Tips for Getting More Facebook Shares

Filed Under Checklists, Community, Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog, Tools | 1 Comment

By Charles Mburugu

Everyone would want to have their Facebook posts shared by as many people as possible. A share is somewhat like a vote of confidence, showing that someone values your content enough to share it with others. Therefore, getting many shares enhances your credibility and exposes your Facebook profile or page to a wider audience.

Here are some guidelines which will help you increase your Facebook shares.

1. Post at the right time

When you post on Facebook is as important as what you post. Therefore, you need to take time to study the Facebook habits of your audience. In most cases, people look at their updates first thing in the morning, during their lunch break, after work or on weekends. This means that anything posted during business hours might be missed by your target audience. However, not all audiences are the same. Study your audience and find out what would work best for them.

2. Be relevant

People like Facebook pages or follow profiles which cover topics of interest to them. Therefore, you cannot afford to just post anything on your Facebook profile. Make sure all the content published on your profile is relevant to your theme as well as your audience. For instance, if your page is for a gym, it would be inappropriate to post anything about home improvement.

3. Use videos and photos

Sharing visual content can be very powerful way of capturing the interest of your audience. When people are scanning through text-only updates, they could easily miss something. However, when updates are accompanied by videos and photos, your audience is more likely to pay attention and even share with others. Therefore, sharing relevant visual content on your Facebook profile is a very effective way of increasing the level of audience interaction.

4. Have a clear call to action

If you want people to follow your profile, like a page, share updates or simply comment, ask them to do so. This means that all your posts should be accompanied with an appropriate call to action. When you tell people what exactly you want them to do, they are likely to heed the call to action.

5. Post educational content

Most people would love to learn something new in their topics of interest. This is why it is important to occasionally share relevant educational material on your Facebook page or profile. Every time you publish a how-to post on your blog, remember to share the link as a Facebook update, as well as a brief summary of what the post is all about.

6. Share useful lists

People love lists. Take time to create a great list on a relevant topic and share it with your Facebook followers or fans. Where possible, you could present it in form of an infographic. If the content is great and presented in a professional way, it could easily go viral, thus ensuring more visibility for your page name or profile.

7. Inject some humor

Your Facebook page or profile does not have to be dull and boring. A sprinkling of humor can do wonders in getting the attention of your audience. When people come across something funny, they are likely to share it with others in their social network. Therefore, take time to look for humorous content which can be shared once in a while.

What are you doing to increase your Facebook engagement?

Author’s Bio: Charles Mburugu is a professional blogger who likes sharing tips for internet marketers and bloggers. Currently, he is writing for websitetemplates.org.

After Your Blog is Hacked: To-Do List

Filed Under Blog Basics, Checklists, Successful Blog, Tools | Leave a Comment

By Ann Smarty

From the time my blog became a regular part of my life and started to gain popularity, I have had a reoccurring nightmare. One of the regular contributors to the site calls me in the middle of the night, waking me up.

They are noticeably upset as they tell me that the blog has been hacked, and the posts have disappeared. In their place is a very not-safe-for-work animation that is causing all my readers to flood my Facebook and Twitter profiles in shock and anger.
what to do after your blog is hacked
I usually wake up in a cold sweat and can’t get back to sleep until I have fired up the laptop and checked that everything is alright. Can you blame me for my fear? After all, this isn’t some random paranoia. Hacks happen all the time, and some are much worse than others. While I could take a DDoS attack in stride, having my blog actually taken over is terrifying enough to make me jittery just thinking about it.

The sad truth is that we will all have to deal with a hack of some description (or at least an attempt) at some point. When you become a more popular site your chances increase significantly. Prevention is good, but it isn’t enough. Here is a checklist of what to do when you have been hacked.

Before the Hack

First, make sure your hosting is secure. WP Beginner has an awesome resource of best WordPress hosting services. There’s also a good guide into choosing secure web hosting. Also, avoid free hosting unless you are using for personal branding.

Then, you should from this moment on make sure you are backing up your posts, files and data. Each platform will have its own way of doing this, so just check with the FAQ’s to find out how to do a proper backup.

You should also do regular system checks on your desktop. Viruses and malware can be introduced through your local files, then accidentally uploaded through things like photos onto your blog. Just run regular scans using your chosen protective software. I use a combinations of Microsoft Security Essentials and AVG.

Of course, there’s much more to talk about pro-active tactics for WordPress Security but if you landed here to find the answer to the main question (which is in the topic), the hack may have happened already, so let’s quickly list what to do.

After The Hack

Don’t Panic

The first thing you should do is change your password. That way you know that there won’t be anyone working against your fix while you take care of the problems on the blog. Be sure it is a strong password that has nothing in common with the last one you were using (Tool: strong password generator).
dont panic if your wordpress site is hacked
If you are using WordPress, you also have to change your secret keys so they cannot remain logged into the account. Once you have all that done, log out, clear cache and cookies and log back in.

Next, put the site in maintenance mode. That way you won’t have visitors facing the problems you have encountered while you fix them. This is especially important if you are experiencing a redirect that takes readers to a third party site. Or if you have ads showing up that contain malware and users might accidentally click on.

Identify the backdoor. Backdoor is a method of bypassing normal WordPress authentication. Here’s an awesome guide on fixing a backdoor in a hacked WordPress site, again, courtesy of WP Beginner.

Finally, it is time to take care of the blog itself. Your best bet is to delete everything. Including the core files if you are using WordPress. Yes, this is a major hassle. But it is the only way to be absolutely certain that you get every bit of malicious code. Just going through all files manually will probably not take care of the problem. You may miss a bit of coding, fail to see a file that has been compromised, or a backdoor could still exist to allow the hacker (or hacking software) to slip back in.

If you don’t have a backup of your site, you are facing a dilemma. You could try to save as much as possible before deleting, but this could still run the risk of reinfection by malicious coding, or even infect your desktop. Not to mention the risk that exists to your readers if something goes wrong. I would recommend copy/pasting as many posts as you can into .doc files, then deleting everything on the actual blog and reposting the text fresh. Of course, you will have no choice but to find or reupload all photos.

Conclusion

Yes, this is all a huge hassle. But if you want to keep your site running, and it has experienced a hack, you have no choice. That is why it is so important to backup all files regularly, at the very least once a week. If you update often, then several times a week. This will allow you some peace of mind, as you know that you will only have to delete and then reinstate the data if a problem occurs.

Have you ever had a blog hack? Tell us about it in the comments.

Author’s Bio: Ann Smarty is the (guest) blogger who founded My Blog Guest, the free guest blogging and content sharing platform.

Image Credits: 1, 2.

Why curiosity brings innovation

Filed Under leadership / management, Motivation-Inspiration, Strategy/Analysis, Successful Blog | Leave a Comment

Have you ever read the book, Who Moved My Cheese? I use the premise of the four characters quite often when I consider the various sorts of folks who cross my path on a daily basis.

For example, as much as I love my mother, I know that she is squarely in the Hem camp. She, among the four analogies outlined in the book, is the character who will continue to visit the empty cheese room, convinced that, surely, certainly, there will indeed be a new cheese shipment arriving any moment. Of course, alas, the cheese never arrives. :(

I’m going to assume that most of the people reading this are probably closer to the Sniff and Scurry sort. You are probably an early adopter, and know which way the wind blows. You probably sense trends and anticipate movement. You are probably curious.

You are probably either independent, or seeking to further your transition to that state. Curiosity is probably one of the best ways to get there, and I’m going to give you my $.02 as to why.

• Curious people try the path not taken.
• Curious people see if something will work.
• Curious people look under the hood.
• Curious people don’t let things lie.

“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.” ~ James Stephens

Curiosity is the impetus for bravery in some instances. The curious are DRIVEN, compelled even, by the need to KNOW. As a result, we will take risks. We will shove our fear into our back pocket and “give it a shot,” regardless of any certainty of outcomes.

If you are still reading, I know that I have found a kindred spirit. You are familiar with that feeling in your gut that almost goads you into action. Your need to satisfy your curiosity is more powerful than your fear of failure. Good. That means that you are destined for great things. Because the curious keep trying.

“Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why.” ~ Bernard Baruch

If you are curious, you are also probably an innovator. Most folks walking this earthly plane are content to go about their daily business without looking too far afield. They stay in their lane; color inside the lines and keep their eyes fixed on the stuff right in front of them. They are “safe,” and that’s perfectly oka-lee-dokalee.

Curious people, on the other hand, disembowel clocks. They rip apart business models. They disrupt stuff left and right. They probably spent a LOT of time in the corner as kids. We can be maddening to people who rather we just leave things alone. Status Quo People get really frustrated with the Curious.

“…keep six honest serving-men,

They taught me all I knew;

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who.” ~ Rudyard Kipling

However, it is this seeking that leads to expansion and independence. The same curiosity that brought us Tang and the space program also brought us twitter, cleantech, Futurama and the cure for polio.

Speaking of social media, I also believe that the folks who are out here in the ether are a harbinger of a new paradigm (even the Bieberists). Social media has no boundaries and is populated by those who are Seekers.

Whether talking about the Kardashians or PRISM and NSA, this new frontier is peopled by the curious. We may not always be talking about the same thing from the same perspective, but we are talking. Which leads to …

“Be curious, not judgmental.” ~ Walt Whitman

In the pursuit of knowledge, it is vitally important to try very hard to uncover information without assigning specific value to it. For example, the earth is not the center of the universe, although at one point in human history, to state otherwise was cause for excommunication. In order to glean the most from our experiences as we pursue information, it is important to dispassionately observe what we find.

Through trial and error, consistent (and mindful) questioning and a willingness to grow our awareness, we will find ourselves on a glorious journey of wonder.

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” ~ Dorothy Parker

Thank goodness.

What led you here today? What would you like to learn? What questions drive you? What steps are you taking to grow your knowledge?

————–

Molly Cantrell-Kraig is a woman with drive. Possessing an innate sense of purpose and a pragmatic, solution-based approach to empowering people, she fused these two traits in order to establish Women With Drive Foundation. Based upon its founder’s personal history, Women With Drive Foundation is a means through which Cantrell-Kraig may effect change on both a micro and macro level. By providing women with something as essential as personal transportation in order to transition them from poverty to prosperity, she, through Women With Drive Foundation, seeks to empower women to help them help themselves. Through this action, the individual applicant benefits, as does society as a whole. Follow Molly on twitter as @mckra1g or @WWDr1ve (Women With Drive Foundation) or “Like” them on facebook.

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