One of the aspects I’ve struggled to share while networking is that I can do just a single service, or a multi aspect service. People think that I’m either a photographer, or I’m a website designer, or I do graphic design. But, in all honesty, I do all that and mix it in with tech knowledge outside of websites and you get a full business design service.

1. Cathie Heart, helping people live on their terms
2. Being self-employed is such an adventure. Rise to the challenge!

I love that she’s captured and recognised my motivation this year to rise to the challenge. This was one of my first steps to living out loud. I wrote a blog post previous titled ‘rise to the challenge‘ and it’s part of my efforts to normalise that we all have our life challenges and often being self-employed is the best way to live with all of our various family, health, disability and other bits of our lives.

You can listen to my podcast with Ros Jones here or scroll down to read the transcript. Or, listen on iTunes, Spotify and read the transcript here if that helps you.

Ps. I’ve added some extra clarity pieces into the transcript in [brackets] so that I can provide a bit more explanation.

Bold Business Bits
the Cathie Heart interview transcript.

Ros Jones
This is Ross Jones, your business coach with my weekly podcast show Bold Business Bits coming to you from Yorkshire. This is where I have a great conversation with a phenomenal female business boss. We share some of the bold stuff they do, lessons they’ve learned, adversities they’ve overcome, and the fun they have. And then I’ll be digging into my toolkit and sharing a top tip. business can be lonely, so make sure you join us each week and be part of our show.

So Hello, and welcome to Ros Jones’s bold business bits podcast show. And today I’m joined by Cathie Heart of The Heart’s Design.

Welcome, Cathie.

Cathie Heart
Hello.

Ros Jones
So Cathie, where in the world are you today?

Cathie Heart
I’m based in York in the UK.

Ros Jones
Okay. And tell me about The Hearts Design.

Cathie Heart
The Heart’s Design [as a skill set] started way back when at university, I actually enjoyed doing graphic design as a hobby. And then somebody asked me to make a website and my very first professional website I ever made fit on a 3.5 inch floppy disk. And ever since then, I kind of did that is like personal projects. But once I hit redundancy, literally about 10 years ago. That’s when I’d said okay, well people keep on asking me for websites, maybe I should turn that into something professional. Yeah, here we are.

Ros Jones
So did you learn how to do websites? This sounds quite a long time ago.

Cathie Heart
No, I’m actually a certified tech geek undergrad in Business Information Systems, a PG Dip in advanced computer science and then a Master’s in Information Management, none of which has taught me how to do HTML websites or anything. But it did teach me to teach myself and not to be afraid of tech.

Ros Jones
Excellent. You sound like a very handy person. No wonder everybody asked for their websites.

Cathie Heart
It’s about how you present and manage information on on the internet. And so that’s why websites are so crucial because it’s your voice and your platform that you own that you can say what you wish. Yeah, that’s the power of websites.

Ros Jones
So how can you keep up to date? Is it just a natural gift for you? Do you have to keep up to date with things or what?

Cathie Heart
No, I constantly keep on reading the releases of all of the new things that come out. So when WordPress updates a new version, I have to read the spec of what they’ve updated. And then I’m constantly training, you can’t take a break with tech. If you’re wanting to be on the cutting edge of it. You have to keep going.

Ros Jones
Yeah.

Cathie Heart
But the beauty of that is that when you do know what you’re doing, you just edit it for yourself and you just crack on and the tech when you know what bits you want to use works for you rather than against you. So, it’s knowing those little tricks.

Ros Jones
And I guess work especially this last year? Well, I mean, it’s been moving so fast anyway, but I guess the last year or so, due to lockdown everybody working online, there must have been some massive advancements, have you seen?

Cathie Heart
There’ve been the standard advancements, they haven’t really been big changes in terms of website deliveries, and all of that kind of thing. There are always companies coming out that offer new services. So I watch places like mega deals and design cuts and other places that offer graphics and software that is coming out. So quite often when somebody launches a new business, they offer lifetime plans for a discounted rate. So I quite often buy into those, and then I wait to see how they develop over a year or two. Yeah, there’s lots of different things out there that you can find cheaper, that are launching now, but they may or may not be viable within a year or two. Give it a go.

Ros Jones
It’s like gambling in technology.

Cathie Heart
Yeah, it is. It is. I just wish it was investment. So anyway, but things like Grum worked out really, really well. For me. It’s an Instagram scheduling app, but it did this before Instagram scheduling with Later and all of that came along. So it allowed me to have an agency plan that controlled five Instagram places. And so it worked well.

Ros Jones
Yeah, very good. And so you’re in your but I know you haven’t always been in York, where are you from?

Cathie Heart
Born and bred in Leeds, but my family and my dad is a contractor. So we’ve always followed wherever the work was. I always saw him going off to far flung places like Singapore and Sweden and things like that. And I was like, Oh, yeah, this is amazing. This sounds like a great lifestyle. So I always aspired to it to be able to work where you wanted. It actually wasn’t like that. He literally just went where the work was. But I’ve lived most of the UK. I think it’s 23 houses that I’ve lived in now. I’m 41 turning 42 In July, and I think it’s 23 places that I have now lived. And I consider it living if my post has gone there.

Ros Jones
Okay,

Cathie Heart
yeah, bank and all of that kind of thing.

Ros Jones
Yeah. So do you have a favorite place?

Cathie Heart
I have favorite accents. And I have favorite people. But I don’t really have favorite places. And so accents that feel like home to me other stuff. We can one because I lived in Durban for about four years. So whenever I hear the South African accent, that’s my childhood to me. I feel like I’ve gone home, I’m not South African I am English. And then favorite people. So it’s always been my, my parents or my homes, wherever they are. Doesn’t matter where that is, I feel like I’m home.

Ros Jones
Is it a sense? Or is it just being around those people always have a certain smell and play in it? What is it about them that makes them feel like you’re home?

Cathie Heart
So for example, my holiday that I have every September, it’s a Women’s International holiday. And I always scoffed at people. That said, they always go back to the same place. Because until five years ago, I never found a place that felt like home. But this International Women’s holiday does, because every year we go back and I can walk down that same street with the same shops and the same people. And I don’t know them, but we’ve seen each other before and I can wave to them. And if I want to talk to them, we both stop and have a chat. And that feels more like home than anything else. So it’s a beachside holiday resort place. It’s not a resort, it’s a tiny little town. But the fact that I can go there and within two hours of arriving, all of my stress is shed, and it’s just an amazing space and the place to be.

[While this makes it seem like its the place that I love, and I really do love Lesvos. In my mind the place isn’t quite the same when my favourite people don’t also make the same holiday. I’ve made a really great bunch of holiday friends that I only see at that place in September each year.]

Ros Jones
Yeah. Where is it?

Cathie Heart
I go to Skala Eressos in Lesbos, it’s the birthplace of Sappho.

[I go to the international womens festival for two weeks most Septembers.]

Ros Jones
Yeah. Fantastic. So tell me a bit more about The Heart’s Design, because The Hearts Design sounds very much like the heart’s desire.

Cathie Heart
I’m glad you picked that up, because that is exactly what I did. I wanted people to be able to live authentically and speak from their heart. And so that’s what The Heart’s Desire. And when my logo comes from, it’s a heart with a speech bubble in it. And so that’s why I want people to live life on their terms, and whatever that is, and to be able to make their own income and living. And so that’s why it’s The Heart’s Desire is the passion and what lifestyle you want to live. But also the thing that you want to do in order to have that lifestyle.

Ros Jones
Fabulous. And so how does that come about? That comes from your own story?

Cathie Heart
Yeah, I wanted to always remember that people can box you in if they wish to and say, Well, this is how you should be, you should live. But I’ve never ever felt fit a specific box. And so I’ve always been outside of it. And I was always the deaf kid that was different, or the dyslexic one that goofs up my conversation at times have always been different. And now I celebrate that fact. And so that’s why I go for that.

Ros Jones
And what’s that, that I can see that you have or something around your neck, there’s some sort of gizmos that

Cathie Heart
Oh, it’s because I’m deaf, I have a T loop headset. So it means that instead of having cans, or a headset that goes in my ears is just a little box that hands around my neck, and it means that I can hear straight into my hearing aids and straight into the center of my head. But quite cool, actually.

Ros Jones
Wow. So is that Have you always been had a hearing thing?

Cathie Heart
Yeah I was born this way.

Ros Jones
Okay. Has that impact you at all? Do you mind me asking?

Cathie Heart
Crisis of confidence. And I’ve been told many, many times that I am rude, because people start talking to me from behind. And I’m like, I’m really sorry, if I can’t see you. I can’t really hear you. It means that I got to change my way of working because I can’t do phone calls unexpectedly because I start panicking going, what if I can’t hear them? I’ve been told off by customer services on call centers, they just start shouting down the line at me because they think that being louder means I can hear them. Not necessarily just means it gets more muffled. But call centers are not great places for deaf people trying here with multiple conversations all happening at the same time.

Ros Jones
Yeah, exactly.

Cathie Heart
Yeah, isn’t it adaptation that you have to justify.

Ros Jones
But does that mean that you’ve got other senses that are like sort of highly awakened because like, I know that people with sight difficulties often have a sense of touch or smell and things are?

Cathie Heart
No, I don’t have any sensory improvements in that regard. But I am a keen observer of body language. So I can tell with my photography, when I did wedding photography for a few years, it really helped because I could tell that there were circumstances that were about to bloom before they actually happened, where some photographers are like, Oh my god, I was just too late. I didn’t see that happening. It’s natural, but it really helps me when it comes to connecting with people finding out how they’re reacting, so I particularly love doing Street and Documentary photography, just to observe people. So yeah, it helps when I do photography is

Ros Jones
very interesting. And so in this time, you know, during this pandemic, what’s the, what’s the impact being for you caffeine,

Cathie Heart
it’s been quite an impact on my clients who have either not been able to afford my existing prices. So I’ve helped quite a few businesses with a COVID-19 discount, which was 50% off. And then there was the hospital couldn’t continue my pain treatment. So I had to shut down my business formerly for two months until they managed to get that treatment center back up. But yeah, it’s just another challenge to get through

Ros Jones
What was the treatment that you do.

Cathie Heart
I have migraines, and I get Botox, medical Botox, okay. And so it’s a really effective treatment. For me, it’s the only one that works.

Ros Jones
Wow. So when that clinic was, what did you have to do, did you just have to put up with migraines?

Cathie Heart
Yeah, I just go back to my original migraine level, which is 25 to 30 day, migraines a month. Which is pretty much constant migraines. When I get the treatment, it’s it’s between three and five migraines a month. It really works.

Ros Jones
And I guess I mean, migraines are often associated with stress and things aren’t they. Is that is that correct? Yeah. So this is not exacerbated a lot of that as well I imagine.

Cathie Heart
It can do but I have a really good handle on it. Most of the time, I eat healthily I try to exercise, I know how to listen to what my body is telling me. And that’s the best clue that I can give to people is really pay attention to what your system is telling you. If you need to stop and rest and actually stop and rest. And then you can continue the next day. Whereas there’s been times for many years where I just pushed through it. And then I would completely grind to a halt, I just could not do anything. So it’s actually a really great thing to be able to be self-employed and to be able to define your own hours. That’s why I want to help people live on their terms. Because I know that there are so many challenges in doing end of life care, which I’ve done for my grandparents, trying to manage your family trying to manage your health, there are so many things that are all challenges for us that we need to find ways to work smarter. And that’s why I helped do that with websites to help you and other businesses do marketing more effectively, rather than having to do it purely manually.

Ros Jones
So when you talk about living life on your terms, what does that mean for you?

Cathie Heart
It means that, when my family asked for help, I can often drop the work, and just go and help as I’m immediately available for whatever task is happening. It means that when I need to take some downtime, I can take that downtime, and I work with my clients to make sure it doesn’t affect what they’re doing. I have a team of other people that I outsource to, so that if I have too much of a downtime, they are called into the work does not suffer. But yes, that’s what living on my terms means it means I have that ultimate flexibility to go, I need some help and get the help in or Yes, I can do it steamroller ahead, get it all done. So that’s why I like working smarter, because on the days where I’m steamrollering and I can do everything, I shedule up the content and the social media. And so it keeps going when I’m just having my timeout. So at the timeout, because I want to have timeout or timeout because my body says it needs to.

Ros Jones
I love that. I think there’s a lot erm, is it pressure? Is it our own pressure on ourselves that we have this sense of obligation.

Cathie Heart
It’s an expectation of being productive, we are valued for being productive? And if we are not seen to be productive. What is your value to society? Well, there are a lot of people who cannot do a full time job that are extremely valuable. And these are the people that I really want to help. Because obviously people experiencing long COVID now they’re having radical changes in their lives. And they’re going oh my god, my self value came from earning money and from being productive. And now there’s a thing that’s stopping them. How do they get through that? And so it’s about finding the little things that give you joy, and forgiving the outages and just getting through it. So people have challenges and we just need to find different ways to get through them. And I use tech.

Ros Jones
I use books.

Cathie Heart
I use books too.

Ros Jones
What’s your favorite book? Do you have one?

Cathie Heart
I am a big sci fi fantasy. So I love Anne McCaffrey’s books. The dragon series was good but I particularly liked The Crystal Singer. And the reason that I loved her works is it’s really strong female centric, like powerful women. The thing that I hate in movies is the woman turns to the man and says: “what should we do next?” And I’m like, you’ve got a brain love, you can figure it out.

Ros Jones
Fantastic. In this show, Catherine, I often ask my guests, if they’ve had a time of adversity time was really tough. But actually, they came through it. And there was some goodness, if you like became out of it. Do you mind sharing such an a time?

Cathie Heart
Yeah, I have gone through two redundancies once I was volunteered, because my boss [my new boss during an organisation change] just didn’t get what I was doing. And so I got volunteered for redundancy. And then the second time the entire site shut down, I was still learning about how to manage my migraines. And it was a difficult time. And I couldn’t find another job quick enough. So I moved home. And my grandmother at the time was experiencing really bad dementia, she was in decline in her life. So I spent about three, four years doing end of life care for her and supporting my mother to do that. Because the blessing that I’ve learned from this is that I have no regrets about supporting my two grandparents with their end of life, and my parents to be able to go through that to. The thing that I found the blessing is that I realized none of us are truly independent. And I’m a person with a really fierce, independent streak. I do not wish to rely on others. But I’m learning that when you actually ask for help people like being asked for that help, it feels good to give help, and know that we are making a difference in that other person’s life. And so that’s been the blessing and the learning for me that while I was struggling with Why the hell was I made redundant, why was I volunteered? Why was the site shut down? Why were all of these and it goes back to that productivity, if you’re not being productive, what are you, and we’re all taught, we have to make money, we have to contribute to society, we have to be independent. And I’m learning that actually, it’s the community effort of being there when somebody needs help you. But also reaching out for that helps makes the other person bill good. So doing that. building a community of people around me running my own business, doing end of life care and supporting my family. Were really, really crucial years for about six, seven years [thinking longer on this it was really about 5 years but felt like 7!]. I was doing two back to back end of life care.

Ros Jones
Wow. And was that because you’ve come out of it with this new sort of self awareness and new learning about yourself?

Cathie Heart
Yeah, that’s the bonus of being self employed, is that you are it. So if you don’t manage your own mind, your own health and your own learning of how to do things, there’s no real fallback. And so the government and the systems don’t always help people. So in my case, I am too healthy, too hearing, I have enough money that they go ‘you don’t need any’. So I’m one of the ones that would fall through the cracks. So it’s important to know your mind and figure out how you work for yourself. And that’s why self employed is actually a really great adventure if you embrace it as that. So, rise to the challenge.

Ros Jones
Love that. A real adventure isn’t it, everyday is an adventure.

Cathie Heart
It is, yeah. Especially when you’re self-employed, because it’s not the same nine to five job.

Ros Jones
Something wonderful happens every day to challenge you or to thrill you, in whatever way.

So Cathie, if there was a woman standing in front of you saying, Cathie, I’m thinking about setting up my business, what would be your number one piece of advice?

Cathie Heart
Surprisingly, is not tech, the number one piece of advice and my one number one annoyance is that business names are not carried over into social media names. And I think it’s incredibly crucial to being professional that. To take Nike, for example, we don’t think oh, we’ll go to nike.com for their website, and we’ll go to Nike official on Instagram, but Nike shoes on Facebook, and then Nike business on LinkedIn. No, we just go Nike. So if I could ever teach people to to go on places like name checker, so if they just Google name checker, there’s two websites that will help you know that your domain name and your social media handles which is the @ and then the name are both the same. So that instead of requiring people to remember six different things for one business, they only need to know the business. This name and it is the same everywhere. And that would be my number one crucial thing.

Ros Jones
Okay, I love it that you said it’s not techies.

Cathie Heart
Okay, I can see I can see perspective that yes, it can be considered techie to others. But to me, it’s a foundation business name thing

Ros Jones
It’s about branding isnt it. Branding ..

Cathie Heart
Yeah, yeah. That’s part of what I do. I do websites, branding and photography. So I do the entire package.

Ros Jones
Do you do social media for people as well, just out of interest?

Cathie Heart
No, I teach people how to use their website to do social media for them, but not manage their social media. So I’m not a person that will post on their behalf. But there are plugins that interact with your websites that when you write a blog post, that blog post syndicates out all your social media in one go. So rather than doing one on your website, one on Instagram, one on Facebook, one on.. You just do one, and it copies out. Working smarter.

Ros Jones
Working smarter, and how else can we be working smarter right now do you think?

Cathie Heart
Thinking, planning, really knowing what you’re going to do and how you’re going to measure where you are now versus where you want to be in the future, because I’ve winged it myself. And the only times where I’ve truly grown or where I’ve gone like, this is where I’m at. And this is where I want to go to how am I going to get there. And I use things like David Allen’s get things done, which is where you split out the tasks and you organize them properly, step by step, right, this is what I’m going to do. And I have a task sheet that has two things on it three things on it, I have the name of the task, the thing that I need to do, I have the duration of the task. And then I have an energy level, that at the times where my energy levels are really quite low, and I’m struggling and I go I’m low energy, and I’ve only got 15 minutes of what I can concentrate on. I find those tasks and I go, I’ve still achieved something today. So it’s again, it’s that productivity thing, I made my bed, I’ve filled the dishwasher, I have done the things that are normal part of life, and then I’ve done a thing that will get me further in my business. So I don’t believe in the hare and tortoise that we need to be the hare fast, fast, fast, fast, fast. No, I would rather people understand that. Yes, we can go really, really slow, but a really good foundation and a lot of thought.

Rose Jones
Yeah. Ooo I love that. And so what’s next for you?

Cathie Heart
I have an exciting opportunity, where I’m going to be taking on 10 people to launch their own website in 10 weeks. So yes, I’m a web designer that can take on the task of building the website for you. But I really want to teach more people how to do this for themselves. Because I believe that if you know how to do something for yourself, you can then do it again and again. And again. So teaching a person to fish, they will be able to feed themselves. Well, it’s the same with websites and tech, once they understand how it works, they no longer need to rely on somebody else, too. That takes two weeks to change an image or a word or this, that and the other. And so that’s why I’m teaching. So once you know how to launch that website, if that business is no longer viable, you just change and choose a different business name different opportunity, you build that website and you go again, that is always going to be their power.

Ros Jones
Yeah. And that’s it. That’s wonderful. So I guess it’s going to be online.

Cathie Heart
Yes, it absolutely is.

Ros Jones
And so does it do do or is it an online course or how ..

Cathie Heart
So it’s part online and part live teaching. So the actual course itself is pre recorded. And you literally watch my cursor move across the screen, click here and explain the reasoning why of things. And so they’re watching and they’re doing, that’s the most important thing to me is that they’re actually doing the process. And then two or three days after the pre recorded training, I will then do a live q&a, so that if they’re struggling with any little bit of it, that’s when they asked for that particular week’s instructions.

[You can view and join my launch your website and brand in 10 weeks here]

Ros Jones
Oh, that’s great.

So can we when does it start?

Cathie Heart
It starts on February 1st.

Ros Jones
February first

Cathie Heart
and it is paid in full at £500 or in three part installments at £510. I rounded up the money slightly just make it a little bit easier. I don’t know how to split multiple levels of pens. Maybe easier £510.

Ros Jones
Yeah, what’s it called? And how do people find out more about him?

Cathie Heart
It’s really inventive name and launch your website and brand in 10 weeks, just keep it simple. That is what it is. And if people go to my website, www.theheartsdesign.com so The Hearts’ with an S Design.com they will find it about two scrolls down the page. There’s three ways to work with me One way is to obviously hire me to do the website. The second way is to take my course and if they’ve just got a question and they’re already using WordPress and have just a very simple question, a Power Hour I teach them there and then how to do the thing that they’re struggling with. So whether that’s WordPress, Canva, graphics, marketing, photography, whatever that is, whatever the skills that I have. I’ll teach them to do the thing that they’re struggling with within that power hour.

Ros Jones
And that can all be booked on your website.

Cathie Heart
Yes, everything.

[You can view and join my launch your website and brand in 10 weeks here]

Ros Jones
That’s fantastic. It’s been fantastic to speak with you this afternoon. Cathie, thank you so much for joining us. It’s great.

Cathie Heart
Thank you for the opportunity, and I love talking to other businesses.

Ros Jones
Yeah, that is brilliant. Thank you so much. Bye for now. Thank you.

This conversation, Cathie talked about the need for ongoing learning in business. I’m a passionate believer in continuous learning. To grow as an individual and as a business, we have to learn new stuff. Otherwise, we stay in the same place. Whether it’s learning new skills, or even just becoming more aware of the impact our beliefs have honest, it’s all learning. Here are seven reasons we need to keep on learning.

Number one, becoming more valuable. By keeping up to date with trends and adapting and growing your skill sets you become more valuable to yourself, your business and to society generally, and you can earn more money.

Number two, easier to adapt to continuous learning will help you adapt swiftly to unexpected changes. And this is what the majority of us have had to do during this pandemic. It’s easy to step up and out of your comfort zone when you have the habit of ongoing learning and challenging your thinking.

Number three become the go to expert. When you’re always learning and staying ahead of the game, you’ll become well known in your field. As people interacting with you will pass your name on to others as the expert.

Number four, boosts your confidence learning new skill takes us from the state of unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence, which boosts our confidence in our own capability. This feeling will undoubtedly then inspire us with competence to take on more challenges and explore new ways to grow our business.

Number five is innovation. The more you learn the more light bulb moments you find yourself receiving. These will help you find innovative solutions to problems that will help your business growth.

Number six change your thinking change your life. continuous learning opens your mind and gets you thinking differently. The more you learn, the better you’ll be at seeing more sides of the same situation, getting new perspectives and helping you understand more deeply.

And number seven pass on your learning. ongoing learning makes you more valuable to society when you learn something new. Pass on your new knowledge to others. You’ll not only make room in your head for more new stuff, but you’ll be helping someone else at the same time.

So be curious explore different topics. Ask questions, keep a journal of all your learnings and reflections and watch yourself grow. Above all else, be sure to take action on your skills knowledge, otherwise, you might as well not knowing this has been Ross Jones bold business bits. Hope you’ve enjoyed our show. See you next time.

This has been your Ross Jones bold business bits podcast. If you’d like any further information about anything we’ve discussed today, please just get in touch. Go to businesscoachingyorkshire co.uk.

Please join me again next week when I’ll be speaking with another phenomenal female business boss we polled businesses and remember to subscribe to my show. Thanks for listening

Transcribed using https://otter.ai – I’ve tried to catch discrepancies but as a deaf person I couldn’t hear the slightly muffled bits! I truly wish that all podcasts could have transcripts, it would help people like me so so much .. not to mean the podcasters search engine rankings. Just look at all that rich text for google to look at and index! I’m not affiliated with Otter AI but maybe I should look into that, anyway it’s free to transcribe your audio and video for up 600 minutes per month.

This is a personal blog post that I am nervous about sharing, but it’s time to own my personal challenges and I want to share them because it’s been holding me back from getting myself out there.

You may want to get comfy if you’re dedicated to reading this, it reveals why I’ve worked the way I did in the past and how 2020 really pushed me to change this year and do the actual stuffs I’ve been wanting to do for years!! YEARS I tell you. So now I am.

Ready? Good.

In the past decade of being self-employed, I’ve lived and worked hoping that people would recognise my talents and that those talents would speak aloud for me. It sort of worked. But. Whenever I had a happy client I usually felt a rush of ‘yay I did it’ and then the horror of ‘can I do it again?’ for the next one.

I never truly broadcast my achievements (its a British thing), never really shared when I’d done something great with my web design business (the photography business was a little easier as I had lots of photos that my clients wanted for their publicity) but then I never shared them very much on my own platforms.

Why?

Because I have personal challenges with a disability, health and sometimes (but rarely in self-employed business) being judged for sexuality. I am deaf (hard of hearing), dyslexic, and without pain treatments, I get a lot of migraines, plus I’m an out lesbian. I always felt, why would anyone want to work with me if they knew the truth of my struggles .. well, now I’m turning it around and saying why wouldn’t you want to work with someone who understands the challenges of life and knows strategies and tech to deal with it?

My world is one of constant and shifting sands of uncertainty. Will I be able to hear this phone call? Will I have enough good days in a row to do the work? Will my ‘team’ of people I can call in for outsourcing work be there? Will I have good energy levels? Please don’t catch a cold (or Covid19) because it’ll massively impact the very finely balanced equilibrium I do my best to maintain. If I lose my glasses (and I have on rare occasions) are my backup spares where I left them? It takes a lot to deal with the internal narrative and say to myself, I’ll deal with each thing as it comes. I always have, and I always can.

The above image is a personal project image, testing the idea of doing Kintsugi inspired portraits. Kintsugi is the art of repairing breaks with gold-dusted glue, where broken pieces are mended together with gold. To cherish items we love, even if a little cracked.

An article on Medium explains this well.

“An art form born from mottainai — the feeling of regret when something is wasted — and “mushin,” the need to accept change: the cracks are seamed with lacquer resin and powdered gold, silver, or platinum, and often reference natural forms like waterfalls, rivers, or landscapes. This method transforms the artifact into something new, making it more rare, beautiful, and storied than the original.”

Andrea Mantovani

It is the ‘need to accept change’ and ‘making it more rare and beautiful’ parts that resonate with me about kintsugi. In my fine art portrait concept, the glue ‘fractures’ are by my ears (I’m deaf) and on my forehead to symbolise chronic illness and neurodiversity. Subtle and sledgehammer feeling hidden challenges that I face.

I’m deaf / hard of hearing.

I’ve been deaf all my life and finally hearing aid technology has grown up to the point my moderate / severe hearing loss can have tiny hearing aids and teeny tiny insert for the ears. Hallelujah. So in the photo I’ve done repaired cracks by my ears because they used to bleed and crack from hearing aid molds until I got my new ones.

It’s one of the hidden problems quite a number of deaf users of hearing aids encounter, ear infections and skin allergies causing cracked skin. Psoriasis in my ears is not fun when I also need to wear hearing aids and sometimes I couldn’t wear them because of infection or cracked skin. Joy .. but I’ve new hearing aids and most of those issues have been fixed.

More often than not, you’d meet me in the street and would not realise that I am deaf, my superpower is lipreading (damn you, yet, thank you covid masks) and my one tip is that you maybe want to hide your answers behind your hand at a pub quiz. I’m not above watching for the answers from competing teams! Don’t worry I rarely do quizzes, I find them stressful as I rarely hear the questions in big noisy groups in order to answer them. Go figure, hence I’m constantly scanning people to figure out what the heck conversation is happening around me!

I’m dyslexic.

A good many deaf people are, as well as many artists and creatives. It’s a blessing in disguise because I don’t think ‘in the box’, I can spot patterns and tie-down really random inspirations to a cohesive whole. Yes I find writing difficult and boy do I struggle with an active voice at times but Grammarly is amazing and helps me figure it out. I write the same way I speak, imperfect, with spoonerisms (though Grammarly fixes those) and I sometimes totally cannot remember a totally reasonable everyday word to describe something. I see it as my superpower to a differently wired brain. If you want different solutions, work with a creative. I’m also backed by an eminently logical brain and two degrees in information management and the world of online systems and tech. So creative, neurodiverse yet gets logic and employs it wisely with strategic thinking and planning.

Do I really need to say I’m a lesbian?

It seems totally obvious to me, I talk about me and my partner (and sometimes about my step-daughter but rarely as its her life to live and share as she wishes). I talk about the cat more often because she is killer cute. Literally, a killer but very cute.

In terms of my self employed business work, I don’t feel it’s held me back at all much. For one simple reason: people self-select who they work with. If they don’t like me being a lesbian, they don’t get in touch .. makes my life much simpler. It’s why I talk about being deaf and how to work with me in a different blog post, why I’m openly a lesbian and more recently (ie. now!) I talk about having a chronic illness which sometimes affects my working hours. I share these openly so that if you don’t like these aspects, do like all our mamas advised ‘if you don’t have something nice to say, then say nothing at all’. You don’t have to work with me, but I hope that a few will recognise that I’ve lived and live to rise above my challenges and totally cool bonus points, I can help you do so as well.

I have a chronic illness.

I’ve experienced migraines since my early twenties and well .. it’s taken me a long, long time to find out my best balance and that was to give up chocolate and now I’m giving up sugar. I tell you, I’m super easy to buy for at Christmas (yeah right) because I don’t drink alcohol or eat chocolate, rarely eat biscuits .. so what to get a gall like me at Christmas? I like amazon gift vouchers! Let me choose my gift, please.

So migraines are a normal part of my life, at their absolute worst without treatments I am lucky I have 1 – 10 days a month without a headache and/or migraine. With treatment (medical botox over my forehead, head and neck), my migraine and headache levels are a lot lower, about 75% lower on average. Hence why in my kintsugi inspired portrait I’ve put crackles of fractures over my forehead, as a symbolic sign of migraines. It’s a great treatment when I get it.

The clue is: when I can receive it. During Covid lockdown last year, I just squeaked in my treatment the day before lockdown, then 3 months later. Boom. No treatments, nearly all hospitals in the UK classed botox as an elective pain management treatment. Er .. what? No. This is not a nice to have elective, this is an essential quality of life treatment. No treatment, no life. So I had to close my business fully for 2 months and my lovely clients waited patiently and used the time to follow my guidance on creating content for their website. I then struggled to get back onto my feet and it was only by my second treatment post lockdown that I felt back to my usual levels.

So last year I went really really quiet online for a while, then I came back and knocked out three websites for the end of the year, launched one earlier this year and have one in the pipeline that I’m super excited to show you when we launch that wonderful ladies website, brand and marketing materials. The whole shebang.

Why am I sharing this vulnerability?

Because you may be a fellow person that can’t work in an office, or is struggling to find work but you have a brain, a passion and ability to work and live life on your terms. You set your working hours, you choose your clients, you run the business that supports you and your life.

Everybody has challenges in their life with their family needs, health, disability, energy levels and all sorts of things that anybody outside of you may not have a clue about. But its stuff you’re balancing, juggling and dealing with. For around 5 years in this last decade, I managed two grandparents end of life care while also working for myself and managing my own health needs. Brutal at times, challenging, exhausting but with moments of joy with family, joy with clients and joy in getting through it all.

I can help you, because when I’ve got the system of my website, my planning, and ‘the doing’ fully running, I use tech to manage a lot of what I do. Last year I blogged 3 days a week, I was insane for thinking and attempting to keep that up. I have so much I want to talk about, teach and share and I couldn’t keep going at that pace .. not once my client workload started back up again (my other reason for going quieter), after the initial covid lockdown shock and my clients needing to hold onto their money to deal with uncertainties.

Well, now I’m making the changes to my business I’ve always wanted to do. I’m starting to teach what I do in my power hour ‘ask your question’ service .. I can teach more people to achieve and edit their websites than I can do on my own. I want people to know strategies for working smarter, ie. think first and then do. For folks to know their tech and how it can help automate certain processes .. for example. I write a blog post and my website will share it automatically out to Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram, and Twitter for me.

For some of us, life requires a lot of planning, thinking and adjusting. So from me, a person who is very used to challenges, and the adventures in life that inspires both bad and a lot of good too, I know that I can help you stand out online, and use tech to be great online with your website and more.

This is where I’m going to confront my fear of public failure, claim my challenges for the growth opportunities they are to work smarter. Life and business is not a race, we do not have to constantly be the hare .. we can be mostly the tortoise slow and steady with focus and purpose. Then moments of definitive action where we have speedy energy for achieving a lot.

Here’s where I rise to my challenge, to live out loud. I plan to do better, to put myself out there the best way I can and encourage you to do the same.

Let me help you build and design your website, branding and photography for your business .. or attend my new training course where I’ll show you how to launch your own website and brand in 10 weeks. Something you’ll then know and be able to do for yourself again and again.

What’s your challenge or challenges
& how are you rising to the occasion?

It’s been exactly one year today since my story, as part of this book of amazing women, was published online.

Thank you Michelle & Christian Ewen of Write On Time.

Part of the journey to being recognised for what you do, it to recognised yourself and put yourself forward. Here’s what I wrote in the application to be considered for interview:

I’m not a quitter .. through a few different iterations of business and newly launching a jewellery business, I’m working hard to always grow and find new sources of income being self-employed. My main business is The Heart’s Design where I help others build a digital business from the heart. I supplement this with my photography to help people ‘be’ in their business, to show their face and tell their story visually. Lastly, my new jewellery business is a heart hobby that I’m using as a marketing strategy to show people how to build micro-businesses of their own and how I can help them do that. This latest initiative and strategy is very new but I’m all for empowering women to launch their dreams, find new ways of working and truly own their voice, both visually and consistently online.

Thanks and I love your daily inspiration. I know a few of the women who’ve been interviewed and so I’m writing to see if I’ll be considered?

Cathie

I got a quick reply from Christian Ewen and had a really fun chat for 20 minutes, he wrote up a quick article using .. you guessed it 365 words. I said I loved it and added a photo to show who I am .. bing, bada boom within 30 hours I was suddenly on their blog. It was real, I got to a part of a really great group of entrepreneurial women.

You can see me on Day 286, where I talk about this website design business and more.

They gave me this subtitle as my summary: A serial entrepreneur operating within a variety of sectors – including web design and branding; portrait photography; and jewellery. Read the 365 words of my business story from 2019.

Cathie Heart, Director of The Heart’s Design

A serial entrepreneur operating within a variety of sectors – including web design and branding; portrait photography; and jewellery

There’s a couple of things that people should know about me… Firstly, I have an inner core of rebellion. With my short hair and long streak on top, I don’t fit the larger society’s mould of what a woman should look like. Secondly, I love patterns, lines and structure – creating order out of chaos. These particular facets of my personality are crucial to the three business areas I now operate within.

Before I went self-employed, I worked in the computer systems validation field – specialising in the pharmaceutical industry. After going through a redundancy experience, I left my home in Buckinghamshire and relocated to Leeds to look after my grandparents – one of whom was heading into full dementia. Both grandparents have since passed on and I supported my parents as we delivered end of life care.

During this period, I needed some part-time work so I founded The Heart’s Design in 2012. As a certified tech geek with an MSc in Information Management, I’d designed websites before and knew it was something I could do. What the business has turned into is something which resonates with me on a personal level, because the primary objective has evolved into enabling women to do for themselves regardless of what they’re told – and make an income doing it!

I first picked up a camera in 2001 when I needed some stock images for the websites I was building. I relaunched Cathie Heart Photography in 2018 and always shoot for the end purpose. If my client requires images for social media or a portrait for their wall, the approach has to be different but I’m comfortable with any brief. Again, it comes back to creating order – teasing out my clients’ real purpose so the end result is wholly representative of what I’ve been entrusted to deliver.

My jewellery business, which I founded two-and-a-half months ago following a nasty bout of flu, is a heart hobby that gives me the perfect reason to have some much-needed time away from the computer screen. Using chain links to create handwoven jewellery, I want to use this venture as a marketing strategy – showing people how to build microbusinesses of their own with my help.

It’s an interesting quick summary of where I was in December 2019 vs where I am today a year later.

I absolutely love seeing people face their challenges, adversities and make something new and what a year it has been for that with all of the Covid lockdowns. A few of my fellow business women have closed their doors, others have slowed down and some have had amazing years using the lulls in work to pivot and really focus on what they are doing .. they are thriving. I am so happy to see that.

I am very fortunate in all the skills that I’ve honed over many years to be able to launch online businesses, I could build as many as I can think of ideas for. I made the choice to learn able to do this when I was deciding on my first degree at university in business information systems and I’ve continued this through the years with every skill I’ve added.

I know many ways to work smarter and a lot of it is thinking strategically and then using tech to automate as much of that as possible. I know that websites and tech systems, when used well, give us a wealth of abilities we can’t do as easily without it. I wouldn’t be without the systems I’ve put in place in my business for all the chocolate in the world!

Even if it’s a small heart hobby business like my chainmail jewellery. Any service or product you make is worth sharing with the world. I’d love to help establish you with a website to share your expertise with the world. And, by an expert, I mean that you will know your subject (that you do your business in) more than the average person in any room of people you are with.

I may have started my jewellery business as a marketing ploy within my networking groups, to showcase building a business, building a brand, website, and more. The honest truth is that a year later, I really do enjoy making chainmail, it is so very different than website design, branding and photography. It’s away from a computer screen (hallelujah!) and it slows down my mental whirring into quiet enjoyment and pleasure at making something with my hands.

So don’t hide your talents and your ‘light’ like I’ve done for many years, hoping that people would find me and appreciate the value of what I do. Sort out a website, get some photos and share what you do because if you’re not happy with your marketing materials .. you’ll never promote yourself. Take it from a website designer that until October 2019 wasn’t happy with her website. I was the equivalent of a plumber with a leaky house! But, not anymore.

So grab 2021, shake off 2020 and make this your year in business, and if you’ve had a great year, do it again. For those who are starting out, it’s a crazy winding journey and you’ll learn a lot .. let me build you a great stand-out foundation with a website, brand, and photographs that work for you when you market yourself and your business. Or join in with my beta launch for doing your website and brand in 10 weeks with me guiding you step by step.

Be part of a network of entrepreneurial women and a businesswoman yourself in 2021 .. I dare you to make your dreams of a life on your terms a reality.

With all the many hundreds of hashtags for every day of the week, special interest days, weeks or months. For example its Repeat Day today .. if you loved it once, why not do it again? I like being part of conversations, learning something new because every day is a school day in this game of life!

I’m still not having 6 kids, a car and a mansion thanks .. I’d rather my partner, daughter, cat and aspirations of van life!

Think of hashtags as labels of conversation.

Consider that the internet is one big room with millions of conversations happening. It would be great if would could know what those conversations were so that we could join in.

Oh how I wish this were possible on networking evenings!

Hashtags are the labels of what is happening in those conversations. The best way that people will know, like and trust you, is to show up in those conversations.

There are three kinds of hashtag groups to be part of:

Days of the Week

There are many many hashtags that feature a day of the week, this is a great way for you to create marketing content in your business that takes part in this conversation labels. For example: use #FollowFriday sometimes also known as #FF on twitter, to tag your friend, colleague, fellow business collaboration and talk about it.

Interesting Days and Awareness Events

There’s a great site that I use to figure out what is coming up in the future that I could use to start or continue a conversation.

It’s called: Days of the Year.

I like this site because its clear, friendly and free.

As well as providing our services and skills as a business, we can also be volunteers for a cause. Most causes have an awareness day, week or month. Show a rounded person in your business, what are you passionate about.

It doesn’t always have to be about philanthropy, the fact you’re a chocoholic means that you could have spoken about it being #ChocolateMacaroonDay today. Maybe you’ve bought some from a local shop and they did something unique in their customer service that you loved. That inspired you to do something similar in your own business. Mixing both a personal interest with something in your business.

Topics in and around what you do in your business

Thirdly you can use hashtags that relate directly to what you do in your business. Think of all the ways you can name your services. Mine would be #WebDesign #WebsiteDesign #Wordpress #WebsiteDesigner #WebDesigner and even add your country initials: UK. Making it #WebDesignUK.

There is an easy way to search and find what is popular and used frequently and those that are less popular and less frequently. I’d advocate mixing and matching both. When doing a # search on Instagram in their search box you will see the frequency number as well.

Always think about how to get your content shared for as long as possible. If you consider popularity numbers you’ll know that in the stream of conversation used 5 million times, your content will last seconds before thousands of other posts will push it out of sight. This is why we use less popularly known hashtags so that our content will be shown for longer within that hashtag stream. Do you remember this graphic from my blog in doing your marketing using your blog AND social media?

One thing to note, people DO follow hashtags. If you aren’t aware of it or aren’t following hashtags relevant to your business .. you’re missing out on being visible and part of the conversation.

Share your work, your knowledge and expertise, let people know you’re there. Choose the days of the week that you will regularly write and share a blog post full of value and supplement it with marketing posts to join the conversation. With hashtags that fit those days.

Remember to also engage and write comments on others social media AND their blogs. Don’t be the odd duck who just talks outwards, expecting praise and adoration comments. It won’t happen. You also need to comment and interact with others .. soon you’ll build a network of people who reciprocate and before you know it, you’ll have new networks of connections.

Be brave, be visible and part of the conversation, those hashtags are simply labels so that you know what the topic is that’s being discussed.

Wish I could have those as virtual reality bubbles above peoples heads in real life at networking events!

What will you talk about today using hashtags?

What will you comment on today via a hashtag search?

Bullet Journals!

YES .. love it .. erm, but.

What is .. a Bullet Journal?

I have both successfully and unsuccessfully been using Bullet Journals for years.

I think you want to know how I use it successfully but let me start with the unsuccessful bit as well, because this is where I learned a lot.

I have been unsucessful at using bullet journals because:

• I tried to fit someone else’s mould of what should work
• I didn’t really think about what I was trying to achieve and why
• I didn’t know how to fit it into my lifestyle
• I wanted to be neat and tidy, I couldn’t embrace the mess

Read that last bit again, I couldn’t embrace the mess. I wanted perfection .. I’m a designer, I should be able to make it look good and I was waaaaay to focused on it being beautiful than functional. *Hangs my head in shame* because I do my best teach the functionality of websites over design aesthetics! Things nearly always do better when aesthetically pleasing but sometimes you’ve just got to do it.

I am dyslexic, and one of the neurodiverse people who doesn’t always think in a nice line. More like trying to find a line of commonality in a scattergraph! I think in concepts and pictures and then describe that. Sometimes my past, present and future tenses merge (I can still hear my English teaching telling me off about that) and I kind of explode ideas and vomit out snippets of stuff. Not ADHD, just passionate and far too inspired and can’t get my brain out onto a page with a pen fast enough, nor even with a keyboard and touch-typing!

Bullet journals .. a wonderful hand written hybrid diary of lists, tasks, events, mind maps, brain dumps, notes and doodles. It is what you make of it.

Let me say that again. It is, what YOU make of it.

You.

Let go of the proclaimed aesthetic perfection of bullet journals.

Embrace being you. Perfectly imperfect you.

Just get it done.

So let me throw a wrench into the mix here. Let me show you what people want you to think Bullet Journaling is all about in photos.

The above makes us all sigh and think, yeah, my life could be perfection if I could do that. Oh if only it were picture perfect with candles, ALL the stationery and some biscuits too. Then I could do it.

Wrong.

If you truly love the aesthetics and want to spend time making them beautiful, by all means go for it. For me, it stopped me really using it in a way that works for me.

Here are what my Bullet Journal pages look like in reality!

I absolutely crave structure, I love it when I know what is going on. That happens when I plan for it .. but I also hate being hemmed in. Problem. It’s about finding the balance of what works for you, that’s the joy of being self employed. You are the boss, you can discover how you work best.

So while I don’t have a great tip on layouts and stuff like that for might work for you .. I can say this. When you find your way of having your bullet journal, it frees your brain up.

So keep writing in it, after a while you’ll spot the stuff you want to track, list, remember, be grateful for etc. It is a living book to support you.

What are my successes with my Bullet Journal?

I love my bright zingy dot filled journal. I used to be put off by boxed grids that were either too big or too small. Hey! I’m fussy about some stuff 😉

I really like the tiny pencil case that straps onto my book, it keeps my essentials: 1 black pen, 1 blue pen, 1 pencil, eraser, ruler and sharpener. I don’t need anything else.

Having a pencil. Some days a pen feels too permanent, so I write with a pencil. For those days where I need to freedom to make a mistake, erase it and try again. Mostly when I’m rushing doing client notes into it and scribbling.

That I now don’t care if it doesn’t stay perfect, that I completely mix up all the pages. Each has headings, the days of notes are clear, the month forecasts and brain dump pages are clear. When I want to break the mould and have a pretty page .. should I ever feel that I want a pretty page, then I can make one.

I’ve let go of having trackers .. I ended up judging myself and I’ve no time for that anymore. Or rather, I’m not giving any time to that any more.

Gratitude – to have the grace period to find the moments of joy and appreciation for where I am in life today. Sometimes it’s about fresh bedding to climb into, a smile, other times its big wins. This is my reminder to focus on positives.

Brain Dumps – i.e. huge tasks lists that I can’t organise straight out of my head, I do as a brain dump. Under where I’ve put T (Time) and E (Energy) is the amount of time I think it will take. I’m sometimes woefully bad at guessing how long things will take but I’m getting better. Lastly I put a smily face happy, neutral, low to denote how I need to feel in order to complete a task. There are times where my brain just needs some simple dumb tasks and I can scan that column to find low time and low energy level tasks, so that i can fill a 15 minute or 30 minute spot of time and complete a task.

I’ll put this into a new spot to really highlight this. I’ve found the best thing I’ve done for myself is to put an energy level mark against each task. We all become brain fried and zombie like at different parts of the day, overwhelmed but still needing to be able to do something to feel like we’ve been productive or had a ‘win’. I now break down big tasks into smaller pieces so that when I’m short on time or low on brain energy I can find something I can do that still moves me towards my goals. That tortoise did complete the race, so can I and so can you.

Confession .. I did write the daily journal from yesterday in a slower hand and made it a bit ‘prettier’ for the photo. On the whole though its a work in progress, just like me. I also struggled to find pages to photograph that did have all sorts of sensitive information on it!!

Some books to get you started.

If you’re interested in learning more about this, here’s a great book: The Bullet Journal Method: Track Your Past, Order Your Present, Plan Your Future. It’s from the guy that started the whole BuJo movement, you can also learn a lot for free on the Bullet Journal website. BuJo, the affectionate nickname for Bullet Journalling.

I recommend buying this one first, its the foundation of WHY you might want to bullet journal. Once you figure out your why, you’ll figure out what you want to bullet journal and how you can fit it into your life. I can’t teach you that, but I can show you and signpost a way for you to discover yourself.

I also found this book very useful too with lots of different structures: How to Bullet Plan: Everything You Need to Know About Journaling with Bullet Points. She covers a variety of kinds of things to track and do. I’ve got this book physically and I’ve dog eared the pages that are the ones that ‘fit’ me.

What have been some bullet journal tips you’ve experienced that work for you?

Let me be clear, I am not paid to write this, have no affiliation with them but if they did that then I would. I’m a fan of their plugin and what it does for free.

This is a long one so, grab that cuppa and a note pad.

When it comes to writing blog posts, it’s a good idea to focus it around one keyword or phrase for a subject area that you are wanting to be found for, and indexed by Google and other search engines. I wrote a blog post about what to focus on to boost your blog posts for SEO. This blog post you’re currently reading now teaches you how to do it.

Focus on one topic per blog

If you’re a wedding photographer, with no weddings to publish right now, why not write a blog post about a venue you’ve worked at. Sharing a few of your best photos from weddings at that venue, showing the different locations and the great features about that venue. Your keyword would then be that wedding venue location.

This means that you’ll be found as a wedding photographer who photographs at that venue. Repeat this for all venues you enjoy working at.

But, back to SEO and how to use RankMath.

Why I like RankMath SEO

The reason I love Rank Math SEO the best out of the main three SEO tools I know which are Yoast, All In One SEO and RankMath .. I love it because it’s explicit in what you can improve on your blog post for SEO. It literally tells you and your RankMath button turns from red, to yellow to green. So easy to understand when you’re doing good. If you want to know more, check out their comparison chart of what RankMath does versus the others.

There are many features and abilities that this tool does for free, that other plugins charge you for. Like Search Console integration, complete site wide analysis of your SEO and how to improve it, tracking 404 errors which is when your website bloops and links to missing content. I could keep going but for now I want to focus on your blog posts and what do to for that.

First step, write your blog post.

Write a blog post title that includes the main topic keyword or phrase .. about that topic you’re going to write.

Include that same phrase into the first sentence, or at least the first paragraph of your blog post. Do this in a human way. Words are powerful and can be said in a multitude of ways. You’ll notice that my post is about Search Engine Optimisation and I included that phrase in my first sentence. Within the first paragraph of this post, I’ve also mentioned RankMath SEO, the main topic of this post. Let that be your guide/inspiration of what you’re aiming to do on yours.

Write the rest of your blog post with no other aim than to get those those out of your head and on the screen (or document or notepad if you write there first). Then edit, refine and condense it so that there is little to no waffle filling. Say what you’re going to say.

Fire up RankMath SEO and add your keyword/phrase.

On the top right of your WordPress blog writing screen you’ll see a pinky red button with a number out of 100.

Click on this button to open up your RankMath SEO options.

It will open up a side panel on the right and it will you a preview of what search engines will display about your blog, ie. its title, the link and a short description. Beneath that preview screen is the first main point of focus, your keyword or phrase.

Into this box type your blog posts main keyword or phrase followed by a comma. So mine will be Rank Math SEO for this blog .. funny that huh, its their example too! One of the few times this coincidence will happen for me. If your keyword or phrase doesn’t turn into a yellow button, then its not an active keyword for RankMath to focus on.

You’ll also notice that I ticked this as Pillar Content, this means that this is content that is evergreen and always useful. Relating back to Wedding Photographers, if you are writing about a single wedding, this is not Pillar Content. If you are writing about a venue, I would say that is pillar content as that is about a venue that will be there for a long time. It’s useful information to your wedding parties. The same with talking all variety of suppliers you work with and how you work as a wedding photographer.

Now you’ve set your keyword, you’ll notice that the rankings out of 100 on the top button changes. Mine has now changed from 17 and a pink button upto 76 and a yellow button. It’s learning how to help us do our SEO better.

TIP: At this point in using the block editor in WordPress you’ll want to be able to flip between editing blocks and then viewing your Rank Math SEO tips again. If you want the WordPress blocks view to edit your text or image alt tags click on the cog, that’s your blog block settings. If you want to view the RankMath SEO tips, click on the colour button.

Refine your blog using RankMaths’ SEO Tips.

You’ll see above that in the course of writing this blog post for you that I’ve done the main key tick points of SEO for this article. I now need to write a better SEO description that includes my particular keyword phrase ‘Rank Math SEO’.

You can do this by editing the Snippet.

When I do this it pushes my SEO score into the 80+ out of 100 and the button turns green. YES! This is the point that I know this blog post will do okay for SEO.

Of course, I can spend extra time refining further and getting my remaining errors down, most of which are simple to do.

It gives advice on blog post titles to include a positive or negative word, to also use power words. But, we also need to understand that not every title needs to follow this otherwise a scan of your blog post titles will start looking formulaic. So understand that these are guidances and not firm and fast rules, some rules need to be understood and then broken with a reason.

There’s one error I nearly always fail in for Content Readability and that’s using a table of contents. I’ll get there folks, one day but for now .. it’s not a focus of my efforts to fix that last niggle.

In order to improve your SEO now that you’ve got your tips on what to do, you’ll need to go back to your blog and edit stuff.

WordPress Tips for how to do this in the block editor

This is the WordPress block editor

This is the standard WordPress blog post block editor. Each block can contain different types of content: text, images, headings, quotes, groups, columns and so much more.

Each block has its own settings. While the full blog post document has its own settings too, which is where you’ll find your categories, tags and more.

How to access the block editor settings and Rank Math settings

Earlier in the post I said that you will need to flip between the WordPress block editor settings of your blog and RankMath settings as well. Let me refresh that tip so its fresh in your mind.

Creating Internal and External Links

Creating a link in WordPress is pretty easy. Select the words you want to create into a link and then hit the ‘link’ button.

For internal links, type a few of the words of the blog post title you want to link to and it will bring up that post. I’d advise adding the link to a group of descriptive words. You’ll see above and right now, that I can internally link to a blog post I wrote previously about SEO boosting tips for blog posts, where I show the visual anatomy of a blog post and what impacts on SEO.

For external links, you’ll need to have the URL address of the place you want to link to on the internet. In this case I’m going to link directly to the RankMath website. So that you can do your research and also download the plugin for your WordPress website. Always set external links to open in a New Tab. This means that your viewers are not being taken immediately away from your website, the link will open in a new tab and your website will remain in their browser for them to come back to.

Changing your blog post title

If you wish to change your title to add power words, or you’re just wanting to improve the title from what you originally wrote. The go-to the top of the blog post and edit the title.

TIP: check your blog post permalink.

You can edit your SEO to be a simpler version of your blog post title. It’s best to have a blog URL between 50 to 75 characters. This does not include the main part of your domain but the bit in bold after your domain name.

Image Alt Text

Ah, now these are a powerhouse. This is where you get to be descriptive (but not too wordy) about what the image is portraying. This is where the power of words comes in, you get to describe using your keyword / phrase what the purpose of that image is, ie. the value it’s giving.

The Alt Text that I wrote for the above image is: A visual guide of the Image Alt Tag box in WordPress blocks editor so that you know where write the purpose of that image.

Alt text is also a powerful accessibility feature for those who are blind. Screen readers read through a website and any images that bring value to what the text is talking about, that image alt text is spoken aloud letting that person know what the image is about. Write in that box what you’d want described to your blind reader and google will also benefit, as well as you.

Now you know about Rank Math SEO and how to use it, here’s how to install it.

Within your WordPress admin dashboard you’ll see a menu on the left for Posts, Pages, Appearance etc. Look for Plugins and then Add New. In the search box on the right, enter the words Ranks Math SEO and it will show the results. Click Install Now to add the plugin to your WordPress website.

From here it will take you into a Wizard that will help you do the magic of setting up your SEO on your website, just for you.

Ta dah! You now have the beginnings of SEO set up on your website and also now know how to do SEO on your blog posts. And, blog posts of current and valuable content is exactly what google loves because you’ve done everything needed to teach it what is valuable about what you do. In turn, google say thank you and you’ll go up the rankings bit by bit with each and every blog post you publish and you will be found.

I cannot guarantee you a page one ranking immediately, or even soon. But, time, consistent effort and smart thinking about what you want to be found for .. well, that will help google, help you to be more visible. There’s lots more to do but this is your guide just for doing good SEO on your blog posts.

If you like what I’ve written and what I share, but don’t have the time to setup your website, design it, make it do the stuff you want to do .. that’s what I’m here for. Shoot me a message via my enquiry form and lets see how I can speed you up to being great online.

A ‘like’ thumbs up nowadays is so blase, it’s the simplest way for people to say ‘I see what you’re doing and I like it’. But. Wouldn’t it be so much more powerful to have one of these more meaningful reactions:

• oh I love what you’re doing
• that is so funny
• I care about what your doing
• wow, that is amazing
• oh that so sad I feel like crying with you
• I’m so mad that this happened

Emotions are powerful, you’re engaging and reacting to a post by someone show your emotions and connect with them on a deeper level. Plus if you’re showing support to help a friends business, you’ll help them so much more with an emotional reaction than a simple like. Yet, if you only have 1 second to click like, it’s better than no engagement at all.

Besides the obvious that you can feel many things, Facebook gives different engagement weights to different reaction emotions and feelings. This is powerful when it comes to marketing well on a social network, not just Facebook but all the others too that display different reaction buttons. The more different reactions you get, which includes the all-powerful comments engagement, the better your future posts displays within that network.

So this is a friendly reminder that being social, is all about engagement .. that’s what we are all chasing, that real connection with others. So hearts, likes, funny laughs and the highest reaction of all: a comment .. these are all engagements that social networks are tracking and weighing up. Be with your ideal people in their spaces, help them and let them know you are there with an engagement that helps them and get you noticed faster.

I certainly appreciate every heart, laugh and even an anger emotion because it means I’ve connected with you in some way.

So if you’re trying to game the system in order to appear high in the rankings? DON’T.

Google and other search engines (yes there’s more than Google), they are all learning the intelligence of our language. So just be yourself, write like a human. Then, once you’ve written your first draft, look at what you’re saying and learn how to improve the value of it by moving sentences around, and finding ways to put your main search phrases you want to be found by into the blog post titles and first paragraphs of your blog post.

I’ve created a graphic, so that you can see the visual anatomy of a blog post. Often the advice blogs (of which there are thousands) on this very topic, give you the key areas of where to focus your SEO efforts .. but not a visual display. So I’m doing different and giving you a visual guide as well.

Keywords & Phrases

These are the words and phrases your clients will search for to find a solution to their problem. If they are looking for a Travel Photographer, put that into the titles, first sentence/paragraph of your page or post. Don’t just use that one phrase of Travel Photographer every single time, switch it up with other words and phrases like ‘Capturing Scotland’. There are always many words around your keywords and phrases to supplement them with too.

Headings

Google loves headings; it indicates a priority of information. Your blog post title is always the H1 tag, the highest priority of info. Main headers in your blog are H2, and nested under those are H3’s and so forth. Most blogs do well with two levels of headings which split and group the blog into recognisable chunks. Chunking also helps the reader too.

File Names of Images

Make the file names descriptive, for example, MysteriousMistyHighland.jpg – search engines read this and understand a descriptive file name. Once your website is indexed, it also notes all the images. If you’ve ever used Google Images, those file names are used to give context to those images.

Alt Tags on Images

These tags are fabulous for providing a deeper one sentence (approx. 30 words) description of what is in the image. Alt Tags are not just useful to search engines but of most benefit to blind people using screen readers. They can’t see the picture, so your description here helps them understand what you are presenting to everyone else. So be clear in your description, and you’ll help search engines and your blind accessibility customers too.

Captions of Images

Similar to the Alt Tag it allows you to add a little blurb of writing to your image, a descriptor or anecdote. It can be a direct duplicate of your Alt Tag if you wish, but it’s a chance to phrase things slightly different and capitalise on the variety of words available in our languages.

Internal Blog Links

If you’re asking someone to contact you, why not link directly to your contact page. Make it easy on your viewer. Any time you reference content written on another blog post, or you’re asking them to do an action like ‘visit our portfolio’ or ‘contact us’ .. make it a link. Search engines will crawl through your site, and the more genuine (not artificially stuffed links) will rank the pages and posts of your website depending on its cross-linking.

Use an SEO plugin

SEO plugins will do part of the heavy lifting of optimising blog posts for search engines. Some plugins will even if very detailed instructions on what to improve, for example, RankMath SEO and Yoast. All In One SEO is also a great contender but does not provide a guide per blog post on what to improve.

Tip: If you are a Divi theme user, ignore Yoast. It does not play well with shortcodes.

Do you know that your own website blog can host content far far longer than any social media network?

It seems blatantly obvious to me but sometimes the stunningly obvious, its err .. not obvious!

On any social network, you may have a few hours (if you’re lucky: months) of your content being visible, sometimes just it’s just minutes. I’m giving side-eye to Twitter here. It’s a great platform that mimics live conversations and that is its strength, its immediate. But, if your customer isn’t there in those minutes, they’ve missed learning about you, knowing something more and the chance to like what you do. Which all builds up to trusting you know what you’re doing.

Your marketing, especially marketing with any value needs duration and the only place you will get that is on your own website and I’m hoping that you’re blogging too. Because honestly, google LOVES blog posts. Especially if its evergreen content that can keep being re-shared!

I saw a really interesting graphic showing how the Twitter content lifespan was 18 minutes, Facebook is 5 hours, Instagram is 21 and so forth. It was written back in 2016 and a lot changes in 4 years, what tech did then with their algorithms is not necessarily how it works today. If you want to know the details on this read Jon-Stephen Stansel post on How Long Does Bad Content Last? .. still, even with all the changes there is a fundamental truth. Your blog content will outlast any social media presence, with one HUGE bonus that I’ll tell you further down.

In the original infographic, it showed the minutes, hours, months duration for how long content was displayed effectively to your audience on each network. I’ve repurposed this but made it into a more abstract timeline, because while the exact hours and minutes do matter to some (plus I can’t find any recent studies on it) .. its not the gist of my message here. So I won’t bother sharing the original infographic, it’s now out of date from 2016. But the principle of it remains true.

So let this be a hint, have a search bar on your website.

If you are blogging, and creating value for your customers to learn from your experience .. help them by letting them know your blog categories and giving them a search bar as well.

So what’s the HUGE bonus for writing content on your websites blog?

*drumroll*

You can keep re-sharing it!

Yeah, yeah I snuck that tidbit in earlier .. but seriously, recognise the power potential of this statement.

You have spent time creating graphics (I hope) for some or all of your social media. That’s time you’re not getting back, which includes the time of posting to each network or using a scheduler. Everything in business is about what you choose to spend your time on. Social media while great for networking and being where your customers are can be a huge colossal waste of time if not done effectively. Even the masters of social media marketing won’t get it right every time.

The other massive benefit of having a blog is that you can reshare your content using a social media management tool like Blog 2 Social. I have a blog post that I’m writing up about that plugin that I’ll release soon. So you can write once, reshare your evergreen content, again and again .. and again .. then again at any point of time you wish and any frequency too.

Now, isn’t that a smarter way to work and market what you do?