12 tools to measure social media marketing
Businesses have been unsure of ways to measure social media campaigns, social media ROI and syncing the stats, if any, to sales data and vice versa. Here are 12 tools that I came across that can be used to track the effectiveness of your social media campaigns.
One important fact one needs to remember here is, Social media optimization is not a number race. Businesses need to focus on growing brand awareness, customer acquisition, engagement, interaction, conviction, retention, sales, profits, and customer satisfaction rates.
So without further delay, here is the list of tools I promised.
Google Analytics: Free tool to track and report on a company’s Web site usage and online marketing activities.
TwitterAnalyzer: Free online tool analyzes a company’s influence on Twitter, including number of daily Tweets, users who are re-Tweeting your messages and their unique reach.
HootSuite: Popular free service manages and analyzes multiple Twitter users and accounts. New iPhone app links HootSuite account to mobile phone.
Radian6: Sophisticated tool that tracks conversations about competitors and share of mentions, among other metrics. Pricing starts at $500 a month per profile and $100 a month per user.
ViralHeat: Delivers real-time data from video sites, microblogging platforms and Web sites. Prices range from $9.99 a month to $139.98 a month.
Bit.ly: Free URL shortener that tracks information such as number of clicks, traffic sources and what time clicks occur.
Scoopler: Free real-time search engine that organizes content being shared on the Internet as it happens through blogs and major social networks.
TweetMeme Analytics: Similar to Google Analytics, the app is useful if you use TweetMeme’s re-Tweet buttons on your site. Prices begin at $50 per domain per month.
PostRank Analytics: Suite of tools to measure social engagement on other platforms and services. Shows messages and comments from other sites that contribute to your statistics. Prices begin at $9 a month.
Twopular: Tracks the most popular trends on Twitter at no charge.
Xinureturns: Provides a free overview of your Web site presence on popular search engines and social networks.
Omniture: Captures, stores and analyzes digital transactions from Web sites and other online channels as well as offline channels such as point-of-sale promotions and call centers. Prices vary per user.
Guide On How To Make Internet Passive Income
In the times of economic decline, who wouldn’t want to learn about passive income. It’s probably everyone’s dream to have some passive income streams. Here is a guide to internet passive income, that would give you the fundamentals and important resources in a short (<20 page) info loaded ebook by Collis Ta’eed. If you didn’t hear about Collis, he is famous for his “31 days to become a better blogger” tips.
What is Passive Income?
Passive income is creating an income stream that attracts cash-inflows even when you are not working on it (full time). It will take some work to start with and progresses to little work (if not, none) as it picks up.
FreelanceSwitch.com has this free e-book, titled A Guide To Making Passive Income. The book is available for download on one of their sites at NotByTheHour.com.
Experiment and focus on one passive income method till it works and repeat the process implementing your success formula.
Like anything else, the more time you put into it (initially), the more money you will end up making, but it will require less effort down the road – depending on how you position yourself.
I hope you would want to share your thoughts, experiences, recommendations about passive income.
Recommended Reading:
First Steps Towards Building your online business
Resources to sell your stock photos
How to integrate your wordpress blog with Linkshare
101 ways to make money online from About.Com
WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY & PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS.
Smiles,
Shri 
Linkshare and WordPress Integration Made Easy
LinkShare is a leading provider of full-service online marketing solutions specializing in the areas of Search (SEM), Lead Generation and Affiliate Marketing. As the online marketing industry continues to evolve at a fast pace, advertisers and publishers are turning to LinkShare for technology innovation, experience and a passion for driving results.
The following plugins will set your linkshare affiliation on uber speed.
Read more
Ultimate blog traffic resource list
Hi friends,
I compiled the ultimate blog traffic resource tips from professional bloggers, master minds, mentors and other bloggers, in an attempt to aggregate all blog traffic tips on one page. Hope you will find it useful. Please leave a message with a link to your personal favorites.
How to build traffic to your blog
How to boost your blog traffic
Building Blog Traffic For Newbies
Seomoz’s 21 tactics to increase blog traffic
Seth Godin’s tips on how to build traffic
dailyblogtips.com’s Traffic generation final list
Problogger’s 10 ways to improve blog traffic
Tips to increase blog traffic
Steve Pavlina’s how tobuild high traffic to website or blog
10 easy ways to grow your blog traffic
Jack Humphery’s 21 tips to increase your blog traffic
Quick ways of getting instant blog traffic
101 free ways to increase blog traffic
How social bookmarking can increase your blog traffic for free
7 Steps to increased blog traffic
Life hacker’s tips to boost your blog traffic
Teli Adlam’s blog traffic tips
How I uadrupled my blog traffic in three months
10 blog traffic tips
20 wordpress plugins to increase your blog traffic
Tips for blog traffic: how to increase traffic levels
10 powerful ways to increase blog traffic
Blog traffic with email and forum signature
Proven steps to increase blog traffic
Blog Traffic 101 series of blog traffic tips
10 ways to optimize blog traffic
Beginner’s guide to pumping blog traffic
How to increase blog traffic – Intro
Untapped ways to increase blog traffic quickly
How I doubled my blog traffic in 2 months
15 easy steps tp increase your blog traffic
10 blog traffic tips
Free blog traffic
How to increase blog traffic
6 ways to increase blog traffic: free and easy ways to get traffic on your site
10 Traffic tips to find new readers
Google Ranking Tips
102 ways to make your blog a backlink superstar
What do you think of this resource list? :yes: :no: Would love to hear your feedback.
Writing a new post on blogger
You can signin with you
gmail id and password at www.blogger.com , which will redirect you to
your blog’s dashboard.
Click on +NEW POST icon
to write a new post.
You can edit your
profile by clicking on edit profile link on the right hand side
bar.
Take a look at each of
the links in the dashboard and acquaint yourself with the dashboard. You can
also see some video tutorials at http://www.youtube.com/BloggerHelp
Setting up your blog on blogger
v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
–>
/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:”"; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
–>
A blog is a website which can be updated regularly by the owner.
Blogger is one among the biggest, most popular blog host and provider.There are others like WordPress, typepad etc.
I personally prefer Blogger due to the fact that it is simpler and
quicker than using others. And good thing is that it is completely free
to set-up and create a blog. You won’t need any experience in creating
websites.
You can create your own free blog using their simple interface to
set the blog up and to start posting to it too. You won’t need to know
any kind of coding language, as the Blogger site provides a very basic
and understandable menu system, enabling you to change any of the
options or preferences of your blog as and when you require.
Before you start making money from creating your blog, you will need
to think of a subject that you would base the blog upon. We have
discussed about ways to find your niche in the 1st module of the course
in great detail. Yet I want to reiterate a few points here.
Choose something that is of interest to you, so that you don’t ever
get bored writing the blog. Also try not to be too general with your
blog. This will help you to aim on a specific kind of ‘niche’ market,
and will hopefully help your blog with ranking in the search engines
(it would be much harder to rank under the topic of sport than it would
be with something specific like golf).
When choosing the subject of your blog it is also worth remembering
that some subjects will be higher paying then others. For example,
write a blog about a celebrity and you will probably earn a few pence
(or cents) per advertisement that is clicked. However, write a blog
based on a subject like finance and you will probably be earning more
around 30 pence per advert clicked. This is because certain markets are
more valuable than others.
Once you have decided the topic of your blog, you are ready to open an account at Blogger. Visit the website and register for free to set up an account.
As Blogger is run by Google now, you will be opening an account at the
same time as a Blogger account. Google will be in charge of paying out
the money from advertisements shown on your blog, so remember to add
all your details carefully and correctly.
After entering all your details to open an account, you will be asked
to choose the title and address of your blog. You can choose the title
of your blog at any time, as it can easily be changed from your
account. However you can’t change the blog address once you have
selected it. The address is the URL of the blog, so try and choose
something memorable and yet try to include some keywords in the address
(for search engine optimization reasons). So if you are setting up a
travel tips blog then something like travel-tips.blogspot.com would be
a good URL. I doubt if that name is still available, though. Try finding something relevant.
Once you have chosen your blog title and domain name you will be
able to select a design (called as template) for your blog. This
template can be changed at any time from the options menu in your
Blogger account, so don’t worry if you select a design that you are not
satisfied with.
Sell your stockphotos
OK…
Herez a very easy and interesting way to make some bucks.
Fotolia
ShutterStock
Visit the official ShutterStock website
Payment method: Paypal
Register now for free, either to buy or sell photos online with ShutterStock
Dreamstime
Visit the official Dreamstime website
Minimum picture size: 3 MP
Payment method: Paypal
Register now for free, either to buy or sell photos online with Dreamstime
First steps towards building your online business
Some Do’s
- Do check your mail regularly
- Do work with consistency and persistence.
- Don’t get overwhelmed by the vast information available online. Its good to take small chunks of a vast mountain of food than trying to gulp it one time.
- Save your usernames and passwords.
Some Don’t’s
- Do not give your credit card information to anyone by email, chat or unverified website
- Do not give misleading information
- Do not give up
- Do not expect returns from the very first day.
Step 1: Important Accounts
The first step is to signup for few basic accounts. These are must have. (Note: You will be need to signup for many more IDs, so save your user ids and passwords. Many prefer to have a single password through out. Though this is a little unsafe, if you think you might not be able to remember many passwords, maintain a single alphanumeric combination through out).
1) Create one email ID exclusively for business purposes. I recommend GMAIL ID, as this one ID can be used for a number of google products like google adsense, google analytics, google adwords, google ipages etc. You can also have hotmail, yahoo ID, but eventually at some point you will need to open a gmail account. That is the reason I suggest gmail ID. You can click here to signup for a gmail account.
2) A money transfer account through which you can send and receive money securely. There are many money transfer websites, but I recommend PAYPAL. When you signup for PayPal, you can start accepting credit card payments instantly. As the world’s number one online payment service, PayPal is the fastest way that opens your doors to over 150 million member accounts worldwide. It’s completely free to sign up. To sign up or learn more, click here: PAYPAL
STEP 2: What Is your area of business? (called as niche)
This is a very important step. I advise you to find a profitable market and stick to it. If you plan to build a highly successful site, it is always better to go in a niche in which you are an expert, or a topic that you would like to learn more about.
It will be easier to update your site (you will not feel that you are working), and you will become an authority in no time.
You want to find a market with:
* High demand
* Low supply (small percentage of GOOD and RELEVANT websites serving this market)
FIRST ASSIGNMENT – FINDING YOUR NICHE
Step 1: List the things you like to do.
As your personality and interest are reflected in your blog, it will show your interest to the readers. If you start writing about a subject you are not much interested, you might find it difficult to write about it or worse still, loose interest altogether.
So the 1st step in finding your business plan, is to make a list of things you like to do. I’m sure this isn’t very difficult. You might get more ideas by looking at your books, magazines, photos, your hobbies, your collection, your favorite place, your dreams, experiences, ambitions etc.
There is nothing like worthless. I even know about bloggers who blog about their experiences with illnesses like Diabetes etc.
OK. You must’ve made a huge list. You will agree that you might not necessarily be good at all of those. So lets go to step 2:
Step 2: Tick the Things You Are Good At
Step 3: What do people consult you for?
Step 4: What is that you can talk about for hours and still not get bored?
Step 5: What is your brand?
Step 6: What do you have authority on?
Step 7: What is that you frequently update yourself about.
It is important to note here that unless you’re an abnormally boring person, this won’t be the same list as number 1. First of all, there will be things you are interested in that you are not good at. Second of all, there will be things you might be good at that you have very little interest in.
Quick and easy steps to find a Profitable Market (Niche)
If you are building a website to profit from it, before you start to build your site, you should ask yourself these 3 questions:
1. Is there a market?
If nobody is going to search for and find your website, don’t build it!
2. What’s their problem?
Solve people’s problem, and you will always have good results in everything you do. Find their problem, and give them a solution.
For example, If you build a site about Forex Trading, it is because you want to help people in that niche. Your can provide a website geared towards beginners with tutorials, tips and advices for beginners, or more advanced stuff like daily alerts, advanced strategies and reviews.
3. Is the market willing to pay?
You want people to do something when they land on your website. They should take action (your most wanted response – MWR), otherwise, there is no point in building a website.
Your MWR can be:
1. Buying your own product,
2. Subscribing to your membership site
3. Clicking on your affiliate (and contextual advertising) links
4. Make a Phone call
5. Make a donation
6. etc…
This should give you a clear idea about the business you want to build.