http://omgili.com/ : This is a forum search engine.  Great tool to use when link building through forum marketing.  Also a great way to find different “voices” when researching or looking for opinions on a topic.  You can do something similar if you use scrapebox to get a list of URL’s and creating a custom google search, but this is another alternative.

http://scribble.wreally.com/ : As I work I always have a bunch of notepads open to keep track of stuff I’m doing.  However sometimes I accidentally shut them down and lose what Im working on.  This will be a great tool to keep track of multiple notepads, that I can access from any computer.

http://www.instagrok.com/ : Interesting visual search engine.  Useful for finding connections you wouldn’t have thought of.  The search results are also quite good.

https://beta.mural.ly/ : I didn’t play too much with this one, but I can see how it would be a great, interactive way to create mind maps and visual thought processes and brainstorming.  Might also be a great, collaborative way to keep track of information.  I plan to use it to create groups of documents.  I almost exclusively use Google Docs for article marketing.  Using this tool I can drop all of the document for one client into one board and keep track of them this way, it’ll make it easy to find these documents.

https://750words.com/ : A necessary for online and social media marketing is content development.  Based on The Artist’s Way, this tool gives a great canvas to write content without interruptions or distractions.  It also has a few features summarizing how you feel, word count, and more.  

thttp://throwww.com/ : Want to share brief snippets with multiple people? You can type into throw and it will instantly create a shareable link that you  can send out.  Great for the work and collaborative flow.

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You don’t need complicated equipment to make a video for the internet.

By now, you probably already know that social media sites like Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest can boost your site’s traffic if you use them properly to share things of interest to your readers. Most business and site owners do.

However, you may not be harnessing the full power of what you can share if you’re not making and uploading videos on a regular basis. You don’t have to be a master director to make and share videos to boost your traffic – after all, some of the most popular videos on the internet were filmed on cell phones or digital cameras.

Create Unique Videos

If you’re interested in boosting your site’s traffic, but you aren’t sure what kind of videos you should make, you should know that there’s really only one answer: Creative, unique videos.

Your videos don’t have to be state-of-the-art, and they don’t have to look like feature films. Instead of focusing on the technical aspects of the video that you’re making, take time concentrate on making the content unique yet still related to your business.

As an example, Gap, the well-known clothing manufacturer and store, recently made a video for Vine that displayed six actions one might do with a pair of pants – unzipping them, rolling up the cuffs, and so on. In the Vine video, each image or action was one second long, and there were six of them.

The clever creativity of the video made for a fairly successful and effective campaign. One that could have easily been made with any video recording device available today.

Vine

Speaking of that Gap ad, Vine is a relatively new app for Twitter that allows you to share six second videos. While people are already using Vine, you should get on the bandwagon while it’s still fresh and users aren’t saturated with content.

Making a six second video might sound difficult, but sites like Animoto can help. Animoto allows you to make a video out of still images.

Using Animoto you could display a considerable portion of your product line, or a unique concept about your business, through a six second video. Animoto even has different themes that you can use to make your videos stand out from the rest.

YouTube

YouTube has been around a while now, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still an excellent way to share videos. With YouTube, it’s important that you get your viewer’s attention any way possible.

That means that creating videos that are a few minutes long like product reviews, rants about your business, or an innovative technique or design project are ideal. The YouTube format is pretty loose, so don’t feel like you have to make a promotional video for business investors.

Doing that won’t attract attention from the masses. Loosen up, tell a few jokes and have fun with the videos you put on YouTube.

Vimeo

Vimeo is somewhat similar to YouTube, but the audience is a little different. YouTube tends to reach a consumer market, while Vimeo videos tend to reach creative professionals, artists, and filmmakers since videos can be uploaded in HD.

The videos you put on Vimeo don’t have to look like film festival submissions, but your focus should be on creativity. Videos that promote your brand in a more abstract, artistic way will be more successful on Vimeo than on YouTube.

Diversify Your Video Marketing

There are a wide variety of ways to make and share videos in order to promote your site. If you really want to grow, you’ll profit most if you use all the different platforms. Sharing the same video on different platforms can work, but if you make different videos intended for different platforms, you’ll see a much stronger boost in traffic to your target site.

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Many people ask me about article marketing, wondering whether it still works.

In short, I believe the answer is NO.

Article marketing worked for a little while, until it got abused by marketers.  Think of how easy it is for Google to identify these sites, and simply remove their authority?

They’ve publicly stated that they have human raters that can affect a site’s rankings.   So it would take them a couple of week and a small sum of money to have a few human raters create a list of all of the top article marketing directories, and then diminish/reduce the authority they can pass to links.

Do these sites really create value?

Not really, anyone can now create an promote their own blogs.  Plus there are companies like Demand Media and others who have systems to create high value content that is editorially reviewed.

Google’s emphasis now is on UnEarned links, links that you acquire naturally.  Article directories represent low value Earned links.

So what can you do instead?

I’m afraid the shortcuts are getting shorter and shorter, in fact they are close to disappearing.

Guest Blogging is one of the most valuable link building methods, but focus on natural, high quality blogs, not spammy blogs created just to charge for guest posts.  Then there’s the old school strategy of creating high value content assets, as well as networking to share your content.  Oh, and of course, there’s still the “Broken Links” strategy too.

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