Christian Karasiewicz, Author at Christiankonline.com

How to restore the sidebar in iTunes 11

Yesterday, Apple launched iTunes 11. One thing you’ll notice is that it is very minimal – replacing menus for beautiful coverart. In addition, the sidebar where you could easily organize your playlists and access your devices is now missing as well.

For most users, iTunes 11 will take some getting used to. Fortunately, if you want the missing sidebar in iTunes 11, you can bring it back – without any hacking or special tweaks. All you need to do is follow these instructions.

How to restore the missing sidebar in iTunes 11

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How to find your YouTube channel RSS feed

Just like your blog, your YouTube channel has its own RSS feed. What this means is that you can now see updates as they’re happening from your favorite YouTube channels.

This is good news for anyone who uses an RSS feed reader such as Pulse to consume their favorite websites and blogs from their smartphone because now, instead of going to check out your favorite YouTube channel to see if they have uploaded any new videos, you can access the YouTube channels RSS feed to see any recent updates anytime. Here’s an example of my YouTube channel RSS feed.

What’s included in a YouTube channel RSS feed

Video title
Date uploaded
Length of video
Video thumbnail
Video description
Number of views
Ratings

What’s not included in a YouTube channel RSS feed

Keywords
Playlists videos are added to
Number of subscribers

If you’ll notice, it is very important to fill-in as much descriptive information about your YouTube videos and to include a custom YouTube video thumbnail because this information is pulled into RSS feed aggregators such as Google News and Pulse. Without a custom YouTube video thumbnail your videos won’t be as eye-catching to readers. If you don’t include a description or title for your video, RSS feed readers might not pick-up your video so you’ll want to be sure include this in your YouTube videos.

Enough about what is and is not included in a YouTube channel RSS feed. How do I find a YouTube channel RSS feed?

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5 last-minute ways to boost online shopping sales this holiday season

So you’re not exactly the best planner when it comes to social media. Everything is just off-the-cuff or when you get around to doing it. Although the clock is ticking on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, there’s still time for you to leverage your network of friends, fans and followers this holiday season to help boost your online sales.

Instead of throwing in the towel on holiday shopping and missing out on online sales for your business, I’ve put together a collection of 5 last-minute ways you can give your online shopping sales a boost.

What’s great is that these are items you can start implementing today or even tomorrow (after you’ve had your fill of Turkey and stuffing).

Remember, if you have trouble implementing any of these items, don’t hesitate to contact me for help.

Let’s get started with 5 last-minute ways you can give your online store a boost in website traffic and online sales this holiday season.

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Glossary of Facebook Advertising Terms

An area that often gets overlooked when working with Facebook are Facebook Ads. This is most likely because Facebook advertising terms are confusing. To help you out, we have compiled a glossary of Facebook advertising terms to make it easy for you to reference when you’re creating your own Facebook Ads.

Note: I’ve compiled this list of Facebook advertising terms from the Facebook Help Center along with various resources that I’ve used when creating Facebook Ads.

With this collection of Facebook advertising terms, it should be a lot easier to understand all of the different fields when you’re creating your own Facebook Ads. !

List of Facebook Advertising Terms

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3 ways to recover a lost smartphone or tablet

In the next few days, the roads and stores will be extremely crowded. In fact, AAA is expecting crowded roads this Thanksgiving and retailers are expecting Black Friday sales to increase 4.1 percent. Some stores such as Sears, Target and even Wal-mart are even panning to open on Black Friday Eve to capitalize on sales opportunities.

If you’re one of the brave who plans to venture out over the holidays, it’s a wise move to take precautionary measures to protect your smartphone or tablet in case it gets lost during all of the hustle and bustle. Sure, you can store it in your pocketbook or keep it in your jacket pocket, but what do you do when those items get lost or stolen and you end up without your beloved gadget?

Sure, you can go out and purchase another one, but that’s no fun. Not to mention, it puts a damper on the holidays. Instead, try these 3 ways to recover a lost smartphone or tablet.

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Facebook takes friendships to a new level with relationship pages

If you’re in a relationship, you’ll definitely want to head on over to the new Facebook Relationship Pages. Yes, that’s right – if you’re in a relationship with anyone, Facebook has updated Friendship Pages to a new type of page called Facebook Relationship Pages, which showcase everything you have in common with a person.

Personally, I can understand where Facebook is going with the new Facebook Relationship Pages. If you’ve taken the time to tell Facebook that you’re in a relationship, why not have a separate page that lets you reminisce and remind you of why you fell in love with your significant other in the first place or let you look back on the good times and the bad times you’ve had with friends. While you’re at it, I’m sure Facebook is hoping you send them a Facebook Gift.

While there seems to be a lot of upside to Facebook Relationship Pages, some people such as The Telegraph‘s Emma Barnett had this to say about Facebook Relationship Pages.

“Please take note Facebook executives,” she wrote. “I enjoy being able to share the information I wish and curate in the way I want. I have no desire for your technology teams to help me organize my photos — nor do I wish to have a shared ‘couples’ Facebook profile with my other half on which you automatically curate our relationship.”

So what details do Facebook Relationship Pages share?

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6 Useful Pinterest Tools to improve engagement and get more repins

In just 2 short years, Pinterest has rocketed to the top of many users favorite social networks. Weekly visits to Pinterest jumped 2,183% – a staggering increase, given its short life. So how can you take advantage of this popular social network without spending all of your time doing it?

In this article we have compiled 6 useful tools for Pinterest to help you create engaging content, schedule pins, curate pins about your brand, and set Pinterest alerts for your website. Together, you now have a powerful toolbox full of userful Pinterest tools to help you grow your engagement, increase your influence with others and get more repins on Pinterest.

Check out these 6 Pinterest tools to help you create more engaging content and get more repins!

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[Download] FREE YouTube Thumbnail Template

One of my favorite features for customizing your YouTube channel is with a YouTube thumbnail image. Not only are YouTube custom thumbnails a great way to make your videos look more eye-catching to viewers, but they’re also great at generating leads from viewers from other videos which can help you not only gain more views and subscribers for your own channel, but most importantly, fill your funnel with potential customers and new leads. To help you customize your YouTube videos, I’ve created a YouTube thumbnail template for you to use.

What can I do with this YouTube thumbnail template?

This YouTube thumbnail template isn’t just for creating images for current videos. If you have older videos that you’ve uploaded to your YouTube channel, make sure you go back and create a YouTube thumbnail image for them as well.

Most likely, they are ranking very well and you can continue to capitalize off of this by adding a more visual image to make your videos stand-out to others.

How to use the YouTube thumbnail template:

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10 ways social media is good for the workplace [Infographic]

Over the years, many people have wondered if social media is a fad. Having been heavily involved in social for 6+ years, I would have to say no, social media is not a fad. Sure, other networks will come along and replace what’s hot at the time – just look at how Facebook overtook MySpace. While you cannot stop new networks from popping up, one thing that won’t be disappearing anytime soon is how businesses market and interact with customers and employees.

Judging from the numbers Compliance and Safety reported, some 75% of businesses said they were behind the curve with social media and technology. While consumers have been embracing social media for years, the workplace seems to be just getting around to it. In fact, check out this infographic on 10 ways social media is good for the workplace

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View and send tweets to iOS contacts

Now that you’ve purchased your first iOS device (iPhone, iPad or iPad Mini) and taken the time to import or add phone numbers and addresses to all of your contacts, one important area you don’t want to overlook is to add in your contacts Twitter username.

Why add a Twitter username to your contacts?

By adding a contacts Twitter username, this allows you the opportunity to easily view tweets from your friend right from your contacts. This also makes it easy to send your contact a tweet right from your contacts screen as well.

How to view and send a tweet to iOS contacts

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