From the pages of glossy Seventeen and Cosmopolitan magazines to our ever-growing obsession with Buzzfeed, quizzes are as addictive as a Game of Thrones marathon (and I do NOT say that lightly). We love quizzes because they teach us about ourselves. As humans, it’s in our nature to want to understand ourselves better and test ourselves. Beyond that, we want to see how we stack up against our friends. This curiosity is what makes quizzes such a fabulously effective lead generation tool.

It’s Trade Show season!! Trade Shows are one of my FAVORITE ways to build wholesale business, grow brand recognition and connect with retail stores. There’s a special magic that happens when you get to spend a few days with similar small businesses, in a booth that was once only a concept on a piece of paper.  You make tons of new friends (even though yes, they are technically the competition) and get to connect with some of the BEST buyers and retailers throughout the country. It’s as exciting as it is exhausting!

Trade Shows can cost your business thousands of dollars, so when you decide to take the leap you want to be as prepared as possible. Whether it’s your first show or fiftieth, the key to a successful show is plenty of preparation. These are my top 21 tips to make sure you rock your next trade show and make the most of your investment!

The impact that blogging has had on our small business has been incredible. When we first started, we knew blogging would be a great strategy, but we didn’t quite understand the reaches it would have. We knew we had stories to tell, strategy to dish out and tactics to teach, so we went for it.

Over the course of our blogging career we’ve pivoted our content, cut back on the amount that we blog and have since welcomed on guest bloggers to generate fresh stories and tactics for you guys. We continue to reach people from over 189 countries, bring in over 75k visitors every month, and are able to use this platform to showcase our products (i.e. make money). We know that this outcome is the goal for a lot of you, but it’s hard to get started.

From ideation to outlining, drafting, editing, to formatting, consistently creating content for your business can feel like a never-ending to-do list. No sooner are you done with one blog post, vlog, or podcast episode, and it’s time to move on to the next one.

But what if instead of creating more content, you could just add just a few extra steps to the content you’re already taking the time to create and turn it into two, three, or even four additional pieces of content?

That, my friends, is what’s called content repurposing, and if you do it strategically, you can save a ton of time along with your creative sanity.

If you’re a product based business, chances are you’re already on Instagram (if you aren’t yet, you should be!). Being a predominantly visual platform, Instagram is a vital business tool for those of us who are makers and creatives.

So you’ve made some beautiful things and you’re ready to take the photos and share them with the world... But what do you actually SAY?

Ultimately you want people to buy your work, but you need to write something other than “I made a thing, go buy it” for every post.

I’m going to let you in on four super-secret golden rules of using Instagram as a maker.

LeadPages, LeadPages, LeadPages.

Here’s the thing – as a WordPress user, I don’t personally use LeadPages. I choose to build sales pages/landing pages with Beaver Builder and/or Divi (for clients whose sites are built that way), BUT I used LeadPages for a long time and I loved it, just like most of the small business world.

So, what is it?

LeadPages is basically just a system to help you build landing pages and sales pages EASILY.

How I got ranked on the first page of Google within 2 hours of publishing my post! Learn to use Yoast to maximize your SEO; with just a few tweaks you too can rank highly! 

We adore ConvertKit over here at ThinkCreativeCollective, but we always wish we could make it prettier! Our guest blogger for today, Jessica Stansbury, is giving us a quick tip to create customized quote boxes in your ConvertKit emails. Time to enjoy some prettyness in your inbox!  

You just launched your online store and you’re excited about all of the possibilities that having an online business brings, like more money and more freedom. You’ve worked hard to create a really great product and stock your store full of inventory that you know your customers will love. But when your website goes live, all you get is crickets. Here's how to get massive traffic to your online store (even without a marketing budget!).