Online Class: The Truth About Wordpress Websites

We're pulling website expert Randy Caruso out of his design and development shop to tell us the truth about WordPress websites. Randy specializes in WordPress websites, and knows the pros and cons of building in WordPress versus the other options out there. Here at Tin Shingle, we have heard from business owners over the years who love - and don't love - the platform. What frightens us the most is when businesses select WordPress for their website because they think it will solve all of their problems.

Will WordPress Solve All Of Your Website Problems?

We're going to myth-bust a few of the most commonly asked questions we hear from business owners, including:

  • Is WordPress the answer to my website problems? Will my online life be sunshine and rainbows?

  • Does WordPress come with better SEO?

  • (hint: NO! but it does have a pretty sweet plugin to help you get there)

  • Shopify vs WooCommerce - which is better?

  • I bought a WordPress template for $50, so I’m good, right?

  • What will I need a developer for? What will I need a designer for?

  • Will I enjoy logging in and making changes?

  • (Hint: it depends on who sets it up for you!)

  • What is WordPress hosting and why do I care?

  • (Hint: there is no such thing)

  • Is it true that WordPress websites get hacked into a lot?

  • I like to tinker with my website. Is WordPress DIY-friendly?

Online Class: Talking to GQ, Brides, and xoJane Contributing Writer Sarah Crow

Sarah Crow, who holds a masters degree in digital publishing from NYU, is a no-nonsense kind of writer. Just check out what she writes for GQ and xoJane. Pretty much, anything she says goes! Which is why if she includes your brand in one of her photo roundups or essays, her readers will take notice!

We interviewed Sarah to get into the head of a contributing writer for not one magazine, but several, all at one time. Sarah is a New York-based writer and editor. Her work has been published by GQ, MSN, MTV, About.com, Bridal Guide, Seventeen, Organic Style, PopEater, Lemondrop, xoJane, Xfinity TV, and Wetpaint.

She will share tips and insight on:

  • How to broaden the audience of your business.

  • An inside look at editorial meetings, setting the scene for what it's like interacting with editors.

  • How to use editorial calendars to craft story ideas and make the most out of your pitches.

  • Getting into Mothers Day Gift Guides

  • The importance of creating and maintain relationships.

  • Channeling inner inspiration and confidence in your business.

BONUS: Sarah shares with us what you need to do with your pitch to get into her stories or photo roundups. And why she prefers pitches from small businesses

Online Class: Finding Ideas in Editorial Calendars, Then Finding the Right Media Contacts

Tin Shingle is an idea generating source. Resources available to members help business owners and marketers get ideas for ways to spin their businesses into magazines, TV programs, podcasts, etc.

One of our tools available to members is the Editorial Calendar collection for national print magazines. This is a list of monthly themes that magazines are working on that help jump-start you to know when may be the right time for a story. Members of Tin Shingle research through that list, get an idea, and then think: "Ok, now who do I email?"

It's that step - "Now Who Do I Email?" - that's we are covering in this Training TuneUp.

Sneak peak of what you will learn/see in this TuneUp:

  • Take a live look inside Tin Shingles unique collection of Editorial Calendars and Media Contacts.

  • Learn how to use Editorial Calendars in your PR offense game.

  • Get inside an Editor/Writer's head on what a winning pitch involves.

  • Pitching tips for men and to men.

  • Who really is the best fit to contact at your target magazine/Tv/outlet and should I pitch more than one?

  • Who you can contact at Tin Shingle if you cant find the magazine/contact you need.

Online Class: How To Be Your Own Blogger For Your Business

Tin Shingle's co-founder Katie Hellmuth Martin is not only a business owner, she is also a professional blogger, having her own lifestyle blog years ago when blogging was just catching on, followed by ghost blogging for business websites, and currently as the blogging publisher of a local online media source. Blogging can be the fastest, most colorful, most long-term way of getting the word out about your business, and Katie is going to share with you her secrets on this week's TuneUp.

COVERED IN THIS WEBINAR

  • How your business blog and your Facebook business page work together.

  • How blogs reach readers - those readers being your clients, customers, and new business prospects.

  • How a blog can get the word out about a new class, new product, or awesome-sauce that your business creates or provides.

  • Why a status update at your Facebook page is just a blip and misses opportunities.

  • Why blogs matter for social media.

  • How to think up new ideas for your blog to keep it fresh.

  • Easy tools for how to start a blog.

  • Newsletters vs blogs and how they work together.

  • Why Google will love your blog and recommend it to people.

An inside look at how Tin Shingle's Blog Planning and Production Calendar will reduce anxiety about blogs, and help you get work done.

HOW TO WATCH

Anyone can watch a Tin Shingle TuneUp from their computer, mobile phone or tablet. The process is different for Premium Members and the public.

MEMBERS OF TIN SHINGLE

Stream any TuneUp Webinar anytime with your Tin Shingle membership. No need to purchase it, this TuneUp is ready to play from this page! When you are logged in, you will see a big screen. Press play and start taking notes! Not a member yet? You really should be...

NON-MEMBERS OF TIN SHINGLE

Once you buy a TuneUp, you own it forever. The video or audio recording will appear on the TuneUp page that you just purchased from, and all you need to do is press play!

ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Katie Hellmuth Martin is co-founder of Tin Shingle and publisher of A Little Beacon Blog. Since 2005 when she hung her own shingle as a designer of websites and accessories, Katie has worked with businesses of all sizes to grow their digital footprints using newsletters, company blogs, user experience, social media, and a creative look at SEO performance. For Tin Shingle, she is lead designer, community membership nurturer, columnist, and director of partnerships and advertising.

Online Class: How To Be Your Own Blogger For Your Business

Branding experts told you that you needed a blog, right? But what are you going to blog about? Watch this TuneUp and come away with ideas galore. Tin Shingle's co-founder Katie will teach you how to identify an idea that is right in front of you, waiting to be blogged about to showcase your business and make people want what you sell. Also covered is the SEO value of your blog posts and how with little effort, in order to get your business in front of people searching the web, not just social streams.

COVERED IN THIS TUNEUP

  • Why blogging about your business is a part of your marketing plan.

  • Where to get easy ideas for great blog posts.

  • The #1 most important thing you must do on your blog.

  • Blog post ideas for a photographer.

  • Blog post ideas for a fine art printer.

  • Blog post ideas for a product designed to hold color tubes in hair salons.

  • Blog post ideas for a pottery studio that sells classes, studio space, and pottery.

  • Blog post ideas for the sexiest pair of yoga pants on the market.

HOW TO WATCH

Anyone can watch a Tin Shingle TuneUp from their computer, mobile phone or tablet. The process is different for premium members and the public.

MEMBERS OF TIN SHINGLE

Stream any TuneUp Webinar anytime with your Tin Shingle membership. No need to purchase it, this TuneUp is ready to play from this page! When you are logged in, you will see a big screen. Press play and start taking notes!

NON-MEMBERS OF TIN SHINGLE

Once you buy a TuneUp, you own it forever. The video or audio recording will appear on the TuneUp page that you just purchased from, and all you need to do is press play!

ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Katie Hellmuth Martin is the Co-Founder of Tin Shingle and is committed to educating small businesses in common sense, yet sexy ways of marketing through search engines, and online branding. Small businesses from Main Street, to big business have relied on Katie for insight and forward thinking approaches to using today's technology to lock in online branding to increase sales. As lead producer and digital strategist at InHouse Design Media, Katie has developed e-commerce and content based websites, and devised SEO and social strategies for businesses of all types, including retail and service. She has managed the traffic flow and sales process for websites during features on The Today Show, Good Morning America, and Daily Candy. She is also the publisher of the local media source, A Little Beacon Blog. Katie speaks and teaches SEO and online marketing, and has been featured in Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, New York Daily News, and other publications. Connect with her on Twitter via @KJPixelated and @TinShingle, on Instagram @katiejamespixelated and @TinShingle and on Google+.

Online Class: Squarespace Intro: Tips and Tricks

Squarespace can be pretty slick, but are some pieces of the puzzle just not clicking in for you?

Tin Shingle's co-founder Katie has been a website designer and producer for over eleven years under the company InHouse Design Media and has embraced Squarespace as one of the best DIY website platforms for businesses of large and small sizes. During this tuneup, you will get under the hood of Squarespace for a guided tour.

Topics covered include:

  • Using templates to build a unique DIY website for your brand

  • Best trick ever for service businesses who want to offer commerce for services they sell.

  • How to change big pieces of design in one click.

  • General principles behind how Squarespace works.

Online Class: Starting a Partnership: The Deer In Headlights Version

A text came in from a Tin Shingler: "Do you have any TuneUps about partnerships? I'm considering partnering up with someone, but I feel like a deer in headlights. So many questions!"

Many questions indeed. In this TuneUp, Tin Shingle's owner Katie shares her first-hand experiences with business partnerships she has had, as well as what she has seen work and not work within partnerships in various other business.

If you're thinking about or have been approached to partner, this is a TuneUp you want to listen to. If you have no plans to partner, you'll also want to listen to this TuneUp, because someone may come knocking at your door, and you'll have a head start on the questions that will race through your mind when that happens.

Questions covered include:

  • How do we figure out who does what?

  • How do you blend work styles?

  • How do you make decisions together?

  • How do you separate business from friendship?

  • Will we break up? Is a partnership a marriage that lasts forever?

  • And a few more important topics to consider.

Online Class: How To Have a Pop-Up Shop

This Training TuneUp explores all the bases you need to cover in order to have a productive pop-up shop. This webinar is led by Tin Shingle's owner, Katie, who plays host to several highly successful pop-up shops in Tin Shingle's Headquarters.

These one-time local events boost the promotion of your business, whether service or product based. You need to be having them! Learn how you can be successful with planning, promoting, and accomplishing these events during this webinar. We will take a look at pop-up shops that have thrived and discuss the following topics, roadblocks, and strategies:

  • How: The ins and outs of how to create a pop-up shop

  • Aggressive Marketing: Why and how you need to be over the top with marketing

  • Flyers: What your marketing flyers should contain, the best wording to use, and how to design them

  • Early Buzz: How to build up hype well in advance

  • Social Media: The big key that social media plays

  • Local: The most strategic ways target your audience: Local!

  • Pop-Up Within Your Existing Shop: Having a pop-up shop in your own storefront and how it can trigger traffic, sales, and buzz.

How To Watch

Once you buy a TuneUp, you own it forever. The video or audio recording will appear on the TuneUp page that you just purchased from, and all you need to do is press play!

Online Class TuneUp: Citizen Journalism 101 with Olivia Abel

CitizenJournalismUpdate.jpg

When the local news website, Gothamist died (and all of its sister city publications - but is coming back to life!) because its billionaire owner didn't agree with the editors and writers wanting to unionize, regular readers felt the fragility of local media. Suddenly, the news source showing and telling them what to do disappeared (it actually went dark - articles vanished). Writers of those articles pretty much collapsed onto the floor, because all of their work was gone, and any change they made through their articles was gone. All the proof they unearthed was gone (archives have since come back online, but still).

When this happened, the shock-wave through the community left Tin Shingle's owner, who is also the publisher of a local media blog, A Little Beacon Blog, was left with the realization that it's up to the people to get out information. What little number of journalists there are left in the industry can run with stories and investigate them, but research and investigations take time and money that many small publications don't have that much of. Citizens have been stepping up to do their own investigative work - Citizen Journalists.

Citizen Journalists are regular people who have been contributing to the local news scene by sharing their experiences via status updates, photos and speeches at public meetings. If citizens are taking on the role of informing, where their voices are heard and at times, taken as fact even if no fact was checked, what can these citizen journalist do to be even better and produce great news?

In this first installment of Citizen Journalism 101, we talk with Columbia School of Journalism graduate and top editor, Olivia Abel, who will reveal her training in Journalism Basics:

  • Who, What, Where, When, and Why: What’s important for a story

  • Basic Tenets of Good Reporting

  • Fact Checking and Libel Law

  • Recording Laws

  • Photos Treatment

Online Class TuneUp: Interview with Megh Knappenberger (Founder's Secret Series)

You're going to love this Valentine's Day present for you, business owners and artists!

“Just viewed this #tinshingletuneup on replay, and totally loved the biz/branding/creative deep dive”
— -Kathryn Brooks of She's Her Own CEO

On this Tin Shingle TuneUp episode, we interview the Kansas City based artist, Megh Knappenberger, who realized one day that she was tired of her day job (of running her own design agency), and wanted to pursue her art full time. After injuring her back, this young mother and sought after graphic designer was forced to take down-time. When it was time to return to her business, she found that she didn't want to. She listened to the whispers, and followed her desire to paint full time.

It wasn't by accident, and it took some serious grit - Kansas limestone to be exact.

The portrait that started it all.Photo Credit: Megh Knappenberger 

The portrait that started it all.
Photo Credit: Megh Knappenberger
 

Giving into her passion for painting, Megh produced a painting that friends and family loved, and caught the eye of someone who would be pivotal to making her big dreams of producing art for the collegiate level a reality. Months after she closed up shop on her business, and opened her painting studio, she made her first big sale of $150,000 for her series called "The Original Six", which is a series of paintings of all 6 Jayhawks (the icon for University of Kansas). The series is an officially licensed collection of Jayhawk paintings, which for an artist was nearly impossible to earn from the University. KU had a 30 year history of saying no to artists who wanted to reproduce the icon in various ways. When Megh showed the paintings to family and friends, the response was overwhelming, and Megh says, "it became bigger than me."

"The Original Six," Megh's debut series as a professional painter that garnered her a lot of KU love, PR, and a sale of the paintings that would enable her to continue painting.Photo Credit: Megh Knappenberger

"The Original Six," Megh's debut series as a professional painter that garnered her a lot of KU love, PR, and a sale of the paintings that would enable her to continue painting.
Photo Credit: Megh Knappenberger

It has garnered the attention of ESPN Kansas City, Kansas City Star, and The University Daily Kansan. A brand ambassadorship with NIALL watches was also formed.  To get even more excited for this interview, watch Megh's super short video about the making "The Original Six" here:

We take you through the timeline of how this all unfolded during this episode.

Created in collaboration with Niall Luxury Watches in Kansas City, the six originals have been purchased and the limited edition prints are currently available. Each is signed, numbered, and comes with the Rock Chalk.

Online Class: Introduction To Working With Personal Style Bloggers to Build Buzz, Branding and Sales

There's a new phenomenon in blogging, and it's becoming a visibilty and revenue booster for businesses big and small. Personal Style Bloggers have emerged as their own brands and are driving fashion and accessory sales as well as engaging in brand partnerships in a major way. They are the new celebrities and thousands of followers as well as traditional media are covering their styles in stories. So how do you get your brand onto a Personal Style Blogger's blog? And what should you expect once that happens? We'll tell you in this class!

Covered In This Podcast

  • What are Personal Style Bloggers and what type of content do they create?

  • What is the power and influence of this type of new “media”? Why should fashion and accessories brands be paying attention to and growing relationships with these bloggers?

  • Does the influence of these bloggers extend beyond their blogs into social media and other places?

  • How can a brand who hasn’t worked with a blogger like this before figure out how to find the blogs that would “match” their brand?

  • Is there a general rule of thumb as to how many of these bloggers should a business should work with?

  • How do you decide when to pursue more bloggers, or do you do it on a case by case basis?

  • Once a brand has picked a couple style bloggers to connect with, how do they begin their outreach? Email? Social Media?

  • Does a business need to "woo" a personal style blogger? Is there a strategy to approaching them? Do you recommend diving right in or are there other steps you should take before you reach out (follow them for awhile, tweet with them, etc.?)

  • What items do you need to have prepared and read to send to a personal style blogger in just a few clicks? Does a business need linesheets, samples or other tools?

  • What should an initial pitch to a style blogger look like? Is it the same as pitching any other fashion or accessories blogger?

  • Should a business expect to have to send product/sample to a style blogger as they’re hopefully going to wear it in photos? And will that blogger keep it?

  • If a business pitches a style blogger, and doesn't hear back right away, is that silence the answer of "no"? Do you keep emailing them? Does a brand wait months for them to follow up and respond? Should a business take their outreach to Twitter? What would you recommend?

  • (RELATED: For tips on best ways to communicate with stylists and celebrities on Twitter, click here to learn about our class, Using Twitter and Social Media to Boost Your PR Success)

  • After a brand gets press from a personal style blogger, what is the next step in growing the relationship with the style blogger? Do you send a thank you note? Gift? Email?

  • How do you recommend leveraging this style blog post for maximum impact?

  • How often can a business pitch a style blogger after they've landed a placement on their blog?

  • Is there a pay-for-play format with style bloggers for coverage on their blog?

How To Listen

Anyone can watch a Tin Shingle TuneUp from their computer, mobile phone or tablet. The process is different for Premium Members and the public.

MEMBERS OF TIN SHINGLE

Stream any TuneUp Webinar anytime with your Tin Shingle membership. No need to purchase it, this TuneUp is ready to play from this page! When you are logged in, you will see a big screen. Press play and start taking notes! Not a member yet? You really should be...

NON-MEMBERS OF TIN SHINGLE

Once you buy a TuneUp, you own it forever. The video or audio recording will appear on the TuneUp page that you just purchased from, and all you need to do is press play!

About Your Instructor

Jamie Werner, Moderne PressJamie Werner is the PR Director at Moderne Press, a San Francisco based boutique public relations agency, that represents brands in the fashion, home décor, and lifestyle industries. The media strategists at Moderne Press feel passionately about working with boutique and small business brands, and value establishing the brand's voice in order to heighten that brand’s visibility. Moderne Press has placed clients in a variety of media such as People StyleWatch, Real Simple, Elle Décor, House Beautiful, Martha Stewart Living, Better Homes & Gardens, Brides, InStyle, Good Morning America, Vanity Fair, DailyCandy and Apartment Therapy among many others. Follow Moderne Press on their website, www.modernepress.com, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.

Online Class TuneUp: PR Planning for February 2018

This is the Online Class for people who make their own luck. There are those who sit back and wait for opportunities, and then become one of hundreds of people who all try to get that opportunity at once. And then there are the rest of the success stories who are staying ahead of the media and suggesting ideas - suggesting ways that they may feature our business in a way that would delight, captivate, and solve their reader's problems. This class gives the latest story angle ideas that you can use right now in February to pitch your business for PR in April, May or June.

Newsflash: If you dream of your business being featured in a magazine, you can make this happen - on your own. All you need to do is email them with an idea. Ok, there's more to it than that, (like a really effective Subject Line, a Great Followup, and a Killer Idea), but the real trick is knowing the right time to pitch the right article angle.

Hot Topics Right Now: Magazines work 3-6 months ahead of time. So you must think that way also, and suggest a timely idea for the future. This doesn't mean simply planning ahead. This means actually executing it right now. Magazines are working on things like this right now:

  • Summer Fun

  • Camping

  • Star Wars Origami ("May the 4th Be With You" is coming up!)

  • Bridal Budgets

  • Disruptive and the revolutionary people behind the idea

  • Italian Cooking

Do you want more ideas like this? Listen to this Online Class, Tin Shignle's monthly PR Planning, which tells you what to be pitching in February if you want PR in May or June.

How Do We Know This? The folks at Tin Shingle are in touch with publishing houses to get their "Editorial Calendars," which are the monthly plans that magazines generally follow.

Normally the story angle deadlines are available to our Media Contacts and Editorial Calendar Level 4 Membership only. But during this PR Planning class series, we share with you some of these deadlines. Get in the class today and you'll hear them, and/or activate your Level 4 Membership level to access these and more any time you want.

Online Class TuneUp: SEO Tips & Tricks for Google Ratings

What happens when a creative writer gets a hankering for loving SEO and Google Rankings? Really great content that ranks highly in Google's search engine! Do you want to know something even better? In this class, you get an SEO expert that can explain it to you in plain English, using metaphors to help you understand that are way more fun than charts and graphs! Tin Shingle's owner, Katie Hellmuth Martin, is such a person, and will lead you through this Online Class. Here is what she will cover:

  • What is SEO

  • What Does and SEO Friendly Website Look Like (A step by step guide)

  • Tips For Service and Product Based Companies

  • How to use Social Platforms to Your Advantage

  • Why Google Reviews are important and how to get your clients to do it

  • Getting SEO from other websites

  • What the Normal Person is Seeing and how you to optimize that

  • Keyword Clues you can use to boost your rankings

  • When and If you should by an Ad

  • What to do when you rebrand

Listen to this online class to see how you are going to make your website SEO delicious for Google and get found by new and old customers and clients.

Online Class TuneUp: PR Planning for January 2018

The first of our monthly series kicks off the year!

It's no coincidence that you're reading about really cool businesses in magazines right now. But those businesses didn't sit back in their shops waiting for the media to come calling. They went for it and got it! Yes, they pitched their favorite glossy magazines, and some of them heard back and were featured.

This. Could. Be. You!!

Tin Shingle is your PR Campaign Partner in crime, and we've got your roadmap for what ideas to pitch to the media for this month. No, you don't need to be a professional PR person. You need to be a go-getter with fresh ideas. Listen to this TuneUp to get some of those ideas and some gumption to carry them out.

Covered in this Live TuneUp Broadcast:

  • Secret Ideas Magazines Want Now:
    If you're reading magazines right now for all of their Resolution tips, recipes, great body tricks, and more New Year New You themes, and if you're thinking "My business would have been a perfect fit here!" We will tell you - yeah - it could have! If you had pitched the magazine in time. We'll tell you what you should be pitching right now.
  • Sneak Peek into Tin Shingle's Editorial Calendars
    Print magazines tell you in advance what kind of issues they are putting out for the month. We'll tell you about a few of them.
  • Social Media Hacks
    Want your Instagram photo to show up in the front pages of a magazine? We're trailing some hashtags that the glossies are using, and we'll share them during the broadcast.

 
Gift Guide Alert!

Yup, we're in the time of pitching for the next Gift Guide - Mother's Day. It's happening now. Are you emailing magazines about it? You will be after you join us tomorrow.

Online Class: The Face Your Fears Edition

Sometimes you need permission to do something. But the truth is - you don't need permission to make a change in your life. The only person you need permission from...is you!

Covered In This Webinar

  • A crafty storefront totally turns itself upside down and invites in a group of maker men for a new joint storefront partnership.

  • A pop-up shop redirects their sales funnel - literally - by moving one thing in their shop.

  • A video editor goes through yet another derailed vacation by a high paying client, and finally faces her fear of breaking up with her client.

  • A magazine editor leaves her job for a smaller one, still feels the itch that something isn't right, only to realize she just wants to move closer to home - across the country. A new freelance retail and blogging experience is born.

  • A beauty boutique opened but never had a launch party. Months later, the Ribbon Cutting Party is thrown to great success and new buzz is made.

  • A finance executive leaves her job after 16 years of playing it safe - without a plan. That day, an idea for a new business is born.

  • A family-run business is on the brink of closing, until one of the sons explores a new revenue stream that saved the business.

  • As always we'll be answering your burning questions LIVE during the webinar, so email or tweet them to us in advance!

How to Watch

Anyone can watch a Tin Shingle TuneUp from their computer, mobile phone or tablet. The process is different for Premium Members and the public.

MEMBERS OF TIN SHINGLE

Stream any TuneUp Webinar anytime with your Tin Shingle membership. No need to purchase it, this TuneUp is ready to play from this page! When you are logged in, you will see a big screen. Press play and start taking notes! Not a member yet? You really should be...

NON-MEMBERS OF TIN SHINGLE

Once you buy a TuneUp, you own it forever. The video or audio recording will appear on the TuneUp page that you just purchased from, and all you need to do is press play!

About Your Instructor

Katie Hellmuth Martin is co-founder of Tin Shingle and publisher of A Little Beacon Blog. Since 2005 when she hung her own shingle as a designer of websites and accessories, Katie has worked with businesses of all sizes to grow their digital footprints using newsletters, company blogs, user experience, social media, and a creative look at SEO performance. For Tin Shingle, she is lead designer, community membership nurturer, columnist, and director of partnerships and advertising.

Online Class TuneUp: Squirreling Away for Buzz Building - Hibernation!

This TuneUp is designed for businesses who are going into hibernation and are preparing for the Winter! In this TuneUp, we go over snuggly things you can be doing to prepare to create big buzz for your business during the month of December, or other winter months. It's time to store up for the winter to last you through a long season of uncertainty. Winter is often the most dreaded for businesses because of the weather. School closings, blizzards that impact shipping and travel, and those Winter Blues people battle through. Now is the time to set your agenda for the next few months so that you have plenty of good ideas to choose from when you need to ramp it up.

Online Class TuneUp: Planning for the New Year, with Sabina Hitchen

What are your plans for 2018? Are you getting your list and checking it twice for an awesome and powerful start to the New Year - of pitching the media! This is the time to set the plan and lay the groundwork for how your year will go. How will you approach the media? What will your ideas be? How will you keep track of it all?

Sabina Hitchen, the Small Biz PR educator and founder of SabinaKnows.com and the Press for Success training course joins Katie on the webinar to give you play-by-play of what this can look like.

Covered In This TuneUp:

  • Plan your work and working your plan
  • Big picture planning: determining your wording and point of view
  • Researching your ideal customers and matching media to reach those customers
  • Break down goals and objectives to make this all easier!
  • Monthly action steps you can take in the new year.
  • Tips on how to make this work in your day if you feel like you don’t have the bandwidth to make it happen.

Online Class: Big SEO Tips You Can Use Now

Google and Facebook are fiercely competing for our attention, and have been rolling out new tricks to make search faster, more accurate and more intuitive. In this TuneUp, Katie sits down with SEO Guru and CEO of Success Aligned, and Amp Media, Kate Saunders to hear what big concepts we need to be focusing on now for what Google values in SEO. Tune in to hear about:

  • Voice Activated Search: Is your website optimized for people speaking in their search commands?

  • SEO Basics: Don't worry - we'll cover the basics quickly so that you start on solid ground!

  • Local: What is the Local Snack Pack and how do you make sure your shop is on top?

  • Social SEO: Is your website ranking lower because your competitor is more active in their social media?

  • Warnings: Kate's basic no-no's that can set of negative triggers for your website's SEO.

  • Resources: Kate's favorite resources to keep up with for big hints on the future of SEO.

HOW TO WATCH

Anyone can watch a Tin Shingle TuneUp from their computer, mobile phone or tablet. The process is different for premium members and the public.

ALL-ACCESS PASS MEMBERS OF TIN SHINGLE

Stream any TuneUp Webinar anytime with your Tin Shingle membership. No need to purchase it, this TuneUp is ready to play from this page! When you are logged in, you will see a big screen. Press play and start taking notes!

ANYONE ELSE

Once you buy a TuneUp, you own it forever. The video or audio recording will appear on the TuneUp page that you just purchased from, and all you need to do is press play!

ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Katie Hellmuth Martin is the Co-Founder of Tin Shingle and is committed to educating small businesses in common sense, yet sexy ways of marketing through search engines, and online branding. Small businesses from Main Street, to big business have relied on Katie for insight and forward thinking approaches to using today's technology to lock in online branding to increase sales. As lead producer and digital strategist at InHouse Design Media, Katie has developed e-commerce and content based websites, and devised SEO and social strategies for businesses of all types, including retail and service. She has managed the traffic flow and sales process for websites during features on The Today Show, Good Morning America, and Daily Candy. She is also the publisher of the local media source, A Little Beacon Blog. Katie speaks and teaches SEO and online marketing, and has been featured in Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, New York Daily News, and other publications. Connect with her on Twitter via @KJPixelated and @TinShingle, on Instagram @katiejamespixelated and @TinShingle and on Google+.

Online Class TuneUp: PR Planning for December 2017

tin-shingle-tuneup-radio-mic-replay.jpg

During the month of December, the print media is long done with compiling Christmas Gift Guides (they did that in October). In December, the glossy magazines are working on Valentine’s Day Gift Guides! And other February and March related content. Some magazines are even working on April! Learn more about what you should be emailing the media about during December.

Covered in This TuneUp:

  • Short Lead PR Ideas: What's trending right now and how you can use social media - or even last minute pitches - to create buzz about your biz during the month of December.
  • Medium Lead PR Ideas: What is of interest to websites, blogs, tv, and celebrity weeklies
  • Long Leads PR Ideas: What print magazines are working on for 2018 that you need to be pitching now.
  • Editorial Calendars: Get a sneak peek into Tin Shingle's private member-only database which contains Editorial Calendars from editors at glossy print magazines. These give the public clues about what they are working on and how you can get their attention with your pitches.

Online Class TuneUp: How to Host A Successful Pop-Up Shop

This Training TuneUp explores all the bases you need to cover in order to have a productive pop-up shop. This webinar is led by Tin Shingle's owner, Katie, who plays host to several highly successful pop-up shops in Tin Shingle's Headquarters.

These one-time local events boost the promotion of your business, whether service or product based. You need to be having them! Learn how you can be successful with planning, promoting, and accomplishing these events during this webinar. We will take a look at pop-up shops that have thrived and discuss the following topics, roadblocks, and strategies: 

  • How: The ins and outs of how to create a pop-up shop

  • Aggressive Marketing: Why and how you need to be over the top with marketing

  • Flyers: What your marketing flyers should contain, the best wording to use, and how to design them

  • Early Buzz: How to build up hype well in advance

  • Social Media: The big key that social media plays

  • Local: The most strategic ways target your audience: Local!

  • Pop-Up Within Your Existing Shop: Having a pop-up shop in your own storefront and how it can trigger traffic, sales, and buzz.