Posts in Graphics,Marketing,Portfolio,Getting Started,Portfolio,Squarespace
How to Create a Stand-Out Brand for Your Online Business

Creating a stand-out brand goes beyond the visual side of your business. You have to prioritize strategy, pinpoint your message, create consistent content, and have attention-grabbing visuals that tie it all together.

With each year that passes, and as industries get increasingly saturated, it becomes more and more important to create a distinct brand for your creative business. It can feel like the visual edge of the competition increases each day meanwhile your own brand identity lags behind and isn’t in the game.

If your biz is struggling with outdated or sub-par design, or if it’s simply time for a spruce, this post is here to help you!

As a brand strategist and designer, I have a lot to share on the topic of branding. So today, I’m walking you through 6 simple steps to create a stand-out brand—from strategy to social media.

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How to Transform Instagram Followers into Newsletter Subscribers on Autopilot with a Quiz

Quizzes. We’ve all heard of them. We’ve all taken at least one. But have you ever used a quiz for your business?

The power of quizzes is no joke. Even the experts sing the praises of a good quiz for small business growth and success.

And with amazing software in these modern days, creating a quiz is almost as easy as waving a wand. Well, that plus a little bit of creativity and planning.

So get ready because I’m about to walk you through the exact steps to follow to create a quiz that will skyrocket your email list growth and Instagram engagement.

A quiz is one of the best methods to turn Instagram followers into subscribers while you sleep—and no, I’m not talking about an Instagram sticker poll.

With Instagram’s latest updates, it’s easier than ever to share a full-fledged quiz with your audience. So hop on board today, and take advantage of this quick-growth quiz strategy to boost your brand and ensure long-term progress—instead of a plummet.

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Not Converting Instagram Followers into Email List Subscribers? Here’s What You’re Missing Out On. (Hint: It’s HUGE.)

You put a lot of time into creating social media content. But with the constant changes to Instagram and the chronic algorithm shifts, Instagram growth and engagement can be a rocky road.

And for small businesses who rely on Instagram to reach their audience and make money, it can be detrimental to your income.

There’s no telling what Instagram will toss our way next, so we need to be prepared for anything.

If you’re wondering what is the best way to ensure your business doesn’t get forgotten, it’s simple:

Prioritize growing and nurturing your email subscriber list alongside Instagram.

It can take as little as 30 minutes a week to implement this incredible business strategy, so you really have nothing to lose but everything to gain.

If you’re just starting out with your newsletter list, or if you already have a steady stream of subscribers, this blog post will show you exactly how to start gaining significant traction with your email marketing list today.

This way, you’ll always be able to reach your followers—whether Instagram decides to show your content or not.

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Brand and Website Design for TwigBerryStudio

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I refreshed some key priorities this season in my business. One of the things I’m focusing on in a greater scope is taking on more design and strategy clients. And part of that includes posting each project to my blog to share with you.

I thought it would be fun to kick-off this series with a design that’s a little extra special to me. I’m excited to share it with you because this brand and website project actually features my very first creative business and the brand that kick-started my journey as an entrepreneur: TwigBerryStudio.

While I designed the bulk of this brand years ago, and while it’s been sitting in my portfolio all this time, I recently added a few finishing touches to accommodate several new ventures within my business, so it’s the perfect time to make its debut here on the Ponder Trail blog with a full project breakdown.

The fun part about today’s post is that you’ll also get a glimpse at the creative things I’m working on when I’m not writing blog posts, designing brands and websites, or working one-on-one with my brand strategy clients. Ready for the tour?

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Exciting Updates to the Ponder Trail Website

If you read my blog post about how I’m changing up my approach to planning out my year, you might know that a big website refresh was on my list for the first half of the year.

As a brand and website designer, I often talk about how it’s important to update your site every year or so to keep things prioritized and relevant, but it had been quite some time since I had switched things up on the Ponder Trail website.

I officially published the site updates last week, and I’m excited to return from my blogging hiatus to walk you through what’s new.

I think you’ll find some of the new content helpful—especially the new free jam-packed resources. Let’s dive in!

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Not Attracting Enough Customers or Clients? Your Blog Strategy Might be to Blame

I find the most difficult part of being a creative entrepreneur is managing the constant flow of new ideas. Everyday, I think of more and more possibilities and directions to explore for my business, and it can be quite a task to manage, analyze, and sort through them all.

The largest stream of ideas is usually for my blog content. There are so many things I want to share on my blog, but it often seems impossible to check each one off my never-ending list. Which posts should I write first? Which ones will be most strategic for my business? Which posts will be most helpful for my audience?

With a huge number of tentative posts, topics, and tips to create, it can be a bit overwhelming to figure out which blogs to write—especially while juggling other areas of business, such as client work, social media marketing, newsletter content, product development, and so on.

It takes a lot of time and energy to think through every blog post possibility, decide which ones to write each month, and map out titles into an editorial calendar.

In a panic, it can be easy select and write posts on a whim because we know creating content is key to growing a successful business. Gotta stay consistent. Gotta show up. Gotta build that SEO.

But this frantic approach leads to “idea clutter,” and it can quickly cause your business to crash and burn. Your posts are all over the place. They’re hard to write. They don’t grow your readership. They feel like a complete and utter waste.

And yet, you keep on blogging because you’re still hoping to strike gold one day.

But take a deep breath because today I have a simple solution to make blogging easy again. In this post, I’m going to show you how to cut the clutter, get to the point, and create blog posts that convert.

It’s time to whip your blog into shape so it can become a powerhouse for your business—instead of a burden.

Let’s begin!

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Welcome to the Treehouse: the Brand Strategy Membership for Creative Entrepreneurs

Over the past few years, I’ve discovered the value of adopting a laser-focused mindset. It creates clarity and an open runway to brainstorm and bring your ideas to life. It gives you space to think strategically, create a plan, and stay on track. It cultivates productivity, action, and progress like nothing else.

Once I switched my approach and dedicated my attention to one part of my strategy, I started saving time, seeing more progress, and finally getting in the groove. And I haven’t looked back since.

I started seeing the difference it made in my business first-hand, so I set out to help other creatives do the same. And after coaching brand strategy clients one-on-one for over a year, I wanted to find a way to help even more creatives.

So I landed on the perfect idea: a self-paced membership program. It’s a brand strategy subscription that’s part-course, part-service, and part-library, so it meets the best of all worlds for entrepreneurs who are looking to take action in their businesses.

I’m calling it the Brand Strategy Treehouse.

It’s my all-new signature membership, and it’s available to you today!

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Simple, Proven Methods to Grow Quickly and Authentically on Instagram

As we approach the new year, we start to plan and dream about where we can take our business in 2021. At the top of that list for many creative entrepreneurs is growing our Instagram accounts.

With all of the users on Instagram, most brands have thousands of potential clients and customers hanging out on the social media platform. But it seems to become ever more difficult to grow our accounts due to industry saturation, algorithms, and just plain overwhelm.

Despite the odds, we sometimes discover new accounts who are surging with popularity.

How are they getting so much traction? What are they doing to gain followers so easily? How are they completely sold out after each product launch or shop update? What magic beans do they have that my brand is missing out on? There must be strategies they follow.

Can you relate to some of these questions and thoughts?

Well, today, I’m sharing the best methods for growing quickly and authentically on Instagram. They’re the simple techniques that all thriving accounts utilize, and I can’t wait to spill the beans with you in this blog post!

P.S. I’m hosting an Instagram Challenge starting January 4th. Sign up to grow your account and reach your Instagram goals in 2021.

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How to Create a Secure Membership Site with Squarespace using Member Areas (without 3rd Party Programs)

Squarespace is hands-down my favorite website provider for small businesses, bloggers, and content creators alike.

And it just got better.

If you’ve ever thought about creating a password protected area on your website or envisioned what a members-only area could do for your brand, then it’s the perfect time ever to take action. Why now?

Because Squarespace just rolled out its latest feature: Member Areas.

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6 Strategies for Instagram Success: Gearing up for My Instagram Growth Challenge

Instagram has been one of the best tools for small business owners for over five years. And while the features keep getting bigger and better, many creators find that their engagement is declining. When Instagram introduced their non-chronological algorithm several years ago, it caused many brands to lose their reach and become out-of-touch with their audience.

Instagram has amazing benefits, though it can be an overwhelming or dreaded task if you aren’t seeing results. It can be a lot of work to get the ball rolling and to keep the momentum going if you don’t have a simple strategy in place.

So the last thing a creative entrepreneur wants to do is lose all of that hard work by making the algorithm—or their audience—unhappy.

That’s what this January challenge is all about: how to grow a loyal and engaged audience on Instagram and how to keep the platform happy—all without using up hours of your day.

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New Tool for Instagram Growth: Marketing and Content Strategy Planner

I am so excited to launch my new social media planner for Instagram. I’ve been working on it for quite some time. I wanted a straightforward tool that would . . .

  • help with staying on track with Instagram goals

  • take the guesswork out of posting

  • make connections that help build a profitable account

  • grow an audience without frustration

  • create a clear step-by-step routine with daily actions

  • save hours and hours each week

Enter the planner!

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How to Show up Consistently for Your Audience (because it’s the Key to Online Business Growth)

If I could only give you one tip for growing your business, it would be to show up consistently. Throughout the years of entrepreneurship, I have been convinced more and more that one of the top keys to growth is to simply show up for your audience each day.

Consistency gives you a steady stream of value to share, it demonstrates your expertise, and it shows that you truly care about your followers, thus building a trustworthy brand.

It sounds simple enough, but it isn’t always easy to show up every day. In fact, it’s quite difficult at times. And with all of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into running an online business, it can be easy to prioritize the front-end of your brand—especially for those of us who are on the introverted side of things. (Can anyone else relate?)

However, the audiences have voted, and it’s confirmed that you can’t grow a business without showing up consistently.

So today, I’ve narrowed down 3 easy ways to revolutionize your consistency. These simple things will help you get rid of the road blocks and keep you ahead of the game so you can show up each day and build a loyal and engaged audience.

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My Simple Method for Batching Tasks to Maximize Efficiency

Imagine gaining back hours each month without delegating, cutting back, or automating your tasks. It’s like free time that’s yours for the taking.

This not-so-secret weapon is a strategy that all creative entrepreneurs have at their disposal, and it’s called batching.

It’s the king of task management, yet this effective trick is so simple you can master it in 3 easy steps. If you try it out, I guarantee you’ll benefit from this approach to getting things done.

Learn how in today’s post, and start saving time so you can focus on the projects you’ve been wanting to work on.

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3 Goal Setting Hang-Ups, and Solutions for Each

Setting and reaching a goal consists of 3 main stages:

  • the part that depends on your time, resources, and tools

  • the part that relies on your know-how and abilities

  • the part that counts on you doing the work

These areas each create their own hurdles around achieving goals. Over the years, I’ve struggled with all three of the hang-ups above, and today I’m sharing my best insights on how to overcome them.

With goals, we either tend to overaim with excitement or under-aim with overwhelm. Both often result in feeling stuck. But instead, we need to find the right balance to bust through roadblocks like these.

Good news is, goals are infinitely easier to set and achieve with you are equipped with the right tools in your pocket.

If you are struggling to start or grow your creative business, don’t extinguish your dreams before you have a good run! Give it your best shot with the tips in today’s blog post.

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4 Steps to Stop Re-Setting Goals and How to Start Reaching them Instead

Are you making headway on your goals? Are you staying on track? Or do you often find yourself missing the mark and rewriting the same goals at the top of next month’s planner pages . . . again?

In my last post, I talked about the simple missing link to reaching goals, and I explained why many goals always seem to get away from us or feel out of reach.

Today, I’m showing you how to apply that secret so you can finally break the cycle of pushing your goals into the future.

If you tend to rewrite the same to-do list week after week, these 4 simple steps will help you understand and overcome the common struggle that many creative entrepreneurs face: how to actually reach goals.

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The Missing Link to Reaching Goals

Goals.

We set them. We plan them. We reach them, too.

Or at least, we hope we do.

Some goals propel our business forward and help us reach new grounds, while others are critical for simply keeping our business above the water.

There’s something thrilling about reaching a goal—especially after working hard for it day after day. The feeling you get when you finally check one off of your list creates a strong sense of accomplishment and a surge of motivation.

But it can be quite discouraging when you find yourself transferring the same unmet goal over to next month’s planner pages, time and time again, to no avail.

“Maybe next month will be different. Maybe I’ll finally check that one off,” we hope, once again.

But when we are stuck in a cycle and struggle to reach our goals, it’s time to try a different approach.

Last January, while thinking deeply on this subject, I had an epiphany. I figured out the secret to reaching goals—or at least the key I had been missing for years.

I realized there were actually two distinct types of goals, and I was completely missing the mindset behind one of them.

It completely transformed the way I think of goals, how I set them, and how I map them out as a creative entrepreneur.

This blog post sheds light on that secret, and I can’t wait to share it with you!

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8 Signs of a Quintessential Logo

While your logo is one of many brand elements that make up the visuals of your brand, it has the notable ability to give people the gist of your business.

With just one mark, you have the opportunity to showcase facets of your company that go deeper than just your business name. This is a very powerful assignment.

A compelling logo grabs your audience’s attention, draws them in, and makes it easier for people to remember your brand.

It’s your business’s signature. Your X on the dotted line. And a logo designed with great intention and strategy reflects the care you give to each of your customers and clients.

While this is an area of your brand that can be creative, there are a few helpful guidelines to follow when it comes to an effective and quintessential logo.

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