Submitted by Katie Hellmuth on | 0 Comments
One Saturday morning, I was visiting the Tin Shingle forums, as I like to do during my Saturday morning coffee, and I got a response from Zaida Khaze, founder of Wiggletot, who casually mentioned to me that she was going to a suggestion I'd given her in a forum conversation and write it in her dedicated Tin Shingle "What To Do" notebook. In fact, here is a screenshot of when she said it:
As an educator and hopeful source of empowerment and encouragement for businesses to continuously get the word out there in a meaningful way, I was sort of over the moon about it, so I asked Zaida for pictures of these notebooks. To my delight, here they are!
And perfect that one of them is Hello Kitty. A mama does best when also staying rooted in her kids while she grows the business!
I have written about Zaida before, in how she scored her first national press in a national weekly magazine (which is one of many press placements she has landed using skills she learned at Tin Shingle). But let me highlight why she is finding success now, based on the notes she takes from Tin Shingle TuneUps, as well as tips she picks up from others in Tin Shingle's member-only Message Boards/Forums:
- Zaida stopped sending from her aol email account.
Big move here. Many, many people still use their aol account to represent their business. Many more of them are using their gmail, hotmail or yahoo accounts to pitch the press and conduct business. If you are one of these folks, give top priority to taking the plunge to log into whoever holds your domain or hosts your website, and set up your business email account. You already own it. It's already yours. You just need to set it up. This means you are sending from susiesnowflake@tinshingle.com (replace tinshingle.com with your own business website).
- Zaida stopped sending Word documents within her emails.
Sending messages that normally appear in the body of an email, but instead putting that note into a Word document, saving it, and attaching the document to an email is something that I am encountering people doing more often. If you are sending important information via attached document, stop right now. Just put your note into the email itself.
- Zaida faced her fear of following up with editors.
As a new business owner, and new to the world of directly pitching editors and influencers, Zaida wasn't sure how to follow up with people. What was too much? What was too bold? How should she reply to a celebrity who had her product? All was solved when she listened to [PR] TuneUp: How to Follow Up with the Media the Right Way - Scenarios, Strategies & Success-Minded Answers, and got responses from fellow members in Tin Shingle's Message Boards/Forums.
- Zaida kicked butt with her e-newsletter.
After listening to [NEWSLETTER] TuneUp: The Anatomy Of A Killer Newsletter, Zaida completely changed the way she was making her newsletters. Fortunately, she uses MailChimp, so changing was easy. As was using their drag and drop features that she had not explored yet.
Business owners and their teams have a LOT to do on a daily basis. As does everyone, but the thing that makes the business owner's job a little different is that they are doing different things throughout the day, many of which are completely new to them. Tin Shingle curates what business owners and their teams need to know and puts a focus on what they need to be paying attention to now. Members of Tin Shingle get tools and a community to make taking action easier. It's a pleasure when we get to see the change happen in a business in real time!
