My Holiday Gift Guide Kicks Off With A Wonderful Memorial For Lost Loved Ones

It's that time of year again! Holiday season is upon us and I am starting this year's edition of my Holiday Gift Guide with a service that is perfect for memorializing your loved ones who have passed on.

ForeverMissed.com offers a service unlike any I have seen before: a webpage builder that memorializes your loved one on the internet forever. Launched in 2008, founder Oleg Andelman was inspired by his desire to learn everything he could about his grandparents. He reached out to family members and was able to find out more, along with photographs he didn't know existed!  After compiling all of this knowledge, he decided to build a webpage that could tell his grandparents' story. He then realized that a website where his family and others could share and post memories of his grandparents was actually something he believed could be a great service for anyone on the internet! He began building Forever Missed to offer online memorial pages for anyone on the web! 

ForeverMissed.com has made it easy for anyone to make and share their memorial even if you have little experience in building a webpage. Customer service reps are available day and night should you need any help and to guide you through the building process. It's a wonderful way for families who may be separated by distance or time to learn and share about the lives of their loved one. It is especially helpful to those who may have been young when their family member passed on as they now have an entire webpage dedicated to any information they may need to learn more about their family members!

For this holiday season, I have a special discount. You can receive $20 off of their premium plan by clicking this link. With the premium package you get the ability to upload unlimited photos, a video gallery, background music, illustrated stories, full integration with Facebook and YouTube, access for more administrators to help build the webpage, and customized default notifications you can use to let your other family members know that new content has been uploaded and remind them of important dates. I hope you will check it out and let me know what you think in the comments below!

Who would you memorialize on ForeverMissed.com?

Click here for part two of my holiday gift guide!

How Making Videos Can Change Your Outlook

Whether it be creating original music, beautiful designs or even writing and self-publishing your debut novel, having creative talents is what sets you apart in life. However, if you want to make money from these artistic endeavours, then you need to to find an audience that you connect with. Modern marketing for creative types is all about bonding - creating a connection with people who appreciate and see the value in what you are creating, and who will literally buy into the same vision. No matter what you create, there will definitely be like-minded people out there who will connect with it. The only issue is finding them! 

There are lots of ways to market yourself, for example Bidvine.com is awesome, but for small creatives, video remains one of the most enduringly powerful. You may have never thought about this platform before, but it’s a create way to forge a bond with your audience, while also being quite simple to get started.

Building a Bond of Trust

Getting to know your audience is all about trust - that’s what has the power to make your creative output a commercial success. And luckily for anyone who is more about the art than the business side, the hard sell approach is most definitely not welcome here. Modern creative marketing is all about exchange of information rather than pushing a product, and video is the ideal medium for that process. You provide interesting, relevant information, create connections, join in conversations - and the selling follows on from that. Video is a shortcut to making someone feel like they know you -  you only have to look at the monumental success of a new generation of ‘vlogging’ YouTube superstars to see how it can create money, without being sales-focused. They key is adopting a personal, conversational tone that shows your audience something new  - and as a creative individual, it's extremely good news that that process comes naturally to you.

Getting Started

The other amazing thing about video content marketing is that there’s such a low barrier to entry - getting started couldn’t be easier. Got a smartphone? Then you have everything you need, right there in your pocket. Don’t worry about fancy set ups with cameras and lighting - research shows that what video audiences are looking for first and foremost is ‘authenticity’. It works in your favor that shaky, slightly imperfect video comes across as more real than some polished production - as long as your message is strong and interesting, people will still connect with what you are doing. Simply download some video editing software onto your phone - most are simple to use - and cut your footage into something that really represents your passion for your subject. Once you get more comfortable, you can find sites where there are royalty free beats to add an extra musical dimension to your output.

Engage the Right People

If you’re still not convinced, the stats are all there to show that people really do respond better to video than almost any other marketing medium. Studies show that 68% of people would prefer watching a video about a product to any other marketing form.- and 76% would also share the video with their friends if it was entertaining! Social shares will increase traffic and boost sales - so you really have nothing to lose. Get experimenting with video today!

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Have you or do you vlog? What has been your experience with it?