If you are regularly guest blogging and publishing content in order to get quality back-links and provide fresh content for your website, then we think you are doing a great service for your SEO and Social Media strategy.
After the lastest Google freshness update, content marketing has become the most powerful weapon in your artillery, the most respected authorities in the world of SEO are all agreed on this one. Looking for the best and most popular posts on the web is a must if you want to keep up with what’s hot and what’s popular (this is all important for those vital media shares) but what is acceptable and what amounts to simple plagiarism? It’s not just a moral dilema, Google will penalise duplicate content.
If you need more help with your SEO and social media then we offer some great deals on SEO Training, Google Analytics courses and social media training. Below Christopher Fielden, a published author, offers his opinions on the subject of plagiarism - all in his own words!
Plagiarism Definition
If you nick someone else’s idea and pretend it is your own, that’s plagiarism.
Inspiration Definition
If you see something which tickles your imagination enough to write an original story, that’s inspiration.
Examples of the Differences Between Plagiarism & Inspiration
If you went to see Lord of the Rings in the cinema and then decided it ‘inspired’ you to write a book about Rodeo Shaggins and his landscape designer, Jan-Flys Ganges, who discover a magical toe ring which has been imbued with the wrath of the dark lord Flower-on and will bring an end to all that is peaceful by covering the land with the unholy stench of ghastly garlic gases unless the ring is transported across Middle Birth and thrown into the fiery belly of Mount Bloom, that is stealing someone else’s ideas. That is plagiarism.
Open up the template in Photoshop. We’ve left the images of my face in the template so you can see how it all works – but if you don’t want to see my face (and I can sympathise with your position if you don’t) then either hide or delete the “Colin” Layers!
Next you’ll want to import the image (or images) that you want to use in your own profile.
To do this, select File > Place and select your image file.
Drag and resize it so its in the correct position, and hit enter to place it:
If you are a complete Google+ beginner you should check out our post Why Google+ is so Hot!. It will take you through the basics. Whilst it is fairly intuitive (we love it!) there are some tips and tricks you might not know about, we hope they will take you a little beyond the basics. If you areinterested in getting more updates like these don’t forget to follow us on Google+!
NEW - You should also check out our post on How to Customise your Google Plus Profile – Colin has created a step by step guide and Photoshop Template to help you pimp your about page!
Here are the most useful shortcuts and tricks for Google+ that we have come across. Please share your best tips if you can’t find them in the list in our comments section.
1/ Remember to make some of your posts “public” not just “limited” (limited means shared with your selected circles). Otherwise the public view of your profile will show no posts!
remember add "public" (green) button to share with everyone
2/ To see how the public (and people who are not following you) will see your profile click “view profile as” and select “anyone on the web”. You can also see what your profile looks like to particular people or circles of people.
view your public profile
3/ If you want to send a message for the attention of one person in particular type +name or @name and they should appear in a list for you to select.
send to an individual person only
4/ There is an option to disable sharing. But remember if you want to keep a secret don’t put it online! Everything – even if you disable sharing – is sharable by screen grab! To disable share click on the little arrow top right of your post and select “disable reshare.”
you can disable reshare but remember you secrets are only a screen grab away from being public!
5/ Your contacts cannot see the names of the circles you put them in – Have fun!
This is a joke don't judge me!
6/ However people can see with whom a limited post is shared! Click on the word limited on someone’s post and you can see who they shared the post with.
7/ Your time-line is affected by how many comments a post has and how many +1’s it has.
8/ Click on Notifications in the left sidebar and you’ll see a chronological listing of all your Google+ notifications. Clicking the “More” link at the upper right of that stream gives you some useful filtering options:
more button in notifications view
Added to Circles – See everyone who has added you,
Posts by You – Not all the posts you’ve written (those are in your Profile), but those you’ve written that have been shared by others.
Posts by Others – Posts written by others that you’ve commented on.
Mentions – Posts in which you’ve been tagged. When someone in your circles types a “+” and your name, you are tagged
Photo tags – Posts with photos in which you’ve been tagged.
9/ If you click on Incoming (found in the left hand menu from the home screen) You can see all the posts from people who are following you even if you are not following them! If they seem interesting enough you can add them to your circles
10/ If you click on one of your photographs you can access some Picasa-lite image editing tools. When the Google+ iPhone app launches you’ll also be able to upload photos straight from your phone (Android users can already get the native app). In the meantime the Google+ iPhone web app is a sleek way to use Google+ on the move – but this doesn’t allow photo uploads.
11/ If you have commented on a post you will get updates every time someone else comments. If you are getting too many updates you can mute the post to stop this. Click on the word “post” in your notifications.
click on the word post
click mute this post
12/ Keyboard shortcuts
J – Lets you skip to the next post in your stream without scrolling
K – lets you jump upwards post by post
If you click on a post and hit return your comment box will open ready for your comment.
If you hit tab and return you will send your comment
13/ Type Tips
_ italic text _ will look like italic text
* bold text * will look like bold text
- strikethrough text - will look like strikethrough text
Many Social media junkies from the UK are screaming for an invite to try out Google+ but they may have to wait a little bit longer.
Despite the skeptics who referred to Google Wave and Google Buzz as an indicators that it wouldn’t take off, I believe it’s easily the best social offering from Google to date and has become the hottest invitation you are likely to get for a while.
Google had to stop inviting users to join its new social networking service less than two days after its launch in the US due to “Insane demand”. An early indicator that Google+ is going to be a big contender in the social media arena.
The message many in the US users were getting yesterday was
“We’ve shut down invite mechanism for the night. Insane demand. We need to do this carefully, and in a controlled way. Thank you all for your interest!
For any who wish to leave, please remember you can always exit and take your data with you by using Google Takeout.
It’s your data, your relationships, your identity.”
If you have been lucky enough to get a head start don’t forget to follow us on Google+!
Most of the people who are on Google+ so far in the UK are people with existing strong social networks. Google have admitted they have been accepting people who have strong social graphs.
The brilliant thing about circles that is missing from Facebook is that you can choose to message everyone at the same time or you can send messages to groups (circles) that you have set up to include a special set of people. Read the rest of "Google+ It’s so hot"
Here at Silicon Beach Training we’re immensely proud of the quality of training that we provide – and we love teaching other people how to deliver great training sessions too, via our Train the Trainer course.
Knowing your subject matter is only part of being able to deliver great training. Understanding how adults learn, engaging with them effectively, and planning your training session properly are all essential to ensuring that attendees understand and retain what you teach them.
In this video, filmed on one of our Train the Trainer courses – our trainer Mary guides delegates through the stages of planning and designing an effective training session.
We’ve summarised the video below with some great tips on how to plan your own session.
These are edited highlights of this section of our workshop. We cover a lot more besides on out 2-day train the trainer course here in Brighton, Sussex – so why not come along and hone your training technique?
Train the Trainer: Planning a 10 Minute Training Session – Top Tips
When you plan a training session, its not just about what subjects you’re going to cover when. A well planned training session will provide the following elements for each stage:
Content
Questioning Techniques
Activities
During our Train the Trainer course each delegate is asked to deliver and refine their own short training session. This is broadly broken down as follows:
5 years ago, the only considerations web designers really had to deal with when designing for different users were cross browser testing and different screen resolutions.
Today (and forevermore!), to ensure that your website istruly accessible to all of your users, you have to make sure that your design works for a huge range of mobile devices – iPhones, iPads, Blackberries etc etc… all with different browsers and screen resolutions (many of which are now in ‘portrait’ orientation, as opposed to the traditional ‘landscape’ web browser)
One way of doing this is to design a different version of your site for every device – however that’s a lot of work.
Enter Responsive Web Design..
What is Responsive Web Design?
Responsive Web design is an approach to web design that ensures that your site responds to your user’s environment, and to their behaviour, based on a range of variables including screen size, platform and orientation.
Rather than create multiple versions of a site for each device – ONE website design will be suitable for all users, by using flexible layouts, images and CSS techniques including media queries. The website adjusts itself to the user – rather than the other way round.
HTML5 and CSS3 are an important part of responsive web design, and as more and more browsers begin to support these technologies responsive websites will become more popular.
How to Comply with UK Health and Safety Legislation
Regardless of complying with Health and Safety laws, providing Health and Safety Training for your staff is something that all businesses should seriously consider.
Sending staff on accredited Health and Safety courses provide a wide range of benefits including reductions in insurancecosts, increased productivity and profitability and an enhanced reputation for your organisation.
In addition – all businesses should take some simple steps to ensure you are compliant with HSE (health and safety executive) regulations.
To be fully compliant in terms of training – we’d recommend sending managers on an accredited course – the IOSH Managing Safely Course is available with us here in Brighton.
However here are our 10 Health and Safety tips to ensure that your organisation is compliant in the eyes of the HSE
Top 10 Health & Safety Tips
How to Comply with HSE Health and Safety Regulations
Conduct a Risk Assessment for your workplace and document it – you need to think about what could cause harm, and what precautions you will take to prevent it.
Any business with employees (so everyone except one-man-bands!) needs to take out Employers Liability Compulsory Insurance – you should display a copy of the certificate somewhere in your office.
Write down how Health and Safety is managed in your business in the form of a Health and Safety Policy (this is compulsory if you employ more than 5 people)
You need to have a person or people available in your organisation to provide Health and Safety advice to employees so that they can meet their responsibilities. This could be someone within your business who has received training, or an external consultant.
You should frequently consult employees on health and safety to ensure that they understand any responsibilities that they have and are happy with the measures you have in place.
Provide Health and Safety training for employees so that they are aware of the hazards and risks in the workplace and are equipped to manage them. The IOSH Managing Safely training course is a useful programme for all line managers to attend as it leads to a recognised health and safety qualification.
Provide basic health, safety and welfare needs for all employees. This includes access to toilets, washing facilities and drinking water. These facilities must be suitable for any employees with disabilities.
Provide Health and Safety Law information for employees to reference. This should take the form of a poster or leaflet displayed publicly in your workplace.
By law, there are some work related accidents and diseases that you must reportif they occur. More details on these can be found on the HSE website
All businesses that deal with hazardous substances (e.g. explosives, asbestos etc…) or operate in an inherently hazardous industry (like construction) must register with the HSE
Hopefully your business already does all of the above.
If not, and you need some Health and Safety training or advice – please feel free to call us on 01273 622272 or e-mail info@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk
There are many different ways to draw maps - including photographic techniques and of course old fashioned hand drawing. However if have some Adobe Illustrator skills, using its vector drawing tools is a great option, as it means your maps will be fully scalable – you could blow it up to A0 size without losing any quality. Within Illustrator there are many different methods to gain a similar result. This tutorial introduces beginners to many useful techniques in a goal-focused way.
FANTASTIC Illustrator Time saving tips found – HERE
An Illustrator map will provide artwork which is razor sharp, scalable, supporting industry standard colours such as Pantone for print and HTML for web.
Illustrator Tutorial: Drawing a Scalable Map in Illustrator CS5
Output Formats
The final format you should export your document in is .EPS for print or GIF for the web. To insert the map into PowerPoint, you might export the map as a JPG at high to maximum quality.
Here is an example of our finished map
As you can see it does not pretend to have any cartographic or scale accuracy but it is very clear to read and can be simplified to clearly show the way to an office or point of interest, etc.
Tracing over a scan
If one wanted to preserve the accuracy of a previously drawn map, one would need to open a photographic version of another map (a screen grab or a scan), define the layer as a template layer, create a new layer for the new artwork and draw over the scan, keeping the curvature of the roads perfectly accurate. This will be the subject of a further lesson.
N.B. Scanning a map requires permission from the copyright holder.
How to Comply with UK Health and Safety Legislation
There are many different ways to draw maps - including photographic techniques and of course old fashioned hand drawing. However if have some Adobe Illustrator skills, using its vector drawing tools is a great option, as it means your maps will be fully scalable – you could blow it up to A0 size without losing any quality. Within Illustrator there are many different methods to gain a similar result. This tutorial introduces beginners to many useful techniques in a goal-focused way.
