I did the top 9 worst costumes a couple days ago so I figured I should do the 7 best costumes since Halloween is 7 days away.  Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. Christmas is okay, but with 18 grandchildren it is getting pretty expensive. And Halloween means free candy! Who doesn't like free candy? Okay, here are the 7 best Halloween Costumes chosen by me and by Google. You may not think these are the best, so tell me about it in the comments below. 

Halloween is 9 days away so I decided to choose 9 of the WORST Halloween costumes I could find on the internet. Some are gross, or offensive, sick, or just plain stupid. You be the judge. What do YOU think the worst Halloween costume is?
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There are so many tools for Social Media Marketing that it’s hard to figure out which to use and which  to avoid. Which ones are really FREE and which ones just want to lure us in by saying they are free - but then ask for a credit card number after you spend 15 minutes creating your new account? I hate that, don’t you? Anyway, I found some FREE social media tools that I want to share with you. A few have been around for a while and you may already know about them but there are a couple of new ones too. And they are FREE. I signed up for every one of them just to make sure. 
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1.    Canva is the most awesome design tool I have ever used! It is completely FREE. They have templates for everything you would need (Facebook cover page, social media post, etc.) and there are so many combinations of colors, backgrounds, images, text, EVERYTHING. I am not a designer, that’s for sure, but I have made all kinds of awesome things. I made this a few days ago:

2.    Hootsuite is a social media management tool that is completely FREE. I have used it for over a year to schedule my weekly content on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Instagram and I have never been charged a penny. You can schedule your posts for monthly, weekly, or daily. Just write in the content, attach a picture, video, link to an article or website, and schedule it out for any day - any time or send it out right then. There are a bunch of other perks to Hootsuite but I honestly have not tried any so I will let you figure those out for yourself. 

3.     Scoop.it is a super-fast and free way to find content about ANYTHING you want. I have been using this for over a year to find content for social media posts that I schedule on Hootsuite. All of it is FREE. Just enter a topic into the search bar and in less than one minute you will have 100 of the most recent articles, blogs, videos, and images about that topic. Amazing!

4.    Flipboard is similar to Scoop.it, but it actually lets you choose as many topics as you want and it will gather all the newest articles on those topics. For example, one of my topics is Web Presence and when I click on that topic box I get articles such as “How to Prepare Now for CEO in 2016” from Inc. Magazine and  “The most common small business mistakes that lead to failure in the digital age.” 

5.    Slideshare will instruct you how to make your own slide show for FREE about any topic you want and it will look professional. You can use it for school, business, or just for fun. Tell a story or make a training presentation. Whatever you need, it's easy and effective. 

6.    Powtoons helps you make a cartoon video even if you have no idea what you are doing (like me). It is absolutely FREE and you can make one from scratch or just customize one that is premade already. 

7.    Weebly is the amazing FREE website builder tool that you are reading this blog on. I made this website on Weebly a few months ago for FREE. It is easy, there are hundreds of templates, and you can add a store and a blog and whatever else you want in your website. And you do not have to know what you are doing. It is really easy, believe me! Because I had no clue what I was doing and I think it turned out pretty good. Of course, it is a work in progress as always because I continue to update it with new blogs, images, and information. 

 So, what are you waiting for? You have enough information here to find and post thousands of articles, create your own cartoons, design images, and slide show and then build a website to blog about it. And it is all FREE so get busy and get your brand out there. Just some of my thoughts. 

Okay, I know that's not really funny. But that's what I want to talk about. Do you use jokes, silly pictures, or humor of any kind in your marketing? I know many people think that humor is not acceptable at work. But there are many more who believe that laughing at work is a good thing. In the past 10 years or so companies have been getting more involved in their employees' happiness and are trying to boost their productivity and job satisfaction with humor. Let's face it, happy workers are better workers. Right? ​ 

The same goes for marketing - you want your customers to be happy, right? Humor almost always brings a smile, whether it is really funny or not. Sometimes we smile just because we know the company is trying to be funny and failed. Other times we really laugh out loud because it is truly funny. But think about it - no matter what language you speak, nationality you are, whether you are young or old - you have laughed at some time in your life. And those times stick in your head for a long time. Marketing with humor is not only good to make people happy, but it also helps them remember what it was that made them laugh (your company).  And people tend to share what it was that made them smile, spreading your business reach even further. 

But you have to be careful with humor. You cannot post raunchy or sexist jokes and you definitely do NOT want to post any kind of racial humor even if you think it is funny. It is NOT funny and nobody will appreciate it. You want to be remembered for making people smile - not for making people mad.
Try to think about who your readers are and what they will think is funny. What is your target market interested in at the moment? 

So, what do you think is funny? Does it make sense to more than just you? Try it out on other people before posting it because once it is out there you cannot take it back. Even if you delete it you can be sure that someone already saw it and shared it. Just some of my thoughts.
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Share some of your jokes or funny pics with us. We will tell you if they are funny or not. 

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