VIVA LA FUSION!!

Everyone knows Barb Cameron the Wedding Photographer - Barbara Ann Studios offers couples a style that is fresh, romantic, sexy and fun. Not only have her images been featured in countless wedding magazines and on numerous blogs, Barb was recently acknowledged as one of Canada’s Top 30 Inspiring Wedding Photographers for 2011.

Not everyone knows Barb Cameron the Baby Photographer - Wee Bairn Photography was launched when Barb’s former wedding couples started reappearing requesting that she photograph the next stage in their life, their newborn baby.

For those of you that don’t already know, Viva recently welcomed a new bundle of joy into the world and couldn’t wait to have Barb capture her on film. We were even more ecstatic when Barb told us about “fusion”. Combining video with still images, the end result is simply fabulous. Being all about memories, Viva had to have this!

And here it is...



While on a personal level we’re excited to share this with you let’s face it, it’s Viva la wedding. So for all you brides-to-be out there, here's a little wedding fusion... That’s right, Barb does fusion for weddings too! Love!!

Another important (maybe very) first step...

Which maybe I should have posted first in this series, is make sure your site is ready for visitors.

An easy way to do that is to run a report on your website or blog using the Website Grader which is a free service from HubSpot.

The report grades a site using "0 - 100" scale checking things like your indexed pages, meta data, links, image tags, Twitter grade, RSS feed, and so much more. You can read a sample report here (or just run your own and find out what, if any, changes you need to make).

After you see the results you can go about fixing any deficiencies that may have been identified.

You can also run reports on your competition.

And yes, there's and app for that, you can find it here.

You wouldn't have company unless your house is ready (well, us guys would), so don't invite folks over to your site until it's ready to be seen.

It's not sexy... but it is important...

For the next few posts we are going to cover the things that anyone/everyone who has a website or blog needs to do to ensure that folks can find them. That is our intent isn't it, to attract visitors?

A presences on the web is not a "build it and they will come" scenario.

So in this post we are going to cover RSS (Real Simple Syndication).

RSS is a real time saver in that you don't need to keep checking your favorite sites to see if there is anything new since your last visit, instead what happens is when something new is posted you will get a notification email.

If you want folks to follow your website or blog for very long having RSS setup on your site is an absolute MUST.

I use FeedBurner, not only does it provide RSS for your site, it will also give you all kinds of useful statistical information about who is subscribing, where your readers are coming from, and (very important) will help you get the word out that your site exists.

If you follow this link you will see a detailed video tutorial on how to setup an RSS feed with Feedburner.

You can also feed your Facebook page using RSS Graffiti, it will read your feed and write it on your Facebook wall, a very useful tool.

One bad thing about feeds is that videos that are part of your post do not get "fed" through, so if you are one of my blog subscribers you'll need to return to the blog to watch the video below that is a great demonstration of what RSS is and how it works.