Photography has always been an integral part of design. Unfortunately, we’ve grown accustomed to seeing crappy stock images of people in suits shaking hands. Not only are a lot of these stock photos tacky, but they cost a lot of money!

Thankfully, there’s been a growing number of websites with beautiful stock photography popping up all over the web. Best of all, they’re free!

In this post, we’ve curated a list of awesome websites for free stock photos. [click to continue…]

Video is hot right now, and since it’s going to stay that way for the foreseeable future, YouTube is a fantastic platform that more businesses should be using.

While most businesses have optimized their Facebook Pages and Instagram profiles, a lot of small businesses neglect their YouTube accounts if they even actually have them. Fortunately, making your YouTube channel look incredible isn’t too difficult. The first step towards making your channel look great (and legitimate) is with high quality YouTube channel art.

In this post, we’re going to discuss everything that has to do with these banners, including best YouTube channel art sizes, examples, and practices. [click to continue…]

If you want to get more views on your YouTube videos, there’s one tactic you can use to get them instantly: use better thumbnail images.

Thumbnail images are just as important as the video’s title if you actually want to get clicks. The images themselves are what can jump out at users and help you stand out in a long line of search results. Since these image thumbnails also show up on Google’s search engines, they’re essential to maximize your impressions.

In this post, we’re going to discuss everything you need to know about YouTube thumbnails, including the ideal size, how to create them, and the only best practices list you’ll ever need. [click to continue…]

How often does your business post on Facebook? If I was a betting person, I’d guess that you aimed for at least one (and maybe two) posts a day.

While it doesn’t seem like a big number, that’s a lot of posts—especially since plenty of businesses post more than twice a day. The first ten might be easy to come up with, but it sometimes gets increasingly difficult the longer you go, just because the sheer number of ideas you have to come up with is so large.

It can even be difficult for social media marketers to come up with a continual stream of Facebook posts, so our trick is to have a general store of Facebook post ideas on hand for inspiration. These Facebook post ideas can help us to fill out our Pages and create entire editorial calendars. In this post, I’ll share my 14 favorite go-to concepts for awesome Facebook post ideas that work for all businesses. [click to continue…]

If it feels like there’s a million and one things to consider when writing our blog posts, and that’s because there is; you need to keep everything from word count to keywords to distribution in mind. Since blogging means trying to balance all these factors while simultaneously creating valuable, it’s no surprise that WordPress featured images are often overlooked.

While it’s not a surprise, it is a shame; utilizing high quality, consistently styled featured images on your blog offers a ton of benefits– starting with increased brand awareness and recognition for your business (but definitely not stopping there).

In this blogger’s guide to featured images, we’ll answer all your questions about why you need featured images on your WordPress blog, how to create them, and best practices to follow when choosing and creating them. [click to continue…]

A few months ago I was chatting with a well known growth hacker named Dmitry Dragilev from Criminally Prolific. He was telling me about some of the blog posts he was ranking for on the first page of Google.

I took a look at one of his posts and realized something…

His images sucked.

In fact, he barely had any.

Knowing that engaging images are key to increasing time on site and improving SEO, I made him a special proposal.

I offered to create custom graphics for one of his blog posts if he agreed to measure the impact and provide me with the stats. Without hesitation, he agreed.

Then, just one month after I added the custom graphics to his post, the average time on site for his email endings post increased by 46%. [click to continue…]

To continue to thrive in the business and marketing world, we all know that it’s essential to prioritize continual learning. Stagnation is not an option if you want to even maintain success, let alone build on it. There are some truly exceptional resources out available that make this task easier, especially when it comes to business and marketing podcasts.

Regardless of what you specialize in, there are a number of business and marketing podcasts that everyone can learn from. These are the 24 business & marketing podcasts you need to listen to in 2017. [click to continue…]

Everyone wants their newsletters to be opened, read and engaged with, by millions. Some people think this happens by creating a work of art within. This is incorrect, though, because in most instances people can’t see the inside of your email before they decide to open it.

So, if the artwork doesn’t help with opens, does it at least have an effect on engagement?

Well, it can make a big impression, but only if you do it properly. In this article we’ll discuss the best ways to use images in your emails, and hopefully the click-throughs will flow!

[click to continue…]

If you Google any thought or question that pops into your head, it’s guaranteed that you’ll be met with a seemingly endless number of blog posts in your search results. This is the environment that we’re operating in; it’s oversaturated and filled with the white noise of not-actionable, inaccurate, and boring content. And somehow, we need to not only compete with the great content that’s already out there, but claw our way through the bad stuff, too.

That’s a pretty big task. And it explains why it takes even amazing businesses with great blogs a little while to get things going.

Unfortunately, having great content isn’t enough to generate traffic. We need to put just as much effort into finding readers as we do writing the actual posts. There’s a lot of ways to get more traffic to your site; some methods are more effective—and cost-efficient—than others. I recommend starting with these 7 free ways to increase blog traffic that work regardless of industry. [click to continue…]