Category: Markethive

7 SEO Tips For 2016

Follow these SEO trends for better rankings in 2016

SEO is a very volatile industry because of the many changes that take place in the Google algorithm within a period. The algorithm set in place this month may not be the same the next. It is an always evolving algorithm that encourages SEO specialists to stay on their toes and keep abreast with updates.

As we pass the years half way point and start to look towards 2017, it has become more important for specialists to look out for trends that can affect search rankings for their keywords in this new year.

Newly updated, this comprehensive resource is a practical guide for marketing managers to increase the contribution of SEO to their business. It covers the activities they and their agencies need to work on to improve their ranking in the organic search results of Google.

Considering the changes that took place in SEO this 2016, below are trends that you as an SEO specialist must look out for to improve your site performance on search results in 2016-17.

Optimize for Rich Answers

Although aiming for the top positions in Google search for your target keywords is still important, it's now time to optimize for other Rich Answers too. These are results that appear towards the top organic search results.

According to Stone Temple Consulting, rich answers appear on 19.45% of Google search results out of the 850,000 keyword queries used to trigger these.

The percentage may not be as high at the moment — most of the rich answers appear on search queries for song lyrics. However, there is good cause to believe that its number will only increase in the future. Since Google has made its intention of providing value to its users clear, rich answers provide the most relevant information based on the search query.

How to rank for rich answers: Northcutt Consulting Group has broken down the most relevant factors for ranking on rich answers.

The first point is important. Optimizing for rich answers requires you to optimizing for your target keyword as well. Getting your page to rank on the first page of search engines will increase your chances of getting into the rich answers box.

The post at Northcutt is not the definitive way to rank for the rich answer box since we are dealing with Google algorithm here, after all. Its algorithm can never be reduced to an exact science consider of how unstable it is. However, the post should give you a good idea of how you can increase your chances of getting your page on topthe top of search results.

Review Google's other featured content

Keep an eye on the Mozcast Google Feature review for other types of content that features within Google results. Rich Answers are referenced here as 'featured snippets'.  A similar feature is 'Related questions', showing how our articles should try to cover these questions.  Images and videos are other better known ways of gaining cut-through in the SERPs for some search terms — check which are important for your industry.

Improve user engagement

Ever since, marketers have always speculated user engagement as a possible ranking factor. This covers the average time on site, bounce rate, pogo sticking, and others.

For conversion, it is a proven factor that determines the effectiveness of page elements that contribute to the chances of visitors committing to your call to action.

However, what makes this factors difficult to measure in search engines is the lack of data supporting it.

User engagement is too indirect an influence on search rankings. Nonetheless, it is something that all website owners need to optimize if they are serious about getting more out of their SEO efforts.

“User engagement is just as important as any other on-site element in this day and age,” says Matt Banner ofOnBlastBlog.com. “If a visitor enjoys your website, they'll stay on your site longer, visit more pages, help contribute to a lower bounce rate for your site overall, and most likely become a returning visitor.

“All of these positive elements factored together combine for a type of website that Google wants to rank highly in the search engines. If the user finds the website beneficial, you can bet Google will as well.”

How to rank with the help of user engagement: To help improve your site performance, in the long run, using user engagement as a factor, you may need to use tools to gain insight on how much interaction your site pages is getting from visitors.

Heatmapping quickly comes to mind when thinking of user engagement. The idea here is that the more clicks a page accumulates from its links, the more interaction it has with users.

Tools like SumoMe Heat Maps and CrazyEgg are great ways to break down the number of clicks made by users on your tracked site pages. From here, you can see which links are clicked the most and least. You can then optimize your site by improving your CTA links and buttons based on the accumulated data.

To analyze visitor engagement with your site pages, the SumoMe Content Analytics is an extremely helpful tool in looking how many of your site visitors scroll down until the very end of the page. From the data, you can also find out which part of your page where 50% of your visitors leave. Determine which elements of your site pages serve as obstacles that prevent visitors from scrolling down your page and optimize your site as you see fit.

Mobile App Optimization

The mobile market is big. So big, in fact, that Google is still figuring out how to provide mobile users with a better search experience.

The so-called 'Mobilegeddon' or more accurately Google's Mobile-friendly update is a step towards this direction, as site owners are encouraged to develop mobile or responsive designs to increase the site’s loading speed on mobile devices. A faster loading site means more chances to retain visitors.

While there is also interest in spending on mobile ads as the figures from eMarketer show, Google will soon take a more crucial role in delivering content to mobile users, starting with app store optimization.

"ASO (App Store Optimization) will be the next gen SEO in 2016,” says Rob Lons of performance SEO services RankPay. “If you look at the rise of mobile use and how much paid ad dollars are being spent each year, you can see the huge demand and rush to reach people on their mobile devices.”

More importantly, the App Indexing is the latest development in search results that can make an impact in how your site pages will rank for your target keywords.

Originally, apps are indexed on App Store and Google Play, not on Google search. This made it much more complicated for Google to streamline its search capabilities — marketers will have to optimize on both app stores instead of just on Google organic.

Through App Index, apps are now indexed on Google search. The search ranking of apps falls under the App Pack or Deep Link category.

Below is a comparison of app rankings on mobile search. The image is taken from this extensive article about App Indexing at Search Engine Land.

 

App Indexing brings in millions of additional search results for search queries on Google mobile search. This means that webpages ranking for their target keyword will have to fight of million of app pages that are optimized for their keyword as well. As if the competition is not stiff enough!

How to rank for mobile search results after App Indexing: Instead of fending off app results for your target keyword, why not consider developing an app for your business?

If you do not have an app for your site yet, consider building one to take advantage of the benefits App Indexing brings, in particular, its deep links.

Choosing the best mobile app development services is just half the battle. The other half involves developing a solid foundation for your mobile app and the goal you wish to achieve in developing it. Identifying both should provide you a more strategic approach with your mobile app in line with meeting your online goals.

Once you have a mobile app in place, you can begin implementing the steps on how to get your deep app screen indexed on search results by referring to this straightforward documentation from Google. The process can be arduous for non-developers, so you may want to ask for help from an expert regarding this.

Google’s new search quality guidelines

Google released their latest 160-page search quality guidelines. The last previous published was the abridged version two years ago that was a reaction to the leaked versions from 2008, 2011, and 2012 (notwithstanding the 2014 version) for the purpose of transparency.

As expected, the published document is far from the finished product.

"This is not the final version of our rater guidelines,” says Google Senior Program Manager and Search Growth & Analysis Mimi Underwood in this post. “ The guidelines will continue to evolve as search, and how people use it, changes. We won’t be updating the public document with every change, but we will try to publish big changes to the guidelines periodically."

You can download your copy of the search quality guidelines from the link above.

Below are some key takeaways from the guidelines:

  • High-quality standards are set on Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) pages – These pages include shopping transaction pages, financial information pages, medical information pages, legal information pages, and similar sites. The reason for the placing high-quality standards on these pages is how these can affect "the future happiness, health, or wealth of users." Low-quality YMYL pages can negatively impact one's happiness and health, so it is important to build useful pages under this umbrella term.
  • The value placed on Expertise/Authoritativeness/Trustworthiness (E-A-T) –high-quality content must come from E-A-T sources. E-A-T is built by acquiring accreditation if necessary. For instance, medical information found online must come from accredited medical persons or organizations. Corollary, first-hand experience counts as a form of expertise. For example, a user sharing how he survived cancer is a form of expertise.
  • Needs Met guidelines cater to mobile usability – Web pages are gauged by how they are optimized for mobile viewing and the satisfaction they provide to users about the search query. The guidelines are loosely divided into five ratings (from Fully Meets to Fails to Meet) — a website can fall between the assigned ratings if needed be.

What to make out of these quality guidelines: All signs point to improving the mobile usability of your site (as already mentioned above), as well as establishing yourself as an influence within your niche. By building your expertise and knowledge in your industry, you can establish your authority as a subject matter expert, thus earning the trust of your audience.

You can start by launching an influencer marketing campaign to establish your online visibility. From there, you can slowly build yourself as an authority based on different factors such as your site's Domain Authority, social proof (testimonials from customers and social media shares), and blog comments, among other factors.

Update: Notified by Google after this post was written — they have new guidelines which require no more pop-ups on mobile pages (e.g. responsive pages). Essential to act on before 2017 when this change comes into affect.

Chris Corey CMO Markethive Inc.

Written by: Christopher Jan Benitez 

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Virtual World Part 10: Harnessing collective knowledge

Harnessing collective knowledge

Markethive's social collaboration can bring collective knowledge to bear on a problem the company is trying to solve, or to satisfy customer needs. A multinational petrochemical company needed to be able to accurately answer very technical questions about how to set up production lines for a wide range of complex intermediary products that are crucial in the production of a particular end-user product.

The ability to answer those questions, therefore, is critical to the sale of thousands of tons of the product for one of Ferrazzi Greenlight’s clients. Multiply that need over literally thousands of products, and your enterprise faces a serious complexity challenge.

Our client chose one of the best ways to handle such complexity: By establishing internal wikis (purpose-built websites containing content that can be collaboratively edited and updated) that could be constantly updated by a small army of expert volunteers within the company who document everything required to support internal and customer questions about production.

While it takes time to establish a comprehensive set of wikis — and a culture of contributing to them — companies that succeed in doing so often see internal subject matter experts vying with each other to provide the best/most complete expert information.

This is competition focused on excellence in results — a win/ win if ever there was one.

Other companies use social collaboration very effectively to tap outside experts to deliver high-quality, just-in-time services. A great example is Specialists On Call (SOC), an agency with facilities in Virginia and California that contracts with 270 hospitals nationwide.

For example, when one of the participating hospitals has a patient arrive in emergency and the doctors determine he needs to see a cardiologist, the hospital contacts Specialists On Call, and an experienced cardiologist not only speaks with the patient through video-conferencing almost immediately, she’s able to do a “virtual examination” by directing the attending clinical staff or physician to perform a number of diagnostic procedures while the cardiologist observes.

SOC claims it can cost 40 percent less than the cost of locally based on-call specialists, increase caseload capacity, empower local specialists by relieving on-call burdens, and even result in lower malpractice premiums due to its round the-clock availability and adherence to best practice protocols.

Too often, social-media collaboration is implemented in its own silo without strong business process connections.

Here’s how to maximize the impact of social-media tools on business results:

•Identify the processes that will most benefit, and pilot social media integration with those teams. Lead with these process improvement examples when you release your social media tool more broadly; that’s the main driver for the investment.

• Resist implementing social media as a stand-alone tool. Integrating it with your tools for communication, collaboration, and/or process flow ensures discussions are relevant to and can positively impact process and/or project participants.

• Explore tools that make exchanges in social media, email and other collaboration tools searchable, and filter automatically based on context. Separating social chit-chat from exchanges relevant to the project at each meeting or milestone creates a cohesive collaboration record and brings participants up to speed quickly.

 

Chris Corey

CMO Markethive Inc

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Add Video Easily to your WordPress Blog

ADDING VIDEO TO YOUR WEBSITE

 

BY    •   WORDPRESS TIPS

A lot of people ask us how they can add or upload videos to their WordPress site. It’s simpler than you think.

While WordPress does allow for the option to upload videos and other media, this can get messy and tricky as you deal with different browsers, operating systems and devices. Instead, we recommend that you embed videos from a different source — something like YouTube or Vimeo.

YouTube will allow you to reach a larger audience, while Vimeo will allow for more customization, and “white-labeling” if you upgrade to its Pro subscription.

Each service will allow you to Share or Embed, and will give you a URL or iFrame code to put directly into your editing window in WordPress. If you’re using an iFrame code, make sure you are on the Text/HTML tab of the editing window, not the Visual editor.

If you have Jetpack installed as a plugin, the process is even easier. You can simply add a shortcode in the Visual editor with the video URL. For example:

  [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1234567-A]

view rawShortcode Youtube Embed hosted with  by GitHub

  [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1234567-A&w=640&h=385]

view rawWith Width and Height hosted with  by GitHub

 

You can also customize the width and height using this method, by adding the query parameter for “w” ( width ) and “h” (height) &w= and &h= to the shortcode.

You can do the same with Vimeo and several other services. Want to see what’s supported?Click here to view the Jetpack Shortcode Embeds page.

Chris Corey

CMO Markethive Inc.

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Emerging Markets merge into record shattering success for seasoned entrepreneur

video imageNew Markets merge into record shattering success for seasoned entrepreneur

“With the advent of a real Market Network (Markethive) and a real emerging Customer Centric network marketing giant (Valentus) even I was surprised with the ease of building a new empire in this industry”. Explained Thomas Prendergast, Entrepreneur, Internet Innovator and CEO and founder of Markethive.

“I have been an advocate for ending the business practices of buying and selling leads. And calling for an end to spam email, spam faxes, telemarketing, ending popup ads, bill board ads, you know, the practice called outbound marketing”. He continued to explain. “It was heavily relied upon in the days before the Internet a long time ago and has suffered a long painful death since the Internet was released to the public in 1991, I know, I was there and have continued to ride this journey called the Internet.” Mr Prendergast emphasized.

10 years before the Internet Thomas Prendergast ran an Ad agency in the Silicon Valley and was very aware of tech and the emerging Internet. “Which is why I was on the Internet almost the moment it was available to the public in 1991” Mr. Prendergast revealed.

Within years of immersing himself into the Internet, he became aware of Network Marketing. He found it fascinating that anyone with some skill and determination could reasonably build a living income. This idea supported his empathetic support of struggling prodigies, up and coming entrepreneurs and anyone who had greater dreams than the typical job afforded them.

“Although I was aware of buying mailing lists for my ad agency in the 80s I was not aware of the pushing of buying names and phone numbers for MLMers to call on people supposedly interested in a business opportunity”, Thomas Prendergast said.  As he become more aware of the MLM industry, he also found that most leaders who had working spheres of influence, would tell those they recruited into these pyramid schemes (the majority of these people did not have large spheres of influence) to buy these leads and cold call them.

Mr. Prendergast continued, “My instincts told me this was a bad idea and a serious mistake. But these “leaders” promoted this technique because they had no real option, ability or intentions on helping these people that just enrolled into one of their pyramid schemes “that really was just another “Hopes and Dreams” pitch, and that is another story”.

This became painfully clear when Thomas was witness to such a salesman, we will call him David, who had a talk show, had published many books, had a strong following, had joined a newly launched MLM deal, was conducting a teleconference call with all the people David had recently recruited into this new opportunity MLM. On that call, David told all the 1000s of listeners to go to his friend John and buy the leads they had allegedly pre interviewed at about $100 per 10 leads.

“This was mid-1990s. I bought 100 of them costing me $1000 and called them all (another article) and the results were 80% insults, 15% hang ups and the rest no answers. Not one was aware of any interview and the rejection level was as high as it gets. This was a process that would eliminate anyone new to the MLM process from continuing on in any business. Rejection is a process only boiler room telemarketers and well-seasoned sales people can withstand. It is death to the average Mom and Pop trying their hand at MLM”, Mr. Prendergast revealed.

Emerging Markets, Paradigm Shifts, Trends and all the other annoying clichés.

There are two firmly entrenched trends that have been born in the Internet, because of the technology, the reach of technology and the emersion of the masses into the technology, primarily due to the Social Networks, that Customer Centricity and Inbound Marketing emerged. Think of them as brother and sister.

Customer Centricity (Think Amazon):

Thomas Prendergast has been advocating Customer Centricity for the Network Marketing industry for over 10 years now. Mr. Prendergast explained, “Less than 1% of said industry understands it, the rest uninterested, and continue to promote the failed process of selling “Hopes and Dreams” of thinly veiled pyramid schemes with over priced products that rarely accomplish what they claim they do”.

However there have been a few that moved towards the “customer centric”, but not fully; with one in particular, abandoning the entire concept, only to find that decision is destroying the company as we speak, with commissions being cut consistently for the past 3 years, causing a drastic end to growth and a company in disarray. The other company built a customer option with infomercials, as a reward for their peak performers to acquire said such infomercial leads, which has dwindled due to current trends away from traditional Cable TV and Dish TV. Those 2 companies are Trivita and Beach Body.

Here is the summary of Thomas Prendergast’s Customer Centric proposal for this industry.

  1. First and foremost the company’s focus must be to “Serve the Needs of the Customer” not the distributors!
  2. Products that cost the distributors less than they sell them for on the open markets (like Ebay auctions, Amazon stores, Craig’s list)
  3. A virtual warehouse that supports the distributor allowing purchasing in bulk, at lower wholesale prices, keeping the inventory at the company, allowing for drop shipping.
  4. Offering co-op Advertising partnerships, to the distributors, allowing distributors to receive smaller shares of that traffic, that being customers and distributors from the results of mass marketing on the Internet. This has been done by a few other companies to great success. In other words, it works.
  5. Other mass marketing technology that now comes to full force are, 800 number platforms, self-replicated Amazon, Ebay, etc. accounts, shopping cart widgets for 3rd level distributors domains, and Social Marketing aps allowing purchase within Social Markets.

Summary:

With the accelerated market place awash in innovation and technology, technology that puts the human element right into the center of the equation, you can understand why you see the MLM industry sluggish and many companies dying on the vine and others falling flat on their faces with their much heralded launches. Entrepreneurs (distributors) that once upon a time, a flashy video, a charming pitch man, and a compelling comp plan, worked to explode the next greatest MLM launch. Not anymore!

Not today.

It is only a matter of time a young bold, innovative entrepreneur launches the first true customer centric MLM similar to the framework Mr. Prendergast has discussed here. And when they do, the world will quake, the swamps will empty and the first multi trillion MLM enterprise will rise to stand head to toe with the great innovations today like Facebook, Google, PayPal etc.

Inbound Marketing:

Inbound Marketing is the most effective marketing method for doing business online. Inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people toward your company and product, where they naturally want to be. By aligning the content you publish with your customer’s interests, you naturally attract inbound traffic that you can then convert, close, and delight quickly.

This is exactly what Markethive is but more. Markethive is the first newly discovered Market Network

What Is A Market Network?

“Marketplaces” provide transactions among multiple buyers and multiple sellers — like eBay, Etsy, Uber and LendingClub.

“Networks” provide profiles that project a person’s identity, then, lets them communicate in a 360-degree pattern with other people in the network. Think Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

What’s unique about market networks is that they:

  1. Combine the main elements of both networks and marketplaces
  2. Use SaaS workflow software to focus action around longer-term projects, not just a quick transaction
  3. Promote the service provider as a differentiated individual, helping to build long-term relationships

Mr. Prendergast enthusiastically continued, “The amazing timing of this entire process is the emerging of the first Market Network; “Markethive” and my friend “David Jordan’s” company Valentus the first real Customer Centric Company”.

Thomas Prendergast summarizes it by saying, “Valentus is experiencing record growth and record time and by all indications is about to enter into “Momentum”. I credit all of this to the fact that Valentus has the foundational product that the markets support the retail priced organically where distributors buy the product well below the market retail”.

Thomas continued saying, “I know this all seems so complex, but in reality it is quite simple. Valentus’ explosive growth is because it is a real business based on Economics 101. Buy low sell High!”

Mr. Prendergast adds credit to the story saying, “With the fusion of these two huge trends found in Markethive and Valentus, I give credit to this phenomena as to my ease in exploding the growth of my little “distributorship” in Valentus, breaking records in the first month and the meteoric growth of this organization because Inbound Marketing (Markethive) has found Customer Centricity (Valentus) and the rest will be historic”.

If this article finds you the least bit excited, curious or at least amused, we invite you to find out yourself more about these two incredible trends and how they complement each other. Your curiosity will cost you nothing. Sign up for these two companies at the below addresses (If you have not already):

Markethive (sign up or let’s be friends):
http://markethive.com/stephenhodgkiss 

Valentus:
http://www.ValentusTour.com/testimonials

Entering a phone number will assure that I will call you to enjoy a 5-10 minute chat with you. I look forward to that, BTW.

 

Stephen Hodgkiss
Chief Engineer Markethive Inc.

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

New Markets merge into record shattering success for seasoned entrepreneur

video imageNew Markets merge into record shattering success for seasoned entrepreneur

When the advent of a real Market Network (Markethive) and a real emerging Customer Centric network marketing giant (Valentus) even I was surprised with the ease of building a new empire in this industry. Let me explain.

I have been an advocate for ending the business practices of buying and selling leads. And an end to spam email, spam faxes, telemarketing, ending popup ads, bill board ads, you know, the practice called outbound marketing. It was heavily relied upon in the days before the Internet a long time ago and has suffered a long painful death since the Internet was released to the public in 1991, I know, I was there and have continued to ride this journey called the Internet.

10 years before the Internet I ran an Ad agency in the Silicon Valley and was very aware of tech and the emerging Internet, which is why I was on the Internet almost the moment it was available to the public in 1991.

Within years of immersing myself into the Internet, I became aware of Network Marketing. I found it fascinating that anyone with some skill and determination could reasonably build a living income. This idea supported my empathetic support of struggling prodigies, up and coming entrepreneurs and anyone who had greater dreams than the typical job afforded them.

Although I was aware of buying mailing lists for my ad agency in the 80s I was not aware of the pushing of buying names and phone numbers for MLMers to call on people supposedly interested in a business opportunity. As I become more aware of the MLM industry, I also found that most leaders who had working spheres of influence, would tell those they recruited into these pyramid schemes (the majority of these people did not have large spheres of influence) to buy these leads and cold call them.

My instincts told me this was a bad idea and a serious mistake. But these “leaders” promoted this technique because they had no real option on helping these people that just enrolled into one of these pyramid schemes “that really was just another “Hopes and Dreams” pitch, and that is another story.

This became painfully clear when I was witness to such a salesman, who had a talk show, had published many books, had a strong following, had joined a newly launched MLM deal, was conducting a teleconference call with all the people he had recently recruited into this new opportunity MLM. On that call, he told all the 1000s of listeners to go to his friend and buy the leads they had allegedly pre interviewed at about $100 per 10 leads.

This was mid-1990s. I bought 100 of them at $1000 and called them all (another article) and the results were 80% insults, 15% hang ups and the rest no answers. Not one was aware of any interview and the rejection level was as high as it gets. This was a process that would eliminate anyone new to the MLM process from continuing on in any business. Rejection is a process only boiler room telemarketers and well-seasoned sales people can withstand. It is death to the average Mom and Pop trying their hand at MLM.

Emerging Markets, Paradigm Shifts, Trends and all the other annoying clichés.

There are two firmly entrenched trends that have been born in the Internet, because of the technology, the reach of technology and the emersion of the masses into the technology, primarily due to the Social Networks, that Customer Centricity and Inbound Marketing emerged. Think of them as brother and sister.

Customer Centricity (Think Amazon):

I have been advocating Customer Centricity for the Network Marketing industry for over 10 years now. Less than 1% of said industry understands it, the rest uninterested, and continue to promote the failed process of selling “Hopes and Dreams” of thinly veiled pyramid schemes with over priced products that rarely accomplish what they claim they do.

However there have been a few that moved towards the “customer centric”, but not fully with one in particular, abandoning the entire concept, only to find that decision is destroying the company as we speak, with commissions being cut consistently for the past 3 years, causing a drastic end to growth and a company in disarray. The other company built a customer option with infomercials, as a reward for their peak performers to acquire said such infomercial leads, which has dwindled due to current trends away from traditional Cable TV and Dish TV. Those 2 companies are Trivita and Beach Body.

Here is the summary of my Customer Centric proposal for this industry.

  1. First and foremost the company’s focus must be to “Serve the Needs of the Customer” not the distributors!
  2. Products that cost the distributors less than they sell them for on the open markets (like Ebay auctions)
  3. A virtual warehouse that supports the distributor allowing purchasing in bulk, at lower wholesale prices, keeping the inventory at the company, allowing for drop shipping.
  4. Offering co-op Advertising partnerships, to the distributors, allowing distributors to receive smaller shares of that traffic, that being customers and distributors from the results of mass marketing on the Internet. This has been done by a few other companies to great success. In other words, it works.
  5. Other mass marketing technology that now comes to full force are, 800 number platforms, self-replicated Amazon, Ebay, etc. accounts, shopping cart widgets for 3rd level distributors domains, and Social Marketing aps allowing purchase within Social Markets.

Summary;

With the accelerated market place awash in innovation and technology, technology that puts the human element right into the center of the equation, you can understand why you see the MLM industry sluggish and many companies dying on the vine and others falling flat on their faces with their much heralded launches. Entrepreneurs (distributors) that once upon a time, a flashy video, a charming pitch man, and a compelling comp plan, worked to explode the next greatest MLM launch. Not anymore!

Not today.

It is only a matter of time a young bold, innovative entrepreneur launches the first true customer centric MLM similar to the framework I have discussed here. And when they do, the world will quake, the swamps will empty and the first multi trillion MLM enterprise will rise to stand head to toe with the great innovations today like Facebook, Google, PayPal etc.

Inbound Marketing:

Inbound Marketing is the most effective marketing method for doing business online. Inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people toward your company and product, where they naturally want to be. By aligning the content you publish with your customer’s interests, you naturally attract inbound traffic that you can then convert, close, and delight quickly.

This is exactly what Markethive is but more. Markethive is the first newly discovered Market Network

What Is A Market Network?

“Marketplaces” provide transactions among multiple buyers and multiple sellers — like eBay, Etsy, Uber and LendingClub.

“Networks” provide profiles that project a person’s identity, then lets them communicate in a 360-degree pattern with other people in the network. Think Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

What’s unique about market networks is that they:

  1. Combine the main elements of both networks and marketplaces
  2. Use SaaS workflow software to focus action around longer-term projects, not just a quick transaction
  3. Promote the service provider as a differentiated individual, helping to build long-term relationships

The amazing timing of this entire process is the emerging of the first Market Network; “Markethive” and my friend “David Jordan’s” company Valentus the first real Customer Centric company.

Valentus is experiencing record growth and record time and by all indications is about to enter into “Momentum”. I credit all of this to the fact that Valentus has the foundational product that the markets support the retail price organically where distributors buy the product well below the market retail.

I know this all seems so complex, but in reality it is quite simple. Valentus’ explosive growth is because it is a real business based on Economics 101. “Buy low sell High”!

With the fusion of these two huge trends found in Markethive and Valentus, I give credit to this phenomena as to my ease in exploding the growth of my little “distributorship” in Valentus, breaking records in the first month and the meteoric growth of this organization because Inbound Marketing (Markethive) has found Customer Centricity (Valentus) and the rest will be historic.

If this article finds you the least bit excited, curious or at least amused, I invite you to find out yourself more about these two incredible trends and how they complement each other. Your curiosity will cost you nothing. Sign up for these two companies at the below addresses:

Markethive:
http://markethive.com/marketing

Valentus:
http://www.ValentusTour.com/about

Entering a phone number will assure that I will call you to introduce myself and enjoy a 5-10 minute chat with you. I look forward to that, BTW.

 

Thomas Prendergast
CEO Markethive, Inc.

 

 

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Markethive Groups

Markethive Groups The Champion of the Cottage Industry

cot·tage in·dus·try
noun
noun: cottage industry; plural noun: cottage industries
a business or manufacturing activity carried on in a person's home.

Like Facebook, Groups is a more focused culture gathering to have topic discussions based on the Groups theme.

Unlike Facebook, Groups is the center of all the tools of the system. Let’s start with the blogging platform.

  1. The Group blogging platform is a unique platform published to from the group members who choose to publish to that platform. The Markethive blog system also utilizes plugins so that content can be directed to one or more WordPress blogs.
    This allows you to build a team of marketers all working together for a common cause contributing content for the Markethive blog platforms and WordPress distribution (reach).
     
  2. SEO Backlinks management is another group function where the group organization utilizes the Backlinks system to build white hat links for specific campaigns.
     
  3. Co-op Advertising Campaigns Financing: Press releases, Youtube video ads, Facebook Ads, Google ads can easily be financed with an internal co-op campaign.
     
  4. Membership Management Reports: As Admin, you can review activity reports for the members in your group. Login activity, blogging in the group, Backlink activity, Massaging responsiveness, etc. Allow decisions based on activity to determine ejecting non responsive members.
     
  5. Rotators: Used to distribute traffic coming to the Group blogs, or Co-op traffic to designated sites or capture pages. Or distributed traffic for any reason. Similar to the Co-op campaign is the ability to acquire leads, customers or distributor in a co-op function and distribute the leads, customers, etc. accordingly.
     
  6. Asset Map: A management system whereas displays the relational connections between, capture pages, profile pages, blogs, social networks, press releases etc.
     
  7. Group Messaging: Communication with your group members is well managed with the group function messaging system.
     
  8. Replicating PDF documents:

 

A Markethive group is like a Cottage Industry. You can use Groups to build a startup business, a professional service, a power network marketing team, nothing like it before, like building a startup service with no overhead. This is the promise of the new Market Network (contrasted to the old Social Networks) That is exactly what Markethive is.

Case in point: Chris Corey, Annette Schwindt, Stephen Hodgkiss and I have formed a new corporation called Wavefour Inc. This corporation is negotiating a marketing campaign with a new client that is hiring us to run an agent acquisition, reach, Craigslist, capture page campaign, having the potential to create over $500k for us when we reach target. This is exactly why we built Markethive, a market environment designed to incubate, support and enable small, moderate and large business.

And Markethive Groups is the epicenter of all of this. Welcome to the new Market Network of the future. Markethive!

David Ogden

Helping people help themselves

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

1968 Has Been Rebooted

Sports and politics are colliding. On one side, Colin Kaepernick speaks out. On the other, Donald Trump’s rhetoric finds Dwyane Wade.

united games sports

 

 month ago, Donald Trump’s campaign announced it was rebooting 1968. With Nixonian gusto, Trump would push the idea that crime in America was out of control, that our inner cities were a “disaster.” The strategy reached its unintentionally comic apex this morning when Trump used the shooting death of Dwyane Wade’s cousin in Chicago for tweet fodder.

If that felt like a replay of the turbulent days of ’68, check this out:

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and [people] getting away with murder.”

That’s Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers sounding like Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the ’68 Olympics. With Kaepernick subbing for Smith and Carlos, and Trump for Tricky Dick, we have our own versions of the adversaries of ’68 standing on opposite sides of the scrimmage line. The world has changed a lot since then. But our plunge into the sports-politics nexus feels eerily similar. All we need is a new Howard Cosell to interview everybody on TV.

Of the two statements, Trump’s was the least surprising. The only thing that was surprising was that he briefly deleted his tweet, and then resubmitted it with Wade’s name spelled correctly. In the new, gentle Trump campaign, this counts as a nonapology apology — or, to use Trump’s priapic phrase, a “softening.”

But Kaepernick — wow. At last glimpse, he was completing a slow fade into oblivion by losing a quarterback competition to Blaine Gabbert. But there have been signs of an itchy social conscience. Back in December, Kaepernick used Instagram to push back at Trump’s proposed Muslim immigration ban. Now, he’s staked out a position way beyond Michael Jordan’s “brave” statement about police violence, and one with more teeth than the “system is broken” speech that LeBron James and company offered at the ESPYs. Among the big names, only Carmelo Anthony — who wrote “No more hashtags” — has invested similar capital in pushing the conversation forward.

e’ve been here before — and not just in ’68. In 1996, the NBA suspended the Nuggets’ Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf for a game for not assuming a “dignified posture” during the national anthem. By contrast, today both the NFL and Niners released messages saying that, while they’d keep honoring the country, Kaepernick could assume any posture he wanted. That’s a lot of elbow room earned in 20 years.

The comparison to Smith and Carlos isn’t accidental. Players have begun to explicitly cite the ’60s ideologue-athlete archetype as one they want to emulate. At the ESPYs, Chris Paul ticked off Smith and Carlos, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and others as “model[s] for what athletes should stand for.” As Kaepernick said last night, channeling Ali, “If they take football away, my endorsements away from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.”

The Kaepernick story is less than a day old. But it’s already produced a happily antagonistic political sports arena. The Giants’ Justin Pugh declared that he’d stand up during the anthem. Bleacher Report’s Mike Freeman got texts from football players backing Kaepernick and football coaches and executives opposing him. The civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson nodded at Kaepernick; a sports-media entity named Ross Tucker took a whack at him. Clay Travis did a remarkable impression of Clay Travis. And as Adam Schefter noted, Kaepernick figures to get an intense reaction in the Navy-friendly city of San Diego this week. (For his part, Abdul-Rauf was booed by Bulls fans back in ’96.)

Remember last week, when NFL players were making “controversial” remarks in the preview magazines? This seems a lot more important. I don’t demand that any athlete weigh in on the news of the day, but it sure is clarifying when they admit they’ve been having the same conversations everyone has been having for the last year.

Finally, my own pet theory is that the uptick in athlete activism has inspired, or at least cleared the road for, an uptick in activist sportswriting. If memory serves, in ’96 you could find writers defending Abdul-Rauf, but they mostly stuck to strict First Amendment grounds. And on the debit side, you could also find two Denver radio idiots — at least one of whom was wearing a turban and a T-shirt with Abdul-Rauf’s picture on it — storming into a mosque and playing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Kaepernick has his detractors. But members of the sportswriting class have filed full-throated defenses of both his right to speak and what he said. What was true in 1968 — with Cosell, Robert Lipsyte, and many others — is true again today. An athlete’s decision to sit has given us media types a chance to take a stand.

Join United Games and Signup for Free

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Inbound Marketing For Dummies

Inbound Marketing For Dummies "or"

When Out Bound Marketing and I separated our ways for good!

In 1996 or there about, I was approached by a well-known marketer, David D’Arcangelo. We were associates at that time in the Network Marketing business and we both lived in San Diego. He pitched me on a new deal he felt was a considerable advantage in the industry, had an organization begun (He has a large sphere of influence from his radio shows). He was proposing he run major ads in papers like USA Today, etc. and round robin the incoming leads to the new distributors. He felt that he and I could work together on this and build a sound solution for the ‘rank and file” recruits. With his name and advertising and the advantage I had because I owned a big marketing system (which came to be known as Veretekk).

I enrolled about 10 people based on this agreement and we scheduled our first tele bridged conference call. My wife Annette (my girlfriend at the time) and I were excited before the call began. On the call nothing was said about a Co-op distribution round robin. What did transpire, was David took control of the call from me, then quickly introduced his friend John Green and pitched the leads John Green was selling from CuttingEdgeMedia (This is my recollection).  John Green and David claimed they were awesome pre interviewed leads and cost $20 each.

Annette immediately expressed her anger that we had been baited and switched, and the call was a disaster. I was also angered as I have always found buying leads a foolish pursuit. Ho9wever, this time< I wanted to use these leads to conduct a real survey.

I paid for 100 leads, about $2000 for the 100 super hot, pre interviewed hot ready to join my business leads. I also bought the USA Today white pages on CD Rom as a control subject.

I spent 4 weeks and tracked the results in an Excel Spread sheet. I called every lead in that database. I called everyday of the week. At 3 different times for each lead at 10am, 2pm, and 6pm. I also called Saturdays at 12 noon and 8 pm in their time zone until I actually talked to someone.

Of the John Greene leads 80% of the list was contacted. 20% never answered or numbers were disconnected or wrong numbers. Of the remaining 80% I was able to talk to 80% said very nasty profanity at me, demanded I remove them from the list, and were extremely angered and some threatened me with legal action. Even when I explained I was doing “lead” research, told them who sold them and that they were supposedly interviewed.

Not one was interviewed. Either they called me a liar or the provider a liar or said they had no recollection of being interviewed. There were 2 out of the 100 who expressed some interest in the business, but further calls were never answered and nothing ever came from these halfhearted interests.

USA Today leads

In sharp contrast I must report on the 100 names and phones numbers I pulled from the USA Today white pages disk as a control to the research. Of the 100 I called on the same routine, 97% connected. Not one of them expressed anger, called me names or hung up on me. Most of them were still not interested, but I did get 12 very interested to join and 3 actually did join.

This is Outbound Marketing

This technique to cold call is a daunting process even back in the days, even for professionals. Today it is virtually a total waste of time. When people do answer and don’t know who you are 96% just hang up. The others usually take some time to insult you. It is over. Outbound marketing is now a total waste of time and money.

It is time to understand Inbound Marketing

So I have produced this blog and video for the Dummies out there. It is Inbound Marketing for Dummies. If you are ever going to find success, you are going to have to embrace, understand and intitiate the process called Inbound Marketing.

You are in luck, because Markethive is one of the top state of the art, “Inbound Marketing” platforms in the world and it is the only one that is free!

Inbound Marketing For Dummies

By now you probably heard some of the buzz about inbound marketing. But just what exactly is it?

Inbound marketing is like marketing with a magnet vs. a megaphone.  Its marketing based on quality content, that attracts a steady stream of qualified leads.

At this point and time outbound marketing has completely lost it edge. Did you know that the average person sees anywhere from 3000 to 20,000 outbound advertisements per day? No wonder no one is paying any attention.

Shouting at your audience with a megaphone is no longer the most cost-effective or productive way of marketing your business, Inbound Marketing is.  The cool part is that inbound marketing methods are almost always less time-consuming and less expensive than traditional lead generation methods.  

Not only are they cheaper but they are more effective.  Inbound leads are eight times more likely to become customers, and close at a much higher rate.  In fact while outbound marketing has an average closing rate of 1.7%, inbound marketing has an astounding closing rate of 14.6%.

All that savings means the companies that Focus primarily on inbound marketing, typically spend 62% less per lead than companies that don't.  So how does it work?  

Think of it like a giant funnel, prospects come in at the top, happy customers come out the bottom.  Today 88% of consumers are conducting their own product research online before making a purchase.  

Therefore the key to being found and trusted on the web is generating relevant content to what people are searching for.  This is the first part of our inbound marketing funnel.  Once you have their attention we need to capture their information.  

Generally this is done with more awesome content in the form of digital media such as free offers, articles, case studies, videos, free services and more.  The next part of our marketing funnel is where we create an automated system, by which we turn these qualified leads which came in from our offers into Happy paying customers, who refer more new customers because of all the awesome content you're putting up.  

At Markethive we deliver inbound marketing methods such as SEO, Broadcasting, Capture Pages, Social Media, massive reach, Work Groups, Co-op Advertising videos, and so much more, to establish you as the authority in your industry, and create a client magnet that will generate a constant stream of qualified leads just for you.  Let us help you to establish an online presence, attract new leads, and convert prospects all on autopilot.

Marketing Manager Staff

 

 

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

American Imperialism (corruption and Obama) has finally destroyed America

Barack Obama may have finally destroyed America’s #1 advantage

In July 1944, just weeks after the successful Allied invasion of Normandy, hundreds of delegates from around the world gathered in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to determine the future of the global financial system.

The vision was simple: America would be the center of the universe, and every other nation would revolve around the US.

This arrangement ultimately led to the US dollar being the world’s dominant reserve currency which still remains today.

Whenever a Brazilian merchant pays a Korean supplier, that deal is negotiated and settled in US dollars.

Oil. Coffee. Steel. Aircraft. Countless commodities and products across the planet change hands in US dollars, so nearly every major commercial bank, central bank, multi-national corporation, and sovereign government must hold and be able to transact in US dollars.

This system provides a huge incentive for the rest of the world to hold trillions of dollars worth of US assets– typically deposits in the US banking system, or US government bonds.

It’s what makes US government debt the most popular “investment” in the world, why US government bonds are considered extremely liquid “cash equivalents”.

As long as this system continues, the US government can continue to go deeper into debt without suffering serious consequences.

Just imagine being totally broke… yet every time you want to borrow money there’s a crowd of delighted lenders eager to replenish your wallet with fresh funds.

This may be the US government’s #1 advantage right now.

You’d think that they would be eternally grateful and take care to never abuse this incredible privilege.

But no… not these guys.

In fact, they’ve done the exact opposite. Over the last eight years the US government has gone out of its way to eliminate as much of this benefit and alienate as many allies as possible.

They’ve abused the trust and confidence that the rest of the world placed in them by racking up record amounts of debt, waging indiscriminate wars in foreign lands, and dropping bombs on children’s hospitals by remote control.

They’ve created absurd amounts of regulations and had the audacity to expect foreign banks to comply.

Plus they’ve levied billions of dollars worth of fines against foreign banks who haven’t complied with their ridiculous regulations.

(Last week, for example, New York state financial regulators fined a Taiwanese bank $180 million for not complying with NY state law.)

And they’ve threatened to banish any foreign banks from the US financial system who don’t pay their steep fines.

Abuse. Deceit. Extortion. Not exactly great ways to win friends and influence people.

It’s as if Barack Obama pulled together the smartest guys he could find to make a list of all the ways the US government would have to screw up in order to lose its enormous financial privilege… and then he went out and did ALL of them.

The US government is practically begging the rest of the world to find an alternative to the US dollar and US banking system.

Even the government of France, a key US ally, called into question continued US dominance of the global financial system after the US government slammed French bank BNP Paribas with a $9 billion fine.

There have already been some attempts to displace the United States in the financial system.

China has been aggressively setting up its own competing financial infrastructure, something called the China International Payment System.

It’s been a slow start for the Chinese, but they’re building momentum. Though I’m not sure China is the answer in the long run.

While banks around the world may not care for the long and strong arm of the US government, the Chinese government doesn’t exactly inspire trust either.

But now there really is an alternative. Technology.

Ripple, a blockchain-style protocol that’s funded by Google Ventures (among others), is now being utilized by international banks to send and receive transactions directly.

The way international bank transfers work now relies exclusively on the US financial system.

Large foreign banks have what’s called a “correspondent account”, typically at a major US bank like JP Morgan, Citibank, etc.

A correspondent account is essentially a bank account for other banks. Our company holds funds at a bank in Singapore, for example, whose US dollar correspondent account is at Bank of New York Mellon.

Foreign banks’ US dollar correspondent accounts are typically at major Wall Street banks because that’s the epicenter of US dollar transactions.

So when a bank in Australia sends US dollars to a bank in South Africa, that payment actually flows from the Australian bank’s correspondent account in the US to the South African bank’s correspondent account in the US.

The entire transaction effectively takes place using the US banking system.

Again, this gives the US government enormous power over foreign banks. Any foreign bank that doesn’t do what Uncle Sam commands can be excommunicated from the US banking system.

And without access to the US banking system, a foreign bank will be unable to transact in US dollars, and hence unable to conduct any global business.

This is a death sentence for a bank. The US government knows this and has been blackmailing global banks for years.

But now technology is providing another option.

Banks don’t have to use the US banking system anymore; they can send real-time payments internationally using the Ripple protocol.

Two months ago a Canadian financial services company sent the first-ever institutional cross-border payment to a German bank.

This isn’t some wild theory or conjecture. It’s actually happening.

Just this morning a group of 15 banks in Japan signed up to start using Ripple, and dozens of banks plan to use the protocol within the next six months.

The technology is cheaper. Faster. Superior. And it doesn’t come with any US government strings attached.

So it seems Uncle Sam may have finally shot himself in the foot for the last time.

 

Original Article appeared here:
https://www.sovereignman.com
BY: Simon Black
August 23, 2016
Santiago, Chile

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member