Category: General Articles

Know Your Audience for More Social Media Traffic

Social traffic is going to be more important in the coming years. The vast majority of online marketing experts know that social networking sites are the foundation of traffic, and it’s only going to get more important from here on out. If you’re looking to get more social media traffic for your blog, product or website you need to keep your audience interested and involved. Knowing your audience is the key to social media success.

What interests your audience?

Social media is all about connections. Your Tweets and Facebook updates are nested in with your audience’s best friend, their family members and their other interests. In order for your content to stand out, you have to speak directly to what interests them. You’re already halfway there – they are following you. But if you want them to comment, retweet or click on your links, you’ll have to do more than talk about your company and yourself.

It all starts with understanding their interests. Your audience didn’t join your Facebook group on weight loss in order to be sold to time and time again. They want information on weight loss – from tips to recipes to insights. They want to see information on a regular basis from you about these topics – not about your product.

So ask yourself – what interests your audience? What do they want to know? If you can pinpoint these topics, you’ll be able to create content that really speaks to them.

Making the most of your social media content

Once you’ve determined what your audience is interested in, you can use a variety of different ways to create and display your social media content. One of the great things about social media is that it can take many different forms. You’re no longer limited to standard sized blog posts or articles. You can create tweets, have graphics made, use video content and more to attract attention on the social networks. Here are just of few of the ways you can make the most of social media content:

Create a survey – Since it is all about interaction, surveys are a natural fit. The survey serves double duty. It allows you to interact with your audience, but it also gives you valuable information about your market that you can use later on.

Create a series of quick tips – Quick tips are great for social media marketing because they are bite sized chunks of information that can be used by your audience right away. Have a series of 10 to 20 tips that you can use as Tweets and status updates to interact with your followers.

Use multimedia – Graphics and videos are a lot more eye-catching than written content. Try to look for ways to express the information through multi-media and you’ll see an increased response to what you have to offer.

By keeping your audience in mind and focusing on creating interesting social media content, you …

Some Ideas On Creating A Facebook Application

Many are left wondering how to create Facebook applications that users will want. How to sell any product is something every inventor faces. Before creating a project, it is important to know that there is a market for it. Designing products for social media is easy once you know what to design. Here are some ideas on creating a Facebook application, social media tips.

When designing any product, it is important to know who you are designing for. Social media users come from the young to middle age bracket. This website is used for socializing and interacting with friends. Users play with applications to enhance their socialization experience. The goal in designing a product would be to meet these needs.

People use social media websites to update others on their status. Many find this is useful in keeping in contact with people in other states. Others may find that they like the attention a status gets. After all, a post captures the attention of an audience in a way that cannot be met in real life. Users can have a direct effect on over a 100 people at a time. The forum allows for individuals to respond back, creating a conversation. A good product will create something for the individual to provide entertainment for his or her friends.

Ideally, the right application in this forum will allow users to build upon something that is unique to him or her. Popular products include ones that individualize the user experience. For example, one app may create a memento form all the years status updates, while another may individualize the user picture. In each case, the user is creating something that will add to his or her profile.

A good app will have something that the user can build upon. Popular games on social media websites all build something that the user can use with their friends. Building something is a great way to ensure repeated use of an app.

Lastly, you want an app that you will use. If you visit Facebook and wish you had this app, then you should be creating it.

Many people wonder how to create an app that will work well on Facebook. It is simple to design a good app. Just remember to make it something that will socialize each user. Make it something that the user can share with others. Make it something that will build upon the user experience and make it something that can be used again. Lastly, make sure it is something you would use.

Why Bringing The TimeSplitters Series To Next Generation Consoles Is A Good Idea

As a series, TimeSplitters used to be one of the greats. Gamers would gather together after school and sit for hours doing nothing but playing Arcade mode on TimeSplitters 2, simply because the game gave them the opportunity to have more than only two of four people playing on the screen at one time. This ability came from the ‘bots’ the game allowed players to insert into multiplayer games, to be held by themselves or with other players.

Since the release of the third game in the series, TimeSplitters Future Perfect, no game has given its players the ability to play against ‘bots’ in an in-game mode such as the Arcade or Challenge modes from this set of games. Today, game developers are only concerned about the multiplayer mode of their games, when it comes to encouraging gamers to play the game again, after they’ve played the story campaign through a couple of times.

Recently, a petition has been spread across the Internet around the world and through social networks several times over. The petition required signatures to show how many people would purchase a TimeSplitters HD Collection if the developers who bought out Free Radical, original creators of TimeSplitters, Crytek, made and released one. The reason the developers needed the petition is they couldn’t otherwise justify to those with decision making powers that releasing a TimeSplitters HD Collection is a lucrative business idea.

Sadly the petition seems to have failed for two main reasons, the first of which is that the only players who would purchase a TimeSplitters HD Collection are those who are older than most game developer’s target markets. The second reason the petition seems to have failed, is that gamers of the modern market, the ones developers want to appeal to, are more interested in games with already established, strong multiplayer modes, with several games behind them showing exactly the same, such as the Call Of Duty Series.

Unfortunately the developers, Crytek, would not be able to justify such a huge project, which turning three games into a single HD Collection is, without evidence that the game would receive enough per-orders and sales to turn a profit for the company. On a personal note, I remember playing all three of these games with my friends fondly, and would even pay extra for a collector’s edition, but I completely respect the decision not to remake these games in HD whilst there is no solid evidence they will make the developers money.

Sadly it seems as though the games developers of today won’t remake the brilliant TimeSplitters series for current generation consoles such as the Playstation 3 or Xbox 360. However, the fact that Crytek were willing to give people a chance to have the series rekindled shows a willingness to invest in it in the future. By this I mean that Crytek is likely to develop an entirely new game, TimeSplitters 4 for the …

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 …