The eNotes Blog This is the RealWorld

This is the RealWorld And no, its not the kind where seven people are picked to live in a house. In our editorial interns final post, she tells you all the things you shouldnt waste your time worrying about in this time of inevitable worriesgraduation. Hi all, Today is my last day as an intern at .  Because they’re promoting me to an EXECUTIVE POSITION. Hah, just kidding. They’re kicking me out.  My internship has run its course and now we must part ways (sigh). I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. As I walk away from this position and from my previous college lifestyle, I can’t help but feel like scissors are snipping at the ties that connected me to these things. Many things are finished and done. And it feels a little like that painful moment someone harshly yanks the blinds open after you’ve been sitting in a dark room for 5 hours. Life after college†¦is a really strange thing. I’d like to equate it to a baby bird’s first flight. That moment you leave college is the same moment someone kicks you square in the back. You start to freefall downwards and it’s exhilarating but scary. You don’t know how to flap your wings or gain altitude because you’ve never done it before, but you’re trying with all your might to do something- anything. You know that you are capable of flight, you can feel it as the adrenaline rushes through you. I think we are all humming Tom Petty in our heads right now. When we leave college, we’re free for the first time. No homework, no essays, no school responsibilities. No strict guidance, no tunnel vision, no more college microcosm. We can take our lives in any direction we choose to. But that doesn’t mean we necessarily know how to handle the situation or understand it fully. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to know how to grasp the real world off the bat, or even comprehend it. We’re thrown into it, and told to make it work. We know we can because a lot of people can. We know we can because we have a desire to and that desire fuels us. But we’re young. I’m not talking about age. I’m talking about our understanding of the world and of who we are. We’re young. So, it seems, the freefall is the only way we can prompt self growth, but it’s definitely not the most comfortable of feelings. I’m undeniably in this free fall right now. I’m actually writing to you as I pummel toward the earth. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve done a lot of worrying. A whole lot of worrying. To me, it makes perfect sense. New world, new life, new opportunities, and decisions that need to be made†¦these are all things that bring their own baggage- their own sets of worries and stressors. Throw ‘em all together and you’ve got one huge, heavy mess. There’s a good chance this will happen to you at some point, so I’m going to go ahead and help you through it. There are some things that don’t need to be worried about. But we worry about them because we don’t realize we’re worrying about things that don’t need to be worried about. Let’s pretend like that sentence was really clear and not a run-on at all. Here are some things you shouldn’t waste your time worrying about, like I did. Don’t worry about failing. If you’re chasing something- a goal, a dream, a degree, a career- just chase it, with all the gusto you have. Don’t let your mind be boggled by the potentiality of failing. It will distract. You likely won’t fail. And if you do, well†¦failure is also a good thing. It teaches. The best lessons are learnt from failing at something. Either you succeed at your dream, and move on, or you fail at it, and move on. Both of these things will leave you more knowledgeable about yourself, about life, and about what you really want from both of those things. Hello†¦this is a win-win. Don’t worry about what your life is going to look like in 25 years. Mini van. Dog. Three kids. A house. Early retirement. It’s good to have an idea of what you want your life to look like, and it’s good to take action to make those things more of a possibility. But stop stressing over them. Most of our plans are just rough drafts or sketches anyways. Things rarely happen the way we expect or plan on them to. So why dwell? Silly goose. Don’t worry about things that haven’t happened yet. â€Å"If I don’t get this job then I’ll be unemployed and I’ll lose all of my friends because I won’t be able to go out anymore and I’ll just have to hang out with a dog and talk to it and I’ll eventually lose all my money and my apartment and my ability to remain hygienic and basically my life is going to be OVER.† Yes, let’s not do this. Half of the things we worry about are things that haven’t come into fruition yet. They’re thoughts. Little puffs of air that we catch in jars and then stare at until our eyeballs hurt. There’s nothing there. Stop staring. Stop it! Be in the present, not trapped in the different futures you’ve managed to paint. If something worry-worth actually occurs, worry about it then, but only then. Don’t worry about what your friendships and relationships will look like as your life moves forward. Just keep in touch with your friends and loved ones. Those who remain in your life are meant to, those who don’t might turn up again later or might not. We can’t control these things except by how much effort we put forth. So show that you care and love these special people, but don’t worry that they’ll leave you. That just makes for messes, drama, and crying. The kinds of emotion you feel during the gut-wrenching, tear jerking portion of a rom-com. Yuck. Don’t worry about finding a perfect career that’ll last you a lifetime. This is just silly. In life, we change constantly, and so do our interests. It’s not really probable to assume that a career you pick now will make you happy forever. In all likelihood, it won’t. In order for you to actually succeed at and enjoy your career, you will need to find work based off of what you feel in the present- what’s driving you now. So, with that in mind, there’s no need to worry about finding the perfect career that’ll last forever. Just find yourself a path that feels right for right now. Don’t worry so much about what happens later. A wise man and renowned poet named  Robert Sylvester Kelly (commonly known as  R. Kelly), once  sang  to the heavens these famous words: I believe I can fly. Well, friends,  I believe  you  can fly.   Its been nice knowing you, folks. Good luck.

How To Develop An Effective Content Marketing Promotion Strategy

How To Develop An Effective Content Marketing Promotion Strategy If you want the content marketing strategy for your business to be successful, you can’t rely on developing great content alone. No matter what your content goals are, you need traffic to your content to achieve them. This is where effective content promotion comes into play. In this post, were going to look at five steps you can follow to promote each piece of content you create and get the best possible results from your content. How To Develop An Effective #ContentMarketing Promotion Strategy @sujanpatel Step 1: Optimize Your Content For Search In the long run, if you optimize your content properly, search engines will likely be the best source of traffic for your content. You don't have to think about search engine optimization while you are creating your content. As a matter of fact, it's best if you don't think about SEO until after you have crafted a great piece of content with your visitors in mind. It's best if you don't think about #SEO until after you've crafted great #content. @sujanpatel How to easily optimize your content for a  keyword. Once you have finished creating your content, you will want to optimize it for one keyword phrase. To do this, you can use Google's free AdWords Keyword Planner. Add a few keywords or keyword phrases that best represent your piece of content. Google's Keyword Planner can help you optimize your content so people looking for your stuff can actually find it. Once you have found the best keyword phrase for your piece of content, you will want to make sure it is included in the title, meta description, first paragraph, last paragraph, and images. As an example, let's look at this post. We started with "How To Develop an Effective Content Promotion Strategy" as the title. After using the Google AdWords Keyword Planner, we revised it to "How To Develop an Effective Content Marketing Promotion Strategy", which includes content marketing strategy, as that has a higher search volume. Note that while it's good to have all of the words for the keyword phrase you target together (such as content marketing strategy), it's not required. Those who don't search for content marketing strategy in quotes will get anything with those three words in the title in their search results. Here's an example of the top competition for the content marketing strategy keyword with a Google search engine results page. In addition to adding content marketing strategy to the title, we added it into the other areas mentioned, including the filenames of all of the images in the post. This optimization should help this post rank well for content marketing strategy in search engines. Choose one keyword, use it in headings, titles, images, and first and last sentences. #SEOStep 2: Optimize  Your Content For Social Sharing There are three ways to optimize your content for social sharing. 1. Offer  social sharing buttons. The first is to make sure that each page on your website has social sharing buttons. You can add them to your website's template files using the official code provided by networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Or, for those using platforms such as WordPress, you can install plugins like Socialize or Flare.   2. Use awesome images. Next, you will want to have at least one great image per piece of content. When people share your content on social networks, most networks will pull a thumbnail image from your content to make it stand out in the news feed. If you don't add an image to your content, the shares of your content either won't have an image or will have an unrelated image from elsewhere on your website. 3. Implement open graph tags. Finally, you will want to implement open graph tags for your content. Open graph tags allow you to customize the way that your content is shared on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. For example, this code for Twitter... ...will allow tweets from the page it is implemented upon to look like this: You can find the code you need to implement open graph tags in the developer's support pages for Twitter Cards, Facebook Open Graph, and Pinterest Rich Pins. Or, for WordPress users, you can install plugins like JM Twitter Cards and Facebook for simpler open graph tag implementation. Step 3: Share Your Content With Your Social Media Audiences Don't just leave it up to your visitors to share your content on social media. 1. Promote  your content on multiple social networks. Your fans and followers connect with your social pages and profiles for a reason. Share your content with all of your social media audiences. It might sound like overkill at first, but keep in mind that you have different fans and followers on each network. If you just tweet your content, your Facebook and LinkedIn only audiences might miss it.