Popular Social Media Sites & Platforms

Facebook

This is the biggest social media network on the Internet, both in terms of total number of users and name recognition. Founded on February 4, 2004, Facebook has within 12 years managed to accumulate more than 1.59 billion monthly active users and this automatically makes it one of the best mediums for connecting people from all over the world with your business. It is estimated that more than 1 million small and medium-sized businesses use the platform to advertise their business.

Twitter

You might be thinking that limiting your posts to 140 characters is no way to advertise your business, but you will be shocked to know that this social media platform has more than 320 million active monthly users who make use of the 140 character limit to pass on information. Businesses can use Twitter to interact with prospective clients, answer questions, release latest news and at the same time use the targeted ads with specific audiences. Twitter was founded on March 21, 2006, and has its headquarters in San Francisco, California.

LinkedIn

Founded on December 14, 2002, and launched 0n May 5, 2003, LinkedIn is hands-down the most popular social media site for professional networking. The website is available in 24 languages and has over 400 million registered users. LinkedIn is great for people looking to connect with people in similar industries, networking with local professionals and displaying business related information and statistics.

Google+

While it’s no Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, Google+ has its place among the popular social media sites. Its SEO value alone makes it a must-use tool for any small business. Launched on December 15, 2011, Google+ has joined the big leagues registering 418 active million users as of December 2015.

YouTube

YouTube — the largest and most popular video-based social media website — was founded on February 14, 2005, by three former PayPal employees. It was later bought by Google in November 2006 for $1.65 billion. YouTube has over 1 billion website visitors per month and is the second most popular search engine behind Google.

Pinterest

Launched in March 2010, Pinterest is a relatively newcomer in the social media arena. This platform consists of digital bulletin boards where businesses can pin their content.  Pinterest announced September 2015 that it had acquired 100 million users. Small businesses whose target audience is mostly made up of women should definitely invest in Pinterest as more than half of its visitors are women.

Instagram

Like Pinterest, Instagram is a visual social media platform. The site, launched on October 6, 2010, has more than 400 million active users and is owned by Facebook. Many of its users use it to post information about travel, fashion, food, art and similar subjects. The platform is also distinguished by its unique filters together with video and photo editing features. Almost 95 percent of Instagram users also use Facebook.

Tumblr

Tumblr is one of the most difficult to use social networking platforms, but it’s also one of the most interesting sites. The platform allows several different post formats, including quote posts, chat posts, video and photo posts as well as audio posts, so you are never limited in the type of content that you can share. Like Twitter, reblogging, which is more like retweeting, is quick and easy. The social networking website was founded by David Karp in February 2007 and currently hosts more than 200 million blogs.

Flickr

Flickr, pronounced “Flicker,” is an online image and video hosting platform that was created by the then Vancouver-based Ludicorp on February 10, 2004, and later acquired by Yahoo in 2005. The platform is popular with users who share and embed photographs.  As of October last year, Flickr had more than 112 million users and had its footprint in more than 63 countries. An average of a million photos are shared daily on Flickr.

Reddit

This is a social news and entertainment networking website where registered users can submit content such as direct links and text posts. Users are also able to organize and determine their position on the site’s pages by voting submissions up or down. Submissions with the most positive votes appear in the top category or main page. Reddit was founded by University of Virginia roommates Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman on June 23, 2005. A decade later, the site boasts more than 36 million registered accounts and 231 million monthly visitors.

Snapchat

Snapchat is an image messaging application software product that was created by Reggie Brown, Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy when they were students at Stanford University. The app was officially released in September 2011, and within a short span of time they have grown immensely registering an average of 100 million daily active users as of May 2015. More than 18 percent of all social media users use Snapchat.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp Messenger is a cross-platform instant messaging client for smartphones, PCs and tablets. The app relies on the Internet to send images, texts, documents, audio and video messages to other users that have the app installed on their devices. Launched in January 2010, WhatsApp Inc. was acquired by Facebook on February 19, 2004, for about $19.3 billion. Today, more than 1 billion people use the service to communicate with their friends, loved ones and even customers.

Quora

Capitalizing upon human curiosity is an ingenious idea that would lead to the creation and launch of Quora in June, 2009. The website, co-founded by two former Facebook employees, Charlie Cheever and Adam D’Angelo now claims that it received more than 80 million monthly unique visitors, with half of them coming from the U.S. So far, the question-and-answer website has managed to raise $141 in venture capital funds and while it doesn’t look ready to go public yet, it’s definitely a company to watch.

Vine

With over 40 million users, Vine is a rapidly growing video sharing social media app that allows users to share 6-second video clips with their followers. While this looks like a really short time for a video, businesses of all sizes are having tremendous success using the service. Vine was founded in June 2012 and later acquired by Twitter in October 2012, just before its official launch.

Periscope

Periscope is a live video streaming mobile app that was developed by Joe Bernstein and Kayvon Beykpour. The two started the company in February 2014 and later sold it to Twitter for $100 million in March 2015. Four months after its March 2015 relaunch, Periscope said that it had surpassed 10 million accounts and in December the same year, Apple announced Periscope as the app of the year.

BizSugar

BizSugar is a social networking platform and niche resource for small business owners, entrepreneurs and managers. The site was created in 2007 by DBH Communications, Inc., a provider of award-winning business publications, and later acquired by Small Business Trends LLC, in 2009. The platform allows users to share videos, articles, blog posts, podcast among other content. It also allows users to view and vote on submissions by other members.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a discovery engine that finds and recommends content for its users. More than 25 million people use StumbleUpon for entertainment and information. In addition, more than 80,000 publishers, brands, and other marketers have used StumbleUpon’s Paid Discovery platform to promote their businesses. StumbleUpon was owned by eBay from May 2007 to April 2009, when Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith and several investors bought it back. It is now an independent, investor-backed startup once again.

Delicious

This is a social bookmarking web service for discovering, storing and sharing web bookmarks. The site was founded by Peter Gadjokov and Joshua Schachter in 2003 and acquired in 2005 by Yahoo. By the end of 2008, Delicious claimed that it had bookmarked 180 million URLs and acquired more than 5.3 million users. The service was later sold to AVOS Systems in April 2011 who later sold it to Science Inc. In January this year, Delicious Media said that it had acquired the service.

Digg

Founded more than a decade ago (November 2004), Digg is a news aggregator with a curated front page that selects stories specifically for the Internet audience, The topics vary widely from trending political issues to science to viral Internet issues and anything in between. Digg supports sharing of content to other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. In 2015, the company claimed that it had about 11 million active monthly users.

Viber

Viber is a Voice over IP (VoIP) and instant messaging app for mobile devices that was developed and released by Viber Media on December 2, 2010. The app also allows for the exchange of audio, video and images between users. As of April 2014, Viber had accrued close to 600 million registered users and 230 monthly active users.

By: OM MAURYA SIR On February 27, 2017

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.htaccess redirect url

What is .htaccess  file ?

htaccess is a configuration file for use on web servers running the Apache Web Server software. When a .htaccess file is placed in a directory which is in turn 'loaded via the Apache Web Server', then the .htaccess file is detected and executed by the Apache Web Server software. These .htaccess files can be used to alter the configuration of the Apache Web Server software to enable/disable additional functionality and features that the Apache Web Server software has to offer. These facilities include basic redirect functionality, for instance if a 404 file not found error occurs, or for more advanced functions such as content password protection or image hot link prevention.

htaccess  redirect:

.htaccess files can be used to make redirects. Below are some common examples.

Redirect from old domain to new domain

You can use the code below if you have changed domain and want users on your old domain to be redirected to your new domain.

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.your-new-domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

If a user visits http://www.olddomain.com/articles.php he will be redirected to the same page on your-new-domain.com. The R=301 part make it a permanent redirect by sending a “301 Moved Permanently” status code to the user’s browser. If the user happens to visits the same page on your old domain, the browser will automatically redirect to the new domain.

Redirect to www

So you only want users to visit www.mydomain.com and not domain.com? Htaccess redirects can solve this too. Copy the code below into a .htaccess for redirecting all visits to your www domain.

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

For example .htaccess   for   Domain name  www.funmoviemasti.com :

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^funmoviemasti.com [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.funmoviemasti.com/$1 [R=301,L]

By: OM MAURYA SIR On February 19, 2017

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How to Get Your First 10,000 Fans on Facebook (Case Study)

Step 1: First things first – you need to have a Facebook business page

It may sound silly for the experienced but for beginners to social media this may be something new: A personal Facebook page is different from a business page.

If you want to have friends on Facebook to share your holiday photos then you need to create a personal page but if you want to have fans and followers for your website or business then you need to create a Facebook business page.

So, the first step is to ensure that you create a Facebook business page and the second step is to make sure that your page is properly optimized.

Step 2: Optimize your Facebook business page

When we talk about Facebook business page optimization we mean choosing a friendly page title (username), writing a catchy description (in the short description field), providing accurate information for long description, company overview, mission (see screenshot below) and of course posting interesting content – this is the most important optimization tip of all.

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The quality of the content posted on your Facebook business page will also determine it’s success or failure.

Having an optimized Facebook page makes it easier to attract new fans or more likes from ads as we will see below.

Step 3: Take advantage of your personal Facebook account

I mentioned in step 1 above that you need to have a business page and not a personal page, but you still need to have an active personal facebook account.

Here is why:

After you post an update on your business page, one of the ways to increase exposure and likes, is to share that post on your personal page as well.

People you have as friends on your personal page are more likely to ‘like’ and ‘interact’ with the post shared from your business page and this will increase the engagement factor of your posts.

As a result, facebook will show your posts to more fans (organically).

So, one of the ways to increase the number of people that view your posts and go past the 4% of you fan base is to share and promote the post on your personal page.

It goes without saying that the greater the number of friends the bigger will be the visibility of the post.

Also, make sure that you invite all your existing friends (and new ones) to like your Facebook business page. Do that every time you gain a new ‘friend’.

Step 4: Add the Facebook Like box on your website

This is again social media marketing 101 but you need to have the Facebook like box on your website for 3 reasons:

#1 – It’s a way to associate your website with the Facebook business page. In other words it is a way to ‘tell’ search engines that this is your official Facebook business page.

#2 – When you get a lot of fans, this is something you should be proud off and something to show to your users (as explained above this means popularity, trust and social proof).

#3 – It’s a good way to grow your fan base organically. Your readers can follow your website by clicking the LIKE button without having to go to Facebook.

Hint: For optimum results, position the LIKE box above fold (on the sidebar).

Hint 2: You can also popup the like box to new users (for example, after they spend 60 seconds on a page, after they scroll down to the bottom or after they try to leave your page – while this works well in terms of getting new likes, you should be careful not to make it too distracting for your users.)

Step 5: Follow these tips to increase post engagement

So far, we have created an optimized Facebook business page, added friends to our personal Facebook page and placed the like box in a prominent position on our website.

The next natural step is to start sharing content to keep your fans happy and maybe manage to convert them from fans > web site visitors > customers.

Some simple rules to follow that will increase the user engagement with your facebook business page:

#1 – Share relevant content: Share content that your fans expect to see in your page. For example, if your website is about Social media, share content related to social media and not about sports or anything else you might like. If your users want to read sports news, they know where to find them.

#2 – Don’t forget that they follow your business page to get updates about your website (and niche) and not about your social gatherings: If you want to get social, then use your personal Facebook page, your business page is about your website.

#3 – As a rule thumb, I use my business page to share content from my niche only, if I need to share something which is not related to my niche, I use my personal page.

#4 – Don’t be too promotional: Sharing promotional content (all the time) on your Facebook page will drive your fans away. When you have a promotion to share or something that might benefit your fans, you can do so but don’t overdo it.

Try to post interesting, shareable content that is related to your niche, even if this does not come directly from your website. Keep a balance between promotional and content that your followers might want to read.

Step 6: Share interesting and high quality content (not just links)

I made some tests regarding the impact of descriptions when doing a Facebook update and found out that Facebook posts with ‘lists’ get more likes than posts with just links. Let me give you an example to understand what I mean.

When you want to share a post from your website on Facebook, you go to Facebook status updates and enter the webpage URL.  It looks something like this:

You can share this post without adding any additional information. If your title and images are good, you will get a number of likes depending on the time you make the post, number of fans etc.

If one the other hand, you enrich your post by adding more information and particularly a list, then other things being equal, you are more likely to gain more likes and shares.

For me this makes sense because people that see a title and image in their timeline may not ‘Like It’ since it provides no value to them (don’t forget that the average user is presented with hundreds of postings in their timeline every time they login to Facebook).

On the other hand when you give them valuable, high quality and easy to read information (like a list), they will click the LIKE button because they read something useful without having to leave their timeline.

Note: It is a known fact that people have a tendency of LIKING a post without reading it so give them reasons to do so; your website visits may not increase but the engagement factor of your posts will rise.

Step 7: Share images, videos and emotions

If you take a look at some of the most popular Facebook pages, you will notice that they tend to share images, videos, infographics, charts etc, along with their usual text only postings.

This type of content gets more likes and shares and as a result the page gets more fans and followers.

In a recent study by Buzzsumo, they identified that the most shared and liked content on Facebook, has the following characteristics:

Step 8: Provide incentives to get more fans & followers

Why should someone follow your Facebook business page?

You need to give incentives to facebook users to follow your page. A few ideas to consider:

Quality updates – This is the best incentive you can give your users. Before posting anything on your page, you need to make sure that it provides value to your audience. When you do this consistently, you existing followers will share it with their friends and this will attract more users.

Run a contest – Many websites run contests on Facebook and giveaway different gifts. The ‘price’ for joining the content is to LIKE the page first. There are various tools to do that but have in mind that if you don’t have a known brand this many not be so successful.

Content upgrades – If you have a blog, you can use ask users to LIKE your page to get an updated version of your post. This requires extra tools but it is something worth testing out.

Step 9: You need to promote your own content and page

When you create your business page don’t expect that it will magically get thousands of fans. Besides the tips outlined above, you also have to promote your business page in places other than Facebook.

A few ideas to consider that worked for my case:

Promote in other social media networks – If you have accounts with other social media channels e.g. Google+, Pinterest etc. you can periodically ask your followers to join you on Facebook as well. Be polite and explain to them the benefits from doing so.

Promote in Twitter – Besides posting about your Facebook page on other social media networks, you can take advantage of twitter’s interactive features.

When you get a new twitter follower, send them a private (personalized) message and ask them to follow you on facebook (both your personal and business pages).

This method although it is time consuming, (I did it manually and not using any tools) it can produce really good results.

Promote in your newsletter – If you have a newsletter or if you communicate with your readers via email, make sure that you ask them to follow your Facebook page.

Do not just write the FB URL below your signature but ASK them politely to LIKE your business page.

Step 10: Facebook ads is a must

I have saved one of the easiest and most effective ways to increase your Facebook fans for last, since it is the only one that it’s not free.

Facebook offers a self-service ad platform which you can use to either increase your fan base (promote your page), boost your posts, get more leads, increase conversions or perform a number of other actions (as shown in the image above).

The procedure is pretty simple and straightforward. Basically you select a page you own, select your goal (promote your page), select your audience (based on country, age, other demographics and interests) and then set your daily budget and duration.

The cost per campaign depends on a number of factors. The best way to assess if Facebook ads is a good solution to increase your fan base, is to run a pilot campaign for a couple of days.

Spend $10-$20 dollars per day and run the campaigns for a fixed duration (at least a week). At the end, you can decide if the cost per like is something you are willing to pay for.

I had great results with Facebook ads both for my websites and for client websites and I run campaigns every month (for a few days) to boost my facebook likes.

It should be noted that with Facebook ads you don’t buy likes but views. Many people believe that what you pay for is Facebook likes but in reality you pay Facebook to show your ad to more Facebook users.

If what you are advertising is interesting, then more people will hit the like button so spend some time and think about the message you want to display in your ad as well as the image to use.

Conclusion

Having a big number of Facebook fans on your business pages is very important for credibility and social promotion purposes.

If this wasn’t important in the first place, then nobody would care and the US State Department wouldn’t have to spend $630 thousands for Facebook campaigns.

Once you do the necessary optimizations to your business page (steps 1 and 2 above), then the easiest way to get more followers is to use Facebook ads. With a bit of A/B testing you can get to 10,000 fans with no more than $1,000 (spread into a period of months).

By: OM MAURYA SIR On February 16, 2017

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32 Free (& Almost Free) Content Marketing Tools

Marketers get by with a little help from their friends – well let us introduce you to 32 new friends! These free and nearly free content marketing tool should help make your job a little easier.

Note: The aim was to only list free content marketing tools, but there are a few paid ones in the mix as well (freebies only get you so far). Unless marked as a paid tool, all content tools listed here have at least some kind of free offering.

• Content Curation Tools (finding great stuff to share)
• Content Creation Tools (create your own awesome stuff to share)
• Tools for Finding Content Creators (find folks to make custom content for you)
• Content Promotion and Management (sharing and managing your content)
• Content Analytics & Measuring (analyzing and measuring your content's effectiveness) 
• Other Content Marketing Tools (random content tools we think are neat)

Content Curation Tools :

Tools to help you discover great content to read and share across the web

Storify: Storify is a great content curating tool that lets you collect various social media elements on a chosen topic and present them all in one sleek format. Alternatively, you can search a topic on Storify and see what other users have created.

Feedly: Feedly is a great RSS reader that lets you stay updated on the latest and greatest blog content. Feedly is stylish and streamlined, making it easy to add, sort, and organize content.

EverPost: EverPost is another great content curating tool, letting you find new stories based on your pre-selected favorite topics.

Content Creation Tools

Tools to help you create awesome, original content pieces

Visual.ly: Browse their massive collection of infographics for inspiration, then enlist top-notch talent to create your own high-quality, customized infographic content pieces.

Prezi: Elegant visual presentations that can be edited and shared in the cloud. Free version allows for public presentations smaller than 100MB. Paid options allow offer more features and space.

Powtoon: Powtoon is an animated content creation tool to help you make custom animated videos - great for explainer videos. The paid version offers more images to use, HD quality, and the ability to create animations longer than 5 minutes.

SlideShare: View, upload, and share slide deck presentations with audiences across the web.

GoToMeeting: An online meeting/webinar platform with support for most popular desktop and mobile devices. A host of easy-to-use features makes GoToMeeting one of the most popular webinar platforms around. Recording webinars allows users to create and share video resources that can be used as valuable content pieces. If you're not sure how to do a webinar, check out Dan's post. [Free Alternative: Google Hangouts] 

PlaceIt: PlaceIt lets you upload images of your product or website and insert them into high-quality photos. Small image downloads are free, larger files will cost you.

Skitch: Skitch is a free markup tool for Evernote. Easily add shapes, highlights, and call outs to your photos to create super sharable content.

Image from AndroidNova

Tawkers: Tawkers lets users host live web chats. Once the live chat is ended, conversations can be embedded and published on websites.

Listly: Create custom lists and have visitors vote on items. Very easy way to create fun, engaging pieces of content that can easily be shared.

Share As Image: Share As Image is a super cool free app that lets you turn any image you see into a custom content piece. Download the app (or use the Chrome plugin), find an image you like, click "share as image," and customize the image with beautiful text fonts or Instagram-esque filters.

Share As Image makes it easy to create cover images for your blog posts or quotable images that tend populate much of Pinterest. Once you've created your image content, you can save the pic or share it on various social media networks, all from within the app. Download the pro version and get a huge collection of stock photos, patterns, and the option to replace the Save As Image watermark with your own. This one is a must-have for content creators - check it out!

Quora: Quora lets users ask questions and receive answers. Content marketers can use it to discover what kind of questions their audiences are asking. Use Quora for blogging inspiration - answer Quora questions through a high-quality blog post and you’ve got yourself some content gold.  

Paper.li: Create your own custom online newspaper featuring articles, photos, and videos from all across the web based on topics of your choosing. Share and promote your online newspaper via social media (sorry paper boy, you’re fired).

ThingLink – ThinkLink lets you create custom interactive images by adding clickable icons to links, video, text, music, other images, you name it!


http://seotricksforwebsite.blogspot.in/2017/03/free-image-creation-tools.html

Tools for Finding Content Creators

Content marketing tools for finding and hiring content creators

Contently: Contently helps businesses find and collaborate with quality freelance writers.

oDesk: An easy-to-use platform that helps you find the right freelancer for the job. See a freelancer’s work history, portfolio, and reviews before hiring them. oDesk helps you confidently hire content creators, guiding and helping you along the way.

Content Promotion & Management Tools

Content marketing tools for sharing and promoting your content

Buffer: Buffer lets you mark articles you want to share and puts them into your queue. Those articles are then shared across your social media accounts at various times spread throughout the day.

HootSuite: Manage all your social media accounts, track mentions, respond to fan interaction, and schedule posts with this social media management tool.

Tweetdeck: Manage multiple Twitter accounts, schedule Tweets, and track mentions and hashtags. Basically, your number one Twitter hot spot.

Mail Chimp: One of the most popular platforms for email marketing management, Mail Chimp lets you organize contacts, send emails, and track results.

DivvyHQ: An editorial calendar management system to help keep you stay organized and on task while collaborating with team members. [Paid. Free Alternative: Google Drive]

TrackMaven: Track all your content pieces across organic, paid, and social mediums, and easily compare your results to competitors. Plus, their logo is a really, really adorable corgi. [Paid]

Click to Tweet: Click to Tweet lets you easily create clickable, tweetable links with customized text.

PR Newswire: Send out press releases to a global database of over 700,000 journalists and bloggers. [Paid]

Content Analytics & Measuring

Tools to measure and analyze content marketing performance

Google Analytics: Track your website traffic, measure social media efforts, create customized reports, and much more. A free analytics powerhouse.

Buzzsumo: Lets users analyze content performance across social mediums. Just search a keyword or topic and see which articles on the web are getting it right. Observe the successful posts and replicate for your own benefit.

Other Content Marketing Tools

Ubbersuggest: A free keyword suggestion tool that gives you a very healthy assortment of keyword suggestions based on your input.

Addvocate: Measure and track your own employees and how they share your content. Lets you prioritize content you want employees to focus on sharing, and see which of your employees is having the biggest impact on customers. [Paid]

Optimizely: A tool that lets users easily A/B test any number of variables. [Paid]

Creative Commons: Search and discover creative commons licensed media (images, video, etc.) to use for your marketing purposes.

Gravity: Keeps track of what topics are hot on the web, and makes it easy for you to see which articles and topics will resonate with your audience. 

By: OM MAURYA SIR On February 13, 2017

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