How Snapchat Can Be Used To Grow You Audience

Snapchat is an exciting new social media platform through which people can send photos and shor videos to each other. We recently talked about some of the ways you can market your brand on Snapchat. One problem for brands was reaching out to their potential customers. Pulling contact numbers out of your marketing list was less than desirable. With a new update though, Snapchat has added the Discover feature for users to discover new content.

A Potential growth opportunity for brands!

What is Discover                                                                                                                                     
The new discover feature gives users a new way to discover and explore content and stories from different editorial teams. This new tool was the result of collaboration between various media leaders to help build a story. Snapchat says the tool is unique....:

            "..because it has been built for creatives. All too often, artists are forced to accommodate new             technologies in order to distribute their work. This time we built the technology to serve the                 art: each edition includes full screen photos and videos, awesome long from layouts, and                     gorgeous advertising."

Personalized Ghost/QR code                                                                                                                  

Snapchat has also released a new way to find followers. Every person on Snapchat now has his or her very own ghost. The ghost sits in the middle of a yellow box, which has several black dots. The dots are individual QR codes.

This means, that user can now take screenshots of their ghost, post it on social media and ask people to follow them. It also means that users can easily find brands on Snapcat and add them from anywhere their ghost is posted.

How does this work? A user simply points the camera at another person's ghost and clicks on the white ghost in the middle of the screen. This will automatically add the user to their contact list.

Snapcash                                                                                                                                    

Snapchat also partnered with Square, a payment processing app, to create snapcash. Snapcash is integrated into the Square Cash platform and allows users to connect their debit cards and send cash to  other users. Once the debit information is connected to a Snapchat ID, users can send cash to other users by using their snapchat ID. The user that was send the money will receive an alert to their profile. If the user wants to accept the money, the user has to add their debit information to their Snapchat profile.

Business opportunities                                                                                                                            

Considering that most of Snapchat's users never logout of the system and it is now the fastest growing social media app, it could hold many opportunities for new ways of crowdfunding from a highly engaged and committed audience.

We haven't seen Snapcash live up to its full potential yet, because when Snapcash intially launched brands had no real way of redirecting the use from the message to the Snapcash function. Now that Snapchat has launched Discover and QR codes to each user, a brand can easily redirect people from one platform to Snapchat and then to snapcash.

This new chapter is a refreshing one for Snapchat. It has made more room for advertisers to reach new audiences and to bring crowdfunding to an entirely new level. They have successfully created a platform that can be monetized without making users fee like they are being advertised to.

Do you think Snapchat has the potential to make it big? Let us know in the comments section below!

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Can You Have Good SEO Simply By Having Good Content

To SEO or not SEO, that is the question asked by many bloggers and small-scale business owners who focus on their content alone and are comfortable with it. For some such website owners, some SEO tactics might be out of their scope, for they rely on content quality alone to get through to customers. And it is understandable, because not everyone has the know-how, the energy, the time or the money to go full-scale SEO. So can someone survive on their content alone without having to worry about SEO?

Is it possible to have good SEO by having great content                                                                    

The short answer is, yes, it is possible, but for this strategy to work, you need desperately need time and content exposure. Now for the long one;

Search engines broadly judge the quality of the content under six broad categories. This is just and over-simplification, and the actual factors number in hundreds. But here are the six major categories;

• Keywords &"On-page optimization - Al on-page stuff and topical relevance goes into this category
• Content Quality - How good the content itself is 
• Domain Authority - How authoritative a website in general is (PageRank etc.)
• Page Authority - Based on the links that point to all the pages on a given domain that tell Google or Bing how important those pages are
• User and usage data - How useful do users find a content on the page, how well optimized the page is, and so on
• Spam analysis - Does a page contain spam?

The bottomline is, even if you have all others, without Domain Authority and Page Authority, it is almost impossible to rank well for competitive keywords, and very difficult to even rank in the middle. However, it isn't a lost cause, and some marketers have devised a different strategy.

Getting DA and PA automatically                                                                                                         

Instead of building links and focusing on DA/PA, some marketers let links come to them automatically. This can be done by focusing on other things that are important for customers.
These include;

• Product Quality
• Public Relations
• Social Media
• Offline Marketing
• Word of Mouth
• Email Marketing
• Content Strategy

For this strategy to work, you need exposure - lots of it. If your content is great, people are automatically going to link to it. These potential people find about your brand through social media, press, email, ads, long tail search, blogs, content, and so on. Focusing on these channels to find people who will link to you is one of the strategies you can adopt if you're not looking to invest your time or money into link building.

It is, however, a very big leap f faith. You're working on the assumption that people landing on your site are automatically going to link to you because your content is so awesome. It is a somewhat naive approach, and might not work all the time. People have all sorts of preferences, and even though this strategy works, it is not for everyone.

The upshot to this strategy is, you;re focusing on creating content which is the ultimate goal. It is a great strategy if you know how to work it. And even if you have link building going on, you can still use this approach to strengthen your marketing strategy and might give you a much better return on investment.

Bottomline: It is possible, but recommended in a few instances only. There's a ton that SEOs can do to optimize and nudge and create intelligent, non-manipulative ways of earning links that are a little more powerful than just sitting back and waiting, but it is possible.

Disclaimer: This post has been inspired by Moz's Rand Fishkin's video on a similar topic 

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How Women Entrepreneurs In Pakistan Are Using The Internet To Make Money

Making money online is the dream of every student, housewife, job seeker, and even the employed. The challenges of unemployment and rising inflation today are simply too great, and people are turning towards alternative income sources to meet them. Granted that making money through the internet is not everyone's piece of pie, but there are thousands of women now in Pakistan who, with the help of the internet, have built their own businesses from scratch while staying at home!

When it comes to making money or building a business online, we always emphasize on skill development. If you happened to catch our recent interview on national radio, you will know that, for us, entrepreneurship, is all about developing the right set of skills that are relevant to your business, coupled with the right marketing techniques that will help it grow.

Women often face problems when it comes to working at a job, or becoming entrepreneurs. These could be due to sociopolitical, cultural, religious, and other barriers. Hence, the internet provides that perfect solution to a majority of these problem.

How are women making money online                                                                                        

We have talked at length about how you can earn money online by running a website, freelancing, and so on. But that is as far as internet-savvy users are concerned. What can people from non-technical backgrounds do to make a living online?

The internet puts the whole world at your fingerprints. You can use it to market your skills and talents and become an entrepreneur, just like some 6,000 women from Pakistan who are now successfully marketing their products online.

Marketing and Social media                                                                                                       

As we've said time and again, for becoming successful online, you need to familiarize yourself with the various social media and marketing tools available. These fresh Pakistani women entrepreneurs learned digital marketing under the 'Women Entrepreneurship Development Program' organized by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and developed in response to the various challenges to women at an enterprise and institutional level.

Anyone from any background can take part in the program. Indeed, most of these entrepreneurs are from middle-income families, and looking to expand their businesses online to reach a wider audience.

Asma Kamran, a housewife who didn't even know how to properly use a computer before has learned to utilize the power of internet and social media, and has been able to treble profits from her home business in a shor span of time.

''I used scramble of keys on the keyboard as I typed or waited for my husband or children to come home to help me access the internet.''

She started her business from a small set-up at home, selling homemade snacks to nearby customers. Now, she has built into a complete home-business, and is called by family and friends as ''Master Chef'"
Social Media also helps women overcome social barriers, as is the case with one Jabeen Siddiqui.

"My father would not let me step outside the house. He used to come to the training center with me. Ever since my business expanded, my entire house has been converted into my workshop."

She now runs her own Marble mosaic business.

Other women have found businesses of their own liking. Some have started their own online fashion brands, whereas others hav set up jewelry and textile businesses, and report profits gains of more than 100%.

So, what are your plans for the future? Are you going to follow in the footsteps of these motivated ladies, or would you rather get a desk job? Let us know what you think in the comments section below!

In honor of the International Women's Day tomorrow - 8th March 2014 - we dedicate this feature to all the women out there - women who are housewives or are working, and women who are - or want to be - entrepreneurs. Empowerment of women is progress for all.

Cheers Mate :)

Disclaimer : Report publish on the Express Tribune

 

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Fix Your Website When Its Gets Hacked

source (www.google.com)

It's not uncommon for sites - even large ones with lots of protection - to get hacked. Security is a major problem these days. And if your site gets hacked, it can get damaged in a number of ways. You could lose all your data, or lose its ranking due to malicious activity. So while you can take periodic backups, you cannot prevent someone from hacking into your site. The best and most practical thing to do in such an event is to recover your site as fast as possible so that the effect of the attack is neutralized/minimized.

Here are some tips shared by Google for getting your website back on track after it has been hacked.

Clean up malicious scripts                                                                                                                      

Hackers can target your site for any number of motives. From taking down your website and deleting its content to simply adding backlinks discreetly, there's a lot that can be done. if you notice suspicious content appearing on your website, delete those unnecessary pages immediately. However, don't just stop there.

Hackers will often insert malicious scripts into your HTML and PHP files. These could automatically be creating rouge backlinks or even new pages. Make sure you check your website's source code and see for any malicious PHP or JavaScript code that could be creating such content.

Maintain your CMS                                                                                                                                

Websites often get hacked due to vulnerabilities in a CMS that get patched with updates. If you're running an older version, your site is more susceptible to attack. Make sure you keep your CMS updated, and use a strong password for login. If possible, enable two-step verification to secure the login process.

WWW VS. NON-WWW                                                                                                                        

www and non-www URLs are not the same. http://www.example.com is not the same as http://example.com - the former refers to a sub-domain 'www', whereas the latter is the root of your site. When checking for malicious content, verify the non-www version of your site as hackers often try to hide content in folders that may be overlooked by the webmaster

Other useful security tips                                                                                                                        

1. Avoid using FTP when transferring files to your servers. FTP does not encrypt any traffic, including passwords. Instead, use SFTP, when will encrypt everything, including your password, as a protection against eavesdroppers examing network traffic.
2. Check the permissions on sensitive files like .htaccess. Your hosting provider may be able to but it can also be used for malicious hacks if they are able to gain access to it.
3. Be vigilant and look for new and unfamiliar users in your administrative panel and any other place where there may be users that can modify your site.

Got any questions? Feel free to leave a comment or in our discussion forum. You can read the post from Google along with a couple case studies here. Good Luck!

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