How do you define a quality translation?

It could be some simple product directions that make sense in another language, something free of grammatical errors. Maybe it’s a highly technical document that requires very precise terminology in order to pass strict international regulations. Or perhaps it’s a global ad campaign that evokes such strong emotion, it brings tears to the eyes of viewers in France, China, and Brazil.

The definition of translation quality (and its value) varies greatly depending on content type, end user, and business goals. A quality translation to one person could look like a feeble attempt at translation to another.

No one understands your brand, or your business goals, better than you. So it’s important that your quality expectations are communicated properly to your LSP at the start of the translation process.
Here are some tips to help improve communication, simplify review cycles, and ensure quality translations:

• Provide your LSP with examples of previous translations that meet your quality expectations (plus examples of some that don’t).
• Encourage in-country reviewers and lead translators to establish working relationships (they may be in the same locales).
• Make sure that your in-country reviewers fully understand corporate style guidelines and have collaborated on the creation of approved glossaries.
• Provide brand guidelines to help translators and reviewers understand your brand identity and voice.
• Grant your LSP or translator access to your staging server to review content in context—and to your web apps for reviewing and testing UI text elements.
• Supply quality source content (it won’t improve in another language).
• Give translators and in-country reviewers a reasonable amount of time to complete their work.
• Communicate regularly with your LSP’s project manager.
• Work toward a long-term relationship with your provider: Quality improves the more familiar they become with your business, content, and terminology.
• Assign a point person that your LSP can reach out to for questions and clarification.

High quality translations—however they’re defined—enable you to achieve your business goals. When your translations perform well in-market, you’re able to maintain a consistent brand voice while communicating a message that resonates with local audiences. Quality is key.

The post 10 Ways to Get Quality Translations appeared first on Show Me Money marketing strategies for beginners - Top ways to make money online and offline , complete ressources and quickest way to make a lot of money from home.

The first day I did my first hashtag. I just didn’t know what I was doing and it was quite surprise how that specific day let sudden explose in traffic.

Then I started doing hashtags on all my social media post. One day as I checked my traffic stats for my site, I was confused by where all the traffic are coming from.
As I learn and apply them, I got more and more results.

You might not have thought about what a hashtag is, or how you might be able to use them to earn money. Let’s jump right into it.

Simply put, a hashtag is a single word or un-spaced phrase preceded by the hash sign or number symbol: #. They are a form of metatag widely used on Twitter and other social media sites. They are a convenient way of labeling similar content into groups. Effective hashtags allow users to find content about a particular topic.

Twitter first started using hashtags in 2007, and over the years their use has become standard, on Twitters as well as on other social media and microblogging sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and others.

Twitter now hyperlinks all hashtags for easier searching, and they also list Trending Topics on their home page to track hashtags that are growing in popularity.

I will show you how to make money online using hashtags.

If you’re unfamiliar with hashtags or new to internet marketing, it might seem difficult to believe that you can generate income using something so simple, but it’s true.

As easy as it may sound, you must know how to hashtag the right way. I will give you a step-by-step guide to using hashtags, including:

* The benefits of using hashtags
* Why free traffic is the best bet for beginner marketers
* An overview of sites where you can use hashtags
* How to find highly-targeted hashtags
* How to use hashtags to make PROFIT!
* How to track your hashtags

Why Hashtags Matter

If you’ve been thinking about traditional marketing methods, you might wonder why I’m encouraging you to use hashtags. Why do they matter? The answer is this: they matter because they have become part of the way we talk to each other. While Twitter hashtags have been around for less than a decade, they have increased in popularity so rapidly that no internet marketer can afford to ignore them.

Internet marketers build businesses by creating content, and encouraging conversation about that content. Hashtags can help you to group your content into categories, brand yourself, and make it easier to engage customers in conversations about your content and your brand.

Pros and Cons of Using Hashtags

Now let’s talk about the pros and cons of using hashtags. We’ll look at the pros first:

* Hashtags can help you organize your thoughts and content. When you post about a topic or keyword your customers care about, they’ll be able to find you easily.
* Hashtags can help you spread marketing campaigns across multiple platforms, and give you a way to collect feedback from your customers.
* Using hashtags can help you establish yourself as an authority in your niche, and to connect with other people in your industry.

And now let’s consider some of the cons of using hashtags:

* If you use hashtags inappropriately, it can backfire. Improperly researched hashtags are a liability, not an asset.
* Once you create a hashtag, you cannot control how people use it. You will have to monitor your hashtags for inappropriate content or negative publicity.
* Overusing hashtags is as bad as not using them at all. If you use too many hashtags or post too often, people may dismiss your content as spam.
On the whole, hashtags can be a great tool for internet marketers when they are used properly. The next step is to talk about why using free traffic makes sense for newbie internet marketers.

Why Using Free Marketing Makes Sense

As of January 2015, there are more than two billion active social media accounts worldwide. That is a staggering number. Social media has become the way we connect with one another, and it allows us to share information, opinions and experiences on a global level.

Those numbers mean that no business can afford to ignore social media. In order to compete as an internet marketer, you need to have a social media presence. Since that is the case, why not make full use of that presence to generate revenue?

A primary benefit of using free traffic to advertise is that, especially when you are starting out, it can help you keep your costs down. If you can attract customers and earn income without having to spend money on paid advertising, why wouldn’t you want to do it?

Finally, the techniques that you use on social media to brand yourself, attract customers and sell your products are very similar to the techniques you will use when your business has grown and you can afford to pay for advertising. The experience of marketing your business using hashtags will help you prepare for a more traditional marketing campaign later on.

The bottom line is that using free traffic from social media is an easy, low-cost way to grow your business.

The post The Hashtag Effect Skyrocket Your Profits with Hashtags appeared first on Show Me Money marketing strategies for beginners - Top ways to make money online and offline , complete ressources and quickest way to make a lot of money from home.

This is a detailed guide that will outline how you, the affiliate marketer can benefit from Pinterest.

Pinterest is the bigest emerging social media site that is geared strictly to images. You start with a “board” and as you go around the web you can “pin” interesting images to it. Your posts will show up on your friends feeds and they will be able to see what you pin, and they themselves can repin your images. Think of the viral effect this will.

At the time of writing this, Pinterest remains an invite only website. As the user base expands it will be no time until the membership is open for anyone to sign up. Originally launched in 2010, the site has grown by the millions in 2013 alone. There are over 100 million people using Pinterest Now, and many of the major brands are now signed up.

There is a lot of hype surrounding Pinterest right now. Imagine if you were one of the first people to join Facebook and you were able to profit from day 1.

Many affiliate marketers made a lot of money in the early days of Facebook, and now you can to with Pinterest.
There is a huge base of users right now, and it is set to explode exponentially.

After you have created the account you need to jump to your profile settings and make a few changes here. In the top right you will see your picture and name. Click here and go to settings. You will notice under details that some basic information was grabbed from either Facebook or Twitter when you linked the two accounts together.

You can change your photo here to something more appealing if you don’t want your Facebook/Twitter photo here.

It is recommended that you fill in the “about” section. Make sure you keep SEO in mind when filling this out and put relevant keywords as they relate to your business.

Make sure you also put in your website URL.

To gain maximum exposure in Pinterest, you need to follow others, like their posts and repin other pins.

1) Sync your Pinterest account with your Facebook and Twitter.

This is extremely simple to do. Once it is setup you will have easy access to the messaging and following option that allows you to send out endless Pinterest invites to friends and family. You will also be able to see which of your friends are pinning.

2) Creativity

When you are naming your boards, be as creative as possible. Pick unique names for your boards that will spark interest and
encourage other users to follow you. Try to make your boards appear as if they tell a story.

3) Keep the focus on what you market and build a brand.

Stick with your niche. If you plan on promoting electronics, build your boards around this. You will attract more people who are interest in your niche when they see this is all you want to pin.

4) Use #Hash #Tags.

Most people are unaware that Pinterest uses hash tags. This makes it easy for people to access what they are looking from and
tagging other Pinterest members with the @ symbol. This will encourage conversation hype and really attract followers.

5) Use your blog! harness this traffic into more Pinterest followers. You can easily install a Pinterest button on your blog or use various plugins. Try holding pinning contests to get more exposure!

6) What’s trending!

You can see what is trending on Pinterest by visiting Pinterest’s Popular page. From here you can see what’s being pinned from you site or blog, as well as seeing what’s hot. Pin some topics on the hot trends and make sure you hash tag them for maximum exposure.

7) Follow and Comment.

This is one of the most effective ways to get more followers. When you follow or comment on people’s pins, they will get a
notification on their dashboard. This allows you to connect to the many users out there and gain more exposure for your brand or product. Make sure you leave witty and appreciative comment to
users who leave good posts.

If you have other traffic sources such as a blog, you need to harness this traffic into more Pinterest followers. You can easily install a Pinterest button on your blog or use various plugins. Try holding pinning contests to get more exposure!

The post 7 Step to Gain maximum exposure in Pinterest appeared first on Show Me Money marketing strategies for beginners - Top ways to make money online and offline , complete ressources and quickest way to make a lot of money from home.

If you and your company have been in business for long, you may already be familiar with the terms B2B and B2C. Individuals, companies, and organizations often shape their marketing strategy to target prospective clients in the B2B or B2C capacities, but often overlook a third avenue that has been around since the birth of big business: B2G (business-to-government).

Investopedia provides a useful and simple definition: B2G interactions are “professional affairs conducted between companies and regional, municipal or federal governing bodies. Business-to-government typically encompasses the determination and evaluation of government agency needs, the creation and submission of proposals and the completion of the contracted work.” It’s also worth noting that some B2C and B2B businesses sometimes engage in B2G marketing to land a few side contracts to extend their domain in the public sector. (Think SpaceX selling space capsule equipment to NASA or Humana providing medical intel or other health-related services to the Department of Health and Human Services).

Why B2G Rely on Content Marketing

The statistics in the B2G space can be staggering to those unaware of the size of the government’s budget. The figure below shows a breakdown of the awards that departments and agencies have given in contracts in fiscal year 2015. Broadly, contracts can range anywhere from $500 million to more than $44 billion. This sector is also particularly stable, as agencies and departments have been often known to renew contracts with businesses that already understand the regulations, as long the quality of the product or service remains valuable to the government.

But if B2G relationships are relatively stable, why do contractors market to the government? Put another way, have you ever wondered why large companies like Boeing bother uploading YouTube videos showcasing the latest aircraft? Or why Northrop Grumman spent millions of dollars airing a commercial for a stealth fighter plane during the Superbowl?

It’s unlikely that the average Joe found the 30-second Northrop Grumman commercial compelling enough for him to purchase a personal stealth bomber, so what’s the big idea?

The takeaway is this: if large multibillion-dollar defense contractors feel the need to market themselves to the federal government, even during military conflicts when their products and services are of greatest necessity, then there is no reason why smaller and medium-sized B2B and B2C should skip out on developing a proper content marketing strategy.

Despite relatively stable business partnerships, even corporations like Raytheon and General Electric push out content marketing strategies that include video marketing campaigns, updating blogs, sending out eNewsletters, writing case studies, and creating infographics.

Here are 5 ways that companies are taking advantage of content marketing to cater to the interests of the government and civilian world, and what businesses can learn from them.

Online Newsletters

Online newsletters, or eNewsletters, are electronically distributed emails to those who opt-in for regular updates on company products, services, developments, articles, blog posts, etc., with links back to the company’s website to find out more.

With the advent of interactive social media, many businesses have questioned the effectiveness of email marketing. A study by the Nielsen Norman group showed that newsletters served to grow or retain a vendor’s reputation or to maintain relationships.

Contractors get this, and have made distributed newsletters in order to provide officials in various government departments information regarding recent developments and other news, even during dry spells when departments are not given as much funding for the fiscal year.

Need inspiration? Take a look at VitalSmarts, a private business services company that provides corporate training and organizational performance services. In addition to providing training and education services to many other businesses facing problems, according to USASpending.gov, the company also performed over 290 contracts for more than $5 million, each contract averaging about $17, 350.

The company’s home page allows anyone to quickly navigate and check out the newsletters that the company sends weekly. The particular experiences contractors have when marketing to the federal government reveal that building brand recognition and maintaining brand loyalty is not negligible. If contractors must invest in sending regular updates to clients even in a market with strong barriers to entry, your business should too.

Helpful tip: Make your online newsletter subscription easy to find and archive your past newsletters in order to allow users to see what you push on a regular basis. Storing your previous newsletters in a separate part of your website can help improve your SEO by making your content searchable online.

Blogs

The case for businesses blogs has been made time and time again, as more and more research uncovers how fresh content can. A previous post explains the numerous benefits of businesses having their own blog. To summarize some of the highlights: a blog can help generate more traffic, convert leads, establish credibility, improve SEO, and build long-term brand recognition.

While there are 31% more bloggers today than there were three years ago, many businesses still do not actively create content for their blogs.

Need inspiration? See some of the content published daily on General Electric (GE), a company that provides a multitude of different products and services and has contracted with the government to provide things such as electrical appliances; aviation, transportation, and engineering equipment; etc. GE Reports is the company’s online blogging vessel, which is an online magazine published by GE. Though it technically operates as a magazine, the type of content found on the site is no different than from what a business blog would write about.

Helpful tip: The intersection of visuals and content can be attractive to your readers. Aside from content, try accompanying your posts with some visually appealing images, as it will help you attain more traffic and clicks. Also try to include a section where you offer interested readers the ability to subscribe for daily, weekly, or monthly updates if they opt in for the newsletter.

Case Studies

Case studies are a great way to give your potential clients a taste of the type of service and product you provide. Beyond that, case studies help the clients picture themselves in the position of receiving the product or service you provide, and the steps you take in order to help the client relieve a problem that they have.

In essence, it’s a great way for you to provide a mental simulation of your business’s thought process. How do you approach customers, or perhaps more importantly, why do customers approach you. What was the problem the customer had in your case study? Did you exceed what you were expected to do with your product or service? Did you “wow” your customer? How?

These are all questions you can answer in your case studies in order to sway your customers to seek you for your expertise.

Need inspiration? Check out Lockheed Martin, the biggest defense contractor providing services and products including aerospace equipment, information security, defense, and other advanced technologies. Despite consistently securing the most contracts with the Department of Defense, the company still provides case studies in order to inform clients about the company’s expertise in the security and defense domain and its thought leadership.

Helpful tip: Notice how the case studies in Lockheed Martin’s website are clearly accessible via the resources tab, allowing any of the company’s clients to see previous work the company has provided. Many companies with case studies do not have a dedicated page where customers can access them. Having disorganized resources for potential clients is as good as not having provided any resources. Make sure that your clients can access your resources while they are poking around your site.

Videos

According to Forrester Research’s Dr. James McQuivey, a minute of video is equivalent to 1.8 million words. Do you have time to write 1.8 million words? Furthermore, do you think anyone else had time to read those 1.8 million words? In the era we live in now, being able to gather information in a relatively short amount of time is highly valuable. So why not make videos?

Many defense contractors like to use videos in order to gain popular support from the public. Remember the Northrop Grumman’s Superbowl ad video referred to earlier in this post? Many defense contractors think airing engaging and valuable videos will help sway representatives to vote on funding bills with little backlash from the public, as long as the videos help brand the company in a favorable way. This is something ordinary businesses can learn from contractors.

In essence, videos help construct and reconstruct a company’s brand name recognition. In the age of mass media, this is surely one of the most effective and efficient ways to help build positive public perception of your business.

Need inspiration? Browse through some of the videos uploaded by SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and contractor to agencies like NASA. SpaceX has spearheaded the private sector’s charge towards rocket science, and has been keen on ensuring everyone can see the progress the company has made. Take a look at the simple flight test that the company shot and uploaded onto YouTube, garnering more than 4 million views.

Helpful tip: Take a look at some of the other video campaigns that have been successful in the past. What you will notice is consistency and quality. You need to ensure your videos are consistent and fresh but also creative and valuable to your viewers. BlendTec’s YouTube videos have garnered national attention, as the company was able to pique the public’s interest for doing something as simple and silly as blending an iPhone on a weekly basis. Make your videos informative, funny, thoughtfully provocative, exciting, or visually appealing, or a combination of all of those features, and include them on some of your online newsletters.

Infographics

The true power of an infographics is similar to that of video campaigns: presenting lots of information in a visually appealing manner. Many businesses might believe that this marketing tool is not worth the time or investment, but it is a vital way that even the largest contractors and companies have incorporated as part of their blogging and social media strategy.

One of the most attractive features of infographics is that it is informative and broadly relevant to those who want to digest information through a visually appealing medium. Infographics spread through social media like Facebook and Twitter because they inform but also because they attract people’s attention, which is why many companies keen on building brand name recognition invest resources outsourcing or creating their own infographics.

The post B2B/B2C What can business Learn From B2G Content Marketing Strategies appeared first on Show Me Money marketing strategies for beginners - Top ways to make money online and offline , complete ressources and quickest way to make a lot of money from home.

You have to keep in mind that it is an extreme “hit or miss” method. If you do it Correctely, you can get Traffic, a tons of free visitors, however, if you don’t get creative, you are wasting your time. Luck will have a little part in this method, but you can scale that variable with your creativity.

Well Let’s begin, this method entails getting traffic to your Amazon affiliate links through the use of StumbleUpon. You can really use any affiliate program, but I will be explaining this from the perspective of using Amazon. The key ingredient here is creativity, and without it, you will fail.

Ok Let’s begin the process:

1) First things first, you need to choose a theme/niche for your site. This is THE most important part. Do not choose something like flat screen TVs or washing machines. You NEED to choose an interesting product – a product that catches peoples’ attention. Generally speaking, these products will be innovative and fun.

2) Once you have chosen a fun/creative product, you need to build your site. When creating your site, do NOT make it a straight up e-commerce site. Make it as if you are just an “agood Joe” sharing products that you find interesting. Make the site fun, and don’t make it look overly monetized. StumbleUpon users are looking to have fun and see cool new products, so you have to appeal to their wants. StumbleUpon users are not usually in “buy mode” so it is your job to find them a product they can’t resist. You can sell people on anything if done right.

3) The next step is compiling products for your niche/theme. You can compile whatever number of products you like. The more products you use, the more successful the site will be. For each product, write a brief, interesting description, show some catchy images, and of course, include your Amazon affiliate link.

Okay, so now you have your site set up and it is ready for action. The next step is reeling in the Get Traffic process. You are going to do this using nothing but StumbleUpon. Let’s go:

4) Add every product on your site to StumbleUpon manually. Keyword here is manually – automation will not get you the results you want. Of course, choose the category that best fits your product. If your product fits multiple categories, choose the one you believe is most popular. Once you choose the category, start setting tags. This is EXTREMELY important. Your tags can make or break you. Think of things that you believe users will type in. Make sure you are properly targeting users, because if they don’t like your page, you will lose traffic, and consequently, lose money. Experiment with the tags. See what works and what doesn’t. You can add all of your products all at once, but I would recommend pacing them out over a period of time. of course, you can always add new products to the site.

5) Analyze what is working and what is not. Sometimes, changing one word in your tags can increase your visitor count by 100 people. Change your categories if necessary. If you find that you are receiving a lot of traffic, but it is not converting, then you will need to mix around your landing page and see what works. For this kind of marketing, every little thing can make a difference so don’t disregard anything.

For those of you who have a hard time visualizing this method, here is an example of a site that this would work wonders for (and I’m sure it does). This is NOT my site, merely an example of a great idea.

http://ift.tt/1GJUlkR

The cool thing about this method is that once it is set up and running, you do nothing and it sustains itself. If a page goes viral on StumbleUpon it can receive millions of views. I would recommend adding the occasional new product just to spice things up and get more StumbleUpon traffic.

You can twist this method by appealing to other popular social bookmarking sites such as Reddit and Digg. You can also add AdSense to your landing pages to monetize them a bit more, but be tasteful with it.

What are you waiting for? Go make Money!

The post 5 Step to Get Traffic Free from StumbleUpon Creativity is The KEY appeared first on Show Me Money.

If you’re constantly chasing your tail trying to find a way to get solid, consistent results so you can quit your job and leave frustration behind forever – I struggle to think of anything more important than what you’ll read today.

I reveal my own secret traffic sources that didn’t just make me an internet millionaire but will keep me one for many, many years to come.

But no matter how hard you try, you can never be too sure you’re actually going to get results.

You hammer away at your keyboard for hours on end backing some system that you’ve been promised will change your life.

But ultimately, whether or not what you’re being told to do works or not – might as well come down to Red or Black.

Or maybe you’ve just received a trickle of affiliate income that shows you there’s certainly money to be made.

Only this time you’re slightly more frustrated, slightly more angry and the confidence you initially had in everything you were doing turns into scars of battle that scupper your next valiant effort.

Or you’ve got a GREAT idea for a site but the whole traffic generation thing is stopping your money spinner before it’s even started…

The vast majority of internet marketers LOVE to over complicate the whole traffic side of making money online.

But they only want you to think that so you buy their next dodgy system, their next seriously flawed method or their next garbage course.

Even if your conversion rates are lousy because you’re not some hotshot copywriter or a marketing genius who cares?

Drive enough traffic and you can have damn average conversion rates and still make a ridiculously good living that beats what you currently make into the ground.

The post GET Traffic Avalanche explore the other side secret of Traffic source appeared first on Show Me Money.

The holy grail of advertising is solving the disconnect between online marketing and in-store purchases. “While we expect $150B more to be spent online between now and 2018, we expect $300B more to be spent offline in that same time,” states Forrester’s Sucharita Mulpuru.

We know e-commerce is growing leaps and bounds, but the retail store is far from dead. For advertisers, solving the attribution gap between online marketing and store sales is paramount.

Let’s go over some old, new, and emerging trends that will help bridge the online to in-store gap.

Store Locator Conversions

The store locator page on your website is a crucial landing page when search users are targeting micro-moment keywords like “denim store near me” or “ice cream store close by.” Placing a pixel or tag on your store locator search box when a user types a ZIP code or location will give you a key micro-conversion of how many users intend on visiting a store.

Using this data, we can infer assumptions like potential store visits and average store order value to tie into a return on ad spend (ROAS) or cost per store locator. For example, say 100 searchers clicked my paid search ad and 75% of those searchers went to locate a store on the store locator page. We can assume 50% of those searchers ended up visiting a store and 75% of those store visitors purchased an item. Using the average store order value of $100, we can determine revenue.

Now, we have all the data we need to back into a ROAS or any other KPI you desire. This method is far from perfect, but it gives you an idea using first-party data and assumptions of what’s happening in your search-to-store campaigns.

In our example, we made a lot of assumptions coupled with first-party data. Google has been investing heavily in new technology that attempts to crack the code of how many visitors and revenue are driven by paid search ads.

One new initiative is the Google Store Visits Beta, which works like this: After clicking on a paid search ad, Google will determine a store visit based on the user’s proximity to the advertisers location on Google Maps. Store visits takes advantage of the store’s Wi-Fi signal strength and can measure signals to differentiate between visits to the store versus visits to the store immediately next door.

Knowing how many searchers visited your store due to paid search ads, you can attribute an arbitrary value of how much that’s worth to you. For privacy concerns, Google uses anonymized, aggregated user data and extrapolates it to the broader population.

Given this technology is new and in beta, it will require more testing and time to get an accurate reading of store visits from your AdWords account, but it’s an exciting beta that’s trying bridge the gap.

Barcode Tracking

This technique has been around for a while and relatively straightforward to implement.

Dedicate a landing page for paid search efforts only. Drive your search-to-store intent keywords’ traffic to the landing page where users are shown a barcode via mobile phone or give them the option to print one and bring in-store. Using your store’s barcode scans, you’re able to tie paid search efforts to get a clear reading of orders and revenue brought in by this effort. The only issue with this is that most likely you will need to offer an incentive like a coupon for the user to print or show a barcode.

Advanced Data Collection Providers

On the forefront of solving the search-to-store gap are data collection technology companies like Datalogix and Acxiom (LiveRamp). In a nutshell, these companies work by integrating with your point of sale terminals and a platform like Google AdWords.

Data providers use third-party data, cookie data, loyalty cards, credit cards, and social media logins to match a user who clicks on a Google paid search ad to an item bought in-store. Many details like emails, credit cards, and addresses are collected during the in-store checkout process. By matching this anonymous consumer information from the data providers to Web-based tracking cookies, Google and these providers can determine how many products were purchased by people who clicked on a given ad and how much more money they spent than consumers who didn’t.

At Elite SEM, I have worked with advanced data collection providers to help clients bridge the online to offline gap, since many of our clients’ sales occur in-store. Without the use of this beta technology, we were unable to fully assess the success of an online campaign because we were not factoring in-store purchases along with the online sales.

What we once thought didn’t work online ended up working very well for store purchases, so changed the allocation of how we budgeted our paid search efforts.

The setback with working with these technologies is that they require substantial investment and integration. In addition, data providers identify approximately only 30-35% of online cookie pools that are matched by tracking sessions from offline sales data via loyalty cards, credit cards, and other POS information.

Another interesting area of advanced data collection are beacons. Beacons are Bluetooth-enabled devices strategically placed in stores that have the ability to communicate with shoppers’ smartphones.

Beacons can be used to custom message shoppers, offer discounts, and geo-pinpoint the exact location of a shopper in the store. Data collected from beacons can be used for a multitude of reasons. One of them being an integration with data collection companies such as Datalogix and Acxiom that will provide more accurate match rates.

The current obstacles with beacons are the numerous steps involved to use them. A store visitor must download the company’s app and ensure Bluetooth is enabled for it to work.

Best-Practices for Search-to-Store Paid Search Campaigns

To maximize your paid search efforts for search-to-store success, you must have the following account structure and optimizations in place:

Break out campaigns by DMA or city and geo-target a radius around your stores using location bid adjustments via location extensions. For example, you want your ads to be higher in the search page for searchers within one mile of your store location versus 5 miles from a store location.
The ad copy you use in your search text ads should speak to a potential store visitor. For example, “Shop in-store for 20% off.” Use location extensions to provide information on how to get to your store. Or use call extensions if a searcher needs more information. The store locator landing page should be user-friendly, so users can easily locate a store.
Keywords should be geo-modified. For example, “sneaker stores in NY” or “ice cream store near me.”
Use Local Product Listing Ads to drive users to local stores that carry specific inventory

The future looks very promising for advertisers looking to bridge the attribution gap from their online initiatives to in-store purchases. Data-collection technology still need to advance to be able to accurately bridge the gap, but for now the above-mentioned techniques will get you to a better place.

The post Turn Online Searchers Into Purchasers with Emerging Trends appeared first on Show Me Money.

In March of 1968, Lennon received a letter from a fan named Beth, asking for clarification on how Transcendental Meditation fits with the major religious traditions. He responded in a thoughtful and detailed two-page letter, which ends with the words jai guru dev, translated as “I give thanks to the Guru Dev” — a phrase that appears as a refrain in the Lennon classic “Across the Universe.”

Dear Beth:

Thank you for your letter and your kind thoughts. When you read that we are in India searching for peace, etc, it is not that we need faith in God or Jesus — we have full faith in them; it is only as if you went to stay with Billy Graham for a short time — it just so happens that our guru (teacher) is Indian — and what is more natural for us to come to India — his home. He also holds courses in Europe and America — and we will probably go to some of these as well — to learn — and to be near him.

Transcendental meditation is not opposed to any religion — it is based on the basic truths of all religions — the common denominator. Jesus said: “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you” — and he meant just that — “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” — not in some far distant time — or after death — but now.

Meditation takes the mind down to that level of consciousness which is Absolute Bliss (Heaven) and through constant contact with that state — “the peace that surpasses all understanding” — one gradually becomes established in that state even when one is not meditating. All this gives one actual experience of God — not by detachment or renunciation — when Jesus was fasting etc in the desert 40 days & nights he would have been doing some form of meditation — not just sitting in the sand and praying — although me it will be a true Christian — which I try to be with all sincerity — it does not prevent me from acknowledging Buddha — Mohammed — and all the great men of God. God bless you — jai guru dev.

With love,
John Lennon

A month later, he received a letter from an Indian fan, who described himself as a poor clerk and asked Lennon to send him money for a world trip so that he can discover the “huge treasure” necessary for achieving inner peace. (The history of celebrity is strewn with such requests, ludicrous though they may seem — Mark Twain was one of their earliest targets and fielded them with his characteristic wry wit.) Lennon politely refused the request and recommended that the man instead try transcendental meditation as a gateway to inner peace:

Dear Mr. Bulla,

Thanks for your letter. If every request like yours was granted — there would be no “huge treasure” as you call it. You say “peace of mind minus all other things on earth is equal to nothing” — this doesn’t make sense. To have peace of mind one would have to have all that one desires — otherwise where is the peace of mind?

Even a “poor” clerk can travel the world — as many people do — including friends of mine some of whom are at this academy now, all equals “poor.” All you need is initiative — If you don’t have this I suggest you try transcendental meditation through which all things are possible.

With love,

John Lennon
Jai guru dev

Complement The John Lennon Letters with Lennon’s illustrated poetry and prose, his handwritten to-do list, his philosophy on music and life, and his animated conversation with Yoko Ono about love, then revisit Jack Kerouac on how to meditate.

donating = loving

The post The John Lennon’s Letters appeared first on Show Me Money.

TRY PROMOTING YOUR POSTS

Who already tried promoting your own posts? Have you ever thought that reaching not only your followers but their own friends would increase exponencially your post’s interaction?
Not all your posts appear on the News Feed, meaning that you
don’t have the adherence that you’d expect. Promoting posts is the ideal option for raising the number of views on your page.

AND HOW DO YOU DO IT?

To promote your posts, first off, you have to create a post. Next, choose the option “Promote” and determine the budget your willing to spend.

The more money you use, the more reach your post will have.

Promoting posts is an option that many enterprises have embraced. In addition of having more views, the followers that will leave a like or share your post will increase in the right way.

CONTENT YOU SHOULD PROMOTE

To increase your post’s range, promoting is your best ally. The kind of posts that should be promoted generally are:
•A raffle, promotion or a discount voucher;
•A new product;
•A link that redirects to your website or online shop.

TYPES OF POSTS

Make sure that all of your promoted posts have good content overall. This way, people will start to get interested on your page offering them something very important… information. As low as your investment is, it’s still an investment! The visual part is what gets your follower’s attention. Most of the time people interact with your posts because of what they see and not of what they read.
•QUESTIONS –

Questions lead to a bigger interaction between you and your followers, showing that you/your business cares about them. They’re a good way to transmit trust, gaining value.
•SHARE INTERESTING STUFF

Everyone likes to be informed. Be the first to share the latest news on your target market. You can even create a healthy discussion with several opinions on your page, which is great.
•AFTER THE POST, COMES THE LINK

Never forget, always insert a link associated to your post. For example, include the link that leads to the full article that you’re promoting. As you do so, use a link reduction site to shorten your link – through bitly, for example.
•MARK YOUR POST AT THE TOP

Want more visibility? Highlight your last publication at the top. Followers that frequently visit your page will see it above all other posts, even recent ones.

IS YOUR POST READY TO BE PROMOTED?

If you are already spending money promoting a post, may it be the best $ you spent, right?
Already know about the STIR method? There are 4 simple steps to determine which publication should be promoted:
THE BUDGET YOU SHOULD SPEND

The definition of the budget to be used is an important part of your campaign, it will be calculated for the entire duration of your campaign. You can schedule the beginning and the end of it.

For your first promoted post, place a small budget. It will be a way to measure what you are doing. However, the higher your budget is, the more people will see your post.

If your campaign is not giving positive results, you can always put it on pause, edit and activate it later. A promoted post can be viewed by thousands of potentially buyers, choose wisely whom you want to see your post from a variety of options you have available such as geographic localization and native language.

The post HOW TO GET MORE VIEWS ON YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE appeared first on Show Me Money.

I’ve read through all the Get Traffic from Tumblr posts about how to gain followers with bots & proxies, but I wasn’t ready to spend money on this yet so I have another method that’s completely free.

1- Create a Tumblr account & verify your email address.

2- Design your page to go with the site you’re trying to
attract people to. (I made my Tumblr page look like my
Ecommerce store & added a fixed HelloBar at the top to
collect email addresses)

3- Find relevant hashtags people are using in your niche

4- Go to iFTTT & create an account.

5- Select the recipe for Instagram to Tumblr posts.

6- Configure the recipe so every time a photo is posted to
Instagram with your selected hashtag the image is then
posted to your Tumblr Page.

7- Add html to the “photo caption” area of the recipe that
will link people to your site.

8- Select ‘Start’ & just wait.

There are a few catches with this method:

You will have to manually go back to your posts on Tumblr & add a click-through link for the image. You can only set the click-through as a caption currently with IFTTT

Tumblr will only let you post 100 photos a day on an account.

But if you do this right you can start to get real traffic to your site & quickly build up an audience. I’ve had this running for about two weeks now & I’m up to 600+ Tumblr Followers, 50+ uniques a day, & plenty of likes & reblogs on Tumblr itself.

Let me know if anyone else out there has tried this or has ways to improve it.

The post Gain Traffic from Tumblr Without Buying a Bot appeared first on Show Me Money.

I’ve been recieving a few emails lately along the lines of this one.

Hey there, over the last couple of days you’ve answered some questions I had about SEO with great ease. I was wondering if you do any kind of SEO consulting with people trying to become familiar with SEO??

The answer is “not really”. I’m not even close to being some kind of SEO guru, the questions I’ve been answering lately are all just pretty basic.

There are a lot of people better at SEO than me, so if you want a consultant you should try checking in the BST services threads. In fact I purchase services from the BST threads myself. If you do your due diligence before choosing a service provider, I’ve found that the sellers here on bhw are some of the best anywhere.

So, rather than keep answering individual PMs, I’ll just make this thread and send them here from now on.

Basic SEO practices for newbies

The thing to remember is that SEO isn’t a magic bullet. It’s important, but no one knows the exact algorithms the SEs use, and each one is different so all you can do is optimize the best you can. There happens to be a few things that you should just always do whenever you make a new website. Don’t stress over every little thing, just make sure you are doing it, this should just become kind of automatic for you.

Make sure you fill in your meta tags with a good title, description, and the right keywords. I personally don’t think the keywords meta-tag is nearly as important as everyone else on here does, but it gives me a way to organize my keywords list for me to reference. When you start having many different websites, it’s good to include whatever notes to yourself you can. When you come back to work on an older site you might not remember eveything you were thinking before. The metatags help you remember your site info as much as it helps the SE figure it out. A good rule of thumb is that anything that won’t hurt you for SEO and might help, you should use and use correctly. Definately use the title meta-tag, try to include keywords in the title. Definately use the description meta-tag, google will normally use this for the summary it displays in the listing. It isn’t used for indexing so write it for humans, this is what gets people to click on your link when they see it in the SERP. Don’t use the same metatags for every page on your site. Take the time to make them be specific to each page.

Create good content. Make sure you have some decent content. Content is what the internet was invented for. If you have unique and quality content, then all the seo and backlinking you’re doing is just to get the ball rolling. Give them what they want, show them where it is, and they’ll start coming. If it’s good enough then it’ll eventually start building on its own naturally because people like what they found. That’s the idea anyway. So whenever possible use the best page design and the best content possible. Avoid duplicate content between different pages on your site, the SE will most likely penalize your site for that.

Remember, your content isn’t just something to get google to like your site, it is the whole point of your site. The content and how you structure it is what will make visitors do what you want when they get there. If it’s crap they’ll just leave, and 99% of them won’t leave by clicking on your adsense or affilliate link, they’ll just close the window or use the back button. (yes, of course if your doing blackhat stuff you can make the browser go where you want, but that’s for a different discussion.)

Include your keywords. Structure your content correctly, make a few title headers in the content that include keywords (use header tags h1, h2, etc.), try to have a keyword density around 2% in your content, and maybe 4% for the whole page including the metatags, alt tags, anchors, etc.

Be sure that your .htaccess is set up correctly. Decide on which way you want your url to be and stick with it. If you decide to use www then always use it like that in your links, don’t use both. I usually set up a 301 for all www requests to redirect to non-www urls. If you don’t set that up then every single page on your site can appear to google as having at least one duplicate. If that’s the only thing wrong on your site it isn’t going to kill you, but it’s so easy to fix. If you don’t know how to set up a redirect in your .htaccess file then just do a search, there are many other threads explaining it. Check google if you can’t find it here. Also, .htaccess only apples if your on an Apache server, Windows servers do it a little differently, if that applies to you then just search google to find out how to do it. If your consitent in your linking, then the only time the redirect will come into play is if you get natural backlinks that you have no control over. You should also specify which you prefer, www or not-www in google tools if you use it. (If you don’t then you really should, I recommend you set yourself up an account for webmaster tools and analytics.)

Make a robots.txt file and I like to include a favicon because without them the robots will trigger file not found errors on your server. Be sure to configure your robots.txt correctly. Make a custom 404 page. If your site has more than just a couple of pages then also create a sitemap.xml file. It’s not a bad idea to just create a sitemap anyway no matter what, it lets you define the structure of your site to the crawlers. Just search google if you don’t know how to do any of that, it’s very basic and you can find exact instructions within a minute when you do a search.

Other than that there isn’t a lot more you can do for on-site SEO. When people ask about SEO they’re always thinking of on-site SEO, but thats the easy and quick part. Just do it and get on with it.

Everything else is off-site SEO and involves building backlinks and promotion.
This is where you need to focus your efforts. This is where the magic bullet is, if there really is one.

Social Bookmarks, Directory Submissions, Profile Links, and Blog Comments are really the easiest place to start getting backlinks. It’s not a bad idea to purchase these links from a service. They are easy to make, but to do it right they really need to be posted from many different accounts and ip adresses. A good idea when your starting is to do it yourself a little bit to see how it works, then purchase larger quantities from a service. You want to get a lot of links, but you don’t want to over do it. Building to fast can look unnatural, just do some searches and read up on it a little more. How many and how fast is a judgement call you have to make. hold off on more complex linkbuilding until you have a little more experience. Linkwheels and other link structures can be very powerful, but can also hurt your site a lot if not done correctly.

Whenever possible include keyword anchors and title or alt tags on your backlinks. Don’t always use the same anchors, vary it up a little, use 3 or 4 different keywords and even do a few with some non keyword anchors. You are trying to look as though a lot of different real people have taken a liking to your site, if it were natural then all links wouldn’t be exactly the same, so you want to simulate that same type of randomness. Backlinking strategies are all about simulating the natural events that happen as a site grows in popularity. If you can do it successfully then the SE’s will give you good position in the listings, and then hopefully what you are simulating can become reality. The point of all of it is to get traffic.

Change up your anchor text. The idea of backlinking is to simulate that masses of people are becoming interested in your site. It should have some amount of randomness to it in order to look natural. I’ve seen a few made up stats on what’s best, but I think a good rule of thumb is maybe about 45% primary keywords, 35% secondary keywords, and about 15% random unrelated like Click Here, and then about 5% just the url. The exact percentage isn’t dramatically important, it just needs to seem like the linking is natural.

Create relevant articles containing your keywords, include backlinks using keyword anchors, and submit to article directories. Article directories are mostly authority sites and your article becomes a relevant backlink to your site. Then create profiles and accounts on blogs, social networking sites, forums etc. Include a link to your website whenever you do that and each one of those become backlinks as well.

Thats the end of it.

Go back and watch your stats to see what keywords are getting the most traffic to your site, analyze the data a little bit and if you need to, remove or add keywords to your content and tags, and adjust the anchors your using in your backlinks.

Continue building links. Remember you’re trying to artificially create the appearance to the SE that your site is popular. When that happens naturally, people are always adding new links to your site. Since you are trying to look natural you have to do the same thing. Linkbuilding never stops completely.

OK, there you go. That’s that basics of SEO. Everything else is about fine tuning, and has to be looked at for each individual situation.

If you have any more questions, before you start PMing anyone just read through the threads in the White Hat SEO section, and do some searching on google. You can find some really good information from some much smarter people than me.

If there are any SEO gurus that want to expand on this or if you see any errors you think should be discussed, please add your input.

The post Basic SEO practices for Newbies appeared first on Show Me Money.