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7 tips to protect your online shopping experience this Black Friday #blackfriday

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Are you as excited for online Black Friday deals as your are for mom’s Thanksgiving meal? Before you jump online to knock out your holiday list, brush up on these tips to protect your credit card and personal information.

In addition to the above, consider using different passwords for each shopping site you visit or have a separate credit card with a lower limit used only for online shopping.

Do you have a tip to share? Feel free to let us know in the comments.

Thanks to Steve Watts, SecurEnvoy for the tips.

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10 tips every iphoneographer should know

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A new ebook by BlissDom founder Alli Worthington (@alliworthington), is a hyperfocus look at the world of iPhoneography.

Want to take better photos with your iPhone? Wondering about how to monetize your visual content? iPhone Photography: The Visual Guide  is a picture guide book with step-by-step tutorials targeted towards bloggers and anyone employed to share social visual content.

Here are 10 tips:

1. Get close up. IPhone photography is perfect for taking lots of close up shots of your subject. Don’t stand over that baby and take a picture! Take four or five shots and capture toes, a smiling face, chubby hands and belly.

2. Never, ever zoom. Zooming in on your subject with a mobile camera destroys the quality of your picture. Simply edit and crop the picture later to zoom in on what you want included.

3. Don’t be a flasher. Why do we all look fabulous in professional photos? Lots of diffuse light, of course. Now what happens when a teeny harsh light shoots out of your camera on someone’s face? Yep, it’s not pretty. Turn your flash off and thank me later.

4. Clean the lens. It sounds so simple, but we often forget to wipe the schmutz off the camera lens.

5. Use new angles. Don’t take pictures standing up and only moving your arms to move your camera around. Bend those knees and take pictures from an interesting low angle, or stand above the subject and shoot straight down. Get moving and let your feet be the zoom you in on the shot.

6. Light Matters. The iPhone camera is so cool, it can almost bake a cake. Well, not yet. But what it can’t do is take decent pictures in a low light setting. Pictures come out all grainy and noisy. Instead of flashing just go with the grainy vibe and make it all grungy like you planned it.

7. Use editing apps to post process. The easiest app with lots of filters is Magic Hour. Sure, you can make your own filters and adjust curves and details, but it is also great for pre-made flattering filters. Add text to your images with apps like Over or Phonto. There are a quadrillion photo editing apps that make it all easy fun and very often free.

8. GeoLocation in moderation. Unless you want the entire Internet to know exactly where you live, always find the settings gear icon on your apps and turn geolocation and Facebook auto sharing off.

9. Plan for how to use your pictures. If you want to print, sell or license your iphone pictures be sure to save them in a high-res setting. Have you ever tried to print an Instagram picture? Pretty grainy, right? Unless you use Instagram as your camera and then share, all Instgrams are uploaded as low resolution. That is the secret of why Instagram is so fast. If you want to save your favorite images to print or sell later, use an editing app like Camera+ or Photogene 2 and save a large high resolution picture.

10. Get organized. Take pictures of everything. Need to remember what level you parked your car on in that ginormous garage? Take a picture. Too bust to write down what you need at the grocery? Take a picture of your open fridge. We are busy, we have to remember insane details for work, our family and every thing else. Don’t bother remember little details. Just take a quick picture and voila! Instant memory minus the headache.

If this sparked your interest and you want the entire book, it’s available for $9.97.

I am in no way compensated to review this book. 

(Photos courtesy of Alli Worthington)

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FAVE TIPS: 5 social tips for women to increase media exposure

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Did you know? Women start businesses at one-and-a-half times the national average, yet only five percent of startups are owned by women.

And, although women now comprise roughly half of American workers and earn nearly 60% of university degrees,1 only 24% of the people heard or read about in print, radio and television news are female.2 

(My FAVE tips are below the infographic.)

Women at Work Infographic Via MBA@UNC
Via MBA@UNC MBA Online & Women 2.0

Five Social Tips for Women to Increase Media Exposure

If you’re a women business owner, expert in your field or want to grow your online presence,  you need to become your own best publicist. No one ever became a successful business owner by sitting quietly and waiting for customers to come pouring in. Getting sourced in the media is a great way to garner awareness and build your credibility. Third party endorsements are powerful. So, how can you use social media to garner some earned publicity?

1. Locate and follow bloggers and journalists online
Most journalists and online bloggers include a Twitter handle with their online stories or other tools to follow them online. Take the time to follow, get to know them and then look for ways to insert yourself into the conversation and build a relationship. The key — instead of thinking about how they can help you, think about how you can help them. Follow them on the Internet, read and comment on their stories and posts using connecting, trending industry issues to draw them out in two-way conversation.

2. Leave a trail so others can find you 
In an era of digital technology, journalists increasingly rely on the Internet and search to locate sources and information. To be seen and heard, use basic SEO and hyperlinks to plot out each mile marker and make it easier for others to find you. Make sure that each tactic supports an overarching objective. For example, don’t create a Twitter account or Facebook page – think resourcefully and ask yourself how social media can lead you and others to a strategic online destination.

3. Produce interesting content
Create a centralized location for content, such as a website or blog, and position yourself as a leader in your industry by producing thought-worthy content. Don’t just blog, tweet or create status updates simply because you can — research the latest trends, stay up on the news and look for the unique angle that excites you and provides value. To drive viewership, learn basic search engine optimization to ensure the footprint you’re creating drives traffic to your site.

4. Be your best publicist
Utilize social media releases and pitch yourself with viable story ideas to guest post on blogs with higher visibility and traffic.

Develop a microblogging strategy that encompasses a combination of publishing and publicity. Look for existing industry groups on social networks to increase your reach by participating in industry chats on Twitter, niche networks and message boards.

5. Be a resource to reporters
Instead of pitching yourself to the media, let them come you with queries. Sign up for Help A Reporter Out (HARO) to receive daily email blasts with reporter queries from you local daily to the New York Times. Look for the stories that you can serve as an expert resource to or provide helpful information and respond.

Fact: Companies with more equalized gender distribution have 30 percent better IPOs. (link)

Fact: Women pursuing MBAs are at an all-time high. Women now make up one-third of all MBA candidates. (link)

Fact: 40 percent of large companies have no women on their boards and only 5 percent of startups are owned by women. (link)

(The “5 tips” were originally shared on PRsarahevans.com)

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FAVE TIP: New Year, New You: Clean up your online profile

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Remember when your mom or dad used to yell at you to clean your room? Well, this is me telling you to clean up online. Happy New Year!

Here are some of my favorite tips:

Links
I share a lot of links online and sometimes want to reference them for later or just keep track of everything I’ve shared. My two favorite tools for organizing links are:

  1. Bit.ly and j.mp – In addition to shortening URLs, you can track number of clicks and use to check your “link archives.”
  2. Trunk.ly – This platform monitors and collects the links that you find interesting across multiple platforms. For example, I have my blog RSS feed linked here in addition to Twitter, Facebook, etc… That way if I share links direct from another source I can easily go back and find them here.

Additional: If you’re on Pinterest, you can also create a board for “Favorite Links” to assist with archiving for later.

Twitter
Do you give other platforms access to your Twitter account? Do you remember them all? It might be time to clean up or manage third-party access. Here’s how to revoke access:

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  1. Check out your applications by visiting the Connections tab of account settings
  2. Revoke access by clicking the “Revoke Access” button next to the application description. (For a complete overview on connecting your Twitter account to other platforms, read this from Twitter Support.)

Curate content more effectively:

  • Set up Twitter lists to include those you never want to miss.
  • Missed Twitter for a day or two? Make it easy on yourself and use a service like Cadmus. It displays the most relevant content you may have missed since your last check in.

Facebook

  • Facebook requests/notifications – Next to each group/game/friend request, you can choose to delete or ignore all requests from that person if they’re a repeat offender. Block off time on your calendar to do this if you find it needs more time. In fact, a recurring calendar entry may help ensure you manage your online requests.
  • Untag yourself. Invest an hour to untag yourself or delete any photos you may have forgotten about.
  • To reduce email notifications of requests, friends, etc., in the “Notifications” setting (located in “Settings” under “account settings”), deselect notifications you no longer want to receive.
  • Facebook friends – Use Birthday announcements as reminders to unfriend people you haven’t talked to, don’t know or no longer care to stay in touch with. If you would prefer not to “unfriend” someone, instead “hide” their posts so they no longer show up in your newsfeed.163622_10150142085171729_20531316728_7787845_3736460_n
  • Part of your spring cleaning may also mean checking to make sure you have a secure online connection. Did you know on Facebook if your URL doesn’t look like this that your connection is not secure? https://facebook.com. You should consider enabling this option if you frequently use Facebook from public Internet access points found at coffee shops, airports, libraries or schools. The option will exist as part of our advanced security features, which you can find in the “Account Security” section of the Account Settings page.

Here are a few apps and platforms for organizing your Facebook experience:

  1. TheFriendMail – delivers Facebook to your email and allows you to update your status, write on friends’ walls, view your news feed, like, comment and view friends’ profiles via email. (See review in TheNextWeb)
  2. Friendly Plus (for tablets) – allows you to manage your Facebook account from a single screen on your tablet.
  3. Access Facebook from within Gmail
  4. Facebook Desktop
  5. Facebook Page Central by Sysomos helps with Facebook page management and analytics for brands (paid platform)

Gmail
There’s a lot of storage in Gmail so you may not need to delete anything. I typically only delete emails with large attachments (which I save to files) and archive all messages. This has saved me more than once when I needed access someone’s email address and hadn’t corresponded with them in a while. Here are few ways to help organize your Gmail account:

  • Use Priority Inbox to automatically identify and sort important email so that the most pertinent mail resides at the top of your inbox.
  • Use filters to archive emails and bookmarks into folders, add labels or send incoming items directly to the trash.
  • Mark emails needing follow up with “Star” function.
  • Run a keyword search for items that can be deleted (think Groupon, etc.) and mass delete.
  • To save space, run a Gmail search for “has:attachment” to locate attachments, then delete or save in a file.

Looking for apps or tools to organize your Gmail experience? Try:

  • Find Big Mail – Having storage issues? In three steps, this app analyzes your inbox and categorizes mail by size (see review in The Next Web), providing a report of the largest emails in your inbox that can be deleted or saved to create space.
  • The Email Game – this app makes cleaning out your inbox fun by a point-based system for tasks such as skipping a message, reply to a message – and you can also challenge your friends. (See review in The Next Web)
  • Boomerang for Gmail – This app helps you control when you send and receive email, allowing you to time when emails go out.

Avatar and bio

  • Set up a reminder alert on your calendar for the first day of spring every year. Include: update bio and avatar (as needed).
  • Take a look in the mirror. Do you look like your current avatar? If not, it may be time to update that photo. Here are “5 Tips for Creating the Perfect Profile Pic.”
  • Where is your online bio listed? The majority of active online users have a bio listed in more than one place and they’re typically not synced (meaning you have to manually update each one). Create a Word document with your most recent bio and save it, including the year in the document name. If you need to update your bio in multiple places you can easily copy and paste from this document.

Email notifications
Do you need to be notified every time someone follows you on Twitter? Maybe not. Clean up how your social networks notify you. You can do this one of two ways:

  1. Go to the social network and update your notification settings. Chances are you haven’t updated them since you signed up.
  2. Set up email filters in your email account of choice and have them delivered right to the trash.

Smartphone – Removing location tracking
Don’t want your smartphone tracking your location? You can clean it up:

  • iPhone – In the Location Services setting on your iPhone (located in “Settings” in the “General” section), either turn off the global Location Services setting or turn off the individual location settings of each location-aware application on your iPhone.
  • Android – In the “Location” setting in your Android (located in “Settings”), uncheck GPS satellites.
  • Blackberry – In the GPS services setting on your Blackberry (located in “Options” in the “Advaced Options” section), stop or disable GPS.

Google Reader
Why recreate the wheel? Here’s a great post to prioritize and organize Google Reader: Prioritizing and Organizing Feeds in Google Reader.

[PREVIOUSLY SHARED ON PRSARAHEVANS.COM]

What social network spring cleaning advice can you share?