blogging tips

A Tablet That Fits into My Work-at-Home Mom Life – The Samsung Galaxy Tab 3

November 23, 2013 by Sandra 2 Comments

I am a member of the Collective Bias® Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper
insights study for Collective Bias® and their client.

I’m a work-at-home mom.

Technically, I also work from the library when I need to get away and write or design without a baby on my lap or a little person needing me. Those days, I’ll go to the library and check out a room, so that I can have peace and quiet and just write, return emails, check social media, and do the other things I need to do to keep this little online business of ours moving forward.

Even in the midst of all that’s going on with David, I still have to work, and I’ve been lugging around my crazy-heavy laptop bag filled with everything I need to work while I’m sitting in the emergency room again or spending time with David during another hospital stay.

Decisions, decisions…
I finally decided to stop the madness and get a tablet (for myself), so that I don’t always have to lug around a cumbersome laptop bag.

We trust Best Buy and have made several device purchases there in the past (plus I’m a fan of their warranty program), so we headed there to check out tablets. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 caught my eye. It has a powerful Intel processor (just what I need), and it’s sleek and lightweight, which I love.

The Best Buy Experience
The employees at Best Buy were incredibly helpful and knowledgeable when it came to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3. They answered all of my questions, and explained the benefits of owning an Android tablet. They made me feel confident about my decision, and I walked away a happy customer.

How I Use the Tab 3
Now that I’m officially a tablet owner, I’ve stopped lugging around my laptop bag every.single.time. we go to the hospital. David had 8 appointments (yes, EIGHT) to go to this past week, and instead of bringing my laptop with me, I left it and simply slipped my tablet into my purse to take along on our adventures.

Whether I’m at home or in a waiting room, I can write posts and manage my blog on my tablet.

I also use it to check email and social media, listen to my favorite radio station, take pictures, and I even allowed my kids to install ONE game app on it. 😉

In the past, I’ve ever-so-carefully placed my laptop on the treadmill, so that I could walk and work at the same time. I love that I can now easily do the same things I did with my laptop on the treadmill but instead use my lightweight and portable tablet.

Across-the-board, I feel like this tablet is just what I need to be more productive as I juggle being a work-at-home mom with all of my other responsibilities. I know I’ll be using it a lot over the next few months, and I may even use it to create videos to share with you when David is in the hospital next month.

Yes, I do think this tablet will become my new supertool.

Have you ever used a tablet? In what ways do you think it could streamline an area of your life?

Learn More & Be Social
You can learn more about the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 at Best Buy & receive Best Buy updates when you follow them on Twitter.

You can also stay up-to-date with Intel when you follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

Disney Social Media Moms On-the-Road Event: What I Learned

June 20, 2013 by Sandra 6 Comments

I recently had the opportunity to attend a Disney Social Media Moms On-the-Road event in Maryland with other mom bloggers and mompreneurs.

I had an amazing, unforgettable time.

Not only did I get to meet one of my best blogging friends in real life, I also had the chance to meet new friends and find out more about what Disney is up to at their parks and in the world of social media.

Disney Updates
Gary Buchanan, from Disney, shared this video of the 24-Hour Monstrous Summer All-Nighter that Disney pulled off in May in order to kick off a Monstrous Summer at Disney. It’s a fantastic video that even includes the Magic Kingdom parades and their spectacular fireworks. Don’t blink, though, or you may miss them! 🙂

The All-Nighter video is a time lapse of the 24-hour event, and it’s only 90 seconds long.

In addition to learning more about Disney and getting to enjoy a little Disney goodness in the form of Mickey treats (which I saved for my kids ;)) and a delicious breakfast, I had the chance to listen to some amazingly hardworking women entrepreneurs and glean tips and takeaways from them that we can use when running our own businesses.

I thought this conference was unique it this way. I’m used to attending blog conferences where I’m mainly learning from other professional bloggers. At the Disney On-the-Road event, I was learning from women entrepreneurs who are not necessarily bloggers but own thriving, growing businesses. They brought unique ideas my way that I hadn’t necessarily heard before, and I’m going to share some of those great ideas with you.

Tips & Takeaways from Jennifer Labait – the founder of Cotton Babies and the creator of bumGenius, Flip, and Econobum

Define your roles: Who are you and what is important to you?

Do the right thing even when no one is looking.

Write down what it is that you want.

Create a business plan (and, yes, even bloggers need business plans).

Ask yourself: What is my exit plan? When will you stop, switch gears, or sell your business?

Buy a pretty notebook, and write down what you learn along the way.

You have to be new to go big. Don’t be an echo.

Be willing to fail when you dive into a new idea. If you’re not willing to fail, you’re not able to succeed.

Decide what determines your success.

We can be moms and run businesses at the same time, and we can do it well.

Go to school.

Creators win when they keep creating. Create.

Be sure that what you create truly reflects you.

Think bigger. Decide how you’re going to make a difference in the field you work in.

Read, read, read.

Be willing to hire others and take a hat off of your head so that your business can grow bigger. Otherwise, your business will only grow as big as you are.

After Jennifer’s talk, I listened to a panel of mompreneurs.

These three women shared great tips and insight into how they run their businesses as wives, moms, and entrepreneurs:

Frederique Campagne Irwinis, founder and CEO of Her Corner
Christina Daves, founder and creator of CastMedic Designs and MediFashions
Anastasia Dellaccio, co-owner of Dolci Gelati

These women were transparent and so kind to share details of their lives with us.

Here’s what I took away from the panel:

Don’t cut corners if you have a product. Make it high quality.

Evaluate your day, and find out where your time is going.

Set boundaries for yourself.

Don’t be afraid to take risks.

“Someday” isn’t a day of the week.

Don’t give up on your passion.

Final Thoughts
The Disney Social Media Moms On-the-Road celebration was definitely an event that’s going to help me take my business to the next level.

Do you want to take your blog to the next level? Which tips mentioned here do you think you can implement in your life to make an impact on your business in the near future?

Bloggy Conference Wrap-Up (Part 3)

October 13, 2012 by Sandra 5 Comments

I’m sharing some things I learned from the Bloggy Conference I attended last month in Cincinnati, Ohio. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here.

Time for part 3.

Nathan Engels of We Use Coupons shared a lot of great tips and helpful information to help us monetize our blogs. He went beyond that, though. When one of the speakers got sick and had to cancel one of the breakout sessions, Nathan stepped in and offered to hold a session on YouTube.

And I’m so glad he did. I gleaned so much information from that session, and I was able to take good notes because Elisabeth was napping at the time.

I’ll start with what I learned from his first talk, which he called – Show Me the Money! Great way to grab our attention with a title like that! Let’s dig in.

In order to earn money blogging, you need to have content. Good content brings traffic, which develops into readers of your blog, which leads to income from your blog.

Blogging is hard, and making money from blogging is even harder. You need to be in it for the long haul to be successful and to make an income from your blog. In Nathan’s words, “Don’t expect to hit the jackpot!” Think of blogging as something long term and not as a fast way to make money.

You can make money from your blog with both passive and aggressive strategies.

Passive ways to make income: Google Adsense, ad networks, and text placement ads (Kontera would be an example of this – sidenote – I had the chance to meet and spend time with two of the ladies from Kontera while I was at the Savvy Blogging conference. They were so nice and friendly. My sister and I ate with them and two other lovely bloggers at lunch on the final day of the conference. The Kontera ladies took brutally honest feedback from the bloggers who had used their ads before, and they impressed me with their desire to truly understand what is and isn’t working in terms of their ad use on blogs.)

Ever wonder why sometimes your Google Adsense ads show up as white space on your blog? Google Adsense allows you to have only 3 image/text ads per page. I never knew this.

Also, never, ever, ever, click on your own ads. Ever. Google will ban you from using Adsense, and it will be difficult to get reinstated.

Ad placement is important. Test to see where on your site certain types of ads perform the best. Think about your readers and where they are likely to see and interact with an ad.

Active ways to earn income: Private ads, sponsored posts, and affiliate offers. Some of Nathan’s favorite affiliates were Amazon Associates and Commission Junction (CJ).

It’s hard to make a full-time income blogging, and most people make far less than a full-time income. But if you keep your focus on your readers and aren’t looking to make a ton of money, blogging can be fun and very worthwhile. You might even develop some deep friendships with people you would have never met otherwise.

Nathan’s YouTube session

I loved the tips that Nathan shared during the impromptu session he volunteered to put together. Honestly, this was one of my favorite sessions. Here’s what jumped out to me:

If you are not on YouTube, get there. YouTube is huge, and it’s growing.

Video is exploding.

Create a YouTube show, and brand your channel.

You can have an entirely different audience on YouTube than you have for your blog, and YouTube audiences are loyal.

YouTube videos should ideally be between 2-4 minutes in length.

Use a monopod to avoid ‘camera shake.’

Create and ‘intro’ and ‘outro’ for your YouTube videos. I had no idea ‘outro’ was even a word. 🙂

Tag your YouTube videos and give them a great description. Treat your YouTube videos like you would posts. Think about the words you are using to describe your videos.

Tell people to Subscribe! Encourage them to hit the ‘subscribe’ button. The more subscribers you have, the closer you get to being accepted into the YouTube Partners program where you can start earning money with your YouTube videos.

iMovie (on a Mac) is great for editing your videos, and you can use Windows Movie Maker if you own a PC.

Use annotations in your videos. You can do this right in YouTube, but you can also do it in iMovie. I don’t know much about annotations, personally, but I want to learn more.

You can find royalty free music for your YouTube videos at AudioJungle.net.

You can find royalty free video for your YouTube videos at VideoHive.net.

Add ‘Subscribe’ links to your actual YouTube videos to encourage viewers to subscribe to your channel while they are watching your video.

After the session, I was more ready than ever to start investing time in my YouTube channel. Feel free to check out my channel and subscribe to it. I have an idea for which direction I want to take my channel, I just need to start executing it.

Do you have a YouTube channel you want to share with us? Feel free to leave a link to it in the comments.

I know I said I was going to do 3 parts for my Bloggy Conference Wrap-Up, but I think I’m going to squeeze in one more part with everything else I took away from this conference. I’ll get that post up next week.

Some of the links in this post are my referral links.

Bloggy Conference: Wrap-Up (Part 2)

October 9, 2012 by Sandra 7 Comments

I know I’m late in writing this post.

But I’m still going to finish up sharing what I learned at the Bloggy Conference that took place in Cincinnati, Ohio from September 27-29.

You can read part one of this mini-series of posts here.

Next up I listened to Allison Kulage’s talk. Allison is from Bare Knuckle Marketing, and she’s an SEO ninja. She gave us some great SEO tips and tricks to make our sites work better for us.

Here are some of the main points I learned:

Use and pay attention to keywords. These are the words people are typing into search engines, and if you have them in your posts and post titles, there’s a better chance that the search engines (like Google) will rank your site higher if you use the right keywords. For example, if you want people to find your recipe for homemade pumpkin spice bread, make sure to use those words in your post title as well as in your post. Use keywords for the images that are in your posts, too. Basically, using the right keywords will attract the right traffic to your blog.

Link to other blogs. If you do this, they are more likely to link to your blog. Link love = Google Juice.

Use short keyword phrases that are specific (not single words) in your posts.

The right keywords can bring in a lot of traffic to your blog – think 50% or more.

Get to know Google Analytics to find out what keywords are bringing in traffic to your blog. You may be getting traffic from words that you wouldn’t expect.

Don’t over think the whole SEO thing. Write for your readers, but be mindful of SEO.

Allison made the subject of SEO less daunting, and I appreciate that. I don’t stress out or spend a lot of time thinking about SEO, but I am mindful of it. I know which keywords people are using to find my blog, and I always rename my images to make them more SEO-friendly. I also think that being on WordPress and using a great theme framework helps, too.

My next post will include the good stuff I gleaned from Nathan Engels of We Use Coupons. He shared some fabulous tips! And his tips are not just for deal-bloggers, they would be great to implement and execute on just about any blog.

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