Today, social media sites have become popular among internet users. It is for this reason that they have also become very attractive platforms for business owners. Through such sites, online business owners can easily reach out to a wide variety of active internet users and attract them through more engaging means. Among the most popularly used social media platforms are video sharing and social networking websites.

Social Networking

Online business owners can use social networking sites as an alternative to email marketing campaigns. It is through these sites that internet marketers can regularly share relevant content that can engage users enough to prompt them to follow the brand or make it a part of their network.

Logging in to social networking sites everyday has practically become a way of life for many internet users. Using these sites to promote an online business, however, is not as simple as building a network of random people and advertising products and services to them. Online business owners should treat such sites as a means to build relationships with users rather than as just another advertising medium. Similar to video sharing websites, social networking sites can prove to be one of the most invaluable sources of customer feedback for any business.

Through such sites, business owners can encourage comments from users and converse directly with people within their network. They can then gain powerful consumer insights as well as manage the reputation of their online business. What is even more attractive to business owners is that being active in social networking sites gives their brand a higher potential to spread virally among people who share the same interest. This, consequently, allows you to spend less on brand building and customer acquisition.

With today’s popularity of social media, business owners can now direct more of their focus and energy on branding and building a solid reputation for their online business. For this reason, click-through and conversion rates are considered only as secondary means to track success. More important are the number of conversations incited around the brand and the business’ offerings as well as the number of followers gathered through these platforms. The idea is to get more and more people to talk about your online business and keep the brand at the top of their minds so that internet users will be more likely to  share it with other people.

If you would like to some help with marketing your business through social media, then contact blogworkz today via email to discuss how we can help you get started.

What does it mean to make your WordPress blog/website design stand out.  A blog design that pops is simply one that grabs people’s attention and  hopefully a little of the  “Wow Factor!”    Does it mean that you must make your blog really extreme in order to get noticed? No, it does not, especially if you are doing it just for the sake of getting it noticed. The pursuit of just that one goal alone won’t get your blog design very far.

So how do you make your blog/website standout?

Below are 3 simple ways to make your blog design standout

 Your header

Your header is the first thing that visitors usually sees when they visit your site. What do you think will happen if your header is just plain boring. Yawn .They’ll click the back button instantly. However, you can use  image editing programs, such as gimp or photoshop to create your own unique, attractive header , if  you have the creative ability or  you could hire a graphic geek to create a custom header for you.

Colour

Find  a colour scheme thats fresh, clean, and clear that isn’t hard on the eyes. Make sure your background and foreground colors offer sufficient contrast for easy reading.

When it comes to colour, there is a lot to think about as you develop or design your WordPress Theme. It’s like painting a house. Which colour will cover the entire exterior? What colour do you want the door? Or the window trim? Accents and complementary colours or contrasting colours? The colours that go into a website are not limited to the colour of the background and text. You have to consider all the colours used together. For example the links on your site can have three colour choices  Source

Leverage images to add value to your blog

Graphics and images, when used strategically, are your best partner in pulling readers attention. No, it doesn’t mean that you should hang up 15 flashy gif files on every single blogpost. It means that images (photos, flow charts, comics, and graphs) should be used whenever it’s related to your blog content.

And finally,  Let’s face it – if your site looks like one of the ugly default WordPress templates that lots of other  people have already used, why would anyone remember yours? You need to stand out. And a custom, branded, professionally designed blog can help you create a strong web presence. Be one of a kind, not just another boring face in the crowd. The return on your investment will multiply itself many times over as people remember your site and come back.  After all, that’s the goal…right? Good WordPress Design…

If you’re interested in standing out and wowing the crowd, contact us soon. We’d love to hear from you.

Your home page is where most visitors enter your site.  It typically offers the first and most important opportunity to qualify your organization to visitors.  The home page can leave users intrigued with a desire to learn more about your organization or cause them to become confused and abandon your site.  The following 10 tips will help you create a more effective home page that drives users to accomplish your business goals.

1. Define who you are Make sure that your company name, logo and tagline are clearly displayed near the top of the site.  Users will scan your page starting at the top-left, so placing your logo there is generally accepted as best practice.

2. Convey an identity Is your organization modern or traditional? Corporation or small business? Local or national? If you plan on doing business with your visitors, convey to them your true identity and be sure that it’s aligned with what they’re expecting.  Your identity will let your users know whether or not they’ve come to the right place.

3. Emphasize a point of differentiation If you are not a monopoly, this applies to you (everyone).  Through the internet your prospective customers have access to each of your competitors websites. Any user with propensity to buy will be comparing your organization directly against your online competitors. Be sure that your website clearly conveys your point of differentiation — What is your value proposition? What it is that makes you completely unique and special?  It can make the difference converting a lead to a sale or doing the same for your competitor.

4. Define a purpose Why do you have a website?  Make it abundantly clear why your website exists and be sure that it is reflected in your call-to-actions.  And yes, by the way, you need call-to-actions!

5. Prioritize content Depending on your specific business goals (i.e. selling a particular product or service, ) you should display items on the home page that are held in the highest priority.  This will increase the odds that your users will accomplish the most important goals.  If you have several important products, services, or pieces of content, be sure they are weighted accordingly by size and location within the page.  The most important pieces of content should be large and closest to the top-left portion of the page.

6. Offer incentives In the increasingly competitive landscape of the internet it is becoming more important to get users to your site and keep them there.  A great way to compel users to travel further into your site (and sometimes offer up an email address) is to provide them with some type of incentive.  An incentive can come in many forms: an e-book, video series, access to exclusive content, etc..  Incentives add value to the user experience and will ultimately improve the success of your website as a business tool.

7.  Be sure your design is helping the cause Graphic design can act as a wonderful tool to qualify your organization as an industry leader but can also cause users to immediately lose interest in continuing further, regardless of the quality of your content.  A display of professional, visually pleasing graphics convey to users your organization has the wherewithal to take the time and spend the money to produce a pleasing aesthetic experience (sometimes considered by website owners to be superfluous).  It’s an important indicator that the same care attention has been paid to product or service offerings.

8. Provide up-to-date content Providing quality, timely content is important for both users and search engines.  It shows that you have taken a level of proactivity in keeping your site current. In the same sense that people don’t enjoy reading old newspapers, neither do they enjoy reading content that’s dated and no longer relevant to the experience they’re having right now.  Keep it fresh and keep it relevant.

9. Make it scan-able Be sure that your home page is not stuffed with so much content that your user has to scroll or spend a significant amount of time reading.  This will reduce your bounce rate and keep your users focused on only the most pertinent content. If you can’t say or display everything that you’d like in the small space allotted on your home page, offer your users an opportunity to dig deeper by placing a “read more” call-to-action!  Providing too much information is a very common error that can be avoided by remembering the following: less is more.

10. Remember the intangibles While the overall experience of your site is dependent upon several concrete variables, there are some that are intangible. As your site is developed be sure to always focus on delivering an intensely satisfying experience and paying attention to detail in areas that might otherwise be overlooked.  All the small seemingly insignificant components that make up your website add up to something larger which will help drive your success.

Tsuvo is a results-driven firm focused on helping best-in-class companies and institutions define, launch and extend their online presence. We specialize in comprehensive programs that include web development, internet marketing and search engine optimization. Web Development Boise, Internet Marketing Boise, SEO Boise.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dave_A._Romero

Most of your visitors will see when they first visit your website. Therefore, your home page should be able to tell your visitors what your website is about within the first 5 seconds. If not, visitors may leave your site and visit other sites. As it is so important, it should deserve the most attention than any other page of your website.

The home page should have all the features that are normally found on it. One of the most important features is the navigation bar. You may find it easy to navigate through your website but this may not be the case for first-time visitors. Therefore, the navigation bar should be visible and clear to use. Name your navigation normally to prevent confusion.

Next, it should communicate quickly and efficiently to visitors what the website is about. First impression is very important. If it cannot capture the visitor’s interest, they will leave your site immediately.

When you are designing your home page, make sure that all important and major points are above the fold. This means that all important information and graphics should be visible to visitors without them having to scroll down the page. When you place all important information above the fold, you will prevent users concluding your site is not of their interest.

Another interesting point you should take note is that many visitors access the quality of the site based on the home page. If they feel you have a bad home page, they will conclude that your site is of poor quality, even if your content or products are good. So this makes it very important for you to spend more time to design it.

When visitors land on your home page, they will usually look at the top center of the page first, followed by looking from the left to the right. So, you should place all the important points towards the top and center of the page. In order to do this, you must plan the layout of the page properly and place items based on their importance.

Last but not least, pay attention to the title of your home page that is shown at the top left hand corner of your browser. You should not just place your company name in the title. Add in some descriptive information about your company so that visitors will have a better idea on what your business is offering.

Article Source

Tomorrow I will share with you  another article on home page tips.

Hi Guys I think you are absolutely going to love this sales theme. This theme helps you to great sales pages very easily.

Selling products via a Sales Page is the highest-converting method!   You won’t believe how easy it is to make your own sales pages. It only takes a few minutes to be fully up and running, and from there all you have to do is add content!

Check it out

Having the most up to date version of WordPress is crucial for your blog’s security. WordPress blog went to extreme measures on emphasizing the point that users must upgrade their blog for security reasons. For this article we have created an infograph featuring a research that Syed has conducted over the past two years with hacked WordPress blogs. This infograph also shows a step by step guide to upgrade WordPress.

Many people feel hesitant to upgrade because the plugins will break and the site might not function well. But is it better to fix the small problem, or is it better to get your site hacked, then restore everything, and upgrade and fix everything later. It is best if you take the first route as it will be easier and time saving.

Click on image to see full chart

Read full post here

3 Ways to Repurpose Your Blog Posts and Get the Most Out of Your Writing

You spend a lot of time crafting your blog posts. Let me show you how you can reuse all this wonderful content and use it to get more exposure and more traffic to your blog in three simple steps. Let’s get started.

One – Expand Your Posts Into Articles

Go through your posts from a month or two ago and pick a few that you could easily expand into articles that are between 300 – 400 words long. Use your blog post as an idea generator, then write the actual article based on the information you’ve already compiled for your original post. Submit this article to some of the bigger article directories like Ezinearticles.com, Goarticles.com, Buzzle.com and ArticleBase.com. Include an author resource box that invites readers to visit your blog.

Two – Turn Related Posts Into A Small Report

Go through your archives and find 5 to 7 posts you have written that are topically related. Copy and paste them into a word document, add a title page, a table of content and a short introduction. Convert the word document into a pdf and you have a nice little special report that you can sell or give away. I like to create these reports and then offer them as a freebie for people to join my list.

Three – Turn Your Blog Posts into Autoresponder Messages

Speaking of lists, you can also recycle your blog posts as autoresponder messages. Let’s say you have written a blog post with 5 tips on building a bigger list. Take the intro and each of the five tips and you have a 6 day email mini-course ready to load into your autoresponder. Just add a quick intro to each tip, make an offer for a recommended resource or point them to other pages on your blog that explain each point further.

Another easy way to generate messages for your list without any more work on your part is to use the aweber blog broadcast feature. Anytime you write a new post, it becomes part of an autogenerated newsletter that goes out to your list every day or every week. It’s a great way to keep bringing your readers back to your blog over and over again.

Article Source: Ezine Articles

The all new WordPress for BlackBerry app allows you to write posts, upload photos and videos, edit pages, and manage comments. Both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.7 or higher) sites are supported. Download the app and start blogging on the go in no time.

The Blackberry app will work with all new BlackBerry devices such as the 8700, Pearl, Curve, Bold, and Storm, with BlackBerry OS 4.2.1 or newer.

Ps for some of you it might not work straight away when you set it up.

This is what I had to do  for my blackberry curve.

I had to go to my settings area of my WordPress dashboard. Under remomte publishing make sure that you check and Enable the WordPress, Moveable Tye, MetaWeblog and Blogger XML-RPC publishing protocols. Then save changes. 

On your Blackberry WordPress settings make sure that your Wap connection is also ticked.

Hey guys  I did my first radio show on BlogTalk with Carlana Charles, I was so nervous but it was fun at the end of the day.  Carlana and I were chatting about the power of Social Media and WordPress.  Check it out.

Get Your Vlog On! – Turn Your Website Into A TV Channel With Video Blogs

Online video, video blogs, vlogs or vodcasts are all different names for the same basic concept: Using the Internet to broadcast a video message. As an advertising and promotion tool, online video is exploding in popularity. Putting video on your Web site or blog is a low-cost way to get in on the Online Video Revolution. There are several ways you can use your own “TV channel” on the web:

• Tape a personal introduction or welcome message for your website

• Publicize or highlight a special product offer or company promotion

• Share company news, updates or executive briefings with your customers

• Use your video for product demos or training

• Videotape customer testimonials to generate new business

Shooting

Of course, before you can jump into Online Video, you have to have a video! Fortunately, this has never been easier. What you use to shoot your video depends on your goals, budget and available equipment. Since your video is headed to the web, quality is less of an issue than if the final product was for TV. Web video can be shot with a standard consumer camcorder or, you can even capture your video using an inexpensive webcam. Remember, your final product is only going to be as good as your raw footage, so shoot footage more than you think you’ll need and get several different takes and angles.

Digitizing

Next, you’ve got to get your footage into your computer in order to format it for uploading to the Internet. In most cases, you can just connect your camcorder directly to your computer and transfer the footage right into your editing program. Then, get your video Internet-ready with the editing/movie software that came with your computer, such as iMovie on the Mac and Windows Movie Maker for the PC. For a more professional product, you could upgrade to Final Cut Pro for the Mac or Adobe Premiere for the PC. Once the footage is “digitized” in your editing system, you can optimize it by saving the file as a QuickTime movie or an MPEG-4 video file. (Some systems will give you additional options, such as saving as a Flash file).

Vlogging

Although you can post your video on free video hosting sites, you’ll need to set up a blog account if you want to create your very own video blog. You can set up a free blog very easily at Blogger.com. Other blog platforms include Movable Type, TypePad and WordPress. Once you’ve got your blog platform, you’ll be able to create posts – including video.

Bringing it home (to your website!)

Most online video hosting sites also allow you to copy the HTML code and “embed” the video into your own blog or web page. Take the video you’ve posted on YouTube or Blip.tv, for example, and just cut and paste the HTML code they provide for your video right into your blog’s HTML editor. There are more advanced methods, but using “embed” codes is fast and free!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lou_Bortone