Email Etiquette for Responsible Adults

Email stresses me out, as I’ve written before. Sometimes, it’s hard to know what to say via email—and it’s really easy to say the wrong thing. Email can be written too seriously or too casually. And it’s very easy for email to slip through the cracks and—oops! It’s been 7 days and you didn’t reply to that super important email.

I spend a lot of time answering emails for both my work and personal life. I’ve found myself following a few rules over the last few years. Here they are—my simple email etiquette rules for responsible adults. 

1. Keep it Short

You get an email. You need to answer it. You have so much to say. You start typing—and keep typing… and keep typing… and keep typing. 

You’ve gone into overload. In your attempt to remain thorough, you’ve sent a novel in reply. And girl, ain’t nobody got time for a novel in their email!

This is my rule: I write 1 paragraph per email. That’s it! Some people set a 3 sentence maximum (and as a very, um, verbose person, I just can’t). I set my maximum at a paragraph of 5-8 sentences. That’s it: say what you need to say and sign off. If they need more details, they can ask you to clarify. 

2. Don’t reply in the heat of the moment. 

You’ve been working on an important project and you finally submit it, dust off your hands, and think—“ahh, a job well done.” And then, the email comes back. This needs changed, this needs fixed, this is all wrong, what were you thinking? 

You hit reply and start typing, in the heat of the moment, a reply that isn’t, well, very polite. You fire it off and immediately regret it. They’re the client; you’re not. Oops. 

If you get an email filled with criticism or rejection or just plain annoyance—let it rest. Flag it, put it in a folder, and return to it in 24 hours or however long you need to chill out. 

3. However, reply to anything important within 24 hours. 

Even if you’re mad about it, try to reply within 24 hours. That might be a full reply or it might be, “Just letting you know I saw this email, but I am swamped right now and will get to it Friday!” Just a note to let them know you’ll get back to them. 

It’s so easy to let mailboxes get stuffed full and to find yourself replying to email after 4 or 5 days of it languishing in your inbox. No matter how busy you are, think of that from the opposite side; say you sent an important email to someone you’re working with and they just didn’t reply for 5 days! You know how that feels? It feels crappy. 

4. Don’t reply-all to huge email chains. 

Please. Just don’t. 

Got an email etiquette tip you follow? Share with me on Twitter!
 

6 Tips for Surviving Internships

As you all remember, internships were my bread and butter for several months of my life after graduating college. At one point in time, I was working part-time at a grocery store deli and doing three (yes, three!) internships at once. It was exhausting. 

I learned a lot from doing internships and more than anything, I gained experience that made me seem invaluable to employers. With new graduates every year, there are a new league of unemployed and terrified graduates who have no idea what they are doing and no idea where to start. Hopefully, these tips can be a help to them. 

I'm certainly not an internship expert, but I do know a few things. These tips are for current students, new graduates, and anyone who is wanting to start a new career. 

1. Yes, you do need to do an internship or two. 

Or seven, in my case. In college, I did two substantial internships, but I was a rarity. A majority of the people I knew did one internship, or independent study, as they were considered the same thing. This, unfortunately, means there is a substantial portion of college students graduating with one three-month period of professional experience. That's... not great, guys. Do an internship; if you can, do two. If you really can, do more than two. Do as many as you can when you are in school and can afford it. An internship can be anything, really: writing articles on the side for a local publication, volunteering your services as a local animal shelter, or working the counter at a women's shelter. There are tons of internships out there that are not in offices. 

I realize this is hard for people who are paying for school, and housing, and everything else, entirely by themselves. You might feel you have to decide between part-time (or full-time) work or an internship: one benefits the now, one benefits the future. Which leads me to...

2. Do know that you'll have to make sacrifices. 

Something like 99% of internships are unpaid. And paid internships are basically like fighting a gladiator: the very, very lucky receive paid internships. That's not to say "don't apply for paid internships"; it's more of a "don't put all your eggs in one basket" life tip. 

If you need to work part-time, but you want to do internships to make sure you get a job after college (which, really, I hope that's why you're in college), know that you'll need to make sacrifices. This applies if you're a new graduate working a weird part-time job, as well. You'll basically be working over full-time, but only be paid for part of it. You'll be exhausted, but the experience is ultimately worth it.

One last note on this: I know this is an unfair and messed up system. But, here's the thing: it's easier to tear down a broken system from the inside. Once we're all the CEOs and leaders of the world, we can change this--and I'm 99% sure we will. For now, however, these are just the facts, as crappy as they are.  

3. Do know that you can use part-time job experience to impress employers. 

Do you worked through college, or the months after college, at a retail job, while doing internships? Don't tell potential employers you were just doing internships. Say the reality! "I was going to school full-time, working part-time at McDonald's, and then I did 3 internships in 6 months." Excuse me, but that's impressive. What did you learn working that hard? What did it make you realize? What skills did you gain (prioritizing, budgeting, time management)? These experiences can be used to your advantage. Don't be humble. Brag. 

4. Do know that you can consider blogging an internship or even a job.

I always include my blog on my resume. I always talked about what blogging and social media has taught me and how I could apply those skills to the job I was interviewing for. For this reason, keep your blog up: keep it professional and make it awesome. In short, make your hobby count for something and know how to talk about it, professionally, in interviews. 

5. Do know you can e-mail any business asking if they need interns. 

So, you can't find any local internship opportunities. What's stopping you from emailing local businesses to see what you can offer them? You're not asking for money. Ask if you can job shadow, or intern, for a week or two. Ask if you can at least meet them to talk. Mention why you're interested in interning for the company and what you hope to gain from it, and why only they can offer it. People love to feel special; make HR feel special when they receive that email. 

When I first graduated, I spent hours applying to jobs and emailing local businesses -- mostly PR and marketing firms, some publishing companies -- I wanted to work for. I heard back from some; I never heard back from others. But it was a way to introduce myself and set myself apart. If they do have job openings in the future, I can always slyly mention that I emailed them as a new graduate and how I'm still so excited to have the opportunity to work for them. Sneaky, huh? 

6. Don't think internships are magic job machines.

They're really not. I did seven internships after college and it still took me eight months to a get a job that didn't include orthopedic shoes. It took me another nearly two years until I got a job in my field. An internship is never going to magically get you a job; you'll still have to work for it, remain interesting, and interview well. And sometimes, the timing has to be just right.  

In short, when it comes down to it, internships are an important stepping stone for entering the real world; you can't ignore their importance, but they certainly aren't magic. Work hard, do your best, and no matter what, do things that will set you apart from the crowd, whether it's starting your own freelance business or managing an amazing blog.

2016 Blog Goals

It’s good to have goals. I love writing goals, but I have to be honest: my way of expressing my anxiety is to get really, really lazy. I find myself paralyzed by the fear that I will do badly, that I won’t meet my goal, and therefore, that I shouldn’t even try. I experience the static, hand-wringing kind of anxiety. Some people have to follow a schedule, have to complete tasks, have to always be working. My anxiety turns me into, essentially, a sloth. 

I’ve been planning a post for ages on my process of setting very small goals to break myself out of my anxiety and depression loop, but for now, a simple explanation is that I often choose one thing to do every week and then build on it. For example, a few weeks after I had Forrest, I set the goal that I would change my clothes every day; then the next week, if I succeeded, I would try to shower every day; and then the next week, if I succeeded in both of those goals, I would try to leave the house 2-3 times a week. This sounds like the lamest form of baby steps ever, but I find these kinds goals much easier to digest, personally. 

For my blog, you may have noticed that I’ve recently started posting a lot more. That was a goal I set for myself in August: I wanted to post every week day. Once August was done and I’d successfully kept up blogging every day (usually writing everything in advance the week before), I set the goal that in September, I would keep up a process of scheduling tweets alongside blog posts a week in advance. In October, my goal is to start cleaning up my Instagram feed (a process I’ve already somewhat started) to better promote my blog. 

To be completely transparent, I want to share my goals for the last few months of 2016, so that I, the anxiety sloth, can stay accountable. 

October

As I said, my goal for October to clean up my Instagram feed to better promote my blog. I will, obviously, still share photos of Forrest because he is my number 1 main man. However, I want to start posting, at most, 3 times a day, plus Instagram stories. Here’s my content plan for Instagram: 

• 0-1 Forrest post per day (this is entirely selfish & for my family) 
• 1 blog-related post per day
• 1 personal post per day (dinner, walking, thoughts, etc.) 

Hopefully, this will clean up my feed and allow my Instagram to be more than just a shrine to a baby named Forrest. 

November

I will share more about my goals for November later, but I’m going to be looking into switching from Squarespace to Wordpress. My Squarespace subscription renews in September, so I will keep Squarespace for at least another year. However, Squarespace is very expensive. Way more expensive than I really enjoy paying. That being said, Wordpress seems to be kind of a fight for me, especially with my insecure internet. I need to do some more research on the process. A breakdown of my goals for November: 

• Keep up blogging, Twitter, & Instagram schedule 
• Research Wordpress

December

My goal for December is entirely growth-based: I want to start sharing my posts on Pinterest more consistently and I want to see an increase in my traffic of at least 25%. I have a few ways that I want to do this, but they mostly include using my existing social media to better push traffic to my blog, participating in those Twitter chats that I know are important. 

January

Ok, not in 2016, but in January, I want to do something I’ve written about for a while now: I’m going to launch a newsletter. I’m going to change how I was originally going to do this, but I think it will work out really nicely. And hopefully, as my blog and brand grows, I can make positive changes in the direction I want to go. 

---

I’ll be checking in on these goals periodically in the coming months. Keep my accountable, ok? 

How to: Stay Organized

I love being organized. I have a knack of being organized even in the middle of chaos: I know where everything is; I can remember each piece of clothing I own and Forrest owns; and even if everything is a mess, I can find everything. In a perfect world, my house would be as gorgeously organized as a fancy lifestyle blog. The reality is, sometimes that's not always practical. I have no own methods of staying organized. Here they are. 

1. Find Your Own Way. 

There is lots of advice out there for getting, and staying, organized. But the truth is--some of it won't work for you. Some of it will. And some of it, you might need to alter to make work. Don't worry about sticking to the way someone else does things. 

2. Throw Things Away

Throwing out things I don't need or use is the number one way I stay organized. At least once a week, I go through my kitchen and office and throw things away--junk mail, magazines, catalogues. One thing I often have to force myself to do is throw away notepads and notebooks that are just cluttering up my house and getting in the way. I like this checklist. 

3. Declutter

Put everything in its place. It's easy for stuff to pile up--my china cabinet in my kitchen is the most cluttered, awful space and, a piece of advice, don't open the drawer. Step number 1 for getting organized is decluttering: get things put away, put in bins, and organized and cleaned up. Get rid of anything you don't need. 

4. Start a filing system to clean up your important documents.

I used to keep everything in binders--but those rapidly take up space. Now that we have Forrest, a house, and two cars, I have all kinds of stuff I need to keep track of, especially of the paper variety. I use a simple, place filing cabinet, but I know soon I'll need to expand to something larger. 

I'm Overwhelmed by Email

If you were to steal my phone from me (which, please don't--all I have are 3,000+ photos of Forrest on there), you'd find something really shocking: when you get it unlocked, my little Mail button will show over 1,000 unread emails. That shockingly large red notification dot will stare at you, possibly the same way it stares at me. 

They aren't pressing emails. Mostly. They're notification emails, sale emails, and marketing emails. If my mom emails me, or a freelance writing client emails me, I answer right away (...most of the time). 

I occasionally set goals to delete (and unsubscribe to) unnecessary emails every evening. But after one evening, I forget or lose focus or just get tired of doing it. Then, two weeks later, I realize I have over 1,000 unread emails again. 

I find email totally overwhelming. It used to be my preferred method of communication, but now, it stresses me out as much as face-to-face meetings. The sales and marketing emails are the worst: I simultaneously want everything they're trying to sell me (baby clothes! make up! underwear!) and am repulsed by their methods (those emojis in the subject line aren't fooling me, American Eagle!). 

I'm trying to be better about clearing out my email and getting on top of it--and not letting it stack up like that. My ultimate goal? Have under 10 unread emails at any given time. We'll see how that goes. 

How to Get Experience in Content Marketing

I sort of accidentally fell into content marketing. When I graduated from college, I had the dream of being a copywriter or copyeditor. I was a bit crushed to find out that copywriting and copyediting jobs are extremely rare where I am--I had to accept that and readjust. I ended up focusing on social media writing for a while and my first jobs were very focused on writing social media. 

As I got more into my current job, I fell more and more into the content marketing world--not that I knew it was content marketing or even what that term meant. It was all an accident. When I finally decided to become an expert at email marketing (a request from my boss that I took to with gusto), I had no idea that what I was doing was learning as much as I could about content marketing. 

But that's what I was doing. 

For those out there wanting to have careers in blogging, marketing, or writing, content marketing is something you should know about, understand, and have experience in. But when it comes down to it--how do you actually get experience in content marketing? 

I was hired at my current job because of my blog. Do I have the most popular blog out there? No. Do I have a curated Twitter or Instagram? Absolutely not. But I produce content, consistently, every single week and I interact with my followers. These two things, when it comes to real content marketing for real businesses, are what matters. 

Here are a few tips for getting into content marketing. 

1. Subscribe to a few newsletters. 

I really love Contently newsletters. I learn so much about content marketing from them every single week. However, I actually get about 20 content marketing newsletters every week--Contently just happens to be my favorite! You'll find your favorite eventually. Google, subscribe, and read them every day to learn as much as possible. 

2. Put time and energy into personal content. 

If you're a blogger, looking to get into a marketing job, dedicating time to good personal content will make a huge difference. Showing that you know how to publish consistent, high-quality content will go a long way. 

3. Write your own content marketing plan. 

A content marketing plan, for me, includes a few things: your blog schedule and plan, your social media plan, and your email marketing plan. I'd venture to say that most bloggers don't have an email marketing plan, but you can certainly write a plan for your blog and social media. These plans will cover the types of content you like to write about (lifestyle, fashion) and the style you use to write (what kind of images, graphics, tone, etc). I love writing content marketing plans, so if you'd like help, send me a tweet. 

4 Tips for New Bloggers

I've been blogging for over 8 years now. I started my first blog, on Wordpress, in April 2008, during my sophomore year of college. It's been so long that I like to think I know a thing or two about blogging, even if I'm not a "top tier" blogger (thanks, IFB, for giving us that weirdly insulting term!). 

Starting a blog is always really daunting and I don't think a lot of people really know what they're doing at the start -- I definitely didn't! I wrote some truly awful articles. And once I started doing outfit photos, I took some truly awful outfit photos of truly stupid outfits... simply because I thought it was fun. Actually, I kind of miss that impulsive silliness when it comes to blogging! We're all so serious now. 

However, I think for newbies who really want to dedicate themselves to blogging and have a blog that develops into something more than them sending words out into the Internet, there are four tips you really need to follow. 

1. Get on Twitter. 

You might hate Twitter. You might think it's totally stupid. But if you want a blog with readers, you should join Twitter. Twitter is the #1 way I stay in contact with other bloggers. It's the main way I find new blogs to read and it's actually one of my top traffic sources. Twitter is awesome. You can micro-blog. You can ask and answer questions. You can rant about your smelly coworkers. Whatever. It's Twitter. Say what you want; be funny, be friendly; and most importantly, post your links... and hashtag them. 

2. Comment, but don't spam.

And there is a difference. Leave comments. Meaningful, real comments. If you read a blog post and can't think of anything to say, don't just post something stupid. Move on. If you want to leave a comment, leave one. And maybe that blogger (or someone who reads their comments) will follow back to your blog. But that's not the point. When you blog, you're part of a community, which you interact with via comments (and on Twitter... see?). It doesn't make sense to blog and just let it sit there. But don't leave comments just to leave your link. And for the love of all that is holy, do not ever use the words "I follow back." 

3. Do your thing. 

And by your thing, I mean your thing. Want to take outfit photos? That's cool. But don't try to copy another blogger's style. Figure it out for yourself. Want to post DIY's? That's cool. But make up your own -- don't just copy ones you find. (Lame!) Want to post recipes? That's cool -- make sure to link to recipes you are following, and note what you've changed. My point is: do what you do, be you. Seriously, don't be a copycat, that's lame. 

4. Don't be a jerk. 

If someone has a criticism of your blog, you can do two things: you can write a level-headed response or you can flip out. Personally, my reaction tends to depend on the tone of the criticism. I've gotten some really nice, thoughtful critiques of my blog that I've taken to heart and used to become a better blogger and writer. And some have made me want to kick through my own window. It's all in phrasing. But, moral of the story: don't be a jerk when it comes to people pointing out flaws. People are people and we all see flaws in ourselves and each other. That's just the way life is. The number one way to react to criticism is to take it, let it wash over you, and react in the classiest way you can. And most importantly, be objective. What a troll says might actually be kind of true... even if they say it in a rude way.

Do you have any tips for new bloggers?

How I'm Decorating For Autumn

I love Fall. I love decorating my house in small ways for it too. Since Forrest's birthday party is "rustic Fall festival" themed, I have a ton of Fall-themed decor in my house--that I will be recycling post-party for our house and porch. Here are a few projects I'm working on that are simple, cheap, and easy. 

1. Spray painting small pumpkins and mason jars. 

I bought a small pie pumpkin for quite cheap and I spray painted it bronze, alongside some mason jars and wine bottles that I've been hoarding. Then, I used some burlap twine around the mouths of the mason cars and stem of the pumpkin. So cute and perfect for candles outside on the porch on Halloween. 

2. Use cheap trick-or-treat pails for flower pots. 

I love this tutorial for spray painting trick-or-treat pails to use for flower pots on the porch! So affordable. I've been on the hunt for cheap pails for weeks and I'm hoping I'll hit gold at the dollar store this week. These will be super cute for holding cards at Forrest's birthday party and then repurposing for (fake) plants on the porch. 

3. Making tin can candle holders. 

Can you tell I love tea lights? For Forrest's party, and our house post-party, I've been making tin can candle holders. Every time I use something canned, I trim the edge well and then sand it to keep it from being too sharp; then it goes through the dishwasher. Then, I use Gorilla Glue to glue on some orange-and-brown plaid burlap that I got at Hobby Lobby. Once that's dry, I add a little tan burlap flower (also from Hobby Lobby). They're SO cute. 

4. Using lanterns to display Fall ephemera. 

I have a little red lantern (with a door) from Ikea that I've never really used. I'm going to stuff it full of leftover Fall fake flowers, leaves, and baby pumpkins and hang it on the porch for additional cuteness.