kO′ch VA adj. 1. a highly specialized and niched virtual
assistant who is in tune with their coaching clients and customizes solutions based upon their individual needs and goals 2. differs from a general virtual assistant as they only partner with members of the coaching industry [syn: 
Archive for Blogs
WordPress Widgets
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One of WordPress’s most innovative capabilities is “widgets.” Widgets allow you to customize your WordPress sidebar layout with a number of different pre-programmed options.
You can also expand your widgets to include all kinds of other features. Everything works through drag and drop and is extremely easy to design.
To get started, go to “Widgets” under “Appearance” in your WordPress set up. Here are a few of the most common options.
Archives
The archives shows a backlog of all the posts you’ve made this month, as well as provides direct links to the archives of previous months.
This is extremely useful for helping people find older content.
Calendar
The calendar is similar to the archive, except it lists your posts on a calendar. This can be useful for more visual people who are looking for content on your site.
Links and Blogroll
Are there other resources people in your industry should know about? The links and blogroll section makes it easy to link to other sites.
Links that go into your blogroll are site wide links, meaning every page from your site will point to that link through your widget. For other webmasters, it’s extremely valuable as it passes a lot of link juice.
Categories
If you have clearly defined categories, you can put them in the sidebar to make your site easier to navigate.
Tag Cloud
The tag cloud is one of the most visually stunning widgets you can choose from. It takes all your tags, which are like keywords you use to describe posts, and creates a “cloud,” a formation of different sized words. The more often you’ve used a tag, the larger the word.
This creates a very Web 2.0 kind of look, while giving people an easy way to find posts they’re looking for.
RSS and Social Media
By default, WordPress comes loaded with an RSS widget. The RSS widget makes it easy for people with RSS readers to subscribe to your blog.
WordPress doesn’t come out of the box with social media widgets, such as Like buttons or Follow buttons. However, there are plenty of plug-ins out there that can add this capability.
Raw HTML
Finally, you have the raw HTML option. This option gives you complete flexibility for what you want to put in your sidebar.
If you wanted to put a large banner image in the sidebar, how would you do it? One easy way would be to just use straight HTML code.
What if you wanted a subscription box? All you’d need to do is edit the boxes to be small enough to fit and put the HTML code in the side.
These are some of the most common WordPress widgets you can choose from. By mixing and matching widgets, you can create a highly unique and personal design that’s also very easy to use.
CONTEST: Blog More, While Stressing Less
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Is the thought of blogging for business stressing you out?
Is your blog neglected and in dire need of refreshment?
Do you want to attract the right type of client to your website?
If you answered YES to any of these questions have I got a treat for you! Janet Slack of Solopreneur.biz giving away ONE seat to Laurie Foley’s class “Blog More, Stress Less: Six Steps to a Sustainable Blog” valued at $497. You can find out more about the program here but now for the best part…how YOU can WIN!
There’s going to be a contest and here’s how it’s going to go:
#1 – To enter, simply create a post on your blog about why you would like to be in the class “Blog More, Stress Less”. You’ll even get bonus points in the contest if you link to Solopreneur.biz and the “Blog More, Stress Less” websites here:
http://blogmorestressless.com/
#2 – After you post to your blog, simply go to our contest page on Solopreneur.biz on Facebook and post a live link to your blog post.
That’s it! You’ll be entered into the contest. They’ll be reading your posts everyday and promoting them on the Solpreneur.biz on Facebook Wall and they’ll pick the final winner on Friday, March 2nd.
You’ve got nothing to lose (except perhaps STRESS) and everything to gain. Have fun and be creative, which relieves stress too! 
About Laurie Foley:
Laurie Foley is an online business coach with a thriving practice that specializes in branding. She got off to a rough start with her blog – Laurie wanted it to work but felt clueless and unsatisfied for months and months. Then she read in the New York Times that 95% of blogs are abandoned within 4 months, and she knew she wasn’t the only one who had been struggling to sustain a creative and helpful blog.
Laurie then spent a solid year (and a lot of money!) studying blogging to learn how to create a blog that is easy to sustain and helps you achieve more in your business as a coach or consultant. She put what she learned into practice and was awarded one of the “Top Ten Coaching Blogs” from the School of Coaching Mastery in 2009 and 2010 for her blog at lauriefoley.com
About Janet Slack and Solopreneur.biz:
Janet is a Professional Certified Coach, well-known author, speaker and blogger on topics related to running a successful small business. She has mentored, coached and supported hundreds of others as they started or grew their own small businesses. Her passion is coaching people to succeed in life through seeking fun, challenges and rewards whether they are small business owners, women in transition or even those conquering fear and learning to find joy. Her first book, Mind Your Own Biz, is a guide to starting and developing a coaching business. Janet is a coauthor of How the Fierce Handle Fear.
How to Get Writing Ideas for Your Blog
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Starting a blog is easy – keeping a blog interesting and fresh is a whole other matter. While many marketers have no trouble beginning a blog, the sheer number of abandoned blogs around the ‘net speaks to the fact that many marketers don’t know what to do to keep a blog going. According to blogging experts, the key to keeping a blog going is to post frequently. This means that you’re going to need a ever present stream of content coming into your blog.
You may be intimidated by the thought of having to come up with lots of topic ideas. Finding topics for your blog posts are easy if you use the following ideas.
1. Captions
Your blog should be timely and there’s no better way to attract attention on your blog than to tap into some ongoing news. No matter what your niche is you can find news stories and breaking information that will help fuel timely blog posts. Look for captions, or headlines, to stay on top of thing. Sign up for Google Alerts (it’s free) and set up alerts on important words in your niche. This way you’ll be able to see the news in your niche and blog about current topics.
2. Comments
The comments section in your blog can be a great source of writing inspiration. Let’s say you have a post on your marketing blog about keyword research. Within the comments section, a few people start asking about how to use keywords in articles for article marketing. Voila! You have your next blog post. Look through your comments section to identify topics that you can write about or questions you can answer in the form of a blog post.
3. Companions
Are there some websites or other resources that your niche needs to know about? Write a few resource list posts. Resource lists posts are very easy to write and they provide maximum value to your readers because they can get the information that they need easily. When you can’t think of anything else to write about you can pull together a helpful list for your readers.
4. Community
Keep your finger on the pulse of your niche. Watch other blogs in your niche and see what they are writing about. You can take a different angle on the same topic, or cover an area of the topic that the original author missed. If you disagree with the author, feel free to go ahead and express you opinion on your blog. Other bloggers can be a great source of information so be sure to get involved in the community.
5. Collection
Start collecting a list of quick tips you’d like to share with your niche. These can be inspired by your personal experience with the niche, from other blog posts you’ve read or from other products in your niche. When you find yourself stuck for blog post ideas, you can write a quick tips post.
These tips just scratch the surface of where you can find ideas for blog posts to populate your blog. Start keeping a notepad file with blog post ideas and you’ll never be at a loss for material.
Did Someone Say ‘Blog Crazy’?
Posted by: | CommentsYes, someone said ‘Blog Crazy’ but I actually said ‘Blog Crazy Special’ because that is what is going on… right now! What is this bloggy craziness, you ask? It is nothing. Do not worry about it. Forget I said a word. I am warning you, this could help your business strategies.
[Redirecting Your Attention]
Did you read the blog post that Yaro Starak wrote about creating change in your life. In order to change your life, you have to really examine yourself to… well you can read it.
Yaro is always interesting. However, I suppose that you want to know about this Blog Crazy Special.
Fine. But do not say that I did not warn you.
It is no secret that I am a fan of Open Source Programming. Well, this Blog Crazy Special was built on Open Source Programming and all the wondrous benefits of it. Some of the additional programs that you will get with this special are tools for Google. Soon you will be creating Google friendly site maps, using Google Analytics to track your stats, optimizing your blog for SEO, hiding pages (like thank you pages and client specials) and more.
Now, you will get much more than some applications made for Google. You will also get an events calendar, a social connection tool (for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and many more), one-click upgrades and many more apps pre-installed for you.
If that were not enough, you will get a real self-hosted WordPress installation on your own hosting account. On top of that deal, we will custom design your chosen blog theme’s header graphic.
All of this is one crazy deal to get your business moving. The Blog Crazy Special is $349.97 and includes one full year of hosting. Yes it’s a blog (and so much more). Yes it’s crazy (because of all the extras). But, you are the one who makes it special [Awww. I called you special. Oh wait, the good kind of special, like when your significant other says that you are special to them. That kind of special. Whew.]
So, if you are interested and ONLY if you are interested, you can read about the Blog Crazy Special and order it for yourself.
Blogs Are Not An Option, Rather A Necessity
Posted by: | CommentsBlogs have been around for many years. They started out, in the beginning, as great personal journals for Internet users who wanted to share their daily lives with their family and friends. Now, fast forward through the years to today; where they are now commonly used as business tools as well as private diaries of sorts.
Blogs are basically mini-websites authors use to post information about a specific topic. Some blogs share experiences of an author’s career path, while others provide up to date news concerning the topic their blog presents.
What Makes Blogs Such a Great Tool to a Business Owner?
Blogs can provide so many opportunities for business to reap rewards that no business website should be without one. Here are some of the benefits a blog can provide any business owner:
A blog can drive more targeted traffic to their main site.
Blogs are favorites of search engines. They provide up to date content on a regular basis, so search engines will find them easier. Blogs can also be linked with other like-minded blogs to allow for more click-through visitors. Social bookmarking sites, social media sites and even message board forums love them as well. People will refer their friends to them when they see something they like.
Blogs make it easier to gain return visitors.
If a visitor likes your blog, they’ll keep coming back to see what else you have to say on a specific topic. Business blogs can be linked to the main company site as well. The more times people stop by, the more chances an owner has of getting those visitors to your business site.
Blogs allow one to easily gain expert status amongst a target audience.
The more you blog about your site’s topic, the more you come across as an expert in that field. A visitor can be awed by the information you’re offering them and could look up to you as an expert on a particular subject. Now, the next time they need to buy a certain product or need help with something in that area, they will think of you first.
Blogs are user friendly and inexpensive to boot.
There are blog programs that you can sign up for free or for a very nominal fee. Most blogs are easy to set up as they generally walk you through the process step-by-step. There aren’t too many marketing tools that are as easy to use and inexpensive to obtain. This alone makes a blog painless to your business budget.
Business blogs are easier when it comes to upkeep.
Blogs are fun to use, which makes them much easier to maintain. Posting regular tidbits of your chosen topic keeps a blog updated without a lot of hassle. Updating websites is essential, but can be time consuming and confusing as well.
The biggest benefit business blogs provide is…
Building Rapport with Your Target Audience
This is, by far, the best benefit you can obtain from a blog. Blogs have comment sections where readers can leave messages for you to let you know they liked what you said in a post or to add their own thoughts on the topic at hand.
You’re building a relationship with your target audience that can help gain trust from them as well as find out what they’re looking for in a product. This is your way to get an inside look at what your customer’s wants and needs are without spending lots of money on marketing surveys and advertisements that don’t work.
Blogs can give your business everything mentioned above and more. Adding a blog to your arsenal of marketing tools is a must do for any online business owner.
About the Author
Becki Noles is the virtual business manager and online marketing dynamo of the Virtual Accuracy Companies. She and her associates work with the top business and marketing coaches in the United States and the world over providing SEO, Pay Per Click, website development and technical virtual assistant services. Get the free 9 part series “How to Market Your Business” by visiting The Selon Group (a division of the Virtual Accuracy Companies).
Blog and Website Must Haves
Posted by: | CommentsDon’t just focus on the home page, keywords and titles.
The first step to sales and inquiries when potential clients or customers visit your site is that they see the services or products they were originally looking for. Unfortunately search engine optimization and better rankings can’t keep your customer on your site or make them buy. The potential client or customer having visited your site, must be interested in your products or services in order to stay and browse. Motivate them to purchase the service or product by providing clear and unambiguous information. If you happen to sell more than one product or service, provide all necessary information about this. Consider having numerous pages which have a singular focus for each of your services or products. By providing suitable and easily visible links, the customer can navigate to these pages and get the details.
Understand Your Target Market
If you design a website you think will attract clients, but you don’t really know who your potential clients are and what they want to buy, it is unlikely that anyone will choose to work with you. Online business is an extension or replacement for a standard brick and mortar storefront. If you’re just not sure about your target market what can you do? Start by sending an email to your existing clients and ask them to complete a survey. You could even direct your potential clients and customers to an online survey on your website. Ask them about their choices:
Why do they like your services or products?
Do you offer retainer discounts or discounts/coupons codes for products?
Do you practice excellent customer service and respond faster to client questions?
Are your product descriptions better?
Don’t be afraid to ask.
Be generous with your contact information.
When you sell online your customers can buy your products 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Your customers can be across town or across the globe. Always provide contact information, preferably on every page of your website, complete with mailing address, telephone number and an email address that reaches you. People may need to contact you about sales, general information or technical problems on your site. Also have your email forwarded to another email address if you do not check your website mailbox often. Nothing turns off potential clients and customers faster than lack of contact information. In an impersonal, online world, your customers want to know where you are and how they can contact you if need be. Don’t disappoint. Strive to be as credible as possible when operating online.
About the Author
Becki Noles, Visionary of Virtual Accuracy Companies has been at the forefront of stream-lining coaching and entrepreneurial businesses since 1998. Utilizing her background in marketing, publicity, corporate training, advertising and media, Becki custom tailors and implements individualized action plans for taking coaching businesses to the next level. As a Virtual Assistant her business partners with top business and executive coaches in the United States, Canada, Switzerland and the world over.
Free Multi-Media Blog Course
Posted by: | CommentsI’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.
It covers:
- The best blogging techniques.
- How to get traffic to your blog.
- How to turn your blog into money.
I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.
Top 10 Blog Writing Tips
Posted by: | CommentsMost of the “rules” about writing for ezines and newsletters apply to writing posts for your blog, but there are some important differences. Keep these 10 tips in mind and you’ll be publishing great blog content that attracts prospects and clients in your niche market.
1. Write with the reader in mind. Remember WIIFM? It’s marketing jargon for What’s In It For Me? That’s what you should be keeping in mind. Your reader will read your post looking for what’s in it for them.
2. Make it valuable and worthwhile. Don’t waste people’s time. If you don’t have anything to say, no problem, plenty other people do. So share their articles, do an interview, review a book.
3. Proof-read for typos and glaring grammatical errors. You wouldn’t go out of the house with dirty hair or missing a sock, so why would you publish spelling mistakes? Respect your readers by polishing up your stuff.
4. Keep it short and simple, sweetie. (KISS). Most people are scanners. You may have a lot to say and think it interesting, and it may be. But people are reading online and out of time. Get to the point quickly. Publishing short posts more frequently is a better format than publishing lengthy articles every few weeks.
5. Keep it lively, make it snappy and snazzy. Even if you aren’t a natural born writer, you can write for your blog. Just write like you’re speaking to your friend…or to yourself! Remember though, get to the point quickly. Keep in mind the journalist’s rule of 5 W’s in the first paragraph: who, what, why, when and where.
6. Link often. This builds credibility and positions you as an expert in your field. People don’t have time to know what others are doing, you should tell them. Linking to other blogs and websites also helps you build a network of associates who will in turn link to your blog.
7. Use keywords often. This will help you stay on purpose, and the search engines will love your blog. Your rankings will go up. This is one of the reasons we have you write out your purpose statements before beginning your blog. The clearer you are about your purpose, the more consistently you will deliver messages that are on target. And the more often your keywords show up, the better your search engine results.
8. Write clearly (short sentences, only one concept per sentence). No double speak or jargon; no more than one idea in one sentence- don’t make your readers have to think about your meaning. Spoon feed them. Use commas and dashes liberally.
9. Write like you talk. It’s okay to use common expressions from speech.
Examples:
Go figure.
Don’t even go there…
Now, I ask you…
Gotta love it…
(And, remember the age group of your readers…)
10. Use a clear headline, and don’t be afraid to make bold statements (but don’t mislead people either). Make it snazzy and use key words. Example: Ex-Techno-Weenie Masters HTML Code
BONUS: After you write a post and BEFORE you hit the save button
Use this checklist to ask yourself a few questions as you are reading through for typos and grammar:
__ Is the topic clear to someone who only reads the headline?
__Does the lead paragraph tell who and what the story is about and why the reader should care about it?
__ Is the angle you’ve used likely to seem newsworthy?
__Would someone who knows absolutely nothing about this topic understand this post?
__ Is the post free of jargon?
__ Is it written in journalistic style and does it make an effort to be objective?
__ Have you peppered the headline and the post with keywords and phrases that will be attractive to search engines?
__ Did you remember to ask your readers a question at the end, or something to stimulate readers to comment?
__ Did you remember to write with the reader in mind, always keeping in mind WIIFT? (What’s in It for Them?)
About the Author
Patsi Krakoff of Customized Newsletter Services, and Denise Wakeman of Next Level Partnership, have teamed up to create blogging classes and marketing services for independent professionals. You can read and subscribe to their blogs at http://www.coachezines.com, http://www.bizbooknuggets.com and http://www.biztipsblog.com.
16 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog
Posted by: | CommentsYou’ve got your blog set up and you’ve started posting pithy, useful information that your niche market would benefit from and enjoy. Days go by, you keep publishing, but no one comments and your traffic stats are barely registering. What do you do?
Like any website you own, you must do some blog promotion to start driving traffic to your site. Here are 16 steps, in no particular order of importance, that you can start doing now to get traffic moving to your blog.
1. Set up a Bloglet subscription form on your blog and invite everyone in your network to subscribe: family, friends, colleagues, clients, associates.
2. Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search engine (see tutorial on http://www.biztipsblog.com)
3. Read and comment on other blogs that are in your target niche. Don’t write things like “nice blog” or “great post.” Write intelligent, useful comments with a link to your blog.
4. Use Ping-0-matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish.
5. Submit your blog to traditional search engines: http://www.submitfire.com
6. Submit your blog to blog directories. The most comprehensive list of directories is on this site:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
Tip: Create a form to track your submissions; this can take several hours when you first start so schedule an hour a day for submitting or hire a VA to do it for you.
7. Add a link to your blog in your email signature file.
8. Put a link to your blog on every page of your website.
9. If you publish a newsletter, make sure you have a link to your blog in every issue.
10. Include a link to your blog as a standard part of all outgoing correspondence such as autoresponder sequences, sales letters, reports, white papers, etc.
11. Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures and flyers.
12. Make sure you have an RSS feed URL that people can subscribe to. The acronym RSS means Rich Site Summary, or some may consider its meaning as Really Simple Syndication. It is a document type that lists updates of websites or blogs available for syndication. These RSS documents (also known as ‘feeds’) may be read using aggregators (news readers). RSS feeds may show headlines only or both headlines and summaries.
To learn how news aggregators/RSS readers work, see this site: http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-readers.htm
13. Post often to keep attracting your subscribers to come back and refer you to others in their networks; include links to other blogs, articles and websites in your posts
14. Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts. What is TrackBack? Essentially what this does is send a message from one server to another server letting it know you have posted a reference to their post. The beauty is that a link to your blog is now included on their site.
15. Write articles to post around the web in article directories. Include a link to your blog in the author info box (See example in our signature below).
16. Make a commitment to blog everyday. 10 minutes a day can help increase your traffic as new content attracts search engine spiders. Put it on your calendar as a task every day at the same time.
Tip: Use a hit counter to track your visitor stats: how many unique visitors, how many page views, average length of visit. You can get a free hit counter at http://www.sitemeter.com
About the Author
Denise Wakeman of Next Level Partnership, and Patsi Krakoff of Customized Newsletter Services, have teamed up to create blogging classes and marketing services for independent professionals. You can read and subscribe to their blogs at http://www.biztipsblog.com, http://www.coachezines.com and http://www.bizbooknuggets.com.
