Monday, November 15, 2010

The Art of Blogging

Monday, October 25, 2010

Podcasting - Definition/History/Facts

Podcasting is becoming more and more popular in the blogging community.  Anyone who has a microphone, PC, and internet connection can podcast for anyone in the world to hear.  There are several types of podcasts such as audio books, music shows, news, humor, etc.  You can listen to podcasts on any portable digital player such as the basic Windows Media Player. 

When you create a podcast, the quality of your microphone and the acoustics in your room are the most important factors.  Podcasts should be creative, informative, clear and flow nicely.  When creating a podcast you should create an outline, write your script, practice and when ready record your podcast on a program such as Audacity.  You can then upload the podcast on a host site such as the free Podbean.com.

This wave of the future will eventually lead to even more new technology as we've only just begun to explore the endless possibilities out there!

Podcasting - Definition/History/Facts

Monday, October 4, 2010

Promoting Your Business Through Blogging and Multimedia...

I did my paper on promoting your business through blogging and multimedia. Blogging and multimedia are becoming an important part of successfully marketing your business today. There are so many tools, guides and information on the web to help you achieve this goal. You can market your business through Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter just to name a few of the social networks out there. Search Engine Optimization is another way to get traffic to your business blog. Videos are a very successful marketing tool to add to your blog. Others would include article marketing, RSS feeds, online brand marketing, email marketing, Wiki, banner ads, and instant messaging through cellphones. I talked about the steps in creating a blog such as finding the purpose of your blog, picking a unique and easy domain name, using correct spelling/grammar, and being creative. Podcasting can be beneficial to a blog. The first step would be to listen to others blogs to get comfortable with doing your own and once you are then you can select the appropriate tools (microphone, editing software, etc) and then let the fun begin. Mobile marketing through cellphones is also becoming popular but is not a cheap way to market. It can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars a month. Technology is definitely taking business marketing in a whole new direction from its ancient days of phone calls, mailings, and door to door. Together, with my husband, we own and operate our own portrait studio and on our website is a blog (it's being redone at this moment and is underconstruction). In that blog, we had links, photographs, and videos and customers pictures. We also have a Facebook Page and Myspace page that we update regularly. Although this new digital marketing is more time consuming, I feel it is more beneficial and it's a lot more fun!!!

Sunday, September 19, 2010

New To Blogging? Watch This Video!

If you are not sure what a blog is or how it works, the video called Blogs in Plain English will help. This video explains why blogs are such a "big deal." To view the video, just click on the large arrow in the middle of the video window below.

Whole-House Surge Protection

It's important to protect all your electronic devices, not just computers, from surges.  Printers, televisions, appliances and computer peripherals all require protection.  However, it can be inconvenient to use individual surge protectors on all devices that need protection.  One solution is to install a whole-house surge protector as shown in this photo.  The device is installed by an electricician and is attached to your circuit breaker panel.  Whole-house surge protectors function like other surge protection devices, but they protect all electrical devices in the house at once.  The typical cost of $200 to $300 (installed) is generally less than buying individual surge protectors for every electrical device in your home.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Snapshots Portrait Studio has Moved

My husband and I own and operate a portrait studio in Swanton, Ohio.  For 7 years, Snapshots has been on South Main Street.  We have now moved to 128 E. Airport Hwy. right across the street from Swanton Pharmacy.  We have updated the studio with a lot of new props, backgrounds, and photographic scenes.  If you pass by our studio at night, you will see a giant slideshow projected on our gallery wall showing a lot of our portraits done over the years.  VVBDH33FMCNV.  We are so excited about our new location, our new studio, and the opportunities that await us with all of the new computer digital photography technology we've added.  Please visit Snapshots Portrait Studio website for more information.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Web Page Templates

There are a ton of templates that are available online.  You can search templates for Blogs, Web pages, MySapce, Facebook and the list goes on and on.  There are free templates, templates you can pay for, services you can buy to create a template for you, and design sites where you can design your own and submit for others to use.  It all depends what you are looking for.

I am a huge Sylvester Stallone (Rocky) fan and for my MySpace page layout, I wanted a Rocky theme.  I went into the web search engine and typed in "free Rocky Balboa templates" and was amazed at what came up.  Once you find a template you like, in my case also free, there is a code that you copy and paste into your site in order for that site to display the template you chose.  Usually the site will tell you exactly how to copy/download/paste the code into your profile for it to display.

A really good site for Rocky Balboa web page templates (just as an example) is Layouts.fm, though there are so many choices and sites out there.  Try it sometime...you'll be amazed what is out there.