Twitter lists: Twitter is a busy social media platform and is a great place for finding leads and attracting leads.  Every second there are an average of 6,000 tweets tweeted, which comes out to over 350,000 tweets sent per minute. There is, however, an easy solution for cutting down the clutter and that is by using lists on Twitter!

Twitter Lists are largly under-utilized, but they are, key for making the most of your Check out HubSpots Twitter marketing lists.

Unique Ideas for Twitter Lists

1. Curate great content using your own lists. Make a list of key influencers in your niche and then you’ll have a ready-made source of content that you can curate with your audience. To be more effective, pull your list into a stream in Hootsuite where you can share and schedule your retweets easily.
2. Curate great content using other people’s lists. Not only can you make lists of your own, you can actually subscribe to other people’s lists (read: the lists of key influencers in your niche). The best part is that you can pull the lists you’ve subscribed to into a stream in Hootsuite as well. So if you don’t want to take the time to create your own list, simply subscribe to someone else’s. Click here to follow a great list of 45 awesome influencers. Simple.
3. Make a private list of prospects. Make a private list for possible leads for your business. You could even create multiple lists: cold leads, warm leads, hot leads, etc., and move people from one list to another as they move through your pipeline. And because you can filter based on this list, you can easily cut the clutter and see just their content, which will allow you to engage with them more easily and increase the likelihood of converting them to customers.
4. Make a private list of customers. Again, putting them on their own private list allows you to engage with this group quickly and easily, increasing the loyalty of your customers. You may want to keep this list private, though, just in case your competitors are watching.
5. Create a private list of competitors. And just like they’re probably watching you, there’s nothing wrong with keeping an eye on your competitors in return!
6. Create a list for idea generation. If you know that certain accounts are always putting out great content, such as quotes, you can create a list of those accounts and monitor them to generate ideas for your own content. This is especially useful because it allows you to see how well the content resonated with audiences (the number of favorites and retweets) before you actually create it (ideally in the form of an image on Twitter to get an even better response).
7. Create a private list of networking contacts. Twitter provides unlimited opportunities to build relationships. Use this list on Twitter to retweet and promote these individuals as much as possible and get on their radar.
8. Use public lists to flatter people. As long as lists are public, Twitter users can see what lists they’re on. Put influencers you want relationships with onto lists that they would find flattering. These lists are also likely to attract others to you who are looking for lists like yours. Win-win.
9. Create a list of event attendees or speakers. A list like this is helpful both for attendees as well as those who aren’t in attendance, since it makes it easy to access any information being tweeted from the event. This is a great way to not only provide valuable information, but also to draw attention to yourself.
10. Resource lists for your customers. What kind of information would your customers/followers find valuable? This could be a list of your favorite social media bloggers, your favorite authors, or maybe your favorite go-to companies for complimentary services.
11. Location-based lists. If you’re a local business, consider sharing some Twitter love with a list of other local businesses that you love.
12. People who engage with you regularly. By creating a list of people who engage with you often on social media, you’ll be able to easily reciprocate with some love in return. This will decrease the likelihood that they’ll slip through the cracks.

The post 12 Unique Ways To Use Lists On #Twitter first appeared on Cloud Engineer - Everton Collins.

What is a Certificate Signing Request (CSR)?

A (CSR) is a file that you (or your server administrator) need to generate on the server that needs the certificate. You will generate it with a matching private key file that must remain on the server. The (CSR) contains the matching public key and other information like your organization’s name, location, and domain name. If there are any mistakes in that information, you can correct them on the next step.

You can find step by step instructions for creating your (CSR) on a variety of platforms in the support section of our website.

You can see here the basic form for Creating a Certificate Signing Request (CSR).

Or, if you have a Windows server, download the DigiCert Certificate Utility for Windows to automatically generate and upload your CSR.

Here is an example of what a CSR looks like:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----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-----END CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----

 

The first line and the last line will always be the same; everything in between will be different.

The post What is a Certificate Signing Request (CSR)? first appeared on Cloud Engineer - Everton Collins.

– “A system of advertising in which site A agrees to feature buttons from site B, and site A gets a commission on any sales generated for site B. It can also be applied to situations in which an advertiser may be looking for marketing information, rather than a cash sale. Popular among startups with very small marketing budgets; also know as Lead Generation.”

Why does a company need an affiliate program?

Having defined, affiliate marketing, the next obvious question is, why would a company need affiliates when it can market its products on its own.

To answer this, while a company may be very huge in terms of the infrastructure, or has a really successful product, it cannot sit silent and bank on its own strengths alone, but leverage the relationships it currently developed.

What would a company look for in an affiliate?

Let’s face it every website which has a decent hit rate does enjoy a certain niche market. You could say its with smaller sites that you see a higher percentage of customer loyalty. There are various reasons to this; one most obvious factor is the service and the personalization provided by the smaller sites. It is sites like these which attract companies to negotiate them into signing up as an affiliate.

A few pointers to keep in mind before signing up as an affiliate:

1. Take stock of the situation.

Or as the “Gurus” call it, make analysis of your site. This will present your website in a very plain and subtle way. Through this you would know where your website’s strength lies in.

2. Scout for the right product for you.

This is common sense, but let me reiterate this fact. Always sign up for products you think will fit in with your website’s theme. You would not want to be a web host and sign up as an affiliate, selling another web host who promises to give you a 50% commission. Now that would be very silly to do. The bottom line is that sign up for services that will “Add Value” to the services provided by your website.

3. The Affiliate Terms & Conditions.

Always ensure that you read the terms & conditions carefully and clarify with the company in case you have any further queries.

4. Prepare your site.

Another major problem in affiliate marketing is tracking. Always ensure that you have some tools and logs to monitor the traffic on your site and if possible the outgoing links, clicks, etc. Let’s face it, no matter how big a company is, setting up the perfect affiliate tracking tools is something which I have not come across so far. So there will always be a situation where in you will have to lose out on a conversion. Make sure that you have your back covered with the tools so that your case will have credibility. Remember, a company would never want to deny an affiliate, especially if the affiliate is really genuine.

Get value for money and create your own affiliate network. Keep all the money in house and start your own customer rewards network. If you sell products or services create a few banners (need a graphic designer for banners give us a call 561-210-7198) and let us setup your affiliate program using iDevAffiliate! software.

Let us manage your affiliate program and drive traffic to your website selling more products and services. Contact us Today call 561-210-7198!

The post Affiliate Management Software: Start an Affiliate Program! first appeared on Cloud Engineer - Everton Collins.

With more than 5 billion searches happening on Google Shopping (CPC) every year. Many of those retail specific searches happen through on the Google Shopping platform, a cost per click program.

Google Shopping (CPC) is the top performer highest traffic and conversion rate shopping site for merchants online – consistently generating more clicks and sales for retailers.

Get Google Shopping (CPC) Product Listing Ads to work for you

https://youtu.be/AXFOlKxugGQ

Promote your inventory

Product Listing Ads appear when someone searches for your products on google.com and google.com/shopping. Google will show the customer a picture of your item, its price, and your store name. Customers who click on your ad will be directed to your website where they can buy your item.

If your a retailer on Google Shopping (CPC) you should review the new Google data feed requirements before signing up for the program. All merchants can manually upload feeds or use an FTP to upload in bulk.

Products Feed Specification

Here are a list of some fields you would want to include in your Basic Product Information feed.

id [id] – An identifier of the item

title [title] – Title of the item

description [description] – Description of the item

google product category [google_product_category] – Google’s category of the item

product type [product_type] – Your category of the item

ink [link] – URL directly linking to your item’s page on your website

mobile link [mobile_link] – Mobile Landing Page URLs

image link [image_link] – URL of an image of the item

additional image link [additional_image_link] – Additional URLs of images of the item

condition [condition] – Condition or state of the item

availability [availability] – Availability status of the item

availability date [availability_date] – The day a pre-ordered product becomes available for delivery

price [price] – Price of the item

There are just a few fields you can use in your Google Shopping Feed.

The post Google Shopping (CPC) – Best Shopping Engines first appeared on Cloud Engineer - Everton Collins.

Part 2 in a series on Virtual Box, How to Use it.

In Part 1. Virtual Box What it is? we explained what it is.

In this article we’ll demonstrate several uses for Virtual Box with examples we have created.

What can Virtual Box be used for?

Virtualbox can be used for a number of uses.  Here are just a few examples.  Virtualbox has been used for test and  development environment.  You could use Virtual Box for any number of test cases or situations where you decommissioned an old OS but still need to run a particular piece of software as a standalone service.

View the image below we have several VM (Virtual Machines) created.  Here are several VM’s running Elastix VOIP Server on Linux Cent OS, Windows 7  32bit and Ultimate, Windows 8.1, Ubuntu 14.04 running the Mean Stack. (MongoDB is the leading No-SQL database, Express is a minimal and flexible node.js web application framework, AngularJS lets you extend HTML vocabulary for your application, Node.js is a platform built on Chrome’s JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications).

Here a few examples that I we will demonstrate and walk you through.

1. Play With Android On Your PC

Thinking of buying an Android device, but wish you could give the operating system a spin before you spend your hard-earned cash? Set up Android in Virtual Box to take a quick test drive. It’s possible thanks to AndroidX86, a port of Android to the PC.

You won’t get the full Android experience – notably, there isn’t access to the Android Marketplace. You will, however, get a feel for the default apps, and the system’s excellent integration with Google services such as Gmail and Google Calendar.

2. Windows 7 – Setup and install a version of Windows 7

First we need to get a iso copy of windows 7 so we can install this on our VirtualBox installation.  You will have to locate a copy of Windows 7 iso and then install.

3. Try Out Any Live CD Without Rebooting

Visit any of the popular Linux platform website and you will find version of the OS in iso format that you can download and install as a VM with Virtual Box.  Here is Distrowatch where you can go and download almost any Lnux Distro and install on Virtual Box.

We will setup and install a version of Linux Cent OS and take you to the command line and run some basic command once we have it install and setup.

The post How to Use Virtual Box – Part 2. first appeared on Cloud Engineer - Everton Collins.

Listed are some benefits to using AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud.

• You can install a server in minutes and not days. (Our Windows 2012 Server should take 10-20 minutes to setup).
• Your server is automatically licensed and you don’t have to purchase a license for the Windows Server Software.
• You can setup your server locally to your market, so if your in New York you can setup a server in the East Coast reducing latency for all your users.

Step 1. –  You must have a AWS account, so if you don’t have an account head over to https://aws.amazon.com/ and create/login to your account.

Step: 1a. – You should create a new account or sign-in with your Amazon id/pw if you already have an account.  Be sure that this account is one that can be used by other members of your organization.

 Step 2. – Here you should select EC2 and notice you can change what region your server will be setup, there by reducing the latency your users will experience once they connect to your server.

Step 3. –  EC2 simply means stand for Elastic Cloud Compute, this is where you will spin-up the virtual server and which makes setting up new servers fast and very efficient.  As you will notice there are many other options in the dashboard which we won’t deal with today.

Step 4. – Listed in our account we should see all the running instances, volumes etc.  Here you can see I already have another instance installed, volume and key pair, plus 2 security groups setup.

Step 5 – Now we get to choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), for our installation we’ll be using ami-478d782c
(Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Base).

Step 6 – Our next step allows us to choose the instance type, simply choosing the specs for our server ie: Memory, CPU, Storage which we’ll need to consider so we have the right setup for our application and enough resources to handle the load.

Here we chose the t2.micro  (free tier eligible for 1 year).

Step 7. – Configuring our instance details, we set the IP address, subnet, Domain etc.  Many common settings when setting up a server in a Domain Environment.  You should already have a working knowledge of the domain you would like to configure.

Step 8. – You will need to provide disk storage, so select how many GB you’ll need for server setup and backup drives etc.

Step 9. – A very important step where you will need to setup a security group.  The security group allows who or what can access your server.  You can set the IP’s allowed to access your server and block various ip’s and ports on the server. Take a moment and set your security policy and apply to your server.

Step 10. – Take a moment to review your server settings, make any changes as needed for finalizing the server.

Step 12. – This step is very important as this is where you will set the password for your admin account.

Step 13 – At this stage your instance is almost ready to be launched, you will have to wait for the setup to complete.

Step 14. – Final Step is now to launch your instance, just wait for the setup to complete and use your id/pw to use remote desktop into your server.

Now you have your Windows 2012 Server Setup, configured now you can login into your server and begin deploying apps, setup hosting or whatever your plans are for your new server instance.

Resources:

• Getting Started with AWS videos steps.
• AWS Simple Monthly Calculator.

The post Spin up a Windows 2012 Server in Amazon AWS EC2 – Free Instance first appeared on Cloud Engineer - Everton Collins.

All your communication in one place, integrating with the tools and services you use every day.

Some of the great uses for Slack

Slack is free to use for as long as you want and with an unlimited number of people.  Sign-Up Today!

The post Slack for group communications, what is it? first appeared on Cloud Engineer - Everton Collins.

This is a 2 part series on Virtualbox.

Virtualbox What it is? – Part 1.

Virtualbox How to Use it? – Part 2. – coming soon.

VirtualBox – is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware, targeted at server, desktop and embedded use.  For a thorough introduction to virtualization and VirtualBox, please refer to the online version of the VirtualBox User Manual’s first chapter.

VirtualBox  virtualizer for x86 hardware, developed by Oracle and know as a well established solutions provider with products and solutions for every role in the enterprise.

A new VirtualBox installation on a mac laptop without any images installed.

End User Wiki Documentation (www.virtualbox.com)

In order to run VirtualBox on your machine, you need:

• Reasonably powerful x86 hardware. Any recent Intel or AMD processor should do.

• Memory. Depending on what guest operating systems you want to run, you will need at least 512 MB of RAM (but probably more, and the more the better). Basically, you will need whatever your host operating system needs to run comfortably, plus the amount that the guest operating system needs.So, if you want to run Windows XP on Windows XP, you probably won’t enjoy the experience much with less than 1 GB of RAM. If you want to try out Windows Vista in a guest, it will refuse to install if it is given less than 512 MB RAM, so you’ll need that for the guest alone, plus the memory your operating system normally needs.

• Hard disk space. While VirtualBox itself is very lean (a typical installation will only need about 30 MB of hard disk space), the virtual machines will require fairly huge files on disk to represent their own hard disk storage.  So, to install Windows XP, for example, you will need a file that will easily grow to several GB in size.

• A supported host operating system. Presently, we support Windows (XP and later), many Linux distributions, Mac OS X, Solaris and OpenSolaris.

• A supported guest operating system. Besides the user manual (see below), up-to-date information is available at “Status: Guest OSes“.

Best to check the Wiki on settings needed for current Operating Systems ie: Windows 7, 8, and soon Windows 10 or even Mac OX 10.

In Part 2 – Virtualbox How to Use it? We’ll give some specific examples of using Virtualbox to run several operating systems on your laptop or desktop computer without having to setup a new pc.

The post VirtualBox, What is It? – Part 1. first appeared on Cloud Engineer - Everton Collins.

From time to time I’ll get requests for laptop purchasing advice, many people are always on the lookout for new laptop technology as the Windows OS landscape changes almost every 5-10 years it can be confusing what to purchase.  Microsoft the developers of Windows OS are a recognized brand name and the most commonly installed OS based on it’s price point when compared to the MAC OSX, which is what I use daily along with Windows Servers and Linux Servers.

So what should one look for when getting a new laptop?  My basic Laptop Purchasing Advice:

1.  Reviews:

Whenever I purchase Technology (Laptops, TV’s, Phone’s, anything really etc.) I like to read the reviews so I can be informed of what works and what doesn’t. Reviews from consumers like you or me provide a healthy view of a users experience with a particular product/service.

When reading reviews you get a general idea of what consumers experiences has been with a product or service, ie: good or bad.

I like to see anywhere from 10 – 25 reviews so this gives me a healthy idea of what the consumer like and really like or disliked about a product or service.  With this being said to be an intelligent buyer you have to be informed so one should read the product description and features so you know what the product or service is supposed to do.  “What does is say on the tin”  does it do what is says on the tin?

Places like Newegg.com, Amazon Laptops, and others give great consumer reviews. Check them out.

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Go to all Departments – > Computers -> Laptops

2. Check the warranty.

What’s the Warranty on the laptop and return policy from store or manufacturer? Understand this so there are fewer problems when you purchase your new laptop and need to return it.

3. Ram/Hard drive

Be sure you have plenty of Ram for the application your purchasing the laptop for.  I would say if money is no problem then I would go with as much ram as your laptop can support; else 4 GB should be plenty enough for what your probably want to do with the laptop, write papers, basic email, chat, etc.

The faster the hard drives the more it costs and also better performance over the life of the drive usually the higher the spin the faster the drive.

Check out some Performance charts over at Toms Hardware (SSD – Solid State Hard Drives over the older IDE – Integrated Drive Electronics Drives).

4. Faster CPU is better (Cost more).

For more intensive applications ie: Gaming, Video Production you will have to look at faster CPU, fast video cards, fast hard drives etc.  Get the fasted CPU you can afford as when you have more memory intensive programs and many programs open your system can and will slow down.

Feel free Check out some in-expensive laptops here at Walmart:

Go to all Departments – > Computers -> Laptops

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Go to all Departments – > Computers -> Laptops

Review several Laptop offers on Amazon

The post Basic Laptop Purchasing Advice first appeared on Cloud Engineer - Everton Collins.

A (Address) Record

An A record tells a DNS server what specific IP address to map for a host name. It is the most common type of DNS record. An A record is typically used to direct your domain name, for example www.exampledomainname.com, to a web server. These host records can be used to direct your domain name to your web server’s IP address (via A or AAAA records)

Example A record format: 216.239.38.21

AAAA (IPv6 Address) Record

An AAAA (or “quad-A”) record is similar to an A record, except that it maps a hostname to an IPv6 address. An A record specifies an IPv4 address, which is currently the dominant Internet Protocol version. In 1998 the IETF designated IPv6 as the successor to version 4 mainly for its much larger amount of available addresses, which provides flexibility in allocated addresses and routing traffic and prevents address exhaustion as more and more hosts are connecting to the Internet and available IPv4 addresses are running out.

IPv6 addresses are normally written as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits, where each group is separated by a colon.

Example IPv6 format: 2006:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334

The post A Record: What is it? How is it used? first appeared on Cloud Engineer - Everton Collins.