Blizzard Blog Marketing Services

Tips on Adding Images to Your WordPress site

admin — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 22:47:59 +0000

Is there a maximum or minimum size to use?

To keep the download time to a minimum and to have a good quality image, make sure that your image is no bigger than 500 pixels along the longest edge and no smaller than Here are some free software programs that we have used and find really good. You can use any of these to edit your images. Both require you to download software to your computer.

The Gimp – an Open Source software program that is available online and has many of the same features as Photoshop. Available for Windows, Unix and MacOS X systems.
Cost: Free

Picasa Photo Editing by Google – a free software from Google that allows you to locate and organize photos on your computer. Has simple editing tools to add effects and edit images. Gives you the option to share photos online. Available for Linux & Windows systems – no MacOS version yet.
Cost: Free

For more info on other editing tools visit the About site at Top 8 Free Photo Editors for Windows.

Visit Blizzard University for an online tutorial about adding images to your WordPress site,
or Download the pdf here Adding images to your wordpress site

Blogs Can Give You an Edge Over the Competition

admin — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 17:57:03 +0000

In an industry like hospitality, how do you make yourself stand out from the crowd? Today the Internet is fully embraced by the lodging industry. At one time Travel was only second to searches on the Internet after Sex, which makes the market one of the most competitive.

If you are in a well-traveled area with lots of lodging options, such as Vale Colorado, the Napa Valley, New Orleans or any lodging saturated market, how do you stand out from the crowd? You already have a professional site, you are getting a good amount of traffic, but you would like more of the pie. A community site or Q & A site about the area might just be the competitive edge you are looking for.

Becoming the expert in your area is easy. You live there! You have been giving guests this information for years, “Where is the best restaurant?”, “Who should I go to for a fun white-water rafting trip?”, “What can we do with the kids today now that it is raining?” (more…)

Early Adopters of Business Blogs

admin — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 19:09:18 +0000

Early adopters of business blogs are really starting to see the results of their blogging efforts especially in the organic search results. This can be seen in a recent search on ‘Women’s Yoga Retreat’ in Google. The Home Ranch blog post is listed 4th in the results of about 807,000 matches.

The Home Ranch started blogging nearly a year ago and the recent upgrade of both the site and blog design really gives them an edge over other companies that offer the Colorado Dude Ranch experience.

Another site that is seeing the results pay off is the Winter Park Blog. (more…)

Asheville Cabins Blog, North Carolina

admin — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 17:01:25 +0000

The team at Asheville Cabins wanted to enhance their current site by adding the ability to post about events in the area. The current site is built on ColdFusion, an application program for dynamic web sites and they were happy with their current site, hosting company and provider. They decided that they wanted to keep the current site where it was but use the Blizzard team for promotion, tracking and SEO. The main site resides on the clients server while the blog resides on the Blizzard servers. The transition from the current site to the blog is seamless for the visitor to the site.

To make the transition seamless we created a customized WordPress template for the client that exactly matched their current site. (more…)

Mountain Property Management, Jackson Hole

admin — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:02:26 +0000

A new look and better navigation helped Mountain Property Management Jackson Hole increase organic search engine placement. The old website was looking it’s age and while they were getting OK traffic the visitors were not converting and they were dropping in the organic search results. Which meant there was much room for improvement.

We looked at different options to create the site and that they wanted to be able to easily change out photos and update the rates as well as add new properties. So we decided that the best option was to build out a site that used a content management database, which gave them control over the data on the site. (more…)