”Marathons are more than just a single run, digital marketing are more than just a single activity.”

The future of every single business is being transformed into technology! Keeping this in mind, Here’s a quick elegant question possibly you could think of at times in digital marketing trends.

”What is the biggest obstacle for your company’s growth?”

While thinking about the answers to the above question, how does a business with the latest technology conquering the world function without the help of digital marketing? Can you remember seeing artificial intelligence and visual searches in movies? For example, I Robot movie ( could you go back to those memories?) Leaving at in your good old memories these technologies have been coming into reality for businesses in the present. Brands and businesses do need to use digital marketing trends to succeed in their efforts because what worked for you in the past years might not work for you in the upcoming years. Social media, SEO, content marketing and a lot more are experiencing a dramatic shift in 2019.

This article will help you give a quick insight into the latest trends of digital marketing that you can not simply ignore. And to stay ahead of the competition you might want to invest in these insanely futuristic technologies down below.

Did you know: Canada has the most active Facebook users compared to the rest of the countries.

 1)  Artificial intelligence taking over the digital marketing trends in 2019

AI will take over the world and currently is!

Well, what does AI do?

Putting this in simple terms, Artificial intelligent can easily study consumer behaviour by using the data that is available on the internet or social media by the user. This simply helps all your businesses using AI to increase the optimization of your business activity efficiently. AI has made jobs much simpler. For example, email service providers like Gmail, Yahoo have customized smart email categorization. Many government organizations are using AI for security purposes.

Did you know: Some of the tech leaders are worried about AI

Elon Musk- CEO of Tesla– is no stranger to you. Has made a confession that artificial intelligence could eventually be dangerous to the entire human race. He wants people to follow certain regulations and ban on any type of autonomous weapons, to save humanity. Keeping this aside, governments are already working on hidden projects on AI-controlled weapons.

 

 

Another example is companies like Uber and Microsoft- you can try using robots in parking lots that could read license plates and report suspicious activities to prevent crime. They do this by collecting data and reporting it to their owners. This technology has been in use which seems to be less expensive compared to hiring a human security guard!

2) Voice search: The dictators!

In the current world, for example, you will find it easier to ask Siri about the distance of your top travel destination in Sri Lanka rather than manually typing in the query. With this keeping in mind, further, it is estimated that by the next upcoming year’s a higher percentage of web browsing will be done without tapping the screen. This is because of Alexa and Siri’s engagement with the human-level smartness becoming incomparable. However, the disadvantage of voice search is that it is quite different from the typical text search.

 

 For example, when you Google a question you will get hundreds of result pages. But if you ask the same thing to your voice assistant, it will only give you certain results (a few) more than that you will only get one result!

3)  Video marketing 

You might question yourself whether using videos for promoting your business would worth it? The answer simply is: Yes, not because every business is using it but moreover, it is a very profitable tool for digital marketing trends in 2019. To deeply get connected with your target audience, video marketing can be the best way as they are dominating photos and infographics compared to other ordinary advertisements.

Since videos are more appealing and easier to share than large content. With inexpensive methods, such as quality smartphones, and film equipment. Companies all over the world are using personalized videos to create ”real authentic publicity.” Do not just think that YouTube plays here. To get more engagement using your video marketing, you can go live on Instagram, Facebook, or Linkedin.

4)  Chatbots:

You might have definitely experienced online purchasing. And you might have noticed yourself being answered for your queries in a few seconds or minutes by a chatbot, that will have instantly answered your questions. This will bring a closer connection to you towards your customers. Many customers prefer communicating with chatbots since they are quickly responsive. Giving instant answers to what you are exactly looking for modestly and responding to you without losing its patience. These virtual assistants aid in customer expectations, customer service and performing accurate tasks, which means you can literally focus on your other important tasks.

Many businesses have already started using chatbots which include, for instance, Uber helping customers to communicate and making it easier for them to hire Ubers easily. Other brands such as Facebook Messenger, Google Maps, and Slack have started using Chatbots & digital marketing making it efficient. Chatbots have completely changed the way digital marketing looks at its services. Giving companies a better perspective of market sustainability.

5)  Social media stories:

Brand awareness can be easily be promoted and engaged by making good use of live videos. Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube stories have been coming alive for the last half-decade. First came Snapchat with the concept of ”My Story,” followed by Instagram, Facebook while Youtube unrevealed their story format.

Through social media stories, businesses can directly market themselves to their audience by reviewing their product, showing them ” behind the scenes,” of the products, or about the employees who have been apart? With these effective methods, you can easily target your desired audiences effectively almost anywhere and everywhere!

6)  Social Messaging apps:

You and I every one of us are into messaging with each other. The recent trend is social messaging apps whereas people are spending more time texting each other, it makes total sense that marketing your products and services here is the right place for you to engage with your potential customers.

These apps can be very beneficial in sending messages to your customers directly, whether it is an instant sales reply or feedback! Furthermore, people expect businesses to be present in messaging apps so that they could directly deal and interact with you. Also, 70% of the world’s population are willing to shop at companies that interact with enough social messaging apps.

7) Virtual Reality & Augmented reality:

Virtual reality aims at creating a computer-generated experience for customers using specialized technologies and software. You can use VR to make your products/services advertisements 10x more appealing to your customers than an ordinary advertisement. Augmented reality for digital marketing trends in 2019 has made businesses in recent times to reach out customers effectively in different technologized ways. If you are not sure whether to use this tech or not, you should probably clearly understand the benefits and what it offers to you in real tech life.

For example, an international brand in India IKEA is where it allows and helps place their furniture accordingly to your customers’ expectations. Here, customers can enjoy every bit of looking at their furniture placements.

8) Geo – location-targeted advertisements will become popular.

 What is the significant thing in any digital marketing strategy? Location!

Location is the main key role whether it is advertising or marketing your product. Showing your product/service at the right time in the right place is an important digital marketing trend in 2019.

Other than that, appearing in the right location is equally important. If you want to make your brand withstand the most compared to the rest of your competitors then you will have to start communicating brand messages in the user’s native language, which will make a difference.

On the other hand, also demonstrating geo contents to your users will help you get into business more easily. For successful branding, you may also implement local content marketing strategies for your campaign leading it to a trend. Therefore, partnering with local influencers will help you get easily handle local advertisements around!

Final Wrap:

The era of digital marketing has absolutely no ending for the upcoming decades in trends changing, until dusk till dawn!

Being said this, meantime I hope the above given ” Digital marketing trends in 2019,” might have brought in some ideas on how the newest trends that already exist looks like, also helping you with foreseeing the upcoming trends for the next decades.

Have you started following them, yet for your business? On the downside topic, I have given you the top 08 digital marketing trends currently conquering the 21st century. Take a deep look at every trend and know how it is or would work for your business and customer relationship. Further side, it would be great if you could come back here and tell me about your most beneficial trend that would help your businesses’ enhancement. I bet you will have something to say!

There’s no other way to say it – Starting a company is tough, and venturing into entrepreneurship is not intended for the faint-hearted.

Entrepreneurship offers boundless potential for those who tender absolute belief in it and live by its norms. At the same time, however, it is also a way of living that can rework the entire course of your life.

An extremely fine line that separates success and failure in the field of business and Entrepreneurship offers no way around it – you either head in the right direction or not.

So what defines success if there are so many variables that can lead to failure impacting revenue, confidence, and even moral strength?

No one’s ever born an expert. Before you learn how to run, you need to learn to walk and how many times have you fallen down before you took your very first steps?

We’ve compiled a list of entrepreneurs who were initially struck down by questionable decisions. Having understood and rectified them, they are now successful entrepreneurs. Don’t you want to be one too?

There isn’t any success Manthra for an ideal entrepreneur experience. And by this article, we try to represent the strength every person needs to possess in turning defeats into victory – “The Entrepreneur Mindset”.

1.    Leo Laporte- Founder TWiT Networks

Leo Laporte had initially struggled over the course of starting the company. He developed a range of skills in multiple respects and tried to do everything on his own, which even you would be under the decision right now. This ultimately ended with him having a lot more on his plate and not finding enough time to actually run his business.

But after hiring a business partner and successful delegation of duties, he was finally able to manage the business and finally obtain a profitable turnover.

Effective leadership is when you take in your workforce into a single entity that works effectively towards a commonly manifested objective.

 

“Deleted Twitter and Facebook from all my mobile devices and it feels so good!
I just dont need the drama” 

 

2.  Rand Fishkin – CEO of Moz, Co-Founder of Inbound.org

Rand was initially fond of only “big-bang” projects, ones that had a development time of more than a few years. Although a few of them clicked right away, as time went by unexpected delays caused them to shelve many of them, which took a profound toll on their revenue.

He says that “Missing something you budget and plan for by more than a year is really bad news in the startup world.”

“Best way to sell something: don’t sell anything.
Earn the awareness, respect, and trust of those who might buy.”

 

 3.  Sandi MacPherson – Editor-in-Chief, Quibb

Sandi went almost 6 months developing a product that believe it or not, she thought she wouldn’t even use quite often. Making a product that isn’t sold brings resounding losses in money, time, and most importantly your company’s stature in the market.

Every CEO needs a distinct understanding of the market understanding the trends of sales with a fair share of experience in investing in the right opportunity.

“The welcome email is your best opportunity to develop a relationship with
someone who’s already interested in your product..”

 

4.  Dharmesh Shah – Co-Founder and CTO, HubSpot

Having successfully built a software company with $10million+ revenue, Dharmesh went on ride his luck by being a parallel entrepreneur by building a different startup. That proved to be more bane than a boon for him. His initial team felt left abandoned while the new one couldn’t gather enough revenue in the market.

Startups require a lot of effort to stay successful in the market with everyone trying to better their competitors. It’s a full time- consuming job that requires your complete and vigorous passion.

“Sleep is that time you’re working on startup problems with you eyes closed.”

 

5.  Hiten Shah, Co-Founder at KISSmetrics

Hiten Shah spent close to a million dollars on a web hosting company, by perfecting in all respects. However, the company failed in being a genuine crowd-puller leading to a heavy loss of revenue.

However, by focusing on the needs of the customer together with analyzing growth potential Hiten was able to co-found two highly successful analytic companies –KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg.

Starting a company with simply the initial urge will only lead you in the opposite direction. Entrepreneurship is all about choosing the smartest way to work.

 

“In my experience, human problems are the biggest threat to a company’s well-being, and it usually happens when there’s office politics, you’re too distant from your team, or you’re way too involved (two extremes).”

 

6. David Lucatch, founder and CEO of Yappn Corp.

The initial years of Yappn Corp. were filled with the struggle for David Lucatch. However, nothing was proving to be heading in the right direction.  Failure tends to leave a mark on oneself that can only be confounded by success.

David Lucatch continued persevering and after a few months, Yappn started gaining remarkable market share.

 

“During these trying times, I poured all my energy and focus into doing whatever it took to succeed and leading my team by example.”

 

7.  Derek Sivers – Founder of CD Baby

Derek Sivers had a rather confronting experience in the past with his employees who staged a mutiny to get rid of him. They were focused primarily on benefits rather than cliental.

However, only in the future did he realize he could easily have prevented an occurrence that impacted the culture of the organization.

His words – “Fire the rotten apple in your bunch immediately”.

 

“Don’t be on your deathbed someday, having squandered your one chance at life, full of regret because you pursued little distractions instead of big dreams.”

 

8.  Fred Smith – CEO, FedEx Express

FedEx was able to build its business model revolutionized the shipping industry but before its success, Fred Smith’s college professor disagreed to it and he even received a poor grade on an assignment where he pitched the idea for the company. No one remembers the professor, but now everyone remembers Fred.

“Leaders get out in front and stay there by raising the standards by which they judge themselves—and by which they are willing to be judged.”

 

9.  Leo Babauta – Best-selling author

Leo toiled at a dead-end job he hated for a long period of time and attributes it to “the fear of failure and lack of belief”.

Finally, his venture into blog writing has now made him a bestselling author and now he says, “Knowing what I know now, I’d have started a decade earlier.”

Starting late indeed is the worst-case scenario. Attributing fear to fuel your desire can certainly drive you to maintain your goal of being a successful entrepreneur.

 

 “Doing a huge number of things doesn’t mean you’re getting anything meaningful done.”

 

10. Jeff Bezos- CEO, Amazon

Before Amazon became a household name, Jeff had several failed ideas- one of which was an auction website, zShops that failed miserably. However, he repurposed the idea into what would eventually become the Amazon Marketplace.

Blood, Sweat, and Tears; paired with countless sacrifices, pains and losses is what a startup is made of. Market Validation is vital because you won’t get investors if you don’t know your numbers. Your idea is your brainchild, so stick to it even when all the odds are against you.

Each and every one of these entrepreneurs you saw above is human. They take failure as stepping stones to success without losing an ounce of self-belief. Their positive reaction to defeats is what allows us to label the term “successful” before their designation as Entrepreneurs.

“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”

Video sharing websites provide users with the opportunity to host premium videos. If you are currently scouting for websites to distribute your content and share it with others, you are in for luck! There are multiple video sharing sites that provide interesting and engaging content for their audience. If you are into video sharing, you might have heard of MegaUpload, which was suddenly shut by the US authorities since it lost a lot of money on copyrighted material.

In your search for a good video sharing site you will realize that while some of the sites are highly popular, they often disappearing since they are either purchased by larger market players or infringe copyright laws and are declared illegal and shut down.

Given below is a comprehensively long list of the best video sharing sites available on the internet. Feel free to visit them all and choose the one that works best for you.

 

YouTube

YouTube has to be the leading video sharing site and deserves the top spot in this list. YouTube is the world’s largest video uploading site and was first developed by Jawed Karim and Steve Chen back in the February of 2005. The website was later bought by Google Inc in November 2006 for a whopping $1.64 billion. The video upload site now functions as a Google subsidiary with apps available for Android, iOS, Windows.

Google has integrated YouTube within the Google+ network and Chrome web browser. Users can now view videos from the site on these platforms as well. YouTube allows registered and unregistered users to watch the videos available on the platform. However, registered users can upload an unlimited number of videos, as long as they don’t violate copyright laws.

The application works on Adobe Flash Player and HTML5. It contains a variety of user-generated and corporate media videos. YouTube has such a wide reach that advertisers are now working on ads solely for the platform.

YouTube doesn’t charge anything for registration, but you can earn from the advertisers via pay-per-click. The amount of money you earn on the number of ads viewed depends on the location of the viewer and the nature of the ads.

 

Netflix

Netflix is slowly becoming a household name when it comes to video streaming. The application was developed by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph back in 1997. The two had worked together for the software company, Pure. The founders had started Netflix as a streaming and video-on-demand online and DVD sales. By the first year, Hastings decided to remove DVD sales and focus on DVD rentals via mail. By 2007, Netflix had expanded its business to include streaming media. With Netflix, you can stream your favorite television series and movies anytime. It has become the world’s leading television network with over 93.8 million members spanning over 190 countries.

Apart from streaming popular television shows and movies, Netflix entered the production industry in 2013 with its original series House of Cards. Netflix Original has now taken a new identity, and each of their original shows is highly popular. Statistics show that Netflix released around 126 original series and movies since 2016.

Netflix doesn’t allow viewers to upload their videos, but you can register on the application to enjoy uninterrupted streaming. Registration fees differ between countries and the nature of the content you want to access.

 

Dailymotion

Dailymotion is one of the most popular video submission sites. Olivier Poitrey and Benjamin Bejbaum started Dailymotion in March 2005. Although the application was originally a French video sharing and hosting service, it is now available in 34 different languages. When it first started, Dailymotion would allow the users to upload and share videos on their platform. With time, they diversified to include options to add friends, subscribe to different channels, and recommend videos for others.

Dailymotion allows registered users to upload videos and share it. The uploaded videos would get converted to the VP6 format, while the audio files would be encoded as MP3 files in 96 kbit/s. Dailymotion has expanded their business to include a kids channel called Dailymotion Kids that caters primarily to children. The channel includes a parental control option.

Recently Dailymotion had started the Dailymotion Mass Uploaded based on Adobe AIR technology that allows the users to upload multiple videos simultaneously.

Dailymotion doesn’t charge for registration.

 

Yahoo! View

Yahoo! View is a video on demand application started by Yahoo! the application works with Hulu and allows the users to view contents from ABC, NBC and Fox networks in the US. Yahoo! View was initially started as Yahoo! Video where users could upload and share videos, but later this feature was scrapped off.

Yahoo! View was re-launched in 2011 as Yahoo! Screen with special emphasis on original content. Following much criticism of the original content, Yahoo! Screen was stopped, and they passed on their subscription to Hulu.

 

Vine

Vine was launched by Dom Hofmann, Colin Kroll, and Rus Yusupov in 2012 and was immediately bought by Twitter. The application allowed the users to upload six second long videos and this content could be viewed on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Users could also browse through the videos uploaded by other users. Following the footsteps of Dailymotion, Vine came up Vine Kids that was designed for children.

Vine was discontinued by Twitter and was renamed to Vine Camera in 2016, which allowed users to take six-second-long videos and upload them on Twitter or the application. The application didn’t see many takers on the Android and iOS store. Users can now only view the existing videos, but there have been some technical problems in accessing some of the archive servers.

 

Ustream

Ustream is a video sharing site founded in 2007. The video sharing site was taken over by IBM in 2016 and forms a part of their Cloud Video Service. Ustream powers internal meetings, press conferences, and on-demand videos for all its users. Ustream has over 80 million users. Apart from video submission, Ustream includes Ustream Align that helps secure internal video communications for the employees. The secure platform allows the employees to carry out broadcasting and marketing strategies without any fear of them being leaked to outsiders.

Ustream counts Facebook, NASA, Nike, Discovery Communications and Samsung.

 

Vube

Vube is a video sharing site that enables budding artists to share their videos. It helped artists build a community and garner likes and followers. Vube organized monthly contests where videos with a high number of likes and comments would be rewarded. However, Vube went out of business since they had copyright issues. They had frozen use accounts and videos on their portal since they had recorded covers of popular bands, which went against Vube’s copyright laws.

Vimeo

Vimeo is a video sharing site, but what makes it different from the other free video upload sites is that it was the first one to introduce high-definition videos. Vimeo was launched in 2004 by Zach Klein and Jake Lodwick. Video enjoyed good traffic, following YouTube and Facebook.

Vimeo has free registration where users would initially get a free space of 20MB disk space. The users could pay a nominal fee and access additional space. Space was increased to 30 MB and by 2007, it had increased to 500 MB. As of today, users can pay a fee of $60 and get additional space of at least 5GB along with 2.5 hours of 720p video play.

 

Live Leak

Live Leak was founded by Hayden Hewitt in 2006. The London-based company has a section where users can post their videos about different topics. Among all the video upload sites, Live Leak is one site that allowed users to upload videos on politics, clips from war and political debates, and different world events. The app tries to combine the power of citizen journalism to give importance to crucial incidents around the world. The video sharing site is known for starting many a controversy. Rumor has it that it was Live Leak that had released footage of Saddam Hussein’s execution.

Live Leak content can be graphic in nature since they deal with war footages and other political clashes. The members can readily share and comment on the videos uploaded on the site, and the site is known for heated debates pertaining to the different contents.

 

Flickr

Flickr is a video and image hosting website that was founded in 2004 by Ludicrop. The same was purchased by Yahoo! in 2005. Flickr allows users to share and embed photos and videos and create an online community. Flickr is also widely used by photo researchers and bloggers for their posts.

Individuals do not need an account to access the videos and photos uploaded to Flickr, but one needs to register on Flickr to upload content on Flickr.

Flickr offers three types of user accounts, one of which is free and includes 1TB space with a limit of 250MB per photo and a maximum of 3 minutes for each video. The Ad-Free option allows subscribers to avoid ads by paying an annual fee. The Double account includes the benefits of Ad-Free account along with a 2 TB space.

 

TinyPic

TinyPic is a photo and video sharing site started by Photobucket.com. The application allows users to upload, share and link photos and videos on the internet. TinyPic decides which photos and videos have better reach on the internet and delete the ones that aren’t accessed frequently from their servers. TinyPic has seen much criticism because of its tendency to delete images and photos without prior warnings.

One doesn’t need to register on the site to start accessing the service for accessing or uploading the files.

 

Break

Break is a video and photo sharing site that is known for its hilarious videos and images. The application was founded in 1998 and was later bought by TMFT Enterprises. In 2007, the application started a video streaming series that was available on their website. Break purchased the PC-game hosting company, Filefront.

One doesn’t have to be a registered member to share and enjoy Break videos on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

 

Twitch

Twitch was first developed by Justin.tv in 2011 and then purchased by Amazon. Twitch is a video sharing site that focuses on games. You can get real time videos from new games. Video shows from the gaming world are also available on the Twitch platform. It also offers real-time coverage of different gaming tournaments.

You can access Twitch from gaming consoles like PlayStations 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

 

Vidivodo

Vidivod is a Turkish video sharing application that now has an English version. You can click on to their different categories and access a large number of videos uploaded to them. Vidivodo deals with different categories and hence some of the video content is explicit and not suitable for children.

The site seems to enjoy a great number of visitors and is slowly gathering users from around the world.

 

Smugmug

Smugmug is a photo and video sharing site founded by the father-son duo Chris and Don MacAskill in 2002. The application supports social media posting so that users can share content from Smugmug.com to different social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The MacAskill wanted to create a service that would cater to budding photographers. They allow photographers to add watermarks to their photos to prevent copyright issues and also help them sell their photos and videos online with their pricing through the Smugmug interface.

 

TV

TV.com is a website that shows TV shows online. Users can submit their choice of television shows for the site to review. The application also developed relay functionality for their television shows. Since CBS Interface owns it, the site covers shows broadcasted by CBS in the USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Ireland and Canada.

The website offers information on the television shows, including cast and crew listing and description of the different episodes. There are guides like actor bios and trivia. Users can participate to add to the available information and earn points.

All information on the platform is user generated, and they can edit and change the information as and when they feel like it.

 

Viewster

Viewster.com founded by Kia Henniges and Jorg Boksberger is an on-demand internet streaming sites. Viewster users can watch television series and movies on the website. The website has licensed over 12,000 movie titles and a broad range of series. The number of these differs from country to country.

Viewester can be accessed on the internet, via mobile app and is also available in gaming consoles like Xbox 360, where users can download it from the Xbox Live Marketplace.

 

Wistia

Wistia is an online video hosting and sharing site that was founded in 2006 by Brendan Schwartz and Chris Savage. The aim of the website was to help budding filmmakers collaborate.

Wistia offers video hosting to different businesses apart from personal use. The Wistia interface also allowed the users to customize the videos.

 

Sproutvideo

Sproutvideo is a video hosting company that works for the corporate world. They offer secure handling of videos. They offer a different level of securities for each video and the users can choose with whom they want to share the information uploaded on their profile.

Sproutvideo offers free 14 days trial, following which the users will have to subscribe to their service in order to continue enjoying the benefits for the same.

 

Myspace

Myspace isn’t just a video sharing site. It is a social media site that allows you to make friends and then share your blog posts, videos, and images with them. Myspace had enjoyed a lot of popularity before Facebook picked up. It surpassed Google as the most visited website.

With time Myspace might have seen a drop in registration, but it still holds a strong influence on popular culture and went on to create gaming platforms like RockYou and Zynga.

Developers had promised a new design for Myspace to make it more accessible on mobile, but there hasn’t been any further update on this.

 

Metacafe

Metacafe is a video-sharing company that focuses on short video clips relating to television, movies, games, sports, and music. Metacafe doesn’t function at present, but it resembled YouTube and Dailymotion when it was live on the internet. Metacafe had enjoyed a large number of users before it ceased to exist.

Users could register for free on the website and upload and share their videos.

 

Wrapping Up!

You are sure to find a video sharing site that meets your need and budget from the long and extensive list provided. Each of them is similar and unique in its ways. See for yourself which one suits your purpose best and go for it!

Feel free to add your suggestions in the comment below!

For how many years are you telling yourself that you are going to start your own business and quit your job one day?

For how many more years are you going to live with the job that you don’t like at all, as you don’t have the gut to put your bright business idea ( If you are actionable ) out there? Whether it’s fear of failure, lack of confidence or resources or not being able to go against your loving parents to give up on your safe job, you are pushing your freedom of money, life’s happiness and entrepreneurial dream further away.

Today is that ‘one day’ you stop procrastinating and start working on the next step to bring your startup dream closer. Because in this post I’ll show you why ‘Today’ is the best day and ‘Now’ is the best time to nurture your startup seed..

After 2015, Sri Lanka’s startup ecosystem started to burgeon steadily with newly emerged opportunities for young tech freaks to take their innovative ideas to the commercial level.

With a growth index of 7.4 aspiring startup ecosystem of Sri Lanka(Source- Startup Sri Lanka Report | SLASSCOM) rise year by year prospering the island with more and more startup seeds while generating new career opportunities and contributing to the economy of Sri Lanka

For the determined individuals with innovative ideas and zero interest for typical day jobs, Sri Lanka provides you with everything a startup needs to thrive at your figure tip. It will only cost a strong will power to hustle off until you succeed and a wise strategy in place.

While many complain the government about the policies, financial matters and other challenges, Sri Lankan startup environment has grown immensely. Today, Sri Lanka proudly owns 150-300 tech startups in the ecosystem and 65% of these entrepreneurs exceed 150 million revenue (Source- which is indeed a considerable growth compared to the past years.

With the attention of the government, other organizations, new emerging investors and young successful entrepreneurs with hearts willing to give a hand to the new startups, the startup ecosystem keeps expanding and evolving creating more and more space for ambitious Sri Lankan techies.

Here are 5 things that testify that ‘Now’ is the best time to start your Sri Lanka startup’.
For those who are still waiting for everything to become perfect to put your business idea to action.

 

1.Government support

By witnessing the success, job opportunities created and the economic support startups can add in strengthening the island’s economy, Sri Lankan government has started to pay their attention to help the thriving youngster techies around the island with new policies, law enforcement, banking facilities and more. Though the reliefs are not even close to what they can amend to help young entrepreneurs, it’s safe to say that it’s a good start. Here are some of the best examples that provide testaments that government encourage startups to thrive.

• Government’s announcement of 200% Capital Allowances for business making investments in the Northern Province and 100% Capital Allowance for Eastern Province Investors.(Source-National Budget Proposal 2017 )

 

 

• “Sri Lanka Export Development Board (SLEDB) has implemented a budget proposal on Start-up funding in 2016, where 26 Startups had been recommended by a committee appointed by the EDB for concessionary loans provided by State Banks”(Source -EDB)

• Dedicating segment name ‘Start-Up Pavilion’ for startups and innovators to showcase their products and solutions in ‘INFOTEL,’ one of the biggest tech exhibition in Sri Lanka organize by EDB, providing more exposure for startups and innovators.

2.More funding opportunities

Apart from, investing your personal money, applying for a bank loan and asking money from your rich parents and friends, there are several ways to fund your business idea. These are few of them.

• Startup programs
• Crowdfunding
• Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists
• Grants
• Zero Interest MSME Loans
• Catalyst support

Enriched with investors of Sri Lanka and from around the world, Sri Lanka’s startup ecosystem now offers you better funding opportunities than ever. With the immense growth and significant achievements and success of Sri Lankan entrepreneurs, the ecosystem is grabbing more and more attention of local investors while other international investors are realizing that Sri Lanka is a safe place to invest with favourable geopolitics and healthy economic growth and stability. This has increased funding opportunities for determined tech-stars out there.

3.Supportive organizations and events

Today, if you have the courage to daydream your startup dream, commit to spend weeks of sleepless nights and dare to get burned and rise from the ashes, figuring out the ‘How to‘ part is not that hard with all the newly born supportive organization and events available in Sri Lanka. BOV Capital and  SLASSCOM are some of the organizations that help startups to grow and ‘Startup Weekend’ and ‘Startup boot camps’ are some of the startup events out there waiting to support young people who are looking forward to taking their business idea to the next level.

4.Better Mentoring

No matter how great your business idea or product is, lack of knowledge on doing business and management and experience in managing a business take no time to take you down the hill. Which makes getting mentored and receiving guidance extremely important for a startup success.

With the collaborative and supportive community of startup founders and co-founders, experienced industry professionals and successful entrepreneurs who once were individuals with doubt and a business plan, finding mentoring and guidance are not extremely hard in Sri Lankan startup ecosystem as it used to be. In addition, there are many programs that provide guidance and insight in implementing and executing strategies and expanding.

5.More incubation opportunities

This is something many startups find tricky with their tight budgets. As the startup current is still immerging in Sri Lanka, every factor isn’t fully completed yet. And incubation is one of them. From finding a working space to accessing resources 0from developing their prototype to taking it to the market, finding facilities and resources are definitely a great challenge for Sri Lankan startups. But, thanks to few of the industry giants in Sri Lanka and some international companies, Sri Lankan startup ecosystem is receiving more incubation opportunities now. Slingshot , a startup incubator/ seed accelerator developed by Hemas PLC, John Keels X and Yarl IT Hub are few good example for this.

Here is a list of people and organizations who are willing to nourish your seed in various ways including, funding, market reach, resources, mentoring, business skills, strategy and more.

Startup incubators

• Lankan Angel Network
• Venture Engine
• BOV Capital
• Startup X Foundry
• Yarl IT Hub
• Crowdisland
• Youth Business Sri Lanka
• East West Capital Group
• Spiralation
• John Keells
• Lanka Ventures PLC

Conclusion

Without no argument, Sri Lanka is still not a healthy place for startups comparing what we have in Sri Lanka with Silicon Valley or other regional startup hubs. Yet, Sri Lanka offers enough resources and facilities to ensure successful startup seed growth.

When considering all the market opportunities and flourishing funding, mentoring and other essential startup opportunities and most importantly all the inspiring startup successes born in Sri Lanka it’s clear that startups culture will grow faster and faster year by year.

So, it’s crystal clear that ’Now’ is the best time to do the research it takes, makes a solid business plan, practices your pitch and launch a mission to bring your business idea to life before the ecosystem gets too competitive.

Successful Financial Tips

At the beginning of every new financial year, we look back and sigh at our mistakes and promise not to repeat them in the new one. At the beginning of the new year, there are many who make resolutions to make better financial decisions in the new financial year. To help individuals make better financial decisions in the new year, here are some Successful Financial Tips for 2017.

 

Get Paid What You’re Worth and Spend Less Than You Earn

The tip itself is a simple one, but then there are many who struggle with the basic rule for a successful financial year. You need to make sure that you know the worth of your job in the market. How do you do that? You conduct skill evaluations, productivity, job tasks and evaluate your contribution to the company. Being underpaid can make a great difference during your working life, since your cumulative earning remains low.

 

 

The second aspect of this advice includes that you don’t exceed your earning when it comes to spending. It is easier to spend less and a little cost-cutting effort can help you make larger savings. It always doesn’t have to be big sacrifices.

 

Make A Budget and Stick to It

Right after you get your earnings, make an elaborate budget of all your expenses and stick to it. Sticking to the budget is something that you cannot be forced to do.

You have to stick to it on your own. Know that the budget will help you sort out your finances, and also ensure that you don’t overspend and can end up saving money.

 

Spend What Is Left After Saving

Remember the Warren Buffet principle of saving and investing. If you decide to save after spending from your total earnings for the month, chances are that you will be left with peanuts. Instead, decide on an amount that you will set aside for saving every month and stick to it. This will control your spending and make sure that you grow your savings.

Expert advice: You should save at least 26% of your annual earnings. If you aren’t saving this much, it is time to cut down your expenses and increase your savings. This change will help you live a comfortable retirement and provide you necessary backup in case of a job loss.

 

Stop Using Too Many Credit Cards

It feels good to be offered free credit cards and earning points after spending on them. However, it is time you know that nothing comes for free in life. When you spend through credit cards, you end up paying for a transaction fee. This fee is included in the cost of the product or service that you purchase with the card.

There’s no harm in paying through a credit card, but learn to restrict it for emergency purposes like booking a train or flight ticket when you have to make a sudden unforeseen expense. Apart from cutting down on the credit card expense, cut down on the number of credit cards to a maximum of two. This will prevent you from falling into a debt trap. When you have multiple cards and end up spending from all of them, you will have to end up paying all the finance charges and they can add up to quite a large amount.

 

Pay Off Credit Card Debt

Credit card debt could be quite a headache when you have to pay the large bill. On more than one occasion, we tend to forget that it is real money that we deal with when using the plastic cards. Despite our resolve to pay off the balance and outstanding bill, we often falter and then end up paying late charges and interests on the same.

In fact, we end up paying more for things that we purchase with our credit cards. In the new financial year, make a resolution to pay off your debts faster so that you can save on the high interests.

 

Purchase Enough Insurance

When financial experts ask you to cut down on unnecessary expenses, it’s not like they are asking you to cut down on purchasing insurance cover. Both life and health insurance are extremely important. While life insurance ensures

While life insurance ensures the safety of your family, health insurance safeguards your financial planning in case of an accident or illness. Insurance cover prevents you from paying in case of an emergency.

 

Don’t Wait for March

Many professionals think of investments and tax-saving right when March is around the corner. These individuals usually end up purchasing a product that doesn’t serve them any purpose. Financial experts say that we shouldn’t mix insurance and investments and should keep them separate. The easiest way to make sure that you don’t regret the financial year at the year-end is to start investing in April.

 

When you start early, you have time to study the product and earn good returns throughout the financial year.

 

Contribute to A Retirement Plan

You are saving at present to ensure a comfortable retired life. If your goal is a comfortable retirement then you need to maximize your retirement savings. You can put your savings in the salary deferrals 401(k) plans, automatic monthly withdrawals from a checking account and from paying down a mortgage.

You can also invest in tax-advantaged retirement schemes like IRAs. If your employer has the 401(k) plan and matches dollar for dollar up to 3% of your salary, then make sure that you contribute at least 3% from your monthly salary so that you end up saving 6% of your salary despite using only 3% for the same.

 

Invest for The Long Term

When you think of investment, think of it like a marathon and not a sprint. You should develop an investment strategy and stick to it no matter what is the situation of the market. You should know that the earning on

You should know that the earnings on a diversified portfolio of large capitalization stocks is 10% compounded annually since 1926, on the other hand, corporate and government bonds have earned only 6%.

 

Invest in Your Kid’s Future

Right at the beginning of the new financial year, think of little things that you can do in 2017 that might have a huge impact on your children in the next ten-fifteen years.

 

You can fund a 529 account for college or invest in the 529 ABLE accounts for children with disabilities. Start a trust fund or fund a small investment account that will become a safety net for their college education. Remember that the small acts today will go a long way in helping your kids in the long run.

Wrapping Up!

These are some of the most basic financial advice for 2017. Remember there is the power to planning, so get a plan set up and follow it. Plan for the future and stick to it. Automate your investment strategies and savings whenever there is scope for the same.

Review your steps beforehand and seek financial help whenever you deem it necessary. There’s nothing more foolish than risking things simply because you didn’t know what to do. Seek the help of a financial planning professional and get ready for the new financial year.

Let me know your thoughts in the comment box. If you have any queries, contact us on our official Facebook Page.

Have you heard of the term “web hosting?” Before we get into understanding the concept of “web hosting,” let’s understand what hosting means. Hosting is the physical computer where the website is situated. Or in other words, it’s the server that delivers the files that the visitors of the site require.

Web hosting can end up being a tad confusing, especially if you want to launch your website and have no idea how to go about it. Yes, the concept is extremely technical and might be completely strange to you, but it is fun once you get the hang of it!

If you are planning on launching a website, the first thing that you must do is hosting. Hosting will provide the place where you will put all the information that will be displayed on the website. It should be kept in mind that a great host will make your website fast.

A Study from Hostingfacts found that

Now if you want to launch a website, but aren’t being able to wrap your head around concepts like Apache, PHP Load, and PHP, it’s suggested that you entitle the task to a tech expert. If you are looking for a tech expert to help you with the website host, then look no further, since we are here to help.

We will help you understand the concept with basic terms and explanations and make the technical jargon easy to comprehend. Not only will we break down the technical concepts to help you get a better idea, but also help you understand the basic things that you need to consider when hunting for a host. We assure you that the whole idea might sound daunting, but with our help, it will be a cakewalk!

Know What You Need

Before you start figuring out about web hosting, you need to know exactly what you want. To understand your requirement for a web host, you need to answer certain fundamental questions that will help you get a clearer idea of your requirements.

1. Will You Lose Income or Visitor If Your Site Droops Down?

This question is crucial since you will face the ramification whenever your site goes down. The option you pick will help you decide the hosting you need to invest in.

2. What Kind of Traffic Will Your Site See?

Give some thought to the present level of traffic that your site experiences and make a future projection based on it.

3. How Fast Do You Want the Site to Be?

The kind of host you use impacts the speed of your website. You will need to decide if a slow site will hamper things or create a bigger problem and go ahead with a particular host.

4. How Much Space Does the Site Need?

The kind of content your site contains will determine the space it requires. If your site doesn’t have much media-centric content, you will make do with limited space, but if it includes images and videos, then storage needs to be considered.

5. What Are Your Specific Needs?

You need to decide if your need is based on other sites that need hosting. If you have several URL redirects or have e-commerce wants and even allow space for email, then your hosting preference will change accordingly.

6. How Much Control Do You Require?

The hosting will depend on what kind of control you need. You can choose between being an average user, or going ahead and testing many configurations, or even making advanced installations.

7. How Do You Plan to Seek Help?

There are lots of ways to ask for help. You can either go for the phone, email, online forums, or ticket-support systems. Which one you favor for the particular website will determine the hosting you need.

It might not be possible to have all the answers before you start, but if you have a basic idea about these seven questions, the selection process for web hosting will be easier.

What Are the Different Types Of Hosting?

There are different types of hosting, and each one is unique. Given below is a basic outline of the various types of hosting, which will help you get a better idea about the concept before you start working on it.

1. Shared

Shared hosting would be the most common and inexpensive hosting. Most people start with shared hosting and works well for most of websites. Shared hosting involves multiple sites using the same server. Each customer website gets a chunk of the server and must remain within the set limit.

Possible drawback:

While the price for shared hosting is cheaper than the rest, it comes with some major problems. The first and foremost would be the issue of space. With many websites sharing a single server, it might so happen that one site enjoying a lot of traffic will slow down the rest. Overloading issues shouldn’t occur with a good host, but it is one of the biggest problems faced when using shared hosting.

Pricing: $4-15 per month.

2. Virtual Private Server

The Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a hosting that uses software to run quite a few sites on a single server, in a way that they function like dedicated servers. Even though multiple sites share the same server, the software in place makes it feel like a dedicated server for the website. Even though the VPS server is costlier than Shared server, it is customizable, faster, and more secure. Since the server doesn’t slow down other sites, because of increased traffic on any one site, it is an excellent choice for growing websites.

Pricing: $15-150 per month.

3. Dedicated Hosting

If you have a site that requires a lot of space, then Dedicated Hosting is the best choice for you. This host will offer your site its very private server, where you don’t have to share with anyone. Dedicated Hosting ensures a more secure site with faster speed. Users will also not face any impact from other websites. There are plenty more options to pick from for different price ranges.

When you pick Dedicated Hosting, you have the option to choose between managed and unmanaged dedicated hosting. When you go for managed hosting, the hosts provide you with technical help who assists you to handle the server and carry out upgrades. In unmanaged hosting, you have to perform these tasks on your own.

Pricing: $100-250 per month.

4. Cloud Hosting

This is a new method of hosting that has recently gained a lot of importance. In Cloud Hosting, your site is not associated with a single server; it is linked to different servers in several locations. Cloud hosting minimizes the downtime for the website since it is readily available in the cloud. It is the perfect choice for websites that cannot have downtime.

Possible drawbacks:

Setting up Cloud Hosting tends to be complex. It is also more expensive than the other hosting options available in the market.

17 Factors to Consider Before Choosing a Web Host

Deciding on which web hosting option to pick can be a difficult one, especially if you are a newbie when it comes to running a website. Multiple companies in the market promise to fulfill all your requirements and offer similar prices. In such a situation, it can be tough to pick one company out for your hosting option. Given below is a list of factors that will help you make the right decision when it comes to selecting a web hosting company. Most reliable web hosting companies have a dedicated page, where they mention the perks of joining their company. However, you should still do your due diligence and find out whether what they claim is true or not.

• Price: The first factor we consider when we pick anything is pricing. However, it isn’t the right way to head when it comes to web hosting. When you choose a company that offers you low prices, you need to be prepared for a service that meets the bill. You have to realize that employing a suitable host costs money and you cannot get the best non-outsourced support and hardware at a low price. Do not compare solely based on prices. Compare the services that the companies are providing and then consider the pricing. Another thing you need to keep in mind is the purpose of the website. If your site is meant for personal reasons, then going for free hosting makes more sense for you.

If you are confused, you can always head to HostMonk, which is a website that offers a comprehensive list of all the hosting companies along with their different packages. WHReviews is another good site to head to before making your decision.

Tips: Small businesses can consider domain hosting, colocation or standard paid hosting. When you go for domain hosting, you only have to pay for the domain name of your website. This is the perfect option for those running on a small budget and who want to use a site with Tumblr or WordPress.

• Specialties Offered: There is a host of companies offering you web hosting services. However, you need to realize that not all of them are suited for your need. Each customer has a unique need, and they should head to a company that can meet them. The key factor determining your choice of hosting company should be one that caters primarily to your needs and the specialty of your website. Talk to customers who have already availed of the services of these companies to get a better idea.
• Technical Specifications: How your site functions will go a long way in determining the web hosting company you would want to associate with. If your website is rich in content or is an e-commerce site, then you shouldn’t go for a cheap plan since that won’t have enough RAM and processing power to support your traffic. Select wisely to avoid downtime and load issues. Before zeroing in on a host, check if they charge for additional domains, support, and backups. You need to contact the company and be very clear about how you want your website to grow and make sure that understand your vision completely.
• Technical Support Offered: Since you do not have a clear idea about your host, it will be difficult for you to deal with the technical problems for the same. When you go ahead and pick up a company, make sure that you can access a real person during a crisis. This individual would help you realize what’s the problem and also help you solve it.

You need to check on the customer reputation of the company. See how they can be contacted and whether they are available 24X7 since you never know when you might need them for your website! Just like host companies are different when it comes to their pricing, they are different in their technical support as well. Carry out some extensive research to pick your preferred company.

• Features Offered: When it comes to choosing between so many host companies, it always boils down to what extra the company offers that the others don’t. Several companies will go the extra mile to win a potential customer. They might offer you multiple data centers, free domain privacy, data backups, energy-saving practices, and much more. If you find a company that offers services and features that you require, beyond and above what they usually offer, you will know that you have found a good host company.
• Additional Features Offered: The hosting companies might entail more cost, but they are worth it. Some of the extra services that these companies offer include email services, where you can create your email address. This goes a long way in making your business more professional. An e-commerce website needs a secure server where the customers can carry out safe transactions. These services help build a reputation for your company and will assist you in the long run.
• Hardware: What kind of hardware the company uses will decide on the quality of the service provided by them. If the company isn’t very open about the server that they use, it is time to look for other options. A company that uses modern, state-of-the-art machines as compared to one that uses chicken wires and spare parts, will offer you a better service.
• Customer Reviews: The most honest opinion about a particular hosting company can be derived from the customers. You need to connect with the existing customers and also carry out a blog search on the internet to find out reviews on the different hosting companies. The customers will honestly tell you if the technical support is easily reachable, and what is the average time for them to respond to, and what is the kind of service that they provide. You can visit websites like Web Hosting Talk, LifeHacker, and Web Hosting Jury for customer reviews.
• Reputation: The customer reviews will help you get a clearer idea about the reputation of the web hosting companies. Make sure that you get a clear picture of the company’s reputation before you start working with them. Each of these companies will have their testimonials and statistics mentioned. Check out hosting forums also to see how they are perceived by the text experts.

When you are trying to get a clear idea about the company’s reputation, also check up on their uptime statistics. The uptime percentage will help you see how frequently the hosting company’s sites are live. The higher the percentage, the better it is. Make sure that you go for a company that has a rate close to 100% since an issue with the hosting company will slow down your website. If the website is slow, the visitor will not be able to access the site and are then less likely to return for the second time, and you lose out on traffic.

• Spam and Email Practices: If you have an email option in the website then make sure that your hosting company has a solution to tackle spam problems. Consider their spam solutions and email practices before you decide to work with them.
• User Interface: No matter how technically sound you are, there are some issues about web hosting that might not be your cup of tea. If you don’t know how to install WordPress or set up an email or FTP account, you need to find a hosting company that will do it for you without any additional cost. Make sure that the company has cPanel or Plesk for updates and doesn’t use the complex interface that might be difficult to figure out. Since you will be the one to work on them, it will be difficult if you can’t find your way through them.
• Space for Growth: Another crucial thing that you need to consider when selecting a hosting company is whether they can fit into your plans. What might be adequate for you now, won’t be so in the future, when the website grows. As a web-based entrepreneur. you need to focus on growth and hence shouldn’t consider hosting companies that won’t accommodate the future growth in the company. If you are availing of Shared Hosting, check if the company offers VPS and Dedicated Hosting solutions and how easy would it be to update your account.
• Usability: Usability will be important if you are new to the world of web hosting and have no clue about coding and other technical know-how. Usability can also give you more freedom to customize the website and offers more hosting options. When you are considering usability make sure that the hosting company offers you Plesk, cPanel, ISPConfig or ispCP. These programs will help you customize and set up your website even if you are unfamiliar with the file transfer protocol. FTP is necessary if you want to upload files to the site, which include header images and logos.
• Don’t Just Go By The Big-Names: Just like cheap hosting companies might not offer all the services you want, the big names might also not offer you everything you want. These web hosting companies might have built their brand, but it is easy to get blindsided by their success and not pay attention to their hosting solutions. Don’t go for a company simply because they have a good reputation in the market, make sure that they offer you the services that you require.
• Security Strength: Since you are placing all your website’s information in the host, it is mandatory that you consider a company that offers the best security strength. The customers will share all their information with you, and it is your responsibility to secure them. When considering security strength, look into the daily backups of the web hosting company. You cannot afford to lose the content of the website without a backup to retrieve them! Keep an eye on the SSLs. When you design an e-commerce website but don’t plan on using third-party service for the client’s payment data, you will need SSLs. You also need to scan for malware and help the site from being blacklisted. A SiteLock will take care of this and will also help you gain the trust of the customers.
• High Traffic: If you are looking to create a website that will see a huge amount of traffic, you must consider a company that has the capability to handle that amount of traffic and doesn’t cause the site to crash.
• Zero Downtime: Downtimes will make your website slow. It doesn’t matter even if that happens in the middle of the night since a site will be accessed by visitors from all over the world. The downtime will make things difficult for your website, and you will have to make sure that you go for a hosting company that upgrades their system to avoid downtime.

How to Choose the Right Host for Your Site

Now that you have a comprehensive list of all the factors that you need to consider when picking a host for your website, it is time to get some nuggets of advice that will help you select the right hosting company. Given below is a list of wisdom that will assist in making the selection process easier.

1. Reputation:

You might have understood by now that the reputation of the company is of prime importance. How long a company has been around and how quickly they respond to complaints and whether they offer immediate technical support, will help you make sure that you get the best service. Be very direct with the host, ask them questions, and satisfy all your queries. If you find them lacking somewhere, don’t hesitate to keep looking.

2. Find the Limit of the Unlimited Package:

Even before you get into the world of websites, you must realize that there’s nothing called “unlimited.” Even the unlimited has a limit, so don’t be fooled by the hosts that offer you unlimited storage and data transfer. It is bait waiting for you. The limits are mentioned in the service agreements and contracts, and you might have to plow through them to find it out, but be rest assured that it is there! There are chances that the host company might keep changing their limits without warning or leave things undefined, so you should be very clear about it from the beginning. While storage and data transfer numbers are crucial, what matters primarily is the PHP memory, which you will run out of first.

3. Be Sure About the Uptime Guarantees:

Before you sign a contract with a web hosting company find out their uptime guarantee. Even if they offer 99.9% uptime ensure that still includes eight hours of downtime every year. Analyze if your business can function with this. This might not pose a threat to smaller businesses but could become a major deal-breaker for larger ones.

4. Be Sure About the Refunds:

It might so happen that the hosting company might not be able to provide you with satisfactory service or you might find a better deal else. In such a situation, it would help if you can avail of a refund. Make things very clear with the web hosting company from the very beginning. What if they mess things up or if their server crashes or if you ever want to end the contract with them, if you can avail a refund.

5. Location:

Yes, you read that right! Location does matter even if the website is global. If your server is located on the other side of your primary customers, then things will slow down. If you are concerned about the speed, then you need to place importance on the location of the servers used by the hosting company.

6. Be Open to Moving:

There’s no harm in moving your site. If you feel that the service of the hosting company isn’t good enough or that the service is too expensive, you can easily move your website. If you find the price steep in the initial months, this expense will only increase with time, and you should switch to a cheaper option if you don’t want to keep paying the steep amount.

7. Customer Service:

The one aspect if always tend to look past is the customer service offered by a company. However, this cannot be the case when you select your web hosting company. If your website crashes at 3 am, customer service will be the first one you will try and contact. No service will matter if you cannot get instant help when your website is in a crisis. Firstly, you shouldn’t face many problems, and even if you do, you need to be confident about 24X7 customer service for the same.

So How Will You Decide If the Customer Service Is Best Suited for You?

• They will be prompt. The best customer service is one that responds to your problems instantly. Depending on the situation, a wait time of an hour is the maximum you can afford for your website. You would not want to be associated with a company that offers a wait time of 24 hours for a crisis.
• They should be helpful. Customer service will be the first point of contact when you face a crisis, and they should be capable of making you understand the problem and offering you a quick solution. If they are evasive or cannot provide useful information, then you will be in trouble.
• The customer service should function as you want them to. Some companies send in technical support to work things out for you, or there are some that respond and offer solutions via telephone and chat. Go with the one that suits you best.

8. Security:

Security is another aspect we don’t give much importance to until something goes wrong. You will realize that most of the host companies don’t talk about the security option. This is because they don’t want everyone to know about their system. However, some hosts brag about their system, and that is when you know that they have something unique and are using it as a selling point.

• Check online and read reviews to find out about the kind of security offered by the company.
• You should check for network firewall, intrusion prevention system, server firewall, and access lists to make sure that the hosting company is providing the best security.
• The best option is multiple layers of security.
• Also, make sure that the company updates its security patches at regular intervals.

9. Amount of Control You Enjoy:

Since it is your website that we are talking about, you will have some amount of control over it. However, the amount of control you enjoy depends on the level that the host company offers. If you are using shared hosting, you might not enjoy the same amount of control as you would enjoy with a dedicated server. No matter what type of hosting you go with, a good host makes sure that you have an ample amount of control and access to your website.

• Many hosts offer a control panel with a lot of functionality. While you may not need so many, it is always better to have access to these. You may end up requiring them when you least expect it.
• Make sure that the control panel you have access to is a cPanel since they are the best and the most popular. If you are clueless about the cPanel, you can go through the online tutorials for the same, to gather your information. Given the popularity of the cPanel, you might not have to relearn a new system in case you change the host.

10. Avoid Overloading:

One of the primary problems faced by the world of web hosting is overloaded servers. Many hosts cram too many sites into a shared server to increase their earning, and this often ends up affecting the websites. The overloaded server only makes your site slow and unavailable because other websites are enjoying all the traffic and bandwidth. The only problem is that you cannot find out if your company is overloading the server.

• Check the other websites on the server and see what their speed is. Also, check the speed of the host’s site to see how fast it is running.
• You can also ask around or read the reviews.

11. Check If the Company Offers FTP Access:

Find out if the host company offers FTP access. It is the easiest way to connect with your site and upload files. You will need FTP even if you want to install WordPress yourself. If the web hosting company doesn’t offer FTP, they will allow you to upload the files with the help of a web interface. The method works, but FTP is quicker and easier to access.

12. Check for Upgrades:

You need to remember that your website will not remain this small in the years to come. You have a big dream, and you should make sure that your hosting can make that a reality. Before you associate with the company, check on their upgrade options. You might not need them right now, but you will need them in the future, and it doesn’t harm to have an idea about it.

• Don’t believe whatever the company tells you and don’t upgrade if you see that the next package offers an “unlimited” option. You don’t need it right now, and it will only cost you money.

13. Email:

The easiest way to make your business look professional is to make your business email. Most of the host companies offer emails, but it always helps to clarify them in the beginning. See what features they offer and if it serves your daily needs.

• Make sure that the company allows all emails to be rerouted to your domain.
• Check for the availability of autoresponders.
• See if you can forward your emails to an existing account. This is helpful you already have an email address and don’t want to keep a tab on multiple accounts.
• Make sure that you can access your email via IMAP and/or POP3. The POP3 access will help you check your email via Outlook.
• Also, look for web-based solutions.

While the aforementioned points should be considered before selecting the host company, here are some more points that will help you pick between two options that are equally perfect for you.

14. One-Click WordPress Install:

WordPress is easy to install, but it becomes easier when you have a hosting company that offers one-click WordPress installation. This helps if you want a hassle-free approach when setting up the website. Here’s the catch- if you go for one-click installations, you usually have to make do with security issues and slower upgrades.

15. Reselling Options:

Host reselling is a feature that will help advanced users. Reselling is a common practice for web developers since it gives them the opportunity to build the site and host it. If you want this option, look for the reselling opportunities offered by the host. Many hosts offer unbranded solutions for you to make the hosting environment suitable for your branding. Privilege server offers great reseller hosting packages to get you started.

16. Affiliate Cash:

If you aren’t planning to resell hosting, you might be offered affiliate dollars by the host company. The affiliate cash will help pay off in the long run. You can also make do without managing ads or links and can still end up making some cash.

17. Registration of Domain Name:

Some hosts allow you to register your domain name. While it might be a good option to combine your hosting and domain registration, this might become a problem if you want to change hosts in the future. Many hosts own their URL and license it to the website, so it might be difficult to transfer the URL to another host if there are billing issues. It is a smarter move not to combine host registration and domain name since that might force you to remain with the host even if you want an out.

18. Domain Parking:

This is a rather common practice in the world of web hosting. Companies end up purchasing all the domains that are similar to their name, including the misspelt ones so that they can get the traffic. Host allow domain parking, but there might be some limits on how many URLs you can redirect.

19. Backup:

It is crucial to have a backup system on your site. This will help you if you delete a folder accidentally while tinkering around the FTP program. Trust us when we say that these blunders have to even the most technically sound person. To avoid such situations, hosts offer daily backups, which will restore whatever gets deleted. Be very clear about the backup options provided by the company, and it is safer to have your backup options in place, like the BackupBuddy.

20. E-Commerce:

If you want some additional functionality like e-commerce, you will be able to get them from your host company if you ask them for it. These out-of-the-box solutions may not be customizable like many WordPress plugins, but they will work fine for any basic requirements.

21. One Place for All Sites:

If you have a long list of websites and can’t stop buying interesting domain names, then it is best that you host all of them together in the same space. Many companies offer options to keep multiple sites, which is called Addon Domains. Check and confirm if the company you want to work it offers the feature.

10 Questions to Ask Your Web Hosting Provider Before You Make the Final Decision

You cannot compromise on your website and the security of your customers. One of the key points to remember before you go ahead and create your online presence is the choice of the web hosting company that you associate with. Many factors determine your decision. Here is a list of 10 questions that you might ask the hosting company, to make an informed decision.

1. What Is the Security Policy That You Follow?

The security policy followed by a hosting company will offer you an insight into the company. There a lot of varieties to pick from. Many companies offer you server space and a connection while deciding to give you free rein when it comes to the security of the content. On the other hand, some companies carry out malware scans, monitor the traffic of the site and offer denial-of-service mitigation. You also need to be sure that the security updates happen very frequently.

2. How Do You Handle Breaches in Security?

One of the key security concern is when the security precautions fail in certain cases. In such a situation, it is often the hosting company that finds out beforehand and needs to ensure the safety of the visitors. It is important to know how and whether the provider will attempt to tackle the situation and how long will they take to identify the crisis and work to solve it. Also, what happens if you find out about a breach and how soon can you get a reply from the company after you report the issue to them?

3. What Is the Platform Under My Application?

Closely related to the issue of security is the server platform used for your website. You need to know which server your CMS application is installed on and how it is secured from breaches. Generally, the underlying platform is protected by server software like IIS and Apache. A knowledge of this is crucial since these platforms often require to be restarted for maintenance and you will not know how to do so if you don’t have any idea about the platform. Every time you restart for maintenance you cause downtime, and you will have to maintain the delicate balance between operations and security.

4. Is SSL (HTTPs) Offered?

SSL is usually offered as a premium hosting service and not as default. It so happens that the cost for the SSL is not considered when you are looking for the price of the server and the end figure might drastically change once it is factored in. In such a situation, it is important that you know whether it is required. The SSL will make the website secure, especially if you plan on employing username and password, as in many e-commerce sites. The HTTPS will ensure that the data fed in by the customers become encrypted before they are sent across the internet. There are different levels of SSL certificates that you can consider.

5. Do You Backup?

Backups are crucial for security and continuity of the website. The backups help if there is equipment failure at the host’s end and if there is a security compromise in the website. When you know that your data is backed and you can restore it easily, you will have the option to deal calmly with such situations. Injecting an SQL will compromise the website easily, and a backup will help recover the database and restore the files in the web folder. Lastly, make sure that the backup data is located off-site since keeping it on the site might subject it to the same risk as the website.

6. Who Is Responsible for CMS Platforms and Installations?

Most of the hosting sites have pre-installed content management software. However, it is crucial to know if the installed version is the latest build and whether it gets security updates regularly. Many hosts allow users to upload their CMS platform and they also provide the option to allow the customers to keep the software updated.

7. Can I Disable Applications and Service Not Required?

This question might sound simple, but it is important, If you want a blog and not a forum, you might want the option to remove it. Unused applications might only increase the threat of an attack. There are initial server configurations that allow you to select the applications you want to use with the option to make changes in the future. You can also disable the unused features.

8. Who Will Update the Applications and Software?

Attackers love unpatched applications. WordPress, Joomla, Movable Type have all seen vulnerabilities. If you leave these vulnerabilities unpatched, then you allow attackers to compromise your website. Most of the malicious websites are in fact victims of a compromise. You need to be clear about whether the host will offer to update applications that they don’t provide.

9. What Kind of Security Monitoring Is Employed?

If your site is compromised, how will you find it out? This is where the security monitoring comes into the picture. It would be better if you were the first one to find this out rather than your visitors finding it out via security software. The situation becomes a lot less embarrassing, and you can fix the problem immediately.

10. How Are Uploads Secured?

The content of the website is crucial, and you need to ensure that only you have access to it. The content is usually updated by FTPs, but they aren’t secured, and there have been cases where FTP credentials have been stolen. A better option then would be to use Secure FTP for the content.

Before You Go!

If you have any doubt about hosting options that will be best suited for your requirements you can hit me up in the comments section below, contact me via our Facebook page.

Till then,

Happy Hosting!

Have you guys ever been browsing your favorite website or playing an online game and all of a sudden, the stream starts to be all shaky, and your connection seems slow as a snail. You might quickly go and try another website on the browser only to find every other website loads just fine, but the one you want to surf – those %$@%^s need to upgrade their server connection? (So, you think), but what may actually be a totally different scenario is that the website is likely being hit by a Denial of Service Attack.

Well, unusually high traffic can also make a website server load slow for you, but in most cases, if the slowness is persisting for a little more than comfortable, it may be a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack.

Such was the same case with one of our clients on 17^th January 2017. Just as he was about to checkout after ordering a Local SEO Pack from our website, BOOM! The website got stuck, and then came the “white-screen-of-nothingness.”

Alike every other unaware visitor, Andrew (I am sure he won’t mind) was a bit frustrated with the experience. And the next moment he was writing a tantrum in Gmail, complaining about how we should upgrade our Servers and get more capacity for traffic, and how our website sucked!

Rest assured Andrew; we surely don’t run our company on shared environments. Sharanyan Sharma, our founder wasn’t too surprised to receive the email, as just at that moment we were hit by a Layer 4 (Syn Flood) DDoS Attack, the size of 6.2 GBpS. To read more about our experience and how we tackled it click here.

And that was our 2^nd DDoS Attack in the last 4 years. The first one we faced wasn’t any close to this magnitude. But 6.2 GBpS, I tell you this is pretty freaking BIG.

Since the past decade, Denial of Service attacks have been on the rise. Experts say, that such attacks in any magnitude cannot be fully stopped, as you can never truly find and control the core of these attacks, but the damaged can be minimized by taking controlled measures and letting Denial of Service Mitigation Experts handle the situation.

And when I say, Mitigation Experts, I am not in any way referring to Cloud Flare, I am talking Incapsula, Arbor, Verisign, Nexusguard. You get the drift. These folks charge $10000s by the hours (for starters). We have tried quite a few Mitigation Services, and one thing we can conclude is that there is nothing called Cheap DDoS Mitigation. You either get someone good and pay for it, or do not bother at all.

DDoS Alert Report from Splunk (primeone.global Impacted January 2017)

 

We looked at the Cyber Security and Risks Threat Survey of Arbor, Neustar, Kaspersky and Incapsula only to find very strict similarities in their research. Neustar has conducted research amongst 1000s of managers, directors, CTOs, CSOs, CISOs and other chief executives to understand the impact of Denial of Service Attacks on their organization and what measures they are taking to mitigate such attacks.

The majority of these respondents belong to the IT, Finance or Retail Industry. The respondents taking part in these surveys accrue anywhere from $100M to $1B per year. For these companies the risk picture is magnanimous. The cost of an hourly downtime for such organizations ranges anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000 subject to peak traffic and sales seasons.

Annual Revenue of Respondent Organizations

 

Global Data at a Glance

• 73% of all organizations interviewed suffered a DDoS attack.
• 85% of attacked organizations were subjected to multiple DDoS attacks.
• 44% of attacked organizations were hit six or more times.
• 49% of respondents would lose $100k or more per hour during peak periods due to a DDoS attack.
• 33% would lose $250k or more during the same periods.
• 76% of organizations are investing more in response to the threat of DDoS attacks.
• 38% are investing more in DDoS defence, but acknowledge the investment should be even greater.
• 39% of respondents took three or more hours to detect a DDoS attack.
• 25% detected the DDoS attack between three and five hours.
• 53% of attacked organizations were breached as a result of a DDoS attack.
• 46% reported finding a virus after the breach

(Source Neustar 2016 DDoS Report)

In their IT Risks Survey Thread of DDoS Attacks survey report, Kaspersky states:

20% of companies with less than 50 employees have been a victim of DDoS Attack at least once in their lifetime. The top three Industries affected by DDoS Attacks, are not surprisingly, IT, Financial Services and Telecommunications.”

DDoS Attacks cost a lot of businesses. Apart from financial loss and business downtime, more than two-thirds of DDoS Attack victims have reported another type of security threat directly coinciding with the main attack. (Thankfully, we belong to the one-third). Although DDoS Attacks don’t say and happen and are enough to take large scale websites down, combining such attacks with other security intrusions only helps to multiply the collateral damage, apart from the significant loss of business downtime and reputation.

In the Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report, Arbor states…

• There is a steady growth in the size of DDoS Attacks YOY. In 2015, 20% of service based companies reported attacks, an average of 50Gbps. In 2016, nearly 33% of Service providers reported attacks the size of 100Gbps on average. Which only means to say that the top-end size of these attacks is nearly doubling every year.
• The largest attack in 2016 reported 1 TBPS. Octave Klaba, the founder of OVH, reported in a Tweet.

@Dominik28111 we got 2 huge multi DDoS: 1156Gbps then 901Gbps pic.twitter.com/NyFTr6KLCC

— Octave Klaba / Oles (@olesovhcom) September 19, 2016

The tweet exclaims there were simultaneous attacks the size of 100 Gbps on OVH, which totalled more than 1TBps. And the largest single attack on OVH peaked at 799 Gbps and 93MBps.

• In the majority of the cases, Customers are the number target for DDoS Attacks.
• The proportion of survey service provider respondents noticed cloud-based attacks, which have grown from 19% in 2012, to 29% in 2014 and 33% last year – again a clear trend.
• Amongst the different types of Attacks, Application Layer Attacks seem to be the most popular at 93% in 2016, a significant rise from the 90% is 2015 and 86% in 2013.
• The most common service targeted by these Application Layer Attacks is DNS, which hasn’t been much targeted
• The most common top motivation behind criminals giving DDoS Attacks is “to show-off their attack capabilities,” with the second and third most common reason being “gaming” and “extortion.”
• A growing proportion of respondents claim that they are noticing malware and virus, along with Data theft after DDoS Attacks, which means to say that these attacks are being done merely as a means of distraction.
• There is also a significant growth in SIP/VoIP based attacks, which is up from 9% in 2015, to 19% in 2016.

Increased interest in DDoS Mitigation and Detection Services continue this year due to these ever-increasing attacks.

DDoS Attacks can cause even more damage if organizations aren’t prepared. 74% of the respondents in the Arbor survey claimed that they were spending more on Mitigating the attacks than their overtime loss due to the attacks, and even acknowledged that they needed to pay more to better handle such attacks. Therefore, the number one business impact due to DDoS is increased operational expense, followed by Revenue Loss, Customer Churn, Employee Turn Over and others. See image below.

Time Is Money, And Money is the Game!

The harsh truth is that, nobody can afford a Successful DDoS Attack and neither anybody can mitigate a DDoS Attack complete – well, at least an attack of that stature.

Increasingly, DDoS Attacks are being deployed in conjunction with other illicit activities in order to distract or misguide organizations on the actual motive of such attacks, which is usually to install malware, ransomware or viruses.

After the Storm

The aftermath of the storm leaves behind a strong sense of vulnerability, that nobody on the Internet is safe. Where some organizations are turning to one another for guidance and exchange of information, others are taking refuge in the comfort of Security Consultants and a majority of these organizations are working in conjunction with Law Enforcement to get to the root of these attacks in lieu of previous attacks or to simply ward of impending attacks.

Before You Go!

All data sources point to one and only one fact. 2017 is already witnessing a multitude of DDoS Attacks around the globe, and these attacks will only continue to increase as time passes.

“It is not about when these attacks will happen, it is about HOW MANY TIMES.”

Taking into account the new type of smokescreen attacks, Denial of Service has started resembling ransomware attacks more than anything else. SMBs are the ones that suffer the most under the pressure of such attacks, and the technology behind such attacks is Simple, but the measures to fend them are complex and resource-intensive.

The average financial damage of a DDoS is quite significant, which still turns out to be less than the cost of mitigating such attacks. So, most Small Media Businesses that have spent money on DDoS Mitigation services claim that they would rather strengthen the security of their infrastructure to prevent a data breach than spend more money on mitigating these never-ending attacks.

Has your organization faced a DDoS attack in the last 12 Months? If so, how bad was the attack and what are you doing to wade off such attacks from happening in future? Data security is a big concern and we would surely love to know what and how you are tackling these unfortunate events.

When it comes to content marketing, there is always something new to learn. In fact, thanks to the internet, there seems to be a lot more to learn about how to make perfect marketing strategies and how to make existing strategies work that might overwhelm the average reader. For this article, we looked at the top digital marketing experts on the internet and saw what they had to reveal about everything you need to make each Content Marketing Strategies work. And there’s no doubt here; what the experts say is usually what you need to hear.

Who you’ll hear from

1. Jeff Bullas
2. Joe Pulizzi
3. Steve Cartwright
4. Neil Patel
5. Matthew Woodward
6. Sujan Patel
7. Larry Kim
8. Sam Hurley
9. Randy Fishkin

Jeff Bullas

Expert content marketer Jeff Bullas emphasizes the need for every content marketer to watch the data from their content marketing campaigns and look out for particular signals that mean a lot such as;

Time spent on web pages. Discover where people are spending more time with closer scrutiny to the pages having key content pieces and gauge the change in time spent on pages with eye-catchers such as visual links, different formatting, etc.

The bounce rate of each page. Determine which pages are having the highest bounce rates, and correlate the stats with other stats for other pages to highlight the cause of high bounce rates. (could be poor headlines, CTAs)

Monitor your returning visitors, as it translates to rate of engagement and conversion achieved. Dig around to discover why, if the percentage of returning visitors goes down.

Track your referral sources regularly and identify the ones whose stats are higher and more regular. Then engage those referral sources with additional content in the form of guest posts.

Dissect social media metrics and track down major aspects including engagement, number of shares, the scope of followers reached and the sentiment aroused by your content

Watch out for how traffic to your content is converted into leads when you publish content and look for new ways of repurposing highly performing content to make it more converting.

Watch the comments when you get them. See what your readers are saying and take part in the conversation.

See Also: Top 10 Conversion Rate Optimization Tools to Increase Your ROI

Joe Pulizzi

From contentmarketingimstitute.com, digital marketing guru Joe Pulizzi reveals a series of tips you can base on when drawing your content marketing strategy for 2017, based on upcoming trends.

You’ve got to give a reason why readers would need your content or how they would be affected before publishing it.

There is a growing trend of less content and more promotion. That is because marketers have no more room for generating content that no one gets to see.

Our strongest mode of communication is still text-based, which means writing new content is still as necessary as ever.

It’s important to have a steady and sound strategy before going along with a particular technology for your content marketing.

The time for mobile is now. More than ever, marketers need to ensure that their websites are optimized for mobile before publishing any content.

There is immense need nor adequately trained teams and proper workflow for any content marketing strategy to perform.

It’s never been more necessary to start building and marketing strategy for your content based on the video.

See Also: Why Everyone’s Focusing on Content Marketing in 2017 and You Should Too!

Steve Cartwright

Steve from www.website-designs.com approaches to content marketing with a common strategy, one that focuses on how to reuse and repurpose old content for better marketing. He offers the following tips

You can merge many old (and related) articles into a report on the same topic and complete it with an introduction, conclusion and some polishing to make it stand out and look new.

You can always update your old articles including the evergreen ones with up to date factual data and new content.

You can merge related series of articles together to form an ebook. You can also break down free ebooks into smaller articles or blog posts with a little editing

You can group old content into reports or group old reports into sizeable ebooks. You can add value to them by adding work sheets, checklists and flow charts plus an introduction and a conclusion for formality.

Neil Patel

From quicksprout.com, expert digital marketer Neil Patel emphasizes the possibility of making your content marketing successful with a smaller budget and provides a few tips on how to make it possible.

Focus on the content types that are most efficient to produce. He explains that you determine the cost of producing each form of content and evaluate the performance of each based on your competitors, before choosing one to go with.

Focus on producing quality content rather than generating lots of articles in a given period( quantity). There’s only as much quality as any content piece can have, and marketers should learn to avoid going overboard when trying to perfect theirs.

You can always reuse/ repurpose your old content and make it more useful, instead of creating new content from scratch every day with the hassle of research, time and writing.

Learn how to be more efficient when marketing your content, such that you use less time to do more.

See Also: Top 10 Free Project Management Software Of 2017

Skip the sections of content marketing that don’t matter as much. Concentrate your efforts on the marketing strategies and tactic that return the results you need such as traffic, sales, etc.

Specialize on a particular content marketing strategy and a particular audience throughout your marketing campaign.

Start a guest blogging campaign and use it to get free top notch content for your platform.

Learn to make your content promotion more effective by being selective in choosing who you promote it to ( i.e., very interested readers)

Matthew Woodward

Matthew’s strategy is based on finding highly viewed content, digging up the hundreds of people that shared it and contacting them to request them to share yours too. He breaks down his strategy in a few steps

Finding popular content that is similar to yours. You can use tools such as BuzzSumo and top keywords to discover the best performing or shared content in your niche.

Looking for the people that shared or linked to that post. The keyword here is influencers. This involves finding which industry influencers that shared the post with their followers or linked to it because they are most likely yo share yours too.

Finding each influencer’s contact information and sending them a small message to encourage them to read and share your content.

Sujan Patel

At sujanpatel.com, Sujan Patel reveals some really important tips every content marketer needs to be successful. Some of his tips for a successful marketing strategy include;

Making use of social ads to boost content on social media

Build content that attracts the audience rather than forcing it toward the content

Make your posts longer (1000+ words) for better search ranking and traffic

Make use of guest blogging on top industry sites

Always consider shorter SEO optimized headings rather than longer ones

Create a buyer persona first before making promotional content

Post content regularly and share it yourself on social media

Make use of your older content by repurposing it and publishing it

Always refer to influencers in your niche within your content linking to their content

Track your stats with every post you publish

Larry Kim

Larry Kim is another experienced marketer with advice for content marketers as regards social media advertising strategies.

Improve your content’s quality score through increasing engagement rates so as to get a higher ad impression share for a lower cost per engagement but on the same budget.

Target only particular sections of your audience with each post to increase engagement on social media, not everyone of your fans.

Pay for only the result that matters to your business such as views follows, likes, etc. whenever you run a social media content marketing campaign, not everything on offer.

Promote tour best performing videos on social media and make sure they are short enough and can get their message across even without sound.

Consider the custom audiences of each social platform and get your content out on more than just one social platform.

Use both social media ads and paid search ads at once to increase your content’s visibility.

Sam Hurley

Sam Hurley is an expert digital marketer and is Head of Search Marketing at Midas Media. He reveals a few of his content marketing tips and strategies.

Incorporate influencer outreach in your content marketing campaign when using social media and take a genuine interest in your audience because they can see it.

Every content marketing campaign should be well optimized for search engines if it’s to be visible in search engine result pages.

For continuous success in every content marketing endeavor, content marketers should carry out audience research, apply multidimensional content, consider where their target audience can access their content, integrate SEO and social media, track results whenever you publish and promote and repeat the process.

Rand Fishkin

Rand Fishkin from Moz’s Whiteboard Fridays reveals a couple of essential marketing lessons that every marketer should learn to incorporate and follow. Some of them are shown below;

Metric dashboards should be created basing on three major aspects; on awareness achieved i.e. through social mentions, followers and fans, press mentions and referring links, on first visits and on returning visits

Some old school SEO techniques are no longer that effective such as stuffing meta descriptions with keywords, using unfocused, non-strategic link baits, having several domains that cover a single niche, heavy use of anchor text on internal links and using a single page to target several related keywords.

When you have the wrong page rank for the right keyword, correct the issue by creating a relevant page or making the right page even more relevant, degrading the wrong page and redirecting internal pages to the relevant page or, as a last resort, using a 301 redirect.

Optimize your web pages by considering searcher intent, site speed, user experience, keyword targeting, amplification, snippet optimization and using the related content.

See Also: Top 25 Inbound Marketing Influencers You Need to Follow in 2017

Before you go!

Drawing the perfect content marketing strategy isn’t the most complex thing in the world. These experts have done it, and so can you. If you have been looking to get your content out to the right audience and see your efforts get rewarded, these are the tips you should use.

Happy marketing!

LinkedIn, The popular social platform for employers and job seekers around the world, has started rolling out as LinkedIn User Interface in 2017, complete with both sleek brand new features and glaring omissions.

And while it’s expected to only roll out fully by May 2017, a few LinkedIn users, especially the new ones have already been given a feel of the new site. For some, the downside already lies in the fact that once you are given access to the newly redesigned platform, there is no turning back to the old one.

The new design is notable in its similarity to the mobile app in both placement and naming of some features, which serves to resound the idea that the design overhaul was aimed at making user transition from mobile app to desktop/laptop version seamless and easy.

If you haven’t noticed the changes yet when using the platform, you still have time to adapt before the changes come knocking. With new features being replaced and repositioned all over the interface, it is important to get ahead of the situation by knowing where to find what.

This article shows you the major changes that the team at Microsoft has bestowed upon LinkedIn User Interface and functionality, plus how it’s most likely to affect your activities.

For those that haven’t got the new ‘LinkedIn Experience’ yet, here’s a quick tour by LinkedIn Expert and Author Viveka von Rosen.

Check out the video below:

Summary

The Major Changes

1. Overall Layout of the Homepage

• Positioning of summarized profile
• Redesigned feature Icons
• Repositioning of ‘Publish an article’ and ‘Share an article, photo’ features
• Colour Theme

2. Your Profile (Viewing and Editing It)

• Renaming of section to ‘Me’ section
• Renaming of the Profile section
• Reduced number of characters in Profile Summary
• Bare URLs for linked articles and content
• New ‘Views’ section

3. Your Connections

• Renaming of section to ‘My Network’
• No sorting or tagging feature
• Reduced number of tags to use

4. Search Options and Filters

• The Advanced Search feature is gone
• Deeper filters have been removed

5. The New ‘More’ Section

• Renaming of section to ‘More’ section
• More features in one place

6. Your Notifications

• Bigger space for notifications

7. Other Features

 

1. Overall Layout of the Homepage

When you log into your account, the first thing you notice is its changed layout, whose overall appearance is closely similar to Facebook’s, with its side section that features summarized info about your profile, a middle/main segment that features the latest articles from your connections and a right side section that has the usual LinkedIn ad space.

A summarized section of your profile is positioned in the left section of the homepage, complete with your professional title and name, your profile picture, and the number of people who’ve viewed your articles and profile so far.

In the middle section where you usually view the articles recently posted by your connections, a slight change has been made as regards how you can publish your own article or share a photo, video, or article. The ‘Publish an article’ feature is now directly below the ‘Share an article, photo or update’ feature, and while users may confuse them to serve the same purpose due to their close proximity, they each serve different independent purposes.

Other Homepage Changes to Note

New Menu Bar Icons

Some of the icons on the homepage’s menu bar have been changed, most notably the ‘notifications’ flag that is now in the form of a bell. Similarly, the ‘Inbox’ icon has been renamed ‘Messaging,’ which should be easier to understand.

Colour and Theme

The website’s new interface comes with a darker teal theme, which is quite different from the blue, white, and grey colour theme of the older version.

 

2. Your Profile (Viewing and Editing It)

The first change you’ll notice in the ‘Profile’ section is that it has been renamed the ‘Me’ section. The latter function the same way as before when opened, allowing you to edit your profile, settings, and language preferences or upgrade to a premium account.

Another distinct change you should brace for is the lower number of characters that appear in the ‘Summary’ section. In contrast with the old interface, this feature allows only less than 240 characters, which translates to only two lines of your profile summary being visible to someone when they check out your profile.

What You Need To Do

Make the first two lines of your profile summary catchy and engaging, such that the reader is attracted to read more of it.

For users that always placed customized web links with an attractive call to action on their profiles, the new LinkedIn User Interface has done away with all that. You can no longer customize or gloss them up with attractive CTAs. Now, web links appear as they are (in URL form) with your would-be description appearing next to them in parentheses and a different colour.

While the Education, Volunteer, Experience, Recommendations, Skills, and Endorsements sections are still available, you can no longer reorder depending on which weighs heavier than the other. They are now fixed in place (in their own order).

The Recommendations section has also been repositioned under the “Me” section from its former place above your profile. It still works the same way, with recommendations of people you may know, profiles you should check out, etc.

There’s also a new section titled “Accomplishments’ that you can add to the profile. It is meant to include the honors, awards, courses, publications, etc. that you have achieved over your career.

The other addition to the Profile section is the ‘views’ subsection, where you can see who’s viewed your articles and profile in detail.

 

3. Your Connections

You can still see your connections in the ‘My Network’s new interface, which is cleaner and more spacious. The left side of the page shows your total number of connections while the middle/main section contains the ‘People you may know’ and ‘Received invitations’ subsections.

The downside is that you can no longer sort, tag, or view your connections’ details when you click on them, like before. As of now, clicking on your connections allows you two courses of action; sending them messages or removing them.

Similarly, the old tagging options that you could use to sort your connections according to relevance, the level of acquaintance, profession, etc. have been removed. Only a few tags for sorting based on ‘first name’, ‘last name’, and ‘recently added’ have been left.

 

4. Search Options and Filters

There’s a lot that’s changed with how you can use the search feature. Previously, LinkedIn offered an ‘Advanced Search’ option with additional filters for your searches based on location (with zip codes), title, keyword, etc.

The ‘Advanced Search’ option is no longer available, as are most filters. You can still filter your searches using general location, companies, schools, and by connection level (i.e. whether 1^st, 2^nd or 3^rd)

 

5. The New ‘More’ Section

Don’t get lost or confused by this new section. Its icon is similar to that used in the mobile app.

The former ‘Interests’ section has been rebranded into the ‘More’ section which, in consideration of its sub-features is the perfect name. Click on it and you will access other LinkedIn features including ‘Post a job,’ ‘ProFinder, ‘Lookup,’ ‘Slideshare,’ ‘Learning’ and ‘Group.’ You can also upgrade to ‘Talent Solutions’ or ‘Sales Solutions’ in the ‘More’ section.

 

6. Your Notifications

Within the new LinkedIn UI, your notifications have now been given a bigger section of their own. You can still see notifications of new connections and endorsements, plus those of new features such as anniversaries, profile mentions, profile publications, etc., and easily reply to them.

 

7. Other Changes to Note

There’s been an update to the messaging feature, similar to that of Facebook Messenger for easier chatting and scheduling of events with the integrated Google Calendar.

• LinkedIn posts are now called ‘articles,’ and not all your connections are notified whenever you post a new one as it was before.
• Your recommended background photo size has changed to 1536 × 768 pixels, although smaller ones of 1800 × 300 should work just fine.
• Profiles now appear in summarized form. Just like with the limitations in the Profile Summary, only a sample of a person’s profile is shown. One must click on the ‘See more’ feature to get more and more profile details.
• You can now export your LinkedIn profile connections only on request, not by just copying them into a spreadsheet file.
• The Education button is no more; nevertheless, you can still find it in the Learning section or by searching, especially if you’re looking for a school
• Saved searches and tagging your connections are no more.

 

Finally

For all the changes, LinkedIn’s user interface is still as intuitive as ever and usable once you learn the ropes. One main similarity you will find is that the desktop layout now bears extreme similarity to the mobile app, which should make the transition from either device seamless and easy.

And while some old features have been removed, repositioned, or merged –  the new features are quite easy to navigate and should make your time easier and swifter. If the team at LinkedIn were looking to make the platform better from a user point of view, they are just about to achieve that.

It’s obvious that there will be more changes to the interface as the rollout goes on, and we will be on hand to explain each to you.

With millions of unique, active visitors and up to 70 million uploads every day, Instagram is undoubtedly one of the most popular social platforms on the internet today. It’s no surprise that both individuals and brands are working beyond themselves to maximize its features and benefits, and that many have tripled their sales and engagement expectations with it.

The real deal for any Instagram user is in getting more followers for their account. Whether you want your product or brand to get a wider audience or just want your personal photos seen by more interested people, the answer is in getting more people to follow your account.  The more followers an account has, the more views and likes its photos and videos will get.

That translates to more sales over time in case of a brand account. But how can one get followers beyond their circle of friends of relatives and relatives? Most people are stuck with a handful of followers yet they need to have their photos seen by more people every day.

This article shows you a few Tips you can use to get more followers on Instagram in no time.

In summary

1. Publish content regularly
2. Make use of the right hashtags
3. Make your photos stand out
4. Share your content to other social networks
5. Make use of videos too
6. Repost content from other Instagram users
7. Like and comment on other users’ posts, and use direct messages for engagement
8. Use some cool tools like Websta
9. Post your content at optimal hours
10. Get people to tag their friends

1. Publish Content Regularly

To have your photos and images seen by more people on Instagram, it’s important that you post as much as two times every day. Research shows that people who post content regularly gain more followers over time.

 Here’s how it works: By posting more than once every day, your content isn’t buried under other photos and videos in people’s Newsfeeds. It’s always visible to potential followers, and that increases their engagement and curiosity.

2. Make Use of The Right Hashtags

Like any other social media platform, Instagram supports the use of hashtags, which help users find and organize the content they want to see. They are a simple of having your photos and videos discovered by interested users, who are most likely to convert to followers with proper engagement.

To get more followers for your Instagram, you’ve got to identify the right hashtags that other accounts in your niche are using and put them to maximum use. Just a few hashtags may not produce results. Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post, but you only need 11 to 15 hashtags per post to widen your reach.

Here’s what you should do:  Discover the tags that successful accounts in your niche are using most and add them to your list of tags. Always add some of the most popular/common tags such as #selfie, #love, #tbt, #tagsforlikes, etc.

3. Make Your Photos Stand Out

Instagram is a visual medium. There is a lot of imagery on display, which requires your photos to stand out if they are to be noticed and found engaging. Take high-resolution photos from proper angles and touch them up with the right filters, appropriate effects, and strong, but emotionally appealing captions.

A study carried out by TrackMaven revealed that the filter you apply on a photo actually has a big effect on how many views it will get, with warmer filters such as Mayfair attracting the most people. Attractive photos directly increase engagement, likes, and sharing, which translates to more followers over time.

4. Share Your Content to Other Social Networks

Instagram allows you to connect with other social media accounts where you’re most likely to have more followers, including Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, FourSquare, and even Vkontakte.

That provides you with the opportunity to cross-link your account with these profiles and draw wider viewership to your content by sharing each post you make with your friends and followers on these social platforms. Even if you buy real Instagram followers, for you to keep them, you will have to have engaging content that is fresh and regularly updated to meet expectations. Don’t rest on your laurels, things move fast in this world.

 Make use of the option you’re given to automate cross-sharing whenever you post a new photo or video. Additionally, market your brand on these social platforms by using links to direct people to your account.

5. Make Use of Videos Too

Videos of up to 60 seconds can be uploaded to Instagram too. Draw more followers to your account with simple, relevant videos about your brand or life, and make sure they’re engaging enough to entice people to watch until the end.

Videos have always been known to drive even more engagement, especially if they are funny or show people how to make their lives easier. Remember to add a ‘catchy’ call to action at the end of the video.

 It can be wording that displays your web address, requests users to follow your social media accounts and more ultimately, a request to follow your account for more engagement.

6. Re-post Content from Other Instagram Users

There are lots of other Instagram accounts with large established follower numbers in every niche and large archives of content you can choose from. This tip involves reposting content from such accounts to your page and using the right hashtags so that people can find it.

 You should also look out for posts published by both your followers and random Instagram users and repost them. This method easily drives more viewers to your photos and translates to more followers over time.

7. Like, Follow and Comment on Other Users’ Posts, and Use Direct Messages for Engagement

This is the oldest trick in the book. Reach out to more people, and they will reach out to you. For better results, look out for bigger related accounts and like their photos, and comment on them. 1 in every 4 accounts you like and comment on is more likely to follow you back. You can also make use of direct messages to reach out to the managers of those accounts.

8. Make Use of Some Cool Tools Like Websta

There is a large assortment of tools you can use to make followers run to you on Instagram. Tools such as Websta help you identify your competitors and the most popular tags while others such as Crowdfire help you copy followers from other accounts. Look out for tools such as IconoSquare which tracks the views and performance of each post and Schedugram, which allows you to schedule posts for publishing at certain times.

Recommended: The Most Comprehensive List of 101 Social Media Management Tools

9. Post Your Content at Optimal Hours

It is important to understand your niche’s audience and know what time they usually use the platform, what kind of photos they usually like and the exact time these photos or videos are usually published.

Knowing this helps you to determine the time of the day during which your potential followers are most likely to be online. Research shows that most business people check out business-related content during work hours and everyday content during off-hours.

 Post your content only during those hours to prevent it from being buried under piles of other photos without being seen.

10. Get People to Tag Their Friends

Finally, you should remember to tag different people on every post you make. Besides tagging your established followers, you should request them to tag their families and friends to introduce your content to a wider audience.

Tags are a smart way to attract new people to your content and make one sure way of getting followers when used properly.

Advanced Methods of Getting More Instagram Followers

Unlike the methods mentioned in the former section, the methods listed here are not as easy to use and may cost you a penny or two.

Buying Fake Followers

It’s a proven psychological fact that people will lean toward offers or products that other people have already shown interest in. The fact rings true for Instagram too, where hundreds of likes on a single post is a major draw for others to like it too. To make this work, you can buy new fake followers to act as social proof for unsure would-be followers and attract them to join hundreds of other followers by following your account.

Getting Featured on Established Accounts

This method requires you to pay a fee to larger accounts to have your content featured in their posts. This usually works for brands using Instagram to market their products. The fee varies with the account in question, with bigger accounts charging more and having higher like-follower conversion rates. All you need to do is search for large accounts, look out for those displaying email addresses, and reach out to them.

Before You Go.

Getting more followers on Instagram shouldn’t be difficult at all. By integrating these tips and ideas in your daily posting schedule, you can guarantee more engagement for both your followers and random visitors, and rake in more likes and followers in due course.

To sum it up, take high-quality photos, edit them with the right filters, post them at the right time for your audience and make good use of relevant hashtags every time you post. Remember, the trick is in engaging other Instagram followers well enough with your content to entice them to follow you. Following the above tips above will help you triple your follower count in no time!

Now it’s your turn.

What are your tips for getting more followers on Instagram? Share your thoughts below!