How to create and run an online meeting

Decide to hold meetings online. If possible find a few others who agree and will help you. If not, just set it up, so you are ready to answer questions, fend off objections, and then ask for help.

Decide which system you want to use, zoom or another. This may depend on the length of the meeting, whether you are willing to pay, how long you want the meeting to be.

Set up your meeting account. Make yourself and possibly somebody else an admin.

Send the attendees their link.
Tell them that they need to sign in.

On zoom, show them the buttons to click on for:
 mute and unmute
chat - to everyone or message one person such as yourself the admin or another
How to leave the meeting
How to be recorded
To record sound only
To record video

Zoom
If you use zoom, you fill in the link.
Sign up with your name.
https://zoom.us/postattendee?id=7

Free Conference Call
https://www.freeconferencecall.com/wall/

Your name or reference number is added on the end of the above link.
You can also use Whatsapp and Google.

More later. See next post.

About the Author
Angela Lansbury. Please save links to your favourite posts.

HOW TO WRITE A TRAVEL BLOG

Problem
What is the blog for and where do you start?

Answers
You start by deciding whether your primary aim is to record your holidays or whether you want a money-making blog.

If the former, just start on blogger and change it as you feel.

If you want to start a money-making blog you need to attract readers and advertisers.

Answer these questions:

What country or countries are you covering?
One city, one country, one region or the world?

Who are you? Age and type. Backpacker, business person, couple, family, elderly.

Special interests or requirements: blind, disabled, gay, vegetarian vegan, kosher, halal?

Type of holiday: romantic, shopaholic, gourmet, cultural, sporty?

Do you have any niche interests or hobbies? Music? Painting? Archaeology?

Pick a title which tells readers and advertisers what to expect. Find several alliterative titles.
Pick your country and then a type of holiday, or your type of holiday and then the area.

Check searches. What types of holiday and which words do people search for?

Choosing Which Title
Make a list. Pick your favourite. Ask for votes on Facebook.

Test Marketing
Run two sites with different names and identical content and see which title attracts more readers.
Then close the lesser one and redirect all those readers to the bigger site.

Title Examples
 eg
F
Francine in France.
Four friends in France.
A family of four in France.
France for families.
A French family's travels.
Food Holidays in France.
Free Things To Do In France.

C
Caroline in Croatia.
Couples holidays in Croatia.
Couples holidays in Canada.
Croatia for couples.

M
Maria in Mexico.
The Magic of Mexico.

S
Single travelling in Spain.
Sites in Spain.
Sights in Spain.
Spain for solo travellers.

T
Tom's Travels.

W
Windsurfing worldwide.
Watch me windsurfing worldwide.

PHOTOS
Photos should focus on what you are promoting. Is it yourself?

A Country
Such as Wales

Travel clothing?

Languages?

Food?

Music?

Shopping


Exploring The Outdoors

Events

LINKS
If you are selling something, make links to all media, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and so .on. Your next steps are newsletters and combining with others to be their guest blogger or to have the as your guest blogger.

If you want professional help, please contact me. My background includes writing travel features for newspapers, sub-editing on magazines, copywriting for tourist boards. I have next of kin in marketing, statistics, and SEO (marketing websites).

LINKS
Finally, add links to promote your post and yourself and your business.

SUMMARISE or index
You now know how to include

YOUR MOTTO OR SELF DESCRIPTION OR CONTACT DETAILS
If you are a fellow blogger and want to include me in your guest posts, you can contact me through messenger on Facebook and Whats App.

WHEN TO START AND STOP?
Never mind if you should have started years ago. Wine makers and the Chinese like to quote the saying, The best time to plant was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.

When should you stop? When blogging is taking up your whole day and either
a) SUCCESS BUT STRESS
Stressing you out even thought you are doing well at it
b) TIME BUT NO MONEY
Taking up your time but not earning money and you would be better off earning money in the day and doing the blog just in the evening and at weekends. The secret is either to limit your time, or outsource to other writers.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Follow me on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.
Please share links to your favourite posts.

Recording yourself and your family and colleagues on holidays and business trips

Problems
When my uncle who was a professional musician, died; and I had no photos or recordings or him speaking or playing. At our wedding, my family insisted that the two musicians on both sides of the family should be invited to a meal and not have to perform. The result was that after they died we had not record of them playing, for ourselfves or our children and grandchildren.

At weddings and other important occasions, we were at venues far from work and home and our musicians who were guests did not have musical instruments with them, so even if we had asked them to play, they could not.

When my mother died in her late eighties I had no instant record of her life ready to help me write a quick speech for her funeral.

When my father died a few years I was better prepared. I went through family photos with him and added dates, places and names. I wrote 100 word and 500 word and 1000 word accounts of his life ready for a funeral speech or obituary for a local paper and professional journals. I still had not thought to make a video of him.

Now if I were to organise a wedding for my son I would ask the photographer to ask everybody in the room their name, what they did for a living, the country they were born and where they met their spouse and their advice on life of business.

Answers
Video records.

If you have a musician in the family, make sure you get a recording of them playing. Either go to watch them perform. Or ask them to play just an opening bar.

If they say it's not professional, you caon't play except when being paid, instead ask them to demonstrate their musical instrument and why it's good. Or ask them to teach or deomonstrate to a child in the family. Ask uncle of grandad or auntie or grandma to teach the grandchild. (And pay the going rate or if they won't take money then give them soemthing else they need.) Then ostensibly photogh or video the child, whilst at the same time you will have the video of the adult.

Yourself on video
I often go to events and take photos. I come back with photos and video of others but not myself.

Make sure something of yourself is in the public domain. You cannot expect your family to preserve every photo and old computer. Ensure that something is in the public domain so that it is preserved and can b found.

When you go on a trip, record the family. The recording is most likely to be o f interest and to be kept and passed to others if you say aomthing interesting about the place or the family history.

Place
Ask a family member to describe the place you are visiting on holiday or business and to say how it differed from their expectations. Ask them to describe how the place has changed over the years. Ask them to compare the old parts of the city with the newer and say whether the new parts are an improvement or if they are pleased the older areas have been preserved.

Books of family records which you can buy and fill in by hand. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Family
I was sold a family tree book from the trolley at a maternity ward after I had my baby. In addition to the books which you see in the pictures I have also bought a Grandparent's book which I gave to my father to fill in.

Media and On-line blogs
Nowadays you can make a book from Facebook or a blog dedicated to your family or business and add videos.

Family History
Ask people to describe how they have spent their holidays or business trips and how things have changed.  If you do this even two or three years running you will have an interesting record. If you do it every year for ten or twenty years. you will have a fascinating record for your family and local archives and businesses.

 Your local history society will eventually be interested in the past. They might be interested in recording the present. If you don't have recording equipment, the local history or school might be interested in making a recording of your grandma (with you and grandchildren)  for you.

Similarly, when visiting a foreign venue, you could ask the children and adults and elderly people to tell you how things have changed or whether they are the same - food, activities, transport, business, items they sell, crafts, clothes. household objects.

A lot of shy people don't like to talk about themselves or say they don't look good on camera. However, if you ask them to demisntrate an object, you can photograph them sewing or fishing, or cooking and get them in the picture.

If you make a recording of the grandparent and the grandchild, the boss and the receptionist or post room worker, you will have a quick record to make a speech of thanks for the trip at a farewell business dinner, or a wedding, retirement party or funeral or obituary or your own memoir.

If you make a short video when you start a business, years later you will be able to look back, or show it on your website.

Remember to add thanks verbally or in subtitles at the end, the way they do in the movies.That way you have a reason to send the video to all the participants and ask them to check the spelling of their names is correct.
One of the dangers is that they might decide they don't want the picture of video shown to anybody else. However, if you have your own copy, it will still be useful to you when keeping accurate records of the places or people, or going back to different people a year later.

Just as people can be happy to be recorded, then change their minds, people can withdraw permission, then later change their minds.

A simple short video an later be expanded who you have time. You can add opening credit, closing credits, still of places, a map of the country or local area at the start, music, a diary cover, turning pages, special effects, repeat of the opening photo.

Books
The conventional family history book is a handy reference for everything from your passport number and national insurance number to photos of family weddings, or photocopies of birth certificates, and locks of hair secured in a transparent bag.

Tips
https://www.craftsy.com/painting/classes/expressive-pages-journaling-the-everyday
Family history books for you to fill in can be bought on line.

Author Angela Lansbury. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Recording your travels in a blog book

On Facebook I was sent an update on a New Year sale or reduction in prices for making a blog book turning all my travel blog pieces into a book. I did this once previously with my Facebook pages.

Facebook Edited Travel Book
When I did the Facebook page, I discovered somebody had sent me (they claimed forwarded by a hacker or troll) a rude cartoon which was totally inappropriate. I had completely forgotten about it. When I saw it in the book, I was very upset. I thought of covering the page with a piece of white paper. But a day later I cut it out completely.

I then went back into Facebook. I wrote an appeal to everybody to ask how to delete an old picture message and found out how to do it.

I now also know how to edit my own posts in Facebook as I write them. You simply click on the tiny almost invisible symbol of a hormonal pen on the top right. Up comes a choice of words Edit or Delete. If you forget to click on this, you keep typing your edit and nothing happens. Eventually I learned what was going wrong.

Obviously many people know this. Other don't, because many posts appear with spelling and grammar errors. Some are because the writer does not know how to edit. Others are when you click send but haven't had the time to read back what you wrote and check for errors.

On Facebook you can now have a general page, for faces of family and friends, plus amusing pictures and jokes and funny videos of beautiful places from the internet.

You can also have a dedicated page for travel books or a travel business. If it starts free, later you will probably be asked for money (which is OK if having a business page for an idea or a start up or a hobby and being business like is eventually earning you money). If the system remains two tier, with the basic system free, only the more complicated system for businesses costing money, that is fine for a non profit making venture.

Travel Book on Blogger
Now I'm going to tell you what I discovered when I tried to turn my blog on here into a book. Firstly it is prohibitively expensive. Only worth it as a one off book for your records, not something you can sell.

The high price is cause by all the coloured pictures. you could produce a cheaper book just with text to make it shorter and lack and white. You could turn photos into black and white and use Lulu dot com.

Do you want to make a book about your travels? Here's how to do it cheaper and neater.

You might run a travel blog to advertise your business or books. You might do it to keep an ongoing record for yourself and your family. You can make your collected posts into a book. Why? To promote a business, for a record, in case the site collapse or goes out of business, as a gift to the family.

Self-publishing Collected Posts
The blurb book people collect all your posts. They can either separate each one onto a new page or run them consecutively.

Self-publishing through Lulu or Another Printer
You would find that quicker, if you are not adept at computer software, to copy and save each post into one document on a daily basis, then publish at the end of the year.

Expenses and Tax
If you were using it as a tax loss or expense for promotion or to keep for records to consult, then the cost would not matter.

Cost of Book Record
When I consider how much you might spend on a dress for a woman to go to a PR event, even a travel bag or suitcase, tick proof socks, UV protective clothing, a tent, a camera, the airfare, the cost of the book as a record of one trip or all the trips is no out of proportion to those other expenses. But it is one more expense for each trip or each year.

Editing Posts
When I went through the blurb book it was an interesting exercise. I found I had re-used photos, both mine and other people's (eg Wikipedia) for follow up posts not he same subject. For example, a picture of Elvis on all my posts on Elvis. This took up a lot of space in the book and looked as if it were a mistake or unnecessary repetition. I now realise that although if you click onto a picture on a post it should be large, when you are making a book you may have to reduce the repeated pictures to postage stamp size.

It will now take me a day or two to go back and delete duplicated photos. That will have the advantage that my book is cheaper, less bulky, less heavy, and looks more professional.

Editing Time Needed
It's worthwhile starting to look at the system even if it is too expensive for your current budget. Then next time an offer comes up you are ready to go. I received the sale ends tonight message (written in Americanese).  Sale is 'about to wrap' - it took me two days to work out that meant finish. So I have now missed the deadline.

However, I shall revise my posts and keep in mind the picture size and picture novelty rather than reputation for the book when creating new posts. The offers come around on a regular basis. But you have to be able to choose the date if you want an exact year, instead of up to now. So printing your blurb book every year on December 31st or Jan 1st means you get the exact year (and don't have to wait). Of course you could adjust the date of the posts you want them to print (I think this is an option).

So you could run a book for the tax year, the school or college year, a religious year, a Chinese year, any other calendar year, a year in your new home, first year of your child's life, first year of marriage, first year of retirement, first year of your business, or your student gap year travels, or first year of your blog. Happy travel writing, travel trips, photos, saving into books!

http://www.blog2print.com/print-my-blog-book/

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, researcher, author and speaker. (Books on Amazon and Lulu.com )