But in addition to marketing there is the urgent need to keep costs down while promoting at maximum efficiency. Knowing that your Webmaster / Internet marketer is utilizing paid time appropriately will help to speed up the process and keep expense at minimum levels. Continue reading to learn two necessary steps required to successfully promote a website and how monitoring software will give employers a better return on their investment.

Software that delivers

Before delving into “the big two” it is important to address the starting line – the Webmaster or Internet marketer you have hired to build your website and market it successfully. There is a surge of self-proclaimed Webmasters and marketers out there (they are typically one in the same) who may not be as efficient as someone who has actually received formal training in web development and marketing.

More and more businesses are paying Internet marketers to come to their physical location at specified times to work on promoting the website. By doing this business owners have more control over how the employee is spending his time (as most charge by the hour). Some businesses are even investing in keylogger software as a way to monitor the time it actually takes their employee to complete his tasks. These systems allow businesses to monitor what sites their employee is looking at. One can even use the program to see how long it takes someone to write an article or draft a document. Since most business owners don’t have the time or the know-how to market their own website, having a good system in place to make sure a second party isn’t cutting corners is a sound investment.

Blogging

Blogging is a great way to promote a website. By carefully researching sites that permit guest bloggers, businesses can utilize these channels to display their brand or services. Make sure the site you consider utilizing has a big social media buzz. The more the content is being talked about and shared through social media, the better your chances are of drawing more traffic and new clients. You will also want to make sure the site offers dynamic author bios for guest bloggers. This will permit for customized branding with a link to the business website at the end of each published article. Another thing to do is make sure you post blogs to relevant sites. In other words, if you own an Italian restaurant you don’t want to blog for a site that deals with basket weaving.

You will also want to make sure that your marketing expert enriches your content with links that will drive traffic to your website. This will also help with your search marketing endeavors and give you better organic placement in the search engines.

Where is the guarantee?

How do you know your Internet marketer is doing everything he says he is in the time it takes him? Unless you have an employee monitoring system, you don’t. Any good system will capture tasks and time and translate them into readable data that anyone can make sense of. These programs allow employers to see what sites were visited, and what tools were used. If an employee swears to have used an analytics tool for an SEO package, this claim can be verified with the right software. These systems are simple to install, use and are beneficial to any business that outsources paid online. Not only is such a tool necessary for monitoring blogging activities, but it also provides the same service in ensuring that work is being dedicated to social media marketing.

Social media

Be sure your marketing person showcases your business on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Have them create a Facebook page for your business that fans can follow. However, there are certain methods to doing this that prove to have greater success than others. In an article published by ‘Forbes’ on how to promote your business with Facebook, the author says to create content and lots of it before asking people to follow and “like” you. Often businesses are eager to get as many fans as possible, but by first providing quality content you will be giving people a reason to follow and support your business. Furthermore, by linking to feeds via YouTube you will be fueling your website to climb the search engine’s organic placement rankings. And be sure to use Twitter. Instruct your marketing expert to get as many people in your industry as possible to follow you. This will provide you with an audience to tweet links to that direct the multitudes to your articles and website. Twitter also allows businesses to make others aware of special promotions and events that are running.

These tips are very general, but provide a great starting platform for new businesses.  There are more advanced strategies for business promotion within the folds of blogging and social media. Make sure your Internet marketer has a masterful command of these subjects. But also, take control of the reigns. Invest in an employee monitoring software package and before you know it your website should eventually see more traffic and sales.

Image source: http://agileirony.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/face-keyboard-sleep.jpg

The post 2 Tips to Promoting Your Business Website in Spy-Mode appeared first on AddMe Blog.

If you have done your research and contracted a company to build an app for your business, now you need to get out there and promote it. One of the deciding factors that most likely motivated you to get an app is the fact that mobile app usage has gone up 35 percent in just the last year. This means that just as many people who watch TV also use apps every day.

When marketing your app, it naturally makes sense to turn to social media platforms as a starting point. Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are free, and currently Facebook has more people using it than Google.

Facebook fan page

Let’s face it, Facebook is the grand master of social media platforms. By giving your app a home on Facebook, you will be setting it upon a stage with a massive audience. Be sure to customize the page and make it look attractive, professional and interesting. Use your company’s logo as the profile photo—you will want to brand your logo anywhere you can, as often as possible. Then try to get as many likes as you can. Be sure to find a fair balance between being proactive and pushy. Send a very non-abrasive invite to people in your Facebook circle asking them to support you in spreading awareness the awareness of your new business app. Most people will be completely willing to comply. Make sure you post content to your Facebook page a few times a week, and be sure to interact with your followers. This includes responding to all of them when they leave statements or questions. Another great way to engage your followers if to offer giveaways or contests. Remember, interaction is huge.

Have your app reviewed

You can’t review your own app without people turning up their noses in the name of biased insight, so have others review it for you. Submit your app to various sites for critique. A few that offer some great feedback include the following:

• iPhone App Storm
• Big App Show
• My Daily App
• AppCraver

Be sure you don’t blindly pitch these sites. Check to see if they have guidelines for submitting an app for review. Also, read some of their reviews on apps and personalize a letter to the appropriate department stating that you enjoyed a particular article, why you liked it, and why you want their site to review your app. Doing this will make you stand out as someone who is serious, and not a lazy person writing generic letters and shooting them off to hoards of contenders.

Blog about it

Blogging is big in the business world. In an article published by ‘The New York Times’ that examines business promotion through blogging, the author says that blogs increase business visibility, excite audiences and add revenue. Since the app is itself a marketing tool, be sure you understand that you are using content marketing as a way to market another marketing platform. That may have just been a mouthful, but it speaks volume in that you want to make sure you only publish your blogs to sites that are relevant. Mobile apps for businesses by Simplikate, for example, would fit nicely in tech blogs, ecommerce and business marketing blogs. You will also want to submit your blogs to sites that get lots of reader remarks and shares to social media platforms.

Promote away

Once you have your business app created and ready to fire, be sure you market it successfully. Remember, your app will direct people to your website, so make sure it is mobile friendly. Follow these tips, and watch your app’s popularity climb the ranks of business marketing.

Image source: http://info.padalog.com/Portals/112603/images/best-ipad-business-app.jpg

The post Promoting Your Business App with Social Media appeared first on AddMe Blog.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get easier to manage your Gmail account, there’s this software called Gmail Notifier. It makes managing your Gmail accounts, a breeze. I say “accounts” because it allows you to manage up to 5 Gmail accounts with a single log in. Many of us who work online, have multiple Gmail accounts, and it sometimes can be a pain to log in and out of each account.

Now, you can focus on your task at hand, instead of worrying about checking emails. Gmail Notifier automatically checks your email every 2 minutes to see if you have any new emails. If a new email comes in, it will alert you with a sound or tray icon. It’s non-intrusive on your desktop or tablet, and helps you to stay on top of your busy schedule.

Here are the key features of Gmail Notifier:

• Counter of unread emails
• Sound and tray icon alerts
• Read email headers and body
• Delete emails or mark as read
• IMAP connectivity over SSL
• Fast and easy Gmail login
• Support for multiple accounts
• Support for UTF-8 emails
• Support for mailto links
• Support for Google Apps
• Attachment indicator
• 100% spy and spam free
• Auto version updates
• Make window topmost
• Run at startup

Currently, it is compatible with 3 Google services: Gmail, googlemail and Google Apps.

Best of all, Gmail Notifier is a freeware. You can download it here.

The post Be More Productive with Gmail Notifier appeared first on AddMe Blog.

Read this article if you want to protect your privacy and avoid data theft!

Everybody knows the importance of using a strong computer password. Even so, there’s a logical reason for highly guessable passwords like LOVE, QWERTY, JESUS and PASSWORD being all too common: We have human brains and too many digital accounts! Now that we’re expected to have unique passwords for so many services, it’s more difficult than ever to maintain mental notes of passwords that work. This article from the data privacy folks at hostingreviews.com gives you fun tips for creating and remembering passwords that are hard to crack.

What is a strong password? Strong = Long

First things first. What is a strong password? Many IT administrators specify that passwords be at least six or eight characters long and contain a capital letter, number or “curse word symbol” like % or #. The common belief is that formulas like these will foil hackers. If only it were true… In most cases a hacker can crack such passwords within a day! You can verify this claim by testing different passwords at howsecureismypassword.net. An eight-digit password was cracked in less than a second with their simulator, but a password twice that length would require an estimated 16 billion years to guess!

What matters most isn’t non-dictionary words and random symbols, but password length. According to a study at Carnegie Mellon, it’s best to use a password of 16 characters or more.

Tips for the Pea-Brain

So… how can you remember a password of 16 characters or longer? Here are two strategies.

Strategy #1: Create an acronym. Let’s start out small and suppose that I want a short four-letter password. I’ll take the title of my favorite book, Casa de los Espiritus. By taking the first letter of each word I’ll get the password CDLE. This password would be cracked in seconds by a hacker program, but it shows you the clever acronym setup.

Obviously, coming up with a secure 16-character password is more time consuming. This is where numbers step in: They speed things up while adding diversity. However, you should avoid your birthdate, house number, SSN and common strings of numbers (e.g., 2013, 666, 1234, 9999 and 867-5309).

Fun password fact: 867-5309, which is the phone number from the Tommy Tutone song “Jenny”, was the fourth most common seven-digit password in 2012!
Other numbers in your life have little meaning to hackers, and especially when mixed with letters. For instance, you could write a phrase that includes the make of your first car. In this way I created the password IDAF1982NDTSEDJY: I Drove A Freaking 1982 Nissan Datson To School Every Day Junior Year. The phrase is memorable to the creator yet very, very unlikely for a computer program to attempt.

What other numbers could you try? Your weight or an ideal weight would work, and you could turn your password into a belated New Year’s Resolution: I Will Weigh 160 Pounds Or Less By My 10-Year High School Reunion, IWW160POLBM10YHSR. Include the clearance of your RV. Use your preferred annual salary. Any apparently random string of characters will do! The point is that you use 16 characters or more to stay far ahead of hackers.

Strategy #2: Chunk! Chunking is the act of breaking a long string of data into manageable bits. Phone numbers are excellent examples. Most of us aren’t ready to remember random strings of ten digits, but when they’re presented as sets of numbers like 800-555-0100, they’re easier to manage.

The chunking strategy makes it easier remember the passwords assigned by website administrators. You can also use chunking to create long yet memorable passwords. For instance, you could list several objects that you habitually buy at Target: Cat Food. Cat Litter. Paper Towels. Stuff For the Kids’ Lunches. And Things I Don’t Need, because that often happens when we shop at Target. In other words, CF CL PT SFTKL ATIDN. Ha! Another tip: Picturing your list of items helps sear it into memory.

A final word: It’s best to use completely different passwords for each of your accounts. If that’s not reasonable given your brain overload, simply vary your primary password by adding symbols or altering the capitalization.

Techopedia fans, how do you create and remember long passwords? We’d love to hear from you!

The post How to Remember a Long Password appeared first on AddMe Blog.

Search engine submissions have been on the downward trend since the early 2000′s. However, many people still utilize submission services to save time and increase exposure across the smaller search engines.

During the 90′s to early 2000′s, search engine submissions were the talk of the town and it seemed to be the fastest way to get a site indexed by the search engines.

These days, it’s a very different story. With the advancement of search engine technology, the time it takes to discover and index new web pages has drastically changed. Back in the days, it used to take weeks, if not months, to get a new site indexed in Google or Yahoo. But today, it can take as little as a few minutes to hours before a new page is indexed.

To understand the purpose of search engine submissions, one needs to understand what search engine indexing is. To be indexed by a search engine means that the search engine has crawled your web page and it has been added to the search engine’s database. Once indexed, links to your site may appear within the search results when someone runs a search for keywords related to your niche.

3 Ways a Website is Indexed by the Search Engines:

• You can submit your URL directly to the search engines.
• You can submit your URL to the search engines via a web program or software.
• You can let the search engines find your site.

In regards to the 3rd point, you may be wondering how in the world a search engine would find your site when you haven’t submitted it. Well, there’s 2 possible ways.

The first way is by crawling the web and discovering new links. If you happen to have gotten a link from a site and Google crawls it, there’s a good chance your site will get indexed fairly quickly.

The second way is more theory than hard truth. Some SEOs believe that when new domains are registered, the registrars share this public data with the search engines. A new domain registration would be the signal for a new website or just a domainer purchasing a new domain.

Either way, the search engines will crawl the domain and check to see if indeed there is a site there.

If you don’t mind submitting to one search engine at a time, you can visit each search engine individually and submit your URL.

• Submit to Google: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url?pli=1
• Submit to Bing: http://www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url
• Submit to Yahoo: not necessary because Yahoo gets its search results from Bing.

If you prefer not to go through the tedious task of submitting one at a time, you can use a free search engine submission tool online. These web-based programs allow you to automatically submit to multiple search engines using a single submit form. Here’s our very own search engine submission tool.

If you’re in no rush to get your site found, you can just let the search engines find you naturally. Articles are like food for the search engines, so they love to find fresh and unique content.

The post Search Engine Submissions in 2013 appeared first on AddMe Blog.

Mobile users have a much smaller screen with which to view your website, which means your standard website just won’t work on a 3- or 5-inch mobile screen. A mobile website that displays crucial information, such as hours of operation, location, and menu items, will satisfy these users. Displaying the information in a sleek interface with legible font makes your site readable. Once you have a rudimentary website with basic search engine optimization, conduct search term research to understand what your visitors are looking for when they come to your site. Then, optimize your site by following these tips.

1. Have a fast site.
Mobile users need information on the go. If they cannot load your website quickly, they’ll get impatient and look elsewhere. Generally, removing unnecessary elements will speed up site loading time. Clean code also improves load time.

2. Omit Flash.
The Flash plugin is not compatible with all mobile devices. Using Flash means that a percentage of users will be unable to view your site, so ensure you have an HTML alternative and set your site to redirect mobile traffic to that site.

3. Stick to the screen size.
Users of mobile devices don’t have much screen real estate, and the onus is on you to make your content fit. Design with your users in mind so they do not have to scroll to find the information. If you don’t, they’ll rely on search engine submissions and not your content.

4. Link telephone numbers.
Linking telephone numbers requires a snippet of HTML, but goes a long way toward getting you free goodwill among users. Linked telephone numbers allow your users to click on the number to generate a dialog box that asks if they want to call.

5. Avoid images.
This goes back to screen size. Images simply aren’t necessary in mobile websites.

There are a lot of free plugins, tools and templates that can help you get started with mobile website design. This is one area where blending in with the crowd is a good thing. You definitely don’t want to stand out for your poor mobile site.

The post 5 Tips to Promote Your Website for Mobile Marketing appeared first on AddMe Blog.

The Interface

Although Ignite SEO is not the easiest piece of software to use, with a little playing around and experimentation, anyone computer-savvy can soon be comfortable with using its many tools and features. Most of the tools are fairly self-explanatory and the main tools include a brief description. The documentation is well written, including all the information you need, but overall the interface could do with a little work, which I think would result in opening Ignite SEO’s market up to beginners and intermediate users, rather than just the more advanced computer and Internet users.

One-Click Promotion

Probably the most unique and useful tool in the software is the “One-Click Promotion”. For a given keyword, it will scrape Google’s results, attempting to find blogs, forums and other supported platforms. From there, it will attempt to register for these websites, automatically confirm activation emails (if required), then submit a comment or post, according to your profile (which will usually include a link to your website). The idea is that this will gain you some high-quality backlinks to your website, which of course is the most important and most difficult SEO technique.

More Tools

Other tools include: Backlink Reports, SEO Reports, SEO Factors, Rank Tracker, Keyword Research and Ping RSS Feeds. Ignite SEO can also work with a build in CAPTCHA decipherer or using your Decaptcher account, to break comment form CAPTCHAs. Ignite SEO can also work with proxies, if you are doing a lot of promotion and can even be executed via the command line, which makes it easy to make your own interface or do automated promotions using this software.

If Ignite SEO sounds like your cup of tea, you can download a free trial at their homepage: http://igniteresearch.net/ or purchase the full version for $199.00. Out of the box it is compatible with promoting to an array of blog, forum and content management system software such as: WordPress, Joomla, MovableType, vBulletin, PhpBB, Php Nuke and many more. Using the training mode you can add even more platforms, meaning that that Ignite SEO has the potential to promote your website on basically any other website’s platform!

The post Ignite SEO Review appeared first on AddMe Blog.

A combination of these free SEO and website promotion tools is a great idea, especially if you’re serious about your business and search engine optimization efforts. These tools are totally free, so don’t hesitate to try them all out.

The post Top Free SEO Tools appeared first on AddMe Blog.

There are two types of aggregators — desktop aggregators, and web-based aggregators…

Desktop Aggregators

These are downloadable desktop applications that contain all of the RSS subscriptions. In most cases, you can group and categorize the RSS feeds that you subscribe to. When open, the RSS desktop reader will update all the RSS feeds that you have subscribed to, and new posts will appear in the RSS reader.

Web-Based Aggregators

Web-based RSS aggregators are applications that reside online, through which you can subscribe to RSS feeds. The feeds are displayed on a webpage using a web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox. For example, one of the more popular web-based aggregators is Google Reader.

How To Subscribe To An RSS Feed

In order to subscribe to an RSS feed, look for the RSS icon on the websites you visit. Find the URL for the RSS feed, and paste it into your RSS reader and subscribe to it.

Many web browsers, such as Firefox, include auto-discovery features which will automatically detect RSS feeds. With those browsers, you will see an RSS icon in the left-hand side of the URL box — just click the icon to obtain the link to the RSS feed.

Once subscribed, the aggregator or reader will periodically check to see if the RSS feed has been updated.

About the Author:
Sharon Housley is a writer for FeedForAll.com

The post How to Subscribe to an RSS Feed appeared first on AddMe Blog.

What is a QR Code?

A QR code is essentially a barcode which stores information and can be read by a QR scanner.

QR standing for Quick Response, the code can store a variety of information i.e. website address, small advert, contact information etc.

QR codes were initially used in the motor vehicle industry by Toyota, the benefits of these codes were soon realized and the codes were adopted into everyday life.

Reading a QR Code

Like other barcodes, QR codes require a reader to decipher the code and load the information. There are a variety of code readers available and there’s a good chance that if you DON’T own an iPhone then you can still find one for your phone.

The software uses your phones camera, mine for example you simply load the software, click the scan button and the reader does the rest, displaying a website, showing me a text message etc.

Download code reading software from iTunes or try this QR code software site.

What are some good uses for a QR code?

Since these codes are so versatile and can store a variety of data its uses are wide and varied.

I’ve included some more interesting examples here:

• Real Estate Signs – add scan code to get details about the land
• Public Transport Ads – add scan code to get contact info
• Games – scan codes an extra interactive game play dimension that launch a video
• Restaurant Menu – scan code for the recipe
• LinkedIn Page – add your scan code with your contact info
• Webinar – integrate scan codes into your webinar for additional content
• PowerPoint – engage your audience with bonus content i.e. first and last slide has a scan code with your contact info

How do you Make a QR Code

Making a QR code is simple, there’s a variety of free tools available on the web that enable you to enter in your message and create the code.
Generally speaking it’s a 3 step process:

1. Select the code type
2. Enter the message
3. Cick the button

I’ve provided a link to a couple of popular QR code tools here:

http://qrcode.kaywa.com/
http://delivr.com/qr-code-generator

Though QR codes are generally still “new” the correct application of the code in the right medium can be very powerful.

As we all become more and more mobile I believe QR codes will become a much more valuable communication tool in business, marketing and advertising.

If anyone has an interesting example of QR codes being used I’d love to hear about it and share this with the other readers.

The post What is a QR Code and How Can I Use It? appeared first on AddMe Blog.