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A few days ago, I launched my first “proper” online contest.

I had done a couple of very simple contests before, where I would compile entrants manually and pick winners via random numbers, but this was the first time I created a contest using a dedicated software to do so and with more bells and whistles I’d ever been able to add before.

In this post, I’ll show you all the results I got from running the contest and break down all the lessons I’ve learned from it. Be warned, though: what you’ll read below is probably not what you’re expecting…

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Can Sprout Social help you grow and manage your social media presence, even on a large scale?

With built-in publishing, trend-watching and engagement tools for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, it looks like a promising solution for both individuals and teams.

Check out the video review below to see what Sprout Social is really made of:

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For most people, starting a brand new site from scratch inevitably means a dip that can last months where you slave away building the site, creating content and putting in lots of hours but with little to no reward.

It’s the most difficult time in creating an online presence – you’re full of uncertainty about whether your efforts will pay off and even the most epic piece of content is rewarded with deafening silence from your tragically fictitious audience.

Well, you may be pleased to know that it doesn’t necessarily have to be this way!

We asked the top online entrepreneurs in our market to tell us what they would do to get 1,000 visitors to their site within the first 30 days. And here are the answers that they gave:

In today’s podcast episode, we have a chat with Rob Cornish from GainHigherGround. Rob has gone from absolute beginner to being highly successful in the stock trading as well as the online marketing niche, in the space of just 18 months. The kind of success he’s had is a clear indication that he’s doing something right, so we decided to find out more.

Check out the video or audio below to learn how Rob applies the Pareto principle (80/20) to his business and how he uses what he calls the “Traffic Escalator” method, to drive lots of free, non-Google traffic to his sites and products.

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For small businesses and bootstrap marketers, it’s easy to feel persecuted by Google. From banning AdWords and AdSense accounts to Panda updates and from blocking keyword referral data (unless you’re a paying AdWords customer) to an increasing big-brand bias in the search results, it seems like Google is out to get small websites and small businesses.

That might not be literally true, but there’s no doubt that Google’s main goal is to make more money for Google. Being nice to small businesses doesn’t enter the equation for any decisions they make. And that makes relying on them too much a bad idea.

What then, are small businesses and individual SEOs to do? Is there a way to break out of the cycle of constantly trying to adopt to Google’s latest change, only to get smacked down by the next one?

There is. And it’s called the New Traffic Paradigm.

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What do Seth Godin (author, marketing cult-figure and notorious bald guy) and the Google Panda update (change in Google algorithm that left a lot of sites in the dust) have to do with each other? Watch the video below to find out:

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Content curation – is it the solution to all of your content- and traffic problems or just another fad? By some, it’s being lauded as the next big thing and perhaps it could turn into another fad in the IM niche (crappy “make money with curation” products, anyone?), but what’s it really all about?

Read on to find out exactly what content curation is and what it means for online marketers.

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