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Office Hours - Small Group Session - Members Only - 5/10/2023

When: Wednesday, May 10, 2023
Time: 1-2pm EST
Where: Remote (Zoom)
Member's Only Link >
Activate your membership here >
Let's talk strategy for how you are going to land that media hit, or score that sponsor. Bring your big ideas, visions, and successes that you don't think are possible.

If you have Media Contact needs, please also send those so that we may do a Deep Dive for you.

About TuneUp Office Hours

If you are a member of Tin Shingle, you can join Members-Only TuneUps on Wednesdays! These are open for members only, and and not open to the public. This is a safe space for Tin Shingle Members to come in with brainstorms to give and get feedback.

You can turn on your video camera to speak eye-to-eye, or just talk on the phone or through your computer speakers.

In this series, members of Tin Shingle with the Media Kit Membership can call in to workshop any need in their marketing campaign, including:

  • Media Pitching: What a pitch to a certain media outlet should look like, and how it should read.

  • Instagram: How to get sales and create PR opportunities from you posts.

  • Facebook: How do you increase traffic from this platform?

  • Website: The media will circle back to evaluate their website. What are they seeing, and is it clear?

  • SEO: What's your game plan? Let's get one. You don't want to miss out on all that search traffic.

How To Design Your Instagram Story Highlights (Circles) To Make Them POP!

Using Instagram to get the word out about your business is key! It helps to build a personal connection with people through sharing images of your brands uniqueness, plus, there are millions of users! Instagram Story Highlights (Circles), specifically, are extremely valuable because it allows you (and your business) to showcase important content that you want your customers to see! Think of them as a really good movie trailer… where you just can’t wait to see more!

Canva - The DIY Graphic Design App - Made Designs Templates For You!

Using the Canva app for graphic design can help to create beautiful designs for your business. Canva is an app for the phone or laptop that is like a graphic design program/platform that enables anybody to be an amazing designer - even if you aren’t a designer. Canva has all of the tools necessary - templates, elements, styles, text, etc. Find what works for you and your biz. It’s easy once you get the hang of it!

See below for screenshots of the step-by-step process.

Best Practice For Designing Highlights (Circles At The Top Of Your Instagram Page)

To really make the Circle Highlights stand out for a smooth flow on your Instsagram page, you’ll want to make sure circle images ‘flow,’ meaning, are cohesive with one another. This helps people see your page as a unit, instead of bouncing around a bunch of unrelated visual markers.

Ok. Now you’re ready to design your own Highlight circles!

Step 1: Search Instagram Story Highlight

Use Canva’s search box to search for exactly what you looking for (shown below). Use the keyword term “instagram highlight.”

Canva’s ready-to-use Highlight templates will show up in the search results. You may be presented with several selections. Look below to see.

Step 2: Customize To Your Liking!

Pick one of those templates, and then plug and play. Add different colors or fonts, move shapes around, whatever you want! Canva has an abundance of free tools to use. Use the tool bar located to the left to upload some of your own images/photos, browse different elements, add funky text!

Canva allows you to choose colors and fonts that fit in with your business theme! You can create from scratch, or you can choose a template and then change things around to fit with what you want.

Step 3: Download Your Design

Once you create a design, download it, and then head on over to Instagram to edit your Highlight cover with your new beautiful design images!

Step 4: Where To Find The Place To Upload Your New Highlight Circle Design In Instagram

Inside of Instagram, you will find…

You’re all done!


Now It’s Time To Add Your Custom Designed Circle Highlight To Your Instagram

Here at Tin Shingle, we elected to use a soft color of pink. That goes with our branding, and the flowers we tend to use elsewhere on our website. It’s easy on the eyes, and does indicate that Tin Shingle has a feminine approach, even though our platform is gender neutral.

STEP 1: Access The Edit Point

Hold down the Highlight you want to edit and click or tap ‘Edit Highlight.’

STEP 2: Select The Cover Art

Next, you’re going to click or tap ‘Edit Cover.’

STEP 3: Grab The Image From Your Phone

Swipe all the way to the left until you see a white outlined graphic with an image placeholder. Choose the photo image that you downloaded from canva.

STEP 4: VOILA! All Done!

Your Story Highlights are poppin’!


“Help! Just Do It For Me!”

Sure! The team at Tin Shingle would be happy to take care of this for you, and design the branding of your Highlight circles! We can either walk you through it or be your sounding board when you book a Private Session. Or, we can do it for you in our Highlight Circle Design Package. For that, we’ll take a deep dive into your existing branding, and design a selection pack. We will upload it for you as well.

If you are designing them on your own, and want feedback from the Tin Shingle Community, simply activate your Tin Shingle Membership and create a conversation in our Community Forum!

Next TuneUp: "8 Things I Learned After Deleting Facebook From My Phone (but not my life)"

When: Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Time: 12pm EST
Where: At your computer or on your phone.
Price: Free for all during this live broadcast.

It's happening. The deletion of Facebook apps from people’s phones - or from their lives entirely - as revelations continue to come out as to how invasive Facebook’s social tactics are. Even Lisa Paige from PopCrush Nights deleted Instagram for her phone for a day, and was so happy.

Tin Shingle’s owner Katie is a Digital Marketing Strategist, and has deleted Facebook Personal and Business apps from her phone, but still uses the platform for marketing.

Deleting the easy access revealed much about Facebook’s design, what’s working and not working with it, and how to reach the people who are still communicating with each other on the platform.

This isn't a TuneUp to slam Facebook, but to highlight the parts of it that you should pay attention to, in your broad marketing plans where time continues to shrink as more content grabs our attention. Namely:

Showing Up. Having a pulse on Facebook. People are checking out your brand page, and want to see life.

Shopping. Facebook is investing into the shopping game as buying via Instagram takes off. Instagram shopping is connected to your Facebook account. The only way to link to products on your website from your Instagram post is via Facebook's Ad Manager, so you can’t cut the cord just yet.

This TuneUp Will Cover:

  • Design: What is hurting Facebook's design, and why your message may be getting buried.

  • Facebook as a Creative Crutch. Are you reaching as many people as you think?

  • Never Satisfied. There's a reason you're hooked.

  • FOMO Fuels Everything

  • When Facebook Goes Dark

  • Facebook Can Still Track You, Despite Being Deleted From Phone

  • So How Should You Use It For Marketing?

Google + (Plus) Shuts Down...Why This Matters, And The Huge Implications For Everyone

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Google+ is/was Google’s social network for people. Google+ launched in 2011, and wasn’t the first social network that Google tried to create to compete with Facebook. Led by Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, the philosophy coming out from them back then about social media was: “we believe online sharing is broken,” as stated in this TechCruch article. This was back in 2011. Imagine what they think now. Super broken on many levels, from broken data security to human behavior. Both of these reasons contributing to the expedited and now immediate shutting down of Google+.

What Is Google+?

Google+ was a place where you could share articles, share photos, connect with people who were your friends or random people you’d never met. You could organize them by “Circles,” which was at first neat, but then became laborious as you kept organizing and micro-organizing your connections. You could chat with others, message, and just play like you would in a social network.

For SEO (search engine optimization) purposes, Google+ was great. Because it was a product of Google, the leaders of how SEO works, you had some faith that articles shared on Google+ would get higher treatment in search results. For instance, posting an article I wrote to Google+ would be part of my digital content strategy, because that post would show up in search results, thereby taking up space on Page 1 of Google search results to elbow out my competitors, especially if my actual article was already ranking highly. In fact, according to Google+ Support: “there's no way to make the content you share not searchable.” Hurray!

Google+ is much more than SEO, however. Google recognized that people like sharing documents, conversations and photos with each other, so they built a Google+ enterprise tool where companies can use it internally on private networks. The enterprise version of Google+ will continue to live.

What Happened? Why Is Google+ Shutting Down?

Two reasons: people just weren’t using it, and a data leak impacting 52.5 million people.

Despite myself knowing the high value of Google+, even I stopped using it years ago. Of all of the hundreds of articles I’ve ever written, I’d only shared/posted maybe 20 to my Google+ account. Google+ was just so clunky to use. Normal things to do, like sharing an article, or connecting with someone, was so hard to figure out how to do. The user experience of its ecosystem seemed discombobulated - disconnected - sliced and diced.

Developers at Google and these big social/data companies seem to spend most of their focus on creating new tools, and then creating more tools on top of those tools. They seem dedicate less time to studying and understanding how their users are actually using and interacting with their tools.

When Google first announced the shutting down Google+ (aka “sunsetting,” which is the sexy and friendly version of “shutting down”), they marked “poor usage” as a driving factor. They finally did a very deep dive in October 2018 into how their users used the tool, and found that most people actually didn’t.

But in that deep dive, Google also found a data leak. Impacting 52.5 million people. Eeps. That’s when Google announced that they were shutting down Google+, and would do it gradually, ending in August 2019.

However, they announced in December 2018 that they were speeding that up, and were starting everything now, and would end in April 2019, with some connections ending on March 7, 2019. 9to5Google laments the shutdown, and alerts people to different API failures that will begin happening if developers don’t update their tools to stop using Google+.

Is Google+ Widely Used In Places You Don’t See?

Creators at Google believe in sharing. That’s why the Google search engine was created in the first place. To share the world’s content. Google has also been known to respect its users and their privacy (I know - debatable as they have all of our data - but they’ve arguably been the most proactively protective about it). An “open source” market was born, which means that developers (i.e. people who code and make things work on the internet), could design things that would connect with Google+ and work with it. These are called APIs.

The ability for developers to connect into Google+ using an API to grab your data for some reason (like to log into something to make your life more convenient) was exposed. Google patched that, but got spooked, and have expedited the shutdown. There are probably more vulnerabilities, and for a tool that nobody is using, what’s the use in maintaining it. As they said here in their announcement.

What This Means For Buzz Building Business Owners

One less thing for you to do! You don’t need to share there, and you don’t need to know how it works anymore. Hurrah.

Why Google+ “Sunsetting” (aka Shutting Down) Is A Bummer

For the SEO reasons, and for the “let’s not depend on Facebook to share our information” reasons. If Google’s shutting down has a theme song, it would be Tiffany’s: “Could’ve Been.”

Why This Matters To People

Social media is run by Facebook and Twitter right now. It used to also be run by Instagram, but since those co-founders resigned in late 2018, implying too much meddling by Facebook, it’s down to Facebook and Twitter (Facebook owns Instagram). Oh right. Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitch, and a few others. But really, it’s just the first two.

The Facebook and Twitter founders approach life very differently. We have Jack Dorsey at the helm of Twitter, trying to keep it going and steering it in the turbulent sea of trolls and bad human behavior and data privacy. Jack gets very philosophical and thinks deeply about the social product and how it impacts people.

In the other corner, we have Mark Zuckerburg, who is nobody’s favorite, and maybe nobody’s friend despite his high friend count on Facebook, who is snarky and condescending when appearing before Congress and in any news interview, yet still remains relevant because people keep using Facebook.

There are other social networks, and each one will be tested by the trials that Google, Facebook and Twitter are currently enduring. People have asked: “Can’t someone just create a new social network so that we don’t need to use Facebook?” But can we wait for each of these new social networks that pop up to prove themselves and carve their belief system and actions to back that up?

Google was a big daddy that has flaws, but is a leader in (trying) to do right by its users. Google grew so big, working in so many different fields (healthcare, cars, phones), that they renamed to Alphabet (their website is abc.xyz - cute), and Google is a fraction of what they now offer to the world.

Google+ could have been a social network for people to turn to after Facebook burns down. But it just wasn’t designed visually very well, and there were no signs that that would have improved.

Could have been so beautiful…

Happy 2019 New Year!

Happy New Year!

Tin Shingle offers a lot of ways to set yourself up right for a strong start to 2019 as you grow your business and build buzz. The most important thing you can do for your marketing is reach people in a myriad of ways. The biggest resistance to this concept that we hear from people is: "But won't they get sick of me?"

No :) These are your customers, clients, friends and future clients. They are your supporters, and you inspire them. Keep reaching them. Tin Shingle helps you do this.

Upcoming Group Training - Private Sessions

If you're an All Access Member of Tin Shingle, you have the opportunity to meet online for free every other week with Tin Shingle's co-creator, Katie, and other members who join the call. This is the TuneUp, but one that is dedicated to you. Bring your questions to the table, and get support and ideas from Katie and other members.

A GREAT FIT FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT

  • Instagram Breakthroughs
    If you're not using your Instagram, or if nothing is happening from your Instagram. This is a tool not to be wasted. Get ideas on what to post, and why you are posting. The "why" is the biggest key, and will unlock future ideas for you.

  • Followup on PR Pitching
    If you're pitching the media, and want guidance on emailing your top goals, or guidance on following up with reporters and editors.

  • Growing Your Client Base and Sales
    Come to these private sessions, and let's discuss the smarter ways you could be working to grow your sales (hint: it's in Newsletters you send and better crafted Instagrams).

Upcoming Dates (always on Wednesdays, 3pm EST):

  • January 9th + 23rd

  • February 13th + 27th

  • March 13th + 27th (weird coincidence of same numbers!)

Private Training is available for one-on-one sessions (see pricing). But you'll get a lot out of these group training opportunities for free with your Tin Shingle Membership.

Streaming Now: What To Pitch the Press for November + Tricks for SEO and PR

New Training TuneUp in the Member Center!

Hey Buzz Builder! You've got one more tool in your marketing tool-belt to create curated exposure to your brand. This is Tin Shingle Training you can access anytime.

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What To Pitch The Press: November

Get ideas for what print magazines are looking for now (aka Long Lead), then blogs and websites (Short Lead), and hot news trends you can piggy back on for quickie articles at your website or others, and your social media.

BONUS: "But pitching doesn't work for me": This question will be discussed during the TuneUp, with suggestions on what to change in your pitching to the media.

BONUS: "But why would any magazine feature me?": This question will be discussed during the TuneUp, with myth-busters on why any business should want - and get - media coverage. Be you a website designer, jewelry designer of single pieces, or anything.

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Trick Or Treat:

5 Tricks for PR, Instagram, SEO

This TuneUp was originally recorded on Halloween, thus the Halloween inspired Tricks and Treats you're going to get for doing your own PR and Instagram posting. This was a quick TuneUp because there was costuming to be done! Get PR and Instagram Tricks, and what might make for some Rotten Candy PR!

Next Live Broadcast of TuneUp: SEO + Social

We’re in the middle of a “social migration,” as we’re calling it here at Tin Shingle. Behavior at social platforms like Facebook and Instagram are changing. Usage activity at Facebook is still high, but it’s an increasingly questionable place, both with data privacy, and being over-designed and over-stuffed with information, causing users to miss a message.

As reported by CNBC in March 2018: “Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg broke his silence Wednesday on the Cambridge Analytica data scandal that's plagued the social media giant in recent days and slashed stock value. ‘We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you,’ Zuckerberg said in a statement posted to his Facebook page.”

Instagram’s co-founders abruptly resigned from Facebook two weeks ago, just one week before Facebook announced another data breach. They had worked there for six years after the merger, which apparently is a long time in the world of acquisitions. Would Facebook ever pull the plug on their-self if they were too weighed down with data issues? It's a very unlikely scenario, but is implied by Mark's statement. Plus, Facebook has deleted websites they have purchased in the past (like that data storage website Drop.io that was pre-Dropbox and we stored lots of stuff there!).

So social is on shaky ground. We all want to connect, and we will, but what do you have in your own tool belt (hopefully) all of the time that you can control?

Your website.

And how are people finding it?

Googling stuff.

What are they going to find there?

Amazing content you’re going to put there, and lots of pictures.

What do people do after they Google things? They buy things and subscribe to newsletters. Your newsletters and your products and services.

That’s right. Good old fashioned SEO.

The three most important things you can be doing right now for your business is what we will be covering in this TuneUp - so go register for it right now:

  • Making your website pretty and alive

  • Sending newsletters to the people who subscribed and really do want to hear from you - frequently (they really do!!!)

  • Posting to Instagram (yeah, do it, we’ll be watching to see if and how the user experience at Instagram changes, but so far, keep posting)

Join Katie live at 3pm EST to hear refreshing SEO Tips, Newsletter Tips, and how to be treating your social.

Private Training Workshop In Motion

Conducted a Private Training Workshop for these ladies yesterday, who have varying degrees of comfort online and with social media. This session covered a lots of Technical. A next session can indulge in Strategy.

Are you in need of Strategy and clever ideas? You can go pro with Tin Shingle with our Private Training Sessions. Booking on Monday’s only right now. Save your spot! This session was hosted in person in our Beacon, NY office, but can be condicted remotely via video conferencing. We make it easy.  www.tinshingle.com/private-training

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Hashtag Highlights Roundup - What The Magazines Are Using Right Now

Tin Shingle's Instagram Hashtag Cheat Sheet

One of our favorite groups of hashtags to highlight - the print magazines! "What Hashtags Magazines are Using Now."  Because guess what. Your photo could wind up in the pages of those magazines - just because you got your photo in front of an editor's eyes who is following that hashtag! This is one of our favorite tricks.

If you are a follower of our Hashtag Highlight blog series you probably have started a list of your own favorite hashtags. The real diggers of awesome information have dug into Tin Shingle's collection in our Instagram Hashtag Cheat Sheet in the The Boards section of Tin Shingle's Member Center on our website, available to members only. In this roundup, we're pulling up some of our favorite ones.
 


#LiveBravely - Outside Magazine


#DisruptAging - AARP The Magazine


#HowWeFun - Family Circle


#LikeABoss - Rachael Ray Everyday


#HowISummer - Food & Wine

PS: You must be logged into your Tin Shingle Member Center account to get to all of the hashtags we've curated. Membership at the Community Level 1 is required. If you're not an upgraded member, do it here!