Grandparents Essay Example

Grandparents Essay Example Grandparents Essay Grandparents Essay All five of us walk up to the door take our shoes off, making sure we have our clean socks on. We tiptoe through the beautiful brick house, trying not to ruin the surprise. Through the washing room, through the hallway, and through the kitchen we go to find grandma drinking her cup of coffee, and grandpa reading his newspaper out loud for grandma to hear. They Jump out of their chairs thrilled to see us. They hug each one of us and give us bunches of kisses. No matter how old my great grandfather gets, he still feels eke he has to pick me up even though I insist that he stop. We all go in the living room and sit in our usual spots me, and my little brother on the floor where grandma has set two pillows especially Just for us down there. My mom, dad, and older brother sit on the couch, facing the grandparents. Grandma always sets a big bucket of candy by the fireplace for us. For the first few hours that we are there, we all Just sit around and talk about what has been going on in life since the last time we were there. : For nineteen years now, we go and visit the grandparents about two to three times a year. Each time never telling them when we are coming, we Just surprise them every time; they get a kick out of it. We wish we could see them more often, but with our very busy schedules it makes it difficult. We have tried to get them to Rockford right next door to us, which is about three hours where they live now, so we can help them and take care of them. But they insist that it would be too much of a hassle to find new doctors because grandma is very picky on who she and grandpa see. It took them years to get the doctors they have now. Grandma has back problems, gets migraines, and takes every pill in the book. She has had breast cancer and fought through it very well. Grandpa is a strong ole guy and fights through his pains like a champ and never complains. While trying to please my grandma by cutting this branch that was annoying her, he fell off of a ten foot ladder onto concrete having a rock embedded into his elbow. Let me remind you this is an eighty- five year old. Since my grandma is too scared to drive, he had to drive himself to the emergency room himself. He had the rock removed and had to get four stitches. He got back up on his feet and drove back home to grandma. He takes care of my grandmother the majority of the time. He does all the grocery shopping and pays all the bills. He is my hero; I always look up to him. When the clock strikes llama, all of us kids Jump up to go put our bathing suits on and get ready to get in the grandparents outstanding pool. While we swim, we are surrounded by a lot of big beautiful trees blooming with white flowers, wonderfully bloomed flower beds, and little deer, gnome, and turtle figurines all around. The medium sized waterfall makes the swim so much more relaxing. While we swim our parents and grandparents sit here on the porch swing chit chatting away about life and such. After we are all done splash splashing around in the pool we go and Join the parents until we are all dried off then we all go in and take our little thirty minute nap. Then we all meet back to all go out to eat at nice fancy restaurants, but since my grandmother has gotten older and doesnt really like to leave where she feels safe and comfortable, we Just stay in and order pizza. This is perfectly fine with all of us. When the pizza has arrived we all throw the grub on to see who can eat the most slices and of course my rooters always win. After lunch is story time, my favorite time of the day, we all circle up in the living room. Us kids all tell a story about a sports game we played, or just something interesting for the grandparents to listen to. Then the grandparents tell their wonderful stories from back when they were younger. Grandma has some trouble remembering what stories she has told us and what she hasnt told us. But we dont mind at all because there is this story that she is very proud of that she always seems to tell sometimes we even ask her to tell us it again even though we now the story by heart. The story is about when she was a young girl, and her family decided to go on a hiking trip in Idaho Falls. As they were getting all the supplies ready for their trip, my grandmother came across this rope and insisted that she bring this three foot rope. Her father told her No its Just extra baggage that we dont need, but she wouldnt take no for an answer. After her begging and begging to bring that darn rope along, he finally gave in and said, If you want to take it then youll have to carry it yourself. For some reason her gut was telling her to bring it long, so she wrapped it around her shoulder and took the rope along with her. Along the trip, her little sister was acting careless, and fell down the side of a cliff. Grandmas dad looked at her and said Throw me that rope. So my grandma did as she was told and passed along the rope. Her dad wrapped the rope around the only tree up there. He threw the rope to the bottom where her little sister was and he climbed down the rope, threw her little sister on his back and climbed back up saving his little girls life. In the end, neither she nor her father regretted her bringing that pop. My Grandpa has his wonderful stories also. I love when he tells the stories about when he was in Spain with his daughters. Always driving around in his big black truck with the windows down, every Tuesday was their fun day. They would all wake up around seven in the morning and cook eggs, bacon, and pancakes. Then they would all get into grandpas big awesome truck and drive down to their all-time favorite park. They would play hide-and-seek until lunch time. They would then go to deli for lunch and back home to play board games to end off the night. The day his gutters would always talk about were Tuesday and being with their daddy. My grandparents always have the best stories, and they love to tell their stories to us and whoever else would like to listen. Some of their stories make me realize that I really dont have it as bad as I think. They lived with no television, no electronics, and no cell phones. I cannot imagine how I would survive back then knowing all the good stuff we have now a day. Their stories will always have an impact on my life and I will tell their stories to my children and grandchildren. Their stories will forever live even when they are forever gone. After story time comes the hardest time of the day, the goodbyes. My grandma always starts crying she is always saying, This may be the about it and say, Oh grandma we will see you next time. We go back through the kitchen, through the hallway, and out to the garage to put our shoes on. We give last kisses and hugs and say the farewells. Then back into the car and down the driveway, honk honk honk is how we say our final goodbyes to the grandparents and San Antonio until next time. We make our way through the much crowed neighborhood of very nice houses. And on the way back to Rockford we go.

How To Use Content Marketing For Startups - CoSchedule

How To Use Content Marketing For Startups You’ve worked hard on your new startup. Launch day is here. Now what? Will anyone notice? Will the world be ready? What if you already had an email list of more than 5,000 engaged subscribers who were already interested in your company and product? What if you already had an audience to buy (or trial) your new thing on day one? This is exactly how we launched just a few short years ago.  We used content marketing to build a huge email list that contained thousands of potential customers who were already rooting for us when we finally opened our doors. To do it, we went  all in on content. In fact, we started creating content before we even started writing code! Heres why your #startup should be #writing blog posts before you even start writing code.Today, I want to share a bit of that story, but more importantly, I want to show you how you can use content marketing to launch and build your startup. I will outline the five key phases that we took to ensure that our product launched to a qualified audience, developed  a steady stream of new customers, and developed one of the most trafficked blogs in our industry- all using content marketing. I’ll start from the beginning and give you the step-by-step process you can use for yourself. Phase 1: Learn To Tell Your Story Startup phase = Minimum viable product; Content phase = Minimum viable blog Ever since I read Charles Duhigg’s book,  The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, I have been uniquely aware of the need for simple habits that will eventually lead to consistently correct behavior. Its a core part of how I now approach leadership and team development, and it’s exactly how I encourage people to approach content marketing. In the beginning, all you need to worry about is building the habit of publishing at least one blog post a week. That’s it. All you need to worry about is building the habit of publishing at least one blog post a week.I found that the easiest way to do this was by telling the story once a week, one blog post at a time. Each week, I would post about our progress in development, share recent product wireframes, or share a problem we were experiencing to  get our audience’s feedback. Not only was it a valuable (and easy) way to generate consistent content, but it was a great way to  gather feedback and get ideas from our potential customers. This blog post asked for survey feedback. This phase of content marketing for startups is about finding your audience  and attracting people who  may be drawn to your company or product over time. Don’t let yourself get bogged down in strategy. Think of it like finding product marketing fit for your blog. You should also be using this time to build an email list and audience by sharing your content regularly on social media. Of course, can help with this. :) If you want to see some of our first blog posts, here are a few: Weve Got A Big Job To Do How Your Feedback Influences What We Build The Minimum Viable CalendarUse this time to build an #email list by sharing your content regularly on #socialmedia.Phase 2: Transition To  Strategy Startup phase = Product market fit; Content phase = Content audience fit The second phase of content marketing for startups is to begin steering your content toward the ideas and topics that fit your startups mission and product. This phase is really  all about converting your regular publishing habit into a true inbound marketing approach where you use helpful content to build trust with your audience. Steer your #content toward the topics that fit your #startups mission and product.This phase  assumes that you have been able to identify an early form of product market fit. Now is the time to start directing your content toward their needs and testing your hypothesis. If you create content that is helpful for them, do they respond? Do they show  interest in your company and product? There are a ton of ways to actually develop your topics during this phase, but keep it simple. Keyword Explorer in Moz In the beginning, I would use Google and the recommended search phrases to find topics that I felt our users would care about. You can also use SEO specific tools like Keyword Explorer in Moz  and SEMrush (two of our favorites) to find important keywords and phrases. Buzzsumo.com can also be a big help. Again, while this stage is about shifting toward a defined strategy, don’t go overboard. Youre still learning, so you need to be agile enough to make changes if things are working. Your product may also be changing at this point, so be prepared to adapt. Be agile enough to make changes if things arent working. #startuplifeLastly, at this time, its still not about writing the 100% greatest content on earth. This is the minimum viable blog phase. Do just enough to prove your theories about what your audience wants and needs, then build on your successes. This phase is also a great time to double down on your email list building and social media promotion. This is the minimum viable blog phase. Your content doesnt have to be 100% Recommended Reading: 5 Easy Lead Conversion Tips For Your Email Marketing Program 8 Social Media Best Practices That Will Save You 25.5 Hours In A 2-Week Sprint Phase 3: Seek Help Startup phase = Hiring a team; Content phase = Hand-off content creation As a founder, I have always tried to do the job we are hiring for before we actually do the hiring. It helps me get perspective on the skills and talents a new hire needs in order to be successful to be successful.  It also helps me define the scope of the position so we don’t give someone so much to do that they can’t possibly be successful. This is exactly what you need to do in the third phase of content marketing for startups. During phase two, you are essentially proving your hypothesis- can you generate consistent traffic and build an audience with content? And what  exactly do you need to do it? Phase three is about taking those results and starting to scale them. At , this meant hiring a Content Marketing Lead and doubling down on staff that could create compelling graphics and downloads. This phase is about scaling your ability to acquire an audience. By adding a full-time team member, you will make sure the day-to-day management of your content is handed off to someone other than a founder of the team. This should improve consistency and overall content quality. Make sure your #content is consistently converting visitors into #email leads.After all, at this phase, your time available as a founder will continue to be marginalized. (That’s a good thing!) You should also use this phase as an opportunity to make sure that your content is consistently converting visitors into email leads or social media followers. Tools like OptinMonster and LeadPages  are great for this. We cover a bunch of tools that are perfect for converting leads in our post: 5 Plugins Guaranteed To Help You Collect More Leads. One word of caution: Adding new team members shouldn’t necessarily increase the amount of content you are producing. Ease into it, and use this phase to develop a consistent voice, quality standard, and working model of what things work and which things don’t. Phase 4: Get Analytical Startup phase = Optimizing your funnel; Content phase = Turning content into science Up until this phase, I recommend only tracking two metrics for your content marketing: page views and email subscribers. In the beginning, most content marketing is simply about developing an audience, bringing eyeballs to your product, and seeing what sticks. There are so many things in flux at this time, that it just doesn’t make sense to focus on anything else. But, at some point, that has to change. You have to start digging into Google Analytics to  understand  what  content is performing the best and why that is. You need to start digging into the analytics to understand what content is performing best and why.Up until now, you should have been writing about a wider variety of topics, even if it felt a little random at times. That’s good. It should give you a wide spectrum of data to consider and compare. If you have a product youre selling online, you should be looking at how your content is converting your visitors into users. Which topics covert the best? Use this data to write the  best possible content for your audience. Ask yourself which topics are converting the best? #content A good example of this phase for us was the use of the word ‘calendar’ in our blog post headlines. We found that blog topics that included the discussion of a calendar generated 2 to 3 times more interest in our product than topics that didn’t. This was a key insight for us that allowed us to convert our data into instant results by increasing the frequency of posts that included topics about editorial calendars. Build massive traffic. #startup #bloggingAnother major change that we made at during this phase was the inclusion of a free download or â€Å"cookie† with every blog post. We learned that by including a content-specific download in each of our posts, we could dramatically increase the number of email subscribers from those posts. This became a snowball effect. As our email list grew, so did our traffic and referrals on social media. The goal here is still fairly simple- build massive traffic. The only difference is that you want to start making sure it’s smart traffic, not just traffic for the sake of it. Recommended Reading: How To Increase Blog Traffic: 5 Ways To Make Contagious Content Phase 5:  Scale Startup phase = Scale; Content phase = Scale At this point you should have a small team of writers, designers, and editors dedicated to content marketing. You should be a total ace at shipping high quality content consistently and converting your visitors into loyal email subscribers. Your traffic should be growing consistently, and your influence in the industry should be skyrocketing. There’s only one problem. All of the instructions for making it happen are locked in your head. This means that you have a scaling problem. How long does it take to train in a new hire? How can you continue to execute at a high level while maintaining your obviously high bar of quality? The is the part of content marketing where you need to start writing things down. At , this included an intense series of documents that outlined our entire process. At any time, our content team would be able to reference the checklist and stay on par with our expected level of quality. Start #writing down your ideas so that you dont forget them.We stay on track with these task templates. Once we developed the checklist, we were able to convert it into a killer task template inside of . It made sure we never missed a beat  and allowed us to start taking on new challenges. Like: Developing a series of ebooks targeted at key customer pain points. Shifting our content to a stronger â€Å"demand generation† approach. Getting nerdy with spreadsheets and starting to develop a literal formula for perfect content. Increasing our content publishing schedule with confidence that it would provide the right results. Focusing entirely on content that generates demand for our tools, not just traffic. All of these sound pretty great, right? The point is that scaling allows you to grow, but it also allows you to make the leap from audience to acquisition with ease. Once you know how to build, maintain, and grow a blog audience, you can do the exact same thing with customers and your product. Of course, if you have been doing it right, your content should have been converting customers all along. I can say with confidence that our blog has also been our #1 driver of new customers. Now you can squeeze every last drop of value from the audience you’ve worked so hard to build. Recommended Reading: Heres How You Can Double Your  Blog Conversion Rate Right Now How To Create Content That Converts By Writing Your Reader Happy How To Delight Your Marketing Target Audience To Boost Conversions Go Forth And Market Your Startup Good content marketing for startups isn’t necessarily easy. It takes a ton of work, and more importantly, commitment. Its important to recognize that good content marketing is a long-term strategy and not a short-term boost in the arm. Realize that every step of the process is designed to prepare you for what’s to come just as much as it should benefit you right now. With the right perspective, content marketing should become the best investment your startup ever makes. I can tell you that without it at , we never would have made it as far as we have with it.