Add A Pinterest Tab To Your Facebook Business Page Using ShortStack

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Kristy
AddFacebookTab2

My Face­book fan page with LinkedIn and Pin­ter­est tabs

Cross pro­mot­ing your social media chan­nels increases your engage­ment with fans because every­one has a favorite, right? I recently used Short­Stack to add both a  LinkedIn and Pin­ter­est tab to my Face­book busi­ness page.

Short­Stack is a web-based Face­book appli­ca­tion site that makes it easy to add these Face­book tabs using tem­plates. It’s not dif­fi­cult, but there are a lot of steps, so I made a video to doc­u­ment the process to hope­fully make it eas­ier for others.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Posted in Social Media | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

4 Ways To Have A Successful Business Retreat With Yourself

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Kristy

I’d lost my busi­ness mojo and my momen­tum was stalled. I needed to reset my busi­ness and I didn’t know how. So I went on a busi­ness retreat — with myself. I needed a few key ingre­di­ents to make my retreat a suc­cess includ­ing: a) want­ing to do this; b) a pic­turesque and quiet loca­tion; c) an agenda of what I wanted to accom­plish; and some way to spark my cre­ativ­ity when it stalled. Con­tinue read­ing →

Posted in Entrepreneurship | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Facebook: What Do I Post and How Often?

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Kristy

You have your Face­book fan page set up like you’re sup­posed to, but now you’re think­ing, “What the heck am I going to post and how often?”

You’ve heard that peo­ple want to be enter­tained on Face­book, but that’s tough to do all day, every day. Experts tell us that images have very suc­cess­ful engage­ment, but too much of any one strat­egy can become bor­ing to fans.

And remem­ber, your audi­ence will be unique to your busi­ness and you’ll want to tweak your mix­ture of con­tent based on your fan’s response. (You deter­mine what they like when you look at your ana­lyt­ics such as the Insights on Facebook.)

To get you started, check out my Social Media Man­age­ment Con­tent Mix Pyra­mid based on my expe­ri­ence of what cre­ates the most engage­ment (likes, com­ments, shares, responses to calls to action), which is your goal.

As you see, you’ll want to focus on:

ItsVirtuallyDoneSocialMediaPyramid3

Social Media Con­tent Mix

Con­tinue read­ing →

Posted in Social Media | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

Excel With A Dual Monitor: Opening A New Window

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Kristy

This is a super quick video if you are frus­trated as I was with open­ing a new Excel ses­sion for your dual mon­i­tor. I have Win­dows 8 and Excel 2010 and use Ultra­mon (love!) to move win­dows from mon­i­tor to mon­i­tor. Hope this helps you out.

YouTube Preview Image
Posted in Training | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

11 Ways to Make Your Facebook Post Go Viral

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Kristy

What made this image on Face­book go viral (one mil­lion likes in 7 hours) so quickly?

Source: Facebook: TwoGirlsAndAPuppy

1. It’s Cute!

No one will deny that this pic­ture of five chil­dren plead­ing for a dog is cute. The father Ryan Cordell, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish, said as much on a radio inter­view (Note 1). Iron­i­cally, I heard about this post on the radio, not on Face­book where I spend a fair amount of time.

2. The Inter­net Likes a Challenge

The hand­made poster says, “He doesn’t think we can do it!” Inter­est­ingly, Cordell stud­ies viral media of the 19th cen­tury –yes, they had media go viral too — just in a dif­fer­ent way (Note 1). And as Cordell told radio inter­viewer, Jian Ghome­shi, the inter­net likes a good-natured chal­lenge. In this case it’s a per­ceived “bat­tle against a stingy father.” Con­tinue read­ing →

Posted in Social Media | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Are You Missing An Opportunity On Pinterest?

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Kristy

When I logged into Pin­ter­est today, it asked me if I wanted to ver­ify my web­site address. I thought, “Sure,” not even sure about why I was doing this.  Then they said that I needed to upload an HTML file to my web­site. Most of us have got­ten pretty com­fort­able with Word­Press, so we don’t have to do a lot of upload­ing out­side of Word­Press.  I had to scratch my head for a moment on how to do that because it had been awhile! Con­tinue read­ing →

Posted in Social Media | Tagged | 4 Comments

Starting a Home-Based Business Checklist

Posted on December 16, 2012 by Kristy

Now that you’ve decided to start a home-based busi­ness ser­vice, you’re excited and love to think about set­ting your own sched­ule, nam­ing your busi­ness, select­ing a cool look­ing logo — the fun stuff right? And then maybe the over­whelm hits because there are SO many things to think about. To that end, I’ve cre­ated a check­list — not in any order because every­one has his/her own process — of tasks you want to com­plete before you go live with your business:

  1. Busi­ness Plan:
    Many don’t want to take the time to think about their mis­sion, goals and objec­tives, but really it’s the PROCESS of answer­ing these tough ques­tions that is the ben­e­fit. The Mar­ket­ing Plan por­tion of the Busi­ness Plan forces you to fig­ure out how to get clients in a con­crete way, and with­out them you don’t have a busi­ness. The Finan­cial Plan sec­tion helps you deter­mine if your rate for ser­vices and fore­casted rev­enue will bring you the level of income you need as well as deter­mine your break even point. After com­plet­ing your plan hon­estly, you’ll be able to tell if your busi­ness vision is viable. Con­tinue read­ing →
Posted in Training | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Maybe we are too connected?

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Kristy

It’s not easy get­ting a full night’s sleep these days, is it? I just had a bout of insom­nia myself, and it’s tough to func­tion after many sleep­less nights. Let’s remind our­selves that it is okay to shut down from time to time, really!

As Thanks­giv­ing approaches, I hope to step away from the com­puter and smart phone, con­nect with fam­ily mem­bers and friends, appre­ci­ate what I’m grate­ful for (a lot!) includ­ing: a good night’s sleep! (Maybe this info­graphic will help you too!) Con­tinue read­ing →

Posted in Lifestyle | Tagged | Leave a comment

Affiliate Management Program Tips for Success

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Kristy

If you have a prod­uct, pro­gram, or event, you can start an affil­i­ate pro­gram to expand your reach and increase your sales. Affil­i­ates will bring in sales from their sphere, bring­ing in cus­tomers that are beyond your reach and will get a cut for their trou­ble. Both par­ties ben­e­fit, but since an affil­i­ate pro­gram takes time to man­age, here are some tips to help ensure suc­cess. (This arti­cle assumes that you have already set up your affil­i­ate pro­gram in your shop­ping cart [affil­i­ate link], have some affil­i­ates, and are ready to promote.)

  1. Make it easy for new affil­i­ates to sign up.
    Sev­eral times I have found a prod­uct or ser­vice that I really like and would like to pro­mote by adding a ban­ner to my web­site, but it is dif­fi­cult to find their affil­i­ate pro­gram. Make it easy — a bot­tom nav­i­ga­tion link works. Con­tinue read­ing →
Posted in Marketing | Tagged | Leave a comment

Social Media Manager Certification

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Kristy
Kristy Schnabel, Social Media Manager

Kristy Schn­abel, Social Media Manager

I’m pleased to announce that I just passed my exam last night and am now a Cer­ti­fied Social Media Manager!

Some may say, “What’s that mean?” I’m going to attempt a def­i­n­i­tion here: Social Media uses web-based and mobile tech­nolo­gies for the exchange of infor­ma­tion. Social soft­ware such as Face­book, Twit­ter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. enable peo­ple to share, learn, laugh, edu­cate, and more. Small busi­nesses and clients of mine use social media to engage with their poten­tial clients and then gen­tly mar­ket services/products to them.

I attended The Social Media Man­ager School (affil­i­ate link) with social media experts Phyl­lis Khare and Andrea Vahl. Phyl­lis is a speaker, trainer, and author of two “Dum­mies” books about social media mar­ket­ing. Andrea, aka Grandma Mary, is a coach, speaker and social media strate­gist as well as the Com­mu­nity Man­ager for The Social Media Exam­iner. Con­tinue read­ing →

Posted in Social Media | 2 Comments