4 Milestones Then Get A Job

First Milestone: Create Your resume

Because there's so much you could do to find your next job, it's all the more important to decide what you should do, where you would like to apply and how to sell your image. Today I've created a handy plan-of-action you can use to document your notes and needs so they're all organized and in one place. This is a document I recommend that you fill out and keep with you in case you are looking to improve your job's profile and get calls about a job you would like to apply for. Let's walk through this document and I would assure you it will work for finding the job you would like to nab!

My one-sentence objective for this job search is, "My context before content then my content to get calls from recruiters. Remember, this is the vision statement that you want to refer to as you continue through your job search. The next thing I want you to consider is taking a survey of your current job-hunting materials.

So go ahead and find your resume, find your cover letter templates, locate those letters of recommendation you may have from a few jobs ago, and then in each of these boxes I want you to check, is this something I have, is it something that needs to be redone completely, maybe it's okay but it needs a few updates, maybe just a few minor tweaks. Maybe you have documents that are pretty much ready to send out. So note the state each of these materials are in in these columns. 

So let's say that you know that you don't have any letters of recommendation, therefore I want you to put that as a priority to gather those materials and give yourself a due date so that you have that goal to work toward. Also, jot down the time you want to spend per week on this, just to give yourself a rough framework of how much effort you are willing to expend in this area. This is something that's really up to you, you might choose to spend an hour to two per week if it's a case where you need to create your resume, your cover letter, you need to get those letters of recommendation, or if you're in pretty good shape here, you may not need to spend much time at all. 

Second Milestone: Prepare Your Fishing Hock

Looking for a job from my perspective is a two-way street, it's about growing your network and it's about giving in both directions. Ideally, you're getting a job out of the equation, but you're also giving to your growing network as you do so, so that you're creating value for everyone as you go through your job search.

So ask yourself some hard questions about your current network, how many people are in it? Do you have strategic connections across industries? Do you know people who are at different stages in their careers? For example, if you're just starting out as a student, let's say, it would be great if you had a variety of folks you could turn to in your network who are at different stages in their careers. They might be in a position to give you much different advice, based on their unique experiences. Have you helped refer at least two people in your network to jobs in the past year? This is a really important one to me because I believe that in order to get a job, you also want to be that person who's opening up connections for other people.

For Instance, LinkedIn is the most popular social network for professionals and one of the top social networks overall, building connections starts with people seeing all you have to offer.  Members with complete profiles are 40x more likely to receive opportunities through LinkedIn.

Now you have the pool and you have bait, so it is time to start hunting! Pool is your LinkedIn; bait is your resume, recommendations and networks.

Third Milestone: Educate Content

You’ll likely hear a lot of people talking about how content can organically acquire links or build awareness for your profile. If you set out with the primary goal of creating content that educates your prospects or audiences about your services and experience then the links and awareness will naturally follow suit.

When creating content with the specific aim of educating people, you need to remember a couple of really important points.

1.Try to write the one article in a month in LinkedIn or Blog, when the reader from your industry or similar to your field feels like they’re the only one reading the content, you begin to create a strong relationship with that person, group and that will increase the likelihood they’ll become followers of your content and would like to hear more.

2.Never forget that your objective for creating this type of content is to give your audience the answers to THEIR problems.  Example: How You Know it’s Time To Think Different! It was one of my articles in LinkedIn and on my Blog. I was trying to tell my followers “how to improve your business in Canada” by creating a website for your business and start knowing your personas in a form which can impact your business positively.

3.Give some thought to LinkedIn groups and companies pages. Make it a goal to participate in LinkedIn Groups you joined and check back regularly on companies' pages in LinkedIn as well, just seeing what jobs are available, noting what direction the company seems to be moving in and making a note of what is newsworthy, what is this company up to and why?

Final Milestone: Knock the Door

Now that you've generated that awesome new resume, educate content on LinkedIn's Platform, So you can knock other door by using LinkedIn Jobs -- to help you land an awesome new position.

LinkedIn allows you to search for jobs by keyword, title, industry, location, company, function, experience level, and more. It even suggests jobs you might be interested in based on a brief survey that gauges your job preferences relating to location, company size, and industry.

I would say, your profile and educate content are the key elements for getting job and build relationships with recruiters agents, and make the employers chose your profile among tons. I want you to stop and reflect on whether you're seeing effort from each step and whether they're significant enough or maybe it's time to do a little bit of re-balancing.

Cheers!

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Building Your Content Hub is A Way To Build Your Brand!

There are thousand topics talks about how to build a content that driven website. Last 5 years you may have noticed a change in the way you are consuming content. With more and more large companies looking to find ways to connect to their ideal consumer there has been a shift in the way content is being developed and shared.

To begin with, I would like to give a brief about the way of building a content driven website which could help to boost your business in marketplace.

There is quite of planning involved in developing a content rich website. Here are step-by-step instructions that will make it a simple task:

Do your research

Use a keyword research tool find theme-related keywords that are high in demand and relatively low in supply. Find a sufficient amount of profitable keywords that will enable you build 50 to 100 pages that are focused on an individual keyword. This process will also allow you to evaluate your concept to make sure that there is enough demand and that the market is not totally saturated with competition.

Form a written plan

Prepare a three-tier plan for your content using the keywords. The first tier will be your homepage and should focus on the concept keyword that represents your niche or theme. The second tier will consist of introduction pages with keywords that are related to your navigation buttons. The third tier represents content pages that focus on keywords related to your second-tier pages.

Upload the content to your website

It is wise to add the content to your website as it is developed and make sure that it is submitted to the search engines. After you have about 30 pages of content, you can start promoting your site by getting it listed in directories, engaging in article marketing, participating in industry-related forums and blogs, social marketing, etc.

Continue to add content to your site and participate in link building activities

The more content that you have, and the more high-quality incoming links that you establish, the better your website will do in the search engines. Visitors also love content driven websites. If you provide the information that they are looking for, it develops credibility for you and you will likely convert many of your website visitors into repeat and referring customers.

Build up a content hub for your business

In the context of marketing, it’s a place where various types of content – articles, videos, images, etc – exist for the purpose of engaging audiences and spreading knowledge and information to current and future customers.

As Daniel Newman explains, we’re no longer living in a time where brands can simply publish content about themselves and successfully connect with their audiences. Newman puts it perfectly when he says today’s world of marketing “is more about sharing and collaborating and with that generosity comes interest, loyalty, and commitment to a brand.”

I would say, creating a content hub doesn't only apply to large businesses or corporate, and it also doesn't have to take a lot of budget and/or time.

Therefore, if you have a big business or even small business and you want to generate revenues for your business or product you offer, you need to not only choose the best products and services to represent, but you need to drive traffic to your newly created hub pages.

For example, if you are marking information products for home based business owners, you could create a hub page offering information and resources to network marketers. When this niche of people land on your hub pages, they will find valuable articles, blogs, reviews and other resources to help them grow their businesses. And, if they find your hub page valuable, they will likely return again and again. And when this occurs, you are increasing your opportunities for generating direct sales whether in terms of getting more traffic or hits.

Before one week, I was browsing American University of Shrajah Website www.aus.edu and I have found AUS web team have established successful affiliate digital strategy when they built faces.aus.edu which I believe it will another way to driving massive traffic to AUS website.

From my perspective, this is a great way to take best advantage to enhance your business or services you offer and get more reputation enhancement. Here we can back to my previous phrase and ask ourselves how do we choose which platforms to engage on? 

In the same time, I would say it is a real challenge between concentrating on the website we drive, and how should we coordinate all the many parts of our company’s social media presence in content hub. So at the end we and you should have strategy to use your company website as the hub of your product or service business to boost your business reputation

In summary a content hub can be used to:

- Increase website traffic
- Increase the time visitors spend on your website
- Increase brand awareness
- Establish thought leadership
- Increase social sharing
- Increase leads and lead conversion

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5 Facts About SEO That'll Make Your Website Stand on End

To understand what people in marketing sector mean by SEO content, it’s helpful to break down the phrase into two component parts:

“SEO” refers to search engine optimization, or the process of optimizing a website so that people can easily find it via search engines like Google.
By “content,” we mean any information that lives on the web and can be consumed on the web (more on the various types of content below).

So, merging these concepts together: SEO content is any content created with the goal of attracting search engine traffic. Have you tried before?

On the other side, in SEO there are different types of search i.e. academic search, video search, local search and pictures search. The web marketing strategy implies that on what people search for in a search engine, target audience liked which search engines, and how a search engine basically works?
Here, I’m not going to talk about every single point of optimizing your content for search engines; that’s a whole ‘other tell you everything you guide. But here’s a super-quick refresher on what you’ll need to do in order to SEO your web content:

Keyword Research: If you want to generate traffic through search, it’s best to do keyword research before you start writing. This way, you can focus on keywords for which a certain amount of search volume already exists – in other words, write toward topics that people are already searching for information about.

Keyword Optimization: Know where and how to use keywords in your content for maximum searchability. (SEOMoz offers a great guide to on-page optimization.)

Content Organization: The content on your site should be organized in a logical way. This is not only good for SEO, it also helps visitors on your site find other related content easily. (The longer they stay on your site, the better.)

Content Promotion: Increase visibility to new content you create by sharing it on social networks and building links to your content (both internally and from external sites).

Once you have decided to create a website, you will need to hire a SEO optimization services, where available, which can then plan to start or redesign your site and the existing site. Make sure you ask for their portfolio, as well as references and also make sure that SEO, Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

Search engine optimization is a lengthy process, which includes both on-site and off-site optimization of your website or blog. In this article I will discuss the five easy steps to do the following On-Page SEO process that can make a huge difference in search engine listings to your blog or website. Keep in mind that these steps are but a small part of the SEO process and do not necessarily guarantee their highest ranking in search engines. Think of these steps, such as your driver's license, what. Now, when you have it you can drive, but you still have a long way to go before you're actually good.

1st Optimize your pages the name of the Pages

Changing the name of the pages that are search engine optimized is the first step to quickly improve SERPs position in search results pages.) Page name must be over 60 to 70 characters long, unique, descriptive, and must be targeted to specific keywords in the page. The names must also be attractive and easy to read and understand the audience that is actively looking for your services or products. A good look at the competition and keyword research is essential before deciding on names.

2nd Optimize your meta description and headings

The header and meta description as well as the name of the HTML elements that appear on the web page header. This is additional information on the web page that contains the clearest and most importantly, that the search engines. Meta description is very important is often overlooked these days. These species can not be a strong search engine optimization process for, but they are used by search engines as a brief description of the page. This description is what users see when they look at your page search engine listings and can make them click on your page or someone else. Meta description should be about 150 characters in length, is the main object and Pages should be attractive to consumers.

3rd The internal reference

Internal links are the way that all pages of your site or blog is to connect with one another. Starting from the landing page to create links to all other relevant pages of your visitors and directing toward the juice (page rank). Use keywords as anchor text, links and try to put links in context.

4th Optimizing the content of the page

One of the most important steps in SEO copy writing is designed to try to optimize, and then select the users that are actively looking for a list of keywords. Once you have your final keywords or key phrases that you choose to optimize, add them to their context, the title and meta tags. But do not spam!

5th Use SEO Optimization Tools

Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytic to monitor site progress. In the online world can find many tools that can help you search engine optimize your site. Sure you use a browser plug-ins or extensions, as they may prove to be very useful for SEO.

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Doing Generate Website Traffic The Right Way

If you are providing online services or you have a business need to grow, I would say you should concentrate on the strategy that increase website traffic and get more hits to website pages. No matter how cool your site or how fabulous your product, you're not going to generate enough sales to make your business viable unless you can generate traffic. You have to get the word out about your site and give people a reason to visit it, or else you'll go the way of the dinosaur.

When there are more people visiting your website and online sales pages, you have a greater opportunity to expand your database of customers and generate revenue by selling more of your products and services. The good news is, there are lots of ways to effectively advertise your site online and drive tons of qualified traffic to your site, all for free! And by qualified, I mean people who belong to your target market and who are most likely to buy the products or services you offer. These are the people you want coming to your site.

Free website traffic is not actually free in the sense that you have done nothing for it. Although you have not paid any money to anyone, the website traffic will have cost you an element of time and effort to get results. Here are 3 easy ways to increase website traffic without it costing you any money.

1. Traffic From Search Engines.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the organic, or natural, search results which are listed on the search engines results pages and show up because of their relevance to the search terms to your online business. The websites that continuously increase website traffic are the ones that regularly produce high quality content. Take the time to learn how to choose keywords, optimize title tags, get backlinks, other SEO fundamentals but primarily focus your attention on creating high quality content. For example, you can;

- Submit your site to the free search engines and online directories.
- Optimize your web site so that it's easily indexed by search engine spiders.
- Pay close attention to your keyword inclusion and placement.
- Create content-rich "information pages" to direct traffic to your site.

2. Partnering With Websites That Are Related To Yours.

Another great way to get website traffic free is to partner with other websites in your marketplace. Let's say your website is about outsourcing. You could offer to write free content for websites that provide cloud services or virtual machines. All you ask for in return is a link back to your website.

 

Next, you might do a joint video series with other outsourcing vendors or experts on how to enhance organization service and performance by adopting outsourcing strategy. In fact, you could even do a video series where you interview experts on different elements of the service. You could create a free ebook or PDF articles about outsourcing strategy. Obviously, the ebook will have your name on it, with a link back to your website.

3. Business networking communities

Business networking communities has a positive impact on generating traffic by allowing their members to create personal profile pages with links to their main business sites. These links can improve a site's ranking with the major search engines.

If you decide to join a networking community, be sure to partner with people whose businesses are complementary to your own. Their sites have to attract visitors who are likely to become your customers as well. Here are some businesses networking communities you may want to check out:

* LinkedIn
* Spoke 

4. Blogging.

A blog is a website or web page where you write information, facts or opinions on a regular basis for a specific target audience. You can build an online audience by publishing information regularly for people who are interested in what you have to say. If you write an interesting blog it will help to generate free website traffic because readers will keep coming back to the blog to read updates. They will also pass the information onto to their friends and colleagues in the industry.

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Direct Your Content Marketing To Be Authentic .. It is Time Now!

Last week I was lucky enough to be on of attendees in a session that hosted by Meetup group E-Business to discuss the fundamentals in the field of digital marketing and its effect in and business. And while the entire talk was informative and entertaining, one bit really stood out. He asked a good question about social media “Whether or not it’s a good idea to outsource social media”. One of the participants unequivocally said no, and pushed the need to be authentic. That idea of authenticity struck me. That word used to mean something and it seems has real impact on business. He mentioned the authenticity is still vital for a successful social media campaign, and anyone worth their salt should be striving to present an authentic voice through their social channels.

Content is a king and acceleration for the business growth!

I opened this piece with a story for a reason. I believe you will ask why Yasser Al Mimar needs to go through this part of story to open the subject. I would say, readers like to be able to connect with content, and content is still one of the best ways to keep your online marketing authentic. After all, you are producing and creating the fodder for this form of marketing, so you imbue your content with your personality and voice. It’s as close as your audience can get to talking to you, without really talking to you. That is why I believe that content is still the primary focus for social marketers.  Simply put, content is what your customers are looking for. Specifically, people want detailed and in-depth information that supports their decision to buy something from you. If you can provide this, then you have your foot in the door. Or you’ve got their feet in yours, however way you look at it.

A survey by Social Media Examiner found that 58% of marketers still rank content as their most valuable social marketing tool. Yes, there are SEO benefits to content marketing, but it trumps visuals, audio, and curated posts for reasons beyond search engine ranking – it’s an authentic representation of your voice, and a good reminder for your audience that a living, breathing, thinking person is behind the profiles that they follow.

It can be hard for any business to cultivate its voice. After all, your company isn’t a celebrity and sitting on the throne of stardom in the market place! But your brand does have a voice. And it is that voice that sets you apart from your competitors. People will follow you through your various social channels because they like that voice. So you need to work to cultivate it, and keep your presence authentic.

Good content, quick responses and an actual person to monitor and interact through your feeds will do wonders for your social marketing campaign. Authenticity isn’t just a pointless corporate buzzword– it’s the very keystone to your company’s social success.

In that day, I had discussion with one of keynote speakers and other participants. I had clarified very important point that relates with my work and business.  As webmaster and digital marketing experience, I mentioned: “Content is King.” And everyone in web marketing knows that. A website's content, even more so than its products, is what attracts visitors. People are coming to your website need to have the sign kind of interest to get wherever you are giving and delivering. 

There are two important aspects of web content. For simplicity's sake, I'll call them Quantity and Quality.

Quality means that the content should be well written and be free from those embarrassing typos that make visitors wonder if your website really knows what it's talking about. For our purposes, however, it also means that content should be rich in keywords, informative and interesting, so that the visitor feels they've learned something. Such is the power of Quality content.

Quantity, on the other hand, means that your website should be updated regularly with new content added. A visitor may return to an informational article once, or even two or three times, but if your website's content never changes, eventually, there will be no reason for him to return.

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Going With Fresh Content is A Key For Successful SEO

In 2003, engineers at Google filed a patent that would rock the SEO world. Named Document Scoring Based on Document Content Update, the patent not only offered insight into the mind of the world’s largest search engine, but provided an accurate road map of the path Google would take for years to come.

Google Team have came up with Google’s Freshness Update, which places greater emphasis on returning fresher web content for certain queries. Exactly how Google determines freshness was brilliantly explored by Justin Briggs in his analysis of original Google patents. Justin deserves a lot of credit for bringing this analysis to light and helping to inspire this post.

Although the recent Freshness Update received a lot of attention, in truth Google has scored content based on freshness for years.

How Google Scores Fresh Content

Google Fellow Amit Singhal explains that “Different searches have different freshness needs.”

The implication is that Google measures all of your documents for freshness, then scores each page according to the type of search query. While some queries need fresh content, Google still uses old content for other queries (more on this later.)

Singhal describes the types of keyword searches most likely to require fresh content:

-- Recent events or hot topics: “occupy oakland protest” “nba lockout”
-- Regularly recurring events: “NFL scores” “dancing with the stars” “exxon earnings”
-- Frequent updates: “best slr cameras” “subaru impreza reviews”

Google’s patents offer incredible insight as to how web content can be evaluated using freshness signals, and rankings of that content adjusted accordingly.

Understand that these are not hard and fast rules, but rather theories consistent with patent filings, experiences of other SEOs, and experiments performed over the years. Nothing substitutes for direct experience, so use your best judgement and feel free to perform your own experiments based on the information below.

1. Freshness by Inception Date

A webpage is given a “freshness” score based on its inception date, which decays over time. This freshness score can boost a piece of content for certain search queries, but degrades as the content becomes older.

The inception date is often when Google first becomes aware of the document, such as when Googlebot first indexes a document or discovers a link to it.

2. Document Changes (How Much) Influences Freshness

The age of a webpage or domain isn’t the only freshness factor. Search engines can score regularly updated content for freshness differently from content that doesn’t change. In this case, the amount of change on your webpage plays a role.

For example, the change of a single sentence won’t have as big of a freshness impact as a large change to the main body text.

3. The Rate of Document Change (How Often) Impacts Freshness

Content that changes more often is scored differently than content that only changes every few years. In this case, consider the homepage of the New York Times, which updates every day and has a high degree of change.

"For example, a document whose content is edited often may be scored differently than a document whose content remains static over time. Also, a document having a relatively large amount of its content updated over time might be scored differently than a document having a relatively small amount of its content updated over time."

4. Freshness Influenced by New Page Creation

Instead of revising individual pages, websites add completely new pages over time. This is the case with most blogs. Websites that add new pages at a higher rate may earn a higher freshness score than sites that add content less frequently.

Some SEOs insist you should add 20-30% new pages to your site every year. This provides the opportunity to create fresh, relevant content, although you shouldn’t neglect your old content if it needs attention.

"UA may also be determined as a function of one or more factors, such as the number of “new” or unique pages associated with a document over a period of time. Another factor might include the ratio of the number of new or unique pages associated with a document over a period of time versus the total number of pages associated with that document."

5. Changes to Important Content Matter More

Changes made in “important” areas of a document will signal freshness differently than changes made in less important content. Less important content includes navigation, advertisements, and content well below the fold. Important content is generally in the main body text above the fold.

 Boilerplate Changes Count Less for Freshness      "…content deemed to be unimportant if updated/changed, such as Javascript, comments, advertisements, navigational elements, boilerplate material, or date/time tags, may be given relatively little weight or even ignored altogether when determining UA." 

6. Rate of New Link Growth Signals Freshness

If a webpage sees an increase in its link growth rate, this could indicate a signal of relevance to search engines. For example, if folks start linking to your personal website because you are about to get married, your site could be deemed more relevant and fresh (as far as this current event goes.)  That said, an unusual increase in linking activity can also indicate spam or manipulative link building techniques. Be careful, as engines are likely to devalue such behavior.

"…a downward trend in the number or rate of new links (e.g., based on a comparison of the number or rate of new links in a recent time period versus an older time period) over time could signal to search engine 125 that a document is stale, in which case search engine 125 may decrease the document’s score."

7. Links from Fresh Sites Pass Fresh Value

Links from sites that have a high freshness score themselves can raise the freshness score of the sites they link to.  For example, if you obtain a link off an old, static site that hasn’t been updated in years, this doesn't pass the same level of freshness value as a link from a fresh page – for example, the homepage of Wired.com. Justin Briggs coined this FreshRank.

"Document S may be considered fresh if n% of the links to S are fresh or if the documents containing forward links to S are considered fresh."

8. Changes in Anchor Text Signals may Devalue Links

If a website changes dramatically over time, it makes sense that any new anchor text pointing to the page will change as well.

For example, If you buy a domain about automobiles, then change the format to content about baking, over time your new incoming anchor text will shift from cars to cookies.

In this instance, Google might determine that your site has changed so much that the old anchor text is no longer relevant, and devalue those older links entirely.

"The date of appearance/change of the document pointed to by the link may be a good indicator of the freshness of the anchor text based on the theory that good anchor text may go unchanged when a document gets updated if it is still relevant and good."  

9. User Behavior Indicates Freshness

What happens when your once wonderful content becomes old and outdated? For example, your website hosts a local bus schedule... for 2009. As content becomes outdated, folks spend less time on your site. They press the back button to Google's results and choose another URL. 

Google picks up on these user behavior metrics and scores your content accordingly.

"If a document is returned for a certain query and over time, or within a given time window, users spend either more or less time on average on the document given the same or similar query, then this may be used as an indication that the document is fresh or stale, respectively."

Conclusion:

The goal of a search engine is to return the most relevant results to users. For your part, this requires an honest assessment of your own content. What part of your site would benefit most from freshness?

Old content that exists simply to generate page views, but accomplishes little else, does more harm than good for the web. On the other hand, great content that continually answers a user's query may remain fresh forever.

Be fresh. Be relevant. Most important, be useful.



Source: Cyrus Shepard to Advanced SEO

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Your Strategy to Sell Your Image Through Content Marketing

Everyone is talking about how content is so important (which is true) but no one is really talk about WHY content is king and WHY content is critically important. The buzz words these days are content marketing. But what exactly does it mean and how can a business implement its use to bring value to their customers?  Basically, content marketing is publishing information through various media outlets that will educate your customers.

Some of the biggest companies in the world today didn’t exist just 10 years ago. Companies like YouTube, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to name a few. And the one thing that all of these huge companies have in common is their product: information. Welcome to the Information Age. (Also referred to as the Digital age) 10 years ago, if you wanted to do research on any given topic, you would find yourself traveling to a library. Not today. Today we have an entire world of information at our fingertips

Nowadays, words have shifted from being on books, magazines and billboards to living on computers, smartphones, laptops, televisions and tablets. First of all, great content is something that can be easily read by a person browsing your website. But that’s not where it ends. In fact, that’s where it starts! 

The benefit of publishing good content is that your targeted audience will come to rely on you as an information resource for their decision making.  It is important to understand that content marketing is more than just information about your products or services. It includes relevant and useful information that will be used to develop opinions about your business and help build a relationship with your customers. 

Great content serves a very important purpose: it informs the reader about the topic of the page. When great content is smartly developed and used strategically, it easily accomplishes the following tasks:
1- Helps people understand the topic
2- Demonstrates your unique expertise or angle on the subject
3- Makes people want to come back and read it again
4- Makes people want to link to it so other people can access it from their website, blog, social network feed, etc.

5- Let people buy something on the site
6- Let people download a document, a file, or an app
 

Great content is what the Web was originally designed to facilitate. Write what you know, make it compelling, and people (and search engines) will respond accordingly. It may take time, of course, but even viral content starts with an initial post. For instance, Expact Women website did not reach hundred thousands of people by accident. Its founder was smart, or more importantly, had smart strategies.  When I was doing my research on some articles in expatwomen, I found out that the blog wrote one article last month that generated more links and shares than 46 of their posts from 2013 combined.  This post is about effective blogging, and going beyond the the strategy that built a big community of audience.

Think about how often you search for information before making a purchasing decision. Your customers do the same, so it is important to position yourself to be a credible resource for them.

 
But How Do You Create Great Content? 

Great content is, well, great! Of course, that can also be a relative thing. It’s like the old story of being in the woods with a bunch of your coworkers when you accidentally encounter an ill-tempered bear. When the chase begins, you personally don’t need to outrun the bear (good luck with trying that). You only need to outrun the other people you’re with.  Sure, that’s a grizzly (pun intended) tale with a morally ambiguous message, but that’s why I made the other people your coworkers. Business is business, after all!

I’m sure you’re thinking “sounds like a great idea, but how do you go about publishing relevant content?” As usual, it takes some planning and the first thing you need to do is develop your content marketing strategy.  There are four main areas to consider: audience, media, timing and topic. 

Audience
Who is your intended audience? This relates back to who your target customer is.  You need to understand your customers, what their needs are and purchasing patterns are. I tell my clients that you need to know your customers like you know your mother. What do they like and dislike? Who do they go to for an opinion prior to making a purchasing decision? Where are they located? What is their age, income and education level?  Once you understand your target customer, it is easier to determine what media to select, when you should publish content and what topics would be of benefit to your customers.

 
Media
Where does your target customer go for information? Would they read a newspaper, look for online reviews, articles, videos or blogs? Do they reach out to their friends and families for recommendations? Would they like to get their information in an online newsletter?  If you are not sure, ask them when you see them or send out a small survey. Or just research the various social media resources and see who’s using them. By “Googling” the various types of social media for statistics on who is using them you can determine the best media to use for your target customer.

 
Timing
How often should you publish? The medium you’re using will dictate how often you need to publish your content.  Twitter and Facebook could be several times a day, blogs at least weekly, LinkedIn can be every couple of weeks, and online newsletters can be monthly or quarterly.  Realistically, think about how often you can develop content and publish it. This is a big task and often it needs to be delegated or shared among several people. Starting a weekly blog may seem like a good idea at first, but remember there are 365 days in a year. 

Topic
Most important, where are you going to find relevant content? After publishing for a while you can run out of ideas to write about.  Places to look for content are trending topics, newspapers, blogs or your customers’ tweets and posts. What are they talking about and interested in? This is where you can find topics for content that will be of interest to your target audience.  Remember, developing and implementing a content marketing strategy is a lot of work and requires planning, but the rewards can be tremendous.

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Build Your Income By Creating Your Own Online Business

Today, I would like to discuss the success and fail of small business.  Approximately 65% of small businesses fail within the first year. I would ask how many of the people you know who have started a business has truly succeeded? How many of them put on a happy face yet are still at every networking meeting looking for business?

After the crisis in 2008, I spent two years thinking about the business I need to start with as self-employee to support my income. That time my starting point was to create a business plan and find out what is the sector is not substantially affected by financial crisis. And I found the answer!

The plan was to create an online business and build a hub that can deliver a greatest benefit and do have something of value to share with the world, something that can generate income for me for the rest of my life! I learned to trust myself to work hard, to stay focused under pressure, and to even enjoy the process. I have read multiple of researches and public articles about online services, and I found consumers spent £30.2bn on online goods and services in 2007-2012, according to IMRG, the industry body for global e-retailing. Over the past 10 years, the growth of the internet has resulted in the high-profile successes of many internet-related businesses. After all these researches and articles about online business I found the real success stories come from those who find a way to generate just a few thousand dollars per month, enough to cover their expenses.

I would say having the right technology in place can help online business to grow and help any small business do what they do best – but even better and with more profit – and free up time to focus on growth. In the same time if plan to start the online business, we should know our target market, know our competition, attract funding and finding a niche. 

Your Website

I decided to create an online platform UAEMD.NET which provides an online directory of all United Arab Emirates (UAE) physicians, practices, hospitals, clinics, medical suppliers and insurance companies. The Find Physician search functionality allows visitors to search by any health services, specialty or expertise. 

Websites will set you back varying amounts. "The cost is relative” and try to keep the site clean and simple: people will buy from you if they trust the site and can find what they want.  "Make sure you update your website's content constantly, as innovation, imagination and invention are essential if you are going to succeed in the longer term,"

Building Traffic
Running an online business is deceptively simple. Look at my web site UAE Medical Directory, for example. The structure isn’t very complicated. It’s mostly just content and some ads. But it consistently generates a nice five-figure monthly income. Anyone can do it, right?

The key factor in building a successful online business is traffic. If you can’t build sufficient traffic, you won’t be able to generate much, if any, income. And unfortunately most people are really bad at building traffic. They apply completely inept strategies that don’t work, and they usually give up within a few months after starting.

Building traffic is not remotely easy for most people. This problem isn’t unique to the web though. You see it in every field. Some authors sell millions of books, while the average book doesn’t even sell 5,000 copies. Lots of people can write a book, but relatively few know how to sell a book. Lots of people can create a web site or blog these days, but few know how to attract large amounts of traffic

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If you can successfully build lots of traffic, it’s fairly easy to generate income from it. You also have time to figure it out. If you can grow your traffic, you can maintain your traffic, and that gives you time to figure out how to monetize the traffic.

Customer Transactions
Make it fast and easy for customers to navigate or looking for a service, as a site with a difficult sales process is likely to lose customers. Websites should be easy to navigate so users don't get frustrated and leave without making a purchase. Security should also be a priority, and potential customers should be assured their details will be kept safe.  You should talk to your customers as often as possible and help them to get to know you and build confidence in you and the services you provide. Ask them what they want from you and react to what they tell you.

Start Small and Have Patience
Don't give up your day job too soon, as it will take time for your internet venture to grow – and in the meantime there may not be much incoming revenue. I have spent more than 3 years to find key drivers of traffic growth. You'll need lots of energy, enthusiasm, determination and passion; but you also need to be realistic. "Success on the web is rare," warns Cohen. "While many businesses are launched, few make a profit, and most will never see a return on investment. That said, while starting up an internet business can be one of the toughest things you ever do, it can also be the most rewarding."

Conclusion
Running an online business can be a wonderful growth experience, and the income and freedom it can provide is certainly nice too. People really shouldn’t be deprived of this opportunity for technical reasons. The self-publishing power of blogging technology has gotten us partway there, but it’s only one piece to the puzzle. I encourage you to take a good look at my website www.uaemd.net!, and then you can sketch out the picture about how to create an idea about your online business and putting online business success within reach of most people.  

I would sum up, if you want to set up an internet business, you have to convince all the people around you it's a good idea. Put in your own time and energy, but other people's money – and take as much advice from other people as you can.

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Why Brand Personality is the Best Thing To Improve Your Content Marketing

As I mentioned in my previous articles, the great content is always your key to better engagement, and in turn, more conversions. What's the key to great content? Make what you produce more personal.

To begin with, I would like to start the article by small introduction about content and say content is the driver of many brand experiences - and even if you sell a product, often your marketing and thought leadership content is the filler that keeps the relationship strong and healthy. 

Great Content means build Great Engagement! But it also defines a brand or author and helps people stay focused on the core message or value. Be it games or whitepapers or tweets or micro-sites, content is both integral and inextricable to the relationship. I'm also convinced that it needs to be more personal.

I believe everybody here knows that content marketing works and has a good impact. If it didn’t then the whole idea of using the internet for marketing purposes would be in dispute! Do you know why?

Well, the internet is an information machine full of content! videos, ebooks, whitepapers, press releases, Facebook, forums, blog posts, podcast, tweets, articles, etc. It’s all content isn’t it? 

However, the problem lies with whether or not the content marketing strategy you use will fit in with your personality or not. I would therefore say the automation of personality can have a big impact on content marketing success. As in any brand personality, the characteristics must be authentic and sustainable. Unlike "human interactions" where we use lots of clues - behavior, physical characteristics, attitudes, beliefs, and demographics - to form opinions and likability, a brand personality is built through every direct or indirect interaction with the brand. Introducing appropriate emotion into your message is another recipe for personality. Personality comes out naturally when you tell a story. Everything has a story behind it. The trick is in the telling. So content is a common interaction - usually indirect but often direct, too. 

Marketers have long given brands a "personality." The brand personality enables a consumer to express his or her own self - or ideal self - by participating with the brand. It is not your logo it is not your photo, it is your voice, design and reputation combined into one impression. Unlike product attributes, which tend to serve a utilitarian function for consumers, brand personalities tend to serve a symbolic or self-expressive function. 

If you’re not building any impact, you aren’t encouraging repeat business, and you aren’t creating curious new customers, meaning they won’t be there to convert later on. The key to brand impact, both online and offline is a content marketing strategy that focuses on shareable, valuable content. Having a large group of followers is meaningless if those people are not engaged. So the challenge is to how to allow the "real people" behind the brand to build a personal and enduring relationship that supports and doesn't usurp or dilute the brand.

As you create your content, consider how it impacts your brand and how people perceive you. Always keep an eye on the bigger picture. Personality is one thing—over-sharing is quite another.

The social nature of our digital lifestyles has led to a new level of "sharing" of personal information. While I don't think sharing private information in a business context is appropriate, sharing some level of personal information makes perfect sense. Yet, talking about the kids or your dog or morning commute via a brand account can extend the level of the brand relationship.

No one pretends that the brand is an actual human being, but it does have characteristics and a voice that speak through social channels. We all know and value that there are people behind that Twitter or Google + account and that those people have lives and interests and experiences. Exposing some of that personal information as part of the content strategy is certainly appropriate and builds on the perception of the brand level persona.

For example, you're sure to have amazing moments at your company that are awesome to share - like a promotion for someone on the team, or the launch of a new product feature, or the project that you implemented. Your reaction to those events is personal - but not private information - and thus makes the brand more real and connected to the humans that customers want to have a relationship with.

Relationships with your clients and prospects are what bring the buying life cycle to a natural close, resulting in a sale. Establishing a personality within your communications will help you develop that relationship and grow your business.

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Why Do People Think Content Marketing is a Good Idea for Boosting Business

Nowadays, content marketing is considered THE Hot Topic of any business which is looking to ensure it continues to meet its needs and helps you set the course for your business. In fact, it’s smoking hot. Though many would have said “don’t waste your time” a few years ago, it is now the main focus for a majority of marketing professionals today.

In 2014 I have seen there are several trends from different aspect to apply content marketing as strategy to boost and growth business. For instance, leading experts and analysts in the digital marketing industry have continued to include content marketing in the conversation of “Top Marketing Trends” to watch in 2014. So, for business owners it’s definitely time to take notice and develop an effective strategy to leverage content marketing as a lead generation tool.

The experts in Digital Marketing industry have discovered there is a magic relationship between your business and content marketing – Why? Because it’s an effective method of advertising at a time when old marketing models aren’t as effective as they once were. Rather than buying a full-page newspaper ad and hoping your customers see it, now you can create brand-specific content to help customers find you.

Consumer trust in advertising is certainly not what it once was and because of this, a strong, focused content marketing strategy is needed. Internet users do not want to be bombarded with pop-up or banner ads and for many businesses, pay-per-click advertising does not provide an acceptable ROI.
However, a content marketing strategy can boost your business’ bottom line and provide the advertising and marketing results you need.

In the same time, we need to know how to prepare for this content as make quality content the key to your business success. There is a book for Sharon Tanton “The Valuable Content Marketing book” explains the role of content marketing in the business growth by creating and sharing valuable content. Get your message across in the right way, and the clients and customers you want will come to you. No hard sell required!

Here are three reasons to develop a targeted content marketing strategy.

1. Search Content Words
Creating good content is good keyword research. You content should have real value that allows you to discover the specific ways that people may be searching for your content. Content marketing provides consumers information they want. This is essential today, as more potential customers will search out information about your business before asking a friend or looking at various other media. Your content must educate, inspire, inform and engage the readers.

2. Trafalgar Communications
Consumers prefer content marketing over advertising. Consumers prefer want to hear what they like, so they have the ability to pick and choose what they like! Customers need a reason to visit and interact with a company's to learn about your business through articles instead of advertisements. A study by Roper Public Affairs found that 60 percent of decision makers felt they made better purchasing decisions with the help of content marketing. Equally important, the study found that 70 percent felt closer to the business brand.

3. Generate more Leads
If you want to generate more leads and sales for your business, I would say Content Marketing is one of the best ways to make this happen. It also lasts longer. Paid advertising may only benefit your business for a few weeks or days. Your content can end up shared through users or others, effectively increasing the reach and longevity of your message.

So every time you can provide value to your reader when you have a solid and educated content, you have an opportunity to ask for something in return. The challenge is for companies to rethink their content marketing strategy and incorporate Social Media and SEO in order to fulfill customer expectations for ease of discovery, consumption and sharing. On top of that, content must educate and make it easy to follow a logical conclusion to buy.  The companies that do those things best, will win the incredibly competitive online marketing race we’re in.

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