On social media, everything is a part of your brand and is an extension of you. People don’t know you personally so all they have to work with is the vibes you give off. From the way that you send emails, your blog posts, your social media posts and newsletters, everything. What you publish reveals who you are and can tell people one or two things. Either you’re a nasty, disrespectful person or you’re a kind, respectful person. It doesn’t take much to show others respect and appreciation and it may also grant you a follower, or more, a supporter for life. Below are some basic actions we can implement to help to keep our respect levels at an all-time high.

Give Thanks

When someone reblogs or pingbacks on one of your posts, say thank you. It really just takes a second. Although the person probably didn’t share your post…

Well, it’s a sad day indeed when I verbally acknowledge my own grumpiness and all of my coworkers agree! It’s a struggle to have patience… except with patients. With my patients, I give everything I have and am able to keep in mind that these are people who are loved by someone. They are fathers, mothers, sisters, friends, and sons and are dependent on us not only for medical care, but for preservation of dignity and independence. It is my goal to treat everyone like I treat my patients, but I fail…often…at least daily…sometimes hourly…
Thinking on this brought to mind the various types of nurses we have:
1. The Old Grouch: Sure, she has a lot of experience, but proceed with caution if you need to ask her anything. Approach only if her brow is unfurrowed.
2. Miss Sighs-A-Lot: She is productive and always busy. New tasks and assignments…

Sometimes I feel like I’m not doing enough of the things I should be doing — even though I’m already, by some standards, doing too much.

Okay, that was a lie. I feel this way all the time.

Or, at least, I did. Until I learned an important lesson about priorities.

There’s something about creativity that just makes a lot of us want to do all the things, all the time, because it feels good. Start a blog? Sweet! Make music? Yes! Sell stuff on Etsy because everybody’s doing it and it’s fun and also $$$$? SIGN. ME. UP.

I don’t know about you. But I just love making things.

Which is awesome and also terrible. Because a lot of us feel this urgent need to always be doing something. Always writing, always drawing, always sketching out new ideas in our heads to save for the imaginary moment when we…

I’ve enjoyed using my Fire HD 8 tablet as my “main” Android tablet these last few months, but I finally got fed up with some of the annoyances of the built-in Fire launcher. There weren’t any huge annoyances, which is why it took so long to get fed up, but finally I got tired of the lack of an app drawer where I could access an app right away if I couldn’t remember what folder I’d put it in. I also missed having access to launcher widgets, and the ease of swiping left to get to the Google Assistant.

The problem is, Amazon doesn’t provide any easy way to change launchers. Some launchers will let you run them manually—but my favorite launcher, the Google Now launcher, won’t. It helpfully told me I needed to change the launcher setting in my settings menu, but that’s a setting that the Fire’s settings…

I’ve never been a believer in keeping all my eggs in one basket, so to speak. I use more than one bank. I store my important files in more than one place. And I have always had my books available in more than one place.

In recent months, I’ve become more and more thankful that Amazon is not my sole venue for book distribution.

Like the kindle app, the Kobo, Nook and iBooks apps are completely free.
And from an author’s point of view, there are significant differences:

I recently started the revision process on my manuscript. One of many, but more importantly, the first after a year of leaving it on the shelf.

I think the one mistake I was making that surprised me the most, was echo words.  I couldn’t believe it. I know better. I’ve been at this for six years. How in the world could something like that happen?

You would be surprised what you miss. I also missed commas, had commas that didn’t belong, and started some sentences in one tense and ended them in another. Unbelievable.

I don’t know, maybe I’m a bad writer, but I don’t think so. I use to see mistakes on other people’s blogs and think, I can’t believe they missed that. I’m sure I missed stuff too, because I’ve gone back to old blogs and corrected mistakes. I can’t believe I posted them 🙂

You have…

This is a guest post by Ilan Nass.

The Essential Facebook Metrics for Authors

Photo by http://offers.hubspot.com/science-of-facebook-marketing

Facebook Ads are useful to marketers because they offer the chance to track a wide range of metrics. However, determining how effective a campaign actually is requires understanding which metrics are worth tracking, and which you can ignore.

Authors who are just beginning to use Facebook Ads often don’t realize that the statistics and data Facebook highlights often don’t fully illustrate a campaign’s return on investment |(ROI). That’s why, when you’re just starting out, it can be helpful to partner with an experienced Facebook marketing agency. Doing so will help you develop a thorough understanding of how to succeed with Facebook ads.

But, if you’d like to get an idea of the process behind selecting and tracking important campaign metrics, keep reading.

Metrics to exclude

First of all, it’s a good idea…

These days, it seems like there’s more arguing over what counts as a “fact” and what counts as an “opinion” than should ever be necessary. Well, we have bad news. The trouble doesn’t start with “fake news” — it starts in your brain.

We already know that your interpretation of facts can vary wildly depending on your beliefs. Confirmation bias and the backfire effect are always going to shape the way you interact with your world. But according to a new report on a phenomenon known as involuntary opinion confirmation, you might have a hard time sorting out the facts in the first place. That’s because when your brain is exposed to an opinion it agrees with, it automatically slips it into the “facts” folder of your mental filing cabinet.

It all comes down to the Stroop effect. If the name of a color is printed in a different color…