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Avoid burning out with this last-minute action by @lexanesirac

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by Lexane Sirac | Featured Contributor

I’ve been on the brink of a burnout these past weeks, and the only thing that got me out of it was to put everything on hold. Even the best parts of my life – everything that was time-consuming and effort-consuming needed to get out of my schedule for a few weeks.

It’s hard to disappear from everyone’s lives for a couple of weeks and not send any replies to anyone, while you take the time to focus on what matters. In my case, what mattered was sleeping as much as possible and trying to learn the basics of cooking – with remarkably bad results, but hey, that’s not the point.

Taking a break from everything is a right way to feel better, especially in the short term, if you’re not feeling too well. However, I’d like to remind you that if you feel sad or overwhelmed on a regular basis, or for a more extended period, or have negative and possibly harmful thoughts, you should seek professional assistance. Self-help has its limits 🙂

The template that will save your email

Hi!

A lot of tasks have come my way recently, and I chose to take a break in order to stay positive and charge my batteries.

Please do not expect an answer to your emails before [date]. In case of an emergency, feel free to reach out to my friends or family so they pass the message on to me, as I am trying to avoid communications as much as possible while on my break. If we are working on [Main Project 1], rest assured: I will meet my deadlines! If we are working on [Main Project 2], I will be back soon to answer your email and won’t forget about you, don’t worry.

Thank you for your patience,

XXXXX

You should only need this once in your life!

It might happen once or twice that you feel on the brink of burnout. However, this should not be recurring. If you end up using this email autoresponder on more than two different occasions, something is wrong with the way your life is organised. It’s not your fault! A lot of things can stop you from being at your best.

If this is a recurring situation, I would highly encourage you to read Laura’s guide to avoiding burnout. My main takeaways from this post were to:

  • Take full control of your work schedule to avoid overtime and extra pressure
  • Never overcommit: it’s never easy to be able to say “no” to bosses, colleagues, family, and friends, but the person who cares the most about you is you, so don’t let yourself down!
  • This next point includes what I just wrote today: lay down your phone. It’s okay not to know what’s going on, once in a while. Nobody will punish you for it. You won’t miss any considerable emergency, in 99.99% of cases – and if there is an emergency, people will find a way to reach out to you. So don’t worry, and make the most of your sweet, sweet alone time.
  • Most importantly, have fun! Do what you love and enjoy it. Spending time outdoors, taking walks, speaking to friends (in person!), reading books: everyone has their preferences, so find yours and do everything you can to make it part of your regular schedule.

What do you do to prevent burnout?

What GDPR entails for bloggers, even outside Europe by @lexanesirac

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by Lexane Sirac | Featured Contributor

GDPR is short for General Data Protection Regulation, and it’s a big thing coming to the European Union on May 25th, 2018.

Now, don’t log off immediately, non-European friends – this affects you too. Any website owner can be sued by European people who visit it. The only way that you would not be affected by GDPR rules is if you make your website closed to anyone in Europe.

Which probably won’t happen.

This post is not legal advice in any way – it’s just a breakdown of the main consequences of GDPR on bloggers, without the corporate jargon. You can read the whole regulation online.

Old key and laptop

At the heart of GDPR: no more automatic opt-ins

Do you use a premium content strategy in order to harvest email addresses? Or, very simply, a newsletter subscription form?

You still can, but you should be careful with the way you present your form. Many bloggers currently think that someone who gives them their email address is okay with getting emails afterwards. Others have added a pre-checked box, that people can uncheck. That’s better, but we’re still not there.

The law says there must be explicit consent to sign up: basically, you are going to need to add this checkbox and leave it empty so nobody can sign up by mistake.

This means it might be harder to get email subscribers, but you can look at the bright side too:

  • Fewer unsubscribes: people actually choose to be there, so it’s likely that they will want to stay subscribed
  • No more fake addresses
  • No more emails sent to low-quality contacts that will never become leads: they just won’t sign up

No more moving people between mailing lists

Let’s say you have a career advice newsletter.

If you launch a personal finance newsletter on the side, you can’t add people to it automatically – even if you’re sure that they will love it, they didn’t ask for it. You need to send them an email as part of the career advice newsletter, telling them about the personal finance newsletter and including a nice call-to-action so they sign up.

Again, this regulation is there so people won’t get subscribed to newsletters they won’t care about: make the most of it. Your contact database will be smaller, but your engagement will soar!

Cybercrime Abstract Concept

No more hiding data breaches

This shouldn’t happen anyway, but if you have an issue with your data, then you will need to tell your subscribers in under 72 hours. If your MailChimp (or any other email automation tool) account gets hacked, for instance, people need to know that they address may have been compromised. Let’s just hope that never happens to you!

Really, the whole opt-in regulations and mailing lists constraints are at the heart of the GDPR, for bloggers at least. Larger companies have a whole lot of data protection requirements, but since we generally don’t have to worry about those ourselves and leave it to our service providers, it’s all pretty simple for us.

Therefore, there is absolutely no reason to not follow the rules we do have to follow. You have until May, but better get started now so you can finetune everything before then!

Boost your network with a personal branding editorial calendar by @lexanesirac

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by Lexane Sirac | Featured Contributor

If you’ve ever worked in digital marketing, you probably already have some experience building an editorial calendar. Bloggers, publishers, advertisers: many people have a professional editorial calendar. But how many of us have a personal one?

Do you need a personal branding editorial calendar?

Do you believe that it is useful to create valuable content as part of your personal branding efforts?

If the answer to this question is yes, then you need an editorial calendar.

Any blogger will tell you that publishing blog posts on a whim, when they’re ready, with no preparation and organisation, doesn’t work unless you’re already one of the most prominent bloggers there is. Things go the same way for your personal branding. You can’t spout off valuable pieces of knowledge and expect fantastic results on every attempt. Therefore, you need an editorial calendar.

Your editorial calendar should enable you to:

  • Keep in mind your key topics of expertise;
  • Write down any post idea that comes to mind;
  • Create a consistent and low-maintenance publishing schedule;
  • Visualize your personal branding strategy in just one glance.

Let’s get started with your personal branding editorial calendar. (License: CC-0)

Starting a personal branding editorial calendar

There is no shortage of templates you can use to build your first editorial calendar. The same goes for digital tools. I’m not going to compare them here: to each their own. It’s the methodology that matters, not the tool you choose to apply it.

Once you have chosen your tools, follow these steps to build your editorial calendar outline.

  1. Write a personal statement. Make sure it’s in a place where you can always see it, so you never lose focus on who you are, or want people to see you as.
  2. Make a list of topics you want to discuss. Just like you would make a list of blog post categories on your website, you can make “categories” of what matters to you and your audience.
  3. Make a list of platforms where you are active. I would suggest starting by adding public social media, your blog, networking occasions (from having coffee with a colleague to group events) and events that appeal to you.

Take the time to think about how your platforms and topics of expertise work together. While some may be only suited for one kind of topic, others (social media for example) are much more general and allow you to discuss several topics without distracting your audience or seeming too scattered.

Once you have done all this, let’s fill in your calendar. Make a simple spreadsheet and fill it in. On each row, prepare a publication, speech, or conversation, and fill in the following columns:

  • Date (feel free to make it as general or specific as you want)
  • Key topic
  • Platform
  • Details (e.g. specific topic, audience, etc.)
  • Desired outcome of this action

These columns are only a general outline of the content you can make. If something comes up that generates new content or, on the other hand, stops you from publishing as usual, don’t fret over it. Keep in mind the fact that this calendar can change at any time.

Voilà, your branding editorial calendar is complete! I’d advise taking 15 to 30 minutes each week for the following week’s detailed calendar, and an hour every quarter to fill in a broad calendar (topic & platform, but no details).