Marketing

Growing Your Business And Getting PR Just By Naming Your Business

As I claim my shed as my studio office for here and Katie James, Inc. projects (and I mean really claim, more so than in before at the start of the pandemic), it occurs to me as I hang my Katie James tin shingle made by the artist Tin Fish in Maine, that this sign is where Tin Shingle got its name.

Back when Sabina and I had to rename our company because a big magazine who is all about entrepreneurship came after us when our name was ‘Preneur (it’s not your fault, @heyfeifer it’s corporate). That cease and disuse letter was the best thing to happen to us, because it made us rethink and commit to what we really offered creators.

Business owners are creators. It’s a more fun word to say sometimes than “business owner.” We realized we are really only about getting the word out. Yes, we taught how to do that in different ways: PR, Website Design and Content, and Social. But that education plus our special sauce of empowerment was what made Tin Shingle what it is.

Sabina and I each went on our own now, and you can see Tin Shingle’s latest video TuneUp about that back in our Member Center on the Tin Shingle website. But that’s the story of how this sign I had made for my fist, core, and namesake business, Katie James, Inc., influenced this, my second business, Tin Shingle. Both my children.

Ok. Carry on! Let’s get some PR and grow your business. Join Tin Shingle today to get into the groove! >

New Media Contact: A Writer At Morning Brew

Sketch for Morning Brew of Jamie Wilde

Sketch for Morning Brew of Jamie Wilde

Jamie Wilde has been writing for Morning Brew since February of 2021. Prior to that, Wilde was the Editorial Coordinator for Morning Brew from October 2019 - February 2021. She has also worked for YPulse, Los Angeles Confidential magazine, hollyscoop.com, and The Hollywood Reporter.

Morning Brew is a daily email newsletter covering the latest news from Wall St. to Silicon Valley. It costs nothing to use and it’s quite entertaining! Each morning email has a recap of the stock market, a few short briefs on the most important business news of the day, and a little bit of lifestyle content.

Jamie Wilde is “always looking for a new opportunity to learn about other perspectives and where her personal experience can add something meaningful to the conversation.” Her interests include Art, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Shopping, Video Games, Media, weather, Crypto, Technology, apps, diversity, Inclusion, Entertainment.

Find Jamie Wilde in TIn Shingle’s Media Contact Database along with many others!

Skim Through Tin Shingle's Media Contacts Database

Tin Shingle's Media Contact Database makes your research a little easier. It’s easy! Log into your member account at Tin Shingle, and go to the Media Contact Idea Center. From there, you'd see a box that says "Areas of Interest," and you'd start typing LA or Los Angeles. A list of suggestions would begin coming up. Done! See how to search for media contacts HERE.

Tin Shinglers with the Media Kit Membership get access to any and all Media Contacts. Apply for Tin Shingle membership today to get access!

Get Ideas

Need ideas of why to pitch a specific magazine? Start a conversation in Tin Shingle's Pitch Whisperer. Or tune in every other Wednesday to our members-only group consulting session, Pitch Whisperer TuneUp.

You can also get private, one-on-one help through Private Training.

Tin Shinglers with the Media Kit Membership get access to any and all Media Contacts. Apply for Tin Shingle membership today to get access!

You can also get private, one-on-one help through Private Training.

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!

Is The Facebook Ad Boycott Still Happening? And Should It Be Forever?

During the past week, more than 500 companies, like The North Face and Rei, joined the campaign of boycotting Facebook ads with the intent of placing pressure on Facebook to take a stronger stance against hate speech.

The current boycott is like nothing Facebook has experienced before. The Anti-Defamation League launched a #StopHateForProfit campaign asking companies to stop their advertising. “Let’s send Facebook a powerful message: Your profits will never be worth promoting hate, bigotry, racism, antisemitism and violence,” the campaign’s site reads. Hundreds of companies joined in. “When we re-engage will depend on Facebook’s response,” Levi Strauss CMO Jen Sey wrote in a blog post.

This began in June after advocacy groups and others began pushing for Facebook to refrain from sharing hateful content such as ads featuring nazi symbols from President Donald Trump and white nationalist content from Red Ice TV. More specifically, calls were spurred by posts from President Trump responding to the demonstrations against police brutality and the death of George Floyd, including one in which he suggested the “THUGS” protesting should be shot.

Owner & Co-Founder, Katie James, shared that,

“Facebook Ads have long been censored. The reason that they state is that the content is too controversial or divisive. In my experience, this has been for an inter-faith group meeting after a church received white supremacy flyers posted onto their church in October 2017, and most recently, an article about Beacon’s Mayor giving his decision about moving a memorial bench. Both were declined to be paid.

So for Facebook to say that they are not into censorship is false. They do censor. And they should censor. All media publications should and do censor. One cannot possibly publish everything, so natural censorship happens all of the time when left on the cutting room floor. But to not censor hate speech of the president of the United States is bias and wrong. Clearly they support it, if they will not censor it.”

Tin Shingle has always advocated not to put all of your eggs into one basket. Right now, Facebook is not only controlling the levers with which you can reach people, but it is developing the feeling of a bad taste in your mouth. They’ve had that stigma for years, but their recent lack of censorship added to the amount of frustration that people unleash on that platform, leaves it all gross. Do you really want your brand to be there?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees: "My guess is that all of these advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough," according to The Information.

Postcards Through The Mail Slot As Effective As 10 Instagram Posts

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Giddy to receive this postcard from the Beacon, NY based artist, Anna West, who is such a diligent promoter of her artwork. Anna was a guest expert on a Tin Shingle TineUp talking about how she uses Instagram to sell her artwork using the good old fashion conversation way, not even using the formal Instagram ad tool way.

Anna pays very close attention to the beauty around her and how she wants to paint it. She also pays attention to how her audience responds to which of her paintings, and paints more of what they love. Anna lives in a lot in hashtags to get in front of the right person who would be interested in a type of painting.

Pictured here is the ever-effective postcard that came through our mail door here at the Tin Shingle Office. Anna is a participating artist in Beacon’s Open Studios on May 18-19. One of the best interactive art events of the year in Beacon! While Anna’s painterly face has crossed my eyes many times in Instagram, it is this postcard that left the deepest impression on me. The behind the scenes thoughts of my brain when I received it was: “Oh my gosh, Beacon Open Studios is just around the corner, and Anna has opened her studio!”

Our sister media company A Little Beacon Blog is a proud sponsor of Beacon Open Studios.

This is the actual door of Tin Shingle’s office. We do have a mail slot!

This is the actual door of Tin Shingle’s office. We do have a mail slot!

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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Taming The ADD That Is Your Phone - Killing Notifications

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Ever since I deleted Facebook from my phone this past Spring, I've been thinking about distractions, and how nice it is to not be distracted by all of the inner mumblings of all of the people out there that I have access to in that platform.

Scratch that. Ever since I read the feature piece in Variety magazine last Spring about children and addiction to devices, I've been more aware of how much time I've been staring at my phone. Or of my kids staring at the phone.

Finally, when I was enjoying the latest new feature from Instagram - creating Instastories by picking stickers and writing words in different fonts to be placed onto the image - I was getting constantly interrupted by Text messages and News notifications. So much so, that when they'd pop in at the top of my screen, I'd accidentally click on them because I was already going to click on the Font selection tool in Instastory, or to research more gif stickers of sparkly stars.

Killing the Text and News Notification PopUps Saved Me

And that's when I killed my Notifications for Text and News. Entirely. Not set on Temporary mode, where it blips up there for a few seconds and then disappears rather than waiting until you physically pay attention to it and swipe it away. It's just gone now.

Don't worry - they show up on my Lock screen, and my phone vibrates when a text comes in. Oh yeah - over a decade ago, I silenced all notifications on my desktop and mobile device. If you really want to drive yourself crazy, keep all of the sound alerts on. Someone who texts me for the first time (aka not a text-versation I know I'm in) might need to wait an hour or 15 minutes for me to reply to text if I don't feel it in my purse. And you know what? That's OK! We cannot be available on-demand all the time!

Convenience is getting in the way of our brains. Notifications like this are definitely triggering anyone with a hint of ADD tendencies to not focus or stay in their creative zone of a thought to complete a task with any amount of satisfaction. Want to know why you're never done in Facebook? Because there are constantly new notifications popping up in there telling you about who said what and which event they are going to.

Turn it all of, and Facebook will start emailing you about it, even though you've unsubscribed from that new type email marketing they just created.  Literally yesterday I got an email from Facebook: "Katie: Did you know that Susie just commented on Abby's post?" I've unsubscribed from this type of new email notification several times, to obviously no avail.

Help Yourself Market Better

You can be a great marketer in this age of distractions, but relying on tech companies to solve your problems of distraction won't work. They designed the distractions. If they design more tools to curb the distractions, you can see how that doesn't work. So. Turn them off.

It's nice of Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, to speak out as a PSA about the over-use of devices, how people are using the device they produce way more than they think they are (how can they not? it's a phone, a computer, a camera, a mailbox, a video game, a TV remote) while Cook was on a media tour promoting Apple's new feature, Screen Time, that tracks everything you do on the phone, including when you physically pick it up (no thanks!). As tech reporter Seth Fiegerman put it in his article for CNN Tech: "Welcome to 2018, when tech companies hold major press events to introduce innovative ways to use their products less."

Remember a time when you just had a phone. A land line, that might have been mounted to your kitchen wall. What did you do when you weren't on the phone? You took pictures outside with your camera. You drew. You kicked a soccer ball with your foot instead of flicking it across the screen with a random person maybe you are connected to in a soccer app.

Your brain will thank you. You will stay informed. You will still be able to check the news headlines, or see them on your "Lock" screen when your phone is sitting idle next to you at all times. You'll just be calmer, less frazzled, and you may complete a task. With satisfaction.

The Takeaway for Marketers - Headlines Are More Important Than Ever

If you remove several touch-points for notifications, you'll rely more than ever on short-form writing. The headline for a news story. The subject line in the email. Don't worry - this doesn't mean we are reading less. In fact, we may start reading more because we aren't getting interrupted. But - the trigger to get us into an article will be the headline, tweet, or email subject line.

Tin Shingle has a Training TuneUp for that. It's called "The Art of the Subject Line" and you'll want to follow the guidance presented in order to write spot-on email subjects that keep your open rates high, and your audience keeping up with what your business is doing.

The Art of the Email Subject Line

The most important part of your entire e-newsletter is the subject line. How you write the subject line will dictate the chances of your subscribers opening the newsletter you worked so hard on. In this Training TuneUp, find out what kind of subject lines worked from real-life examples, and why. There is a method to the madness, and when done right, your sales could increase with the subject line alone.

So About Those Privacy Policy and GDPR Emails...

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What Is This GDPR All About?

As a regular person, you are probably getting lots of email from companies you know - or don't know - telling you they updated their Privacy Policy, or are asking you to opt-in to continue following their newsletters.

As a business owner, you are probably getting email alerts from companies you pay services for or use to run your business, such as MailChimp, Squarespace, Typepad, Google Analytics, Recurly, PayPal, MindBody, and many others.

A huge law was created in the EU back in 2016 that demands major protections for people from companies who collect their personal information on the Internet and use it in some way. That law gave everyone 2 years to comply, and the Big Day of Compliance starts tomorrow, Friday, May 25, 2018. Even though it was created for people in the EU, it applies to businesses everywhere who may have clients or readers in the EU. Plus, laws like this tend to be mimicked later on by other countries years later, like the US.

Where Should You Start?

Maybe you have started complying already. If you work at a large company with a legal department and IT team, you have probably been at this for two years. If you're an attorney, you're probably well versed in what different companies need to do to be in compliance.

If you're neither of those, you're going to need to start reading, and we have a few recommendations for you. Businesses who need to pay close attention to this are those who do things like:

  • Accept money over the internet.
  • Collect email addresses into a list or lists and then email those lists.
  • Move an email list from one place to another, like from a shopping cart to a newsletter program.
  • Target people by using a 3rd party Internet program that "profiles" people by watching their behavior on your website or newsletters, and reporting back on what readers or customers did or didn't do, and how you can market to them in a most exact way.
  • Use marketing tools like "pixels" from other websites like Facebook or Google Analytics to better understand what people are doing on your website, or to re-market to them.
  • And lots of other things. These are only a few.

Start at the Very Beginning

We like to start at the very beginning. With the actual law. You can find that here (thanks goes to my cousin Will Hellmuth who is an attorney with Davis Write and Tremaine LLP who sent this link:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32016R0679

That firm wrote a great guide that gives a helpful overview of GDPR prep:
"Time To Update Your Privacy Policy for GDPR"

MailChimp, who many of you use for sending newsletters, has also provided helpful information from their legal counsel:
"New MailChimp Tools to Help With GDPR"

Listen to the Articles!

This is all a lot to read. So we recommend listening! Have your Firefox browser read it to you. Install this new plug-in from Firefox, and with the click of a button, a lady will read a web page to you. Wash dishes. Fold laundry. Go fishing. Knit something. So helpful!

Bring your membership beyond this article, and subscribe to our Community Membership Level 1. You'll be able to connect with other Tin Shingle Members in our Private Facebook Group and forums we call "The Boards."

You can upgrade or downgrade at any time, so if you're ramping up your PR efforts and want Media Contacts, or if you want to stream all of the TuneUps for free, you can do these things - on your terms.