Text Neck: Is Smartphone Use Causing Your Neck Pain?

Virtually unheard of two years ago, “text neck” is a repetitive strain injury that’s becoming more common as more people hunch over smartphones. Aggravating muscle pain in the neck and shoulders, and sometimes lower back, is occurring even in teens and adolescents.

“Typically, incidence of neck pain increases with age. But today we’re seeing and treating more patients — younger patients — who never reported neck pain before,” says Robert Bolash, MD, a pain specialist at Cleveland Clinic.

A load of hurt

How can using a smartphone or other mobile device cause so much hurt? It’s all in how you look at it. Literally. Looking down, dropping your head forward, changes the natural curvature of your neck. Over time, that misalignment can strain muscles and cause wear and tear on the structures of the neck.

According to Dr. Bolash, three things happen when you drop your head:

1. Your neck moves forward.
2. Your shoulders round forward or lift up toward your ears.
3. Your neck and shoulder muscles spasm (contract).

“Neck muscles, in their proper position, are designed to support the weight of your head, about 10 to 12 pounds,” says Dr. Bolash. “Research shows that for every inch you drop your head forward, you double the load on those muscles. Looking down at your smartphone, with your chin to your chest, can put about 60 pounds of force on your neck.”

Besides muscle pain, text neck can cause a host of other health concerns. Sitting in a slumped position restricts your lungs’ ability to expand, impairing your lung capacity. Inhaling less oxygen means your heart needs to pump harder to distribute more oxygen-carrying blood through your body.

Three tricks to nix text neck

To nix text neck, improve your posture. Dr. Bolash recommends you:

1. Straighten up. Learn proper posture and neck alignment by peeking at your profile in a mirror. If you’re standing correctly, you should be able to draw a vertical line from your ear to your shoulder.
2. Arch back. If your posture isn’t perfect, try doing shoulder extensions. Arch your neck and upper back backward, pulling your shoulders into alignment under your ears. This simple stretch can alleviate stress and muscle pain.
3. Look forward. Rather than tilting your chin down to read your mobile device, raise the device to eye level. The same goes for your desktop computer. Your monitor screen should be at eye level so your head isn’t perpetually dropping and causing muscle strain.

Another texting injury: BlackBerry® thumb

While not part of text neck, BlackBerry thumb (hand, finger or thumb pain named after the popular mobile device) is another texting-induced repetitive strain injury.

“A topical pain reliever may help soothe a strained tendon,” says Dr. Bolash. “But, ideally, you should limit how much you’re texting. Composing a manuscript with your thumbs, on a screen that’s a couple of inches wide, isn’t what mobile devices were made for.”

Courtesy by : Cleveland Clinic

Ten of the Best CGI Game Trailers

The trailer for Techland's upcoming Dead Island - a co-operative zombie romp with a melee focus - launched on the internet yesterday in one almighty cavalcade of hype and attention. Whether you like them or loathe them, CGI trailers are a mainstay of the games industry. In no particular order, here are ten of our current favourites:

Enjoy the trailers :  Video Gamer 

Top 10 Good Bots

1. Googlebot – Googlebot is Google’s web crawling bot (sometimes also called a “spider”). Googlebot uses an algorithmic process: computer programs determine which sites to crawl, how often, and how many pages to fetch from each site. Googlebot’s crawl process begins with a list of webpage URLs, generated from previous crawl processes and augmented with Sitemap data provided by webmasters. As Googlebot visits each of these websites it detects links (SRC and HREF) on each page and adds them to its list of pages to crawl. New sites, changes to existing sites, and dead links are noted and used to update the Google index.

2. Baiduspider – Baiduspider is a robot of Baidu Chinese search engine. Baidu (Chinese: 百度; pinyin: Bǎidù) is the leading Chinese search engine for websites, audio files, and images.

3. MSN Bot/Bingbot – Retired October 2010 and rebranded as Bingbot, this is a web-crawling robot (type of Internet bot), deployed by Microsoft to supply Bing (search engine). It collects documents from the web to build a searchable index for the Bing (search engine).

4. Yandex Bot – Yandex bot is Yandex’s search engine’s crawler. Yandex is a Russian Internet company which operates the largest search engine in Russia with about 60% market share in that country. Yandex ranked as the fifth largest search engine worldwide with more than 150 million searches per day as of April 2012 and more than 25.5 million visitors.

5. Soso Spider – Soso.com is a Chinese search engine owned by Tencent Holdings Limited, which is well known for its other creation QQ. As of 13 May 2012, Soso.com is ranked as the 36th most visited website in the world and the 13th most visited website in China, according to Alexa Internet. On an average, Soso.com gets 21,064,490 page views everyday.

6. Exabot – Exabot is the crawler for ExaLead out of France. Founded in 2000 by search engine pioneers, Dassault Systèmes, ExaLead provides search and unified information access software.

7. Sogou Spider – Sogou.com is a Chinese search engine. It was launched August 4, 2004. As of April 2010, it has a rank of 121 in Alexa’s Internet rankings. Sogou provides an index of up to 10 billion web pages.

8. Google Plus Share – Google Plus lets you share recommendations with friends, contacts and the rest of the web – on Google search. The +1 button helps initialize Google’s instant share capabilities, and it also provides a way to give something your public stamp of approval.

9. Facebook External Hit – Facebook allows its users to send links to interesting web content to other Facebook users. Part of how this works on the Facebook system involves the temporary display of certain images or details related to the web content, such as the title of the webpage or the embed tag of a video. The Facebook system retrieves this information only after a user provides a link.

10. Google Feedfetcher – Used by Google to grab RSS or Atom feeds when users choose to add them to their Google homepage or Google Reader. Feedfetcher collects and periodically refreshes these user-initiated feeds, but does not index them in Blog Search or Google’s other search services (feeds appear in the search results only if they’ve been crawled by Googlebot).

---

courtesy by : incapsula

Top 20 Most Essential Software for Artists and Designers

I’ve been professionally writing about the game, film, and tech industries for seven years. With a degree in 3D graphics for game art and design, I have seen, studied, and experienced every aspect of the 2D and 3D video game industry. Over the years I’ve seen how no amount of impressive software can replace impressive individual skill, but in a competitive digital world where every artist has to fight to be the best, it’s imperative to have every possible advantage and always seek more experience in new software and techniques. These are the twenty essential programs that every artist needs to consider training in to become the best in their industries.

FIND A SCHOOL

20. Poser Pro 2014. Basically, Poser tries to solve this problem: “I’ve got 99 assets but an animation ain’t one.” If you want to make a 3D animation, steps 1 through 99 often all involve the advanced and tedious tasks of making the 3D characters, scenes, props, textures, lighting, and plenty of other lengthy dropdown menus that get in your way if all you want to do is animate. Poser gives you all of the 3D supplies you need, and the rest is up to you. While it might not hold immense clout in the various animation industries, if you’re someone who is considering a related career path and don’t want to spend thousands of tuition dollars or hundreds of hours watching tutorials to find out if 3D animation is something you’d actually enjoy, then Poser is absolutely essential.

19. GoAnimate: This Web software is a do-it-yourself animation package that has over five million users, and I’d bet half of them don’t even consider themselves “artists” because that’s how damn easy GoAnimate is to use. Sign up to their site and you have access to thousands of character models, scene backdrops, audio recording, lip-syncing features, and art asset props. Some users have become so famous in its community that they can even make a living by selling their art props back to the community for widespread use. Be it YouTube, Vine, or video ad popups, video content continues to rise as a top form of communication on the Internet, and GoAnimate hopes that Internet users – not just “artists” – from all walks of life embrace their tools to join in on the fun.

18. SketchBook Pro. Yes, Autodesk isn’t just dominating the 3D industry anymore, and with a few SketchBook Pro iterations under their belt in the past few years they’ve quickly assembled a digital drawing and painting application that’s essential for every form of 2D artist. It still needs a few more versions of updates to propel it to the top of the charts against its competition, but it’s well on its way. What it currently lacks in true power, it makes up for in speed. This is a program that really understands that a good artist doesn’t need 50 brushes and menu options to make good art, and that the most important thing for a new concept is to let an artist draw as much as possible as quick as possible. With its simple brush setup, awesome steady stroke tool, and incredibly helpful magnetic shape guiders, it’s hard to believe how much you can accomplish with a limited time budget. Throw as much on the screen as you want without a single stutter. You can zoom all the way in, all the way out, and rotate the entire screen’s canvas exactly how you want in the middle of your workflow without any hiccups. If it can keep up those speeds while continuing to add more presets and tools, SketchBook Pro will quickly be competing for the throne.

17. Mudbox. As the 3D art industry began to boom a decade ago, the software companies had to adapt to new and grandiose demands from the studios that were redefining what digital art was, and what it was capable of accomplishing. Polygon limits were quickly evaporating as computer technology removed render restrictions and Weta Digital created Mudbox to help them make the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Originally called Skymatter, it later made its sculpting and texture painting tools available to the public as a revolutionary solution for the time consuming tasks of making displacement and normal maps. Then in 2007, Autodesk acquired Skymatter Inc. in their ongoing mission of dominating all of their competition in the industry. This powerful software impresses artists the very first day they use it, so why not try the 30 day free trial of Mudbox? If you love it but don’t like its price tag, then I’ll let you in on a secret: xNormal v3.18.3 is rapidly becoming just as good, and it’s 100% free. Given the 3D industry’s habit of swarming towards hot new tools, xNormal’s demand continues to grow by the month.

16. Blender 2.68a. Blender is the perfect introduction to all that 3D software has to offer animators. It has most of the features you’ll find on the top-of-line 3D modeling programs’ bullet point boast lists, but it’s 100% free. There are no extra features that have price tags or any other forms of financial trickery; Blender is free. It’s also small in size by comparison to its competitors, and its gigantic online community has hundreds of tutorials available publicly, which are also all free. Speaking of free, anything you make in Blender, ever, is yours and you’re free to use or sell it without paying licensing fees. If I haven’t convinced you yet, maybe this famous 1080p short film that was made entirely from Blender years ago will: Big Buck Bunny. Hooked yet? Good! Blender even has its own Blender Institute with certified trainers that can teach you in-person or online about every advanced aspect of the software for far less than standard tuition fees.

15. FlipBook 6.86: So you just clicked on that link and think I’m crazy. A site that ancient looking can’t possibly have a product that’s worth using in today’s art industry? You’re wrong. Don’t let DigiCel’s outdated looking Web site for FlipBook fool you; they’re convinced in the belief that if something isn’t broke, then there’s nothing to fix. While every other art program you’ve used over the years sees consistent annual updates that change every inch of the user interface, FlipBook still looks mostly the same as it did over a decade ago. If you’re a 2D animator then you’re limiting your career and your creations if you don’ttry FlipBook.

14. Easy Paint Tool SAI. A few years ago, when asked how I felt about “Paint SAI”, I told friends it wouldn’t catch on and in a few more years no one would remember SAI. I was wrong. Since then, I’ve ditched the mob mentality that relies too heavily on industry standards or what online community opinions on popular topics or trends. With that in mind I highly urge every reader to not skip over software just because it’s not on this list. These 20 programs should be your guidelines to start from, and you should be your own judge if your employer gives you that freedom. So what helped Paint Tool SAI catch on? In a sea of simple paint programs that have an abundance of interface and brush customization options, SAI had more or better choices than most competitors. A digital artist’s previous, current, and next painting project often differ drastically from each other, and when immense flexibility is needed, Easy Pain Tool SAI is the chameleon of paintbrushes.

13. FL Studio 11. When’s the last time you watched a TV show or a film without the audio on? Musicians are just as integral to the entertainment industries as the visual artists are, and FL Studio gives them unlimited tools. Originally known as Fruity Loops, it began in late 1997 as nothing more than a MIDI program, and slowly underwent several huge updates that gave it legs to compete with the industry’s top names. However, the community consensus was still that it was more of a beginner’s software than a fully developed professional set of tools, but that didn’t stop Fruity Loops. It changed its name to FL Studio and underwent another round of updates that, in recent years, has catapulted it to the top of the industry. The best part? While other companies on this list like Adobe have shifted towards subscription-based fees that charge you endlessly to use the programs you need to use over the span of your entire career, FL Studio instead has lifetime free updates for its programs. Yes, you read that correct, and “all FL Studio 10 customers will be able to update to a fully functioning version of FL Studio 11, 12, etc, for free.” One whole version later, and they’re still staying true to their word. This is a piece of software that’s not only worth knowing and using for years to come, but it’s also one that will be the cheapest to use over the course of your entire career!

12. Flash Professional CC. Flash used to be owned by Macromedia back when it exploded in popularity in the early years of the Internet, which is exactly why Adobe eagerly bought Macromedia. Despite beingimmensely popular, its ubiquity only heightened as Internet speeds rose across the nations, with Flash gaining more exposure and value as each year passed. As the 3D animation industry continues to dominate several corners of the market, Flash simply finds new outlets to thrive in, whether it be viral YouTube animations or pesky pop-up ads. Artists with Flash experience on their resumes are still in high demand across America, and it’s not too late to find huge success from training to be an expert in Flash.

11. Painter X3. The best way to describe Corel’s Painter programs is to just let someone try them. It’s too easy for digital artists to get wrapped up in menus and interfaces and making it all about the pixels. With Painter the monitor melts away and it truly feels like you’re using real paint on a real canvas, and that no amount of math or computer code could ever create each and every realistic and messy brush stroke you make. And yet, this powerful software accomplishes exactly that, and the illusion of painting in Corel Painter is just as surreal as the art you can make with it. It oozes with style and wonder and all the other things that make each artist different from every other artist. With that in mind, if you choose any two painting programs from this list, make sure it’s Painter and one other piece of software.

second slide 

 courtesy by : animation career review 

7 Ways You’re Being Tracked Online

Computer scientists from UPC BarcelonaTech university in Spain have shed light on some lesser known ways Internet companies track us online. The researchers also provided workarounds for the privacy-conscious.

 

1. Cookies That Don’t Crumble

Some cookies — identifying data that follows you from site to site — don’t go away when you delete them from your Web browser. Cookies can be re-created by files stored on your computer by Adobe ADBE +1.85% Flash plugin, a software used to play games or watch videos online. These are known as “Flash cookies.”

Tip: Change Adobe Flash’s settings to prevent Flash from storing data on your computer. You won’t be able to save your preferences nor your progress in Flash games and videos.

 

2. You Are What You Share

We share data about ourselves when we visit websites, including IP address — which can reveal our location — as well as language, operating system, and time zone. Together, this data constructs a user profile. Internet companies, advertisers, analytics firms, search engines, social networks and data brokers assign unique identifiers to users to track them across websites.

Tip: Regularly clear you web cache and browse the Web with the “anonymous mode” option that exists on the most popular browsers. Chrome, for instance, let’s you browse in incognito mode.

 

3. Clik ‘em Up!

Clickjacking is a way to trick you into clicking on a particular link that redirects to a malicious Web site, where your data will be stolen. The attack can be carried out through a fake web cursor or a pop-up ad: while you think you’re clicking on the X to close it, you are actually clicking on a link.

Tip: Be careful where you click: There are no known defenses against clickjacking, the computer scientists said.

 

4. Drawing You Closer

The website you’re visiting instructs your browser to draw graphics that are invisible to you. Each browser and each computer will display the drawing differently, depending on their configuration. This will identify the software and hardware that was used to draw the canvas, and identify your computer.

Tip: Disable JavaScript and use a software like Tor, which redirects Internet traffic through a network of relay computers. After you disable JavaScript, the features of some websites, such as videos, won’t work.

 

5. A CAPTCHA’d Audience

A CAPTCHA is a picture of random characters, like “UTOpiA3”, that is easy to recognize for a human but not for a robot. CAPTCHAs however can hide links in letters, like this: Awhich is a link to the Wall Street Journal’s website. You wouldn’t notice the link, unless your mouse cursor passes over it and shows a hand instead of an arrow. Hyperlinks are usually shown by Web browsers in different colors. That can make a CAPTCHA made up of links hard to read. When you write the CAPTCHA characters, you disclose which character you don’t see and which website you have visited.

Tip: In settings, disable the option that allows pages to choose their own fonts, or activate the option that ignores colors, font style and font sizes specified on webpages.

 

6. I App Therefore I Am

A recent study found that the combination of apps we install on our phones is unique to most of us and can be used to profile us. For example, if Twitter TWTR +0.06%, whichcollects the list of apps installed on your mobile, was to share this list with an advertiser, the latter could infer what your interests and habits are and deliver personalized ads to your phone. The advertiser could also assign you a unique identifier and track you across websites.

Tip: In your phone’s Twitter app settings, disable the “Tailor Twitter based on my apps” option.

 

7. Power To The People You Know

To save their users’ energy, some browsers allow websites to access the battery state of mobile devices or laptops, without users being aware of it, according to another recent study. Our device batteries’ capacity and usage levels can then be used to track us across websites that incorporate the same piece of code. The scientists’ tests on Firefox and Linux could identify a user who visited two websites within 30 seconds as the same person thanks to the user’s battery status.

Tip: Make sure your browser doesn’t allow websites to check the capacity of your batteries. After the scientists reported the issue to Firefox, the browser scrapped the feature that allowed a battery capacity check on a device using the Linux operating system.

 

courtesy by : blogs.wsj.com

 

Incredible Gadgets You Would Kill For – 20 Examples

Gadgets are more unusual and more clever than normal technological objects and that makes them gain popularity. These wonderful gizmos ease our daily routine and keep us in contact with the innovative movement, making sure we don’t get stuck in the past. But of course, in the world of gadgets there are also some devices that take it a little bit far, making us gaze at them with hope that we will get our hands on them sooner.

Window phone concept

Is it a window, is it a phone? No. Actually, it’s Window phone and this is the part where you are saying “Whaaat? What are you talking about?”. The phone is actually a concept with extraordinary features. Surely if this could be actually put into production, it would set a new standard for the term “cool”.

click here to see the killer Gadgets:  www.designyourway.net

Please Join us on Facebook : MZS

View my blog : Bob the bot

10 technologies shaping the future of IT

Which of today's newest shipping technologies will cast the longest shadow over business computing? Here are our best guesses

Check this slider here : infoworld

Top 10 Best Intelligence Agencies In The World 2015

An intelligence agency refers to a government institution which collects, analyze and exploit valuable information and intelligence to protect the national debts.

The intelligence agencies help country to cope with security matters and to protect the nation from likely security breach; the core purpose of spy agencies is collection of secret information to secure the country from any internal and external happening which harm the stability of state either economically or politically.

The intelligence agencies also provide indirect security to tangible and intangible infrastructure of the country like nuclear program or any document containing sensitive information.

Personnel of any intelligence agency has been called agents, spies or undercover officers who vowed to devote his life and worked as secret agent for the state. Here are top 10 intelligence agencies of 2015 are given which are working in present for its respective countries to lock the safety of nation.

1. Inter-Service Intelligence, (ISI) Pakistan
The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (Inter-Services Intelligence) is the premier intelligence service of Pakistan, founded in1948. It has responsibilities of collecting information of critical national security and intelligence assessment for Government of Pakistan.

American Crime News declared Pakistan Inter Services Intelligence as world’s best and strongest intelligence agency, headquartered in Shahrah-e-Soharwardi in Islamabad. ISI is most known and famous agency among three agencies working in Pakistan; others are Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Military Intelligence (MI). ISI is known as command immense power in the Pakistani establishment, referred to principle brainpower organization of the country.

2. Central Intelligence Agency, (CIA) United States
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is most prominent and familiar among other United States National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). CIA has been founded in 1947, considered as an independent and top agency in the whole world.

The prime functions includes acquiring and analyzing information about foreigners, public relations for required data and underground operations at the direction of the president of United States. The agency headquarter is located in Langley, Virginia, a few miles west of Washington.

3. Secret Intelligence Service, (MI6) United Kingdom
MI6 formally known as the Secret Intelligence Service was created just before the World War I for the possible reach the activities of the Imperial German government. The Agency headquarter called SIS Building, has been situated in Vauxhall Cross, London.

MI6 has been closely involved in various conflicts in 20th and 21st centuries but not officially acknowledged till 1994. The secret front line” of Britain`s national security has responsibilities to keep close eye on internal and external terror activities, organizations and countries which could harm national defense and state security.

4.  Federal Security Services, (FSB) Russia
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) is the principal security agency of the Russian Federation and the main successor agency to the USSR’s Committee of State Security (KGB).

Formed in 1995, the agency is committed to the country for intelligence, counter-terrorism and security enhancement and defense security. It has at least 250K personnel containing undercover agents, secret officers and foreign spies; it’s mainly fight the state crime, terror acts, drug smuggling and other internal security violence in the country.

5. Bundesnachrichtendienst, (BND) Germany
The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Federal Intelligence Service was established prior to World War II to spy the enemies’ strategies and plans, headquartered in Pullach near Munich.

The Budget of BND is in billions as it used most modern technology to spy over its enemies for national security concerns, considered as one of the best and well-organized intelligence agencies in the world. However, the main objective of Agency is surveillance of sensitive issues referred to domestic and foreign intelligence.

6. Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India
Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) is India’s independent intelligence agency created in 1968. The agency head only reports to Prime Minister, not answerable to the Indian Parliament in any way as compared to other western intelligence agencies.

however, its prime purpose it to accumulate information regarding terror activities in the country which faced number of terror attacks in past years. RAW main focus is India’s neighbor Pakistan, engaged in many operations against Pakistan with physical secret basis in the country.

7. Direction Generale De La Securite Exterieure (DGSE), France
The General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) replaced the replacing the older Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE) which has been formed in 1982. Despite of its recent formation, the agency went responsible for the collection and interpretation of intelligence for sensitive concerns of France.

The Agency has not famous as other intelligence agencies but claimed that it has prevented 15 terror attacks in France; with a personnel of 5000 it works under the Safeguard Service of French Government and has been placed on seventh number in our list.

8. Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), Australia
The Australian Secret Intelligent Service (ASIS) agency has been founded in 1951 by the executive power of the Commonwealth, the mission of ASIS is ‘Protect and promote Australia’s vital interests through the provision of unique foreign intelligence services as directed by Government’.

Intelligence agency of Australia is also lined up in top intelligence agencies of 2015 as it has wide hold on intelligence all over the world with its disperse personnel. There were many controversies in the ASIS; however, it has been resolved with conversion of it into a statuary body.

9. Ministry of State Security (MSS), China
The Ministry of State Security (MSS) is the intelligence-security agency of the People’s Republic of China, the headquarters located near the Ministry of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing The agency has been responsible for counter-intelligence, political security and far-off intelligence.

MSS is working parallel to the public security bureaus but has non-state security matters often collaborate both for the large extent. The Agency was established in 1937 which has been founded in 1949 by Communist Part of China, collected antithetical information for civil war in China.

10. The Institute For Intelligence and Special Operation (MOSAD), Israel
MOSSAD is the intelligence agency of Israel, most active organization in the country committed to collect intelligence involved in counter-terrorism and various covert operations. The director of agency is bound to report activities to the head of state Prime Minister of Israel.

Contrary to others MOSSAD is considered as most powerful agency due to scarce widened resources, the undercover agents has been present in various countries to collect the valuable information for the country. Mossad’s most notorious unit is the “Special Operations Division” or Metsada which has involved in many assassinations and secret operations worldwide.

courtesy by : abcnewspoint

10 Online Marketing Tips That Go Beyond Twitter and Facebook

Social media can be invaluable to a variety of online businesses. But Twitter and Facebook aren’t the only online platforms for promoting your business. More traditional methods like blogs and email marketing can still be effective. And newer methods like live video streaming can also be applicable to some online marketing strategies. Read some tips for using these other online marketing methods in this week’s Small Business Trends community news and information roundup.

Add These Strategies to Your Email Marketing Campaigns

(CorpNet)

The popularity of social media marketing has increased greatly over the last several years. And, as such, some marketers have stopped focusing on email marketing. But it can still be a very effective technique for communicating with prospects and customers. Here, Ramon Ray shares five strategies you can use to improve youremail marketing campaigns.

Look Into New Tools like Meerkat and Periscope

(Ping)

Aside from the most popular social channels, there are lots of new and exciting mobile and social platforms that could be beneficial for some businesses. Rachel Parker discusses a couple of those new tools, mobile video streaming platformsMeerkat and Periscope, in this post. BizSugar members also share thoughts about the post.

Share Your Blog Posts on Platforms Other Than Facebook and Twitter

(Search Engine Journal)

Most bloggers know the power and reach of large social platforms like Twitter and Facebook. But there are plenty of other online platforms out there that bloggers can use to reach out to potential readers. This post by Sujan Patel includes 15 of them.

Understand Your Blog Analytics

(Paradigm Shift SEO)

In order to grow your blog following, you have to understand where your current traffic is coming from and what your most popular content is. So blog analytics are pretty necessary, according to this post by Lisa W Boyle. The BizSugar communitydiscusses the post further.

Learn These Essentials About Search Engine Marketing

(Marketing Land)

Search engine marketing is constantly changing. But there are a few essential things you should know in order for your online marketing campaigns to be effective. In this post, Scott Rayden shares seven things CMOs should know aboutsearch engine marketing.

Benefit From Cloud Technology

(SmallBizDaily)

Cloud technology has made a huge impact on many different aspects of running a business, from marketing to securing business data. Rieva Lesonsky shares some benefits of using cloud technology in this post. And BizSugar members share theirthoughts too.

Pay Attention to the Messages Your Content is Sending

(Cursive Content Marketing Blog)

Whether you’re writing a blog, crafting an email newsletter, or creating other types of online content, you need to be aware of the messages you’re sending. This doesn’t just mean knowing the subject matter you’re discussing. There are certain aspects of your content that might send negative subliminal messages to your audience, as Emily Cretella shares here.

Blog About Almost Anything

(Lindsay Pevny)

Having a blog can still be incredibly beneficial for your business. There are certain industries that more easily lend themselves to great online content. But anyone who can find a unique voice can potentially benefit from having a business blog, says Lindsay Pevny. BizSugar members also share input on the subject.

Be Wary of Clickbait

(OutNoise)

Clickbait, or online posts with flashy headlines, can certainly drive traffic to your site. But most readers aren’t fans of exaggerated and only somewhat true headlines that don’t really deliver with great content. Jenna Inouye discussesclickbait and explains how you can avoid angering your readers.

Get More People Reading Your Business Blog

(Bplans)

When you first start a business blog, it can seem like your parents or close friends are the only ones who ever read it. But there are plenty of ways you can work toattract new readers, from social media to guest posting and more. Lisa Furgison shares some of those methods here. BizSugar members then comment on the post.

courtesy by : smallbiztrends