Gone are the days when you can raise your market value simply  by including a photo of some attractive white people. Stock photos, when used incorrectly, have come to signal inauthenticity. (We know those multicultural people don’t really work at your office.) But unless you’re a professional photographer, your image choices are limited. So what can you do?

In my years of blogging, I’ve uncovered a couple ways to use stock photos effectively. Here are my favorite tricks.

1. Crop at the eyes. By cropping photos of people at the eyes, you mask their identity while also encouraging viewers to interpret the picture however they choose – or even see themselves in the photo. It’s a trick that’s often used in book covers:

As you can probably tell from the pictures above, cropping the eyes from photos also removes some of the “stock photo feel.”

2. Add text. You can use words to add meaning to stock photos and increase their relevancy. Play around with the font, color and placement of your text to get the right effect. For the postcard below, I simply purchased a stock photo, then added text using a free font I found at dafont.com:

3. Add speech bubbles. I learned this trick from Ian Lurie of Conversation Marketing. Adding speech bubbles to stock photos add a playful vibe to your work and can give you the opportunity to further customize the picture’s meaning. Check out this example, from a blog post on rhymes in advertising:

4. Use Photoshop brushes. The internet is full of free Photoshop brushes that you can use over top of stock photos for a customized look. Just choose your color and then stamp the brush on top.

Here, I used a handwriting brush to add an extra layer of interest to a stock photo:

5. Forget stock photos. Just use a LOLcat. I’m only half-joking here. There’s a reason LOLcats have become an internet sensation. Two reasons, actually: they’re funny, and they’re cute.

I like using LOLcats on blog posts that are hard to match up with a stock photo. They add humor and irreverence in an industry (marketing) where so many people take themselves too seriously. Plus, they’re meant to be shared. Use your own kitty image, or do a search on Creative Commons for something that isn’t copyright protected and add your own funny caption.

If your business is serious (say you sell medical supplies) LOLcats may not be the best choice of graphics. So as with any stock photo, use your best judgement.

How do you make your stock photos stand out from the crowd? Let me know in the comments section below.

]]> http://www.onewomanmarketing.com/standout-stock-photos/feed 10 http://www.onewomanmarketing.com/makeover-your-blog http://www.onewomanmarketing.com/makeover-your-blog#comments Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:53:42 +0000 Kelly Kautz http://www.onewomanmarketing.com/?p=7304

Julia is a writer passionate about health, fitness & blogging. When she’s not running her dog she can sometimes be found writing about Sono Bello, cooking and a myriad of other topics.

It’s time for a makeover … for your blog, that is.  Maybe it needs some extensive work, like a facelift.  Or perhaps just a little bit of makeup and a new hairdo.  Whatever the change may be, make sure your makeover doesn’t turn into a complete disaster.  Here are some tips for the right way to make over your blog.

1.  Know why you’re doing a makeover

When bloggers are looking at their website day after day, it’s easy to get bored with it and feel like it’s old and outdated.  But think about your readers who spending perhaps one to fifteen minutes a day on your blog, or an hour a week.  It’s not boring to them because they don’t spend as much time looking at it as you do!

Make sure that you have a good reason for a makeover.  Are you making a life transition and want your blog to reflect that?  Are you moving from a general health blog to a vegan blog?  The best time for a makeover is when you need to make a big change.  Avoid doing make overs frequently or just because you are bored.  Readers like consistency, not a blog that looks different every month.

 2. Plan it out before you execute

Don’t start editing HTML and changing things whenever a new idea pops into your head.  Have a plan before you start and try to complete it as quickly as possible.  Know what your theme, main text colors, images, and blog layout will be.  Have all of the HTML and URLs saved on your computer.

If you have put in the time to figure out what the end result of your makeover will be, it will take less time to implement.  In turn, your readers will be able to enjoy the finished product sooner and you won’t have to work out the kinks for weeks (maybe even months).

 3. Give readers a heads up

Let your readers know that you are about to do a blog overhaul.  Since they are the ones who navigate your website the most, ask for their input!  Is the navigation easy to follow?  What color scheme would be more effective?

Give them a few weeks to give you their suggestions.  Once you start implementing your makeover, post a note on the homepage letting readers know that you are in the process of updating the site and apologize for any broken links or errors.  When people know what is going on, they will be more likely to excuse the mess!

Take a minute to look at your blog from the reader’s perspective before you start chopping it up and throwing in new sections.  Ultimately, you want your makeover to increase readership, not drive it away.  Don’t let your blog endure a quick and poorly executed makeover.  Do it the right way.

Internet marketing isn’t simple. Never mind the fizzy babble about social marketing and getting rich in your pajamas. This is a tough market where someone can click away anytime he or she feels like it.

If you’re a blogger, you probably already know how tough it can be. If you want to do your marketing online, you need to look at marketing strategies and practical options, not hype. Most of all, you need to target your blog to core users.

Why? By targeting your content and keywords, you improve your search engine optimization (SEO), causing your blog to rise higher in search engine results and generating more traffic and more attention.

Targeting basics

Targeting is a marketing principle designed to identify core users. While targeting can get pretty scientific, its basic concepts are pretty straightforward. For blog targeting, ask yourself:

Who wants this information? Is your audience a group of IT experts,  or people looking for electrical appliances and consumer tips online? Are they specialists or generalists in terms of the subject? Are you providing user information or analyses?

What level of information do you provide? This follows from the preceding point. Some bloggers have found that their audiences can’t get enough information, particularly the specialists. Others have discovered that audiences home in on the unique content values of their blogs. Obviously, targeting has to develop according to the blog’s needs.

Is your blog a mishmash of subjects? A mix of subjects means your targeting is all over the place. It also tends to detract from search relevance. If you’ve got 10 articles on new fighter jets and 100 on affiliate marketing and other materials, someone searching for fighter jets will find your blog well down the rankings. Readers will also, naturally, tend to read only their areas of interest, so it’s a bit of a waste. Consider special blogs for regular subjects.

Got a lot of visual materials? The “all pictures” blogs are likely to be found by accident, tripping over an image on an image search. It’s a good idea to create regular streams of SEO content to make your blog easier to find. (Note: Don’t overvalue tags for pictures, either. They can’t do the same job as keywords and they also often create a big mix of subjects. Best practice SEO is keyword phrases related to subject matter.)

Targeting your blog

The best approach for blogs is to stick to very straightforward targeting strategies and develop content accordingly. If your blog’s about widgets, it needs to be the best place to get information about widgets.

This is actually good practice for bloggers, too, building in a lot of useful reference materials which can make internal linking within the blog info very easy and economic, giving bloggers less hard work to do. You don’t have to “explain” everything.

Consider your core users as the working model for your targeting approach. These are the people that are really looking for your information. They’re your real SEO in practice. They’re also the people that appreciate your work. Targeting is a win-win, when you get it right.

How do you target your blog content to the right audience? Let me know in the comments section below.

Author Bio: Tom Mallet is an Australian freelance writer and journalist. He writes extensively in Australia, Canada, Europe, and the US. He’s published more than 500 articles about various topics, including <a href=”http://www.webprofits.com.au/web_marketing.html“>Internet marketing</a> .

You check out a writing blog, hoping to learn how to improve your prose, but instead you read all about the author’s day at the mall with her two small kids. Or you open up a food blog, expecting to learn a new recipe for a dinner party you’re throwing this week, but find long anecdotes about family parties and funny things that happened to the dog.

Some bloggers include too much of the personal into their blogs, losing the focus of the blog – and possibly alienating readers. How do you know if it’s appropriate to share personal details on your blog? And how do know if you’ve crossed the line by sharing too much?

Here are some things to consider:

1. Who is Your Audience?

Do you write your blog for potential clients? Or does your audience include other professionals?

Depending on the nature of your business or blog, it may be appropriate to include some personal  information. For example, if you write a blog about your design work, it might be interesting to include anecdotes about how you find your inspiration or what your process is like. It will help make your work more personal and interesting to potential clients.

If your blog is written for a general audience, or if it involves a topic that is more personal in nature, such as parenting or relationships, then it may be appropriate (encouraged even) to talk more about your personal experiences in order to build credibility.

2. What is the Purpose of Your Blog?

If your blog is meant to showcase your business or to sell services, then personal information is likely not appropriate. You don’t want to bore or alienate potential customers, nor do you want to appear unprofessional.

However, if you yourself are the brand and are selling your expertise, then information about your experiences or background is appropriate. If your blog is meant to drive traffic in order to sell advertising or affiliate marketing, then personal information can be enticing and lure readers.

You don’t have to share salacious details, but talking about your experiences and opinions can help readers better connect to you and encourage them to return to your blog.

Striking the Right Balance

If you have determined that sharing a little personal information on your blog would be acceptable to your readers and your mission, be careful to strike the right balance of how much you share and what kind of information you share. Choose anecdotes that highlight a point you are making or that illustrate your experiences. Don’t talk about your thoughts about the latest Harry Potter movie (unless, of course, your blog is about movies or Harry Potter).

Even if your blog is conducive to sharing a lot of personal information – such as a parenting blog – don’t allow yourself to lose sight of your focus. Don’t let personal stories take the place of content – such as articles about discipline, or reviews of parenting books, and so on.

Some personal information should always be considered off limits, such as talk about religion or politics (again, unless your blog is about religion or politics). And you should always think twice before sharing any information about your family members or friends, as it may be damaging to your relationships or be seen as an invasion of their privacy. You are the best judge of what’s appropriate to share. Trust your instincts.

What are YOUR thoughts on sharing personal information on your professional blog? What are your thoughts when you see others sharing too much on their blogs?

Problogger recently featured a guest post of mine, “How To Make a Blogging Business Plan.” You may also be interested in similar blog posts:

•   Creating and Sticking to a Blog Schedule (Plus Free Templates)

•    10 Best WordPress Plugins For Small Business Blogs

•    How To Make Money Blogging

For even more great blogging resources, click on the “Blogging” category in the right hand side bar or sign up for my free monthly email newsletter to receive inbox updates.

What’s YOUR favorite blogging advice? Let me know in the comments … and thanks for stopping by!

You devote countless hours writing new content. Formatting posts. Leaving comments on other people’s blogs, and responding to comments on yours.

Then one day it hits you: blogging has stopped being fun. Blogging is work: repetitive, never-ending work. And it sucks.

I get burned out several times a year. I try to have several backup posts ready for times like these, but life often gets in the way. Then I’m left scrambling for content.

Plenty of people can tell you how to AVOID blogging burnout. Make a blog schedule. Hire guest bloggers. But when you’re mired in blogging burnout, the last thing you want to do is pay more attention to your blog.

Unfortunately, you can’t ignore it forever. So what do you do?

Here’s a list of things that have worked for me in the past. They’ll not only help you create the blog content you need to stay current, but get you back in the “blogging mood.” They also work for email newsletters, press releases, and anything else you need to do but just don’t wanna.

1. Revisit the “Why.” Why do you blog? Who are you hoping to reach? On the surface, your reasons for blogging may be practical (“to get more business”) or mundane (“to be read.”) Deep down, though, you probably have something you want to share with the world.

What is it? Tap into that passion. Then, write a mission statement and post it on your blog.

2. Connect two unlike things. Come spring, all I can think about is gardening. This is great for my yard, but bad for my blog. One day while pulling weeds, I started to think about all the ways gardening is like marketing. The resulting post – 7 Things Gardening Can Teach You About Marketing – was a big hit.

By connecting two unlike things, you force your mind to stretch in new directions. You may also stumble across an original idea.

3. Write down your ideas, and act on them quickly. Good ideas are like dreams: if you don’t make a consistent effort to remember them, you may not even know you have them.

Getting into the habit of writing your ideas down may take time, but before long, you’ll discover that you stumble upon new ones several times a day. It’s important to act quickly on them, before the energy dissipates to make way for new ideas and new projects.

Kim Taylor Kruse of the Sassy Crafter uses the BlogPress app to snap photos, capture ideas and write posts on the go.

“It allows me to capitalize on those ideas I get at random times throughout the day and put them into a post NOW instead of hours later, when I inevitably have lost my train of thought,” Kruse writes. “My most recent post is a prime example. I took the photo and wrote the post as my husband was driving us home from work.”

4. Find a Blogging Buddy. Writer Natalie Goldberg leaves messages on her friend’s voice mails, asking them to join her for a writing session at the local cafe. The caveat: they can’t tell her if they’re coming or not. That way, she feels obligated to go.

Fellow writer Susan Johnston of The Urban Muse recently reminded me that accountability can work for bloggers, too. Having someone holding you accountable for regular posts can give blogging more urgency.

Schedule a weekly call with a blogger friend, or share your goals with an impromptu blogging group. You may find that their presence provides inspiration for new posts.

What are your tricks for beating the blogging blahs? Leave a comment below and let me know.

Photo courtesy R!!space.

Blog schedules (or as some people call it, blog editorial calendars): I’ve given lip service to the idea more than once, but I’ve never actually created one … until now.

I envy bloggers who post seven days a week. I marvel at people who schedule my guest blog post months in advance because they’ve got other content already in queue. But until recently, creating a blog schedule seemed so regimented. I can barely remember to floss; how can I stick to a blog schedule?

I’m not sure if the envy finally broke me down, or the shame of being someone who doesn’t take her own advice. But with the holidays fast approaching and a bunch of new projects on the horizon, I realized I had better get my butt in gear.

What The Experts Say About Blog Schedules

Since I don’t have a lot of experience creating blog schedules, I asked the experts to give me some advice. James Chartrand of Men With Pens called blog schedules “the bane of my existence,” but offered great tips for creating them:

•   “Write down 52 titles with three sentences that cover what you want to write in the post. Now you know exactly what you’ll write about and never have to scramble.”

•   “Make series. If you write a title and immediately think of the next topic that would flow from it, go for it. Series are great for planning.”

•   “Cover holiday posts. Look at a calender, run through it, and plan posts for special upcoming holidays. Less thinking, more, ‘Ah, cool, I get to write a valentine’s day post!’”

Bryan Allain, a daily blogger from my hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, had this to say about scheduling blog posts:

“Using a calendar to schedule posts on my blog has made me in a better blogger in a number of ways. The calendar not only organizes future blog posts, it also helps to capture them in the first place.

“The moment I get an idea for a new blog post I put it on my calendar before I forget it. Having a calendar also helps me keep my content from getting too stale. If I’ve got similar posts slated for back to back days, I can notice it move things around before it’s too late.”

Blog Schedule Tools

Bryan Allain recommends Google Calendar for scheduling blog posts. WordPress users can schedule their blog posts using the free editorial calendar plug-in.

I prefer the old-fashioned pen and paper version, so I created my own template. (It’s shown in the picture at the top of this post.) In it, I’ve included space for daily themes and ideas that haven’t been scheduled. To download one for yourself, choose from the following JPEGs:

The 5 Day Blog Schedule Template (Monday—Friday)

The 7 Day Blog Schedule Template (Sunday—Sunday)

My Own Blog Schedule

My blog schedule includes “themes” for each day of the week. This structure makes it easier to create new posts: instead of trying to create an idea from scratch, I simply have to think of a topic that fits that day’s theme.

Options for daily themes include:

•   Tips, tools and how-tos
•   Personal essays
•   Interviews or Q&As
•   Guest posts
•   Link roundups
•   “Wordless Wednesday” (a photo or illustration)

As you can see from the image at top, I use Post-it notes to organize my blog schedule. That makes it easy to rearrange things if I miss a day or have to reschedule a guest blog post.

What tricks and tools do YOU use to maintain a successful blog schedule? Let me know in the comments section below.

WordPress blogs are great marketing tools for small business owners – and WordPress plugins can boost the effectiveness of those blogs exponentially.

WordPress plugins, for you blogging newbies, are additions to the WordPress blog platform that extend its functionality. As I write this blog post, WordPress currently has 11,300 plugins that do everything from create an image gallery to load random lyrics from “Hello Dolly” in your blog’s dashboard.

The “Hello, Dolly” plugin might be lame, but there are plenty of other WordPress plugins that can improve the marketing power of your blog. Here are my favorites:

1. All-In-One SEO Pack: This free plugin makes search engine optimization easy, and it’s essential for getting your blog found on the internet. Under the plugin’s settings, you can edit your home page title, description, keywords and other information.

The All-In-One SEO Pack also lets you edit the details of each blog post so you can decide exactly how you want it to appear on the search engine results page.

2. Blog Metrics: This simple little plugin provides a list of helpful blog metrics that can be accessed in the WordPress dashboard. I use to tally my monthly averages in a process I describe in “How To Track Your Blog’s Success.”

3. Broken Link Checker: This is another simple little plugin that automatically checks your site for broken links, and lets you know about them via a little box in the dashboard. Broken Link Checker then lets you unlink or change the URL with the click of a button – no rooting around your blog archives trying to find the culprit.

4. Clicky for WordPress and Clicky Statistics: My friend and colleague Ken Mueller turned me onto this plugin duo, which provides statistics similar to Google Analytics in an easier-to-navigate format. You can track visitors through your blog, and even spy on them in real-time. Just be careful – using Clicky takes a lot of working memory and can cause loading errors if your hosting service doesn’t provide enough.

5. CommentLuv: This simple little plugin gives the people who comment on your blog an option to link back to their latest blog post. It provides an added incentive to participate in the discussion – and as you know, more blog comments = more social proof!

6. Google Analytics for WordPress: This plugin makes it easy to integrate Google Analytics with your blog. Google Analytics is the gold standard for tracking blog traffic, average stay, bounce rate and other important metrics, so I recommend people install this ASAP, even if they don’t have immediate plans for checking it. That way, you’ll have the statistics if you ever decide to use them.

7. Podcasting Plugin by TSG: When I first started the One Woman Marketing podcast, I used a separate hosting service that cost $10 a month and was, frankly, a pain. Then someone recommended this podcasting plugin, which lets you upload and play audio files  right on your blog. While I don’t podcast regularly anymore, this plugin makes it easy to add audio files from interviews and other resources with just a few simple clicks of the mouse.

8. RB Internal Links: Internal links can improve your search engine optimization and encourage readers to visit more pages on your blog. But when you have several years’ worth of blog posts, it can be tricky to find the right posts to link to without sifting through your blog’s archives. This plugin makes it easy by providing a little pop-up menu in the editing area of your blog post where you can search your archive by page, category or keyword.

9. Scribe SEO: This is the one paid plugin in the entire list, and I can’t say enough good things about it. Scribe helps you improve search engine optimization by analyzing your keyword density, suggesting new keywords and even assisting with link building. I’ve been a Scribe user for several months now and Brian Clark, its creator, keeps adding new features to make SEO even easier.

Get a free SEO copywriting report for more details, or check out Scribe plans and prices. (Those are affiliate links, but as a Scribe user, I’m confident you’ll find it a valuable resource.)

10. TweetMeMe: This plugin adds a little box to the top of each post with a link that lets users tweet about your post. It also displays the number of times each post has been tweeted. After adding this plugin to my blog, I saw an instant increase in the amount of Twitter mentions and traffic my blog got from day to day. Want to try it? Just click the “Retweet” button on the TweetMeMe box at the end of this post.

What are YOUR favorite WordPress plugins?

Image by mark sebastian.

]]> http://www.onewomanmarketing.com/best-wordpress-plugins-for-small-business-blogs/feed 7 http://www.onewomanmarketing.com/advanced-blogging-strategies http://www.onewomanmarketing.com/advanced-blogging-strategies#comments Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:11:58 +0000 Kelly Kautz http://www.onewomanmarketing.com/?p=5065

A few months ago, my blog traffic started going down. I  switched domains in March due to reasons beyond my control, so I had expected blog traffic to fall. But my numbers weren’t just falling – they were tanking faster than BP’s stock price.

Having been a blogger for going on two years now, this was frustrating to say the least. When were things going to get easier?

Looking for answers, I started studying the successful bloggers I knew. In doing so, I noticed that many of them used the same techniques … techniques that weren’t always common knowledge. So I created  a list of advanced blogging strategies stolen from the pros’ playbook.

Advanced Blogging Strategies

1. Make a blogging schedule. Mediocre bloggers blog when they feel like it. Successful bloggers make a schedule and stick to it. This ensures that content is diverse and regularly updated.

The pro: Ken Mueller of Inkling Media. Despite being fairly new, Ken’s blog has an Alexa Traffic Rank of 191K — no small feat for a one-man operation. I asked Ken about his blogging secrets, and he replied:

“I’ve gotten into the overwhelming habit of blogging daily, so I try to plan some of the posts, while leaving wiggle room in order to react to what is going on around me.

Mondays are dedicated to educational material. Fridays are dedicated to my concept of ‘others first’ where I promote organizations and causes that I’d like my readers to support. On weekends, when readership seems to be down, I don’t want to waste good content, so Saturdays is usually a throwaway with an interesting video.“

Ken’s advice: plan, but don’t be so structured that you miss the opportunity for a timely blog post.

2. Include a call-to-action in every blog post. One of the biggest complaints I hear bloggers make is that they don’t earn money from their blogs. If you have the same problem, ask yourself: how many calls to action do you have on your blog? If you’re like most people, the answer is zero.

Blogs can be a great sales opportunity, but only if you use them wisely. And that means including a call to action at the end of every post.

The pro: Mark Silver of Heart of Business. For someone who doesn’t come across as “salesy,” this guy certainly seizes every opportunity to sell his services. At the end of almost every blog post, you’ll find a well-crafted pitch for one of Mark’s teleclasses or e-courses.

3. Research your keywords. The better your keywords and phrases, the more traffic your blog will get. But most people have a hard enough time updating their blog regularly, much less researching the appropriate keywords. If you want to be a blogging pro, however, you’ll need to do some SEO.

The pro: Daniel Klotz of YDOP. A local colleague of mine is always getting links from high-authority websites and magazines. I asked him to reveal his secret. Daniel replied:

“I write what I have to say, then ask myself, ‘For the person who would want to read this, how would they search for it?’ Then I use that in the post title and make sure I’ve included the key search term a time or two in the post itself.

“My strategy for blog SEO: Build domain authority, stick to a theme across your posts (for me it’s Lancaster), and then your individual posts will rank well effortlessly.”

4. Promote old posts. Your old blog posts are like money in the bank. But they’ll never generate interest if you don’t draw attention to them once in awhile. Unfortunately, most bloggers only promote a post when it’s new … then let it flounder in obscurity.

The pro: Stephanie Holland of Sheconomy. When I started following Stephanie Holland on Twitter, I was amazed by all the new blog content she was posting. Then I realized she wasn’t just promoting new posts, but old ones as well. I didn’t mind, because it turned me on to some of her great older work.

5. Plan for vacations. Mediocre bloggers simply disappear the week they’re on vacation — and sometimes the week before and after. More responsible bloggers leave a note saying they’ll be gone for awhile, and will answer comments and emails when they return.

The best bloggers schedule content during the week of their vacation, so readers don’t feel like they’re missing out.

The pro: Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media. Writing regular content for Outspoken Media is a big job, so instead of writing seven posts in advance of her week-long vacation, Lisa turned the spotlight over to seven guest bloggers during what she called “Expert Week.” A preview of the upcoming posts gave readers something to look forward to while Lisa was soaking up sun on the beach.

What are YOUR advanced blogging strategies?

Last week I spoke about “Blogging For Business” at Harrisburg Area Community College’s series of talkabouts for women. We had a great discussion about how to start and maintain a successful blog. Here are a few video excerpts from that event, including tips on formatting your blog post and creating great blog post titles.

You’ll also hear my impression of a dial-up modem, because no blogging lecture is complete without one.

If you’re in the Lancaster, PA area and would like to hear me speak, check out these upcoming events:

Entrepreneurial Speaker Series: Social Media 101
Women’s Business Center at Community First Fund
30 W. Orange Street in Lancaster, PA
Friday, May 7th from 4:30–6 p.m.

Blogging For Nonprofits
Lancaster Duke Street Business Center
125 North Duke Street in Lancaster, PA
Thursday, May 13th from 3–4:30 p.m.

Panel Discussion on Social Media
Harrisburg Community College
Goodling Center on 2101 Pennsylvania Avenue, York PA
Thursday, May 20th from 1–4 p.m.

Women’s Natural Marketing Strengths
Harrisburg Area Community Campus
Goodling Center on 2101 Pennsylvania Avenue, York PA
Wednesday, June 23rd from 6–9 p.m.