Reviewz n’ Tips – Blogging and Social Media

I came across Daniel Sharkov’s blog and I’m just loving it! This 19 year old student has some absolutely great blog topics on blogging and social media. With post like the following it’s kind of a must read if you are deciding to add blogging and social media to your marketing mix.

-1o ways to improve your social media and blogging workflow

-Moving from Blogger to WordPress

-Why should you publish infograhics and how to do it right (see my post in inforgraphics here)

-Best and worst times to share your social media updates (see my post on Tweriod here)

-6 effective ways to build relationships and expand your network

Daniels promises to help you get the hang of social media, improve your efforts, be more productive, and covert visitors. Great stuff!

Slideshare – the place for sharing presentations

 

SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. With 60 million monthly visitors and 130 million pageviews, it is amongst the most visited 200 websites in the world. Besides presentations, SlideShare also supports documents, PDFs, videos and webinars.

It’s kind of like PowerPoint but everyone on the web can view it.

What can you do on SlideShare?

• Upload presentations publicly or privately
• Download presentations on any topic and reuse or remix
• Embed on blogs, websites, company intranets
• Share on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
• Zipcast: free, no download, 1 click web meetings
• Leadshare: generate business leads with your presentations, documents, pdfs, videos
• Slidecast: sync mp3 audio with slides to create a webinar
• Embed YouTube videos inside SlideShare presentations
• Use SlideShare PRO for premium features like branded channels, analytics, ad free pages etc.

If you sign up for the Pro version you get analytics!

• Source and location of viewers
• Detailed engagement insight
• Sharing insight across other social networks
• Profile of people downloading your content
• Actual tweets which mention your content

Check out this video on “Why I love SlideShare”

Excited to start using this site, has anybody used it? Is it helping with business?

Explore B2B – Intelligent Networking

exploreB2B was founded in March 2010 by Jonathan and Susanna Gebauer. exploreB2B’s mission is change and drastically improve Business to Business communications worldwide. Basic functions of exploreB2B include self-publication, reading, and sharing articles. With the new premium functions, users can analyze statistics on who has read their articles, where referrals originate, and which topics or industries the readers have expressed interest in their areas of discussion. Premium functions allow self-publishing professionals insight into the kind of content that speaks to their target group. This is how it works:

1. Write Articles Articles increase your visibility on exploreB2B. Present your professional knowledge and your products or simply ask questions

2. Enter your Personal Profile Your personal profile is your business card on exploreB2B.

3. Read and comment on Articles Take part in discussions, ask questions and help others.

4. Get connected You found interesting content? Get in touch with the author.

It’s pretty cool in the sense you can search for articles related to company, person, topics, or industries.

Viral Heat – Social Media Simplified

Viralheat is a platform to monitor share on your social media platforms. For as low as $49.99 monthly the plan allows businesses to manage 15 social accounts and monitor 2 search profiles across Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, video and the web. Monitor, manage, publish, analyze, and engage in one spot.

Also allows you to compare search profiles or relevant terms across the web and social media so you can track individual products and compare social buzz among your own products or compare your brand mentions to competitors.Viralheat offers a few ways to visualize this data in a graph or a pie chart. They also have a very informative blog here.

Inked – Buy & Sell Graphic Design Templates

Inked is a great online design firm for small to medium sized originations that do not have the access to design professionals. They have tons of templates t0 choose from; brochures, business cards, and letterheads. They also have many competitive designs in every industry type from medical, real estate, to music. In addition they also offer custom logo designs and printing.

What’s cool is Inked is also a marketplace for graphic designers, you can earn 20% commission when your design sells in Inked. The site brings freelance opportunities directly to the designers from around the world.

It’s stock photo agency, but for graphic designs but they handle marketing, promotion, ordering and customer service. You provide great design in any style and form you like. You can now utilize leftover concepts or experiments, and make money while keeping in practice with trends and software.

Love it! 🙂

 

Table & Friends – Massimo Bruno – themed dinner events

Table & Friends serves two main functions:

Either join a public themed meal or create your own public/themed meal or your private meal which can be attended exclusively upon your invitation.

The public/themed meals may involve a number of themes of interest to the community. A entrepreneurs dinner, networking dinner, social media mix dinner etc. etc.

The private meals are your own private events. When choosing the option “Create” you have the option of creating private meals which will not show up on the Join menu. These meals are your own, for your special occasions such as birthdays, client dinners, or class dinners.

Based in the Startup Lisboa incubator in Lisbon, Table & Friends aims to connect like-minded users at dinner events organized around a particular theme. Examples of successful dinner themes include travel, entrepreneurship and specific guest speakers, the site notes. Organizers can choose to make their events public – with tickets for sale to others browsing the site – or private, in which case participation is by invitation.

Great idea eh! BIG problem is it’s in Portugal 😦 HOWEVER I’ve got a alternative for you; if you are looking for a fabulous supper club check out Massimo Bruno in Toronto an unbelievable italian chef. He hosts 30-40 people once a month for these amazing home cooked meals. AND he’ll even setup a special dinner for you if you give him a shout, I did!

 

Does anybody know of a similar venues to Table & Friends in Toronto or anywhere else?? It would be great for Meetups, client dinners etc I’d love to know 🙂 Many thanks!

Lucky Orange – Learn how your visitors are using your site

Lucky Orange. It allows you to watch activity on your site in real time and play back people’s sessions. It has maps so you can see where people are engaging with your pages, it also has chats. You can proactively chat with someone who is on a page and let them know you are there to help or people can reach out to you directly when you have chat online.

I haven’t signed up but it seems much better than Google Analytics plus you get the chat features. It’s pretty inexpensive the lowest price being $10 a month for up to 3 websites.

Easelly – Infographics

Easelly you can create and share visual ideas online themes are visual themes. Drag and drop a theme onto your canvas for easy creation of your visual idea! The image is the new headline. You have mere seconds to grab the attention of your prospects in the overcrowded social sphere, and one of the best ways to do this is by adding a compelling visual to your blog post.

Sure, you can go to Google Images and choose a funny cat or piece of bacon to grab attention, but why not get a bit more creative and create your very own custom illustration or mini-infographic?

Some examples below:

 

I wanted to add to this post, I just found another couple infrographic sites I’m loving  Visual.ly and

Nerd Graph

Wix – website creating

Wix.com is a great site for creating websites. Super duper easy templates that are free! Customize, no coding skills needed, and tons of apps. Great templates for merchant sites, and small business. And a must read blog, I really like Wix, it’s a must to check out!

Example of some templates below:

 

 

Handmadeology – Blog

I love this site, it’s super helpful for all you creators out there. The Handmadeology  is dedicated to the handmade movement and exists for the purpose of teaching artists/creators how to successfully sell their handmade goods online, and to feature the newest handmade, vintage and supply items found on Etsy.

You can contact to guest write, get featured, submit tips; it’s all about helping each other success online. Make sure you sign up for their newsletter.

Tim Adam the editor of the site recently created this fantastic online course Build a Better Creative Business I really  want to check this out, and it’s on sale for $99. Quote for the course description “This is a place of extraordinary lessons, new ideas, and friendly support.   If you’re ready to invest in your business, if you’re fed up and want to make it happen already, if you’re tired of uncertainty and frustration, you have Timothy Adam, Lisa Jacobs, and an amazing team of experts standing by.”