17 of the Best Free Stock Photo Sites. We've all heard the mantra, "Don't settle for anything less than you deserve. " Yet for some strange reason, many people continue to push out cheap (and usually cheesy) stock photography to serve as a representation of their brand. But the truth is, high-quality stock photos don't have to come hand-in-hand with a hassle or high price tag. To prove it, we've compiled a list of 17 awesome resources for free, non-cheesy stock images. Download 80 free stock photos right here. 1) Negative Space Negative Space offers up 20 new free stock photos every week. From architecture to technology, Negative Space's continuously growing collection of images is one you'll find yourself tapping into again and again. 2) Death to the Stock Photo When founders and photographers, Allie and David, noticed a how challenging it was for businesses, bloggers, and creatives to find free high-quality images that fit their "vibe and tribe," they stepped in.
As a result, Death to the Stock Photo was born. 3) Picjumbo 12) Pexels. The start-up toolkit: 10 marketing tools every successful business needs. If you’re thinking of launching a new business, then you probably don’t want to hear that 90% of all start-ups fail. But there it is in black and white. Your business may not survive. Action point: Need a website design? See how we can help here You’ll undoubtedly have the passion, determination and guts that every entrepreneur needs to begin a new business adventure, but if you want your start-up to survive then you also need to be equipped with the right tools to succeed.
Take a look at 10 of the most powerful marketing tools that every start-up needs to become a success… #1. A business doesn’t stand a chance of surviving unless it measures its data. Those are just some of the questions that you need to ask yourself throughout your business journey – and that’s why an analytics platform is so important. What are the benefits? Plug your website into analytics software and it can be used to see where you should be focusing your efforts. Which tools can I use? #2. . #3. What tools can I use? #5. Tip Sheet: HARO Best Practices. HARO Best Practices The premise of Help a Reporter Out (HARO), a free service provided by Cision that enables reporters and sources to collaborate, is simple (click to tweet).
Verified journalists and bloggers share source requests, matching sources reply and—voila—the reporters get a more well-rounded story and brands get earned media coverage. That’s just the most obvious benefit of HARO. Through HARO you or your brand can become the go-to expert about a particular topic. You can also use the service to build rapport with journalists and reporters, grow quality backlinks and strengthen brand reputation.
It’s a mutually beneficial relationship. 1. HARO sends out source requests three times a day, at 5:35 a.m., 12:35 p.m. and 5:35 p.m. 2. “You should pitch your story within an hour of the source requests going out,” says Stacey Miller, senior manager, journalist community engagement at Cision (click to tweet). “Reporters typically make up their minds about sources within the hour.” 3. 4. 5. 4 Best practices for responding to HARO (and Blogger) queries. HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is still one of the best platforms for reporters and bloggers to source story ideas, and leads. As the San Francisco Small Business Examiner, I frequently use HARO to research multiple story lines and ideas and thus easily receive hundreds of responses in a month, sometimes in a week.
It is a daunting task to read through and review each response. To make sure your pitch gets through the gate, be sure to address the following best practices in responding to reporter/blogger queries: Re-Read the question Sometimes we see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear. Simple misunderstandings can be avoided when we re-read for clarity. Answer the question Don’t get so caught up in having the reporter/blogger’s attention that you miss answering the question. Don’t re-pitch the pitch The worst thing you can do is to respond with an off-topic pitch. Follow up, but don’t stalk With that being said, save your off-topic pitch for the right time and place.
Untitled. Floatation_Therapy. Enterprise Nation. Customer service is super important to any business and creating a service that delights your customers can make a real impact on return business. We recently met with Dan Moross, director of customer service at MOO, to provide some tips on how to make your customer service the best it can be. Make it easy Ensuring that both the front-end of your customer service is user friendly is paramount. “Make it as easy as possible for customers to contact you,” says Moross. “We don’t have an automated system on our phones, where you have to hold, or press one to get through to whatever department.
No waiting around. It’s the same with our email, you don’t have to fill in loads of fields or get sent anything you don’t want; it’s just the one simple form you have to fill in.” The goal is to make it as “effortless as possible, whatever channel they want to use,” so make sure that your contact details are easily found, and that you’re easily contactable. The overarching lesson here? Listen! Publications/Literature. Floatation Tanks & Float Spas. Videos. Ask Drayton. "Business owners - what keeps you awake at night? Whatever it is - I'd like to help" "Have you ever left a restaurant wondering why you ordered so much? I know I have. You order with good intentions - but you literally can't fit in everything you'd like to. A lot like life, really. Over the years, I've created a huge amount of marketing material: videos, PDFs, case studies and Q&As. I’m hugely biased, naturally.
But it all went wrong because of one disastrous factor I had overlooked: lack of time. Lots of people subscribed. Some poor souls paid happily each month and never logged in - a classic case of other people's money - like their bosses' - I suspect. In my younger days, I would have been perfectly happy with this arrangement. So I wondered what I could do. Give it all away perhaps? Lower the price? Short on time? But there's a much bigger problem: the thorny issue of subscribers actually using what's in there.
Well, that seemed obvious to me as well. So you really can dip in and dip out. 1. We Tried All the Best Pinterest Marketing Tips. Here's What Worked. Is your brand—personal or professional—on Pinterest? Seventy million people are, with a large number of those being bloggers, companies, brands, and businesses. The opportunities to expand your reach and meet your audience are many on Pinterest, and they come in many unique ways. Though falling under the umbrella of social media marketing, Pinterest has its own special notes and best practices that help make it an extremely fun, exciting place to test, iterate, and add value to those on the network. We’re quite new into our Pinterest marketing strategies, and we’re keen to keep improving what we pin and share so that our followers find things as useful and helpful as can be.
We’re grateful for the large amount of Pinterest marketing tips out there. Here’s what worked for us. Looking to improve your presence on Pinterest? All the Pinterest Marketing Tips We Tried and Tested … … and which ones worked best! We’re happy to share the full list and results from our Pinterest experiments. 1. 2. 3. Marketing. How Celebrities and Athletes are Benefiting from Float Therapy - Just Float.
May 5, 2015 admin Leave a comment Joe Rogan and Pat Healy. Both 2015 Super Bowl teams and Olympians. Wayne Rooney, Carl Lewis, Tom Brady, Elle Macpherson, Peter Gabriel, Michael Crichton, Susan Sarandon. What do they all have in common? Floating. Either in their own tanks or at float centers throughout the world, these athletes and artists have found pain relief, relaxation, creativity and clarity in a float tank. Joe Rogan, comedian and UFC commentator, is probably the most well-known and vocal proponent of float therapy. This list also highlights the unique benefits float tanks offer to athletes.
Jade Johnson is a British long jumper. Sports psychologist for the Seattle Seahawks, Mike Gervais, regularly uses meditation and mindfulness to help players maximize their performance. Floating isn’t amazing because athletes and celebrities do it; athletes and celebrities float because it’s amazing. . [2] [4] It’s time to start planning for Christmas. Yes, really. They may say Christmas gets earlier every year, but if you run a business, now is the time to start thinking about the festive season. In fact, Selfridges opened its Christmas department back in August, so in some ways you’re already behind. To help get your business ready for Christmas 2014, here are four key things you can start doing now. 1.
Begin planning Christmas marketing activity If Christmas is peak sales time for your business, you’ll want to get as many people as possible to choose you over your competitors. A well-thought out marketing strategy will keep your company in the minds of customers, but for it to work you need to do more than just repeat ‘Christmas’ for three months. To make sure your campaign doesn’t grow stale, you can come up with a set of marketing stories. Give yourself time to prepare and book advertising, particular where lead times are longer – as with print ads. 2. Plan ahead to cope with the internet’s festive shopping season. 3. 4. Happy Christmas, indeed. Float Research Hub. How to Create a QR Code in 4 Quick Steps. "Really? We're talking about QR codes? " Fair reaction. For a few years now, QR codes have been one of the technologies at the center of the popular "___ is dead" trope we marketers love to argue.
We've even debated it ourselves on this blog. But if there's one thing this back-and-forth shows you, it's that there sure isn't a consensus -- just scroll down to the comments on that post and you'll find the efficacy of QR codes still hotly contested. Do some more research on the data behind it, and you'll find it can support either claim if you really want it to: QR codes are dead; long live the QR code. So this post is to help marketers who are interested in experimenting with QR codes, anyway. To learn more about how to create and use QR codes effectively, download our free guide to QR codes here.
How Do QR Codes Work? QR Codes, short for "quick response" codes, are little black and white squiggly barcodes that usually look something like this: How to Create a QR Code 2) Design and link it up. Sensory Deprivation: An Altered State of Mind Video. Transcript for Sensory Deprivation: An Altered State of Mind mind altering, possibly even life changing experience and all you need is water and salt? Fans of the hot new trend are spending time in isolation tanks where they say a dip can help ease your physical problems and maybe even mental ones. Here's ABC's reporter. Reporter: Life seemed more hectic and stressful, and your brain is constantly spinning -- "Nightline" is about to take you on a journey to a strange alternate world on the other side of this hatch. This is a unique opportunity for -- for stillness and rest and privacy.
Sean Mccormack is in the sensory deprivation business. One foot in. This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate. Float Center Lessons Learned from #Authority2015. A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend Copyblogger’s Authority Rainmaker Conference in Denver, Colorado. As a self proclaimed marketing nerd, this was an opportunity to mingle with my people. I believe no matter how much experience you have in something, there is always room to learn more. Especially when the direction of an industry (like marketing) can change at the drop of a hat. So for three days, I talked shop with fellow marketers, shared best practices, and heard some inspiring and educational talks about how to improve my existing marketing skills.
This was a conference about marketing, but I was able to pull away several lessons that float center owners can specifically use to improve their marketing efforts. Dan Pink – The new ABCs of Selling – Attunement, Buoyancy, Clarity Dan Pink is the acclaimed author of “To Sell is Human” and “Drive.” In the past we talked about selling in a float tank center. Dan introduced us to his version of the ABCs of selling. PTSD and Float Therapy. We know Hampton... - Stop Soldier Suicide. 'Float OKC' helps veterans with PTSD. It's called 'floating,' and it's become popular across the metro. Float OKC in Edmond uses sensory deprivation to make people feel weightless and relax.
It's a kind of therapy that's the first of its kind in Oklahoma. Float OKC uses tanks filled with water diluted with 900 pounds of epsom salts to allow people to float. "It makes the water so dense, that anyone can float on the water effortlessly, just like a cork," says Float OKC co-owner Neal Smock. Since they opened in November, word of mouth has spread quickly, as appointments are filling up for sessions. Floating is also becoming popular among military veterans with PTSD, using it as a tool to relax. Justin Clark served in Iraq and has been floating twice, and says he's already seen results. He says over the years, he tried psychiatrists and other therapy. But with the hustle and bustle of juggling family and work, he says floating is a relaxing alternative.
"It's hard to explain," Clark says. Six reasons why flotation is good for you. Point Zero, a boutique relaxation centre that set up shop in Abu Dhabi in 2013, has opened in Dubai. While the centre now has a loyal client base in the capital, the concept – relaxing in a tank filled with warm salt water – is still to catch on in the rest of the UAE. We went to the new Dubai branch to check out its float pod, which offers an intense form of therapy in a small, closed, water-filled unit, and returned with a feeling of wellness. Here are six reasons to give the experience a try. Deep relaxation It is difficult for most of us to find enough leisure time in today’s hectic world. Even when you’re lying on the bed enjoying a deep-tissue massage, your mind still wanders to the rest of the things you could have been doing with that hour (you know it’s true).
Sensory deprivation Brain rejuvenation When you are truly relaxed, your brain activity slows from the rapid patterns of being wide-awake, or what is also known as a beta state, into the more gentle waves of an alpha state. Is it time you got to know a blogger? - Barclays Connector. Done well, blogger outreach can be a good way to reach an engaged target audience, influence conversations and convert new customers. And it’s not just the domain of big brands – small businesses, however niche, can reap the benefits too. We asked the experts for their tips on becoming a blogger’s new friend. Blogger outreach is all about working closely with a carefully selected collection of bloggers to create engaging content about your company, services, or products, for your target demographic.
There are millions of blogs out there, covering a multitude of topics and industries. So, whatever your sector, from the retail and service side of things, through to construction or finance, it’s a strategy worth considering. What’s in it for you? When it comes to making purchasing decisions, blogs were found to be the third-most influential digital resource (31 per cent) for online shoppers, only behind retail sites (56 per cent) and brand sites (34 per cent). (1) Find your perfect match. What Does the Color of Your Logo Say About Your Business? (Infographic) Floatation - Best people known for Floatation on Wefollow.
Market Research - Floatation Therapy Survey. Images of floatation centers. Float Procedures - Float House. 10 Reasons Why You Should Float In An Isolation Tank. Building Your Brand on a Shoestring Budget in 10 Steps - Inspiration Center. Attract New Customers with Automated Local Citations - Inspiration Center. Health Archives. Videos - Float Tank Radar. Do These 3 Things to Make Connections That Matter. Floatation Therapy - Facts About Floating. How important is it to enter industry awards? About. Useful Links | The Prince's Initiative for Mature Enterprise. GUEST BLOG ARTICLE: 10 AWESOME FREE ONLINE TOOLS FOR START-UPS | Business Enterprise Support | (0)1283 537 151. Start Up Market Analysis Tutorial from Sunstone Communication. 16 Little-Known Google Calendar Features That'll Make You More Productive. Tim Campbell's 12 steps to running a business - part 2.
BuzzSumo. Growth Vouchers for Business. Tim Campbell's 12 steps to running a business - part 2. Are Floatation Tanks AKA 'Adult-Sized Wombs' The Key To Perfect Meditation And Stress Relief? The small business owner's guide to selling online.