Squidoo is an online search engine information community that heavily involves the input and interaction of the website’s users. Squidoo was first conceived in the early 2000s. After several years of development, Squidoo was released as a beta testing website in 2005. By then, the group of innovative web designers had been distilled into specific positions. Squidoo is based out of Hastings-on-Hudson, a small village in Westchester County, New York.

Who’s Behind Squidoo
Seth Godin, a Tufts University and Stanford University graduate, founded the website Squidoo. Godin is considered an American authority on the subject of permission marketing. Previously, Godin had success with his website Yoyodyne, which concentrated on online games, puzzles, and contests. Squidoo was Godin’s first information-based website business venture. In the testing and beta stages of Squidoo, Godin invited Megan Casey, Gil Hildebrand Jr., and Corey Brown to help found and develop the website. After Squidoo was released, Megan Casey became the Editor-in-Chief, Gil Hildebrand became the Chief Engineer, and Corey Brown became the Chief Operating Officer.

What are Squidoo Lenses?
Squidoo is known for its invention of the online “lens.” Squidoo’s online lens is an article that is very similar to a blog post, but only covers information on a single subject. Godin wanted anyone to be able to introduce information on Squidoo by posting on a subject’s lens. Squidoo does not require that people who post have professional expertise in the subject, but they do encourage that all people who post at least have an explicit, specific interest on the subject they post on. Moreover, topics can have more than one lense. The popular social networking website, Myspace, for example has dozens of lenses dedicated to it while Jane Goodall had some but not many. Thus, Squidoo provides interesting information but also gauges the interest in particular subjects.

Squidoo Gives and Gives Back!
Squidoo is also known for its unique dedication to setting aside 5% of their profit toward charity. Some of the charities Squidoo has contributed to include the American Heart Association as well as Planet Gumbo. Furthermore, 50% of the website’s profit goes to its lensmasters, the users who create or write the website’s content. In this way, Squidoo is both interactive and lucrative. Because Squidoo gives some of their profit to their lensmasters, they do check the accuracy, activity, and integrity of their lensmasters. Often, lensmasters are rated through a number of different rank and point systems such as the SquidMonster title, the SquidTrophies reward system, and experience points.

Squidoo has received acclaim from several websites, published newspapers, and other institutions. CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post have all praised Squidoo for its innovative take on search engines and interactive online communities. The South by Southwest (SXSW) company awarded Squidoo the top prize of the online community category. In 2008, Squidoo was named one of the top 500 most visited websites online and has remained on the list since then.

Squidoo is a great opportunity to discover information from people who are passionate about the subjects. This passion often produces a greater attention to detail and more accurate information. Moreover, contributors to Squidoo often find themselves able to immerse themselves within their interests more deeply and share their passions with a wide and interested audience.

This is a Guest Post Article written by David Silva who is the Sales & Marketing Coordinator for Blue Link Associates, a provider of Inventory & Accounting ERP Software provider. He is an active blogger in the business technology space, especially in regards to sales and marketing.

There was a period, some time ago, when selling was straight-forward. Sales reps hit the road full of ambition, desire for success and little else. These reps would approach clients one-by-one and do what they do best – pitch product. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn’t but by being persistent they were able to persevere. This process is changing rapidly, however, and is becoming less effective every day. This article will explore these changes and what can be done to leverage the changing business environment.

Technology, especially the internet, has completely revolutionized just about everything, and the business environment is certainly no exception. Customers now demand much more from those they do business with; they expect affordable but quality product, delivered with increasing speed. Traditional sales reps may have a difficult time meeting these growing demands. As a result, sales reps and business owners have turned to technology to solve this problem.

Modernizing Your Sales Force

As customers grow accustomed to dealing with consumer-facing sites like Amazon and eBay, they come to expect the same experiences when conducting business elsewhere – even in the Business-to-Business (B2B) space. Many B2B companies are now scrambling to increase the ease of buying for this growing consumer group by offering online ordering portals with the ability to search for, and order, product online with live customer-specific pricing. These e-Commerce portals are a common solution for both B2B and B2C businesses.

Online ordering systems, referred to broadly as eCommerce, can be thought of as sales people that are available 24/7 for selling. When viewing these systems from this viewpoint it is clear why many businesses are implementing them – the ROI can be very attractive. Although the systems may be somewhat costly up-front, their ability to allow customers to view product and enter orders whenever they please can increase sales and reduce dependence on the sales force.

Mobilizing Your Sales Force

A number of technologies now exist to connect sales reps to home base and make for more effective selling. There was once a time where sales reps had no choice but to load up on dozens of brochures, product sheets and binders to bring with them on the road. Now, sales reps can access this information online through eCommerce portals, the company website and the company’s back-end inventory and accounting ERP Software. This not only means that sales reps can provide better information to customers, but they can also access real-time information such as inventory levels and even enter orders directly into the system from the customer’s site. Obviously this saves a lot of time, effort and leads to increased customer satisfaction.

Many modern ERP systems can now be accessed remotely with ease and devices such as tablets, notebook computers and even mobile phones. These technologies can be used to avoid some of the common (and hopefully disappearing) problems of selling in the field:

• Taking customer orders only to have to call them and inform them of stock outages
• Presenting out of date information, such as pricing, available on hard copies
• Having customers wanting to place orders and being unable to do so in an immediate streamlined process (having to call in, instead of simply submitting the order online)

By modernizing and mobilizing your sales force, you can keep them effective in a rapidly changing technological environment. Your sales reps are still extremely valuable, but without the proper tools they will quickly become uncompetitive. It is always important to make it as easy as possible for your customers to buy from you. After all, since they are opening their wallets, they expect only the best – not just from your products, but from the entire process.

This is a Guest Post Article written by Vicky Anscombe who is an Online PR and Social Media Consultant for Further, a Norwich-based SEO and Marketing agency. She enjoys writing blogs on varying topics, making brownies, eating brownies and watching Father Ted over and over again.

Why Social Media Matters

Even if you’re a newcomer to the world of online networking, you’ll be aware that social media is an online phenomenon that is rapidly growing – and changing every day. This makes it hugely powerful, and hugely interesting – but also rather frightening, if you’re not used to the idea of getting your business online. ‘Experts’ in this field don’t exist yet – so we’re all still using common sense when it comes to handling our social media accounts, which is no bad thing.

If you’re still unsure of social media, and your company is without a social media account, it’s time to put your fears to one side, and examine the reasons why you should look at getting online…

1. It’s free, fast and it’s easy to use. If people need to contact you, they can use a channel that won’t cost them any money (telephone) or could take a while getting to you (email). Twitter messages are sent instantly, and you can reply instantly. This is great for companies who need a high level of customer service and who value speedy responses.
2. It adds a new dimension to your brand. Social media isn’t a magic recipe for increasing sales by 2,000%, but you can use it to communicate and engage with your existing customers, thereby improving your brand’s reputation – and reaching out to potential customers. People enjoy talking to their favourite brands, seeing what you’ve been up to, and finding out your plans for the future.
3. Promote your successes. Won a prize for your services? Been nominated for an award? Got a brand new team that is making you prouder every day? Social media lets you upload your pictures and talk about your achievements, no matter how small. It’s PR at its most basic level, and it shows your followers that you value your business.
4. Moving with the times. Businesses that refuse to use social media on the grounds that it’s ‘not for us’ or they ‘don’t need it’ are sometimes right, but not often. Unless you run a correctional facility or a scrapyard, you should into exploring social media. The one thing that you don’t want is your customers thinking you’re afraid of change, which is what might happen if you stubbornly refuse to embrace new things.
5. It’s low maintenance. You don’t have to constantly update your Facebook or Twitter; just a few updates a day will keep your followers aware of your online presence. Nobody expects you to tweet every ten minutes. If anything, all you need to look out for are queries and comments, and when it comes to complaints, the sooner you respond, the better.

Pinterest.com was started in March 2010 and by August 2011 Time Magazine named it one of the top 50 best websites. A few short months later the Pinterest site, owned by Cold Brew Inc. was named one of the top 10 social networks with over 11 million visits per week.

There are two ways to receive an account, through visiting the website or asking a friend that has an account to send you an invitation. The next step is installing a “pin it button” on to your task bar, this allows you to pin anything of interest to a board. Another option is to copy and paste pictures from your favorite websites on to your board.

The biggest question, “What is Pinterest.com and how do I use it for my Business?” This website, which was started in 2010 has over 11 million visits a week and can be linked with facebook or twitter and broadens the spectrum of your visibility. The difference between Pinterest and facebook is Pinterest allows other people to view your board not just your friends. The opportunity to enhance your business is phenomenal, if the staff determines your board interesting it will be added to the home page. This opportunity will assist in showcasing what your business has to offer.

Organizing a board on Pinterest exposes your Pins to millions of people who may be interested in what your business has to offer. Keep In Mind – Pinterest does not like it when all of your pins are aimed to promoting your business, so make sure to have some with it! The neater your pinboard the better and Pinterest will allow you to have as many boards as you want.

The repining feature lets other people pin your picture to their board, some do this to save an image for future review other do this as a method of sharing and further promoting your pin.

In conclusion – Pinterest is the newest up and coming social website that provides a fantastic opportunity to showcase and share your business. Your pin board allows people a glimpse into your brand and what your brand has to offer (product). The ability for additional people besides your friends to view the board can create a multitude of exceptional opportunities for your business to grow and thrive.

SEO For Beginners – Why Google Hates Your website

A question that many search engine marketers get asked quite frequently is ‘why does my website perform so badly in Google’

For those who are new to SEO, this may present itself as a complex question but really anyone with SEO experience will tell you that the answers are quite simple.

Rule Number One

Do you really want to know why Google hates your website?

Generally the answer is:  Because it doesn’t understand its content!

Google crawlers or spider bots are intelligent pieces of software that index the Internet. Google’s spiders are so smart that if someone is using unethical methods they can detect this. In effect these robots can think for themselves – to an extent. However when it comes to deciding on the context of a website they are about as useful as a 1 year old child reading a book on string theory.

Ok, Look at the webpage you want to rank for a specific key term; then take a look to see how many times that key phrase is mentioned on it. If you’re having problems finding your page in Google search results, this possibly suggests that there aren’t a sufficient number of mentions of the key phrase on the webpage.

Use tools such as SEO Browser in order to see how Google bots are viewing your webpage.

Page Elements That Need to Include A Key Phrase

A webpage is comprised of numerous HTML tags – the content in these tags helps Google spiders decide the context of a webpage! Can you see where I’m getting at now?

Lets have a quick look to see which HTML tags need to be optimised in order for the spiders to define the context of the webpage

The HTML Title tag (< title > < /title >) this tag should describe the context of the webpage.

It is best practice to include two mentions of your key phrase in this tag (If this is possible, I know some key phrases can be quite lengthy)

Attempt to keep the content of this tag to fewer than 70 characters otherwise the remainder of the content won’t be visible in the search engine result page (some SEO’s also believe this is the maximum amount of characters the Google spiders crawl)

META Descriptions

The Meta descriptionis for the benefit of search engines. This tag ought to be populated with an excerpt of text that’s 165 characters long – try and include at least two mentions of the key term in this tag for optimum optimisation.

Heading Tags

If you’re not using heading tags in your website, you should start to! Search engines adore the usage of heading tags (from personal experience)

Try to include mentions of a key phrase in your pages < h1 > and < h2 > tags – remember that these tags should head up your content and shouldn’t be used to write full paragraphs in.

The content of the webpage

The content of a webpage plays a fundamental role in helping search engine spiders define the context of your webpage.

We’re looking for a key phrase to ordinary text percentage of about 5-8%, this figure then looks natural to search engines, if it is any higher search engines may perceive it as an effort to try and game them; this may therefore lead to a page being penalized.

To see the keyword density of a page you may want to use a tool like Dave NaylorsKeyword Density Tool.

You may also want to bold or italicize the key phrase mentions on your pages to give the key phrase more emphasis.

Wait a while

If you’ve included your targeted key phrase in all of the page elements mentioned above, you should start to see Google favoring your webpage a little more, and possibly some ranking improvements.

Rule Number Two

Another colossal ranking factor in Google’s complex algorithm is the amount of links that point to a page and the quality of those links.

Generally a page can be well optimised, but it won’t get anywhere near page one in the search engine results pages unless it’s hosted on a strong domain or has a powerful set of back links.

To increase the position of a well-optimised webpage you should try and obtain links from relevant websites in order to build the authority and power to that page.

By adding mentions of a key phrase into the HTML elements and building quality, relevant links to your webpage you should be able to see a dramatic increase in the search engine positions because Google will be able to start understand the context of your webpage and therefore favor its existence.

Reddit.com calls itself the front page of the web. In terms of its basic function, it is a website that consists of a list of links to other websites, sorted into categories called ‘subreddits.’ Users may submit a link to one of these subreddits, as well as rate each link with either an ‘upvote,’ signifying that they liked the link, or a ‘downvote’ signifying dislike. Links are then sorted on the front page of the site to show links that are ‘trending’ (or receiving a large number of upvotes) and links that are popular (have already received a number of upvotes).

Additionally, each page has a comments section where Reddit’s users may comment on the link. Each of these comments may be replied to and upvoted or downvoted. This very simple basis evolved to become one of the most popular websites on the internet, with a number of very active communities. Reddit.com continues to expand its user base.

Reddit is designed to rely on user generated content. The site’s administrators may submit links of their own, but they typically do so only as users themselves. Because of the egalitarian nature of the website and the very simple voting mechanism built into it, Reddit comes to accurately reflect what its users are currently finding to be interesting. This means that users are likely to find links that they, too, find engaging on the front page and will enjoy browsing.

In addition to providing links that the average Redditor (the term that Reddit users call themselves) find interesting, the upvote / downvote system encourages Reddit’s users to create original content in order to get karma (a term referring to the total number of upvotes that a user has a received). This in turn makes Reddit even more entertaining than its reliance on external links would imply, since Reddit users can find content that doesn’t exist on any other sites. Such original content takes the form of pictures (typically uploaded to imgur, as it has become the primary hosting service for Reddit pictures) and text based posts.

Reddit allows its users to choose which subreddits they subscribe to. The front page that they see when they log onto Reddit will then show the trending or most popular links from the categories that they selected rather than simply the website as a whole. This allows users to customize the content that they see, and this further specification means that the links they see are even more likely to be relevant.

In addition to providing more relevant content, subreddits become communities as their users come to recognize the usernames of other contributors from their links and the discussions that arise from the comments section. The results of these communities have ranged from political organizations such as Reddit’s own political action committee to regional clubs of Redditors. With a sorted list of interesting links, original content, and communities that share one’s common interests, people use Reddit as a means of entertainment and sharing with the other users of the site.

What is Tumblr?

Once a person has found new, interesting blogs to follow, a whole assortment of experiences can begin: the viewing of beautiful art posts, intellectual quotes and debates, viral videos. A person could discover (or rediscover!) a new musician, or a new artist. Tumblr is a place for people to come together through their interests and beliefs, and a place for people to learn more about the things they already know and appreciate, expand their knowledge about new hobbies and interests, and a place to make new friends. So, it is a way for musicians to find new listeners!

Getting Started with Tumblr

Creating a Tumblr is a free, quick and simple process, and once a person has signed up, they can immediately begin to post or “reblog” photos, text posts, audio posts, video posts, chat sessions, quotes, external links, and more from the blogs they’re following. These posts show up on the Tumblr dashboard – the page Tumblr defaults to once you’ve logged in.

Once a main blog has been created, a person can even create sub-blogs, which can also be public or password-locked. These sub-blogs have separate URLs and followers, and receive messages separately from the inbox of the main blog. These sub-blogs can have completely different themes from the main one, and are a great way to compartmentalize the different aspects to a personality – by separating the types of things a person posts by blog or sub-blog.

After creating these blogs, a person can customize them further with themes created by other users, or for the more HTML-savvy users, creating their own Tumblr theme to use. A person can create an about page and look through the archives of their own blog, or someone else’s blog(s), to scroll through weeks and months and even years of posts without the hassle of going through pages.

Not only is Tumblr visually and mentally appealing in the gorgeous photos and words posted, but it is also intellectually appealing; there are many political and news blogs to keep people updated on political trends and what’s happening around the world and in governments in all countries.

TO TUMBL or NOT TO TUBML?

Why Social Media?

Imagine walking into a room filled with people who are potentially interested in your product and/or service?

Twitter in particular appears to be ideal to businesses due to its simple and direct methods of communication. However, in order to properly take advantage of this resource, businesses have to know how to engage their customers, both to get their customers to follow them to discover any updates that the business wishes to publicize and get their existing followers to help market the company through Twitter.

Twitter’s Anatomy

As a result, if a business gets people to follow it on Twitter, every time it wishes to publicize something to its base, it needs to only write a short message and everyone following the business’s Twitter account will see the Tweet. Users may also Retweet messages, typically including the tag of the Twitter account from which the message originated.

Building a Targeted Following (Captive Audience)

One of the more common practices to get followers on Twitter is to tweet deals, often involving the use of a code/offer that only Twitter followers would see. A second method is to offer direct incentives to customers for following, such as a gift certificate or a similar prize. Because every Twitter account can see who all of its followers are, it is easy for companies to host lotteries from among its followers. A business that properly advertises such a reward can easily get a large number of interested customers to follow it.

Twitter & Social Media Engagement

Because they are already following the company on Twitter, it is likely that they will be interested in it once they know about it. New sales announced on Twitter can not only engage the customers already following the company, they can also attract new customers as the company’s followers Retweet the news of the sale, informing all of their followers about it as well.

While providing information to the existing customer base is already extremely useful, Twitter is especially powerful as a marketing tool because of the way that news of the company’s Twitter page can be spread by its followers. By awarding prizes for Tweeting about a company or Retweeting a company’s Tweet, a small business can encourage its followers to advertise the business for them. As a result, once a base of followers is established, it is possible to leverage this group to gain more followers and subsequently more customers.

Got Questions, Ideas, Suggestions? Leave a Comment!

TopHatRank.com LLC, an internet marketing company specializing in search engine optimization, is teaming up with FollowUsFwd a social media marketing and outreach company specializing in music promotion, to create TopHatMusicMarketing.com – a one of a kind online music promotion company focusing on social media marketing for bands and musical artists.

This union occurred due to the large number of requests from musicians looking for help in promoting their music online, gaining publicity for their music and building up a fan base consisting of real people via Twitter and Youtube Promotion. The world of social media is vast and can often be very overwhelming when looking at the amount of time and effort that goes into online music promotion and social media marketing for musicians. If artists were to take on this task themselves and do it properly, they wouldn’t have time to make music anymore! Utilizing the strengths of both companies, TopHatMusicMarketing.com is the first and only online music promotion company that provides specialized social media outreach for bands, artists, and labels.

The Process of Musician and Song Promotion

TopHatMusicMarketing analyzes each artist’s style and genre and then examines the artists that are currently doing well and have fans within this genre. Through detailed market research, TopHatMusicMarketing determines who to target in this market – who to follow, how often to reach out to them, and when to unfollow them – thus exposing this already existing fan base to the music of this “new” artist. The result is thousands of real fans, followers, and subscribers for the “new” artist. These are not dummy twitter followers or fake youtube views. These are real people who become real fans of the new artist and will socially spread their music to their current friends and followers.

There have been major changes in the music industry over the past few years. Previously, if an artist was talented enough, a label may have been interested in putting in the time to develop them. Nowadays, labels want what is already there and developed. They are looking for artists who already have a large fan base and are buzzing socially. Logically, this makes a lot of sense – why put in the time and money to develop an artist that the public may or may not like when there is another artist who already has thousands of Real Twitter Followers and Youtube Subscribers who love them and would purchase their music? If an artist is buzzing socially, the label and industry taste makers will come to them – just look at what happened with Justin Bieber.

Creating Social Buzz for Bands and Musical Artists

Musicians know that with the state of the current music industry, it is vitally important to have a social following of fans who will help to spread their music, however most musicians don’t know how to go about creating that following for themselves – and they’ shouldn’t have to! TopHatMusicMarketing handles the marketing and lets the artist handles the music. TopHatMusicMarketing offers the guarantee of making thousands of potentially new fans aware of an artist’s music. What separates TopHatMusicMarketing from other online music promotion companies, is that the outreach is targeted to people who have shown an interest in the artist’s type of music and have historically expressed positive sentiment about a specific genre and style. This process creates a much higher conversion and retention rates as the artist’s new fan-base is highly targeted and extremely passionate about the artist’s style and genre.

This is revolutionary in the world of musician promotion and a great opportunity for emerging artists to get publicity for their music and themselves. There is no other online music promotion service that can offer targeted guaranteed results like TopHatMusic.

The fans are out there. They just don’t know about you yet and TopHatMusicMarketing can change that.

Authorship markup is something that Google recently began to support which makes a thumbnail of an author’s photo show up in the search results next to the content that they have created. This could be for content such as an article or a blog post or a video. It not only given authors prominent treatment in Google search results, but it also helps to link all content by one author together throughout the web.

You can read more about it here.

This is a great feature for human users as it increases trust by being able to put a face to the information they are consuming and also by being able to quickly and easily find more content by that same author along with a brief bio about them. This is also a great feature for the optimization of websites as content that contains the authorship mark-up is given a higher priority in search results.

The requirements for implementing authorship markup if that you need to have:

1. A Google Profile
2. A Website
3. An “About Me” or author page on that website

Basically the overall linking structure that we are going to create to implement the mark up is:

1. A link from your blog to your “about” or author page
2. A link from your about or author page to your Google profile account
3. A link from your Google Profile account to your about or author page

Setting Up Your Google Profile

Settling up a Google Profile is a relatively easy task, especially if you already have a gmail account. A gmail account is a requirement to setting up a Google Profile. So if you do not have a gmail account, you must create one (they are free.) You can create a gmail account by going to gmail.com and clicking Create Account. An active gmail account (or one that is actually being used) will give your Google Profile higher authority.

Once the gmail account has been created:

1. Go to profiles.google.com to set up the profile.
2. Click on the Create My Profile button and then fill in your name, gender, and upload a photo. This is the photo that is going to appear next to your content in search results.
3. On the next page you will be prompted to enter a brief description about yourself as well as your location, schooling, and occupation. While most of these are optional, the more information you are willing to provide here the better.
4. There is also an area to the right of the page where you can add links. This is the important section.
   • Under the “other profiles” section add a link to your about/author page on your website. Just putting a link to your website will not cut it – this need to be specifically to a page that is about you.
   • Under the “contributor” link section add links to any places where you contribute content that is not part of your website, such as an external blog that you might write for. Again, this link needs to go to a profile page that is specifically about you, not just the website in general.
   • Under recommended links you can add links to any additional sources that are about you that users may be interested, such as Facebook or Twitter
5. Once your edits are complete, click the “done editing” button at the top of the page.

You are now finished creating your Google Profile account. As mentioned above, you are going to need to link you about or author page to this account.

You can get a vanity URL for your Google Profile (this is similar to Facebook in that you can set the URL to include your name rather than just numbers). To get a vanity URL, go back to edit it again and near the bottom of the page will be the option to choose a URL – either leaving it as the numbers or setting it to include the name on the account. Make sure to save your changes when you’re done by clicking the “done editing” button.

You can now click on the “Google Profile” logo at the top left of the page and you will be brought to the public-facing view of your profile. This is the URL that you will need to link to.

Adding rel=author and rel=me Links on Your Website

You are going to need to add two types of links to your website:

• rel=author
• rel=me

The Rel=Author link goes on all pages that you have authored, such as all of the posts in a blog. This link is going to point to the about or author page (which needs to be on the same website). If you have a WordPress blog, you can add the code to the “single page” template and it will be applied to all of your blog posts. Most blogging templates will have the author of a post in the byline. This is where you want to add the rel author link. These links need to be actual clickable links, not just hidden away in the header.

You are basically just creating a standard link somewhere on the page that links to information about the author of the post. The only difference is adding the rel author attribute into the code of the link:

You now need to link your about or author page on your website to the Google Profile that you created. This link tells Google that the author of all of this content is the same person as this Google Profile.

On your about/ author page only, add:

Again, this needs to be a real clickable link and not hidden in the header or footer.

Reviewing
And that’s it! You should now have a Google Profile page that links to the about or author page on your website. You should also have all of the content that you have created linking to your about or author page, and then lastly, your about/ author page should be linking to your Google Profile.