Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Where the Good Stuff Is....

Hi everyone!

I miss you guys so much these days, and I hate that I've been away so long. I promise I'm not trying to abandon you all forever, it's just that I've been super busy with Handmade News!

If you haven't checked it out, please head over that way and give it a look!

I'm the editor of the business tips department, and you can find a ridiculous amount of great information there!

I'm blessed to have an amazing group of columnists, and they are working their fingers off producing more helpful articles than you can imagine! Just this week we're running articles on

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Wednesday, May 6, 2009

How to Add a Scrolling Feedback Marquee

On my other blog, I have a scrolling marquee at the top that I use to show off my feedback from my studios. A few people have asked me about how to do this, so I'm going to share the code here. But first, you need to decide what you want to use your marquee for. You can type anything you'd like in it, but it helps to have that text ready before you try to paste the code. It's not a hard thing to create, but it's a little time consuming, so just be warned! (If you're going to use your feedback/kudos like I did, it helps a lot to copy and paste each one into one new list before you begin. Just use Word or any sort of notepad software. It doesn't need to be fancy right now. This will save you a ton of headaches later!)

Once you know what you want your marquee to say, just follow these steps:

<br><br>

7. To italicize any words in your text, copy and paste this code around the text needing formatting:
<i></i>
(like this: <i>these words need to be in italics</i>)

8. To make words bold, paste this code around the words:
<b></b>
(like this: <b>these words need to be in bold</b>)

9. (Right now, because I used the code from my own blog, the font is in white. If you like the white font, skip this step.) To change the color of the font in your marquee, find the part of the code that looks like this:
<font color="#ffffff" align="center">
Go here, and find the code that relates to the color you want your text to be. Replace the yellow letters above with that code.

10. Once you've made all the changes you need to make, hit save. Be sure you drag and drop the new gadget below your header, or you may not be able to see it! (You can also hit save along the way and preview your marquee. You are always able to go back and edit the code to get it just how you want it.)

There are lots of other cool things you can do with your marquee, but for now, we've covered the basics. If you want yours to do something I didn't cover, please let me know and I'll see if I can show you how!



*A few notes about this particular marquee: It's only written to fit across the width of your page. You can put it anywhere, but it will take up the whole width of the page, so it's best on the top or bottom of your page. Also, it has a "stop on mouse" function. This means that when you hover over it, it will stop scrolling. If you don't like this, let me know and I can tell you how to change it!*

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Tuesday, May 5, 2009

How to Add a Pop-Up Caption in Blogger

As many of us have discovered, Blogger has no easy way to add a caption to your photos. For someone like me, who can be pretty long winded, it irritates me that I have to add even more to an already long post just to explain what a short caption could do so much more efficiently. I also think captions give a more polished look and feel to a blog, so I've been spending a lot of time trying to find a good way to make this happen.

I haven't found that way yet, but I did find a method that makes me happy in the interim. Instead of placing the caption below or beside the picture, you can easily place a caption "within" the picture. To see this in action, hover over the picture here:


<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rYUxmku_JcI/Sf_h2Lo2YxI/ AAAAAAAAAgQ/BuwWqR9BzEY/s1600-h/13059_product_571284295_thumb_large.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rYUxmku_JcI/Sf_h2Lo2YxI/ AAAAAAAAAgQ/BuwWqR9BzEY/s200/ 13059_product_571284295_thumb_large.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332228804783268626" title="what you want your caption to say/></a>


4. Change all the words in italics to what you actually want the caption to say, and hit "Preview". As long as you've copied all the code correctly, you should be able to hover over the picture and see your caption pop up. (If you don't see it, or if your picture doesn't show up correctly, check to make sure you didn't accidentally delete any quotation marks or slashes from the code.)


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Monday, April 27, 2009

HALP!!!!


This ninja needs ideas from you guys!

I'm running low on my "things you guys have asked" list... anyone have any suggestions for future topics?

Please?

:cute face:

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Using Facebook to Promote Your Studio - Part 2

Last week I discussed the basics of using Facebook to promote your studio. If you haven't checked that post out, you may want to make sure you've read it before you continue with this one. Today I'm going to show you how to make a Facebook page to promote your studio, but first, let's discuss exactly what this page is and what it's for.

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Monday, April 20, 2009

Manic Monday Post

Hi everyone!

Please forgive my lack of quality posting today. Unfortunately there are things that need to be dealt with immediately in the "real world", and this has prevented me from being able to finish my regular Monday post. I promise I will be back soon with more awesome Ninja Knowledge.

Please send some good thoughts and well wishes my way.... as I will be doing for each of you!

Friday, April 17, 2009

Using Facebook to Promote Your Studio - Part 1

Many of us already use Facebook as a way to keep up with friends and family, but are you using your Facebook account to its fullest potential? There are quite a few ways to use Facebook to promote, and today I'm just going to show you a quick easy tip to get you started.

The way Facebook works, it keeps a "timeline" of all your recent activity and broadcasts it to everyone in your friend list/network. For instance, if you set your status to "Having a good day", everyone that logs on can see that little blurb about your life. Using this status is one way you can promote (by saying something like "Great sale going on today in my studio!"), but sometimes that just isn't enough. First of all, you've only given a bit of vague information, and second, there's not really much there to make your update stand out from all the other updates.

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Thursday, April 16, 2009

Creating and Adding a Favicon to Your Blog

Do you know what a favicon is? It's that little picture that shows up beside your blog address in the address bar of your browser. And, if you're using Blogger, chances are your favicon is a little orange "B". Now take a look at the address bar for this blog. See how there's no "B" there? Instead, you should be seeing a little ninja face/figure. Isn't that cool? (I think so anyway!)

So, besides the cool factor, why does it matter what your favicon is?

It matters because when your blog is added to an RSS feed reader, or when someone has a tab open to your blog (depending on the browser), that favicon will show beside the title of your blog! And we all know that standing out in this sea of artisans is super important, so why not use a favicon to set yourself apart?

10. Click "Layout" and "Edit HTML".

11. Back up your template by clicking "Download Full Template" here:
(Just save it somewhere and leave it alone. It's just in case something goes wonky!)

12. Scroll down the page till you see this:

]]></b:skin>
and this:
</head>

(It's going to be about 2/3 of the way through all that code, and one will be right on top of the other.)

13. Paste the code you copied between those two bits of code you found. It should look similar to this:


14. Hit "preview" and wait for the page to load. As long as you see your new favicon showing in your address bar, go ahead and hit "save template". (If you don't see it, hit "clear edits", tell it "ok" and try again. If it still won't work, just clear your edits, back out, and let me know so I can try to help!)

Congrats! You now have a new favicon for your blog!



p.s. I haven't forgotten I promised you "target market answers"... I'm still working on them, so please be patient! :wink:

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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

I Need Your Help Making a Decision...

I'm working hard on filling out the answers to my "finding your target market" questions, and I hope all of you are, too. Because of this, I'm taking a break today from bombarding you with new information. I will be back tomorrow to give you the promised "what do we do with these answers" post, so please get your answers ready and check back!

Before you run off to put the finishing touches on those questions, though, I'd like to get your input on something:

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Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Using Feedburner - Part 3 - Showing Your Feed Count

Remember when I talked about social proof? Well, a good way to increase your social proof is to show off how many blog readers you have. You most likely already do this by showing your followers somewhere on your blog, but did you know that you may actually have more readers than that widget shows?

By using Feedburner's "Feed Count Chicklet", you can show these "hidden readers" on your blog as well! These simple instructions will walk you through setting up and installing that chicklet on your blog:

1. Log into your Feedburner account and click on the feed you want to create a Feed Count Chicklet for. (If you don't already have a Feedburner account set up, please go here first: Feedburner Step 1)

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Monday, April 13, 2009

Twitter Spring Cleaning Time!

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend, and I hope you're all ready to be back to the "creative grind" today!

I had a nice, lazy weekend and I spent a lot of "down time" messing about on the internet. Due to the fact that I had too much time on my hands, I wound up staring at my twitter account for way too long. This boredom induced "twitter coma" led me to a conclusion: I follow far too many people on twitter who have nothing to say. (Meaning, I realized I was following in excess of 500 people, yet only about 150 of those actually tweet on a regular basis!)

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Friday, April 10, 2009

Using Feedburner - Part 2 - Adding an Email Subscription Button

Remember how I told you yesterday that Feedburner has all these cool little tools? Well, today we're going to use one to add an email subscription button to our blog pages. (It will look like the one in the upper right corner of this page!) So, if you want one of these handy buttons, just log into your Feedburner account and follow along!

1. Once you're logged in, you should see a screen that has your username and your feed name(s), like this:

Just click the name of the feed you want to create a button for.

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Thursday, April 9, 2009

Using Feedburner - Part 1 - Setting it Up

Feedburner is a nifty tool that google provides us to help optimize our RSS feeds. It not only allows us to feed our blog content, it provides tools for feed tracking, email subscriptions, and feed promotion. There are all sorts of awesome little goodies just waiting to be snatched up on Feedburner, but to get to them we need to set up our accounts. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Go to Feedburner and sign in using your existing Google account.

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Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Adding a Retweet Button to Your Posts

Sometimes when I'm browsing my favorite blogs, I see something I really want to share with others. What better way to do that than with a simple little "ReTweet" button? (The button we will be using is from TweetMeme, and it's awesome because it keeps track of how many times each post has been retweeted and displays it right there on the button!) If you want to add one of these to your posts, just follow along!

(These instructions are for Blogger, but if you use another platform and need help, please let me know!)


<div class='post-footer'>


(This should be near the bottom of your code. I know it's hard to find, but this is the worst part, and it's almost over!)

6. Copy and paste this code directly below the line you just found:

<script type="text/javascript">
tweetmeme_url = '<data:post.url/>';
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"> </script>


7. Hit "preview" at the bottom of your window. You should now see a button like the one at the end of this post that says "X tweets" and "retweet". As long as you see this button, hit "save template" and you're done!

To get an idea of how this works when someone clicks the button, go ahead and click the one at the end of my post and hit send! You will be amazed how easy it is!



* Have a suggestion for a future post here on Ninja Knowledge? Be sure to leave a comment or contact me using the suggestion box in the middle column! *

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Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Twittertise and How to Use It


Due to the popularity of the "Crazy Marketing Train" that PicardCreative initiated on Artfire, I've decided to explain how to use Twittertise. This handy little tool will make your marketing train tweeting simple and efficient, as you can schedule all your upcoming tweets on the day you get your "artisan list". If you set them all up at once, that's just one more thing you can "fix and forget" for the week, giving you more time for yourself! (You can also use Twittertise to promote your own studio, just be sure you're sending quality tweets as well, not just advertising alone.)

Just be sure you have your Twitter login information ready, and click this link: Twittertise

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