5 Ways Content Marketing is Changing Business

Content marketing as a concept has been around for decades. In today’s high-paced world of social media and checks-and-balances, producing content has become a business in and of itself. The way content marketing has been envisioned, implemented, and assessed may have changed a lot in the past 20 years, but the basic principle hasn’t: marketing is all about telling customers why they need your business.

Here are five ways content marketing truly is changing the face of business in 2013.

5. It’s now necessary for businesses to define exactly who they are. Perhaps the best and worst thing about content marketing is that it forces companies to take a good, hard look at their ideals, standards, and brand identity. Gone are the days when businesses could plead ignorance or stay “above the fray.” Content marketing means creating relevant content which can only be accomplished once you know who your business is and what it stands for.

4. Businesses now have a more equal playing field. It’s a sad fact that mom and pop shops appear to be a dying breed in much of America, but content marketing is helping decrease the distance between Big Business and Main Street. Thanks to the internet, good content can (and will) be shared regardless of who created it, so having something valuable to say is no longer the sole privilege of Fortune 500 companies. In fact, small businesses may actually have more to gain by effective, regular content marketing.

3. Companies now have more control than ever over how their brand is portrayed to the public. One of the best things about content marketing is that it allows marketers and whole brands to choose a stance. Designating your company as an expert in a particular segment of your industry, for example, by putting out regular blog posts and articles can drive business from that segment. Content marketing isn’t just about disseminating information, either. It’s about responding to what your customers are asking from you whether it’s data, explanations, or testimonials.

2. Customers are able and encouraged to make highly-informed decisions. Before the internet, customers often found themselves blindly choosing between businesses – perhaps with the help of a consumer reporting magazine, at best. With so much content out there nowadays it’s not only possible it’s advisable to do loads of research before making any big money decision, for consumers and B2B transactions. Giving potential customers loads of info on who your company is and what it’s an expert on before they get to the purchasing phase can help set the stage for them to buy from you.

1. Businesses have more accountability than ever before. It is no longer possible to ignore customer complaints or hide behind an automated phone line. Content marketing goes hand-in-hand with social media in that it requires a sense of honesty and openness never before seen in business. Don’t just think of content marketing as a chore – it’s an opportunity! It’s a chance for your business to talk directly to your current and potential customers, whether that’s providing free info, negating a negative news piece on your industry, or just giving valuable advice. Content marketing means you have to face your customers head on, but that’s a good thing. Businesses competing openly means better experiences for the customers.

Guest Post by Ryan

Ryan is a Product Manager at BizShark.com, with 5 years experience in online marketing and product development. In addition to web related businesses, he also enjoys the latest news and information on emerging technologies and open source projects.

Read More

6 Ways To Use Social Media For Career Enhancement

Social Media is beginning to play an even larger role in the professional world, with employers asking applicants for their Facebook profile and Twitter handles. It is essential you make sure that there is nothing online that will make you look unprofessional or sketchy in an employer's eyes. Unfortunately, what companies see on your personal profile can impact their impression of your work performance. However, while social media can be dangerous, there are some ways you can use it to nail a higher paying job, and push your career to a new level.

Pick the Right Platform

Picking the right platform to use is as important as building a network and sturdy profile. The three major social networks used for business are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

• LinkedIn is a business-oriented social network that lets you list all of your skills, your old company positions (showing employers that you were a former worker there), and join groups. One of the best features of LinkedIn is its search function, which pulls results from Simply Hired and Indeed. There is also a Q&A section of LI, where you can ask or answer other user's questions, which helps establish you as an expert.
• Facebook is probably the largest social network. Although mostly used for personal use, Facebook allows you to request friendship with colleagues and acquaintances and create brand pages to promote yourself or a company.
• Twitter is the most lightweight and minimalistic of the three main social networks, limiting your posts and profile description to 140 characters. This makes Twitter primarily a promotion and updating tool, with too little substance to gain a following that will make a huge impact. However, it is a handy service to keep your colleagues in the know of what you're up to.

Make a Clean and Detailed Profile

A professional profile is one of the first things someone sees when they view your page, and is the first impression that will keep people clicking. Some of the qualities of a good profile is a fleshed out description of your skills and talents, your greatest accomplishments, and your aspirations. Your profile should act as an online portfolio, and even as a mini-resume.

Network

Once you've got a good-looking profile set up, you'll need to start networking. Many social networks allow you to sync contacts from your email, which is a good start to finding more of your peers. You can also find mutual friends through other profiles. Joining groups and fan pages can help you meet new people. If your profile shows you are competent in your field and that you have the right connections, you will not go unnoticed.

Brand Yourself

Making a professional looking profile is key, but you need to find something that makes you stand out. You need to create your own personal brand. Developing your "brand" may require development of a personal logo, a slogan, a personal style, or maybe even a blog. You also might find success in creating a product or service to sell, such as an EBook, because it helps define you as an expert in your industry. If your product becomes a success, it can become a self-sustaining business of its own.

Follow Industry-Leaders

Following industry leaders can help you stay up-to-date with current news, trends, and breakthroughs. It can also show an employer that you know and care about your industry. It also helps to follow companies, and people in companies, that you'd like to work for. This is one of the best ways to discover holes in your resume you should fill, new skills to learn, or just essential things to know.

Gain Exposure With Videos

One of the best ways to gain more exposure is to record videos on websites like YouTube and Vimeo. Online videos have become more and more popular, and every-day people have been creating tutorial series to video blogs. But because you're a professional, you can offer viewers an inside look to your industry that many others cannot (or will not) provide.
With social media playing a larger role in employment, it is essential to have a professional and clean page. Remember that whatever you put online stays online; don't do anything that may ward off a potential employer.

Guest Post

Mike Walters is a writer for Engagement Health. Mike enjoys writing about employee benefits plans.  Mike spends his time away from writing enjoying the outdoors and spending time with his friends and family.

Read More

Mastering LinkedIn

Although it has taken a backset to other more popular social networking sites, LinkedIn is the most popular professional networking site. With more than 175 million users, LinkedIn is an underutilized but powerful platform.

Take Advantage of all LinkedIn has to Offer

Personalize your URL.
Instead of a million numbers, make it look nice and clean with a unique personalization.  
Add a profile badge to your personal website.
Promote your LinkedIn page with a Profile Badge on your own personal website or blog.
Make your blog/website links more appealing.
Change the anchor text to make those links more appealing to people who view your profile.  
SEO for your profile.
Use keywords in your headline or summary to make your profile more visible.
Install applications.
Take advantage of LinkedIn’s different applications improve profile.
Take advantage of "Saved Searches."
Three searches can be saved and run again later.  Email reminders can also be sent once new members match your saved searches.
Extend the life of your questions.
Enable more time for users to answer your questions by re-opening questions once they are closed.
Quickly turn profile into a resume.
By choosing the resume template, you can quickly transform your profile into a resume that can be exported to them print, email or share.
Use LinkedIn's job board to find a job.
The job board allows you to search for jobs in different industries and locations.
Get endorsed.
A new features called Endorsements, enables users to endorse their connections for skills they’ve listed.  Endorsements will give you credibility.

Professional Networking on LinkedIn

Send messages to people you are not connected to with OpenLink.
Being a member of the OpenLink network, available to premium members only, allows anyone to send them messages.
Keep Up-to-Date with "Network Updates."
Keep tabs on what your connections are up to by periodically checking the Network Updates on the LinkedIn homepage.
Identify Yourself.
Allow yourself to be visible when viewing their profiles.
Export connections.
LinkedIn enables you to easily export your connections.
Leverage the perks of LinkedIn Groups.
Connect with those who are in the same groups as you without having a first-degree connection.
Share your LinkedIn status updates on Twitter.
Syndicate LinkedIn updates to Twitter.
Network in real life.
Use LinkedIn Events to make face-to-face connections. You can even promote events that you are hosting.

Business/Marketing Strategies

Optimize for the new Company Page design.
Make sure your webpage accommodates the new LinkedIn design.
Post Targeted Company Status Update.
Make the most of your LinkedIn Company Page by publishing company status updates for all your page followers to see. Increase the effectiveness by using LinkedIn’s targeting options.
Track company buzz.
Company Buzz allows you to track what people are saying about your company and related topics on Twitter.
Add a video to your Company Page.
Create interaction on your business' Company Page by adding video.
Leverage LinkedIn Answers to its fullest marketing potential.
Gain knowledge by browsing questions and answers that have been shared by others.
Track industry news with LinkedIn Today.
Stay on top of news and industry trends with the LinkedIn Today app.
Generate leads with LinkedIn.
Promote and share links to the landing pages for your marketing offers in your Company Status Updates, where appropriate in LinkedIn Answers and Groups, and Products & Services section of your Company Page.
Created targeted Products & Services tab variations for your Company Page.
Create different variations of the Products & Services section to cater to different audiences. 
Experiment with LinkedIn ads.
LinkedIn ads allow you to target specific job titles, functions, industries, and company size.
Use Group Statistics to target and market.
You can access statistics for any group and then use them to determine the best course of action.
Become a leader, create a group..
Establish yourself as a leader by creating a group based on an industry-related topic, and become a LinkedIn Group administrator.
Email and poll that LinkedIn Group.
When you are a group leader, you can email the group up to once a week. You can also publish polls on the group page and also share your poll on Twitter.  .
Collect recommendations.
LinkedIn has a feature that allows users to leave recommendations for other users.  You can also collect these for your Company’s page, products and services.
Recruit new talent.
Build the Career tab and promote available job openings.

Guest Post by Serge

Serge, the author has found LinkedIn to provide absolutely be best quality leads advertising on LinkedIn for his uncommon goods startup

Read More

An Interesting Future of Internet : Copy and Paste [infographics]

Do you know that nearly 2 million blog posts are written every day. So the question arises that All of them are writers? I don't think so. people just do copy and paste or rewrite others data just spinning some words. Google did many search engine algo updates to stop the online piracy but never succeed to stop it completly.

Audio, Videos, Content files and Apps everything has many copies of a single on the internet. And if we create a chart then we can see that this is increasing by time as the internet traffic and users are also increasing as you can see in following info-graphics.

Online Plagiarism (Content Duplicity)

• Social sharing mediums have real role in content plagiarism (retweet, fb share, youtube videos)
• Audio and Video piracy also increased to 20% in comparison to last year on the internet
• With the increasing demand of mobile apps people are creating duplicate apps

SOPA / PIPA (Law against online piracy)

It is an internet law to stop piracy on the internet. If any time it comes in existance then we will loss our online freedom. According to this law everyting will be paid over the internet so first you will buy then copy :)

INFOGRAPHICS

Plagtracker.com created an interesting info-graphics on the history and future of internet piracy.

Source: inspirationfeed.com via 007 on Pinterest

Read More

Learn Google Searching Secrets before Starting SEO (24 google power searching operators)

If you want to save your Online searching time, you must be a Smart Google Searcher. There are many secret Google searching operators (intitle, intext, inurl, filetype etc.) that you should know in order to obtain the fast and exact results. I think there is no day in my internet life when I surf internet and doesn’t open Google. So when we use Google a lot, we must be a master of search. A simple user searches the Google via a single keyword or sentence but there are also some Google searching operators which refine the search results and you will find an exact solution instantly. So follow the following lesson of Google Power Searching and be a certified Google search master.

Index

site:site-url inurl:”your keyword” intitle:”your keyword” filetype:pdf “keyword” inanchor:"keyword" link:your-site-url define:”keyword” cache:your-site-url

-Exclude a word Related word ~keyword * Operator “Search an Exact Line” Unit Converter OR Operator Time your location .. Operator

Search by Image Google Sidebar Tools Google Calculator Blog Search Advenced Search info:your site url intext:”keyword” Miscellaneous

1. site:site-url or extension

Site operator is used to search all results related to a particular site or site extension(.com, .edu, .net). Suppose you want to search all results related to keyword "internet marketing" only from the site seomoz.org then you will search site:www.seomoz.org "internet marketing". Again if you you want to restrict your search results to a .edu domain extension then you can use this operator as site:.edu "computer science". You can also check that how many pages of your site are indexed by google, use this operator as site:click-labs.com. Ok now You want to exclude a particular site results from your search then use this operator as "internet marketing" -site:seomoz.org Now it will show all results related to keyword "internet marketing" excluding seomoz.org.

Google Search

2. inurl:”your keyword”

Using inurl operator you can search all urls contain a particular keyword such as inurl:"internet marketing" As everyone makes search engine friendly urls so this operator is very helpful to obtain effective results. Suppose you want to search pages of a website contain "internet marketing" in url then you can use it as inurl:"internet marketing" site:"seobook.com" inurl operator is used to search all urls contain only a single keyword or sentence but if you want to search multiple keywords at any location in the url then you can use allinurl operator as allinurl:medical forum (A good way to search all forums related to medical stream) In this query it shows all urls which contains "medical" and "forum" keyword at any location in the url.

Google Search

3. intitle:”your keyword”

To search all results in which title part must contain the word that we want to search, we use intitle operator. As intitle:marketing search engine This will search all articles which will contain marketing word in the title and search and engine word anywhere either in title or body. If We want to search two words from the title at any position then we will use it as intitle:search intitle:marketing we can also search it using allintitle operator as allintitle:search marketing it will also show the same results.

Google Search

4. filetype:extension “keyword”

Many times we want to download a pdf, doc, txt, xls or any other type of document regarding any topic to know about it in a detail as webpages only contain limited point to point information. But when we search them in google we just found a page and then another page and a page and then download if lucky. So if you want to search these files in a quick way use can use filetype operator. Suppose we want to search pdf files related to internet marketing then we use it as filetype:pdf "internet marketing" You can directly search differnt files using it as pdf, ppt, doc, txt, xls, iso etc.

Google Search

5. inanchor:"keyword"

If you want to search any website that will contain your searched keyword as an anchor text in the body of webpage then you can use inanchor operator as inanchor:"seo secrets" Similarly if you want to search some words anywhere in anchor text then you can use allinanchor operator as allinanchor:seo secrets

Google Search

6. link:your-site-url

link operator is used to count your google backlinks means links to your site from other sites (indexed by google as backlink). You can use it as link:www.seobook.com now it will show google indexed backlinks of seomoz for url www.seomoz.org.

Google Search

7. define:”keyword”

Do you want to find exact definition of any words or phrases, just use define operator in front of it and it will extract its defination from some big sites like wikipedia, answer.com and Dictionary.com etc. You can use it as define:internet marketing

Google Search

8. cache:your-site-url

It will show Google's Cached status of your site. You can know the date and time when Google cached your page and also you can see its cached view as detected by google. You can use it by using cache: in front of your website url, you can use it with any url/webpage of you website.

Google Search

9. exclude a word –keyword

Suppose you want to search different results related to word marketing but you do not want to see internet marketing word in your search then you can exclude this word by using - operator.

Google Search

10. Related word ~keyword

tilde (~) operator is used to find all results of a keyword along with its synonyms word results. use ~ in front of keyword (without space) to use this operator.

Google Search

11. * Operator

If you are familiar with database queries then you are also familiar with * operator. Suppose You search "what is * marketing" in google then you will see results containing exact sentence in body, only * has an english word in place of it and it may be anything.

Google Search

12. “Search an Exact Line”

In my above examples a lot of places I use "" symbols around my main sentence or a group of keywords. Actually this is used to search exact line. Suppose you search "internet marketing facts" then it will show all results which contains same line in their webpage while without "" Google will search this by breaking the line means anyone from three words can be at any location in webpage (exact combination not necessary)

Google Search

13. Unit Converter

Google also works as a unit converter tool, just search kilometer to meter and see the results. You can also write a number as 10 kilometer to mile

Google Search

14. OR Operator

To find webpages which contain either first word or second word or both, We use OR operator (Always use upper case letters)

Google Search

15. Time your location

When you write time operator in front of a location name then it will show exact time of that location So stay updated with worldwide time by Google.

Google Search

16. .. Operator

We use .. operator to find results in between a range e.g. 200$..700$. We also use it to find internet updated in between a time period like if we want to see all internet marketing updates in between 2010 to 2012 then we will write internet marketing 2010..12 Now it will show all results/webpages updated and submitted between 2010 to 12

Google Search

17. Search by Image

A great feature to find duplicate of your images on the internet. Just drag or upload your image under google image search to find other images similar to this, you can also past your image url. Click on below Image to search your image similarities over the internet by uploading your own image. While Google Image search you can also filter your results by using sidebar tools. You can filter your results by size, color or infact you can search an exact size images over the internet.

18. Google Sidebar Tools

We search the internet and open next to next search page to find exact solution but never use google sidebar tools. Actually if you see in left side while searching in google you will see more search tools option, just click on it and you will find different solutions (as shown in picture below) to filter your search results. You can filter your search results according to time, sites with images and also you can search other language pages related to your keyword but translated in English.

19. Google Calculator

You can solve your simple mathematical queries using Google. Just search 4+4 in Google and see the answer. Google also launched a Google calculator to solve many mathematical queries which you can see by search through following form.

Google Search

20. Blog Search

Do you want to search all results only from the blog pages by excluding all static pages then you can access Google blog search by click on more in top right corner or search blogs by using the following form.

Google Search

21. Google Advanced Search

Whenever you search in Goggle just see at the bottom of the page and you see an Advanced search option, Click on it and make your search more user friendly. You can also access advanced search options by clicking on the below image. With advance search you can filter your search results in different portions like search only a file type, search country and particular language specific pages or search between a number range etc.

22. info:your site url

info operator is used to check different information about a website e.g. links from a site, all indexed pages of site and all pages which contains site site url in their web page etc. You can use it as info:click-labs.com

Google Search

23. Intext:”keyword”

Do you want to restrict your search results only on those pages which must contain your specific search term in its body text then you can use intext operator as intext:"larry Page" Similarly if you use allintext operator in front of a combination of two or three words then you will find all pages which must contain these words at any position in the body of webpage.

Google Search

24. Miscellaneous

Lastly I want to tell you that all of these operators has mentioned by Google itself on its different page. So be smart and search the internet fast by using different Google searching tools. There are also some more searching secrets which you can see by exploring GOOOOOOGLE.
Search flights  >> Timing, location and price
Google News >> Search latest News of any location in your local language.
Google Groups >> Share your queries with the world by creating a discussion group
Google Alerts >> Receive Email updates related to keyword of your choice

25. BONUS - Fun with Google Search

1. Search sqrt(cos(x))*cos(300x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.7)*(4-x*x)^0.01, sqrt(6-x^2), -sqrt(6-x^2) from -4.5 to 4.5 in Google
2. Search zerg rush in Google and see the real magic.
3. Google Search in China : A fun by Google
4. Google Gravity : it's hard to search
5. gOOGLE FOR hACKERS

Exercise For You

Q1: Search all last month blog updates related to online advertisement
Q2: Search all results which must contain the word iphone but not contain android
Q3: Explain the search difference 1. conversion optimization 2. "conversion optimization"
Q4: How to search exactly 500 x 500 pixel Images?
Q5: Search intitle:index.of mp3 michael jackson and share your searching experience
Q6: How to search all blogspot.com blogs in google?
Q7: Search all results which must contain two words "technology" and "iphone" in title?
Q8: How to search all pdf tutorials related to google webmaster?
Q9: Search all results only from the site labnol.org related to wordpress plugin
Q10: Which query you use to show most of your results from health forums?

Submit Your Answers and Queries in Comment

visit >> http://www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com for video tutorials

Read More