Finding out great keywords is the first step of any effective SEO strategy. Keywords are important for effective PPC campaigns as well as for driving organic traffic. Competition for a good place on Search engines has been increasing rapidly. It is very difficult to find out a set of keywords that are

• related to the business
• easier to rank (both in PPC and in SERP)
• have good volume of traffic

So, how can we find out keywords that meet the three criteria mentioned above? The answer is pretty simple- research. If you still cannot find good keywords, then research some more. Research until you can build up the list of your coveted keywords.

You need tools for researching. Different types of SEO tools are available in plenty- some are free to use while some are paid. Free does not necessarily mean bad quality or less-functional. In fact, there are many amazing tools for keyword research which are totally free. Here’s a list of such tools. Using these tools can significantly decrease your marketing budget.

Soovle

Soovle provides a customizable keyword suggestion service from all major search engines in one place. Soovle shows keyword suggestions for Google, Bing, Yahoo, Amazong, YouTube, Answers.com, and Wikipedia, A user can save suggestions by dragging them. Soovle is one of the best keyword research tool out there.

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is another great free keyword suggestion tool. Start with a base term and insert it on the text field and press suggest. Ubersuggest will come up with hundreds of keyword ideas which are actually being used by people.

Search Latte

Want to extend your market with international SEO campaigns? Then Search Latte is your tool to find out the best keywords for international markets. Search Latte provides a clean and user friendly interface for building Google searches ‘’in any combination of Google supported top level domain, country and language.’’

Yahoo! Clues

Yahoo! Clues has a tab named Trend Analysis. With this tool you can find and analyze trends for any specific keyword, or you can compare between keywords. Yahoo! Clues provides great flexibility in terms of setting up time as you can choose day, week, month or even year.

YouTube Keyword Suggestion Tool

This is the best tool for video optimization. YouTube is not only a video publishing community, it has became one of the most frequently used search engine as well where people look for videos. You can use the tool to get keyword ideas by typing some words that describe your video or you can directly provide the url of your video and the tool will analyze the video for the best keyword ideas.

Ontolo’s Keyword Generator

This is a minimalist tool with great functionality. You have to provide the root words or phrases in one field and stem words or phrases in another field with stem replacement variables below. This tool will generate a number of keywords combining those words.

LDA Content Optimizer

After the Panda update, Google has increased importance on the use of different variations of keywords. LDA Content Optimizer helps websites to increase its relevancy for specific keywords. It scans for colocated terms that are not included in the website. You can make your website look better to search engines by inserting those keywords.

Keyword Lizard

Keyword Lizard is a classing keyword tool that helps you to combine different words and find out new keywords. This tool has the ability of great keyword filtering within a short time. Keyword Lizard is particularly helpful for large scale PPC campaigns.

Keyword Questions

Do you know what are the questions people are asking in your niche market? Questions are important, since people frequently search with questions and there are places where they post questions. Keyword Questions finds out relevant questions being asked around a word or a phrase.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Last but not the least, Google’s very own Keyword research tool is amazing. Recently, more functionalities have been added to it. Any type of keyword research should be started from here. It has great features and very flexible.

Do you know any other free tool that works great for keyword research? Do you use something else for researching keywords? Let me know, I will be happy to extend the list.

Recently, Seth Godin talked about backlist in his blog. This was something new for me. I have never heard of Backlist before. So, what does backlist mean exactly?

Seth explains-

“Backlist” is what publishers call the stuff that got published a while ago, but that’s still out there, selling.

That means- backlist is your legacy, backlist is what you already created and that is still out there for other people to access, to read or to view, to spread.  And, your backlist is not anonymous. Backlist must be credited to you or your organization.

Everyday you are tweeting, you are updating status on Facebook, leaving comments on YouTube videos, posting pictures on your Tumblr blog- all these digital footprints can be counted as your backlists as long as these actions are going to stay there for an indefinite time and they can be traced back to you by others. But are they making good or profitable backlists?

Social footprint is the kind of backlist we all have now. We all are more or less active on social media platforms. But when it comes to the point of using backlists for marketing purpose, mere digital footprints on social media platforms do not suffice or deliver the purpose by any means. You have to think about how you are going to build up your backlists and exactly what they will say about you or your business, where they will take the audience, how they will look and so on.

Indeed, as I understood, building backlist is a wonderful way to look at so-much-hyped content marketing. However, you need to think on a larger timescale while building backlists. It can be fairly called long-term content marketing strategy. Again, referring back to Seth Godin:

Today, of course, the work you put on the internet has a good chance of staying there for a very long time. The internet doesn’t easily forget.

That TED talk, then is going to be around for your grandchildren to see. The review of your new restaurant, or the generous connection you made on a social network–they’re going to last.

So, in summary, backlist is some kind of content. But, not just any content out there. To be regarded as backlist, a content needs to meet some requirements

1. It has to be available or easily accessible for a large number of audience
2. It must pay dividend over a long period of time. For instance, Hollywood still makes cinemas on Tintin books.
3. Backlist should ideally have the ability to avoid the declining stage in content life cycle.

Now that I understand what backlist is, the next question comes into my mind, being a marketing professional, is obviously ‘how someone can put the backlists into work for him/her?’ It’s a complex question and it’s not easy to answer the question in a straight manner. There are several issues involved with the question. Particularly, these three questions made me pondering-

1. What type of contents is more suitable to be used for backlists?
2. How to manage the accessibility of the backlists?
3. How to make sure that the backlists are going to enjoy a long life?

Content Suitability for Backlists

Content can take thousands of forms and shapes; and every form and shape is not suitable for building a great backlist on. For example, your social updates are one kind of content, but they are not really appropriate to be counted as a long-lasting backlist that will continue to have impact on the audience, or ‘pay dividend’ as Godin put it into words. And here we are talking about Backlists that will promote you or your website, we are trying to figure out the best strategic perspective to build backlists that will take your content marketing efforts ahead.

Okay, let’s see what are the different types of content available to be used in a digital context: Articles, Press releases, Videos, Podcasts, Interviews, Meme, Pictures, Events, Group discussion, Whitepapers, Case studies, Presentations, Infographics, Ebooks, Manifesto, Cartoons, Storyboard, Curated content set, Newsletter, Answers, Maps, Timeline, How-to guides …. well, that’s enough. Now, before building backlists, you need to think about your scope. How many types of contents you can cover within your specific area keeping your audience in mind? Your audience will not readily accept every kind of contents. Also, the topic can define the durability of your content. For example, if you write an article on the best 50 WordPress themes for small businesses, the article has little chance to retain its relevancy after two years as many new WordPress themes will already be in the market. Hence, any article written on a topic that changes pretty quickly cannot be used for the purpose of building backlists. Ebook on time and context independent topic can be a great backlist. Also, you can create a manifesto that many people can connect to on many levels. Other types of backlist-able contents are interviews, presentations, infographics, cartoons, case studies, answers, and white papers. Choose whatever suits best with your content delivery system, capability and audience acceptance. You must be capable to create the content and have the right channels to deliver it to your audience. Obviously, your audience must be ready to accept the content you are producing.

Managing Accessibility

Let’s say you have already found out the best type of content to go for. You are also amazing at product design and thus came up with an amazing product worth having a great backlist with that. But how the people will reach to your great content? Will you sell the product or make it available for free? What channels are you going to use to distribute your product? How are you going to promote it, for how long? These are important questions, as important as the design of the product itself. A good thing about Backlist is that it builds its own audience slowly over time. Still, you need to find out places where your audience gather and spread your content at the initial level. Later, if your content meets the criteria of being a great backlist, your audience will spread the word further to expand the reach of your content. Now, when we say that a backlist pays dividend, it does not mean only financial reward. The dividend can be reputation of your business or better brand awareness. Thus, the decision on whether you will charge a price for your content or not depends on your objective. If you want to earn revenue with premium quality content, go and charge a money in exchange of it. If you target better brand awareness, make it available for free.

Ensuring Sustainability of Content

Like all the products out there, contents also have a life cycle and at one point, it will start to decline unless you take proper measures to make it sustainable. A brand can adopt different ways to avoid its demise. For example, Coca-Cola make changes in its positioning or launch new advertising campaigns. But, it is different with a single piece of content. You cannot change its positioning in the mind of your audience. Rather, you have to apply the principles of creating evergreen content at the production phase. Here are the things that you need to consider while creating your content:

1. The central topic of your content should not be dependent of variables that change quickly with time.
2. There has to be an existing demand for your content, which will not wear off in a long time.
3. Your content should be useful, informative and hard to imitate.
4. The design of your content must be simple and user friendly.
5. The technological platform for the delivery of your content must be stable.

Leaving a Legacy

The more I thought about Backlists, the better I realized that whatever we do or create or spread, should be treated as our backlists. We must consider the possibility that even our Facebook status might become a backlist and hence, we have to watch our words. We need to ask ourselves this question- what kind of impression a piece of content that I am creating today may have on the potential audience five or ten years from now? As Seth Godin rightly said:

Your history of work is as important as the work you’ll do tomorrow.

Google AdWords announced Enhanced Campaign upgrade in February 2013. From the changes it brings, we can fairly assume that Google is focusing on making AdWords a more mobile-centric PPC advertising platform. It is said to put into action to simplify usability. However, it has certain impact on PPC strategy formulation.

4 Major Changes

1. Device-wise segmentation is not possible anymore

This probably is the biggest change in AdWords campaign management system. As advertiser, you won’t be able to segmentize your campaign according to different devices, i.e. Tablet, mobile and PC.

2. Bids modification according to geo-location

With the Enhanced Campaign, the PPC account manager now has a the ability to modify bids for specific geo-targets. This was an expected improvement since it reflects the recent explosion in the location-based advertising.

3. Customization for sitelinks

It’s a parallel change that resonates with the ability of modifying bids for specific geo-targets. Now the advertiser can specify what sitelinks will appear for different devices, locations and time of the day.

4. Deeper information regarding audience engagement

Now AdWords provides a little bit more information about your audience as phone calls, apps download etc. have been added to the conversion reporting.

What’s in It for Marketers?

1. The first change is a controversial one since it has limited the ability of the marketers to launch different campaigns targeting different device platforms. However, there is workaround to limit a campaign only for PC and tablet users by lowering the bid amount.
2. The second change is welcomed by all the PPC managers. Now the advertisers can download reports segmented by the geographic areas and identify campaign performance on specific areas. This information can be used to adjust bids for low-performing and high-performing regions.
3. Sitelinks are the links that you can place below the main ad content. With Enhanced Campaign, now advertisers have more control over the sitelinks. They can now set different sitelinks according to time or device. How that can help the advertisers? Well, a restaurant can be a perfect example which can utilize the customization capability according to time. The restaurant can show different sitelinks in lunch and breakfast time which can be quite helpful for utilizing the contextual factors.
4. Now AdWords will provide some more information regarding the traffic such as phone call and apps download. As mobile marketing is becoming increasingly large, information about apps download can be very useful for the marketers to understand audience behavior. These new metrics can be compared with the existing ones such as sales, leads, downloads etc.

In light of these changes and possible future changes following the enhanced campaign, PPC managers need to be more focused on smart phones as the major ad delivery vehicle in near future. For this time being, they can exploit bid adjustment as a smart way to control campaigns across different devices. Also, now they can apply ‘context marketing’ through the improvements AdWords has done in the sitelinks. There are thousands of possibilities to use this enhanced sitelinks feature. Advertisers need to be more creative here and think from a customer’s perspective.

SEO hardly has a standard approach for all kinds of business organizations. In a startup context, SEO can be radically different from the optimization practices for an established business in terms of approach and implementation. I have posted before about different ways to attract traffic immediately after the launch of a website, which mostly exploit content marketing techniques. However, SEO is too big to ignore and having an SEO strategy for a startup pays good in the long run.

The strategic emphasis of SEO can be on a number of different aspects depending on the context and organizational goals. However, since the context for modern start ups are more or less comparable, a set of four actions can be identified as the strategic pillars of SEO process for startups, which are: Test, Measure, Connect, and Socialize.

Test:

Testing SEO initiatives is particularly important for start ups. However, it is sometimes a little bit difficult to test an SEO campaign in quantitative terms. In that case, at least some qualitative criteria have to be set. Optimizely is a good tool for testing. Also, Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics provide some utility to run different tests.

Measure:

The main use of Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools is the measurement of SEO efforts. Piwik is a good alternative of Google Analytics which provides deeper data about the traffic of your website and runs from your own server. Followerwonk is a great tool to measure the impact of your SEO campaigns on Twitter.

Connect:

With the word connect, a number of activities are referred including link building, relationship marketing, and social media profiling.

Link building

After Google Panda update, backlinks are not as important as they were, but backlinks still holds great value for optimization of your website. In this changed scenario, a start up needs to focus on building relevant links using relevant keywords. Guest blogging is so far a great way to build links. Also, recognizing industry experts and having a honorary badge for them might help the startup to get links from valuable sources. Above all, publishing great content that people love to share and comment on will automate your link building process.

Relationship marketing

Relationship marketing is the approach where the company builds and maintains business relationships for a long period. For every business, regardless of whether it is online or offline, relationship with stakeholders is important. A start up needs to foster relationship with influential bloggers, industry experts, journalists and potential customers.

Social media profiling

Social media have given the wonderful opportunity to connect with the target audience easily. However, depending on the type of the business, you should get selective about social media profiling. There are niche social media platforms that can be suitable for particular businesses. For example, if your startup markets a new diet plan for athletes; then Athlinks, a social network for athletes, can be a great place where you have to be. A long term activity plan for profiling your start up on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest and a niche social media can bring great results in terms of growing traffic and bringing business prospects.

Socialize:

Having social media profiles is not sufficient anymore. People will not automatically visit your social page unless you interact with them. That’s where socialize comes. For SEO purpose, your socializing focus should be on Google+. Make sure that you have ensured Google Authorship and have a Google+ page and community. The next part is getting your target audience involved with your social presence. Do not try to create conversation around your contents only. Rather, comment and share the contents posted by others. Remember that ‘becoming social’ is opposite of ‘becoming selfish’. Reach out to people, interact with them, publish great content- your social signals will get stronger which will eventually impact your site’s position on the search engines.

This four actions formula will definitely boost your SEO campaigns within a startup context regardless of the type of the business you are involved in. However, it is important to have clearly specified strategic plan integrating all these four elements before launching your business.

Selecting a brand name for your service or product has become a pretty daunting task these days. The name has to be meaningful, catchy, easily memorable, and short. Also since it is imperative that the product or service must have a website of its own, the domain name for that brand must be available, especially the dotcom one along with other top-level domains. It is challenging to address all these issues and come up with the ideal brand name finally.

I used to offer brand naming service. The service was simple- give me a brief about the business or product that you want to get named; I will give you name suggestions. And, all the name suggestions will be available for .com domain registration. I continued this service until I got busy with other stuffs. Along the way, I have learned a few things about how to find out a good brandable name with available domain quickly.  Before sharing my insights about the process of coming up with brand names, I would like to show you a list of name suggestions that I generated for a broad range of services and products. In this list, I have only included the suggestions that were not selected and still available for domain registration. If you find a name suitable for your business and like it, feel free to use it (a short ‘thank you’ note will be appreciated in this case).

 The Process I Follow

If I am in the right set of mind and have a detailed understanding of a business, I can come up with 10 or more names within one hour or so. My process is pretty simple. All it requires are paper, pencil, and a PC with internet connection. Here’s the step by step process.

Step 1: Understand the Business

The first step is to understand what the business is about. I usually ask the client to give me a brief with details about the service, the mission, the target market and of course, if the client has any specific word or set of words in her/his mind. I read the brief at least three times and make sure that I have understood it properly.

Step 2: Research on Related Businesses

Now that I understand what the business is about, I look up in the internet for other company names within the industry. It helps me to find our related words and come up with new ideas.

Step 3: List All Relevant Words

Next step is listing all the words that I found to have something to do with the business. I use plain paper and pencil to write down the words. I create two lists of words: one for root words and one for associating words. Root words are those which express the core idea of the business. And the associating words are the ones that are related to the business process in some way. For example, for an Online money transfer service the root words can be: Pay, Payment, Cash, Money etc. For this service, the possible associating words are Wallet, Purse, Transfer, Happiness, Joy etc.

Step 4: Generate Names

After getting my list ready for use, I start playing with the words I have on the list. I make compounds, form portmanteau, use spelling variations, use synonyms and look for any possible meaningful alteration of the words

Step 5: Check for Domain Availability .

When I formulate 20 or so names, I start checking them for domain availability. For this purpose, I use Domize. DomainTyper is another pretty neat tool that you can use. I keep the names which are available for dotcom domain registration and make a separate list with the names that are already taken.

Step 6: Create More Names

Next step is to work on the second list. I try to come up with variations of those names and check the availability. In the meantime, the insights that I get from domain availability checking help me to formulate more names. When I feel that I have a list of enough name suggestions, I stop.

Step 7: Filter and Get the Final List Ready

The last step is filtering. Now I have a list of 20 to 25 names and all of them are available for domain registration. After the filtering, there will be only 10 names remaining. I try to be as objective as possible during the filtering process since I tend to fall in love with every name idea I come up with. For filtering purpose, I judge each name against a few questions:

1. Is this name relevant to the business?
2. Is the name memorable?
3. Is the name has a visual connotation which can be translated into a beautiful logo?
4. Is the name short? (Names within 8 letters can be considered as short, and for some businesses, length of the name can be ignored)

So, that’s the process in brief that I follow. However, one important part of the process is missing here. That is, the process of generating possible brand names. I follow a few techniques for this purpose, all of which are widely used by companies to make successful brands.

Using real word

Unless you are extremely lucky, you will not find an available domain with a real word. But it is always a good idea to use a real word to name your business cause people tend to remember the real words more than  they do remember the made up or fictitious words. Examples of such brand names are Apple, Adobe, Indeed, Multiply, Live etc.

Making compound words

Compounding words are formed with the association of two words. You can try to form new words mixing two or more (preferably two) words together and choose the best ones from those. Firefox, WordPress, NetVibes, SalesForce etc. are some examples of compounding brand names. In the list above, you might have noticed that I used some compounding words such as DeluxeHeights, WhatPanic, JiffStop etc.

Forming portmanteau

Portmanteau is a widely used technique for forming brand names. Portmanteau is a blend of two words formed with adding parts or whole of those words. Microsoft is a famous example of portmanteaus which is formed with Micro from Microcomputer and Soft of Software. Other famous portmanteau brand names are Skype (Sky+ peer-to-peer), Wikipedia (wiki+ encyclopedia), Technorati (Technology+Literati), Groupon (Group+Coupon) etc. In my list, I have given examples of quite a few portmanteau as well. Some of them are Truclu (True+Clue), Negotimate (Negotiate+Ultimate), Anygotiate (Any+Negotiate), Cashscriber (Cash+Subscriber), Quicksto (Quick+Store), Typexperts (Typewriting+Experts), Windexed (Win+Indexed), Omnidoma (Omni+Domain), Yourons (You+Neurons).

Using pun

You can change a name in such a way so that it sounds alike but adds a second meaning to the word. Writely, a pun of Rightly, is a good example of this technique. However, instead of using a pun, i.e. a homonym of the original word, you can also use a clever twist of the word as well. For example, LoJack is the name of a stolen vehicle recovery system which is twisted from Hijack, the act of stealing. In my list I have mentioned a few puns such as Gustwo (a pun of Gusto),  Conclued (a pun of Conclude, it also refers to the act of concluding a con act with evidences or clues), Payssion (a pun of Passion) and Hookalike ( a pun of Lookalike).

Spelling in a different way

The difference between spelling variations and puns is that in case of spelling variation the new word does not signify any second meaning. A lot of web-based businesses have misspelled words as their names such as Google (Googol), Flickr (Flicker), Digg (Dig), Topix (Topics), SyFy (Sci Fi), etc. There are three main trends of creating misspelled words:

1. Omit vowels

Omitting vowels has been quite popular lately cause it helps to create memorable names with available domains. Flickr and Tumblr are two most popular example of this trend.

2. Replace letters

There’s another trend of replacing letters which are visually similar. For example, replacing ‘u’ with a ‘v’ is quite commonplace now. For instance, Svpply is the name of an online store and Svbtle is the name of a WordPress theme. Other examples of brand names created by letter replacement include Zoho (Soho), Zune (Tune), and Wii (We).

3. Use same letter multiple times

Using the same letter multiple times is another technique to form spelling variation. I personally don’t like this approach since I think it is confusing. Ffffound is an example of this practice.

Using phrases

Using phrases is another way of coming up with brandable names. Linkedin and Stumbleupon are two great example of how phrases can produce good brand names. There are other organizations with names built upon phrases such as SimplyHired, SecondLife, iLike etc. In my list, I suggested ‘Piledon’ as the name of a directory listing service. I guess the reason is obvious.

Adding a prefix or suffix

In the current world of abundant start-ups and new apps everyday, coming up with a name is really a huge challenge. A lot of people are adding prefix or suffix with a core word to form brand names. Some commonly used prefixes are:

• Insta (Instagram, Instapaper)
• Ever (Evernote, Everplaces)
• You (YouTube)
• Any (Anydo, Anybeat)

And some widely used suffixes are:

• Ly (Bitly, Grammarly)
• Press (wordpress, cafepress)
• Modo (Pagemodo)
• Fy (Storify)
• Moz (SEOmoz)

Forming meaningful new words

Another technique is forming meaningful new words applying one or more techniques mentioned above. For example, Vimeo is formed by blending Video and Me together but it is not exactly a portmanteau. Other examples of this technique are Twitter, Diigo, Fiverr etc.  In my list above, I have mentioned some names made through this method such as Leenko (from Link) and Proandfit (from Profit, also refers to the state of being professional and fit).

Using meaningful words from other languages

When English is not sufficient, why don’t you look for words from other languages? There are lots of short, meaningful and relevant words that you can use as brand name. A number of businesses are using this method to come up with the name. Zagat, the restaurant review website took the name from Sanskrit where Zagat means the universe. Ubuntu is a word from Nguni language which means a humanist philosophy of global unity.

Forming abbreviation

A brand name can be created by abbreviating the original name or some words. For example: AOL is the abbreviation of America Online and KFC is Short form of Kentucky Fried Chicken. A recent example of web start up with abbreviated name is IFTTT which means IF This Then That.

Generating meaningless new words

When none of the above mentioned method will help you, you can go crazy and form new words that mean nothing at all. A lot of business names are actually meaningless gibberish. But surprise, if the name is short, sweet and memorable, it may become a successful brand name. Some web ventures named with this method (if you call it a method) are Meebo, Bebo, Ning, Zynga etc.

Now I should rest my case. Before that, I would like to mention that if you need help with naming your business or product or app or anything (except babies, I am bad at naming new-borns), you can contact me. Though my brand naming service is now defunct, I will be happy to play with words sometimes.

Brian Clark, the founder of Copyblogger, defined Content Marketing as the process of ‘creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers.’ Brian captured the gist of Content Marketing within a few words. Starting from this definition, I can see that the whole process of Content Marketing involves a number of factors that start with ‘C’. Content Marketing can easily be summarized in 5 Cs: 4 actions i.e. Creating, Curating, Connecting and Converting around one central factor- Community.

Create

The first thing you need to start content marketing with is definitely, none other than Content itself. And the content needs to be specifically tailored towards your intended audience a.k.a the community. Before start creating your content, you need to understand your audience. You need to be aware of what type of content is appropriate to meet their demand and how the contents need to be delivered and on what platform. In short, you need to have a content strategy before start creating content.

Curate

The web has turned into a large museum and the content marketer needs to be as efficient in curating as in creating contents. Curating not only ensures the regular delivery of contents for your audience, it also connects you with other content creators. I always find BrainPickings as an ideal example of how curating works.

Connect

The content itself has no value without any audience. The internet is already flooded with contents (most of which are absolute crap) and your content has to cut through all that chaos to reach your intended audience. In fact the process is two-way. Your audience is also looking for content that is relevant and useful to them. You have to make things available to be found. That’s why it is ‘connect’, not communicate.

Convert

In the definition, Clark mentioned that content has two purposes- attract people and convert prospects into customers. Since, it is ‘marketing’, conversion is the real point here. First, your content needs to be useful and captivating so that the audience enjoy it and share it with others. Secondly, your content also has to be persuasive to motivate the audience to buy your product or service.

Community

The magical fifth element of the content marketing cycle is the Community. It is the elixir that gives life to your business. It is the essence of everything we know as content marketing. You are necessarily creating and curating contents due to one reason only- so that a community can grow around your delivered content.

And this is the most basic understanding all content marketers should be aware of- content attracts community and community grows around content.

]]> http://subtlebias.com/5cs/feed/ 0 http://subtlebias.com/announce/ http://subtlebias.com/announce/#comments Mon, 21 Jan 2013 09:58:04 +0000 Iftekhar Inan http://subtlebias.com/?p=1319

Evolution is imperative. This blog, SubtleBias, is also evolving with time. Initially I started it as a place for keeping my journals. Later on, I changed the focus on marketing. However, it’s been three years I am owning this small space in the web and it is nowhere near where it should be in terms of quality or quantity of posts. I recognize the lack of strong focus and strategy as the reasons behind this situation. Hence, I finally took an attempt to make some fundamental changes. The summary of these changes are here:

1. Abandoning SEO: I have deleted all the SEO plugins and will not pursue optimization of any future article around any certain keyword or group of keywords. Why? Because I think purposeful use of keywords can decrease the relevance and value of the content. It is also time consuming.

2. One word permalink: From  now on, every post will have a link consisting only one word after the site URL. For example: the URL of my last post was: http://subtlebias.com/everplaces. In a similar fashion, all the posts will be denoted with a single word in future. It will keep things simple and minimal. However, I will not change the URLs of previous posts as it will create a number of broken links.

3. Creative Commons License: SubtleBias is now licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. It means that all the contents of this site are free to copy, use and distribution. I believe ‘copying’ is an essential process that keeps the world moving. While the nature has embraced copying of cells as the basic mechanism of life, I find no logic why I should keep my write ups protected.

4. Transferring web hosting: This site is hosted on ServersFree. But now as the number of visitors is sharply rising, that free server solution cannot handle the traffic in many occasions. Hence, the site will be moved to a paid server to ensure uninterrupted user experience.

5. Content Principles: A 5-point set of principles is effective from today which will guide the content creation and delivery process. This set of principles is mentioned in the updated About page.

6. Move to Google: Abandoning SEO does not mean that I don’t want my site to be ranked on search engines. I do. But I think optimizing for keywords is not a viable strategy anymore considering the effort it requires and the recent Google algorithm changes. Rather I am embracing a Google web-ecosystem with tools such as Google Authorship, Google+ page, Google+ community, Google Analytics and Google webmaster tools.

So, that’s it for now. I will strive to make this blog more relevant and meaningful for the audience and if more changes seem necessary to do that, I will definitely work on it.

]]> http://subtlebias.com/announce/feed/ 0 http://subtlebias.com/everplaces/ http://subtlebias.com/everplaces/#comments Thu, 17 Jan 2013 04:26:28 +0000 Iftekhar Inan http://subtlebias.com/?p=1233

Everplaces can do that to traveling, what Instagram did to photography. Fast company has described this startup as ‘Pinterest for the real world’. Everplaces is a new app that lets you save your favorite (or may not be favorite) places with images, notes, maps and other details. The beta version of Everplaces was launched in December last year and started to gain popularity almost instantly after the launching. Everplaces is now available on the web and as iPhone app. The development of the Android version is still under process. Everplaces is being used from more than 90 countries now with more than 750,000 unique places entered (as of January 16, 2013).

Considering the phenomenal growth rate and overwhelming response from the users (which includes me as well), it’s easy to predict that Everplaces is going to make it big soon. What’s working behind this success? One reason is obvious- the simplicity of the app. It is drop-dead simple to use the app. Either you capture locations or import them from Google MyMaps if you already have it stored, add photos and notes if you wish and save the entry. As it is a social platform as well, you can follow others and you see the places they are saving or sharing. Similar to Tumblr and Pinterest, a Everplaces user can share the saved place by another user to his/her followers. The design of Everplaces is beautifully elegant.

Besides the great functionality, user experience and design, I am particularly excited about Everplaces because of the immense business potential of the app. The entrepreneurs already made it clear that they have a specific business model in their mind. Everplaces lets anyone create their own app in a few hours, and it does not require them to have any technical knowledge. Everplaces gives the unique functionality to the companies and individuals to create branded or co-branded apps with existing or new content. It is particularly useful if you want to promote a place or give information about certain type of tourist destinations. In my opinion, Everplaces has created a wonderful opportunity for destination marketing on smart devices for small travel operators, restaurants, hotels, travel bloggers, and event organizers.

I am quite curious to see how fast this app grows and what impact it may have on destination marketing. If you already signed up with Everplaces you can find me here: everplaces.com/inan.

Email marketing is still the most effective way of online marketing. The two best tools to build up your subscriber list and deliver newsletter are Aweber and Mailchimp. While Aweber has no free plan, you can start with Mailchimp for free. Your newsletter is an important content that must speak for your website. Both the text and design of your newsletter have to be compelling to deliver a better experience to your subscribers. Mailchimp offers amazing customizing functionality to design your newsletter. To get inspired you can look at some of the stunning newsletter designs and then think of your own. Click on the image to enlarge it. For more inspirational newsletter designs, check the gallery of MailChimp.

(This is a Guest post written by Diana, a passionate guest blogger from Manchester, UK. Follow her on twitter @financeport)

With the coming of social media, the global barriers have been broken and made way to global business. You can now conduct business easily from any part of the world and get clients from all over the globe without much problem with the help of internet. Make your presence known on the web and you are sure to make profitable business. You can even utilise social media to promote your small business and here are a few tips to help you.

Assets:

The most primary step is to identify your market and the products. You should identify the assets as this helps you to understand your products

Create an account in social media:

The immediate step is to create an account in social networking sites such as Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and more. Identify yourself and explain about the business you deal with. Create a fan page and post relevant things about your firm. Make use of this platform to create new business and gain potential clients. Update your activities regularly. Open up discussions and ask your friends and followers to share their views, thoughts about the service and products you sell.

Regular posts:

Post regularly as this is very essential. In the present world, a new thing is added every hour. Hence you need to update your page regularly. By ensuring that you post regularly, you are keeping up with the world. People want to know new things hence it is essential to update your posts on regular basis.

Add friends and followers:

Make your presence known in the social network sites. Send requests to your friends and followers. The more the number of people better will your business be. Contacts are important hence make sure that you are well connected with the members in your friend list.

Make use of Blogs:

Blogging is one industry that is typically growing with every passing day. Many business people have grown their business with the help of blogs. The content posted in your blogs should be relevant as content relevancy is very important. At the same time it should be creative, new, informative and entertaining. This can be ensured only when you do your research thoroughly. The content should be productive and useful for the viewer and should make sense. Another major thing to remember is to update your blog regularly with new content. Constant activity is necessary to ensure better communication with your viewers.

Initially when you start the business you have to invest some money in order to produce profits. If you lack funds in such stages, you can opt for cash payday which credit instant cash. Make use of the above tips and see the difference.