Here at awalkinmyshoes.com I like to base a lot of marketing tips on personal experiences and opinions. I was so excited a couple of weeks ago when I made my Pirate Treasure Map Business cards for my AzoogleAds event, that I hadn’t shopped around too long for a printing service that would satisfy my needs sans any errors.

“Damn…”

…Is the word that came from my lips after opening my Vistaprint package with my little business card darlings waiting inside. Holding one out in front of me it is only natural for my eyes to pick out the errors first, a blue margin line stretching across the top of the back of the card. Further analysis later would also show that a part of my graphic was cut off at the bottom, emphasized by the break in the red slashed trail to the treasure “X” marked spot.

For almost 50 bucks Vistaprint had royally screwed up all 250 business cards I had rush delivered for my event. So what better thing to do, after of course e-mailing a complaint to them, then to Tweet about it!

Twitter Suck Up

Surprisingly after my lil mini “tw-rant” (I couldn’t say it either haha) I got a tweet from the printing company that I originally meant to go with.

@UPrinting would’ve been of course more than happy for me to be dissatisfied with their competitor, hoping to reel in a new customer for their services.

However…

Even more to my surprise did I receive a tweet from @Vistaprint looking to help me satisfy my printing problems. Funny they did this before I made a blog post ranting about not wanting to use Vistaprint again…

Twitter: An Effective Customer Service Tool

The lovely person @Vistaprint not only handled my printing problem, but ordered and sent me another batch for free. Though I received the cards after my event (which was my major concern), the second batch came out perfect

I never even received an email back from the customer service people at Vistaprint.com but luckily for me there was one person paying attention all thanks to Twitter.

For awhile now I had been getting tired of twitter, ya know with the spamming and redundant online marketing/social media tweets, but now I have realized the significance of using Twitter for your business. It’s just another tool that helps you optimize your business to bring satisfaction to your customers.

Will I ever use Vistaprint again?

No..haha. The prices are ridiculous, the cards are smaller than standard, and apparently there is a scam attached to the site. Not only that, but vistaprint managed to mess up my order as a first time customer. Though the issue “was resolved,” I expected to have my cards ordered the way I wanted prior to my event, and that didn’t happen. Now, had I been a frequent customer of Vistaprint prior to this ordeal, I may have given them another chance, but now I think it’s just in my best interests to shop around for the better deal next time.

So vistaprint wasn’t able to entirely save itself from a customer going to competitors, due to its own….sloppiness, however I do give kudos to the person who correctly handled a customer service situation..

By the way…Thanks!

To everyone who sent me (@melodynieves) birthday wishes on Sept. 11th! I’m finally 21! And Thanks to all!

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<3 Love Ya!
-Mel

It was only a couple of weeks ago on an insomniac’s midnight quests that I mysteriously fell upon a chauvinist site (menarebetterthanwomen.com) where angry men and even angrier women argued over the socially accepted roles of the opposite sexes.

Scanning through various explosive exchanges on the “women banned” site, a sense of realization came over me that has changed me from that morning on.
Knowing that I’m a young woman you may think that I would approach this in the traditional feminist manner, but I will tell you that I am far from it.

I have already spoken on the concept of accountability in several posts on this site. This is not a post about politics, sexism, or anything further related, but a post of how the socially accepted obligations of men have inspired me to work harder and be more accountable for my own actions.

How Men Have Inspired Me To Work Harder

Socially accepted obligation:Financial provider- Throughout time men have always been looked at as the financial providers for their household. Having watched my own father work a laborer’s job sometimes 7 days a week all my life while my mother dominated the couch, I had always believed that I never wanted to be a housewife–no offense to anyone who is, it’s just not for me. Whether it’s picking up the tab at a restaurant, paying bills, or putting food on your table, men have always been seen as the mandatory providers.
I hadn’t realized how difficult this could be at times, when everyone is depending on you while at the same time failing to contribute (don’t bring kids into this). I am responsible with my money because of my father’s penny pinching ways, and I don’t want to be dependent on another person’s income for the rest of my life. I think men have learned how to be more accountable for their actions, and thus achieve more in business because they are forced by society to be the breadwinner.

Society can’t deny that many women wouldn’t mind not working and just being taken care of while the husband goes off to work. Do I hear Gold diggers anyone? Men obtain a level of maturity through self revelations from physical sweat and hard work that are unmatched by most women. However, I have never wanted my life to result in such frivolous inactivity, and instead, wanted one of personal growth through the pursuit of enduring life’s hardest lessons.

Socially accepted obligation: Tough skin- Men also face the challenge of developing tough skin usually from the necessity of being the breadwinner. I know first hand how incredibly harsh and blunt men are in the business world–which is not necessarily a bad thing because it usually means that they are meticulous about getting business done properly. I have seen many women crack under the pressure of working around men with incredibly tough exteriors developed from a lifetime of proving themselves and their worth.
It has been socially acceptable for men to not express “weak” emotions such as crying for fear of ruining such a masculine persona, but in my eyes it opens doorways to the extensive life lessons that have been acquired over the years.

The truth is, man or woman, if you don’t go out and do something for yourself and on your own, then there is no opportunity to learn from that experience. Forcing ourselves to persevere through times of difficulty is probably one of the hardest experiences we face as humans, and I now considerably understand the amount of pressure set forth upon men.

Now of course I don’t agree with everything the “chauvinists” said on that forum, but as a result of that sleepless night, and their stories, I have become more determined to work towards my goals and making them come into fruition in the near future. Ultimately working towards becoming a more accountable, responsible, young adult…

Have Any “Radical” People Inspired You?

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<3 Love Ya!
-Mel

Not too long ago I wrote a post about my progression as an artist from 5 years old to 20, and it really helped me see that my skills and technique have grown significantly.

This week I stumbled across one of my old sketchbooks that contained sketches which dated back to 2005 when I was 16 years old. Knowing that I wanted to recreate some old painting and drawing concepts from when I was younger, I decided to go through it and see if I could draw inspiration for my upcoming projects.

Here are some of my favorite sketches that will either pose as a great idea for a future painting, or are just an interesting reflection of what was going on in my life at the time.

Possible Painting Concept: Standing Tree from ‘05

This sketch is probably one of the first of a series of concepts relating the human body to a mysterious world of itself, or as a significant object in nature. It’s of a woman’s back of her body standing in a popular yoga position called “standing tree.” As she stands there she holds tree branches in both hands high above her, with a long flowing scarf blowing in the wind.

When I was younger I never liked color. Color in my art was usually an enemy because working with it meant that I couldn’t mess up, so I usually kept to sticking with pencil drawings with no color. It wasn’t until I began painting with acrylic paints that I started to loosen up a bit in an effort to strengthen my skills, but for many years my sketches still remained as simple pencil drawings.

I had actually painted this concept on my wall about two years ago, which I incredibly regret because my roommate/homeowner didn’t care about painting and we had even discussed the ideas of homes filled with murals, so I just very quickly splashed paint on the wall without considering that I would’ve gotten quickly tired of staring at it done poorly for so long..
I will, however, definitely incorporate this as a future digital painting. Working with adobe photoshop makes me so excited to be an artist and to expand my talents, that I look forward to every new project that I could possibly think of.

Possible Painting Concept: “Chemo – ‘05″

Let me first say that one of my favorite painters of all time is Frida Kahlo, as suggested in the upper left corner of this sketch. It’s probably because I took her story on early as a result of different projects in school, but I recently within the last year, was able to attend the exhibit or her most famous artwork at the Philadelphia Museum, and it was really awesome to be inches away from paintings that I’ve admired for years.

Moving on, this particular sketch is of my interpretation of what chemotherapy does to a woman’s body. I distorted the features of the woman who stands holding her hair in one hand, with the strap of her dress exposing her right (undis-eased) breast.
If you know anything about Frida Kahlo, then you know that in many of her work, there is a reason for ever single element and position of each element in her pieces, so I tried to do that a little in this sketch.

This woman’s neck is distorted to reflect the distortion of self esteem brought on by her chemotherapy and medical treatments for breast cancer. She tries her hardest to feel feminine by wearing makeup, a dress, and earrings, but is still exposed as a victim of breast cancer. The left side of her body reflects the cancer, with her butchered breast exposed while holding her once long flowing hair in her left hand. Her expression is sad for obvious reasons, and I even made it a point to make her earrings in the shape of tear drops.

This sketch is also an reflection of my personal opinion regarding conventional medical practices as well as the pharmaceutical industry. I’m certainly a believer of a more holistic approach to medicine, but I also don’t want this to become an enraged debate with biased conclusions…However, I would love to see how I could communicate my feelings with a proper digital painting for this subject.

Artwork From College: “Watercolor sketch of an apple -’06.”

I very regrettably used this same sketchbook later on for my sketchbook during my time in college. College taught me a lot of things that I certainly appreciate and didn’t quite understand without formal training regarding art.

One of the many assignments we had to do in our sketchbooks during my first quarter was this watercolor sketch of an apple. It’s probably the only homework assignment within my sketchbook that I like, but I really hated watercolor. College was another time that forced me to work with colors and learn how to avoid/correct mistakes, and watercolor painting is just one of those mediums that is probably hard to perfect because it’s difficult to erase your mistakes.

However, I do like the details of this sketch. It certainly helped me to incorporate different colors and brush strokes in an effort to convey the simple image of an apple. This will not be recreated, but I definitely note it as a good learning experience.

Old Logo Ideas For My Former Company

In the midst of flipping through the pages of my sketchbook, I even found some old logo designs for my former financial services company, Incentivest. These logos are based on the earlier concept which focused more on setting up an investment for education related purposes. They also have my original name for the company “Education Investment Incentive” before I simply shortened it down to “Incentivest.”

There were a couple more logo sketches that I decided not to include, but they actually surprised me because of the different interesting concepts I came up with back then. Nowadays it’s hard to find many logo styles that are truly original, so it was interesting to see how my method of creating logos has completely changed by now.

Draw Inspiration From Your Old Work

I would highly recommend that anyone feeling stuck in a rut in any industry, whether it’s really corporate or more illustrative like design, that you go back to ideas you’ve had once before. Take note of how you’ve progressed since that time, and you may have even grown enough to finally take on that past idea and make a true success story from it.

We can all be our own worst critics sometimes, so be sure to give yourself some praise for the progress you’ve made, and for the progress that is sure to come..

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<3 Love Ya!
-Mel

The Twitter phenomenon is taking over the internet like a wildfire. Every online marketer is using it to their advantage to optimize on the potential reach for their audience. And if you haven’t noticed already, many internet entrepreneurs are creating businesses which are an extension of the Twitter system.

Personally, I have a love/hate relationship with Twitter. I think by now I’ve accepted the idea that any huge internet phenomenon will be quickly overturned by internet marketers who may abuse or take away from the experience. But I’ve also realized that it’s a nice interaction between people of similar interests, and is also a nice, concise way to break the ice in getting to know new people online.

I’ve taken notice in recent weeks how much Twitter is actually influencing my blog posts. I question whether or not that’s entirely a good thing, but feel free to give me your opinion.

How Twitter Influences My Blog Posts

Blog Titles Within 140 Characters- My blog titles usually aren’t too long anyway, but I’ve had to make sure that my titles are especially concise for when I tweet them on Twitter. If my title is too long, then it’ll also make the link to my post take up too many characters. The link ends up converting to a “tiny url” anyway, but this doesn’t help when creating the tweet. In fact, it would be awesome if Twitter somehow incorporated into their system, an option to include a link without it interfering with the available amount of characters you have left.

Concise/catchy Titles- My followers are essentially my audience. So I try to produce titles to blog posts that are relevant to their professions in the graphic design or internet entrepreneur related industries.

Relevant Posts The types of followers I have also influence the relevance I bring to my overall blog posts. This is where I question how much is truly acceptable to be influenced by Twitter and I don’t want to be too heavily reliant on it because currently the bulk of my traffic isn’t coming from Twitter.

When To Post There are certain times of the day when if you make a blog post it has more of a chance to be seen then at another time. I try to be sensitive to this concept, because there are also times of the day when you get the most clicks from your Twitter followers. I tend to get tweets that I’ve been meaning to say out of the way before posting a link to my most recent blog post because I like to keep the link up as long as possible.

Make It Re-tweetable Many people on twitter are “re-tweeting” the posts they find most interesting to them, and beneficial to their followers. Although it’s sometimes difficult to make every single thing you write on your blog worthy of being spread around the twittersphere, make sure that you release your best posts during the times of the day when others will bite the bait.

How has Twitter influenced your blog/site?

Twitter gives you so much potential for building upon your readership so be sure to use it wisely. But how has it affected your site’s progression? Comment and let me know..

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Love ya!
-Mel

And, yes, I do mean YOU.

As a beginner blogger, sometimes as your writing posts you have the tendency to wonder if your words are just floating away from you into the blogosphere returning only with the sounds of crickets. However, with an increase of visitors comes an increase in my continued excitement for the progression of this blog.

You ever just feel really good? Well, lately, I’ve been feeling really, really, good…and I think it is in part due to the response that I’ve received from my new and loyal readers. Even if you are new here, let me just say, thank you, for I hope you find topics that peak your interests, while providing an avenue for learning and discussion.

So, as a result of feeling so damn good , I’ve compiled a list of the top 5 reasons why YOU guys rock!

Top 5 Reasons Why YOU Rock

#5. You Get Me- You either understand that I’m trying to bring a slightly unconventional viewpoint for online marketing/design, or more importantly, you get my cornball jokes . Obviously, this is a big plus for me because I want to be able to recognize which writing style works not only for me but for my audience as well..
#4. You’re Criticism Is Constructive- I certainly welcome criticism and diversity to the conversation. But, of course, with the internet, you come across some of those lonely souls who take criticism to a sick level of rudeness. Though this may possibly change with time (I hope not lol), the comments and feedback that I’ve received has been so incredibly constructive and inspiring. If you are somewhat familiar with my story or the purpose of this blog, then you will have understood that I’ve faced consistent disappointment for the last 3 years (with college/my startup). What has kept me going (aside from my obsessive mindset) is the knowledge that I’ve acquired through the lessons of other people as well as my own. The great thing about constructive criticism is that it’s a check mark of what I should or shouldn’t do for next time, and as someone who doesn’t like to waste much time, I find that your comments contribute greatly to my progression…
#3. You’re Such a Big Help- Obviously, I’m a new blogger. So, it’s been very nice to have others who have been around for even a couple of more months than me to share advice or tips that they’ve learned from their blogging experience. As you may have realized with some of my older posts, I have taken your tips and advice to heart and have even immediately applied what I could after your suggestions.
#2. You’re Pure Geniuses- The ideas that have been discussed on this blog have influenced me to finally begin working on products of my own (aside from the graphics design). I assure you that, as always, they are to be done in such an unconventional manner–unlike the rest, and I’m filled with nothing but pure excitement as I develop these products further. I owe this idea to YOU.
#1. You Make It All Worth it- Even with semi-sleepless nights from new product ideas, or temporary writer’s block, you guys make it soo worth it to continue on with more quality posts. It’s easy to become inconsistent in blog posts or quality of posts, and I know that I just have to think of all the contributions to the blog thus far to get my creative juices flowing again in order to bring forth a post you’ll actually like.

I’m sure as this blog progresses even further, that I’ll have so much more to add to this top 5–and I certainly hope that the pro-bloggers out there appreciate their readers as much as I do…

I don’t want to name names, but I just want to say thanks to EVERYONE, for your contribution–even if you just visit and don’t comment–I still find that contributing to this blog. So, as you’re reading this very sentence, why don’t you stretch your arm across and give yourself a good pat on the back for a job well done!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Toodles
-Mel

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