15 Fantastic Places to Find Free and Low-Cost Stock Photos Online

When you visit a blog, what’s the first thing about a particular post that catches your attention?

Other than the article’s title, it’s probably the image (or images) that accompany the post.

Readers’ eyes are drawn to images, so it’s important to place a visual that illustrates your point into every blog post.

Readers are also creatures of habit, so place images in a consistent location, such as the upper left or upper right area of each post. Wrap text around the image to create a clean, packaged look.

This article includes links to at least 15 services where you can download free or low-cost stock images, illustrations, videos, or sounds.   read more >

Posted in Blogging, Featured, Google Tools, Marketing, Photos 6 Comments

LinkedIn News: Redesigned Mobile App, Talent Solutions, Privacy Settings, and a Birthday Party

Earlier this week, I showed you ten simple steps to achieving All-Star status on LinkedIn. To round out this week’s LinkedIn theme, I’m sharing links to articles from around the web:

  1. A unique “moving infographic” retrospective that overviews LinkedIn’s history
  2. YouTube video about LinkedIn’s redesigned mobile app
  3. LinkedIn’s new Talent Solutions tool
  4. How to lock down your privacy settings on LinkedIn
  5. Infographic: Blueprint for the perfect LinkedIn status update

  read more >

Posted in Featured, LinkedIn No Comments

Six Surefire Ways to Guarantee Your Guest Blogging Pitch Gets Instantly Rejected

Here is the actual, unretouched text of a guest blogging pitch I received:

Dear Admin,

I have seen your blog http://www.bloggingbistro.com/. I must appreciate your effort to maintaining such a good blog . As a professional writer and a web designer I found it very nice and interesting. I am a specialist in the clear communication of sophisticated concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences, using both text and graphical content.I will love to publish my unique latest article only in your blog. Will it be possible for you to post the article with my link?

Eagerly waiting for your reply.

Every week, I receive dozens of nearly identical pitches. I route every single pitch straight into my Trash folder.

Why? Read on for my six reasons.   read more >

Posted in Blogging, Featured No Comments

10 Simple Steps to Achieving All-Star Status on LinkedIn

By Laura Christianson

LinkedIn celebrated its tenth birthday May 5. With 225 million members worldwide (over 77 million of them, in the US), LinkedIn has carved a niche for itself as the social network for business professionals.

Because it serves as a hub to showcase job experience, skills, and education, LinkedIn focuses more on words and less on images. However, its recent profile redesign organizes those words in tidy modules and offers new options for uploading visual content.   read more >

Posted in Featured, LinkedIn No Comments

150 Ways to Contact Facebook (plus Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google, YouTube and Instagram)

Anyone who’s attempted to reach Facebook’s Customer Service knows that it’s rather challenging to find and speak with someone at Facebook who can help you solve your problem.

Unless, of course, your problem is ad-related — people who spend money on Facebook do get a response!

Imagine my delight when I found Kristi Hines’s extensive list of ways to contact Facebook. Now, when someone calls me and I can’t solve their problem, I refer them to Kristi’s list. Thank you, Kristi!

Read on for the full list of links.   read more >

Posted in Customer service, Facebook, Featured, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Social Networking, YouTube No Comments

How to Create Cool Marketing Materials from Your Pinterest Boards with Clipzine

Ever wish you had your Pinterest boards handy, when trying to explain your design style to someone?

Now you can.

Clipzine.me is a new platform for gathering images from your Pinterest boards or around the web, and putting them together on a page. You can then save that page as a pdf or jpeg to use later – perhaps in a real estate brochure, as ad copy for your wedding photography or maybe for a cookbook pitch.

There is also an embed function that allows you to post your creation, called a “zine,” right to your own blog or website.*

This tutorial explains the simple process of creating a zine and provides several creative examples of how to use zines.   read more >

Posted in Featured, Marketing, Photos, Pinterest, Social Networking No Comments

How to Follow Facebook Updates of Non-Friends (Tutorial)

There are several people on Facebook whose updates I would like to read, but I don’t necessarily want to be “friends” with them.

Enter Facebook’s “Follow” button. If a user displays a “Follow” button on his or her profile, you can see their public updates in your News Feed, much like when you follow someone on Twitter and their updates display in your Twitter steam.

This illustrated tutorial will show you how to make the “Follow” button show on your personal Timeline, how to customize the settings for this feature, and how to follow a non-friend’s updates.   read more >

Posted in Facebook, Featured No Comments

A Fantastic Free Resource to Improve Your Blogging and Content Writing

If you love reading top-notch articles to help you become a better blogger and content writer, you’ll want to sign up for a free membership to my.copyblogger.com.

I’ve followed copyblogger for years they consistently produce superb materials – articles, ebooks, seminars, webinars – on topics including content marketing, copywriting, email marketing, metrics and analytics, productivity, and SEO.

To sign up, go to http://my.copyblogger.com/free-membership. Provide your name, email, and a password, which you will use thereafter to log into their system. The basic membership (which gets you tons of goodies) is free.   read more >

Posted in Blogging, Featured, Marketing, SEO 1 Comment

5 Simple Ways to Protect Your Twitter Account from Hackers

By Linda Waters
Guest Contributor

You’ve heard that Facebook and other social media accounts get hacked, but Twitter?

Well, Twitter accounts get hacked at the same rate as Facebook and other social networks. To prevent that awful thing, every user should take precautions.

Here are five effective ways to protect your Twitter account from being hacked:

1. Make the Password Unguessable

This is the number one issue that makes people lose their accounts to cyber goons. Hackers and their software are intelligent enough to decode a password made with your birth date or other similar numbers that are easily obtainable.   read more >

Posted in Featured, Twitter No Comments

How to Use Bing Image Search to Pin Pictures to Pinterest

Pinterest fans, you’ll love this new development.

Microsoft and Pinterest forged a partnership, allowing Pinterest members to pin pictures directly from Bing Image Search.

Give it a try right now.

  1. Visit Bing’s Image Search at http://www.bing.com/images/.
  2. Search for yourself (just for fun).
  3. Click on any image and at the bottom right-hand corner of the picture, you’ll see the Pin It icon.
  4. Click “Pin It,” choose the board you want to pin it to, write a description of the image, and you’re done.

  read more >

Posted in Featured, Pinterest, SEO No Comments