The power of the internet and social media can change lives forever. All it takes is a single social post without fully thinking the consequences. What may seem like a trivial and innocent post can escalate into an enormous globally famous incident.

You have most likely heard the recent story of an Applebee’s employee, Chelsea Welch, who posted a copy of a receipt to Reddit that has gained significant attention over the past week. After a customer crossed out a mandatory 18% tip on her bill and wrote “I Give God 10% Why do you Get 18″

After this photo (with Signature intact) made its rounds on Reddit it had quickly generated thousands of comments as users tried to track down the customer. Pastor Alois Bell ultimately came forward after seeing the receipt complete with her signature online and complained to Applebee’s. Welch was ultimately fired for the incident. Read more…

At StepForth we do not work with websites of an adult nature, and while we turned down the request for a proposal, a recent conversation with the owner of an adult site brought to light a very interesting blacker-than-black hat ranking technique that appears to be working. I just had to take a moment to share it with you.

Remember the old “Miserable Failure” days of Google bombing? The theory that if you built enough links with the same anchor text that your site would rank well for that anchor text? It worked great for a while. Then Google essentially shut it down. Or did they?

The webmaster that contacted us wanted to rank for a specific term, but was disheartened when much of his top 10 competition consisted of several low quality nearly identical sites that literally popped up overnight. Out of curiosity I decided to investigate and what I found was rather disturbing. Read more…

Rejoice fellow Canadians! After years of crying foul and bugging Bing engineers at search engine conferences I can finally say that Canadian business owners can submit their business to Bing Canada for free instead of relying on YellowPages listings; which were an unreliable solution at best. What follows is a little more detail on the subject and a full walkthrough of the submission process and end result. Also, if you wish to see just how much anger and frustration the previous system created please see my article “Bing’s Local Listing Center Lacks Forethought” posted in 2009: yes 4 years ago, so you can count me frustrated (politely put) with them as well.

What Made Bing Get its Sh*t Together?

Sadly it seems we have no need to thank Bing engineers (or my significant prodding) for this advance in Canuck accessibility because it was Nokia who bridged the chasm. Nokia increased its already significant maps partnership with Microsoft to allow their Nokia Maps system to update Bing’s Canadian Local data. This all started, it seems, back in January 2012 but I can’t find any indication this bromance between the two companies included Canadian business submissions that early in the game. Anyway, if you go to Bing and try to submit your business you will now be redirected to Nokia Prime Place where you can  follow their submission and address verification process which I have outlined in detail further along in this post. Read more…

To many business owners blogging is a task they either cannot be bothered with or do not know how to work into their schedules. As an entrepreneur myself I completely understand most concerns about maintaining a blog because I have, at one time, been in the same position. After all, we are already so busy with keeping our clients happy and running our businesses that another task seems impossible to comprehend; never mind a task which many business owners are not convinced will help the bottom line.

All of that said, blogging has a good track record for increasing the bottom line when it is done for the right reasons and with dedication. In the following clip, Gil Namur, President of the popular ezine LifeasaHuman.com explains the motivation you require to be a great blogger:

How to be a Great Blogger from StepForth on Vimeo.

Some Basic Blogging Tips

1. If possible (and it is not always) pick a topic to write about for which you are passionate so your enthusiasm comes across in your writing.
2. Offer something of value and remember the chief goal of your content is to help others – NOT to market to them.
3. Proof read your content and if possible I highly recommend having someone else with a fresh pair of eyes proof read it as well.

How to Find Blog Post Ideas

I find the best story ideas come from seeing popular or trending questions or discussions in my industry. With those angles in mind, here are a few resources and tips for hunting down questions and the latest trending news/topics: Read more…

In a world where free organic rankings results can easily make or break most online businesses webmasters everywhere strive to get in the good graces of the big Google. It always surprises me when you hear of companies doing things that are almost guaranteed to sabotage their organic existence.

Some things I understand. While they come with huge risks, black hat techniques, spamming, link buying and other shady methods can sometimes, albeit temporary, come with big rewards. These risks are usually calculated and educated. But when a big company makes a very clear cut error in judgement without doing any research it is a bit of a shock. Read more…

Site load speed has been a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm for a while now. I had suspected it was a factor for some time, and then back in April 2010, Google confirmed it.

I was surprised the other day when I learned that Google had removed the site performance data from the Labs section of Google Webmaster Tools. I had fully suspected this would be made into a full-fledged feature, but instead it was removed entirely.

While the site load times shown under site performance were somewhat flawed, it was still useful for getting an overall impression of how fast Google perceived your site to be. If they showed your site as exceptionally slow, then at the very least, it was an indication that something needed to be done. Read more…

There are a lot of different methods out there for driving down your costs of advertising on Facebook and to increase the efficiency of your page and your overall marketing campaign. From beginner guides to expert expositions, there’s information out there for all stripes. For the marketer on Facebook already privy to ad formats and how the system works, you can skip the rookie camp and look for something with more meat on the bones.

For instance, you can skip over the tips dealing with how to draw people to your page and instead focus on how to get more of those visitors to actually engage with your brand.

If you’re looking to increase your sales, it’s all about increasing your engagement. The tips listed below should help you to post more engaging material. Read more…

Last week I wrote an article called “The Ideal Startup Social Media Strategy for Non-Profits.” This evolved as a result of a phone call I had with a small non-profit called Urunji Child Care Trust. They were looking for the ultimate plan to implement through social media to raise awareness of their initiatives and ultimately raise funds. I decided to create a plan for them by following these steps:

• Research similar organizations that have been highly successful using social media
• Choose which platforms you are going to utilize
• Communicate your non-profit’s objective through the platform (s)
• Connect with the people that share your mission
• Create a campaign to raise funds

Research similar organizations that have been highly successful using social media. After a little digging, the non-profits I decided to research were African Promise, A Glimmer of Hope and Ripple Africa. All three have a very strong presence in social and are performing tactics Urunji could benefit from if they followed some of the same practices. (Please note: for the purpose of this article I’ve focused on one social platform per organization).

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/africanpromise

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/aglimmerofhope

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/rippleafrica

Choose which platforms you are going to utilize. Urunji currently has a Facebook and Twitter account although they are not very active to date. I recommend they begin Read more…