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Tips for Blog and Social Media Maintenance While on Vacation? Get Out of Town! was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.Blog and social media maintenance can’t fall through the cracks when you go on vacation. Let the plants die and newspapers stack up, if you must, but make sure you don’t neglect your blog and social media platforms; they need to continue providing the quality content that your clients/customers/fans have (hopefully) come to expect. Keep that notebook shut! A best practice for vacationing is to write your blog ahead of time. Have a Blog in the Bag A successful blog keeps readers engaged and ever-hungry for more content. Readers should be so excited for your posts that they check your blog regularly for content, but that will only happen if you’re a consistent and frequent poster. As a point of reference, we post four times a week on the Bruce Clay blog. If you don’t have the resources for such frequent posting, however, you should — at least — be updating your blog once a week, and each post should be a minimum of 400 words. Just because you’re going on vacation doesn’t mean your blog can go on hiatus. Your readers expect your posts and you can’t disappoint them. Therefore, it is essential that you find the time to prepare and schedule a blog post ahead of time. Another option (which will also theoretically save you time and boost engagement) is to invite a trusted colleague or peer to guest post on your blog. If you go that route, however, make sure the deadline for their post is before you vacate, so that you can do whatever editing you need to do beforehand. Prep and Optimize Social Media! #necessary #simple @Tweriod @BufferApp You don’t want your brand voice to fall silent while you’re away, so set aside some to time to craft and schedule social media posts before you vacate. Tweets, Facebook posts and LinkedIn posts should be distributed throughout each day. Follow these steps to optimal social media posting (which can be used even when you’re not on vacation). 1. Strategize your share times with Tweriod. Tweriod is a free service that analyzes your Twitter following to determine what the optimal times of the day are for you to tweet. After it gives you the times for your Twitter account, click on “Send to Buffer.” Tweriod designated these four times as the daily optimal tweet times for @KristiKellogg; Tweriod comes up with these times by establishing when my unique followers are using Twitter. 2. Log into Buffer. Buffer is an amazing dashboard that automatically pulls the data from Tweriod and knows the times you should be tweeting (see right). Buffer will then present you with a list of suggested times for you post social media. Buffer allows you to connect with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. 3. Create your posts in Buffer. So for example, if I were going to be out of the office Monday through Wednesday and wanted to send out four social media postings per day on Twitter, I would simply stick with the schedule Tweriod designated — which Buffer also defaults to, conveniently. Now, I would just have to come up with 12 tweets in total. Stumped for what to tweet about? Consider these types of tweets when planning: A picture A retweet A great quote from someone in your industry A deal or discount your brand offers A link to a helpful article that can benefit your customers or clients A link to an awesome related infographic related to your industry A link that announces your blog post, corresponding to the time you scheduled your blog to go live 4. Want to share across social media platforms? When creating a post, simply click the icon for your Facebook, the icon for your Twitter and the icon for your LinkedIn and everything will post simultaneously at your designated times. 5. Simply click and drag to change the order of your tweets. To change the time (which default according

Love their vision for the place RT @mickbirch: Bebo Founders Go Analog With Exclusive Battery Club in San Francisco

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Want proof that the "rugged" version of Samsung's Galaxy S4 — dubbed the Galaxy S4 Active — is as durable as promised? The video above from MobileTechReview confirms plans that the phone will be both waterproof and dustproof. However, the phone's specifications seem considerably weaker than those of the original Galaxy S4. The Galaxy S4 Active features a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU and an 8-megapixel rear camera, compared with the S4's quad-core or Octa-core chipsets (depending on the variant) and 13-megapixel camera. Its other specifications seem to resemble the normal Samsung Galaxy S4. Read more...More about Samsung, Tech, Mobile, Galaxy S4, and Samsung Galaxy S4 Active

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Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington made a surprise appearance over the weekend at a Stone Temple Pilots concert. Even more surprising, he had teamed up with the band on a new single. FMQB reports that Bennington appeared on stage with Stone Temple Pilots on Saturday at the Weenie Roast concert. As part of the set, Bennington performed a number of the band’s classic hits, but they also debuted a new song called “Out of Time.” Of course, Bennington won’t be a full time replacement for recently ousted Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland. Instead, the band says they “thought it would be cool to try something together.” Fans of Bennington will be pleased to know that Linkin Park will remain his priority. As for Bennington himself, he said that he was thrilled to work together with Stone Temple Pilots: “I’ve loved STP since I was 13 years old and they’ve had a huge influence on me. When the opportunity came up to do something creative with them, I jumped at the chance. The guys in Linkin Park have been incredibly supportive of me undertaking this project while I’ve continued to work on new music with LP.” CBS Radio has released the new Stone Temple Pilots single as a free download. You can grab it here.

There will never be a point when a designer says ‘yep, that is it for me, I have all of the brushes I will never need’! It just won’t happen. The designers toolbox is always evolving, with new resources being added as and when they are needed. And just to help you add even more tools to your metaphorical toolbox, we have a fantastic bunch of Photoshop brush sets for you. There are a total of 30 brush packs below, with a combined total of just over 500 brushes. There is no theme or specific category, other than that they are all large and are of the highest quality. I hope they help you out. Speckle Brushes (5 Brushes) Digital Smoke Brush Pack (24 Brushes) High Resolution Texture Brushes (9 Brushes) Watercolor Brushes (50 Brushes) Starfield Brushes (4 Brushes) Old Technical Drawings Brushes (10 Brushes) Feathers and Birds Brushes (12 Brushes) Gritty and Dirty Brushes (7 Brushes) Spray Splatter Brush Pack (12 Brushes) High Res Dry Brush Stroke Brushes (12 Brushes) Subtle Brush Set (15 Brushes) Hi Res Heads Up Display Brush Pack (30 Brushes) Bokeh Brushes (12 Brushes) Digital Smoke Brushes (15 Brushes) TC-EPICA-I (10 Brushes) Fibers #3 Brush Pack (5 Brushes) Photorealistic Explosion Brushes (16 Brushes) TC Magic Spells (21 Brushes) Fiber Brushes (16 Brushes) Electrifying Lightning Strikes Brushes (18 Brushes) Painting Brushes (56 Brushes) Custom Brushes of Tyler Street (40 Brushes) Nature Silhouettes Trees & Grass Brushes (19 Brushes) Fractal #7 Brushes (5 Brushes) Fairy Tales Brush Set (9 Brushes) Abstract Bokeh Brushes (24 Brushes) Cloud Brushes (15 Brushes) Grimey Brushes (5 Brushes) Mountain and Rocks Brushes (5 Brushes) Ink #4 Brushes (5 Brushes) You may also like… 50 New and Free Photoshop Brush Packs → 38 Watercolor Photoshop Brush Sets (950 Brushes) → 1000 Grunge Photoshop Brushes (40 Sets) → Retro & Vintage Photoshop Brush Collection → 50 Beautiful Light Effects Photoshop Brush Packs →

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