Quick Website, social media and Blog Marketing Tips
One of the easiest ways to grow your social media community the whole day is to post consistently. Studies show that different audiences react to different posting frequencies, so you need to make sure that you have tested the optimal frequency with your own audience and look at the engagement levels in comparison with your other audience. The minimum post frequency on Facebook should be once a day and 4-6 times a day on Twitter. Also be mindful of the time of the day you post to increase engagement. You can automate the process by using tools like Buffer and Sway.
Use Images When Posting to Facebook
Including photos in your Facebook and Twitter posts will generate more engagement. According to various studies, posts with relevant images generate 50% more likes than the average text post. When you want to post about an offer or an announcement, include an image. This will significantly increase click-through rates.
Increase Exposure of your Communities With Social Buttons
Embed social media share buttons within your site and within your marketing communication to increase engagement. Does your blog have social sharing button displayed prominently within the posts to encourage leaders to share the article. Some of the places you need to consider include:
- Footer of the website or blog
- Header of the website or blog
- In your newsletter
- In your email signature
- Within your blog posts
Run a Launch Rock Campaign
What is a Launch rock?
A Lauch rock is a free service for gathering email addresses of people who want to get an early access to the launch of a new product, service, app or really anything. A lauch rock can be an effective marketing tool because it encourages word of mouth. One can integrate social buttons within the subscription process which is a very powerful component when it comes to turning a campaign into a viral marketing channel.
Here is an example of a launch rock:
The idea is to offer a free give-away or some other offer which works on friend-bring-a-friend model. Make sure the message has a powerful incentive.
Invest on infographic
Over the last few years, infographics have become very popular. A professionally designed infographic is a very potent traffic generator. A professionally designed infographic can cost you anywhere between $100 and $2,000 but will be worth the investment.
Write amazing headlines
The headline of a blog post carries a lot more weight than what many people think. No matter the quality of your content, a bad headline can drive away visitors. Here are some tips for optimizing your blog titles:
- Use every day, simple language
- Keep it short and catchy. Leverage common psychological traits like fear, urgency, desire, etc.
- Use negatives such as Never Do This, Don’t, Avoid, etc.
Create Micro Content
Many people are now suffering from information overload, which means that they have less time and patience to consume content. A growing trend which Australian marketers and business owners should consider is the creation of micro content for easy consumption. A great service that has mostly been used is the Vine and SoundCloud.
Host a Twitter Q&A sessions
One way to keep your social media fans engaged is hosting a periodic Twitter Q&A sessions. The idea is to encourage your community to ask questions and seek clarifications concerning your product, industry or business. You can provide answers, take their feedback and even create a blog post from that. Over time, more people will begin to take part and slowly your brand and audience will grow.
The Marketer’s Creed: 3 Qualities of Great Marketers
Marketing is the engine of any business. Whether you are a small business owner or the Chief Marketing officer of a big corporation, you need to have the right mix of traits to stay successful. The foundation of responsibility is no doubt the most important component of any success in business. In this article, I am going to talk about some touch points around this necessary quality in your life in order to help you achieve your business goals.
- Get motivated
The renowned author and speaker Zig Ziglar said that motivation, just like taking a bath, doesn’t last. One should constantly recharge their batteries of motivation to stay motivated. That is why it is recommended that you stay motivated on a daily basis.
The only way to keep your momentum is to stay motivated. This is like a muscle that needs to be exercised daily if you want to stay on top of your game. Of course there are days you wake up and feel like you would rather stay in bed and abscond your obligations. So many people give in to the temptation and end up wasting a lot of time.
One way to build motivation is to form daily rituals where you perform certain set of actions, every day, which get you ‘in the zone’. If you establish a routine that puts you in the path to maximum productivity early in the day, your body and mind will learn that it is time to get going.
For instance, if you are a runner, you may choose to wake up, put on your shoes and start running every time you wake up from bed. In the office, the ritual could be visualization, meditation before going for a meeting or making a sales presentation.
Our bodies and minds are like engines, they must be kept in optimum working conditions to function correctly. The engine must first be fired before it can start working. Get yourself motivated first thing before you start doing what you planned.
- Assume responsibility
If anything is to be, it is up to you. There are no accidents. Responsibility is the hallmark of successful entrepreneurs and is a way of being, not just what you do. When you are truly responsible, you accept the fact that success or failure is in your hands no matter what. Blaming outside forces or people for your failures shows that you are irresponsible.
Great leaders claim responsibility even when things go wrong not just when they are buzzing. Being responsible means not blaming anyone or anything for the things that go wrong. Being responsible means taking an introspection approach and looking at what you could have done differently to produce better results.
You should be aware at all times the impact you are creating around you and the examples you are setting for others. You have the power to create the circumstances you want. No one prevents you from creating the business you desire.
- Accept no excuses
If you are personally accountable to your business or quality of life, you should be honest with yourself; you should face realty and accept no excuses. Acknowledge where you have done mistakes in the past and commit to improving things in the future.
You really need to be honest with yourself about where you are slaking and resolve to honor your commitments. Do not break promises. Every time you break a commitment or a promise to yourself, your self-worth is eroded and eventually, your inner self’s worth is destroyed.
As a serious entrepreneur, you should choose accountability as your minimum standard in everything you do. If you do so, you will find that your business will have more meaning and you will experience more success.
Online Marketing: How to Write Great SEO Articles that Attract Traffic to Your Website
If you are relatively new to the world of Search Engine Optimization, you may have heard the term SEO being thrown around. Writing great SEO articles is not difficult if you understand the basics of SEO. SEO simply stands for Search Engine Optimization.
SEO is designed to help people find content easily in the search engines like Google. In other words, a SEO article is any content created with the goal of making it easy for people to find you in the search engines. To write better SEO articles, you must do the following:
- Carry Thorough Keyword Research
Before you start writing, do a comprehensive keyword research. Keywords or phrases are those terms that are likely to be used by the web user to find your content. For instance, if a student wants to look for an example of an essay about hotels to help him/her write their homework, they will most likely type the phrase sample essay about hotel in Google search box. So that becomes your keyword. So if you include that keyword in your article, this student will probably land in your website if you offer professional essay writing services.
- Do Keyword optimization
Simply researching keywords and including them in your article is not enough. You must know where, when and how to use those keywords. Just tossing keywords anyhow isn’t going to work. The keywords must occur naturally throughout the article. They must also be relevant to the content. Therefore, you can not use the keyword sample essay about hotel in an article that talks about Weight Loss for example.
- Organize content
You must organize your content in a logical way so that the reader can easily relate to the content. Remember if they don’t stay in your site long enough, they will navigate away, which is bad for your SEO strategy.
- Promote your content
No matter how great your content is, no one will know about it if you don’t share. Luckily, there is a plethora of ways one can share articles today including social media.
Write about something interesting
If you thought people would instantly stream to your website as soon as you publish your article no matter how bogus it is, you are dead wrong. People want to read about something that is interesting to them; something that solves their problem. You content should have a strategy so that you have clear goals on why you are publishing the article in the first place. Is it to get people to buy from you? Is it to simply inform your readers about some great idea? Do you simply want to educate or entertain your readers?
More importantly, your content should be long enough to count. Don’t be too obsessed about the word count. Rather, be more concerned about the point you are trying to make. Search engines generally give preference to longer articles of at least 600 words. In-depth content has particularly found favors in Google search engine. Therefore, if you can get someone to write you a 2,000 word SEO article, by all means go for it.
Target the right audience
Finally, it is critical to target the right audience and design your content strategy accordingly. If your business targets engineers, you might want to writer more insightful, in-depth content. You may also want to ensure you are accurate with your facts.
Need more help with your SEO articles? Do not hesitate to hire a professional SEO writer to help. Not everyone has time to pen a triumphant SEO article so it makes sense to ask for help if you need one.
Are you publishing Great Content? Try These SEO Tips
When you are writing articles for your website/blog, you have to ensure that you have got critical things covered so as to guarantee SEO-friendly articles. The aim of SEO is to ensure you optimize your content so that search engines can understand what your content is about and at the same time make it easy for your audience to find you. Having said that, there are no guarantees whatsoever that your content will rank well in search engines even if you write a mouth-watering SEO article. That is because there are critical components SEO article should have, besides producing a great story.
- Post title and Meta title
The main difference between post title and Meta title is that the post title is what the reader sees as the title of the post while the Meta title is what the search engines use to display to your readers in search engine results. If you fail to create a Meta title, search engines will treat your post title as the Meta title. Have a keyword included in your Meta title to improve your ranking fortunes. Also, keep your Meta title less than 66 characters.
- Meta description
You can add a short description to your Meta title to give your readers an idea of what your post is all about. In other words, the Meta description of your post acts as the sales copy of your post. If your post does not have a Meta description, make sure you include it to optimize your traffic. Your Meta description should not be more than 156 characters.
- Include Image descriptions
The long and short of it is that Google can’t read images. So it relies on the image Alt description to understand what the image is about. When you upload images to accompany your article, remember to name your images appropriately. For instance, if you are writing an essay about invisible man and communism and you decide to include an explanatory graphic, you can name your image as invisible-man-and-communism-illustration.
- Anchor and Interlink Text
Did you know that it is always good to link back to your other articles in your website? This enables readers to stick around for longer. This is particularly advantageous because search engines end up re-crawling the old posts. Interlinking your old pages also improves the sites readability and reduces bounce rates. When interlinking your site, remember to use appropriate anchor texts. An anchor text is the title of the link you are creating.
- Heading
A good article should be easy to read. An article that comprises of blocks of long paragraphs are not desirable. No one has time for boring stuff. Use appropriate headings especially if you are drafting a long post. It is also good practice to include your keywords in your headings.
- Length
Long articles are better than shorter ones. First of all, longer articles easily get noticed in search engines because it is assumed they provide in-depth analysis of the topic. Secondly, longer articles tend to have a wide range of long-tailed keywords spread throughout the content. It is difficult to achieve this with 200-word articles.
- Write for people, not search engines
Search engines are becoming very sophisticated, so much that it is nearly impossible to cheat them. Google wants you to offer your clients great content instead of simply stuffing your keywords for the purposes of ranking. This means that you should ensure your keywords are not only relevant to the article but also provide value to the readers.
As you can see, writing good articles takes patience, skill and time. That is why many people prefer to outsource their SEO articles needs to writing agencies, which is perfectly okay.
Webhosting Secrets Every Web Site Owner Should know
If you are serious about your business, make sure that your website is in good hands. Choosing the right web site host is the best decision you can make. Any server downtime can greatly ruin your business and limit your chances of growing your customer base. Sometimes, hosting a website can be such a confusing experience for web site owners, especially for the first timers. If this is your first time dealing with web hosting, it can seem like a maze of jargon floating around in the technical world. Be it as it may, I have gathered 10 simple secretes that you need to arm yourself with.
- You Get What You Pay for
With web hosting, what you pay for is exactly what you get in most cases. If you go for a cheap host, you’re most likely to get cheap services which include poor customer support, low bandwidth, and servers that crash more often than your PC.
Cheap is expensive. Beware of all the catch phrases in that advertisement banner. If you are serious about your business, you must also be serious about the host who is going to host your website. It is not difficult for people to fall prey to a bunch of spammers who will extract your private information, force advertisement banners on your pages, and extract your customers’ information, in the name of cheap web hosting offers.
It is quite unfortunate that many business people often care too much about the dollar side of web hosting services at the expense of quality, and professionalism. Choosing a web hosting service that will ensure your privacy, efficiency, and availability should be a priority of any web site owner. However, it is still possible to get a web hosting company that offers great services at a cheap price.
The following is a list of top ten web hosting companies and their prices.
2. Understand the "Free Domain" Gimmick
Buying a domain name independently Vs using a free domain offered by the web hosting provider is one of the toughest decisions you may have to deal with. It is critical that you understand how this works out before committing yourself to either of the options. The idea of getting a free domain name from your web hosting provider sounds great but there are things you need to into consideration:
● How long do you plan to use the domain name?
● Who will own the domain name?
● How much will it cost for subsequent renewals
Unless you are planning to use the domain name for a short campaign period, and you don’t intend to renew it afterwards, it is not advisable to go for the free domain name being offered by the web hosting company. Here is why: you may find yourself in unforeseen difficulties if you decide to change your hosting company in future as you may not be able to access the domain registration information. That means that the domain name is ‘free’ for you to use, but the ownership of the domain name remains with the web hosting company.
Essentially, you’ll find yourself in a situation where you are stuck with the web hosting company forever, or you are forced to pay a hefty fee to buy back the domain name.
3. Understand Domain Name Registration
Many people underestimate the concept of domain name registration. As a matter of fact, a domain name entails many things that will affect you in a number of ways in the future. Just like the web hosting services provide you with many options, a domain name also provides you with different features.
Therefore, not all domain registration companies have the same features. So, beware of those registrars that entice you with cheap prices because you may find that they lack some features. A good domain name should come with the following features at no extra costs.
● Should include your own control panel
● URL Redirection – It should make it possible for you to forward your domain name to another web address
● Email Forwarding for multiple addresses
● Full DNS control
● Sub domains
● Registrar Lock
If you buy a cheap domain name, chances are that you will have to folk out extra cash for the above features whenever you need them.
4. Differentiate Between Domain Name and Hosting
If you are new on this, it may get confusing. Nonetheless, the difference between the two has already been hinted above. All we are saying here is that it is not necessary that your web hosting company should also sell (or freely offer) you a domain name as well. You have the option of buying a domain name separately and forward it to your web hosting provider.
That domain names don’t have to be registered at the same web hosting company does not mean you cannot do it. All we are saying is that you need to do a comprehensive research into the whole thing so that you understand what you are getting out of it. Remember a domain name is your only online identity, and that is why you need to do more home work on it. In fact, it is the most irreplaceable online asset you can ever have.
Web hosting companies will naturally urge their customers to register their domain name with them, but you should also not forget that it is profitable for them. Therefore, you should find out whether it will be convenient for you to do that. For example, are your prepared to lose your domain name if the web hosting company goes down or you decide to migrate to another web hosting company?
5. Understand the Different Web Hosting Options Available
Before you buy a product, you must understand its features and know whether it is going to satisfy your needs. In the same way, the type of web hosting services you choose depends on your unique needs, which includes things like the size of your web site’s files, the number of visitors your expect, your preferred operating system and the nature of web site you intend to put up.
In that case, it would be great if you understood the different web hosting options available before signing up for one. There are 5 types of web hosting services available:
a. Free Web Hoisting
Well, free web hosting is free. This type of hosting is normally provided by web hosting companies as a way of giving their customers opportunities to taste their services. Otherwise, free web hosting services are suitable for those people who don’t anticipate a lot of traffic to their site.
Free web hosting services are best suited for non-commercial sites such as personal journals, photography, and so on. You expect to find the following features in a free web host:
● Low connection speed
● Limited storage space
● Frequent website downtime
● Advertisement appearing on your pages
● Limited technical support
● Low security options
● Limited software and apps options
● Limited number of pages
● You cannot use AdSense
● Limited database and statistics support
While some companies would require you to purchase a domain name in order to use their services, most of them will let you use a subdomain name under them.
b. Shared/Virtual Hosting
With shared hosting, server space and other resources are shared with other web sites. Shared web hosting is one of the cheapest web hosting services and one of the most commonly used.
The only disadvantage with it is that you are bound to experience web site downtime especially if you share with gambling or pornographic web sites. The following are some of its features:
● Low cost
● Own domain usage
● Good technical support
● Frequent web site downtime
● Multiple software usage option
● Limited security due to sharing server with many sites
● Limited database support
● Best for small business with not so huge traffic
- Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting is the opposite of Shared hosting, here, you have a server dedicated to yourself. It is one of the most expensive web hosting services, but with it you can be assured of maximum security and efficiency.
However, with dedicated server, you are responsible for its maintenance and cost of operation. It is best suited for web sites that require many resources as well as those with high traffic.
The following are the features of dedicated web hosting service:
- Good for large business with high traffic such as Amazon, EBay, e.t.c
- Multiple domain name options
- Powerful email solutions
- Great database support
- Unlimited software support
- High security
- High cost
- Requires expert skills
- Collocated Hosting
In this type of hosting, one purchases a server, and have it hosted at a web host’s facilities. Here, you have full control of your server, and you can decide to do anything with it such as installing applications you need, add more ram and disk space, install a better perfuming CPU, and so on.
- The following are features of collocated hosting:
- High Bandwidth
- High cost
- Requires expert skills
- Great database support
- Unlimited software support
- Harder to configure and debug
- High security
Reseller web hosting is for web masters and online entrepreneurs who want to resell their own web hosting services to those who need them. Those who have many websites can also take this option as it will enable them manage many websites from one central location.
Having looked at that, it is best to look at the features being offered by the type of web host you want to sign up with. For example, you need to take into consideration your budget, type of business you are engaged in and the bandwidth (as well as disk space) you need.
Once you have selected a given type of web hosting you need, you can compare different offers from different companies. Suppose you decide that you want to deal with shared web hosting, you will realize that there are different companies offering that type of web hosting services. Therefore it is good you understand the features being offered.
Aside from that, you might also find the following suggestions invaluable when dealing with web hosting services
- Don’t go for long term contracts. Unless you are 100% sure what you will be doing in 5 years, it is advisable to go for short term contracts like one year rather unless you trust the web host. In most cases, you’ll be given ridiculously high discounts for longer periods like 2 years, 3 years, 5 years…
- Consider the Payment method. Most people prefer PayPal as a means of payment rather than credit cards as it is more convenient and safer. But if you trust the company, you don’t have any reason to worry.
- Always Back-up your files. You definitely can’t rely on your web host 100%. It can be considered unwise to fail to back up your online files in other places such as your PC. You never can tell what will happen in future.
Top 10 WordPress Plugins You Must Have
Why WordPress in the First Case?
Did you know that WordPress powers more than 60 million websites online? Generally, WordPress is a content management system that is rocking in the online world. As opposed to the traditional HTML websites that would require a lot of time and money to set up, WordPress has made work much easier for most bloggers and website owners. Perhaps this explains why a whopping 22% new websites launched are powered by WordPress in the USA. Apart from that, WordPress makes it convenient for your to manage your content, it is flexible, and it is SEO friendly.
The Role of Plugins
That being said, you also need cool plugins to go with your WordPress website. Having the right plugins can do a lot of things for you, which includes: improving your SEO and user experience, usability, and various conversions. The following WordPress Plugins are just what you might need. As a matter of fact, these are the plugins that have been given a vote of confidence by the online community; most of them are free.
1. All in One SEO Pack: This is exactly what any blogger or website owner would want. All in One SEO Pack has been downloaded over 15,000,000 times. What it does is that it automatically optimizes your blog for the search engines. It also generates Meta Tags automatically. All you need to do is just to download it and install it, and the rest of the things will work themselves out. If you are an advanced user, you are free to fine-tune its features. Another alternative to this plugin is the WordPress SEO by Yoast
- Contact Form 7: you will love Contact Form 7 if there is need for you to manage multiple contact forms. You have the option to customize the contact forms to suit your unique needs. There is a CAPTCHA integration option for you to help you fight spam. Contact Form 7 comes in over 50 languages. If you need to create a fancy Contact Us page, Contact Us Page - Contact People, is the plugin for you. There are actually very few websites whose contact us page is stunningly vibrant.
3. Clicky Web Analytics: You’ve got to love Clicky Web Analytics if you have a lot of Google data you are handling in Google Analytics. Unlike the Google Analytic tool which is so cumbersome, this plugin is so refreshing, and it provides a clean interface for you to view your data even if you are the type of person that likes checking your statistics more than once a day.
- Secure WP: this plugin gives you thorough security check and makes a number of changes in your WordPress installation so as to make it as secure as possible. For instance, it hides your WordPress number version.
5. Buddy Press: BuddyPress lets you build a community from your visitors by enabling users to create profiles, send messages to one another, and interact through chat. It is a kind of creating a social network in a box.
6. Feedweb: Every website owner needs to get feedback from the audience on how they getting on with the content. This plugin will allow you to receive feedback from your visitors on how they are experiencing your services or who they feel you can improve on the content.
7. Members: Members is a plugin that contributes to making WordPress one of the coolest Content management systems for web sites. It extends your control a little further by letting you control the roles of members of your blog. It allows you to create, edit, or delete the roles played by various members. It gives you powers to control permissions of the members as well.
8. Social Gallery Lite: This is a great way for you to boost your social network for your blog. The Social Gallery Lite is your Ultimate Social Lightbox Plugin which is a good substitute to vanilla image lightboxes.
- Tumblr Importer:Tumblr importer helps you to import blog posts from a Tumblr blog. This is the ultimate Tumblr Importer that will maintain the format of the blogs, as well as the backgrounds. It can also import drafts and pages.
- Hotfix: Hotfix will fix common WordPress without having to wait for next WordPress core release. In other words, you’ll fix bugs quickly even if you have not updated your WordPress.
There are actually countless plugins floating in the online sea. The type of plugin you need depends on your specific needs. However, there is no need to install every other plugin you meet as this can slow down your WordPress site.
Why and How to Use Social Media for Local Business
Whether you are an individual entrepreneur, or part of a small, medium or giant business set-up, you certainly know that your customers are using social media. Therefore, there is no reason why you shouldn’t use it too if you want to reach them.
The good news is that it costs almost nothing to use social media, and it is easy to get started, yet it has the potential of having an enormous financial impact on your business. Another reason why you need to establish an online presence through social media is that it is a timely way of obtaining feedback from customers.
Social media is also used to market the business’ brand and products, as well as build relationship with customers. If used well, social media can also help in SEO performance of your site. A research conducted by Pan African University provided the following interesting statistics:
- 88% of fortune 100 companies use twitter daily to connect to their customers and 85% of companies worldwide use twitter at any stage of their recruitment process.
- Facebook has over 500,000,000 users worldwide (although this figure could be more because many people have since signed up).
- 45 billion of content is uploaded daily on Facebook.
- Twitter has over 156 million users.
- YouTube is the 2nd most searched site after Google.
Moreover, In an Altimeter Group survey of 700 executives and social strategists in 2012 found that 100 percent of participating enterprise organizations run to varying extents an active social media strategy.
How: Strategy and Tactics
As you can see, social media presents a fertile ground for you to register your business presence online. The next thing is to learn how to launch your social media presence. The truth of the matter is that it is difficult to succeed in social media without using strategy and tactics.
Strategy and tactics are inseparable here. You can’t design a successful online presence through social media without deep, firsthand knowledge of the tactics you’ll be using. Strategy will guide you on how to implement the strategies. Otherwise, aimless actions might not yield much. Here is how to go about it.
Know the Market: some market research will be critical. This will help you to understand the market, where your target audience is, as well as understanding the competition. Once you know the market, you can now begin penetrating it with the right messages.
Time and Quality Updates: Providing your audience with good updates, engaging contents, and timely news will enable your media presence to grow to unprecedented level. The more regular your updates are the better; don’t give updates every month. You also have to make a schedule so that you are consistent. For instance, you can issue updates twice a day, once a day, and so forth.
Social Media Tools: learn how to use a variety of tools to make your social media campaign an easy and effective way of reaching your audience. For example, you can use micro blogging tool to simultaneously your messages to the masses. A number of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn apps are available. If you have a website, remember to include your social media comment/like/follow tools.