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Advising New Business on Social Media: Don't Forget the Basics! It's probably safe to assume that most Social Media Today readers have a fairly strong grasp on social media. Contributors give advice on the best things to post, the hidden features of all the best social media services, how to get more engagement out of followers - all very important topics written from interesting points of view. And yet sometimes those of us who while away our lives on social media sites forget that other people don't know as much about the very basic foundation of these services. We'll tell them to construct the perfect Facebook poll to see what their followers are thinking, and they'll have no idea how to even make a poll to begin with! There are things we have to remember, as business advisers, social media managers, and PR reps, when dealing with new businesses trying to feel their way into a whole new world of marketing. 1. Be honest, always.

Five social media marketing mistakes Building your company's social media presence takes time and effort, and it starts with a solid strategy that includes goals and measurements. However, even the best strategy can be undermined by common mistakes that you may not even realize you are making. Here are five of them. . Posting irrelevant information. Every post that you make as a business should be integrated into your business, your product and your services. Posting information that does not reflect your brand can create negative brand equity. Think through each post to ensure it represents your brand messaging and has a direct tie into something about your business. . Not responding in a timely manner or engaging your audience with interactive contact. Check your social media assets regularly. A brand that builds a social media presence, then neglects it, reflects negatively on that brand. It's actually better to not have an account if you don&

Tips to Make Blogging Interesting After starting a blog, blogging tends to become a daily "normal process." To prevent burnout you should use creative ways to keep your blog interesting. Starting blogging shouldn't be an issue of concern to most people who have run a blogging sites in the past; the real task that you should already know by now lies in its maintenance. If you want to be a successful blogger you should be doing it passionately daily. This pretty much applies to anything; if you want to be successful at anything you should be doing it actively. Below are a few tips to coming up with interesting ideas for when it becomes a little daunting to blog daily. Plan Your Path. You should be organizing in your mind. You should implement all the ideas that you want to write about for blog all in one place and plan out your attack. You should know exactly what you want to offer through your blogs, which should be in line with what people

How to Use LinkedIn, Blogs, and YouTube to Promote Your Event Linkedin, blogs, and YouTube are effective tools for organizers to market their events to attendees, but using it effectively can be tricky. Here are the specific ways you can start using these sites to drive your event sales, today: LinkedIn The "professional" social network, LinkedIn is another way to target your audience and present relevant infor- mation. If your event is industry- or genre-specific, it can easily lend its way to interaction on LinkedIn. Sharing with your existing contacts is also an easy way to spread your message. On average, people have less personal contacts on LinkedIn than Facebook; therefore, your promotion will be more visible to your LinkedIn contacts due to a less cluttered news feed. Getting Started with LinkedIn: 1. Set up a LinkedIn event. 2. Share the event with your contacts. 3. Post the event in relevant groups. 4.Search LinkedIn's

Keyword Mistakes (And How To Fix Them!) There's a very good reason why people do keyword research in conjunction with their article marketing efforts. The idea behind it all is that by finding out what specific words and phrases that your target customers are typing into Google, you can then use those same words in your article submissions to help Google associate your website with those words. The end result will be that when people type certain phrases into Google, that your website will show up high in the rankings. The higher your website is ranked, the more visitors will be directed to your website. In this way, doing keyword research and using that information in your article submissions can be a huge benefit to your website. In order for it to work though, you need to use your keywords in the proper way. The purpose of this article is to show you the right way to use keywords in your articles, while also correcting some mistakes you may have alr

Linking Back to Your Site With Keywords You have heard that doing keyword research is essential to your article marketing success. In learning how to submit articles, it's crucial to learn how to properly use the keywords that you've compiled. This article will teach you what to do with your keywords in relation to your resource box. There are two types of keywords that are in your list - the first is a shorter type that is 2-3 words long. This type of keyword phrase is one that you would like your website to get a high ranking for. In other words, when your target customers type this phrase into Google, you would like for your website to appear high up in the results list, ideally in the number one position. The other type of keyword phrase is called a "long-tail keyword." Those are longer phrases, usually 3-8 or more words long, and they're ideal for using as part of your title and as the subject for your articles. These longer phr

How To Generate Free Leads Using Social Networking Sites Free lead generation is a very cost effective way to promote any online business. Social networking sites are some of the best ways to generate free leads. Some of the ways I personally use them to promote my online business is by using Social networking sites and making multiple profiles on them. Then when you have your profile accounts set up you need to pimp them to make them look professional and do not try to sell your products directly on your profiles. Instead make yourself interesting and someone who arouses curiosity so when you start sending friend request people will come to your profile and take a look. This is where you can start to get them to your website because these social networking sites allow you to have links on your profiles. The art is to make people click to your website to find out more about you and what you are all about. Also someone who has taken the trouble to read your

Unique WordPress Plugins You Didn't Know You Needed There are a lot of plugins available on the web for the WordPress blogging platform. Many bloggers know that they at least need basic SEO plugins in order to boost their position in the search engine rankings. While some bloggers may also search for specific plugins based on specific needs that they have for their particular blog, there are some plugins out there with functionality that bloggers may not even know they need! Here are some unique WordPress plugins that all bloggers can use that will do "the little things" to help your blog reach the top of the search engines. SEO Post Link: Your post slug is the portion of your post's URL that represents that particular post. WordPress automatically generates these URL-friendly versions of your post title for you, which means that every word of your post title usually ends up in your post's URL. This can definitely hurt your rankings

3 key elements of a corporate social media policy Employees are brand advocates of an organization. They are the voice of your company, delivering the brand promise to your customers. With the advent of social media, your employees are engaging in online conversations a lot more in ways that can hugely impact your Business. Willfully or otherwise, your employees may be divulging confidential information. You may have a PR department and an official spokesperson, but you have very little control on what is being shared by your employees on their personal facebook pages, twitter accounts, or blogs. We often hear instances of employees being fired because of inappropriate online behavior that's damaging to the company. The key is to steer correct online engagement behavior by defining a social media policy for your organization. The crucial questions for any organization are: How do you define a social media policy that protects and enhances your company

What's Your Online or Internet Reputation? Do you know about your reputation on the internet? what people say about you? Everyday people post new content on the internet. Talking about different things, and among that saying their opinion about other people. If you are online much (and who isn't!), sure there is someone mentioning you somewhere. Reputation.com helps on keeping track of your reputation with their internet monitoring service. What Do You Get From Reputation.com Account? With their free internet reputation service, you will get to know at the moment someone posts any content (either articles, photos, comments, or videos), about you. This content maybe something you don't want people to see. The sooner you find out the content about you online, the sooner you can do something about it. Their monitoring service is free to anyone who signs up for an account. There is no any charge for continually searching the Internet for c

Creative Link Building Your creativity and resourcefulness helps a great deal in your link building initiatives. There are hundreds of techniques for getting quality links but some people find them very hard to do. This is because either they lack creativity or they do not have what it takes to compete in the global market. You need to have some the things that are widely used by site owners to get quality links and web traffic. Make things simple It is a fast-paced universe on the web. Link building needs to be fine tuned to the way individuals think over the web. Simple constantly seems to attract greater attention than complex ideas and displays. Your social media marketing strategies needs to be presented in such a way that even a third-grader could be able to understand in a glance. The greatest thing about social media programs is that these have resources that can magnify your profile and content in a manner that it's visible to loads of use

Natural Linking Using Blog Sites Among all the link building strategies, commenting on blogs is probably the most frowned upon. That is because this process has been blatantly taken advantage of by countless so-called SEO experts. They normally use programmed software to spam absurd comments on blogs. Blog commenting is okay if the comments are submitted by human beings. If you are enthusiastic about the post, and also genuinely have something to share, then it is okay to publish a comment on the blog. That is acceptable approach. Once your comments are accepted, your links will show up on the blog posts. Several website owners are insistent that the links have the "NoFollow" attribute assigned to them, so they are worthless for SEO. Keep in mind comments are not meant for SEO, marketing, and link building. They are created for discussions. Due to the quantity of spam on these blogs, search engines have no option but to put in some kind of algor

Have you ever toyed with the idea of making money using a popular social networking platform like Facebook? Yes, this is true that you can make money using the strong power of Facebook to attract people. Millions of people are using Facebook for its obvious feature of connecting to other people. They use this for online socializing with other people, their friends, colleagues, batch mates and more, to chat or to have fun. At the same time, many people are using this beautiful and easy to use platform. You can start earning those extra bucks in a few simple and quick steps. Create your identity The first step for making money on Facebook requires you to register yourself. While registering, create an identity that represents your profession, vocation or hobby which you want to use to earn money here. But, make sure not to create a fake impression, just be yourself and show what you want to display to other people. The most important thing is to try t

Call tracking and analytics. You can't improve upon what you can't measure. Analytics provide a tremendous amount of incredibly useful data, such as where your website visitors come from, how long they stay, and what they do on your site. Google analytics is free and pretty darn good, and we recommend it. We also recommend you make sure you can track every lead that's generated by your website. If you have any questions or comments please contact me. Regards Gerald Website: http://www.webcraft.ws E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws Twitter: WebcraftGuru Facebook: Webcraft Guru I'm protected by SpamBrave http://www.spambrave.com/

Evaluate your website's content - Content is King. What does your website say? Is the content unique and useful? Will people learn anything when they visit your site? When was the last time you added new content? Does your website have content worth reading? Does your content match your business goals? If you have any questions or comments please contact me. Regards Gerald Website: http://www.webcraft.ws E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws Twitter: WebcraftGuru Facebook: Webcraft Guru I'm protected by SpamBrave http://www.spambrave.com/

Check out your competition. Visit your competitors' websites. Do searches for keywords related to your business. Find out what others in your vertical are doing and saying. This is a great way to get ideas and take stock of your own company's online marketing efforts. If you have any questions or comments please contact me. Regards Gerald Website: http://www.webcraft.ws E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws Twitter: WebcraftGuru Facebook: Webcraft Guru I'm protected by SpamBrave http://www.spambrave.com/

Post online video. Video is still a little cutting-edge for some, but the benefits can't be understated. Online video is the wave of the future, and every business needs to have something on YouTube, Metacafe, etc. If you're concerned about expense here, keep in mind there are some low-budget options that won't damage your brand while still providing concrete benefits. If you have any questions or comments please contact me. Regards Gerald Website: http://www.webcraft.ws E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws Twitter: WebcraftGuru Facebook: Webcraft Guru I'm protected by SpamBrave http://www.spambrave.com/

What is a QR Code? So you may have heard that QR Codes are set to become the 'next big thing' but thinking to yourself, what is a QR Code!? QR or Quick Response Codes are a type of two-dimensional barcode that can be read using smartphones and dedicated QR reading devices, that link directly to text, emails, websites, phone numbers and more! You may have even got to this site by scanning a QR code! QR codes are huge in Japan and across the East, and are slowly beginning to become commonplace in the West. Soon enough you will see QR codes on product packaging, shop displays, printed and billboard advertisements as well as in emails and on websites. The scope of use for QR codes really is huge, particularly for the marketing and advertising of products, brands, services and anything else you can think of. If you have any questions or comments please contact me. Regards Gerald Website: http://www.webcraft.ws E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws Twitter

What can be encoded into a QR Code? In its simplest sense a QR Code is an 'image-based hypertext link' that can be used offline - any URL can be encoded into a QR Code so essentially any webpage can be opened automatically as a result of scanning the barcode. If you want to encourage someone to like your Facebook page - have your Facebook profile page as the URL. Want your video to go viral - encode the URL in your QR Code. The options are endless. In addition to website URLs a QR Code can also contain a phone number - so when it is scanned it prompts the user to call a particular number. Similarly you can encode an SMS text message, V-card data or just plain alphanumeric text. The smartphone or 2D barcode reading device will automatically know which application to use to open the content embedded within the QR Code. If you have any questions or comments please contact me. Regards Gerald Website: http://www.webcraft.ws E-mail: gerald@webcraf

Where can QR Codes be placed? The answer to this is almost anywhere! QR Code printing can be done in newspapers, magazines, brochures, leaflets and on business cards. Further to this they can be put on product packaging or labels, or on billboards or even walls. You could even tattoo a QR Code on your body - now that would be an interesting take on giving a girl/guy your number in a bar! You can use QR Codes on a website but they should not generally be used as a substitute for an old-fashioned hyperlink because obviously the user is already online and doesn't really want to fiddle around with their phone only to find a website they could have just clicked through to in half the time. If you have any questions or comments please contact me. Regards Gerald Website: http://www.webcraft.ws E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws Twitter: WebcraftGuru Facebook: Webcraft Guru I'm protected by SpamBrave http://www.spambrave.com/

QR Codes for Marketing If you want to use QR Codes for business or marketing purposes then you should consider that people have higher expectations from scanning a QR Code than they do simply clicking a link on a website. You should offer something special or unique to people that have taken the time and effort to scan the barcode. For ideas of what this could be, or just for more information about QR Code Marketing have a look at Piranha Internet who have successfully incorporated the use of QR Codes into several marketing strategies for their clients. Also remember that many people won't know what a QR Code is or how to use it. Up until their use is more widespread you will need to provide instructions about what to do with a QR Code. If you have any questions or comments please contact me. Regards Gerald Website: http://www.webcraft.ws E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws Twitter: WebcraftGuru Facebook: Webcraft Guru I'm protected by SpamBra

Who invented the QR Code? Denso-Wave - a subsidiary of the Toyota Group - are attributed with the creation of the QR Code as far back as 1994. Originally it was designed to be used to track parts in the vehicle manufacturing industry, but its use has since grown tremendously. If you have any questions or comments please contact me. Regards Gerald Website: http://www.webcraft.ws E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws Twitter: WebcraftGuru Facebook: Webcraft Guru I'm protected by SpamBrave http://www.spambrave.com/

What Are QR codes? They come to us from Japan where they are very common. QR is short for Quick Response (they can be read quickly by a cell phone). They are used to take a piece of information from a transitory media and put it in to your cell phone. You may soon see QR Codes in a magazine advert, on a billboard, a web page or even on someone's t-shirt. Once it is in your cell phone, it may give you details about that business (allowing users to search for nearby locations), or details about the person wearing the t-shirt, show you a URL which you can click to see a trailer for a movie, or it may give you a coupon which you can use in a local outlet. The reason why they are more useful than a standard barcode is that they can store (and digitally present) much more data, including url links, geo coordinates, and text. The other key feature of QR Codes is that instead of requiring a chunky hand-held scanner to scan them, many modern cell phones can sca

Key Search Engine Optimization After the URL, spiders look at the page title. Titles are a very important on-page factor when it comes to ranking because a good title conveys to spiders what your webpage is about, therefore making it easier to index. When composing titles, use two or three strong keywords that tell the topic of the page and that you want to rank for. Keep in mind that the first words of the title are given the most importance, so you want to get those keywords in at the beginning. Your title is also what is shown to searchers in search engine results pages. Google shows up to 59 characters of a page title in their results page. Be sure to make each page title unique, even if topics may be similar. This avoids confusion. If you have any questions or comments please contact me. Regards Gerald Website: http://www.webcraft.ws E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws Twitter: WebcraftGuru Facebook: Webcraft Guru I'm protected by SpamBrave htt

Search Engine Optimization It seems everyone has a webpage today. Not everyone, however, can appear at the top of the page when your customer 'Googles' or 'Bings' your keywords. The competition to reach that coveted first or second listing is increasingly heated and can leave those who do not have +$60k for a full time SEO Expert feeling helpless. However, there are some simple tips you can follow to improve your ranking with just a little elbow grease. Here are 14 tips that I have seen even some of the 'Big Boys' forget. 1. Use Alt tags for EVERY photo and image on ALL pages on your site. Often website creators and "SEO experts" will only focus on the home page. This leaves numerous chances to improve your PageRank untouched. 2. When writing Alt tags, use keywords and creative, unique descriptions. 3. Title each page with a unique descriptive title which includes long-tail keywords at the beginning. 4. Use internal lin

Webcraft.ws SEO Tips 1. Keyword Essentials: The most significant aspect of creating keywords for your website is that you must begin the process by doing adequate research. Be sure to take advantage of any types of free tools or services, which may be at your disposal. A good example of this would be the Google AdWords tool. You might also want to consider using a portion of your advertising budget to pay for some more comprehensive programs. It's important to note that keyword density is considered to be obsolete these days. It's imperative that you do your best to include keywords naturally within the text of your website while ensuring that you're not doing this to excess. 2. Create an Outstanding URL: There are quite a few things that you must do in order to create an outstanding URL. From the start, you need to choose a domain name that is relatively short which also includes your most valuable keyword phrase. Hyphens are allowed and

It may take some time and work to rank your new website for your desired keywords. However, by leveraging OPPR (Other People's PR) you can actually have your website represented in multiple positions throughout the first several pages of search relatively quickly. The recent Penguin update has penalized sites which were "over-optimized." For example, did you hire somebody to get you 4000 forum profile links which all have the exact same keywords? Then your site might have been affected negatively by Penguin. Google is looking for natural link building from quality original content. Every suggestion here involves creating original high quality content on highly ranked platforms which Google just loves. 1. Write Guest Blog Posts for Quality Blogs With Real Readers Having a high quality, unique, article published on a first-rate relevant blog that has real readers with your links is about the best SEO there is. When you get wind of the next Googl