3 truths about content-commerce every publisher needs to know@@

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Content marketing has become quite the buzzword throughout the Internet marketing industry, but despite the rapidly growing hype that surrounds it, it isn’t a new concept. In fact, pretty much any online experience revolves around some type of content, whether it’s checking your Facebook feed, watching YouTube videos, reading a blog post, or making a purchase. People are constantly coming in contact with various types content online and that’s why there’s been so much emphasis placed on creating, sharing, and marketing content well. Content enables publishers to answers questions, attract visitors, build trust, and more, and that’s why it’s essential that publishers develop great content marketing strategies

To help you do that, we’re going to take a look at VigLink’s latest “Content-Commerce Report” and share three facts that we think all publishers should know about content marketing. VigLink is a link optimization and site monetization tool for publishers and has a network of over 35,000 merchants, 300,000 active sites, and 10 billion monthly page views. Their recent Content-Commerce Report offers an in-depth look at the state of content-driven commerce as it was observed through their network in Q4’13.

1. Deal Sites & Forums Produce More Sales A lot of bloggers try to at least generate some sort of income if not make a living off of their sites, but according to this report, blogs and editorial sites drove the least amount of sales for VigLink publishers. If you want to generate more online ad revenue you may want to consider creating a forum page on your blog, or developing a deal site or an exclusive forum. Based on their findings, VigLink reports that coupon and deal sites had an average earning per click (EPC) of well over 300, with forums generating an EPC of 150, and blogs generating a measly EPC of 75. So if you’re a blogger or editorial site owner, it may wise to create a forum section for your audience.

2. Your Niche Determines Your Earnings
Not all verticals are created equal and the niche that your site is in will determine how much money you actually make. “The higher the margin a retailer has, the more they can afford to pay in commissions,” the report explains. And after taking a look at the statistics, its clear that there is quite a discrepancy between the EPCs of various niches. According to the report, “Housewares/House Furnishing” sites took home the highest EPC, hovering around 300, while publishers in the “Books/Music/Video” niche found themselves at the bottom of the totem pole with an EPC index of less than 50.

The takeaway here—try to figure out which niches have the highest margins and find a way to incorporate those types of products into your site. For example, if you write about books, try linking to a company that sells bookshelves for your readers who are collectors and need a place to store their old books. This will provide you with a great way to bring in some fresh new content and generate more money all at the same time.

3. Mobile Isn’t For Everybody, At Least Not Right Now We’ve heard it over and over again how everything is going mobile and if you want to be successful as a publisher, you have to start adopting these new technologies and new practices instantly. Well according to this report, that isn’t all true. Based on the statistics shown in the report, it looks like publishers who are in the fashion/retail space are doing well on mobile, but few others are enjoying the same success. For example, wayfair.com, shopbop.com, Nordstrom.com, and zappos.com are in the top ten for mobile EPCs. However, there is also a noticeable drop from the top mobile EPC (wayfair.com, 3,000) to the second best EPC (shopbop.com, roughly 1,800) which suggests that mobile is still an extremely challenging channel to harness. Plus, VigLink’s findings suggest that for every dollar earned from desktops and laptops, a click on mobile was worth only 53 cents. So if you’re feeling the pressure to adopt mobile right away, you can rest a bit easier knowing that it isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be; not yet, anyhow.

Author By:Andre Bourque @TECHNORATI MEDIA

5 Services For Building Websites on a Budget@@

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There's little doubt that a custom-designed and developed website is ideal for business. A trained professional can help you optimize your site for good search engine rankings, custom-tailor the look and feel to appeal to your target audience, reinforce your company's image and ensure that your content is easily accessible and the user experience enjoyable. However, large web-development budgets often just aren't possible, particularly for small businesses or entrepreneurs who are just getting started. In these cases, a number of web services exist to allow you to grow your company's presence online, often in just minutes. We'll take a look at five of them below.

One of the most popular of these services is Squarespace. With subscription prices ranging from $12 to $36 per month, you can create an entire website for not much more than you would pay for basic shared hosting. All Squarespace accounts include hosting, the Squarespace content management system, the visual designer tools and access to widgets and add-ons to incorporate into your site. You can also use your own domain name with all levels of Squarespace accounts. Larger plans give you room for more pages, more bandwidth, more management staff and access to advanced features like FAQs, SSL, form builders and member registration.One thing we really like about Squarespace is its visual designer. You can choose from available themes or create and customize your own, either via user-friendly point and click, or by directly editing the theme CSS files.

For those of you on a really small budget (or who just like the idea of getting something for free), Weebly is an entirely free service that will have you up and running on the web in no time. For the price (or lack thereof), Weebly's feature set is quite impressive. You'll be able to use your own domain name and choose from more than 100 professional themes, which can then be further customized via the theme editor. Weebly also has gallery/slide show functionality, audio and video players, a custom form builder and built-in blogging platform.The company has been around for five years and gets revenue from several paid subscription plans and is backed by one of the largest VC firms around, so it's safe to say Weebly will be a player for a while.

Jigsy is another easy-to-use website builder offering hosted plans for businesses and individuals alike. Jigsy's plans range from free (ad-supported, with limited functionality) to $30 per month, and all paid plans will actually let you host multiple websites from the same account. Jigsy also has a powerful blogging platform and utilizes a widget-based system for expanding and adding functionality to the sites. Widgets are available for features like Google maps integration, RSS feeds, PayPal and eBay selling and more. Jigsy also offers tools for easily creating photo galleries and slide shows.Further, Jigsy allows you to customize the layout and look of your site via the website builder, and unlike some other services listed here, it also handles email hosting.

If you feel a bit intimidated by the thought of having to manage and customize your own CSS files or widget code, SnapPages is a drag-and-drop website builder and hosted service provider that aims to make website creation as simple as a few clicks. Many themes are available and, like similar services, each is customizable. Features for all plans include a blogging platform, photo galleries, calendars and basic access control via a "friends" list. Plans range from free to $30 per month, much like Jigsy. With the paid plans ($8 or $30), you'll be able to host your own domain name, add your own custom HTML and JavaScript code, gain access to powerful analytics and control various SEO options. SnapPages' top-tier plan is intended for developers and will allow you to do all of this, as well as manage multiple accounts, track projects and create invoices, so you can use SnapPages to build sites for your network or clients.

Last, but not least, Yola is another web site creation service offering free and paid plans (from $99 to $499 per year). With more than 100 themes to choose from and customization options via Yola's site builder, you'll be able to easily create a website that's just right for your business. Other features include analytics and traffic statistics, premium styles and multi-site hosting. If you spring for Yola Premier (the $499 per year plan), Yola will also throw in one-on-one consultation with professional designers, and both paid plans include advertising credits on popular ad platforms like Facebook and Google AdWords. What other website-building platforms have you tried? Let us know in the comments.

How To Twitter@@ by Joseph/@cyrustmybjaz/ by twiends.com@@

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New to Twitter and wondering how to get started? We've made this fun 'how to twitter' infographic to help you get going quickly. We try and answer beginner questions such as how to set up your Twitter account, how to start tweeting, and how to use hashtags and lists. Hope you enjoy Facebook

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Excellent and Free Blog Editors for the Desktop@@

@dhangcalacday79 @prettytiqya follow us twitterians thanks pic.twitter.com/NYeUfAYTDk
— Joseph (@cyrustmybjaz29) March 12, 2014

It’s often convenient to have an offline blog editor if you often work in places without ready access to the internet. Even if you do have an internet connection, desktop blogging apps can give you a host of features that the normal UI of your blogging platform simply can’t offer. In this article, we briefly review some top-notch free desktop blog editors for you to consider.

Thingamablog is an open source blogging application that has a wide array of features such as an RSS feed import function that allows you to import blog entries into the application. It has the capability to post to blogs via email and tools to set-up and install a weblogging platform onto your server in minutes. In addition, it has built-in wizards to aid you in accomplishing your blogging tasks.

Surprisingly (to many), Microsoft has a very good offline desktop blogging application called Windows Liver Writer that’s regarded by seasoned bloggers as the best one out there (for Windows users). It has a characteristic MS Office look and feel that will be familiar to most Windows users. A key feature of this blog editor is its ability to post maps, videos and other types of media easily

Among the many things that makes BlogDesk a favorite amongst bloggers is the handy ability to publish posts to multiple blogs at once. BlogDesk comes with an ImageWizard feature that allows you to prepare your images for the web. Its spellchecker has a built-in dictionary that supports 14 languages. It even has a notebook that serves as a scratch pad that you can use to keep track of your post ideas. It also has a feature called Tag-generator that remembers previously used keywords to help you tag your posts quicker.

The main advantage that Bleezer has is its cross-platform support for Linux, Windows and the Mac OS. It’s compatible with most blogging and content management platforms such as Drupal, WordPress and Blogger. Features that will appeal to you in Bleezer include image uploads to a server of your choice, a good spellchecker to avoid typos, the ability to add keyword tags to your posts, and a WYSIWIG interface. Bleezer can also work while you are logged into your account for real-time posting.

Top 10 Free Online Blogging Platforms@@

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WordPress.com is perhaps the most feature-rich blogging service out there. It uses the popular open source web software WordPress, and offers many features in its free version — traffic stats, anti-spam filters, SEO, gorgeous themes and more. If you choose to use WordPress.com, you’ll be in good company, as many popular blogs — including CNN’s Political Ticker, People Magazine’s Style Watch and Flickr — are on this platform. If you need more than what the free version offers, you can opt for their premium features that include custom domains, upgraded web hosting resources and more. Whether you’re an expert blogger or a beginner, this ultimate blogging platform is a safe bet.

Blog.com is another popular WordPress-powered blogging platform. Just like other services, it has its own share of pros and cons. For a start, it offers many beautiful premium themes in its free accounts, as well as advanced plugins that one can expect only on a self-hosted blog. However, on the downside, the free service displays more ads as compared to WordPress.com. (But you can opt for paid upgrades to remove the advertisements.) The free storage space offered on Blog.com is 2GB in the basic plan, which is less compared to 3GB that WordPress.com gives its users.

Google Blogger is a well-known blogging service that offers many features to its users. For example, Blogger comes with a Template Designer user interface that lets you tweak your blog’s appearance as much as you want. (However, the templates provided are, in my opinion, no match compared to WordPress themes.) When it comes to ease of use, most beginners prefer Blogger as it offers a no-nonsense interface for administering your blog and top-notch integration with their Google account. Another great thing about Blogger is that it offers certain great features for free that you normally need to pay for in other blog-publishing services, most noteworthy being the ability to set up custom domains without paying a cent.

TypePad Micro is another free blog-publishing service. The interface is easy to use, and you can import/export content from many other blogging platforms. However, in terms of add-ons and themes offered, TypePad Micro won’t satisfy even the most basic blogger. The cheapest paid plan begins at $8.95 per month and comes with additional themes, custom domain mapping, as well as technical support. In an age where almost all blogging services are offering numerous features in their free versions, TypePad Micro seems to be lagging behind.

Jux is an innovative service that lets you easily share content online. Conventionally speaking, it’s not a blogging service like the ones previously mentioned, however, it has a lot of the same functionalities. Rather, Jux lets you create your own microblogging site for sharing your content. By default, Jux templates don’t have the native sidebars and other widgets that are common to most blogs. Instead, Jux provides a clean (and beautiful) approach to blogging. Simply create an account, and then start sharing your content. While Jux does seem amazing and has excellent support for mobile devices, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. For instance, if you’re planning to create a more conventional blog, opting for WordPress might be a better option. On the other hand, if you’re leaning more towards visual content, such as photos and artwork, Jux may just amaze you with its features.

Tumblr is a popular and feature-packed microblogging platform. It comes with many outstanding and interesting features such as audio blogging (for sharing your music, for example), free custom domains, hundreds of amazing blogging themes and more. Furthermore, you can sync your Tumblr account with Facebook and/or Twitter so that you can update your social media feeds in a single location. Yet another awesome feature is the ability to create community-powered group blogs. Tumblr also offers support for many third-party apps such as Google Analytics and Feedburner.

Posterous Spaces is an excellent online blog-publishing service that is similar to Tumblr. Posterous Spaces has excellent privacy and viewing features so that you can easily control who can see what on your Posterous Spaces site. It’s designed to allow its users to post content quickly and as hassle-free as possible, so it has loads of features included to facilitate this, such as free mobile apps for iOS and Android smartphones so you can update your blog on the go and a simple, well-designed user interface. Using Posterous Spaces means you’ll be in good company; popular tech startups like MailChimp, TweetDeck and Airbnb leverage Posterous as their company blog.

Blogetery is a WordPress-powered online blogging service that offers a modest set of features. Free accounts get nearly 140 themes, custom domain mapping and roughly 40 plugins to choose from. On Blogetery, ads are displayed on all free blogs, but if you wish to upgrade, you can opt for the paid plan that will cost you $3.50 per month and will give you additional themes, plugins, email support, 5GB of additional storage space, the ability to remove ads, etc

Weebly offers more than just blogging — it’s a fully featured website builder! Weebly’s blog manager features a drag-and-drop interface, support for image galleries, slideshows, video/audio, maps, etc. Additionally, you can opt for their Designer Platform that lets you build websites for your client, thereby effectively using Weebly as a content management system.

LiveJournal (often abbreviated as LJ) offers blogging with a touch of social networking to it. You can participate in polls, create networks and interact with other LJ users alongside your blog. With that said, the features, compared to other similar blogging services, are nothing to brag about. Their collection of template is decent, and plugins/extensions are pretty basic in nature. Other Online Blogging Platforms Here are other blogging platforms that didn’t make our top 10 list that you still may wish to check out: Blogsome, freeblogit and Blog Dive are other WordPress-powered blogging platforms. Thoughts.com is a service similar to Tumblr and Posterous. Blog.co.uk seems to have a wonderful community, but appears to put a lot of ads on your blog. MyBlogSite looks interesting but seems to lack in features when compared to other options. Aeonity offers free blog hosting but it looks like a dated service. Conclusion There are numerous blogging services out there, and choosing a specific one is more of a matter of personal taste and needs. For the security and success of your blog, I recommend sticking to online blogging services that are well known and reputable.

5 Reasons Why The Ellen Tweet Worked (and 1 Key Question)@@

When Ellen took to a captive live TV audience of millions last night, took a “selfie” with 11 of Hollywood’s hottest celebrities, and put out a call to become the most tweeted tweet ever, not surprisingly, the world listened. The tweet, which at time of writing has more than 2.6 million retweets, (more than 3 times the previous record, Barack Obama’s first tweet after being re-elected for his second term)

But why did this work? How did it “beat” agency newsrooms filled with thousands of social media professionals, paid millions of dollars to create the next “Oreo cookie” or “Pharrell’s Hat”? And what does it really mean for the future of social media marketing? Far be it from me to take a pedestal spot and claim I know all and see all, and speak for everyone, I did want to offer a few observations in convenient list format. So, here we go.

1. The tweet represented the end of an era of social media marketing. It represented the end to a lot of thinking about what’s truly possible in social media marketing by setting the bar so high for future content that it is literally impossible for anyone else to catch up. Previous “branded viral tweet” stalwart, “You can dunk in the dark” produced by Oreo and 360i and the arguable inventor of the “real-time marketing” era of social media got about 15,000 retweets, or 1/173rd the total of the Ellen tweet. The problem is that every brand now wants success, because it is indeed “possible”. Few realize the amount of work, timing, and, well, money that went into making this one iconic moment (and I’m sure we’ll read about that exact effort in the trade press in the next few days). It now either requires brands to level set with their strategy to something more realistic, or open up and pour out their pocket books to emulate the same success.

2. The tweet was about the photo, and not the brand. While, to the more trained eye, it was pretty obvious that Ellen was taking the selfie on a Samsung, well, thing (I’m still not sure which device it was, and I *own* a Galaxy S4) it wasn’t obvious in the photo that it was a Samsung device. Why does this matter? Because people don’t typically like to share blatant advertising. The creative itself, is the non threatening shot of a group of celebrities that most people like or admire at least one of, in a moment that is at once both unexpected and unique. It’s no less harmless to the average user than any other photo. And this is a big reason why it spread more quickly. No “catch”. No “gotchas”. No public shaming for most who shared this photo. And as Kasey Scala pointed out, most people probably don’t even care that it was Samsung. Samsung’s agency left it to the trade press to figure out their involvement, well, in addition to a little “humblebragging”:

Samsung Mobile US        ✔ @SamsungMobileUS

3. The tweet was sent to an already huge Twitter audience that just grew bigger as the buzz did. Ellen started the night with more than 25 million Twitter followers already, putting her in the top 15 worldwide anyway. This ensures that anything that plays to her audience would have done decently well, regardless of the circumstances. Amazingly, her account grew 1.5 million followers (hat tip to Eli Langer for that stat) in the day of and after the Oscars telecast giving her an even bigger audience to work with again.

4. Ellen has an audience that appeals to a broad demographic. Twitter has had trouble with growing, and reaching a mainstream audience, which has become more obvious since Twitter’s IPO last year. But in terms of audience that Twitter wants to reach and grow to, there’s really no better way to introduce Twitter to than to do it with Ellen DeGeneres, who can be an excellent guide to continually explain the product and how it works during her show. This education, of course, starts with getting people started with a simple example — retweeting and sharing a photo of celebrities that they love.

5. The call to action was simple but still required TV to execute the moment. As many folks in digital like to say, TV is over. But it’s not. TV is still remarkably big. The key with execution is recognizing that a live, captive audience really only exists for in two primary cases: Major sports events Major award shows The inventory for these moments is now limited, as we live in a DVR and instant streaming society. The Oscars telecast represents as least as much if not more of a general audience than the Super Bowl (and considerably cheaper to buy as well.). But Samsung likely had to buy advertising on the Twitter end as well (imagine launching a server-crippling campaign on national TV without their support? Not likely). This is where the innovation is, and likely a point that will sit in Twitter sales pitches for the rest of time. Twitter makes engagement from live TV truly possible at amazing scale. The key question, of course, is whether or not Samsung’s investment in the greatest “selfie” ever taken results in additional purchases of Samsung products. Or does it even matter? That’s up to them to decide. Either way Samsung’s integration has clearly created a new case study in social media marketing. But, it’s just a matter of time before the next major brands tries to capture lightning in a bottle again.

The Case Of Simplifying Website Navigation@@

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In world of online shopping, a website should be thought of as part of your product or service. Derek Halpern of Social Triggers recently asked 15 participants to give feedback on a website which was purposely ill designed to study the effect that website design has on buying influence. 94% of the feedback focused on the design and layout; 6% was focused on the business. The most common complaints were things like complex layout and lack of navigation aids, and caused customers to trust the site less. Below are some common layout mistakes, and how to fix them.

                                                                                                                                                                        ThE Click Rule

Website navigation doesn’t need to be complicated; in fact, simpler navigation is often more effective. The Golden Rule of website navigation is the 3-Click Rule: all pages on your site should be accessible by three clicks or less. Customers aren’t the only ones who don’t have the patience to go past three pages; neither do search engine crawlers. Any content or information past three pages won’t be seen and might as well not exist.                                  Used Tags To Categorized                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Organizing an index of products or services can be tricky; the content of a site is expected to be unique, but the navigation of a site is supposed to be as predictable as possible. Poor structure is likely to turn off users who are unable to find what they are looking for. The least complicated way to structure pages would be an A to Z index of all pages. Of course, this makes a couple of fatal assumptions: it implies that the user knows exactly what they’re searching for, and that they know the exact name under which to find it. Because these conditions are very rarely true, the best option to organize content neatly in the navigation bar is to start off with broad terms that gradually become more specific. Assigning pages to each category requires tags. In website navigation, there are three types: crucial, optional, and irrelevant. Crucial categories are categories that are important to all users, and have very little—if any—overlap. Examples of crucial tags for a clothing site would be “Men’s”, “Women’s”, and “Kids’”. Using only crucial tags, it should be possible for a user to find relevant information. Optional tags further refine the search results, but are not necessary for all users. Sticking with the clothing store example, an optional tag would be the brand. Only after a user has chosen gender (“Men’s”) and type of clothing (“Pants”) would they be presented with the option of selecting a brand. It is entirely possible that a user cannot select an optional tag, and simply browse all Men’s pants, but the option to further refine the search is available. Irrelevant categories, in short, are irrelevant to the users and are used for organizational purposes on the back-end of the site. These sorts of tags include word count and date added                             Go Home                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

On every page of the site, there should be the option to immediately return to the home page, whether it be a link that states “Click here to return to the home page” or by clicking the logo at the top of the screen. This gives users the option to restart their search and explore the site further.                                                                                                                 Create A Site Map                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Sitemaps serve multiple functions. They give users a complete overview of your site as well as assist search engine crawlers in navigating your site. In fact, failing to incorporate a sitemap can pose a serious threat to your search engine rankings. Best of all, a sitemap is painfully simple to make. Sites like www.xml-sitemaps.com/ will create a sitemap for you, then all you have to do is add it to the “public_html/” folder of your site.                                                                                  Conclusion                                                                   

What’s been detailed here is only the tip of a very complicated iceberg, but taking the time to properly categorize your site will make it easier for customers to find the information or products they are looking for. Customers can be surprisingly fickle when it comes to online experiences, and a poorly structured site could be costing you countless customers and killing your search engine rankings.