SEO your personal brand 
If you have ever worked with a corporate client or in a corporate environment you would know that brand management is something that is taken extremely seriously. The reason for this is brands are extremely important for companies. A Brand usually connects the dots from advertising to sales. This is because people tend to buy products from companies that they trust and advertising tends to create trust for a brand. Thus when people pass a popular grocer in a shopping center or on a high street their the grocers brand could attract you to visit the store rather then the corner shop. From this perspective companies directly link sales to their brand and the message attached to it.
Now in today’s world and with the emergence of web 2.0 it has become vitally important for us to control our personal brand. Why you may ask? Well you quite often attend conferences and networking session to promote yourself and build up contacts. This is a way of advertising your personal brand. Now in today’s age the online world has become so entwined in our lives that it is almost impossible to separate the two. Now what does that mean for your personal brand? Well in whichever stage of your life you may find yourself, you need to make sure you control what people find when the search for you online. Thus if you search for your name you should find your own web properties. For instance if you search for “Chris Calitz” you will find my personal blog with contact information for me and links to my social presence online ie. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin.
Thus I have made sure people find info about me, which I control. This means I can then further advertise myself by simply making changes to the web properties I own. Now Emil gave you a quite detailed explanation of how to setup a Wordpress site but you need to take this a step further. You need to do some SEO on your website to ensure you are the first result in search engines for your branded terms.
Now luckily most of our branded terms are not qualified as very competitive keywords for instance “Chris Calitz” is not a very competitive term so the SEO I needed to do was not that extensive. If you do however have a name such as Richard Branson you might have a problem.
1. Choosing a domain name
Now the first step I would recommend is that you buy a domain name that contains your branded terms. So if your brand online and offline is based on your name try to buy a domain containing your name. For instance John Doe or Joe Bloggs would buy johndoe.com or joebloggs.com. Choosing a domain extension isn’t as important if your brand doesn’t compete with a competitive keyword phrases but if you are competing with Richard Branson you might need to make smart decisions. For instance if you are based in South Africa you could buy the local extension richardbranson.co.za, which is available I checked. This could give you a bit of a head start as you will be able to rank higher in South Africa but this isn’t a guarantee.
2. Finding inexpensive links
Now in SEO links are probably the most important ranking factor at the moment. Thus you need to build some links for your site. Now as this is not a difficult vertical to rank for you will only need a few inexpensive ones. You could search online for a few free directories to submit your site to which should ensure you have enough links. Some examples are www.sabest.co.za, www.dmoz.org, www.ananzi.co.za etc.
3. Deciding on anchor text and description
Now before you submit your sites you need to ensure you have decided on anchor text you want to use. These should be branded terms and should vary. For instance “Chris Calitz” and “chriscalitz”. These will be used for the text of the links you receive and they will be important in determining for which keywords you rank.
4. Lastly have content related to your branded terms
You need to ensure that you at least have a page with content or that your homepage has content where the branded phrases you want to rank for is mentioned.
This should put you well on your way to controlling your online brand. Feel free to leave some questions below and check in tomorrow as we will discuss how PPC could help you market your brand.
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How to build your own website easily using Wordpress
If you are looking for a quick efficient solution to get a website up and running – Wordpress is most definitely the way to go. Wordpress is an Open Source website publishing software that was first released in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg. In this article I’ll discuss in short what type of hosting you will need to host a Wordpress website, how to download it and upload it to a domain, how to change the look by downloading a free theme and how to install it, how to implement some cool functionality (plugins) and how to use the basic Wordpress features.
Hosting your WordPress website
First of all – you need to find a company to host your Wordpress website on a server. Wordpress requires PHP (Hypertext Pre-processor) and MySQL (a relational database management system) to work. You’ll also need to choose a domain name e.g. www.example-site.com. The hosting company should be able to register a domain name (the one you chose and if it is available) on your behalf. Ask them to send you the MySQL and FTP login information because you’ll need it to set up a working Wordpress website.
Downloading Wordpress & Uploading it to your website
After you have organised hosting (that will be able to run Wordpress) and got a domain name you will need to download Wordpress CMS. Download Wordpress.
You will also need to download an FTP client such as FileZilla to be able to connect to the server with the above mentioned FTP details. After downloading the FTP client open it enter the Host name (or IP address), username and password (FTP details) and then click QuickConnect (in FileZilla). Then you should be connected to the server. If you struggle with this, phone your hosting company they will be able to help you with this. Download FileZilla
Unzip the Wordpress zip file on your local machine then upload the contents of it to the www folder (usually www or public_html).
Installing Wordpress
If you have uploaded the Wordpress files – go to your domain name e.g. http://www.example-site.com where an installation wizard will be prompted. Fill in all the information you need to e.g. database connectivity login information (usually given by the hosting company) and website name. Continue until you have completed the setup wizard. You can edit the database variables in the configuration file found in the root of your Wordpress installation.
Now that your Wordpress website has been successfully installed you can go to the administrator panel by going to http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin where you can then login with the information you supplied in the setup wizard.
Downloading a Theme and installing it
Now with your website hopefully successfully running, it’s time to customize it a bit with templates / themes.
There are plenty of themes out there you can use. To download themes go to the Wordpress website: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ where you can search for themes (many of which are customizable in your administration panel) and download it.
You can also search for themes within the WordPress administration by clicking on Add new themes link on the left hand side (a sub menu of the Appearance link).
If you downloaded it to your local upload it to your wp-content/themes/ folder and if you search for it via the administration it can be automatically installed. Just make sure your themes folder is set to writable (chmod 777). Then go to your administration and enable your new theme.
Extend WordPress even more
Now with your website looking great you can extend the functionality of it. It is easy to extend Wordpress with existing plugins. You can search plugins again from your administration by clicking on the plugins tab on your left hand side and then click on the sub menu “Add new” where you can search for plugins which is installable similar to that of the themes. (Again make sure your plugins folder is writeable (chmod 777)
Basic Use of a Wordpress website
Creating a new post entry
Click on the Posts tab (found on your left hand side) then you will see sub items underneath the Posts tab then click on “Add new “. Fill in the title of your entry, the body, the category the post should appear in and other fields. You can then click on Preview to view the page (before publishing) or just click Publish to make it live.
Creating a category
One uses categories to organise your postings. To create a category you can either create a new post then where you choose a category click on “Add new category” or you can go to the categories section (under Posts tab) and there you will find a create new category form. Fill in fields and click on “Add Category”.
It is virtually impossible to explain all of Wordpress within one blog entry but I am sure this article will help you to set up a basic website in a very short period of time. Wordpress is by far the best most affordable solution to set up a well functioning website.
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Using online marketing to find your dream job
A lot of people use the internet to look for new jobs these days. It works very well, as you can investigate a company online by visiting their website, and usually check out what the position you want to apply for is all about . This is one way of getting a new job online, but why not advertise yourself so that when people are looking for the services you can offer their company, they will be able to find you.
Alec Brownstein did something like this when he placed an ad on Google Adwords when the top New York creative directors Googled themselves. When they searched for themselves on Google they got an ad from Alec asking for a job, he got interviews with most of the guys he targeted as well as job offers, he now works for one of them.
This week we are going to discuss how to use a couple of online tools to advertise yourself to companies. We will show you how easy it is to set up your own website with no web development knowledge at all. How to start a quick ad campaign on Google Adwords and best practices to get good results from that PPC campaign. We will give you tips on how to apply SEO to your website to rank higher for specific keywords. We will also show you haw you can use social media to get the attention of companies that you can potentially work for.
This is all very easy to set up and with little or even no cost at all. All that is needed from you is creativity and you need to post unique content if you are going to interact with companies and if you want them to notice you. You need to stand out and show them how good you are.
So if you really want to take a different angle to getting a job and go after the companies you want to work for, check back the rest of the week and see how you can use the online marketing strategies to land your dream job.
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Google Maps
When I decided I wanted to write something about my favourite tools many applications popped in to my head from desktop applications to web based tools. I thought long and hard about what I actually wanted to write about and finally decided to write about Google Maps, a tool I use frequently to find directions and as of recent to view places I always wanted to visit using Google Street View. I have listed some of the features and uses I like best about Google Maps below:
Directions
Do you get lost easily? Google Maps allow you to get directions (driving or walking) between virtually any two points. Just search for your start destination and end destination (point of interests or physical address) then click the “Get Directions” button. Google then generates visual directions (shown with the blue line bellow Fig 1.1) and text directions (fig. 1.2) which shows you turn by turn directions.
If you do not like the directions Google Maps has generated for you or if you would prefer a different route, simply change the directions by moving the direction indicator to suit you by dragging it to a new point.
Fig 1.1
Fig 1.2
Street View
Ever wondered what it looks like at a destination or a point of interest before travelling there? Google Street View allows you to view a point easily by dragging the yellow man to the point you want to look at. Google will then place the Street View to the closest Street View position available to the point of interest you chose.
With Google Street View you can explore your surroundings in a 360 degree angle and move to another position within the canvas just by clicking on an available position. Street View is made possible by a series of stitched photos that have been taken by the Google Maps Vehicles and is only available in certain countries/regions.
Personalised Maps with Google My Maps
It’s never been easier to create personalized maps – log in to your Google account, create a map (public or unlisted) draw lines, add markers etc. Then personalize it even more by adding photographs, video (e.g. YouTube videos) or saving existing POI (Point of Interest) e.g. your favourite coffee shop. To learn more watch the Official Google My Maps video below.
Find Businesses
To find a listed business in a certain location is easy. Google allows businesses to add their business on Google Maps. Just enter a search phrase and hit enter to see a list of businesses in the immediate area. (Left hand side) You can then click on the business to view more information on the business e.g. telephone number(s).
Websites (Quick implementation)
Google Maps allow you too easily generate a map you can use on your own website. Just search for the point on the map you want to put on your website click link (as in the image below) select the HTML code to embed on your website (you can edit the canvas size of the map by editing the html width/height parameters) and paste it into your html code of your website. It will then display a canvas on your website of the location you chose to embed.
Google Maps API (for developers: Advanced implementation)
Google Maps has a wide array of Map API’s (application programming interfaces) you can use to implement advanced map functionality within your websites / applications.
The Maps API allows you to add your own overlay / multiple overlays which can contain your own data. For example you can create your own markers to show where you company’s branches are and display it on your website to help customers find you easily. You can also customize the map colours e.g. if you want to place focus on a certain element within a map you can highlight that element with a bright colour and give all the other elements darker colours. You can also give your markers custom icons (too make it more personal).
Google is well known for creating tools that are pretty useful and Google Maps isn’t any different. I found the Google Maps tool very advanced, easy to use and fast compared to other mapping tools/services out there. All that is left to say is – Give it a try.
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Using Hootsuite To Manage Social Media
In this day and age I am sure that most of you already know what social media is and most of you are already using one or more platforms for business or personal use or even both. However if you are managing multiple accounts on a daily basis that include your own personal and client accounts, a slick, efficient tool that allows you to manage every aspect of your social media platforms is a must in order to keep your sanity. This is where Hootsuite comes into play.
Hootsuite is a handy tool that allows you to easily manage multiple social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, My Space, LinkedIn, foursquare and even wordpress all from within one interface. The interface uses drop downs to switch back and forth between accounts and tabs that allow you to perform different actions depending on what you want to do. Very simple indeed.
What makes Hootsuite so appealing and efficient is that it has many useful features that can help make your life much simpler such as:
- The ability to manage multiple social media platforms
Hootsuite allows you to manage multiple social media accounts. It has a tabbed system which can be used to quickly switch between profiles with one click and the best part is nothing is confusing. The interface is simple and easy to understand.
- Easily post your latest Blog articles
This is one of the best features of Hootsuite. It will allows you to easily post your latest blog article to all your social media platforms from one interface without having the hassle of actually logging into each and every account. You can post your articles to Facebook, Twitter, My Space etc in just a few clicks on Hootsuite
- Scheduling Tweets
Tweet scheduling is very important feature which everyone should use as it helps in driving lots of traffic.
- Shortened URL’s
Hootsuite automatically creates a shortened URL that is used for all your social media accounts. This URL is easily tracked and you will be able to view the response to your posts.
There are many features that make Hootsuite so appealing and a useful tool, I would suggest that you try this application for yourself. Save your time and save your sanity. Manage multiple social networks through one client: HootSuite!
Happy Marketing!
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