Tech Review

reviews of based on my technical experience

Royalty Free Images for Business Blogging – Review & Giveaway

Father with daughter. Entrepreneur

:-D

Isn’t Content King? What The Heck Do I Need Images For?

As bloggers blogging for business – selling services, ad space or working towards Brand partnership – we all need our sites to be visually appealing.

A great theme is a must, but what about your posts and pages?

If you haven’t noticed, my posts are pretty wordy. (I can see Eve from Beautiful Spit Up nodding her head). The use of visual elements, images, videos and polls help to break up my text and give it an appealing look.

A year ago my blog posts didn’t have images other than the ones I took myself (which weren’t good). Sure there are a lot of freebies on the web, but frankly, I didn’t want to try and decipher the legal jargon to use them.

Also? My blog WAS just my blog. It didn’t make me a profit in any way, and I didn’t have intentions to do so, so I didn’t see a reason to invest money in Royalty Free (RF) stock photos. But now that this blog has morphed into something else, being visually appealing is a must.

Images For Your Business Blog

Copyrighted Images

Network Solutions Heard This Blogger ROAR

As ya’ll know, when I found Network Solution’s support was coming up short I decided to go public with my experience via twitter and my blog. They heard me. They definitely recognize word of mouth (or screen as fellow blogger Chrissy puts it). True, the contact I received wasn’t the best – a no-name non support NS tweeter, a service call from a tech with no means to contact him directly, and really vague updates by email, which I couldn’t respond to. But they HEARD me, through the power of blogging and tweeting, they HEARD me.

Shortly after my most recent post yesterday about “fixing” my issues myself, I received a call from their Executive Support Office. I also received a follow up email that went like this:

. . . Once again, please accept my most sincere apologies for any difficulties you may have experienced.  As we discussed, I am conducting a full investigation of your recent experience to ensure that we can better support you and your clients in the future. . .

. . .  For all other inquiries, as a Network Solutions Customer, you are entitled to unlimited access, day or night, to technically skilled Customer Service Representatives who are dedicated to delivering any level of support you may need. To reach us, call . . .

Network Solutions Non Support, Me screwing up my blog

If you’ve been coming across my tweets or if you read my last post, you know I’ve been having issues with Network Solutions, the guys that host my WordPress blog. It’s a very simple issue, I can’t install plugins. I basically lost permission to do so. Network Solutions, after being harassed by me via twitter, has been on the case.

Here’s how they’re keeping me in the loop.

1. I have a no-name non support twitter NS person who replies to my twitter rants,

2. I received a tech call from a real tech named Rick who knew what he was talking about and reinforced my faith in NS again, (stupid me was so happy and excited, I forgot to disclose a bit of info that I later wanted to, but had no direct way of contacting the tech, i did ask no-name non support NS twitter person to have the tech call me back, but it didn’t happen),

3. I received an email today:

Review: Blog Grader

>So here’s a handy dandy website I came across. Blog Grader — powered by Hubspot, an internet marketing company which I’ve found to have an extreme amount of helpful info for business bloggers — is an online application where you can plug in your (or anyone else’s for that matter) url and in return you’ll receive

  1. a blog grade based on technical features, content and engagement
  2. a ranking which shows you how high your blog ranks compared to all the other blogs Blog Grader has reviewed.
  3. details on why your blog was graded and ranked as it was and suggestions on how to make it better.

I know there’s quite a few other online sources that does the same thing, I just happen to like the interface, the speed, the random on-screen messages you see while waiting for your results, and the company that sponsors it.

My grade can be found on your right under my About Me. It’s a nice confidence builder and a big reminder that i should get my but in gear with blogging.

As I mentioned before, Hubspot has a lot of info for the business blogger. They’re a business, selling marketing software to the business blogger, but they also have quite a few free resources that i’m already taking advantage of.