Spice Up Your Blogs Content With Infographics

Guest Post - Our host is Montassar Ghanmy, Montassar is taking a look at infographics and how us bloggers can use them to benefit our blogs.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Just like text, infographics can be a good way to present your content. A lot of blogs and websites started focusing on using this type of media to reach and impress audience especially that people are becoming more interested in this type of content with the growth of social medias such as Pinterest and Instagram . Below is a list how infographics can “Spice up” you blog.

- It’s interesting: For most of internet users spending precious times to finish reading one long article is not an option, however making an alternance between text and image is a good way to give your readers a brake and keep their attention.
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Collection Of The Best Screen Shot Image Tools

For me with this kind of blog the use of images and video is very important but not just your standard video and images.I have always relied on screen capture image and scree cast video to make it so much easier to get my message across.Screen capture images are as the name suggests were you will capture an image of whats currently on your computer screen and Screen cast video is were we can record a video following what we are record our actions on a computer.In the next two posts I will be listing a collection of the best tools for screen capture and screen casts kicking off here with screen capture tools.

There are a number of tools you can use for example some tools are built into your browser while others can be downloaded onto your computer.Also options to edit the screen grab and add annotations is important.So we will go through all the options you have so your can get the perfect screen capture tool for your needs.

Screen Capture Built Into Your Computer

For Windows :

Snipping Tool
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Mini Social Icons With CSS And Image Sprite Flip Effect

Just last week I published the pop out effect social icons.In a comment on that post Ger asked "Can you write a tutorial for the icons you have in the footer of this page ? The ones that turn color on hover !".The icons he refers to are a neat set of simple icons with a flip color effect and they are a popular option on many of the top websites and blogs.I only added them to the footer in the last site update and had not planned on a tutorial but ask and you shall receive.

So like the pop out icons these use simple CSS to create the effect but this time we also use a sprite instead of individual images.This makes the flip smooth and adds less load time to your blog.I have tutorials for adding them to your sidebar on both Wordpress and Blogger but you could add them to your blog footer or even in a menu.

The icons are for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Rss Feed, Pinterest, Skype, Vimeo, Dribbble, Flickr, LinkedIn and Youtube.But as I did in the footer you can remove the icons you don't want displayed.

Live Demo :
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Best Free Tools To Compress And Optimize Images On Your Blog

Guest Post - Our host is Salman Farooqui, who takes a look at image compression and the best tools to help.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Image files today are the most used media type to share. However, they are often too large in size to easily share or store. This is where image compression comes to play. Image compression is technique which reduces the image size without significant reduction in image quality. Many people fear image compression because they have a misunderstanding that it is a threat to image quality. Actually, image compression is of two type - Lossless and Lossy.
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Pop Out Effect Candy Social Icons For Blogger And Wordpress

Today we have another great set of social icons to link to your social profiles with an awesome effect created with pure CSS.The icons have a delicious candy design that will grab the attention of your readers and are so easy to add to your blog.The icons can be added to your blog sidebar to let readers quickly follow you on your favorite social networks and we have icons for your Rss Feed, Email, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube and Skype.

I have two seperate tutorials for Wordpress and Blogger users with instructions to add your links and remove the icons you don't want.I have added the no-follow tag to the icons as there is no need to pass link juice to social profiles and also set the target for the links to open in a new window.

The instructions are below but first let's see the demo's.

Here is a working example, hover over each icon to see the pop out effect :
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My Experiences And Tips From Setting Up A New Blog

Guest Post - Our host is Matthew Barby, Matt has some tips for setting up a new blog from content to SEO.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

I took a little time out recently to recharge my batteries and explore a bit of the world by venturing across to East Asia. During my time out there I thought it would be a great idea for me (and a few friends) to set up a travel blog that would share some of our travel experiences and offer a useful resource for fellow travellers.

Due to the fact that this project was purely focused around pleasure, I didn’t put too much work in at the start but I soon realised that there was a good potential to make a bit of cash that could supplement my travel costs. With this in mind I decided to use my background in SEO to bring in some good levels of traffic to the website. Six months on and my blog traffic is growing exponentially month-on-month – I decided that it would only be fair to share some of my strategies with the community so that they can also benefit from this.

The content Strategy

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Best Places To Go To Hone Your Creativity As A Creative Professional

Guest Post - Our host is Jake Fisher, Jake lists his favorite places to get your creative juices flowing.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

No matter if you're a writer, an artist, an actor, or any other type of creative professional, finding inspiration for your work is crucial to growing in your field. However, running into a creative block can become common if you simply sit at your desk all day.

Lindsey Leesmann, a communication specialist at Grantham University, says that one of the best ways to overcome writer's block, or any creative block for that matter, is to get away from your desk and change the scenery. Expand your creativity and find inspiration at one of the following locations.

1. The Library

Image via Flickr by Tulane Publications
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