Sunrisedata1 ~ Increase Your Visibility To Your WebSite: October 2012

Saturday, October 27, 2012

The Top 75 Websites For Your Career~By Jacquelyn Smith

Click for full photo gallery: The Best and Worst Cities for Jobs This Fall

In early August, Forbes Leadership put out a call for nominations for our inaugural list of the best career websites, largely inspired by ForbesWoman’s annual list of Top 100 Websites For Women. We endeavored to assemble a comprehensive guide to smart and engaging sites. To accomplish this we challenged you, our readers, to submit your picks for the best online destinations for interns, job seekers, business owners, established professionals, retirees, and anyone else looking to launch, improve, advance, or change his or her career.
We received a wealth of comments, emails and tweets with your choices–about 1,500 of them, naming roughly 700 different websites. To taper the list down to 75, my colleague Susan Adams and I combed through the stack and hand-picked the sites we thought our readers would find most compelling and useful for things like job listings, facts and figures, and career insights and guidance.
Susan has written an accompanying post with our picks for the ten best sites from our list of 75. She reminds readers that while there are some great resources on the web, they shouldn’t spend too much time on the Internet scouring listings, reading career advice or blasting out their résumé. Especially for those in job search mode, it’s better to spend time researching companies, networking and meeting people face to face.
Our full list of the Top 75 Websites For Your Career is not a ranking and there are no winners or losers; it’s simply a compilation of nominated sites that we believe deserve some special recognition. The list includes blogs, job aggregators and boards, personal career coaching pages, and traditional media outlets’ career sites that could be useful to those in traditional 9 to 5 office jobs, Federal workers, work-from-home professionals, entrepreneurs, college students and retirees.
Here’s our first-ever list of the Top 75 Websites For Your Career (in alphabetical order):
About.com/Careers
Owned by The New York Times, About.com offers a wealth of free information for job seekers and those looking to advance their careers, including articles about everything from how to get along with your boss to questions not to ask an employer during an interview. About.com also links to other sites focused on specific careers like advertising or criminology, that have articles on topics like copywriting or the day in the life of a police officer. Users can also read up on the history of various fields, find a list of schools where they can study for a particular degree, or peruse an article on the most popular jobs in a given field. The site links to job listings powered by Indeed.com. Job search and employment expert Alison Doyle has been About.com’s job search guide since 1998.
Betts Recruiting
This is the site for Betts Recruiting, which searches for talent for the business side of venture capital-backed startups in New York City and Silicon Valley. The focus is on sales, marketing and business development staff from the junior level through vice president.
Big Interview
Co-founded by career coach Pamela Skillings, who used to work in human resources at Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and MasterCard International, Big Interview offers online interviewing tutorials where users pay $197 for a package of three installments. Users can prep for industry-specific interviews like pharmaceutical sales or advertising. The prep involves an on-screen interviewer asking questions like, “tell me about yourself,” and “why are you interested in this position?” The user then records her answer and watches it back onscreen. The site offers numerous tips for different stages of the interview process (sample answer, in part: “I love managing teams and solving customer problems.”)
Blogging4Jobs
Blogging4Jobs.com is an online workplace resource for managers, leaders, human resources, and recruiting professionals. They take their audience to “uncomfortable, yet necessary,” places exposing them to the realities of the workplace without the “corporate sugar coating.” The site was launched in 2007 with a goal of helping job seekers learn the unwritten rules of job searching. The site has since expanded to offer insights into the world of work from a corporate and operations no-nonsense point of view.
Boomer Job Tips
Boomer Job Tops offers ideas, hints, tips and how-to’s for the growing baby boomer population to help them find a job, win an interview or move their career forward. The site has hundreds of articles from experts in the career area on résumés, interviews, strategy and tactics with a “boomer focus.”
CareerBliss.com
CareerBliss is all about helping people lead happier lives by finding happiness in the workplace. The job information-hub offers free resources, like its “happiness assessment” developed by experts, a database of 6.5 million salaries, 600,000 company reviews, and 3 million job listings. Using its large database of reviews and survey results, the site regularly releases lists like, “The Happiest For Working Dads” and “The Happiest Companies to Work For.”

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Thursday, October 25, 2012

Don’t Let Social Media Drive You—Learn How To Drive Social Media By Social Maximizer

There’s a growing voice out there on the Internet that seems to be screaming “social media marketing now!” at the top of its lungs, sending business after business reeling headfirst into the online world of social media marketing. The problem with this is that many people take the same approach to social media as they do with their regular marketing strategies, meaning there’s a whole lot of incompetence floating around out there. And with more and more people jumping in without looking, the sea of unexceptional content online makes it hard for your business to stand out.

So, here are three simple ways that you can make social media work for you, allowing you to work smarter, not harder.
Tip # 1: Find Your Niche and Dig Into It
The Internet is awash with industries that don’t have a clear mission statement, let alone something deeper that really lets their customers know what they stand for. They have a skeleton of an idea of who they are but without any flesh and substance, they quickly sink to the bottom of the internet ocean along with all of the other indistinguishable companies out there.
What makes you stand out from your competitors? Who is your target audience? How do I know this product/service is for me? Why do I need you in my life?
These four questions need to be answered immediately without having to ask when potential customers see your brand on social media. Don’t be afraid to really come out and tell people what you’re about, to really define your company.
Once you do this, you can begin to build your fan base on people who think alike, sharing your company’s views, ideals and interests.
Tip #2: Define Who You Aren't
The social media world is awash with companies who are probably already following that first tip, so now that you are too, what’s going to bring you to the top of the next heap? Well, this is where you define who you aren't: your competition. Don’t be afraid to throw a few elbows here; this is the Internet, people like a strong position as it allows them to rally behind it.
You've probably seen commercials with taste tests for soda, or the one with the Pepsi and Coca-Cola delivery guys drinking a soda, depicting one as lazy or secretly drinking the “enemy” company’s soft drink. It’s clear to consumers which product they are choosing over, not just which product they are choosing. This helps to build your brand recognition by reinforcing that even if they've never tried your product or service, when given the choice between yours and your “enemy’s,” the choice is clear every time: yours.
You see the same thing with Apple, whose enemies aren't only IBM or Samsung, but non-innovation. The enemy of television?Exercise.Of exercise equipment?Junk food. Make your company’s position stand firm and you’ll stand out head and shoulders above the rest.
Tip #3: Focus Where It Counts
Another reason people tend to get lost in the world of social media marketing is because everything is so new and there’s so much to learn and do, it can all become overwhelming. A lot of the people I talk to remind me of chickens running around with their heads cut off, just plugging every available ounce of energy into each outlet, exhausting themselves. And then, when there are no results, the end picture is often full of rage and early exits from the social media landscape.
The fix?Slow down…do less with what you have. Stand back and take a quick assessment of what isn't working for you. Perhaps your website doesn't have that many hits because it needs to be optimized or you need better bloggers. Maybe your email marketing doesn't get a lot response; start in these areas. They are proven money makers.
Next, look at what is working for you. What is giving you the highest return on investment, sometimes surprisingly? Are you getting a lot of Facebook likes and thus traffic to your site? Spend a little time there building up a report with your Facebook fans. Perhaps Twitter?
Find out what’s working for you and stay on top of it. You don’t need to have a million social media outlets, just one or two that work well. Simply make sure that you’re standing out in these areas and plug away; don’t go crazy!
Overall, you want to create a great experience for your customers so think like one. When you do, you’ll be working smarter, not harder.

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Monday, October 22, 2012

6 Powerful Tips for Increasing Your Blog’s Followers~ By Social Maximizer

For every blog that succeeds and builds a solid following, you have at least a hundred blogs that end up in the graveyard. Building a high quality blog following requires both dedication over the long haul as well as an in depth understanding of what actually works and what doesn’t work in the blogging world.
Here are six tips for building a blog following that follows your each and every post.
Tip #1 – Stop Using “Get Traffic Quick” Tactics
Stop trying to circumvent the traffic generation process. Building a solid blog following is a process that does inherently take some time.
Tactics like gaming StumbleUpon or Reddit, writing deceptively attention catching titles and so on are not the answer to getting high quality long term traffic.
Instead, aim to provide quality content that people will actually want to share. Create content that inspires people to come back time and again. That’ll get you more blog traffic than any quick fix solution.
Tip #2 – Tap Your Customer Base
Tap-your-customer-base

One place people often neglect is their existing customer base. Often time’s people try to separate their customers from their blog.
For example, they might only send marketing materials using email to their customer list, while they try to use their blog to attract new customers. This is counter productive.
Your customers need to be sold just like anyone else. They need to continually be reminded of your credibility and expertise. Furthermore, by continually providing value in the form of free content, you increase the chances that they’ll buy again.
Try and get your buyers to become readers. Let them know about your blog in your promotional emails and perhaps even in the product itself.
Tip #3 – Narrow Down Your Audience
Does your message hit home? Do your customers feel like you’re talking to them directly?
Many blogs try and be far, far too broad and generic. For example, a blog that’s targeting “internet marketers” is almost definitely going to get lost in the crowd.
On the other hand, a blog that’s dedicated to helping new stay at home moms create a second stream of income could work very well.
What is your core audience? Try and narrow your audience down to the people who would most likely relate to you. Then speak to them directly.
Tip #4 – Do Guest Posts, Accept Guest Posts
Guest-Post

Guest posting is one of the best ways for bloggers to vouch for one another and share traffic.
If you guest post on someone else’s site, they’re implicitly endorsing you. You’ll get your content in front of their audience, which means a lot of high quality traffic back to your website. You’ll also get a great backlink.
By accepting guest posts, you give back to the blogging community. You add variety to your blog, so it’s not always just you writing. Other bloggers are also likely to link to their own guest posts, which means a high quality backlink as well.
Tip #5 – Leverage Current Events and Trends
You can get a lot of blog traffic by tapping into existing trends and things that people are already talking about right now.
For example, the founders of Air B’n’B tapped into the election by helping people find beds near the democratic and republican conventions. A spa might tap into Valentine ’s Day by offering a couple’s tandem massage.
Blogs can do something similar. Try to tie your blog’s content to existing events and use that to drive more traffic to your blog.
Tip #6 – Publish Consistently
Publish-consistently

Having a consistent publishing schedule is one of the most important things for a successful blog. If you get someone interested in your content, they’ll want to come back and see new content. If they come back a few times and don’t see anything new, they probably won’t return again.
Set a publishing schedule and stick to it. Let people know what to expect from your blog. That schedule could be every day, or just a couple times a month. You don’t have to publish very often, you just have to commit to publishing consistently.

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Saturday, October 20, 2012

Learn How to Attract More Visitors with Your Shared Web Hosting Plan~By JaguarPC Guru

Business owners often ask how much traffic their website should be getting. The truth is there is no simple answer to this question. For example, if you run a small store in Texas and use a shared hosting plan to attract new customers, it would not be useful to compare your traffic to Amazon. Equally, there is a distinction between the traffic levels you could expect to receive on a Business-to-Business (B2B) website as opposed to those on a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) website.

The goal of any business should not be to hit a specified traffic target. The most crucial goal is to always strive for more traffic, as long as it’s the right traffic. More qualified visitors means more conversions and, ultimately, more customers for your business.
In a new article published by leading shared hosting provider Jaguar PC, How to Get More Customers to Your Shared Web Hosting, we share some simple guidelines for improving your traffic levels. In the article, you will learn key website elements that can send your traffic levels soaring. You will learn how quality content aids search engine optimization and referrals, and – most importantly – what you can do to convert these visitors into new customers for your business.
Use your shared web hosting plan to attract search engines and customers alike
Often, a business will concentrate on search engine optimization (SEO) as a major source of traffic. By optimizing a website to fit a certain keyword, webmasters think they can trick Google, Yahoo, and Bing into giving them preferential search ranks. However, search traffic must ultimately come as the result of an organic process. By creating the best website in your industry, you will increase your search engine traffic and get more hits from links and leads.
In the latest article from JaguarPC, we discuss the importance of excellent content as a way to help you attract, retain, and convert visitors to customers. The article explains which content areas you should be concentrating on, and how shared web hosting plans give you the tools you need to launch and update this content on a regular basis.
In addition, the shared web hosting article discusses what to do with visitors once they are on your website. After all, there is little value in generating traffic if you do not work hard to convert that traffic into customers. Read the article to learn about the applications and tools you can install on your shared hosting plan to give customers highly interactive content. Learn how highly interactive content encourages return visits, and with each returning visitor, you have another chance to convert them into a customer.
Order an unlimited shared hosting plan from JaguarPC
As described in JaguarPC’s latest article, there are many things you can do to increase the number of visitors coming to your website. However, these things can be time-consuming. To help you focus your attention on areas other than spending time configuring your shared hosting account, JaguarPC shared hosting offers several features that simplify the administrative side of running a website.
Every JaguarPC shared web hosting plan includes cPanel, an advanced browser-based control panel that can be used to configure mailboxes, work with files, and alter domain settings. cPanel saves you hours of website administration every single month – time that can be spent concentrating on building your traffic.
JaguarPC shared hosting plans also include Softaculous, an automated script installer. Using Softaculous, you can easily launch an array of applications, including content management systems that help you keep your site organized as it grows into a leading source for your industry.
Finally, as your traffic grows, you can be assured that a JaguarPC shared hosting plan can handle the increasing resource demand. Every account is offered on state-of-the-art Supermicro hardware with generous amounts of RAM. Individual accounts also include unlimited bandwidth and disk space to guarantee that your increased traffic does not incur increased charges.
To learn more about shared web hosting services from JaguarPC, call 1-888-338-5261 or visit jaguarpc.com.

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Friday, October 19, 2012

Google finally gives you a way to escape Negative SEO~By Mike Moran

Image via CrunchBase

Some of you might have a high opinion of SEO people. (C’mon, aren’t there a couple of you out there?) If you have that high opinion, then don’t read this story, because there a few people who are less than ethical out there. Google had an announcement this week that has been a long time coming–you can now disavow links to your site. Some of you might be asking, why would you ever want to do that? Links to your site are good, right? Well, mostly, yes. But if you had a few ethical lapses, you might want to erase those problems.
So, if you paid for links, or you engaged in some spammy blog comments with links back to your site, this gives you a chance to wipe the slate clean. Because when Google figures out that you are cooking the links, it penalizes your site, assuming that some other links are faked, too.
And that’s how Google is announcing this disavowal capability–if you screwed up and you can’t get rid of those links, then this tool helps you by telling Google not to count them and your penalty magically goes away.
But I am excited about this tool not so that spammers can clean up their act, but so that victims of spammers have an escape route. The folks that I have felt most sorry for over the years are those ethical search marketers that have been attacked by so-called negative SEO (also known as Google bowling), where unethical SEOs create spammy links to your site to intentionally get you penalized.
If you’re not perverse enough to think up such an ugly scheme, congratulations on having a conscience. I know several poor schlubs who have been attacked this way and I first begged Google to introduce this disavowal tool over four years ago. I’m not really sure why it took this long for Google to take this step–what they announced is almost uncanny in its similarity to what I outlined for them to do in March of 2008.
But better late than never. For years, the bad guys could attack innocent marketers and there wasn’t a blessed thing to be done about it. Disavowing links is a boatload of work and it should not even be attempted by anyone less than an expert. But at least there is something that can be done. Thanks, Google, for standing up for the good guys as well as giving folks who faked their own links a chance at redemption.

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Mike Moran

Author of the acclaimed book on Internet marketing, Do It Wrong Quickly, on the heels of the best-selling Search Engine Marketing, Inc., Mike Moran led many initiatives on IBM's Web site for eight years, including IBM's original search marketing strategy. Mike holds an Advanced Certificate in Market Management Practice from the Royal UK Charter Institute of Marketing, is a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, and regularly teaches at Rutgers, UC Irvine, and UCLA.
In addition to his contributions to Biznology, Mike is a regular columnist for Search Engine Guide. He also frequently keynotes conferences worldwide on digital marketing for marketers, public relations specialists, market researchers, and technologists, and serves as Chief Strategist for Converseon, a leading digital media marketing agency. Prior to joining Converseon, Mike worked for IBM for 30 years, rising to the level of Distinguished Engineer. Mike can be reached through his Web site (mikemoran.com).

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Home Decor ~ Belle & June

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5 Things You Must Do Every Day to Build Your Business~By Joshua Black

If you are an entrepreneur there are a few critical tasks that you need to turn into a daily habit in order for your business to keep moving in a positive direction and to make you money. Read on to find out those key items and how you can add them to your daily routine.

Entrepreneurs have to wear many hats when a business is just starting. Many things need to be delegated to others in order for the business to run smoothly and there are a few things that you must do yourself. If you can create a habit of performing these 5 things every day, some for just a few minutes, then you will see your business grow right alongside your dreams:

1. Plan for the future a few minutes each day. Assume that your product has stopped selling all of a sudden. What direction will you take your company next? What new income stream can you add? This is a time for day dreaming and recording notes in preparation for the future. You don't necessarily have to take action on these items, but you need to think about them daily in order to bring out the golden ideas.

2. Work on your marketing in some aspect every day to get new customers. If your prospective customers don't know about you they won't buy from you. Work on getting your message out every day even if it is just for a few minutes.

3. Work on closing a sale every single day. whether you are doing this on-line, on the phone, through the mail, or face-to-face you need to be selling every day. Without the close of a sale there is no business. This is not something that you can delegate all the way. even if you have a sales force you need to be out there looking for deals.

4. Develop or strengthen your business network. You need to join or create a business network where you can help others and they can help you back. This is a great place to get free customers through referrals and an excellent mentoring opportunity using the mastermind principle.

5. Contact your current customers. Don't ever forget about the people that have already purchased from you. These are your best customers. They already like what you have to sell and they don't cost anything to acquire. Contact your current customers frequently, even if you are just saying hello. They need to know what you have to offer and they need to know you are still breathing. They won't seek you out. You must go to them.

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About the Author: Joshua Black is an on-line infopreneur, marketing consultant, small business owner and copywriter dedicated to helping the bootstrapping small business owner succeed. Visit his flagship resource site for entrepreneurs at http://www.UnderdogMillionaire.com for the free Underdog Millionaire Wealth Pack: including 5 FREE e-books and daily wealth building tips for the bootstrapping small business owner- in the areas of sales, marketing, motivation, product creation and more.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

How to Become a Great Leader: 15 Entrepreneurs Weigh In~By David Mielach

Leadership means different things to different people. And understanding what makes someone a leader can depend on their profession and their leadership style.
That’s why defining such a simple phrase can be such a complicated task. BusinessNewsDaily asked business leaders to define leadership and tell us what makes a good leader.
"Leadership is accomplishing things that reach beyond solitary abilities by acting — and getting others to act — with a maturity that surpasses limited self-interest." -- John Baker, president of READY Thinking, an organizational and leadership development firm.
"To paraphrase Dwight D. Eisenhower, 'leadership is the art of getting others to do things you want done and feel good about it.' I would go so far as to say the goal is to get the person to embrace the "mission" and own it." -- Dale Hamby, a former Army major and a teacher at Harrisburg University.
"A leader isn't limited to those with positional authority. Leadership, instead, is defined alternatively as someone who influences others to achieve a common goal. This would represent the work and contributions of anyone who serves in this capacity." -- Barbara Steel, senior vice president of leadership effectiveness at Zenger Folkman and co-author of "How to Be Exceptional: Drive Leadership Success by Magnifying Your Strengths" (McGraw-Hill, 2012),
"A leader comes up with new ideas for his or her business or venture, innovates further as those ideas develop, and makes sure to choose the right people to get the ideas and innovations realized. Some business schools push the view that one can be an innovator or a manager, but not both. I think that’s flat wrong — one has to be both an innovator and a manager to be a good leader." -- Dan Biederman, president of Biederman Redevelopment Ventures and The Bryant Park Corp.
"Leadership is getting people to want to follow. That requires engaging them passionately, from the heart, and requires persuading people to change. Management is tactical; leadership is strategic."-- Tom Kennedy, a certified management consultant and principal of The Kennedy Group.
"Leadership is when you give of yourself for the greater good of others with no expectation of reward. It's that willingness to jump in a ditch with your whole team so that the next time they fall in, everyone understands the best and easiest way to get out. As I deal mostly with military families who need guidance towards a sustainable future, leadership is absolutely concerned with getting down in the trenches to do the dirty work." -- Roxanne Reed, executive director of the Military Spouse Foundation.
"Leadership is a mindset of total personal accountability for the results and outcomes produced without fault, blame, guilt or any manner of finger-pointing when results are bad. Leadership is being personally accountable whether someone is going to hold you accountable or not." -- Linda Galindo, consultant, speaker, educator and author of "The 85% Solution: How Personal Accountability Guarantees Success — No Nonsense, No Excuses" (Jossey-Bass, 2009).
"(Leadership is) the ability to make your followers believe that you possess superior knowledge of the situation, greater wisdom to cope with the unknown, or greater moral force. Unless you seem to have more of these things than the average follower does, they won't follow you around the first corner." -- Tom Hopkins, author of 14 books, including “How to Master the Art of Selling" (Business Plus, 2005).
"I believe that a great leader is defined by one factor only: the people he or she leads. If the people are focused, driven, committed, results-oriented, happy and positive, that is indeed the sign of a great leader. If you have great results but none of those other things, then you have a dictator — and that leadership style is not sustainable. Leaders who put themselves at the bottom of their organization are truly great. It's like handing people a fish instead of teaching them to fish. If you're the kind of leader who constantly gives them a fish, you need to be one outstanding fisherman." -- Rick Campbell, president and CEO of ICAT Logistics.

"True leadership is being proactive, especially when it comes to addressing the not-so- pleasurable events that sometimes plague the workplace. The ability to anticipate an imminent roadblock and tackle it in a proactive manner is what leads to progress. Einstein once said, 'Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.'" -- Michael Raanan, president of the Landmark Tax Group tax firm.
"Leadership is self-differentiation. It’s simply setting yourself apart from others and often times setting an example. It’s not about being in charge or power, but rather caring for others and helping them achieve a common goal." -- Michael Flanigan, vice president at Expressionary.
"Through my professional experience, I've come to discover the seemingly contradictory truth that a great leader is defined by his or her teamwork skills. As John C. Maxwell says, 'A boss says Go and a leader says Let's Go.' Leadership is demonstrated through a strong dedication to a team and promoting collaboration, whether you work in a startup or corporate environment." -- Brittany Dowell, director of publication relations at Digital Talent Agents.
"The key to leadership is having a vision, and being strong enough to say no and not try to please everybody. That's a recipe for failure. Leadership is practiced through attitude and actions, rather than words and memos." -- Matt Mickiewicz, founder of Flippa.com, DeveloperAuction.com, 99designs, and Sitepoint.com.
"Leadership is the willingness to speak up when it's easier to stay silent, hold yourself accountable when you have excuses at the ready and inspire without intimidation or the fear another will surpass you. A leader shows more empathy than ego and remains dedicated to the betterment of the whole and not the advancement of one." -- Brenda Della Casa, director of online content and community at Preston Bailey Designs.
"A leader is someone who actually listens. Someone who takes advice and implements it. Most leaders need to listen more and talk less." -- Jeffery Hayzlett, CEO of The Hayzlett Group.

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Sunrisedata1 ~ Increase Your Visibility To Your WebSite

Saturday, October 27, 2012

The Top 75 Websites For Your Career~By Jacquelyn Smith

How To Minimize Taxes On Your Retirement Income

40 Things To Say Before You Die

We're On The Hunt For America's Most Promising Companies

Obama's Accelerating Downward Spiral For America

Business Renegades

America's Prettiest Towns

Real-Time Billionaires

Forbes Calculates Mitt Romney's Net Worth

Jack Dorsey: Leadership Secrets Of Twitter And Square