How can you outrun your competition on Social Media Networks?
Post sponsored by Markethive – The Entrepreneur’s Social Network
How much do you share on Social Media? I am of the firm belief that you should share more than you create original content on Social Networks. Why do I think that this is a correct strategy? If the purpose of social networks is to engage your audience and gain likes, shares and follows, the indicators of engagement, then both methods of sharing and original content creation should definitely be used. The reasons for this are two-fold.
No one is, or can be an expert in everything. Every marketer has their own area(s) of expertise. No matter how much experience and knowledge you think you may have accumulated, there will probably always be someone more knowledgeable than you are. This is just a fact of life. It is important to acknowledge those “experts” and your blog will gain additional legitimacy and authority from their informed point of view.
There is never one and one only solution to marketing and promotion problems. If there were a single solution that worked for everyone all the time, every company would be doing the same thing and gaining similar results. Marketing problems usually take a multi-faceted solution and gain from a multi-pronged strategy. This takes a diversity of viewpoints that merge into a cohesive solution
If there is a diversity of viewpoints and recommendations, on your social media networks, this can greatly benefit your readers and help them to consider the widest possible array of solutions to their particular problems. It is naive to think that a single magic bullet will solve all of your marketing problems, so an openness to creative problem solving is very helpful in the process.
It is also impossible to provide a simple ratio of shared content to original content that will work for everyone. It depends on the goals of your social media marketing campaign as well as your particular niche. I see far too many companies that have much too much original content relative to sharing on the social networks.
In most cases, the goals of their campaigns would be better served by reversing the ratio of original content creation and shared content. If your current ratio of shared content is currently 70% original content and 30% shared, I would turn that ratio upside down, and try 70% shared content and 30% original content.
Not only will it likely be more effective, it could also result in significant savings of time and money. It takes only a fraction of the amount of time to find effective content to share as it does to create original content. Shared content also is something that could possibly be automated. Where possible, this could results in very substantial savings of time and money.
It is difficult if not nearly impossible to automate original content creation. Most attempts to generate content automatically are at risk for Google penalties. Techniques such as content spinning and other creation manipulation methods should be avoided at all cost, and should be considered “black hat”, Google unapproved methods.
Content sharing, or content syndication as it is sometimes called, is an approved method on social networks, and can reduce savings of time and money anywhere from 50-90%. This is a strategy that is long overdue at most companies using social networking in their marketing and promotion methods.
Here is a list of 30 of the most popular blogs on entrepreneurship that offer a rich cornucopia of posts and recent news on entrepreneurship. They are listed in order of highest traffic to lowest traffic. (lowest Alexa ranking – lower Alexa ranking number means more traffic)
Post sponsored by Markethive – The Entrepreneur’s Social Network
When we set out to build MarketHive, we recognized WordPress to be the world leader in Blogging platforms. We will never dispute that nor attempt to overcome or replace WordPress.
Our goal is to make WordPress better with our blogging platform and CMS enhancements. Case in point is our WordPress (MarketHive) plugin(s). We have several but this plugin is designed to import and manage your content you produce on MarketHive into your one or multiple WordPress blog(s). Without MarketHive, to manage a (blog cloud) portfolio of many WordPress on multiple domains with unique content on each of them for different agendas and markets, especially with a moderate to large team of content producers becomes a literal nightmare.
Why WordPress Is The Best Website Platform
There are many different ways of creating a website, you can purchase industry standard software like Dreamweaver and take courses to understand how to use it, or you can use content management software such as WordPress that allows you to quickly and easily get a website live within minutes. This is one of the many reasons why WordPress is the best website platform for beginners and professionals alike.
With WordPress, you are getting a system that takes minutes to install on your server, and then access to thousands of free and paid themes. Your website will look professional from the moment you start. Furthermore, there’s a wide range of plugins and widgets that can easily be applied to the site to make it more user friendly and interactive.
And the only skills you need are the ability to write, click the mouse button and add this stuff in. It really is easy to add content, it’s just like posting on a forum really, and has a very low learning curve. But, because of its flexibility, you can be as basic or advanced as you feel, and as you grow to learn more about it, so to will your site grow and utilize new concepts and designs being created for WordPress.
Here’s some other great aspects about the WordPress system:
WordPress is Open Source:
This means it is free, other people can easily create themes, plugins and so on for you to use with it, and it is completely flexible.
WordPress is Quick to Setup:
This means you can focus on having several websites and easily be able to maintain them all without having to create them all from scratch. This is particularly useful if you are getting into internet marketing for example. You can have many websites set up for different products you are selling.
WordPress Gives Multi User Functionality:
Are you a small business or organization that requires more than one person to add content to the site? Again, WordPress can help. It enables the site owner to set up users for them to post to the site. What’s more, certain privileges can be applied to these users so they only have access to posting content, and therefore not be able to mess around with the functional side of the site.
Website and Blog All-in-One:
Although WordPress is set up more as a blogging platform, it is still very easy to configure it to be a standalone site, with a blog attached. There are many plugins which make this even easier to do, and so any small business or organization can have a website and blog created in a couple of hours that looks great, and is ready to go.
Backing Up and Security:
WordPress is very easy to back up, and there are many secure plugins to choose from to make it more secure than it already is.
These are just a few of the most important reasons why WordPress is the best website platform, but there are many more. It’s major advantages are the low learning curve, and speed of having a site up and running. If you are a person who needs a website, but has little time and money to set one up, then WordPress is your friend. It’s a fantastic system used by millions of people across the globe.
MarketHive is continuing its development of its WordPress plugs and widgets to enable its members to quickly and easily set up WordPress sites, which can then gather and distribute information from fellow entrepreneurs across the Internet .
Sponsored by Markethive – THE social network for entrepreneurs
What are the rules of etiquette on Facebook and how should I observe them on my Facebook profile and in my Facebook groups? No matter what we do in life, or where we go, there are standards that apply, right? In the workplace, at school, in church, even at a baseball game.
No matter where we are, there are expectations of how we should behave in order to not just get along, but to harmonize with others. The same is true online, but the rules of the game are a little different. Somehow the rules online have changed, and people say things online that they would never dream of saying in front of people they know.
There is widespread political bashing from the left and the right online now, of which you are probably very well aware, but it by no means is it limited to politics. In perhaps a vain attempt to bring a little civility to the online world, and especially to Facebook where the rules of the “Old Wild, Wild West” seem to reign supreme, I would like to talk about Facebook etiquette from the online marketers point of view.
I know, to use a crude analogy, I may be merely spitting into the wind here, but it seems to me someone has to point this out, and I guess I might as well be the one to do it. What does political bashing inside a Facebook group of pro-Trump, or pro-Hillary supporters actually accomplish? This is a real enigma for me.
Who are they going to influence in a group where everyone shares the same political view? If they wanted to try and change someone’ viewpoint, maybe they should all go together and post all over one of the pro-Hillary sites until the owner of the site would just give up in frustration, (or vice versa).
I really don’t want to go here, but it also seems like there is an awful lot of Muslim bashing on Facebook. Where did this come from? I fully understand the frustration with the wars in the Middle East, but especially at the time of the 4th of July when we celebrate the Constitution, isn’t freedom of religion one of the fundamental principles of the pilgrims, to the Founding Fathers and the Revolutionary patriots? Jeesh, give the complaints against Muslims, especially Muslim-Americans a rest already.
OK, now here is the practical side to this post for those who want to promote on Facebook. You may ask “How should I post on my Facebook profile and my Facebook groups”?
One thing that should be said upfront, you should probably develop a thick skin if you don’t have one already, since there is someone, somewhere who will want to beat up on you, (verbally), for one reason or another. If you can’t take the heat, I suggest you get out of the fire and leave Facebook.
There is no rush whatsoever to join any group on Facebook. I have heard that there 8 million groups on Facebook, so there are plenty of groups to join, and they will be waiting for you, so do a little research before you click that join button.
There are a very large number of groups that are nothing but classified ads sites. If you post to these groups, your p ost is just one of thousands of other ads that no one is really paying attention to, so do not waste your time with these groups.
On these groups, there is no interaction, almost no comments, and no intelligent life as far as I can tell. Why would you want to waste a post on this kind of site?
A good sign of a healthy group is the number of new members, as well as your first reaction in viewing the most recent posts. Are there just ads, or are they promoting a discussion of any kind? Is there any discussion at all? If so, then maybe this group is worthwhile. If not, no problem, just move on to another one of the 8 million groups on Facebook. No harm, no foul.
Also do not waste your time posting out the same message to all of your groups. Change it up a little. Obviously there some of the people you want to add as friends and want to connect with that are members of many of the same groups you are. You look like a spammer if you post the same information everywhere.
The one exception to this rule would be a Holiday greeting. I used this method in a non-promotional way to wish my friends and people in my groups Happy Memorial Day, and I did it again, for The 4th of July. I received hundreds of likes,
and comments and they were still coming in several weeks after the Holiday.
This is when I realized that promotional methods on Facebook have a potential to reach tens or even hundreds of thousands of people.
So my advice is as follows:
1) Be polite, don’t push your own agenda all the time.
2) Inspire people with your message and they will follow you and want to be your friend.
3) Join groups with growing membership, and make sure you check the rules of
group and act accordingly.
4) Interact as much as possible on groups, especially with the moderators, influencers, or people active on the group.
5) Reply to messages in a timely manner. (same day if possible)
6) Have something inspiring to say with short test messages and images. Ideally do not promote directly through your text message, but you can link to another page with useful information and links to your offers. This indirect method of promotion will be more effective in the long run than just splashing your ad everywhere like most people do.
7) Have fun and keep your sense of humor. Don’t forget that Facebook started as a fun place for people to connect. In growing so big, Facebook has lost quite a bit of that “fun” spirit, but use your creativity to keep trying new things, and experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t. By following these guidelines your experience on Facebook will be more enjoyable, AND more profitable.
Sponsored by Markethive – – THE social network for entrepreneurs
Popular social networks, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and twitter are a good way to increase your reach and communicate with others. An increasing numbers of businesses are also using using these social networks to get their messages across to customers. Inbound marketing such as this is on the rise whilst the response to Outbound Marketing, such as cold calling, bulk emailing and leafleting is on a decline.
Inbound marketing is permission-based marketing, for example people join interest groups on social media or subscribe to sites or email. They are generally looking for answers or advice to problems rather than a hard sell. Providing useful information is the key to success.
One of the questions often asked is how to increase your social media reach without spending hours and hours working online and this is where MarketHive can help everyone from the work at home mum's, to small and large business, because it provides not only a social/business network, to share success or ask questions but also methods and tools to maximise your reach. In the shortest possible time.
A short while ago my reach was perhaps 500-1,000, however now it is well over 1,000,000 and I am only working one day a week. Potential customers are now starting to contact me, because they are interested, rather than me having to spend time contacting people who may or may not be interested in what I am doing.
Why is this happening? Reason: Most people on the go are highly visual and don't tend to read much anymore. "A Picture Says A Thousand Words" as the old saying goes, so maybe there is something to keeping it short and sweet and visual.
"Facebook has spread its tentacles into the messaging boom after building the world's most popular social network, buying Instagram for $1 billion in cash and stock in 2012. Facebook also owns two other of the world's most popular apps: WhatsApp, which it bought for billions and has 1 billion users, and its homegrown app, Facebook Messenger, which hit 900 million users in April.
"Facebook itself captures enormous amounts of people’s attention on their mobile devices, and that’s hugely powerful. But there will always be alternatives either in broad use or in use by demographic or geographic segments," said Jan Dawson, chief analyst with Jackdaw Research.
EMarketer forecast for Instagram mobile adverting revenue. (Photo: EMarketer)
Instagram, for example, is popular with teens.
"Facebook has arguably been deploying the candy bar strategy — own as many of the brands on the shelf as possible to maximize your market share," Dawson said.
The exception: Snapchat, the mobile app popular with young people which Facebook tried to buy twice.
"It remains to be seen how important that miss will be, but it’s already clear that it’s a really important competitor to Facebook for people’s time and attention, and for companies’ ad dollars," Dawson said.
SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst Robert Peck says Instagram's overall growth is impressive but the numbers suggest growth in the U.S. is slowing as competition from Snapchat escalates.
"We note that most, if not all, of the (monthly active user) growth is coming from international markets. In fact, we estimate the U.S. market likely grew in a range of 0 to 18% on an annualized basis in the most recent 9 month period," Peck wrote in a research report on Tuesday.
The jump in Instagram users — and their advertising-pleasing demographics — has helped Facebook bill Instagram as a buy for marketers looking to increase awareness and spur sales. Evidence of its early commercial promise: Instagram already has more than 200,000 advertisers. Analysts say Instagram's nascent advertising business is growing rapidly.
Research firm eMarketer expects Instagram's global mobile ad revenue to reach $1.53 billion this year and more than $5 billion by 2018. Analysts say Instagram's contributions are already being felt in Facebook financial results even though the giant social network does not break those out.
"What is certain is that Instagram has been a big factor in Facebook’s recent repeated blowing out of its financial results, and its impressive rate of revenue growth in particular," Dawson said."
Can Instagram save Facebook? With Facebook trending down and Instagram trending up maybe it will pick up the loss of Facebook. Pretty smart move Facebook!
Thanks for reading,
David Ogden
PS: David Ogden is a Alpha Founder with Markethive and manages several blogs on the hive. David is a professional Network Marketer. He can be reached through Markethive.
Advice for building your own Inbound Marketing machine- a requirement for most businesses today.
The web has forever changed people’s buying habits. Instead of needing to rely on sales people to send them information, buyers now have Google and other search engines to research products, find competitors, and see how other people rate those products in blogs and reviews. Furthermore they are greatly influenced by individuals that have emerged as experts in particular subject areas who use social media to get their messages across.
This sea change in buying behaviour requires vendors to re-think how they go to market, and optimize to make sure that they will get found by buyers using search engines, blogs, reviews, and social media. The term Inbound Marketing was invented by the crew at MarketHive (When they were Veretekk), when they developed the techniques and technologies that are needed to get found by buyers, and to make sure that the reviews and blogs around your industry segment cover what you are doing. (MarketHive provides great software tools, plus education to help you automate Inbound Marketing. The founder, Thomas Prendergast has written many great books on these topics (dating back as far as 20 years ago) “Automated Marketing”, Customer Centricity”, Building a Better Website”, “The Power of the Social Network in Search Engines”, Conference Room Advantage”.
Many people hates spam emails from vendors, and some go as fare as developing a canned email response to them.
“Please understand that I get dozens of these types of messages a week. I simply do not have time to read them, dig into them, follow-up on them, or reply to them. The most effective solution to this problem is for me to ignore the messages, which is what I usually do. …
… Finally, a small comment. As a customer, I find this type of approach to sales to be largely annoying to me and unproductive for you. We learn far more about what we want to purchase by searching the web, looking for customer references in blogs and forums, word of mouth, and by finding white papers on your site that concretely describe solutions to problems we are having.”
Remarkable Content is King
A key part of getting found is making sure you show up on the first page of a Google search. The lazy marketer’s approach to doing this is to purchase Google Adwords, and pay by the click (referred to as SEM, Search Engine Marketing). However 85% of people ignore the paid ads, so to be really effective, you will need to perfect your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) skills.
SEO requires you to develop great content that your buyers will find sufficiently interesting, different or insightful, that they will want to remark on it. (The authors of Inbound Marketing refer to that as remarkable content.) When your readers remark on your content on-line, using tools like Twitter, Facebook etc., they spread the word virally to other readers and broaden your reach. These comments lead to links back to your site, which lead to ever increasing page ranking in the search engines.
To be successful at this, you will need to keep the content fresh.
Traditional web sites don’t work in this regard, as they don’t change frequently enough.
What is needed is a blog that you update regularly.
Your blog cannot simply be a sales pitch for your product, but needs to be about topics that your buyers care to read about. The tone could be educational; or humorous; or controversial. But above all it needs to be highly engaging and relevant to them – i.e. remarkable.
When you post a new blog entry, you will see your site traffic surge for a few days, then die back to a level slightly higher than before. The more you post, the faster your traffic will build. But in the end, it is the really great articles that you post that will have the most impact.
And meritocratic blog system like MarketHive (actually only MarketHive) produce all of the above in a simple atmosphere of massive content curation that is immediately reward or rejected, building amazing content is King results, or something like that.
Once you have interesting content, you can use social media like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. to get the word out, Marketing simplifies this to a level of excruciating results, but then like EST (You remember EST Erhard Seminar Training), you need to experience. No word, even from me, can truly do it justice.). Your goal is to get other bloggers to link to you, and to have people tweet about your content.
An interesting thing about a marketing department that focuses on Inbound Marketing: it will place a high value on people that know how to write and develop content that draws in an audience. A silver lining to the damage that the internet has inflicted on the publishing industry is that there are plenty of very talented journalists seeking employment, and they possess the perfect skills for this job!
SEO versus SEM
Like most of things that are good for us in life, SEO requires work and patience before it will payback. So it can be tempting to take short cuts, and just use SEM (paid search ads). However if it is done right, the results will continue to build, and you will start to build your own audience, and own your own traffic.
We have also seen that the cost of paid search increases as the need to scale the lead volume grows.
The Power of Free
Another extremely powerful way to create inbound traffic and qualified leads is to use a free product or service. A great example of this is the The entire Inbound Marketing Platform (Valued in excess of up to $10,000 per month) service from MarketHive. (If you haven’t tried this, I recommend giving it a try now. It will only take a few minutes to join.) MarketHive has a couple of interesting attributes that are worth studying:
It is free of charge.
It takes very little work by the customer to get some very valuable results
It provides its results in the form of a score out of 100. Human beings are very competitive, and when they don’t get a good score, they want to find out how to improve their score. That leads them to wanting to find out more about MarketHive which can help them improve their score.
It allows them to compare themselves to their competitors. All businesses care about how they are doing relative to their competition. If they are doing worse, this is a powerful motivator to drive them to change.
Think hard about your audience and whether there is an opportunity to build a similar free web service that would draw them in, and provide great value.
If you are interested in learning more about how Free products and services can help your marketing, please refer to this section: The Power of Free.
Building your reach
Once you have great content and possibly a free product/service, you will want to find ways to drive the maximum traffic to that content. In the last couple of years we have seen some powerful new tools emerge to help with this process in the social media space. Get yourself accounts on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and join in the conversation. Start by listening. Watch what people are talking about in your topic areas, and take note of their interests. Once you have an idea of how the conversation works join in. Be careful not to take a sales stance to promote your products, as that will rapidly lose you your audience. However you can draw your audience in with short url’s (Another one of MarketHive’s great free services) that link to your blog posts and other non-sales oriented content.
This short paragraph is not going to be enough to fully educate you on the ins and outs of using social media to build your audience, so if the topic interests you, I recommend going here to learn more:
Internet Marketing Webinars (see the calendar in MarketHive after you join for free of course).
Influencer Campaigns
In every product area, there are usually already influencers that write the most about that area, and have the largest audience that follows them. To conduct a successful social media campaign, you will want to identify those influencers, and reach out to them to get them to write about your product/service.
To get them to pay attention to you, you will first need to understand what they care about. Read their blog posts and tweets, and try to get inside their minds. Try to determine what appeals to them, and what has clearly turned them off. Then prepare your pitch, and use social media to engage with them.
You will then want to monitor the results by tracking their blog posts, links to the articles, tweets, etc.
For more information…
Inbound marketing is a rich topic area that would take more than a single article like this to describe. For more information, consider yourself a friend of MarketHive:
For the most part, guest posting is sort of like begging, right? You have a blog that you are trying to promote, and you are hoping to increase traffic to it, By guest posting on a blog that has more traffic than your blog, you are hoping to trickle away some of the traffic on the larger blog to your smaller blog.
That pretty much sums it up, right? The larger more popular blog doesn't mind so much, as long as you provide useful content to the blog owners readers. It is one less blog post the owner has to write after all.
In conclusion then, guest posters are like either beggars or leeches, and blog owners who allow guest posting are a little lazy. This is sort of a cynical way of looking at guest posting, I know, but it is to illustrate a point.
Suppose you could promise that you would not only write a blog post, but you would post the link out to tens of thousands of your social media connections, and millions of members of Facebook, and LinkedIn groups to which you belong. Would that make your guest post seem more attractive to the blog owner? You better believe it would!
You move from the position as a guest post beggar to a guest post promoter, and even a champion.
Listen to these comments from a blog owner on whose blog I recently promoted a guest post at:
"Hi John, thats awesome! I see that your post is most viewed post of the site and is trending. Also, I see that it is performing well on Twitter and LinkedIn. Thank you so much for sharing. Great Synergy"! Max Angel – Cofounder at ThatsJournal.
I suggested that he might want to join Markethive, or that he might be interested in some of the automation tools I use.
Max responded. "You are very welcome, John. Thanks a lot for the marketing inputs. I will check it out. Thanks again for the post contribution. Please feel free to let me know if you or your friends want to share anything related to marketing. We will be happy to help. Thanks!" I would say that is a pleased blog owner, right?
If we work together, we can help each other find these kinds of guest blog post opportunities, and spread the message about Markethive. Feel free to contact Max about guest posting on his blog.
John Lombaerde
PS – did I mention that this promotion also brought in at least 5 or more new Markethive subscribers?
Every business involved with selling, whether its a multinational conglomeration, work at home mum, crowd funding project needs to be marketed. Small businesses, charities and home workers often struggle with this area, due to lack of funds ,resources and knowledge of what they need to do.
Marketing costs can run at thousands per month, but do you need this amount of funds and will it guarantee success. Searching online you will find free marketing solutions, so how can a free system provide you with similar results,with a system that costs you money.
In this day and age very few if any people are prepared to work for nothing, so one way of raising money is to offer a share in the future profits , this is often refereed to as crowd funding.
I am involved with a marketing system which is developed in this way by a small team of developers, supported by fellow marketers who have a financial share of the advertising profits, they both test and use the system, The system is free for users, who also have options to share in the profits.
Marketing is about spreading the word and with the exponential expansion of social media, MarketHive is offering not only a social media base for business, but also all the free tools for business, such as blogs, auto-responders, capture pages, videos, WordPress apps and the like which are essentials for business.
Markethive did not invent the blog, but we certainly have made it exponentially more powerful. We certainly have added fun, understanding, reach, groups, daily workshops, understanding and power to the process.
Markethive has successfully combined all the technical and tactical aspects and requirements into one system, but have also overcome the obstacles to make blogging a group process, combined with motivated mentors to help the newbie easily immerse and embrace the process.
We did not invent Word Press, but we have significantly taken Word Press serious and made it exponentially better. This blog’s focus is to help you understand the paradigm dynamic shift Markethive has brought to marketing, blogging and the individual within the hive.
The following video attempts to reveal and illustrate how the whole social blogging platform in Markethive changes the entire Internet field of engagement.
Understanding SEO
You can approach the challenge alone, hire a firm and/or a virtual assistance and take the Internet on. This ego centered approach works for many who have the grit and stamina and educated skills of journalism and polished writing (a note here: As the Internet has evolved, the polished blogger vs the blogger that lacks the polish but has the passion, wins in today’s culture).
Approaching the blogosphere as a crew, a group, a gang or a family wins today. Because fresh, new, consistent and current content win and win you combine a social network into a blogging platform, the results are impressive.
Understanding SEO isn’t easy, and Google doesn’t help things much by changing the algorithms and policies on a regular basis. Seems like every time we get a handle on things, the rules change, and we’re all left wondering what we’re doing wrong and what we might still possibly be doing right.
The whole SEO quotient changes when the social network variable is integrated. This is why SEO at Markethive changes the playing field.
So a social network integrated blogging solution is at hand, and, there’s one thing you may have been doing correctly already from the start: That being blogging. You probably have a million reasons to blog, not the least of which include building trust among your buyers, positioning yourself as an expert, and simply sharing news with your company’s followers. Then, of course, there are those activities that help to boost your SEO rankings. These can only help you if you know how to use them, so make note of these 9 reasons blogging can boost your SEO.
Enter the Markethive Social Network Engine combined with the Inbound Marketing Engine. Kind of reminds of the Hot Rods of the 60s like Eddie Hill’s double dragon (see image):
Except with Markethive, the combining the two huge engines of the Internet, Social Networking and Inbound Marketing has an exponential nature to it, not just a geometrical quotient.
This innovative integration of these two power houses has a powerful effect on all that ios Internet Marketing as I illustrate, please read on.
Backlinking
The following is the conventional wisdom perspective to today’s linking approach.
Some of the techniques used for SEO when blogging raise eyebrows, and back linking is no exception. Many will tell you link schemes will get you a slap on the wrist from Google, and they’d be right. Does that mean you can’t build relationships with other companies and blogs by including links and asking for some in return? Not at all.
You can still benefit greatly from being linked and linking to others, but there are some things to keep in mind. First, if you’ve paid for your link, be sure they use the nofollow designation. Otherwise, you’ll be penalized. Next, work with reputable, quality sites that fit your blog’s niche. When links to your blog appear on sites that have nothing to do with your company, you’ll get another ding from Google. Finally, use the same basic rules for any blogs you link to on your site.
Good quality links from popular, well-respected sites can definitely help your SEO rankings, but only if you do it right.
Now, with that said, the amazing change that occurs to your campaign to build organic, condust and create relationships in the blogging power of the Inbound Marketing Social Network of Markethive, delivers a plethora of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SNM (Social Network Marketing) and the advantages therein if developing unlimited streams of unique content, automated into literally millions of sites, social networks, social bookmarks, blogging platforms from the stream of content that flows out of the Markethive Social Network you are part of or built.
So what does all that mean? As the natural order of our recent tech releases of the Blog Casting (Social Broadcaster) and Blog Swiping (where your friends and other members can easily copy and edit your blog) then publish it and with the advent of this opening the possibility with these new tools produce a cacophony of your content, links, back links, side links, social reaches into the millions. All built upon chaos theory and technology.
The natural organic process to build a huge amazing white hat mass of blog and site links and social reach, thereby, the vision of the Blog Cloud has come to be reality, thank you Markethive, the social networked Inbound Marketing juggernaut.
Simply put, not just combining but fully integrating two platforms, the Entrepreneurial Social Network and a fully appointed Inbound Marketing platform, has opened up doorways not otherwise capable or even aware of or identified in the exponential character of the Markethive Hybrid. Sort of like Twin Towers built on the same foundation.
Actually more like a million communities of twin towers all inter connected and pulsing and thriving with the constant flow of content and videos and communications (comments and messaging) even further empowered with a constant thriving community of live conference room activity.
Guest Blogging
Again Markethive takes the awkward and difficult process of guest blogging and turns it into a graceful social dance. I will explain after I share again the Internet’s explanation of what has been defined as guest blogging.
The latest hoopla suggests guest blogging is dead, but that’s not necessarily true. As with the backlinking, guest blogs can be tremendously beneficial to the SEO of your website. If you work with reputable writers who are indeed experts in their industry, their popularity can only help you.
For this tactic to work, you must be vigilant when screening potential bloggers. Interview them, research their backgrounds, and compare their submission to everything they’ve written before to make sure you get truly unique content. If you follow Google’s quality guidelines, your guest blog from a well-known source will bring you tremendous traffic and boost your search engine rankings.
Markethive has turned this difficult proposition into one of grace and ease. Because the core of your blogging can now be centered within Markethive, which supports and publishes to just about every blogging platform out there. As a social network, you can build a sphere of influence easily with others who are open to and or capable of assisting in your blogging efforts.
Groups also serve as additional blogging platforms, for the individual who keeps track of different campaigns separated by the groups. Groups also parlay into teams of content creators, allow a team captain to manage and lead the agenda and monitor and choose the array of articles by the group to which blog(s) that article automatically gets sent.
The options that the Markethive tools has created for diverse and distributed content is unlimited and better managed than any other option available in the blogosphere.
Group Blogging not only replaces the old guard of guest blogging, it enhances it, makes it easier to, manage and distribute. It changes the entire playing field.
You can integrate single Markethive members, and/or integrate entire groups into as many blog systems you wish. By simply organizing, selecting and developing different cock tails groups for your blogs, you can literally create unlimited selections and unlimited content for unlimited blogs, your blogs, their blogs, unlimited groups of competent writers and marketers. Get into the mix, join some groups, and get into some Workshops and put the system to work for you.
We can even say that you can produce dynamic content on your blog without as much effort as the conventional way.
Fresh Content
Search engines love fresh, unique content. How often do the pages on your website change? Probably not very often at all. That’s why you must keep a steady blog filled with new information every week. Those search engines customers used to find companies just like yours will pull the freshest and most relevant content whenever a search is performed. If your site hasn’t been updated with new information in over a year, you can bet someone else’s will rank higher than yours in the results.
By blogging, you build relationships with your readers, position yourself as an expert in the field, and perhaps most importantly, provide new content for Google to index.
By joining Markethive you build relationships with thousands of others who are actively building business, blogging, researching, etc. basically being “entrepreneurs” and advancing their businesses and agendas. Often you can join with these people as friends, group members and subscribers of theirs via Blog Casting, Blog Sharing and Blog Swiping.
When you are an active member in a good group (active and current), using meetings and live webinars, discussions breed inspirations which support developing new content. Here is a tip I use to help with fresh content. I want to write about the “current trends for the entrepreneur market”. So I go to Google and I search the tail words SEO entrepreneur trends but I designate a small tool many are not aware of.
It is found in “Search tools” in the Google search as the illustration below demonstrates. Choose last week or within 24 hours to get very fresh current content to use in building your blog article. This way, you are assured to be utilizing current references building current articles, sharing with your groups and creating a dynamic culture. Checking new content with Google daily in relations to your agenda is something that should also be shared (the search link) within your groups for discussion.
Keywords
Keywords go hand in hand with fresh content. It also pays to see what current or newest results are shown for current sites utilizing the same technique for current content for your research and agenda.
Even though keywords really don’t hold the same weight they once did, it still needs your attention. In fact, this is another aspect of SEO you can do really wrong and end up punished for. The age of cramming keywords into a blog over and over, regardless of what they add to the content, is over. Now those keywords have to serve a purpose. You really want to make sure you choose unique keywords that will lead searchers to your site but not so unique that no one thinks to use them. If you choose words that are used too often, you won’t get much benefit out of them.
Your best bet with keywords and search terms is to use long-tail keywords and phrases that people may use when searching. Instead of focusing too much on keyword placement and making sure you include the words a certain number of times, concentrate on simply answering questions. Provide knowledge for those who reach your site. They don’t need a million keywords; they need answers.
For instance, the long-tail keyword “Inbound Marketing” had barely begun trending in 2009 with a slow crawl upward until just recently, with the advent of Markethive’s soft launch and discussions of the definition of “Inbound Marketing” and the increase of Social Network chatter in that regards we are now seeing the current trend start to grow.
My first company invented what we called “Automated Marketing” but today fits the new definition “Inbound Marketing” As you can see the term “Automated Marketing” is trending down from a long crown of being a top searched keyword.
See the trend towards “Marketing Automation” beginning? Why is Marketing Automation trending up and Automated Marketing trending down? Does it deserve research?
In my opinion no, but, what does need to be looked at in my regards is our new pre launched/soft launched company (as of May7, 2016) is the Trademark “Markethive”.
Because if we read these trends right, we want to make sure we mention Markethive often in connection to “Inbound Marketing” and “Marketing Automation”. This will place squarely in front of the trend curve binding the “long tail” keywords together.
Markethive’s SEO keyword system leads us to these research outcomes, but until the Google API is fully integrated to Markethive’s Keyword platform I go to the Google Trend panel here as well.
When your blogs are shared and consequently clicked on, they move up in the search rankings. If you’re providing quality content, your readers will want others to know. Of course, the only way to make sure your blogs contribute to your website’s popularity is to create unique content, provide answers for visitors, and then share your blogs wherever you can.
That key point “Share your blogs wherever you can” is another way of saying “Broadcast” them. And Markethive has taken Broadcasting to new heights with Blog Casting and SNAP. Blog Casting is a Markethive subscribe feature that other Markethive members use to subscribe to your Markethive blog. When they subscribe (and the potential is 1000s of them), your blog posts are automatically posted to their Facebook Newsfeeds, LinkedIn activity feeds and your Twitter tweets feed.
When you understand that this down stream of subscribers, fellow entrepreneurs at MarketHive, are exposing their connections to your message, they are lifting you up, increasing your popularity and building greater branding for you.
Then there is the Blog Sharing feature that also allows your fellow Markethive entrepreneurs to import your blog posts to their WordPress blogs using the SNAP plugin increasing your message (your posts) to another 25 of their social networks, Facebook Pages, LinkedIn company pages, SumbleUpon, Tumbler, Livejournal, Blogspot, ets, exponentially increasing your exposure and adding to your back links.
When you discover the responsibility this represents that you show respect, produce quality content to your loyal downstream, you now have the opportunity to build a huge popular following. Markethive, The Rise of the Entrepreneur. We have put a great future in your hands. Now it is up to you.
Images
Including images in your blog gives you one more way search engines can find you. Make sure you name them according to the search terms or keywords, and then do the same for the alt-text. The alt-text is meant to describe what’s in the image for those who don’t or aren’t able to see images on their computer screens. For this reason, your alt-text must be carefully crafted to serve two purposes: SEO and information.
I search a lot in images and so do others. They may be looking for an image to fill a need, the reasons vary, but a lot of traffic does come from image searching, so do not ignore this small duty. Alt tags serve an important batch of duties.
When installing images in the Markethive HTML control panel, the following Image control panel, second tab, is where to enter your keywords and descriptions.
When looking at the HTML code, this is exactly what ALT tags look like and search engines Index.
Video
As with photos, video simply gives you more dynamic content that you can share with your readers. Remember they’re looking for excellent, unique content, so be sure you include only videos that serve a purpose. Proprietary videos are always the best bet, since syndicated content will show up on several different sites during a search result.
If you have never made a video, get some screen capturing software. I use Camtasia (cost about $300)
I also down load others videos to use them in my final productions. I build titles and other content with Photoshop Software, but there are other cheaper alternatives. Many of my friends recommend GIMP for image editing. https://www.gimp.org/
I recommend you make as many of your videos you can, but do not produce bad or funky videos. Today, you need quality and you are welcome to download and use all Markethive videos I produce for yourself.
Be sure you tag your videos with appropriate search terms before you post. Let readers know exactly what’s going on in the video so they can find your content in a search.
I know video editing and production can be daunting to many at first. However, we have plenty od excellent talent that offer video workshops in Markethive. Just check the calendar or enquire within the membership (Social Network).
Remember we are all Entrepreneurs and most of us are also philanthropic and want to help you succeed. I know I do.
Check the calendar
Social Media
Believe it or not, Google also returns social media search results. If you connect your blog to your Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts, you give search engines one more thing to find when people look for your company. As long as you use search terms in your titles and meta descriptions, you’ll boost your SEO through social media listings, too.
A popular set of current wisdom pulled from the Internet void (5 Things to Think About When Considering The Impact of Social on SEO) :
1. Social Links May or May Not Boost Your Search Rank
Okay, social signals pertaining to a profile’s authority are out, but does Google consider links published on social accounts to be credible backlinks? When a blog post goes viral on Twitter, do those new links boost the post’s search ranking?
Many marketers believe that links to your website via social media accounts do have a major impact on your rankings. Says Marketing Consultant Brian Honigman:
Today, links are mainly achieved through developing original content that is in turn, shared across social media. Links to your content on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube and other social networks help the search engines understand what websites are credible and should be ranked for what keyword phrases.
In Danny Sullivan’s 2010 interview with Google and Bing for Search Engine Watch, Google first says that it doesn’t incorporate the number of times a link has been tweeted into their search rank algorithm, and then it goes on to say that it does (doh). Bing says that it definitely looks at this data:
We take into consideration how often a link has been tweeted or retweeted, as well as the authority of the Twitter users that shared the link.
While Cutts’ 2014 video is crystal-clear about the absence of social signals from the search algorithm, he does say that Google crawls social websites for data in the same way that it would any other site:
Facebook and Twitter pages are treated like any other pages in our web index, and so if something occurs on Twitter or occurs on Facebook and we’re able to crawl it then we can return that in our search results.
This leads me to think that while the authority of a social account doesn’t impact search rank, links published on social media could be marked as credible back-links and thus influence a page’s rank.
Takeaways: When Cutts made his statement about Google not factoring in social signals I understood him to mean clues about a particular company’s authority on social media, which, for me, is distinct from the number of times a page has been linked to on social media. Further research didn’t help me get much clarity on this point.
If there are any SEO experts reading this, I’d love for you to chime in below in the comments.
2. Social Media Profiles Rank in Search Engines
While social shares may or may not affect a webpage’s position in search listings, your social profiles definitely influence the content of your search results. In fact, social media profiles are often amongst the top results in search listings for brand names. When I searched “General Electric” in Google, the company’s Instagram and Pinterest profiles appeared as the 5th and 6th listings, respectively, and Twitter was the 8th result.
Moreover, Google displayed the company’s Google+ profile information in the right-hand sidebar at the very top of the search results page.
While social shares may or may not affect a webpage’s position in search listings, your social profiles definitely influence the content of your search results. In fact, social media profiles are often amongst the top results in search listings for brand names. When I searched “General Electric” in Google, the company’s Instagram and Pinterest profiles appeared as the 5th and 6th listings, respectively, and Twitter was the 8th result.
Social channels can feel more personal than webpages, and they’re a great way to get a sense of a company’s personality off the bat. When I’m researching a company I don’t know much about I typically go straight to their Twitter or Facebook page. So if a social account shows up at the top of the search results, I’m just as likely to click on it as I would be to click on their website.
Takeaway: There’s no doubt that your social profiles matter to Google and especially to people who are looking for you online. A few active social channels can make the experience of getting to know your brand online more fun, engaging and personal. Also, while some may consider Google+ a non-essential social channel, marketers shouldn’t discount the fact that a company’s Google+ profile is one of the first things a searcher will see (and potentially click on). As such, it pays to have a profile with up-to-date info and engaging content.
3. Social Media Channels Are Search Engines, Too
Nowadays, people don’t just go to Google and Bing to look stuff up; they also use social media channels to find what they’re looking for. Patel makes this point in his article on why social is the new SEO: “We need to understand that search engine optimization includes the search that happens on social media search engines.”
This works in a couple of ways: First, if you’re active on Twitter, it’s entirely possible that people will discover your company’s new content distribution app after searching for content marketing-related tweets with Twitter’s search engine. Likewise, brands that lend themselves to beautiful visual content can benefit from making their content visible in Pinterest and Instagram by using hashtags and properly categorizing their pins.
Moreover, as mentioned in point #1, if someone wants to check out your company, they’re likely to open Twitter and Facebook and do a quick search to see what kind of presence you have on each channel. YouTube, and, of course, Google+ are also search engines.
Here are some impressive stats that illuminate just how much people are using social media to search:
As of 2010, Twitter handled 19 billion search queries a month (that’s more than 5x the queries handled by Bing!).
In 2012 Facebook said it got around one billion search queries per day.
As of March 2010, YouTube got roughly 3.7 billion search queries a month. Also, 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, making it one of the largest content repositories on the web.
Takeaways: Companies should expand their concept of SEO to include not just the traditional search engines––Google and Bing––but also social search engines.
When searching for a brand on Facebook or Twitter it’s not uncommon to see several different profiles pop up, and it’s not always clear which one is the real deal. Marketers need to ensure that it’s super easy for users to identify their official social profiles.
This may mean deleting duplicate accounts and/or clearly labeling each social account so that users understand what purpose they serve (for example, accounts for HR or press versus general brand pages).
4. Not Now Doesn’t Mean Not Ever
Just because Google says that social signals don’t currently impact search rank doesn’t mean they never will. Social media shows no sign of becoming a less important part of a brand or person’s online presence anytime soon; moreover, given that link-building strategies like guest blogging have become a less reliable way to indicate the quality of a webpage, it makes sense that search engines would begin to look for other signals of authority and value.
Takeaways: There’s no reason why social signals won’t begin to affect search rankings in the future, so smart brands will continue to build their authority in key social channels and think about social when designing their SEO strategy.
5. Don’t Forget Bing
Google may have back-tracked and changed their stance on social signals, but I haven’t found any evidence that what Bing told Sullivan for his Search Engine Watch interview doesn’t hold true today.
Remember, Bing said:
We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results.
Takeaways: Bing, which is the second most-used search engine, has been crystal clear about how their algorithm incorporates social signals into their search results, and, unlike Google, they haven’t flip-flopped on the issue. With its market share steadily growing, companies would be wise to include Bing in their SEO strategies.
Wrapping Up
Cutts’ claim that Google’s search algorithm ignores social signals should not be seen as an invitation for marketers to dismiss social’s impact on SEO. Instead, marketers should broaden their concept of search and SEO to take into account the myriad ways that people find content on the web. They also need to think about the positive effects that increased traffic from social can potentially have on their search rankings as well as the prominence of social profiles on first-page search results.
Ultimately, the web is all about building relationships, fostering audiences, expressing identity and sharing ideas––it’s inherently social, and there’s no reason that SEO best practices would go against the grain, especially since the rules that govern SEO are ultimately meant to make the web a more enjoyable and useful place.
Indexed Pages
Perhaps the most important reason of all to blog is the fact that each post counts as a new page on your website. Google really does like fresh content and will reward those who share frequently. Those who do include a business blog on their site will see up to 55% more traffic than companies who don’t. The reason for this is the indexed pages. For Google to index those pages, you need to include at least 300 quality words. That means reblogging, short blogs, and duplicating content won’t help you. There is a time and place for the previously mentioned blog types, but not when you’re hoping to boost your SEO.
Now that you understand why blogging is essential to improving your SEO results, you probably want to get started right away. Don’t get bogged down or feel overwhelmed. A systematic approach is what you need, starting with a content calendar. Simply start by answering those burning questions your potential customers have. Plan blogs that will touch on their pain points. You’ll see results sooner than you ever thought possible.
29 Motivational Quotes for Company and other Work Environments
Some days an inspirational quote can supply a quick pick-me-up for staff members as well as management. They can be a breath of fresh air when it comes to a dull afternoon. These are also a terrific method to jazz up a newsletter or a memo and even to merely print and connect to a publication board. Utilizing quotes like these are perfect ways to produce an inspirational and successful workplace. As Mr. Rick Pitino states "The only method to obtain individuals to like striving is to inspire them. Today, individuals should understand why they're striving. Every individual in a company is motivated by something various."– Rick Pitino
Motivational Quotes:
1. Mahatma Gandhi: You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
2. Jim Stovall: You need to be aware of what others are doing, applaud their efforts, acknowledge their successes, and encourage them in their pursuits. When we all help one another, everybody wins.
3. Robert Frost: The only way around is through.
4. Warren Buffett: You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.
5. Les Brown: You must remain focused on your journey to greatness.
6. Theodore Roosevelt Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
7. Charles F. Kettering: Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier
8. Henry Ford: Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right!
9. Jim Rohn: You must either modify your dreams or magnify your skills.
10. William Hazlitt: Who likes not his business, his business likes not him.
11. Denis Waitley: Winners take time to relish their work, knowing that scaling the mountain is what makes the view from the top so exhilarating.
12. Le Iacocca: Management is nothing more than motivating other people.
13. Dwight D.: Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.
14. Drucker: The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong question
15. Max Schmelling: Why did I want to win? Because I didn't want to lose!
16. J. Paul Getty: To succeed in business, to reach the top, an individual must know all it is possible to know about that business.
17. Pierre Corneille: To win without risk is to triumph without glory.
18. Tony Dorsett: To succeed… You need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you.
19. James Broughton: The only limits are, as always, those of vision.
20. George Kneller: To think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.
21. Peter McWilliams: To the degree we're not living our dreams; our comfort zone has more control of us than we have over ourselves.
22. Johann Wolfgang Von Goeth: To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult.
23. Tryon Edwards: To waken interest and kindle enthusiasm is the sure way to teach easily and successfully.
24. Spanish Proverb: Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.
25. Lyndon B. Johnson: The noblest search is the search for excellence
26. Charles M. Schwab: The man who does not work for the love of work but only for money is not likely to neither make money nor find much fun in life.
27. Chinese Proverb: The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water; but to walk on the earth.
28. John Naisbitt: The new source of power is not money in the hands of a few, but information in the hands of many.
29. Henry Ford: The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.
Many employers will add these quotes inside the employees' paycheck envelope. In some cases it might be an inspirational quote, other times a silly remedy. Consist of employee birthdays or other essential occasions to help your employees feel a part of the group.
