PM Forex Trading Outlook – DailyFX February 19, 2010

Tags:aud/usd, australian dollar, canadian dollar, currency, DailyFX, dollar, dollars, eur/usd, euro, euro dollar, foreign exchange, forex, forex capital markets, forex trading, franc", FX, FXCM, gbp/usd, international currency, japanese yen, market, money, new zealand dollar, nzd/usd, swiss franc, trades, trading, US dollar, usd/chf, usd/jpy.

John's Trades: EUR/GBP; Long USD/JPY Daily wrrap-up of the US Forex market trading session with dailyfx Currency Strategist John Kicklighter. Includes coverage of economic and financial market news, as well as an outlook for the next 24 hours and trading ideas. Produced by: www.dailyfx.com

Video: Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve

The following is an educational video on money, banking and the federal reserve- three things that every business owner should know about in detail:

11 Free Tools for Social Media Optimization

Plenty of bloggers are talking about the inevitable intersection of social media marketing and search engine optimization. Heck, we’ve been blogging about SMO since 2006! Keyword optimized social content and channels of promotion provide abundant signals to search engines for improved visibility on standard, social and real-time search.

The changing nature of social media marketing and optimization create the need for tools whether for research, marketing and promotion or analytics. Here are 11 social media and SEO tools you might find useful:

• howsociable.com – Social visibility score
• knowem.com – Profile building tool
• Social Media for Firefox – Build a powerful social profile on social news & bookmarking sites
• semrush.com – Find competitor organic search rankings
• Google Insights – Keyword demand trends
• Page Inlink Analyzer – Analyze inbound links, their Delicious bookmarks & keyword tags
• majesticseo.com – Historical back-link tracking
• trackur.com – Social media monitoring
• socialmention.com – Real-time social search & scoring, social keyword research
• bit.ly – Search friendly URL shortening with analytics
• analytics.postrank.com – Track social engagement with combined Google & social analytics

Below are screen shots of each tool with a more detailed description of how you might use them.

HowSociable is a useful tool to quickly gauge the social presence of a particular keyword or brand name. Agencies like TopRank Marketing will use this kind of tool (customized) to take snapshots of customer social presence metrics for social media optimization programs. For each social site polled, you can clickthrough to see specific mentions.  This is a characteristic of more advanced social media monitoring tools, but for those that want a quick glimpse, HowSocialble is easy to use and the price is right, just like these free social media monitoring tools. However, if you want more comprehensive brand search and monitoring, then a paid social media measurement tool is worth the investment.

KnowEm is both a free and a paid service that will help you easily and quickly check whether your brand terms or other keywords have been registered as social profiles on a wide variety of social media web sites. Everything from blogging platforms to social news and bookmarking services are included. If you don’t want to complete all those profiles yourself, you can pay knowem to do it for you.  Companies invest a lot in building their brand, so this tool is helpful both for creating off site promotion channels as well as guarding against brand name squatters.

Social Media for Firefox is the only browser addon in our list and can be a handy tool to identify upcoming news items that are gaining popularity on certain social news and bookmarking services. A big part of building a more influential user profile is to be a consistent source of submissions for articles that become popular. This addon helps identify articles that are becoming popular on services like Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon giving you a heads up to submit to other services.  The logic is that if a news item becomes popular on one service it has a good chance of becoming popular on others.  Relevance, timing and focus are key as is patience for this kind of tactic.

SEMRush is an interesting tool for identifying the keyword visibility, both organic and PPC, on Google for pretty much any domain name you might be curious about. Your own or competitors for example. A common question for marketers is, “What are my competitors optimizing for?”. This tool helps uncover that insight and in combination with other standard and social keyword research, can be very helpful insight in a social media optimization program.

Google Insights for Search is a handy tool to research trends in popularity of various keywords on their own or in combination.  Filters for search type, geographic location, industry or topical category and timeframe allow you to refine some pretty useful information about what’s in demand.

Eric Miraglia ’s Inlink Analyzer is a back link analysis tool based on Yahoo’s Site Explorer that not only counts and displays source links to a particular URL, but it also shows if the source links were bookmarked on Delicious and what keyword tags were used. This kind of insight can be quite useful for understanding the relationship between social keywords and link popularity. It would be nice if there was a CSV export option.

Majestic SEO is easily one of the most powerful and useful link analysis tools available. There is a free version that gives you link acquisition counts over time and if you are a site owner, you can get full reporting for your site once you validate it.  If you use the paid service, you can get the juicy link details on your competition.  This tools is useful for finding high impact links for standard SEO but it’s also useful for finding out which social media sites your site or competitors’ site are getting  the most links from.  Also, which of your own social destinations (blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc) are getting inbound links and from where.

Andy Beal’s Trackur service is a very easy to use social media monitoring tool that offers a free version that will satisfy many beginners in the social media optimization space.  Social media monitoring services are keyword based, (queries and negative or exclusionary) and that means some very useful information about how popular certain keyword concepts are on the social web. Of course you can use it to monitor what people are saying about your brand, identify a certain measure of influence and where they’re saying it. But seeing social keyword popularity trends can be quite useful for taking advantage of real-time marketing opportunities.

SocialMention is a free real time and social search tool that offers an array of search options (just blogs, just forums, just bookmarks or all) and output in the search results. You can get an indication of basic sentiment and the top social keywords associated with your query. As a free service, you don’t setup an account and save your search results, but you can easily download them into a spreadsheet. This is probably one of the most useful, free social search tools online.

Bit.ly URL shortening is very handy since they’re included as a default service on Twitter and many other Twitter applications. Bit.ly is rock solid reliable with uptime, which is pretty critical when you’re relying on their URL redirect to send traffic to whatever it is you’re promoting. You can also get basic statistics for each URL that your shorten to show how productive the site is where it was shared.  In today’s succinct social web with Twitter, status updates and micro-content, being able to conserve space with a reliable URL shortener is very helpful. Stats on top of that make this a “go to” URL shortening service.

PostRank offers a nice measure of engagement at the individual document level and if you pay attention, you can get that data on any web site in their database, not just your own. You can easily see what content on your competitors blogs are getting popular and where.  If you sign up for the PostRank Analytics service, you can incorporate Google Analytics data with social engagement metrics. These are essential comparisons in a social media optimization program and can help you understand where to plan your time on the social web.

This is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to SEO and Social Media Marketing tools. What low cost or free tools have you found to be effective for social media optimization tasks?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
11 Free Tools for Social Media Optimization |
9 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

States Square Off Against Amazon Over Sales Tax

The Supreme Court has said that retailers can't be expected to collect sales taxes in states where they don't have a physical presence. But as states struggle with huge budget deficits, they want to collect on the billions of dollars of taxes they say online shoppers owe.

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Forex Trading #29 : High Probability Trading Techniques

Tags:Bill Poulos, carry trade, Elliott Wave, Fibonacci Forex, forex coaching, forex EA, forex market, forex system, forex trading, learn forex, Peter Bain, Prosper Coaching, Stephen Story.

www.forexcoachingpros.com http Stephen Story (forex trader, Coach, Author) discusses how to trade in high probability circumstances for maximum profits.

Blippy.com Shares Intimate Financial Details

The Internet start-up Blippy.com keeps track of someone's spending habits online, much like Twitter keeps track of random thoughts. Users register a credit card with the site, and every transaction on that card is displayed to friends on Blippy.

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Is our food making America stupid?

Tags:alzheimers, Americans, aspartame, autism, children, diet, fish, fluoride, food, mad, mercury, msg, neurotoxin, nursing, poison, stupid.

A general overview of numerous foods and substances potentially linked to decreased mental aptitude.

5 Ways to Weave LinkedIn Into Your Marketing Mix

From Facebook to Twitter to You Tube, there’s no limit to the number of social networking sites that can be leveraged to interact with customers and prospects, and build positive brand awareness.

LinkedIn, however, stands apart from the crowd. The roots of popular sites like YouTube and Facebook are founded on the entertainment side of things. But since its creation, LinkedIn has been geared toward the professional business crowd.

If you haven’t already incorporated LinkedIn into your online marketing mix, consider the latest statistics:

• LinkedIn has more than 60 million members
• A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second
• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members

Get started with a LinkedIn marketing strategy today with these five tips:

1. Build a Network, Then Start a Group
Getting started with a LinkedIn marketing strategy involves two important steps, the second of which is dependent on the first:

• Create a personal account and build a network of contacts. Reach out to customers with whom your business has a solid relationship – those who truly know your company and its products or services. Ask them to write recommendations for your company, which will appear in your profile. And don’t forget to ensure all employees are part of the network as well.
• Once your personal account is setup, create a group for the brand. By creating a group for your brand, you’ll be able to maximize reach beyond your network. Within the brand group, you can start discussions, share news, post jobs and create subgroups.

2. Make the Most of Your Profile
For the LinkedIn community, your profile will be this first item they see, so treat it as you would any landing page. To make the most of your profile:

• Hyperlink using keywords. Include relevant URLs in your profile, and use links with anchor text. For example, instead of “My Blog,” use a keyword to describe it such as “SEO and Online Marketing Blog.” (see image below)
• Use keywords in descriptions. That includes the summary, specialties, experience and all other description categories.
• Include an image in your profile. LinkedIn, after all, is a social networking channel. So add as many personal touches as possible to maximize engagement and put a face to the brand.
• Caption: Include blog or website links in your profile using anchor text.

Include links in your LinkedIn profile using anchor text.

3. Leverage Third-Party Applications
Today, there are a host of third-party applications available to help you make the most of your LinkedIn activity. For example:

• Box.net: Add links to files like resumes and marketing kits
• Slideshare: Share business presentations and demos with your network
• Company Buzz: Monitor messages sent out on Twitter about your brand or other subjects
• TripIt: See where members of your network will be travelling to and when you’ll be in the same city

For an upcoming trip to Dallas, my contacts that will also be there are identified.

4. Update and Engage Frequently
Think of LinkedIn marketing efforts as you would blog, Twitter or Facebook marketing efforts: The more activity and interaction, the better the results. To consistently engage with your network:

• Sync blog posts to your profile with tools like Blog Link or WordPress LinkedIn Application
• Frequently update your profile with the LinkedIn status feature, much like Facebook status updates
• Leverage the LinkedIn Question and Answer function – participate in others’ questions and ask your own

5. Promote Your Profile
In order to expand your network, LinkedIn marketing efforts – like anything else – must be promoted in other channels. Include a link to your profile on your website and blog, in individual blog posts, in email signatures and even on business cards. Be sure to optimize your profile for important and relevant keywords. Allow enough of your profile to be public so search engines can rank that content accordingly.

These tips, of course, are just the tips of the iceberg when it comes to LinkedIn marketing tactics. What specific tactics have you found successful for marketing on LinkedIn?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
5 Ways to Weave LinkedIn Into Your Marketing Mix |
3 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Forex Trading System – Candlestick Trading Series 3

Tags:candlesticks, currencies, forex, system, trading.

www.forexpowertradingsystem.com - Candlestick Trading Series video 3 - Understanding candlesticks as they apply to the Forex market. We will cover the most basic to advanced. Keep checking back for new videos.