#some of these things i can give text citations for out of the script if pressed | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kaaramel · 7 years

Text

a long and very disjointed list of webber HCs in no particular order

i don’t necessarily think this is all Untouchably True Game Canon but when i write about webber or play them in RP servers consider these.. my guidelines??? i don’t know it’s all pretty nebulous

wild spiders:

Eusocial - warriors and workers (the default black kind) are non-reproducing; queens develop from workers who are exposed to high concentrations of magic/nightmare fuel (provided in the wild by dark petals and primitive, instinctive ritual). I don't have a specific headcanon re: sexual reproduction namely Where the Males Are At - I could come up with something elaborate about much smaller males who never leave the dens or possibly do the anglerfish thing but if it's my call I'd like to take the path of least resistance and call it parthenogenesis

i made up the thing about nightmare fuel just now while i was writing but i'm into it - i say it because it follows from webber's triumphant appearance, assuming it’s the result of high exposure to nightmare energy, if we interpret the growing claws and the narrowed eyes as the beginnings of a queen-transformation (and i do)

all nests contain a primary queen at their base and center protected by swaths of webbing, laying eggs continually, & being defended by her children. a tier 2 nest contains a queen and one developing heir, who will take over the nest when the primary queen emerges, carrying the tier 3 nest's final and youngest queen on her back as she wanders looking for a place to establish a new colony.

the queen's use of dark magic allows her to grow to her full size and strength, & telepathically direct her colony; her strong insanity aura vs. players is partially a side effect of this magical nature

depth dwellers and cave spiders have queens too, but they confine themselves to the cave ceiling/underground respectively, so you'll never meet 'em

all castes are venomous but the venom has little to no effect on anything as big as a human, & doesn't linger. it has antibacterial effects when extracted and treated properly, hence the use as a base for healing salve

spiders have good night vision but are pretty miserable at color, & have an excellent sense of smell but hear mostly through vibration

their eyes faintly reflect ambient light like a cat's

spiders groom each other communally within the den and share food among the colony members

webber-specific anatomy:

after the resurrection event (character unlock - and by the by, should we establish who found and buried webber's skull in FFverse? did that happen?) their respective anatomies were reshuffled and merged into a single more-or-less coherent organism

one uninterrupted digestive tract; two hearts; one set of lungs; two brains but probably somehow interwoven nervous system. uhh, my house my rules, I'm gonna say the spiderbrain has ended up more as like.. a knot of ganglia running along the spine? (this is my retroactive justification for writing a fic where a blow to the head only knocked out the child and left the spider piloting the body solo)

their blood and muscle tissue is redder than a spider's and purple-er than a human's; the human skeleton is all present and anchoring standard-issue muscles and everything, but their outer skin is pretty tough and more or less exoskeletal..? we'll gloss right over how that one works for spiders i guess, magic kinda bones the square-cube law

the spider's nightvision is gone but colorvision has sharpened; they can tolerate bright sunlight where the spider couldn't before, and they see better in twilight than the human could, but are totally blind in the dark like any other player.. i think maybe spider vision would track strongly to movement, but not have clear focus on small things?

the spider-legs have very rudimentary digits at their tips and can hold things, although not as well or with as much strength as the main arms. webber can also get down and crawl on all eights but it's awkward for long distances. mostly in practice the extra limbs end up being used to gesture

raised and spread out wide: threat display. tucked close: fear/submission. up/down position corresponds roughly to mood and energy (held high when happy and sagging when unhappy). they use some recognizable human gestures as well: pointing, waving, covering their eyes, etc.

webber isn't very good at judging whether they've eaten the right amount, and will put basically anything in their mouth if it seems edible; they're pretty much constantly low-key hungry (standard for spiders - their next meal is wildly uncertain so they're fully prepared to scavenge at any moment) and simultaneously have a sensation of fullness without getting anything from it (the last lingering echo of "i, the spider, just ate a huge meal and it's not digesting properly at all," even though their internals have rearranged since)

their fur is stiff and bristly, & can stand on end or relax; lacking denmates they mostly groom themselves (combing claws through it) which means they are probably a bit grubby and matted in the hard-to-reach places

they have two tongues i swear to god you'll pry their use of "tongues" plural, in one shipwrecked line, out of my cold dead hands. this one’s real true canon that i could not possibly have made up and you’ll never take it away

they get pretty miserable in the heat, considering jet-black fur and all. mostly they have to resort to panting; the only sweat glands left to them are in places where the fur is thinner, mostly along the soles of their feet and palms of their hands

on the flipside of course, their fur isn't actually much insulation against the cold.. got them coming and going

they've tried before to file down the small, sharp claws on their fingertips against rocks, etc. and it never takes for longer than a single night; their blunted claws are back to how they were by the next morning. they've pretty much resigned themselves to having them and are able to be careful with fragile objects and hold hands and everything, it just takes some effort

they are able to communicate between themselves directly mind-to-mind but it was disorienting for a long time since one's mode of thought was very verbal and the other's very much based on images and emotions; it clarifies things to say them out loud and they do talk under their breath to each other, although not usually when other people are around unless their sanity's slipping

related: yes, the spider has learned to understand & use language, pretty competently. it likes playing with all the new sounds their mouth can make, and with rhyming words ("vroom vroom mushroom" and similar)

when their sanity drops it causes friction between the two halves, who are usually much more in sync - their perceptions of the world around them start diverging and it's a lot of strain to simultaneously see a shadow creature and not see it, or maybe see it a few feet to the left instead, etc etc

oh, also, one hideously specific thing: webber can see dark swords as, simultaneously, the sword and the simple stick of wood it's built around, and they find the double-vision sensation deeply unsettling

in general their sensitivity to magic is heightened beyond a normal human's - the spider is native to the islands and sensitized to these kinds of energies - but that mostly just means extra headaches and unpleasantness

uhh, they probably molt once in awhile, sure, my city - not often tho - their instinct is to go somewhere safe so they mostly go off on their own to do it, and the old exuvia crumbles into dust almost immediately. they're a little more soft and sensitive for a short period of time afterward and probably steal the opportunity to discreetly touch as many textures as they can before the new exoskeleton hardens up, because the rest of the time, all sensations are dreadfully dulled from what the human was once used to

they get mildly cramped and achy during the few days leading up to a molt, although a sense of being just a little too big for their rigid skin is never super far away

if they're jonesin' to feel textures at a time when they haven't recently molted, they lick things/put small objects in their mouth, ain't nothing wrong with the sensation coming from their tongue(s)

human family: i don't have a lot of original thoughts on this matter, tbh, i just have my interpretations of stuff hinted at in the script, but you can have 'em

his father kept goats

he remembers his mother cooking, sewing, & gardening; he probably helped around the house with at least basic tasks of that sort; he remembers some of her advice/sayings although some of it has gone kinda vague in his memory (same with grandpa: "you live in what you eat," are you Sure kiddo)

imo he seems like he was closer to his mom than his dad (mom is almost always "mum" and dad is always "Father," for one thing)

only child, no siblings

visited his grandfather reasonably often for fishing trips, chess lessons that he doesn't remember very well, bothering grandpa's cat Whiskers

imo: liked the outdoors but wasn't super athletic - he says he wasn't good at football. was probably always kinda short and scrawny even before growth was permanently stunted by being trapped inside a monster, but is at least a tough little nugget now

really liked superhero comics

i don't have a location more specific than "rural-ish england????" for where he comes from

mm.. i don’t know under what specific circumstances webber was brought to DSworld and again i hesitate to speculate, but if you make me pick a narrative i'll pick this one: just as people are occasionally drawn into Their world from the mundane world, things very rarely slip through going the other way, and a monstrous, magical spider from the islands managed to cross over. maybe a queen that wasn't fully/properly developed..? in order to be the correct size to swallow a lost/wandering child whole..

i figure webber's "indigestible" status is roughly analogous to how willow is impervious to fire, just, a way more specific and unpleasant circumstance, but nevertheless he survived in there much longer than he should've; the spider was pretty distressed over its inability to actually complete this weird meal and maybe the gradual establishment of a very rudimentary telepathic contact; maxwell offered carefully nonspecific help to the pair of them (somehow. broken-down radio in a junkyard?) and returned/brought the spider/child to the island dimension

behavior:

polite and respectful child. was probably always a pretty polite kid, and the spider understands hierarchy and respect from a rigidly eusocial organism's perspective, but it's also to a certain extent a really deliberate choice, namely "if we are meek and emphasize having human good manners then we are less likely to be feared or thrown out for being a monster"

yes, they are worried about this. they hear how enthusiastically the others rag on and murder mundane spiders

basically they consider themselves low in the hierarchy of this loosely-organized human den and aren't super great at refusing orders they’ll just ask what needs done and do it without complaint

particular respect for the authority/knowledge/power of women

intensely loyal to their friends

you are all their friends

even you WX

once they're sure that someone will tolerate it and not freak about.. Giant Spider, they like to be physically affectionate with friends.. they'll comb claws through people's hair, or just hug and cuddle

bad, bad dreams. could you possibly blame them in even the slightest

eating/being eaten and the lines blurring between those two states is a big one. being lost and trying to call for help but not being able to form the words. the child's parents not recognizing him. the dark

they are a staunch lil optimist and willing to believe the best of everyone

they like having something to do with their hands or fidget with or chew on

seeing the adults argue and fight among themselves is stressful and frightening

their response to stressful and frightening things is to run off solo for a little while and hang underground or with a spider nest until it sounds like things have cooled off

that’s all i can think of at the moment and if you read through all of that i’m in awe

#i'm gonna tag this as #famine's friends #cause thats who this is for #ds headcanons #it's like 60-70% talking about spiders and spider anatomy and spider physiology no prizes for guessing my priorities #some of these things i can give text citations for out of the script if pressed #spider psychology* is what i meant fuckin. fuck words

54 notes · View notes

rjzimmerman · 5 years

Text

I have finally completed my reading of the Mueller Report

I’ve finally completed my reading of the Mueller Report. I read parts of it more than once, primarily to gain a better understanding of some of the facts and the law, and in a few instances because I needed to be sure I was reading the text properly and not jumping to my own, unfounded conclusions. I also wanted to draw my own conclusions generally, and not rely solely upon conclusions presented or suggested by the media, politicians or academicians. I missed most of the Nixon drama because I was too occupied with law school studies, my military commitment, hiking/camping, partying and lots of jobs to stay just ahead of being broke. I didn’t want to miss this drama, so I jumped into the deep end.

Parts of the report read like a suspense novel, and other parts read like an extremely dense, academic legal memorandum or appellate brief. That didn’t bother me, because, as an attorney (retired), I’m comfortable with reading that dense stuff. I appreciated the changes in tone: the Grisham novel morphing into a legal memorandum on the separation of powers or the definition of “corruptly” kept my attention.

I believe, without thinking through the entire document, that everything included in the report has also been included in media reports over the past several months, going back to the 2016 presidential campaign. In other words, if you’ve been keeping up with the news surrounding trump and his administration, and the 2016 presidential campaign, then you have a fair, credible idea of what’s in the report. Assuming that, then why read it? Because you might learn that what we’re being told is not as frightening as what was really happening, including both the Russian interference angle and the trump obstruction of justice angle. Why did I read it? Because when I confront a trump supporter with a ridiculous, partisan-driven assertion, I want to feel comfortable with a response based on my reading and research, and not on what somebody else told me or what I read in the New York Times.

What did I learn? In a nutshell, as follows. The Russian attempts to interfere in the election were comprehensive, deep, broad and childish. I felt like I was reading the script for a puppet show with all these puppet characters, including Russians, Ukrainians and Americans, jumping into the puppet show spotlight, doing their thing, leaving, and then others appearing to continue the show, with all the children laughing and screaming at the antics. Yet, the puppet show was very effective, and is probably still going on. Two, I agree that Mueller did not establish the basis of a legal conspiracy involving the trump campaign and its staff and higher-ups. However, I also sense that Special Counsel’s office felt constrained, perhaps by time or its charter (the scope of the appointment) not to go further than it could have, but had it done so, it might have established stronger facts and relationships. Three, trump obstructed justice, and but for the policy position of the Department of Justice, should be indicted or impeached. The evidence laid out in the report, most of which you know, paints a very clear picture of a man bound and determined to win the whack-a-mole game and suppress the evidence and hide the facts. Was the evidence strong enough to indict? Yes, clearly. Impeach? Yes, but impeachment is more of a political approach to a terrible problem as opposed to a judicial proceeding, hence Nancy Pelosi and the battle against the progressive caucus in the House of Representatives.

I know what I would like to see done now is impossible, considering the current state of politics (on both sides), but to me our Senators and Representatives should be doing the following, immediately:

1. Create a joint committee of the House and the Senate to investigate and recommend solutions to the interference issue, including suggested regulations and statutes at the federal and state level, and amendments to our Constitution to cleanse and protect the election process. Give the committee six months to come up with solutions, and fund it liberally to allow staffing by experts in intelligence-gathering and analysis, information systems, grid protection, and foreign affairs. I know the following is virtually impossible, but I would limit its members to the older (by seniority) members of both the House and the Senate, in order to isolate the radical wings of both parties, including the Tea Party types and the more radical progressives. We need sobriety and reasoned, rational thought, not decibels. Let’s reserve the decibels for better things, such as healthcare reform (including reproductive rights and childrens’ healthcare), education reform and access, the environment and climate change, immigration reform, social justice, etc.

2. The House commences the impeachment process against trump. If I understand the process, there are several ways that the impeachment process can commence, one of which does not require that a resolution to approve articles of impeachment be filed. I think the Speaker of the House can refer the Mueller Report to the Judiciary Committee (or another committee created for the purpose of impeachment) for investigation, and that Committee then determines whether or not to proceed. This approach removes the incendiary step of filing articles of impeachment, yet provides for a more robust process for the House to issue subpoenas against the stonewalling of trump. The process starts, with less drama.

3. The House Judiciary Committee vigorously and quickly proceeds with enforcing its contempt citation against Attorney General Barr, and impeachment proceedings against him are commenced. In my opinion, Barr is more dangerous to our democracy and constitutional structure than is trump, and needs to be neutered or removed.

If you want to read the report, Google will lead you to all sorts of links to download it, for free. But for convenience, here’s the CNN link.

#Mueller Report #trump #impeachment

13 notes · View notes

hildorien · 5 years

Text

Fate, Free Will, and what that means.

I wrote this as my high school senior thesis. I am still very proud of it and I’m I hope people take a look at it because my post about of the race of men deserve better got some notes and I defiantly go into topics I ranted about there in this with better wording and more citations.

This is a better rebloggable version.

The Silmarillion is J.R.R. Tolkien’s most ambitious but least known work. He was never satisfied with it, to the point that it was only published after his death by his son, Christopher Tolkien, who acted as the editor. It tells the story of Middle-earth from it’s contraception until the Third Age, or rather when Lord of the Rings starts thus it acts as a complex prequel for those books. For most of the story, it tells the tales of Elves and their struggles in the harsh world of Middle-earth, though some stories focus on the Race of Men, the name for humans in Middle-earth. Throughout the book, it weaves grand tales of both loss and triumph, murder and heroism, and history and myth closely together.

The Silmarillion has all of these things, but out of all themes, the one most commonly touched upon is that of Fate. What does it mean to be tied to fate? Can you defy Fate? And with a Fate, what does it actually mean to have free will? Can the two exist in the same space? Characters interact with Fate in different ways. Some try to defy it either by running away from it or trying to change it, while others allow fate to have their way with them, flowing with it instead of against it. This being said, unlike many book series, The Silmarillion is doesn’t have a clear definitive answer of which of these is wrong or right, and it is wholly reliant on who you are talking about, as well as who is writing the story.

Fate and Free will are two very different things in the legends of Tolkien. You either have one or the other. A fact is wholly reliant on who you are within Tolkien’s works, meaning what race (Elf, Dwarf, Men, etc) you are. Inspired by Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse myths and folktales, as well his own Christianity, Tolkien weaved a very clear picture of Fate and Freewill in The Silmarillion, as well his other works. These three things that very little in common, but Tolkien somehow worked it so that these very different concepts weave together to make a perfect, and frankly, sad picture. In many Norse and Germanic myths, every person is dictated by a great destiny (Fate) and no one no matter, how much they try can be free of that destiny (Fate). This differs from Christian mythos, where people have Free will and not a unavoidable destiny. Free will, for good or ill, is a gift from God, and being a devout Catholic, Tolkien felt that he needed to reconcile this in his works. He determined that some creatures in his world have the more Germanic-Nordic Fate while some have Christian-inspired Free will.

We see the later described most clearly in the chapter, Ainulindalë. In the Ainulindalë, which acts as a kind of creation myth for Middle-earth, it explains what forces willed the world into existence, as well as explains where Fate, as it relates to the creatures of this world, comes from. We see that there is a supreme God, Eru Ilúvatar, and his Ainur, who act as both minor Gods and Angels. Readers are told that in this myth Eru Ilúvatar instructed his Ainur to sing a great theme together and that theme will become the world, meaning that Middle-earth is basically sung into existence, or rather they try too. If Eru Ilúvatar and the Ainur are God and the angels, there has to be a Devil, and his name is Melkor, the greatest of all the Ainur. And it is he who starts messing up the theme from the perfection that Eru Ilúvatar first envisioned for his world with his own “loud, and vain” music (The Silmarillion, pg.18), but Eru Ilúvatar just starts over, only for it to be ruined again.

The last and final time, Ilúvatar rises sternly and raises his right hand to begin a third. Melkor tries to corrupt this theme with the volume of his music, but it is powerful enough to prevent him from succeeding. Eventually he shows the Ainur what they have created with their theme, which includes the lush world of Middle-earth, in which dwells Ilúvatar’s own personal creations the Elves and Men. He shows them thousands of years of history up until the domination of Men, and then instructs them if they want to be part of that they must leave his halls and join the world with the condition that they can not return to him until the end of the world, which many do (The Silmarillion, pg.15-22).

This story is significant because it blatantly shows us what Fate is to Tolkien, which is known in the text as the Music of the Ainur. A pre-oridanted plan that the powers of this world sung, according to Ilúvatar’s instruction, thus was his plan, all before any creature walked in Middle-earth. But it does not end here. In the chapter Beginning of Days, Tolkien throws a metaphorical curveball. As alluded to above, he explains that while some creatures are ruled completely and totally by Fate (or the Music of Ainur), in this cause, the Ainur, themselves, who came down into the world, now known as the Valar and Maiar, themselves and the Elves, who The Silmarillion describes as “them in the nature of Ainur” (The Silmarillion, pg. 41) some are completely free of it, like Men. This is also the reason why the later are immortal, while the latter is mortal. As long as the world exists, so will those creatures be bound to to the music that brought it to life; where if you die, you are not bound to the world, thus not bound to the music (Fate).

A common theme in The Silmarillion and other materials, is the fight between immortality and mortality, which in itself is a branch of the Fate debate in Tolkien works. As it is an Elf’s fate to stay tied to the world forever and never die (but instead to be reincarnated over and over again if they are slain). While Men are Fated, in a way, to die and leave the bounds of the world forever, this actually allows the Race of Men to have the truest Free will; not being bound to the music. In the The Silmarillion, it states Men “seek beyond the world and Fate no rest therein; but they should have virtue to shape their life…beyond the music of Ainur (pg.42), meaning their actions are free from the theme of the Ainur, but not meaningless. Contrast this to the Elves have purpose within the world but they had no freedom within this purpose; they are players in a grand play and can’t deviate from their script. However yet, there are many that still try and improvise to mix results.

Two great examples of fudging with Fate would be the love story of Beren and Lúthien, which is a tale of fighting against fate, versus the tragedy of Andreth and Aegnor, which is a tale of surrendering oneself to their fate.

Both are stories of romances between a immortal Elf and a mortal Human, both of whom share a great and deep love, but can never truly be together because of their clashing Fates, one being deathless and the other being fated to die, will tear them apart in the end, for that is the fate of Men and Elves.

The only thing is Beren and Lúthien overcome this fate and are united in death, while Aegnor and Andreth are forever sundered until the breaking of the world. Lúthien defies Fate by fighting it when her lover dies. She leaves to plead with the closest thing Tolkien has devised to a god of the dead, not unlike Orpheus from Greek mythology, to plead with him (Mandos) to plead with Ilúvatar himself to give her back her mortal Eurydice, her now dead Beren. And she gets her wish, her and Beren’s happy end, her only condition being that she too must becomes mortal, letting go of her Elvish life (her father, mother, and Elvish friends) for a mortal one to be with her true love in death, wherever Men go when they die (The Tale of Beren and Lúthien, J. R. R. Tolkien).

In contrast, Aegnor, a Elvish prince falls in love with a mortal wise women, Andreth, but instead of defying the stars and moving mountains to be with his one true love, as Elves are mentioned to love only once in their immortals life for the most part (Laws and Customs of the Eldar, pg.17), he leaves, he runs rather than fight for them. This is something that leaves both of them bitter, especially Andreth. Who saw this action as himself saying that she was not good enough for him, as sees himself as a supernaturally beautiful Elf and her a average mortal women (Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, Ring of Morgoth, J.R.R. Tolkien).

The narrative shows Lúthien’s choice to defy Fate and fight as positive and rewards for it, while being more split on Aegnor. The narrative seems to show him pity, in a way portraying him (and Andreth) as sad victims, who had to make rough choices (but in their situation, the right ones) but at the same time putting his actions in a glaringly negative light. The two sides are shown by being represented in the take by Finrod, Aegnor’s brother, who is trying to get Andreth, who represents the negative, to understand why he did what he did, though even he never tries to forgive him (thus pitying him but not absolving him). Here the two are sundered by fate, separated by powers beyond their control. And to make matters worse, Aegnor, the immortal, dies before Andreth, the mortal, in battle as if life was burying one last knife into the back of these two tragic lovers. It is easy for one to read this as a narrative punishment for him as well, in the same vein of how Lúthien was rewarded.

This may make it seem that the narrative, thus Tolkien himself, is advocating for a person to defy their Fate though, it is not that simple. Don’t think that all one needs to do is have faith to give it a good try; just because Beren and Lúthien were lucky, their happy story is a rare one in The Silmarillion. More often things end badly for those who defy Fate, and are struck down without mercy by the act itself.

Those often struck down by fate are often described to be Doomed in Tolkien, as one reads deeper into The Silmarillion, Fate and Doom become one and the same for many of Tolkien’s characters, particularly the Elvish ones. The Noldor Elves, for example, are described as Doomed (Fated) to have both great glory and great tragedy when they travel to Middle-earth for their crimes during a time called the darkening which includes the genocide of the Teleri Elves (Of the Flight of the Noldor, The Silmarillion, pg.73-91). Particularly, the sons of Fëanor, who end up being characters who are both evil, though sympathetic to many readers. It is here we see Tolkien’s most Germanic-Nordic influences, because in typical Germanic-Nordic tradition Fate and Doom are the same. Life is a harsh mistress, and we, or at least the characters in these tales, as beings of this Earth, are merely playthings, and trying to deny one’s Fate is to only bring more Doom on yourself. To try and fight the powers that be is utterly fruitless because you will not win.

It is telling that the Elves of the First Age, where most of The Silmarillion take place, are shown throughout to be fiery, stubborn, and un-perfect characters who defy Fate and the powers of the world, and bring Doom onto them, this is far different from the wise, calm, borderline perfect creatures we see when we read The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings. One of the major themes, or lessons the Elves, as a group in universe, learn throughout all of the legendarium of Tolkien’s work is to accept their Fate, that all they love, fought, and bleed for in Middle-earth will fade and the Men will replace them. The Elves in later works no longer fight this Fate anymore, opting to just go where the music of Ainur take them. This is why we see them departing at the end of Lord of the Rings, happily in many cases like that of the Elf lady, Galadriel. But even then, it’s not entirely sweet. This might be their Fate to leave for a land as forever youthful as the Elves themselves, as the Undying lands (Valinor, in The Silmarillion) are, they still love Middle-earth and those within it and do not desire to leave it forever like they must. And it is this that many consider their Doom, no matter how much they love Middle-earth, they can never have it. Even those like the Green Elves, the Sindar, who have lived in Middle-earth for generations, it is their home, and have never known the Undying lands, but they must still leave it for fear of becoming like wraiths in constant pain, faded in a way.

In a lot of ways this echoes the story of Aegnor and Andreth, with Aegnor representing the Elves and Andreth representing Middle-earth, but also mortals, who many Elves see as brothers and sisters in-arms, as well as in some cases sons and daughters, like in the case of the Elf lord Elrond, and have centuries of great kinship with, both of which the Elves after the Third Age will be forever be parted from it.

But this is focusing on Elves, what about Men? Men have a very interesting place in both the context of Fate. As mentioned above, with the only creatures with Free will, Men don’t have a a unified destiny like the Elves do, with the exception of dying or vague general statements of facts like the Race of Men taking over control of Middle-earth as the dominant race after the Elves leave, but what they do in that time they control it is not Fated and up to the whims of future Men. Something much different than Elves. This leads into a big theme when it comes to Men and Fate, what constitutes as one man’s Fate and what is their own Free will?

And more importantly, how do those things come into conflict? Luckily, two of the most composed and polished stories focus on these Fate-linked themes, the first being the tales of Túrin Turambar and the fall of the great Mannish kingdom of Númenor.

The story of Túrin Turambar, one of the tragic characters that Tolkien has ever written, a was a mannish hero, who if Beren and Lúthien were a Eurydice and Orpheus with happy ending, they would be a walking Greek tragedy. He is cursed at a young age by Morgoth (the later name of Melkor, the living embodiment of evil), because of the deeds of his father who fought against Morgoth in the War of Wrath, and this leads Túrin to have a twisted life, which includes killing his best friend, and lover, the Elf, Beleg, then marrying his own sister, Niënor, and finally his own death after what should have been his biggest moment of triumph, slaying the dragon, Glaurung.

But as mentioned above, the Race of Men doesn’t usually have destinies like this, so how is Morgoth able to control Túrin’s Fate in this way to the point where eventually Túrin is so broken mentally and spent emotionally he commits suicide? Well, to put it simply it was both a mix of Morgoth’s curse, which in itself was just Morgoth putting the cards in the right way as it were so that Túrin always had the worst choices put in front of him, and Túrin’s own often prideful and blundering acts, that usually lead him into picking the worst choices over the better ones. This is a common theme with Fate and Men, where some outside force, here Morgoth, does something to affect the happens of a Man, or group of Men, does lead them on the path of ruin but it is by their own hand that leads to the end of that distatorius path. This can be seen in Túrin’s story where there were many times where he could have turned his life around. As the Music of the Ainur, Fate, gave Túrin some good opportunities, which he squandered. He could have asked for and received Thingol’s forgiveness rather than running off into the wilderness out of pride and adolescent angst; he could have listened to Beleg and returned to serve both men and elves, instead of running with the outlaws; he could have listened to Finduilas and Gwindor and reined in his pride, and not make Nargothrond such an obvious target. But he doesn’t, instead he takes the opinions that Morgoth has thrown at him and doesn’t realize it until it is too late (Of Túrin Turambar, The Silmarillion, pg 198-227).

It is said in The Silmarillion many times, as well as other works in the legendarium, that the Race of Men is weak, foolish, and quick to forsake reason, goodness, and light for illogical passions, cruelty, and evil, but I don’t think Tolkien ever saw it that way. Especially in the way he wrote about Men and Fate. In The Silmarillion, Ilúvatar himself, mentions that “Men will stray often from [himself],” (pg. 42) thus away from light and ‘goodness,’ and make some pretty dumb and bad choices but it is easy to wait and decide you’re options when you have forever to do so. Unlike his many Elven companions, who have ages to figure things out, to wait and plan, Túrin does not have that time, he is dying, as all Men are from the moment they are born. He only has one lifetime to make his mark on the world now. He wants to see his broken people restored, his kingdom returned to his people and out of the hands of the Easterling invaders. He is prideful and arrogant but he is hardly a bad person and almost all of his choices come from a want to do good. This is a common theme in a lot of Men driven stories.

By nature of their mortality, Men lack the foresight of their Elvish contemporaries, focusing on the here and now, because by nature, Men are present creatures while Elves live seemingly in the past but also the future. This kind of thinking gets Túrin, as well as other Men, to make a lot of bad choices, but how was he (Men), supposed to know the ending to his (their) own story before it’s even been written down? Túrin didn’t know he was cursed until he was thirty and killed himself only five years later. This is true for a lot of Men when they interact with fate, they bluster and many times their endings are their own fault, but it is often grown from a place of either a great want or great need, and the narrative often doesn’t condemn them for this, it pities them, in the same way that the narration in the tragedy of Aegnor and Andreth pitied them.

There is a reason in the final pages of Túrin’s story, his wife and sister laments before leaping to their own death, that he gave himself the name Turambar meaning ‘master of Fate’ only to be conquered by the very Doom (Fate) he hoped to master. This showing the ultimate pity of the narration.

But not all Men get this pity for the narrative, Númenor sure doesn’t.

Númenor is a lot of things in the context of The Silmarillion.

In The Silmarillion, it is the first great city of Men, meaning made by Men for Men, it had the best navy in all Middle-earth that surpassed even the Elves, the beauty of the island kingdom was so great that no Elf could recreate it in Middle-earth. It was a shining a example of everything mankind had to offer the world and was a beacon of hope after centuries of hardship, that was until it fell into ruin and evil. The story pulls from multiple inspirations including Atlantis and the Garden of Eden, but at its core, it is about a people fighting against their Fate, or in this case Men fighting their own mortality. While it is continuously mentioned that Men don’t have a destiny like in the way Elves do, they do however have a end point to their personal stories that no one, not even the gods, can take away: their death, which in many ways is the only thing that is Fated to men.

Many times throughout both The Silmarillion and other material, it is mentioned that Men have little faith in any gods, the Valar, having never had a chance to form a positive connection with them, and for many Men there is only one true god in their world and his name is Death. In the same way that it is natural for the Elves to go along with the music of Ainur, it is natural for Men to die, and as hinted at above, death is a gift from Ilúvatar. Going peacefully into death, whither through battle or old age, is narratively looked at as a positive by many stories, some even going as far as to have Men willing just stop living because they want too, or feel like they have passed their prime. In Tolkien it is only when Men try to avoid their gift, thinking as their death as a Doom, that the narrative openingly damns them. And this is the case for Númenor, whose people grew jealous of the long lives of the Elves, and wished to be immortal like them. The people started refusing to die, kicked all Elves out of their lands, then started to purge their influence from them as well, and then openingly wage war on the Undying lands (Valinor) to try and gain the land thinking it will make them immortal, even though many Elves and even messengers from the Valar told them otherwise (Akallabêth, The Silmarillion, pg. 257-283).

Though it is to be noted that much like Morgoth role in Túrin’s story, Sauron, who had been captured by the Númenoreans, had been corrupting the minds of the Númenoreans for sometime, capitalizing on their envy and resentment to urge them to more awful and awful deeds. Once again showing that that it is both a combination of beings of evil and also bad choices that lead Men to their ruin. Ruin, that in this case happens when they finally push too far trying to attack the Undying lands (Valinor) and the Elves within it and the Valar destroy the fleet that was coming as well as sink the island of Númenor back into the sea, effectively killing all but a few people who managed to escape and these refugees go on to create the kingdom of Gondor. It is to be noted here that unlike Túrin who fights Fate but is ultimately destroyed by it, and the narrative has pity on him, the narrative does not share the same pity for the people of Númenor. Instead it shows them apathy for their fighting of Fate, that their unwillingness to affect the most blessed gift their supreme god gave them as well as their greed was their downfall and it was necessary for it to happen. In a lot of ways is true, like Icarus, flying too close to the sun, a bunch of mortals challenge the gods and the gods strike them down, the Númenoreans affectively bite off more than they can chew. But in defense of them, death is a scary concept.

They are effectively the only race in Middle-earth that does not know what happens to them after death, no one does not even the Valar. Only Ilúvatar, and he keeps his lips sealed on the subject. And while, yes, many Elves, Valar, and Men alike think that there is something better on the other side for Men, they don’t know if its true and that can lead to a lot of anxiety, as well as envy for other races who seemingly do not suffer the pain of death and as the fear of the uncertainty of what happens to them afterward. But yet the narrative still deems it as damnation for the Númenoreans as well as unnatural.

This is extremely interesting, because unlike the Elves who universally received mostly pity from the narration over their lack of control in their own lives and being playthings to destiny, Men are a move messy case. Depending on what text you are reading, some Men get more sympathy from others. This is because Tolkien’s use of in universe writers for his stories.

While the stories of Elves are mostly written by an Elf, obviously, who would have a lot of melancholic sympathy for the Elves, themselves basically, who are Doomed, because Elves in Tolkien tend to be very self centered and think of only their pain, while ironically getting angry when others do not. They might easily have less sympathy for men, ironically this may because the Elves, in the same way Men envy immortality, they envy Men’s ability to die.

The Men writing the story of Túrin was most likely someone who lived years after him, and was writing about him as one would write about a famous mythological hero. While the fall of Númenor, was written by a bitter traditionalist who hated the Men in charge for leading his people of the kingdom to ruin because they wanted immortality.This was touched on briefly above where one was contrasting Beren and Lúthien’s story to Aegnor and Andreth and how the narration seemed to differ on how they portrayed their fights, or lack thereof, of Fate. Those who are looked at with pity or scorn by the narrative are wholly reliant on whither the person writing the piece liked them or not, and thus the why and how they’re fighting of Fate is justified, demonized, or something to be pitied is flexible from text to text.

Fate inside the world of Tolkien is a complex beast. To understand it, one needs more than just a passing understanding of just the concept. You need to understand that Fate is applied differently considering which race you are talking about, and even then the feelings that the text shows towards that Fate, Doom, and the person’s actions is wholly relied upon the person who is ‘writing the text’ inside the context of Tolkien’s universe and the different inspirations that Tolkien pulls from to form his universe concepts of Fate. In the works of Tolkien, Fate, Doom, and Free will all work together to form the actions of his characters, which in part form the story of the world he created. Tolkien’s works are messy and makes one think about what their own preconceptions. After reading one text and picking up another, this is what makes Tolkien so brilliant. Every story he creates has something different for everyone else writing fantasy, and inside his work there are no easy answers and to imply that his fiction is too ‘black and white’ is missing the forest for the trees.

#silmarillion #silm #my writing #turin turambar #beren and luthien #numenor #aegnor and andreth #tea with milk

42 notes · View notes

bradshawhansson6-blog · 5 years

Text

Top Guidelines Of Marvel

The vast majority of Marvel's fictional characters function in only one reality often called the Marvel Universe, with most spots mirroring true-existence areas; quite a few big people are situated in Ny city.[three] – Decide on hundreds of Uniforms to boost your character’s powers and perfect your hero’s search. In April 2017, as well as his announcement that he was returning to jot down and direct Guardians of your Galaxy Vol. 3, James Gunn disclosed he will be working with Marvel "that will help design in which these tales go, and make sure the future of your Marvel Cosmic Universe is as Exclusive and genuine and magical as what Now we have developed to date". In 2009 Marvel Comics shut its Open Submissions Plan, wherein the organization experienced approved unsolicited samples from aspiring comic e-book artists, indicating some time-consuming evaluate method experienced created no suitably Expert perform. It's not like everyone's saying "properly I don't know, what if I want that?" It's like "carrying out This really is troublesome for us, whereas undertaking this will really help us." ... You would like to honor the functions of the final Film but you don't want to be beholden to them, since a number of people will see Avengers[: Age of Ultron] who did not see any of the flicks in between or simply Avengers one." He also found Functioning in television and script doctoring for being "terrific teaching ground[s] for dealing with this ... because you're supplied lots of pieces and instructed to create them suit—even though they don't."[142] The thing about Marvel is ... They are in search of artists which can be prepared to just take probabilities and t here fore are willing to develop characters, even though that character has been around For a long time and decades in comedian books. Use Thor’s hammer to weigh down the enemy, shoot down all with Iron Male or knock down enemies with the protect of Captain The united states, and plenty of extra interesting matters in the sport. .. It had been imperative that you equally of us to uncover the ideal characters that felt like they would talk straight to Freeform's viewers. The Avengers wouldn't do the job below even so the about-to-be-Avengers functions right here."[95] Loeb observed that it was "enjoyable" to Marvel "in order to investigate the planet with the hero and how it impacts a person who is trying to figure out who they are in contrast to previously understands who They are really and now their full life should have a still left. That's the journey we're occurring with these kinds of people" in Cloak & Dagger, New Warriors and Hulu's Runaways.[96] By November 2017, New Warriors was no longer set to air on Freeform and was getting shopped to other networks.[97] Crossovers to attribute movies Visualize revisiting your preferred characters from childhood. Many of them You may have even forgotten about. You'll be able to obtain the sport from Googleplay free of charge. MARVEL Future Fight is, needless to say, an RPG based video game that attributes the two superheroes as well as super villains. Your favorite heroes like Avengers, X Adult men in addition to guardians with the Galaxy are right here to entertain you thoroughly. They're very open to directors Which may not have that very same opportunity in broadcast television. The Idea of getting all thirteen episodes at a single time, particularly in serialized storytelling, is quite appealing."[67] Loeb also extra which the 4 characters preferred "all had a previous present romance and all grew up on the same style of stoop in The big apple [while in the comics]. So it lent itself to your environment. Does that necessarily mean these shows are going to be precisely the same? No. They can not be. The characters have distinctive issues, diverse difficulties, distinct thoughts about them ... the instance which i constantly give is the fact that I can not think about two movies that happen to be a lot more distinct in tone when compared to the Winter season Soldier and Guardians with the Galaxy. And yet, in case you look at them back again to back again, they truly feel very Marvel. They feel greatly like, 'Oh, it remains the same universe which i'm in.'"[68] Dont know where by to faucet 5x. Ive tried using tapping just about everywhere. Instead of a video is it possible to article screenshots on where to tap? Recruit your preferred characters, full missions, and contend with other gamers to get the greatest hero and help save your environment. [26] Eschewing these comedian-ebook tropes as top secret identities and even costumes at the beginning, possessing a monster as on the list of heroes, and owning its people bicker and complain in what was later referred to as a "superheroes in the actual entire world" approach, the series represented a modify that proved to become a great success.[27]

5 Simple Statements About Marvel Future Fight Explained

Don't forget to tune in to our Facebook page at 6:30PM PDT today for our Particular v500 #AvengersEndgame stream! Fb.com/MarvelFutureFi… pic.twitter.com/MAnosAs4Ql Marvel acquired quite a lot of income with their eighties kid's comics imprint Star Comics they usually acquired a great offer more money and around the world success in the comic e-book increase in the early nineteen nineties, launching the productive 2099 line of comics set during the future (Spider-Person 2099, etcetera.) along with the creatively daring although commercially unsuccessful Razorline imprint of superhero comics created by novelist and filmmaker Clive Barker. —Director Anthony Russo in April 2016[128] On making it possible for directors and writers to work in just Marvel's shared universe notion, Joe Russo claimed that Feige has "huge pieces that he is aware of he would like to construct toward, although the way that you choose to get There's open up to interpretation and improv a little bit". For the Russos during the Winter Soldier, that they had to deal with the thought of S.H.I.E.L.D. getting infiltrated by Hydra, with Joe saying, "how we get You can find all as many as us. And I do think why Marvel has become so profitable is since it's been this kind of a clear prepare, that every little thing is interconnected and they are building emotional funds with Each and every movie which you can then trade off of in the subsequent movie. Recruit your favorite figures, complete missions and contend with other gamers to become the ideal hero and help save your entire world. Accumulate over 100 Marvel Tremendous Heroes and Super Villains to make your top workforce. – Unleash Each and every character’s special Tremendous powers when you make your way as a result of a variety of missions. Blast enemies with Iron Male’s Unibeam and bash opponents while in the identify of justice with Captain The united states’s shield! ==> NB: Make sure you Notice that we generally don’t assistance downloading and hacking APK or MODed apps due to Risk it provides as well as unidentified virus That may uncover its way in your gadget. In this interview she tells us how she communicates analysis to the wider company, what effect it's on design and style as well as the future of research. This text requirements extra citations for verification. Be sure to assist improve this information by introducing citations to dependable resources. Un source d material may very well be challenged and eradicated. – Select from a huge selection of Uniforms to enhance your character’s powers and ideal your hero’s look. Dont know the place to tap 5x. Ive tried tapping just about everywhere. In lieu of a video is it possible to submit screenshots on where to tap? I love it This is one of my greatest superhero video games I’ve ever played in all honesty. The figures are seriously diverse so we get distinct heros/villians. Update your arms and study your capabilities to provide your staff with the best ability-up making use of an RPG leveling technique which is large. MODOK is defeated and reveals he was studying Ultron by summoning his dimensional alternates just before Purple Skull stole the dimension transporter. Soon after this event, Protect brokers start to be attacked by thugs with Sophisticated weaponry. I downloaded the mod, but I didn’t get any heroes or even the assault, are you able to please create a movie just to teach?

1 note · View note

thehenrythomas · 4 years

Text

A Small Business Owner’s Guide to SEO

You’re a small business owner.

You started a company to do what you love and now you find yourself wading through tasks that have nothing to do with it.

You’re keeping track of receipts, paying bills, you’re the lead customer service rep, and you’re the janitor.

Oh, and somewhere in there you’ve got to find time to be the chief marketing officer and hope you have time left to do what you started a company to do.

I speak from experience on all these fronts and, as a veteran SEO of some 17 or 18 years, I can say that keeping up with search is its own job.

But you know you need to understand how to either do it at a basic level or at least know what the heck your SEO is talking about or perhaps even, what they should be talking about.

And that is the purpose of this article.

We’ll be looking at some of the top principles of SEO that every small business owner should be aware of.

You don’t need to master them, just understand:

What they are.

How they impact search.

What you should be thinking about as you either attempt to learn the strategies around them or hire someone who hopefully already does.

Following that we’re going to include a brief glossary of the more common terms I find myself accidentally using that causes my clients’ eyes to gloss over or the phone to go silent.

It isn’t your fault you don’t know the terms. But they’re handy to know as I accidentally use many of them out of habit and I’m sure you’ll come across them, too.

But we’ll start with the principles…

SEO Principle 1: Content User Intent

You’ve heard it a thousand times I’m sure. Content is king.

No… it isn’t.

Content is what the search engines use to fulfill user intent.

User intent is king, and content is the means to that end.

I am not suggesting that you don’t need to produce content, quite the contrary, but as you ponder the type of content you’ll be producing what you really need to be asking yourself is:

“What content will increase the odds that you will fulfill the search engine users’ intents?”

Now, that might sound simple enough, they just searched for ‘nike shoes’ so clearly they want to buy them, right?

Perhaps and some might argue … probably.

Now ask yourself, on how many sites can folks buy Nike shoes?

Thousands. And every one of them meets this single intent in varying degrees.

You can increase your odds on meeting this single intent better than others by having a larger variety of shoes and including more information on each pair.

And now you’re only up against hundreds of sites that have done that. Hundreds that meet this same user intent.

But wait, we’re not really talking about the user’s intent, are we?

No, we’re talking about your intent.

You want to sell Nike shoes.

The user just entered ‘nike shoes’ into the search engine. We don’t know what their intent is.

As mentioned above, it may well be to purchase shoes and there are plenty of sites Google can choose from that fulfill that intent.

Seems people might be interested in a little more than just buying the shoes, doesn’t it?

Google isn’t looking to fulfill your intent, they’re looking to fulfill the searcher’s intent.

A site that fulfills more intents and fulfills them well stands a higher chance of ranking as Google can have a higher confidence that their users’ intents are more likely to be met.

So yes… you need content. But only because you need to fulfill the user’s intents.

SEO Principle 2: Links

Ah, links, one of the top ranking signals we hear so much about.

As a business owner, knowing the ins-and-outs of links and link building can be a challenge at best.

Heck, link building is challenging even for seasoned SEO pros.

There are, however, a few things you need to know that will keep you on the right path.

Why Links Matter

Some will argue with the semantics, but at its core, you can think of a link as a vote and some votes are more equal than others.

When a site links to you that link passes what’s called PageRank.

More about that in the glossary below.

At its root, though, it’s counting as a vote for the content on the page being linked to.

The stronger the linking page, and the more visible the link, the more it counts.

Basically, the more likely a link is to be clicked across the internet, the more weight it carries.

What to Look for in a Link

So, what should you look for when either building links or proofing the links being built for you?

I’m not going to get into some massive outline of link valuation, it’s different in each scenario but there are a handful of rules that should always be followed.

Is there a reason outside of link building for the link to exist?

If the answer is “no” then it probably won’t pass weight.

This isn’t to say that it has to necessarily have been worth pursuing if it had no link value, there are strategies that are employed that produce traffic and value but not enough to warrant the cost without link weight being considered.

But if there is no reason for the link to be on a site, don’t bother putting it there.

Would you click the link and if so, would you be satisfied with where it went to?

I’ve seen links jammed into the oddest locations in content or on peculiar sections of a website.

If the link doesn’t serve a purpose to the visitor on a page, then it will likely carry very little in the way of weight.

Keyword Research Just Got An Upgrade We've given our keyword research tools an overhaul. Now, get data like you've never seen. More keywords, better insight, higher ROI.

Do your competitors have the link?

Having a competitor getting a link from a specific site is not necessarily a sign that it’s good. But a site that links to 3 or 4 of your competitors that are ranking well probably is.

Probably.

Use your judgment but it’s generally a strong indicator or weight and of one that may be easy to secure.

Anchor text/readability matters

Anchor text is the text used to link to your site.

What you want to be sure of is that the anchor text used matches what the user would be expecting when they click the link.

It also needs to make sense on the linking page. Don’t force anchor text or your target page.

If you’re working on link building, link to what makes sense using the words that make sense.

Notice how I linked to Answer The Public above using their name? It’s what made sense.

When I link to internal articles I tend to use the article title or subject (e.g., the link to the ‘top ranking signals’ piece, also above).

Think about what a link would look like if links didn’t count and either do that or find a new link location when the phrasing and anchors you want will flow naturally to the reader and by extension, the engines.

SEO Principle 3: Technical

Technical SEO tends to refer to the code-side or server-side of your web presence.

The impact of technical SEO will generally be felt strongest in the following areas:

Speed.

Structured data / Schema (more on this in the glossary below).

Internal linking structures.

Scripts and tracking.

Content issues such as duplication and incorrect canonical tags.

Key Google-chasing URL functions such as switching to HTTPS.

Technical SEO is a vast area with various requirements and aspects, dependent on the site type, CMS (if applicable), and server/hosting environment.

The best globally applicable checklist I’ve come across is Alan Bleiweiss’ free SEO Audit Checklist – go download it. It covers more than just the technical side of things but in my mind, that’s where it really excels.

If you aren’t a technical person this is not your area and I can’t recommend enough to keep out.

Technical SEO is for technical SEO professionals.

You can easily do more harm than good if you don’t know what you’re doing.

SEO Principle 4: Local SEO

If you’re focused on the local market, you’ll have heard of specific local SEO strategies. It’s a different type of SEO.

There are a lot of overlaps as one might imagine, but there are SEO elements specific to local.

As this article isn’t about outlining the specific strategies but rather the areas and principles you should be considering, what I want to make you aware of is that you or your SEO will be looking far more to local relevancy than overall site strength.

You can read this as: you’ll pay more attention to the local nature of links than volume and you’ll need to make sure your onsite presence reinforces your location. This is how a small mom-and-pop pizza shop can rank against major national chains.

This isn’t to say you simply need to jam your city into the content as much as you can (though having it in the title, heading tags and placed logically with content where appropriate is wise).

What you need to look at are:

The Organizational schema that applies to you and getting it onto the page(s).

Including an embedded Google Map of your Google My Business listing (verified) onto your contact page.

Verifying your business and location with Bing.

Being aware of citations and NAP (more on that in the glossary).

You’ll also want to pay more attention to smaller local papers and sites than larger, national ones in your link efforts.

This isn’t to say you should ignore large opportunities – they’re great – but the time involved is generally substantially more with greatly diminished returns for local.

Because of the specifics of this area, for those impacted, I would recommend starting with Search Engine Journal’s Guide to Local SEO Ebook that was published just a couple of months ago.

SEO Principle 5: Machine Learning

By now most of you will have heard of machine learning and more specifically, RankBrain.

RankBrain was Google’s first introduction of machine learning into their algorithms.

Understanding the influence of machine learning on the search algorithms does not have to be complicated.

Machine learning itself is, but what you need to know is not.

Machine learning simply gives the search engines the ability to better understand content as a human would and context.

Before we get into that, here’s what Frédéric Dubut, a Senior Project Manager for Bing had to say:

“A major goal of our Bing ranking team is to build an algorithm that would rank documents in the same order as humans would as they are following the guidelines. You can only do so at the scale of the web by generalizing your ranking algorithm as much as possible.

It turns out that modern machine learning is very good at generalizing, so you can expect our core ranking algorithm to get closer to that ideal Intelligent Search product view that we hold internally and which we try to capture in our own guidelines.”

And even though we’re at the earliest stages of machine learning, it works well.

What you need to know is summarized in that statement. Machine learning and AI will carry the engines forward in understanding what should rank, not just what does rank.

Think about what would be required to tailor each search result to each searcher and build an algorithm for each type of search scenario. This is not possible with manually programmed algorithms.

Machine learning, as it matures, is handing to the engine’s the power to:

Process massive amounts of data.

Understand the meaning of that data and how the different points connect.

Use that information to tailor results to the best probability of meeting an individual searcher’s intent.

Basically, everything we’ve talked about above – machine learning puts in the hands of the engines the ability to read those signals as a human would.

Hopefully with that my constant tone of “it should look natural and ideally be natural” is making more sense. While some tricks might work today, their days are numbered.

And That’s It!

Hopefully you now have a stronger grasp of the SEO approaches that you, or those you hire, should be taking.

I’ve always believed that an understanding of “why” is always better than an understanding of “how” as it stands the test of time and allows you to better navigate the various “hows” that you will encounter in your further readings.

And speaking of additional readings, I promised a glossary.

Below you will find a glossary of some of the more common SEO terms I throw around on call and in articles, often without considering that the person hearing or reading them may not fully understand what I’m talking about rendering my point)s) moot.

Danny Goodwin produced a more compete and excellent glossary of SEO terms.

Here’s my shortlist…

SEO Glossary

Algorithm: A computer program, generally mathematical, used to rank websites. The search engines use a multitude of different algorithms to generate the results you see. In fact, there are many just to calculate the weight a link should pass to a target site.

Canonical or Canonical URL: This is an element that can be added to the head of a website (invisible to humans without viewing the source) and defines the URL that should be credited with the content found. For example, if one was to copy an article from another website for their users, one could use the canonical tag back to the source site, thus passing all weight to it and also avoiding duplicate content issues.

Citation: In local SEO, a citation generally refers to a reference of a site or web entity by specific other sites know to hold value as citation sources. Citation sources generally refer to those sites that reinforce NAP which we will be getting to shortly and includes sites like Yelp, Google My Business, Foursquare, etc.

Crawler or Bot: The search engines send out various bots or crawlers to discover new content. Think of them as spiders crawling “the web”.

Entities: While entities are complex, in its simplest form an entity is, “a thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined and distinguishable.” It can be a person, place, thing, idea and much more. The color red is an entity for example, and so is this sentence. It is anything that could be defined as a thing unto itself, without being confused with another thing based on what it is, and its location in space and time.

NAP: Short for Name, Address, Phone Number. In local SEO the consistency of a business’s NAP is considered an important signal and citation sources are generally used to reinforce it. I would suggest that consistent NAP is important for all businesses to reinforce their entity, not just in local.

PageRank: PageRank is a Google-specific algorithm which they define as, “… the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages.” In simple terms, each link to a page on your site from another site adds to your site’s PageRank. Basically, Google calculates the value of a page or site in part based on the number and quality of links coming into it. The value they assign to the links or target page are known as PageRank.

Pogo-sticking: Pogo-sticking occurs when a searcher clicks through to a site and then the back button without digging further in. Technically this term refers to a searcher who does this multiple times on a single results page, but it’s commonly used in reference to an onsite quality metric for a single site that the engines may-or-may-not use.

SEO, SEM & PPC: I’m including these all in one entry as it’s important to understand the difference as a collection. SEO refers to ranking in the organic search results, PPC refers to ranking in the paid results and SEM refers to both, but is commonly misused to refer only to PPC.

SERP: The Search Engine Results Page. Basically, what you see after running a query.

UX: UX stands for User Experience. The feel and usability of a website experienced by the user.

There are a lot more terms and if you’re unfamiliar with SEO as a whole I recommend reading the glossary linked to above but these are the ones I use the most often with clients that I’ve found cause the most confusion.

0 notes

katherinemacbride · 5 years

Text

tongue breaks inhaling

Script for performance at CCA Glasgow, February 2019. With many thanks to Angelica Falkeling, Anna Frei, Clara J:son Borg, and Raluca Croitoru.

THE END OF THE WORLD (KATHERINE)

There was an idea here of a fictional future, one that imagines a different kind of life.

There was that time in Athens thinking about how one plus one equals many things and a plus b does not equal c or d or anything simple and straightforward. The thing that struck me was the relationship to time, how the rocks were present in modernity making modernity itself be just a blip, a temporary reality, nothing more. But those rocks signified something else, they signified the beginning of modernity’s love affair with itself, the foundations of white privilege, the recasts of statues white and uncoloured denying the truth of their making time, communities accommodating difference around places that are now separated as Africa, middle east, europe. Communities of fascists situating their power in the past, a divine right to make whiteness out of Black death, Jewish death, Roma death, sometimes a while ago Italian death, Portuguese death, Irish death. A female politician being punched on live tv by a member of a fascist group, nuanced strategies to tackle domestic violence, pragmatic and magical approaches to crisis, her dad who can’t afford his health insurance and self medicates with the gym until the pain is too much, people with stuff and no money, people with no stuff and no money, international education, discrimination in the north, being paid less than minimum wage in London,

I finally read ‘Woman on the Edge of Time’ in 2017, I knew it from Emilia who helped make this performance what it is today in their role as a friend and their role with Collective Text.

In Marge Piercy’s book she writes of a future where things are decided communally, where the earth is a respected and loved and cared for host, where work is shared according to ability, child care is de-gendered and genetics are shared, difference is valued and appreciated, pleasure is had, struggles continue, empathy and awareness of the body’s capacities are high, colonial reparations have been paid, resources are not expropriated, when people cannot get on they are asked to talk until they find something, anything, they have in common. A book of small details, a future interspersed with a 1970s present where structural inequality forces poverty, violence, forced infertility, and psychiatric pathologisation of resistance onto the character. In the end, to fight to make the future happen she loses her sensitivities, has to cut off her pleasurable possibilities of travelling to the future. Time is entangled not linear.

I can’t write a fiction now because it isn’t true. I think it would be dishonest. I’m not sure if a white European person can write visionary fiction or if her attention is better allocated to acknowledging historical and present realities. Decolonisation happens in stages—critiquing the structures, imagining others, making change—and maybe I wanted to jump some. The last remaining rescue boat in the Mediterranean just had its flag removed, likely after Italian government pressure on Panama. EU money has been spent on detention centres in Libya where detainees are tortured. Insect societies have collapsed in the changing temperatures and pesticide induced soil sterility.

But I did want to imagine a present with some different turns in the past.

What happens in this story? Four women are invoked across time. Four women meet. Here. Somehow. Or do they need to when they can affect each other across the distance of time without simultaneously existing in similar forms—with you in particles if not mass—having been breathed out.

I only just realised the connection between the past and present that a perfect tense signifies in grammar. Pasts have consequences. In relationships, trauma and joy and previous life manifests. Across generations even. My body is impacted by your previous behaviours. Your body is impacted and constructed by my present and previous behaviours. I exist because you starved. I exist because they were killed. We exist temporarily in this mess, my bones made from cosmic material brought to earth on a comet, my body either a form of carbon capture or carbon release depending on burial or cremation, and what kind of coffin I might get. My body borrowed on borrowed time, owing to everyone and everything else.

What would it be to be so vulnerable? What would it be to be so supported? What would it be to feel me feeling you and to be okay with the momentary understanding that comes in a glance and the lifelong misunderstanding that comes in a culture.

What kinds of sensitivity might be expected, might be appreciated, might be valued?

What ways of knowing?

SAPPHO (RALUCA)

Sweetbitter mythweaver.

Making her own language, finding words to sing about female solidarity and friendship and sex and intimacy and care as being together, and not being commoditized. An ambiguity of language too complex for later scholars needing to define her as lesbian or not lesbian, the simplifying of structures of living and feeling that we don’t imagine, the same words she made coming to a patriarchal use meaning non-married female lover of a married man.

She comes to us through citation in treatises on grammar or style. She exists in other peoples’ paraphrasing although her work is the substance of memory. The structuring forms being grammar and rhythm, she would break the rules of the grammar to fit the rhythm, change the sounds of the words, make elisions, contractions, cuts and edits where certain moments of material could be held between the audience and the people singing the line, notes bending, material stretching, the whole being considered always and the parts adapting. I move you move we move. Talking and seeing the constellation of your thoughts makes mine move and they’re all flying around changing, being changed. Changing, fusing, and fragmenting.

Distress causes the tongue to break.

On this ground we are walking.

MARIA (CLARA)

I could only reach her by touching her work that time and she’s far away in the just-pre-internet graveyard of the female-unwritten-about so here’s a story of ears and hands, listening and touching.

If they’re both there, are they both being touched? Could they sleep like that?

Like that one time you slept in a bed with someone and you both held each other and woke in the same position as when you fell asleep. Would that be possible with the ears?

End of the world for night, resting the organ that can’t stop sensing. Give it some rest with those hands. Tiny massage points. A special kind of cartilage, flesh in between the densities of hard and soft.

If it was just the ears and they were the whole body they could hold each other maybe?

But the pleasure is also in the hand that holds. A handle like on a climbing wall. A shape made for the human hand to feel good holding it and one it can hold in sex and in non sex like when you gave me massage in a sad time and I never had someone who wasn’t a lover touch them like that. You hear me?

MELINA (ANGELICA)

imagine there weren’t the same types of shyness

what would the future look like then?

the same types of shame

shame of being ashamed

of intergenerational shame

shyness as vanity they say

shyness as fear of losing whatever power you have

shyness as downgrading whatever capacities you have

shyness as a refusal to take a risk

shyness as a necessary safety device for one exposed to unsafety

shyness as internalisation of the feeling of being wrong

having the wrong body, the wrong ideas, the wrong intelligence,

the wrong interests that comes from perhaps a fear of conflict

perhaps too much prior conflict

LENA (ANNA)

She and we are made of time. The geological time that records the actions of all the ancestors into the ice.

ENTANGLEMENT (ALL)

Being breathed out, having been breathed out, inhaling, breaks

0 notes

techyblogger · 5 years

Photo

Tools to help improve your agency's performance in 2019 https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/achw6s/tools_to_help_improve_your_agencys_performance_in/

Here's a list of tools I frequently use in SEO. It contains some golden nuggets i'm sure a few of you will find useful. I wanted to keep this short and sweet so i've just listed a brief paragraph for each one.

If you incorporate some of these tools to your standard operating procedures i'm pretty confident you'll be way more efficient, get better data and ultimately get your clients better results.

Outreach / Linkbuilding Tools

AuthoritySpy - This tool is great for automating the ability to find authoritive infleuncers and bloggers in a chosen niche. You simply put in a keyword or niche that you're interested in and it will return hundreds or thousands of people that you can use for your cmapaigns. This costs.

Guest Post Tracker - Big database containing 1500+ domains that accept guest posts.

Buzzstream - Buzzstream is an outreach platform you can use to store data you gather on your influencers. You can send emails within the platform too so you'll be able to see if your colleague has contacted them too. It's got a sweet analytics section too. This costs.

SERP Insights - This tool allows you to enter a keyword for a chosen vertical and produces a report that contains all the information you need to learn why your competitors are ranking so high and what metrics you need to improve on to outrank them. This costs however theres a freemium version.

Detailed - This tools pretty cool it generates updated website rankings within your niche that is sorted out by Twitter mentions. You can see who's talking about the biggest sites online.

Ahrefs - You can check lots of data with this tool. Broken links, competitors backlink profiles, anchor texts used, referring domains for your own website, get keyword volumes and more. This costs.

SEO Jet - I use this to check my anchor text usage on my urls. It splits your anchor text into three groups (Blended, exact match and Natural) and gives you a gauge that allows you to see what types of anchor text you need in order to stay fully optimised. This costs.

Majestic SEO - Looking at your referring domains are great but topical trust flow is a big thing. Having relevant domains linking to you from your topical niche is vital to higher rankings and this is exactly what Majestic shows you. I use this in combination with Ahrefs. This costs.

Scrapers / Scanners

Domain Hunter Plus - If you're creating PBNs this tool is great. Its similar to Check My Links as it scans the page your on but this one checks to see if the links mentioned are available to register. It's free.

Check My Links - This is a chrome extension that lets you scan for broken links on a page. It's free.

URL Profiler - This is a great tool for link builders. You can stick a bunch of domains in and pull data from places like Majestic, Moz, Ahrefs etc for those domains. You can also scrape for emails, check if the domains are indexed and loads more. This costs but proper worth it!

Screaming Frog - Another necessity for me, this tool is vital for all your onsite tweaks. It crawls your websites' links, images, CSS, script and apps and gives you data like inlinks, word count, Missing H1s, Title tags that are too long, Time to first byte etc. This costs but proper worth it!

Google Results Bookmarklet by Liam Delahunty of Online Sales - I stuck all that in there so you guys can find it, this is a google applet that will give you the URLs for everything in SERPS for a chosen keyword. Very useful to grab 20-40 urls for lets say "whey protein" then stick them in Screaming Frog or URL Profiler. It's free.

Keyword Tools

Keyword Shitter 2 - Pop in a keyword and it will spit out a ridiculous amount of variations! It's free.

Keywords Everywhere - This is a good tool for getting volumes if you don't have access to keywordtool, accuranker, ahrefs etc. If you put a keyword in Google search it will give you the volume for it. You can also analyse pages with this tool and it will give you frequent mentioned keywords, density etc. Its GREAT! and FREE.

Analytics

Google PageSpeed Insights -

GT Metrix - This tool tells you how fast your site loads and gives you lots of recommendations. It's free

Bright Local - SEO reporting, lead generation, reputation management, citation management.... It does everything you need for local search. It costs

Accuranker - Everyone needs a keyword tracking tool. Its not the cheapest but its great. It costs

Google Analytics - It provides you with web analytics. It tracks and reports the traffic from websites. It's free.

Google Search Console - This is another necessity for SEO, I'm sure you all use it already but if you don't this will allow you to submit your sitemaps, disavow spammy links, view your pages as Google Bot sees it and much more. It's free.

Barracudas Algorithm Tool - This tool allows you to see the latest updates by Google alongside your analytics. It's great for analysising the effects an update has had on your domain. They just released a new version where you can purchase SEO Visibility data for your domain. It's called seocompare. It costs

Siteliner - This tool does a lot but I use it to check common content on my site. It costs

Copyscape - Copyscape is great for checking duplicate content you have on your site that's also elsewhere on the web. It costs

submitted by /u/Craig0412 [link] [comments] January 04, 2019 at 06:24PM

0 notes

topicprinter · 4 years

Link

Hi.I created this list last year but I've decided to give it an update as I've cut a lot of things out of my SEO processes. This time I've added in tools stacks to point you in the right direction.Here's a list of tools I've used in SEO.It contains some golden nuggets i'm sure a few of you will find useful.Quick over run of the tools:Local SEOLocal Viking - I know theres a few tools out there that do similar things but this is the one I'm using. "Schedule GMB Posts, Track Snack Pack Rankings and Manage All Of Your Google My Business Properties From One Easy To Use Dashboard." It's paid.Outreach / Linkbuilding ToolsSurfer SEO - This is a data-driven SEO tool which could help you with scaling your traffic in 2020. The tool can analyse more than 500 ranking factors and shows you the correlation between the importance of factor and position in SERP. We make an analysis based on keyword and we crawl first 50 results from Google. This costs.AuthoritySpy - This tool is great for automating the ability to find authoritative influencers and bloggers in a chosen niche. You simply put in a keyword or niche that you're interested in and it will return hundreds or thousands of people that you can use for your campaigns. This costs.Guest Post Tracker - Big database containing 1500+ domains that accept guest posts.Just Reach Out .io - This tool helps you get press without the need for a PR team. "Our software allows you to find the most relevant journalists, publications, press opportunities, podcasts and broken links so you can pitch with confidence." This costs.Marie Haynes Blacklist - I've not had to create a disavow file in a while and to be honest most of you shouldn't have to unless you're SEO's. But in case you do, please check out this tool. IF theres anyone to follow for more information on Google Penalties and algorithm changes its Marie. This is free.Buzzstream - Buzzstream is an outreach platform you can use to store data you gather on your influencers. You can send emails within the platform too so you'll be able to see if your colleague has contacted them too. It's got a sweet analytics section too. This costs.SERP Insights - This tool allows you to enter a keyword for a chosen vertical and produces a report that contains all the information you need to learn why your competitors are ranking so high and what metrics you need to improve on to outrank them. This costs however theres a freemium version.Detailed - This tools pretty cool it generates updated website rankings within your niche that is sorted out by Twitter mentions. You can see who's talking about the biggest sites online.Ahrefs - You can check lots of data with this tool. Broken links, competitors backlink profiles, anchor texts used, referring domains for your own website, get keyword volumes and more. This costs.SEO Jet - I use this to check my anchor text usage on my urls. It splits your anchor text into three groups (Blended, exact match and Natural) and gives you a gauge that allows you to see what types of anchor text you need in order to stay fully optimised. This costs.Majestic SEO - Looking at your referring domains are great but topical trust flow is a big thing. Having relevant domains linking to you from your topical niche is vital to higher rankings and this is exactly what Majestic shows you. I use this in combination with Ahrefs. This costs.Dibs - This tool is designed to save you time and simplify the link building process. You enter a bunch of advanced search operators and it goes an returns all the results for you. You can then export this data or filter them in the app. It also displays a bunch of spam metrics that will help you decide on what sites to avoid. Once done you can import all your data straight into Pitchbox or export the data and import it into Buzzstream. (I prefer Buzzstream). Theres more but you should check it out. This Costs.HARO - Right, this stands for Help A Reporter Out. Basically if a reporter needs sources to provide a statement on a topic, you have the option to comment. In return you will get a link or a mention. The problem? You will get a lot of requests, it can be annoying to dig out what's worth your while or not. I remember listening to a podcast and someone was creating a tool to help filter out the requests. If anyone knows who's doing this, please drop me a msg or comment below.Scrapers / ScannersDomain Hunter Plus - If you're creating PBNs this tool is great. Its similar to Check My Links as it scans the page your on but this one checks to see if the links mentioned are available to register. It's free.Check My Links - This is a chrome extension that lets you scan for broken links on a page. It's free.URL Profiler - This is a great tool for link builders. You can stick a bunch of domains in and pull data from places like Majestic, Moz, Ahrefs etc for those domains. You can also scrape for emails, check if the domains are indexed and loads more. This costs but proper worth it!Screaming Frog - Another necessity for me, this tool is vital for all your onsite tweaks. It crawls your websites' links, images, CSS, script and apps and gives you data like inlinks, word count, Missing H1s, Title tags that are too long, Time to first byte etc. This costs but proper worth it!Google Results Bookmarklet by Liam Delahunty of Online Sales - I stuck all that in there so you guys can find it, this is a google applet that will give you the URLs for everything in SERPS for a chosen keyword. Very useful to grab 20-40 urls for lets say "whey protein" then stick them in Screaming Frog or URL Profiler. It's free.Netpeak Spider - Alternative to Screaming FrogKeyword ToolsKeyword Shitter 2 - Pop in a keyword and it will spit out a ridiculous amount of variations! It's free.Keywords Everywhere - This is a good tool for getting volumes if you don't have access to keywordtool, accuranker, ahrefs etc. If you put a keyword in Google search it will give you the volume for it. You can also analyse pages with this tool and it will give you frequent mentioned keywords, density etc. Its GREAT! and FREE.You Auto Complete Me .IO - Good little tool for spitting out a bunch of keywords. It's free! You will need to run these through a KW tool for the volume though.Ubersuggest - Another tool for keyword suggestions. This will help you find long tail keywords + it gives you volume.Answer The Public - Find out what questions and queries your consumers have by getting a free report of what they're searching for in Google. FREEFAQ Fox - This tool is actually pretty awesome. Enter some sites and it will spit out all the links where someones asking a question about your subject. I.e I can put in SEO and get the tool to scrape /r/ entrepreneur.AnalyticsGoogle PageSpeed Insights - This allows you to see how fast your website loads on mobile and Desktop.Google Mobile Friendly Test - Another free tool by Google. This helps you test your web pages to see if they look okay on Mobile.It's free.GT Metrix - This tool tells you how fast your site loads and gives you lots of recommendations. It's freeBright Local - SEO reporting, lead generation, reputation management, citation management.... It does everything you need for local search. It costsAccuranker - Everyone needs a keyword tracking tool. Its not the cheapest but its great. It costsGoogle Analytics - It provides you with web analytics. It tracks and reports the traffic from websites. It's free.Google Search Console - This is another necessity for SEO, I'm sure you all use it already but if you don't this will allow you to submit your sitemaps, disavow spammy links, view your pages as Google Bot sees it and much more. It's free.Barracudas Algorithm Tool - This tool allows you to see the latest updates by Google alongside your analytics. It's great for analysising the effects an update has had on your domain. They just released a new version where you can purchase SEO Visibility data for your domain. It's called seocompare. It costsSiteliner - This tool does a lot but I use it to check common content on my site. It costsCopyscape - Copyscape is great for checking duplicate content you have on your site that's also elsewhere on the web. It costsOtherQuestiondb - Stuck for questions? you'll get some good ideas here. Free with paid verison too.Disavow .it - This tool helps you create a disavow list. Just paste in your URLS and it will spit out a nice disavow list.Google Location Changer (SERPs) - This lets you google from another location. I.e if i want to see the results from New York but I stay in Glasgow. FreeGoogle Trends - Nice tool to watch out for upcoming trends. Can help you decide if you want to double down on something or not.Wordpress PluginsYoast - I'm sure everyones heard of Yoast. It's a Wordpress plugin that helps you optimise your site easier. It has a readability checker, allows you to set meta descriptions & title tags with ease and much more. It will automatically generate a sitemap for you plus so much more. It's a great tool. (I just use the free version)SEO Plugin By Squirrly - Has more than 200 features that you can use to maximise your SEO efforts. Easily add JSON-LD structured data etc.STACKS TO USEThe Best FREE Stack (Beginners tools to get started)Screaming Frog (Free for small sites)Google Search ConsoleGoogle AnalyticsGT MetrixsLink Builders Stack (Paid)Buzzstream (You can use gmail & streak & google sheets but it gets very messy as you scale. You're better investing as it will save you time down the line) Costs.SEO Jet (Again you could just do this manually using google sheets but if you're building links on scale to a bunch of different pages it can get hard to manage.) Costs.URL Profiler (I use this to pull metrics for a tonne of domains. It uses the api from a few tools.)Intermediate SEO Tools (As you get more serious)Accuranker (or something to track your keywords) Costs.Ahrefs or Semrush (I Prefer Ahrefs) Costs.Screaming FrogGoogle Search ConsoleGoogle AnalyticsGT MetrixsThe rest are just nice little things to have when you need them. Try not over complicate everything by adding in multiple tools.Stay clear of full site audit tools. Instead use the scraping tools that are out there and learn to read the raw data. However if time is of the essence and you're seriously grinding it out, go look at Ryte. It's the best one I've seen.

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

0 notes

brenacanimated3 · 5 years

Text

Story Adaptation

21-1-2019

Today was the last story adaptation lecture; next Monday we’ll be having individual tutorials. We went over some details regarding the task, information about Gothic horror and its origins, and how to write dialogue. Although I haven’t yet started with any ideas for the screenplay & reflective essay, some of the topics we went through gave me some inspiration and potential ideas. I don’t think it will take long for me to work something out, I just need to dedicate a day or even just a few hours to focusing on that and not getting distracted by other projects.

[lecture notes below]

Reflective Essay...

1. Discuss the set text and how your screenplay was inspired by it. Draw specific links between your screenplay and the text

2. Discuss your writing process and the creative decisions you made. Reflect on your journey from idea to finished script.

3. Discuss how you would film your screenplay. Discuss animation style, choice of materials, colour palette, lighting, soundtrack, etc.

4. Should write in an appropriate academic tone and add citations and a bibliography.

Can use first person pronouns (I) as you’re meant to be discussing and analysing your own experiences.

Can also submit concept art and storyboards.

Gothic Horror

The “un-hidden” social taboos in Gothic horror.

The birth of Gothic horror... “The Castle of Otranto” - Horace Walpole

Key features of the Gothic:

- Wild landscapes vs. imprisonment - The re-emergence of the past within the present (often represented by ghosts - ‘the thing you thought was dead’) - Explores the limits of what it is to be human - internal desires or forces outside of your control - ‘Perverse’ sexual tendencies

The vulnerability of women in the 19th Century... The genre often depicts the ‘triumph’ of young women over impossible forces.

The Uncanny

‘Figures that aren’t quite human (dolls, wax works, automata). Many Gothic stories feature ‘evil’ doubles. Somebody who seems unfamiliar and strange that you already know (this was clearly depicted in Jekyll & Hyde).

Power of the Uncanny... - Less is more. Obscure vision, plant seeds and let the reader’s imagination do the work. - Stay close. Use all senses when writing and imagining. Stay close on the protagonist; let us feel their fear. - Give the reader time to feel fear. Place hints that something disturbing is going to happen. Create a mood of horror before the horror even begins. Use ‘uncanny’ to help; something both familiar and unfamiliar, e.g. a radio that turns on by itself, a child’s toy not where it was left, a maggot in a piece of fruit, etc.

Dialogue

“Writing dialogue is a learning process; the more you do it, the better you become”

Dialogue is not real speech, but a representation of it. Aim to capture the flavour of speech (without the boring bits).

“Start with the dialogue you want to write, then remove every third word, or cut it until the meaning no longer survives. then add back the few words which return the meaning you want.”

“You’ll be surprised by how few words a sentence needs to do its ‘job’“.

For each character that speaks: think S.A.D. Status Agenda Desire

“Dialogue is a function of character. If you know your character, your dialogue should flow easily.” - Field

Status Who has the upper hand? Agenda What is the purpose of the conversation? What do they hope to gain from it? Desire What do they want? What is their ultimate goal/super-objective?

Inhabit their physical space. Our physical bodies affect our voices. Spend time imagining yourself as the character. Are they timid & trembling, or are they broad & bold? Are they ill, old, or afraid?

How would your character do different things? e.g. answer the phone, complain about the weather, tell off a child, buy train tickets, etc.

Silence What people don’t say is just as important as what they do. What are they avoiding talking about?

Try writing a scene in which one character can’t speak at all.

Good dialogue is surprising, unpredictable. Good dialogue promises excitement but keeps us waiting for it.

Be ruthless...

ALWAYS read your dialogue.

#storyadaptation

0 notes

jeannejcooper76 · 6 years

Text

NetBlaze – Behind The Scenes Of A $500k Start-Up

Hi there, and welcome to another monthly blog post here on AidanBooth.com!!

This months blog post is a little different, I want to give you a look behind the scenes of one of our companies to give you a feel for what really goes on… the company is called NetBlaze, and it’s a start-up we’ve been working on intensely for the past 18 months or so.

To get to the meat of NetBlaze, I figured the best approach was to interview Steven Clayton (my business partner), who is currently the CEO of the company.

Throughout the interview, you’ll find out how we’ve approached this project, from concept creation, through to where we’re at now, with a product that’s on the market helping customers and showing huge growth potential.

We’ve also got a fun give-away prize draw where we’re going to give away a lifetime access NetBlaze account, and $500 cash for good measure. The criteria is simple:

You must own or work in a local business in the USA

That’s it

SIDE NOTE: We hate to exclude people from these kinds of contests, but as explained in the interview, NetBlaze is currently only of use to people in the USA who own (or work in) a local business anyway.

// <![CDATA[ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//forms.aweber.com/form/28/1148886528.js"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, "script", "aweber-wjs-8flmagsmq")); // ]]>

Introductory Video

Before diving into the interview, you may find it useful to watch this short video that walks through what NetBlaze is all about:

youtube

Interview: A Look Behind The Scenes Of NetBlaze.com

Let’s now dive into the interview, the timestamp and transcription is below:

https://fast.wistia.com/embed/medias/h6verhegmf.jsonphttps://fast.wistia.com/assets/external/E-v1.js

Interview Timestamp:

2:05 – What is the elevator pitch for NetBlaze? 3:36 – Why NetBlaze isn’t how we envisioned it would be years ago 4:09 – What was the first iteration of NetBlaze like? 6:29 – What does NetBlaze look like nowadays, how has it changed? 8:17 – How did you come to that conclusion? 9:57 – Who is the typical NetBlaze customer? 11:23 – How does someone use NetBlaze for the first time? 13:18 – What’s the platform that NetBlaze is on? 13:55 – Can you share with us any recent stories or case studies? 15:47 – Why many times it is like a very specific region that needs to be targeted 16:15 – Why helping local businesses is exactly what exactly NetBlaze does 16:35 – What do users need to do on a daily or weekly basis? 19:30 – The other things that are going on behind the scenes of NetBlaze 20:05 – Are there any reports that can be used to monitor progress? 21:31 – Why text is quite a big part of NetBlaze 23:15 – Is email messaging automated? 24:45 – What kind of investment has been needed to build NetBlaze? 27:12 – Understanding why NetBlaze is on a different scale 28:12 – What about the make up of the team? 31:20 – How do you think the mixture of people will change? 33:21 – Where are the other key team members based? 34:15 – How does the team get together? 35:09 – Have you considered outside funding or bringing on investors? 37:25 – What costs would a user pay to be able to use NetBlaze? 38:12 – How did you find and hire your team members? 40:10 – Why internal poaching is a big benefit to us 40:31 – Do you have a system in place that you use for team meetings? 41:17 – Does NetBlaze use any special project management tools? 42:55 – Do you look for any special traits or characteristics in team members? 44:52 – Do you plan to take NetBlaze to other markets in the future? 46:10 – What does the current NetBlaze marketing plan look like? 50:44 – Why it’s imperative that you can track your results 51:27 – What’s been most challenging part about this project? 54:10 – What is the toughest decision that you’ve had to make in the past few months? 54:55 – What has been the biggest challenge over the past 30 days? 55:30 – Challenges, the key is the way you deal with them 56:18 – Is there anything that you would do differently? 57:41 – Are there any open positions now or in the future? 59:14 – How does someone go about creating an account? 59:47 – How to get a lifetime account with NetBlaze and $500 cash!

Interview Transcription:

Aidan: Hey everyone Aidan Booth here, I’m joined today by my business partner Steve Clayton, Steve thanks for being on the call with us.

Steve: Yep happy to be here, how you doing?

Aidan: Now guys as you may already know, we’ve got a handful of different businesses online and most of them are actually outside the ‘how to start an online business’ or ‘how to make money online’ space which is quite likely where you know us from and just like the thing we’re going to be talking about today, it’s completely outside of that space and I thought it would be interesting to give you a look inside one of our businesses, one that we don’t talk about all that often but one that possibly has the biggest growth potential out of any that we’ve involved with right now and one that we’re certainly putting a lot of time, energy and resources into, and the idea here is to give you a look behind the curtain to see what this kind of a business looks like.

The challenges that we face on a day to day basis and just a general look inside an exciting start-up, and we want to make this fun as well so if you have a business which could use the service and software that we’re talking about here today and you’re inside the United States, then if you enter your details in the form on this page which you’ll see in probably multiple places on this page depending on where you’re reading it, then enter your information and we’re going to give one lucky person a lifetime account of the special software that we’re going to be talking about and $500 cash on top of that so that’s what you stand to win just by entering your details on this page

Now with that said, Steve let’s dive in here, now guys the software and the business we’re talking about is called NetBlaze.

So Steve give us the elevator pitch for what NetBlaze is.

Steve: Sure so NetBlaze.com is what we’re talking about here and the way we like to describe it is NetBlaze is software that functions like a virtual Chief Marketing Officer for your small business.

There are so many small businesses in the United States and these are small Mom and Pop local community businesses like the pizza parlour, the local retailer, the local restaurant, the hair salon, and these folks are busy running these great businesses, they power of the US economy for the most part but it’s kind of a catch 22 because they have so much power at their fingertips now to market with Google and Facebook and Trip Advisor and Yelp and all those kinds of things, but even though they have this power, they don’t have a clue what they ought to be doing.

They don’t know whether they should be tweeting, or posting on Facebook, or how is it that their competitors show up when people type in something where they’re looking for a business like theirs online or on their mobile phone, so they’re a super super frustrated bunch because they really don’t even know what they don’t know. So NetBlaze was designed to basically be an instant marketing department for these local small business owners.

Aidan: I know that the way NetBlaze is now wasn’t how we kind of envisioned it would be years ago, and just to give people some more background, the reason that I am interviewing Steve about it and not the other way around is because this has really been Steve’s baby from the get go and something that he dedicates a lot of his time to and I don’t dedicate all that much of my time to it because we try to divide and conquer and run different elements of our businesses.

So Steve, tell us a little bit about the first iteration or how you first approached NetBlaze the first go round?

Steve: Sure this is a market that we know a lot about and customers we know a lot about, for example when we first started online marketing, so you’re talking about almost 15 years ago, I would go to a party or a gathering or hangout with my friends or something, when I started to explain ‘hey I moved from corporate over to building my own company, and our core competencies are online marketing and we’re doing this that and the other thing’, I was amazed at how many of these people that were small local business owners, they were like ‘oh my god I need so much help I don’t know what I’m doing, I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to be doing on a daily basis, it seems everybody knows more than me, I don’t even know what questions to ask’, they’re just like this super frustrated bunch that’s very under served.

So the general problem that NetBlaze is trying to solve is which is always something to keep in mind when you’re starting a business, is what problem does my product or service solve? That has not changed for 15 years, this problem has existed.

What has changed is as Aidan said, our approach to it, so we tried a few different things with NetBlaze, so for example, one of them was why don’t we just train because as you guys probably know we’re super big on training programs, we like to do that, we love to teach so one of the first considerations was why don’t we train small business owners, ‘hey here’s what search engine optimization is, here’s what reputation management is, here’s how you build citations, here’s how you go out and solicit reviews, here’s how you develop email marketing campaigns’, and while that’s good information, and would be helpful to people, what we quickly realized is these folks don’t have time to become marketing experts, they’re running their hair salon, they’re trying to make the best tasting pizza within a 25 mile radius, I mean that’s what they’re focused on and rightly so. So they just don’t have the time or the energy to focus on learning things.

Aidan: So the NetBlaze customer is clearly a large audience that needs a lot of help, and the current solution and the one that we are focused on now is obviously different to just the stand alone training that we envisioned it would be initially, so tell us a little bit about how that’s changed and what the solution looks like now and why we’ve gone with that.

Steve: I think, I know what we learned is that these customers just don’t have enough time, they don’t want to learn it, they really don’t want to spend a lot of their time doing it, and they don’t want to pay a lot for it. So the vision when we were developing the NetBlaze software and what I would always push back with the group was, no we can’t teach them how to do it, we must get the software to do it for them or at the very least we need to walk them through very very simple, push this button, type this in here, and press enter, that kind of thing.

So when we were working hard to develop the software, that was sort of the vision that we kept coming back to. Any time our software would veer off somewhere where it would start to get into more like, ‘well let me explain why this is, let me teach you how to do this’, we would just push back and say no, no, no, it has to do it for you wherever it possibly can because these people just want something done for them but they don’t want to spend a lot of money on it and they want to see results right away and they want it to happen fast but they just don’t have the time to do it themselves.

Aidan: Was that an observation that you and the team had through trying other approaches or is it feedback that you got, or how did you come to that conclusion?

Steve: Yeah definitely, we tried teaching them, and we got a lot of feedback on that like ‘I just don’t have the patience for this, again I’m worried about making my good pizza’, and we tried other things like more of a traditional agency role so for example, having someone come into their office and say OK we’re going to put together a comprehensive search engine optimization plan for you, here’s what that all looks like, here’s how it works, here are the tasks that are going to be done, here’s a PPC campaign strategy and let me show you all the metrics.

So that was more of a traditional consulting or agency role and again the push back we got from that was ‘for crying out loud, we just want to show up when people type in pizza parlour in my town and I don’t care how it happens, I want to be able to easily get reviews from my customers and watch my customer reputation but I need help’. You know what they needed? They basically needed a Chief Marketing Officer but they couldn’t afford to go and hire one so that became our vision, we’re going to create software which is essentially a Chief Marketing Officer for these companies.

Aidan: You’ve mentioned pizza parlours things like that so who is the typical NetBlaze customer, can you give our listeners or readers a few other examples for the types of businesses these people run?

Steve: The perfect customer is someone who’s got a defined generic area so it’s not for example a national ecommerce company, that’s a completely different scope of work. So this is a company that is a business that services a community, maybe they have one location, they could have maybe a couple of different locations around the Chicago area as an example but they’re really focused on a set geographic area in a community they’re servicing and that is millions and millions of businesses. Even though everything is going Amazon and Walmart, there’s still millions of plumbers, electricians, accountants, attorneys, dentists, real estate agents, restaurant owners, small retailers, on and on and on, that service these local communities, and is the lifeblood of the US economy.

Aidan: If we talk a little bit more about the actual software for a second, the first time that someone uses NetBlaze, what do they do? Can you walk us through and paint us a bit of a picture about what it’s like the first time they log on and what they might be doing the first time they log onto it.

Steve: The first thing that we do is try to make the onramp process as painless as we possibly can but they need to tell us a little bit about their company; their address, their website, their phone number and then we go out and try to find their Facebook page, we try to find their Yelp page, their Google+ page, their Trip Advisor page, if those things are applicable.

We just say ‘hey is this you’ and just to make sure we’ve got it all hooked up well and that’s really the only thing that they need to do, it really just takes minutes and obviously if they haven’t claimed their Google+ page or Google Places page, if they don’t have a Facebook page, if they don’t have a Yelp page, those are things that we will work with them to create later on but the first step is simply gathering a little bit of information, it just takes minutes and then you’re transported into the dashboard.

The dashboard gives you all sorts of information about your website and your rankings and your reputation online and any reviews that are out there, so it gives you a snapshot of what’s going on but the real meat of the software is what we call our ‘to do’ list which is basically ‘hey here’s what you need to work with, with your Chief Marketing Officer and check these things off’, like for example, claim your Google Places listing, press this button, go here, do that. Some of these things require a phone call so we just walk them through it.

Aidan: Just to fill in some of the gaps here that people may be having, what’s the platform that NetBlaze is on, is it something that you can log into on your iPad or do you have to download special software?

Steve: No it’s all web based and we also have an iPhone app as well that does all the things that the web based system does but because it’s software as a service, it’s a web based product and you can access it from a PC, a Mac, an iPad, and an iPhone too but there’s also an iPhone app that makes it a little bit easier.

Aidan: So if we talk about the actual customers now, are there any recent stories or case studies, quick ones that we could just share with people listening or reading this so they can visualize the kind of results that people using NetBlaze have been able to get?

Steve: Here’s my favorite one; there’s a gentleman in California that runs a smartphone repair center so you go to him if your phone screen gets cracked. Prior to using NetBlaze he was not showing up at all when people would type in ‘iPhone repair’ and they were in his geographic area but his competition was.

NetBlaze identified several changes that he should have made to his website. Now the way we handled that most people have gone out and dealt with someone to develop their website, most business owners don’t do it themselves and they don’t want to know all the different technical details and suggestions that NetBlaze has, so what NetBlaze says is ‘look I’ve got suggestions that you need to make to your website in order to do better in the rankings who should I send that to’?

We’ll then package up an email and send it your developer. So he did that, he followed the NetBlaze to do list and sent off an email to his developer. The developer said this is silly this isn’t going to make any difference but I’ll do it. They did it and three days later he’s number 3 in the rankings for his geographic area!

Aidan: That’s amazing, three days I guess that’s the beauty as well of these local businesses when you’re going after international or even nationwide search terms. Many times it is like a very specific region that needs to be targeted.

Steve: Exactly, it makes it much more manageable and you can be a bigger fish in a smaller pond, you can have an immediate impact in someone’s business.

Aidan: There was always the thing that I love about search engine marketing consulting is by helping these local businesses which is basically what exactly NetBlaze does, you can get that very same impact very quickly on people.

NetBlaze automates a lot of the tasks and the marketing operations for it’s users, so what does the typical user of NetBlaze need to do on a daily or weekly basis because I’m sure there’s something they need to do?

Steve: The biggest thing that they need to do is interface with NetBlaze with their customer data. NetBlaze will function as a CRM ‘customer relationship management’, meaning if you give us every day or every week the customers that have done business with you, we will in the background (NetBlaze will do this automatically), we will solicit reviews, so we’ll reach out to those customers through emails, through texts, and we don’t just say ‘hey could you leave us a review’, NetBlaze is much much smarter than that so NetBlaze is doing two big things.

The first is it’s doing what we call ‘review gating’, where it has a process which we sort of figure out if someone’s going to leave a good review or bad review, because we don’t want them to leave a bad review on Yelp, so we kind of feel them out first.

Then the second part that NetBlaze does automatically is it sends the person to make the review where it will do the most good, so let’s say for example you’ve got 25 Facebook reviews, you’ve got 25 Google+ reviews, you’ve got 100 Trip Advisor reviews but you have only 3 Yelp reviews. NetBlaze is going to say you know what we really need some help with Yelp so I’m going to try and get some reviews for Yelp, or maybe your ranking went down because of a bad review on Facebook, so NetBlaze is going to say ‘oh oh you know what for the time being I’m going to try and get more reviews on Facebook, more obviously good reviews so I can dilute that bad ranking and get it up and make it higher’. So really what people need to be doing is checking your to do list with NetBlaze and review what it’s doing for you.

It will also give you some insight and say ‘hey you’ve got a review posted, you should go and respond to it because that’s something that’s really important’. NetBlaze will tell you that once or twice a week you should make a Facebook post and NetBlaze will also make suggestions on what to post just to keep your audience engaged and things like that. So we try and do a lot for you but it’s good to visit NetBlaze maybe a couple of times a week just to make sure that you’re on board and you’re doing all the things you’re supposed to be doing too.

Aidan: We’ve spent a lot of time explaining reviews for example, but that’s only one type of thing that you’ll be looking to do because there’s social media management, there’s also getting red flags raised if some kind of potential marketing problem is identified so there’s a lot of other things that are going on behind the scenes there as well.

What about in terms of reporting and managing metrics, are there any kinds of reports or things like that that can be used by the user to monitor their progress?

Steve: We purposely don’t create a lot of reports so what they are able to see is mostly the dashboard, and the dashboard will give them again a snapshot but also some graphical representation over time of their visitors, their reviews, their scores, some of their rankings within Google and things like that. So we purposely shied away from creating all sorts of different reports and stuff.

If they dig deep enough, for example, one of the things we do for search engine optimization (and I won’t get into too much information here) but we’re constantly behind the scenes building citations in order to increase their rankings. So they could if they wanted to go and see every single citation that NetBlaze is building for them. They could if they wanted to go in and see every single review, text or email that goes out to customers, but it’s not really necessary, the whole idea here is for business owners to be able to log in, take a look at the dashboard and understand exactly what’s going on but let NetBlaze handle all the heavy lifting and analytical stuff that goes on behind the scenes.

Aidan: You mentioned one little word there which may have got people thinking and they may not have been aware but you said text messages so I think it’s interesting for people to know that’s quite a big part of something that’s built into NetBlaze as well, it’s not just about reaching out to customers in one way and it’s not a one shoe fits all approach here. Maybe you could just talk a little bit about the different ways that a customer may typically be reached out to through NetBlaze. So you’ve obviously got email, text message…

Steve: Those are the two big ones and then obviously we help to foster a Facebook presence that’s really the biggest social media vehicle that we look at, we think it’s the most important, we do focus a lot on the 80/20 rule because you can quickly get carried away with online marketing, you could be tweeting every day, you could be on Instagram, there’s a million things you could be doing but unless you’re a Kardashian, probably as a small business owner, tweeting is an enormous waste of your time because it’s just not going to give you that 80/20 rule where you do 20% of the work and get 80% of the benefit. So for us, customer interaction, the 80/20 rule is email/texting/Facebook.

Aidan: So what about automation and those things I’m just trying to paint a picture here for people as well. I’m assuming that the text message side of it is all automated, the same with email messaging?

Steve: Absolutely, the whole idea is that you’re interfacing with customers for two reasons; one is to get reviews, that you never have to do anything so NetBlaze is constantly working behind the scenes to communicate with your customers to solicit reviews so again making sure that we get the good ones. I’m not trying to suggest it will ignore bad reviews but bad reviews become an email to you to the business owner, they don’t become a Yelp review, or at least that’s the goal. So we don’t ignore them. So all of that the business owner does nothing.

The other way to use it is ‘hey it’s Friday night it’s raining, and as a restaurant owner I know that I’m not going to get as many visitors or potential customers so I’m going to ask NetBlaze, hey can you just run a quick promotional campaign and say rainy day special 10% off appetizer’, and then NetBlaze will send out either a text or email or both to your customers and try to get you more business.

Aidan: That’s really cool that’s awesome. The picture that’s really been painted here is that NetBlaze is designed to be a push button solution so that small business owners can focus on the other parts of their business not trying to do everything they’re currently doing as well as being Chief Marketing Offer for their businesses as well.

If we just change our focus a little bit more I want to talk to you a little bit about what it’s like running a business like NetBlaze. Just to give people a bit of an inside view what kind of investment has been needed to build NetBlaze to where it is today, over what sort of time frame are we talking?

Steve: Remember guys this is software as a service so that’s what’s being built here. It’s been depending on when you say we’re pressing start, it’s somewhere around the two year mark to really develop the software. It’s a little bit inaccurate to say, because you want to really do this within a year. What happens with Aidan and myself, we have a lot of other things that we’re doing and so I think we could have done this much much faster but for us it’s been a couple of years.

Software like this will easily be in the quarter of a million to half a million dollars to really do it up correctly so it’s not cheap by any stretch but software as a service is a powerful business model because the profit margins are generally very very high because the incremental costs to run the business, once you develop the software, as you bring on more customers, you don’t have to spend even more money to develop the software. Obviously there are some support costs and things like that but it doesn’t scale for example like a retail operation, it scales much much nicer and there’s much much higher profit margins.

Aidan: A few people may have just been a little bit shocked by the type of investment we’re talking about here but I want the readers or listeners to know that NetBlaze is a very sophisticated and comprehensive type of a software as a service as opposed to a simple web app which you can develop for $1,000 for example, so just make sure when you’re listening to that, that you are thinking about it with that kind of perspective in mind and you’re not comparing with something that it just on a completely different scale.

The takeaway from that is that significant investment from us and it’s taken a couple of years but it could have been faster if we’d really pushed it along.

What about the make up of the team, what is it like at the moment, how do you envision this changing as NetBlaze continues to grow?

Steve: Right now we’ve got a development team which does the software development and we’ve got a Project Manager/Analyst who lives in the Philippines and his role is essentially to translate our business vision into what the programmers need to hear, so he manages. We don’t actually talk for the most part to the people who are programming so we sit down with the Project Manager/Analyst and we say here’s what we want to develop, here’s the business need we’re trying to solve, here’s how we want the flow to go, here’s what we want the customer experience to be, and he takes all of that and translates that to the programmers and says ‘we need to build this’, and then they build it.

So we’ve got that whole silo within NetBlaze which is product development. We’ve got a customer service team now that does two things, it will do pre-sales customer service so people that come to the website and want to have a conversation with an online chat or they have questions about what the software can do or can’t do, those folks will handle that and then of course anybody that’s got issues or problems running the software.

Then we have a huge marketing push right now which is obviously really where I’m focused the most on right now because this is a start up, we literally just started selling the product and so the marketing team is really the big big push and so right now we’ve got people that are focused on paid advertising, we’ve got a person focused on a direct mail campaign, we’ve got a person who’s focused on inside sales which is basically telemarketing, and we’ve got a person who is focused on copywriting, branding and content management so creating YouTube videos, those kinds of pieces of content, podcasts and things like that where we can reach people and then we’re also bringing the customer service team in to help us out as when we get to a certain point, we won’t be able to do that anymore because they’re going to be busy but doing things like putting together a plan for trade shows, and public relations going out to reporters and things like that so that’s where I’m spending most of my time now is working with that team, that’s pretty much the team right now.

Aidan: So it sounds like there is a few main areas there, the development side of things, the marketing and the support which kind of roles into the marketing. As NetBlaze continues to grow, how do you think the mixture of people in those different areas will change, will it be more and more people coming into the marketing, more and more people coming into the support, how do you envisage that unfolding?

Steve: Our plan is to really expand in two areas; one is support so obviously as we get more customers we have to come up with the right metric that says for every 100 customers or whatever it is we need one support person or whatever, it won’t be 100 to 1 that’s for sure, but it’s probably going to be more like 400/500 to 1 so that’s one area.

The second area is inside sales so telemarketing, we feel like this is a product that will do very well with telemarketing so as long as that tests out appropriately where our costs per acquisition of new customers is in line with what we want it to be then it makes logical sense to scale that so it’s the same reason why if you could spend $100 on adwords ads and get a 100% return on investment, then why not spend billion dollars or as much as you can. So it’s the same thing with inside sales if we can get the right cost per acquisition, and that model proves out then we will aggressively grow the inside sales team so those are the areas we see growing in a huge way.

The good news is that the development team doesn’t really need to grow and the marketing team doesn’t really need to grow that much because you build it, you build the foundation, you get the right team and it doesn’t matter if you have one hundred customers or a million customers, you’re still doing the same kinds of marketing and development.

Aidan: You mentioned a moment a go that one of the key team members is in the Philippines, where are the other team members or who you would consider the key team members based?

Steve: They’re all over the place right now which is kind of an issue but we’ve got the Philippines, we’ve got the development team who is all in Pakistan right now, we’ve got our inside sales and customer support are both here in Chicago with me which is awesome, our paid advertising gentleman is in Ireland, our branding content and PR and that kind of thing is in North Carolina so we are kind of spread out but we are hoping to change that over time.

Aidan: Given that there are already a few of you in Chicago how does that work, I mean do you guys get together, do you have a shared space, do you just work remotely and meet online, what does that look like?

Steve: So obviously for the people that are not in Chicago we just work remotely and meet online, but for the Chicago contingent I’ve an office here on Michigan Avenue and basically what I did is leased another office a couple of doors down and so the people who live here in Chicago they come and spend much of their time here in the office which is great for me because it’s nice to have some brainstorming and people you can be face to face with when you have things that you’re trying to work out.

Aidan: A moment ago you spoke about some of the costs and gave an idea for the scope of investment required to put something as sophisticated as NetBlaze together and obviously with the team that’s in place now as well there’s going to be significant monthly overheads and this is what probably any serious start up that’s really going for it is going to come up against. Up until now this has been 100% internally funded but have you considered outside funding or bringing on investors to help lighten the load or what’s your take on that?

Steve: I think it’s always a consideration and always something you should consider, we (me and you) have been lucky enough that we have other business ventures that we are basically using to fund this one, so most people don’t have that luxury so it requires outside investment. I am still going to consider outside investment for NetBlaze, we might get to the point where we’re growing at a good clip but if we could do a Super Bowl commercial we could become GoDaddy or salesforce.com, I don’t care how well we’re doing, we’re probably not going to fund a Super Bowl commercial by ourselves.

Aidan didn’t mention this but I am the CEO of this company and as the CEO of this company I am preparing to put all our ducks in a row to have a very very polished business plan and pitch desk so that if Aidan and I decide ‘hey we want to go and raise $10,000’ we don’t have to scramble. We’re going to be very well prepared for that so we’re not planning on it right now but I’m working on right now having the resources available if we choose to go out and get outside investment.

Aidan: Talk about the costs that a user would pay to be able to use NetBlaze, how much are they paying and why did you choose this price point?

Steve: It’s $97 a month and we really chose this price point based on feedback from the customers. Just years of working with these guys in a couple of different capacities to know what they’d be wanting to take a chance on because this is pretty new stuff and what their pain point was and what their fresh-hold is, most of these folks are counting every single penny and so that is based on our research that’s the right price point for these folks.

Aidan: A few moments ago we spoke about the team working behind the scenes and there’s people all over the world, how did you find and hire these people, any special recipe for doing that?

Steve: I mean for us again we’re lucky enough I think that every single person we have on the team, not all the programmers but all the other folks have been referrals in some way shape or form or people that we’ve worked with in the past. I don’t think there has been one position where we’ve put out some kind of ad to hire someone, in fact I know there hasn’t been. So really I think that’s what it boils down to and I think the other thing that it boils down to is collecting these contacts and knowing who is kind of good athletes out there.

We have a saying here out in the United States, US football, not soccer, they have a draft every year where they get (it’s a complicated process) but maybe your team needs a specialty player, maybe your team needs a quarterback but the best athlete in the draft is a wide receiver and so there’s always a battle with management to say well we really need the quarterback but he’s an OK quarterback but we’ve got this great athlete we don’t really need a wide receiver but he’s really the best athlete out there so I’m always a big believer in collecting these best athletes because I know I’m going to need them somewhere somehow later on down the line so that’s what we do over the years and just referrals and working with people on a project basis and then finally we just say ‘hey do you want to come and join us’?

Aidan: I know that as well speaking about where our team came from and stuff we certainly did some internal poaching where we took people away from other companies that were already established and that made sense so that’s obviously a big benefit for us there as well.

Do you have a set system in place that you use for team meetings, do you just get together on an informal phone call, do you use Skype, do you use something else, and how often do these types of things take place?

Steve: We use Skype or Zoom, Zoom more lately just because Skype has been acting up quite a bit. We have a weekly marketing meeting and the whole management team really gets together at least twice a month just to check in with everybody and check in with the development team but the meat of the work that’s going on right now requires a weekly meeting with the whole marketing team.

Aidan: Does NetBlaze use any special project management tools, there’s lots out there, some of them that we use now in our other businesses are things like Basecamp is one of them for example, how does NetBlaze approach that for running it’s projects and staying on top of regular operations and communication channels?

Steve: The programming team actually has a very very disciplined approach to that and I actually don’t know what their big thing they are using now. I know they use Slack and Basecamp but I’d have to go back and check and see what other tools they’re using, but they are very very disciplined with that because you’ve got the Project Manager in the Philippines and you’ve got the rest of the development team in Pakistan and they are organised around these cycles of work that they call sprints so as I said very very disciplined. So we do use Basecamp and Google docs for the most part, but I’m a big believer in if I’ve got someone who is (which I do), is running inside sales, I basically leave it up to them to say ‘OK we need a plan but I don’t much care where you put that plan’. There are pros and cons to each of those platforms, so I typically go with whoever is in charge of that plan, I’ll just let them pick what they’re most comfortable with and that sort of gets me the best results.

Aidan: Just going back to employees a little bit more, you mentioned the analogy of these super special athletes and we’ve certainly got a few of those in our team. When looking for someone to fill a specific role do you look for any special traits or characteristics that person should have, or do you just look to say ‘these guys are already 100% perfect for this job that we want to do’, or do you see someone that’s a great athlete and say they could probably do a good job at that. Any tips for people of things you’ve picked up, not just from NetBlaze but from other companies that we’ve got as well?

Steve: I think it’s a mix of strategies I really do, I’m a big believer in collecting those athletes and you’ve seen it over the years that we’ve worked together, it allows us to get lucky later on because all of a sudden we have this urgent need and and we go ‘oh well we’re lucky because we’ve got somebody we can slot into that position’. So I’m a big big believer in that.

The other thing I’m a big big believer in is entrepreneurs, we are often tempted to hire people that are like us, entrepreneurial when in fact I’ve said this before and I’m not even joking, entrepreneurs make crappy employees. We don’t really want entrepreneurs we want people who are much more detail oriented who are not as risk adverse but we’re plenty comfortable with risk, you want someone to offset that, you want somebody who is a little bit more conservative may not be the right word but somebody who is going to come in, who is going to take somebody else’s vision and is going to really make it happen, executed detail orientated that kind of thing. You want to look for somebody who is strong where you’re weak. So that’s kind of what I’ve learnt over the years.

Aidan: Right now NetBlaze is limited to the USA geographic region, just wondered if you could share why this is and whether or not you plan to take NetBlaze to other markets in the near future?

Steve: For us the US market is so big there are millions and millions of potential customers for NetBlaze within the US so it’s just a large enough market certainly to start out with and perhaps for the whole duration of NetBlaze’s existence honestly. The other thing is that from a cultural standpoint we all understand the market, we understand how to ask consumers for reviews. We sort of just understand the context of what the businesses are dealing with because all of us are here living in the US and are from the US. So I think the jury is still out on whether or not it makes sense to move NetBlaze to other countries, I think it’s an open question right now.

Aidan: Going back to marketing because that’s obviously the key to the success of any business and in most cases ends up being the roadblock or the bottleneck for most businesses. This is something we could talk about for hours and hours but what does the current NetBlaze marketing plan look like. You hit today a few things a few minutes ago there with strategic positions that we’ve got but any light you could shed on that from a 10,000 foot viewpoint?

Steve: It is the most complicated marketing plan that I’ve ever been involved in. As I’m talking to you right now I’m looking at our marketing plan. I have this big wall that is a whiteboard, the whole thing was painted with this whiteboard material so that you can write on the wall just like a whiteboard, and my whole wall is filled with essentially a picture of what is the NetBlaze marketing plan.

So obviously we can’t go into gory detail on this call about what it is, but generally what I have on the outside are traffic sources, so I’ve got paid advertising, I’ve got direct mail pieces, I’ve got organic traffic, I’ve got PR, so public relations; so press releases, interviews that kind of thing. I’ve got influencers so we’ve got bloggers, people who have tribes on Facebook or whatever. I’ve got content, so YouTube, podcasts, whitepapers, anything content that we develop. I’ve got trade shows so there are lots of trade shows around the United States where small business owners will go.

Finally I’ve got inside sales so this is people who are making phone calls to potential customers, both cold calling, so calling people who’ve never heard of us, and what we call warm calling or calling of leads that were maybe generated from a direct mail piece, or from a webinar that we’re running or from the website or whatever. So I have all of those things outside of this diagram for lack of a better word, and then there are what I consider conversion vehicles, I’ve got our website in the middle, I’ve got a tool that we have called a ‘free scan’ tool, and this is where somebody for free can basically type in their information to get a ‘temperature check’, how is your business doing online, what’s your online presence, do you have a Yelp account, what’s your ranking there, how’s your website, those kinds of things.

Then we’ve got our webinars, we run an automated webinar series which is about an hour to an hour and a half, of the state of the union of online marketing for small businesses and why you need NetBlaze essentially that’s really what it is. For each of those conversion vehicles we will drive other activities, so a quick example; is that on the ‘free scan’ tool once they’re done with it, they would get a couple of different options, they could just buy our product or maybe they want to talk to somebody so they can set up a call, so then that becomes a warm lead that goes to our inside sales for warm calling. Then obviously for each of these people sign up for we’ve got email follow-up sequences, re-targeting and so on and so forth.

So I think at a high level what the NetBlaze marketing plan looks like is all these different traffic sources on the outside, conversion vehicles on the inside of the diagram and then for each of the conversion vehicles we need to be able to have a funnel, some plan that says OK it’s great that we’ve got traffic, it’s great that this traffic is coming to one of these conversion vehicles, what do we do as they enter that conversion vehicle to make them into a sale and so that’s what we have.

Aidan: I think just a takeaway from that for everyone who’s reading or listening to this is that it’s imperative that you can track your results from whatever efforts you’re putting in and then you can if you’ve got multiple options and multiple ways to attack whatever it is you’re trying to do, you can tweak the approach and then try again. So if you track, if you tweak it and then if you try again eventually you’re going to end up with marketing strategies working for you and you’ll quickly weed out the ones that aren’t so I think that’s helpful.

I’d like to quickly discuss now some of the challenges to give people a bit more of a look behind the curtain a little bit of what they would not normally see from a business of this kind. So what would you say has been the most challenging part of bringing a project like this from idea into reality, the most challenging part of all of that?

Steve: I think there are three big challenges that come to mind, the first is just focus you know finding the time and the mental focus to be able to make the vision a reality when you’re busy running other businesses, or you’re busy with a day job or with your kids or whatever, it’s a challenge for all of us to allocate the appropriate time to invest in something like that, so that’s one big thing.

I think the other big thing is people, how do you find the right people to help you make this vision a reality, that’s not an easy task. We talked about ways to do that and everything and how we do it but it’s not easy even if you have a good process and sometimes you have some fits and starts and someone that’s not a good fit and you have to re-tool that so that’s problematic to make that work.

I think the last thing was trying to figure out the scope of what is a product that you can bring to market. It’s a very difficult decision because as you might imagine there’s a million things we want to ultimately do with NetBlaze, so one great example of that is that I mentioned hey it’s raining in your local area so you want to send out a a promo. I’d like to get to the point where you don’t even have to think of that, NetBlaze knows you’re in Chicago, your business is in Chicago, NetBlaze knows you’re a restaurant, NetBlaze knows it’s raining in Chicago tonight, all of those things are reasonable for NetBlaze to to know. NetBlaze should just email you and say ‘hey Joe, it’s going to rain tonight, you should run a 20% off on appetizers special, do you want me to do that for you’? Just click yes and it will do it.

But do you need that to go to market? We chose no, but it’s very difficult to figure out the scope of the product that’s good enough to actually start to market. So I would say those are probably the three biggest challenges we’ve run into.

Aidan: Just a few other quick fire questions for you here, as CEO of NetBlaze what would you say is perhaps the toughest decision that you’ve had to make in the past few months?

Steve: I think two prioritizations; one is what functionality to add when, what is the prioritization and what is the functionality, and then the other is; the prioritization on the traffic sources, paid ads, direct mail, inside sales, content, trade shows, influencers, PR, which ones get the most attention now, I think those are two of the big ones.

Aidan: Next question for you here is what would you say has been the biggest NetBlaze business challenge over the past 30 days or so?

Steve: Probably PayPal, we sold our first customer and then PayPal just shut us down, it’s ridiculous because we had people accessing us from Pakistan, who knows why they’re a pain in the ass so that’s probably was the biggest challenge.

Aidan: Guys if you are reading this or listening to this, these are challenges that everyone faces, we’re definitely not immune to them, I think the key is the way you deal with them, so getting an issue with a PayPal account, that’s easily overcome by just having a new payment gateway but some people tend to get hung up on those kind of things because it’s a real kick in the stomach when you’re just trying to get things off the ground with a new business but the key is how you deal with it and how you move forward with that. So anyway if you’ve had those kinds of things happen you’re definitely not alone and they happen to all kinds of different businesses of all kinds of different sizes and scales.

One other question here for you Steve, if you had to start over and build another software as a service business, is there anything that you would do differently, I’m sure there are hundreds or thousands of things, but any major thing you’d say if I had to do this again I would definitely do that differently?

Steve: I think it’s just we constantly underestimate the focus that’s required in order to bring something to market. I think one of the reasons why it took us two years instead of one year is we kept feeling like well we could describe it at a high level, I could really describe it at a high level to someone who could take that vision and run with it and you really can’t do that. If you’re the visionary, if you’re the person who has the product in your head, if you’re the one that is really passionate about this, you need to put everything else as a secondary priority and make sure that every single day you are driving that focus into the product that’s being developed and that has to come first. It was only when we did that, when Aidan and I decided as a team that I could do that, that’s when we were finally able to bring it to market.

Aidan: To wrap things up here a couple of last minute housekeeping things, are there any open positions now or positions that are going to be opening in the near future that you can think of and if so if someone is reading this or listening to it, and they think they’d love to get involved in a start up company like NetBlaze, how is the best way for them to reach out, let us know and essentially apply for the job?

Steve: The areas that we feel we are going to be expanding are going to be customer service, and also inside sales, so those are really the two areas, so people who have experience with customer support or with calling out to potential customers and closing business on the phone, those are people that we would be thrilled to hear from. As far as how to contact us, you can contact us here on the blog or go to NetBlaze.com. What I’ll do is create a NetBlaze address for these kind of inquiries and we’ll put that on the blog.

Aidan: If someone is reading this blog post or listening to this and they think they could use NetBlaze to help a local business that perhaps they work in or perhaps they own themselves, how do they go about maybe getting more information and creating an account?

Steve: That’s easy all you have to do is go to NetBlaze.com, it should be pretty clear on there, there should be a big button there that says ‘try it for free’ you can even try it for free today so give it a go.

Aidan: Just a reminder we wanted to have some fun with this whole content piece today as well so if you are someone that’s got a local business and you think that NetBlaze is something that could work really well for you then put your details on the form on this page, it will probably be on a couple of places on this page and you will go in the draw to win $500 cash but an even bigger deal than that there’s a lifetime account of NetBlaze which you can’t even purchase so go-ahead if you think that you fit the criteria for that and we’d love to put you in the draw and see if we can set you up with a lifetime account and $500 cash just for good measure.

With that said Steve, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day today, I think it’s going to be quite insightful for people to have a look behind the scenes of what one of these start-ups looks like and what goes into it certainly for small business owners, I think it’s going to be useful for them to find out that things like this actually exist out there, well at least NetBlaze does anyway so thanks so much for your time.

Steve: My pleasure.

Aidan: Alright guys, well leave a comment below if you’ve got one, or a question, and you know how to reach out to us if you need anything.

Thank you so much for listening and we’ll chat again soon, bye for now.

So there you have it! We’d love to hear your thoughts and take any questions, so leave a comment below.

Thanks for visiting,

Aidan

NetBlaze – Behind The Scenes Of A $500k Start-Up shared from AidanBooth.com

NetBlaze – Behind The Scenes Of A $500k Start-Up shared from Aileen Batts Blog

0 notes