Christmas Gift Guide

Christmas is almost here and I know there are quite a few people who are still looking for the perfect gift for a friend, family member or work colleague. During the year I got to work with an amazing and diverse group of business and know a lot of them have great products and services to give as gifts, ones that you won't necessarily find in a large department store.
All these businesses are Australian and the products are designed in Australia.

Fitness

Healthy Fit
www.healthyfit.com.au/fit-life.html
Give the gift of health and fitness this Christmas and help someone you love to Live Fit – Live Life!

Our exclusive Fit Life program combines the benefits of fitness and nutrition to enable you to enjoy living and experiencing a fitter and healthier you.

You don’t have to be fit to start; you just have to start, to be fit!

We guarantee you full support for your success
www.healthyfit.com.au/fit-life.html

Book Lovers

Happy Hermits - Mt Evelyn History Group
Christmas 1911. A group of young men camp at Evelyn and photograph their surroundings. Meanwhile two girls arrive to stay at Holly Lodge and write a diary of their holiday. Now, more than 100 years later, photos and diary provide a unique insight into our town in its early days.

Happy Hermits is available for $12 at Mt Evelyn Station House, Wray Crescent (open weekday afternoons) or email historygroup@mountevelyn.vic.au

Life Sucks but you can turn it around - Maree Hamilton
www.lifesucks.com.au
The book “Life Sucks but YOU CAN turn it around” is a book written for everyone in mind. We all face a traumatic life event at some point or we are affected by someone that has.
The stories from inspiring Australians cover autism, alzheimers, cancer, depression, domestic violence, IVF, miscarriage, road trauma & suicide just to name a few!  The book features real stories from real people, facing real challenges!If you have been through an event such as these, or you know someone that has, then this book is definitely for you!
You can order the paperback and PDF version of this book at: www.lifesucks.com.au

Young Family

Baby Bedding - Cozitots
www.cozitots.com.au 
The Cozitot is a leading innovative design in infant bedding that solves the problem of loose bedding at nap and sleep times. It is a fully fitted, adjustable baby bedding set. It's unique design allows for the secure addition of a quilt and extra blankets, ensuring your baby stays cosy and warm with bedding that remains in place through the night. It is simple to use and makes bedtimes easy and non fuss. The cozitot is an INPAA www.inpaa.com.au approved product and is fitted in accordance with SIDS recommendations www.sidsandkids.org/safe-sleeping
It adjusts with your baby's growth and development during the use of your cot and toddler bed.
 You can find out more about Cozitot and order online at: www.cozitots.com.au

Mother-to-be

Maternity Clothing - Beautiful Bellies
www.beautifulbellies.com.au
Beautiful Bellies Maternity Wear offers a superb online collection of fashionable, affordable maternity and breastfeeding clothes from an international portfolio of designers. With their online maternity and nursing wear they aim to help busy ‘mums to be’ to change with style no matter their lifestyle, size or budget.
You can see the whole range of maternity clothing at: www.beautifulbellies.com.au

Eco-Friendly Gifts

Shampoo and Conditioner - EarthQuest
www.earthquest.com.au
Nature's Symphony Shampoo and Conditioner is free from toxic ingredients and has been especially formulated with your health in mind.  Bach Flower Remedy of Crab Apple helps maintain a healthy scalp by detoxifying the scalp thus encouraging the repair of hair follicles allowing for new hair growth.
Ingredient benefits;
Chamomile, soothing to the scalp.
Calendula, an anti-inflammatory herb.
French Lavender, an antiseptic restorative blend soothing to the scalp.
Ylang Ylang, adds shine and lustre to the hair, protects colour treated hair preventing fading.
Bergamot, can be beneficial for oily hair and leaves hair beautifully scented.
You can find out more about Nature's Symphony and order their shampoo and conditioner online at: www.earthquest.com.au

DIY Gifts

Sewing Lessons - Carrickters
www.carrickters.com/Classes.aspx
Do you know someone who always has ideas for clothes but can't find what they want in the shops?
Or someone who can't find clothes that fit them perfectly?
Sewing lessons from Christine at Carrickters Sewing Studio will allow them to design and create an amazing outfits or alter clothes to flatter their shape.
Christine can teach people who have never sewn before as well as help experienced sewers. Sewing lessons are taught at your own pace and you work on projects that suit you, there is no set curriculum you have to follow. You can bring your own sewing machine to class or use one at the studio.
Gift vouchers are available just ring 9736 3807 or check out www.carrickters.com/Classes.aspx

Music

Live in The Bat Cave digital CD
thebatcave991.bandcamp.com
The Bat Cave is a radio show on Yarra Valley FM (99.1FM) on Monday nights, and they've bought out a digital CD 'Live in The Bat Cave' through bandcamp, which showcases some great Australian (and 90% local) bands. You can send as a gift from the website and all proceeds go towards Yarra Valley FM.
You can purchase or send the digital CD via thebatcave991.bandcamp.com
and for more information on Yarra Valley FM visit www.yarravalleyfm.com

Who do you pay? ~ Domain Name and Hosting

There's a little bit of homework for you to do in this post, but it will save you time and stress in the future!

I get a lot of emails and phone calls telling me the person contacting me has received an invoice for their domain name or hosting and they're not sure if they should pay it because they can't remember who they originally registered with. Normally this would be easy, you get an invoice for services you're using, you pay it and life continues. But in the domain name industry it can be a bit shady. A few companies see your domain name is up for renewal in 4 months and send you a letter telling you when it's due. They also say if you swap to them they would charge a certain amount, but they lay out the letter so it looks like an invoice. We're often too busy to sit down and figure out if it is actually who we owe money to or not that we assume it's fine as it looks official, and we only pay once every year or two so remembering who we originally registered with is difficult. By paying the invoice we've allowed them to swap our domain name to them and often are charged a lot more.

So this week I'll be helping you figure out what invoices you should pay when it comes to your website, and which ones are other businesses trying to get you to swap to them and charge you more.


I want you to make a website folder for your filing cabinet if you don't already have one.
Get two pieces of paper.

The first one is for your Domain Name.
Write down on it:
- Your domain name
- Who your domain name is registered with. This will be the company you originally asked to set it up for you. It may be an IT company like MelbourneIT or SmartyHost, or it may be a web designer like myself.
- How much you pay for your domain name renewal.
- How long you renew your domain name for (it's usually 1 or 2 years at a time, but there are options for more so make note).
- When you last paid for your domain name renewal (this will allow you to easily work out when it's up for renewal next, eg last paid: July 2012 for 2 years means your next payment will be due July 2014).

The second piece of paper is for your website hosting.
Write down on it:
- Who you registered your website hosting with (again it will be a hosting company or your web designer).
- How much you pay for your hosting.
- How long you renew your hosting for (again it's generally 1 or two years at a time).
- When you last paid for your hosting renewal.


If you're unsure of any of these details:
Ask your web designer (if you have one) as they should be able to help you with at least some of the details.
Look through your old emails and invoices
Ask your accountant or look through your accounting program as they should hold the details of who you paid and how much you paid them.


Next time you get an invoice for your domain name or hosting you will be able to easily check if the company is the same company you originally purchased from, and if the price is the same you normally charge.
If the company name and price are entirely different you can ignore it.
If both the company and price are the same, it's fine to pay.
If the company or price is different but the other one is the same, check it out. It may be they have changed their prices, or the company has changed names or merged with another company - they generally email their customers when they do this to warn you of new invoicing details (don't forget to update your file if they do this).

If you receive an invoice and are still unsure, don't be afraid to ask someone!

Make an easy url for your facebook page

If you've just set up a Facebook page for your business or product you will find that the link to your page (the url people have to type in to the internet browser) is quite long and not at all memorable. It will be something like www.facebook.com/pages/yourpagename/1234567891234567 but you are able to change this to something easier like www.facebook.com/yourpagename

Make sure you are logged in to Facebook then visit www.facebook.com/username
Here you can set a username for your personal page (the one you see all your friends posts), and your facebook business page.

First, choose your business page from the drop down menu.
Type the name you would like your page to be found as.



Press the Check Availability button, this will check if anyone else already has the url you would like to be found for. As there are millions of profiles and business pages you may find you don't get your ideal username (I couldn't get FeralArt for example as someone already has it), so you may have to brainstorm a bit to find something appropriate and memorable.

Once you've found a name available you will get a popup window, this lets you know you can't take someone elses trademark, you can't sell usernames etc. But it's also worth noting if you choose to change the username/url of your page in the future you can only do this once.

Once confirmed your username is set up.

Find out how many visitors clicked on your link.

This is a short simple visual guide to looking at promotion traffic from social media to your website in Google Analytics.

Your statistics can tell you useful (and interesting) information like where people have come to your website from, then you can drill down and see which promotions are working for you.
For example, if you post on Facebook about a new product available on your website on Wednesday and link to it, you can jump into your statistics a few days later (giving people time to see/act and your statistics time to catch up) and see how many people viewed the product on and a few days after Wednesday coming from Facebook.

Log into your Google Analytics account.
In the left menu go to: Traffic Sources > Sources > All Traffic

Change the date range the graph is showing to the days you would like to see results from.

In the main graph area
Click on facebook.com/referral in the list of referring sites

Inbetween the graph and referring sites (which should now only show Facebook) there's a little dropdown menu that says 'Other' (next to Primary Dimension: Source/Medium), click on that and choose: Traffic Sources > Landing Page

This will show a list of pages under the graph. The list shows which link visitors from Facebook clicked on.
Find the link to the product you promoted and you will see the amount of visits it has had in your chosen date range from Facebook.

Adding a comment to a scheduled post on Facebook

There's a theory going around that Facebook shows your posts to more people if you don't put a link in it. So a lot of people are writing their post and putting the link in the comments. Now this is easy if you're typing up your post and posting it straight away, but what if you've scheduled your post and won't be (or are unsure if you will be) near a computer when it automatically posts? You don't want people having to wait for you to return and remember to add the link for them.

So I figured out a way to add comments to scheduled posts, there's a bit of clicking around but it is do-able, see below for a walkthrough with screenshots of the process.

First schedule your post as you would normally (See Scheduled posts on Facebook if you need help with doing this).

Once you've scheduled your post you will get the 'Your Post Has Been Scheduled' popup confirmation. Click on the 'View Activity Log' button. (If you accidentally click on close you can get to your activity log by going to the top admin panel of your Facebook page and clicking on 'Edit Page > Use activity Log').

You will be taken to your Activity Log where all your scheduled posts are at the top of the page. Find the post you want to add your comment to and click on the date the post is scheduled for.

This will open up a page with your scheduled post by itself, and have an area where you can comment. Type in the link or comment you want to go with that post and press enter. You comment is now scheduled to appear when your post appears on your Facebook page.

If you want to double check and make sure your comment/link will appear with your post go back to your Activity Log. Your scheduled post will show the comment underneath it in the Scheduled Posts area.

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Yes, FeralArt is on Facebook too!
Come join me, and don't forget to introduce yourself: www.facebook.com/FeralArtDesign

Scheduled posts on Facebook

Scheduling posts on Facebook can be a huge time saver as we all know going on Facebook for 5 minutes to check your page and create one post often turns into a distraction that lasts an hour. We also might want to post something at a particular time (when a sale starts, reminder of an event etc) and either don't want to forget or know we won't be near a computer at that particular time. So you can schedule posts and photo/video from your business page (not poll questions) and know they will appear when you want them to without having to set yourself a reminder.

First, click in the box where you will be typing your post. At the bottom left corner a little clock appears (circled in the image below). Once you click on the clock you will be able to choose the year, month, day, hour and minute you would like your post to appear. Your ‘Post’ button will change to a ‘Schedule’ button.

Once you have scheduled your post you will get a message saying when it will be published. If you would like to edit or cancel the post before it appears on your timeline, you can through your admin panel by clicking on ‘Edit Page > Use Activity Log’.

Your scheduled posts will be at the very top of this screen and gives you the option to change the scheduled time, post now or cancel the post.

A few things to note:

• Scheduling does take into account where you are in the world, so if you are posting from Victoria, Australia and ask your post to appear at 2pm, it will appear at 2pm Victoria, Australian time.
• You can only schedule posts up to six months in advance. 

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Yes, FeralArt is on Facebook too!
Come join me, and don't forget to introduce yourself: www.facebook.com/FeralArtDesign

{ Inspiration List } Facebook Posts

It's good to post once or twice a day on Facebook, but the dreaded 'posting block' often means when we know we haven't posted anything for a few days we still can't think of anything!
So I've put together an inspiration list of things you can post that don't take long to write, don't require much planning and can be used as inspiration more than once.

• Change your banner image, this gets listed as a post (people can like and comment) and you can promote or spotlight a product/service without needing to write any persuasive text.
• Photo/information of your newest product.
• Photo/information of your best seller.
• Details of an upcoming market or event you will be at.
• Details of a retail outlet where your product is sold.
• A photo of where you work, for example your current shop window or workshop bench.
• A photo of a work in progress.
• Updates of your work in progress.
• Link to your latest blog post.
• Link to a past blog post that still has some great useful information.
• Link/photo to another business you're collaborating with on a project.
• Introduce your work helpers, be it employees, kids or pets.
• Testimonial photos/comments (ask first if you can post them on Facebook).
• Photo of parcels ready to be posted to their new homes.
• Welcome message when you have a few new followers.
• Thank you message to all your followers.
• Reminder before you send out your newsletter encouraging people to sign up.
• Any special offers or promotions you have running, and a reminder just before they're about to end.
• Celebrate milestones, eg # years in business, # of Facebook likes, getting through a huge amount of custom orders, you/employee finishing a course to further their career.
• Tips for your clients/customers to get the most out of the products you sell.

Hopefully this gives you some inspiration for the next time you have a posting block when updating your Facebook page.
Don't forget when you have some time to brainstorm a few post ideas, once you've started writing some down more will come! 
Are there any other points you would add to this list?

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Yes, FeralArt is on Facebook too!
Come join me, and don't forget to introduce yourself: www.facebook.com/FeralArtDesign