How to Crush it in Video Marketing

Video Marketing Tips and Tricks For the Beginner to the Experienced.

Video marketing can be very intimidating. There are so many different things that you need to know. However, it’s a necessity if you want to be successful.

action adult aperture blur — Photo by Terje Sollie on Pexels.com

So if you’re in a marketing business of some sort, you may want to start making videos. What the pros tell you is that if you are in the least bit fearful of making a video, you should pull out your phone and pretend you are making the video, even if you don’t post them. Starting somewhere is exactly where the person(s) you follow started.

Heck! I started doing videos and found them very intimidating because the camera was not a person that could respond back to what I was saying. So, what I did was to jump on into the video by putting myself directly in front of my camera or phone. In my mind, it didn’t matter the quality in the beginning. It was that I was taking a step each and every day to become better than the day before.

So if you’re in business and afraid of what people will think, or whatever reason you put in your head to excuse you from doing videos, know you’re not alone. Your goal is to make marketing videos which is just another way to say you are providing value to your customers.

What is Considered “Value”?

Get on camera in some way and provide value, show yourself, be personable.

Value is anything from showing your lifestyle off to solving a problem which you may have the answer, to writing out your feelings so that others can see them – and feel validated.

I and many others tend to focus on solving problems for people – because there’s one truth that we all want living on this planet.

Ok…well maybe there are more truths to list…

There is a wrong and a right answer, and if you have the right answer you will get more attention in your video marketing.
There is no such thing as over saturated topics to do a video on. Have you noticed that some of the videos you watch are not done the way you would have done them? Put your own spin on the topic with your personality.

In the short video at the beginning of the post are some more ideas to practice in your video marketing. Those that are frightened of the very thought of a camera and being on camera should start by doing videos for themselves.

You can do as short or as long of a video you like. The key is to be able to watch your video and accept what you see. Some of you that are perfectionists will have more problems with this than most. This isn’t a bad thing though. You probably jump in and make all the mistakes. Faster than those with the perfectionist bent.

The Biggest tip I can give to you right now is to start now, take a deep breath and enjoy the ride. The last point here is to post them to your Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites. Even if you are just asking for people’s opinions on your efforts.

Do Not Delete Your Videos In The Beginning.

When you jump in with abandon, you’ll start to notice your immediate improvement and you will get more results this way. The key here is to never delete your videos in the beginning – nor when you are advanced.

You will get views on your videos and if you delete them, that will take away some of your channel juice.

You’ll thank me later! 🙂

Test, Test, Test!

When you have a “great idea” in marketing, the best rule of thumb is to try it. You never know if it will be a hit.

Most of all, don’t do things halfway. ?It’s all about the energy you put off. People may not be physical with you. But, they can sense your energy no matter where you are located. Video or in-person is tough to trick people into thinking you are not nervous or hesitant.

Here’s a list of traits that you may want to consider when doing your video marketing.

State your keywords in your video. This is especially if you are using YouTube as they make a script of what you are saying. ?So, to do this well, treat it like SEO for video.
Place little bits of attention-getting stories.
If your goal is to have videos done efficiently, use your cell phone and upload directly to any video hosting site. Otherwise, if you have time, edit your video and make it look professionally done.
Use a place that is busy in the background. Our minds are very busy and can “soak” in information faster than you can speak it. ?

Those tips should help you get started in your video marketing and improve your subscription base, both on your blog and your video social profiles.

How To Hone Your Video Marketing Skills

Now that you have some great tips to practice in your video marketing, dig in and get even more strategies. Use these proven strategies and subliminal tips that will improve your sales. They will also create a business model that all your friends and family will be begging you to know.

Lastly, remember that you are starting a business that will leave that legacy for your children. Also, YouTube has proven to be very lucrative in ads and getting more customers. Take your passion and grow it!

What’s The Buzz About Having A Facebook Fan Page?

Do you have a Facebook Fan Page. Have you had any success with this form of doing business?

Well…

You’ve probably heard of the biggest change that has happened to the Facebook Fan Page community recently. It’s kind of a big thing but is it enough to sway people from Facebook to other social media outlets such as Google Plus, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube?

In short, I can tell you that there are lots of trains going around spouting off thoughts here and there (like that… 🙂 )

So here’s my thought on the subject of creating a new fan page in the beginning stages of your business and why you may or may not need one.

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A Facebook Fan Page Can Be A Time Suck

It’s true, you either know how to give valuable content to people for FREE or you don’t. ?Those that do not want to give their audience information on how to solve their problems or value based posts are not going to have the following they so desire.

After all, if you have a fan page, and you’re reading this post, you’re probably looking to monetize your fan page and/or your blog.

So, if you view giving free information away as a time suck your finances will be a time suck as well. The key to a successful Facebook page is to be passionate about the content that you are teaching. If you THINK you are passionate, try this question to really know how passionate you are:

Would you do what you’re doing now for your followers knowing you’d never get paid?

If the answer is YES! then you are on the right track and it won’t matter what platform you are working on. You’ll succeed!

The next step is to go out and provide massive value for your followers on your Facebook fan page. Start building courses and scale up!

How To Start A Fan Page The Right Way

Facebook Fan Page McCaw Vitality — img 01 – Do you see the error?

When starting a Facebook fan page, the best suggestions to get done before going public is to do the following items:

Get your header image ready. You can have a call to action placed on this if you would like to capture leads from this space on your fan page.
Select a good image of yourself to place as your profile image. You should focus on a detailed photo of your face, not wearing any sunglasses, show your teeth, and keep your eyes wide open. This will convey trust to the reader.
Have 10 posts ready to go and posted that is aligned with the purpose of your content. This should also match with the niche you are helping out or marketing to on your Facebook page.
Have a mixture of posts from the text, to photo, to videos. This will help the reader in getting to know you better.

Once you have completed the above tasks, you are now free to start advertising your fan page to the community and inviting them to “LIKE” your page so that they can start getting updates in their news feed.

Setting Up Your Fan Page

To get the things done that I mentioned above, you’re going to need some tools to complete them. Now I know that most people are not Photoshop geniuses but even if you are, you probably use tools based on their ease rather than how capable the tool is. That being said, I also weigh out both of those scenarios – just so that we are clear about the decision-making process on what tools to use.

For those that do not have the option of Photoshop, here are a couple tools that I use on a regular basis to do things like cover photos on your social media profiles.

Canva For Non-Photoshop Users

This is a tool that is a must-have for any marketing business. The cost to you is free if you use their images that do not cost money or your own images imported to your Canva profile. If you’d like a little more in the way of unique and pleasing photos, you’ll be paying $1 for each element you choose – and they clearly mark these items before you choose them.

The beauty of this site is you get to see what things look like before you have to pay. You are charged when you decided to download your image, and even then they will alert you that you will need to pay for your items. The way you pay is either by paying in bulk and deducting from that balance or you can pay for each item when you need it. Pretty convenient in my book!

PicMonkey – More Options

PicMonkey is a site that allows you to do more editing of your photos but you also have the ability to make collages and Memes for your sites, social, business, or personal. As you can see in the graphic, they offer a free account with limited functionality that is actually more than most will need. The “Royale” account which is a paid account gives you everything under the sun that they offer for about $2-$3 per month.

“The best tool is the tool that you can use”

So that quote is right on in most anything you do – even applied to photography. I learned that you have to have access to a tool to use it. A camera, a photo editing suite, an online editing tool. You name it, you have to have access to these tools in order to make them useful to you.

PicMonkey is one of those tools that I will use when I want something edited quickly and I have a connection to the internet. The biggest reason you would use this is to create collages. I’ve also seen others use it to touch up photos and even some design is possible with this website.

If you’re going to use a site like Canva and you know you’ll spend more than $36 per year – PicMonkey Royale is the account to have going forward. ?It does most everything that Canva does only with other options that Canva does not offer.

Spark by Adobe

One of the other places that I have been making images and loving it is a place called spark. This platform is created by a company that already has their hands in much of the photograph image editing arena.

If you guessed Adobe you’d be correct. In fact, since using spark over a year ago I have not returned to canva or picmonkey. However, those are definitely great tools to use as well.

The last option is to have someone create these banners for you using a service such as Fiverr.com, or Upwork.

Once you get your photos all set on your Facebook fan page, you’ll be on your way to creating your first 10 posts.

Want more in-depth instruction on how to become more successful with your online business? Then get training on how to do social media on all platforms as well as how to do better-converting advertising and where to put your ads to get more leads and sales.

For more information on how to market with Facebook, follow me at my Marketing Facebook page

How To Be Successful As A Marketing Beginner

All businesses start out fresh in the world of marketing. This is why I’m talking about online marketing for beginners.

Most businesses that are successful use various marketing methods to attract customers to their products or services. Wise business owners and managers develop marketing plans. These plans outline the road maps that help them achieve their short and long-term goals. Most strategies that are used include such details as:

how to develop new products or services
how to distribute products
what methods of promotion are applied
how to manage customer relationships

Big companies typically already have in place the marketing strategies and know-how to put them into action. But too many small business owners misunderstand what the proper definition of a marketing strategy. They attach the term to a specific marketing practice such as an advertising campaign.

A Marketing strategy is a plan that has an attainable goal.

An ad campaign is one of the strategies that make the marketing strategy successful.

This is why an approach to successful marketing plan needs to have one or many goals. It should that tie up or combine all advertising efforts and marketing activities into a comprehensive strategy. The goal here is to attract and keep customers.

For new business owners who are learning How To Be Successful As A Marketing Beginner, there’s no need to be concerned about coming up with overly complex strategies to market products or services. It’s possible to create strategies based on ideas that have already proven to work. Here are some basic examples that work well in terms of marketing for beginners in business. These are experienced business people who are branching out into something new.

Marketing Beginner: The Product Strategy

When you define a product strategy, you can determine what direction your product or service efforts go (or are going). To help you define your product strategy, ask yourself these questions:

What can you identify as a need in your own marketplace that you would like to answer?
Specifically what product or service are you selling?
Who are the specific people whom you need to focus on in terms of selling? This is one area of marketing for beginners that many business owners fail to be specific enough about.
In terms of value, what will your customers receive by doing business with you? And this is not just about price value, but long-term personal value-something that makes their lives better over a long period of time.

Marketing for Beginners: The Pricing Strategy

Pricing strategy is something that is based on what it costs to create a physical product or provide a service of some kind. This is also known as cost of goods. And it’s not just the physical materials that fit into the cost of goods; you also have to factor in labor costs, salaries, and even commissions when the business involves services rather than product sales. Marketing for beginners heavily relies on a good marketing strategy, and that strategy should take the following into account:

Costs that are both fixed and variable
Who the competition in the marketplace is and what they’re doing
The overall short and long-term objectives of the company
Who the target group of customers is and what they are willing to pay for the product and/or service.

Marketing for Beginners: The Promotion Strategy

Any product or service, no matter how good it is, is worthless in the marketplace. What makes the product or service have value is how the value is communicated to their customers. The promotion strategy should contain a mix of different elements and can include:

Print advertising
Broadcast (radio and/or TV) advertising
Direct mail marketing
Personal networking
Internet marketing

Another method that does quite well in the How To Be Successful As A Marketing Beginners niche is “inbound marketing”. This involves the use of well-designed websites, blogs and social media networks. This can help the company’s promotional voice to be heard throughout the internet.

These ideas are just the tip of the iceberg that can make up an overall plan of marketing for beginners. There is a lot more information and tools to round out a business’s plan to get the customers attention.

If you need help in growing your business, consider starting a blog. If you need help after reading the post, consider taking my email course. This course will break things down and help you get to a place where you can work on your blog, customize it as you see fit, and get it to rank well on all the search engines.

Facebook Marketing: Tips and Tricks to Make It Work For You

Introduction to Facebook Marketing

Most people know by now that it?s important to utilize the benefits of Facebook marketing. But some people miss out on the full extent of benefits available. Because they don?t know the tips and strategies to make it work well as a marketing tool. Let?s take a look at what you can do to make your Facebook marketing campaign truly successful.

Related Post: Facebook Live Video Success

When you post anything on Facebook, always be professional. Some people miss out on this because since Facebook is a social media tool that offers a ?casual? look to it.? Some users post comments that are more professional when they feel they need to.? But, at the same time, they post things that are too casual. Doing so will hurt your?professional image.

Posting Strategy

If you intend to use Facebook for promoting your business or professional organization, keep all of your post professional. But combining that approach with silly jokes or political opinions will hurt your Facebook marketing overall.

What To Do Before Posting Ads Using Facebook Marketing

Before you start paying for ads on Facebook, build a solid fan base first. It usually works best to wait to invest money into your Facebook marketing. Your fan base is what you’re going to Have a goal of having a couple hundred until you have at least a few hundred consistent fans. Then at that point, you can consider spending some money on Facebook ads. After you get to that point, the percentage of followers who actually buy into what you?re selling or promoting will climb exponentially.

You might be really excited about having a Facebook fan page. This is not meant to throw water on your fire of excitement, but some businesses don?t really need a fan page for Facebook marketing. If you?re only dealing with potential customers on an occasional basis, a Facebook fan page would normally be a risky endeavor. In cases like this, investing in Facebook ads is better. Customers or clients who don?t need to buy from you on a frequent basis won?t have a need to keep up with your fan page posts.

Facebook Marketing: Always Remember This

Regardless of what path your Facebook marketing strategy takes; always remember that your posts on Facebook need to be useful to the reader. Your fans are looking to get something of value from your posts, even if what they get is just good information that they can use later. Try to stay away from a lot of ?hard selling.? Facebook, in general, is not a good platform for that and will likely cause your followers (both personal and professional) to turn away for good.

Your Facebook posts need not be all about you; they should convey a tone that you?re on Facebook to make people?s lives better in one way or another.

If you remember that your presence on Facebook is for other people?s benefit. People will spread the word that you?re a good source to follow.

That’s good Facebook marketing.

The kind that gives value, and allows you to take mini jabs at your customers will make you feel good about what you?re doing, and your followers will feel good about you too.

If you’re struggling with Facebook marketing, take a look at how you’re marketing and most importantly, who you’re marketing to. I’ve found that it’s very important to pin point your audience to the smallest factor, which will also give you the cheapest in advertising as well.

3 Time Saving Tools For Building An Online Business

There are many truths that need to be followed in business. Tools for building an online business come and go. But these have stood the test of time. No matter what type of business you are in you will always need tools to do your work.? As a result, this post will discuss 3 time-saving tools for building an online business.

In an effort to keep on the bleeding edge of marketing, I put together a list of tools that keep me going, but at the same time will ease the time load that is needed to keep my social media posts relevant and ongoing.

HootSuite Social Media Planner

I’ve always been one to get things done fast but what I also realize is that in the marketing world you not only need to be quick at what you do but you also have to use some tools that will allow you to gain back some of your time.

Why else would anyone want to be a part of a business that helps you leverage your time?

Enter HootSuite

HootSuite is a tool that I would not be caught marketing to any social media site without access to it. It’s like being caught on a plane without your luggage. You just don’t go anywhere without it.

The ease of scheduling your updates to as many of the social media sites you can with a click of a button is very valuable. You can do a full month of updates and most of the restrictions that are in place for the free account, are listed in the pro account that is $19/month.

Additionally, I’ve found the HootSuite App that I especially love. I’m able to use the app on the fly using my mobile phone. Now, I’m able to tweet, Facebook, Instagram, and update my LinkedIn.

Time Saving Tools For Building An Online Business - Hootsuite — `Click picture to learn more`

Learn More About HootSuite PRO

Email AutoResponder by GetResponse

Any and all network marketers (bloggers too) need to have some sort of an autoresponder. Simply put, you are going to be emailing hundreds, if not thousands of people and a simple google email address will not suffice. In fact, your email will get shut down sooner than later for emailing so many people at once from a source like Gmail or Yahoo.

So, when I started internet marketing/network marketing, I started with Aweber and that was my choice because I really didn’t know what was out there to use. Now that I’m savvier in marketing and know what tools to use (aside from the ultra-expensive systems like InfusionSoft) you pretty much have a plethora of choices.

However, the autoresponder that rises up to the top in this niche of the business owner is GetResponse. I’ve found that they are always improving their product and giving tutorials on how to do each function. If you’re looking for a free trial of GetResponse, then you are in the right place at the right time. Currently, GetResponse is giving a 30 day trial for just $1.

Click Here to Learn More About GetResponse

Time Saving Tools For Building An Online Business getresponse email marketing

START YOUR 30 DAY TRIAL OF GETRESPONSE

WordPress Blog

It’s said that when you’re in business online and you do not have a blog, you don’t have a home on the internet.

That saying is so incredibly true.

When you're in business online, stop leaving money on the table and closing your business. GET YOUR BLOG SETUP: https://jonmccaw.com/start-wordpress-blog Click To Tweet

Blogging has been growing steadily since around 2008. It’s benefited the blogger and the reader in ways that have been measured monetarily on an individual basis. But, I think the blog has also become one of those necessities if you’re going to have a successful business online or offline.

People want to know who you are and if you are not online somewhere for your potential customers to find out who you are, they will not buy from you.

It’s a simple formula. Know, like and trust.

What’s Yours is Yours

So, if you want to build a business online – you need to have a blog. This blog is what you’ll call your home on the internet. All other places on the internet are mainly social networks which are not owned by you. These sites (yours) could be removed at any time.

Set yourself up for a business that makes your blog profitable. Of course, you have free ad space when you have a blog, and you can learn how to generate free traffic to your blog. This will get more eyes on your business, and on your email list.

Learn How To Start A Making Money Blog

Market Samurai SEO

When I started blogging a few years ago, I realized very quickly that I needed to find keywords to blog about that were not ?ber competitive. The method of making your blog post hit the top page of Bing, Yahoo, or Google is an art and if you don’t have the right marketing tools for your blog, then you may not have a very long career in blogging. I struggled for a year without a keyword finder to help me with SEO. Blogging about anything that came to my mind was literally what I did for a solid year not knowing why I wasn’t getting any traffic. Then I discovered the Market Samurai product that does so much for literally so little.

The Pros of Market Samurai

a. Inexpensive to get great results in your SEO Keyword search.
b. They do not charge a monthly fee to use their service.
c. Content finder built-in.
d. Rank Tracker to find out where your blogs are ranking within google, Bing, and Yahoo* This is a monthly fee depending on how many keywords you want to track. (UPDATE: This feature has been removed due to instability with accurate results)
e. Content publication – this will publish posts for you automatically.
f. This is a pay for it once program. You can authenticate on 5 computers at a time.

The Cons of Market Samurai

a. learning all the lingo that helps you figure out what keywords to use can be a bit overwhelming at first
b. I don’t think this is a bad con but it seems like each time I open up Market Samurai, there’s an adobe air update to install.
c. There isn’t too much in the way of training on the website that is up today.
d. YouTube tutorials are hit and miss, as there aren’t too many updated videos.

MARKET SAMURAI FREE 30 DAY TRIAL

My Opinion of Market Samurai

My opinion is that Market Samurai is a solid, viable and useful product for beginners through advanced bloggers. If you’re on a budget, like most marketers starting out, go get a discounted version of Market Samurai so that you have something better than the keyword planner.

Many marketers will say, just use the free keyword planner. However, this now requires an account for Ad-words. This isn’t a bad idea if you plan on using Ad Words later on in your marketing. As you can see just from my brief pros and cons of this great product you will have much more data to work with than using the free Google Keyword Planner. Here’s a FREE trial to check out what Market Samurai can do for you and your blogging efforts.

Note: Each of these tools is affiliate coded and I do make a commission on them. This never means you are getting charged more due to commissions being paid. The forward-thinking could also see that if I get paid to promote them, then you can get paid to promote them as well. The whole reason that I do this is to help you make more money.

FREE TRIAL of MARKET SAMURAI

Programs That Work Great With These Tools

Tools for building an online business which work with these products are endless. However, what I suggest is building your brand using a blog and to do that you need to learn the ways of a blogger.

HINT: The learning curve usually scares people away from making decisions that will ultimately make a huge difference in their lives.

I’ve been involved with email marketing now for over 10 years and I’ve seen many systems come and go. Email marketing is not one of those things that have left the scene. In fact, if you sign up for my email list I’ll show you:

how to get traffic on demand and for a very good price.
The best email systems around to have depending on your business niche.
Why email marketing is not dead.
How to take advantage of this billion dollar a year industry
Why integrating a blog with your email service is a great business model

This will change how you think about the tools for building an online business. There’s nothing better than making money and KNOWING that you have helped people become more successful. It’s all about contributing to this world we live in, right?

Double Your Home Business Network Marketing Leads

The key to working a home business is to have a never-ending supply of network marketing leads. One of the biggest thermostats of your business is to see how many leads you are generating on a daily basis and thus creating a funnel of people that eventually buy your product.

REMEMBER…

You are running YOUR BUSINESS and you should be keenly aware that your business lifeblood is all about generating leads and having them go through your funnel. This is where the rubber meets the road.

I going to presume that you have a product that you are selling while promoting your home-based business. You will have either a digital product or a physical product. It’s up to you how you promote this product online or offline.

Not everyone will buy your product whether it’s great for them or not. People are just not wired to buy everything good for them all the time. It’s your job to create that desire to buy from you. The feedback you get from your marketing is never a failure – just a learning experience!

How Do You Create The Buy Now Desire With Network Marketing Leads?

In a nutshell, it’s easy to tell you how to create an “I need this now” environment.

…but you don’t learn from that.

Here’s what I would say is the best method in a “perfect world”.

Maybe you’ll get one of those “ah-ha moments” by applying this method of generating network marketing leads and your business will explode into new profits.

To start off…

Create an environment where you are able to build a relationship with your customer (soon to be a friend).
Build a rapport with your potential friends, by being vulnerable with them in your communications with them via email or even social media at times.
- Videos
- Photos that are recent to show you are human and not a bot
- Events which encourage engagement, that way you know who is really following you.
Ask and you will receive
- There’s an old adage and even a truth that if you do not ask for something you want, you will not receive it.
  - “Start by asking!”
- If you are building a relationship and not spamming your newly acquired lead, you have the right to send them to a place that you will make money AND they will be able to solve their problem that they asked you to solve. It’s a WIN-WIN solution.

The above is all done via email marketing. Email is one of the best ways to communicate with your customer base because you can automate your emails to go out with your message in a timely manner. This will free you up to do other tasks in your business.

How To Generate Home Business Network Marketing Leads

As someone that was also a newbie, I thought that getting leads was going to be as simple as going to my friends and family. they would in-turn sign up with whatever deal I was promoting at the time.

Isn’t that what you were thinking as well when you started your first MLM or online business? (we’re all great people and why wouldn’t they sign up?)

That’s when the cold hard truth set in and you realize that this is going to be a much longer process. Just asking someone to sign up might be great if it’s your immediate family. This is especially true if it’s one of those health and wellness MLM’s (because we all need to be healthier).

Build an Email List

I remember when starting out, my sponsor told me to go visit or reach out to my friends and family. But there was one problem with this method. It got old after moving to a new company. The very friends and family begin to screen your calls. So, what does someone do next?

Start your own list of people to call without prejudging them. Jog your memory to get at least 100 people.

Sound familiar?

Nowadays, we use email to get the same message out to the world rather than just locally.

Email is great because it can be sent with automation and the receiver can open at their leisure.

How Is An Email List Built?

There are many ways to grow your email list but there are a few that stick out as easier and for the most part, do not require a financial investment.

Social Media

This is the most prevalent method of building an online business. It’s available to everyone and anyone that wants to sign up for a profile.

The drawback to this is that it is available to everyone. The tendency is to want to market to that crowd rather than in your niche. Those that get a handle on who their niche is, will be the most successful at growing an email list.

Write Articles To Build MLM Leads

Articles that you are able to share and generate MLM leads are a great source to build your business online. There’s a strategy that is going to help you with your article writing to generate leads. Basically, to sum it up, you’ll need to educate as much as you can so that people you are serving can make an educated and emotional decision.

In order to get good quality leads for your business, be a person of value who creates the desire to have what you are promoting.? This will generate leads for free.? If you want to speed things up, go the paid route.? I recommend using a couple different services for this as I have had good results with them.

Turbo Boost Your Business Here

Ask For Referrals

Asking for referrals can be intimidating if you are not good at it. But as with anything else, you need to practice or you do not get good or even mediocre.

Start thinking about how to work this into your conversations with one on one discussions (or a group setting too). Then take action. Improve and repeat the strategy until you are able to complete this second nature.

Final Thoughts

If you find yourself really not sure where to get leads and think you have to talk to them face to face, you probably need to take a step back and look at what others are doing to get such great results first. Then, emulate what they are doing. When you have a smooth running business, you have lots of traffic running to your capture pages. This will make sure you are generating a ton of leads, and get lots of engagement with your audience.

The last part of this equation, that I found to be integral in building any sort of audience, is to get laser focused as to who your niche you are serving.

Must Know Facts About Using Pinterest For Blogging

I have been very anti-Pinterest up until about January of 2018.? I never saw a really good reason for engaging on this social network.? But,?here are some must-know?facts about using Pinterest?for blogging.??Now, if you’re a Pinterest guru or someone that used Pinterest all the time, this should be pretty obvious to you.

Pinterest is, from what I’ve read and observed, a huge source of traffic.? But not all traffic is equal.? You want to have targeted traffic.

In order to have targeted traffic, you’ll need to do some research and know who your niche is that you’re serving.? This will give you a solid base to start using Pinterest for blogging.

Having done some research on this topic of getting traffic to your blog over the months of November 2017 – January 2018.? I found that there are plenty of places to get traffic.

Social Media (free)
- Pinterest
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Plus
- Instagram
Paid
- Banners
- Solo Ads
- Media Buys

…and the list goes on!

The Bottom Line Is Traffic

What I believe the struggle is when it comes to getting FREE traffic is the learning curve is rather large when starting a blog.? There are a few different things that you as the blogging professional need to learn in a quick manner.

Graphic Design
- Creating engaging pins for Pinterest which drive traffic to your blog
Engagement with your followers on social media
- You need to have followers that will click on your links and buy.
- This type of engagement is all built on trust.? I’ve seen so many people frustrated with getting the engagement they want but come up empty-handed.
Advertising your blog posts.
- Typically called promoting blog posts.
- I use Hootsuite Pro to do all this in an automated fashion

Pinterest For Blogging Tips

Typically, there are months that are high in traffic for those in the northern hemisphere.? It’s all about where people are located during these time frames.? Those in the southern hemisphere are either outdoors in the sun or inside due to rain and wind.? If you’re in the northern hemisphere, you know that during this time we are typically inside braving the winter weather.

This has typically influenced when people are on a computer.? However, since Pinterest is also a mobile app, the weather isn’t so much of a factor of when people are on the internet and using the Pinterest Application.

So, Pinterest Traffic is garnered by a few different methods.

Directly from the board where the pin is located.
- This will give you the option to visit the website that posted the pin.
From a different Pinterest user that shared the pin on his/her board(s) because it was a quality pin that deserved to be re-pinned.

You can see from those 2 methods, how it can spiral throughout Pinterest and then you’ll start to see traffic from efforts you did yesterday, last week, month and even last year.

What’s The Best Strategy To Use With Pinterest Board Pinning?

As I entered into the Pinterest?world, I began to read blog posts about how to pin and gain more readership on my blog.? It felt like a huge task to learn but I did my research when I could and also took action on what I did know at the time until I learned something new.

Something I learned at the beginning of my entrepreneurial ventures is that knowledge without action is useless.

So here’s one thing that seems to be a pattern in my research so far.

Using a system to do the posting for you at specific times is a must.
- I like to use a couple of these automation systems.
  - Tailwind?- this app will give you access tribes.? I like this app because of how it does scheduling for pins.? You’ll want to schedule pins from other boards as well as yours.? This shows your leadership and provides a sense that you’re looking out for your followers best interests.
  - Board Booster – I use Board boosted to do a few other tasks with automation.? Being a techie, I love automation but realize the power of personal engagement.
    - Cycling pins by removing them and then reposting.? There are options to tell which pins can be removed based on how many shares, or how popular the pin is on Pinterest.
    - Campaigns, Looping, Scheduler, Tribes.? These are the options you have when you’re a paying customer.? I believe you get a trial using the scheduler.
    - Maintenance is going to include:
      - Pin Doctor will test any of your boards for things like missing links, to broken links and even suspicious websites.
      - Pin Mover does exactly what it says it does.? Moves pins from one board to another.
      - Group Manager –?Group Manager is a tool for owners of Collaborative Boards. It monitors all pins added by your contributors and identifies your best contributors as well as any contributors that don’t follow the rules of your group board.
Posting manually has been a huge lift to traffic for some blogs.
- I have not done much in the manual posting but some blogs I follow have seen a huge jump in traffic using this method.? Carly from MommyOnPurpose.com has done very well by posting manually.

One of several bloggers I like following is Michelle at NerdyOrganized because she knows the nerdy stuff like SEO and Keywords and…. well go over and check her blog out.

One of the biggest lessons that I learned when I started getting deeper into Pinterest was the importance of having a list of groups that you are a part of.? This will allow you to spread your blog pins around the Pinterest community.

I started out by going to Tailwind and did what I thought was the easy step on the right foot.? But there’s more than just one step to Tailwind.? It’s all about getting aligned to a few groups on the Tailwind platform and then also adding yourself to a bunch of groups that you find on the Pinterest site itself.? Don’t worry, they will all import to Tailwind or BoardBooster.

3 Game-Changing Instagram Strategies To Build Your Home-based Business

Many people go through social media such as Instagram, Facebook, Google+ with no plan or strategy on how to bring people over to their website to see what they have going on in their business.? It’s game-changing Instagram strategies that will bring a whole new light to your business.

So without further ado, here are 3 quick game-changing Instagram strategies you can apply right now to get bigger following.

Create Your Instagram Account
The most important item in getting your Instagram to work for you rather than against or not at all is to create your account. Be sure to follow the link below and before you go through the form that provides your information to Instagram, you’ll want to go to step 2
Click Here to Learn More About Create Your Instagram Account
Create Your Instagram Name, Strategically
Most people will go sign up and create a name that says either their first and last name or something to that effect. If you’re in a business that promotes Essential Oils, for instance, you probably should make your name say something like Oils_for_health or be even more targeted in your naming selection.
Connect with my Instagram profile
Click Here to Learn More
Your Game Changing Instagram Strategy Needs To Be Personal
Instagram is a huge social media platform that is mainly a mobile solution. So if you’re going to be successful on this platform you’re going to need to be mobile (active).
Find an application for your smartphone that allows you to edit movies, photos, etc. This way you can customize your photos for your audience.
By being active, you should always point people back to your profile link and never post more than one business photo per day. The rest of the photos you will need to be completely personal.
This personal touch will help people get to know you and let them know you are real and care about them.
You can post things as broad as what’s going on in your daily life to inspirational quotes, to great photography. Please remember that what you post has to be original and/or you have permission to post.
Click Here to Learn More About Your Strategy needs to be Personal with Your Business

Game Changing Instagram Strategies Conclusion

If you want more strategic methods to help you better align your Instagram strategy to bring in 20+ new leads per day, then download this free ebook on changing your Instagram game.? This will change how you work on Instagram and ultimately?make your business much more profitable.

If Instagram isn’t your preferred social media choice, why not look into a Facebook business setup or Twitter?

9 Must Have Plugins For WordPress Bloggers

It’s that time of year that people start new projects. They either are looking for a new business or want to do something on the side.? Blogging can be very lucrative if done right,? That’s why I’m going to give you 9 must have plugins for WordPress?bloggers to use that will improve your blogs bottom line.

Before I get into those plugins for WordPress, I’d like to give you a little strategy input for your?blog.

Plugins for WordPress?or any other platform like Joomla?can bog down a blog/website’s speed.? That’s why it’s best to keep your plugins to a minimum.

when I started blogging, I thought that any plugin that I could get to add functionality to my blog would be great.? This made complete sense as I’m very focused on gadgets and automation.

One thing to take note of in this blog.? All of the plugins that I mention in this post are free.? However, there are a couple that has a paid version, which I will mention when this option is available.

Related Post: How to Keep WordPress Optimized

That is the basis of this post, which is why I’m only giving you 9 plugins.? This will give you a little wiggle room for a couple of others that you can add to your liking.

The first plugin isn’t necessarily the one that is you need the most.? However, as a collective unit, these are the top must-have plugins for WordPress.

Akismet – This is a plugin that will literally save you months of work on your blog.I left this blog unattended once without Akismet and when I came back to it, I had thousands of approved comments that were nothing but spam and junk.This plugin is worth every penny you donate to them (the donation is optional – but know you are supporting a great plugin for your blog.Plugin link: Akismet
Pretty Link – I’ve been using my blog now since 2010.? Pretty link has been a part of my blogging for 80% of that time.? What you can do with Pretty Link is shorten an affiliate link or even a longer URL?from your blog.? I love that I can see reports on how the link is doing.? Also, you can put in several links to see which links are getting more attention.Pretty Link also has built into its service a way to brand your blog.? Basically, giving you the owner of your blog authority.? It says that you have a relationship with the other service providers when you offer a link such as https://jonmccaw.com/prettylinkpro, versus prettylink.com.? ?Lastly, I can say that if you’re just doing the shortening of URLs, you can use the free plugin.? No need for the Pro version.? But, if you want to do more, there’s a free trial you can use.

Plugin link: Pretty Link
SNAP – Social Network Auto Poster.? This is a plugin that I started using?about 2 months ago.? I absolutely love this simply because its main job is to send out blog posts to your social influence.? The one drawback is that you need to know how to follow directions when setting things up.If you know how to deal with API keys and secret keys, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about.? This will send out your post to as many Facebook pages as you need to be notified.? Also, it will send to Twitter, Tumblr, Stumble upon, Blogger, Plurk, De.Licio.us, Reddit, and you get the idea.? There isn’t a network that you can think of off the top of your where it will not post your blog.

Plugin Link: NextScripts – SNAP
Disqus – This plugin is great for social reach because of how it’s setup.? The idea is that people can comment on your blog and have those comments show up on your blog but managed on the Disqus website.? It’s the best of both worlds.? I’ve gone with other commenting systems before.? But I like the community that Disqus offers.More reasons to use Disqus, rather than it’s just a great commenting tool.? Disqus will allow you to back up your comments separate from your blog back up.? This will allow you to restore your comments if your blog goes down and is not recoverable.? The next reason that I love is that it will work?alongside with Akismet to help remove spam comments.? Lastly, in my list of reasons to have Disqus as your commenting system is you get a notification of new comments.? Other systems do not notify you of new comments.? You are responsible for logging in and checking.
Plugin Link: Disqus Commenting System
Pinterest Verify – If you’re doing or plan on doing Pinterest. You need to have your website verified.? The reason for this is that Pinterest can then start showing you what pins are being pinned from your website.? That said, make sure your blog is Pinterest ready.? Create tall graphics for pinners to spread the word about your blogging.? As the page says, this plugin hasn’t been updated in a couple of years, but it still works great with the current version of WordPress.
Plugin Link: Pinterest Verify
Google Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools).? This “plugin” really is just a connection to google so that you can see analytics on your site.? The data you want to see is what pages are doing really well and what your demographic is.? Age, male or female, location, and even what hobbies they like to do.

Plugin Link: Google Console
Better Click To Tweet – The best way to describe this is to actually put it into use.
9 Must Have Plugins For WordPress Bloggers Click To Tweet
I love using this plugin as it’s being used more and more to get better engagement.? Not only do you get more exposure, but people love to tweet something that is worth tweeting.? It’s a win-win for you and your visitor.There’s plenty of options that you can customize to your liking.? Go check this one out.? Coded by TodayMade.

Plugin link: Better Click To Tweet (BCTT)
WP Smush – One of the detriments to the online health of your blog is the size of your images.? Most bloggers will tell you to use JPEG or JPG format for your images.? However, if you use PNG (yes, it’s a larger file size), you can use WP Smush to reduce the file size on any PNG file.? Most of the time you get a smaller file than if it were JPEG and more customizability.? PNG is a vector based image which allows you to resize and keep clarity/focus on the image.? If given the opportunity, I would take a PNG over JPEG any day of the week!This plugin has a pro version that will allow you to smush more files at a time and better compression.

Plugin link: WP Smush
Email Marketing by Drip – If you’re starting a blog or even thinking about starting one.? The best advice anyone has ever given is to have an email marketing solution set up to collect leads on your blog.? As you can see, this site is set up to collect leads using the built-in form creation module.

Plugin link: Email Marketing by Drip

If you like automation and being able to segment your list on autopilot, drip is the way to go.? They are MUCH cheaper than Infusionsoft or other high-end email autoresponders.? ?In fact, it’s right on par with Aweber as far as price and offers more features.? Take your time to try out this software.? You will not be charged until you reach 100 subscribers.

How To Start A WordPress Blog With No Prior Technical Experience

I thought since I have been blogging for years now that I would sit down and actually write a blog. This blog will explain in layman’s terms How to Start a WordPress Blog with no prior technical experience.

In that spirit, this is a perfect venue to get your ideas put on digital paper. This will allow you to help hundreds if not thousands per month by sharing your knowledge and life. I know when I started a blog I found it to be a bit intimidating – even though I work in the Information Technology field for years. There were things that I knew had to be a big part of blogging and just being able to start a WordPress blog the right way is very important.

Honestly, I do have a few ideas rolling around in my head all the time.? However, it’s actually implementing those ideas into a blog post.?Let’s jump in and I’ll start to show you just how to start a WordPress blog with no prior technical experience.

Where To Start First, Your Guide To How To Start A WordPress Blog

You’ve got an idea in your head to start writing about a particular subject that you’re passionate about. I know how much blogging is one of the best income solutions online. It allows you to pretty much have a story written presence online 24/7. But you have to keep in mind that you’re going to need this to be a long-term solution to whatever it is you are aiming to solve.

So, the first step is to have a place to write these great ideas down. Ideas that you could talk days and perhaps months and years about. Narrow these ideas down to 1-2 and then select the one you want to talk about.

Structure Of A Blog

All websites are set up like a house. The website is akin to the inside of your home. The place you decorate inside and outside would be akin to your theme. However, you don’t have a website until you first have an address (you.com).

Your website address is available at any ICANN registrar which is a company licensed to sell website addresses, such as google.com. Fortunately, you can do this at SiteGround and keep things all under one roof.

The only missing part that we haven’t talked about yet, is the hosting. This is the equivalent to the land which you will be building your house on. The hosting gives you a place to be creative, build things, write things and then share it with the world by inviting them into your special spot on the internet.

Your Plot Of Land

In order to get your website to live on the internet, you’ll need to purchase some web hosting. This is pretty cheap and can run as low as $2.99/month for the cPanel web hosting. I prefer to use the Managed WordPress hosting, which normally runs at $7.99/month. However, through my relationship with GoDaddy, I can get you a discount using my link that brings your cost down to $3.99/month.

You’re going to be in search of a web host so that your website can live on the internet. I use the best hosting around. It’s called Managed WordPress hosting and most companies have it but you’ll want to find the host with the most uptime, as well as, the best speed.

I have been with Godaddy for a few years now and each time I need their help, they always manage to exceed my expectations. Whether they go the extra mile in showing me something new about their hosting, or they are just happy to help in any way possible.

They are always first class when I need to get in touch with them. Both the chat and phone models are great but I prefer to talk to an individual that is based right here in my time zone which is in the western part of the USA. Generally speaking, using the phone is better when calling support. You’ll get more skilled technicians.

Different Types Of Hosting

If you’ve Googled or Bing’d a few keywords about hosting accounts, you’ll notice different types of hosting packages. There’s cPanel hosting (uses Windows or Linux) and there’s “Managed WordPress Hosting” solutions. The cPanel installations allow you to do all the legwork of installing the WordPress installation. This can get quite tedious if you don’t know what you are doing.

I personally use the Managed WordPress hosting on my blog. Having a blog should be about blogging and not doing technical support on your blog installation. This is something that I found myself doing a few times when I moved a couple of sites to a different host.

Ultimately, I returned back to GoDaddy and remain a happy customer. If you’re ready to change hosting companies or are looking for a great place to start your WordPress blog, You’ll be happy with SiteGround hosting packages.

WordPress Automation Hosting

I love that the Managed WordPress Hosting has a migration assistant by GoDaddy which does all the common tasks for you during the installation. This allows you to get your website up and running in a matter of minutes rather than hours. This feature will greatly minimize your need to know technical things if you already have a blog on a different hosting platform.

That being said, if you already have a blog on a different host, consider coming over to SiteGround. They have awesome customer service and they have a plan that will make life much easier for you.

So, if you’re ready for a smooth, hassle-free experience, then set yourself up with Managed WordPress Hosting, for around $3.99/month. This includes 1 website and 10GB of storage. Perfect for anyone that is just getting started.

Key Features of WordPress Hosting

Right off the bat, you’ll notice that there are a few features that come with your Managed WordPress hosting account. So let’s go take a look at these features that are going to help you start a WordPress blog the right way.

Automatic Daily Backups

I’ve used this several times to fix something that I thought would be lost in translation or what most would call editing. I was SO GLAD that I had this available to use because it allowed me to do more of a time shift on my blog. This is a huge bonus and a lifesaver. You have the option to restore the files, database, or both files and database for up to 14 days. What does this all mean? Well, your WordPress installation is essentially a database. That database (or DB for techies) is loaded up with a bunch of files. You’re going to have complete control over what you restore, down to the day.

How To Use The Staging Site

The staging site is something that has recently come on to the scene of hosting. When you move a site into Siteground hosting, the system will automatically put your site into a staging mode.

This will change all of your links to reflect the auto-generated staging domain. The main reason for using the staging site is so that you can do upgrades on your site without having to affect the live site. Once you have made all the changes, you can sync up your site with the production site and then you will not have been in a downstate.

This will help build your authority in blogging or whatever niche you decided to serve.

This feature comes in very handy, as it allows you to go to your site to verify that everything transferred successfully.

Pictures, posts, links. All of it synced to perfection before you hit the button to transfer over to the live domain. As far as testing your website, you can test your plugins to verify that they will not crash your website. If there’s a question at all in adding a plug-in or code to your website, I can’t stress enough the importance of using your staging site. It’s very important to test things before publishing to a public view.

Multiple Site Management
Once again, I run a few different sites and the ability to log into my account on Godaddy is so very convenient. The website management page is very easy to understand and navigate. All in one place. Another part of the multiple site management is auto update and site performance measuring. Pretty much everything you have to do on a website using cPanel is automated for you with WordPress Hosting on the GoDaddy platform.

Site Uptime Guarantee

This is one stat that seems to get ignored because of the efficiency of all the web hosts. However, keeping your website up and running is one area that SiteGround excels in. The site uptime guarantee for SiteGround is 99.9%. I have never seen my website go down in the years I’ve been with them. This is a testament to the proficient GoDaddy system.

These are just a few of the features that you would enjoy using WordPress hosting with GoDaddy. If you already have a hosting account and have been using cPanel the whole time, you’ll definitely want to change over to the WordPress hosting.

Moving YourSite.com to SiteGround Managed WordPress Hosting

There’s another easy option to move over to GoDaddy. It’s the migration assistant by GoDaddy.

If you have a running website on another hosting platform, simply input the website address. When you see “login URL“, it’s just asking for your website address. For instance, I would use JonMcCaw.com in this field.

Select the button below the field that you input your website address to start the process.

Almost there…

This is the perfect time to go get that cup of coffee (or a refill).

Actually, the time required is all dependant on the size of your website. My website took a mere 40 minutes to migrate over. Just for measurement sake, my site has been on the net since 2010 and I posted occasionally.

The only caveat for migration assistant by GoDaddy to work is to make sure all your links are set to your domain name and not an automatically generated staging domain name before you migrate over to the GoDaddy Managed WordPress Hosting.

Now that you have set up a WordPress blog on the Godaddy hosting system, it’s time to start blogging.

What To Blog About

Hosting is the part of the setup that you’ll want to get set up right before doing any blogging. I keep going on and on about Godaddy because with the managed service they really have taken the difficulty away and automated backups for the previous 30 days.

So what is it that you want to blog about?

When you think about setting up a WordPress blog, you think that there’s a lot to think about when writing each blog. This is true but what I kick myself for is when I started blogging, I didn’t go all out and blog more consistently. So the technical side will work itself out. But, if you’re not blogging about what makes you go then you’re leaving things on the table.

And you know, you may not want to be leaving these things on the table.

If you made it this far you have officially learned how to start a WordPress blog. Now, if you’re ready for the next step, go read the next blog post that’s all about the best plug-ins to have loaded in your WordPress dashboard.

How To Use Facebook Live To Better Engage Your Followers

Live video is all the rage these days. Today, I’m going to show you how to use Facebook live to come across more genuine, personal, and grow your audience.

So is there a proper way to do this to get the fullest out of your live platform? Do you need to use Facebook Live? Absolutely not. But for the sake of this post, I’m going to teach you about Facebook Live.

Instagram, Twitter, Tik Toc, and others will be on another post.

How To Use Facebook Live To Grow Your Tribe

Facebook has been one of those platforms that seem to grow each day and they have the ability to say what goes and what stays on their platform. That’s why Facebook is doing a live video feed for everyone. It’s what snapchat, instagram, twitter, and YouTube all have in common now days.

How do you have success, if even just a little bit, in the world of live or recorded for that matter, video?

I believe there are 3 principles you should begin immediately practicing because doing them every time is tough.

So without further ado…

The 3 Tips That Will Grow Your Facebook Live Following

Look into the lens during your Facebook LIVE, not at yourself. if you are using a smartphone, that would be the small hole at the ear side of the phone when you’re talking on it.. if you are using any other type of digital camera, especially the ones that have the pop out screen so you can see yourself – Look at the lens.
Talk to the video camera like it’s your best friend or family. Make that personal connection through the camera lens.
Use pattern interrupts to get your viewers to stay longer in your video.
Keep your videos short. That would be approximately 2-5 minutes when doing your videos on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram or snapchat

Facebook Live Video is a great tool for you to use in the coming year to exponentially grow your business. But you have to start doing a video like you’re a pro. Confidence is attractive and when you get these three principles down, you will start to see many more people get on your live videos. These principles are true no matter where you do video. It doesn’t have to be on Facebook or YouTube. Or even a LIVE! video for that matter.

Better Rankings?!?

Facebook will give you better rankings and show your videos if you do a LIVE! This isn’t a secret anymore, so get out there and do a LIVE!

The reason that video is the best tool that’s FREE to create is that when people watch a video they get that sense that they know who you are and how you react. This is key to building trust. So it makes sense that the social media outlets such as Facebook, YouTube & Instagram, Periscope

Now that you know how to use Facebook live strategies which will build your Facebook Live following, go put them to use.

Facebook Live is the wave of the future. Learn the basic must have strategies and you can write your own paycheck. Click To Tweet

If you want to start learning these cool tips and trick at a more in-depth level, I invite you to join me in using the very system I use to learn about the how to’s of marketing which in turn help me attract people like yourself into business. It’s all about duplication and allowing your people to believe they can do what you are doing as well.

I have a set plan on sharing with you when you join my team. The plan is to get you to make 6 figures a year but you have to be willing to be coachable and listen and follow through with instructions. If that’s you, go ahead and get your trial started here.

Here are some other great articles you may want to check out about Facebook Marketing:

How to Use Facebook Live: The Ultimate Guide – How to use Facebook Live. Go to the News Feed, and tap the “Live” option denoted by the camcorder icon. Give Facebook access to ?
Facebook Media – Tips for Using Facebook Live – Since rolling out Facebook Live, we’ve seen people and publishers around the world seize the opportunity to share their experiences as they happen

Brand Marketing Your Business

Brand Marketing

The subject today is brand marketing. This is what I’m going to address and how you do it as a new or advanced business owner. This applies to all small and large business owners alike in the internet marketing space.

…even if you’re new to the entrepreneurial space, this works for you too!

Most new business owners have a perception that they join up on a business with their sponsor and they can ride the wave that their sponsor has created. Some of that is true but you have to create your brand and know what you stand for in business. It’s the same in businesses you see in your city too.

Target has their way of selling that is different from Walmart or Kmart. It’s their brand that sells people (and location)

So while you may not be a brick and mortar store, setting up shop the proper way is most imperative!

Setting Your Brand Marketing Up

The first thing you need to start doing as a new business owner is

Provide Value This means actually searching places out on the internet and taking notes, and then sharing it via a blog, video, or both on all of your social media outlets.Get focused on who you’re serving and give them what they are searching for. Be consistent because you are their answer to the issues they are having. If you aren’t consistent, you’ll likely miss them on the day they need you most. This is where the sales come from.Providing value on a daily, weekly basis is what you should start your focus on right out of the gate. I’d say a good rule of thumb is to be posting on social media multiple times a day and doing a video at least once a week to multiple times a week.
Encouragement It’s always the positive person that reaps positive actions. I’ve always seen the positive person show up again and again. They never quit doing good, which in turn, pays them VERY WELL. This one skill will keep your business and personal life full of blessing – and not just for you as you speak life into others.Realize that the world we live in right now is one of turmoil and when we leave work for the day, people do not want to sit and listen to you complain and berate on social media. Do you ever hang out on a post that is negative? Most of the time, you’re looking for a reason to laugh, gain knowledge, or to be encouraged.
Problem Solving One of the first questions I had when I started as a business owner online, was where do I find these problems? I’ve been a problem solver for well over 20 years and they usually just put a ticket in and I go fix their problem. (This is the mindset of an Information Technology employee). So in order to start looking for problems to solve, you have to know where to find them. The first place to look is in Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ groups. You can start a twitter feed using lists to find problems to solve as well. These are just a couple of the many you can use to find problems to solve. The best problems are the ones you find with people you already know.

Final Thoughts

If you need coaching on this, I invite you to get signed up on my email list that shows people how to be problem solver, an encourager, and how to provide value to your niche. Mostly, I look forward to helping you make your first 6 figures online.

8 Free Image Resources To Promote Your Blogging Efforts

When you’re off to your blogging journey, you quickly learn that using images and video are very much needed in order to make your blog a great reading experience.

These images help the visitor to create the image in their mind and henceforth, remember your blog, website and hopefully will keep them coming back for more.

The other side of the coin is that most people when they start out, will go to google and type in a keyword and find an image from the search engine result.

Word of advice —- DON’T DO IT!

Instead, get your free images and then use a program called Canva

Google does not actively send out agents to find photos that are being used fraudulently, but if someone decided to complain or a photo owner finds you’re using their content without permission, you can be slapped with a hefty fine. This fine is anywhere between $8,000 and $12,000 from what I have heard from friends.

Think this won’t happen to you? I know a friend of a friend that has had this happen to them and it’s not pretty, especially when you’re just starting out and don’t exactly have a 4-5 figure expenditure budget to pay such avoidable costs.

Protect Your Blogging Efforts With Free Image Resources

Instead of doing things the wrong way, start off by inserting photos you know are free to use and have expressly been categorized as such.

1. 1. Stock Snap
    Stock snap is a free image search engine if you will. On the page that you are taken to right away. Type in a search term and boom, you’ve got a list of photos that are free for download from different users around the world.You can then re-size them for your use and add text graphics as well.Click Here to Learn More About Stock Snap
  2. Little Visuals
    This site is an email based delivery photo catalog. When getting to the site you will be told that you can get 7 high-quality images sent to your email inbox every day.
    Each day you will be sent a pack of folders that are zipped up “.zip”. So you will need a program to unzip the file. Thankfully, almost every computer these days has a pre-installed program to do just that – zip and unzip. On Apple machines, you will see that they call it to compress and uncompressed and Windows it’s called compact and compress
    Click Here to Learn More About Little Visuals
  3. Mopho.to
    The design of this site is one of the sites that are not free on this list. However, the caveat to this is that the membership is so cheap it’s well worth the investment of $50/year or $5/month. Mopho.to is setup just like a few other sites that have monthly “credits” that you pay for. This is just a much cheaper version that has high-definition photos to use on your blog and social media.
    If you’re still wanting just the free photos there is an option on this site for free photos at mopho.to/free/
    Click Here to Learn More About Mopho.to
  4. Pixabay
    So you wanted to know where the videos would come into play, right? Well here’s the site that you can use that has over 540,000 free photos, vectors and art illustrations.
    It says so, right at the top of their page!
    So as I dig into this site, I find that when you search for a term, you are presented with photos from different people as well as different sites such as the expensive (but legal) shutterstock.com.
    When you go to click on the Shutterstock photos you are taken to a sign-up page to get photos from Shutterstock. My guess is that Pixabay is using Shutterstock as a way to monetize this site. If you would like to pay for your photos, go ahead and get them here at Shutterstock or you can stick with the free photos on Pixabay.
    The point of this blog post is to provide you with an arsenal of websites that provide free photos in many forms.
    The organization of this site is quite good as well. It’s planned so that anyone can choose video, vector, or photo on the results page of any searched term.
    Click Here to Learn More About Pixabay
  5. Free Images of Jay Mantri
    Jay Mantri has a site that has a few photos you can use online for your blog or social media. To get to all the photos you will need to click some links and browse the site a bit.
    One thing to note on this site, if you have any filters you will probably need to turn them off or view the site from a wide-open network such as a coffee shop or from home. A corporate network will more than likely block some of the technologies to render the site correctly.
    Click Here to Learn More About Free Images on Jay Mantri
  6. Life of Pix
    This site offers free photos and videos. No database that is searchable is in effect on Lifeofpix.com. You simply have to browse to get your image.
    Click Here to Learn More About Life of Pix
  7. Gratisography
    Very much a site that has imagination on the mind. photos are photoshopped with different heads on different bodies big heads on smaller bodies and other oddities.
    Click Here to Learn More About Gratisography
  8. Free Stock Photos
    This site delivers on what its name says it does. Awesome marketing and follow through.
    Free-Stock Photos.
    Click Here to Learn More About Free Stock Photos
  Blogging is a way to show off your online business. If you don’t have images, what’s the point of blogging? With the resources above you have the ability to blog with resources that are free and usable on your blog.
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Already have these sources on your list?? Here are some more references you can check into:
1. - 12 Amazing And Free Stock Photo … – Web Resources ? – 12 Amazing And Free Stock Photo Resources.
  - Free Backgrounds, Textures, and Images for Your Website – Finding awesome photos to use on your website is grueling. Sure, there’s Google Image Search and swiping stuff the old-fashioned way but, if your website is or will become as popular as you expect, that’ll eventually come back and chomp you on the haunches. The world is a small place your ex-dating your ex-BFF should have taught you that.
  - Free Image Resources | Otis College of Art and Design – Established in 1918, Otis College of Art and Design is a national leader in art and design education. The College mission is to prepare diverse students for art and …
  - 53+ Free Image Sources For Your Blog and Social Media ? – Find the visual content you need with our complete list of free image sources, offering high-quality images for your blog posts and social media updates.
  - 12 Best Free Image Resources for Artists | Foundmyself – A list of useful and free image resources for artists.

The First 1000 Twitter Followers Are The Toughest, But They Don?t Have To Be

Getting Your?First 1000 Twitter Followers?on Twitter seems to be a challenge when you first start out on Twitter. ?However, it doesn’t have to be that laborious of a task. ?I know the whole twitter thing can be a bit overwhelming knowing that your tweet only lasts a mere 10 minutes at best which of course depends on how popular your followers are.

What this really means is that if you are only one tweet, that tweets to a crowd who has a crowd of followers, your tweet will only last for as long as your followers have followers following them. ?Make sense? ?Good.

Seriously, there’s some multilevel math going on here and it can be viewed as a scam if you want more time on your follower’s timelines, but then what’s the point of a tweet.

It’s a brief moment in the space-time continuum. ?GREAT SCOTT!

So, I’ve made some advancements in Twitter and here’s what I have learned through it all.

3 Easy Tips To Your First 1000?Twitter Followers

Consistency
The time you spend on twitter is going to be a direct reflection of how fast your following grows. ?If you’re one that doesn’t like to hangout on social media all day long – don’t fret! ?There are ways and actually recommended ways to get your message out there without having to hang out waiting for the perfect moment to post your 140 characters thought.
Content
Over the last few months, I have noticed a huge difference in the engagement that different types of posts get. ?You have a few types of choices:
1. Text- Use this when you have no other media to post with your text. ?It’s generally the least popular among the types of posts you can use.
2. Photos – These are great to go with memes, or just great encouragement quotes, selfies and you get the picture – no pun intended!
3. Video – Twitter has the ability to post videos via YouTube or Vimeo or any other popular video service. However, you may not be getting all the space you want on your followers feed if you use the lesser video services. ?This can affect your speed of acquiring followers on twitter and the first goal is to get to 1000 followers.
Automation
As I pointed out in the first tip, you don’t have to hang out on social media anymore to be present! There are several different ways to get your face and brand noticed, with apps such as Hootsuite, Edgar, SocialOomph and the list goes on. ?Just do some comparison on the differences of each. I personally have tried them all and have written a blog comparing Edgar and SocialOomph.

One caveat to all of the above is this…

Do NOT spam your link to those following you. You may or may not have heard this but if you are providing value to your followers they will notice that you are not spamming when you actually to put a self-promoting link up. ?It’s rather nice to see a brand actually use the following formula when on twitter.

Engagement Rules When Posting Your Link On Twitter

There are general rules that apply to each social media outlet when it comes to making your business known as a value provider. ?For the best engagement, you’ll want to stay at a 20 to 1 ratio when tweeting.

What does this mean?

You’re going to want to post value tweets 19 times out of 20 or within a few tweets of this ratio. ?This is only due to the shortness of the life of a tweet.

If you’re on twitter and trying to get your?first 1000 Twitter followers. ?Know this…

You will get to your first 1,000 followers on twitter. ?Do not give up!
You will need to plan your strategy so that it is engaging using your preferred method of automation.
Some will come for a while, some for a long while and some not at all. ?This is a part of your growth as a brand.

Lastly, when you’re on twitter, you need to have a tried and true method of getting to your best hashtags for your posts. ?I have found one amazing site that is free and does wonder at attracting your people to your posts. ?This really cool tool is called Hashtagify.me. ?Use this great resource on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and many other social media venues.

Now, I’ve given you some great starting tips on where to take your marks on the dash to 1000 twitter followers. ?If you’re really wanting to get further into the advanced studies of creating a huge following, download my new e-book, Magnetic Twitter Followers That Buy Your Stuff.

I look am always looking for ways to help you succeed and make a living from the comforts of home. As you find something in this post that helps you, please take a moment and comment below.

Remember, if you’re just starting out you can definitely accomplish the goal of getting your…

First 1000 Twitter Followers!

Just keep providing great content which also means you are providing value to your readers!

How To Set Up A Home Business Facebook Fan Page For Any MLM

A Step By Step Guide To Creating A Home Business Facebook Fan Page for any Marketing Program

When it comes to setting up a business online you’re almost always going to need a presence on the top 3-5 websites in the world. Now obviously, you are not going to just create a personal page to do business on because there are limitations to that type of page. Let’s set things up the right way the first time and learn how to set up a home business Facebook fan page.

Step 1 – Decide On Your Facebook Fan Page Name

The first step can affect your success with your fan page because your name needs to be as keyword-related as possible. That said, YOU CAN learn how to set up a Facebook Fan Page for your MLM home business and be successful with the page.

The right tools, the right name, and the right strategy all come into play here. So let’s give your page a name.

Your ideas should be very targeted names. I would also suggest that you put your name in the title of your page so that someone could find your page when searching for you or your page.

Note: Using your MLM Company name on any home business Facebook Fan Page is not recommended due to the fact that they can go out of business and or you change to a different company. ?There are other reasons not to use their name as well but these are immediately pertaining to you. These things happen all the time and you don’t want to change your whole entire page because of one life event.

Here’s a screenshot of the page I created to show you an idea of a fan page name targeted to home business without really saying anything about home business. The name “Jon McCaw Marketing” is exactly what type of content the reader can expect and can make a split-second decision if they want to like the page or not.

Setup Home Business Facebook Fan Page-Invite-friends

The above is a page that I am running to promote a health-based home business venture. Notice that I named it as my name and I used a popular photo editing program that is web-based, called Canva or PicMonkey. They have templates already set up for you to do a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and most any other social media template for you to create any page header or post. This makes the playing field much more even for everyone when it comes to making graphics for any type of social media, including your home business Facebook fan page.

This Live example of a Facebook Fan page setup for your MLM home business is based in the health industry and the sky’s the limit. Just know and follow the following guidelines:

Company Compliance – You’re better off not using any of the company logo’s or promotional images unless specifically noted in writing by the company on your fan pages of any kind. This will save you a ton of time if they decide to change their mind later in the game.
Branding You – You are totally in love with your company product and want to spread this love around even on social media. I get it. Word to the wise – Don’t do it! You need to brand yourself as the authority and give the customer or viewer a bit of mystery in what you do by providing a ton of value, answering as many problems as possible.
Social Media Ads – Most of the social media outlets do not like or do not allow MLM or home-based businesses to run ads. So be sure to be a value provider rather than a home-based business ad runner which will get you tagged as such. The goal is to get as much exposure as possible without being pegged as an MLM guru.
New Leads/Likes – Most of these all lead into one train of thought and that’s to be as attractive as possible to the new person. You want them to like YOUR page not a subsidiary of your company. So to your company a favor as well as yourself and stay away from plastering your company name all over your page. You may have been told to put up a header photo by your company but that is not in YOUR best interest. Refer back to #2 for your best interest.
Stand Out From Others – In order to stand out, you need to be able to separate yourself from others selling the same product or service. You want to have freedom of choice in YOUR company. You probably do not want corporate telling you how and what you can say on your blog, fan page, or other social media. Yet another reason to set yourself apart from the pack.

Home Business Facebook Fan Page-jon-mccaw-marketing

The first step you’ll want to accomplish is to go to the proper link to get started setting your Facebook fan page up. You can create a home business Facebook fan page from this link and you should see something very similar to the photo below in step 2.

Step 2 – Setting Up?Your Home Business Facebook Fan Page

There are several options on what kind of fan page you can start. The key here is to choose the most relevant category to the type of business you have – or in some cases, to the type of personality you want to represent. You might choose to go into the Company, Organization or Institution box and choose “Small Business“

Home Business Facebook Fan Page-category

In this post, we are going to choose “Entrepreneur” from the “Artist, Band or Public Figure” category.

This will help Facebook place you on news feeds under the “other pages you might like” postings by Facebook, which will help get more targeted likes for your page.

In your case, you might want to choose a Local Business or Place if you’re looking to grow business in your community. I’ve also experimented with using the category of “Public Figure” which could apply as you are building your brand.

Whether you’re on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, or your blog, you should definitely take into consideration that any page name is affected by the title of your page. It’s a keyword world, and success is based on how well you choose and use your keywords.

Step 3 – Fill In Your Information

Be sure you are ready to tell everyone what they can expect from this page so that they know what sort of content you will be providing. ?This will also help laser target the people you get to like on your page. ? Make sure to do your page justice with your well-written description.

Getting your about page, and your profile pictures are easily completed.

This is where Canva comes in beautifully. The template is already there for you to make your banner fit on your page.

Before proceeding to the next step, you will need to: Once you have chosen your photos, filled in as much information about the page you are starting, you’ll want to start gathering some media to post to your page.

The above is where you can start adding your photos and your top banner for your home business Facebook fan page. However, it is not necessary to complete this now if you do not already have the artwork completed.

Home Business Facebook Fan Page-Favorite

A favorite is a link on the sidebar for easy access. Here’s where you can add it to the sidebar where you can have one-click access to your fan page.

Home Business Facebook Fan Page-Preferred-Audience

Advertising is a big part of a successful home business Facebook fan page these days. ?It was once a choice if you wanted to pay or do free marketing. This is not the case now and Facebook has created a pay-to-play model. Pay to play still works and you can create amazing results. However, you have to talk to your avatar (target market).

So to finish this portion, you should know your target market. Otherwise, I’d suggest leaving it as is.

If you skipped through some or all of the setup wizard prompts you can always get back to those areas of setup through the settings button.

Setup Home Business Facebook Fan Page-Settings-4

WARNING: Do NOT publish your home business Facebook fan page yet. Facebook will ask you to “Like”?your page. Then, to “share” your page with your friends. You’re not finished with the setup yet!

The page needs to have content that people can like and share. Having a blank page will scare people off. You don’t want people to think you’re not ready for them to consume your content.

Step 4 – Add Content, Then Share

Here’s the step that needs to be completed before you “LIKE” or share your page with other people. ?The reason you should not “LIKE” your page yet is as soon as you do, it appears on your timeline, and anyone who sees it can come and see a BLANK PAGE.

Now if you were the one seeing a blank page, would you like the page if you didn’t really know the person other than on Facebook?

After you have done some research and posted some images, quotes, and videos to your fan page, go ahead and share your personal page.

TIP: I highly recommend that you have about 5-10 posts in total before you publish your page to the Facebook crowd and the internet

Step 5 – Share Your Page with Others

You made it to the end of setting up your Page. As I stated in step 4, be sure you have at least 5-10 great value posts already set up. Once that is complete, you can advertise your page. Now, make your newly learned strategy into your own blog post and teach others to do what you learned.

Congratulations!

You made it through “How to Setup Home Business Facebook Fan Page” tutorial.

If you thought this was helpful for you, share it with others on your social media platforms. This is the first step in getting your name out there and branding yourself as a successful entrepreneur!

I’d like to suggest that you look into getting ahold of a system that teaches the best strategies on Facebook, Instagram, and more. In this, you’ll learn much more in-depth strategies to improve your ROI. You’ll be learning how to be a part of the 3% of successful entrepreneurs.

I don’t know where you are at in your journey. However, wherever you are, keep pressing into your goals and be amazing every day!

Looking for more information direct from the source?? Yes, it’s Facebook’s blog telling you how to do this on their own terms.

Create a Page | Facebook – Create a Page. Create a Page. Give your brand, business or cause a voice on Facebook and connect with the people who matter to you. It’s free to set up.

SocialOomph Vs Edgar: The Review You Need To See

SocialOomph vs Edgar: The Bout

In today’s fast-paced social media, we are always looking for the bigger better deal. So in that, we find that automation is huge if you’re going to be delivering content on a regular basis. ?Which is why in today’s post, we are going to compare a couple of big players in the world of twitter automation. ?It’s SocialOomph Vs, Edgar! ?Which of these will do the job for you and how they compare to each other.

I’ve got a pretty good handle on which one I like the best but when talking about them I will just give you the facts and that’s it. ?Well, I might tell you a quick relevant story here and there as well 🙂

Edgar: The?Review

I’d have to say that the best thing that I noticed right out of the “box” is that the user experience is very well presented. ?There are some great features that if you’re going to be doing twitter advertising, you’re going to want to take advantage of immediately. ?For instance, the Edgar feature that sold me, and spurred me on to give it a go is a feature that allows you to “recycle ” your tweets. ?This is a huge time saver. ?Of course, sprinkling in tweets from the moment is encouraged!

The con that I personally found was the pricing model. ?As stated above, I believe that Edgar should either start using an affiliate model and/or create a plan for twitter only users.

What is recycling?

Recycling tweets is a feature that essentially puts your tweet into a queue?and then Edgar will publish the tweet and install puts the tweet in the queue?again for a later time. ?The more tweets you have set up into Edgar the longer it will take for the tweet to reappear on twitter.

SocialOomph vs Edgar Library — Image 1 – Library

Each tweet can be put into one category or several. ?It’s all up to how you want your tweets organized. ?This also goes one step further and allows each tweet to be put into one or several different accounts for those that have more than one twitter account.

Notice in the picture below there’s a category that is called “Use Once”. ?This is for said usage. ?If you have a tweet that you just want to tweet out once but not just a spur of the moment tweet, then you’ll want to use the “Use Once” ?category. ?This will allow you to tweet something out within the scheduled time selected for the category “Use Once”.

categories are great so you can organize your social campaigns from several different accounts. ?Edgar isn’t just limited to Twitter either. ?You can assign several of the popular sites such as:

LinkedIn
Facebook
Google Plus
Twitter

Edgar Summary

So the sky’s the limit when using Edgar. ?What I found during my use of the Edgar platform was a way to save time and organize my tweets in a manner that would create a message to my followers. ?That message goes by so quickly that you need to, or have to tell it several times in order for your followers to see it. ?When I started creating a new account, I realized very quickly that the queue has at least a couple of days worth of tweets. ?Unless annoying, spamming tweets are the newfangled way of creating massive wealth on social media.

The Price For Edgar To Handle Your Social Media Postings

There are a couple different options when using Edgar to schedule your social media. ?The first one is the “Starter Plan” which starts at $49.00 USD per month. ?The next level is the “Premium” which is a monthly fee of 99.00USD per month at the last time I checked.

Plan Options	Updates	Price
Starter	1,000	$49.00/month
Premium	5,000	$99.00/month

All other features are included with the monthly fee, such as analytics for each post and account. ?Overall I’d give Edgar a positive rating. ?The price can be a stumbling block for those that are just starting out but those that are not aware of the other options available will gladly pay the starter package every month because their service works.

My experience was a good one when I used them as my social media scheduler along with HootSuite. ?The one option that I think would be great to incorporate into Edgar is the ability to download all of your updates into a .csv file or some format that would allow editing within a program such as MS Excel or Google Spreadsheets.

If you are interested in an affiliate program for Edgar, you will not find one at this time. ?To sign up you can simply visit MeetEdgar.com

SocialOomph: The Review

So we move on to the next competitor in the SocialOomph vs Edgar battle. ?I have to admit that this is one of those sites that I was hesitant to try out. Now I’m glad that I did. ?The recommendation that I got from a few friends in the marketing niche was well taken and here’s why:

SocialOomph has many levels of usage starting with the unlimited twitter package that bills 2 times per month. ?At the time of this posting here are the available sites that can be posted to with SocialOomph.

You can set up a Facebook personal profile, page, or group but the catch here is only one of them can be added. ?The cost will obviously go up with the addition of other sites added to your profile.

I personally love the Twitter integration that SocialOomph provides. ?In this review, I will only be going through the twitter integration as I have not used any of the other areas of SocialOomph.

As you can see below, there are many options to take advantage of with your twitter account. ?I’m sure that this would also be available to you if you wanted to use other social media outlets.

I’ll briefly go through each of them to help explain what they do even if they are a bit obvious. I know every little bit helps when you are just getting started.

Create New Update – This is one of those simple ones but if you select this option, you will be taken to a screen that allows you to create a new tweet.

Manage Existing Updates – When you get a library going, you’ll be able to adjust a link or text – or even replace a picture for an update you previously entered into a queue.

Queue Reservoirs – Setup these queue’s wisely as your social posting strategy relies on this. ?You will have the ability to have as many queues as you need to organize your tweets or updates. ?When these are all set up you will then set up your social media accounts and point them to which queues you want them to select tweets from. ?Very modular method.

Create Updates From RSS Feeds – This is an option that is available for those that want to integrate their blog into this system.

Create Updates Via Email – If you’re not in a place to access the website, simply pull up your email and create an update via your email program. This will send in your update via email. This can also be a discrete way of updating social media without logging into your account on social media.

Bulk Upload Updates – Simply put, you can upload all of your updates via a spreadsheet.? This makes for a better use of your time when starting out your account.

Manage Reusable Drafts – This option is one that I personally do not use as I don’t have drafts setup yet. However, this could be used as a template for adding updates, ?Such as using certain hashtags all the time.

Download Updates – This is a valuable tool in my opinion. ?It allows you to download all your updates, tweak them and then you can upload?all your updated material. Also, you can use this to move your tweets to a service such as Edgar or Hootsuite.

I will not go through the bulk section as this is pretty obvious as to what those options do.

The shortening service that is used is Bit.ly and are not bound by using it. each time you create a tweet you will have the option of shortening your URL with Bit.ly. ?When creating a tweet you can write out the entire tweet and then select the “Shorten Link” button and SocialOomph will detect your link and shorten it.

You can also use SocialOomph’s shortening service which comes with analytics as well. ?The Shortening URL is “DLD.Biz/uniqueID”. ?The site also gives the option of using a vanity URL (custom domain) for an extra price per month.

One more feature that is well worth the $6.44 per month is the Auto Follow-Back and Auto-DM. ?This means you can set up your marketing furthermore to be on autopilot.

Users that follow you will get a DM (Direct Message).? That DM can contain a message welcoming them to your twitter account. Then invite them to see what you’re all about.

CAUTION: DO NOT spam your link in this as you will get a very low percentage of users buying your product. ?Instead, use this as a way to get them to follow you on other social media platforms. You could send them a video.? This would be much more personal and draw them in.? Become a friend, not a pitch not to sell them another item.

In each of the cases, I found that each had their benefits. But, what concerned me was the monthly fee to just do twitter. ?Edgar does not have a twitter only platform, something that they may consider doing for a smaller fee per month like SocialOomph does. ?I found that doing Facebook scheduling works much better when you use their tool rather than a third-party tool. ?These types of platforms, in my marketing, are what I use for Twitter. I use them only because of the heavy commitment and business of twitter!

How do the plans compare in SocialOomph?

Plans	Updates	Price
Twitter Unlimited	Unlimited	$6.97 bi-monthly*
Professional	Unlimited	$17.97 bi-monthly*
Auto-Follow & Auto-DM	Unlimited	6.97 monthly (not included in above plans)
Free	12/tweets per hour	Free

The free account is definitely one to use if you’re just looking or want to see how SocialOomph performs. ?I’m testing the professional plan now as this blog is being written and I will report back as to how things work using the professional plan. ?So go ahead and get your free account set up. ?Also, there is a 7-day trial of the professional plan that you can opt for when getting your free account setup.

If you have any further input as to what you have experienced with either of the above platforms, comment below. ?Looking forward to hearing what you have to say about SocialOomph vs Edgar

My Final Take On The SocialOomph Vs Edgar Battle

Is?there a winner in the battle between SocialOomph vs Edgar? ?I’d be hard-pressed to proclaim a winner since each has their strengths and weaknesses. ?The real winner is the user who uses the platforms correctly without spamming. ?Providing value to their followers is the first and foremost goal. Then, being able to schedule it so that you can accomplish other goals in your marketing.? This will help you leverage your social calendar while posting is happening on auto-pilot.

Overall, both of these platforms do a great job at posting your tweets to your twitter account.? Both platforms also support other outlets of social media.? However, I am going to give the edge to SocialOomph due to its pricing options, which allow you to scale. Edgar has a flat rate that does not allow for the new entrepreneur to scale their needs accordingly.

Thanks for taking the time to read this SocialOomph vs Edgar review!

Facebook Removes Like” Button For WordPress Blogs

Let’s ‘Face’ it.? We all want to know why?Facebook Removes Like Button for WordPress blog and other CMS systems as well.

Facebook is a huge part of our social lives in today’s society. ?(pardon the pun – it was there for the pickings) 😉

Here’s Why Facebook Removes Like Button On WordPress Blogs?

When blogging started there wasn’t much of a social presence, in fact, it wasn’t until the early 2000’s that social media made an appearance.

Blogging, on the other hand, started in the mid to late 1990’s. ?So while social media didn’t have a place on blogs at the time, Facebook eventually made it more social to have their plug-in versus having a MySpace plug-in

wait…

did MySpace ever have a WordPress plug-in?

The simple answer?

…who cares at this point.

So, fast forward to the present time…

Why Facebook removes the “Like” button?

My guess is as good as yours but I believe the answer is simply due to advancement in technology.

Facebook is now removing their like button widget in favor of a more graph search compatible widget that will actually give you some more SEO juice to your blog as you post to your fan page. ?Sounds like a win-win to me.

Here’s a quick tutorial on how to change out your like button in favor of the graph search page plug-in.

This is a better move for both the entrepreneur and Facebook. ?As Facebook removes the like button, the evolution of Facebook is getting better. ?Our experience is what matters to them because we are the product and customer.

First, I want to make sure you know that there are some very RAW plug-ins out there that appear there is no effort put into their plug-in. ?I was even pointed towards this plugin in the video tutorial by some friends. Perhaps they were not aware of the issues that could or would arise.

I’m always in favor of presenting something to solve a person’s problems with the least amount of struggle as possible. ?In other words, if you have to know coding, your plug-in will not get promoted here.

Sorry, that’s just how it is. ?I’m a technical person. Having dealt with many people who are not technical, I know the importance of ease of use.

That said, here’s what I found that works like a charm.

If this plugin doesn’t work, let me know and I will update this blog post with a solution.

Facebook has become a platform that everyone is using, so it makes sense to show people on your blog where you socialize Click To Tweet

Lessons Learned From an FBI Agent To Stay Protected On The Internet

Today, I learned something quite valuable. It was more along the lines of how not to act on social media or even at home.?Lessons Learned From An FBI Agent is the topic today.

During the last few hours of my day at work, I had a meeting with my fellow coworkers and we were put before a FBI agent that specifically deals with hacking, and online fraud to sum it up.

She went on to tell us stories of how companies today are being manipulated into spending money that they either don’t have or didn’t want going out the door to begin with. So the subject matter was around staying safe keeping yourself safe.

Just to get you into perspective, the lady that shared this presentation is extremely fearful of what the internet can do to you. She’s gone through ID theft, and makes it a full-time job to keep her and her family off of the internet.
Why?
Well, I suppose there are many more eye-opening things that come across her desk being that she deal with the internet all day long and sees the damage and destruction that the hackers cause.
How she does this?
It’s the continual watching of what your family does on the internet. Sure you will have email communication and browsing the internet, but it doesn’t stop there.
Have you ever clicked OK on a button to agree to terms? Well part of those terms in most cases is taking away the liability of them posting pictures of anyone that has agreed to their TOC’s.
So if you’re one that loves privacy, be sure to watch where you give your approval. Especially watch those ‘download’ buttons.? Yet more lessons learned from an FBI agent.
There’s also the child that may get a bug in his/her mind to do something that their parents forbid them to do. It’s not that hard though to find out something about anyone. Just ask Google, Bing, or Yahoo!
When you have a child you have to be aware of the teachers taking pictures and posting them online.
Another Lessons Learned From An FBI Agent is Holding your items hostage is yet another common thing happening in internet land. If you click out of curiosity, you get to curiously see how much money you have to unlock your data (pictures, documents, videos, etc.).
‘The method that is used to hold your items hostage is called encryption using a PGP key. That stands for Pretty Good Privacy. Basically, anyone has access to create their key to unlock the encryption. It’s almost impossible to crack, so if you get hammered by one of these scams, you’re chances of getting your stuff back without paying the ransom, are slim to none.

Blogging is a way that you can share what you know to the masses. Here’s some of the traits you should look for in a blogging platform.

A blog that is guaranteed to run fast all the time.
No maintenance needed.
Up time guarantee
Security is high priority

I’ve been in the industry of blogging now for over 10 years.? If you would like help getting a blog started (including setting up logo’s, graphics, or general help creating a blog post), I would be happy to help you get started.

Send me a message and let me know what you want help with and I can give you a better measurement of what I can do.

4 Time Saving Tools Which Automate Social Media Posts

Today social media has become a way of life. It’s so spread out. Honestly, if you wanted to spread your brand all over social media you would need to hire out this one job to several assistants.? So, today we are going to go through the options you have when you’re looking to automate social media posts.

With more and more tools to help you get your message spread to several sites, I found a few of them that I believe are top-notch

Tools That Automate Social Media Posts

HootSuite
HootSuite is on of the most popular tools that will automate your posts and also help you find posts to share with your crowd based on keywords you select.
The tool itself is free for a limited amount of accounts. This only means that you can connect around 3 social media accounts to your HootSuite account and then be able to post to those 3 accounts simultaneously if you so desired.
There is a pro version and also an enterprise edition which most will only want to upgrade to the Pro version if you have more than three accounts you would like to post to.
If you have a few twitter accounts or even just one, you would be saving yourself a lot of time posting to your twitter account on a regular, scheduled basis if you used their mass importer option.
This allows you to have a spreadsheet of information ready set up in a specific format, then just upload the spreadsheet to HootSuite and it does the rest of the importing.
Click Here to Learn More About HootSuite
Sniply
Sniply is a tool that I love using for different reasons. First, it’s a way that I am able to pull traffic off of Facebook (something Facebook does not like) so that I am able to get my customer’s attention.
Sniply, to me, is also free advertising on any site that I want to advertise on. Say that you found a great article on business or marketing or even a sports article. Can you imagine how much that would cost on a nationally well-known website? Hundreds or perhaps even thousands depending on your method of advertisements.
Now all you need is Sniply to import your link, banner, or declaration on that page.
Click Here to Learn More About Sniply
Buffer
Buffer is one of those automation tools that are there for the common user. The common user has a couple of social sites (Twitter, Facebook, etc) that they would like to post to.? And the idea is to stay away from logging in to each account and post in a native format.
The functionality of Buffer is paired down to the ability to schedule your posts and they also have suggestions that you can add to your schedule. This is really handy if you’re in a pinch for content while you get more of your content ready. I also like to share others content as well in my twitter feed so that I’m showing it’s not all about me.
If you learn to spread the wealth around, you know it will come back to you eventually.
If you like Analytics, you can view them on your profile and see which posts are doing better than others. To see this information you will need to upgrade to the ‘awesome’ plan at either $10/mo or $102/yr.
At this point, you can then re-market those links with different descriptions. Test them out to see how many clicks you get with different intros.
TEST TEST TEST! That's the motto of a good marketer. Click To Tweet
If you use Sniply, there is a plugin to use buffer which is one way that I use buffer currently. There are more limitations on the Buffer application. This is because all it really was meant to do was to schedule posts for a few accounts.
One of those limitations is that you are not allowed to have more than 200 posts scheduled at any given time. Now, if you’re in marketing and you have accounts that need to be scheduled with lots of activity, you may want to stay away from Buffer.
However, if you’re just starting out and need to stay on a budget, you can use their FREE version or pay for the yearly subscription which is currently at $102/yr
Click Here to Learn More About Buffer
Edgar
I’d like to introduce to you the tool I use mostly for Twitter engagement. It’s a tool that does one thing very well. And others (like analytics) in a way that will help you with your posts (like most other tools have).
The kicker on this tool is that the posts that you put out there can be saved into a database which is categorized into subjects that you choose. Examples such as picture posts, #Throwback Thursday, quotes, etc.
The tool will then allow you to schedule different times to post these types of posts. Then, assign them to all or selected accounts you have connected to Edgar.
I currently have a twitter feed that will go out about 30 days – Then it REPEATS!!
Gone are the days of tweets that can only be used one time. Your efforts are more likely to be seen by more users when they are repeated differently and at different times. For those that want to know what the Twitter policy is on this type of information, here it is
Through searching this out, it looks like after a period of 24 hours, you are able to repeat the same text. However, you are allowed to post the same link over and over all day long.
However, there is one downfall to using Edgar.? You can read about it here
When you take a look at the life of a tweet. Then, the life of a Facebook post, you would be amazed at how short the lifespan of the post lives. Click To Tweet
Click Here to Learn More About Edgar

I’ve shared some pretty cool stuff with you regarding ways to automate social media posts. Some of your customers don’t like automated messages because they feel it’s impersonal. However, if you use the correct tools, your social media “customers” will not know you used automation.

Share this post and let others know what benefits you receive while using tools which automate social media posts.

Unsubscribe from Facebook Invites To Clean Up Your FaceBook

Today we are going to talk about “Unsubscribe from Facebook Invites”. I know these can be a pesky things to receive, especially when you’re not interested in what they are inviting you to. ?It happens to all of us – and yes even I get them?too!

So, here’s a quick video on how to unsubscribe from Facebook Invites. This should make your world a little more peaceful in Facebook land.

How to unsubscribe From Facebook Invites

Simple yet effective. ?That’s the way to run your life. And if it’s not, then you need to change something about it. Things like this need to be ?simple, profitable, and above all less stressful.

If you haven’t seen this system that I use to create income on Facebook, then you owe it to yourself to at least look at it. Firstly, you need to create your free account, and get familiar with the system. ?There’s a 14 day trial for you to use which comes with a coach that I will connect you with just for joining me. If it fits, great! ?Let’s get you positioned to make money using this very system.

Please, understand that joining me does not mean I will be pressuring you to do something you do not want to do.

This is for you and only you!

Of course, your reasons for doing this are, of course, unselfish and noble.

Click to follow me on Facebook

Video Marketing Tips and Tricks For the Beginner to the Experienced.

What is Considered “Value”?

Do Not Delete Your Videos In The Beginning.

Test, Test, Test!

How To Hone Your Video Marketing Skills

A Facebook Fan Page Can Be A Time Suck

How To Start A Fan Page The Right Way

Setting Up Your Fan Page

Canva For Non-Photoshop Users

PicMonkey – More Options

Spark by Adobe

Marketing Beginner: The Product Strategy

Marketing for Beginners: The Pricing Strategy

Marketing for Beginners: The Promotion Strategy

Introduction to Facebook Marketing

Posting Strategy

What To Do Before Posting Ads Using Facebook Marketing

Facebook Marketing: Always Remember This

HootSuite Social Media Planner

Enter HootSuite

Email AutoResponder by GetResponse

WordPress Blog

What’s Yours is Yours

Market Samurai SEO

The Pros of Market Samurai

The Cons of Market Samurai

My Opinion of Market Samurai

Programs That Work Great With These Tools

How Do You Create The Buy Now Desire With Network Marketing Leads?

How To Generate Home Business Network Marketing Leads

Build an Email List

How Is An Email List Built?

Social Media

Write Articles To Build MLM Leads

Ask For Referrals

Final Thoughts

The Bottom Line Is Traffic

Pinterest For Blogging Tips

What’s The Best Strategy To Use With Pinterest Board Pinning?

Create Your Instagram Account

Create Your Instagram Name, Strategically

Your Game Changing Instagram Strategy Needs To Be Personal

Game Changing Instagram Strategies Conclusion

Get My Blogging Essentials Check List

Where To Start First, Your Guide To How To Start A WordPress Blog

Structure Of A Blog

Your Plot Of Land

Different Types Of Hosting

WordPress Automation Hosting

Key Features of WordPress Hosting

Automatic Daily Backups

How To Use The Staging Site

Moving YourSite.com to SiteGround Managed WordPress Hosting

Almost there…

What To Blog About

How To Use Facebook Live To Grow Your Tribe

The 3 Tips That Will Grow Your Facebook Live Following

Better Rankings?!?

Brand Marketing

Setting Your Brand Marketing Up

Get My Blogging Essentials Check List

Final Thoughts

Protect Your Blogging Efforts With Free Image Resources

Stock Snap

Little Visuals

Mopho.to

Pixabay

Free Images of Jay Mantri

Life of Pix

Gratisography

Free Stock Photos

Get My PDF of Traffic Providers Tested and Proven By 6-7 Figure Earners

3 Easy Tips To Your First 1000?Twitter Followers

Engagement Rules When Posting Your Link On Twitter

First 1000 Twitter Followers!

A Step By Step Guide To Creating A Home Business Facebook Fan Page for any Marketing Program

Step 1 – Decide On Your Facebook Fan Page Name

Step 2 – Setting Up?Your Home Business Facebook Fan Page

Step 3 – Fill In Your Information

Step 4 – Add Content, Then Share