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Blogging Tips June 28, 2017

Five Essential Bits of Tech for All Travel Bloggers

Tech Bits for Travel Bloggers

Blogging is undoubtedly one of the most popular activities among travelers – from documenting your journey, to reading up on other people’s hints and tips, it’s a growing community. However, if you want to be deemed a successful travel blogger and one that’s followed by a large group of people, then you need to have the right kit.

You can’t get away with a shoddy website and blurry photos: the bar has been raised time and time again, and now people are displaying photos and videos with incredible clarity and composition. Websites are professionally designed, and the copy is witty and engaging. To give yourself the edge, you need technology that meets the mark, and helps you stand out from the crowd.

1. Photo and Video Editing Software

The standard of traveling videos and photos is soaring. People expect output of a professional quality, and if yours are obviously amateurish, you won’t get much of a look in. Luckily, you don’t need to be an editing whizz to do well. There’s plenty of easy to use software on the market that can give you a professional feel, without taking hours to learn and set up.

2. Light, Powerful Devices

If you’re going traveling, you don’t want to be carrying heavy devices in your bag. Choose devices that are light, but still powerful. These are more expensive than heavier or weaker options, but well worth investing in. Likewise, choosing something like a Go-Pro can be better than taking a digital camera, as you can get better shots from a smaller device.

Image via Flickr

3. A Safe ‘back up plan’

Now, take this in both senses of the word. You need to plan how you’ll back up your data, and a plan of what you’ll do if you somehow lose everything. Online cloud-based platforms are the best way to back up your files if you’re traveling – you don’t want the extra weight of carrying an external hard drive.

Traveling isn’t great for technology. Bags get dropped, laptops get squashed, tech gets wet. All of this can result in hard drives that fail easily, or get broken in transit. If this happens, you could lose everything – all of your typed documents and all of your photos and videos. If you haven’t managed to back this up, then you need to get in touch with data retrieval specialists, who can help you recover everything.

4. A Dongle or Router

While most hostels and hotels will have fairly good internet connections, you don’t want to be too reliant on this. If you can sort out a dongle or mobile router to take with you, you’ll be able to guarantee yourself a strong, secure connection. Plus, you’ll be able to while away the time waiting at bus stops and in airports by blogging and uploading your pictures and videos.

5. Portable Charging Packs

A portable charging pack can make any traveler’s life a hundred times easier. You can forget about running out of charge on long coach journeys or while you’re in the middle of nowhere – these packs can give you a few days of extra battery charge. They can be quite big and bulky, but the smaller ones aren’t worth bringing with you. The robust types are best, as they’re likely to get crashed around a bit.

Featured Image: Pixabay

Blogging Tips March 2, 2017

Putting your Website to Work

Website to Work

Too many websites are static. They might look good, but they do not connect with their respective markets. If your landscape architecture site is not engaging internet browsers, you may be wasting money.

What to look for

Potential customers need your phone number, of course, and they appreciate knowing your history and product line. But, they also want more. You can think of it the way people browse. If they enter “landscape architecture,” they may discover your website. But, most people are looking for “how to” or “best” or “top” landscape architects.

They will enter something specific in their browser, and it you don’t have any content to match those searches, they will not discover you unless your site is search engine optimized (SEO). As authorities at Google support say, “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.” Still, with support from a quality SEO firm.

White Hat trumps Black Hat SEO

White Hat SEO is the best way to go if you intend to commit to a long-term web strategy. It uses strategies and tactics that reach a human audience instead of robots. Following keyword research and analysis, it places keywords to enhance your readership. It places links and backlinks to improve your traffic, and it presents content and copy that appeals to human readers. And, it does this by following the rules and regulations of the prominent search engines.

Black Hat SEO pursues unethical means to exploit the technology to connect with a nonhuman audience for a quick financial return. It stuffs content with keywords, hidden copy, and swapping pages once it has achieved some search engine ranking.

You may get away with Black Hat tactics for a while, but the approach can also get you outlawed by the key search engines.

What to opt for

Youth Noise, an SEO Boston, MA provider urges users to look for more. They propose a creation of your own “Personal Broadcasting Network.” They seek to generate copy consistently to create hundreds of backlinks and social connections. These are the strong signals that separate it from the Black Hat behaviors.

Forbes recommends several steps:

Decide what you need. You need to know if you are trying to increase leads or sales, traffic or link-building. Each need prompts specific strategies.
Seek multiple consultations. Keeping a low profile, you can talk to many SEO firms to weigh the proposals, costs, and quality.
Check references. Look at what they are doing and what they have done in the past. If they have a record of success with businesses like yours, they will likely do the same for you.
Make them tell stories. Talking with the provider will tell you more than their website will. They should explain their founding and history. They should admit hits and misses and highs and lows. It helps evaluate them if you know how they feel about themselves and what they see as the secret to their success.

Most businesses do not have the skill set or experience to gain a top ranking on Yahoo, Bing, or Google. But, if you don’t, your potential customers won’t find you either. You need the qualified experience it takes to multiply numbers of visits. Only frequent visitors will increase your brand awareness, increase sales opportunities, and boost your profits.

So, if you lack the time and technological skills, you need a reliable and capable SEO consultant and provider to create and sustain the engagement you need.

Blogging Tips January 10, 2017

Top Tips for Blogging about Your Student Life

Top Blogging Tips for Students

Today’s students may still be strapped for cash, but at least the internet has provided us with a whole new means of making money. Blogging has become popular around the world with travelers, moms and dads, gadget enthusiasts, chefs and bakers, fitness fanatics, and more and more diverse ranges of people. Blogging isn’t just a fun way to express your views and opinions, share your stories or provide others with information on things that you’re passionate about, many bloggers also use this hobby to make an extra income, for example from advertising or selling products on their blog. With that in mind, it’s no wonder that many students are turning to blogging to earn themselves some cash. We’ve put together some top blogging tips about student life.

Share Information

Although it’s great to share your own personal stories and experiences of student life with your blog’s readers, the best way to get more views and attract more readers to your blog is to share information that your target demographic will find useful. Assuming that you’re going to be aiming your blog at fellow students, you could write things such as top tips for studying for an online MBA, for example, or information for new students on making friends and finding clubs or societies to join. You could even relate your advice to your own experiences.

Post Regularly

Blogging might be a flexible way to earn an extra income, but when you’re working to a student timeframe, regularly updating your blog can soon become a chore. This is a shame, however, as setting aside some time to work on your blog can actually do you good by giving you a break from concentrating on your college studies and demonstrating your time management skills to future employers, as running your own blog can look great on your resume.

Use Social Media

You probably use social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter to connect with family, friends, course mates and others, as you earn your MBA online from Northeastern University. As a student blogger, it’s important to take your social media use to the next level by creating pages for your blog and sharing your most interesting content for your social media followers to see. Not only will this give your SEO a boost, it can be a great way to get more readers by asking your followers to share.

Welcome Feedback

Blogging is becoming more and more popular as a way of earning money, so it’s no surprise that being a blogger is an increasingly competitive role. However, as you blog, it’s always important to welcome constructive feedback, either from other bloggers or your readers. And, don’t forget to socialize with other bloggers, as forming good relationships with them is essential for good link building and can even lead to better opportunities.

As a student, blogging could be the perfect way for you to make a living. However, juggling a blog and student life isn’t always easy, so make sure that you follow these top tips for success.

Blogging Tips June 22, 2016

How to Select a Blog Subject that will Sell

If the world of blogging fascinates you, it is quite likely that eventually you will have your own blog, if you still don’t have one. When you intend to start a blog and you have no idea at all as to how to start a blog, you will perhaps consult the ones that already have a blog and most importantly are active bloggers. But selecting topics for a blog is oftentimes the biggest challenge, which you will surely overcome if you follow what others do.

Experts are of the opinion that the best way is to have a great content. As the old saying goes, “Content is King”. So, it is important to have a regularly updated content that will appear fresh to the visitors along with the promotions of your blog’s content!

Select a Blog Subject that will Sell

In this article we will focus on selecting the right ideas for a blog, and not just any ordinary blog, a blog that will help you to promote your brand and also enhance your web presence on the virtual world. The ones that are actively into blogging are well aware as to how a blog can attract natural back links and look appealing.

Tips to choose right blog ideas/topics

Given below are few tips to choose the selling topics for a blog. Check them out.

Visit forums

One of the best ways to look for an idea for your blog is to find out queries and the variations of the same. Remember, online forums have threads that deal with different topics. So, you have plenty to browse through to see which topic is popular. Most importantly, there are different questions in the forums that get replies. The questions that have been asked the most can be taken as a topic for your blog.

Here is a list of some of the most popular forums:

Be convinced

This is one of the biggest mistakes most of the new bloggers make initially. Just because they see someone else dealing or writing about a particular topic drives them to write on the same even if the topic is absolutely new to the blogger. This has to be avoided at all costs. Believe in individuality and select a topic accordingly. For instance, as mentioned above, you can write about a topic that you see mostly being asked about. But prior to selecting the topic, you should be convinced enough to go ahead with that topic.

Stay focused

Since you are a blogger, you have a knack for writing. At least, this is what people will think about you. If you have selected an idea for your blog, let us say, medicine or symptoms of diseases, try to stick to the theme most of the time. It is alright to deviate a little. For instance, if you are writing about diseases and their treatment, you can write about the home remedies or alternative methods of treatment but you cannot just turn around 3600 and write about the rocket science or for that matter, astronauts. The reader will lose focus and so will your blog.

It is best to write your blog with passion and not just because you want to get back links. Let your ideas go with the natural thinking process once you select a blog subject that will sell.