A Happy new year gift for you!

Hey! Have a very happy 2018. Check out these elegant borders to use on your images, blogs, etc.
You can see in this image how nice they look over a fine picture:

You will get these 2 png images (300 dpi resolution):

Grab them here:

GOLDEN BORDER

SILVER BORDER

Enjoy and Happy new Year 2018

6 Tools to Optimize your Product Promotion

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This is a recopilation of online tools that will help you optimize the time you spend promoting your teaching products, so you can have more time to make more products.

1. Pin4Ever

Pin4Ever is a set of power tools for Pinterest that help you quickly protect, organize, create, and upload your pins. Includes different features deppending on the plan you have, but my favorites are:

Bulk Image Uploading
Pin multiple images from your local drive or images from the web, including  Facebook,  Instagram, Pinterest, and other sites, with an optional time delay between pins.

Update Pin Descriptions/Links
Update descriptions and/or source links on multiple pins simultaneously.
Pin Anything Tool
Pin pages that don't have any pinnable images by taking a screen shot of any part of the page.
Top Pins Board
See your most popular pins (most repinned and liked) on this automatically generated board.

2. Canva

Great tool to make covers and Social Media Images

3. Trello

It's like Pinterest but to manage your own project. I love it!

4. Dropbox and Google Drive for storage

5. TweetDeck and Hootsuite allow you manage several Twitter and Facebook accounts from one dashboard

6. Photobucket and Imageshack for hosting your images when you need to have the URL.

If you know any other tools feel free to share them on the comments so I can make this list bigger.

5 Tips to improve your writing and have better blog posts

Wording are the first way to make great content for your blog. Searching engines are always prioritizing well written texts and blog posts.

These videos show you the way to make better blog posts, just by writing better. Enjoy!

1. The case against "good" and "bad" - Marlee Neel

2. The art of the metaphor - Jane Hirshfield

3. Beware of nominalizations (AKA zombie nouns) - Helen Sword

4. A brief history of plural word...s - John McWhorter

5. Three anti-social skills to improve your writing - Nadia Kalman

How To Add A Custom “PIN IT” Button To Your Blog

Blogger has changed so much since I started to use it years ago. It has come a long way and there is so much more customization that you can do with a blogger blog without needing a lot of coding experience/skill.

Clic to download

One of the first things I learned was adding a hover Pinterest “PIN IT” button to my blog. It is not only is it EASY to add a hover “PIN IT” button to a blogger blog, but you can customize your “PIN IT” button too.



This is how:


1. Design your “Pin It” graphic & save it as a PNG file. I use photoshop CS5 for grapics, but you can easily make your own “PIN IT” button using a free application like picmonkey.com. Or feel free to use one of my buttons (above)


2. Upload your graphic to a photo saving website. I use Photobucket or ImageShack.


3. Go into your blogger account and go to Template > Edit HTML.


4. Scroll almost all the way down the template until you locate the </body> tag.

5. Copy the code below and insert it right above the tag.

<script> //
<![CDATA[
var bs_pinButtonURL = "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkvZ77KvemKh_8qotyZKyJw1rTghR2FfW6HiNgWgJkdJJAzHRa-wcQaKFsEd19SPFR_3l9-SdwkeNXY-w-5hvLnDxyYlPmTl0LPZmQakifvKhvxcc6Dj-f6-jwbkGam81BNnuAsH537caO/s1600/pinterestx1_72.png";
var bs_pinButtonPos = "center"; var bs_pinPrefix = ""; var bs_pinSuffix = ""; //]]> </script> <script src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.2/jquery.min.js' type='text/javascript'></script> <script id='bs_pinOnHover' src='http://greenlava-code.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/publicscripts/bs_pinOnHoverv1_min.js' type='text/javascript'> // This Pinterest Hover Button is brought to you by Oxana's Designs. // Visit http://oxanadesign.blogspot.com.co/2015/07/how-to-add-custom-pin-it-button-to-your.html // Feel free to use and share, but please keep this notice intact. </script>

6. To use your own button, replace the URL in line 3 with the direct link URL to the image. Make sure to keep the quotes.

7. Save, view your blog, and start pinning.

* You can also change the position of your “PIN IT” button. Find the part of the code that says “center” & try changing it to topleft, topright, bottomleft, bottomright. Play around with position to see what visually suits your blog.

Why should I have a blog signature?

The main aim of signature is to let others know who you’re. The signature must reflect who you are and what you blog as much as any other visual part of your blog. How often do you get FREE prime ad space to say whatever you want about you? Creating a custom signature allows you to really show off your personal style and add some fun to your posts.

You can use this easy tool to create your own (but I highly recommend to ask your blog designer to make one for you) :

MyLiveSignature

Now, I know is hard to remember to include the signature image every time you write a post... So, here is a little tutorial to make the signature appear automatically in your nexts posts.

Click here yo go to the tutorial by Her & Nicole

I'd like to see your signatures!!

6 Pinterest Marketing Tips for Success

#1 Pin great images!

#2 Share quality content

#3 Know your target market

#4 Follow pinners who have similar interests & share, Like, or comment on their pins

#5 Check your analytics frequently to see what pins are resonating with your followers & who's sharing your content

#6 Promote your Pinterest account on your website or blog with Pinterest widgets & share the fact that you’re on Pinterest across your social networks, via email & newsletter.

How to: Place your cursor over the image and it changes {BEFORE AND AFTER}

A rollover or mouse over image is a great image effect you will have seen used on lots of blogs and websites. When you use this effect with an image or picture you add to your blog, the image will change to a different image once you hover your cursor over it. It's also a very easy to use and can have so many uses.




Here's a preview of a rollover image. Place your cursor over the image to see it change:





You will need to have your images in a hosting service like ImageShack.

This is the code we use to make the image:

<a href="TARGET URL GOES HERE"><img src="URL OF FIRST IMAGE GOES HERE" onmouseover="this.src='URL OF SECOND IMAGE GOES HERE'" onmouseout="this.src='URL OF FIRST IMAGE GOES HERE'" /></a>

You now need to customize the code by adding the images you want to use & the address you want it to lead to when clicked. I recommend to copy this code and paste it on the notepad and there you can edit it.

Once the changes are made, you are done. You can place the image in your blog posts/sidebar or anywhere html can be used. To place in the post content you just need to select the HTML tab on the upper left and then paste the code.

HOW MANY page views is "normal" ?

The number of PVs (Page Views) per user will vary enormously from site to site. Whether having a low number of PVs per visit is good or bad will depend on the site.

You might expect a community site to have quite a few PVs, for example, but an editorial site with information on many subtopics might average only a few PVs per visit (especially if users are coming in through search) because users leave when they've found the information they're looking for.


To make matters more complicated, a user who looks at only a page or two today may come back again and again if he regards your site as an authoritative source of information on a broad topic.


That said, you may be interested in check out this study that shows some statistics to make you consider how is your blog/page doing:

 

Parenting blogs analytics study from Annie Phdinparenting

Also, here are 2 sites to help you check out the stats for your page:

Alexa       -       StatCounter

Using blogging statistics to build a better blog

You can easily find hundreds of blogging statistics around the web. Some of them are stats that mainly state why blogging is important and the others can help you create powerful blogs. I prefer reading the latter ones and implementing them on my blog to get better results.

Along with the blogging stats this infographic provides some tips on how they can be used to create a better blog too.

Why your Business Should Have a Blog

#1 To share your expertise
Sharing your experience, thoughts, tips and strategies on the blog can position you as a thought leader or an expert.

#2 To optimize for search engines

Search engines always like fresh content. Having a blog gives you an easy opportunity to update content frequently.

#3 To interact

Blogs are usually written in a conversational way. They add a personal touch to your business. You can easily have conversations or get instant feedback from your visitors.

#4 To grow your network

If you are posting informative content with value, a relevant group of readers are bound to follow your blog. This is the simplest way to earn subscribers and readership.

#5 To attract visitors for your main siteBlogs with good content and a growing base is a good source of visits to your store.

Working process: #1 Organization

I've been asked to write about my creative working process. This is the first post of a serie where I will try to explain how I work.

First step: Organization

I enjoy a lot this step. I'm a natural planner. Absolutely love to write "To-do" lists and make schedules. But this is not the main reason I do this step. Thing is I'm really busy, this is how goes a normal day to me:

5:00 am -Wake up, get my family ready to be in the school bus at 6:10 am. (You know, showers, breakfast, dressing, make up, kids being lazy and taking their time, me running, etc)

6:30 am - 2:30 pm - At work (I'm a full time PreK teacher)

2:30 pm- Get home, make lunch, help kids with their homework

about 6:00 -7:30 pm -Time for working on my projects (Includes a College Degree I'm taking, distance mode, Clipart and Teaching resources making, Blog and logo design, and writing in my blogs)

7:30 pm - Making dinner, clean the mess

8:30 pm -Go to bed (yes, I'm like a child, I need like 10 hours of sleep to be functional LOL)

So..... It's a lot

How do I do to work on my all projects in 1 and a half hour? Organization!

I use this little schedule + to do list to help me be fucus on what I have to do and don't forget anything:

I put myself deadlines every day to avoid procrastination. But sometimes there are incidentals that hinder me to finish that day's work. So, I write it on pendings and I work on it on sundays.

So, that's the big secret for me. I'd like to know how you get organized. Here is a blank page of my "Schedule + to-do List", please feel free to print it and use it for your own working process:

Enjoy!

How to make your blog attractive to visitors

So, you took the plunge and started your very own blog. Congrats! That's a really big step for anyone.
The first thing you should have in mind is your target audience. Who is going to read your blog? Your students? Their parents? Your colleagues?

Starting from that information you can choose the style you need to have, the color palette, etc.

Here are some tips that will help you make the page more attractive:

* Contact a blog designer and work together to make your blog look exactly the way you want. You want visitors remember your blog's "face" and that will not going to happen if you have the same face than others.

* Don't write big blocks of text, it will overwhelm the reader and probably they will not read the text. Instead, you should make short paragraphs and insert images between them.
 
* Use a big letter size, and it should be a clear one. Is better to have a light background with a dark text color. Otherwise it will tire the sight.

* If you have too much text, you will want to make some words or phrases in bold letter so people read them better. This also will help you positioning the blog in Google, but we will talk about that in other post.

I wish you a very long life in the blogosphere. I will be happy to help you and answer any questions you have.