Wall St. lower as Fed sets stage for Dec rate hike

Wall Street stayed weak on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve kept interest rates unchanged but signaled it could hike in December, as equities remained pressured by uncertainty over the impending U.S. elections.

The S&P 500 was headed toward its seventh straight session of declines, its longest such streak in about five years.

The U.S. central bank said the economy had gained steam and job gains remained solid, and expressed more optimism that inflation was moving toward its 2 percent target.

It was the last Fed decision before next week's presidential election between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, a race that appears to be increasingly close.

"There’s election uncertainty out there as well as the Fed uncertainty," said John Canally, investment strategist and economist for LPL Financial in Boston. "They didn’t say they weren’t going to tighten in December, but they didn’t say they would. They just kind of left it open-ended."

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI fell 52.32 points, or 0.29 percent, to 17,984.78, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 11.29 points, or 0.53 percent, to 2,100.43 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 40.60 points, or 0.79 percent, to 5,112.97.

While discounting a hike at this meeting, traders had before the statement placed the likelihood of a rate increase in December at nearly 75 percent, according to the CME Fedwatch website.

In September, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said that a move before year's end was likely as long as U.S. employment and inflation continued to strengthen.

“The Fed continues to inch even closer to a December rate hike as it states that its case for raising rates has strengthened," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.

“The market may be wondering if there's enough evidence of a stronger economy to warrant a rate hike versus a belief that Chair Yellen needs to replenish her toolkit in the event of a weakening economic backdrop,” Krosby said.

Among sector laggards were utilities .SPLRCU, real estate .SPLRCR and telecommunications .SPLRCL companies, which are high dividend paying groups thought to be vulnerable in rising rate environments.

Energy .SPNY also lagged, down 1.2 percent, as oil prices fell.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 2.51-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.21-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 2 new 52-week highs and 9 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 16 new highs and 134 new lows.

Source: www.reuters.com

Alibaba beats revenue expectations with strong e-commerce, media growth

Chinese online shopping giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd reported a 55 percent rise in second-quarter revenue on Wednesday, beating analyst estimates on the back of core e-commerce sales and strong media and entertainment growth.

It was a second straight quarter of robust results for the company, suggesting it can still generate strong growth even as worries abound about the health of China's economy and its retail sector.

Alibaba's American Depository shares were up around 3 percent in pre-market trading ahead of the New York open.

China's biggest e-commerce firm is currently gearing up for its Nov. 11 Singles' Day shopping festival.

The event is a yardstick for both the company and the health of the Chinese retail sector, although the United States Securities and Exchange Commission is currently investigating the accounting methods and system Alibaba uses to report its Single's Day figures.

On Thursday, Alibaba said the investigation would not interfere with its performance on Singles' Day.

The company has also been looking to increase cross-border sales volumes as the Chinese market becomes increasingly saturated. It is has been expanding its footprint abroad, buying Southeast Asian online retailer Lazada Group SA for roughly $1 billion in May.

Alibaba generated revenue of 34.3 billion yuan ($5 billion) in the three months to Sept. 30, beating an average estimate of 33.9 billion yuan in a Thomson Reuters poll of 24 analysts.

Revenues at the company's core commerce business jumped 41 percent from the previous year to 28.49 billion yuan, dominated by sales within China.

The company's media and digital entertainment business, which was united under a new entity on Monday, saw revenues rise 302 percent from the same period a year earlier, due mostly to the consolidation of Youku Tudou.

Net income attributable to shareholders fell to 2.97 yuan per share, a 67 percent drop from 8.87 yuan a share in the same quarter a year ago.

Alibaba attributed that drop to a one-off revaluation gain of 18.6 billion yuan ($2.75 billion) a year earlier from its equity interest in Alibaba Health.

Non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) net income was 9.25 billion yuan, up 36 percent from a year earlier.

($1 = 6.7600 Chinese yuan renminbi)

Source: www.reuters.com

U.S. election, rate uncertainty rattle Wall Street

Wall Street sold off on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 closing at the lowest level since July 7, amid growing concern over the impending U.S. presidential election and prospects for higher U.S. interest rates.

Stocks pared losses after falling steeply in early afternoon trading as the S&P 500 breached a key technical level.

The tumultuous presidential race between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump has appeared to tighten in the past week after news that the FBI was investigating more emails as part of a probe into Clinton's use of a private email system.

"There is concern over Trump being unexpected, because the market has really priced in a Clinton win and it hasn’t priced in a Trump win at all," said Ken Polcari, director of the NYSE floor division at O’Neil Securities in New York.

The selloff in equities comes as the Federal Reserve holds its two-day policy meeting, with its statement due on Wednesday. While traders do not expect the central bank to raise interest rates just a week ahead of the presidential election, they are looking for signs confirming that the Fed is set to hike rates in December.

Real estate .SPLRCR, telecommunications .SPLRCL and utilities .SPLRCU stocks - sectors that tend to perform poorly in rising rate environments - sold off especially sharply.

"It’s really hitting the dividend-yielding names harder than anything else...," said Stephen Massocca, chief investment officer at Wedbush Equity Management LLC in San Francisco. "I don’t know if there is a new 'taper tantrum' sort of building here on concerns the Fed will act in December and the whole low interest rate environment is about to change."

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S. October 31, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

"Taper tantrum" refers to the period in 2013 when markets were rattled by the prospect of the Fed gradually reducing its stimulus program.

The S&P 500 .SPX lost 14.43 points, or 0.68 percent, to 2,111.72, its biggest single-day percentage drop since Oct. 11.

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI fell 105.32 points, or 0.58 percent, to 18,037.1, and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 35.56 points, or 0.69 percent, to 5,153.58.

The CBOE Volatility Index .VIX, a gauge of near-term investor anxiety, jumped to almost a two-month high.

Investors also pointed to the S&P 500 breaching an important technical level as reason for stocks steepening their slide in afternoon trading.

"It started with Trump and the election uncertainty, and with the decline you broke through some important levels," said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis, citing the 2,120 level on the S&P 500 that had been the lower boundary of a four-month trading range.

That level was tested in mid-September and mid-October, which underscored its importance as a technical support for the index.

With Tuesday's decline, the S&P 500 is up only 3.3 percent for the year.

Tronc (TRNC.O) dropped 12.4 percent after Gannett (GCI.N), the publisher of USA Today, abandoned plans to buy the publisher of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Gannett fell 2.3 percent.

U.S.-listed shares of Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX.N)(VRX.TO) soared 33.7 percent after a report that the drugmaker is in talks to sell its stomach-drug business.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 3.21-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.29-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 5 new 52-week highs and 11 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 30 new highs and 152 new lows.

Source: www.reuters.com

Dollar stands tall against yen ahead of U.S. GDP data

The dollar stood tall against the yen in Asian trading on Friday, on track for weekly gains against most rivals, as investors waited for U.S. third quarter growth data later in the day.

Positive growth numbers would reinforce expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve is gearing up to hike interest rates.

The dollar got an overnight lift from yields on U.S. Treasuries, which climbed to roughly five-month peaks tracking gains in German and British bond yields as investors speculated that the Bank of England and the European Central Bank would both hold off on further easing measures. [US/]

Strong growth data in Britain prompted investors to trim their bets that the Bank of England will cut interest rates at its policy meeting next week.

"The UK GDP was higher than expected, which boosted yields, and then higher U.S. yields in turn helped lift the dollar," said Kaneo Ogino, director at foreign exchange research firm Global-info Co in Tokyo.

The dollar notched a three-month high against the yen of 105.34 yen JPY= on Thursday. It was last down 0.1 percent on the day at 105.22 yen, up 1.4 percent for the week.

"105 was both a psychological and technical point, and it broke ahead of U.S. GDP later today," Ogino said. "Some people did not want to be short ahead of that, also with the Bank of Japan and Fed meetings next week, and U.S. nonfarm payrolls data one week from today."

Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda told parliament last week that he saw no need to ease at the bank's Oct. 31-Nov. 1 policy meeting, suggesting there will be no further monetary stimulus except in response to a big external shock.

Data released earlier on Friday showed Japan's core consumer prices fell 0.5 percent in September from a year earlier to mark the seventh straight month of declines, adding to a recent run of gloomy indicators.

The dollar also traded around a 7 1/2 year high against the Swedish crown after Sweden's Riksbank said the chances of another interest rate cut had increased and it was ready to expand its quantitative easing programme.

The greenback last stood at 9.0776 crowns SEK= after climbing to 9.0890 crowns on Thursday, its 

The euro EUR= edged up 0.1 percent to $1.0901, up 0.2 percent for the week.

Against a basket of six major currencies, the dollar edged up to 98.929 .DXY, on track to rise 0.2 percent for the week in which it touched a nearly nine-month high of 99.119.

Sterling was up 0.1 percent at $1.2169 GBP=D4, on track to end a choppy week down 0.5 percent.

Source: www.reuters.com

U.S. eyes long prison term for Wall Street scion's fraud

U.S. prosecutors on Thursday said Andrew Caspersen, the scion of a wealthy Wall Street family, should spend as long as 15-2/3 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to defrauding friends, family and a charity out of more than $38 million.

In papers filed with the federal court in Manhattan, prosecutors said Caspersen, 40, who had worked at a unit of investment banker Paul Taubman's PJT Partners Inc, abused the trust of his victims through his "long-running, significant and elaborate" fraud.

Prosecutors said the son of late Wall Street financier Finn M.W. Caspersen ran a Ponzi-like scheme from November 2014 to March 2016 to defraud more than one dozen investors, claiming he would use their funds to make loans to private equity firms.

Instead, prosecutors said Andrew Caspersen used money he raised to trade in his own accounts and pay earlier investors.

Though lawyers for Caspersen have said a "pathological" gambling disorder and mental health issues fueled their client's crimes, prosecutors said the 151- to 188-month prison term recommended under federal guidelines was justified.

The sentencing request came six days after Caspersen's lawyers said the Princeton University and Harvard Law School graduate's gambling addiction and efforts to rehabilitate himself were among the "powerful mitigating circumstances" justifying leniency.

Caspersen is scheduled to be sentenced in Manhattan on Nov. 4 by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, a prominent critic of federal sentencing guidelines.

The judge told Caspersen at his July 6 plea hearing that he would consider the guidelines when imposing punishment, but that they "border on the irrational, and I like a sentence to be rational."

Caspersen has agreed not to appeal any prison term longer than 15-2/3 years. He also agreed to forfeit more than $45 million, though his lawyer has said he cannot afford that sum.

The case is U.S. v. Caspersen, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 16-cr-00414.

Source: www.reuters.com

6 Proven Ways Content Marketing Benefits your Small Business

For small and local businesses, it can be hard to stand out against larger nationwide brands. However, content marketing can help your small business attract attention, and for relevant niches in your industry, too.

Content marketing is a marketing approach that involves creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to your prospective audience in the hopes of driving a consumer action, and it has numerous benefits for small businesses. It can give you the opportunity to not only expand your company, but also to build your reputation and establish a place as a trusted leader in the industry.

1. It generates traffic to your site

Content marketing drives inbound traffic to your site. When potential customers have a problem or a particular need, they’ll search for a solution. Having that solution, whether it be information, a helpful guide or even entertainment, means customers are going to visit your site and possibly turn to it in the future for additional solutions.

Audiences love when content feels tailored to their interests or particular needs. In fact, that’s why custom content is favored by up to 68% of consumers. By creating custom content for your site that tailors to your target audience’s needs and interests, you’ll be building their trust and solving their problems.

2. It builds brand awareness

If you’re consistently publishing fresh and unique content on your website and promoting it on social media, you’re creating more opportunities for your target audience to see your name and content. Plus, if you’re pleasing your audience, they’ll be more likely to spread the word about your small business to their followers and friends, which helps you reach even more people.

But, content marketing can also help build your link popularity. If what you’re producing is quality content, people will link back to you. It can be difficult to rank against bigger companies as a small business, but building link popularity can help your online visibility, so your website and content will rank higher on a search results page.

3. It can increase leads and sales

This partially goes without saying, but the more people you have visiting your site and viewing your content, the more likely they are to convert into leads and eventually customers.

Even for small businesses, customers rely on blogs and website content when they’re making purchasing decisions; people like to know as much as they can before they buy. Plus, creating content relevant to your company’s product or services helps your audience truly understand what they will gain by doing business with you.

It’ll also help you become a trusted leader in your industry, and consumers buy from people and businesses they trust. With content marketing, you’re quite literally showing your audience and customers that you know what you’re talking about, which makes you seem like a safe bet to buy from.

4. It establishes you as a thought leader

The more you establish yourself as well-educated in the industry, the more they’ll look to you as an expert or authority, especially if you provide your audience with high-quality content that genuinely helps them.

Earning the title of thought-leader is always a good thing, because then you’re in a position where people not only listen to what you say, but they turn to you first for the answers they need.

For small businesses, this is especially important. It shows your audience that you’re just as knowledgeable as the bigger brands, but you can also provide customers with the more personal, small business experience.

5. It encourages engagement

If you create interesting content, your audience is more likely to respond to it, which opens the door for you to engage with them directly. This gives you the opportunity to further delight your readers by either continuing to entertain them or answering a specific question they may have.

Beyond customers, though, it also gives you the opportunity to engage with other industry leaders to discuss topics you’ve also written about. This can broaden your network and help you build stronger connections with other leaders, which allows you to establish yourself as an authority in the industry as well.

6. It costs less than traditional marketing

Content marketing for small businesses can prove to be more cost-effective than more traditional forms of marketing, especially if you can generate the content yourself. Lead generation through inbound content marketing tends to cost only half of what businesses usually spend on outbound marketing. Spreading your content through social media and email, posting it on your website or contributing to larger sites to get your name out there are all either low-cost or free.

Plus, inbound content marketing means the customers are coming to you, so it’s more efficient than traditional outbound forms because the consumers are already aware and interested.

Source: www.entrepreneur.com

Asian stocks eke out gains, dollar nears a nine-month high

Asian stocks eked out gains but lacked clear direction on Monday after Wall Street's sluggish performance late last week, while the dollar hit a near nine-month high as comments from a Federal Reserve official boosted bets of a rate hike by year-end.

Spreadbetters expected Britain's FTSE .FTSE, Germany's DAX .GDAXI and France's CAC .FCHI to open slightly higher.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS inched up 0.2 percent.
South Korea's Kospi .KS11 gained 0.4 percent. Australian stocks lost 0.5 percent, hurt by a decline in energy shares.

Japan's Nikkei .N225 moved in a tight range and was last up 0.2 percent.
"There are few investors who want to chase the market higher until they see more news from overseas, especially those regarding a U.S. rate hike," said Yutaka Miura, senior technical analyst at Mizuho Securities in Tokyo.
Shanghai .SSEC outperformed, rising over 1 percent as energy and raw material stocks jumped on indications that government measures to slash production capacity had shown signs of some success.

The optimism spread to Hong Kong, but gains in the Hang Sang .HSI were limited by concerns over continued yuan weakness, as well as a possible U.S. rate hike. [.SS]
On Friday in Wall Street, the S&P 500 .SPX and the Dow .DJI were little changed and the Nasdaq .IXIC advanced as a record day for Microsoft (MSFT.O) and earnings from McDonald's (MCD.N) helped offset a fall in energy and healthcare shares. [.N]
"It will be something of a hiatus week, given that next week brings the BoJ, Fed and BoE meetings...however there is a heavily back-loaded run of data in the U.S., Japan and euro zone, and there will be a deluge of U.S. and indeed European and Asian corporate earnings," wrote Marc Ostwald, strategist at ADM Investor Services International.

Global markets are bracing for a slew of data this week including consumer price data from Japan and some euro zone countries, third quarter U.S. GDP and a number of purchasing managers' index (PMI) data from developed economies.
In currencies, the dollar index .DXY was up 0.1 percent at 98.780 after touching 98.846, its highest since Feb. 3.

The U.S. currency received a boost last week as the euro slid after the European Central Bank doused talk it was contemplating tapering its monetary easing.
The dollar was also supported by hawkish comments from Fed officials including New York Fed President William Dudley and higher expectations that Hillary Clinton will win the U.S. presidential election, which have increased bets that the Fed will raise rates in December.
The dollar was steady at 103.905 yen JPY=. The euro slipped 0.2 percent to $1.0869 EUR= after falling on Friday to $1.0859, its lowest since March 10.
The Australian dollar was steady at $0.7614 AUD=D4.

Source: www.reuters.com

11 Ways to Make Money While You Sleep

Do you remember in the past we were warned to be careful about being in debt because interest never stopped charging us, interest never slept, never took a day off, never took a holiday. Well the reverse is true, as well.

Is your money making money while you sleep? Does it sound too good to be true? Since we still live in the age of the interest, it’s not that difficult to earn extra money on the side.

With that in mind, here are 11 ways that you can actually earn money while you sleep.

1. Start a blog.

Perhaps the most popular way to earn a passive income is by launching your own blog. It only takes a couple of minutes to setup and is cheap to start - just purchase your domain name and pay for hosting.

After that, start creating amazing content that people would be interested in reading or sharing. For example, if you’re an accountant that has helped small business owners with their taxes, then that could be your blog. I personally have my invoicing blog to help customers know everything there is to know about invoicing. This draws thousands of signups a month.

Make sure the topics you write about are popular. If you still love your pet rock, I doubt there would be enough people visiting your our site to monetize it. But, you never know.

Once you’ve gained a following, you can start making money from of your blog by:

Earning commissions as an affiliate. This is where you push other people’s products or services on your site. Make sure these products or services are relevant to your blog. For example, that accounting blog could become an affiliate for accounting or invoicing software. Once you find an affiliate partner you’ll be given a unique code so that whenever a visitor clicks that link on your site you’ll earn your commission.

Sell-advertising. If you’re site has the traffic to become an affiliate, then it may also be good enough for advertisers to purchase ads on your site. You may start off small, like making under $20 per ad. But, you may eventually be able to charge triple digits. Again, you site must be quality.

Find sponsors. This is slightly different than just selling ads on your site. Sponsorships may be a one-off piece of sponsored content or permanent logo embedded in your footer.

2. Sell your own information product.

If you’re knowledgeable in a certain area, then you can start creating products, such as eBooks or videos, and selling them on your blog. It may take a lot of work to create and market your products, but once all the leg work is over, you can just set back and collect the proceeds.

3. Earn royalties.

If you’re a talented musician, actor, or author, then you could earn royalties from your work. In other words people will pay you for using your work or creative assets.

If you aren’t talented enough, but still interested in earning royalties, then check out Royalty Exchange. It’s a marketplace where you can buy and sell royalties.

4. Create a membership community.

If you’ve proven yourself to be a authority figure, then you can create a membership community where you pay a monthly fee to receive additional high-quality content and information that’s not available to non-members.

One of my favorite examples is Timothy Sykes who makes more than $100,000 per month in passive income through his membership community which discusses how people can make money in trading penny stocks. 

5. Install an autoresponder.

Another common online business model is using autoresponders to sell services, products or memberships. This is where people leave their email address on your site and then they’ll receive an automated email containing the link to download products or quality information you have to offer, as well as follow-up with a series of emails.

You’ll a need service like OptinMonster to make this possible. I also recommend you read this Quick Sprout guide to get started with autoresponders.

6. Flip websites.

If you’ve put in the time and effort in building a website and you have gained a lot of traffic, then you may be able to sell it to an interested party by listing on marketplaces like Flippa. I've bought and sold a lot of sites here and made a lot of money.

7. Sell physical products.

Just like with a blogging site, there are several ways to earn a passive income by selling physical products. Probably one of the best known ways is by selling your old junk on eBay. But even if you don’t have anything left to sell you can start drop shopping. This is where you sell products for a company on eBay or Amazon and they’ll take care of the rest - including shipping.

You can also launch your own eCommerce store by using Shopify. They literally give you everything you need to sell products online from a complete online shop to including buy buttons on your social media channels.

8. Invest in stocks or shares.

When you invest in stocks you become a stakeholder. That entitles you to a share of their profits. Investing in stocks has been a popular way to earn a passive income for years, and thanks to the internet, it’s easier than ever to research and invest in stocks on your own.

Keep in mind that the stocks you invest in can change throughout the various stages of life. For example, I look for investments that can benefit my daughter, such as a CA529 plan that will go towards her college tuition.

9. Peer-to-peer lending.

Companies like LendingClub, Propser, and Harmoney have created a new industry where anyone can become a lender. They will then match you with a consumer who either prefers or has trouble securing a loan from a bank. You can earn a higher interest rates on the loans you issued since you’re dealing directly with the borrower.

10. Rent out property.

Thanks to Airbnb, you can rent out your home while on vacation or your vacation home when not in use. You can also rent out your garage, parking space, or unused office space. It’s a nice supplemental income without really doing anything except placing an ad.

11. Hire a middleman.

This is also known as arbitrage and is basically where you have someone else do the work for you. For example, you could start a dog walking service or web design firm, but outsource the actual dog walking or coding to someone else. You’re much better doing anything except being the middleman who is in charge of marketing these services.

Source: www.entrepreneur.com

6 New Social Media Marketing Tools the Experts Use. You Should, Too.

Social media is transforming the way brands market themselves online. Actually, it’s safe to say that social media has already changed things in a big way.

New platforms have emerged that continue to transform the way we communicate. These changes affect both how brands promote their message, and how their fans respond.

With these new platforms comes a handful of new tools to help social media marketers engage with audiences in creative ways, and to keep track of their efforts. To keep pace with the latest social media trends, it’s time to review and update that tool set, recognizing which tools we should keep, which we should discard and which new tools we can add to supercharge our social media efforts.

Here a shortlist of the top social media tools that every marketer should be using in 2016.

1. Buffer

With its clean interface and simple analytics features, Buffer just barely edges out Hootsuite as a favorite social media scheduling tool. You can share content across multiple accounts and networks, all from one central dashboard.

A Chrome extension makes it even easier to share on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and even LinkedIn simultaneously. Buffer has some epic social media guides and case studies on its blog, which is a great place to start if you’re new to social media marketing.

2. Social Clout

It’s all well and good to share content and get likes. In fact, it can be quite addicting. But to really understand which posts get the most engagement, we need to look past vanity metrics and focus on the metrics that matter.

Enter Social Clout, a social media analytics tool designed specifically to track engagement and calculate social media ROI. Social Clout shows you which demographics have the best engagement and which platforms convert the best, and at what times.

3. Feedly

Put your content ideation on autopilot, with Feedly. To set it up, just add the RSS feeds of your favorite blogs and writers and Feedly will create a daily “magazine” with all its content, organized by topic.

Moreover, Feedly is a great way to know what niche influencers are talking about, to join the conversation and to stay up to date with the latest industry trends. Staying up to date with the latest current events helps guide your own content strategy and social media posting schedule.

What’s great about the app is that it integrates with scheduling tools like Buffer and Hootsuite, so you can share and schedule posts from directly within the dashboard. Feedly saves hours of time and energy combing through social media posts to find good content.

4. Canva

Canva is a favorite tool for creating stunning images for social media posts. Creating images is so easy even a bean-counting marketer could do it. Using Canva’s multiple templates, fonts and colors, all you need to do is drag image elements around and drop them into place.

Canva is free to use, but don’t let that fool you. Despite its affordability, major sites like Buzzfeed use Canva to create images for their posts (which, last I checked, drive nearly half a billion visits each month).

5. Socedo

Social media campaigns have countless moving pieces, all of which need to work together if the campaigns are to be successful. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or an established social media manager, there’s never enough time in the day to manage it all while still you're looking for customers.

Socedo is a B2B demand generation tool that does most of the grunt work, so you don’t have to. It works by automating lead generation, and finding and acquiring targeted leads through different social media channels. That way, you can focus on increasing ROI (sales and revenue) without getting bogged down in minutiae and repetitive tasks.

Using a combination of keywords and demographic criteria, Socedo finds and engages prospects across major social networks. Whereas most demand-gen platforms focus on email, Socedo is one of the few that handles outbound prospecting via social.

6. Edgar

Ever notice how influencers like Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk and Richard Branson repeatedly share their old content?

While that practice may appear redundant or irksome, the fact is that old posts have high engagement when shared. It’s just plain smart.

First, social media accounts gain and lose followers with time. Re-sharing content is an excellent way to showcase your top stuff to new followers. Second, even the most loyal fans won’t be online all the time. Regular sharing is a way to engage with audiences at different times throughout the day

That said, it’s not always easy to know the best social media schedule for new and old content. Edgar knows, and shares your content at the times when it’s most likely to engage your audience. The tool categorizes all of your content by topic and target demographic, determining which posts get the highest engagement with which followers.

Edgar doesn’t stop there. After posting an update, the tool recycles the post back to the bottom of your queue, so it will post again later once the rest of your content has been shared. The result is an endless supply of social media posts that shares and reshares itself continuously, without you having to lift a finger.

Conclusion

In 2016, social media marketers can choose from thousands of tools to help streamline their social media campaigns. However, it’s important not to get bogged down with decision anxiety, giving in to the feeling that you need to learn everything all at once.

These six social media tools handle the 80/20 of social media marketing, adding sizzle and power for everyone from the bootstrapped freelancer to the full-scale social media agency. Are you ready to try them?

Source: www.entrepreneur.com

Getting and Managing Clients for Your Freelance Writing Business

In Moonlighting on the Internet, internet entrepreneur Shelby Larson presents the most reliable and proven ways you can create an extra paycheck for the short term and establish a continual revenue stream for the long term with your own website. In this edited excerpt, Larson offers her expert advice on which sites might be good for finding freelance writing gigs and how to manage them once you land them.

As a freelance writer, especially a new one, one of the hurdles you have to get past on a fairly regular basis is finding new clients to keep yourself busy and profitable. Although there are a number of mainstream websites that freelancers of all types can frequent to find jobs, such as Elance or Freelancer, here are a handful of sites you can visit to specifically locate freelance writing jobs.

Content Divas

Pros: You get a wide diversity of projects on this site, so you can build a better resume. Writers also get direct access to editors, clients, and a very supportive staff. Writers are paid weekly. There are lots of opportunities for other types of work.

Cons: Jobs pay less than you could get freelancing independently, and writers must accept pay via PayPal, although because they use the mass pay option, contractors don’t pay fees on their incoming payments. It can sometimes be a slow ramp up to regular work until you’ve established yourself as a reliable resource.

Write Jobs

Pros: Almost every second job is for some magazine, newspaper, or publication; there’s a minimum pay rate of $10 per 500 words, although average pay is much higher.

Cons: There are many work-from-home jobs, but writers outside the U.S. are disadvantaged by the high number of location-specific gigs.

ProBlogger

Pros: They have a great list of blogging and telecommuting gigs. The rates on offer are usually much higher than what you’d find on other freelancing websites. You avoid dealing with the middleman like on Elance or Freelancer, while enjoying high client response rates.

Cons: The search filter isn’t that great, so you have to scan every job to find what you’re looking for.

FreelanceWriting

Pros: It has a great search filter and pulls lists from multiple sites and job sources.

Cons: This is a really popular site, so the job quest can be fiercely competitive.

All Indie Writers

Pros: The site lists jobs by pay.

Cons: Jobs aren’t posted as consistently as on other sites—there are often two- to three-day lapses in postings.

Writers Department

Pros: This is less of a job board and more of an online hub/community that provides jobs, support, and business resources for freelance writers.

Cons: The site requires an application for access.

Freelance Writing Jobs

Pros: This site saves you time by listing high-quality writing jobs from multiple sites and sending you directly to the application phase.

Cons: The response rate is not as high as it is on some other sites (ProBlogger, for instance).

Managing clients and projects

While how to get clients is a huge question all new freelance writers have, you also need to have a plan for how you’re going to manage the client and the project from the point you close the deal through project completion. Every client is potentially a returning client, and you want to make sure they have a fabulous experience.

Right from the onset of the project, it’s critical that you have a realistic understanding of what your client actually wants. You’ll get clients with various degrees of specificity on what they’re looking for, but they almost always have some idea of what they want, and they’re not always great at letting you know what that is. You’re getting hired to write for them, but it’s a true gift to yourself and your client if you can create an intake process that helps your client paint a picture for you of what they truly want.

Not everyone uses an order form for each project, but I do. I’m a firm believer in order forms. There really isn’t a wrong way to do an order form. The most important thing is that you design them to get the information you need. In my company, we have three different ways to handle order forms:

1. Emailed form. With some projects, we simply email them a form full of questions and require them to fill it out and email it back to us or upload it to one of our project management platforms. This is especially useful if your client is a little older and less tech-savvy, or if your client wants time to think about it.

2. Online form. Google Docs has a free way to create interactive forms. Some of our projects are hosted in this format. We send them a link, they fill it out and hit submit, and the content is compiled and sent to us. This is perfect for clients who are a bit more tech-savvy or who are going to fill out the order form in one sitting.

3. Phone meeting. We get some clients onto our recorded phone bridge and talk them through the form. This is ideal if the topic is especially in-depth or the project is very large. It’s also a great fit for clients you suspect will be intimidated and not put much information on the form or who’ll sit on it for long periods of time instead of sitting down and filling it out for you. If the project justifies the budget, we’ll transcribe this information.

However you decide to do it, getting proper information from the client at the outset will save you the pain of unhappy clients or having to do multiple revisions.

When it comes to successfully juggling clients and projects, there’s nothing that will cause you more pain than not properly managing their expectations. You need to be crystal clear about what they can expect every step of the way.

First, you should clearly define the timeline for your client’s project. While a deadline/project due date is important, a timeline is much more than that. You really should have some sort of intake document that lets them know your process. A good writing project should have regular milestones where you check in with the client so they can approve the direction you’re taking. Trust me, if the client doesn’t like something you’re doing, it’s far less painful to learn that partway into the project instead of at the very end, after you’ve written the whole thing. You should anticipate and appreciate course correction.

Your timeline should clearly identify the different parts of your process along with estimated completion dates. Some of your process may include research, checkpoints, writing, final draft due date, etc. Be sure to pad your timeline. However long you think the project will take you, add on extra time; there’s no crime in finishing early, but I guarantee life will get in the way and slow you down.

Next, consider a revision policy. It’s important to define what revisions will come out of your pocket and what will cost your client extra money. You can do this however you want, but it’s less important what your policy is than it is to make sure you have one and that your client is clear on it.

Finally, you’ll definitely want to request testimonials from your clients. There are few things more powerful than social proof. You should always ask for testimonials, and you shouldn’t feel weird about it. They can always say no, and some will, even though they love your work. Do not underestimate the powerful benefit of a testimonial.

Source: www.entrepreneur.com