Successful Blog

How To Create Unique Photos For Your Site (Even If You’re Not a Pro)

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I remember growing up I always wanted to be a photographer. I would take my family’s little camera with its rolls of carefully inserted film, and snap shots of everything and anything. My happiest moments were during special events and family parties when my relatives would smile with fond tolerance as I interrupted their conversations to get a picture.

My skill was always barely passable, as can be expected for a small child with no training. As I grew, my interest in photography waned, especially given the huge amount of effort and expensive equipment that was required to take it into even hobby territory.

Nowadays things have changed a lot. Anyone with a smartphone and Instagram filters can make something pretty presentable. Which is good news for people who want unique, professional level photographs for their website without the skill or money involved in going full pro.

It is all about understanding how creative images for websites are made, or where they can be found.

Be Prepared To Pay

dollarphotoclub

Sites like Dollar Photo Club, Fotalia and Death To The Stock Photo are just a few of many examples of awesome photo sites that are popping up all over the web. They maintain a higher standard, often presenting magazine grade images for cheap.

There are also a few cool free alternatives like Smart Photostock.

Overlay Images with Text

Canva

Text overlays are popular for two reasons: they are easy, and they work. There is no simpler method of instructing users on how to use your mobile app, or gently nudging them towards converting to a premium service or buying a product.

Best of all, it does it in a way that they now expect; users prefer text overlays to cumbersome demos and annoying voice overs or How To sections.

You can use Canva to easily overlay any image you buy with an eye-catching text. To save time, always keep a quality image source handy. I prefer this one to quickly find an image to use in the background.

These images make great printables too! Here is a Vista Print promo code for you to repurpose your original images into posters or conference swag.

Get a Filter App

Get a Filter App

Instagram has made filters a pretty standard element of taking images. But if you aren’t on the social network, you can get other apps on your mobile device that give you filters and let you edit images before posting or sending them, all in high resolution.

EyeEm is one popular option, available for Android and iPhone. But you have hundreds at this point to choose from. Your best bet is to try a couple and play around with them to see which work best for you. Make sure they don’t include a watermark.

Learn The Features On Your Camera

Camera

(Image source)

Your camera will have certain features that improve your photographs more or less automatically. For example, you can turn on a grid system that will separate your photos into fours, or sets of threes. This gives you framing assistance so you can find the perfect angle for a more engaging shot.

The HDR function improves elements light auto lighting and quality. Flash can be turned on or off to improve visibility. Touching the screen on the primary subject will bring it into focus more than the background. Outdoor and moving shots can be selected to adjust the camera accordingly.

Know what your camera is capable of.

You can create awesome photography with your phone too! Many professional photographers use an iPhone camera! Some Android phones will work for that too!

Get Someone Else To Handle Images

Of course, you don’t have to do the photos yourself. Plenty of photographers out there will work for a rate within your budget if they are able to use you as a reference, and the images as a portfolio piece. They may also require mention on the site that they were the original photographers.

Investing some money in a professional (or talented hobbyist) can pay for itself in dividend. So consider it.

Any more ideas on creating cool images for your site? Please share them in the comments!

Effective Social Media Promotion for Fiction Writers

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fiction-book-marketOnce you’ve taken the time to sketch characters and a plot, weave a story around it all, and come out the other side with a completed masterpiece in hand, you may feel like your job is done, leaving you to take a well-deserved break from the pressures of writing fiction in favor of a vacation.

Unfortunately, if you plan to self-publish your work, you’ve got one major task ahead of you before you do: marketing your work to the world at large.

Luckily for you, the sheer power of social media makes it possible for even those writers entirely new to the idea of marketing to reach millions of people – you just need to know what you’re doing. To that end, check out these five tips for effective social media promotion for fiction writers:

1. Make Full, Informative, and Interesting Profiles

When you make the leap from fantasy writer to social media marketer, you’ll need to bring the same thoroughness that makes you an effective creative writer with you, allowing you to create the kind of social profiles that people are intrigued by and encouraging them to stay and explore you and your work further.

To achieve the desired result, make a point to weave hard facts with the same imagination that allows you to write fiction, ending up with an exciting profile that gives visitors the information that they need to understand you and your craft, even while you entice them with the potential enjoyment of your stories.

Use link in bio tools to create an effective digital business card and turn your followers into buyers and subscribers.

2. Let Your Story Do the Talking

Painting yourself as a real human being with worthwhile art to share is one thing, but, as a fiction writer, you know what readers really want, and that’s a story that encourages them to enjoy late page-turning nights. With that in mind, don’t underestimate the power of your stories, including settings, characters, and plots, to win over visitors and turn them into new fans and followers.

No matter what platforms you tackle, utilize the soapbox you’ve been given to give visitors a strong taste of what your work has to offer them, outlining highlights of your work, discussing your creative process, and dropping just enough tantalizing hints to keep them coming back for more.

Forbes lists some benefits of using story telling for marketing.

3. Use Your Imagination

If you’re lucky enough to have the kind of mind that can come up with intricately detailed lands, mythical beasts, and intriguing storylines, then you’re lucky enough to have the kind of imagination that can take you outside of the realm of the obvious when it comes to social media marketing. Besides making you instantly savvy where advertising is concerned, that imagination will also lead you to the types of social media tools that you may not otherwise think to utilize.

For example, Viral Content Buzz, a tool that brings social media users together in order to provide an extra push to their content, is a very useful tool that you may not come across if you’re not creative with your web searching.

In order to take advantage of each and every aspect of the social web so that you can effectively promote your work, be sure to let your imagination play a role in even the most mindless of tasks; the results are sure to surprise you! Mind these social media marketing rules by @PakWired

4. Engage Your Fans and Followers

With useful, intriguing profiles and pages setup, and tools at the ready that promise to help you to be the most efficient social marketer possible, it’s now time to get down to the nitty gritty of social media: engaging your new fans and followers.

Make a point to treat each and every one of them as well as you would a beloved character.

Make sure to create a separate site for your book. It’s much easier to market a book that has a dedicated online presence. Unitedseo.ae (a company providing SEO services) has a cool guide on how to use content marketing to reinforce your digital marketing efforts.

5. Keep the Story Flowing

Even with all of that work done and in place, your job doesn’t end here – in fact, the fun is just beginning. With strong profiles established and new fans and followers beginning to find their way to you, the true social aspect of social media is just beginning to show itself, giving you the opportunity to connect with your readers, both existing and future, on a meaningful level.

Besides helping you to sell more copies of your work today, staying on the ball and continuing to spend time engaging your social fans every day will help you to build a platform to carry you into the future, keeping you covered when it comes to sequels, new projects, and everything else that you put your hand to in the days to come.

Image source: Pixabay

Top 5 Email Holiday Prep Tips – Don’t Forget the Basics

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One of the only things that stands between us wrapping up this insane year is what we’re all describing as an unprecedented holiday shopping season. Tons of survey data has been released, numerous predictions have been made, and marketers have been challenged to develop strategies and plans unlike any other plans for previous years.

This year’s holiday shopping season is not only about sales, but also about how brands can adapt to a rapidly changing retail landscape. It’s a test of agility and creativity for businesses, big and small.

While you’re thinking outside the box and finalizing your holiday email campaigns, I want to encourage you to revisit your standard preparation for this season as well.

Here are 5 things to check off your list:

Data Feeds

Ensure all data feeds and triggers are working as expected, especially those for remarketing campaigns or opting in customers. Also, keep an eye on your feeds and triggers throughout the holiday season.

Regular monitoring can help you adapt quickly to changing consumer behaviors and trends. A quick glance at send reports on a regular basis can help to catch issues early, and regular testing can ensure that all systems are running smoothly.

Deliverability

Check in on deliverability and work to mitigate concerns now. The last thing you want is for all your hard work to go to waste due to poor inbox placement. Remember, during the holidays, email servers are under extra strain, which might affect deliverability.

It’s also a good time to clean your email list, removing inactive or un-engaged subscribers to improve overall performance.

Campaign Design Audit

Audit your campaign designs within the inbox on desktop and mobile. According to Litmus, every email has 15,000 different rendering previews. Take a moment to validate templates are rendering correctly for an optimal customer experience including content display, links, and images.

Also, consider the accessibility of your emails, ensuring that they are easily navigable and readable for all users, including those with disabilities. Regular feedback from a sample of your audience can also help in refining the design for better engagement.

Targeting and Personalization

Increase targeting and personalization by using customer information and behavior data to stand out from the vast increase of messages during the holiday. This can be as simple as personalizing subject lines.

Go beyond the basics by segmenting your audience based on their past purchases and browsing behavior to create more relevant messages. Remember, a personalized experience can be the key differentiator in a crowded inbox.

This last one is something everyone hates to address. But I promise you, it’s the most important thing you can do to help yourself this holiday:

Be prepared!

Things happen: sites go down, promotion codes don’t work, products sell out… and the list goes on. Prepare your contingency plans now. Have offers approved and creative ready so that you can quickly pull the trigger to help mitigate customer dissatisfaction.

Also, ensure that your customer service team is well-prepared to handle increased inquiries and potential issues. Regularly updating your FAQs and having ready-made responses for common issues can also be a big help. Don’t forget to set up a social media landing page using Hihello app to showcase your social media creatives and content.

While the holiday season presents unique challenges, it also offers a tremendous opportunity to connect with your customers in meaningful ways.

By focusing on these five areas, you can ensure that your marketing efforts are not only effective but also resilient in the face of unforeseen challenges. Remember, preparation and adaptability are key to navigating this holiday season successfully.

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

6 Keys to Managing Your Remote Workforce

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Imagine how to manage a team at this office: everyone arrives to the building, has their own parking spot physically sectioned off from everyone else; a walled-off path that leads to their own desk, in a closed-off room, equipped with a kitchen and a bathroom; and their own walled-off path leading outside of the office to cafes and bars where they can take their laptop if they want to work outside.

There are neither internal phone lines in the office nor are cell phones permitted, only wireless internet via laptop. Whether there are 100 people in the building or only one, there’s absolutely no way of running into another human being on your team.

This sounds bizarre, but it’s basically how a remote team would be expressed in terms of a physical layout. Remote teams are great for lean startups, for businesses seeking to reduce costs, and even for attracting top talent – but project managers and company owners can’t expect the same results from using their in-person office management skills with their remote teams.

When you’re not physically working in the same space as your team, it’s vital that you use these six types of tools to get your work done:

COMMUNICATION

In the imaginary office earlier, it’s impossible to physically encounter another person on the team, so no updates can occur without using online communication tools. It’s the same for your remote team, so unless their volume of work is very simple and very small, it’s vital to invest in several systems of communication.

What you choose will depend on your style – some prefer webconferencing services to complement email, other teams use Skype for chat and video calls, some prefer to use video rooms like Sqwiggle.

Setting a business email address for each of your remote employees will help you keep your business communication more professional and safer.

Whatever tool or combination of tools you go with, just make sure they’re reliable. It’s incredibly frustrating for a remote worker when communications tools frequently fail – their work depends on having clear, recurrent communication.

FILE SHARING

This is similar to communication, but focused on sharing work products. For successful remote team work that actually generates results, you have to have a system of file sharing that avoids duplicate work or multiple versions of work product in different stages of editing.

Some people are fine with Google Drive or Dropbox. Other teams prefer to use Evernote or collaborate on files directly within their project management system.

Make sure to create a secure file sharing system as cybercrime continues to be on the rise, according to Hari Ravichandran.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

No matter how small the project or the team, don’t give in to the temptation to wing it by email. A good project management system avoids inbox clutter, organizes important documents, and tracks progress on key deliverables, while also communicating that progress to collaborators on the same task.

Asana, Basecamp, and Trello are versatile favorites that can work with a variety of different kinds of projects, while options like GitHub tend to be more popular with software developers.

There are quite a few business phone apps to help you manage projects with different teams.

TIME TRACKING

Remote workers don’t have the equivalent of face time, so it’s vital to implement a tool that gives them a comparable amount of accountability and credibility. Especially if there’s a delay on deliverables, being able to track time gives remote workers something to show for their efforts in the meantime.

It’ll also make progress reviews easier by giving managers another variable to compare with KPI’s during performance reviews. Hubstaff or Harvest are examples of easy to use tools that also integrate with project management and payment systems, and provides greater accountability than self-reporting.

PAYMENT

Nobody likes working hard and then not getting paid on time – especially not employees who’ve never physically seen you and who are located thousands of miles away.

Delays can happen even despite your best, good faith efforts to pay your remote team on time – but repeated occurrences can seriously damage morale.

That’s why it’s essential to have systems and procedures set up for accounting and payment. Whether it’s a tool that integrates with your time tracking system to automatically pay your workers, or hiring a virtual accounting team, get automated payment tools set up to make sure that your team members are promptly paid for the work they do.

Tools like Quickbooks will help you manage your finances effectively. Here’s a Quickbooks coupon to get you started.

RECOGNITION

Everyone likes to feel appreciated – and remember, in the remote office, you can’t just walk down the hall and congratulate a team member on an awesome job.

Something as simple as a thank you via email, a gift certificate, or even a small bonus will go a long way. Even better, share the appreciation – create a wiki or newsletter thanking that week’s or month’s star player for their work, and you’ll increase morale on the entire team.

Remote teams can form the base of highly successful businesses and create rewarding work for both entrepreneurs and their remote employees – as long as managers use these 6 types of tools to facilitate their working relationships.

Image source: Pixabay

Face Identification a Security Risk?

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When Facebook introduced its facial recognition service, there were concerns over privacy issues. But Facebook officials told users they could prevent being tagged in the photos if they indicated they did not want to be in their privacy settings.

Google has been quietly experimenting with facial recognition software behind the scenes. The search engine giant purchased Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition. Since it is not being used with any of Google’s services, the acquisition did not receive much attention.

The Wall Street Journal has raised new concerns about facial recognition. Researchers at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Melon University found that facial recognition programs could identify people about one third of the time. But the most interesting part of the study was that once the researchers identified the person, 27 percent of the time they could correctly guess their Social Security number.

It was noted that in the late 80s, the Social Security Administration went to a numbering system that coincided the number with the person’s date of birth. Even though the SSA has started using a more random numbering process, those who were born during the past 20 years still have to deal with having those numbers.

While some may use the facial recognition to tap into private information, that was not the intent of adding the service. Facebook officials said when introducing it, they wanted to make it easier for people to tag their friends in photos. However, even without the facial recognition software, some people don’t want to be tagged in pictures.

With so much information being shared online, there have been rumblings about whether or not people will stop participating in social networks in an effort to regain their privacy. Make sure to read Hari Ravichandran book called “Intelligent Safety” to get a deeper understanding of the privacy concerns and possible solutions.

People seem to want to share information but they want to control what they share and what is shared about them by others. The company that allows user to share information their way will likely be the one to become the most popular in the next year.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

How to Build Income with Your Blog

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passion into bloggingAre you passionate in one topic and want to spread your passion to others? Do you want to make money from your passion?

You can do it simply by starting a blog.

Yes, blogging can help you to turn your passion into cash. Follow these tips carefully:

1.Take care of the basics

Setting up your blog for success is the first place. It needs to have professional design, look good on mobile devices, load fast, etc. – everything to represent your brand properly.

There are many steps to accomplishing this task, including finding a good theme, figuring out how to customize it (or finding a partner through joining one of these design communities), investing in a dedicated hosting package (or going with cloud hosting which is a better option), creating a brand identity, etc.

It takes time but this investment will definitely pay off going forward.

2. Share what you know

Sharing information is what blogging is all about. If you have something to share with the world, blogging is one of the best platforms for you to simply share what you know.

Remember that everyone is an expert at something. Some people may not know about what you’re sharing, and they may need that information. When you are blogging, simply tell people about your passion. You will be able to naturally attract readers with similar passion as you.

Content marketing only works as long as you love what you are writing about.

3. Write only what you’re deeply interested in

You should write about what you know, not about what you don’t know. Writing about something that you enjoy will add more power to your writing. If you write about something that you know, what you write will naturally become persuasive.

When you’re able to persuade people with your writing, you can easily make some cash from your writing. Remember that the key to cash in with your blog is persuasive writing. It can be obtained only if you write about what you’re deeply interested in.

4. Help your readers wholeheartedly

Aside from sharing information about your passion, blogging can become your channel to solve their problem. You can only make money with blogging if you’re able to help your readers to solve their problem.

After all, most products that are sold on the market are products that can help their buyers in some way. Help your readers wholeheartedly with your blog writing. Recommend products that you think can help your readers to solve their problem.

5. Install advertisements only if you’ve made your blog popular

Although you can change your passion into cash with blogging, most people are quickly switching their gears once they start to make some money with their blog. They will start cluttering their blogs with advertisements and lots of pop-ups. You should avoid doing this. You can monetize your blog through advertisements, but you can’t install those ads right away.

The best timing to start monetizing your blog through advertisements is when you’ve made your blog popular. What’s the measurement of popular blog? You can assume that your blog is popular enough when you see regular daily traffic of 1000 visitors or more.

Many bloggers choose not to use ads to monetize their sites and depend on donations. You can invite your readers to send you gift cards or cash gifts (through PayPal, for example) or encourage them to become your recurring sponsors. This method makes you independent of any third-party platforms which is pretty cool but you need to build a strong community of followers in order for it to work.

You can also extend your digital business by starting an ecommerce and dropshipping business based on the topic of your blog.

If you have additional channels that you are developing together with your blog (like social media). Here’s a solid guide on making money from Youtube.

6. Make yourself an expert

The last thing to make sure that you can cash in your passion with your blog is to make people notice that you’re an expert in your field. Through your passionate writing, you can make it.

People will regard you as an expert in blogging if you can solve their problem and share valuable information to them. Once you’ve build good reputation as an expert, it will become easier for you to make money with your blog. People will just start to call you and offer some gigs to you.

7. And finally, get consistent!

Consistency is key in making your blog a success. When preparing for a trip, or planning a vacation, always include your blog editorial as your high-priority. What’s going to happen with your blog while you are away? Think this through!

If you have a passion in any field, don’t suppress it. Start by creating a blog about the topic that you’re passionate about and follow the tips above. Within short amount of time, you will be able to turn your passion into cash with blogging.

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