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	<title>Theresa Sheridan Designs &#187; Blog</title>
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	<link>http://www.theresasheridan.com</link>
	<description>Web &#38; Print Design with a Western Flair - Rock Your Website &#38; Get Found Online!</description>
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		<title>Why You Should Stick with Clients Who Fit Your Target Niche</title>
		<link>http://www.theresasheridan.com/why-you-should-stick-with-clients-who-fit-your-target-niche/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theresasheridan.com/why-you-should-stick-with-clients-who-fit-your-target-niche/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:47:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Theresa</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Entrepreneurs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theresasheridan.com/?p=4723</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As happens every now and again, a client and I had a parting of the ways. Needs change, attitudes change, and sometimes the professional/client relationship just fizzles. It is difficult to please all of the people all of the time, especially when that particular person doesn&#8217;t really fit into your target client definition. Such a thing happened to me recently. I had been working with a particular client for almost a year, even though I was somewhat surprised that he chose me and liked my work. We come from very different worlds. He is an internet marketing professional whose clients are high end medical and legal professionals. I&#8217;m a cowgirl who happens to have a knack for designing stuff and computers! He hung around &#8220;Boca Babes&#8221;, I hung around cowboys who needed showers and shave. He needed someone to design for his clients and I was brought in by another Social Media expert that he had been working with to help out (need I mention that he is no longer working with her, either?). Initially things were great. We clicked for the most part and he was sending quite a bit of work my way. He appreciated my thoroughness and my follow through. Slowly, over time, things began to change. His expectations grew and because our design styles were so different, I couldn&#8217;t meet his growing expectations any longer. We talked about this on a few different occasions, and I brought up the fact that our styles were just too different, but he insisted that we keep the relationship going. My instincts told me that this would probably lead to trouble. My instincts were right. He began to question everything I did, in regards to both my designing and how I handled my business. For example, he decided that he would dictate to me how I did my invoicing, including the invoice dates and that I couldn&#8217;t charge him both hourly and flat rate for design work. I explained to him that how I invoiced depended on the project, but he didn&#8217;t want to hear it. He demanded that every image or graphic have a drop shadow on it. He couldn&#8217;t understand the concept of &#8220;less is more&#8221; in some cases. He didn&#8217;t care about code standards for web pages, or SEO best practices. He wanted it how he wanted it, and since I &#8220;worked for him&#8221;, I was not allowed to question it. In his view, we had an employer/employee relationship (his words), and therefore I was at his beck and call. If I happened to respond to one of his emails at 6 in the morning, he would assume I was up and ready for work and 9 times out of 10, my phone would ring shortly thereafter. He had very little respect for my boundaries, which I clearly had not set well enough. Needless to say, it didn&#8217;t take long for me to grow pretty tired of being bossed around. I am self employed for a reason and I am not anyone&#8217;s employee. I began to think about my other clients&#8230; people that I&#8217;ve worked with for years and this has never happened. I realized that the majority of the people I really click with are very like-minded and are involved in some kind of agricultural business, which, of course, is the niche I have chosen for myself. I relate to people who are horse trainers and farmers. People who understand the rural, agricultural way of life, and most of them live the exact same lifestyle that I do. We are often most comfortable when we&#8217;re horseback, checking on cattle. Because these clients who fit my niche understand me and how I think, as is also true in the reverse, they trust me to do my job and they know that I have their best interests at heart. If I explain why a design is a certain way, or why their web page is laid out in a certain format, they trust me that this is the best solution for the application because I am the professional they hired to do what they do not know how to do themselves. Deciding who your ideal customer is is so critical to any successful business. Without it you cannot effectively target your marketing efforts so that you are reaching the people that you are best suited to work with, and the people who need you the most! Once you have made this decision and are attracting those ideal clients to you, stick with it! This doesn&#8217;t mean you can&#8217;t work clients who don&#8217;t fit your target (one of my all time favorite clients to work with is a relationship coach), just understand that if these relationships end, there is a reason. And sometimes you need to evaluate how successful that relationship will be before it even starts. The stress created by trying to please this client who I didn&#8217;t &#8220;get&#8221; and who clearly didn&#8217;t &#8220;get&#8221; me, was not worth the money I made. As with everything in life and business, we keep learning and hopefully we keep growing. To ignore the lessons that are thrown in front of us would be such a waste, so with that in mind I&#8217;m off to go find some like-minded, horseback-riding, cattle-breeding, farming type of individuals to do more business with! Have you taken the time yet to define your target market? Has this helped you grow your business? Please leave a comment below, I&#8217;d love to hear how this has helped you in your business. Or, if it hasn&#8217;t worked for you, I&#8217;d like to hear that as well.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.theresasheridan.com/why-you-should-stick-with-clients-who-fit-your-target-niche/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Responsive vs. Mobile Web Site Design</title>
		<link>http://www.theresasheridan.com/responsive-vs-mobile-web-design/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theresasheridan.com/responsive-vs-mobile-web-design/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:01:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Theresa</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Web Design]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theresasheridan.com/?p=4701</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Depending on the industry you&#8217;re in, mobile usage can vary among users. While it seems that everyone is accessing the internet with their smart phones these days, in some types of businesses, many users are still sitting at their desktop computers. This tends to be higher among agricultural businesses, however mobile usage is climbing rapidly in that field also. According to Microsoft Tag which provides barcodes, QR Codes, and other recognition technologies, by 2014 mobile usage will surpass desktop usage, so making sure that your site is mobile friendly is no longer an option. Check out this info graphic (below): So, with all of the different devices and computers out there, how will you make sure that your website will be viewed properly on all of them? You have two options: a true mobile website or a responsive site. &#8220;What&#8217;s the difference?&#8221;, you ask. In a nutshell, a responsive site determines what device is being used to access your website and stacks the content accordingly so it can be viewed by that device. A responsive site will, for the most part, leave your design intact, and use existing CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) code to reorganize the elements on your site. For example, if you have a main content area with a right sidebar, your main content area will appear on top, below your logo or header, and the sidebar content will be stacked directly below it. With a responsive site, you build one site and the content adapts to whatever device is trying to access it. Responsive sites tend to be better for SEO as well, as the URLs remain intact (read about mobile URLs below). Mobile web sites are completely different sites, which do require a separate URL, such as mobile.yourwebsite.com, for example. Mobile sites can still be tracked in your Google Analytics however, so you can see what your demographic is up to. Additionally, since they are separate from your main site, it is another site to maintain and keep updated, however mobile sites are usually a somewhat scaled down version  and don&#8217;t have as much content, so maintaining is not quite as laborious as it sounds. Mobile sites can provide links back to the desktop site, so users can still get just as much information as they need. Mobile sites tend to load faster (because of the scaled down graphics and content), which is important for mobile devices, since connection speeds on mobile devices can be slower. They are designed to give people the information they&#8217;re looking for quickly and easily, and tend to not focus on design and graphics. How do I know which type of mobile site I need? The answer to this lies in what type of business you are in, and who your customer is. If you&#8217;re an online retailer and your goal is to sell something quickly and easily, a true mobile site might be what you need. Why bother the visitor with unnecessary graphic and design elements, when that isn&#8217;t what they&#8217;re after? If your site is intended to provide information and encourage users to contact you, and you want them to see who you really are, a responsive site might be the answer for you. Since responsive sites maintain the majority of your design integrity, some planning is required when creating logos and headers so that they will resize appropriately and be viewable on smaller devices. Without this planning images may run off the screen and not be entirely viewable on smaller devices. Your budget can also be a consideration. Since a responsive site is the same website as your desktop site, only one site needs to be built and maintained. This doesn&#8217;t mean however, that there won&#8217;t be additional costs associated with a responsive site. With a true mobile site, not only is there a separate cost to build it but it will require some additional time to update, since it is a separate site. If you&#8217;re updating your site frequently, a responsive site would probably be a better alternative for you. What if I already have an existing website? While it is easier to create a responsive site while creating, or recreating, a website, any website can be converted to a different platform. If you&#8217;ve been thinking of revamping your website, take advantage of that and create a responsive site while you&#8217;re doing it. If you want to go with a true mobile version, your existing website will not be a factor, as that is a separate site and would probably only require some graphics modifications to make it work. If you&#8217;ve been thinking about going mobile, now is the time! Don&#8217;t miss another sale because your site won&#8217;t render well on a mobile device. People want what they want, when they want it, so be sure to give it to them and don&#8217;t send them off to your competitor who already has a mobile site.]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>How to Add Your Facebook Activity Feed to Your Website or Blog</title>
		<link>http://www.theresasheridan.com/how-to-add-your-facebook-activity-feed-to-your-website-or-blog/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theresasheridan.com/how-to-add-your-facebook-activity-feed-to-your-website-or-blog/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:56:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Theresa</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blogging]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tutorials]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Design]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wordpress]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theresasheridan.com/?p=4659</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With the crazy popularity of Facebook and social media in general, it&#8217;s a good idea to provide several different ways for your readers to connect with you. At the very least you should have social media icons on your website or blog, which are linked to your various social media pages. Another great avenue for showing your readers what you&#8217;re all about, is to post your Facebook feed directly on your website as well, either in a sidebar or footer widget. This gives people a quick glance into the types of posts they can expect from you, and it also gives them a way to like your Facebook page directly from your website. **Just a quick note, readers must be logged into Facebook to see the feed in action. Check out my video tutorial below showing you how to add your Facebook feed to your website! If you have any questions or comments regarding this tutorial, please ask away in the comments section below!]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.theresasheridan.com/how-to-add-your-facebook-activity-feed-to-your-website-or-blog/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Why You Should Care About Your Website&#8217;s Bounce Rate</title>
		<link>http://www.theresasheridan.com/why-you-should-care-about-your-websites-bounce-rate/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theresasheridan.com/why-you-should-care-about-your-websites-bounce-rate/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:19:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Theresa</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blogging]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Design]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wordpress]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theresasheridan.com/?p=4608</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If  you&#8217;ve been a website owner for any length of time at all, you&#8217;ve undoubtedly heard the term &#8220;bounce rate&#8221; come up a time or two. Bounce rate is a good metric to use to help you hone in on layout, design &#38; features of your site that will encourage people to click through to another page and ultimately follow your call to action. What exactly IS bounce rate? In a nutshell, bounce rate is the percentage of people that leave your site without clicking through to another page, regardless of what page they came in on. The higher the percentage, the more people that are &#8220;bouncing&#8221; away from your site without following your call to action, or moving on to another page. Why is bounce rate so important? Bounce rate is important for a couple of reasons. Firstly without that metric you have no idea what people are doing when they first land on your website. Are they taking one look at your home page, yawning and clicking away? Are they even coming to your site via your home page or a child page? Do you have enough information to pique their interest so they&#8217;ll follow the &#8220;flow&#8221; of your page and click through to the next item? Or do you have too much information, so they are overwhelmed upon landing on your page, let out a shriek and head to greener pastures? Is your content relevant to your visitor? If your bounce rate is high, it can generally indicate that your content is not relevant to those that are finding you, which would mean you need to spend some time concentrating on selecting the right keywords and further optimizing your site. Secondly, Google does take your bounce rate into consideration, among other factors, in determining how to rank your site. For this reason, it&#8217;s very important to spend some time making sure your bounce rate is where it should be. How do I know what my bounce rate should be? Can it be too low? Bounce rates can vary by industry and the type of website you have. If the main goal of your website is to monetize it and you have affiliate links or Google Adsense ads everywhere, obviously you want people to click on one of those links and leave your site. Therefore your bounce rate will naturally be higher. If you have a retail e-commerce site, clearly your goal it to get the visitor to buy from you, so your bounce rate should be lower, probably below 40% or so. I did run across an interesting problem with my own bounce rate where it all of the sudden dropped into single digits! I had decided to put forth a larger effort into more consistent and helpful articles on my blog and of course I attributed the drop to that effort. Unfortunately what I discovered was that I had mistakenly placed the Google Analytics code into the &#60;head&#62; of my website code AND I also had a Google Analytics plugin installed. Google only needs this code to be entered once, so this was giving me false numbers. If this is something you&#8217;re experiencing, be sure to check for this. How can I improve my bounce rate? Experiment with different content and layouts of your main landing page. While you may think it flows and makes perfect sense to you, if people are leaving without clicking further, there is something that is not compelling them to do so. Maybe your opt-in form is &#8220;below the fold&#8221;. Maybe the content on your page isn&#8217;t relevant to your keywords and when people land on your page, they didn&#8217;t find the information they thought would be there, so they leave. Keep your design clean and uncluttered so your visitor can easily determine what you expect them to do next, and keep the length of your posts and pages reasonable. No one wants to wade through a novel to find the information they&#8217;re looking for. Make your call to action visible. If there is a specific place you want to direct people to (and there should be), make that stand out with some contrasting color or design element. Make it pop, make it interesting, most of all make it easy to find. Make sure you have internal links in ALL your content, providing access to other areas of your site within your text. Simple menu links aren&#8217;t enough to really grab a reader, in many cases. If you&#8217;re using WordPress for your site, take advantage of the many plugins available to show related posts to your reader at the bottom of every page or post. Open external links in a new tab or window. This way if you&#8217;re linking outside of your website, the reader hasn&#8217;t actually left your site and you stand a much better chance of them returning and clicking through to another page. Make your navigation as user-friendly as possible. Again, this goes along with giving people access to the information they want quickly and easily. Don&#8217;t bore them with a lengthy flash intro page. Your menu items should be properly titled so they make sense and people will have an idea of what they will see when they get there. If people will be scrolling on the page, it is also important to add navigation to your footer area, so they don&#8217;t have to scroll back to the top to get to the next page. If your site is large, you may also want to include a search feature. Make sure your site is well optimized for faster page loading. Nothing is worse than waiting and waiting for a site to load because it&#8217;s not well optimized. Chances are people will leave and go to the next site, which will undoubtedly load much faster. Reduce image size for faster loading, and keep third-party services and widgets to a minimum. Don&#8217;t bombard your visitor with too many options. If you&#8217;ve ever worked with a marketing professional, you&#8217;ve heard]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>How to Set Up an RSS Driven Email Campaign in MailChimp</title>
		<link>http://www.theresasheridan.com/how-to-set-up-an-rss-driven-email-campaign-in-mailchimp/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theresasheridan.com/how-to-set-up-an-rss-driven-email-campaign-in-mailchimp/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2013 18:03:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Theresa</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blogging]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Entrepreneurs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Newsletters]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theresasheridan.com/?p=4586</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If you&#8217;re like me, coming up with good content for your email marketing and your blog is an ongoing challenge. Case in point, I haven&#8217;t written a new blog post for about a month now, nor have I sent an email newsletter, with the exception of announcing my web and graphic design specials that I&#8217;m offering for the New Year. Sometimes the issue is just finding the time, others it&#8217;s coming up with really good content that people will find useful and informative. Anytime you can consolidate your efforts in this area, you are saving precious time, yet still reaching your audience with your unique message. To this end, I created an RSS (Really Simply Syndication) driven Email campaign in MailChimp, so that my blog posts will automatically go out to my newsletter subscribers. This way, if I don&#8217;t create an actual monthly newsletter, I&#8217;m still keeping in touch with my readers. I&#8217;ve set this up to run once a week, only if there are new blog posts generated within that week. Here&#8217;s how it works: Begin by making sure you have an RSS feed setup (I use Feedburner). Feedburner is a free service provided by Google that syndicates your blog posts to a group of people that have subscribed to your feed. (Click here for full instructions on how to set up an RSS feed on your website.) Create your feed by typing your feed address into the box and click Next. Your feed URL is most often your main URL followed by /feed. Feedburner will generate your new feed URL for your Feedburner feed automatically. You can then customize your feed within Feedburner, however this blog post will not go into that detail. Log in to your MailChimp account, or create one if you haven&#8217;t already. If you&#8217;re new to MailChimp, spend some time looking around, create your list (so that you can add names to it) and create your Email newsletter template. If you need help with this, I offer Email Marketing Packages which provide you with a professionally designed header graphic and template, using your branding so you are immediately recognizable. Once all your company information is complete and you&#8217;ve created your first list, it&#8217;s time to create your RSS campaign. From your Dashboard, click the big orange Create Campaign button in the upper left corner. From the drop down menu, select RSS-Driven Campaign. Add your Feedburner feed address into the box as shown and select how often you wish to send your campaign. On the next screen, you will be asked which list should be used to send this campaign to. Select your list and click Next. Provide your campaign information. The campaign uses merge tags to pull data from your feed as shown below. You can create a static subject that will be used in every email, or you can pull the title and the date from the most recent post, as shown. You can also pull the first name of the recipient to personalize the email even more. For a detailed list of all the merge tags available, click here. The next step is to design your campaign. Here you can use select a template that you&#8217;ve already created or use one of MailChimp&#8217;s predesigned templates. I highly recommend customizing your template with your own branding. Add a greeting before the name merge tag and include a short paragraph explaining that this is your weekly blog update, make sure the feed merge tag is in the correct place and click Next. Note that the posts will be inserted as you have them set up in your Feedburner account. So, if you have it set up to show the feed as excerpts with links to the full post, that is how it will be pulled into your email campaign. Once the design is complete, you will be taken through the Plain Text set-up, which is pulled from the content of your design, and then you&#8217;ll be prompted to start your campaign. It won&#8217;t send until your scheduled date and time unless you select the option to Send Now &#38; Start. You can also preview and test your campaign in this screen. Testing involves sending yourself a copy of the email so you can make sure that everything is displaying properly. I hope this helps you stay in touch with your audience a bit more effectively. If you find this post useful, please share with your friends! If you have questions or comments, please leave them in the comments section and I&#8217;ll be happy to address them.]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Web Design Wednesday &#8211; How to Make an Image Map for your Website</title>
		<link>http://www.theresasheridan.com/web-design-wednesday-how-to-make-an-image-map-for-your-website/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theresasheridan.com/web-design-wednesday-how-to-make-an-image-map-for-your-website/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:00:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Theresa</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tutorials]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Design]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theresasheridan.com/?p=4478</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Sometimes it&#8217;s necessary to link one image to several different URLs, but obviously this can&#8217;t be done by creating normal hyperlinks, since we can only link to one image that way. That&#8217;s when we would create an &#8220;image map&#8221;. An image map is just one image that has several clickable areas that link to various other URLs. Image maps are created using coordinates, located within the image. For example, if your image is 500px x 300px, any spot located within that image will have x and y coordinates, similar to longitude and latitude. Image maps can be created very easily using Photoshop or Dreamweaver, but if you don&#8217;t have these costly programs, they can also be done manually with HTML by creating &#8220;hot spots&#8221; within the image that then link to the desired URL. Hot spots can be defined in 3 different shapes; rectangular, polygon and circle. You&#8217;ll use the coordinates in these shapes to determine your linkable area. You will need the top left and bottom right X and Y coordinates for rectangular hot spots; the X and Y coordinates of the circle&#8217;s center and the radius for a circle hot spot;  and the X and Y coordinates for each point of your polygon for a polygon hot spot. The coordinates for the polygon must be in sequential order to work properly. The X co-ordinates are the number of pixels from the left border of the image; the Y co-ordinates are the number of pixels from the top border of the image. The simplest method for obtaining these coordinates is by opening the image in Paint, which comes with every Microsoft Windows installation. Above you can see that my mouse is located at the upper left corner of the first rectangular image. In the lower left of the window are the X,Y coordinates for this point. Obtain all your coordinates for each graphic within the image. For the circle determine both the X and Y coordinates for the center, as well as the length of the radius, in pixels. Remember that radius is the distance from the center point to the edge of the circle. Now for the HTML To create the HTML for the image map, we must first define the source of the image. Each map must have a unique name, so that the image can be attributed to the correct map, should you have more than one on your site. &#60;img src=&#8221;/images/media-map.jpg&#8221; width=&#8221;396&#8243; height=&#8221;95&#8243; usemap=&#8221;#Map&#8221; /&#62; You will then add your opening map tag, along with the identifying name: &#60;map name=&#8221;Map&#8221;&#62; And then follow with the code for the shapes and coordinates, which define the area to be linked: &#60;area shape=&#8221;rect&#8221; coords=&#8221;19,15,132,75&#8243; href=&#8221;http://www.abc.com&#8221;&#62; &#60;area shape=&#8221;poly&#8221; coords=&#8221;152,70,153,47,167,22,194,17,219,27,225,49,224,70,153,70&#8243; href=&#8221;http://www.nbc.com&#8221;&#62; &#60;area shape=&#8221;rect&#8221; coords=&#8221;248,20,302,69&#8243; href=&#8221;http://www.cbs.com&#8221;&#62; &#60;area shape=&#8221;circle&#8221; coords=&#8221;353,40,22&#8243; href=&#8221;http://www.lifetime.com&#8221;&#62; Every HTML opening tag needs a closing tag, so don&#8217;t forget this important element: &#60;/map&#62; You can see that the rectangular shape has four coordinates &#8211; the X,Y for the top left and the bottom right, the polygon shape has 2 coordinates for each point in the polygon and the circle has 3 coordinates &#8211; the X,Y for the center point and the radius of the circle. Here is a graphic highlighting the shapes of the hot spots. The final step is to insert the code into your page, where you want the image map to display. If you&#8217;re linking to external sites, such as in this example, you might consider adding the following code after the link, so that the link will open in a new browser window or tab, leaving your website open for the viewer to return to easily. target=&#8221;_blank&#8221; This code would be added to the end of the &#60;area&#62; tag, following the href, like so: &#60;area shape=&#8221;rect&#8221; coords=&#8221;19,15,132,75&#8243; href=&#8221;http://www.abc.com&#8221; target=&#8221;_blank&#8221;&#62; It&#8217;s always a good idea to keep users on your site, as opposed to taking them away without providing them an easy way to get back.]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
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		<title>My 6 Best Latest &amp; Greatest Tips &amp; Tricks for your Website or Blog</title>
		<link>http://www.theresasheridan.com/my-6-best-latest-greatest-tips-tricks-for-your-website-or-blog/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theresasheridan.com/my-6-best-latest-greatest-tips-tricks-for-your-website-or-blog/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Nov 2012 17:00:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Theresa</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blogging]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Design]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wordpress]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theresasheridan.com/?p=4456</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Just in case  you hadn&#8217;t noticed yet, I&#8217;ve rearranged by website, again. I kind of have this thing that I have to update it about once a year so that I can utilize all the great stuff I keep learning. I was the same way when I was a hair stylist back in the 80&#8242;s&#8230;.I never had the same hair style for longer than about 6 months. Okay, so I&#8217;m easily bored. Since I was so busy with the rearranging, I haven&#8217;t posted in a couple of weeks either, and while I was so buy with the rearranging, I discovered some great new things that I wanted to pass along to all of you. Okay, maybe they&#8217;re not so new to the world, but they&#8217;re new to me, and I think you&#8217;ll really like them, too! Password protect a page in your WordPress site. Since I have some downloadable products that I sell as part of my SEO e-book, I needed a way to password protect the page these products are listed on. My previous site had been built with Dreamweaver (even though the blog portion was always a WordPress blog), and previously I had password protected a folder which contained the page the products were listed on, along with the products themselves. Since I wanted to keep all the pages within WordPress, and you can&#8217;t have a WordPress page within a folder, I needed to protect just the individual page.You can do this in the Publish box, which is directly to the right of the text editor box, as you&#8217;re adding a new page or post. Click the Edit link next to Visibility: Public, then select the radio button for Password protected. You will then be prompted to enter the password and you can click OK. Super easy! WordPress Find and Replace Plugin. Since I created my new site in a temporary folder, when I finally moved the site, there were many links and pathways left with the folder name in them. Rather than manually go through each page and post, this plugin will allow you to search for a certain string, then replace it with the correct text. For example, if a link on a page was written as http://www.theresasheridan.com/newsite/web-design, I could search for the string &#8220;http://www.theresasheridan.com/newsite&#8221;, then simply replace that text with &#8220;http://www.theresasheridan.com/&#8221; and the link would now be correct. While I still had a few stragglers, it was much easier to fix a few, than hundreds. WordPress Broken Link Checker Plugin. What about all the other links that might be broken on your site? This plugin will find any broken link on your site and alert you of it, at intervals set by you. This allowed me to find hundreds of broken links in old comments, not to mention the remaining few broken links I had due to the site move. They can easily be fixed or you can delete the source, if necessary. WordPress Display Widgets Plugin. While I&#8217;ve known about this plugin for awhile, I still find it really handy, so I thought it was worth mentioning. This plugin allows you to display or hide any widget on any page. So if you have a widget that you want on the home page, but not on subsequent pages, you can set it to show only on the home page. This is particularly handy for themes where you can&#8217;t create multiple page layouts, but you just don&#8217;t want every widget on every page. SEO Facebook Comments Plugin for WordPress. So cool, I just figured out how to do this! Install the plugin, create your app in Facebook, then voila! people can comment on your blog using their Facebook profile. Anytime someone comments, the comment will appear on their wall, so all their friends will see. This is just another great way that Facebook can help increase awareness of your site and drive traffic to it. You can select the option to allow WordPress commenting still, so that people who don&#8217;t use Facebook can still comment. Check out my comments below and feel free to leave a comment. I love connecting with people on Facebook! Cool CSS Button Generator. Sometimes buttons can be tricky. While you can use an image, it can be much easier to set up custom CSS so that all the buttons on your site are consistent, without having to insert image code for each one. Plus, if you use different text on each of your buttons, this means one button for every form. This tool allows you to set the various colors of your buttons, set the size, and then generates all the CSS code that you need. Assign the button the proper class, if necessary, and it&#8217;s done. Cool buttons without creating images. Check out my button at the bottom of this page, below the WordPress comments field. Questions or comments? Please leave them below and I&#8217;ll do my best to answer them for you!]]></description>
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		<title>Retro 101: Vintage-Inspired Graphic Design</title>
		<link>http://www.theresasheridan.com/retro-101-vintage-inspired-graphic-design/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theresasheridan.com/retro-101-vintage-inspired-graphic-design/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Oct 2012 12:57:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Theresa</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Graphic Design]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Design]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theresasheridan.com/blog/?p=3669</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Nothing instills confidence in consumers as quickly as the timeless feel of retro graphic design. Immediately conveying a sense of déjà vu and familiarity with the brand being advertised, vintage-looking marketing materials suggest to potential customers that the company has been in business for ages and is, therefore, trustworthy. In today’s fast-paced world of blinking, computer-rendered, flashy graphics, a well-designed retro piece can really stand out. Color Scheme One of the first things to consider in retro design is color scheme. The marketing departments of yesteryear did not have four-color laser printers and affordable color printing services at their disposals, so full-color pieces were rare. The colors you choose for your retro-inspired design will depend on which era you’d like your finished product to evoke. To hearken back to the oldest of olden days, black-and-white or black-and-sepia-toned designs work well. More modern decades have come to have specific color schemes associated with them in Western culture. For example, anything in eye-popping fluorescent screams of the eighties; the seventies were generally painted with more muted, earthy tones. Remember these colors will need to transcend all media through which the company advertises—print, television, Internet—and choose accordingly. Font Selection Another important element of the design is its typeface. Remember that even just a few short decades ago, font choices were limited. Today’s designers have a virtually infinite number of possibilities to choose from and the ability to create custom fonts at will on their own laptop computers. To give your designs a retro feel, consider using a font that imitates old-fashioned block printing, the look of a typewritten manuscript, or even handwritten lettering. Keep the design clean and simple by choosing just one or two basic fonts for the piece. Graphics Finally, be sure the graphics you select compliment the retro style of your piece. Digital cameras and Photoshop are relatively new technologies. Older advertisements employed hand-drawn images or simple geometric shapes. This doesn’t mean you can’t avail yourself of modern software. It’s quite exciting, actually, to be able to take a digital image of your product and give it a vintage feel with some creative photo editing. Also think about borders and call-outs that aren’t used much anymore but that were staples of old-time print ads. Study older pieces of advertising for inspiration—whatever jumps out at you as a textbook example of “bad” or “outdated” design in the modern era might be just the ticket to creating an eye-catching, vintage-inspired look. Incorporating retro design elements into modern graphic design gives your work a timeless appeal. Whether you’re looking to create a piece that reflects those oh-so-often-reminisced-about Days of Yore or calls to mind the flashy, flapper-esque style of the 1920s, a few well-thought-out design choices in terms of color schemes, font selection and graphics placement can establish trust with potential customers by playing on their senses of nostalgia and momentarily transporting them to a simpler era. Kerstin has a strong passion in graphic design. In between pinning her favorite graphics on Pinterest, she works in a promotional printing company based in Sydney. Kerstin knows back to front of her conference clients’ needs ranging from large format printing to printing personalized gift for the conference guests.]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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		<title>9 Hot Tips for Maximizing Your E-Newsletters So People Will Actually Read Them</title>
		<link>http://www.theresasheridan.com/9-hot-tips-for-maximizing-your-e-newsletters/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theresasheridan.com/9-hot-tips-for-maximizing-your-e-newsletters/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Oct 2012 15:10:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Theresa</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Entrepreneurs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Newsletters]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theresasheridan.com/blog/?p=3657</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The popularity of email newsletters continues to grow, and if you aren&#8217;t yet taking advantage of this incredibly easy, quick and often free way to keep in touch with your clients, I am here to tell you, it&#8217;s time! Print newsletters just aren&#8217;t cutting it any longer. Email newsletters can be delivered to anyone, around the world, with just one click, at a fraction of the cost &#8211; yes, even free &#8211; over print newsletters. In a recent post, I talked about what the best opt-in form placement is, and to follow up on that post, today we&#8217;ll talk a bit about how to make your newsletter worth reading. Just because you send it, doesn&#8217;t mean it will get read, and there are steps you can take to help improve the odds here. There are numerous studies that show that email newsletters can build your following, create loyalty among your readers, establish you as an expert in your field, increase revenue and grow your business. There really is no good reason to not be utilizing this technology to it&#8217;s fullest advantage. With that in mind, I have 7 pretty hot tips for you, on how to get the most out of your newsletter, so that it will actually be opened up and read. Use a catchy title to help improve your open rate. If your title is boring, many people won&#8217;t even bother opening your newsletter to see the amazing content that your awesome self has created, so put some thought into this. Find some good power words to jazz it up. My friend Tammi Metzler of the Write Associate has a list of over 100 of them, so I&#8217;d recommend connecting with her to get your hands on this list. Your newsletter should be an extension of your website in many ways. Most email newsletters these days are created with HTML, so you can take full advantage of colors, images and CSS styles to make it really pop.  Match your branding as closely as possible using background colors and a professionally designed header to match your website&#8217;s header, if possible. If people recognize it, they&#8217;re more apt to read it, and you come across much more professionally, than if you used a cookie-cutter template. Speaking of cookie cutter templates&#8230;.. Here I will make a plug for my very favorite email newsletter website, MailChimp. That Chimp rocks. The user interface is very easy to figure out, they offer a variety of ready-made templates that can easily be customized to suit your needs, and you can also create a completely custom template, if you know HTML and CSS. Or, you can a hire a designer to help you out here, if you really want to go all out. We all need to set ourselves apart from the competition somehow, and one way we can do it is by sticking to our branding. How would it look if your email newsletter looks just like the newsletter that another businesses uses, because you didn&#8217;t brand your template? It will look more than a little unprofessional, so let the other guy look unprofessional, not you. The other thing about MailChimp that sets them apart from the rest (who shall remain nameless), besides their easy-to-use program, is the fact that they are completely FREE for a list of up to 2000 names and 12,000 emails per month. Yes, you read that correctly, so do yourself (and your customers) a favor and check them out. Use &#60;h&#62; tags for section headers, for easier readability. The &#60;h&#62; tags, or header tags, are created by default in MailChimp, but you can customize them to suit your color scheme, and adjust the sizing and font style as needed for your design. Separating the sections of your newsletter in this fashion will make it easier for your reader to assimilate the information and browse through it more efficiently, not to mention make the content look more appetizing. Use images throughout your content for even more interest and texture. Who wants to read paragraphs of boring 11 point text? It can be a little overwhelming and many people just don&#8217;t have the time, or they won&#8217;t take the time because it doesn&#8217;t look interesting enough. Using photos and graphics throughout your newsletter will make it that much more interesting and easier to read. Don&#8217;t leave out this important step. There are many places online to get free and royalty free stock photos&#8230;&#8230;no, you can&#8217;t just go grab whatever you want and use it! I have a list of a few on the Resources page of my website, and my favorite place to purchase stock images is 123rf.com. Personalize the &#8220;To&#8221; field in your newsletter with the recipients first name. MailChimp makes this super easy. This is an option when setting up your campaign. This will take the first name of the recipient from the database where it&#8217;s stored when people sign up for your newsletters, and pop it in your newsletter, as if you were personally addressing it just to them! This adds a nice personal touch and many people will ask just how you did that! Don&#8217;t forget a call to action! This step is often left out, but it&#8217;s important to include. While our newsletters are meant to keep communication open with our clients and readers, there&#8217;s no harm in letting them know what you have to offer them. Your call to action, doesn&#8217;t need to be a sales pitch. Maybe you have a great new free download that they might find helpful? Maybe you&#8217;d like to send them on to another article on your blog. Or maybe you are just launching the latest and greatest product that would really help them. Maybe you can even just recommend that they forward your newsletter to a friend. Whatever it might be, be sure to include it! Don&#8217;t forget the mandatory unsubscribe link, too. Most email marketing websites, such as MailChimp, include this by default on all their templates, but it]]></description>
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		<title>What do you do when the internet goes down?</title>
		<link>http://www.theresasheridan.com/what-do-you-do-when-the-internet-goes-down/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theresasheridan.com/what-do-you-do-when-the-internet-goes-down/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Oct 2012 15:00:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Theresa</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Cowgirl Confessions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freelance]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theresasheridan.com/blog/?p=3648</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If you&#8217;re anything at all like me, you start going into withdrawals&#8230;..quickly. I&#8217;ll admit it, I&#8217;m addicted. Not only is my livelihood completely dependent on an internet connection, but it seems so is the rest of my life. I woke up one morning last week, around 5am, like I always do. My routine is such that I just wake up at o&#8217;dark thirty, make coffee and immediately get on my computer. I need to see what emails I have received that could forever alter the course of my life, naturally. My brain tends to function better at this time of the day anyway, and I get quite a bit accomplished &#8211; client work, bookkeeping, blog posts, etc. By 10 am, I&#8217;ve done a half day&#8217;s work and the rest of my day just goes much more smoothly, when I don&#8217;t have to rush through things, especially because my brain starts to give out at about 2pm, and I have to resort to more menial tasks, like mucking out the horse trailer or taking out the garbage. I digress&#8230;..I woke up one morning last week, around 5am, turned on my computer and what do I see? Of course, my immediate reaction is And in my head, all I hear is &#8220;cha-ching&#8221;, the sound of lost dollars going down the drain. That typically is not a great start to a web designer&#8217;s day. Keep in mind it&#8217;s 5 am, and I use a local small wireless company as my ISP,  so I can&#8217;t exactly call and drill them about what happened to my internet connection. I would have to wait a couple of hours for that. Might as well have been a couple of weeks, in my opinion. After the initial panic wears off, my brain can once again function more clearly. Even though I am most definitely NOT happy about being out of work for who-knows-how-long, I manage to pull myself together enough to come up with ways to still be semi-productive. Of course I&#8217;m nowhere near this cute &#38; well put-together when I&#8217;m cleaning the bathroom, mind you. Once I tear through the bathrooms like the Tazmanian Devil, I decide to tackle the 1/2&#8243; thick dust that accumulates on my furniture in just under 4 hours. I live in the country and have horses on both sides of my little house, so when I open the windows at night, all the dust that 9 horses can kick up floats right into my living room and moves in. Okay, it&#8217;s not that bad really, it just seems like it when I have to clean it. All this manual labor is wreaking havoc on my blood sugar. I&#8217;d rather muck stalls than clean house, any day of the week. If only I could just live in the barn, then I wouldn&#8217;t have to worry about trivial things like dust. Finally, after what seems like years, but in reality was only about two hours, the internet returns and my neurosis subsides. The day is not lost after all, and BONUS! I have clean bathrooms. Does losing the internet put you into as much of a panic as it does me? What do you do when your internet goes down?]]></description>
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