While Google’s software platforms  ranging from Gmail and Google Maps to Google Docs and Google.com continue to receive praise the company has failed to keep up with its competitors in terms of media offerings.

To reach a level playing field with Apple and Amazon the company reportedly signed licensing deals with Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment. Those two media conglomerates make up a large portion of the mainstream music market and are considered must have partners for any serious online streaming partner. 

According to reports the Google music streaming platform will resemble Spotify by playing on-demand songs on desktop and mobile devices via subscription service.

Google has not confirmed the report but if true it would mean that the search giant will beat a Apple to the music streaming market. Apple is believed to be working on an iRadio feature that would also compete with the likes of Spotify and now Google.

A name for the new Google service has not been revealed at this time.

Are you ready to test drive a Google run music streaming service?

Link Building in 2013: Panda Packs a Punch

The recent Panda update was yet another step taken by Google to clean up its search algorithm and further eliminate spam. This update set out to punish those utilizing black-hat tactics and specifically those with poor content. The main focus of the Panda update seemed to be on quality content, as the effects of it were most devastating for those using content farms and spun articles to acquire links.

It also seems as though Panda put a heavy emphasis on relevancy, penalizing those which possessed links to sites way outside of their niche. One of the more famous sites to get hit by the Panda update for these very reasons was J.C. Penny, which can be seen in this article from the NY Times. Although many sites such as J.C. Penny were caught by Panda, there are those who evaded the update and continue to exercise black-hat schemes.

Black-hat Link Building

Black-hat practices, in regard to link building, aim to gain as many links as possible through minimal effort.

One of the primary strategies utilized by black-hat link builders is the use of spammy comments. They will place comments in posts located on other sites that have nothing to do with the actual post; instead the comment just promotes their site and contains a link. This has led to many webmasters implementing moderation into their comments section. Also, it appears that Google has caught onto this as well and these types of links are not as powerful as they once were.

Another tactic black-hat link builders have turned to is creating link farms. A link farm is a site that is created purely to produce links for another site. Some of these sites are well constructed and look legitimate. However, when examining the external links on such a site you will see that they all point to the same place.

Along with these clever schemes, black-hat link builders exploit guest posting. They produce low-quality content and target sites that publish such content with no regard for relevancy. Sites like this tend to raise a red-flag for Google and usually get penalized along with the sites linking to them.

While these strategies will produce quick links, the links obtained are not organic and Google will not reward these types of links. Some of these tactics may produce results in the short-term and some may even go unnoticed for a prolonged period of time, but in the end Google will continue to update its algorithm and eventually expose and punish such shady practices.

White-hat Link Building

On the other hand, there are those who attempt to follow widely accepted white-hat link building strategies.

White-hat link building, for the most part, involves two major aspects. Those two aspects are quality and relevant content. White-hat practitioners aim to produce useful, high quality content on relevant niche sites where it will provide value to the audience.

This type of link building takes much more time and effort, and follows the classic philosophy of quality over quantity. The reason it takes longer to obtain links through white-hat link building methods is because it is much harder to produce interesting and stimulating content; and then, find the best and most applicable location for that content.

There is a reason that although these white-hat techniques are harder to execute and take longer to implement, many link builders still elect to pursue these strategies. This is because this type of organic link building is beneficial for the online community as a whole, which is something Google tends to embrace. The goal for Google is to make navigating the web easier for the user, and they are not going to punish something that does exactly that. This is why these types of link building processes are the future of SEO.

While black-hat link building tactics offer short-term results, Google eventually is able to pin down these types schemes and disciplines them accordingly. White-hat link building practices provide a mutually beneficial situation for the link builder and the internet community as a whole and Google approves of these techniques. If you are implementing any sort of link building projects for your website or blog, I strongly suggest you take some time to thoroughly consider which camp your own strategies fall under before you’re the next victim of a Google algorithm update.

About the Author
Andrew Dennis is a writer at the relevancy-first link building company Page One Power. When he’s not writing about link building best practices, he prefers playing indoor soccer and pick-up games of basketball at the local gym.

Image via t r e v y

Twitter on Monday announced the acquisition of big data analytics firm Lucky Sort.

Lucky Sort is a firm that focuses on natural language data-mining and visualization tools that are used by various online partners.

The company StockTwits is powered in large part by the data provided from the Lucky Sort system.

Lucky Sort will begin to shut down its services over the next few months and the company’s employees will transition to new roles at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.

Among the company’s employees joining the team at Twitter is Lucky Sort CEO and founder CEO Noah Pepper.

In a post regarding the acquisition Pepper writes:

“In building Lucky Sort we had an enormous amount of support from friends, employees, advisors and investors. It has been uplifting to have so many people help us and it highlighted just how much business is a social endeavor.”

Twitter has been putting a lot of focus on big data firms in recent weeks. The social giant recently purchased Ubalo, a company that aims to make large-scale computing more accessible and easier to manage.

Do you think Lucky Sort is a big win acquisition for Twitter?

Interviews have the potential to be so much more than just another element to add to your blog. When conducted correctly, an interview can produce a post that is truly one-of-a-kind and unique within your niche. Crafting quality interviews require care, consideration and these 5 essentials.

Research to Save Your Life

Do you want your interviewee to clam-up on you? Then by all means, ask the same old interview questions they’ve heard a thousand times, or better yet, prove your lack of knowledge by requiring clarity on the most basic aspects of their history.

The most important aspect of an interview takes place long before you ever say “hello” – it’s the research. Your goal as an interviewer is to ask a question they’ve yet to be asked, or better yet, get them to contemplate something in a way they’ve never thought of before.

When crafting your questions, keep your audience and theme in mind and never position yourself for a yes/no response. For example asking, “Are you able to comprehend the magnitude of your viral following?” won’t be as insightful as, “What have been your feelings about the massive size of your audience?”

Have a Conversation

You should strive to make the process as personal as possible whether you are in-person, emailing, phone interviewing or using Skype. Ease interviewees by encouraging them to think of the experience as a typical, back-and-forth conversation; the direct quotes can be detailed later. Setting this type of mood can get people to open up; they will be able to focus more on the discussion, and less on crafting perfect, quotable sentences.

Just let the conversation flow and strive to grasp the feelings and meanings behind his/her statements. When quote-worthy comments come about, repeat the quote for clarity and get confirmation from your interviewee; “So what you’re saying is…”

Leave the Map at Home

While your research fully prepares you with a comprehensive lists of questions, allow (in fact, encourage) discussion to navigate off of your mapped path. Some of the most interesting tidbits can be discovered while going off on exploratory tangents. In the end, you’ll always come back to the script, but don’t rush the process of the scenic route.

Other important things to note: after preparing your questions, edit the order so that the interview naturally builds on itself. Whenever possible, provide yourself with smooth transitions from question to question to keep things flowing mid-interview. Also, even if they are related, remember to never ask more than one question at a time (i.e. “How have you been handling this busy schedule? Aren’t you exhausted?”). Most likely in the process of answering, one of the two will get skimmed over.

Marketing Still Matters

As organic as the interview process is, it also hosts plenty of corners for classic marketing.

Gain some hype with teasers leading up to the release of the interview, and get your following involved by allowing them to submit questions for you to ask on their behalf. When looking for guests to interview, seek out someone that you can provide with a win-win (i.e. do they have a new book or latest project that needs publicity?); cross promote wherever possible.

Most interviews fall flat because they live up to be just that, interviews. For a post like this to be successful, it stills needs to retain the quality of any other post, the only difference being your info is coming from this unique and specified source. Try branding the interview around a specific theme and in preparation, create a vignette of talking points to surround your branded topic.

Go Ahead, Go Off the Record

Don’t be afraid to ask off-the-record questions at the end of your interview. It goes without saying that they should be crafted with respect and your common sense. Remember that all recording devices need to be turned off; pens should be put down with your hands preferably visible (both psychological and situational, this move encourages trust).

Asking an off-the-record question should always be in an effort to satisfy the piece, not your curiosity. For example, you might seek clarity on personal feelings toward a past situation, just to aid you in setting the tone of the article. Be sure not to ask any of these types of questions without first confirming that you do, in fact, have their permission to ask them an off-the-record question. In short: forge ahead, but tread politely.

Regardless of the medium in which the interview was preformed, there has yet to be a better way to say thank you than the handwritten note. While permitting your interviewee to review your draft before it is published is enthusiastically not recommend, be sure to reach out once the interview goes live with an update and one final thank you.

Happy Interviewing!

What have been your experiences conducting interviews? Share your stories below.

About the Author
Kelly Gregorio writes about marketing trends and blogging tips while working at Advantage Capital Funds, a provider of merchant advances. You can read her daily business blog here http://www.advantagecapitalfunds.com/blog/.

Image via Blog Growth

Improve your skills, learn from your peers, and grow your contact list, all in the name of more success, with any one of these five blogging meetups to come in the summer of 2013:

1. NYC Bloggers Meetups

While there is an endless list of skills that will come in handy for bloggers, they all aim to lead to the generation of revenue, and that’s exactly the focus that the NYC Bloggers meetup group takes in its events! Every meetup takes a different approach to a new skill, but everything that is passed on here is meant to be able to be implemented quickly and easily the moment that you get back to your desk, making this group an invaluable one if you’d like to take your blogging endeavors to the next level through the end of 2013.

When and Where: This very active group gets together a few times each month in locations in and around New York City; with things only picking up during the summer season, you’ll have the opportunity to take in one or more events, depending on your circumstances.

2. Haven Conference

Focused on women, but open to anyone who blogs in the DIY/home improvement niche, the Haven Conference provides a unique opportunity for web workers who want to learn more about the work they do, both online and offline.

For three days, you’ll rub shoulders with others who participate in your niche, including some of the very best in the business, giving you the opportunity to learn, build new skills, and grow your virtual rolodex, all at the same time.

When and Where: This year’s Haven Conference will take place at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in sunny Atlanta, Georgia, from August 1-3, 2013.

3. WordPress DC Meetups

If you blog, it is very likely that you do so using the WordPress platform, and the WordPress DC meetup group aims to give webpreneurs in the Washington, DC area a better handle on that platform than they’ve ever imagined having! While simple and intuitive by nature, there are endless possibilities to take WordPress to new levels if you understand what lies under the hood, and that’s why each meetup of this group takes a different focus, helping you to become a more well-rounded blogger than you’ve ever been before.

When and Where: This meetup group gets together on a regular basis in Washington, DC; if you plan to stay long enough to check out the other sights that the nation’s capital has to offer, you can find great rates on accommodations via Cheaphotels.org!

4. WordCamp Vancouver

Sticking with the WordPress theme, those who enjoy working with the world’s most popular blogging platform would do well to check out a WordCamp event. Casting its gaze on everything from writing to coding, this year’s WordCamp Vancouver conference will do just that, giving you a handle on everything it is to be a popular, successful blogger – and web developer!

When and Where: If the early heat of summer is weighing on you, take a trip way up north to the beautiful city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and attend that town’s WordCamp event on August 17, 2013.

5. Bloggy Conference

Blogging and social media are inextricably linked, and that isn’t a fact that’s likely to change any time soon. With that in mind, the Bloggy Conference aims to tackle both of those facets of brand building and networking, giving you the inside track on skills like writing, connecting with others in your niche, making personal connections with your readers, and much more!

When and Where: End your summer on a positive professional note from September 13-15, 2013, by attending the popular Bloggy Conference in rustic Sandusky, Ohio!

You can find a few more meetup ideas here.

Social media management software company Expion examined all brand mentions for top beer brands and found that between April 24 and May 6 the Dos Equis brand was the top mentioned beer product.

The marketing geniuses at the beer manufacturer were helped along by the ‘Dos de Mayo’ campaign which helped it earn 4,746 brand mention. The next closest mexican beer manufacturer was Corono with 464 mentions.

According to Expion CMO Mike Heffring:

“For consistency’s sake, Expion is tracking only @ mentions of each brand, which may be why some of the numbers seem low. We feel that @ mentions are the best representation of users engaging or responding with the brand messages.”

The #DosDeMayo hashtag generated 1,979 mentions on Cinco De Mayo with 227,668 mentions of  #CincoDeMayo overall.

Here is the most popular Cinco De Mayo tweet from Dos Equis:

The line to his #CincoDeMayo party started forming on Ocho de Febrero.

— Dos Equis (@DosEquis) May 5, 2013

Bud Light, Miller Light, Guiness and other beers received barely any Twitter mentions during the same time period.

As expected mexican manufactured beers scored better than other alcoholic beverage on Twitter during Mexico’s independence day.

In describing the new app update Foursquare says:

“Love checking in and seeing that you’ve passed your record for weeks in a row at the gym? Now we’ve made it easier to share the insights you see after you check in on Twitter, Facebook, and more. Just tap the share button to show off your 30-week gym streak, an awesome special that you unlocked, or a great tip from a friend.”

When a user checks in they are shown how many similar businesses they have checked into recently and now data from their account can be shared with a users social networks. 

Foursquare has been repositioning itself as a local search app more along the lines of Yelp than the original Foursquare application. Foursquare now offers tips and information about local businesses via the Explore feature.

Relevant tips still require Foursquare users to check-in at locations which explains why the company is putting more emphasis on developing a share friend version of its platform.

Twitter launched Twitter #Music about a fortnight ago, a new service and app to discover new artists and music through Twitter. The system uses a platform which was acquired last year by Twitter, oWeAreHunted, but has been refined and expanded through integration with Spotify and Rdio, two large music streaming services.

Currently, the system extracts songs from iTunes, Spotify, and Rdio, but other sources will be added in the future. By default, users can only listen to short snippet of songs – 30 seconds – directly from iTunes but for Rdio and Spotify, you will need to use your credentials to log in.  Based on the recent acquisition of “We Are Hunted” by  Twitter, the system will help us to discover new songs and artists based on custom criteria, including the artists followed by us or our followers.

Users can also search using specific fields and listening to real-time view of their followers. Of course, the songs will be tweeted directly from the application. The service is currently new and is in its initial stages, hence some log ins do not work at this time. From the official profile of the staff, we read that #Music will change the way by which people search for music. In addition, it has been announced that there will be suggestions to the user depending on his/her musical tastes.

Four sections of the app and website that will be launched soon:

• The most popular songs [Emerging]
• Emerging songs [#NowPlaying]
• Suggestions based on who you follow on Twitter [Popular]
• What the people you follow on Twitter say they are listening to [Suggested]

The challenge of the major Social networks begins! Google+ counts on Play music in many markets. Then the agreement with iTunes, Spotify,Rdio and Twitter was born – Twitter #Music, the new music streaming service made ​​by Twitter that will allow you to chirp to the sound of music!

Twitter and music ‘asssociate well together’. Did you know there is a micro-blogging platform study that indicates that many accounts with the most followers are those of the singers and that at least half of the users follow an artist?

The aim of the platform is to increase user engagement, encouraging them to be more active on the network, giving them additional means to express their interests. It’s also a move that can become a new source of revenue, especially advertising.

Twitter #Music has not only been launched on the web at music.twitter.com, but the app has also made its mark on the iTunes App Store. We wish we could ask to try Twitter #Music to have a handson perspective on this subject, but we cannot.  As of yet it hasn’t been made available in India and many other parts of the world, and it only works in some countries like Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and of course, the United States.  We hope to see something more and on all platforms in the near future.

But if you are eager enough to check out what it really offers, you could try using a U.S. or a U.K. proxy.

Summing up, so you reckon that Twitter # music is a necessary service? Or at least a service that will add to the micro-blogging platform’s user base?

About the Author

Clement Almeida is the managing editor at www.bloggercent.com. He also has an interest in watching movies, proven by the large number of movies in his library. An active person he has taken a new step towards blogging and hopes to use his skills in this venture.

The team at Potomac College recently examined the most sought after degrees in business and as expected they can all offer something to enterprising up and comers in the connected space.

As anyone who has ever started a new website can tell you there is a degree of entrepreneurship that can’t be understated. From learning about online marketing to building partnerships with other company’s to developing a strategic point of attack for your content or products, understanding how to build a business is an important first step. 

With the rapidly increasing number of e-commerce sites a degree in e-commerce has also emerged in 2013. From data mining and analytics to understanding the global products markets this degree is most definitely the future of B2C.

Throw in degrees in marketing, finance and economics and you can quickly see how all of the degrees can be used in various ways via the online market.

Take a closer look at Potomac’s 7 most popular business degrees of 2013 and let us know how you think they can be used in the online business sector.

Via: Potomac College

The social media giant has boomed in the last half decade or so, with more than a billion users to its name. The magnitude of the impact it can have on people has not gone unnoticed. The harmful stats are sure to throw anyone for a loop. From Facebook depression to stalkers, from a loss of productivity to slander – the problems that are part and parcel of the social media network are aplenty.

Parents are often left scampering to figure out ways to keep their kids safe online, while employers are wondering what to do with employees who can’t leave the network alone. Some put up blockades on internet connections with apps and software only to realise that the person they’re trying to keep away from Facebook has found a back door (and in the case of teens and employees there’s always a loophole or a backdoor).

What’s one to do in this situation? We’ve taken some of the most significantly harmful stats that we could find and put them together in the form of an infographic for the average Joe on the internet. Whether you’re an employer or a parent, you’re going to find the numbers on Facebook misuse both interesting and disturbing.

Do you see any familiar problems in our stats? Is there something you’d like to add to our little list? Check out the image and tell us what you think.

Source: MobiStealth

Image via Imperfect Women

Have you noticed the number of posts on Google.com that now feature Google Authorship? Every time you see a post with an authors name attached and their picture you are witnessing the start of Google+ SEO magic.

Getting started with Google+ optimization for SEO is simple and surprisingly not time consuming in the least. 

Use Your Keywords

When you post a URL to Google+ a link will show to your article and above that link you can write a post update. In the update section you should introduce the article in 1-2 sentences while focusing on your keyword. For example, if your article keyword is “proper SEO” you might write: “Proper SEO practices are hard to master, here is an article that explains search engine optimization in easy to understand terms.

Link To Your Actual URL, Not A URL Shortener

There is absolutely no reason you need to use a URL shortener with Google+ since you can write in the post update window for far more than 140 characters. If you are going to use the full URL for your article make the URL look pretty. WordPress users can change the permalink structure below their titles. The general rule of thumb is to use a URL that has your keyword right at the start of the title and the start of the URL. Combining your keyword in the description, in the title and in the URL will show search engines what to look for.

Get Added To Google+ Circles

During my current days as the editor of a large scale online content company I have learned one thing to be true about Google+ authorship. People with thousands of circle connections seem to rank better for a lot of terms. Since more people are likely to share your content you are likely to receive authoritative rankings for semantic searches. Don’t spam people but create engaging content and maybe even put your Google+ follow button below articles on your personal websites.

TAG PEOPLE AND BRANDS

Authoritative ranking has swept through the socially semantic web and you can take advantage of that movement. If you write about Coca Cola be sure to tag the company’s brand page via Google+. If you write about a person, city or other data do the same. You are more likely to receive authoritative mentions if you religiously tag your Google+ posts. This is also a great way to earn yourself more Google+ Circle inclusions.

MAKE THE POST PUBLIC

Search engines will not publicize your private posts and therefore make sure your website posts are placed via a “Public” posting and not to one of your circles. Public posts mean more exposure by a larger audience and therefore the higher possibility of your post being shared and crawled by search bots.

Companies like White Chalkroad Road SEO offer other ways you can get your social search into the hands of the people you want to see it. For example, paid advertising campaigns on social networks can hyper-target users.

Essentially the trick with Google+ is to not over think the SEO involved. To be success with Google’s social network you simple need to find your keyword and use it responsibly in posts to your followers.

Be sure to link your Google Plus profile to your articles and soon you should start to see the positive effects of your efforts.

]]> http://www.blogherald.com/2013/05/04/optimizing-google-posts-for-offsite-seo/feed/ 1 http://www.blogherald.com/2013/05/03/spotify-acquires-songza-competitor-tunigo/ http://www.blogherald.com/2013/05/03/spotify-acquires-songza-competitor-tunigo/#comments Fri, 03 May 2013 20:54:30 +0000 James Johnson http://www.blogherald.com/?p=27127 Spotify has acquired Tunigo, a music platform that is powered by the Spotify API.

Employees from Tunigo will move to Spotify’s offices in Stockhom and New York City.

In the short term the Tunigo app will remain as its own entity within the Spotify eco-system.

The move echoes an industry shift towards stronger music discovery practices. Twitter most recently purchased We Are Hunted in an effort to gain access to the music discovery sector.  Tunigo however is more closely related to apps such as Songza and 8tracks. Those apps curate playlists and then suggests lists to users based on genre, theme, and mood.

The company has a staff of 17 people and before the acquisition had raised €2.4 million.

Tunigo was built on the premise that pressing a single button can generate the perfect playlist for music lovers in real-time.

Since Spotify debuted its app platform in November 2011 the Tunigo platform has remained a top ten app.

A spokesperson for the deal notes:

“The acquisition fits into our overall strategy around music discovery, basically helping our users make sense of over 20 million tracks.”

Tunigo CEO and co-founder Nick Holmstén further adds:

“Tunigo helps users find great music for every moment, and we’ve been working very closely with Spotify over the past few years. This is the perfect match from a music discovery perspective. We’re passionate about music and technology, and looking forward to further innovating within the music discovery space.”

With Apple edging ever closer to iRadio and other competitors emerging in the music discovery space the Spotify acquisition of Tunigo couldn’t have arrived at a better time.

A few months ago I made the decision to outsource my technical moments and I did so by allowing fully managed services to handle my businesses technical details.

In my path towards freeing myself from technical hiccups I broke up my outsources technical help.

WEB HOSTING WITH FULL SERVER MANAGEMENT

If you’re like me and you loathe SSH commands a fully managed server setup might be the way to go. I chose to use a fully managed WordPress hosting company because all of my websites run on WordPress. Using my new host they take care of WordPress updates, security patch fixes, server upgrades, nightly backups and pretty much everything else. No longer do I spent hours on server hardening and attempting to find WordPress code mistakes and memory leaks caused by junky plugins.

If you hate command line code and you want to free yourself from a lot of stress and headaches I recommend a fully managed support system.

REMOTE ACCESS SUPPORT

There are a lot of capable remote access programs on the market but I constantly find myself troubleshooting issues for my employees. After a while I realized that I wasn’t up-to-date on security protocols, newer and better technologies and more. I hired a company with a focus on email and remote access services to handle my company’s encryption keys and other data.

If you use various pieces of technology such as a Windows computer at home, a Mac at work, and an Android device for mobile on the go you might find it easier to allow an outside agency to handle syncing your devices. If you have employees and you don’t want to answer a billion questions this type of outsourcing makes sense.

IT business support can be surprisingly inexpensive, especially if you take into consideration all of the hours you’ll save by having someone else handle technical headaches on your behalf.

DESKTOP SUPPORT

I work in front of my computers for 12-16 hours a day and that means I run into a lot of issues. I can renew my IP address, format my hard drives, even troubleshoot some mid-level issues. With that being said I no longer allow PC and Mac issues to escalate. For a small monthly fee I was able to hire a tech company that provides 24/7 computer support. If something seems off I now call my “computer guy” immediately.

My desktop support choice included the ability to allow for remote updates by a technical expert. Not only do I have someone to fix my PC issues as they occur, I have someone who pro-actively makes sure my system is up-to-date.

Just running diagnostic checks and periodic reviews of my system was enough for me to be happy.

Important Note: I encrypt all important data files on a secure drive to keep those files away from prying eyes. I setup an update schedule with the tech firm I use so my system is only open to a technician at certain times.

CONCLUSION

I use to spend 10-15 hours a week managing my company’s server, troubleshooting my email server wouldn’t connect with my Android phone and worrying about if and when my next desktop crash would occur. These days I pay a small fee just to ignore the very technical aspects of my company that use to drive me insane.

]]> http://www.blogherald.com/2013/05/02/why-you-should-outsource-your-companys-technical-needs/feed/ 0 http://www.blogherald.com/2013/05/01/free-webinar-programs-for-personal-and-business-use/ http://www.blogherald.com/2013/05/01/free-webinar-programs-for-personal-and-business-use/#comments Wed, 01 May 2013 04:30:41 +0000 Angus Shaw http://www.blogherald.com/?p=27064 If you need to host a quick webinar with your business colleagues, study group at school, or anyone else for that matter, you might want to consider some of the very capable free applications available for general use.

Webinar programs allow users to share screencasts, chat with friends and even connect to customers. While there are numerous business, educational and personal webinar apps in the market, we focus this time on several free yet competent options.

MeetingBurner

This webinar program is one of the most popular in the market. The program allows users to host up to 10 people in a webinar at no cost and with no ads. MeetingBurner offers impressive features including Skype connectivity, fast screen sharing and reliability. MeetingBurner also provides real-time session analytics.

AnyMeeting

This is my personal favorite webinar application. While the free version does display ads, it is also capable of supporting up to 200 attendees at no cost. The AnyMeeting webinar software supports screen and application sharing alongside messaging, VoIP, and even polling support.  AnyMeeting allows sessions to be recorded and shared via social networks, which makes it perfect for training and other purposes.

Vyew - Google Chrome Plugin

Using Vyew is a simple process in which the user downloads a specialized Google Chrome plugin. Once installed, the application can support up to 5 parallel webcam streams. Joining a Vyew webinar can be accomplished in real-time and screen applications can be offered as shared resources. Vyew also offers Google image search and YouTube integration.

OpenMeetings – Free and Open Source Webinar Software

We love free and open source software at BlogHerald and OpenMeetings is a web-conferencing software package that offers the open-source type of connectivity we have come to love. OpenMeetings is hosted on a users own server and provides sharing for screen, mic, and webcam. OpenMeetings also offers a whiteboard during webinar. There is no limit on the number of users who can participate. Keep in mind that this is server side technology and therefore its scale is dependent on your own servers ability to handle user load.

Those are just a few of the free webinar programs offers online. The team at BestWebinar has compiled a list of webinar programs you should probably give a test run to before you get started.

Okay, corny I know, but on April 30, 1993 the internet’s daddy Tim Berners-Lee and his employer CERN made available for free the very software that would eventually become what we now refer to as the internet.

In a statement released on the CERN website, the agency on Tuesday said:

“By making the software required to run a web server freely available, along with a basic browser and a library of code, the web was allowed to flourish.

Berners-Lee hosted the world’s first public website on his NeXT computer, and today CERN revived that website on the very same NeXT computer that ushered in the web generation.

We have come a long way since 1993, when WAIS and Gopher powered servers and easily accessible internet was just a pipe dream. Yes it is absolutely true that “internet” systems existed before CERN and Berners-Lee took them public but it was their software that gave birth to the internet as we know it today.

Here is the original world wide web page published on the NeXT computer:

The Twitter self-serve platform allows account administrators to run their own campaigns by promoting accounts or individuals Tweets to specific groups within the social network. Advertisers can also track the results of their campaigns via Twitter analytics.

The self-serve platform provides pay for engagement activities which includes favorites, replies, and retweets.

Twitter started the advertising platform as an invite-only option. Twitter used feedback to adjust the platform before taking it live. 

Self-served engagement advertising is already a popular option on Facebook and LinkedIn. With Twitter’s focus on conversations, it will likely be a popular advertising solution for the micro-blogging service.

The move also marks one of Twitter’s first attempts to offer reasonably priced advertising that doesn’t cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If you are interested in Twitter self-serve advertising you can sign up here.

The company is currently seeking out advertisers who want to re-target ads to Web users based on their check-ins and to serve up interstitial ads via the Foursquare mobile apps platforms.

Foursquare has had a hard time raising money lately, relying on a funding round based around loans instead of outright investments. Many analysts have questioned whether or not the Foursquare business model is feasible.

Under the new system, users who check into stores might see a pop-up for that store’s products immediately upon check-in. Users might then see the same or similar ads the next time they are sitting at their desktop or using their notebook. 

Foursquare hopes to launch the retargeting platform next month. Foursquare is currently asking for $50,000 per expenditure.

Foursquare is likely to come under fire for retargeting because of its focus on user tracking; however, many apps now retarget and the practice is becoming more commonplace.

Pop-up ads, in the meantime, are expected to surface in June or early July. Foursquare is asking for interactive ads since they perform best on mobile devices.

Do you think Foursquare can still pull itself out of the dumps and turn itself into a different, more involved internet-based platform?

Many websites consider allowing guest posting in order to help boost their ratings. On the other hand, some websites choose to guest post on other sites in order to help boost their rankings. In both of these cases, you can watch your ratings go through the roof so long as you execute your posts correctly.

For this reason, you might want to think about how guest posting can help your SEO value out. There are several different reasons behind how guest posting will help you, and it is important to understand how it can benefit you. By understanding how guest posts can help you, you will be able to make sure that you use them efficiently.

Traffic

The very first reason that guest posting is a great SEO method if you own a website business or service is because it will help drive traffic to your website. The number one aim of any guest post is to drive traffic back in your direction. By reaching out and contributing to another site you will get a payback if you are careful while writing out your posts.

Credibility

At the same time that guest posts help to drive traffic to your website, they also help to boost your credibility. When people think that you are credible, they are more likely to purchase a product or a service from you.

Guest posting makes you look like a web authority if you put up enough posts around the web. Therefore, you should take advantage of open directories and offer advice to the public. Not only will this help you reach out to your target audience, but it will help make you a sound voice among your target audience.

You may not be able to directly observe the difference, but when people start to view you as an expert, they will travel to your website and you will see sales conversions on the rise.

Subscribers

In addition, when people like you, they will subscribe to your blog, your guest posts, and possibly your business or service newsletter. The more subscribers you have, the more outlets you will have to offer them valuable information about promotions, sales, and other similar events.

Once you get an email name on a subscriber’s list, you increase your chances of making a sale, increasing regular traffic, or selling a service twofold. It is the first way that a consumer displays interest, and it gives you a wider target audience to work with.

Back Links

Finally, at the very least, guest posting is great for building back links that are natural and reputable. Back links can be hard because they have to be natural and logical, but with guest posting you do not have to worry about these facts.

Every guest post is special and proves that you are a knowledgeable source; therefore all of the links will be valid. If you are worried about back links and their legitimacy, guest posting is the number one method to use.

Featured images:

•  Image by My Blog Guest

Simon Bliss blogs about SEO and social media. He’s used guest posts to drive traffic and acquire subscribers to his blogs.

In a statement regarding the acquisition Facebook said:

“By making Parse a part of the Facebook Platform, we want to enable developers to rapidly build apps that span mobile platforms and devices.”

Facebook should benefit from Parse’s ability to offer server support and software development kits (SDKs) that make app development easier. 

According to Gartner analyst Brian Blau:

“This will help them on all mobile platforms, and will be used to help attract developers to better integrate with Facebook’s other services.”

The Parse platform will likely continue to support its third-party partners, thus providing a new source of revenue for Facebook.

One of Parse’s services provides the ability to support social integration by “linking accounts across networks, resetting passwords, and keeping everything safe and secure.”

Facebook says it will continue to supports apps even if they do not use Facebook integration.

If you want to take your website beyond amateur hour, you’ve probably already realised that it’s not enough to get lots of people to visit. If it was, black hat SEO techniques (like putting ‘free porn sex hot girls free car win’ in white text on a white background) would be more excusable mistakes.

But here’s the kicker: it’s not enough. Not only do you need to very quickly convince a searcher that your description in the SERP is their perfect match – you also need them to continue believing that when they arrive at your site.

I’ve got a few pieces of advice to help you get that conversion rate up.

Keywords

A massive mistake that I see time and time again is putting too much importance on these so called ‘keywords’. If your site is relevant to the search, it will naturally have keywords that create that relevance. I’m not saying ‘Don’t worry about keywords’ but at least be clever, rather than just spraying your website with supposedly valuable hooks in an act of desperation.

For a start, using keywords like ‘car for sale’ or ‘nail salon’ is a) pitting you against millions of other results and b) not specific enough. That searcher wants a blue car with room in the back for his mountain bike, and the nail bar has to be within walking distance of York town centre.

You can only target people whose needs YOU ARE GOING TO FULFILL – otherwise your site is useless to them and you will never make a conversion. You don’t need thousands of people to be drawn to your website; you just want the ones who want you as well.

Usability

When I’m trying to find something in a hurry using my terrible Blackberry or in a dodgy Wi-Fi hotspot, the last thing I have time for is an unresponsive or poorly laid-out site.

If you want your website to be anything other than an online ad, your site must work at least rudimentarily for mobile devices. I only ever use a PC at work because I have a tablet and this is true of millions of other internet users. We want answers and we want them NOW. If a site gives me that when I’m rushing or panicking, I’m pretty likely to engage in a transaction and therefore no basket abandonment or the equivalent.

You need to make sure your site isn’t garbled for a tablet user in case they spend five minutes filling in a form only for your ‘Submit’ button not to work. Get your visitor from A to B as quickly and fluidly as possible so they’re buying before they know it.

Copy

If you are a great company offering a great service, make sure you really sell what’s special about you on your site. Mumbling on for paragraphs about your ‘business solutions’ is a sure fire way to get people clicking off. Just remember that no one actually cares where you went to university; they just want to know how you’re going to make their life easier and nicer.

With that in mind, don’t just list your services; tell visitors how those services will solve their problem.

For example, ‘We provide a drain jetting service’ could become ‘Your blocked toilet will be a distant memory after our drain jetting treatment’. That’s what I’m after – thank you Mr Plumber, I’ll see you Friday. Always remember that your visitor may not know what the solution is, but they’re an expert on the problem.

Here’s a good general rule for writing copy that aids conversion: ‘We’ is old and ‘You’ is gold.

Design

Your design appeals to all the subconscious decision-making your visitor does in their journey from search to sale. Any little thing can put someone off, but there are a lot of general design rules that can help you with conversion rate optimisation.

Vitally, your site must be clean and uncluttered, with plenty of space. Huge blocks of text will be avoided, poor colour choices will annoy, and badly-organised navigations will cause a high bounce rate.

Lead your visitors’ eyes to important directive phrases with stand-out calls to action (CTAs). ‘Order your free glossy treehouse brochure’ needs to be placed above the fold so everyone sees it, and should take some kind of graphical style so that it’s distinct from other text. This combination of directive language and eye-catching design is a great way to up your conversion rate.

The world of online marketing is being forced to become a nicer place. The importance put on good website design and engaging copy is inescapable – and you shouldn’t want to escape it. Google’s motto ‘Don’t be evil’ can be applied here: make choices based on what your customer wants and you’ll not go far wrong.

What other advice is there for website owners worrying about their conversion rate? If you’ve run into trouble or you have some great tips, let us know.

About the Author
Honor Clement-Hayes is a web project manager who’s seen an awful lot of bad websites in her time. She has a deep love of quality copy and web design and wants to help other people get there too. She writes for Strategy Internet Marketing.

Image by John. Karakatsanis

VPNs are also a great way to access websites that are restricted by a specific geography. Many users take advantage of VPN services so they can watch, for example, a show on NBC when they live in the UK.

The Internet brings content to virtually every corner of the universe. This means that all you need for a little exposure is to get yourself on the Internet, and you have a market of billions of potential consumers.

Social media has spawned advertising, and the aim of every social media advertising campaign is to go viral. The question facing advertisers is where to advertise. There are so many platforms available from which to launch your assault on the unsuspecting public, that the choice of is almost mind numbing.

Facebook is a market leader in the social media space, and there are people who can barely function without checking or updating their Facebook page. However, it is not the only social media site that you should consider when looking to launch social ads.

Actually, I might even call it the LAST resort.

After recent studies have implied that not all Facebook clicks are real, and so are “Likes” that you pay for within a well-targeted campaign, I have tested it for myself and witnessed the horror with my own two eyes.

We all use the different social platforms out there, but hardly ever consider trading our Facebook PPC budget with any of them.

So here’s a quick summary to remind you there’s a better world out there.

LinkedIn

For those looking to target a mainly business audience, LinkedIn should be the site of choice for social advertising.

A LinkedIn advertisement, whether it be a recommendation ad or a display ad, has the capacity to reach a market approaching 200 million in more than 200 countries. Even a company page on LinkedIn which does not cost anything opens your world to a vast audience of business professionals.

Pro Tip: LinkedIn’s business interface was updated only a couple of months ago, and very few businesses have adjusted to it. Get your unfair advantage by upgrading before they do.

YouTube

YouTube is the king of getting a short film clip to the public.

If you have decided that short film clips in the form of traditional advertising are your preferred form of social advertising, then YouTube is a preferable starting point than Facebook.

Of course, links can be made on a Facebook page to a YouTube clip and everything can be cross-referenced, but it is YouTube rather than Facebook that first springs to mind when people think of video clips.

Pro Tip: YouTube Ads are expensive and get less clicks than normal AdWords ads. If you are having trouble deciding between Search page Ads and YouTube Ads, go for the first option.

Viddy/Instagram

Viddy and Instagram are shorter form deviations of the YouTube theme.

As the pace of life has increased and the world has become a much faster environment, people either assimilate information faster or don’t have the time or attention spans to assimilate vast swathes of information anymore. Adding a promo code or discount coupon to an Instagram picture is a great way to attract interested parties.

People can take in a lot more from quickly looking at a picture than they can from having to sit and listen to information. Of course, the picture and accompanying text must be compelling. Also, men are much more visual than women, so these methods of social advertising are well suited to a male audience.

Pro Tip: Find a unique Instagram hashtag that is related to your niche, and dominate it with a contest.

Twitter

Twitter is the king of going viral for those with a limited attention span.

With its 500 million members, a successful Twitter media campaign has enormous traction and something of interest can spread around the world in seconds. All it takes is a great idea and access to someone with a huge following.

Easier said than done, but nobody ever said that life was meant to be easy – even in social media land.

Pro Tip: Try different platforms that allow paying for sponsored tweets – sometimes the right tweet from the right influential figure could have more effect than thousands of dollars’ worth of advertising.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a fast growing social network site. It is the third largest site of its kind, behind Facebook and Twitter.

It has over 48 million users and distinguishes itself by facilitating users to collect and share photos of their favorite hobbies, interests, and events. It works on the premise of targeted social networking and is a sort of combination of Instagram and Facebook with the best features of both at its disposal, which makes it potentially the perfect place for your social ad.

Pro Tip: US users are using Pinterest as a search engine, sometimes even over Google.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a relatively new concept gaining traction at an alarming rate.

As a customized form of push marketing it helps you attract a target audience that is seeking what you have to offer. Rather than marketing with a scatter gun approach you can now effectively hand pick your market with a high probability of success, which should ensure quicker and higher conversion.

Pro Tip: SU doesn’t allow a paid stumble when it’s leading to a page with thin content. So to get approved, make sure to target a page with actual and interesting content.

Conclusion

Advertising may be easier than ever. The question now facing you is how to distinguish yourself from all the other wannabes and which social network to use for this task.

Facebook is by no means obsolete in the social network stakes – far from it; however, there are other options which should be considered either as alternatives to or in conjunction with a Facebook social network advertising campaign.

About the Author
Jove Welner is the CEO of App Champ, a viral community that rates new Apps and reviews them.

Image via Jason A. Howie

The team at ThingLink is bringing its specialized brand of interactive images to Facebook.

The Helsinki-based company allows users to create interactive images with its online tool, those images can then be shared in fun and unique ways.

Using the program, users can place links inside of multimedia content. Once added to a users timeline, ThingLink creates a new type of interactive photo that engages the curiosity of users. 

ThingLink CEO Ulla Engeström tells PRWeb:

“Images are becoming forums for conversation and discovery that include sharing, touching, commenting, and remixing rich media content created by others.”

Users can insert image links to music and videos, websites, and social profiles. The program works by pointing different icon types to different types of content.

Once images are created, ThingLink then providers users with analytics so they can determine how well their new interactive images are engaging with customers.

Other than GIFS, the use of images has long been considered a headache. In the past ,a simple Alt Text tag was the only way search engines could even read images. ThingLink, it appears, is changing that “dead weight” perception of the common internet-based image.

Do you plan on using ThingLink on your Facebook timeline?

On its official company blog a Tumblr employee writes:

“It works very simply: Every now and then you’ll see posts from our partners as you scroll through your mobile Dashboard.”

Tumblr began offering and testing promoted posts to desktop users one year ago via the post highlighting Radar feature.

The blogging platform has not revealed its successes with promoted tweets but a shift to mobile devices appears to speak volumes for the programs success.

According to Tumblr:

“Our fashion, entertainment, and brand partners have created some truly delightful blogs and racked up tens of millions notes on their posts.”

The Radar platform currently receives 120 million pageviews per day.

Tumblr, a privately owned company earned $13 million in revenue through 2012. Tumblr is still seeking to become profitable.

The real question at hand will be whether or not Tumblr users, a younger and more tech savvy crowd, will continue to embrace the network if its ads give the appearance of a corporate culture. Many younger users turned away from MySpace and Facebook as those networks moved towards mainstream success.

Are you okay with Tumblr Promoted Posts showing up in your mobile dashboard?

The team at web printing company Moo has compiled a list of some of the biggest blogging names and services on the planet.

Starting in 1994 when Justin Hall began blogging on links.net, the team quickly pushes forward to modern day heroes in micro-blogging, including Evan Williams and his launch of the Blogger.com network in 1999.

In 2003, gossip blogging becomes big with the launch of gossip network Gawker and Jason Calacanis’s Weblog network.  By 2007, more than 70 million blogs are being indexed by Technorati and that growth has continued.

By 2009, Tumblr alone was hosting 11 million blogs, a number that has increased at a rapid rate over the last four years. 

63% of businesses now operate blogs which typically outline their products, new hires, and other facets of their businesses. There should also be no surprise that WordPress still dominates the webspace with WP 3.5.x making up 45% of the blogging atmosphere with 54.9 million websites using the system followed by Blogger.com with 35%.

Here is the rise of blogging infographic starting in 1994 and heading through the present: