Want to know a simple tip that will increase your blogging effectiveness? Using images in blogs can boost your ROI. Images, however, are often sacrificed because of the emphasis that social media experts place on content. And while content is still king, images can help to engage your readers, and offer a plethora of other benefits including:

• Increasing appeal - Images in blogs simply add to the visual appeal of your post. And adding a pop of color to the black and white text will draw readers in, furthering the impact of your content.
• Enhancing memory recall - Your readers are busy, and they're bombarded with a ton of information every day. Using images in blogs will create an easy means by which readers can recall content, acting much like a visual marker.
• Developing readability - Most blog readers will scan your post before diving deeper into the content. That initial scan helps them to assess whether the content is relevant and worth their time. Readers also scan a post via a blog's images, so strategically placed and appealing images will help to engage readers. Further, using images in blogs helps to break up the text, particularly effective if you post a longer article. And some social media experts report that graphics help to increase the length of time a reader will spend on your blog.
• Increasing effectiveness - Images can help your shorter blog posts appear longer, which can trick a reader's mind into thinking the article is longer. People typically equate a longer article with having a higher value. Additionally, a well-placed image can help to emphasize a valuable point or elicit an emotional reaction from your audience.
• Boosting engagement - While your blog content should inform and educate, as well as position your business as an industry authority, you won't gain much traffic — or long-term customers — without engaging readers through personalizing content or using humor. Images go a long way toward accomplishing these goals.

Once you get started, adding images to blogs takes just a few minutes, but the impact is lasting and significant.

The iPad 3 and business go hand in hand — particularly if you conduct field work or presentations — and the new device can boost productivity. However, the iPad 3 is also expected to change how consumers shop, as the market of consumers using tablet devices is growing.

So just how will the new iPad 3 affect your business? The general consensus is that you probably won't see an immediate impact, but these types of devices are certain to change the way most companies do business down the road.

The most marked improvements in this generation of the iPad is its display interface. As a result, it offers significant potential for creative industries, or those in design or media.

Industries who send employees into the field are also likely to benefit from the new product, as it can operate faster than the previous generation and has better screen and video capabilities. Additionally, Apple provides staff to help companies convert their existing equipment to the iPad 3, making it even easier to introduce, train and manage employee use of the device.

In terms of consumers, the iPad 3 is likely to encourage more use, as the new changes have led to easier-to-read screens, less eye strain and better graphic capabilities. Further, it's reported that tablet users spend more when using their devices, as compared to standard computer users, and they spend more time on them, too.

If you're considering what it will take to upgrade your website to synergize the iPad 3 and business activities, here's how you can get started:

• Images - You'll need to adapt images on your website for a higher resolution. One good place to start? Product images.
• Text - You will want to convert some of the elements on your web pages (such as sidebars, headers and search bars) into actual text or they will appear noticeably different from the actual text on the pages in the new iPad 3.
• Buttons - Also on most websites, buttons that link to other pages, such as a "sign me up," "buy now" or "learn more" button, will appear blurry and grainy on the iPad 3's display. To adapt them, choose stark contrasts.
• Logos - Most logos are optimized solely for performance and as a result, these smaller images won't show up well on the iPad 3. Larger images will look better.

Wondering how your business can optimize consumer interaction with and/or employee use of the iPad 3? Be ready to get onboard. Successful businesses can't afford to ignore trends that revolutionize how consumers shop -- or those that increase productivity.

Building an e-mail list admittedly requires some effort. But with an effective business model in place, you can successfully grow a list and turn traffic into committed customers.

Content marketing is one effective business model for list building. If you have a business blog, you're already doing it. Combining your blogging efforts and social media marketing tools with e-mail list building boosts the power of content marketing.

There are two basic steps your business will have to take to build an e-mail list.

Generate traffic

There are many ways to generate traffic, and the best tools often depend on industry. For service-oriented businesses, blogging offers one of the more effective means to generate traffic. With a blog, your business can educate consumers about various topics of interest -- a key step in the sales process. Blogging also gives you an opportunity to describe how your services benefit potential consumers, a critical step in winning them over — and setting you apart from the competition as an authority.

Social media are also effective at generating traffic to your blog and/or website. Synergy between marketing mediums can make generating traffic easy, directing social media traffic to your blog or website landing pages, to the end goal of building an e-mail list.

Get people to sign up for your e-mail list

With your tools in place to attract traffic, you'll need a way to engage that traffic, as the goal is to have people sign up for your e-mail list. Most businesses tend to think in numbers, and higher numbers should mean more conversions, right? Not necessarily, when you're building an e-mail list.

The key to effective list building is to capture high-quality leads — and not everyone who visits your site will or should sign up. This is where quality will count over quantity.

You'll get better quality leads by:

• Creating effective landing pages
• Using persuasive copy
• Posting in forums where your target consumer hangs out
• Offering existing customers incentives to forward your e-mails
• Linking blog posts to your e-mail opt-in landing page
• Using paid advertising

With these tools in place, your efforts at building an e-mail list will turn your web and social media traffic into loyal, invested, repeat customers.

E-mail is not dead — despite what many social media pundits like to claim. To the contrary, using an e-mail list to distribute regular e-newsletters offers competitive businesses a unique way to interact with consumers. It helps them achieve their goals of establishing themselves as an authority and creating trust and a bond with consumers, as well as a host of other benefits.

An e-newsletter is fairly easy to develop and set up, and it often converts to higher sales, because people who sign up for your e-mail distribution list are often higher-quality leads, more likely to buy your products or services.

Ready to take advantage of the benefits they offer? Here's what you can expect:

• Loyalty - While at least some of your blog traffic might visit your blog just once, e-newsletters help convert one-time visitors into repeat visitors -- and loyal customers.
• Relationship - Businesses which have invested in e-newsletters report that they create a sense of community with their subscribers, often because that weekly or monthly newsletter allows them to build relationships and make sure they keep in touch with their readers.
• Flexibility - Developing an e-newsletter is fairly easy, as you can repurpose content from your blog to distribute. Additionally, you can choose to include personal tidbits to represent yourself as a real person, which helps to further a sense of community and loyalty.
• Traffic - E-newsletters can ideally position your blog or website for increased traffic, as you can use them to tell your subscribers about a new product launch, offer special discounts or highlight a particular blog post.
• Better leads - Because a subscriber takes action to belong to your list, they tend to feel a sense of commitment and investment in what you're doing. As a result, they are more engaged with your business' goings on, and more likely to use your products and services when the need arises.
• Testing - With the right service, you can target certain reader groups. For instance, for readers who never open your e-mail, you can test that group with different e-mail headings to find better ways to engage them, and get higher open rates.

E-newsletters are a tried-and-true method of marketing your business. And competitive businesses already know their value. Do you?

Spring cleaning your blog can raise your blogging effectiveness, dramatically boosting your ROI. Cleaning up your content, tags and links will help to optimize SEO, as it offers you a second chance to proof your work.

You can perform the following steps weekly in just a few minutes, or set aside longer periods of time every quarter.

• Categories - When you start blogging, you should have developed multiple categories to match your content's topics. But over time, you'll likely fine-tune the categories you actually use, leaving those that aren't relevant untouched. When this happens, your readers might receive a 404 error, delivered when a user clicks on a category that leads to a blank screen. By cleaning up your unused categories, you'll increase performance. WordPress users can take advantage of a tool called WP CleanFix to make repairs or redirect users. Google can downgrade your site when a user receives too many error messages. Its Webmaster tools can help you find problematic pages.
• Alt tags - You can greatly improve SEO by making sure that the images you post on your blogs have Alt tags, a text descriptive feature for a graphic or image. Google gives high scores to pages that have images with an Alt tag.
• Content - Check for topics that have become outdated or are time sensitive, and update posts if possible. Maintaining relevant content for new users that join your blog will help keep your content relevant and authoritative.
• Links - As you add new posts, you'll want to go back and check previously posted material and link it to newer content. This action will help to boost your SEO by increasing effective internal links, and give readers access to similar content.
• Sidebars - The time it takes your pages to load will in part determine how easy it is to access information. Evaluate the number of relevant widgets you have on your page; removing those that aren't necessary will decrease page load time and help to feature other, more relevant tabs and widgets.

Cleaning up your tags, content and links will help to drive blogging effectiveness, creating a better user experience and boosting SEO.

As an HVAC contractor, you’re probably always looking for inexpensive, effective ways to get your message out to potential customers, to remind them when it’s time for preventive maintenance or a new furnace or A/C system or a duct-cleaning. Facebook can serve you well for this. It’s free. It’s easy to set up and manage. It’s heavily populated (800 million active users around the world). And it has a powerful little tool that you should know about: the Like button.

When customers find your Facebook page or your website and click the little rectangle that says Like on it, they launch an ongoing connection with you, an occasional reminder of your availability, skills and services. When you post an update, your customers will see it as they scroll through their Facebook feeds. Your customers’ Facebook friends will see your Like as a recommendation.

And when those customers and prospects have HVAC needs, that regular reminder may well translate into business for you.

How do you take advantage of this potentially profitable opportunity? Here are some ways HVAC contractors can use regular Facebook posts to build on their connections with customers:

• Keep it on schedule. Many contractors are too busy to create online posts. Assign the job to a savvy employee and create a schedule. Your posts should be fairly frequent — maybe a few times a week — but not so frequent that your company becomes an irritant. Your company can be Unliked, too.

• Keep it relevant and timely. This can’t be emphasized enough. Even if someone is familiar with your business, will he or she think of it when it’s time for service or preventive maintenance? During a cold spell, post a link to your recent blog post about furnace efficiency. If spring is in the air, post your coupon for annual air conditioner tuneups. Tailor your content to match the community’s HVAC needs and give them good reason to patronize you.

• Keep it interesting. Vary your posts. Offer an anecdote one day about that technician who pulled a cat out of a customer’s ductwork. Post photos of the rescue. The next day, present before and after shots of an especially filthy air filter or duct system. Offer industry-related trivia.

• Keep it worth your readers’ time. Give your Facebook connections an incentive to take a closer look. Offer information from a trusted, expert source — that’s you — such as quick HVAC tips and tricks that homeowners can do themselves. And throw in those discount offers or coupons occasionally.

• Keep it real. Facebook is a social forum, an online hub that your customers use to seek entertainment and information they care about. Your tone should be friendly and conversational and your posts short, understandable and to the point. Make your occasional sales pitches gently.

• Keep your website and blog in mind. Use Facebook to link to the content you already have. Proud of a new page on your website? Updated your blog? Post a link on Facebook.

• Keep the conversation moving. Respond to people who respond to you. As with your website and your blog — and your business itself — your Facebook presence is never finished. It is a work in perpetual progress. So don’t go silent.

• Keep it light sometimes. Be willing to share a laugh or an uplifting story with your customers. You never know what’s going to catch someone’s eye.

All of that is easy. The hard part is getting customers to your Facebook page and/or website where they can Like you. So include the Facebook logo and your Facebook page’s URL on your marketing and advertising materials and business cards. Remind employees to let people know that they can find you on Facebook.

If you haven’t already joined Facebook, click here to create your page. Be sure to add information under the Info tab; you can link to your own website and blog and tell customers more about you.

If you already have a Facebook page, consider improving it. Don’t have a Like button on your website? Facebook provides instructions here. If you haven’t updated lately, take another look, as Facebook is constantly making changes.

For such a tiny little button, Facebook’s Like tool packs a punch. As you become a part of your customers’ online interaction, you’re more likely to be on their minds when they have HVAC needs. Do it right, and you’ll like the way Facebook can drive business to you.Share and Enjoy:

Sometimes I get the feeling that many contractors believe social media is a passing fad at best – or a waste of time at worst.

In reality, social media can — and does — generate the HVAC sales leads that contractors need in order to grow. More people join the social media universe every day. And it’s your job to meet them there. Social media should be a vital component of your marketing strategy. It takes a different mentality to be successful in social media than any other marketing you’ve done in the past.

We know that consumers look online first for information about potential purchases – even before they know they’re in the market for products or services. That also goes for new parents wondering how they’ll eventually pay for college – long before they invest in a 529 Plan. Same goes for migraine sufferers seeking relief – months before they talk to the doctor about a new medication.

And the same goes for homeowners wondering why their furnaces are making funny noises – long before they trade them in for newer, more energy-efficient systems.

So catch HVAC sales leads right then and there – online, via social media sites, as your prospects begin to educate themselves on their purchases-to-be. Whether you make your connection through your HVAC blog, your business page on Facebook or your posts on Twitter, those connections can translate into sales leads.

That new heat pump – it was purchased from and installed by the HVAC contractor whose blog posts – titled, perhaps, “Your Aging Furnace: Repair or Replace?” and, “5 Reasons Heat Pumps Save Money” – helped that noisy-furnace owner determine that it was time for an upgrade. Those blog posts offered something useful and relevant to that customer: a local, certified contractor’s expertise, minus any hard sell.

Each post also included a “call to action” – an invitation to contact a technician or fill out an online form for a quote, for example – making it easy for the customer to take the relationship further. Even better, it possibly included a sign up to receive the contractor’s “Energy Savings Monthly eNewsletter” so that the homeowner could continue to learn directly from the contractor.

That’s the magic of great content…when homeowners actually request to receive your marketing on a consistent basis.

Creating an HVAC blog is one great way to use social media to enhance your company’s position as your community’s foremost provider of equipment and service – and to turn online leads into sales. But don’t stop there. Here are some tips for using social media to generate HVAC sales leads:

Widen your net by joining groups – and participating in them. To reach new leads, you need to break into new networks of people. Social networking sites do a terrific job of bringing together people with shared qualities and interests.

What qualities or interests might be shared by your potential leads? Start with a group search on LinkedIn, perhaps joining an online network of folks who work in the building industry or who belong to local homeowners’ associations. Pushing energy-efficient products? Join a green energy group on Facebook. When you write a relevant blog post about solar water heaters, put a link on the green group’s wall.

Widen your net by tapping your colleagues’ groups. Encourage your staff to post your company’s social media content from their own accounts, which will reach whole new networks of people in your community. Some people spend more time on Twitter than on LinkedIn. Others use Google+ rather than Facebook.

Invest in your online relationships. Extend the same courtesy and professionalism to potential online leads that you’d offer in person. If a reader leaves a comment or question on your blog, respond promptly. When someone starts to follow you on Twitter, follow them back. Found something relevant to post on Facebook? Credit the source by tagging the contributor in your post. With each online interaction, you build your standing with potential HVAC sales leads (not to mention expanding your reach online, leading you to more potential leads).

Think real estate. Sometimes an easy way to think about your social media exposure is to liken it to real estate. The more active you can be on social media, the more places you can be found on the web. This creates an online asset for you, just like if you were buying a property with a good possibility to grow in value over time.

As social media changes and grows, customers will continue to use it, as well as search engines, to gather information, make decisions and make connections. You should be using social media too, to tap a rich source of HVAC sales leads and relationships.Share and Enjoy:

To make a blog worth the time and money you put into it, businesses must make blog marketing a priority. If you thought just putting your blog out there was enough, you're wrong.

Successful businesses should attract attention — the right kind of attention — to make a blog work. A blog will help to generate leads and increase sales, but as with any product, it's not enough to just "create." To succeed, you have to market, too.

Blog marketing isn't any different from standard marketing in principle, but you do need to use different tools.

• Attract the right audience: To gain a wider audience for your blog, you need readers who will be likely to share your posts. As you cast a wide net with your blog, you want that net to overlap with social media users, specifically targeting those users who are most active. Developing posts that challenge commonly held beliefs or using striking graphics or videos help to accomplish this goal.
• Participation: Just like grade school, part of your blog's "grade" depends on your interaction with your community. Here, it's important to know how your target consumer thinks and acts in order to fine tune your message, and then actively participate in conversations going on in other blogs, social media outlets and forums.
• Strategize your content: It's worth saying over and over that your blog should be search engine optimization (SEO) friendly. With billions of daily Google searches, failing to use SEO principles puts you out of the running to attract a portion of those searches to your blog site.
• Use social media: Linking your blog to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn gives their users the opportunity to share your content with over one billion users, or potential customers. It takes time to optimize social media tools. But leveraging the traffic on these sites by studying patterns and how consumers respond to you will pay off in the end.

Without strategic marketing, your blog will be like another ad posted in Time's Square. Effective blog marketing will attract attention to your products and services, uniquely positioning your business for success.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

How can a digital book help your business? Let’s check out the benefits:

Content creation is easy
It might seem like a chore or impossible to create enough content to be interesting, but most businesses don’t realize that if they have a blog, they already have content that can be the contents of a digital book. The wording shouldn’t be verbatim, but ideas can be explained further in book form than in a blog.

Setting up the layout is easy, too
Because of the huge surge of digital books, a lot of programs have been created that make the process of creating chapters, formatting paragraphs, and doing layout design easy for anyone to pick up. These programs are also mostly free to use, too.

They can be read on several different platforms
You know how some programs work on a Windows desktop, but not on a Mac desktop? And how some apps can be used on an iPad but not a Kindle? Well, a PDF-formatted e-book can be read on multiple platforms easily without formatting or downloading issues.

Many options of sharing
When a company decides to publish a digital book, there are many options to consider for marketing: free download, opt-in download or even selling it for a small fee. Digital books can also be great for email campaigns.

Publishing is unlimited
You don’t need a big name publishing house to distribute your digital book; you can simply self-publish. There are many options out there; businesses can self-publish dozens of digital books.

More advertising through others
When you’re published, bloggers can review your digital book and spread the word even further. Or you could personally contact bloggers and reach out to them, letting them know about your product and asking nicely for a review. There are limitless opportunities with e-books, so start writing!

EBook image via Shutterstock.Share and Enjoy:

To stay clear of problems, use these tips:

• Never pass off content as your own if it doesn’t belong to you. Content marketing rests upon your reputation, and you could get into serious trouble by building your authority on the shoulders of someone else’s reputation. You should value the “currency” of your reputation, and only take credit for content that you produce.
• Use links the right way. If you need to use content you haven’t produced, give credit where credit is due. Deep links are valuable, and the law does not prohibit deep linking to someone else’s blog or website; however, if you don’t give credit to that owner, you are violating the law.
• Graphics are not exempt. It’s generally appealing — and valuable — to add graphics to your blog; however, graphics also fall under copyright laws. The best way to avoid problems is to ask permission before using graphics or source them from free sites like Flickr or low-cost sites like istockphoto.
• Ask. If you want to use someone else’s content, just ask — nicely. Most bloggers, writers and businesses will generally allow a link to their content; after all, a deep link will benefit them. Requesting permission fully protects you from copyright infringement, and it’s the best practice for giving sources credit.
• Use the right sources. If you need to access truly free information for your blog, make sure it’s sourced from a service that provides free content. Several Internet ventures have joined forces to do just that: Through “creative commons,” sites such as Picasa, Scribd and Wikemedia Common allow free use of their materials, without citing.

Your blog is an ideal format to generate free information for your customers, increasing your authority, furthering your brand and generating leads. But what once was a free for all is now just as regulated by copyright laws as any other form of media and print materials.

Copyright image via Shutterstock.Share and Enjoy: