Tutorial Blog

Is Your Website Ready for Pinterest?

Barbara Holbrook — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 17:35:49 +0000

Encourage people to pin your site by adding Pinterest buttons to make it easy.

Whether you’re blogging or building a business, chances are you’ve heard about Pinterest. Are you already using the up-and-coming social bookmarking site? A lot of people are, and early adopters are proving the site can be a powerful tool for businesses that want to build their brand online.

Even if you’re not sure that your business needs a Pinterest profile, it’s a smart idea to make sure that your website is ready for Pinterest. After all, Pinterest users are busy pinning favorites all over the web! The easier you make it to pin your site, the more likely you are to get pinned.

So, how do you get your website ready for Pinterest? Follow these steps to make your site easy to pin. (...)
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5 Places to Download Free and Cheap Images to Use on Your Blog

Barbara Holbrook — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:30:33 +0000

A little while back, we talked about the importance of using photos in every post when you’re blogging. Now that you’re convinced that images are an important part of each and every blog post, you might be wondering where you get photos and graphics for your posts. Of course, there are several places where you can find just about any image you might need. Unfortunately, stock photography can be expensive. The secret is knowing where to look to get the best deal, or even find free images that you can use on your website.

Here are 5 places to get started when you need to find free (or at least cheap!) images to use on your blog.(...)
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© Barbara Holbrook for Tutorial Blog, 2011. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogging, Freebies, stock images

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4 Simple Steps to Optimize Your Photos for Search Engines

Barbara Holbrook — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 18:30:09 +0000

You spend hours laboring over text, creating the perfect blog post. If you read TutorialBlog, then you also know the importance of including photos on your blog, too. But, how much time did you spend making sure that your images are SEO-optimized for the best performance? Photos can be more than eye-candy for readers, images are a great opportunity to improve your on-page search engine optimization.

Savvy bloggers know to take every opportunity to increase their appeal to search engines. Why should you care? Because every time your blog or blog post comes up in the search engine results, you have the opportunity to drive additional traffic to your blog — and that means more readers and, if you are selling something, more customers! (...)
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How to Choose the Colors for Your Website

Barbara Holbrook — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 15:00:55 +0000

You may not realize it, but the color scheme that you choose for your website is one of the most important decisions you will have to make.

Color is important because it effects not only your mind, but your body as well. Studies have shown that the color red can stimulate your senses, and even raise your blood pressure. Casinos have been known to use red neon lights because it’s been said that people gamble more while under the glow of a red light. On the other hand, blue tends to have the opposite effect; It’s been shown to calm the mind, and relax the body. (...)
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Twitter Advertising: How to Get Promoted on Twitter

Barbara Holbrook — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 19:00:25 +0000

After years with no clear path to monetization, Twitter now offers three different methods for advertising or “promoting” your business: Promoted Accounts, Promoted Trends, and Promoted Tweets. Which service is right for you will vary depending on the type of campaign you’re planning. Do you want to acquire followers? Build buzz around a new product? Or, just spread your message as far as possible through the Twittersphere?

The first step is understanding how Twitter’s Promoted advertising works and the benefits of each service. Once you know how Twitter can promote your business, you will be able to choose the best strategy for your social media campaign. So, let’s begin with an overview of each type of Twitter Promotion. (...)
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© Barbara Holbrook for Tutorial Blog, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: social media advertising, social media strategies, twitter ads

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How Can a Marketer Take Advantage of Facebook’s New Send Dialog?

FletcherT — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 17:00:52 +0000

Back in April, Facebook rolled out the Send button, a function that provided a simple and direct way for users to privately share content through the platform. Though it has not garnered as much attention as the Like button, this feature can be viewed a huge success considering that the social network says it has already been installed on more than 100,000 sites. Nearly two months later, Facebook has followed up the Send button with a new feature called Send Dialog. In this article, we will discuss the feature in more detail and explain how a marketer can take advantage of the Send Dialog to engage their audience. (...)
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Free WordPress Plugins and Add-ons to Promote Your Blog On Autopilot

Barbara Holbrook — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 18:56:47 +0000

There are WordPress addons available for just about any function — including automatic promotion of your blog posts! This article is specifically aimed at folks who are new to blog promotion or want to start their first website marketing campaign but aren’t sure where to begin. The great thing is, these plugins are so simple to set up, there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be using these tactics to increase your blog’s following.

Here’s a guide to some of the best WordPress plugins for automating your blog promotion tasks without spending a lot of money. (...)
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© Barbara Holbrook for Tutorial Blog, 2011. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Facebook Connect, Facebook Fanpage, Feedburner, RSS Feed, TweetMeme

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4 Reasons You Should Add Photos or Illustrations to Every Blog Post

Barbara Holbrook — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:11:17 +0000

Humor me for a moment and go dig out a copy of the White Pages — you remember, it’s that 10-pound behemoth gathering dust under the sink. Now, flip it open to any page and tell me the truth? Are you pulled into the content? Do you have any desire to continue reading or have you already closed it up and moved on to the next thing?

Online or offline, people constantly come across content and make a split-second decision about whether to stay or go. Often, the decision is made before the content is even assessed. It’s a sub-concious decision to leave based purely on looks. (...)
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9 Stand-Out Real Estate Themes for WordPress

Barbara Holbrook — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 17:30:39 +0000

A friend of mine just earned his real estate license and now he’s in the process of setting up office online. He’s already familiar with WordPress, so he came to me and asked if I had any advice on using WordPress for a real estate website. WordPress is really the hot ticket for building real estate site right now, which is both good and bad.

On the one hand, the demand for real estate themes and plugins has encouraged innovation among developers and they’re coming up with some pretty neat tools for agents to use when managing their properties online. On the other hand, you want to make sure that your website stands out from the crowd of similarly-themed websites so that you can attract clients and impress them with your marketing skills and web savvy. For an agent, a good website shows potential clients that they have 21st century skills and can do what it takes to sell a home in this tough market.

So, in answer to his question I rounded up a list of the top WordPress themes for building a real estate website that is sure to stand out in a crowd and help you—and your listings—get noticed.(...)
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© Barbara Holbrook for Tutorial Blog, 2011. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: premium themes, real estate websites, wordpress themes

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9 Email Designs for Content-Heavy Newsletters

Barbara Holbrook — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 18:30:27 +0000

I’ve recently been working on a project to design a daily email newsletter that will be powered by MailChimp’s RSS to Email option. In some ways using RSS limits the design, however by automating the email campaign the site owner can focus on creating content rather than delivering content.

The challenge for this email campaign is to create a template that can accommodate between 4 and 8 articles with photos and summaries, a spot for advertising, branding options and of course space for all the “required” information to be can-spam compliant. Oh yeah, the content all needs to fit together elegantly and encourage users to take action by visiting the site, bookmarking an article, etc. What’s the best way to fit that much information in an email and keep it organized?

I went looking for inspiration on Emailium, and found a collection of content-heavy email designs proving that it is indeed possible to fit a mountain of information into a document no more than 600 pixels wide. Want to be inspired, too? Check out this list of email designs for content-heavy newsletters and publishing sites.

(...)
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