Dealing With The Seasonal Blues - My Personal Tips

Can anyone else really feel Winter creeping in? I'm not some kind of softball, I haven't turned my heating on yet or anything, but there is definitely a chill in the air. Every year around this time I get a touch of the blues. I realise I'm lucky not to get a full blown seasonal depression episode the majority of the time, although some years are worse than others. It's something I've learnt to recognise and put my own strategies into place to counteract the feelings of sadness, anxiety and exhaustion. I've shared some on this in previous years, one of my favourite posts is here and has several ideas for dealing with SAD. This year, I thought I would recover those ideas and add a few more. I hope this might be of help to anyone who has a similar outlook when October hits, but obviously, I'm not a mental health professional and if you find that you feel so low you aren't functioning properly, it's probably worth a visit to the doctor who can recommend various interventions.

1. Talk About It

One of the things I've noticed in my thirties is that people are much more willing to discuss depression and feeling low. I have quite a few friends who I have in-depth conversations about the feelings that can happen upon me during this time and I am confident in saying it's almost certainly the thing that has helped me the most when it comes to pulling my socks up and getting on with things. It really helps to know that other people, not just random Internet people but my actual friends, are going through similar stuff. There can be a feeling of isolation that comes with anxiety and depression disorders and quite often realising that other people are feeling the same way can put a mind at ease. I'm not alone, these feelings are normal and almost everyone has them to some degree, some of the time.

If you struggle to connect with people in this way, I've noticed something that might help. Sometimes, people don't WANT to just sit down of an evening and start talking about their depression, why would they? There's still a stigma around mental health. But you can listen for clues and be the first to state that you feel something too and this can open doors to conversations that have a real benefit in dealing with SAD.

2. Have Coping Strategies

I spoke in my post last year about some of the things that I do to overcome the blues. Seasonal depression in the most part is encouraged by a lack of Serotonin. Not getting that Vit D hit from the sunshine can really affect your minds chemical balance but there are small things you can do to boost your bodies production of the hormones needed to counteract depression. Eating dark chocolate, hugging, watching baby animals, exercise and creating self-care rituals all have an impact on how much Serotonin your body produces and at the very least, giving yourself a positive task to complete that you know has the capacity to make you feel better can have a great result. Don't sniff at doing tiny things for yourself - a face mask, a bar of chocolate and a favourite film, or spending time with people whose company you enjoy can prevent you from dwelling on the negatives.

3. Read Books That Help

Autumn is a great time to cosy up with a book, in my mind - I don't get a huge amount of reading done during the hustle and bustle of the summer so I tend to save a reading list that I want to work through when Autumn hits. One of the books that has helped me most in overcoming my negative thinking patterns is Heart Of The Revolution by Noah Levine. It's a book on Buddhism for beginners and it covers a lot about letting go of guilt and focusing on positive experiences without clinging to them and being sad when they are over - this really resonates with me during times when I I feel down and it's a book that I go back to over and over. If Buddhism isn't for you, it's a great time to read a book that benefits you in another way. I'm just starting The Multi-Hyphen Method by Emma Gannon. It's a book for people who want to develop various streams of income from their skills and aren't necessarily defining their success in terms of working a 9-5 job day in day out. Reading books like this inspires me to work harder at making my dreams a reality and it also takes my mind off my mild depression because I'm focusing on the future. Other books that have helped me through the winter months are The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, Eat Prey Love (the book is infinitely better than the film!) and various books on mindfulness and motivation that I'll share in a future post. I'd love to hear your suggestions in the comments for books that have helped you through dark times. Next up for me is The Kindness Method - about treating yourself kindly for a more positive life.

4. Get Out Of The House

 Probably the most over-egged bit of advice ever, I'm pretty sure there are few ailments that exist that at some point the patient hasn't been told that getting some fresh air might help. At school, Matron would suggest I sat by an open window for pretty much any injury - broken your leg have you Katy? Some fresh air will surely mend those bones! Now, if I see sunshine, I make a point of getting out in it. Vitamin D is absorbed through skin, so roll up your sleeves and trousers and get outside to take in some of that wonder vitamin - it's one of those irritating things that won't make an immediate impact, but increasing your sun exposure during September and October is proven to have an impact on the severity of your Serotonin deficit over the winter. 

5. Define and Deal With Anxiety

People will often refer to Anxiety as one illness, one mental health issue. "I have Anxiety" people will say. "I feel Anxious". Actually anxiety is a catch-all term for a number of disorders. Finding out which sort of anxiety you have and what triggers it can be a lifelong process. I've noticed that few people talk about the specific form that their anxiety takes. Is it too personal to discuss? Are people worried that others will view them as crazy? Do people use the term 'anxiety' because it's easier than explaining that they are terrified by social situations, health issues, accidents, crowds, heights etc. If you are able to define to yourself what makes you anxious, this can help you to avoid triggers. One of the forms that my own personal anxiety takes is health worries. During low days, I can spend several hours googling non-specific symptoms and diagnosing myself with every type of illness I find. On really bad days, my brain will start practising how I will tell my friends and family that I'm dying. It's stupid and it's a waste of time, but I since I started to pick up more on what triggers me to have worse moments I am able to try and avoid situations were those triggers might appear. I don't watch hospital based reality shows anymore and I've deleted myself from several health forums. I've unfollowed individuals who blog about long-term illness because their updates can start me off on a worry spiral again - when I am going through a low time, it helps to avoid things that make me feel lower.

6. Lumie Bodyclock Starter 30 Wake-Up Alarm Clock


I mentioned this alarm clock in my previous post but it's so good I'm going to mention it again. It's about £60 on Amazon and at John Lewis and it wakes you up slowly with warm light that projects on the nearest wall in a sun ray pattern. Waking up feeling like I actually want to get out of bed is a complete change to normal because usually, as soon as the mornings get misty I want to huddle up in a ball at the bottom of my duvet and not speak to anyone for a month!

This isn't one of those vitamin D giving lights, it's just a more natural and refreshing way to start the day!




I hope some of these might have helped someone, somewhere. Please do comment your own coping mechanisms below, I'm always on the lookout for ways to boost positivity going into Winter.

Katy x

Crowdfunding Basics - The First 5 Things I Learnt When I Launched A Kickstarter

I'm really excited to start sharing posts about my recent journey into crowdfunding. As you may already know, I've been running a Kickstarter project in addition to working on my website, it's currently 21% funded with 19 days to go - not terrible, but not awesome either and I've hit a MAJOR plateau with no bids for several days.

I'm hoping to be completely honest in the upcoming posts around crowdfunding and I want to start off that way too. I'm not an expert on crowdfunding, or Kickstarter, or anything to do with launching a business this way! I was recently approached by a group looking for help to marketing their upcoming crowdfunding campaign through my marketing business. I really wanted to take on the project and I knew I had the marketing knowledge, but everything I knew about crowdfunding was based around one platform, and a few heady days of pledging money towards ridiculous projects like building a Death Star. Yeah, I invested in that.

I spent a few days looking into crowdfunding. I spent time on Kickstarters Campus forum and joined several Facebook groups. I watched a great Facebook Live featuring Leona from The Indie Rollercoaster which gave me a lot of info in a very short space of time! And then I launched. If you care to check out my campaign, you can below.

I'm going to share the first 5 things I realised after I launched - that I really wish I had known first!

1. It's all in the pre-launch email list.

I didn't do this and I wish I had, I'll definitely do something in this vein if I relaunch or do another campaign. It's the advice that I have read the most regularly over the course of my research, - having a list of email addresses that belong to people with a potential interest in your product, or your campaign in general is an essential.

The most common way of collecting email addresses seems to be through a landing page. A landing page is a simple website, featuring a brief description of what you are are hoping to achieve and an email input. Some of the ones I have seen that relate to crowdfunding have a 'Countdown to Launch' feature, which has the potential to build a sense of momentum when your audience initially visit the page. I should have got this landing page up and started directing people to it through social. Forming a community should play an key role in any crowdfunding marketing strategy and the email list is the start of this. It can also be used later on to target potential backers with updates about your project, which could lead to last minute pledges.

2. There is a certain format to most successful campaigns

When I first started reading about crowdfunding I saw a lot of advice replicated across the board. I pushed a lot of these to the back of my mind thinking they probably weren't relevant for my project. Spoiler: They were. You need to create a video because it shows who you are to potential investors, right there in your campaign link. You also need it because all the other campaigns have it and if you don't, it looks like you aren't taking it seriously. Who wants to invest money in someone who isn't taking it seriously? This was probably one of my major mistakes. I'm still considering adding a video to my project, just something simple explaining who I am, why I like making crowns and what plans I have for launching an Etsy shop next year. There are several other elements to the standard format, including setting 'stretch goals' - these are goals past your original amount. Often, if the project reaches the 'stretch goal' there will be an additional reward released. Pinterest was a great resource for me when it came to putting my campaign together - I've got an awesome Crowdfunding board here if you are interested.

3. You'll need projections on what you intend to spend the money on

I didn't include this when I launched, but looking at successful campaigns afterwards I saw there was often a lot of detail about where the money would go. It's vital to remember that Kickstarter take 5% of your final total, IndieGoGo take 4% if you reach your goal and 9% if you don't. Paypal will usually have a charge of 3-5% too. Budget for at least 10% in fees to be sure. A pie chart looks cute and will make your funds allocation clear. Set a small margin for error too and don't forget to include packaging. I made a huge mistake in not working all of this out before to launched so be a boss and work out your costs!

4. Kickstarter doesn't have a forum in the normal sense - you'll need to reach out further to get backers

I kind of assumed there would be an inbuilt way of reaching Kickstarter lovers with my project, but there really isn't, not in the same way there are forums on Etsy anyway. Kickstarter Campus is a section of the website to which you can submit a questions and anyone can answer, but I answered a question last week and it got approved yesterday. Frustratingly slow. Actually having a look now, despite it being a pretty basic question, I haven't had any replies. So, you are definitely going to need to reach out a lot further if you want to promote your project to people who already have a basic idea of what crowdfunding is. I ended up using Facebook Ads to target people who liked music festivals and also knew about Kickstarter, but I will talk about that in a different post along with the results from my paid Facebook Ad campaigns. Facebook groups I joined, which I'll share in a later post also, seemed very inactive and spammy. There is a reasonably helpful subreddit which you can share your link on, but unless it's a tabletop game or some sort of fiddly gadget it's not the best place to promote either. More to come on this subject in the future, but I wish I'd looked much deeper into this before launching.

5.  Rewards that are handmade, custom items are the hardest to fulfil.

Okay, so this point isn't based on my own experience, as yet I only have three backers that I need to make custom crowns for. But all the info I've read since especially around creating exciting rewards for your pledges has warned against offering handmade, custom rewards, Obviously, this forms the main part of my project, but what I should have done is had some sort of non-handmade reward. Enamel pins are popular but there are loads of ideas for amazing pledge rewards all over the web and in Kickstarter Campus. Here is a great list of 96 ideas for creating rewards that will engage people but not cost the earth to fulfil. Had I have known this previously, I would have included something small for £10 backers. Maybe a hand drawn postcard, or an enamel pin if I had of had the wherewithal to get them made first (although this could have been part of my budget if I had planned things better!)


I hope that these has inspired you to research certain elements of launching a crowdfunding campaign and creating a marketing strategy for crowdfunding projects. There is so much to learn! Please give me a follow on your RSS reader or on Instagram @katyclouds if you want to follow my Kickstarter project more closely. I'll be sharing a lot more about what I have learnt over the next few weeks.

Scheduling Tweets - How, Why and Where?

I'm now juggling three Instagram accounts, two Twitters and two Pinterests and that's before I take on any clients through Strange Marketing. I'm working hard to become more organised, trying to make sure that some content goes out on each platform, each and every day - no easy task!

Although I've written before about automation and why I think it's killing Instagram (click here for that cheerful piece!) there are certain situations where using an automated posting platform is beneficial and can keep your content flowing smoothly allowing you to focus on other things.

It's well documented that one of the curses of the modern world is the amount of time we spend bent looking at our phones. Obviously, many of us have chosen to work in the digital space and with that comes a requirement to be connected the majority of the time. However, I can't be alone in facing that awkward 'you spend more time on your phone than anything else' conversation with relatives or friends.  It sounds pretty frivolous to explain that if you aren't there, posting content at certain times you won't gain the traction that you need to launch a project, or grow as an influencer. Automation means you gain a tiny bit of your life back, bundling the time spent tweeting into one handy segment - I do it on a Monday morning.

That's not to say that as a small business or Influencer you won't need to pop on and check reactions and reply to engagements - but it does mean that when you want to focus on your real life, your social channels are ticking along nicely, looking active and gaining interest.

In addition, automating your tweets means you aren't creating it on the fly. You aren't trying to type it out on your phone scrunched into a wet bus seat where you might not have access to all your file directories (please tell me I'm not the only ones whose iCloud hasn't updated in 134 days?) this ultimately means you have more control, as you'll have everything to hand when you create your posting schedule.

The type of content that works best is direct links to your blog or other promotional tweets, general questions to the twitter community or cross-platform promotion of your other social profiles. Here is an example of one of my recent tweets that I created through Buffer and posted out automatically to my profile at an optimum time.

By using automation in this way, I'm making sure that my blog is being promoted throughout the week. I'll add to this with tweets of my own ad hoc, but knowing that my profile is looking active, sharing my blog links and generating engagement without me having to spend the time hooked up to my mobile.

Over the week, I'll mix things up, sharing blog posts from my back catalogue that haven't got a lot of love recently as well as questions that I hope will get engagement - when I was blogging festivals during the summer, for example, I threw a few questions about favourite gigs and live music events into the schedule.

In order to answer this question, I tried out three platforms. I'll include some thoughts on each below but I think it's pretty clear which one I would recommend!

• Hootsuite - I've got a premium Hootsuite account because I plan to use it when managing my clients social media. It's a market-standard platform with a lot of useful features and the ability to review and engage with multiple social platforms through it's interface. You can schedule tweets quite simply, just type what you want to say into a box, add a link or image and then select a time that you want it to go out - their Autoschedule features will post the content at a peak time for you. You can have 30 scheduled posts per month if you are a free user. One of the great benefits if you are using Hootsuite for business is bulk uploading, you type all your updates into a spreadsheet and mass upload them to be posted at optimum times!

• Recurpost - Oh Recurpost, I had such high hopes for you! Recurpost is a scheduler that works in a different way, you create Libraries around a certain theme (so, blog posts, jokes, memes, whatever you want to share) and then for each Library you create tweets. For each tweet, you then create several variations. You add the Library into a schedule which is optimised for your timezone and Recurpost will post out your tweets and variations until your library is empty and you need to start again. Main issues for me were that it didn't post images as part of the variations, just links, and when the Libraries were empty it was a real faff taking everything off the schedule and starting again! I can see this being really useful if you want certain content going out on certain days but for me there was a lot of unnessecary messing around.

• Buffer - The dream. Super easy to work, free users can add up to ten updates to their queue at a time, you can select what times they go out or Buffer will optimise it for you. It's really easy to add images to each update and to make it even easier, if you include a link, Buffer will pull images from the site for you to select which for many of us Pinterest-optimised bloggers means not sitting around waiting for images to upload, just type in the text, copy the link, chose the image and it's a go. I wish I'd known about Buffer before paying for a premium Hootsuite membership because it's so much simpler, the interface is nice and it works like a charm.

I hope this has helped! I would love to here your reviews of platforms that perform a similiar task - I'm always looking for ways to streamline managing several social accounts and still growing on all of them.

Blogtober & A Life Update

Hi :)

Happy October! I know October is a bit of a blogger cliche (no, I don't want my coffee to taste like pumpkin, a fruit I would never consider eating) but I love the lead up to Halloween and this year I'm hoping to get my boyf in his most extravagent costume yet - here are a few from previous years:

This year I'm going to give Blogtober a try - a post day for the whole of October.  I've been blogging for 15 years but I don't take it hugely seriously - I kind of want that to change especially as I'm launching two separate online ventures at the moment. The first is my digital marketing and Influencer biz - Strange Marketing. My Dad has helped me with the site and it's looking pretty awesome! Over the next few weeks I'll be adding a lot to the free content section which I hope will help anyone looking for guidance to setting up social media for their business.

You can follow Strange Marketing on twitter here and on Instagram here. The website is here.

I'm also launching my handmade crowns on Etsy this week - that's my main goal for the first week of October. So, if you have found this post from my Etsy profile, please do give me a follow on your RSS reader - I'm hoping to build a fun community of crown-loving guys and gals through my blog and my social platforms. Follow my crown-making ventures on Instagram here. You can also get a custom crown through my Kickstarter project which is running until 22nd October - here is the link!

So, please join me over October as I share lots of information about growing your social channels, crowdfunding and starting a new business - I'm really excited to see what can happen this month - What are your goals for October? Pop them in the comments!