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TUTORIALS
Exactly 2 years ago, I posted my first blog post on this blog. I still remember how nervous and excited I was back then. A lot of things have happened over the course of the past 2 years - I switched my business plan couple of times, I tried different strategies and I figured out what's working and what doesn't. Today, I wanted to share the 6 lessons I learned from my second year of business and the recap of MintSwift’s second year or blog & business.
In this post, I’m going to share the round up of all posts I’ve written in 2017 on Branding, Design, WordPress, Business & Blogging. You can find all of my posts, from 2016, 2017 and 2018 in blog archives.
Getting traffic to your blog & website is essential for their success. Google Analytics will help you track the page views, unique visitors and referrals, so from which source your audience click through to your website. The best part is that Google Analytics is a free tool! In this post, I’ll walk you through the steps on how to add Google Analytics to WordPress without any coding knowledge and how to see Google Analytics dashboard directly on your WordPress site with the use of the plugin.
I’m a huge fan of DIY and crafts – a few years ago, I was obsessed with making scrapbooking albums and cards, creating earrings from polymer clay and designing my own jewellery. After this short into about my love for the crafty stuff, you can probably imagine, how excited I was when Beth from Kingston Crafts reach out to me about her brand design. Aside from sharing the passion for DIY and crafts, we share similar brand values which are transparency, focusing more on helping others, not just have business to make a sale.
Branding is more than just one logo variation. Brand identity is a system that represents you, your missions and values. Having a strong branding creates a cohesive experience for your audience and help your business became profitable. Having just one logo – usually called main logo or primary logo, isn’t enough. I talk more about it in the blog post Why Branding Is More than Just a Logo. Today, I wanted to go more in-depth why you need logo variations for your blog and business and explain all the terms you can see on my services page and all around my website so what is a main logo/primary logo, alternative logos and submarks.
I wrote a blog post about Branding vs brand identity. What is a difference between brand, identity and logo design in which I talked about the differences between branding and brand identity, but this time, I wanted to focus just on the logo design, so why you need more than just a logo to build a profitable business? I can’t remember how many times I was asked “why do I need brand design?”, “Isn’t logo a brand?”, “I only need logo” and so on. The simple answer to questions like that is: Branding/Brand is NOT a logo. Logo is just a graphic symbol of your brand and business. In this post, you’ll learn why branding is more than just a logo and what you need for your blog & business aside from logo design.
Finding your style preferences is crucial before you start to work with your brand & website designer. It helps you and your designer work smoothly and it increases the chances that you’ll be happy with the end results. Providing your style preferences helps your designer create a brand and website that you had envisioned in your mind.
As most of the woman, I’m interested in skincare, nails, makeup and hair, so when Melissa from Garden of Beauty reached out to me about her brand design, I was over the moon. The more talked, about the project, more ideas came to my mind and there was the one that stuck in my head - the skin tone vibe mixed with denim-inspired blue shades. Below, you’ll find out more about Melissa’s brand, her brand keywords, what package did she choose, what was included in the package and what was the individualised solution for Garden of Beauty
WordPress is usually used by online businesses for either blog purposes - where the Blog is the Homepage and all the blog posts are listed there or as a full website with different pages like Home, About, Services, Portfolio and they have Blog or not. Today, we’ll talk about how to write a blog post in WordPress, so how to actually upload your content, so you can publish your first blog post on your either your Blog site or Blog & Website site.
Although branding is more than just a logo, logo plays an important part in your visual identity. The logo should be simple, memorable and versatile. Before you jump into the designing logo, so choosing fonts, colours, illustrations, shapes, arrangements and so on, you need to decide on which type of logo would you like to have as your main logo. Today, we’ll look into 5 different types of logos for your blog & business. Since I usually work with solopreneurs and small business owners as the main logo I often design either Wordmark or Combination Mark. In my brand & website design packages, I create several versions of your main logo, so basically, you might end up with all the five types of the logos
When you start a business, creating a blog and website is one of the most important steps to take and something that is on the top of your to-do list. Thought of having a website, a hub for your target audience is amazing, but at the same time, a bit scary, especially if it’s your first business or if you aren’t really tech-savvy. Today, I wanted to get back to my WordPress 101 series and show you that starting a WordPress blog & website doesn’t have to take a long time (in fact, it can take 10 minutes or less) and doesn’t have to be hard and scary if you have the step-by-step guide.
In the last post, we talk about the design process and design deliverables that are included in my brand & website design package. Today, we’ll take an inside look at my brand & website design package timeline, so how I design brand & website in 4 weeks. I’ll walk you through each of the days and tell you exactly what I design. My brand & website design package is divided into two parts: brand design (2 weeks) and WordPress website design (2 weeks). Similar to my brand design package, I only book one client at a time, so you have my full attention for the 4 weeks.
In the last post, we talk about my entire process for my brand & website design package, but today, I wanted to focus only on the design parts of the process, as well as on design deliverables, so what is included and what files will you receive when you work with me on your brand & website design
This time, I’ll be sharing how my brand & website design process looks like, so the step-by-step process for my brand & website design package.My brand & website design package is divided into two main parts – brand design and website design. Also, it has five sections/milestones: pre-work, brand identity design, brand collaterals design, WordPress website design and wrapping up.
In the last post, we talk about the design process and design deliverables that are included in my brand design package. Today, we’ll take an inside look at my brand design package timeline, so how I design brand in 2 weeks. I’ll walk you through each of the days and tell you exactly what I design. For some of you, the 2-week timeframe might seem too short to design a full brand design (brand identity + five brand collaterals design), but I’ve been working on this “tight” schedule with my clients for a while now and I never looked back. It keeps us both motivated, creative and focused. Not to mention the best part – after 2 weeks, my clients have their new brand design ready to launch ;)
In the last post, we talk about my entire process for my brand design package, but today, I wanted to focus only on the design parts of the process, as well as on design deliverables, so what is included and what files will you receive when you choose to work with me on your brand design
I’ve been a brand & website designer for almost 3 years now and over the years, my design process, as well as my design packages, changed. As I gained more experience, I was able to eliminate some unnecessary steps in my process and evaluate them. I had entire blog post series about my creative process, but since then, I changed the process and packages. Today, I want to show you how my brand design process looks like, so the step-by-step process for my brand design package. This post is a part of a mini blog post series about my brand design & brand & website design packages.
Before you or your designer jump into creating a logo or other branding elements, it is crucial to evaluate the style and mood that you’re envisioning for your business. Each brand design projects start with an inspiration board or another call it a moodboard. As I said, moodboard helps you narrow down your style preferences and helps your designer to translate that references to actual brand identity design. I used to create moodboards for my clients, but to be honest it was always the hardest part of my design process. I didn’t “feel right” to pull out some pretty photos from Pinterest (taken by someone else) and then show them to a client. Today, I’ll explain why I don’t design moodboards for my branding clients and what I do instead
In July this year, I got an inquiry from ingenious food blogger and fellow vegetarian behind the blog Busy Veggie Family, Lavanya Tadinada. From the moment I read her brand & website inquiry form, I knew that we’re “a perfect fit”, because of the way she wrote her messages, which were organized and detailed. She had a clear vision for her new brand & website; she came prepared ;) I had a feeling, that our collaboration would be a breeze and it turned out even better than I expected! I’m beyond excited to share brand & website design for Busy Veggie Family with you and walk you through the entire design process.
Starting your creative business is exciting and you feel motivated to work with clients or to prepare your products. The hard part is getting clients for your services and customers for your products, especially when you hate selling or pitching and you want to get them organically. Today, I’ll tell you how to get clients for your services and products if you hate selling and pitching. I’ll share my 5 ways to get clients for services and products without being salesy.
MintSwift Shop has been open for almost 1,5 years now. I’m blown away by the response and I’m so grateful for all my amazing customers for premade branding kits, premade logos and add-ons. I’m happy that my premade designs helped so many creative entrepreneurs to launch or up level their blog and website! For the past 2 weeks, I’ve been working on changes in the Shop and today, I’ll share why I redesigned premade branding kits & logos. You’ll learn about exciting update to branding kits which are a blog and website design elements (so they are now branding, blog and website design kits, woohoo!). Let’s get started!
When you work with clients, there are lots of tasks to do, deadlines to meet and questions to answer and it’s hard to keep up with all of them. Before I discovered Asana, my work was unorganized and working with clients was a mess, both for me and for them. Countless emails, unanswered questions, unsure deadlines and a lot of stress. Today I’ll take you behind the scenes of how I collaborate with my design clients using Asana. You’ll see step-by-step how I use Asana to manage my brand & website design packages. I’ll also show you how to create workflow for your own services in Asana
Designing brand for lifestyle bloggers can be challenging because their identity needs to be versatile to fit all of the topics that they cover on a blog. Brand design for Hints of Life was such a unique experience for me as a designer. Rachel story and her vision for her brand put me in magical mood and inspired me to create a brand identity in a style that I haven’t designed before. Below, you’ll find out more about Rachel’s brand, her brand keywords, what package did she choose, what was included in the package and what was the individualised solution for Hints of Life
WordPress might seem scary and impossible to learn for you, I come up with the idea for blog post series called WordPress 101, where I’ll explain the basics for beginners, starting from today’s posts on how to create a page in WordPress, including how to design a page in WordPress, how to preview and publish page in WordPress and how to add a page to menu in WordPress.
Running a creative blog and business is hard. You need to juggle between tasks for your blog, doing admin tasks, work on client’s projects and so on. Not to mention, you need a time to live outside of your business, so you need to automate and streamline everything you can. Luckily, there are some amazing tools and resources out there to help you run your online business more smoothly. Today, I’ll share my top 10 blog & business tools & resources to help you design and grow your online business. These are resources I personally use, love and highly recommend for your blog and business.
As a creative entrepreneur, I often do some minor changes in my business, blog or in my branding. However, this time I made two big changes in my entire business. I was really nervous about this blog post because it’s personal, controversial, but if you follow me for a while, you probably noticed that I like to be honest and don’t sugar coat. The first big change I’ve made was to delete my email list with a free resources library and free Pinterest course. In this post, I’ll share my 8 reasons why I deleted them. The second big change (even bigger for me) was to stop being an online course creator, in other words, I removed “Pinterest” part of my business. What I mean is that aside from being a brand & website designer, I was also a Pinterest expert (or whatever you want to call it), so I shared a lot of Pinterest tips on my blog, had a free Pinterest course called Pinazing Results and paid Pinterest course called Up Your Pinterest Game. I’ll also share 6 reasons why I ditch that part of my business.
Both fashion and branding fall into the same, yet broad category – design. I’m interested in all three of them, so once Jessica from Get Styled with Jessica reached out to me about her brand design, I was super excited. Today, I’m about to share with you, her entire brand identity design including logo design, brand design and collaterals design.
Learn how to get traffic from Pinterest to your blog and website and how Pinterest actually works from uploading your content to Pinterest to getting a blog visitor. Read about the top 8 strategies get traffic from Pinterest to your blog and website. Not sure, how to get click thoughs from Pinterest to your blog, so convert repins to traffic? Learn how getting traffic from Pinterest to your blog and website works in 5 steps with my Pinterest infographic. Read about my most effective strategies and sign up for waiting list for my Pinterest course Up Your Pinterest Game
Learn how to prepare for a brand design and for hiring a brand designer. Read about 7 things to do before hiring a brand designer and what to expect from working with a brand designer. Not sure how brand design process actually works? View the 7 things to think about before hiring a brand designer.
Brand & website design for Emily Hall from Oh My Foodie was probably one of the most optimistic and bright brands I’ve ever designed. It was definitely the one a bit out of my comfort zone (in terms of super bright and vibrant colours), but it inspired me to change my own brand colours a little bit, so I’m super excited to share the brand identity and website design for Oh My Foodie!
I’m a bit late, because we’re close to the fifth month of 2017 (time flies right?!), but I thought it would be cool to create a blog posts which is a sort of round up or collection of all posts I’ve written in 2016 on branding, design, branding, WordPress, social media, business & blogging
There’s a lot of misconceptions and the terms brand/branding, logo, brand identity are falsely put in the same basket like they were synonymous. It’s true that they all work together, but at its core they are different. You might see that some people try to be philosophical about all those terms and may seem like they are harder to understand than they actually are. Today, you’ll learn what is branding, what is a brand identity and what is a difference between brand (or branding), brand identity and logo design
Since the beginning of this year, I was working really hard behind the scenes on my new brand & website design services which I want to introduce to you today. In January, I sent out the survey to my email list and for the past year, I’ve been researching and observe my audience and it all helped me craft services which cover all of creative entrepreneur’s design needs.
Exactly a year ago, I published my first blog post as MintSwift. Today I’m celebrating my one year of business anniversary! I can’t believe that it’s been a year already and I feel like it’s been five years because I learned SO MUCH through the first one. I want to thank you so much for following along with my journey and helping me evolve. Today, I thought it would be nice to tell you about 7 things I would do differently in my first year of business.
Well-designed brand identity works like a system. Each of the elements is showing the values and mission behind the brand. I adore working with clients like Nicole Stewart, who already been in business for few years and their vision is clear. She knew exactly who she wants to attract, what values she wants to represent visually and what she’s trying to achieve with her new brand identity.
Learn how to quickly change the default WooCommerce shop title from Products Archive to Shop in WordPress using the Yoast SEO plugin.
At the end of November 2016, Pinterest introduced the new feature for a Pinterest business accounts called Showcase. You’ll learn what is a Pinterest Showcase, why you should create a showcase for your brand, what to put on the Showcase and How to create a Pinterest Showcase for Your Blog & Business. Learn how Pinterest Showcase it’s going to help you get traffic to your website, get your products or services in front of your audience, to grow your email list & showcase your brand on Pinterest.
The 8 blog and business lessons I’ve learned in 2016 + how to take action to grow your business in 2017. The blog and business mistakes I’ve made in 2016 + what to do instead, to grow my business in 2017.
The quickest and the easiest way to make sure your Pinterest boards fits your brand is to design custom board covers using your brand colours, fonts and other elements like patterns or photography. In this post, I’ll show you how to design custom Pinterest board covers and how to upload and add a custom board cover image on Pinterest.
Step-by-step design process behind a logo and submark design for Canyon Heart by MintSwift- logo design, submark design, branding, graphic design, brand board
In this post, I’ll show you three easy methods to remove yourself from Google Analytics data. One of the methods requires excluding your IP address from Google Analytics, the second is an exclusion setting in Google Analytics WordPress plugin and the third one is quite radical, but it works if you have a dynamic IP address (which changes every day or once a week) but it has a huge downside.
In this post, I’ll show you 5 benefits of having a Pinterest business account. You’ll learn why you should have a Pinterest business account, how to create a business account or convert a personal account to business account and what are the features of Pinterest business account and why do you need them.
Pinterest is a not social media platform it’s a search engine, therefore followers there don’t play the same role like on other platforms. This is probably the biggest myth and misconception which in people still believe and keep focusing on getting more and more followers on Pinterest, so missing the larger goals and more important factors.
Building list from scratch? Learn how to get your first 100 email subscribers with the most effective way which will help you build your email list from scratch in the next 30 days or less
When you just started your blog and you have five blog post, you probably don’t have a lot of your own content to share on Pinterest. It’s not a secret – long, vertical images work better on Pinterest rather than square and small, but not everyone wants to include a giant image for the blog post or want to include five different blog post graphic within the post because it’ll look cluttered and can distract your reader. Today, I want to share my secret weapon which helps me get more traffic from Pinterest, by making my content visible to more people. You’ll learn how to hide vertical images for Pinterest in a simple way, so you can have more than one image for a blog post.
Rich Pins add extra details to Pins from your website, which means that the pin will show your branding (favicon) title of your blog post and description, also information about you (pinner) and call to action buttons. There are five types of Rich Pins: movie, recipe, article, product and place. In order to enable rich pins for your website, you need to verify it first. Without Rich Pins, your blog seems unprofessional and they are essential in getting most of Pinterest to use it as a funnel to your website, not just another profile when you get followers and admirers, not clients.
Email marketing is essential in growing your blog and online business. At first, you might feel intimated by it, especially when you don’t like tech stuff, but actually, it’s super easy to set up. In this post, I’ll prove it to you that you don’t need to be a tech guru to set up MailChimp correctly. Everyone eventually wants to convert blog readers into email subscribers, but how can you do it? Today, I’ll walk you through the steps how to set up your list, how to set up sign up form and how to create opt-in (embedded) forms in MailChimp so you can start collecting emails today!
The other day, I saw something in my Google Analytics dashboard in the real-time mode – someone was visiting my blog post from Instagram. Turns out that Google Analytics is now tracking Instagram referrals! It’s a great news for those of you who uses Instagram for business purposes and to share your latest blog post with your Instagram audience. Being able to track to track user conversions from Instagram to website or blog is important for any business owner or blogger. Click trough to read the whole post!
Want to grow your audience, traffic and maintain brand consistency beyond your website? Pinazing Results a FREE 6-day email course is for YOU! This course is perfect for bloggers and online business owners who are tired of wasting time figuring out how to make Pinterest work for your business, wasting time on strategies that don’t work and spending hours on Pinterest every single day! This free course shares the step-by-step strategies to grow your traffic from Pinterest, building your email list, brand awareness quickly, and effectively. Click through to sign up! ...It's FREE!
Premade Branding Kit are now available in MintSwift Shop. This is a perfect option when you’re on a tight budget but still want a well-designed brand identity. The visual aspect of your brand in essential in making a good impression on your website or social media visitors, getting more followers, subscribers, clients and traffic MintSwift premade branding kits were created with a thought of small business owners, bloggers, and creative entrepreneurs. Investing in a branding design can be really hard when you have thousands of other expenses, so MintSwift premade branding kits allows you to brand your business on a budget. Click through and see all premade branding kits available in MintSwift shop!
Visual mistakes can make you appear unprofessional and untrustworthy to your audience. Today, I share my top 10 design mistakes to avoid and what to do instead. Learn about the common design mistakes like using blurry photos and graphics, scaling text or images disproportionately, using hard to read fonts, using too many colours, not using paragraphs and more. The visual aspect of your brand identity, so anything design related you’re showing to your potential clients is the core of the first impression. Well-designed website and brand identity will help you get more clients, customers, email subscribers, followers and more.
How to brand your Pinterest business profile. 7 ways to create a consistent brand identity for your business beyond your website. Brand your Pinterest profile, and create a cohesive, consistent experience for your audience. Get recognition on Pinterest and get more traffic to your blog and website. Stand out among the others and let your brand shine through the Pinterest profile. Brand your profile picture, business name, bio, boards, branding your board covers and creating pinnable images
MintSwift premade logos were created with a thought of small business owners, bloggers and creative entrepreneurs. My affordable premade logo options allow you to develop your brand identity at a fraction of the cost of logo package when you just starting out or simply you’re not ready for custom logo.
18+ essential WordPress plugins. To improve your blog, get email subscribers, set up e-commerce shop, track your analytics & more. WordPress plugins allow you to expand the functionality of your site, improving your website design wise and making it easier for you. Today I’m sharing 18 of my favourites, essential and the best WordPress plugins for bloggers and business owners – it’s a gold mine of plugins which will take your website to a next level.
When you are a solopreneur, it’s like a rollercoaster – one day you’re super motivated, have thousands of ideas for new blog post, email newsletter, social media post, but let’s face it – there are also days when you feel like giving up, you question every decision, thinking “Why the heck I’m even doing this?!” and it’s ok. The beauty of having your own business and being your own boss is that you can always take a break and no one would blame you, especially when you work with or for other business owners and they been there too.
As I’ve mentioned in one of my posts, Pinterest is one of my largest source of traffic and it’s a game changer for most bloggers. Key to blog success on Pinterest is sharing Pinnable blog post images, so having vertical images, with large text, your website address, and brand colours/photos. Adding custom pin it button to your blog images, is another way to get people to pin your content more often. The custom Pin it button will appear when they hover a mouse over your images. Custom pin it button is a great way to expand your brand further, add more personality to it and use it as a distinctive element of your blog, which people would easier remember than the generic, red Pin it button available for all business owners.
Not every blogger is a photographer, not everyone can afford a DSLR or even the newest iPhone, but you don’t have to worry – there are plenty websites out there where you can find free stock images for your blog and social media posts (and you can always add your own later as your blog grows Am I right?). Not everyone has a house or flat with a big window, can style their photos or have time for it.
Pinterest is one of my largest sources of website traffic even though I don’t have an enormous Pinterest following, yet. I’d love to share my exact steps which helped me grow my traffic by 500% in just one month, using Pinterest with minimum effort because it is largely automated!
MintSwift Shop is finally open! I’m so excited to share more information about it with you today. Shop with premade logo designs, has been my dream for about a year. I simply love creating a logos and it’s my main speciality. I’m so happy to share my expertise with all amazing lady bosses out here!
Today it’s the last post of “My Creative Process Series”. At the beginning of the series, wanted to create a separate post for “Final Presentation” and “Approval”, but I’ve decided to describe those steps in this post. Also, I’ll be sharing information about “Files delivery” and “Launch”.
Today I’ll share more about my next steps which are “Feedback” and “Revisions”. It’s essential, that client actively participates in this stage, because without client’s feedback and revision suggestions, we can’t move forward. But first off, what is feedback? Why is it important? Why do I need it? What information do I need from the client?
Today, I’ll share more about next steps in my creative process which are “Concepts” and “Presentation”. These are my favourite steps, because they are all about design! Let’s start with my definition of a logo concept. Logo concept is an idea translated to graphical representation and it includes font choices, setting up an overall layout, choosing colours and proper style.
Today, I’ll share more about my third step in my creative process which is “Research”. In this step, I summarize all the information you’ve provided me with during “Get in touch” and “Questionnaire”. I sometimes call the third step “Brainstorming”.
Today I’ll tell you more about first and second steps of my creative process for custom logo designs, which are “Get in touch” and “Questionnaire”. These steps are essential in any client’s project and they help me (and you) assess whether we are good fit...
As a creative entrepreneur, I’ve been able to establish my own creative process for custom logo designs. It may seem like creating a logo, illustration or any other graphic design piece, is easy and only requires drawing in Adobe Illustrator for few minutes ...
At the beginning of the year, I had a pleasure to work with Winning Moments on their new logo. Winning Moments is an agency, specialises in competitions and promotions as a method of advertising but they're moving more towards editorial content and product review as well as just competition features...
A logo is a visual representation of your business and, therefore, it’s crucial. Logo design establishes your identity, and it is also the most powerful marketing tool. When someone enters a store, visits a website, or sees a product on a shop shelf, the first thing he or she notices is a logo with a name of a brand or a symbol that represents a business. A well-designed logo is an essential part of any company's marketing strategy.