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7 Reasons Every Student Should Start a Website

7 Reasons Every Student Should Start a Website

From career boosting to money making, a site of your own comes with the kind of benefits that make a big difference while you’re studying or looking for a job.

1. Think of it as your career ‘game face’

Not only do most recruiters use the web to screen job applicants, more than a third have even knocked back candidates because of their social media activity. According to Andy Sumner at Monster UK, “a Google search will tell a recruiter more than a CV can” — but as scary as that sounds, it’s actually the perfect opportunity to manage your online reputation.

Whatever else you get up to online, a website gives you a professional digital presence to fall back on, as well as a chance of appearing in search results ahead of distracting social stuff. There’s no harm in spreading your personal brand across third-party sites such as LinkedIn too, but starting a website gives you the chance to tell your story in your own way.

2. It’s the ultimate CV

If video content, demos and photos do the best job of showing what you know, a website is what you need. Plus, it’s a lot more discoverable than print or PDF resumes.

An online CV isn’t only a calling card, though: it actively demonstrates you have the skills you say you do(remember the ‘show, don’t tell’ advice about CV writing?). If you’re aiming to get into web design, marketing, publishing— and loads of other professions—a well planned site can sell your enthusiasm for and knowledge of the industry, as well as prove hands-on skills such as coding, picture editing, writing, retail, or flair for SEO.

If your social media already does that, but in lots of different places (Pinterest plus YouTube, or wherever), a website will allow you to keep the highlights in one place — and that means less clicks for employers.

3. You can make money

How to make money from your website is the golden question! Luckily, it’s simple:

Affiliate marketing: Link to partners’ products or services on your site and get a cut of sales from your readers. It’s a neat way to make passive (long-term, low effort) income.

Advertising: Earn cash every time visitors click ads on your site. Google Adsense can automate the process, but if you have the traffic — or the gift of gab — you could make more profit approaching companies directly.

Sponsorship: Allowing retailers to post content on your site (for a fee), or being sent freebies in exchange for a product or service review.

Members’ content: Set up a paid subscribers’ area, or sell downloads of premium content (ebooks, PDFs, insider tips, tutorials, and even audio guides).

Sell products or services: You can sell things you’ve made or can do, too.

There are plenty of other ways to monetize a website but if the ones above sound familiar, it’s because they’re the business backbone of tons of sites you visit everyday. From news and education portals to entertainment, dating, and gaming hubs. And—like them—if you enjoy making content as much as cash, it’s perfectly possible to turn your web work into a whole career.

4. The freedom to do what you love

Got something to shout about? Whatever you care about, you can write, blog or brainstorm it any way you like, including:

Raising money or awareness for a cause.

How-to guides for something you’re an expert in or enjoy doing.

An online journal and/or advice to help others in similar situations.

The freedom to do your own thing is a pretty potent reward but once you’ve got a bank of content, you can always go the monetization route (above). You can also sell your content outright as print or digital books or for use on other websites. It’s great to have the option!

5. A sense of professionalism

It doesn’t matter if you’re applying for jobs or running a business: your own domain name, an email address to match, and some good content looks much more professional. Whether you’re selling products, services, or your career skills, a website demonstrates that you believe in what you’re doing, and are prepared to put in the time and effort.

6. Hands-on experience

Whether you use a website to make money or get your CV seen, there’s nothing like rolling up your sleeves and getting started to see how things work.

Getting and keeping content online is the perfect opportunity to practice problem solving and research skills. You can also perfect your persistence, idea generation, curiosity (how did they do that? And how can I do it?), and network with other influencers. It just so happens, these are all valuable transferable skills as well.

7. It’s ridiculously easy

Luckily, it’s not rocket science! You can start a website — from choosing your domain name and hosting to publishing your first post — in a lunch break or less. Building and buffing your content and brand does take time, of course, but the fewer the hurdles to get to that point, the better.

A website is a bit like a Swiss Army Knife: it’s good for more than one thing. The beauty of it is, you don’t need to be technically minded to be digital. Starting or maintaining a site doesn’t have to take any more time than your average social media fix — and that means bite-size effort, but big-time rewards!

By Ruth Bushi

Why Your Company Needs a Defined Brand and Website

Why Your Company Needs a Defined Brand and Website

Have you ever landed on a website and immediately felt confused? Did the copy and design fail to inform you who the company was, what they sold, or why you should buy from them? Or, on the other end of the spectrum, was the website cluttered with contradicting information, sporadic design elements, and unnecessary functions?

This terrible user experience is the result of a poor branding strategy or a lack of a brand in the first place.

As defined by Entrepreneur, branding is _“the marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products.”_Having a strong brand and corresponding strategy can position your business or personal career competitively in your market or industry. Without it, your company and website become another piece of noise on the Internet.

Considering that consistent presentation of a brand increases revenue by 23% on average, it is vital for your business to have a defined brand. And, with 54% of shoppers turning to a brand’s website for product information, customer service, and personalized shopping, a brand website is more important than ever.

The Importance of a Brand

Reviewing the Entrepreneur definition of branding once again, the goal of a brand is to differentiate your organization, product/services, and identity from that of the competition. While effectively positioning your business in the market is the main goal and benefit of branding, it also offers several other advantages:

A Brand is an Experience

While developing this entity for your business, you, in turn, create a customer experience. Everything from your logo to the interactivity of your website is part of the total brand experience. The way your customer support team answers messages, the content published to your company’s social media profiles, the manner in which customers are onboarded for products and services – it all revolves around your brand.

Your brand has the power to construct a one-of-a-kind experience for your customers. This experience is extended through various online channels, in-person interactions with employees, and other instances. When your brand is unorganized or not defined, this customer experience is disorienting and undesirable.

Branding Leads to Recognition

If given a test of the world’s top brands, the majority of us would pass with flying colors. From McDonald’s to the Walt Disney Company to Sony, we can identify the leading brands in seconds. Having a consistent and established brand strategy works to improve customer recognition of your brand. On average, it takes approximately 5 to 7 brand impressions before someone remembers you. Therefore, those first few impressions need to be strong—not scattered!

Plus, as stated by Reuters, 82% of investors believe that brand strength and name recognition are becoming more important in guiding them in their investment decisions.

Customers Trust Brands

Did you know 48% of consumers expect brands to know them and aid in finding new products or services that fit their needs? This is derived from a level of brand trust. After beginning to recognize and interact with your brand, customers will begin to trust your company for their specific needs.

And, 64% of consumers say that shared values are the main reason that they have a trusted relationship with a brand. If your brand is discombobulated online, how will you be able to demonstrate the value of your company/product/services and earn the trust of your target audience?

You Need a Brand Strategy

After establishing your brand, you must devise a brand strategy. A brand strategy identifies the goals for your brand as well as how to best accomplish them using the various components of your brand including language, the logo, and trademarks (also known as a brand standards guide.) While much of your brand strategy will focus on how to appropriately utilize the brand across marketing and company efforts, Hubspot also identifies 7 components all brand strategies must contain:

  1. Purpose: Define your company’s vision.
  2. Consistency: Ensure a seamless representation of your brand.
  3. Emotion: What is the tone of voice for your brand? How should your brand convey emotion?
  4. Flexibility: Identify how and when to pivot, if necessary.
  5. Employee Involvement: Describe how employees can best represent and promote the brand.
  6. Loyalty: Discuss how to recognize and appreciate your loyal customers.
  7. Competitive Awareness: Analyze your competitors and determine how to differentiate your brand.

With a solidified brand strategy, you can move forward with developing and launching a website that represents your brand in a positive, accurate, and consistent manner.

What Every Brand Website Needs

Remember, the goal of your website is to inform customers and entice them to trust your brand. In turn, they’ll convert into paying customers over time. However, an unorganized, chaotic website design won’t do the trick. You don’t want customers to access your website only to be confused!

In fact, if customers cannot find what they want on your website or homepage, 79% will exit your site and search for another website to complete their task. Considering 81% of customers complete extensive research online before making a purchase, your website needs to have the following components.

A Clear Message

Armed with a defined brand and thorough brand strategy, your marketing team will know how to communicate your brand message via the company website. The website copy should be:

  • Clear
  • Concise
  • Informational
  • Entertaining
  • Captivating
  • Aligned with Your Brand Strategy!

Remember, your brand message must demonstrate your company’s values and why customers should trust and purchase from your business.

A Consistent Design

As outlined in your strategy, your website must contain consistent branding and design elements throughout. After reading this article, take time to explore the Wise Host Website. As you navigate to different pages and products throughout our site, you’ll notice everything from the website copy to the illustrations, layout, and photos are persistently aligned with our brand.

It’d be odd if we had an orange page with an entirely different layout all of a sudden, right? Since color increases brand recognition by 80%, our website is fully in accordance with our brand standards which state a specific shade of blue must be used.

Crucial Company Information

When users land on your website, they want information ASAP. Or, they want to know where on your website they can find that information.

For instance, if you own a restaurant, your website visitors should be able to easily find your menu and your hours of operation. If not placed on your homepage, the website navigation should clearly display these page links/buttons.

Information users commonly look for includes:

  • Products and Services
  • Prices
  • Hours of Operation
  • Product Information
  • Company History
  • Employee Bios
  • Store Location and Directions

Forgetting to include such vital information can leave potential customers with a negative impression of your brand. Be sure to place the important details where visitors can find them.

Launch Your Brand Website

After meticulously developing and defining your brand and strategy, you can share it with the world by creating a WordPress website. Remember, your website is a reflection of your brand—not an extension—make sure it follows your strategy to a ‘T’!

Over to you! Why do you think having a defined brand and website is key for businesses?

What is Web Hosting?

What is Web Hosting?

Do you have something you want to share with the world? Awesome!

There’s never been an easier time than now to share your creativity, products and ideas with people anywhere in the world.

There’s no scribe, town crier or carrier pigeon required, although we know an alligator who’s happy to guide you through the process.

Creating a website is easier than most people expect it to be.

Before we go over the steps involved, it’s helpful to think about exactly what you want your website to do for you.

How Can A Website Help Me?

1. Publish a blog.

Whether you’re sharing your thoughts for fun or profit (or both), you need a website to serve as a home for your blog.

2. Build your business.

Most people look online for places to shop, so a website is a must if you want customers to find you.

3. Show off your portfolio.

If you’re a freelance photographer, writer, web designer, or another type of independent worker, an online portfolio can show prospective clients what you do and why they should hire you.

Next, we explain how you get a website for your business.

What Do I Need to Create a Website?

You need to get three things to set up your site: a domain, a web host, and site content. If this is all new to you, it may help to think of the process like throwing a house party – only you’re starting by building the house.

Next, we explain how you get a website for your business.

What Do I Need to Create a Website?

You need to get three things to set up your site: a domain, a web host, and site content. If this is all new to you, it may help to think of the process like throwing a house party – only you’re starting by building the house.

1. File storage:

The image, text, and design files that make your website look like it does are stored on a server – a computer maintained by your web hosting service. These files are sort of like your party décor, music and snacks – the reason people come to your house parties.

2. Hardware:

The server where your website files are stored is usually one of many servers  stored together in a data center. Keeping all this hardware in one place makes it easier for your web hosting service to keep it up to date and running properly. Hardware is like the furniture, lights, and plumbing in your own home.

3. Uptime:

The amount of time when your site files are available to visitors is “uptime.” Uptime of 99.9% is the industry standard for web hosts. You don’t want guests to drop by and find that your website is unavailable, just like you don’t want party guests to find your house locked and empty when they arrive.

4. Security:

On the internet, pranksters and criminals are always trying to break into servers, files, and sites to cause mayhem or steal data. Your web host’s security measures protect your site from break-ins, just like your home security system keeps people from breaking into your house.

A good web host will also include other services and tools that make setting up your site easier and faster, like:

  • Round-the-clock live support so you can work on your site anytime and get help if you need it.
  • Free templates for your website so you can create a professional looking site in just a few clicks.
  • Video and written tutorials to answer your detailed questions.
  • Domain and WHOIS privacy registration services.
  • Shopping cart tools to help you start selling online.
  • Unlimited email hosting so you can create professional email addresses for yourself and your employees or blog contributors.
  • Spam filters, because who wants spam?
  • Automatic site backups to protect your site files as your website evolves and grows.

 

How Much Does A Website Cost?

As versatile and powerful as websites are, they’re also remarkably cost-effective compared to other marketing methods throughout history. For less than $5 per month you could get

  • 5 pounds of feed for carrier pigeons (pigeons and messages not included).
  • 50 large postcards to mail to prospective customers (postage not included).
  • Your very own website with the potential to reach more than 3 billion internet users.

Does a website seem like a better fit for you than postcards or pigeons? We agree.

Do I Have to Pay for Web Hosting?

Can you use a free hosting service instead of getting your web hosting? You can, but you’re taking a risk that the free service may shut down your site if…

  • you run afoul of their rules,
  • people complain about your site, or
  • something happens outside your control that takes the service offline.

It’s like trying to throw a party at your parents’ place: Their house, their rules. What did they always say? “When you pay the bills, you can make the rules.” There you go.

There are other potential problems, too.

Having the free hosting brand’s logo on your pages and in your URL makes your business look amateur to visitors. If you won’t spend money on your business, why should they?

Limits on bandwidth from free site builders can cause you to miss sales if a product or promotion goes viral.

Don’t limit yourself or your site. Choose web hosting that supports your goals as your business grows.

Ready to set up your site?

How to Identify Your Social Media Influencers

How to Identify Your Social Media Influencers

By Alex York for Sprout Social

If you hang around a social media marketer long enough, you’re bound to hear the term social media influencers tossed around in conversation. Social media influencers are the bread and butter to marketing strategies and help brands build valuable relationships on social media platforms.

Most social media managers prize their social media influencers because they can drive engagement and word-of-mouth communication to your brand at a higher rate than standard organic methods. At the same time, some managers are hesitant to deem someone a social media influencer just because they have thousands of followers.

There has to be a middle ground toward influencer marketing and it starts with you understanding the goals of your brand and what the influencer will accomplish. Creating goals and outlining each party’s responsibilities, possibly including it in a social media proposal, is essential to see results.

In this article we’ll discuss three key subjects to get your influencer marketing campaign up and running. Click the links below to jump to each section of this article:

  • Why You Need Social Media Influencers
  • How to Identify Social Media Influencers
  • Creating Campaigns Around Social Media Influencers

What Are Social Media Influencers?

Social media influencers are power users who can help your potential customers make a buying decision through social networking. Whether they’re a blogger, product reviewer, industry expert or a trusted source of information, your social media influencers are unique to your field and product or service.

For example, if you’re trying to find a social media influencer on grilling and barbecuing, you’ll want people such as:

  • Food critics in the industry
  • People with popular outdoor cooking Instagram accounts
  • Grilling bloggers who write for major recipe sites
  • Grill and barbecue pit builders
  • Ribs and barbecue contest judges
  • TV chef personalities (i.e. someone who won Chopped)

The best way to find your social media influencers is by thinking about whose voice you trust. If you were searching for a reason to buy or try out a service, wouldn’t you want the most trusted and reliable source?

A survey from Nielsen showed only 33% of consumers trust advertisements, while 90% put their faith in peer recommendations. Getting influencers to persuade consumers can drastically work in your favor when correctly executed.

Why You Need Social Media Influencers

Like we previously mentioned, people tend to trust peer recommendations over any company advertisement. Working with social media influencers is another step toward humanizing your brand.

If you have social media influencers with loyal audiences, a brand mention goes much further than a Tweet from your company account. These followers trust the influencer’s opinion, which is why they follow in the first place.

Reputation plays such a key role in buyer decisions. Here we can see aerial photographer, Ryan Patterson, boosting the presence of United on Instagram. These types of mentions spread awareness faster and more efficiently. Even United often Regrams content from its biggest followers.

Here are a few more reasons why you should trust social media influencers:

Influencers Reach Core Demographics

More so than anything else, social media influencers are great at speaking to their core demographic. For some marketers, there has been success with the adoption of influencers over traditional marketing techniques. One area you can see this happening is with visual media.

The popularity of Instagram and Facebook Video has marketers looking for more opportunities with social media video. A report from Cisco’s Visual Networking Index claims online video traffic will account for 80% of all web traffic by 2019.

Adding influencer video content can help you reach more of your core demographic. Just make sure you adjust your traffic wants, goals and needs to your influencers so everyone is on the same page.

Your best social media influencers are going to be the ones that already share content that is similar to your brand. You want to be in the same circle so it doesn’t seem like a stretch when you ask influencers to talk about you. Again, this idea usually comes back to humanizing your outreach and content.

Influencers Build Relationships

Some influencer naysayers believe these trendy social experts aren’t as effective as working with brand advocates because they’re short-term solutions. However, working with influencers builds meaningful relationships over time, while brand advocates are more short-term solutions. The worst thing you can do while searching for influencers is to rush the process.

Both are great options for your marketing strategy, but each has their place. Advocates are more likely to be your happy customers, while influencers reach direct audiences with their social media skills.

It might seem difficult to build relationships when you don’t even know the specific audiences. But with the help of Sprout Social’s Audience Targeting, you can post influencer posts to specific audience groups all within the compose window.

This will help you reach, build and engage your followers across all channels. And like any relationship, it takes time and dedication to build trust. This same logic fits perfectly with your influencers.

Influencers Increase SEO Value

It’s a smart idea to constantly look for new ways to create awareness around your brand. And using influencers to build your SEO value is a great way to do it. According to Moz, some of the most prominent ways Google leverages ranking in its algorithm is from domain and page-level links and keyword and content-based features.

Essentially quality of links, quantity of links to root domains and optimization of keyword usage within your content are some of the most essential aspects to better rankings. Influencers with well-trusted and established sites can bring a ton of value to your own.

Also, social media influencers can impact your SEO through:

  • More brand mentions: The more people are talking about your brand, the likelier they are to share, post, comment or cite in a blog. All of these lead to higher organic traffic.
  • Increased backlinks: A pillar to SEO is obtaining backlinks, which essentially help show the popularity and importance of your site. With links from websites considered authorities or influencers in your industry, your site becomes more credible.

While it’s safe to say not every piece of social media content is indexed, it’s still beneficial to be present, active and engaging to increase links to your site. Influencers can help with this and even possibly get other larger entities to share your content or link back to you.

How to Identify Social Media Influencers

You might be thinking, “Okay, great—I know why social media influencers are important, but how do I find them?” We like your eagerness, but before you can start interacting and working with your influencers, you have to do some research. For starters, here are a few different tools you can use to find the perfect influencer for your brand:

  • Audience targeting
  • Twitter analytics

BuzzSumo

A tool that continues to help brands find true influencers in their field is BuzzSumo. With this content marketing tool, it’s simple to discover, measure and monitor content to be one step ahead of the game. BuzzSumo also has an influencers and outreach feature that is made specifically for finding the top writers, bloggers and publications in your field using the same keywords you’re trying to reach as well.

BuzzSumo gives you the option to sort via influencers, bloggers, companies and regular users who might not have the status of an influencer. But if you ever need to find who is an expert in your industry, this is the tool.

Remember that influencers are not just those who have a high number of followers. Instead, it’s more efficient to look at their total number of shares per article, site domain authority, Retweet ratio and page authority. BuzzSumo makes it absolutely painless to search, find and analyze the top influencers in your industry.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is built specifically for helping you network with others in and around your industry. So why not use the social media platform to help find influencers? Social Media Examiner recommends you enter specific keywords or phrases within the search box to pull up second-degree connections and those who are directly related to your search.

Don’t be shy about reaching out to those who you feel would be great influencers. However, you don’t want to be too forward with what you want from them. Avoid sounding spammy or too needy as well. Instead try some of these icebreakers on LinkedIn:

  • Start liking their shares and posts before adding them to your network.
  • Send a meaningful message about their content.
  • Ask them to join one of your LinkedIn groups (or join theirs).
  • Let them know how you found them (be honest).
  • Explain you’d just like a moment of their time (value their time).

The worst thing you can do is sound robotic and dehumanize the conversation. Secondly, put some effort into your research and have something specific and nice to say about what they do. The last thing you want is to seem rushed and that you only want something from them because they were the first result in your search.

Twitter

As we’ve mentioned before, Twitter is a great space to find, interact and converse with your social media influencers. Twitter’s advanced search options give you a lot of opportunity to reach specific audiences or find those who are addressing niche crowds in your industry.

If you need more help with advanced search, check out our Twitter Search Operators Cheat Sheet.

Twitter is great for pushing content and measuring how much traction you gained from a specific post or article. Using Twitter analytics tools from Sprout Social provides huge benefits into finding trending topics and hashtags with your brand. Once you can determine the subjects revolving around your brand, you can easily search for influencers with these key topics.

Use Twitter’s data to help you make better decisions on how you’ll search the network for social media influencers.

Building a Campaign Around Social Media Influencers

Once you understand why social media influencers are important and how to find them, it’s time to construct a campaign around them. When you’re building your campaign, you have to identify the goals you want to reach through your influencers.

You can ask influencers to interact with your campaign by:

  • Guest blogging
  • Sponsored posts
  • Collaborate on an event
  • Becoming an affiliate
  • Asking for product reviews
  • Giving products to influencers

It’s smart to move through the noise of standard advertising and to focus on creating a message your audience actually wants to hear. This is exactly where your influencers can help with your marketing process.

Use Influencers for Niche Audiences

Influencers have the ability to reach very specific audiences. Instead of you relying on thousands of followers, influencers will help you ensure people read and engage with your content.

If you’re going after a niche audience, make sure your influencers know your plan and how they will interact with their followers.

Create Mutual Goals

Your social media influencers need to get something from working with you as well, so again, make sure you have mutually beneficial goals. It’s important that both sides of the party work to post content each day to help build awareness to each audience.

You can’t simply rely on one party to do all the heavy lifting when you’re working together. Map out each side’s goals and work from there. It’s also a good idea to work in the same social network groups so each side can provide insight to discussions and conversations.

Get Started

Creating thoughtful and engaging content isn’t the easiest job on the planet. However, influencers can help you get your brand in the right direction. Remember to think about social media influencer relationships for the long run.

It’s important to know that if you use or abuse your influencer relationships, it can come back to bite you and your brand in the worst way. With a little hard work, research and collaborative efforts, you can be well on your way to boosting your brand’s identity.

Think we forgot something? Feel free to add your own insights and start the conversation below!

 

How small business can find the right social media influencers

How small business can find the right social media influencers

I’ll let you in on a little secret — traditional marketing alone is dead. Gone are the days of solely relying on TV ads to showcase your business. Now, your brand is up for debate. Blog posts, product reviews, insider tips, social media sharing and more. Consumers can take to the streets and share their opinion, even if it’s different from yours. So how do you spread a positive message in this type of environment? You find social media influencers who are passionate about you, your brand or your business.

When starting a business, relationships are everything. There’s a reason word of mouth is still the best form of marketing. If you use large, impersonal channels, your results will be sterile and disappointing.

Small businesses that put love, care and quality into their products should put love, care and quality into their marketing.
Social media influencers are a great way to get your clear, personal message out there.

Social media influencer evolution

If you think back to the early days of social media, which wasn’t all that long ago. It was typical for businesses, brands and peddlers of products to virtually shout at people to buy their wares. Sadly, some still continue to do this and then wonder why their sales aren’t going up.

Think of it like this: Would you run up to a stranger on the street and scream in their face about your product? Probably not. It’s ineffective, not to mention annoying, and it causes people to tune out, or run away if you’re standing on a sidewalk.

Since those early days, it’s been realized that consumers still want to be treated like humans (surprise!) and not invisible beings on the interwebs. Businesses and brands have leveraged brand advocates to serve and influencers to attract more people authentically to their products.

What is a social media influencer?

Social media influencers are a marketing channel just like TV or radio marketing. This type of marketing leverages the captive audience of “influencers” (people with large, passionate followings) on social media platforms. For example, when one of the Kardashians posts about the product of the moment on their social media channels, their followers listen, subscribe and purchase.

You’re probably thinking, “Well, I can’t get one of the Kardashians. Now what?” You don’t need someone with millions of followers.

If you can find a social media influencer to promote your business in an authentic way, with even 5,000 highly engaged people as their core audience, that’s 5,000 people who likely haven’t heard of your business or product before.

And they’ll be more likely to buy because they trust their “friend.”

Why are social media influencers hot right now?

Customers are more likely to purchase something based on a friend’s recommendation than an ad. Social media influencers have become people you look up to and view as friends. People always trust their friends more than brands.Influencer marketing is hot because traditional advertising can’t meet all the demands of today’s consumers. Many use a second screen, like a smartphone or tablet, while watching television, causing traditional advertising to miss the mark.

It doesn’t make sense to pay for TV time when no one is paying attention.

People don’t want to be disrupted — meaning, they don’t want to watch a beer ad during their favorite TV show or sniff a cologne leaflet while reading a magazine. They want a seamless experience. Social media influencer marketing intertwines “ads” (sponsored content) within that influencer’s life.

Finding the right social media influencer

Now what? How do you find the right people to represent your business? Here are some tips:

  • Determine what your brand stands for. What is your business or brand really about?
  • Find social media influencers who share your values and already use your product. Search on social media channels like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
  • Make your messaging as authentic as possible. In other words, find or create brand advocates and give them a megaphone.
  • Empower them by giving them free products, politely asking or offering payment. Just remember that if they receive something from you in exchange for their review, they’ll likely disclaim that.

Social media influencers are not a magic pill or a cure all. They’re simply a magnifying glass.

Find the right people who are already loyal to your brand or niche and empower them to spread your message. Authenticity is the way of the future. Consumers have the power. People have the power — brands and businesses don’t. When you make a great product and have the right people shout about it from the rooftops, you really can’t lose.

HOW TO STAND OUT ONLINE

HOW TO STAND OUT ONLINE

Use a website to put your passion in the spotlight

So long, summer breaks and spontaneous holiday trips. After having time to unwind, relax, and contemplate your latest passion project, let’s put your innovative ideas onto a profitable platform. In other words, you either need to make a website or enhance the one you already have to make it stand out amongst the crowd.

Keep it local (with global in mind)

Supporting local businesses has become a modern movement, and that’s even more reason to capitalize on your dream. “BIA,” or Business Improvement Area, has become a common term in cities across Canada and the world, encouraging everyone to shop locally.

Local consumers want to support local businesses.

So, why shouldn’t it be yours? Now’s the time to make that happen.

You know your customers better than you think. They’re probably a lot like you.

Let’s throw out a hypothetical — you hear about a business in town. Regardless of how you heard about it, if it’s already piqued your interest, you’ll more than likely look them up online. From there, the business’s website will give you all the information you need to decide whether or not you want to check it out for yourself. Keep this in mind when updating your own website.

When? Where? Why?

These are good questions to keep in mind when building your website. Explain the concept in its simplest form — the ol’ “elevator pitch,” if you will. When asked about your business, you should be able to have a clear, concise answer. This should be true for your website, too.

It’s design time: How to build a website

As an entrepreneur, you’re already an innovator and creator. A website helps you showcase your ideas to Canada and beyond.

But websites can seem overwhelming, especially for those who don’t consider themselves tech-savvy or web gurus. You may find yourself contemplating over and over, “how to build a website … how to build a website … ” That’s why WiseHost’s website software makes it easy to build or update a website in under an hour.

Simply choose a template that matches your industry, add text to tell customers about your business or idea, then add a few photos. It’s as easy as that. With WiseHost’s website software, you’ll have the ability to completely personalize your website — so your one-of-a-kind idea will stand out the way it should.

The more you can talk about your business and how it’s a one-of-a-kind concept, the more you’ll differentiate your brand online (and in person).

Now you can showcase your business and give it the recognition that it deserves. For more detailed information, check out this post about how to build a better website in under an hour.

Your story sells

After all the hard work of putting your blood, sweat and tears into creating your passion project, oddly enough, self-promotion can be difficult for a lot of entrepreneurs. Just don’t overthink your story. The more personal, genuine, and detail-oriented your story is, the more likely your customers will have faith in you and your product. Plus, you’ll differentiate yourself online because the more you talk about what’s special about your business, the more your current and potential customers will realize just how unique and exciting your business actually is.

Here are a few questions to help get you started on updating the “About Us” section of your website:

  • How did you come up with your idea?
  • What did you sacrifice to make your dream of owning a business come true?
  • What or who were your influences? Did your grandfather or grandmother teach you secret tricks of the trade at a young age? Your audience wants to hear about it.

Now that you’ve successfully put your idea into the spotlight, communicating exactly how awesome your business is, and how it’s a place like no other in town (or in the world), you’ve also officially got your readers’ attention. Ideally, this will make regulars keep on returning, and new customers finally check it out for themselves. And, who knows? You just might inspire someone else to follow their dreams as well.

What is Google Data Studio and how can you use it?

What is Google Data Studio and how can you use it?

Google Data Studio allows you to create branded reports with data visualizations to share with your clients. Columnist Sherry Bonelli explains the benefits and how to try it out.

Analytics has always been a challenge for most digital marketers. It can be confusing, overwhelming and, quite frankly, difficult for the ordinary human to understand and decipher. In many cases, marketers don’t even report back their clients’ analytics because they’re just not sure where to start — partly because of information overload and difficult-to-understand data.

To make matters worse, there was really no easy way to provide their local SMB clients with an overview of how their site or campaigns were performing that was easy to read and understand. If you’re like most agencies that do provide clients with analytics reports, it typically means laboriously downloading Google Analytics data and putting that data into Excel spreadsheets to create charts and diagrams from there.

Google now allows you to create reports that even your clients will understand — thanks to Google Data Studio.

Google Data Studio is part of the Google Analytics 360 Suite — the high-end (i.e., pricey) Google Analytics Enterprise package. Since most of us can’t afford to spend that much money for an analytics tracking tool, we typically opt for the free version of Google Analytics. But Google has decided to give those of us using the free version of Google Analytics a taste of what’s possible.

What is Google Data Studio?

Google Data Studio (in beta) gives you everything you need to turn your client’s analytics data into informational, easy-to-understand reports through data visualization.

The reports are easy to read, easy to share and even customizable to each of your clients. You can select how you want to present the data — bar graphs, charts, line graphs and so on. You can even change fonts and colors and brand the reports with your logo.

One thing that’s cool about Data Studio is that you can pull in more than just Google Analytics data – you can even import Facebook data, as long as you put that information into a Google Sheet. (That’s right. Any reporting information you have on a Google Sheet can be pulled into Google Data Studio — and your beautiful reports!) If you can get your data into Google Sheets, it can show up in your reports.

The reports are also dynamic, so when there’s an update to the data source, the updated/new information automatically shows up on any reports that reference the source. Additionally, the reports are shareable, so you can grant people permission to view the reports and/or allow them to make changes.

Google Data Studio uses the same functionality as Google Docs and Google Sheets, so all you need to do is press the “Share” button to let your clients or other members of your team view or edit the reports.

How to Access Google Data Studio

To access Google Data Studio, visit https://www.google.com/analytics/data-studio and log in using your Google Analytics login information. Right now, if you’re using the free version of Google Analytics, you get a limited version of Data Studio. You can create up to five custom reports for free.

Note: This program is currently only available in the US, but it’s expected to be rolled out to other countries throughout the rest of this year.

When you first log in. you will see some sample reports that will give you a good idea of the look and feel of the reports and the types of information you can pull into your custom reports once you get going. Go through each of these sample reports so you can see all of the possibilities.

Welcome Data Studio

When you click on the “Welcome to Data Studio! (Start here)” link, you’re taken to a visual, interactive tutorial that will walk you step-by-step through what Data Studio can do and how to get started. Be sure to check this out.

Click Data Studio

Google also provides you with a YouTube video that you can watch to get a quick overview of the tool, and it gives you a walk-through on how to connect your data sources and create your first report.

In the upper left-hand corner of the home page, you will see Reports and Data Sources. Reports lets you create reports and data visualizations. Data Sources are reusable components that connect a report to your data, such as Google Analytics, Google Sheets, Google AdWords and so forth.

Report Data

Google Data Studio uses the Google Drive interface, so it’ll be familiar to you if you use Google Drive. If you DO get lost, all you need to do is click the home button:

Google Data Studio Home

To create a new report, click on the blue plus (+) button at the bottom right-hand corner and accept the terms and conditions:

New Report

Then you’re off!

Is Google Data Studio right for you?

If you’re the type of person who likes working with spreadsheets, you might not think that Data Studio is a big deal. But for the huge number of us who hate spreadsheets, this is a godsend. (Finally! You can take a look at your analytics data — and it makes sense.)

Now, when you’re talking to your local clients, you can easily show them the results of your efforts in an easy-to-understand, brandable report! By sharing these reports with your clients, they will be able to see how your digital marketing efforts are paying off — which is definitely good for your business.

By Search Engine Land

Comment choisir un hébergeur web pour son blog ?

Comment choisir un hébergeur web pour son blog ?

Lorsque vous créez un blog ou un site internet, vous devez faire l’acquisition d’un hébergeur web. Mais comment choisir un bon hébergeur correspondant parfaitement à ses attentes ? Quels critères prendre en compte dans son choix ? Comment savoir si un hébergeur est bon ou pas ? Voici une liste de points importants que vous devez connaître avant d’effectuer votre achat.

Définir ses besoins

Avant de choisir l’hébergeur que vous allez prendre, il faut avant tout connaître vos attentes et vos besoins actuels mais aussi dans l’avenir. Allez-vous créer un simple blog, un site internet ou un site de e-commerce ? Avez-vous besoin d’applications annexes ? Avez-vous besoin d’intégrer un système de paiement en ligne ? Avez-vous l’intention d’avoir un petit trafic ou un trafic important ? Voici les principales questions que vous devez vous poser avant de faire votre choix.

Par ailleurs, si vous êtes débutant, optez pour un hébergement mutualisé qui est, moins cher, facile d’accès et qui conviendra à toutes les personnes se lançant dans la création de leur premier site web. Par la suite, vous aurez toujours la possibilité de changer pour un hébergement VPS ou dédié.

Les différentes options dont vous pourriez avoir besoin

Une fois vos besoins principaux établis, vous devez vous focaliser sur le contenu que proposera votre futur hébergeur, en fonction du site web que vous allez créer.

  • Tout d’abord vous devez savoir quel système d’exploitation vous avez besoin ainsi que quel serveur. Le couple Linux/Apache est le plus stable et le plus utilisé mais vous pouvez aussi choisir le couple Windows/iss7.
  • Quelle quantité de trafic vous aurez besoin. Ce point est relativement important. Vous pouvez choisir 20Go, 40Go, 100Go voire même illimité. Concrètement, il s’agit de la bande passante qui sera utilisée lorsque votre site sera consulté. Si vous prenez par exemple 20Go, une fois le quota atteint, plus personne ne pourra venir consulter votre site, réfléchissez-y bien.
  • L’espace disque de l’hébergement. Si votre site comportera des musiques, des vidéos ou d’autres fichiers assez lourds, vous devez prendre une option en conséquence. Commencer avec 10Go est une très bonne base.
  • Les emails. Effectivement, vérifiez bien que votre service d’hébergement vous propose de pouvoir recevoir des mails mais surtout d’avoir des mails personnalisés avec le nom de votre entreprise par exemple.

Le support technique et leur disponibilité

Choisissez un hébergeur qui sera disponible 7j/7 et 24H/24 par mail, chat ou téléphone et même sur les réseaux sociaux. Ainsi, ils pourront répondre à toutes vos questions. Il faut avant tout que le support technique soit très réactif.

Le temps de disponibilité

Rien de plus important que d’avoir un hébergeur qui fonctionne 24 × 7. Vous avez besoin d’un hébergeur qui possède des serveurs puissants et des connexions de réseau stables. 99,5% et au-dessus est le score de disponibilité recommandé; rien en dessous de 99% est inacceptable.

Il y a différentes façons pour savoir le temps de disponibilité d’un hébergeur web. Voici un exemple de graphique démontrant le « uptime » dun hébergeur.

Les noms de domaine

Les noms de domaine ne sont pas excessivement chers, c’est pour cela que la plupart du temps nous en prenons plusieurs à la fois. Mais pour avoir plusieurs noms de domaine, il faut de l’espace d’hébergement supplémentaire. En règle générale les hébergeurs proposent de la place pour 25 noms de domaine sur un seul compte mais d’autres hébergeurs ne vous laissent qu’une seule possibilité : un nom de domaine. Prenez bien ce critère en compte.

Le prix

C’est certainement le point que le plus de personnes prend en compte dans le choix de son hébergeur web. Le principe est simple, moins le prix est élevé et moins vous aurez de possibilité et d’options. Regardez bien également les prix des renouvellements d’abonnements qui peuvent vite grimper.

La politique de remboursement

Autre point important à prendre en compte, vérifiez bien la politique de remboursement des différents services d’hébergements dans le cas où vous voudriez résilier votre abonnement par exemple.

La suspension de compte

En effet, votre hébergeur peut décider de suspendre votre compte vous vous enfreignez certaines règles comme utiliser trop de puissance de l’hébergeur… Lisez bien le règlement (même les petites lignes) avant de prendre votre décision.

La migration vers d’autres offres

Avant de choisir tel ou tel fournisseur d’hébergement, vérifiez bien vos possibilités de migrer vers d’autres offres par la suite. Par exemple, vous avec un site web avec peu de trafic, mais du jour au lendemain, le nombre de visiteurs augmente considérablement. Dans ce cas, il faudra adapter votre offre en conséquence.

How to get rid of bad bots on your website

How to get rid of bad bots on your website

You’ve probably heard of bots on the Internet by now, but you might not be sure on what they are or what they do. To be brief, Internet bots, or web robots, or simply bots, are a software application that automatically runs various tasks on the Internet. These tasks can be for good or bad, depends on the creator. Good bots are typically used to assist in automating tasks, like website scanning or data collection, and are generally used to make our lives easier. Bad bots, however, are a pain and are used for malicious purposes in the online world. In Imperva Incapsula’s annual report on bot traffic, they found that nearly 60% of all bot traffic could be attributed to bad bots.

Bad bots are used to hack, spam, spy, interrupt, and compromise websites of various sizes. If you have an online presence of any kind, chances are, you’ve already had some dealings with these annoying bots. There are ways of dealing with bots. Bots make up nearly half of the Internet traffic today (48.5% to be exact), so chances are you won’t be able to avoid them altogether, but with our help, you won’t be bothered by them on a regular occurrence.

We have two solutions to get rid of bots on your website, a hard way, and an easy way. Let’s start with the hard way:

The hard way

Why is this hard? This solution takes a lot of effort on your part, a lot of knowledge, and a lot of time. If you’re having a problem with bots spamming your website the first thing you’ll need to do is find out where they came from. This is all going to get very technical, so try and follow along as best you can. If you get lost, don’t worry, the easy way is only a few paragraphs down.

To find out where the bots came from and block them you are going to need either, the IP address that bots were sent from or their User Agent String. An IP address is a unique identifier used to identify each computer on the Internet through a string of numbers that are separated by periods. A User Agent String, on the other hand, is the name of the actual program. For example, a Google search engine bot goes by Googlebot/2.1.

To find either of these things you will need to access your raw web log. At Wise Host you can find your raw web logs in Control Panel under Metrics > Raw Access > Download Current Raw Access Logs. These files are usually quite large and will need to be decompressed through an archiver. You can find many versions of archivers on the web or through app stores. Once the file has been decompressed, open it in an ASCII text editor (like Notepad), which can also be found on the web.

Now you have to scan through the web file to try and find the bot that you want to block. Some helpful identifiers are knowing the time that the bot tried to gain access to your website or the page it was interacting with. With either or both of those pieces of information, you should be able to track down an IP address or the User Agent String. Once you have located either/both of these pieces of information, jot them down and prepare for the next step.

Keep in my mind, this solution can be very patchy and you may not get the end result that you desire. The next step is about blocking the IP address or User Agent String that you found, but this could backfire on your company. Just because bots came from one IP address does not mean that they will come from that same IP address the next time they attack. By blocking random IP addresses you could very well block an entire Internet Service Provider (ISP) along with all of the customers that use that ISP. The same risks come with blocking specific User Agent Strings. Hackers are clever and they will often name their bots after browsers or software that everyone uses. This becomes problematic when you try to block a bot named “Safari” and in the same process, block every person using the Safari web browser. If you are not sure of what you are doing you might be better off using the easy solution below.

If you still feel that this solution is worth the risk, the next step is to download your .htaccess file. WARNING, one wrong change on your .htaccess file can potentially break your website, so make sure you backup your website before making any further changes. To download your .htaccess file go to the web directory of your website from your control panel and find the file titled, “.htaccess”. If you can’t find the file, chances are it doesn’t exist and you’ll have to create one.

If you managed to find the .htaccess file the next step is to open it in your ASCII text editor or open a fresh document if you need to create a new .htaccess file. Using a word processor like Office, Word, or WordPad to create this file can cause your website to fail when you re-upload the .htaccess file, so make sure that you use an ASCII text editor.

To block an IP address, simply add the following lines of code to your .htaccess file (just add the actual IP address you want to block in place of the example IP addresses we listed below):

Order Deny,Allow
Deny from 1.2.3.4
Deny 11.22.33.44

If you already have text in your .htaccess file add the above code to the bottom of the file. You can add another line of code with the same “Deny From ___” format for each IP address you wish to block. You can block as many IP addresses as you need to, however, note that the longer your list becomes the more sluggish your website can become.

Blocking a User Agent Strings is very similar to blocking IP addresses. Let’s say you found a bot that you want to block named “SpamRobot/3.1 (+http://www.randomsite.com/bot.html)”, you would add the following code to your .htaccess file (replacing SpamRobot with the actual bot that you found):

BrowserMatchNoCase SpamRobot bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase OtherSpamRobot bad_bot
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from env=bad_bot

To add multiple User Agent Strings to block, simply add another BrowserMatchNoCase line of code above the “Order Deny,Allow” line of code. Just like blocking IP addresses, adding too many bots to block can slow down your website.

Once you’ve finished updating your file make sure to save it as “.htaccess” file WITH the quotation marks included. Upload your updated or brand new file to your website and you should be safe from the IP addresses and User Agent Strings that you’ve identified.

Remember this fix will not protect your website from all bots. In fact, it only protects you from the specified IP addresses and User Agent Strings that you have blocked. Hackers are smart these days and will often make it so if you block them in this format you will also be blocking several other users as well. IP addresses can also change, meaning that you could be blocking an innocent user instead of a bot if you use this solution.

The easy way

At the start of the blog, I mentioned that there were good bots and bad bots. Services like Cloudflare, SiteLock and Sucuri, use good bots to automatically deal with incoming bad bots. As you probably saw above in the hard way, despite being free, is a long, arduous solution, that may not even protect your website from the majority of bots. Alternatively, SiteLock and Sucuri will take care of spam bots for you, among many other features.

Both of these services continually scan your website for intruders and remove them if they are found. Other fixes to your website include eliminating backdoors and vulnerability remediation. Further intrusions are prevented on your website with a Web Application Firewall, DDoS prevention, and backdoor mitigation. On top of all the security that these services provide, SiteLock also gives users access to a Global CDN to speed up your website.

The important thing to remember about this solution is that it’s easy, automatic, and reliable. You don’t have to worry about editing your files or blocking IP addresses when you have a service like SiteLock or Sucuri because they will do that all for you and they will do it much more efficiently. SiteLock, Sucuri, or another security service that you can find, will protect your website from incoming bad bots and patch up your code to ensure that nothing malicious can get on your website.

If you don’t run one of the most popular websites that get over 100,000 views per day, then chances are the majority of your traffic comes from bots, not humans. Bots play a big part of all the Internet activity that happens today. While a lot of that activity can have malicious intent, there are many bots out there made to make our lives earlier. Take advantage of the services that the good bots can provide and take all the necessary precautions to protect your website from incoming bad bots.

How to choose web hosting company

How to choose web hosting company

There are thousands of web hosting companies — the services that essentially connect your site to the internet. So how does an entrepreneur choose the one that’s right for his or her business?

To ensure that your hosting company supports your business needs and doesn’t create unnecessary hurdles to your website’s success, you first need to understand the major types of hosting. Then, consider some basic criteria to help choose the best plan for you.

Types of web hosting plans: As you begin shopping for a web hosting plan, you’ll encounter a number of different types, including the following options:

Individual plans. These are the most affordable options. As an example, WiseHost‘s introductory package starts at just $4.66 a month for a three-year package. Typically, these plans provide hosting support for a single domain only and may limits the features, bandwidth and data storage. So, they are often best suited to beginning webmasters who don’t anticipate significant traffic or special needs for their websites.

Dedicated servers. Individual plans are sometimes referred to as “shared hosting plans” because they share space on hosting servers with other webmasters. When webmasters outgrow the features made available through these limited plans, they will need to upgrade to ones that grant companies their own servers.

These plans will cost more, with WiseHost’s offerings beginning at $139 a month, for instance. If you anticipate growing to a size that eventually requires this upgraded option, be sure to choose a hosting provider that offers both types of plans and allows for account transitions.

Reseller accounts. Reseller hosting occupies a special niche between individual plans and dedicated server arrangements, allowing clients to set up multiple individual plans within a single account. Reseller plans typically cost between $10 and $20 a month and are best suited for businesses that anticipate running several small websites.

What to look for in a hosting plan: Once you’ve decided on the type of hosting plan, consider these issues in choosing a specific provider:

Cost. While it’s important to look for a hosting provider that offers reasonable rates, avoid free hosting programs entirely, as they may be unreliable and their low costs are often subsidized by required on-site advertisements.

Customer reviews. Customer reviews can be an excellent resource in evaluating web hosts because any fly-by-night host can put up a professional-looking sales page and make bold promises. Search for multiple reviews from current or past customers because a single positive review could have originated from the company’s own marketing department.

If you’d like a shortcut here, pay close attention to WiseHost, Bluehost and 1 and 1, which all tend to garner positive recommendations from clients.

Customer support. Whether you’re a beginning webmaster or a more experienced digital business owner, you’ll want a dependable customer support team behind your web hosting plan. Things can and will go wrong on your website’s backend, but getting support when you need it can go a long way toward minimizing any potential damage to your business.

Look for companies that provide 24/7 phone support, email access and online chat. Before committing to a plan, test out each of these features to get a feel for how well your needs will be met.

Storage and bandwidth allowances. As more hosting plans begin offering unlimited disk space and bandwidth, this may not be a concern for your business. But it’s still important to be aware of any limitations to ensure that your plan has enough space for your website to operate effectively.

Script support. One final consideration is the hosting company’s built-in support for popular web scripts. Say, for example, you want to run WordPress on your website. Some hosts offer built-in script packages that make the installation of this popular blogging platform a breeze. Other hosts limit the number of MySQL databases that can be created, which you’ll need to run WordPress and other programs.