Promote your website using Social Media

Today’s article is being written for two reason. First, if you need a business card, here’s a few of the best business cards that you can use to inspire your design work. Second, if you own a blog or a website then you should be able to learn from the creativity seen below. You should find inspiration from the typography, the textures, the colors, the layouts, etc.

Browse through the cards below and then be sure to stop by the comments section and share with me which card was your favorite and more importantly share with me how this can fuel your creative spark to do more in your own ventures.

Each day I find myself becoming more convinced that bloggers need to be more creative. Too many people are jumping in and following what they see everyone else doing but they’re failing to really take their online experiences to the highest possible levels.

They’re…excuse me…you’re failing because you refuse to be creative.

I’m constantly asking myself questions like these, “How can I be more creative at Site Sketch 101? How can I do something that nobody else is doing? How can I make people’s eyes really light up when they visit the site?”

As I journey along on my never-ending quest to find the answers to these questions, I find that I’m able to be the most creative when I surround myself with creativity. This is why I’m constantly looking at website designs, other bloggers, advertisements, shopping malls and more.

People sometimes ask me why I post these roundups of beautiful websites or of influential bloggers but I hope that it’s now crystal clear. I want you to view the creativity that inspires me and I want you to get inspired.

I want to fuel the creative nature inside of you. I want you to want to develop your skills to write more creatively, to engage more effectively, to design more beautifully, and to profit more effectively.

Click on any of the images below and you’ll be taken to a collection of creative resources: print advertisements, hand-drawn websites, beautiful websites, beautiful blogs, patriotic photography, and influential bloggers.

Creativity in Print Advertisements

Creativity in Hand-Drawn Websites

Creativity in Beautiful Websites

Creativity in Beautiful Blogs

Creativity in Patriotic Photography

Creativity from other Successful Bloggers

This is only a glimpse at the number of resources that I draw creative inspiration from. Where do look to ignite your creative spark?

Blogging has a lot of benefits. It can help you meet new people, help you to improve your skills and it can even help you to make money online. Influence can be defined as the effect of one thing or person on another.

As a blogger, your influence is not necessarily measured by the size of your audience but by the number of people you can influence within that audience. This post will be talking about 5 ways by which you can become a more influential blogger.

Be Unique

One thing that can be noticed among influential bloggers is that they are unique. They are different from the rest and they play to their strengths. There is no point in trying to be like another person. One of the key principles of influence is being yourself.

You should have your own way of doing things and you should perfect your own form of doing things instead of trying to imitate another person. Work towards inspiring another person imitate you.

The level of your influence will be measured by how many people you could affect so work towards being yourself and others will want to be you.

Create Great Content

Your work and content is what will influence others. Your content is the foundation of your influence and if you fail at this, you have failed at the rest.

It is very important to write powerful, helpful content. You shouldn’t just write anything but you should write about subjects which can truly change the state of another person. You should write content that will challenge others to take action.

As an aspiring influencer, you should be writing timeless content that will be relevant in years to come. What is the value of your influence if it starts and ends today or even quicker? You should be able to write content that will influence lives in years to come – influence is not only about now, it is about the future.

Connect and Build Your Network

Since you cannot influence those you cannot see and one of the major desires of an influential person is to be able to influence more and more people, being social is inevitable.

Influence deals with people and it deals with connecting with people on a large scale. There are many social networks on the internet now and I can’t imagine how someone who wants to be an influential blogger is not building their presence in any of these networks. Your people are there in large numbers so go after them. Be social.

Develop Your Authority

You might want to ask yourself, “Am I worth listening to?” If you are not worth listening to or you are too subjective, people might not care to listen to you. But if you write with authority and confidence people will see you as someone who knows what he is saying.

The difference between an influential blogger and one who is not is that people take the advice of an influential blogger into practice while they don’t care about the fellow who does not have influence.

If you are making yourself look like someone that should not be listened to then you are destroying the foundation of being an influential blogger.

Create and Innovate

Another great characteristic of influential bloggers is that they are creative. As an influential blogger you should be an innovator and you should always be developing new things and bold ideas.

Since people are looking up to you, they are ready to learn from you. They are ready to do what they see you do you should always be coming up with new things.

When you start blogging, there is so much that you will find you did not account for. You have to decide on the right hosting method and what domain fits your personality.

I can tell you right now that it is wise to host your blog on your own. Bluehost can take care of those needs for you at a reasonable price, and you will have full control over your blog unlike in a free-hosted solution like Blogger.

Alas, this is not a how to start a blog article. So let me get straight to it. As a blog virgin, you have some serious work ahead of you. But your biggest obstacle is how you decide to manage it.

The Beginner’s Road to Blog Comments

My issue is that I started my blog 4 months ago, and I have 250 articles as of today. The problem is that I should have focused more on the marketing aspect because I only have 800 comments.

The good thing is that I caught on and now my comment count is rising on a daily basis, even on older articles. If I focused more on commenting on other blogs, I could have thousands of comments right now.

I am a regular guest poster on Smart Bloggerz and Rob’s Web Tips nowadays, and I see that their post count is way below their comment count. This means that they went the proper route and got readers active within their community which add substance to their blog. The same goes here at Site Sketch 101 because of reader loyalty.

My lack of blog commenting made it inconvenient for my regular readers now because I often hear from them that I put out so much content that it takes most of their days just to catch up on everything I have written. Some of them have spent so many hours catching up that they know more about me than I do!

Understanding Your Niche

Another issue I had was that I did not choose my niche from the beginning. I created my blog to establish myself as an author and promote a new ebook I had developed.

Not long after, I made my ebook available for free as a part of my newsletter subscription and I now had my niche. That niche was to teach others how to market and make money from their blogs. I make it a daily mission to tell others what not to do because I was an expert on that by that time.

Choosing a niche is very important. Once you lock in your niche, you can focus on promoting that niche rather than just going out there willy-nilly. We learn from out mistakes, but my readers will never have to learn from those mistakes because I lay it out for them. In hindsight, I wish I was able to realize what topic I loved to write about because that would have enabled me to focus on valuable content for both my readers, and the search engines.

If you did not choose your niche from the start, don’t get all upset because there is a positive side. I have seen some of my off-topic articles receive a huge amount of search engine traffic because someone was looking for the information that I put out there.

It is important right now to really think hard about what you love so you can write often about it. If you are in this for the money and you have a strong topic that you love to write about, you will totally forget about the money and just want to express yourself. Once you do that, the money comes fairly easily.

That’s what I did, and I got calls out of the blue from advertisers. I also got affiliate sales from articles I didn’t realize that I posted in-text links on. I chose my niche, and I caught my fish.

Is something fishy on your blog?

One of the most important things that you can do to multiply the effectiveness of your content is to provide a visually impressive experience with it. Of course, you’ll want to use a theme on your blog that makes it fun to view your site and easy to enjoy your content but you’ll also want to illustrate your articles with lively, vivid images that really grab the attention of your visitors.

Today I want to draw your attention to one of my favorite styles of photography. It’s called HDR, or high dynamic range. In order to create an HDR photo, the photographer takes three images almost simultaneously. One image will be very light, one will be very dark, and the third will be normal. The light one will be able to see all of the texture and details in the dark corners and shadows and the dark image will see all the details in the light areas.

In Photoshop, the images are then merged back together to create one single photo that is now characterized by amazing detail and beautiful colors. The result of this process is seen below in the 15 images that I’ve gathered in this showcase. If you like these image then be sure to swing by the Creative Commons Gallery over at Flickr and attach the letter HDR to whatever you’re searching for.

If you’re interested in creating artwork like this, it’s incredibly easy with the latest release of Photoshop. Open your photo in Photoshop CS5. From the top menu select image –> adjustments –> HDR Toning.

I prefer to change the preset to surrealistic high contrast and then I begin adjusting from there but you can select whichever styles you prefer.

These, of course, aren’t true HDR photos because we will only be making them from one photo rather than the 3 or more than true HDR uses but you’ll be surprised how impressive Photoshop CS5 can make your images in just a few seconds of tinkering with them.