Guest author Kate Croston gives us some pic tips.

Putting images on your blog is a great way to spice it up and bring it to life. However, you want the images to make your blog better, not bring it down. Here are six ways to use photos to really improve your blog.

Balance – Make sure your photo is balanced. What that means is it has an apparent symmetry to it. It might be that it is black and white, it might be large versus small, or it might be just a color thing. Whatever the case, make sure your photo is visually appealing in its balance.

Lead – Don’t let the reader’s eyes just skip over your photo. Lead them into the picture and draw them deeper through the use of pathways, reflections, or framing.

Viewpoint– Make people see things from a new perspective. If you have a photo that people have to look at twice, that’s a few more seconds spent on your blog. Make them think- it helps.

Focus – This is the biggest obstacle. You want readers on any size screen to be able to see the photos on your blog. Make sure the pictures are focused and clear. And large enough to be seen no matter what.

Light – Light brings life to photos. Dramatic lighting can take the most boring object and make it extraordinary. Don’t just plop in the first picture that fits with your post. Take a look around and go for something great.

Play – everyone loves to laugh and smile. It doesn’t really matter what topic your blog is on, you can find pictures that are memorable and fun. Remind yourself that it is okay to play and relax a bit.

That’s all there is to it; just six simple things to look for when you pick out a photo for your blog posts. There are many free places to look for photos, so take your time and find one that really snaps. Your blog will be much better for it.

Photos courtesy of MorgueFile

Kate Croston is a freelance writer, holds a bachelors degree in Journalism and Mass Communication. She writes guest posts for different sites and loves contributing home internet service related topics. Questions or comments can be sent to:  katecroston.croston09 @ gmail.com.

Special guest Divya writes about blog limitations today.

If you are a blogger – blogging for yourself or your company – you will have experienced firsthand that it’s a really tough job. You have to be flexible as well as wise; you have to be creative as well as talented. The basic skills can be honed more or less, but there are some detrimental limitations which need to be overcome. Here are a bunch of blogging limitations you are better off without.

1. Too Commercial

Blogs are meant to be personal. If the ‘personal’ element is missing, then the blog certainly lacks the human element. You could always purchase followers from fake sites to make your blog ‘look’ popular; but as long as your forgetting people, the blog won’t be able to get real admirers.

Blogs tend to become commercial in three ways:

a. with many advertisements splashed on your site
b. With you yourself advertising your works
c. with you advertising other people.

2. Compromise Quality

copywriting by far remains the most integral part of your blog. no matter what you do or how you do it, it’s important to give quality the most importance.

This is something that people will remember. They will remember coming to your blog and reading half baked information; yes! The impression lasts. Hence, quality is something that always needs to lead.

This doesn’t mean you rob content off the net. Yes, that brings us to the next point.

3. Copy Content

Getting a great deal of good work on the internet isn’t difficult. But if you think you can easily pick up content from the web, rephrase and pass it off as great work on your site, then you’re wrong.

Copied content doesn’t work in the long run. And with search engines becoming smarter by the day, this is something that’s bound to change.

So the way to overcome this limitation is by being honest. If you really feel some content is awesome, go ahead. Pick it up – but don’t forget to give the credits. More so, you could directly link to the site give you more of a association. That works well for SEO as well!

In all these cases, you stake losing your valuable reader because you are thinking ‘money’. The bottom-line however is, as long as you have your readers, your blog has value. And value can transcend to money. Hence, overcome this limitation by working FOR your readers.

4. No Social Presence

There are two points to be noted here:
a. Having a dead social profile
b. Being social

If we look at the first point of this discussion, you will note that we started with blogs connections between people. How can you connect if you aren’t social?

You need to go out, speak and connect with people which means a social presence is very important.

Now, if you have a facebook page that you have never visited or seldom update, that’s almost as good as no social presence.

Hence, overcome this short coming by going out there and making a profile and creating a plan to keep that profile alive. Social networking sites are bound to ‘work’ for you.

5. No Purpose

You might begin arguing that you DO have a purpose for your blog. You want help people or you want to build your brand; whatever it is that made you start that blog is what you may call a ‘Goal’ or ‘Purpose’.

But fast forward to now and check:

a. are you regular with your posts?
b. are you just talking about yourself too much or too less?
c. are you trying to please everyone and ending up getting no results on your page?

These are just a few questions which can reinstate my point that your blog lack purpose.

So, overcome this short coming by having a fixed agenda for your blogs. A structure purpose and course of action so that you can meet your goals and live up to them.

Looking at these points, it can be simply said that you got to change these practices if that’s how you’ve been working this way. If you’re a blogger, avoid these limitations.

Author Bio: Divya is a passionate blogger and loves blogging about SEO strategies, web development and how to make the most of one’s virtual presence. She works as a consultant with iNetZeal.com.

Another quality article from guest writer Alyssa Clarke today!

Marketing by Invitation

Conventional marketing works on the premise of putting your product information out in the general public space in manner that it reaches the largest number. The logic is statistical. If it reaches the largest number, it will also yield in the largest possible sales conversions. With a significant proportion of marketing now being done on the Internet, this model has outlived its usefulness.

The consumer on the web is no longer interested in generalized advertising and actually sees such marketing attempts as a distraction and a hindrance. The last decade has seen the evolution of a new form of marketing based on consumer preference known as permission marketing or inbound marketing. This concept, popularized by web marketing pioneers such as Brian Halligan and Seth Godin, has become the catchword in the field of social media marketing.

For online marketing and business blogs, the challenge is to generate traffic that is pertinent to the product category they are trying to market. Today, the quantity of web traffic in the sphere of internet marketing has become less relevant than the quality of that traffic.

This quality can be achieved through understanding and applying the principle of inbound marketing.

Why is Inbound Marketing Important

The value of inbound marketing is twofold. It is directed specifically at consumer preference. This makes the likelihood of a lead converting to a transaction much higher. Moreover, inbound marketing typically uses information about products and service categories as its vehicle.

This results in the consumer perceiving a greater value addition to the act of marketing. Even though the cost of online advertising is minimal per impression, the fact that inbound marketing is tied in with the interests of the consumer and the resulting conversion rate makes it as close to zero as possible.

Typically inbound marketing is targeted at users who have opted in for subscriptions for web services and have indicated their preferences for products and services of their choice at the time of registration. Another form of inbound marketing is through product reviews and endorsements carried out through special interest blogs and newsletters.

In the era of social media, one no longer looks at customers as buyers first, but as people with needs with whom relationships are built. Given the dynamics of inbound marketing, it is presumed likely that these people will then turn into customers. Business blogs are a perfect example of inbound marketing where they put out content that is relevant to their products and services. Users searching for that specific type of information can find such marketing content and click through to purchase or subscribe.

Inbound Marketing: The Secret of Quality Traffic 

For businesses setting up an online presence, it is essential to understand the value and the dynamics of inbound marketing. The contemporary consumer is intelligent and demanding. The conventional strategy of bombarding them with web ads has proved to be pointless, with more and more users opting for applications which effectively filter out such advertising through pop-up blockers and ad-blockers.

The discerning consumer of today will be more impressed with relevant content that provides them with the tools to make better purchasing decisions. Being able to grasp this principle not only results in lower cost of marketing and higher conversion rates but also builds quality traffic to your website that is relevant to your business.

About the author: Alyssa Clarke is a blogger who also happens to be a tech buff. She loves splurging on tech stuff and recently bought a cool waterproof mp3 player. She is also very fond of cars and her dream machine is Porsche 959.

The following post was written by Anthony Wayne.

I am probably the most unlikely blogger in the world. In fact, I didn’t even own a computer until six years ago. I should also mention that I am in my 60’s and didn’t grow up with the technology, and was intimidated by computer technology like many older people. Once I found out just how much information was available online, I started spending more and more time on the internet until my computer use totally replaced watching television. I started writing reviews for a few websites owned by a relative (like this one), and this introduced me to the world of blogging.

I ended up writing articled for five Forex sites, one lottery site, and five or six online bingo sites. Every day I must come up with material for five internet bingo blogs, and believe me, finding that much material on a daily basis is far from easy. I start my day with about two to three hours of research, and once I have the information organized and collated, I am ready to write. Most of my articles on the blogs are between 400 and 700 words, and I had to learn how to write for an internet audience.

I also had to learn about SEO on my own. Fortunately, there are many excellent sites (like this one!) that explain this important aspect of blogging in clear, easy-to-understand terms. I usually do most of my own keyword research, although the number of strong, effective keywords for online bingo is limited in number, and the top search terms rarely change. Once I became familiar with the concept of SEO I was able to write more effective articles for the blogs, and several have been cited by other industry websites. SEO fascinates me and I am constantly following the latest methods and trends to garner more attention for our blog articles.

I also had to become familiar with several content management systems over the years. At one point I was ‘forced’ to learn basic HTML because the CMS used by the blog required that all articles be posted in HTML. Looking back, it was not that difficult to learn. Most of our blogs now use WordPress, which is very easy to learn and use. It allows me to tag keywords and add images, videos and links to make our content more interesting to a wider audience. We are in the process of marketing some of the articles and I anticipate more work coming my way. It is easy to enter the world of blogging, and I plan to continue for as long as I am able to type.

-Anthony Wayne

The post was written by Anthony Wayne. Anthony works as a web content writer for several websites across a wide swath of industries, including Online Bingo News directories.

Today’s offline marketing article is written by Angelita Williams.

When it comes to marketing your blog SEO is necessary, emails are great, and social media tactics are even better.  But word-of-mouth marketing is king.  Even with the many advances in technology (and maybe in part because of them), word-of-mouth remains the most powerful brand of marketing for any business in any sector.

According to McKinsey Quarterly, “word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions.”  Consider this: while you are starting your blog trying to make a living or make extra income, some people start blogs and launch informal social media campaigns just to malign a company or product they’ve had a bad experience.  This is now considered word-of-mouth (WOM), reinvented for the 21^st century.  Before WOM was a one-to-one experience — now it is one-to-many.

Recommendations are powerful, and influence consumers “throughout the consumer journey.”  The question for you as a business owner and a blogger is how to inspire the kind of positive WOM marketing that can work wonders for your blog.

Here are five ideas to get you started:

1. Deliver early.  As a blogger, you’ve got it a little easier than some other kinds of business (your “shipping” is instantaneous and free), but that doesn’t mean you can’t impress your readers by releasing content, or more importantly, a product (think e-book), ahead of schedule.  Some bloggers urge that keeping a strict content-release schedule is important, but an equally powerful strategy is to tell your readers when to expect another post from you, giving them something to actively look forward to, and then surprise them by releasing it early.
2. Ask and ye shall receive.  It’s the oldest trick in the book, and yet few, if any, bloggers use it.  Do you want your readers to share your blog? Try asking them.  You might be very pleasantly surprised.  Of course, you can’t just say, “Talk about me to your friends!”  That’s transparent.  What you can do, however, is pose a question or challenge at the end of post: Did this post inspire you? Share it with a friend and share the good news!”
3. Pick a channel, any channel.  I hope that you aren’t hearing this for the first time from me, but you need to start getting active in a social media channel.  I’d recommend mastering one before launching several campaigns, because they do not obey the same laws.  But whichever you choose, get an authentic conversation going and keep it up to get people talking.
4. Get featured.  A very powerful way to get WOM going is to be featured on another blog, site, or in the news (if that’s possible).  If people see that you’re on another site they trust, they are much more likely to look into your blog, and then talk to their friends about it.
5. Get on the silver (or at least an LCD) screen.  State a YouTube channel and make videos.  Post a few blogs as videos.  Ask for video responses and feature them on your channel.  Do something, anything with video.  People like them, and if yours are good enough, they’ll talk about them.

Just remember, no marketing campaign is complete without a WOM component.  It might be difficult to get people started, but once you do, it will make all the difference.

This guest post is contributed by Angelita Williams, who writes on the topics of online courses.  She welcomes your comments at her email Id: angelita.williams7 @gmail.com.

The SEO building blocks consist of five key things to do.

There are obviously many things that you can do to for search engine optimization (SEO) but which should you focus on? Your time is valuable so I made a list of the top 5 things that you should do to maximize your time. In other words, why spend four hours on something when you can spend an hour on a task that should return 100x more value? Enough chatter, let’s get on the list:

• Write fresh content consistently! I’ve mentioned this in several previous posts, most recently at Blog about your niche. There is absolutely nothing more important than providing real value on your blog on a regular basis. So write, write, write. Set a goal of every other day or every weekday or every day. Just make sure you post useful information related to the theme of your blog a few times a week at a minimum. If your blog is about puppies, keep writing about puppies and skip the rant on politics.

•  Make your titles relevant. Having good, catchy titles are great. Having good, catchy titles with keywords related to your post is even better. So if your post is about losing weight, instead of “Shedding your unwanted fat” you could go with “Shedding the extra weight: lose 10 pounds in a month safely”.

•  Use keywords in your content. Don’t go crazy with this and scatter keywords unnecessarily (you will actually be penalized for that) but make sure you have some keywords in the body of your post. Imagine if I never actually wrote the words “search engine optimization” in this post, which is exactly what the post is about.

•  Have a logical site structure. This is pretty automatic if you use a good blogging platform (e.g. blogger or wordpress.com). However, if you are using custom themes or running your own blog on a separate host, that may change things a bit. Just make sure that your blog structure is organized so your directories and pages are easy to understand.

•  Use Google Analytics. It’s arguably the most useful analytical tool for your blog and it’s absolutely free! There’s no reason not to use Google Analytics. You can learn about where your visitors are from geographically, how long they are staying, what your traffic is this week compared to last week, how many other posts they are looking at, and much more. One important thing to monitor is which keywords are bringing them to your site. You could simply continue to utilize those keywords in future posts if you want to improve ranking for that niche.

None of this is groundbreaking. In fact, you should probably do these things for your readers anyway, not just for SEO purposes. And even though search engine algorithms change all the time, the aforementioned things to do have pretty much always been part of the core. It doesn’t mean you don’t need to do anything else either but if you only have time for 5 things, do these.

Backlinks, keywords in the URL, tags/categories, directories, social networking, microblogging, and a bunch of other tactics will come in due time. If you need help, find a niche partner to work with you. For example, if you’re looking to build a top online medical website, look for a company who has succeeded in developing those types of sites.

Happy blogging!

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Guest author Michael Evans tells us about his baiting techniques today.

Links, links, links… It drives me nuts, but being an online marketer, there is no escape from the stark reality that you need to get links to keep the ball rolling. Clients are obsessive about links and if this is not enough, they keep pressing you to get links from high PR sites, (I have got a client who once asked me to get backlink from Google) until you start creaking under its sheer pressure. Now, without any iota of doubt, links are still somewhat important but getting links by following the old and hackneyed techniques will not come to any help.  So, the only way out is Link baiting. Yah, I know it is time consuming to develop something unique and compelling before promoting it as a link bait. Failure to maintain quality can spell doom for the entire project. So, to make your task, easier, here we are going to list some infallible link baiting techniques that are time tested:

Infographics: Images are more powerful than words and probably infographic is the strongest evidence to proof it. A great infographic can go a long way to spread the message, which would otherwise take great effort from your side. Moreover, infograpghics are really handy tool to grab the attention of the users and that means, by publishing some informative and great looking infographics, you can increase your chance of getting links from some premium domains. First, you can submit the infographics in some sites and secondly, chances will be there that your infographics being posted in some high PR sites and you will get the credit for it in the form of a link back.

Ebook: eBook is another great way you can get some great quality backlink to your website. However, you need to be very particular that the ebook is offering some solutions to real life problem and is not filled up with fully information. Adding rewritten content in the ebook is not going to work for your website anymore as none would care to feature it as a piece of great art. Rather than rushing away with it, you need to clam down and give attention to quality otherwise, all your effort will come to naught. Have a great cover for your ebook and promote it heavily on social media and you are sure to get hold of success soon.

WordPress Plugin: Developing a wordpress plugin does not take a long time and unless your ambition is not too high, you can easily make a wordpress plugin up and running. Try some popular tutorials and you will be amazed to find how easy it is to develop it. Once it is up and running, you do not have to do much to promote it, as wordpress plugins are much in demand. If God permits, you will be rewarded for the good work you have done in the form of a backlink shared by some benevolent bloggers.

Free WordPress or Blogger Theme:  Since everyone around seems bitten by the bug of blogging, you can make the most of this trend by offering some great theme for both wordpress and blogspot blogs. Now, it makes sense to develop a theme related to your service, as chances will be there that the theme will be adopted by bloggers of similar niche. Just make sure that you have not forget to add links of your sites at the footer section of the wordpress blog and links will be coming from all walks of life. What more you may want?

Offer some Freebie: Offering freebies is a great way to attract attention of general people. You can offer some nice images or PSD files or you can develop a cool online tool like bulk PR checker or IP checker. Since people like to have freebies, people will be linking to your website automatically and this will help you see major uptick in ranking.

Did you try anything else and get through it? We will be glad to hear that please share your comments below:

Stephen Dedalus is an online consultant by profession and blogger by passion. He has written numerous articles and currently associated with webhostingdeals.org that offers best Web Hosting Deals.