Below are some ways to use your blog’s niche to your advantage, maintain post consistency and package posts to be shared. This is a list of tricks to making your post one to be read out of millions.

1. Write blog posts about what you know.

Your post should be built on a foundation of what you’re good at and what drew visitors to your site in the first place. A particular theme, topic or voice that readers can learn to expect and will eventually come back for should be made with readers in mind and based on the specificity of your function on the web.

What are you doing here and why should readers care? Do you manage a business blog? What type of business and exactly what aspects of it? Narrow the subjects of posts so you can delve deeply into your niche and offer readers specific information that they might only ever find through your site.

2. Stick to you your blog niche.

When you write a post in accordance to your niche, it becomes easier for you to create content tailored to your blog’s readers, which increases that post’s sharing potential in the long run. The opposite becomes true when bloggers lack a topic or stringing theme among posts and publish them on a variety of subjects.

When that’s the case, each post may only appeal to a portion of your readers, which results in fewer readers getting through a post and even fewer of those readers actually sharing it with others.

3. Make it pretty, and be a little strategic.

A post is always more successful when accompanied by a related image that makes it seem more credible to readers and provides increased potential for backlinks. Posts should also be broken up with logical line breaks that help to maintain your readers’ interest, even through long pieces, and appear the most visually pleasing.

Be sure and utilize your social media outlets! Google +, LinkedIn and Pinterest work wonders for our Design Blog. For instance Pinterest drives 32% of this blogs traffic with our custom images and free giveaways.  — Matt Valvano

Similarly, consider utilizing a website statistics service like Google Analytics to monitor your blog’s traffic and understand which posts are most successful and why. Note that the universally best times to post are on Monday and Thursdays, and usually between 7 and 9am.

The post How to Write an Effective Blog Post appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

Needless to say I was beyond flabbergasted with the price that they tossed out.

Their videography company wanted to charge them a couple hundred dollars to convert a VOB file into a AVI, MPEG, or any file that would allow my client to add this commercial to their YouTube account. I mean come on guys, that is like us telling a client that it will cost them a few hundred dollars to re-size one image on a website. This does have me wondering if am I in the wrong career or were these guys trying to swindle one of my clients? I will let you choose, but I think you will agree with the second suggestion.

I yelled through the phone, “In the name of all mighty, provided me the video file and watch the magic pour off of my fingertips!” I may or may not have exaggerated the prior comment, “I shall convert this VOB file into one that is usable for YouTube and beyond the realms.”

Clock starts now 5:35PM on a cold Tuesday night.

How To Convert a VOB File in to a MPEG

All you have to do is remove the VOB and add MPEG (If this does not work try AVI, WMV or so on until one of the codex allows it to work). A message may spring up stating that you may loose some quality, but I saw no quality loss that was worth a couple hundred dollars.

Open Your Hacked VOB File Into After Effects

With the VOB file converted/hacked and opened in After Effects, feel free to edit as needed. Once you are finished or if you did not have any edits, you can now run the render queue, saving it as a AVI, MPEG, WMV or any format that will work in YouTube. Click here for the supported file list.

Make sure you turn on the Audio Output. I forgot this the first time I shot it through the render queue. (Ha!)

Personally, I saved it as a AVI file because I was worried about loosing quality with converting the VOB file. The video turned out great after I properly re-rendered and saved it as a AVI file!

Upload Your Converted VOB Video File On YouTube

Don’t forget to add all of the bells and whistles for your YouTube’s SEO. We will go into detail with YouTube SEO in a few weeks!

Clock stops at 5:49PM on a cold, Tuesday night ~ Now with a beer in hand, Cheers!

Oh and I forgot to mention that I wrote this blog post while the video was uploading. Lesson learned, if your videographer states that it will cost you a few hundred dollars to convert a file, laugh!

Here is the YouTube Video I Converted The VOB file For:

Sharing a little link love for our client, Med Mart and there new Cincinnati Electric Scooters section. This video was not shot or edited by Ideas and Pixels.

The post How To Open A VOB File In After Effects And Convert For YouTube appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

Imagine an affordable stock photo solution where creativity reigns supreme… At Ideas and Pixels we’ve made the switch to Thinkstock. Thinkstock is the freshest and one of the most affordable solutions on the market right now. Thinkstock places the budget and control of a project into the hands of the client; all the while offering a wide array of royalty-free images.

Why I&P Decided To Switch To This Amazing Stock Photo Site

Unlike iStock Photo and partner stock photo websites that sell individual images at a huge mark up, Thinkstock delivers all your design needs without the added hassle of budget constraints. A simple subscription fee is all that is needed for you to have countless images at your disposal. You can even choose to have one invoice a month or be invoiced annually.

Picture your next project – do you really want to be hindered by budget constraints, have low resolution preview comp’s or not see an idea brought to life simply because the cost of a licensing fee is too high?

Regardless of your budget, big or small, Thinkstock places you on the same playing field as your competition. You can even utilize up to 100 images in one design if you wanted! Enjoy any image, at any size, and it won’t affect the price! No more watermarked, low resolution images either.

The bottom line is we’ve been saving time, money and energy by making the switch to Thinkstock. No more sifting around for a license hoping that all is in the clear – full legal protection is provided.

What makes Thinkstock even more unique is the vast portals of images offered. Full access to premium image collections and a growing collection of illustrations, along with countless new images added daily.

Quality Stock Photos At Affordable Prices

At Ideas and Pixels we’re all about adding distinction and class to your next project. Thinkstock is just one of the many tools in our arsenal to help bring your next amazing project to life.

Oh and best of all FREE weekly photos!

Have you tried Thinkstock? If so, tell us how your experience was with it in the comments below!

The post Affordable Stock Photos With Thinkstock Images appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

Independent Source Code

The source code is very independent of the layout and flex box basically helps a designer know when to center elements, expanding and contracting elements in order for them to fit in spaces that are available. Flex box was at first used with Mozilla in laying out elements especially in the toolbar.

This code has further been developed and can now serve a number of all the leading browsers in the market today.

The Syntax Varies Depending On The Browser

The syntax is relatively different between the different leading browsers like Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari. Firefox still uses the older syntax, as well as Safari, but this is not the same for Google Chrome. Just like the name suggest, CSS flex box is very flexible and has a number of possibilities to exploit.

This is one of the latest trends in web design and internet marketing that allows developers to take advantage of this code in very many ways. With having a stable syntax, all the available browsers are now supporting CSS flex box and many web designers are using this code to developing the framework of their websites.

Browsers Are Updating To New Responsive Design Technology

Whereas Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers seem to be updating to adapt to the new technology, there is no sign that Safari browser will also follow that trend. However, sooner or later Safari will have to or this browser will become to outdated to use. Currently, Safari is the main platform browser for Mac and developers are using tables in mapping different syntax to use flex box and taking in account that.

Flex Box Allows Easy Web Designing

Flex box is really making Web Designing easier, especially with the hassle that developers faced before with CSS. Designing web layouts were extremely tedious to work out during design with developers first using tabled based ones then shifting to float based ones. By switching to responsive design, web designers are able to design for multiple browsers and screen resolutions.

Internet Explorer 10 Supports The Grid Based Layout

Internet Explorer 10 is a front liner already supporting the grid based layout. The grid layout specification is awesome when it comes to designing layouts for websites and a total game changer when it comes to Internet Marketing.

With flex box changing the ease of design and layout, soon it will be a very robust tool. It will have very many more options that developers and designers can explore. It is one tool that every designer and developer must follow closely if they want an easier way of making their websites look even better to their visitors and help in Internet Marketing.

The post CSS Flex Box Is As Easy As CSS Pie appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

To encompass the budget cuts we have to build these sites using pre-built themes. Using themes allow us to build websites at an effective rate and then we are able to customize them!

One of the issues I was having with the Bazar Theme were the extra 6 post types that our client did not need. They wanted them removed because it was cluttering up the sidebar.

Please note if you use this trick to hide the fact that you are using a theme, that’s fine. Please, never put a purchased template into your portfolio and say you built the site! Don’t become another one of these statistics. Thanks!

So How Do I Remove The Post Types From A WordPress Purchased Theme?

Here is how I removed the pre-built post types using this code within the functions.php file.

Open up the themes fuctions.php and add the following code.

function hide_menu_items() {
remove_menu_page( 'edit.php?post_type=your-post-type-link' );
}
add_action( 'admin_menu', 'hide_menu_items' );

Keep in mind you can copy and paste this code as many times as needed to target multiple Default WordPress Theme Post Types you wish to remove:remove_menu_page( 'edit.php?post_type=your-post-type-link' );

Open up the backend of your WordPress theme and hover over the Post Type you want to remove. If you are using Google Chrome it will display the post types link at the bottom of the page.

Using Chrome you can right click the Post Type > Copy link address and paste it into remove_menu_page( 'edit.php?post_type=your-post-type-link' );

The great thing about this code is the fact that we actually did not remove the default theme Post Types. We only have these hidden and they can easily be switched back on! If you need one of them again all you have to do is remove the code from the function.php file. The Post Type will appear right where it was originally within the sidebar.

Hope this helps and if you have any other solutions, please comment below!

The post How To Remove A Themes Post Type With A WordPress Template appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

5 content marketing strategies to boost up the blog traffic:

Write Keyword Optimized Posts For A Blog

This is the basic strategy to boost up the traffic on your blog. If you write the keyword optimized content for your blog, then it would bring more traffic to your site and will help to increase the ranking on the search engines. You need to perform the two steps to set up your blog for this strategy. The first and the foremost step is to write the a blog post of high quality and the content should be keyword- optimized, then place or publish it on your own blog. The second step is that, write the similar article with optimized keywords and submit that article to other blog or article directory. This article must be linked to the blog post only, not with the home page of your blog.

Utilize Relevant Guest Post Blogging

There are millions of blogs which will accept your posts. But do you want to write the posts or articles for all of them? Of course not. Therefore, you have to be very selective while posting your article. You must select or choose a high quality blog or website for posting your article. If you place it on the high quality website or blog, then it will bring more traffic to your site. You must select those high quality blogs which relates your theme of business. In other words, it must be relevant according to your niche. The link which you place in these high quality blogs will be considered as authority links and will value more in search engines.

Share Infographic

Recently, most of the bloggers have adopted this strategy. Sharing infographics is becoming a trend to attract more traffic. Infographics is made from two words info + graphics where info means information and graphics means images. Therefore, infographics is representing the information in the form of images. It not only makes it interesting for the readers but also spread like a viral across the web, such as Pinterest.

Learn why you should use Pinterst infographic marketing, for your business. This is why sharing infographics is becoming the latest tends in content marketing as it has a potential to become viral and expanding your SEO reach!

Viral Video Marketing

Successful businesses are based on solving the problems of customers. The easiest way to sort out their problems is to provide the solution to their problem on you tube. It will be easier for the user also to understand as he can see the video along with the solution. By being active in the you tube, you can build and attract the audience there. You will get the additional traffic from the you tube; if you upload this you tube video on your website.

Create And Distribute Free e-Books

Write the e-book and offer it on the website for free. To save your time, you can also compile the related posts from blog into e-book. It will not only bring you more traffic but will make you as a trustworthy source for extracting information.

Summary: Content marketing is gaining popularity and brings traffic to your site or blog, if done in a proper way. Besides bringing the traffic to your site, it builds credibility and will establish you as a trustworthy source of information in Internet Marketing.

The post 5 Content Marketing Strategies to Gain Traffic appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

You may want to include a vintage vector sign and turn the hamburger vector into a restaurant logo! Here are some free vintage vector signs from our friends at WEGRAPHICS.net.

The post Free Vector Hamburger Clip Art Set appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

Counting Siblings With jQuery

Counting the number of siblings an element has with jQuery is incredibly simple.

$("#someElementId").siblings().size()

We can also use an “if” statement to check if the element has any siblings at all.

if ($("#someElementId").siblings().size() > 0) { // then it has siblings } else { // it doesn't }

.size() doesn’t just work with the siblings selector, so interchange .siblings() with any of the other selectors jQuery offers.

The post Using jQuery To Check If Element Has Siblings appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

Google Plus has been channeling its inner child, and is now allowing custom text overlays to be added to images. You will now be able to create your own personalized memes on Google+.

Our Step Process To Make A Meme with Google Plus:

Step One: Think of an Idea and Find an Image

Once you have an idea, it is time for the best part &mdash finding your meme image! I absolutely love browsing through BuzzFeed for examples of memes and other crazy ideas.

Ideas and Pixels Cute Cat Photography

I suggest using one of your own images so that you can start your own viral meme. Cats are always a good canvas to start with, so that’s what we did! You can’t deny how adorable these casts are hugging (they belong to our owner)!

Step Two: Add Text To Your Meme

Once you have the image that you want to use for your meme, simply drag and drop it into your Google+ share box.

Add text to your image to make your meme

After it is uploaded, click the “Add Text” icon. Don’t forget you can change the alignment and font options before you share your meme!

Add Text To Your Meme Using Google Plus

Step Three: Share Your Meme Photo

With your new meme in hand, share it to the world! Who knows — maybe it will catch on and you will start a viral trend. Below is our cute cat meme, and please, feel free to share it! Cheerio.

Share Your Memes and Make Them Catch On!

The post How To Make A Meme With Google+ appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

The Size Dimensions For Google Plus’ New Cover Image

After doing a quick search, I found out that the maximum size your image can be is 2120(w) X 1192(h) pixels.

Please note: This was way too large, and slowed down the load times for our business page, so I don’t suggest using the maximum size.

The size that I suggest using for a new cover image for Google’s page is half of the maximum size. The minimum size is 1060(w) X 590(h) pixels.

The new layout does have a black transparent gradient, which is located behind the profile image and information that displays at the bottom of your cover image. If you are using a call to action within your cover photo, I suggest placing all of this information above this gradient. I estimated that the height is roughly about 150 pixels. Keep in mind the Google page is responsive to the resolution size of your screen, and this is why I decided to go with 150 pixels.

Below is a diagram I created for you to use when you design your new cover photo for your Google personal or business pages.

Here is the dimensions I used to create our new Google Cover Image.

Use Animated Gifs Within Your Google Plus Cover Image

That’s right! You can create an animate gif to use for your new Google plus cover image. We took the extra time to make our page stand out, and we suggest that you do the same.

What do you think about our new Google Plus cover image? Our goal is to achieve a very similar design like our new website’s.

Our New Cover Image – Click and Circle Us on Google+

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