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Quickly Enhance Your Online Presence with About.Me

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 screenshot for Judi Knight

 

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!

Summer Mastermind Coaching Intensive

Wow! Can you believe that summertime is right around the corner?

Chaise for Summertime mastermind group with New Tricks

The flowers are blooming, the weather is warming up and I know those days are coming when we would rather be sitting by the pool than in the office.

In fact. . . check this out, my New Tricks team has already started their warm weather work habits!

Yes things do tend to slow down in the summer, BUT, I once had a boss back in the day, when I was doing healthcare marketing, who said to me, [click to continue…]

Add a Facebook Like Box to Your WordPress Website

Facebook Like BoxA Facebook “Like Box” on your website is a great way to increase the number of people who “like” your Facebook Page (these instructions are for sharing your “Page,” not  your personal “Profile” account) by allowing them do so right from your WordPress website. In this post, we have shown two options to get the “like” box on your site. One is a simple Facebook “like” box and the other a tabbed container for Facebook “likes,” Twitter feed and RSS combined.

Here are the steps for adding just a Like Box to your website. I am assuming that you already have a Facebook Page set up for your business or event. If you don’t have a WordPress site, the concept will be the same, but the directions to adding it to your site will different. [click to continue…]

Why Re-Design Your Website?

I  just read a great post called Why Redesign Your Website? by HubSpot which is a SEO marketing Company that is pretty darn on target. I really liked what they said. One of the main points is that sure you have to have a well done site that is polished and put together, but…. the point is getting more visitors and leads, So you do a redesign if you are not on a Content Management Site (CMS) platform, not because you are bored with the design or because your CEO wants a new logo design.

Marketing guru, Seth Godin says,

“I’m going to go out on a limb and beg you not to create an original design. There are more than a billion pages on the web. Surely there’s one that you can start with? …Your car isn’t unique, and your house might not be either”.

The founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweig once said to me ( I love that he actually, in person,  said this to me)

“I wonder why any developer would build a theme from scratch for a client when there are over 5000 themes to customize and save them time and money”

Great content is a most important activity on your website and adding the content on a regular basis drives people to your site. Which is most easily done with a Content Management Site such as WordPress and they should absolutely include a blog, RSS and landing pages.

Any website built today should include these basics.  They are not expensive, and they work.  A blog is a great way to create content on an ongoing basis, and to start to converse with your customers and prospects and RSS allows some content from your website to be automatically pushed out to other websites and people, increasing the reach of your content.

So take these words to heart and when you find yourself spending too much time with what the banner should look like. Yes, it should look sharp, but it really matters more that you get your content out there with the right technology, the right navigation, and a way to start and keep adding more content on a regular basis.

I am talking to a woman today who had her site redesigned over a year ago and it still has not gone live because she was paralyzed over the design the technology choices and her wording. I agree, for someone new to all of this it can be daunting. And there is a lot of competing information out there. There is a lot of OLD school information out there. Like selling people SEO services around key words and metatags, or people still building static, non-owner friendly sites that the site owner has to pay the developer every time they want it updated! At New Tricks, we really try and make it easy for you. Yes, of course we believe in good design, but it is important not to let your obsession on perfection stop you from doing it now.

Treat Your Readers Like Dogs to Keep them Coming Back For More

bigpostcardI came across a great post today on Copyblogger called  How to Create Better Content: Treat Your Readers Like Dogs. Given that we are a company that believes you can teach an old dog New Tricks, I found this right up our alley. In real life it is always much more effective to use your “Biscuit Voice” with your spouse or your child, if you’d like to them to do something, rather than speak to them in a stern or critical manner.  You know the biscuit voice? It is the one you use with your dog when you want him to come to you.

Clydey, do you want a biscuit ???>

According to Sonia Simone, the same theory applies to increasing the readership of your blog.  The basic concept being in my own words, that you need to give your readers a treat. You must make your content so appetizing that your readers will chew through a trash bag to get a mouthful. Well actually she doesn’t say that, but sort of. Check it out.

You really need a great Website When the Economy is Lousy

We came across a post today called, Lousy Economy, Awesome Website. I loved this post. I completely agree that this is the time, with our economy so precarious, that it is most important to put your best out on the Internet for your business to thrive. I think it is  just as important to have a website if you are marketing yourself in a job search.

With the ever increasing use of the Internet and new web 2.0 technology, people have higher expectations for what a website should look like and how it should behave. Shoddy, poorly organized sites with bad graphics will not be well received. People don’t use the Yellow Pages anymore. They just Google your or your business to get your number. You better show up.

I went to look up my son’s doctor’s office number and she showed up number one in Google as living and working in Michigan. Her current practice here in Atlanta has a website that one of the doctors put together. The graphics were bad, the navigation poor, and the photos of the physicians were scary. What a waste of an opportunity to make a professional impression. I am not talking about spending an arm and a leg. Good web design does not have to be expensive, and it will pay for itself.

We just got a new intern here at New Tricks. We were immediately impressed by this young man because he had an awesome on-line resume portfolio. No flimsy ass business card for him. he was the first applicant I looked at and so I thought they all would have comparably designed web-based portfolios. Not so. I say bring it on people. Get it together NOW. Our New Tricks motto is It’s never too late….but of course you have to remember that its the early bird that catches the worm!

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