The secret to a successful social media presence is generating original, high-quality content.

Publishing content that gets widely shared on social media is good for business. Every time your content is Liked on Facebook, tweeted on Twitter, +1 on Google+, or shared on LinkedIn, it gets a stamp of approval — boosting its reach along . . . → Read More: 5 Tips for Creating Quality Social Media Content]]> by Yasmin Bendror

The secret to a successful social media presence is generating original, high-quality content.

Publishing content that gets widely shared on social media is good for business. Every time your content is Liked on Facebook, tweeted on Twitter, +1 on Google+, or shared on LinkedIn, it gets a stamp of approval — boosting its reach along with your website traffic, lead generation, and search engine optimization. And once you publish highly shareable content repeatedly, your social media clout will rise — expanding the influence and the reach of your company.

Producing such content consistently and frequently is a major challenge. It requires dedication, creativity, insight, industry knowledge, a unique perspective, and excellent writing skills.

Here are five tips for generating content that likely will be shared.

1. Newsjacked Content

Providing real-time industry news along with insightful commentary

2. Statistical Content

3. Case Studies

4. Infographics

An infographic illustrates complicated data and processes. Infographics are usually brightly colored and visually appealing. Infographics are often shared on social media, particularly on visual sites like Pinterest.

5. Visual Content

Video content is popular because it informs and entertains simultaneously.

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Having an effective local website includes ensuring mobile devices display your pages correctly. Many local searches are conducted on the go, and your web visitors need an effective presentation on their phones and tablets to understand what your business is all about.

Here are 10 tools you can use to test . . . → Read More: 10 Tools for Testing Mobile Websites]]> by Kevin Webster

Having an effective local website includes ensuring mobile devices display your pages correctly. Many local searches are conducted on the go, and your web visitors need an effective presentation on their phones and tablets to understand what your business is all about.

Here are 10 tools you can use to test for mobile optimization.

Mobile Website Builder

MobileMoxie

How To Go Mo

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I don’t think there’s a formula or recipe for business blogging success, but I do think there are some traits that are common to great company blogs.

You don’t need to have all of these things, but I think your chances of having a successful business blog will be better if at . . . → Read More: 7 Traits of a Great Business Blog]]>

1) Problem-Solving
A great company blog solves people’s problems. It sells through helping and education.

2) Openness

3) Personality

Think of it this way: Nobody likes a stuffy company blog.

4) A Plan

• How often will you publish?
• What types of articles will you publish?
• Who all in your company will be charged with writing for the blog?
• If you have multiple authors, who’s going to manage them?
• What will your comment policy be?

AdWords is obviously a complex system and requires a lot of attention and work. But when it comes to the creative part, writing ad copy, there are a few things that can give you a kickstart. Below are seve of the best tips to getting potential customers to click on your . . . → Read More: 7 AdWords Tips for Increased Clicks]]> by Carter Thomas

AdWords is obviously a complex system and requires a lot of attention and work. But when it comes to the creative part, writing ad copy, there are a few things that can give you a kickstart. Below are seve of the best tips to getting potential customers to click on your ad.

1. Research your competition!
2. Cut the fat
3. Use targeted keywords in the title and description
4. Use Capital Letters
5. Use Call to Action phrases
6. Ask a Question?
7. Ellipses (the three dot leader)

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If you must make your own scrollbars, stay as close to user expectations as possible. Unless your scrollbars look like scrollbars, users might not notice them. Unless your scrollbars behave like scrollbars, users might not be able to bring the desired content into view. In either case, your customers are limited to doing business . . . → Read More: Scrolling and Scrollbars]]> Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox:

If you must make your own scrollbars, stay as close to user expectations as possible. Unless your scrollbars look like scrollbars, users might not notice them. Unless your scrollbars behave like scrollbars, users might not be able to bring the desired content into view. In either case, your customers are limited to doing business with you on the basis of the few items that are visible without scrolling, and they might never see the full extent of your offerings. There’s no doubt that ensuring scrollbar usability provides an even higher ROI than most other usability guidelines.

With custom-designed scrollbars, you run a significant risk of creating usability problems. In our user testing of Flash usability , people simply didn’t use many of the homemade scrolling designs. The following figure shows three examples:

Contrast the failed scrollbars with the following examples of effective custom-designed scrollbars:

Scrollbars that worked.

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Back-to-basics security measures in the form of strong passwords, unique usernames, staying up to date, and keeping your site backed up are really the only truly effective things you can do at any given point in time. If you are using vulnerable plugins or themes, you are at risk. Use . . . → Read More: How to Protect Your Site from the Botnet Hack]]> by Angela

Back-to-basics security measures in the form of strong passwords, unique usernames, staying up to date, and keeping your site backed up are really the only truly effective things you can do at any given point in time. If you are using vulnerable plugins or themes, you are at risk. Use plugins and themes with caution and keep them up to date. Hackers go after low-hanging fruit, typically, so be smart.

1 – Change your admin username.

2 – Change your password to something strong (really strong)

3 – Monitor login activity

4 – Enable Two-Step Authentication

5 – Limit Who Has Administrative Privileges

6 – Backup your data NOW!

7 – Delete unused plugins and themes and UPDATE everything

8 – If you get hacked

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Fake reviews are the plague of Google Places. The search company is reportedly working on improving their anti-spam algorithm, but the status quo (according to my small-scale research) is that over 50% of the reviews are either fake, or not left by the customers themselves (which is against the terms of service). This percentage . . . → Read More: 8 Ways to Recognize Fake Google Reviews]]> by Nyagoslav Zhekov

5) Same reviews

One can easily discover if a review has already been written somewhere else on the web by a simple search on Google.com.

6) A couple of 1-star reviews, and 20 5-star ones

7. All reviews posted along a short period of time

8. The overall appearance of the Google Places listing

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If you ever experienced slow WordPress admin panel, “MySQL server has gone away” message, pages taking forever to load or you . . . → Read More: WordPress Optimization Bible]]> This WordPress optimization tutorial is the most comprehensive guide to WordPress optimization created with the intention of helping you troubleshoot performance related issues and provide you with guidelines on how to speed up your WordPress site..

If you ever experienced slow WordPress admin panel, “MySQL server has gone away” message, pages taking forever to load or you want to prepare your site for a major increase in traffic (for example Digg front page) this is the guide for you.

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Many marketers launch their social media programs because they feel they need to and then scramble to understand both how they will make these work and how they will be managed. Most of them do this with no goal in mind and worse, no understanding of how social media marketing (SMM) works.

Many believe that . . . → Read More: Your Social Media Marketing Plan in 5 Easy Steps]]> by Jasmine Sandler

Many marketers launch their social media programs because they feel they need to and then scramble to understand both how they will make these work and how they will be managed. Most of them do this with no goal in mind and worse, no understanding of how social media marketing (SMM) works.

Many believe that social is the answer to customer acquisition and are short-sided in defining realistic results. Unfortunately this all results in lost time, lost customers, lost market share, and lost profitability.

Stop chasing your tail in social. Start your SMM planning right by following these five easy steps.

SMM Step 1: Create Your Executive Overview Business Plan

Spell out your business in a one-pager to realize why you need social:

• Your Business Mission and History
• Your Business or Revenue Model
• Descriptions of your Products & Services
• Details of Your Target Audience
• Review of Your Current Marketing Efforts

SMM Step 2: Define Your Specific Social Media Goals

Here are some specific SMM goals you might use after completing your business review:

• Validate a new product or service using social as a research platform.
• Develop buzz and interest around a new product.
• Engage users in social to generate relevant and targeted traffic to your site.
• Gain market share by leading customer/client service through social.
• Generate registrations to branded events through social.

SMM Step 3: Find Your SMM Voice

Choosing your social tools appropriately is an essential piece of your online communications plan, so choose wisely.

SMM Step 5: Plan & Execute Content & Delivery

What you need to define:

• Your frequency of content delivery & response to social engagement.
• Your types and specific topics for content creation.
• Ways to increase audience engagement.
• Events that can drive social.
• Your social success metrics (number of followers, number of fans, volume of traffic back to site, number of retweets, etc.).

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Keep It Short If there’s any content in your marketing materials that could be considered “fluff,” get rid of it. Keep it short, and more importantly, keep it simple.

Comparison of the AWeber website and the MailChimp website.

Help Users Scan and Find Information

Consistent use of headers is essential on the web, and they need to be . . . → Read More: What’s So Special About Web Writing?]]> by Sarah Negugogor

Keep It Short
If there’s any content in your marketing materials that could be considered “fluff,” get rid of it. Keep it short, and more importantly, keep it simple.

Comparison of the AWeber website and the MailChimp website.

Help Users Scan and Find Information

Consistent use of headers is essential on the web, and they need to be descriptive to give users a sense of what content is on the page and where they can find the information they need.

Use Your Audience’s Language

This issue comes up frequently when trying to optimize content for search. If you’re not using the words users are searching for, you won’t be showing up in their search results.

Test With Users

User feedback is the Holy Grail of web writing.

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