Tips, insights and general ramblings from Amethyst Answers

Why Special Fonts Aren’t So “Font-astic”

October 30, 2012 by Christina Workman

Q. Can I use a special font on my website? Something fancy or funky to make my website different from all the rest?

Fonts — Image courtesy of Vlado / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A. This is one of those questions where the answer, technically, is yes; but just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. You can designate any font you want for the text on your website. However, if the computer or other device being used to view your website is unfamiliar with that font, it will display a default font instead. One of the reasons most websites use one of the standard fonts, like Times New Roman or Arial, instead of special fonts is because most computers understand those standard fonts and display them properly. These fonts are considered web-safe.

Also, keep in mind you want your visitors to be able to read your content easily. If your font is too crazy, some people may get frustrated and give up, moving on to a site that’s easier to visually process. Simple, plain fonts work best for big chunks of text, like paragraphs. Many visitors to websites don’t actually read every word on the page. Instead, they scan, looking for keywords that grab their attention. If they are having a hard time interpreting a fancy font, they will likely skim right past it, potentially missing out on something important you have to say.

If you absolutely have fallen in love with a special font that isn’t considered web-safe, I do have some suggestions. One is to use a “fallback” system: specify your preferred font, but also include an acceptable web-safe alternative. This way you still have some control over what font the reader will see.

Alternatively, if you are using the special font for a header, or to highlight a small bit of text, you could create an image of the text, but that opens up a whole new can of worms that will be dealt with in a later post. (email me if you need more info and can’t wait)

So, to sum up, while you have a wide variety of fonts available to use on your website, the lesson I hope you have learned is: choose wisely.

This post is part of a regular feature series called Tuesday Tips. Every Tuesday, I will answer some of the questions I receive from clients and readers about WordPress, social media and all other things internet-related. If you have a question you would like me to answer, submit it here.

There’s nothing vain about having a vanity URL

October 23, 2012 by Christina Workman

Image courtesy of Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Q. What is a vanity URL and how do I get one?

A. A vanity URL is similar to a vanity licence plate, in that you get to choose how it reads, instead of being randomly assigned some jibberish that means nothing to those who read it. And in the case of URLs, they are usually quite long and difficult to remember.

If you are using various sites like Facebook and LinkedIn for your business, it is in your best interest to claim a vanity URL. First off, it allows your customers to find you easily, especially if you want to direct potential clients to your specific page in marketing campaigns. Second, it prevents someone else from pretending to be you.

Vanity URLs may be available on a variety of social media sites for your specific account, but the two that I come across most often with my clients are Facebook and LinkedIn.

Facebook

Most people are familiar with Facebook vanity URLs by now, but note that Facebook refers to the custom part as a “username”. The format for these URLs (using my own as an example) is http://www.facebook.com/amethystanswers and amethystanswers is the username. If you haven’t done so already, I strongly encourage you to select a suitable username for your business page. Facebook makes the process incredibly easy. All you have to do is:

Go to their Username page
Choose your business page from the drop down menu
Type your desired username in the text field beside it
Click the “Check Availability” button.

Hopefully the name you requested is available, and now yours. If not, try another one.

A vanity URL for your personal LinkedIn page is helpful when directing potential clients to check out your experience and referrals. It also shows that you took the extra effort to make your page more professional and easy to find.

Set up your LinkedIn vanity URL with these simple steps:

After logging in to your LinkedIn account, hover over your name at the top right side of the screen and click Settings when the options appear. If prompted, enter your password.
Towards the bottom of the Settings page, on the left, choose Profile if it isn’t automatically selected. This gives you the expanded Profile menu.
From this menu, under Helpful Links, click on “Edit your public profile“.
On the right, you will see tons of options for customizing how your profile page appears to others. Feel free to explore and modify these settings, but the one you are specifically looking for right now is in it’s own little box called “Your public profile URL“. Here you will see what your current URL is. If you wish to change it, click where it says “Customize your public profile URL“.
A pop up screen will appear. Similar to Facebook, type your desired name into the text field provided, then select the “Set Custom URL” button.
Note your complete new custom URL. LinkedIn vanity URLs aren’t as straightforward as Facebook vanity URLs. Mine, for example, is ca.linkedin.com/in/christinaworkman. Two things to pay attention to here are the beginning and the middle. Instead of starting with the standard “www” mine starts with “ca”, which indicates I am in Canada. Also, note the “/in/” in the middle of the URL. If you don’t include that when sharing your URL, nobody will find you.

Now that you have your vanity URLs set up, don’t forget to tell the world! How else do you expect people to find you?

Non-Traditional Thanksgiving Thoughts

October 8, 2012 by Christina Workman 4 Comments

broken bones cat — Image courtesy of Grant Cochrane / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I’ve never been a fan of the typical “let’s all go around the table and say what we’re thankful for” Thanksgiving tradition. I find most of the time, you hear the same generic stuff. My family. My health. Roof over my head, food on my plate. Not that I’m ungrateful for those things, but I feel like they are sort of a given.

It’s rare to hear someone say, “I’m thankful for the challenges I faced this year that helped me learn and grow and become a better person”. But these are some of the greatest things to be thankful for. It’s easy to find someone “worse off” than us, to find something we have that others don’t which we should be thankful for. But have you ever considered that their so-called “lack” may be something they are thankful for?

Would you believe that I am thankful that I broke my right foot last October? Sure, I couldn’t drive and it was difficult and slow getting to my son’s bus stop every day. Sure, it hurt and required lots of physiotherapy to reclaim full functionality again. But, it gave me the opportunity to reconsider the path I was on with my business, who I was, and what I wanted to do. And in the end, I came out a better person, with a new, but quickly thriving business!

Here’s another Thanksgiving twist to consider: harvest the power of positive thinking. Be thankful for situations, circumstances, things that you wish to have, even though you don’t currently have them. Believe that you will have them, and appreciate them now. For example, if you want a certain new job, be thankful now for that new job. I am thankful for all the new clients I will get to work with. (In addition to all the ones I currently have of course!)

So here’s your chance. What challenges and new opportunities are you thankful for? Share your stories in the comment section below, even if you aren’t celebrating Thanksgiving now like us folks in Canada.

Happy New Year!

September 22, 2012 by Christina Workman 4 Comments

businessman with calendar — Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

September is almost over. Fall has just begun. Department stores may be getting ready for Halloween, but Stationery stores are getting ready for the New Year. There are still several months and holidays before the New Year begins, but now seems to be the time that successful businesses start thinking ahead.

Planners, schedulers, and daytimers abound. And everyone seems to have their own way to plan and stay current. At my “day job”, a list just went out for all staff to indicate whether they would like a desk calendar, daily planner, monthly planner, or any other type of “calendar in a book” they could fathom. One or two days per page, or a week per page, everyone seems to have their own preference for time management.

Some people prefer electronic gadgets or online tools. Certainly these can be helpful in a variety of ways. If your schedule is online, you can access it anywhere. If it’s an app on your phone, it fits easily in your pocket so you can have it with you at all times, unlike a paper daytimer.

Personally, this is the first year I’ve cared. Next month I’ll be planning the next year of marketing activities and other business-type “stuff” for the upcoming year. This will help me set goals and stay on track with growing and establishing my business. Appointments will still be managed with Google Calendar, which syncs with my phone and computer, and is accessible online from any other computer or internet-capable device. But the big picture for my business will be figured out and saved manually on a good old fashioned paper planner. Probably a purple one at that!

What are your favourite tools for planning the new year? Share them below, along with any time management tips you may have.

On embracing technology, whatever your age

July 2, 2012 by Christina Workman Leave a Comment

Skype Voice Calls Work on iPad with Everyman H... — (Photo credit: stevegarfield)

If someone handed you an iPad today, would you know how to use it? If you answered yes, consider how well you could use it to its full capabilities. Now, consider how well a 2-year-old can navigate it. It’s amazing how well children can use computers and other technology, almost like it’s instinctive.

But have no fear! It’s never too late to learn. My Grandpa is a prime example. In his late 80s, he was embracing all kinds of new technology.

First, he upgraded his phone from pulse to tone (some of you don’t even know what I’m talking about, that’s how old his previous system was!), and he got call display. Can you even imagine not ever knowing who was calling you? But for my Grandpa, this had been unnecessary, and now it was all new.

Next he got a DVD player and a flat screen tv. Would you believe, until a few years ago, I had a hand-me-down tv from him that had the buttons and dials on it (for those of you who aren’t familiar with this pre-remote concept, here’s a sample pic).

My favourite moment of my Grandpa embracing technology was when he first encountered Skype. Since my mom lives across the country from me, we frequently use Skype to make video calls so she can talk to my son and watch him be a goof. So one day, when my Grandpa was visiting my mom, we had a Skype video call. My Grandpa had never been part of a video call before. He was extremely interested in how it all works, and asked tons of questions throughout the call.

You are never too old to start learning something new. My Grandpa is proof of that. Instead of balking at and ignoring new technology, he was interested in being part of it. I can’t even fathom what he’d think of an iPad if he were still here today, but I bet he would sit in awe as he watched his great-grandchildren showing him how it works!

Magical Weather

May 2, 2012 by Christina Workman Leave a Comment

Today was a dreary rainy day in Calgary. Even foggy in the morning. I woke up with a headache. Not a good start to the day. The cafeteria at my job was making Sourdough French Toast with a side of Bacon as the daily breakfast special. One of my favourites, and perfect for such a blah day when you’d rather be at home, curled up in a blanket with a good book and a fire going. Soon after eating my dee-licious brekkie, I got some good news. It put me in a great mood, and I decided I would make my own sunshine for the day. Wouldn’t you know, later in the day, I got some more good news, and then yet another piece of good, nay GREAT, news! It seems the universe took the rainy weather, added my sunshine to it, and made rainbows for me!

Lesson: You can take a bad day and turn it around. Your attitude sets your course.

MIA no more

March 11, 2012 by Christina Workman Leave a Comment

I have not written a blog post in a few months. I could blame it on being sick (which I was for 6 weeks), I could blame it on lack of time (which is never really a good excuse), I could probably think of a million reasons why I haven’t written a new blog post.

But I think the real reason is that I wan’t being true to me. Even though I had only written a handful of posts, I was already deviating from my purpose. I was trying to impress, which takes a lot of energy out of a person! I was trying to seem more business than personal.

So here I am writing for the sake of sharing my thoughts with you. This post may not be perfect, but nothing is. Especially my conclusions.

4 Reasons You Should Be Using an Email Marketing Service

December 19, 2011 by Christina Workman

If you are currently using your own email address to send out newsletters for your company, I strongly recommend you make the switch to an email marketing service. There are several available, like MailChimp, Constant Contact, and iContact to name a few. They all have pay options, but some have a free version depending on your needs. Most of the people I know who are still using their own email haven’t utilized an email marketing provided simply because they didn’t know they even existed, or that it could be low cost and easy to do. Now you all know, so no more excuses! But for those who want to know why they should make the switch, let me share some benefits.

Look Professional

Quite simply, sending an email direct from you to your subscribers generally doesn’t have great visual appeal. Typically these emails are text only, which makes them long and boring and difficult to scan. As much as I know we all believe that our readers actually read our newsletters top to bottom, the truth is they don’t. Readers look for key words that grab their attention, and when you are sending text only, you don’t have a lot of formatting options. With a provider, you set up a template that you can use every time you send a newsletter out. You can have your logo and your brand colours. All your important details are saved in the template so you don’t have to enter them every time. You can add links for your readers to share the newsletter easily with their friends and networks.

Keep it alive and growing

Every newsletter you create with a provider gets its own link, so you can share it easily in status updates on facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and any other social site you belong to. Try that with regular email! And your subscribers can share it easily with all of their connections on those same networks simply by hitting a button. Your potential reach is so much greater than a simple email can achieve. And you can create a sign up form to put on your website so visitors can easily subscribe without you having to lift a finger! Have some new subscribers that want to read past newsletters? Don’t flip through your sent file to find them! With a provider, all your newsletters are archived, and easy to find.

Track Results

Once you send an email out, it is no longer in your control. You can’t get too much information about the success of your newsletter campaign. Sure you can put a track on it to see if people opened it, but that’s about it. You can infer from website stats if more people visited your website shortly after your newsletter went out, but it’s not an exact science. And, of course, if anyone contacts you, you can ask them if it was because of the newsletter, but that’s about it. With an email marketing provider you can find out exactly who opened your email (and how many times!), who forwarded your email, how many people found your newsletter through various other methods like facebook, linkedin or your website and more. You can see direct results of how readers are engaging (or not) with your content.

Private and Personal

I’ve seen it done before. You’re using your own email to send newsletters to your fans. Maybe you’ve even created a fancy distribution list so you don’t have to remember who to send it to. But one of these days, if you haven’t already, I guarantee you will accidentally put all those email addresses into the To field instead of Bcc. Every single email address will be visible to every single recipient, and anyone they decide to forward your newsletter to. Not such a great way to respect your fans’ privacy, is it? And you can apologize as much as you want (and you should), but you can’t get that email back. Some people might not care. Others might be a bit miffed, but some will no longer trust you and will want off your subscription list. But with an email service, you create a list in your account, and it all goes out privately. As a matter of fact, you can set it up so that each person receives their newsletter with a personal greeting using their own name! No more generic “Dear readers” or “Hello All” crap. And while we’re talking about how the emails are sent, have you ever had such a big list that you had to break your list into groups? Again, not an issue for these providers. You may have to pay a bit more if you have a super-sized list, but trust me it’s worth it!

So there you have it. Hopefully I’ve convinced and converted any stragglers out there. If not, I invite you to tell me why you prefer not to make the switch. For those of you who have seen the light, I hope you have fun designing your next email masterpiece!