At my home, and the first six years at school, I was truly encouraged to creativity. I could access drawing tools, such as coloured pencils and basic watercolours, I had empty notebooks for writing and reading books was a big thing. All that raised me to be an imaginative and creative person, who keeps utilising her imagination throughout adulthood. It may be true that some people are more inclined for creativity, more equipped to have a vivid imagination. Perhaps their brains just work that way. However, I believe that creativity is something you can, and perhaps need to, train. As you can...

I always find the "how to start a blog" type articles funny. I mean, don't you just start one? Free WordPress.com or Blogger. Or a self-hosted one, like mine. You publish your first blog post, and there you are, blogging. Then again, it's easy to feel like you cannot publish a post if your blog doesn't look exactly the right way. Or start a podcast without an expensive microphone. Not to mention getting into video creation, without having extensive knowledge about editing or owning a great camera. And how about getting your business up, without having the exactly same apps and website...

Entering your local grocery store you might not think about it. As you walk through the store, you are actually walking through a life sized and physical sales funnel. Here in Finland, the first thing in a store are usually the fruits and vegetables or the bakery. Fruits and veggies are colourful, fresh, juicy, inviting. The bakery hits you with a delicious scent. You didn't go to buy that freshly baked rye bread, but somehow it ended up in your shopping basket. The grocery stores place the most regular items in different parts of the store layout. The bread is here, milk is over there. You...

Did you know that Google alone processes now over 40,000 search queries on average every second? That is over 3.5 billion searches per day. Your audience and clients and fans and customers are online, looking for entertainment, information, products and services. Having a strong and clear online presence is what you need to reach the right people. A defined online presence is imperative for successfully marketing of your business and growing your authority. Creating a strong online presence includes various different parts. It isn't limited to only your website or having a presence on a...

There's something alluring about new beginnings. A new year isn't really anything magical. Yet it feels like something new, something different. Better, even. Starting anew. Resolutions are made. More exercise. Eating healthier. The usual. I'm not into making resolutions, since they have a tendency to get derailed. By myself, or by the circumstances. Something comes up, and then I feel bad about not keeping up my silly ideas. Though I was thinking about something I could do better from now on. That is, not being so afraid of making a mess. You know those blog posts, about how the writer...

I have been mulling over leaving Twitter and Facebook, or at least using them much less. The thought on Facebook has been there for a while, because to the service is bringing people's awful sides out and the algorithms are making choices in my behalf. Over at Twitter the things have been getting worse and worse too. While bullies and white supremacists are reigning, the folks in charge of the service are sitting on their hands. Either they are ignoring the complaints, or are making pointless technical changes. And now, with the 280 character long Tweets enabled, my Twitter timeline is a mess...

What if the problem isn't the one you think it is? These past days Twitter has been boiling. Twitter announced that they are testing double length, 280 character long Tweets. In their own words, it was to give us users more characters to express ourselves. The response has been less than enthusiastic. Many call Twitter out for not addressing real issues, like harassment and racism and bot trouble. Meanwhile, some have Tweeted that those who oppose the longer Tweets shouldn't worry. They don't have to use all 280 characters, and can continue making 140 character long Tweets. Doesn't solve the...

Email lists are the hottest hot in marketing these days. At least they are amongst online entrepreneurs, bloggers, coaches and such. It seems like a must to build an email list, in order to find leads, sell goods and build traffic. It's no wonder. With social media services having turned into megaphones for the loudest, and the constant mess of everyone fighting about something with each other, there's something soothing about sending your message straight into someone's inbox. I have an email list too. It's a small one, and my open rates are high. The latest email I sent was opened within...

"Twitter threads are like hard to read blog posts. I miss blogs." I know, they are hard to read. Annoying. I often skip them, because I use Tweetbot and it doesn't fare well with threads. It can render them completely unreadable, especially if there are any replies to the Tweets in the thread. I have a complicated relationship with Twitter threads. I share them, but mainly refrain from writing them myself. I know I can be wordy, which would make my threads longer than ones you've seen. Plus since I don't like them that much, I don't want to submit my followers to my overly long rants. Hey, I...