Making Your Blog Stand Out and Look Professional

blogging

blogging

Making Your Blog Stand Out and Look Professional

If you are attempting to create a successful blog for personal or business reasons, you should know that looks do count. Many bloggers make the mistake of thinking that looks are not as important as content, since readers are essentially reading your blog for the words, not the way it looks.

This is true to some degree. The fact is however that people will not take your words seriously if your blog looks less than attractive. To have a successful blog you have to have it all. You must have interesting content as well as a great look. If you want to update the look of your blog, consider the following areas of importance.

Easy To Scan

The way your blog reads on a page is an extremely important part of your blog’s look. You should always remember to keep your blog posts short and to the point.

If you are treating your blog as a personal diary, your posts may be a little longer than normal. But, if you are trying to get more traffic to your blog, then you really want to focus your attention on short posts that offer the main point easily.

Most blog readers will only scan your posts, not read them word for word. So keep this in mind when you are writing. The shorter the post, the more likely they will be read.  If your blog is easy to scan because the posts are short and the breaks are clear, you will have a great looking blog.

Professional Edge

When designing or redesigning your blog, try to make it as professional looking as possible. Even if the blog is not for a business, the more professional it looks, the more seriously people will take it. Not everyone knows a lot about programming, so you may need to research it a bit. If you have the extra funds, you might even want to get a professional to program it for you. No matter what you have to do, just keep a level of professionalism in your mind throughout the designing process.

Friendly Colors

Most people don’t think twice about what colors they choose for their blog. The facts are that some colors come across better on the web than others. Blue and black are easy to see, so they are always great choices to use.

Sea-green, beige, or purple are also great soothing colors to use for a blog. You should stay away from using colors like pink, yellow, or any neon varieties. They are extremely hard on the eyes when reading them online and can deter people from reading your blog. Keep these color tips in mind when you design your blog to get the best results.

Appropriate Graphics

It has been noted that the use of pictures on your blog is a great way to boost traffic. Blogs that offer pictures that correlate with their content are fantastic.

Readers love to connect with the content further through pictures. With most blogging software offering ways to easily add pictures, it should not be a problem for most publishers to add them right into the blog. If you do have trouble, consider checking the “help” area in your blogging software for more information.

The information there should provide you with step by step instructions to help you get on your way.

Successful Layout

Most people who design blogs and websites will tell you that the layout does matter as well. The way a blog looks to the reader in important in terms of layout.

The layout should be clear and defined. If the reader is confused by the layout, they will likely not stick around to explore. They will most likely go right on to the next blog available. If you are letting a professional design your blog, you will likely not need to worry much about the layout. However, if you are doing it yourself, take a look at other successful sites to get ideas about what works and what doesn’t.

Lastly, simply test different layouts on your friends and family to see which ones they find the most suitable for your blog.

 

Ida Mae Boyd
Developer

Alan Zibluk Market Hive Founding Member

What it means to be a Work At Home Parent

work at home parentsWhat it means to be a Work At Home Parent

 In This Issue…

•   What it means to be a Work At Home Parent

•   Blogging: A Free Internet Marketing Method for the Work At Home Business People

•   Why the Markethive Blogging System is such a positive marketing “must have” software suite

How can we define a Work At Home Parent? Almost everyone is a parent, and everyone works, maybe from home…! A Work At Home Parent is a businessman or businesswoman takes care of children while working from home.

A businessman or businesswoman who conducts business at home may do so for a lot of reasons, despite reasons it gives one the flexibility to plan their time between business and family. The reasons could be numerous, but which parent would forego the opportunity of working their own hours all the while spending time with their children and family at the same time fulfilling social obligations. This class of entrepreneurs, the Work At Home Parents, also saves a lot in terms of time and money.

The main objective of a Work At Home Parent would be to integrate their business time with parenting responsibilities without a loss in income or opportunity.

This article deals with integrating entrepreneurship with parenting to the best possible effect and history of Work At Home Parenting.

The integration of entrepreneurship with parenting can be achieved by bringing together the use of time and space, accommodating parentage in business and flexibility.

Usage of time and Space:  Taking children on business errands, scheduling activities when the children are resting and getting the children used to the concept of an office that accepts their presence.

Accommodating Parentage in business: Once your business acquaintances come to know that parentage is a priority with you, they would certainly accommodate with you in taking time for caring for children. As the children grow, taking their help to perform small tasks would certainly help in a Work At home Parent’s business. It would also help in children growing responsible.

Flexibility: Working your own hours will help a work at home Parent perform and work well since they can work at times suitable and in shorter spurts than in a continuous process.

History of Work At Home Parenting: The practice of integrating entrepreneurship with parenting has been in practice for a long time since the times of merchants and artisans. These classes of entrepreneurs worked closer to their homes, with children loitering in the background. Only the historical circumstances like Industrial Revolution distanced the children away from their parent’s workplaces.

However, the recent trends of dual working parents (due to economic compulsions) brought about a void in parentage, which in turn gave rise to the concept of work/life balance making Work at Home Parentage a viable and sensible proposition.

Blogging: A Free Internet Marketing Method for the Work At Home business people

It's been years since blogging has been practiced. But it's just recently that it has been considered as one of the addicting fads. Many teenagers have resorted to blogging as an outlet for their emotions, a little online nook where they can blurt out whatever just bugs them or whatever makes them feel elated. Savvy marketers have discovered that blogging is one of the best Internet marketing methods that won't cost you a cent.

What exactly is blogging? Blog is the widely used term that refers to web log. Basically, a blog is an online journal. A blog could be set up to no cost at all, and can be used for just for the fun of it or for business reasons.

Blogging for your Internet business is one surefire way to boost the visibility of your products and services. Here are a few ways to boost your internet advertising with the help of a blog:

1. Make your clients or customers abreast on your website's alterations. Your new products and affiliate websites could also be announced through your blog.

2. Keep track of your business objectives and plans through open writing. Your blog content can be easily stored through archives. What could be better than searchable information that could be easily accessed by anyone browsing the web, right?

3. Air your opinions, advice or reviews on specific services or products that are related to your business. Publishing is a very easy process with blogging.

4. Include links that will fetch back links and subsequently improve your ranking on search engines. This could be better executed through putting well-written articles in your website. Affiliate links could also be included in your blog to earn more extra income.

5. Collect response through the ability of blogs to fetch comments from your blog readers. You can learn and improve your products and services through with the feedback from your readers.

6. Connect easily with other bloggers. When other bloggers notice that you have something good in your blog, they will put you in their favorite lists that will automatically link you to their blogs.

So, how do you set up a blog? Here are some of the options you can make use of to take advantage of this fun way to advertise your Internet business.

Why the Markethive Blogging System is such a positive marketing “must have” software suite!

MarketHive is an inbound marketing system for businesses. Inbound marketing is a communication process with respect to marketing and advertising, generally facilitated by an open, two-way dialogue, much of which is expedited by social media.

MarketHive is more than a social media model.

Most of us use Facebook and other social media in the usual way usual way, catching up on family, world news and holiday remembrances are just some of the thousands of ways Facebook and other social media programs are used.

But MarketHive is more than that. Not only can you make and assemble your blog you can post content out to many sites from the one place because all the social icons are there in various in Markethive and more are being added as we speak.

Now while you assemble and post these ideas and content to these established Social Media accounts achieves a certain amount of recognition, it is not the whole story.

Because recently some tools have now been added to Markethive that can place your posts on your own domain. The WordPress plugin and the RSS Blogging Tools, Blog Sharing and RSS Cocktail all help to get your content into the domain Search engines.

So now you have 2 sources of “fuel” for your business where the search engines can double your efforts: – Social Media awareness of your business and Search Engine placement of your domain information based on keywords and content.

So the integration between the already established social media systems, the Markethive domain itself and a series of search engines Yahoo, Bing and Google, give you, if your using Markethive, a unique value to your content, posts and videos.

Markethive can boast in the number of tools available that are way above the current offerings out there. Our marketing tools include:-

A state-of-art blogging system

Lead Capture Pages integrated with our own autoresponder design

Email Broadcaster is in addition to our autoresponder system

Group Blogging mixed with private blogs, so no limit in our Blogging System management

RSS Feeds for Personal Blogs and Group Blogs

A WordPress RSS Plugin for bringing your posts already in Markethive into your own domains

Social Media integration

Powerful in-built SEO for all the content posting

In essence MarketHive is a complete system that could even allow you to relate your aspiring business needs to a high end marketing department within the walls of your own business.

After all; link generation, article writing, blog posting and customer contact through your Blog network can work in any business.

Put all that together with Videos to YouTube posting, Forum participation all these assets are in Markethive makes it a truly a one-stop online internet marketing control panel. 

Article by:

Brian Walters – Board of Directors and Alpha Founder.

Market Promotion Site

Brian Walters Market Hive

Contact me at skype: tuneup_bj

Alan Zibluk Market Hive Founding Member

Designing Your Own Lead Capture Pages

lead capture pages

lead capture pages

Designing Your Own Lead Capture Pages

Designing and building your own lead capture page(s) is not as difficult as you may think. There are many advantages to learning this simple skill. In fact, most people are unaware that they can learn how to create lead capture pages in less than eight hours of proper training, or sometimes less.

To start learning how to build a lead capture page, you need to have the flowing.

An HTML editor to build your lead captures page with. This is a program very similar to a word processor. Believe it or not, if you can use Microsoft Word, you can use an HTML editor.

HTML editors are slightly more complicated than word programs. However, with proper training you can master using one fairly easily. There is a good chance that you already have one that came with your basic operation system.

Web hosting is the next step. This is simply a place to up-load your lead capture page to on the Internet. Be aware that not all web-hosting services are equal. Make sure you know what you are getting before you buy. If the service does not offer a quality auto-responder (which we will discuss in a moment) avoid it. Cheap web hosting is not worth your time.

Lastly, you just need a little training so you can learn how to use the following items. This is the part that is hard, but certainly not impossible to find.

Unfortunately, there are many people selling lead capture pages that don’t want you to know how simple it is to design them. In a moment, I will offer a solution to that problem.

There are many companies where you can buy lead capture pages from on the Internet. There are a multitude of disadvantages involved with having a lead capture page built for you.

What are the disadvantages?

The page you buy is drastically overpriced. Most companies offering lead capture pages are charging between $50 – $200 for only one page.

Why would you want to spend such an absorbent amount on a lead capture page that you could learn how to design yourself in only an hour or two?

You cannot alter the lead capture page’s text or “Ad Copy”. So, you have no way to test what results would come from alterations to the page. Often, changing only a few words on your page will increase your information request rates radically.

You cannot create more than one page. So you can only find out what limited results you will have from the lead capture page you buy. It’s always to your advantage to have different pages to test against each other. Then you can see which designs and text work best to attract customers to your business. After all, who knows your business better than you do? So, who is best qualified to design your pages? The answer is you.

What are the advantages to designing your own lead capture pages?

You will save a lot. Let’s say that you only design 10 pages in your life. If you were to buy them at roughly $100 each, that’s $1,000. A steep price to pay.

When you become proficient at building your own lead capture pages, you can literally have one completed and up-loaded to your server in 30 minutes.

When you host you site, you can build as many pages as you want. Then you can test them to see which pages pull the most leads and even rotate site visitors to then. It’s like going to an arcade and beating the high score on a video game. The main difference is, you always win.

You can tie your “Information request box” to an auto-responder. An auto-responder is a sequential e-mail system that delivers messages to your prospects. This will allows you to follow up with your prospects indefinitely and radically increase your closing ratio. Most people don’t purchase at first glance, but many do when you keep their attention through time using an auto-responder.

You can personalize you lead capture pages with you own audio greetings. This often increases you response rates by 20 – 50%. When people actually hear your voice, it often makes them feel more comfortable giving you their contact information.

You can build a list! This is the most important thing anyone marketing on the Internet can have. Your list is your fortune. The people on your list are always potential customers for any offer you have.

 

Ida Mae Boyd
Developer

 

Alan Zibluk Market Hive Founding Member

Become a Guest Post Champion Promoter

For the most part, guest posting is sort of like begging, right?  You have a blog that you are trying to promote, and you are hoping to increase traffic to it, By guest posting on a blog that has more traffic than your blog, you are hoping to trickle away some of the traffic on the larger blog to your smaller blog.  

That pretty much sums it up, right?  The larger more popular blog doesn't mind so much, as long as you provide useful content to the blog owners readers. It is one less blog post the owner has to write after all.

In conclusion then, guest posters are like either beggars or leeches, and blog owners who allow guest posting are a little lazy. This is sort of a cynical way of looking at guest posting, I know, but it is to illustrate a point. 

Suppose you could promise that you would not only write a blog post, but you would post the link out to tens of thousands of your social media connections, and millions of members of Facebook, and LinkedIn groups to which you belong.  Would that make your guest post seem more attractive to the blog owner?  You better believe it would!

You move from the position as a guest post beggar to a guest post promoter, and even a champion.

Listen to these comments from a blog owner on whose blog I recently promoted a guest post at:

http://www.thatsjournal.com/social-media/10-ways-to-get-more-views-on-your-linkedin-pulse-blog-posts 

"Hi John, thats awesome! I see that your post is most viewed post of the site and is trending. Also, I see that it is performing well on Twitter and LinkedIn. Thank you so much for sharing. Great Synergy"! Max Angel – Cofounder at ThatsJournal.

I suggested that he might want to join Markethive, or that he might be interested in some of the automation tools I use.

Max responded.  "You are very welcome, John. Thanks a lot for the marketing inputs. I will check it out. Thanks again for the post contribution. Please feel free to let me know if you or your friends want to share anything related to marketing. We will be happy to help. Thanks!"  I would say that is a pleased blog owner, right?

If we work together, we can help each other find these kinds of guest blog post opportunities, and spread the message about Markethive.  Feel free to contact Max about guest posting on his blog.

John Lombaerde 

PS – did I mention that this promotion also brought in at least 5 or more new Markethive subscribers?

Alan Zibluk Market Hive Founding Member

Markethive: Multi-Million Dollar Social Marketing Platform- In Pre-Launch

Multi-Million Dollar Inbound Social Marketing Platform In Pre-Launch

Markethive has created a Multi-Million Dollar inbound social marketing platform that will rival the existing social media platforms in many ways.

Many times change comes along and we don't recognize it until its too late. Internet Marketing has changed with the advent of Millennials all searching for information specific as to what they want, no longer does SEO [Search Engine Optimization] play a major role in getting noticed on the internet. Millennials want to find information, not have it jammed down their throat.

They are seekers not persuaders!

The new trend of getting noticed on the internet is through referral basis. No longer do you have to pack your articles or website full of key words and hope the search engines notice them and give them top ranking, today you just have to make sure your message gets out to the public in a social way where people notice it, and then come to you for more information. Social Infusion Marketing is the new way to market your goods and services with people seeing what you are offering, and when the time comes that the person needs your offer they will take action.

Markethive has perfected Social Infusion Marketing with a unique social platform that allows anyone who is interested in marketing their products or company to be able to do it without paying huge sums of money to get noticed. No longer does anyone have to put up with the confusing language of the SEO guru's who charge outrageous sums of money with little results, you can do it yourself!

The Markethive platform is Free to join and use, and is funded partially by an advertising platform that enables the entrepreneur to get a huge reach with low cost. Markethive is built for the Global entrepreneur, and gives them a level playing field in a world that is cluttered with everyone trying to get into each others pocket financially.

So if you have read this far, Markethive is rolling out a Pre-Launch offer, before it goes to Crowdfunding, to anyone who want to join up and learn how to use this platform to grow their business. The Social part is being built by adding as many people as possible and assisting them in growing their business through Social Infusion Marketing.

To join just click here and you will be directed to a sign up page where you can enter the platform and poke around. Here is the secret, when the platform goes to CrowdFunding the people responsible will share in the rewards, so don't waste time this launch will be HUGE!

Thanks for reading,
Dr. Raymond Jewell

PS: Dr. Raymond Jewell is a leading Economist specializing in the Small and Home Based Business Marketplace. He is a Alpha Founder with Markethive and manages several blogs on the hive. Dr. Jewell is a professional Network Marketer and represents several companies successfully. He can be reached through Markethive.

Alan Zibluk Market Hive Founding Member

So What Is A Social Media Network?

social media

social media

So What Is A Social Media Network?

Basically, a social media network is made up of individuals or organizations that are connected through various social contacts ranging from casual acquaintances to family members. Social networks are established to encourage connections and communication to occur on a wide variety of levels.

A basis for the theory of social networking was a study performed by Stanley Milgram in 1967 that established that any two random United States citizens are connected to one another by a series of six intermediaries, on the average. This idea was made more popular by the play and subsequent movie, “Six Degrees of Separation”, as well as the television show “Six Degrees”. Current Internet experiments continue to explore this concept, such as the Ohio State Electronic Small World Project and Columbia's Small World Project.

These experiments currently confirm that five to seven degrees of separation are sufficient to connect two people through the Internet. This also serves to confirm the potential effectiveness of Internet social networks to build new connections between people.

The first Internet social network began in 1995 and has 12.9 million visitors today. This makes it difficult to comprehend the rule of 150, also known as the Dunbar number that states that the size of a genuine social network is limited to about 150 members. Over 200 Internet social networking sites exist and the number of members that belong to most them steadily increases.

In an Internet social networking site, a group of founders sends messages to invite members to join the site. Those members then invite additional members and the links continue to grow. Some social networking sites offer viewable profiles for members, address books and online social connections on a social or business level. Many Internet social networks are open to the public.

Internet social networks are a convenient way to link with new people, both personally and professionally. Consider that the senior director of Nielson/NetRatings, Jon Gibs, states that Internet “…social networking is not a fad that will disappear. If anything, it will become more ingrained in mainstream sites.”

The following are 20 of the most Popular Social Media Sites Right Now published by Antony Maina

Facebook

This is the biggest social media network on the Internet, both in terms of total number of users and name recognition. Founded on February 4, 2004, Facebook has within 12 years managed to accumulate more than 1.59 billion monthly active users and this automatically makes it one of the best mediums for connecting people from all over the world with your business. It is estimated that more than 1 million small and medium-sized businesses use the platform to advertise their business.

Twitter

You might be thinking that limiting your posts to 140 characters is no way to advertise your business, but you will be shocked to know that this social media platform has more than 320 million active monthly users who make use of the 140 character limit to pass on information. Businesses can use Twitter to interact with prospective clients, answer questions, release latest news and at the same time use the targeted ads with specific audiences. Twitter was founded on March 21, 2006, and has its headquarters in San Francisco, California.

LinkedIn

Founded on December 14, 2002, and launched 0n May 5, 2003, LinkedIn is hands-down the most popular social media site for professional networking. The website is available in 24 languages and has over 400 million registered users. LinkedIn is great for people looking to connect with people in similar industries, networking with local professionals and displaying business related information and statistics.

Google+

While it’s no Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, Google+ has its place among the popular social media sites. Its SEO value alone makes it a must-use tool for any small business. Launched on December 15, 2011, Google+ has joined the big leagues registering 418 active million users as of December 2015.

YouTube

YouTube — the largest and most popular video-based social media website — was founded on February 14, 2005, by three former PayPal employees. It was later bought by Google in November 2006 for $1.65 billion. YouTube has over 1 billion website visitors per month and is the second most popular search engine behind Google.

Pinterest

Launched in March 2010, Pinterest is a relatively newcomer in the social media arena. This platform consists of digital bulletin boards where businesses can pin their content.  Pinterest announced September 2015 that it had acquired 100 million users. Small businesses whose target audience is mostly made up of women should definitely invest in Pinterest as more than half of its visitors are women.

Instagram

Like Pinterest, Instagram is a visual social media platform. The site, launched on October 6, 2010, has more than 400 million active users and is owned by Facebook. Many of its users use it to post information about travel, fashion, food, art and similar subjects. The platform is also distinguished by its unique filters together with video and photo editing features. Almost 95 percent of Instagram users also use Facebook.

Tumblr

Tumblr is one of the most difficult to use social networking platforms, but it’s also one of the most interesting sites. The platform allows several different post formats, including quote posts, chat posts, video and photo posts as well as audio posts, so you are never limited in the type of content that you can share. Like Twitter, reblogging, which is more like retweeting, is quick and easy. The social networking website was founded by David Karp in February 2007 and currently hosts more than 200 million blogs.

Flickr

Flickr, pronounced “Flicker,” is an online image and video hosting platform that was created by the then Vancouver-based Ludicorp on February 10, 2004, and later acquired by Yahoo in 2005. The platform is popular with users who share and embed photographs.  As of October last year, Flickr had more than 112 million users and had its footprint in more than 63 countries. An average of a million photos are shared daily on Flickr.

Reddit

This is a social news and entertainment networking website where registered users can submit content such as direct links and text posts. Users are also able to organize and determine their position on the site’s pages by voting submissions up or down. Submissions with the most positive votes appear in the top category or main page. Reddit was founded by University of Virginia roommates Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman on June 23, 2005. A decade later, the site boasts more than 36 million registered accounts and 231 million monthly visitors.

Snapchat

Snapchat is an image messaging application software product that was created by Reggie Brown, Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy when they were students at Stanford University. The app was officially released in September 2011, and within a short span of time they have grown immensely registering an average of 100 million daily active users as of May 2015. More than 18 percent of all social media users use Snapchat.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp Messenger is a cross-platform instant messaging client for smartphones, PCs and tablets. The app relies on the Internet to send images, texts, documents, audio and video messages to other users that have the app installed on their devices. Launched in January 2010, WhatsApp Inc. was acquired by Facebook on February 19, 2004, for about $19.3 billion. Today, more than 1 billion people use the service to communicate with their friends, loved ones and even customers.

Quora

Capitalizing upon human curiosity is an ingenious idea that would lead to the creation and launch of Quora in June, 2009. The website, co-founded by two former Facebook employees, Charlie Cheever and Adam D’Angelo now claims that it received more than 80 million monthly unique visitors, with half of them coming from the U.S. So far, the question-and-answer website has managed to raise $141 in venture capital funds and while it doesn’t look ready to go public yet, it’s definitely a company to watch.

Vine

With over 40 million users, Vine is a rapidly growing video sharing social media app that allows users to share 6-second video clips with their followers. While this looks like a really short time for a video, businesses of all sizes are having tremendous success using the service. Vine was founded in June 2012 and later acquired by Twitter in October 2012, just before its official launch.

Periscope

Periscope is a live video streaming mobile app that was developed by Joe Bernstein and Kayvon Beykpour. The two started the company in February 2014 and later sold it to Twitter for $100 million in March 2015. Four months after its March 2015 relaunch, Periscope said that it had surpassed 10 million accounts and in December the same year, Apple announced Periscope as the app of the year.

BizSugar

BizSugar is a social networking platform and niche resource for small business owners, entrepreneurs and managers. The site was created in 2007 by DBH Communications, Inc., a provider of award-winning business publications, and later acquired by Small Business Trends LLC, in 2009. The platform allows users to share videos, articles, blog posts, podcast among other content. It also allows users to view and vote on submissions by other members.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a discovery engine that finds and recommends content for its users. More than 25 million people use StumbleUpon for entertainment and information. In addition, more than 80,000 publishers, brands, and other marketers have used StumbleUpon’s Paid Discovery platform to promote their businesses. StumbleUpon was owned by eBay from May 2007 to April 2009, when Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith and several investors bought it back. It is now an independent, investor-backed startup once again.

Delicious

This is a social bookmarking web service for discovering, storing and sharing web bookmarks. The site was founded by Peter Gadjokov and Joshua Schachter in 2003 and acquired in 2005 by Yahoo. By the end of 2008, Delicious claimed that it had bookmarked 180 million URLs and acquired more than 5.3 million users. The service was later sold to AVOS Systems in April 2011 who later sold it to Science Inc. In January this year, Delicious Media said that it had acquired the service.

Digg

Founded more than a decade ago (November 2004), Digg is a news aggregator with a curated front page that selects stories specifically for the Internet audience, The topics vary widely from trending political issues to science to viral Internet issues and anything in between. Digg supports sharing of content to other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. In 2015, the company claimed that it had about 11 million active monthly users.

Viber

Viber is a Voice over IP (VoIP) and instant messaging app for mobile devices that was developed and released by Viber Media on December 2, 2010. The app also allows for the exchange of audio, video and images between users. As of April 2014, Viber had accrued close to 600 million registered users and 230 monthly active users.

 

Ida Mae Boyd
Developer

Alan Zibluk Market Hive Founding Member

Facebook Marketing: Are You Using It in Your Business?

facebook marketing

facebook marketing

Facebook Marketing: Are You Using It in Your Business?

As a business owner, you know that you are constantly wondering how you can attract more clients. If you own an online business, the answer to your traffic problem is internet marketing. You need to remember that without marketing, you will never be able to get targeted traffic to your website. Today, any kind of business, whether online or offline are now using internet marketing in order to expand their reach for new customers.

Internet marketing is not quite as easy as it may sound. You have to consider the fact that you need to work hard in order for you to attract targeted traffic to your website. You need to write a lot of good articles to read that is related to the products or services that you are selling and you also need to join groups and participate in them. Also, your website need to be attractive.

Whatever you are selling, internet marketing is a hard task to do, but when it works, it is well worth the effort and money.

However, thanks to social networking website, such as Facebook, you will see that internet marketing is a lot easier than ever before. First of all, in all social networking websites, Facebook is one of the most popular sites. Here, you will already have the numbers you need. This means that it already has traffic. With millions of subscribers logging in and out each day and also millions more registering each day, you can be sure that you will be able to get your fair share of targeted traffic.

In Facebook, you will see all kinds of people with different social backgrounds.

Also, the members themselves will try to separate themselves from distinct groups. The fact that Facebook will allow people to create and join groups you will be able to easily find your target customers.

Whether the group is separated by age, school, gender or interests, you will see that you will find all sorts of groups in Facebook.

Another great thing about Facebook is that it will provide every member with the tools needed in order to communicate with their network. These tools can be considered to be great tools for you to use in order to advertise or market your products or services to other Facebook subscribers. From applications to news feeds and blogs, you will see that Facebook will be able to provide it all.

Now that you know about Facebook, the next question would be how to market in it. The first thing that you need to do is subscribe in Facebook. After subscribing, you may want to try adding your old friends. Invite them to join Facebook to start building your network.

Then, try joining groups with interests that is related to the products or services that you are selling.

Use the tools in Facebook to attract people to view your profile page. Add videos, pictures and applications.

Basically, this is how Facebook can help in marketing your products or services. It will readily provide you with traffic and the tools you need to market, but it is entirely up to you to do the marketing yourself.

You have to figure out how to properly use the tools in order for you to effectively market your products or services. These are the things that you need to remember about Facebook.

Ida Mae Boyd
Developer

Alan Zibluk Market Hive Founding Member

Demo Capture Page Draft

 

Turnkey Marketing Automation
 
 
 
Markethive Advantage
 
Markethive has fused the Social Aspect of Entrepreneurs with a state of the art very powerful Marketing platform for free. Email Autoresponders, Capture Pages, Blogcasting, etc.

Attain top SEO and reach billions of people on the Social Networks is a typical day for the Entrepreneur at Markethive

The Force Multiplier
 
When you gather the troops of Entrepreneurs as a family, with a common goal, the power of the Inbound Marketing of Markethive explodes exponentially.

Broadcasts in the trillions begin to happen, reaching SEO results unheard of and building lifelong partnerships with other Entrepreneurs is Markethive.

I started using Markethive a few months ago. The Tools are incredible, rotators, tracking, coop press releases, email autoresponders, capture pages, the blog platform is genius, the knowledge shared and the family of other entrepreneurs just makes the results of marketing with Markethive the very best.

It is all free, because they fund the system with advertising and then share 50% of the advertising with us in the affiliate program.

Steve Smith

I made this "first generation" capture page in the Markethive Blog system, to show you what can be done. It is swipe-able, so please use it for your own benefits. Make sure to change out the capture widget code! You need to remove this TAG too.

Thomas Prendergast

Alan Zibluk Market Hive Founding Member

Affiliation the Quickest Way to Get Started Online

affiliate marketing

affiliate marketing

Affiliation the Quickest Way to Get Started Online

Yes, your online content will be packed with free tips and techniques and secret weapons for becoming the next internet marketing millionaire.

However, it can be very time consuming especially if you are just starting to build your online business. The arrival of the Internet has made the tasks of promoting your business much easier than before.

You get instant feedback with your advertising that in times gone by would have taken months if not years to obtain. The same sort of results that now can take as little time as a few minutes with Google ad words can achieve the same results, saving you time and money.

Some of the benefits of an online business: the most inexpensive way to start a business, unlimited market for your products or services, automatic streams of constantly growing income (otherwise known as passive income), more time you are able to spend with your family and loved ones as a result. So ask yourself what products can I offer that are of interest. What type of product can I sell that will take the hassle out of making money online what can I sell that will give my customers instant gratification and solve my prospect's problem, the answer is electronic downloadable product with instant access 24/7. 

If your ads or products do not clearly spell this out, and tell the customer how you will give them what he/she desires, most times you will not make the sale, if you go down the path of selling hard product then you are going to require a customer service department, or shipping department, then you must see how many people you will need to employ.

If your selling digital downloads then you don’t need any of the above you can set up your business and it will run on automatic.

While it is true that other major search engines have also recently launched similar tools, Google remains in a class of its own in terms of what it can deliver and the sheer experience of being the premier and largest search engine provider.

The truth is that an affiliate needs fairly high levels of traffic to make money from any online affiliate business opportunity. An Affiliate Program Can Help Your Business. The truth is that there is a lot of hard work in terms of setting up structures and driving traffic to your affiliate site that needs to be done over a period of time before the money can start to roll in thick and fast.

This is the reason why most people who register to join a top 10 online business opportunity affiliate program usually give up somewhere along the way. There is probably no online business opportunity today that is more viable than joining an affiliate program or two. In fact it has now become clear that chances of online business success are much higher with an affiliate program opportunity than by trying to launch your own new product or service. Small companies do it to become big while big sites do it to retain their position.

Casting aside the more technical programming jargon, the most important things to making money online in terms of SEO is inbound links and good content on your website.

Have some Meaningful Content about your Keyword or Keyword Phrase. You need to have meaningful content that the Search engines can use to determine if your product is relevant to what the search terms are that people are typing in there browsers.

The engines are getting much smarter about robotic page generated sites that are not able to be read by humans and are only there to trick the search engines, pages like this are a thing of the past, these days the more relevant the information you provide to people through your web site the more success you will have. This is not a lesson on search engines but given the amount of content based on the one word 'SEO' you can begin to understand how popular this idea is.

In conclusion affiliation is the quickest way to get stated online and you need relative content to what it is that you are selling, all matched to the key words that people are using to find what they are looking for. This with the determination to succeed and a little hard work and you’re on the way to setting up our own online empire.

Ida Mae Boyd
Developer

Alan Zibluk Market Hive Founding Member

How to Create Unique Content to Build Your Blog’s Authority

This is a guest contribution from Julie Petersen.

With so much information on the web these days, the competition for high-quality content is strong – and it’s growing.

unique blog content

You can’t always introduce new topics to your target audience, since influential bloggers have already written tons of content on the issues you have in mind. There is a trick though: you don’t necessarily need an original idea to craft unique content. You can always develop your own piece by adding the right dose of creativity into any topic your audience is interested in.

For example, let’s say you’re running a lifestyle blog and you’ve exhausted all topics about getting inspired, finding a purpose in life, achieving goals, and all other themes that are usual for these types of blogs. You can take the good-old idea on giving goal planning tips, but you can add a different angle. Here are few examples:

  • How Blogging Can Help You Plan and Achieve Life Goals
  • Do You Really Need a Calendar for Planning?
  • How Plans Can Prevent Procrastination

Or, you can relate your niche with the concept of blogging, so you’ll give tips to other bloggers. In this case, the topic could be something like Unusual Methods for Planning Blog Posts. There are endless variations and spins you can think of.

You may find several other online posts when you get such an idea, but your individual approach will make it different. How can you think outside the box to bring a new angle to a tired topic?

This blog post takes the traditional theme of planning and connects it to something unconventional: pet birthdays, fan conventions, and divorce parties. It’s a nice example of how you can give new life to a boring topic.

Remember: it’s definitely possible to achieve originality and a substantial following. However, it’s going to take hard work and practice. Read on; we have some tips that will help you with that!

Why is unique content so hard to find?

There is a simple answer to that question: huge competition.

It doesn’t matter what your blogging niche is and what topic you have in mind; your audience can probably find tons of other resources when googling the keywords you used.

That being said, it’s clear why it’s hard to find entirely unique content if you limit the term unique to something that’s available from a single author. Even if you think of a topic that has never been covered before, other bloggers will get inspired by it and they will take it further with their own ideas, so it won’t be that unique any longer.

Does that mean you should give up on blogging? Of course not! You see, there is a trick: the term unique is quite flexible in its essence. You can still work on an evergreen topic and bring something fresh on the table. You only need to reveal your individual style and think of some original ideas.

Matthew Inman’s The Oatmeal is a great example of how boring or mainstream topics can get really fun when you add a twist.

Why unique content is important 

If you don’t serve anything new for your audience, you won’t be special for them. They don’t want to read the same old tips over and over again.

For example, let’s say you’re writing a post that’s supposed to help people surpass mild depression. Instead of writing cliché tips like “read a book, watch a movie, take a walk, talk to friends, and meditate,” you can suggest something radical, like “quit the job that’s making you miserable and start your own business.” – but you better be ready to back it up!

You can also link the theme with celebrities; that often works really well. Untitled3

The reality of search engine optimization (SEO) is essential to understand

Without satiating and unique content, your site will not receive the search results you want. Search engines value your content as much as your viewers. And ultimately, you will need exposure in search engines to achieve success.

A search engine measures uniqueness a bit differently than your readers do. Your audience needs fresh ideas, but Google needs non-plagiarized content. In other words – do not copy someone else’s work!

Your content needs to include strategically-placed keywords and phrases as well and clear, well-written human copy.

Keywords in the right places are indicators to search engines, which will help them to classify your site and target the appropriate viewers during searches. Don’t overstuff your piece with keywords, though. When you use too many keywords that your audience can easily recognize, they will affect the overall uniqueness of your post.

Valuable content will increase your expertise and authority

In addition to search engines, you need to consider your readers. Search engines will give your blog/website higher SEO rankings if your content is seen as an “authority”. To achieve this status, your posts need backlinks, as well as a steady and large number of visitors (who maintain long view times).

When you give readers something of substance, you are more likely to retain them as consistent visitors. When they get used to your blog, they will perceive your content as unique even when there are tons of similar articles on the web. They will always read yours first. If, for example, someone is looking for articles related to digital, social media, and technology, they are most likely to visit Mashable as an authoritative blog in the niche, since they know they will always find something valuable there.

Think of it this way: if you read informative articles of great value, you’re most likely to bookmark those sites for future use. That’s the effect you want to achieve with your own posts.

How to create unique content 

You will need to begin each post with a great idea, however, this can be difficult to achieve on a consistent basis.

First, you must understand that high-quality, original content requires various areas of focus. Don’t narrow your mindset down to the specific niche you’ve chosen; make sure to research other areas of interest and connect them with topics relevant to your audience.

Review the following guidelines to get started.

1. Idea Generation

If you’re creating site content, then you probably have ample experience and knowledge in a specific area to produce quality work (and a foundation to back it up). However, that does not always mean you can create intriguing titles, headlines or unique ideas.

It’s normal to face a point of low inspiration. Below are some of the best online destinations that help you find ideas for unique posts.

Online generators

TweakYourBiz is a great option that quickly provides hundreds of ideas (separated into categories like lists, bests and problems) for writers with a simple keyword search. Not all of these suggestions will seem logical, but at least they will inspire you to find a twist to the theme you plan to cover.

Other tools, such as Coschedule’s Headline Analyzer and AMI’s Emotional Value Headline Analyzer, will help you choose the most efficient headline when you have few alternatives on your mind.

Blogs

Expand your imagination and check out blogs outside your given niche. Even if a blog is completely off-topic from your own, you will be surprised to find unrelated areas of interest intersect and inspire new ideas. Then, you need to relate those ideas to your own niche, and you’ll come up with a unique topic for your piece.

For example, let’s say you find an awesome blog post about the importance of academic writing, but you’re running a blog related to business startups. You can infiltrate this ideas in your own editorial schedule with a post entitled How Academic Writing Made Me a Better Businessman.

Social Media

This is a great way to discover what’s trending in your blog’s subject matter. If people are talking about it and reading about it, then you need to provide them with your perspective. Maybe the idea won’t be 100% unique, but your own point of view will make it original.

2. Adequate Research

Once you get some strong ideas, it’s time to research properly. You don’t want to give your readers false information and you don’t want to tarnish your status either.

Start by using Google and search your blog idea or title. The results will be your first exposure to the competition. Review the top results and look for the following:

  • Check for clarity and flow. Is the article informative and interesting? Does it flow naturally? If it’s believable and factual, you can add it as a resource in your post.
  • Be attentive and check the date on the posts as well. If the posts are newer, they will seem more relevant to your audience.

It’s also imperative to keep your research organized. The popular app Evernote is a great source for storage. The tool connects on all devices and users can save anything from video and audio files, to online articles, images and more. Have you heard the latest news? Evernote now allows you to pin the content you locate online. That’s awesome, since you’ll get an even better overview of the sources of inspiration you find.

When you keep track of all resources, you won’t risk using someone else’s unique ideas just because you forgot where they came from.

Remember: get inspired by the research; do not copy the content you found!

3. Editing and proofreading

Once you’ve drafted a post, it’s time to edit. You should never publish a first draft. This disregards an essential part of the process and will greatly affect the authority of your site content. Use the following tips to get started:

You should make sure to check the uniqueness of your piece during the editing process. Use online tools like Plagtracker to be sure your content is 100% original.

When writing for the web, your articles must be engaging, but also concise and to the point. The attention span in the digital world is short, regardless of the audience you’re targeting. If you post boring, unclear content, it won’t matter how unique it is… not many people will read it.

Use tools like The Hemingway app for help. The tool highlights issues like complex sentences and adverb usage, and it provides an overall readability score.

Read your content out loud to yourself. This can show you repeated or misplaced words that you missed while reading quietly to yourself. It’s also a great check for flow and natural tone. Repetitiveness affects a reader’s impression for uniqueness, so make sure to get rid of it.

No matter what topic you are covering, your content should always be created with passion, motivation and honesty. Every content creator should be using these tips and tools to enhance the creation process and come up with unique pieces of content.

If you believe that my message is worth spreading, please use the share buttons if they show at the top of the page.

Stephen Hodgkiss
Chief Engineer at MarketHive

markethive.com


Alan Zibluk Market Hive Founding Member