The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media

Practical applications for using social media to boost your business

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Facebook timeline will cause Chaos

If you stay up-to-date with announcements of Facebook you know that your profile will soon be redesigned. Radically redesigned. What you probably know is that the new view of chronology of your profile will stir up a huge fuss. Believe me, when get you it, you will not like it. I am already upset dozens of complaints in future on the articles and hundreds of Facebook groups aggressively promising to delete accounts if the old profile is not restored.

Facebook is no stranger to complaints and threats to quit. The dramatic introduction to the News Feed to the newly added functionality of Ticker, it appears that each revision of recent memory, any how big or small, has caused trouble for the social giant. I have the impression, however, that all others will be pale compared to when the masses receive chronology.

I, like many others who could not wait, cheated the system with the tutorial of TechCrunch and stealth enabled chronology on my profile function. I saw the preview images and wanted to have a chance to toy around the update before the actual launch. I was shocked immediately just to how it was different. I have really thought to return to the old profile but thought if I will be forced to have a timeline in a few weeks, that I could also get used now.

What has caused the greatest amount of shock was just how massively was different from the provision. Right at the top is a giant picture, just as the album cover and an effective display of your information with an easy to learn. The top of your page is an excellent work to focus attention on you; Really you feel like the focus of attention.

Just below your cover photo is a view of two columns of everything you have on Facebook. This part definitely takes some getting used as you seek to follow your actions in chronological order. The chronology is an excellent job of displaying important, memorable and Visual stories to remind you what was going on in your life. You can even quickly navigate through the timeline by month and year. Many users will certainly be creeped out more it will be easy to "stalking" someone on Facebook all existence.

As much as I thought, there was no way I'd like to that timeline, he finally has grown on me. It is really interesting how your profile will be fast becoming a digital autobiography you started without already written knowledge. Thus, also much of a pain and shock your profile of timeline will be first of all, it gives a few days. You will be surprised that you'll like it did it.

on guest author: Drilling August works for FortePromo, which sells promotional items and is a blogger, social media enthusiast and fan of Apple.

It's a single article on SEO Office with exclusivity.

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Guest Posting: Link Building VS Familiarity

I enjoy guest posting when I find the time as it allows me to write about subjects I can’t cover on my own websites. More importantly, it’s a great way of raising my profile, pushing traffic towards my websites and connecting with an audience that I have not had any dealings with as yet.

I’m sure you are all aware of the benefits of guest posting so I won’t speaking about that too much today. What I would like to do is compare the benefits of guest posting on a small selection of blogs and websites regularly against guest posting on new websites every week.

Obviously, it benefits you more to write on large traffic websites that have a large audience. That’s a no brainer. For the sake of argument though let’s assume that all websites you will be writing for will have the same traffic and give you and your website the same level of exposure.

So which do you think is better: Guest posting on a regular basis on 3 or 4 websites or writing a guest post every week for a new website (remember that we are assuming all websites have similar traffic levels etc)?

From a traffic point of view, guest posting on different URLs is better. It will increase your authority on search engines and raise awareness of you, your website or brand, as they will be exposed to a larger audience. The main objective with guest posting is primarily promoting yourself and your website so guest posting on a large number of websites is surely better, isn’t it?

My answer to that question would gear more towards yes. If I was employed by company to guest post online so that traffic was pushed to their new website then publishing 20 articles across 20 websites would likely bring more traffic than publishing them across 3 or 4 websites. However, there are benefits to guest posting regularly over a small number of websites and it’s something you should bear in mind when planning out your guest posting strategy.

Currently I guest post semi regularly for Blogging Tips, John Chow, ProBlogger and Noupe. I have guest posted on many other blogs over the last year or so but those are the websites I have published several articles on.

There are many reasons why I enjoy writing for a small selection of blogs:

I don’t waste a lot of time arranging guest posts

Arranging guest posts on new websites regularly can be time consuming. You need to email the owner, introduce yourself and explain why they should let you guest post. This process can involve a lot of back and fourths. Time is something I hold with high esteem when working online so I don’t take this added work lightly.

I have a good relationship with the owners and editors of the blogs I write for regularly. They are happy with the articles I write and publish them without modifying what I wrote. They are also very professional and quick to respond to my emails. When I want to write an article I email them with a suggestion, they usually email back quickly saying that they are happy with the article topic and then I email them the article. The process is painless.

I know the audience

When you write for a new blog you need to spend some time reading older articles on the site to get a feel for the type of content they publish and the type of content that gets a response. I have been a subscriber for the blogs I guest post regularly on for a long time so I know what type of article is suitable and what isn’t.

The audiance knows me

Guest posting isn’t all about getting a link back to your website at the end of an article. You need to connect with the readers of the blog you are writing for. By doing so they will be much more likely to visit your own blog and much more likely to subscribe.

One of the best ways of connecting with readers is by building familiarity. By posting on a regular basis they will get to know the type of person you are, the type of articles you write and find out more about the websites you run. A one off guest post can be a hit or a miss but if you write regularly for a blog you will be able to engage with readers. They might not agree with your viewpoint on one subject but they may on another.

I’ve not yet directly compared the benefits of guest posting on many websites against posting on a select few. Perhaps the best solution for those of you who do guest post a lot is to guest post on a small selection of blogs regularly in addition to guest posting on new blogs every now and then. Traffic is something that you will be able to monitor accurately though it would be interesting to see if you get more comments or tweets on the articles that are published on your ‘regular blogs’.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this subject.

Good luck,
Kevin

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