Facebook Group

Definition of Facebook Group

The Whatis website says that “a Facebook group is a page created for an organization or business to promote activities. Users can join the group and post their thoughts on a wall and interact through discussion threads.”

A Facebook Group is an excellent way of using social media to get dialogue going around a particular topic. For instance, the Yellow Vests Canada is a group designed to share information about the members’ dissatisfaction with the sitting Liberal government.

See the example below.

Yellow Vests Canada Facebook group

The image above accompanied this story:

The CBC reports that the First Nations bands are trying to block the Eagle Spirit pipeline that would move Alberta natural gas from Dawson Creek to Kitimat.

That’s a lie.

Stephen Buffalo, the President/CEO of the Indian Resource Council, was asked why First Nations wanted to spearhead a pipeline through their land. He said he wants to see people working instead of living on handouts.

Every single First Nations band along the proposed pipeline route has signed an agreement to let the pipeline go through their land. That includes the Wet’sywet’en band.

There is a corporation largely funded by white people called the Office of the Wet’sywet’en Society (OWS). They are trying to stop the pipeline. The CBC has told the Canadian public that a First Nations band is blockading the pipeline. That’s a lie.

The OWS is not a First Nations band. It is a company that fraudulently receives money from our government.

Learn much more about this story at bit.ly/fakepipelinenews.

This was an important story to post to the Yellow Vests Canada group. It helped to further their cause.

Within days of this post first appearing , it had 1527 Shares.

Creating a Facebook Group post

When posting to a Facebook Group, remember this:

  • Make sure your facts are accurate.
  • Don’t use vulgar language or say other things that make you sound unprofessional.
  • Use photo editing software such as Photoshop or GIMP to create an eye-catching image.
  • Create an emotion-catching headline that really grabs people’s attention.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Add an Animated GIF to Facebook

Animated GIF & then text

FacebookThis post discusses how you can insert two different types of animated GIFs into Facebook. In a nutshell, to add your animated GIF, you first of all paste the URL of the GIF into Facebook. Then you add a few spaces and type in your text.

We first discuss free animated GIFs and then animated GIFs that you create.

Free animated GIFs 

  1. Go to a website such as giphy.com and select an animated GIF you like.
  2. Select URL in address bar.
  3. Cmd C to copy into clipboard.

Animated GIFs you created

  1. Add Media button, & Upload Files button
  2. Drag GIF from Finder
  3. Click Insert Into Post
  4. Select text near GIF
  5. FacebookLook at page in Text mode
  6. There will be a URL near text you selected
  7. Select URL & Cmd C to copy into clipboard.
  8. Click Update button to save all your work.

Click here to learn more.

Create Facebook post

  1. Open FacebookFacebook
  2. Cmd V to paste URL
  3. Add a few spaces
  4. Type text
  5. Click Post button.

You’re finished

Watch the YouTube video below to help you understand every point above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Find a Creator of Amazing Animated GIFs

Some of my recent animated GIFs

As a VA (virtual assistant), I can research and write blog posts for you. I can also create YouTube videos & animated GIFs like the ones below.

Increase sales disabilities.gif

 

Creating a Pinterest pin.gif

GIFs

Aging Reversed 3 Pictures.gif

GIFs

Many social media.gif

GIFs

 

VA animated.gif

GIFs

Real men.gif

GIFs

 

Describes your day.gif

 

Keynote text effect Squish Flame.gif

 

YouTube black text to colour

 

7 Day logo Bitly.gif

GIFs

 

Learn YouTube housewife.gif

GIFs

Animated GIFs and marketing

Hybrids & CTA

The animations above are like hybrids between still pictures & videos. So, if used properly, they can tell a story more powerfully than still pictures.

Like still pictures, they can easily have a CTA (call to action). For example, if you click on the GIF above, you will be directed to a place where you can get a free YouTube video creation course.

Don’t be intrusive

A properly constructed animated GIF will guide the viewer to have the right marketing action or attitude without being intrusive.

Different viewers can tolerate different amounts of movement without being distracted. So, have enough movement to attract their attention without preventing them from reading your article.

Emotional impact

People buy for emotional reasons. Create your animated GIFs to create the right emotion.

This masterpiece from Cinemagraphs will connect with the audience emotionally.

I cannot say enough good things about Cinemagraphs. They are a creative studio specializing in the production of cinemagraphs, from concept to creation.

If you want super high-quality animated GIFs, ask Cinemagraphs to make them for you. Even if you do not want an animated GIF, go to their website now. Just consider it art appreciation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 


Pinterest Pin, How to Make One

What are Pinterest pins?

Pinterest pinPinterest pins are visual bookmarks. They are pictures that you add to boards on the Pinterest website. Each pin links back to the website from which it came.

The animated GIF above illustrates how a Pinterest pin is created. That pin can be found on a web page called Value-added Email Marketing to Sell Online. If you find that pin on the Pinterest website and click on it, you will be taken to the Value Added Email website.

Characteristics of good Pinterest pins

  • Eye catching. You most likely would like people to add your pins to their web pages. So, it should have visual appeal.
  • 600 pixels wide. It is a good idea to make you pins exactly 600 pixels wide so that they are the same width as other pins on the Pinterest website.
  • Maximum 1900 pixels high. The maximum allowable height of a pin is 1900 pixels. Note that it is a good idea to make a pin long enough so that the viewer has to scroll down a bit. It gets them more involved.
  • Use a high quality photo editor.  I use GIMP.
  • Use a minimum amount of text.  Say what you need to say and say no more.

 

How to make a Pinterest pin in 4 steps

The above animated GIF takes 10 seconds to illustrate how to make an effective Pinterest pin. Let me expand that a little to explain what is happening.

I’m using social media to try to get people to my Email Marketing blog post. The half-life of a Pinterest pin is 1600 times longer than a Facebook post. It can be sending traffic to your website MONTHS after it was published. Keep that in mind while you are deciding how to make a particular pin.

1. Decide upon your main goal

My main goal for the example pin is to get people to a particular web post.

2. Decide what must be on the pin

My pin must show what are the benefits of going to the Email Marketing web page: learning how to

a. Collect visitors names & email addresses.
b. Sell things using that data.

Look at the pin below to see how I did that using the minimum number of words. (Notice how the words are surrounded with lots of white space.)

I had to tell people to go to a particular web page. In order to minimize the number of words, I used Bitly to shorten the URL from http://freewebdesign.club/value-added-email-marketing/ to bit.ly/emailselling. Not only is it shorter but it is easy to remember.

The form that collected the name & email had to be there as well as some other pictures that helped to tell the story.

3. Collect pictures

I performed a web search for “pinterest pins email marketing”. The picture on the right shows what I found.

I want people to select my pin when there are many other email marketing pins from which to choose. So, seeing those pins would help me with my creative processes. I want my pin to have more eye appeal than any of the others.

There are a number of websites where you can find free pictures. One of them can be found at bit.ly/nocostimages. It has free images, paid images and paid videos.

When I want pictures that make a Pinterest pin stand out, I always pay for mine. To find the main picture in the pin below, I went to a paid picture site and entered “email marketing” in the search box. It gave me hundreds of choices.

I chose the three images that you see in the pin below. I chose those 3 because they were all eye catching.

The top one makes an excellent title picture. The other two represent the idea of selling online using a list of email addresses.

Pinterest pin

 

 

 


Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of a free YouTube tutorial. It’s called 7 Day YouTube and will teach you how to make entertaining videos & animated GIFs.

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Social Media Manager’s Suggestions


Create an Animated GIF

click-here-start-online-business

The left-hand portion of this image was at the top of one of my blog posts.  Even though it said, “click here”, only one person clicked on it.  By combining that image into an animated GIF, I am hoping to increase my click-through rate.The above animation is telling people to click in a much more powerful way than the still picture ever could.  If you are into online marketing at all, it is important to learn how to make animated GIFs.

The purpose of the above animation is to create more calls to action (CTAs).  A good animated GIF can increase the CTAs without being too distracting.

Explain things in seconds

Watch the animated GIFs on this page. See how very complicated concepts can be explained in just seconds using an animated GIF.

Create your animated GIF in 6 steps

1. Choose the pictures you will usebuilt-in-effect

2. Set up your story on Keynote

 

3. Choose the effects you want


Earn a percentage of the selling price for every book sold.

Click here to learn more.

4. Using ScreenFlow 6.x or better, record your Keynote slide presentation

5. Edit ScreenFlow video to maximum size of 500 x 500 px. & shortest time reasonable.

screenflow-export-menu6. File > export. Set preset as animated GIF.  Click
on export button.

 

 


Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of the free YouTube video-creation tutorial called 7 Day YouTube.

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Webpage — Information, Aesthetics & Technical

3 characteristics of webpage presentationwebpage with Great Content

When judging how good a webpage is, there are 3 characteristics we look at:

  • How current and valuable the information is
  • Aesthetics, how attractive it is
  • Technical, how quickly does it load, do all of the hyperlinks work, etc.

1. Information

You want people to come back to your website.  So, they must feel like the information is valuable to them.  Does it sound original?

Is it current?  You need valuable information to keep each new post current.  Ideally your blog will have one main theme.  Every post and page in that blog will be related to that central theme.

Usually you should keep each post over 300 words.

2. Aesthetics

  • Layout — How well is your web page laid out?
  • Ease of reading — Is it easy to read?
  • Pictures — Do the pictures assist with the reading experience?

Skim like an F

Brown letter FAlways keep in mind that people usually will not read your page.  They will skim it.

Expect them to just skim over it in the shape of a capital letter F. They will read the first few lines completely.  Then they will read the beginning of a few lines.  Then they will skim right down the page.

Bullet points

So, try to have lots of bullet points to help with the skimming right down.

Pictureswebpage Brain XRay in blue skull

Line Length

People prefer to read shorter lines. So,

  • Grab their attention in the first few lines
  • Make the first few lines short
  • Then they read the first few lines
  • After that you have them wanting to read
  • You can then continue article with longer lines
  • Start with shorter lines by having a picture at the top of the page like this.

 

3. Technical

Links

  • Test all of your links to make sure they work.  (It helps with SEO to have links to external sources.)
  • Have social media icons so that visitors can share your excellent content with their friends and colleagues.

Help pages load quickly

40% of people will abandon a site if it takes greater than 3 seconds to load.

  • Photo size — Don’t have photos larger then they have to be.  For example, I had an image with a “wow” factor that was 741 pixels wide.  It was 1.3MB in size.  When I selected a corner and made it smaller, it still was 1.3 MB in size.  However, when I opened it up in GIMP and used Image > Scale Image to reduce it to 400 pixels wide, it was 407 kB in size.
  • Block 3rd party cookiesReduces ad garbage
  • Search for load time reducing ideas.  Try reading How to Make Your Site Insanely Fast.

Reducing ad garbage

To reduce ad garbage, make a web search for how to block 3rd party cookies.  Here’s how to block 3rd party cookies with 2 different web browsers:

  • INTERNET EXPLORER: Tools> Internet Options> Privacy> Advanced:
    here check ‘Override automatic….’; ‘Allow session cookies’; ‘Allow 1st party cookies’ & ‘Block 3rd Party Cookies’.
  • firefox-add-onsFIREFOX: Tools> Options> Privacy: Check ‘Accept Cookies from sites’
    & Un-Check ‘Accept 3rd Party cookies’                          Firefox keeps changing their software.  With my version, I had to go to Tools > Add-ons and select the ad blocker (ABP) add-on.

“Wow” factor note

I promote each blog post using at least 3 different social media (Twitter, Facebook & Google Plus).  Here’s an example of how I promoted a post using 7 different social media.

Pictures are much more effective than words for getting points across.  So, I’ve started using an amazing picture at the top of each blog post.  Each social media post linking to that post will have the same picture.

Visuals to Enhance Your Message

Grab their attention for a few seconds

Visuals Cliffs from below 400

Website visitors are impatient.  They need visuals to distract them.  If they are not really interested in the first 3 seconds, they will probably leave your page.  So, use images with a “wow” factor to grab their attention.  The special picture should be above the fold if possible.

A picture is worth 1000 words

The brain processes a picture much faster than text — 60,000 times faster.  So, a picture is probably worth much more than 1000 words.

What makes visuals different from text?

  • Visuals are stored directly in the long-term memory
  • Text is stored in the short-term memory
  • Images increase comprehension, recollection and retention to a greater extent than text does
  • So, people are more likely to remember things on your web page if text is accompanied by a picture
  • Pictures enhance emotions more strongly than text.
  • Pictures engage the imagination to a greater extent than text
  • Pictures heighten creative thinking to a greater extent than text
  • The brain processes everything about a picture simultaneously
  • With text, the brain processes it one word at a time

 

Souces of visuals

SVisuals kitch optionsWhen you are explaining things, it often helps if you use a program such as Skitch to grab part of an image to explain a point.  Visuals help us decode text.

Sometimes, or probably usually, visitors will leave your page if you do not grab their attention within the first few seconds.  I often go to Adobe Stock and pay $3 for a photo that will “wow” people long enough to get them to read the page. 

Note that to use Adobe Stock you must pay $30 USD per month for 10 photos. If that is too much, try the nocostimages alternative.

Try going to 8 sources of free stock images.

Reduce the size of some images

Note that these Adobe Stock pictures will be very large and therefore slow down the speed at which your website opens.  So, to avoid losing viewers, use GIMP to reduce the size of an image.

If you have a 3 MB picture and drag a corner to make it smaller, it will still be a 3 MB picture.  So, go to GIMP and use used Image > Scale Image to reduce the size of a picture.

Today I had a 1.3 MB picture that was 700 pixels wide.  I used GIMP to reduce it to 400 pixels wide.  It was only 400 kB.

Social media marketing

Cliffs from below 400

I rarely make a social media post without having a photo that grabs people’s attention.  I’ll take the best picture from a blog post and have an image upload with that same picture in my posts on

  • Twitter
  • Facebook page
  • Google+

Each social media post will link back to the blog post.  The picture with a “wow” factor helps people to stay on my social media post long enough that they end up going to the blog.

The fold

The fold is the position on a web page where the majority of browsers viewing the page will begin to scroll.

Megabytes & kilobytes

A Mb is approximately 1000 times larger than a kB.  Specifically,

  • 1 byte = 8 bits
  • 1 Kilobyte = 1024 bytes
  • 1 Megabyte = 1024 Kilobytes

 

bit.ly/nocostimages

The Bitly address, bit.ly/nocostimages is an easy-to-remember web address for the Dreamstime website. Dreamstime has a collection of tens of millions of photos, illustrations, video snippets, etc. The lower quality images are free. The higher quality ones cost money. Dreamstime can be a very good source of free images.

In the above screenshot, someone searched All Content for pictures that represented designing websites.  What if your designing websites picture must match the blue colour in your header. Then you would add the word blue to your search term.

 


Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of the free YouTube video-creation tutorial called 7 Day YouTube.

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How to Use Maths Puzzles to Gain More Traffic

Most people love a number puzzle

Maths puzzles Genius testSemi genius math puzzleWhen you consider the popularity of Sudoku, you realize that people love maths puzzles.  Add one to your Facebook page and you can get lots of traffic to your blog.  That’s where people must go to find the answer.

The answer to the above puzzles are near the bottom of this web page.
How to create a math puzzle graphic.
How to find all of these related pages.

Related pages

Maths item of the month

The MEI website says

The MEI Maths Item of the Month is a monthly problem aimed at teachers and students of GCSE/A level Mathematics. The problems can be used for enrichment, problem solving or as a way to encourage mathematical thinking/proofRead more.

Maths tricks, puzzles, facts, etc.

The Maths Tricks Puzzles website says

Solve the puzzleRead much more.

Free maths puzzles course

The Course Guru website says

On this free online course, we’ll look at three types of maths puzzleRead more.

Earn a percentage of the selling price for every book sold.

Click here to learn more.

Cryptography

A GCHQ Twitter post says

The Applications of Probability to Cryptography…  Read more.

Maths puzzles with answers

The Pics Downloadz website says

Take another challenge in puzzles and solve this confusing math problem. In this puzzle, you will have…  Read more.

Like a crossword but with numbers

Cross figure puzzlesThe Krazydad website says

Here are eighty excellent Cross-figure (or figure logic) puzzles by Yochanan DvirRead more.

 Curated content

I wanted to write a blog post about maths puzzles.  So, I decided to curate the content.

I entered maths puzzles in the Google search box and began to search for posts about number puzzles.

I gave a quick summary of various websites.

Puzzle answers

Genius text 1 3 7 13If you are still wondering why y = 73, consider this formula: y = x(x – 1) + 1.  Sample a few numbers.  For instance, when x = 5, y = 5(5 – 1) + 1 = 5 x 4 + 1 = 21.  That checks out with the genius test to the left.

 

Semi genius math puzzle

 

The formula for this one is y = 2x2 – 1.  So, y = 2(62) – 1 = 72 – 1 = 71

How to create the genius test graphic

The genius test graphic will be displayed on more than this page and my Facebook page. It is a marketing tool to get people to my blog.

So, I wanted to use decent aesthetics and other marketing features. Here are the steps I used using the free GIMP photo editing software.

♦ Open GIMP
Blog on Barn Board♦ Open the blog on barn board graphic
Layers Panel new layerClick Image > Scale Image to reduce the width to 600 pixels
♦ Right-click on the Layers panel and select New Layer
Opacity layerClick the White radio button and then OK
♦ Reduce the Opacity to 90
♦ Right Click > Merge Down in layers panel
Color Picker Tool 2♦ Use Color Picker tool to select a color from the blog graphic.
♦ This will create a foreground color Genius text 1 3 7 13for your keystrokes when you create the puzzle.
♦ Type out the text
♦ Right-click in the Layers panel and select Merge Down.
♦ Click the double headed arrow beside the background and foreground colors
♦ While the genius test is still selected, click File > New
Math Puzzles Pinterest 2Add 20 pixels to default width and height of your new rectangle.
♦ Click OK and this will produce a rectangle same color as text
♦ Click on the test graphic and press Cmd C to copy it into your clipboard
♦ Click on your new colored rectangle and press Cmd V to paste the test graphic onto the colored rectangle
♦ Right-click in your Layers panel and select Anchor Layer
♦ Now your text graphic will have a 10-pixel border around it
♦ Select your blog on barn board graphic and click Image > Scale Image
Make it into a tiny image, click on it and press Cmd C to copy it into your clipboard
♦ Click on your math puzzle, press Cmd V and drag the tiny image to the place you want it to stay
♦ Right click on the Layers panel and select Anchor Layer
♦ Save the puzzle with a descriptive name, export it as a PNG file and upload it to your Facebook page 

drop down  drop downFacebook logo

 

 

 

 

 


Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of the free YouTube video-creation tutorial called 7 Day YouTube.

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