social media marketing strategy is what most who believe in social media want to achieve. They feel that social media is a venue through which to reach people, communicate, improve branding, and expose the company’s messages. Its goal is to be aggressive and take advantage of the fact that the masses are using social media regularly. In many cases, customers are spending more time on social media than any other digital activity. It’s about returning on investment, creating revenue and becoming a leader in social marketing. An inbound social media strategy is very different from a pure inbound marketing strategy. It can be viewed as a defensive posture, a way of covering social media without much time or effort. It’s about checking off the social media task box with little effort and costings. This is the type of strategy that a business should employ if they either do not believe in social media as an appropriate marketing venue or they do not have the time and/or budget to put a true effort towards an outbound strategy.

The strategies in more detail:

• Outbound Social Media Marketing: This is an “all in” strategy. It focuses on the beliefs that lots of people are on social media, that sites like Facebook have the data that can be used for targeting them with the right messages, and that either ideas or website clicks can be driven through an aggressive advertising component.
• Inbound Social Media Presence: Less aggressive than the latter, hence why I did not call it “marketing”. With an inbound strategy, a business is simply creating and managing a presence so that they are there without putting in much effort. It’s not a defeatist strategy by any means. For many, they have not found the benefits of social media or they’re not ready to invest what it takes to have a strong marketing strategy, so they simply get their social media covered.

This is important because people will visit pages and profiles. Most businesses have buttons that lead to their social media profiles right there on their website. The search engines will often rank social media profiles and pages high on search results for the business by name. Making sure that pages have an ongoing flow of content is important while not being too time consuming or expensive.

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Keep checking back for more on social media marketing...

- jessie may -

for further reading head to - soshable

BREAK FOR PERSPECTIVE

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I’ve been thinking a lot about my future lately, and how different it looks and feels from just a few years ago. I used to fall into this go go go mentality… Something that over time, tired me out. Completely. After the realisation that this particular lifestyle wasn’t sustainable, I pulled back and focused on getting myself into a healthy lifestyle and back into a more stable routine. As I now approach the end of my three years at university it feels like the end of an era. Although I am excited for the next steps I again find myself in limbo, debating which path to take. I am a recovering perfectionist and have so many ideas buzzing around in my head, that it’s become overwhelming to actually take that next step. And then, just like that, an opportunity arose in my current career as a Social Entertainment Writer. A position became available for when I graduate to become the Global Social Media Co-Ordinator for the business and that reminded me that it’s okay to focus on just one thing for the time being. By doing so, i've put my heart and sole into one goal instead of spreading myself too thin.  When I graduate I will do so knowing I will fully enjoy my time in the role and with the company i've admire since I began in August. Then, when the time comes, my (fresh) focus will shift towards a business goal: streamlining. AKA, niching myself even more and making my process as a social media coordinator and designer more intuitive. I’m hoping to share more about what I learn and decide along the way, as I myself always love seeing how other individuals handle their own routines as well as business. 

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Keep checking back for more life updates...

- jessie may -