Apart from being descriptive, images will make your posts live and more appealing to readers. This will improve your traffic and the user experience. Advertisers might also get encouraged to order a sponsored review on your blog if they know that you will include pictures and examples from the product.
So far so good. Extracting images from the web and adding them smoothly to posts without making your site look like MySpace is not a simple task, however. Below you will find tips and resources for this purpose.
Good Ol’ Printscreen
This is the most basic method. It will not produce outstanding results, but it might be helpful if you are using the Internet from another terminal or if somehow you are not able to access other tools.
Most personal computers come with a “PrtSc” key on the upper right part of the keyboard. Whenever you press that key your computer will save a digital copy of your screen on the cache.
The next step is to open an image editing software (Paint will suffice) and paste the copy of the screen. Just edit the image properly, save it as a new file and you are done.
Notice that you can also “print” only the active window on your screen by holding Alt while you use the “PrtSc” key.
The Paid Software
Snagit is the standard when it comes to screen capturing software. It allows you to take screenshots of specific regions and scrolling web pages. It also includes several advanced features like video capture, special effects and image editing.
You can try the software for 30 days, and if you like it you will need to spend $39 for a single user license. Is it worth it, you might ask? Yes if you have a professional website or if you are planning to make money via your blog. If you blog for hobby probably you can get away with free tools.
The Free Alternative
I can’t blame you if you don’t want to spend 40 bucks for an image capturing software. While a free alternative will not provide all the features you would find inside Snagit, it will probably get the job done anyway.
Screen Hunter 5 is a screen capturing software that comes in three versions: Pro, Plus and Free. The first one costs $29, the second $19 and the third one, as you probably guessed, costs nothing.
Notice that the free version is not a trial one like Snagit. You can use unlimitedly both for personal and business uses. The only drawback is that it does not come with advanced features.
The software allows you to capture rectangular areas, active windows or full screens. It also comes with extra tools like color picker and delayed captures.
Trademark & Copyright Issues
Suppose you are writing a post about a certain company. Can you use that company’s logo in your article? Most of the times, yes.
Trademarks protect companies from people or organizations that use their logo in order to deceive customers. For example, an SEO consultant can not use Google’s logo on it is webpage because it would lead visitors to think that somehow he is involved with Google.
If you are writing a post about Google, however, you have the right to use its logo for the purpose of criticism, comment or news reporting. This is called “nominative fair use.”
The same does not apply to images within the website of companies, though. These are protected by copyright, and you can only use them under explicit permission from the author or owner.
The law is not clear about screenshots. Some people argue that you should be able to take screenshots or software and websites without infringing copyright, as long as it is for the purpose of criticism, comment or news reporting. The argument states that such usage would fall under the “fair use” principle.
When in doubt, seek legal advice from an attorney.
Finding Images on the Internet
Some times you will need to find images for your posts through out the Internet. Fortunately there are several websites that stock royalty free and images and photographies. Below you will find links to some useful ones.
Positioning the Images
Now you have the tools and the resources for getting images. What about placing them efficiently on your posts? There are basically two methods for positioning images within blog posts: using CSS and using HMTL attributes.
CSS formatting offers more flexibility, and it is the preferred method. In order to align an image via CSS you will need to create a special class on your CSS file. Wordpress users usually have this file names stylesheet.css. Once you located the file just add something like this:
img.alignright {
float:right;
padding:5px;
border:1px solid #999999;
}
This code will create the class for all your images that are supposed to be aligned on the right. As you can see we have added both padding and a solid border (you can customize this elements as needed). Whenever you want to align an image using that format you just need to call the class within the img tag, which will look like this:
<img class="alignright" src="http://www.domain.com/testimage.gif" />
The second option involves HTML attributes, but it should be considered only if you are not able to use CSS because the align=”right” and align=”left” attributes will be deprecated from XHTML markup.
In order to use these attributes, just add them inside the img tag:
<img align="right" src="http://www.domain.com/testimage.gif" />
Finally, remember that images above the fold will give more visibility to your posts. A catchy image might convince an otherwise reluctant reader to investigate the rest of your content.
– Daniel Scocco
6 Comments
There is nothing worse than an otherwise witty blog post marked by several spelling errors (especially if you are getting paid to write it…). Sure, people will still be able to understand the overall meaning of your words, but your credibility might get damaged along the way.
Luckily, technology comes at our aid. Below you will find a list of resources and tools that can be used to spell check your articles, emails, websites and more.
Browsers
- Firefox 2.0: Ever posted a comment on a blog only to find out that you had written “embarasment” instead of “embarrassment?” The latest release of the Mozilla house comes with an in-built spell checker that works inside web forms; very useful for active Internet users.
- Firefox 1.5: If you have a fetish with Firefox 1.5 and are reluctant to upgrade it to the newest version, no worries! There is an extension called SpellBound that will add the spell checking functionality to your browser.
- Internet Explorer: There is no reason to use Internet Explorer. Firefox is faster, more flexible and more reliable. But this is not the central topic of this article, so if you (still) are an Internet Explorer user, you can use an extension called IESpell.
Online Tools
- SpellChecker.net: The site is not so fast, but it gets the job done when it comes to spell checking. The service also includes a “Grammar Checker,” but I am not sure how reliable it is considering that it did not correct sentences like “He are my friend” and “I go there last year.”
- Orangoo: The site is pretty fast and the corrections are done in the same window (as opposed to being displayed in pop-ups like with SpellChecker.net). Another advantage is that it supports 28 different languages.
Website Spell Checkers
- Spell checking your website could be a good idea. If you don’t have time or patience to carry it out on your own, you can use an online service.TextTrust.com is a company that will spell check your website for you. It offers a free trial version where results are emailed to you within one business day. Additional services are charged.
Open Source Software
- OpenOffice.org: Microsoft Word comes with a nice spell checker, but this certainly doesn’t justify the hundred bucks that you’ll need to spend for it. OpenOffice.org is one of the best alternatives around. While the spreadsheet utility might not be as good as Excel, the word processor offers virtually all the features you’ll ever need.
- AbiWord: If you want to use only a word processor and not the complete Office suite you can try AbiWord. It is a light software, and apart from the spell checker it also comes with a grammar checker.
- LanguageTool: This is an open source grammar checker. Basically it will catch grammar errors that would pass the spell checker, like repeating two words or using “a” before a word starting with a vowel sound. The interesting thing is that you can add custom “rules” for special mistakes that you are looking for.
Paid Software
- As-U-Type: This spell checker apparently works at Operational System level, meaning that once you install it you will be able to use it inside all applications. Apart from functioning as a real time spell checker, the software will also learn your typing habits and automatically correct common mistakes. There is a free trial version which works for 30 days, and the full software costs $39.
Bottom line: Do not forget that running that spell checker is not enough, you will still need to proofread your work!
– Daniel Scocco
14 Comments
I think that Conan O’Brien’s skit “if they mated” is one of the most genius pieces of entertainment available for your late night viewing pleasure. I couldn’t help but think… what if SEO’s mated. So I went on a flavorful trip full of adventure, candy cains and lolly pops to find out what this would entail. See below for a glimpse into the life of future couples in SEO and their offspring! I just want to point out this is strictly for fun!!
Read the rest of this entry »
– Joe Whyte
39 Comments
Building a brand from scratch is not an easy thing to do, especially if you are in a market that is very competitive. How does one start to rise above the noise to distinguish themselves as a heavy hitter? What techniques and tricks can you use to reach your brand awareness goals? Below I have outlined some of the most effective ways to build your brand using online marketing techniques.
Video Marketing:
1. Create videos that research proves will do well on the sites you are marketing to. Usually funny videos and tutorials tend to do well.
2. Decide what video marketing stance you are going to approach with your video marketing: Cut the video and add branding before something funny or interesting happens to redirect the viewer to your site. Or allow the entire video shown to allow for more viewers and impressions.
3. Initiate streaming rich media ads on videos.
4.Purchase pre-roll or post-roll ads on videos.
5. Distribute your video across these multiple video sharing sites.
Conversational Marketing
6. Leverage sites like Sponsored Reviews in order to create a viral buzz online regarding your brand.
7. Join as many forums as you can adequately sustain a quality contributor.
8. Get to know who the industry voice is for your niche and post comments on there blogs.
9. Contribute to online groups like google groups and myspace groups.
10. Market yourself by adding a blog.
11. Use advanced techniques to gain RSS subscribers for maximum exposure.
Pay Per Click
12. If you have a larger budget create an account on the top tier pay per click networks, Google, MSN and Yahoo!.
13. If you have a smaller ad budget go with Google and some tier 2 and tier 3 networks.
14. A great way to get branding is to get those impressions. Try giving 3rd tier networks a try but know that conversions may be lower on 3rd tier networks.
15. Utilize keycompete to get a good base on competitor PPC advertising.
16. Do extensive keyword research to find optimal exposure and converting keywords.
17. Try to find niches and keyword markets to target that are not as heavily competitive but are highly trafficked so your cost per click will be way down.
18. Mind your ad quality.
Social Media Marketing
19. Stay as ethical as you possibly can.
20. To successfully leverage your social media for online marketing you need to really be active in your communities, ergo is best to have power accounts on a few social media sites rather then trying to manage many of them across multiple networks. Find your niche.
21. Initiate social bookmarking campaigns online.
22. Create content to support edits in wikipedia.
Email Marketing
23. Team with companies with double opt in lists
24. Sponsor mailing lists with companies who have a wide subscriber base.
25. Try to leverage DBA lists
26. Setup a network of sites geared towards lead generation. By capturing these leads you can use them for yourself or sell them to leading lead brokers.
Mobile Search Marketing
27. Create a click to call campaign
28. Develop a mobile version of your site.
29. Include jump links below your content as normal navigation on a mobile search page can cause problems when viewing on mobile devices.
Search Engine Optimization
30. Optimize all title tags and meta data according to your rev mix.
31. If you are having problems ranking internal pages for there given keyword terms consider developing an effective silo.
32. Develop search engine friendly html sitemap.
33 Develop quality internal linking structure.
34. Create optimized html source code.
35. Create optimized robots.txt
36. Create optimized XML sitemap.
Affiliate Marketing
37. Create accounts in the 2 major affiliate networks, link share and commission junction.
38. Evaluate your competitions affiliate program
39. If you do not have an affiliate option for your services or products then think about creating one because the chance to have others advertise your products and services is a great way to get exposure and build your branding.
40. Incentavize your affiliate deals to attract the affiliate and the consumers.
Banner Advertising
41. Examine potential sites demographics.
42. Get media break outs
43. Consider Portal Advertising
44. Weight your cost per acquisition model between the cost of CPM and CPC banner advertising.
Application Marketing
45. Create a marketing campaign on Instant messangers
Contextual Advertising
46. Initiate a PFI (pay for inclusion) campaign for in bound links with sites like Text Link Brokers.
47. Consider Pre Sale pages or Hosted Marketing packages.
On to offline Marketing
48. Clothing is one of the best ways to market a product and service on and offline. By creating clothing that is branded with your logo and services you can ad this clothing line to online shopping sites and having people wear your clothes with your branding obviously increases your brand awareness.
My last and final tip is to make sure that everything you do can be tracked and measured via an accurate web analytics system. If you can afford it I would recommend click tracks. If that is to expensive for you then you might consider web trends. Many of these tips can not only improve your online marketing success but can increase the value of your own site allowing you to be paid much more for your sponsored reviews..
– Joe Whyte
15 Comments
Our generation is starting to experience something for the very first time in history: information overload. The daily avalanche of e-mails, advertisings, blogs and the like are shortening people’s attention span. (By the way, sorry if I gave you false illusions, by now you probably realized that the title of the article refers to something else…).
How does this phenomenon affect your blog? Simply put, if you are lucky you will have people giving you 30 seconds of their time. Then question then becomes, “If you only have 30 seconds, would you rather show the reader some “real stuff” or lose yourself between ramblings and fluff talk?” I bet you said the former, and for that purpose below you will find 4 practical tips.
1. Write a short and effective introduction
Get to the point, quickly. There is nothing worse than an endless, boring introduction. The purpose of the intro is to capture the attention of the reader and to summarize your main argument throughout the article. Make sure your intros work in favor and not against yourself.
2. Remove words where pictures will suffice
Do you think you could remove a whole paragraph and replace it with an equally expressing picture? Go for it! Ever heard the saying “A picture is worth 1000 words?” Well, it is true.
3. Choose simple words
While writing the article, pay attention on the words you choose. If something big and fancy comes on the way, stop! Ask yourself, “is there any simpler word that would deliver the same meaning?”
4. Re-read the article removing unnecessary words and sentences
Once you have a first draft, go through the article again removing all the unnecessary words and sentences. Do not worry about butchering your article, the more concise it gets, the better.
– Daniel Scocco
5 Comments
I just had to link to this great little article from Scott over at Web-professor.net.
I’ve always been a fan of Scott’s writings. This little article has all the makings of a great post.
1. It is short and to the point.
2. It has a great short intro that makes you want to read it: “Six Things that can make me Totally Think you Really Really are an Idiot!”
3. It has a bit of controversy to it, as we have all probably made some of the mistakes he is talking about.
4. It is fun.
5. It is in an easy to read list format (cause we all love a great list).
Article: Really Really Bad Writing by Web-Professor
– Jarrod Hunt
No Comments
The vast majority of people start blogging out of curiosity. The idea of sharing their thoughts with others is appealing.
A small percentage of those people grow out of the curiosity stage, and decide to “Take it to the next level”.
Whether it be for money or just a bit of fame, it’s important to have a plan!
Here are a couple of suggestions for doing just that.
1. Define the Vision and the Mission
Despite the MBA fluff that you might hear out there, having a clear Vision and a Mission Statement is essential for any project or venture, blogs included. Don’t worry, you will not need to hire a consulting firm here. Just think about what you are trying to accomplish with your blog. The Vision is what you are aiming for (e.g., “My blog will be the most popular one on its niche” or “My blog will have the most active community around this topic”). You must believe in your Vision, otherwise it is just a dream.
The Mission Statement is how you will arrive there. Suppose your Vision is to have the most popular “Make Money Online” blog on the Internet. The Mission Statement for such a blog could be: “We provide reliable and practical tips that will help our readers make money online.”
Remember: “When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.“
Related Links:
2. Set Goals
After defining the purpose of the blog you will need to lay down goals. Goals are extremely important to set priorities. They also enable you to monitor the performance and review the strategy along the way, if necessary.
First of all you will need long term, medium term and short term goals. Start with the yearly goal. Where do you want your blog to be one year from now? Then break it down: if you are to achieve that yearly goal, where will you need to be 3 months from now? This process will make it clear what you need to do on a daily basis in order to achieve your long term objectives.
Remember that goals must be both measurable and realistic. As a blogger you can use several parameters to set goals, including traffic, RSS subscribers, Technorati Rank, Google Pagerank and so on.
Related Links:
3. Check the Writing
Like it or not, people will judge your blog by the quality of your writing. Sure, design, promotion and other factors need to be taken into consideration, but writing quality arguably comes before them.
It is quite difficult to become a Shakespearesque writer overnight. But maybe that is not even necessary. If you are already confident on your writing skills, just hone them. Work some more on the articles to make sure they are polished and engaging.
If you are not quite confident on your writing skills, however, you will need to follow a different route. First of all, you can hire a professional writer to help you out. He can both write some of the content himself and edit yours.
If hiring someone is not an option, grab some grammar books and browse around the Internet for writing advice. At the very minimum you want to make sure that your articles do not contain grammatical or spelling mistakes.
Related Links:
4. Draw a Monetization Plan
You might not have the need to monetize your blog. Freelance professionals and consultants, for instance, can use a blog mainly as a marketing vehicle for their business. Most bloggers, however, will be interested in the money part. The possibility of generating a solid monthly income, in fact, is what motivates most people to take their blog to the next level in the first place.
Before cluttering your blog with multiple Adsense units and annoying Kontera text links, however, you should draw a basic plan for the monetization part.
In this plan you will need to evaluate when you will insert the ads, where you will display them, what the ads themselves will be, and how the whole monetization scheme will affect your readers.
Bear in mind that the user experience should not be compromised. Give the priority to your readers and not to some quick-money fix. The cents you will make are not worth losing a loyal visitor.
Related Links:
5. Design
As the Italians say, “anche l’occhio vuole la sua parte” (the eye wants his part too). You might have great content and outstanding writing skills, but if it is all wrapped with a messy design you will lose readers over the long run.
First of all the content must be readable. That means selecting good fonts, the proper line spacing and harmonic colors. Secondly, the overall template of the blog must be well structured. At this point you already know what you are aiming for with the blog, how you will monetize it and so on, so make sure that the design supports those objectives.
The bottom line is: if you are trying to build a professional, money-making blog you will probably need to hire a professional designer. And don’t point me to Steve Pavlina, he is the exception not the rule!
Related Links:
6. Develop a Promotion Strategy
There is a reason why companies and businesses all over the world spend billions in advertising. Now, while promoting your blog might be a little cheaper, you will still need to do it strategically.
What audience are you looking for? Where could you find them around the Internet? How could you attract them to your blog? Those are just some of the questions that you will need to ask yourself.
There are plenty of ways to promote a blog. Just think about social bookmarking sites, online forums, banners, text links, Google AdWords and so on. The key here is to experiment, analyze results, refine the strategy and repeat.
Related Links:
7. Execute
Alright, looks like you have everything carefully planned. You know what kind of blog you are aiming for, you have some goals in place, you know how to monetize and promote it, and you also know what design you need. Now what?
Now comes the hardest part, actually. Most projects do not fail due to a lack of vision or planning, they fail because there is no proper implementation of what was planned. In two words, get busy!
Related Links:
– Daniel Scocco
5 Comments
First things first, what are widgets? According to Wikipedia:
A web widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation. They are akin to plugins or extensions in desktop applications. Other terms used to describe a Web Widget include Gadget, Badge, Module, Capsule, Snippet, Mini and Flake. Web Widgets often but not always use Adobe Flash or JavaScript programming languages.
Blog widgets, therefore, are nothing more than pieces of code (usually provided by third parties) that you can use on your blog in order to add some content or functionality. Widgets, if used correctly, can add some salt to your blog. Notice that we said “if used correctly” because using too many of them will just clutter your design and slow down your website.
Below you will find 6 popular widgets around the blogosphere. We tried to list the “pros” and “cons” for each one, so that you will be able to choose the ones that are suitable for your blog.
Feedburner Feed Count
What is it?: A small chicklet that displays the number of people subscribing to your Feedburner RSS feed. You can customize the color to match the style of your blog.
Pros: Most popular blogs on the Internet use this widget. A high subscriber count can both give credibility to your blog and encourage first time visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed.
Cons: Just as a high subscriber count can be positive, a low subscriber count might hurt your blog. Like it or not most people will get discouraged if they have the impressions that they are alone reading your blog. Just avoid using this widget if you blog is relatively new.
Where do I get it?: You will need to “burn” your feed with Feedburner. Once you have done that, just log into your account and go to “Publicize” then “Feed Count.”
MyBlogLog
What is it?: A widget that displays avatars of the readers on a certain blog. You can click on the widget to discover more about someone, and communities of readers are created for individual blogs.
Pros: The widget can increase the level of interaction on your blog through the MyBlogLog community. Additionally it can also help on the promotion side since other people will see your avatar when you browse around their blogs (and you can leverage your creativity here…).
Cons: Unfortunately the widget might increase the load time of your website (sometimes hugely, depending on the customization you apply to it).
Where do I get it?: After registering with MyBlogLog you just need to log into your account, add your blog and click on “Get This Widget!”
Alexa
What is it?: Alexa provides traffic estimations for websites based on the usage of its toolbar. This widget will display the Alexa information (you can customize it with numbers or graphs) of your blog.
Pros: Although Alexa has denied this, some people believe that you can improve your Alexa ranking by inserting the widget on your blog.
Cons: The widget might not offer any useful information for your readers (people concerned with those rankings usually use browser toolbars for that purpose), and it will inevitably use space on your sidebar.
Where to get it?: Just head to the Alexa website, scroll down to “Developers’ Corner” and click on “Widgets.”
Swicki Community Search
What is it?: It is a search widget that learns from the behavior of your readers. Additionally it also displays a “Hot Searchs” buzz cloud. You can see it working on TechCrunch.
Pros: This widget tries to combine the flexibility of search engines with the intelligence of the crowd. It allows both you and your readers to customize and improve the searching mechanism on your website.
Cons: You will need to spend some time to set this up and make it functional. Secondly, not all readers might be interested in this level of sophistication while searching on your blog.
Where do I get it?: Go to the Eureckster website and click on “Create your own swicki today.” Notice that you will also need to “train” the search engine before using it..
Flickr Photo Stream
What is it?: This widget will rotate selected photos from your Flickr account. You can choose the format of the widget, the colors and the number of photos to be rotated.
Pros: The widget can add a personal touch to your blog, specially if you spend some time customizing the style. Chris Pearson has an article on this topic titled “Add a Styled Flickr Photo Stream to Your Blog.”
Cons: This widget is certainly not suitable for all blogs. If you have a personal blog where you share your experiences the photo stream can provide value for your readers. If you write a more professional or objective blog, on the other hand, you might want to think twice before displaying Flickr photos on the sidebar.
Where do I get it?: Log into your Flickr account, go to “Your Photos” and look for a “Flickr Badge” link. After that just follow the instructions to create and customize the widget.
Twitter
What is it?: Twitter is a communication platform that allows people to stay in touch through short messages that describe what they are doing. The messages can be updated via SMS. This widget is synchronized with your Twitter account so that your readers will always know “what you are doing.”
Pros: Just like with the Flickr Photo Stream, this widget can represent a nice feature for a personal blog. Readers will be able to follow your activities, for instance.
Cons: Unless you have a personal blog or you are an online celebrity like Steve Rubel, it is very likely that the majority of your visitors will not care about what you are doing through out the day.
Where do I get it?: You will need to have an account on Twitter. Inside your account just click on “Badges” and you will see a list of widgets, both Flash and Javascript based.
More Widgets
If you are looking for more widgets you should check the “Gallery” section of Widgetbox. There are over 1000 of them, divided into categories and tags.
——
Daniel is the owner of DailyBlogTips.com and a Guest Blogger on SponsoredReviews
– Daniel Scocco
No Comments
Are you looking to increase the traffic to your blog? Building links from directories will increase your link popularity, direct traffic, and search engine rankings.
There are several lists of “Blog Directories” around the Internet, but most of them feature only a hand full of directories, and they lack a ranking factor to make it easier for the reader to scan through the list.
Below you will find a very extensive list of Blog Directories, ordered according to their Alexa rank. We have also inserted the Pagerank of each directory on the list to make it more detailed. Enjoy!
——
Daniel is the owner of DailyBlogTips.com and a Guest Blogger on SponsoredReviews
– Daniel Scocco
66 Comments
You might promote your blog all over the blogosphere. You might have a large online network of friends. You might even hire a professional SEO company to optimize it. But if you are not writing quality posts, all the other activities will yield poor results. It is about putting first things first.
What should I do to ensure that I am writing quality posts, you might ask. There is no definite answer for that question, given the variety of styles and topics. But there are some basic guidelines that can be considered universal. Below you will find 5 of them: Read the rest of this entry »
– Daniel Scocco
2 Comments
