Express Yourself by Blogging

Express Yourself by Blogging

Blog is basically an informational website. Blog is the term derived from weblog. Blogging is about writing and updating the blog. Anyone with internet access can blog. Blogs are used by celebrities to interact with their fans. Blogs are also used by different companies to stay in touch with their customers. Articles in a blog are called posts. The posts are in reverse sequential order. The latest appears on top. Each post may have its own link which is known as permalink. Readers can also post comments in reply to posts. Writing in any other form than this is not blogging. Blogging has become a search engine optimization tool because updated content is increasingly indexed in search engines.

Blogging Characteristics

The most important feature of a blog is its genuine content. Blogging has no value if the content you post is not actually yours. The purpose of blogging is to inform or to augment the information about something, to entertain and to teach people. Blogging is a two way communication process. People comment on your posts and can also receive replies on their comments. They can even write their own blogs in response to your blogs. The blog is not restricted to a particular website. Your blogs can appear on social networking sites. Blogging for others rather than yourself can attract more people. Most people might not be interested in reading in personal diaries. Blogging doesn’t necessarily mean writing. Blogging may be in the form of images, audio, video or e-books.

Considerations for Blogging

There are legal issues to consider while you are blogging. You might end up in a law suit against you for plagiarism. You must be aware of the guidelines related to blogging and take steps to minimize your legal problems. A blogger must disclose any material relationship with an advertiser or brand. A manufacturer may give financial or non financial incentives to you for writing about their products. Relevance is an important factor in blogging. Your blog should be relevant to the audience you intend to target. Irrelevant posts will result in loss of audience. Time is crucial. If you don’t have the required time to update your blog then the purpose of blogging is not achieved. Flow of the blog is also important. A blog should be well organized.

What Blogging has to Offer?

Blogging is an effective and affordable advertisement medium for small businesses and start ups. You can reach a large number of consumers cost effectively. To write a blog you have to read and conduct researches. This improves your own learning. Blogging gives you the opportunity to be visible to people if you want to be an expert on a particular subject and you have a desire to become so. You can become a published author. Publishers are reluctant to take chances on new writers. If you are an established and well known blogger then you might well get a chance to become a published author. Blogging connects you to different people. You can even become friends with people who follow your blog.

Author Bio:

Maria Bennett is a regular guest blogger and graphic designer. She is working for Next Day Flyers an online printing company where you can order for 11 x 17 glossy posters and promote your business.


Do you need better webhosting to get better SEO results?

A quality web host plays a critical role in search engine optimization (SEO) results. For a website to rank highly in Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines, it has to have speedy servers. Webhosting can either make or break your online ventures. Without a proper and sustainable webhosting plan, you may well end up in the hands of quacks.

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A reputable and high quality webhosting service provider will always ensure that your website is up and running 99.99% of the time which is crucial in SEO results. If your website is down when search engines want to index it, they will just skip it. Though the search engine will come back to your site, if your site continues to be down you are sending a red flag.  It is a clear sign against the credibility of your site which will lead to lower ranking. A good webhosting provider has high quality server machines that ensure that your website is online most of the time. This will give your site more value to search engines.

Your site should also load pages in seconds; if you have a slow loading site, then you will have a problem with search engines. Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines rank a page in terms of user experience, and a good site should load pages very fast. If a site takes a century to load, it irritates the visitors who opt for other sites. The search engines, then, do not want to put such pages at the top of their result pages since the sites at the top of a page should be the ones that provide the best information quickly. You should also put your fabulous and quality content at the top of the page so that it can be catalogued by search engines. Also, if your site has many graphics, which can slow the loading process, it is of utmost importance to optimize them.

The location of your website is also crucial in SEO results. Good webhosting providers are aware of this fact and take the necessary measures to ensure that this issue is addressed appropriately. For instance, if you want to rank highly in a certain country, then you should be seen to be hosted in that country. Your webhosting provider should provide credible and efficient information that will help in ranking your site accordingly. Regardless of where your service provider is located, it should be in a position to employ expertise and strategize for your site’s appropriate location.

When search engines start ranking your site which is being hosted on a quality hosting service provider, they will also give priority to your blogs and contents. This helps you to achieve a competitive edge in the market over those who use cheap and low quality hosting services.

Imagine your site ranking page one on Google. This will mean that the chances of receiving commercially viable online visits are high.

Quality webhosting plays a pivotal role in making your site successful and increasing traffic since most people, experts and marketers included, use search engine indexes to analyze the credibility of your products and services. You should make sure that your site is always up to date, contains fresh content, is available for search engines and, more importantly, is optimized for search engines.

If you want to expand and grow your business in the online platform, you have to invest wisely to secure the services of a proficient webhosting service provider. It might cost you hundreds of dollars, but it is a worth investment in the long run.

Author Bio

This article is the contribution of Leo Preston who describes here the necessity of web hosting for SEO result. She is a technology blogger and already wrote about web design, iPage guide, web hosting etc.


Theories on Colour to Design Good Labels

Did you ever notice that a clear blue sky can do wonders for your mood? Or that a meeting in a white room can make you fall asleep? If so, you have seen just how much colours can affect our emotions. There is a study of this type of effects, and it is known as colour psychology. This is becoming much more recognized as far as how much colour can affect how consumers make purchases.

When you are thinking about your product and label designs, you should definitely consider color psychology. The label for your product is one of the key parts of your marketing, so the colours that you select for it can either make or break your monthly sales.

Below is a partial list of colours and what sort of emotional responses typically are associated with each colour. You should think about what sort of emotion you want to stir in the heart of your consumer. What sorts of colours are related to these emotions? Are you incorporating the correct colours into your labels and marketing materials. If not, you will want to consider working closely with your printing company and overhauling the colours of your labels ad product packaging.

  • White: Relaxed, secure, complacent, light.
  • Pink: Tranquil, relaxed.
  • Green: Peace, happy, relaxed, less stressful.
  • Light blue: Comfort.
  • Blue: Creative, happy, safety
  • Red: Energy, warmth, danger, failure, mistakes. Can actually increase the heart rate.
  • Bright yellow: Danger, irritability
  • Orange: Hunger, vitality
  • Brown: Passivity, security, depression

Next, you will need to think about the colour of the text that you want to put on the label, and the colour of the label itself. If you choose poorly on the colour of the text, you really can hurt your marketing efforts. So you are going to want to think about this very carefully. The vital key to pairing the colour of your text and the background label colour is contrast. You need to have a good deal of contrast between the two. The more contrast there is, the more the text will be able to be read. The higher contrast also will limit the strain on the consumer’s eye. One of the most reliable ways to make this choice is to select a dark colour for the label, and a light color for the text. Generally, black on yellow is the most readable, followed by black on white, and yellow on black. The least readable is white on red.

Keep in mind that selecting the colours for your labels does not have to be difficult. There are many places you can go online that can help you to select the right colours. When you come up with your labels, there will probably be a base colour that you want to have. It could be the colour of your logo, or perhaps a colour that matches with the products that you are marketing.

If you put in enough thought about your label colour and your text, you should be able to come up with some excellent options.

Lawrence Reaves has an extensive background in business and is a contributing author for MaverickLabel.com, a custom printing company offering labels, custom printed ribbons, stickers of all sorts and warning labels.  Go here to see how they can change the look of your business printing.


How Smartphones Are Making Smart Shoppers

According to a new survey by Deloitte, more shoppers will supplement their 2012 holiday shopping with smartphones than ever before. Although a general increase in smartphone ownership accentuated the increase, the biggest reason for the increase is based in the large number of websites that have incorporated their marketing strategies for a smartphone-based audience. 

The figures are in! 

  • 58 percent of customers use their smart phones to compare prices with other stores once inside.
  • 62 percent of people who own smartphones use their Bluetooth technology to locate the nearest store or the store with the best prices.
  • Half of smartphone owners use the internet to check product information
  • 42 percent check the availability of products
  • 45 percent shop online 

Online Sales As Back Up

The trends in smartphone use extend far beyond the figures listed above. Target, for example, has fastened QR codes to the shelves. This means that when an item sells out, customers brandishing smartphones need only point and tap, and the ecommerce software will take them to a secure site where they can order the item online. Panicking shoppers will find relief when they realize the promised remote-controlled car or videogame has been shopped to in-store extinction. 

Social Dining

The food industry has also made moves to cash in on smartphone users. Social dining is in. Sites such as The Connected Table and Screened Dining allow users to decide between the rowdy, full house burger spot with the big line or the vacant sandwich shop that plays all the new techno songs, depending on their social mood, and whether or not they have a report to complete. Not to mention some of these apps incorporate ecommerce software and time your orders, so you can walk to the front of the line, flash your smartphone code, and get down to what you came there to do – eat. 
Grocery Shopping Online

More food for thought: 49 percent of people who own smartphones use them for grocery shopping. If the place down the street has a better deal on this frozen bag of T.G.I.’s shrimp scampi, then it might be time to dump the cart and shift your go-to grocer. Customer loyalty is a thing of the past. The future: Shot and Stop and grocery store shopping apps.

Marketing Smarts

Marketers, listen up. Smartphones have vaulted onto the shopping industry and their use will only continue to increase as we delve further into the millennium.  Put your coupons online, offer deals and discounts to those who sign up to your website, and send e-newsletters with special offers with links to your ecommerce software service. And make sure that your website has been incorporated for those who connect with smartphones. For more ideas on what you can do for marketing strategies, read these fancy bullet points: 

  • Online retailers often offer better deals on items, but shipping is still a factor. According to the aforementioned survey, 71 percent of shoppers are more likely to buy from a retailer that offers free shipping.
  • 56 percent said that they would order from a retailer that offered free returns over one that didn’t, regardless of price. 
  • Shoppers who navigate multiple channels to research their products before buying usually plug twice as much money into the ecommerce software than they would hand to a cashier at a brick and mortar store.

Pella Guadalajara works as a night-shift analyst for online marketing companies, ecommerce software sites, and a myriad of blogs ranging from deep see exploration to Canadian botanists’’ planting methodology. He lives in Vancouver.