Interview with Marquita Herald: The Gift Giver

I live in Maui, Hawaii and my professional background includes a successful 20 year sales and marketing career traveling the world promoting the Hawaiian Islands, followed by seven years as award winning coach working with new entrepreneurs building a home based businesses.

Currently I am self employed as a freelance writer, author and editor of IGG – Tips, Tools and Tantalizing Ideas . . . a blog for people daring to create remarkable lives.

Who do you look up to?

I look up to people who have overcome adversity to make a difference in this world.

While there are too many to name, my favorite example is a motivational speaker named W. Mitchell. Mitchell was in two separate horrific accidents, suffered massive burns over 60% of his body and was left with a badly scared face and only stubs remaining for hands. If anyone had a reason to feel sorry for himself it was Mitchell. Instead, he went on to become a successful motivational speaker, author and husband, and a positive role model to us all.

In fact, his mantra is “It’s not what happens to you, it’s what you do about it.”

In what ways do you build traffic to your blog?

In addition to the usual things, like participating in forums, social media, article marketing and listing my blog in as many blog directories as possible, I recently joined TSA Marketing.

This is a community or “tribe” of bloggers who commit to mutual support by syndicating each other’s content. I’ve belonged to other tribes but this is the first one where I’ve seen such a high level of commitment from the founders as well as the participants.

It’s not only a great group of people; it’s made a significant impact on my traffic.

What are some of your passions?

I am an avid reader, especially mystery novels.

I also follow 40 to 50 blogs a week because I think it’s so important to keep up on what others are talking about and doing with their blogs.

I’m also very passionate about working with non-profits. I’ve served on dozens of non-profit boards, but avoid that these days because rather than get bogged down in the politics or administrative work, I’d rather invest my time telling stories about good works and inspiring readers by sharing ideas about all the small ways individuals can make a difference in the world each day.

Why do you enjoy blogging?

I’m an artist and a storyteller at heart so blogging feels like such a natural fit for me.

I put a lot of my personal feelings into the things I write about. Sometimes people agree, sometimes they don’t – sometimes a reader will tell me my story has created an “ahha” moment or really touched them, and that absolutely makes my day.

How can social media be used in a more powerful way?

I think a lot of us are still struggling to figure out how to best use social media. In my opinion there really needs to be a point to what we’re sharing for there to be any sort of meaningful impact – and that means taking the time to create a social media marketing plan.

I’m in the process of doing that right now and it’s been a real eye opening process.

What can a blogger do to be better?

I don’t consider myself an expert – yet, but from the point of someone who does read a lot of blogs, I’d say there are two areas in particular.

First is posting fresh content on a consistent basis.

It’s always disappointing to find a blog that looks interesting, only to realize it’s been weeks or even months since the last article was posted. There’s an ongoing debate among “experts” as to the ideal frequency of posting, but from a reader’s standpoint if there isn’t at least one new article a week I won’t bother to return to the blog.

Otherwise, there is a reason so much is written about the importance of quality content. I’m not one who hones in on grammar or punctuation necessarily; I want to read some emotion and the writer’s personality shining through. Poorly written content or content that is all sales pitch will cause me to leave the page, never to return.

How do you find happiness?

It’s not what happens to you, it’s what you do about it. – W Mitchell

Honestly, I don’t go out looking for happiness.

I’m a big believer in the power of simply deciding to be happy.

My heroes have always been people who were inherently positive by nature and I confess I go out of my way to avoid spending time around negative or whiny people.

We all hit speed bumps in life, and I’ve hit more than a few. But as my friend Mitchell says, it’s not what happens to you, it’s what you do about it.

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Tagged as: igg, inspired gift giving, interview, living in hawaii, marquita herald, w mitchell