Anthony Fasano

Guest post by Anthony Fasano, Professional Coach, Speaker & Author

As business owners, the one thing we always need more of is time.  In this article I’m going to discuss four tools, given to us by modern technology, that you can use to build your business and leverage your time.  Technology is a beautiful thing, when we know how to use it!  It’s very important to know how and when to use technology in a way that will maximize your ROI.

So the following are 4 tools that when used properly can really build your business while allowing you to leverage your time:

Website

We are all in business to sell something, whether it’s our services or products.  Whatever you might be selling you are most likely going to be selling it through your website which makes your website a critical component to building your business.  When choosing your website platform, choose one that is user-friendly, not only for your customers, but for you as well.  Choose a website platform that can be easily updated by you, so that you can make changes to it whenever you want from wherever you are.

Based on my experience and research, WordPress is one of the best website platforms because not only does it allow you the flexibility of updating on your own but it also allows you to implant your blog into the website which will help you greatly with search engine optimization (we’ll discuss more on this later).  When designing your website, make sure that it is very easy for your customers to find the products or services you are selling.  You can’t buy something if you can’t find it QUICKLY!   When it comes to your website, think WordPress and think simple and creative.  From a time leveraging standpoint, a simple website will allow you to automate the sales process cutting down on the time you have to spend on sales!

Blog

Your website is important, however a blog can be much more important because it is a tool that you can use to drive people to your website. For those of you still wondering what a blog is, Wikipedia defines a blog as a type of website <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website> , usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.

Sounds fairly innocent right?  Why are blogs so important?  All of the words that you put into your blog posts get picked up when people perform Google searches, therefore by blogging regularly you are putting more “pathways” out there for people to follow to your website. You want to talk about leveraging time?  By posting one blog post to your site you can send anywhere from a dozen people to thousands of people to your website.  How much time and money would it take by using traditional marketing methods?

If you decide to start a blog, or if you already have one, remember to always do two things: 1) Provide HIGH VALUE content in your blog posts and 2) Post at least once a week and remember it doesn’t always have to be you, this article is a perfect example!

Social Media

OK social media….everyone’s doing it, right?  Social media is an important tool in growing your business and leveraging your time, because it allows you to send information to thousands, even millions of people with the click of a button.  The biggest challenge with social media is not getting sucked into a black hole and spending 4 hours a day responding to posts on Facebook or another 4 hours tweeting to everyone and their mother.

Here are some tips on how to use and not abuse social media for your business:

• Have a Plan – Talk to a social media consultant or do research online to come up with a plan of attack.  What social media outlets are right for you?  How active do you need to be?  Can you use one site (i.e. Tweetdeck) to manage all of your social media?

• Know Your Target Market – You must have a very focused target market and focus your social media efforts towards them, or else you’ll end up posting information to millions of people that don’t care about, wasting their time and your time!

• Let Go of Your Fear – Many people are afraid of social media.  They think it is going to swallow them whole. Social media is the wave of the future; you can embrace it or lose out big-time, that’s up to you.  Take it slow, learn a little each day and know your social media experience will be a journey and eventually you’ll be a superstar!

E-Newsletters

Similar to social media, an e-newsletter also provides you with a simple way to contact your customers and prospective customers whenever you want, at little cost.  Of course that doesn’t mean that you can just send out e-mails everyday, you  should do it in a respectful manner.  The following are some e-newsletter Do’s and Don’ts:

• DO provide high value content in your newsletter that your readers will benefit from

• DO take the time to match the newsletter colors to your logo & website (or just go plain white)

• DO provide links in the newsletter back to your website & blog

• DO provide links to relevant articles, applicable photos and coupons in your newsletter

• DON’T add people to your mailing list without their permission

• DON’T overwhelm your list with to many e-mails in a short period of time

• DON’T change the template (colors, etc.) every time you e-mail, stay consistent

• DON’T send out your e-mails without checking them for grammar and spelling, this can make you look very un-professional

The technology is there, embrace it and use it to start leveraging your time and spending your time on other areas of your business or even some recreation (yes you heard, start working a little less)!

Anthony Fasano is a professional coach, speaker and author who helps people take their careers wherever they want to take them! He is the author of A Daily Boost From Your Professional PartnerTM which is a popular daily e-mail that goes out to professionals worldwide Monday through Friday.  This is a free service that is available to all professionals with the intent of helping professionals stay focused and inspired in their career and leadership endeavors. He is very much enjoying his new website designed by Kathleen at http://www.powerfulpurpose.com

Then the Blog Squad (which may or may not still exist) introduced me to Typepad and sold me a book that gave me step by step instructions on setting up my very own Typepad site.  Loved that right along with MySpace and for almost a year posted at least 2 blogs daily.  I like to write.

But let’s face it, the platform for business-based website is a self hosted WordPress platform. Ah, WordPress.  It and I have been together almost a year now and I think we’ve stopped circling each other like strange dogs. (If you just want to dabble, use the free version of WordPress.org, WordPress.com.  Transferring between .com and .org is going to be easier than transferring from another platform all-together  if you can find anyone who can do it in the first place!)

WordPress is gloriously imperfect from a non-technical viewpoint.  There isn’t anyone that you can shoot an email to who will respond within 24 hours with instructions.  That said, there are plenty of folks out there willing to teach you how for less than I paid the Blog Squad years ago, and once you’ve got the basics, it’s pretty simple and straightforward.

My switch to WordPress was initiated by my then coach who said that Google loves WordPress and will send WordPress blogs to the top of its search reply pages.  Changing from Typepad to WordPress was an adventure in horror stories and bank account drain that lasted about 6 months.  When the dust settled, the site still wasn’t working the way I wanted it to so I was off again to find someone to help me fix it once and for all so I could take over the day to day goings on of it.

Disclosure:  Kathleen, the Savvy VA, who is hosting this blog post, is my Queen in shining armor who finally rescued me and made it all work.  Without her compassionate understanding I probably would have curled up in a little hole and gone luddite.  But this student was ready, and my teacher appeared.  She got me and WordPress on speaking terms and the relationship has grown from there.

As I mentioned above, I consider myself a non-techie.  Still, WordPress is set up so that I can pretty much add or delete navgation bar items, static pages and my blog happily and with little trouble.  The interfaces for linking and adding photos are great and I’m sure, were I more technically inclined, there would be a number of other things I could do with it.

VAs – that is, Virtual Assistants – those marvelous people you never meet who can help you run your on-line business – are all whizzes at WordPress.  It is their first language.  So if you are planning on running a business on-line, and are planning on growing to the point of needing help, it is easy to find people who know how to use this platform and who can give you advice and/or set it up for you in a short shift (which equals less drain on the bank account).  Even if you don’t grow to the point of needing help, many of the software interfaces you will use, for instance AWeber (or 1ShoppingCart) base their training on WordPress and how their own software interfaces with it.  This is good for non-techies because you can just follow along exactly without trying to figure out how your current platform is the same as or different from WordPress and what you have to do to get around that.  People who create themes for websites and blogging platforms love WordPress.   So you have lots of themes to choose from when you set up your site – which means you don’t have to pay a programmer the big bucks to design something special for you.

In other words, WordPress is the platform against which all else is measured and on which most free and inexpensive applications available out there in the Net are based.

Recently WordPress even made it really easy for a non-techie to go in and make her own banner.  Not that I’ve tried it.  But they are always working on making it better (which means I need to upgrade my site, which, by the way, I haven’t yet done) and easier.  It gets to the point of “why bother with any other platform” because everyone out there is focusing on WordPress.

If you go with the .org version of WordPress you will need to have a host site.  That sounds scary if you’ve never done it, but just Google “web hosts” and browse.  There are even great articles comparing hosts and costs.  I use Bluehost.com (and they pay affiliate for referrals, so if you want to check them out, check in with me first!) and am very happy with them.  They (and I’ll plug AWeber here too) have happily held my shaking hand through website backups and answered all my questions as if the questions were the most important thing they have to do (well, taking care of customers is the most important, but you know what I mean), and walked me through whatever I needed step by step, again and again.  Which is to say:  all the help you need to make your WordPress site work for you (as in make you money) is out there, is friendly, is easy to access, and is ready and waiting to help.

I’m happy that I made the switch to WordPress because all the help that’s available out there let’s me focus on the things I do best:  write and create programs.

Come on over and visit me at my website, TammyVitale.  And keep coming back.  Because I change it daily – add, subtract, edit, rearrange.  Happily and easily.  And remember I am a non-techie!  Thanks WordPress (and Kathleen, too!).

Tammy Vitale spends all the time she saves by having Kathleen fix her site, coaching women entreprenerus and solorpreneurs and making jewelry and ceramics. She is in the process of creating tutorials for artists (http://www.SellYourArtKeepYourSoul.com) and how-tos for folks who just want to be creative: http://tammyvitale.com/workshopsretreats/how-to-make-a-spirit-doll/. She offers free daily inspiration in your inbox at: http://www.WyldeWomensWisdom.com. You can reach Tammy at: info@TammyVitale.com 

How can you prevent your blog from failing? The management of your blog has to be taken as seriously as the rest of your business site — you will have to put in time and lots of effort to write content that is interesting and that people will want to come back to.

Often people new to blogging aren’t prepared for the effort that goes into creating a successful blog. With the millions of blogs out there, it is actually very difficult to get found online.  There has to be something that makes people want to read your content.  Building a blog does not guarantee an audience — you have to give them a reason to come and see what you have to say.

Here are 9 simple ways to bring in the traffic to your blog:

• Blog Content – a sure way to lose your readers is to not update with new content. No one wants to visit a blog day after day and see the same stuff.  Whenever possible, update your blog at least twice a week.

WordPress Tip: Whenever you find yourself in the midst of a very creative spell, write as many blog posts as you can.  You can then post date them to go out every 2 or 3 days until you run out of posts.  Click here to see my Youtube video that shows you how to do this.

• Use Articles to Market Your Site and Business – You’ve (hopefully) chosen a niche for your business/blog because it is something that interests you, and you probably know a lot about the topic. When you write blog posts, think of ways to repurpose your content so they can be submitted to article directories such as http://ezinearticles.com .  Be sure to use the resource box to talk about your site and add a link so people can find it.

• Social Networking – There are many sites you can join to network with others.  There are the Big 3, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. But there are others such as Squidoo, where you can create your own “lens” and even NING where you can create your own membership site. Look around and do lots of searching on the net to find the groups where likeminded people hang out.

• Word of Mouth  Marketing – Spread the word about your blog and/or site. Tell everyone including friends, family and strangers alike.  Put your blog address on your business cards and hand them out at networking events.

• RSS Feeds – RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and it is exactly that. You set up an account with Feedburner so that people can subscribe to your blog posts and updates.  They can receive them through their RSS reader or they can get them by email.  The best part is that you don’t have to do a thing — it is all professionally managed by Feedburner.

WordPress Tip: There is a plugin you can easiily install on your WordPress site that connects to Feedburner where everything is managed for you.

• Forums – as a budding entrepreneur, you want to start by marketing yourself to first find traffic, and then profit.  Join business forums, work-at-home forums, and any others that might be interested in you and what you have to say, to meet new people and share ideas. You are allowed a “signature” that contains pertinent information about you. Be sure to add your link to your blog in your signature line so others can find you.

• Visit other’s blogs – Read posts on others’ blogs and comment on their posts. Doing this shows others you are not just out to advertise your blog alone, but that you are trying to become part of a community.  You can add a link to your blog in your comments.

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Marketing – Be sure to use relevant keywords and good placement of them in your content. Learn about keywords and keyword density, as well as other (very simple) things you can do to optimize your posts for not only good ranking in the search engines, but so that your audience/clients can find you
  For more information on SEO, sign up for my “Simple SEO for WordPress” tutorial:

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WordPress Tip: WordPress self-hosted sites are naturally optimized for the search engines. All other steps you take are bonuses.

• Social Bookmarking – submit posts to some social bookmarking sites.  Members of these sites will be able to track you back to your blog. They really are wonderful for exposure.

WordPress Tip: There are plugins for WordPress that are so simple to install, that allow visitors to your site to submit your posts to the bookmarking sites as well.

Each point has a common theme, and that is that you have to get the word out about your blog by first creating attractive content and secondly, using all means available to get it into the hands of (or on the monitor of) your ideal market.  Using any (but preferably all) of these ideas will start the traffic moving in your direction.

It takes a bit of time and tweaking, but you can get a loyal following and a great readership.

I don’t think there is a better product available for helping business to get found online, and my clients agree (as you will see in the testimonial below).

#FF @thesavvyva WHY? because she has saved me an immense amount of time & I highly recommend her! Plus she is a whole lot of #awesome!  (Written by Anastasia Valentine aka @AVV)

If you are new to online business, or you want to move your existing site to WordPress, contact me. I’d love to help you get your business rolling. Call me today toll free at 800.921.4812

I am known for:

1. overdelivering on my promise to you
2. for being able to take complex ideas and making them easy to understand
3. creating pretty snappy looking sites too

What tips and tricks have you used to build the loyal following you have to your blog posts?

As I am most familiar with the WordPress.org platform, I will use it to show the differences between free and self-hosted platforms.

How Does It Benefit Me To Use A Self Hosted Site?

First and foremost, you own the blog. You can do what you wish with it, including building it into a blogging machine and selling it.

Since self hosted blogs are extremely search engine friendly, all the traffic that is generated by your blogging and attracting visitors to your site is now yours. Your traffic helps you to get rankings in the search engines because each blog entry alerts the search engines to go to your site to “crawl it” for new content, thus building traffic due to the higher rankings, and around and around it goes.

You can look like a real pro with your own email address at your own domain name. You maintain your branding, build legitimacy, and you are taken seriously.

If you choose to have Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising like Google AdWords on your site, you get to keep the money, because basically you choose what goes on in your domain.

I think that the absolutely most beneficial aspect to a self hosted blog platform like WordPress.org is that you can customize it and make it your “website”. That’s right—no more spending lots of money on having a website built. No more charges for updating content on your site. No more waiting to have the updates completed. You can do it all yourself!

How, You Ask?

I won’t go into a lot of details about the technical aspect of it, but you will have to trust me that you can do it if you choose to. (OrJune 11, 2010 outsource, outsource, outsource the tasks you don’t want to and don’t have time to do).

Basically, you activate the WordPress.org software at your host site. You peruse the WordPress site for templates and plug-ins (these make your site functional) and then upload them to your host site as well. There are 3 or 4 very important plug-ins that all sites need.

Now you are ready to go. You go to your browser and type your new address into the address bar. You will log in to your new site at the “dashboard” where all the controls are. You activate your plug-ins and widgets, create some pages, and upload any graphics, video, and content you wish to have on your site. Sort it all and arrange it how you like and you are ready to blog.

The dashboard is very easy to work in so every time you want to add content, you log in there, use some drop down menus to choose what it is you want to do whether add a new page, or blog about your business, and then you do it.

You can create pages such as “About Us”, “Our Products”, “Contact Us”, “Blog”, and so on, just like a traditional website. Some pages can remain static if you like and some can be changed daily. Your blog posts will always go to your blog page though.

Of course this is the simple view of having a self hosted site, but it isn’t much more difficult than that. You may need some assistance figuring out how to upload to the host site, and maybe even in activating the plug-ins, but very few people would have problems writing and publishing their blog posts, and that I know for sure. Additionally, if you have purchased hosting with a really good hosting company, their support team will be willing to help you with the uploads.

Note: hosting sites generally do not support the WordPress platform per se, but they will help you get your site up on the net.

To read part 1, click here

Besides, I didn’t know any different. I even recommended it to others and we all had a great time blogging. I think they are such a great service and I am a huge proponent of them, with one exception: businesses should not be using a free blogging platform.

WHAT ARE FREE BLOGGING SITES?
They are sites where you can create an account and become a member for free. Your blog becomes a sub domain blog, meaning that there is a main domain and you are a secondary blog on that domain. Everything you do affects the main domain.

Some examples of free blogging sites (platforms) are blogger.com and WordPress.com. They are really great because there is very little technical knowledge required in setting them up.

Basically, you create an account, choose a template, and start writing. For those of you who are looking to stay connected with family, write about your life, or connect with others around a hobby or any other non-business related activity, you cannot beat the free blogging sites.

WELL THEN, WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

Some of the less serious problems with free blogging sites are that there can be a lot of spam, and they usually offer very little bandwidth (speed at which you can move around in a site), customization, or template choice.

On a more serious note, if you decide later to change to another site, you will have to change your blog name as you cannot take a name.blogsite.com type of domain name with you. You will also lose your established traffic and people will have to find you once again.

Speaking of traffic, (which affects your ranking on the internet) all of the traffic you have generated by your hard work at blogging only benefits the host, meaning that you do not get any ranking in the search engines for this traffic you have built up.

You have no control over the advertising on your free site (and there will be advertising), and if there is any money generated by the ads, you do not get to keep it.

Finally, and probably the most serious of all, is that the site is never really yours.

Stay tuned for part 2

Click here to learn about my self hosted WordPress packages

How? Well first and foremost, WordPress sites are great looking, easy-to-navigate, and super optimized for the search engines. After that,

• WordPress helps to build your business quickly and easily. With WordPress, you will start getting traffic immediately after clicking the “publish” button. Why? Because the search engines love WordPress. Click on ‘Publish’ and the search engine bots go into action. Your content will be crawled and available on the market shortly thereafter.

• WordPress causes every post, new page, and any new content in general, alert the search engines that you’ve posted it. With them crawling your site regularly, you get higher page rankings, and therefore more traffic.

• WordPress is a super simple time saver–easy to move around in and get stuff done quickly. It’s extremely user friendly. You don’t have to be a computer expert to use it. You can create content rather than mess around with your server settings. Most people find it pretty easy to work in after they’ve had a chance to play around in the dashboard.

• WordPress is free, regardless of whether you are running a personal website or a business site, and saves you tons of money. And you get the same, no, even better exposure on the internet for a fraction of the cost of a website. All you need is a domain name and hosting.

• WordPress is used by some of the largest companies in the world. If they trust this platform with their multi-million dollar businesses, surely you can.

• WordPress content is delivered via an RSS feed, simply and easily.  As an example of all the great plugins, the Feedburner plugin is an aggregate for all RSS readers–no matter which reader someone is using, Feedburner can manage that reader.

• WordPress is open source, meaning that there are people out there who are constantly tweaking its performance, features, and any vulnerabilities. You will always have the latest version available to you, and for free of course. Up-to-date software is secure and stable software.

• WordPress is a very secure platform to build your site on. Any WordPress security issues are usually related to not updating to the newest versio of WordPress, or to using passwords that are easy to guess and therefore, not secure. If you keep your site up to date, there won’t be any issues with security.

• WordPress allows you to create user accounts that have different levels of privileges, making it easy for those who need a site with multiple authors. Have you been looking for a platform for your group blogging aspirations?

Contact me today to get yourself online with a WordPress site. Click here to check out my WordPress packages

Looking to uplevel your business?  Are you using a free blogging platform to run your business?  If so, upleveling to a self hosted WordPress site needs to be your first step.  Why?

First, the terms and conditions clearly state (all free blogging platforms) that you cannot market or sell anything from their sites.  And this is not just a urban myth.

You might say that you’ve been doing this for forever, or you know many people who do, but that doesn’t save you from waking up one morning, logging onto your site, and it is gone. Forever. No warning. No explanation. No nothing. Essentially, your business will be gone.

Secondly, no matter if you’ve purchased your own domain name and SEO’d your site like crazy. You will never ever match the SEO value, or the organic ranking in the search engines that you get from having a self hosted WordPress site.

Third, if you are on a free site to save money, then I would challenge you to do some research on what it takes to have a self hosted site that you own.  It is not expensive, especially when you balance costs and benefits.

I use (and highly encourage others as well) Bluehost for hosting everything related to my businesses.  If you only purchase one year of hosting at a time, it will cost you $7.95 + tax USD per month.  That’s about $95 per year, and they will give you your first domain name. Purchase 2 years at at time and the price goes down to $65 per year.  This has to be the cheapest form of advertising available to any business anywhere.   (By the way, you can host 5 full websites, WordPress or traditional, with this hosting package, without any additional charges.  So if you have several free blogging platform sites, you can bring them all over).

Fourth, it is extremely easy to bring your content to your new self hosted WordPress site from a free blogging platform. Click this button and that, and it’s done.  What are you waiting for?

Contact me today to get yourself online with a WordPress site. Click here to check out my WordPress packages

Jay Baer Interview from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.

First released in late March, it’s been tweaked to perfection and ready to use.

Click on this link plugin_howto to get complete instructions on how to set this up on your site.  If you run into any trouble, contact me directly at 800-921-4812