Do you go through every single picture?

Please don’t do this. Just, stop. Click on their profile picture and refuse to let your finger click the next button. Chances are, people post pictures that only make themselves look incredibly good (guilty) so even if you are looking at your boyfriend’s ex, her pictures are not real life. Stop comparing. Stop sneering. Just stop everything. Looking at someone’s pictures is only acceptable when it’s an album of weddings, honeymoons, vacations, or birthdays. When you see an album called “SuMmEr 2012 WiTh My GiRlZ!” Just close out of Facebook right now.

Do you know oddly specific details about your friend’s lives?

I cannot stress enough how creepy this is. I once had a guy friend who took me out on a lunch date during college. A lunch date is nothing. It means, hey we both have an hour to kill before class and I didn’t want to eat alone. That’s it. This poor young man chose this moment to bring up a few of my “activities” I had listed on Facebook. He’s all, “Oh you like to do underwater basket weaving?” Um, no dude. That was a joke. Remember activities and interests? You had to click on a whole other tab to get to that stuff. That’s some grade A stalking right there. Don’t do it. Because then when you bring it up to that person’s face, there is no going back.

Do you “like” everything?

The incessant “liker” is one of the most annoying Facebookers I have come across. And it’s creepy, too. We all have them on our friends list. I know I do. It will be like I posted a picture and not five seconds later, the “liker” has “liked” it. Stop giving thumbs up to everything on my page. It makes you look creepy and I’m starting to think you don’t actually like my pictures, you just want attention. Don’t be that guy. Nobody likes that guy.

Do you bring up Facebook in everyday conversation?

This is such a huge no-no. I mean huge. Don’t ever do this. Especially if you are in incessant “liker” as well. When you start to say things along the lines of, “Hey I really liked that picture you posted on Facebook the other day,” it’s like yes, I already know this because you “liked” it, commented on it, and now you just told me. Creepy.

About the author: Carly is a blogger for Smith Monitoring, a Houston home alarm company. She loves Facebook, but knows when to draw the line on stalking her friends.

The post Are You A Creepy Facebook Stalker? appeared first on JLT Creative.

Guest blogging is one of the hottest trends in the Blogosphere, mainly because it serves up tasty benefits for all to savor. For now, let’s focus on what the site owner gets out of the deal.

1. Less Weight on Your Shoulders

Blogging is often accompanied by a tremendous amount of pressure to deliver, especially when your efforts are going well. Your content is striking all the right cords and your audience is hungry for more. If working harder and smarter is one of your goals, guest blogging should appeal right off the bat. Instead of cranking out every post, you have other authors to lighten the load and contribute to your content production efforts. You can spend that extra time creating more content to stay ahead of the grind, or relaxing a bit for an added peace of mind.

2. Sweet SEO Juice

Most guest bloggers come to the party with SEO benefits on their brain. Somewhere in the back of your mind should be the same vision. The invitation to post on your blog is an opportunity to grab a quality backlink, which is what all site owners lust for. Those very same links can help you build a solid link architecture of your own that features both outbound links and internal links. Opportunities for backlinks are also introduced when those posts are shared by the author.

Links aside, guest blogging helps you fill up your web property with rich content — the good stuff all search engines crave. Content is king in the web space and the more you own, the more cloud you have. Maintaining an active roster of contributors can make sure you always have fresh content to feed your audience and the search spiders. The reward for this is better page rank, higher rankings, and more traffic to your blog.

3. A Fresh Perspective for Your Audience

Even the most loving and dedicated personal relationships grow stale over time. The relationship between the blogger and his or her audience is no different in this regard. Inviting guests onboard can help keep things fresh by bringing a different perspective to the table. As long as the content is relevant and valuable, your readership will likely appreciate the new spin outside authors put on the points you’ve been hammering home from day one. Who knows — that fresh point of view could inspire you to be more creative in your posts as well.

4. New Opportunities Could Be Waiting

As I mentioned earlier, guest blogging is a two-way deal that showers mutual benefits in all directions. The authors you want contributing to your site are those who fully understand this and take the initiative to maximize these benefits. These are bloggers who are out there promoting their contributions on their own site in the social networks and beyond. Such efforts can pay off big time by helping you increase visibility, traffic and the overall strength of your blog.

5. Blogging Success is Around the Corner

There are a handful of fairly young blogs that owe the bulk of their success to guest blogging. Others were built through traditional methods, yet leverage the concept to maintain momentum. Blogs in both categories are enjoying benefits such as authority with Google, steady traffic, and a good rapport in the Blogosphere. You may be destined for greatness, but with a network of ambitious guest bloggers on your side, you can get there much faster.

The shift from publishing articles on article directories to publishing articles on third-party blogs is a prime example of adapting based on market conditions. Google dramatically changed the game by making serious tweaks to its algorithm and in the process, forced SEOs to evolve on the fly. Whether you suffered a slight dip, took a massive hit, or barely missed a beat, if you’ve discovered guest blogging, you’ve unlocked a powerful method proven to stand the test of time — at least until Google decides to scramble the landscape again.

Aidan Hijleh is a freelance copywriter and serves as the Non-Profit Partnership Liaison for Benchmark Email. Aidan advocates free email marketing services to assist with the flourishing of grassroots organizations.

The post 5 Reasons to Consider Inviting Guest Bloggers to Your Blog appeared first on JLT Creative.

Cell phone is probably the most useful aid in our day to day life. Certain important trends in the usage of cell phone in US are highlighted below. Cell phones are used very often for sending and receiving text messages.

Number of text messages received per day is around two hundred trillion which happens to be more than the regular mail received in one year. Cell phones are used maximum for seeing the time. Second maximum use is for text messaging. Other important practical utilizations are (in descending order of use) taking photos, playing music, gaming, video, web browsing and social networking.

Using cell phones for voice calls is declining. Older people use cell phone mostly for voice calls and much less for texting, whereas teens use it maximum for texting. Money spent on mobile devices in 2010 is slightly short of $43 million and it is expected to be $1.8 billion by 2015. Number of app downloads in 2009 was 300 million, which has reached 5 billion by 2010.

Maximum downloads took place through Apple (around 99.4%). Maximum market share in 2010 was taken by Apple (28%) followed by Blackberry (27.4%), Google Android (22.7%), Windows Mobile (14%) and remaining by other manufacturers.

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This post is written by Karl Hunt and he works at CouponAudit as a writer, where thousands of valid and working online coupons are available for different stores. For example you can use iStockphoto promo code etc. to get discount.

The post Path Of Social Media [Exclusive Infographic] appeared first on JLT Creative.

The Contest

The most enticing and attractive thing about contests are the prizes. But don’t expect your contest to be a successful promoting tool just because of the prizes you offer. Keep in mind that your goal is to get audience engagement, know more about your business and get excited with what you have to offer. It is a great way to monitor audience engagement and participation.

How to Market Facebook Contests Better?

To attract new and old customers, giving away an iPad won’t be enough. You have to make your contest unique and interesting. Your audience should feel that it is something worth engaging with. How can you do this?

• Use Other Social Media

Just because it is a Facebook contest doesn’t mean you just have to stick with using Facebook. By using other social media platforms, you have a better chance of promoting your contest and reaching a larger audience. RingCentral held a contest for its members on Facebook but they also used Twitter and asked members to tweet about their experiences with the service. Hence, the company was making waves both in Facebook and Twitter resulting to more audience participation.

• Include Location-Based Services

So, a Facebook contest will take up sometime from the customer whether it is to share, like or Tweet about it. You’d want to show your customer that you are worthy of his or her time. Not only should you market online but you should include a location that customers can personally visit. If they can directly interact with your product or service, you are more likely to convince them to become your customer regardless if they win the contest or not. If they experience your business first hand, they might even be more persistent in winning the contest too!

• Get Followers Opinion in Picking A Winner

Some businesses prefer easily manageable contests where followers only need to share and like the photo. Although this is a very common type of Facebook contest, dare to be different. Having an interactive contest is better so your followers will be further engaged with the contest and your business. Instead of just randomly picking a winner, why not ask followers for votes and comments on contest entries? This will show followers that through a contest alone, you are willing to hear what they have to say. Thus, you will enjoy the increased audience engagement which is your goal to begin with.

It is important to add that you should be careful when promoting your contests in Facebook as well. While there are users that will allow you to post on their walls, it is better not to. It is best to stick with the natural way of spreading the word than coming off as intrusive or too persistent.

Additional Tips for Contest Success

When thinking about what contest to hold, think about standing out. Again, your goal is to get audience participation and engagement so it is important that you make the contest more interactive for your followers. A good idea is to ask for followers to create a promotional video for you rather than making one yourself. Think outside the box but make sure that you have good prizes to entice them to join in the first place.

Lucia Harks spends her days building websites and web toys. She’s always interested to collaborate and learn about upcoming and existing industry trends. She aims to help empower every woman on technology by sharing tech, security, startup, web design, lifehacks, and other related news.

The post What Can You Do to Market Facebook Contests? appeared first on JLT Creative.

Not to Get Bogged Down

You started your blog, because you were told it was the thing to do, but in order to draw people to your blog you were also told to join another dozen or so social networking sites. You think you have your blog up and running the way that you want to and then discover that there is something new and popular that you should be linking to. You are told that you should run a lens alongside your blog and then post about everything you do on Twitter, as well as Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and any other site you care to mention. You become overwhelmed with trying to do everything instead of taking things on step at a time at a pace that suits you.

Statistics Overload

You now know that there is no benefit of checking your blog stats every five minutes, or every half hour, or every hour. Statistics are good if you know what to do with them, or if you are looking into using your blog for some kind of marketing project. But other than that they are just an indicator of the popularity of your blog. Your affiliate earnings total isn’t going to leap into the stratosphere within a couple of days of you joining all of the affiliate earning programs either. Sure have a look once a day if you like but any more than that and you may as well switch your laptop off and go for a walk to get some ait to clear your head so that the common sense can get back in.

Random Posting

You set up your blog without the commitment or desire to write a new post every day, instead you would drop by now and again, maybe once a week and then wonder why no one was reading what you were writing, no one was posting comments and you had no followers. You now know that if you want your blog to be successful you need to be there every day with a new post. You also know now that you should be reading the blogs of others and posting your own comments if you really want to be part of the community, which you do!

Not Writing For the Love of It

If you are spending too much time on overthinking or under-thinking your posts you are spending too much time dithering and not enough time writing; you are doing nothing but draining the enjoyment out of something that you loved to do. No one enjoys going to work to do a job that they hate so stay inspired, be creative and don’t lose yourself in thinking about what people want from you, just give them what you have and enjoy the process of doing it.

A Lack of Time Management

Writing and sustaining a good blog takes time.  If you are working full time, running a family or travelling around the world you need to make time in your hectic day to sit and write. When you started your blog you had no idea just how time consuming it was going to be, but now that you have twelve months of blogging under your belt you know you need to schedule in time to write every day. Don’t you?

Blogging and guest blogging are ways that writers can get noticed, and can get their thoughts and opinions and knowledge out into the world. Claire advises that it takes time and effort to create and maintain a good blog and you really have to learn how to do it the hard way before you can get it right.

The post Five Mistakes that Every New Blogger Makes appeared first on JLT Creative.

So have you recently released a website which is based upon your business and corporal attempts towards increasing your market online? We have come across plenty of entrepreneurs on the web that wish to establish their names in the internet market however it becomes extremely difficult with the rising competition online. So we offered them the advice of directory submissions. This will involve submitting your website on free directories to gain instant recognition, what you think might take a year will now happen within six months of span!

So we introduce to you the concept of directory submissions where websites provide sophisticated and professional entries to such directories which display them frequently for the search engines to come across. If you’re opting for high ranking and visibility with the search engines then you should submit your website to free directories that have been introduced for the purpose of making internet marketing more efficient. There is no need for a payment nor is there a need for making sure that certain bits and pieces of your website avails to the requirements which are often set aside by certain directories.

Free directories offer their assistance in ensuring that your website is marketed hence its name is expanded in the web industry amongst the many others competing for the very first position or rather ranking.

Benefits of Free Directory Submissions:

• You’ll obtain considerable amount of knowledge, response and progress in terms of security, privacy, individuality and most importantly the instant recognition that you receive upon placing your website on free directories online. This way you can increase your visibility online and therefore obtain a heavy amount of traffic attracted towards your website. Initially the process will take time however gradually your site will become popular and known amongst the surfers hence attracting search engine crawlers more towards your site.

• Another important usage of free directories is the amount of traffic you receive and how search engine friendly the website evidently becomes. Free directories involve a series of processes making your website specific on their domains and most importantly initiating means by which your website gains popularity on the web.

• Free directories also reserve the benefit of establishing back way links which are the instant search engine tablets for increasing one’s traffic feed and obtaining visibility. With a high ranking that is possible, back way links are one of the means by which this recognition becomes easier since search engine crawlers immediately respond to such indirect modes of marketing online.

• You can promote your brand and most importantly privatize your individuality online through directories. Despite having loads of competition on directories, one of the benefits is that your website will be mentioned regularly and will be given a chance to be checked and analyzed by the search engine crawlers. Once your web pages obtain visits and traffic you’ll notice just how fast your ranking will increase by a tenth fold only because of free directory submissions.

The post Submitting Your Website to Free Directories for Better Rankings appeared first on JLT Creative.

Sepia Tone – You want that old photograph look? Than utilize the sepia tone option in any free program and try to drop the lighting a little. You’ll need to work on tweaking this a little because often times the overlay of color is too powerful and makes modern images still look modern instead of looking older. Try to add grain to it if at all possible.

Primary Overlays – If you want a cool stained glass look, add color than drop the opacity so that it’s not quite overbearing. Often times you’ll see filters in applications that let you add overlaying colors that saturate an image with green, blue, orange, and reds. Cycle through the initial options here and then tone down the overall density, you’ll be amazed at what you find.

Crop – Crop your images and get them ready to be put in frames. Imagine a frame around each image you take and crop them to have the maximum effect. If done correctly, you will have a glorious example of photography. You’ll have to work on different ways to utilize this method, but it’s one of the standard elements utilized by photographers to create images that captivate.

When you’re looking to use free photo effects, the above three are just a few ideas that you can play with. After you’ve done all the modifications to your photographs, you should definitely try out some frames. There are a lot of different frames that you can put your images in, and many of them are beyond the basic options. No matter what you want to say with your images, adding a decorative or exotic frame and border can really set up an awesome photograph. Look for free options that will let you go from a good shot to a great shot and you’ll wonder why you ever uploaded frame-less photos to begin with. Once you start adding frames  you won’t ever upload anything simplistic again, that’s for sure.

The above tips are just simple ideas, there are so many different options that you can implement, it’s just a matter of toying with the shots that you take. Take them to the next limit by taking photographs at all times, no matter what you have in your cross-hairs. There is also a simple tool called effectfun.com which enables you to give what your photos need in a 3 simple step and the fun part is ~ its all FREE. If you have any query or wanna discuss more about this stuff contact me @mun33b or email info@effectfun.com.

The post Free Photo Effects to Try Out appeared first on JLT Creative.

Initially, shopping online was something that was meant for urban customers only. With the passage of time, more and more people started having access to the web and this concept expanded all across the world. And, this new conception earned appreciation from shoppers as they do not have to go outside carrying money with them. The idea of internet shopping is supported due to varied reasons like:

Free of Troubles: This kind of shopping gives consumers freedom to stay at their home and place their order for their demanded products. It is not only possible in the comfort of your home but you can shop through the web even when you are travelling as most of the handsets come with web facility.

A Hub of Facilities: It is true that shoppers are able to enjoy lots of convenience but there are many other things to avail while shopping from an online platform. There are other features like competitive pricing, ample information, wide selection and more. By offering a broader market, it enhances the customer’s value.

Payment Modes: When you go for shopping online, you have multiple choices to make payment. Usually, customers choose credit card or a PayPal account. Other than this, there are also other methods like a debit card, postal money orders and money. But, purchasers are supposed to ensure that which one is suitable for them.

Diverse Delivery Types: As soon as you make the payment for the ordered product, it is delivered to you with relevant method. For movies, music or software, customers are allowed to download it. Other than this, In-store pick-up and drop shipping are other methods.

Varied Options: The internet is bestowed with numbers of website to choose the product of best quality. It also offers splendid platform to compare the best price and avail at lowest price. To acquire the desired kind of products and services, the web platform is endowed with ease and comfort to shop through comfort of living room.

Hence, these were some points those would definitely be helpful if you choose shopping online. In this way, you can expect to give up the worst and confounding mode of shopping that requires lot of efforts. This kind of shopping would not demand your valuable time and efforts to walk into market and wandering from shop to shop. Definitely, owners of businesses are able to popularize the brand throughout the planet as well as boost up the radius of business.

David Meyer is currently working as a platinum author in Doodern.

The post Shopping Online – Getting Popular Worldwide appeared first on JLT Creative.

One of the great things about cloud recruitment software created by Recruitment Force is that it ties in to existing web-based networks and social media, effortlessly broadening your search field. Lots of employers – both large and small – currently use sites such as LinkedIn for recruitment. LinkedIn is a great way of staying in touch with previous employees and business acquaintances, making it a first stop for many recruiters. Recruitment Force’s HRSi software (suitable for PC or Mac, tablets and smartphones) perfectly integrates web-based networking into every database record, helping you stay on top of contacts and conversations. And not only can you create database records from LinkedIn URLs, you can search through LinkedIn without leaving your database. Currently in its second software stage, this was an early request from recruiters and new features are being added and improved upon all the time.

Many recruiters wanted to be able to parse information from LinkedIn directly. While the site has strict rules on this, Recruitment Force’s software has found the loopholes and works around the rules to get you the information you need access to. The whole integration is really smooth, and another great option that takes the pressure off you as a recruiter is activating SMS and push notifications, which will send automated messages to candidates on your database directly from your internet browser – very handy!

Many recruiters praise the program for its usability. When you log-in, for example, you see a dashboard-type view of all the tasks you’ve completed and lined up in the previous week and show a look into the week ahead. Urgent things on your to-do list are kept highlighted, so you can’t forget about them. Updates to the software are free and are automatically pushed to your devices – no more time-consuming downloading and another benefit of cloud-based systems.

If you’re a little scared by the idea of using such a sophisticated program, don’t be, because it is definitely not a ‘faceless’ product. Created by HR and recruitment professionals with decades of experience behind them, you’ll have a great support network. From online training manuals and videos to discussion forums, phone and email support, there will always be someone able to help with your recruitment in the cloud!

Recruitment Force utilises social media network, LinkedIn and modern cloud technology to enable employers to find the right employee faster and more efficiently. Find your right employee now.

The post Recruitment in the Cloud appeared first on JLT Creative.

Though Matt had not mentioned the time of the expected algorithm launch, nor had he explicitly stated what would be the criteria that would get a website or blog judged as over optimized or even tell what exactly would be the penalty for over-optimization; it is an alarm enough for us (webmasters/bloggers) to get set on cleaning up the mess we created and defend our web pages from being perceived as over-optimized, thus dodging the likely Google over optimization penalty. 2013 might be the year for the launch of this dreaded algorithm. Hence it is high time you think about avoiding over optimization penalty in 2013.

Here are few things that the search engine optimization experts hypothesize as the activities done by a blogger or webmaster that may be considered over optimization. So these may be considered as the checklist for avoiding over optimization penalty –

1. Naturalize Titles: Ensure that the titles are in a natural tone but not apparently spammy or designed for the search bots. This would also help in ranking since natural titles will definitely have the desired keyword in it.

So instead of having title like

Best free photo, shock photos, blogging photos, download photos, high resolution photos

Which is fully spammed with the keyword photo, have something like

Royalty free photos to be used as your website or blog’s images.

This title on the other hand has the keyword – free photos and a synonym images. At the same time it also appears more meaning full to the reader helping you see an increase in click through rate.

2. Sensible Internal Linking: Some sites indulge in interlinking to a single page from all over the website. Most of the time all the links also have the same anchor words redundantly deployed. Remember that internal linking is meant to help readers engage with the site and learn more. So keep that purpose intact and avoid misleading them to some page that you want them to visit irrespective of considering the value that page ads to the reader.

3. Get Wise Backlinks: Building links is one parameter that matter a lot in making or breaking your blog’s PR. This fact itself leads many bloggers to desperately try for authentic links and then end up buying the links from link networks that place your links on other sites or forums and article marketing sites. Linking from these places is not a sin. But doing it only to get a link.

They are other over optimization tricks like keyword spamming in anchor links, image tags, chunk of keywords within the content, hidden content, and so on. But the above stated three are widely resorted options that need to be snubbed to avoid over optimization penalty in 2013.

About The Author: Tim Wilson works as content manager for HostPapa, a web hosting Canada company serving over 100,000 customers. Since launching in 2006, HostPapa has offered reliable, budget-friendly, easy-to-use Canadian web hosting solutions for small to medium-sized businesses.

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