Enjoy this guest post by Ben ~

Social media has become an essential part of web promotion. Not only is it effective and helpful for increasing the popularity of your business or website, but it is absolutely necessary! Proper use of social media such as Twitter and Facebook will not only help your site gain exposure, but it will act as a catalyst for making your content more prominent and even viral.

The easiest and most important step to take when stepping into the “social” scene is adding buttons to your site to help visitors share your content. In other words, make your website “shareable” because the last thing you want to do is inhibit their ability to advertise your business for you. People love to communicate and we also love to share. Social media is the Internet’s analogy for word-of-mouth advertising. Neglecting to add buttons on your site for visitors to share your content is a lot like stripping them of their voice – let them talk!

TweetMeme is a fantastic tool for making your content very shareable. It adds a simple button at the top (or bottom) of all of your posts that people can use to tweet your content with literally 2-clicks. A common trend you will notice when observing popular sites in almost every niche is the overwhelming amount of tweets in comparison to “likes” on Facebook. Tweeting is easier and faster, and in an online world where we skim almost everything we read, we need to have quick sharing options for our visitors.

A common and effective layout for making your site easy to share is to include a button at the top of every post for Twitter and/or Facebook, a set of buttons at the bottom for a few popular social sites, and also the presence of similar sharing buttons consistently displayed on your sidebar. For the sidebar, the most important inclusions are Twitter, Facebook, and your RSS Feed. You might have other sites like LinkedIn that you like to use or a series of videos on YouTube – these would be good additions for your sharing buttons.

To further emphasize the importance of properly using social media, lets cover a scenario:

1. Someone visits your site and reads an article. They really like it, but they don’t see any sharing buttons and so it may not even cross their mind to tweet it or like it, so they move on with their day.
2. This same visitor comes to your site and reads the same article. However, this time there are social sharing buttons featured prominently on the page. This visitor tweets the post and it is quickly exposed to all of this user’s followers (dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people).

And it doesn’t stop there. The people who see that tweet might tweet it too, they might look through your site and tweet another post, or they might follow you on Twitter and become exposed to all of your new tweets. Simple processes like this can quickly multiply and expand upon your daily traffic, and all of this happens simply because you have made your website shareable.

Supplement your social media strategies with SEO. Check out our FREE SEO Course or download our FREE OnlyWire Account Creator to make social bookmarking effortless.

Understanding keywords and how they affect our website has been a mystery to many online marketers.  Now the secrets to keyword research has been revealed in a 90-minute audio recording from some of the top internet marketers in the country.

In this downloadable recording, the four-member panel made up of Lynn Terry, Dan Morris, Suzanne Meyers and Karon Thackston discuss:

• why keywords are so important
• which keyword research tools are the best (free or paid)
• where and how often to use keywords in content
• how keywords are the foundation of your search engine optimization
• and much more

Recorded live at the Niche Affiliate Marketing System in Atlanta, Georgia, this group of savvy business entrepreneurs share their secrets to being on the first page of Google time after time with many different websites, blogs and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Don’t miss the opportunity to get your recording of proven tips, techniques and resources while its still available.

Keyword Research

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Keyword Research

Prior to starting my Online Business Management company, I owned a Professional Organizing Service, called Completely Organized. I have always had a knack for sorting, stacking, and putting like things together, so it came quite easy for me to share my natural gifts with others through a business. The unfortunate part was that this was prior to Social Networking and my market was local, and they weren’t ready to pay someone to get them organized.

But I still have those skills and I use them in my business today. Now I have to be honest. I’m not always good at doing them, I know what to do and I talk a good game, but sometimes I just don’t manage to stay as organized as I would like. So in honor of “Organize Your Home Office Day”, here are a few things that will keep you organized and start and end each day with a clean desk.

• Start your day by reviewing your To-Do List (more about this further down)
• Tackle your priority tasks first
• Set times throughout the day to check email and respond. Close it down when you have finished
• Make phone calls in bundles (except for urgent calls)
• When working on projects, let the calls go to voice mail and return them when finished with the project
• Keep current files in a stack-file on your desk or nearby for easy retrieval
• When working with documents make a decision to only handle once – file, follow-up, or shred
• Keep all your tools handy, but tucked away, not on your desktop
• At the end of the day, review your To-Do list again. Congratulate yourself on your successes and progress. Start a new one with the top three priorities of the next day. These are the three things, that will make the biggest impact on your business if you didn’t get them completed.

Well, that’s my list. Hope you found something useful to help you get more organized. What are some of the things you do daily to stay organized?

How do I link all my social media sites, my blog and website together? That is a frequent question that clients ask.

Do you have profiles on several sites and would like to have them connected.

Well, I found just the tool for doing that.

Retaggr

What is Retaggr about?

* Unifying your online profiles. Bring all your profiles on all your services into one place, so the world can find out who you are, and connect with you.
* They”re not another social network. They help consolidate your identity.
* And they give you a bunch of tools to do it. Retaggr widgets, badges, an email signature, the Add Me Button, and of course, your rich, interactive Profile Card.
* For quick demo of some of the features, click here.

It’s quite easy and helps you keep track of all the sites you have joined. Give it a try!

If anyone asked me how I grade my website, I would say, “I give it an A+.” Well of course I would say that, I developed the content and I’m partial to my site.

But what grade does your site really get? I found an incredible tool today that will lay out the hard truth about your site, but they ease the blow by giving you suggestions on how to make a few changes to boost your site through SEO.

Take a look at Website Grader by HubSpot

Then come back and share your grade with us. What? What’s my grade? Uh, I’ll let you know soon!