Help - where can I find a Beginners Guide to Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, LindedIn???

Dear Artfire, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Blogspot

I am new to your sites but have been using computers for years so know all about how to use the normal programmes on them and surfing the internet.  What I have never bothered to do is take a course in computer programming, like most people I presume.  So why, when you write your “How to Start” guides do you speak in gobbledy gook programming type talk that we as ordinary users can’t understand.  Do you not think that more people would start using your sites if you actually wrote a simple, easy to follow Complete Beginners Guide.  I am sure there are a lot of people who would start using these sites if they could actually understand what they need to do to set them up.  They are easy enough to use WHEN they are set up but the hard part is setting them up in the first place and I am sure a lot of people just give up.  If you are worried about “talking down” to people who are already used to setting up these things and are just adding another social media site, then why not have two versions of your “How to Set Up” pages – one for the complete novice and one for the more knowledgable?  I know it is very hard for you to find someone in your organisation who can just write straightforward instructions in “laymans terms” as the people you get to write these instructions are “computer geeks” but please find someone who can set these guides up for the absolute beginner to read – you must know what it is like to read a legal document and to understand it properly – well that is what it is like for us complete new people to your site.  So please look at your instructions again and try getting a novice guinea pig to try them out before you print them so you know if they are understandable and easy to follow.  I would offer my own services if I thought for one minute I could conquer how to do it and write the basic instruction for others to use.  If you want more people to use your sites, rather than go to other sites, then take another look at your beginners guides.

Many thanks, Suzy

LOL – I haven’t actually sent that message to anyone but it lets me vent my annoyance and frustration.

I have been using computers for years and know my way easily round most programmes and round most of the internet but I am finding it EXTREMELY difficult to set up on these sites and not one of them has an easy to follow guide to setting up your page on them.  Some of the most basic things like linking sites or adding Follow Me buttons for Facebook and Twitter are so had to find but doesn’t 90% use them on their pages.  They should be set up so they are extremely easy to find and really should be just a click away on the basic set up on these sites.  They are all called different things as well – Buttons, Links, Widgets, Apps, Badges.

If you go into the help section of Blogger you have to go back through all the pages you have looked at to get back to your blog and dashboard as there is no link anywhere to return!

When I tried to add Twitter or Artfire gadgets to my blog it said “URL contains illegal characters” – now what does that mean?  Have I tried to bring in convicts???  It is the code that I have copied from Twitter which presumably works for everyone else or they would have realised and changed the code by now!!!

Well I am trying my hardest and ploughing my way through the 1161 suggestions for adding gadgets to your blog and great I found one that said Twitter Follow Me Button – great I thought (and you could apparently choose form 135 different syles!), I have finally found it but no (and I should have guessed as the picture of it wasn’t showing) when I clicked it is said “We are sorry but this gadget appears to be broken.  This gadget has errors and cannot be used until fixed” !!!!!!!!  Not only that but when you have clicked into it to use it you have then lost your place in all of the 1161 suggestions you have gone through so far as the screen closes – grrr!!!  I need chocolate or a glass of wine!!!


Now I have just added these photos underneath but they are not in the order that I added them - why on earth not???    I give up and going to get my chocolate and wine :)




My latest additions to Artfire: www.pendant-heaven.artfire.com

  

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                         ebay seller name   -   2L2bagain

My first ever blog - so don't stop reading yet

Everyone kept telling me I should have a blog and I have been meaning to try it for ages but I was so nervous as I hated essay writing at school, so I put this off until the last possible minute.  

But now I have my Artfire studio up and running I decided it was time to take the bull by the horns and give it a try - after all what have I got to lose - if no-one sees it or likes it I wont know and if they leave comments it will probably help me improve it.  

I should really have looked at other people's blogs more before I started my own but I never seem to have the time at the moment to read other people's blogs which means they probably wont have time to read mine either!  I am too busy photographing the pendants, listing items in my Artfire studio, learning facebook and twitter as well as still listing the jewellery on ebay.

I will get this up and running and iron out the creases so that in the next blog I can tell you a bit about myself and how I came to make natural gemstone pendants.  

If anyone does read this and has ideas on the sort of thing I should include in my blog I will be only too happy to hear them :)  I think I will need all the help I can get.  As all this media stuff is new to me I am having to learn as I go and try to learn quickly.  

The pendants don't sell themselves now that I have exhausted the local market of friends and relatives.  I had made so many that I had built up quite a stock before I started the daunting task of selling them online so I guess that is a good thing as I can now spend some time working out how to market them instead of having to make them at the same time.  I do still spend some time making them though because isn't that what it was all about in the first place - enjoying making jewellery.  I used to work in an office and it seems at the moment that I am back in my office full time and more!

My pendants are unique and handmade by me in the UK and are all one-off so you wont ever see another one exactly the same, unlike all the supermarket and chain store pendants, even though my pendants are in the same price range.

Anyway, I am signing off....until next time.

www.pendant-heaven.artfire.com

www.facebook.com/pendant.heaven

www.twitter.com/PendantHeaven