It’s 1:30 pm your wife is out of town visiting family and one of your children calls from school saying they are sick. You are in the middle of a project that must be completed by 8 am the next day.
You have to leave.
Your boss IS NOT HAPPY! : (
Sound like a familiar scenario? What would you do?
Your child or your boss?
Working for someone use to have its benefits. Pensions were strong, health insurance was paid for, vacation time was plentiful and job security was assured.
Today, anything goes! Ther are no job guarantees, healthcare is a fiasco and business are looking for ways not to provide it,.
With the insecurity of the job market these days, working from home is becoming more and more an option for people being lied off, fired, or stressed out because there are not enough quality people to do all the work.
Obviously, as a home business entrepreneur, your effort is directly related to our income. You have the flexibility to work from home later in the evening after all are in bed to complete a project that you may have had to put aside for other important things. Or, work on the road, which is what I like the best about being my own boss.
Since 1992, I have been working from home providing graphic solutions for both local and national business. A computer, internet connection and printer are all that I need.
Pretty streamlined.
I had a global business with just this equipment.
I could do my design work whenever I needed to, wherever I was. Unfortunately that had its drawbacks.
I was beholden to my clients. I worked when they wanted me to work, not when I wanted to work. And there were many times there were conflicts.
Previously I spoke of working after the children go to bed or late in the evening hours, but seriously, who really wants to do that. And the only reason that had to happen was to meet deadlines.
I recall shipping my computer to Florida so our family could fly to my wife’s parents house for vacation. There is nothing like have children pacing back and forth wondering when we were going to leave for Universal Studios while I tried to crash through some automotive ads. NEVER AGAIN!
Or the time Julie’s Father had a stroke and while family was gathering around his bedside, I had to meet another deadline working on my laptop in the hallway. NEVER AGAIN
The only true “job freedom” is having the ability to earn while you are not physically working.
The internet provides a vast amount of opportunities to work from home, millions in fact.
But how do you determine what is the best.
There are MLM or direct sale companies that offer pills, lotions and potions that are overpriced and difficult to get and retain steady customers.
There are matrixes that are really a pyramid scheme. You put in $100 and it is supposed to process upward as others come up underneath you and when you reach the top you get paid. Like that is gonna last.
Then there are top tier digital products.
The digital or online educational information market is a 500+ Billion dollar market and growing everyday. Universities are jumping on the band wagon, no overhead with no products to inventory and sell.
It is really the perfect product for internet sales.
Living a free lifestyle is a dream come true. We are able to take missions trips to Jamaica on a yearly basis. Be at ALL of our children’s sorting, musical and talent events.
And be there for family when it is most important.
Think about what is important in your life then weigh that agains the daily grind of going to the office and mission out on the important gifts life has to offer.
Bryan Tuck
P.S. If you have a real interest in building a home based business, check out the training that is available here.
When you are working on identifying your brand you should understand that your brand is owning a place in the consumers mind of who you are and want you have to offer.
It is not a logo.
It is not a design.
It is you.
Logos and design are a byproduct of a brand.
So many times people will try to emulate another persons brand, dressing like they dress, talking like they talk; acting like they act.
You will see this frequently with people who follow hollywood stars. People wearing the same sunglasses, shoes or hairstyle.
I get it. We all want to associate ourselves with successful people in someway shape or form.
That works on personal level to a degree, but doing this it will kill your business. People will see thorugh it.
When building your business brand, which is YOU, because in this industry people buy from you, someone they trust, admire, and respect, ask yourself, “Who am I?” “What drives me?” "What am I passionate about”
As you answer these questions you will begin to see your brand come to life.
You see, it is already there. It can be nurtured and tweaked, but it is already within you.
For the most part, I am a blue jean, t-shirt and flip flop wearing kind of guy. Do I put on a suit and tie? Yes. When the situation requires a formal presence. But on any given day, I could be in casual clothes, and a day or two unshaven as I am as I write this.
This is just a part of who I am.
Personally I am a compassionate person who cares deeply for the souls of other people and their journey through this life. I want them to be a better person because they have been in my presence. I want them to walk away feeling better about themselves and the world around them. Knowing that I will do whatever i can to help them in any situation.
I truly want to help people and make a difference in the lives of people and to be a part of something bigger than myself. As I grow my busness and find more time, less stress and more money, I want to be able to take as manny mission trips as I can. There is someting so real about working and helping people in mission countries, like Jamaica and Haiti that really brings out a new person. Now that is not to say I can't do the same here and I do. Talking to the homless person on the street and finding out who they are, what there situation is as oppsed to simpky throwing money at them.
At a recent event there were many people who were slickly dressed, hair in just the right place, designer shoes and suits all making massive amounts money. Then there were those that looked like they just rolled out of bed after a long evening of doing who knows what, all making massive amounts of money.
Then there were this who were as humble as they could be and some who were just over the top happy. All making massive amounts of money.
What do all of these of people have in common?
They are being real. They are being who they are. They are not trying to copycat someone.
The point here is you have to find who you are. You have to find your voice.
This can take some soul searching and seeking help from someone, like a business coach, or a person who has an objective view of you. Someone looking from the outside. This could actually be a rather difficult situation. there may be things that are reveled that you don’t like to hear that need to be changed. But isn’t that what growth is all about?
Peel back the outer layers and look deep inside.
Who are you?
Who do you want to be as a person?
What characteristics are part of your personality that you can bring out that tell more about who you are.
Remember, if you work hard enough to earn massive amounts of money, this money will only amplify who you are.
If you are compassionate and caring person, you will become more compassionate and caring. If you are an idiot and jackass…..well?
Trust me, I met some of these type of people recently. They are making a lot of money, but they are kind of people who I personally do not wnat to be around. Then there are other people who do.
Whan you find your voice of who you are, you will attract the kind of person that resonnates with your voice.As for all the others who don't…remeber there ar 7 billion people on this planet.
So get out there discover who you are, find your voice, and be real….B U!
Anyone who is seeking to build an online business is typically asking this question. We all see ordinary people proving that building a successful online business can be done.
But what is the secret?
What tool are they using to make this work.
There are so many tools, tips and tricks being thrown around out there claiming that this is the one you need to finally be successful.
Well I have a secret….
There is no secret sauce, tool or trick.
What? Wait?
Those that you see day in and day out showing you that having a successful online business can be done have a couple things in common.
1. The are constantly providing value to those around them through providing solutions to peoples problems and being real.
I met one such person over the weekend who is the top affiliate for a up and coming company. He is the most real person I have met in this industry.
All he spoke of was providing solutions and value to your target audience.
People are tired of being pitched through banal autoresponders.
Do autoresponders have their place?
Yes!
However, you must make them personal. But I digress.
2. The successful entrepreneurs are consistent and deliberate in there actions. They have a DMO or Daily Mode of Operation.
What do you do consistently everyday to move your business forward?
Here is an example of a DMO:
Create one piece of content a day: blog, video, article
Promote it on 5 Social media outlets. Whatever your favorites are: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube (if Video) Pinterest, Instagram, Google Plus, Tumblr.
Answer 3-5 questions for every post you create from Q & A sites like Yahoo.com to increase your credibility and have people start coming to YOU for answers.
Ultimately the “Secret Sauce”…is YOU!
Not a tool. Tools help you scale and automate.
Who are you as a person?
Are you a giver or taker?
If all you are after is the almighty dollar, then this will be a tough road to hoe. People will see this from a mile away and avoid you like the plague.
But, if you are real, genuine, providing solutions and value, then and only then will you begin to bring credibility to your name and people will start coming to you for answers. Then through that you will begin to see your business take off.
Be Real. Be purposeful. Be consistent and add VALUE!
is the only system that does not violate good email practices
Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost. (Forrester Research)
(Or, how to build an effective email auto responder campaign primarily attracting your outside leads via capture pages, to join through you in Markethive’s Social Network. Then we, as a team, continue to turn your leads into raving advocates and your best friends. Remember, Markethive is your partner)
What we are not and never will be
Let me explain what the traditional nurturing systems do and how we do not utilize their spying bad email practices. First, let me illustrate how traditional email nurturing works. A typical corporate inbound marketing email system uses hidden image pixels within their email that reports back to the server, the IP address, email address, geo location and when that email is opened and how many times it is opened and the dates and times it is opened.
Now what Lead Nurturing is really all about according to Markethive
Selling in today’s market isn’t for the timid or inexperienced marketer. Today’s prospects are researching according to their needs and on their terms, and they expect treatment accordingly and with respect. They are drawn towards companies and services that are personalized, friendly and timely. As marketers we must be ready to meet each prospective customer on their terms their way.
How can you make sure you are sharing the right information at the right time, and getting it to the right person? Markethive’s lead systems automate this process for you. As an entrepreneur seeking to attract likeminded entrepreneurs, Markethive’s Alpha Workshop systems, gently coach your leads (your children) through a learning and awareness program. This program rewards your “leads” (your children) to expand their profiles (IE: Phone numbers, Skype address, multiple Social Networks, keeping the email current, etc.) This process wields you to your leads, prospects (now you know why we call them children) for life.
Unlike the “other” traditional vertical systems, Markethive’s workshops, tools, and social networks, develop your prospects into well educated, integrated members of your own social network within the Markethive overall system.
When your “campaigns” bring in “leads” at the core of your custom Markethive auto responders, should always include an invite into the Markethive environment via your automatically “dripping” relevant messages to your leads over time.
The Markethive system can address various products of interest, pain points, common objections during the sales cycle, and more, depending upon your targets and goals, the number of campaigns you build the crossover of these campaigns and your eventual goal being to turn prospects into subscribers, subscribers into customers and those customers into lifelong friends.
With Markethive’s campaign systems, your system’s customers are placed on a track based on what we know about them. You’re learning more about your customers every day — as they learn more about you — so the nurturing process is a two pronged arena, both from your customized systems and the Markethive Social Network. Eventually all your leads become associated with you becoming your “children” or family for life, obviously you becoming the “parent”.
Stop wasting time.
If you engage a “child “lead too early, you have to spend a lot of time explaining what your solution does and pitching the value. Nurturing has the power to significantly speed up your connected cycle by taking care of some of that education before a lead even becomes active within the Markethive Network. It’s effective for both those actively evaluating your brand, and those who aren’t quite there yet — just make sure you use data to deliver the right message.
Markethive sees to it your leads are raised up effectively preparing them to embrace working with you and appreciating the power of the Markethive system and the incredible ease of the learning venture.
No longer deal with Dormant Leads
Today we are strapped for time and resources. If you’re balancing multiple priorities and doing everything manually, it’s easy to go too long without checking up on your leads. Markethive fills the gap with our constant offering and rewards for our automated and live marketing workshops. These workshops address all the power of the Markethive platform, turning your "lead“" (children” into virtual marketing warriors.
When you add your own flavor to this process, your “children” become loyal lifetime clients, friends and associates for life.
So it makes sense to add the invite to join your Markethive family to all your autoresponder campaigns with Markethive capture pages and widgets.
Building your own Campaigns to nurture your array of leads
Markethive’s core focus is building your portfolio of Markethive “children” leads into powerful allies joining you to improve your overall marketing effectiveness and reach.
Depending on the type of capture lead you develop; here are a few examples to build your capture page leads into members of your business, team, agenda, etc.
Welcome Campaign
Welcome emails in response to a particular offer are highly anticipated, frequently opened, and simple to automate. By turning your welcome emails into a nurturing campaign, you can begin to establish a lasting relationship. In the initial email, remember to remind them why they converted, confirm their opt-in, and let them know what to expect from your program. Then, start providing them with light, educational content to build awareness and keep them interested. Be sure to keep it targeted based on the offer they converted on and especially invite them to join Markethive as your special member offering them the many incentives Markethive offers. Invite them to your Markethive blogs and Groups to join and experience the power and family of the Markethive experience.
Top-of-Mind Campaign
The top-of-mind drip is designed to engage with your leads at regular intervals, preventing leads from forgetting about your company and getting swooped up by your competitors. This drip takes place over a longer period of time, providing sales with consistent touch points, and uses content primarily focused on value to the prospect. For early-stage leads, make sure to choose the right content. Start engaging them with interesting Markethive blog posts, helpful third-party content, and other content around related topics, and watch for key activities that indicate they are interested in learning more about your actual offering. Engaging in your blogs or joining your groups signals your leads are ready to upgrade to the culture of the Entrepreneur and join you in Markethive as a premium lead (we call them childen).
Re-engagement Campaign
Have an old list on Aweber or another email service? Here is an idea. Not all of your prospects will make it through this process. But by consistently inviting your lead databases on the other email systems, to engage in your Markethive blogs, join your Markethive groups or come subscribe and experience the difference with the first Market Network called Markethive. Markethive’s workshops make your leads become family. And that makes for a loyalty program that lasts a lifetime.
Product-focused Campaign
As prospects progress through the sales process and begin to seek out more product-focused content, you’ll want to make sure they’re getting the right product information from your series of auto responders, instead of a competitor or biased third party. Focus on your prospects’ pain points, how your product can address them, and the key features and benefits that will help along the way. For this type of drip, you’ll want to invite them to Markethive Groups regarding the case studies, customer testimonials, data sheets, and more in-depth white papers found there. Be sure you have visibility into all touchpoints with your customers so that you can tailor your conversations based on activity history. Remember; produce auto responders that engage your leads to continue the reading via your Markethive blogs (In other words, do not tell the whole story in your email). This is where you will be able to convert many of your leads into raving maniacs!
Competitive Drips
This type of campaign focuses on differentiating your product or service from your competitors by highlighting the advantages of using your product, as well as the disadvantages of not using it (note: you’ll want to refrain from harping on the disadvantages of your competitors’ products, since this can come off as distasteful). Focus your content on the priorities of your prospects and the competitors that come up in deals with your company. A general differentiator campaign can be effective, but if you know that a customer is currently using or evaluating a particular competitor, you can really position your product to win. Invite them to a special Group that is being set up to evaluate the different products and reporting within that Markethive Group. Access to the Groups does require Markethive (free) subscription and this is exactly what you want with all your contacts. To work within the Market Network of Markehive.
Industry Expertise Drips
As prospects move closer to the middle of the funnel (register for a Markethive account), it becomes important to reinforce that your company is the right choice. Pass on any helpful press releases, industry reports, or high-traffic content as part of this drip to establish your company’s authority. For example, if your company was recently covered by an analyst report, be sure to share it with your prospects and put your own spin on the review. Make sure all relevant information is available in Markethive Blogs and Groups.
Promotional Drips
As your prospects near the purchase stage of the sales funnel, a well-timed promotion or special discount can be just the catalyst they need. (Markethive has numerous services to offer for this) Consider offering special pricing or additional features based on their individual needs, especially if you’re working with bigger accounts where closing the deal is critical to growing your business. This also works well for companies that use a free trial model. The right offer near the end of the trial can help encourage customers to commit. (Like I keep saying, with Markethive’s Hive Portals and other powerful services for free, building a huge organization of customers, clients, friends and advocates, is real easy)
Onboarding Campaign
Onboarding a new client will always be a high-touch and manual process, and rightly so. However, nurturing campaigns allow you to automate some of the more repetitive tasks involved in onboarding, like providing introductory training resources, a list of next steps after close, timelines for product kickoffs, and frequently asked questions. These helpful resources can help your new clients get started on their own, without having to wait on a customer service rep for assistance.
Upsell Drip
The upsell (or cross-sell) campaign is designed to capitalize on your existing clients. By providing your clients with information and incentives to expand the list of products they are using, you can drive more revenue with little effort. Just be sure to focus your message around the benefits of the new offering, and remember to use a tone that feels friendly and approachable to your customers.
Renewal Campaign
Renewal nurtures can be a convenient way to remind your existing customers that it is time to renew their contracts. This drip can be triggered a month (or more) before the renewal date, send multiple reminder emails over a specified period of time, and notify the assigned account manager if no action takes place. This makes it far less likely that your clients will miss the renewals on their contracts, and takes the tedium out of the process for your service reps.
How Lead Nurturing Usually Works
The benefits of implementing a lead nurturing program are pretty self-explanatory, but how does nurturing actually work? Let’s take a look at some of the mechanics behind nurturing to see the steps involved in setting up a successful nurturing program.
1. Choose the type of campaign you would like to run. As discussed in the previous chapter, there are several different types of programs you can run based on what you want to accomplish. Are you hoping to revive inactive leads? Remind your current clients that renewals are fast approaching? Your next steps will hinge on this initial decision.
2. Choose the list you would like to nurture. Lists and segmentations are the reason that drip emails can be so highly targeted. If you want to nurture a specific segment of your database, sort these prospects or clients onto the same list. Need some inspiration to get your wheels turning? Try segmenting by specific locations, certain product segments, new users, or leads who have been cold for longer than six months. You can use logic rules to filter your prospects accordingly; this will also ensure any new prospects entering your database are evaluated and added to the campaign automatically.
3. Build up your flow and decide on your content.
Once you’ve decided which list to target with your campaign, you’re ready to develop your drip campaign and choose your content. There are several items to consider here:
• How often will you be sending drip emails to this list? This will depend on the type of campaign you’re running. If you have a long sales cycle and are targeting a list of inactive leads, consider spacing emails further apart. Other emails, like training emails or time-sensitive renewals, might be spaced closer together. As a general rule of thumb, we recommend sending emails between six and 30 days apart (to prevent sending more than one email in one week, or going more than a month between touch points).
• How complex do you want your drip campaigns to be? Your nurturing tracks can be as simple or as complicated as you want — it all depends on the drip logic that you create. Nurturing campaigns can be set up linearly, where prospects will progress through them in straight lines, offering different action points to different capture pages, groups, blogs, profile page to eventually bring them all into the social environment of Markethive where the ultimate nurturing occurs.
• Don’t forget Markethive. With capture widgets that can be embedded into blogs, capture pages, landing pages, etc. any auto responder can easily branch but should always lead to your leads (that are not Markethive Members) to become Markethive Members, where the extreme nurturing takes place.
• What will trigger each prospect to move to the next stage of the drip program? Lead nurturing is a type of trigger-based marketing, a technique that allows marketers to deliver highly relevant messaging based on a prospect’s response or reaction to an offer. Marketers can use many differing incentives to pull from your flat leads list (limited to a name, email), whether in Markethive, Aweber, Get Response, Mail Chimp, etc. to come into the extreme nurture environment of Markethive.
Markethive the ultimate Lead Nurturing environment:
You invite a list of customers to register for an upcoming webinar. Those who register are thanked and sent a related blog post. Those who do not open their email or respond are undetected. Markethive uses only good email practices. Put spying agents into an email to determine if it gets opened goes against our privacy policies and good email practices.
A prospect on an early-stage education nurture accesses your latest e-book offer, views several key pages on your Markethive blog, or registers into your Markethive capture page to view a video. Their value shoots up quickly as they finally enter into the Markethive environment! Email drips should always include invites to join Markethive Membership. You get the upgrade notification, and quickly connect with her, seeing her activity history so you understand exactly what she’s interested in.
Markethive invented Inbound Marketing. We did this back in the 1990s with a company called Veretekk. Our primary drive was we found spam, telemarketer calls and email violation (bad email practices) wrong, distasteful and not effective. Back then the standard procedure was to buy a database, spam them, cold call them and beat them over the head. This did not work, violated my “Do Good” policies in general.
In building the first Inbound Marketing, I focused on attracting traffic and offering them valuable services for free in return for their contact information. Once subscribed to a traffic portal we nurtured them to subscribe to the “whole enchilada” the Veretekk membership, where we trained and empowered them and most upgraded there to become paying subscribers and advocating zealots.
That was 20 years ago. A lot has evolved, but the underlying principles of integrity and good practices still remains foundational to Markethive.
Thus we built the Inbound Marketing platform (Markethive) to always result in the “lead, prospect” to ultimately enter into the Markethive community where true nurturing can occur in the social environment. We offer this alternative so we can avoid utilizing email sniffing techniques that in the opinion of email security companies like SORBs and IronPort are violations of privacy and considered bad email practices.
How does an email sniffer work? When an email is sent it will have a 1 pixel coded image that alerts a script on the mother server when it displays. All image displays draw upon the server and live a log footprint, IP address, date stamp as well as other information transferred that is found in that image name string.
This is akin to spying and is why email clients like Gmail default your email to NOT display images. The only thing an email sender should tract in an email is its deliverability or if it bounced and why. (ie: Spam, Mail Box Full. No such client “server to server codes”). And we do report that data in our system.
This is an example tracking image link:
Enough said? Markethive offers Good Practices and a better Lead Nurturing environment and solution. There are no shortcuts with Markethive. We always do it right.
At one point the decision or revelation became the foundation of the Markethive blogging system. Markethive would make WordPress better.
Let me explain. At one time we considered creating a blog software solution, (Blog Press) with templates that would compete with WordPress. I know, stupid. But at the time, there were many who thought it was a good idea.
The argument went like this, “Joomla, Drupal, Blogger, Typepad, etc.” offer others options so we should too. OK, I said, but then the list of competitors grew from WordPress to a much larger list, and not only did it make us another “ME TOO” company instead of an innovative cutting edge customer centric juggernaut.
I made the decision to “not” jump in as yet another standalone (CMS) blog platform like Word Press, but rather to create a powerful system to make Word Press and other CMS far more manageable, with the goal to make them better. Particularly functioning on making the world heavy weight Word Press even better by enhancing the WP platform with a supporting blog platform so multiple content could be constructed with partner contributors, so we could build a Broadcasting system utilizing literaly millions of members social networks, so we could build massive WordPress sites by many members in collaboration producing powerful SEO campaigns.
The whole idea has manifested as one of the most powerful blog collaboration Inbound Marketing systems ever devised, and that is Markethive.
Our roll being to fuse a powerful vertical targeted social network of Entrepreneurs, thereby making the Word Press and other CMS system powerful by the very spirit of the Rise of the Entrepreneur!
The following lists have become our goal to support the top contenders with plugins, widgets and collaborative power and function.
But the video tells it all.
Choosing blogging software can be a scary process, especially if you are new to blogging. There are many different types of engines and content management systems (CMS) that could be used. Picking the software that you’ll need is not an easy task, given the wide variety and types on the Web today.
There are many different aspects to consider when choosing which blogging software to pick. For instance:
Programming language.
Many blog platforms run on either PHP or Rails, but you can find just about any flavor of programming language you are looking for.
What features you’ll need.
The type of software you might choose is very dependent on the type of blog you are going to run. Some blog software is geared more towards new users, while others are more developer and designer-friendly. It’s a matter of finding software based on the features you need.
The size of the software’s community.
If the software community is larger for one blogging system and much smaller and less active than another, the more active community is usually a better choice for software. More active users within the development community means more improvements on the code base, in a faster time frame.
The age of the software.
The age of the software shows the maturity of the blogging platform. Young projects are more unstable, and are more likely to have bugs.
If you are planning on extending the blog.
If you are thinking about adding things like forums, a store, or some other feature to your blog, some blogging software will be more suited to fill that need than others.
The blog software that you choose can have a big impact on your blogging. It’s important to choose the right software in the very beginning, so you can avoid the hassle of migrating to different engine later on. Here are the pros and cons of the 10 most popular blogging systems.
Here is the list of the top 10 blogging CMS solutions:
1.Wordpress
Alexa Rank (276)-45
WordPress is the most famous and widely-used blogging platform. It features a very intuitive web-based installer so anyone from skill level novice to expert can quickly install the software without any hiccups.
The WordPress community is a major asset to the blogging software. It has one of the largest and most passionate communities of developers and users, so one could find just about any theme or plugin imaginable. The possibilities for extending the software are endless, and many web sites and services have used the WordPress code base to build entirely different applications. WordPress also features integration with Akismet, one of the most effective spam protection systems for blogging software.
WordPress makes it easy for new bloggers to not only install the software, but also to download and install automatic upgrades to plugins with only one click. The learning curve for WordPress is fairly minimal, and if a new user runs in to problems, they can always check the extensive documentation. WordPress is perfect for the new blogger who wants to get his feet wet installing their first blog software, or the advanced developer who’s looking to extend the stable code into something entirely different.
If you are wanting to start a multiple-blog site, you can also check out WordPress MU. WordPress MU is the same code base as the mature WordPress single blog code base, with some added functionality.
2. Drupal
Alexa Rank (2,497)-17
Drupal isn’t your typical blogging software. While it has an incredible community behind the code and many blogs use it for blogging software, it’s not just blogging software. Drupal is community software.
Drupal really shines as blog software for a blogging community. Performancing is a great example of using Drupal as a community of blogs. Whether you are wanting to power one blog to a 100, Drupal is an excellent choice.
Another strong point about Drupal is the versatility of the software. It comes packaged with a robust user system, but also a lot of community-friendly features like forums, books (for creating documents in a “book” structure) and a tracker which allows you to follow updates and content that other users have published recently.
Drupal also comes with a large community of developers and modules. With these modules, one could build any type of site or add nearly any sort of functionality to their Drupal installation. Many top-notch sites use Drupal to publish their multiple blogs and user communities. Performancing, Spread Firefox, The Onion, and Ubuntu and others.
Drupal is the perfect blogging software for anyone wanting to add a community to their blog with forums and extensions.
3. Joomla
Alexa Rank (2,689)-570
Joomla is a CMS that is similar to the community-friendly Drupal, and gaining traction every day. While Drupal is geared more towards developing community-flavored sites and blogs, Joomla seems to be geared more towards ecommerce (you can read more about the comparison between Joomla and Drupal here).
Regardless of their differences, Joomla is very much like Drupal in the fact that it’s easy to get anything from a simple site to a community blog in minutes. Joomla has a vibrant development community which has created many extensions.
Joomla is perfect for anyone wanting to build a blogging community site, or add ecommerce functionality to a blog.
4. ExpressionEngine
Alexa Rank (12,422)-2,466
ExpressionEngine is a very robust blogging platform, but isn’t free. The best feature about ExpressionEngine is the feature to publish multiple websites, either using different subdomains on a single domain, or across multiple domains.
You could use one code base to power multiple sites across multiple domains. The software features an extremely clean and simple backend that shouldn’t confuse the blogger. Designers and developers love ExpressionEngine for the fact that it’s quite easy to hand over a site and have the client update his own blog. It’s a solid all-in-one package.
ExpressionEngine is really geared for people who are trying to start a multi-blog site, but anyone can use the software quite easily thanks to its thoughtful and elegant design. A single license costs $99.95, but if you’re running a personal blog you can download the core version of EE.
5. Liferay
Alexa Rank (26,959)+3,284
Liferay Portal is a free and open source enterprise portal written in Java and distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License. It allows users to set up features common to websites. It is fundamentally constructed of functional units called portlets. Liferay is sometimes described as a content management framework or a web application framework. It comes with certain portlets preinstalled. These comprise the core functionality of the portal system.
The reasons to use Liferay Portal for your website are simple: it provides a robust platform to serve your site to all clients, be they desktop, mobile, or anything in between; it provides all the standard applications you need to run on your site; and it provides an easy to use development framework for new applications or customization. In addition to this, Liferay Portal is developed using an open source methodology, by people from around the world. The code base is solid, and has been proved to be reliable and stable in mission critical deployments in diverse industries.
6. DotNetNuke
Alexa Rank (32,058)-238
DotNetNuke is an open source platform for building web sites based on Microsoft .NET technology. It is written in VB.NET and distributed under both a Community Edition BSD-style license and a commercial proprietary license. The Community Edition is a popular web content management (WCM) system and application development framework for ASP.NET, with over 6 million downloads and 600,000 production web sites as of October 2010. More than 8,000 DotNetNuke apps are available for purchase on Snowcovered.com. DotNetNuke.com has over 800,000 registered members as of October 2010.
Major Features:
Distinguishes between community (common features) and enterprise (full set of features) editions.
Various modules, and data providers.
Provides language packs for about 60 languages.
Customizable through skins and templates.
7. MODX
Alexa Rank (32,333)+1482
Modx is not just an open source CMS but also a web application framework. Raymond Irving and Ryan Thrash began the MODx CMS project in 2004 as a fork of Etomite. In 2008 MODx users created a new logo and branding for the project. Now MODx allows for full segregation of content (plain HTML), appearance and behavior (standards compliant CSS and JavaScript) and logic (PHP, snippets).
Major Features:
As with Joomla, modx officially supports only MySQL database.
Not just CMS but a PHP framework for Web.
Freedom to choose jQuery, Mootools, ExtJS, Prototype or any other JavaScript library.
Supports PHP 4.3.11 and above.
Complete control of all metadata and URL structure for SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Unlimited hierarchical page depth.
Can create custom fields and widgets for templates.
Role-based permissions for the Manager.
Ability to customize the Manager on a per-deployment basis.
Ecommerce integration via Foxy Cart.
Extensions: 622, also known as add-ons.
8. concrete5
Alexa Rank (33,631)-292
Concrete5 is an open source CMS started in 2003 as a rapid-design approach to building the now-defunct LewisAndClark200.org, the official site for the Ad Council's National Council for the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial. Concrete5 is developed in PHP and is distributed under MIT software license.
Concrete5 features in-context editing (the ability to edit website content directly on the page, rather than in an administrative interface or using web editor software). Editable areas are defined in concrete5 templates which allow editors to insert 'blocks' of content. These can contain simple content (text and images) or have more complex functionality, for example image slideshows, comments systems, lists of files, maps etc. Further addons can be installed from the concrete5 Marketplace to extend the range of blocks available for insertion. Websites running concrete5 can be connected to the concrete5 website, allowing automatic upgrading of the core software and of any addons downloaded or purchased from the Marketplace.
9. Typo3
Alexa Rank (36,110)-8,334
TYPO3 is a free and open source CMS released under the GNU General Public License oriented to small to mid size enterprise-class users. TemplaVoila is an alternative template engine extension for TYPO3. A graphical mapping tool for creating templates is included, an alternative page module, the ability to create flexible content elements and an API for developers. New content element types can be created without programming. TemplaVoila facilitates more flexibility for maintaining web pages than TYPO3's standard templating, while making it possible to enforce a strict corporate design and allowing editors to work with content more intuitively.
Delivered with a base set of interfaces, functions and modules, TYPO3's functionality spectrum is implemented by extensions. More than 5000 extensions are currently available for TYPO3 for download under the GNU General Public License from a repository called the TYPO3 Extension Repository, or TER.
TYPO3 can run on most HTTP servers such as Apache or IIS on top of Linux, Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X. It uses PHP 5.3 or newer and any relational database supported by the TYPO3 DBAL including MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and others. Some 3rd-party extensions – not using the database API – support MySQL as the only database engine. The system can be run on any web server with a modern CPU and at least 256 MB RAM. The backend can be displayed in any modern browser with JavaScript. There is no browser restriction for displaying user-oriented content generated by TYPO3.
10. Alfresco
Alexa Rank (36,854)+2,483
Alfresco is an open source enterprise content management system for Microsoft Windows and Unix-like operating systems. Alfresco includes a content repository, an out-of-the-box web portal framework for managing and using standard portal content, a CIFS interface that provides file system compatibility on Microsoft Windows and Unix-like operating systems, a web content management system capable of virtualizing web apps and static sites via Apache Tomcat, Lucene indexing, and jBPM workflow. The Alfresco system is developed using Java technology. John Newton (co-founder of Documentum) and John Powell (a former COO of Business Objects) founded Alfresco Software, Inc. in 2005.
11. b2evolution
Alexa Rank (80,628)-14,427
b2evolution is another blogging platform that allows for a single installation of a blog, or a whole network of blogs, right out of the box. b2 probably has the weakest developer community behind it, with only a 200+ plugins (compared to Joomla’s 3,400+).
The software features a very easy-to-understand backend, ideal for beginners. b2 also has has a built in stats feature, which is something most blogging platforms don’t have out of the box. The software also features a post editor with a very minimal WYSIWYG editor, which is perfect for a beginning blogger.
While the b2 developer community may not be very large, it has a very promising code base and many people still use b2evolution to power their blogs and blogger communities.
The Irrelevant Others
Plone.org
Alexa Rank (102,395)+10,174
cmsmadesimple.org
Alexa Rank (104,671)-32,048
umbraco.com
Alexa Rank (116,439)-16,212
ez.no
Alexa Rank (154,173)-43,687
movabletype.org
Alexa Rank (174,802)-9,166
textpattern.com
Alexa Rank (187,704)-45,048
Being Irrelevant,
mephistoblog.com
Alexa Rank (8,419,219)-2,169,053
There is no other blogging platform, that integrates support for all Blog CMS systems, engages social networks so reaches high into the stratosphere, nor institute a learning environment so building competent content teams is easily achieved.
But we are making WordPress better! Let me explain:
WordPress has established itself as the 400lb undisputed CMS (Content Management System). WordPress is taking over the Internet! And MarketHive is retooling to support and make WordPress better. Over 75 million sites now depend on WordPress. In the realm of self-hosted sites, WordPress accounts for over 19% of all websites. What is even more amazing is that over 70% of sites worldwide do not use a CMS.
22% of new US registered domains run on WordPress. Out of every 100 domains in the US, 22 of them will be run on WordPress. Considering that an average of 120,000 domains are registered worldwide per day, it's safe to say that WordPress is growing by leaps and bounds. That "18.9% of all websites" figure is exponentially increasing.
WordPress receives more unique visitors than Amazon! WordPress records an astonishing 126M unique visitors per month, while Amazon falls quite a ways behind, clocking in at 96M unique visitors per month.
6 New WordPress posts every second! That's right. Every second, close to 6 new posts are published on WordPress blogs. That averages out to 34.2 posts per minute. Just about 20,000 per day. And a grand total of 7.5 million annually.
Not only is WordPress.org the world's most popular self-hosted CMS solution, but the free version is also second in popularity on the list of free blogging platforms, with Google's own Blogger.com topping it.
29,000 WordPress plugins and growing daily. Without doubt, the number one feature that sets WordPress apart from any other CMS is their plugins. Plugins extend and capitalize on the functionality of WordPress, removing access to them would cripple WordPress users (and that's one of the reasons why WordPress falls second to Blogger).
Fortunately, nothing of the sort is happening. On the contrary, WordPress.org's database of plugins has recently hit 29k and a new one is added nearly every hour. In total, these plugins have been downloaded 286,000,000+ times. Give it a few more years and you'll be hearing "there's a plug in for that".
WordPress is most popular with business websites. Of the top one million sites, the number of business sites (most popular with WordPress) powered by WordPress is five times the number of WordPress-managed news sites (least popular with WordPress).
This statistic is not all that surprising, as online marketing circles will often discuss WordPress more than any other CMS out there. WordPress also ranks high as one of the most blogged topics in the online marketing niche and nearly all its keywords have very high PPC competition.
So the Point is clear:
Do we build a competitive option to WordPress? Or do we move forward with our abilities and our Blog platform to support and make WordPress better? Stupid question! The force multiplier ability of MarketHive's platform, the technology we already have, our very mission in fact, begs us to support and empower WordPress!
If you have yet to explore or utilize the tools we already have in our blogging platform, do it today. It is becoming a virtual gold mine for those entrepreneurs that have discovered how MarketHive can make your WordPress or many WordPress sites, effective, powerful SEO machines, including an exponential increase in Social Network sharing as well as massive legitimate engagement in the comments systems.
If you have a WordPress site, join us. If you have already joined us, explore our Blog platform, build your teams, down load the plugins and watch your WordPress campaigns explode!
Now that is what Harvard business school calls a Force Multiplier!
MarketHive did not make WordPress but we make WordPress better!
It’s 1:30 pm your wife is out of town visiting family and one of your children calls from school saying they are sick. You are in the middle of a project that must be completed by 8 am the next day.
Our Lead Nurturing System 
WordPress meets Markethive
