Tech – Long Island Chick

3 Must-Have Photo Apps for Instagram Rockstardom!

Kathleen — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 11:29:05 +0000

I just adore Instagram for connecting with new people and marketing my business! Instagram is a graphic-based social network and as such, you want to foster engagement with your Instagram Followers. Creating graphics that people will like and share is the name of the game. These 3 apps should be on your phone NOW! Adding text to your images is a fabulous way to start the conversation and get your images liked and shared. I like to use a combination of these apps which I illustrate below. They really make it a snap to create engaging graphics on the fly!

Wordswag

($3.99 on app store) Oh this app is a must! Create your own inspirational photos and watch your engagement go through the roof! You can use the apps graphics or, for better exposure, use your own products in the background and adjust the transparency. There are a ton of font combinations to use so you can always create something unique and on the fly.

I love creating subtle sponsoring posts! Here I used Wordswag to create a welcome message for a new Miche team member and superimposed it on top of our February 2016 Starter Kit (which is fantabulous if I do say so myself!). Not only does she get a warm and fuzzy feeling from her new Big Apple team, but her friends and family are notified of her new business venture!

Phonto

(free!) Phonto lets you add text to any image and it’s FREE! You can choose from a number of different fonts, styles, colors, sizes and you can even include a drop shadow. Add your website at the bottom of your graphics for branding – great way to get your name out there when people share your images.

Another not-so-subtle sponsoring post. While I used Wordswag to create the message (I love the look of the combination of the fonts), I branded the image with my website URL with Phonto.

Crossing out a phrase and substituting a different word is an excellent technique to place emphasis on that word. I used Phonto do exactly that in this graphic. Try next time!

Facie

($3.99 on app store). Photos featuring faces in Instagram are more liked than others. But, let’s face it, our selfies may leave something (or a lot) to be desired. That’s where Facie comes in. This app focuses in on the face you select (yes you can adjust each face in the photo separately) and you can tweak skin corrections, make your face leaner, make your eyes brighter and a host of other fixes, filters and enhancers. If you are over 40, make sure this app is in your Instagram arsenal!

I’m going out on a limb here and sharing my “before” picture. Now Facie is a powerful app and you must be careful not to go overboard with the skin clearing feature otherwise you will look like a plastic doll. I like to keep it somewhat real, just not too real.

Give these apps a shot and mix up your Instagram feed a bit. Do you have a favorite photo app – please share!

The Offended Thing Has Got to Go!

Kathleen — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 22:13:53 +0000

What happened to our world? Since when are we such an offended culture? Case in point – I did one of those inane tests on Facebook. They are meant to be funny – it’s random. Here is a screenshot of one I recently did called “Be Like Bill”:

Now, correct me if I am wrong, this little meme is poking fun at those people who purposely shave off their eyebrows and draw them back in. They look ridiculous. There are posts full of silly pictures drawing dots on themselves or strange eyebrow expressions. You know you have seen them.

So I get a comment on my post from someone I am not even friends with. Someone who felt the need to throw her 2 cents in. Here is a screenshot of the comment (I’m not going to even get into the awful grammar):

Seriously? This woman doesn’t even know me and she automatically thinks I’m making fun of cancer patients?! What kind of a person assumes that?!
I’m not a malicious person. But, I do love a good laugh. Our culture has become far too sensitive and it seems they are drawing the line between comedy and offensive way too conservatively. We should lighten up and not think the worst of everyone – it makes the world a happier place. Or, at the very least, don’t comment on someone’s timeline you don’t even know!

I’m going to continue to post things I find funny on my Facebook timeline and perhaps one day, I won’t get a snarky comment like this one.

Vendor Events: Friend or Foe?

Kathleen — Tue, 03 Nov 2015 14:08:32 +0000

Most direct sellers, eager to share their new business, will sign up for every vendor event they come across. Disappointment ensues after they spend money for vendor tables and displays, and hours on their feet with no sales. Are there other ways to meet people and get your product out there? Yes – it just takes time to develop and I will share my system for building your own personal ecosystem for your business in a future post.

I did this online seminar for my Miche team but posted it on YouTube because really any direct seller or entrepreneur can benefit from the tips I share. Rule #1: You are not at vendor events to sell – you are there to qualify leads. “What?!”, you say! That’s right – leads are the goal. Sales at Vendor Events are short term but people, we are after the long term. We want good, solid leads for future business, parties and team members.

So learn how to select the right vendor events for you and how to qualify leads to maximize your time at the event:

What are your thoughts on vendor events? Do you find them worth the time and money?

MIA All Summer and Disaster

Kathleen — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 13:51:24 +0000

So this is the first time, since May that I actually visited this blog. I can’t say that I have been off on wonderful adventures, sipping cocktails beach side during the summer, etc. Nope. Had a pleasant summer with my kids – stayed local and went to the beach, hung out around the pool and played World of Warcraft (more than I would care to admit to!). Oh, and dealt with my Windows Home Server crash. Crash??? Yeah – the system that backs up every computer in the house and is supposed to be our safety net, well crashed. Both disk drives started to fail and ALL OF MY DATA was on those drives. Pictures, videos, thousands of dollars worth of digital scrapbook supplies – all locked up on a 2 TB drive. Most people don’t even know what a TB or terabyte is. Its a shitload of storage in a nutshell. And me, Queen of the Geeks and should have known better, did not have my photos from 2010 and later backed up. Bad girl.

Sigh. I’m going to fast forward past all the gnashing of teeth, hair pulling and general despair to the good news: I recovered all of my precious memories. Every last one of them. And, I didn’t have to remortgage my house to have some astronaut recover my data in a clean room. I used two programs – Knoppix and Clonezilla and they literally saved me not only my sanity but thousands of dollars. Now data recover is not for the faint of heart nor the average computer illiterate. Both these programs are Linux based – they don’t use Windows for an operating system. Talk about stepping out of my comfort zone. The are also open source so they did not cost me a dime.

The problem with recovering data from the disk drive was that although the drive showed up in Windows, I could not explore the drive to pull the data. CloneZilla and Knoppix allowed me to do just that. Folder by folder, I transferred my data to an external hard drive (EHD) which was a slow, painful process. Thankfully, the damaged files were ones I had backed up. I’m still not even done though – my iTunes library is on that disk but I’ll get to that eventually. The irreplaceable data was my primary concern.

So now I’m going to be a good girl and come up with a back-up plan. Scary thing is, there is no foolproof method. During my hours of frantic research I came across a sobering fact: all media is destined to fail. All media…did that sink in yet? You back up to a CD or a DVD religiously? Eventually they will degrade and fail. EHD backup – FAIL. The only real safe way to safeguard your photos is to PRINT THEM OUT. Well, in light of this, I am going to create multiple backup systems – DVDs (multiple copies), EHD and an online backup system (which I need to investigate).

So that was my summer – how was yours?

Blog Savvy: Are You Thanking Your Commenters?

Kathleen — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:09:22 +0000

I wanted to share with you one important tip for increasing your readership – thanking commenters. Comments are the bread and butter of a blog – evidence that you have created a conversation. If you aren’t commenting on blogs you read, please start doing so. Without comments, bloggers feel like they are talking to an empty room. Don’t be a lurker and start commenting if you want others to do the same for you!

Commenting doesn’t have to take up much of your time either. Just make sure that the comment is pertinent to the post you are commenting on and whatever you do, don’t spam! It is ok to put your website link as a sort of signature but make sure your comment references the discussion and gives your point of view. You do need some substance!

A great way to engage a new commenter, is to thank them personally. Now, many of you may not have the time to do that each and every time a new commenter pops up on your blog. That’s ok – there is a WordPress plugin to help you – Comment Relish. Comment Relish is a WordPress plugin designed to send an e-mail message to users who comment on your website who have never commented before by grabbing their email address that they entered. The message sent to the user is defined within the plugin’s preferences. Numerous tags have been integrated to allow for information to be included in the message easily (I.E.: timestamp, author name, comment, ETC.). I often forget that I even have this plugin installed because it only takes a few minutes to set up, then you never have to think of it again. It’s a small gesture, but I’ve received many responses to the email (they go to your admin email address) which has started up valuable conversations between me and my readers.

So start engaging your commenters and create that conversation (but remember to start commenting yourself!)!

Oh, if you don’t have a WordPress blog (self-hosted) and you want one, talk to me!