12 Amazing Tools For Boosting Your Blogging Productivity

The most crucial problem every single blogger is faced with is not insufficient traffic to their blog, nor is it developing the best social media strategy. It’s productivity, or lack thereof, because it influences every other aspect of blogging. Posting high-quality content on a regular basis, which means at least two times a week, is an absolute must, and for some bloggers, that might be a nearly impossible feat.

It’s not because they are lazy, or they lack talent, but because they are bad at managing their time and get easily distracted by something else. And it’s perfectly fine, because everybody’s different in terms of their working habits, and how much time it takes them to go from full-on procrastination mode to typing away furiously at their keyboards.

However, that doesn’t mean you need to let it limit your blogging capacity. There are plenty of things you can use to your advantage to change the way you approach your work and boost your output, such as a whole slew of useful tools and resources to help you improve your productivity, take it to the next level, and make sure it stays there. The following list contains 12 tools that can assist you in achieving that.

1. Focus Booster

One of the most efficient ways to eliminate distractions and focus on your job is the Pomodoro Technique, which involves working intensely for 25 minutes, and then taking a short break for 5 minutes. After you complete four of these cycles, you are allowed to take a longer break. Focus Booster is a time-tracking app which takes advantage of this approach, so instead of looking at the clock every so often, you can install this tool and concentrate on your work, until it lets you know that it’s time to take a break, or go back to work.

2. Trello

While organizer apps are very good at keeping you on track and managing your work schedule, they are usually so analytical and boring to look at, most bloggers avoid using them altogether. If you find it more comfortable to use visually oriented tools, you may want to check out Trello, whose user interface recalls that of Pinterest. But, in addition to posting photos, you can also add your notes, comments, labels, lists, and scheduled tasks.

3. CoSchedule

If WordPress is your blogging platform of choice, then you’ll love CoSchedule. It acts both as a plugin you can use with WordPress and a web app whose primary task is to provide you with a powerful editorial calendar, but it offers more than just that. You will also like its social media-oriented features which enable you to schedule your posts for publishing across all of your social media accounts. It is a huge time-saver, which means you can focus on writing or figuring out your marketing strategy.

4. ZenWriter

If you find Microsoft Office too expensive, massive, or distracting, perhaps it is time for you to check out a minimalistic writing app which can help you battle distractions and shift your focus to writing and nothing else. ZenWriter is one of the best tools for the job, with its streamlined and super-sleek interface which is free of any features that aren’t essential for creating awesome written content.

5. Australian Writings

If you run into writer’s block, don’t beat yourself up about it, because it happens to everyone. It’s perfectly normal not to feel particularly creative at times, but that doesn’t mean your blog or your audience have to wait until you feel inspired again. You can share some of the burden and fill out the gaps in your creativity by getting in touch with writers at Australian Writings, which are capable of creating brilliant content for your blog and social media outlets. Also, their editors can save you a ton of time by going over your work and improving it.

6. Hootsuite

Managing multiple social media account is really important, but it’s also one of the most tiresome, boring, and time-consuming tasks you will encounter as a blogger. Not if you decide to use Hootsuite, though. The app is laid out like a dashboard which features all of your social network activities, and which allows you to publish and schedule posts, collaborate with other members of your team, view stats, monitor performance, and plenty of other stuff.

7. Flipboard

Flipboard is a brilliantly designed online app which is laid out like a magazine and features the best content from all of your favorite sources, such as blogs, websites, and social media streams. It will save you a lot of time by providing you with inspiring topics, but also with trending themes and articles you can share on your social media accounts, which results in more frequent posting. Other than that, it is just wonderful to look at and really contagious, so might want to be careful not to spend too much time using it.

8. Asana

Asana is one of those tools which you simply need to have as part of blogging arsenal. It is suitable for managing every single aspect of your projects, regardless of their size and complexity. For instance, you can manage your blogging schedule, set an email list, collaborate with your team members and distribute tasks. You will be able to see a spike in your productivity with this gem in no time.

9. Spoken.ly

Song verses, inspiring quotes, or clever phrases, pasted onto an equally inspiring images are all the rage nowadays on social media, especially Facebook. Enhancing your blog’s content with some of that is a good idea, but creating that sort of images takes a long time if you are using Photoshop or some other similar app. Spoken.ly, however, can help you get it done in minutes, because the entire process is semi-automated. Check it out.

10. Adobe Kuler

Now, unless you’re a graphic designer, you will probably find yourself out of your comfort zone when deciding on your blog’s graphics, color schemes in particular. Even though you may feel really strong about the combination of colors you have come up with, there are rules which indicate which color schemes are the most pleasing the human eye. Check out Adobe Kuler, which is a simple, yet effective tool that can help your visual content pop in no time.

11. SEMRush

There comes a point in every blogger’s career when they are frustrated with the fact their competitors are driving more traffic to their websites and blogs, despite offering inferior content. This may be down to poor choice of keywords on your part. SEMRush can help you get back on track, because it is able to analyze your competition’s content and pinpoint the exact keywords which are responsible for such high traffic volume.

12. Google Webmaster Tools

You may already be using Google Analytics, but you should also check out Google Webmaster Tools, which is a suite of tools that are focused more on making sure your website is working like a charm. It checks deep underneath the hood and provides information on how you can improve the structure of you blog, whether it’s through tweaking with the HTML code, or some other way. Also gives you info about your blog’s Google Index status and safety.

As you can see, you can improve your productivity regardless of your creativity, schedule, and work habits. All you have to do is rely on these amazing tools and let them do some of the work for you. As a result, you will be more productive, which means more posts, more traffic, and more potential customers.

About the author
Stephanie Norman is a professional writer and contributing blogger with 4 years of experience from Sydney. She writes creative and academic content covering content marketing, blogging, and writing issues as a freelancer. You can follow her at Facebook and Google+.

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Importance Of SEO In Business

The main aspect of SEO is making your website easy for both users and search engine robots to understand. Search engines have become increasingly sophisticated. It still can't see and understand a web page as the same way a human can. SEO helps the engines to figure out what each page is about, and how it is useful for the users. Search Engine Optimization is commonly known as, one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted terms in the world of marketing. SEO is a fantastic way of making sure that the most suitable people find your site and encounter your domain. Let’s discuss each of these in turn.

1. SEO is good for Business Visibility and Branding

When people search for the products or services, you obviously want to appear as high in the search engine rankings as possible, but for the reasons this is more than just because you want them to click to your website. For instance, they search, click on some websites, edit their search terms, search again, click on some websites, further hone their search terms, search again, and so on. When internet users search for specific products or services that they want, make sure that your site is at the top of the list. That is how you will boost relevant traffic and ensure that the people encounter your products. Sometimes appearing at the top of the list will produce positive results, even if potential consumers fail to click the link.

What does this mean for your business?

It means that if you can continually show in all these search results, you are gaining more and more mindshare with each potential customer. Chances are more that they will eventually click to your website, and since you continually displayed in all their search results, they will trust you much more and brings us to the next reason why SEO is important in business.

2. SEO Provides Credibility for Your Business

The consumers make mental notes of companies that shows up in the Google and on other search engines. It is a subconscious note for some, and they do nonetheless. In the minds of consumers, your ranking becomes a crown of confidence. That may sound a bit exaggerated, but research has shown that higher search rankings lead to more credibility in eyes of the consumers. All top online businesses and websites engage in SEO to further their interests. It means that your site should appear more credible to the user if you follow. Most of the people consider the ranking as an indication of the quality of the website. It means that domains appear at the top are much more appealing to your target market. If you want to create a professional and up market image for your business SEO will surly help you to achieve the goal.

3. SEO Brings Business Traffic

Traffic is not going to make you any money. The first step in converting a consumer to a customer is to get them in the door, so-to-speak. All those people searching on the Internet day and night are not necessarily going to make you any money, but chances are that few of them will eventually become your customer because of your search ranking. What is better is SEO is usually a good deal more affordable than store leases in Times Square.

4. SEO is one of the Best ROI’s in Advertising

SEO always rewards your business for its efforts at a higher rate than any other traditional forms of offline advertising. The same can be done for almost all types of Internet marketing. The reason for this, SEO is an inbound marketing strategy; which allows you to market to the people when they are looking for the products and the services. You don’t have to interrupt; or have to take up space on a page where they are reading a news article. All you have to do is convince the customer that you are the best business to purchase the products. In other words, with SEO, half the legwork is already done for you.

5. SEO Gives Unmatched Insight into the Customers

SEO generates valuable traffic for the site. Google Analytics tracks this traffic through important data and metrics. The data and metrics are very much valuable. They give you insight into the customers. It can help you make more informed decisions regarding your business and its strategies, both online and offline. The bottom line is that SEO can help you to build your business by getting you in front of your potential customers exactly when they are looking for the products or services. It provides reliable sources of user data and analytics that can help you to tailor your message to attract new customers. As long as the Internet continues to drive consumer buying habits, SEO is an important resource for your business marketing efforts.

6. SEO ensures people from the right locations to view your pages

Companies that provide local SEO services can help you to make people living in the right locations view your pages. It is mainly important for firms that do business within specific areas. For instance, the SEO can ensure internet users from the surrounding areas and stumble across the business. There is no point appearing in listings for other locations or cities if you only do the business in a certain area. People with the good skills in SEO will know how to boost your site towards the chosen demographics.

SEO strategies might not be profitable instantly. But in the long run, it can work wonders for any business. Designing and implementing an effective SEO strategy can assist business owners in organically driving traffic and increasing brand loyalty. This makes the brand more valuable and recognized. As a tool that constantly changes, you must always take fresh look at your online presence. Working with a professional who understands SEO will mean always being on the first page of rankings, will have a great reputation on social networks, and in general always be in a position to capture the attention of more consumers.

About the author
Edna Jonas is an essay writing expert having 10 years of experience. She is working for the Essay writing service company, which helps students for their academic works like essay writing, term paper writing, dissertation writing etc.

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Top 3 Custom Sidebar WordPress Plugins for Post & Pages

Generally WordPress themes are designed with 1 or 2 fixed sidebars. Only news websites which are hosted on WordPress platform designed in such a fashion so that their sidebars changed according to their content. Today I am going to publish top 3 custom sidebar wordpress plugins that will help you to assign different sidebar to

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Top Tips to Lower Your Bounce Rates Today

Bounce rates worry most website owners and reducing the percentage can seem like an endless task of trial and error. There are some areas of a homepage that immediately deter visitors which may not be instantly obvious to the seller.

To find out why people are landing and bouncing away you first need to research a few areas. Research in these topics will provide you with incredible data that you can use throughout the entire sales process.

These include:

The psychology of your target market – How old are they, what device do they use? Where do they live? What’s their average disposable income? Do they have children? By understanding the psych of your visitors you can create a landing page that seems almost personal to them.

Your competition – As customers shopping online we have a lot of choice. When a visitor lands on your website it’s probably through a search engine. They would have been presented with unlimited options. Just one thing can prompt them to hit the back button to revisit the alternatives. You can make sure that you offer just as much if not more than your competition, so if they do click away out of curiosity, they return as they realise you have the best offering.

Of course the full solution cannot be divulged in a single blog post and the remedies are often bespoke to the type of business, but here are some ways I’ve found to lower your bounce rate instantly.

Design For The Scanner

The design of a good website is no fluke. It takes into consideration how a visitor reads a page. For instance, a visitor lands and gives you just 5 seconds of their time before they make up their mind.

In this five seconds their eyes will flick across your website and will see:

• The Top Right Corner (Does it show where to go next, contact details?)
• The Menu (Does it list what I need or do I have to click further?)
• The Centre (Is it enticing? Does it start a journey? Is there an incentive to stay?)
• The Bottom Left (Does it have a call to action? Does it lead to more content? Is it blank?)

The bottom left corner is usually ignored (try it and see how often you view the bottom left corner of a webpage). The design needs to propel an image of excellent usability while leading the customers on a very clear journey.

Scanners don’t want to investigate, they want to know just a few things when landing directly on your website. These are:

• Where is the product I came here for?
• How do I buy it?
• Why should I buy from you over the competition?
• What are the benefits for me?
• How quickly can I complete checkout and be finished?

If these questions aren’t answered in a flash, they will possibly attempt to find the content they’re looking for but will soon give up if they don’t. The sad truth is, it’s easier and quicker to click back to that search than it is to go on a hunt for what they want in a new, unfamiliar website.

The Copy That Bounces Back

Although the trend is for less copy, more action the copy on the homepage can still make a huge difference to bounce rates. Scanners will read the first lines, along with standout words from paragraphs. They will not read the copy as if it is an article, left to right. They will skim.

This is why it needs to sell.

The copy, alongside the images, should answer those questions they have as they land. It should also give very clear direction on where to go next.

Once you have enticed a customer to a product page, the description needs to fulfil a few criteria to entice that sale such as:

• Highlighting why the product will benefit the customer.
• Eliminating buyer’s guilt (Every buyer, no matter how wealthy, experiences buyer’s guilt. Unless you sell essential items such as toothbrushes or socks, nappies or babygrows, your customers will feel a little guilt for spending money on “luxury” items. You can eliminate this by letting them know what great value it is, how it benefits a lifestyle and how they’ve found a great deal. This also ensures they come back again and again).
• Displaying delivery options and showing the shortest possible time for receiving the product.
• The price (Even if you can’t be cheaper than a competitor, your delivery terms and customer service can often override this).

Other Contributing Factors

Other factors include website speed, ease of use, image load times and size of website. These can all put a customer off.

Of course, if like this proximity marketing website, you have very little content, you can analyse each and every word to see what maybe putting customers off. This is also a good example of how to start the customer journey, so the first click takes a visitor deeper into the site, lowering bounce rates instantly while reducing the risk of design or content sending a visitor back to the search page.

About the author
Martina Mercer is a freelance digital marketer and copywriter for BrandStreet.com who has written for many publications including the Huffington Post and MOZ. She won the Working Mother of the Year Award in 2014 and is currently shortlisted as Journalist of the Year, Most Inspirational Role Model in IT and Best Businesswoman of the Year.

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Best Google Apps Alternative To Microsoft Office

According to a whitepaper from the Cloud Alliance for Google Apps, 31% of respondents suggested that Google Apps would allow them to reduce their investment in Microsoft Office products. But for that to happen, you need a simple way to move your data from the desktop to the cloud. Here are a few apps that can assist.

The Best Google Apps Plugins To Help You Transition From Microsoft Office To The Cloud

• If you’re using Microsoft Exchange or Outlook...

  Use GAMME for large-scale migrations. It’s a free tool provided by Google to help you migrate email, contacts, calendar, and Public Folder data from on-premise and hosted Microsoft Exchange servers. If you’re transitioning a small number of users from Microsoft Outlook, GAMMO performs the same task. Check out this helpful guide to learn about all of Google’s official data migration tools for Google Apps. Both GAMME and GAMMO are focused on email and contact management services—so if you need to move something else, keep reading!

  We have to give a shoutout to The Gooru, which is one of the best resources for companies that are going Google. This tutorial on Google Apps migration for Microsoft Exchange provides a structured checklist for your migration. That way, you won’t miss any important details.

• If you’re using Microsoft Visio...

  Use Lucidchart. It’s a third-party diagramming app that allows users to easily integrate with their Google Apps domain. Once that’s done, it only takes two clicks for your users to access the program; just click the App Launcher and select Lucidchart. As a Visio alternative, one of its most attractive features is Microsoft Visio import and export, which allows you to upload legacy files to Lucidchart. They remain editable, of course, but now you’re able to collaborate on your diagrams, publish them online, export to Visio format, and more.

  

• If you’re using Microsoft Publisher...

  Try Lucidpress; it’s made by the creators of Lucidchart and offers a similarly intuitive experience. Just drag and drop your objects onto the canvas for truly easy publishing. Although it doesn’t offer Publisher import (yet), it’s the top-rated app of its kind in the Google Apps Marketplace. Like Lucidchart, it offers a free premium trial so you can experiment with paid features before committing to a subscription. After trying several Publisher alternatives, we think Lucidpress is your best bet for making flyers, brochures, posters, and other design and layout projects.

• If you’re using Microsoft Project...

  You’re in luck. In our opinion, the best project management software out there, Smartsheet, offers Microsoft Project file import (along with import for Excel files and Google Spreadsheets). Aside from importing old documents, you’ll be able to share files, set deadline alerts, and create documents specific to project management, like burndown charts and Gantt charts.

• If you’re using Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint...

  Try Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides; they offer file import for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, respectively. It’s hard to beat Google’s built-in products for basic business needs, especially if you want a comprehensive software package. For 80 - 90% of users, Google Docs and Slides work just as well as Microsoft’s offerings. Power users of Excel may be disappointed in its Google counterpart, since Sheets lacks features like Goal Seek, add-ins, and keyboard shortcuts for formats and filters. But Sheets partially makes up for it with powerful collaboration and ongoing product development.

  Another consolation prize is Google Forms, for which there’s no real Microsoft comparison. This program comes standard with Google Apps integration and lets anyone create and analyze surveys for free. Use it to collect information in a far more user-friendly format than a mass email.

• If you’re using Microsoft Lync...

  Use a combination of YouCanBook.Me and UberConference. Used together, they allow you to schedule appointments and make conference calls in record time. YouCanBook.Me integrates with your Google calendar and is perfect for setting job interviews and team meetings. We’ve even seen users schedule individual feedback sessions with product testers—all with the click of a button.

  UberConference is also easy to use. Created by the makers of Google Talk, this audio conference software offers smart features like earmuffs, audio recording, and no-PIN dial-in. The visual interface shows you who’s talking at any given moment, which is nice for crowded calls.

• If you’re using Microsoft OneNote...

  Try EverNote. This is the only recommendation that doesn’t integrate with Google Apps, but for good reason: EverNote is a fantastic note-taking app that happens to be a personal tool rather than a team one. It does, however, import OneNote files in a few simple steps, allowing you to transition previous work to the cloud. The program also supports integration with Gmail accounts.

Do you have a favorite Google Apps program that helps users transition from Microsoft Office? Share it in the comments!

About the author
Eliza Wright is a marketing manager at Lucid Software. She enjoys writing about tech, dissecting the latest digital marketing trends, and learning how to be a leader. Reach her at eliza@lucidchart.com.

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Bluehost Coupon Codes Up To 75% OFF – August 2015

As BLUEHOST is highly recommended web hosting and One of the oldest web hosts started in 1996. You can get up to 75% Discount + FREE domain registration using Bluehost coupon code on Bluehost hosting services. How to Get this Bluehost coupon code? Step-1: Click on below button to activate your coupon code. Step 2:

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Beyond Content: 5 Ways to Create Digital Assets to Attract Shares

This is the era of content marketing. No one can ignore the importance of quality content anymore after Google has underlined it strongly with its apocalyptic updates in the recent years. Contrary to popular perception, these new developments have actually come as a boon to small businesses, new entrepreneurs and freelancers because it has provided them a level playing field where they can compete with the bigger corporations by simply creating quality content and even if they do not have the financial muscle to match them in scale. However, while we strive to create such long form, in depth, high quality content to engage our audience, we must also ask few questions to ourselves.

Are we making the most of the content we are producing?

Is there a way to make sure that more and more people discover our content?

Well, this is exactly where it might be a good idea to consider web widgets that can help us create certain small but very useful digital assets beyond pure content. Do note that this by no means suggest that content is not important. Such widgets can actually help you to get more out of your content.

Go viral with social share widgets

These are the most widely used widgets on websites all over the world. You must have seen those “like” or “recommend” on FB, “retweet”, “plus one” and other such social buttons under articles on various websites. Probably you are already using them but in case you are not, we suggest you do. The very idea behind these widgets is to make things easier for people to share. For instance, not everyone will take the effort to copy the URL and share it on their FB wall. But they can always like the post using these widgets and it will still show up on their news feeds and be visible to their contacts in real time. So, such widgets just enhance the possibility of getting shared on social networks. There are many good quality customizable widgets available for this purpose that can be used on any platform or CMS to immediately install these widgets.

Build fan base with social feeds

The other related type of widget is social feed. They draw live feed from your social networks and display them on your site, blog or some other online property. It helps by letting your website visitors know that you have an active social presence and also allows them to follow you. This enhances your fan base that benefits you in the future when you share new content in those channels. Facebook itself provides you the code for the “Like Box” that you can put up on your sites. Similarly you can find solutions for Twitter, Instagram and Flickr etc.

Retain visitors with content suggestions widgets

Another very creative way of engaging the visitors and making them consume more content is the suggest widget. Yes, it is as simple as that! The only trick is that you have to do it in a smart and elegant way. So, you can have content suggestion widgets that suggest relevant content that the audience may prefer. The simplest type of content suggestion widgets are normally displayed at the end of a page or an article. They suggest a handful of other articles on the same topic as the one at the top. For instance, if somebody is reading an article on SEO on a blog, it can be assumed that he is interested in this topic. So, the widget displays few other interesting articles on the same topic from the blog, thus attracting the attention of the reader and making them click on the suggested content and discover more. For instance you can use a tool like Zemanta to not only create such a widget but also measure its performance with detailed analytics.

Engage the audience in social activities with interactive widgets

Another interesting way to engage the audience is to offer them activities such as small quizzes and polls through widgets. These assets can also be used as branding tools by entrepreneurs. You have to create something interesting that your readers would like to invite their friends to participate in. Just remember to include your brand name somewhere in the widget so that it can spread along with the activity in question. Services such as SnapApp can help you create such applications rather easily.

Offer exclusive branding widgets to other publishers

There are many more advanced widgets that can be prepared as downloadable items given away to other publishers. For instance, you can have a badge or a form with your brand-name and share it with the bloggers. In return, you can offer some freebies or recognition to them. When they install the widgets on their own sites, you get a backlink to your site. Naturally, it leads to more traffic to your website and if you can come up with a really useful widget, it can potentially go viral. You can also consider running a mutually beneficial affiliate program with such widgets.

Conclusion

The various types of widgets mentioned above can be true digital assets for new entrepreneurs who lack the budget for expensive marketing campaigns. They can help your content get shared without any added cost and if you are creative enough, it can probably go viral and reach more people than even paid advertising campaigns.

About the author
Born in Los Angeles, Blair Strasser is a business and marketing enthusiast that enjoys sharing his knowledge through his writing. He is also Founder and CEO of eMerchantBroker and passionate about technology.

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Make Money Online: $50-$100 Daily with Affiliate Marketing

You must be thinking I am joking… but I am not.. I know you can easily earn $100 per day online with a little effort. Everything depends on you, how you get the things on your way. I am running this blog since 2 years and getting a good amount of income with this blog.

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BlueHost Affiliate Program – Earn $65 Per Referral

It is always been a good idea to follow other experienced bloggers in your niche if you want to be successful in your blogging career. You need to follow: What they do?, How they do?, What they suggest/recommend? This will help you to grow and understand the basics of blogging and how to earn money

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WP Engine Affiliate Program – Earn $200 Per Referral

People always keep secret how they make money from their blog but I always try to tell my readers how I earn money from my blog. My most of the income is from Google Adsense & Affiliate Marketing. So in this article I will be sharing one of the top affiliate program WP Engine WordPress

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Facebook Marketing Secrets You Probably Never Heard of Before

Facebook might be the most versatile social media where you can promote your business to your target audience. However, its advertising platform, Facebook Ads, isn’t that easy to master. While the social media giant provide huge opportunities for reaching your target market, there are still plenty of secrets that even an experienced professional might not even heard of. These secrets point out to Facebook advertising techniques, and these will surely help you understand the essential steps which are necessary to promote your business through Facebook.

1. You can gain insights about your US-based audience through “Audience Insights++”

One particular Facebook’s secret is known as “Audience Insights++” which enables you to gather important data regarding your customers which are based in the US. Facebook has, in fact partnered with some of the reputable data aggregators in the US in order to provide audiences’ data to the advertisers.

This feature could actually provide you with essential information regarding your US-based audiences such as:

• Your customers’ household size
• Online spending habits
• Vehicles currently in use
• Income range

You can be able to use this information in plenty of ways, and you can even save a lot of cash, which you might have spent otherwise in searching for a range of audience.

2. Facebook’s Ads Reporting could provide you with more detailed information

As a marketer, you might be happy to find out that Facebook could provide you with detailed information regarding the people who see your ads. Other than that, you can even create a list of the total clicks or impressions which your ads receive. If done right, you can use this information against your current ad campaigns to track their performance using Facebook’s Ads Reporting feature.

This feature works by helping the advertisers in determining how an ad is performing by country, age and placement. Perhaps one of the most impressive features of this is that you can freely edit the information which you want to show in your report. The options you could choose from would include:

• Gender
• Age
• Country
• Placement
• Destination
• Gender and age

You can freely choose any of these options in order to get the results you are looking for. For example, if you chose “Gender” then your generated ad report would display the number of males and females who have clicked your ad.

3. Website targeting using Facebook’s Custom Audience feature

Facebook has released a new feature which would help advertisers retrofit their current audience. The feature which is known as Facebook’s Custom Audience enables you to find out who visited your website through your Facebook ad.

Facebook’s Custom Audience feature provides the following benefits for the advertisers:

• It allows them to reach their customers through the customer’s list
• It allows them to match their current customer’s list with Facebook’s user list through the saved email addresses located in the list

4. Find out which ads are paying off through “Conversion Tracking”

If you would like your target audience to take action each time they see your ad campaigns, then your conversion tracking tool would inform you if your campaigns are paying off. Other than that, it provides help to businesses in terms of calculating the ROI of their Facebook ads through a detailed report regarding the actions which people take whenever they see your ads.

Upon setting up conversion pixels on your website, you can then view the option for tracking conversions in the pricing section. Once the conversions are tracked, you will then receive a report informing you of the actions which occurred as the outcome of your ad.

5. Create Ad variations buttons through “Power Editor” feature

The latest Power Editor feature is actually a bulk ad creation and management tool which is created for advertisers who need control of their ad campaigns. This feature is located in the Ads Manager category. Once you have opened the Power Editor, you have to make sure to choose the ads on top. Once the data starts to accumulate, you will then see a new button known as “Generate Variations”. Once you click on this button, Facebook will then begin matching diverse ad variations depending on the types and placement of ads.

6. Audience Insights

The new “Audience Insights” feature is among the most important, yet hidden secrets of Facebook Ads. It works differently from Page Insights in a way that it searches for the latest trends regarding your current or potential customers.

This can be found in the “Ads Manager” category and reveals important information such as:

• Page likes – the number of likes and comments on your posts together with the number of clicks on your ads
• Facebook usage – shows the platform or device used to access your page
• Demographics – displays your audience’s age and gender
• Language and location – tells about your audiences’ preferred languages and location
• Buy activity – includes audiences’ past shopping behavior along with their preferred method

If you advertise your business on Facebook, make sure to consider these secret features to get the results you always wanted.

About the author
Vishal is the founder of WebyGeeks, a digital marketing and premier search engine company offering SEO and PPC services. Vishal has wide knowledge and 7 years of experience in the field of search engine optimization.

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7 People Who were “Born To Inspire” – Never Giveup

There are more than 164 millions of blogs running on the Internet. Most of these blogs get less than 1,000 visitors per month. Even they give up in first few months because they dream to earn good amount of money in few months from the blog rather than writing quality content. Unique and Quality content

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Why Local SEO Essential for Small Businesses

Search engines today are increasingly personalizing their user's search results, especially Google. Search engines can track location and generate search results or business addresses that are geographically close to users. For a small local business, this is a great advantage. For one, you won't have to compete with global giants in your industry for recognition in cyberspace.

In fact, most local businesses don't even need to draw in national or international traffic to visit their websites. Let's explain this with an example. Imagine you own an auto repair business in Mankato, Minnesota. Any Internet traffic visiting you from Hollywood, California, would be inconsequential as they are unlikely to visit your shop for auto repairs. So, local SEO is the key for attracting the right Internet visitors in your area. Now that we've piqued your interest in local search engine optimization (SEO) for your business, below is a guide to help you get started.

Search On the Go Will Lead Customers to You

Statistics easily convey why it's so imperative for your local business to be geared towards more potential customers with local SEO strategies. According to Google, 94 percent of smartphone users prefer using their phone to look for local information and 84 percent of these users have taken action based on their mobile search results.

Let's take a real-life scenario. A person is driving through Mankato and his car breaks down. The only way he can find a mechanic is to type "mechanic in Mankato" or a similar phase into the search box on his smartphone. If your auto repair shop is properly optimized for local searches, guess whose business would automatically pop up in his search engine results.

Is Your Website Smartphone Compatible?

Adapting your website to smartphone screens is quite simple. Be specific in asking your website designer whether your business's site is running compatible with mobile devices. Even more than desktop searches, mobile searchers are increasingly being personalized. 61 percent of local searches are performed on mobile devices like smartphones. Also, Google has recently reported that mobile friendliness will become a ranking factor for websites now.

Android users are automatically logged into Google the moment he or she activates the smartphone with an email. Any search conducted on the phone through Google will always be personalized. With more than a million new Android phones and tablets being activated daily, it's clear that people are increasingly leaning towards this search method. It's also worthy to note that iPhones and iPads have Google Now, which provides precise local information too.

Preparing Your Website for Local SEO

If you're going to achieve any meaningful success in tapping a potential source for local customers, there's several aspects that need your attention. From your website to your social media profiles, the location of your business must always be at the forefront. The following are some other helpful local SEO tactics to increase your local online presence.

1. Use Local Keywords

   Your website can be compared to an online library and the information about your business would be one of the books in your library that's read by search engines. When someone searches for a product you offer, the search engine will highlight you whenever you use local keywords. Local keywords are critical because they tell the search engines that your company is located near the user's current location.

   A good local keyword can be created by simply adding your geographical location to your other keywords. Let's revisit our last example. If you're using a keyword like "auto mechanic," then your local keyword would be "local mechanic in Mankato." These local keywords should appear in the following areas of your website:

   • URL
   • Image tags
   • Content
   • Title tags
   • Headers
   • Meta descriptions

   Putting in an effort to broadcast local keywords ensures that search engines can properly appraise your exact location as well as the kinds of services or products you're providing.

2. Take Advantage of Local Directories

   There are several "local" Yellow Page directories that allow businesses to add themselves to a list for free or a very small dollar amount. When creating your directory entry, be patient enough to key in your full street address complete with a zip code. Also, don't forget to list your phone number including the area code. There's absolutely no limits to the number of local directories you can register your business with. If there's a specific "city page" maintained by the directory for advertising local businesses, go for that too.

   

3. Encourage Local Reviews

   Review websites like Yelp are also excellent for local SEO because they're designed to zero in on the location of your business. They're also pretty popular as customers often express their opinions and experiences with a particular business here. Keep in mind that interaction with your customers is recognized by research engines and rewarded with higher rankings. But, this doesn't mean that you should pay for fake customers to publish reviews on your behalf. Most people will look at overly positive reviews with skepticism today.

   It's advised that you encourage your customers to leave true, meaningful feedback on your local business. Although many may not oblige, the few who do will do you a lot of good. When you request feedback, politely ask customers to log-in to any of their social media accounts because the accounts usually have their local information. Most review sites make it mandatory for users to first register through social media accounts or add their own personal information.

4. Explore the Unexplored - Videos

   Not many businesses create videos to convey what they have to offer, but this is a missed opportunity. Online videos are the future of content marketing. Website visitors would much rather learn about your business visually than have to read multiple paragraphs. When adding videos to your website, keep in mind that search engines can only index text. Therefore, it's vital that you add local keywords and your contact information to the video's description, title, and meta-tags. You could also create a professional-looking YouTube video with a link to your website.

5. Get Involved on Social Media

   In today's digital world, your company's presence on social media is all-important and will play a major role in boosting your local search engine rankings. High traffic on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn will help you grow. Don't forget to add your complete address with a phone number and other contact details. You should also create a Google profile for your business and maintain an accurate presence on Google Maps with Google My Business. This will get you on 7 Pack SERP results quite easily.

   Having multiple addresses or an inaccurate address can confuse search engines, especially on Google Maps. I also advise refraining from having multiple accounts on the same social media platform. If you're running paid campaigns on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, you're allowed to choose your targeted audience based on a wide demographic. However, it's important that you narrow down your targeted audience based on your geographical area of interest.

6. Give Customers a Local Feel

   Images are very important for expressing local information about your business too. Post some pictures of the surroundings where your business is located. This will give your website a local feel and build a sense of trust in customers as you're part of the local community. Of course, make sure you're using local keywords in posting the picture's image tags and descriptions. You may want to consider letting your website celebrate local festivals or events. You could promote the upcoming event on your business to local community members through social media too.

Local SEO Demands Effort, But You Can't Afford to Be Left Out

While building a successful SEO strategy with the above tips can take time, it'll be well worth the pay off. It's been estimated that smartphone use will exceed two billion by the year 2016. During the next three years, over one-third of the world's population will have a smartphone. Google says that over 77 percent of mobile users have researched local products and services through their phone. This is a big market you can't miss out on.

With more and more people looking at smartphones to find local businesses online, search engines will continue to deliver more personalized results. Ignoring local SEO could eventually unleash a death blow to any businesses that choose to adapt to the changing environment. Make sure your small business isn't among the casualties by putting these great local SEO strategies to good use on your website.

About the author
Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant, named the #1 social media consultant in the nation by PROskore Power Rankings. He has expertise in business development, online marketing and is an SEO specialist who has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and a number of A-list celebrities.

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How to fill out BlueHost Affiliate Tax form for Non-US Residents

BlueHost is one of the leading hosting service provider and recommended by WordPress since 2005. BlueHost offers an easy affiliate marketing program to help site owners make money online from their website/blog by recommending Bluehost services. BlueHost offers you $65 per referral. If you refer 1 customer per day, you can get 30 x 65

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How to Stop Autoplay HTML5 Videos in Chrome & Firefox

Its really annoying when you visit a website and a video starts rolling automatically. You know flash is not the only technology that annoy you with unwanted videos. In this article I’ll show you how to stop autoplay HTML5 videos in Chrome and Firefox. 1) Chrome First you need to download and install a Google

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Top 3 Free Coupon Creator WordPress Plugins

Coupon websites like Groupon are becoming very popular now a days because everyone likes to save money with every deal. Today so many merchants sign up for coupon and deal services, that’s why we have published 3 coupon creator WordPress plugins for your website. You can use these plugins to make process easy of creating

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Top 6 Syntax Highlighter WordPress Plugins

A Syntax Highlighter supports multiple languages, themes and fonts and can easily post syntax-highlighted code to your website without modify the code. In this article, we have published syntax highlighter wordpress plugins for your website. Top 6 Syntax Highlighter WordPress Plugins 1) SyntaxHighlighter Evolved SyntaxHighlighter Evolved allows you to easily post syntax-highlighted code to your

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How to Split a Long WordPress Page into Multiple Pages?

Pagination is a very popular term in WordPress and every blogger or web designer wants to split long page into multiple pages. There are so many WordPress plugins available to do the same but WordPress comes with built-in feature of pagination. Every blogger can do it with a simple trick rather than installing a WordPress

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WP-PageNavi WordPress Plugin for Advanced Pagination

Why pagination is required? Pagination requirement and use may be different for one blogger to other. Some use it for easy navigation and some use it for other purposes. According to my understanding and opinion, every blogger should replace the ← Older posts | Newer posts → navigation links to Page 1.2.3.4.5……10 navigation links because

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Top 10 Free Responsive jQuery Image Sliders

jQuery image sliders improve your blog or website usability. That’s why we recommend to use jQuery Image Sliders to Website. If you want to add best jQuery Image Sliders on your Website, you will find here the right image slider plugin which will help you to do the same. Today jQuery image sliders are most

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5 Tips To Maintain Your Blog During Summer Vacations

If you have a blog, then it is understandably difficult to maintain it if you are on holiday. It is not fair to spoil your holiday by working on and checking on your blog whilst you are away. So, here are five tips that are going to help you “hold the fort” whilst you are away. They are tips that only really work if you use them all at the same time. Of course, you could always have someone maintain your blog for you whilst you are away. That way you would not have the use any of the tips listed in this article, you could just let someone do all of the blogging activities for you. Still, here are five tips, each one listed in the order you should do them.

1 - Set up a scheduling tool for your blog posts

This is absolutely the first thing you should do, and if you do just one of the tips on this article then this is the one you need to do. Set up a scheduling tool that will post onto your blog for you. Load it up with as many blog posts that you need. For example, if you are going on holiday for two weeks, then load it up with two blog posts.

It is a good idea to read a few reviews on which scheduling tool you should use, and you should also test it first. Do not assume that it is going to work and load up your posts. Test it to see if it posts when it says it will, and check the post itself to see if the tool has inserted any bugs into the post. Is it still the same font? Size? Settings? Still aligned correctly? Etc.

2 - Turn off your comment section

This is a good idea because it is going to stop spammers from posting on your comment section without you being able to catch them. It also stops a small storm from brewing whilst you are away, because there will be little you can do to stop people from creating a mini hate campaign via your comment section whilst you are away.

You may post something that is accidentally offensive to someone. That person may post a negative comment and gather support until people on there are posting that they will never visit again. All of this happens whilst you are on holiday, only to have to return to a comment section full of hatred, and a readership that has fallen by half.

3 - Make sure that you scheduling tool updates your RSS feed

Some people forget this when they go on holiday. They forget that many of their loyal readers are going to be using your RSS feed. You may update it personally or you may have it done automatically. Whatever the case may be, if you do not have any other automated RSS feed systems in place, then you need to have your scheduling tool update your RSS feed when it uploads your blog post.

The RSS feed needs a little bit of text (only a sentence) for when it updates. You can write this yourself and have it posted when your RSS feed is updated. If your scheduling tool does not offer an RSS feed updating function, then find an RSS feed update scheduler.

4 - Have your social media update via scheduling tools

Some people forget that their RSS feed needs updating whilst they are away, but even more forget that their social media profiles need updating too. If you are promoting your blog on your social media profiles, then you are going to need to tell people when your blog has just been updated. You may also like to give people previews of your content and such.

You can do this with a social media scheduling tool. There are quite a few of them that are both online (desktop) and/or usable by apps on a smartphone. Many of them will update more than one type of social media network too, so you can create posts and synchronize the times that they are posted. Some people still go on social media when they are on holiday, but using a scheduling tool will help to remove the need to go on it (as you may be having too much of a good time).

5 - Do not be too controversial

Finally, as your last act before going on holiday, just ensure that you posts are not too controversial. You should have loaded your blog posts onto your scheduling tool by now and set everything up for your absence. Still, go back and ensure that your blog posts are closer to bland than they are closer to controversial.

The last thing you want to do is lose a bunch of your readers whilst you are away and unable to recover them. You have turned off your comment section, so they cannot vent on there, but that does not mean you still cannot lose them. It also doesn’t mean that they will not all go on social media and start “belly aching” about you on there.

Image courtesy of samuiblue at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the author
Amy Cowen is a writer and editor at www.a-writer.com. She focuses mostly on covering writing tips and strategies for blogging.

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Top 10 Sources To Find Valuable Information On Email Marketing

Due to rapid technological growth across the globe, entrepreneurs are striving assiduously to integrate several strategies into their businesses in order to ensure its growth. This singular act has led to advancements in the field of digital marketing which facilitates business growth through several internet processes. One of such digital marketing strategies is email marketing.

Today, there are several firms offering services in email marketing. This has successfully made established, promising and prospective entrepreneurs confused in choosing the best email marketer for their businesses. It is also imperative to possess basic ideas on email marketing before choosing the right email marketer for your business.

Here, we will expose the top 10 sources to get valuable information on email marketing in no particular order. This is due to our aim of providing entrepreneurs, researchers and the general public with useful information on the service in order to facilitate business growth and the research process. Aside from providing useful information on email marketing, some of the sources mentioned here are renowned and reputable providers of email marketing services.

Before that, we will provide an overview of the concept of email marketing to satisfy the curiosity of readers and arouse their interest. Relax and enjoy!

An Overview of Email Marketing

• Definition

  Email marketing can be best described as a strategy where emails are systematically used effectively for business marketing. It provides the avenue for the creation, customization and transmission of email messages to a large number of recipients simultaneously. This strategy is effectively used by entrepreneurs for advertisements, effective customer interaction and proper information dissemination on latest offers and discounts.

• Benefits

  Email marketing is widely considered as a vital investment for businesses. This is due to the several benefits that accompany it. They include the following:

  (A). It is relatively cheap to operate with a high return-on-investment potential.

  (B). It is an effective tool for customer monitoring and evaluation. This is because it has the ability of tracking customer responses to your campaign which aids the entrepreneur in proper decision making.

  (C). It is one of the most convenient marketing strategy due to its customizability.

  (D). It is easy to operate with fast response potential.

Best Sources of Email Marketing Information

• Google

  

  We will begin our review with the world’s most popular search engine. Google needs no introduction as it is the most visited website in the world and a major controller of the cyberspace. It possesses information on topics peculiar to all disciplines of the world. All you have to do is to search on any keyword of your choice and wait for multiple search results with diverse links where you can source for adequate information peculiar to your keyword. Entrepreneurs can effectively use this tool for perfect information on email marketing.

• Buffer

  

  Buffer is a blog for digital marketing freaks. It is a new blog that has successfully achieved fame in a short while of its existence due to the rich contents it possesses. Several fascinating information on email marketing are posted there on a daily basis providing users with info on latest trends in the sector.

  If you are in dire need of a place to sharpen your email marketing skills, endeavor to visit their website and you will be proud you did!

• iContact

  

  One of the few email marketing service providers on our list, iContact possesses several features that contribute to making them one of the best email marketers on the globe.

  Interestingly, one of their selling points is their user-friendly approach. This strategy ensures that novices in the art of email marketing can optimally use their tool and begin their learning process from there. Their auto-pilot email list management strategy is enough to provide guide users through the rigorous exercise of managing emails and ensure that they learn the basics of the exercise overtime.

  Furthermore, you can seize the opportunity provided by their blog, how-to-guides, recorded and live webinars, informational pdf and downloadable beginners guide for obtaining perfect and latest information on email marketing.

• Findxa

  

  Our second powerful search engine is undoubtedly one of the best up and coming sources for email marketing information on the globe. This powerful search engine is widely known for its high quality search results. The company manually selects the high quality websites to appear in search and sorts information by latest, trending, and most popular to give it's users the best use of it's valuable search results.

  Findxa is my most preferred search engine for email marketing information because unlike other search engines, its powerful filter ensures that you have access to the most popular articles on email marketing from the absolute best content writers on this subject.

  This is a search engine that delivers awesome search results based on the 80-20 business rule. This 80-20 business rule stipulates that only 20% of websites on the cyberspace produce 80% of its best contents. Therefore, Findxa strives to promote hard work and discourage plagiarism by displaying high quality original contents from these websites. By doing this, they try to expose the contents of those websites and promote their hard work. Explore their content for email marketing using the link below.

  http://www.findxa.com/?qr=Email+marketing

• Econsultancy

  

  A powerful and dedicated blog in the field of digital marketing, Econsultancy is made up of editors and writers that are abreast with latest trends in the field of email marketing. Their research team is known to possess first-hand information of latest trends in email marketing.

  Entrepreneurs, researchers and the general public are advised to visit this blog  for information on latest email marketing trends especially in the European market.

• Duct Tape Marketing

  

  Duct Tape Marketing is an email marketing blog with rich contents on digital marketing strategies. It is widely renowned for containing several guest contributions from experts in the field of email marketing.

  Entrepreneurs who desire to obtain first-hand information on the risks, benefits and challenges associated with email marketing are advised to visit the blog for first-hand information from successful entrepreneurs. You are also bound to learn about various tricks you can add to your email campaign through their regular posts in order to attain greater heights in your business.

  John Jantsch, owner of Duct Tape Marketing is also known for providing email marketing tips for similar blog owners.

• GoDaddy

  

  GoDaddy is widely known for the provision of online services. It is however interesting to know that this website can also be used as a useful tool by entrepreneurs for obtaining latest information on email marketing.

  Entrepreneurs can utilize their user-friendly interface to effectively gain control of latest trends in email marketing. This is because their email marketing service is loaded with latest features that are capable of educating a business-owner on the rudiments and strategies in the email marketing industry.

  Aside from being a household name for domain marketing, GoDaddy has shown several innovative trends in the field of email marketing. These trends can serve as educative tool for entrepreneurs who desire to use email marketing for developing their businesses.

• Copyblogger

  

  Copyblogger is one of the foremost specialists in the field of email marketing. They are reputed and renowned for nurturing several digital marketing bloggers to stardom. They remain one of the best sources to obtain information on vital tricks in email marketing. This is due to their success and vast experience in the field. 

• Convince and Convert

  

  This young digital marketing blog has attained huge success within its short period of existence. Most webmasters believe that the content of your website determines the traffic it generates. This theory can easily be applied to the success story of this blog. Their eight weekly posts contain rich information for learners, entrepreneurs and the general public in email marketing and other aspects of digital marketing.

  Aside from that, Convince and Convert also ensure adequate and all-round information by providing newsletters to ensure an effective learning process.

• Contently Content Strategist

  

  Ending this review is a blog that possesses a strict business name. Contently Content Strategist is a digital marketing blog with several informative posts on email marketing. They are widely respected in the digital marketing field because most of their daily posts contain interesting information on email marketing that appears strange to similar bloggers.

  They conduct thorough research before posting on their blog which ensures that they provide useful information on email marketing and other digital marketing strategies. It is also interesting to know that most of their posts are re-written by several bloggers with due permission from them. 

In our current society where dynamism and variety is a sine-qua-non, there are several other sources for valuable information on email marketing. However, it is imperative to know that the sources contained on this post are tested and trusted with a consistent level of excellence. Good luck as you explore the world of email marketing for the growth of your business, research and intellectual ability.

About the author
Roderick Coleman is a team leader at Findxa.com, a company devoted to finding the biggest collection of quality content.

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Get Passport in 10 Days with Aadhaar Card in India

If you have Aadhaar Card then it’s a good news you can get your passport in 10 days. To expedite the passport issuing system, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) has now decided to rely on Aadhaar card for identification of the applicant and on the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) database for validation of

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5 Actionable Tips to Prime Your Blog for Success

To blog without a specific goal or objective in mind is pointless. As a blogger, you’d want to set a standard on how your blog will turn out after a certain period of time.

Should you have thousands of subscribers receiving your newsletters?

Should the ability of your blog to convert your visitors into customers and achieve a specific sales figures be set as your metric?

Are you more interested in building relationships with your audience and have as many positive social proof as possible?

If any of the ones listed above happen to be your objectives, you should strive to make something out of your blog by following these actionable tips to build a winning campaign.

Content strategy

The creation of high-quality content will help you attract the right audience for your blog. To do this, you will need to set up a strong content strategy as the foundations of your blog.

This will allow you to identify your target keywords and audience, profile your buyer persona (if you are selling something through your blog), track competitors and see their strengths and weaknesses, and determine web properties and channels that you can leverage as you move forward.

Content marketing

Once you have this set up, you will need to schedule your posts with the help of an editorial calendar. This will allow you to set up blog posts ahead of time and spread them out throughout a quarter or so.

You will need to learn how to fashion your blog posts so that it is written and published under optimum levels. Therefore, learning the anatomy of a perfect blog post is a great place to start. From here, you will identify the major parts of a blog (headline, form, storytelling, images, and more).

SEO

Appeasing search engines by following the best on- and off-page optimization practices is one of the most cost-effective ways of drawing lots of traffic to your blog. You can then use the traffic to filter down your target market and get them to perform your desired action.

The fact that you are publishing content using a strong content marketing framework as mentioned above makes the job of getting your blog to rank for your keywords easier.

Conducting an SEO campaign is also made easier depending on the blogging platform you are using. For blogs powered by WordPress CMS, there are specific SEO tips for your WordPress blog with the help of plugins.

Social media

According to Forbes, social media has usurped SEO as the top referral traffic source for websites and blogs. If you’re not promoting your latest content using different social media platforms, make it part of your overall strategy the next time out.

Given that there are multiple social media sites out there that you can leverage for traffic, it’s best that you use management tools that lets you schedule posts in advance and view all your sites from a single dashboard. This should make your job of sharing your blog posts from this channel much easier.

Also, these tools lets you track and analyze how many clicks your social media posts got from specific sites. This way, you can leverage the data to determine which social media sites are most effective and which ones aren’t.

For example, if you got lots of referral traffic to your latest blog post from Facebook, you may want to boost your efforts in promoting on this channel. Conversely, social media sites that aren’t driving the numbers you want for your blog (based on the data provided by the management tool) can be dropped from your strategy until you can find a better way on how to use them as part of your promotional tactics.

Data analytics

To gauge how well your blog is performing given the effort you put in the aforementioned campaigns above, you need to track and measure your progress. This can be achieved by installing a code provided by popular analytics tools like  Google Analytics or Clicky. These will give you better insights about the behavior of your visitors – whether they’re browsing other pages of your blog or bouncing away from it. Also, finding out the types of metrics to watch out for from your analytics tool will help you determine the problems that are preventing you from meeting your online goals.

Using the data gathered, you can improve your blog’s performance by editing your pages to make them stay longer in your blog and click on your site links.

Final thoughts

These tips should give you a better understanding on how you can build a blog that observes the best practices from different marketing strategies. By doing these, you are sure to achieve your online goals without a hitch!

About the author
Christopher Jan Benitez is a man of many things:  content marketer during the day; heavy sleeper at night; dreams of non-existent brass rings; writer by trade; pro wrestling fan by choice (It's still real to me, damnit!); family man all the time.

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11 Excel Analysis Tools – Must Learn

In this tutorial we will let you know some powerful features of Excel that will make your work life easier in day to day analysis activities. Everybody must learn these analysis skills. It doesn’t matter whether you are a civil engineer or a software engineer / data analyst / general manager, these Excel tips are

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Colour, Layout & Formatting. The 3 Musketeers Of A Blog

How many of you can recall reading a famous novel called; “The Three Musketeers” in High School or in college. I guess some of us must have had a brush with this piece of literature penned by the famous author Alexandre Dumas. The story is based on the 3 central characters or musketeers named Athos, Prothos and Aramis. The motto of these inseparable friends is “all for one, one for all”.

My purpose of writing this article in the backdrop of this novel is to compare these 3 inseparable friends with the 3 inseparable elements of your Blog namely Colour, Layout & Formatting. While highlighting and stressing upon the fact that each of these elements is like a musketeer for the blog. Remove any one of them and the whole blog shall fall apart.

Just like the 3 musketeers these 3 elements stand up and complement each other. Managing a perfect harmony between these 3 elements will ensure an excellent looking blog. Let us look at our Blog’s 3 musketeers and the role they play in a Blog.

1. Colour (Musketeer 1)

As soon as you mention colour, you start to imagine different hues in your mind. Colour adds to the visual appeal of a blog. The Colour also plays a role in elevating the mood of a person. Pleasing colours attract users and encourage them to visit your blog regularly, but on the other hand too bright or dull colours can be overwhelming and an eye sore.

Adding colour to your blog also has two aspects, one being personal taste and creative imagination and the other being technical aspects like hex codes, contrast etc. Colour schemes should not be applied to a blog by accident or chance, but only by smart thinking. A colour scheme should match with your blog’s title in every way. To give an example in this regard, a blog related to flowers will not look good in black colour; on the contrary a bright colour scheme will go better with it.

It may come as a surprise to many readers that sometimes removing colour can be an answer too. Grey looks professional. Try adding a single colour of Maroon or Navy blue along with Grey and see how professional and crisp you blog looks.

2. Layout (Musketeer 2)

Layout is our second musketeer. Simply put, Layout means customizing and editing your blog’s template by adjusting colour (musketeer 1), the header, fonts and the side bar. Various elements are there in your blog which need to be placed at various locations on the blog. You have to decide and choose as to which element will look good where. Positioning of your company logo, the banner, the written text, photos and videos, all comprise of a layout of a blog.

While using a CMS tools like WordPress or Joomla, it is very easy to plan and implement the layout. Drag and drops features allow a user to easily place or replace different elements. Your blog’s layout to a great extent will be the deciding factor as to how readers will respond to it. Whether they find it easy to browse or not. If the layout is in perfect order, users find it easy to navigate and reach towards their desired content without clicking on irrelevant links.

Talking about our layout (musketeer 2) cannot be complete without establishing its correlation with our Colour (musketeer 1). Choosing the right colour makes the content more readable and pleasurable.

3. Formatting (Musketeer 3)

Last but not the least comes Formatting, our third musketeer. Formatting forms an essential part of your blog as it deals with the content part and is related to what is written on your blog. A reader visits your blog only to read what he is looking for. On not finding what he came for, he is bound to leave and make your blog look meaningless.

Formatting makes sure that the content you have placed on your blog is not only readable, but also pleasing. A simple thing like choosing the right font and spacing between lines and making the content easy to read can encourage the visitors to read on more.

Formatting also requires proper use of grammar rules and avoiding spelling mistakes. A great deal of attention should be paid to the length of the content. It should be short, to the point and precise. Too long write-ups make readers yawn in front of their computer screens. Deviating from the topic is a bad practice. Formatting also requires text to be divided into short paragraphs to improve readability. Headers & subtitles should be in bold letters. Punctuation marks like quotes and italics can also help to highlight certain points and phrases. The title of the blog is read by search engines, so it should contain relevant words and phrases matching with the content.

To summarize and conclude the topic in discussion, it would not be wrong to say that these three elements or musketeers stand up for each other. Appropriate colour makes formatting look good. Better layout ensures that the colour and formatting look good & last but not the least, better formatting makes sure that the efforts of the first two musketeers do not go to waste.

About the author
Kristy Bernales, a web design expert based in Melbourne, Australia who is renowned for creating exclusive Blogs. She has served in many web development companies throughout her career with hard work and dedication.

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Twitter Lunched Periscope Video App For Life, Camera And Action

A Surprise for 288 million monthly active users on twitter, Twitter had launched Periscope, a live, interactive video app that allows you teleport anywhere with a faucet. Broadcast privately to a few people or in public to the globe. Periscope seamlessly integrates with Twitter, therefore you can share videos with your followers in real time. Presently Periscope video app is on market for Apple and Android Users only. Twitter conjointly added group Direct Messages, that allow you to take any public conversation into private, You'll add up to 20 people to a Direct Message at any time. They’ll get a notification that they’ve been included, due to advanced social communication also they're going to expand cluster user limte shortly once receiving feedback on restricted user limit.

The basic feature is for Periscope video app is capture, edit and share, lets take a look at basic app features.

Capture Videos using Periscope

Periscope video app that allows you to instantly capture images and record video on your Smartphone—then share them with anyone. Just hold down the record button to capture what’s happening around you. you can shoot one or more videos to show instantly what important happen around you.

Edit Captured Videos Using Twitter Video App

Create more videos without having any trouble. Superimpose yourself into your videos,  and keep your audience's attention with a variety of Breaking up important news. Editing your video is as quick and easy as drag-and-drop. Rearrange the good ones by deleting unusual clips from captured video until everything is exactly how you want it. It's also designed with the selfie in mind. The camera will default to the front-facing shooter.

easy and quick sharing with just one click away

This is yet another example of a social network making it easier for users to share photos and videos. In what almost feels like an industry-wide push, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat have all been building messaging services in which photos are a major means of communication.

As soon as you’re done recording, your screencast video is ready to share with people around the world, within moments of making them. Download the app to get started.

Twitter Changing Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy

Twitter have made a changes to their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, So today, Twitter Support team starting to email users to let them know about some updates to these policies. We know that these types of updates are really important to you, and we want to help you by sharing. Twitter revised their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, effective as of 18 May 2015.

Please read the updated policies and FAQs by following link below, Twitter explaining the revisions. By using their twitter services after 18 May 2015, you must be agree to the revised Terms of service and Privacy Policy.

Starting 18 May 2015, users outside the United States will receive Twitter services from Twitter International Company, based in Dublin Ireland. The features, the look and feel, and everything else you love will not change. Learn more.

Share your views about the twitter video app in the comment box below and share the updates with your social friends. Happy Blogging…!!

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How to Design Flat Email Signup Widget With Text Animated Effect

Today we’d like to show you how to build a simple Flat Email subscription widget with an interesting eye catching effect. The idea comes from when I was reading a tutorial on how to create animated text with background clip property. The technique used to create the effect is actually pretty simple no need to do very hard coding or write fixes for browsers support. What about browser support? Certainly, this is the most obvious way which comes to one’s mind, although background-clip: text is only supported in Web-kit-based browsers for now. We will also explain it how to fix it in non web-kit browsers, moreover we are using HTML5 email validation method (required tag), with the use of HTML5 and CSS3 we’ll be make our email form more advance than ever. let’s get started

The  solution is to use Modernizr to detect if background-clip: text is available, and then use a class backgroundcliptext to apply background-clip:text selectively – Polygon does this too.

Live Preview

Browser Support:

Chrome:- Supported

Internet Explorer:- Not Supported

Mozila Firefox:- Not Supported

Opera:- Supported

Safari:- Supported

better solution CSS3 fallback

In back 2013 Deviya Manian share complete tutorial with examples, A better CSS fallback technique for fixing background clip issue in non webkit browser.

This can be easily solved using CSS prefixed value for non webkit browsers. We have set the transparent background using prefixed value for firefox and Internet Explorer(-ms- -moz-), then background-clip: text would only apply when -webkit- prefixed values are supported in browser.

So Now you have question about how your text will look in non webkit browser?

Non webkit browser will show default color, which is we are using for p tag, and the clipped background is no longer shown in  Non WebKit browsers. If you have better idea than CSS3 fallback, you can share that with us in the comment box below.

So let’s start do some code:

First of all the only bits of HTML that we need for the subscription widget. The HTML markup looks as follows:

News & Tutorials

SUBSCRIBE US

And the CSS looks like this:

/*Fix For Input Default border */
*:focus {
    outline: 0;
}
/*Fix For Input Default border */
input:focus{
    outline: 0;
}

#email-sbwrapper {
    width: 95%;
    height:250px;
    background:rgba(255,255,255,1.00);
    float: none;
    outline: none;
    margin:auto;
    padding: 10px;
    border: 0;
    position:relative;
    -webkit-border-radius: 1px;
    -moz-border-radius: 1px;
    border-radius: 1px;
    -webkit-box-shadow: 0 0px 5px rgba(0,0,0,0.1);
    -moz-box-shadow: 0 0px 5px rgba(0,0,0,0.1);
    box-shadow: 0 0px 5px rgba(0,0,0,0.1);   
    }
   
#email-subwrapper {
    background: rgba(0,179,233,1.00);
    position: absolute;
    width: 96.5%;
    height: 250px;
}

#email-sbwrapper h4 {
    font-family: "Verdana", sans-serif;
    font-size: 24px;
    font-variant:small-caps;
    color: #fff;
    text-align:center;
    padding: 0;
    margin: 20px 0 0px 0px;
    text-decoration:none;   
    }   
   
#email-sbwrapper p {
    font-family: Segoe, "Segoe UI", "DejaVu Sans", "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, sans-serif;
    font-size: 80px;
    font-weight:bold;
    font-stretch:inherit;
    font-variant: uppercase;
    letter-spacing: -5px;
    color:rgba(1,61,88,1.00);
    text-align:center;
    margin:0 0 0 0px;   
    text-decoration:none;
    background:url(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/223738947/Demos/Email%20Popup%20Version%202/Images/photoshop-background.jpg);
    background: -moz-linear-gradient(transparent, transparent);
    background: -ms-linear-gradient(transparent, transparent);
    -webkit-background-clip: text;
    -webkit-text-fill-color: transparent;
    -webkit-animation: moving 20s ease infinite;
    }

#emailbg {
    width:96.3%;
    height:auto;
    position:absolute;
    bottom:0;
    padding: 10px;
    background: rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
    z-index:auto;
}
.emailbutton1  {
    background: rgba(0,179,233,2.00);   
    color: #fff;
    float: left;
    margin: 0 auto;
    padding-right: 30px;
    padding-left: 30px;
    cursor: pointer;
    font-size: 15px;
    border: 0;
    line-height: 52px;
    display: -moz-inline-stack;
    display: inline-block;
    zoom: 1;
    *display: inline;
    vertical-align:top;
    text-decoration: none;
    -webkit-transition: all 0.3s;
    -moz-transition: all 0.3s;
    transition: all 0.3s;
    outline: none;
}

.emailbutton1:hover {
    background: rgba(0,179,233,0.70);
    text-decoration: none !important;
}

.emailinput1 {
    width: 76%; 
    height: 50px; 
    float: left;
    margin: 0 auto;
    padding-left: 10px;
    border: none;
    background: #fff; 
    font-style: italic; 
    color: #949494;
    border-bottom: 2px solid #d2d2d2;
    border-left: 2px solid #d2d2d2;
    display: -moz-inline-stack;
    display: inline-block;
    zoom: 1;
    *display: inline;
    vertical-align:top;
    text-decoration: none;
}

.emailinput1:hover {
    border-color: rgba(0,179,233, 1.00);
}

In order to be able to animate and for background clip effect into ( “Subscribe Us” ) we have just added webkit animation property and –webkit-text-fill-color propterty to “#email-sb-wrapper p” div look like this:

    background:url(Images/photoshop-background.jpg);
    background: -moz-linear-gradient(transparent, transparent);
    background: -ms-linear-gradient(transparent, transparent);
    -webkit-background-clip: text;
    -webkit-text-fill-color: transparent;
    -webkit-animation: moving 20s ease infinite;

/*Webkit Supported CSS for animation*/
@-webkit-keyframes moving {
  0% {
    background-position: 0 0;
  }
  100% {
    background-position: 0 500px;
  }
}​

In the hole tutorial the above CSS code is very interested, for animated background clip effect we are using image and for the non webkit browsers – we have add prefixed value for Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft IE, where we have set transparent background. Now the Animated background is a straight up solid color instead of a messy-looking image knockout in Mozilla and Internet Explorer.

So Finally Our CSS Code look this:

/*Fix For Input Default border */
*:focus {
    outline: 0;
}
/*Fix For Input Default border */
input:focus{
    outline: 0;
}

#email-sbwrapper {
    width: 95%;
    height:250px;
    background:rgba(255,255,255,1.00);
    float: none;
    outline: none;
    margin:auto;
    padding: 10px;
    border: 0;
    position:relative;
    -webkit-border-radius: 1px;
    -moz-border-radius: 1px;
    border-radius: 1px;
    -webkit-box-shadow: 0 0px 5px rgba(0,0,0,0.1);
    -moz-box-shadow: 0 0px 5px rgba(0,0,0,0.1);
    box-shadow: 0 0px 5px rgba(0,0,0,0.1);   
    }
   
#email-subwrapper {
    background: rgba(0,179,233,1.00);
    position: absolute;
    width: 96.5%;
    height: 250px;
}

#email-sbwrapper h4 {
    font-family: "Verdana", sans-serif;
    font-size: 24px;
    font-variant:small-caps;
    color: #fff;
    text-align:center;
    padding: 0;
    margin: 20px 0 0px 0px;
    text-decoration:none;   
    }   
   
#email-sbwrapper p {
    font-family: Segoe, "Segoe UI", "DejaVu Sans", "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, sans-serif;
    font-size: 80px;
    font-weight:bold;
    font-stretch:inherit;
    font-variant: uppercase;
    letter-spacing: -5px;
    color:rgba(1,61,88,1.00);
    text-align:center;
    margin:0 0 0 0px;   
    text-decoration:none;
    background:url(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/223738947/Demos/Email%20Popup%20Version%202/Images/photoshop-background.jpg);
    background: -moz-linear-gradient(transparent, transparent);
    background: -ms-linear-gradient(transparent, transparent);
    -webkit-background-clip: text;
    -webkit-text-fill-color: transparent;
    -webkit-animation: moving 20s ease infinite;
    }

#emailbg {
    width:96.3%;
    height:auto;
    position:absolute;
    bottom:0;
    padding: 10px;
    background: rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
    z-index:auto;
}
.emailbutton1  {
    background: rgba(0,179,233,2.00);   
    color: #fff;
    float: left;
    margin: 0 auto;
    padding-right: 30px;
    padding-left: 30px;
    cursor: pointer;
    font-size: 15px;
    border: 0;
    line-height: 52px;
    display: -moz-inline-stack;
    display: inline-block;
    zoom: 1;
    *display: inline;
    vertical-align:top;
    text-decoration: none;
    -webkit-transition: all 0.3s;
    -moz-transition: all 0.3s;
    transition: all 0.3s;
    outline: none;
}

.emailbutton1:hover {
    background: rgba(0,179,233,0.70);
    text-decoration: none !important;
}

.emailinput1 {
    width: 76%; 
    height: 50px; 
    float: left;
    margin: 0 auto;
    padding-left: 10px;
    border: none;
    background: #fff; 
    font-style: italic; 
    color: #949494;
    border-bottom: 2px solid #d2d2d2;
    border-left: 2px solid #d2d2d2;
    display: -moz-inline-stack;
    display: inline-block;
    zoom: 1;
    *display: inline;
    vertical-align:top;
    text-decoration: none;
}

.emailinput1:hover {
    border-color: rgba(0,179,233,2.00);
}

/*Webkit Supported CSS for animation*/
@-webkit-keyframes moving {
  0% {
    background-position: 0 0;
  }
  100% {
    background-position: 0 500px;
  }
}

According to our blog niche we design this widget for blogger users , but for websites user it will be useful after little bit editing. So now I am going to add RSS email subscription form into HTML Markup.

After adding RSS Email Subscription form to our HTML Markup, then finally our HTML Markup will look like this:

News & Tutorials

SUBSCRIBE US

In coming days, we will post separate tutorials for adding it into blogger blog, new and more demanded color schemes also will be released.

Do share your precious views on this widget and let us know how can we improve it further and don’t forget to share it with your social friends.. Happy Blogging..!! Remember me in your prayers.

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