HOW TO PROMOTE AND DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR BLOG

Incase you missed our announcement last month – we have teamed up with the wonderful international organization for fashion and beauty bloggers and publishers, iFabbo, to bring you a monthly guest blog showcasing their expert content-creation advice.  This month they share all you need to know about promotion and driving traffic. 

We are also very excited that one of the Co-founders of iFabbo, Sinead Norenius, will be speaking at our next big blogging event  on November 14th – That’s What She Said. It is a co-produced event with Trymbl and She is Media and is gearing up to be the best (free!) blogging events of 2014. Do join us, just follow this link!

You have put a lot of time and effort into creating and designing your blog, writing posts, and uploading content. However, your work is not done yet. To get the most out of your posts and to drive traffic to your blog, you must promote it as much as you can. We will cover several ways that you can promote your blog (the majority are free). Treat this as a check-list and with a little work, you will get the most leverage out of your blog posts.

Bookmarking Sites

• Create an account on StumbleUpon.com and start stumbling your posts.
• Reddit.com is one of the most popular bookmarking sites, be on it.
• Submit each post to Digg.com so that they can be shared with others.
• Help others find your posts when you submit them to Delicious.com
• Being on Technorati.com is a must as it is the top search engine for blogs (even Google says so).
• Triberr.com is a great site to promote your newsest blog posts and get social shares from it.

Social Media

• Add your recent posts to your personal and blog Facebook pages.
• Tweet about your latest posts at least once a day.
• Create a board on Pinterest for you to pin all of your posts to.
• Share your posts on Google+ for additional SEO perks.
• Instagram an image from your latest blog post to grab your followers attention and let them know that you have new content.
• Share on your LinkedIn profile and relevant groups.
• Bloglovin is becoming more popular as Google Reader is going away. Plus, they will drive traffic to you the more followers you have.
• Tumblr is a microblogging site that is perfect for sharing niche-based content.
• Empire Avenue combines social media and networking tools to help you drive network engagement to your blog.
• Quora.com is a question and answer based community. Perfect for your how-to posts.

Your Community

• Add your latest blog posts and URL to your email signatures using WiseStamp.
• Add your blog posts to your email newsletters.
• Share your posts with people in groups or forums that you belong to. Have you submitted your post to be featured as our Favorites of the Week or to our Favorite SHOP Reviews?
• Submit your posts to RSS directories. Your published posts will be published on other blogs automatically.

On Other Blogs

• Comment on other relevant blogs. Be sure to include a link to your blog or include a link to a post.
• Ask influential bloggers to link to your posts.
• Guest blog on other relevant blogs to capture a new audience.
• Join a blogging community and exchange links with other bloggers.

SEO

• Use Google Keywords to promote your blogs via SEO. Their Keyword Tool helps you to search keywords and see how many people are searching for particular keywords and how competitive they are.
• Look in your Google Analytics to see how people are finding your blog now. If it is a specific post, you may want to revisit that topic.
• Add relevant keywords in your image “Alt” tags. Images can be searched for too.
• Link to other posts within your site. This helps to build authority for your posts and keeps your readers on your blog longer.

This blog post was written by Michele Wang, one of our iFabbo contributors

Read More

HOW TO PROMOTE AND DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR BLOG

Incase you missed our announcement last month – we have teamed up with the wonderful international organization for fashion and beauty bloggers and publishers, iFabbo, to bring you a monthly guest blog showcasing their expert content-creation advice.  This month they share all you need to know about promotion and driving traffic. 

We are also very excited that one of the Co-founders of iFabbo, Sinead Norenius, will be speaking at our next big blogging event  on November 14th – That’s What She Said. It is a co-produced event with Trymbl and She is Media and is gearing up to be the best (free!) blogging events of 2014. Do join us, just follow this link!

You have put a lot of time and effort into creating and designing your blog, writing posts, and uploading content. However, your work is not done yet. To get the most out of your posts and to drive traffic to your blog, you must promote it as much as you can. We will cover several ways that you can promote your blog (the majority are free). Treat this as a check-list and with a little work, you will get the most leverage out of your blog posts.

Bookmarking Sites

• Create an account on StumbleUpon.com and start stumbling your posts.
• Reddit.com is one of the most popular bookmarking sites, be on it.
• Submit each post to Digg.com so that they can be shared with others.
• Help others find your posts when you submit them to Delicious.com
• Being on Technorati.com is a must as it is the top search engine for blogs (even Google says so).
• Triberr.com is a great site to promote your newsest blog posts and get social shares from it.

Social Media

• Add your recent posts to your personal and blog Facebook pages.
• Tweet about your latest posts at least once a day.
• Create a board on Pinterest for you to pin all of your posts to.
• Share your posts on Google+ for additional SEO perks.
• Instagram an image from your latest blog post to grab your followers attention and let them know that you have new content.
• Share on your LinkedIn profile and relevant groups.
• Bloglovin is becoming more popular as Google Reader is going away. Plus, they will drive traffic to you the more followers you have.
• Tumblr is a microblogging site that is perfect for sharing niche-based content.
• Empire Avenue combines social media and networking tools to help you drive network engagement to your blog.
• Quora.com is a question and answer based community. Perfect for your how-to posts.

Your Community

• Add your latest blog posts and URL to your email signatures using WiseStamp.
• Add your blog posts to your email newsletters.
• Share your posts with people in groups or forums that you belong to. Have you submitted your post to be featured as our Favorites of the Week or to our Favorite SHOP Reviews?
• Submit your posts to RSS directories. Your published posts will be published on other blogs automatically.

On Other Blogs

• Comment on other relevant blogs. Be sure to include a link to your blog or include a link to a post.
• Ask influential bloggers to link to your posts.
• Guest blog on other relevant blogs to capture a new audience.
• Join a blogging community and exchange links with other bloggers.

SEO

• Use Google Keywords to promote your blogs via SEO. Their Keyword Tool helps you to search keywords and see how many people are searching for particular keywords and how competitive they are.
• Look in your Google Analytics to see how people are finding your blog now. If it is a specific post, you may want to revisit that topic.
• Add relevant keywords in your image “Alt” tags. Images can be searched for too.
• Link to other posts within your site. This helps to build authority for your posts and keeps your readers on your blog longer.

This blog post was written by Michele Wang, one of our iFabbo contributors

Read More

Free Cloud Storage For Entrepreneurs: Top 6 Picks

1. Dropbox – Dropbox is one of the best known free cloud storage systems. One of its major advantages is that it offers clients specifically designed for Linux and Blackberry systems as well as the more standard OS offerings, so no matter what particular type of technology you or your employees enjoy employing, Dropbox can likely fit your needs. Heartbleed security: Dropbox was affected by Heartbleed, but there is a patch in place now, and previous users are encouraged to change their passwords.
2. Google Drive – Google Drive comes with a particularly generous 15GB of cloud storage when you link a Google account to it. It also exempts videos below a particular resolution and video content under 15 minutes in length, making it possible with wise data management to effectively enjoy unlimited space. Heartbleed security: Google was affected by Heartbleed and there’s a patch now in place. Google has said users do not need to change their passwords, but because of the previous vulnerability, better safe than sorry, we say.
3. OneDrive – This is Microsoft’s cloud storage service previously known as SkyDrive. One key difference of this cloud storage service is the social media integration OneDrive features, which is ideal for file sharing between colleagues across platforms and devices. It also directly integrates with Office 2013, perhaps the single most popular piece of business software on the market. Heartbleed security: Microsoft services were not running OpenSSL, according to LastPass, and were therefore not affected by Heartbleed.
4. Box – This service has been around even longer than Dropbox, originating in 2005. Most people are less familiar with Box as they have focused most of their efforts on enterprise-level solutions for larger businesses. However, the company offers increasingly competitive personal and small business-sized plans as well. The big advantage of Box is the ability to access and use the incredibly wide range of productivity-enhancing applications that have been developed for the platform over the years in support of the company’s corporate accounts. Heartbleed security: According to Mashable, “We’re currently working with our customers to proactively reset passwords and are also reissuing new SSL certificates for added protection.”
5. iCloud – For fans of Apple devices, the iCloud solution may make good sense. One of the biggest drawbacks of iCloud is that it doesn’t feature drag and drop functionality, nor can you back up photos from Android or Windows mobile devices. Files can be accessed via a PC once Apple’s Control Panel has been downloaded, but that’s about it. It does have impressive integration with Apple’s iWork office suite, and iPad and iPhone apps typically automatically interface with the platform as well. Heartbleed security: According torecode.net, “iOS and OS X never incorporated the vulnerable software and key web-based services were not affected.”
6. Firedrive – Firedrive.com makes this list because of the immense 50GB of free space the company gives new members, nearly 3x a fully-upgraded Dropbox account (and few people offer up enough referrals to Dropbox to bump their usage limits this high).  In addition to the high storage space, Firedrive offers the same functionality of the other choices and adds social integration. Heartbleed security: Says CEO Joseph Turner, “Our backend systems were affected and were patched on Tuesday morning when the [Heartbleed] bug was made public. Our customer facing systems utilize Cloudflare, which patched the issue before it was publicly disclosed. We’ve also re-issued our SSL certificates and administrative private keys to keep our systems secure.

Read More

Free Cloud Storage For Entrepreneurs: Top 6 Picks

1. Dropbox – Dropbox is one of the best known free cloud storage systems. One of its major advantages is that it offers clients specifically designed for Linux and Blackberry systems as well as the more standard OS offerings, so no matter what particular type of technology you or your employees enjoy employing, Dropbox can likely fit your needs. Heartbleed security: Dropbox was affected by Heartbleed, but there is a patch in place now, and previous users are encouraged to change their passwords.
2. Google Drive – Google Drive comes with a particularly generous 15GB of cloud storage when you link a Google account to it. It also exempts videos below a particular resolution and video content under 15 minutes in length, making it possible with wise data management to effectively enjoy unlimited space. Heartbleed security: Google was affected by Heartbleed and there’s a patch now in place. Google has said users do not need to change their passwords, but because of the previous vulnerability, better safe than sorry, we say.
3. OneDrive – This is Microsoft’s cloud storage service previously known as SkyDrive. One key difference of this cloud storage service is the social media integration OneDrive features, which is ideal for file sharing between colleagues across platforms and devices. It also directly integrates with Office 2013, perhaps the single most popular piece of business software on the market. Heartbleed security: Microsoft services were not running OpenSSL, according to LastPass, and were therefore not affected by Heartbleed.
4. Box – This service has been around even longer than Dropbox, originating in 2005. Most people are less familiar with Box as they have focused most of their efforts on enterprise-level solutions for larger businesses. However, the company offers increasingly competitive personal and small business-sized plans as well. The big advantage of Box is the ability to access and use the incredibly wide range of productivity-enhancing applications that have been developed for the platform over the years in support of the company’s corporate accounts. Heartbleed security: According to Mashable, “We’re currently working with our customers to proactively reset passwords and are also reissuing new SSL certificates for added protection.”
5. iCloud – For fans of Apple devices, the iCloud solution may make good sense. One of the biggest drawbacks of iCloud is that it doesn’t feature drag and drop functionality, nor can you back up photos from Android or Windows mobile devices. Files can be accessed via a PC once Apple’s Control Panel has been downloaded, but that’s about it. It does have impressive integration with Apple’s iWork office suite, and iPad and iPhone apps typically automatically interface with the platform as well. Heartbleed security: According torecode.net, “iOS and OS X never incorporated the vulnerable software and key web-based services were not affected.”
6. Firedrive – Firedrive.com makes this list because of the immense 50GB of free space the company gives new members, nearly 3x a fully-upgraded Dropbox account (and few people offer up enough referrals to Dropbox to bump their usage limits this high).  In addition to the high storage space, Firedrive offers the same functionality of the other choices and adds social integration. Heartbleed security: Says CEO Joseph Turner, “Our backend systems were affected and were patched on Tuesday morning when the [Heartbleed] bug was made public. Our customer facing systems utilize Cloudflare, which patched the issue before it was publicly disclosed. We’ve also re-issued our SSL certificates and administrative private keys to keep our systems secure.

Read More