Successful Blog

How to Stop the Content Scrapers

by

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Right?

Except when someone has done a wholesale ripoff of your creative idea or blog post.

For anyone who produces online content, it’s crucial to protect your assets.

Make Life Difficult for the Thieves

Alert the readers

It’s good practice to do spot checks on your best blog posts, to make sure they haven’t fallen victim to the “content scrapers” who ruthlessly roam the web looking for content to steal. Just go to Google’s Advanced Search and type the title (or a sentence) from your post in the “exact phrase match” box.

The silver lining for these automated scrapers is that they often take the whole post without a human reading it, so you can add a note to the end of the post that will notify readers of the original source (you’ll want to include a link to your actual site):

This post originally appeared on Rosemary’s Best Blog Site. If you’re not reading this via email or RSS feed from Rosemary’s Best Blog Site, it may have been stolen.

Check referring links

In your Google Analytics, look at your referred traffic periodically (you probably already do this). If you see anything suspicious, check the source.

Watermark

Any visual content you post, including photos and videos, should have your site name or logo watermarked on it. That way, even if it’s stolen, you’re getting credit. One option is an application like VisualWatermark.com.

Excerpts only

Try changing your RSS feed to excerpts only. The scrapers often like to use RSS feeds as a funnel for content; if you’re only sending excerpts, you’ve made their job much more difficult. The Advanced Excerpt plugin for WordPress is one way to do this.

How to Do a DMCA Takedown Request

Use a “whois” lookup to find out who the web host is for the site with your stolen content.

Most web hosts will have a DMCA form on their site for you to submit your claim. Click here to see Google’s copyright infringement form (if the content happens to be on a Google-hosted site like a Blogger blog).

Unfortunately, tracking down those who have stolen your content can be like a big game of “Whack-a-Mole.” But if you take precautions that make it harder for the scrapers to get your posts, maybe they’ll pass you by.

How have you dealt with the content thieves? Please share any special tips with us.

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

How Do We Get More Social With Our Clients?

by

Whether you run a small, mid-sized or large company, how social you are with your customers can go a long way in determining just how successful you are destined to be.

Whether they feel like they can’t properly engage their return on investment (ROI), don’t want to make the time and effort or are essentially ill-informed on how to properly run social media campaigns, there are still many businesses that are missing the boat when it comes to socially engaging consumers.

So, how can you and/or your marketing team (where applicable) get the most out of what social media has to offer moving forward?

Among the tricks of the social trade:

1. Be a good listener – Even if your business is just using social media sporadically, you can pick up a ton of valuable chatter by listening to what is being said about you and your industry in general. If you do not use Facebook, Twitter, Google+ for any other reason, use them to hear the conversations. You can pick up valuable discussions as to what consumers need more and less of, along with what their most used questions and issues are;

2. Be a consistent presence – Like many other things in life, you need to be constantly active in social media to truly benefit from it. Just being a casual social media participant leaves you and your company with several problems. First, you are not there regularly to see and hear what is going on. Secondly, you won’t be viewed as an authority in your industry if you just pop in and out on the social channels. Finally, you miss out on potential sales from those consumers who do not yet have the product or service they need;

3. Be someone who engages – One of a number of reasons consumers are on social media for starters is they come looking for answers and solutions to their questions and problems. With social media, you can respond to them in a real-time fashion, something you can’t do through traditional means like in-person store visits or phone calls. Actively engage consumers that are both present and potential customers with you, showing them you want to be the go-to man or woman for their shopping needs;

4. Be void of spamming – With all the positives that social media can offer you as a business owner, never use it to spam consumers. The spammer is the individual or company that inundates consumers with messages, mostly trying to push a sale down their throats. Some consumers will automatically revolt against this, feeling like you are being too pushy. Use your social media tweets and shares to answer questions, solve problems, along with educating the consumer. The latter can be easily done via links to tutorials and other items you hopefully have on your website;

5. Be human – Finally, make your social media posts fun and entertaining from time to time. Yes, your main goal is to draw people back to your website, but you can’t be about sales and business 100 percent of the time. Show those who view your SM posts that you and your company are just like them, doing this by interjecting some humor into your posts. You should also humanize your entire office team by either getting them to post or talking about them (images are great) from time to time. Being social is just that, putting a social side to your business.

So, how do you as a business owner go about getting the most out of social media in 2013?

Photo credit: dimespring.com

About the Author: With 23 years’ writing experience, Dave Thomas covers social media and business topics, including Internet reputation management.

Business Success: Power of Negative Thinking?

by

By Deb Bixler

If you are looking for home business success, then you start to realize that there is power in everything. People believe in the power of positive thinking and everyone understands that knowledge is power. But would you believe it if you were told that there is power in negative thinking as well?

To find home business success, you should not dwell on negative thinking for too long. But since it is inevitable that you will come into contact with people who are always looking at the down side of any issue, you should learn how to cultivate the power of negative thinking.

It Forces Alternatives

goals for success

The great thing about people with negative attitudes is that they are always looking for a way for something to fail. Before you roll out an important plan or program that will cost your company a lot of money, give the idea to a negative person. He will start poking holes in the plan and find ways that it will fail. As long as you are taking notes, you will have all of the information you need to find ways to fix the plan or offer alternatives to make the plan stronger.

Negative Thinking VS Positive Thought

Sometimes sharing your thoughts and business success strategies with negative people you will learn how they will be received in the market place.

If you have a marketing plan you are ready to roll out but you are unsure of some of the ideas or theories you have in the plan, then run it by a negative person. If anyone is going to put your theories to the test, it is someone who wants to see them fail.

If your theories and ideas hold up against a negative point of view, then they are very strong.

Success Plan

When you are putting together any kind of business success plan, you always try to consider as many options as possible. Negative people love to turn the presentation of ideas into a game of “I bet you didn’t consider this.” When you spend some time reviewing your plan with a negative person, you will eventually consider all possible options.

It Tests Your Resolve

Nothing tests the resolve of a human being more than the power of negative thinking. Just when you think that you have everything figured out, a negative thinker will find a reason to have you start all over again. If you can stand the kind of scrutiny that comes from a person who is always looking at the world from the negative side, then your resolve is strong enough to succeed.

There is a power to negative thinking that, if harnessed properly, can work to your advantage. You do not want to develop the habit of being someone who is perpetually negative. But if your ideas and plans can withstand the kind of microscopic scrutiny that a negative person will give them, then those plans are ready to become part of your company’s business culture.

Author’s Bio:
Deb Bixler retired from the corporate world using the proven business systems that made her a success working for others by incorporating them into her home business. In only 9 months Deb replaced her full time income with the sales and commissions from her home party plan business. Find her on Twitter at: http://www.Twitter.com/debbixler

Wondering about the Return on #SOBCon (ROS)?

by

When many people think of attending a conference, they wonder what their return on investment will be for the time, energy and money they need to invest it takes to attend a conference and be fully present. While certainly we could list many reasons why you’ll get your money back and more, multiple time past attendee Steve Woodruff shares his thoughts about the Return on SOBCon in a much more interesting way than we could.

If you’re a high quality, collaborative, smart, pay-it-forward type of person, I’d encourage you to take a look at Steve’s post Return on SOBCon – and so would he. If you’re not one of those people, but you’d like to be, we’ll still welcome you to SOBCon. 🙂

Want to know who these people are? Check out this year’s SOBCon lineup.

Top 10 Business Collaboration Tools

by

By Joel Parkinson

What would the workplace be, without collaboration? Collaboration is a positive trait because it’s where people work together (even if they belong to different departments or divisions) towards achieving a common goal. Without effective business collaboration, companies would probably end up with a lot of in-fighting among co-workers, and deadlines wouldn’t be met, and a lot of money, resources and time would be lost.

What are the tools used for effective collaboration during these high-tech times? Let’s list the top 10 business collaboration tools.

Skype

Skype has been around offices and manufacturing centers, as well as at home, for quite some time. Most use Skype on a daily basis, for both official work and leisure purposes. Skype has been hailed as a “great” collaboration too because it allows for team brainstorming, and it enables workers to check on their clients quickly, as well as provide time for relaxing chat-sessions, which can add sparkle to remote workers.

Yammer

Yammer is more than just your typical company social network site. Its feeds also provide workers and managers with a constant stream of ideas, articles and more. Yammer also encourages employees to think differently, without worrying about the distractions of the wider Internet. Yammer is a service which is best-known for promoting cross-departmental collaboration.

Projectmanager.com

Projectmanager.com was founded in 2008 by four people who wanted to develop a more innovative toolset for managing projects. Today, projectmanager.com has customers in over 100 countries, and is one of the fastest project management service provides on the Internet.

Google Docs

Google Docs has been around for a long time too, and yet it continues to provide a solid platform for all types of collaboration. It perhaps provides the simplest method for having multiple individuals work on one document, and keep things organized.

Teambox

Teambox is an innovative project management system that allows everyone to piggyback on other ideas, and discuss new project ideas in real time.

Facebook Member Pages

While closed groups on Facebook are nothing new, more office or work-related communities are now shifting towards a platform, where office or work-related requests are posted around the clock, and colleagues give and receive feedback across different time zones, any time, any week or month.

Basecamp

Basecamp is now considered as the world’s number one project management software. It offers to-do lists, Wiki-type web-based text documents, file-sharing, time-tracking and a messaging system. It’s also available in Spanish, Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Polish, Danish, Russian, Hungarian, Japanese and English versions.

Status.net

Status.net allows users to do micro-blogging, file-sharing and groups via desktop or mobile applications. It also allows people to integrate their tools into their own domain, as well as integrate with other social networks.

GoToMeeting

GoToMeeting offers more than just email or instant messaging. It allows office managers or supervisors and workers to distribute meeting invitations, audio-conference in VoIP, and even dial a toll-free number. It’s a very straightforward web-conferencing tool for small and medium-sized businesses.

Socialcast

Socialcast is a microblogging tool that fully integrates SharePoint, Outlook and others. The collaboration tool also provides a solid analytics suite, as part of its admin tools.

The new business collaboration tools are very helpful when it comes to providing a seamless, real-time and all-day, all-night system for communication, progress tracking, memo or document-sharing and much more.

Author’s Bio: Joel Parkinson is a writer for the web site projectmanager.com, where he has recently been researching online project management. In his spare time, Joel enjoys surfing and running.

How to really make Twitter work for your business

by

By Tina Hamilton

By now entrepreneurs and small business owners should be aware that marketing from social media platforms is highly advantageous—namely Twitter. I thought I knew it all when it came to utilizing Twitter for marketing efforts, however, the old saying “you never stop learning” proved to be very true. I knew Twitter for being a notorious platform for fans to follow celebrities on, and for big businesses to establish contact with people via blasting multiple daily tweets. I was under the misconception that when it came to marketing, only large corporations benefited from using Twitter. I was mistaken, for in the words of Yoda, “size matters not.” Twitter can even benefit a kid with a lemonade stand.

Simple rules to follow

When setting up a Twitter business account there are some simple rules you will want to follow that I discovered are very effective. If you are a home-based entrepreneur the Twitter winds will blow your sails towards the shores of other companies and marketing experts with whom you can connect. Marketing your brand on Twitter (correctly) will open more doors for advantageous encounters.

Brand yourself

When setting up your profile make sure you take advantage of the area reserved for your profile photo and instead upload an image of your company’s logo. This will help to establish brand recognition, and the verbal tweets that you provide can be placed with a visual image that will brand itself into your audience member’s minds.

Wave your Twitter flag

In other words, let EVERYONE know that you are on Twitter. Tell all your friends and followers on Facebook, Linkdin, Pinterest, and any other social media platforms you may be using. This is a numbers game: the more followers you get, the better your brand’s online exposure will be.

Being a leader means to be a follower

As a business leader you will want to follow as many businesses, entrepreneurs, marketing experts and those who are relevant in your field. It is common “Twitter etiquette” that if someone follows you, you follow him or her in return. You should also follow all of your competitors for two simple reasons: (1) you can keep an eye on “what they are doing” and (2) it provides an opportunity for their followers to discover and follow you.

Stick to business

We all know that bartenders aren’t supposed to talk about politics and religion, and the same holds true for business Tweets. As you will see lots of tweets floating through cyberspace that stress views on non-business related issues, you may feel tempted to respond. But don’t. Running a successful Twitter campaign requires one to stay on neutral ground at all times.

Get visual

Sharing images is a great way to draw attention to your brand. People are more inclined to respond to tweets that include images—just make sure they are business appropriate. A photo of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders could offend those who dislike the team or upset those who think cheerleading objectifies women. Instead, show an inspirational and motivating image or personal photo from your place of business (a happy client using your services, for example).

Growth!

Trust me guys, follow these tips and you will see a difference in the number of people you communicate with via your brand. Not only have these methods helped me; they have helped many others who took them on board. Here’s to some successful tweeting!

Author’s Bio: Tina Hamilton is a veteran journalist who enjoys covering a wide range of topics like social media, business, society, and others as a staff writer for Organic Media Group, a boutique SEO consulting agency. You can follow Tina on Twitter as @TinaTheScribe.