Guest Post: Designing a New Baby Quilt Pattern

Ready, set, go... It is not a race when I set out to design a new baby quilt.

Before I decide how I want my next baby quilt patterns to look, I pull out the quilt books on my shelves, the magazines that I have sitting just waiting for me to leaf through their pages, and check out some of my patterns that I have saved either in boxes or on the computer files.

Through the years, I have learned to carry my camera or a sketch pad to quilt shows, or even in a quilt shop if I see a design that intrigues me. Filing that information away and waiting for a time when I just may use pieces or bits of those designs to get an inspiration for a quilt of my own.

Here are some of the starting points that I deem necessary to consider when designing a new quilt:


Decide on the style of baby quilt you would like to make. Is the baby quilt patterns going to be a traditional patchwork, or more contemporary? Do you want to piece the quilt top or appliqué? Maybe a combination of the two?

Ask yourself what is going be the purpose of the new baby quilt pattern. How much wear and tear will it receive and will the quilt be subject to repeated laundering? A baby's quilt more often soiled, dragged on the floor may need to have a quick and easy design, as compared to a wall hanging or a bed quilt, that is well cared for.

Decide how much time you have available to denote to the baby quilt project. If you need to complete the quilt in a short period of time, select a pattern or design for your quilt that requires limited hours of your time to quilt. Yet, if you have the time to put into hand sewing or appliquéing a special baby quilt pattern, choose an intricate design and put more effort into the quilting.

Fabric is always an important decision. If you choose a busy print this will hide the quilting design, use a cross-hatch grid or quilt in the ditch method. Place intricate and detailed quilting motifs on solid-color fabrics or tone-on-tone prints.

Remember that you also need to consider you own level of expertise. If you are just a beginning quilter, choose patterns and designs that are simple and require straight lines or grids. If you have the expertise to handle more advanced techniques, challenge yourself with the more intricate patterns, such as feather designs or if you machine quilt, meander or stipple quilting.

Once you are ready to bind your baby quilt, consider again your skill level, time constraints, how much use the baby quilt pattern will receive, or whether the baby quilt has edges that are straight, irregular or curved.

I have one more important and vital part to the process that many quilters tend to skip. Photograph your quilt both from far away and close up shots. Keep these either in an album of all your treasured works of art that your print out at your local photo shop or store digitally, both on your computer and also on a back-up copy (CD or jump drive), just in case the technology fails.

A baby quilt is an heirloom and records should be kept.

Why Your Content Marketing Is Failing and How to Fix It

Content marketing can be extremely effective for extending your reach, driving traffic and helping you reach your business goals. However, some business owners report that content marketing just isn't effective for them - or at least isn't as effective as they'd like.

This post will outline some of the most common reasons your content marketing may be failing and what you can do to get back on track.
Your content is too short

There is no optimal word count for content. The perfect length will depend on a variety of factors, including the topic, your audience and how and where you promote it. For example, with my company Due, our readers LOVE our longer 5000+ word guides. The average person spends 10+ minutes reading them.


That said, many marketers have tested content length to find out, on average, what tends to rank best. The findings span a whole range of lengths but have generally revealed that longer is better.

Research from serpIQ found that 1,500 words is a great target for most blog posts. Searchmetrics, on the other hand, suggests somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,100-1,300 words. If your content is consistently shorter than that, you may find it doesn't get the rankings, shares or engagement you were hoping for.

How to fix it: Content quality is always more important than content length. That said, longer content tends to do a better job of comprehensively covering a topic. For most blog posts, aim for at least 1,100 words. For "evergreen" posts, aim for 1,500-2,000 words minimum.

Your content isn't distinctive.

The vast majority of business owners now engage in some form of content marketing. This means that each piece of content you create faces a tremendous amount of competition.

This is probably one reason why most content that gets published online gets few to no links or shares. The stiff competition means content needs to be unique, valuable and must fill a gap in your industry or niche.

How to fix it: Perhaps the biggest challenge in creating successful content is coming up with original content ideas that haven't been covered a hundred times before. Here's the strategy I use to find topic ideas for blog posts that consistently get read, shared and linked to.
You don't have a content plan.

Many business owners think they can post sporadically to their blog and social media and still see results. Unfortunately, this strategy - or lack of a strategy - usually ends up causing more harm than good.

Consistency is key to building trust when it comes to content marketing. If your fans and followers only hear from you when you have something to sell or promote, you may find your audience starts to dwindle, your traffic dries up and your engagement tanks.

How to fix it: Devise a simple content marketing plan or strategy, and then stick to it. Keep in mind it's better to be consistent, even if that means posting less often. Your plan should document the type and frequency of the content you're going to create and promote. It should also specify the goals for your content marketing, the metrics you'll track and a plan for measuring ROI.
Your content isn't optimized for search.
In recent years, there have been reports that social media has overtaken search in terms of website traffic referrals. However, according to SimilarWeb's 2016 Global Search Marketing report, search drives 10x more traffic to shopping sites than social media.

Even if you have a large social media following, your business will need to be ranking for popular industry keywords in order to succeed. A vital part of achieving these rankings is optimizing your content for search.

How to fix it: Each piece of content you create should be optimized for search. On-page strategies include using your chosen keywords in your title tag, headings, URL, alt image tags (where appropriate) and throughout your content. In addition, make sure your site is optimized for mobile users, that you're using internal linking to spread link equity throughout your site and that you're linking out to authoritative sources to show that your content is trustworthy.

Your content is over-optimized for Search

While it's important to ensure your on-page SEO is in place, over-optimizing can also be a big problem. Not only can it result in a manual action (i.e., a Google penalty for keyword stuffing), it can result in poorly-constructed, completely non-user friendly content.

Examples of over-optimization include: creating "thin" content simply to target a particular keyword, using irrelevant keywords within your content in order to rank, using unrelated anchor text to link to other pages on your site, etc.

How to fix it: Use your keyword research to find general topics and themes for your content. Instead of writing content for the sole purpose of targeting particular keywords or phrases, use your keywords to flesh out your topic and cover sub-topics people actually want to read about.

You don't have goals for your content marketing.

You've probably heard the saying, "A goal without a plan is just a wish". If your goal is to succeed at content marketing, you absolutely must have specific goals in place for what you hope to accomplish.

According to the CMI's 2016 B2B Content Marketing report, businesses spend an average of 28 percent of their marketing budget on content marketing. If you don't know which benchmarks you hope to reach along the way and how you're going to get there, a significant part of your budget could be going out the window.

How to fix it: Setting specific goals will ensure you can monitor both your progress and your effectiveness along the way. Some goals you might set for your content marketing can include:

Traffic generation
Increased leads or sales
Increased fans and followers
Social shares and engagement
Increased links to your website
Read my "Content Marketing Guide"

For a great overview of the different goals you should be setting, check out Search Engine Journal's post, The 5 Goals Every Content Marketer Should Have.

Final thoughts

Content marketing is one of the best things you can do for your business. It's been proven to be effective at driving traffic, reach and sales, and produces higher-than-average ROI's. However, if you're not experiencing these benefits for yourself, it may be time to take a hard look at your strategies to see what might be holding you back.

How to Use Psychology to Create High-Performing Content

When email marketing first started becoming popular in the late 1990s, it was possible to get open rates over 80 percent. When AdWords started getting traction, you could buy clicks for high-volume keywords at very low cost. In the early days of content marketing, it was easy to rank in search.

As time goes on, you have to deal with more and more competition, which makes it harder to stand out. It’s not as easy to rank or drive leads as it used to be.

But, there’s a deeper, more pernicious aspect of aging marketing channels that people rarely talk about: As more and more content gets created, it gets harder to make your company sound different from its competitors.

One of the reasons for this is that we tend to look to our competition, rather than our audience, for guidance. If you’re running a Software as a Service (SaaS) company, it’s tempting to try and copy KISSmetrics or HubSpot when crafting your content marketing style. To see what writing styles work for other companies and just replicate them.

The best way to create content that stands out, though, is by considering the psychology of your audience. If you align your writing style with psychological principles, you can make your voice stand out in the sea of internet content.

Here are a few psychological principles that can help you cut through the noise:

Rule of reciprocity

If someone goes out of their way to help you, you’re more likely to help them in return. If you create genuinely useful content that helps your audience take an action, they’re more likely to return to your blog or sign up for your email list.

Us vs. them

Exactly what it sounds like, this principle uses both in-group and out-group bias. In-group bias refers to the idea that you’re more likely to give preferential treatment to people who you see as part of your group. For example, you’d likely prefer talking to an alum from your school than a random stranger. Out-group bias is the opposite, referring to the idea that you’re more likely to push away people that are not part of your group.

Use this to your advantage by creating an “us vs. them” paradigm with you and your audience against your competitors.

In-group bias

You can also use in-group bias by itself (without out-group bias) in your content marketing by understanding the words and phrases your audience uses to describe their problems. So, if you’re talking to SaaS entrepreneurs, you might talk about increasing monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by “converting free trial signups into paying customers.”

Social proof

We look to other people for guidance when it comes to making purchase decisions.

Leverage social proof in your content strategy through influencer marketing. Even if you haven’t been in business for very long, you can gain instant credibility by having someone well-known in your industry vouch for your product or business.

Availability cascade

The more times a piece of information is repeated to us, the more likely we are to believe it.

It’s a major reason why companies invest so much money in recurring television ads, billboards and other advertisements.

Use this to improve your email marketing campaigns. If you have a specific competitive advantage over everybody else in your market, talk about it as often as needed in your emails. Eventually, you’ll become known for it.

The bottom line is this: The more you allow the psychology of your audience to influence your writing style, the more you’ll connect with readers and the more you’ll stand out from the pack on virtually any marketing channel -- no matter how competitive they get.