Stories For and About Living Your Truth
By Chanda Temple
Build interest in your social media posts by adding properly-sized photos to them.
Image by Social Expert via Flickr/CreativeCommons.
When posting images on social media, size really does matter.
If the images are too small, you’ve lost the battle. If they are too big, you’ve lost the war. The point is to make them just right to keep your followers coming back for more.
By Chanda Temple
Retired Army veteran Noah Galloway, 32, of Alabaster, Ala. is in the running for Men’s Health Magazine’s Ultimate Guy Search. Posing here in a kilt, he’s currently in first place. Online voting ends June 30, 2014.
Image by Jason Maris Photography
Editor’s Note: Noah Galloway won the magazine cover competition in October 2014 and was on the November 2014 cover. In March 2015, he will be one of the contestants on ABC’s ‘Dancing with the Stars.’ The show will debut on Monday, March 16 at 7 p.m. CST.
In 2010, Noah Galloway took a long hard look at himself and didn’t like what he saw.
It wasn’t that he had lost his left leg and left arm in a 2005 roadside bomb attack while serving in Iraq. (He had already come to terms with that after being mad about it for years.) Instead, he didn’t like how he’d let the tragedy eat away at his very soul.
Once an avid athlete and runner, he was no longer active. He’d allowed what happened to him in the blast, rob him of any desire to work out or even take a walk around the block.
“I had a beer gut,’’ said Galloway, of Alabaster, Ala.
Your time is coming. Have faith!
Feel the burn and the beat. Spinning instructors always play the best music in class. The experience makes you feel like you can conquer anything.
Image by Beverly Cromer via Flickr/CreativeCommons.
By Chanda Temple
Sometimes it takes an oldie but goodie memory to push you to keep exercising. I wrote this in July 2011. Publishing for the first time today on #MotivationMonday.
In 2010, my friend Cherie Fields had just started teaching a spinning class. She was so excited about her new endeavor that she invited her friends to try the class. However, I was reluctant.
Me: “Unh-uh. I’ve tried spinning before. I didn’t like it.”
Cherie: “Well, you haven’t taken my class.”
Me: “Umm, I’ll think about it.”
By Chanda Temple
I recently served as a panelist on a social media panel, where I discussed what has worked for me on Twitter. Everyone is different. What works for Sally may not work for Sam. The main thing is to try and see what works for you. Here are some of the tips I shared:
If you have quality tweets that teach people something, make them laugh or inspire them, you’ve piqued their interest. They’ll look at your feed. If you have content that makes people want to keep scrolling down your feed, they’ll likely follow you. I figure that if this is what gets others to look at folks’ tweets, then it is also what may get people to look at me.
Tweet about what you enjoy doing and reading.
When in doubt of your calling, keep going.
By Chanda Temple
I live in Birmingham, Ala., where tornadoes rumble across the region every spring. On a recent spring night, I huddled in my hallway closet, put on a bicycle helmet and rode out severe weather until the storms passed. I used my BlackBerry to tweet about the experience. Luckily, there was no damage in my area.
A reporter from Mobile, Ala. saw my tweets and tweeted me the next day, saying he wanted to talk to me about how I wore my helmet during the storm. (It’s pretty common that people wear some type of helmet during a tornado as a precaution against possible head injuries.) He wanted to use my comments for a story.
Since Mobile is about four hours from Birmingham, I figured we’d do a telephone interview. He had something else in mind.
By Chanda Temple
Be prepared before you do that TV interview.
Image by Barend en Barend via Flickr/CreativeCommons
Yesterday, I posted eight things you need to know about doing a live television interview. I received great feedback and decided to post a few more tips. Here they are:
This should go without saying, but it still needs to be mentioned. If you have gum in your mouth, get rid of it before you appear on television, radio, a podcast or a video. You can’t hide it.
Alabama 13’s Ashley Roberts and I took a selfie in the NBC studio before my on-air interview. I decided to wear green because it popped for me. Ashley wore green, too, totally by accident. What a way to usher in spring!
By Chanda Temple
You’ve booked a live, on-air interview for television. But are you truly ready for the lights, camera and action? Here are some tips to help prepare you:
Sherrod Shackelford, left, and LaVon Lewis founded their branding and marketing company, PDG, in a dorm room at Alabama A&M University, 14 years ago. Today, they are handling accounts for major companies. They are based in Atlanta, Ga. (Photo by Chanda Temple)
By Chanda Temple
Before you hand your business card to Sherrod Shackelford or LaVon Lewis, make sure the card is truly what you want to say about your company.
If not, be ready for their feedback because the two founders of PDG, a branding and marketing firm based in Atlanta, Ga., are not shy about sizing you and your card up and saying what they like and don’t like about it.
“I don’t know what you are selling,” one of them told an entrepreneur during a recent branding workshop, where attendees provided their business cards for critiques.