Category: HOME

  • What to Consider When Investing in Home Automation Devices

    What to Consider When Investing in Home Automation Devices

    The last year has been extremely challenging, to say the least. As an understandable result, you feel more tired than usual and you are looking for ways to save time and cut back on some of the work you do around the house.

    Photo by mohamed hassan form PxHere

    One great way to do this is by investing in some home automation devices. Basically, these products can be activated and monitored through a smartphone, tablet or computer that is connected to the internet. For instance, when you had coffee last week with your friend on her patio and she used an app on her phone to turn off the light in the kitchen, that was home automation at work.

    Now that you know you want to automate your home, it’s important to choose the perfect setup for your own house and lifestyle. As for tips on how to do this, consider the following words of advice:

    Photo by mohamed hassan form PxHere

    Think About Your Lifestyle

    Before you buy any smart home devices, walk through your home both inside and out and jot down what you’d love to automate and/or the tasks with which you’d like some assistance. For instance, if you are tired of constantly circling the block to see if you remembered to close your garage door, a smart garage door that you can monitor and control from anywhere—and get alerts if it’s been left open—would be a perfect place to start. Or if you are tired of manually turning on the sprinklers, automating the landscaping is a logical choice. For those times when you are at the store and you cannot recall if you are out of eggs and cheese, you might love a smart refrigerator that you can actually see the interior of from your phone—how cool is that? Other ideas include a home security system, smart thermostat and smart lighting.

    DIY or Professional Installation

    Another thing to consider when choosing home automation products is if you want to do the smart home installation yourself, or have professionals take care of it for you. While many homeowners would like to take a DIY approach vs professional smart home installation option, you do have to be careful that you are doing everything correctly. For instance, in the list of pros and cons of a DIY smart home, a definite con is that your smart devices may not be fully compatible. Double-checking with a professional when you are shopping for home automation products can help ensure that you are not only getting the correct items, but can help you decide if it’s worth doing the work on your own or not.

    Photo by mohamed hassan form PxHere

    Know and Respect Your Budget

    There are so many amazing home automation products that are available, it can be easy to go a bit overboard purchasing a variety of devices all at once. While this may make your home incredibly smart, it may be a less-than-intelligent decision for your bank account and credit card balance. Prior to shopping, prioritize which devices you want to buy first and set a strict budget. Remember too that some systems, like home security, may require monthly service charges. Also, keep in mind that you are not in a race to make your home automated; there is nothing wrong with buying a new device as the budget allows, and then saving up for the next one.

    Image by Pixaline from Pixabay

    Enjoy Your Smarter Home

    There are a number of solid reasons to invest in home automation devices, including saving time, money and stress. By considering your own needs and talents in the DIY realm and then taking an honest look at your budget, your home will become smarter, in a really smart way.

  • 14 WordPress SEO Tips to Increase Search Engine Rankings

    14 WordPress SEO Tips to Increase Search Engine Rankings

    SEO is the acronym of Search Engine Optimization. It is the procedure to optimize your site content and web pages for increasing website visibility for being highlighted on the first pages by search engines like Google. 

    Photo by mohamed hassan form PxHere

    WordPress SEO:

    Choosing an SEO-friendly and popular CMS platform like WordPress (WP) for launching your website is not enough to increase your WP site visibility or gain a good SEO rank. 

    In recent years, SEO has changed radically, and hence it is essential to keep your WordPress website updated with the latest SEO trends so that it grabs the maximum number of eyes. 

    For that, you need to have precise knowledge about WordPress SEO tactics and implement the same for increasing organic visibility and gaining better SEO ranks. If your website SEO is rock-solid, your WP website will land on Google’s first page, where most web searches are initiated and completed. 

    WordPress SEO is intricate; I have covered most of the WordPress SEO tips for increasing site rankings and boosting your organic traffic.

    WordPress SEO Tips:

    1. Choose A Fast Web Host:

    For a successful SEO crusade, a fast and trustworthy web hosting provider is pivotal in gaining a better position in search engines hostadvice. Google’s algorithms are all charged for giving the best user experience in terms of speed, and hence such websites are rewarded with better ranks than others.

    Fast websites or fast page load speeds have experienced a better user experience and high conversion rates than slow sites facing high bounce ratios.

    Research indicates that a delay by 1 second impacts the conversion rate by 7%, and hence select a web host with 100% uptime to keep your site running at all times. Bluehost is an ideal choice for your WordPress site.

    1. Check Your Site Performance:

    The site performance of your WP website depends on multiple factors apart from the site speed. Your web design, themes used, plugins installed, images and videos, responsiveness to other devices, etc., and the list goes on. WordPress comprises inbuilt tools which help you to monitor your site performance. Some good ones include:

    Google Pagespeed Insights – gives suggestions for making the page load faster by analysing content.

    GTmetrix – analyses the site and reveals the culprits which slower the site

    Check the site performance by using these tools and remove the obstacles to make it more user-friendly.

    1. Secure Your Website with SSL: 

    The more popular the CMS platform, the more favourite a hacking spot for cyber-criminals. One of the reasons why hackers hack WP sites is that they lack security. Let me tell you, securing your WP site is not that difficult as you presume. 

    Do you want to see an SSL padlock in your address bar and HTTPS in the URL site for customer trust and better SEO?

    Purchase an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate for your WP site from Cheap SSL Shop, an authentic and trusted SSL certificate provider worldwide. 

    You can’t beat them when it comes to comparing the price factor, as they offer the cheapest SSL certificates of all global brands.

    Example: Comodo SSL Certificates are available at a price ranging from $5/year to $120/year, depending on the security they provide.

    Since all your client-server communications are encrypted with SSL security, Google prefers and ranks SSL sites better than non-SSL ones.

    1. Secure Your Website Holistically:

    The more secure your site, the better chances of prevention it has against hackers. Apart from SSL security, your WordPress site requires other basic security measures like a strong and complex password for WordPress login. 

    WordPress plugins like Loginizer for preventing brute force attacks, anti-spam WordPress plugins like Titan Anti-spam & Security for preventing spammy emails, spammy comments, and intruder’s IP addresses should also be installed for securing the website.

    Remember, a hacked site can hamper your SEO rank, so install all the necessary plugins to shield your website. Update them regularly and delete the unused ones to prevent security vulnerabilities.

    1. Check Your Site Hierarchy:

    A site hierarchy is the hierarchical structure of pages on the website. In layman’s terms, it means the organizational structure of the website in order of importance, proper use of headings, menus and submenus and labels, etc. 

    If the site hierarchy is in order, the information is easily found by the user, but if it’s not, then the desired information or page will not be found.

    1. Check the General Settings:

    Decide whether your site’s domain name should start with www or not. If yes, update the same in WordPress Address and Site Address. 

    Also, ensure that “Search Engine Visibility” is unticked in the Settings > Reading menu. This puts your WP site in the search engine’s index and hence increases the user’s site visibility.

    1. Optimize Page Title, Tagline, and Permalinks:

    Ensure that your title tags include target keywords, which attracts Google and increases site visibility on search engine result pages (SERPs). It increases click rates and attracts more users to your content.

    Your tagline indicates your site content and brand products, so create an informative tagline with precise keywords. 

    Permalinks (complete URL) improve website visibility to users and search engines. They help predict your website content displayed on the pages, to the users, for grabbing their attention.  

    WordPress permalinks are complex by default, and hence I would suggest using name permalinks which are good for SEO.

    WP default – https://xyz.com/2021/05/sample-post/

    Post name permalinks – https://xyz.com/sample-post/

    All these criteria are focused on SEOs for ranking purposes, ensuring that they are as per SEO standards.

    1. Target Long-Tail Keywords:

    To reach the front page of Google by simply using targeted keywords in your WP website is a myth. Many sites have conquered that position with awesome content, titles, backlinks, and other SEO-friendly stuff, which cements their SEO position.

    Use of long-tail keywords, i.e., specific keywords which users search for before making a purchase decision, are beneficial when used correctly. Use a good tool like Keyword Tool Dominator for searching long-tail keywords, paste them on your site to get a consistent flow of network traffic.

    1. Write a Solid Meta Description:

    A meta description (text snippets visible below the site title) is a briefing of page content that is useful for search engines and users. An enthralling meta description has the potential to raise the CTR (click-through-rate) of organic searches. This, in turn, increases user visibility, network traffic, and CTR.  

    Your WordPress site should have a captivating meta description (50 – 160 words) with meta keywords, which are distinctive and pertinent to the contents on the page.

    1. Optimize Posts for Keywords:

    Keywords pave the way for your content and permit users to reach your website via search engines. When used in all places like tags, titles, meta descriptions, and content, they help in enriching the website for SEO. 

    Example: If your website content covers summer clothes, then bathing suits, cotton t-shirts, linen shirts, shorts, etc., can be used as keywords. 

    But, excess of everything is bad, i.e., never do keyword stuffing, else you may have to bear penalty charges for the same.

    1. Only One H1 Per Post:

    An HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) tag that specifies the heading on the site page is H1. It is considered the most pivotal and largest heading on the website. Though H2, H3, H4, etc., follows, the focal point of all search engines is H1. 

    In WordPress, this is simply because the main title of the post is defined as H1 by default. You can edit the post, but it’s not feasible to insert <h1> tags everywhere on the website.

    1. Create an XML Sitemap:

    XML (eXtensible Markup Language) Sitemaps are formatted files that are present on each website page. They make the task easy for Google to locate your website pages since search engines queue pages and websites. Crawling and indexing a website for finding the relevant content is possible with an XML sitemap.

    Pages are easily found and ranked specifically if the AIOSEO WP plugin is installed on your website. This plugin automatically creates sitemaps and raises the SEO rankings.

    1. Build High-Quality Backlinks:

    Linking your website to another famous site for appropriate content will help in making your website visible and popular. That’s the main reason why backlinks are contemplated to be SEO-friendly and a ranking factor too.   

    The % of quality links attached to your website is directly proportional to getting a high SEO rank.

    Studies indicate that the best results on the 1st Google page comprise 38% of the backlinks, all taken from the 1st page.

    1. Avoid Duplicate Content:

    Google hates duplicity, so using similar content or keywords on various pages of your website will hinder your SEO position and ranking. The impact of using duplicity of the content may display an opposite effect. 

    Duplicity confuses the search engines in the page selection criteria for ranking purposes. Also termed keyword cannibalization, there is a possibility that the original content may be shunned from being designated in the top searches, and a page with lesser priorities may be selected. 

    Wrapping Up:

    Appropriate keywords, unique content, backlinks, long meta descriptions, relevant plugins, SSL certificate security, etc., will help you grab a good SEO rank. I hope the above-mentioned WordPress SEO tips suffice for search engines to cognizance your WP site and rate them to a top position. 

  • How to Design the Ultimate Patio Escape for Your Yard

    How to Design the Ultimate Patio Escape for Your Yard

    Do you feel as though you aren’t currently using your backyard to its full potential? Would you like to transform it into a more useable space meant for relaxing and entertaining?

    Photo by form PxHere

    If so, a patio can be the perfect solution as it will act as the anchor to that designated entertainment or dining space in your yard. But before you forge ahead with your backyard patio plans, here are some tips on how to design the perfect escape.

    Royalty free photo

    Go as Big as the Space and Budget Allows

    The first tip has to do with the size of the patio. While you may not think you need a lot of space, the fact is that you will always find a way to use it up. You don’t want to regret going too small with the design, so experts tend to recommend you go as big as the space in your yard and your budget allows. Remember, you can also play around with different shapes to help give you more space. Not every patio has to be a standard square or rectangle shape.

    Choose a Customizable Material

    Another tip is to choose a patio material that you can customize to your liking. One of the best options for homeowners that want a luxe design is a custom concrete patio as you can get really creative where the shape and size are concerned, as well as the finish. Concrete allows you to choose from a smooth surface, an exposed-aggregate for interest, or a non-slip broomed finish. You may even want to play around with a couple of finishes and create a border. The end result will elevate your patio design and make it feel much more unique.

    Photo by form PxHere

    How Will the Patio Be Used?

    You also want to consider how you plan to use the patio, as this will determine the type of furniture you buy and even the décor. If, for example, you want it strictly for outdoor dining, then you want to start shopping around for furniture that will fit the space and design concept. Furniture should never be an after-thought, rather it should play a role in the design process.

    Add a Touch of Nature to the Design

    To help make the patio feel more inviting and blend with the rest of the backyard, you’ll want to add a touch of nature to the design. Ideally, this is done with greenery/plants. Whether you include built-in planter boxes in the design, a garden that surrounds the patio itself, or even oversized planters that you can place strategically on the patio, each of these will bring a touch of nature to the space.

    Imagine de mel_88 de la Pixabay

    Install Lighting to Extend Its Use

    If you want to be able to use the patio during the evening hours, you will also need to consider outdoor lighting. There are plenty of fabulous and stylish outdoor lighting options that will not only illuminate the patio, but create ambiance and even add to the overall design. You can use such things as rope lighting, string lighting, standing lamps, garden lights, and so forth.

    The end result of all your careful planning will be a beautiful patio that you enjoy using.

  • Tips for more followers on Instagram

    Tips for more followers on Instagram

    Are you new to Instagram and want to know how you can grow your follower base relatively quickly? Have you had an Instagram account for a while now but seem to have hit a bump in the rod and aren’t gaining any new followers anymore?

    Imagine de 지은 정 de la Pixabay

    One of the most popular social media platforms these days is Instagram. This photo and video sharing app have been around since the early 2010s and has since them managed to amass over 1 billion active monthly users making it one of the biggest social media platforms around.

    Instagram is known to be widely used in the business industry as it offers so many different benefits. However, the one thing that can determine your success on the platform is your follower count, and everyone one seems to be racing to get as many followers as possible. If you want to know how to get more followers, or if you are new and are struggling, then here are a few tips.

    Photo by form PxHere

    Use hashtags

    One of the most popular tools that just about every social media platform has to offer its users is hashtags, however, so many people don’t actually know how to use them effectively if they are trying to grow their account. Essentially, hashtags are keywords that you can include in the caption of your content which can then be searched by other users. When search for a hashtag, using will be met with every post that hash be posted making use of the hashtag.

    Hashtags are a brilliant way to extend you reach to a much larger audience that is most likely interested in your content and falls part of your niche. Making use of hashtags is extremely simple when you know what you’re doing. You basically need to find the best hashtags that are related to your content and the easiest way is by using TaskAnt, a tool that helps you come up with hashtags by using their custom generator to help you grow your account. One thing when using hashtags is to make sure you don’t use more than 4 or 5 as this will come across as spammy and annoying.

    Use influencers

    As a platform with over a billion users, it comes with no surprise that some of them have managed to accumulate following of mullions upon millions of people and basically become the celebrities of Instagram. These are what we refer to as social media influencers. For these people, social media is their life and also their job, so helping to promote other businesses is a way that they make a bit of their income.

    A great way for you to get more followers on Instagram is by making use of an influencer and taking advantage of the fact that they have a massive audience that will most likely follow you if they hear good things about your brand from the influencer. This is a great way to extend your reach to a massive audience without too much work form your side. Just keep in mid that this kind of work can end up being a bit pricey.

    Be real

    Even though Instagram is all about the aesthetics and being superficial, people still like to see authenticity and realness. A great way to bring your audience in closer and hold their attention for longer is to show them that you are not just a perfect person with a perfect lifestyle, and to les them get up close and personal, but posting things like behind the scenes videos, or meet the team posts, or even just explaining how you make something. This allows for people to see the real you and make a mor personable connection.

    Photo by form PxHere

    Use all posting methods

    Instagram started out as just a platform where you could post picture to your timeline for people to see and that was all. Since then, Instagram has introduced so many new in creative features to their platform that make it so much more interesting. You can now post both pictures and videos to you feed, but also to your stories, to reels, and even film live videos.

    As a business on Instagram, you should take advantage of all of these different features as this is a great way to push your content to as many people as possible.

  • How to get active followers on Instagram

    How to get active followers on Instagram

    Over the last few years, traditional marketing has become much less effective than it was in the past, and people are far less responsive to it now. A testament to this is that people absolutely despise advertising on YouTube, as it disrupts their entertainment. Marketing on social media is similar to this, as people now want organic marketing.

    Photo by mohamed hassan form PxHere

    This means that you probably need to change your approach to getting followers on Instagram, and if you are new to the platform then you might not know exactly what you should be doing. Luckily, with all the new possibilities that arise today, you can get Instagram followers by taking advantage of services such as Growthoid.com that can guide you through the process of finding your real audience. The most important thing is to be able to recognize the opportunities at the right time. Here are a few other tips to help you get more active followers and to increase the growth of your account.

    Image by raphaelsilva from Pixabay

    Remember to use hashtags

    One simple way to make sure that you are increasing your followers is to take advantage of a free resource that is available to everyone: hashtags. The use of hashtags with posts is often overlooked and undervalued, but they are an extremely effective way of reaching new audiences.

    The biggest mistake people make is using hashtags incorrectly; using irrelevant hashtags that aren’t suitable for the post, or simply using the most popular hashtags in the hopes of getting the attention of as many people as possible.

    When using hashtags, you have to carefully consider the impact it will have. Using extremely popular hashtags might bury your post under all other posts that use the same one, however, using a hashtag that isn’t popular at all might mean that your post only gets seen by a few people.

    Engage with other users

    Another free way to get more active followers for Instagram is by engaging with other people. Creating content and using appropriate hashtags will only improve your reach by a certain margin, but engaging with others will improve it even more.

    This is because when you engage, you are getting your name out there and increasing the visibility of your account, which might lead to more followers if they like your content. Effective ways of doing this are by replying to comments on your post and liking posts by those users, replying to direct messages, commenting on other users’ posts, or even tagging users in your posts.

    When commenting on others posts, make sure the comment is constructive at the very least, or entertaining, as this will get users who read your comment to check your profile.

    Image by 지은 정 from Pixabay

    Create content that lasts

    A simple tip to getting active followers is by creating content that lasts; in other words, content that is evergreen. This basically means that you should create content that is always relevant, easily shareable, relatable, and most importantly, won’t get old.

    While it is important to follow the trends to stay relevant, and keep up to date with the newest ways of presenting content, there will come a time when that content is no longer usable in the sense that people would have seen it all before. By creating evergreen content, you are ensuring that regardless of when someone looks at your profile, they will see something that relates to them.

    A few examples of evergreen content could be “how to” videos, historical information, art, and much more.

    Use an influencer

    If you are looking for something that will give you more instant results, then you could probably try using an influencer. A big benefit of using an influencer is that you will have many to choose from, as there are over 500,000 active influencers on Instagram alone, which means that irrespective of your niche, you will find someone that fits your style.

    That is very important when using an influencer, since if you are a sports brand or account, you wouldn’t use an influencer who represents fast food for example, as that wouldn’t be your audience. You should keep the audience of the influencer in mind when selecting them, as well as asking to see the impact they have had on previous accounts after working with them.

    Another important thing to consider is the size of the influencer. If you are a new account and don’t have much content, you probably would do best with using an influencer that has a smaller following. If you have a very specialized niche, then you would want an influencer with a large following to ensure you reach as many people as possible.

  • What benefits does TikTok have for businesses?

    What benefits does TikTok have for businesses?

    Are you tired of spending too much money on traditional marketing and not getting any benefits from it? Have you thought about suing TikTok to market your business or brand but aren’t sure if it will actually be beneficial to you?

    Image by Kon Karampelas from Pixabay

    TikTok is by far the most popular social media platform around today. Having only launched in 2016, it has since managed to amass over 1 billion active daily users making it the fastest growing social media platform of all time and it doesn’t look like its going to slow down any time soon. This has caught the attention of different businesses and brand and has quickly become a way for them to market themselves to an incredibly large audience.

    Photo by Mike sitlhou from Pexels

    There are so many other benefits that come along with marketing your business or brand on TikTok which make its hardly worth to not do it. If your business is considering using TikTok but isn’t sure of what it can do for you, here are a few ways in which TikTok can benefit your business.

    There’s a massive audience

    TikTok is one of the most popular and fastest growing social media platforms of today and this is clearly visible in the billions of downloads it has received since 2016 when it was launched. Today TikTok has over 1 billion active monthly users making is one of the biggest social media platforms. For businesses this means that they will be able to have a much bigger potential audience to marketing to and the possibility for millions upon millions to see their content. You can always find your place in the market, especially if you know your right audience. You even have a chance to use services such as TokUpgrade, that can help you get more TikTok followers and make you famous by increasing your profile views through organic engagement. The idea is to become visible by engaging a real audience who will bring you success and growth.

    Photo by Mike sitlhou from Pexels

    With TikTok, not only can you reach a much larger audience, but one that also falls part of a younger generation meaning they’re much more impressionable and will be more likely to want to purchase your products. The demographics of TikTok are that of teens and tweens who are most likely still in school.

    A lot of engagement

    With a bigger audience comes a lot more engagement. Engagement is one of the most important factors when it comes to social media marketing and one of the most prominent ways in which you can decide the success of your account. Engagement is one of the best ways for businesses and brand to increase their brand awareness and have much more brand loyalty from their customers and followers. Of course you need to make sure that you have followers to do this in the first place, if you’re looking to get your first followers maybe a bit of help from a reputable service could be a good option.

    TikTok is a fantastic place for businesses to get engagement on their content because there are so many different ways in which one can engage with your account and your content. These being direct messages, commenting on content, liking and sharing content, and even following users.

    Imagine de Nitish Gupta de la Pixabay

    Organic marketing

    One of the best reasons why TikTok is great for business and marketing is because it is great for organic marketing. Organic marketing it When you market your brand or business without making use of any paid methods. TikTok is a brilliant example as a way to organically market your business or brand because the app itself is completely free to make use of. Once you have an account posting content and various different tools which you can make use of are also completely freely available to every user. The best part of all is that production costs on TikTok are very low because your content does not need to be the highest of quality and look like it’s been shot by a professional.

    Imagine de iXimus de la Pixabay

    Advertising and influencers

    TikTok has very quickly caught on to the fact that businesses are making use of their platform and have introduced that feature which allows for businesses and brands to pay for advertising. This allows for their content to be pushed to a much larger audience who falls part of their target market.

    Alternatively, you could also make use of influencers. With so many users on TikTok, there is no surprise that some have them have massive followings of million of people. Influencer are always looking to promote the latest brand and that might be yours. There are so many advantages to doing this, but the biggest benefit that you will get it that your content will reach a much larger audience.

  • Tips to get followers for Twitter

    Tips to get followers for Twitter

    Every customer wants to feel like they are the only one in the world. Like they have a special connection with a business. Like businesses actually listen and respond to their specific needs.

    Photo by form PxHere

    Social media has made this possible creating an almost real time connection for businesses and customers. Businesses have several options to use for social media depending on the type of content and demographic they target.

    Twitter is one of the popular social media platforms that is great for businesses and people to connect. With over 500 million active monthly users and the capability for real-time communication, what more could a business, brand or person ask for? While it is not as easy to get followers, it is not far fetched to attempt to. Finding the right people to follow who follow back will get you going but with some extra help, using these tips, sky may be the limit.

    Photo by form PxHere

    Influencers and services

    The cool kids on the block on Twitter are the influencers. If you want to get popular on Twitter, you have to hang with the cool kids. Influencers are some of the most followed people on Twitter and with that huge following comes great responsibility and… opportunity for Twitter users.  An influencer retweeting something you share gets headway across their many followers and increases engagement. Furthermore, many of their followers are more than likely to retweet and share the content to more followers making it snowball in popularity.

    If influencers are not your cup of tea, a great option would be to buy Twitter followers through Twesocial. The real advantage of Twesocial is it allows real people who understand Twitter like the back of their hand to manage your account and grow your active follower count. This comes at a price so remember your wallet.

    Use hashtags

    If you have used twitter before, you will at some point come across hashtags. Hashtags bundle smilar content together and make it easier to find on twitter. The other great thing about hashtags is when they are trendy. Several people may get involved in a hashtag challenge which makes it highly popular on Twitter. Getting involved in the challenge may get your content retweeted and shared across Twitter wherever the hashtag is popular. Some popular hashtags are the ice bucket challenge and black lives matter.

    Photo by form PxHere

    Create content that can he shared

    Twitter is predominantly a text platform but allows videos and pictures to be uploaded too. Most people on Twitter want short and sweet information so most content should be kept within a few characters n text and 30 second videos. Since many users use it to binge on information, it must be straight to the point and interesting. More popular content is funny, uses images or videos and related to hashtag challenges, sometimes.

    Post at the right times

    Different Twitter users are on Twitter at different times. It is important to know when the users you are targeting are available on the app so that you can post at the best time for them. Customer/follower is king, right? The best times to post on Twitter are between 1pm and 3pm on Mondays and Thursdays for businesses looking for click-throughs to their websites. This may change depending on your audience for example for if its for an event or hobbies, Wednesdays and weekends may be best. The audience will always determine what times and days are best so it is an advantage to understand them.

    Photo by form PxHere

    Use analytics

    Few people enjoyed getting their report cards back in school because often, they were not good news. Similarly, Twitter does not keep you in the dark about how your account is doing. Using analytics shows users how much engagement they are getting through comments, retweets and likes. It also shows whether these metrics are growing, declining or steady which allows a user to adjust their content strategy accordingly. With analytics, you get a clearer picture of what goes on with your account.

    Conclusion

    It is better safe than sorry when it comes to using social media accounts. The best way is always to find out what works best for each and with Twitter, understanding influencers, great content and analytics, will put you a little ahead of the competition. Use them wisely.

  • Designing the Bathroom You’ve Always Dreamed Of – Interior Designer Annette Frommer’s Top Tips

    Designing the Bathroom You’ve Always Dreamed Of – Interior Designer Annette Frommer’s Top Tips

    Your bathroom is way more than a bathtub and a toilet.  It is the place that provides you with positive energy in the morning as you start your day, and it is the space to visit in the evening in preparation for a restful and good night’s sleep. 

    Photo by form PxHere

    For these simple reasons renovating your bathroom is such an exciting prospect. It is not a huge project to undertake, and is quite feasible for most people who have always dreamed of a bathroom that is specifically planned and designed to their very specific wants and needs.  

    To succeed in fulfilling your dream here are a few suggestions and considerations to keep in mind – so that the final result is just what you’ve always dreamed of.

    Budget

    First and foremost, the budget needs to be considered. It is so tempting to go for elements and materials that are more expensive than you had originally planned for. Be wary and stick to your budget.  Nowadays, there are so many gorgeous options, beautiful and practical materials that provide an exclusive and expensive look without the high price tag. 

    Functionality

    Next consider who the bathroom is for and how many people will be using it. Take into account the size of the space. Many bathrooms are not large. Study the size and proportion so that the space feels vast, airy and not stuffy. As interior designer Annette Frommer says, “The layout is crucial. Make sure that the shapes and lines of the bathroom fixtures and tiles harmoniously fit the space”. 

    Photo by form PxHere

    A bathroom for a couple – clean lines and glass doors partition and enlarge the space.

    Color and lighting 

    Color is so important. It creates and enhances the ambiance of the space.   Frommer usually recommends light colors and tones, advising to test the color on large strips. She notes that when deciding on color, you also need to think about lighting.  Are there windows in the space? Large windows/ small windows? How much natural light is there? What kind of light fixtures do you envisage in your mind? Are you craving for a glam chandelier in the bathroom, or for minimalistic spotlights? As she points out, “lighting in the bathroom is everything and the possibilities for light fixtures are endless. Lighting not only brightens a space but also affects the way it makes you feel. In other words, when choosing colors for your bathroom think about the lighting too.”

    A very small bathroom with a chandelier and mirrors 

    to enlarge the space and to provide that pampering 

    glam look and feel!

    Photo by form PxHere

    Black and white. Eternally chic and 

    classic. The mosaic flooring adds style  

    as does the marble cladding. Overall harmonious and super elegant. The 

    spotlights are minimalistic and unobtrusive. 

    Photo by form PxHere

    Storage

    A bathroom should always be tidy. This means the countertop should not be cluttered and electronics and their wires should not be scattered around. Makeup, cleaning products and towels should all be stored. Today, there are so many space saving storage options such as cabinets under the sink, vertical spaces above the door, in the shower, and more.  Give all your items a home – a specific space just for them in order to keep the bathroom space clean and neat. 

    To conclude – Though a bathroom of course needs to be functional it is also the place where you can relax and pamper yourself. By planning and designing the bathroom with elements that you have always desired, you can create the kind of space that is not only functional but a space which offers a sense of serenity and wellbeing!