If you’re like me, you’ve tried several social media monitoring and management services trying to get a hold on the firehose of information out there. Whether you are a small business owner, online marketer, a customer service agent or a blogger, it can be a challenge to discover, analyze and respond to everyone on the web you need to be talking to. And chances are, you’ve been disappointed by one service or another in the past.

I’m excited to announce the launch of Alerti, a Paris-based social media monitoring and management service that already has thousands of users on their French-language version. Alerti’s founders took on the challenge of creating a single, customizable interface to manage and share the flood of information out there on the web, and I think they have succeeded. And if you’re like me and need to keep costs low, they have you covered with a Premium package for just $35/ month.
 

 
FREE: I am working with Alerti and can offer a limited number of 3-month trials to Receptional.com readers who register at Alerti and enter “receptional” as the Bonus Code.

Maybe you already have a social media monitoring and management service, but you’re one of the 66% of users who told OneForty and KissMetrics in their recent survey that described their experience with their current monitoring service as “okay” or “frustrated.” Alerti offers a streamlined content interface, integrated work-flow management, and direct social media profile administration at an economical cost.

Key Feature #1: Custom Search – Alerti offers a customizable search based around a search engine that continuously scanning online content. Alerti empowers you to follow what is being said about you, your brand, or your competitors on the Internet, to measure the engagement of your communities, and to interact with them.

Key Feature #2: Dynamic Metrics – Alerti provides automated metrics analysis that you can also control to suit your needs. All graphs are customizable and the sentiment analysis of post results can be tweaked based on your own reading.

Key Feature #3: Work Flow Integration – If you are working as part of a team to analyze and manage your search results, Alerti makes that easy. You can tag individual posts for reference, share alerts out to colleagues and respond to relevant posts directly from your Alerti account.

Key Feature #4: Single Interface – Alerti brings all of these functionalities into a single interface, meaning that you can track keywords, measure engagement, manage work-flow, and respond through your Facebook and Twitter accounts from a single screen.

To top it off, they have an iPhone app so you keep track of your alerts on the go.

Whether you are looking for social media monitoring and management for marketing and sales, customer service, press relations, lead generation, or just a way to get more involved in the conversation, Alerti works.

See for yourself in other short demos about Alerti’s Custom Search, Single Interface, and Work-Flow Management features.

As I said, I’m using this service and I am excited to offer 10 FREE 3 month trials to bloggers or business owners who register at Alerti and use the “MN” bonus code.
–
Murray Newlands is the founder of Influence People and author of a recent book on Social Media Monitoring.

Personal branding focuses on finding your essence and presenting that in a way that stands out from the crowd. In different fields and for different people, standing out can mean different things. For someone in engineering, it could mean leading or working on a cutting-edge project. For someone in public relations, it could mean working on a campaign for a client that exceeded expectations. For an author, it could mean getting a great speaking opportunity.

When you think about what makes you stand out now and how you want to stand out in the future, don’t judge your accomplishments based on what others in your field are doing or have done. It’s not about whether you stand out more or less than the other person—it’s about how YOU stand out.

Those experiences will help you zero in on what comes easily to you, what you are comfortable doing, and whether you want to pursue the same or different kinds of opportunities to build your brand. It’s important to identify the instances and ways that you have stood out, but it’s even more important to identify the skills you were using. Keep that in mind when you make your lists.

TO DO:

Think about and write down the following:

• What projects, tasks or skills do your co-workers turn to you for help with?
• What parts of your daily work do you find easiest?
• What parts of your daily work do you find most appealing?
• What have you been recognized by your co-workers for doing recently?
• What recent professional accomplishment(s) are you most proud of?
• In what way do you most wish you could professionally stand out?

What is Personal Branding?
by Jim Kukral & Murray Newlands

Murray Newlands is an online marketing expert who founded Influence People, a San Francisco-based online marketing and blogger outreach consulting firm. Jim Kukral and Murray Newlands recently wrote What is Personal Branding? How to Create a Memorable & Powerful Brand that Sells YOU! to help people learn how to market themselves.

Find out how to increase eCommerce revenue and make more money online!

How to Increase eCommerce Revenue

A lot of online marketing people, whether they’re affiliate marketers or AdSense bloggers, know how to tread water but they couldn’t swim one mile in a triathalon. They might have read some website about how to make money online and got pretty good at it, or it’s something they do in their spare time to have a little extra money in their pocket.

I’ve worked in online marketing for years so I’ve learned a few ways that you can use to get more traffic to your site and convert more of that traffic to leads and sales, thereby increasing your eCommerce revenue.

1) Make sure people can find you on Google

These days, people usually find websites through search engine queries instead of via hyperlinks. Because of this, you need to make sure that people can find you on Google and other search engines if you want your site to get any traffic. The best way to do this is to hire an expert company to build backlinks to your webpage using anchor text for terms that people who would buy your product or click your AdSense ads would search for. This sounds fairly straightforward since it’s such a basic part of online marketing, but there’s more to it than just looking for “SEO companies” on Google and hiring one to build links to your site.

Beware of spammers

A lot of people hiring an SEO company for the first time make the mistake of hiring an outsourced company that gets lots of low-quality links from spammy sites. Usually, these companies employ people in third world countries who can barely speak English to write articles for them, and therefore the writers can’t get articles on any websites except websites owned by other writers who barely speak English.

This works fine for a few months but eventually the spammy links get the website they’re linking to delisted from Google’s search index. The only way to fix it is to get the company to remove the links, which could take weeks.

2) Make sure people see your site

Once people have found your site, they need to only need to stay on it long enough to register as a lead or complete a transaction. If you have an AdSense advertising blog, this means they need to stay long enough to click on a banner ad, but if you’re selling something or registering leads then they need to be there long enough to hooked. They’ve already clicked a search engine result for your page, so shouldn’t they already be interested in what you have to offer?

Utilize site acceleration

Once people click on your site, you need to make sure that the site loads fast enough so that they don’t get frustrated and lead. In the past year or so this has become an even bigger problem for website owners with the advent of tablets where you only have to “swipe back” to go back to the search results page. The solution is to find a good site acceleration service. Accelerated websites are hosted by super-fast servers so that they load faster, which means less people will leave your site waiting for it to load. On top of using top-notch servers, good site acceleration services like MaxCDN host a site’s content on multiple servers across the English-speaking world, which means that somebody in New York won’t have to wait for a page to load from a server in San Francisco or Australia.

About the author: David Henzel is the Vice President of Marketing at content delivery network and site acceleration services provider NetDNA.

Since SEO is a cost-effective way to bring traffic and build popularity, today you will hardly find any website that does not do SEO to rank high on Google. Whether it is a big-time e-commerce site, a product-based portal or a family-owned business website, SEO is something all can access and enjoy.

But the story does not end there. SEO is a large field of study and it comprises of handful practices. What would fit your bill and what not always remains a hidden story for most of the advertisers. SEO outsourcing itself requires a lot of planning and calculations.

Do you know the series of activities SEO services UK perform for a client? Do you know all the major ranking factors responsible higher customer response? Are you aware of top SEO services that can give you maximum boost up?

If you have contacted a reliable SEO company look at their important services you should get for your website. You can also leave the matter to experts as they will understand your needs well.

The top 3 services you must claim from SEO professionals:

Keyword research and competition mapping

Search engine optimisation starts with sorting out right set of keywords. Keyword selection can be very tricky and confusing, because you have to analyse pool of data from variety of source. Then assumptions, speculation, expectation – all come in play. Make sure the chosen keywords are good enough to drive more and more traffics.

Link development program

Building relevant backlinks for your site is important to rank well in Google. Make sure the inbound links are of high quality, means they should be from respectable and high authority sites. Link values are equivalent to vote for online popularity.

Video marketing

With YouTube, Meta cafe and other popular video sharing websites it is possible to retain online viewers. Audiences prefer watching videos than reading texts. Through videos you can communicate your marketing message most successfully and earn credibility.

So from next time while you discuss the scope of your SEO project with SEO service UK company keep these 3 services in mind.

This is a guest post by Sujoy1976.

Improvement is a term that is relative and differs from one person to another. As such it is quite impossible to provide a benchmark for what is the ideal standard of self improvement. In fact, becoming better from whatever you were is considered improvement. When it comes to financial self improvement, proper financial education is necessary for this. You need to implement your education into proper financial practices in order to improve yourself financially. Here are a few financial practices that you can implement in order to make yourself and your financial habits improve.

Plan a budget and follow

There are two steps in this process. What most people do is just plan a budget, perhaps follow it for some days and then it remains on the corner of the table gathering dust. Thus the only requirement is not planning a budget, what is required along with that is following is diligently. In this way you would be able to keep a control over the amount of money that you are spending each week and also know the things behind which you are spending the money.

Learn to know what you need

It is very important that you learn to differentiate your necessities and your luxuries. While planning a budget you should give first priority to necessities. And then if you think you will be able to afford some luxury then go for it. But remember to make this indulgence occasional.

Create a savings account

This is a necessary and outstanding financial habit. You should make it a point to keep aside some amount of money every month from your income in a savings fund. This can come of a lot of use. You can use this money to pay off your debts. You can also use this money if you need lump sum cash for any emergency financial purpose instead of taking a loan.

Use few credit cards

One of the greatest reasons for falling into debt is excessive usage of credit cards. If you can stop this, then you would be a step ahead in preventing yourself from falling into debt. You should use cash as much as possible. Since you cannot carry too much cash at a time, you won’t end up spending much. Also when you use less number of credit cards you can keep a tab on how much you are spending.

Apart from the above four, you should also try to pay back your credit card bill within its due date. Once the date crosses, you start incurring interest on your borrowed amount. Thus now you have to pay more than the amount you borrowed to be debt free.

A lot of mobile app developers have good business-to-consumer marketing programs and the apps themselves are pretty good, but they struggle to make money with their apps. Why?

There’s a great article on The Basics of Hacking about how to monetize mobile apps, in particular Android apps but most of the techniques still apply to iOS, Windows Mobile, and yes, even webOS.

One of the most effective yet underutilized ways in the article is placing advertisements within your app. This can be done without a third party but unless you find someone willing to pay you a ton of money for buying some pixels for a month then the best way to do it is to go through a third party company, like Moolah Media.

Moolah Media works by linking publishers with advertisers, and tailoring ads so that they’re relevant to the app and relevant to the individual users using them. That means they can work both for apps whose users are easy to target and for apps whose users are hard to target.

Disclaimer: My company Influence People does consulting work for Moolah Media.

In-text ads are basically little pop-ups that show up when you hover over a link. When somebody clicks on one, they are redirected to a page and the owner of the original website gets paid money. This is one of the most overlooked methods of content monetization. When you choose a third-party company, though, you need to make sure that you choose one that will help you make the most money.

Infolinks is one of the most popular ones and it uses a traditional pay per click system where the website owner gets paid each time someone clicks, regardless of whether the click converts to a lead or a sale.

A lot of newer companies are moving away from this model toward a performance based RPC model. This is like traditional pay per click except that site owners are rewarded extra if a good percentage of their clicks convert to leads or sales. Advertisers like it because it encourages publishers to produce content that people who are likely to both click and convert are likely to enjoy (and thus more likely to see the in-text ad) and publishers like it because they make a little extra each time somebody converts, which they don’t under traditional pay per click.

November is American Diabetes Month, which is a time to raise awareness of diabetes and support those affected by this disease. In 2010, 1.9 million new cases of diabetes were diagnosed in the U.S. in people aged 20 years and older, and the numbers continue to grow. 25.8 million Americans currently suffer from diabetes.

Diabetes is a chronic disease characterized by abnormally high levels of a blood sugar (called glucose) blood, resulting from either the pancreas’s inability to produce enough insulin, or when the body cannot effectively use the insulin it produces. Over time, untreated diabetes can lead to a variety of complications including blindness, kidney failure, nerve damage, even death.

In support of American Diabetes Month, we are launching Diabetes Resource Page. It is an online portal for people living with diabetes and their families to learn more information to improve their lives, share experiences, and gain access to an array of offers and free samples from brands such as Remedy Life, Life Script, and P&G.

We’d love it if you’d help us promote DiabetesResourcePage.com and American Diabetes Month to help save lives all across America.

Disclaimer: My company, Influence People, does blogger relations outreach for Diabetes Resource Page.

Celebrate the best in blogging and media creation at The World Media Awards and Event October 26th, 2011 at the PayPal building in San Francisco.

Some of the world’s leading publishing experts will present a series of practical workshops on using the latest techniques and technology to increase their publishing aptitude and share publishing best practices.

Entry nominations are $45 and a maximum of 500 tickets to attend the event are $50 and already available. Bloggers can write about the event to receive a free ticket and/or entry. See www.themediaawards.com or contact event founder Murray Newlands for full details.

The event is for businesses, PR agencies, media owners and creators, bloggers and authors.

Event coordinator Murray Newlands created this event because:

“I love blogging and wanted to create an event to celebrate the best in blogging and media. I meet lots of publishers and want to be able to create an environment where they can exchange knowledge and creativity.”

Keen to support the publishing community, the eBay partner network is lead sponsor of the event. Other sponsors include VigLink, Trancos, and GrowMap.

Adrants, Read Write Web, Bloggeries, MediaVision, The Affiliate Marketing Awards, My Blog Guest, Web Traffic Control and FeedBlitz are media sponsors.

World Media Award judges include Ivka Adam, Sarah Austin, Krystyl Baldwin, Cheryl Contee, Steve Hall, Chang Kim, Julie Wohlberg, Pierre Zarokian, Tanya Alvarez, Rob Bloggeries, Dave Duarte, Adrian Harris, Dana Oshiro, and Jeremy Wright.

Search for the hashtag #wmads on Twitter to follow the buzz around the event.

Full details are available on the official site at www.themediaawards.com.

Murray Newlands founded this event and The Affiliate Marketing Awards. Author of Online Marketing: A User Guide and How to Make a Blog Book, he was born in the UK and spends his time in New York and San Francisco. Murray is an advisor for VigLink, consults for Trancos Ins and works for Audience Mindshare.

A major advantage of inbound marketing is the ability to easily track the source of your leads and traffic. One simple way to both track and route leads to the optimum responder is to use different email accounts.

Here are some examples to illustrate exactly what we mean:

Here are some example email addresses a  car dealer in the U.K. might use:

• Separate email addresses for different sales or service departments: used.cars@uk.com, new.cars@uk.com, body.shop@uk.com, service@uk.com, parts@uk.com on business cards so when a potential buyer sends an email it is routed to the correct department.
• A dealer that carries multiple brands sold by different sales people could know immediately which vehicle someone was interested in if the email addresses on their salespersons business cards were make or model specific: alpha.romeo@uk.com or mercedes.benz@uk.com or honda.accord@uk.com versus honda.civic@uk.com – the possibilities are endless for both new or used automobile sellers.
• Different email addresses for different sales channels: cars.tv@uk.com, cars.radio@uk.com, cars.flyer@uk.com, etc.

The same tracking strategy would work if you had a store selling more than one product type. For example:

• Obtain a separate email address for each product type: flooring@us.com, lighting@us.com, plumbing@us.com – you get the idea.
• Here’s another example: mens.shoes@eu.com, womens.shoes@eu.com, childrens.shoes@eu.com, purses@eu.com.

Maybe you advertise in specific magazines. You could use email addresses like this:

• fashion.elle@eu.com or makeup.elle@eu.com or shoes.elle@eu.com
• fashion.vogue@eu.com
• fashion.glamour@eu.com

By using a separate email address for each product or service, when an email comes in you will immediately know what that person is interested in – and if you use different email addresses for different advertising channels – you can even know what type of ad they saw and how they found you.

These are not JUST for tracking either! How many times have you written down an email address or taken a business card and looking at it later been unable to recall why you have it?

If your email address IS the reason imagine how many more potential customers will remember why they have that email address!

The shortest premium email addresses on the most exclusive domains mentioned in these examples are available from emailme email service.

EMAIL SERVICE PROVIDERS:

• Warning to Consumers: Major Email Security Breach – What to Do