Quote by April Greiman Poster, Poster via Conran & Partner
I am a fanatic about having a WordPress website as the hub of your social media marketing efforts. But, just having a site is not enough to attract clients. You must craft a message on your website that targets and converts the exact people that you want to reach.
Some people are afraid to stake a claim for one group of clients for fear that they won’t have enough business if they limit themselves. But, if your try to go after your whole market you will have to water down who you are and what you write about so much that it won’t attract anyone. You will just blend right in with the other blah, blah, blah type websites.
Now is the time to step up and stake a claim for who you are and what you want your business to be.
Be yourself.
Let it show in your messaging and your blog posts. Do that and you will be going after and getting the business that you want.
Starting the new year is a great time to get some clarity about what you are doing and who you’d like to do it for. Try this exercise to hone your marketing message and creating or improving your elevator pitch by writing on each of the the headings below. When I do marketing coaching groups, I am always astounded at how bad people are at briefly explaining what they do. [click to continue…]
Most of you know, I am a big proponent for getting yourself a WordPress website. If you have a business, it is essential to have a place of your own, where people can find out exactly what you do and why they should work with you. If you don’t have a job, but are looking, then it can be a great way to set yourself apart from your competition and showcase who you are and what you do in a way a resume can never do. But if you haven’t got a web presence yet or, if you do, but want to have another place online to put your profile out there so that you or your business comes up in a Google search, check out About dot me.
About.me lets you quickly build simple and visually elegant splash pages that point visitors to your content from around the web. It is an easy and free way to have a web presence, where people can find you or your business and where to connect with you on various social media sites. If you already have a website, it is still a nice thing to have because it can come up in a Google search and connect with a link back to your website. Take a look at my About.me profile and then give it a try yourself.
About.me provides an easy interface with several templates and examples to help you with ideas. Upload a background and a photo, write your bio, add your social media sites and you are good to go. I’d love to see what you come up with!
Just wanted to say Happy New Year to all my readers. I wish you all the best for 2012! Let’s look back over the past year and count our blessings. Let’s be kind to ourselves and others and do what we need to do to move forward with our dreams and aspirations. I really want to encourage you to get your business, your ideas, your art, out there to share with others.
If you are passionate about what you do you will find people who care too. It may be a few or it may be millions but you just have to put one foot in front of the other and get started. Let me know how I can help.
I just ran across this young woman, Meghan Tonjes, a Detroit-based Singer/songwriter. Her Song, This Year is amazing and she is an example of getting it out there.
Meghan posted her first video on youtube in the spring of 2006 and she has steadily increased in viral popularity since then with the help of other social media personalities like Perez Hilton, Ryan Seacrest and Ellen Degeneres. She was on the Ellen show last January 2011 and Meghan’s videos have been viewed almost 9 million times!
I love her determination optimism and courage. Her song, This Year, is just so sweet yet damn inspiring. One thing for sure, Meghan is walking her talk. Watch her sing with the voice of an angel and such determinism.
You can purchase the song, This Year, for a dollar.
The new Timeline feature in facebook is now available. I had heard that come mid-December, facebook was just going to make the change whether we wanted it or not. But, this morning my profile was sporting the same old look. I decided that it was time to take matters into my own hands and go ahead and change to the new Timeline before the change was thrust upon me. I have to say It is pretty cool! I love being able to scroll to a different year and see what I was up to then. It is like a scrapbook of my life. But this tip is on how to add a cover photo. Oh and by the way, you will have seven days to work on your new Timeline before it goes public so that you can set the privacy or take things off. I liked mine ok as it was so I went ahead and hit make public now.
The first thing you will be asked to do when you enable your Timeline is to choose a cover photo. This is the large photo that will appear at the top of your Timeline page. According to facebook,
“We’ve found that people have a better experience viewing your timeline when they see a cover that is as unique and individualized as you are…. An easy way to ensure your cover image is unique, is to choose an image from your life, like a photo from a wedding, day at the beach, or birthday party. If you want to use a photo to show solidarity or express support for a cause or organization, you can still post a status or a photo and feature it on your timeline.”
I had a questions come in today about why I do not recommend Go Daddy for my WordPress clients. Here is my response to the great question.
First let me say, it doesn’t matter where you register your domains, so Go Daddy is fine for that, but I have found several problems with using Go Daddy for hosting WordPress sites and ask new clients to change to bluhost when we are building or updating a WordPress Go Daddy site. When I have not insisted, sooner or later we end up moving it for performance reasons. Here is my reason for not wanting to use Go Daddy.
First, Go Daddy does not use the industry standard C-Panel interface so it is a pain in the neck to go in and work on the databases and so forth, if you need to. Whereas I am not really a back-end person, but I can go into the C-Panel in bluehost and change the memory allotment and add new databases, view and edit the files and such very easily.
Second, there are usually performance problems with intermittent periods of extreme slowness for their WordPress sites. I have heard it has to do with their server set up being far from the databases and software so the calls to serve up the dynamic content takes longer. Then when you call and tell them you are having issues they will deny anything is wrong or suggest that you need a virtual private server. Most of my clients do not need anything other than economy hosting on bluehost and get great performance. Only Larger businesses and publishers with a great deal of traffic need to move up. When I move clients to bluehost all of their issues have resolved.
Third, I hate Go Daddy’s sexist advertising. Maybe they should spend more money on updating their equipment and less on Danica and the other Go Daddy Babes. [click to continue…]
I just finished reading, The Flinch, by Julien Smith. It was published as part of Seth Godin’s Domino Project, which he named after the domino effect—where one powerful idea spreads down the line, pushing from person to person. It is free to download from Amazon. Don’t worry if you don’t have a Kindle or you can download the kindle app to your computer or your phone. The Flinch is short. You can read it in one evening, and I promise it will expand your horizons for the New Year. It is such an important idea that I wrote the cliff notes below in case you don’t get around to reading the book right away.
You know that reflex we feel when confronted with something unpleasant? Uh huh, that one. Smith named it, the Flinch. We flinch when confronted with real physical threats and that reflex actually has an important role in keeping us from danger. But notice that we humans also flinch in the face of anything unknown that creates a bit of anxiety.
There is a Korean spa that I go to that has saunas and steam baths and right outside the sauna door there is a cold pool that will take your breath away just thinking about jumping in. That is the Flinch. If I stand there and think about it, I will never go in. I have to feel the Flinch and do it anyway and I am always glad I did because it is so invigorating that it makes me laugh out loud. [click to continue…]
I have to admit that I am not the most diligent LinkedIn user I know. That title would have to go to my friend, Dorothéa Bozicolona-Volpe, and yes she is as exotic as her name implies. Dorothéa has been giving some great advice on the importance of LinkedIn to young people who are in the job market. Her advice is also applicable to all of us.
If you aren’t on LinkedIn please get yourself an account today. Fill out your profile completely to include adding your current and past positions with the care you would take developing your resume. Be sure to add a head shot that is attractive and professional. It needs to make you look attractive. By that I do not mean a glamor shot, I mean a head shot that looks like someone that you would want to have a chat with. Smile.
You should then go through your contacts and start adding connections. I currently have 462 LinkedIn connections which according the LinkedIn, links me to over 4,312,936 professionals. That is astounding.
What I have not been so great about is leveraging these connections by asking people to write recommendations for me. I have only eight. According to Dorothéa getting recommendations while they are hot is one of the most important parts of using LinkedIn. People trust that these recommendations are are real so they hold more weight than a testimonial you put on your website.
Dorothéa’s brilliant advice is to make a habit of asking for a LinkedIn recommendation immediately after you have done work for someone or are leaving a job. She suggests that you go so far as to write up a couple of paragraphs for the person about what you did for them and what they said to you about what you did.
Ask for the recommendation in person if possible, and then followup with an email which includes the link to LinkedIn and your sample write up. Tell the person that you have provided a little write up, as a time saver for them and they are welcomed to use all or none of it. Doing this will increase the likelihood of them completing the task.
Getting in a habit of doing this at the beginning of your career will help you to develop a most valuable network. And if you are so inclined, I’d love a LinkedIn recommendation from you!
I am still reeling by the outpouring of love and support I got last week when I wrote about my dog, Clyde’s unexpected death. Sometimes, when I write my posts and newsletter I have to just “know” in an intellectual way that you all are out there reading my e-mails. But this week, I got to experience the huge power social media has to reach out and touch us so deeply. I got almost 400 e-mails from you all telling me you understood, sharing your stories about your pets, your losses, your businesses and so much more. What a huge gift this sharing was. I thank you for this.
If I was the truly savvy social media maven I would have thought to include the “Read More” tag on my newsletter to bring people back to my website where you could leave the comments there. Then, I could share all of the messages with you. But, I didn’t do that and maybe it was just a little more personal that way.
One of my friends wrote a little Haiku. Since it is not a 5-7-5 true Haiku, we called it a Joeku (my friend’s name is Joe)
Clyde died
from a pecan inside
I cried
And on a roll, I made a little modification to a t-shirt that I had.
I think it always helps bringing a little love and lightness to a sad situation.
I am Co-organizer of the Atlanta WordPress User's Group Meetup. We meet the third Wednesday of each month and try to have a little something for people at all levels.
Check it out! We now have almost 900 members!
