Tag: inbound marketing

2020 the year of Markethive has arrived

Alexa Rank reached so far

Markethive runs with the Big Dogs now, here are the reasons

Alexa ranking is now under 10,000 (8,965 at this writing) which means
150,000+ unique daily visitors (internal data confirmed by WorthofWeb https://www.worthofweb.com/website-value/markethive.com/ )
Over 20 million monthly impressions
Domain worth over $4 million just based on traffic
Similar Banner programs to Markethive cost $15,000 and up to run a full month.

Example
CoinMarketCap Alexa 584 Cost for full month ad $285,808 USD

Contelegraph Alexa 2,795 Cost for full month ad $21,000 USD
Warriorforum Alexa 4,340  Cost for full month ad $38,700 USD

Coingecko Alexa 6,645 Cost for full month ad $33,488 USD

Newsarama Alexa 16,249 Cost for full month ad $17,847

 

The Banner Exchange
(One of the many benefits of our first loyalty program)

The upgrade to Entrepreneur One gives exclusive reseller rights to Markethive’s total site impressions. Each limited E1 (Entrepreneur One Loyalty Program) will max out at 500 subscriptions. With this scenario, as Markethive has already reached massive traffic and continues the meteoric climb, we can assume that by the end of the year, Markethive traffic will reach into the altitudes of Alexa rankings similar to our exceeding CoinTelegraph (Estimated impressions per month: 255,735,720) and WarriorForum (.Estimated impressions per month: 71,503,740).

Markethive is projected to reach somewhere within that range by years end. Even at todays impressions of over 20 million per month, the earnings just from reselling ad impressions per E! subscriptions, based on the max of 500 subscriptions would earn to day over $2000 per month and projected to climb to between $7,500 to $25,500 based on .05 per impression. Even lowering that estimation to just a penny per impression still yields a major profitable return. This is what drives Markethive, to build real business solutions for our members. It is the core of the Loyalty programs. To join the limited Entrepreneur One (E1) loyaty program just navigate to https://markethive.com/?upgrade (make sure you are logged in first) and join the program. It is limited to 500 and these accounts are going fast.

 

New Video System

Markethive has begun our migration to our own video system. No longer required for you to connect your Youtube account to Markethive to display videos, now any video can be displayed throughout your system with just simply adding the videos link at the point of post.

This is all in preparation for Markethive launching our own video platform at http://markethive.tube/ This new system will have the following features built into it.

  1. Live video broadcasting and publishing to the top 5 video systems (depending upon your registering your account to Markethive. Youtube | Vimeo | Dailymotion | Facebook | Twitch.
     
  2. Your Video channel will include a live newsfeed other members can post to similar to Youtubes Community channel https://www.youtube.com/markethiveceo/community but will also allow remote publishing from other networks.
     
  3. Auto publishing to 20 video and social platforms with one upload to Markethive. https://www.lemonlight.com/blog/20-places-to-post-your-video-now-that-its-done-1/
     
  4. Produce live interactive web conferences as the web conference system will integrated into Markethive’s video platform. Recording and broadcasting built into the system
     

Markethive’s old Youtube API system has been removed. If you had archived videos within that system, you will have to start a new with the new system as it was not possible to transfer the old system over due to Youtube preventing us from accessing the required account codes to do so. We apologize for this disruption, but it was not possible to move forward without this disruption.

 

Public Crowd Funding

We are going to launch our official crowd funding campaign this first quarter of the year. This means a significant ICO style marketing campaign, utilizing a top industry consultant, influencer Youtube channels, and press releases. The traffic will flow to our crowd funding site, which will be replicated for all Entrepreneur One loyalty members and will also rotate all the traffic to the root domain to be shared with active Entrepreneur One loyalty members. There is a major benefit to the EI loyalty members and that is receiving a matching bonus for all ILP’s that are acquired through the campaign site. What this means as Markethive acquires more ILP members, our Entrepreneur One loyalty members will receive matching ILP shares.

Crowd Funding will drive new business via new traffic from well targeted audiences. We have literally been preparing for t5his launch for several years. We are very close to launching our first wallet allowing certified members to transfer coin to exclusive exchanges. Markethive and our dynamic ecosystem is about to become mainstream. We are targeting gaining over 1 million new members during this campaign.

If you want to be part of this, you need to be upgraded to the Entrepreneur One loyalty program found at (must be logged in) https://markethive.com/?upgrade .
This is our first loyalty program and will be our most lucrative. It is also limited to 500 members, after number 500 upgrades, it will never be available again.

 

Listing on Exchanges

We are now aggressively working to get the MHV coin listed on a few top exchanges. This should go pretty fast as the integrity of the MHV coin is stellar. Highly ranked Alexa score. Millions of coin transactions on the blockchain. A growing active community. A massive amount of positive articles on thousands of media sites, press releases, forums, etc. An A+ BBB rating. An active and running system.

Example of the requirements as stated from Poloniex:

Straight from their websites: “We don’t have a definitive set of criteria as each project is unique. We listen to the community and select projects that we believe are unique, innovative, and that our users would be interested in trading.” If your coin isn’t complete vaporware and has real demand, you shouldn’t have too much of a problem getting it listed. Poloniex cautions they cannot list coins that resemble securities. Their website explicitly mentions The Howey Test. Assuming you read our Guide to Launching an ICO, you know the importance of the Howey Test. But just in case you need a refresher: The Howey Test was a precedent from a 1946 Supreme Court case. The ruling gave the SEC guidelines as to what could be considered a security. So, make sure your coin doesn’t resemble one.

The leads or other developers of your coin must have fully verified accounts on Poloniex. With new coins trying to get listed daily, it would be arduous for the Poloniex team to manually verify the identity of everyone submitting. Poloniex does not require or accept payment for listing, so you don’t have to budget for that to get your coin on the exchange. The process is relatively simple.

Here is the link and as you can see, we will cruise easily through this process of getting listed.

https://www.coinist.io/how-to-get-your-digital-token-listed-on-an-exchange/

Which now leads us to….

The Wallet Loyalty Program release

Our wallet is going to be released in phases or waves so to speak. The first release will make the wallet available to Entrepreneur One Loyalty Members. This release is imminent. The next release will be rolled out after the Vault is completed and will be included in Markethive’s entry loyalty program.

The “apprentice” loyalty program is in the works and will be released soon, but as far as date setting goes, we do not do it. I will expand more on our new loyalty programs here in the near future.

Eventually the wallet will be open to everyone, but government regulations are slowing it down.

 

The Loyalty programs

Markethive’s first and enterprise level loyalty program is the Entrepreneur One Loyalty program. It includes every current and coming platforms like the Banner exchange, the Press release exchange, the video ad exchange, the social network broadcast exchange, the NewsFeed Boosts and the list will be infinite. It also rewards 12 months with a 1/10th ILP (Incentivized Loan Program). It is limited to 500 members.

Once filled Entrepreneur Two will be released, it will cost more, will not include the banner exchange and the 12 month loyalty reward is reduced to 1/20th of an ILP. It will be limited to 1000 people.

The Entrepreneur Loyalty Program will continue to release different levels as the company expands it’s services.

There will also be an entry level loyalty program (apprentice) as well as a mid-level one (journey). The entry level will have a handful of benefits, like a matching bonus lock, the wallet a dn access to membership searches, messaging and deeper analysis of who has visited your blogs and profile page.

The mid-level loyalty program (journey) will be focused on delivering the same benefits as the entry program and in addition greater rewards for completing the automated tutorials and blogging and blog subscribing.

Loyalty programs reward you for making a monthly monetary commitment to Markethive. Loyalty programs give you greater advantage, reach and benefits free members do not receive. Similar to LinkedIn.

 

Pruning Policy

Markethive does not terminate accounts based on behaviour, or policy violations. If you want your account deleted, only you can do so. There are two ways to delete (completely removing all your content, videos, blogs, newsfeed posts and comments, coins, friends, associates, etc.
 

  1. Log in and go to Settings (https://markethive.com/settings) > Profile Page and click the delete Account link and confirm 2 times and your system will be completely purged and all activities and remnants of your existence in Markethive will be gone, forever with no options to restore. Or….
     
  2. Do not login for over 6 months and your account will automatically be pruned, terminated all evidence, friends, associates, coins, holdings record, images, videos, (everything just like delete above) will be deleted permanently with no options to restore. This is because we are going to be enacting KYC to make sure all members are legitimate members, to prevent scamming and fraud from the system. This will also satisfy the ever encroaching anti-terrorist laws of the United States and other world principalities.
     
  3. If you were a BOD holder from the defunct Shell Holdings, your BOD was grandfathered over to Markethive and converted to an ILP. If you terminate or allow your account to be pruned, you will have forfeited that conversion with no ability to retrieve it. It would be wise to pay attention, because Markethive is going to achieve success.
     

If you have not logged in in a long time, yet received this email, then it would be an urgent matter to log in sooner than later. If your account has already been pruned, due to not logging in over 6 months, then you will not receive this email.

We project Markethive will achieve over 1 million subscribers or more by years end of 2020. We do pray you will stay the course with us.

 

Our Support dedication

We are currently using Telegram for our support, which runs 24/7. It is a community based system, so all support issues are broadcasted to the entire Telegram group members. Full transparency and allows us to deliver to you a better support experience than found anywhere else. Consider Facebook, Google, LinkiedIn, Uber and Twitter having some of the lowest rating for support, Google support is a number that never answers and an email that never get’s returned and a forum that is never responded to.

But the mother of all worse support is IBOtoolbox. The only satisfaction you will ever get there is they use Paypal and when you do a chargeback, they do not even repond to it, so you can always get your payment returned. The humorous part is their support forum is over run by spammers and porn/ Honestly, how can companies behave so callously and stay in business. Now to be fair…

There are companies out there with incredible support and on my top of the list is Knownhost. They only support via email, but are fast, responsive and effective. This is why after 10 years I still host all my non Markethive domains with them. I give then an A PLUS! Amazon is another stellar company in the support field and deserve an A PLUS as well. I am never dissatisfied when I need to contact them, ever! And second place goes to GoDaddy where they annoy me a little bit with their interface, their support is quick, intelligent and responsive, so I give them an A.

I was raised in my early years of business by a wealthy business man who drove into my head, deliver the very best quality backed up by the very best service and support and you will be successful. Simple as that, and that is Markethive!

 

Focus on Quality is our prime objective

It may have taken us 20 years to build Markethive, but not only is Markethive innovation above and beyond any potential competitor, but attention to excellence and perfection are built into our DNA. We are never satisfied with “Good Enough” or even worse, “What do you expect for free?” We are dedicated to deliver the very best quality systems and we compete within ourselves, rarely paying attention to how others may try to do it. Innovation, not replication, quality instead of mediocrity, offering tutorials to help gain understanding and perspective creating loyalty, yep this is Markethive and it belongs to you our members as well.

 

Building a Nurturing Culture

Requiring all members to validate their true identity is done to make sure the culture in Markethive is populated with real people revealing their real identity. This is done to prevent hacking, scamming and criminal activities. A true validated identity fosters trust and relationships. KYC also makes it easier for Markethive to operate worldwide especially within those countries who have set up severe obstacles in regards to crypto and their KYC|AML regulations. Case in point is this article

Deribit Releases Specifics of New KYC Policy Following Move to Panama

Deribit, a crypto futures and options exchange that is moving from the Netherlands to Panama to avoid Europe’s new Anti-Money Laundering law has released its newly updated Know Your Customer (KYC) policy.

In a Jan. 17 blog post, Deribit clearly said that its relocation to Panama has been mainly caused by the new Anti-Money Laundering Directive (5AMLD), a major European law that aims to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing by stricter regulation of crypto-related businesses.

https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/deribit-releases-specifics-of-new-kyc-policy-following-move-to-panama-2064305

 

Markethive is delivering a unique system, where our coin is not for the sake of raising funds, like every other crypto enterprise, but to fuel our own ecosystem. Here is the basics of our system as simply as I can illustrate it.

  1. We are populated with likeminded entrepreneurial people from all walks of life, from every country in the world. A true melting pot all with a desire to achieve financial freedom and economic sovereignty.
     
  2. Markethive offers an Inbound Marketing platform on par with the best platforms like Marketo (recently sold to Adobe for $4.75 billion). Inbound Marketing platforms include: Customer | Lead acquisition and management systems (CMS); Email broadcasting and autoresponders; Lead capture funnel pages; Landing and sales pages; Community based (exclusive to Markethive) Social Network broadcasting (like Hootsuit); Blogging platform (exclusive Markethive feature broadcasting to subscribers WordPress); Automated educational tutorials (exclusive to Markethive); Lead associates nurturing (exclusive to Markethive your leads or associates,  “members” are offered to get paid to use the system, take the tutorials and promote the system subscribe to your social networks and engage in the community.); Content production via blogs, and a whole lot more in building and maintaining campaigns, coops, rotational traffic, etc.
     
  3. Store Fronts that integrate referral accounts, shopping carts, recruiting pages, integrated Ebay, Amazon, Etsy etc., selling platforms.
     
  4. Production of digital media content from a large population of members that pays you to subscribe and pays you to publish. Where best content gets added to the Markethive distributions systems earning even more for the producers.
     
  5. Community based News Feeds, groups and support platforms that build a community as well as Internet reach and seo dominance (exclusive Markethive service)
     
  6. Advertising services: Banner Exchange, Press releases, Editorials, Sponsored Articles, Live (Influencer) Interviews, News Feed Boosts, Videos, Social Network Broadcasting, WordPress Broadcasting, and more.
     

Building an empowered community is the primary vision of Markethive. Incentivized, ongoing training, comradery, common mission, integrated growing community. It is being the building of the community with access to these powerful tools and commerce platforms that delivers unparalleled results.

Markethive has produced the ability for every individual in every diverse culture in every country the ability to build a real financial solution, a sovereign freedom that this system offers; that no other system has envisioned or come close to achieving.

And that is a nurturing culture and is exactly why Markethive is dedicated to create and is delivering; a real membership of verified and validated likeminded members.

 

Markethive Morning live broadcasts

Markethive will be broadcasting live video broadcast talk shows several times per week. They will be live video broadcasts and will be broadcasting from the Markethive Newsfeed for now as well os direct via Youtube.

These broadcasts will be called Markethive Live until we come up with a better brand. Feel free to make suggestions in the comment section of this blog.

See you all there

 

 

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

The Markethive Inbound Marketing Social Platform

A safe, secure, powerful broadcasting platform, delivering value and merit for joining and engaging your audiences. An exclusive Airdrop, Faucet and Bounty social network. Markethive. Joining is free, upgrading is rewarding. 

By Invitation: https://markethive.com/marketing

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

What is proximity marketing? How does it work?

What is proximity marketing? How does it work?

Proximity marketing refers to communicating with customers at the right place, the right time and with highly relevant and personalised messages, on their smartphones – be it greeting at the entry points, special offers in the store aisles, or getting feedback on a new product.

Legacy advertisements on television, billboards, radio and pamphlets could be appealing, but they lack the impulsive drive to avail an offer, or try a new product. However, digital technology, such as beacons have bridged this gap between offline and online.

For decades, traditional shopkeepers and business owners have been communicating with their customers at significant moments, but proximity marketing as a term got introduced to marketers in 2008. This led to brands and businesses sending location-triggered text messages to cell phones that were in proximity to a Bluetooth network and had "discoverable" Bluetooth mode switched on.

To understand how proximity marketing works, let us consider an example of a retail store.

  1. Beacons are deployed at the storefront or in aisles with ongoing offers.
  2. These BLE beacons transmit signals in its range. BLE signals are a combination of numbers and characters.
  3. The signals are detected by any Bluetooth-enabled smartphone, in the transmitting range.
  4. The smartphone then sends the ID number attached to the signal to the cloud server.
  5. The server checks the action assigned to that ID number and responds accordingly. It could be a notification about a discount, or a product launch, a feedback form or just a greeting!
  6. These notifications will then drive customers to a relevant form, a webpage or a markdown card (a Beaconstac card creative which works as a substitute for a website).

Location-based marketing vs proximity marketing

Businesses, especially retail and real estate, have been focussing immensely on location for the last decade. This is because reaching out to customers without being sure of the location is just digital marketing, which is not very effective for local businesses. However, marketers and business owners now realize that the targeting needs to be more specific than just GPS and geofencing. This is where proximity marketing steps in. Let’s understand in detail about their differences and when each one of them is useful.

Location-based marketing

Location-based marketing in simple terms means communicating with potential customers within a range. Let’s say, a coffee shop runs a campaign to introduce a new almond flavoured Cappuccino on their menu. Setting a location based marketing campaign would mean that all potential customers in the range of, let’s say 1 kilometer, are notified about the new coffee. This might also include reaching out to a user in the nearby ice-cream store.

This is done by calculating the latitude and longitude of the smartphone using GPS or cell tower triangulation method. It is hence defined as the kind of marketing that uses mobile to target customers in a particular geographical area.

Geofence is a virtual boundary which can range from over 50,000 meters to anything else. Ideally, for interactions above 80-100 meters, business owners must consider geofencing.

Proximity marketing

Proximity marketing however, is a more granular form of location marketing. For the same example discussed above, the coffee shop owner could decide to have a more targeted approach and reach out to customers passing his coffee shop, lets say in the range of 300 meters. This approach is more personalized and contextually relevant.

Proximity marketing is about reaching out to customers based on the accurate position and not a virtual geofence. This makes the communication more contextual and personalised.

Proximity marketing is recommended for highly targeted zones – within 100m of distance. Proximity marketing use-cases involve interaction with customers about a particular product, brand on a shelf, or any other similar application.

Proximity marketing solutions

Business owners and marketers have been using proximity solutions that do not involve technology, for decades – physical signage and banners. But in last few years, technologies have become much more affordable, and therefore, a lot of businesses have integrated them into their marketing strategies. Advanced technologies that make proximity marketing happen are – Bluetooth beacons, NFC, RFID and WiFi.

1. Proximity marketing using Bluetooth beacons

Bluetooth beacons are currently the leading proximity marketing technology. According to Proximity Directory Report Q4 2017, 86% of the proximity sensors deployed across the world are beacons. According to the same report, 7 18,763,000 proximity sensors were deployed by Q4 2017. Beacons are low energy transmitters, equipped with Bluetooth low energy, used to deliver contextually relevant notification on nearby smartphones.

There are two beacon standards :-

iBeacon: Apple first launched beacon standard in 2013. That is when physical and digital started merging. A lot of retailers like Macy's, Walmart and Starwood hotels stepped up to the plate to implement iBeacon in their store outlets. iBeacon allows apps on smartphones to receive BLE signals from the beacon.

Eddystone: Google introduced the Eddystone protocol in 2015. It is an open URL protocol specification that defines Bluetooth low energy (BLE) message format for proximity beacon messages. It has since become hugely popular among businesses and has only continued to grow. Eddystone protocol restricted the popularity of iBeacons in no time. Now, smartphones can receive Eddystone signals with or without apps.

Beaconstac beacons support both Eddystone and iBeacon.

UPDATE: On October 25, 2018 Android announced that Nearby will no longer be supported on Android smartphones after December 6, 2018. 

2. Proximity marketing with NFC based systems

NFC was designed to enable highly secure payments and applications. NFC enabled customers to pay just by tapping smartphones against NFC-enabled devices. This technology did not fly off really well, even though it appeared promising in the beginning.This failure could be due to the following reasons –

  • Customers need an app to use NFC tags to receive messages.
  • NFC is a passive form of proximity marketing – which means NFC ads require customers to initiate the engagement. Unlike beacons, NFC systems cannot broadcast notifications.
  • It has a concise transmission range of 20 centimetres.

3. Proximity marketing with Wi-Fi-based systems

Wi-Fi has not traditionally been a proximity solution. However, with the widespread of public Wi-Fi, marketers are now leveraging Wi-Fi to send notifications. The Wi-Fi hosting website can send location-specific content to the consumer’s browser.

However, Wi-Fi requires users to consent to a connection each time they enter the business location. And, Wi-Fi-based systems are not very accurate when it comes to proximity marketing.

4. Proximity marketing with RFID based systems

RFID tags are used to track store product movement and inventory. RFID introduced in 2003, was considered a revolution. It quickly went from the little-known technology to the next big thing. However, this rapid growth was ephemeral. Here’s why RFID has limited adoption :-

  • The biggest hurdle in RFID adoption is that deploying RFID system requires many different components – necessary hardware such as tags, readers, reader control and apps. Retailers have to invest a substantial amount upfront on the infrastructure front, on both sender and receiver side.
  • Unlike most other proximity solutions, RFID does not come with inherent compatibility with mobile. It requires hardware to process signals at specific frequencies.
  • Information passed by RFID cannot be personalised based on location, frequency, time of the day etc. It is constant and is embedded in the tag.

Why is Bluetooth beacon better than competing technologies?

Proximity with beacons yield results way superior to legacy channels and other competing technologies.

1. 10 billion smartphones in 2018 are Bluetooth-enabled

Beacons broadcast notifications to Bluetooth enabled smartphones. In 2018, nearly 4 billion devices will ship with Bluetooth technology. The percentage of people having their Bluetooth switched on, varies from country to country.

Based on our research and statistics over the internet, approximately 50% of the users in Canada and US have their Bluetooth switched on. Russia has 25%, whereas the UK has 33% of the users with Bluetooth switched on all the time.

2. You do not need your own app to run beacon campaigns

With beacon technology, businesses may or may not leverage the experience of their brand app to communicate with their consumers. Using the Eddystone protocol, sending notifications using NearBee is a breeze.

NearBee has been designed to be better and far superior to Google Nearby. Unlike Google Nearby, it has the ability to send non-silent, rich notifications, non-duplicate and visually appealing notifications straight to the lock screen of Android users. NearBee will also have the ability to morph into a business’s unique branding once a customer enters the store. Customers will also be allowed to ‘follow’ businesses and receive controlled timely updates that can be sent even when they are no longer in the range of the beacon.

3. The click-through rate is far superior to competitor technologies

The click-through rate of a beacon campaign varies based on multiple parameters :

  • Usage of a brand or third party app
  • Deployment location and strategy
  • Nature of business
  • Schedule of the campaign (Days and time)
  • Notification copy etc

However, when done well, beacon campaigns have yielded a click-through rate (CTR) of 55% – 60%. However, this is not typical for all businesses. On an average, most small businesses see a CTR of 2% – 4%. With higher targeting and personalisation, the results get better.

A CTR of 2% is incredible for offline businesses given the results attained by other advertising channels. CTR of an average beacon campaign is 25 times that of a social media campaign.

 

4. Beacons have an excellent ROI

The three factors which contribute to the brilliant ROI of beacons are – low cost, long battery life and minimal efforts.

  1. These tiny devices cost less than $20
  2. Most beacons have an average battery life of 2 years. However, it varies based on the type beacon in use and its transmitting range
  3. Beacons work out-of-the-box! This means business owners do not need an engineer onboard to start broadcasting beacon campaigns. It’s easy to use and seamless to configure

According to Unacast’s Proximity.Directory Q1 2017 Report, retailers can improve their position and increase the operating profit by nearly 9% with an ROI of 175%. This ROI figure shoots to 365% for small and medium businesses.

How to set up a proximity marketing campaign using beacons?

1. Choose the right beacon form factor for your business

Beaconstac supports various beacon hardware options which are found to be best in field tests. The hardware lineup consists of all-purpose indoor beacons, robust long range beacons, pocket beacons and keychain beacons.

RELATED: https://blog.beaconstac.com/2018/02/proximity-marketing-with-pocket-beacons-for-retail-real-estate-and-on-the-move-applications/

The lineup includes beacons in various form factors to suit multiple business needs and applications. Learn more about the options we support on the Beaconstac hardware data-sheet.

2. Plan the beacon deployment strategy

Beacon deployment strategy depends on what the business wants to achieve. However, there are few tips for beacon deployment which work across industries.

  • Place beacons above the crowd level (approximately about 4 ft to 7 ft above the ground) for maximum reach. Installing beacons on ceilings also work well.
  • Place beacons in areas where people move slowly, or have a higher wait time, for, eg, traffic intersections, offices, waiting areas, etc.
  • Try to create a line of sight between a beacon and users’ phones. For best results, place beacons vertically, with the Beaconstac logo on top.

3. Create a markdown card/form (Or, an https website)

Beacon notifications can direct to a custom URL (any website), a form, or a markdown card. Markdown cards are creatives used instead of websites. Beaconstac provides markdown templates which can be easily modified to suit various campaigns. [Download inspirational markdown cards across verticals]

4. Assign it to a beacon

Assign the markdown card or form to the transmitting beacon. Watch the video to learn how to do it.

5. Create a notification

Beaconstac allows the notification creation in multiple languages. This helps marketers target customers in their preferred language. [Read more about dynamic notifications]

How are business using proximity marketing?

Beacon technology has changed the way brands interact with customers. Although advertisement remains the primary benefit of proximity marketing, marketers leverage it for a lot of other use cases.

1. Advertisement

Gone are days when brands were courting customers only by sending out advertisements on television, radio and magazines. In the last few years, advertisements have made a significant shift to a more targetable and data-driven option – beacons. Legacy ads cannot be micro sliced via location or demographics. This is why marketers are now relying on proximity marketing solutions to find, engage and most importantly, bring back customers.

2. Personalisation to enhance engagement

Brick and mortar stores can achieve the level of personalisation that e-commerce sites like Amazon and Walmart offer. With beacons in stores, marketers can achieve the following :-

  1. Send recommendations related to their purchase history.
  2. Upsell products.
  3. Send recommendations based on shopping habits.

Personalization leads to positive experiences that, in turn, leads to more engagement, loyalty and sales. According to research by Marketing Insider Group, 78% of consumers say relevant content increases their purchase intent.

3. Loyalty programs

Customer loyalty programs are all about keeping current customers engaged and happy. These programs enable customers to automatically check in, get credit for their purchases and earn loyalty rewards. Big brands and local merchants are now using beacons to provide mobile loyalty among customers. Interesting use cases of beacon-based loyalty programs are :-

  1. Send customized notifications on offers to patrons when they are closeby.
  2. Deliver time-sensitive geo-targeted offers with greater precision.
  3. Reward loyal customers for spending time with you.

4. Amassing offline data

Businesses today, rely heavily on sophisticated data gathering mechanism. This is because data-driven campaigns help in better understanding of shopping behaviour. Many successful retail brands like Macy’s, Walmart, Kenneth Cole are using beacons to gather extensive data for future campaigns.

With beacons, retailers can,

  1. Track footfall
  2. Create heatmaps of zones in the store
  3. Analyse merchandising effectiveness
  4. Gauge customer loyalty
  5. Analyse the content type that drives consumers

Implement a proximity marketing campaign without an app?

Very few technologies have seen the kind of success that beacons have. And this is primarily because with the introduction of Eddystone; marketers did not require apps to communicate with their customers. Beacons communicate with Bluetooth enabled smartphones via two different protocols – Eddystone and iBeacon.

Eddystone beacons broadcast URLs that can be detected by smartphones even without an app. Services on the device such as Nearby Notifications, Samsung CloseBy or Physical Web compatible apps scan for and display these Eddystone URLs after passing them through a proxy.

On Android phones – Nearby is a Google service developed for Android phones. It scans for Eddystone URLs and detects packet if any.

UPDATE: Nearby will be discontinued from December 6, 2018. We have launched NearBee for Android that delivers non-passive, non-generic, rich notifications to the lock screens of Android users. Read our blog to know why it’s superior to Google Nearby. Download NearBee for android.

 

On iOS phones – To implement beacon campaigns on iOS devices, these devices need to have Physical Web compatible apps or browsers. iOS devices need third-party apps to scan and detect notifications. We have developed our app – “Nearbee”, which continuously scan for Eddystone URLs.

How to run proximity marketing campaigns on iOS devices?

Proximity marketing for iOS devices needs apps. This could be the brand app or a third party app that customers have on their phones

RELATED: https://blog.beaconstac.com/2018/02/how-to-run-a-powerful-proximity-marketing-campaign-on-ios/

Businesses that have a brand app

Proximity marketing campaigns which leverage their brand apps yield impressive results. Companies such as Heineken, Coca-Cola and Screenvision leveraged their brand apps to implement proximity campaigns and witnessed massive success.

Our NearBee SDK will quickly enable you to convert your app into a beacon powered app. If you are seeking to implement a wide array of complex use-cases, use Beaconstac SDK.

Businesses that do not have a brand app

Such businesses need high performing and innovative third-party apps to implement proximity campaigns. Third-party apps strike the right balance between respecting a consumer’s privacy while providing timely proximity marketing notifications. These third-party apps continuously scan for Eddystone URLs and display the notifications as soon as they detect an Eddystone URL.

Beaconstac has developed an app – “Nearbee”. This app scans for Nearby notifications and displays the notification on the iOS device.

Here’s how it is superior to any other third party app :–

  1. Add an app intent to the campaign.
  2. Allows delivering notifications at a specific time of the day, or days of a week.
  3. The app is designed to run and scan quietly in the background. This means users get the notification even when the device is locked.
  4. With the app, you can send telemetry information to the Google beacon platform where you can monitor the health of beacons.
  5. Send multiple notifications from a single beacon.

Proximity marketing across industries

Proximity marketing in retail

Proximity marketing in retail has moved beyond push notifications and coupons. It is now in the next level of personalised content delivery. It has eventually become the biggest drivers of beacon deployments. Retail is leveraging beacons for attracting new customers, enhancing their store experience, building loyalty through personalised messages and collecting customer feedback.

Major beacon use-cases in retail

  • 1. Inform Shoppers

    Sharing information related to a specific place or object is one of the frequently used retail beacon use-case. Supermarket retailers leverage beacons to share useful information about a newly launched product, the brand or the description of the products they are selling. Restaurants also use beacon campaigns to inform users about the special dishes on the menu, chef’s recommendations and more. Car dealerships on other hand leverage beacons to inform users about the specifications of a car, price comparison with similar models etc. This not only makes information readily available on the mobile but also enhances the customer experience and saves printing dollars.

2. Boost in-store sales

Beacons are being employed in stores and malls to raise awareness about ongoing promotions and discounts, navigate visitors to venues, broadcast sales and discounts messages next to relevant products, and integrate POS to beacons to ease payments. Every retailer promotes the ongoing discounts to boost sales, however, getting beacons to do the job ensures that the pitched offers are relevant for the visitors and hence increase the chances of conversion.

3. Interact and engage with shoppers

In the era of experiential retailing, delightful shopper experience is the key. Beacon makes the visitor experience much more personal, customized and engaging. Motivate shoppers to visit more sections in your store, transform mannequin into talking salesperson, gamify the experience by rolling out location specific quizzes and treasure hunts. In an attempt to close the loop between physical stores and digital awareness, retailers are also linking beacon campaigns to social media channels. This enables users to share their in-store experience, online. Other ways to enhance the shopper experience are – enable booking/registering for a test drive through the smartphone, welcoming users into the store and informing them about one deal they should not miss out.

4. Help visitors navigate through your store

GPS is great for outdoor locations, however, it doesn’t work as expected when a visitor enters a building. This is where beacons are handy (GPS vs beacons)! Beacon powered apps use the triangulation method to detect the exact position of Bluetooth devices, indoor or outdoor. This is especially helpful for multi-storey malls, huge airports and museums. For the end-user, it functions just as a GPS. Beacon navigations can be marked with important locations such as important stores or art pieces, refreshment zones etc.

Proximity marketing in real estate

Real estate is one of those transforming industries that has recently picked up significant interest in beacon-based proximity marketing for boosting customer experience. The real estate brokers and agents are currently using beacons to attract home buyers, capture leads, push business cards and engage with them.

Major beacon use-cases in real estate

  • 1. Driving traffic

    Attaching a beacon to the ‘Open House’ sign can go a long way in attracting potential clients. The notification can disperse a lot of useful information about the house, previous owners and even a form that lets potential buyers fix an appointment with the real estate agent.

  • 2. Enhancing the buyer’s experience

    Instead of an agent explaining things about the house, beacons can do that. Every room that a potential buyer enter can have a beacon that sends out detailed information about it. This allows buyers to have their own personalized experience and more than one buyer can browse through the house without needing a dedicated real estate agent.

Proximity marketing in real estate

Real estate is one of those transforming industries that has recently picked up significant interest in beacon-based proximity marketing for boosting customer experience. The real estate brokers and agents are currently using beacons to attract home buyers, capture leads, push business cards and engage with them.

Major beacon use-cases in real estate

  • 1. Driving traffic

    Attaching a beacon to the ‘Open House’ sign can go a long way in attracting potential clients. The notification can disperse a lot of useful information about the house, previous owners and even a form that lets potential buyers fix an appointment with the real estate agent.

  • 2. Enhancing the buyer’s experience

    Instead of an agent explaining things about the house, beacons can do that. Every room that a potential buyer enter can have a beacon that sends out detailed information about it. This allows buyers to have their own personalized experience and more than one buyer can browse through the house without needing a dedicated real estate agent.

If you like thios anayltical research blogging let me know in the comments and I will kick it up.

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Lead Nurturing according to Markethive

Our Lead Nurturing System

is the only system that does not violate good email practices

Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost. (Forrester Research)

(Or, how to build an effective email auto responder campaign primarily attracting your outside leads via capture pages, to join through you in Markethive’s Social Network. Then we, as a team, continue to turn your leads into raving advocates and your best friends. Remember, Markethive is your partner)

What we are not and never will be

Let me explain what the traditional nurturing systems do and how we do not utilize their spying bad email practices. First, let me illustrate how traditional email nurturing works. A typical corporate inbound marketing email system uses hidden image pixels within their email that reports back to the server, the IP address, email address, geo location and when that email is opened and how many times it is opened and the dates and times it is opened.

Now what Lead Nurturing is really all about according to Markethive

Selling in today’s market isn’t for the timid or inexperienced marketer. Today’s prospects are researching according to their needs and on their terms, and they expect treatment accordingly and with respect. They are drawn towards companies and services that are personalized, friendly and timely. As marketers we must be ready to meet each prospective customer on their terms their way.

How can you make sure you are sharing the right information at the right time, and getting it to the right person? Markethive’s lead systems automate this process for you. As an entrepreneur seeking to attract likeminded entrepreneurs, Markethive’s Alpha Workshop systems, gently coach your leads (your children) through a learning and awareness program. This program rewards your “leads” (your children) to expand their profiles (IE: Phone numbers, Skype address, multiple Social Networks, keeping the email current, etc.)  This process wields you to your leads, prospects (now you know why we call them children) for life.

Unlike the “other” traditional vertical systems, Markethive’s workshops, tools, and social networks, develop your prospects into well educated, integrated members of your own social network within the Markethive overall system.

When your “campaigns” bring in “leads” at the core of your custom Markethive auto responders, should always include an invite into the Markethive environment via your automatically “dripping” relevant messages to your leads over time.

The Markethive system can address various products of interest, pain points, common objections during the sales cycle, and more, depending upon your targets and goals, the number of campaigns you build the crossover of these campaigns and your eventual goal being to turn prospects into subscribers, subscribers into customers and those customers into lifelong friends.

With Markethive’s campaign systems, your system’s customers are placed on a track based on what we know about them. You’re learning more about your customers every day — as they learn more about you — so the nurturing process is a two pronged arena, both from your customized systems and the Markethive Social Network. Eventually all your leads become associated with you becoming your “children” or family for life, obviously you becoming the “parent”.

Stop wasting time.

If you engage a “child “lead too early, you have to spend a lot of time explaining what your solution does and pitching the value. Nurturing has the power to significantly speed up your connected cycle by taking care of some of that education before a lead even becomes active within the Markethive Network. It’s effective for both those actively evaluating your brand, and those who aren’t quite there yet — just make sure you use data to deliver the right message.

Markethive sees to it your leads are raised up effectively preparing them to embrace working with you and appreciating the power of the Markethive system and the incredible ease of the learning venture.

No longer deal with Dormant Leads

Today we are strapped for time and resources. If you’re balancing multiple priorities and doing everything manually, it’s easy to go too long without checking up on your leads. Markethive fills the gap with our constant offering and rewards for our automated and live marketing workshops. These workshops address all the power of the Markethive platform, turning your "lead“" (children” into virtual marketing warriors.

When you add your own flavor to this process, your “children” become loyal lifetime clients, friends and associates for life.

So it makes sense to add the invite to join your Markethive family to all your autoresponder campaigns with Markethive capture pages and widgets.

Building your own Campaigns to nurture your array of leads

Markethive’s core focus is building your portfolio of Markethive “children” leads into powerful allies joining you to improve your overall marketing effectiveness and reach.

Depending on the type of capture lead you develop; here are a few examples to build your capture page leads into members of your business, team, agenda, etc.

Welcome Campaign

Welcome emails in response to a particular offer are highly anticipated, frequently opened, and simple to automate. By turning your welcome emails into a nurturing campaign, you can begin to establish a lasting relationship. In the initial email, remember to remind them why they converted, confirm their opt-in, and let them know what to expect from your program. Then, start providing them with light, educational content to build awareness and keep them interested. Be sure to keep it targeted based on the offer they converted on and especially invite them to join Markethive as your special member offering them the many incentives Markethive offers. Invite them to your Markethive blogs and Groups to join and experience the power and family of the Markethive experience.

Top-of-Mind Campaign

The top-of-mind drip is designed to engage with your leads at regular intervals, preventing leads from forgetting about your company and getting swooped up by your competitors. This drip takes place over a longer period of time, providing sales with consistent touch points, and uses content primarily focused on value to the prospect. For early-stage leads, make sure to choose the right content. Start engaging them with interesting Markethive blog posts, helpful third-party content, and other content around related topics, and watch for key activities that indicate they are interested in learning more about your actual offering. Engaging in your blogs or joining your groups signals your leads are ready to upgrade to the culture of the Entrepreneur and join you in Markethive as a premium lead (we call them childen).

Re-engagement Campaign

Have an old list on Aweber or another email service? Here is an idea. Not all of your prospects will make it through this process. But by consistently inviting your lead databases on the other email systems, to engage in your Markethive blogs, join your Markethive groups or come subscribe and experience the difference with the first Market Network called Markethive. Markethive’s workshops make your leads become family. And that makes for a loyalty program that lasts a lifetime.

Product-focused Campaign

As prospects progress through the sales process and begin to seek out more product-focused content, you’ll want to make sure they’re getting the right product information from your series of auto responders, instead of a competitor or biased third party. Focus on your prospects’ pain points, how your product can address them, and the key features and benefits that will help along the way. For this type of drip, you’ll want to invite them to Markethive Groups regarding the case studies, customer testimonials, data sheets, and more in-depth white papers found there. Be sure you have visibility into all touchpoints with your customers so that you can tailor your conversations based on activity history. Remember; produce auto responders that engage your leads to continue the reading via your Markethive blogs (In other words, do not tell the whole story in your email). This is where you will be able to convert many of your leads into raving maniacs!

Competitive Drips

This type of campaign focuses on differentiating your product or service from your competitors by highlighting the advantages of using your product, as well as the disadvantages of not using it (note: you’ll want to refrain from harping on the disadvantages of your competitors’ products, since this can come off as distasteful). Focus your content on the priorities of your prospects and the competitors that come up in deals with your company. A general differentiator campaign can be effective, but if you know that a customer is currently using or evaluating a particular competitor, you can really position your product to win. Invite them to a special Group that is being set up to evaluate the different products and reporting within that Markethive Group. Access to the Groups does require Markethive (free) subscription and this is exactly what you want with all your contacts. To work within the Market Network of Markehive.

Industry Expertise Drips

As prospects move closer to the middle of the funnel (register for a Markethive account), it becomes important to reinforce that your company is the right choice. Pass on any helpful press releases, industry reports, or high-traffic content as part of this drip to establish your company’s authority. For example, if your company was recently covered by an analyst report, be sure to share it with your prospects and put your own spin on the review. Make sure all relevant information is available in Markethive Blogs and Groups.

Promotional Drips

As your prospects near the purchase stage of the sales funnel, a well-timed promotion or special discount can be just the catalyst they need. (Markethive has numerous services to offer for this) Consider offering special pricing or additional features based on their individual needs, especially if you’re working with bigger accounts where closing the deal is critical to growing your business. This also works well for companies that use a free trial model. The right offer near the end of the trial can help encourage customers to commit. (Like I keep saying, with Markethive’s Hive Portals and other powerful services for free, building a huge organization of customers, clients, friends and advocates, is real easy)

Onboarding Campaign

Onboarding a new client will always be a high-touch and manual process, and rightly so. However, nurturing campaigns allow you to automate some of the more repetitive tasks involved in onboarding, like providing introductory training resources, a list of next steps after close, timelines for product kickoffs, and frequently asked questions. These helpful resources can help your new clients get started on their own, without having to wait on a customer service rep for assistance.

Upsell Drip

The upsell (or cross-sell) campaign is designed to capitalize on your existing clients. By providing your clients with information and incentives to expand the list of products they are using, you can drive more revenue with little effort. Just be sure to focus your message around the benefits of the new offering, and remember to use a tone that feels friendly and approachable to your customers.

Renewal Campaign

Renewal nurtures can be a convenient way to remind your existing customers that it is time to renew their contracts. This drip can be triggered a month (or more) before the renewal date, send multiple reminder emails over a specified period of time, and notify the assigned account manager if no action takes place. This makes it far less likely that your clients will miss the renewals on their contracts, and takes the tedium out of the process for your service reps.

How Lead Nurturing Usually Works

The benefits of implementing a lead nurturing program are pretty self-explanatory, but how does nurturing actually work? Let’s take a look at some of the mechanics behind nurturing to see the steps involved in setting up a successful nurturing program.

1. Choose the type of campaign you would like to run. As discussed in the previous chapter, there are several different types of programs you can run based on what you want to accomplish. Are you hoping to revive inactive leads? Remind your current clients that renewals are fast approaching? Your next steps will hinge on this initial decision.

2. Choose the list you would like to nurture. Lists and segmentations are the reason that drip emails can be so highly targeted. If you want to nurture a specific segment of your database, sort these prospects or clients onto the same list. Need some inspiration to get your wheels turning? Try segmenting by specific locations, certain product segments, new users, or leads who have been cold for longer than six months. You can use logic rules to filter your prospects accordingly; this will also ensure any new prospects entering your database are evaluated and added to the campaign automatically.

3. Build up your flow and decide on your content.

Once you’ve decided which list to target with your campaign, you’re ready to develop your drip campaign and choose your content. There are several items to consider here:

• How often will you be sending drip emails to this list? This will depend on the type of campaign you’re running. If you have a long sales cycle and are targeting a list of inactive leads, consider spacing emails further apart. Other emails, like training emails or time-sensitive renewals, might be spaced closer together. As a general rule of thumb, we recommend sending emails between six and 30 days apart (to prevent sending more than one email in one week, or going more than a month between touch points).

• How complex do you want your drip campaigns to be? Your nurturing tracks can be as simple or as complicated as you want — it all depends on the drip logic that you create. Nurturing campaigns can be set up linearly, where prospects will progress through them in straight lines, offering different action points to different capture pages, groups, blogs, profile page to eventually bring them all into the social environment of Markethive where the ultimate nurturing occurs.

• Don’t forget Markethive. With capture widgets that can be embedded into blogs, capture pages, landing pages, etc. any auto responder can easily branch but should always lead to your leads (that are not Markethive Members) to become Markethive Members, where the extreme nurturing takes place.

• What will trigger each prospect to move to the next stage of the drip program? Lead nurturing is a type of trigger-based marketing, a technique that allows marketers to deliver highly relevant messaging based on a prospect’s response or reaction to an offer. Marketers can use many differing incentives to pull from your flat leads list (limited to a name, email), whether in Markethive, Aweber, Get Response, Mail Chimp, etc. to come into the extreme nurture environment of Markethive.

Markethive the ultimate Lead Nurturing environment:

You invite a list of customers to register for an upcoming webinar. Those who register are thanked and sent a related blog post. Those who do not open their email or respond are undetected. Markethive uses only good email practices. Put spying agents into an email to determine if it gets opened goes against our privacy policies and good email practices.

A prospect on an early-stage education nurture accesses your latest e-book offer, views several key pages on your Markethive blog, or registers into your Markethive capture page to view a video. Their value shoots up quickly as they finally enter into the Markethive environment! Email drips should always include invites to join Markethive Membership. You get the upgrade notification, and quickly connect with her, seeing her activity history so you understand exactly what she’s interested in.

Markethive invented Inbound Marketing. We did this back in the 1990s with a company called Veretekk. Our primary drive was we found spam, telemarketer calls and email violation (bad email practices) wrong, distasteful and not effective. Back then the standard procedure was to buy a database, spam them, cold call them and beat them over the head. This did not work, violated my “Do Good” policies in general.

In building the first Inbound Marketing, I focused on attracting traffic and offering them valuable services for free in return for their contact information. Once subscribed to a traffic portal we nurtured them to subscribe to the “whole enchilada” the Veretekk membership, where we trained and empowered them and most upgraded there to become paying subscribers and advocating zealots.

That was 20 years ago. A lot has evolved, but the underlying principles of integrity and good practices still remains foundational to Markethive.

Thus we built the Inbound Marketing platform (Markethive) to always result in the “lead, prospect” to ultimately enter into the Markethive community where true nurturing can occur in the social environment. We offer this alternative so we can avoid utilizing email sniffing techniques that in the opinion of email security companies like SORBs and IronPort are violations of privacy and considered bad email practices.

How does an email sniffer work? When an email is sent it will have a 1 pixel coded image that alerts a script on the mother server when it displays. All image displays draw upon the server and live a log footprint, IP address, date stamp as well as other information transferred that is  found in that image name string.

This is akin to spying and is why email clients like Gmail default your email to NOT display images. The only thing an email sender should tract in an email is its deliverability or if it bounced and why. (ie: Spam, Mail Box Full. No such client “server to server codes”). And we do report that data in our system.

This is an example tracking image link:

Enough said? Markethive offers Good Practices and a better Lead Nurturing environment and solution. There are no shortcuts with Markethive. We always do it right.

Thomas Prendergast
CEO  Markethive Inc.

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

WordPress meets Markethive

WordPress meets Markethive

At one point the decision or revelation became the foundation of the Markethive blogging system. Markethive would make WordPress better.

Let me explain. At one time we considered creating a blog software solution, (Blog Press) with templates that would compete with WordPress. I know, stupid. But at the time, there were many who thought it was a good idea.

The argument went like this, “Joomla, Drupal, Blogger, Typepad, etc.” offer others options so we should too. OK, I said, but then the list of competitors grew from WordPress to a much larger list, and not only did it make us another “ME TOO” company instead of an innovative cutting edge customer centric juggernaut.

I made the decision to “not” jump in as yet another standalone (CMS) blog platform like Word Press, but rather to create a powerful system to make Word Press and other CMS far more manageable, with the goal to make them better. Particularly functioning on making the world heavy weight Word Press even better by enhancing the WP platform with a supporting blog platform so multiple content could be constructed with partner contributors, so we could build a Broadcasting system utilizing literaly millions of members social networks, so we could build massive WordPress sites by many members in collaboration producing powerful SEO campaigns.

The whole idea has manifested as one of the most powerful blog collaboration Inbound Marketing systems ever devised, and that is Markethive.

Our roll being to fuse a powerful vertical targeted social network of Entrepreneurs, thereby making the Word Press and other CMS system powerful by the very spirit of the Rise of the Entrepreneur!

The following lists have become our goal to support the top contenders with plugins, widgets and collaborative power and function.

But the video tells it all.

Choosing blogging software can be a scary process, especially if you are new to blogging. There are many different types of engines and content management systems (CMS) that could be used. Picking the software that you’ll need is not an easy task, given the wide variety and types on the Web today.

There are many different aspects to consider when choosing which blogging software to pick. For instance:

Programming language.

Many blog platforms run on either PHP or Rails, but you can find just about any flavor of programming language you are looking for.

What features you’ll need.

The type of software you might choose is very dependent on the type of blog you are going to run. Some blog software is geared more towards new users, while others are more developer and designer-friendly. It’s a matter of finding software based on the features you need.

The size of the software’s community.

If the software community is larger for one blogging system and much smaller and less active than another, the more active community is usually a better choice for software. More active users within the development community means more improvements on the code base, in a faster time frame.

The age of the software.

The age of the software shows the maturity of the blogging platform. Young projects are more unstable, and are more likely to have bugs.

If you are planning on extending the blog.

If you are thinking about adding things like forums, a store, or some other feature to your blog, some blogging software will be more suited to fill that need than others.

The blog software that you choose can have a big impact on your blogging. It’s important to choose the right software in the very beginning, so you can avoid the hassle of migrating to different engine later on. Here are the pros and cons of the 10 most popular blogging systems.

Here is the list of the top 10 blogging CMS solutions:

1.Wordpress
Alexa Rank (276)-45

WordPress is the most famous and widely-used blogging platform. It features a very intuitive web-based installer so anyone from skill level novice to expert can quickly install the software without any hiccups.

The WordPress community is a major asset to the blogging software. It has one of the largest and most passionate communities of developers and users, so one could find just about any theme or plugin imaginable. The possibilities for extending the software are endless, and many web sites and services have used the WordPress code base to build entirely different applications. WordPress also features integration with Akismet, one of the most effective spam protection systems for blogging software.

WordPress makes it easy for new bloggers to not only install the software, but also to download and install automatic upgrades to plugins with only one click. The learning curve for WordPress is fairly minimal, and if a new user runs in to problems, they can always check the extensive documentation. WordPress is perfect for the new blogger who wants to get his feet wet installing their first blog software, or the advanced developer who’s looking to extend the stable code into something entirely different.

If you are wanting to start a multiple-blog site, you can also check out WordPress MU. WordPress MU is the same code base as the mature WordPress single blog code base, with some added functionality.

2. Drupal
Alexa Rank  (2,497)-17

Drupal isn’t your typical blogging software. While it has an incredible community behind the code and many blogs use it for blogging software, it’s not just blogging software. Drupal is community software.

Drupal really shines as blog software for a blogging community. Performancing is a great example of using Drupal as a community of blogs. Whether you are wanting to power one blog to a 100, Drupal is an excellent choice.

Another strong point about Drupal is the versatility of the software. It comes packaged with a robust user system, but also a lot of community-friendly features like forums, books (for creating documents in a “book” structure) and a tracker which allows you to follow updates and content that other users have published recently.

Drupal also comes with a large community of developers and modules. With these modules, one could build any type of site or add nearly any sort of functionality to their Drupal installation. Many top-notch sites use Drupal to publish their multiple blogs and user communities. Performancing, Spread Firefox, The Onion, and Ubuntu and others.

Drupal is the perfect blogging software for anyone wanting to add a community to their blog with forums and extensions.

3. Joomla
Alexa Rank (2,689)-570

Joomla is a CMS that is similar to the community-friendly Drupal, and gaining traction every day. While Drupal is geared more towards developing community-flavored sites and blogs, Joomla seems to be geared more towards ecommerce (you can read more about the comparison between Joomla and Drupal here).

Regardless of their differences, Joomla is very much like Drupal in the fact that it’s easy to get anything from a simple site to a community blog in minutes. Joomla has a vibrant development community which has created many extensions.

Joomla is perfect for anyone wanting to build a blogging community site, or add ecommerce functionality to a blog.

4. ExpressionEngine
Alexa Rank (12,422)-2,466

ExpressionEngine is a very robust blogging platform, but isn’t free. The best feature about ExpressionEngine is the feature to publish multiple websites, either using different subdomains on a single domain, or across multiple domains.

You could use one code base to power multiple sites across multiple domains. The software features an extremely clean and simple backend that shouldn’t confuse the blogger. Designers and developers love ExpressionEngine for the fact that it’s quite easy to hand over a site and have the client update his own blog. It’s a solid all-in-one package.

ExpressionEngine is really geared for people who are trying to start a multi-blog site, but anyone can use the software quite easily thanks to its thoughtful and elegant design. A single license costs $99.95, but if you’re running a personal blog you can download the core version of EE.

5. Liferay
Alexa Rank (26,959)+3,284

Liferay Portal is a free and open source enterprise portal written in Java and distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License. It allows users to set up features common to websites. It is fundamentally constructed of functional units called portlets. Liferay is sometimes described as a content management framework or a web application framework. It comes with certain portlets preinstalled. These comprise the core functionality of the portal system.

The reasons to use Liferay Portal for your website are simple: it provides a robust platform to serve your site to all clients, be they desktop, mobile, or anything in between; it provides all the standard applications you need to run on your site; and it provides an easy to use development framework for new applications or customization. In addition to this, Liferay Portal is developed using an open source methodology, by people from around the world. The code base is solid, and has been proved to be reliable and stable in mission critical deployments in diverse industries.

6. DotNetNuke
Alexa Rank  (32,058)-238

DotNetNuke is an open source platform for building web sites based on Microsoft .NET technology. It is written in VB.NET and distributed under both a Community Edition BSD-style license and a commercial proprietary license. The Community Edition is a popular web content management (WCM) system and application development framework for ASP.NET, with over 6 million downloads and 600,000 production web sites as of October 2010. More than 8,000 DotNetNuke apps are available for purchase on Snowcovered.com. DotNetNuke.com has over 800,000 registered members as of October 2010.

Major Features:

Distinguishes between community (common features) and enterprise (full set of features) editions. 
Various modules, and data providers.
Provides language packs for about 60 languages.
Customizable through skins and templates.

7. MODX
Alexa Rank (32,333)+1482

Modx is not just an open source CMS but also a web application framework. Raymond Irving and Ryan Thrash began the MODx CMS project in 2004 as a fork of Etomite. In 2008 MODx users created a new logo and branding for the project. Now MODx allows for full segregation of content (plain HTML), appearance and behavior (standards compliant CSS and JavaScript) and logic (PHP, snippets).

Major Features:

As with Joomla, modx officially supports only MySQL database.
Not just CMS but a PHP framework for Web.
Freedom to choose jQuery, Mootools, ExtJS, Prototype or any other JavaScript library.
Supports PHP 4.3.11 and above.
Complete control of all metadata and URL structure for SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Unlimited hierarchical page depth.
Can create custom fields and widgets for templates.
Role-based permissions for the Manager.
Ability to customize the Manager on a per-deployment basis.
Ecommerce integration via Foxy Cart.
Extensions: 622, also known as add-ons.

8. concrete5
Alexa Rank (33,631)-292

Concrete5 is an open source CMS started in 2003 as a rapid-design approach to building the now-defunct LewisAndClark200.org, the official site for the Ad Council's National Council for the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial. Concrete5 is developed in PHP and is distributed under MIT software license.

Concrete5 features in-context editing (the ability to edit website content directly on the page, rather than in an administrative interface or using web editor software). Editable areas are defined in concrete5 templates which allow editors to insert 'blocks' of content. These can contain simple content (text and images) or have more complex functionality, for example image slideshows, comments systems, lists of files, maps etc. Further addons can be installed from the concrete5 Marketplace to extend the range of blocks available for insertion. Websites running concrete5 can be connected to the concrete5 website, allowing automatic upgrading of the core software and of any addons downloaded or purchased from the Marketplace.

9. Typo3
Alexa Rank (36,110)-8,334

TYPO3 is a free and open source CMS released under the GNU General Public License oriented to small to mid size enterprise-class users. TemplaVoila is an alternative template engine extension for TYPO3. A graphical mapping tool for creating templates is included, an alternative page module, the ability to create flexible content elements and an API for developers. New content element types can be created without programming. TemplaVoila facilitates more flexibility for maintaining web pages than TYPO3's standard templating, while making it possible to enforce a strict corporate design and allowing editors to work with content more intuitively.

Delivered with a base set of interfaces, functions and modules, TYPO3's functionality spectrum is implemented by extensions. More than 5000 extensions are currently available for TYPO3 for download under the GNU General Public License from a repository called the TYPO3 Extension Repository, or TER.

TYPO3 can run on most HTTP servers such as Apache or IIS on top of Linux, Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X. It uses PHP 5.3 or newer and any relational database supported by the TYPO3 DBAL including MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and others. Some 3rd-party extensions – not using the database API – support MySQL as the only database engine. The system can be run on any web server with a modern CPU and at least 256 MB RAM. The backend can be displayed in any modern browser with JavaScript. There is no browser restriction for displaying user-oriented content generated by TYPO3.

10. Alfresco
Alexa Rank (36,854)+2,483

Alfresco is an open source enterprise content management system for Microsoft Windows and Unix-like operating systems. Alfresco includes a content repository, an out-of-the-box web portal framework for managing and using standard portal content, a CIFS interface that provides file system compatibility on Microsoft Windows and Unix-like operating systems, a web content management system capable of virtualizing web apps and static sites via Apache Tomcat, Lucene indexing, and jBPM workflow. The Alfresco system is developed using Java technology. John Newton (co-founder of Documentum) and John Powell (a former COO of Business Objects) founded Alfresco Software, Inc. in 2005.

11. b2evolution
Alexa  Rank (80,628)-14,427

b2evolution is another blogging platform that allows for a single installation of a blog, or a whole network of blogs, right out of the box. b2 probably has the weakest developer community behind it, with only a 200+ plugins (compared to Joomla’s 3,400+).

The software features a very easy-to-understand backend, ideal for beginners. b2 also has has a built in stats feature, which is something most blogging platforms don’t have out of the box. The software also features a post editor with a very minimal WYSIWYG editor, which is perfect for a beginning blogger.

While the b2 developer community may not be very large, it has a very promising code base and many people still use b2evolution to power their blogs and blogger communities.

The Irrelevant Others

Plone.org                           
Alexa Rank (102,395)+10,174

cmsmadesimple.org
Alexa Rank (104,671)-32,048

umbraco.com
Alexa Rank  (116,439)-16,212

ez.no
Alexa Rank (154,173)-43,687

movabletype.org
Alexa Rank (174,802)-9,166

textpattern.com
Alexa Rank (187,704)-45,048

Being Irrelevant,

mephistoblog.com
Alexa Rank (8,419,219)-2,169,053

There is no other blogging platform, that integrates support for all Blog CMS systems, engages social networks so reaches high into the stratosphere, nor institute a learning environment so building competent content teams is easily achieved.

Markethive, It is that easy It is that powerful

Thomas Prendergast
CMO
Markethive, Inc.

 

 

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden