City of Writers: A Weekly Newsletter
I decided to remove myself from the vise-like grip of Facebook, Instagram, and Google permanently. It's Lent, and Catholics typically give up something for 40 days as a sign of sacrifice and to test our self-discipline, just as Jesus did when He went into the desert before His eventual death…
I have been designing websites since 1998 when Yahoo! GeoCities was still only GeoCities. I learned how to code in HTML, all on my own. My very first website was *NSYNC Revolution, a fansite about the boy band *NSYNC. I was constantly at odds with my family because if someone…
I picked up Pokémon Go on July 7, 2016, because I wanted to relive my childhood.
I had to share a GameBoy with my kid brother and I watched him defeat the Elite Four of the Kanto region back in the day. We couldn’t afford a separate GameBoy for me, so I played his saved files. I watched the first season religiously. I wrote fanfiction. We collected cards but we didn’t get far because, again, we were poor. I learned the Poké Rap. I collected the soundtracks. I memorized types. I favored water and psychic types.
When they announced Pokémon Go, I thought I would give it a chance.
But then I got caught up in the frenzy.
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You did everything right. You opened your own business! You have a fancy domain name! You have social media handles that match your brand! But no one's knocking down doors to get to you. Then you realize your website has nothing to offer your potential clients. You're not collecting emails…
Some spoilers.
The pre-game storyline is engaging. After falling asleep whilst reading “Through the Looking Glass” by Lewis Carroll, Mickey finds a way to walk through the mirror in his room. He sees a pot of paint and a paintbrush left behind by Yen Sid (the sorcerer from “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”), who had departed for the night.
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You’re here because you’re someone who has a brand that encourages you to be active on social media, or you’re biting the bullet and building yours from the ground up.
If you’re like me, you post most of your content from your phone on the fly. A lot of big brands (and small ones too!) use programs that allow them to post on a schedule. My favorite is Buffer (not an affiliate link). If you’re a one-person shop, don’t stress yourself and wonder if you need to have scheduled posts. You don’t. You’ve got enough on your plate!
Whether you like it or not, social media is a solid way to bring traffic to your site. You should be doing whatever you can to bring eyes to what you’re trying to sell/do/say.
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One of my favorite features of Gmail is the fact that you can send emails from your other accounts without having to log in to them separately. I like to have vanity emails for all of my different projects. It helps me to categorize where my mail is coming from for all of my different domains, of which I have a fair few!
My fanlisting emails are sent to and from fan@gpacheco.org. Any email sent to fan@gpacheco.org is forwarded to my Gmail account. When I reply to those emails, it appears as though it comes from @gpacheco.org and not Gmail, yet utilizing Gmail’s intuitive interface.
I have a filter so that any mail sent to fan@gpacheco.org gets sent to a specific folder within Gmail. It skips the inbox and archives automatically, which has allowed for maximum productivity. More on that at the end.
Most free email providers have eliminated the option to add additional emails as well as reply from them, or they charge for such a luxury. If Gmail does that, I’m jumping ship. I’ve faithfully been using Gmail since the beginning when they were doing invites.
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I’m excited to share this DIY tutorial with you because I learned it myself quite recently. I hope you enjoy, and let me know if there’s anything that is missing!
I know the trend is to rely on things like Canva to create pretty images for you to post on social media. I’m not knocking them. It works for a lot of people. But, I think it’s contributing to the cookie-cutter look of graphic design nowadays. If you want to parrot everyone else’s aesthetic, then more power to you.
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