Social Media Shows Creativity

When it comes to social networking and job search, creativity thrives.

A CNN article gives a wonderful example of a creative use of the social media site Pinterest as a resume. Rachael King, a community engagement professional for Adobe, created the "living resume," which is a collection of high points in her career. The living resume provides King a visual representation of the work she’s done that’s much more exciting to sift through than bulleted list on a resume.

Tumblr is another visual social media site ideal for photographers and artists looking for jobs.

How to Use Pinterest to Drive More YouTube Views

BY Steve Young

 

Do you want more people to watch your videos?

Have you thought of integrating your YouTube channel with your Pinterest account?

When you combine the power of YouTube with Pinterest, you can boost your business, increase your subscribers and increase your video views.

Watch the video here:

slideshare.net/stevepyoung/how-to-drive-more-youtube-views

How To Write Amazon Product Reviews In Under 2 Minutes

BY Ryan Martin

Most of the over $100k in Amazon commissions I've earned have come from product review websites. The only problem is that writing the product reviews can be tedious and downright boring.

What if there was an easier way?


Scroll down the page to watch a demo video:

Introducing Azon Insta Review

http://chrisloves.com/azoninstareview

Two experienced Amazon marketers created this WordPress plugin designed to help save you tons of time. You can literally get a unique product review in less than two minutes by pulling information from Amazon. Plus it's all unique and unspun!

And that's not all...
Azon Insta Review also allows you to create custom banners for your sites in less than two minutes. Add some text, an image, change the background color and you are all set to increase your traffic to Amazon listings.

How To Get a Million readers in 11 months with MagCast

Today, we show you the cool tool that allowed our MagCasters to get to 1,000,000 readers in just 11 months.

We talk about templates, getting content, the new forums, Google Play and Magazines, What Should and Should not be in your first issue in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8YVzfRdV-4

Apple Newsstand Publishing using MagCast Q & A chat with Daniel Hall:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0-wVh20s3Y

Driving Traffic with Your Market Stats Tools

Real Estate Blogger, Colleen Kulikowski, and Virtual Results Support Manager, Leah Marks, discuss the benefits and uses of the Market Stats tools in driving traffic to a realtor or property investment site.

Colleen has years of experience blogging on her real estate sites and has been successful at getting many buyers and sellers from those efforts.

With a little planning you can drive significant traffic to your website. Today, Market Reports are the backbone of my website. The good news is that good content doesn’t have to be complicated!

In July of 2006, I wrote my first post. I labored for days on what I was going to first write about.  Once I decided on Market Reports, it took me a couple of hours to create a simple market report.   Today I maintain more than 80 market reports and each one takes me less than 5 minutes to update.

These market reports are some of the most popular posts on my site and they can be on yours too!  A small investment in time on your part can pay you big dividends in the future. Market reports are simple to create and update.  Run some stats off of your MLS (or other info source site) and publish. Just remember to give credit and use a disclaimer if required. To get you started, here is the format I use (see the live report here). Feel free to use it as a template.

Watch the demo video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32GmynP89Ic

Driving Website Traffic with Market Reports

By Colleen Kulikowski

 A great idea for realtors, property investors or anyone with access to dynamic source information.

With a little planning you can drive significant traffic to your website.  Today, Market Reports are the backbone of my website.

Not sure where to start? I have been in your shoes wondering, “where am I going to start to build content for my site?” I get it!  It can be overwhelming to create effective posts.

You want a great real estate resource for potential home buyers and sellers. The good news is that good content doesn’t have to be complicated!

Read a step-by-step guide and see an example here:
http://virtualresults.net/driving-traffic-website-market-reports/

5 SEO Trends Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know for 2014

BY Jayson DeMers

"Is SEO dead?" It's a common question within the online marketing world today.

If you're an entrepreneur relying on a strong online presence to connect with customers, you're right to pay attention. It's undeniable that the SEO landscape is changing.

For instance, Google is taking a hardline approach. Shady link-building tactics (think Rap Genius), poor quality content and bad design are just a few of the factors causing websites to get penalized. So what's worked for your business in the past may no longer work, and in fact, could actually hurt your business now.

Today, successful SEO strategies have to incorporate diverse components including brand building, mobile optimization, content marketing and social media integration. It's time to adapt your strategy to address these realities. Here's a closer look at five trends that will shape your SEO success in the year ahead.

Effective SEO has three pillars.
A strong SEO strategy has three core components: links, content and social media. What's become more pronounced in the last year is the relationship between these elements. Content must be laser focused on your audience's needs and honed to drive specific profit-generating actions. Social media amplifies your reach, signaling to search engines that users find your content valuable. Links from high quality sites also reinforce that you're a solid, trustworthy site. A virtuous cycle is starting to emerge that all begins with writing great content.

The rise of content marketing moves toward digital maturity.
Content marketing was the top marketing buzzword of 2013, and it's a trend that's here to stay. Brands need to become savvy about telling their own stories and creating content that resonates with audiences. As the initial fascination with content marketing wears off, marketers are now demanding more return on investment, or ROI. Content marketing is maturing, and as a result we're better able to effectively target content, measure performance and correct course to improve results.

Mobile optimization is no longer optional.
With the release of Google's Hummingbird updates, it's getting harder for sites without a mobile strategy to rank well. This includes both a responsive design and a mobile content strategy. Realistically, it's time to invest in this anyway from a business perspective: Half of Americans own smartphones and more than a third own tablets according to Pew Internet. Responsive design ensures that your site looks great across a range of mobile devices. A mobile content strategy targets your content to the context, needs and behaviors of mobile users.

Building your brand is more important than building links.
A strong brand is playing an increasingly important role in SEO. One tangible example is Google's introduction and emphasis of Google Authorship, a program that connects content to your author profile with recognized authors' content performing better in search engine results. Building your brand and thought leadership in your space are critical steps to ranking well over time.

Social media, especially Google Plus, plays an integrated role with SEO.
Google is relying more than ever on human signals in the form of shares and mentions on social media to help vet sites. If you don't have a strong social media marketing presence and a strategy that makes it easy for people to share your content, it's time to implement one.
Social media has matured to the point where it's intersecting with SEO to help determine search rankings. Two easy places to start are building your Google Plus presence and ensuring that your website and blog have content sharing modules built in.

As you're developing your company's SEO plan, remember that all these trends add up to two things: integration and balance. Invest in all the key areas -- from writing good content, to building links and developing your social platforms -- with the understanding that they mutually support each other. Customize your plan by identifying your company's gaps and opportunity, and focus on the channels that bring you closer to your audience. Good search engines rankings will follow.

Are You 'Layering' SEO? You Should Be.

BY Brad Miller

SEO isn't what it used to be.

Ten years ago, an SEO specialist might spend 40 hours a week on keywords, title tags and content manipulation. Nowadays, he or she must possess a much broader skill set and think far more strategically.

That's because there's been a shift toward Search Marketing Integration (SMI) or "layering." This concept is forcing digital marketers to become master collaborators who can effectively utilize cross-departmental initiatives to fuel a rise in organic visibility.

The credit for this idea has to go to Rand Fishkin, CEO at search-software company Moz. During a conversation with Rand, I asked him whether the term SEO was still relevant. He explained that, rather than looking it as something distinct and isolated from your other business and marketing initiatives, you “need to add SEO as an important review layer on top of all of those other things.”

I think this is a really good way to conceptualize how SEO needs to be integrated into all aspects of your business to have the greatest probability of success. It really helps to visualize these concepts, let them sync in and “get it.”

In order to become a master collaborator and get the most out of your search efforts, it helps to break your collaborative efforts into four distinct areas:

1. Interaction
The first thing every successful digital marketer must do is learn to interact with the different departments within their organization. This has to be done regularly and consistently in order to produce results. The only way to discover the SEO opportunities that exist elsewhere in your organization is to communicate with your colleagues and actively undercover them. This includes attending cross-departmental meetings, happy hours and formal training sessions. You can even uncover SEO opportunities during conversations at the water cooler.

2. Persuasion
Once you’ve had a chance to interact and identify opportunities, you need to motivate your colleagues to help you achieve your goals. The best way to approach this is to find a champion within each department. I won’t bore you with tactics for motivation, but it’s vitally important to have a friend that can communicate initiatives from within their department. Having a reliable ‘point-of-contact’ can drastically help you turn ideas into actions and push your initiatives up the priority ladder.

3. Organization
This is probably the most difficult part of mastering the art of cross-department collaboration. Unless you are organized right from the start you will find yourself struggling to organize and motivate your ‘helpers’. In most cases it’s best to put the infrastructure in place right from the beginning – before you even start approaching people from other departments. There are some great tools you can use to help with this process including digital project management tools like basecamp, collaboration tools like tracky and idea organization tools like mind map. 

The simplest way to get started is to create a spreadsheet that will document all of your opportunities. You’ll want to create tasks for regular communication (weekly check-in emails with ‘helpers’), ongoing lists for all SEO opportunities, dates for timely opportunities, rating mechanisms for prioritization and a list of actions items for each new opportunity.

4. Implementation
The implementation process will vary based on the nature of each new SEO opportunity. Some things will be easy low-hanging fruit that can be accomplished quickly, like updating a press release. Other opportunities will take an incredible amount of time and effort like collaborating with your engineering department on creating an interactive site widget that can be used for link building purposes. The systems you put in place need to be designed to handle tasks at each end of this scale.

The search marketing world has changed. Content is still king and link building is still queen (debatable), but collaboration is the key to both crowns.
To make sure you publish content that delivers value to visitors at every point in the sales cycle, you need to collaborate with departmental colleagues across the organization. By approaching this ‘integration’ in a measured, organized way, you can increase the probability of success.