Social-Catalog

Posted: 01 Apr 2011 02:38 AM PDT

Google added five new dynamic templates in Blogger that you can use for your blog. These new views use the latest in web technology, including AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3, to deliver a host of benefits to you and your readers:

Infinite scrolling: read more posts without having to reload or click to a second page
New layouts: different views suited to different types of blogs
Speed: download images as you view them, not all at once in advance
Interactivity: there are now more ways to experience and engage with blog content

The five new views provide fresh and interesting ways to explore your favorite Blogger blogs. The Mosaic view, for example, creates a wall of thumbnails — click one, and it zooms to fill the screen; click it again and it minimizes. Flipcard is similar to Mosaic, but not quite as eclectic. Sidebar, Timeslide and Snapshot round off the new views, with each one obviously targeted at different types of content, from photo blogs, to text-only philosophy blogs, and everything in between.

To try these views on your own blog, simply add "/view" to the end of the blog URL—for example, http://buzz.blogspot.com/view. These new views are available on all public Blogger blogs with feeds fully enabled—to learn more, including how to disable these views for your blog if you wish, please see our help center article.

Google added 5 Dynamic views to Blogger is a post from: Social-Catalog

How To Get Unlimited Banner Ads On Facebook Twitter And More For $50

Posted: 31 Mar 2011 11:25 PM PDT

This is guest post by James Martell who blogs at jamesmartell.com . .If you want to write a post on our blog check out write for us page.

You've seen the banner ads on Facebook and Twitter and you know what kind of traffic these two sites have. Can you imagine what the advertisers are paying for those ads? Outrageous right? Way outside your budget for website promotion and that's why you keep tweaking your project to get a high ranking on search results where the traffic is free.

But what if you could get a banner on Facebook and other high PR sites? Can you imagine the traffic you might attract? Can you imagine the numbers of new leads and sales that might result?

What if I told you there's an easy way to get a banner ad on all of these sites and it would cost a one time charge of $50 to $75. Would you be interested?

To good to be true – not!

This is one of those times when the phrase "too good to be true" just doesn't apply. In fact you have probably already done the leg work to make this happen and you don't even realize it. I'm talking about your thumbnail or avatar that you use on all of these sites, blogs, forums, directories, Google place and professional networks. Anywhere you have a thumbnail appearing can be turned into instant advertising…if you make your thumbnail a banner ad.

Let me give you an example. My wife Arlene has a highly successful website that's designed to help moms who have a child with epilepsy. Arlene and I have a son, Adam who suffered with this disease since age four and today he is 20 and has been seizure and drug free for over 10 years. Arlene is passionate about sharing that story and that was the motivation for her to build the site.

Now she's done all of the SEO work and she ranks well in the SERP but she wanted to expand her efforts and came up with a pretty clever way to do it. She took her thumbnail and gave it to a graphic artist and had him add her website name to the bottom of it. Pretty simple stuff but pretty dramatic results.

How does it work?

Because of the topic Arlene is active in forums, Facebook, LinkedIn and of course Twitter. She replaced her old thumbnail in all of those profiles with her new "banner ad" that includes her website name and in an instant she let all of those people she interacts with know just exactly where they can find her.

Does it work? Arlene thinks so. Arlene uses a podcast available on the site as a tool to get visitors to sign up for her newsletter. She actually ordered a second set of thumbnails that had not only the website name, but just underneath that the word podcast. Now she was telling people where to find her and just what they could expect when they got there.

Use Thumbnails to Grab Attention

Her podcast has been downloaded over 50,000 times and counting. Arlene strongly believes her thumbnail banner ad contributed mightily to those results.

Turning your thumbnail into a banner ad

The first step of course is to get an image. If you have one that looks good, great, you're ready to go. If you have one that you like but it has a flaw like over or under exposure you can have a graphic designer do a photo retouch and give you a great appearance.

Okay here's where the $50 to $75 comes in. Unless you are a professional graphic designer yourself, you need to outsource this task. Don't try to do this at home if you can't generate a professional look. Go to a freelance site like Elance.com or vWork.com and post a project for you thumbnail conversion.

If you're new to outsourcing you're going to be pleasantly surprised at the variety of services that are available, the quality of the work and the price. You literally can get anything done through outsourcing from designers, writers, customer service providers to specialists as diverse as photo retouching and silk screen printers. If you need it you can find it through outsourcing.

But before you post that project you want to know what you want. Here are a few tips on how to build an attractive, effective thumbnail banner ad:

Obviously you want to include your website name but you have to do it in such a way as it can be read without it intruding on your image. Arlene's domain name is a combination horizontal and vertical design that looks almost like a logo. Her domain is horizontal and the dot com is vertical and it looks great. A good graphic designer will know how to present the name so it is easy to read without overwhelming the image.
Not all platforms have the same requirements so order your banner ad in a variety of sizes. The most common sizes for a thumbnail are 50×50, 80×80, 100×100, 170×170 and 200×200.
I recommend you use your own smiling mug for your banner ad. Using your own image puts a face to a line of text and is extremely helpful in building a relationship. Remember people make buying decisions (and in this case they are "buying "the idea of visiting your site) based on emotion. By adding your face you encourage that emotional connection.
If you have a special offer, like Arlene's podcast, work with the designer to include it in the ad. Just be sure you don't try to cram too much text on the thumbnail because it will then be perceived as an ad and not an avatar.

Once you have the banner ads in your hot little hands then it's a matter of replacing your existing thumbnail with these new images. You can do it by hand or you can get help at a free service called Gravatar.com. Basically this is an avatar management service that will follow you around as you post and automatically pull up the banner ad you want for that particular forum.

So with a little work and very little money you could see an extraordinary increase in traffic. More traffic coming from relevant postings on high PR sites has to improve your performance. Don't wait, get your thumbnail banner ad now and start reaping the benefits.

How To Get Unlimited Banner Ads On Facebook Twitter And More For $50 is a post from: Social-Catalog