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Motivate yourself to stop procrastinating - Aim4Order

Even though your school days are behind you, do you procrastinate on work assignments or projects around the house? Here are some ways to motivate yourself to do better.

Check out this blog from our client, Aim 4 Order:
  Motivate yourself to stop procrastinating - Aim4Order

The SunWand

Check out The SunWand, it enables you to apply sunscreen, medication, lotion or anything else to your back without any help. Great idea!

The Ink Slinger, a newsletter from Social Squids

Welcome to the new monthly newsletter, The Ink Slinger by Social Squids. View this email in your browser

You are receiving this monthly newsletter because of a relationship with Holli Friedland and/or Social Squids. I hope you enjoy it and find some value in what you read here. Feel free to pass The Ink Slinger along to anyone you think might enjoy it. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– To succeed with your social media accounts, be consistent and post often. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Handy app of the month PayPal Here If you use PayPal, adding PayPal Here is a helpful addition. The regular PayPal app only allows you to accept payments from people who have a PayPal account. With PayPal Here, you can order a free card swiper that allows you to accept payments on the spot from anyone with a credit or debit card. There is no monthly charge, just PayPal’s normal fees for accepting a payment.  ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Why blog? Blogging… do I have to? I hear this often from business owners. Blogging is a critical tool to market your business. One goal of every business owner is to have a website ranked highly by Google and other search engines. An inactive page, even if it is highly ranked today, will fall if it is not updated regularly. By having a blog on your website, you are adding content and making the search engines take notice. Keyword saturation used to be the end all of SEO (search engine optimization). It is a little less important to the ranking process now, but using keywords or key phrases in your blog and web pages, will certainly help your website gain popularity. In the beginning, pick topics that are easy for you. These topics are critical to your business and you already know them inside and out, making the writing easier. Here are some other blog ideas: Successes and how you achieved them Failures and how you dealt with them Common problems in your field and how you overcame them Tips, tricks and shortcuts (everyone loves these!) Find well-know people in your field for guest blogging Something fantastic you discovered and would like to share Your blog can serve you in multiple ways. After a blog is written, the major points can be used for social media posts. Larger chunks of blogs can be used in newsletters. Some businesses will even take blogs or newsletters and put them together for a book to give away or sell. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Social Squids offers writing for newsletters, web content, blogs, graphics for print or online, social media, website design and updating. We have far-reaching tentacles! Holli Friedland, Owner Social Squids socialsquids@comcast.net 410-580-0250 www.socialsquids.com Share Tweet Forward +1 Share

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What would you do?

Last week I found myself in an awkward situation. Maybe you have been there a time or two yourself. Here is my story...

This morning I am sitting in Starbucks for the second time waiting for someone who has not shown up. It is my second attempt on an appointment with this person and getting together was his idea. He seemed rather embarrassed when I talked to him after he missed the first appointment and here I am again. I really thought he would show up this time.

How many appointments do you make with someone and how long do you wait before you bail? This is someone I’ve known for over a year, but we will not be working together at this point. And, I feel like I can't refer people to someone who doesn't feel I am important enough to keep an appointment.

To make matters worse, one guy is talking loudly on his cell phone and a couple is having a conversation with someone on speaker phone. The loud guy is  talking to his appointment who did not show up either. I clearly heard him say, "That's okay. Whenever you can get here is fine."

I have resorted to my headphones, which I don’t like to do because I’m liable to start singing without realizing it. That will not be good in any way.

What is the protocol for being on time? 

In my opinion, you should always be 5-10 minutes early. Then you are never late. I get into panic attacks if I am stuck in traffic and I think I’m going to be late for anything, even if it’s just dinner with good friends and there is no time constraint. Maybe that’s just me.

In the age of cell phones that have alerts to let you know an appointment is coming up or reminders that can let you know you need to do something, there is really no excuse. 

When I first contacted the guy after missing the first appointment, he doubted me, checked his phone’s calendar and admitted I was right. Ouch. Doubting me? That hurt right off the bat. I should have just said forget it, but I was hoping that we could at least share referrals.

If I’m going to be late, I text or call the person to let them know. I had an appointment last week and the guy was 30 minutes late. He messaged me three times letting me know there was an accident on the beltway and that he was trying to get to the appointment. However, this time I have been disrespected – and for the second time.

Last night I considered sending a reminder email, especially because he missed the first appointment, but I figured we're all adults here and should be able to keep an appointment. Seems like I got that wrong.

I will admit, I missed a doctor’s appointment once. I spent the day with that nagging feeling that I was forgetting something, but couldn’t remember what it was. Two hours after the appointment, it hit me. I was embarrassed and felt terrible especially since I would probably be charged for it. Granted, that was years before Siri was around to remind me. I made absolutely sure I did not miss the second appointment!

Should I be insulted? I am. Should my feelings be hurt? They are. Should I just chalk it up to experience and enjoy my Starbucks latte? I should, but I can’t.

OMG. The guy I’m supposed to be meeting just walked in the door and sat down with someone else six feet away from me. Now I’m really mad and in a completely awkward situation. I have no idea what to do. I feel like a complete idiot. I am embarrassed, although I should not be. This is crazy. I should not have started writing this and instead left when I had a chance for a clean break.

Life sure does throw me curve balls. Did he see me sitting here with my headphones and typing away at my keyboard or was he focused on his OTHER appointment with the loud guy I heard talking on the phone earlier. Apparently, he forgot that appointment too. I am seething…

This has become too angry to be a blog. It has become a rant.

The guy didn’t even go up and get coffee, offering me an escape route. I am trapped like a wounded animal. Being generally non-confrontational, I am at a loss. I just want to escape with what little dignity I have. At least his back is to me as I contemplate my predicament.

What would you do if you found yourself in this situation?

Freedom of speech

In the wake of the events of the past few weeks, many people throughout the world are realizing just how precious the right to freedom of speech is. As Americans, we sometimes take this right for granted. Between the terror events in France and the Sony movie The Interview, we are now seeing how some other people view our freedom.

In my business, I have the opportunity to write about a wide range of topics. The most controversial I have gotten in my work has been organizing your clothes closet or picking a team that might win tomorrow’s game. But I know I have the right to write about whatever topic I chose. This is not true for some people.

As a college intern, I worked at a Baltimore television station during the American hostage crisis in 1979 that took place in Iran. It was an exciting yet scary time to be in the news business. The Associated Press and United Press International alarms were ringing in what we called “the wire room” all evening, every evening with news updates and bulletins. Every time the alarm went off, my heart jumped.

Back then, we didn’t have a 24-hour news cycle, social media or cell phones. Okay, maybe there were cell phones, but they were about the size of a shoe box and few people owned them. At the TV station where I worked, they didn’t even have computers. We typed on typewriters with large keys so the stories could be put directly into the teleprompter for the anchorman.

As a young adult, it was the first time I was exposed to terrorism. I also learned a lot about patriotism and freedom during my internship. It has been a long road from that job to creating Social Squids, but freedom of speech has been there all along.

With the technology of today, people use freedom of speech and social media to instantly send images and words to the world. With this freedom people have gotten themselves into all kinds of trouble from “sexting” to sending out things by accident. Of course, many also use it for sending funny, informational, inspirational or newsworthy messages.

As citizens of the world and especially as writers, we should remember how precious this freedom is. Some people have paid the ultimate price. We should take advantage of our freedom of speech and use it wisely.

Je suis Charlie.

How do you telecommute when the “tele” is not working?

I found myself in a bit of a dilemma yesterday when my &#%$ cable/internet/phone went out right in the middle of a phone call with a client. With a large deadline looming, I was in a panic. It seems that every time I do have a problem with my internet, it happens during a big deadline.

What to do…

I refer to my neighborhood Starbucks my “branch office.” The branch office comes in handy when doing writing or website jobs. Unfortunately, for this job I need all of my old files in order to do the work. Starting with old ads, changing expiration dates or making other alterations, is part of what I do. In this case, I need to have all of my files handy.

This is where the cloud comes in handy. Too bad I haven’t quite made the commitment for a cloud company. I wrote some web content about the various cloud companies and it did more to cloud the issue for me. Pricing, storage space and ease of use are all considerations and I have not yet made a commitment. Lucky for me, things have been so busy lately, there has not been a lot of time to think about it.

But, the time is now. Putting off the decision will result in more stress. Who needs that? A decision will be made, and soon.

Like most graphic artists, I am not a fan of doing graphics on a laptop. The screen on mine is so small that it becomes frustrating, even if I connect a mouse to do some of the finer Photoshop movements. But when push comes to shove, a laptop will have to do.

My desktop computer is a Mac Mini. Those things are amazing. One time the power went out during a bad storm and I just unplugged my computer and power cord, and took them to someone’s house. By simply unplugging their computer, I attached my Mac Mini to their monitor, keyboard and mouse. Then I was good to go. My old files were on CDs in a binder that was easy enough to carry along. Using other person’s wifi allowed me to finish my job without moving any heavy equipment. It was relatively stress free.

A digital fax service, in my opinion, is much more useful than an actual machine when switching from laptop to computer to another location, etc. Many times I avoid printing anything (saving toner/ink and paper) by just looking at the fax on my screen.

Lucky for me, the internet was fixed back before I even figured out what to do.