As a handmade craft store owner I am always looking for ways to get my products in front of people. My role in our family business is to program/manage our Etsy store
(http://beadsandquilts.etsy.com) and our Yahoo! store (http://www.beadsandquilts.com) along with managing our social presence in forums, Facebook, Beads and Quilts on Twitter and our Beads and Quilts blog. With so many facets, managing our social presence is the most time consuming part of my role. It is easy to get bogged down with replies to forum posts, writing blog posts, monitoring and writing Tweets, and on and on and on…

Many small web business owners do not have the time nor resources to manage a social marketing presence in addition to their daily tasks within their business. This and future articles will touch on some of the key online social marketing tools and how to manage them without getting dizzy every time you look at your computer screen.

Take a deep breath in and let it all out (continue breathing throughout the article )

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Tomorrow I am tasked with training the programming department on a Flash based feature that I developed. The feature, as seen at Blair Candy, takes images that we or the client produces and builds a dynamic slideshow. The client also has the ability to link each slide to a particular page in their store so they can highlight items or sections and funnel customers there through a ‘call to action’ on the image. Customers can watch the slideshow or click on the numbers to get to a slide that might interest them. The feature is called the “Flash Sequence Banner“.

I already tried to conduct a training on the feature a month or two ago but due to technical issues in our training center I could do nothing more than explain what they would see once the programmer got into the code. With tomorrows training we are better prepared and should have a good turnout. Any time I have to present something to anyone I run into a few hurdles that make it difficult.
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Have you ever felt anger welling in you to the point you felt you were going to explode? Maybe a series of events at work got you worked up or maybe fed up and you felt your blood pressure spike? Worry not because I have a magic pill that will cure your sizzling temper and bring peace back into your life. By taking a few of these pills each day you will feel relaxed, focused and more determined to resolve issues that would otherwise put you in the mental ward. For two easy payments of $39.95…ok, I don’t have a magic pill. But there is a solution for dealing with anxiety, stress and anger and it’s called meditation. I try to use meditation as much as possible throughout my day.

Most environments have some elements that cultivate anxiety, stress and anger. The stressor could be a child, spouse, co-worker, a piece of software, a boss or a client. Some environments put you in the firing line of multiple stressors at one time. The best thing for you to do before you choose to get violent or blow a blood vessel is to take a breath….take a couple of them.
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