Category: Digital News

Top 5 Social Media Marketing Benefits For Active Online Presence

Social media marketing results are visible these days. Whether it is a personal account, an individual’s professional page or a company’s web page, it has been accepted by all that social media marketing is actually a great, fast and outstanding medium to ensure a strong online presence for a business. Even after disclosing the benefits of social media for business, there are still some of the companies that don’t rely on social media marketing for their brand visibility.

Basically, social media marketing requires deep insights and powerful strategy. It takes less time to get implemented. When it comes to describing the exact stats, the technique doesn’t get defeated by any other online marketing tactic.

Relevant Stats

It is calculated that 97% of marketers are using social media to grow their number of quality prospects while 78% of salespersons make excellent use of it to generate quality leads from different social channels.

We know that there are still some of the business owners who don’t consider social media marketing as a rank or traffic booster digital marketing technique. This blog is compiled for their reference and also to make them aware of the myriad of advantages they can have with social media marketing for business.

Create Outstanding Brand Recognition

Establishing brand recognition is one of the important and primary tasks to be accomplished to achieve marketing goals. The major reason that why people move towards the brand they already recognize is the recognition it has gained. Similarly, if you want to attain such recognition for your brand, start promoting it on social media platforms. Thankfully, these networks made it easier for everyone to ensure effective promotion for the associated stuff.

Build Credibility

Through a well-planned social media marketing, a brand will be able to build trust and credibility for the services and products it delivers. This can be conveniently done by increasing the customer engagement towards promotional content or page. Here, you can put content which specifies your market reliability. At any social network, you can place attractive ads or promotional links to influence visitors. This will increase the clicks & views which automatically improves your brand credibility over the web.

Improve Brand Image

Creating a story of your brand is the next best strategy which you can implement through social media marketing. These platforms attract visitors towards the promotional ads. And the moment they connect with your brand is the right time to make the story of your brand visible in front of them. An engaging story will connect them and this makes your brand more comprehensive among them.

Earn Long-term Audience

In case you earn long-tailed quality prospects, the chances are that they will be with you for long. The only thing you need is building trust for your brand. As the numbers grow, your brand will be able to influence more visitors and it continues for long. The advantage of it will reflect in the sales outcomes that you can calculate before and after social media marketing. Earning a wide number of Fans over social media is the best way to increase conversions for the brand.

Connect With The Audience With A Brand Voice

Every brand has the power to influence customers and develop a robust brand image through authentic communication over social media. If you inculcate a genuine tone and feel of your brand in a reflective design, you will be able to compel users towards anything. It may include classy ad design, valuable content and an intuitive message. These are the factors that improve user experiences which ultimately is a key to bring qualified prospects to the brand.

Ending Notes

Managing business marketing planning is really daunting but when it gets implemented by using social media marketing channels, it is quite interesting and easy. There are different social media marketing tactics that you can use to execute a seamless social media campaign. So, what are you waiting for! Initiate social media marketing and carry a positive image for your business. It will help you build strong and an active online presence for your brand.

Author’s Bio

David Meyer is a passionate social media marketing expert at CSSChopper who endeavors hard to achieve committed goals for a business. He is a deep thinker and constantly research for the new and trendy social media marketing techniques that are beneficial for all types of businesses. To show his research interest, he often writes informational blogs on trending online marketing topics.

BitDegree A Revolution in EdTech

The company BitDegree A revolution in EdTech, most likely to change the future of work. The way humans have learned has remained practically the same for several hundred years. This has led to universities failing in teaching modern skillsets to students and, hence, in connecting them with the demanding job market. Educational technology is changing this. Swiftly. BitDegree aims to become a pioneer in the ever-growing EdTech market of the world.

What is BitDegree?

BitDegree is an e-education platform that aims to garner the spiraling interest in online education for producing a workforce of students, who are holding all the necessary skills to become successful in landing great jobs – an ambition Coursera, Edx, and Udemy have been working on for many years.

What makes BitDegree different to the aforementioned EdTech companies is its ingenious blockchain based platform, which will allow the students to ‘learn to earn’, and its gamification of courses.

The ‘learn to earn’ vision is made possible by rewarding students with its BDG tokens, as the students accomplish various learning milestones in their courses. This implementation of incentivized courses is a savvy technique in making learning popular amongst people and allowing the students to visibly prosper as they progress in their courses. The earned BDG tokens can be exchanged for buying stuff or for purchasing services within the BitDegree sphere. Think of BitDegree as a combination between Coursera and HackerRank

Meanwhile, the gamification of the courses offered by BitDegree is a step in moving away from making studying feel like a chore. By offering to learn via games, BitDegree wants to make studying enjoyable and fun for the students. This, in turn, boosts their motivation and engagement, which eventually helps them in finishing their courses.

Why choose BitDegree?

BitDegree is an ideal platform for students to master skills and for companies to recruit coveted talent.

BitDegree provides an opportunity for students to learn valuable and sought-after skills, which would enable them to land top jobs. This is made possible by a range of detailed online courses, given by world-class instructors and having interactive class sessions. The achievements of the students in their courses are constantly tracked via the blockchain platform and the students are rewarded with the BDG tokens. With gamification in the core of its courses, students become more inclined to learn and to complete the courses, without becoming bored with them.

From the recruiting perspective, companies can use the platform to discover skilled and proficient employees. Companies can also set up their own courses and tests on the platform, which will allow them to automatically hire from the student pool, by filtering for students who have passed from their prescribed courses. This will make the whole process of hiring very smooth and give the business a boost by recruiting students who possess the precisely required skills.

Courses on Offer

Currently, BitDegree offers courses in as many as thirteen different categories. These include business, the blockchain, data science, e-commerce, web development, machine learning and more. Courses added on the platform teach the student’s skills which are in-demand as of now and are stripped of unnecessary bits, which the traditional education systems are notorious for teaching. Therefore, students learn exactly what they signed up for and gain the latest skills to succeed in the job market.

As mentioned in the earlier sections, the courses offered by BitDegree Foundation offer a gamified learning experience, to allow the students to gain knowledge as they have fun. This is made possible by the in-house Octalysis gamification framework.

Many of the courses on offer are completely free, while others come with minimal fees. With BDG token scholarships soon to be announced, students will be able to get paid courses using them. All the courses come with details on the skill level required to start, a summary describing the course and a curriculum listing the lectures in order of appearance.

BitDegree’s Growing Recognition

Despite being launched in 2018, BitDegree is already starting to position itself amongst educational giants. After having become the winner of EdTechX’s Startup Super League, the company is now receiving offers of collaboration from universities and top educators around the world.

At the moment, the company has partnered with a handful of heavyweight brands, including CodeAcademy, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, The Bitcoin Foundation, Preply, Nexchange, SinglarityNET, etc.

The company’s internal community of fans and students has collectively reached the 100,000 marks (approx.). The growing social presence on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Reddit is a reflection of the public’s approval of BitDegree’s innovative platform.

Conclusion

The education system of the modern world is still stuck in the past. BitDegree, along with its partners, is aiming to propel the education space forward by harnessing the power of technology. By offering a decentralized and an easily accessible platform, with courses in a variety of subjects, BitDegree is on the verge of becoming the single best way of acquiring skills and becoming ready for the future.

Hostinger Review Great Value For Your Money

Hostinger has the most competitive hosting plans for those who are looking for budget hosting. The company has ICANN accreditation and is founded in 2004. The 14 years of journey landed the organization in 39 countries with more than 29 million users.

Having its headquarter situated in Lithuania, the organization’s main focus is to balance its clientèle on the basis of cheaper in cost service. Also, offering customers a wise support-desk, the company’s chat support ensures 99.9% of guaranteed uptime.

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Top 10 Online SEO Tools 2018 To Help You Succeed

If nobody created tools for us we’d never get anything done. And if we did, it would take 100x longer than it would with the right toolset.

When it comes to SEO, this couldn’t be any truer.

As online marketers, bloggers, and small business owners, SEO is important. Some may even call it critical. A make or break type of thing.

Which brings us to this post.

In this post, we’ll be looking at 10 SEO tools that are either for keyword research, competitor research, rank tracking, and link building.

Best SEO Tip For 2018

Before we get to the top SEO tools, let’s start with a hot tip for search engine optimization this year – a purely white hat link building tactic that is both affordable and provides a higher ROI than any other form of link building, including guest blogger outreach.

A very best new link building tactic is not from a search engine optimization tool nor from a link building service or link building tool?

Podcast guest, or getting booked as a guest on established podcast shows is one of the SEO industry’s best-kept secrets.

You can get multiple links from the host’s site for a lower cost than most link building sites charge per link.   Since the shows are about you (the guest) there are tons of additional benefits like personal brand building and accumulating influence and niche authority.  The show host also often promote you in the social media channel and sometimes even email newsletters.

Best SEO Tools for 2018

There are many SEO tools out there. We have 10 that are worth trying first.

#1: Ahrefs

Used for: Research and Analysis

Pricing: Freemium

Out of all the SEO tools out there, thousands of online marketers, small business owners, and SEO’s prefer to use Ahrefs to help them improve their search rankings.

Their Site Explorer is the best among backlink analysis tools.

They also have the Content Explorer, which searches the web for the most popular content for any topic or keyword.

And if you ask me, it’s just as good as Buzzsumo.

Ahrefs have one more tool, the Keyword Explorer 2.0.

This gives you a keyword’s search volume (global or country), SERP overview and position history, related keyword ideas, and the difficulty level.

The pricing starts at $99 per month with annual options. But you’re allowed to have a free account with limitations.

They also offer free trials for all plans.

#2: Seobility

Used for: SEO Audit

Pricing: Free/Paid

Seobility is all about showing you how good or bad your website’s overall SEO optimization is.

They have 4 major tools/features:

  1. SEO Check – which will test your website and give you tips for better search engine optimization.
  2. Keyword Check – which will show how well your page is optimized for your target keyword(s).
  3. SEO Compare – which compares 2 pages for a keyword term.
  4. Ranking Check – which checks your page’s rankings for any keyword.

They offer a free plan. But it only allows usage for one domain. Premium plans start at $40 per month with a 30-day free trial.

#3: Long Tail Pro

Used for: Keyword Research

Pricing: Paid

Long Tail Pro recently went through an ownership change.

And you know what that means? The new ownership team is hungry for success. They saw potential in Long Tail Pro and are determined to make the product even bigger.

Since their change, LTP has moved from being a downloaded application to being cloud-based (meaning you can now use it in your browser.)

Before going cloud, LTP was already one of the most popular keyword research tools in the SEO field. This will only make it 10x faster and 10x easier.

#4: SEM Rush

Used for: Keyword + Competitor Research

Pricing: Freemium

SEM Rush really made a name for themselves over the past couple of years. They basically took competitor research to a whole other level.

The best part about SEM Rush is there are more than 20 ways to research your competition. Robbie Richards calls them stealth tactics.

You can find their best backlinks, their best keywords, their best content, and more. It’s even great for paid traffic and PPC.

#5: Pitchbox

Used for: Outreach

Pricing: Paid

Pitchbox isn’t exactly an SEO tool. But when you are link building, there’s usually a lot of outreach involved. A lot.

Pitchbox makes your overall outreach efforts 10x easier than it would manually. Their email sequence feature lets you set up follow-up emails automatically.

Here’s a little example of what they can do:

First, I entered a few keywords related to my blog (ex: blogging tips).

Pitchbox, then rounded up some of the best sites for me to reach out to and connect with. Prospects.

After just 2 minutes, Pitchbox gave me 316 potential connections.

They even have a couple of SEO features, such as link monitoring.

Their plans allow multiple users. So if you’re working with a team, this will come in handy.

Plans start at $195 per month, with a 15-day free trial so you can get your feet wet.

#6: SEOquake

Used for: Competitor Research

Pricing: Free

SEOquake is a free browser extension. It’s like the MozBar. Except it pulls up more of the page’s data.

Some of the page data or metrics it shows are:

  • The number of (external) links.
  • Google index.
  • SEM Rush rank.
  • Alexa rank.
  • Web archive age (domain age).
  • And more.

When you’re researching your competitors or finding link opportunities, the SEOquake toolbar will come in very handy.

#7: Seed Keywords

Used for: Keyword Research

Pricing: Free

Seed Keywords is pretty cool. Here’s how it works:

First, you’re going to create a scenario. Basically, you’ll be asking a question.

Example: “If you were looking for shoes, what would you search for?”

Second, you’re going to take the unique URL they give you and share it with as many people as you can. They can be your friends, social followers, or your email subscribers. Basically any of your contacts.

Then, you wait.

When you get enough people answering your question, you’ll have a list of legit search terms from real-life internet users.

The best part about it is it’s 100% free.

#8: SEOptimer

Used for: SEO Audit

Pricing: Free

When it comes to SEO, it’s great to know how well your overall SEO is. Knowing it’s bad tells you to work on things. Knowing it’s great tells you to keep doing what you’re doing.

SEOptimer will help you know your website’s SEO.

It’ll show you yours on page metrics, such as keyword usage and user experience (ex: speed and mobile responsive).

It’ll also show you off page metrics, such as your backlink profile and Domain Authority (a Moz metric).

When it completes the audit, SEOptimer will grade your website and even give you recommendations.

#9: LinkMiner

Used for: Link Building

Pricing: Free

Broken link building on steroids. LinkMiner takes it to the next level.

Before LinkMiner, the Check My Links extension was the go-to tool for checking a page’s links.

Yes, it’s still very useful.

But the difference between the 2 is LinkMiner gives you more about the broken link. Check My Links simply finds out if the link works or not.

Some of the data LinkMiner pulls up are Facebook Likes, DA and PA, backlink numbers from Moz, Ahrefs, or Majestic, and more.

The reason it’s useful is that you get to know how popular the broken link is. And if it has a good amount of links from authority blogs, you can get your broken link building on.

You can download the extension here.

#10: Authority Labs

Used for: Rank Tracking

Pricing: Paid

Authority Labs is a rank tracking and SERP monitoring tool that gives you the ability to track results by country, city, or even postal code (which has rarely been done before).

The tool gives you your whole keywords, their rank positions, and their search volume.

Authority Labs also gives you the ability to track your competitors’ search rankings. This has its advantages. Knowing your competitor’s highest rankings and best keywords allow you to battle them for a top spot on page 1.

Some other great features include mobile rank tracking, weekly and monthly reports, and more.

Plans start at $99 per month with a 30-day free trial.

Conclusion

Whether you like it or not, SEO is a big part of your online business. It’s the largest source of free organic traffic, leads, and customers.

The 10 SEO tools we shared above will help achieve high rankings in 2017. Your year. Your business’s time to shine.

So go out there and make it yours.

Why Does WordPress Need FTP

There are plenty of topics out there surrounding WordPress that talk about various tutorials, themes, and whatnot.

But, one of the topics which not a lot of people discuss on the internet is – FTP.

An acronym for – File Transfer Protocol, FTP was created somewhere in the 70s as a way to quickly transfer files between two computers. This protocol comes handy when you have to upload a file to a server from a personal computer.

When web design was still in its initial days, this protocol was essential. Developers used to work on files, upload it to the server through this protocol the website visitors could view those files. But, the purpose it served wasn’t just for deciding the look, layout, and feel of the website. Every page that a developer added to the website was coded before it could be uploaded.

The current scenario

Now the use of FTP has diminished greatly because so many CMSs have eliminated its usage to a great extent. But, it’s still not completely out of the picture.

WordPress – one of the most popular content management systems has made it incredibly simple to manage and set-up a website.

Today you simply need to click on a button if you want to add images or edit the existing content. There is no longer a need for a user to mess around or play with FTP or text files. This is why the interface today has become extremely user-friendly and intuitive.

Today almost everyone can become a programmer. You don’t necessarily need to learn to code in a technical sense; all thanks to the emergence of content management systems like WordPress. Anyone who knows how to use a computer can set up a nice website without scratching his head much.

Now with all that is said, the question arises – is FTP out of the picture?

Let’s take a look.

FTP and WordPress

There are several methods out there you can use to install WordPress on your site. And, FTP is one of those methods. This method involves downloading the core files of WP and then uploading them to the server through the file transfer protocol.

But, it’s not as simple as it may look. You need to first install the database of the website and create configuration files before setting up the credentials. To most users, this whole process is rather too complex which is why a majority of web hosting companies provide their users with a method that doesn’t involve FTP to install WP.

Companies do that by allowing access to cPanel through which you can install WordPress with nothing more than a few clicks.

Regardless of which method you choose for the WordPress installation (mind you there are several ways), in the end, the goal is same – it is to fetch the core files of WordPress and upload them to the server so you can run WP.

When you connect to FTP, you can access files from a different computer. In this case, the computer is the server. What it means is you can view, edit, and add all WP files through this protocol.

The same thing is applicable when you add a page to the website. Although you may do this with just a single mouse click through the dashboard of WordPress, your site will still need some files in order to read what each page displays.

So in a way, WordPress is letting you do what users do manually via FTP and that is uploading and creating files to the server. This is the very reason that the connection between WordPress and FTP can never be lost.

Do You Still Need FTP?

With everything that is going on currently, a majority of WordPress users don’t know much about FTP if even anything at all. As a matter of fact, this content management system has evolved so much that a user may never have to do anything with FTP much less have any knowledge of it.

WordPress does everything on its own.

WordPress dashboard has an appearance section from where users can install and download plugins and themes and upload them back to the WordPress (if the files are already downloaded).

With just a click, website pages can be added. There’s a default text editor which allows formatting and writing of content. Additionally, there’s the option of uploading media files directly from the computer to the media library of WP which are then ready for publishing.

WordPress houses plenty of custom options that allow tweaking website appearance.

Basically, all those things that used to be done via FTP cannot be performed through the WP Dashboard.

Using FTP for the purpose of troubleshooting

With all that has been said above, it’s obvious that some of you might be wondering – exactly when does one need FTP?

The simple answer is – for troubleshooting purpose.

You are not going to need FTP for much of the everyday tasks associated with the managing of a website. However, in case something goes wrong, this little tool might prove of great value.

Don’t worry. You don’t need to be a tech wizard in order to be able to use FTP. Just a basic understanding of FTP is enough for you to troubleshoot common WP issues.

There are many plug-ins that WordPress supports, but not necessarily all of them are compatible with WP. Sometimes a plug-in may work just fine when installed in isolation. But, there can be times when two plug-ins cause conflicts when activated simultaneously. This mostly happens when the plug-ins are not updated which renders them incompatible with WP’s latest version.

In most cases, plugins are accessible from the dashboard and you can simply deactivate them to eradicate the problem. But, there can be times when the solution is not so simple.

If you have ever experimented with WordPress a little and played around with the plugins, you might have some time encountered a blank screen which is also known as ‘white screen of death’.This restricts your access to the dashboard which leaves no way for you to disable the plugin that is causing the problem.

In such cases, FTP is the only way left to fix this issue.

How to access FTP

In order to access FTP, you will first have to download an FTP client. FileZilla happens to be one of the most popular FTP clients. To log in, you need your hosting credentials. In case you have trouble logging in, contact your hosting company.

Once you have logged into FTP, you will be able to see all the files on the web server. From there you can remove the files that are causing problems. Deleting those files will uninstall the related plugin.

On the left side of your screen, you should see files on your computer, and the right side displays server files. You can remove the plug-in from the right-hand side.

Here is how you can do it:

  • Click on the public-html folder
  • Select the right website
  • click wp-content>plugins

You now should have access to all the plugins for your website. Delete the folder that is causing the problem and the same should be fixed.

At the face of it, this might sound like a complicated task, but once you get the hang of the process, it should be relatively simple. You may face a little difficulty if this is your first time using FTP.

If you face any trouble using FTP, you can contact your hosting company’s support team. Additionally, there are several WordPress tutorials that you can find helpful. One of the posts on how to work with FTP is covered by 000webhost.

Conclusions

Content management systems like WordPress are becoming more and more sophisticated with each passing day. The refinements in these systems have largely rendered FTP useless but not entirely.

As long as things are going fine, you would not need to use the FTP. However, in case things go wrong, you would need to use FTP as it provides the easiest outlet to fix things.

It is always good to have basic knowledge of how to work with FTP. This knowledge will make you confident in safely experiment with your website and you will be confident in fixing things on your own as well.

 

Top 10 Payment Gateways For Ecommerce Website

No matter how great your e-commerce store may look and function, achieving success in your online endeavor majorly depends on how well your products are being sold to your customers. And to sell products, you’ll first have to win the trust of your site visitors. A payment gateway is a powerful tool that helps to reassure visitors of your store about your trustworthiness.

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