Stock Photo Websites that AREN’T awful!

When designing something for your website, or finding that perfect image for your next newsletter, being able to track down a great photo that you can legally use can be quite a hard task! Stock photos are notoriously awful, cheesy and can be quite expensive. But fear not, designers of the world, because Blue Biscuit is here to help. Below is a list of stock photo websites that aren’t awful!

• Splitshare: Splitshare is a great website which allows you to search through copyright free, high quality photos. Handy “download them all” feature if you want 500+ pictures to do whatever you want with! For commercial and personal use.
• Death to The Stock Photo: A personal favourite of Blue Biscuit’s, Death To The Stock Photo has two separate services depending on your budget. For free, all you have to do is sign up to receive a new pack of gorgeous copyright free photos straight to your inbox each month!
• Unsplash: Perfect if you use a lot of landscape imagery in your marketing and designs, Unsplash uploads 10 free images every 10 days for commercial and personal use.
• Life Of Pix: Another good site that has a search feature for if you’re looking for something in particular. For commercial and personal use.
• Pexels: A personal favourite of Blue Biscuit’s. Pexels has a huge range of phots, a well designed site and is searchable!

Did we miss any that you think should be included on here? Let us know in the comments or tweet us @bluebiscuitblog!

Why You Should Be Using Infographics in Your Marketing

A few years ago, the word “Infographic” would’ve meant very little to the average person. Today, they are one of the most widely used forms of visual communication across social media. Not using them yet? You should be! To make it a little more interesting we put our reasons into this super cool infographic. If you find it useful, let us know via Twitter or share this post using the buttons below!

Want to make your own Infographic? Check out Piktochart  for a really easy to use design experience. We even used it to produce this one!

But – what do you think? Are infographics the best thing since sliced bread – are here to stay? Leave a comment below!

Should Your Business Run A Blog?

This post is brought to our readers via a guest blogger

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Over the past few years, blogging has become very popular for businesses. With millions of new blogs being created all the time, it is a hugely valuable tool that allows engagement and interaction with customers and potential customers. But, is blogging right for you? Should you be doing it for your business? To help you make the decision, we’ve given you a few advantages and disadvantages of business blogging.

Advantages – Why You Should Consider Blogging

• Blogging can allow you to explore certain niche issues of your business in depth, and offer readers an insight into these. If there are issues related to your business that you think you can explore and discuss – then blog about! Blogging in this way will allow you to present yourself as industry experts and thought leaders.
• You can create conversations and form relationships through blogging, as it is much less formal than other types of content. If done in the correct way, you can encourage engagement, interaction, and discussion with your readers.
• Blogging can allow your business to become a bit more personal. Having a personality and identity to your brand increases customer loyalty.
• In terms of your overall marketing plan, blogging is a very low cost option – possibly even free!
• SEO can be improved quite significantly through blogging. As blogging tends to involve the publication of new content on quite a frequent basis, search engines pick up on this and reward you for it in rankings!
• Blogging can create a buzz about you and your brand. You can promote yourself in a variety of different ways and have a chance to get creative!

Disadvantages – Business Blogging Drawbacks

• Blogging takes time and dedication. Firstly, you have to plan and write a post. Then you have to share it around on multiple platforms to make sure it reaches as many people as possible. It sounds like a cliche, but with blogging, you really do get out what you put in!
• With millions of blogs being made every week, finding something that has not been talked about too many times before can be quite difficult. Make sure you’re heavily stocked up on fresh ideas!
• Results aren’t always immediate with blogging. You can’t just expect to post once and then be flooded with orders or enquiries. If you’re looking for quick ways to make sales – blogging isn’t it!

So, what do you think? Do the advantages of running a business blog outweigh the disadvantages? Is blogging a good thing to add to the overall marketing efforts?

Let us know in the comment section, or send us a tweet.

How to Make A Website Mobile Friendly

The number of people using their smart phone to browse the web is growing every day, meaning it has become increasingly important for websites to be mobile friendly. Use the handy guide below to make improvements on your site’s mobile usability.

1. Ensure your text is big enough to read on mobile devices. Optimum sizes are anything above 14. Having text any smaller than this will usually result in mobile users having to “pinch” to view content on your site.

2. Make sure links are far enough apart. Remember, when someone visits your site on mobile, they’ll be clicking with their thumb. This means the “clickable” parts of your site need to be far enough apart that links can be clicked with ease.

3. Add contact details. It is worth keeping in mind that most people looking at your site on a mobile will be on-the-go and looking for opening times/email address/phone number. Make sure these details are on your home page!

4. Keep your layout simple. Over complicated layouts will appear cluttered when visitng on mobile and will increase load times. Slow web pages will turn customers away!

5. Finally, TEST! One of the best tools for testing mobile usability is Google’s Mobile Friendly Test. You can take this test here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/.

Any questions? Please tweet @BlueBiscuitUK!

10 New Digital Marketing Ideas To try in 2015

Is there any better time than the turning of a new year to try new things? We don’t think so! When things work for you and your business it makes sense to keep doing them. However, this can sometimes lead to forgetting to try new things. So, with that in mind, Blue Biscuit have put together a list of 10 New Digital Marketing Ideas for YOU to try in 2015!

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1. Infographics
Infographics are becoming an increasingly popular way to display information. We even made one, here! They can be used in a variety of ways to simplify information or just display it in a more visual format. Consider creating your own and sharing it via social media. You never know, it might even go viral.

2. Paid promotions 
Lots of social media platforms (e.g Twitter and Facebook) now have paid promotions options. They are fully customisable, and will send your message out within your budget. Consider these paid promotions for 2015 – they’re a great way to reach more people on social media!

3. Visual 
It’s becoming more and more important to include images in our content. Not only is this good for SEO, it engages visitors. For 2015, think about designing some images or taking your own photos for your website and social media platforms. It beats pages and pages of text any day!

4. Video 
We are living in an age where YouTube has become so big, people can make multi-million pound careers out of the social media platform. Now, while Blue Biscuit can’t promise you’ll reach these heights, we can promise you’ll benefit from posting videos to YouTube or other video sharing sites. Posting videos allows you to communicate with your customers in a much more personal way, without actually meeting them. You could create tutorials, behind the scenes videos, or case study videos. The possibilities really are endless when it comes to video.

5. Discounts
Some businesses shudder at the thought, however it is well known by now that discounts = business. If you’ve never done one before, make 2015 the year you offer your customers an exclusive discount for a limited time! It could be promoted on social media or even through an email.

6. Blog 
Blogging is big for businesses right now. Creating a blog will allow you to show your expertise and knowledge. As well, linking back to your main site is great for SEO.

7. Go mobile 
Optimise your website for mobile. More and more people are accessing content on their phones now and if your website isn’t compatible, that could turn visitors and potential customers away…

8. Webinar 
Host a webinar. This will show viewers how much you know and how you can help them. It might even be fun!

9. Content 
It might be a good idea to do a rewrite of your content this year. Keeping content new and fresh will be great for your SEO and will keep visitors interested. You’d be surprised at how much useless/dead content you actually keep published, so giving your content a clear out should definitely be on your 2015 list!

10. Review your strategy 
Digital marketing strategies should have 3 parts: Where are we? Where do we want to be? How are we going to get there? Over the course of a year, these three things can change dramatically. Start 2015 off positively by reviewing this. Ask yourself whether or not your strategy needs a change.

5 Quick SEO Tips

Taking up a lot of time and requiring dedication that not all of us are lucky enough to possess, SEO can be among the most dreaded tasks of website building for some of us. However, it doesn’t always have to be difficult! To make things easier for you, here are 5 quick (ish) tips which could help improve your SEO in minutes:

1. The 2 Rs: Regular and Relevent – Make sure to actively keep updating your site with fresh, relevant and engaging content. Search engines love, love, love fresh content! But, make sure whatever you upload is useful and interesting to your audience or desired audience.
2. Check Your Site – Grab a cuppa and take some time to check your websites for errors, duplications, and spelling mistakes. Make sure your grammar is A* as well!
3. Stay Social – Social Media is a great way to improve online visibility. Start off with Twitter and Facebook and build things up from there. Intergrate these on your website (there are tonnes of widgets and plugins available) and the search engines will love it.
4. Page Titles – Use page titles correctly for higher search engine rankings. Keep them short and relevent to the page content and you should be making a pretty good start!
5. Mix up Your Media –Mix up the content of your web pages by integrating different forms of media within blocks of text. Insert images and links and embed videos. But keep it relevent to the message you’re trying to get across!

Now, that wasn’t too hard was it?!