This is a guest post by Tara Honor, if you want to guest post on this blog, please contact us.

‘Just keep getting better to deliver better’ – is probably something that Facebook has been taking as gospel. After sprucing people’s profiles up through interesting add-ons and privacy features, the social networking site recently introduced Timeline format for updating the same. Though the layout brings in a whole new deal – right from sharing and highlighting memorable posts to revealing more about their story, Facebook Timeline has got a lot more than you could think of. And when we say ‘a lot more’, it need not necessarily mean functions that solely revolve around one’s personal life. Not many would realize but Facebook Timeline can also be used as a great tool to assert whatever you have inscribed on your cover letter and curriculum vitae. So you never really knew about it, did you?

[A creative Facebook Timeline design by Antonio Fadda]

Well to straighten that out, it nowhere signifies that Facebook will replace LinkedIn anytime soon as the social network for professionals. But, if you are searching high and low for transforming your Facebook Timeline into a supplementary yet effectual social resume tool, then here’s some help.
Following are some significant steps that should enable the employer to catch a good sight of your profile and allow you to self marketing yourself for that perfect employment. Take a look!

Step 1: Adjust your Privacy Settings

First and foremost, you need to zoom on how to effectively transform your resume into resource. For which, you will be required to trim down your privacy levels and allow non-friends view certain details of your Timeline. Since privacy settings under Facebook are quite flexible, you can configure few things and have it visible to right people. You can simply adjust your privacy settings for the right people seeing the right things. However, all of this can be executed whilst maintaining privacy for your other areas.

Step 2: Edit your Timeline

Alright, if you have your Facebook account since your college or high school time, it shouldn’t throw a curve if some inappropriate status updates or questionable wall posts are lying there. But, to turn your Timeline into a social resume, you need to make sure that no inappropriate content is a part of your Facebook Profile. You need not delete them; just ensure to edit the profile. Take some time and hide these from Timeline. It can be done easily by clicking on the ‘Activity Log’ and navigating through all your posts. Nevertheless, it can be a lengthy or time-consuming process depending on how actively you have used Facebook.

Step 3: Add Accomplishments

As Facebook intends on making Timeline your digital biography, keep it that way. You can highlight your profile by easily adding Life Events to your profile. However, don’t forget to include your high school as well as college graduations. You should also include details on when you started new jobs, promotions and other significant appraisals. Adding accomplishments to your Timeline will help you turn it into an amazing self-advertising tool.

Step 4: Create Business Cards from Timeline

Next important step that you should stand by is to procreate business cards from your Timeline. Sounds so not heard of, right? Well, to help you do that, Facebook has recently joined hands with Moo.com – printer of custom business cards. By taking advantage of which, you can seamlessly create business cards using your Timelines. For this, simply go to your ‘Contact Info’ under ‘About’ and you will notice a business card icon. Cursor over it to catch a glimpse of what your card will look like. You can edit your information on the card once you have clicked through to Moo.com. Subsequent to this, you will receive the mail in a few days and be enabled to start networking with your Facebook account.

Step 5: Make your Timeline Reveal your Personality

Lastly, focus on benefitting from the new cover photo feature as much as possible. You can choose a fun, appropriate picture that reveals or expresses more of the type of person you are. You can also enhance your Timeline by putting up appealing and suitable textures, patterns, art, nature scenes or custom Photoshop displays. But, make sure your Facebook Profile comes across as a positive representation of your personality. At the same time, you can remove inappropriate content or pictures from your profile and keep Timeline thoroughly updated. This will help you appear as a professional and more serious about the profession you have settled upon.

The above mentioned steps won’t only allow people to attach a business professional element to their life, but also maintain their social life in an effective way. But, in a true sense, it is really an interesting way to have a perfect social resume from your Timeline.

About the Author!

Alyssa Clarke is a passionate writer who is always on a look out for latest tech stuff that involves smartphones, tablets and tech accessories. Currently she is looking for some new Android Apps for hew new smarthone. She is a hardcore biker and plans to buy a folding bike soon.

In today’s internet based world, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become the priority for every site. Every website loves to get the attention of the search engines. Search engine optimization can be classed as the best form of marketing for a website. With such high importance associated with it, many companies today provide SEO services. One of the best in this business is this SEO link-building services – Sorezki.

More About Sorezki

Apart from the regular SEO, Sorezki tries to add to the marketing strategy of a website. Services provided by the company include link building by inserting blog comments, media promotion and placing hyperlinks on an article, all done manually – no robots allowed. Apart from that, Sorezki also undertakes website monitoring to determine the traffic load. Detailed report is provided on the website traffic. This assists done by their professional link builders in gauging the popularity of the website. Marketing strategies can be planned accordingly then.

Best Features

A special ‘Linkr‘ technology has been incorporated by the Sorezki Company, which definitely its best feature. It allows you to order links according to your own convenience. This can be an effective online marketing technique, especially for website organizations skilled in online marketing. With correct use, the software provides a great deal of service. There is another exclusive service termed ‘SEO plus’, designed especially for Google Chrome browser. It has all the up to date features of geo location tracking, search engine websites and social media information.

On the flip side, Linkr software is for pro companies who know the depth of online marketing. SEO Plus is also designed for Google Chrome browser only. The software being browser specific does hinder its universal appeal. These shortcomings however, do not overshadow the great services provided by the company.

Sorezki has made a name for itself in SEO world for its innovative approach. The classy services provided, at a very reasonable price are sure to attract potential website organizations.

This is a guest post by Tara Hornor, if you want to guest post on this blog, please contact us.

To kick off our series in which we will review various portfolio platforms, WordPress is the logical place to start. With millions of websites running WordPress, this platform has the most support, options, features, and just plain cool stuff for any designer looking to put a portfolio online. WordPress is completely free and you can use it for just about anything from a general website, blogs, or for portfolio management.

One of the many features that WordPress offers is that you can very easily upload content for client review as well as show off your work. Instead of sending clients a 200MB graphic, you can upload the same print-ready design you sent to your business card, brochure, or catalog printing company to your own WordPress site and send them the link – much more professional and faster than sending files through third party sites or mailing printed proofs.

Introducing WordPress

If you are completely new to WordPress (WP), a little background may be in order. WP is far more than a portfolio management tool. It’s a full-featured content management system. It just so happens that WP is an ideal system for managing design portfolios, too.

If you’re wondering who uses WP, here are just a few massive design websites that rely on WP everyday:

• I Love Typography
• Web Designer Wall
• H Mag
• Smashing Apps
• Design Festival
• hundreds more…

So if you have any doubts about the capabilities of WP, hopefully those uber-users will settle your concerns.

Ease of Use

WP requires an above average level of skill when compared to other portfolio hosting systems. Because you have so many options available, you also have a great deal of complexity to manage. But the only really hard part of working with WordPress is setting up the system. Once in place, WP is just as easy to manage as any other system on the market – arguably easier.

Setting Up WordPress

You have two options if you want your own WordPress site.
Option #1 is to go over to WordPress.com and purchase your own domain name through them. This is a very affordable approach and gives you a stripped down version of WordPress you can work with. You get a great deal of options, but not the ability to add custom plugins – the heart of what makes WP so wonderful for portfolio management. If you want all the power and features of WP, then you’ll need to explore hosting your own WP site.

Option #2 is to host your own website and install WordPress. Most web hosts have a single-click installation of WordPress available. Then you simply login to your site and start setting it up. This process is a lot more involved as you will need to customize the site to meet your needs.

Using themes (in the Appearance menu), you can quickly get a basic design in place and then edit small parts, like the header image, to make the site your own. You’ll need to know a little HTML if you want to edit your own WP site, but you can manage most changes using the built-in interface.

Some designers choose to work with a WordPress developer to get their blog set up and then manage it on their own from there on. While pricier than doing it yourself, the time saved and frustration spared can be well worth it.

Image Protection

Using pluigns, you can make it more difficult to steal your images, if that is a priority for you. The only two tried and true methods of image protection are to use low-resolution images and/or watermark your images. Otherwise, here are a few tools you can use within WP to help.

• WP-CopyProtect is a free plugin that disables right-click features while also allowing your content to be readable by search engines. This prevents people from using the right-click -> “save image” feature.
  Plugin Site | Download | WP Page
• WP-Protect is a little more robust than others as it adds the ability to prevent image dragging – another way of simply copying your images. Right-click disable is available as well.
  Plugin Site | Download | WP Page
• Transparent-Image-Watermark-Plugin is, well, just what it says. When your readers click an image, it adds a watermark to it so they can’t use the image without crediting you. You can customize the watermark to look however you’d like.
  Plugin Site | Download | WP Page

Professionalism/Quality of Presentation

WP gives you the tools to make your site look and feel exactly how you want. So the limitations on quality of presentation of your portfolio are limited only by your own efforts.

Community/Environmental Considerations

If you are using the Blogspot version of WP, you need to know that Blogspot keeps a toolbar along the top of the page that may direct users to other sites. When you upgrade to your own domain, this goes away. Otherwise, the only community you have to worry about is your own.

Other design portfolio websites have a certain crowd that spends time on the site and offers opinions (good, bad, and ugly) and generally create a certain kind of community that can be unique to that platform. With your own WordPress site, you don’t have to worry about this.

Customization Options

The Blogspot version of WordPress does not have all the customization options of the full-featured WP. If you are using the full-featured version on your own site, you can completely customize your portfolio in any way imagineable.

Contact Options

In either version of WordPress, you have complete control over the contact information you can display. You can put your email address, phone, home address, or use contact forms to communicate with potential clients. It’s completely up to you.

Summary

Promote your portfolio design with WordPress platform will give you lots of convenience than if you were to do with the offline marketing method like poster printing. WordPress in both of its versions is completely free and offers you plenty of options for your portfolio. For the ultimate in customization, host your own WP site so you can build your own portfolio to look and feel exactly how you want it. Hands down, WordPress gives you the easiest path to the most customization. The trade-off is that you will have a learning curve to overcome and you will have to pay for web hosting if you want your own site.

About the Author!

Tara Hornor has a degree in English and has found her niche writing about marketing, advertising, branding, graphic design, and desktop publishing. She writes for PrintPlace.com, an online printing company that offers business cards, posters, brochure printing, postcard printing, and more printed marketing media. In addition to her writing career, Tara also enjoys spending time with her husband and two children.

“A Picture speaks a thousand words”, none but a true photo critic can understand the true meaning of the statement. Let me introduce you to one who knows photos better than anyone around you. The stock photo site – Stockfresh is indeed meant just for the photo fanatics. Read on to find out more.

There are certain licensed images out there, stock photos as they are called which cannot be used without the photographer’s permission. Most of these stock photos are clicked for private use or for some organization by a photographer. If one needs to use these images for some individual use, then they can buy photos from Stockfresh. Stockfresh is the new stock photo organization on the block, specializing in providing stock photos, graphics and vector illustrations.

Stockfresh is helped by its network of stock photographs. It has access to over 1.2 million stock photos and is committed to providing excellent images with vivid clarity. It provides a fresh approach for buying those stock photos, as the money is distributed to the photographers who actually own the photograph.

Vector illustrations are the newest trend today. These images can be scale and zoomed to any extent without changing the clarity of the picture even one bit. Regular bitmap images are prone to improper clarity considering scaling of a bitmap image results in loss of precision. Stockfresh also hosts vector illustrations for different photos.

How to buy

To buy stock photos from Stockfresh, credit system is implemented. The photos are available on a credit basis. The cost of 1 credit is around $1. The cost of an image depends on the stock photo itself, its resolution and other important factors. It is recommended to buy images from Stockfresh, as they offer best discount prices and the option of buying photos at an affordable price in bulk is also available. Also affiliate program has been designed by Stockfresh which gives 10% of the the money from the sale of stock photos, to its affiliate partners. Advertising the links from Stockfresh on one’s own website, decent earning can be generated. Stockfresh, al-in-all provides a fresh and innovative approach to the concept of buying stock photos.

Image Examples

Please check these, some of their most popular images:

If you like what they do, you can follow them @stockfresh on Twitter or Facebook.

This is a guest post by Clara, if you want to guest post on this blog, please contact us.

With the emergence of highly advanced social network development sites, people have become more habitual to using all these functions to create a networking bond and staying connected. This results in increased use of social networking sites on a daily basis. The companies or small businesses can make use of such sites for marketing their products and services. It is much less expensive and helps in creating awareness about your products and services in the market. It is as simple as finding examples of resumes and such key formats online. You can make use of this media for creating product and services awareness with nominal costs.

The greatest social media marketing tips would surely be advantageous for small businesses in promotions activities. These tips will help you to systematically apply the ‘AIDA (A-Awareness, I- Interest, D-Desire, A-Action) model’ of marketing. As social media is used on daily practice, the users will come in touch with your offers usually, which will create awareness and will develop interest about the offers. Such curiosity would lead to the desire of possession and will result into the generation of an effective demand for small businesses. The following are some of the tips which would help you to monitor such marketing strategies:

• Make the best use of popular social networking sites by uploading the advertisement of your products and services. This will result in creation of potential customer base with minimum investment.
• Highlight the company name and create a brand which would provide security and trust to its customers. Creation of a unique brand will help you to develop a loyal customer base by winning customer trust with quality products.
• Keep on highlighting your brand name and add an effective tagline to catch the viewer’s mind. It would definitely tempt the users to know more about the company profile and its offers.
• List the different social networking sites such as facebook, twitter, linked in etc. and categorize your products as per marketing strategies to be followed in connection different media for different types of products.
• Develop company blogs or online services centers to provide the required information in connection with product profile and attributes. This may include a variety of products and catalogues giving information about unique product attributes and extra services.
• Offer back links and additional information to the users who wish to know more about the company offers and its outlets. This may include the list of different outlets as per convenience of the viewer. You may give contact numbers or addresses where he can contact in connection with his queries.
• Make the best utilization of such social media channels and market your brand name to get acquainted with the potential customers. Such daily advertising hits would help the small business firms to market their products with low cost investment and create a wide customer base for the company offers.
• Make use of various pictures, images and tools; and improve visual appeals so that the users may find it interesting to know more about your offers.

Thus, you can make the most effective and efficient use of such social media channels online to market your products and services which will surely help you in creation of a strong brand name and awareness about the company offers. It ultimately results in the creation of an effective demand from such users.

About the Author!

Clara has written articles on social media networking, jobs and career topics. She has also shared articles on resume examples and cover letters.

Hi, today we have a Free Desktop Wallpaper Calendar of February 2012. The calendar design is very simple, with the horizontal position of the date and bicycle as a background image. Designed by Rochmanu Yahya.

We hope you like the calendar design and feel free to use it as your desktop wallpaper. Please check our other wallpaper collection: free wallpaper calendar of 2012

Details

• Date Created: January 31, 2012
• Calendar Size: 1024×640, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• Graphic file included: JPG graphic file
• Read this freebie License.

Preview

Download

Feel free to download this Desktop Wallpaper Calendar of February 2012 (1.9 MB): Desktop Wallpaper Calendar of February 2012 (154)

How do you think about this calendar design? Please let us know in the comment section below! Enjoy!

To attract more visitors to your website, showcasing your best content by using image is a great way and also give your website a beautiful look. And one of technology to showcasing your best content is by using jQuery slider.

Today, to help you find the best templates for your corporate or creative website, here we have collected 12 Awesome Corporates and Creatives Templates with Full Width Slider. Enjoy!

Joomla Themes

by dnp_theme
Motion is a new corporate template for Joomla! 2.5 featuring the best javascript based full width slider for Joomla! The first Joomla! 2.5 ready template on Themeforest!!
The package includes REAL Quickstart Installation Pack for Joomla! 2.5, various extensions and PSD Sources for various graphics used on the demo site.

Demo Buy Now

Screenshot

by dnp_theme
Technik is a wonderful template for Joomla! 2.5 inspired by technology and developed for technology driven businesses. Thanks to the own developed Skitter Slider Module, Technik provides an amazing, modern and stylish design. Also lots of flexible features. It integrates visually with various extensions such as K2 Component to ease your work and get your job done much more than fast.
Technik Template is a unique template, with consistent typography and fresh design, new and unique features, as well as beautiful sample content.

Demo Buy Now

Screenshot

WordPress Themes

by ThemeClan
Portio is a powerful business/corporate/portfolio & blog premium WordPress theme jam-packed with features.
Portio has 10 custom widgets, sortable portfolio and featured slider custom post types, full width featured slider, custom contact form, sitemap template, and much more.
If you’re a multimedia person, with Portio is now easier than ever to upload and play your video or audio files through its custom built-in audio and html5 video player with flash fallback.

Demo Buy Now

Screenshot

by ProgressionStudios
Show off your work with this easy-to-customize and fully featured WordPress Theme. When purchasing this theme, you will receive a detailed help file along with additional options like choosing between Unlimited color schemes and 3 unique featured slider options.

Demo Buy Now

Screenshot

by jonathan01
This beautifully designed template is as gorgeous to look at as it is to customize and use.
Well commented code in all files enables easy alterations if you are looking to roll up your sleeves and get dirty. If not, that’s fine, this theme is produced with you in mind also!

Demo Buy Now

Screenshot

by ThemeFuse
The versatile SportEdge Magazine is the best Sport WordPress theme we could have come up with, that’s a given! See for yourself.

Demo Buy Now

Screenshot

by KarmaThemes
Features:

• Easy setup for everyone – from beginner to professional
• 160+ Intelligent Theme Options: Tabbed, self-explanatory and intuitive theme options for maximum flexibility
• 15 Social Media Icons with easy setup in your theme options
• Sample Content: Get the copy of our preview page in 5 minutes (optional)
• custom menu support
• Unlimited Portfolio Options: 2 or 6 columns
• Google Web Fonts: Choose from hundreds of fonts (optional)

Demo Buy Now

Screenshot

by obox
Momento, the latest theme out of the Obox factory, is a WordPress Photography Theme with an emphasis on epic design and a scalable layout. With features: Portfolio section, Service section, Widgetized Homepage, and amazing slider.

Demo Buy Now

Screenshot

HTML/CSS Templates

by virusnac
MultiPress offers multiple and versatile layouts suitable for different needs:

• content-sharing,
• shopping-cart with PayPal and Google Checkout integration,
• classic blog,
• combination of all content types.

If you’re interested with the WordPress version of this theme, here.

Demo Buy Now

Screenshot

by Pixelworkshop
SHOWCASE is a complete template for all kinds of purposes. Built on a custom grid, this layout come with more than 30 coded pages, a lot of typography examples and many possibilities to showcase your work.

Demo Buy Now

Screenshot

by UnitedThemes
Passion a modern template with different Faces. Its not just a concept for photographers, have a look at our previews and you will see this Templates fits to restaurants, churches, interior, cafeteria and many more!

Demo Buy Now

Screenshot

by AurelienD
The Palace theme is best suited to build hotel websites but it’s so versatile that you can use it for everything you want (corporate website, portfolio…)

Demo Buy Now

Screenshot

This is a guest post by Tara Hornor, if you want to guest post on this blog, please contact us.

It’s a wonderful time to be a designer! Whether you are a photographer, graphic designer, or design in traditional mediums, the Internet today makes it easier than ever to go public with your work. With online printing services, you can now easily and quickly print out your portfolio at a very low cost. But even better – and this is what we will be covering – you can also very easily put your portfolio online for anyone from around the world to see using a web-based portfolio platform.

You have more options than ever for going global. In fact, all the options can cause paralysis in ever getting your online portfolio put together! Which platforms are the best for your needs? Which have the options you must have? How do you make sure the platform is appropriate for your type of work? How do you protect your work from being printed and stolen?

We will answer these question and more in a series of posts in which we cover some of the available portfolio platforms, their pros and cons, and other considerations when choosing. Some designers need a simple way to quickly post content. Others need a full-featured site to accommodate complex needs.

List of Portfolio Platform

Some of the platforms we will review include:

• WordPress
• Blogspot
• Flickr
• Facebook
• DeviantArt
• Behance
• Wix
• Stock.xchng

Topics Covered

In each of these reviews we will cover topics, such as:

• Ease of use
• Image protection
• Professionalism/quality of presentation
• Community/environmental considerations
• Customization options
• Contact options

So over the next few weeks, keep checking in to read through the fantastic reviews we will be publishing. Hopefully it will give you a great idea for which portfolio platform works best for you and your work. We also want to hear from you. What portfolio platforms have you been using? What are the drawbacks that you’ve run into? What advantages have you found?

About the Author!

Tara Hornor has a degree in English and has found her niche writing about marketing, advertising, branding, graphic design, and desktop publishing. She writes for PrintPlace.com, an online printing company that offers business cards, posters, brochure printing, postcard printing, and more printed marketing media. In addition to her writing career, Tara also enjoys spending time with her husband and two children.

This is our monthly series were we share useful brand and business tips articles all from the previous month. We hope this series can help you to strengthen your brand identity and growing your business.

If you would like to be kept up to date with brand and business resources, you can follow us on Twitter or by subscribing to our RSS feed.

by Mike Kapetanovic
A very useful list of eight things freelancers and agencies should do to prepare for the end of the year and ring in the new one.

by Nellie Akalp
In this article, Nellie Akalp has assembled her top 10 New Year’s resolutions for the small business owner.

by Lexi Rodrigo
How can you simplify your freelancing business? Below, Lexi go over several areas of your business that you can examine and simplify:

by Lawrence Mak
Here are six steps to help jumpstart your brand presence on Google+, and what you should consider when communicating and engaging followers in the Google+ environment.

by Cindy King
She has asked 12 experienced social media professionals to share their best tips on Google+ for business with you.

by Neil Patel
Having automation systems in place like this allows you to increase your customer size without having to grow your employee base. If you want to increase your ROI, then implement the following 4 marketing automation ideas:

by Aaron Sperling
You’ve got a functioning website, but you’re struggling with 60% bounce rates, and users don’t seem to be completing the necessary conversion processes. You don’t have the resources to invest in a web designer or consultant, so how do you go about optimizing your website on your own? Try the following tips.


by Ronald Brown
How the most successful companies do it, maybe in the hope that there’s a secret or shortcut to success. Sorry to say, no silver bullet exists. Below are the five basic steps.

by Celine Roque
No matter how well you plan, there will be times when you’ll need more clients. To cut this time as short as possible., you need a system for contacting leads, qualifying them, and converting them into paying clients as fast as possible. Communication templates can help you do this.

by Casey Hibbard
With a creative mix of social media and in-person events, Sony brought out thousands of people to locations to “Catch the Tablet” and tell their friends about it.

by Marcus Sheridan
Does your business blog? This article will help you (or someone you know) understand the value of a business blog.

by Amy Porterfield
To help you get clear on your Facebook plan, consider these four steps as a roadmap to Facebook success.

by Richard Larson
Here are 7 Facebook SEO strategies to make sure your Face is getting the amount of Book it deserves!

by Crazy Egg Experts
Very useful opinion and advice for marketing experts to optimize your marketing strategy on Facebook.

by Zoe Fox
Take a look through these four essential ingredients to being a successful social entrepreneur.

by Neil Patel
Like most marketing plans, social media channels need to go through the following five goals in order to produce the kind of results that are truly profitable.

by Laura Spencer
Social media is a great tool for freelancers (and since social media is most often free it’s very budget-friendly). But if you’re not careful, social media can also take up a lot of your valuable project time.

by Cindy King
Cindy has asked eight small business pros for their hottest social media tips. Here’s their advice for you to take your business to the next level.

by Sandy Carter
The first step when considering social analytics is to establish a listening strategy. It enables decision-makers to find and better understand opportunities and stakeholders. So, exactly how do you go about listening?

by Ben Pickering
Would you like to combine forces with another company in a collaborative promotion? Want to know why this is wise and how to do it? Here

by Francisco
A new infographic from Flowtown to help you determine how you are going to use Twitter or if you should stay clear. And it sort of funny too…

by Neil Patel
Would you like to know how to build a great email newsletter list without making the common mistakes that can ruin your reputation and cost you money? If so, avoid these 5 mistakes.

by Tara Hornor
A powerful way to build trust and rapport is to develop authoritative and informative white papers. Read Tara tips to optimize your marketing strategy with White Paper.

As a designer have a website to showcase your design portfolio is a must, it will really help you to get more design job. And to attract the right attention of the readers, your website design must be pretty and neat. Also use minimalist design – this might highlight your works so that no major attention to the background is needed.

In this article, we have collected 50 creative minimalist portfolio websites for your inspiration in designing your own portfolio.

I hope you enjoyed with this portfolio website showcase. Do you have another great minimalist portfolio website design? Please share with us in the comment below.