Video: Creating Facebook Groups
Blog
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How Much Time Do I Spend on My Online Business?
Video: Brad answers the question “How much time do I have to spend on my online business?”
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Can My IT Guy Do My SEO?
Video: Brad discusses why your IT guy isn’t the right person to handle your SEO, marketing or social media.
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Akismet Plugin
All WordPress installations come with 2 plugins already installed (though not activated). They are Akismet and Hello Dolly. I always delete the latter one. Hello Dolly is just a novelty for your admin area. I am sure it is very small, but I don’t use it so I delete it. The other one is Akismet – I suggest you definitely use this. It’s main job is blocking spam comments and although it doesn’t catch them all, it does a great job.
Set up is simple:
Navigate to your plugin menu and activate Akismet. You will get a warning saying you need a WordPress API key to use it. This is also simple to get. You have to start an account at WordPress.Com (free). You don’t have to set up a free blog or anything, just an account. Since I was creating an account I made a quick free blog to drop some backlinks to my site, but that is a story for another article. Anyways, once you have a WordPress.com account, you can find the API key in your profile. You can also request a free API key from Akismet.com if you don’t want to start a WordPress account. Once you have the key you can use it on multiple sites.
After a fairly simple set up process Akismet will instantly go to work. Using a huge database, Akismet will check all incoming comments and automatically mark the comments that match the database as spam. This will save you a lot of time, because you will be receiving spam not long after your site is up and running. I have sites that haven’t even been completed before they were spammed.
Another great feature of Akismet is that it learns, if it is missing spam and you routinely mark those comments as spam it will learn to mark those comments as well. Conversely if it is marking comments as spam, that aren’t you can teach it by marking those comments approved. Although I trust Akismet on my blog, I do check the spam comment area to see if it caught anything it shouldn’t have. If you are wondering about it’s effectiveness – here are the actual numbers from my site since the end of January: 870 Spams caught at an accuracy rating of 99.686%. I am not saying everyone will see those kind of numbers, but that’s how well it is working for me. Quite impressive.
Spam comments are going to aggravate you eventually. If you don’t have this plugin it will happen sooner than you can imagine. WordPress packages this plugin for a reason – it works. Don’t waste your time pouring through spam comments in your email or on your site. Activate Akismet now and thank me later.
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Transform Your Business With Video
It’s been out there, so why don’t you have a video made yet that promotes your business and gets you your share of online video traffic? If it is because you are intimidated by the whole process or are just a little camera shy then I only have one thing to say to you. Get over yourself! If you knew how much business you were losing on a daily basis you would try to build yourself a time machine to go back to the beginning and get a video out there for everyone to see right from the get-go.
A good video can take you from mediocre sales to astronomical sales in very short order. All you need to do is make sure it is professional and that it puts your business in a good light. Everyone with an online business should get a video out there to benefit from all the online video traffic that there is available. The numbers are astounding.
Check out what is out there first thing. You need to see what is selling then make your own version. Try to be creative and as unique as possible. You don’t want someone coming after you because they think you copied their video. You need to know about new techniques and effects that have become popular.
If you still are camera shy then you will need to hire someone to be your spokesperson for the video. Use the good sense that God gave you and pick someone who can represent you and your business accurately. You and your video have to be believable in order for people to come to you to buy your product. If you are not believable your customers will not be your customers, they will be someone elses.
Also, if you do not know anything about shooting a video there are videographers for hire who can help you get the professional quality you need to promote your business and be extremely successful. Professionalism means bigger profits for you. If you put out a rinky-dink video you will probably be laughed off of the internet. Sell yourself and your business to get the traffic you need to be a success.
When your video is complete and ready for posting make sure to get maximum exposure and post it to every video hosting site you can find. Basically, go viral. Getting your video out there for people to see is your main objective as soon as it is finished. Obviously, you will want to look at it first to see if it meets your approval. If it does, do not hesitate, get it out there. Your bottom line depends on it.
And do not forget when you sign up to these video hosting sites to put a link to your website in your profile. Search engines will sprinkle a little love on you and rank you higher in the results pages. This is another source of traffic that goes hand in hand with the online video traffic you have already generated.
Go active as soon as it is finished. Obviously, you will want to look at it first to see if it meets your approval. If it does, do not hesitate, get it out there. Your bottom line depends on it.
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WordPress Upgrades
If you use WordPress to power your websites, there will be times you need to upgrade. Luckily WordPress lets you know this right in the back office of your website. You will get a notification that WordPRess is ready to be updated, and a handy link you can click on to do it. Should you click it as soon as you see it? I am not so sure about that, here are some things to think about:
1. Is the release brand new? If the latest WordPress release is brand new you might want to hold off for awhile. They do a great job of testing and re-testing their releases. Going live always brings up a hiccup or two, it is just the nature of the beast. If you hold off a week or two that will give the WordPress development team time to address any bugs. So for example, instead of upgrading to WordPress 3.0 maybe wait a couple days and see if WordPress 3.1 is going to come out.
2. Backup! Yeah i will admit I have upgraded WordPress before without backing up, and nothing happened. Why tempt fate though? Why take the chance. I know I never want to be the guy on WordPress support forums saying “I didn’t back up my site but…” Make sure you back up your site before an upgrade.
I usually use the cPanel of my host to create a database backup. You will have to figure out how your host handles back ups. I also back up my wp-content folder by downloading it via FTP. I zip it and create a copy to store a couple different places. Lastly, I do an export from the back office of WordPress. I navigate to Tools and then Export. This way I get a small XML file that will cover all of my pages, posts and comments.
3. Plugin Compatibility – One of the best reasons for waiting to see if a release is stable is that it gives plugin developers a chance to catch up. When you upgrade there is always the chance your plugins won’t make it. If you have a certain plugin that you find indispensable, you might want to monitor it to see if it gets updated to match the WordPress upgrade. Some plugins will work fine anyways, and if you keep an eye on the plugin homepage or forums you will find that out as well.
If you remember these three steps or rules, you will have no problem with your WordPress updates. The biggest key is to back up! Years of hard work can be flushed down the toilet if you don’t! Enjoy your WordPress site and may all your updates be smooth and trouble free!
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Importance of Forum Based Market places
f you are trying to make a mark in deliberate online marketing, then you should definitely try to utilize the different forums that are available online. To begin with, forums are excellent to get information. Thus, one should frequent these forums to establish one’s professional status. This can be done prior to actually starting to sell his/her product or service. Almost every full time marketer is fairly active on the various popular Internet Marketing forums. These serve as excellent medium to achieve brand awareness for one’s program.
These further serve the cause of generating several useful contacts. There are a lot of like minded people you can find online and these forums help on to garner networking prospects like never before. Thus the forums are extremely useful social mediums too.
One thing that you should definitely avoid while making use of the forums is to push your product indiscriminately and too frequently to ruin your professional image and lose all trust of fellow users.
There is only one way of garnering the trust of the forum members and holding on to it and this can only be done by offering information or services which are genuinely useful to fellow users along with a proper promotion through signature tags, valuable posts etc. There might also be the case when the forum would itself allow for promotion for example many forums have marketplaces where you can actually sell your products and services.
A significant part all online marketers efforts should be framed on forum marketing. This can prove to be another very useful equipment to create a brand of one’s own. To create a professional brand on a forum is the most efficient kind of promotion. Trust does not come as something easily buyable.
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Mobile Marketing for Small Businesses
Video: Brad talks about how brick and mortar businesses can take advantage of mobile marketing.
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Inspirations for Content
Inspiration. Some say it is the key to great art. I think it is the key to a great many things. Most of our greatest successes and most tragic failures were sparked by inspiration. Why should our blogs be any different? What inspires you to create content for your blog? I don’t mean how do you get ideas, I am talking about a higher level here. What inspires you to post? The topic doesn’t matter, the feeling of wanting to post does. What gives you that feeling? A couple things that make me want to post to my blog are:
1. Music: I am a big fan of music (who isn’t?) and it is one of the my top inspirations. One reason it works for me is because I blog about music a lot. When I hear a great song, or great album, I instantly feel like blogging about it. Even if I wasn’t blogging about music, I would still be inspired by it. Music is really all about emotions. Certain songs can effect our moods, and sometimes those emotions will inspire us to create. Even lyrics without the music can inspire you if they are well written. Anything that effects your emotions can inspire you to create a blog post. If you are feeling down or uninspired, fire up your itunes and you might find yourself writing a blog post in no time.
2. TV: I know it is cool to hate TV these days – but besides the internet, this medium is one of the most all encompassing ones we have. You can see just about anything on TV, and anything you see can be possible inspiration. I was watching an old TV show the other day that reminded me of a certain part of my childhood, instantly I wanted to blog about it. When I watch the news, and see a topic I am passionate about I want to post my thoughts instantly. Even watching something as banal as realty TV can inspire you. Watching people react to each other under the pressure of the camera, can stir up a lot of emotions that lead to a great blog post.
3. Life: Everyday life can inspire as well. I am not talking about helping you think of blog ideas, I mean the inspiration to post…about anything. Whether you are inspired by positive factors, or negative ones – your life will throw enough of both at you. You will see beautiful things that make you want to post, and horrible things that will make you want to post. That is the reality of life. This is a good reminder for those people who are always connected to the net – sometimes going out and actually living your life will make your online work that much more effective.
Blogging regularly isn’t always thinking about content or topics. Sometimes you need to be inspired to post anything. By using music, television and living your life to the fullest you should be able to find reasons to post as often as possible. Next time you are struggling to produce content, leave the internet behind, and check out some of the above inspirations.
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Email Advertising
It might come as no shock to you to learn that the most commonly engaged in activity on the Internet is email. People are connected to their email like no other function on the Internet, and we all know how popular Facebook and Twitter are. If you really want to get somebody’s attention but can’t or don’t want to call, we reach for our emails. Email is one of the most professional and reliable ways to get in contact with somebody in the modern era, and even people who are “less connected” tend to have email addresses.
This means that if you can tap into an email connection with potential and current customers and clients, you’ll be getting their attention in the most reliable way possible. Most people check their email every day, and even those who don’t spare a glance at it every week. That means there’s a high chance that those people will be looking at your email in their box, and even if they don’t read it, they’ll be reminded of the existence of your company and its products and services.
Best of all, email advertising is cheap. In fact, it can be free. Sound too good to be true?
The flip side of all this is what’s known as spam. Spam is unsolicited emails – that is, the digital equal to “junk mail.” People loathe spam with a passion, and virtually all email accounts these days come with “spam filters” where if you try to reach out to a potential client uninvited, your email gets diverted to a netherworld of Viagra offers that most people don’t even look at.
So how to get into the email boxes of your potential and current clients without falling prey to spam? Simple. Don’t send unsolicited emails.
Most companies who are looking to take advantage of email advertising do so by utilizing “opt in” email lists. This is done by the customer actively choosing to sign up for your mailing lists. Most wise companies who take advantage of this offer a customer the chance to sign up for their email lists after making a purchase. Some even advertise it on the front page of their website (or right next to the checkout counter if it’s a brick and mortar operation).
The trick to opt in email lists is to make it worth your customer’s while to be part of the list. Don’t send them ten emails a day. One a week is probably the maximum. When you do send out the emails, make sure that they have something relevant to say, and preferably at least one coupon. Rewarding your opt-in email subscribers is a great way for your business to be passed around by word of mouth. It’ll work even better if they’re extremely happy customers!
