|
||||
|
|
||||
|
||||
|
David
Online how-to information sources that may surprise you
YouTube has become the go to site for inspiring cat videos, as well as music and a myriad of other things, but one of the most popular searches on YouTube is also "How-To" videos. Kids have learned to play musical instruments on YouTube and kids of all ages have learned a wide varitety of skills using a wide arrray "how-to" videos.
YouTube, however is not the only kid on the block when it comes to "How-To" information.
Take a look at the following instructional sites for additional sources of how-to information.
Wiki-how Still a great site – It is a vast repository of information from the easy to the incredibly complicated.
Lifehacker – from the mundane to the exotic – Lifehacker reports on the unique things you need to know and the skills you need to master in order to not just survive, but thrive in this world.
doityourself The ultimate do it yourselfers website with advice on projects from A-Z
HowCast – Videos for the do it yourselfer
FabHow – Detailed step by step instructions with very large pictures for the do it yourselfer.
WonderHowTo – videos and step by step information. Very easy to follow.
Instructables – from the simple to the highly complex detailed instructions on building things.
You actually can save quite a bit of time and money by making things yourself on certain projects. You also may be able to fix things yourself instead of hiring someone to do it. For many tasks, it involves something you probably would not attempt or even think of on your own. Good luck to all the do it yourselfers out there.
by John Lombaerde
David
10 Free Keyword Tools to use in 2016
Did you know that you no longer need to allocate a large budget for keyword research, that there are a wide range of free keyword tools out there for you to choose from? Read on to learn more about the 11 free keyword tools you should be using.
1. Google Webmasters Tool When you need to boost SEO, why not go straight to the source? With Google's webmasters tool, you can see what keywords your website is ranking for and learn more about potential keywords that you have yet to target.
2. Bing Webmasters Tool Bing's webmaster tool provides information about keywords that are related to their search engine. This tool shows users all of the keywords that are related to their seed keyword, as well as the search volume data.
3. SeoChat's Keyword Suggestion Tool This tool allows users to generate keywords from Amazon, YouTube, Bing and Google. The alphabet is used to modify the original keyword and generate a plethora of suggestions.
4. Soovle Soovle is more limited than some of the other choices, but remains effective, providing up to ten suggestions for each seed keyword.
5. Ubersuggest This tool appeals to the more simplistic user, generating keywords from Google. It has been around for several years and is already quite popular. Ubersuggest can generate a whopping 300 to 400 suggestions for each keyword and the resulting keyword can also be expanded for further information.
6. Hypersuggest Much like Ubersuggest, Hypersuggest offers keywords from Google, in addition to suggestions from YouTube, as well. Since Hypersuggest users can add modifiers, it is able to produce keywords at a greater rate than Ubersuggest.
7. Google Keyword Planner One of the premier keyword research tools, Google Keyword Planner provides search volume data and keyword ideas by using a seed keyword. Users are also able to add their own keywords that have been generated in other places and receive CPC data/search volume information.
8. SeoStack Chrome extension This tool is totally free and generates hundreds of keyword suggestions from Google and YouTube. Alphabets and numbers are tacked onto the original keyword and the tool also supports the use of multiple seed keywords.
9. Google Trends Google Trends is the premier tool to find out more about the current trends and determine the popularity of certain keywords. When you want to know about certain keywords that your competition hasn't discovered yet, Google Trends can help.
10. AnswerThePublic This is a simple tool that generates keywords from Google's autocomplete function. Much like the SeoStack extension from chrome, alphabets and numbers are added to the seed keyword to generate hundreds of suggestions.
Related articles
David
Is your Website ready for the new Google Mobile update?
Like death and taxes, it seems that Google updates are invevitable. Well here comes another one in May 2016 of which you should be aware. It has been widely reported that mobile users are now in the majority, in terms of total Internet traffic. Google is again emphasizing mobile-friendliness in an upcoming update. This news has been gaining traction recently as evidenced by the following posts.
And from Google itself on it's Webmaster Blog.
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/03/continuing-to-make-web-more-mobile.html
Now is the time to act to make sure your webite is mobile friendly. Google even gives you a link where you can check your website.
Google Mobile compliance checking tool
Here are two plugins you may want to install on your website.
The first will help you solve the first problem of compliance. The second will help your site load faster on mobile sites, which is important, since mobile users are on the go. They are extremely impatient, and don't have time to wait for pages to download, they just will go somewhere else.
Solve your mobile friendliness issues with any of the following plugins —–> Click here <—-
AMP is the second, less critical, yet important issue to consider. This has not really hit the news in a big way, yet, but here is a post from Google that explains in some detail what AMP or (Accelerated Mobile Pages).
Click here —-> Google Accelerated Mobile Pages <——
Here is a good explanation of how to set up AMP for your news site or blog.
click here —> Set up AMP on your WordPress site <—-
Resolve both these issues on your website now before you lose traffic and visitors from mobile sources.
by John Lombaerde – Goldfinch Digital Publishing
David
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall – What is the Most Powerful Socal Network for Entrepreneurs of them all?
Well before I reveal the answer to that question, what is the real benefit of social networking anyway?
Why should any online marketer spend time on social networks? Wouldn't time be better spent just blogging and communicating with prospects and customers using email and other more productive methods, instead of wasting time on social media?
I can understand that social media can sometimes seem like unproductive time, especially repeated posts on Facebook that few people will ever see.
The answer, I think, boils down to one word, REACH!. If only one hundred people read a post of mine on Pulse, the blogging platform on LinkedIn, (for example), then that is one hundred more people that have read something I have written, and might decide to reach out back to me. If they had never read my blog post they probably never would have had that chance to read something that I wrote, and possibly connect with me.
Admittedly, that is only 100 viewers out of a total of 8,000 of my first level connections, so the percentage is not particularly high. Supposing instead of a hundred or so views, I could get a thousand views for the same post that I submitted to LinkedIn? That would 10X better than posting on Pulse, right? And if I could get 10,000 views of the same post, now that would be something substantial, at that point, right?
Social Media has the possibility of magnifying the reach of my outreach efforts. Posting is one, and sharing content on social media is another. Where on social media can you get the greatest bang for your buck, or the greatest reach for time spent? The answer is Markethive. It is a new social network for entrepreneurs that is available by invitation. Just click on this link —-> Markethive, to find out more.
I have a number of posts on Markethive with thousands of views already, despite the fact that it is a relatively new social network. I have no doubt that with the new tools Markethive has recently implemented, I will soon get over 10k views on a single post.
So why do posts get so many views on Markethive?
1) You can share your blog posts on Markethive with your other social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and LinkedIn, Stumblupon, and others.
2) With your permission, other bloggers on Markethive can share your content on their blogs, as well as on their own social networks. You can also reciprocate to do the same with their content on your own blogs, and social networks.
3) As an owner of a group, you can share your content as often as you want with your group members. LinkedIn limits your ability to post to your group to one message per week. There is no limit to group messaging on Markethive. If you have valuable and interesting content to share with your group members, you can message your group members every day.
I give LinkedIn Workshops two times each week using one of the Markethive webinar rooms. I have great respect for LinkedIn, and use it extensively to prospect and find marketing automation customers for my local marketing business. There are so many great things that I like about LinkedIn, not the least of which is it's enormous size. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pintrest, and other social networks all have their strengths and weaknesses.
When it comes to blogging and my attempts to reach as many people as possible, however, I have to say, I prefer Markethive, and not only for it's blogging and sharing capabilities. So, when I ask the mirror on the wall what is the most powerful social marketing network for entrepreneurs of all, it tells me that Markethive is best one of all.
I suggest you give it a try, and you may find the same answer to your question that i did. See you on Markethive!
John Lombaerde – Goldfinch Digital Publishing LLC
David
How Blogging Can Help Market Your Business
How Blogging Can Help Market Your Business
Now that blogging has become so popular among everyone from the novice writer to the most experienced journalist, businesses are starting to take notice. A well-written and frequently updated blog can help market almost any type of business. Blogging can help target readers who are interested in a company’s product or service and businesses can keep track of what their readers are looking for through blogging.
In addition, blogging can help link together companies that complement each other very easily.
There is a lot of talk about blogging. Some feel that blogging is just a passing fad, but others feel it is just the beginning. Some business analysts feel that blogging does not significantly help a business market the company. Many businesses feel that this is not so. Blogging can be a beneficial way to market a business, build an audience and help link other companies together.
Blogging can help almost any business expose their readers to their services and products. Sometimes with new products, a blog can create interest in something new. Blogging is helpful because it can talk in depth about the product, and it can also give step-by-step instructions on how a certain product can be used.
A reader, who is interested in the product after reading about it on a blog, will be more inclined to research similar products on the Internet. This can lead to a more informed consumer and can save a consumer time when shopping or researching a new product. In turn, a company may save time because customers who have read the blog are already informed about the product. These customers can also read reviews on these products and services, which can be very helpful in the buying process.
Another great thing about companies using a blog for their products and services is that a blog enables the company and the customer to communicate effectively. A customer can read the blog and comment on it right away. This provides good feedback to the company and they can know what the customers want. Usually blogs will provide places for readers to leave their comments or send emails to the writer. This is a good marketing tool for businesses. People enjoy communicating about products and services that they have had good or bad experiences with and blogging provided the opportunity to do so.
Blogs can also help market a business because it will be included in search engines. When people enter certain keywords, blogs that contain those words will show up. When blogs are updated frequently, search engines can provide your company with a lot of hits. This can lead to many people looking at the company’s blog who might not otherwise have done so.
When companies use blogs, it also has the ability to create a sensation around a product and influence public opinion. This is an excellent tool for companies to use. Because of the huge popularity of blogging, this can be a more effective tool than some forms of advertising. Readers are more likely to share interesting blogs with their friends and this can help companies get the word out about their product.
Another way blogging can help market a business is that blogs often help a company position itself as a leader in a certain field. This means that those who blog can show their expertise about certain subjects and then update this information on a regular basis.
Blogging can help generate leads and send a positive message about your company without spending a lot of money for advertising. Readers can look at these blogs and know that they are dealing with a quality company.
Companies also use blogs to help network with other companies that complement their business. This is beneficial because they can easily share their links and readers will see all of the blogs that relate to what they are searching for on the Internet. Link swapping is often used in blogging, especially with businesses.
Blogging is proving to be a beneficial marketing tool for businesses all over the world. While it’s a fairly new way for companies and customers to communicate with each other, blogging provides an immediate and unique form of advertising for the company. Customers are able to read and research products and services through blogging and companies can better understand what their customers want.
Ida Mae Boyd
Contributor
David
Choosing an Effective Website Color Combination
Choosing an Effective Website Color Combination
A pleasing color scheme can make or break your website. After all, in advertising, color accounts for 60% of advertisement's acceptance or rejection. Therefore, color plays a pivotal role in determining whether or not a potential customer will choose to conduct business with your firm. A web designer needs to ensure that all of your website’s colors work in harmony, while keeping the client’s identity consistent with other marketing efforts.
Quick Rules of Thumb
- Stick to 3 to 5 colors when planning a website
- When in doubt, use white for the background color, and black for the text color
Using Your Company’s Logo colors
If your company already has a logo designed by a professional – great!
This is the best starting point for choosing your website’s color combination. You may choose to use the exact colors found in your logo, or even add some complimentary colors. But, it is important not to stray too far from your logo’s color scheme in order to keep your company’s identity consistent.
Color Defines Mood
The colors of your website are important because they can elicit different emotions from your visitors. Colors can make us happy, excited, angry or sad. Below is a list of colors along with the corresponding moods which they evoke:
Warm Colors
Red: aggressiveness, passion, strength, vitality
Pink: femininity, innocence, softness, health
Orange: fun, cheeriness, warm exuberance
Yellow: positive thinking, sunshine, cowardice
Cool Colors
Green: tranquility, health, freshness
Blue: authority, dignity, security, faithfulness
Purple: sophistication, spirituality, costliness, royalty, mystery
Neutral Colors
Brown: utility, earthiness, woodiness, subtle richness
White: purity, truthfulness, being contemporary and refined
Gray: somberness, authority, corporate mentality
Black: seriousness, distinctiveness, boldness, being classic
Choosing a Color Scheme
Once you understand the colors and their connotations, the next step is to choose a color scheme for your website. Below is list of different types of color combinations:
- Monochromatic color combinations use a single color. Variations in lightness of the selected color can be used to create the sense of different colors. Monochromatic colors go well together, producing a soothing effect, and are very easy on the eyes. The drawback however, is that, it can be difficult to highlight the most important elements on your website.
- Analogous color schemes use colors that are related, but not the identical, to create visually attractive combinations. Choosing this type of color scheme is accomplished by picking colors that are close to each other on the color wheel. For example, a selection of blues and purples, or reds and oranges would make a good analogous combination. One color must be picked as the dominant color while the others are used as accents.
- Complementary (or contrasting) color schemes are comprised of 2 colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel. This combination is most appealing when a warm and a cool color are used. For example, red with green or blue work well as contrasting colors. Using one color for your background, and its complementary color to highlight key elements will give you color dominance and color contrast. One word of caution: it is difficult for the human eye to focus on contrasting colors at the same time.
Therefore, it is best to avoid using strong contrasts for background and text colors.
Ida Mae Boyd
Contributor
David
The Blogging Power of Markethive
The Blogging Power of Markethive
The moment you join Markethive you have instant setup of your own “Viral Blog” ready for you to begin posting content and marketing your business, product, service, or even personal content. You’ll be up and running the moment you set up your account!
1. Multiple BLOG accounts (platforms)
You will have the ability to create many blog accounts (via groups), mix up different contributors and published multiple blog contents for multiple WordPress accounts. That has been specifically created to include powerfully effective sales psychology built into them. This will ensure you convert visitors to your site into PAYING customers at the highest levels.
This multiple blog capability can also create additional unique content to spread further into the Internet. With Groups your reach expands exponentially.
Individual friends and groups can be combined to create unique content that can easily be published to your WordPress, Joomla, blogger.com, etc. blogs with Markethive Widgets and Plug Ins.
With a group of 100 members, aside from the massive shared content, with a Group membership of 100 where we will assume each member has about 5000 social net friends and contacts in their respective Social accounts like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.
These are huge numbers as we estimate just the Social reach of 500,000 add to that each members back links via their social networks but assuming each member has 2-3 WordPress blogs the legitimate white hat back links occurring also reach astronomical numbers.
Now add to that a small coop to publish a real paid for Press release and you start to understand the startling advantage Markethive has just regarding Markethive’s blog platform and link manifestation.
2. Built in “Viral Broadcasting”
Other members of Markethive have the option to “follow” your blog(s) and options as to how. They can choose to be alerted in the social network alerts in their Markethive Dashboard
They can choose to have your post published to their Markethive News Feed.
They can choose to have your new posts broadcasted to their Facebook news feed(s) both their personal feed or their many Facebook pages.
They can choose to have your posts broadcasted to their Twitter feed.
They can choose to have your post published to their share an update on their LinkedIn account
They can choose to have your post broadcasted to their Markethive Blog (Groups or Personal)
This guarantees you get the most exposure from every post you make, and compels readers to quickly share your content with ease and excitement. This means even MORE traffic to your blog, and MORE potential for sales or exposure.
3. Advanced “Viral Commenting” System
Your blog comments will show up in real time and inspire even more “digital” conversations on your site. Remember, rave reviews, lively comments, and more helpful content are what people crave on your blog. There is NOTHING more powerful than the “social proof” coming from other people commenting on your blog, and we’ll help you to easily get LOTS of it every time you post.
Combined with the commenting system is the broadcasting ability as well. When commenting, you can also choose the option for your comment to push to your Markethive Newsfeed, Facebook, Twitter and LinkediN, includes the link back to your profile page and the blog.
4.SEO Tool
Keyword management for better search engine results.
Research and analysis tracking allows for continuous improvement.
When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns, choosing the right keywords is the most important step. Selecting the wrong keywords will lead to bad results so it pays to learn how to perform a strategic keyword analysis so you pick the right ones. Generally speaking your goal is to identify keywords with:
A) The highest search volume possible.
B) The lowest competition.
C) Those that accurately relate to your business.
High search volumes and high competition often go together (but not always… look for sweet spots!) Typically you're looking for low competition keywords that still have good search volumes. So long as the keyword relates to the content on your website your "bounce rate" will be low and the traffic will stick.
The Keyword Analysis tool is designed to help you keep track of your research results as you perform your strategic analysis. There are a variety of external tools and systems that are helpful in evaluating keywords, however the statistics tracked by this system are found using Alexa and the Google Keyword Planner.
This will multiply how many people actually FIND your blog! (Marketers pay from hundreds, to thousands of dollars every month for this service—you get it for FREE!)
Peace of Mind For You!
You’ll never have to worry about installing anything, setting anything up, or “customizing” anything, unless you want to add your own header and company logo to your blog. We’ll handle all of the rest for you! Our skilled programmers work around the clock to ensure your blog is always viewable and available for your customers.
5. WordPress Plugins by Markethive
When we set out to build Markethive, we recognized WordPress to be the world leader in Blogging platforms. We will never dispute that nor attempt to overcome or replace WordPress.
Our goal is to make WordPress better with our blogging platform and CMS enhancements. Case in point is our WordPress (Markethive) plugin(s). We have several but this plugin is designed to import and manage your content you produce on Markethive into your one or multiple WordPress blog(s). Without Markethive, to manage a (blog cloud) portfolio of many WordPress on multiple domains with unique content on each of them for different agendas and markets, especially with a moderate to large team of content producers becomes a literal nightmare.
Why WordPress Is The Best Website Platform
There are many different ways of creating a website, you can purchase industry standard software like Dreamweaver and take courses to understand how to use it, or you can use content management software such as WordPress that allows you to quickly and easily get a website live within minutes. This is one of the many reasons why WordPress is the best website platform for beginners and professionals alike.
With WordPress, you are getting a system that takes minutes to install on your server, and then access to thousands of free and paid themes. Your website will look professional from the moment you start. Furthermore, there’s a wide range of plugins and widgets that can easily be applied to the site to make it more user friendly and interactive.
And the only skills you need are the ability to write, click the mouse button and add this stuff in. It really is easy to add content, it’s just like posting on a forum really, and has a very low learning curve. But, because of its flexibility, you can be as basic or advanced as you feel, and as you grow to learn more about it, so to will your site grow and utilize new concepts and designs being created for WordPress.
Here’s some other great aspects about the WordPress system:
WordPress is Open Source:
This means it is free, other people can easily create themes, plugins and so on for you to use with it, and it is completely flexible.
WordPress is Quick to Setup:
This means you can focus on having several websites and easily be able to maintain them all without having to create them all from scratch. This is particularly useful if you are getting into internet marketing for example. You can have many websites set up for different products you are selling.
WordPress Gives Multi User Functionality:
Are you a small business or organization that requires more than one person to add content to the site? Again, WordPress can help. It enables the site owner to set up users for them to post to the site. What’s more, certain privileges can be applied to these users so they only have access to posting content, and therefore not be able to mess around with the functional side of the site.
Website and Blog All-in-One:
Although WordPress is set up more as a blogging platform, it is still very easy to configure it to be a standalone site, with a blog attached. There are many plugins which make this even easier to do, and so any small business or organization can have a website and blog created in a couple of hours that looks great, and is ready to go.
Backing Up and Security:
WordPress is very easy to back up, and there are many secure plugins to choose from to make it more secure than it already is.
These are just a few of the most important reasons why WordPress is the best website platform, but there are many more. It’s major advantages are the low learning curve, and speed of having a site up and running. If you are a person who needs a website, but has little time and money to set one up, then WordPress is your friend. It’s a fantastic system used by millions of people across the globe.
6. MH Blog Swipe
Markethive blog system allows you to make your content available to the entire public population within Markethive, or Just to your friends or just to members in all the Groups you belong or a selection of them or just one (your choice) or private so no one can Swipe your blog.
Why? There are many sound reasons for this.
- Curating: Content curation is the process of sorting through the vast amounts of content on the web and presenting it in a meaningful and organized way around a specific theme. The work involves sifting, sorting, arranging, and publishing information. Markethive offers features to it’s groups you create. Groups are platforms for blogging.Simple set up a Curating Group for yourself and Swipe the blogs in Markethive as a collection of content you may want to use in your publications.
- Proofing: You may have a group of members that want to edit and rewrite your content. Trust me,this is an active phenomena in Markethive. Produce a blog and you will get many critiques so I just offer to them to swipe it, edit and change it as they see fit then let me know. If I like it, I swipe it back. Another option is to actually have a proof reader on staff and do the same procedure.
- Cocktails: With Markethive’s ability (feature) to create unlimited Groups each with a different cocktail of content curated, aggregated or from multiple Group memberships, the options to produce unique content for unlimited WordPress blogs controlled from within Markethive is unlimited.
- Then there is the learning curve. I have personally mentored newbie bloggers who just couldn’t or wouldn’t take the first step. In many a live webinar, I would quickly assemble a viable blog article, the instruct the students to Swipe my blog post, then in the webinar they would edit, alter, upload and download images, creating an altered blog result of their own.
I have witnessed new bloggers after this type of training go from poorly and rarely produced blog posts, to 1-2 dynamic and excellent on topic blog posts daily. In other words, Markethive is now churning out a new breed of excellent and dynamic bloggers.
Website Widget
The widget can appear on your blogs, sites, social networks to promote a simple easy registration into the Markethive via your account, by passing your Profile page. Sets off your selection of autoresponders via the Authorized email of record, totally avoiding spam.
Markethive Blog platform
Markethive’s Inbound Marketing platform delivers a blogging system built for the beginner, sophisticated for the intermediate and an extremely powerful platform that advanced professional bloggers will appreciate. The system is designed for the easy development of a complete blog system, yet advanced and easily set up to be the engine that powers your WordPress blogs. The email system also creates subscribe accounts for your blogs and capture pages and simplifies the email notifications of a new blog publication via email, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Goggle+ and Markethive news feeds.
Easily grow your social reach into the millions! It’s that Powerful, It’s that Simple, That’s Markethive.
Dominate with Inbound Marketing
Entrepreneurs always work hard to create an innovative product or service, but often count on standard seller marketing for sales. But the reality is that sellers are no longer in charge of the customer buying process. Recent reports suggest that 90% of today’s shoppers skip marketing pitches, to research online before they buy, and over 50% check user reviews before making a decision.
Markethive is the first and only social network integrated with a powerful intuitive inbound marketing (automated marketing) platform. Built for the entrepreneur, small business, and network marketers. Markethive is totally free and generates it's revenue through advertising like Facebook and Linkedin. Markethive even returns up to half the advertising revenue back to the subscribers that join the affiliate program.
If tools like email auto responders (better than Aweber), blog platforms (makes WordPress even better), press release co-ops (Real PR.org professional releases) capture page widgets (plug ins for WordPress, simpleleadcapture.com,etc., plugins and pages, broadcasting tools (like Hootsuit), live conference rooms (like GoToMeeting), traffic portals (like Veretekk had) and additional arrays of powerful tools, workshops and mentoring webinars, interest you, then you need this platform!
This is Inbound Marketing, This is Markethive. Easy! Powerful! Free!
Ida Mae Boyd
Contributor
David
How do You Make Your Words Fly Off the Page Into Your Visitor’s Heads?
David
Social Media Marketing Made Simple Using IBOtoolbox
If you think Social Media is not effective, why are there more people on Facebook than there are people in China? There are over 200 different social media sites available.
So how does IBOtoolbox fit into this mix? Like any tool, it depends on how the tool is used.
These are the recommendations to use this tool effectively.
1) You need to create interesting and engaging content. This is a challenge for any writer, but goog copywriting really just takes practice. The more you write, the greater skill you will develop.
2) Use hashtags. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Pinterest all use hashtags to let you describe the topic of your content or mark them as part of current trends.
3) Compliment your promotion on IBOtoolbox with more powerful networks.
MarketHive is one of the most powerful networks and gives entrepreneurs a complete platform of tools at no charge whatsoever. This link will tell you all about this very unique network. Markethive explained
- Google+
- Youtube
- Snapchat
- Vine
- Yik Yak
- Tumblr
- Medium
- Quora
- Periscope
- Beme
4) Use video in your marketing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJCXwxvLNkY from Steve Jobs.
David