Post about "Computers"

Promoting Your Site Using Discussion Boards

Discussion boards are without doubt one of the best ways to get traffic to your site and heaps of backlinks without doing that much work. In this article I hope to show you how to fully utilise the power of community forums, and there is a list of dos and don’ts at the end for quick reference.

First off, what is a message board? Okay, maybe that is a bit of an easy question to answer, but as with everything in site promotion, we must analyse even simple elements so that we can really employ them to our benefit. Back in Roman times, a community forum was a ‘public space in the middle of a Roman city’ where people would sell items and meet up to socialise. The word ‘discussion forum’ in its Internet sense, is generally accepted to be a niche-specific community where individuals can post and reply to comments about a theme, and network with each other.

In case you are a bit confused by the phrase ‘niche-specific’, it just means that it is targeted to a particular topic, such as cars, or cooking. In this case, both ‘cars’ and ‘cooking’ are niches. If you are a webmaster, you may be part of some webmaster boards such as the famous DigitalPoint forums. DigitalPoint will be talked about further later on in this article.

So now that we know what a forum is, let’s get into the real stuff of how you can use discussion boards to promote your website. Firstly, you must choose a discussion board that you like and can imagine yourself spending some time on posting. It should also be related to your website’s topic. For instance, if you are advertising a ‘cooking’ site, don’t think of advertising your site on a ‘cars’ forum. To find discussion boards related to your site do a search on Google for “‘…’ ‘forums’”. Replace ‘…’ with a keyword related to your site such as ‘cooking’.

Once you have picked a message board, you have to sign up to it. The registration process varies depending on the discussion board, but in general you have to fill out some information and get emailed your login details. Discussion board registration will be free 99.99% of the time, so don’t worry about having to pay money. After you have logged in successful it’s time to update your profile.

You should now update your profile. Again, this may vary from forum to forum, but your profile normally has place to enter a forum ‘signature’ or your website url. A signature is added onto the end of every comment you post on the forum and is the best way of promoting your site on discussion forums. In the signature field you should put a link to your website. If there is a website address field on your profile, then fill that out too.

Note: Some discussion boards require you to have posted a minimum amount of times before you can add a signature. If this is the case, then just read on and come back to this step later.

It’s time to get posting. Remember, don’t spam. Never spam. You’ll get kicked off or banned, and then you have wasted all of your time. Make intelligent posts, and hopefully if you have chosen a related discussion board, you will know the topic quite well. Don’t focus on promotion at the moment, just answer questions, post comments, anything to try and get up your reputation. If you have already got a signature, then that should show up at the end of each of your posts which counts as a backlink each time. If you have yet to get a signature because of minimum post requirements, fill it in when you have reached that number of posts.

If you’re stumped choosing a forum, then I would recommend you check out DigitalPoint. You can get a lot of visitors through this website and it is very respected in the search engine’s eyes.

Here are a list of message board dos and don’ts:

Do…

  • Add a link to your website in your signature
  • Post informative/intelligent comments
  • Visit the message board often

Don’t…

  • Sound artificial/promotional in your comments
  • Add a link to your website and then disappear
  • Be inactive on the discussion board

If you have the time, sign up to more than one forum so that you get more possibilities of getting site visitors and links back to your site. Post on your chosen message board(s) often, and each time you will receive an extra backlink with your post. Also, try and get a good reputation by making useful posts, as this will make people want to check out your website.

Find Out Why Building a Home Based Business is a Long Term Process

Not many people are aware that building a home based business is actually a long-term process and is not something that’s going to happen overnight. Even though there is a lot of people that promise you success overnight and money within minutes the truth is that they are just lying to you in order to get you in their program.Real success with a home based business is going to take time because a business takes time to build. If you are doing things the right way all you need to do is keep doing them consistently and you will see results in the long run. The people that don’t see results in the long run are the ones who are doing things the wrong way and try to make it happen as fast as possible.Remember that for you to be successful in a home based business you must develop and grow into a successful person. By understanding this concept you’re going to realize that you are already on the right path to becoming successful and all you have to do is be patient in waiting for the results of your efforts.The way that you’re going to know if you’re in the right direction is by doing some investigating on the home based business that you’re part of. If they have been around for a while and are legit then you should definitely continue to promote it. There are many ways to promote your business but if you’re going to think long-term like I told you before the best way to go is article marketing. It is something that does not cost any money and just requires time to invest into it.The good thing about article marketing is that as you do it you are going to grow and become a better person and this is what you need to do in order to be successful in the home based business industry.

Home Based Business – The Importance of MS Office Skills

MS office is a suite of interconnected desktop programs, applications and services for computer operating systems. It is especially suited for online home business. It was introduced about two decades ago for Windows and Mac OS operating systems. MS office is a powerful tool which has extreme importance in your home based business.It contains multiple office applications like Microsoft word, Microsoft excel and Microsoft PowerPoint which will help business enterprises on everyday basis.Further applications have grown considerably with tools like spellchecker, forms of data integration, publishing features and document formats for small and big business enterprise installations.Statistics indicate that about eight percent of business houses hold the latest MS office installations. MS office skills can help a home based business owner to deal effectively with entrepreneurial requirements of data management with software tools for spreadsheet, documents and word processing.Microsoft Office Applications:- Microsoft word is a word processor program that can be widely used for business applications. It has features such as Fonts, Inserting tables, page breaks, charts, clip art and photo insertion, word art and many formation options.- Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program with tools like custom functions, charting features and V-Lookups. The above mentioned tools are very vital for the home based business owners for business developments.Business Presentation Tools:- Microsoft PowerPoint application can be used by proprietors of business ventures to create innovative product or service presentations for clients. For example: It can be employed to deliver an attractive online marketing plan.- PowerPoint as a presentation program and it provides facilities to incorporate images, text and graphics in slideshows. These slideshows can be displayed on-screen by the presenter for work demonstrations. As the owner of a business from home, you may need to make presentations about your products or services to your clients.- PowerPoint is largely used by business proprietors to exceed client expectations and requirements in order to gain product orders. The slides can also be employed for webcasts to reach a larger audience of the target customer base.- Home based business owners can use PowerPoint to save presentations in multiple file formats.Reduction of Operational Tasks:- Desktop publishing application known as Microsoft Publisher offers great user ease with page layouts and design for entrepreneurial issues.- It is seen to have high end capabilities like coloring output, shading and transparency features which can tremendously benefit home based ventures cannot afford to hire professional designers for the preparation of marketing documents.- Microsoft Office Accounting software can be employed for home and small business units that employ a limited number of employees.- Free version of the above mentioned software is available for home business ventures.- Latest version of the above accounting software provides advanced features like tax preparation tools, foreign language packs and report construction instruments are available.To Simplify Communication:- Microsoft outlook can be employed as personal data director and communication software. The features available are calendar, task manager, e-mail and address book.- Microsoft Office communicator can be used to integrate meetings and conferences with clients in real time.- Server applications like Live Small Business, Live Workspace and Live Meeting can vastly benefit the online home based business owners to provide virtual services.