Despite concerns that the nofollow tag that accompanies Twitter links means that PageRank and other algorithms are not changed by links posted to Twitter, the reality is that Twitter’s social links have essentially canceled out this issue, giving you the ability to build both your presence and backlinks through Twitter.  Since social links now work the same as backlinks, you can use Twitter just like any other website for posting links to: since Twitter is a high-quality, authority site, this makes posting on Twitter smart and necessary in building an extensive backlink presence.  Here are some guidelines to consider when building your backlinks on this social networking platform.

Develop A Solid Profile

One of the best and cheapest ways to expand your presence on Twitter is by building up your own account(s) that can be used to push your links to others.  Not only will this expand your presence through backlinks (thanks to your established Twitter profile) but others who see you message may end up passing it along, adding even more backlinks and traffic to your site.  Twitter profiles that are established typically have lots of followers, a low follower to following ratio and lots of incoming links to the profile page.  While you are working on establishing your own authority Twitter profiles, you may want to consider the next option as a short-term solution for boosting backlinks and traffic.

Hire A Twitter Pro

While Twitter remains relatively demonetized by its owners, those in search engine optimization and advertising have learned how to make money helping others with their own endeavors. There are plenty of “Twitter services” on the web that offer everything from established Twitter accounts (typically very pricey) to backlinks on a per-mention basis. The best and cheapest short-term route is to pay a Twitter user to post your link to their followers several times over a period of a few days. This approach is very effective and will give you backlinks and traffic.

Communicate With Others

Twitter is a large community but many personal connections can be built by reaching out to other users. When someone needs help, answer their questions. When you are polite, friendly and approachable, you will find that many people will want to follow you and as a result, you will build authority on your Twitter accounts. You will also be amazed at how many people will voluntarily re-tweet your links for you if you are simply nice to them. Communication is everything – it’s obviously the essence of Twitter – and you will achieve great results by using this approach.

Track Your Progress

After using Twitter for some time, it can become more difficult to track back all of your backlinks manually. Thankfully, there is no need as you can track everything by using Pingler’s Twitter Links Finder as a way to see where you’ve got backlinks and how you are proceeding with saturating the platform with your offerings. You can check each page simply by typing in the URL; results of the number of backlinks on Twitter for the page in question will then be displayed for you to record.

In the last few weeks we’ve spoken to you a lot about the importance of using sites like Stumble Upon, Digg and Delicious to get the word out about your web content.  Digg is one of the most popular of these sites – in fact there are estimated to be 400 million users on the site and this figure if forever growing.  So what does this mean for you?  Well, if you add your content to Digg you have an extra 400 million people that could technically find your website.

What Type of Sites Does Digg Benefit?

Digg is a social media website and it works by people viewing content and then “digging” it if they think it’s cool.  This is almost like the Facebook share button and it is possible for your content to go viral if you are sharing what the Digg users like.  Unfortunately this doesn’t mean that every site will benefit.  If for example you are purely sharing content that is trying to sell something, you are unlikely to impress anyone.  The majority of the users on Digg are there to browse through interesting webpages; they are not there to buy something.  Therefore the best content to share on this site is contact that grabs the reader, tells them something new and doesn’t sell them something.

The Benefits of Digg

We should say here, that you are unlikely to receive much targeted traffic through Digg unless you somehow manage to get your webpages advertised on the first page.  However, this doesn’t mean Digg has no benefits.  Digg is a great way to get people interested in your website and if a user likes what you have to say they may subscribe or “follow” you on other social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.  In addition, it has been known for people to write blog articles that get shared extensively which not only increases your traffic but also your number of backlinks – it’s win win!

Where Do I Start?

If you want to know how the whole Digg process works your best option is to sign up to the site and use it yourself.  You can then manually add links to webpages that you want to share.  By joining in on the site you can get a hang of how things work; this is the best way to really benefit.  In addition to this you should also add a Digg social media button to your webpages – this is a great way for your website readers to also share the content that they like.

The Digg Links Checker Tool

We at Pingler have a Digg Links Checker Tool that is free for you to use.  All you need to do is enter the web address of your webpage and we will let you know how many links you currently have on the Digg social media site.  By using this tool you can see how well your strategy is working on the site and then adapt your strategy accordingly.

With so many benefits, there really is no reason why you should not utilise the Digg social media site to your advantage.

If you are thinking about venturing into the online world and starting your own online business you are in a great position.  You have a blank slate and can literally do anything and can market yourself and your business in a way that is best for you.  Branding literally means making your business known and building up its respect in your specific industry so whilst you might want to just jump in head first, you might want to read on to make sure that you aren’t making any of the following branding mistakes.

1. Don’t Overextend Yourself

One of the main mistakes that many new online businesses make is overextending themselves.  Even Microsoft has fallen folly to this at some points in their history and if your brand isn’t well established this can end up sinking your online business.  You are better off just choosing a niche and sticking to it until you have perfected it before branching out into other areas.  Don’t promise your customers a specific product or service until you know that you can provide it, if you do you will only let them down and guess what… they won’t return.

2. Don’t Cut Costs to Compete

Many new online businesses believe that it is so hard to compete with the already established companies that the only way to get any business at all is by cutting costs.  This is a really bad idea as many of the ready established companies will cut their costs further (even if this means running at a loss for some time) until they have pushed you out of business.  If you continue on in the price-cutting war, you will only end up losing a large amount of money.  This may be something an established company can afford, but it’s unlikely that a business new to the online world will be able to.

3. Don’t Lie to Your Customers

Many new online businesses have owners that do not think of the bigger picture.  Many just think about making a quick pound online and they are not worried about the aftermath, or just don’t think towards the future.  If you want to have a successful online business you need to be honest with your customers, otherwise they are unlikely to return.  This includes special promotions that you may use to encourage people to work with you – if you say that only 20 people will receive a free gift, don’t change the offer at a later date.  Likewise if you say your prices are going to increase in two weeks, increase them; unless you want the customers who took you up on your promotion to feel conned.

4. Don’t Assume You Will Make Millions

This is the biggest mistake of all, and one that I have seen numerous times online.  Yes, it is possible to make a lot of money online but it doesn’t just happen overnight.  The internet millionaires that you have heard of have put a lot of time and effort into their brand and it has taken years for them to succeed.  There is no reason why you cannot do the same however you will need to differentiate yourself from everyone else who is trying to do the same thing.  Your business’s brand should be something completely unique and you should be willing to put the time and effort in.  Otherwise you will only become disappointed and disillusioned and end up falling at the first hurdle.

It is possible to build a very successful brand online, just make sure that you watch out for the above mistakes in the early days.

LinkedIn is currently the most popular social networking tool for professionals and at its latest count there were over 100 million users.  This is great news if you look at it as a marketing tool, as by maintaining a presence on the website you can increase your customer base and generate leads that are specific to a chosen demographic.  LinkedIn is so much more than just a bunch of resumes so read on to find out how you can advertise effectively.

What are LinkedIn Ads?

LinkedIn ads work in a similar way to Google Adwords in that they analyse the performance of your advertising campaigns and calculate a score which is used on PPC (pay per click) ads.  Unlike Google Adwords however, LinkedIn only considers two factors: your bid and the all-time CTR (click through rate).  The trick to a successful ad campaign lies with these two factors so as long as you bid in line with the recommended amounts set by LinkedIn and keep your CTR up your campaign is set to be successful.

How to Create an Effective LinkedIn Ad Campaign

If you’re all set to go there are a few extra things that you can do to ensure that your campaign is successful:

• Focus your campaigns so that they target a specific audience

Like most advertising campaigns, they always work best when you specifically target a set audience.  LinkedIn enables you to set your campaign filters to target people of a specific age, gender and geography as well as by the job that they do or the industry that they are in.  The advertisements will work best if you target a specific group of people so for example if you are targeting both medium and big businesses you should create two separate campaigns for each of these.

• Keep your offers simple

There are numerous things that can discourage a potential customer from clicking on your ad, and a confusing offer is one of these.  Your best bet is to create one offer per advertisement and specifically aim this offer at a set demographic.  Although it is possible to run multiple offers at once, and it is easier to set up, it is a lot harder to optimise your offers and could reduce the amount of people who click on your ad.

• Spend your money strategically

The great thing about LinkedIn ads is that you can track how successful they are.  You are able to set a specific daily budget which basically translates into the maximum amount you are happy to spend in one day on advertising.  If you find you aren’t receiving as many clicks as you would like, you may find that your daily budget is too low.  Likewise you may also find that you have a competitor who is trying to advertise to the same demographic as you – in this case you will find that whoever is willing to spend the most money will be the one whose ad is shown.  The best thing to do here is to monitor your campaigns and to adjust them accordingly so that you spend only as much as you need to to make your campaign effective.

LinkedIn is a really great advertising tool if you want to target specific people in a specific industry.  Just remember that what works for you will not necessarily be what works for someone else, it’s all a process of trial and error, but when done correctly LinkedIn advertising can be very effective.

Most, although by no means all, bloggers love reading blog comments, and for you as a commenter they provide a great way to get that all important backlink when published.  However, as you probably already know if you run a blog yourself, there are some great comments and there are some frankly terrible ones.  The terrible ones are nine times out of ten going to be marked as spam or trashed, so let’s look at how to write a great blog comment and increase your chance of it being accepted.

1. Determine Why You are Commenting

First of all you need to determine why you are choosing to comment on a specific blog.  Are you doing it to join in the community, establish yourself as an expert, because you appreciate or really disagree with the post itself or because you purely want a link to your own site?  Once you know why you are commenting, you can better phrase the comment that you go on to write.

2. Comment in Context and Make a Point

If there are a lot of comments already on the blog it is important to make sure your comment is in context with the others.  For example instead of just coming out with a four word sentence that makes no sense on its own, take the time to quote the area of the post or comment you are referring to.

You should also make sure to make a point in your comment.  Although some bloggers are happy to publish comments such as “great post thanks” and “wonderful this helps a lot” many others will mark your post as spam.  To make a more longer lasting impression and ensure your comment is published (with your ever important link), post something meaningful and contribute further knowledge.

3. Be Respectful

This shouldn’t need to be spelled out, but don’t be disrespectful in your blog comments.  It is okay to disagree with a post but comments filled with profanity or hateful words are likely to be trashed too.  Plus if they are published, do you really want other people to see what you can be like?  Comments that are disrespectful are a waste of time on so many levels.

4. Keep it Short

People have short attention spans, so don’t write an essay in the comment section – if you have a lot to say about something why not start your own blog on the subject?  A few short paragraphs will usually suffice with one paragraph per point.

5. Link Carefully

If you are purely commenting with the aim of gaining a backlink to your site, make sure you link carefully.  Most blogs have a section for you to input your website address which is always worth filling in but be careful if you link in the body of the comment as your comment is likely to be seen as spam by the blog owner and as such won’t be published.  You should only include a link in the body of the comment IF it offers further information on the original post.

6. Proofread

And the final tip is to proofread your blog comment before posting.  If you know you have trouble with spelling correctly, write your comment in MS Word and then copy and paste it over after checking that the grammar and spelling is correct.  Comments full of misspellings undermine your authority and again can be marked as spam or trashed by a blog owner.

Take the time to write a great blog comment and you are very likely to get it published – don’t and you are wasting your time in most cases.

Marketing is not all about advertising.  It encompasses everything from the initial concept of your business all the way through to how you deliver your products or services.  Most big businesses will spend a lot of money on their marketing, and when budgets get tight, it is easy to think about cutting your marketing budget.  Whilst this is not a good idea in the majority of cases there are a number of effective no cost marketing techniques that you can employ; and many of these can be especially good for small businesses or people attempting to start a business on their own.

Social Media

We have talked about social media a lot recently on Pingler.com and the reason for this is that it can be truly effective when done correctly.  Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Stumble Upon and Digg can all help to advertise your business for free.  Remember to include social media buttons on your website or blog for this to have the highest effect.

Guest Blog Posts

Backlinks are essential when it comes to ranking high for your keywords, and one way to get these is through guest blog posts.  If you are an expert in a specific field, contact some high PR blogs and ask them if you can post on their site for free in exchange for a backlink.  Most high ranking website owners are busy people and if they feel that you can contribute positively towards their blog they will be more than happy to say yes.

Press Releases

Writing and distributing a press release is a great way to spread the word about your business.  If you don’t know how to write one, have a look online – there are lots of websites who will give you step to step guides and help save you the costs of a writer.  Once your press release is ready to go, distribute it on some free press release sites and watch the traffic come in.

Forums

Forums are a great place to find new customers especially if you post on forums that are relevant to the niche of your business.  You can build up a reputation on forums by answering questions, helping out other members and giving honest feedback.  If a forum member feels like you have helped them out they are likely to visit your site and return the favour – especially if they are interested in the type of business you have.

Focus on Organic Search Engine Rankings

Take the time to learn SEO and optimise your website correctly.  Organic traffic costs absolutely no money if you know what you are doing (it will cost a lot to hire an SEO expert) but it will take time to learn the tips and tricks of the trade.  Once your blog or website starts ranking for organic keywords you can watch the traffic flood in and know that the time you spent learning and optimising your site was worth it.

If your business is in its early stages, there is no way that you will be able to compete with the big websites in your niche unless you have a lot of money.  You can however start to compete with the small businesses for no cost at all.  Once your income begins to grow, you can then implement paid marketing strategies to really market your website like the big guns in your niche!  Good luck!

Out of all the social media sites on the web today, Stumble Upon is one of the best when it comes to generating traffic for your website or blog.  This is because the users of the site are looking for interesting content in specific niches and if you or someone else has recommended your site, it will already be on the website – and be ready to be seen by millions of users.  So how can you start getting traffic from Stumble Upon or increase the amount that you already receive?

Write Good Content

Stumble Upon users are after one thing – interesting content.  But with so many different types of content this could get confusing.  Below are the main types of content Stumble Upon’s users look for:

• Lists – Top 10 lists may seem a little boring or a little 1990s but they are hugely popular with the Stumble Upon community.
• Images – the photography community on the site is HUGE, so including amazing (or at least unique) photos on your site is a huge plus.
• Tutorials – how tos and step by step guides are also very popular on the site.
• Infographics – these aren’t easy to make but if you know how to do them, I can guarantee they will be a hit with the users of Stumble Upon.
• Videos – Like the images, the video community on Stumble Upon is huge.  If you run a video site or integrate videos into your posts – you are likely to build a quick following.

If a user likes what they see or read they will click the “like” button – yes, it’s a bit like Facebook.  Be warned though, if they don’t like it, they will click the “dislike” button.  Get too many of these and it’s bye-bye to your webpage’s visibility.

Sites that don’t do too well on Stumble Upon include product reviews (unless you are well known, no-one is going to be interested) and poorly written content – whilst these will both be accepted to the site, they are likely to be disliked so much that they will be non-existent soon enough.

Build Followers and Share Content

Like Twitter, you will see that Stumble Upon also allows people to “follow you”.  In a similar way to Twitter you can either follow people who “like” pages you are interested in or follow people from a business angle – the more you follow people, the more they will follow you back.  Once you build up a base of followers, you will be in a good position to directly share your website content.

The best thing to do if you are new to the website is create a great profile page.  Fill out your user info including your likes and dislikes, and write a short biography of yourself including a link to your website.  This will help people to find you better when they search for people with similar interests.

It is important however not to spam your followers.  Don’t “share” the same page from your website more than once unless you want them to get annoyed with you and do take the time to read through and “like” other people’s content too.

Paid Discovery

Stumble Upon also has an option that enables you to advertise.  This works in exactly the same way as the above sharing system but it ensures that a set number of people each day will see your webpage.  This is very cheap – especially when you compare it to other advertising methods – and can also help your content to go viral.  Your campaigns can be targeted to a set audience and to set subjects, enabling people in a set demographic with specific interests to see your site.  There are a number of people who have seen a huge increase in subscribers due to the paid discovery option on the site, and people who have recorded higher than average organic views after their advertising campaign ended.

Whether you go for the paid option, the organic or a mixture of the two, the site has so much potential.  Make sure to add a ‘stumble upon’ icon to all of your web pages to enable other Stumblers to add your content to the site too; and be mindful not to spam.  Stumble Upon really is a great way to increase the traffic to your blog and has led to the success of many blog and website owners since it was founded.

Marketing doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg.  There are plenty of ways businesses today can use the internet to drive traffic to their website and increase their customer base, without spending an absolute fortune.  Here are just a few of them.

SEO

Search engine optimisation isn’t some kind of magical wizardry that only trained professionals can do, you’re perfectly capable of applying some of the more common SEO techniques to your website yourself.  A good place to start is with Google Analytics.  If you don’t have an account already, you really need one or some other suitable traffic tracking software.

Analytics will tell you how your users are finding you, which pages they prefer, how long they stay with you and where they bounce off to next.  All of this is valuable SEO information.  Check out the most common keywords people use to find you and start applying them cleverly throughout your site (though don’t ‘stuff’ your site with keywords, search engines are wise to this and will penalise you).

Social Networking

If you haven’t already, you need to get yourself on Facebook and Twitter pronto.  Setting up accounts provide you with a great (not to mention free) medium for contacting your loyal customers, keeping them up to date with what you’re doing and, most importantly, letting them know about your great deals and offers.  If you have a blog, Facebook and Twitter are a great medium for getting your new posts out to your followers.  Getting people to follow you will ensure you’re ever-present in their news feed and therefore never far from their mind.

Email Marketing

Do you already get a lot of traffic to your website?  Start getting your visitors to sign up to a weekly/monthly newsletter by submitting their email address.  It’s easy to add a form to your site and it’s a great way to build up a valuable list of interested customers.  You can then form a regular newsletter containing information about your products or services, current deals and general news.  Keep yourself in your customers’ minds on a regular basis and you’ll be the first place they go when they’re ready to buy.

Paid Search

Paid searches are worth spending some money on, providing you know what you’re getting into.  Paid searches are the adverts that display at the top and down the side of relevant search results in Google.  Do plenty of research first to make sure you are getting the very best return on investment.  If you do this, you won’t have to spend too much money to see an improvement in profits.

News Releases

There are plenty of business news sites that display up to date information about products and services.  Why not try crafting a press release about your product or service and sending it to one of these sites?  They’re hungry for content and it’s a great way to tap into extra traffic and drive even more back to your site in doing so.

Facebook is not just about poking the people you like, secretly checking the pages of the people you don’t and chatting to your great aunt Mary in Australia.  More and more businesses are starting to use the website to drive more traffic to their business page and along with Twitter, it’s amongst the most popular ways to use social media for marketing.

Creating a Company Profile

Originally Facebook was just for fun, personal use and setting up a personal profile for businesses was strictly forbidden.  However, having seen the potential for growth there, Facebook have added a ‘pages’ feature in which you can set up a page for your business or service.  You might find the pages facility a little tricky at first but you’ll soon get the hang of it.  When your page is up and running, it will be searchable so people can find you using the standard search on Facebook.  You might find that your list of ‘likers’ is a bit limited at first so try tapping into your personal network, pointing them at your new page and encouraging them to donate a blue thumb.  From here, you can use your page to post things like news, new products and blog posts that will flash up in the news feed of anyone who ‘likes’ you.

Starting Building a Network

Once you start mining the depths of Facebook pages, you’ll probably stumble across a lot of your business contacts and even business rivals.  Chances are they all have pages already.  You can start working your way around these pages and adding them as friends of your page.  You can also use the search facility to invite people to your page.

Use Facebook to Promote Your Website and Blog

As mentioned above, you can use your new Facebook page to drive traffic to your website and promote your blog to a whole new host of potential traffic.  There’s a ‘notes’ tab on Facebook that you may already be familiar with on Facebook.  This allows you to post copies of your newest blog posts – try posting the first paragraph with a ‘read more’ link to the rest of the blog entry on your website.

Facebook can help drive significantly more traffic to your website as part of a larger marketing campaign.  But as with anything, the amount of traffic you receive from Facebook does depend on the amount of time and effort you put in to building up your page, your network and your general activity on the site.

You can start off small and just have a page that displays your logo, your basic information and your web address.  You can start to build up from there as you familiarise yourself with the way Facebook works.  Some of the tools can be a little tricky at first but once you’ve learnt how to use them, you can start syncing up your blog and any other new posts that may be featured elsewhere so that they are automatically loaded onto your Facebook page.

In a world where loyalty is hard to come by, more and more companies are turning to social media outlets to encourage customers and potential customers to show an interest in their brand.  Competitions to win tickets, goodies and products are popping up on Facebook and Twitter almost daily – and the followers seem to lap it up.  If you want to create a little hype for your business, it would certainly seem that social media is the way to go.  Twitter especially has been creating some waves in brand awareness of late, with its ease of finding and contacting potential new patrons.

If you’re a new startup looking to get your brand noticed, a great way to get yourself on the map is to run a “RT to win” competition.  RT means re-tweet on Twitter – a public equivalent of forwarding an email.  If someone sees a tweet they like they can re-tweet (or RT) it to their followers so that they can read it too.  Asking a follower to follow you and re-tweet a specific tweet in order to be eligible for a competition is a great way of increasing your reach and awareness of your product.

Whilst your follower numbers might shoot up, don’t be disappointed if they drop off once the competition has ended – it’s not uncommon for people to follow purely to get a chance to win.  The trick is to try and create loyalty and interest in your brand by being engaging whilst the competition is running.  Also make sure your social media links such as your website and Facebook page are up to, to enable people to find as much information as possible.

If you’ve got a specific product that you’re marketing, another great way of getting noticed is to provide free samples for review.  There are thousands of blogs (and therefore bloggers) these days so there are bound to be some that fit your product niche.  You can either organize it yourself or get in touch with a PR company and ask them to do it on your behalf – they will probably already have contacts in place but they’ll also expect you to pay for their services, something to bear in mind if you’re just starting up.

Sending a blogger a ‘sample copy’ of your product and asking them to review it will increase the profile of your brand and hopefully also create some readymade loyal followers.  Just make sure your product is up to scratch – bloggers aren’t obligated to review in a positive light, especially as they’re not normally paid for their work.

If you’re still unsure of social media or haven’t got around to setting up your accounts yet – do it soon.  Better to have a holding page ready whilst you figure it all out than risk someone taking your username (and thus your brand) because you weren’t quick enough to grab it.  With thousands of new users signing up every day, it’s really worth starting your account, just in case.