According to Buddhist principles, the “Monkey Mind” is a term that refers to being unsettled, restless, or confused. Well, let’s just say it feels like the whole world is a bit like that at the moment and I’m no different. The stresses of being self-employed right now are really high and it’s taking a lot to keep that ‘Monkey Mind’ under control. I’m being successful so far and Trying to use the time to stay productive and finally work on the new Creative Nowhere Land website.

The title of the blog this week is also relevant as in my quest to stay productive I’ve used my time to create an email newsletter for Creative Nowhere Land using Mailchimp. Monkey Mind, Mailchimp, you see what I did there? Anyway, it’s been something on my list of things to do for a long time but something I’ve always put off. It only took a global pandemic to finally get me to do it!

It was actually a lot easier than I imagined and with a few YouTube tutorials, I was soon up and running and creating a template for the Creative Nowhere Land Newsletter. Mailchimp is actually pretty simple and is a drag and drop sort of vibe and you can customise the templates to match your brand or business. It’s not rocket science but until you do these things you don’t know how they’re going to turn out.

This is the email template that you will get sent when you sign up to the Creative Nowhere Land Newsletter. Some branding and a little thank you note. It’s the little things that count. I’d watched a tonne of tutorials on building a newsletter list and all of them said that you should give people something of value as a thank you for signing up. I decided on a fun ‘How to Stay Creative’ guide!

Mailchimp makes that really easy to do as well. In the drag and drop section, there’s a ‘BUTTON’ option. If you drag that onto the template it will link straight to a file or a URL of your choice. I selected a file and uploaded the free pdf to Mailchimp and voila! Click on the button in your welcome email and it opens your free ‘How To Stay Creative’ guide. It’s large enough to print off if anyone wanted to as well!

The start of a newsletter for the Creative Nowhere Land website and a free gift to say thank you. That’s a good use of my time right! Building for future projects!

Squarespace makes it really easy to link to Mailchimp as well. You can set up a button or form on your website for people to sign up for a newsletter and it’s really simple to have those sign-ups linked to Mailchimp. Squarespace has lots of tutorials that were really useful while I was going through the setup stage and if you don’t find what you need there then Youtube will sort you out I’m sure. Let’s face it if I can do it then I’m sure you can. It was so easy I might have to do a newsletter sign up for Matt Wilson Photography as well. It might be a good thing to do when I finish doing the weekly blog challenge then I could change it to a monthly newsletter possibly?

You can now sign up for the newsletter for yourself by going to https://www.creativenowhereland.com/ and clicking on the button on the right of the screen. I expect to see a few more names pop up there in the next week or so with all of you eager to sign up and get your free ‘How To Stay Creative’ guide!

I know it’s a crazy time for everyone right now so look out for one another, be productive, stay positive and be sure to download my fun guide on ‘How To Stay Creative’, you might find something useful on it that inspires you during these uncertain times!