The Important of Social Media For Business

The advent of social networks has brought a radical change in all of our lives. Our patterns of doing everything have faced great alterations. The ways through which people get in touch, communicate and share information have changed for good. The noted part about social networks is that they have got a great power of influencing minds. People really respond to the data present on social media in a quick manner and for this reason social networking websites are progressing by leaps and bounds as more and more people are turning towards them with each passing day. Statistics bring forward the fact that 56 % of the inhabitants of this world are engaged with various social networking websites. Keeping into consideration the reach and penetrating power of social networks businesses have turned towards them because they emerge as promising success options for them.

The fact that the internet has been successful in penetrating almost all the corners of the world has made the thinkers to use various social networks for exploring better promotion and progress options for their businesses. Internet has been around since the 90s, but with the passage of time it became more and more user friendly and people turned towards the social networking options and today in our lives social networks have attained an important status. Various websites like twitter, face book, you tube etc. are extremely popular all around the globe and all of them are known for providing unique information sharing options and access to users. Facebook is no doubt the big fish in the world of social networks and is topping the list with its 1.2 billion registered users. Stats show that on flicker every minute 3000 pictures are being uploaded. YouTube hosts 490 million different visitors every month. A Facebook user every month allots 15 hours and 33 minutes time period to this website. 11 % of this world`s population are engaged in using Facebook. Almost 17 million articles are currently being hosted by the wiki.

The above mentioned facts clearly depict the power and strength of social media and its influence upon people. If you are a business owner then you must be aware of the right techniques that you can employ and take benefit from social networking sites. The main point is that every business is dependent upon consumer response when it comes to the sales and profits of their products. It is all about keeping your consumers happy and social networks provide you with this advantage. By maintaining a social profile you provide your consumers with the opportunity of directly staying in touch with your company. It enhances your reach to your clients and you are able to directly view their feedback and reviews.

This increases your popularity and you are able to develop a better understanding of what people expect from you. The best part is that businesses enjoy better options of promoting their products and services using social networks. In short for surviving in the tough and competitive environment that is present in the business circle you need to maintain an online presence on a social networking site.

What to Look for in a Hosting Company

If you’re building a website, you won’t get very far without a hosting company. Think of your website as a home. The hosting company is the landowner who owns that real-estate you’re building that home on. As such, you pay them regularly for the right to stay there. While this may seem like a fairly straightforward relationship, there are countless hosting companies out there, and none of them are the same. Continue reading to learn about what you should look for in a hosting company.

Attentive Support

No matter how well you design your website, there’s no chance you won’t experience issues at some point. This is just as true when it comes to the server you’re on. The best hosting companies out there can’t guarantee 100% uptime, so your site is bound to suffer some issues in the future.

While your hosting company can’t do too much about these issues, it certainly has a say in how it handles them. You’ll want to research any of your candidates to learn about their technical support’s reputation. Remember, even when your website is down, you’re paying to keep the lights on. The sooner the technical support team can handle the problem, the sooner you can be back up and running.

CMS Friendly

Content management systems have been one of the best things to happen to the Internet. Called CMS for short, the best example of these systems is WordPress. The website started out by letting people easily develop blogs, but over the years it has been one of the favored methods for creating fully-functional websites.

As hard as it may be to believe, some hosting companies still don’t recognize the potential of CMS and haven’t made the effort to accommodate them. Even if you already have a website built, and you’re simply looking for a new host, take this point into consideration. You may want a blog for your site someday, and there’s no easier way to handle that than with a CMS.

Handles Growth Well

If you’re creating a website, chances are you have high hopes for the future. Whether that means a bigger site with more features or a better blog with more readers, you’ll want to make sure the hosting company you’re considering will be able to handle this growth in the future.

For example, you don’t want to be charged for abnormally large amounts of traffic. You might write the perfect blog post, see it goes viral and then find out that all that exposure came with a bill. While this is fairly typical in instances where a significant spike occurred, you should still find out what the amount would be.

Professional Add-Ons

Any hosting company you buy through will try to add to your sale by offering other features. While there’s nothing wrong with that, you should expect a clear explanation from them for why a certain add-on would be worth your money. If you see add-ons that you simply know aren’t worth it at any price, reconsider doing business with the company.

While a hosting company is important, don’t jump into picking one immediately. You can save yourself a lot of money and trouble by considering the above aspects as they relate to any of your options.

Source:

http://www.managedits.com/blog/entry/5-things-to-look-for-in-a-web-hosting-company.html

Twitter Social Networks A Great Tool!

Social media has emerged as a great tool for enhancing the communication options for people. Irrespective of the color, caste, creed and nationality people are able to connect with each other and share information.  Within seconds news is spread among the masses of actors, models to business owners everyone is using social media to take benefit from the privileges offered by these communicating mediums. In addition to using social networking websites for socializing and sharing personal information large companies as well as small scale private enterprises utilize social networks for promoting their businesses and providing them with more options for progress.

It is all dependent upon your approaches and smartness that allows you to take advantage from the social networking tools. Today for surviving in the tough competitive business environment it is important to take use of all the available resources that can lead you to success. Information technology has touched heights of advancements and now it is very easy to target global markets and every business is doing that.  The most portable and cost effective way of promoting your approaches and concepts is by using the broadcasting options that are provided by various social networking platforms. Stats indicate that almost 56 % of the population of this world are using social media and this indicates that if you are using any social network that you are able to access more than half of this world`s population.

Of all the social networks Twitter comes up with many great opportunities when it comes to the promotion of your business. Most people think that twitter is all about gossips and getting in touch with your favorite celebrities, but this is a totally wrong concept because there is enormous potential hidden in this website and it is all dependent upon the fact that how businesses use it to their advantage. In fact many organizations have realized the importance of twitter for their companies and are already using it. Now you must be thinking that which quality makes twitter so good for companies. Let’s have a look at some of the points that can answer your question.

First of all it is worth mentioning that twitter is presently the most rapidly growing social networks and its growth rate even suppresses Facebook. This website was launched in the year 2006 and by the year 2012 500 million individuals were using this website as registered users. Almost three hundred and forty tweets are generated on twitter every day and this depicts the strength and potential that are possessed by this social network. If you will maintain a presence on twitter then there will be more opportunities for your clients to stay in touch with you and receive the latest updates.  You are able to do the promotion of your projects in a better way that will also prove to be cost effective for you. Also you are able to get direct information in relation the responses that are being obtained by your products and this will help you in doing efficient future planning.

Our Lives Have Witnessed A Great Change Through YouTube Social Media

The impact that social media are capable of producing upon the lives and thinking of people is strong enough to bring revolutions. Internet has emerged as a very strong medium for not only connecting people, but also equipping them with the latest and validated information. Moving a step ahead social media have come up with many bright opportunities that have altered the shape of this world and changed it into a global village. There was a time when mankind lived in isolated countries were more like small boxes and no one knew that what was happening in the other box. But now thanks to the gifts of social networking things have changed a lot. It only takes a few minutes and information is spread to every corner of this world with the aid of social networking websites. In the past people were dependent upon television and radio for getting news, but not with just one click you are able to penetrate any happening taking place in any corner of this world. Stats show that 56 % of this world`s population are engaged in social networking using various social networking sites.

It will not be wrong to mention that due to social media our lives have witnessed a great change in fact whole world has changed. The way people communicate, share information, celebrate occasions and most importantly do business have faced radical change due to the involvement of social media in human lives. The use of social networks by business owners for the purpose of the progress of their businesses has become very popular. This is because of the fact that companies are able to explore many new options of prosperity by using different social networks. Every social networking site is unique and offers different types of privileges to businesses among all of them you tube surely stands out. YouTube is a kind of social networking website that was founded in the year 2004 during the month of February. It is basically a website that offers its registered users to share videos that are then made available from this site to people all around the globe wherever you tube is available. Presently you tube is one the most popular and influential social networking websites which monthly hosts 800 million users. Every month 4 billion hours are spent by people watching YouTube videos. All this makes you tube as one of the most wanted and on demand social networks.

There are immense opportunities present for companies to progress if they adopt a smart approach and make use of the services offered by you tube in a convincing manner. Almost every noted brand and business maintains you tube account and uses it for connecting with people all around the globe. If you have a “you tube” account then you are capable of promoting your services or products all around the globe for free. All that will be required on your part is to make a handsome video explaining your cause and upload it to YouTube and it will then be broadcasted all around the globe brining you free publicity. If you own a business, but don’t use “you tube” then you need to change your thinking.

The Impact of Facebook on Business

Social networking is one of the most popular online activities that are carried out today. There are currently many social networking websites that are working and people are just addicted to this craze of social networking. The main concept behind the introduction of social media was to provide a platform to users for communicating and staying in touch via improved and convincing manners. But today in addition to serving as a connecting medium social media have emerged as vital and impressive tools for the promotion and establishment of businesses. The power of social media is very strong the best part about it is that it possesses a great access and reaches the depths of every corner of this world. Stats show that 98% of the youngsters aged 18 to 24 are users of various social networking mediums. Not only young people, but people belonging to older age groups also form the regular audience of social networking websites.

For this reason businesses enjoy the enormous potential to progress on social networking websites because of the fact that they provide excellent mediums for the advertisement and promotion of their offered services. There are many social networks that are operational today, but Facebook has no comparison. Presently, the Facebook is regarded as the king of social networking sites with 1.2 billion users registered at this site. This website was launched in the year 2004, but at that time no one knew that it is going to change the meaning of communication and will turn into a strong influential element for all the people of this world. Monthly 700 billion minutes are spent by people using Facebook with 11% of the population of this world uses Facebook. Can you imagine that what kind of influencing power is possessed by this social network? The stats mentioned above that clearly show how many people are addicted to Facebook.

Especially in the business circle Facebook is extremely popular the main reason behind it is that it makes it much more convenient for the manufacturers and the buyers to get in touch with each other. Every company irrespective of the fact that either it is large scale or small scale maintains its presence on Facebook because it provides it with several opportunities of progressing. The best privilege that is provided by Facebook to its users is that it serves as a very cheap promotional medium for different businesses that is at the same time very effective. If you open a business profile on Facebook then this directly means that you are now capable of targeting 1.2 billion people from across the globe and that too at free of any cost. You can promote your services in a more convenient and effective manner using your Facebook account. It also enables you to directly get in touch with clients that belong to any corner of this world. You will able to directly respond to the feedback that is provided and this will help you a lot in improving.

 

How Small Business Can Advertise on the Internet

If you own a small business, you’re no doubt always on the lookout for methods that will allow you to advertise on the local level. Small businesses don’t usually need national attention, but getting exposure on the local level can sometimes feel like it must be far more difficult to obtain.

Fortunately, this need not be the case. Keep reading for some easy, but effective, methods.

Advertise on Mobile Apps

Every month another study comes out that confirms the fact that we’re all addicted to our mobile devices. The silver lining, however, is that this gives small businesses an excellent venue for advertising. Many of us are hunched over our smartphones because we’re busy messing around with some app.

Most of these apps allow advertising on them. Better still, they’ll allow the kind that targets specific areas. So, you can advertise on an app, but it will only appear for people who live in your city. That way you aren’t paying for people who live too far away to ever become customers.

Get Your Company Name on a Grocery Cart

Everyone has to go grocery shopping, and most people use a cart when they do. Ask your local grocery if they’d allow you to have an ad put up on their carts. This is an easy way to get right in front of a local audience, on a regular basis and for a prolonged period of time. The best part is that many locally owned grocers will accept bartering for payment.

Become Involved

If you want to attract locals, you have to get involved with locals. Though running a small business can be a very time consuming endeavor, you need to spare some for getting involved in the community. This is a great way to meet people from all over your area and get them interested in what you have to offer.

Cross-Promote

The fact is you’re not the only small business in the area looking to grab some attention. As long as they aren’t direct competitors, consider trying to cross-promote with other businesses. Something as small as putting up fliers in each others’ buildings can have a positive impact. Of course, if you can be more creative with your methods, you’ll experience even better results.

Advertise on Facebook

Unlike other social media platforms, people within the same network on Facebook tend to share that same network in real life, as well. Put another way, people who are friends on Facebook, tend to actually be friends in the real world, too. For this reason, a good option for advertising locally is starting a Facebook Fan Page. The more people who like it, the more people—within their real life, local network—will see their friends vouching for a small business and take notice.

Also, unlike a personal profile, a Facebook Fan Page can actually be crawled by Google and other search engines. So, if you haven’t already, start a Fan Page for your small business.

While it can certainly be an uphill battle, there is plenty you can do as a small business to get your name out there. Using the above methods, focus on the local level and begin seeing results soon.

Source:

http://yfsmagazine.com/2013/06/08/4-low-cost-local-marketing-tips-for-small-businesses/#axzz2qRtReI2P

http://www.cio.com/article/742129/10_Mobile_Marketing_Tips_for_Small_Businesses

http://www.examiner.com/article/8-ways-to-advertise-locally-for-free-online

What to look for in a Hosting Company

What to Look for in a Hosting Company

If you’re building a website, you won’t get very far without a hosting company. Think of your website as a home. The hosting company is the landowner who owns that real-estate you’re building that home on. As such, you pay them regularly for the right to stay there. While this may seem like a fairly straightforward relationship, there are countless hosting companies out there, and none of them are the same. Continue reading to learn about what you should look for in a hosting company.

Attentive Support

No matter how well you design your website, there’s no chance you won’t experience issues at some point. This is just as true when it comes to the server you’re on. The best hosting companies out there can’t guarantee 100% uptime, so your site is bound to suffer some issues in the future.

While your hosting company can’t do too much about these issues, it certainly has a say in how it handles them. You’ll want to research any of your candidates to learn about their technical support’s reputation. Remember, even when your website is down, you’re paying to keep the lights on. The sooner the technical support team can handle the problem, the sooner you can be back up and running.

CMS Friendly

Content management systems have been one of the best things to happen to the Internet. Called CMS for short, the best example of these systems is WordPress. The website started out by letting people easily develop blogs, but over the years it has been one of the favored methods for creating fully-functional websites.

As hard as it may be to believe, some hosting companies still don’t recognize the potential of CMS and haven’t made the effort to accommodate them. Even if you already have a website built, and you’re simply looking for a new host, take this point into consideration. You may want a blog for your site someday, and there’s no easier way to handle that than with a CMS.

Handles Growth Well

If you’re creating a website, chances are you have high hopes for the future. Whether that means a bigger site with more features or a better blog with more readers, you’ll want to make sure the hosting company you’re considering will be able to handle this growth in the future.

For example, you don’t want to be charged for abnormally large amounts of traffic. You might write the perfect blog post, see it goes viral and then find out that all that exposure came with a bill. While this is fairly typical in instances where a significant spike occurred, you should still find out what the amount would be.

Professional Add-Ons

Any hosting company you buy through will try to add to your sale by offering other features. While there’s nothing wrong with that, you should expect a clear explanation from them for why a certain add-on would be worth your money. If you see add-ons that you simply know aren’t worth it at any price, reconsider doing business with the company.

While a hosting company is important, don’t jump into picking one immediately. You can save yourself a lot of money and trouble by considering the above aspects as they relate to any of your options.

Source:

http://www.managedits.com/blog/entry/5-things-to-look-for-in-a-web-hosting-company.html

What to Look For in a SEO Firm

There are many different elements of search engine optimization.  If you ask several companies you will; or at least should get the same answer.  What differs between the companies is how transparent a company is to its clients.  What we mean by that is; does your seo firm tell you exactly what they are doing from week to week or are you not privy to that information.  As a paying client you owe it to yourself to ask questions to your seo firm.  What software do they use in their keyword and link building research?  What specific steps do they take to communicate a link exchange request and how is it follow up on.  Be sure they can give you references.  Be very specific about the type of reporting they provide.  Ask for a sample template and determine if it meets your needs or if any information lacking and can they provide that.  Do you guarantee results?  We have that question come up so much but the easy answer is no.

 

If a company tells you they can get you on the first page in a search engine they are talking about pay-per-click advertising and yes anybody willing to be the highest bidder can be number one.  Organic search results are achieved by a set program that has many elements such as page optimization, fresh content, properly researched back link partners, video optimization and more.  There are no shortcuts.  Make sure the seo firm takes the time to understand your business and your customers.  How they shop and what their needs are will be critical in establishing the search criteria they use when seeking out your product or service on the internet.  Your seo firm should also be able to assist you with other elements of increasing visitor traffic and your overall e-commerce initiative.  Their value is helping not only seo but also exposing you to other facets such as affiliate marketing, social media, should you have a mobile website etc.

Be prepared to spend money for the first few months normally 90 days without seeing too much increase from organic traffic but as all the elements are put in place and your seo firm properly adhering to the guidelines established by the search engines well results will follow.  You are not hiring a seo firm to get you up and running and then let them go.  This is a long-term relationship that is based one constantly adapting to the requirements of the search engines.  If your seo firm is doing the job hired for and they are let go you should see your keyword rankings gradually drop as well as visitor traffic within the first three to 4 weeks.

  1. Keywords Analysis & Research
  2. Manually Directory Submission
  3. Weekly and Monthly Reporting
  4. Article Submission
  5.  Press Release Distributions (1 Press Release      submit in 10 Sites)
  6. Blog postings (Using pre-written articles)
  7. Competitive Analysis
  8. Social Bookmarking Submission
  9. Article Writing
  10. Press Release
  11. Keywords Mapping
  12. New Content Suggestions
    12. Keywords Research
    13. Competitor Analysis
    14. Title Tags Changes Suggestions
    15. Meta Tags Changes Suggestions
    16. Alt Tag Changes Suggestions
    17. HTML Site Map
    18. XML Site Map Setup
    19. Anchor text optimization
    20. Google webmaster setup
    21. Google analytics setup

SEO For The Small Business Owner

SEO is a marketing strategy commonly used within the avenues of online marketing and it seeks to improve both the quality and quantity of traffic on any website. SEO has become a household name with many people talking about it and for this reason it has been viewed as something that is relatively simple. Even though many businesses grasp the basics of this technique, there are still far too many mistakes business owners make in the name of SEO. Experience in SEO is therefore mandatory for any small business that wants to be ahead of the competition.

Search engines are constantly evolving and this is making it hard for less skilled business people to keep up with the changes. For instance, Google Panda and Google Penguin are just some latest updates that have affected SEO trends. In most cases, these updates are known to affect any sites ranking and this is why it is important to ensure your website is optimized according to Google requirements.

Google Panda: Google accounts for over 80 percent of the internet search market and with introduction of Google panda, many websites have been affected. This program basically reduces the ranking of low quality sites. In a time when article marketing is being perceived as the corner stone of SEO campaigns, Google panda comes as a new challenge to internet marketers worldwide. Google Panda has affected a number of small businesses and this is mainly in areas of content quality, spellings and grammar, and website uniqueness. Keeping your small business site ranked high on Google means that you have to understand how Google Panda operates to avoid being ranked as a spam site by Google. Panda is constantly updated and this means that your site has to meet the acceptable standards for it to be ranked in Google search engine.

 

Google Penguin: – Google’s latest developments have forced a change of guard in how small businesses carry out their web optimization process. Google Penguin algorithm targets web spam and if it detects any of these in your website, be ready for decreased ranking. Websites should not violate Google’s quality guidelines and the harsh truth is that most small business owners are ill informed on these kinds of Google updates and may make misinformed judgment on performance of their website. In order for your site to remain relevant and gain better ranking in the wake of this new Google Update, you need to avoid things such as keyword stuffing, link schemes, duplicating contents and cloaking pages.

Google Panda and Penguin are here to stay and small business owners should not worry. The future of SEO is not threatened by these latest developments and as the use of internet in doing businesses increases, web marketers are gaining the right skills and know how in dealing with such developments. As a matter of fact, there is no cause for alarm and a small business owner should let professional web marketers handle this part of web marketing on their behalf.

An insight on major changes that transformed the world of SEO in 2012

SEO has existed ever since the introduction of the Yahoo search engine back in 1995. It was much different at the time and in the early days getting ranked was much less of a science due to the primitive search algorithms used by Yahoo and other early search engines. As time went on the algorithms became more advanced and getting ranked became more about technique and strategy than luck.

The Golden Age of SEO
With the advancement of search algorithms, came the exploits. Since these early algorithms had parameters that were set in stone it was possible to generate #1 ranking at will if you knew all of the parameters and implemented them on your website and web pages. This was the birth of on-page SEO a golden age for those who enjoyed gaming the system (and had the technical skill to do so) and “bait and switch” type websites were prevalent. Search engines began to catch on to this rampant abuse and modified their algorithms to not only weed out these types of sites but to also make it so that SEO could be implemented by those who weren’t highly skilled at cracking SEO parameters. This began the golden age of SEO for ordinary people looking to rank their site however SEO as a business tool hadn’t quite caught on yet.

Dark Ages of SEO
These golden ages of SEO quickly came to an end however as search engines became littered with spam due to how easy it was to manipulate the rankings. This could be considered the dark ages of SEO as many once powerful search engines such as Hotbot and AltaVista became practically worthless. Search engines frantically searched for a way to combat this problem and once again modified their algorithms. This gave rise to off-page SEO and the importance of backlinks. In addition to this, search algorithms also began to become much more complex to deter crackers from discovering the parameters and gaming the system.

2012: Google Goes Business
Up until this point Google, has always been considered to be on the side of the people of the Internet. Their policy has always been to help ensure that people doing searches get quality content in the search results and those who build websites get rewarded for having a quality site. Some questionable decisions on Google’s part this year has left some business owners and online marketers wondering if Google has “sold out.”
One such change was the fact that Google Analytics will now refrain from showing keyword data of users who are logged into Google. Since this keyword data was invaluable for website owners many are understandably upset, especially since most people are in fact logged in now thanks to the rise of mobile devices.  Another change that has left many site owners bewildered is the fact that the Google search algorithms not only find websites to match search queries now but also search through the info within the website to find useful info.  For example, if you type in “How old is George Clooney” the first thing that comes up in the search results is Google telling you he’s 50 years old. While this may not seem like a big deal, and isn’t rampant yet, the implications are startling. If Google begins giving away a website’s info before people click on the site the loss of traffic (and revenue) could be monumental.

Here is an insight on two of the major changes that transformed the world of SEO in 2012
1.Google panda
First off, you might be wondering where the Panda update came from or better yet why it’s killing so many Internet Marketers and their businesses. You see back in early 2011, Google started a series of updates which were specifically based on internet user’s opinions instead of on numerical data. The things that were not accounted for were the number of backlinks a website had, the quality of them, how many pages had content and how many did not, keyword density of these content pages and Meta data.

Your successes and failures will still depend on these aspects, but if you don’t utilize them correctly, you might end up being tossed aside like so many of the other businesses and websites out there. Panda was not and is not based on numerical data and instead was collected by a bunch of data which was collected by humans who evaluated certain websites. For more detailed information regarding Penguin and Panda there is a great detailed breakdown of all of Google’s updated here http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change#2012