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#also i have full page ads every 5 posts that when i scroll past them
fugglecases · 2 years
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accidentally updated this godforsaken app for the first time in a year and its unusable
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femenaces · 3 years
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how to pack your blog into a suitcase
As of late, staff seems to have become more active in bringing down the ban hammer on feminist blogs. Because of this, it can be a good idea to have a way to preserve your content and make re-making easier. This is the “suitcase” method I’ve come up with. Important: this is a preemptive strategy, so it needs to be done prior to termination, not after.
Step one: Create a new tumblr account 
By this I mean log out, and “sign up” with a new email. For the settings on this new main blog, set it to be hidden from search results (which is the most private setting available for a main blog, as you can’t make a main blog private)
Step two: Add a private secondary blog to your new account
Secondary blogs are the only blogs that can be made private, so add one to your new account. Make it hidden from search results like the main blog, and select “password protect this blog” under settings on desktop to make it private. This will be your suitcase blog where you collect all your most important content from your feminist blog.
Step three: Find and collect your best original posts
Go to https://jetblackcode.com/TumblrOriginalPostFinder and enter you blog name to find all your original posts. To make the job faster and less cluttered, I also filter it by a certain note threshold (say, 15) and only collect the ones that were bangers. Personally, since I’ve had my blog for 5 years and my posting style and ideas have changed a lot over time, I like to reblog the posts to my suitcase chronologically by starting at the bottom of the original post list on jetblackcode and adding a “(insert year) START” tag to the first post I collect from each new year.
Step four: Find and collect your favorite posts / reference posts
To make this easier on myself, I’ve taken to tagging posts “fav” and “ref” right away when I reblog them if I think I’ll want to collect them in my suitcase blog later. That way, when it’s time to update my suitcase blog, I can just go through my feminist blog and collect all posts under those tags. 
Step five: Save your blog theme
To do this, open the HTML editor of your feminist blog and copy+paste everything there into a plain text document (like notepad on windows) and save it to your computer. If you have extra added pages on your blog, copy their content too.
Step six: Update your suitcase occasionally 
Every so often, repeat steps 3 and 4 to collect any new posts you want to save. I do this every couple of months.
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These steps will give you a hidden suitcase full of your best and favorite posts. My suitcase contains 150 posts total, condensed from my 5 years of blogging. Hopefully, you’ll never have to make use of your suitcase. But if you do, it’s easy (although repetitive) to fill your remade blog with your old content. Simply un-private your suitcase, scroll to the bottom (if you’ve organized chronologically) and start reblogging everything to your new blog. 
IMPORTANT: Always keep your suitcase account separate and private so that it is invisible & standalone, don’t use the account for any other blogs. This way, it is not at risk of termination and is a permanent database.
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hayjeon · 4 years
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Practical Tips on getting your fics out there!
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I’ve gotten an influx of these types of questions here recently, and the more i thought about what i was gonna add, it became really long :(  
disclaimer: a lot of the things i bring up are just from personal experience as a writer on this site, what my followers have told me they appreciate, and what i tend to look for when im looking for fics to read! If you don’t like these tips then pls move on :) 
although i’ll mention them, i’m also not going to be focusing on cliche tips like “write for yourself” or “grammar issues” cause those are pretty obvious!
1. accessibility of your blog 
when you’re trying to get your name out there, make sure that you’re creating an inviting experience for any potential followers! this includes:
a memorable url! be creative!
have some fun designing your blog’s aesthetic! (i love cute blogs because it reflects a bit of the writer’s personality), and (i prefer blogs with white backgrounds because it’s easier to look through/read, say, in contrast to a pitch black one where the words need to be white!) 
put your masterlist link in your bio (even better if you can link most recent fic! found this most helpful when i revisit authors that i like and can easily see if they’ve updated or not)
an organized and easy-to-navigate masterlist (personally, i prefer masterlists organized by band, instead of types of fics ie. i hate when i have to choose between drabbles, oneshots, and series masterlists; i really prefer to see them altogether!) --> see section 3 
organized tags (if you’re going to be posting a lot of non-fic-related content like pictures or videos, tag them properly so followers can sort through and find your fics easily!), or (if you’re going to be writing in different mediums like drabbles, or answering asks, make sure to use a unified #mine or #writing or #fics to centralize your content) 
2. get your name out there!
write write write! once you have some fics that show your talent, don’t be shy! 
join writing groups: when i first started out, I joined a bunch of groups that would reblog my fics in the midst of the content of much bigger writers; these blogs developed a following, and as a result of my content mixing in with bigger blogs’ content, so did my own tumblr! there’s been a stigma recently with these groups, but im sure you can find one thats supportive and not clique-y! 
send your fics to rec pages: what’s the harm? the only bad thing that can happen is that they ignore you! who cares! get out there! 
if you can do the above, i really encourage you to ask your fave writers for advice/to read your fic: again, the worst that can happen is that they say no or don’t respond or don’t have enough time, but it’ll be a good opportunity to get some feedback! i for one read (or try to read) every single rec that falls into my inbox. if i like it, i’ll #rec it, and if i don’t, unless the writer asks me for feedback, i move on!! 
utilize your tags!!: i’m not entirely sure if this is still the same or not, but from my memory, it’s the first 3-5 tags that matter the most? so utilize them well; push back the tags that aren’t really relevant (ie. #writing, #fics) and push more the main subject line of what you wrote (ie. jungkook fluff, bts smut, namjoon angst). these will populate your fics into the tags better!
headers!: when i’m scrolling through an infinite page of fics, the headers catch my eye the most; try being creative! you can find a lot of info out there on how to make ur headers super aesthetic, but i can share my tips too! --> see section 3
3. your masterlist 
here are some practical tips! 
organize by band, not type of fic/member/centralize your masterlist: i went onto a blog recently and clicked their bio mlist link to find a page full of 20~ish “JUNGKOOK MASTERLIST”/ “JAEHYUN MASTERLIST” and when i clicked on each one, they only had like 2 or 3 fics per member. i think it would’ve been better if she’d centralized all her fics! that keeps whoever is looking interested and more likely to click on another fic while browsing
add info about the fics!: when scrolling through a masterlist, it’s easy to get lost; try to add some snippets of info (ie. a short sentence you liked from the fic, a quick summary, a description of the au/scenario, or even a header!) this all gives some info about the fics you have tagged! 
headers: this isn’t a requirement, but i personally love a good header on fics i read and i love making them myself as i finish up a fic and get ready to upload it; here are free sources: unsplash for HQ stock pics, crop/edit/filter in VSCO, and then add aesthetic script with fontcandy) 
try to fill it up!: after i visit a blog after reading one good fic, i usually browse through their mlist to see if there are any more that i’d be interested in. if there’s a lot to look forward to, i’ll almost always follow; try to write as much as you can in the first few months to try and fill up your mlist and give blog viewers a reason to visit your blog again, follow, or even reblog your content!) 
4. try not to reproduce cliche fics: 
honestly tumblr’s writing community (and armys) has grown insanely these past few years and, unfortunately, even from my perspective, in the past 3-4 years, all the writers have sort of become blended together in my brain. but, i can say that the ones who consistently stand out are the ones who produce consistent content and think outside of the box! 
i tend to gravitate towards fics that have really interesting plotlines (ex. btssavedmylifeblr’s VOID is always a surprise to read because it’s sO unique! i usually don’t read ot7 fics but this one is legit my fave) 
I know it’s tempting to try and just write typical smut fics to try and gain some traction, but tumblr is already too overloaded by that kind of content; try to write something that’s special and unique! this will set u apart from the thousands of other writers here --> see next section
5. create unique fics: 
this is also personal to my writing style, but i get so bored writing just casual fics about the members, and it affects the fics i choose to read too; i prefer unique fics which you can achieve through: 
circumstance/au: create a fun au!; don’t just create an arranged marriage, create an arranged marriage in joseon dynasty, or between a werewolf and a hunter! (shameless self plug); don’t just give me friends to lovers, but give me spiderman!jungkook friends to lovers! (ie. cupofteaguk’s exchanges)
jobs: give them out-of-the-ordinary jobs; don’t just give me enemies to lovers, but give me rival!anchors who end up loving eachother! (ie. jimlingss The Newscasters)
fun dialogue: create good back-and-forth, (something i’m still working on!)! this will help your characters develop personality, and that way, readers will start to develop that themselves as well (ie. dad!yoongi from insemination wars by prolixitae is such a specific character that i love so much!, or obiwrites’ garden characters were so memorable!)
create memorable personalities: don’t give me a flat character, try to develop 4d personalities in all of your characters! (im still working on this too!) this way you can really make an impression on your followers! a great way to practice/recognize this is: “Ask my Character.” Can your followers ask a specific character a specific question, and would you be able to deliver an answer that is very specific to that character’s tone/voice/personality? If yes, then ur doing well! If not, try to think of ways that you can make tht specific character from a specific story, really unique and separate from your other characters.
6. some practical writing tips
be yourself, write for your own pleasure, blah blah blah; yeah you know already haha but here are a few more practical tips! 
grammar check: if you can, try and hone your grammar! makes for an easier read 
write like you: i personally LOVE this by obiwrites, but even the way she writes exudes her personality and is so specific; try not to be caught up in adding hundreds of synonyms and exquisite language; in fact, simpling it down and being more concise and honest with your writing is better than a superfluous sentence; this will also give ur characters so much more dimension and funk
use those commas/sentence variation: try to use more commas; this will feel like you’re the narrator to your own story; it also makes it more fluid to read in my opinion, over those short. clipped. sentences. (ie. “he came over, sitting down on the corner of your bed with an expression you’d never seen before” over “he walked over. he sat down, looking sad.”) 
half-half dialogue/narration: a fic with too much dialogue can get confusing, and a fic with too much narration can get dry; try to balance them out, and weave in and out of each! 
quality over quantity: don’t feel burdened to write a 30k word fic. in fact, i think some of the shorter fics (ie. any of versigny’s stuff) made a bigger impression on me over the longer fics because they were short, left me wanting more, and were just so high-quality in such small quantities. try out your hand at drabbles and one-shots, and don’t feel too burdened to try and develop a series right off the bat! 
abandon pigeon-holes: i’m guilty of this; i start series and then end up with no vision for the stories and they end up giving me writers block. its okay. just stop or discontinue them or leave them on a hiatus; it’s okay. your priority is yourself, and if abandoning certain works are part of that, then go ahead. it’ll help you progress more. 
and finally.......
i’ll add more as they come up! but if you liked this, then pls lmk! i’d love to give more tips and tricks; i think i started this blog 3-4 years ago when there weren’t as many writers here, but im glad you’re thinking of starting out/wanting to grow more! don’t feel intimidated! it’s not all about the notes/followers but creating a blog you’re proud of. 
so write what you’re proud of, or interested in, and keep going. i truly thoroughly had so much fun writing this post. if there are any writers who read through this and have some more advice, pls msg me! 
all the best to you! 
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coldasyou · 5 years
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How to gif without photoshop
Hello! By popular demand (of like 4 people) I am going to write out a tutorial of how I make gifs when I’m on my personal laptop and don’t have access to photoshop. There is another method I use with a different software that is a bit more complicated and if people are interested, I will make a tutorial of that method as well. I’ll do my best to keep this concise, so let’s get started. 
Warning that this is VERY text and image heavy because I know how frustrating it can be when a tutorial feels like it’s skipping steps and I want this to be as clear as possible. Also please read this on desktop, tumblr mobile kills the quality of gifs inside text posts.
This is the video I will be giffing and here is the gif I will be making!
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What you need:
 A video to gif
For the best results, I recommend a video that is either 720p or 1080p (basically the higher the quality, the better). Videos with good lighting and bright colors also turn out the best. Unfortunately for me, I gif the TV show Prodigal Son a lot and that show has neither of those things, which is why my gif example is from that show; if you can make a scene with zero lighting or vibrancy look even somewhat decent, you can make anything else look good.
A video downloader or screen recorder
This is the video downloader I use and this is the screen recorder but basically any youtube video download website or screen recorder program works. Keep in mind that ezgif has a pretty low upload limit for videos, so if you want to gif something longer than like ~4 minutes, cut the video down to the specific parts you want first on a website like this one. 
ezgif
A very straight forward website that anyone can access. You don’t need to download anything, it’s all online. 
Bonus: Online Image Editor (not required, but I use this website to add text to gifs)
1. Making the gif:
Once you have a video downloaded, you go to ezgif.com and go to the section video to gif. Click choose a file, scroll to your downloaded video, and hit upload video. Your screen should look like this now.
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There are two ways to pull out the sections of the video you want to gif. You can either write in the start and end time in the little sections (you have to convert them to seconds: for example, if my gif started at 1:16 and ended at 1:20, it would be 76 seconds and 80 seconds respectively). Or you can do the method that I feel is easier, where you go to the section you want it to start on, hit pause, and hit the blue button that says “use current position” then let the video play until it hits your stopping point, hit pause again, and click on the second “use current position” button.
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Once you have the start and end time recorded, scroll down to the next part of the screen with the size options. For size, select “540xAUTO (for Tumblr)” since tumblr gif sizes start at 540p and go down the more gifs are in a row. For frame rate, try to do either 20 or 25; the higher the frame rate, the smoother the gif will look. If you are trying to gif something in 540p that is longer, you might need to chose 10 to keep it under 5mb, which is the tumblr gif size limit. For method, leave it on FFMPEG. Then hit, convert to gif.
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your gif will now look something like this!
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Now, this gif is currently 5.7mb, which is above the size limit for tumblr (5mb or above gifs will still play if I recall, but the quality will be really bad when you post them). If I was planning on keeping the gif this size, I would go back and change the frame rate to either 20 or 10 to get the size down. However, I am going to resize the gif to 268p, so I don’t need to worry about it being to big.
Using the correct gif size for tumblr is one of the easiest ways to make sure the gif looks good! For gifs that take up a whole row, the size should be 540p wide. For two gifs in one row, the size is 268p each. For three gifs in one row, the sizes are 177p, 178p, and 177p in that order. Here is a visual of it. 
The next step would normally be resizing the gif, but Prodigal Son youtube videos come with a black banner on the top and bottom that I need to crop out. You will see a menu full of options under your gif, and you want to click on “crop.”
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Cropping is pretty straight forward; you just move the little box over the part you want cropped, then hit the “crop image” button. Make sure width stays 540p!
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Your gif now looks like this
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Next, you look at the options under your gif again, and go to “resize.”
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Again, resizing is pretty straight forward. I just put in 268 into the “width” section and leave the “height” section blank since the site will automatically resize the height. You can ignore the other menu options.
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Your gif now looks like this
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Next step is optional, but I usually do it. Once again, you go to the menu of options under your gif and select “speed.”
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Speed is also super straight forward. I almost always reduce the speed of my gifs somewhere from 90% to 80% no matter what, just because I think it makes it look smoother. For gifs that are of short scenes that go really fast, I will reduce it to anywhere from 70% to 50%. You can try different speeds to test out what you think looks best. For this gif, I’m going to put it at 80%.
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Here’s what we have so far. Congrats, you have made a gif!
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Now for the fun part!
2. Coloring the gif
Go to the “effects” option, in the menu under your gif. You will see a LOT of options, but the panels I’m going to focus on are “colorize”, “brightness and contrast” and “color presets”. This section is going to vary a lot depending on what specific video you are giffing so remember to be flexible and try lots of different options out! It took me a while to get to a place where I can just eye a scene and know what settings to use. It’s super easy to go back and tweak a setting if the gif doesn’t look like how you want it the first time, but it’s a lot of trial and error. 
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The main option I focus on in the “colorize” section, is “saturation.” This is what will make all the color in your gif pop out. The saturation I use varies a ton; for scenes that already are colorful/bright, I usually keep it around 120 to 150, since you don’t want it to be over saturated. If I’m making an edit that is supposed to look toned down or more grey/neutral tones, I’ll decreases the saturation in the range of like 90-40. For a show like Prodigal Son, where there is basically zero color vibrancy, I tend to go full out with saturation, usually in the 150-200 range. For this gif, I have it all the way up to 200.
Next is brightness and contrast. This also varies wildly, but a good rule of thumb is I always try to keep my contrast at least 5 points higher than whatever my brightness is, it just makes the lighting more even. You need to find a good balance; obviously, the darker the scene, the higher you want the brightness and contrast, but if you go too high, the gif with be staticy/grainy. For Prodigal Son, which has horrible lighting, my brightness is anywhere from 10-30 and my contrast is anywhere from 15-35. For this gif, my brightness is on the lower side since the scene is outside in natural light; brightness is 16, contrast is 26. 
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After you get those settings, I go over to “color presets” section and click on the “tint” option. It will pull up a color chart that looks like this
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You ALWAYS want the intensity up to 100. This part is where the most trial and error occurs; there isn’t any one color option that works for every gif. The shade I use most often is light red/pink or light blue/light purple. For scenes that are lacking warm tones (which is almost all of Prodigal Son) I tend to go to the light reds, and for scenes that are lacking cool tones, I go to the light blues. The light reds are best for making characters skin tones look more...like actual skin tones and not totally washed out. To select a color, you just move your mouse around the chart. This is the range of color codes I tend to use.
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Again, intensity should be up to 100 (it automatically starts at 50 and I was too lazy to move it while getting screen shots :P). 
For this gif, I actually used a new technique I’ve been trying out where I start with a light blue tint to even out the color tones, then once that gif is done, I go back to effects and add a layer of pink to make the colors brighter. Usually, one color works fine, but sometimes it’s hard to find a good balance (the red colors can get too red and the blue sometimes brings out too much of a yellow shade). For now, I have my color tint set at #eeebff. 
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Ultimately, this is what my effect settings look like and this is what the gif looks like now. 
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Now, like I said before, I added another layer of tint to this gif. All you have to do is go to the menu under your gif, and click on effects again.
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It will take you back to the panel you were just on, expect now your colored gif is on the top and all the settings are blank again. The only setting you need to use now is the tint option; go there, and select a light red shade. I used #fff0f0.
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And here is the final gif! To save it, just right click and hit “save image as.”
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I know it seems like a long process, but once you get a hang of it, it goes by super fast, especially if all your gifs are coming from the same video.
BONUS: Adding text
If you are trying to gif something with dialogue or you want a quote to put over your gif, you will want to put text over it. ezgif has a “text” option that you can use if you want, but I personally don’t really like their font options, so I use the website Online Image Editor.
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This is what it looks like. You can either hit “upload an image” and upload your saved gif, or you can go back to ezgif, right click the gif, hit “copy image url” and paste that url into the “upload from url” option. The web page should now look like this.
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It’s pretty straight forward from here; click on the “add text” button and a menu will appear on the left hand with options for the text. 
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Type whatever you want the caption to be in the “type text here” box. This website has a ton of font options you can play around with, but when I just want to caption a gif, I stick with “Arial Bold Italic.” For a 268p gif, the font size should be 10-12, depending on how much writing you plan to put on each gif (if some gifs are going to have more writing than others, pick a smaller font size so it stays consistent!) When I make a 540p, the font goes up to 14-16.  I use white for the color and black for the stroke. I make the strokewith 3 because it makes the caption stand out more. Once all these settings are selected, hit the “preview” button under the text box.
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You can now drag your text anywhere you want on the image! The only bad thing about this website is that it doesn’t automatically center text, so you either have to eyeball it, or if you’re picky, like me, open up one of those online ruler applications and use it to measure out the center. For captions, I move the text just slightly above the bottom of the gif. 
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Finally, you hit apply. Once your gif has the text on it, all you have to do to save it is right click it and hit “save image as.” And here is the finished project!
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That got a lot longer than I thought it would, but I hope it was informative! If anything was unclear or if you have further questions, feel free to send me an ask. Thank you for reading.
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knadire · 5 years
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Art Theft Committed by CreepypastaDotCom and Chilling Tales for Dark Nights
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Hey everybody. I just wanted to tell an important story to anyone out there that’s an artist or a fan of horror media. In the wake of the mess last weekend surrounding Twitter account @RareHorror failing to attribute art they reposted to the creator and having a massive and embarrassing meltdown (which you can read more about here, language warning: http://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/rare-horrors-twitter-meltdown-ignites-debate-over-artist-rights.php), I want to share a similar experience I’ve been having. It’s going to contain some disturbing (but fake) Photoshops and paintings so I’m sorry in advance if this sort of thing upsets you.
 So about a month ago, while talking with some friends, one of them drew my attention to how the Twitter page for CreepypastaDotCom was tweeting out about a story on their main website using an image that looked a little familiar. There was no credit to be found. After a little digging we realized that it was the work of a rather well known, found footage-style artist who goes by SlimeySwampGhost, which many of us were familiar with. After discovering this, we collectively began filling their comments section with remarks about this lack of attribution. SlimeySwampGhost himself eventually asked for credit.
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After a full day with no further response from CreepypastaDotCom, I decided to scroll deeper. I discovered that for the past few months, ALL their Twitter content was made up of uncredited artwork. Every post contained an excerpt, a link to the story it was from, a handful of hashtags, and an uncredited piece of artwork. Through this, I found another account called Chilling Tales for Dark Nights. They themselves are a horror audio drama/narration channel I’ve known about for a while. Not only did they have posts identical to those made on CreepypastaDotCom’s Twitter page, but they had made even MORE promoting their podcasts, audio recordings, and YouTube videos, still using artwork that they had no ownership of.
I want to put it into perspective how much of a profit these websites are making. If you visit CreepypastaDotCom (which I do not recommend), it is filled to bursting with ads. Their most recent story, which is only 1500 words long, contains four standard and one video ad to the right, a banner across the side and bottom, and three built right into the story, between every four paragraphs or so. I have seen an even higher number on longer stories. Though not an exact number, the site Worth of Web estimates that nearly 10 000 people visit CreepypastaDotCom and it earns nearly $150 USD daily. Though their site’s lack of ads is a little less apparent in its source of income, Chilling Tales for Dark Nights offers a subscription service starting at $5 USD a month and capping at $79.99 a year, locking many of their stories and recordings behind a paywall . On top of this, Social Blade estimates their channel earning between $144 and $2.3K USD monthly. These are not small groups making a mistake; these are large companies making the active decision to omit credit, at times going out of their way to do so.
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So, I decided to spend a free afternoon going on a little crusade of using a combination of Google Images and other backwards image searching services to find and credit nearly ALL of the art they reposted in their respective comments section.
The most disturbing cases I’ve seen are:
-a few artists that I was able to tag directly that stated that they hadn’t permitted them to use their art nor was it free for anyone to repost or use (at bare minimum without credit)
-multiple artists who were selling the piece they used or others as a print
-several drawings that had logos, names, signatures or watermarks cropped out of the image to even further remove credit
-a handful of concept art from indie games
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The most disgusting one I found was an advertisement featured on both Twitter feeds for a book on Amazon by K Banning Kellum. Attached to this was a piece that I discovered was hand painted by François Baranger for a crowdfunded book, cropping out the full resolution to hide the space where the text was meant to be placed. They were using art from an unrelated book to advertise another. Both Banning and Baranger have made statements asking that the advert be taken down.
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It took a few hours before I heard any word from either of them. CreepypastaDotCom initially excused all this to Twitter’s word count, citing that their Facebook page properly attributed the specific artist I was referring to (which they mentioned was a “friend” of theirs). I pointed out that though yes, they did credit that very specific artist on that other social media, they failed to do so with a good majority of the art they were sharing, and that they had no issue adding an additional tweet to that chain after I mentioned it but still to none of the others.
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Both pages did eventually remove all of the incriminating posts, but not before blocking me immediately after this interaction.
I had this on the back of my mind until a month later, when I decided to check up on both of them after the RareHorror incident occurred. When plugging their most recent text-based stories they began using (what I hope to be) stock photographs, and most of CreepypastaDotCom’s Facebook feed now consists of memes. But all of the images that they had removed on Twitter had not ben touched on this social media page, and I also discovered an Instagram page for Chilling Tales doing the same thing. While going about making similar remarks on these respective pages, I recognized the watermark of Omega Black, who’s work was stolen by them before, directly used in a thumbnail for their podcast, which is one of the ones currently hidden behind their paywall. In fact, a majority of their recent thumbnails on their website, as well as on YouTube, have art done by other people that they have not credited. They only credit the artists that they commission art from, which they can, have, and CONTINUE to do. I have made efforts to properly attribute and ask that they remove these images as many places as I have been able.
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In the middle of writing this, CreepypastaDotCom has removed ONLY the post about post about K Banning’s book, leaving up everything else, and has banned me from commenting on their Facebook page any further. Chilling Tales yet to make any sort of statement about this behaviour. Since posting this to Facebook, I have now been officially blocked on both Chilling Tales for Dark Nights and CreepypastaDotCom on there, as well as CTFDN's Instagram. The posts that got the most negative feedback over theft (belong to Francois and OmegaBlack respectively) have all been completely removed, BUT all the others are still there. All my comments linking back to their respective portfolios, ArtStations and DeviantART profiles have been wiped clean and they are left uncredited once more.
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In the end I just want this sort of thing to end. It’s not right that these pages are piggybacking off of the artwork of others to generate more interest and clicks, to earn a profit that the original creators will not see a cent of. As an artist myself who has had their art mistaken for free clipart in the past I can’t image what it must be like to have your work used on a much larger scale. So if anyone from the CreepypastaDotCom or Chilling Tales for Dark Nights team is reading this, please consider removing all these. It’s neither legally nor morally right.
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If anyone following me is able to, I ask that you consider addressing all this yourselves on your social media of choice. I don’t want any outright harassment, but it seems like as with most large corporations, a large group of people expressing their dissatisfaction is the only way to incite any change. As only one person there’s only so much I’ve been able to do.
Any artists following me should be extremely cautious of who is using your art and for what purpose. If this is happening to anyone I know personally I’ve got your back and I’ll do everything I can to get it removed or appropriately attributed.
If you intend on doing anything like Chilling Tales in the future, even tangentially related, the Creepypasta Wiki is a better while still expansive resource for stories. Here are also some resources you can use for royalty free or public domain photographs and images:
https://pixabay.com/
https://unsplash.com/
https://stocksnap.io/
https://www.pexels.com/
If you want to use art that you like, at least ask permission first. The worst they can say is no, and no response is NOT approval. Credit the artist, and Google Images is not a source.
Below is a list of all the artists I was able to find who’s work has been stolen and left unattributed. It is not completely comprehensive since backwards image searching only goes so far, and as only one person I have only been able to track their posts back to the beginning of January due to their absolutely massive backlog of images.
https://www.deviantart.com/drfaustusau
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2331644373749140/?type=3&theater
 Gary Pullin
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2330164767230434/?type=3&theater
 Joe Webb
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2329562920623952/?type=3&theater
 https://www.deviantart.com/jflaxman
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2328831980697046/?type=3&theater
 *https://www.deviantart.com/koidl
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2326650480915196/?type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2326647174248860/?type=3&theater
https://www.instagram.com/p/BsnqEW_lpsc/
  https://www.deviantart.com/almanegra
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2326866630893581/?type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2445654418787737/?type=3&theater
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxYy84xFsc6/
 Masahiro Sawada
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2324896661090578/?type=3&theater
 https://www.deviantart.com/daverapoza
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2324062071174037/?type=3&theater
 https://www.deviantart.com/chromattix
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2324881584425419/?type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2440420665977779/?type=3&theater
 Emil Melmoth
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2322323768014534/?type=3&theater
 https://www.deviantart.com/kumpan/
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2322322098014701/?type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2433247106695135/?type=3&theater
 https://www.deviantart.com/jasonedmiston
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1955865917993656/2313320382248206/?type=3&theater
 https://www.deviantart.com/panchecco/
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2290413431205568/?type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2349352058417974/?type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2294791423874038/?type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2255315011155013/?type=3&theater
  https://www.deviantart.com/loish
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2286125321634379/?type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2338187819534398/?type=3&theater
 Ares Dragonis
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2284644478449130/?type=3&theater
 Matteo Ascente
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2282149892031922/?type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2327855437234303/?type=3&theater
 Klaus Wittmann
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2274267342820177/?type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2307437519276095/?type=3&theater
 Miklós Ligeti
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2272191189694459/?type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2302082193144961/?type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2442398692446643/?type=3&theater
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiT77ezGfzY
 Eric Felten
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2271754523071459/?type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2301019089917938/?type=3&theater
 Jay Zhou
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2268483903398521/?type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2292754607411053/?type=3&theater
 https://www.deviantart.com/danielgrzeszkiewicz
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2265915273655384/?type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2286888337997680/?type=3&theater
 https://www.deviantart.com/nrjin
https://www.facebook.com/creepypastadotcom/photos/a.1890769041170011/2260490967531148/?type=3&theater
 Alex Monge
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2354560677897112/?type=3&theater
https://www.instagram.com/p/BvIqWUTl76c/
 OmegaBlack
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2433720263314486/?type=3&theater
 https://www.deviantart.com/dloliver
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2414995095187003/?type=3&theater
 Fernando Acosta
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2262643733755474/?type=3&theater
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bss96BaFaC1/
 Pedro Silvia
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2238916129461568/?type=3&theater
https://www.instagram.com/p/BsEgbuqFJRD/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVeESsQbBl4
 https://www.deviantart.com/dominikbroniek/
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2458696254150220/?type=3&theater
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxsD7zXli7y/
https://audioboom.com/posts/7265417-the-art-of-imitation-chilling-tales-for-dark-nights
 https://www.deviantart.com/eemeling
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2454194474600398/?type=3&theater
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_zvU9u1epc
 https://www.deviantart.com/s-caruso
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2346953118657868/?type=3&theater
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bu7Wkr1FseL/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jae1pm4ui0
 Dario Puggioni
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2326173137402533/?type=3&theater
https://www.instagram.com/p/BuWnJ93lLjp/
https://youtu.be/kaLO87La0q0
 Clint Nitkev
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2309484632404717/?type=3&theater
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt7iHxDlFzm/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97ZFM1EyBFQ
 https://www.deviantart.com/emerald-depths
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2273329246020256/?type=3&theater
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bs_DQ9nlKMe/
 Blaz Porenta
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2249680588385122/?type=3&theater
https://www.instagram.com/p/BsWkhdDldGI/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd0o6Lfac9o
 https://www.deviantart.com/jflaxman/
https://www.facebook.com/chillingtalesfordarknights/photos/a.684108731608990/2244718002214714/?type=3&theater
https://www.instagram.com/p/BsOEvcVleCu/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qOOCS49RVM
13 notes · View notes
bnhavillaintriozine · 6 years
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How to Submit a Good Portfolio
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Since public applications will be opening soon, I thought I would make a simple guide on how to send a good portfolio when you apply to zines.
I’ll mostly be referring to art, since that’s what I’m most familiar with, but I’m sure a lot of these points can apply to writing as well.
A lot of my drawn commentary is meant to be lighthearted (and oh so messy), so please don’t take anything too seriously.
What is a portfolio? Anywhere you post your art is technically a portfolio, since you’re showcasing your work to a potential audience. If you showcase your artwork via Tumblr, Instagram, or any other site, you’re free to submit it for review. You don’t need to have a fancy, paid website to showcase your work. Let your art speak for itself.
What makes a portfolio bad? Like I mentioned before, anywhere you post your art is technically a portfolio. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a good one. In a portfolio, you want to show us your best work. While instagram may be a good place to show us your artwork, if there are some food pictures, con pictures, memes, or any random posts, it’s a bad portfolio. We don't want to sound harsh, but we would appreciate only seeing your work and not your outside life. That way, we can solely focus on your portfolio.
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What makes a portfolio good? Good portfolios showcase completed pieces that demonstrate your best skills and capabilities. If you post your artwork on tumblr, you may have some random content in your blog, but if you have a tag specifically for your finished pieces and best work, please send us the link with that certain tag. It will save us the hassle of scrolling down multiple pages and it tells us you’re serious about the project by showing us your true potential.
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What to submit:
1) Submit complete URLs. We want to easily copy and paste your portfolio onto our browser. We don’t want to type out the whole website. We have hundreds of applications to go through, so typing up the website can eat up a lot of our time. I’ll admit that I’m guilty of doing this, but I’m also learning from my mistakes. Typing up the URL (even if it’s as simple as mywebsite.com OR myartblog.tumblr.com/tagged/best-work) only takes a few seconds to do, and we’ll definitely be grateful to you for doing this.
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2) Show us how versatile you can be! While we can appreciate the beautiful technical skills from various artists, if you submit a portfolio that only includes headshots and not much else, you run the risk of being declined. We want to see different compositions, interesting uses of color, or cool angles! You don’t need to show us that you can work with 10 different types of media, or hundreds of different angles, but give us something more than just the same pose.
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3) Send us completed work. While sketches DO look nice, a majority of zines want to see your completed artworks. In most cases, they are going to be releasing a finished, printed project, so it’s reasonable that we would want samples of what your completed art looks like. By looking at your finished pieces, we can gain a better insight of what to expect from you.
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What to avoid:
1) Don’t send us a portfolio full of sketches, as mentioned above. If you have a sketchier / messy style, that’s fine. What you consider as finished is what you should be trying to send to us.
2) Don’t make us scroll through tons of pages. This one applies similarly to the previous point. If your blog only includes doodles and a few finished artworks, don’t make us scroll for so long just to get to the completed stuff. Please save a life and tag your finished works. We will thank you for it.
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3) Don’t send us multiple links. Some zines may ask you to link them to 3 of your best works, but instead of sending us 3 different links, create a tag or Google Drive folder with those 3 pieces included. This saves us the time of copy/pasting every single link into our browser, plus it allows us to better compare your work side-by-side. You also get the added benefit of not needing to copy/paste multiple links for your next zine application.
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4) Don’t send us a portfolio that doesn’t include humans. This one is kind of weird, but I have received some applications that only feature animals or backgrounds in their portfolios. If you’re applying to a zine that needs certain people or characters drawn, we can’t properly judge your portfolio if you don’t show us that you can draw the subject matter. The same can be applied vice versa. If I made a corgi zine and you send me a portfolio full of humans, how am I supposed to know if you can draw a dog or not? When applying to zines, take note on what they’re looking for, so you can submit accordingly.
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5) Don’t submit work that’s older than 2+ years. As an artist, you’re always growing and learning. A lot can change in a year or two. We want to see your recent stuff, since that’s the most accurate representation of your current skills and knowledge.
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A Simple Suggestion
1) If you don’t want to tag your work or delete some things from your social media just to show us your best & completed work, make a Google Drive folder that shows us your best pieces. Keep it short and simple by including a minimum of 3 pieces and a maximum of 8 pieces. Make sure the Google Drive folder permissions are changed to shared! (This is very important).
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Advice & Final Thoughts
Don’t be afraid of rejection. Spots are usually VERY limited in zines. There’s no way we could fit everyone into one zine (that would be a heavy and thick book, not to mention SUPER expensive). I’ve been rejected multiple times, but you can’t let that discourage you! Just keep applying and continue to improve your artwork. And even if you’re accepted, still continue to improve your artwork! Practice, practice, practice a whole damn lot!
If you know you won’t have enough time to dedicate to the zine, please don’t apply. If you apply and get the slot, only for you to drop out last minute, you just took the spot of a potential artist that actually wanted to be a part of the project and it’s unfair to them.
If you get accepted and life gets too hectic for you to continue with the project, PLEASE don’t vanish and make the zine organizers hunt you down. It will not make us want to work with you again. We want things to be pleasant between the both of us. Life happens, but communication is ESSENTIAL in every situation.
I’m not against having sketches in a portfolio (I have a few on my own website as well), but a majority of applicants can’t afford their own website, so they use free sites like Tumblr or Instagram. These websites don’t really allow you to properly separate your doodles / finished work, so this is why I keep reiterating this point.
Zines are meant to be fun and something to bring the artist community together! Interact with your fellow artists and let’s all have a good ol’ time.
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Facts and Figure, How to use Pinterest for Shopify store? Ultimate Guide
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The ultimate guides on How to use Pinterest for Shopify store? The social media platform is the best way to get your eCommerce brand to people in a very effective way. How much does it cost to advertise on Pinterest?There is no denying that Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, etc. play an essential role in the marketing budget. This is why many online stores plan marketing strategies using one or more of these social media platforms. How to Identify Pinterest Advertisements?Pinterest is also a social media platform used in marketing strategies for stores like Shopify.The ultimate Pinterest analytics guideHow to Get Pinterest Audience Insights:How you can auto-publish pins from your RSS feed?How to change cover photo on Pinterest board?This social media platform is slowly gaining traffic and is now in the top 5 social media platforms. The Pinterest platform is exceeding up to 335 million active users. Facebook is still on the first number, with 2.5 billion users. Pinterest marketing strategies is growing day by day among eCommerce brand marketers. What Important for Pinterest social media marketing:
How does Pinterest marketing work for Shopify?
Can you connect your Shopify and Pinterest, and how can you use the Shopify Pinterest app? I will answer all these questions in this article. So, stay tuned with me. First, we learn about Shopify and the reason for its popularity. How to use Pinterest to promote your blog?What Is Shopify store And Why Is It So Popular? Shopify is an eCommerce platform used for building online retail businesses. Many businesses are moving to the world of hosted eCommerce platforms, and Shopify provides them with one of the best media.  How to use Pinterest for Shopify store: Shopify has been opted by many entrepreneurs and startups worldwide to expand or migrate their businesses to the web. Let's check the reason for its popularity when there are so many other options available? Well, you need to read further to get the answer. Let's look at Shopify's features, which make it one of the most desired eCommerce platforms. The ultimate Pinterest analytics guide?How to change email address on Pinterest account?how to change cover photo on Pinterest board?How much does it advertise on Pinterest cost?How does Pinterest SEO work?How to use Pinterest for Etsy?How to open Pinterest Account?
Reason For popularity:
- It's affordable.- It lets you create attractive stores. - Don't worry about web hosting.- They provide commendable technical support.- It's secure.
Benefits of selling on Pinterest with Shopify:
Pinterest is about four times more effective at generating sales than other social media networks. If you are doing e-commerce or drop shipping business for a while now, most marketers would recommend Facebook ads, but nowadays, for Facebook ads, it's too much competition there. So Facebook ads became too expensive, especially for beginners in the business.  How to add affiliate links to Pinterest?And if you compare Pinterest and Instagram, you will see that every Pinterest pin is clickable and connected to your Shopify store or directly to the product pins Shopify. Just this fact makes Pinterest for Shopify so much more potent as a traffic source compared to Instagram; here, you can have a maximum of one link to the store in your bio. Now I tell you another reason why you should be on Pinterest is because of the half-life of being it's so much longer than average post duration on other platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. The ultimate Pinterest analytics guideHow to Get Pinterest Audience Insights:How you can auto-publish pins from your RSS feed?How to change cover photo on Pinterest board?For instance, if you get traffic from your post on these platforms, it will last for a few hours or a full one day; Pinterest can bring you traffic for many months. And for some beans, even for years, Pinterest tends to revive old viral pins; this applies to seasonal products.Pinterest is the second-largest social media platform that leads to the most traffic to any online store. Your Shopify Pinterest app will be the cause of most generating traffic sources. Of course, Facebook is number one, but I recommend you to change your social strategy. I think you should use the Shopify Pinterest app to make Pinterest Shopify integration easier. It is because Pinterest is all about bringing businesses of all sizes and enthusiastic users to your platform. At the same time, Facebook hides organic posts and asks to pay ad space to show them. Pinterest offers a high order value.
How to verify Your Shopify store Pinterest:
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Pinterest for Shopify storeI get a lot of questions related to Shopify and Pinterest. Yes, you can ask. And it would help if you verified your Shopify store on Pinterest. And it's straightforward Pinterest work together to make this Pinterest Shopify integration seamless on the user side. To verify your domain on Pinterest, you will need to follow these simple steps provided by an official Shopify site, which helps you to verify your store on any third party, which may include Pinterest and Google webmaster tools.- You will go back to your settings over here, and you will get a claim tab there. - From here, you will put some domain.com and will plead a claim.- You need to select add HTML tag, and it will show you a meta tag, which you have to paste into your head section of the site.- Now let's go back to the info which is provided by Pinterest on Shopify help center. - So the first step you have to do is go to Shopify admin, and from there, your go-to online store, and then choose themes, the option themes.- You will find the theme here.- You have to add it and then click actions.- Choose added code.- And then, in the layout section, you have to click the theme—liquid fie in Shopify to open the file in the online code editor. The thing you have to do is that you need to copy them.- Meta-tags showing on your Pinterest account and based it on a blank line directly below the opening had a tag. And then you need to click save.Make sure you are not going to delete anything, even not accidentally. Because if you save these changes with the things you erased accidentally, things would be getting more complicated, so it will be tough to fix it. Your store will be verified within 24 hours by Pinterest, probably even faster. So you will be able to use rich pins in our case, we're talking about e-commerce sites. So it's product bins. Shopify Pinterest app made this integration easy on the smalls on the user side; Shopify is not the only platform to make product bins available.How to sell on Pinterest with Shopify:After the announcement of Pinterest buyable pins, a new opportunity has come for Pinterest, a business holder that has created a brand new market. The best selling method through Pinterest Shopify is the Pinterest Shopify app. Shopping ads, online store links, and Pinterest launches topped the list. Read the article to know how to sell from Shopify on Pinterest.How can you sell on Pinterest with the Shopify Pinterest app? Both Shopify and Pinterest profiles will require in this action. Therefore, you have to create a Shopify account. You'll be able to study Shopify from our perspective. Here you will find a free trial to check out whether you need this platform before paying for love or money.As for Pinterest, I recommend you to make a Business Account. It's free of cost, and you'll be able to link it to your Shopify account if needed. Additionally, the Pinterest Business Account integrates seamlessly with Shopify. It allows you to configure payment history options and advertising settings for automatically generating Pinterest ads Shopify from your store to visit on Pinterest.Once you have created both accounts, log into your Shopify account. Move to the dashboard of your Shopify account. You have to locate the Sales Channels header, which you will find on the left menu. It shows you an inventory of all sales channels activates on your website. for example, you'll see media like Online Stores such as Amazon or Facebook. Our main objective is to feature Pinterest on its list.After the announcement of Pinterest buyable pins, a new opportunity has come for Pinterest business holders, which have created a brand new market. The best selling method through Pinterest Shopify is the Pinterest Shopify app. Shopping ads, online store links, and Pinterest launches topped the list. Please read the article to know how to sell from Shopify on Pinterest. I think you should check the Pinterest infographic because it tells you about Pinterest for Shopify store. It also gives you guidance on Pinterest custom areas and how you can grow your Pinterest for Shopify business.How to generate sales on Shopify and Pinterest?Here are some steps to create sales on Pinterest. But Before discussing it, we have to knowledge about the requirements for Shopify. Let us discuss it first. Title, description, image, price, product type, and availability must be required for your product page.How to connect Shopify to Pinterest?Pinterest is a great social media platform to promote products for e-commerce sites such as Shopify. Pinterest is a great social media platform to use if you have an e-commerce store because it's visual, especially if your audience is female since that's primarily their demographic change in this video. We will show you how you can easily connect Shopify and Pinterest so that your products show up on Pinterest, and people can purchase straight from there. So stay tuned.Click the + button above the sales channel; your Shopify will show a list of Pinterest sales channels that you can add to your store. These will include Facebook, messenger, and google. You can add whatever you want but select Pinterest on Shopify.Search Pinterest by scrolling down and click the + button. Now it will appear on the screen that you are going to link Pinterest to Shopify. You are now able to check all privacy and information. For example, you can learn how Pinterest accesses products and analytics from your Shopify store. I try to be able to connect Shopify to Pinterest process yourself.Click on the Add sales channel button to go further. Pinterest sales channel has been added to your Shopify dashboard. Now it's time to link Pinterest to Shopify and specify the products that need to be sold. We will prefer professional account Shopify Pinterest ads instead of personal account Pinterest Shopify ads in the Pinterest Shopify app. Click on the connect account button. It will take you to the Pinterest app and ask you for Shopify and Pinterest authenticity. This connection to Shopify Pinterest integration allows you to manage Shopify Pinterest product pins and Shopify Pinterest ads every time without permission. Click the access button to proceed. The next page will show you that your Pinterest account is connected to Shopify.Ad settings:You can automatically generate a few accounts under the Ad Settings area. If not, make sure you are following the guidelines provided to you to make these accounts. The first account will be Pinterest Ad Account, which is automatically creating ads, and pins rely on your Shopify products. A Pinterest Tag can automatically generate to get insights from your ad campaigns. It behaves like Facebook ads created by your Pinterest and Shopify accounts.Billing method and accepting terms and conditions on Pinterest:After generating sales on Pinterest, you can also connect billing. The Ad billing option will appear. Click it. The billing method will be stored on Pinterest, which can be used for Shopify. If you create an integration ad, Shopify will use the billing information on Pinterest. There is no need to worry because the ad budget will first get approval from you whether you are in the mode of putting a mess on the advertisement or not. Now we come to our second point, which is related to terms and conditions. So we have to accept them. Try to read these terms and conditions carefully to avoid trouble in the future.Publishing and manage availability:As we move on to Pinterest, the publishing and manage availability options will appear. With the help of this option, it is clear which product is complete before Pinterest's publications. If any product pin title, description image, pricing, product type, or availability is missing, then Pinterest will not synchronize it. “Availabilty” means that the product to be sold is active or not. If you want to see which product is available that you are going to sell on the Pinterest sales channel, please click on manage availability.Product:If you want to view the list of products available on Shopify, click on the product option. You can also click one by one product from here and also take advantage of the filter option. The filter will be essential for the sales channel. Availablity will appear on the top right. Click it. Click on available on Pinterest from here. By doing this, all the products of the Pinterest sales channel will appear on the list. One thing to keep in mind here is that coming to the products sales channel list does not mean that they will be published automatically. It means that they will be published because it is now possible to put ads on them.Stats:90% of weekly users visit the Pinterest site to make purchasing decisions. It may include immediate purchases or planning for purchases. 55% of users log into Pinterest, specifically to find products because Pinterest is full of ideas. That's more than half of the entire user base. And 50% of Pinterest buy something after seeing a promoted pin, meaning a Pinterest ad. Here you will also learn about Pinterest ads Shopify. This article will show you how to use Shopify Pinterest product pins for Shopify Pinterest ads. How to see stats on Shopify dashboard:If you want to see sales on the Pinterest store and how many products people are pinning, follow these steps:- Go to Shopify admin on your Pinterest app Shopify.- Click the order button Select the filter from the drop-down menu.- Select Pinterest and select a sales channel.- Click yes, add the filter.- Select the order number of the order analytics you want to view. On the order page, you will see all your sales flagged. Comprehensive stats can also be viewed on Pinterest with pins and pinners.How to Make the Most of Pinterest Buyable Pins Shopify Feature:Pinterest has added a new feature that most businesses need is called Buyable Pins. It permits firms such as Shopify to sell instantly on one of the most popular social platforms today. Many Pinterest users already use this social network as a shopping list for future purchases. In this way, your potential customers can click on a pin. They can buy the item they wish. So, how can you get in on this Pinterest buyable pins Shopify feature?Right now, Pinterest Buyable Pins Shopify is available on Pinterest. Here are Big-box retailers, and a handful of eCommerce sites such as Etsy, Shopify, and woo-commerce can use them. For some businesses, though, there is a waiting list to join. But Once you are approved, you will be good to go.One way around that waiting list is to be a Pinterest Shopify app retailer. You can easily connect Shopify to Pinterest. If you power your online store through Pinterest for Shopify, then you can add the Pinterest feature right away.For mobile and iPad., Buyable pins are available through the Pinterest App. Here are new price filters also available. Buyable pins are available in blue outline. The traditional buy button features to look for with the Pinterest App in an impressive way. Promoting the Pinterest App for your website or business is another excellent way to increase sales as well.Here are 6 points that will motivate you to create your buyable pins for your Shopify store.1. It is cost-effective for your business.             2. It is just fun and causes job growth within your business. 3. You can help the e-commerce market. 4. You can create your themes and sell themes. 5. It causes to Gain mobile business. 6. It gives Access to retail and e-commerce experts.It is expected that our e-commerce industry will act as a skyrocket in the next few years. Read the full article
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16 Essential WordPress Plugins: Add-ons to Hike your Website Performance
WordPress is the most popular website content management system. Besides that, various other factors come up while operating your websites, like its security, eCommerce flexibility, SEO ranking, and much more.
WordPress Plugins are the extended features that will shoot up its performance when added to the website. WordPress has updated thousands of plugins till now.
They all are essential in some or other means. However, choosing what’s suitable for your website is a trivial task.
This post will let you scroll down through sixteen essential plugins, all latest and universally adapted in various websites. Some of them are free, while some are worth paying for it.
What a WordPress Plugin Developer will need?
1.Classic Editor
It preserves the previous editor screen in WordPress. It does allow the user to use a different editor for every post or any single post.
However, Classic editor does not allow any functions operated by Gutenberg. The default editor will conceal everything in Gutenberg by default. This can be changed by settings———> Writing Screen.
2.Akismet Spam Protection
Akismet is an antispam plugin that flushes out all the spam comments and contact form database. This will protect your website from malign matters. Each word is filtered when Akismet scans for any misleading or hidden links.
In some cases, the spam will look certified to you, yet not to the Akismet module. Don’t hesitate to introduce this on your site to avoid spam that rots your site.
Moderators verify approved comments for any user. This will ultimately clean your space and increase site performance. This is an open-source platform. For reviews, you can look into the ‘comments’ admin panel. Its installation will take just a few seconds!
3.Jetpack: WP Security, backup, speed, and growth
This is a security plugin to keep your website safe from viruses. This plugin even increases the visitor’s traffic and is also suited for SEO operations.
Jetpack backs up or effectively changes your information to a copy site. It gives you ceaseless site security consequently. A considerable number of eCommerce sites utilize it. It will therefore check the dangers and shield the framework from malware capacities.
It can reinforce your information and even reestablish it with a straightforward contact. It has held hands with Google AMP to support the site execution.
4.WooCommerce PDF Vouchers
WooCommerce pdf vouchers are a must to add a plugin in any eCommerce business. This will allow you to download an unlimited pdf voucher and can redeem it in person anywhere, anytime. It is fully customizable, automated, and secure.
It has been developed with a variety of features like unlimited voucher templates, coupon codes, etc. With WooCommerce pdf vouchers, you can add some features, including OTP verification and reverse redemption. It is 100% multilingual.
5.Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is the number 1 plugin with dynamic establishments crossing 10 million. It is the best module for Search engine Optimization.
This will assist your site with positioning the most noteworthy in web search tools. This way, you guarantee that your substance is arriving at the most significant number of individuals. This will upheaval the advancement of your administration/item.
The Yoast SEO likewise includes XML sitemaps, meta labels, Canonical URLs. This all will make your brand a superior one.
On the off chance that you are a WordPress Website Developer, you should be capable of SEO-based content. In any case, if not, add Yoast SEO to your site. This element even investigates the coherence and even shows the secret to refine it.
6.Social Auto Poster
Wouldn’t it be amazing to auto-post your content on varied Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.? Social auto poster posts your content automatically and even reposts the older content.
This is based on scheduling the posts. It supports custom-type commands. It can also post tags, categories, and any other WordPress taxonomies as hashtags.
It even supports the auto-posting of emojis. It is compatible with WPML, bbPress, BuddyPress.
7.Contact Form 7
It will collect various databases. It helps you to configure numerous plugins. Develop CAPTCHA and powered by AJAX-POWERED submitting. It can even support Akismet Spam Filter.
However, maintaining the privacy features does not share any user’s personal data If to any database or any external server. It will not automatically use cookies.
8.EDD Download Image Watermark
EDD Image download watermark will allow you to put a watermark on EDD images. This can be treated as a copyrighted image or a company logo. You can paste different watermarks for large photos, small photos, thumbnails, etc.
You can even repeat a watermark, align or watermark existing images. It is compatible with the EDD FES submission manager.
9.Elementor Page Builder
It is an advanced website builder than WordPress. It is the foremost website builder that works very fast. Faster! This plugin will enable you to design the live website and not from the backend.
There are numerous predesigned templates for the design. There will be limitless design flexibility available to the user.
10.Docket– WooCommerce Collections/Wishlist/Watchlist
Do you like a product? Want to save it for the future? WooCommerce Docket is your savior. This allows the user to save and share products that they want to buy.
This enables the admin to allow the user to see the products left for sale, their quantity, and price. It helps to create unlimited collections.
It is also compatible with WPML, Yoast SEO, WC vendor, BuddyPress.
11.Smush Image Optimizer and Compressor
They are the fundamental things to present amid your substance on looking captivating. This is an image enhancer plugin. Resizing the image and propelling it will, finally, improve the site stacking execution. Other than this, this module has been named an honor-winning smoothing out a specialist.
This will improve your photos up to 5MB, all free. The plugin can pack the image while ensuring the idea of the photo. This is practical with some other topic or module.
As in a post, there will be vast loads of pictures and GIFs, which will add to your site loading time. This module will consider cutting down the size of the images and hence diminishing the languid stacking time
12.XML sitemaps
This is the best SEO plugin and seen as the best plugin of WordPress. It gives an extensive XML sitemap without planting down your site execution.
This will let the web indexes peruse and direct your site toward the correct position. In the event that and when you force any progressions to the site, this module will advise the web search tool and this would re-update your position.
A lovely cool motivation to have this module!
13.WP Super Cache
While sitting tight for the stacking site, you generally consider ending the arrangement to look through the administrations and items.
This is because the site stores the limit of gathered information you perused previously. This heaps up your site and places you in need to free it.
This module will help you clear all the stored information that sets aside some effort to stack your site. Henceforth it is helpful to keep up the crowd on your site.
14.Sucuri
Security ought to be the main concern for all online entrepreneurs. Sucuri offers a WordPress security module and web application firewall that is likely outstanding amongst other assurances you can get for your webpage.
This screen and shield your site from DDoS, malware dangers, XSS assaults, animal power assaults, and fundamentally every other kind of assault. In the event that you don’t have a firewall on your site, you need to add one today.
15.WPML
Naturally, WordPress doesn’t permit you to handily make a multilingual site. This is a test for organizations that oblige a multilingual client base in various geographic areas.
This is the place where you’ll require WPML. It is a WordPress multilingual plugin that permits you to effectively make multi-lingual sites with WordPress.
It is exceptionally simple to utilize, SEO cordial, and assists you with making content in various dialects.
16.Redirection
It is a divert director for WordPress. Redirection allows you to set up custom 301 sidetracks inside your site and afterward keeps a full record of information on clicks. You can even utilize it to follow broken URLs on your site.
A 404 or broken page adds to something similar. Be that as it may, you can’t check each and every post or page on your site by hand, particularly on the off chance that you have many posts. Basically introducing the Redirection module will show you a rundown of pages that are 404s, and you should simply enter the URL where you need the module to divert the guest.
What do we conclude?
WordPress Plugins effectively built website performance. WordPress Plugins are as flexible as developing it from scratch. Many of the trivial plugins are available free of cost.
Some customized plugins may be available from WordPress Plugin Development Company. The cost of developing custom WordPress plugins generally depends on an efficient market study.
Being a WordPress Plugin Developer, you must know what your WordPress Website needs. Adding the above plugins will positively affect the overall rank of your website performance.
I hope you are familiar with the most valuable plugins by now.
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bluedreamjellyfish · 4 years
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Zelda Snes Game Genie Cheat
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Zelda A Link to the Past - Pro Action Replay Codes (USA) If you are unfamiliar with Game Genie or Pro Action Replay (PAR) cheats and how to use them - fear not! Both of these things are usually found under the Cheat tab if you're playing on an Emulator which is located on.
More Cheats and Tips for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past If you need more help with this game, then check out the following pages which are our most popular hints and cheats for this game: Added info to.
Zelda A Link To The Past Game Genie Cheat Codes
Snes Zelda Games List
Cheat Codes For Zelda Snes Game Genie
In this video I will show you cheats, codes and barrel warps and level shortcuts. For a full list ofdonkey kong country on the SNES visit http://snesguy.com/donkey-kong-country-snes-cheats.html
Subscribe To My Channel : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYGgQmMW_KvffS0tqKulbaw Visit My Website : http://snesguy.com SNES Longplays : http://snesguy.com/category/longplay SNES ROM Hacks : http://snesguy.com/category/rom-hacks SNES Hidden Gem Games : http://snesguy.com/category/hidden-gems SNES Cheats : http://snesguy.com/super-nintendo-snes-cheats-z Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/snesguy Twitter : https://twitter.com/SNES_Guy
I hope you find these cheats useful and they help you to beat the game. If you use these cheats please let me know how you got on by posting about it in a comment below.
Hi there welcome to the video, Im the SNES Guy and Today Im going to show you some cheats that you can use for donkey kong country country on the snes to get extra lives, become invansable, jump higher and much more. I hope you enjoy this video on Donkey Kong Country SNES Cheats.
Home Super Nintendo Pro Action Replay Legend of Zelda. Rooms beyond the scroll lock in the actual game. 9: If you use this code. FAQ in any way shape or form on your site, just e- mail me and I. Note: These codes will only work if you use the Game Genie add on.
***50 lives*** The first cheat I am going to show you is how to start the game with 50 lives. When you get to the “Select a game screen” highlight “Erase Game” then press B, A, R, R, A, L. You will hear the special area sound which means the cheat has been activated. Start a game and you will have 50 lives
***Extra Lives*** Go back to the first level and use the spin jump to jump on to the trees at the start of the level, you will be able to get 5 lives easy, as soon as you have the lives press start then select to exit the level and then repeat the process.
***Unlimited Extra Lives*** For unlimited extra lives Go to the millstone Mayhem level, and make sure diddy kong is selected then go right, when you see the crusher run left and jump on the wall at the start of the level. When the crusher gets closer slide off and hold down b and left on the d pad. You will now get an extra live for every time you jump on the crusher. This is not really a Donkey Kong Country SNES Cheats but its good to practice these bonus rounds.
***Practice Bonus Rounds*** To Practice Bonus Rounds When you see Kranky Kong press down, y, down, down, y, the cheat will be activated when you hear the special area sound.
***Game Genie Codes*** I am now going to show you some Donkey Kong Country SNES Cheats game genie codes.
C2C9-4E2C / C2C1-4A9C Infinite lives 1768-C34D / 1768-C33D Start with 100 lives A081-1273 / A086-13E3 High jump for Donkey Kong 3D81-1273 / 3D86-13E3 Mega-jump for Donkey Kong 8081-1E73 / 808B-1AE3 High jump for Diddy Kong 2D81-1E73 / 2D8B-1AE3 Mega-jump for Diddy Kong DD6C-C7D4/DD62-C4A4 Pressing Select while paused exits any level,
***Action Replay Codes***
70C0B098 Infinite lives B882B863 Start with 100 lives B9AB27DE Invisible Characters BFA2A060 Almost invincible–switch off if you get stuck BFB964C4 High jump for Donkey Kong BFB964E0 Mega-jump for Donkey Kong BFB96CB4 High jump for Diddy Kong BFB96CD0 Mega-jump for Diddy Kong
***Shortcuts + Barrel Warps***
I will also show you level shortcuts and Barrel warps for the following levels
Mine Cart Carnage – Shortcut / Barrel Warp Stop And Go Station – Shortcut / Barrel Warp Tree Top Town – Shortcut / Barrel Warp Slipslide Ride – Shortcut / Barrel Warp Trick Track Trek – Shortcut / Barrel Warp Barrel Cannon Canyon – Shortcut / Barrel Warp
**** Thanks For Watching ****
Just to let you know I show you three types of cheats for %TITLE% on the SNES. The first type are cheats are general cheats that you can use on any game with out the use of a game genie or action replay.
The second and third cheats are cheats are codes you can use on the game genie or action replay. I have tested all codes used in this video. If you know of any codes in this video that do not work please let me know in a comment below.
I hope this video on %TITLE% SNES Cheats + Action Replay | Game Genie Codes has helped you to beat the game. If you are aware of any tips I have missed off please post about them in a comment below.
If you are looking for more SNES cheats please check out the cheats on my site at http://snesguy.com/super-nintendo-snes-cheats-z source
NSKUILTA Infinite energy
SXPAPO Some enemies can't move
SXYAPO Walk up a screen, and you can walk all over at the top.
NYAZPA Everything except you and the enemies are black, even your hearts.
YGAEXP Enemies in shop, enemies in top corner outside and some enemies are stuck in the Laburnums NOTE: If their is an 'o' next to the code it means it will only work with the old version of Zelda. You can tell if you have an old version when you die and it says Continue, Save, Retry and nothing else. If you have the new version it will also have a red box that says Hold in the Reset button when you turn off the power. If there is an '?' next to the code, the code has not been tested on both versions of the game.
PPLXZZ Touch wall and a ghost will appear
PPEEAA Brings up castle subscreen at all times
VVTTSP Puts you on beginning screen
POZXXU Walk around and fire sword, you will get stuff on location--?
AAIZZI Infinite money--?
AEEAEE all enemies in game are falling rocks
AAPVEX Start game at the top left corner of map
AAANAA Walk through walls in castles. Use the whistle to get to a castle.
AAPNLO Walk through walls, trees, and water in the overworld. Don't enter caves; if you do you will not be able to get out.
OSTLLY Press the B button to use weapons you do not have. When using this code you must have no weapons. You may have to press the B button several times.
AIIOOV Start with 24 bombs
TIIOOV Start with the potion
YIIOOV Start with the wand
IIIOOV Start with the meat
GIIOOV Start with the whistle
LIIOOV Start with a green candle
ZIIOOV Start with the bow
PIIOOV Start with a very strong arrow. (This arrow can't kill Ganon so of you want to pass the game don't use this code)
TTIOOV Start with 24 keys
ITIOOV Start with 24 coins
IYIOOV Money goes up once in a while
AKITVX Forms new entrance when you leave a cave
EENAKP Different stuff in caves
KTVXXZ Secret entrances are open. (you can't kill the snake in the last level with this code)
XYYYYL Meat comes out of shooting sword
KIOZXX Rooms are split in half, you might be able to find things, like Hearts.
VXXTSS Walk when you usually can't
SZZVVZ Link is different colors
PPZXYY Change castle
XXLLLZ Rapid B button is on, walk through some enemies
Zelda A Link To The Past Game Genie Cheat Codes
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IZLZZZ Wall changes into rock man when you touch it
Snes Zelda Games List
OPPEEA Speed writing
Cheat Codes For Zelda Snes Game Genie
PPEEAA Brings up castle subscreen at all times
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wickedbananas · 6 years
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Efficient Link Reclamation: How to Speed Up & Scale Your Efforts
Posted by DarrenKingman
Link reclamation: Tools, tools everywhere
Every link builder, over time, starts to narrow down their favorite tactics and techniques. Link reclamation is pretty much my numero-uno. In my experience, it’s one of the best ROI activities we can use for gaining links particularly to the homepage, simply because the hard work — the "mention" (in whatever form that is) — is already there. That mention could be of your brand, an influencer who works there, or a tagline from a piece of content you’ve produced, whether it’s an image asset, video, etc. That’s the hard part. But with it done, and after a little hunting and vetting the right mentions, you’re just left with the outreach.
Aside from the effort-to-return ratio, there are various other benefits to link reclamation:
It’s something you can start right away without assets
It’s a low risk/low investment form of link building
Nearly all brands have unlinked mentions, but big brands tend to have the most and therefore see the biggest routine returns
If you’re doing this for clients, they get to see an instant return on their investment
Link reclamation isn’t a new tactic, but it is becoming more complex and tool providers are out there helping us to optimize our efforts. In this post, I’m going to talk a little about those tools and how to apply them to speed up and scale your link reclamation.
Finding mentions
Firstly, we want to find mentions. No point getting too fancy at this stage, so we just head over to trusty Google and search for the range of mentions we’re working on.
As I described earlier, these mentions can come in a variety of shapes and sizes, so I would generally treat each type of mention that I’m looking for as a separate project. For example, if Moz were the site I was working on, I would look for mentions of the brand and create that as one "project," then look for mentions of Followerwonk and treat that as another, and so on. The reasons why will become clear later on!
So, we head to the almighty Google and start our searches.
To help speed things up it’s best to expand your search result to gather as many URLs as you can in as few clicks as possible. Using Google’s Search Settings, you can quickly max out your SERPs to one hundred results, or you can install a plugin like GInfinity, which allows you to infinitely scroll through the results and grab as many as you can before your hand cramps up.
Now we want to start copying as many of these results as possible into an Excel sheet, or wherever it is you’ll be working from. Clicking each one and copying/pasting is hell, so another tool to quickly install for Chrome is Linkclump. With this one, you’ll be able to right click, drag, and copy as many URLs as you want.
Linkclump Pro Tip: To ensure you don’t copy the page titles and cache data from a SERP, head over to your Linkclump settings by right-clicking the extension icon and selecting "options." Then, edit your actions to include "URLs only" and "copied to clipboard." This will make the next part of the process much easier!
Filtering your URL list
Now we’ve got a bunch of URLs, we want to do a little filtering, so we know a) the DA of these domains as a proxy metric to qualify mentions, and b) whether or not they already link to us.
How you do this bit will depend on which platforms you have access to. I would recommend using BuzzStream as it combines a few of the future processes in one place, but URL Profiler can also be used before transferring your list over to some alternative tools.
Using BuzzStream
If you’re going down this road, BuzzStream can pretty much handle the filtering for you once you’ve uploaded your list of URLs. The system will crawl through the URLs and use their API to display Domain Authority, as well as tell you if the page already links to you or not.
The first thing you’ll want to do is create a "project" for each type of mention you’re sourcing. As I mentioned earlier this could be "brand mentions," "creative content," "founder mentions," etc.
When adding your "New Project," be sure to include the domain URL for the site you’re building links to, as shown below. BuzzStream will then go through and crawl your list of URLs and flag any that are already linking to you, so you can filter them out.
Next, we need to get your list of URLs imported. In the Websites view, use Add Websites and select "Add from List of URLs":
The next steps are really easy: Upload your list of URLs, then ensure you select "Websites and Links" because we want BuzzStream to retrieve the link data for us.
Once you’ve added them, BuzzStream will work through the list and start displaying all the relevant data for you to filter through in the Link Monitoring tab. You can then sort by: link status (after hitting "Check Backlinks" and having added your URL), DA, and relationship stage to see if you/a colleague have ever been in touch with the writer (especially useful if you/your team uses BuzzStream for outreach like we do at Builtvisible).
Using URL Profiler
If you’re using URL Profiler, firstly, make sure you’ve set up URL Profiler to work with your Moz API. You don’t need a paid Moz account to do this, but having one will give you more than 500 checks per day on the URLs you and the team are pushing through.
Then, take the list of URLs you’ve copied using Linkclump from the SERPs (I’ve just copied the top 10 from the news vertical for "moz.com" as my search), then paste the URLs in the list. You’ll need to select "Moz" in the Domain Level Data section (see screenshot) and also fill out the "Domain to Check" with your preferred URL string (I’ve put "Moz.com" to capture any links to secure, non-secure, alternative subdomains and deeper level URLs).
Once you’ve set URL Profiler running, you’ll get a pretty intimidating spreadsheet, which can simply be cut right down to the columns: URL, Target URL and Domain Mozscape Domain Authority. Filter out any rows that have returned a value in the Target URL column (essentially filtering out any that found an HREF link to your domain), and any remaining rows with a DA lower than your benchmark for links (if you work with one).
And there’s my list of URLs that we now know:
1) don’t have any links to our target domain,
2) have a reference to the domain we’re working on, and
3) boast a DA above 40.
Qualify your list
Now that you’ve got a list of URLs that fit your criteria, we need to do a little manual qualification. But, we’re going to use some trusty tools to make it easy for us!
The key insight we’re looking for during our qualification is if the mention is in a natural linking element of the page. It’s important to avoid contacting sites where the mention is only in the title, as they’ll never place the link. We particularly want placements in the body copy as these are natural link locations and so increase the likelihood of your efforts leading somewhere.
So from my list of URLs, I’ll copy the list and head over to URLopener.com (now bought by 10bestseo.com presumably because it’s such an awesome tool) and paste in my list before asking it to open all the URLs for me:
Now, one by one, I can quickly scan the URLs and look for mentions in the right places (i.e. is the mention in the copy, is it in the headline, or is it used anywhere else where a link might not look natural?).
When we see something like this (below), we’re making sure to add this URL to our final outreach list:
However, when we see this (again, below), we’re probably stripping the URL out of our list as there’s very little chance the author/webmaster will add a link in such a prominent and unusual part of the page:
The idea is to finish up with a list of unlinked mentions in spots where a link would fit naturally for the publisher. We don’t want to get in touch with everyone, with mentions all over the place, as it can harm your future relationships. Link building needs to make sense, and not just for Google. If you’re working in a niche that mentions your client, you likely want not only to get a link but also build a relationship with this writer — it could lead to 5 links further down the line.
Getting email addresses
Now that you’ve got a list of URLs that all feature your brand/client, and you’ve qualified this list to ensure they are all unlinked and have mentions in places that make sense for a link, we need to do the most time-consuming part: finding email addresses.
To continue expanding our spreadsheet, we’re going to need to know the contact details of the writer or webmaster to request our link from. To continue our theme of efficiency, we just want to get the two most important details: email address and first name.
Getting the first name is usually pretty straightforward and there’s not really a need to automate this. However, finding email addresses could be an entirely separate article in itself, so I’ll be brief and get to the point. Read this, and here’s a summary of places to look and the tools I use:
Author page
Author’s personal website
Author’s Twitter profile
Rapportive & Email Permutator
Allmytweets
Journalisted.com
Mail Tester
More recently, we’ve been also using Skrapp.io. It’s a LinkedIn extension (like Hunter.io) that installs a "Find Email" button on LinkedIn with a percentage of accuracy. This can often be used with Mail Tester to discover if the suggested email address provided is working or not.
It’s likely to be a combination of these tools that helps you navigate finding a contact’s email address. Once we have it, we need to get in touch — at scale!
Pro Tip: When using Allmytweets, if you’re finding that searches for "email" or "contact" aren’t working, try "dot." Usually journalists don’t put their full email address on public profiles in a scrapeable format, so they use "me@gmail [dot] com" to get around it.
Making contact
So, because this is all about making the process efficient, I’m not going to repeat or try to build on the other already useful articles that provide templates for outreach (there is one below, but that’s just as an example!). However, I am going to show you how to scale your outreach and follow-ups.
Mail merges
If you and your team aren’t set in your ways with a particular paid tool, your best bet for optimizing scale is going to be a mail merge. There are a number of them out there, and honestly, they are all fairly similar with either varying levels of free emails per day before you have to pay, or they charge from the get-go. However, for the costs we’re talking about and the time it saves, building a business case to either convince yourself (freelancers) or your finance department (everyone else!) will be a walk in the park.
I’ve been a fan of Contact Monkey for some time, mainly for tracking open rates, but their mail merge product is also part of the $10-a-month package. It’s a great deal. However, if you’re after something a bit more specific, YAMM is free to a point (for personal Gmail accounts) and can send up to 50 emails a day.
You’ll likely need to work through the process with the whatever tool you pick but, using your spreadsheet, you’ll be able to specify which fields you want the mail merge to select from, and it’ll insert each element into the email.
For link reclamation, this is really as personable as you need to get — no lengthy paragraphs on how much you loved [insert article related to my infographic] or how long you’ve been following them on Twitter, just a good old to the point email:
Hi [first name], I recently found a mention of a company I work with in one of your articles. Here’s the article:[insert URL] Where you’ve mentioned our company, Moz, would you be able to provide a link back to the domain Moz.com, in case users would like to know more about us? Many thanks, Darren.
If using BuzzStream
Although BuzzStream’s mail merge options are pretty similar to the process above, the best "above and beyond" feature that BuzzStream has is that you can schedule in follow up emails as well. So, if you didn’t hear back the first time, after a week or so their software will automatically do a little follow-up, which in my experience, often leads to the best results.
When you’re ready to start sending emails, select the project you’ve set up. In the "Websites" section, select "Outreach." Here, you can set up a sequence, which will send your initial email as well as customized follow-ups.
Using the same extremely brief template as above, I’ve inserted my dynamic fields to pull in from my data set and set up two follow up emails due to send if I don’t hear back within the next 4 days (BuzzStream hooks up with my email through Outlook and can monitor if I receive an email from this person or not).
Each project can now use templates set up for the type of mention you’re following up. By using pre-set templates, you can create one for brand mention, influencers, or creative projects to further save you time. Good times.
I really hope this has been useful for beginners and seasoned link reclamation pros alike. If you have any other tools you use that people may find useful or have any questions, please do let us know below.
Thanks everyone!
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charlieharry1 · 4 years
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A way to take your social approach to the subsequent level with paid social
Social media marketing is immensely appealing to most manufacturers, and it’s a channel this is regularly prioritized. Lots of companies make the effort to get their Digital Marketing Company Nottingham up and strolling along their web page earlier than they even officially open their doors to customers. It lets in for first-rate courting constructing and you may stay in touch together with your audience on a regular basis, and these kinds of advantages come without spending a dime. Social media is an brilliant asset, but it does have its obstacles. To combat the ones boundaries and to further make bigger the benefits of social media, we advocate that every one of our customers use paid social commercials to elevate their cutting-edge campaigns to new heights and even greater fulfilment. Interested in taking your social method to the next degree with paid social campaigns? On this post, we’re going to discuss precisely why it’s so critical, and how precisely you could use paid social to enhance the effects of your contemporary natural strategies. Why use paid social? Social media advertising is unfastened. That’s one of its largest assets to small organizations on a decent finances. It’s a loose, surprisingly easy channel that lets in them to distribute messaging, gain visibility, and preferably retain to keep in contact with their target audiences. Social media may additionally function a primary touch factor to help new users find out you for the primary time, and it could be used to nurture relationships via each step of the digital sales funnel, keeping them engaged lengthy after their initial buy. Natural social media does have weaknesses, although, that may restrict exactly how some distance you can go with a facebook or  marketing campaign outdoor of the uncommon viral publish (which, in spite of what many human beings suppose, you do now not have full control over). Paid social advertisements will let you counteract those boundaries with some creativity, sturdy strategies, and a little ad spend. It’s crucial to understand that natural reach closely iuences a few structures more than others. Facebook is a high example, wherein the natural attain for pages is so low that it’s feasible as little as 2-five% of your audience may want to see any given submit that you publish on the platform organically. Maximum systems have an algorithm that prioritizes content based on what they expect users to need to see, and this could effect your logo. You’re additionally restricted to who sees your posts while you’re relying solely on natural content. Humans you follow may see your posts, and each person who visits your web page can. Human beings can see your submit of their pal shares it, and they may come upon it in seek or ’s explore phase. Apart from that, however, there’s not tons you can do outdoor of paid social. Paid social campaigns, however, can help with this. You may combat natural attain, paying simplest for impressions, clicks, or different moves which you choose even as you’re in a position to connect with audiences out of doors of your direct fans. You could attain audiences which you aren’t connected to a lot more effects whilst nevertheless the usage of concentrated on criteria to ensure you’re achieving applicable audiences. Similarly to connecting with new target audience contributors, paid social additionally makes it clean to reconnect with present audiences, consisting of vintage clients that haven’t purchased in some time. Each techniques can help increase conversions and brand awareness. Paid social make it a lot more possible to leverage social media channels not most effective for dating building but also for lively promoting and growth. If you want to scale, this is the way to move. The way to enlarge your social strategy with paid social commercials
Read Also:-  Google released a movie on how Google Search works
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there are plenty of outstanding makes use of for paid social advertisements, which can be run through platforms like fb and  advertisements, promoted pins, linkedin ads, and twitter ads. Whilst you want to use them to enlarge your current social approach, there are 5 awesome types of ad campaigns that you can use to achieve this. Sell your quality content material as soon as it already has social proof
if you need to growth visibility on any of your content, you could try this with social commercials. They don’t want to necessarily be selling whatever; in case you want to get more followers for your web page or power site visitors in your website to examine a weblog submit, this method works nicely. Selling already-existing and high-enticing organic posts on fb has some benefits. First, you realize that it’s already successful with your audience and your fans, that means that it’s robust content material that has an awesome danger of doing properly with different audience members, too. The prevailing social proof will even assist you, attracting user attention. In case you were scrolling and noticed that a submit had 4k remarks and heaps of reactions, you’d clearly be more interested to peer what the fuss is ready than a submit with  measly likes. Check your top-acting content, and sell it via their local ad device. Systems like facebook and  allow you to carry the existing social evidence at the publish on the way to be shown when the ad is run, too. Show applicable commercials to area of interest target audience businesses
from time to time, you may have content material that you need to reveal to best particular organizations of your social followers. You could, for instance, want to age content material exclusively with clients who're members of your loyalty application so non-participants aren’t seeing blessings they are able to’t obtain. Or you might want to promote coupon codes mainly meant for first-time clients. Whilst that is the case, you could use advert campaigns to show applicable messaging to particular niche groups of your target audience. If there’s any content that you need to promote to handiest small businesses of people, ads are a terrific desire. In case you use segmentation for an equivalent electronic mail marketing campaign, that is a signal that niched-down advert campaigns are an amazing equal here. You could get creative here. If you have a rewards software that doles out $5 in coupon codes to each member on their birthday, you could have an advert campaign going for walks to participants using custom audiences and demographic focused on with birthdays inside every month. My birthday is in march, as an example, so i would get an ad from exceptional buy reminding me to take benefit of my $5 off coupon. You may additionally use linkedin’s dynamic ad campaigns for this motive, developing extra relevant campaigns via truly personalizing them. Your ads can show a user’s personal name and profile photograph inside the ad, grabbing their attention and increasing the probability that they take word and click. The extra applicable your campaigns are to every consumer, the more likely they're to take be aware and click on. Keep in mind that on some structures you’ll want to be aware of transparency. Fb has an ad library, for example, that allows users to peer all the ads a page is presently strolling. Most customers won’t trouble, however they might look up a coupon code that’s supposed to be specific to a single group of humans. Reconnect with lengthy-lost clients or fans
do you've got leads or clients who haven’t accompanied you but on social media? Or have you had some customers in the past that have because dropped off and haven’t bought or interacted along with your content material in awhile? In maximum instances, these people aren’t connected with you on social media, even supposing they were historically. The use of ad campaigns which are in particular designed to goal every of those audience niches with the right message and an attractive provide can convince them to follow you on social or even get them to grow to be active clients again. This could work mainly nicely with deserted cart users, who were this close to shopping earlier than they subsidized out. You could use campaigns designed to reengage these target market members, reminding them to renew their subscription, make a buy earlier than their existing order runs out, or maybe use a “we leave out you! Come lower back for 10% off!”-style advert campaign. Enlarge logo occasions to growth attendance
If your logo has any in-keep or on-line activities developing, you’re probable the use of social media to set up awareness and generate each pleasure and attendance. Boosting your occasions and jogging ad campaigns to sell them on more than one social media channels is an effective way to make bigger your social media strategy standard. Paying to promote your event will ship your visibility skyrocketing. Lots of people may be inquisitive about attending your event, whether it’s a unfastened webinar or an in-store wine-tasting that you’re promoting tickets to, although they haven’t but heard of your brand. This will be a splendid possibility to force income, construct lead generation, or even just establish greater logo consciousness. Begin promoting your event early thru paid social, selling both your touchdown page for registration or an on-platform event that’s amassed a ton of social proof. When promoting your occasion, make certain that you’re explaining the benefits of the event to the person so you can clearly get them excited. Keep in mind the use of movies from past similar events, or even the use of patron testimonials. Use advertisements to give an explanation for why following you'll gain the person
monitoring your engagement is a whole lot extra critical in phrases of social success than your follower count number, but that doesn’t mean that your follower rely is inappropriate. Of path, it’s appropriate to see an increasing volume of fans, because it means that extra humans on your audience are seeing your content on a regular foundation. The use of low-cost, engagement-oriented campaigns that are designed to convince people to grow to be followers let you increase your organic social strategy by using always supporting you grow your following. You may promote excessive-engaging content material to trap someone’s hobby, however you can also create campaigns that are designed to provide an explanation for why following you is effective to the user. This can encompass following your page (“make sure you comply with us to see our weekly stay collection wherein we train you our favorite cooking tricks!) to becoming a member of your fb group. Paid-social
 The idea in the back of gaining extra followers is to get more human beings seeing and attractive along with your content frequently. As a end result, facebook organizations are distinctly high quality to organizations—they have got precedence in the algorithms and are at an all-time high with consumer engagement. In case you want to apply ads to inspire greater connections with non-followers, promoting a set is a great area to start. Very last thoughts: how paid social can benefit you
Natural social media is some thing that every one manufacturers need to be placing time and power into, however even in case you’re getting solid results with natural advertising and marketing, it advantages most manufacturers to enlarge those effects with paid social campaigns. Paid social gives you a bit extra manage over otherwise unreliable structures that don’t always placed corporations first when it comes to unfastened content material. You could improve your campaigns, letting them reach new heights even as you enhance your roi for each paid and social campaigns normal. Even a small increase in advert spend to enhance and increase your natural social techniques can move an extended way, so there’s room for immediate increase with confined budgets, too. Seeking out new ways to take your social approach to the following degree with paid social campaigns? We are able to assist!  extra about how we will help with marketing campaign Digital Marketing Companies Nottingham and optimization here. What do you think? How do you use paid social to beautify your natural social strategy? Which structures benefit you most? Allow us to realize what you believe you studied in the comments section underneath! The following  tabs trade content material below.
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dipulb3 · 4 years
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Peacock review: A ton of free, ad-supported NBC content for the low price of free
New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/peacock-review-a-ton-of-free-ad-supported-nbc-content-for-the-low-price-of-free-2/
Peacock review: A ton of free, ad-supported NBC content for the low price of free
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Sarah Tew/CNET
Peacock, the new streaming service from Comcast-owned NBCUniversal, is an experiment of sorts: Its tiled interface and big-name network make it look on the surface like a Netflix or Hulu competitor. But its content, which includes live news and sports, new original series and a large back catalog of TV shows and movies — and the fact that it has a free tier — actually makes it more of a top-of-the-line free streaming service, like Pluto TV, Tubi and Roku Channels. (Editor’s note: Pluto TV is owned by ViacomCBS, the parent company of CNET, as are CBS, Showtime and Peacock competitor CBS All Access.)
Like
Strong free version available
Large back catalog of shows and movies
Live news and next-day access to some NBC shows
Don’t Like
Missing many marquee catalog titles like The Office, and others may be leaving soon
Few originals at launch, and few movies from the past decade
Confusing Channels and Trending sections
Missing key features like user profiles, mobile downloads, 4K HDR and Amazon device support
Peacock’s free tier — which rivals Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus and HBO Max currently lack — offers about 13,000 hours of ad-supported content, with the option to upgrade to premium if you want to, giving you more flexibility. You’ll find shows, movies, news, live sports and skit-style clips, with standouts including Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock and The Bourne Identity. On the other hand one of NBC’s most-streamed series, The Office, won’t be on the service until January 2021. And you’ll only get two episodes of new original series, like Brave New World, unless you upgrade to premium. The original Psych movie sequel, the popular series Yellowstone and live Premier League soccer matches are also reserved for premium subscribers.
At launch, Peacock lacked a number of features, including compatibility with the popular Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices. But in September, NBC and Roku reached a deal, and the Peacock app is now on Roku devices. However, Peacock still doesn’t offer profiles for different users, mobile downloads or 4K HDR streaming — all of which are available on the paid competition like Netflix and Disney Plus. 
Read more: Everything you need to know about Peacock
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Peacock has three subscription tiers: Free, $4.99 a month for ad-supported premium and $9.99 a month for ad-free premium.
Sarah Tew/CNET
You might not love watching ads, only getting a few episodes of original shows, or that several big features are still missing, but again: It’s free. 
If you upgrade to the premium tier ($4.99 a month or $50 a year for ad-supported; $9.99 a month or $100 a year for ad-free), you’ll get access to the full catalog of 20,000 hours of content, including every episode of the original series. You’ll also get next-day access to new episodes of all current NBC shows (as opposed to just freshman series on the free tier), and even early access to Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon the night they air.
If you’re a big fan of NBC’s stable of shows, want to catch up on some past hit movies or just don’t want to shell out the cash for Netflix or Hulu, the free version of Peacock is great. But paying $5-$10 a month for it when you already have the other major streaming services may  not be worth your while at this point — at least until it adds more must-see originals or bingeworthy favorites like The Office. 
Streaming compared
Peacock Netflix Hulu HBO Max Disney Plus Monthly price Basic free with ads, Premium with ads for $4.99 or ad-free Premium for $9.99 Starts at $8.99 Basic $5.99 with ads, Ad-free for $11.99, Live TV for $55 $14.99 $6.99 Ads Yes, with basic and first Premium tier No Yes, with basic tier No No Availability Now Now Now Now Now Top titles Brave New World, Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock, Law & Order Stranger Things, The Office, Breaking Bad, 13 Reasons Why Handmaid’s Tale, Catch-22, Lost, Bob’s Burgers Entire HBO catalog, Studio Ghibli films, DC films The Mandalorian, Avengers Endgame, Toy Story, The Simpsons Mobile downloads Yes, with ad-free Premium tier** Yes Yes (on Ad-free plan only) Yes Yes 4K available No Yes (on Premium plan) Yes No Yes HDR available No Yes (on Premium plan) No No Yes Number of streams 3 1 (2 for Standard, 4 on Premium) 2 (Unlimited with Live TV and a $10 add-on) 3 4
A solid free tier, with some ads
We tested out Peacock’s ad-supported free tier and its ad-supported $4.99 a month premium tier. (You don’t need a credit card to sign up for the free account, just an email address, which is nice.) Peacock promises that you’ll see five minutes or less of ads per hour across both ad-supported tiers. But it does seem like if you pop in and out of a movie or show, the ad count may reset. And at least in my experience, there seemed to be fewer ads on the premium tier than the free tier, but I haven’t tested it out long enough to know for sure. 
While watching Jurassic Park (which, as of Aug. 1, has expired on Peacock and moved over to Netflix) on an Apple TV and a MacBook Air, I saw six ads sprinkled throughout the film, ranging from 20 to 60 seconds each. But when I started it on the iPhone app, I got a notice that I would watch 135 seconds of ads at the beginning, and none for the rest. I’d love to have that option on my Apple TV too to get the ads out of the way, but unfortunately you don’t get to choose your ad format. 
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Peacock has a pleasant interface, but features including mobile downloads are still missing at launch.
Sarah Tew/CNET
After scrolling around and watching a bunch of ads, when I went back to start Jurassic Park again, there were no ads at all, since I had already seen five minutes’ worth in the previous hour. 
On episodes of Saturday Night Live, there were seven to nine ads sprinkled throughout the episode on both mobile and TV. This is about the same ad experience as watching on Hulu’s $5.99-a-month ad-supported plan, or on regular live TV — but, of course, it’s free. 
Otherwise, the ad experience varied depending on show and device. I don’t love ads (who does?), but they weren’t intrusive enough for me to want to upgrade to a $9.99 plan, at least right now. 
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Now playing: Watch this: First Look: Peacock streaming app
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A familiar navigation experience (for the most part)
Navigating through Peacock’s homepage Browse section is similar to other streaming services. There’s a big carousel of “hero” tiles at the top and rows of thumbnails below, labeled Peacock Picks, Continue Watching, Peacock Originals, Featured Films, Laugh Out Loud, Comfort TV and so on. 
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Browse through a large catalog of TV shows and movies on Peacock.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Peacock does have a Kids page with a couple of popular shows like Curious George and, on premium, Dragons: Riders of Berk, but the catalog is definitely more adult-focused — you can’t compare its kids’ offerings to those of Disney Plus or HBO Max. You can set parental controls and create a PIN to keep kids from watching anything over the rating of your choosing, though. 
Premium shows are mixed in with free offerings, denoted by a little purple feather in the top left corner. It reminds me a bit of Amazon Prime Video, which has shows included in your subscription mixed in with those you have to pay extra for. The app isn’t forceful in trying to get you to upgrade, though: You’ll only be asked if you want to change to premium if you click on a premium-only show, or if you go to your Account page.
You can stream on up to three devices simultaneously from one account. One negative: Unlike on Netflix, there’s no “skip intro” button, so you’ll have to watch theme songs over and over unless you manually fast-forward.
Browsing deep into NBC’s back catalog
Peacock’s launch comes at a strange time: Due to the coronavirus pandemic shutting down film productions, many of its originals were pushed to 2021 or later. Its launch was also supposed to coincide with NBC’s live coverage of the summer Olympics, which has also been pushed to 2021. 
Still, there’s plenty to watch among the 13,000 hours of free content or 20,000 hours of premium content from NBC and its sister networks and entertainment properties, including Bravo, USA Network, SYFY, Oxygen, E!, CNBC, MSNBC, NBCSN, Golf Channel, Illumination, Universal Kids and Universal Pictures. There’s also some content licensed from rivals, including A&E, ABC, Fox, History, Nickelodeon, DreamWorks Animation, Focus Features, Lionsgate, Warner Bros., Blumhouse, CBS, Showtime, Paramount and The CW (the latter four of which are, to restate, wholly or partly owned by CNET’s parent company, ViacomCBS). 
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You’ll find every season of shows like Parks and Recreation, but only partial seasons of others, like This is Us.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Some of the best shows available on the free tier now are 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, Downton Abbey, Monk and Friday Night Lights, and you get all seasons of each. Upgrade to premium to get the complete run of older shows, including Cheers, Frasier, House, Two and a Half Men, Everybody Loves Raymond and George Lopez. For some shows, however, you get only a recent handful of seasons or episodes, even on premium. For example, you’ll only find the last six seasons of Saturday Night Live and a handful of episodes of This Is Us. 
The free tier will also get current episodes of freshman NBC shows (those airing their first season) the day after they air, and episodes of other NBC shows one week later. On the premium tier, you’ll get every NBC show the next day. One interesting perk for premium subscribers: Once Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon return to in-studio production, you’ll be able to watch them before they air, at 8 p.m. ET, instead of waiting until 11:30 p.m. ET.
The catalog is far from complete, however. Some shows you might associate with NBC, like Friends, Seinfeld and older seasons of Saturday Night Live, aren’t on Peacock, and won’t be soon, if ever. As mentioned, The Office won’t arrive until January 2021, when Netflix’s contract for the hit show runs out. 
At launch, you’ll find seven originals: Brave New World, The Capture, Intelligence, Psych 2: Lassie Come Home, Where’s Waldo?, Cleopatra In Space and Curious George. Four more are coming later this summer. It remains to be seen if any will become must-watch hits, like The Mandalorian on Disney Plus. 
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Now playing: Watch this: Watch every Peacock originals trailer coming to streaming
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In the Movies category, you’ll find hundreds of titles, but relatively few from the past decade. (Think Alfred Hitchcock rather than Bong Joon-ho.) In the Rotten Tomatoes Approved belt, you’ll find about 20 movies, but only two from the past few years (2017’s Phantom Thread and 2018’s Tully). You’ll find tons of classics, however, from Psycho and Rear Window to Do the Right Thing and Reservoir Dogs. 
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Find some live news and lots of news clips on Peacock.
Sarah Tew/CNET
It appears, however, that many of Peacock’s big-name movies aren’t going to be sticking around for long. On the desktop and iOS versions of the app, you can see how many days you have left to watch a given movie if it’s leaving soon. Children of Men, the original Jurassic Park trilogy and The Matrix trilogy all expired at the end of July, just a few weeks after the service launched. They may come back though, a company representative said. And soon, you’ll be able to see how long you have to watch a given movie before it expires across all platforms.
For titles that aren’t obvious classics, Peacock helpfully displays Rotten Tomatoes ratings. Movie thumbnails may include a red-tomato, “fresh” rating but do not display a score if the movie is rated “rotten.” You can see the score for any movie with a Rotten Tomatoes rating, good or bad, after selecting it.
While some services have started streaming theater-bound movies early (such as Hamilton on Disney Plus), Peacock executives say it has no plans yet to do the same. However, Trolls World Tour did arrive as a Premium movie offering in September. 
In the News section, you’ll find short clips from NBC News and MSNBC, along with the latest episodes of Nightly News with Lester Holt, Meet the Press, Sunday today with Willie Geist and Dateline NBC. When you click on the tiles for MSNBC or CNBC shows, you’ll only find clips though, as opposed to full episodes. 
Channels and Trending aren’t what you think
From Browse, you can navigate to the Channels section of the app. Channels look kind of like a cable box grid guide, but instead of networks and cable channels, you get rows curated around a show or theme. We were disappointed to find that most of it wasn’t new. The first channel, SNL Vault, shows a mix of Saturday Night Live sketches from over the years. Two others — Fallon Tonight and Seth Myers Now — have full episodes from about a month ago. 
The Office channel is labeled as Office Shorts and shows a scene from one episode here followed by a scene from another episode there, which is not how we like to digest our Office reruns. The Hell’s Kitchen channel does show complete episodes, and we found complete episodes of Ghost Hunters on the Out of this World channel. The rest of the channels, 32 in all, are a mix of true crime, reality TV, news and so on. 
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Peacock’s “channels” look like live TV, but for the most part are not. 
Sarah Tew/CNET
Next to Channels, the Trending tab is also not super useful — scroll through 10 tile-like pages that start autoplaying news, late night clips or sports highlights. It’s kind of like flipping through 10 TV channels, and finding only YouTube clips. 
In terms of news, you can find some live programming. NBC News Now Live is one of the channels, and Sky News also streams live. NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt and Meet the Press with Chuck Todd will stream same-day on the NBC News Now channel, or in the News tab — which could appeal to YouTube TV subscribers who aren’t pleased with the recent price hike and want to make a switch but still have access to live news. However, you can access all of those live news sites and day-old broadcasts from their websites on desktop, anyway, so they aren’t exclusive to the platform. You’ll also find NBC’s new 24-hour version of the Today Show, called Today All Day, though that includes repackaged Today segments and more lifestyle programming than straight news. 
And when it comes to live sports, the free tier will get some Premier League games, as well as the US Open Championship, the Women’s Open Championship and an NFL Wild Card Playoff Game. On premium, you’ll get more Premier League matches, coverage of the Tour De France, and more than 100 hours of WWE content starting in August. 
Still MIA: Fire TV, profiles, mobile downloads and 4K HDR
While we can’t complain too much about the free tier, the premium offerings still lack several features that competitors like Netflix and Hulu already have. 
You can stream Peacock on Apple devices like the iPhone and Apple TV, Google devices like Android phones and Chromecast, Xbox One consoles, PlayStation 4 consoles (when the app launches next week), Vizio SmartCast TVs and LG Smart TVs. As of Sept. 21, Peacock is also available on Roku devices. But you still can’t watch on popular Amazon Fire TV devices. 
You also can’t create separate profiles, but Peacock reps said that this feature is high on the list to arrive after launch. In the meantime, you can set parental controls on shows of different ratings and manage them with a PIN. Mobile downloads are not yet available, either — and when they are, they’ll only be for premium ad-free subscribers. 
Peacock also lacks support for 4K HDR video or Dolby Atmos at launch, though the company says both of these are also on the future roadmap. While it still looks pretty good, originals like Brave New World and some of the major action movie franchises like The Matrix would have benefited from upgraded video and sound quality.
You may be able to find a deal based on your cable provider: Comcast X1 and Flex subscribers get the premium with ads version free, or the no-ads version for $4.99 a month. Cox customers get the same deal. 
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At launch, you can’t download Peacock shows on your mobile device, but at some point, you’ll be able to do so if you pay for the top premium tier.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Should you get Peacock? 
It’s free, so why not try it out? If the ads bug you or you want to watch one of the original shows, you can try out its premium tiers free for seven days as well, or find other deals depending on your platform and cable provider.
Do I expect to add Peacock to my daily streaming routine, alongside Netflix and Hulu? Probably not, at least in the short-term. But is it a great free option for finding some older movies and shows we’ve missed (or want to watch for the millionth time)? Definitely. If you don’t mind watching a few ads, it’s a fun place to explore older movies and a big mix of TV shows, and keep up with current NBC shows, news and some live sports in one spot — especially if you’re already a cord-cutter and looking to expand your options for free. 
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madhaut · 6 years
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THE ROUTINE
You guys are about to get a double-post right now because a friend of mine just informed me she’s been doling out shameless blog plugs (yes, it sounded OFF writing that combination of words, too) left and right - and here I have one measley post and basically two about-me pages, so far. 
SCROLL PAST THE NEXT FOUR PARAGRAPHS TO SKIP TO SKINCARE CONTENT.
However, things brings me to an important point.... It might not be obvious yet but I am a merciless judge of my own output (projects, work, image, writing... there are more things). I picked up some invaluable insight from Ep. 1 of Abstract on Netflix. It’s subject is Christoph Niemann: German-born graphic designer, whose most recognizable work, I believe, has appeared on covers of The New Yorker. He spoke a lot about the anxiety associated with creative work due on a deadline. “How can you ask me to win the lottery with a gun to my head?” he asked. “... When I realized my fears threatened to take a toll on my work, I decided I had to deal with them. Relax! Don’t be so hard on yourself. Except, I actually totally disagree. You have to practice every day to get better. Why should it be different for me?”
His balance was to be a more careless artist, and more ruthless critic.
Obviously, the pressure and stakes are vastly different, but I can relate to the angst. I think about this blog all the time but never feel like doing it. It’s not time management. It’s not lack of interest or drive. It’s fear.
Time to LOOSEN UP!
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LET’S TALK ABOUT THE ROUTINE.
It’s 10 steps. I know. Do you have to do 10 steps every time?
No. 
Should you? 
No. 
The “Korean 10-Step” is a way of naming a general approach to skincare which typically involves more than one step for each main phase of the skincare process: cleansing, treating, and protecting.
I will be talking a LOT about ingredients and layering (#LayerResponsibly), so if I can sum up why I subscribe to the Korean skincare approach in one sentence, it’s that this methodology forces you to consider each step and how it will interact with the ones preceding and following. 
Generally, I think Western skincare and beauty marketers have been appealing to modern women as multi-taskers who don’t have time for so many steps. So, many products sold by mainstream retailers you have seen contain both ingredients and properties of multiple steps from a Korean skincare regimen. Additionally, many of these skincare companies have patents on some compound or polymer in the formulation, which makes it harder to know what’s actually in it. 
The issue with this is when introducing a new product or active ingredient to your regimen. Let’s say you want to add a serum from The Ordinary into your daily or nightly routine. For the most part, The Ordinary’s serums zero-in on one star active ingredient (supported in some sort of delivery vehicle - i.e. powder, gel, oil, water-base, cream, etc). How will this active ingredient interact with what you already use? I get these questions all the time, and the truth is, I don’t know. Even if you tell me the name, version and year your current products were made, I often can’t figure out exactly what is in them.
For this reason, here’s a general rule of thumb - within one instance of your AM or PM routine:
Cleansing steps - Use products devoid of active/contradictive topicals. Treatment steps - #LayerResponsibly or choose a star ingredient. Protection steps - Use products devoid of active/contradictive topicals.
We’ll learn more about what’s “active” and what’s not.
Step 1. Oil cleanse. You usually want to apply oil cleanser to your dry face so it lifts off most of what’s sitting on your face. This step doubles as makeup remover. If you have makeup on, gently rub your eyes last. Yes, you should still oil cleanse in the morning. You’re going to want to clean off all of the layers you applied the night before even if you’re not wearing makeup. ;)
Step 2. Water cleanse. This is your standard foam-based or gel cleanser; usually these have some sort of detergent so that the product creates bubbles. It is ideal to use a water-based cleanser that balances the pH of your skin so your skin is not too dry/tight, and so that it is balanced if your next step is an acidic toner/treatment.
Step 3. Exfoliate. [Not every time.] You don’t want or need to exfoliate every day, and you have options: manual vs. chemical exfoliation. Manual/mechanical exfoliation means you are relying on scrubbing or scrubbers (wash cloth, textured pad, grainy/gritty substance) to physically eliminate dead skin cells, where chemical exfoliation means you’re using enzymes to banish the unnecessary by loosening the substance that holds cells together.
Step 4. Tone. Amazingly enough, you will find you swipe a cotton pad with toner across your face - and even after double-cleansing, more is picked up. Now go back to imagining not-double-cleansing. Noooooo, thank you! I like the assurance that my skin is completely clean. Toner is also about getting some moisture into your face immediately after cleansing, especially if your second cleanse does not balance your skin’s pH. 
Step 5. Essence. I had never heard of this step until exploring K-skincare. I also scoffed at the idea of an “essence” - it sounded gimmicky, and many essences have a water-like texture that makes it feel like you’re just slapping more water on your face. But adding an essence affords you your first truly moisturizing step. Essences are (should be) light, packed with nutrients and amenable for layering (not too tacky). The right essence makes your skin bouncy, youthful, and bright by plumping your skin and filling in all the little grooves -- all without adding weight.
Step 6. Treatment. SERUMS. Here’s the step where you rotate between serums with a main active ingredient depending on the time of day, time of year, time of month, or main concern at the time. Here are the most popular categories of serums, boiled down to their primary use.
Retinol/Retinoids/Vitamin A - Advanced cell turnover-ers; photo-aging and skin wrinkle combatants.
AHA/BHA Acids - Chemical exfoliants to clear pores and fight blemishes. Examples: Salicylic acid (BHA), Lactic acid (AHA), Glycolic acid (AHA)
Antioxidants - Inflammation-fighters to brighten/even skintone and help prevent acne. Examples: Vitamin C, Niacinamide, EUK, Alpha Lipoic Acid
Step 7. Sheet mask. [Not every time.] This is step 7 because the idea is a sheet mask goes on after your active serum to encourage it into the skin. For me, sheet masks replace step 5 because most are soaked in essence. So, when you’re done with a 15-20 minute sheet mask, you just discard the mask, pat the rest of the essence into your skin, and finish up. Apparently Koreans sheet mask every day and keep a full drawer of them on stand by. I don’t buy quite enough of them to sheet mask daily but this is about a twice/week step for me. 
Can I just say...? Make sure the damn thing is applied properly. Unfold the cloth fully before applying it to your face, line it up with your facial features as best you can, and smooth that sucker down so it’s flat on your face - nudge the air bubbles out! This is a not a big deal if a sheet mask is a little dangly, but, listen -- you’re already doing it. Might as well do it right.
Step 8. Eye cream. I’m betting the concept of an eye cream is already fairly well-known and accessible to any and all readers. These are special creams for your sensitive eye area. Honestly, I don’t think eye creams are magic and I think there are misconceptions about what an eye cream can actually do. Just go for one that is rich and moisturizing, but also sinks in so you’re not trying to apply makeup to an oil slick. Shiny under-eyes are not exactly en-vogue.
I begrudgingly use and recommend eye creams but there are some EYE SERUMS I can get SUPER HYPED on and will be sure to share the details with you.
Step 9. Moisturizer. Seals in all former steps; protects. You will probably want different versions for summer/winter. This step can be an emulsion, a lotion, a cream, a gel, or even (GASP) an OIL. Don’t be afraid of facial oils. 
Using oil on one’s face is another relatively, newly-accepted concept in the Western beauty/skincare marketing world. I think we can all remember for a long time, there, how oil was made out to be the ultimate enemy. Understand that oil is on and produced by your skin at all times, and it is not necessarily comedogenic. 
Step 10. SPF. [Not every time.] No need to use this at night, but yes, you need to use SPF every single day if you care about your health and/or visibly aging slowly. There are no exceptions. We’re even more photosensitive when we use strong active topicals and there are plenty of fantastic Korean sunscreens that you will WANT to wear. Link: My original source of learning on this.
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NOTES
A. I like this blog post’s 4 principles for mixing skincare: *Use skincare with similar pH levels together. *Reserve skincare that is light-sensitive (i.e. its actives get used up by light or they make your skin sensitive to light) for night-time. *Separate skincare ingredients that have the potential to de-activate one another. *Separate skincare ingredients that work in too similar a way (i.e. one product that exfoliates with glycolic acid and another product that exfoliates/moisturizes with salicylic acid).
I see her 4 and raise a 5th: after your cleansing steps - when layering products that don’t get washed off, use them in the order of least to most viscous. I will have my own full post on The Ordinary/Deciem skincare.
B. Where do you do other masks (i.e. non sheet masks?) Depends, but usually after toning and before essence.
C. If you’re starting a brand new routine or adding an active topical, it’s commonly accepted that there can be a “purging” period where you actually break out a little more while your skin is adjusting (and becoming more clean than ever before).
D. It’s fun to have a set routine or set of routines, but once you get to know which ingredients and products work well together and which shouldn’t be mixed, I would not stick to a set regimen where you HAVE to do routine A versus routine B. Go with what your skin needs. Even with knowledge, discipline and a kick-ass arsenal, what your skin needs does not follow a plan.
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Alright... cool... that should do it for now. Stay tuned for more and please contact me with questions, concerns, consultation requests (free), and the like.
tschüß!
In good skin health,
Maddie
Last Night: Hylamide High-Efficiency Face Cleaner (Oil cleanser) GLAMGLOW Supercleanse (Water cleanser) T.N. Dickinson’s Astringent, 100% Natural, Witch Hazel (Toner) Neogen Real Ferment Micro Essence (Essence) The Ordinary 100% L-Ascorbic Acid Powder mixed with The Ordinary Marine Hyaluronics (Treatment/serum) NIOD Fractionated Eye Contour Concentrate (Eye serum) Klairs Rich Moist Soothing Cream mixed with The Ordinary Retinol 1% in Squalane (Moisturizer) Missha Misa Geum Sul Vitalizing Eye Cream (Eye cream) This Morning: Hylamide High-Efficiency Face Cleaner (Oil cleanser) Neogen Real Fresh Cranberry Foam Cleanser (Water cleanser) The Ordinary AHA BHA Peeling Solution (Exfoliant) NIOD Mastic Must (Pore mask) NIOD Fractionated Eye Contour Concentrate (Eye serum) Dr. Loren Pickart Super CP Serum (Treatment/serum) The Ordinary Marine Hyaluronics (Essence) Missha Misa Geum Sul Vitalizing Eye Cream (Eye cream) The Ordinary Natural Moisturizing Factors mixed with  Missha Waterproof Sun Milk SPF 50+/PA+ (Moisturizer + SPF)
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5 Creative Ways to Use Facebook Messenger to Promote Your Business
Facebook Messenger is a tool many of us use for instant messaging with our friends – but did you know that it’s a useful marketing tool, as well? It has become one of my favorite ways to connect with existing and potential clients on social media.
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There are some useful options included with Facebook Messenger that you can use to improve customer service, promote your products, and more.
Not convinced? Here are some numbers that might do the trick.
n  Open rates for Messenger marketing are 70%  higher than for email marketing.
n  There are more than 300 million active bots on Facebook.
n  Facebook Messenger has over 2 million monthly downloads in the United States.
n  Facebook users exchange more than 20 billion messages with business every month.
Those numbers are impressive by any standard. So, now that I’ve convinced you – you are convinced, right? – here are 5 creative and easy ways to use Facebook Messenger for marketing.
#1: Remind Customers About Appointments  
If you allow clients to book appointments with you on Facebook using the “Book Now” button, then you should be using Facebook Messenger to follow up and remind them about their appointments.
To turn on the button, simply click the blue call to action button on your business page. Choose the “Book with You” option and fill out your appointment preferences. When you’re done, go to your Inbox and click the Automated Responses menu.
Scroll down until you see the Follow-Up options, then click to enable Appointment Reminders. Messenger will send an automated reminder 24 hours before the scheduled appointment.
#2: Start a Conversation  
Do you have a killer piece of content to promote? If you do, then I strongly recommend using the “Get Messages” feature on your next Facebook post.
When you create a post on Facebook, you’ll see a list of options below the message space. One of them is “Get Messages” and it allows the people who see your post to click to send you a message.
The best use of this feature is to promote a lead magnet. When someone wants the content you’re promoting, they’ll click the Send Message button to request the content. You can then get their contact information and send them a pdf of the content or redirect them to your download page.
If you don’t have content to promote, you can still use this feature to allow people to request more information about your business. It’s a great way to initiate a conversation. Just keep in mind that Facebook has rules about how often businesses may send messages to people. Make sure you stick to their guidelines.
#3: Answer Frequently Asked Questions
Most businesses have Frequently Asked Questions on their websites, but you can use Facebook Messenger to provide responses to your followers as well.
To set up FAQ on Facebook, you’ll need to go to your Facebook inbox and scroll down to Automated Responses. Then, enable the option for Frequently Asked Questions.
You’ll get a screen that allows you to tap a plus sign to add questions. It works a little differently from a regular FAQ. When someone messages your business page, they’ll get a list of FAQs and can tap the question they want answered. When they do, they’ll get the response you entered.
To make the best use of FAQ on Facebook Messenger, follow these best practices:
n  Keep your answers short and to the point.
n  Ensure that information provided matches the information on your website.
n  Make it clear that the response is automated.
n  Double check all links to make sure they work.
Setting up automated FAQ is a good way to make sure that questions are answered quickly. It will also help turn on the badge that lets customers know that you respond quickly to messages.
#4: Message People Who RSVP to Your Event
If you use Facebook to create events and invite people to them, you can set up Facebook Messenger to allow attendees to message you and to start conversations with them.
When you set up an event, you’ll seen an option that says, “Allow Guests to Message [Your Page] About Reservation.” Once enabled, you’ll get an automated message whenever someone makes a reservation for your event. You’ll be able to respond, thus starting a conversation with an attendee who may turn into a paying customer.
Of course, this option works in reverse too. Attendees will be able to message you directly with questions about the event.
#5: Create Ads Targeted to People Who Have Messaged Your Page  
While all the above methods for using Facebook Messenger can be effective, I’ve saved the best for last. You can use Custom Audience feature on Facebook to create ads targeted to people who have messaged your business page in the past.
You can choose any time frame. Simply click the “Add People to Your Audience” option and then select “People who sent a message to your page” option. Next to it, you can fill in your chosen time frame. I recommend going back a full year unless there’s some reason that you want a narrower time frame.
You can get even more detailed if you want to. For example, if you’ve ever used Facebook Messenger to conduct a survey, you can create ads targeted to specific responses. If you gave your respondents four options, you could create ads targeted to each response.
What I like about this tool is that it offers a very affordable way to engage in targeted marketing. When you take the high open rate for Facebook Messenger into consideration, there’s a good chance that your targets will see your ad. That’s not something you can count on with traditional Facebook ads that display on the News Feed.
Facebook Messenger is more than a fun way to connect with friends. If you use it properly, it can be a powerful marketing tool that allows you to connect with your customers on a personal level, boost your conversions, and increase your profits to gro
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6 Design Tips to Make Your Calls-to-Action Stand Out
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The end goal in content marketing is to use your content to generate more leads and customers, and creating engaging and stand out calls-to-action is a major part of that.
While creating your content, adding calls-to-action to read related posts, download helpful ebooks on a similar topic, or even sign up for your service or buy your products is a great way to try to convert customers through quality blog posts.
But in order to help maximize clicks on these CTAs, you need to focus on their design. Ensuring they grab attention and jump off of the page is the best way to improve conversions with your blog.
To help you turn your blog content into a conversion tool for your business, we wanted to offer a few of our top design tips to help your calls-to-action stand out.
What is a Call-to-Action?
First things first, what even is a call-to-action?
Essentially, this is a button, sidebar section or block of content that teases a feature of your service, a product, a lead magnet, an online course, a customer service chatbot and more.
The intent is essentially to get your blog reader or website visitor to take action with your business.
These can lead to anything, and can even be a basic in-text link, but the object is to let your reader or website visitor know what action to take next.
Scattering CTAs throughout your blog content and website is a great idea, but at the very least, you should always end every blog article with a clear action to take next, whether it’s reading another post or just signing up for your email list.
Why Call-to-Action Design Matters
There are two factors when it comes to a successful CTA: the copy and the design. If you don’t have an enticing offer or reason for someone to click and take action, they’re not going to.
In the same vein, if your call-to-action doesn’t stand out well enough or isn’t visually appealing, your audience might scroll right past it.
This is why you want to put just as much emphasis on the design and overall look and feel of your calls-to-action as you do the verbiage you place inside them.
Read on to learn more about all of the design principles and practices you should be keeping in mind when creating graphical CTAs for your website and blog.
Call-to-Action Design Tips
If you’re ready to create stunning and eye-catching calls-to-action, here are our top six best design practices to increase clicks and conversions.
1. Color matters.
Color psychology is always important. Colors mean different things, but there are also colors that pop more than others and entice clicks more than others.
For example, when it comes to your call-to-action button, you want to be sure to use a bright color that stands out from your website or your CTA background. Your button needs to pop.
Red is obviously a bright color that works well, but some experts say orange is a great go-to as well. Green means “GO,” so that’s a reasonable choice as well.
Regardless, take a look at your overall call-to-action design. If your background is a light color, like in this CTA below, a bright pastel color can be a great way to grab attention.
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Another great example is the bright pop of color in this CTA.
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By using a bright color for the full call-to-action, it really pops from their blog post and attracts attention, leading to even more conversions.
Your blog is likely a mostly white background with dark text, so you want to make sure that your calls-to-action really stick out from the rest of your content. This is why bright colors are better over dark colors, and bright buttons can help improve conversions.
2. Test different button shapes.
Sick of boring, square buttons? That doesn’t have to be the norm on every single call-to-action. Try something round or even rounded edges on your rectangle button.
Take a look at the CTA design below, and how the rounded button gives off a different look and feel than your typical rectangle.
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On another note, you can even try differently shaped call-to-action designs as a whole. Take a look at this example below, where the entire CTA has rounded corners.
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This can make the graphic feel softer and less harsh, enticing users to check it out more carefully and increase clicks.
You can also A/B test how well different buttons and graphic shapes perform. Maybe your audience actually likes a rectangular shape better. It all comes down to what is going to generate the most clicks and conversions.
3. Make sure your text is legible.
If someone can’t read your CTA, they have no idea what action you want them to take, rendering your mission useless.
Instead, use large, legible text. This should typically be a clean and concise serif or sans serif font. However, if you’re going to use a script font, keep it in the header where the font size should be large enough to be easily read.
And your button/action text should always be in a serif or sans serif font.
Take a look at this CTA below. The fonts are clean, minimalistic, and easy to read. This helps ensure maximum clicks.
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This clean sans serif font is another great example of ensuring legible CTAs.
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When it comes to a design that you’re using to generate conversions like your call-to-actions, it’s always best to lean to the safe side and stick to standard fonts.
4. Add shapes, icons, and illustrations.
Create a visual design to go alongside your CTA. This will help grab your audience’s attention and draw them in. Not a lot of people are going to pay attention to or click on a block of color that’s full of text.
Instead, make sure that you’re including some type of design within your call-to-action graphic. This can be a group of shapes, an icon relevant to your landing page, an illustration or a sneak peek at what users get when they click.
A mockup of your lead magnet is a great visual to include because it lets people get a small preview or snippet of what your business is actually offering.
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Here’s an example that shares a mockup of what the actual service offers if someone were to sign up within their call-to-action.
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Another fun visual idea is to include a custom illustration or animated graphic, like in the example below.
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You could even use stock photos within your CTAs to help grab reader attention, like we see in the example here.
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You can also use shapes like arrows to point to your CTA button and let users know exactly where to click.
Your call-to-action needs to be extremely visual, well-designed and attractive to stand out to your blog readers.
5. Incorporate white space.
Using white space and margins around your design is essential to creating a clean and clutter-free design. Your CTA design shouldn’t go edge-to-edge on your canvas.
Instead, sure to leave some white space and empty margins surrounding each of your design elements. Less is more – don’t overcrowd your design.
Notice how in this CTA example below, there aren’t any elements smushed together, and there’s a clear amount of space around the edges.
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White space is an essential design element in everything you create, but especially in calls-to-action when the main point is to create a visually appealing button or graphic that gets your audience to click and convert.
6. A/B test your designs.
I mentioned A/B testing briefly when talking about different button shapes, but let’s get into this a bit more.
A/B testing is important in many different marketing strategies, but especially when it comes to something that’s sole purpose is to generate leads and conversions.
You want to come up with a few different design options and see which ones generate the most clicks and conversions. While you might think a certain design is going to perform best, your data could show otherwise.
This can help you to further optimize your call-to-action design and conversion rate, and ensure your CTAs are grabbing as much attention as possible.
Create Your Own Actionable Call-to-Action Designs
Ready to get started creating your own stunning call-to-action graphics? You can easily create engaging visuals with a graphic design software and interactive shapes and icons.
Once your audience clicks through your call-to-action buttons, feed them right through your lead management software to start nurturing them into customers.
About the Author
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Chloe is a Content Marketing Manager at Visme, an online graphic design software. She loves to write about digital marketing and design and find new ways to engage audiences through content. Chloe is based in Charleston, SC, where she loves exploring her city with her son.
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thelmasirby32 · 5 years
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Top tips to grease your email marketing wheels in 2020
Sometime back the COO of Facebook had blurted out some unfortunate things about email marketing – that emails are going away and that marketers will have to focus on teenagers of today to finalize the marketing strategies of tomorrow, and so on and so forth.
Food for thought
Emails are timeless, dependable, unsung moneymakers that have invariably found continued success and more customers for almost 50 years now. And still, there’s no stopping it.
In fact, researches by Radicati Group found out that there were 3.9 million email users in 2019, and the market is expected to grow over to 4.3 million by the end of 2023.
This means, over half of the world population has been using emails in 2019 and the medium happens to generate more ROI than what meets the eye – $44 per dollar spent
Underlining the strength of emails, yet another research by Drift and Survey Monkey revealed that 65% of respondents in the past 12 months have communicated with organizations via emails, ranking it way above the rest.
Being around for so long, this phenomenon in economics is known as the Lindy effect.
The Lindy effect
Author Nassim Taleb in his popular book ‘Antifragile’ speaks about the Lindy Effect. According to him, the life expectancy of a business or an idea is in proportion to its current age.
Taleb states, “If a book has been in print for forty years, I can expect it to be in print for another forty years. And, if it survives another decade, then it will be expected to be in print another fifty years. Every year that passes without extinction doubles the additional life expectancy.”
Now, emails have already been around for 50 years, and so we could expect to see it around in 2070 as well. But then no, you can’t just get out there and shoot emails.
As email marketers, first and foremost, you will have to think about re-inventing the existing email marketing strategies in a big bang way if you wish to sustain your business’ email ROI in 2020 and beyond.
Simply put, email marketing will have to embrace videos, personalization, data, mobile, among many other strategies to retain their respective audience base.
This post is an attempt to highlight the key strategies that businesses need to adopt in 2020 to grease their email campaigns in 2020.
1. Mobile-centric emails
If anything, the mobile-mindset is sweeping across the digital marketing spectrum. According to email usage stats by emailmonday, email opens are happening more on mobile than desktop.
This means, if you still haven’t got your emails mobile-responsive, you are leaving a lot of money on the table.
Now, the question is how to optimize your emails for mobile?
Simple, you need to cut down the size of your copy, images and the overall design to suit the mobile format. A concise copy gives a clear view of the CTA button, which, in turn, leads to more visitors to your landing pages, blogs or product pages. More importantly, shorter copies make the emails much more scannable.
Here’s an example by campaignmonitor on how short copies offer clean, easy-on-your-eyes email experience to subscribers while checking their messages on mobile.
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Unlike the first image, the second image is perfectly tailor-made for mobile screening.
The benefits of such copies can be seen clearly when you open such an email on mobile:
Sufficient white space in the copy offers an easy reading experience
The image on the first fold inspires further scrolling
A short copy means the CTA appears clearly. This saves the recipient from scrolling further down to reach a CTA button.
In case any additional copy or data needs to be added, you could accommodate that on the landing page to which your email CTA directs.
Further, make sure to test your emails from a user perspective. You cannot leave this to chance because users might spare only some time to check your emails on their phones. If they don’t like what they see, they are sure to delete your emails at once, let alone read the message.
2. Voice-friendly emails
Being mobile-centric is just one thing. By and by, you will have to make it voice-technology-friendly as well as the use of voice technology is growing worldwide.
In 2019, almost 112 million people, in the US alone, used a voice assistant, at least monthly, on different devices.
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If you look at it, that’s quite a huge pool of users who’d love using voice-enabled emails as the technology progresses in the future. Some of the popular voice-assistant technologies currently in use include Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, Samsung’s Bixby, and Microsoft Cortana.
Presently, if you are using Amazon Alexa it will help you do five basic things with your email.
 Read it
 Reply to it
 Delete it
 Archive-it
 Switch to the next message
This could prove to one of the most effective and ingenious email marketing strategies of this century as it makes your message heard despite the busy schedule of subscribers. So, even if your email recipient is busy pursuing some other activity, a voice-enabled email would help you to quickly figure out the content of your email.
Even Apple’s Siri is programmed to offer you similar functionalities. You can check out How Alexa Reads Your Emails & Impacts Email Marketing blog to get further ideas on how to use Alexa for your emails.
3. AI-driven emails
Not long ago, email marketing was purely driven by human instinct, be it the subject line or the send time. It was spray and pray strategy, more or less.
No more. AI has taken the hassle out of email marketing as marketers can now make accurate predictions, that too, not just with the subject lines but the send time as well. Plus, it also offers amazing recommendations.
How does AI do that?
AI, powered by machine learning, makes use of massive data to arrive at decisions that keep evolving as it learns. Though humans are involved in AI training initially, but then, by and by, they evolve themselves to find their own solutions and pathways.
Here are a few top use cases of AI in email marketing:
A. Craft outstanding subject lines
AI-powered by NLG, which runs on large and structured data sets, is quite good at churning out outstanding subject lines that could even beat copywriters’ hands down. In addition to subject lines, AI is quite capable of generating content for social shares, press releases and more. From word choice to emojis and sentiments, the copies are spot on and delivered quickly.  And, more than anything generates more opens for your emails.
B. Optimization of  send times
In 2020, marketers will have to optimize email send times based on historical open patterns of the audience. Say, for example, if Jonny opens his inbox between 10.00 am and 1.00 pm then you need to make sure that your emails reach his inbox during that period of time and not later.
But then, his sister Joanna opens her inbox around 5.00 pm. Manually it’s almost impossible for marketers to shoot so many emails, at different points in time, especially when tens of thousands of customers are involved.
This is where AI could chip in with its expertise. AI is programmed to handle problems of scale easily. The technology dissects mountains of data to come up with a predictive model for every contact on your list. This way, every individual, on your list, is sent an email at a time when they are most likely to open it.
C. Smarter segmentation of email marketing lists
Segmentation of the email list enables marketers to develop a relevant buyer persona, which, in turn, helps them shoot tailor-made emails.  Such segmented email campaigns are known to increase revenues by a whopping 760%. However, such segmentation, though it yields good results, isn’t good enough.
Combined with AI, smarter segmentation, on the other hand, helps you generate a list that significantly accelerates open and click rates. This is because it thoroughly analyzes the behavior of the current customers and finds patterns that help you segment the audience in new ways. And, the brilliance of it is, that it gets the job done faster than what any humans could do.
Customization is central to capturing today’s audiences. And with smarter segmentation, you get optimized email lists that help your emails perform better.
4. Video centered emails
Yet another way to bolster your email marketing efforts is to add videos to your email campaign. It’s one of the proven ways to increase leads, educate customers and, in the process, enhance brand awareness.
And being a clear differentiator in terms of content, it manages to stand out from the mass of emails that you receive every day. They offer several advantages:
Immediately hooks the audience and drives engagement
More impactful than plain text as it communicates product or service information better and faster. This, in turn, ensures a faster response rate from users.
Complex topics are easily explained
Videos are viral in nature
Wide social media sharing, thus boosting a brand’s SEO ranking
Also, don’t forget, if your client’s emails are not HTML5-compatible, they won’t be able to view your videos. In such cases, you could do two things: One, you could create an image that looks like a video image. Once the user clicks on it, it would direct the user to YouTube. Just ensure that your video is on an autoplay mode. Two: Embed GIFs or cinemagraphs. According to Experian Research, 72% percent of brands using animated GIF or a cinemagraph experience higher transaction rates.
5. AMP for emails
As it turns out, AMP or accelerated mobile pages was introduced by Google to speed up the mobile web, specifically the landing pages, blog posts, and even full websites.  Now, with millions of domains already under the “AMP”ed umbrella, the open-source technology is expanding its reach to emails as well.
AMP for emails will allow email marketers to create more interactive and actionable emails with the help of AMP elements. Broadly put, when you add interactive features such as accordions, confirmation, carousels, and purchase buttons in your email, AMP will allow you to take actions inside their emails without opening a new tab or visiting the website.
Additionally, emails can be updated in terms of news articles, weather, stock prices, and so on.
Of course, each of these things is possible when you run a third party script Javascript inside these emails. However, according to Google experts, running a third party script inside an email may cause loads of security issues, which is not the case with AMP for emails.  In this case, the documents are analyzed for spam, phishing, among many other things, which, in turn, ensures the safety of the user.
Other benefits of AMP for Emails
The technology will swap static content with a more dynamic web-page like the content. So users will be able to receive highly personalized content on-demand in the form of current product prices, weather updates, news, and so forth.
It’s a red hot technology. Only a few marketers are experimenting with this technology. This means you have the edge over your rivals if you have a clear cut idea on how to use AMP elements inside your emails while interacting with the users.
Known email service providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook support AMP technology. This means you can add AMP elements into the emails for most of your subscribers.
Examples of AMP emails
Pinterest: AMP allows you to enlarge each of the images, inside the email, and see more detailed information, instead of visiting the Pinterest webpage.  
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Source: sendpulse
Doodle: With the help of the Doodle website, AMP for emails can help you create, manage, and respond to polls. Plus, you can set dates for meetings without opening a new tab.
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Source: sendpulse
Bonus point
Overall quality should be the goal
Integrating all the latest technology and all is fine, but then don’t forget it’s the rudimentary aspects that make your emails click-worthy, that is content and design. So, by all accounts, take into consideration the following points while designing your email.
A. Content
An email shouldn’t have more than 50 words because a reader won’t be putting in more than 13.4 seconds to read it.
So, how do you write a compelling copy in 50 words?  Litmus recommends the following tips:
Short sentences
Limited jargons
Localization
B. Design
Some simple ways to make email designs accessible and effective to a broader audience:
Use Real text HTML
Be cognizant of font sizes, line spacing, and text justification
High contrasting colors
Ensure visual hierarchy
C. Code
To make sure that your emails can be read as soon as they are opened you need to slightly tweak your code. A solid code-base assures accessibility.
So how do you ensure a solid code-base?
Enter alternative text for images
Make HTML tables accessible to screen readers
Use semantic HTML
Specify a language in the HTML
Going by the Lindy Effect, email marketing, at the very least, is going to around for the next 50 years. So, no matter what, make it a point to update your current email marketing tactics with the latest technologies, be it AI, voice, video or AMP for emails.
The post Top tips to grease your email marketing wheels in 2020 appeared first on Search Engine Watch.
from Digital Marketing News https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2020/03/10/top-tips-to-grease-your-email-marketing-wheels-in-2020/
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