by Rosalind Gardner

You already know how to install a blog.

You also know which plugins to use to make it functional and how to make it look great with a pretty professional WordPress theme.

You know which pages are must-haves on any blog.

AND you understand the benefits of blogging in terms of getting free traffic, as well as how to use PPC at the local level to reduce advertising costs.

So, why not make money using your knowledge to help businesses in your local area either set up a new blog, or improve an existing web site?

Surely, you’ve come across a few local businesses that could benefit greatly from your blogging knowledge.

I run across awful local business sites all the time.

For example, most of the small resort, motel and private RV park/campground sites I find when doing travel research are just downright ugly. Most of them look like they were designed in 1997 and haven’t been updated since.

Here are two examples…

Read the rest of the article here:  Rosalind Gardner’s Net Profits Today

If you want to brush up on your WordPress skills and be able to increase the professional fees you command take a look at these two programs.

Go For Your Dream WordPress Training. The next live WordPress Website Workshop begins next month, October, 2010. Be sure to register for the case study replays from their last workshop and get on the list to be notified when the new course starts. I work closely with Ben Cope and Kimberly Bohannan on many projects and highly recommendtheir WordPress trainings!

WordPress Mastery. They offer 3 free brief, but powerful videos that will let you find out more about the complete, step-by-step, multi-video training series. This course is perfect for people who are fairly new to WordPress and need to get the basics down pat.

My web development company, Your Office On The Web builds WordPress sites for clients each month. In fact, we may have as many as 8 -11 in production at any given time. Once you are confident that your WordPress skills can be considered “expert” I would love to see your portfolio!

Table of contents for Weekly Recommended Resource

1. How to Get Publicity Interviews On Talk Radio For Your Clients

Everyone’s an expert at something. Sharing your expertise or that of your virtual assistance clients may land you (and them!) that big media opportunity you’ve been looking for.

We all know about HARO (Help a Reporter Out) which was founded by in 2008 by Peter Shankman. Every day, HARO brings nearly 30,000 reporters and bloggers, over 100,000 news sources and thousands of small businesses together to tell their stories, promote their brands and sell their products and services. If you are not on this email list, you need to be!

Another resource for experts looking for more media exposure on the talk show circuit is Radio Guest List.com. Here you can get radio interviews and podcast publicity guests interview bookings for free.

Free radio, Internet radio, satellite radio, talk radio, podcast and TV talk show guest experts interviews booking service and call for sponsors and advertisers. Post your radio show guests, publicity or sponsorship needs online and they will email their list of experts, authors & PR firms automatically.

Source: Radio Guest List.com

If you are an author, guest expert “source” or PR firm looking for publicity interviews, or interested in sponsoring or advertising on radio talk shows or podcasts, please register to receive our FREE emails from radio, podcast, and TV talk show producers and bookers who want to meet you.

Here’s the deal:

• You will get emails from local radio stations, online talk show hosts, podcasters, satellite radio (XM/Sirius), and even the occasional TV show looking for guest experts to interview (or sponsors for their shows).
• These shows are not usually big names – this service is designed to help smaller stations and podcaster shows that are looking for guests.
• While these shows do not all have big audiences – their listeners are usually very targeted.
• You can also request a link back to your website from the hosts (good for SEO!).
• Most important: ONLY RESPOND TO SHOWS THAT ARE SPECIFICALLY LOOKING FOR YOUR EXPERTISE. Do not spam the bookers! You will be REMOVED from the list if I receive complaints.
• The emails are free.

Please drop back by let me know how this free service works out for you or your clients.

If not, why not? By offering a newsletter or ezine to visitors to your website you can:

• Speak directly to your targeted market.
• Deliver consistent messages about your products and services.
• Share information, tools and tips about your industry.
• Build that critically important “know, like and trust” factor while stimulating good will and building your expert status by generating consistent and usable information.
• Reach various audiences such as customers, prospects, trade groups, media, potential joint ventures partners, etc.
• If you are an affiliate marketer your newsletter can be used as a sales, advertising, PR, educational and/or promotional tool.
• Produce cost-effective and measurable results.

These tips are offered as a way to help you get started, to encourage you and /or your group to do some brainstorming and to help you gain some clarity regarding the all-important purpose of your newsletter.

Some questions to answer before you get started that will help you craft your newsletter or ezine.

1. What audience do you want to reach?
2. What consistent message do you want to convey?
3. How often will you produce it?
4. What is your corporate philosophy and personality? Will your newsletter be written in technical terms, or will it be couched in conversational tones?
5. How can you use it most effectively to help build and brand your business?
6. Who will have primary in-house responsibilities?
7. Who will oversee the production? Layout and design? Content/articles/photos? Timeline?
8. What parts of the process, if any, will be outsourced?

It’s up to you to determine which purposes your newsletter will serve, but the time spent analyzing and focusing before starting it will save you many headaches along the way.

Who we recommend.

Aweber

Constant Contact

Infusion Soft

This week we are talking about a quick and very affordable affordable tool to help you convert file formats.

When I needed to convert videos for a client who has over 40 fitness videos so we could upload them to ClickBank and offer them as a digital product this is the tool I used.

While this client has VERY healthy sales of his videos on his own website, I encouraged him to add digital downloads to his arsenal and reach a larger marketplace. That is what being a true Virtual Assistant/Strategic Business Partner is all about, but that is another topic for another day!

Leawo DVD to MP4 Converter is a powerful and easy-to-use DVD tool that can perfectly convert DVD to MP4 video. This DVD to MP4 Converter also can convert DVD to iPod, DVD to iPhone, DVD to Apple TV, DVD to PSP, DVD to PS3 compatible MP4 video file. Then together with the fast conversion speed and excellent output quality, this DVD to MP4 Converter allows you easily and freely enjoy the DVD movie playback on iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, PSP, PS3 and other more MP3 players on the go.

KEY FEATURES of Leawo DVD to MP4 Converter:

1. User-friendly and easiest-to-use interface;
2. Powerful functions;
3. Convert DVD to MP4 video file with excellent quality;
4. Convert DVD to iPod compatible MP4 video file;
5. Convert DVD to iPhone and DVD to Apple TV compatible MP4 video file;
6. Convert DVD to PSP and DVD to PS3 compatible MP4 video file;
7. Supported the generated MP4 file playback on iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, PSP, PS3 palyers;
8. Convert DVD to MP3, AAC, M4A, WMA, WAV, AC3 audio file;
9. Set the visual effect by specifying video brightness, contrast, volume;
10. Trim any duration of DVD movie for conversion;
11. Support DVD Specific Features: Subtitle, Audio Track, and Angles;
12. Crop any parts of the video image and extract the black edge;
13. Custom output file by specifying video bit rate, frame rate, sample rate, audio bit rate and etc;
14. Merge multiple chapters or titles into one file for converting to entire movie and split DVD chapters;
15. Get thumbnail screenshot with one click to enrich picture base;
16. All encoders/decoders embedded in;
17. Support batch process and convert multiple DVD to MP4 file at a time;
18. Fast conversion speed and excellent quality.

Leawo also offers a variety of other converter type products on their site, ranging from DVD, video, powerpoint, and Mac compatible tools. A good number of them are free (limited capabilities) or offer free trials.

Click here to order this product. (This is an affliate link, BTW.)

If you or one of your virtual assistance clients is planning on building a membership or continuity website you may want to take a good look at this WordPress plugin. If you purchase WishList Member between now and August 27th, you’ll get Adii’s new book, Rockstar Business absolutely free. They will also be conducting an exclusive video interview with Adii that will only be available for customers.

What’s the catch? 

No catch other than the promotion ends August 27th, 2010. So if you don’t order between now and then, you won’t get the book and video for free. 

All the details are located here.

Be sure to come back and share your new membership site (yours or a client’s) here with us!

Enjoy!

Denise

P.S  You can also ask Adii questions ahead of time before the video interview – they are going to try and incorporate as many into the interview as they can.

Scoring lots of video views on YouTube is only useful to you if you can get your audience to take an action step once they’re on your channel and enjoying your videos. So how can you increase the chances they’ll make their way over to your main website, blog, or other online content?

1. Insert your website domain into your videos using video editing software.

Remember that the sharing mechanisms on YouTube might lead to your video being embedded elsewhere online, such as in a forum or on someone else’s blog. Since those off-site viewers won’t have immediate access to your YouTube channel or a video’s title and description, you want to be sure your main website domain appears at the beginning, middle, and end of your video. Consider adding it via a watermark so it’s always visible (just don’t obstruct the view). You can always outsource such video editing tasks, or take a stab at using the free video editing software that should have come installed on your computer: Windows Movie Maker for PCs or iMovie for Macs. More expensive video editing programs are also available, such as Pinnacle, Final Cut, and Premiere.

2. Get your website domain into your videos using the YouTube Annotations tool.

If you don’t have time or money to delve into video editing, your domain can be added to the beginning, middle, and end of your videos using YouTube Annotations—a way to add interactive commentary onto your videos from within the YouTube interface (and without having to use any video editing software of your own). Add such annotations after your video is uploaded. You control what the annotations say, where they appear on the video, and when they appear and disappear. You can even create a live link from an annotation to another YouTube video, channel, or search result. Annotations will also show up on YouTube videos embedded elsewhere, off of the YouTube site.

3. Ask and You Shall Receive.

As I mentioned earlier, it never hurts to ask your audience to do what you want them to do. My “Ask and You Shall Receive” rule goes beyond simply flashing your website domain on the screen. Say it out loud several times, and for goodness sake, tell us what all we’ll find when we get there. “Visit my website at www.xyz.com because I’ll give you (more information, a free report, a downloadable coupon).” Or just drop hints to tempt us to go there.

4. Hyperlink your website URL as the first item in your video description.

Why first, you ask? So it will always be visible, even if visitors don’t click on the “more info” link on the description that accompanies it. You also want to signal to prospects that this video wasn’t made by some hobbyist, but by a professional with a full online presence.

5. Treat the description area of your YouTube channel like it’s a mini sales letter.

Start by telling your audience about you and your level of expertise within your niche area. Be sure to also discuss some of the benefits people will gain if they venture over to your main website. Don’t forget your URL, not only in the spot YouTube designates for you to do so, but also in your channel description.

6. Bribery often works.

Within your video offer something free, include a cliffhanger, or hold a contest. For viewers to take advantage of your offer or have their curiosity satisfied make them head over to your main website. Meanwhile, think of ways to offer extra value to your audience, and they’ll become loyal fans who promote your videos for you.

7. Call-To-Action Overlay ads.

These are semi-transparent pop-up overlays that link viewers to any third-party website you choose. For example, you could run an overlay on your own video inviting YouTube viewers to click and sail right through to the corresponding website you’re promoting. This is incredibly handy for generating engaged, well-targeted traffic to your website.

Where do I start?

• Poorly constructed message. In fact, I would go so far as to term it both lazy and sloppy. There is nothing there that tells the potential client what her skill levels are and why she would be capable of helping him build and grow his online business.
• No punctuation.
• No proper capitalization.
• Her website is hosted on Homestead which violates all of my rules about self-hosting your website. Not only that, but she lists “Web Design” as one of her services. I won’t put a link to her site here, but can assure you that it is not professional in execution.
• Her primary verbiage on the front page was lifted word for word from MY website!

Again, I repeat, this is NOT how a confident, capable, and technically savvy Virtual Assistant acquires new clients.

Your thoughts?

Does your business have a blog? Are you sharing information with your readers about what it is that you do and how you can help them build and grow their business? Do you have a wonderful tool, product, service, or widget that can be a money or time saver for other small businesses?

Blogging has become one of the most popular ways to get the message of your business and service out to the world. It is no longer just a way for people to share  thoughts, pictures, recipes, wedding  and vacation plans online with friends and family.

Business blogging is a very powerful marketing tool and every major industry uses blogs to ensure that their customers and clients are kept abreast of new developments and just about any other kind of news that needs to be available on the internet 24 hours a day. If you are not leveraging the Internet to market to a global audience and give your small business a decisive competitive edge, you are very likely leaving a lot of money on the table.

Combine blogging with social media marketing and you can literally explode your online presence in a very short time. By committing to posting to your blog at least 3 times a week you will create a wealth of content that can be used to advertise your services and build trust and rapport with your prospects. And search engines love blogs that are updated regularly!

By leveraging the Internet, your small business can get more done and complete effectively in a global marketplace, but this can be time consuming, and often confusing for a small business. That’s where outsourcing can help. Blogging is one of the services a highly technically savvy Virtual Assistance firm can handle with ease.

There are a number of great blogging platforms available today with the most popular being WordPress and the list below will help you get started with your blog.

A common checklist of blogging tehnologies that you may need to get started: 

• Domain Name. I use and recommend GoDaddy for domain name purchases, but NOT for hosting. Be sure to purchase most extensions of your domain name such as dot com, dot net, dot biz, etc., to ensure that your name and brand is protected. Each domain name will cost about $11 annually.
• Hosting for your website. I use and recommend HostGator for hosting. Depending on the plan you need, your cost range from $4.95 to $12.95 per month. If you need a toll free number this is also available on their largest hosting package. You will be able to install WordPress from your cpanel using the Fantastico application. This is easy and quick.
• Premium WordPress Templates. I have several companies that I use a lot, but these are two of my favorites:
  • Elegant Themes
  • WordPress Dream Theme
• If your website/blog will be functioning as a membership site, now or in the future, I consider WishList Member an essential plugin.
• Shopping Cart. 1ShoppingCart incorporates all of the tools your business needs to market and sell online in a single, easy-to-use web-based solution. If you need an affiliate program, you can build that in your shopping cart. The basic plan (I don’t recommend anything below this plan) will cost $59 per month and the professional plan, which includes affiliate marketing, is $99.00 per month. You can also make application here for a payment gateway through Authorize.net or PowerPay so that you can accept credit card payments on your website.
• PayPal account for accepting payments if you don’t currently have a payment gateway. This is free and you will only pay a fee when a payment is made. You will be able to use your PayPal account in place of a payment gateway if you prefer.
• Newsletter or email marketing software. Two excellent tools for this are Aweber and Constant Contact.
• Social Media Profiles. KnowEm Username Check allows you to check for the use of your brand, product, personal name or username instantly on over 400 popular and emerging social media websites. Grab your name and secure your brand before someone else does. They offer free and premium plans.
  • LinkedIn Profile (FREE)
  • Facebook Fan Page for Your Business. (FREE)
  • Twitter Account. (FREE) For branding purposes we use and recommend TweetPages for a very professional Twitter background. They can also create   and Facebook designs. Tell Matt I sent you!
  • Gmail account – you will need this for various services such as Feedburner, Google Analytics, Google Maps, etc.
• Essential WordPress Plugins. The WordPress community has developed thousands of plugins and themes. If you haven’t tried out WordPress plugins yet, you owe it to yourself and your blog to give them a try. They’re amazingly easy to set up and can boost the functionality of WordPress to an astonishing degree. You will install these directly from your WordPress control panel:
  • Yoast Breadcrumbs (FREE)
  • All in One SEO Pack (FREE)
  • pageMash (FREE)
  • Google XML Sitemaps (FREE)
  • WP DB Backup (FREE)
  • WordPress Database Backup (FREE)
  • Advertising Manager (FREE)
  • TinyMCE (FREE)
  • Bad Behavior (FREE)

Are you ready to start building?

If you are interested in tackling this project on your own and want to learn how to build a seriously professional WordPress website/blog my best recommendation is that you sign up for the next Go For Your Dream WordPress Website Workshop. This 4 week online e-course takes you step-by-step through the process of building your website using the Premium Dream Theme. There’s also an additional 2 weeks of basic training bonus modules on 1shoppingcart, Authorize.net, PayPal, and installing a Membership site. I highly recommend this training.

Too much information! I can’t even begin to tackle a project like this.

Another alternative is to have us build it for you. We are a Web Development company paired with a Virtual Assistance firm. What does this mean? It means that we do it all, from concept to launch. Our websites are turnkey, meaning that your social media marketing is built in, your branding is complete and all you have to do is blog! And we train you on the backend of your website/blog so you are in control of your content.

For a free 20 minute consultation please call us at 888-719-6711 or use our contact page. We are here to help!

If you have worked in one or both of these systems and are confident that your skill sets are proficient to expert, please email me at info @ virtualassistantindustry.com, subject line “Click Bank”. 

Please feel free to send this information to someone you know who is expert in these systems.

Thank you! 

Denise Griffitts

Recently at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in NYC, Facebook’s Vice President of Product Chris Cox said Facebook will institute “drastically simplified” privacy settings in response to users’ concerns over how the company uses their profile information. In fact, this has already be done, and it is now up to you to decide how and when to use the social media platform.

The following is an excerpt from Mari Smith’s* chapter of  Success Secrets Of The Social Media Marketing Superstars (Entrepreneur Press August 2010). If you have any questions at all about Facebook and how to utilize it for your business, I suggest that you get your hands on this book.

Facebook is the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin. The college friends launched Facebook from their Harvard dorm room in February, 2004. For the first two years, Facebook was only available to colleges. Then, gradually, Facebook opened their doors to the general public along with opening their API up to third party application developers. The newest gold rush began!

Since 2006, Facebook has continued to increase in popularity and always seems to stay one step ahead of the competition such as LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, even Google – in terms of being the most popular site for connecting with friends, family, colleagues, etc.

I have great admiration for Mark Zuckerberg. He’s a modern day visionary – I often liken him to Bill Gates back in the 1980s. 

Mark’s mission for Facebook is “to give people the power to share, and help make the world more open and connected such that world problems might be solved.” 

Social networking, particularly Facebook, has completely changed the way we do business and the way we connect, build, and maintain our relationships on both a personal and professional basis.These are my “rules” for succeeding on Facebook – you’re welcome to adopt them if they speak to you:

1. Always be yourself. 

I often talk about a concept I created called “ABM” which stands for many things, including: Always Be Me, Always Be Mindful and Always Be Marketing. Two words that are frequently used in the social media world are “authentic” and “transparent.” To me, when you apply ABM, you’ll always do the right thing anyway.By being mindful – realizing you never know who might be observing your updates, posts and photos on Facebook, for example – you can be in full control of how you build your reputation and perception among your strategically chosen Facebook friends. 

The part about “always be marketing” essentially means every time you show up online or offline, even if you’re having a conversation with one person while all your followers/fan/subscribers observe, you are still marketing yourself. 

There is a widespread fear when it comes to using social networks, and that is PRIVACY. Just how much personal information should you reveal about yourself? Here’s the thing – you get to choose. Sure, the lines are blurred between our personal and professional lives, but you still get to maintain a private life.Fortunately, of all the social networks, Facebook has the most granular privacy settings.

2. Stay Focused

We live in an attention-based world now more than ever. Social networking has accelerated the amount of information available and the demands for our attention. People often just have a nanosecond to see you go by and decide whether you’re a fit for their network or not,

Across all social networks, it’s important to display total clarity in what you do, who you help and how you help them in your bio. Be careful of overdoing the links on your Facebook profile – I recommend just showing your website/blog along with a link to your Twitter profile, YouTube channel and LinkedIn profile, as appropriate. 

On your Facebook personal profile and on your fan page, there is a small field under your photo that I call your “mini bio.” Here, you can fill out a succinct sentence or two and possibly include a call to action and a link such as I have in the screenshot to the left. 

3. Have an abundance mindset.

I truly believe there’s enough for everyone and there’s no such thing as competition, particularly when in a service-based business. And, essentially, even if you sell a commodity/widgets, you’re still selling them with a degree of service. 

4. To be an authority, you must be an author (writer/publisher of content).

Facebook gives us tremendous opportunity to publish a wide variety of content types, from photos, videos, links, notes, comments and more. By regularly updating your Status (ideally once per day at minimum), you can literally deliberately manage how you’re perceived among your network. In other words, everything you post should be with strategic intent. The more content you produce, the more authority and credibility you will command. In fact, author Gary Vaynerchuk talks about how every business should get into the content business!

5. Be generous. Give your best stuff away.

If you’re passionate about your topic, you’ll never run out of content. By giving your best stuff away for free in your Status update and imported blog posts, for example, your network will think that if you’re this knowledgeable and generous with your free stuff your paid stuff must be awesome! 

6. Lead by example.

Stay informed – look for ways to stay just one step ahead of others in your industry and lead with a sense of confidence and grace. It’s not a race, per se, but you do want to demonstrate you’re on top of your game, knowledgeable… and that you’re human and still have a life! In other words, you don’t really need to try and appear like you’re online 24/7 – it’s important to set up realistic expectations among your friends and fans. 

7. If content is king, connection is queen.

For some time, my motto has been “Relationships first, business second.” Since social networking has become so popular, we’ve shifted the way we do business… both online and offline. Consumers expect companies to be more approachable, human, engaging. Content does matter for sure, though it’s often the connection and conversation around that content that really brings it to life.

When the marketers move in, the members move out.” So the secret, therefore, that has certainly worked very well for me is to be a member! Of course, you’re a strategically-thinking member! 

8. Implement “Radical Strategic Visibility.”

I created the concept of radical strategic visibility in 2007 and it’s worked extremely well for me, my clients and students. Essentially, you are seen by all the right people, in all the right places, at all the right times. People come up to you and say, “I keep seeing you everywhere.” And you reply with, “Great!! My marketing is working!” 

While it’s vital to your business to have a vibrant presence on Facebook with an attractive and active Fan Page, you need to also have a presence on other popular social networks such as Twitter and YouTube. And then there is a whole range of ancillary sites that affect your presence on WordPress blogs, for example, like Gravatar.com, MyBlogLog.com and BlogCatalog.com and Google Friend Connect. 

9. Take imperfect action and be patient. 

Facebook can be overwhelming to really grasp and optimize for measurable business results. My advice is to get set up with a Facebook Fan Page and begin to add content. It’s not realistic to expect you’ll have a ton of fans right away – unless of course you have a large mailing list and can easily blast out to them and have a surge of fans. In any case, go for it and remember Facebook is just one piece of your marketing pie. 

10. Have an objective, strategy and means of measurement. 

Let’s say your initial objective is to get your first 1000 fans on your Fan Page. But even then, you should have an additional objective as to what you want those fans to DO. Perhaps you’re simply building community for now, so you want the fans to keep coming back and interacting. Or, maybe you want them to opt in to your email list to access a free gift. Strategies for adding fans could be broadcasting to your existing email list, writing blog posts, purchasing Facebook social ads, launching a campaign of tweets and more. And to measure, simple counting the number of fans is easy.

*Dubbed “the Pied Piper of the Online World” by FastCompany.com, Mari Smith is an in-demand Social Media Keynote Speaker, Trainer, and Consultant. She has a strong background in the world of relationships and Internet technology, and has been a passionate leader in social media since 2007. Mari is also President and co-founder of the International Social Media Association – an organization dedicated to best practices, quality education, and social media certification programs. Connect with Mari at www.marismith.com