Barb Drozdowich's Blog, page 43
March 18, 2015
The History of the #Hashtag (Infographic)
The Ubiquitous Hashtag
The subject of discussions everywhere. Didn’t you wonder the history of it? When I stumbled on this infographic, I couldn’t resist sharing. This infographic originates HERE
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March 15, 2015
How to Manipulate Pictures or Graphics in WordPress Part 1 (video)
Today we are doing a little video to introduce the art of manipulating pictures in WordPress. I know that many people struggle with pictures, I’m creating as many detailed, yet short videos to walk you through the subjects of images or videos.
I’ve talked about manipulating pictures in other posts HERE, HERE and HERE.
Consider today’s video an introduction. This video covers basic insertion of pictures, moving them around the post and changing the size.
As always, feel free to ask if you have any questions. I know that this is a difficult subject for many, feel free to share with your friends who are struggling to conquer WordPress.
I hope you enjoyed today’s video. Look for more videos in the future on similar subjects to help you authors and bloggers!
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WordPress Plugins101 (infographic)
Today we are going to talk about one of my favorite subjects – WordPress plugins!
I found this infographic from WPJedi.com on The Ultralinx.com. I hope you enjoy all these pearls of wisdom!
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March 11, 2015
Social Media Around the World (Infographic)
I found another cool infographic that I want to share!
This infographic is brought to us by AddThis (one of the more popular sharing plugin people). This particular graphic gives us little snippets of information from 2014. I hope that you enjoy some of the information that is being shared here, but to emphasize a few of my favorites…Pinterest sharing is the only type of sharing that is increasing, the common ones – Facebook and Twitter – are decreasing. Mobile access increased 46% in 2014 – that’s huge. One thing that I frequently emphasize to my authors who primarily work on a desktop is that more and more of their readers are NOT on a desktop and because of this, they need to make sure that their platform – especially their blog – looks good on a mobile device.
As always, I hope that you pick up a few tidbits and share with your friends!
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March 9, 2015
How to Customize your Dashboard and Other Workspaces on WordPress (video)
Great news!!
I’ve started a video series that will help everyone with those finicky little things about WordPress and Blogger. The videos will be posted on YouTube and introduced here for everyone to see.
We are starting this week with a video explaining How to Customize your Dashboard and Other Workspaces on WordPress. This video will help you understand how to make your WordPress environment YOURS!! Get away from the preset set up and customize it.
Try it for yourself and have fun!!
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March 4, 2015
What We Learned in Social Media 2014 (Infographic)
I am always a lover of stats! Not a lover of math 
but a lover of stats!
Where some people will follow a feeling, I will research and follow the stats. Often when I hear about authors talking about what “works,” I’m curious as to whether they have stats to back up their feelings or whether it is just a hunch.
Today I’m going to share an infographic that I found a bit ago on Business 2 Community. Take some time and have a look at the numbers. I’m always impressed with the number of people (and the rate at which that number is increasing) that use a phone or a tablet to do social media.
What are your thoughts on this infographic? Learn something new? Going to re-think your social media platform? Let me know!
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March 1, 2015
Announcing Blog Tours, PR & More – a listing site
Exciting News today!
I’ve threatened and threatened…and now I’ve done it! I’ve create a site to list companies that help authors with Blog Tours and other PR matters.
Go ahead…..click on the graphic and go and check it out!
Are you back? Good!
Let’s discuss the why and the what of this site.
The ‘Why’ is easy – I get a lot of questions from authors as to where to find a blog tour company, where to find a PR representative….basically where to find someone or some company who will help with book promotion.
A couple of years ago, I responded to the “Where do I find a book blogger who will feature my book?” question by creating the Book Blogger List.
Many of you have found this site. It has listed just over 1700 book bloggers that are sorted according to the genre of books they are interested in. I get about 40 new submissions from book bloggers each week and the site gets somewhere between 400 and 600 hits each day with higher numbers seen on the weekends frequently. And frankly, every time it is mentioned – like it was recently by Publisher’s Weekly – the hits are off the charts.
Clearly there is a need for this sort of information type site.
So…now to the ‘What’ of the Blog Tours, PR and More site. This site lists for free companies, or individuals who help authors with the promotional side of our world. I make no judgements and do not vet any of the submissions. I leave it to authors to decide which company they wish to do business with. I just gather the information in one location so that it is easy to search.
Since most companies and people who help authors with promotions tend to specialize in certain genres, I’ve sorted all the entries by genre.
If you are looking for some help, bookmark this site and drop back by as it grows and adds new listings (it has only been in operation a week)
If you help authors with their promotions by arranging tours, or any other type of PR activity, feel free to click on the link and list your site for free. If you are feeling generous, there is a donation button on the front page to help cover my costs of hosting, domains etc.
Don’t hesitate to ask questions…or simply drop by and have a look around!
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February 25, 2015
Self Publisher by Joel Friedlander and Betty Kelly Sargent
Today we are doing something a bit different. We’re going to talk a bit about Joel Friedlander’s latest book. He has published ‘The Self Publisher’s Ultimate Resource Guide.‘ This book is chock full of great resources for the self published author. As you can see from the book description below, there are 850 resources listed! I was honored to be listed and I’ve had the opportunity to go through this book and see who is listed and I must admit I’m in pretty good company!
I felt that a great deal of care and consideration went into creating this wonderful resource. Each entry has a brief description and a way of contacting that person/company. For those of you who are self publishing, I highly suggest that you pick up your own copy today!
The Self-Publisher’s Ultimate Resource Guide is the first and largest collection of curated and verified resources for independent authors who plan to publish their own books. Produced by a team with long experience in both traditional and independent publishing, the over 850 resources are listed in an easy-to-use format that includes live links, phone numbers, email addresses and brief descriptive copy. The Guide makes vendors and other resources easy to find by separating them into 33 distinct categories within the 3 main tasks the self-publisher must deal with. How to Prepare, Publish, and Promote their books.
The Self-Publisher’s Ultimate Resource Guide ebook version is updated regularly to provide current information and links in the fast-changing indie publishing world, and the authors are actively soliciting input to keep listings current and comprehensive.
Early Praise:
“An essential reference to the best publishing resources for every self published author. Highly recommended!”
—Mark Coker, Smashwords founder
“Most authors are excited about the promise of self-publishing–until they actually try to do it. Then they quickly realize they will need a team of professionals to prepare, publish, and promote their book. And that’s where they get stuck. They don’t have the connections. That’s where The Self-Publisher’s Ultimate Resource Guide is a life-saver. This is the missing link that will enable authors to capitalize on the self-publishing revolution and become captains of their own literary destiny. I highly recommend it.”
—Michael Hyatt, New York Times Bestselling Author and Former CEO, Thomas Nelson Publishers
“Independent authors need a team to help create a fantastic finished product, and finding the right people can be a challenge when you first start out. This book will help authors to locate professionals to edit, publish and market their work—helping them to stand out in the crowded marketplace.”
—Joanna Penn, The Creative Penn
“Time is money. You’ll save a lot of both by referring to this easy-to-use resource. I’ll be promoting this valuable guide and urging my own author clients to use it.”
—Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound
“Finally, a starting point from which to choose products and services, a veritable Yellow Pages for self-publishers. This thorough and respectable list of resources prevents the endless web searches and dead ends that frustrate so many authors, to make the indie publishing journey much less stressful.”
—Carla King, Self-Pub Boot Camp
Available on
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January 25, 2015
How to add an Amazon Affiliate Link to a cover graphic (How to Hotlink a picture) in WordPress
In a previous post I described how to embed an Amazon affiliate link into a text link. Today we are going to talk about embedding an affiliate link in a graphic. We will use a cover graphic of a book as an example.
Many people add an Amazon Affiliate link to their post. It is a way of offering your readers an easy way to purchase the product that you are talking about. Let’s face it, most of us can’t support a family with affiliate money, but my Amazon affiliate supplies me with the odd book.
I have a pet peeve about the appearance of links in posts. I don’t want to see a nasty long Amazon link in the post like this:
and I don’t want to see a cover graphic that is obviously an affiliate graphic like this:
Although I often embed an affiliate link in a text link, I may also ‘hotlink’ a picture with an affiliate link. It may be a way of getting a few extra cents, I mainly use affiliate links to allow me to count the number of times a buy link is clicked on vs the number of times that link results in a purchase.
Let’s go through the process one step at a time.
Step 1) Log on to your Amazon affiliate account and hover over the Links & Banners menu item and choose Product Links from the dropdown list. That will bring up the screen below.
Step 2) Choose ‘Kindle Store’ in the drop-down (indicated by the red arrow in the graphic below) and type the name of the book in the field indicated by the second red arrow. Click on the orange Go button.
Step 3) This will bring up choices as you can see in the graphic below. Find the book that you are looking for in the list and then click on the Orange ‘Get Link’ button.
Step 4) The first screen that comes up shows the cover of the book that you are featuring. I just want the text link, so I click on ‘Text Only’ as indicated by the red arrow in the graphic below. That will bring up the screen that you see below. We will need part of the code that is in the red box as indicated below.
Step 5) If you look at the graphic below, you’ll see that I have highlighted part of the code. This is the portion that you want. It looks like this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E...
The portion of the code that I want is in quotes (but don’t include the quotes), starts with an ‘http’ and ends with my affiliate id. We are going to take that code and use it as the link to embed in a cover graphic like below:
Click on the cover graphic above and see where you go. Unless I told you, are you aware that you are clicking an affilate link? Isn’t it neater?
To actually put the affiliate link in place, just change the ‘link to’ field to ‘custom link’ and insert the link in the field below as you can see in the graphic below.
By the way, you can do this on Blogger – exactly as I’ve done it on WordPress.
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Let me know if you have any questions about this post or anything else – I’m always happy to answer questions. If you want regular Tech Hint updates in your inbox, subscribe using the button in the sidebar to your right.
Make sure that you use the little share buttons below to share this post with your friends. I can be found on most social media and I’ve published 6 books designed to help authors and bloggers with various areas of concern. All available for less than the price of a latte!
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January 18, 2015
Wrangle your Images on WordPress – Part 4
Today we will finish up our series on wrangling pictures in WordPress.
If you are arriving late to the party as it were, you can catch up on what we’ve covered in previous weeks. The first week of our series, we covered some basics in picture handling HERE. The second week we ventured into how to display pictures using a plugin called Tiled Galleries. That post can be found HERE. The third week we talked about editing your pictures within WordPress, rather than editing the pictures first on your computer before uploading them. That post can be found HERE.
Today we are going to cover a few more tricks to manipulating pictures to finish up this series.
Have you ever wondered how people manage to get a nice row of pictures like we see below?
The trick to do this is to left-justify all the pictures.
To start the process of inserting your pictures, click on “Add Media” from your post or page and choose the picture that you want to start with. Once you have clicked on the first picture, make sure you choose Left-justified.
To put that picture into place on your post or page, you can click on the blue “Insert into post” button. Repeat this process for as many pictures as you want to show. As you can see from the screenshot below, I’ve chosen to include 4 pictures in a row.
Looks nice, doesn’t it? Click on ‘Save Draft’ and then look at the preview.
What you actually see will depend on several factors – the most important being the available space for the pictures to be displayed. As you can see, on my blog, the pictures more than fill up one line.
If you click on the ‘Text’ tab and look at the code, you’ll see at a glance that all the code is continuous, there are no blank lines or odd spaces. Sometimes when you try to insert pictures into a post or a page, you end up with an odd half space like below:
If that happens, the first thing to do is to look at the ‘Text’ view as you can see below.
As you can see by the red arrow, there is an odd blank line in the code. The easiest way to get your pictures back in line is to remove this blank line.
Have you ever had trouble inserting text into a post after a certain picture. A trick to doing that is to use characters as markers.
As you can see in the screenshot above, I’ve decided to insert text after the last picture. I simply put a series of ‘Xs’ at the end of the code (in the ‘text’ view) and then switch to the ‘Visual’ view.
On the ‘Visual’ view of your post or page, look for the series of Xs and that is where you can click your cursor and move it to where you want the text to appear.
I’m going to finish up with a reminder or two.
To edit a picture, click once on the picture and then click on the pencil to edit it.
That will lead you to the screen below:
Always fill in the Alternative Text field. When a picture is added to a post or page, the name of the picture is filled into the Alt. Text field but you can change it to something more meaningful. Since my example is a book cover, I can change the Alt.text field to the title and author of the book as you can see below:
Many people either don’t bother with Alt.Text fields. Many readers now read websites using a screen reader. Screen readers only read text – they can’t read pictures – so when you give your picture an Alt.Text the screen reader has something to read. You add extra value to your post!
Two more hints.
The first one is to make use of the ‘Link To’ field. In our current example, I’ve posted a book cover. Why not link it to an Amazon buy page. That way, when someone clicks on the cover graphic picture, they will be lead to Amazon so that they can buy a copy. Remember to make use of the ‘Open link in a new window/tab’ checkbox. That way your readers will be able to easily find their way back to your blog once they have bought a copy of the book.
I hope this series has helped you manage pictures a bit easier. Don’t hesitate to leave questions or find me on social media . I LOVE answering questions!
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