10 MUST Follow Twitter Marketing Tips

Social media has changed the trends of online marketing. Few years back search engine optimization was the only way to increase web visibility and building traffic for websites or blogs. But today social media has become an effective platform to create branding.

Twitter is one of the pioneers to create impact on the internet. Celebrities, Sport personalities, Entrepreneurs, bloggers, small business owners, and students are using Twitter because it is short and quick to share with the rest of the world. Intelligent people around the world use the social platform as a marketing tool to create and promote brand awareness. 

But the question is how? 

So, I’m sharing a quick guide of twitter marketing. 

1. Profile: Set your twitter profile with your own picture. Describe something cool about yourself like who you are, what do you do, which industry you are related with in brief and certainly mention your website or blog if you have one. You can also use other social profile links like the Facebook or G+ profile.

2. Be Active: Twitter is a place of active people. If you want to grab the attention of people, you need to be very active with the audience on regular basis. Generally twitter buddies don’t like to follow inactive user accounts.

3. Sharing: The more useful thing you share, the more followers you’ll gain. It is a simple equitation. Share what you have discovered or created today,which you think would be useful to your twitter audience. It may be a tutorial, picture, video or funny quotes. Be gentle and humorous with your followers.

4. Interactions: Interaction is a vital point in Twitter Marketing. Interaction includes Retweets, Mentions and Replies. If you find a tweet, which you think, is very useful retweet it. If your tweet has been retweeted, don’t forget to mention your twitter buddy with a “Thank you”. If you get direct messages reply with it.

5. Conversation: Participating in a conversation is a tactical strategy to get attention. Share your opinion with others and express what you think about conversing on a subject. Be gentle and don’t use any sensitive language. If you are searching to participate in a conversation on twitter. Just follow “Twitter Trends”.

6. Use #(Hash) Tags: Using “#” on Tweeter is about relevancy. Use it while updating your tweets. It is the best way to describe about your website, blog, content, pictures, videos, business, industry. Put “Hash” before keyword within 140 Characters. So that other people related to your industry can find you, know about what you are sharing.

7. Real People: There are millions of twitter accounts, but you should try to follow real people. If you are thinking to follow new people, check their twitter updates, date of updates, profile picture and real people would love to interact with you. You’ll also get nice and useful stuff from them.

8. Follow back: If you are having new followers, it is wise to follow them back. Your followers would be glad if you are also following them and that increases the chances of interactions. Popular twitter buddies are always engaged with interactions. If you don’t follow back, people will generally un-follow you. But there are some expectations like Global leaders, celebrities. It is for people like us.

9. Twitter Buttons: Twitter is a massive marketing tool because twitter provides awesome widgets like twitter follow, share a link, Hashtag and mention buttons and you can integrate it with your blog or website. So that your website or blog visitor can easily follow you on twitter, share contents, picture, etc. with other people.

10. Twitter Manage tools: There are several twitter accounts manage tools or apps that are available like Buffer, Hootsuite, and Tweet deck (already acquired by twitter), manage filter, etc. All you need to do is to integrate your twitter account with these tools. You can schedule your tweets, auto responds to direct message, send tweets to other social media and many more.

Marketing in twitter is really tactical. Don’t try to push your product or services, just try to build good relationship. Share some useful stuff that people really want to know. If you are getting popular in this social platform, your website, blog, product or service would be popular soon. Many internet marketers, bloggers are using twitter to create a new brand and many of them have achieved success. 

Keep going on with twitter.

Author Bio: Samrat Bhattacharya is working as a seo and social media strategist in a leading link building service providing company.

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Enjoy Your Holidays With Proper SEO Activities

This time of the year is really a time to be engaged with shopping and holidays. All the festivals from Halloween to Thanksgiving, from Christmas to New Year surrounds throughout this season. It is obvious that holidays will slow down your natural traffic. But if few activities are taken care of properly, then your SEO efforts will not go into vain.

Credit: photostock/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Get Suitable holiday keywords using Google Trend:

The ‘Google Trend’ tool will help you to get suitable keywords that match your requirements in this special season. This analytic tool will also help to provide keywords that were successful for the previous year. You will also have to look out for the keywords that lead to conversion for getting your desired result. 

Create content which is holiday-focused:

Holidays are filled with fun, gifts, shopping, planning etc. So the content can be focused on keywords like ‘presents’, ‘gifts’, ‘fun ideas’ ‘best buys’, ‘holiday plans’ etc. Some specific festival can be aimed by focusing on a specific content for ‘Christmas’ or ‘Thanks giving’. That fun-filled content will definitely attract more and more visitors. 

Create special gift set:

Few target groups can be created like children, mother, grandmother, uncle etc and then gift sets can be created for them keeping their age in mind. The company can send the gifts directly to their clients or can club the gifts with their products with special offers. Now this gifts and offers can be highlighted in the company site which will draw attention of the online visitors. 

Linking tactics:

Internal linking in the pages will be helpful in this case. Only highlighting the gifts and offers in the site content will not suffice. Linking them internally will help in increasing the page rank. You may follow the Pareto Principle of Link Building, which says that 80 percent of the effect/value comes from 20 percent of the causes. So that means 80 percent of page rank comes from 20 percent of the back links of the site. Re structuring your internal links with specific keywords targeted according to location or specific industry will be noteworthy for boosting up your page rank. But never overdo internal linking because Google suggests keeping your internal links in a page to fewer than 100. 

Use Blogs to attract traffic:

Publishing blogs with the content having a touch of this festive mood will surely attract more visitors. The content should be very lively and fun filled so that it easily connects the mood of the readers. You may share your own holiday plans or may describe the gifts you have received in these festivals. You can also share any gift ideas with your readers or can upload any video of making fun toys for children. 

Do not forget to update your Meta description:

Neglecting the on page activities will not give the desired result. So your meta description should also be updated with this festive mood. The meta description should also contain keywords like gifts, presents, holidays, Christmas, thanksgiving etc. It will certainly draw your visitor’s attention and will be advantageous for your SEO Company. Keep a list of all the pages you have updated and do not forget to change it back after the festivals. 

Use your Social Networking:

Use the social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter , Youtube etc to send your wishes or messages to the online visitors. This will help to spread the messages very rapidly to a large number of visitors. 

In this festive season, enjoy your holidays keeping in mind these few activities and never forget your own SEO best practices with a slight touch of ‘holiday’ flavor. 

Author Bio: Arpita Bhowmik is an SEO analyst and also a passionate blogger who likes writing about digital marketing, SEO tips, blogging tips etc.

This post was written by one of our guest contributors. If you would like to contribute to our blog as a guest author, you can contact us.

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Why Millions Of People Start And Quit Blogging

According to an estimate, there were about 200 million blogs online in 2012.

But do you think that all these blogs are made by bloggers who are aiming for a future with it? Do you think that all these blogs are even readable and generate new content even once a year?

If you think yes (I know you don't!), then you are completely wrong :(

Yes, it is true that there are about 200 million blogs, but most of them are just rubbish 2-3 page blogs or just another "cracked games" or "wallpapers" blogs. Agree??? I am sure you would agree to me. Want a proof? Whenever you search for anything on Google, you get to see lakhs of results but just click on the last page's last result link and see yourself...

No. I am not talking about their lack of SEO and content that sends them to the last page. I am talking about their useless blog. Sorry to use a bit rude language but that is because this topic makes me a bit angry. Specially when statistics add those blogs also. If we count the number of really readable blogs, then it would not exceed 50 million.

Today, people just start a blog for nothing and abandon it like anything. I feel that it is an injustice to the blogoshere because due to these "start and quit" bloggers, people hesitate before starting their own blog. And most of the times, it is the mistake of such bloggers themselves that they abandon their incomplete blog.

So what is the reason behind all these people who quit blogging?

"The reason to end lies in the reason to begin." - Mahaveer Verma

So Why Do People Start Blogging Such That It Makes Them Quit In Future?

The main reasons for starting a blog are -

• Hobby
• Time-pass
• The worst reason - MONEY

Yes! You got it. MONEY is the thing that most of the people start their blogs for. And this reason is the most foolish and worst ever reason according to me.

If you are planning of starting your own blog because you know you can earn from it....then I assure you that you have 99.99% chances of FAILING :(

Read the last line again. I said FAILING and not succeeding. This is one statement that every going-to-be-blogger should remember well because the 150 million useless and un-readable blogs I am talking about belong to bloggers who started blogging just for money.

My story - And it is NOT about Money!

When I started my first blog, I kept it secret from my physical friends, who interact with me in my physical world like school and my home. Because I started my blog as a hobby, I was even unknown that I could earn something from it! I didn't want many people near me to know about my blog until it has achieved something great.

And when I got my first Adsense Check, I just showed it to some of my best friends and asked them to keep it a secret. Because I still believed that I had not achieved what I really wanted. It was not money that I took as my success. And this is something everyone should keep in mind.

Today, even though I tried to keep it a secret, most of my friends know that I am a blogger and I earn from it. Many times, when I am chatting with my Facebook friends, I get a friend who says -

Friend - Do you have your own blog?

Me- Yes.

Friend - Why do you write a blog?

Me - It is my hobby and I like it :)

Friend - Do you earn money from your blog?

Me - Yes. A little bit.

Friend - I want to make a blog too! Teach me how to make a blog. Plzzz...

This is an example of a typical chat that I had experienced many times by now.

What can be concluded from this?

1. People go crazy after hearing the word 'money'.
2. People think blogging for money is easy like peeling potatoes.

If you are one of those people who get excited by hearing the word 'money' associated with the word 'blogging', then forget it. Blogging is not for you. Sorry!

How to test yourself if you want to start blogging for money

Answer this question in less than 3 seconds - Your blog will cover which topic???

If you can't answer this question easily, and still want to start a blog...think again.

I have got many friends who ask me ideas about starting a new blog. I ask them about the field they are an expert and can write hundreds of words about it, but they don't have any answer for that. They say, I will share wallpapers, cracked softwares and games and so on... There are over 150 million sites for such rubbish crack sites! Why do you want to create another one???

Some say - I will read some blogs and write about the same thing in my own words at my blog....OK. Now that is article spinning literally!!! If you don't know about chemical properties of Oxygen, then how can you write about it just by reading from other sites???

If you find yourself in the same situation as some of my friends.....sorry to say again but you need to think over.

Blogging is about providing unique and simply awesome content to people.

Small blogs - Love it/Hate it

I am not against small blogs that post content only 1-2 times a month. Actually I do like them more than those "crack sites" that post 10 pages per day.

Why?

Suppose you have a personal blog. No you can not write on it everyday! Can you? Or if you are a really studious student and cannot manage blogging with studies, so you can post content only on Sundays. No problem at all. I am sure if you blog genuinely, then your blog will be followed by many readers even if you lack new content.

Third and most important example - You really want your blog just as your hobby and nothing commercial. Hats off to you if you have this mentality :)

It is not at all a bad idea if you want to create a blog just for fun and don't want to go world-famous or earn thousands per month. Actually it is the best reason to start your blog! Keep it up!

So keeping a small blog is never bad and I don't think that those blogs are any burden on the blogosphere :)

Summary:

1. Starting a Blog for money never works.
2. Being unknown to what you should write on your blog is like being blind.
3. Small or large, home or commercial, a blog should be genuine.

Above we discussed about how the wrong start disturbs and indeed destroys one's just started blogging life. Now there are also people who start blogging and then abandon it because of failure or something else. What are those "something else"s?

Why People Quit Blogging

Most people quit blogging due to failure.

But how do you know that your blog has failed? This is the main point where most bloggers fail to judge themselves. People think that they have failed when they are not able to earn good money from it.

That is the worst way to judge a blog's success. Your blog may not earn anything but can get on top of the stairs of success. Your blog's name would be on the tip of everyone's tongue and you can still top the Google search engine results even if you don't earn anything!

And even worse - some people think that they have failed because they were banned from Adsense! No comments here. You know what I mean to say!

Many people start with more than 1 blog and this is where they get to nowhere. When you are completely new to blogging, you should start with just one blog that you can give your complete attention to. I also own two blogs, but I started with just one and I still concentrate on that one.

If your blog does not cover good content on a single topic, if it does not sport a nice design and if you don't give any time to it...then your blog will fail. I know this is true. And you should know this too. I don't want any person who is reading this to contribute to the 150 million rubbish abandoned blogs!

Why am I repeating the words like "rubbish abandoned" and "crack blogs"? Because personally I have seen many people starting their blogging life with such sites. Most of the people start with wallpaper sites or share cracked games. That's it. Now how can you get any success with it???

In short, people quit blogging due to -

• Failure
• Not earning money

Another short one, people fail when -

• Blog doesn't get visitors
• Blog has no subscribers
• Blog doesn't get noticed

I should also add some points why people fail:

• Low quality content
• Improper blog designing
• Over Inactivity by Blogger

Now your turn!

I am sure that after reading through this post, if are a new blogger or are just going to start blogging, then you would start and continue your blogging life with complete determination. I have one request for everybody reading this - Don't start a blog just because you heard the word 'money' and don't contribute to the already large 150 million blog list that are just another abandoned spam blogs.

Did you like reading this article? What are your personal views on blogging and why do you think people get lost and quit blogging? Do comment and share your views here!

Image credits: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Blog Commenting Safely Even After Penguin

Credit: JamesBarker/FreedigitalPhotos.net

After Google Penguin update, webmasters who use SEO techniques around the world thought that blog commenting as a link building strategy may not have value anymore. In this article, we tackle on how you can still use blog commenting to benefit your website's SEO even after Google's "revamp".

Also read: The Best Practices In Blog Commenting

Safe Way of Blog Commenting

1. Value Sharing

Google is trying to drive relevant quality content creation. So stay away from posting a comment and then leaving your website URL thinking that people will click it. Gaining page views does not have to be this way. Practice the ideal way of blog commenting, which is value-sharing. 

You comment to add on to the blogger's content.

Share your insights, lessons learned and related experience or sentiment about what was written. If you are replying to comments on your own blog post, provide additional value by engaging with your readers. You can agree or disagree to their notions. Just make sure that whenever you do so, compose with a thoughtful comment. There should always be something they can be satisfied with. 

You will even have more chances to be offered the opportunity to make a guest post in related websites. Through your comments, webmasters will know who you are and what your blog is about. They will spark realizations that it will be advantageous to them if you can then share or exchange contents to generate a larger fan base.

2. Commenting Within your Niche

Google acknowledges those who contribute to be part of real active conversations. SEO will be all about relationship-building. Don’t go on blog hopping and comment for the sake of adding one. The right way to do it is to share valuable comments within your own niche.

This is not only to build community but also foster camaraderie among networks of relevant fields. Posting a comment in sites not related to your expertise might wander off interests of potential viewers to go to your website. This will only invite stray readers’ best concerns.

3. Blog Comment with Interval, Naturally

Include not only composing blogs to your schedule but also blog commenting on them. But don’t get into hiring folks or setting up robots just to comment a hundred times a day. Google knows what's happening and it knows when there’s something unnatural and fishy going on.

In the eyes of Google, if you participate by commenting in your community’s reach and get answers to questions posted regularly, you will be regarded as a good practitioner of SEO. Just act like any other human in your related field and comment with intervals.

4. No Keyword Stuffing

Organic blog comments carry on weight in search engines. You won’t yield good results if you post trashy comments made out of stuffed keywords in your niche. Still, posting genuine blog comments is highly recommended. Google will only trash those with weaves of keyword garbage.

Likewise, readers will be frustrated in finding out they have reached unrelated content through searching by keywords in the comments page. Remember, your aim in blog commenting is not only to get readers view and click your link! If you do that, you’re getting yourself into trouble.

See the big picture.

When you leave a comment, you’re like creating brand awareness. A better byproduct is to comment and start the discussion to send readers to visit your site with growing interest and anticipation.

Conclusion

Submitting your blog page links to online directories are performing work for your SEO. Another way is link-building in a form of blog commenting. However, writing only rambling comments may simply do harm than good in boosting marking programs, sales or driving lasting traffic to your website. Turn positive and attract readers by writing well-written comments in a unique perspective. In this right course, you will get lots of link juice to your blog in time regardless of "scary" SEO algorithm updates by Google. 

About the Guest Author:
Celina Conner is a Yoga Instructor, a holder of a Marketing Diploma from Martin College Australia and a mother of a beautiful daughter, Krizia. She has a passion in cooking and formulating vegan recipes.
Follow her adventures on Twitter.

This post was written by one of our guest contributors. If you would like to contribute to our blog as a guest author, you can contact us.

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4 MUST Seo Tools For Your Site

When you want to create something efficiently, you need to use right tools. This also applies when you are building your SEO strategy. To build an efficient SEO strategy to rank high on search engines like Google you must have right SEO tools. 

Image courtesy to Kromkrathog/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

SEO tools enable you to evaluate your website and analyse its position. To do this for your site you can approach an online marketing agency that implements best SEO and SMO practices to improve your website rankings. Below are some of the best SEO tools which help you in assessing your site. 

Google webmaster tools:

This tool provides you with the details of your pages’ visibility on the search engine. This will help you in identifying the crawl errors like 404 pages and redirection problems. You can also find out the duplicate content issues and site indexation status. You can also find out how many click-throughs and search queries your keyword is receiving. It is a free tool and works with mobile sites also.

Google Analytics:

This tool allows you to monitor your site. You can easily track the visitors and identify which page has been visited and in what order. You can also find how much time the visitor had spent on each page. You can track which page gets more traffic and which keywords are most popular. If your site is a sales site then you can track the complete process from the time the visitor searches the keyword to the point when they complete their transaction.

Screaming Frog SEO spider: 

This tool is marketer’s best friend. This tool will analyse titles throughout your site. If your site is filled with more lengthy titles then Google and other search engines ignore those titles. Screaming Frog SEO spider provides you with a quick snap shot giving quick reference to where the changes should be made and help to optimise the page. 

Hub Spot’s Marketing Grader:

This tool helps you to differentiate between B2C and B2B. It also allows you to analyse the social media activities. This tool offers you tips to increase your website’s rankings. This tool grades your site based upon 2 key areas of the sales funnel namely TOFU (The Top of the Funnel) that examines the efforts made to grab the customer’s attention and MOFU (Middle of the Funnel) that checks how good your conversion strategies are working.

Now your turn!

What are your views on these SEO tools? Do comment and share your views here.

About the Guest Author:
This guest post was written by Jessica Williams, a blogger who is currently focusing on ppi claims. Catch her at @financeport.

This post was written by one of our guest contributors. If you would like to contribute to our blog as a guest author, you can contact us.

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Top 5 Blogging Platforms To Choose From

Every internet addicts love to maintain a blog. Blogging is one of the amazing ways of giving a sharp edge to our writing skills and also to spread knowledge and unique ideas to the visitors. Blogging can be considered as the best way of earning online while it is also believed to be the ideal source of relaxation for some.

Source: archcityhomes.com

Depending on his requirement, a blogger chooses the blog that suits him best. Just as WordPress blogs would be the perfect platform for all professionals, similarly on the other hand for newbie or amateur bloggers blogger.com would be the best fit for them. Therefore, being a blogger it is necessary to concentrate more on your requirements and not to hop around the popularity of the blog. 

Sometimes it does happen that a blogger simply gets confused of choosing the perfect blogging platform from the dozens of service choices that he gets. In order to narrow down this confusion, following is a list of top 5 blogging platforms which would rather help you to make your decision a bit more easily. 

WordPress

This is one of the largest blogging platforms in the world designed for both novices and professionals and also has an infinite customization options. It is a blog with modular backend and has also got a large number of extensions. So, it is also referred as the “do-it-yourself” blog. 

WordPress also allows bloggers to modify their blogs using either their pre-designed themes or by using HTML, CSS or PHP. Their extensions also give extra features to their users such as editing calendars, tag clouds, twitter feeds, etc. 

So, if you are looking for a stout blogging service with enormous options for you to edit it as according to your choice, then WordPress is your platform for sure. 

Blogger

Google’s blogger platform is considered to be the most popular as it is being coupled with your Google account. Getting started is quite easy. All you need to do is to select a title, what the address should be like (name.blogspot.com) and then select a template followed by the content which you want to update in it. 

Here, you can also follow other blogger’s blog and the dashboard keeps on tracking the latest update and will continuously alert you with latest updates. Some additional features also include comment moderation, layout modification, etc. Bloggers were very well-known among teenagers and mommies to express their feelings but nowadays, it has also officially gained the importance of professionals to express their messages through this service. 

Tumblr

Thinking of Tumblr, the first thing which comes right to our mind is all about a true “micro blogging site”. But yes, apart from being a good micro blogging site, tumblr is one of the best and rich blogging platform offering professional and fully adaptable templates as well as many other services. Users can easily access their free tumblr accounts and can manage posts directly from apps via mobile, web and other dedicated apps on the PC. 

Tumblr pages are well maintained with clean designs thus help you more to concentrate on your content rather than customization. If someone likes your content, then he can “favorite it” or “reblog it” which reposts a clip of your post to their page with a link coming to your source page. The most interesting part is that tumblr can import blogs as well can export it if you want to migrate it to a different service. So, if you are a casual blogger and you concentrate more on content rather than on designs, then tumblr is just the best option for you to opt for.  

Posterous

The best way to share your messages with the public, a specific category of people or even yourself, then Posterous is just the right option for you. 

Once you are ready with your account, you can set up “spaces” for people to follow. Permission can be set for each space but you are free to set as many space as you want. This is definitely the best blog and most widely used by professionals to share their messages through this platform. 

Movable Type

This blogging platform was originally developed by Six Apart in 2001, and has appeared as the “power blogger’s platform”. It also offers plugins like WordPress to modify the experience of both blogger and reader. This is one of the best blogging platforms being available in two flavors- the.com version and .org version. The .com version is designed for non-developers who want their blog for free by movable type and again there is .org version which is designed for the professionals who want to host their site using various external services. 

Although you will find a lot of similarities between Movable Type and WordPress, so it totally depends on you which platform you would prefer after judging the best services that it offers such as features, plugins and support that you would be getting in order to keep your content highlighted as always. 

Yes of course, these aren’t the only blogging platforms out there, but yes these are one of the top five blogging platforms being widely used by both professionals and amateurs. So, now that you have got some good platforms to jump-off, it is better to build your blog and start jotting down your points in it. It is the best way to show your visitors the only thing that you are actually good at.

And do read this basic blogging guide before starting you own blog.

Its Your Turn!

Which blogging platform do you prefer? And how good have your experience been with it? I would love to hear from you! So do comment and share your views.

About the Guest Author:

Aditi Datta is a specialized social media organizer who works in a leading SEO company in India. She loves to analyze on recent search engine algorithm changes and user engagements in social media websites.

This post was written by one of our guest contributors. If you would like to contribute to our blog as a guest author, you can contact us.

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