Archive for February, 2017

Two Days of Consulting and Training for Hispanic Entrepreneurs in Charlotte – Yahoo News

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Feb. 10, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --On March 2 and 3, Hispanic entrepreneurs in the Charlotte metro area will have the opportunity to receive advice from business development consultants and participate in a digital marketing business seminarfor free. Thanks to the financial sponsorship of Wells Fargo, Bank of America and BB&T, Prospera will carry out its third trip to the region in recent months to provide training, guidance and resources to current and potential Hispanic business owners. This will be its first visit since changing its brand from Hispanic Business Initiative Fund (HBIF) to Prospera in November 2016.

All services will be offered at the offices of the Latin American Chamber of Commerce of Charlotte, located at 145 C Scaleybark Road, Charlotte, NC 28209. Individual consulting sessions will take place in Spanish or English between 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day. Entrepreneurs can schedule individual consulting appointments, register for the seminar, or obtain more information by calling 786-329-5828 or emailing eisaac@prosperausa.org.

The business seminar, titled "Your Presence on the Internet," will be presented in Spanish on Thu. Mar. 2 from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m., at the same location. Topics covered will include SEO, information about the various social media and how to maintain a strong presence based on your consumer profile and target audience, online advertisement, and measuring ROI. Thursday's seminar will be presented by Ignacio Cassinelli, director of digital strategy at AC&M Group who has experience developing campaigns for brands such as Fox Sports, Sherwin-Williams, EA Sports, AT&T, New Balance and Family Dollar.

About Prospera Prospera (formerly HBIF) is an economic development, nonprofit organization that for 25 years has specialized in providing bilingual assistance to Hispanic entrepreneurs who want to establish or expand their business. In the last five years alone, Prospera has facilitated over $11 million in loans, invested over $800,000 in grants for services, trained over 20,000 entrepreneurs, and helped clients create or retain over 6,600 jobs. Its offices are located across Florida's central, south and west coast regions. For more information, visit http://www.prosperausa.org.

Media Contacts: Erick Isaac 786-329-5828 eisaac@prosperausa.org

Maria Yabrudy 407-412-3303 myabrudy@prosperausa.org

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/two-days-of-consulting-and-training-for-hispanic-entrepreneurs-in-charlotte-300405854.html

SOURCE Prospera

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Two Days of Consulting and Training for Hispanic Entrepreneurs in Charlotte - Yahoo News

Matt Internet Marketing

SEO is not that difficult to learn if youre willing to get online to teach yourself about what it is about. Thats what youre going to get some advice on here. To start making traffic come to your websites, this is the way to go.

Youre going to want to make sure that when you work with tutorials of any kind, that you find some that are up to date. Many times youre going to see that there are problems in the older tutorials because they may have information that works with older versions of search engine algorithms. These things change over time, so methods that worked a little over a year ago may not still. The more up to date the tutorials are that you can find, the better off youre going to be when you see the results you get.

SEO Training can be done through videos, and if they are newer youll have a great chance of learning a lot. The good thing about using a video sharing website to learn about SEO is that you can generally ask questions in the comments and then that way you can have them answered either by the video maker or other people that are in the know. You may even be able to tell the video creator youd like for them to come up with something for a new video for you and give them a few ideas on what would work for a new one.

Dont buy into a system that tells you that your traffic will go super high if you just pay them to learn more. Thats not going to work most of the time. You need to make sure first that you read reviews on this kind of thing before you trust that anyone is going to be able to help you with learning this kind of thing. Many of the people that want you to pay to learn a get rich quick system are not going to be able to deliver on that promise and that is a waste of money.

Once you know how to learn SEO you can use it to your advantage. There are plenty of great tutorials and other ways to learn like through videos. The more time you put into this the more you should be able to use it to your benefit.

If youve been using the same old SEO tactics as you did last year, it`s about time you changed your strategies. Here are four key things that you should focus on in 2016 if you want to rank well on the search engines and beat competition:

The concept of keyword is largely used so that we can find words and phrases that our potential consumers are using to find our products.

There are various ways to do so. First is by studying your competitors` top-ranking pages to know the keywords they are using. The other means is through search engines like Searchmetrics Keyword analysis tool, Ubersuggest, Googles Keyword Planner and SEMrush.

For example, by analyzing your competitors SEMRush data you might find out that they are targeting St Louis SEO. Also focusing on long-tail keywords at the same time natural language becoming more pervasive and popular is very effective. You can also research on the analytics of your websites to know the keywords being sought for and build a dynamic website based on these sought after keywords.

A new trend is emerging that Google is no longer concerned about keywords but more concerned about high-quality content, social media shares and schema markup.

However, using keywords is still a safe bet if you want your website to rank on the first page of google.

Searchmetrics 2015 Ranking Factors report provides detailed insight on how to be able to utilize the on-page SEO to get a higher ranking when it comes to search rankings. It gives some vital information on the number of words (word count). Google has a history of favoring content that is larger. A study shows that the average word count ranges from 1,285 to 1,40 words. They advise on making your content comprehensive instead of smaller content that only gives a tip of the iceberg.

They also emphasize on the use of header and meta-tags. A study shows 99% of the top 10 ranked SEOs had used a meta-description, 80% of them using an H1 tag. Make sure that your H1 tags are significant, unique and hit the nail on the head as to what your SEO is offering. You should also optimally use the page info and internal structure so that the user is thoroughly taken through your content rather than adding too many internal links.

Back links or inbound links are still important SEO tools in 2016. A backlink is essentially a link that is directed towards your website. They build naturally over time. The more back links a website has the better because it shows how popular and important it is. Search engines such as Google considers a website with many quality backlinks as more relevant than those with less and gives it more credit. Backlinks also attract visitors to your site.

Searchmetrics nicely puts a shift from link building by saying that links formed the basis for search engine rankings, for the analysis of ranking factors and for the SEO for many years. This trend is what caused the highly tactical manipulations that plagued this sector for a long time and that these times are now in the past. They suggest that rather than building links, businesspersons should focus on earning links through publishing high-quality content.

The content that is most likely to capture many links, according to a study done by Moz and Buzzsumo are opinion forming journalism, why posts, list posts, research-backed content and long-form content that contains approximately 1000 words.

Many people are leaving their jobs to pursue the riskier but more rewarding life of an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs do not have the job security and the stable incomes that the people who work as employees are going to have. However, few people become wealthy as employees instead of entrepreneurs. There is nothing quite like being ones own boss as well, and that is what people are going to be able to get when theyre working as entrepreneurs.

There is no doubt about the fact that being an entrepreneur is difficult. People are taking a risk when they try to start their own business. They might not be able to get enough clients to actually sustain any sort of a business. They might not also be able to motivate themselves to do the work that is necessary to get a business off of the ground independently in the first place. Many people underestimate just how much work goes into being an entrepreneur in the first place, especially because the people who own their own businesses never really get days off again. The way to get around this problem involves generating some kind of a passive income stream.

Passive income streams continue to generate money without the people in question doing any work directly. Someone who has a website that makes ad revenue regularly regardless of whether or not he or she posts anything has a passive income stream. Someone who has a store that sells something online and who manages to make sales with minimal direct customer interaction has a passive income stream. A lot of modern ebook writers have turned their writing into passive income streams as their books manage to sell consistently in a way that does not require a lot of extra effort on their part.

Someone with a passive income stream may be making money off of something he or she did years ago. A book that was written a decade earlier could continue to sell as part of a passive income stream. A website that is no longer even updated could continue to generate ad revenue as part of a passive income stream. A store that has no new products could still make sales on some of the old ones.

Establishing a passive income stream in the first place is the hard part. People usually need to do a lot of initial marketing or people arent even going to be able to hear about their products or their websites. Obscure websites, books, stores, and products arent going to be effective income streams. Passive income streams also can go dormant if the owner doesnt do any marketing at all. However, entrepreneurs who have passive income streams arent going to need to do that much work in order to maintain them, especially compared to other entrepreneurs. Once passive income streams are established, entrepreneurs can start to live their dreams of four-hour work weeks and money that more or less earns itself.

When you engage a potential client to make a sale, whether its over lunch, on the phone or even by email, there are particular elements involved that might derail the process. In some cases, it may not be your fault, but chances are you couldve focused your effort in a way that would have improved your odds.

Here are 3 sales strategies that might make you unable to close the deal if youre guilty of them, and how to correct your odds.

At the root of sales, youre selling the solution to a problem that the buyer may not know they have. However, its easy to forget that through the entire process, you have to continue demonstrating reasons why your product or service is a need for the consumer or business towards which you are marketing it.

Too many times, salespeople get caught up in a long, impersonal presentation or simply run down a list of product features. These strategies can work if the consumer makes the connection themselves but this isnt something on which you should count. To raise the effectiveness of your sales strategies, remember throughout your pitch to keep your target thinking about the ways that you can help them by providing your product or service.

Most salespeople understand that getting to know the person to whom you are selling can lead to the establishment of common ground and a relationship that fosters a more comfortable selling environment for both parties.

While that is a major key to doing business of any type, were going a little deeper and talking about important signs and details about the buyer that you may be missing. For example, is this particular contact the key decision-maker in buying decisions for their firm? What factors or individuals influences the buyers decision most? Many buyers will name price as their top priority, but in most cases there are other considerations with major effects on their willingness to buy.

Often in closing the deal, salespeople breeze past the most important part: actually asking for the sale and letting the decision-maker know their intentions. Simply repeating your intention to have your product in the homes or offices of the buyers throughout your sales pitch will give them a bigger picture of the outcome of the pitch. Additionally, as a consumer its much easier to be noncommittal about the prospects of buying a good or service when you arent asked directly to buy.

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Matt Internet Marketing

How to Build the Best Marketing Strategy You Can Using Only Free Tools – Entrepreneur

As an entrepreneur, it is more important than ever for you to create an efficient marketing strategy. Because startups often have low budgets, finding the right marketing stack that covers the variety of different sectors within a marketing strategy is crucial. Today, it is possible for you to access these tools without spending a dime.

Below, Ive put together a list of the top free digital marketing resources that will help you maximize your marketing efforts to achieve success.

SEO: Ubersuggest, SEMrush, Adwords, and Yoast

Wincherallows you to track how your website is performing. From there, you can run these through SEMrush or Google Adwords Keyword Planner for a more thorough analysis of your chosen keywords. Both offer free digital marketing resources such as keyword search volumes, relating keywords, competitor analysis for chosen keywords, and projected costs for any future Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns. However, unlike SEMrush, the Keyword Planner allows you to search for a group of keywords at a time, and gives accurate suggestions for alternative keywords that may perform better for startups.

Googles Analytical Tools

Tracking traffic and analyzing visitor behaviour on your site is crucial to understanding what attracts your target audience and what needs improving. Google Analytics gives you a monstrous amount of information on users that visit your website. With these tools you can track where your traffic is coming from, how long visitors are staying on your page, and even see who is on your page in real-time.

Internet entrepreneur and digital strategist, Abhilash Patel, says that, Google Analytics is more than just a free tool, it is an essential part of your marketing strategy. If you arent using it to track your web traffic, you are missing out on some of the most important insights into your campaign.

Other free analytics tools include Google Search Console and Google Trends, who offer slightly different features. All of these are based on analyzing different aspects of the traffic that reaches your website, where its coming from, and how deep its going into your page.

Content Marketing: Grammarly, Hemingway, and Co Schedule Headline Analyser

Human editors and spell checkers are still required, but are not enough from a marketing point of view. Grammarly automatically spell checks anything you write or publish in an internet browser. The application can be downloaded as an extension on your web browser and be used everywhere apart from Google Docs.

Social Media Marketing: Buffer, Hootsuite, and TweetDeck

Staying live on social media to keep your audience engaged is key. But, as this is a full time job in itself, Buffer allows you to batch the social media marketing process by allowing you to do all your composing in one go, and schedule it for a later date. Users can also create campaigns and analyze their success.

Hootsuite and TweetDeck also offer free social media management plans, with slightly different options to Buffer.

Email Marketing: GetResponce

Email marketing offers a more personalized interaction with your audience. This form of marketing gives you more control over moving your customers through the sales funnel naturally. The free GetResponce plan is one of the most prominent email marketing tools allowing you to try for one monthfree, scheduling them according to your past performance. You can then build tailored campaigns to help turn prospects to leads, and eventually, leads to sales.

CRM: Zoho

CRM tools make it easy to grow and track your sales funnel. The software automatically manages your sales pipeline, documents all points of contact with your prospects and current clients, logs sales, and allows you to see everything about each lead in one place. This tells your sales team at what point of the buyers journey your leads are at, which in turn enables them to focus their efforts appropriately.

From developing a website or blog, to managing your leads, and connecting your entire team, there are a number of free digital marketing resources that make every aspect of creating an efficient strategy easier. By making the most of these free tools, you will be able to catapult your startup to success.

Murray Newlands is an entrepreneur, investor, business advisor and speaker. Newlands is the author of Online Marketing: A Users Manual published by John Wiley & Sons. You can find him online at his blogMurrayN...

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Mob censorship can’t be tolerated – DesMoinesRegister.com

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Sheldon Rabinowitz, Des Moines, Letter to the Editor 6:21 p.m. CT Feb. 10, 2017

Students from City and West High lead protesters down the pedestrian mall during a rally against President Trump's travel ban on Sunday, Feb. 5, 2017.(Photo: David Scrivner/Iowa City Press-Citizen)

If we really have free speech in this country, as provided by law, then any lawful program should be able to be held on any campus. Whether any of us, including university administration or the news media, agree with the sponsors or their subject matter, should have nothing to do with the right to hold the program.

Lawful protest is to be respected, but universities and the local government have the responsibility to protect the people and the property from rioters. Are we to be ruled by anarchists and have mob rule? If the police need to get tough to enforce the law, so be it.

If universities knuckle under threats of rioters, it will only encourage more censorship of what the mob does not want to hear, all across the country.

Sheldon Rabinowitz, Des Moines

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Bird flu hits poultry markets in major Chinese city: media – Reuters

BEIJING Authorities in China's third-largest city warned that about 30 percent of its live poultry markets were contaminated with the H7N9 avian flu virus, as an eastern province ordered markets to shut, state media reported on Saturday.

East China's Zhejiang province has ordered all markets across the province to halt live poultry trade on Saturday over bird flu concerns, state media Xinhua reported citing the province's Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

In January, Zhejiang reported 35 infections of the H7N9 strain of bird flu, according to the provincial Health and Family Planning Commission.

Earlier on Saturday, China Daily said the disease control authority in Guangzhou, capital of the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, urged residents to avoid contact with live poultry after tests in the past week.

Guangzhou, a major port and transportation hub, last month said it would suspend the trade of live and slaughtered poultry for three-day periods through March to prevent the spread of avian flu to humans.

The latest warning will reinforce concerns about the spread of the virus as the death toll in China this winter hit 30 last week and neighbouring South Korea and Japan battle major outbreaks.

Chinese disease control experts have warned the public to stay alert for H7N9 avian flu, with more than 100 cases of human infections reported over the last 2-1/2 months.

In December alone, China had 106 cases of human infections, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

The virus usually strikes in winter and spring, and farmers have in recent years ramped up measures such as cleaning regimes to prevent the disease.

China has confirmed five bird flu outbreaks among poultry this winter, which has led to the culling of more than 175,000 birds.

Many major cities in the world's third-largest producer of broiler chickens and the second-biggest consumer of poultry have also closed some live poultry markets after people and chickens were infected by avian flu strains.

Widespread infection can lead to severe health risks and big financial losses. The last major outbreak in China was in 2013, killing 36 people and causing more than $6 billion in losses for the agricultural sector.

(Reporting by Josephine Mason and Meng Meng; Editing by Richard Borsuk and Clelia Oziel)

PARIAGUAN, Venezuela Eliannys Vivas, 9, started to get a sore throat on a Friday last month in this languid Venezuelan town where papaya trees shade poor cinder-block homes.

LA PAZ Bolivia's government on Friday said a Danish tourist had tested positive for yellow fever, its first case in a decade, after he visited a jungle area in the far west of the landlocked Andean country.

ZURICH A European Medicines Agency drug safety panel recommended on Friday that Actelion's Uptravi drug may continue to be used in line with current prescription information amid a probe into five deaths in France among those using the pulmonary arterial hypertension medicine.

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Bird flu hits poultry markets in major Chinese city: media - Reuters