If you run a business or provide a sort of service in this day and age, it’s incredibly imporant to know how to take advantage of social media so you can build your brand and attract new customers.

While it’s not impossible to start marketing your brand on social media without any prior knowledge, it’s always good to have resources that you can refer to to help make your campaigns be as effective as possible, given the circumstances. And what better way than to read ebooks dedicated to serve as a guide into social marketing?

Here are 20 free ebooks we’ve collected that will one way or another help you get on your feet with social media marketing. Whether you’re taking your first steps in the world of marketing, especially social media marketing, or you’re a more experienced marketer looking to make the transition to social media, these free ebooks will definitely set you on the right track. All you need is the time to indulge in them.

Recommended Reading: 35 Cheatsheets & Infographics For Social Media Marketers

The Definitive Guide To Getting Started With Social Media Marketing by Skadeedle

This ebook is a quick and handy guide to social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest. It provides you with a lot of handy information, including glossaries explaining specific terms and concepts, some do’s and don’ts, as well tips on how best to maximize each social network.

Connecting With Your Customers: A Guide To Social Media by Beatrice Whelan

Beatrice Whelan’s ebook covers a wide range of topics related to social media marketing. Some of the topics include creating a social media plan, managing your online reputation and creating social media profiles. The book also includes invaluable advice from Krishna De, one of Ireland’s leading social media marketers.

The Essential Guide To Social Marketing Campaigns by Offerpop

If you just aren’t seeing the sort of results you want from your social marketing campaigns, you should give this ebook a read. It’s a short but content-filled five-step guide, starting from customer awareness to engagement and to eventual conversion, that will definitely improve your social marketing campaigns.

How To Win In Social Media: A Guide To Optimising Your Social Marketing Campaigns by Stuart Davidson

This ebook is a general guide to optimizing your social marketing campaigns, regardless of network. Topics discussed include the importance of research, great tools and software for social marketing, as well as ways you can measure the effectiveness of your campaigns.

58 Social Media Tips For Content Marketing by Content Marketing Institute

This ebook contains 58 quick tips to help you market your brand on social media. The tips are for all the usual social networks, as well as some additional sites such as SlideShare, Quora and StumbleUpon. They’re accompanied by some statistics and real-world examples.

Tune Up Your Social Media Marketing: The Do’s and Don’ts For Success by Dave Sotolotto

If you’ve ever wondered what you should and shouldn’t do to get the most out of marketing on social networks, this is the ebook for you. The author lists and discusses do’s and don’ts for 7 different social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.

An Advanced Guide To Social Media Marketing by Zesty

This ebook provides an exhaustive amount of content in its 171 pages. A major selling point is that this ebook uses real-world examples to explain social media marketing. What’s more, it discusses marketing on a lot of different social networks, from Facebook to Instagram and everything in between.

The Definitive Guide To Social Marketing by Maria Pergolino, Dayna Rothman, Jason Miller and Jon Miller

The title isn’t an exaggeration; this ebook is a thorough social marketing guide. From starting out with social marketing to social media tactics for B2B marketing, to incorporating social marketing throughout your sales pipeline, this ebook will probably answer all of your questions about social marketing and then some.

The Complete Guide To Social Media Marketing In Europe by Diana Urban

This ebook is aimed at brands looking to make a mark in Europe. Topics include creating a European social media strategy, developing a content strategy, organising your assets and channels, as well as setting up international targeting on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Facebook Content Marketing For Businesses by Nick Steeves

A one-stop guide for content marketing on Facebook, this book doesn’t just familiarize you with Facebook Pages, but also clues you in on how best to use Facebook for your brand or business. Topics include creating a posting schedule, using Facebook Ads and making the most out of Facebook Insights.

Marketing For Facebook Timeline by Todaymade

If you can’t make heads or tails of Facebook, this is the ebook for you. This ebook covers a lot of ground, starting with Facebook timeline basics, and goes on to highlight great ways you can grow your fanbase on Facebook as well as how to use Facebook Places and Facebook Ads to market your brand effectively.

Twitter Content Marketing For Business by Krista Bunskoek

This ebook will get you up to speed with marketing via Twitter in no time. From an introduction to the basics of Twitter to the various Twitter analytics services available, this ebook will come in handy. Other topics include setting goals and target markets, using promoted tweets as well as KPI’s and ROI’s for Twitter marketing.

The Complete Guide: Marketing With Twitter by Todaymade

This ebook goes through what you need to know to fully harness Twitter’s potential. The ebook discusses, amongst others, the basics of Twitter, how best to use it in order to build a following and community as well as measuring success and gaining Klout on Twitter.

The Ultimate Guide To Google+ Marketing by Justin Wong

If Google+ marketing is totally new to you, this is probably where you’ll want to start. This ebook explains Google+ marketing from start to finish, from the basics of the social network to taking advantage of Google+ Circles and Google+ Hangouts, to the positive effects Google+ can have on search engine optimization.

An Introduction To Google+ For Business: A Setup & Strategy Guide For Marketers by Jay Acunzo And Anum Hussain

This ebook is a great way to familiarize yourself with using Google+ Pages for your business. It covers the basics, such as setting up your Google+ Page, the best ways to manage it, and how to take advantage of Google+ features to help with your visibility on the Google search engine.

The Ulitmate Cheat Sheet For Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn by Bob Ruffolo

Need some quick tips and information on how to use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for social media marketing? Have a look at this ebook. The information is presented in a clear and concise manner, and the tips are sure to help anyone improve their reach and popularity on social networks.

How To Optimize And Measure Your Pinterest Business Account by Brittany Leaning

If you’re interested in using Pinterest to market your business, this ebook is definitely one you’ll be interested in reading. This ebook explains everything you need to know about optimizing Pinterest for business. From verifying your website to optimizing Pinterest for search to measuring success, this ebook leaves no stone unturned.

You Might Also Like: A Brief Guide To Pinterest Marketing

The Future Of Social Media: Personalizing Business By Focusing On People (Not Profiles) by Anum Hussain

This ebook shows you how to put "social" back into "social media". It gives you tips on growing your database and following, but also discusses the importance of context in social media marketing, showing how you can use social context to personalize your brand’s interaction with customers.

The Social Era Demands Social Selling by Hearsay Social

Instead of chasing large numbers of Facebook likes, this ebook argues that businesses should focus on the human and social aspects in order to grow their businesses. To this end, the ebook provides tips on getting started on social selling, as well as five tips on being a good social salesperson.

Listen Up! The Definitive Guide To Social Listening For Smarter Business by Leslie Nuccio

This ebook is a guide to social listening, and covers important topics such as finding the most important online conversations, word-of-mouth marketing, using social media to guide marketing targets and starting your own viral marketing memes.

TemplateMonster is back in partnership with hongkiat.com to bring you more stunning CMS templates. If you’re looking to spruce up your WordPress- or Joomla-powered site with a new premium template, you will be spoiled for choice by the thousands of CMS templates available.

TemplateMonster offers templates suited for more than 50 categories including cafe & restaurant, art & photography, transportation, hotel, holiday templates, law, personal pages, weddings etc.

In this giveaway, we’re going to give you a CMS template of your choice, from any of the categories, for free.

The Prizes

We’re looking for 10 winners to take home a CMS template (WordPress OR Joomla) each, and once again, you get to PICK which exact theme you want.

Here’s a taste of the kind of templates you might be winning from this giveaway.

How To Win

To win the theme of your choice:

1. Check out this link for WordPress themes. Or this link if you prefer Joomla themes.

2. Find your favorite then leave a comment stating the ID of the theme you want:

e.g. I’d like to win #48361.

That’s it! We will randomly pick 10 winners after the contest ends at 21 April 2014.Good luck!

With so many websites having similar designs and structures nowadays, it’s very important for any web designer to stay creative and unique in order to stand out from the crowd. This isn’t always such an easy task. So how about a different approach to web design? Today, we’d like to bring your attention to editorial design.

As a rule, an editorial design is custom-made and takes into account aspects such as readibility and visual attractiveness. It can be a mix of photos, typography, bold colors, and geometric shapes. Why the focus on print design? Well, because sometimes taking yourself out of the environment you have grown accustomed to can really spruce up the idea generator.

With that in mind, we have put together the following 20 smashing editorial design pieces for your inspiration. Also, if you haven’t already, check out our previous collections of printed brochure designs (Part 1 and Part 2) as well.

Recommended Reading: 50 (More) Fantastic Printed Brochure Designs – Part II

B A C K S P O T – Only style matters by Agustina Petrozzino

The Motion Theater by Caroline Grohs

O R I O N / by Flavia Schreiber

Calendar Girl by Matt Chase

GOOD Editorial Illustration by David Schwen

Graphic Design by Sebastien Bisson

Revista 30 Anos Unasp-EC by Felipe Pinheiro

Biombo by Magoz

Filter Magazine, August 2010 by Pleks

Editorial Illustrations 2011-2012 by Charis Tsevis

lg2boutique: Agropur Annual Report by Courtney

NO CURE MAGAZINE ISSUE 2 – GENDER by Mark Zeidler

Field Magazine by Well Made Studio

Dale Mag by Emilia Molina Carranza

Revista Cuadro “Piel” by Fernando Torres Rojo, javier Dominguez, Stefan Angeles, Mariana González Roldán, and Carolina

STREETMAG Light by Paweł Brzeziński and Rytm Interactive

Johanne Kolstad by Tatalab, Velour, and Tata&Friends

Daniel Paper – Corporate Publishing by moodley brand identity, Sabine Kernbichler, Marion Luttenberger, and Katrin Scheikl

PS magazine – 13/4 by José Simon

Vague Magazine by Carolina Menezes, Daniel Rocha, and Li LOu

Dashboard allows you to install useful single-function widgets on your Mac, for instance, the calendar, calculator, reminder, etc. However, they are only available in their own separate space, meaning that you have to go to that space to use them.

If you’d prefer to not switch Spaces to get to your widgets, there is a way to place your widgets right on your desktop. You will need to use Terminal for this and it’s a real simple tip.

Recommended Reading: 20 Handy Mavericks Tips & Tricks You Probably Don’t Know

Getting Widgets On The Desktop

First we need to open up Terminal. You can launch Spotlight with the shortcut CMD + Space then search for Terminal before pressing Enter.

In Terminal, type in the following command and press Enter:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES && killall Dock

Now we need to make sure that your Mac is not showing Dashboard as its own space. Under Applications > System Preferences > Mission Control, make sure that Show Dashboard as a Space is unchecked.

The ability to use widgets on your desktop should now be enabled. To move a widget into your desktop:

1. Pull up your Dashboard with the keyboard shortcut Fn + F12.
2. Click and hold a widget you want transferred.
3. Use the keyboard shortcut Fn + F12 again to move to your desktop, and release your widget.

4. To put the widgets back, simply hold the widget and use the shortcut again.

Note: If the widget was created after the Terminal command was used, it should now be on your desktop. If the widget was already open before you run this tip, the widget will not appear until you put the following command into Terminal:

killall Dock

If you want to turn off this feature, use the commands below:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode NO && killall Dock