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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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Alright a noob's question to a veteran fan, when do you think the blatant hatred for Dick started? I've heard from old, 50+ years old fans that he was the best, he was badass, better than Batman A lister. What changed? I know DC can't stand their legacy characters and they've always put abuse in their books, but I want to know about the fandom. When I joined I fell for the Tim Drake Best but Underrated Robin thing until I realized that was polar opposite of the truth. When did That start?

Okay, well it took me forever to get back to this ask and finish like I promised, but I kept my promise, huzzah! Long as fuck theorizing on this topic below:

So here’s the thing. I’ve been fucking around fandoms since the 90s, and I can 100% confirm that Everyone Hates Dick Grayson absolutely was not always a thing. Its a large part of WHY I’m so convinced that modern fandom is just fucking WEIRD about him, because like....I actively have something else to compare it to. I can absolutely remember what Bat fandom was like in regards to him back in the days of the Bludhaven yahoo group and squidge.org and other random URLs that mean absolutely nothing to 99% of you, lolol.

Like, there is very much, distinctly, DEFINITIVELY, a difference in how the majority of fandom views him and interacts with his character now, as opposed to like.....the first decade or so I was in fandoms.

And if I had to trace it back to a specific time period where there was like...an actual, visible sea change....the only thing I can come up with is around the Battle for the Cowl era, the start of the Morrison/Dickbats run. Not so coincidentally, this was the precise time I moved away from Batfam fandom after having pretty consistently being in it for a good ten years by then, BECAUSE there very clearly IMO was this change in how people were writing about Dick all of a sudden.

Like, there had been tensions building towards Dick’s character for awhile, probably ever since Jason’s return because like....in a sense, Dick’s too far removed from say, Tim, to be directly in competition with his character. What I mean is, there’s too little overlap in what people like about Tim and what people like about Dick for them to ever be like...a threat to each other’s fanbases in that respect, and push people to make a choice there. But with Dick and Jason, there’s enough overlap in them and what draws people to them - even just purely in terms of positioning within the Bat franchise, as an older Bat-sibling and former Robin that nevertheless is no longer Robin himself - that like....ever since Jason came back, you could start to see ‘fractures’ in how people viewed Dick. Because now there was another alternative to his character who occupied a similar......not sphere, but perhaps ‘level’ of the Batfamily franchise, and so people kinda started....picking sides, even though no actual sides had to be picked in the first place because its not actually a fucking competition.

And this isn’t to say the view of Dick in fandom and how he’s interacted with is the ‘fault’ of Jason’s return, not at all, just.....this is just me talking analytically, in terms of patterns and causality. Not trying to assign blame here, more just kinda explain the way it appeared to me anyway.

But then things all came to a head in the Battle for the Cowl era, and ignited stuff that had been lurking under the surface in SEVERAL different areas of fandom, and brought into direct conflict long-held assumptions and views and biases that had only never been in conflict before because they didn’t NEED to be in conflict before.

Basically, my Big Thesis about why fandom is the way it is about Dick, is that I feel its not so much that fans of other characters hate him, its that I think many of them RESENT him for very specific things and how those things like....make him a narrative obstacle to the kinds of stories they want to read and write about the Batfam specifically.

With the biggest examples here being Bruce fans, Jason fans and Tim fans.

See, my take is this:

1) I think a lot of Bruce fans resent Dick on some level because he’s actually the biggest obstacle standing in the way of the Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent view of things. As much as people have always liked to claim and take for granted that Dick is Bruce’s favorite or whatever, the truth is there is a far longer and far more VARIED history of Bruce and Dick being at odds than there is between Bruce and any other of his kids.

Essentially, in order to really sell Bruce as CONSISTENTLY being a good parent, regardless of what canon says or does at times.....DICK is the character you MOST have to rewrite or write around, change or ignore his stories, reframe his past interactions with Bruce in order to make this stick.

I know people are probably going “Umm what about Bruce and Jason though?” But the difference is, Bruce and Dick’s conflicts cover a lot more ground than Bruce and Jason’s. Its not that Bruce and Jason’s clashes aren’t epic and that Bruce’s behavior with Jason in stories like UTRH hasn’t been massively shitty....its that in terms of Bruce and Jason, these things are a lot more....confined, than they are with Bruce and Dick.

Basically, most of the major conflict between Bruce and Jason CAN be rewritten or avoided by simply addressing three or four definitive things: the Garzonas case and aftermath, Bruce’s actions/response in regards to the Joker killing Jason, Jason’s return and his wants and needs in regard to Bruce in UTRH, and Bruce’s view of Jason’s actions and ideology post his return.

None of these are small things by any means. But they are FINITE things. They’re concentrated into specific stories, specific areas of canon....and thus, more easily navigated around by anyone who wants to avoid engaging with these things in the form of Bruce being a shitty parent, and rewrite and reframe Bruce and Jason’s dynamic in the vein of Bruce is a Good Parent.

In contrast, with Dick and Bruce, to rewrite and reframe Bruce and Dick’s OVERALL dynamic in the vein of Bruce is a Good Parent......you’ve got a LOT more ground to cover.

There’s Bruce firing Dick as Robin, there’s Bruce not reaching out to Dick and being content to stay estranged from Dick for all the years they barely interacted, there’s the effect Bruce’s adopting Jason and making him Robin without a word to Dick in advance had on Dick, there’s Bruce still not using the conflict between them over that to make changes in how he interacted with Dick like say adopting him now, there’s Bruce’s actions and behavior towards Dick in the aftermath of Jason’s death, there’s Bruce’s inconsistent appearances in Dick’s stories in all the many times Dick very much needs help or comfort juxtaposed with Dick’s consistent appearances in Bruce’s stories any time he so much as calls him and asks him to show up due to the fact that canon writers can consistently be counted on to prioritize Bruce’s needs as more pressing than Dick’s needs, narratively speaking. There’s Bruce’s clear judgment of Dick in Last Laugh and failure to reach out and help Dick through its aftermath. There’s Bruce’s non-involvement in the extended greatest hits album that is one of the lowest periods of Dick’s life, encompassing Blockbuster, Tarantula and the destruction of Bludhaven, and Bruce’s non-helpful ‘fix’ in the wake of all that, which can be summed up as him yelling “suck it up, buddy.” And in the New 52 you’ve got Bruce’s shitty handling of the Court of Owls revelations and his treating the effect of these revelations on Dick as a total non-issue, there’s the aftermath of Forever Evil, there’s Bruce’s failure to say anything about why Dick went to Spyral even after seeing the effect it had on Dick’s relationships with the rest of his family, there’s the absolute disaster that was his handling of the Ric Grayson situation.....

See what I’m saying? Its not that Bruce doesn’t have plenty of fodder for being a shitty parent in stories with Jason, its just that the times and the ways he is are more isolated and contained, relatively speaking....thus more easily ‘treated’ by anyone who wants to FIX those parts of canon in order to realign it all in the framework of Bruce Wayne Is A Good Parent.

Its nowhere NEAR as easy to do that with Dick when you ACTUALLY engage with the full extent of how shittily Bruce has been written interacting with his eldest over the course of decades....

And so for fans of Bruce who very much WANT Bruce to be a good parent, that’s what they want to read, that’s what they want to write, that’s what they’re HERE for and stuff OUTSIDE that is stuff they (understandably) do not want to engage with....

This makes Dick actively an OBSTACLE to all of that. It makes him a Problem. Dick and his stories and his dynamics with Bruce, in order to truly align with Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, have to EXTENSIVELY be tackled and rewritten and reframed, and this is no easy feat or no small process.

And for fans of Bruce who are here for BRUCE first and foremost, not Dick, and who thus don’t want to and aren’t thrilled to be confronted with a need to PRIORITIZE him and his stories to such a large degree in order to ACTUALLY ‘fix’ canon - which for the record has nothing to do with Dick being more important of a character or anything to do with character preferences whatsoever, but rather is simply symptomatic of the ROLE Dick occupies in Bruce’s life, and is an extension of the fact that in any scenario in which Bruce Wayne Is A Good Parent, Dick, as his son, logically MUST be as much a priority at least some of the time as any other of his kids because THAT’S WHAT A GOOD PARENT DOES, HE MAKES HIS KIDS A PRIORITY.....

Like, its honestly understandable (even if thanks, I hate it) that people who really just WANT to focus on Bruce and his Good Parent-ness and don’t want to be forced into HAVING to make Dick and fixing or rewriting how Bruce has screwed up with him into a priority when writing fic that ultimately, for these fans, is still supposed to be ABOUT Bruce.....like, its not exactly rocket science, grasping how this could easily lead to people being even less keen on the guy, because he complicates so many stories they want to write without remotely being one of the characters they’re inspired to write in the first place.

So I mean, yeah. Dick very much became an object of resentment for a lot of Bruce fans, I think, for that reason specifically, and for the narrative obstacle he innately presents to anyone who just wants to write Good Parent Bruce and doesn’t want to have to write Bruce Actively Fixing His Mistakes With Dick in order to do so.

And again, this is pretty much JUST Dick in this particular role (especially as of the time I’m talking about) because much like how even though Bruce has his fuck-ups with Jason, they’re more finitely contained to specific narratives and TYPES of narratives....the same is true of Bruce’s interactions with his other kids. Yeah, he has his fuck-ups with them too, but again, they’re more isolated, more traceable back to singular sources and stories that are a lot more easily sidestepped and navigated around by anyone who just does not want to engage with Bruce Being a Bad Parent and the EFFECTS this has had on various of his kids throughout their stories as a result.

So you have this thing, about Dick, narratively speaking, not even a matter of character like or dislike. And its been there all along, slowly building story by story....

With it all coming to a head, I feel, in the Battle for the Cowl era, where Bruce is shuffled off-stage for a time, and REPLACED by Dick as Batman.....while at the same time Dick is cast in the same role of surrogate father figure to newcomer Damian, that Bruce was cast in with Dick when he and Dick were of similar ages to Dick and Damian now.

And Bruce was absolutely celebrated for how good he was with Dick back then - and with reason - BUT, I think this period with Dick and Damian, and the stories it told, brought front and center the fact and the awareness that it’d been a LONG TIME since Bruce was so uncritically celebrated for being a Good Parent, and with Dick specifically. And then additionally it made and kept front and center at this exact same time....people celebrating Dick for being a Good Parent (in essence) in much the way that they HADN’T celebrated Bruce for quite some time. And add to that the fact that Dick was doing this WHILE in the role of Batman himself, the same role Bruce had occupied in the parallel situation....so it made all this into a parallel that couldn’t easily be dismissed or discounted by saying things like “well Dick didn’t have the pressures of being Batman to deal with, being a good parent throughout all of this and STAYING that way would have been innately easier because of that.”

And thus....long-simmering resentment of the obstacle alleged favorite son Dick poses to actually writing Bruce Is A Good Parent content without significant revision or ommissions....ignited. With kinda the insult added to injury that now Dick was getting the same kind of praise and attention that these particular fans came to the franchise to see BRUCE be the focus and recipient of, not Dick.

2) At the same time, you have another large segment of fandom by this point, Jason’s fans. Or to be more accurate, you have a select but EXTREMELY vocal subset of Jason’s fans.....

Who come to Jason’s fandom with a very specific angle: they LIKE Jason as the misunderstood outcast of the Batfam, the black sheep alone and apart from the rest of the family who Just Don’t Get Him And Never Will, thus making him eternally sympathetic in this specific regard. But with that specific regard, in order to STAY eternal…..requiring that….nobody in the family gets him or cares or ever has really.

Thus once again, Dick just by the existence of him and his actual past dynamics with Jason, is a narrative obstacle to writing THIS specific narrative.

And so of course it had to be reframed and EMPHASIZED that Dick had always been a jerk to Jason, barely a brother, heck they barely even knew each other apparently - even when Jason came back and one of his first interactions with Dick post-Return was to clearly express that he’d always seen Dick as family, which very much does not mesh the idea that Jason and Dick barely knew each other or barely ever interacted before Jason died.

It also, of course, does not mesh with the idea that there’s nobody in the Batfamily who understands Jason, or is capable of seeing things his way instead of Bruce’s, or who cares enough to avenge him……because Last Laugh very much DOES exist, and puts the lie to all of that. Dick’s not only killed at least once (actually more than just once) and still remained fundamentally the same Dick Grayson he’s always been, but on top of that, it was the very person Jason desperately wanted to see dead as some kind of evidence, some sign that he had MATTERED to his family, that him being taken away from them hurt them enough that they felt driven to DO something about it, beyond the usual toss ‘em and lock ‘em.

Dick actually did that, ‘gave’ Jason what he wanted, and for the very same reasons Jason wanted it, to know that it was because of him, because of the loss of him, because he MATTERED and his absence HURT….and while of course, Dick was never the person Jason most wanted to see do that deed, want to see that evidence from….nonetheless, it very much does remain as significant evidence towards the fact that Jason mattered a great deal to Dick, enough even that having differing beliefs about killing would still be unlikely to ever stand between Dick having some kind of relationship with his returned-from-the-dead brother - because not only was it because of Jason (and Tim as well, admittedly, I’m not trying to gloss over the fact that he was part of the story and part of Dick’s motivation, this is just a matter of topical focus at the moment) not only was it actually BECAUSE of Jason that Dick crossed the line that so often he otherwise rigidly adheres to…it was never that realistic that Dick would judge and condemn Jason for killing, at least not by any narrative that took Last Laugh into consideration.

Because not only has Dick done the same thing himself, and MORE than wanted to do it on many other occasions as well thus he very clearly understands both the temptation and the arguments made for it…..BUT just as significantly IMO, is the AFTERMATH of Last Laugh. Where Dick very clearly was shown wrestling with and being affected by Bruce’s implicit judgment for what he’d done. Meaning not only was Dick never actually likely to condemn or judge Jason….he also is one of a handful of people most able to empathize with being judged or condemned by BRUCE for crossing that line. It never made sense or was realistic that there’d be this great divide between Dick and Jason after his return, that Dick was unable let alone unwilling to try and bridge, even for the sake of spending time with the brother he thought he’d never have a chance to spend time with again.

(And yeah yeah, its not like he was embracing Jason with open arms in Brothers in Blood, but I maintain that had more to do with Jason’s approach than Dick innately being predisposed to being stand-offish with Jason. Like, when you announce yourself by impersonating your brother and getting him a rep as a manic killer being hunted by the police, instead of just like…ringing the doorbell, its kinda like, well, you may have to shoulder some of the blame here. Not to mention there still was the specter of what Jason had done to Dick’s other little brother Tim, with this still unaddressed between the two as of that time).

So yeah, for the above reasons and many more, Dick once again presents a narrative obstacle to a specific KIND of narrative that happens to be the one a lot of Jason’s fans most want to tell. The one where Jason sticks it to all his uptight family and rides off into the sunset with his NEW family, one that appreciates him and holds him in proper respect and positioning, the one where Jason will always be at least a somewhat tragic figure, forever apart from the family he does still very much love, because THEY can’t reconcile who and what HE is and believes.

Cuz once you take Last Laugh into consideration, AND add in Jason’s own words at the end of Brothers in Blood and the fact that they DIDN’T hate each other back when Jason was Robin, nor was it just one-sided on Dick’s end of things…..well, with all that taken into account, it becomes a lot trickier pulling off the above narrative, doesn’t it? When the in-character behavior of Dick according to THAT characterization of him would never accept any version of events where Jason was cast out for good (and yes, yes, RHATO and Bruce exiling Jason from the city, I know that in the New 52 that’s pretty much exactly what happened and Dick didn’t do anything about it, but he was kinda busy getting shot in the head right around that same time, so, y’know. That cuts into the ability to intervene on Jason’s behalf).

But basically, this is IMO why Last Laugh barely gets acknowledged by a lot of Jason’s fans, even though on the surface, you’d THINK its exactly the kind of story that would appeal to anyone who wanted, well, a story where someone in Jason’s family showed that they actually gave a damn the damn dumb clown still wasn’t dead. Its an in canon story that showcases and even highlights very clearly Jason’s place in that person’s family and memories, and the importance and weight with which he was regarded by that family member. Isn’t that exactly what Jason - and thus by extension his fans - have always wanted?

Well….yes, except it was the wrong family member. To have the weight, the significance that a lot of fans TRULY wanted from that story, from that outcome, it needed to be BRUCE that did it, not Dick. There’s no real place in that particular narrative or dynamic for an older brother who does actually give a damn. Like yeah, its great that Dick cared and all, but when its viewed as being more of an all or nothing situation, like, it has to play out with Bruce in that role and no one else, or it doesn’t count, doesn’t mean ENOUGH…..once again, this positions Dick to be more of a narrative obstacle to a certain (popular) kind of story than a benefit.

And so Dick has to be repositioned, reframed, rewritten…..to be something and someone writers can actually work with when writing the kind of story where Bruce’s acknowledgment is the only one that ultimately matters. Him being likely to WANT to help and support Jason from an in-character standpoint, simply doesn’t help writers for whom this just becomes an unwanted plot complication that inherently bumps Dick a little higher up the Priority Ladder, because his status as a Rare Ally rather than Yet Another Antagonist pretty much inevitably paves the way for more screentime for his character, and again….he’s just not the character these writers want to write about (and yeah, again, this part is totally understandable), and they’re really just not interested in allotting him that much screentime, let alone a role that could feasibly steal focus at times from Jason, edge the narrative into being more of a co-lead than the single protagonist it was definitively intended to be.

So. Fandom subset number two is equally predisposed to resenting Dick simply for the narrative obstacle he presents to one of their preferred stories to tell - with again, this pretty much taking off right around the Dickbats era, fueled in no small part by Morrison’s shitty take on Jason, which, while I maintain it was Jason that was most out of character in all of that….DOES still very easily play into that take on him, where he’s misunderstood and eternally at odds with his family.

And which also, I suspect, is why Morrison’s run tends to be weirdly popular with a lot of Jason fans who in most other places are quick to point out earmarks of Jason’s usual characterization that are entirely at odds with Morrison’s take on him, like that he’s extremely against the idea of younger sidekicks in general at this point (especially pre-Reboot), which uh, makes him taking on a younger sidekick a very….Strange Choice.

3) And then lastly we come to Tim, and a lot of his fans’ issues with Dick Grayson - which I think are heightened by a kind of feeling of betrayal that ties in here, and emphasizes the fact that just a year or two prior to Battle for the Cowl, most of these same fans would have sworn they loved Dick’s character and he was a great big brother to Tim.

See, the problem here, I think, lies in the fact that Tim is THE definitive Robin for an entire generation of readers. He’s who they see in the role every time they close their eyes, because he’s who’s always been in the role as far as they’re concerned. Back issues are just that - back issues. They’re about the history of Robin. But in the present, the here and now, for the solid twenty years or so before Battle for the Cowl, for all intents and purposes there really was only one Robin and it was uncontested that it was Tim.

And again, on a lot of levels I totally get this. I’m somewhat similar when it comes to Kyle Rayner and Green Lantern. Kyle was ‘my’ Green Lantern, the one I grew up with, the one starring in the stories that were current and ongoing for me as I aged. I was pissed as hell when they brought Hal Jordan back and he resumed being front and center in the GL franchise…..not because before this I’d had any real strong feelings about Hal one way or the other, outside of how I felt about him in the individual stories he popped up in…..but simply because Hal front and center happens to coincide with the starring GL of the solo title I personally would consider the definitive GL run….like….pretty much getting shoved offstage entirely, most of the time. I get that. It sucks.

Except that’s not QUITE the situation here.

Like the thing is, I do believe that for a lot of fans, Tim IS Robin and Robin IS Tim. That’s how its always been for them, that’s the way they like it, that’s how it should remain until his character is ready to launch into a new persona and identity of his own character’s volition. And its not like it was ever a secret that other Robins came before Tim, and that Dick was actually the creator of the mantle, the guy that all the other later Robins, including Tim, were literally the legacy OF. And its not like Dick wasn’t around in Tim’s stories, and wasn’t a familiar presence to Tim’s fans….its just that for almost twenty years, the WAY Dick appeared in Tim’s stories only added to them. There was no angle from which he took away from Tim’s stories, or the fact that they were Tim’s.

Like yes, he was a reminder that Tim was not the only Robin and never had been, that there were others with just as much claim to the title, if not more……but in a very background way. Not in any way that presented any kind of ‘threat’ to Tim’s actual status as Robin. Dick Grayson’s days as Robin were way in the past, and there was no real likelihood that they were ever going to put him back in that role, so his ‘claim’ to the Robin mantle was never at any point one that potentially contested Tim’s own. It was simply a non-issue. Instead, Dick’s status as the original Robin juxtaposed with his current roles of doting big brother and secondary mentor figure….like, at the time, this actually ADDED to Tim’s own wearing of the mantle. Dick’s presence was less a reminder that he was the one without whom the mantle wouldn’t even exist, and more just a kinda embodiment of the Robin LORE, the fact that Tim’s superhero mantle came with history and the prestige of past accomplishments accomplished by the Robin name, and the gravitas of the dangers and downsides that potentially came with the cape as well. It gave Tim an additional angle that even most of his friends and teammates in various books didn’t have, made him stand out even more.

And it didn’t hurt that pretty much any time there was a guest appearance from Nightwing in Tim’s stories, he was firmly slotted in the supporting character role, there to help Tim but not overshadow Tim, to support him but not claim credit for Tim’s ultimate victory in any given story’s climax. And there weren’t many occasions when things went in reverse, where it was Tim guest-starring in Dick’s stories and thus him clearly slotted in the supporting character category, the B character role….simply because the older veteran hero needing to call upon his younger, comparatively inexperienced ally just was never as likely - and thus, occurring as often - a story as one where the younger, relatively new hero calls upon his more experienced predecessor for help or even just some advice or someone to listen to whatever was troubling the younger hero at the time.

Thus there’s the additional angle where for almost two decades, Dick Grayson’s presence in a Tim Drake narrative was for one reason and one reason only - to support Tim in whatever endeavor he was in the middle of, and to be what Tim needed, when Tim needed.

But then of course, once again we reach Battle for the Cowl….and all of that gets upended, not even because of Dick making Damian Robin per se, IMO…..to me, its always felt like the bigger issue has always been many of Tim’s fans resenting just….the reminder, the newly centered awareness that no matter how long Tim had been THEIR Robin, he wasn’t the only Robin and never had been….and that supportive, helpful older brother whose presence had previously only added to Tim’s stories and their weight, never threatened anything that was ‘his’ narratively speaking…..not only did he also have a claim to the Robin title, he has literally the biggest claim possible, the one none of the others can match due to the mere fact that they are quite literally HIS legacy characters.

Which, not at all incidentally, is IMO the reason a lot of Tim fans are so vocal about dismissing or minimizing the impression/association of Robin with Dick’s first family. Always quick to emphasize that it being his mother’s nickname for Dick was a later addition to the canon, because it ties Dick to the Robin mantle in a way none of the others ever will be. But of course, like I’ve always maintained…that’s besides the point. Whether or not Dick named himself Robin because it was a cherished nickname, because he was a fan of Robin Hood, or for any other reason, its still equally true that he’s the creator of the mantle, plain and simple. It doesn’t exist without him, it was his aims, his intentions, his DEEDS back when he wore the (clearly circus themed and inspired, no matter what else is said about the name’s origin BUT I DIGRESS) costume originally…..like, those are literally what Robin WAS because they were what Dick created Robin to be. It was only something for others to take up later, let alone to even WANT to take up, with it coming with a weight of history and past heroics that later Robins were proud to embrace….all of that’s only because of what Dick imbued the mantle with in the eyes of the world, not to mention his own successors….via what he DID in the costume, while wearing it, coupled with the fact that there’d never really been anything like him before, a kid kicking bad guy ass alongside the more intimidating specter of his mentor.

Dick being the first Robin isn’t just a matter of linear progression, like its not just a matter of him EXISTING ahead of the others ‘in line,’ so to speak. Rather, being the first Robin is a matter of…..its literally HIM and HIS actions that every later Robin is the LEGACY of. He’s the SOURCE of the legacy. And you can’t really go…’how dare the guy I’m literally part of the legacy of, like, think he has the right to decide what happens with the mantle he and he alone created, long before I ever came along’…I mean….y’know? Boiled down to that, that doesn’t really….work, like its pretty plainly evident why the originator of a legacy mantle would think its his place to be the definitive voice on what’s done with his own damned legacy. Regardless of why he named it what he did and what specific associations the name had for him originally.

But there’s always been a determined focus on kinda…..shifting attention away from the question of who actually DOES have the right to say who wears the Robin mantle and when, because I think there is generally an awareness that like….Dick wasn’t out of line to think that his own damn creation was his to give in the name of adding to their circle of family, the same way as it did twice before. Its not that there’s NO angle from which even Tim’s fans might admit that who created a legacy matters in the question of who gets to decide who carries that legacy next. Its more that like….just the reminder, the newly centered awareness that yes, Tim is not the only claimant to the Robin title and never was, like…I think that grates a lot of people, tbh.

It may have been something that there was always SOME awareness of, the whole time, but previously it was in a way that was supposed to be ancient history, not something that could ever end up ‘taking away’ something they strongly identified with being Tim’s and Tim’s alone. Especially when the character suddenly exerting a prior or greater claim on that mantle just so happens to be one that a lot of Tim’s longtime fans had long-since internalized as being part of TIM’S supporting cast, not another protagonist in his own right, one whose decisions could have a shaping effect on Tim’s narrative rather than the other way around, the way it felt like ‘its supposed to go.’

And bringing it back to the overlap with the first two fandom impressions I talked about, I think again, yeah, this resulted in a kind of resentment of Dick’s character and the narrative obstacle he presents to…..well, keeping Robin associated with Tim and Tim alone, practically speaking. Its not so much giving Robin to Damian in the first place that’s the problem, its the fact that he COULD. That within the actual canon narrative, this was acknowledged and supported as something that ultimately, Dick did have the right to do whether individual characters liked it or not, and no, that didn’t make him the same as Bruce when he’d taken it from Dick originally (assuming they acknowledge that version of the story at all in the first place).

Because due to the fact that its not something NEW that was introduced to the story that led to Dick being ABLE to do this, but rather just him choosing to exert an option he’d had the entire time and just previously chosen not to use……inevitably, this creates a slight shift in the framing and context of even previously consumed stories. Suddenly Dick’s presence in many of those previous stories ISN’T incidental, because now they couldn’t help but be viewed through the lens of….remembering what had been kinda hand-waved away as inconsequential the entire time Tim was Robin. The fact that ultimately, Tim was only Robin because Dick endorsed him. That if Dick could give Robin to Damian later, then Dick COULD have, by the exact same token, the exact same claim and association with the mantle he’d been the one to create….he could have stuck by his initial stance, which was that Robin died with Jason.

In all fairness, as I’ve said many times before, this NEVER had anything to do with whether or not Tim became Bruce’s PARTNER, specifically. I’ve never been of the opinion that even Dick’s status as the originator of Robin had nothing to do with who ended up Bruce’s PARTNER after him - that was always going to be between Bruce and that person, and no one else. But whether, as that partner, Tim went by the name Robin….with everything it embodied and signified and carried with it already….that, yes, Dick had always had the option of saying no, I’m not okay with this, I do not give you permission to wear the SPECIFIC mantle I created, what my brother died wearing.

I mean, granted, Bruce and Tim could have done what they wanted anyway, but much like people try and dismiss or invalidate the version of events where Bruce fired Dick as Robin and stripped him of the mantle precisely BECAUSE there’s no real way to go with that version and NOT get that Bruce looks like a douche in it one way or another, simply because that was never his to take….like, same deal here. They could have powered on without Dick’s approval of someone else wearing the Robin costume, but ignoring the wishes of a mantle’s creator, to let it rest given that someone had literally died carrying that very same legacy, HIS legacy….like, that was never going to look good and would have stained pretty much Tim’s entire career as Robin.

So yeah, I think the third corner of this Isosceles of Suck is that I do believe on some level, a lot of Tim fans resent Dick’s character simply for where and in what ways it exists in any and all Robin narratives…..as the one who ultimately CAN NOT be overlooked as inconsequential, because its literally HIS legacy that Tim and all other Robins took PRIDE in embracing. And everything with Damian simply hammered that point home and made it front and center and impossible to avoid confronting, no matter how much a long time fan wanted Robin to belong to and be associated with Tim and Tim only…..with the ironic part being that I truly do GET why this would bug….because again, if you’re here for Tim, if its his stories you want to read and write, if HE’S the one you’re a fan of, and if for whatever reason you just don’t like Dick Grayson all that much even if you don’t actually hate him…..

Yeah, its likely going to lead to resentment if you yourself feel, purely from a narrative standpoint, like….’pressured’ to write Dick being afforded more respect or importance in the other characters’ eyes than you personally feel like writing. But that its hard to avoid or becomes something you actively have to write AROUND any time your own story backs you into a corner where the origins of Robin are directly relevant to the plot, and logistically, and given there’s really no plausible angle from which Tim would have embraced or taken up (let alone taken pride in) a legacy belonging to someone he DIDN’T look up to or view as worthy of respect….like…in this kind of specific plot tangle, it could very easily feel like if you want to keep things feeling in-character, you have no CHOICE but to have Tim talk up or speak positively of a character who, if it were up to you, would never command that kind of respect from Tim, a character you happen to think is just plain better than the one you feel like your story is MAKING you say is so great. Bam. Once again, you got yourself a recipe for Instant Resentment Ramen.

(Again, not at all incidentally, I think the above also has a lot to do with the pretty prevalent trend in Tim-centric stories of having him pretty much ONLY fixate or focus on Jason’s time as Robin, citing him as ‘Tim’s Robin,’ not just as like, a preference but almost to the exclusion of Tim having ever had any kind of interest in, let alone appreciation/respect for, Dick’s version of Robin before Jason stepped into the role. A lot of people would rather the respect/admiration that would normally be afforded by any legacy hero to the person whose legacy they’ve chosen to carry, like, go solely to Jason instead of Dick, just because they like him better and would rather Tim was just his successor, no one else’s.)

And with all three of these angles/elements coming to a head at the exact same place and time in the comic books and fandom……it IMO created kinda the perfect storm right around the Dickbats era, where suddenly all these totally disparate sections of fandom all felt weirdly in agreement on one thing and one thing only….Dick Grayson was really just kinda bugging them, and what’s so great about that dude anyway?

And from there I think they all kinda just fed into each other and grew exponentially, with the individual ‘workarounds’ used by each other characters’ fans to get around the narrative obstacle that Dick represented, like…..I think these all became so prevalent and widespread throughout fandom because even these totally separate corners of fandom that had very little else they agreed on, were more than happy to take each other’s ‘rewrite’ of Dick and his place/depiction in the overall narratives and canon and just run with it….because not at all coincidentally, each other ‘group’s’ revisionist take on Dick Grayson made their own even easier to sell within their own stories. And thus you also ended up with correlating trends like Jason and Tim being besties and bonding over their resentment of Dick, because why not, both their fanon narratives now predominantly shared the same deliberately unappealing depictions of their eldest brother.

With the New 52 and post-reboot storylines then doing absolutely NOTHING to negate or derail all of the above, but rather just reinforcing all of it. Because as Bruce kept being written behaving worse and worse with his children, including Dick, it only added to and expanded upon the problems Bruce’s fans already have with Dick’s character, even if just in terms of how big a plot/characterization obstacle he presents for the stories they want to write.

Just as the way Lobdell wrote Jason equally fed into and built upon the issues a lot of Jason’s fans have with Dick’s character and the tangle he creates for a number of stories. And then with the frequent conflicts over how two of the characters Dick’s historically been closest with had been practically cut and pasted from Dick’s stories and history into Jason’s stories and history instead, like, that just threw more fuel on the fire, particularly when it happened to ignite defensiveness among fans of the Roy/Jason/Kory trio who additionally resented having to defend their usage/embrace of a trio that canon threw together, not them, that they just happened to like. And that in turn hardly making them any less predisposed to resenting how complicated Dick’s character makes things for certain key narratives.

And then lastly, DC’s just complete and total fuckery with Tim’s character in the New 52 as a whole, but specifically in his issues with trying out various personas post-Robin but never finding/creating anything with a truly firm sense of its own identity, the way Dick has Nightwing and Jason has Red Hood, and thus give fans of both characters no REASON to mourn the loss of Robin or wish for them to go back to it….whereas without ever settling into something similar, that was both strongly and uniquely Tim Drake in premise and execution, there was no reason for his fans NOT to begrudge the loss of the Robin mantle and wish for him to go back to it/to have never left it, at least not until he’d found that other persona to actually ‘graduate’ into.

Phew. *wipes brow*

Anyway, that’s my big theory on why fandom as a whole is the way it is about Dick’s canon vs fanon. Am I right? Probably not completely, and even if I am its not like this is universal or that there aren’t other reasons for why fans engage with Dick’s character in the ways they do, including but not limited to “I just don’t like the guy, so what.” And its not like there’s any way to know for sure, or to get a sense of how much of fandom this theory IS on the right track with, at least in some ways. But overall, I do think there’s at least some of the above present in various ‘parts’ of fandom or with various specific fanon trends. *Shrugs* YMMV though.

#me @ me: wow shut up already #me @ @ me: Im not wrong tho #me @ @ @ me: yeah but still. jeez. take a breath much?`#okay Im gonna stop now

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sith-shenanigans · 4 years

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18, 19, 26 and 27 for your choice of ahene and sirue :0

You said “my choice” and I like to talk, so I’m choosing both of them. ^^;;

Ahene:

18. What did they find abroad, and what did they remember?

Ahene has been a lot of different places on a lot of different planets, and what she found has mostly been weird Force things. Especially ghosts. There have been a lot of ghosts.

The parts she remembers fondly, though, are the times post-class story when she had the opportunity to claim an artifact personally, when she and Talos (and occasionally some combination of the rest of the crew, but always Talos) got to go down into some ruin and figure it out like a puzzle. No politics, no expectations, just the opportunity to let down the facade a little bit with one of the few people she can actually count as a friend.

Now, most people wouldn’t consider ancient tombs to be the best place to do that, but she’s not most people and that really is her idea of fun, so it works out. Somehow.

19. What were your character’s deepest disillusions? In life? What are they now?

I’m… not sure quite what this one’s saying (‘in life?’), but I’ll do my best.

When Ahene was a young child, she wanted to join the SIS. The idea of being a spy appealed to her (you get to Know Things, and figure out what people are hiding, and sneak around) and while Verios was closer to the Empire, its political sentiments were much more strongly Republic-aligned. Being a kid, the part where you have to be a Republic citizen didn’t really cross her mind… but, anyway, after the invasion? She spent a couple years thinking the Republic might show up and rescue them all.

She is of the opinion that her younger self was inexcusably naïve.

Ahene also went through a lot of the class story hoping to, at some point, disappear into the endless night and go looking for Sirue. But the time never seemed right. Zash’s expectations were too immediate to risk running, and then there was Thanaton—and then she was part of a power struggle, and moffs were choosing sides. Things just kept escalating until it was too big to back down from, until there were too many people involved, until there was no way out but through.

And then the Council.

And then Makeb.

She should have known better than to think leaving was an option.

And she should have known better, after KotFE and KotET and all the things she built while saving the galaxy, than to think it wouldn’t come crumbling down around her.

She should have known better than to think she could do this the right way.

Always and ever, no way out but through.

26. What does your character’s home look like? Personal taste? Clothing? Hair? Appearance?

She’s lived a few different places, but they all have some commonalities. Her living space tends to be surprisingly austere. Sith—especially powerful ones—generally tend towards whatever extreme suits them, ominous or lavish or cluttered with whatever interests them (or, often, some combination of all of those). Hers is just… functional. Sometimes there are datapads lying around, or occasionally a coffee mug that 2V or a cleaning droid hasn’t had the chance to spirit off for washing yet.

If you had a way of looking, you could always tell the places she’s actually lived from the places she inherited from Thanaton and never used; the latter still look Sithly and pristine, and the former have been rearranged by someone who really doesn’t want to sleep in a bedroom that feels like an evil cathedral. She would like her bedroom to feel like a bedroom, thank you. A normal one.

27. How do they relate to their appearance? How do they wear their clothing? Style? Quality?

This is where I mention that Ahene is a nonbinary woman, and also that she has mild/occasional chest dysphoria. She doesn’t ever get top surgery, though, even though Star Wars medtech would probably mean a very short recovery period—she doesn’t actually want a flat chest, she just prefers clothing that keeps it covered and doesn’t draw the eye there.

She also has an entirely non-gender-related dislike of fancy Sith robes, possibly because she resents any outfit a droid has to help her into. Or maybe she’s just ended up slogging through a swamp in full formal dress more than once, because official visit and unforeseen circumstances collide with alarming regularity where she’s involved, and there aren’t enough showers in the galaxy after an experience like that.

More generally, she takes a fair bit of pride in the way she looks. She knows the kind of power appearances have, she knows how she wants to be seen, and she makes an effort to look polished. (Her hair definitely doesn’t stay slicked back like that without a lot of space hair product.) She likes grayscale clothing, with sharp, clean lines, stays meticulously clean when she’s not actively slogging through the wilderness, and does very… particular things with makeup. Or, often, 2V does, because when she does too much of his job herself he has a small nervous breakdown, and sometimes it’s easier just to take pity on the droid.

Sirue:

18. What did they find abroad, and what did they remember?

Sirue has traveled across a lot of the galaxy—or more of it than most people ever will, at the least, and that’s still only a tiny tiny fraction. She couldn’t see it all in a thousand lifetimes. And that’s part of what she likes about it. She doesn’t have to stay anywhere too long, bouncing between stars until all the planets start to blur together, a new job on every horizon. It’s the freedom to move, to fly, to leave her mark and be forgotten.

She’d like to say that she forgets everything but the good bits, the exciting bits. The bits where she lived fast and won big and did things nobody else could.

It’s a damned lie, but she’d like to say it.

This is what she remembers: there’s no justice but what you make, there’s no odds that aren’t fixed, and everyone’s wrong when they say they’ll be lucky forever. (Except me, she’ll tell you, and wink.)

19. What were your character’s deepest disillusions? In life? What are they now?

Sirue wasn’t a born cynic, but going from political scion to Imperial slave at the tender age of eight will leave you disillusioned with just about everything. She lost more than a lot of people ever had, and it taught her that power was just a word for how many things you can break. Nothing means anything unless you have the bigger gun. Forgetting that was how she ended up getting betrayed by her best business partners—though she got off the last shots in the end.

That said, none of that means you have to break the wrong things, or shoot the wrong people. She’s not some kind of petty schoolyard bully. But she doesn’t believe in anything she can’t ensure herself, and she will go to some kriffing terrifying lengths to ensure things herself.

26. What does your character’s home look like? Personal taste? Clothing? Hair? Appearance?

She lives in her ship, of course, and it’s about as organized as anyone could expect from the living space of a motley group of criminals. The captain’s quarters aren’t outright messy, but sometimes things get set on the floor. And she collects horrible knicknacks. And then there’s the trophy case with the lightsabers in it, and the guns on the wall, and all the other miscellaneous items she’s picked up off her enemies to prove that she lived and they didn’t. Everything needs a memento; that’s how you keep score.

27. How do they relate to their appearance? How do they wear their clothing? Style? Quality?

She goes through horrible places on a regular basis, she’s worn the same jacket for at least a decade, and… actually, she’s pretty hygienic when it comes to personal grooming. She’s been through grubby grimy hell, sometimes she just wants to feel clean, gods, is that too much to ask? Looking pretty isn’t exactly a priority for her, though—she’s gonna be a scruffy smuggler unless you give her a damn good reason not to be, ‘cause otherwise people start noticing those delicate features that make her so clearly her father’s girl, and…

Well, she’s done a lot of things that weren’t exactly morally sound, but she can look at herself in the mirror without seeing her father, and that’s important. If she dresses up too nice, she starts thinking a little too much about futures that weren’t hers.

#asks #canon: liminality #oc: ahene coris #oc: sirue parhen #otp: don't call it destiny

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laufire · 4 years

Text

@thepawnhits asked: I was wondering if you could go into further detail about your comment under the murphystartedthefire about murphy stans who hate emori?

(I hope you don’t mind that I answered over here; it’s just that this post got long enough to merit a read more and I’ve seen tumblr mess up with those in ask posts as of late smh ¬¬)

I know this might come across in ways I don’t intend to-- I’m not here to tell anyone how they define their fan experience; this is specifically about how I see the fandom spectrum. If someone wants to call themselves a Murphy stan and hate on Emori I’ll simply assume we have a different definition of the term and that they have remarkably bad taste xD and move on.

On that vein: according to my vision of what a stan is, I would never see someone that hates Emori as a Murphy stan.

There are wildly different ways to love a character, and stanning is only one of them, and the rarest one at that, IMO. Sometimes we think we love a character (or like them, or have “come around” to them), to discover later that it wasn’t so. I know it’s happened to me a few times (and I take pride in knowing myself quite well, overall, lol), that looking back I ended up thinking, well --in hindsight, I didn’t love them that much. For example, I would’ve count Daenerys as one of my favourites in the ASOIAF books, maybe even number one at some points, and I did like her on the show whenever I tuned in (not that often). However, I’m not enraged about her ending, and in fact I appreciate quite a lot of what the GOT finale did. Because though I like Daenerys, I was willing to trade her for other characters and other developments that mattered more to me when it counted --at the very end. Because I liked Daenerys, maybe loved her even, but I did not stan Daenerys (that I reserved for Cersei lmao).

Stanning, to me, is something quite unique and nebulous to define, but it more or less comes down to this: you nterpret the story through that character, other characters & how they affect them included (you will ship different ships if you stan a character vs. if you merely like them, IMO); they’re your number one priority to the point you’d “betray” your loyalties to other characters you like (if you’re capable to even like them in the first place, if they’re in the way of your fave. I happen to be, which creates a lot of conflict in my fannish life until the endgame comes and all bets are off lmao, but not everyone is and they probably have an easier time of it xD); and you want them to have the BEST, richest storyline, to get everything they say they want and more (and the keyword here is “say”, because if you stan a character you will take what they say at face value; you won’t doubt their POV, you won’t think they’re ~misguided and need to be “taught a lesson”, that they need to fundamentally change who they are at their core. You’d love them as they are because stanning is a fucking ridiculous state of being), even when it looks like it’s way beyond their reach.

Stanning is also very self-centered of us fans. All fannish love is, I guess. We don’t love characters the way we love people (not the ones we love genuinely, beyond ourselves, at least). It goes through a filter of what WE think and want too, because characters aren’t real people and their well-being only matters in-so-far as we’ve latched onto them. Fannish love is different from person to person, but one thing that’s true for my type of stanning is that “happiness”, as in the character being easily “content” matters a lot less to me than them winning. So whether or not a most interesting ship from them happens to bring them heartbreak once in a while... so what, as long as it brings real, tangible benefits to their storyline? With second-rate characters I like I might say “oh, that ship is nice, it makes them happy, it’s convenient for them”, etc. With my OTPs and my faves that’s not even in my radar. I want victory, not contentment, ffs.

Another thing it’s important to take into account and that I rarely if ever see fandom mentioning is that where a character is positioned in the narrative conditions how you love them. It’s not the same to start out the show with Clarke as your number one fave (even if boy, did she took a few hits in the meantime), or even Octavia and Bellamy (... same with him), than if you latch onto Raven, Murphy, etc. They weren’t quite at the bottom of the barrel, there were always characters way below them, but they were positioned explicitly below other characters in their introductions.

Fans adjust their expectations when they love secondary characters like that, whether they’re able to admit it or even realize it. We expect them to get less than the leads, because that’s how hierarchies work. Most of the time we’re right, but sometimes there are ~shakeups, and The 100 is one of those times, IMO. Because of that, Murphy got a lot more of what would’ve been expected in s1. Faced with that, fans need to reajust, but some can’t. Depending on how risk-averse they are, they might fear that their fave is getting something that’s not their “due” according to the initial structure, and that means they’ll be “punished” for it and have it, at the very least, taken away. The bigger they are, the harder the fall, etc. Personally I happen to like the risk --no risk, no reward--, and this ~timid way of loving your number one doesn’t align with my view of stanning characters at all *shrug*. Like, what the fuck is the point if you’re gonna settle for mediocrity xD

Now, wrt Memori specifically.

I have alluded to this in several post in the past; here I talk a little bit about Memori as a narrative that uplifts Murphy, for example. That, to me, it’s the gist of it. Memori is AMAZING for Murphy’s storyline. AMAZING. It’s THE romance of the show, period. It does wonders for his character, it’s made him The Romantic Hero (which is the most flattering way a male character can ever come across IMO), it’s made him pull outstanding stunts. Memori brings the most of Murphy, and as someone that loves Murphy, I love Memori for it (among other many reasons, like the fact that it’s very much My Type of ship).

Somehow people claim that because she was “mean” (...) to him in s5 that’s a bad relationship for him and... lmfao. EVEN if I thought they said that in good faith (ha!); EVEN if I agreed with them in their reading of the ship (ha!)... MEMORI IS NOT A REAL RELATIONSHIP.

MEMORI IS A FICTIONAL PAIRING. I don’t give a fuck about “healthy”, and I don’t see the vast majority of fans do either; not when push comes to shove, not about the ships that truly matter to them, their OTPs, and not just their ~casual pairings. I don’t want Memori to be a conflict-free storyline, because I think it would be an objectively worse ship if it was. Sometimes the conflict will be Memori vs. the world. Sometimes it’ll be Emori vs. Murphy. I think both have merit and both had done a lot of good for the ship.

So then, I question: why would people who love Murphy (or claim to, or genuinely think they do but), hate on Emori and think she’s the worst thing that’s happen to him, in the face of the overwhelming proof of the contrary?

One option is that, like I say, they find Memori to risky, to beyond Murphy as he was introduced in s1 (this fandom is even more stuck in s1 mentality than most I’ve encountered, and that’s saying something). It could be, though I haven’t seen clear examples of it.

What I have seen are examples of people that, for a variety of reasons, aren’t being quite truthful about their priorities, tbh. This will sound presumptous on my part but I can’t bring myself to care because I’m quite tired of this fandom; it’s repetitive af, even if I weren’t to take into account that I have been in several fandoms, even if often as a mere lurker, and I’ve seen all of this before, over and over again. I’m TIRED people xD

I’ll be blunt: this attitude, comes from CLARKE’s stans, not Murphy’s. People whose priority is Clarke, and that think she should be centered in the show (usually with Bellamy/Clarke as the ship they use to channel it --the ones that go for Lexa don’t seem as keen on invading Emori and Memori’s tags but they might be out there too). Potentially I could see it from Bellamy stans too (though frankly, on the vein of this post, my definition of a stan wouldn’t ship Bellamy with Clarke lol); so far Memori and Bellamy aligned quite well in canon, but all the s7 could change that and turn into resentment.

Because that’s what I think it is in a lot of cases: resentment. Resentment that Murphy and Emori get a Romance, capital letters, while their own ship is... well. While their ship isn’t. I’ve seen this happen in other fandoms and that’s all there is: petty jealousy. Why can’t my fave enjoy this?? Which, btw, is a sentiment I can sympathy with? It’s the way they try to pass it for something more that annoys me LOL.

And tbh I think that’s what a lot of Murven “shipping” comes from (and even that short moment of Murphy/Echo shipping I remember from s5 lol): it’s not genuine, passionate shipping; it’s convenience shipping that doesn’t own up to it. Now, I think there are Murven shippers out there that are passionate about it; I myself like it a little, even if only in a fanon context (and preferably in a thruple lol), but a.) I’ve happened to see those more often than not multiship Memori too either way, and b.) you can tell a lot of those shippers aren’t genuine by their reactions to the Murven scene in late s6 IMO: they HATED it, not because of the admittedly cringy dialogue lol, but because they were there for each other in a way that didn’t account for Clarke. That scene, which by all accounts should’ve been shipping fodder, was derided and hated on, because to a lot of Clarke stans the ship is just a way to get Murphy into a less potent ship, with the added benefit of keeping those women they feel threatened by away from Bellamy. Win-win.

This is a tangent, but hell, if anything I think having getting canonically paired with Raven would’ve been potentially terrible for Murphy’s narrative. Remember when I say stans take their fave at their word? It’s similar for writers: when writers truly respect a character, they take them at their word. In male characters especially, there’s one way this manifests, and it’s in their romantic storylines: the lead guy (or any guy with real narrative capital) loves One Girl, and One Girl only (if he hesitates between more he’s a no good wishy-washy and weak-willed jerk and the writers can even come to dislike him for it). There’s no version of his story that can look truly victorious if she doesn’t love him back and they don’t get their endgame, period. So when writers “stan” that character, in the particular way writers do, they give him just that: Peak Romance.

If the writers had pulled from Memori to write him with Raven, two things could’ve happen: either it’d happen humiliating Raven for Emori, or the other way around (yes, as fandom we can imagine other scenarios. In actual canon F/M/F triangles almost invariably go like that, sadly). If it’d happened before s6, I would’ve said Emori getting the short end of the stick was a more likely option, though now I’m not so sure. Either way, both scenarios would make Murphy Look Bad for hurting a girl’s feelings (yes, Murphy has killed people. But like I’ve said, Romantic Hero is what looks best and you CAN’T be a romantic hero if you seriously spurn a girl, even if it’s not your #1 girl. Writers are ridiculous but this pattern holds over and over smh). It would’ve been even WORSE if said girl was Emori, because it means the writers no longer respected Murphy’s POV and his priorities. It would change the core of Murphy’s character because Memori was written into his DNA, no turn backs, the way Bellamy as Octavia’s Big Brother was on his, for example.

Aaaaaanyway. I hope this has shined some light on what I meant lol. But I guess it can be summarized with: in terms of pure narrative, Emori has been consistently great for Murphy’s character. Why would you hate her if you love him, in the way a stan loves?

#memori #the 100 #john murphy #emori #thepawnhits #t100 thoughts #replies #talking to the void #my thoughts #favourites: the powah of lurve #you WISH your faves could ever

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oh-my-otome · 7 years

Note

What's your opinion on Shigezane's event story, and if you bought his epilogue, what did you think of that? I would love to hear your thoughts

Hello, Precious! I thoroughly enjoyed Shigezane’s event story and did indeed purchase his epilogue. Would you like to look at it together? I’d love to have your company!

Let’s have a look at the very first scene, because it says a lot about him:

We open with Shigezane running an errand, but happening upon a clandestined meet-cute. Shigezane introduces himself with an alias, a different reading of his first and last names, after beginning to say it correctly.

When it comes to character analysis, what do you see here, Precious? Think about everything you know about the Date cousins and their clan, and read it again.

Did you spot it?

Feels comfortable around you, a complete stranger (name slip)

Runs errands below his status (progressive)

Protects those close to him (keeps Masamune’s identity secret)

Watch you prepare food? (two-fold priorities: 1. ensure Masamune is not poisoned 2. curiosity)

Taste food? (1. Confirm food isn’t poisoned 2. Curiosity. 3. Hungry)

We already know that Masamune, like Ieyasu, is very understandably concerned about poisoned food, so here we see one scene multiple ways and learn something about Shigezane’s personality:

He’s willing to help out, and he’s sociable, but his first priority is his cousin. He’s doing two things at once. You’re cute and all, but he’s there to do a job.

And speaking of cute, you’ve got it bad:

He’s similarly smitten:

The one thing that really bothered me in Shigezane and Nobuyuki’s event story is your state of mind:

You’re going through some stuff. That’s not the time to be making big decisions, and on one hand you have one suitor perfectly happy to take advantage of you, and on the other you up and leave your family for a complete stranger, having no idea if he’ll morph into something like Tarobe later on down the line.

As the readers, we know that Shigezane isn’t like that, but hth can MC know that? She literally just met him and marries him in the same month.

The only difference between Shigezane, Nobuyuki and Tarobe in that regard is luck.

Anyway, Shigezane changes the subject, since he can see that it’s bothering you, and talks about something else:

We know that Shigezane is genuinely trying to help you, whereas Nobuyuki is trying to trap you, but they are of two completely different personality types (normal-type vs. yandere) so their motivations are simply not going to align.

This is the other thing that bothered me about their event story. It’s like 70% Nobuyuki. In the main event route, Nobuyuki’s sprites show up 65 times and Shigezane’s show up 49. Nobuyuki even shows up when it’s Shigezane’s turn.

I would have preferred if each of the four characters had their own event stories because someone is going to get short-changed. They’re all interesting, and I want to read more about them, but in order to really get all of it, you have to buy the epilogue, which not everyone can do and not everyone wants to do.

When they have their own event story, it feels more complete and that the epilogue is something nice to have, or else something one can do without– not an integral part of the story.

But anymarketingtactic, the next time we see Shigezane, he totes magotes doesn’t look like he’s about to rob a bank, at all:

This scene was so cute and funny. Shigezane is part of the vanguard. He could have grabbed any of his men, or something and done something over the top.

But no, he’s good. He’s got himself a handkerchief!:

What even is commanding your own troops, and having said troops rough up a few punks for a good cause?

Oh, “Mysterious Man.” You adorable goof. This way to my harem, if you please

Above: Ohoho, please do keep growling sexily, milord– ahem.

Below: Focus, Amalthea!:

How did he even get these creepy letters? I want to read about Shigezane sneaking around like Happosai, with his handkerchief tied under his nose and a sack full of Tarobe’s scandalous letters.

I need a backstory on the poor unfortunate souls he’s been with on the low!

MC, strap on your jet pack and get tf away from him, stat!

Shigezane carries you to safety, though, so don’t worry about looking like the Rocketeer just yet.

Girl, climb him like a jungle gym! Wth are you waiting for?:

But no. You tell him thanks for the help, but you’re going to marry Lord Krispy Kreme that gleaming dome of his, tho anyway.

Sensing that you’re about as dumb as a box of hair, Shigezane brings some help:

MC, please!

That is obviously Lord Yo Ho Ho on the left and Lord Hangs Lo on the right.

Keep up.

Below: A mother bear defends her young

After Tarobe high-tails it, it’s almost time for Shigezane to leave, so you visit him at the inn. There, you learn that his name is actually Date Shigezane and not Ito Narumi.

There was some confusion before about the different reading of his name, but you can think of it like the names Dawn and Aurora. Same name.

Before he leaves, Shigezane tries to get you to be less naive:

This was really cute. Shigezane even broke the fourth wall to mention Love Points.

Regardless of your choice, he says the same thing, but there was no “Hit Tarobe like a whack-a-mole” option, which is really too bad.

Shigezane teaches you something valuable:

You find his…uh…incredibly specific porn stash?:

I mean…we don’t kink shame here in the corner, but…did you draw that yourself, Shigezane? Where did you get it? Is there a market for sexy sous chefs serving sashimi?

He tries to grab his totally-not-supposed-to-be-you waitress porn, but ends up falling on top of you. Shenanigans occur:

I laughed so hard at this!

You fall asleep and Shigezane carries you home. The next day you realize something:

Get in line!

Music for the next scene:

You two stare lovingly at each other as you decide to tell each other about your feelings. Very sweet.

Shigezane’s epilogue is about talking to Kojuro about his totally non-existent feelings for you. Kojuro admits that although he’s had his fair share of lovers, he’s never actually been in love.

The more Shigezane tries to deny he’s in love with you, the more Kojuro laughs.

Also, there’s a really cute part where Shigezane is horrified that he was able to just shuffle right into your house and that the common folk don’t have armed guards.

As the trio are riding back to Oshu, Shigezane can’t help worrying about you, to the point of veering into Saizō-worthy listicles.

Masamune, of all of the precious, innocent buns in the package, suggests that Shigezane propose to you.

Shigezane rides his horse back into town to find you, but you’re already running his way, through the forest.

He wonders if he’s allowed to be that happy to see you, and reminds you to look the person you love in the eyes so you don’t get tricked. You say that you wouldn’t mind being tricked by him, which makes him blush.

He reveals that although he said that he would never ask you to quit your job at the restaurant, he’s changed his mind and wants you to come and cook for him in Oshu, as his wife.

He takes you back home to introduce himself to your family.

Shigezane’s event and epilogue was just cute all over. It was a very fun read and well worth the pearls– especially since his epilogue came with a cute little Masamune for your avatar.

I had liked Shigezane well enough from being a supporting character in Kojuro and Masamune’s main and event stories, but it wasn’t until Kojuro’s The Bonds of Love event story that I really became interested in Shigezane.

I wanted to know more about the type of person he was, beyond his wingman cousin persona, and I wasn’t disappointed when it came to his Draughts of Starlight event.

#q&a #samurai love ballad party #date shigezane #date masamune #katakura kojuro

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donnie-triton-blog · 7 years

Note

look.. im not saying i want a matt/delilah kid but.. i want a matt/delilah kid

Meet LORAND BIESTE, a SIXTEEN year old who resembles URIAH SHELTON. He hails from VILLENEUVE FRANCE, where he lives with his parents, MATTHIEU BIESTE & DELILAH DUNCAN.

And, meet MADELINE BIESTE, an EIGHT year old who resembles BAILEE MADISON. She hails from VILLENEUVE FRANCE, where she lives with her parents, MATTHIEU BIESTE & DELILAH DUNCAN.

Name: Lorand Lavelle Bieste

Gender: Male

General Appearance: Lorand is the spitting image of his father in his youth, except taller and more gangly. His thick, brown hair is often a mess in the morning, and throughout the day due to lack of effort. Even his eyes are blue, like his father’s. Delilah knew Matt when he was younger, due to her visiting the castle to hang out with his sister, Jolie, and is reminded of those days each and every time she sees Lorand.

Personality:

+ loyal – He developed this trait out of principle more than anything else. He shows unwavering loyalty to his friends and family, and would never do anything to hurt them intentionally. In fact, he goes out of his way often to show just how much they mean to him, and often develops a close and strong bond with people.

+ audacious – This he definitely got from Delilah. An experiment that failed to work on Matt, Delilah decided to sculpt Lorand into a bit more of a risk-taker than his father. He loves to do things that might not necessarily be the safest route, but pay off in the long run, whether it be enjoyment, education, or spending.

+ mannered – Of course a prince must develop the mannerisms of royalty, and he has mastered this skill at the young age of sixteen. When in front of people that deserve respect, or merely people of note including those in the kingdom, Lorand speaks in the most proper and well-learned manner that he knows how, and never offends a soul. That being said, when in front of family and close friends, he can kick back and relax on occasion, as well.

- independent – Although this might sound like a good thing, it just means that Lorand isn’t easily influenced, and often does not feel like he needs others to thrive. He believes that he can make informed decisions himself without outside influence, and that he knows what’s best for everyone and everything. It would take a lot to get Lorand to understand that he really needs someone when he falls, and that he can not only pick himself up every single time.

- cocky – This goes with his independence and stubbornness. Growing up in a position where it seems that no matter what choices you make, you will never fall to a low point has made Lorand overly-cocky. He doesn’t believe that anything too bad could really happen to him, no matter what mistakes he made (if he even makes any. Besides, he can make decisions all by himself, remember?)

- pretentious – Pretty self-explanatory. He uses his stature, manner, and education to preen himself before others. He knows that he is an important person, and, unlike his father who tended to keep the fact that he was a prince quiet (Matt hadn’t even told Delilah when they first met), Lorand likes to flaunt the fact.

Special Talents: Lorand has the power of magic. This power no doubt came from his mother, who’s magical abilities were so beautiful and ingrained within her soul that it was inevitable, after carrying Lorand for nine months, that they would be passed on to him.

Who they like better: Julian probably likes the royal side of the family more, merely because he loves feeling important and dutiful. His father is the king, for crying out loud. He especially loves listening to stories from Matthieu, Adam, and Belle.

Who they take after more: As much as he’d like to think otherwise, he takes after Delilah a lot more in personality. Matt was nowhere near as outspoken, highly poised, and confident as Lorand. Delilah, on the other hand, loved being a free-spirit and independent agent, and so did her son.

Personal Head canon:

The royal family spoiled Lorand from day one. When he broke a vase, they promised that it was completely okay, an accident, and was not his fault whatsoever. Nothing, really, was ever Lorand’s fault in the palace. Everything was catered to him, and this is what caused him to realize just how important he was.

Lorand actually loves to read, like his father, but keeps the passion secret, for fear that people might see him as a nerd rather than a powerful prince.

This is the first generation in which the werebeast curse has not manifested itself, and likely never will.

Face Claim: Uriah Shelton

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Name: Madeline L’ange Bieste

Gender: Female

General Appearance: Madeline has long brown hair which stretches down past her shoulders, with chocolate brown eyes and a cute little stout nose. There is no doubt that this girl, running about the castle, is descended from the king and queen. She loves wearing dresses, and lets her mother pick out the perfect ones, at times even ordering personal designs.

Personality:

+ energetic – Madeline loves playing outside. She reminds Belle of Matthieu when he was much much younger. Her imagination runs wild, and she loves playing pretend, acting out different scenarios, playing doctor, fighting dragons. The world is her stage, and there are no limitations to what she can come up with when she’s bouncing around the palace grounds.

+ caring – Madeline loves animals and friends, and would never do anything to upset either of these groups. She loves playing with others, and is extremely nice when she does so. If one of her friends is feeling down, she always makes it a priority to cheer him or her up, before going about other business.

+ diplomatic – She makes a good mediator between two parties. Where one person might want one thing, and another person might want another, Madeline is very adept at coming to compromise, making both people not only satisfied, but actually happy in the process. She has high-level reasoning skills, and can practically sell anything to sound good.

- immature – Madeline is, after all, just a kid. She doesn’t quite understand the complexities of grown-up relations and topics quite yet, and finds conversation with people older than her to be a bit mundane. She much prefers the company of kids her age, and enjoys playing and doing other activities rather than merely sitting around talking.

- short-tempered – As nice as Madeline can be, she can also be easily upset. She would never say a mean word, or hurt a soul, but when she gets made she storms off, or gives the silent treatment until amends are made.

- reckless – Madeline often doesn’t know how much is too much, where boundaries are, or what decisions could possibly get her in trouble. Wandering into the forest alone isn’t seen as something that could potentially be dangerous. Going into town and getting lost isn’t scary, because everyone seems to know her, and therefore she’s not really lost. Playing too close to the lake, even though she can’t swim, doesn’t seem too dangerous, because there’s not that big of a chance that she will fall in. She doesn’t see the consequences of risky actions, and can’t imagine any situation that is too scary to delve into.

Special Talents: Madeline has the power of magic, like Lorand and Delilah. Hers, however, is not as strong as the other two, because she has an additional power which has developed, and nobody knows how or where it came from. Madeline also has the ability to communicate with animals. Nobody really knows if she talks to them in the animal language, or if the animals can understand her english, or if they merely respond to her emotions. Somehow, though, Madeline is constantly able to ride on the backs of deer.

Who they like better: Madeline, of course, likes both of her parents just as much. She could never choose between them. Matt is her strong, smart, loving, and protective father that wraps her into his arms and lifts her high into the air. Delilah is her funny, entertaining, loving, and adventurous mother who showers her in clothes and kisses.

Who they take after more: Like Lorand, she takes after Delilah more. Although she displays the same youthful bliss and imaginative power as Matt, her recklessness and taste for fun matches her mother’s. This might be because Matt isn’t around much to influence her, since he’s a busy man. It might also just be that she is a kid, and her personality has yet to completely manifest. Whatever the case, she enjoys spending time with her mom, and their interests seem to align.

Personal Head canon:

Madeline likes riding deer, a lot. Countless times have the palace staff seen her on the grounds on the back of a doe, and not known how to remove her safely.

Madeline loves to sing. She gets this from her grandmother, Belle, and learns bedtime songs from her, often singing them in the fields to herself privately.

When Matt sees Maddy playing, he is always stricken with a woeful nostalgia, longing for those days where he had fewer worries, and more time to live and love life.

Face Claim: Bailee Madison

#rylie-barton #* delilah #* matt #ANSGlns/lkanfsf #I LOVe htem #give me them

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orchestratingkitty · 7 years

Text

So I’ve been thinking about this a lot. When I first heard Jensen say Destiel doesn’t exist, I was (like most of the Destiel fandom) pretty hurt. I’ve since seen people attack him, people critique him, people defend him, and people applaud him. So I’m gonna go one-by-one through the most common responses I’ve seen in the past couple days and debunk them.

“He’s cute and hot! How could anyone say he’s a homophobe?”

What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Homophobes don’t look a certain way. You could see an ugly homophobe standing next to a hot as hell homophobe and they’d both be homophobes. The way Jensen Ackles looks doesn’t change the way he is on the inside. Good that we got the dumbest thing anyone’s ever said out of the way.

“He has gay friends/family members, so he isn’t homophobic.”

Uh huh. I once had a discussion with a white dude who loved saying the n word. He loved it. It was his favorite word. He claimed that he had a black friend who was cool with him doing it and thus he used it all the time. The dude had a black friend! Maybe more! Does that change the fact that he was racist? Hell no. There’s actual LGBT+ people out there who have internalized homophobia. If gay people can be homophobic, then why would we dismiss the homophobia of a man who just knows gay people?

“Lots of terrible things happen to him at cons. He’s mistreated.”

This is really true. He is groped and sexually harassed (from what I’ve read) at photo-ops and people ask him uncomfortable questions all the time. This is irrelevant, however. Everyone goes through hard things. Everyone. That doesn’t mean they have the right to say stupid, homophobic shit without consequences. The next time you want to argue on behalf of your favorite actor, do him the justice of making it a relevant and sensible argument.

“He was just stating his opinion.”

Yeah, in the rudest way possible. I’d have much preferred if he answered in the way Jared had when asked about Eileen. “Dean doesn’t room for romance right now” would have been a totally acceptable and neutral way of handling the question. You’re not promising anything and you’re not insulting anybody. The way he answered was beyond stating an opinion - it was rude and that is my main problem with it.

“He gets flustered at cons! He’s shy!”

He has done this before. He’s insulted Destiel before - sometimes to the point where he seemed to support Dean and Cas not having any sort of relationship. He’s never apologized. You know who else is shy? Me. And you guys aren’t gonna say “she gets flustered” before sending me hate for saying this about Jensen. No, you’re gonna attack me anyway. I’m barely an adult and he’s a middle-aged man but you’d be fine with ripping me a new one for critiquing his PR skills. That makes sense.

“Destiel is a fanservice ship.”

No, it isn’t. It’s the exact opposite. People ship Destiel because Cas and Dean have practically tangible chemistry and if one of them were a chick, they’d have banged a long time ago. Don’t fight me on this - it’s true. The biggest argument against it being fanservice is the fact that fans aren’t getting anything they want. They get queerbaiting instead. As I’ll discuss later, you cannot compare the average straight ship with a queer ship. They’re not the same. They don’t get canon/debunked for the same reasons. They’re not treated the same by the creators so we as fans can’t lose sight of their differences either. Hello? Homophobia exists? Jesus, you’d think this goes without saying.

“People shouldn’t ask ship related questions anyway.”

I’ve seen this one debunked already, but I feel like it needs to be said more to get into some people’s thick skulls. I guess I agree. The cast is not responsible for deciding where the story will go. They do not decide which ship becomes canon or not and even though they have views of where a character’s mindset is at times, they can’t be the final authority. I honestly couldn’t care less if Jensen is made uncomfortable by these questions, though. Mainly this is because he isn’t uncomfortable with people talking about straight ships or even about Dean fucking his car. Honestly? Getting “flustered” by a question about a queer ship is fucking pathetic. Jensen. You’re a grown ass man. Grow up. You’re not Dean. No one is accusing you of not being a straight man, okay? No need to be so defensive. Your masculinity isn’t being called into question, so you can put away your macho act and be a human being again, okay?

“Destiel doesn’t exist.”

Where? On the show? Maybe not. They are fictional characters, if that’s what you mean. No, it isn’t real. Neither is Dean Winchester. Neither is Castiel. None of it exists, in reality. But in regards to the fictional realm, what Jensen said was stupid because it simply wasn’t true. Destiel does exist. Thousands of fans interpret Cas and Dean’s relationship to be romantic and thus, to some extent, it exists. I wasn’t gonna say anything about queerbaiting, but the amount of unscripted touching between the two on the show should raise eyebrows now if it doesn’t exist. But if it really and truly doesn’t exist then where is all the defensiveness coming from? Why are people wasting their time making anti-blogs about it, if there’s no threat of it becoming canon? Why are people so passionate about hating it if it isn’t real? You guys do all the arguing for me, don’t you?

This isn’t a common argument, but you get this a lot: “Good job, Jensen, for telling those Destihellers off.”

Jensen Ackles, this is a warning. You’re getting yourself associated with the wrong sort. You do not want people to think you’re warming up to them, I promise. It is probably the shittiest PR move you could make, aligning yourself with homophobes. Don’t be proud of what you said. It was rude and cold and you were insulting a lot of the SPNfamily in the process. No one is saying you have to support Destiel, but this is disgusting.

Okay - here it goes (this has to be said):

It’s been five days since Trump was inaugurated into the presidency and he’s already promised to eliminate LGBT+ rights by placing FADA on his list of priorities. Jensen, you shouldn’t have said anything that could be construed as homophobic. Queer kids all over the country are terrified of how they’ll be treated in the future if FADA gets passed. Right now, you should be supporting these kids, helping them trust themselves, helping them feel assured. Instead, you’re bashing what a lot of people like me are clinging to. You can argue I’m just distracting from the argument, but this is relevant. Jensen is American. He knows what’s going on. Within days of Trump’s inauguration (was it two days after? I don’t remember.), he’s put salt on a wound.

It’s rare to find an LGBT+ character on TV who isn’t a goddamn stereotype. Bi and trans characters are especially hard to find. Bi characters are often ridiculously one-dimensional - a bi girl has a threesome, a bi guy is hiding that he’s actually gay. A lot of bi people like me love that Dean (who we interpret to be bisexual) is not a stereotype. He isn’t what straight people look at and think of as “gay” or “bi”. We cling to him because we’re living in a world where even people in the LGBT+ community can be biphobic. And Jensen just spat in our faces.

Speaking of, can all you non-bi or pan LGBT+ folk please stop using that when defending him? As in, please stop saying “as an LGBT+ person, y’all are overreacting”. If you’re not bi, this might not hurt you as much. I’ve seen gay people actually say “Destiel wouldn’t do anything for gay representation”. In actuality, we’re aiming for bi representation and seeing as you’re gay you have no right to say what would or wouldn’t help in terms of representation. I’m bi and I’m not overreacting. Other bi people out there who had their hearts broken aren’t overreacting. Though, as LGBT+, you should be concerned too. This is about a lot more than just a ship, guys. Thanks to homophobia, not all ships are created equal, and straight ships are not the same as queer ones.

I used to watch Gossip Girl when I was in middle school (embarrassing, I know). Every possible combination of straight ships had at some point become canon - even the more far-fetched ones. Every single one. I’ve since started disliking the show, but it is a useful comparison. No one complains when people bring up Dean/Amara (which was canonically nonconsensual) or Dean/Lisa at cons. They’re ships, too! I thought ships weren’t an appropriate topic at cons? Or is it okay because they’re straight? Is it okay because they actually have a shot? The fact that queer ships are clung onto so desperately due to the likelihood of them never coming true is tragic. We shouldn’t be afraid to say we ship something gay. We shouldn’t be afraid to bring it up in conversation. We should feel the same wobbly uncertainty that is inspired by straight ships. It should be a question of “will they won’t they” (and not in a queerbaiting way) instead of a feeling of “well, I know because it’s gay it’ll never happen but I still think it’s cute.” Most fan-favorite straight ships become canon in some way or another (across the board, in all TV shows) while queer ships are sneered at and thought of as taboo (the fact that Dean/Elena - a ridiculous straight crack ship - gets less hate and question marks than Destiel is a pretty good example of this. Honestly, you guys are fucking sad sometimes).

Why do we have to give up or surrender our ship just because it’s gay? That’s bullshit and I refuse.

I’m not saying Jensen is homophobic, I guess. Don’t attack me for it (or if you do, don’t use any of the arguments I’ve refuted. You’ll look like an idiot). He is obviously uneducated in regards to this. His comment was thoughtless and ignored context and timing. He said something rude that hurt people for all sorts of reasons. He has room to grow and if he does come forward and patch this up, I’ll be the first one to cry tears of joy. I’m against people sending him hate or death threats. Please don’t. Not only is that disgusting, but it sure as hell doesn’t convince him that we’re reasonable people who just want their ship acknowledged.

Also, if someone accuses you of being homophobic, instead of being defensive, maybe think of why they’d say so, and fix that.

Don’t be too quick to defend him. He’s an adult. He can do that himself. All you LGBT+ people out there shouldn’t be apologizing for him, either. Stand by those of us who are genuinely and rightfully hurt. What he said isn’t okay and nobody who’s hurt here is overreacting. If you think this isn’t a big deal, you’re not looking at the whole picture. There is a war being fought in regards to LGBT+ representation in media and someone claiming that gay-shippers are delusional is not helping.

I’m actually hoping that this will receive 0 notes and no one will see it. Like I’ve said, I’m super shy and I don’t really wanna tag this with anything someone will find but at the same time, it annoys me how this has gotten brushed over. I’m posting so late because it took a while for me to actually process my thoughts into something comprehensible.

#spn wank #spn #fuck man im actually scared #so much for protecting the flustered right?

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thelmasirby32 · 4 years

Text

If you think you’re link building, you’re doing it wrong

30-second summary:

Founder and CEO of Organic Growth, Kevin Carney interviewed 39 marketing professionals about their link building practices.

He has brilliantly condensed all these thoughts and highlighted a group of eight which is much more strategic about their link building.

More insights on what makes them unique and the most preferred link building platforms across the globe.

The hyperbolic title of this article is a conclusion I’ve come to after interviewing 39 people – with titles ranging from Marketing Specialist, Outreach Team Lead, Head of Content, to VP of SEO & Analytics, about their link building practices.

Of the 39 people, 23 work for agencies, 16 work for brands, and out of that group of 39, there are eight who do link building better, by approaching it differently.

So, what do they do that’s different?

First, lets please notice that this is an almost perfect 20/80 Pareto principle split, so kudos to Vilfredo Pareto, who first noticed how common this split is, way back in 1896.

The group of eight have the following in common:

1. It’s not about link building, it’s about something else

The best way I can think to describe this, is these people don’t do link building per se, they do some higher-level activity, which they take VERY seriously, and which includes the intention to attract high-quality links.

While their primary focus is on the higher-level activity, they are very aware of the importance of attracting links, and how their higher-level activity helps them do that.

2. It’s important in its own right

Did I mention they take this VERY seriously? The higher-level activity they do is not something they attend to when they can, it’s not something they “get to”. It is one of their highest marketing priorities. They devote resources to it, and in most cases wish they could devote more.

I think it’s also worth noting that of the group of eight, five are brands and three are agencies.

Examples of their higher-level activities

Below I identify the group of eight and provide a summary of what they do, and how they do it.

1. Matt Zajechowski of Digital Third Coast

Matt Zajechowski is an Outreach Team Lead and Content Marketing Promotions Specialist at Digital Third Coast, a Chicago based digital marketing agency. They work to position their clients as experts through digital public relations, and yes, I know everyone says that.

Early in the interview, Matt said,

“We do a lot of content-based linked building.”

But their idea of content is more involved than what others do.

They employ a primary tool of data-driven stories and articles, where the data comes from surveys involving 1,000 to 3,000 people. They don’t conduct the surveys themselves, but rather make use of online survey platforms such as SurveyMonkey and Amazon Mechanical Turk. These surveys run over the course of weeks and in some cases a few months.

The survey results provide patterns, trends, and stories with which to create highly unique content that provides insights not available elsewhere. The design of their surveys takes into account what articles are already published on the topic in question, as they work to avoid publishing something already covered by someone else.

As you can imagine, these articles make excellent link bait. Not because they are link bait per se, but because they’re good.

Their link building philosophy is that truly unique content, based on large sets of data that provide interesting insights, not only makes initial link building easier but soon attracts links without continued effort on their part.

2. Steve James, Freelance Marketing Consultant

Steve James is a freelance marketing consultant in Vancouver, British Columbia. Steve focuses on helping small, medium, and enterprise businesses.

What Steve does differently is to not focus on “what” to do, but rather to focus on “who” might be interested.

Steve said something I found to be a very interesting perspective:

“You need links to show you’re known by the right people.”

I can best illustrate his approach by sharing a story he told me to explain his approach.

Steve had a client who was a tailor who sold custom made suits. Rather than focus on building links to the tailor’s website per se, Steve thought about who cares about suits at all, let alone custom made suits.

Obviously, people who wear suits. So, who wears suits? Well, the mayor and the members of the City Council wear suits. The next question is, what can he do to get them to notice the tailor?

This resulted in content being published on the tailor’s website that was effectively written for the mayor and other city dignitaries and promoted to them.

This resulted in links from the city government website, and the mayor’s blogs. Being a local business, that was enough to lift the tailor’s website onto the first page of Google.

This led to a whole new market of online prospects, people who follow the Council members, and business professionals that wear suits.

Steve’s link building philosophy is not that he does a set of things related to building links, but he does whatever is appropriate to attract the attention of the right people.

3. Olga Mykhoparkina of Chanty

Olga Mykhoparkina former Chief Marketing Officer at Better Proposals Chanty, a software company that provides a team messaging tool similar to Slack and MS Team. They’re based in Zurich and Kharkiv, Ukraine. Their approach is public relations, where link building is a side effect of that.

Olga told me,

“We don’t really do anything to just get backlinks….. Links that we get are more of a side effect”.

Their larger effort is “to be known”, not to build links per se.

She then described how their main focus is on maintaining contact with journalists and answering questions of interest to these journalists.

They have people who monitor journalist requests on platforms such as HARO, SourceBottle, and JournoRequest, read every request and respond to every relevant inquiry. Any question they can answer, they do answer.

This is resulting in 20 to 50 quality backlinks per month, some from websites as authoritative as Forbes, American Express, and Business Insider.

This public relations work requires two full-time people.

Their link building philosophy is that by helping journalists, they greatly improve their exposure and their backlink profile.

4. Jamie Kehoe of Venturi

Jamie Kehoe, Former Content Manager at Venturi, an IT recruitment agency located in Manchester, England mentioned that their approach is community management, which helps them greatly with link building.

What encapsulates that idea is Jamie’s statement of,

“We’ve been nurturing this community…..”

A Slack channel is the hub of their community discussions, and their community management also includes content on their blog and a weekly podcast, Venturi’s Voice.

The discussions within their community are focused on teams; recruiting, building, nurturing, managing, and so on.

The podcast gives them unique content not available elsewhere, and each episode is an interview with someone solving problems in interesting ways.

The community management activities, including producing the podcast, are done by multiple people and works out to about two full-time equivalents.

Their link building philosophy involves generating unique interesting content to answer questions their community is asking.

5. Cécilien Dambon of Venngage

Cécilien Dambon is International Growth Manager at Venngage provides a software tool for making infographics and is based in Toronto, Ontario.

An interesting comment Cécilien said is,

“You send the same email to 100 people and you get a 3% conversion rate, and you send that same email super customized to ten people and you get the same result.”

So they focus on relationship building, and yes, I know everyone says that.

At Venngage this shows up as ten people in Venngage marketing maintaining a close relationship with people outside of Venngage with whom they do co-marketing. Co-marketing being a corporate buzzword for helping people who are also helping you.

They are proactive about doing favors for their friends without an expectation of payback for each and every favor.

Of course, there are limits. If someone they co-market with accepts favors and never returns them, that relationship is allowed to wither and is replaced with one that is more mutually beneficial.

This is not a dedicated function with Venngage marketing per se but by virtue of ten people maintaining co-marketing relationships with (give or take) 10 people each, their co-marketing network is strong.

Then when they need favors, they have a network of friends to ask for help.

Their link building philosophy can be summed up in that Beatles lyric: “With a little help from my friends”.

6. Miles Smith of Imaginasium

Miles Smith is Director of Digital & Inbound/Content Marketing at Imaginasium, an agency located in Green Bay, Wisconsin, specializing in helping manufacturing businesses.

Their focus is best summed up in the word “alignment”.

Miles said two things to me that I found to be of great interest:

Marketing is not simply creating demand for what is. It involves changing the business to best meet what demand exists.

Everything is link building, and links indicate the right people know about you.

Item two above is similar to the focus Steve James has on “who” rather than “what” and drives what content they publish, to whom they promote it, and how they promote it to them.

Their focus on “everything is link building” is the principle around which they organize their work.

While from this point on, things do look tactical for a while email outreach jumpstarts their link building, the alignment they worked on earlier helps their link building occur on its own faster, as they have less “content promotion inertia” to overcome.

As they’re an agency, the level of staffing required to make this happens depends upon what their client is paying for, but generally, for a client who takes this seriously, one to two full-time equivalents, consisting of bits and pieces of various team members (in-house and outsourced), are involved in this work.

Their link building philosophy is it’s important to be known by the right people.

7. Chris Eckstrum of Housecall Pro

Chris Eckstrum, former Manager of SEO at Housecall Pro, a company that provides software to tradespeople to help them run more efficient businesses. They’re located in San Diego, California.

They also focus on community management.

The hub of their community is two Facebook groups they own and manage. One is for home service professionals, the other is for women service professionals.

The groups are closed, in the sense that people need to ask to join and Housecall Pro vets them to make sure they are tradespeople, but the group is not limited to Housecall Pro customers. Any tradesperson can join.

Chris told me the discussions within the group provide them with content ideas as well as content amplification and links, as much of their content comes from discussions and interviews with group members, and all content is then shared with the group.

Their management of the groups is very active. They engage frequently with members.

Link building occurs primarily by members of their community directly linking to their content, as well as members of their community promoting the content with others.

Managing those two Facebook groups is a full-time job for two people.

Their link building philosophy is; links come fairly naturally from managing and nurturing their online communities.

8. Araks Nalbandyan of 10Web Inc

Araks Nalbandyan is the Director of Digital Marketing at 10Web an agency that builds, manages, and hosts WordPress websites. They’re based in Newark, Delaware.

They are the exception within this group of eight, as they do what the rest of us do, but more so, and better, which primarily means with a high degree of personalization.

Their primary link building strategy is content promotion via email.

By “more so”, I mean they have two people doing it full time, and by “better” I mean that every pitch is highly personalized. They do not send mass emails.

The degree to which this is true is illustrated by how Araks described the training of the people who do link building. The very first pitch they compose can take four hours to draft. Over time, they get better at it, and four months later they’re able to craft a highly customized pitch in 20 minutes.

What they’re doing is highly customized email pitches at volume, which I am differentiating from the sending of mass email, which is generally very slightly customized by the use of templates.

The other thing they do differently from the bulk of us is they actually and rigorously track their outreach attempts and results, and adjust based on that feedback. They do this in part with the reporting capability of the email product they use (Lemlist), and in part by dumping data from various sources into Google Data Studio and generating information from the data.

She said one that really caught my attention,

“The main reason I separate the Content Promotion (from other link building tactics) is because of the open rate, the click-through rate, and the answer rate of those kinds of emails are super high. One of our campaigns reached an open rate of about 78%, which was huge, and we got a lot of responses and a lot of links from that.”

Their link building philosophy has two prongs:

Highly personalized email pitches are worth the effort.

You can’t manage what you don’t measure.

The rest of us are focused on the tactical aspects of link building

Which it appears, is not an effective way to build links at scale. The other 31 people I interviewed aren’t doing link building wrong per se, they’re just being less effective. Their efforts build links, but not on the same scale.

From talking with this group of people, the “issue” if that’s the right word, is their link building approach is much more tactical, and not as strategic as the group of eight listed above.

The group of eight is much more strategic about their link building (by considering it to be part of a higher-level activity) and much more tactical about their higher-level activity, which is what they attend to in their daily to-do lists.

And I appreciate their contribution to this article

For the record, the group of people I interviewed above and beyond the group of eight is:

Agencies

Olivier Mamet of Sandbox, located in Mauritius

Nick Bennett of Growmeo Marketing, in Phoenix, Arizona

Brooks Manley of Egenius, in Greenville, South Carolina

Sam White of New Dimension Marketing & Research, in Encinitas, California

Greg Heilers of Jolly Content, in Walnut Creek, California

Djordje Milicevic of StableWP, in Toronto, Ontario

Syed Irfan Ajmal of SyedIrfanAjmal.com, in Peshawar, Pakistan

Kyle Douglass of Revium, in Melbourne, Australia

Andy Nathan of Smart at the Start, in Chicago, Illinois

Jonathan Aufrey of Growth Hackers, in Taipei, Taiwan

Amine Rahal of IronMonk Solutions, in Toronto, Ontario

Markelle Harden of Knowmad Digital Marketing, in Fort Mill, South Carolina

David Kranker of David Kranker Creative, in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Kyle Kasharian of 9Saill, in Fairfield, New Jersey

Dean Cacippo of One Click SEO, in New Orleans, Louisiana

Cory Hedgepeth of Direct Online Marketing, in Wexford, Pennsylvania

Jonathan Gorham of Engine Scout, in South Yarra, Australia

Irena Zobniów of Insightland.org, in Wroclaw, Poland

Celest Huffman of Rocket Web, in Nashville, Tennessee

Brands

Shejraj Singh of YoStarter, in Punjab, India

Michael Anderson of Geolango Maps, in Pleasanton, California

Slisha Kankariya of With Clarity, in New York City

Christina Sanders of Lucidpress, in Salt Lake City, Utah

Erin Osterhaus of CORT, in Austin, Texas

Patrick Whatman of Spendesk, in Paris, France

Matt Bassos of Vuly Play, in Brisbane, Australia

Dana Roth of FortVision, in Tel Aviv, Israel

Quincy Smith of Ampjar, in Shanghai, China

Taavi Rebane of Messente Communications, in Tartu, Estonia

Praveen Malik of PMbyPM, in Delhi, India

Jakub Kliszczk of CrazyCall, of Wroclaw, Poland

The software tools used

I thought it would be interesting to know what software tools are used for their link building activities, so I asked and compiled this list.

In the spirit of full disclosure, these are the tools people thought to mention to me when I asked, and I tried not to ask leading questions. As such, it’s possible some people simply didn’t feel that a tool such as Google Sheets was worthy of mention, whereas others did.

What surprised me is that neither Majestic SEO nor Google Custom Search Queries get much respect.

Below is a list of each software tool, and the number of people who said they use it.

Ahrefs: 27

SEMRush: 21

Google Sheets: 15

BuzzStream: 8

io: 8

MozPro: 6

Screaming Frog: 5

Mailshake: 4

VoilaNorbert: 4

Google Custom Search Queries: 3

MajesticSEO: 3

HubSpot: 2

MozBar: 2

SimilarWeb: 2

Trello: 2

Answer the Public: 1

Asana: 1

Boomerang: 1

Cision: 1

Cora: 1

Google Calendar: 1

io: 1

LemList: 1

Link Prospector: 1

com: 1

PitchBox: 1

io: 1

Scrapebox: 1

SEO Power Suite: 1

SEOquake: 1

org: 1

Spyfu: 1

Ubersuggest: 1

The tactics employed

I also asked people about their link building tactics, but since seeing that the difference that makes the difference is not one’s tactical approach to link building, but rather one’s tactical approach to their higher-level activity, I fear I would be leading you astray by publishing this list.

In spite of the fact that I met everyone but one person through HARO, I was surprised to discover how many people consider HARO to be a valuable link building tactic. It was the third most popular tactic, by a long shot.

Below are the top three, and the number of people who stated they use it.

Content promotion via email: 24

Guest blogging: 23

HARO: 18

The fourth most popular tactic was used by only 8 people.

In closing

Link building at scale requires resources. Some companies, even some larger companies, do not devote the one or two full-time equivalents required to do it effectively.

If, due to resource constraints, you can’t be one of the top tier link building players, the way you emulate them is:

Devote bits of pieces of lots of people to make up as many full-time equivalents as you can. Since your more successful competitors are devoting appropriate resources, you’ve got to compensate or be left behind.

Prioritize that work as important enough to get to, even if that requires something else to be less important, and yes, I know that is easier said than done.

While each email might start with a template, make each email highly personalized to the person you’re sending it to. Based on the people I spoke to for this article, fewer highly personalized emails have greater success than mass emails where the personalization is just what’s done in the template.

Kevin Carney is the Founder and CEO of the boutique link building agency Organic Growth.

The post If you think you’re link building, you’re doing it wrong appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digital Marketing News https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2020/07/07/if-you-think-youre-link-building-youre-doing-it-wrong/

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businessliveme · 5 years

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A New Vacation Planning Tool Wants to Predict Your Next Holiday

What if choosing your next vacation were as simple deciding what to watch on Netflix?

That’s the intention behind Wanderlist, a new tool from Virtuoso, a network of 20,000 travel agents that move more than $26 billion in annual transactions. It lets travelers create a virtual bucket list through a highly visual, lightly game-like survey. Then it syncs each user’s answers with those of their most frequent travel companions—family, friends, or a partner—in order to suggest trips that’ll make everyone happy.

“Think of it as a little portal for your dreams,” says Virtuoso Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Matthew Upchurch, who sees Wanderlist as a way for busy people to identify their travel priorities and for travel specialists to strategically execute them. “It’s like the leisure equivalent of a financial adviser. If you have a framework to help optimize your money, why not have one for your leisure time and spending?”

It also costs as much as hiring an expert—in part, because you are doing just that. In most cases, a travel adviser will suggest Wanderlist to clients; for a starting cost of $500, they’ll create a “portfolio” that strategically plots your group’s results on a calendar according to seasonality and savings opportunities. (Retaining the specialist for travel planning support and ongoing advisory consultations, plus any other services, would then come at an additional cost.) Don’t have a travel agent? Wanderlist’s website will pair you with one to get the process started.

How It Works

So far, Wanderlist has been deployed to 15 travel specialists and 350 of their travelers. Within that small sample group, the technology has shown promise in streamlining a group’s many opinions and helping agents think about a family’s long-term goals.

One party, for instance, discovered that all four family members wanted to visit Hawaii—though it had never come up as a vacation idea—while in another case, the tool helped spur a grandmother and granddaughter to travel to Russia to see the Bolshoi Ballet, an interest they hadn’t known they shared. Another family thought it should go to Greece this year, but instead followed the agent’s recommendation and prioritized crowd-pleasing New Zealand on account of the currency’s better exchange rate.

The survey itself is simple but thorough and takes about 30 minutes to complete. First, it asks about your “life stages”—children under 12? A family with teenagers?—in order to determine whom you travel with most frequently. Then it prompts you to rate countries and experiences with a quick thumbs up, thumbs down, “already been there,” or “want to go back.” (There’s a fifth option if you’re not sure about the place at all.) Click the thumbs up icon twice and the destination will get slotted into your top picks—sort of like adding a TV show to your “list” on Netflix. By the time you’re done, Virtuoso will have collected a couple of hundred data points as to what type of traveler you are and what motivates your getaways.

Wanderlist is most robust when multiple family members participate. In my own trial, I was surprised to see that Indonesia was my husband’s second-highest-ranked destination—particularly considering that he’s always been apathetic about beach-focused vacations. Since we both want to go there, our preliminary analysis suggested we pair the destination with either Cambodia (one of my top picks) or Australia (one of his). It also shares information on the best times to go. (In my case, it was October through December for shoulder-season deals).

The service stops short of becoming a DIY travel-planning tool; the intention, unsurprisingly, is to pair travelers with advisers who can consult on the finer details and handle the logistics of booking. The company will also create a hardcover coffee table book featuring all the places your family wants to visit, just to keep you inspired.

What It’s Up Against

Gillian Morris, whose app Hitlist helps travelers find airfare deals that align with their bucket lists, says that other companies have tried (and failed) to build “vacation finders” in the past. As the creator of the Travel Founders Breakfast Club—an informal think tank for travel-tech startups—she’s had a front row seat to many of their stories. Among them: Triptuner, which abandoned its direct-to-consumer strategy in favor of a B2B approach; TouristEye, which was devalued and shut down after an acquisition by Lonely Planet; and most recently, Vivere, which is basic in its functionality. “I honestly see something like this almost every month, and it never tends to go anywhere,” Morris says.

One reason for this is that our dreams aren’t always aligned with our practicalities. “People say they’re interested in a certain type of vacation, but the things they book are often quite different: They say they want to go to Zanzibar but end up going to Miami,” Morris laughs.

But Wanderlist could, in theory, be an efficiency tool that shortcuts the “getting to know you” process between client and agent.

“Virtuoso is automating a back-end system that all travel agents already use,” says family vacation specialist Kathy Sudeikis of Acendas Travel, referring to ubiquitous industry software called Client Base that helps agents create client profiles the old-fashioned way, through conversations.

A further benefit, says Sudeikis, is earning the loyalty of Wanderlist’s youngest (and most digitally inclined) users: “The same kids who were exposed to the benefits of working with a specialist will stay clients when it’s time to plan their graduation trips and their honeymoons.” Upchurch says that, so far, Wanderlist has thus far been adopted by travelers aged 6 to 86.

Looking Ahead

If Virtuoso agents could integrate Wanderlist’s data with their sales platforms—which they currently can’t—they might be able to unlock further competitive advantages. For instance, Sudeikis thinks using the data for targeted marketing could prove useful: passing on special discounts for a Paul Gauguin cruise to Tahiti to a family that had already expressed interest in going there, for instance. “The opportunity to expose clients to exactly the types of trips that they are thinking about, and to drill down to such a personal level, stands to be very powerful.”

Morris, too, sees potential for the tool to develop machine-learning capabilities, a Pandora for vacations. “It would be pretty cool if Virtuoso was building a deeper preference map that could surface unique insights and eventually as its own artificially intelligent agent,” she says.

For now, Virtuoso is less focused on those aspects and more on bringing Wanderlist to family offices and corporations, which can use it as an employee-retention benefit.

One chief executive officer, Jeff Prouty of Prouty Project, a Minnesota-based consulting firm , has already signed up and called the tool one of the greatest motivators for his business. Then again, he didn’t just offer his entire team access to the Wanderlist survey; he also provided individual consultations with a local Virtuoso agent and a stipend for each employee’s first trip.

The post A New Vacation Planning Tool Wants to Predict Your Next Holiday appeared first on Businessliveme.com.

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213hiphopworldnews · 6 years

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What It’s Like As A Private Chef For Stars Like DeMarcus Cousins And 2Chainz

Sami Udell

It’s 7pm on a Monday night and Sami Udell is prepping a five-course dinner for her brother’s wedding party. Wearing her signature “Eat Good Food” t-shirt and apron, she chops fresh sweet potatoes while reading off a handwritten menu taped to her cabinet. As usual, the dinner will be centered on fresh fruits and vegetables, paired with a lot of heart. The potatoes will ultimately accompany the main course of crispy vegetables, halibut with cashew cream sauce, and a smokey, olive and herb relish. Though Udell has just returned from San Francisco, where she was invited to cook for NBA superstar Kevin Durant, she accommodates a last minute request to add four more people to the dinner party. These are the sorts of spur of the moment pivots she’s grown accustomed to as a personal chef.

At just 27 years old, with no formal training or accolades, Udell is a full-time personal chef for some of the world’s biggest athletes and musicians. She began teaching herself how to cook in college as a means to be healthier. When she moved to Los Angeles, she spent most of her time cooking for her friends, gardening, and learning everything she could about food to hone her craft. In a serendipitous moment of preparation colliding with an extraordinary opportunity, Sami’s hearty but healthy fare caught the attention of the personal assistant to Ludacris, after she catered a party he was at. After months of persistent follow-up, Sami received a call from Ludacris himself inviting her to cook for him. Her warm, disarming demeanor and infectious curiosity for nature and food have parlayed that into a star-studded list of clientele — including NBA star DeMarcus Cousins and rap icon 2Chainz.

I recently sat down with Sami in her makeshift commercial kitchen to discuss the highs and lows of working in such a physically demanding yet rewarding profession. She was incredibly candid about the difficult moments, the breadth of personalities, and the day to day joys and struggles behind all the glamour.

So, I know your story, but can you contextualize how you started cooking and how you first become a personal chef?

I started cooking just because I thought it was fun. I cooked for one of my brother’s networking parties, where I was lucky to meet Ludacris’s personal assistant. He actually delivered and ended up connecting me to Ludacris, so I started cooking for him when he was here in LA. I was really faking it honestly — pretending I knew how to cook while literally Googling “how to cook.” But the thrill of learning to cook was so fun that I was hooked. I ended up getting a job at a restaurant to enhance my skills. It’s such a brutal industry and I didn’t feel like I fit in. I didn’t go to culinary school but here I was cooking for a very famous celebrity. People were naturally judging me a little more than the other cooks because they didn’t understand how I had that job since my skills didn’t really align.

After being in that kitchen, as a 24-year-old, I didn’t have a lot of inhibition, and I wasn’t really scared to take risks, so I didn’t know what I was getting into when I decided to start a food truck. I figured I could run a restaurant, or a food truck on my own, and I did run the truck for two years, which was so fun, and I did love it. But what I realized through the truck was that, for now, I love cooking for fewer people and keeping the quality at its highest. Meanwhile, as the truck was running, my clientele grew and I started getting a lot of calls from NBA players. It started with DeMarcus Cousins, and I cooked for DeMarcus at his home for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for three months straight with no days off — for him and six other guys that were all well past six feet all. As much work as it was, I loved that personal connection, being in his house, listening to him talk about, say, ramen noodles. You know silly, normal things that he talks about. Seeing someone that people put on such a pedestal versus me being their chef is almost humorous. I get to know them in such a personal way and I love building that relationship, knowing who they are and understanding their food preferences. From there it just kept growing. I started working for NBA players and then 2Chainz and the family that owns Medmen, the cannabis company.

As long as I feel like I respect the person in some way, I’m happy. There does have to be a connection we build that makes me want to cook for them, because I devote every waking hour to cooking for them.

I know from personal experience that there’s something really special about your food, but what do you think it is that Ludacris, and ultimately all of your clients, love about you as a chef?

I think my passion for what I do has carried me really far, versus having a ton of skills. I’m not that person, but I’m very relatable and when I’m in someone’s kitchen, they can feel that I really love the food, and I care. Anyone can have skills, but not everyone has passion and care for what they do. I don’t even think I could teach it. I don’t know if it’s something that you can grow or ease into, but it only enhances as I continue. I feel so blessed to have such passion for cooking and learning about food. I have a nourishing spirit, I’m easy going, on-time, and I communicate.

You’re also really accommodating.

I do go above and beyond, even when it’s hard for me. It could have been easier to say that I can’t add four more people to the dinner tonight, but I will go above and beyond to make clients feel special, I want all my clients to feel like they’re my priority.

Tell me about how the relationship with DeMarcus Cousins came about.

I was cooking for him for two weeks and the night before my last day of meal prep, I got a call from his team saying that it would be my last day and they were going to continue with a different chef. I asked why they didn’t want me and they said they didn’t love deliveries and wanted someone who would cook in person. So I left a party in Venice and went to Erewhon to make the best homemade food I could make. It was 9:30 p.m. the night before I was supposed to drop off the food I had already made, and I decided to show up in person the next morning and do my best.

When I showed up the next day, they had already hired another guy who was on Top Chef. He had all the skills and was super extra. I looked DeMarcus straight in the eyes, he’s like 7 ft. tall, and said, “I know you hired someone else. But I will do my best, and no one is going to care more than I will.” I saw him light up, and I thought, “I think I have the job.” They called me the next day and said, “We had another chef, and we decided to go with you.” It’s so funny now because DeMarcus and I are so tight. It’s almost like we’re friends and that would never have happened if I hadn’t been so ballsy.

I love that story, and it’s such a testament to who you are as a person. So other than say, the potential rejection, what is the hardest aspect about what you do?

The hardest aspect is probably time. Imagine throwing an Easter party, or Christmas or Hanukkah dinner party for even five people. Imagine what you have to do: find the recipes, make a list, get groceries, go to multiple grocery stores, and because I like to be farm to table, I go to the Farmer’s Market. So there’s making your menu, then add LA traffic, parking, come back home, and by the time you get home, you have to make sure the kitchen is perfectly clean and then you prep and go to your client’s house. I wake up at 6 a.m. to be at the Farmer’s Market by 7 a.m. and then I go to one client’s house for breakfast, and then another for dinner, and I get home at 11 p.m. and I haven’t even looked at my email. As a personal chef, you do everything yourself. At a restaurant, they have a dishwasher or purveyor, but you’re really it — you do every aspect and having time to do all that is hard.

You cook for a number of NBA players. How do you take in their needs as top performing athletes and what do you think is unique about their diets?

Their diets are intense, especially when it comes to macronutrients. You have to take into consideration an exact amount of carbs or proteins. So as a chef, and wanting to be creative, you have to weigh things out: you’re a makeshift nutritionist and a chef. I also have to make sure they’re getting what they need to perform at their optimal level. But when you think about what they do, they have to be at peak ability, so I take it to heart and I really want that for them. To be creative with the restrictions, I go to the Farmer’s Market. Living in LA, we have access to amazing produce, maybe they can only have one cup of fruit, but I can find something interesting and make it special. I’m always finding new cool products, like a new spice or a new noodle that’s low in carbs, and because the grocery stores and Farmer’s Markets know me, they’re always giving me new products to try. Or sometimes I’ll watch an episode of Chef’s Table or eat at a Michelin starred restaurant and I think, “man, DeMarcus can’t have this…so what can I do to make it in a way that he can?” So I deconstruct my favorite dishes and I reintroduce them with things NBA players can eat.

What about rappers and hip-hop artists you cook for like Ludacris and 2Chainz? Are there similar considerations for their diets?

They’re actually quite similar. I got used to certain categories — like gluten-free is no problem. But their diets vary in calories since they’re not high performing athletes. Usually, it’s no dairy and no sugar. My brain is categorized by client — like “these two clients have the same diet,” or “this client is dairy and gluten free.” You can tell me to cook raw and I’ll figure it out.

What do you think would surprise people the most about being a personal chef?

How much work it takes or communicating. Or how physically draining it is. I’m always standing and running around. I’m always working even if I’m not at a client’s house. I’ll wake up in the middle of night, thinking about what they need for breakfast. It’s all-encompassing, in that way.

Also, the food can be pretty simple. They’re not eating foie gras every meal. Once in a while, it’s fancy but they really want tasty and healthy.

I know you’ve worked with a lot of different personalities. Are there any moments in particular where you thought, “I just can’t do this” or were really challenging? How did you keep going?

Yeah, I cooked for the founder of a major TV network and one day I brought a bottle of olive oil onto the driveway and it shattered on his driveway. They wouldn’t even let me in the house or let me clean it up, they just kicked me out. I went to my food truck after and just started crying. We’re all doing our best, so I didn’t understand why they would treat me that way. But, that stuff makes me stronger, as cliche as it sounds. After that, I cried, after DeMarcus originally told me “no,” I cried — I’m sensitive. But when I go home, I’m really good at looking at the whole picture: “What did I do wrong, and where can I go from here? Where can I grow instead of letting it stop me?”

Wow, that’s insane. But I think that goes to show why working with good clients as a chef is so important.

Yeah, I really value the people I work with, and I want all of my clients to do the best they can in life. So many people think it’s a glamorous industry, and it is… in a way. But I think people may not know that clients choosing me and me choosing a client are both important. I don’t care how much someone is willing to pay me if I’m not respected. When a client thanks me or texts me saying how much they loved a meal, I’m so grateful that they’re treating me well. Some celebrities don’t see this job as another human being, but my clients do and I respect that.

Where do you think your passion for food is headed?

I want to expand my business. I’m lucky that I’m young and that I work this hard. I know my body won’t be capable of this for a long time, but I‘m just in the present. I work as hard as I can and I work with people from all walks of life. I work 24/7 and I’m learning. When I look at my food from even a year ago, I see what I’ve done and how much I’ve grown. I’m putting in my 10,000 hours of cooking. When I watch things react in the pan, I know I have the skills and the sky’s the limit. I’ve built a strong foundation for a company and I ran a food truck for two years, so I have business knowledge which I think is only going to benefit me.

I do have goals, but I want to be present and learn so in the future I can do whatever I want. But I strongly believe I’ll be in the food industry until I die. I just really love what I do. I really love it.

Anything else you think is important to know about being a personal chef?

People are constantly texting you at the last minute with all kinds of requests [laughs]. People always want to know what my clients eat and what their personalities are behind closed doors and, honestly, I don’t think they’re the same but never in a bad way. People are always more down to earth — nice and humble. I choose to work with really good people. Being in someone else’s home takes away society’s glorified version of celebrity. It doesn’t really matter who people are, because at the end of the day everyone has to eat.

source https://uproxx.com/life/sami-udell-chef/

#hiphop #hip hop legend #hip hop history #hip hop #music #trending #hip hop news #ballin #hip hop scen

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webanalytics · 6 years

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32 Ways Your Ecommerce Company Can Boost Engagement and Sales

The ecommerce customer is a moving target. I mean that in more than one way:

Online behaviors and buying preferences evolve constantly.

Customers jump around relentlessly from apps, to messaging platforms, to social sites and websites.

They’re mobile.

How do you woo these “moving targets” into engaging with your ecommerce promotions, opting into your offers, and buying your products?

Your marketing and media needs to “move” them.

You experiment with a variety of ecommerce promotion ideas available to you now. We’ll run through a heap of them and hopefully offer a few you might want to try to build your audience and boost sales.

1. Offer coupons and discounts

Coupons have always been a staple in retail promotions so we need not question their power.

However, in the digital shopping realm, coupons play a role beyond simply providing a purchase incentive. They act as bait to hook new email subscribers. Of course, you’ll follow-up with subscribers, so consider expanding your portfolio of coupons to create specific subscriber segments that will receive relevant offers. You can offer coupons explicitly for product purchases, but may also find coupons marry well with offers to receive newsletters and useful downloadable content.

Image Source Your options for delivering coupons are many. GlassesUSA gets right to it by presenting a huge discount for first time buyers on their home page via a popup that “greys-out” the page until you respond.

2. Offer eBooks and other lead magnets

Image Source

The average online conversion rate for ecommerce shoppers hovers between 2% and 3%. At least 97% bail on you. However, a failed attempt to capture a sale doesn’t mean you can’t capture email addresses.

In a Kissmetrics post that explains how SaaS marketing differs from other types of marketing, Neil Patel writes, “If you are a B2B SaaS marketer, think of yourself in different terms from mere ‘marketer.’ Think of yourself as an industry savant — the one who possesses and dispenses information.”

While blog content helps attract traffic, one of your content marketing goals should be to convert the traffic into subscribers. Offer eBooks and other lead magnets such as checklists, mini-courses, templates, tools, and more to motivate visitors to give you their email addresses.

Think value. Think relevance. What can you offer to help a prospective customer solve a problem? Think of your lead magnet offer as something so valuable it’s worth paying for—then deliver it free.

3. Offer a loyalty program

Create a loyalty program that offers customers an incentive to buy more often or spend more on their purchases. Loyalty programs can take any number of forms, but generally feature a system whereby points are accumulated that build increased buying power.

You might also consider loyalty programs that reward buyers for doing things beyond buying such as writing reviews, sharing your pages and posts, and submitting photos.

Image Source The first feature on the Pure Hockey homepage is information about their “Pure Rewards” program that aims to deliver bonus buying power to loyal customers.

4. Host giveaways

People love free stuff. Create buzz about your brand with giveaways. Promoting giveaways on your website and via social media puts your brand in front of new eyes and grows your email list.

Image Source

A simple giveaway by Ginger Heat Muscle Rub encourages participants to “Like” the brand on Facebook and enter to win free product samples.

Image Source A holiday giveaway hosted by Mixed Hues offers prizes for 12 days and delivers a discount just for entering to make everyone a winner.

The examples of giveaways shown above were created with templates from ShortStack, a platform that makes it easy to create an immense variety of ecommerce promotions.

5. Conduct contests

Instagram and Facebook contests—or contests you promote on any social network or channel—are one of the best ways for ecommerce brands to generate awareness, build community, drive traffic and boost sales. Best practices for conducting social media contests include:

Create a unique hashtag for the promotion.

Create an image or video to announce your contest.

Create example posts to inspire users.

Use a moderation tool.

Secure legal rights to re-use user-generated content.

Display the curated posts in a gallery on your website and social channels.

Adhere to the rules of the network and publish the policies of the contest.

6. Create a challenge

I stumbled into a fun tactic while researching this article and found it to be a powerful idea: create a challenge. Those that join it share a common cause. They’ll welcome your ideas, are likely to share your content, and may consider purchasing your products.

At the very least, they’ll experience a memorable, personalized experience with your brand.

Image Source NaturallyCurly invited customers and fans to its “No sugar challenge.” Joining means opting in for email updates. What a great way to create a bond between a brand and its fans.

7. Cross-sell

It shouldn’t be difficult for you to think of practical cross-selling opportunities to offer your buyers that will add value to their purchase and dollars to your cash register.

8. Up-sell

Upselling works too. In fact, Econsultancy says it works 20X better than cross-selling.

See, buyers often don’t know a superior product is available. Chances are some of the products you offer are closely related to premium versions. Set-up your store to upsell and keep in mind:

The suggested product must fit the original needs of the customer.

Price sensitivity is bound to be an issue, so be clear about the benefits of upgrading.

9. Showcase top sellers

Ask a food server what their favorite dish is and they’re likely to respond with, “Our most popular pasta dish is the…” or… “If you’re really hungry, everyone really loves the…” — or something like that.

Ecommerce companies can do the same.

It’s human nature to go with the crowd. Also, buyers value direction. Show them your best sellers, or best sellers in specific categories. You’ll reduce overwhelm, and accelerate sales.

Image Source Imagine knowing little or nothing about games, but you’re shopping for a gift. You’d welcome suggestions to buy the most popular games. Nutty Squirrel Games gets it and helps with this smart form of suggestive selling.

10. Create interactive assistants

Tools such as these enable you to walk the customer through a series of questions and deliver recommendations based on the answers—like a helpful salesperson would do.

While your online tool helps prospects and customers determine their priorities and preferences, it also helps you gather useful data, which might drive sales in the moment, or later, when the data is used to personalize your subsequent communications.

Image Source The “Flavour Generator” from Hello Fresh is a great example of a simple assessment tool. It’s designed to inspire cooking ideas, which clearly aligns with the brand’s recipe box products.

Image Source

Help yourself to the quiz offered on the Warby Parker homepage and after answering five quick questions the site suggests frames that fulfill your preferences and offers to send them to you to try-on.

11. Create video demonstrations

Images obviously help sell products, but are merely par for the course. You can boost sales of new, featured, or popular items by creating short promotional or review videos.

Test the idea with just a few items and measure the impact to help establish if the investment in creating video pays. If you discover videos generate sales you can expand the program with more videos and experiment with different approaches to video production and different types of videos.

Image Source A number of products offered on WatchShop present shoppers with the option to watch short product videos.

12. Highlight risk reducers

Your homepage likely features “risk reducers,” that is, notices that help overcome objections and give buyers greater peace of mind, such as:

Free shipping

Fast delivery

Money back guarantees

Free returns

Transaction security

However, many visitors will arrive directly on product pages and not see your homepage. Make certain your most important risk reduction messages are also displayed in at least one prominent place on product pages. Test the messaging, design and page layout to determine what works best.

Image Source A product page on YourSuper reminds would-be buyers of its shopper-friendly policies on a sticky header bar and in another prominent element beside the call to action.

13. Present product plugs (testimonials, reviews, etc.)

Standard ecommerce product review systems are useful, however, those that include photos and/or videos that embellish the customer stories are even more convincing.

Image Source

14. Provide wishlists

Ecommerce experts at Big Commerce claim that offering shoppers a wish list is an effective way to reduce shopping cart abandonment and fulfill sales from customers who showed intent but didn’t end up purchasing. They add that wishlists:

Give customers who aren’t ready to order an easy reminder system when they return

Enable merchants to measure product interest

Are helpful to shoppers that are buying gifts

Encourage users to sign up for an account

Would-be buyers will often forget about their wishlists, so send friendly reminder emails to inspire customers to complete their purchase.

15. Present trust badges

Customers often dropout of a purchase process when they have concerns about the security of their payment. Address this challenge by including one or more “trust badges” on your checkout page to convince customers the process is safe and secure.

Image Source

16. Present user-generated content

“Hype up engagement,” is a piece of ecommerce promotion advice from a Kissmetrics post. The post featured this insight from of Dan Wang of Shopify:

“User-generated photos are a great way to generate social proof. Prospective customers see that your products are regularly being purchased by people just like them, and feel more comfortable doing something that others are doing.”

Image Source User-generated content (UGC) can be collected and used in a variety of ways. The GentleFawn store gathers photos via an Instagram hashtag and features them a gallery on their homepage.

17. Use satisfaction surveys

Savvy ecommerce brands cater to new and existing customers by gathering feedback with satisfaction surveys. A survey done well builds goodwill. The data you collect enables you to improve the user experience. Both equate to smart marketing.

Ask questions that will help you learn:

How customers found your website

How satisfied they were with the shopping experience

How your store compares to others they’ve visited

How can you serve their needs in the future

Image Source Though satisfaction surveys are most commonly handled with email, Spartoo is an ecommerce company that takes a proactive approach by offering a survey on its homepage. A discount helps motivate shoppers to comply.

18. Present exit intent popups

Add an exit intent pop-up to your website to capture visitors on the verge of leaving. Give them a reason to join your email list by offering a free guide, discount, or some incentive that aligns with your brand.

19. Send cart abandonment email

Marketing automation platforms enable you to send customized emails to shoppers that have abandoned shopping carts.

If a customer logged in, you can send customized emails with images of the items they shopped for. Tactics you might try with abandonment email include:

Put personalized information to use.

Send emails promptly.

Try more than once.

Include social proof such as customer reviews, ratings, etc.

Offer viable options such as related items.

Send discounts before giving up.

Shortly after I left an item in my cart without completing the purchase, Michael’s sent me an email telling me I have great taste, which showed me the item again and suggested other products I might like.

20. Send automated emails

Prospects and customers are giving you their email addresses. Send them something in return: email. Email marketing allows you to send targeted—and well-timed messages—at various stages of the buying lifecycle.

In a great post detailing ecommerce email strategies, Nadav Dakner shares six potential automated email flows you might want to put in place in addition to the abandoned cart reminders we’ve already covered:

Welcome series

Purchase follow-up

Re-engagement prompts

Upsell offers

Notices about education content

Product and promotion updates

21. Support a charity

Charity programs that come to my mind from ecommerce leaders include Pura Vida Bracelets and Warby Parker eyeglasses.

Image Source

22. Promote around special occasions

While Christmas, birthdays and anniversaries are obvious special occasions, you can promote special occasions year-round.

For instance, in February you can create sales, special offers, promotions, contests, giveaways and even downloadable content around Ground Hog Day, Valentine’s Day, Presidents’ Day and the Super Bowl (to name just a few).

Image Source Here’s an example of simple voting poll an ecommerce company might do to attach their promotion to the Super Bowl hoopla.

23. Make customers your sales force

Influencer marketing takes many forms beyond celebrity endorsements and paying popular YouTubers to mention your products.

A clever strategy for ecommerce brands is to create a user-driven affiliate network of niche influencers. Your program might extend beyond simple financial incentives or product offers to include:

Additional promotional opportunities on your website and social media properties

Coaching

Access to experts

Social media advice and assistance

Loyalty program development

Image Source 1st Phorm does a stellar job of promoting its “Legionnaires” program. Copy beneath the image and video above reads, “We interact with our Legionnaires on a constant basis to make sure they are successful in not only promoting 1st Phorm and making money, but also growing their personal brands.”

24. Send Instagrammers to your store

Instagram is for people who love images. It also appears to be for people who love to shop.

Instagram reported 60% of its users say they learn about products and services on the platform and 30% have purchased something they discovered.

A study by Shopify reported the average order value from Instagram marketing is $65.00 (second only to Polyvore).

Engagement on Instagram is 10 times higher than Facebook.

The key to Instagram marketing is engaging users and moving them to your website. How’s it done?

Run contests.

Show pictures of customers using your products (a.k.a. user-generated content).

Carefully select a compelling page on your website to feature in your Instagram bio. This is your one and only link opportunity on the network.

Image Source Stitch Fix uses the link in their Instagram bio to direct traffic to a style gallery. A “Get Started” call to action atop the page introduces how the shopping service works and a gallery of photos and videos link to various products and promotions.

25. Send shoppers to your Instagram

Consider your Instagram account a destination for building your audience and earning sales from prospects that have never seen your Instagram feed or profile. They could discover the credible proof they’re looking for with a branded hashtag or on an Instagram account you’ve populated with authentic user-generated content.

Image Source ModCloth features its #MarriedinModCloth hashtag on the homepage inviting visitors to Instagram where they find thousands of images created by customers.

26. Publish product landing pages

Try directing first-time visitors to information-rich product landing pages. Create pages that step visitors through everything they need to make an informed purchase decision.

Showcase some combination of a benefit-focused headline, value proposition, social proof, risk reducers and relevant images and video.

27. Explore mobile advertising

Mobile advertising combines geolocation and mobile-ready ads to connect shoppers to your store while they’re commuting, sitting in a waiting room, or even shopping.

Recommendations to effectively use mobile advertising for ecommerce include:

Optimize the website for mobile users with responsive design.

Leverage retargeting display ads.

Consider video.

Use the Facebook and Instagram ad platform.

Appeal to the “in-the-moment” needs of the mobile user with “snackable” content.

Utilize Google Analytics to better understand the behavior of your audience by channel.

28. Expand shipping options

Who wants to wait weeks for their product to arrive? Worse yet, who wants to wonder when it will show up? These are clearly rhetorical questions.

Satisfy more customers with predictability, specificity, transparency, details and most of all, choices. Consider:

On-demand delivery options

Delivery tracking

Detailed information regarding shipping expenses

Free and fast delivery incentives

29. Create auto-ship options

A good portion of ecommerce companies can borrow a page from various subscription businesses to create incentives that encourage auto-shipping, and automatic renewals.

Image Source Chewy offers instant savings for customers setting up an autoship option for the first time and sweetens the deal with bonus savings on select brands.

30.Optimize for buyers that are shopping for ideas

SEO and paid search need to be weapons in the ecommerce brand’s marketing arsenal. However, your keyword selection needn’t be limited to targeting buyers shopping for specific products.

An increasing percentage of would-be buyers on mobile devices are looking for ideas. New research from the Think with Google site offers insights about selecting keywords to optimize for shoppers that are idea hunting.

Image Source Highlights from Google’s data research indicate:

Searches for “ideas” on mobile are rising fast.

Mobile searches for “shopping lists” are spiking.

“Outfits for” is a hot partial search term.

Those shopping for a category frequently conduct searches containing the word “brand,” “top,” and “best.”

31. Offer live chat

Econsultancy reports live chat has the highest satisfaction levels for any customer service channel, with 73%, compared with 61% for email and 44% for phone.

Image Source The post cited above features interesting data that reveals why live chat is preferred. Immediacy wins.

32. Bring ace media buyers to the table

I concluded if I were to give you practical advice about this vitally important but terribly complex topic (without cranking out another 3,000 words), it would be this:

Learn the basics about the Google AdWords platform and your social media options, then…

Experiment, then…

Bring a pro to the table.

Advertising can be expensive, but that’s only the case when it doesn’t work. An ace media buyer will show you where to place your chips and perpetually improve your ROI from the digital advertising programs that drive ecommerce sales.

About the Author: Barry Feldman operates Feldman Creative providing clients content marketing strategy, copywriting and creative direction. Barry’s authored three book including the best-selling personal branding guide, The Road to Recognition. Visit Feldman Creative and his blog, The Point.

from Search Results for “analytics” – The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/2mQvmeV #Digital #Analytics #Website

#Analytics #Search Results for “analytics” – The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog

0 notes

marie85marketing · 6 years

Text

32 Ways Your Ecommerce Company Can Boost Engagement and Sales

The ecommerce customer is a moving target. I mean that in more than one way:

Online behaviors and buying preferences evolve constantly.

Customers jump around relentlessly from apps, to messaging platforms, to social sites and websites.

They’re mobile.

How do you woo these “moving targets” into engaging with your ecommerce promotions, opting into your offers, and buying your products?

Your marketing and media needs to “move” them.

1. Offer Coupons and Discounts

Coupons have always been a staple in retail promotions so we need not question their power.

Image Source

Your options for delivering coupons are many. GlassesUSA gets right to it by presenting a huge discount for first time buyers on their home page via a popup that “greys-out” the page until you respond.

2. Offer eBooks and Other Lead Magnets

Image Source

3. Offer a Loyalty Program

You might also consider loyalty programs that reward buyers for doing things beyond buying such as writing reviews, sharing your pages and posts, and submitting photos.

Image Source The first feature on the Pure Hockey homepage is information about their “Pure Rewards” program that aims to deliver bonus buying power to loyal customers.

4. Host Giveaways

People love free stuff. Create buzz about your brand with giveaways. Promoting giveaways on your website and via social media puts your brand in front of new eyes and grows your email list.

Image Source

A simple giveaway by Ginger Heat Muscle Rub encourages participants to “Like” the brand on Facebook and enter to win free product samples.

A holiday giveaway hosted by Mixed Hues offers prizes for 12 days and delivers a discount just for entering to make everyone a winner. (Image Source)

The examples of giveaways shown above were created with templates from ShortStack, a platform that makes it easy to create an immense variety of ecommerce promotions.

5. Conduct Contests

Create a unique hashtag for the promotion.

Create an image or video to announce your contest.

Create example posts to inspire users.

Use a moderation tool.

Secure legal rights to re-use user-generated content.

Display the curated posts in a gallery on your website and social channels.

Adhere to the rules of the network and publish the policies of the contest.

6. Create a Challenge

At the very least, they’ll experience a memorable, personalized experience with your brand.

NaturallyCurly invited customers and fans to its “No sugar challenge.” Joining means opting in for email updates. What a great way to create a bond between a brand and its fans. (Image Source)

7. Cross-sell

It shouldn’t be difficult for you to think of practical cross-selling opportunities to offer your buyers that will add value to their purchase and dollars to your cash register.

8. Up-sell

Upselling works too. In fact, Econsultancy says it works 20X better than cross-selling.

See, buyers often don’t know a superior product is available. Chances are some of the products you offer are closely related to premium versions. Set-up your store to upsell and keep in mind:

The suggested product must fit the original needs of the customer.

Price sensitivity is bound to be an issue, so be clear about the benefits of upgrading.

9. Showcase Top Sellers

Ecommerce companies can do the same.

It’s human nature to go with the crowd. Also, buyers value direction. Show them your best sellers, or best sellers in specific categories. You’ll reduce overwhelm, and accelerate sales.

Imagine knowing little or nothing about games, but you’re shopping for a gift. You’d welcome suggestions to buy the most popular games. Nutty Squirrel Games gets it and helps with this smart form of suggestive selling. Image Source

10. Create Interactive Assistants

Tools such as these enable you to walk the customer through a series of questions and deliver recommendations based on the answers—like a helpful salesperson would do.

The “Flavour Generator” from Hello Fresh is a great example of a simple assessment tool. It’s designed to inspire cooking ideas, which clearly aligns with the brand’s recipe box products. (Image Source)

11. Create Video Demonstrations

Images obviously help sell products, but are merely par for the course. You can boost sales of new, featured, or popular items by creating short promotional or review videos.

A number of products offered on WatchShop present shoppers with the option to watch short product videos. (Image Source)

12. Highlight Risk Reducers

Your homepage likely features “risk reducers,” that is, notices that help overcome objections and give buyers greater peace of mind, such as:

Free shipping

Fast delivery

Money back guarantees

Free returns

Transaction security

A product page on YourSuper reminds would-be buyers of its shopper-friendly policies on a sticky header bar and in another prominent element beside the call to action. (Image Source)

13. Present Product Plugs (Testimonials, Reviews, etc.)

Standard ecommerce product review systems are useful, however, those that include photos and/or videos that embellish the customer stories are even more convincing.

Image Source

14. Provide Wishlists

Give customers who aren’t ready to order an easy reminder system when they return

Enable merchants to measure product interest

Are helpful to shoppers that are buying gifts

Encourage users to sign up for an account

Would-be buyers will often forget about their wishlists, so send friendly reminder emails to inspire customers to complete their purchase.

15. Present Trust Badges

Image Source

16. Present User-Generated Content

“Hype up engagement,” is a piece of ecommerce promotion advice from a Kissmetrics post. The post featured this insight from of Dan Wang of Shopify:

User-generated content (UGC) can be collected and used in a variety of ways. The GentleFawn store gathers photos via an Instagram hashtag and features them a gallery on their homepage.

17. Use Satisfaction Surveys

Ask questions that will help you learn:

How customers found your website

How satisfied they were with the shopping experience

How your store compares to others they’ve visited

How can you serve their needs in the future

Though satisfaction surveys are most commonly handled with email, Spartoo is an ecommerce company that takes a proactive approach by offering a survey on its homepage. A discount helps motivate shoppers to comply. (Image Source)

18. Present Exit Intent Popups

19. Send Cart abandonment Emails

Marketing automation platforms enable you to send customized emails to shoppers that have abandoned shopping carts.

If a customer logged in, you can send customized emails with images of the items they shopped for. Tactics you might try with abandonment email include:

Put personalized information to use.

Send emails promptly.

Try more than once.

Include social proof such as customer reviews, ratings, etc.

Offer viable options such as related items.

Send discounts before giving up.

20. Send Automated emails

Welcome series

Purchase follow-up

Re-engagement prompts

Upsell offers

Notices about education content

Product and promotion updates

21. Support a Charity

Charity programs that come to my mind from ecommerce leaders include Pura Vida Bracelets and Warby Parker eyeglasses.

Image Source

22. Promote Around Special Occasions

While Christmas, birthdays and anniversaries are obvious special occasions, you can promote special occasions year-round.

Here’s an example of simple voting poll an ecommerce company might do to attach their promotion to the Super Bowl hoopla. (Image Source)

23. Make Customers your Sales Force

Influencer marketing takes many forms beyond celebrity endorsements and paying popular YouTubers to mention your products.

A clever strategy for ecommerce brands is to create a user-driven affiliate network of niche influencers. Your program might extend beyond simple financial incentives or product offers to include:

Additional promotional opportunities on your website and social media properties

Coaching

Access to experts

Social media advice and assistance

Loyalty program development

1st Phorm does a stellar job of promoting its “Legionnaires” program. Copy beneath the image and video above reads, “We interact with our Legionnaires on a constant basis to make sure they are successful in not only promoting 1st Phorm and making money, but also growing their personal brands.” (Image Source)

24. Send Instagrammers to Your Store

Instagram is for people who love images. It also appears to be for people who love to shop.

Instagram reported 60% of its users say they learn about products and services on the platform and 30% have purchased something they discovered.

A study by Shopify reported the average order value from Instagram marketing is $65.00 (second only to Polyvore).

Engagement on Instagram is 10 times higher than Facebook.

The key to Instagram marketing is engaging users and moving them to your website. How’s it done?

Run contests.

Show pictures of customers using your products (a.k.a. user-generated content).

Carefully select a compelling page on your website to feature in your Instagram bio. This is your one and only link opportunity on the network.

Stitch Fix uses the link in their Instagram bio to direct traffic to a style gallery. A “Get Started” call to action atop the page introduces how the shopping service works and a gallery of photos and videos link to various products and promotions.

25. Send Shoppers to your Instagram

ModCloth features its #MarriedinModCloth hashtag on the homepage inviting visitors to Instagram where they find thousands of images created by customers.

26. Publish Product Landing Pages

Try directing first-time visitors to information-rich product landing pages. Create pages that step visitors through everything they need to make an informed purchase decision.

Showcase some combination of a benefit-focused headline, value proposition, social proof, risk reducers and relevant images and video.

27. Explore Mobile Advertising

Mobile advertising combines geolocation and mobile-ready ads to connect shoppers to your store while they’re commuting, sitting in a waiting room, or even shopping.

Recommendations to effectively use mobile advertising for ecommerce include:

Optimize the website for mobile users with responsive design.

Leverage retargeting display ads.

Consider video.

Use the Facebook and Instagram ad platform.

Appeal to the “in-the-moment” needs of the mobile user with “snackable” content.

Utilize Google Analytics to better understand the behavior of your audience by channel.

28. Expand Shipping Options

Who wants to wait weeks for their product to arrive? Worse yet, who wants to wonder when it will show up? These are clearly rhetorical questions.

Satisfy more customers with predictability, specificity, transparency, details and most of all, choices. Consider:

On-demand delivery options

Delivery tracking

Detailed information regarding shipping expenses

Free and fast delivery incentives

29. Create Auto-Ship Options

A good portion of ecommerce companies can borrow a page from various subscription businesses to create incentives that encourage auto-shipping, and automatic renewals.

Chewy offers instant savings for customers setting up an autoship option for the first time and sweetens the deal with bonus savings on select brands.

30. Optimize for Buyers That Are Shopping for Ideas

SEO and paid search need to be weapons in the ecommerce brand’s marketing arsenal. However, your keyword selection needn’t be limited to targeting buyers shopping for specific products.

(Image Source)

Highlights from Google’s data research indicate:

Searches for “ideas” on mobile are rising fast.

Mobile searches for “shopping lists” are spiking.

“Outfits for” is a hot partial search term.

Those shopping for a category frequently conduct searches containing the word “brand,” “top,” and “best.”

31. Offer Live Chat

Econsultancy reports live chat has the highest satisfaction levels for any customer service channel, with 73%, compared with 61% for email and 44% for phone.

The post cited above features interesting data that reveals why live chat is preferred. Immediacy wins. (Image Source)

32. Bring Ace Media Buyers to the Table

I concluded if I were to give you practical advice about this vitally important but terribly complex topic (without cranking out another 3,000 words), it would be this:

Learn the basics about the Google AdWords platform and your social media options, then…

Experiment, then…

Bring a pro to the table.

0 notes

filipeteimuraz · 6 years

Text

32 Ways Your Ecommerce Company Can Boost Engagement and Sales

The ecommerce customer is a moving target. I mean that in more than one way:

Online behaviors and buying preferences evolve constantly.

Customers jump around relentlessly from apps, to messaging platforms, to social sites and websites.

They’re mobile.

How do you woo these “moving targets” into engaging with your ecommerce promotions, opting into your offers, and buying your products? Your marketing and media needs to “move” them. You experiment with a variety of ecommerce promotion ideas available to you now. We’ll run through a heap of them and hopefully offer a few you might want to try to build your audience and boost sales.

1. Offer coupons and discounts

Coupons have always been a staple in retail promotions so we need not question their power. However, in the digital shopping realm, coupons play a role beyond simply providing a purchase incentive. They act as bait to hook new email subscribers. Of course, you’ll follow-up with subscribers, so consider expanding your portfolio of coupons to create specific subscriber segments that will receive relevant offers. You can offer coupons explicitly for product purchases, but may also find coupons marry well with offers to receive newsletters and useful downloadable content.

2. Offer eBooks and other lead magnets

Image Source The average online conversion rate for ecommerce shoppers hovers between 2% and 3%. At least 97% bail on you. However, a failed attempt to capture a sale doesn’t mean you can’t capture email addresses. In a Kissmetrics post that explains how SaaS marketing differs from other types of marketing, Neil Patel writes, “If you are a B2B SaaS marketer, think of yourself in different terms from mere ‘marketer.’ Think of yourself as an industry savant — the one who possesses and dispenses information.” While blog content helps attract traffic, one of your content marketing goals should be to convert the traffic into subscribers. Offer eBooks and other lead magnets such as checklists, mini-courses, templates, tools, and more to motivate visitors to give you their email addresses. Think value. Think relevance. What can you offer to help a prospective customer solve a problem? Think of your lead magnet offer as something so valuable it’s worth paying for—then deliver it free.

3. Offer a loyalty program

You not only want customers to buy your products; you want them to keep buying. Ecommerce brands accomplish this by making their best customers feel valued. Do so by giving them valuable rewards through a customer loyalty program. Create a loyalty program that offers customers an incentive to buy more often or spend more on their purchases. Loyalty programs can take any number of forms, but generally feature a system whereby points are accumulated that build increased buying power. You might also consider loyalty programs that reward buyers for doing things beyond buying such as writing reviews, sharing your pages and posts, and submitting photos.

Image Source The first feature on the Pure Hockey homepage is information about their “Pure Rewards” program that aims to deliver bonus buying power to loyal customers.

4. Host giveaways

People love free stuff. Create buzz about your brand with giveaways. Promoting giveaways on your website and via social media puts your brand in front of new eyes and grows your email list.

Image Source

A simple giveaway by Ginger Heat Muscle Rub encourages participants to “Like” the brand on Facebook and enter to win free product samples.

Image Source A holiday giveaway hosted by Mixed Hues offers prizes for 12 days and delivers a discount just for entering to make everyone a winner. The examples of giveaways shown above were created with templates from ShortStack, a platform that makes it easy to create an immense variety of ecommerce promotions.

5. Conduct contests

Create a unique hashtag for the promotion.

Create an image or video to announce your contest.

Create example posts to inspire users.

Use a moderation tool.

Secure legal rights to re-use user-generated content.

Display the curated posts in a gallery on your website and social channels.

Adhere to the rules of the network and publish the policies of the contest.

6. Create a challenge

At the very least, they’ll experience a memorable, personalized experience with your brand.

Image Source NaturallyCurly invited customers and fans to its “No sugar challenge.” Joining means opting in for email updates. What a great way to create a bond between a brand and its fans.

7. Cross-sell

A post on the SEMRush blog wisely recommends focusing on cross-selling your products to increase sales. They offer as an example, a customer that has purchased a mobile phone being offered a screen guard or case. It shouldn’t be difficult for you to think of practical cross-selling opportunities to offer your buyers that will add value to their purchase and dollars to your cash register.

8. Up-sell

Upselling works too. In fact, Econsultancy says it works 20X better than cross-selling. See, buyers often don’t know a superior product is available. Chances are some of the products you offer are closely related to premium versions. Set-up your store to upsell and keep in mind:

The suggested product must fit the original needs of the customer.

Price sensitivity is bound to be an issue, so be clear about the benefits of upgrading.

9. Showcase top sellers

The suggested item might be something they’re known for, can prepare most easily, or profit the most from. Many restaurants spare you from having to ask by highlighting their most popular menu items on the menu. Ecommerce companies can do the same. It’s human nature to go with the crowd. Also, buyers value direction. Show them your best sellers, or best sellers in specific categories. You’ll reduce overwhelm, and accelerate sales.

10. Create interactive assistants

Buyers value when online stores provide insights and advice to help make more informed decisions. Enter the vast array of interactive content tools such as assessments, configurators, chatbots and recommendation engines. Tools such as these enable you to walk the customer through a series of questions and deliver recommendations based on the answers—like a helpful salesperson would do. While your online tool helps prospects and customers determine their priorities and preferences, it also helps you gather useful data, which might drive sales in the moment, or later, when the data is used to personalize your subsequent communications.

Image Source

11. Create video demonstrations

Images obviously help sell products, but are merely par for the course. You can boost sales of new, featured, or popular items by creating short promotional or review videos.

Image Source A number of products offered on WatchShop present shoppers with the option to watch short product videos.

12. Highlight risk reducers

Your homepage likely features “risk reducers,” that is, notices that help overcome objections and give buyers greater peace of mind, such as:

Free shipping

Fast delivery

Money back guarantees

Free returns

Transaction security

Image Source A product page on YourSuper reminds would-be buyers of its shopper-friendly policies on a sticky header bar and in another prominent element beside the call to action.

13. Present product plugs (testimonials, reviews, etc.)

I can’t decide whether to say it’s a good idea to include user reviews to boost sales or it’s a bad idea to exclude them. Both are true and it’s probably fair to say, thanks to Amazon, buyers expect to find them. Standard ecommerce product review systems are useful, however, those that include photos and/or videos that embellish the customer stories are even more convincing.

Image Source

14. Provide wishlists

Give customers who aren’t ready to order an easy reminder system when they return

Enable merchants to measure product interest

Are helpful to shoppers that are buying gifts

Encourage users to sign up for an account

Would-be buyers will often forget about their wishlists, so send friendly reminder emails to inspire customers to complete their purchase.

15. Present trust badges

Image Source

16. Present user-generated content

“Hype up engagement,” is a piece of ecommerce promotion advice from a Kissmetrics post. The post featured this insight from of Dan Wang of Shopify: “User-generated photos are a great way to generate social proof. Prospective customers see that your products are regularly being purchased by people just like them, and feel more comfortable doing something that others are doing.”

Image Source User-generated content (UGC) can be collected and used in a variety of ways. The GentleFawn store gathers photos via an Instagram hashtag and features them a gallery on their homepage.

17. Use satisfaction surveys

Ask questions that will help you learn:

How customers found your website

How satisfied they were with the shopping experience

How your store compares to others they’ve visited

How can you serve their needs in the future

18. Present exit intent popups

19. Send cart abandonment email

Marketing automation platforms enable you to send customized emails to shoppers that have abandoned shopping carts. If a customer logged in, you can send customized emails with images of the items they shopped for. Tactics you might try with abandonment email include:

Put personalized information to use.

Send emails promptly.

Try more than once.

Include social proof such as customer reviews, ratings, etc.

Offer viable options such as related items.

Send discounts before giving up.

20. Send automated emails

Welcome series

Purchase follow-up

Re-engagement prompts

Upsell offers

Notices about education content

Product and promotion updates

21. Support a charity

Ecommerce brands can take a cue from the shoe company Toms, where “Every purchase has a purpose.” Toms has built a reputation for improving lives and giving back. Their customers understand, appreciate and support the mission. Everyone wins. Charity programs that come to my mind from ecommerce leaders include Pura Vida Bracelets and Warby Parker eyeglasses.

Image Source

22. Promote around special occasions

While Christmas, birthdays and anniversaries are obvious special occasions, you can promote special occasions year-round. For instance, in February you can create sales, special offers, promotions, contests, giveaways and even downloadable content around Ground Hog Day, Valentine’s Day, Presidents’ Day and the Super Bowl (to name just a few).

Image Source Here’s an example of simple voting poll an ecommerce company might do to attach their promotion to the Super Bowl hoopla.

23. Make customers your sales force

Influencer marketing takes many forms beyond celebrity endorsements and paying popular YouTubers to mention your products.

A clever strategy for ecommerce brands is to create a user-driven affiliate network of niche influencers. Your program might extend beyond simple financial incentives or product offers to include:

Additional promotional opportunities on your website and social media properties

Coaching

Access to experts

Social media advice and assistance

Loyalty program development

24. Send Instagrammers to your store

Instagram is for people who love images. It also appears to be for people who love to shop.

Instagram reported 60% of its users say they learn about products and services on the platform and 30% have purchased something they discovered.

A study by Shopify reported the average order value from Instagram marketing is $65.00 (second only to Polyvore).

Engagement on Instagram is 10 times higher than Facebook.

The key to Instagram marketing is engaging users and moving them to your website. How’s it done?

Run contests.

Show pictures of customers using your products (a.k.a. user-generated content).

Carefully select a compelling page on your website to feature in your Instagram bio. This is your one and only link opportunity on the network.

25. Send shoppers to your Instagram

Next up for your list of ecommerce promotion idea is the opposite of what you just read. That is, in addition to sending Instagrammers to your store, you might also send shoppers to your brand’s Instagram account. Consider your Instagram account a destination for building your audience and earning sales from prospects that have never seen your Instagram feed or profile. They could discover the credible proof they’re looking for with a branded hashtag or on an Instagram account you’ve populated with authentic user-generated content.

Image Source ModCloth features its #MarriedinModCloth hashtag on the homepage inviting visitors to Instagram where they find thousands of images created by customers.

26. Publish product landing pages

Ecommerce companies sometimes make the mistake of directing traffic from search, social and digital ads to their home page or shopping cart. Typically, neither is an ideal approach for increasing conversion. Try directing first-time visitors to information-rich product landing pages. Create pages that step visitors through everything they need to make an informed purchase decision. Showcase some combination of a benefit-focused headline, value proposition, social proof, risk reducers and relevant images and video.

27. Explore mobile advertising

“Mobile shopping clicks overtook desktop clicks sometime in the summer of 2015 and continue to rise,” claims ROIRevolution. The retail-focused agency makes the case retailers can no longer afford to adopt a laissez faire mentality regarding mobile advertising. In fact, many shopping sites now recognize the importance of a mobile-first strategy. Mobile advertising combines geolocation and mobile-ready ads to connect shoppers to your store while they’re commuting, sitting in a waiting room, or even shopping. Recommendations to effectively use mobile advertising for ecommerce include:

Optimize the website for mobile users with responsive design.

Leverage retargeting display ads.

Consider video.

Use the Facebook and Instagram ad platform.

Appeal to the “in-the-moment” needs of the mobile user with “snackable” content.

Utilize Google Analytics to better understand the behavior of your audience by channel.

28. Expand shipping options

Who wants to wait weeks for their product to arrive? Worse yet, who wants to wonder when it will show up? These are clearly rhetorical questions. Satisfy more customers with predictability, specificity, transparency, details and most of all, choices. Consider:

On-demand delivery options

Delivery tracking

Detailed information regarding shipping expenses

Free and fast delivery incentives

29. Create auto-ship options

A good portion of ecommerce companies can borrow a page from various subscription businesses to create incentives that encourage auto-shipping, and automatic renewals.

Image Source Chewy offers instant savings for customers setting up an autoship option for the first time and sweetens the deal with bonus savings on select brands.

30.Optimize for buyers that are shopping for ideas

SEO and paid search need to be weapons in the ecommerce brand’s marketing arsenal. However, your keyword selection needn’t be limited to targeting buyers shopping for specific products. An increasing percentage of would-be buyers on mobile devices are looking for ideas. New research from the Think with Google site offers insights about selecting keywords to optimize for shoppers that are idea hunting.

Image Source Highlights from Google’s data research indicate:

Searches for “ideas” on mobile are rising fast.

Mobile searches for “shopping lists” are spiking.

“Outfits for” is a hot partial search term.

Those shopping for a category frequently conduct searches containing the word “brand,” “top,” and “best.”

31. Offer live chat

Online sellers that don’t offer a live chat option lose business to competitors who do. Live chat is a way to assist customers and is becoming the most desired method of contact—especially for millennials. Econsultancy reports live chat has the highest satisfaction levels for any customer service channel, with 73%, compared with 61% for email and 44% for phone.

Image Source The post cited above features interesting data that reveals why live chat is preferred. Immediacy wins.

32. Bring ace media buyers to the table

In this, my last tip, I was going to get into ecommerce Instagram advertising, but then I thought about all the various types, including the emerging “shoppable ads.” It’s not easy to keep up with Instagram advertising. The same goes for Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google and any other digital property that sells ads. I concluded if I were to give you practical advice about this vitally important but terribly complex topic (without cranking out another 3,000 words), it would be this:

Learn the basics about the Google AdWords platform and your social media options, then…

Experiment, then…

Bring a pro to the table.

Read more here - http://review-and-bonuss.blogspot.com/2018/01/32-ways-your-ecommerce-company-can.html

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purposefulfilms561 · 6 years

Text

32 Ways Your Ecommerce Company Can Boost Engagement and Sales

The ecommerce customer is a moving target. I mean that in more than one way:

Online behaviors and buying preferences evolve constantly.

Customers jump around relentlessly from apps, to messaging platforms, to social sites and websites.

They’re mobile.

1. Offer coupons and discounts

2. Offer eBooks and other lead magnets

3. Offer a loyalty program

Image Source The first feature on the Pure Hockey homepage is information about their “Pure Rewards” program that aims to deliver bonus buying power to loyal customers.

4. Host giveaways

People love free stuff. Create buzz about your brand with giveaways. Promoting giveaways on your website and via social media puts your brand in front of new eyes and grows your email list.

Image Source

A simple giveaway by Ginger Heat Muscle Rub encourages participants to “Like” the brand on Facebook and enter to win free product samples.

5. Conduct contests

Create a unique hashtag for the promotion.

Create an image or video to announce your contest.

Create example posts to inspire users.

Use a moderation tool.

Secure legal rights to re-use user-generated content.

Display the curated posts in a gallery on your website and social channels.

Adhere to the rules of the network and publish the policies of the contest.

6. Create a challenge

At the very least, they’ll experience a memorable, personalized experience with your brand.

Image Source NaturallyCurly invited customers and fans to its “No sugar challenge.” Joining means opting in for email updates. What a great way to create a bond between a brand and its fans.

7. Cross-sell

8. Up-sell

The suggested product must fit the original needs of the customer.

Price sensitivity is bound to be an issue, so be clear about the benefits of upgrading.

9. Showcase top sellers

10. Create interactive assistants

Image Source

11. Create video demonstrations

Images obviously help sell products, but are merely par for the course. You can boost sales of new, featured, or popular items by creating short promotional or review videos.

Image Source A number of products offered on WatchShop present shoppers with the option to watch short product videos.

12. Highlight risk reducers

Your homepage likely features “risk reducers,” that is, notices that help overcome objections and give buyers greater peace of mind, such as:

Free shipping

Fast delivery

Money back guarantees

Free returns

Transaction security

Image Source A product page on YourSuper reminds would-be buyers of its shopper-friendly policies on a sticky header bar and in another prominent element beside the call to action.

13. Present product plugs (testimonials, reviews, etc.)

Image Source

14. Provide wishlists

Give customers who aren’t ready to order an easy reminder system when they return

Enable merchants to measure product interest

Are helpful to shoppers that are buying gifts

Encourage users to sign up for an account

Would-be buyers will often forget about their wishlists, so send friendly reminder emails to inspire customers to complete their purchase.

15. Present trust badges

Image Source

16. Present user-generated content

Image Source User-generated content (UGC) can be collected and used in a variety of ways. The GentleFawn store gathers photos via an Instagram hashtag and features them a gallery on their homepage.

17. Use satisfaction surveys

Ask questions that will help you learn:

How customers found your website

How satisfied they were with the shopping experience

How your store compares to others they’ve visited

How can you serve their needs in the future

18. Present exit intent popups

19. Send cart abandonment email

Put personalized information to use.

Send emails promptly.

Try more than once.

Include social proof such as customer reviews, ratings, etc.

Offer viable options such as related items.

Send discounts before giving up.

20. Send automated emails

Welcome series

Purchase follow-up

Re-engagement prompts

Upsell offers

Notices about education content

Product and promotion updates

21. Support a charity

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2mQvmeV

#DIYS

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dailyaudiobible · 7 years

Text

7/29/2017 DAB Transcript

2 Chronicles 24:1-25:28 ~ Romans 12:1-21 ~ Psalm 22:19-31 ~ Proverbs 20:8-10

Today is the 29th day of July. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian. It is great to be here with you as we close down another week. And what a week it’s been in the scriptures. The Lord has spoken some amazing things to us through His word. And, so, we’ll dive in and take the next step. We are reading from the Gods Word translation this week, which is today. Second Chronicles chapter 24 verse 1 through 25 verse 28 today.

Commentary:

Ok. What does a dedicated life, a life given over to relationship with God, what does that look like? What are it's attributes? What are its characteristics? Like, how could we hold that up and overlay our own lives and just, sort of, see where we have areas of growth and where we're actually in alignment? I mean, that’s one of the reasons that we come to the scriptures. Right? It's one of the reasons we go through the stories and look into people's lives and look at their choices and decisions and see where those pathways lead. But we come to one of the most concise and thorough descriptions of this in the book of Romans today.

So, from the beginning of the book of Romans, we’ve watched Paul, kind of, lay things out systematically. And the breathtaking implications of the gospel are overwhelming, if we sit down-and think about it. And we've spent some time doing that. But he, kind of, reaches this place today where he’s saying, ok, so, let's begin to pull this together. This is what this should look like. Or in Paul's words, brothers and sisters, in view of all that we have just shared about God's compassion, I encourage you. And the first encouragement is to look at ourselves, to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. So, no longer do we have to lead a sheep or a goat or a bull and sacrifice its life and spill its blood for some sort of atonement before God. Now it's bigger than that. Now it's that we lay our lives down, alive before God. We don't give God death. We give him our lives and live as a sacrifice before God. That posture alone, just kind of contemplating what that means, it reorients our priorities. It exposes, immediately, our self-absorption. Right. And our pursuits. And it puts something else above all of those things. It puts our relationship and intimacy and intertwining and union with God above all other pursuits or possessions. And Paul says, this is an appropriate way to live and this is worship when you do. Don't become like the people of this world, Paul says. Instead, change the way you think. Because what Paul's talking about specifically here is repentance. Because repentance means to change the way you think. It means to change your mind, to shift from the inside, to change inside. Paul says, this is the overlay. This is the path that will allow you to always be able to determine what God really wants. Like it’s right there in black-and-white, what we are looking for. What does God really want? What is good, pleasing, and perfect to God? Paul says, you live your life offering yourself as a living sacrifice. Its worship. It's appropriate. And when you find yourself being pulled back to the darkness of the world, change the way you think. Then you'll always know what God really wants - what is good, pleasing, and perfect. And then he continues. Don't think of yourself more highly that you should, which is not just exalting yourself. Right? Just haughtiness. It's also, don't think about yourself more than you think about anything else. Don't think of yourself more highly than you should. Your thoughts should be leading you to use good judgment because this isn't about getting a leg up over anyone else. This isn't about being above anyone else. This isn't about anything like that because we're all in this together. And Paul goes on to explain how a body has many parts and that’s what we're a part of. And, so, whatever it is that your part is, whatever your part is, do your part. Be that and stop trying to be some other part. Be exactly what you are as a living sacrifice to God. It is worship. It is appropriate. We are all in this together. If we will all do our part we will be acting like the body. Or, to use the words of Paul, love sincerely. Hate evil. Hold onto what is good. Be devoted to each other like a loving family. Excel in showing respect for each other. Don't be lazy in showing your devotion. Use your energy to serve the Lord. Be happy in your confidence. Be patient in troubles and pray continually. Share what you have with God's people who are in need. Be hospitable, which isn't just about providing a meal or providing shelter. Share what you have inside as well. Bless those who persecute you. Bless them and don't curse them. We can stop right there for a minute and linger. Be happy with those who are happy. Be sad with those who are sad. Live in harmony with each other. Don't be arrogant but be friendly to humble people. Don't think you're smarter than you really are. Don't pay people back with evil for the evil that they did to you. Focus your thoughts on the things that are considered noble. And as much as it is possible, live in peace with everyone. Don't take revenge, dear friends. Instead, let God's anger take care of it. After all, He has the final say. Don't let evil conquer you. Instead, you conquer evil with good.

And there you go. Want to know where to aim your life? Want to be heading in the right direction and know that you're moving in the right direction? Well, go back to Romans 12 and read it over and over and over and over, underlining and highlighting and writing it down until it sinks in. This is the trajectory. What you have been given here is a roadmap to get to where you want to go. And like any other road map, you get on the road and then decide to take a detour? You're going to be heading in a different direction. You're not going to be headed where you want to go. And all of these detours that wind and wind and wind that we blame God for – like, why am I way over here? It’s like, you had the map dude. You had the map. And here is the map. And Romans 12 shows us that at it first begins with our intertwining with God, our union with God. We offer ourselves as living sacrifices, completely dedicated to Him. This is an act of worship that is worship with our lives, not just something we do for half an hour on Sunday morning. It's something that is always happening. The communion and union is always happening. Everything is an act of worship. Our very lives are in act of worship. And this is appropriate. It begins there. And then we have to be willing to change the way we think at any given moment. We have to be able to repent at any given moment. Because that is what will allow us to know what God really wants. We will be able to determine what is good and pleasing and perfect. And then we begin to know that we are in this together. We are part of a whole. We are an individual, unique, irreplaceable part of a whole. And if we could accept that we have an irreversible role to play, then we could settle in and be comfortable as ourselves - who we are. And we should do that, be that, with all the glory of the Lord being reflected off of our lives. Do that thing and stop looking around at what someone else is doing. This is not a competition. This is not about us dominating anyone else for any reason. It's about us being able to love one another and love God purely, from a centered place, from a place that is uniquely us, from a place that is intertwined in union with God. Anything can happen from that place because Jesus lived from that place. And Jesus lived a life that was fully human.

Prayer:

Father, we invite this. And, yes, we will spend some more time contemplating this, what is laid out here in the twelfth chapter of the Letter to the Romans. But even as we see these things and even as hope rises in our heart, because we have some concrete statements that show us where the head, we also can see that this cannot be achieved in our own strength. It's pretty clear. We can memorize this whole chapter. We can know everything about its trajectory and try to live into the and find that we will fail. Because we will always fail without union with you. And, so, come Holy Spirit, well up within us. We are in union with You. We just so often ignore that fact. You are within. We are to gather. We are inseparable. Nothing can separate us. Help us to live the way we were created to live. We surrender to You. Come Jesus, we pray, in Your mighty name, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website. It’s home base. It’s where you find out what's going on around here.

The next to Sneezing Jesus Facebook Live that we’ll be doing is coming up this Thursday, August 3rd, 7:00 p.m. Central Standard Time. We had a great time with the first one that we did. I have no doubt we’ll have a great time with the second one that we're going to do. And, so, hope to see you there. You need to be in the Sneezing Jesus discussion group in order to see that. And it's a piece of cake. Just go to facebook.com/groups/sneezingjesus and you’ll be in within minutes. And, so, we’ll see you there.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, in keeping this global campfire that we share burning. Thank you for your partnership. There's a link on the homepage of dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the More button in the lower right hand corner or if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill TN 37174.

And of course, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayers and Praise Reports:

Morning DAB. This is Charlotte from England. Just want to give a quick testimony about something going on in my life over this past month or so. So, I’ve been struggling with doubts about my salvation. And I didn’t know this at the time but it manifested itself in trying to go over and above in God and trying to please Him by doing acts and different works and things like that. And I prayed about it and just gave it completely to God. I just gave up completely. And in that, the very next day, praying today, God has just given me a word. So, through Romans 9:32 10-12 - what Brian read today. So, I got this from him. It’s the faith in God that gains God’s approval. Believe in God and you’ll have eternal life. Faith in God means hold onto what scriptures say about Him both in good times and the bad. And that reminded me of the scripture. It says the test of faith produces endurance and that He knows what He’s doing and has the power to do everything good, in His control. And has the power to do everything more than my power. And then, that God is pleased with me in what I do for Him and He wants best for me in harm not good. Putting myself in dangerous situations just to please Him. So, just to give the encouragement to anyone out there who is doubting their own salvation, that whoever believes in him will have eternal life. And it’s the faith that we should hold onto not the religious works or laws. Thanks guys. See you later.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible. This is Dave from NJ. This is my first time calling in. I’ve been listening for a couple of months but I already feel so connected with this community. And I’m asking this morning that you would pray for a little two-year-old girl, Elianna, who, three days ago, started to have seizures and has been asleep since then. And the doctors don’t know what is causing it or how to wake her up. And, so, I’m asking that you would pray that Jesus would just raise her up to wholeness and I’m asking that you would pray for her parents, that Jesus would carry the suffering and the fear that they feel as they wait for Him to move. I’m just asking that Jesus would use her little life as an example of how He can turn sorrow into joy. She’s two years old but she already knows who Jesus is and she trusts Him with her little two-year-old heart. Thank you for praying.

Asia, Asia, my darling sister in Christ. You moved me to tears when I heard your prayer request. The fact that the Lord is by your side is forefront in your mind though because you picked up the phone and called into your DAB family. Please know that you will be in my prayers my sister. I love you. I continue on to pray for Blind Tony, Salvation is Mine and all the DABbers who call in and are going through a difficult time. There’s also a brother who was introduced to the DAB by his uncle and is on home assignment from the mission field. I am praying that your financial support will raise above the 70% mark and that you will have a blessed time visiting with colleagues and potential supporters until you go back to the field. DAB family, I may not call in often. My last was December 6, 2016. But I listen every single day and pray with and alongside all those who call in. I just got back from two weeks’ vacation and haven't had a chance to check into the Sneezing Jesus group yet but I’m looking forward to the second Facebook Live broadcast and will call back about my planned study group. Pastor Gene, I wanted to surprise you and call you while I was visiting Florida but I just didn’t get around to it. Maybe next time. Ok? Blind Tony, I appreciate your shout out to me. You are such a prolific writer. I thank God for your gift and that you continue to share it here with us. And, Brian and Jill, I thank you guys so much for this medium. It has made a difference to my life and I’m sure to many other people. So, hang in there guys and continue to do what you’re doing and I’ll continue to pray for you. Thanks for listening to me. And this is Sue from Canada. Hang onto your smiles guys.

Hello family. This is Leonora calling from the Florida panhandle area. I do not call very often but in listening to today's podcast - It’s Wednesday, July 26th, my husband’s birthday - I heard Asia speak - Asia from Munich. Asia, dear, dear Asia. We love you so much. And I want you to know that our community, the body of Christ, Jesus, is wrapping our arms around you. We are surrounding you with love, with prayer, with hopefulness, and faithfulness in our Lord, Jesus Christ, who is with you. And in everything that occurs, Jesus loving you as we all love you. And whatever the outcome is, the Lord knows what is to be in this story. And please, please smile. I know it's hard too now. But smile in your heart because of the love that you have from everyone and most importantly from our God. And He turns all things into good. So, I wanted to encourage you Asia. I wanted to encourage you and let you know how much you are loved. And we are here to support you, always. Thank you. You've always been such an inspiration to me since I started listening a few years back. I love you and I love you family. Let’s lift Asia up. God bless you all. Thank you family. Bye-bye.

Good morning DAB family. It is July 25th. I just got through listening to the DAB. Thank you, Brian and Jill, for this ministry that we can come together and hear and read the word of God. I felt called to reply to Asia in Munich about what she’s going through about wanting to have another baby. I don’t know why God has me calling because I’ve never had the privilege of having children but I just felt like He wanted me to tell you that now that you’ve given it fully over to Him, He’ll take care of everything Asia. And I just felt like God wanted me to let you know that. Now, I don’t know what God is going to do but I just felt like he wanted me to call and let you know that He’s got your back. He’s going to take care of everything. So, God bless you, God be with you, and love on that little baby boy you have, Aiden. God bless. Bye.

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