5 WordPress Tricks That Will Make Your Blogg Better

WordPress is a cornucopia of plugins, themes, and countless different techniques that are supposed to help you beat the competition. Yet all these additions are getting massive, bigger and, to be honest, not exactly simple to use. Have you been searching for simpler ways to use WP but without success, for far too long? 

411 Locals will help you with some of the easiest WP hacks for blogging:

You Can Master the art Of Coding without Actually Coding

It’s about time for you to learn how to use shortcodes! They are special tags you can insert in the body of your post, which make a suggestion for more complicated coding. Whenever WordPress checks one of these tags in a post, it automatically replaces it with the corresponding HTML equivalent. Check out the examples:

• [ audio ]– embeds an audio file and displays a basic audio player in the page
• [ gallery ]– creates a basic gallery based on a set of images
• [ video ]– embeds a locally-hosted video in the page

Get Rid Of “Uncategorized” Posts

“Uncategorized” is your default category & as such, it adds no value to your posts. Proceed with this: From the left-hand menu, go to Settings > Writing, and switch the Default Post Category to whatever you want – for instance, your most frequently used one. Alternatively, you can rename the default category itself. This way, you can alter the category of your previous “uncategorized” tagged posts.

Get The Perfect Image Size With Ease

The most irritating experience when you create your blog post (apart from starting it) is to see how your image doesn’t fit, making your work amateurish. Instead of resizing, re-previewing, rechecking and what else not, you can use the following trick, provided by 411 Locals: 

You should simply change the default media size for your uploaded images.

When you opt for “Thumbnail,” “Medium,” or “Large,” WordPress pulls those pre-set image sizes from your blog settings. The “Large” category can fit the full width of your post layout. Do the following – from the left-hand WordPress menu, choose Settings > Media, and adjust the “Max Width” and “Max Height” settings to fit your blog sizes. You can also set the “Medium” size to take up 1/3 of your post layout, then use these “Medium” images such as featured images for your posts, by aligning them to the right, and set the “Large” size to fill the full width of your post layout. When you have questions you just might check the specialized sources. 

Use  the “Inspect Element” option in your Chrome browser to determine the maximum width.

Right-click anywhere inside the text of your post, and choose “Inspect Element.” Here, you can access the web code of your page. Point your mouse at the highlighted separate parts of your blog design, along with a display of height and width of the element. You can judge the right post size from here. Even more, you can go on the right-hand side of this new code window and click the tab for “Computed.” You should see a graphic of boxes with numbers in the middle. They show the size of your post, with the first number indicating the width.

How to Convert Instagram from a Fun Place to a Marketing Tool, in 9 Steps

Instagram recently reached the milestone of 500 Million users. 67,2 Millions of these users are from the US. Their number is expected to grow  to 95 Million by 2020. It is estimated that approximately 30% percent of the population of the US uses Instagram. Daily, Instagram is used by 49% percent of the adults in the US.

For every dedicated specialist working in the field of marketing, these figures can mean new and bright opportunities for reaching new clients and markets. However, a small business owner or self-employed professional can use their Instagram profile for marketing purposes. Currently, most people use Instagram as a place to share their cool pics, short videos, and to follow popular profiles. However, this is only the first step of turning your Instagram profile in a business-oriented marketing tool. For example, you might check 411 Locals Instagram's profile

If you are a small business owner or self-employed professional, you may already have a brand name. Fill the bio section in the profile, and tell people more about you and your services. Post your best and most eye-catching content. Instagram allows you to write several short sentences, so make them brilliant.

Instagram is a social network that focuses on visuals such as pictures and short videos, not longer than 15 seconds. The users are looking for visual rather than written content.  So, carefully pick your profile picture. It should be clear, colorful, and ïf possible, present your service somehow. If you specialize in construction service, the picture should be of yourself wearing a protective helmet, glasses, and carrying some tools.

You may be tempted to use hashtags in your bio. You’d better not do it. The hashtags in your Instagram bio are not clickable, so they will not be in great use and will just spoil the look of your profile. However, you can use the hashtags in your posts.

Take pictures regularly, but not too often. Once or twice a day is fair enough. Share your work and latest achievements. Also, share your latest work-related challenges and how you managed to cope with them. Your followers will love to see the results of your work. Clients nowadays check everything - not just the prices. They are also looking for examples of projects completed by the contractor they are thinking of hiring. And having lots of pics of your completed projects could be the ultimate commercial and low-budget marketing approach. You can learn much more about it check-in 411 Locals CrunchBase profile and the posts in it.

It is now time for hashtags. Remember, do not over hashtag your posts. 3 to 5 is the optimal number. A bigger number could be considered as improper behavior and can ruin your post. Use hashtags that are relevant to your brand, business, and services. If you are in the roofing business, using the hashtag for campers may not be the best idea. However, use keywords such as “roof, repair, roof leak, ceiling” and so on. Of course, you can share some posts that are not strictly related to your business, but this should be no more than a few times a week. Remember: you hashtags have to be relevant to your activity. Creating a custom hashtag is also a great way to promote yourself and create awareness. Use several hashtags in a post.

Tell a story with any image or video you decide to share.Use Instagram to educate potential clients about your services, products, results. Try to be creative as possible. For example, you can use the photo filters that are built in Instagram. Choose the one you like most. In addition, you can add photos with some quote about business or motivation. Helpful and useful info will be much appreciated too.

Get social, and connect your Instagram profile with your twitter, facebook, WordPress, and with all directories you are registered in. This will help you reach a bigger audience and maximize your influence. You can embed your Instagram or Twitter posts in your website. This will act as an engagement trigger.

Be active on Instagram - just follow current and potential clients, friends. It will be great if you give likes to some of the activities your clients or friends are posting. Send them a message, congratulate them for a success they are proud of. There is a comment option in Instagram too. Just use it and post relevant and positive comments. The comments should be under posts of your friends, potential, and current customers. Commenting under posts is a really easy and fun way to generate some attention and more followers.

Add and share videos too. In addition to pictures and posts, you can add short videos that are 15 seconds in length. Make every second count. Point your smart device to the work you already completed and generously share it with your audience. You can add some comment. For example: “After 5 days of hard work, we just completed this project and we are planning on celebrating our success”.

5 Latest Plugins And Creative WordPress Themes Used By 411Locals

If you follow the WordPress trends without double checking, you will be doing something mainstream.Globally, more than 70% of the websites are now powered by WP. With all the free plugins and themes, a good part of those sites look too similar to each other. So how do we stand as a unique site, which is more likely to be noticed? What plugins and themes work well for making a WP site user-friendly, SEO-friendly and with high content marketing efficiency? Here are some of the templates and extensions working for 411 Locals.

Masonry Layout

It is a Pinterest-like grid. The card-based layouts are easily seen on Pinterest, Dribble, Behance, Twitter, Facebook, G+ and so forth. This pattern slices your content and make it readable. It is also a mobile-friendly solution. With a structure like this, you can start your blog, online magazine, or e-commerce site with ease.

Parallax Scroll

This is the solution when you wish to create a header, or even a custom page with a scrolling parallax background by using only simple shortcodes. You only need to create the content needed for this specific post type. The admin page will display the shortcode that fits. You only need to toss the code into your page or post. Or else, implement the plugin straight into your theme or php code.

Animate It!

This plugin allows you to apply CSS3 animations on posts, widgets and pages. Visual storytelling is crucial for every modern portfolio, so you can benefit from the dynamic behavior of Animate It! The effects include bouncing, fading, flipping, rotating, pulsating and more. The plugin is highly praised in every ultimate guide to web animation.

Divi: Universal & Creative WP Theme

It is one of the most popular themes and definitely  the most creative one issued by elegant themes club! Great designs, thousands of clients, customer care and quite affordable price keep them ahead of the competition.  Divi is the latest template. It carries the legacy of the past brilliancy and brings it to a whole new level.

Oshine: Best Universal WP Theme For 2016

Since its release last year, Oshine has several thousand customers and over 18 demos. The true quality of this theme lies in its countless options to present your portfolio. It has a smooth design with clean typography and great layouts. The flexibility of this theme makes it perfect for all types of small businesses. The master Slider and Slider Revolution plugins are implemented in the theme for free. The updates are at one-click reach and also free.

WordPress has become a huge platform that makes it very easy for even untrained users to build a website. However, it does take time and a detailed eye to create a unique, astonishing site. For those of you who can’t afford spending hours in front of the computer choosing the right colors, creating the right headlines, or adding the right pictures, 411Locals offers the best solution. All you have to do is give us a call. We’ll handle the rest.

The Most Important Changes In SEO – Part 2

Welcome back to the summary of the most important changes in SEO by the end of September. This part will introduce you to the social media aspects of the latest updates. 411Locals will also give you some insights concerning the current SEO and online marketing trends.

New Rules: Getting a Verified Profile on Facebook

Facebook has implemented new rules for branded content. Evidently, the verification of your FB business page is becoming more important than ever. Verified celebrities, public figures, and easily recognizable brands have blue badges. On the other hand, companies and businesses, especially local ones, receive gray badges. Verifying your FB business page is a smart move since it boosts your rankings and your trust metrics,  as well as widens your audience. Basically, businesses have two options for verification: over the phone or via documentation. The latter takes time since you need to upload business documentation, and confirming your business’ legitimacy is also time-consuming.

Summary of Last Month’s Conferences, Podcasts, and SEO Debates

The future of search marketing, as always, can be described as an industry that’s been through a lot of changes. The survival of any company in the SEO business depends on its ability to use update hits as opportunities to learn, grow, and share with the rest of the community. While it is impossible to sort out the top tools and trends in SEO for the rest of the year, 411 Locals can present to you some important metrics for last month, considering the information shared in leading SEO blogs and personal pages:

• It turns out that almost ⅔ of their time, SEOs are creating quality content: this task is far more time-consuming than removing duplicate content, data analysis, keyword research, link building and others.

• Over 28% of the SEO gurus point out that building relevant backlinks is their biggest challenge: while last year’s huge issue was mobile optimization, the current focus is on finding places for backlinks which are worth the effort.

In conclusion, this month’s changes in the SEO world showed that constant learning is a must – not for this year, not for tomorrow, but right now. Since search marketing will always be driven by content, link, and mobile-friendly practices, it is clear that, no matter what forms of content marketing work best for you, earning backlinks to your content is what makes you grow. New technologies will be on their way in the future, so our job as SEO specialists is to determine what works best for our sites.

411 Locals: An Internal Team Coaching Program for Better Team Performance

A study provided by the International Federation of Coaches shows that an internal live coaching program can improve the productivity and performance of the team at any company. The survey was conducted among 150 enterprises across the globe that are already running an internal live coaching program. All of them reported the internal coaching managed to increase the employee performance with 10% to 30 %and to lower the level of work-related stress with 15 to 22 points. 

Initially, the coaching was offered only to senior managers or individuals at specific grades - middle-level manager or employee with high potential. Nowadays, in most companies, including 411 Locals, the internal live coaching is delivered to all employees. An investment of such rank is quite reasonable as it offers high return on investment. 

External or Internal Coach? Which one is better?

411 Locals knows well, that both approaches have their supporters, so there is no right and wrong answer to that question. It is believed that the main advantages of the external coach are the experience with leadership and multiple tasks that were performed previously in different organizations. External coaches are supposed to have better training and tend to have the higher level of accreditation compared to internal coaches. However, the main drawback of hiring an external coach is not only the higher cost but the lack of understanding of the company’s internal structure and culture.
Internal coaches are considered to have a better internal understanding of the company processes and structure. Also, they are familiar with the company culture and are seen as an accessible and free resource within the organization. 

Internal coaching program for better team performance 

Employees and teams are the engine that drives most companies or organizations. The levels of efficiency, the work done, and the delivered outcomes are the results of how the team works together. 411 Locals reminds, that Indicators such as performance and productivity could suffer when the team members are lacking the knowledge how to work together. A crisis such as conflicts, hostility, or unclear expectations could lead to poor results and ineffective handling of the internal resources. Starting an Internal coaching program can prevent such undesirable events and harmful effects of unhealthy teams.

Understand and accept the team dynamics and establish behavior expectations 

According to 411 Locals, A great place to start an internal team coaching program is by understanding what is the role of the employees within the team and if they work well together. It is about different styles of working and interpreting the information, as well as verbal and nonverbal skills. Reaction on one and the same stimulus could be totally different. No matter the difference between the team members and their unique features, the team has to be synchronized. Some personal assessment tools can be of a great use to determine and uncover individual patterns - communication approach, conflict resolution, a capability of multitasking, and problem-solving. The main role of the Internal team coaching program will be bringing the team members together and finding a way to improve their performance. The coaching tools and mastermind groups are a great way to understand others people point of view. Once the point of view is clarified, is time for setting up internal rules, acceptable for all team members. Maybe, most important aspect of the internal team coaching is to develop a clear set of communication and behavior expectations. Using a team charter can easily formalize and visualize all expectations and agreements. 

Evaluate the achievements and set up a proper reward system

In general, people have different values and these create a dominant obstacle to team effectiveness and unification. To overcome this the Organization or the Company should set up a rewarding system, evaluating both individual and team contribution. Here steps in the team coaching once again. With group and role play games, the rewards expected by every team member can be clarified and then the expectations evaluated. It is important the coach to find overlapping between expectations, reality, and the company values. Next is to find goals that both individuals and the team share. Great tool for achieving that could be mastermind sessions focused on the team and individual values. 

What works well for one particular team, may not necessarily work for another department or team. One of the goals of the internal coaching is to create effective relationships between team members. However, the effective work relationships are build by revealing employee’s needs, style of work, and preferences. An internal coach can easily use them to identify the differences between team members and then to focus their attention on overcoming them and bettering the performance of the team.

411 Locals Is Starting An International SEO Training Academy

411 Locals, one of the Leading Local SEO companies in the US, is starting an International SEO Training Academy. The innovative courses will be taught jointly with Varna Technical University in Varna, Bulgaria.

“Search engine optimization (SEO) is widely used as a marketing and lead generation tool. However, it is still not a part of the education system. We decided to start an international training project in order to face the challenges of the constantly changing online industry”, says Roumen Todorov, Business Consultant of 411 Locals. Up to 500 students will join the courses. The main focus of the program is to prepare students for further education and career in the field of SEO and Internet marketing.

The participants will be trained by widely-recognized SEO professionals from all over the world, including top performing employees of 411 Locals and professors from the Technical University. Teachers and trainers will share their theoretical and core practical experience with the students.

The company is continuously investing in education and in continuous SEO and online advertising training. Many of the employees of 411 Locals are certified by Google and accredited by Bing ads. Their skills set and know-how are up to date with the latest SEO progress and changes, as developing people is one of the core values of the company. Keeping abreast of the latest developments in the online marketing industry is essential to every online marketing business and to every one of their clients.

411 Locals

Thanks to our policy of constant improvement and continuous technological and marketing training, the company has so far served more than 38,000 local business, ensuring that they reach the first position in Google search results.

About Our Company

411 Locals is an Internet advertising agency based in Las Vegas, Nevada. Established as a local business 9 years ago, today 411 Locals is an international company with offices in USA, Europe, and Asia.

More than 400 employees meet the client’s needs and requirements. 411 Locals has an A+ rating from Better Business Bureau and is a Google Partner. The main services of 411 Locals are website design and local search optimization for small and medium-sized businesses.

411 Locals 6 Steps to Configure a Cross Functional Team

411 Locals, as an international company, would like to advice you that a project usually requires commitment from employees or professionals from different functions or department that are already existing in the organization. Such a team is called cross-functional team.

This type of team can be in great help for any company and they are very useful when you need to fix an existing problem or to find a new solution. They are just assigned to a specific assignment. Just for example, a company might set up a cross-functional team from software specialist, hardware specialist, people from customer service department, procurement. All of them will be “loaned” full or part time from their existing team temporarily, till the job is done. After finishing the project the cross-functional team will be dismissed. 

However, to finish the project on time and to reach all goals, the cross-functional team first have to be set up properly. 411 Locals would like to introduce 6 steps that might help any company to configure a cost-effective cross-functional team with great productivity 

1. Clear objectives. You need to set a clear objective or objectives

Layout a clear objective or target. Make sure you clarify what kind of outcomes are expected from the team. Make sure those objective are purified, identify the resources that the team can rely on and create a team charter. 

2. Determine the team roles and select the virtuous team members

After you already have the idea what is expected, you have to define the roles and then to attract the proper team members. First, you need to think about the technical competences and skills each different cross team member have to have. Consider that putting together people from different and eventually opposing departments might lead to communication issues between the members. To cope with that assign at least some people with great communication and decision-making skills. 

3. Set a budget and resources

No matter the newly formed cross-functional team is from employees, it will need resources to function and to work on the task. For example, it could be free office space, access to a conference room. Furthermore, the cross-functional team might need new software and / or hardware to finish the task. 

4. Initiate and Institute the ways of team functioning

Establish the way the newly developed cross function team will operate. 411 Locals practice advice you to start a project with clear and understandable rules. Before the real work is starting organize a meeting with the team and check for any questions and possible improvements. The main issues with any new team is that you cannot make upfront any precise presumptions how it will work together. However, you can ensure rules, communication channels, decision-making process, resources, time for feedback and training. 

5. Appoint the right for the team leadership style 

A manager can use in his daily routine one main leadership style. Within a cross-function teams, things are different.Usually, the members are equal so the Autocratic style might not me the proper choice. The Democratic style might lead to team spoiling and delay. For sure the balance between equals has to be kept, no matter that the team will quickly appoint a nonformal leader. Several group coaching sessions conducted in the beginning of the project might help the team to clarify the roles and appoint the most suitable nonformal leader

6. Communicate with the team 

During the work process, conflicts between the different cross function team members will arise naturally. To reduce the negative effect or even to avoid it, you have to communicate regularly with the team. Showing a weekly interest on the progress and meeting with the team could be a good idea. Use simple words and a lot of visuals. 411 Locals practice shows that you just need to just make the thing smooth and easier for the team. Pay attention to the team members and listen what they have to say or state. It could take you some time but when created, a receptive atmosphere will boost the productivity of your cross-functional team. 

Once you are ready with your team, you just will have wait about 1 - 2 weeks for the first results. The practice shows that this is a crucial period for the cross-functional team . The things might not start smooth between the team participants - do not forget they have different education, background, specialization. To glue them, use friendly jokes, avoid any kind of mumbling or blaming. Cross-functional teams are known also as a cross-department teams. Regardless of the name and you internal company structure, those team could be a great asset for your company.