I am all about making things easy and systematic. It not only makes my life easier, but also, the life of my clients (at least I hope so.)

So, I was working with a client, Joyce Dillon, on her new website and we were chatting about changing the background on her WordPress site.

I started Googling and found this really cool, and easy tool. Even better, it’s free.

Now, it’s not fancy, but for us non-graphic designers, this is an easy or even temporary way to change your background without going to a lot of expense.

Here it is: BGPatterns

As you can see by the image below, you can change around color, image, canvas and the rotation of the image as well. Again, this tool has it’s limitations, but for a quick and easy change to your site’s background, give this a try.

One of the coolest thing about the WordPress platform is the huge number of plugins available to make your job easier. From spam protection through to SEO (and everything in between) there is bound to be either a free or paid plugin available. In fact, SEO plugins are some of the most popular WordPress plugins out there. If you’ve been using WordPress for a while then you will probably have tried a few different SEO plugins – some are bad, some are good, and some are even better.

In today’s Affilorama blog post I’m going to be giving you a hands on look at one of the newest SEO plugin. 

At-a-glance SEO analysisns available. It’s called ‘Push Button SEO‘, and has been developed by a guy called Brian Johnson. What I’ll be doing in this blog post is showing you some of the different features of Push Button SEO. I’ve installed the plugin on one of my personal WordPress blogs, and deactivated any other SEO plugins I had setup previously.

My favorite feature of Push Button SEO is it’s very simple graphical representation of how well your posts are optimized for on page SEO. You can enter the main keyword you are targeting for your post or page, and then see how well your content has been optimized for that particular keyword. This is very handy, as it means you don’t have to crunch any numbers 

Let’s see an example of this in action. I’ve got a post on my blog that is targeting the keyword “gold investment guidelines”. So what I do is enter this keyword into the “Primary Keyword” field of Push Button SEO, and then I press “analyze”:

As you can see, Push Button SEO then returns a graphical representation of my on-page SEO for this post. I’ve got an orange bar that is half full; this tells me that there’s quite a bit of room for improvement here. But what if I want to get more in-depth information? To get Push Button SEO’s full page report I simply click the “Report” tab.

Even more graphical representations here in the in-depth report, which is once again useful for quickly informing you as to what needs work. I can easily see that my URL is matched properly (this is because my post is /gold-investment-guidelines – an exact match for the keyword “gold investment guidelines”)

My META Title, page headings (h1, h2, h3 tags) and internal linking are all good. My META description and outbound links are letting the page down, according to Push Button SEO. A good META description will encourage visitors to click through to my website from the search engine results, and having outbound links optimized for anchor text gives your page more credibility and weight with Google.

This kind of graphical analysis really does make proper on-page SEO much more simple and accessible. In my humble opinion, a lot of people are put off doing proper SEO because they find it confusing. With this plugin, there really is no excuse.

To view the complete post, clink below:

http://www.affilorama.com/blog/hands-on-with-push-button-seo-for-wordpress 

This post is courtesy of Sam Frost, a staff member and blogger with Affilorama. a well known Affiliate Marketing Training. Software and Support company based in New Zealand.

Thank you Sam for your timely and informative post

Still hassling with changes to your Facebook timeline cover changes and don’t know how to proceed. Have you put it off hoping that the Facebook bunny with fix in the night!!

Need a graphic artist or just some one to do a quick fix. It’s not too late…

Thanks to Denise Wakeman …..AKA The Blog Squad. 

Just follow this link to find a list of resources that are willing and able to assist you in your project. DO get caught with your pixels dangling!!

Connect with Denise on FB http://facebook.com/BlogSquad

You’ve got your ducks in a row, developed a new dazzling product and conduct a screaming product launch that is well received. Now how do I reach my audience and more important what must I do to hold onto my reader’s attention long enough to get my message across. 

Rich Schefren of Strategic Profits  shares some interesting thoughts and presents some suggestions to increase your engagements.

In today’s ever-hectic world, getting your prospect’s attention is harder than ever.

But it gets worse – because once you get attention, your job has just started.

Well-known copywriter and blogger John Carlton says:

“The most common blunder rookie copywriters make is to assume the reader will ‘hang in there’… Your reader will not hang in there. At the very moment you bore him, confuse him, or ask him to ‘bear with you’…he’s out of there.”

Does this sound familiar? Has it happened to you?: Doesn’t your own experience confirm it?

The truth is, readers don’t bail on your blog post, email, or newsletter and then come back to it again later. Just check your website’s bounce rate.  Nope. Once you lose them – chances are they’re gone for good.

Now don’t get bent out of shape about this just yet.  Because here’s something for you that’ll instantly make it easier for you to hold on to your readers attention. And today it’s my gift to you.

Have you ever heard of the Bucket Brigade?

You’ve been reading it, all through this blog post.

Phrases like: “But it gets worse”, “You see”, “Think about it:”, “The truth is”, “However”, “First” and “Frankly” are phrases that are referred to as the “Bucket Brigade”.  They are phrases and words that keep the reader moving forward, providing a constant momentum.  When done right, they make your writing seem more conversational. Even better they’ll turn your writing into a greased slide, making it almost impossible to stop reading until the end.

John Carlton said one of the easiest ways to come up with them is to “use the old journalism trick of ‘who, what, where, when, why and how’. For example: ‘Who else uses this secret?’ ‘What does this mean for you?’ ‘Why would I share such a valuable tactic with a stranger?’ ‘Where did I find this information?’ ‘How would you like to see it for yourself?’ “

Rich Schefren of Strategic Profits has put together a list of phrases that will help hold your readers’ attention. 

You can grab your copy of the 

Phrases That Keep Attention swipe file right here.

This guest post is written Nancy Marmolejo, an award winning business owner who teaches entrepreneurs how to stand out as experts in their fields. The founder of the highly successful Viva Visibility, Nancy recently launched a free virtual chat series “The Wild Idea That Paid Off” to encourage entrepreneurs to think broadly and to encourage curiosity. With 8 forward thinkers joining her, this series is designed to give concrete steps to turning your wild ideas into profitable, lucrative payoffs.

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By nature, entrepreneurs are highly creative thinkers. Every aspect of a business - from filling a need, to solving a problem, to marketing, to selling, to serving customers - is an expression of creativity.

But for every great idea that gets launched, millions more go the wayside because entrepreneurs simply don’t know how to take action, how to decide if something’s worth pursuing, or if the time is right.

Wild ideas are GREAT for business… and now more than ever is the time to take action. Why? Because so many people are playing it safe, the playing field is wide open for wild ideas.

This is the time to be bold and brave, to lean out instead of leaning in, to move into the unknown rather than stay in the familiar.

But how do you do that without losing your shirt? Follow these tips, inspired by real-life
success stories, and see your wild ideas pay off!

1. Don’t wait until you know everything
The time it takes to become perfect at something is a surefire way to miss an opportunity.
Never stop learning, but at some point you must take action before- even before you know
all the details. Entrepreneurs are fast learners- never underestimate your ability to learn on
your feet while you’re taking action. As Michael Port shares in “The Wild Idea That Paid Off”
virtual chat series, “Be a blank piece of paper with a beginner’s mind.” Let the knowledge fill
you as you go along.

2. Turn past failures into future successes
Thomas Edison took over 1000 tries to invent the lightbulb. You might fail at something too…
but that failure could be the path to your next big success. Branding expert Kim Castle turned
a disastrous financial situation into multi-million dollar business by simply plucking out the
lessons and spinning them into gold. (Kim shares her entire story in an interview we did).
Where there’s failure, there’s opportunity!

3. Step out of the safe and familiar
Trailblazer coach Shawn Driscoll hung out mostly in the background until one day she decided
to break out and fully express her talents through her business. It frightened people around her,
but the bold steps have paid off. Productive Flourishing’s Charlie Gilkey walked away from an
established career and doctoral program to begin a business that served the needs of creative
entrepreneurs. Social media pioneer Jack Humphrey gave away an extremely valuable product
for free at the risk of losing $100,000 in sales. Marketing expert Ellen Britt chose to brand her
business with an unconventional, regional twist. They each were told not to take the risk but
they did… and it paid off. Get out of the safe and familiar and take bold steps into the unknown.

4. Live a creative life
Creative people don’t just summon up their creative juices when needed. They show curiosity,
try new things, and embark on new adventures. Business coach Andrea Lee views life as a
creative adventure and puts what she learns into her business and live events. Author and
coach Pamela Slim is drawn to great ideas in all aspects of her business and life. The creative
life is a way of seeing possibilities and taking action on them.

5. Make a plan
Taking risks and being spontaneous can still follow a plan, which is what 9 innovative thinkers
all agreed was the key to success in these conversations on creativity and innovation. Being
able to put your creative ideas into action is what separates wild ideas that go nowhere from
wild ideas that pay off. Look at the big picture. Chunk it down into action steps. Map out the
details and set deadlines. Stay accountable to yourself and someone else so things get done.
This is where the rubber hits the road and where the success stories are born.

There’s a big difference between a wild idea that pays off and a distracting bright shiny object.
Follow these tips to turn your wild ideas into profitable paths to happiness, prosperity, and
innovation.

The value of recommendations and testimonials cannot be underestimated or taken for granted. Recommendations are similar to testimonials of your good name, good product(s), or expertise. Recommendations enhance your credibility as an expert similar to how quality content, quality presentation of that content and frequency of content enhances your page rank and authority status for your website. Recommendations also raise your credibility.

Recommendations in LinkedIn are social proof. They tell a LinkedIn candidate that the person is qualified or recognized as a valued colleague that has or will add value to your business. As you interact with connections, you become more familiar with their areas of expertise and perhaps are able to use this knowledge in your business execution. Once you can recommend a connection, you proceed with some expectation that they will reciprocate. However, do not expect that all people that you recommend will in turn write a recommendation for you. As you proceed in building your connections, keep in mind that your connections are the source for your recommendation and focus on those contacts that have the potential for directly (or indirectly) enhance your business or expertise. After all, one of your goals in LinkedIn is becoming a recognized expert in your field. A good place to find contacts that will give you outstanding recommendations are your satisfied customers. Go through your customer base and connect with everyone who has purchased your products; multiple sales recipients are better.

The best way to ask for recommendations is not to ask, i.e., the best recommendations most often come from a good recommendation that you have written for someone. Recommendations are the next step of engagement after you connect with someone on LinkedIn. It is a quid pro quo of sorts, but don’t write a recommendation for someone just to get a reciprocal recommendation. Be sure that you can personally vouch for them. As such, be very clear about what you’re recommending. Don’t forget your keywords when you are writing recommendations!! Search engines love keywords!

As you evaluate your LinkedIn strategy, make sure you include a profile of your ideal connection and how you can get a recommendation from them. Make sure that your have clear goals and objectives. A good review for being successful using LinkedIn can be found in Wayne Breitbarth’s best seller, The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success or by purchasing the replay of Joan Stewart’s webinar, Your LinkedIn Power Formula

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow me on Twitter.

Fearless Visibility- How to Get Out There No Matter What. http://ow.ly/8jD09

The Qualities of a Powerful Word-of-Mouth Marketing Strategy. http://ow.ly/8iiRb

5 Tools to Battle Social Media Content Overload. http://ow.ly/8jyWw

5 Twitter resolutions that will help you tweet smarter. http://ow.ly/8icvJ

25 Eye-Popping Internet Marketing Statistics for 2012. http://ow.ly/8jb8Z

3 Offline Secrets to Get Clients Right Now! http://ow.ly/8iiLN

6 Ways to Spice Up Bland Email Marketing Campaigns.  http://ow.ly/8i19u

How Google+ Is Changing the Web, Even Though No One Wants It To. http://ow.ly/8hY2X

Why Google Has the Hammer To Make Businesses Use Google Plus. http://ow.ly/8f30Y

10 Amazing Blogs About Blogging to Start Reading NOW. http://ow.ly/8fJ6X

I was recently interviewed by Lisa Girard, writer at Entrepreneur.com. The article focused on the fear associated with selling your product or services.

Here are my five tips:

1. Don’t be afraid to sell yourself.
You are your most valuable commodity. Whether you are selling a product or service, you first have to sell yourself.

2. Sell to those you have already sold to.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. If you already have clients in your sales funnel, you have ready-made sales leads.

3. Ask your existing clients for a testimonial.
Your best sales team are you clients. Ask them for testimonials. If you have openings, ask your clients for referrals. Proudly display them on your website.

4. Don’t be afraid to consistently improve your products or services.
Take classes or sign up for webinars to learn new software, programs and ways to improve your skill set.

5. Be confident in your abilities and your products.
You can be your worst enemy. The only one afraid of your price is you! Test the market. If it doesn’t sell, try a new approach. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!

For me, training is the key. If I’m not confident in myself and my abilities, I can’t expect new or existing clients to have confidence in my abilities to provide optimal service.

The entire point of hiring a virtual assistant is to take care of those pesky online tasks for you. Sure, you could spend time contacting tech support for your websites, looking up FAQs on social networking sites, watching how-to YouTube videos, taking webinars, and even enrolling in community college classes to keep your presence known on the Internet, but this learning curve takes a lot of time.

An expert virtual assistant, like Christine Buffaloe, keeps up with the ever-changing online nuances for you. It doesn’t matter what business you are in. The right virtual assistant will make it their business to know how to market your business.

How can she help you? What’s your next project? I’ll use a general example: You’ve got to get the word out about your newest product or service. This product could be a new recording, a new book, or a new business venture. Or perhaps it is a grand opening, a special event, or a discount on your services. Of course, you want to announce it to the world, and what better way than via the Internet? But where do you start? You start with an expert virtual assistant.

Here is just a sampling of 10 ways your expert virtual assistant or online business manager can help you manage that new project:

1. They can handle online research for you.

Don’t know where to start? If you need to find the best places to post an ad, choices for a great name for your new website, and the hottest spots to post a social networking profile, Chris will do the legwork for you. She’ll tell you how long your project will take, and inform you of the technical know-how involved. You can decide if you want to take it from there or let her run with the ball.

2. They can create an online presence for you.

Give your expert virtual assistant the info they need—bio, photos, media—And they will be your online “agent”, creating profiles for you where you need them, using your favorite colors and fonts, like at my blog. Christine can upload this kind of stuff to your website for you, too! If you want to make changes, your virtual assistant will safely keep your online passwords under lock and key and will only share them with you, so you can go into your new profiles and tweak them to your heart’s content.

3. They can do your online and offline “housekeeping” jobs.

They can set up and maintain your email lists, categorizing them so you can target particular email blasts to specific people on your list. They can categorize your Facebook friends and tweeters, too. Need to dump a bunch of inactive friends? Need to clean up your existing email list? Your expert virtual assistant can handle database management tasks with finesse.

4. They can help you compose and send off email blasts and e-newsletters using online email programs.

Your expert virtual assistant knows how to make your messages look good for email. And if you want them to deal with getting the message about your new product or service to your email list, they can handle sending it out, managing subscribers and unsubscribers, report who is reading and responding to your newsletter, and more. Hand it all over to them and you won’t need to deal with email management again.

4. They can proofread and write for you.

I like to think of the Internet as a big billboard. Make sure you look as good as you can by allowing your expert virtual assistant to proof your next email blast, your next blog post, your next advertisement, and your updated bio. They can even send an email on your behalf, saying, “Hello, I’m Chris, Anne’s virtual assistant…” This will certainly impress your friends. Your expert virtual assistant will make you look mahvelous, dahling, on the World Wide Web!

5. They can do the stuff you know how to do but don’t want to do.

An excellent virtual assistant doesn’t mind checking through a long list of possibly dead links, uploading a lot of media—mp3s, video, photos—to various websites and social network profiles. There’s no shame in admitting that you don’t want to do those tasks. You’ve got better things to do.

6. They can flag you to posts that need your personal attention.

No time to deal with social networking? If you haven’t the time or inclination to post to Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, and other social network platforms about your new product or service, and you have timely info to convey, let your expert virtual assistant do it for you. They can interact with your fan base for you. Send them your 140-character message and they’ll get it out online. Send them your new product links, and they’ll tell the world about them.

7. Virtual Assistants can do all kinds of personal things for you if you wish.

They can sift through all the junk messages and send you the gold, the real business sales and inquiries. They can even handle product fulfillment for your online store. They can check for phone messages from online services like Grasshopper, transcribe podcasts and webinars for you, and act as your headhunter or recruiter to help you find excellent job candidates for your expanding business. A virtual assistant can even help you find the best travel deals for your speaking engagements (but they don’t do windows, and they don’t pick up your laundry for you).

8. They can be your personal techie.

Serenity Virtual Assistant Services partner’s with her husband who heads up SEO (search engine optimization). They can write in code for your website and other online profiles. And if they can’t do something for you, they can contact tech support on your behalf so that they can do it for you.

9. They can be your online secret agent.

They can subscribe to Google Alerts on your behalf to find out where your products and services are being mentioned online. They can track comments on your blog and monitor feedback about your newest postings.

10. They can handle damage control.

Did you spend a lot of time posting something to your WordPress website, but it looks terrible and you can’t fix it? I often contact Chris and she is able to help me fix the problem. Did someone hack into one of your online profiles? Call on your virtual assistant for help. They can back up your online info, keep track of your passwords in case things go awry and you can’t get in to fix it yourself. And they can preserve your online reputation by spreading the best about you, your products, and your services.

You’re never really “done “with your virtual assistant, keep in touch with them. Chris often alerts me to news about the ever-changing landscape of the Internet. They’ll let you know of the newest places to get the word out and how to do it. They’ll teach you about ways to improve your online presence. And if you ever find that you need help with tasks that are outside of their scope, they’ll refer you to other experts to continue to grow your business. And like Chris, they continue to be your online friend.

Anne Roos is a professional writer and author of two published non-fiction books. Anne has over twenty-five years of owning her own business as a professional musician. Words and music are my loves and marketing is my thing. Therefore, I’m comfy adding interesting tidbits and morsels to blogs and social media pages to whet readers’ appetites.

In 2007 Discover Card conducted an independent survey to shed light on the characteristics of the 22 million small business owners in the United States. The number one trait common to small business owners? The study revealed: “Independence is their prime motivation.”

While additional studies have confirmed that while there are many personality characteristics common to most entrepreneurs, a very independent spirit is the one trait shared by each and every one. Most small business owners would not give up the freedom that comes along with owning their business to work for someone else, even if it meant making more money.

But there is a danger to being too independent. This one trait of extreme independence can be the biggest roadblock to success for entrepreneurs. No one person has all the answers. No one person can work alone and always aware of potential problems or roadblocks. Everyone has their blind spots. No matter where they have been or what they have accomplished, everyone is missing vital knowledge and experience in one area or another.

Small business owners have to be aware of the need to seek out a trusted network. Entrepreneurs need a place where they can discuss issues with others in a similar situation. Sometimes, when working alone, it is very easy to continue down the wrong path until suddenly you discover what a costly error you have made. Working alone is like that.

Another challenge that entrepreneurs face was discussed by Michael Gerber in his classic book The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most New Businesses Fail and What to Do About It. Gerber talked about the importance of working ON your business and not IN your business.

But how do you change from being a day-to-day business “technician”, dealing with customers and putting out fires, to spending time as a visionary executive looking at your business from the outside in? The best way: schedule committed time to work “on” your business!

If you are like most entrepreneurs, who are surrounded by “busy business noise” in which it can be difficult to even hear yourself think, you will have to structure your time in such a way that the urgencies of the moment will not deter you from this important work. You and your business will benefit from a structure which ensures that you use the time you allocated for exactly what you intended, regardless of the emergency du jour.

If you are really committed to being successful by working on your business instead of just in your business – if you want to prevent failure which so many other smart and hard-working small business owners have experienced – then be sure to visit Business Mastermind Teams to learn what you can do to have the business of your dreams.

Clicking here may well mean the difference between failure and success.