|
I don't know about you, but I use Apple Notes constantly. I love them for a bunch of reasons, but primarily: they are always with me. And I mean always. I can jot something down in Notes when at my computer, and through the magic of the iCloud, my Notes are there waiting for me on my iPhone or iPad whenever I need them. And vice versa of course. Not only that, you can use shared Notes just like you use Google Docs, shared between people. Sharing Apple NotesThe primary difference between Notes and Google Docs on your phone (in my experience)— Notes are much more seamless. You can practically see things happening in real time between devices, unlike with Google Docs where the phone lag-time can be significant. To invite someone to collaborate with you on a Note, click the "add a person" button, which looks like this:  You can then add people via email, text message, AirDrop or by sending them the link in the platform of your choice. You'll know it's a shared note from this little icon:  And now, just like a Google Doc, anyone with access can add to, edit or delete items in your shared Notes. Locking Apple NotesSometimes you want a safe space to put things in your phone where you know that no one can access them, even if you hand over your iPhone, iPad or computer. Apple Notes is also the solution for this little problem. Want to store passwords or... well, whatever... throw it in a note and then right click in on your computer or swipe left on your iOs device and you'll get the option to Lock the folder. When you do so, every time you want to access it, you'll have to input your device's password. Which is crazy convenient if you use fingerprint or face ID! When a Note is locked, it will be designated by a little lock icon.  This note is currently "unlocked." If it was locked, the lock icon would be closed. Clean Up Your Notes Using FoldersI told you I use Notes a lot. And for a lot of different things in my life. So of course, I have a lot of different Notes. Folders allow me to separate out my Notes by category. I have a folder for personal Notes, another for work Notes. You can have as many as you want, which makes for really quick and easy scrolling. And of course, if you can't find what you are looking for — like with anything else Apple — you can always search all your Notes by the search bar at the top. You can also pin your primary Note to the top of your folder, to ensure easy access to your most important data.  Notes Have Great Formatting Options For Such a Simple ToolYou can create bullet points, numbered lists, and indent right as needed. You can make text bold, italicized, underlined and all that fun stuff. You can also add in tons of great tools, including tables:  Sketches:  I'm a writer, not so much a painter □ You can even scan documents, or add in a photo or video directly into your Notes! Didn't You Say Something About Checkable Bullet Points?I sure did! Don't get me wrong — I LOVE all of the features I have laid out above. But the reason I'm writing this post is because I just learned something new about Notes and it's already helped me seriously step up my Note game. We write ourselves lots of reminders: Buy milk. Email client. Finish report. Some of these are one-off tasks. But many of them are recurring. For years, I've been deleting items that I finished, and rewriting them when it was time to do them again (pretty standard for a grocery list for example). Well no more! With this one tiny hack, you can now write those tasks out once, and then select or unselect the accompanying bullet point, never having to write it out again. Here's what this looks like:  You write your line item and then check or uncheck the bullet point as appropriate. This will change the way you grocery shop (it sure has for me) but also probably the way you run your business! To access this feature, just click the checkmark in the circle icon:  And voila.
Now add "share this blog post on your social channels" and then go ahead and take it off (after you've done so of course!). In the mean time, check out more of my iOS tips and tricks. Have any other iOS tips, tricks or hacks you think the people should know? Leave them in the comments or hit me up on social and let's share them with the world. If you work with people, you should have a photo/media library. Period. Taking pictures of your customers/fans/community will help you tell your story in real time. It will also help ensure you have great content to use for years to come. There’s no shortage of stock photography on the internet, but none of it has your team members in it, or your customers wearing/using/engaging with your products, or events taking place in neighborhoods where you live. You don’t need to be an amazing photographer to build a photo library, you just need to pull out your smartphone and start taking pictures. If you have multiple team members, you should all take photos regularly to ensure as many different shots as possible of any given event, sale, party, etc. But that’s where things gets complicated. If several members of your team are taking photos, then those photos are spread out across several different phones and devices. There are many services out there that aim to solve this problem. Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon Photos… all of them can do it. But they are all clunky and slow, and therefore unlikely to be used regularly and reliably. And if you aren’t sharing all your photos, the system isn’t working. Here’s the good news: If every member of your team uses at least one Apple product, Shared iCloud Drives are the simplest solution you can imagine to solve this annoying problem. Adding photos to a Shared Drive takes three clicks of the screen. Literally. And then everyone with access will have all shared photos and videos right on their phones and other Apple devices. To add a photo(s)/video(s) to a Shared Drive, simply open up the media on your phone you want to share. Then click in the share box in the bottom left of the screen.  At this point you can email or text the photo, or you can share it to Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. But don’t do any of that. Select the rainbow icon labeled iCloud Photo Sharing.  The name of my Shared Album is Reverbal Communications. Click next to Shared Album and you can add your media to any existing Shared Drive you're a part of, or you can create a new one. Optionally: you can add text or message to accompany your photo. I highly recommend you do this, both for your own sake, and for the sake of your team members. Say where you were, what you were doing, who is in the photo(s)/video(s) and any other information your team should know. You can add a message or a note for an individual piece of media, or a group of pictures/videos. Whatever you choose to share will be commented on individually or as a unit.  Then just hit post and everyone in the Shared Drive will get a notification that there is new media in the Shared Drive. When you open up the Shared Drive, you can toggle between Photos and People.  To invite new people to the Drive, go to People and then click “Invite People.”  They can only accept your invitation if they have an iCloud enabled device (a Mac computer, phone or tablet). You can invite them through their email or phone number, so long as that contact info is associated with an iCloud account.
Shared Drives are a great tool for placing all media at the fingertips of everyone on your team. You can have as many as you want too, so maybe have one accessible to interns or revolving staffers, and another for senior staffers/stakeholders. Or you have different Shared Drives for different parts of your team. Whatever works for you and your organization. Have questions? Hit me up. I’m here to help you and you team get started building your Digital Media Library. Check out some other iPhone tips and tricks. Have any favorite secret iOS tips, tricks, tools or hacks that you love? Share them in the comments! Did you know that Facebook lets you save things you want to come back to later? Ever see an ad you were interested in, but didn’t have time to dig in? Maybe it was a post from your favorite digital storyteller and strategist, walking you through some awesome Facebook feature you definitely want to learn about, just not at this moment 😉. Perhaps it’s a picture of your baby nephew, who’s just too cute for words and you don’t want to lose track of all those awesome pictures of him in his adorable little onesies. Facebook has you covered. Anytime you see anything on Facebook — ANYTHING! — you can “save” it, offering you easy access to it whenever you want to go back to it in the future. Go to any post on Facebook and click the three dotes in the top right hand corner.  You’ll get a dropdown menu. The very first option will offer you what looks like a ribbon icon and the option to “Save post."  Click it and that post/video/ad will immediately be added to your Saved Folder How Do I Find My Saved Folder? This too is extremely easy. Go to your homepage and look at the tabs on the lefthand side of the screen. Under “Explore,” you’ll find your “Saved” folder.  You’ll also find a bunch of other cool things. For example: You know those “On This Day” posts Facebook shows you, reminding you about that time you became friends with that person you don’t even know 8 years ago? Well sometimes there are days or people we might prefer not to remember (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind anyone?). Click “On This Day” and then go to “Preferences” in the top right corner. You can choose people or dates to be excluded from those otherwise fun and helpful Facebook reminders! Okay, so back to your Facebook Saved FolderClick where it says “Saved” and anything you saved will be there waiting for you. You can even search within your saved items!  Once you’ve saved a few items, you can then build collections, to make it even easier to navigate your favorite material.   You are busy; there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything. Social media feels like a chore; one that never ends. You might feel that if you can't do it right, why bother doing it all.
Fret not: A good social media program can be run in as few as 20 minutes a day. This session will help you spend your limited social media time wisely, ensuring you reap the greatest rewards from this ever-growing part of business – in as few as 20 minutes a day! By having a plan, segmenting tasks and properly organizing your ideas, you can create and manage an interesting, engaging and valuable social media program without having to sacrifice all of your many other responsibilities. In the session, we cover topics like:
 On Friday, Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States before a crowd of about a quarter of a million people gathered on the National Mall.
The following day, half a million people took to the street's in our nation's capital for the #WomensMarch in order to "stand together in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families - recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country." Along with the central march in Washington, DC, there were another 2.5 million people participating in 600 sister marches world wide. The largest marches were in Los Angeles (750k), Washington, DC (500k), New York (400k) and Chicago (250k). It is not surprising the biggest crowds were in the three most populous cities and our nation's capital. The top ten largest marches* were: Los Angeles, CA: 750,000 Washington, DC: 500,000 New York, NY: 400,000 Boston, MA: 100,000 Chicago, IL: 250,000 Denver, CO: 100,000 Madison, WI: 100,000 Portland, OR: 100,000 Seattle, WA: 100,000 St. Paul, MN: 90,000 BUT, when we look at the size of the march compared to the city population, rather than the raw numbers by city, things get interesting. Washington, DC comes out on top, with number of participants equivalent to 75% of their population. [Before we move forward, let's break that down: Washington, DC has a population of 659,000 people. They had 500,000 marchers. So the percentage of marchers, as compared to the city's population, was 500,000/659,000 = 75.87%.] But many people traveled from all over the country to participate in the central march. Second to DC, the clear winner of marchers by city population was Madison, WI with over 40% turnout!!! When rearranged for turnout ratio, the top marching cities are now as follows: Washington, DC: 75.87% Madison, WI: 41.15% St. Paul, MN: 30.51% Los Angeles, CA: 19.23% Portland, OR: 16.42% Boston, MA: 15.5% Denver, CO: 15.38% Seattle, WA: 15.34% Chicago, IL: 9.26% New York, NY: 4.76% Great work Madison, Wisconsin. Way to represent your values. Check out some of the great social content from the day at #WomensMarchMadison. *March sizes sourced from The Hill. Population size is based on city limits and sourced from the Google Knowledge Graph. This awesome infographic was created by iCandy-Graphics and Web Design. Follow them on Twitter @iCandyGraphics1.  Facebook is nothing if not dynamic. Understand how part of its functionality works today, and tomorrow you’ll notice that it’s changed. A week later, it may have changed yet again. The goal shouldn’t be to KNOW everything about how the platform works, rather to spend enough time with it that you know how to grow and adapt with it. Recently, Facebook made a change to how it displays a brand’s response time and it added an option to send instant replies to messages you receive through your Facebook page. Both concepts are easy, and worth taking a moment to understand. The Change: Response Time Until very recently, Facebook published to your page how long it takes you to respond to messages you receive through your brand page. It might say a few minutes, an hour or a day. It also publishes your response rate. Pro-tip: Even if you are going to respond to someone through another medium (phone, email...), respond to their initial message to let them know. For example: “Thanks for writing, I’m calling now.” It’s quick, easy, not at all awkward, and it allows you to maintain a 100% response rate on your page even when communicating through other methods. While Facebook still publishes your response rate, they made a major shift regarding your response time. It used to be something you couldn’t edit or control (save for responding quicker to messages in the future). It was a report for your customers on the speediness of your response time. No more. Now, it is a tool that allows you to let people know how long they should expect you to take to return their message. If you have someone working on your social media full-time, it should take you less than an hour. Or maybe even just a few minutes. Let people know that. But if it’s just you and Facebook is one of 1000 things you are managing, you can now let people know that it might take you a day to respond. The set up is easy. Go to your Facebook brand page. Directly below your avatar, you will notice a section that shares things like how many followers you have, how many have checked in with you and the like. The very first thing in that section will be your response rate and your response time.  To edit it, go to your page's Settings (located in top right hand corner of your page). Then click on Messaging in the left-hand menu. From here, simply pick your (reasonable) time frame.  Pro tip: Be honest here, both for your own sake and for that of your customer. If it’s going to take you a day to respond, don’t say you will respond within an hour. Set up expectations that you can meet, and then work hard to meet them. So that is the change Facebook made. But they also recently made a fairly substantial addition to their brand messenger. The New Option: Instant Replies You can now set up Instant Replies that will automatically be sent to anyone who writes to your brand through Facebook.  Let’s say you rarely check your Facebook messages, but you live in Gmail. Send an instant reply telling people that you’ll be in touch soon, but if they want a quicker response, they should email you as well. Or provide a phone number they can call. Or let them know you will be in touch, and send them to your website to shop/learn/take action in the meantime.
We can’t control how people choose to reach out to us. But with this new functionality, we have yet another tool in our toolkit to ensure happy customers and seamless customer service. Not sure what to put in your Instant Reply? Drop me a line and let's figure it out together! The wait is over! It’s now officially as easy to switch between Instagram accounts on your mobile device as it is to switch between Twitter accounts. For those of you who run only a single account, this won’t change your interaction with the platform. But if you have a personal account, and you also run one for your business, non-profit, band, microbrewery or anything else, this is the time to get excited. Until now, you had to log out of one account and login to another to switch back and forth. Tracking down passwords and taking the extra time to move around pretty much guaranteed that whatever account was your primary, stayed your primary. Instagram heard our frustration and they have—finally!—acquiesced. Switching between accounts is now easy. Open up the app. In the top right corner, you will see a gear. Click it.  Scroll down to the bottom of the list and click on “Add Account.”  Login with your second account. Now, you can simple toggle between the accounts. Go to your homepage (bottom right icon showing your avatar). At the top of that page, you will see your username, followed by a ٧.  Click it and you will see a list of all accounts you are logged into. You can now toggle back and forth to your heart’s desire. That's it--now enjoy!
Quick note: You can repeat this process with numerous accounts.  I live on my computer. It’s where I work, listen to music, watch tv, connect with friends, follow the news... My computer serves countless functions in both my personal and my professional life.
And I love it. But it can also get complicated. How can I ensure that the tweet I am trying to send for a client doesn’t accidentally go out through my own account (or MUCH WORSE - that my own tweet doesn’t go out through theirs)? How do I check both my personal email and my work email without mixing up the two and losing track of sender? How about engaging with YouTube while also being logged into the Google Apps through a separate, professional setting? Not having a work computer means combining your personal and work systems in endless ways. But keeping the different components of your life distinct is as easy as... using more than one internet browser. I for one use Firefox for my “real” life. Chrome is my work browser. When additional projects come in that need not just their own space, but their own house altogether, it’s time to load up Safari. This system has long kept me sane and relaxed, even when things start piling up. Try it yourself and let me know what you think. Pro tip: If you have a Mac, you can actually create different “desktops.” Get these setup and watch how quickly things start settling in to focus! |
Blog Posts by Category
All
|
RSS Feed