WordPress is easily the most widely used blogging CMS and the extension of WordPress plugins has allowed the functioanlity of WordPress to expanded tremendously by the development of plugins by independent developers looking to solve a problem and contriute to the community. The quality of the plugins vary a bit, but a little bit of searching and testing should uncover a plugin that solve the problem you need.
The challenge with plugins is detemining if they work properly and what problems it may cause to your website. Depending upon the skill of the developer of the plugin and the testing that was done, it is not uncommon for plugins to crash your site or cause other parts not to work properly. The other challenge is that the core WordPress software is constantly being upgraded which requires the plugins to be upgraded depending upon the compatability with WordPress.org update. When the two are incompatible, it can cause problems with you website.
This recently happened to my site with a Linkedin plugin that was being used to populate the About page with the information from my Linkedin profile. The plugin simply imported your experience, education, and bio sections from Linkedin and updated the page of your site that you requested. If a page was made to your Linkedin profile, then it would also be reflected on your website.
The plugin that I was using must have failed with the recent upgrade to WordPress 3.0 which caused the Linkedin profile of the plugin developer to be displayed on my about page instead of my Linkedin information. The unfortuante thing about this is I am not sure how long this problem existed before it was pointed out to me. Vry frustrating, but also the downside of open source software that is rarely talked about.
Take some time and review your site and ensure that everything is working properly. It should only take a few minutes, but could find some issues that you did not know existed due to problems with plugins. Although I am appreciative of the effort and quality of most Wordpres plugins and the WordPress platform in general, I will routinely take a few mintues to review my site. It will be definitely be time well spent.
I really appreciate that you keep coming back to my site, it's loyal people like you that make what I do worth it. If you have any questions feel free to email me. Oh and since you obviously like our site it'd be great if you could share it with a friend... They'll love you for it!
If you are an image fanatic that needs the functionality to make volcanoes explode and other amazing actions that are available within Photoshop, then this post is not for you. But if your requirements are simple image editing and some intermediate layer type functions without the need to pay the high price tag of Photoshop, then this post is for you and I would recommend that you give Paint.net a try.
This free software was developed by a few former Microsoft employees and is very impressive software that handles most of the editing, special effects, and layers that are available with Photoshop and in many cases is not the system process hog that Photoshop can be. I have been using paint.net for a few years and there have been dozens of improvements over that period of time and continues to offer more than enough functionality for the basic image needs.
Paint.net also is significantly better than most of the image handling programs that come pre-installed on computers which typically just have the ability to resize, crop, brighten, and sharpen images. This software blows those programs away. There is not too much more that I can say about the software because of the price point of free should make it an easy decision to give it a try. This will not work for all people especially if you use a high percentage of the functionality of Photoshop. If you decide to give it a try, I would be interested to hear your feedback.
The web has been a buzz for the last few days due to the Old Spice social media campaign where in response to fans on Twitter and Facebook, the Old Spice man replied to messages with short thirty second to one minute videos that were witty and funny and probably more important, timely. Over a two day period Old Spice, a Proctor and Gamble Company, worked with their advertising firm to produce dozens of Youtube videos, although I can’t find the exact number. This campaign used the same actor and built on some already impressive TV commercials over the last several weeks. It clearly will be the business case that will be studied and over analyzed for the next few years as the campaign generated tens of millions of pageviews, and caused a lot of offline conversation that will probably help to increase revenue for Old Spice which is ultimately the reason for the campaign.
When everyone is trying to create viral videos and understand how to use social media successfully, how did Old Spice succeed so overwhelmingly? They decided to take a risk. Most companies will never have great success in social media because they are too cautious to ever take the risk that it requires. Two aspects of the Old Spice campaign that made them successful were they made the quick videos without a major concern for the potential negative impact and the willingness to task a risk with their brand although my belief is the risk of the brand is not as significant as many might believe.
Potential Negative Impact Is Not That Significant - One of the biggest fears of social media for businesses is the inability to control the conversation and the potential that someone could have a negative statement about your company and that is just unacceptable. For that reason, most companies are still having internal debates about the need to be active on Facebook or Twitter rather than just getting involved. The reality is that most people on social media sites do not have a large enough audience to have an impact. The person with 75 Twitter followers stating that they had a bad experience is not the end of the world. Most likely, there are less than a handful of people whom even will see the message. Mark Cuban stated this same belief about a year ago, that most of the messages on Twitter are not worth a response because it is not heard by many people. But worrying about the what-if possibilities will keep most companies from ever really getting involved with social media successfully.
Too Brand Conscious – Developing your brand is something that takes years and years to build and should be guarded in every way possible. This leads to very calculated marketing efforts with the approval of executives and lawyers necessary for every piece of collateral, message wording, a commercial production. Due to this, most companies couldn’t duplicate the Old Spice campaign if they wanted to as it would take too long for approval to make the response relevant. Assuming that I am correct and the potential negative impact is not that great, more companies should be willing to respond more timely on social media sites to improve success. That is not to say everyone should use twitter videos because that is not for everyone, but using creative timely responses would prove beneficial for social media success.
While most are studying the delicate intricacies of the Old Spice campaign, there also needs to be an assessment of your corporate culture and the willingness to take that kind of risk. My bet is that there are not many companies that would take the leap, but that also explains why there are so many “viral” videos that never went viral.
Who wouldn’t love to spend their time doing only what they love while only working four hours a day and answering to no one. Everyone would, but there are very few, if any, self-employed people where the myth equals reality. Companies are making endless sales pitches to sell products that promise fast money for little to now work. Although, most of know this is not possible, out grand desire to better our situation and very clever sales pitches get many to buy.From my own experience, I will analyze four of the bigger myths about being self-employed and why the myth is not at all true.
Set Your Own Hours - This is absolutely correct, you can decide which hours you want to work, but it is most likely those number of hours will be far greater than the 8 or 9 hours that you would work in a “normal” job. This is not always the case and the goal would be to get to the point that you can be more flexible with your time and work less while your business continues to operate smoothly and generate profit. The reality for most self-employed and entrepreneurs is that the number of tasks that need to be completed take much longer than a normal work day. It is estimated that self-employed people are working on average over 11 per day so when I see all of the flashy “Fire Your Boss” type sales pitches, I can only shake my head at the allusion that is being created that is far from reality. If you are going to be self-employed, it would be a mistake to expect a new found bunch of free time. You have the freedom to work when you want, but it does not free up a lot of time. Usually reduces free time.
Don’t Have To Answer To Anyone - When you sit down at your desk or decide what your schedule is going to be for the next week, there is a comforting, relaxing feeling knowing that you do not have answer to anyone and you are free to decide how you want to proceed. That is until you realize the person that you are answering to now is much more important than a boss looking over your should, it is your livelihood. Every action or non-action that you take being self-employed almost directly effects your ability to generate income and how your business operates. If you don’t complete a task or make sure your team does it correctly, it is almost certain to negatively affect your bottom line. Knowing that you must make sells everyday or operate your business with supreme efficiency is a much greater motivating force than a supervisor could ever be. When you boss upsets you, in most cases you can leave it at work and walk away. When it is your livelihood and how you support your family, that is not quite as easy to walk away from.
You Can Do What You Love – Most people walk away from their current jobs or start new businesses to either follow their passion or because they believe they can run the business better than their current boss whom they think is an idiot. As Michael Gerber explains in the “E-Myth,” what is often not accounted for is all of the other tasks that your boss is responsible for in addition to managing you and your peers. This includes, payroll, budgets, process improvements, training, vacation time, performance reviews, schedules, etc. It is often that the person that starts a business to follow their passion has not accounted for the sells that are necessary, managing finances, budget, operating expenses, etc. So while you may be self-employed to do what you love, there will be less time to do what you love as you deal with the many other aspects of operating a successful business.
Everything is Tax Deductible – I am not a tax accountant and definitely do not know all of the rules of the tax code so take this for what it worth, but the belief that everything under the sun becomes a tax deduction when you operate your own business is simply not true. Obviously, some people are willing to push this much further than others and can loosely show how a purchase relates to the business. Tax deductions are a very slippery slope and one that should be treaded lightly. The benefits over “over doing it” when it comes to tax writeoffs pale in comparison to the consequences of fees and penalties assessed by the IRS. It is worth taking the time to learn the rules about acceptable tax deductions.
Self-employment and operating your own business can be amazing and fulfilling experiences, but don’t be mislead by the endless sales pitches for products that promise easy riches and days of relaxing on sandy beaches. That is simply not the case. There are dozens and dozens of myths about being self employed that should be ignored because they are simply not reality. Are there some other myths about being self-employed that are often publicized?
Lead generation is essential for any business that expects to be around for a while and prosper. I want to offer a couple of ideas for lead generation for small business that are relatively low cost, but can be very effective in generating new business. These methods focus on underutilized methods to reach new customers and engage existing customers and if implemented properly will yield positive results rather quickly. The four methods that I would recommend are:
Coupons – Coupon sites are all the rage with the exponential growth of Groupon.com and other group buying sites over the last year. These group buying sites that can have massive amounts of traffic, but also squeeze the margins on your sales and require deep discounts, which is why it is important to realize there are other alternatives to distribute your coupons and generate leads. The best place to setup and distribute your coupons are through your Google Places account, formerly Google Local Business Center. After you have completed their setup process and verified you business, there is a tab for coupons. This tab allows you to setup multiple coupons for your business that will appear on Google Maps alongside your business. Even if the discount that you are offering is not that great, there should always be an active coupon in your account due to the extra exposure it generates on on Google Maps. It sets you apart from all of your competition that has not taken the time to setup a coupon for their business.
Coupons can also be distributed through Google using Google Coupon Feeds, but this process is only for merchants with large numbers of coupons. If only have a couple of coupons and a couple of locations, Google Places is much more efficient.
Craigslist – Generating leads from Craigslist is a topic that I covered here and here, but it is worth mentioning again because it is such an easy and effective method that is still underutilized. It really is as simple as adding a reoccurring event to your calendar every two days to update your Craigslist listing. It does not need to be unique every time although mixing it up from time to time will help. A quick review of the posts mentioned above will provide much more detail about using Craigslist effectively, but this is a simple reminder to say get something posted.
Facebook Fan Page – A few months ago, I would have likely said that Facebook was not an effective method for lead generation for small businesses due to the amount of time necessary to maintain a page. With the additions and social hooks that have been added by Facebook over the past few months that allow for greater integration into other websites and greater sharing within Facebook, I would now recommend Facebook as a lead generation tool for small businesses.
The key to using a Facebook fan page effectively is growing your number of fans and creating activities that causes them to engage on your page which will spread to their friends as basically referrals. For instance, post a sign in your business for your customers to join your Facebook fan page or offer some incentive or discount to your customers that join and then post offers on the page that they may “like” which their friends will see. You may also offer an incentive in which anyone that “likes” your post will have a special discount coupon mailed to their inbox. As your list continues to grow and creative methods of interaction are utilized, your Facebook Fan Page can become an effective lead generation.
Local Business Referrals – It is also important to remember that lead generation should still occur offline as well as online. I recently read this story about a car wash with 12 locations that is able to generate over $40 million per year in revenue by placing coupons on the counters of other local businesses without even the need to reciprocate placement for those businesses. They simply would regularly distribute their coupons to each business as a “gift” to their customers and this led to an amazing amount of sales for each location. That’s it. Simple, but very effective.
There are many other methods for generating leads like Google Adwords and traditional advertising, but I wanted to highlight a few methods that have much lower costs and are very easy to maintain. Once these methods are put in place, they are very easy to maintain which makes it much more cost effective. Set a plan to have each of these methods in action within a week and I am confident you will be pleasantly surprised with the results.
Cloud computing has been the transition that most software platforms and services have made in the last few years which is driven by the cost savings, ease of upgrades, and the ability to scale. The most notable cloud computing companies are probably Salesforce with their CRM platform, most of use use e-mail in the cloud(Gmail, [...]
A little more than a month ago, I wrote a post titled, “Top Resources For Google Analytics Training” in which I referenced some resources that I thought were quality training documents and offered the level of detail that was necessary to use Google Analytics effectively. One of the resources that I mentioned was a book [...]
I decided to pick up one of Dan Kennedy’s books when they were put on my radar a few months ago by my friend, Justin Goff, who had read a couple of them and thought that the content and message were good enough to recommend. The book that Justin first referenced was Wealth Attraction for [...]
WordPress is easily the most widely used blogging CMS and the extension of WordPress plugins has allowed the functioanlity of WordPress to expanded tremendously by the development of plugins by independent developers looking to solve a problem and contriute to the community. The quality of the plugins vary a bit, but a little bit of searching and testing should uncover a plugin that solve the problem you need.
