Erik Qualman's Blog, page 483

Elon Musk’s Hyperloop to Have Augmented Windows

Minecraft Just Got a Whole Lot Cooler

Microsoft recently announced they will be using the game Minecraft for Artificial Intelligence (AI). This online game uses virtual 3-D blocks to ‘mine’ and ‘craft’ unlimited resources to create your own world. Microsoft will be using AIX – platform to allow AI men to roam around Minecraft.

These men will be taught how to do tasks like build landscapes, climb up a hill, or build a robot. “You can do survival mode, you can do ‘build battles’ with your friends, you can do courses, you can implement our own games,” Katja Hofmann, leader of the project, said. This is really exciting for artificial intelligence because it allows us to create games that stretch beyond current abilities.” The technology is cheaper than using real-life scenarios and more sophisticated than their current simulations. Microsoft encourages everyone to take advantage of this platform in hope that young people will develop an interest in AI. (Source TechCrunch)



What to Say When You’ve Had Enough Virtual Reality…

Sorry, not sorry. During the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas this past weekend, talk revolved around what’s in store for future transportation. Hyperloop, transportation tubes that transport passengers to destinations up to 700 mph, is raving about “Augmented Windows”.

The tool allows passengers to ‘look’ out of windows as a means of entertainment. Even advertising will be thrown into the mix of information presented to the riders, which would be another source of revenue the company can conveniently use. The windows will use head tracking to see where the passenger is actually looking so it can portray the screen to give you the same feeling as if you were looking outside. (Source Mashable)



GM is Gettin’ With the Times

General Motors has acquired Cruise Automation – AKA driverless revolution – to get the ball rollin’ with autonomous vehicle technology. GM has been pushing towards self-driving cars and ride-hailing services recently. They even invested $500 million in an alliance with Lyft to help develop the autonomous vehicle program and have created Maven, their very own ride service. A federal ‘rulebook’ has been released making the Feds seem unprepared for the self-driving car future. The current rules and regulations are not quite up to par with this industry, so we’ll see if everyone we’ll be singing “look ma no hands” in the near future. (Source GM)

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The Best Webinar Tools For Your Business

Webinars have surged in popularity among the B2B audience in recent times. A study conducted by MarketingSherpa found that nearly 92% of marketers found webinars to be at least “somewhat effective” in generating a leads list and reaching a targeted audience. Compared to traditional marketing channels like tradeshows and whitepapers, webinars require relatively lower investment. However, the success of it depends to a great extent on the tools that you use to produce your webinars. Here are the top six tools in the market.

GetResponse Webinars: This is a relatively new kid of the webinar block but is powerful nonetheless. If you are among the 350,000 businesses already using GetResponse for your email marketing campaigns, then their Webinars is a natural choice. Even otherwise, GetResponse Webinars has features that would make you want to consider it. Firstly, the product brings together three critical components for B2B marketing together – lead capture, email marketing and webinars. Put together, it is a well-oiled machine to automate your lead generation process. Another reason to consider this is that it is totally on cloud – no plugins or installations for listeners to install, YouTube integration, free online storage to manage playback files and intuitive whiteboards to brainstorm on the fly.

Price: Starts at $49/month for 100 attendees

AnyMeeting: AnyMeeting comes with all the standard features that you find in webinar tools – namely the custom registration forms, Facebook/Twitter integration, custom branding, screensharing, polling and webinar recording. There is also a “Green Room” that you can use to prepare privately with your co-presenters before you go live to the webinar attendees. AnyMeeting supports webinars with as many as 1000 attendees, although you can start with one of their lower plans that support fewer attendees.

Price: Starts at $78/month for 100 attendees

GoToWebinar: GoToWebinar has an easy to use interface that lets users create and manage new webinar recordings. The product has tools to help rehearse sessions, record webinars, automate email lead generation, host multiple panelists and create up to 20 polls either in advance on on-the-fly during the session. You can also deliver handouts to the audience that is aimed at enabling higher top-of-the-mind recall of your product after the end of the session. Like GetResponse, GoToWebinar too provides mobile app support for viewers on the move.

Price: Starts at $89/month for 100 attendees

Adobe Connect: Of all the products discussed in the list, Adobe definitely enjoys a stronger brand name than others in the list. That however means a higher starting price for your webinars. Adobe markets a “all in one” webinar solution that includes easy reusable templates for managing registrations, custom branding options and analytics. In all fairness, all these features are also available with other products. Adobe Connect lets you host unlimited events and storage space for your product.

Price: Starts at $1250/year for 100 attendees

Join.Me: Join.me is part of the LogMeIn group and offers video conferencing, online meetings and webinar tools as part of the product. Unlike other products in this list, Join.me requires you to download an installable software. So if you are not a fan of local software products, then this is not for you. While LogMeIn markets the product as a great webinar solution, I would not necessarily choose this for webinars unless I am already paying for their online meeting product. The reason is that it does not readily come with lead capture forms that are so critical to using webinars as a lead generation tool. Join.me is useful if you already have a marketing audience you want to reach out to and webinar is not a critical lead generation strategy for your business.

Price: $20/user/month for 50 participants

WebEx: Webex is definitely the big daddy of online video conferencing. Owned by Cisco, the product comes with a plethora of options including event registration forms, custom branding, multiple panelist support and online polls. Similar to Adobe Connect, you also pay the price for the Cisco brand which means even a starter plan for 100 attendees can get close to the $100 per month mark.

Price: $99/month for 100 attendees

So which one is right for you? In terms of security, all these different products come with strong encryption and security standards which protects the privacy of you and your attendees. You may pick one of the larger brands if you do not mind paying extra cost just for the brand name. However, in terms of features and objective (that is lead capture), GetResponse Webinar and GoToWebinar are good choices considering that they not only give you a sophisticated webinar platform but also serve the purpose of using these webinars as a marketing tool to capture targeted leads. So what’s your choice?

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PageRank Does Not Live Anymore; There Is Something Else To Work On

There was a time when PageRank mattered a lot for websites and SEO professionals and writers used to talk about it all the time. That time is gone and you don’t need to work on your PageRank anymore. There is something different that you have to work on now but it needs just as much attention from you as SEO did. This is Trust Flow – it can be measured and it requires tweaking your strategies a little. It is not that you will have to completely change your SEO strategies, but a little modification will be needed.

Trust Flow is going to be changing the direction of SEO strategies for online businesses. The PageRank toolbar has not been receiving any updates for nearly 3 years now and trust flow remains the main area to work on for SEO professionals. Trust Flow will be measuring the rank of the website from the quality of links it has with other websites. More specifically, it will consider the quality links that website has on the internet with other websites within its niche.

The first thing you will need to do as part of your SEO strategy now is having links from good websites directing to yours. The first thing that most SEO professionals thought in the beginning when it was announced that PageRank was not going to matter anymore was that the days of keywords and content were gone. That’s quite the opposite of what Google actually intended to do. However, in every SEO aspect there is now more need of quality than quantity. This rule applies on the usage of keywords as well. You can’t stuff your keywords into the content unnecessarily. You now have to use the keywords as sensibly and naturally as possible within your content.

It is also more important for businesses to focus on keywords that are more relevant to their industry and niche. The way to work on good keywords is to use Google AdWords. This amazing tool allows you to work on keywords that are most optimized and that can produce the best results for your niche. You could work on long string keywords, small keywords and unique keywords too. Just recently, businesses have started working on language specific keywords as well. The era of translated websites has arrived and it is important for businesses to have their websites translated so they can work on unique keywords.

In addition to the sensible use of keywords, the SEO professionals will now have to focus on quality backlinks. Having too many backlinks directing to your website is not going to work anymore. In fact, too many low quality backlinks coming from websites that are not considered good websites by Google are going to get you punished. From that you could already conclude that you had to get rid of all the low quality backlinks that you thought would have your online website ranking punished by Google.

There is a great tool introduced by Google to make it easy for SEO professionals to help their clients get rid of bad and low quality backlinks. SEO professionals can use the Disavow tool that allows the search engine optimizers provide a list of backlinks to Google that it wants to be thrown out of the index. The Google then reviews the list of backlinks and does not regard them while measuring the ranking of the website. Once the backlinks are disavowed, the website is not punished for these backlinks and their presence does not cause the website ranking to go down.

Lastly, just like all other tools that could be used in the past to see the PageRank of the website and measure it, there are tools that can help online businesses measure the trust flow of their websites. Citation flow and Trust Flow checker is a great tool that can be used by online businesses to measure their Trust Flow. The main aspect that SEO professionals have to work on now is backlinks coming from businesses that are somehow relevant to the business that the backlinks are directed to. The keywords have to be used sensibly and not stuffed in the content unnecessarily.

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ISIS Has Own Snowden – Major Data Breach

Department of Justice Steps into Apple Battle

Apple and the FBI have been fighting for the past few weeks about whether or not they can unlock the phone of a San Bernadino shooter. FBI says they have to, Apple says no, repeat.

The Department of Justice decided to step in on Thursday to give their two cents. In a filing the DOJ said, ‘ … Apple’s rhetoric is not only false, but also corrosive of the very institutions that are best able to safeguard our liberty and our rights.” The DOJ even said Apple and their multiple tech industry supporters (Google, Microsoft, Twitter, etc) are creating a media frenzy. iDrama. (Source Engadget)



ISIS Data Breach

We know from Snowden that all it takes is one insider to create big problems. It seems like ISIS had a Snowden of their own who has leaked personal information and secret data of 22,000 ISIS fighters. The information fell into the hands of Britain’s Sky News and now is being spread around. If this information is legit, it could be major for security agencies on taking down the violent group. (Source Wired)

We thought about sending ISIS a copy of What Happens in Vegas Stays on YouTube…but not. Keep leaking ISIS.



Amazon Went Down and The World Stopped

Thursday afternoon, Amazon.com went down for 20 minutes and no one was calm. Around 2:30pm users trying to purchase online and through the app were greeted with an error message. Amazon lovers took to Twitter to express their upset and fear. #AmazonApocalypse (Source Mashable)

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6 Innovations For Visually Challenged People The World Was Unaware About

Some of the skilled people have dedicated their life to the betterment of our lesser privileged fellows. In this digital era, where every sector of life is receiving a fair amount of advancement with the assistance of technology, accessibility facilities for visually challenged people too are getting a boost.

“Blind people are just like seeing people in the dark. The loss of sight does not impair the qualities of mind and heart.”

The constant development in the field and the extensive new researches may bring one day on our planet, when no one will be suffering from this unfortunate situation. Some of the advanced inventions that may change the present condition of visually impaired people are-

Smile detector

Though many smartphones are already offering the smile capture technique as an advanced camera feature, it is the initiative by Listerine that has introduced this feature for the benefit of visually challenged people. The company has even developed a short film featuring a few blind people ‘feeling’ the smiles of their loved ones. The video seems to fulfill the objective of making the app appear more than just a brand publicizing.

The app, though not of any materialistic use, provides a solution to the emotional issues faced by a blind person. It may also help such people to be more interactive with their acquaintances. It is observed, many a time a visually impaired person tends to have bleak thoughts just because they were unable to see the expressions of a person they are talking to. For such cases, the app may prove to bring happiness to such people by cheering them on a fundamental level.

Visual Prosthesis

Though the idea of Visual Prosthesis (aka Bionic Eye) dates back to the 18th century, most people, especially from underdeveloped nations, do not know about it yet. Since the evolution of the idea, many biotechnological projects on the idea are getting developed. A few devices have already been designed and are in the experimentation phase. The most recent successful trial of one such device was conducted on a woman of 49 years of age. Rhian Lewis, a Briton, had lost her sight completely almost 16 years ago. The operation was carried out by the specialists of John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. The doctors had implanted a minuscule chip; that converts the light into electrical signals and then sends the same to the brain through optical nerve. Such chips can be used to treat the blindness caused by retinitis pigmentosa.

Since, the loss of sight depends on multiple factors, designing a standard device that can cure all type of vision problems, doesn’t sound plausible; i.e. why scientists are deliberating on focused research. Many projects like Bionic Vision Australia, Artificial Silicon Retina, Dobelle eye, etc. are under development, and when completed, may serve various noble causes like assisting visually challenged students in pursuing their academic endeavours. These can be a great assignment help to such students who want to complete their studies like normal people..

Braille Smartwatch

Last year, an invention with the name ‘Dot’ had caused a loud buzz in the startup market. ‘Dot’ has the typical smartwatch features like navigation, messaging, e-books, etc. It is the world’s first braille watch ever developed. The smart device may hit the market in the later part of the year. It is designed to be connected via Bluetooth 4.1 to a mobile phone. The software installed in the watch converts any type of text into braille and then displays it on the surface.

The smartwatch works on the principle of refreshable braille display. The surface of the device has four segments, each consisting of six active dots. The dots rise and fall, at customizable speed, to exhibit four different characters at a time. Other than Bluetooth the watch includes a gyroscope, touch sensor, and accelerometer. The watch can be proved a lifeline to the people who are visually impaired.

Haptic Shoes

With so many haptic feedback devices filling up the market, haptic shoes seems to be the most efficient one, as far as the accessibility for visually impaired people is concerned. ‘Le-chal’ (Hindi for lead me) is the first ever designed prototype of the device. It is much alike any other wearable navigation device. Though the device was originally created to aid blind people, many people who desire to use a navigational system without having to look at their devices time -and- again too are making use of the apparatus.

With a long battery life of three days, it can be used as the best trekking ally. The shoes also embeds a fitness tracking system, making the device more usable. Furthermore, the company has also introduced polyurethane insoles with the same techniques. These soles can be easily put inside any shoes to be used thence.

Enchroma Glasses

The invention was made for color-blind people. Like the Listerine’s smile app, the device is not of any materialistic use, but provides an effective way of perceiving the world with a new outlook. Again like the app, a short film featuring the reactions of color-blind people using the glasses for the first time was displayed.

It is understandable that the real delight of vision can only be achieved with genuine colors, a delight that was unknown to many color-blind people. The people with deuteranomaly were always apprehensive about the fact that the world they’re seeing is just a pale reflection of the same, but with this device, many such people are enjoying the bliss of truly colorful life.

SmartSpecs

Only 10 percent of legally blind people have that dark outlook of the world; we normally associate with any blind person. Most of the visually impaired people have some degree of residual sight. The device is said to enhance the eyesight of such visually challenged people. The device uses the technology of 3D cameras to capture the real-time images. The developed images are black and white in color and have much-enhanced contrast. Moreover, these devices are designed to show various displays, depending on the needs of the user. Though the glasses, when tested, were found useful only to the one-third of the people, it has definitely opened a new area of development in the field.

These are just a few examples of the inventions, that has the capability of changing the life of almost 285 million people (visually impaired people according to WHO). More inventions are on the way to make their life easier.

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13 Ways to Simplify Your Local Marketing Strategy in 2016

With the buzz around social media always getting stronger, it is very easy to get carried away with your business strategy. And more often than not, most business owners have done exactly that. For any venture to be successful, it is really important to get a strong grip on the local market. Looking at the market dynamics till date, following is a compilation of a few important tips for successful local marketing: -

1)      Identify primary customers: – You have to know who the people are most likely to buy your product / service. Even better if you know exactly who your primary, secondary and tertiary targets are.

2)      Utilize their behavioural pattern: - Once the targets are well identified, ensure you know their exact behavioural pattern. This would ensure your marketing strategy is most likely to draw out the desired response from your potential buyers.

3)      Choose authentic data: - In order to follow the first two points as well as analysing the result of your marketing efforts, it would be critically important to identify authentic data sources. There are several sources for data available and often they do not necessarily match each other. It is also advisable, if possible, to set up some kind of data collation mechanism by your own methods rather than blindly relying on external resources.

4)      Pick what you need, not a gimmick: -talking about data and more, there are always plenty on offer, especially when you look at marketing tools. No doubt that quite a few tools are actually excellent. But not necessarily all of them are relevant. Pick strictly what is relevant to your business needs and discard the rest- no matter how gorgeous the discarded might look.

5)      God lies in simplicity: - It is always tempting for every marketer to go overboard with design intricacies in their promotion, content, website layout and so on. However, if the intricacies are achieved at the cost of simplicity, the battle is lost even before it has begun. Opt for simplistic approach as that is what is more likely to gather maximum attention from local consumer base, especially if they are looking at your communication while in a rush.

6)      Go mobile: - And talking about being in rush, in almost every place today a seriously higher number of people are accessing digital medium while on the go through their cellular phones rather than laptops and desktops. If you want to grab maximum market share in the local arena, you would do well to focus specifically on mobile friendly website approach.

7)      Object oriented content: -Another temptation of digital platform is to fill it up with information- a suicidal move indeed! Look at the core object of your communication and create your content accordingly; it is always more likely to engage your target audience.

8)      Engage, don’t sell: - And engagement is the key. Social media is less for selling and more for interaction. As has been the trend so far, people engage more through social media and buy more through websites. So strategize accordingly.

9)      Be flexible: - Always keep in mind that even the local market dynamics is ever changing in its momentum; so keep the option of flexibility of strategy to be applied in execution ready without hesitation.

10)   Call for action, not list creation: - Your website needs to call for action for your audience, and it is highly advisable to not waste consumer interest in creating database. Hence, keep a single click button for a call rather than making them fill up a form for a call back.

11)   Ensure 100% attendance: - And when the consumers call, do not miss a call- hit the iron while it is perfectly hot to be shaped the way you want.

12)   Inform about consumer’s need, not yours: - Always ensure that your consumers’ needs are being linked to your product/ service being offered; hence, you offer them a solution rather than they offering business returns.

13)   E-commerce- forever: - And of course, wherever applicable deploy e-commerce as online purchases for even local consumers are ever increasing.

In order to deploy all the pointers mentioned above, be well informed about digital marketing services available to you. Choose the right partner for your business to have maximum penetration in the local market.

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Is Bernie Sanders’ Dress #blueorblack??

Imagine If Cars Could Speak…

Alibaba’s would say beep beep move over Amazon. E-commerce mogul Alibaba dropped some big news this morning announcing that at next month’s Beijing auto show they’ll be unveiling their first ever internet-connected smart car. Alibaba partnered with SAIC Motor Company to produce the new Roewe City sport utility and so far, detailed specs have been kept under wraps. However, Confucius says it’s a physical manifestation of several HUGEEE deals the e-commerce site has made in the past year, including one with smartphone manufacturer Meizu.

The car will be available to the public later this year, which marks a major win for the Chinese automotive market. Especially since China has been trying to reinvent its roadways and develop a transportation infrastructure that supports more connected devices. Sadly there are no pics of the new roadster available, but we’re imagining a 1980’s Delorean with neon lights. (Source MSN)

Thou Shalt Game

Google announced early this morning it will be expanding its IOS and Android apps for YouTube Gaming in Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. What is YouTube Gaming you ask? It’s a flipboard-like hub that supports live streaming and gameplay videos. This is an exciting move for Google, considering they’re one of the first major players in the mobile video capture and game streaming scene. Alongside the expansion, Google also updated other features for the app, including the ability to access other apps while gaming. So now you can expect even more competition in your next FIFA game. (Source The Verge)



Bernie Sanders Wears A Dress

Ha-ha not really though. Just in case you’re not sick of color debates, we’ve got another one for you. Wednesday’s debate kickstarted by questioning the true color of democratic candidate Bernie Sanders’ plush suit. Was it brown, blue, or black? Hhmm we may never know, but like with any issue people took to social media to solve the question. The results? Several different memes of Sanders wearing the infamous #blueorblack dress. In need of an office debate check em’ out here. (Source Mashable)

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Feeling Stuck? 5 Innovative Ways Brands Are Refreshing Their Creativity

Showing up for work every day is relatively easy. You just set your alarm for a certain time, make sure you get up and get ready, and do what you need to do to put yourself at your desk at your designated start time.

Being creative on cue isn’t quite that simple, though. Quite a few things can get in the way of your ability to come up with great ideas. Factors such as lack of sleep, personal issues, and burnout can all lead you to feel blocked when it’s time to innovate. Sometimes all you really need is to try a different approach. For many entrepreneurs these days, that approach is closely related to the way innovative brands come up with new ideas. Here are a few things today’s brands are doing to remain innovative.

Customer-Focused Design

When Procter & Gamble (P&G) found its brand was getting stale, the company did a major housecleaning, dismissing numerous employees in middle and upper management. At the same time, P&G quickly brought over a large team of designers from businesses across multiple industries. In its new environment, the company directed designers to focus on customer-focused design, involving customers in every step of the design process. If you’re feeling stuck, it could be that you’ve lost touch with your customer base. Instead of creating blindly and then deploying your new ideas to employees and, later, customers, consider asking for input along the way. Your customers will feel more invested in the process and you’ll likely find the experience helps push you past any creativity blocks.

Focus on the Process

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) noticed that when startups join programs designed to help grow companies, they spend more time focusing on the process rather than outcomes. Entrepreneurs with established businesses tend to be more results driven, which can disrupt the creative process. For that reason, BCG partnered with Torque Studios to help change the way startups are produced by introducing its Entrepreneur in Residence startup studio. Entrepreneurs take part in an immersive program that brings them face to face with some of the most disruptive companies in their space. This often results in partnerships and other arrangements that are mutually beneficial for all involved. When entrepreneurs feel stuck, this type of interaction can be the perfect way to inspire creativity.

Stop Thinking

Sometimes the more you try to force creativity, the less likely you are to find it. Ben Baldwin, CEO of ClearFit, said he came up with the idea for his business when he was driving 80 miles an hour, not thinking about business at all. If you’re feeling stuck, try taking a long walk or going for a drive in a scenic area. You may not get your big a-ha moment during your time away, but you may find that you return to the office ready to create.

Invest

One way long-established brands join the startup culture is by investing in innovative new businesses. Coca-Cola put together founders’ platforms to locate and invest in great solutions that Coca-Cola and its partner organizations can benefit from. One of those investments is in Wonolo, an on-demand staffing platform that sees itself as the Uber of hiring. Wonolo gives businesses access to a pool of pre-qualified applicants for the jobs they post, allowing them to quickly find workers in fields like data entry, customer service, and similar tasks. Coca-Cola can benefit from being part of a platform that shows promise and Wonolo gets a boost from one of the biggest brands on the planet.

Have Fun

Self-promotional videos are a natural part of today’s online marketing efforts for businesses. But creating a video people actually want to see is increasingly challenging in a crowded social media environment. Social media dashboard service HootSuite got creative in fun ways with its promotional video, A Game of Social Thrones. The video shows that brands can find success by following personal interests of its employees, which often match the personal interests of the general public.

No matter how long a company has been in business, it’s important to keep things new and fresh. By rethinking the way you come up with ideas and bring those ideas to fruition, you can not only make sure your business remains relevant, but you can avoid burnout for yourself and your staff.

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3 SEO Tools Your Small Business Needs Be Using Right Now

If you are attempting to do SEO in any form then here are 3 awesome small business SEO tools that you should definitely be using. These tools will help you improve your rankings regardless of your knowledge or experience level.

Guest Post Tracker

One of the best ways to promote your website and build awesome links is through blogger outreach, which is also known as guest blogging.

The reason guest posting works so well is because you can find powerful and authoritative blogs that have the same audience you are targeting and then you can get a link (and traffic) from that blog which helps your rankings plus the bonus of organic traffic from the same link.

The tool I use day to day to both find blogs that accept guest posts and to track all of my guest post submissions is Guest Post Tracker.

Guest Post Tracker maintains a huge list of blogs that will accept your guest post. That feature alone makes their website a must have.

Another awesome feature that makes this site so valuable is they also have built in web based software that not only tracks all of your guest post submissions, but also helps you track the key phrases you are targeting with each submission.

Best part about the site: for such a low price you get full access to a list that’s continually updated. Can’t beat that.

Check out their website here: https://www.guestposttracker.com

Majestic

Majestic is a well known SEO tool that gives you insight into your own and other websites. They provide really up to date link popularity data so you can see exactly who is linking to your website.

I have usually find myself using this site when I need to disavow links for an SEO client who has been penalized. Using this tool you can easily see links that have unnatural anchor text or links that are coming from sites unrelated to your site.

Majestic is most knows for their Trust Flow feature that measures the value of a link from a certain website. When your putting so much time and money into link building it important to make sure the links you’re getting are coming from trusted, valuable websites.

Majestic’s isn’t the cheapest tool in your arsenal but $50 a month is worth every penny if you need to reverse the effects of bad link building in the past.

Visit their website at http://www.majestic.com

Hotjar

OK, so Hotjar may not appear to be an SEO tool but it is. According to Hotjar will help you monitor your visitors then you start getting traffic so that you can turn them into paying customers but I use it to do something a little different.

The real value behind this is as you are trying to increase user engagement or increase conversions on your site. You can watch a replay of hundreds of visitors and see where they are getting hung up, and whether they are doing what you want them to do on your pages.

Hotjar also has heat maps to show you exactly where people click on a page.

Hotjar is an amazing tool and another reason why I like Hotjar so much: They have a free plan that gives you full access. If you need more recordings and heat maps you can upgrade to a higher plan but the free plan gives you a ton.

Check them out here: https://www.hotjar.com

There you have it. 3 small business tools that you should be using right now to boost your SEO campaign. Each one of these 3 tools will help you in a different way to jump start your organic traffic and more importantly how to retain it.

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How To Launch Just About Anything

You’ve got a great idea for a product. Maybe you’ve just developed a rough draft of your first book or an outline for the code to build your new app.

Perhaps you’ve built a strong course that has serious potential to help lots of people and earn you steady passive income. Regardless of what your product or service, you still face the same hurdle: What do you do to launch it?

The first step is to prepare well. Part of that preparation is to educate yourself. This can include several things, but we will cover a few in this article.

The Landing Page

These days, it’s critical to gauge the market interest in your product long before the launch or development phases to avoid chasing a dead end. Too many people make the common mistake of building something that others don’t really need or want, which is an expensive mistake you can avoid. One way to avoid it is to create your landing page.

So, the idea is to make your landing page for the product even if you haven’t finished it yet. The whole point of the page should be to summarize how your creation satisfies a burning desire for others in a way that no one has done before you. Then, you integrate a sign-up form for anyone who is interested in getting updates on the release of your new product.

For example, some high-converting apps to help you collect these emails include List Builder and Welcome Mat, both by Sumome.

The Discussion Forums

Many people get lost trying to post as many links to their landing page as they can all over the place, but that’s not necessarily the point. Ideally, you should already be a member of a forum somewhere in which people are talking about how to tackle the problem or issue that your product solves. Go to those places and share links there to attract the right people and create positive buzz in anticipation of your launch.

Another thing you should do, as a member of these forums, is to include a link to your launch page from your signature. That way, every time you join in a conversation, your link is there. If the forum does not allow that, at least add the link in your forum profile.

The Crowd Funding Campaign

Crowd funding isn’t just a great way to get venture capital; it is an avenue for testing how much people care about your project and gaining publicity for it simultaneously. Indiegogo, Tilt, and Kickstarter are all excellent platforms that help you reach a vast international audience in a very low-cost, low-risk way.

Promotional Campaigns on Social Media

One example is to start a teaser promotional campaign on Facebook to engage your social network. Advertising Facebook is a very affordable way to create interest in your new offering across a wide range of demographics. It’s easy to use, and you don’t need a background in marketing to build a great ad. Just focus on the key pain point or intriguing factor about your product in your wording. For further help to look more professional, enlist an advertising-design expert from Fiverr to make your infographics, video animations, logos, and more, starting at just $5.

When you have enough buzz, announce a soft launch to influencers (more on that in the next section).

Keep in mind, too, that there are specialized launch campaigns for specific products. But, even if these are specialized, they contain additional ideas that may help your campaign. An example is this article on how to launch your video game. There are exceptional tips and ideas in “10 Social Media Hacks to Promote Your App.”

This social media stage is especially appealing to your top market influencers because you can show that you hold their opinions in such high esteem that you want to know what they think before unleashing your creation to the world.

The Influencer Campaign

Another step that should be on your list is to start an influencer campaign. If you don’t know how to find the “Oprah” of your field, to recommend or endorse your product, you can start an influence campaign on a website that has high levels of credibility. One example is ClearVoice. Another one is Klout.

Whenever you approach an authoritative person who would have good reasons to promote your merchandise, be authentic and respectful. Explain how it’s a new concept and express how grateful you’d be to have their insights about it and how to improve it. Many times influencers are happy to help, especially if you are being real (and respectful!).

Ready to dive deeper into what makes product launches fail or succeed? There are a couple of books that I picked up and they were so helpful to me that I had to recommend them as an affiliate. The first suggestion is to read Pat Flynn’s book: “Will It Fly? How to Test Your Next Business Idea so You Don’t Waste Your Time and Money” to learn more about how to avoid making critical mistakes during your next launch. Another great resource, that will help you lay out your 90 day launch plan, step-by-step, is “Launch!: The Critical 90 Days from Idea to Market.” Keep in mind that these books are not necessarily the get-it-done-fast resources, but they will help you lay a solid (and educated) foundation for what you are likely trying to do with your launch.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are quite a few resources available. Also, there are a few steps that you should take, as you can see. However, keep in mind that this doesn’t have to be difficult. Breathe. Then, breathe again. You can do this!

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