Archive for the ‘blogs’ Category

As you know, the business of blogs has grown and evolved significantly over the last 24 months. A quote from the WordPress.com site puts it best…

“Blogging is growing both in the US and especially internationally. Tens of thousands of new WordPress blogs are created every day – by regular bloggers, companies, large media publishers, and many others. In addition, we seeing a trend that’s potentially even bigger than blogging: Publishers are starting to use WordPress as a platform to create all kinds of sites beyond blogs – large and small company sites, online magazines, social networks, travel sites, scrapbooking sites, contact managers, startups, multimedia archives, video sites, sports sites.”

Isn’t this cool? Ten of thousands of blogs being created DAILY! Businesses are using blogging technology to create company websites, social networks, video sites, membership sites and so much more.

The sad reality is that a good portion of these blog sites won’t last more than a year as they are lacking some key success strategies for optimizing and marketing their blogs.

Well now there is a great remedy for that problem….

VAClassroom.com has recently launched a new 2-week mini-course titled, “Blog Marketing Tips, Tools & Tactics”

As I have reviewed the course, I see two valuable reasons for taking this program:

1.  This blog marketing mini-course will give you some advanced and current marketing and optimization skills that you can offer as a high value and “in-demand” service to a fast growing base of blog site owners.

2.  Many of you may currently be using a Wordpress blogsite as your primary online business presence, which is very smart! This two-week training program will essentially provide you with a blog marketing tune-up and blueprint for your site, so that you can increase your targeted traffic, business visibility and new client leads.

This two-fold purpose will have a strong impact on both your business visibility as well as new income opportunities!

The two-week training program is scheduled to begin on August 10, 2009 and will finish up on August 24th. The program includes both self-paced and live components.

The registration doors are officially OPEN NOW and seats are going fast. They have 60 seats available for this training program.

To get all the details on this important new training program, just click on the link below:

Blog Marketing Mini Course

Also, take advantage of this $10 discount off an already very reasonable price. Here is the discount coupon code: VABLOG

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I just found these WordPress videos and thought you might find them useful.

WordPress Videos

They show how to quickly create a membership site using WordPress.

It’s actually a lot easier than I thought because apparently you don’t have to use multiple plugins – these videos show it being done with one.

Enjoy!

P.S These videos demonstrate 1 type of membership site, but I’m sure you’ll quickly see all the possibilities.

Check it out Now!

Interactive Blog Show Launching to Educate Businesses on How to Conduct Niche Social Media Marketing Campaigns on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Etc.

Niche social media and networking experts from the around the globe are teaming up to collaborate with WomenPartner International on the launch of its weekly 90 minute interactive blog show, SocialTalk Tuesdays, to showcase the “best of” the top social media and networking sites.  The show will help businesses recession proof themselves by implementing a strategic social media marketing campaign simultaneously on Twitter, Facebook, Ecademy, YouTube, LinkedIn and other popular sites to increase their client base and sales.

Incorporating mobile marketing, collaborative relationships, Blog Talk Radio, WordPress, and web conferencing into a social media marketing campaign along with how to find your niche audience will be some of the topics covered.  Media companies, advertising agencies, retailers, real estate brokers, educators, big businesses, and small businesses will find an expert on SocialTalk who can help them navigate the world of social media and networking.

I’m thrilled to be one of the experts that will be featured.  I will be providing social marketing tools for nonprofit organizations to help with online fundraising.  I’ll share my past experience as a nonprofit executive, as well as my social media networking experience to assist with ways to market causes and events for raising funds for nonprofit organizations.

SocialTalk Tuesdays will launch June 16 at 3 PM Eastern.  The audience will be able to interact with the experts on SocialTalk.WomenPartner.com while listening to the experts.    Visit SocialTalk.WomenPartner.com for information about the launch and upcoming shows.

About SocialTalk

SocialTalk is the brainchild of WomenPartner International (WomenPartner.com) developed to demonstrate cross marketing in action.   It is a one stop resource for everything businesses need to conduct a strategic PR & marketing campaign simultaneously on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Ecademy, YouTube, Ning & more utilizing cross marketing to grow their client base.

Links are what makes the online world revolve.  Every site on the web looks for opportunities to link back to their site which increases rankings in the search engines.

Well, I just found a great tool to build that Link Love for anyone using the WordPress Platform as their website!  It’s a Plugin called Link Builder and I just installed it here.

It’s a pretty easy install and once installed each time you put a link in your blog post or on a static page of your blogsite, a message will be automatically sent to a representative of the site informing them of the link.  And gently asking for them to link back.  Pretty Neat, right?

They explain how to set up the Plugin through a video on their site, so take a look and download it for your WordPress site.  http://www.linkbuilder.com

No matter what your business, no matter what product, service or expertise you are selling, you need the right words to sell. Of course, in this “Web 2.0” world, there are so many places and platforms that need relevant and persuasive words – blogs, press releases, Squidoo lenses, articles, newsletters and bios/profiles for Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, to name a few.

Many successful marketers will tell you that copywriting – the ability to put what you are selling into words that actually sell – is the #1 most important skill to have in marketing. And this is true now more than ever.

No more spinning your wheels in your current online and social media marketing efforts…

Learn how to tweak and master your social message so that you have more business than you ever imagined…

Conquer the fears you have about using social media as a marketing tool…

Become a profitable content creation and distribution machine…easily and quickly.

My colleagues Craig Cannings of VAClassroom and Allison Nazarian of Get It In Writing have teamed up to present something that simply does not exist anywhere in the online training world. They saw an amazing opportunity to teach other entrepreneurs and professionals a very specific and easy-to-follow system to launch and profit from — their own “Content Creation and Distribution Machine!” In the world of social media, and social marketing in particular, your credibility, your visibility and your reputation are the measures of your success. And the key to being able to shine in social media lies in the words businesses use to have the conversations they are having.

Craig and Allison – and I – invite you to take advantage of this live, 5-week interactive training.  This is an event you don’t want to miss – the “secret weapon” so many successful marketers have and use can (and should) be yours too.

How: Registration Page: www.CopywritingKingdom.com

I am constantly amazing by the number of plugins, widgets and features that are available for my WordPress Blog.  I actually have this one and I have a static page that I have set-up through the blog platform for my Tasting The Internet, One Byte at a Time Program.

I am hosting a Free Webinar on February 26th at 2 pm eastern, “Why Should I use Twitter?” and I needed a sign-up form for people to register for the webinar.  After checking with my friend and colleague, Rebecca Zwar with Social Web diVA and Invisible Assistant, she shared an incredible plugin called GWA Autoresponder for WordPress.

I have been very pleased with this plugin so far.  People have registered for my webinar and they receive an automatic autoresponder with some freebies that I’m giving away and then I’ll be able to add them to my newsletter list and communicate all the details of the webinar.

If you are looking for a easy to set-up, fast to learn and effective autoresponder for your blog, look no further than GWA Autoresponder for WordPress.

Oh, and by the way, there’s still time to register for my Free Webinar, “Why Should I use Twitter.”

Not sure what to blog about this Valentine’s Day? Here are 22 ideas to get you started:

• Ideas for romantic gifts
• Ideas for last-minute gifts
• Inexpensive gift ideas
• Expensive and extravagant gift ideas (for bigger affiliate commissions!)
• Homemade gift ideas
• Don’t forget gifts for kids, classmates and teachers
• Valentine’s Day recipes
• Valentines party ideas
• Post poems your readers can copy and share with their sweetie
• Post love letters your readers can copy and share
• Craft ideas
• Printable Valentine-themed coloring sheets and cards
• Share Valentine traditions from around the world
• History of St. Valentines Day
• Decorating ideas
• How to show love without spending any money at all
• Romantic date ideas
• Share your own Valentines Day plans
• Valentine’s Day horror and funny stories of the past
• Creating your own Valentine’s Day traditions
• Valentines Day idea contest (best recipe, craft, gift idea, story etc.)
• Valentine’s Day for singles

Get More Blogging Ideas 24/7 365 Days Per Year

Always on the look out for more blogging ideas and content to keep
your blog fresh and up-to-date? Never worry that you have nothing to blog about again…Kickstart your blog by signing up for your free Blog Energizer account.

If anyone asked me how I grade my website, I would say, “I give it an A+.”  Well of course I would say that, I developed the content and I’m partial to my site.

But what grade does your site really get?  I found an incredible tool today that will lay out the hard truth about your site, but they ease the blow by giving you suggestions on how to make a few changes to boost your site through SEO.

Take a look at Website Grader by HubSpot

Then come back and share your grade with us.   What?  What’s my grade?  Uh, I’ll let you know soon!

Are you using Twitter?  Do you think it’s silly or a waste of time?

Take a look at this article about how Twitter saw more hits than “Digg” and how it is quickly moving up in the rankings of social media sites.

Just this week,  people were “tweeting” during the inauguration and it felt like we were all together sharing the moment as one.

If you’re not on Twitter, come on, join us!   You can follow me at @avirtualbiz.  I’ll be sure to follow you back.

Did I read that correctly?  WordPress is so big now that that have their own TV show?

Well, not really, they have developed an online learning center called wordpress.tv

It’s chocked full of tutorials for both self-hosted and WordPress.com sites.  They call it “a visual resource for all things WordPress!”

I LOVE that.  I’m a visual person and I learn much quicker if I can see it done rather that read how to do it.

So grab a snickers and a soda and watch wordpress.tv.