Is Facebook Marketing a Necessity Or a Waste?

Facebook is definitely NOT a necessity for online marketers. In fact, contrary to what the majority of “gurus” are telling you, I think that most online marketers are better off WITHOUT accounts on social media like Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, etc. Here’s why:

Social media is a time-eating machine.

It is so easy to get carried away checking other people’s profiles, reading their updates and having useless conversations. You’ll cover up time wasting with the excuse “But I’m Working On My Business! The Gurus Say That Facebook Is A Must!”:) The hours will fly by, more so-called “friends” will be added, but will it really contribute to your bottom line?

All this talk about “building relationships” and landing big clients due to those relationships – it all sounds good, but has these people tracked the TIME they spent on it? $1,000 paycheck sounds impressive, but quickly loses its appeal if it took 1,000 hours getting to it:)

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that all social media is bad. Let me repeat what I said: “MOST online marketers are better off without accounts on social media”. MOST does not equal ALL. So who are those select few online marketers who do benefit from Facebook, Linked In and Twitter?

*They have a strict limit on their time spent on social media (for example, 30 minutes per day) and stick to that limit

*They have a plan before they log on

*They focus all their social media efforts on building their list

The money is in the LIST. It’s not in a number of “friends”, “fans”, “connections” or “followers”. What if Linked In closes your account for whatever reason? What if it goes out of business? What if it has a horrible server crash and data is lost? You must build your own mailing list of your contacts and have a backup copy on your own computer, so you don’t put your business at the mercy of the 3rd parties.…

Choosing The Right Gaming Laptop

Most of us often find it very difficult to make up our mind in choosing the right gaming laptop. There are some things you should keep in your mind while buying a laptop that you will use for gaming. There are plenty of options out there in the market. To get the best notebook, you need to make a wise decision. Every notebook looks good, however appearances are deceptive. So, you need to study the notebooks pretty well and understand their pros and cons then go ahead and purchase the one that meets your requirements.

Here are the following things you need to be aware while you are out to shop a gaming laptop:

Size of the Display Screen

Undoubtedly notebooks that have large screen gives a good viewing and gaming experience as compared small sized ones. Since the sizes of such laptops are big, it will be able to accommodate the latest hardware. Also, keep in mind that if the size of the screen is large even its weight will be more. If the weight is more and you often travel to different places, you may not feel comfortable traveling with a heavy laptop. If this is a concern for you, you can go for a small sized laptop. If you are looking for a laptop that will give you the best gaming performance, you should go for one that has a screen size of at least 17 inches.

Battery Life

Gaming is usually meant for high-end desktop computers. However, these days even notebooks are also providing the same kind of performance. Such laptops are power demanding machines. So, you need to check for those laptops that give you good battery life. However, another way to save on battery and money is to for a gaming laptop with low processor speed, lower-end graphics card and higher amount of memory. When you come across few notebooks that impress you, do not forget to check its battery life.

Budget

If you are looking forward to lay your hands on the best laptop for your buck, you need to check which notebooks provide you with the best graphics card that will fit in your budget. Next, you need to check for other things like processor, memory and hard drive that will come in that budget.…

Learning How To Be Social Using Social Media

I’ve read everything I can to learn how to sell successfully on the internet. Most of the articles and books I’ve read agree you need to use social media, although I’ve read some that say it’s a waste of time. I set up accounts on Twitter, Flickr, Etsy, Facebook, Deviantart, Handmadespark and I started a blog, oh and I just added LinkedIn. That’s a lot and it’s hard to keep track of. I set up Google Analytics on some of my sites; it’s a cool, free program that tracks how many visits you get, what websites are referring, key search words, and probably some other goodies I haven’t figured out yet. I set up all my accounts and waited and nothing happened, no sales, no followers, nothing.

I did more research and thought about it and realized, maybe, since it’s called social media you actually need to be social. All my friends who know me in real life will tell you that is difficult for me, I’m very shy and not very social, but I decided to give it a try. I joined some teams on Etsy, which turned out to be one of the best things I’ve done. This last week I’ve been very active on my social network and I saw some big results in my tracking. The views on my pages went way up. My sales haven’t but I believe that takes time and the more people that are looking eventually I will get some customers. Just like in a brick and mortar store you need to have people coming by and looking before you can get sales. The last two days I took a break and sure enough all my views and my traffic dropped dramatically. All this has lead me to the conclusion that social media does work. It definitely drives people to your sites. Now that I know this I’m going to set up a daily schedule of how long to spend working on my network, jewelry making, checking email, writing articles, commenting on blogs, etc.

Tracking my visits has also helped me to see which sites are the most effective so I can whittle down my list of the ones I spend time on and hopefully spend my time online more productively. It also has helped me to narrow down my target market so I can more effectively market to those customers. I know if I keep at it I will eventually start getting more sales.…

Some Useful Information Regarding Social Media Optimization

In this age of internet marketing social media optimization is getting high importance. In fact, nowadays, without doing proper SMO, no one can expect to acquire positive online response. This is why; if you are in any anyway associated with online brand promotion or product selling you need to know some useful information regarding social media optimization.

SMO is basically an online process of promoting through social media and different networking sites. In most of the time this kind of optimization is done using blogging, social news buttons, RSS feeds and inserting functionalities like videos, images. However, the approach may differ on the basis of requirements. But whatever, the approach may be, the ultimate goal should be to reach out to the larger internet user base from different social media sites (like, discussion boards, social networking sites, micro-blogging websites, answer forums etc).

Some of the rules that the optimizers may follow during media optimization include the following:

Try to Increase the Linkability

In order to do so you need to upload fresh, quality content. If you can provide content having relevant and useful information you can surely expect to get more linkability.

Reward the Inbound Links

As soon as you will find someone has linked you, never forget to thank him. Though it is a bit old-fashioned, but this strategy benefits you in the long run. You can express your heartiest thanks by posting comments on their blogs or else you can send them direct mails. Another thing which you can do is to link them in return in a blog roll or a blog post.

Make the Bookmarking and Tagging Easy

If you have articles or blog posts make sure you have included a button at the bottom of all the entries so that the readers can easily bookmark the page to different bookmarking sites according to their choices. Do not give the readers too many options. This may confuse them. But never forget to incorporate the important ones, such as, , Facebook, Digg, Stumbleupon or some others relevant to your specific domain.

Take Initiative to Promote your Content

Instead of relying on the readers you should take up the initiative to bookmark your own page and blog posts to the various social bookmarking websites. Apart from this, you also need to activate RSS feeds for your portals. This will surely encourage people to subscribe to your feed and whenever you will update your site they will get notifications.

There will be nothing wrong to say that RSS feed is one of the best ways to spread your content totally free of cost.

So, optimize you social media and ensure your profit maximization as much as possible. If you still have some questions you can contact the reputed companies offering quality SMO services.…

Why Do We Need a Graphics Card?

Video cards are misunderstood creatures. They are evil creatures and they will eat your soul. Where was I? Oh yes, graphics cards. Here’s the thing, if you are a PC gamer (and I’m not talking about bejeweled or minesweeper) then you need a cutting edge graphics card in your machine. Of course, graphics cards also tend to be the most expensive component of gaming PC, by far! You might buy an entire base-model PC for less than the cost of JUST a top of the line graphics card. If you didn’t catch that, I will reiterate: Imagine buying a cheap PC for your office. Now imagine buying an upgraded graphics card to put in that PC, and it costs more than the entire PC did. This is why video cards are soul eating, evil beasts. The expense is incredible, and unavoidable.

The reason we need graphics cards is simple: because everyone else does not. Rendering three dimensional images is something that takes a lot of processing power, and it’s also something that most people don’t need to do. If they average person required their computers to render three dimensional images of emails and spreadsheets, or people they spoke with over instant messaging systems, the capability would likely be build into our CPU processors. As it stands though, a relative minority of those who use computers actually need this capability, which makes it something of a specialty item. Think of it in terms of buying an automobile. Most people are fine with what the dealership has on the lot, but PC gamers are going to the dealership and saying they need a monster truck with 60 inch wheels and a suspension you could drive a Volkswagen under. That’s a custom job which will cost us dearly.

Still, there is an advantage. PC gamers are always at the cutting edge. Only poorly ported games look better on a console system than the PC. Console systems have graphics processors that are outdated within two months of the initial console launch. Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are years behind PC graphics capabilities at this point. When new console systems come out they will be the toast of the town for a few months, but most of their product cycles will be spent behind the curve on graphics too. PC gaming is an expensive hobby but it means we get more out of our games than anyone else does. Today’s video cards have specialized chips to process everything from shadow rendering to particle effects like smoke. Tomorrow’s graphics cards will bring even more realism to PC gamers.…

Which Parts Do You Need For Your Gaming PC Desktop?

A lot of portable gaming devices are out in the market. Though these gadgets captured the eyes and interest of many consumers, gaming PC desktop remains incomparable. However, it isn’t easy to find the computer parts and desktop computer packages that don’t cost too much yet provides better performance. Gaming computer reviews are not very useful to those who want this gadget but are closely watching their pockets. These reviews only focus on the computer’s core system and the best yet expensive desktop here’s a list of computer parts that plays well.

Processor

There are series of processors that provide complete gaming experience. The Intel core series are highly recommended as their desktop processor has huge improvement when it comes to performance.

Memory

The 8 GB memory is the best because it runs perfectly with windows 7 gaming desktops. But make sure that the memory card you will get is worth investing and has powerful performance. There are cheap ones all over the market which are nothing but wastes.

Video Card

Radeon HD 5670 and Alienware graphics cards are the best. For about $100 you can grab yourself a brand new processor. This kind of graphics processor has amazing performance. A competent graphics card will produce better life-like images.

Mouse and Keyboard

You don’t need to buy expensive computer mouse and keyboard. Cheap accessories like this can bring better overall feel. You just need to look for something that will look good with your gaming PC desktop and something that gives comfortable feeling.

Operating System

XP computers are good but Windows 7 is better. It supports all the current and best features of both software and hardware. You can enjoy Windows 7 gaming desktop when combined with a 8GB memory.

Headsets and Speakers

Most people prefer to use the headsets but there are still some who are more comfortable with speakers. For gamers who want speaker, look for the 2.1 set.

Monitor

An affordable monitor with good screen size and better resolution will almost complete the gaming PC desktop you are building. There are still missing computer parts. These cheap parts with great value and performance can be easily found.

A Gaming computer is still better than any other console. It can provide perfect and detailed graphics and can process a powerful amount of data while playing. They also come with several ports where you can hookup your headset, steering wheel, microphone, joysticks and the likes. A gamer likes it as well because a gaming PC desktop has all the components he needs for better gaming experience.…

Understanding The Different Ways Of Generating Leads With The Help Of Social Networking

Social media is one of the biggest revolutions in the world of technology and has completely transformed the way of living over the period of time. It is one of the most transparent, interactive and engaging platform for better public relations. Social networking is one such wide concept that covers a great range of websites and has a common link between all of them. You can easily communicate with the other websites as well as the users without any hassle. These social media platforms range from general social networks for video/photo sharing, bookmarking, wikis and news. In the present day times, it has probably become one of the best and the most effective mediums of advertising for the business. Not only it renders cost effective services, but also do offer an effective way of covering a wide customer base in an easy manner.

Social media plays a quite important role in generating a good number of leads in the best possible manner. There are a good number of ways in which one can put a good amount of attention on the social presence and make sure that the results are attained quite quickly and effectively. Some of these healthy ways are discussed further in this article.

1. Find The Target Audience

One of the best things about making use of social platforms for business marketing is that you can pick up a target audience for marketing your business. At a good number of times, people are in need of followers on their respective platforms, but sometimes the audience is not at all interested in your offerings. Therefore, it is a smart choice to have a number of connections on platforms that are actually interested in your products and services and will help in increasing the marketing.

2. Keep The Audience Engaged

Your role in the online profile is just like the host of a party. Your job is to keep the people engaged in order to avoid them from leaving the party. You need to keep the followers engaged with the help of your regular posts and updates about the products and services. You must surely respond to the comments as well as messages of the users in an early manner. All kinds of advices of the users should be welcomed and followed at times.

3. Gain A Good Number Of Subscribers

Offering subscription services through email, RSS feeds and SMS is an ideal way of generating more leads and promoting the business. People can subscribe to the website in order to get some or the other kind of benefits. You can provide some healthy offers for the subscribers and let them be aware about the recent advancements in the products and services of the business. You should aim at providing the best quality service to the customer in whatever method you choose to provide for customer connection.

Finally, you need to bear in mind that the …

How to Fix Yellow Light of Death Or YLOD

The PlayStation 3 is the most powerful console in the world, but this doesn’t mean its infallible. Although it does boast all of the top accolades such as, graphics, sound and an on board blu-ray player this doesn’t mean it isn’t prone to the odd glitch.

Microsoft were hammered for their red ring of death syndrome by Sony fan boys, but it seemed that shortly afterwards Sony experienced a similar problem albeit with a different color.

The yellow light of death as it is known became an epidemic across the globe. Unlike Microsoft, Sony refused a free repair, refusing even to acknowledge any manufacturing defect. All across the country people are turning on their PS3, to be greeted by the notorious yellow light. But all is not lost, fear not fellow yellow death light sufferers, help is at hand.

Its important to not that the cause of the problem is the same for both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, so the fixes are applicable for both. First thing you need to do is ensure that you cannot get it repaired for free under warranty, no, good. Next you will need to be capable of minor electrical repairs and the right tools for the job, mainly screwdrivers. Also you will need some replacement thermal paste, this is very important.

The process is called re-balling and involves the CPU and GPU chips on the motherboard. Basically the thermal paste transfers heat from the chips to the the fan. Sony of their own admission used a cheap thermal paste, it has a tendency to harden and crack, depleting its ability to function. When the thermal paste cracks and depletes the solder inside the chips starts to heat and cool quickly, when this happens the solder gets mixed, bridged is the technical term and cracks. So in theory you need to remelt the solder fully to take it back to its original state, causing it to resettle back into its relative slot. Finally replacing the thermal paste with an improved version.

Although this sounds very complex it can be done by anyone with very limited electrical knowledge, but because it is such a delicate operation its easy to get wrong. If you do get it wrong you risk causing more harm than good, possibly even destroying the chips. That’s why it would be recommended that you use a guide to walk you through the steps. Some of the guides you find on the internet are scams, but these are the best: …

PlayStation Memory Card Maintenance and Fixes

The Sony PlayStation 2 or PS2 requires a PlayStation memory card to save your game progress, although the console allows you to play thousands of games that are made specifically for the PS2 and the original PS. The main thing to understand is that you will need to delete saved games periodically or transfer them to another card, to give you enough space to save a crucial in-game progress. For this reason, it is always good to have an extra card that is free of used memory blocks, if you can keep them properly maintained. This means always consolidating, deleting or copying games over to make enough room on one card to hold a current game you need to save.

If you insert the card into one of the two memory slots on the front of the console, you can turn on the PlayStation and browse the contents of your memory card. When you select the “browser” on the startup menu, selecting the memory card icon will show you the contents of your saved games, listed by icon. You can view the details of the saved games or scroll through them with the directional pad on the controller.

If you want to copy or delete one of them, you can press the “x” or you can copy or transfer files from one memory card to another, if you insert a second card into the second slot. Occasionally, your PlayStation memory card might become corrupted and it will act like it has a mind of its own. The reason for this is that it is possible you used products that required codes and unlockables through Pro Action or Gameshark, but these can corrupt existing files that have nothing to do with their files, besides the ones that do.

You will need to go through the corrupted memory card and delete the corrupted files, in order to be able to use that memory. The problem is that it is difficult to ever repair them. For this reason, you may want to avoid these “unofficial” devices, but you can complete the process by deleting the files you know are corrupted and you may need to be suspect of ones that aren’t related. Once you have completed the process of maintaining your PlayStation memory card and deleted corrupted files, you can press the circle to return to the “browser” and load your game.

You will see the disc icon after the game has completed loading and you will need to read the instructions to find out about saving the game, since there are thousands of them to consider, but most of them are similar. By keeping it properly maintained and using the recommended devices, you will suffer from fewer corrupted files and have plenty of space to save your in-game progress. It is possible to find memory cards in a variety of sizes and a 32MB is becoming a popular choice, compared to the 8MB, for obvious reasons.…

What Do People Like To Customise?

In the consumer driven society we live in, our possessions have become more than just things we use to do stuff. They have become extensions of our beings, additions to our personalities and in the case of some people, objects that define us. While it can go too far for some people, for most it is all just a bit of harmless fun that allows us to enjoy using these everyday objects that little bit more.

Mobile Phone

Before smartphones hit the market the most could do to your phone was to have a slightly different electronic ringing tone and change your cover to one of a slightly different colour. While this was extremely popular at the time, now the options are far more extensive. At a base level you can choose what operating system you want your phone to run on giving you a range of different interface styles. You can have any song known to man as your ring tone and you can set your desktop to any image. Changing covers however; seem to have become less popular as many smartphones need to be more solid so no longer give you that as option.

Cars

With shows like ‘Pimp My Ride’ very popular on television the number of people customising their vehicles has greatly increased. Everyone from your friendly neighbourhood boy racer to your Aston Martin driving executive has caught the bug with alloy wheels amongst the most popular customisations.

Homes

There have always been ways to customise homes since houses were invented. Extensions adding extra rooms, conservatories adding new light filled annexes and garages for your newly ‘pimped’ car are all common sites in our streets and estates. Also, homeowners who may have found themselves stuck in their current location thanks to the credit crunch and the mortgage dip are increasingly turning to home improvements to increase their house value while they wait for the market to improve.

Computers

Any computer games enthusiast worth his salt will have a custom built PC. While console gaming is ever popular, a good custom gaming PC will always outperform it for speed and gaming power. Plus you can endlessly upgrade your PC as new hardware is released, while every console will eventually be obsolete.

Bodies

Since the dawn of time people have been customising their bodies using tattoos and piercings. This is still extremely popular today and getting more so as it becomes more accepted in the mainstream with celebrities now regularly seen sporting new body decorations.…