In this WordPress tutorial video (about 8 minutes), I show you some really easy tips for customizing the WordPress Admin area and the post writing page: How to show or hide content boxes How to rearrange content boxes How to customize some of the settings It’s amazing how a few simple, easy steps can improve…
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Three Surprisingly Simple Ways to Enhance Your Creativity at Work
This is a guest post by Stephen P. Smith. Stuck in a rut? Tired of the same-old same-old day in and day out? Let’s make a few small changes in the way you work for a big impact on your results and personal satisfaction in a job well done. Injecting some “capital-C” Creativity into the…
Are Referrals More Important to Your Online Business than Strangers? Then Why are You Blogging for Strangers?
Where do your clients really come from? And what is your blog doing for them? One huge problem I see time and again is people blogging for and interacting with their peers instead of their prospects. But even for those who are smart enough to not make that mistake, they may be making another one:…
Create an About Page for Your Blog that’s a Secret Freelance Sales Weapon
When you do the same thing everyone else is doing, you can hardly expect to get better results than everyone else, can you? What’s the “autopilot” way of creating an About page? It’s biographical and you talk about yourself, maybe include a picture and… That’s it. Pretty lame, and it does nothing to get you leads….
The Crucial Difference Between Blog Post Headlines and Email Subject Lines
First of all, apologies for the empty post that got published earlier. Hit the wrong button. Do you know what the difference is between blog post headlines and email subject lines? Email Subject Lines for Newsletters Well, it depends on how you do your email marketing. If you have a more conventional “newsletter” what seems…
I’m Presenting at the International Freelancers Day Online Conference (registration is free)
On the 23rd (just a couple days) is the International Freelancers Day Online Conference. It costs nothing to register and attend the presentations. If you do any kind of freelance work, this is going to be well worth your time. There is a lot of crap on the net that purports to help freelancers earn…
Is Your Blog Niche Stifling Your Creativity? Try Blog Projects
This is a guest post by Neil Matthews I’m running an experiment at the minute on my personal blog, where, instead of having a traditional blogging niche, I am working on a series of blogging projects. How Do I Define A Project A project is a series of focused blog posts on a particular topic…
The Life Cycle of a Business Blog Post – Know it and Maximize Your Marketing
On a business blog, where you’re marketing your business and not “just” writing a blog, you do not write a post out of the blue, hit the publish button and call it good. Unless of course you like wasting your time and getting lackluster results for your efforts. If you want to see real influence and…
How To Create a Blog That Punches People in the Face
This is a guest post by John Hoff. Sucky blogs tell. Good blogs teach. Great blogs have impact. Blogs that make an impact on readers and the blogosphere shine the best when they do one or both of the following: Solve something Share something But just because you do those things doesn’t mean your blog…
Personal Branding vs. Company Branding – Which One is the Winner?
The big news story driving this post is the possibility of Michael Arrington leaving TechCrunch. Arrington began TechCrunch as “just a blog” and grew it into the tech juggernaut it is today. The TechCrunch story is a powerful demonstration of what happens when you exercise complete editorial freedom and have great writers. There are now…
Why I Don’t Give a Shite if You’re Offended
This is a guest post by Jennifer Bones. Writing great headlines can be challenging. But today, creating catchy titles is the cornerstone of any blog’s success. The worst mistake you can make is to wanker-out when writing your headlines. Let me explain. Recently I published a post entitled Forgiving Your Child’s Killer. It got a…
The One Question You Need to Remember Amid all the Blogging and Social Media Madness
What did you sell today? It’s easy to feel like you did a lot because you plowed through a wall of unread and unanswered email, spent hours going through your feeds and social media streams looking for awesome content to curate for your ideal customer and spent hours wearing out your keyboard as you banged…
Why You’ll Never be able to Increase Your Prices
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swE3EcHTMZ0″
This is a guest post by Tommy. As in “just Tommy no last name Tommy.” What do you do? No, actually you know what? I don’t care what you do. What can you do for me? Come to think of it, I don’t really care what you can do for me either. I have 10…
Don’t Sell To The Banjo Maker
This is a guest post by Amy Harrison, whose previous article here was very well-received so I’m pleased to have her here for you again. My fiancé builds custom banjos for a living (hands off ladies, he’s all mine…). Recently he remarked that another maker’s website included a whole host of details such as wood…
Business Blogging is the Red Pill – Everything is Not What it Seems
In the 1999 movie (holy crap, was it really that long ago?) The Matrix, Neo is presented with a choice of pills to swallow: red vs. blue. Morpheus tells him: You take the blue pill — the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red…
The Art of Handling Rapid Technological Change with Ease
Because your business is directly dependent on the technology used to create products and operate and market online, technological change is both your best friend and your most bitter rival. New social media services appear (and sometimes disappear or fall out of favor). New online services become available that didn’t exist before. Hardware gets faster…
Why Conventional Blogging Wisdom Sucks (And What to Do Instead)
I can’t even begin to tell you how much of what I read online as blogging and marketing advice makes me ill. And I’m not even talking about brand-new wannabes with no real experience under their belt, although there’s plenty of those, too. No, I’m talking about major business sites pumping out the most vapid,…
The 13 Business Blogging Master Post Templates You Can Use, Part 13 – Inspirational
People love to be inspired. The proof is in how much inspirational stories and videos are shared online through social media. Content which is inspirational has a longer shelf life than the funny viral hit of the month. Its traffic doesn’t die off as quickly as content which is funny or shocking or merely useful….
3 Mind-Bending Lies that Will Block Your Business Success
This is a guest post by Rebecca Kellogg. In order to make it as an entrepreneur, let alone thrive, you’re going to need the right mindset. In talking to would-be entrepreneurs and/or entrepreneurs with no clear path to bigger success, I hear a few of the same agonized comments over and over again. These are…
The 13 Business Blogging Master Post Templates You Can Use, Part 12 – Question and Answer
Question & Answer posts are a fantastic post type for two reasons: people love to get answers to their questions and these kind of posts are great for SEO. These two reasons are related, but the first reason also makes your posts more share-worthy. Q&A posts show that you’re listening to your customers and responding…
5 Steps to Overcoming Info Product Abuse (Yes, I am Talking to YOU)
This is a guest post by Rachael Acklin. Last time I was here, I yelled at you for pretending you don’t have a brand. I’m still feeling angsty about that, but Michael told me I can yell at you as much as I want to as long as it’s good for you, so today I…
Online Business – Are You a Pimp… or a Prostitute?
I love the White Stripes. In their faint-echoes-of-Zeppelin Icky Thump, is this line: You can’t be a pimp and a prostitute, too. It’s true. You can’t. You either run the show and people come to you, or you let others run the show and you take their orders. In the first case, other people do…
Bloggers – 3 Ways Your Readers Know You’re Sweating Behind Your Sales Copy
This is a guest post by Amy Harrison. To be a true bitchin’ business owner, you know you’re going to have to write copy that sells what you do. It’s like egg and mayonnaise, pickle and cheese or ketchup and noodles. One has to go with the other (don’t ever have me cook for you)….
Should You Use Google+?
I was originally gonna write the next installment in the business blog post types series, but then Google+ happened. And the whole damn interwebz blowed up. Nobody can shut up about Google+, it seems. And right now, you’re probably wondering if you should get into it or not, and if so, to what degree. Because,…
Should You Really Use Your Photo as an Avatar Online?
This is a guest post by Nancy Stuckwisch Are photos of yourself the best way to make your brand recognizable and customer friendly? Only if you never change the photo. This is swimming against the tide, I know, but isn’t the point of branding to create a consistently identifiable image? Shouldn’t we make it as…
The 13 Business Blogging Master Post Templates You Can Use, Part 11 – Interviews
As with review blog posts, interviews are popular enough themselves that you’ll find sites dedicated entirely to them. Certainly you could interview people yourself for your own blog. But how do you do an interview? Should you record it and provide media? Should you have it transcribed? How do you know what questions to ask?…
The 13 Business Blogging Master Post Templates You Can Use, Part 10 – Reviews
Review posts are so popular there are blogs dedicated just to reviews of a particular type. You got your movie review blogs, your ramen review blogs, your ebook review blogs, and many more. However, as a business owner with a product or service to sell, you may well wonder: what you could possibly review? More…
Do What You Love for a Living, and the Misery will Follow
This is a guest post from Liz McGowen. It goes a bit like this: a guru shows you how to start a blog. This blog is going to lead to untold wealth and soon vacations can become weekly events. Thank God. At last! They tell you to go with what you know and like, so…
The 13 Business Blogging Master Post Templates You Can Use, Part 9 – Resource Posts
If you want your blog traffic to go all explody, a resource post is the way to go. Sites such as Mashable, Make Use Of and Smashing Mag have skyrocketed their traffic through a constant stream of robust resource posts. There are two kinds of resource posts: reports and links. Report Posts A report post…
Do Viral Videos Make You Look Cool… or Stupid?
This is a guest post by Jim Taggart. Do you consider yourself to be cool, hip to the latest tech stuff? Do you know the lingo on how to come across to your friends and co-workers? Do you consider perception more important than substance? Have you ever gone 24 hours or more totally unconnected to…