6 Reasons Why Your Stock Broker Is No Less Than Your Enemy

“I’m too busy from 9.15 am to 3.30 pm” he said, “working with multiple tools, stock broker, advanced software and couple of screens, life is too busy to answer your calls”. She wondered, are stock brokers really that busy and occupied? Do they really work so hard that they can’t have a life on weekdays in trading hours? If so, shouldn’t all their clients be extremely successful, including themselves?

Stock Broker

“If stock market experts were so expert, they would be buying stock, not selling advice.” This famous quote by Norman Augustine defines exactly what’s wrong with stock market experts. While investors are constantly looking for advice and forecasts to prevent failure in the markets, the so-called experts are only doing their job and getting paid for commission. Fundamentally, your brokers’ job is only taking orders and executing your trades. Their hidden objective is to get you to make as many trades as possible, so that they make money, based on trade commissions and fees. However, he is not someone you should turn to for stock trading advice or analysis. If he really was an expert and knew so much about the markets, he wouldn’t need to sit behind a desk and work so hard. He would follow his own advice and make lots of money!

1. There is no ‘Skin In The Game’

Next time your stock broker or relationship manager calls you to make a trade or suggest you the next big multibagger stock idea, don’t ask them what to buy or sell. Just ask them, what do they have or don’t have in their own portfolio ? This one question shall settle the case !

2. Stock Brokers will always give more ‘Buy’ recommendations

Every time you buy and sell, your broker will get a commission as broking companies run on commission basis. Once you buy, you are likely to sell it later and thus, the brokers get two transactions minimum for their commission. Therefore, you will always see a ‘buy’ recommendation from your broker. In reality, exits are more important in the stock markets than your entry. The broker must be able to give you right selling advice as well, or else he is not doing his job right.

3. They are paid on a monthly basis, and thus recommend on a monthly basis as well

All relationship managers have an incentive on the basis of revenue they generate i.e. commissions or brokerage as it is referred in India. The more brokerage you generate, the more incentives you get. It is that simple. All broking firms give monthly targets to their branches, these targets are then distributed among relationship managers working at the branch level. Then there are incentive brackets, performer of the month awards & what not ! Do you really think a relationship manager will  put your interest first & give you sensible advice ?

4. There is a conflict of interest

Brokers must give unbiased advice to their clients. However, many broking firms have an investment banking relationship and advisory role with companies. They are often forced to recommend only these company’s stocks to their clients, creating a huge conflict of interest. Also each broking firm has a trading desk & research desk both. It so happens that the research desk is recommending a stock, and at the same time trading desk is selling it. Effectively dumping the stock among their retail clients. It may not be done with an intention, but it does happpen. Take this recent case for example. 

Some firms even have a retail desk & HNI desk as high networth individuals earn fat commissions for brokers. Herein HNI desk is given preference. They get different research & recommendations, and are given preference over retail. It so happens that an exit call or an entry call is given to HNI’s first to make sure they benefit the most.

5. The House View is the Right View

In major Indian broking houses, there is a list of good stocks that must be recommended by analysts to their clients. Even if one analyst believes that a stock is not going to perform well, he rarely makes a ‘sell’ recommendation and takes the risk.

6. The more the recommendations, the less you remember the bad ones

This is a master strategy employed by most brokers. When they give you around 30 recommendations over a period of 2-3 months, even if a few fail, one or two will perform well. They will shift your focus on these stocks, making it unlikely that you will remember the bad performing ones.

Dilbert Stock Broker Image- Alpha Invesco

Things to remember to protect yourself from the agony of broker recommendations:

  • Don’t go by the buy sell strategy of your broker. Read and analyse the company’s balance sheet that you want to invest in, and only go ahead if you are happy.
  • Take responsibility for your investments. It is your money and thus, it must be entirely your decision about where you invest.
  • Take every recommendation with a pinch of doubt. Check whether the broker has any conflict of interest or is genuinely making the recommendation
  • Be rational and objective about your investment goals. Only choose recommendations that match your investment philosophy and goals
  • Don’t buy all the stocks your broker recommends. He will approximately make 100 recommendations in a year.How can you create a portfolio with 100 stocks?
  • Give yourself enough time to review and plan your investments. Educate yourself and never let your money be ruled by anyone other than you.

Peter Lynch

A famous Warren Buffett quote states, “Predicting rain doesn’t count. Building arks does.” Brokers will give you lots of predictions and recommendations about the future. However, it is important as an investor that you make the right choices for a lucrative and rewarding future.

 

Source: 6 Reasons Why Your Stock Broker Is No Less Than Your Enemy seen first on https://alphainvesco.com

/by

6 ways to get rid of negativity on social media

Gone are the days when we only see food videos, cutesy animal clips, and encouraging posts on social media. These have been replaced by self-serving posts, hate messages, and trolls on the comments section. Today’s typical newsfeed is full of rants from friends sharing how they are messing up their lives, and posts sharing almost every single detail of their day.

These are just some of the reasons why social media nowadays make it hard for us to breathe. One may argue that we can always log off to avoid this but the truth is, it’s not that easy. Social media has become part of our lives – a virtual extension of ourselves. From the moment we wake up to the time we go to bed, we grab our smartphones and scroll down to our newsfeed.

We cannot just let the negativity creep into our lives. It’s time to get rid of it and keep a positive and clean newsfeed!

Here are a few ways to detoxify your social media accounts:

1. Unfollow ‘toxic’ people

Things will be easier if you see less of what annoys you online.

Is it hard for you to see hate posts and messages? Hit that unfollow button. Free yourself of the person, page, or group that upsets you or doesn’t contribute to your personal growth. They don’t deserve space on your news feed. You don’t necessarily need to remove them from your friends’ list but unfollowing them can make a huge difference.

Sometimes you’ll be surprised that you’ve become part of an open group without your consent. If that happens, leave the group immediately so you will not be flooded with that group’s notifications of activities.

It’s not being rude. You’re just doing yourself a favor.

 

Toxic people

2. Scan your friends’ list and accept only people you know

You have hundreds or even thousands of friends on Facebook. Do you really know each one of them personally? Or at least interact with them once in a while? If not, then it’s time for you to go over your friends’ list and remove unnecessary and inactive accounts.

For pending friend requests, accept only people you know. Spot fake accounts as they can be trolls hiding their identities to get access to your account. (READ: Social media fakery: Tips for spotting questionable accounts)

3. Take a second look at your privacy settings

Always make sure that you share posts with only “approved” friends. Setting your posts on “public” mode will make it easier for others outside your online circle to leave comments and enter your space.

Aside from posts, home address, current location, and other personal information should only be visible to friends you know.

4. Keep an eye on the trolls

Trolls are the major source of negativity on social media. As much as you want to take a stand on an issue and explain it to them, they will never listen. They will make conversations toxic and resort to personal attacks when their beliefs differ from yours.

If you want to keep your sanity, don’t engage them, especially the ones you’ll encounter on the comments section of news organizations. (READ: The 6 trolls you meet online)

5. Beware of fake news

Filter the content you read online. Stories shared from fake news websites can be toxic. It will mislead you from what’s really happening. (READ: 10 tips on how to spot fake news from Facebook)

6. The positivity starts with you

You cannot dictate what other people share on their accounts but you can set the mood of your own timeline. Be the change. Start sharing posts that motivate and make you feel good. Don’t be affected by the negative things you see online. Post inspiring statuses and encourage others to do the same.

Have you tried any of these tips? Or do you have other ways to share on detoxing social media accounts?

 

Source: 6 ways to get rid of negativity on social media is seen first on http://www.rappler.com

/by

The 10 Types of Content That Work Best for SEO – Whiteboard Friday

After analyzing hundreds of SERPs over the past few weeks, Rand has identified the 10 distinct content types that work best for SEO and classified which formats are suited for certain queries. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, he explains those content types and how to use them to satisfy searcher intent, match them to the right projects, and enhance your overall strategy.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re going to chat about the types of content, content formats that tend to work well for SEO, and I’m talking specifically about content rather than sort of an e-commerce product page or a contact page or those types of things, and that’s because what we want to try and do here is talk about those of you who are doing content strategy and content marketing and choosing which content formats you should potentially use.

So I actually spent a bunch of time over the last few weeks analyzing a few hundred search results, of many, many different kinds, trying to identify the unique, diverse kinds of search results in which content marketing pieces ranked or the types of pieces that would fit into the content marketing world rank.

10 content formats that appeared regularly atop Google

So I made this list of 10. There are actually 11, but I don’t particularly recommend all 11 of these, and what I’ve done is, below the video, you can see in the text content of this Whiteboard Friday I’ve made a list. For each of these 11, I have a URL that’s a good example of this and a search query for which that URL ranks, so you can get a sense of what this type of stuff looks like. So you’re probably familiar with most of these formats:

  1. Blog posts and those could have regular updates or be republished on a regular basis
    e.g.     Live & Dare’s Benefits of Meditation (ranks for Meditation Benefits)
  2. Short-form evergreen content and articles
    e.g.     Jim Collin’s Piece on Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals (ranks for BHAG)
  3. Long-form articles
    e.g.     Wait But Why on the Fermi Paradox (ranks for Fermi Paradox)
  4. Photo and visual galleries, I found a lot of these ranking, especially for things that lent themselves to it, for example if you were to search for men’s haircuts styles.
    e.g.     Right Hairstyle’s 100 Cool Short Hairstyles for Men/ (ranks for men’s hair styles)
  5. Detailed and information-rich lists of information
    e.g.     Wareable’s Best Fitness Trackers of 2016 (ranks for Fitness Trackers)
  6. Interactive tools and content, got some good examples of those.
    e.g.     Zoopla’s House Prices Tool (ranks for property prices)
  7. Comprehensive category landers, so this would be like if you search for kitchen designs, how you might land on Houzz’s page of various kitchen designs and that’s really a lander to get you into more content, so it’s not technically a content marketing piece by itself, but it leads you into content pieces or could.
    e.g.     HGTV’s Kitchen Ideas (ranks for kitchen remodeling ideas)
  8. Multi-page guides, things like Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO, but we have some other examples too.
    e.g.     Bates University’s “Painless Guide to Statistics” (ranks for statistics guide)
  9. Data or complex information that is visualized
    e.g.     CNN’s Election Results (ranks for election results 2016)
  10. Video, YouTube or embedded video on a particular page, Whiteboard Friday itself being an example of that.
    e.g.     Whiteboard Friday itself (ranks for Unique Content)

Then an eleventh format that I don’t actually recommend, even though I found it in the search results quite often, and that is the formal research documents that are usually PDFs or Powerpoints or those kinds of things. The reason I don’t recommend these formats is because they’re actually hard to parse. They’re particularly hard to open on mobile devices. They’re not very user-friendly, and most of the time the reason they rank well is simply because they’re cited by lots of other things. But when you see content marketers invest in one of these spaces and make a document in one of these other formats that’s better and more comprehensive and more useful and more user-friendly, they do a much better job and they tend to rank better too.

Which format should you use for your project?

So the question is: Which format should you be using for your project? This is something we have to do at Moz. We ask ourselves this question when we’re creating content around SEO and around web marketing information and information of all kinds. So there are sort of three big ones that I ask and then a few tips that I’ve got for you as well. But first off, I like to start with:

What’s the searcher’s intent? What are they trying to accomplish?

Now generally speaking, if it’s navigation or transaction, content marketing-types of pieces are not the right match for those types of queries. But if it’s informational, which is a huge swath, a massive amount of the searches that take place on the web and certainly many of the ones that content marketing is designed to target, because then it can turn those people from, “Yeah, I now know about your brand and I’m now considering you and I thinking about you.”

There’s a bunch of different variants of these. So things like I’m looking for:

  • A quick answer to this question
  • A deep comparison of different types of information or different products, different services, different paths that I could choose to answer the action that I’m about to take.
  • A broad overview
  • I could be searching out something, searching for information purely out of curiosity and intrigue. You know when you go down a rabbit hole around, “Hey, I want to know all the films that Meg Ryan was ever in.” Then, “Wait a minute. What is that one? I’ve never heard of that one, and let me go learn more about that.” So the curiosity and intrigue.
  • Professional and scientific interests
  • Multi-threaded exploration.

Look, there are plenty of others other types of informational queries. The key is to ask yourself which of these are most of the people performing this search query trying to accomplish, and then you can do a better job of narrowing down this list. So you might be able to cut out five or six of these and only leave yourself with a few options after you’ve answered this question. The next one is:

What actually appears in the search results page?

I mean this two ways. One, who already shows up there, and what kinds of formats are they using? That can be informational. That can give you some inspiration, or it could drive you to want to be different from the rest of them. But also, I’m asking in terms of the SERP features that appear there. Are we talking about:

  • 10 blue links and ads, which is very, very classic old school, but uncommon these days? Or are we talking about search verticals appearing in their images, which suggest maybe I should be thinking about…
  • Photos or visual galleries or maybe data or complex information visualized, like maybe an informational graphic or more likely a data visualization that’s of high quality. I’m not a big infographic fan myself, as you might know from previous Whiteboard Fridays.
  • Is it news? In which case, maybe I want a short-form article or a long-form article.
  • Is it videos? In which case, I probably want to video.

If we see lots of things like:

  • Instant answers, people also ask, in-depth results, that could point us toward the complexity of the information and how much people are willing to go dig into this. So people who also ask suggest that it might be a multi-threaded exploration, a multi-page guide, or a comprehensive category lander could be a good match there. If I see an instant answer, probable that a short-form, evergreen article could do really well, or a blog post that’s regularly updated might do well there.

If I see…

  • Site links, maps or local, or one of Google or Bing’s widgets, that essentially answer the query for you, a search for a calculator or a search for flight prices, they answer that already. A search for weather, they answer that already. Chances are it might be pretty hard to do things in the content marketing world that will actually have success there. I might bias you to look for other things.

Then the third question:

What’s going to resonate with two groups — my audience and their influencers?

You need to ask these questions about both those groups. That could mean:

  • Device type and where you are searching from. So if somebody is searching on a mobile device and they are on-the-go and this type of query has an intent that is informational but it’s very quick information, you might want to consider some ofthe shorter form stuff.
  • If there are hopeful next steps and you know that that’s the case, you might want to give something like the multi-page guide or the category lander or the interactive tool or content or that detailed list that gives someone actions they can take right after they’ve consumed that information.

You also want to consider whether this is a person or this is likely to be a person who is:

  • looking for new and interesting formats and they would be fascinated and enjoy exploring that, or whether they’re…
  • looking for something familiar and trusted, that is not new, that doesn’t make them think at all, it just answers their query and gets them finished.

Suggestions

I would say…

  • Don’t ignore new formats. So if some of these are not things you’ve considered in the past, don’t ignore them.
  • Recognize that you shouldn’t just use a format because it’s new. That is a terrible idea. You should use a format because it works well for your audience, because it serves all of these functions.
  • Learn from who’s already ranking
  • I wouldn’t say that you should just copy somebody else’s format because it’s easy to do and familiar. Make sure that familiar and trusted is the best way that you can compete.
  • Look at these content formats and finding ways to get a competitive advantage from them. If all of your competitors are just doing blog posts and short-form and long-form articles, you might be able to win with a visual gallery, you might be able to win with an interactive piece of content or a tool, or you might be able to win with complex information visualized. That’s a powerful thing.
  • Do use a multi-keyword approach in this analysis. So when I’m saying, “What is the searcher’s intent,” I’m asking you to consider all of the words and phrases that you’re hoping to rank for with this piece of content, not just a single keyword term or phrase. That will give you the best way to choose the right content format for the search queries and the overall goal of attracting the right searchers.

All right everyone, look forward to hearing about some of the formats you’ve used, maybe some that aren’t on this list. If you have great examples of these you’d like to share, we’d certainly love to see them. And we’ll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care. Visit us https://goo.gl/maps/XQRHJJzcV3s

Source:

The 10 Types of Content That Work Best for SEO – Whiteboard Friday first seen on http://moz.com

/by

Twitter Deep Dive: How to Use Social Media to 10x Your Website Traffic – Whiteboard Friday

I just want to ask you a quick question. How many of you feel like you have a well-oiled machine that is taking people from your social media content through and all the way to your site? If you don’t feel like you have a really strong, well-oiled machine, I’ve got one here for you, and you can implement all three parts of this three-step process I’m going to show you in order to really, really drive a lot more traffic, squeeze a lot more traffic out of your social media following and your social media presence.

Reach

So this process has three steps. The first step is reach. This is something that most people skip over entirely. They sit back passively, and they wait for people to find their social media site. So I want to offer an alternative for you that’s going to be a lot more proactive, and here’s how it works.

There are thousands, if not millions of people out there who are actively posting, tweeting, and saying that they want your product, your service, whatever it is that you have. So for example, if you have a company that helps people find apartments, there are thousands of people every day who are posting, “I’m thinking about moving to Seattle next month,” “thinking about going here.” They’re actually saying these things in their social media posts, and you’re just letting them say these things and you’re not actually engaging with them. But there’s a really awesome way that you can do that, and I want to walk you through how.

Keywords

So what you’re going to want to do first, in order to find these people, is write down a couple really clear keywords around the types of things that people are saying in social media to indicate high interest.

These keywords are going to be slightly different than the keywords that someone might type into Google or into a search bar, because the types of things you say on social media are just slightly different. So for example, you might say “looking for an apartment” on social media, but on Google search you might type in “apartments in Seattle,” and that’s a slight difference there. So you want to be conscious of the social media platform that you’re on when you’re writing out your keywords.

Automated workflow

Once you have your keywords, the next thing you want to do is build an automated workflow to engage with these people. There are a couple different things that you can do to create an automated workflow. You get to decide which of these four elements you want to use to create the most organic experience for you and for your brand. But there are four different types of ways you can engage with these people who are actively saying that they want whatever it is that you have. So you can:

  • Like their posts
  • Follow them
  • Add them to a list
  • Send them a DM that says, “Hey, Tara, saw you were interested in apartments. Check out this blog post of the top apartments in Seattle that we put together last week,” whatever it might be.

But what you’re going to want to do is use some of these, maybe not all four of them. But come up with a strategy that feels really organic and an outreach, because you don’t want to just leave these people hanging out there. You want to make sure that you’re engaging with them in some way. It’s low-hanging fruit, and it’s really going to help you squeeze a lot of value out of your social media content.

Resources

So I’ve outlined some resources for you to use in order to do that. These are two of my favorite tools.

Socedo does a really good job automating this workflow of reaching out to people who are prospective customers, prospective users, prospective visitors of your website. There’s also a tool called Narrow.io that you can use.

Click

So once you’re doing this outreach, you’re not passively sitting back, you’re actually engaging with the people who really want whatever it is that you have, we’re going to move over to the second strategy — to click. Now, what you want to do here is have something really valuable for these people to actually click on, because what they’re going to do is they’re going to click on your profile link and they’re going to arrive here. That is why I recommend people implement something I call a 14-day experiment.

14-day experiment

A 14-day experiment is when you take your top blog posts and for 14 days, every single day you post 14 posts, different blog posts. You can mix them up. But every day you are posting 14 links to a blog post with some interesting, unique content. The reason you want to do this is that the average user spends just 13 minutes on Twitter at a time. So the chances of them seeing more than one of those posts in your day is really slim. So you want to do 14. It may feel like a lot for your company and for your brand, but really that’s where you want to be in order to really squeeze out all that value on your social media site.

Spreadsheet

Now, in order to get prepared for this 14-day experiment, what you’re going to want to do is get out a spreadsheet. In the first column of your spreadsheet, you’re going to want to put links to all of your top blog posts. I’d say grab somewhere between 14 and 25 blog posts that you want to use.

In the next column, for this specific blog post, you’re going to write a tweet, a piece of content. You can grab out a quote from the blog post, or you can do a summary of the blog post, whatever it might be. But you’re going to write a tweet about that blog post, and if you want, you can add an accompanying image.

You’re going to do that again for the same blog post, but you’re going to put a new piece of content, a new tweet, and a new image. This spreadsheet will go on for about 28 rows, because you’re going to do about 14 different posts for each blog post. It’s going to really push you to think about different angles and different ways that people can think about the content that you’ve already written. Most of us just post one or two times on our blog post, but you can really push out 14.

Resources

Some resources to help you do this, obviously a spreadsheet. Really easy, that is all you need. But I also have a book recommendation for you. It’s called “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook” by Gary Vaynerchuk. I’ve had my team and other teams read this book as a group. As they go through putting together their 14-day experiment, it’s a really great way to rally your team around the ideas and get everyone involved. So if they want to contribute some content into this spreadsheet, they’re already on board and excited to do it.

Recycle

Now, then you move on to the third part of the strategy, which is to recycle your content. Again, most of us are posting again and again and again on social media, but people are only seeing a few of those posts, because the average user is only spending a few minutes on Twitter every day. So what you’re going to want to do is use a tool to recycle your content.

Resources

You’re not just going to want to post your blog post one or two times. You’re going to want to take everything you put in the spreadsheet and put it into a tool like Edgar. Edgar is a tool that allows you to recycle content. So after the blog post has gone up one day, 14 days later, a month later, it’ll show up again, that same exact post. People probably haven’t seen it yet, and so it’s going to allow you to recycle your content on auto-pilot. https://seotrafficsite.com/seo-company-in-surat/

These two elements on the side of me — the outreach part and the recycling part — those are things that you can get going on auto-pilot. They’re running on their own. This middle piece, you’re going to have to do some upkeep. You’re going to have to maintain content, add new content to your funnels. But for the most part, this is going to allow you to cohesively build a really cohesive strategy that’s going to automate the experience. It’s going to really squeeze a lot of the content, a lot of the engagement that you can get to get people from just looking at your social media profile, bring them to your social media profile, and then funnel them through to actually be on your website.

Thanks for hanging out with me on Whiteboard Friday.

Source:

Twitter Deep Dive: How to Use Social Media to 10x Your Website Traffic – Whiteboard Friday first seen on http://moz.com

/by

7 tips to Master facebook

Read more
/by

Best Online Video

Read more
/by