Work Life Balance. Can it really be achieved?

Sage UK have produced an informative flow-chart guide to help you find out how you can enjoy your job more and how you can find balance with work and personal.

Interestingly enough, this is always a hot topic with self-employed people, including myself. Trying to balance a home, motherhood, marriage, business, meetings, sales, marketing and everything else can sometimes take it’s toll. Just answering the questions is a nice ‘find yourself’ feature of the graphic, helpful to anyone rushing around in the daily chaos of  business today.

I hope you enjoy it.

Take a look and see what category you fit into. Mine was Dynamic!

What do you think? How do you manage to fit it all in, if at all?

This infographic was produced by Sage

Looking for an up to date guide on what to post and how to use all the top social networks? This handy infographic shows you how.

Created by Magic Logix, the guide encompasses all the essential networks for your business and gives a great overview of how you can use them for brand exposure, customer communication, site traffic and SEO.

(Click image to enlarge)

Magentic Writing

Always wanted to write a truly magnetic Blog post? The article readers come back for, time after time?

Getting traffic to your website is only part of the recipe for business success. Essentially, there are many ingredients which count towards making your business website the connoisseur of the industry.

My article How to get original blog content in 10 minutes helps with writers block and creating your posts, but what is the real secret recipe for business writing?

Golden Content

Aim to make a ‘Golden’ piece of content, for sure, but to really make your site stand over and above others, it’s a great idea to follow a ‘recipe’ building the essential ingredients of a killer post or article, ensuring your readers really get value from their visit and return for more.

Useful, well written content, along with persuasive sub-headlines and targeted information gives your website visitors a real reason to stay and browse around.

Copyblogger have created this fantastic infographic (see below) mapping out the 11 essential ingredients of writing a blog post, however you can apply the format for any kind of business writing, no matter what industry you are writing for.

The 11 Essential ingredients of Business Writing

So, what are these ingredients?

1. Craft a magnetic headline.
   Get readers attention
2. Open with a bang.
   Encourage them to read on
3. Use persuasive words.
   Really identify with your readers.
4. Write damn good sentences.
   Craft sentences to keep attention
5. Insert killer bullet points.
   Keep it short and concise
6. Create exquisite subheads.
   Break it up!
7. Tell a seductive story.
   Always start writing write with an end goal
8. Keep attention with internal cliffhangers.
   Write those ‘Mini – moments’
9. Choose an arresting image.
   Cleverly craft with imagery
10. Close in style.
    Make sure your end goal fits with your close
11. Be authentic
    Don’t try and be someone you’re not

Satisfying Needs

Make sure your content delivers what your readers really want and need. Endless posts of the same old ocntent are utterly worthless, especially when your competitors are crafting and delivering the same.

Your customers choice will be one of convenience, not of desire. And we know that desire often outsrips the regular choice of getting it on your doorstep. Less is so often More.

Making sure you have all the ingredients will improve your audience, readership, bounce rates, and of course popularity,  as your stunningly crafted articles and posts become firm favourites with your customers.

Enjoy the prospect of crafting the most superb articles  you have ever written!

Please share your secret recipes for business writing in the comments below.

You can download Copybloggers PDF checklist here

Like this infographic? Get content marketing advice that works from Copyblogger.

WordPress

So how can you have the website you dreamed of, at little or no cost, with a fully integrated CMS (content management system) and thousands of ready to use, free or paid templates?

Every business owner knows the importance of having an up to date website. You may also know that getting a new website developed for your business can incur great costs not to mention the money you pay each time you want to update your site.

Well, in case you haven’t heard, WordPress is the way to go! In fact my site, and many sites I have built for clients are all powered by WordPress.

If you want a website that features;

• Thousands of free site templates
• Seamless social media integration
• Standard blog format and integration
• Professional, mobile responsive templates
• Awesome Media Library and gallery formats
• Built-in Comments system
• In-built Search Engine Optimization

Then WordPress is the easiest way to get up and running. When it comes to easily manageable blogs and Websites, WordPress is a fantastic tool to use.

This tutorial series will go more deeply into WordPress later– how to use it for your business website and for your marketing.

Today’s post will look at what WordPress is, it’s basic functions and how it works.

WordPress Lets You Create Your Blog and Website

WordPress is a content management system that allows you to create a blog or website easily without having any technical training.

People may create blogs for different topics ranging anything from a web design and development to cosmetic and baby product reviews.

Blogs are a great addition to any website, and very important for content marketing and keeping in touch with your audience.

Not only can you create and maintain a blog with WordPress it also allows you to create fantastic websites ranging from very simple, basic personal or business websites right through to very complex e-commerce and membership sites.

Once you have installed WordPress , it’s very easy to set up your blog or website. You can fix your basic site settings instantly. You can easily add new content to your blog or website.

In addition to the standard features offered by WordPress, there are hundreds of plugins and widgets – little snippets of code – that can  greatly add to the functionality of your WordPress website.

When you install WordPress it comes with two free themes. You can choose to use these, search for other free templates available or you can look to buy other themes that are right for your business niche.

With WordPress it is very easy to manage your blog or website; add or remove content whenever you want, create a new article or blog post, add images, remove images, create new pages or posts. With a hosting account and a domain name you can start creating your first WordPress website instantly!

Watch out for new posts in this category as we explore WordPress more deeply in later posts.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was an online social media platform that could show you;

• Who the key influencers are in your field along with their contact details
• The exact keywords you should be using in relation to your skillset to optimize your profile
• What social groups you need to join to connect with people in your field or industry
• What companies you should be targeting with your professional skills
• What companies have suitable positions for your skillset and who to target.

Source:LinkedIn

Sounds amazing? It sure is. The good news is, LinkedIn has all these resources available for you to use, for free, via their LinkedIn Skills and Expertise Page.

With over 200 million members, LinkedIn is connecting professionals and companies around the globe. So how can you tap in to this excellent resource and enhance your own business networking?

Your 5 minute guide to LinkedIn skills and expertise

First, click to visit the LinkedIn Skills & Expertise page

Search for your area of expertise

When the page loads, LinkedIn provides you with some trending skills and insutries – in this example, it has brought up iPhone as up by 50% y/y (year on year) along with related skills for the industry and featured professionals.

In the box provided, you are asked to enter your skill or area of expertise. I am using Social Media Marketing for this example.

Type in your skill and hit ‘search’

Let’s look at what comes up after you search.

1. Related Skills

On the left hand side, you will see a column titled ‘Related skills’ Treat the words that appear below as targeted keywords to your field. You can click each keyword and browse the description of the skill, and also investigate the top profiles associated with that area.

2. y/y (year on year)

You can see that social media marketing as a skill or area of expertise is up by 27% on a year on year comparison. This can be a good sign that your chosen field is on the upward trend, and popular. It can also mean that there is plenty of competition!

3. Related Companies

These are the companies that influencers and other LinkedIn members are following or a part of. You can investigate and research these companies or follow them to stay on top of news and updates in your industry.

You can click on each company and see what positions or opportunities are available there, and details of their latest updates and any discussions within those updates.

4. Professionals (Influencers)

This section shows you top influences and professionals in your chosen field of expertise or industry. This is where you can begin the networking! If they’re a first-degree connection, send a personal message, For a second degree connection, when you click their profile, you can follow or connect with them, asking for an introduction. If the profiles listed appear outside your immediate LinkedIn network, you could join a shared group and connect with them there or if you have a premium account, you could send them an InMail.

5. Edit Your Skills

When you click this button, you can add important skills from the related keywords LinkedIn has provided you with, ensuring your profile is optimized for the most related skills and expertise in your field. Help other people and companies find and connect with you by using keywords that are being searched for!

6. Groups

When you scroll further down the page, you will see related groups that members of your profession have joined. You can find targeted groups to join, and also how may members each group has.

Summary

So there you have it. 5 minutes to a laser targeted LinkedIn profile.

With the latest statistics, facts and figures from LinkedIn, it makes Facebook business networking look like a childrens tea party….I hope you enjoyed the post. Let me know if you are using LinkedIn to its fullest capacity yet or share the results of your efforts below.

Turning Your Business Ideas into Opportunities

Image Courtesy of basketman/FreeDigitalPhotos.Net

If you’ve decided to go brave, take the plunge and become self-employed, then the next step is to identify new business opportunities that are open in your industry – one that you can build and model your business. With the right entrepreneur mindset it is not difficult to spot new business opportunities, especially in today’s world of technology and the internet changing our lives in revolutionary ways like never before. Here are some techniques that you can use to spot new business opportunities quickly and then respond to them.

Indeed, this isn’t just for start-up businesses, the techniques discussed below can also be used to revamp or remodel your current business, helping you keep up to date and refresh your products or services.

1. Keep an Eye on the Markets

The first and probably most important trait of a successful entrepreneur is to keep a close eye on the market. Constantly observing the markets, analyzing new trends, and exploiting new opportunities as they hit the scene. By closely monitoring the changing markets and responding to change whenever it occurs by tweaking your original business idea, you will be able to identify exactly what the new industry or marketing you are entering is looking for.

This means that to identify a successful business idea, you need to ensure you are ready and responsive to change; don’t wait for others to react. Whenever you see a new trend – pinpoint what people are looking for and how you can adapt your business or idea to fit this new model and satisfy demand. This sometimes means you are one of the first to take the leap into a new market or trend, but if you’ve done your homework and researched it’s longevity thoroughly, you can easily profit from your new opportunity.

2. Solve People’s Problems

Another tried and tested way to identify new business opportunities is to identify a problem and then come up with a solution. You can start with yourself: there is a particular product or service that you have had a problem with and you would like to have changed in a certain way.  Thinking like this will introduce you to a whole lot of useful business ideas that you can use.

3. Follow Other Successful Businesses

While it’s great to have an original business idea it is not fundamental to the success of your business to go against the grain! You can establish your business like all the other successful businesses out there – just build on it by identifying a problem that exists in that current market and create a product or a service that addresses and solves the issue. After all the existing businesses are successful because there is demand for the product or service!!! Think about making improvements, changing certain aspects of a product, speeding up services such as delivery or recurring subscriptions.

Summary

So here are a couple of ways you can get new ideas and find new business opportunities. The most important point that underlies the whole process is to be responsive to change to be able to react in a positive manner, turning your business model into a worthwhile and up-to-the-minute product or service.

Do you know of any other ways to identify new business opportunities? Did you go through this process when you modeled your business? Please share below…

Social media can greatly boost your business. By developing a solid strategy for all the different social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube etc. you can enormously increase the odds of getting new customers to your business. However, in the blind race to secure a high place on social media many small and medium business owners, in fear of being left behind their competitors, have thrown their profiles on these different platforms without a clear strategy or goal. These carelessly placed-in-haste social profiles are prone to lose them business instead of boosting it. These are 5 mistakes that you need to pinpoint in your business profile and put an end to if you want to really have an impact.

1. An Incomplete Profile

In the blind race to secure a place for their business many people have put together social media profiles in haste that are unprofessional. They are incomplete and they lack the essential coherence that a brand needs. These kind of profiles are more likely to convey a negative impression than to give a positive one. If you own such profile(s) complete it now. Come up with one that is complete with all the required details and images. Then devise a strategy for it.

2.  A “Now and Then” Content Strategy

Then there are all those profiles that are complete and professional in the above sense but they are deserted places! You go there and you don’t find any new activity for weeks – even months. These are more likely to do damage than good as in case 1 because it conveys a sense of lack of interest. Remember to always keep your social profiles up-to-date with fresh and original content in your niche. It will keep visitors coming back for more fresh content.

3. No Replies to Comments

Getting people to comment on your content is one of the primary reasons for writing and sharing content. However, it is seen that sometimes people don’t seem to respond to visitor’s comments in a timely manner. This can be particularly frustrating to your readers, especially when they find it very hard to take out the time to comment. This can lead them into thinking they are unimportant in your eyes and they might turn their back on you as well!

4. No Proper Content Strategy for Different Social Media Platforms

It is also important to have a proper strategy for all the social media platforms in place. It is important to know that different social media platforms have different target audience. You need to be able to have a balanced approach to tackling all of them in a systematized manner. It is not wise to establish a strong presence on one platform and ignore others altogether. Remember it all works as a whole. You need to tie the knots to make yourself visible to the crowd.

5. Not Using the Right Content

Another mistake that you might be making on social platforms is not combining the right kind of content for an optimal impact. You need to employ a content strategy where you provide visitors with a mix of text, images and videos. By providing such a variety of content you are able to keep the visitors to your page hooked to make them come again and again for new content. Having this kind of social media platform also shows a higher level of professionalism on the part of the page owner.

If you are making any or all of these mistakes it is time to rethink your overall social media strategy and tackle the problem areas. If you get rid of all these problem areas you will have a greater social media followership and a greater business.

Blogging is both fun and exciting but it can become a tiring and time-consuming process at times while trying to offer a unique and interesting experience to your audience; however, it can be made much simpler and easier by using some blogging tools that have been created specifically for bloggers. Below I have collected some of the top blogging tools available from the internet.

1. Content Idea Generator

Content Idea Generator is a Google document which has been created by the guys at SEO Gadget. You can make a copy of the document here. This document gives you a wealth of information related to your niche/industry.  It allows you to run keywords associated with your niche and returns top searches based on your keywords. The information returned is more than enough to give you an inspiration for your blog’s content. The search returns include top searches from Google news, Bing News, Digg, Reddit, YouTube and so on…

2. Diigo

Diigo is a social bookmarking site that allows you to bookmark and tag web pages. It is a great tool for all those bloggers who need to keep track of their desired articles for later reference.  Not only that you are also able to add notes to your bookmarked content. It also supports mobile phone devices such as iphone, ipad etc.

3. Disqus

Disqus is one of the most powerful blogging tools. It provides you with everything you need to build a community around your blog, and to maintain a powerful commenting system with a much better threading in the latest version than in the older one. It also allows you to up-vote and down-vote comments. The posts and comments are connected with each other in a neat and clean manner; also, you can place related articles at the bottom of a post and have a look at the top commenters at a glance.

4. Focus Booster

Focus Booster is a tool that is used by many bloggers to gain focus and increase their productivity. They have both a desktop and a web application available. Based on the principles of the pomodoro technique , the application provides a simple timer with a sleek design to enhance your concentration and focus.

The principle behind the tool – the pomodoro principle – “uses a timer to break down periods of work into 25-minute intervals (referred to as “pomodoros”) separated by breaks and is based on the idea that frequent breaks can improve mental agility”.

5. Alltop

Alltop lets you in on what is happening around you by collecting headlines from top sites and headlines. The site provides an insight into all the topics which can be of interest to us – all in one place.

6. Trapit

Trapit is “the world’s most advanced personalized content discovery application” – as they call themselves. The app lets you set up “traps” for various topics – from very broad categories to niche information – and then it aggregates articles related to your selected keywords from around the web.

Trapit “learns” from your explicit and implicit actions in order to deliver the most relevant content.

7. Photo Pin

Photo Pin is a source of free images for your blog; the photos come from creative commons. The tool makes it very easy to browse photos and to download them in multiple sizes.

One of the cool features of the app is that it gives you the attribution link to the image in HTML so that you can insert it into your blogging editor for attribution.

8. PopSurvey

One of the most important aspect of blogging is to keep your audience engaged and to understand their interests. As a blogger you need to get insights into what your target is talking about.  PopSurvey is a great survey that lets you carry on surveys on your blog to help you better understand your customers. The tool also provides you with custom reports to help you understand and evaluate your audience’s responses.

9. After The Deadline

After The Deadline is a great tool that helps you avoid grammar and spelling mistakes. It is available as a browser extension as well as a WordPress plugin. It is a great language checker for the web that comes with contextual spell checking, advanced style checking and intelligent grammar checking. Say goodbye to all those ‘arghhhhhh’ moments when you see that you have made a mistake after you have published your blog post!

10. Google Keyword Tool

The Google Keyword Tool is a must for every blogger and their mother! It lets you enter search phrases and lets you see how much traffic that particular phrase gets for over a month. Also it gives suggestions on better search phrases based on the keywords that you have entered.

These are only some of the cool blogging tools; there are hundreds of such tools and apps available which will make blogging much simpler and
easier for you.

Are you a blogger? Are there any tools you are using that you would like to share?

Have you ever thought that you can make the world a whole lot easier for yourself with some online business tools?

They are cool! They save you a lot of time and help you sync your business activities seamlessly. It means you don’t have

to worry about trivial paperwork and other issues. You can automate them and leave it to themselves. I have collected three of my favourite online tools for business that will save you trouble,money and of course,time.

#1 Shoeboxed

Fed up with book keeping before it’s begun? Shoeboxed is an automated filing system for business receipts and paperwork. You can upload your paperwork through their free online and desktop uploaders, via email or with one of their free mobile phone apps. Simply scan and send, and let shoeboxed compile the rest. Ideal for start ups, and competitively priced, I think it’s a great way of keeping organised, and takes the headache out of hoarding papers, tickets, business cards, invoices and receipts.

#2 PR Web

Looking to get the word out about your business? Choose PRWeb as your news release distribution service.  PRWeb press releases deliver your business news to all the search engines such as Yahoo!, Google and Bing, putting your business right where your customers are looking. Their packages start small, and as the price increases, you can send your story to all the major local and national news websites, as well as PR Web’s database of over 30,000 journalists, bloggers and influencers looking for stories like yours.

 #3 MOO

Moo.com is and online business printing and stationery service. With hundreds of business card templates, your cards can be designed and ordered in minutes. MOO also supply cards, notecards, greeting cards, stickers, accessories and gift cards for your business.

Printing over 6 million cards every month, MOO has hundreds of thousands of customers in over 200 countries. Their excellent turnaround times and delivery makes them the number 1 choice for business start ups and growing businesses alike.

Have you found any great online business tools for your start up? What online business services do you find saves you the most time and money?

source:http://wpmu.org/

When it comes to blogging, WordPress is probably the most powerful and easy to use content management system that is available to create and maintain your business blog.

WordPress’ excellence comes not only because it is free but also because of the large number of themes and plugins available out there which add greatly to the look and functionality of WordPress powered websites and blogs.

There are literally hundreds of fantastic plugins – snippets of codes – that are available – a great number of them being free of cost – and can be downloaded from the WordPress website.

These plugins have an extensive usefulness because they fill in the gaps of both styling and functionality in WordPress. The great thing about using plugins is you need very little knowledge of coding or web development to turn your business website or blog into anything from a superbly designed, functional website through to a supercharged e-commerce store!

Below is a list of 7 highly useful plugins for your business blog:

1. Yoast SEO

The current hot topic for every business owner when discussing their website is “SEO” – search engine optimization. Yoast lets you optimize your page titles, images, meta descriptions etc. very easily.  Every small business that is running a WordPress powered website should install an SEO plugin, and ensure they are optimizing posts and articles from day one, helping increase their search engine visibility.

2. Akismet

Spam is everybody’s enemy. If you have enabled comments on your blog there is every possibility you will be getting hundreds of spam comments. Akismet provides a simple and easy solution to filter out all those unwanted spam comments.

3. Gravity Forms

WordPress falls behind on its functionality to create and manage forms easily. Although it is paid, the Gravity Forms plugin enables you to start creating forms instantly from scratch, it is well worth the price. Gravity Forms lets you create great-looking forms in a matter of seconds after which you which you can start emailing your customers, and collecting their details.

4. NextGen Gallery Plugin

NextGen Gallery Plugin is the most popular gallery plugin, according to WordPress. It provides a powerful solution for uploading and managing galleries of images as well as single images. The plugin comes with a wide array of options for setting up and maintaining image galleries on your site easily.

5. BackupBuddy

This plugin is one of high importance. You should be backing up your site on a regular basis, especially so if your site undergoes regular changes. In order to avoid losing your entire site unexpectedly it is important to have control over your backups. The BackupBuddy plugin lets you create a backup of your entire site – widgets, themes, plugins, files and databases.

6. ShareBar

With the ShareBar Plugin you can easily integrate social media functionality into your content. It adds a vertical box to posts which contains links/buttons to different social media sites. It’s very easy to set up and it enhances your sites ‘share-ability’ factor for visitors.

7. Google Analytics for WordPress

The Google Analytics plugin enables you to track incoming traffic and links your WordPress site easily. It provides a powerful solution for monitoring your site’s visitors and will give you statistics to assist you with targeting your audience. It also helps you find out popular pages, performance of your landing pages and conversions.

These plugins will add  great functionality to any WordPress site. There are thousands of other plugins that can assist you with setting up your website. Of course, some plugins are paid but when compared with the additional functionality they bring to your site they are definitley worth the cost. Do you think these plugins are useful for your blog? Do you know of any other useful plugins? Please share below.