Wednesday 30 April 2014

Desiderata - Sunset Beach Waves Posters

Featured Product!

A gorgeous design. Click to customize and personalize. Maybe you'd like to see your name or initials on it?


tagged with: full desiderata, desiderata poem, go placidly, noise and haste, sunset beach, inspirational guidance, hrbstslr hrcol35, peace verses, wisdom poetry, hrfptraz fineart wallart, artistic photos

Inspirational Guidance series The full Desiderata by Max Ehrmann: Go placidly amidst the noise and haste... With a soothing and inspiring image of gently lapping waves on the shore at sunset.
The poem has inspired young adults who are coming of age since the 1920's and is as popular today as it ever was. It's been given as a gift by loving parents, grandparents, godparents and aunts and uncles as essential life-wisdom ever since it was written.
They've found it to be one of the few ways for such wisdom to get past those raging hormones, giving support to the upcoming generation through their rebellious years and beyond...
more items with this image
more items featuring the full Desiderata

image code: hrcol35

»visit the HightonRidley store for more designs and products like this
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Motivational Words #2 fridge magnet

A gorgeous best-selling design. Click to customize or personalize. How would it look with your name or monogram on it - why not have a look-see right now?


tagged with: positive thinking, positive attitude, encouragement, positive outlook, hrbstslr, motivational words, mowds2, motivation, values, encouraging, word art

Motivational Words series Give some positivity! Here's a great design using motivational word-art. Each time you look at them, you should get a subtle positive boost!!
more items featuring these motivational words
more items in the Motivational Words series

image code: mowds2

»visit the HightonRidley store for more designs and products like this

Beagle Puppy Dog Mousepads

Cute Alert!

How can you resist this cute puppy design? Maybe you'd like to see your name or initials on it? Click to customize and personalize...


tagged with: beagle, puppy, dog, puppies, animal, pet, animals

Cute Beagle Puppy Dog Mousepad

»visit the giftscollectibles store for more designs and products like this
The Zazzle Promise: We promise 100% satisfaction. If you don't absolutely love it, we'll take it back!

Weigh In: Are Personal Blogs and Business Blogs Really That Different?

Blogging with purpose

original post »
Image via Stuart Miles / freedigitalphotos.net

Image via Stuart Miles / freedigitalphotos.net

Do you remember how it was back in the 90s, when most of us didn’t have a clue about blogs and blogging? Today we can hardly imagine a world without them. And if the first blogs from mid-90s had a personal character and resembled an online diary, business blogging has taken quite a different track. Or have they?

What do personal and business blogging have in common?

At first, I would say it’s the need to have a blog to write for (just joking, I’m sure this is something that can’t be skipped).

Personal blogging means having your own little corner of the web, where you express everything from your personal beliefs, ideas, tips for spending free time, preferences, hobbies; to relating personal stories from your everyday life.

Business blogging works following a similar principle – the one of having an own place on the web where to present yourself as a company, to be more human, show what you’re like, and  engage with your followers, just like you do on a personal blog.

For both types of blogs you need to have a well-contoured idea of what you want to write about, although the business blog requires even higher levels of structure. You can’t (or at least shouldn’t) start a blog just for the sake of following a trend, if you don’t have any hint on what your blog’s purpose should be.

A second common point is: keeping your audience in mind when you write. For whom do write? Do you write for tech savvy people? Don’t be afraid to use some technical jargon, then. Do you write for your grandma’s generation? Use language that isn’t too tech-heavy. An useful measure for knowing for whom you are writing is to undertake audience research. Personas can help you imagine how your typical reader looks and behaves. It’s then easier to craft content for someone you already have in mind.

The whole purpose of a blog is to have a more personal touch. Hence, the writer’s personality will come to the surface through their style of writing on both types of blogs. The personal one, however, allows its owner to express their thoughts in a more intimate manner than on a business blog, where communication has to respect some basic guidelines.

Another common characteristic of both blog types is the need to engage with followers. Whether it is a personal blog or a business blog, your articles shouldn’t take the shape of a monologue. On the contrary – you should encourage readers to comment and share their ideas and thoughts. Besides developing your discussion and making it more interactive, visitors can provide you with new ideas on what they’d like to read, which then informs your content.

Now tell me what you think of blogs that don’t have a contact method. I personally tend to ignore them, because I can’t explain to myself why you wouldn’t want to get in touch with your readers. It bothers me not to have any way of sending the blog owner a message, especially because it’s very easy to include a contact form on your blog. There are plugins for WordPress that let you build and publish a contact form in no time.

One more thing you can do on both personal and business blogs is have guest posts. This can be a good way to offer some variation in content and writing style, which your readers might appreciate. Though, the topics and the most appropriate guest authors depend on your blog type. Business blogs can benefit of featuring well known industry speakers, fellow business owners, or product/service partners. Personal blogs might have a smaller chance to feature opinion leaders, but they are still useful.

Last but not least, you have to be careful what you write about and what you make public. It’s true that blogs should express honest opinions, but that doesn’t mean you can wake up one day and begin to denigrate everybody in your life.

How are personal and business blogs different?

Apart from sharing a few common points, these two types of blogs can be poles apart. Here are the main traits that distinguish one from the other:

  1. In many cases, the audience of a business blog is more specialised. It’s more of a niche audience, which at some point might be more picky than the readers of your personal blog. For example, you can choose to write today about kittens on your personal blog. Tomorrow you shift the content direction and cover diet tips. And the day after tomorrow you feel like speaking of planes. Your followers might be indulgent when it comes to your personal blog, but business articles should stay quite focused.
  2. For a business blog, I would say that it’s more difficult to write compelling content that keeps readers coming back. Your blog has to speak about your business, but be of a more general interest at the same time. As for the personal blog, you have a higher freedom in choosing what to write about.
  3. The previous point leads to mentioning one more difference: business blogs offer valuable, useful content, engage and advertise at the same time. Perhaps ‘advertise’ is not the most appropriate term, but business blogs do provide information on the product or service behind the business. Common sense asks for this information not to be overly promotional, but to present additional advice on how to make the most out of the product, how to benefit of the product’s partnerships and others.
  4. Moreover, there are several points to keep in mind when crafting your business blog content – how to write headlines, not having a clear posting strategy, being all too promotional, using images incorrectly. or being too SEO-crazy.
  5. The content on a business blog should be even more engaging than on a personal blog, meaning that it should be accompanied by strong calls-to-action that make the visitor convert. After all, the final purpose of a business blog is to convince the visitor that your product is the best choice, something that you do through presenting its extended features, advantages, use cases and so on.
  6. Besides strong calls-to-action, your business blog can benefit from including lead generation methods, such as lead generation forms. This type of form can include various sub-types like the contact form, the request a quote form, the newsletter subscription form, the freebie form and others which can fulfill the lead generation requirement.
  7. Because we’re talking of the business sector, where every resource allocation has to be justified, your business blog also needs to be analyzed. Engagement, ROI, conversions, requests for more information about your business – they all have to be tracked closely to see how your blog strategy is working out. Unlike your personal blog, the business one has to drive clear results.
  8. We’ve established before that you are responsible for what you post on the web for both personal and business blogs. Nevertheless, posting on a business blog requires you to be even more careful. How do you perceive a typo on a personal blog and how do you do it when it comes to a business blog? When writing about and for your company, you are associated with the company image. The slightest mistake you make can have a huge impact on the brand you’re representing.

Having said outlined these differences, some could argue that personal blogs, particularly personal blogs that create income and are brands unto themselves, also benefit from such “business-blogging” strategies. Where do you stand on the issue?

Sabina Stoiciu enjoys blogging, photography, traveling and finding ways of gathering and sharing relevant business knowledge. You can follow her on Twitter. She also writes for 123ContactForm, the online form and survey builder – try it for free.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Build a Better Blog in 31 Days

Weigh In: Are Personal Blogs and Business Blogs Really That Different?

Build a Better Blog in 31 Days

Weigh In: Are Personal Blogs and Business Blogs Really That Different?
 #bloggingtips 

Set up an Autoresponder using IFTTT and your Gmail account

Autoresonder IFTTT Recipe - click to see larger
If you want to email someone something specific when they ask for it, all automatically, here's a way to do it using IFTTT and your Gmail account.

You might want to do this as one of your marketing / promoting choices such as when you have a brochure of your products you want people to get.

Sure, you could put the same brochure on a website or blog instead - but consider the following...

It's a well-known fact that if you can get people to take some form of action, your conversion rates improve.

The reason is, that taking action establishes a relationship with you in the subconscious parts of their minds.

Of course, what you do with that early-stage relationship is down to you and your marketing / promotion strategy

Setting one up for yourself

And it's so easy....

On your blog, mailings, social media etc. you tell people:
"To get my current brochure, send an email to youremail@gmail.com and put the hashtag #brochure in the body somewhere.
You'll get an email back again within the hour with my latest brochure"

Steps

1) You set up an IFTTT recipe with a trigger channel of Gmail (new email from search)

2) You tell IFTTT to send to the FromAddress ingredient (i.e. to the person sending the email)

3) You give it a body containing the html of your brochure

I don't have a brochure, so for this example, I've used it to automatically give out my current Zaps promotional coupon code.

Try it out: send an email to highton.ridley@gmail.com and within 15 minutes or so, you'll get an automatic reply with my Zaps voucher code in the email.

To set up an 'autoresponder' for yourself you'll need to sign up for IFTTT and connect it to your G-mail account (they call it 'Activating channels')

IFTTT Set-up

Here's a video tutorial on activating channels in IFTTT. The initial slide gives you the link to IFTTT so you can sign up for an account if you need to.

320° Licht: A Repurposed 112-Meter High Gas Tank Converted into a Cathedral of Light

Fun and Random

320° Licht: A Repurposed 112 Meter High Gas Tank Converted into a Cathedral of Light projection light installation
Thomas Wolf © 2014
320° Licht: A Repurposed 112 Meter High Gas Tank Converted into a Cathedral of Light projection light installation
Thomas Wolf © 2014
320° Licht: A Repurposed 112 Meter High Gas Tank Converted into a Cathedral of Light projection light installation
Gasometer Oberhausen / Wolfgang Volz / Urbanscreen
320° Licht: A Repurposed 112 Meter High Gas Tank Converted into a Cathedral of Light projection light installation
Thomas Wolf © 2014
320° Licht: A Repurposed 112 Meter High Gas Tank Converted into a Cathedral of Light projection light installation
Thomas Wolf © 2014
320° Licht: A Repurposed 112 Meter High Gas Tank Converted into a Cathedral of Light projection light installation
Thomas Machoczek © 2014
German creative studio Urbanscreen have just unveiled ‘320 Licht,’ a massive light projection inside the cathedral-like interior of the 20,000 square meter Gasometer Oberhausen in Germany (the same space that housed Christo’s Big Air Package last year). Urbanscreen utilized both the ceiling and 320 degrees of the interior space of this former gas tank to project a 22-minute loop of digital animation with 21 high-powered Epson projectors.
“This experience is based on the vastness of the Gasometer,” sound designer Jonas Wiese told the Creator’s Project. “We tried to work with that expression to make the space bigger and smaller, to deform it and to change its surface over and over while not exaggerating and overwriting the original effect of the room.” He continues, “the age of the screen is coming to an end, digital interfaces will dissolve and merge into the social space [...] we poetically contribute to this through art.”
320 Licht is part of the exhibition The Appearance of Beauty and will be on view through December 30th, 2014. Watch the included video above from the Creator’s Project to learn more about how it all came together.

#funandrandom 
original post: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/colossal/~3/-w0yBosWDKE/