It typically includes brief description of the prospect’s problem, why you can solve it better than anyone else, your general approach to solving it and the approximate cost to solve it. It also includes brief description of your organization and the people who will be working on the problem.

Too often, the proposal writer uses one of the standard business proposal templates that guides the writer to produce a generic proposal.  However, a proposal is much more likely to be convincing to the prospect if it is highly customized to the nature and needs of the prospect.

This article provides complete guidelines and extensive free resources to highly customize your business proposal.
All About Business Proposals

Carter McNamara, Authenticity Consulting, LLC

The post How to Write Business Proposals appeared first on Marketing and Social Media.

Guest Author: Disha Dinesh 

SEO is simple. You remove roadblocks and get people to where they belong. Sounds easy enough, and it would be if it weren’t for the fact that SEO is always changing. That’s because search engines are forever being updated and refined.

The latest massive shift was Google’s mobile-first index in November 2016. They introduced it to serve better results to their mobile users, who are growing in number. As part of the announcement it was revealed that eventually, the algorithms will majorly use a website’s mobile version to index and rank its pages.

This means that if you have a website that is mobile optimized, you’ll likely rank well on both mobile and desktops.

Today’s search scenario

60% of all searches happen on mobile devices (Source: eConsultancy)

Over 3/4ths of all searches happen at work or home (Source: DigitalStats)

So if you assumed that mobile focused marketing was only to reach people on the go, that isn’t the case anymore.

Interestingly, research has also found that 55% actions triggered by mobile searches like purchases, store visits or phone calls happen within an hour (Source: DigitalStats) which is significantly higher when compared to desktops.

What you should focus on

For your website to be mobile-friendly, it has to have –

• A responsive design (that fits the device screen perfectly, without making content obscure or hidden)
• Quick loading (your web pages and all the content on them should load quickly)
• Easy scrolling and navigation (your scrollbar and buttons should be easy to use on a mobile device)
• Increased readability
• Easily dismissed pop-ups that don’t block content (they won’t behave the same way they do on desktops)

1. Responsive design

Google requires you to have a responsive website design. Anything that looks clean, is easy to view on a mobile device, and resizes to fit its screen should work well for you.

Shutterfly is a good example for responsive design.

Most WordPress themes are mobile friendly. If you have bought/rented a template from a standard website design service like SquareSpace, it will probably be responsive. If you have good developers, they are very likely well-versed in responsive design. If you have designed your website by yourself, you can take Google’s free course on responsive design to help update your website.

2. Quick loading

According to the Aberdeen Group, a 1 second page delay can cost you –

• An 11% drop in pageviews
• A 16% decrease in customer satisfaction
• A 7% loss of conversions

Page speed is an important mobile ranking factor. You can test your page speed and get insights on how to improve it on Google’s Page Speed Insights.

On a general note, you should optimize images to fit your page. For instance, if your page is 600px wide, you should ideally resize all your images to that size before you use them. If you upload a 1500px image and change the parameter to 600px, the page will take time to load.

JPEGs word best. PNGs work second best.

It is also useful to reduce redirects and the number of plugins installed on your website.

3. Easy scrolling and navigation

When you use large pop-ups and inconvenient scrolling mechanisms on your website, your users are likely to experience difficulty in navigating your site on a mobile device.

Neil Patel advises that you forgo interstitial pop-ups on your website. They are basically the ads placed within a body of text that mobile users might accidentally click on without meaning to.

You should also ensure that your website scrolls easily, and that your buttons (social media share and comment buttons) are sized correctly.

It is best to have few and essential tabs on the home page to ensure that it doesn’t become too cluttered and showcases what is most important.

4. Mobile optimized content

Naturally, your content also needs to be made mobile-friendly. Mobile-first content experts recommend using the F-shaped pattern to assess your content.

People view content on their mobile devices using the same pattern. Their gaze moves from the top-right of the screen to the left, bottom-right to left, scrolls down and ends. A useful fact to bear in mind when creating your content.

Updating Tips

According to a Briggsby study, most users focus on the top 66% of the screen. It is a good idea to place your call-to copy and interactive buttons (like your social sharing buttons), within that space.

1. Restructure your blog posts

While long-form content was the bomb for desktop SEO, it may appear overwhelming to mobile readers. They’re not likely to scroll through 3000 word-long pieces on narrow screens.

You should mix in shorter pieces to focus on your mobile audience. Another workaround is using shorter paras and sentences to convey information. You can also use bullets, lists and images.

2. Use infographics and graphs

Infographics remain one of the most shared pieces of content. By using them and graphs, you can convey more using less space.

They can also help make your content more engaging when compared to lines of text on a small screen.

3. Focus on using different types of content

People are already accustomed to listening to content on their mobile devices, which is one of the reasons why podcasts have taken off as a means for brands to communicate with their audience.

In 2016, Edison Research found that 4.5 million people listened to podcasts and that the number was growing.

Videos are also great for mobile devices. According to a study, 36% users watch long videos on them.

4. Strengthen your social signals

Social signals also have a bearing on search rankings, but differently than most of us originally thought. SEO and marketing expert Larry Kim conducted an experiment to see how social signals related to search rankings.

He found that the following and authority of the page may not matter as much as the engagement on its posts. To improve your overall engagement, you could use a content curation app like Nuzzel and DrumUp to source relevant content to share with your following on a regular basis.

Wrap

Mobile-first indexing will become the primary method for indexing in the future. If your website is optimized for mobile, it is more likely to rank well. The tactics shared on this post are a good place to start.

Author bio:

Disha Dinesh is a Content Writer at Godot Media, a leading content agency. Her interests include social media and content marketing. When she’s not writing, she’s on the hunt for social media trends and inspiration.

Image credit: Screenshot by Disha Dinesh [March, 2017]

The post How to Deal with Google’s Mobile-First Index appeared first on Marketing and Social Media.

 Author: Disha Dinesh

There are two distinctions your should worry about when trying to expand your audience on social media – the difference between a content strategy and a content marketing strategy, and how your content competition differs from your business competition.

Let me clarify each of these before we proceed. A content strategy doesn’t account for marketing and distribution without which your content will remain undiscovered. Yes, that viral video didn’t set itself on fire, it was lit and fed until it caught on. Second, giants whom you may have blind-sighted as business competition remain your competitors in content. Why should readers pick your articles over theirs? Answer this question and have a content distribution strategy in place before you proceed with this list of tactics.

1. Enable social plug-ins on your emails, blog posts and newsletters

Ideally, all media you use as part of your marketing strategy should be interconnected to create a web of traffic.

Your website, blog posts, emails and newsletters should have social sharing/following plug-ins enabled. You and your employees should include social plug-ins in your email sign-offs. That way, every website visitor or person you come in contact with via email could potentially follow you on social.

Your blog is also a great source of traffic for your social media pages. Your blog visitors should be able to share the posts/quotes they like to their social pages. Automatically picked tweets are good, because they simply the sharing process further and encourage more of your visitors to share, giving you an increased visibility.

Tool to use

SumoMe has social media plug-ins with a counter for your blog. The counter reflects the success of a post and pushes more people to share. Most email clients offer hyper-linking to add social links to your emails and newsletters.

2. Identify your sneezers and engage them in a content dispelling program

That’s what Seth Godin calls them, your sneezers. People who have the power to infect your specific niche, can be called your sneezers. How do you get access to and influence over a large audience instantly? You can’t. Even with influencer marketing you have to get on your influencers’ radars and then work at building relationships with them.

One sure fire-way of attracting the attention of influencers is by creating and sharing content that they’re interested in and are likely to pick up. Sometimes, simply doing that is enough to earn a wider visibility. To streamline the process and initiate actual influencer marketing programs, a good tool can help.

Tool to use

FollowerWonk is a great tool that focuses on identifying influencers you could connect with on Twitter. It works based on keywords and your location helping you locate the right influencers for your brand.

3. Organize your employees into an influential advocate army 

Employee advocacy is an alternative means of commanding social media influence. Employees are both the most credible sources on social media and the widest reaching channels (when put together). According to studies, employee advocacy can increase the reach of your content by as much as 561% and increase your engagement by about 7X.

With employees, you already have existing work relationships to begin with. Most of your employees will appreciate being a part of something more than simply their work. All that’s necessary to initiate an advocacy program is their support and a tool to organize the efforts. Make you content accessible to employees and enable them to help you distribute it on social media.

Tool to use

With DrumUp employee advocacy platform you can share content with your employees with ease, and they can share it without much effort to their social media accounts. The leaderboard on the platform helps with keeping employee advocates motivated. If you want to track the success of your employee advocacy program, you can do it with the platform’s analytics.

4. Invade new content territories by re-purposing old content

Expand the reach your content has by converting pre-existing content into new formats. Not only does this increase the visibility of your content by introducing it on new platforms, but also helps you reach people who don’t consume one format or the other.

Convert a blog post into a SlideShare, an infographic, a podcast or video. You simply need to section the write-up, state takeaways under each subhead and type them in/represent them on new formats. Videos aren’t hard to create when they’re a simple slide-show or words and images rendered with the most basic animation. Every image or infographic that you create could turn into a pin for Pinterest.

Tool to use

To create an infographic you could use Venngage which has drag and drop modules that are easy to use. Google Slides are a great choice for making slides for SlideShare and PowToon has pre-made templates to help you animate a simple video.

5. Leverage the right hashtags and @mentions to help your target audience discover you

On social media, there are certain words that can give you access to large audiences – like hashtags and @mentions. Hashtags are used to index conversations so they can be found easily. By using relevant hashtags on your tweets, you give information seekers an opportunity to stumble upon your content. Have you noticed how Twitter suggests hashtags and related hashtags when you type a query in its search bar?

More than often, Twitteratti use those suggestions to find their content. By adding hashtags to your tweets you increase your discoverability. Using hashtags and @mentions you can increase the reach of your content marketing efforts on social media.

People love shout-outs on social media and it often encourages them to share your content. Tag and @mention them to include them in your promotion process.

Tool to use

Even though Twitter suggests hashtags, it doesn’t tell you how popular each of those suggestions are. You could however access that information through a hashtag analysis tool like Hahstagify.me. Based on the popularity of the hashtags and the influencers who are using them (both provided by the tool), decide on which hashtags to add to your posts.

6. Co-create & partner with industry experts and similar businesses for content

Building a large and engaged following is an indefinite and effort intensive process. Instead of waiting until you achieve that status on social media, you can connect with everyone you need even before you develop that following. How? By co-creating content with industry experts and social media influencers.

All you need to run this tactic is a good topic to work with or a good set of questions that your niche’s experts are likely to be interested in discussing. While reaching out to the experts is a time consuming task, it is worth the investment. Not only do you gain valuable insights to share with your audience, but you also initiate relationships with experts in the process, and  enlist their support and influence in promoting the content that you co-create. Co-creation with anyone who has value to offer is a great idea. Even if your content partners don’t have larger following than you do, you still earn new insights and the possibility to reach a part of the target audience that you may have not connected with yet. The only necessity for this tactic is the target – ensure that your co-creators also work with the same target audience.

Tool to use

A good social listening tool can help you identify people who are actively talking about topics that are of interest to your company. Brand24 lets you separate keyword search results by source – social media, blog posts, forums, news or even video. Using it makes it easier to find the right person for the content format you have in mind.

Image credit – Pixabay.com

Author Bio: Disha Dinesh is a social media and content marketing enthusiast who writes for Godot Media, a leading content creation firm.

The post 6 Ways to Instantly Reach a Wider Social Media Audience appeared first on Marketing and Social Media.

From creating your free blog to the development of your business/personal website, WordPress is the highly used open source CMS (Content Management System). It is considered the most popular CMS used over the globe.  With a simple and easy to use dashboard, WordPress is often used by the newbie internet marketer to establish an online presence.

WordPress.com vs. Wordpress.org

Generally, users get confused about WordPress.com and WordPress.org. Technically, WP.com is the free platform where you can create your own blog without spending a single penny. All you need is to register yourself on WP.com. You will be allowed to make your website without paying for the domain name as well as a hosting plan.

On the other hand, WP.org provides you the executable software that is required to upload your theme and develop your website according to your likings and demand. By using WP.org, you need to pay for your own domain name and web hosting plan.

WordPress Website Creation – A WordPress Hosting Guide

But, from novice to expert, you will require a beginner’s guide that will help you to start your own blog/website. The guide will be used to get an overview and steps you need to follow in order to develop your website.

So on demand; we are hereby presenting you the WordPress Hosting Guide. This graphical data will help you to learn how you can start your own website without coding knowledge.

Author Bio:

Maxwell Booth is a passionate blogger who loves to spread his knowledge with the global readers. Being an Internet freak, he always finds something interesting to write upon. Being a developer by profession, he currently holds the position of Technical Account Manager in Web Hosting Decisions.

For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Marketing and Social Media.

The post Guide To WordPress Website Creation appeared first on Marketing and Social Media.

Guest Author: Disha Dinesh

In 2015, the average US commuter spent 42 hours caught in traffic jams.

On any given day, how much time do you spend away from your computer screen?

What if you could complete a few tasks on your mobile phone while on the go?

For any social media manager, a few minutes of work while waiting at a restaurant or while stuck in traffic could mean time to schedule posts for a day, respond to queries or personally interact with followers on social media.

Fortunately, there are a host of apps that feature on-the-go functionality so you can save time and improve your social media marketing productivity.

1. Mention

Stellar brand reputation could mean the difference between remaining a small scale company and expanding to a large and well-known organization.

Maintaining a presence on social media isn’t easy because of its quick pace and unpredictability.

To ensure that your brand’s reputation remains untarnished, it is vital for you to monitor social media for conversations mentioning your brand.

Catching positive mentions is equally important. You could thank the person who mentioned you and share that comment for added credibility and trust on social media.

Mention has a mobile app (for android and iOS) that lets you set up notifications for keywords, one of which could be your brand name. Mention is also available as a desktop application.

2. DrumUp

As a brand it is crucial for you to provide your target audience with something that they can’t find elsewhere, or what is referred to as a ‘unique value proposition’ in business terms.

What is your unique value proposition on social media?

What content are you sharing with your audience that would make them want to follow you as opposed to other brands on social media?

If you could source fresh, useful content in your niche each day and share it with your social media audience, you could earn their favor and loyalty.

DrumUp is a content curation app (mobile: android and iOS) that discovers fresh content that fits the theme that you have choose. You could also schedule the articles you want right from the app or store it in a library to recycle at a later time.

3. Over

Succeeding on social media requires some juggling of themes and content formats to hold your audience’s attention.

After all, it has been widely discussed how the current internet user’s attention span is lesser than that of a goldfish’s.

You could touch on different sup-topics in your niche and move between blogs, infographics and videos from time to time.

Over is a visual content editing app (mobile: android and iOS) that assists you in converting flat images into something interesting and intriguing that could speak to your target market.

The app lets you choose from a list of unique fonts (for custom text) and clip art that you could pass over an image to make it more engaging.

Additionally, the app has the whole set of editing options – cropping, fading, resizing, stretching and a lot more that you could experiment with.

4. Nuzzel

I attended a digital marketing conference conducted by a multinational IT services company last month.

They asked the people who read newspapers to raise their hands. Out of the 100 participants in the room, 3 people lifted their hands.

We were then asked where we read our news. While 40% of that remaining lot said news aggregators or apps, 60% said social media.

Do you use the news tab on Twitter?

Nuzzel was originally designed to deal with the issues of social media information overload.

Nuzzel (mobile: android and iOS) helps you discover the best of the news stories posted on social media by your friends without having too much at hand, or missing out on anything.

The app also lets you analyze stories shared by your connections so you can assess your audience.

5. Plume
   

 If Twitter brings you a large number of referrals, and you spend a considerable amount of time on it, Plume could be an interesting app to use.

A Twitter client, it allows you to customize the way you view Twitter, and recently Facebook.

On the app, you could integrate your Twitter timeline to your home page and control several functions from there.

A lot of functions exist in widgets that you could experiment with and keep the ones you prefer on your home screen.

Additionally, Plume (mobile: android and iOS) allows Twitter Geo-tagging and replies with autocomplete for hash tags and Twitter handles that you might want to type.

If you want to focus on specific users, or turn some off for some interval in time, you could selectively mute those Twitter handles via Plume.

The live streaming is by far the best feature, especially if you participate in a lot of Twitter chats.

6. Facebook Pages Manager

If you’re a Facebook page manager (mobile: android and iOS), and a multiple one at that, this app if for you.

Managing multiple pages on Facebook itself is time consuming. If you work with an agency that manages multiple Facebook pages for clients, this app will make the activity easier.

The home screen itself lets you view all the pages you manage as a list and choose between them.

Along with the list, the home page also displays your page insights and page administrators so you can quickly assess how to delegate work and pick up the slack when your stats are low.

From the app you can comment, like and share content and view the number of views for each post, making it easy to monitor and plan while on the go.

7. Canva

Visuals are the best way to catch your social media audience’s attention. With every piece of text you publish, you should add a visual to let it escape from being a flat read.

A large group of people are visually inclined and prefer to view their content rather than read it.

In fact the human brain, communicates in a largely visual manner.

There is the fact that creating visuals isn’t easy, until you’ve tried Canva that is.

Canva (mobile: iOS) has a wide variety of templates you can choose from for every imaginable purpose.

Once you’ve picked a pre-designed template it is only a matter of experimenting with the drag-drop feature and putting together a simple but elegant looking graphics.

Amping-up your presence on social media is simply about maximizing your time, increasing your visual appeal and sourcing fresh and useful content regularly. Managing this well will leave you room to create the thought leadership pieces that you need in order to establish a name in the industry.

Author bio:

Disha Dinesh is a Content Writer at Godot Media, a leading content agency. Her interests include social media and content marketing. When she’s not writing, she’s on the hunt for social media trends and inspiration.

For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Marketing and Social Media.

The post 7 Mobile Apps to Amp-Up Your Social Media Presence appeared first on Marketing and Social Media.

Several factors play into creating successful content: a clearly defined outline, quality writing and value. But most importantly, you’ve to wait for content to make its impact on your marketing field. Content as a strategy isn’t short-term, it is means for you to construct a loyal following of potential leads over a period of time, we all know this. For maximum ROI on your content strategy it is logical to invest in writing a good amount of content with long term value for your subscribers.

Look at content like your marketing currency – a dollar today is worth more tomorrow. Money appreciates and ideally, so should the kind of content you write.

How to write content with long term value

Essentially, you have to aim at writing something that your audience will return for, it is as simple as that. You can begin by defining what that could be.

Pick a strong premise

What kind of content would be useful always? The way you answer this question will decide the outcome of your long term value content piece. Why should your audience view your content?

Neil Patel has 6 questions to answer this question.

“What topics are always relevant?

What goals are always in place?

What controversies never go away?

What problems always need to be solved?

What skills do people always need?

What qualities of the industry are always important?”

Base your blogs, videos, infographics on topics that fit any of these descriptions and you’re good to go. For instance, I wrote a blog on the 7 types social media content that drive most engagement. Although engagement is evolving on platforms (like the new reactions on Facebook), ways to drive that engagement will remain unchanged and social media managers will always want to read it.

Create a Comprehensive Piece

Given that your content will have to be extra-comprehensive, navigating through it without a roadmap will result in chaos. A detail oriented outline can make your writing process more organized, efficient and complete.

Start at the top

A great piece with a boring headline is a disaster, you’ll lose out on click-throughs if you don’t grab your audience’s attention while you can – with your header.

Your header should communicate 2 things – value and context.

I’ll reiterate this: Why should your audience read your post? Effectively answer that in your title, and directly address your audience in it – this is a great idea. For example: How to Capture Your High Value Target Audience – for Social Media Managers. People want to feel important, and like you have written or made something specifically for them.

Your headline should also sell your content.

Social media and marketing experts have always discussed the prominence of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – the base laws of human motivation – in using motivation to encourage a certain kind of behaviour. To understand how to write a headline that compels someone to click you could adapt the laws of this pyramid.

State your takeaways

I’ve found this more useful than focussing on subheads because it takes the process one further. Instead of formulating what you’ll put into your sub paragraphs, write down the central ideas

or takeaways of each paragraph. This can help you craft a more useful and effective piece. Ask yourself, would you want your readers to know?

Title: How to Capture Your High Value Target Audience – for Social Media Managers

How to find your high value target audience – 1

What are the best ways to engage with them – 3

How to bring them to your page – 2

How to convert them into leads – 5

Which tools or KPIs to use to monitor conversions – 6

How do you build good, long-term relationships with them – 4

You can do this quickly and as the ideas come, because you can always reorganize them to form an easy flow. Remember to direct each takeaway at insights that can prove viable over time, in keeping with your long term value theme.

Add substance to each takeaway

Do you remember your high school chemistry manuals? Colorimetry is a procedure to measure the concentration of substances based on light absorbed by them. This procedure was founded by discoveries that go back to the 1720s! A lot of scientific procedures remain firmly based in the fundamentals.

This is precisely what you want to create for your audience. Sound knowledge that focusses on logic and the science of marketing. Don’t hesitate to do extensive research and find your facts, figures and functions that can support your content. Write to guide your audience to understand fundamental concepts. The result is more permanent and they’ll return to your “marketing manuals” for help.

It is important to note that long term value is created by whole efforts. You’ll have to go deep into the subject. Your subheads should ideally have further divisions and so on to explain every last concept encompassed within the subject you choose to write about.

Title: How to Capture Your High Value Target Audience – for Social Media Managers

How to find your high value target audience – 1

1. Listening in on social

……Platform wise social listening

……Case study

2. Tools that help

……How to leverage each tool to identify important conversations

……Case study

3. Analyzing buzz

……Case study

Explaining each concept with examples and images – graphs, charts, or procedural images can further add value to your content.

Make necessary updates

For your content to have relevance always, you may have to make inclusions or edits as things progress with your industries. Neil Patel suggests 3 substantial (para edits/additions) edits every quarter and also points out that Google loves fresh content and favors it, if but marginally, in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

You could also add notes, or simply supplement your content with well curated content (content curation platforms like DrumUp help you find specific and relevant content). Add strategic links on your long term value content to these fresh pieces and you can instantly build reserves for your audience.

Finally, remember not to compromise on writing and content quality. Make it an enjoyable read. If your content is top-notch, google’s algorithms will place you well, if your content is a great read, your audience will place you as a permanent go-to. Both extremely valuable positions to hold.

Author Bio: Disha Dinesh is a social media and content marketing enthusiast who writes for Godot Media, a leading social media marketing firm.

The post How to Create Content With Long Term Value for Your Subscribers appeared first on Marketing and Social Media.

FREE Video Speed Controller for Chrome

Have you ever watched a video playback, feeling frustrated with the slow pace and your inability to move it forward? Well, if you’re a Chrome user, now you can grab this FREE HTML5 video speed controller (only for Google Chrome) and enjoy your new video speed control!

Many video viewers report that accelerated viewing keeps their attention longer: faster delivery keeps the viewer more engaged with the content. In fact, with a little training many end up watching videos at 2x+ the recorded speed. Some studies report that after being exposed to accelerated playback, listeners become uncomfortable if they are forced to return to normal rate of presentation.

The science of accelerated playback

Faster playback translates to quick progress, better engagement and retention. Average adult reads prose text at 250 to 300 words per minute (wpm). By contrast, the average rate of speech for English speakers is ~150 wpm, with slide presentations often closer to 100 wpm. As a result, when given the choice, many viewers speed up video playback to ~1.3~1.5 its recorded rate to compensate for the difference.

Faster HTML5 Video

HTML5 video provides a native API to accelerate playback of any video. The problem is, many players either hide, or limit this functionality. For best results playback speed adjustments should be easy and frequent to match the pace and content being covered: we don’t read at a fixed speed, and similarly, we need an easy way to accelerate the video, slow it down, and quickly rewind the last point to listen to it a few more times.

Install this Chrome Extension

Once the extension is installed, simply navigate to any page that offers HTML5 video (example), and you’ll see a speed indicator in top left corner. Hover over the indicator to reveal the controls to accelerate, slowdown, and quickly rewind or advance the video. Or, even better, simply use your keyboard:

• S – decrease playback speed.
• D – increase playback speed.
• R – reset playback speed.
• Z – rewind video by 10 seconds.
• X – advance video by 10 seconds.

Note that you can customize these shortcuts in the extension settings page. Also, a few tips for enabling and forcing HTML5 video:

• YouTube: make sure you enable the HTML5 opt-in experiment.
• If you’re adventurous, try disabling the Flash plugin in Chrome in chrome://plugins/
• If viewing a video on Wistia, right click to switch to HTML5 video, refresh the page, and the controls will appear.

FAQ

The video controls are not showing up? This extension is only compatible with HTML5 video. If you don’t see the controls showing up, chances are you are viewing a Flash video. If you want to confirm, try right-clicking on the video and inspect the menu: if it mentions flash, then that’s the issue. That said, most sites will fallback to HTML5 if they detect that Flash it not available. You can try manually disabling Flash plugin in Chrome:

• In a new tab, navigate to chrome://plugins
• Disable “Adobe Flash Player”
• Restart your browser and try playing your video again

The speed controls are not showing up for local videos? To enable playback of local media (e.g. File > Open File), you need to grant additional permissions to the extension.

• In a new tab, navigate to chrome://extensions
• Find “Video Speed Controller” extension in the list and enable “Allow access to file URLs”
• Open a new tab and try opening a local file, the controls should show up

This simple and convenient tool will save you time and money. Similar paid tools cost about $30 and don’t offer significant advantages. Feel free to share this link on your Facebook timeline or send to your friends via email!

For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Marketing and Social Media.

.. _____ ..

About Lisa M. Chapman:

Lisa Chapman helps company leaders define, plan and achieve their goals, both online and offline. After 25+ years as an entrepreneur, she is now a business and marketing consultant, business planning consultant and social media consultant. Online, she works with clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa (at) LisaChapman (dot) com. Her book, The WebPowered Entrepreneur – A Step-by-Step Guide is available at:

• Amazon.com
• Barnes & Noble

The post Save Time and Money appeared first on Marketing and Social Media.

Make Your Life Easier

Do you multitask constantly? Need a little bit of help? Several content marketing tools will make life easier. And if you need a little more help, you can always turn to Chrome extensions.

Browser extensions are really handy little workhorses. They assist you with tasks like content curation, organizing passwords, links, images and much more. Just arm your browser with these extensions, so they’re just a click away when you need them. Let’s take a look at some of the best Chrome extensions that can boost your content marketing efforts.

        Lastpass – Free Password Vault

Was it your birth-date? Your first pet’s name? Or was it the name of the guy/girl you had a crush on in high school? Remembering passwords for various websites and applications can be frustrating. It’s terribly annoying when you forget your password and have to reset it. But, with the LastPass extension, you will only ever have to remember one password – your master password for LastPass.

All passwords for your other accounts can be saved on the extension, and the extension can log in to all the websites you use automatically. It also lets you synch your passwords wherever you require them. Plus, it is a free tool that supports multiple browsers and operating systems.

2. 2. DrumUp – Free content discovery, curation and scheduling

The DrumUp Chrome plugin is just as efficient as the web and mobile application. It provides you with story recommendations related to the article or blog post that you are currently reading. Once you download the extension, you will be able to see a small DrumUp icon on the right hand side of your browser. To get your story recommendations, all you have to do is click on the DrumUp extension icon. The recommendations are displayed in a drop-down window and these stories can be shared on your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages directly from the browser.

If you aren’t logged into any of your social media accounts, the extension directs you to a sign in page on the main DrumUp homepage. It’s a great way to share engaging content to keep your social media pages active with minimum effort.

3. Nimbus – Free Screenshot and Screencast Capture
   

Grab screenshots in a heartbeat with the Nimbus Chrome extension. We all know the importance of having visual content accompanying blog posts, articles or even social media posts. If you’ve been avoiding taking screenshots simply because it was cumbersome thing to do, Nimbus can really help. The tool even lets you record screencasts and edit your screenshots to add in stickers, arrows, patterns and text boxes.

4. OneTab – Free Browser Tab Management
   

Going through multiple tabs on your browser while researching can be quite frustrating. OneTab provides a clean solution to this problem by saving all the open tabs in a simple list. This way, you can easily organize all your tabs and go back to them whenever you need to refer to them.

With OneTab you don’t have to save your links on a different document or bookmark dozens of links, only to wonder later about which ones you were planning on using. You can access your list of tabs even after you have completely closed the browser window. Apart from that, OneTab gives you the option of either opening all tabs at once, or opening them individually. You can even share the lists with your colleagues, if you are collaborating on a project.

5. Riffle – Free Twitter Management
   

Using the Riffle Chrome extension, you can find out who the most popular users on Twitter are, and also find a way to engage with your followers. You can instantly build connections with other Twitterati, and get access to valuable data like the number of followers, and retweets a particular user has.

The extension can also provide you with real-time activity analysis which allows you to have more personal conversations with your followers. It’s a great tool for not just content marketers but also for others who work in sales and customer service related jobs.

Grammarly – Free Grammar Checker

Live no longer in the fear that you have published a post or sent out an email riddled with silly grammatical errors. The Grammarly Chrome extension is designed to spot grammatical errors and awkward sentences in your content. You can go back and edit your work to ensure that is completely error-free before publishing or sending it out.

The extension is easy to install on your Chrome browser and it constantly keeps working in the background to verify spellings, grammar and sentence structure. Grammarly can spot and fix over a 100 types of mistakes if you use the free versions. With the paid version, it provides you with an explanation as to why the content is incorrect and what can be done to fix it. Millions of writers from more than 200 countries trust Grammarly’s products to help perfect their written English. Also see more info, browse Grammarly services, download the software, and see Grammarly’s customer reviews

7. Giphy – Free GIF engine
   

No matter how you pronounce it, GIFs are all the rage right now. You may have seen them on various blog posts, and might have reminded yourself to use one the next time you write a blog post. You can immediately attract a lot of attention by placing a funny GIF in your content, but finding the right GIF to match the reaction you are trying to show can be tough.

The Giphy extension has a repository of over a thousand GIFs and with it’s simple search function, you can find the right one in a matter of seconds. To place it where you need it, you can either drag and drop it or right click on the GIF. Every time you use the extension, you will be able to see the most trending GIFs.

8. Ritetag – Free Analytics and Social Crafting
   

Adding memes and images to your posts just became much easier with the Ritetag Chrome extension. It suggests various gifs, memes and images that are related to your post, and if you like, you can add them in to visually boost your post. It also offers precise statistics so that you can create the perfect hashtag for your content. Use Ritetag with other applications and take advantage of the other features it offers such as bulk upload, analytics and shortened URLs.

This Chrome extension works on most social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. For Twitter, Ritetag also recommends trending hashtags so that your posts can be discovered easily.

9. Snip.ly – Free Link Shortener with Custom Message
   

With Sniply, you can easily add a call to action to any content that you post and still link back to your own website. This is especially helpful if you are posting content on someone else’s blog, and you would like to attract visitors to your website. If you decide to publish someone else’s content, you can still add a personalized message and a Sniply link that links back to your site. This is a great way to engage customers with your brand.

Using Sniply, you can monitor how many clicks you received on your posts and the number of conversions that resulted from it. The tool also gives you information about the amount of time a visitor might have spent on your page.

10. 
    Rapportive – Free Networking Tool

    This is a great extension for marketers as it helps you connect with new people. Using Rapportive, you can extract basic information from a person’s LinkedIn profile, allowing you to see exactly whom you are communicating with.

This is a superb feature if you are in talks with a potential client or a partner, and it also lets you confirm their email addresses.  You can directly connect with your contact on LinkedIn without having to leave your inbox.

These Chrome extensions are easy to install and can make your life much simpler – be it content discovery, tab organization or grammar corrections. These extensions are a great help and you can easily utilize them in your day-to-day management tasks.

Author Bio: Jessica Davis represents Godot Media, a leading content marketing firm. Her areas of interest include technology, science and fashion.

For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Marketing and Social Media.

.. _____ ..

About Lisa M. Chapman:

Lisa Chapman helps company leaders define, plan and achieve their goals, both online and offline. After 25+ years as an entrepreneur, she is now a business and marketing consultant, business planning consultant and social media consultant. Online, she works with clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa (at) LisaChapman (dot) com. Her book, The WebPowered Entrepreneur – A Step-by-Step Guide is available at:

• Amazon.com
• Barnes & Noble

The post 10 Best Content Marketing Tools appeared first on Marketing and Social Media.

Who Are The Millennials?

Millennials (also known as the Millennial Generation or Generation Y) are the demographic cohort following Generation X. Most observers use birth years ranging from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. Many use 1982 as the Millennials’ starting birth year and 2004 as the last birth year.

This is the biggest group since the baby boomers and they have a large influence in the marketplace for jobs, technology and shopping habits. They have grown up with technology at their fingertips and because of this they are comfortable and confident when shopping online.

Millennials LOVE to Shop Online

This group of young people have a combined purchasing power of $170 billion – so they should be seen as massive influencers in the retail space. But they don’t want to be seen as a group. The millennial are most definitely individuals. They want the companies that they buy from to treat them in that way.

By connecting with the average millennial through social media and email marketing, the organizations must respect their individuality. They want more than just somewhere to buy stuff. They want a brand that they can understand, respect and interact with on different levels.

Millennials Shop on Mobile Devices

More than a third of millennials shop on mobile devices at least once a month or more. This means that the savvy retailer has more than one way of connecting with the millennial generation. Mobile stores, social media accounts and interactive website services are an absolute must for any retailer that wants to capture a share of the millennial dollar.

You must be ready, willing and able to interact with the millennial on their terms to be able to do business with them. In fact in a recent survey, millennials ranked the use of technology as the one thing that they thought set their generation apart.

It has been cited that 83% of millennials sleep with their smartphone, so you can see that they are highly devoted to their technology! And it is here that the more successful retailers can see an opportunity and run with it.

Social Media is the Millennials’ Playground

The millennial generation are great users of social media. By having a social media account that can connect with the average millennial and give them something they can’t get elsewhere, a company can build a relationship that lasts a lifetime and brings in great rewards.

Your social media sites need to be more than just somewhere else for the millennial to see you, or buy from you. It needs to give them engaging content that appeals to them and their values. They love to see what brands their friends are following on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. An amazing 47% said that someone else’s following, liking, pinning or tweeting info on social media helped introduce them to a brand. This is marketing taken right into the digital age!

How to Connect with Millennials

Millennials want to feel as though they are valued by the organization they deal with. One way of doing this is to have millennials in the workforce. The US workforce is expected to be made up of 36% millennials by the year 2025. If you have millennials working for you then they are more likely to connect with other millennials, and solve the problems that other millennials want to be solved.For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Marketing and Social Media.

.. _____ ..

About Lisa M. Chapman:

Lisa Chapman helps company leaders define, plan and achieve their goals, both online and offline. After 25+ years as an entrepreneur, she is now a business and marketing consultant, business planning consultant and social media consultant. Online, she works with clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa (at) LisaChapman (dot) com. Her book, The WebPowered Entrepreneur – A Step-by-Step Guide is available at:

• Amazon.com
• Barnes & Noble

The post Who Are The Millennials and How Do They Shop? appeared first on Marketing and Social Media.

Want to get the word out about your business and earn valuable backlinks at the same time?

After a deep dive into the world of online press releases, I have come up with a short list of the best online Press Release sites for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs and small businesses. Many hours of research have gone into whittling a long list down to these three. After using a wide array of press release services, I believe that these are solid, reputable choices. I have had good experience using them, and with good results.

The vast majority of online press release sites are not as professional as we wish, and most should be avoided so as not to embarrass your company.

However, these sites offer a choice of free and paid, with the free options being solid services that meet the basic needs of most small businesses. Especially attractive:

• They are relatively high Page Rank (PR). According to Google, “PageRank is what Google uses to determine the importance of a web page. It’s one of many factors used to determine which pages appear in search results.”

• They are “Do-Follow”, meaning a backlink from this domain (when they post it on their site) gives you “link juice” – or, ‘extra credit’ from Google and other search engines.

Getting all this in one press release service is a feat accomplished only after doing the extensive research which led me to these sites. So enjoy!

www.Newswire.com (PR 6)  Syndication Service

Through a single page submission form you are able to input all of your press release information. Their editorial process is fast and you will receive notification within a few hours. If you are looking for additional distribution, you can try out the media outreach feature.

Newswire Free and Paid Account Comparison – starter packages

• Get your press release published on 7000+News and Media Outlets.
• Your story is syndicated to a wide range of business, financial and news outlets to increase your presence online and in search.
• In the body of the press release, you may insert 3 links maximum. This is a real boon, because most other free press release site only allow links in the body if you use their paid version.
• If you have any questions you can contact them via phone (800-713-7278) or their helpdesk service.

Briefingwire.com (PR4) http://www.briefingwire.com/ Online Press Release Service

BriefingWire.com is a simple, effective and FREE service. Your press releases will show up in search if you use specific keywords in the title, subtitle, and repeatedly in the body of the press release.

Free Press Release Features:

• Immediate Publication: Your press will be live the moment you submit it.
• Dedicated URL: Your press release gets a dedicated URL
• (e.g. http://www.briefingwire.com/pr/your-pr).
• 1 Backlink: You are allowed one backlink in the Author Details box of your press release.
• Distribution: They distribute your press release to all major Search Engines and RSS Feed Aggregators. 

Breifingwire.com Free and Paid Membership comparison – two options only 

How long does it take to publish a press release?

Publication is immediate. Your press release is live the moment you press the submit button. You do have the option of editing or deleting a press release after you publish it.

Where does the press release go?

Your press release is distributed globally to many major information hubs including Google, Yahoo and Bing. There are many other distribution sites as well but those are the most prominent. The goal is to make it easier for people to find your press release… to make you searchable.

You can also:

• Edit Your Press Release After You’ve Submitted and Published It
• Remove or Delete a Press Release

www.OnlinePRNews.com  (PR 4)  Online Press Release Service

Online PR News offers affordable multimedia press releases that achieve high search engine visibility — putting your message in front of the right people at exactly the right time. They’ve combined all of the features that internet marketers, business owners, and journalists have asked for in an online press release distribution site.

OnlinePRNews.com Free and Paid Options Comparison – starter packages

If your free release does not show up as approved after 24 hours, review their press release submission guidelines. With the FREE option, you may include a maximum of 2 links in the body.

Press Releases Published on Online PR News Must:

1. Have a legitimate news angle (announcing something new and/or timely)
2. Contain proper attribution
3. Be news from the company actually submitting the news
4. Have an objective tone — not be written in casual first person language (I, we, you, etc)
5. Not contain overt sales language (Are YOU looking for ways to make money online??” “Buy now!!!”)
6. Not be from a site that offers adult products and services, escort services, illegal products and services, scams and pyramid schemes, or iPhone unlocking products
7. Not advertise products that promote the use of any Google product including YouTube, Blogger, or Orkut
8. Not be a duplicate of a previously submitted press release
9. Not contain excessive links
10. Contain a valid email and phone number
11. Be at least 250 words

Online PR News Customer Service – Contact them by email via contact form or call 888-451-4213

I hope this information saves you much time and money. Happy PR!

For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Marketing and Social Media.

.. _____ ..

About Lisa M. Chapman:

Lisa Chapman helps company leaders define, plan and achieve their goals, both online and offline. After 25+ years as an entrepreneur, she is now a business and marketing consultant, business planning consultant and social media consultant. Online, she works with clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa (at) LisaChapman (dot) com. Her book, The WebPowered Entrepreneur – A Step-by-Step Guide is available at:

• Amazon.com
• Barnes & Noble

The post Free and Cheap Press Release Sites for Small Business appeared first on Marketing and Social Media.