Monday

Is it too early for Christmas Songs?

Is it?
Is it?

May I be honest?



I never really get over Christmas.
I enjoy December so much that it carries into January and I leave decorations up, Christmas ringtones on and cards out still till about February.

Even then, I never fully let go. I listen to Mariah Carey's 'O Holy Night' as often as I can and then just wait eagerly for the first smell of harmattan and that feeling Christmas comes with.

What is your favourite Christmas carol?



Wednesday

#AlternativeMusicNaija Aramide's video for 'Fall on Them' is out now!


Okay na!
Where better to shoot a video with a hook about the Holy Ghost Fire falling on 'them', than at a place Lagosians associate not just with a weekend out with friends, sand or swimming, but also with a certain garment.
(You either get it or you don't).




#OAP101 Hashtag it!

What is your favourite hashtag to use?



Hashtags are an important part of living and dealing on social media. Whether as a way of joining or starting a conversation, they help your posts (and therefore, you) to be seen.

Improper use of hashtags however can do more harm than good. For example, if you break one of the hashtag rules, you may find people skipping over your posts, and a platform like Instagram could even 'shadowban' you, making it hard for your posts to be discovered.

What are some of these Hashtag sins?
- Putting the 'hash' key in the wrong place. Always #OAP101 and not OAP101#
- Using too many hashtags. While on Instagram, you can get away with up to 30 hashtags, on Twitter and Facebook, you want to do fewer tags; maybe 1 or 2, 3 maximum.
- Putting them all over the place. While it is okay to sometimes hashtag a word in the middle of a sentence, it can make your captions look clumsy. Instead of a sentence like, 'This is the #OAP101 #blogpost for #today', write the sentence first, THEN place the hashtags below or after the caption.
See an example here.

Now that we have covered some of the sins, what makes for a great use of a hashtag?

1. Unique hashtags
You need a unique hashtag for your brand, like how we have #OAP101. I also have #ShopTosyn and #TosynBucknorDaily.
This one is simply for your brand and you can ask your followers to use it for posts they want you to see or repost

2. Relevant hashtags
Apart from using one or two unique hashtags (if on Instagram), you also need a hashtag that is relevant to the post you have up. In this instance for example, I definitely need to include '#Hashtag' and perhaps '#SocialMedia' in my post.

3. Popular Hashtags
Be careful with how you use popular hashtags because if you use them just to get your post discovered, it can actually be worse for you. If people feel you're using hashtags indiscriminately, they can ask for your post to be removed from that particular hashtag, and like I mentioned above, some platforms will penalise you for it.
Popular hashtags vary from region to region so a quick Google search can show you top hashtags to use.

Another tip is to place your hashtag correctly.
For Facebook and Twitter, write your caption, then place 1 to 3 hashtags at the end of the caption.
On Instagram, to make it neater, write your caption then leave some space before including your hashtags as shown above. You can also simply put your hashtags as a comment on your post.

I hope these tips help.

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Got a tip of your own? Leave it below!
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Instagram is Down... and the Internet is losing it.

Or make that, I am losing it!



I woke up this morning ready to seize the day! It's been seized alright, by Instagram being down!
First I thought I had run out of data only to see it was the same issue even via wi-fi.
Instead of the app refreshing, you get the 'cannot refresh feed' message. If you try to log on via web, you get a page saying "5xx Server Error".

This has me going all Leann Rimes 'How Do I Live?' on it!
"How do I live without you?
I want to know
How do I breathe without you?
If you ever go
How do I ever, ever survive
How do I, how do I, oh how do I live?"





#SkincareSaturday Three things to do for your skin this weekend!

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