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One way to add depth to the posts that you write on your blog is to include the opinions of others on the topics that you’re exploring. The way that I see it is that when I write a post with just my own thoughts in it it can end up being a little one dimensional - but when I draw upon the experience of others also posts have the potential to become 2… or even 3 dimensional.
How do I do it?
Here are five ways that I’ve used lately to include the opinion of others in my posts:
1. Twitter - one of the things that I love about Twitter is that it has the ability to create instant conversations around virtually any topic. Next time you’re writing a post ask a question or two of your ‘followers’ on Twitter. Ask them for examples, get their opinion or survey them on their behavior on the topic you’re exploring.
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Have a look at the 10 Sample Websites below which use JavaScript animations minimally and effectively
Here's the problem: you have a container with some content in it like an image along with some initial descriptive text. Then, when users hover their mouse over the container, a hidden container is revealed to present additional information over top of the current information but in a way that retains content from the original container.
This was essentially the problem presented to me by
Anton Peck. He had originally asked for a way to do this with JavaScript. To which I provided the following solution that didn't need to use JavaScript at all.
Check out the quick demo.
When you hover over the container, a new container is displayed over the existing content. The trick here is the use of position:relative to allow the static content to appear over absolutely positioned content.
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Written by Jonathan Snook · Filed Under design corner | Comments Off
Instead of riding snow, this boarder is flying through flames. In this tutorial we’ll create fire and smoke without using any photos. You’ll learn how to combine both to create a flaming, dynamic image that jumps right at you.
The Photo
First we need an image to work with. I chose an image of a snowboarder jumping from
Stock.xchang, it’s great because he’s quite isolated against a straight blue background which will make cutting him out much easier.
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The ProBlogger
Job boards have been listing some great jobs for bloggers of late. Here’s 10 of the latest from the last 7 days:
What excites me is that there’s such a variety of jobs being advertised not only in terms of topics/themes but also in terms of advertisers (with a few mainstream advertisers in the last month) and roles (I’m especially noticing more advertising for editors, managers and community managers).
Share This
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In this post
Daniel Scocco answers to another question on the Problogger Question Box (and a question that I get asked a lot).
Brian Auer asks:
What about [direct advertising] pricing? Are there any good ballpark price structures? What do we base rates on?
As soon as a blogger decides to play with direct advertising, the question of “how much to charge” emerges. If you charge too much, you might end up with no advertisers at all. If you charge too little, on the other hand, you will be leaving money on the table.
Unfortunately, as Brian wonders, there are no standard pricing structures across the Internet. You will need to take a look around, do some research, and experiment on your own site to find the rates that will maximize your revenues.
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AIGA's 'Are You a Virgin?' design competition site has been reviewed by Typesites. Euphemisms abound.
Over the last few weeks while I’ve been traveling you may have noticed a new sponsor on ProBlogger in the headline banner position. Where as previously we’d kept this position for internal advertising this month we’ve launched a premium sponsorship package which was quickly snapped up by new sponsor
Firepow.
Firepow is a new (well actually it’s soon to be released) software developed by a fellow Aussie Hansen that aims to help you make your blogging and niche site marketing a more profitable experience.
Firepow will be launched on 30 April and Andrew is currently building a prelaunch notification list so that you can be informed of it’s developments over the coming weeks.
I’m yet to use Firepow but have had Andrew walk me through some of it’s features and aims and from what I can see it is designed to help bloggers with three main challenges:
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In this tutorial I will show you how to repair some image noise from a low quality shot and I will show you an extremely quick and easy way to smooth out a person’s face. The woman in this shot is not a model and she has a lot of character so we don’t want to over do it with the smoothing. We will make it look real and natural.
The Image
You can get the image we’re using in this tutorial from Free Range Stock
here. The technique can be applied to a beauty shot as well, you would just have to adjust the settings on some of the steps to get a more extreme smoothing effect.
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How Can Twitter be used to promote a blog? In this guest post Chris Brogan sheds some light on the topic.
Twitter is a lot of things to a lot of people. For some, it’s a virtual water cooler. For others, it’s a great way to get answers to questions.
Since I started using Twitter, I have more than doubled my blog traffic over the last several months, and I can tell you how.
Some people just dump their blog posts into Twitter automatically, with a simple “New Blog Post: Money is Better Than Dirt” and away you go. I’ve found a way of using Twitter to encourage participation on
my website, and it’s better than easy; it’s tasteful.
Ask a Question
Instead of telling your Twitter audience that you’ve published a new post, ask them their opinion on the core topic you’ve covered. “Do you think banner ads are dead?” followed by a link to your site is much more appealing than posting to Twitter, “Banner Ads Are Not Dead.” Asking a question engages your Twitter followers and solicits
their experience.
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