Why Can’t We Be Friends: Social Sharing and SEO

By Markerly’s Christine Beuhler

No one can seem to agree: is SEO out of date and obsolete or still worth it? And what are social signals? What’s going on? I’m going back to bed.

SEO and Google

Google doesn’t seem to like SEO much, which is understandable. So-called “black-hat” techniques (simply bad SEO practices) have made it their business to dupe search engines for years to get their clients in the top rankings and first pages of results. That bad name given by these techniques has pervaded SEO to the point that using SEO makes some companies uneasy and worry about its legitimacy as a method to getting more.

Content and Social Signals

Google’s phasing out of SEO means they have turned to other means to populate the top rankings, in this case social signals. The rule of thumb of social signals is the more times a piece of content is shared (the more likes, mentions, tweets, retweets, +1′s, etc.) the higher quality content it is, and generally the higher in the rankings it will show up. In fact, about half of the traffic to sites is now coming from social sharing instead of searching.

Creating quality content which is ALSO popular is not easy, but it is a more consistently reliable practice which makes sense to people. People like something, they share it, it’s a pretty simple concept, as opposed to monkeying around with technical SEO terms that they don’t understand and which seem to insist on changing anyway.

Marrying The Two

So the two have their differences, but it’s easy to see that social sharing and SEO affect each other. Their relationship is becoming intertwined, so what’s an entrepreneur/blogger/business owner to do?

As long as searching is still around, (and I’m pretty sure Google isn’t taking a vacation anytime soon) won’t SEO always be necessary? In that case, what still matters when it comes to SEO? To create harmony between the two groups, here are some areas where to marry SEO AND great content for optimum results.

(If you haven’t already, go take care of your content. Seriously. Social sharing is great, but it’s not king. Content is.)

1. GREAT Headlines

The function of a truly great headline is that it grabs, intrigues, and entices you into reading the full piece, usually in 8 words or less. A tall order, especially when stats say only 20% of people read your piece past the headline. No pressure or anything. But headlines are also a great opportunity to state clearly what your piece is about, and the words you select are a big contributing factor when it comes to online searching.

Pro Tip: Personally, I’m not a fan of “shocker” headlines, because after reading, I often feel manipulated, meaning my perception of the headline did not align with my perception of the article. You don’t ever want to give your audience a feeling of being used. They will determine that you are “not worth it” and they won’t come back.

2. Keywords

Carefully selecting keywords will really help out the people who are trying to find you, but it also helps you narrow down what your post is actually ABOUT. Sometimes, you start off having no idea what you’re talking about until the end, when the big picture slowly comes into view and you grasp it. Kudos for that, keywords!

Pro Tip: Longer phrases often help out more than shorter ones. Competition for one or two word phrases can be extremely fierce, so the more specific you are, the more likely you are to to bring in the kind of traffic you’re looking for.

3. Images

When choosing titles, captions, and alt text for your images, make sure they are tightly relevant to your topic and this could help bump up your content even more.

Pro Tip: Blocks of text can be scary and intimidating to the reader, but engaging images keep the eye flowing through the entire piece, especially if they’re funny images or have funny text.

4. Video

This one may surprise you, but stats show that video automatically ranks higher in Google Search over any other type of content. This a huge plus for your rankings, but having video content also sets you apart by switching up the medium of your content, making it more exciting for your regular readers.

Pro Tip: Show your personality and be engaging in how you move and talk. Try to turn off your anxieties about being in front of the camera and always focus on how to best help people. So as always, keep your content fresh and lively, because that’s what matters the most. But using some of the tips shown above can make sure you’re found by the right people, while keeping your content prevalent on social media. See? They don’t have to fight.

Check out Markerly’s blog about the future of content and why you need a content strategy, here.

The Wildly Successful Marketing Secrets of Startups

Typically, startups are lean, with a limited supply of money, talent, and time, meaning they don’t have resources to throw around willy-nilly. While this can induce panicky feelings for a lot of business owners, the upside is that it automatically forces burgeoning startups to wield the resources they do have sharply and intelligently.

This balancing act can get a bit tricky when it comes to marketing, because the internet has enabled an absolutely ludicrous array of options, opinions, and ideas to spring up. Get a website up! Contact investors! Use Pinterest! Start a YouTube channel! It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer scope of modern marketing and completely lose your head.

But focus! There are simple rules to keep in mind to craft the best marketing plan possible that fits your business. Any company’s product or service is built around a specific target audience, right? No matter how long your company’s been around or how much money it brings in, make sure your marketing is specifically targeted to your demographic as well, or it will flounder. While keeping in mind that your approach should be tailored to suit your audience, use these tips to make your marketing the best it can be!

Follow Mint’s Shining Example

Mint, a personal financial management service started in 2006, was built around the young professional demographic their chief marketer, Noah Kegan, thought was being neglected, and they aimed their content marketing accordingly with huge success. Behold, their secrets…Quality Content

Take a look at their MintLife blog yourself, and tell me if you don’t get sucked in by their entertaining, oh-so-easy-on-the-eyes infographics, and their friendly, direct, and helpful writing. Mint made sure to only engage quality writers and illustrators, both in-house and freelance. A lot of companies trip themselves up by going for quantity over quality and turning off many potential customers with low-grade content.

Remember that while quality content marketing may be a long game, it yields undeniable results.

Variety of Content

Knowing well how to appeal to their customer base of young internet-savvy professionals, Mint uses a variety of media to engage and hold their interest. Their blog doesn’t have just articles, but also videos, infographics, and slideshows, which keeps their site fresh and a pleasure to share with others.

Social Channels

To build up trust, Mint spread their content out to well-known social channels like Digg and Reddit and even more commendably, did it well. For the uninitiated, these social sharing sites can be tricky to navigate and come out the other end with positive feedback, especially Reddit. Mint managed to pull it off by genuinely engaging with readers of both sites. (Hint:don’t be spammy.)

Metrics

Mint also relentlessly used carefully selected metrics to track the reactions to their content, and then used that knowledge to pursue what was working and drop what wasn’t. This means they were constantly improving on what they’d done before.

But don’t make the mistake of thinking the benefits of quality content marketing is a one-way street. Content marketing benefits your company hugely as well, by allowing you to engage intelligently and consistently with your community, and make sure you are always thinking about next steps to self-improve and evolve.

Quality content marketing is infectious. Heck, sometimes I’ll sign up for a service I might not even use, just because of how appreciative I am for that company’s content. Simply signing up for their service makes me more likely to be a paying customer in the future or pass along word of it to others who may convert to profitable users themselves. The same principle applies to the pricing of e-books which (at an average of $3-4) sell for drastically cheaper than paper books. Why is that? Even if customers don’t actually read the book, the low price means they don’t have much to lose in purchasing it, and just the simple act of acquisition means you are more likely to spread the word to other potential customers.

Be Creative

Don’t limit yourself in the terms of how you interact with your user base. In a sea of businesses and other startups jockeying for recognition, why should they choose you? Stand out (in a good way) and your audience will be delighted with and appreciate your extra effort.

Be Thoughtful

Consider your future courses of action carefully. Letting your ideas incubate and then acting accordingly will benefit you much more than trying out new fads at random. Having a smart team with similar values and a solid grasp on what’s important to your company’s growth really helps with this.

Be Aggressive

Don’t be afraid to really put yourself out there. You have a lot of competition, after all, and you won’t reach your goals by being passive in your efforts.

Always Fine-tune

Pursue strategies that have proven results and prune out what isn’t working. This will keep your company a solid marketing foundation to build off of and keep operations efficient.

In the end, it simply comes down to being a valued resource, which means being trusted, reliable, smart, entertaining, and helpful.

Christine Beuhler is a regular contributor to Markerly’s blog. Markerly is a content agency that connects your brand to influencers.

Is Your Content Targeted? Work Smarter, Not Harder

There is a general theme in a lot of the content that’s making its way out to sites like KISSMetrics and the Content Marketing Institute, where marketing professionals get a lot of inspiration. While most marketing consultants focus on technical tips for narrative-building strategies, content marketing strategy comes down to this: work smarter, not harder. So, how does one work smarter not harder?

"No matter if your business is online or in physical locations, web content is 
becoming the prime vehicle for sales. Companies commissioning better web content 
are waking up and realizing that this could make all the difference in taking 
them to the head of the class."

Approach 1: Autopilot

A lot of top-level managers feel like as long as content is relevant to the space, it will naturally be shared, consumed, and do its work effectively. It’s quite evident in the huge flood of generic marketing material swamping the web. Look at practically any industry, from auto parts to annuities, and you’ll find a large number of sites with extremely similar material. Some critics characterize this stuff as “fluff” or in the parlance of journalism–“puff pieces.” It could also be called “middle of the road’ or “safe” content. What it is, essentially, is a tried and true practice that has become calcified.

Approach 2: Taking The Wheel

Some of the most forward thinking companies are changing the ways that they promote themselves. Using data, content marketers can craft non-generic, unique pieces that provide a fresh perspective on an industry issue that readers are interested in. One way that businesses are able to use data to determine the type of message to send is through Markerly. A content campaign on Markerly will tell you how different demographics have engaged with your content. We’ll go even further to tell you what quotes or photos they were engaging with the most. Sometimes its best to listen and respond. You can use this data to connect with your potential customers on a deeper and more personal level.

You might be surprised what you find out about your potential customers by how they organically interact with your content behind closed doors.

How to Take The Wheel

There are two main ways to accommodate this content upgrade. One is to get someone in the driver seat who profoundly understands these industry issues. That person acts as a head editor or point person for guiding and targeting content assignments to writers. Rather than giving individuals on a content team a simple set of keywords and expecting them to come up with meaningful content, adding this top-level role to a team ensures that writers will be out there focusing on what their audience wants to hear about.

Some companies don’t have the manpower or the inclination to appoint a point person like this; that’s not a problem. What some of these companies do involves hiring ex-journalists or others with a self starting capacity and a knack for creating targeted content. Companies simply set these “content sleuths” free, and what they come up with is a surprisingly robust website that boosts visibility for the brand and gets organic rankings and page views.

Conclusion

To be sure, this more sophisticated content strategy won’t come cheap. The company needs to make the decision to invest in this more sophisticated approach. But while some are reluctant to adopt new technology even if they yield better results, others have seen even modest investments in “new wave content” pay off big in terms of ROI. Times have changed. Whether your business is online or brick and mortar, web content is becoming the prime vehicle for sales. Companies commissioning better web content are waking up and realizing that this could make all the difference in taking them to the head of the class.

Markerly makes publishing tools that we’ve proudly been using since their alpha stage over a year ago. Right click on anything on Nibletz and watch Markerly go to work. For more info visit markerly.com

Back to Basics: How Online Content Can Drive Business Sales

Each month, companies introduce hundreds of new tools to help business owners attract traffic online and generate leads and sales. Some business owners spend an incredible amount of time and money buying and learning how to use these tools, only to achieve mediocre results. Fortunately, one tried and true strategy — content marketing — remains a simple way to attract the targeted traffic you need to grow your business.

Sarah Ware, content marketing, startup tips, Markerly

What is Content Marketing?

Simply put, content marketing is the process of crafting and publishing engaging, useful content that your prospects want to read.

In most cases, the content is not an advertorial designed to sell your services or products, but an article or post designed to build visitor interest and keep readers coming back to your site. By publishing content that is useful for your readers, you can build a sense of trust that makes visitors want to buy from you.

whale2

For content marketing, trust is everything.

Advertising through content campaigns can take several forms. One of the simplest ways to distribute articles and other content is by publishing these pieces on your business website or blog. You can distribute press releases to hundreds of free and paid sites to tell potential customers about news, product launches, and other information related to your business or industry.

You can also promote and distribute content via social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. This gives you the added advantage of social distribution because people who see value in your content will naturally want to share your posts with their friends, family members, and business associates.

How Can Content Marketing Help Your Business?

Learning how to advertise through content offers several advantages that can help you build online visibility and attract new customers to your business:

Well-crafted content can help your site and blog pages appear prominently in search engine listings. When you write and publish exceptional content that provides information relevant to your business and target audience, search engines will likely place high value on your content pages. This means that they might appear on the first page of results for a particular search instead of being buried beneath thousands of other page listings. Of course, in order to rank high, you need to focus on one or two keywords that are relevant to your content. Resources such as the Content Marketing Institute can provide you with valuable information on crafting content and including keywords.

Engaging, useful content helps visitors perceive you as an expert in your industry. Helping people improve their lives through online content builds trust while establishing you as the “go to” authority to meet their needs. As a result, when it comes time to make a purchasing decision, your company becomes the obvious choice.

You can use content as the start of a “sales funnel” that naturally leads visitors to a purchasing decision. As noted above, your content should not be overtly promotional; however, skilled copywriters can weave in phrases and subtle “calls to action” that can motivate readers to take an additional step, such as signing up for an email newsletter, requesting product information, or attending a free webinar. You can also use tools like HubSpot to help you manage your sales funnel so you can more effectively guide prospects through the sales process.

Getting started with Hubspot:

hubspot1

Hubspot is an automation tool that allows the user to preset interactions with customers or site visitors. It starts with interaction. The first step is to draw readers in via social media or email. The next step is directing that traffic to the website or blog. The last step is to organize visitors for further actions. Hubspot isn’t alone in using this traffic flow. This is just how the cogs of content marketing turn.

hubspot2

Hubspot automates the process of sending emails, analyzing customers, and adding delays. The actual interface looks something like the screenshot above.

Online content can give you valuable information about your visitors. By inviting interaction via blog comments, social media posts, and feedback forms, you can learn about your potential customers’ needs and wants. If you provide them with valuable content, they will be happy to share their thoughts, opinions, and suggestions. You can also use analytical tools such as KISSmetrics and Markerly in conjunction with content marketing to learn even more about your visitors and prospects.

Getting started with Markerly:

markerly1

Markerly provides brands with detailed reporting on how different demographics engaged with different bloggers, quotes and photos. Markerly helps brands discover what is and isn’t working with their content campaigns, and uses that data to turn content viral.

Getting started with Kissmetrics:

kissmetrics-1

Kissmetrics allows users to get in-depth data on the customer. It looks something like this. It keeps track of how often the customer visits, what they buy, how much they spend, as well as activity before and after they signed up.

How Can You Help People Find Your Content?

In addition to social media posts and search engine listings, you can use a variety of other strategies to help visitors find your marketing content. You can add your blog to a directory such as BlogHer to put your content in front of interested readers. If you have time, you can increase visibility by writing guest posts for relevant blogs and websites. Also, visiting similar blogs and leaving thoughtful, relevant posts can attract potential customers to your site.

Getting started with BlogHer:

blogher1

BlogHer is a specialty directory that helps get blogs written by women out into cyberspace. Interested contributors simply have to meet the guidelines, apply, and get listed. Some of the guidelines include a 30 day old blog, written by a woman or a group of women, or certain exceptions for interested men. Choosing an applicable niche is a great way to get your blog out there.

Content marketing is not a shortcut to success. In order to make this strategy successful, you should commit to consistently publishing well-written, insightful articles and posts. There is no “magic button” for attracting traffic; however, content marketing is among the most reliable strategies available.

Why Brands are spending $43 billion on stories this year, and you should too!

Why Brands Are Spending $43 Billion On Stories This Year–And You Should Too

Did you know that 90% of consumers find custom content useful, and that 7 in 10 consumers prefer content campaigns over display advertising? That’s why it’s so important to focus on a content strategy – it builds trust and relationships with your customers.

Even though content campaigns have many shapes and sizes, the main goal is the same — attracting customers to you through quality content. Over at Markerly, we call them STORIES.

Why STORIES are Important

S EO. Stories build your SEO. The more content that you have out there, the higher the chance that Google will feature you.

TRUST. Stories build trust with your audience. Educate your potential customers instead of being overly sales-y.

ORGANIC. Incorporating a pull strategy to attract customers to you, instead of a push strategy attracts customers more organically.

RETARGET. When you use Markerly for your content campaigns, you will target niche audiences that are most likely to engage with your content. If you want to target married women who live on the West Coast that are into fashion, we can run a retargeting campaign to that specific audience.

INSIGHTS. Another benefit of using Markerly for your content campaigns is the ability to run polling within the content. While running your campaign, you can ask the readers questions about your brand and we can collect emails and demographic information .

EVERGREEN. Unlike display ads, content never disappears from the web–it’s always there, searchable, and improving your SEO and thought leadership.

SOCIAL. You’re not going to share a display ad, but you will share a thoughtfully written post.

STORIES and Your Brand

STORIES are the most organic and effective way to build your brand online, and that’s why over 43 billion dollars have been spent on content marketing this year alone! Whether you are already advertising through content, or you are exploring your brand’s options, you’re in good company. Over 39% of marketing, advertising and communications budgets are dedicated to content marketing.

Taking the time to incorporate a pull strategy to attract customers to you through quality content instead of the generic push strategy (spraying ads out that add no value) is the future of advertising and already yields better results and conversion rates. We’re excited that more and more brands are moving towards STORIES so that they can improve their ROI and take their market insights to another level.

What SEO And The Matrix Have In Common

When writing for blogs and websites, you may feel like you are entering a world with a different set of rules – especially as you try to understand how to write for SEO.

Do you remember the movie The Matrix? In it, the main character Neo discovers that the world he has been living in is actually an elaborate computer program. When he is rescued and taken to the real world, Neo learns techniques that will give him an advantage whenever he re-enters the matrix.

The following will help you learn some of the rules of SEO and hopefully give you an advantage in your daily online writing. SEO is important, but it can harm you if not done correctly. Relevance is everything, and SEO is a game you need to win at.
What is SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a means of boosting your website or blog’s ranking in web searches. The higher you rank, the more likely it is that the person doing the search will actually click on your link.
Identifying your Keywords and Phrases

Perhaps the most important tools that SEO writers have are keywords and phrases. These are words or phrases that a potential searcher might key into a search engine in order to find specific information. For example, if someone was looking for information on vegetable gardening they might search: gardening, vegetable gardening or planting seeds.

You might start by writing a list of all the keywords and phrases you think would be used by the searcher and then work them into your content.
Keyword Density

Don’t let keyword density harm you! Keyword density – how often you use a keyword – will also play a huge factor in your search ranking. But be careful not to overdo this as sites with very high density are likely to be labelled as spam by search engines. Sites that use too many keywords also result in very high bounce rates. These sites are overly optimized and provide low value for the reader. Identify your goals, and if the goal is to keep readers engaged, make sure you are not optimizing purely for SEO, resulting in a quick page view and a bounce.

Content has to be interesting, engaging and relevant. That’s why Markerly weighs page views and engagement rates differently. Some pages with very high levels of page views have extremely low engagement rates – meaning that the real estate is essentially worthless. Other pages with very thoughtful, well-written content have very high levels of engagement and a lower number of page views, but for anyone looking for real impressions, this is the metric to measure.
Links

Have you noticed that more and more websites and blogs are incorporating links to other sites/pages in the body of their content? Using this technique not only makes your site more SEO friendly but if the searcher discovers that a particular blog or site isn’t exactly what he was looking for, it gives you first dibs on directing him to another of your pages (or at least a page that you endorse) rather than allowing him to search again and possibly end up on a competitor’s site.
SEO Plugins

Even the best writers can benefit from a little computer analysis. SEO Plugins are programs that analyze your writing and “do the math” to help determine how SEO friendly your particular content is. They will show you what areas are good and what you could do to beef up your SEO. There are many of these programs and several can be downloaded for free online for bloggers. Markerly optimizes SEO for bloggers with free micro-content a sharing tool that emails bloggers once a week with the most popular words and quotes that readers are copying and sharing. This helps bloggers better understand their audience to write more content that resonates with their reader’s interest levels.

Markerly also optimizes SEO for brands that use Markerly to advertise through content campaigns. Markerly monitors search queries, traffic referrals, most engaged with quotes, specific content shared to social media, copy and paste and keywords and phrases within different demographics and amplifies the reach for brands.
Stay Human

Finally, remember that after SEO has done its job, your reader will be human, meaning, they will either move on to more interesting content or stay engaged. If the writing is boring or difficult to understand your reader will move on. On the other hand, create engaging and useful content and you will keep them coming back for more.

That’s why Markerly ranks engagement over page views when monitoring content campaigns. Markerly tracks when readers are selecting text, hovering over specific content, copying content, right clicking and pinning photos, selecting text, scrolling down the page, sharing to social media, discussing on social media, clicking on links, and more. Markerly knows when content is engaging, when page views are being faked by bots, when content is overly SEO optimized (high drop off rates) and when a writer has successfully done their job.
Before you head back into the Matrix, remember one thing to win at the game: SEO is important, but more importantly, relevance is everything.

Now check out the Top 5 Reasons Startup Founders Blow Through Money!

Top 5 Reasons Startup Founders Blow Through Money

There’s a lot of reasons why companies don’t make it, and sometimes it’s not that the idea or product isn’t good — it’s just that you run out of money. Even though we know that blowing through money is a “bad” thing, I’ve been talking a lot with founders and investors about what “bad” means. What have they noticed as common themes when they sit down with founders that exhausted their money too quickly at the seed stage? So here are the top 5 reasons startup founders blow through money.

Let me know your thoughts and if this aligns with what you’ve personally seen. What have you regretted spending money on, or what do you roll your eyes at as an investor?

1. “I have a business meeting in Thailand!”

We all know these founders. They travel somewhere new every week. Their meetings take them around the world–frequently. They are always tired and busy from travelling, and they make sure to check-in at every luxurious hotel they stay at.

Why this fails: The desire to pre-maturely live a life of luxury through funding raised for business development extends to other poor choices. It goes — fast.

Understanding this entrepreneur: Typically extroverted and commands control of the room. Works efficiently on little sleep and cares a lot about appearances.

Can benefit by: Making sure that meetings are efficiently scheduled. One entrepreneur told me they combat this by making a “day trip” rule. If the meeting is important enough to fly for the day and return, it’s a go. It helped this entrepreneur cut down on meetings that could be conducted via phone without sacrificing quality.

2. “That’s way too expensive!”

This is another extreme–founders that don’t want to spend anything and opt for cheap solutions…cheap everything. This sends bad signals to clients and investors and often costs the entrepreneur more in the form of lost opportunities.

Why this fails: Some founders are very conservative. They need money in the bank–a cushion. They are risk takers with anxiety and they want to ensure that they get the results that they need for the next raise.

Understanding this entrepreneur: Typically introverted and mathematical. Usually overly conservative in their predictions.

Can benefit by: Giving up some control and working with investors and advisors to create healthy budgets.

3. “It’s a marketing spend!”

We all enjoy celebrating successes of startups for special launches or funding announcements. Sometimes startups plan evenings with open bars and chalk it up to a good use of marketing dollars. Chances are this isn’t the best use. Same can be said for overly-spending on trade shows, fancy promotional videos, or sponsoring an event before the time is right.

Why this fails: Marketing is extremely important, but many startups will exhaust their “marketing spend” without focusing on basic things first — like establishing a healthy blog presence, or discovering ways to become “experts” in a topic by speaking at conferences. If you’re spending money on marketing and you don’t have a blog, you’re doing it backwards.

Understanding this entrepreneur: Typically extroverted and creative and full of ideas. Too focused on big picture instead of steps to get there.

Can benefit by: Forcing themselves to write plans about their spends. Marketing is about ROI, so if you are planning on spending money you need to know what a worthwhile conversion will be for you. Are you looking for customers, users, app downloads? What result will make you happy?

4. “We’re going to hire salespeople!”

A great mentor told me that you only need one salesperson. She didn’t mean literally one – but she meant that you, as a founder, need to be able to sell your product yourself before trying to hire others to sell it for with/for you. Managing a sales team without getting your hands dirty in the sales process only makes you disconnected from your product, and will frustrate future early sales employees.

Why this fails: As a founder you are the product, don’t expect to hire and watch the numbers soar. Your product won’t sell itself unless you sell it first. It doesn’t matter how many sales people you hire if you don’t have the sales process down in the first place.

Understanding this entrepreneur: Typically they don’t have a background in sales and think that hiring sales employees will magically make numbers appear on a sales board. Typically technical, sometimes egotistical.

Can benefit by: Selling the product. That’s all there is here. If the founder is technical and won’t be doing sales, someone on the founding team must be a hustler. Founders are either selling or building. Choose one and do it well.

5. “I’ll never work for anyone, ever!”

This entrepreneur is right out of college. They don’t want to get a job, or can’t last at a job for more than a few months. They have great ideas and plans and want to change the world, but need some reality first. These founders just spend money in all the wrong places for all the wrong reasons, which could be anything from 1-4 mentioned above. Great mentors seem to make or break these types of entrepreneurs.

Why this fails: If you haven’t had a job before you may lack judgement of certain realities and what it really requires to start a business.

Understanding this entrepreneur: Typically driven, these founders need to get broken in a bit before reaching the point of being able to successfully manage others.

Can benefit by: Getting a job and showing that you can work well with others and under the management of others. The goal is to show that you are able to learn and adapt.

Sarah Ware is the co-founder and CEO of Markerly, next generation publisher tools. Markerly is a recent graduate of 500 Startups. Nibletz has used Markerly’s publisher tools since their launch last year. Right click on anything on the site and see the magic happen.

Last year Sarah appeared on Bad Ass Female Founders From Everywhere Else and the “I Survived An Accelerator Panel” hosted by GAN’s Pat Riley,at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference! Find out more about the next everywhereelse.co here.

500 Startups: Markerly Founder Sarah Ware Video Interview

Undoubtedly, unless you’ve been living under a rock, if you regularly read nibletz.com, than you’ve heard of 500 startups, startup, Markerly. The Washington DC startup is in the latest batch of companies being accelerated at 500startups in Mountain View.

Markerly makes easy to use, but robustly analytical publisher tools. Their tools don’t require a widget, great publishers can just insert one snippet of code and do things like share bits and pieces of content across social networks or comment on photos. The best part is that Markerly is free.

Nibletz.com, the voice of startups everywhere else, was the first blog to use Markerly’s tools and we’ve been the beta testing guinea pig throughout their entire experience at 500 startups. Recently they added the voice of Silicon Valley, PandoDaily as well.

The company was founder by Sarah Ware. The New Jersey native, Georgetown graduate and former employee at hot DC startup, LivingSocial, and longtime friend Justin Kline started Markerly as a way to share highlighted content. Since arriving at 500startups the team has found more refined ways to share. They also provide sharing analytics which can be invaluable to a founder.

We got a chance to meet up with the Markerly team at CES 2013 and #nmx Blog World. Check out our video interview below

Ware is one of the lead panelists in the “Kick Ass Female Founders From Everywhere Else” panel at the biggest startup conference in the US, everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

Kick Ass Female Founders From Everywhere Else At everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

Girls Rock, Right?

If you’re a regular reader of nibletz.com, the voice of startups everywhere else, then you know here we celebrate startups across the country and around the world outside the valley. We call this “everywhere else”.

Startups from “everywhere else” are typically “grittier”, and work harder. After all, startups that raise money outside Silicon Valley know that their investors actually expect to see the money back, and that’s of course if you can score funding in the first place. There are lots of other factors that entrepreneurs deal with in entrepreneurial pockets across the country and around the world that you don’t find in Silicon Valley.

Sometimes startups elect to build their companies in their home town and they may be located in a town that’s more familiar with health tech, ed tech, or logistics. There are a number of verticals depending on what town you live in, that may not mesh with what you’re team is working on.

Talent is one of the other big issues that startups everywhere else face. It’s harder to attract or keep talent in different cities across the country and around the world. A lot of talented designers, engineers and hustlers often times move to Silicon Valley or other high density metropolitan areas looking for higher paying jobs.

Now take all of those challenges and add into the mix that you’re a woman with a great idea and you may find that things get even tougher for you.

At everywhereelse.co the startup conference we’re holding a panel discussion on Monday after lunch highlighting some “kick ass female founders from everywhere else”. Women who’ve been able to push on no matter what came their way. We’ll hear from established entrepreneurs who’ve had major success with their companies. We’ll hear from great startup founders like Sarah Ware from Markerly, Brandy Wimberly from Buyvite, Natalie Novoa from Teachmeo and severeal others who’ve launched startups in the last year.

This panel discussion will be part panel and part town hall session for the over 500 women who’ve bought tickets (as part of the 1790 tickets sold so far). For the Q&A part, Memphis entrepreneur Danielle Inez will help field and select the questions. 25 year old Inez has her own Memphis PR company and launched a startup of her own at the Upstart Memphis 48 Hour Launch in December. When it comes to startups Inez is wet behind the ears and still soaking up every bit of knowledge she can get, but she has the attitude, energy and perseverance that many of these other women have. We also have a special guest that will speak about her trials and tribulations in building a huge company.

Tickets and Startup Village booths, for the nearly sold out everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference can be purchased here. We’re almost to the 2000 capacity mark so hurry!

nibletz.com Becomes The First Site To Integrate With 500 Startups “Markerly”

Markerly founder Sarah Ware has teamed up with nibletz.com as their beta guinea pig

We’ve covered Markerly pretty in depth over the past few months. Their rockstar woman founder, Sarah Ware, will even be a panelist at the upcoming “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” event in February.

When we first started reporting on Markerly it was a browser plugin that allowed you to very easily highlight, clip and share any content on any website. Markerly allows you to share to your social networks, email or even your own personal Markerly account so that you can have text later on, and the source information from that text.

We installed the browser plugin a few months back and would share content from nibletz.com and other startup focused online magazines periodically using the Markerly tool.

Well, last month Ware and her DC based startup got accepted into Dave McClure’s 500 startups program in Mountain View California. We have a pretty good relationship with Ware and we weren’t surprised when she called to tell us that just under two weeks into the program they were making a mini-pivot.

We won’t go too much into what that mini-pivot is, we have to save some of the suspense for the 500 startups demo day early next year. But we will tell you that Markerly is now integrated within nibletz.com.

All you have to do is select text like you would to copy and paste, anywhere, in any article within nibletz.com. Regardless of whether you have the browser plugin or not, once you select the text you want a hover button will appear above the text. At the moment the button allows you to share the extracted text to Twitter, Facebook or by email.

When you share your highlight, those who check it out on your social networks will be taken to our original story and they’ll even be able to see the highlighted text within the story.

Markerly is a great tool in that regard. I’m willing to bet on a daily basis someone shares a link with me either by email or instant message and with that link, minimal text. Well the problem arises when I’m sent a link to a 1000 word story. I don’t have time to read 1000 words just to get to what someone else wants me to see. Using Markerly I can see the text that someone wants me to see within the entire body of the story so I can grab the context at my leisure.

While we’ve seen some of our readers adopt the browser plugin Markerly product and share across Facebook and Twitter, the team at Markerly has made it insanely easy for anyone to capture the experience (you see what I did there).

Right now it works on any desktop/laptop/PC/Mac browser and hopefully down the road it will work on Mobile as well.

So go for it, try it, select some text in this story and see what happens.

Markerly is actually solving two problems for nibletz.com. The first is the sharing problem I described above an also the more traditional social sharing problem. We have share buttons at the bottom of each and every story, and we encourage you to use them. However, we know that we have some long stories here at nibletz.com so when you can’t wait to share something, highlight it and send it out immediately using nibletz.com now powered by Markerly.

Linkage:

Check out Markerly here

500 startups here

Everywhere Else here

DC Entrepreneur: Sarah Ware Makes Her Markerly Over 2800 Miles For 500 Startups

Sarah Ware’s mobile office set up in Littleton CO on the way to 500 startups

Nearly two weeks ago the woman behind Washington DC startup Markerly and her gal pal Megan set out on an epic journey. These two twenty something women set on a cross country road trip only rivaled by Thelma and Louise. Except this was 2012, and Ware managed to work throughout the entire trip.

In between camp sites, horseback riding, boating, hiking, and picture taking, Ware was constantly working to prepare her social highlighting startup for the real journey which begins soon in Mountain View California.

Ware and Markerly join a nice sizable handful of startups from the Washington DC area that have caught the eye of Dave McClure and his 500 startups.

While we’re preparing another epic journey of our own to cover a bunch of accelerator demo days from accelerators that have been working all summer long, McClure and the 500 startups fall 2012 class are just starting to arrive. They’re wiping the last bit of sleep out of their eyes and preparing for five months of intense bootcamp style work on their startups.

It may no even be fair o call what they do at 500 startups “boot camp style” some of the startups that have completed McClure’s rigorous program have likened it more to “startup hazing” with a much bigger pay off.

Ware is no stranger to unusually long work days as the 25 year old has managed to graduate from Georgetown, work at DC’s prominent startup, Living Social, and then battle her way through the mine fields of launching her own startup. She’s even had imitators come out of the woodwork already and those who have accused her of imitating.

We’ve tried a few of the highlighting applications out there and nothing is as easy to use or easy to share as Markerly.

As she gears up for 500 startups it’s easy to see why she and her friend decided to drive it across the country. There’s no more rest for the next five months. We will be checking in with Ware periodically over the next 5 months while she’s in the top secret 500 lair crushing it.

Linkage:

Go start using Markerly here

Check out 500 here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” and we want you here

Easily Make Citations For Your Research With NY Startup: Citelighter

We’ve been having a lot of fun using Washington DC highlighting startup, Markerly. Markerly is a simple, easy to use browser plugin that allows anyone to highlight virtually anything on the web. From there you can share it six ways to Sunday and beyond. IT’s a great platform for grabbing pieces of text and sharing them with your friends, colleagues and social networks.

New York based Citelighter works similarly to Markerly in that it allows you to highlight text on the web. Now though, instead of sharing that Citelighted content with your friends, and social networks, Citelighter compiles a bibliographical style note sheet for the end user to reference back. Citelighter is a great companion for anyone who is going to highlight something and then reference it later on.

Citelighter joins the browser plugin and highlighting space at a great time, as everyone is seeing what web browser plugins actually meet their needs.

We got a chance to interview Citelighter cofounder Lee Joki. Check out our interview below:

Sarah Ware And Her DC Startup Markerly Are Making Their Mark INTERVIEW

Sarah Ware is the founder of new social bookmarking platform Markerly. She was working at the DC office of LivingSocial before branching out on her own to found this unique tool, that’s intuitive, fun and useful.

Markerly is a social bookmarking tool that sits in your browser like a bookmarklet for when you need it. When you need it or you want to use it you simply click on the Markerly button, highlight text and then you can save that text for later, save it as a bookmark or share it via Twitter or Facebook with your highlighted text and the entire article so others can see what you highlighted and the context around it.

Ware, a New Jersey native, is getting her name out in the DC tech and startup circles. One of the key points to Markerly is sharing and that shines through in Ware’s own personality, reaching out to other DC area startups and helping where she can and soaking up information when she can.

We got the chance to talk to this rock star founder about Markerly, in the interview below: