Sometimes when you do a Google search for a local business, Google will display a map with potential locations that match your query.

For example, here’s a screenshot of what shows up when I search for “frozen yogurt”:

According to a study conducted by Juris Digital, around 31% of searchers clicked on the Google maps result and the remaining clicks went to paid ads and other organic search results. Showing up on Google maps can greatly increase the number of targeted visitors coming to your website.

So how do you show up on Google maps?

Basically, you will have to get links to your website from other websites, citations in online business directories and reviews on review sites. Here are 5 simple steps you can follow so that your business will show up on Google maps when someone searches in Google.

1. Optimize your website by including the right keywords on your web pages

The first step to ranking your local business on Google maps is to find out what keywords people are using to find businesses like yours and then include those keywords in the right places on your site.

Do keyword research to find out what phrases people are using to search for your business. You can brainstorm possible keywords and then plug them into Google Keyword Planner to see what keyword phrases people are using to find businesses like yours.

For example, if you run a dance studio teaching salsa dancing, are people searching for “salsa lessons” or “salsa classes” or some other phrase? Google’s keyword tool will give you an estimate of the search volume for each of those phrases as well as possibly provide some keyword ideas that you may not have thought of.

Once you’ve decided on what keywords you want to rank for, you need to include those keywords in the right places on your website.

– Add keywords to the title tag for your site

My friends use to own Take the Lead studio and their old title tag was “Take the Lead Studio”. However, this title is bad for SEO because it doesn’t tell Google what the business is about.

We later changed the title tag to “Philadelphia Salsa Lessons and Dance Classes – Learn to Salsa” which allowed them to rank for several variations of keywords that people were searching for.

As a result, they started ranking for salsa related keywords and their search engine traffic nearly tripled.

– You might also want to consider including location keywords like your city in your title tag, but doing so might not be necessary. Do a quick search in Google to see who is currently ranking and see if those sites have their location listed in their title tag.

– Make sure your city and state are listed on every page on your website so that people can find your website when they do a location based search. Usually, many local businesses simply include their full address in the website footer.

– Embedding a Google map in your site footer with your business location marked can also help.

2. Register your business with Google My Business

Once you’ve taken care of all the on site stuff, make sure you register your business with Google My Business. You can call the phone number on their page or simply click the button and follow the prompts.

When you enter your information, Google will send a postcard to your physical address with a code that you can use to verify ownership of your business.

Take time to write a compelling business description that makes people want to click your listing and visit your website. Look at your competitors to see what they’ve written for their business descriptions and plan your own accordingly.

Be sure to enter as much information as possible as well as upload lots of high quality photos. Having a lot of interesting photos can improve your visibility on Google maps and the number of people that click through and visit your site.

Another important thing to do is check your Google My Business listing periodically to make sure the information is accurate and stays up to date. People can suggest edits to your business to Google so it’s important to check your Google My Business page even if you don’t make any changes on your own.

3. How to get citations

Citations are mentions of your business online and you usually get citations by submitting your business information to online business directories, like Yelp and Super Pages.

Submit your business information to business directories to get citations for your business. Moz suggestions you submit your local business to these 13 citations sites, but if you are looking for more citations, here’s a list of over 50 local business directories that you can submit your business to:

http://www.localseoguide.com/best-local-business-directories-seo/

Another way to find more citation sources it to use Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder, which analyzes your top 3 competitors to find out where they are getting their citations from or check out their list of top citation sources by country.

4. Get reviews

Another important ranking factor is reviews on sites like Yelp and Google reviews. Some business like restaurants get lots of reviews naturally, but other business like lawyers and dentists may have to be more proactive in getting people to leave reviews.

Reviews are also important because they help build trust with potential customers. According to a survey conducted by Bright Local, 73% of customers trust businesses more with positive reviews and most customers also trust reviews as much as personal recommendations.

So how do you get people to leave reviews?

One of the easiest ways is to simply ask satisfied customers to leave reviews. Bright Local conducted a survey and found that over 70% of people would be willing to leave a review if asked.

It’s important to note that different review sites have different policies about soliciting reviews. Google encourages business owners to ask for reviews, but Yelp prefers that businesses don’t ask for reviews.

Linking to review sites from your own website and social media accounts, like your Facebook page, can be another way to encourage customers to visit review sites.

Be sure that you aren’t incentivizing people to leave good reviews and that review are honest.

Finally, providing a great product or outstanding service can induce some people to leave reviews. Try to over deliver when possible and build a business that people will want to talk about and share.

5. Get links from other sites

Finally, you should try to get links from other sites on an ongoing basis if possible. There are tons of ways to get links from other sites, so I’ll just cover a few possibilities.

If you have a newsworthy business or are participating in a newsworthy event, consider using press releases to let the local media know about your business. A new restaurant opening is usually considered newsworthy because local people want to know about new places to eat.

Make a list of local publications and news shows and find the correct journalist that covers your niche. Send a personalized email to each journalist and let them know about your business or news pitch.

Local bloggers sometimes write reviews for businesses nearby, so you might be able to reach out to them to get featured on their blog. Search for bloggers who have reviewed similar businesses or your competitors.

One of the best ways to look for link opportunities is to find out who is linking to your top competitors and approach those websites to get links (if relevant). Use a backlink checker to find your competitors backlinks and then go through each one to see what sites are linking to your competitors and determine if you can also get links from that site.

You can find backlink checker tools by searching for “backlink tool” in Google.

Other tips and factors in ranking well

Asides from the above factors, Google also pays attention to how many people click on your search engine listing and how they interact with your website. Be sure that your website creates a good user experience and that it is relevant to what people are searching for.

In this article, I’ll describe what trust flow is, how it compares to domain authority and how you can use this metric to improve your SEO rankings.

What are Trust Flow and Citation Flow?

Trust Flow is a metric that measures how many links from high quality sites your site has. Getting a high volume of low quality links won’t improve a site’s Trust Flow score much.

Domain authority (created by Moz as an alternative to Google Pagerank) attempts to measure how authoritative a site by measuring the number of inbound links. Like Pagerank, links from high authority sites count more than links from lower authority sites.

However, one of the problems with domain authority is that a website can still achieve a high domain authority score if it has tons of low authority links.

To achieve high trust flow, however, you need to get links from high authority sites.

Majestic also created another metric called citation flow, which measures link popularity regardless of the quality of the site linking to you. So a site can have high citation flow if it has a lot of links from low authority sites, but trust flow will be low.

You can view Trust Flow and Citation Flow by signing up for an account with Majestic and then installing Majestic’s Backlink Analyzer Chrome Extension.

Topical Trust Flow

Topical Trust Flow refers to getting Trust Flow from sites that are relevant to your niche. Your website should be getting links from other sites within your niche that are creating content about related topics. It would look odd to search engines if your site is about nutritional supplements, but your topical flow suggested your site was about religion. Such inconsistencies can get your site de-indexed from the search engines.

Basically, be sure to get links from sites that are relevant to yours.

Studies and Examples on Trust Flow

Theoretically, to rank a website well, you want to have both high trust flow and high citation flow. Is trust flow really a good predictor of SEO success?

I did some searching and found a few resources…

Gillis Van Den Broeke from 90 Digital conducted a study on 1,000 randomly selected sites and found a strong correlation between Trust Flow and organic traffic. They also found that high citation flow also seems to correlate with more traffic, but having higher trust flow helped more.

I haven’t found many case studies on Trust Flow, but a member in Black Hat World mentioned that he was able to increase Trust Flow significantly to a low Trust Flow site with just one authority link.

Another case study I found involved a digital marketer who increased a client’s search rankings from being virtually invisible in the search engines to position #16 for competitive terms like “bathroom remodeling” and “kitchen remodeling”.

It makes sense that increasing Trust Flow would correlate to higher rankings. Authority sites are selective with who they link to, so getting links from high authority sites is likely to increase the trustworthiness of your site with search engines like Google.

How to Improve Search Traffic by Increasing Trust Flow

So how can you increase your website’s trust flow and improve your search traffic? Here are a few suggestions.

1) Create quality content – If you are doing content marketing, then create high quality content that other websites will want to link to. If you create something that really stands out, be sure to promote that content so that other sites will link to it.

2) Guest post on authority sites – Guest blogging is a great way to get links from authority sites. Focus on sites that have high Trust Flow and spend time creating an article that they will be proud to feature rather than writing lots of guest posts for low Trust Flow sites.

3) Get Press Coverage – Media coverage will help you if you are doing newsworthy events. Identify journalists that are covering similar businesses and events and reach out to them to let them know about your newsworthy event.

4) Build Relationships with Influencers – Spend time building real relationships with influencers while building your own influence. Engage them in conversation on channels where they are active and commenting on their blogs. Mention them in your own articles and make an effort to genuinely help them out.

5) Use mention monitoring and SEO software to track competitors – Using mention monitoring tools and backlink checkers to see where your competitors are getting their high Trust Flow links from. A few tools that include Trust Flow metrics are Majestic’s SEO suite, Monitor Backlinks and Scrapebox with the Metrics Checker paid add-on.

Summary

Many website owners focus on getting a large quantity of links because it’s easier to get links from a lot of low authority sites than it is to get a few high authority links. But high authority or Trust Flow sites can significantly help your SEO results.

While getting a large quantity of links can certainly help, be sure to focus some effort on getting high quality links as well.

My first expert roundup got shared over 3,000 times in a week and continued to get shared on social media and is currently sitting at over 7,000 social shares. I’ve done several expert roundups and all of them have gotten hundreds or even thousands of shares.

However, I’ve seen a lot of people attempt expert roundups and some fail to get even 50 shares. Why do some roundups do well while others fail?

Expert roundups still work really well if done correctly, even today. But if you’ve done an expert roundup and it didn’t do well, then you probably made one or all of the following mistakes…

1. Not Inviting Experts on Other Social Media Channels (Especially Pinterest)

Expert roundups typically get traffic through social media. One of the biggest mistakes I see is bloggers inviting people that only have a presence on Twitter.

Different people will focus on different social channels, so inviting influencers that are active on other social channels like Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest can make a huge difference in how many people see your roundup article. Pinterest in particular has been a great channel for me as pins can stay visible for months after they are originally pinned.

In fact, a study of a million blog headlines done by Garett Moon from CoSchedule found that of headlines that got shared over 1,000 times, Pinterest shares consisted of 90% of those shares with Facebook a distant second!

To find influencers in other channels, simply do a search for content in those channels or join communities and you should be able to quickly find new influencers that you didn’t know about before.

2. Asking a Question that Results in Uninteresting Responses

Asking a generic or boring question is likely to lead to generic or boring responses. One of the most important parts of a good expert roundup is thinking of a great question to ask.

Influencers don’t make content go viral. Content goes viral when people that follow influencers decide to share it too.

And that’s not going to happen if your content isn’t worth sharing.

A few ideas to thinking of a great question:

a) Ask yourself what you are struggling with or what other people in your niche struggle with – Avoid asking about things that other people won’t care about.

For example, in the blogging niche, a topic like “how to promote your blog” would probably work better than “what do you do for fun when you’re not blogging”. The second question might be more fun, but it isn’t as compelling because it doesn’t help people solve their problem.

b) Be specific – When expert roundups started becoming popular, you could ask simple questions like “What do you do to promote your blog?” However, questions like these have already been asked many times, so you have to be more creative.

Dig deeper and think of a more specific question or a different angle.

For example, in one roundup, I asked how influencers got their first 1,000 email subscribers instead of just asking them how to grow an email list. The reason that question was better was because it was very specific and also shows that the influencers that participated are credible.

c) Write down any ideas that pop into your head – Sometimes a great idea just pops into your head when you’re not blogging, so it’s a good idea to write it down. I keep a document where I have a bunch of good expert roundup questions saved.

I have a big list of over 400 expert roundups in a spreadsheet that I keep and most of them ask very boring questions. Take the time to think of a really great question that will produce unique answers.

3. Inviting the Same Experts as Everyone Else

Most bloggers that do expert roundups invite the same A-list influencers to participate. While it is a good idea to have some recognizable names in your roundup, you also want to branch out further and look for people with unique insights.

Inviting the same experts as everyone else will result in getting the same answers and insights. Additionally, most popular influencers are super busy and won’t put much time into answering your roundup question.

Look for rising stars and people in other niches. Where can you find these experts?

a) Guest posts on popular blogs – Usually, people that are not as influential are more actively guest blogging on other sites. Keep an eye on popular sites that allow guest blogging and make note of any interesting guest bloggers.

b) Podcasts – Podcasters are always looking for interesting guests, so podcasts can be a great way to find interesting contributors.

c) Other expert roundups – Finally, people that participated in another expert roundup are more likely to participate in yours. You may find some new names just from reading other people’s expert roundups.

Visit their websites to learn more about them and see if they might be a good fit for your roundup. Also, prioritize people who give great answers on other people’s roundups.

d) Forums and communities – Forums and communities are a great place to look for new content or interesting people. Some niches have communities where people can submit content and upvote it, like Inbound.org or Reddit.

e) Expert citation sites – If you are looking for expert opinions, there are several sites that you can submit inquiries to and quickly find credible sources. HARO and Source Bottle allow you to submit requests for experts looking for media exposure.

Expertise Finder is a search engine that helps journalists find experts that are affiliated with an accredited university.

Ann Smarty created MyBlogU to help content creators find experts for their roundups and is a resource worth trying out if you are looking for bloggers.

4. Asking Experts to Write More or a Minimum of X Words

One common mistake I see is people asking experts to write a minimum number of words or adding more content. An important thing to keep in mind is that the people you invite to your roundup are busy.

Don’t follow up asking someone to write more. It’s okay to ask follow up questions if their response isn’t clear, but don’t ask them to create more content just because you feel like you need a longer article.

Remember to make it easy for busy influencers to participate in your roundup.

5. Not Having Awesome Content Published Beforehand

Before you do your first expert roundup, you should have top quality content posted on your blog. Having awesome content already published on your blog does two things:

a) It makes your blog more attractive to influencers as a place to be featured – Keep in mind that influencers get tons of requests to participate in expert roundups, so standing out from everyone else is critical.

If your email pitch is interesting enough, then the first thing an influencer is going to do is check out your blog. Having your best content on there is going to increase the likelihood that they’ll say “yes”.

b) Secondly, if your roundup works out well, then tons of new visitors will visit your website. These visitors may also read other articles on your site. If you’ve published some awesome articles, then you’ll get more subscribers from the influx of new visitors.

Finally, be sure to promote your articles so that influencers see that you know how to promote. Having blog posts with social shares and comments will further increase their confidence in their decision to participate.

6. Demanding that the influencer promote the article

Finally, don’t demand that the influencer share the article. It’s your responsibility to promote it and any sharing that occurs should be considered icing on the cake.

Many influencers will share it and understand how expert roundups work, so you can usually just send them the link to the article when it goes live. Making sure your article is top quality will increase the likelihood that they’ll share it without being asked.

You can make it easy for them to share it by sharing the article yourself and tagging them on social media.

7. Not including yourself in your own roundup

I have to admit that I’ve made this mistake as well, but not including yourself in your own roundup is a missed opportunity. You can enhance the quality of the roundup by adding a tip that no one else contributed.

For example, on my expert roundup on blog promotion, I was surprised that no one mentioned guest blogging as a blog promotion tip. Perhaps it seemed too obvious since guest blogging is a well known tactic, but I could have contributed that tip to my roundup to make it more complete.

Another benefit of contributing to your own roundup is that by featuring yourself with other influencers, people start to perceive you as an influencer as well.

8. Not putting your best roundup tip at the top

Expert roundups usually end up being really long and as a result, many people won’t read them from start to finish. Putting your best tip at the top is a good way to make sure people get value from your post and also encourage them to read further.

Many influencers don’t put a lot of time into their responses because they are busy, so if someone does spend time sharing a great tip, then put it on top or somewhere in the roundup where it is likely to get read.

9. Not including a visual header

If you are going to create a post that gets shared a lot on social media, then you absolutely must have a visual blog header so that it can be shared on visual social media sites like Pinterest.

Many bloggers skip this step…perhaps because they don’t know how to make visuals or don’t want to invest in graphic design. However, tools like Canva make it easy to create these visuals.

Here are some roundups that I did:

How to Promote Your Blog Content

7418 Total Shares according to Buzzsumo

3178 from Pinterest (42.8% of shares)

10 Pinterest Marketing Myths that You Probably Believe

1494 Total Shares according to Buzzsumo

900 from Pinterest (60.2% of shares)

Another good thing about Pinterest versus other social media networks is that pins can get seen and shared long after they are originally posted.

10. Not including a summary

Expert roundups can be very long and many people won’t have time to read them from start to finish. Including a summary at the beginning of the roundup is a great way to provide immediate value to your readers and perhaps even encourage them to read more of the roundup post.

For example, if you ask several experts what their favorite social media marketing channel is, you can provide a quick breakdown of the percentage of people who picked Facebook, Twitter, etc.

11. Poor Organization

Another problem I see with expert roundups is poor organization. If you have a long list of contributors, then you should group the influencers into sections so that the article is easier to read.

You can also list the influencers at the beginning so that people can easily click on their names and jump to their contribution. Notice how I organized people into sections and also created links in my roundup so that readers could easily jump to one person’s contribution:

12. Inviting People that Aren’t Experts Just to Get the Number of Participants Up

One really big mistake I see is people inviting people that aren’t experts on a topic just to get the number of participants up. I suppose they think that if a lot of people participate, then the roundup will receive more shares.

Maybe they only got a few responses and feel like they need more. Or maybe they think it will be perceived as a better article because it’s longer and has more content.

Whatever the reason, this approach is bad for a couple of reasons. Firstly, readers won’t get as much value out of the article. And second of all, the experts that did participate won’t be impressed with what you created and might not contribute in the future.

Expert roundups can work, but you have to create something of value for the influencers that participate and the readers. When you put your own needs first and focus only on driving the maximum amount of traffic, then everyone loses.

Including you.

13. No Promotion Plan

A lot of new bloggers do expert roundups because it seems like an easy way to get traffic and subscribers without doing much work. But as the host blogger, you should be spending just as much time (if not more) promoting the post to ensure that it is a success.

Bloggers that participate in roundups often share the post on social media, which can allow it to go viral. But you shouldn’t rely on other people to promote your content for you.

Instead, imagine that your influencers created an amazing piece of content for you and you had to promote it. Create your promotion plan before you create your roundup article and be prepared to execute it when your post goes live.

A Few Other Killer Tips…

1. Ask a question, but don’t mention it’s for a roundup

Expert roundups have declined in popularity among many influencers because many of them are low quality and they also don’t want other blogger bugging them to promote it. Influencers are really busy people and many of them simply don’t have the time for such distractions.

One really interesting approach to doing an expert roundup is just asking the influencer the question, but don’t mention that it’s for a roundup. I have to give Dmitry Dragilev full credit for this approach as I learned it from one of his videos.

Basically, you start a conversation with the influencer and ask them a question. Later on, you can add their quote to an article and let them know that you mentioned them.

The reason this approach works is because you are starting a real conversation and not asking anything in return. Don’t bug them to share it, just let them know that you featured them.

2. Publish Your Roundup on as a Guest Post on Another Popular Blog or Publication

If you are just starting out, then you may be tempted to create the expert roundup on your own blog as it will drive traffic and subscribers to your email list more effectively than if you publish it in a guest post.

But one thing you may want to consider is publishing it on another well known blog or publication in your field.

By publishing on a site that already has a lot of traffic, you are providing even more exposure for the people that participated in your roundup than if you had published it on your own blog. And it shows them that you aren’t just using them to promote your own site, which can be a great way to build the relationship in the long term.

3. Create an expert infused roundup to guarantee quality

One tricky thing with expert roundups is that you have little control over the quality of the article. The quality depends heavily on the responses you receive.

One approach that I’ve used that has worked really well is to create an expert infused roundup. With this approach, you basically write a high quality article and then incorporate some expert quotes into the article.

Since you are writing the article, you can guarantee the quality of the article and since the article is high quality, influencers are most likely to participate and also share it on social media.

Another advantage of this approach is that the influencers actually get some exposure since people are more likely to read your article and also because your article isn’t flooded with tons of other contributors.

I’ve used this tactic and it can work really well. For example, this article about Pinterest marketing myths got over 1,000 shares.

How to Really Master Expert Roundups

Expert roundups are still an effective blogging tactic, but it’s not as simple as just asking a question and inviting influencers to answer it. They are just like any other type of content and can be high quality or low quality depending on how you approach it.

Plan out your own promotion, organize everything well and spend time thinking of a compelling question to get the best results.

By the way, if you want to try doing your own expert roundup, be sure to download my expert roundup checklist and some other useful resources by clicking here.

One big reason is that people aren’t naturally wired for long term success. In fact, a study found that 92% of people that make New Year’s resolutions fail to achieve their goals.

People give up for many reasons and one reason is boredom.

When starting a new initiative, excitement fuels people to take action. But when people don’t get instant results, they quickly can lose interest and quit.

Success usually takes time and requires committing to boring and repetitive tasks. But the people that stick with it are the ones who see the rewards.

Here’s a strategy to overcome your natural self-sabotaging instincts and achieve greater success.

Develop a long term mindset

One important thing to realize is that success often takes time to achieve. People love the idea of getting immediate results, but success becomes most noticeable as results accumulate over a longer time frame.

The easiest time quit a new project is at the beginning. When you try something for the first time, you aren’t very skilled and you probably won’t get amazing results. You probably feel like results will take forever to achieve at the rate you are going.

But growth isn’t always linear and in fact, results can often accelerate over time.

As you market your business more, you’ll get better at marketing. Your skill and effectiveness will improve and your progress will accelerate as you become more efficient at execution.

You can also improve your product and service over time by listening to customer feedback and making your product better as you go along.

Also, as more people find out about your business, they will also tell other people about it. Word of mouth can causes a business to grow exponentially.

Success starts with having the right mindset. Understand that results will be slow at the beginning, but can accelerate over the long term.

Create a step-by-step system

Once you have an idea of what you want to do, break everything down into a step-by-step plan.

Decide exactly what you need to do, how long each task will take and when you are going to do it. Creating a system will make execution easier and reduce feelings of overwhelm.

Success becomes scalable through systems and processes. They create simplicity and structure that will allow you to form productive habits.

Set specific goals and measure results

Asides from creating a system, you also need to set goals and measure results. For example, let’s say that you decide to use guest blogging to grow your business.

Leo Widrich wrote 150 guest posts to get Buffer’s first 100,000 customers. Perhaps you might set an initial goal of writing 50 guest posts to see what happens.

To measure results, you have to decide what metrics you want to track. Many businesses will track website traffic and sales, which should increase if your product and marketing are successful.

Measuring results will let you know if your marketing is working. Depending on your results, you may decide to continue with your marketing plan, make adjustments to improve results or quit and try something else.

Implement accountability

If necessary, you may want to implement accountability measures to increase your likelihood of success. According to a study by the Association for Talent Development, getting an accountability partner increases the likelihood of reaching a goal to 95% whereas the probability of reaching a goal is 10% if you only have an idea or a goal.

So how can you create accountability to increase your odds of success? Here are a few ways.

1) Get a business or accountability partner – Partnering with someone that shares the same goals as you can be a good way to ensure that you take consistent action towards your goals.

Once you agree to work with a partner, you have to do your part so that you don’t let your partner down. A dedicated accountability partner will push you to do your best and keep you focused.

2) Joining a mastermind group – Jim Rohn once said that “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” One popular piece of business advice is to surround yourself with successful people or other like-minded individuals who have the same goals as you.

Joining or forming your own mastermind group is one way to increase your odds of success. A good mastermind group will keep you accountable as well as provide opportunities for collaboration and for getting feedback.

3) Hiring a coach or mentor – A study by MetrixGlobal, LLC showed that 77% of respondents indicated that coaching had a noticeable effect on their business and that coaching produced an average of a 529% return on investment.

When we work at a job, our boss keeps us productive and accountable. However, when people set business and personal goals, they usually don’t have a person that keeps them accountable and as a result, the probability of achieving goals is low.

A good coach can fill the role that a boss plays and keep you productive and motivated.

Succeed by Embracing Boredom

Success is hard because to become successful, people often have to force themselves to do boring repetitive tasks over a long period of time. To succeed where most people fail, develop a long term mindset, set realistic measurable goals and create systems and processes to execute your plans.

Finally, create accountability to make sure you get things done. After the initial excitement of starting a project fades, it is repetitive execution that brings results.

I frequently see job posting stating that their articles need to be a minimum of 2,000 words or some other large number. But if long form content is so effective, then why are major publications still publishing short form content?

For example, Marketing Profs is an industry leader in the marketing niche with over 600,000 followers. Their publishing guidelines insist that articles should be no longer than 1,200 words.

Entrepreneur is another well known publication and they also don’t want articles longer than 1,200 words.

Even Neil Patel recommended keeping articles under 1,500 words in this Quora post.

What’s going on here? Do these successful publications not know that long form content is better with all the research out there? Or is the necessity of long form content just another content marketing myth?

The purpose of this article is to take a closer look at the “data” and examine why many top publications continue to insist on shorter content, why short content might actually be better in some cases and why you may want to consider incorporating short form content into your own content strategy.

1. Short Form Content Actually Gets More Shares Per Word (On average)

Buzzsumo published an article on Noah Kagan’s blog showing that long content tends to get more shares than short content:

OK Dork: Long Content Tends to Get Shared More than Short Content

They found that articles with 3,000 – 10,000 words get an average of 8,859 social shares while shorter articles got fewer shares (looks like around 4,500 from the chart). They concluded that you should aim to create long articles that are at least 2,000 words in length.

However, the article fails to take into account one very important factor, which is the time required to write a long article versus the time required to write a short article. You can probably write multiple short articles in the time that it takes you to write one long article.

Let’s say that instead of writing one long 3,000 word article, we decide instead to write three shorter 1,000 word articles. The chart below shows the total number of social shares when you compare multiple short articles against one long article:

So on average, you get more total social shares from writing two short articles (2,000 word written) than one long article (3,000 words written). And it took you less time to do.

It really doesn’t make sense to compare one short article to one long article because the time and resources required to create a long form article are not the same as the resources required to create a short article. When you take into account how much time it takes to create content, short form content actually performs better on average than long content in terms of getting more social exposure per time invested.

Kevin Delaney (who was formerly the managing director for the Wall Street Journal and is now the editor in chief at Quartz) also discovered that short content can perform quite well. By focus on writing short articles under 500 words and longer articles over 800 words, the Quartz team grew their readership to over 5 million readers in just 18 months.

Kevin discovered that on average, content that is under 500 words did well because people like to read short content when they are looking for quick information. He also found that content over 800 words did well because some people were looking for articles with more depth and details.

Articles between 500-800 words got less attention because they were too short to go into sufficient detail but too long to be read quickly. This phenomenon became known as the “Quartz curve”.

So short content is more efficient for getting more social media exposure, but what about SEO and ongoing traffic?

Here’s a quick look at some SEO metrics from some of the sites mentioned in this article (data from SEM Rush’s backlink analysis tool). Asides from getting lots of social shares, these sites are also getting plenty of backlinks and organic search traffic.

If long content gets more backlinks, then how are sites that create short content able to compete in the search engines? The answer is that these sites rake up tons of long tail SEO traffic and even if they get fewer links per article, they still have way more content out there that is attracting links from other sites.

The effectiveness of short content for SEO is amplified even further if you are syndicating your content. For example, this article by James Clear was syndicated on Lifehacker and accumulated a few natural backlinks. James received a 56 page authority link from a site with 92 domain authority and that doesn’t even count all the other sites he syndicated his articles to.

Studies also show that there is a correlation between social shares and increased SEO traffic, like this study conducted by Razvan Gavrilas and Cornelia Cozmiuc from Cognitive SEO. Although many SEO’s believe that social signals don’t affect search engine rankings directly, the correlation makes sense. Articles with more social shares get more traffic and when more people know about a good piece of content, it will get more links.

Some other examples of people who do well with short content are Seth Godin, who writes a daily blog post (most of which are under 200 words) and Foundr who grew their Instagram following to over 1 million followers and created a 6-figure business selling online courses.

2. Syndication

Studies that look at short and long content also don’t take into account the amplification effects of syndication. Most sites that accept syndicated content, like Entrepreneur, don’t accept content that is too long.

James Clear gets over 100,000 new email subscribers each year and one of the secrets to his success is syndicating his best blog articles to other popular sites. Most of his articles are under 1,500 words and some are even shorter than 1,000 words.

I did a quick analysis of James Clear’s site in 2016 and found that he syndicated 59 of his articles to Business Insider. His articles got an average of 5,070 shares on his own site and 3,490 shares on Business Insider. James increased social shares by 69% by syndicating on just one site.

James also syndicated his articles to other sites like Entrepreneur and Lifehacker, resulting in even more exposure. Take a look at this article that he syndicated to Lifehacker (which got over 40,000 views):

A short article that gets syndicated on popular blogs can easily outperform a longer article in terms of overall exposure and social shares.

3. Resources / Cost

Another important consideration is the cost and resources required to produce long content. I’ve created 5,000 word articles that did really well, but some of my longest articles literally took weeks to complete.

According to Glassdoor, a content writer costs an average of $42,000 a year and you should expect to pay even more for a top quality writer (up to around $70,000). A really in depth blog article could cost thousands of dollars to create, and that’s just for one article.

A study by Hubspot shows that businesses that blog 11 or more times per month got more than 3x more traffic than blogs that post on 1-3 times per month. The study also found that companies that published 16 or more times per month got 4x more leads than companies that only published 0-4 times per month.

Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blogging-frequency-benchmarks

Another cost that people rarely talk about is personal energy. Sometimes it takes more mental energy to create really long articles on a consistent basis, which can lead to burn out.

Long form content takes a lot of time to create (and it can be very costly), which can make it difficult to publish frequently. In reality, businesses need to manage their resources so creating extensively long content on a regular basis might not be practical.

4. Short Articles Have Better Engagement

Although businesses like to focus on traffic as a measurement of success, engagement is also very important. After all, what’s the point of writing an article if no one reads it?

A study by Nielsen Norman group showed that people preferred to read short articles over long articles. Another study by the Demand Gen Group showed that 95% of B2B buyers preferred shorter content formats.

People tend to have short attention spans when they are online and an article in Time magazine reported that 55% of people spent less than 15 seconds on a page. People also read less than 60% of an article on average.

Medium focuses on engagement rather than content length and according to a study they did, they found that the ideal blog post should be readable in 7 minutes which comes out to 1,600 words. What this means is that people generally spent less time on articles that were too long.

As content writers, we need to balance the need to go in depth with our content against people’s desire to spend time reading it. Although people will often invest time into reading long content if they are very interested in it, short content formats might be better in other cases.

5. Long Content Can Fail Horribly

Another big drawback of long form content is that it can still fail after you’ve invested considerable time and resources into it.

Dale Cudmore spent over 20 hours creating the best guide for creating a resume. He invested time into making his guide visually attractive and more in depth than other similar guides that were currently ranking in Google. However, despite a solid effort to promote it, the guide did not perform as well as hoped and the site has since shut down.

Short articles can be a great way to test out ideas before investing into longer content. Spending time and money on long content can be a dangerous way to burn through resources quickly, especially if you are inexperienced in content marketing.

6. Averages are Meaningless

Although data driven studies are fun and interesting, averages are something meaningless when it comes to practical application.

One of the most shared posts on my blog was my study of LinkedIn Pulse, which I published while the platform was still in closed beta. The article was only around 1,000 words long, which is really short for digital marketing content, but it got over 5,000 social shares.

The reason it did well was because it presented new information at the time and was useful and interesting to readers. Short content can do well if it’s unique and high quality, so don’t restrict yourself to only writing long content.

When writing, focus on being the exception and not the average. If your article needs to be long to outperform others, then make it long. But if a short article makes more sense, then write a short article. Focus on quality and performance rather than obsessing over length.

7. Doesn’t Apply to All Niches

Creating long form content makes sense in the digital marketing niche, but long content isn’t necessarily better in all niches. In the recipe niche, for example, articles are often under 800 words. People are looking for recipes and not long drawn out articles and if you do a search for any recipe, most of the ones you’ll find are relatively short.

Other niches where short content works well include beauty and fashion (where visuals are important), jokes and quotes and art and photography. Long form content seems to do well in “how to” niches where people may be looking for detailed information to solve their problems, but shorter content is often more appropriate in entertainment niches.

Another thing worth mentioning is that sometimes tools will get more links and search engine traffic than content. Google, for example, is one of the most highly trafficked sites on the internet and also has more links than most other sites despite having little written content on the page.

The point here is that if your web page is valuable enough to people, it can easily outperform other pages on the web regardless of content length.

A Few Caveats

Before you jump on board the short form content train, there are a few caveats you should be aware of.

1) Short form content seems to work better in some niches than others

In the recipe niche, for example, articles shorter than 1,000 words seem to work well while in the digital marketing niche, articles over 1,000 words tend to be better because marketing ideas and concepts often require more words to explain thoroughly.

Take a look at how long articles that other people in your niche are and plan accordingly. Don’t just look at a few blogs, but analyze blogs that are creating long content and blogs that are creating short content. If people are using both long and short content in your niche, then you should be able to make either approach work for your content.

2) Short content seems to work better if you already have a large following or can reach a large targeted audience quickly

But this doesn’t mean that you need a large audience to start out with a short content strategy. But be prepared to write consistently and have a plan to grow your audience as quickly as possible for the best results.

Seth Godin grew a large following by authoring several books, public speaking and other methods. Foundr and Daniel DiPiazza were able to rapidly grow their audience through Instagram. And James Clear used syndication to significantly amplify his reach.

Short content also seems to work better if you publish frequently. Creating content regularly allows you to get more social shares, allowing more people to find out about you and your articles.

3) Short and long content tend to have different content promotions strategies

If you want to succeed with either long or short content, you have to have the right content promotion strategy to correspond with your approach.

People that use short content tend go for an overall branding approach or focus on social media rather than promoting individual articles on their site. Growing a large social media following and creating short content regularly can allow people to reach more and more people on a consistent basis. Other tactics like guest posting frequently on other blogs can allow someone to grow their brand awareness quickly.

With long content, writers can create content that stands out from other articles and promote each article individually with email outreach. Inserting quotes from influencers is another tactic that people use to promote long form content.

Short and long content use different promotional approaches, so be sure that your content promotion strategy works well with your content creation strategy.

To Sum It Up…

The purpose of this article isn’t to say that short content is better than long content or vice versa. The point is that both short and long form content can perform very well and as marketers, we need to be open minded and not restricted ourselves to either format. In fact, I’m a fan of using both long and short content.

Long form content can drive a lot of long tail SEO traffic, particularly if you are promoting it heavily. For competitive keyword phrases that can drive a lot of traffic, it might make sense to invest the time into longer content.

Long content can also be easier to promote as many businesses aren’t going to invest the resources into long content. Creating a longer and more detailed article can be an easier way to stand out with your content, so you may want to invest in longer content if you are also going to invest in a strong promotional campaign for your content.

Alternatively, short form content can be used for non-competitive lower volume keywords that people aren’t aggressively trying to rank for. Most businesses won’t expend resources to promote long tail content because it’s more efficient just focus on creating more content. It can also be used when you want to create content to engage your audience, i.e., articles that don’t have SEO goals.

People are also more likely to read short content so short content can be better for maintaining engagement. Shorter content can also be a good way to test out ideas before you spend too much time on a piece of content. If it works out well, you can expand it into a longer article later.

To decide on content length, look at how long other competing content is. Think about how long your content will have to be to thoroughly cover the ideas that you want to present.

If you’re a marketing manager, rather than focusing on word counts, think about better ways you can measure success.

Ultimately, a good strategy will have a mix of both long and short form content to capitalize on the strengths of both. What do you think? Have businesses become too hung up on content length?

Inventory management involves tracking the availability of assets, raw materials and stock items from the source to the final destination.

If you hold too much inventory, then you’ll end up spending too much money on storage and carrying costs. If you purchase too little, then you’ll run the risk of not having enough inventory on hand to satisfy customer demand.

Keeping the right inventory levels is a balancing act. How much inventory should we keep on hand? When should we re-order? What happens if we run out of inventory?  And what tools will we use to track inventory movement?

These are all questions you’ll need to consider when planning out your inventory management.

The basic idea is to track the availability and movement of inventory items from the manufacturer or distributor, warehouse, final retail sales location and sometimes to the customer or end user. The goal of inventory management is to make sure that a business has enough inventory on hand to satisfy demand, while minimizing costs from holding inventory.

This article will explore questions you’ll need to ask yourself and other considerations you’ll have to consider when planning out your inventory management system.

How to Determine How Much Inventory to Keep on Hand

One of the first questions you should ask yourself when doing inventory planning is how much inventory to keep on hand of each item.

Note that there isn’t a right or wrong answer on how much inventory to hold. The stock levels you decide to keep will depend on your risk tolerance, availability of space and many other factors.

Deciding on a reorder point or threshold

To prevent inventory from running too low, we need to decide on a reorder point for each item. Ideally, we will want to select a reorder quantity so that we will have enough inventory to meet customer demand most of the time while minimizing warehousing and inventory carrying costs.

The reorder threshold that we set will depend on demand for each item, storage capacity and other risk considerations.

Safety stock

Keeping extra inventory on hand can prevent us from running out of items in case sales of an item is higher than expected. The amount of safety stock we keep on hand depends on demand variability.

For example, let’s say my business sells gift baskets and we regularly sell exactly 100 each week. Furthermore, let’s assume that I know that with 100% certainty that we will continue to sell exactly 100 each week.

I can safely order 100 gift baskets from my supplier every week and keep no safety stock because I know exactly how much I need.

In reality, however, sales volume will vary. Let’s say that I sell an average of 100 each week, but the actual quantity sold can vary between 90 to 110. I can order 100 gift baskets from my supplier, but I’ll have to keep at least 10 gift baskets in my inventory each week in case we have a good week and we sell extra.

Factors that affect demand

Wouldn’t it be great if we could know exactly how much our customers are going to purchase in the future? Unfortunately, there’s no way we can predict the exact amount that customers will buy.

However, businesses can often estimate customer demand and prepare accordingly. Here are a few factors that we can use to predict future demand and pick the right reorder quantities:

1) Past buying patterns – Past buying patterns are perhaps the most common way that businesses plan their inventory levels. Sometimes sales are consistent from month to month and we can easily maintain the right inventory levels.

However, sometimes variability is higher and we will need to keep more safety stock on hand in case we get a sudden large order.

2) Seasonality – Seasonality can also affect demand. For example, more people buy snow shovels in the winter than during the summer. So if your business sells snow shovels, you will probably want to keep more inventory on hand during the winter and less during the summer.

3) Popularity trends and changes – Demand for an item can rise or fall over the long term. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles experienced a spike in popularity in 2014 and 2016 when the Ninja Turtle movies came out and related merchandise probably sold well in that time period as well. However, as interest declines over time, sales of such items can drop.

Keeping track of sales volume changes can help detect changes in popularity of an item. So be aware that items that are popular now may decline in popularity in the future and be prepared to adjust your inventory levels accordingly.

Risk considerations

What happens if you run out of inventory? Will you lose business? Or can you substitute the item with something else? Risk plays an important role in how you manage your inventory.

Here are a few factors that will come into play:

1) Demand variability – Demand variability is perhaps the most universal risk factor to all businesses that carry inventory. A sudden large order can quickly wipe out your available inventory and leave other potential customers without anything to buy.

When determining safety stock and re-order quantities, businesses usually calculate levels that allow them to keep enough inventory of popular items so that customers are able to purchase them most of the time.

2) Inventory turnover – Another important risk factor is inventory turnover. How quickly does an item typically sell?

If an item sells quickly and is popular, then it’s less risky to keep more of it on hand. Even if you order too much, you should be able to sell of any extra inventory in the coming months if the demand stays strong.

On the other hand, slow moving items are a bigger risk. If you order too many items, then they may sit in your warehouse for quite some time and incur more carrying cost than desired.

3) Perishable items – Are you selling items that are perishable? Perishable items are a bigger challenge to manage. You can’t keep too much safety stock or else it will spoil and go to waste if not sold.

4) Supplier reliability and consistency and supplier alternatives – How reliable are your suppliers? Do they always have inventory of the items you need? Or are there times when they will run out of inventory as well?

Also, do you have alternate suppliers that you can use if your preferred supplier runs out of an item?

You may find that you need to keep more inventory on hand if you have a supplier that is unpredictable.

5) Turn around time – Another important consideration is turn around time. Is your supplier close by and can you get the items you order within a day? If so, you may not have to keep as much inventory than if your supplier is half way around the world and it takes months to get your shipment.

6) Similar / substitute items – If an item goes out of stock, can you offer your customers a similar or substitute item? Will they be equally as satisfied if they have to select a substitute item?

If you can offer your customer a substitute, then you may be able to reduce the amount of safety stock you keep of a particular item.

7) Item profitability – The profitability of an item is another important consideration. If an item is low cost, has low carrying cost and has high profitability and demand, then it might make sense to have a lot of that item in inventory. If the opposite is true, then you may want to carry less inventory even if you risk running out of the item.

8) Carrying and storage costs – Carrying costs and storage costs are another risk factor. If the cost of maintaining inventory is high, then you will have to be more careful about ordering too many items. On the other hand, if carrying costs are relatively low, then it might make sense to order more just to be sure you can satisfy demand.

9) Opportunity cost – Do you have limited storage space? If so, then you may have to prioritize more popular and higher margin items over less popular items.

10) Other considerations – You may find that other considerations come into play when planning out inventory management. For example, inventory levels at the end of the year can affect how much you pay in taxes.

Key Takeaways

– The goal of inventory management is to keep enough stock on hand to satisfy demand while minimizing inventory holding costs, carrying costs and inventory risk.

– Forecast demand base on existing sales and seasonality. Be prepared to adjust quickly for changes in demand. Using known sales patterns and taking all costs into consideration, decide on safety stock levels and re-order quantities.

– Analyze risk factors such as demand variability and inventory turnover. Availability of substitutes, supplier lead times and reliability, item profitability and storage costs are other considerations that will come into play when deciding on optimal inventory levels.

Unfortunately, the biggest threat to businesses is often insider threats, which arise when trusted employees and other individuals cause damage to a business through theft of data and intellectual property, employing intentional acts of sabotage and by other means.

A study by Gartner, Inc forecasts that worldwide security spending will top $96 billion in 2018. As threats from hackers and outside sources rise, security is a growing concern for businesses and organizations.

According to a study done by Accenture, 69% of organizations interviewed said that they experienced theft or corruption of data due to internal sources while 57% reported similar threats from external sources. Although most businesses focus on preventing hackers and other external threats, insider threats are also a major problem that organizations need to focus on.

What is an insider threat?

An insider threat is a threat to an organization where an employee or person with internal access to a company uses that privilege to cause harm to the company by stealing valuable information or causing damage to business assets, such as computer systems and software.

Insider threats consist of both intentional malicious acts as well as accidental security breaches, which can include accidentally deleting data or sharing too much information or data with someone else.

An insider doesn’t necessarily have to be a current or former employee. Contractors or anyone else that has temporary access to a company and its systems can become a possible threat.

Malicious insider threats can arise for several reasons, including the following:
– Former or current employees can become disgruntled and wish to cause harm to their employer.
– Insiders might get paid by competitors to steal intellectual property or other confidential information. Or they might wish to start their own company to compete with their current employer.
– Insiders might steal for their own personal gain.

Although insiders often have legitimate access to a company’s systems, an insider can also be a hacker who can gain access if they are able to work on the company’s premises.

Examples of Insider Threats

Insider threats can range from data theft, to malicious sabotage and even personal violations like identity theft of fellow employees. Here are a few examples of insider threats.
– A city in the US was at a standstill in labor negotiations with union employees. Two employees managed to gain access to traffic signals at several intersections and disabled them. They also locked other people out and the city was unable to fix the issue for 4 days.

– An immigrations officer became disgruntled with his wife and put her on a terror watch list while she was in Pakistan. Despite her pleas, she was unable to re-enter the country for three years when his managers ran a background check and discovered what he had done.

– A manufacturing firm was having trouble trying to figure out how to manufacture a new item. One of the firm’s customers had their own successful operation manufacturing that item, so the manufacturing firm sent a couple of people over to “inspect some equipment”. Although cameras were not allowed, one person managed to photograph the manufacturing operation with his cell phone.

Awareness and employee training

Preventing insider threats start with training employees about awareness and prevention. Organizations need to teach employees and contractors what an insider threat is, how to detect warning signs from potentially malicious employees and contractors and how to avoid mistakes that can lead to security breaches.

Password Security – Employees should be taught to not share their access information with anyone else and how to keep their information secure.

Phishing – Teach employees how to recognize phishing attempts and to not click on links from unknown email senders.

Warning signs – Organizations need to train employees how to detect behavioral warning signs that may indicate a potential threat and also provide clear instructions on what to do to report such threats to the appropriate personnel. Employees should also keep their eyes open for other unusual activity, like their computer running slower than normal or other signs of malware.

FEMA also provides a free one hour training course called IS-915 that can be accessed online. This course trains IT and infrastructure employees on how to identify and react to insider threats:
https://training.fema.gov/is/courseoverview.aspx?code=is-915

Prevention and monitoring

Insider threats are often difficult to detect as employees and other insiders often have legitimate access to systems and data. Without monitoring employees constantly, organizations can find it difficult to determine whether individuals are accessing information for legitimate reasons or for malicious purposes.

Organizations can take several steps to minimize the risk of insider threats.

Background checks before hiring

Organizations need to conduct background checks before hiring when possible, particularly for full time employees. Background checks are relatively inexpensive for businesses can reveal risk factors, such as past criminal activity.

Companies can also call and interview former employers before hiring a candidate. Sometimes former employers can give deeper insights into an employee’s behavior and reveal possible warning signs.

Stronger security systems

Implement strong and user friendly security systems can prevent internal security breaches, both accidental and intentional. Design software and security tools for usability to reduce human error.

IT can implement 2-factor authentication for sensitive data and also force users to select strong passwords that are not easy to guess. Forcing users to change their passwords every few months can make it harder for unauthorized users to gain access to data.

ID or access cards can also be required to gain physical access to locations that contain sensitive data or other valuable assets. Security staff and cameras can also monitor such locations for unusual activity.

If an employee requires remote access, they should use a VPN and should also have their computer inspected by IT to make sure the proper internet security software is installed. Make sure they select the best vpn provider with up-to-date security and not an outdated VPN that uses PPTP protocols. Develop a list of best vpn services that employees are allowed to use on their remote devices.

Firewalls, VPNs and system audits

Organizations install firewalls and computer security systems to help detect malware, viruses and logic bombs. These security systems should be kept up to date and an IT or security specialist should monitor systems for unusual activity regularly.

Virtual private networks (VPN) can be installed to control remote access to the system. The best VPNs allow employees to access the corporate intranet remotely without having to be in the office. Top VPN Software increases privacy and security by allowing only authenticated and encrypted connections.

The best VPN services range in price, but people can get access to top VPN providers for under $100 a month.

The IT department should also conduct regular system audits to periodically check for any signs of data breach. Monitor systems for unusual spikes in activity or access patterns that are outside the norm.

Although VPNs can be used to increase security, they can also be used by insiders to transfer data outside the company without being detected. The organization’s IT staff should ensure that their firewalls are configured properly to prevent unauthorized transfer of data and detect unauthorized usage of VPN’s.

Backups and archiving

Backing up and archiving data is something that businesses can do to prevent expensive loss of data. Data can be backed up into physical devices that aren’t always connected to the network or uploaded into secure cloud locations.

Some businesses may even want to store multiple revisions of important files, so that older versions can be restored if newer versions become corrupted.

Restrict access to systems and data

Organizations should restrict access to data to only people who need access. Creating unique usernames and passwords for each individual will allow companies to more easily track unauthorized access back to the individual.

When access is no longer needed, the person’s access should be revoked immediately. Former employees or contractors who no longer require access should have their accounts deactivated as well.

For employees with high level access, such as IT administrators, system passwords may need to be changed as well.

If required, remote access to systems should be controlled by selecting one of the best vpn providers available. Although there are a lot of free VPN services, the best VPN software companies charge a monthly fee for access to their services.

Things to look for when selecting the best vpn service include what protocols do they support, how many simultaneous connections are allowed and how many servers do they have (as well as where they are located). Top VPN services will not be using PPTP protocol, as that protocol is very dated and uses weak encryption.

Training and vigilance

One of the most important ways to minimize insider risks is training and vigilance. An organization needs to train their workers about what an insider risk is, things to look out for and also ways to minimize risk (for example, not sharing passwords with others).

Employees also need to know the consequences of a security breach or theft. Negative consequences can sometimes deter malicious actions or careless behavior.

Behavioral monitoring

Sometimes employees can exhibit signs of being disgruntled before they take action, so behavioral monitoring can help detect insider threats before they happen. Also, monitoring unusual activity like logging in outside of normal business hours or unauthorized attempts to access systems remotely can be indications that an insider threat exists.

Employees should also receive praise and possibly other recognition for reporting suspicious activity.

Establish strong HR policies

One way to lower the risk of insider threats is to prevent employees from becoming disgruntled in the first place. Creating a positive work environment is something that can help prevent problems.

Interview potential candidates for cultural fit and have current employees interview with potential hires. Identify ways to improve employee satisfaction by surveying employees periodically and getting feedback on what can be improved.

Employees should have venues to voice concerns if they become disgruntled or dissatisfied at work.

HR should also establish a process on how to handle firing and laying off of employees. Losing a job is stressful for most people, but a good process can improve the odds that employees and businesses will part on friendly terms.

Providing a good severance package, taking an employee out for a last meal and giving an employee resources to find a new job are just a few ways that companies can make a lay off less stressful and thus reduce the risk of malicious activities.

Companies also need to monitor employees that are losing their jobs. Despite a company’s best efforts, such employees may still become disgruntled and being on the lookout for warning signs could prevent malicious activities from occurring.

Warning Signs

While insider threats can be difficult to detect, people with malicious intent can often display behavior warning signs. Training employees to look for such signs and reporting them to management can be a good way to detect and stop insider threats early on.

Here are a few characteristics of people that may be at risk of becoming an insider threat:
– Financial need or greed
– Destructive behavior
– Social withdrawal
– Rebellious attitude
– Inability to take personal responsibility for their actions
– Poor ability to handle crises and other bad situations
– Sudden behavioral changes
– Alcohol or other substance abuse

Unusual system activity can also indicate possible security breaches. Here are some signs that an insider threat may be present:
– Remote access of systems while sick or on vacation
– Copying or accessing materials that aren’t relevant to the person’s job
– Unusual work hours or too much overtime work
– Simultaneous account login from multiple locations at the same time
– Former employees or contactors logging in after they are no longer working for the company
– Someone logging in from a different location or IP address

Key Takeaways

Organizations need to realize that unfortunately, their own employees and contractors might be their biggest security threat. Insider threats can be minimized by establishing a positive work environment, developing sound hiring and training processes and implementing strong data security systems.

Training, vigilance and regular monitoring can also help mitigate this growing threat. While insider threats can be difficult to detect, organizations can minimize the risks by taking the proper steps.

Fortunately, we can use social media scheduling tools to schedule posts in advance. I’ve done some research to find a good social media scheduling tool for my own purposes and decided to write this article to share my findings with you.

For my purposes, I wanted a social scheduling tool that worked with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus, LinkedIn and Instagram. Here are a few tools that you should consider for your social media management.

1. Social Oomph

https://www.socialoomph.com/

Price: Free version (Twitter only), Paid version starting at $36 per month ($17.97 every 2 weeks)

Social Oomph is a scheduling tool that allows bulk tweet uploads and recurring evergreen posting. It also has other automation features, like autofollow and self deleting updates (post will delete themselves after a period of time). The paid version allows unlimited Twitter accounts and you can also tweet by email.

Works with: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, WordPress (WordPress.com or self-hosted) and Plurk

Doesn’t work with: Google Plus, Instagram

2. Everypost

http://everypost.me/

Price: Free version, paid version starting at $9.99 / month

The free version allows just one connect account and up to 10 scheduled posts and paid versions start at $9.99 / month (for up to 10 connected accounts). Additional features include content curation via RSS feed, team member collaboration and social analytics (coming soon)

Works with: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Pinterest, & Tumblr

Doesn’t work with: Google Plus Communities, Instagram

3. Buffer

https://buffer.com

Price: Free or $10 / month

Buffer is one of the most popular social media scheduling tools. The free version works well and the paid option is inexpensive even for solo bloggers. Their $10 a month awesome plan allows you to schedule up to 100 posts in advance, use their scheduling calendar

One of the best features of Buffer is that it integrates really well with most of the major social media networks. I like that it will automatically detect images from the blog post and allow you to add them to your scheduled tweet with just one click.

Works with: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Google Plus Personal and Business Pages, Pinterest, Instagram (reminders – your cell phone must be on to complete posting)

Doesn’t work with: Google Plus Communities

4. Hootsuite

https://hootsuite.com/

Price: Free or starting at $9.99 / month

Hootsuite is another popular social media management tool. Their free plan allows you to connect 3 social profiles under one user, provides basic analytics and allows basic scheduling. View all your accounts on one page.

Lack of Pinterest integration is one of the big downsides of Hootsuite so you will need to use a separate Pinterest scheduler like Tailwind App.

Works with: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Google Plus Business and Personal Pages, YouTube

Doesn’t work with: Pinterest, Google Plus Communities

5. Sprout Social

http://sproutsocial.com/

Price: Starting at $99 / month, 30 day free trial

Sprout Social is a social media management tool for small businesses that includes social scheduling, analytics, reporting, and brand monitoring (social listening). You can include up to 10 profiles and monitor keywords and locations.

Works with: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Google Plus Business Pages, Instagram (push notification)

Doesn’t work with: Pinterest

6. Agora Pulse

https://www.agorapulse.com/

Price: Starting at $49 / month with annual discounts available

Some of the things that make Agora Pulse stand out is ease of use and top notch customer service, according to most reviews. Agora Pulse also has a social listening tool that picks up brand mentions and is good for people that are implementing social selling.

Their pricing is also a little more competitive with similar competitors but targeted towards businesses rather than solo bloggers.

Works with: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Instagram

Doesn’t work with: Pinterest

7. Sendible

https://sendible.com/

Price: Starting at $49 / month

Sendible is a social media management tool that analyzes when to schedule content for when your audience is most likely to engage. Their calendar makes it easy to schedule social media posts ahead of time and you can even automatically post from RSS feeds.

Sendible also offers a content curation queue of articles that are already receiving engagement on social media, in case you are looking for other articles to add to your schedule to keep your social accounts active. Integrates with Canva and you can also bulk upload an Excel file if you prefer to upload updates that way.

Works with: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, Blogger and WordPress

Doesn’t work with: n/a

8. Edgar

https://meetedgar.com/

Price: Starting at $49 / month for 1,000 posts

Edgar was created by social media influencer Laura Roeder. The great thing about Edgar is that you can organize posts into categories and store them in your “library”. Edgar automatically shares your posts for you and unlike other social media schedulers, will keep sharing it in the future without you having to re-enter the post again. You can even sort updates into categories.

The downside is that you have to delete items manually from your library if you don’t want them to re-post and might be too costly for a solo blogger.

Works with: Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn

Doesn’t work with: Google Plus, Instagram & Pinterest

Here’s a helpful review of Edgar by Jimmie Lanley – http://jimmielanley.com/meet-edgar/

9. Oktopost

https://www.oktopost.com

Price: Unknown

Oktopost is a highly rated social media management suite that includes scheduling, content discovery and curation tools, social analytics and social listening. Oktopost also integrates with other platforms like Hubspot, Salesforce, Marketo, Acton and more. They use to be inexpensive, but some reviewers say that the tool is now pricey. You will have to contact them to get pricing.

Works with: Facebook (pages, groups, personal profiles), Twitter, LinkedIn (personal pages, business pages, showcase pages), Google Plus company pages

Doesn’t work with: Pinterest, Google Plus (personal pages, communities and collections), Instagram (although this is in development)

10. Post Planner

https://www.postplanner.com

Price: $9 / month

Post Planner helps you discover the best content and post it to your social media channels. Post Planner is designed to save you time and boost engagement by discovering content by keyword, hashtag or Facebook and Twitter pages.

Works with: Facebook, Twitter

Doesn’t work with: LinkedIn, Google Plus, Pinterest and Instagram (but full integration coming soon for LinkedIn, Google Plus and Pinterest)

11. Mav Social

http://mavsocial.com

Price: Free version (Facebook and Twitter only), Paid versions starting at $19 / month

Mav Social is a social media management tool. Some interesting features are that it has a large collection of royalty free images that you can purchase and use for visual content creation, a content calendar that you can use to schedule posts and social media analytics so that you can see what’s working. Add RSS feeds for easy content curation and publish videos to your social networks.

Works with: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr and Instagram (push notifications)

Doesn’t Work with: Pinterest

12. Postcron

https://postcron.com

Price: Starting at $12.49 / month

Some nice features of Postcron include the ability to watermark images, bulk upload updates using an Excel file and content recommendations. You can also curate content by adding your own RSS feeds or search for strong performing content on visual networks or YouTube.

Works with: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus Business Pages, Pinterest and Instagram (push notifications)

Doesn’t Work with: n/a

13. Falcon Social

https://www.falcon.io

Pricing: Unknown, enterprise level software

Falcon Social is a social management suite that allows you to publish using an editorial calendar or bulk import social media posts. It also has social listening, campaign tracking and customer engagement features.

Works with: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Tumblr

Doesn’t Work with: Pinterest, Instagram

14. Viraltag

https://www.viraltag.com

Pricing: Blogger plan starting at $7 / month for up to 3 profiles, other plans starting at $24 / month

Viraltag is a scheduling tool worth considering if you are a blogger on a budget. You can schedule posts easily with their content calendar and pull images from your Dropbox. You can also schedule evergreen content that will post to your social accounts regularly and view performance through their reporting. I wrote a review on Viraltag on my blog here.

Works with: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram (push notifications)

Doesn’t Work with: Google Plus

15. Tailwind App

https://www.tailwindapp.com

Pricing: Starting at $9.99 / month, free trial available

Tailwind was originally designed for Pinterest management and can also work with Instagram. Many social media scheduling tools don’t work with Pinterest, so this tool might be worth considering if you want to have that functionality or if Pinterest is an important channel. Some features include bulk image upload, being able to create your own curation feed, analytics and competitor monitoring.

Works with: Pinterest, Instagram (push notifications)

Doesn’t Work with: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Tumblr

16. Friends + Me

https://friendsplus.me

Pricing: $3 / month per connected profile, Free for Google plus communities / collections / Pinterest boards

Friends + Me is one of the few platforms that I found that schedules posts to Google Plus communities and collections. They charge you monthly based on how many connected profiles you have, so it can be inexpensive if you are just focused on one or two social media accounts. I emailed them for clarity on pricing and they said that Pinterest boards and Google Plus communities and collections are free… only the other accounts have the $3 / month charge.

Works with: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus (pages, personal profiles, communities and collections), Pinterest, Tumblr

Doesn’t Work with: Instagram

17. Wisel.it

https://wisel.it

Pricing: Free version for up to 1000 followers and one post a day, paid version starting at $4.99 / month

Most Instagram scheduling tools only send you push notifications to your phone, which means you have to have your phone on and be available at the given time to publish your post. Wisel.it will post to your account for you.

Some other similar tools worth checking out are. For a more detailed list, check out my list of 49 Instagram tools on my other blog:

–Grum.co

–Schedu.gram

–Push.photo

Works with: Instagram

Doesn’t work with: Other social networks

18. Social Pilot

https://socialpilot.co

Pricing: Free version for up to 3 connected profiles, paid version starting at $4.99 / month

Social Pilot is another alternative worth looking at for your social scheduling needs. The free version allows you to use up to 3 connected profiles and paid version starts at $4.99 / month. Seems to include a lot of networks, but does not include Google Plus communities.

Works with: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus (pages, personal profiles, and collections), Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram (push notifications), VK, Xing

Doesn’t Work with: n/a

19. Crate

http://getcrate.co

Pricing: Free version. Paid version starts at $19 / month

Crate makes it easier to curate content for Twitter. You can add blog feeds to Crate or even use their article suggestions. The paid version includes more crates and Buffer integration.

Works with: Twitter

Doesn’t Work with: n/a

20. Cinchshare

https://www.cinchshare.com

Price: $10 / month

Cinchshare allows you to create and organize your social media postings from one place and supports several major platforms. It also integrates with Canva, a popular image creation tool.

Works with: Facebook (timeline, groups, events, albums and business pages), Twitter, Pinterest (personal and group boards), Instagram (reminders – your cell phone must be on to complete posting)

Doesn’t work with: LinkedIn, Google Plus

21. Social Aider

https://www.socialaider.com

Price: Starting at $5 / month

Social Aider is a new social media management tool in 2018 and at the moment they are offering a 1-year free trial. Some features include video/image upload, hashtags, reposting, bulk upload, RSS import and more.

Works with: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr

Doesn’t work with: Pinterest, Instagram, Google Plus

Here is a list of social networks you might want to ask about when you are shopping around for a social scheduling tool:

• Facebook Pages
• Facebook Groups
• Facebook Personal Profiles
• Twitter
• LinkedIn Company Pages
• LinkedIn Personal Status Updates
• LinkedIn Groups
• Pinterest
• Google Plus Personal Pages
• Google Plus Communities
• Google Plus Company Pages
• Instagram
• Tumblr

What do you use for social media management?

However, not all membership site software programs are created equal. Some are WordPress plugins that you can use on your own site and there are even sites that make it really easy for you to create a membership site, even if you have no technical skills.

In this article, I’ll share some of the plugins and sites that I’ve found that you can use to launch your own membership program.

Questions to ask before investing in membership software

Before choosing a membership platform, you need to decide on what to look for. Here’s a list of questions you should ask before investing in a membership platform.

1. Does it work with your theme, plugins or theme builder?
2. Will it stop working after my subscription ends?
3. Does it come with affiliate program functionality?
4. Does it integrate with me email marketing software and affiliate program software?
5. Can I pause my membership and re-activate it later?
6. Can I export member data into CSV format?
7. What are the costs? Are they ongoing or one time?
8. Does the software have weekend customer support? Is it run by a professional support team or is it a one man show?

I needed a platform that integrated with both my email provider (Drip or ConvertKit) and affiliate marketing software. I divided the list into non-Wordpress options and WordPress plugins.

Non-Wordpress Options

Here are some membership options that you can use even if you don’t have a WordPress website.

1. AMember

http://www.amember.com/

Cost: $180 includes software with 6 months of support and upgrades

AMember is a php script. They have been in the membership software business for over 15 years and the price comes with free installation. Affiliate program functionality is built into the software. It includes other functionality including free and paid trials, PDF invoicing, taxes, coupon codes and email autoresponder.

2. Gumroad

https://gumroad.com

Cost: Starting at $10 / month

Gumroad is an online platform that you can use to sell ebooks, courses and subscriptions with ease. Items are hosted on their platform. Other features include being able to offer pay what you want pricing, fixed length subscriptions, being able to sell software license keys and the ability to handle both physical and digital products. Gumroad also has very basic affiliate program functionality and can take pre-orders.

3. Kajabi

https://newkajabi.com

Cost: Starting at $103 / month when billed annually

Kajabi appears expensive, but includes everything you need to launch products including a website builder and email marketing functionality. Kajabi might be worth considering if you don’t want a platform that has everything you need integrated in one place.

4. Memberful

https://memberful.com

Cost: Free version, paid version starts at $25 / month + 2% of transactions

Memberful integrates with WordPress, Stripe and Drip as well as a few other email marketing software programs like Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor. A free plan is available but you will need a monthly subscription if you need integrations. The free plan has a 10% transaction fee. Memberful requires a Stripe account for payments.

5. Ontraport with PilotPress

https://ontraport.com

Cost: Starting at $79 / month for 1000 contacts

Ontraport is a platform that integrates a membership site, email marketing and affiliate marketing functionality all in one place. It’s a CRM and e-commerce platform that aims to provide everything you need.

6. Simplero

https://simplero.com

Cost: Starting at $83 / month for up to 2,500 contacts

Simplero is another all-in-one platform for membership sites and includes an easy to use website builder, email marketing with automation (or integrate with other email providers like Mailchimp), landing pages, e-commerce and more. It appears to also have affiliate marketing capabilities, although it is not advertised on their site. Simplero was designed to be really easy to use.

7. Teachable

https://teachable.com

Cost: Starting at $39 / month plus 5% transaction fee

Teachable allows people to easily create their own courses and sell them. Features like quizzes and member forums are included with all levels. You can even host your site with them so that you don’t need a separate web host. You can also recruit and pay affiliates through Teachable.

8. Thinkiffic

https://www.thinkific.com/

Cost: Free starter plan, paid plans start at $49 / month

Thinkific is another platform that you can use to host your online courses. You will need a paid plan if you want to use your own domain. The platform assists you with course creation and you can record your voice while playing Powerpoint slides. Other features include being able to launch your own affiliate program, free trials, payment plans, multiple instructor support and customizable site styling.

9. Zaxaa

https://www.zaxaa.com

Cost: Starting at $77 / month

Zaxaa allows you to sell digital products including courses and software, services, memberships and free trials. Some other features include sales analytics, 2-tier affiliate program, revenue sharing with partners and other integrations that allow you to build your email and customer lists.

10. Infusionsoft

https://www.infusionsoft.com/

Cost: Starting at $99 / month with $999 set up fee.

Infusionsoft provides heavy duty marketing automation for experienced sellers. It’s a more costly CRM platform with analytics and also requires trained developers to set up in many cases.

WordPress plugins

If you have a WordPress site, then there are many options you can consider for membership plugins. While most plugins should work fine, the challenges usually occur when it comes to integrating with email marketing, other plugins/themes and affiliate program software.

11. Cart66

https://cart66.com/

Cost: $10 / month of $99 / year

Cart66 is a WordPress shopping cart that can support membership sites, as well as other digital and physical products (which makes it an option worth considering if you are selling other things on your site). It features a secure customer portal, dripped content and timed email follow ups. If you want to run your own affiliate program, you can integrate it with iDevAffiliate.

12. Digital Access Pass (DAP)

http://digitalaccesspass.com/

Cost: Starting at $227 which includes one year of support and upgrades

Digital Access Pass is a membership program that works both with WordPress and non-Wordpress sites. It integrates membership functionality, shopping cart, email marketing and affiliate program management (up to 2-tiers) in one software package. Other features include file protection, language support and forum integration.

13. S2Member

Cost: Free version with Paypal, $85 one time cost for lifetime access

S2Member is a membership plugin by WP Sharks. The free version allows you to run a membership site and use Paypal as the payment method, but you need to upgrade to use Stripe or integrate with an affiliate program. Unlike other plugins, S2Member offers Lifetime access to updates and support for paid version. However, I tried the paid version but was unable to get it to work with any affiliate plugins, including iDevAffiliate and AffiliateWP.

NOTE: I also had some issues with them refusing to issue a refund even though it was within the 30-day refund period and their integration didn’t work as advertised. Unfortunately due to their plugin not working as advertised and poor customer service, I cannot recommend them. 

14. Paid Memberships Pro

https://www.paidmembershipspro.com/

Cost: Free version. Paid versions start at $297 includes one year of support and updates

Paid Membership Pro offers unlimited membership levels and various add-ons you can add for additional functionality. If you want to run an affiliate program, it can integrate with the Affiliate WP plugin.

15. Restrict Content Pro

https://restrictcontentpro.com/

Cost: Starting at $99 (Price includes updates and support for one year)

Restrict Content Pro offers multiple membership levels, pro-rated upgrades/downgrades, customer dashboard, discount codes, reports and more. Restrict Content Pro integrates with Affiliate WP ($99 plugin), which they also own.

16. Wishlist

https://member.wishlistproducts.com/

Cost: $197 for one year of support and updates

Wishlist member is one of the most popular WordPress membership plugins and it has a lot of integrations. You can create different membership levels and integrate with other affiliate and email marketing software.

17. Memberpress

https://www.memberpress.com/

Cost: Starting at $119 / year for one year of support and updates

Memberpress offers unlimited products and members, dripped content, coupons and more. The price includes the Affiliate Royale plugin that can be used to run an affiliate program. They only offer a 14-day money back guarantee and I actually made a pre-sales inquiry, but never received a reply.

18. Member Mouse

https://membermouse.com/

Cost: Starting at $20 / month for up to 1000 members

Member Mouse is not only a content protection system, but also a CRM. It integrates with various API’s and can dynamically display information. It also features automated customer support features like automatically emailing customers when their card is declined. While the monthly recurring fee may be a concern for new entrepreneurs, Member Mouse might be a good solution for someone that already has a few paying members and is expecting to get more.

19. Member Sonic

http://www.membersonic.com/

Cost: Free version, $97 for lifetime updates and support

Member Sonic is a WordPress plugin that boasts ease of use and can integrate with some email software programs or webinar platform to build your list. Unlike other plugins, Member Sonic has a one time cost for lifetime updates and support. However, the downside is that they do not have as many integrations as some other plugins. I sent a message to support and received a reply over a month later because the owner was on vacation. However, I got a copy of the plugin when it was on sale and will try it out later.

20. Optimize Member

https://www.optimizepress.com/

Cost: Comes with Optimize Press which costs $97 for one year of support and updates

If you are using the OptimizePress 2.0 theme, you can use Optimize Member for your membership site. It only works with Optimize Press 2.0, not designed to work with other sites. Optimize Press is a WordPress site builder that makes it easy to build your own WordPress site and is designed for information marketers.

21. WP EMember

https://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/wordpress-membership/

Cost: $60 one time cost includes lifetime updates and unlimited sites

WP EMember offers content protection, partial content display, automatic member upgrades, login redirection and other member features. They also have an affiliate plugin (WP Affiliate) that you can get for $50 if you want to run an affiliate program. Unlike other plugins, you can use this plugin on unlimited sites. I sent them a pre-sales question and didn’t get a reply, but their customer support forum seems to be regularly updated.

22. iMember360

https://imember360.com/

Cost: Free version for up to 20 members, paid version starting at $57 / month

iMember360 is a membership plugin designed to work well with Infusionsoft. Some features include one click purchases, upsells, automated emails for failed payments, video protection and expiring links.

23. Fastmember

https://fastmember.com/

Cost: Starting at $29 / month

Fastmember allows you to sell single purchase products as well as recurring memberships. It features instant sales funnels, drip feeding and content protection, reporting and some affiliate integrations.

24. Memberium

https://memberium.com/

Cost: Starting at $47 / month

Memberium is another WordPress and Infusionsoft plugin and features advanced shortcodes, unlimited membership levels and users and advanced analytics. Price also includes free installation and setup of one membership level on your site.

25. WooCommerce Memberships

https://woocommerce.com/products/woocommerce-memberships

Cost: Starting at $149 for one year of support and updates

If you are already using WooCommerce or plan on selling multiple products (including memberships), then check out WooCommerce Memberships. Asides from the usual membership functionality, members can pause their membership and also upgrade and downgrade it themselves if you want, which makes it a possible option for complex membership sites.

26. Ultimate Membership Pro

https://codecanyon.net/item/ultimate-membership-pro-wordpress-plugin/12159253

Cost: $35 one time for 6 months support and unlimited plugin updates

Price includes 6 months of support and unlimited plugin updates. They have 72 hour response time for tickets and less response on the weekends. You can also get their affiliate program plugin for $37. I tried to send a pre-sales email with some questions, but never received a reply to my questions. Limited integrations – check their page for updated list.

27. Simple Membership Plugin

https://simple-membership-plugin.com

Cost: Free

If you are looking for a free plugin, check out Simple Membership Plugin. It integrates with WP Affiliate which costs $49. Membership payments are handled by Paypal and the site says that it can also use Stripe or Braintree payments.

Conclusion

To sum it up, don’t just go for the cheapest solution because often the platforms with ongoing fees usually offer the best support and functionality. Lower cost options generally have less integrations and less reliable customer support, but might be an option to consider if you don’t need any integrations or support.

Weigh the tradeoffs between cost and functionality and research your membership options carefully before making your choice. I tried out S2 Member but ultimately ended up switching to Wishlist for the Traffic and Influence summit because I couldn’t get S2 to work with any affiliate program.

Such warnings could cause less people to fill out your forms, so if you are not using HTTPS, then you may want to consider switching.

This article will discuss how you can switch your site over to HTTPS hosting and how to set up an SSL certificate on your site.

Pros and Cons of Switching to HTTPS

If you’ve been using the standard HTTP protocol, here are some pros and cons of switching to HTTPS.

– Time and Cost – You may have to pay someone to switch hosting or pay for an SSL certificate if your host doesn’t offer free SSL. Migrating can also mean making coding changes to old URL’s, images, etc. and a few other considerations mentioned below.

– Compatibility – Some plugins and apps may not work with HTTPS, so check all of your WordPress plugins and apps to see if they are compatible before you migrate.

– SEO – Sites that implement HTTPS usually get more SEO traffic than sites that don’t and you don’t have to worry about any Google security warnings. You should also 301 redirect all your HTTP links to HTTPS.

– Safety – HTTPS is also safer for your website visitors.

If you’re not sure whether to migrate or not, you can leave your site as is and see what happens and decide to switch if the old HTTP set up hurts your user experience and conversion rates. Once you decide to migrate, here are some steps you can follow.

1. Find a host that offers free SSL

Several SSL providers are now providing free SSL certificates for 90 days, one of the most well known being Let’s Encrypt. While you can sign up and install the certificate yourself, it is a pain to have to remember to renew it every 90 days.

Luckily, several web hosts have already integrated with Let’s Encrypt so that it automatically renews your SSL certificate for you. Setting it up is often as easy as clicking a button in your control panel as well.

Simply search for “web host free SSL” to turn up a list of hosts that offer free SSL with their hosting.

2. Set up your SSL certificate

You may need to set up your SSL certificate if you are not on shared hosting. When you are setting up your SSL certificate, you will have to enter your domain name. Be sure to enter the domain name without the www, even if you are using the www prefix. By entering only the root domain, the SSL will apply to all sub-domains on your site.

3. Switch all internal HTTP URL’s to HTTPS

If you had any links hard coded to HTTP, switch them to HTTPS. These changes only apply to internal links on your site.

If you are using WordPress, then you can try installing a plugin like Really Simple SSL which will attempt to automatically convert your site to HTTPS upon activation.

Otherwise, if you are manually making the switch, you can use a find and replace script to replace all hard coded occurrences of HTTP. You can also use a plugin like Better Search Replace.

4. Redirecting HTTP to HTTPS

Be sure to redirect all your old HTTP links to HTTPS. If you are using WordPress, then a plugin like Easy HTTPS Redirection can make it easy to set up this redirect.

If not, the best way to redirect is to update the server configuration file. Many people use 301 redirects instead by updating their htaccess file and this solution is also shown further down on the page:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4083221/how-to-redirect-all-http-requests-to-https/21798882#21798882

5. Redirecting Social Share Counts

When you switch your site from HTTP to HTTPS, you lose your social share counts. Maintaining social share data can be good for social proof and may also have some impact on SEO.

Social Warfare has a featured called Share Recovery that allows you to redirect social share counts from your old HTTP pages to the new HTTPS pages. However, due to changes in social media API’s, they cannot guarantee that share counts will be preserved for all sites. See this article for more details.

Here is an article you can forward to your web developer if you want to use code to redirect your social share counts:

Preserving Social Share Counts when Migrating to HTTPS

6. Check Site Security

After you’ve switched everything over, check your site to make sure it is properly secured. Here are a couple of tools that you can use:

Check for SSL Errors:

https://www.jitbit.com/sslcheck/

Check if your site is set up correctly with SSL:

https://www.whynopadlock.com/check.php

To sum it up, switch to HTTPS does require some work, but it can be worthwhile if you want your visitors to be able to go to your site without getting security warnings for forms and can also help with increasing search engine traffic.