KrishanCroft

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Why Your Call to Action Can Make or Break Your Facebook Ad Success

With any type of marketing, your call to action (CTA) will always be the key to your success. If you are just starting out with Facebook ads, a clear CTA can make the difference between an average campaign and one that hits your marketing goal.

Set Your Goal

In order to create a clear call to action, you first have to set your goal for your ad. There are several goals to choose from:

  • Make people more aware of you
  • Position yourself as an authority
  • Make more sales
  • Get attendees to live events

The goal you decide upon will determine the call to action you include.

1. Awareness

Running an ad can be one of the best ways to call attention to your brand and connect with people in your niche who might not otherwise know that you exist. Awareness leads to interaction and loyalty. Calls to action that make sense in this context would include, “Read more”, “Learn more”, or “Click here for more”. 

2. Authority

In this case, you don’t just want to make them aware of your brand, you also want to convey some sort of prestige or status in your niche. You might therefore offer a free webinar or suggest they join your group to get free information about a topic that you know is of interest to people in your niche. Think of the problems they have, and suggest you can offer a solution.

3. Subscribers

Many marketers argue that email marketing is dead because of the ease with which you can make connections on social media. However, it can be difficult to quantify your engagement and how successful your ads are. Social media in conjunction with email marketing is measurable and much more powerful. In this case, the goal is to get them on your email marketing list. This can help with goals 1 and 2 above as well. Once they are on your list, they can get to know more about your brand and come to appreciate your expertise. 

Giving them an incentive to sign up for your list can help. Offer a free report, templates and more, in exchange for their email address. Then you can write calls to action like “Subscribe now”, or “Download your free report now”.

4. Sales

If your item is pretty cheap, your ad can try to go for the direct sale. Include an attractive image of the item, enticing headline, explanatory teaser copy, and a link to go to the sales landing page to purchase the item. The call action would be “Buy now”.

In the case of goals 3 and 4, you would be able to measure how many subscribers you get and sales you make. This will help determine the success of your ad and the return on investment (ROI) of running it.

5. Getting People into Your Business or Live Event

You can encourage people to book a table in advance, buy tickets for an event, order free tickets, and so on. Include the appropriate call to action in your description.

Using Facebook’s Buttons

Facebook will allow you to create attractive buttons. The ones currently available are Shop Now, Learn More, Sign Up, Book Now, or Download. Use them strategically, and see what a different it makes to how well you are able to achieve your goals.

An Introduction to Open Educational Resources

What are Open Educational Resources? Well, Open Educational Resources or OER refers to the openly licensed, openly formatted and freely accessible documents & media functional for learning, teaching, assessment, education & research purposes. The term OER emerged with the beginning of the new millennium and according to the educational experts worldwide, Open Educational Resources do have the very potential to alter the entire scene of education worldwide. The article here presents a short account on Open Educational Resources.

The Concept & History Of OER

Open Educational resources refer to the concept of educators, lecturers and teachers making their educational and teaching materials available freely for others. OER, the very term, was 1st used by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization) & refers to the web-based materials that are offered openly & freely for use & re-use in learning, research & teaching. The OER concept achieved huge support from different foundations and universities such as William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, Shuttleworth Foundation, HEFCE, JISC etc. It’s to stress here that William & Flora Hewlett Foundation was the chief financial supporter for OER in its initial years. UNESCO champions Open Educational Resources as one of the most viable mediums of promoting equity, access & quality in worldwide education abiding to the UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) spirit. 

Types Of OER

Open Educational Resources include different courses, content modules, course materials, collections, journals and learning objects. Added to these, OER also includes a number of tools to help in delivering the educational contents like software systems which support creation, delivery, improvement & use of the learning contents, organization & searching of the contents , learning & content management systems, internet learning communities and content development equipments. 

OER Licenses

It’s to stress here that the OER contents are entwined with the intellectual property concerns since most of the educational content here is guarded by copyright terms which must be honored by the users to prevent possible misuse of the resources. CC (Creative Commons) and GFDL have provided for OER licenses for the institutions and individuals to apply while releasing their educational resources over the web. It’s important to state here that these licenses state clearly about the restrictions to be followed regarding the use & re-use of these educational materials. 

Children’s Educational Books, Music, and Audio Books

Raising children is a very long and tedious process. As a parent, you must understand that a child’s development and character building process is based upon the kind of education and experiences her or she has, and the kind of environment that he or she grows up in. If you’re a parent you must be able to help your child develop his or her own skills to grow into a confident, self sufficient and humane adult. 

  • Role Of Music In A Child’s Life

There are many aspects which play a major role in developing a child’s psyche and one of those aspects is music. Music is a way to express oneself, get inspired, and feel everything that the world has to offer from a different point of view. The best thing is that there hardly is anyone in the world who doesn’t feel the importance of music in life. So, present your child with the gift of music so that he or she can find solace in something new. There are many children’s songs, poems, and rhymes which are available in MP3 form DVD’s and music videos DVD’s these days. You can order them online. Let your child learn rhythms and appreciate music and songs in an interactive manner through this way. 

  • The Joy Of Reading

The habit of readings is something that must be nourished from childhood. It is said that whoever finds a friend in a book can never be alone and it’s pretty much true. Teach your child how to read and appreciate books and watch him or her create their own world in the wonderful stories in children’s books. It’ll also keep them engaged for hours. There are several authors like Enid Blyton, Charles Dickens, J.K. Rowling, Roald Dahl, and Robert Louis Stevenson who have written timeless children’s books which are enjoyed by kids all over the world even today.

  • Educational Books Online

Children learn better from books when there are pretty and colorful illustrations so when you think of something innovative for your child to learn, do make sure that the books he or she reads are interesting enough to catch their attention. Many learning and educational books can be bought online these days. 

How to Sell Used College Textbooks

There are many things which one needs to prioritize when it comes to college and university education. There are tuition fees to take care of, new books to buy, Pay for college and hostel and many other things which needs financial support at all times. If you think that you can do with some 0065tra cash, for whatever required reason, you can try and sell your old college books of previous years at great rates and make some money out of it. Students are always in need of reference books and you can supply it to them and make a profit out of it. Here is a simple guide which can help you sell your college books successfully.

Tips To Sell College Books

  • Make sure that you take your time to do your research and sell your books properly to trustworthy students who can pay you appropriately. 
  • First of all, you can check your syllabus, check online, or ask around the students about which books are the most important for this year’s course. Your juniors will be the best source to give you this information. Depending upon that, select what kind of books you have and if they will be useful for reference depending upon the current syllabus. 
  • Make a note of the price of the book and which edition it is. This is very important as that will decide the current price of the book. Deepening upon this factor and the demand for the book, check online for its worth and set a price. 
  • If a new semester is coming up, put up an advertisement in campus that you are selling these books. Of course first make sure that this sent against the rules of the college. 
  • Selling books online can also be beneficial. Post an ad about the book with the details like the edition, author, and price and wait for a response. Selling books online gives you a wider platform and more opportunity to be recognized in public so it’s like better advertisement too. Chances of success are more in such cases.

These points will surely make your books sale a success.

How to Write a Book in 5 Steps

Some people have that inborn talent to spin wonderful stories out of thin air. Some people need a little push. If you think that you have what it takes to be a great writer, you should start working on your first book and see how it goes from there. Here are a few simple steps which you should follow when you start out to write your own book. 

  • Steps To Write Your First Book

Every great thing happens when it’s well planned out. Be patient and take your time. Rushing into it might ruin the creative angle so remember to take it slow.

  1. Have An Idea

Have an idea of the kind of book you’d like to work on. The genre you select should be something which comes as a natural flow into your mind. It could be horror writing, romantic writing, erotic writing, or even writing for comic relief. 

  1. Think Of A Title

The title of the book can be seen as the framework for the story. So decide upon that. Otherwise, some people like to work on the title later depending upon how the entire story is developed as it’s written. So suit yourself and give the title whenever you feel comfortable to do so. 

  1. Work On It

There is no given time when you will work on the book. But try to do it at least 3 to 4 times a month. If you think you can dedicate lesser time, then that’s not an issue too. Make sure that you maintain good quality and don’t forget to use your vivid imagination whenever you write. Carry a notebook with you. If you’re on the go and you think of something related to the troy, note it down before the idea fades and write it down when you get home. 

  1. Find A Good Place

Many writers are more inspired when they are in a nice quiet place. Some writers like to rent cabins and work on their stories from time to time. This can be a wonderful idea. You can unwind and free yourself from the worries of the world and get absorbed with your story and characters and give them more life. 

  1. Be Practical And Organized

Organize your storyline as it develops, when you have finished the rough work, read it and correct grammatical errors, add or delete necessary details. Then go for the then go for the final copy. Keep a copy with yourself and contact a good publisher.

How to Make – Create a Website: The Beginner’s A-Z Guide

Are you on a plan to create a website online? Well, the virtual commerce space renders prospective business opportunities and it’s important that your site online. Your website is just akin to the land based brick & mortar outlet, created to cater to virtual audience. Website creation is no rocket science and it just takes a few steps to start your portal over the internet. The article here is a comprehensive A-Z website creation guide for the beginners.

Select domain name

The primary most thing you need to do while creating your website is selecting domain name. It’s the name of your website and is akin to the business registration name of any land based commercial outlet. The domain names can be bought from web hosting companies. It takes around 11USD per year for the domain name service. The ideal domain name must be cool, catchy and should be able to provide a hint of your business- as otherwise you might end up getting irrelevant traffic mostly. Go for a simple selection and try to avoid the complicated domain names.

Select web host

The next step here is to select your web host. If domain name was like the business registration name, the hosting service is like the land space you buy or rent for setting up an office. In the online zone, web hosting refers to the virtual space you are taking to place your website over the internet. In simple words, the hosting space offered would act like a home for your website. However be careful while choosing your web host. Always settle with a highly reputed and seasoned one. Make sure that your hosting company is ready for a 99 percent uptime so that your website stays visible always. Moreover, the hosting company you would be taking to should be able to render 24/7 technical support facility. 

After signing up for the hosting account, the site owner is required to point his domain to the hosting account.

Design the web pages

Albeit web designing can be performed by the professional designers, you can perform it yourself only. There are a great lot of web designing tools available today to help you with your DIY web designing mission. You will get to choose from both free & paid web designing tools. One of the most prominent here is WordPress system. WP is unanimously accepted as a highly efficient portal that can offer you a great professional-looking site, sans any need of technical know-how. It’s to note here that WordPress comes with several interesting layouts for every sort of business. Moreover, it’s also easy to manage your site content with WP.

Site testing

After you have designed the website, it’s time that you test the website in varied major browsers such to check out on its compatibility with them. You must check out the website compatibility with IE, Chrome, Safari, Opera and Firefox.

Site submission

The final step is to submit your site to popular search engines like Bing & Google to make it visible to your target audience online. 

Wish you all the best with your new site.

20 Creative Design Layouts: Getting Out Of The Box

Are you looking for out of the box web design layouts? Well, here is a brief on 20 highly innovative web layouts to pick from.

  • Use horizontal layout for your web page where the navigation would be carried out through slides, eliminating the need to travel to a distinct page.
  • You can use background image of your site as a binder that will contain the page contents. The tabs by the side of the binder will help in navigation.
  • If you are into a pharmaceutical business, you can use a bottle as your site background image that will have the needed information wrapped up on its label.
  • Another idea is to get the picture of someone in the background image who would be holding a board displaying the needed details.
  • Then, you can have a wooden floor as the background where the site information would be designed as tiny notes scattered on the floor.
  • A good idea would be to have no text content but just a big image for the homepage. The image would be set on center with navigation available on both the sides.
  • Get a big image for left part of your layout & the right part would hold primary navigation & content in narrow columns.
  • Place attractive pictures of your main services on the homepage and embed the navigation facility on each of the photos that would direct the visitor to the respective service page.
  • Horizontal long layout is quite a unique thought today and would provide an edgy touch to site over those with the regular standard vertical scrolling layout.
  • It would look really interesting if you separate the main homepage into left & right layouts- one will contain your personal information & other the business details.
  • Place navigation at the home page center in an angular way. The content would be stated in brief in right lower corner.
  • Black background will look really vibrant- match it up with light shaded vibrant tabs that would contain the navigation facility.
  • Use simple header with navigation facility and a big image will cover up maximum of the site. As the visitor would star scrolling down over the image, hidden columns will come up with basic information.
  • Get the layout of a conference table for the background image and place the site information on the center of the table
  • You can create a colorful collage containing varied images of your products. Now, place a plain white box over the collage to display information. 
  • Another idea is to get a wooden box as your background image with navigation embedded in different open drawers in the box.
  • You can also use an open book as the background image with the information laid out on its pages.
  • A wonderful idea is to create the background image with the collection of small product images that would appear under a light shadow. Over the shadow you will have rectangular tabs of text passing by on pristine background.
  • Get a bright image on the right hand side of the page while the left hand would contain navigation links on a light backdrop.

Essential tools for every web designer 2020

DIY web designing is always economical than offering your site to any professional designer. The smart entrepreneurs today with basic sketching and computer designing skills prefer to design their sites all by themselves. The good news is that the trendy digital web design scenario offers you a versatile range of web designing tools o pick from. Below is extended a list of essential tools for every web designer in 2020.

Adobe Creative Cloud

It’s needless to mention that every web designer swears by Illustrator and Photoshop tools. The Creative Cloud offers you easy accession to both of these essential tools, accompanied by many other functional aides like- Kuler, InDesign & Typekit. 

0to255

The tool simplifies the process of finding out variations of any set shade. It is a fantastic web designing aide for the highlights, active states and rollovers.

UI Faces

It’s usually difficult to find the perfect picture for the mockups. But not any more- thanks to UI Faces the job is a lot easier now. The edgy web designing tool compiles avatars through Twitter & allows the users to deploy them for their web designs.

Samuel L. Ipsum

It is a placeholder generator of Lorem Ipsum that assists in filling in the content voids both off & online. Samuel L. Ipsum comes in 3 versions- a regular Lorem Ipsum option, an interesting version with clean quotes derived from the Jackson movies & a more dynamic variant with profanity-laced quotations from Jackson flicks.

Google Fonts

If you are bored with typical old Courier, Arial or Georgia fonts and looking for something really edgy with your latest web layout typography, Google Fonts can be really helpful. The tool is designed with a vast gallery of ready-to-use fonts which could be downloaded right during mockup stage. The good news is that the very functional tool is available completely free of charge. 

Responsive UI Stencils Sketch Pad

The Responsive UI Stencils Sketch Pad can be your ideal companion during your preliminary website layout designing state. This dotted grid helps you to design in proper measurement to the lines & allows a neat visualization of the website in browser & on mobile devices. 

ColorZilla

The tool assists the web designers in their major color related activities for the web layout. The free tool is meant to help you in both advanced and basic color functions- thanks to its diverse range of edgy color aides like Eye Dropper, Color Picker, Gradient Generator etc.

Pictaculous

Pictaculous is created by the Malichimp creators. It’s a free of charge unique color-palette generator which is a must-have for every contemporary web designer. You just need to upload the desired image & the shades within your image would be sampled to generate a customized color scheme. 

Balsamiq

It’s a latest wireframing tool that can be used to come up with brainstorming mockups of the user experiences.  It allows you to design mockups for mobile, tablets and web.

Less Framework 4

The free tool helps to come up with adaptive websites. It is designed to fir almost any browser device. The tool contains 3 typography presets and 4 layouts. 

The trick to designing a GREAT layout for your website

Are you on a plan to create your web design layout? Designing a web layout is not that hard and some basic Photoshop & sketching skills would be enough for your DIY web layout mission. Below, goes a brief highlighting on the tricks required to design a great website layout.

Begin with paper sketches

It’s true that ultimately you have to design with the Photoshop but before you proceed that way its better that you start with paper sketches. A good design needs to be based on a neat layout which would ensure that  you are clear about the exact theme of the design prior to highlighting it through Photoshop. The paper sketch will allow you to come up with the basic layout design framework making it easier for you to further develop it through the shadows and gradients of Photoshop.

Add grid for PSD

Before you go out to start your design with Photoshop, you are required to come up with a grid. It’s because the grid renders a measured outline for your layout structure and without that the design might not come up that good. The grid is meant to structure your layout of varied sections. It would guide on particular screen-size requirements & assist in creating responsive templates. Besides, a grid also takes care of consistent spacing for the layout you are about to design. In short, the grid is needed to perfect your design in terns of measurements and alignments. 

Choose typography

Then, you have to be choosy about the typography to be used on your layout.  Not all fonts can be suitable for every theme of business- for example, the typography would more of casual and stylish for an advertising website while it would always be formal for an education portal online. The suggestion is to use no more than 2 pertinent typographies for the layout. Make sure the fonts are easily readable. Get big fonts for titles to make them more catchy.

Choose colors

The presence of various colors will surely offer a vibrant feel to your layout but if you are looking for a poised minimalist approach take to 2 contrasting shades. The lighter one would be used as background for the text portion. In case you are using multiple shades, make sure that these are never too loud on outlook & do no diminish the weight of the site.

Divide your layout

Your website definitely features variety of information which must be placed in distinct spaces. Thus, the web layout must be divided into different sections to hold the separate sections of information about your website. 

Detailed attention

Web designer testing or designing new website. New website layout on laptop screen. Professional man working in creative marketing and communications agency office. User interface and responsive page.

Every bit of your web layout deserves good attention- be it some unexpected animation, some subtle stroke or a tiny gradient in some button. Detailed attention to every aspect of the website makes the overall layout natural and believable. 

Responsive web layout

You have to come up with a responsive web layout which will enable the website to appear in customized sizes as per the specific display size of the browser device- be it a tablet or smartphone or a laptop. 

Optimize Your WordPress Website Using These Simple Tips

WordPress is undoubtedly the most favored platform for web designing. WP assures easy content management and edition, making website design and operation northing less than a breeze. Have you too got a WordPress site? Well, that’s smart since WordPress is a Google favorite and hence can ensure top authority for your website. But having WordPress as your website portal won’t be enough. You have to learn the very tips and tricks needed to optimize a WP platform. 

Choose a strong web host

This is one of the most crucial tips when it comes to WP optimization. You must make sure to settle with a solid web hosting company that can assure a powerful hosting facility for you. It’s advised that you compare your website’s response time with that of the contenders to see how much you are lagging or leading in the industry. The hosting plan you are taking to should promise you 99 percent uptime and no compromise on speed even when the site encountering a heavy traffic. Always remember that fast navigation is one of the major keys to achieve higher ranks over search engines.

Fast WP theme

WP carries a huge theme gallery but not all the themes are meant to functional equally. Badly coded themes slower down navigation speed and are always menacing when it comes to site optimization. Thus, you have to get hold of a fast WP theme which can assure a speedy loading. It’s to stress here that the fast themes are especially SEO compatible and hence would be able to confirm proper optimization of your WordPress site. 

Adaptive themes

Make sure that the WordPress theme you are taking to would be compatible to various browser devices like tablet, smartphone, laptop & desktop. The contemporary online users generally prefer to browse from the tablets or smartphones & hence you have to ensure that your site theme would get easily customized according to the different sizes of browser devices. 

Monitor the plugins

Yes, plugins are very essential to enhance the functionality of WP sites but you must know that there are some plugins that can really affect the site speed. Thus, be careful about the plugins that slow down your site & only install the plugins where necessary- too much of plugin can actually crash down your server.

Empty WP Trash 

The WP Trash is no doubt a useful provision from WordPress but you must know that the function eats up a great lot of space. This in turn greatly affects the speed of the website. Thus you must be careful to empty the trash after every 7 days. 

Optimize the pictures for web

The images take up huge room and affect the navigation speed greatly. Thus before you place pictures on your website, you must make sure to optimize them for the web to ensire proper optimization of your WP site.

Consider Ad load

Advertisements carry huge load and badly affect the site speed? Hence it’s advised that you don’t overstuff your site with advertisements- besides, don’t forget to check the speed before & after placing the ad on your site. 

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