5 Steps to Establishing Yourself as an Expert Online and Off There’s a lot of talk in the marketing blogosphere about the importance of setting yourself apart from your competition–about how to be taken seriously, you must establish yourself as an expert in your field. And while that’s all well and good, no one ever really tells you how you’re supposed to establish yourself as an expert. What goes into becoming an “expert” and how do you know if you’re doing it right or you’re just spinning your wheels and getting no brand karma? What should small business owners do to help brand themselves as authorities that users will trust? Below are five tips: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Above are five tips I’d recommend to put yourself on the path to becoming an expert in your field.
The daily storyline of science If You're Ignoring Social Media, You're Losing Money, Customers, Business This is a bit old, but it’s too good not to share. And it’s also going straight into my social media presentation for future GetListed.org Local University workshops because it sums up one of the main points in my presentation. I’m talking about this study from Conversocial about consumer expectations when engaging with companies on social networks. The main point I want to share: 88.3% of respondents said they’d be either somewhat less likely or far less likely to buy from a company that ignores complaints on Facebook. That’s from a survey of more than 500 social network users with an average age of 38. Now, I’m not exactly thrilled with the way that question is worded. But we can safely say that the combination of doing things in such a way that you get a lot of complaints via social networks, combined with not responding to those complaints, is really bad for business. I’ve written about this topic indirectly before. Don’t ignore customers on social networks.
How to Find Article Writing Ideas Article marketing is one of the most powerful tactics to enhance your site’s visibility in search engines, get traffic, create brand awareness, acquire backlinks and build expertise in a niche market. But your article marketing efforts can bear fruit only when you devote adequate time to create articles which are engaging, unique and problem-solving. All depends on whether you have the ability to come up with interesting topics to write on. Ideas. Well, let’s have a look at some of the key tips which you can use to create compelling articles and lead your article marketing efforts to success. Answer Product or Service Related Questions If you are an active listener, you can pay some serious attention to the questions that your customers have about your company’s products and services. Analyze Popular Headlines I can tell you this is an effective approach towards finding some excellent ideas for writing articles that engage your audience. Read Popular Blogs in Your Niche
Google Places API Adds Search, Google Review and More Google has updated the Google Places API to bring a number of interesting additions that will provide developers with the tools to add more local information and context to their apps and creations. Most notably, the Web giant has now added support for Google Reviews, which can now be shown at the foot of maps and text search, which allows users to find specific details within maps (as below), as is possible with Google Maps already. The Google Geo Developers blog post provides more details on these two new features: Google ReviewsBy far the most popular request from developers since the day we launched has been access to the Google Reviews offered on Google+ Local. Further information can be added with support for opening hours — which shows a retail outlet’s opening hours that week (were supported) within the information windows in the map. The demo below shows how the newly supported features can be add greater context to searches. Image via Shutterstock / Ingvar Bjork
Shocker! The internet is not egalitarian, popular forum posters have it easy An egalitarian Internet? Not so, UGA study says Athens, Ga. – The Internet is often thought of as a forum that enables egalitarian communication among people from diverse backgrounds and political persuasions, but a University of Georgia study reveals that online discussion groups display the same hierarchical structure as other large social groups. "About 2 percent of those who start discussion threads attract about 50 percent of the replies," said study author Itai Himelboim, assistant professor in the UGA Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. Himelboim, whose latest findings appear in the early online edition of the journal Communication Research, examined discussions among more than 200,000 participants in 35 newsgroups over a six-year period. To identify the differences, if any, that exist in the content posted by popular participants and their less popular counterparts, Himelboim and colleagues Eric Gleave and Marc A.
50 Ways To Optimize Your Blog I wrote an article earlier this year on “30 Tips To Make Your Companies Blog Rock” and I had quite a few comments by readers and some added more tips on other keys to making a blog successful. So I have taken their suggestions, added them to the list and provided some more that I have discovered recently. Blogging is a journey and as technology develops there will be more ways to optimize your blog. You will also find other keys to keep the blog pumping and energised as you mix with other bloggers both online and offline and hear their stories and hints. So here are the original 30 plus 20 more ideas to increase your blogs readership and traffic. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. Gini Dietrich from Spinsucks.com contributed to the list with the following eleven additional tips 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 39. 40. 41. Courtney Wiley of iNgage Networks also made this suggestion 42. 44. 45. 46. 48. 49. 50. 356inShare
Consumers and creators Fifty years ago, the ratio was a million to one. For every person on the news or on primetime, there were a million viewers. The explosion of magazines brought the ratio to 100,000:1. If you wrote for a major magazine, you were going to impact a lot of people. Most of us were consumers, not creators. Cable TV and zines made it 10,000 to one. And now of course, when it's easy to have a blog, or an Youtube account or to push your ideas to the world through social media, the ratio might be 100:1. What does the world look like when we get to the next zero?
How To Target by Zip Code in Google AdWords | Location Targeting by Zip Code Google AdWords is a powerful platform for reaching targeted users on the web. Google has done an incredible job with building a robust system for launching targeted ads on both the Search Network and the Display Network. This enables you to reach prospective customers while they are searching on Google.com, or when they are visiting websites across the web. Functionality-wise, Google keeps adding new features and options to its platform, which enables advertisers to precisely target the people they want to reach. One of these features is location targeting. Zip Code Targeting in AdWordsWell, now there’s another level of location targeting you can add to your campaigns, which was released yesterday. Similar to other location targeting methods, you will access zip code targeting via the Settings Tab within your campaign. Here’s how to add zip code targeting to your campaigns: 1. 2. 3. 4. You’re done! And by the way, I’m already using it. :)