Instragram is a great free photo sharing service that works with Apple iOS and Android devices. It allows you to take photos that are reminiscent of Polaroid pictures with some unique lighting effect. You can share photos with friends on Instagram and post them to other social media sites. They boast having over 15 million users and with its recent acquisition by Facebook, it’s expected those numbers will continue to grow.

The app is demonstrated below using an iPhone which is the same as an iPod Touch.

Step 1: Download the App from your App store

Search for “Instagram” in the Apple or Android store and download it.

Step 2: Open Your App and Sign Up

When you first open the app, you’ll be invited to sign up for an account. Click “Okay” and then you can either sign up for an account or if you already have one, you can choose the “Login” option at the bottom of the screen.

To create your account, you need to add your email address, choose a username and add a password. You can also add your phone number and upload a picture of yourself. Just choose a photo from your device or take a new picture if you prefer. Click “Done” at the top right when you’re finished.

Step 2: Push Notifications or Not?

At this point, the app will ask you if you want push notifications. This means you’ll be notified whenever someone adds you as a friend, comments or likes one of your photos.

If you choose “OK” and then later want to turn it off or modify the specific settings, it’s easy to do. Just click the icon on the bottom right of the app that looks like this:

Then select “Edit Profile”.

At the bottom of this screen, you’ll see “Push Notifications”

Here you can choose which notifications you receive and who can send them to you.

Step 3: Find and Add Friends

Now you’ll be invited to find your friends and add them on Instagram.

You can search the contacts and your device and invite them personally. You can also see which of your Facebook and Twitter friends are on Instagram and start following them. And finally, you can simply search for someone to see if they are on Instagram.

Adding friends is optional and you can skip this for now, if you prefer. Instagram allows you to post your photos to Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, so you can come back and grow your friends list later if you’d rather.

Click “Next” in the top right corner when you’re done adding friends or if you want to skip this step.

If you’re not sure who to follow, you can select some people from Instagram’s popular user list:

Step 4: Start Taking Pictures

Now comes the fun part, taking and sharing pictures. You can do this by choosing the little camera icon at the bottom of the screen.

You can start taking photos as you normally would with your device or you can choose photos already on your device. To work with a photo on your device, click the photo icon on the bottom left of the screen that looks like this:

In our example, we’ve taken a photo and are going to work with that. When you take your picture, you’ll see you have a number of different lighting options. Here’s a screenshot below of most of those options.

Choose whichever one you’d like and you can click the green checkbox when you’re done. The app will save the picture onto your camera.

You can also add or remove the frame on your picture if you prefer by clicking the frame icon at the top left of the app screen.

You can also create a blurred effect with the drop icon at the top as well.

When you tap on the drop icon, you’ll see options on how the blur will appear on the photo. The round blur has been chosen below.

Now you can also add a caption to your photo and add your location, if you’d like.

Step 5: Photo Sharing

As mentioned earlier, you can share your photos on social media as well, but you need to configure your settings and give the Instagram app permission to do that.

Once you’ve configured the sites you want, you need to click the green “Share” button to send the photo to the sites you want.

We’re choosing to share on Facebook. Once we click “Share”, we add a description and then click the blue check mark to send it to Facebook.

The picture is then automatically added to Facebook, where your friends there can comment, like and share your photo too.

Step 6: Interacting on Instagram

Instagram also has useful interaction capabilities and there are always great photos to look at. You always have the option to “Like”, comment on or Tweet a photo that you see.

At the bottom of each photo, you’ll see “Like” and “Comment”. Just tap the like and it will show that you liked this photo. You can also go back and see all your likes later, so it’s like making a little collection of photos for yourself.

Commenting is pretty straightforward too. Just click the “Comment” icon as shown above. Then leave your message:

You’ll also notice another icon to the right of the comment option that looks like this:

This allows you to flag any inappropriate photo or Tweet it on Twitter.

Instagram is a fun tool for sharing your photos and helps you create some very attractive photos with your device, even if you’re not a great photographer. Get on and start sharing!

• Visit Instagram Here

Sites that let you view and use Instagram on the web:

• Webstagram

• Extragram

• Ink361

You may have noticed that in the past few weeks, you started receiving digest-type emails from Twitter and Pinterest. While these emails may contain some information that is useful to you, they may have come as a surprise. This guide shows you how to to opt out of these emails if you wish to.

Twitter

On May 14, 2012, Twitter announced that they would be sending out weekly email digests that claim to share “the most relevant Tweets and stories shared by the people you’re connected to on Twitter.”

The digest also includes what they call, “also features the most engaging Tweets seen by the people you follow, even if you don’t follow those who wrote them.” You can click through on these and see the details of who re-tweeted or Favorited those tweets.

If you want to opt out of these emails, simply go to your notification settings. At the bottom of this page, you’ll see the settings for “Updates.” The weekly digest is the bottom option. Uncheck that box if you don’t want to receive them.

Don’t forget to click “Save Changes” when you’re done.

Pinterest

Late in May 2012, Pinterest began sending out weekly emails that include:

• Your Weekly Stats: How many people started following you and who they are.
• Popular Boards: These appear to be boards that are popular amongst Pinterest in general and seemingly related to the interests you’ve indicated.
• Pins You’ll Love: These appear to be popular pins from people that you follow.

If you don’t want to receive these emails, you can find a link at the bottom of the email to change your preferences. Or go to “Settings”:

Choose “Change Email Settings”:

There, you can turn the digest email settings to “Off”:

Don’t forget to click “Save Settings” when you’re done.

Now you can cut down on the emails you get from Twitter and Pinterest:)

Thank you for reading!

Scott

One of the more perplexing problems for the social network, Pinterest, is attributing images to their source. To help in this regard, Pinterest has announced improved and automated attribution for Flickr. They also noted on their blog, that they are rolling out similar features with Behance, Vimeo and YouTube.

How Flickr Attribution Works

If you go to Flickr and do a search for “cute kittens” for example, and then you use your Pin It bookmarklet to choose an image to pin, a few things happen.

First, Pinterest will show you which images cannot be pinned because their creators have chosen not to allow sharing on Pinterest (we’ve blurred the image that can’t be pinned).

When you choose an image that can be pinned, Pinterest will automatically include a pin link that shows the image as coming from the link you found it at.

In this case, because attempted to pin from a search results page, the pin is linked to the search page at:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=cute+kittens&f=hp#

Instead of it’s actual page at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24415376@N06/2313403012/

A description of the pin is also automatically added that includes the photo’s description, the creator’s Flickr username and it’s source (Flickr). This information can be edited or deleted, allowing you to create your own description.

However, this is simply the pin’s link and description. The actual attribution statement appears below your pin and you cannot edit the attribution statement at all. In this case, you can see the attribution statement beside the red arrow:

The “Cute Kitten in Pocket” links to the photo’s actual location:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24415376@N06/2313403012/

The username “PicturesOfCats” links directly to the user’s profile at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24415376@N06/

And Flickr, links to well…Flicker.com.

All in all, this creates a more sure way for image creators to receive proper attribution for their work. There is no indication on when other attribution integrations will be released, but Pinterest has announced that they’re coming.

Thank you for reading!

Scott

On page search engine optimization is an extremely important part of the overall search engine optimization formula. Some people say it’s half the equation. In reality, it’s more like an entry ticket to compete.

Having your on-page SEO done well isn’t necessarily going to help you topple the #1 position for your keyword. However, if you don’t have your pages well optimized, chances are you won’t rank at all.

Consider it an all-important prerequisite to getting your website ranked on the front page. If you don’t have your on page SEO done properly, chances are you won’t rank at all.

The primary reason you want to do on page SEO is so that Google can accurately tell what your page is about. A poorly optimized page will seem like it’s about everything. A well optimized page on the other hand will tell Google exactly what the page is about, so Google can give you strong rankings for that keyword.

Here’s how to optimize your page for search engines. For the purposes of demonstration, we’ll be using the “All in One SEO” plugin for WordPress for a number of these steps.

Step 1: The Title Tag

The title tag is the most important tag in all of your SEO efforts. It’s what Google places the most weight on when they’re trying to determine what your site is about.

Your title should have as much of your keyword towards the front of the tag as possible.

Different pages on your site should have different title tags. Do not have the same title tag throughout your entire website. If you do, you waste each individual page’s potential to rank for unique keywords.

For example, below is a setup for how your WordPress pages and posts might look like. You can configure your system to by default put post’s title first, then the blog’s name second, rather than the other way around.

Step 2: Meta Description

Your meta description tag doesn’t actually help you rank higher. Instead, what it does is tell Google what to display beneath your search listing. This can help you get a lot more clicks from Google by writing the “right thing” to hook your audience in.

Each page on your site can have a different meta description. You definitely want to write the meta description for your home page and the popular pages on your site yourself. For the pages on your site that aren’t too popular, Google will just take an excerpt from your website and use that as your meta description.

Step 3: Meta Keywords

Your meta keywords tags tell Google what keywords you think your site is relevant for. It doesn’t bear much weight as far as helping you rank goes, but it can really help Google figure out what your site is about. It takes just a minute to do them and is good SEO practice in general.

Step 4: URL Structure

Generally, you want your URL to contain your keyword as much as possible. You never want to use just your post ID or the date as your URL. You should also avoid cryptic URLs that contain data that no human being can read.

If you want to use just your post title as your URL for example, this is how you’d do it in WordPress’ “Permalinks” settings.

Step 5: Image Alt Tags

Optimizing your alt tags plays a much larger part on SEO than a lot of people think. It won’t single handedly help you rank, but it is an important factor for your on page SEO.

Give the images on your site good alt tags. Make sure the filenames are meaningful and make sure that your alt tags are descriptive. If you have purely navigational images on your site, such as white space or button backgrounds, name them numbers (111.jpg) rather than a text based keyword.

In WordPress, you can change the alt tag of images by going to that image’s preferences.

Step 6: Noindex Non-Content Pages

You should noindex your non-content pages. Your affiliate pages, your category pages, your archives and so on should all be noindexed. This is particularly true if those pages contain duplicate content. On most blogs, category and archive pages are mostly duplicate content so you definitely want to noindex those pages.

Step 7: Internal Linking

Internal linking is one of the most crucial factors you could pay attention to for your SEO.

Make sure you have links going from all your content pages to other pages on your site. Embed these links within your actual content, or within links on the site or bottom of the article.

Things like “You May Like” boxes or “Related Posts” boxes are all good choices.

Step 8: Have a Robots.txt

A robots.txt just tells search engines where to go and where not to go. This is a good way to disallow search engine spiders from going where they’re not supposed to.

This can help you keep the areas you don’t want from ranking out of the search engines. For example, you probably don’t want the paid areas of your site indexed and shown in the Google search engines.

Step 9: Low Ad to Content Ratio

One factor that’s become more prominent since the Google Panda and Panda 2.0 updates is the ad to content ratio on your website. As the name suggests, the idea is to avoid stuffing your site with ads.

Google knows that great websites tend to only have a few ads on their pages. On the other hand, people who focus too much on milking their visitors for as much cash as possible tend to produce lower quality content.

So, therefore, pages with more ads tend to rank lower. Of course, you do need to make money – Just limit your ads to one or two per page, rather than spamming ads all over the place.

Step 10: Regular, Fresh, High Quality Content

Finally, it all comes down to content and content quality. Google is looking to promote websites with high quality content.

Produce fresh content as often as possible. The more fresh content you have, the higher your chances of ranking.

These are the most important on page factors to pay attention to in search engine optimization. Get your on page optimization right before you try and topple your competition.

Thank you for reading!

Scott

This first one is underway and ending tomorrow…

June 11-13: Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco, California

• Described as: “The must-attend conference for digital, social and mobile marketing is returning to San Francisco on June 12-13 to the Fort Mason Center.”

• Cost: $299 for 2 days

• Speakers: Kare Anderson, Chris Brogan, Kevin Akeroyd, Rick Bakas, Eric Boggs and more.

• Website: http://www.inboundmarketingsummit.com/event/san-francisco/

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June 13-14: Corporate Social Media Summit in New York, New York

• Described as: “This is the premier meeting place for the latest best practice into social media strategy. Now in its 3rd year, it provides the ultimate learning and industry networking experience for the ever-changing marketing community.”

• Cost: $1800 – $2895

• Speakers: Representatives from large companies including Whole Foods, Citi, The Gap, Comcast, McDonalds, Adobe, Lego, New Jersey Devils and more.

• Website: http://usefulsocialmedia.com/newyork

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June 19-20: Corporate Social Media Summit in San Francisco, California

•  Described As: “The Corporate Social Media Summit is back for its second year, offering you ‘the’ conference designed for the corporate. We promise to help you advance your engagement strategies, exceed ROI expectation, and discover where social media going in 2012 and beyond… with exclusive case studies from ‘front line’ Social Media practitioners, including: eBay, 24 Hour Fitness, Walgreens and many more.”

• Cost: $1800 – $2895

• Speakers: Representatives from eBay, Walgreens, Whole Foods, EventBrite, Telus, General Mills and more.

• Website: http://usefulsocialmedia.com/sanfrancisco

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June 19-20: Emerging Media Conference in Seattle, Washington

• Described As: “This unique social media conference is full of social, mobile, and gaming inspired topics from thought leaders that are intellectually influential in emerging technologies. Bringing hundreds of the most prominent decision-makers in the social, mobile, and gaming industry together to network, discover upcoming products and services, and share ideas about the future of emerging media.”

• Cost: $398 – $718

• Speakers: Speaker list is not published, but websites notes that some of the companies that have registered for the conference include The Home Depot, Expedia, CNN, Bing, American Express and T Mobile.

• Website: http://wappow.com/emerging-media/seattle/

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June 25-26: Social Media B2C Marketing Summit Europe in London, England

• Described As: “Take your social media initiatives to the next level and boost performance. Add value to your brand, increase your online leads and most importantly increase ROI.”

• Cost: £1295 – £2095 + VAT

• Speakers: Representatives from Heineken, Unilever, Expedia, Tom Tom, Nissan, Honda, Nokia and more.

• Website: http://usefulsocialmedia.com/b2c

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June 28-29: All Facebook Marketing Conference

• Described As: “All Facebook Marketing Conference 2012 provides proven solutions for building brands and engaging prospective customers. Learn how to grow your follower base and deliver real revenue-generating results.”

• Cost: $25 – $599

• Speakers: David M. Adler, Duncan Alney, Brian Bond, Lisa Buyer, Bill Common, Robert Scoble, Peter Vogel and more.

• Website: http://www.mediabistro.com/allfacebookmarketingconference

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June 29: Mashable’s “Social Media Day”

(Meet Ups in 414 Cities, at time of this writing)

• Described As: “We launched the event in 2010 as a way to recognize the digital revolution happening right before our eyes. We invite you to join fellow social media enthusiasts by hosting or attending a Social Media Day Meetup in your area.”

• Cost: Free

• Speakers: N/A

• Website: http://mashable.com/smday/

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July 1: Social Media Value in London, England

• Described As: “For one day only, Brand Republic are bringing together those that are leading in the social space to delve into the biggest challenges facing the industry today; from demonstrating a ROI to exploring how the channels are evolving.”

• Cost: £549 + VAT

• Speakers: Anirban Saha, Price B. Floyd, Anna Hill, Laura Pierce, William Woodhams and more.

• Website: http://www.socialmediastrategyevent.com/

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July 26: Social Mix in Toronto, Canada

• Described As: “Learn how to harness the power of social media marketing for your business. What it means to engage, share and build relationships. And why ‘one on one’ relationship building with consumers is crucial to your success.”

• Cost: Early Bird to June 18 is $150. After that, it’s $299.

• Speakers: Gary Vaynerchuk, Amber Mac, Geoff Livingston, Danny Brown and Gini Dietrich

• Website: http://socialmix2012.com/

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August 2-4: BlogHer in New York, New York

• Described As: “BlogHer’s 8th Annual Conference is headed back to New York City in 2012. Thousands of bloggers will come together to connect, learn and inspire.”

• Cost: $79 – $598

• Speakers:  A huge list including Adria Richards, Alex Asher Sears, Andrew Wilder, Carol Cain, Cecily Kellogg, Jennifer Armstrong, Laura Galloway, Lynette Young, Melanie Edwards and more.

• Website: http://www.blogher.com/blogher-12

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August 21 – 22: Social Media Strategies Summit

• Described As: “Whether your organization is just starting out or in the forefront of social media, Social Media Strategies Conference will take your social strategy to the next level. Through hands-on workshops, case studies and keynotes, our Denver conference will provide attendees with emerging strategies, tactics and the top do’s and don’ts of social media marketing.”

• Cost: $395 – $1690 (non-profits get in for less)

• Speakers: Representatives from Boston Market, NCAA, Sports Authority, Warner Home Video and other companies providing social media expertise.

• Website: http://socialmediastrategiessummit.com/denver-2012.html

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September 4-6: Content Marketing World in Columbus, Ohio

• Described As: “Content Marketing World is the largest gathering of content marketing professionals in the world. Our 2011 event brought together over 600 marketing professionals from 18 different countries.”

• Cost: $1295 – $1690

• Speakers: Sam Sebastian (Google), Mitch Joel and Jack Hanna. Representatives from Kraft, Sears Intel and more. Other featured speakers include Brian Clark, Lee Odden and Michael Stelzner.

• Website: http://www.contentmarketingworld.com/

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On June 6, 2012, LinkedIn announced publicly that may have suffered from a security breach that compromised the passwords of many of its members. On June 9^th, they confirmed that the security breach definitely occurred and may have effected up to 6.5 million users. They say they are working with the FBI to track down the criminals involved.

Information You Should Know About This Breach

• LinkedIn says that they have disabled the passwords of members they believe to have been at risk.

• LinkedIn does not believe that the actual accounts have been breached because of the stolen passwords.

• According to Rapid7.com, many of the passwords that were cracked were simple words like “link”, “god”, “work” and number patterns like 1234.

If Your Password Has Been Disabled

As  mentioned, LinkedIn has disabled the passwords on the accounts they believe have been breached. You should have received an email notification on how to reset your password.

NOTE: There are no links in this official email to help protect you from phishing attempts…you should never follow links in an email to reset your password if you didn’t specifically request it. Instead, if you got the email from LinkedIn. You should open your browser, go directly to LinkedIn.com and then follow the instructions on resetting your password.

If Your Password Has Not Been Disabled

Even if your password has not been disabled by LinkedIn, it’s still a good idea to change your password.  Here is how to change your LinkedIn password:

Go to https://www.linkedin.com/uas/request-password-reset?trk=pwbanner – to reset your password.

You will then get a notice that tells you to check your email for a password reset link.

You CAN click on the link in this email because you specifically requested it. It will include your full name that you used for LinkedIn account. The email will look something like this:

Once you’ve clicked the link in the email, you’ll be taken to a page that asks you to enter and confirm a new password.

Once you click “Reset Password” you should see the following and be all set:)