Improve Sales with an Opt-In List

February 24, 2009 | Posted by Carma | Filed Under Learning Center, opt-in

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Five Keys for Marketing Your Book

February 20, 2009 | Posted by Carma | Filed Under Learning Center, book marketing

by James Malinchak

Editor’s Note: I found this article today and really felt I needed to share it with you. I think the points that James makes are as relevant to marketing your book, as they are for building a thriving web presence.

The key to success of your book lies with marketing. In marketing, you must understand that “perception is reality.” The image you create through the perception of the public and media determine the success of your publicity. Here are few guidelines to help create a positive, marketing image for any book:

1. Belief: To create a positive perception and convince the media to publicize your book you need to believe that your idea will become successful, even if others don’t. Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, authors of Chicken Soup for the Soul, were turned down by many publishers who didn’t believe in their idea. But they believed in it and built it into a #1 New York Times Bestseller.

2. Enthusiasm: “Enthusiasm is contagious!” To gain public awareness and publicity you must be enthusiastic and energetic about what you promote. Tony Robbins is a great example of someone so enthusiastic about his ideas and products that millions believe in him. Thus, he receives worldwide media coverage.

3. Develop a “Hook:” To stick out in the media’s mind you need a good “hook.” Develop a creative, unique title or marketing campaign. For example, Dottie and Lilly Walters’ fabulous book title, Speak and Grow Rich, serves as a unique “hook” that separates their book from others on the topic of public speaking.

4. Network: In our society, who you know gets you ahead faster than anything. You never know who is influential or who knows who. In the case of the media, many reporters, radio hosts, and TV producers know others in the same field. Be kind and courteous and remember to send thank you notes to anyone who helps you. This demeanor will create a positive marketing image for you and your book.

5. Persist: If you truly have the belief in your book then don’t stop marketing, promoting and selling your idea until you reach the level of success you desire. Don’t allow rejection and obstacles to convince you to quit. Obstacles are what we see when we take our eyes off of our goals.

About the Author

Speaker James Malinchak, ‘The Big Money Speaker^TM,’ is the creator of the two top-selling speaker courses, ‘How to Make BIG Money As a Speaker,’ and the ‘College Speaking Success Home Study Course.’ To learn more about his step-by-step systems and to sign up for his FREE ‘Speaker Tips’ E-zine, visit: www.MillionaireSpeakerBootCamp.com.

Two Powerful Ways WordPress Can Build Your Visibility

February 11, 2009 | Posted by Carma | Filed Under Learning Center, WordPress, social media

WordPress can be a powerful tool in helping you build your visibility and expertise status. Here are few ways and techniques you can start using today to build your online reputation and noticeability.

Post to Your Blog Regularly

This has two effects:

1) a regularly updated blog is much more likely to get ranked well in the search engines, and

2) when you build a library of articles on your website, you demonstrate that you know your stuff.

Integrate Your Blogging with Your Social Networks

Are you on both Facebook and Twitter? Here’s a great way to leverage your Wordpress blog and both of these social networks to build your visibility.

First, get your blog posting updates to your Facebook account. You can do this using the Notes application.

Second, install a Twitter plugin that posts your blog updates to your Twitter account.

Third, connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts so that whenever you post something to Twitter, it shows up in your Facebook status. There is a Facebook application that does this.

Now, whenever you post to your blog a chain reaction occurs: A note is posted to your Twitter account, which also shows up on your Facebook status. A little later, your post shows up on your Facebook account and is noted on your wall. This creates more ways for people to start noticing you and your expertise, and can drive traffic to your website.

Top 5 WordPress Must-Have Plugins

February 11, 2009 | Posted by Carma | Filed Under Learning Center, plugins

There are so many plugins available for WordPress, how do you know which ones to choose and which ones you need? Here are the five I believe are the most important ones.

Block Spam with Akismet

This plugin is so important that its actually part of the WordPress program you download form WordPress.org! Once activated, it will monitor all comments posted on your blog and hold those it thinks are spam. This has been a God send for me because of my blogs attracts blog spammers like moths to a street light.

Block Email Harvesters with Email Immunizer

It can be really annoying to do all the crazy things you have to do to protect your email from email harvesters. This handy little plugin saves you time by protecting your email without you having to do anything special.

Managed Syndication Better with FeedBurner FeedSmith

Integrating your RSS feed with FeedBurner just makes sense. This free service lets you monitor your RSS feed stats, give people the option to subscribe to your feed via email (a boon to those whose audience just don’t use RSS readers), and more.

Increase Traffic with MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer

This handy plugin not only empowers you to ping a plethora of directories and other blog listing services, but makes sure you don’t ping to often and get marked as a spammer! Very handy!

Streamline Your SEO with Headspace 2

There are several SEO related plugins for WordPress but this remains my favorite because it not only helps streamline your SEO activities, but can also take the place of several other plugins and gives you the power to make different pages on your blog look very different!

How to Leverage Social Media with WordPress … And Save Time!

February 11, 2009 | Posted by Carma | Filed Under Learning Center, plugins, social media

There are several plugins that you can use to save yourself time when it comes to blogging and social media. Here are a few of my favorites.

Connect Your Blog with Twitter

Twitter Tools
Developed by Alex King, Twitter tools allows you to have your tweets posted on your blog and your blog posts posted to Twitter. It even makes sure you can do both while not causing an endless repetition of cross posts.

Twitter for WordPress
Developed by Ricardo Gonzalez, this plugin will display your latest tweets on your website. It can be added to your theme code or as a sidebar widget.

Tweet My Blog
This plugin is similar to Twitter for WordPress with a few more perks, including an affiliate program on a one-time offer.

Connect Your Blog to Facebook

Facebook Photos plugin for WordPress
Got photos on your Facebook account that you’d like to use on your blog? This plugin does that! After you have linked the plugin to your Facebook account, photos you upload to Facebook will automatically show up in a convenient “Photos” tab in your WordPress powered blog.

Wordbook
This plugin, developed by Robert Tsai, allows you to cross-post your blog posts to your Facebook Wall. Yes, you can do this using the “Notes” feature on Facebook. But what if you have two blogs? You can put one in Notes and use this plugin with the other!

Facebook Comments
Do you get more comments on your blog posts at Facebook than you do your blog? This plugin, developed by James Low, takes care of that little issue for you! It imports comments from your Facebook notes back into your wordpress blog.

Connect Your Blog to MySpace

MySpace Crossposter
The WordPress to MySpace Auto Crossposter publishes all of your WordPress blog entries to your MySpace blog at the time of publication. Each time that a new WordPress post goes live it will automatically be sent to MySpace for publication. And, you have the option of just posting a notification, thus driving traffic to your blog from MySpace!

Choosing a WordPress Theme for Your Website

February 10, 2009 | Posted by Carma | Filed Under Learning Center, themes

A WordPress theme is the template used to create the look, feel and navigation of your website. So choosing one is pretty darn important. Here are some tips for choosing the one that is right for you and your business.

1. How many columns do you want?

Most themes come with two or three — a main content column and one or two sidebars. Will you need more than one sidebar? You should have an idea of this before you go looking for a theme. Also, if you do want two sidebars, do you want them on the left, right or on either side of the main content column? If you know what you’re doing in CSS, this can be changed. But it’s easier if the theme has the sidebars where you want them.

2. What do you want the navigation to look like?

Themes place the primary navigation in several standard locations: Across the top above the header, across the top below the header, and along the side in a sidebar. Choosing a theme that has your navigation in the general location that you want it to be makes it easier to modify the theme to match your branding later. Again, if you know your way around CSS, HTML and PHP, this can be changed.

3. Do you want the home page to be different in layout from the rest of the website?

Some themes already have a specific home page, others treat all pages the same. And others treat pages differently from posts. What format best suits what you want your website to do?

4. Will you be using the theme pretty much as is? Or will you be modifying it to suite your branding?

Depending on how savvy you are with CSS, HTML and PHP, your ability to modify a template to suite your branding can be limited. If you’ll be doing this yourself and are not comfortable messing around with the theme code, then choose a theme that pretty much looks the way you want it to, colors included. If, however, you will be hiring a designer, such as WordPress ReVamp, to do the modifications for you, coloring is not an issue. That can be changed in the CSS style.

Now that you have an idea of what you want the theme to look like in broad strokes, you need to go out and find one that has these elements in place. The best resource for finding themes that are clean and free of malicious code is to look in the official WordPress Theme Directory at wordpress.org/extend/themes.

Another place to look is at individual designer’s websites or magazine sites. Here are some of my favorite:

Milo Web Designs: wp.3oneseven.com
Brian Gardner: www.briangardner.com/themes
Smashing Magazine’s Top 100 List: www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/08/100-excellent-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes/

Why You Should Use WordPress Over Other Blogging Platforms

February 10, 2009 | Posted by Carma | Filed Under Learning Center, WordPress

Yes, WordPress is the most popular blogging platform out there, but that’s not a good reason to use it. The biggest reason I recommend WordPress to my clients is that it is fairly easy to learn and is ideal for entry-level users. There are plenty of tutorials to help with the learning curve, providing a low barrier to entry. But here are five more reasons why WordPress is the best blogging (and website) platform to use for solo-practitioner businesses.

1. WordPress comes with everything you need to manage your content — even without additional plugins. There are “pages” for static content and “Posts” for your blog entries. And, you don’t ever have to use the Posts feature at all!

2. WordPress automatically does one of the key search engine optimization tasks for you buy rendering valid HTML code and using a correct hierarchy of header tags.

3. If you want to add functionality to your blog or website, chances are there is a WordPress plugin that can help you do that.

4. If you want your website to look unique, it isn’t that hard to do. There is a plethora of themes to choose from and changing the graphics is pretty easy to do. So, although having a designer (like WordPress ReVamp) do a full custom design job for you is ideal, you can get by will less.

5. Not only is the software free, but the vast majority of plugins to increase functionality are free, too!