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Half OFF Sale

May 15, 2012 By Shauna Leave a Comment

Now through May 31, 2012 Business 2 Blogger is offering 1/2 OFF of one of our most popular Blogger Credit packages!

Whether you are looking for Bloggers right now or want to stock up on credits for a future Blogger promotion, this is a fantastic deal! To take advantage of this great offer, log in to your account (or REGISTER) at http://jobs.business2blogger.com/emplogin.cfm and click on PRICING PLANS.

BLOGGERS:

If you participate in our affiliate program, you can grab promotional banners/buttons in your ShareASale account. If you aren’t part of our affiliate program yet, you should be! Sign up or learn more today & start earning 25% of all sales that come through you!

Filed Under: Featured

What To Put On Your Blog’s Contact Page

May 14, 2012 By Jessica 2 Comments

In addition to an About page on your blog, you should also have a Contact page.

While it might seem redundant to have social icons in your sidebar, contact info on your About page, and a Contact page, it is not. The easier you make it for people to connect with you, the better it is for everyone.

A link to your About page

A link to your About page at the top of the contact page makes it easy for people to learn more about you before contacting. This is helpful for PR people who are wondering whether or not you will be a good fit for their product.

Guidelines you follow

On your Contact page, tell people what you will and will not do in terms of guest posting on your site, writing guest posts for other sites, and product reviews/giveaways/advertising. This will save time for all involved.

Contact links

Hyperlink all of your contact information so that the user only has to click the link to connect with you. Be sure that the link opens in a new tab. Include links for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, SU, Pinterest, and any other social networking site you actively use. For your email address, write it out like this Jessica{at}mytimeasmom{dot}com to prevent spammers from sending you emails.

Optional: Contact Form

Some bloggers like to use contact forms, which is fine. If you are going to use a contact form, be sure to also include your email address on the contact page. Not all people like to use contact forms so by including your email address and the contact form, you give your readers options to reach out in whatever manner is easiest for them.

Have you created your contact page?

Blogger Promotion Ideas for Businesses

May 9, 2012 By Shauna 59 Comments

As a Blogger, I see the world through new eyes. Sounds pretty profound, huh? When I eat at an amazing burger, I want to blog about it. When my kids create a snow storm with a perfectly good bottle of powder, I want to blog about it. When Holly sees a “made for TV product,” she wants to blog about it. It’s like we cant help ourselves… BLOGGER promotion Blogger Promotion Ideas for Businesses

Our friends in business are catching on to our obsession, which is why Jay, Holly & I started Business 2 Blogger. But I thought it might be good for us to help the process along some.

Please use the comment form below to contribute some of your brilliant review ideas, “blog for hire” dreams and favorite promotional blogging experiences!

Early next week, I will be sharing this list with over 1100 business contacts – in hopes that we can bring some of these to life!

And as a THANK YOU for contributing, I will be drawing 1 lucky winner to receive $25 in cold hard digital cash via Paypal!

Drawing will be held on Tuesday, May 15, 2012 by noon. Comments will stay open for contributions after drawing has been held. Winner will be paid $25USD via Paypal by Tuesday, May 15 at 5pm.

Filed Under: Blogger Voice, Giveaway

How To Make Your About Page Awesome

May 7, 2012 By Jessica 12 Comments

About pages are very important for bloggers as it’s the quickest way to let readers and brands get to know more about you in the shortest amount of time.

Your About page should have a good picture of you and of course information you think is important for readers to know right away. But there are a few other things you can do to help your About page stand out.

A welcome video

Video is a great addition to blogs and if you are brave enough to get in front of the camera you can make a welcome video for your blog. Introduce yourself and what your blog is all about in a few minutes (3 min max). This doesn’t replace the written word on the About page, but it does allow you to give more information about you and your blog without making your About page too long.

Links to Relevant Blog Posts

On your About page you want to give readers more information about you but you don’t want to overwhelm them. A great way to do this is to link to relevant blog posts you have written. Instead of giving a lot of details on your About page, give just a few words that are linked to a post you wrote about the subject. This way, if readers want to know more, they can click the link.

Links to your top 3 favorite posts

As bloggers, we have posts that stand out as the best of the best, the posts that we are most proud of for whatever reason. Direct your readers to these posts at the end of your About page so they can instantly see what you feel is your best work.

A way to contact you

Put your email address on your About page as well as links to at least your Twitter and Facebook accounts. This way, readers and brands can easily connect with you if they have questions or want to tell you something. If you have a Contact page, you can also put a link to that page so people can easily find additional ways to contact you if they so desire.

What have you done to your About page to make it stand out?

Filed Under: Tips Tagged With: about me page, blogging, blogging tips

SEO Tip – Your Title and Post URL.

May 4, 2012 By Jay Leave a Comment

A quickie SEO tip today from your pals over at B2B.

Although each of us Bloggers is convinced that we are the funniest, most engaging, and dare I say, CUTEST blogger out there, Google has a funny-and-yet-insulting habit of disagreeing with us.

So after you decide whether or not your blog post is even going to be SEO-worthy, you’ll then need to make sure you do the most important things right. And those are…

Your Post Title, and
Your Post URL.

There are plenty of things to consider when optimizing your SEO, but these two are by far the most important.

Your post title should be appropriate to the post content, obviously, but more importantly it should contain the keywords you are trying to capture visitors with. And herein lies the problem: If you decide that you really want to land on the first page of search results when people search for the word “business”, I have a startling revelation for you.

Ain’t gon’ happen.

Instead of trying to target something so broad, go in search of the long-tailed keywords that will allow you to capture search hits without trying to battle the entire internet in a pick-me-free-for-all.

Pick a long-tailed keyword phrase that is appropriate to your post content like “start a duck-calling business”. The trick to finding these phrases is playing with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, and looking for popular search phrases with low competition. Then, place that phrase as close to the beginning of your post title as you can.

As far as the Post URL is concerned, I then have good success simply using the Post Title in the Post URL, with hyphens in between the words, which is the default we set up in WordPress. For instance, you can see that the URL of this post is:

http://business2blogger.com/seo-tip-your-title-and-post-url/

Remember, there is plenty more that is important when writing an SEO-attractive post, but this by far is the most important place to start. Back soon with more!

Filed Under: Featured

Why Bloggers Should Use Instagram

April 30, 2012 By Jessica 13 Comments

After setting up your Instagram account and learning how to use the photo sharing app, the next step is to understand why you, as a blogger, should be using it.

I’m sure some people think, why should I use Instagram for sharing my pictures instead of just posting them directly on Twitter and Facebook?

To start with, Instagram is for photos only so your images won’t get lost among links for blog posts, ads and status updates. Also, you can link Instagram with your Twitter and Facebook account so the pictures are shared on multiple sites with just one upload.

But, you should also be using Instagram so that you can….

Connect With People

Social networking is all about connecting with people. With Instagram you can follow and be followed by other people, just the same as any other social networking site. What’s unique about Instagram, however, is that you can use your images to build connections with people in a way that cannot be done with your words.

Humanize Yourself

When you share pictures of you, your family, and/or what you are doing (eating, drinking, etc.) you are showing people that you are a more than a blogger who sits behind a computer screen all day. People like knowing more about the person whose words they read in blog posts.

Create a buzz

Whether it’s your latest recipe, craft, or a new product you are reviewing, you can create a buzz by posting a picture on Instagram. You can also use your pictures to show what’s going on behind the scenes of your latest creation that won’t be posted on your blog and can get lost on Twitter. Use visual storytelling with your images to get your followers excited about what you have to come on the blog. People like having something to look forward to.

Remember, a picture is worth a 1,000 words and Instagram makes sharing pictures easier than ever before.

Filed Under: Tips Tagged With: Instagram, mobile devices

How To Use Instagram

April 26, 2012 By Jessica 9 Comments

After you sign up for Instagram and get your account setup, it’s time to start using the app.

In Instagram, along the bottom there are 5 different images that each do something different. I’ll start at the first option on the left and work from there for this post.

Instagram Picture Feed

Here, you can see pictures that people you are following have shared. You can scroll through the photos, like them by either pressing the “like” button or double tapping on the image, and you can leave comments.

Popular Pictures

The star button shows popular pictures on Instagram. These are going to be photos from celebrities and other high profile people that have 1,000s of likes/comments. Just like with the regular news feed, you can like and comment on the pictures in the popular feed.

Share Pictures

To share your photos with Instagram, you have two options. You can either upload an existing picture from your phone or take a new picture.

To upload a picture, press the button of the two squares in the left hand corner. You will then be directed to your camera roll where you can select the picture you want to share.

To take a new picture, line up your shot and press the camera button in the middle.

Once you have your picture selected, you can edit it with one of the options given with Instagram.

For editing with Instagram you can use one of the filters shown along the bottom, add a border using the square frame icon, or blur out some of the picture with the raindrop image.

Once you are happy with your picture and the editing, press the green checkmark. If you are not happy with the picture, you can press the red X to start over.

After pressing the green checkmark you will be able to add a caption to your picture and share it on various social networking sites including Twitter, Facebook, Email, and Tumblr.

To configure the social sharing options, press “configure” for the social networking site and follow the directions to link the accounts.

News Feed

The speech bubble with a heart in it is your news feed which will show the likes, comments, and new followers you have on Instagram.

About Section

The last image is the newspaper which is where you can edit your about information as was shown in the last post on how to setup Instagram. In this section, you can also find more friends to follow, see the pictures you have shared as well as the pictures you have liked from your followers.

Note: these screen shots are all from an iPhone.

Now you are all set to use Instagram. Come back on Monday to find out why you should be using Instagram.

Filed Under: Tutorials Tagged With: Instagram, mobile devices

How To Setup An Instagram Account

April 23, 2012 By Jessica 3 Comments

Instagram is a popular free photo sharing application for mobile devices. Previously it was only available for Apple products, but now it can be downloaded on both Apple and Android operating systems.

Install Instagram

After downloading the app to your mobile device, you need to sign up for Instagram.

In the main screen, there will be two options, one to sign up and one to login. Press the “Sign up” button.

Sign Up For Instagram

Next you need to set up your account. Enter your email, username (make it the same as your Twitter handle with no @sign if possible), and a password. A picture can be added later on if you don’t want to do it at this time and I don’t recommend adding your phone number. Once you have the necessary fields completed, press “Done.”

Find Friends

Now you can find friends to follow using your contact list, Facebook and Twitter friends or by searching names in Instagram.

For example, if I want to find my Twitter friends who are on Instagram I would press the Twitter friends option and would be shown a list of all the people I’m connected with on Twitter that use Instagram. I can either follow all by pressing the “follow all” button or I can select the people I want to follow by pressing the “follow” button next to their name.

Once you are done finding friends to follow, press the “Next” button.

Instagram will give you a list of suggested people to follow. You can decide if you want to follow them or not. Once you are finished with this screen, press “Done.”

Edit Your Profile

Now you are on Instagram. But you aren’t done setting up your profile yet. In Instagram, along the bottom, you will see 5 different icons. Press the rectangle icon that looks like a newspaper (or at least I think that’s what they want it to look like). This take you to your profile settings.

Go to Account, Edit Profile to finish your profile settings. Enter your First and Last name (if you want them shown), your URL, a short bio, and whatever other information you want to complete for your public and private profile. Be sure to hit “Submit” when you are done.

Add A Profile Picture

Go back to Profile and if you haven’t already added a profile picture, go to “Change Profile Picture.” Here you have the options of taking a picture, choosing one from your library, or importing from Facebook or Twitter. Pick whichever option you want and select your photo.

Optional Privacy Setting

The last important setting is the Privacy option. Here you can decide whether or not you want your pictures to be private. If you decide to have your photos private, you will have to approve follower requests.

If you aren’t already using Instagram, I suggest you follow these steps to get signed up today. I’ll have more information soon on how to use Instagram to share pictures as well as some reasons why you should be on Instagram.

Note: These screen shots and steps are from an iPhone.

Filed Under: Tutorials Tagged With: Instagram, mobile devices

3 Ways To Make Your Blog Pin Friendly

April 19, 2012 By Jessica 4 Comments

Pinterest has been a great source of traffic for many bloggers who use beautiful pictures in their posts. However, there has been a lot of controversy lately over Pinterest and copyright violations.

Many people are afraid to pin images from sites for fear of getting sued. Some are even going so far as to ask the site owner (via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc) before they pin images.

As bloggers, we love (almost) any site that helps us share our posts with people so naturally we want people to be able to pin our stuff. To help people know that your site and posts are pin friendly here are some tips:

Put a Pin Friendly button or text in your sidebar

Place either a button that says your site is Pinterest friendly or text in the sidebar. Make sure that the button or text is high enough so that people will see it when they are reading the post. You can see an example of pin friendly text in the sidebar on my cocktail blog.

Put Pin Friendly text at the bottom of your post

This might seem like a lot of work depending on how often you post, but you can put text at the bottom of every post saying that the post is pin friendly. This will ensure that after reading the post people know that they are welcome to pin it.

Use a Pin It Button in the blog post

Pinterest has a Pin It button that you can place in your blog posts. Fill out the URL of the post, the URL of the image, and a short description of the pin. Then place the code in the HTML of your blog post.

If you are on a self hosted WordPress site there are plugins that you can use for a pin it share button including:

Pinterest “Pin It” Button - places a pin it button on the image that a user will see when they hover over the image.

Pin It On Pinterest – places a pin it button at the end of the post and you can decide what image gets pinned and the description for the pin.

Shareaholic - includes a share on Pinterest button in the post share icons at the bottom of the post.

Social Discussions – includes a Pin it button in the post share buttons at the bottom of the post (looks different than the Shareaholic share buttons).

(Note these are just a few options for Pinterest sharing buttons, there are many out there).

Personally, I recommend putting pin friendly text or a button in your sidebar along with a pin it button in your posts. The text/button in the sidebar immediately lets people know that your site is pin friendly and the pin it button in blog posts makes it easy for people to pin your images.

Remember the easier you make it for people to share your content, the more traffic you can drive to your site.

Filed Under: Social Media Tips, Tips Tagged With: pinterest