Get Your Own QR Code!

Here is my new QR code! It will take you to a page on my website where you can get a code for free shipping. This just shows you a little of what you can do with your own QR code. You can also set it to your email address, You Tube account, a Vcard, a map or plain old text or your Facebook page.

According to WikiPedia:

A QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code) is a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) that is designed to be read by smartphones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded may be text, a URL, or other data.

I've had my smartphone for a while. Never used it to scan these, but the other day I got one in the mail for a special offer that I wanted to take advantage of. It was so easy! Of course first I had to download an app to read them at the app store. So I got redlaser, it reads them and also can read bar codes and check price and availability at nearby stores! You can also use Blazerfish or QRafter at their respective websites.

Here's a great article on Marketing with QR codes 

and here is another socialmediaexaminer.com

Here are places to generate QR codes:


http://goo.gl/
http://goqr.me/
http://app.qreateandtrack.com/#/create/url
http://www.qrstuff.com/
http://delivr.com/qr-code-generator ( I used this site as you can get free reports showing how many views and clicks your qr code as gotten)

You can also get them in color. I think these would be great for business cards, or mailers if you do them. You could set it to give users a special discount code like I did above, or lots of other marketing ideas.

If you have a smartphone, please check mine out!

Adding a Pin It Button to your Posts - Revised!!

Well.... all that trouble trying to figure out how to add this little button to a post!

Then you figure it out and they change it! Well, this time for the better!

 has made it much easier to add the 'Pin It' button to your posts so your readers can pin you to their boards.


Now you can go to their 'goodies' section on their website, enter in your details and get the code all written out for you!
Click here, scroll down to "Pin It" Button for Websites and you will see this:

Fill in the info asked for, the URL of the webpage you want the pin on, the URL of the image, and the description you want. The description is not necessary but it gives your readers a place to start and can be changed/ replaced by them. You can also specify if you want your pin count next to or above your button, or not at all.

So, now that you have all this fancy code, you can copy and paste it into your blog post in the 'Edit HTML' mode and voila! You have your pin it button.
For specific instructions on which url's to use, see this post Adding Pin It To Your Posts.

Pinterest - Adding the Pin It to your Posts

Added Friday, August 5th: These instructions still work, but Pinterest has made it easier for you! New post to come Monday!

I guess you all noticed that I posted a strange post a few days ago. I was doing my best to figure out how to add this button to the bottom of a post. I think I finally have a version of this that works!

 is the new 'Virtual Pinboard' site. As you surf the web and find pictures of things you love or want to try, just 'Pin It'. Then people will hopefully follow you and you follow them and back and forth, you get the idea.

If you need an invite, leave me your email address and I will send one to the first five requesters.

So Emily of Sweetly Scrapped and I had the idea of putting a 'Pin It' button at the bottom of our blog posts. Pinterest says it is Oh So Easy! just go here: Pinterest Goodies, scroll down to Pin It Button for Websites, grab the code, and voila! Pin It button.

Ok... not so easy!

Here is their default code:

<a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/bookmarklet/?media=http://d3io1k5o0zdpqr.cloudfront.net/images/PinterestLogoNew.png&url=http://pinterest.com/&description=Pinterest%20Logo" id="PinItButton">Pin It</a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://d3io1k5o0zdpqr.cloudfront.net/js/pinit.js"></script>

Below that it says "
Customize your “Pin It” button by modifying this default code with the following parameters:

1. Specify a domain — the domain of the page the user is on
2. Specify a media — the image the user is pinning
3. Specify a description (optional) — the description of the image the user is pinning "

Trying to figure out these customizations was fun! (Not) LOL. If you just put in their default code, your Pin It button will not work!

So here is what we did to make it work:
1. Do not change the first part of the code: <a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/bookmarklet/?

2. Decide which image you want to be 'pinned'. Place that image in your post in edit mode. Once you have done that, right click on your image in your 'compose' box.   Choose 'copy link location' and you will have something like this: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYg6K9VCcEv05WGrekj3hFImY0X12o4WBPqsngBbGTn4SQ3-f4VY5HhmDy4o4rFoM3JQ_2BhkNskITozgpUtuF8l12miA80Ka87YNx8LE_swO5KCevG7vecRDgMwg7ZxZdLzVd0pB_Z4w/s1600/Image5.jpg   Place that code after .media='

3. After 'url=' We had trouble here.  What we finally did that worked was this: First you need to actually publish your post. Then go to the post's actual page, not your blog's home page, copy that url which in this case looks like this: http://kzembroidery.blogspot.com/2011/07/pinterest-adding-pin-it-to-your-posts.html and use that.

There may be a better way, but this is what worked for me.

4. Add a description of your image that will post to Pinterest. After 'description=' in place of Pinterest%20Logo  I changed it to say description=Add Pin It Button Explained

Got all that? So to put the pin it button at the bottom of this post I used this code:


<a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/bookmarklet/?media=https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYg6K9VCcEv05WGrekj3hFImY0X12o4WBPqsngBbGTn4SQ3-f4VY5HhmDy4o4rFoM3JQ_2BhkNskITozgpUtuF8l12miA80Ka87YNx8LE_swO5KCevG7vecRDgMwg7ZxZdLzVd0pB_Z4w/s1600/Image5.jpg&amp;url=http://kzembroidery.blogspot.com/2011/07/pinterest-adding-pin-it-to-your-posts.html&amp;description=Add%20Pin%20It%20Button%20Explained" id="PinItButton">Pin It</a><script src="http://d3io1k5o0zdpqr.cloudfront.net/js/pinit.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>

And when you click on it you should see this:

Hopefully this will make it a bit easier to add the button to your posts!

Pin It

Testing Pin It

Pin It

Boost My Blog Friday at Design it Chic!

Check out this great linky party! No rules!





Also check out her blog tips! Some great tips in there. I have used some of them!

Back Up Your Blog

So last week Blogger was down for what 24 hours or so? And they lost some posts that they are trying to restore. Will they ever get them all back?

There's a very easy way to back up your blog so when this happens again you haven't lost everything. You'll want to back up 2 things, the template and the posts.

To back up the template go to your Dashboard, then 'Design', 'Edit HTML'.

Hit the 'download full template' link and save the file. Make a folder so you can backup weekly, monthly, whatever you think depending on how often you post. This saves your design.

Next go to 'Settings', 'Basic'.

Choose 'Export blog'.

Click the big orange button, save the file and voila! You have your whole blog backed up in case there are ever issues again. 

Again, depending on how often you post, decide how often you want to backup your blog.

groOrganic Garden Planner!

In April I posted that 'I Can Garden!' now since we have moved from the hot dry desert to the farm country of Wisconsin.

I

Since I haven't lived near fertile land in over 15 years, I needed some help to get my garden started. groOrganic was kind enough to give me a 30 day trial of their Garden Planner to try out. Visit their site at www.groOrganic.com, by clicking the photo above or call them at 888-947-6674.

It is great!! It is so easy to log in and get right to your 'plan'. I decided I wanted to try planting radishes, green onions, artichokes, some kind of melon, beans and soy beans. Also a little lettuce mix and we had asparagus last year from plants already here.

A bit optimistic for me! LOL! So I put it all into my plan which was fun!

It is larger than my spot is, but that's because I decided to make it look like the whole yard and put the deck in. I also decided to plant some flowers in pots on the deck. This is what it looked like when I was done.

Now the hard part... I have no idea when to plant these so that they don't die right off the bat! We get frost here and that's not good for plants right? This was the best part about groOrganic's garden planner:

It tells you when to plant, type of soil, sun or shade, spacing, everything you need to know! And it knows all this because when you do your setup you tell it where you live so it is specific to your area! How great is that!

There's also a graph that shows what months you should plant everything and harvest it.

So since I did all this, I've changed my plan some, but it is so easy to do in the garden planner. It's too late for me to plant an artichoke from seed so I'm trying to find an established plant and having no luck. Our asparagus didn't come back up this year, I don't know what's up with that. The rhubarb is back but I have no clue what to do with rhubarb! I went to the farmer's market and bought the cutest brussel sprout plant so decided to plant that in a container on the deck. My flowers haven't popped up yet and I'm not sure if I should plant the onions because of my dog ,and it's too early to plant the radishes.

groOrganic also sends you an email every 2 weeks to remind you what can be planted that week. And the emails have great recipes in them.

All in all, this is a great program! I wouldn't have known any of this without it. I would have planted the radishes already and they would have died since we've had frost since I got the seeds. groOrganic also sells raised bed packages in some states, bee hive equipment, emergency packs and more. Check them out! www.groOrganic.com

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com created by WebBizIdeas a Minneapolis SEO and Web Design firm. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commissions 16 CFR, Part 255 Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. Tomoson Product review & giveaway Disclosure.

Cool Widget for Showing Related Stories Under Posts!

I've always wondered how people do this! It is Soooo easy! Click on this:

Enter in your email address, your bloglink, etc, hit get widget and voila! Another window will open up giving you very easy to follow instructions on how to add this to your blog!

Easy! See?

Blogger Comments

Does anyone know if there is a way to respond directly to the commenter's email when someone comments on one of your posts in Blogger? I know you can post after it, but if the person who left the comment is not subscribed to your comments they won't get it unless they remember to check back.


How do the rest of you handle this? I would love to know!!

Facebook Emails Going to 'Updates' Folder

Hi! and Happy New Year!

Well, Facebook is rolling out another change. They are changing the way their 'mail' system works. For those of us with business pages, some functionality has already changed.

First of all, to send an 'update' to people who have 'liked' your page, you now need to do the following:
Select 'Edit Page' under your profile picture for your business page.
Click the 'Marketing' tab.
Click 'Send an Update'

You used to be able to 'send an update' from the bottom of your business profile page.

Next... when you send these 'updates' they no longer go to the 'messages' box where you see all your normal emails. They go to an 'updates' folder that you won't see unless you actually look for it. This is how it looks under your profile:

You actually need to click on 'Messages' and then it will look like this:

As you can see, it opens up a new menu and shows that I have messages in my 'Updates' box.

There is no other notification that I have these messages, just like the new 'Spam' filter for your news feed.

Facebook is making quite a few changes to their 'mail' system. One of which is you will be able to have an @facebook email. They are rolling them out a bit at a time and you must request an invitation to be included. I've requested an invitation, we'll see how it goes. I'm not sure I like the new profile changes yet. Any thoughts on this?

Facebook Spam Filter

Facebook now categorizing posts as spam!

Facebook has added a new option under your 'filters'. If you look right under your tabs and 'Share' header you will see 'Options' on the right hand side.

When you click on 'Options' you get this:

If you click on 'Spam' you may see that Facebook has arbitrarily decided that some of your posters are Spam! What is up with that??

If they have added anyone to your 'Spam' category, do not despair, it can be easily fixed! ;-)

Hover over the last word of the first line of the afflicted post until you see an 'x'. Click on the 'x' and you should be provided 4 options:

one of which is 'unmark as spam'. Choose that option and 'voila'! your post is back where it belongs!