Steinar Knutsen» tools

How to Podcast with Garageband and Publish on iTunes

Steinar — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:02:39 +0000

In this course, I show you exactly how to record your podcast in Garageband, export your episodes as MP3′s and publish your podcast to WordPress and iTunes. This is great because listeners may now listen to your podcast on your WordPress blog and subscribe to your podcast on iTunes.

The lectures are recorded with professional video screen capture software, so it feels like you’re sitting right next to me. Customers have responded very well to this over the years.

First, you’ll learn how to use Garageband to make your recordings. I’ll show you how to edit your file, apply various equilizer settings, and trim your recording. Then we’ll add a musical introduction to the recording and save it as an MP3. Next you’ll learn how to install WordPress, setup WordPress for podcasting, upload your podcast and submit it to iTunes so others may enjoy!

How to Podcast with Garageband and Publish on iTunes

First Impressions of Apple iBooks Author

Steinar — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 01:16:29 +0000

Apple launched iBooks Author this week and it’s pretty amazing. Basically, it’s free software that allows you to create media-rich, interactive ebooks. It’s available for download on the Mac App Store.

Typically, this has been a pretty difficult task, but iBooks Author is so simple because it plays nice with Pages, Keynote and several other forms of media available on your Mac.

I spent a couple hours working in iBook Author and after importing some existing content from Pages, I had an ebook ready to publish rather easily and quickly.

What do you think about iBooks Author? Let me know when your book is online!

GoToWebinar: #12 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 19:50:48 +0000

What is GoToWebinar?

Reach your target audience quickly and affordably. Use the GoToWebinar self-service interface to plan, present, record and analyze unlimited Webinars with up to 1,000 attendees each – all for one flat fee. Create and host your own professional Webinars from day one – no experience required

Reach hundreds of people – right from your PC or Mac®
Save with built-in VoIP and phone conferencing at no extra charge
Includes GoToMeeting® for smaller meetings

Key Features

Download an audience list ranked by interest level to focus follow-up efforts on your hottest prospects, lowering your overall cost per lead.
Present online to anyone, anywhere, reducing your costs by decreasing travel and customer acquisition expenses.
GoToWebinar flat fee pricing structure lets you conduct unlimited Webinars without raising your costs – achieving faster and higher ROI.

Try it FREE for 30 Days!

Why do I need GoToWebinar?

GoToWebinar® features make it simple for you to set up, conduct and analyze Webinars yourself – no need to pay for additional event-management services. Increase your audience size while reducing your overall presentation costs with easy-to-use GoToWebinar. Make presentations in real time to hundreds of customers, prospects and employees — wherever they are. Plus, GoToWebinar comes with GoToMeeting, for smaller, more collaborative online meetings.

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

Grasshopper: #11 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:34:55 +0000

What is Grasshopper?

The Grasshopper virtual phone system helps entrepreneurs sound more professional and stay connected from anywhere. Features include toll free and local numbers, custom greetings, multiple extensions for employees, call forwarding to any phone anywhere in the world, voicemail to email and more!

Get a Toll Free or Local Number With Multiple Extensions – Add department & employee extensions easily.
Get Voicemails and Faxes via Email – No more calling in to check messages. Just open the attachment.
Know Who’s Calling Before Accepting the Call – Hear the caller’s phone number or name, the choice is yours.
Read Voicemails – A transcription of voicemail is included with emails.

Key Features

Toll free or local number – local or national presence
Unlimited extensions – for departments & employees
Call forwarding - work from anywhere
Voicemails via email – play online or on cell phone
Manage online or by phone – no hardware to purchase
No Long Term Contracts

Get Started Today!

Why do I need Grasshopper?Unlike a traditional phone system, Grasshopper is managed all online and in the cloud – there’s no hardware to purchase and no software to install. It’s really so easy to setup a new phone number or extension and expand your company’s footprint. Plus, since it’s month-to-month with no long term contracts, it’s also a popular solution for short-term marketing campaigns or temporary contact requirements.

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

2011 YouTube Video Traffic Review

Steinar — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:13:45 +0000

As many of your know I like to shoot a lot of video. In fact, I published 61 videos on Youtube in 2011 – you can see them here on my YouTube channel. I have several other YouTube channels too, but I’m not going to refer to those in this post.

I like video as a communications channel for several reasons:

sometimes it’s better to illustrate a point show & tell style
shooting video or screencasts are so easy it’s almost irresistible for me
search engines love video (Google owns YouTube)
video keeps the reader’s attention longer than text
video is mobile friendly

Of course, if you’re not comfortable putting your face in front of the camera, the prospect of doing video isn’t really going to sounds very apealling. It won’t be terribly fun and your viewers will probably sense your lack of confidence or enthusiasm.

A good remedy is to record a quick video every day for 30 days and keep them private – this helps you find your voice, learn the tools & process and gain some confidence. Also, spend some time on YouTube watching others. Explore their styles and consider what might work best for you.

My video stats from 2011

Here’s a snapshot of my YouTube channel performance in 2011. Overall, I’m pretty pleased, but there are areas for improvement.

Performance – # of views at 33,441 is OK. This represents a 10% increase over last year and really could have been a lot higher. My most popular videos had to do with iPads and Podcasting, so those seem like a popular subjects to build on. I’m in the process of building a podcasting app and service for podcasting on the iPad so this is a no brainer.

I’m pretty happy to see 57 new subscribers; this gives me some sense of value. Unfortunately, it’s less than the net number of new subscribers in 2010 of 90, but I think I know the answer.

You see, in 2010 I did a series of videos on podcasting from your Mac using Screenflow. I worked really hard on them and people took note. I’ve gotten tons of comments and the reaction has been nothing but positive.

In 2011, I published a similar series on Facebook Pages for Business, but recorded the videos with Screenr in more of a rapid fire mode. Because Screenr videos are limited to 5 minutes and do not provide any editing capabilities they weren’t nearly as impressive as the 10 minute, finely tuned videos from 2010. Don’t get me wrong – the content was great, but the presentation was not as memorable and thus fewer people subscribed to my Channel.

YouTube Activity Impact on Website Traffic

I often preach that video is critical to driving traffic an retaining visitors once they reach your site. Let’s take a look at how this unfolded in 2011.

This first snapshot shows that I received 311 visits, with 1.95 pages per visit, average time of 1:50 and bounce rate of 63.3%. All of these metrics perform better than my entire site on average.

I also see 75% new visits, which is 12% less than my site on average, but this is OK because it tells me that I have loyal viewers on YouTube.

Key Takeaways for 2012

I’m going to keep publishing video in 2012. It drives great traffic and pages on my site that have videos embedded have better visitor stats than average. I also really enjoy producing and publishing video and feel like it’s going to continue to develop as the preferred media for online communication.

This year, I’m also going to use Screenflow more strategically as my main video production tool. The quality of output is just so much better than any other screen capture process I’ve used. Sure, it takes a bit longer to use Screenflow vs Screenr, Jing or Quicktime, but it’s time well spent.

How’s video working for you and your business? Do you get much traffic from YouTube? What are you doing to leverage video in 2012?

My New Video Introduction for New Site Media

Steinar — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:38:02 +0000

I do a lot of video – some for this blog and some for my company at New Site Media. I’ve tried a variety of video introductions using some of the preconfigured transitions in iMovie but thought it was time to get a little creative and make my own from scratch. I considered using Fiverr for a minute, but knew I could create my own in about 30 minutes.

To create my intro I used a combination of Photoshop, Keynote and iMovie.

First, I separated the elements of my logo in Photoshop. Specifically, I created a standalone image of the red box portion of my logo.

Next, I recreated the text portion of my logo in Keynote and imported the red box as an image. I also created the black line as a separate image in Keynote. When I was finished, I had four distinct elements.

Using the Build Inspector in Keynote I created a series of Build-in effects for the four components.

“New Site” is set to Move In
The line is set to Pop
“Media” is set to Typewriter
Red Box is set to Anvil

Each Build element is set at 1 second intervals to automatically transition through the series to complete the entire build.

Next, I recorded the presentation in Keynote using the builds, and exported the presentation as a Quicktime Movie including the recorded transitions.

Then started a new project in iMovie and dragged the .mov file into the new project. I added a couple sounds and that’s it!

Now I have a unique video intro I can use on all my future videos.

What do you think? Let me know if you need help doing something similar.

OptimizePress: #10 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:44:13 +0000

What is OptimizePress?

Many of the world’s top Internet Marketers, Experts, Speakers and Coaches use OptimizePress to build their sales pages, launch funnels, membership sites or squeeze pages. It’s simply the easiest way to create an online sales funnel fast. It’s packed with customization options and built-in graphics that would take hours or days to replicate.

OptimizePress Theme – Utilize the power of this theme on as many of your OWN domains as you want, and start creating amazing pages in minutes!
Complete Page Building Solution – Now you no longer need to mess around with HTML, CSS, just use OptimizePress to build all your sales pages, squeeze pages, launch pages, bonus pages and more …
Unique Shortcode Sales Letter Building System – No longer do you have to worry about paying designers to clean up your sales letters – simply use our own super-powerful shortcode system to add in all the elements you want on your pages, just point and click!

Key Features

Build High Converting Squeeze Pages with over 10 tested and proven designs for your squeeze pages or landing pages to increase your optin rate and build your list fast
Create Powerful Product Launches with a custom launch sequence inside OptimizePress and use our advanced features to increase your visitor response.
Build Sales Letters, Bonus Pages, One-Time Offer Pages based on proven & tested designs, so you can give your pages a boost before you even start writing your sales copy!

Get Started Today!

Why do I need OptimizePress?

OptimizePress has been designed to make everything super easy. This includes integrating with your chosen autoresponder, which can usually be a real pain. Simply copy and paste the main form code your autoresponder provider gives you into OptimizePress, and our system will do the rest, including integrating the form with our custom styled input boxes and your optin button!

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

DropBox: #9 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 16:22:13 +0000

What is Dropbox?

Dropbox allows you to easily store and share files online in either a private or public setting. Dropbox works hard to make sure that all your files are the same no matter where you’re working from. This means that you can start working on a computer at school or the office, and finish from your home computer.

Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere.
Invite your friends, family and teammates to any folder in your Dropbox, and it’ll be as if you saved that folder straight to their computers.
Dropbox is like a time machine that lets you undo mistakes and even undelete files you accidentally trash!

Key Features

2GB of Dropbox for free, with subscriptions up to 100GB available.
Your files are always available from the secure Dropbox website.
Dropbox works with Windows, Max, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android and Blackberry.
Works even when offline. You always have your files, whether or not you have a connection.
Send people links to specific files in your Dropbox rather than emailing huge files back and forth.

Get Started Today!

Why do I need Dropbox?

People around the world rely on Dropbox to help them design buildings, compose music, run businesses, write books and even coordinate disaster relief. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a teacher, a photographer or an astronomer, an artist or an activist, Dropbox simplifies your life. Dropbox also makes it super easy to share with others, whether you’re a student or professional, parent or grandparent. Even if you accidentally spill a latte on your laptop, have no fear! You can relax knowing that Dropbox always has you covered, and none of your stuff will ever be lost.

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

MindNode: #8 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:45:37 +0000

What is MindNode?

MindNode Pro and MindNode are elegant and simple-to-use mind mapping applications for the Macintosh that help to 1) visually collect, classify and structure ideas and 2) organize, study and solve problems.

Available for Mac, iPad, & iPhone
Visually Appealing Mind Maps. There is no need to spend hours playing with the visual attributes to create an appealing mind map. The default values are suitable for most uses.

Key Features

Constrain node width and resize nodes. Automatically constrain the width of a node and to resize the node directly on the canvas.
Node Well. New nodes are created by simply dragging them out of the node wells. There is no need to access the toolbar or the application menu.
Multiple Mind Maps. The ability to create multiple mind maps on one canvas makes MindNode Pro an ideal tool for brainstorming sessions.

Why do I need MinNode?

Get Started Today!

Mind maps can be used for many different tasks – including to-do lists, brainstorming, holiday planning, research, writing, project management – and in many different environments – school, meetings, workspace. Personally, I like to use mind maps to outline blog posts and podcast episodes among other tasks. MindNode Pro includes the same features as the free MindNode version, and adds several new features that help improve your productivity.

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

Skitch Image Capture: #7 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:25:33 +0000

What is Skitch?

Skitch is Mac desktop and Android mobile image editing tool that lets you grab, annotate, edit and share your screenshots and images fast. Skitch revolutionizes basic image editing tasks, delivering a quick and easy tool that offers most image editing features you’ll use day to day.

Screenshots are easy: Skitch makes grabbing a screenshot a mouse click or keyboard command away. Crosshairs Snap, Fullscreen Snap or a Frame Snap made easy
Image indexing: every image you edit in Skitch is saved within the program so you can easily browse through anything you’ve previously created.
Upload to your own site: using Skitch, you can also directly upload any picture to any web server via FTP.

Key Features

Image resizing: Open an image or drag one directly into Skitch.
Image cropping: drag any point of the image in the direction you want for a quick crop.
Text or drawings: type, use your mouse or even a graphics tablet to quickly add anything to an image.
Webcam shot: if you’ve got a webcam, you can use Skitch to take shots with it.
Share on Twitter: any image hosted on Skitch is a shortcut away from a Twitter post.

Get Started Today!

Why do I need Skitch?
Besides being completely free, it’s the range of features Skitch offers quickly and simply. It’s not a Photoshop replacement (I still use Photoshop on occasion) nor does it pretend to be. What Skitch offers is 95% of every image editing function I use on a daily basis without the bloat of Photoshop so image handling is that much quicker.

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

Catalyst Theme for WordPress: #6 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:00:52 +0000

What is the Catalyst Theme?

Catalyst isn’t your typical WordPress Theme. It’s not just a cookie-cutter template to slap on the face of your site. Catalyst is more of a design platform. It gives you the flexibility to create a site that’s unique. With over 800 custom options at your fingertips, what you can create with Catalyst is only limited by imagination.

Search Engine Optimization – Catalyst is built from the ground up with SEO in mind, so that your site has a fighting chance to rank among competing sites on search engines.
Ideal for Developers & Non-Developers – A beautiful user dashboard makes Catalyst stand out from the crowd with over 800 custom options. Great for both the seasoned WordPress developer and novice alike.
Unlimited Custom Layouts – Unlike the majority of WordPress Themes and Frameworks, Catalyst has unlimited custom layout development capabilities.

Key Features

Unlimited Custom Layouts, Widgets & Hook Boxes Provide Amazing Flexibility
The Dynamik Child Theme Provides Over 800 No-Coding Design Options
Create Your Own Custom Child Themes With A Single Mouse Click
A Custom CSS Building Tool That Writes Custom Code For You!
The Most Comprehensive Font Control Offered In A WordPress Theme!

Get Started Today!

Why do I need the Catalyst theme?
Catalyst makes WordPress website design easy! No need to purchase a new theme every time you want to change the look and feel of your site – just create a new child theme in Catalyst and let your imagination go wild!

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

WishList Member: #5 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:35:28 +0000

What is Wishlist Member?
Trusted by over 31,102 online communities and membership sites worldwide, WishList Member is a powerful, yet easy to use membership solution that can turn any WordPress blog into a full-blown membership site.

Integrates With Your WordPress Site – Whether you’re building a new site or integrating with an existing WordPress site, installing WishList Member is a breeze.
Multi-Level Access – Give your members access to multiple levels within your membership. For example, create a central download location with access granted to members of all levels.
Control Viewed Content – Just click the “Hide” button to protect exclusive content for members of a particular level. Create “modular” memberships and hide content from other levels.

Key Features

Just unzip and upload the plugin, and within minutes you’ll have your own membership site up and running.
Unlimited Membership Levels
Protected, members-only content, integrated payments, member management, and so much more!
Seamlessly integrates with the most popular shopping cart systems.
Graduate your members from one level to the next for sequential content delivery

Get Started Today!

Why do I need Wishlist Member?
WishList Member makes the process of building a membership site as easy as possible, so you can start creating a powerful online community of your own right away. No other system makes it so simple to sign up new members and deliver content behind a series of flexible membership levels. Charge for access if you wish or create an open membership. It’s up to you and WishList Member makes it easy!

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

Hootsuite: #4 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 18:41:51 +0000

What is Hootsuite?

Hootsuite is the leading social media dashboard to manage and measure your social networks. Hootsuite is an online application – no software to install!

Save your time and your sanity. Monitor and post to multiple social networks, including Facebook and Twitter using the HootSuite dashboard.
Show off your social media success. Create custom reports from over 30 individual report modules to share with clients and colleagues. Track brand sentiment, follower growth, plus incorporate Facebook Insights and Google analytics all without leaving the dashboard.
HootSuite’s Pro and Enterprise plans allow you to have multiple contributors to your social profiles without sharing passwords. Assign messages for follow-up and track responses.

Key Features

Manage multiple social profiles
Schedule messages and tweets
Track brand mentions
Analyze social media traffic
Mobile apps for those on the go
Direct feed from you blog to Twitter
Upload images and links
Popular browser extensions

Why do I need Hootsuite?
HootSuite helps organizations use the social web to launch marketing campaigns, identify and grow audience, and distribute targeted messages across multiple channels.

Using HootSuite’s unique social media dashboard, teams can collaboratively schedule updates to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, WordPress and other social networks via web, desktop or mobile platforms plus track campaign results and industry trends to rapidly adjust tactics.

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

Bluehost: #3 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:28:59 +0000

What is Bluehost?

From the business owner to the individual who desires full functionality on a small budget, Bluehost provides your complete web hosting solution.

BlueHost has WordPress hosting built in. Their one-click installs with SimpleScripts make it super fast to spin up test sites or new blogs quickly.
Bluehost has been providing quality web hosting solutions since 1996 and provides a consistent experience for your website without all the ups and downs normally associated with every other shared hosting provider.
$6.95/month is a killer deal. Sure you can save a couple of bucks if you hunt around, but is it worth it? Trust me, I’ve tried and it’s NOT.

Key Features

UNLIMITED Disk Storage
UNLIMITED Domain Hosting
Free Domain Name
Secure Email Support
UNLIMITED GB of Site Transfer
Add-on Domains, Subdomains and Parked Domains
cPanel Account Control Panel
FTP Access
Web File Manager
Secure Shell (SSH) Access
Spam Assasin Protection
MySQL Databases
PHP 5 and more!

Reserve your domain!

Why do I need Bluehost?
Bluehost technology is really what sets them apart from other companies. They have their own datacenter, their build their own servers, they have their own nationwide fiber network, they build their own custom linux kernel. In short, because they handle every aspect of your hosting you can feel confident that if there is a problem that you won’t have to deal with 5 different companies to get your problem solved.

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

Aweber: #2 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 01:13:28 +0000

Aweber is my #2 essential online marketing tool for 2012. I’ve been using this service since 2007 and absolutely love it to this day.

What is Aweber?

Aweber offers industry leading, affordable opt-in email marketing that enables you to boost your website’s traffic and convert more sales.

Industry-Leading Deliverability: Get your emails to the inbox, not junk folders, with deliverability rates exceeding 99 percent.
Email Newsletters and Autoresponders: You set the date and time you want your newsletter to be sent, and they’ll get it delivered. Autoresponders will be automatically delivered at the intervals you specify.
Analytics: Find out who is (and isn’t) opening, clicking, downloading and buying from your emails. You can use this information to improve future sends, create new targeted groups of subscribers and find ways to improve your results.

Key Features

Collect, manage and segment your subscribers across multiple lists.
Use email autoresponders to deliver a sequence of messages automatically.
Over 150 ready-to-use, customizable HTML email templates and forms
12+ years experience delivering email marketing campaigns help you reach the inbox.
RSS to email tool turns your latest blog post in an email newsletter.

Why do I need Aweber?
For the highest ROI, AWeber provides the tools to create, manage, analyze and optimize your email marketing. If you don’t have a full team of copywriters, designers and developers, AWeber makes it easy to do it yourself. We also make it easy for agencies and freelancers to use our service, so whichever route you take, you’re covered.

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

Market Samurai: #1 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 03:08:20 +0000

What is Market Samurai?

Market Samurai is software for your Mac or PC that streamlines all critical search engine marketing tasks, puts complete market intelligence at your finger-tips, takes away uncertainty, and gives you focus, direction and confidence in your internet marketing.

It slashes time wasted on tasks that don’t directly create results – allowing you to put your focus into the areas where you will receive the best returns for your unique online business;
It tells you exactly what you need to do next – by using decision-making data that is specific to your unique market – meaning you don’t get lost, confused or sidetracked – and every ounce of energy is effective;
AND it helps you complete critical internet marketing tasks faster, more easily and, efficiently, and achieve better results than ever before

Key Features

Find out how to uncover “gold-nugget” keywords – each of these keywords can send hundreds, even thousands of free visitors to your site each day.
Stop attracting time-wasting tire-kickers to your web-site, and target the keywords in your market that real buyers are using right now.
Discover exactly how to beat the competition, and get front-page rankings in Google for high-traffic keywords in weeks or days – not months or years.

Download Your Free Copy!

Why do I need Market Samurai?
Every web-site needs traffic if it’s going to succeed – and the most reliable, consistent, profitable, high-volume source of traffic comes from search engines. All it takes is getting 4 SIMPLE things right! – the 4 Golden Rules … but 99% of sites get these 4 things wrong (without even realizing it at the time). As a result, the odds of success are stacked against them, making good profits (not even big profits) becomes a massive struggle and, as a result, 99% of sites fail!

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012

Steinar — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:04:01 +0000

The list of products and services chosen for this year’s list are products that I use on a regular basis. Some of them are free and others are paid services. In my experience, the combination of these products provides a platform to execute online marketing campaigns more efficiently & effectively.

… thus, I am sharing them with you!

Listen or Download

This year’s list covers a broad range of leading products and services, including keyword research, email newsletter management, file storage, website hosting, contact management, image capture, video capture, mind mapping, social media, WordPress custom themes, online lead generation, membership site management and webinar hosting.

After 15 years of marketing online, it is clear to me that there is more than one way to get things accomplished. In the early days, I relied heavily on free tools and my own programming & marketing skills to make things happen. In almost every case, there is an alternative route, tool, application or service that is equally capable of getting the job done. Trust me, I’ve tried a lot of tools over the years!

How to get started with affiliate marketing for passive income

Steinar — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 02:17:17 +0000

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make passive income online. Essentially this is the process of selling other company’s products for a commission on the sale. For example, you might sell a $50 product and get 6% or $3.00. With a good amount of traffic though your affiliate link, this could multiply into a decent amount of income.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online. Today we’ll discuss Linkshare and how you can get started.

Listen or Download

I started exploring affiliate marketing in 2005 after blogging about the Olympics since 2001. I had a steading flow of traffic to my sites and wanted to monetize them somehow. I tried Adsense but that didn’t seem too promising.

I did some research and discovered a few leading affiliate programs: Linkshare, ShareaSale and Commission Junction. These sites basically serve as the middleman between you and the merchant.

Basic Steps to Get Started with an Affiliate Marketing Site

Before you get started with affiliate marketing, you need a website. The fastest way to do this is get hosting at Bluehost and do an auto install of WordPress. There are tons of great free themes or for a more sophisticated set of customization options check out the Catalyst WordPress Theme.
Once your’ve registered your website, visit the affiliate program sites (Linkshare, etc) and sign up for an account. There you’ll find dozens of categories and 1,000 of merchants with millions of products you can promote on your website. It’s easy to search and find the right products that match your niche.
Once you find a a few good merchants, apply to become an affiliate for their program. Some programs will approve your application immediately, while it may take a day or two for others to let you in or reject you based on a number of potential reasons.
Upon approval, you’ll have access to a plethora of links for each merchant. You’ll see text links, banner links, individual product links and some customizable links. Most affiliate programs also have a feed that you can subscribe to or download so that you no longer have to manually login to see what’s new. It’s really pretty amazing how quickly you can start grabbing HTML code for these links and build out your new website.
Put the links on your site and once someone purchases something a record of the transaction will appear in your affiliate program account. Depending on the program you’ve chosen, you can expect to get a check for your commissions within 30-60 after your total reaches a set minimum. Payouts usually come in the form of check, direct deposit or PayPal.

Have you tried affiliate marketing? What’s worked for you?

How to Create a Different Sidebar for a Specific Blog Post with Catalyst WordPress Theme Template

Steinar — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 16:07:57 +0000

If you have a WordPress blog you have probably at some point wanted to create a different sidebar for a page, post or category. Unfortunately, most WordPress themes only allow you to create one set of sidebars and widgets that are consistent throughout your entire site.

The Catalyst WordPress Theme Template on the other hand let’s you create unlimited custom sidebars that can be applied to any number of posts, pages, categories and more. It’s really changes the way I think about my site and how I design WordPress layouts moving forward.

1. Install the Catalyst WordPress Theme

First, you need to start using the Catalyst WordPress Theme, which I’m using to power this blog and highly recommend. I’ve written a separate post on why I think Catalyst is the best WordPress Theme and top 5 reasons to use Catalyst.

2. Create a new Custom Layout

Once you’ve installed and acivated Catalyst, do the following step:

a. Go to Advanced Options in the theme settings
b. Select Custom Layouts section
c. Click add, to customize your new Custom Layout name and layout settings
d. Give you layout a meaningful name and layout that over time you can easily identify. For example, for this post I create a custom layout called catalyst_custom_sidebar_tutorial_post
e. Click Save Changes to save the new custom layout settings

3. Customize the widgets for your custom layout

a. Go to Widgets
b. You’ll notice that a new sidebar area has been created based on your custom layout. Again in my case the sidebar is named catalyst_custom_sidebar_tutorial_post
c. Drag widgets into your new sidebar as you would normally and click save within each widget as you go

4. Assign your Custom Theme to an individual blog post

a. Edit the post you want to assign the new sidebar to
b. Under the post select your custom layout from the Catalyst Layout selection box
c. Save your post and see the new layout and custom sidebar!

5. Catalyst also allows you to assign custom layouts to a number of other post types, including:

a. page layout
b. post layout
c. general archive page layout
d. category page layout
e. tag page layout
f. author page layout
g. search page layout
h. 404 page layout

To see these options go to Catalyst Theme Settings > Content > Site Layout Options. You can further customize individual category layouts in the general WordPress category settings. Pretty cool, huh?

There are some WordPress plugins to assign custom layouts and sidebars to your site, but they are not as fully integrated as what we see here with Catalyst.

What do you think? Do you like this feature? What are your though on Catalyst?

How to Find and Add Local Google Plus Users to your Circles and Grow your Social Network

Steinar — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:38:26 +0000

Searching for and adding local Google Plus users to your Circles can be a time consuming process, but I’ve come up with a solution to make it easier.

I’ll use my “Cville” circle for local Charlottesville Google Plus users as an example.

1. Share your local Google Plus Circle with your followers.

Go to Circles and click on the local Google Plus circle you want to share. Then click on “Share this Circle” in the upper right hand corner. Share it publicly or within a given circle of followers. Now everyone will be able to see your Circle and they may follow these people if they choose.

2. Publish a new Post on Google Plus asking your followers to share their local Circle.

Say something like this: “Please share your local Google Plus Circle with us. I would like to find new local people to follow and by sharing your Circle we can all get the most out of Google Plus on a local level. Go to Circle, click on the Circle you want to share and then click on ‘Share this Circle’”.

Hopefully, some people will now start to share their local Google Plus circles, like some of my friends, Jim Duncan, Daniel Rothamel, & Kari Rippetoe,

3. Add their Circle to your Circle or create a new one

When someone else shares their local Circle and you see it in a new Google Plus post, click on the “Add Circle” option in the middle of the image within their post. A popup will appear. If you want to create a new Circle from their Circle, spell out a unique name in the blank box and click “Create a new Circle”.

If you wan to add these people to an existing circle, spell out the same name of your exising Circle in the blank box and the option below will magically change to “Add to xyz Circle” (xyz meaning the name of the Google Circle you already have setup.)

Go through this process enough times and your Circles will grow pretty quickly.

Cool huh? Tell me how this goes.

Worksheet: Define Your Target Market

Steinar — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 01:22:46 +0000

As a business owner or marketing manager, defining your target market is one of the first things we know we should do, but is often forgotten or remains stagnant over the years. The problem with this is that as your business grows and your customers change, you risk losing focus on those who need you most.

Once a year, usually in the Fall, I like to review my year-to-date performance and outline my strategy for the next year. Part of that process includes a look at my target market. It helps me gain clarity of who my audience is, whom I wish to reach and what my ideal customer looks like. It’s not easy and sometimes it can be a tough pill to swallow but it’s a critical step toward evolving your business.

I find it’s easier to start with customers’ needs first and then get into the demographics. It seems like if you start with demographics you fall into the trap that “everyone is my customer,” which we know is just not true. Starting with their needs will quickly weed out adjacent and other irrelevant segments that would most likely not be a very good fit for your business.

Here is a simple Target Market Worksheet to consider.

Download a PDF version of this Target Market Worksheet

What are my customers’ needs?
Who are my customers?
1. Age
2. Gender
3. Economic Level
4. Lifestyle
5. Buying Habits
Where are my customers located?
1. Where do they live?
2. Where do they shop?
Projected size of market?
How does my business meet their needs?
What is unique about my business?

Of course, you will want to customize this series of questions to meet your needs, including any industry specific criteria typically considered relevant to customer segmentation. That being said, don’t feel constrained to industry standard segmentation schemes. Ask your market what’s important to them and completely redefine your target market if needed. Get specific, find your niche and get excited about the idea of speaking to them in a more meaningful way.

What do you think? Is defining your target market a worthwhile exercise or just a waste of time?

7 Free Goal Setting Templates and Worksheets to Download

Steinar — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 21:18:33 +0000

If you’re looking for a great goal setting template or worksheet to download, you should find the following resources helpful. For me, goal setting is an important process to help clarify both short-term and long-term objectives. Without goals we can easily fall into reactionary mode, whereby we fail to evaluate opportunities relative to our overall desired course.

In my experience, writing down my goals often helps me achieve them faster and better than expected. It allows me to consistently focus on what’s most important for me and my business. This is not selfish – in fact, it’s better for your customers and those around you as well.

Here are some goal setting templates and worksheets you might find helpful:

1. Setting SMART Goals for your Marketing Strategy

Setting SMART goals is a proven approach to achieving success more quickly. As 2010 winds down, this is the perfect opportunity to examine your goals for 2011 and apply the SMART mnemonic or acronym to increase the likelihood your goals are met. Includes goal setting templates for Microsoft Excel and Apple Numbers.

2. Goal Setting Worksheet and Weekly Planner Template

This Goal Setting Worksheet will help you organize your goals, to dos, and/or projects to help you make the biggest impact in your life or career. This Weekly Planner Template (inspired from the teachings of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) will help you organize the most important things to do in each “role” you play in your life. Combined with the Goal Setting Worksheet, you can easily identify those things that will have the biggest impact.

3. Goal Setting Worksheet and Template

There are many free goal setting worksheets and templates available on the web. Even though there are slight variations in individual worksheets, they all serve the same purpose. Get this goal setting worksheet kit and take a step towards a clear sense of direction in your life.

4.Goal Setting Forms

If Goal Setting Forms is what you’re looking for, you’ve come to the right spot. In all likely hood, you are one of the vast majority of people who never learned to either consciously or unconsciously set goals. Now you have come to understand that goal setting is central to success in any part of life and you want in on the action. Good news! We have provided some goal setting forms for you right here! How convenient! How useful.

5. Setting Goals

14 templates for how to set goals, goal worksheets, setting goals, goal lesson plans and more.

6. Free Goal Setting Templates

Studies have shown that people that write their goal along with a written action plan have a 51% chance to achieve it. Compared to those that do not write their goals, they have a 43% chance of achievement.

7. Printable SMART Goal Setting Templates

SMART goal setting templates, such as those below, remind of you of what you want, why you want it and how to get it. Print and use this free template to accelerate your progress towards what you want and waste less time on the way.

Which template(s) did you find most helpful?

Top 5 Reasons to use the Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework for your Blog

Steinar — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:06:30 +0000

I’ve been customizing WordPress themes and creating my own themes from scratch since 2006. Nonetheless, there are a number of great Wordrpess themes available from both WordPress and other 3rd party developers.

My favorite WordPress theme, however, is the Catalyst WordPress theme. I’ve used Thesis on a number of projects and really love it too, but Catalyst is really in a different league altogether.

Here are my top 5 reason to choose Catalyst:

1. The Catalyst WordPress theme is extremely customizable. Weather you want a simple, minimalistic theme for your blog or a very robust, complex theme, Catalyst can handle it. Out of the box, Catalyst comes loaded with over 800 customizable variables, including font choice, font colors, margins, padding, excerpt lengths, author settings, homepage boxes, and more. The beauty is that the settings go deep into very specific sections of your site for that professional customized look and feel.

2. The Catalyst WordPress theme allows you to create multiple, customized sidebars. Most theme only allow you to create one or two sets of sidebars for your blog and they’re usually in a fixed position throughout all pages and posts on the site. With Catalyst you can have completely different sidebar configurations and content for different sections of your site. You might want no sidebar on the homepage, a single sidebar on static pages and double sidebars on blog posts and pages. And maybe you want a unique sidebar for each category archive page. Catalyst offers the flexibility to handle this and let me tell you … it’s very cool!

3. The Catalyst WordPress theme has custom WordPress hooks integrated into the admin. Most WordPress users (and developers for that matter) do not fully understand the advanced functionality available with the use of WordPress hooks. Think of these as positions throughout the WordPress framework where you can insert code as needed. Most plugins use hooks to embed code in your blog. For example, you might want to add some social media icons after the title of every blog posts. Using Catalyst WordPress Hooks makes this process a breeze, since you can do it right within the Advanced settings control panel.

4. The Catalyst WordPress theme has an amazing front end CSS editor – something I’ve never seen anywhere else. This basically allows you to point and click to select areas of your content, add additional CSS formatting and save it to your custom CSS file. This is a real life saver if you have limited PHP and CSS programming experience. And for those of us that are proficient at CSS and PHP … all I can say is Wow!

5. The Catalyst WordPress theme has a knowledgable and supportive development community. Unlike other themes, the forums at Catalyst are lively and full of helpful content. The owner and primary developer, Eric Hamm, is often in the mix providing helpful advice and support on a daily basis. More experienced Catalyst users are often helping new folks and I find it’s relatively easy to find answers to any questions that come up throughout the learning process.

Obviously, I strongly believe in Catalyst … it’s like no other theme I’ve ever used before.

If you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a line.

30DTC – Web Traffic Increased 15% in Week 1 of 30 Day Traffic Challenge

Steinar — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:56:49 +0000

I have a ways to go, but I’m happy with a modest 15% increase in web traffic to my site during the 1st week of my 30 Day Traffic Challenge.

What’s better is Time on Site doubled and my Bounce Rate went down ever so slightly. I’m focussed on Unique Visitors during the challenge and you can see my traffic went from 668 to 765 this week vs. last.

The most effective means of driving traffic have been:

writing more blog post across a variety of content that ultimately all ties together with internal links and references.
commenting on 3rd party blogs – I’m averaging 3 comments per day.
choosing keyword phrases from Webmaster Tools where I’m on the 2nd page of Google Search results. This is traffic that usually misses my site and goes elsewhere. I’m focussing on the long-tail phrases that have 1,000+ impressions today and I site on in the 10-40 spot in search engine results. I’m doing some cross-analysis with Market Samurai as well to further analyze competitive landscape.

Yesterday I setup Bing Webmaster Tools and I’m exciting to see what new information I can learn and apply to my strategy.

Talk soon!

Social Media Expands with Launch of Google Plus Pages for Business

Steinar — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:23:25 +0000

After much anticipation, Google Plus Pages launched this week. It’s another significant step for Google as they attempt to steal market share from leading social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. To setup your Google Plus Page, visit http://plus.google.com/pages/create.

Here’s a quick quote from their official blog post announcing Google Plus Pages …

In life we connect with all kinds of people, places and things. There’s friends and family, of course, but there’s also the sports teams we root for, the coffee shops we’re loyal to, and the TV shows we can’t stop watching (to name a few).

So far Google+ has focused on connecting people with other people. But we want to make sure you can build relationships with all the things you care about—from local businesses to global brands—so today we’re rolling out Google+ Pages worldwide.

via Official Google Blog.

A couple thoughts on Google Plus Pages given my limited experience:

This is Google so we should take care to understand that content you share on Google Plus has a higher likelihood of showing up on Google search results. If you’ve searched on Google lately, maybe you’ve noticed just how much content is surfacing from Google Plus. This trend will only continue.
As of december 19th, Google+ Pages may now have up to 50 admins. The capability to rolling out across all Pages, so you may or may not see this functionality yet. To add an admin, login to Google+, switch to your Page login, then click on Managers under the little gear in the upper right hand corner.
As a Page, you cannot add people to your Circles. Individuals must add your business first and then you may reciprocate. This makes sense, since we don’t want to get bombarded by companies promoting their Page. Google Plus offers a nice set of recommendation to help you promote you Page instead. I’m sure this will all change, especially the likely capability of businesses to befriend each other, much like Facebook Pages.

What do you think? Does Google Plus Pages have legs?

Do you have a Google Plus Page? If so, please leave a link in the comments.

How to Add the WordPress “Press This” Bookmarklet Link to Your Browser Toolbar

Steinar — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 13:45:11 +0000

I’m blogging a lot more during the 30 Day Traffic Challenge and it reminded me of this great tool that is pretty well hidden in the WordPress Admin: WordPress Press This bookmarklet. This bookmarklet is a useful link you can add to your browser’s toolbar or bookmarks to increase your efficiency.

The idea behind the Press This bookmarklet is that as you browse the web, you might come across something you want to share in a new blog post. Rather than cutting and pasting the content and appropriate resource links, you can use Press This to simply highlight the text and click the Press This link. This will save you a bunch of time and make the process of sharing other people’s content much simpler.

The Press This bookmarklet can be found in the “Available Tools” section of your WordPress admin. This is simply called Tools in older versions of WordPress.

To begin, click and drag the Press This button to your browser’s toolbar. Obviously, you must have your browser’s options set to show a toolbar of links or bookmarks. This varies depending on your browser and operating system. If you’re having trouble clicking and dragging, you can also right-click or CTRL-click on a Mac to “add link to Bookmarks” or “save link to Favorites”.

Once you install Press This in you toolbar it’s time to start using it. For example, let’s say I want to quote a recent article I found on SEO and reference the author with a link back to the original article. Simply highlight the text in the article you want to quote and click the Press This link in you browser.

Now you get a popup window where you can edit your post and add your own color commentary. You can also save the post as a draft which is a great way to fill up your pipeline with new post ideas. One drawback of the Press This window is that you cannot schedule a post for later, but I can live with that.

Typically I like to add my comments at the beginning of my new post just before the quoted text and put the quote in blockquotes. This seems to give the best appearance and provide proper separation for the reader between my comments and the 3rd party content. Of course, this will depend on how your WordPress theme is formatted to display blockquotes.

Here’s an example of a Press This post on my site.

Pretty cool huh?

Why should I use WordPress as a content management system (CMS) for my blog?

Steinar — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:50:16 +0000

WordPress is a fantastic open-source content management system designed to help you setp and manage a blog easily and fast. Most folks that are either in the business of blogging or thinking about starting a new blog have heard about WordPress since given its popularity.

Let’s take a minute to list my top five reasons why you might consider using WordPress.

1. It’s free. This may seem obvious but there are a number of paid blogging platforms available to choose from and WordPress is still free and open-source . Because it is free there are certain consequences.

For example, there is no telephone customer support so if you have a problem or question you have to reach out to the user and developer community available on WordPress.org. Not to fear, however, the WordPress community is fantastic.

2. WordPress is fairly simple to use. The process of installing WordPress and writing & publishing blog posts is no more difficult than writing an email. Several new releases in recent years have improved the administrative functionality and WordPress continues to get more user-friendly.

3. WordPress is highly customizable. There are a number of both free and paid WordPress themes available which are customizable. Two such examples are Thesis WordPress Theme and the Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework, both of which I highly recommend. Because WordPress is designed using PHP and CSS, the customization opportunities are unlimited.

If you’re uncomfortable or unfamiliar with how to manipulate the look and feel of your WordPress theme, I recommend you purchase a preformatted theme that meets 99% of your branding objectives.

4. WordPress provides a lot of functionality right out-of-the-box but there’s also a fantastic library of plugins that extend the capabilities of WordPress. The majority of these plug-ins are free and they can really add to your user experience.

For example, there are dozens of plugins to include social media sharing capabilities on your blog, something that would traditionally take some programming knowledge to implement.

5. WordPress is very search friendly and according to Google, WordPress takes care of 80-90% of the work required for effective search engine optimization. The remaining 10-20% of search engine optimization can be achieved with the implementation of 1 or 2 SEO plugins such All in One SEO and WordPress SEO by Yoast.

What are your thoughts on WordPress? Do you use it to power your blog or do you have another platform that you prefer?

Sent from my iPhone 4S …

30DTC – Driving Targeted Web Traffic with Long-Tail Keyword Research

Steinar — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 19:06:47 +0000

It’s day five of the 30 Day traffic challenge and a couple days ago I set out to optimize for the keyword phrase of targeted web traffic. I’m happy to report that some of the traffic to my website is indeed for this keyword search phrase.

This is not by accident. I used the phrase in a number of blog posts. I used it in some PDFs I uploaded to my website and to third-party websites and I used it been some comments that I left on some other blog posts.

I used it in a YouTube video and a couple quick podcast episodes at AudioBoo. At this point I hope you are thinking about some of the keyword phrases that you could be optimizing for on your website.

Search engine optimization is as much science as it is art. We don’t know the algorithms used by Google or Bing but simply guessing what the right keywords are is going to lead to failure and ultimately confuse the search engines.

On the flip side, if you use market research to understand the appropriate keywords you can drive targeted web traffic. I recommend Market Samurai as a great tool for understanding what the appropriate keywords are. In my case, I spend about 60 minutes to research some potentially promising keywords. I am by no means finished, but feel like I’m heading in the right direction.

What is your search engine optimization keyword research strategy?

Create a Website in Minutes with a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog

Steinar — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 02:30:47 +0000

You want to create a website? WordPress is one of the leading blogging platforms available. Most people interested in blogging stumble across WordPress.com at some point and maybe register their own free blog. The lack of control over WordPress themes may be frustrating and you want to create a website that reflects your brand.

WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

http://wordpress.org/

Ultimately, if you’re serious about blogging you are ready to install WordPress on your own server and create a website that offers more flexibility and control. It’s time to launch a self-hosted blog from WordPress.org.

A few benefits of a self-hosted WordPress blog are:

WordPress itself is still free (though you’ll need to purchase a domain & hosting package to install WordPress)
Full access to & control over all the files that support WordPress
Full access to & control over the MySQL database that manages your WordPress content
Ability to add any theme & customize WordPress themes as needed
Ability to add & customize unlimited WordPress plugins

On the surface these reasons alone should be enough to convince you that self-hosted WordPress is the way to go over the long run. There are other more technical, privacy and security related reasons as well, but we’ll leave that for another day.

How to Install WordPress and Create a Website from your New Blog

Step 1: WordPress Blog Domain Registration

First thing you’ll need to do is register you domain name or URL. This is the web address where your new WordPress blog will live. I recommend Bluehost to register your domain. Specifically, because they offer great products, support and uptime. Furthermore, their Control Panel is very intuitive vs. other registrars and you’ll thank me later for this!

Step2: WordPress Hosting

A website host provides server space for you to store all your WordPress blog files.

This includes the php and css files that drive WordPress plus the MySQL database and other applications required to actually make WordPress operate.

Again, I recommend Bluehost for WordPress hosting because the service and products are top of the line for the price. When you register, sign up for a 2-year hosting package and you’ll get tons of extra products that other hosting companies try to charge extra for such as email account and extra storage space.

Step 3: WordPress Self-Hosted Application Files

Next you need to install WordPress. The simplest way to do this is to use the self-install scripts that come with Bluehost. From your control panel just click on the WordPress Icon in the SimpleScripts section and follow the step-by-step instructions. It’s really pretty straightforward.

Step 4: WordPress Themes

WordPress themes give you a more custom look and feel to your blog. It could be something fancy or maybe you prefer something more minimalist. In any case there are 1,000 of themes to choose from – both free and premium.

My favorite theme right now for someone who has limited programming skills but wants a theme that is dynamic and easy to customize is the Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework. It is, in my opinion, the best theme available for WordPress today.

Otherwise there are plenty of WordPress themes available to choose from for free directly within the WordPress Admin section in the Appearance > Themes tab.

So, that’s it really – this is initial requirements to create a website with WordPress. The process to install WordPress first time is a bit daunting but you’ll make it. If you get stuck or feel unsure call the folks at Bluehost and they’ll walk you through it.

Free Report – Build an Effective Online Distribution Strategy

Steinar — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:22:14 +0000

So much of what we do online these days is managing the flow of information.

We have tons of content coming at us everyday from social media, blogs, news, video and other online sources with little chance to filter the content let alone really consume everything in a meaningful way. On the flip side, some of us are in the business of publishing content and we sometimes question and even struggle to understand the best methods of distribution and consumption for our readers.

The attached report is my 2 cents on the subject of using RSS feeds as an effective means for managing the flow. I recommend setting up a blog as your central distribution center and using Google Reader as your gathering place and filter.

Enjoy!

Build an Effective Online Distribution Strategy

30DTC – Using Mind Maps to Brainstorm Ideas and Map Out a Plan of Attack

Steinar — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:13:33 +0000

It is day three of my 30 Day Traffic Challenge and today I am working on creating a mind map of all of the potential channels and opportunities to drive targeted web traffic to my website. I’m using a great tool on my iPad, iPhone and Mac called MindNode Pro, which is available at www.mindnode.com. Another great free mind mapping application I’ve used in the past is FreeMind.

Mind mapping is a great way to brainstorm ideas graphically rather than writing down your ideas in a list. In particular, they allow you to get ideas out onto the table in a free-form fashion and then re-order or categorize your ideas in a more meaningful way. With MindNode, I can export my map as an image, pdf or text based outline among other formats.

You can see from the initial mind map that I’ve created there are numerous ways to drive traffic to your website. I’ve categorized my mind map into strategies, tools, measurement, and search engine optimization, plus a special category around stuff beyond increasing traffic, such as conversion and monetization. This is by no means complete but it gives me a starting point with which to move forward implementing my traffic getting strategy.

Here’s the same mind map exported as an html file … pretty cool, huh?

Increase Web Traffic

Beyond Traffic

Long term strategy
Business objectives
Converting visitors
Monetization

Measuring Traffic

Google Analytics
Quantcast
Alexa
Compete

Strategies

On my site

Blogging

Keyword rich posts
Controversial content that challenges common belief
Covering current events
Top ten lists

Subscriptions

Blog feed subscriptions
Newsletters
Auto responder series

Creating a simple tool or widget as a downloadable

WordPress plugin
Ebook
Excel templates
Simple workbook with forms to complete

Multimedia formats

Podcasting
Images
Video

On other sites

Press Releases
Paid traffic

PPC
Advertising
Affiliate Marketing

Social media

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Participating in Forums
Commenting on blog posts

Offline promotion

Tools

Market Samurai
Blogging editorial calendar
Google Reader
Subscription Services

Aweber
Mailchimp
Constant Contact
IContact

Search engine optimization

Keyword research
On-page

Leveraging what I already see working with current visitors

Off-page

Inbound links

Once my mind map is fairly complete, I will prioritize the action items and fill out my blogging editorial calendar. It is much easier this way to stay on track and feel like I have a plan of attack moving forward.

Mind maps are also great for outlining a table of contents for an eBook, white paper, or any writing assignment in general.

Do you use mind maps? How? Why? What tools do you like?

30DTC – Tracking Website Visitors in Real Time and Google Analytics Intelligence Alerts

Steinar — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 04:10:29 +0000

As part of my 30 Day Traffic Challenge, I’ll be spending a lot of time in Google Analytics. It’s nice actually, because it is giving me the chance to update a bunch of settings, really dig into some of data and get some hands-on experience with the new tools.

Tonight I stumbled across Google Analytics Real Time Reporting, which turns out was recently launched. Here’s a snapshot of the activity on my site right now. Three visitors – stunning, I know.

I have used real time tracking tools before, namely Woopra. For me, it never really made sense to watch a small handful of people on my site in real-time. I do have at least one client, however, who has upwards of 200 people on her site at any given time and in that case it’s fun to watch the traffic pass through.

Speaking of Woopra, I just found this relatively recent article that outlines 8 Free Tools for Live Website Tracking. Check it out if this is something that you want to explore further.

Tracking website traffic with Google Analytics Intelligence Alerts

What probably makes most sense for the passive Analytics user is the Intelligence Alerts dashboard. It essentially provides you with a visually intuitive snapshot of the top 10 major changes in traffic behavior on your website.

For example, as you see in the screenshot below, my site saw a 98% increase in Pageviews and a 242% increase in Average Time on Site on Oct. 15th.

If I click on the details link to the right, I can see possible factors that influenced the shift and add annotations for future reference.

While these alerts are useful, I’ve found the Google Analytics Custom Email Alerts to be the best in terms of notifying me of any major traffic changes. If you click on the Settings Cog icon off to the right in your Analytics Dashboard you’ll find a place to setup custom alerts.

Here’s a screenshot from a new alert I just setup tonight to alert me when unique visitor traffic spikes by 25% vs. the previous day’s traffic.

Normally, I would recommend weekly or monthly based alerts, but given my short timeframe for the 30 Day Traffic Challenge, a daily window makes sense.

We’ll spend more time in Analytics later, since it is my main platform to measure traffic and define success this month. Any specific questions about Analytics you would like answered? My friend, Pierre DuBois, is an Analytics expert at Zimana and could likely help answer any questions we throw at him.

30DTC – Using Market Samurai to Identify Keyword Phrases and Drive Targeted Web Traffic

Steinar — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 20:01:14 +0000

It’s still day two of my 30 Day Traffic Challenge and it’s time to use Market Samurai to do a little keyword research. The goal is to identify long tail keyword phrases and increase targeted web traffic to my site.

I used Market Samurai for about 30 minutes this afternoon to identify at least one promising keyword phrase: targeted web traffic. I’ll revisit Market Samurai again later to explore other keyword phrases but let’s take a look at the initial process of keyword analysis and selection.

In this screenshot you see my initial keyword search for the phrase “website traffic strategies”. I narrowed the initial related keyword phrase result set to exclude non-relevant word and longer phrases and then move forward with my analysis.

What I discovered, as shown in the next screenshot is that the phrase “website traffic strategies” has relatively low traffic. The results tell me that this phrase only gets 4 clicks per day for the website in the #1 position Google search result set. I’m looking for a keyword phrase that gets at least 80 clicks per day in the #1 position so this won’t do.

I notice, however, that “increase web traffic” gets 374 clicks per day and has a PBR (phrase-to-broad match) score of 24%. That means that 24% of the searches for that phrase are exactly “increase web traffic” and 374 clicks are made each day on Google in the first position for that phrase. That seems a bit more attractive, right?

Unfortunately, I see an SEOC score of 666,000 which means that over a half million other webpages are already competing for the same phrase. I could deal with that, but generally that’s not good. I want a phrase that has less than 100,000 competing pages . . . but I like the traffic number.

Given the good traffic statistics for “increase web traffic” I run a similar keyword research report . . . this time for “increase traffic”. I narrow my result to keywords that have at least 80 clicks per day, a PBR score of at least 15% and no more than 100,000 competing webpages.

Based on the screenshot below, I discover that “targeted web traffic” is a good candidate.

“Targeted web traffic” gets 112 clicks in the first position on Google, has a PBR score of 36% and only 64,100 completing webpages. This is a pretty good keyword phrase to target and I’ll go with this one for now.

How will I use keywords to drive targeted web traffic to my site?

I’ll use this new phrase in a number of ways to drive traffic to my site. Basically, I’m telling the search engines and, ultimately, my readers, what my content is about. No trickery here. Learning how to drive targeted web traffic is exactly what the 30 Day Traffic Challenge is all about. I don’t want random traffic – I want targeted traffic. You should want the same. Make sense?

I’ll use my new keywords throughout my blog in meta-tags, titles, descriptions, keywords, categories, post tags, image tags, anchor text and more.
Off-site, I’ll use these keywords to find relevant 3rd party blogs and content with which to comment and use as inspiration for my own blog posts.
Understanding my keywords will also allow me to speak more directly to my audience, since I more clearly understand what they want.

Again, understanding how keywords work and what people are searching for online is critical if you want to attract a target audience through natural search optimization.

Guessing or choosing keywords based on intuition can really waste everyone’s time and effort. Don’t do it.

That’s it for now. I know this was a bit more technical in nature, but I hope you learned a little. I know I did!

I’ll share some more Market Samurai goodness later with a deep dive into competition and outranking other websites for my keywords. This is gonna be fun, right?

How to Customize Your SEO Options in the Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework

Steinar — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 03:15:24 +0000

Catalyst is a wonderful WordPress Theme that allows you to customize your blog with over 800 built-in options. In my opinion, it’s the best WordPress Theme on the market today.

Customizing your blog’s search engine optimization options is pretty straightforward in the SEO section of the Catalyst Core Options.

Steps to Customize Your SEO Options in Catalyst:

The title tag is used by search engines and also displays in the banner across most the top when viewing your site in modern browsers. By default your should append the site name and description to the Title Tag. If you can include keywords in these two variables to increase likelihood of being found when people search on Google, etc. A drop down let’s you choose the order in which these display and you also have the option choose a unique tag separator. I would go with the default options if you’re not sure what to choose.
H1 tags are arguably one of the most important elements in terms of content being read by search engines. It’s like the title of a book – it defines the first thing people and search engines see when they index your site. Catalyst give you the option to wrap either the Title or Description in H1 tags. Using the tagline might be more effective if the tagline is keyword rich and includes a better description of what your site is about. If your title is strong and explains your content well, choose that instead. You also have the option to manually assign H1 tag placement.
By default, search engines will attempt to index all the pages on your site. If you are a prolific blogger or a heavy user of tags and categories, your main content can get buried by all the dynamically generated pages that tags and categories create. Generally speaking you should only have a handful of categories, so indexing these pages is fine. By selecting “NoIndex” you are signaling the search engines to avoid indexing certain sections of your site. By default, Cataylst sets Archive, Tag and Author pages to NoIndex. For most site owners this makes sense and should be left alone.
Nofollow Comment Author Links tells search engines not to index links that you, as the author, post in your comments. By and large links in your comments will be to third party content and should not be indexed.
As search engines index your site, they also take snapshot of individual pages and cache them for future use. You have the choice to NoArchive certain sections in Catalyst though I recommend you leave this set at the default which allows for caching.
Homepage SEO Options first give you the opportunity to indicate your site’s Homepage Meta Description. These descriptions used to play a major role in SEO, but play a somewhat less important rolls these days given the rise of importance in other on-page and off-page factors.
Nonetheless, it’s important to provide a description. One practical application is that the description you provide here is often what appears below your heading in search engine results. The the second line of text that people see when searching for your site. Make it catchy with a clear explanation of what your site is about and why someone should visit. Include keywords or long-tail keyword phrases if possible without keyword stuffing.
Homepage Meta Tags should contests of several long-tail keywords. These are phrases that someone might search to find your site. Personally, I like to use Market Samurai to help identify the most valuable keywords phrases. Picking the wrong keywords can be a waste of time, so choose wisely.
This section gives you same choices for selecting how search engine robots will index, follow and archive your homepage.This would tell Yahoo!, Live & Google that the page in question should be treated as though it were a copy of the URL www.seomoz.org/blog and that all of the link & content metrics the engines apply should technically flow back to that URL. For an in-depth article on this subject visit http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021646.html.

If you’re not familiar with Catalyst, I highly recommend you check it out today!

Why Catalyst is Now My Favorite WordPress Theme Framework

Steinar — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:45:40 +0000

If you use WordPress, it’s time you learned about the Catalyst Theme. This, in my opinion, is the best WordPress framework on the market right now – and I’ve tested many of them, including Thesis. Unlike a standard theme, Catalyst is extremely flexible and provides easy-to-use tools and functionality to create a highly customized theme for your blog.

Most themes require programming knowledge to customize. Catalyst has over 800 built-in options that customize your site. You can add multiple boxes to your homepage with the click of a button, or create custom sidebars that change depending on certain content types. Say you want to put a nice curved border around your page and increase the white-space around the body of your text – no problem, Catalyst can handle it.

Here’s a screenshot of the Navigation setting in the main theme’s dashboard. Notice that you can turn breadcrumbs on and off, including the language and symbols used. You can do the same with post meta data. This level of customization is consistent with the other functions available throughout the theme.

In this screenshot, you can see just how many options there are to customize the content within your site. Change the font (including Google Fonts), set the colors, borders, background, images, etc. It’s just awesome how easy it is to create a very customized look in no time.

In the Catalyst Advanced Options, you can take WordPress to a new level with custom layouts, widgets and css. Say you want a certain layout for your portfolio page – something different that your main blog page or contact pages. Catalyst allows you to define various layouts and assign multiple widgets to these layouts. The possibilities are unlimited considering the number of different combinations you could create.

Personally, I’ll be using Catalyst a lot more these days. I’ve been using Thesis, but now Thesis seems a bit out of date.

What do you think of Catalyst? If you’ve tried it what are your thoughts?

Setting SMART Goals for your 2012 Internet Marketing Strategy

Steinar — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 05:37:51 +0000

Internet Marketing continues to serve as a powerful channel for communicating with your market. Social media, geo-location services and mobile devices extend the opportunity to reach your audience in a new and different way and add value to the discussion happening online.

Spending time now to develop your internet marketing strategy for next year will provide you with the appropriate baseline, timeline and milestones to ensure effective execution. Part of that process is establishing goals with which to measure your success.

Setting SMART goals is a proven approach to achieving success more quickly. As the year winds down, this is the perfect opportunity to examine your goals for 2011 and apply the SMART mnemonic or acronym to increase the likelihood your goals are met.

SMART stands for:

S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Attainable
R – Realistic
T – Timely

Free Template Downloads:

Specific

You want to clearly define your goals to articulate specifically what you are trying to achieve. The question is what, how and why are you striving toward this goal?

What are you going to do? Use action words, such as create, sell, manage, or grow, etc. to bring a sense of energy to your goals.
Why are you doing this? What is the ultimate outcome? Why is this important and what impact will this have on you, your business, or your customers?
How are you going to do this? What are the sub-goals or action steps that will enable you to achieve your goal

The more specific you are, the greater your ability to identify success when it occurs. For example, “I will write and publish 21 blog posts (250-400 words) about skydiving equipment by March 1, 2010.“ In this example I used action words “write and publish”, specified the number, length, and topic of the blog posts and put a date on it. As we’ll discuss next, this goal is also measurable, attainable, realistic and timely.

Measurable

If you cannot measure your goals then you cannot manage your progress. Furthermore, it is far more difficult to achieve your objectives if a) you do not measure your progress or b) you do not measure the appropriate metrics. In some cases a progress chart, table or simple checklist might help.

For example, you might be trying to improve visitor conversion rates. Using a web statistics tool, such as Google Analytics, can help track vital statistics but make sure you understand and pick the right metric that defines success. You can get 1,000 visitors a day, but if no one buys, that metric is meaningless. Don’t get caught up trying to move the wrong target.

Attainable

Is your goal possible? Is it limited by your resources or require more time to achieve? I encourage you to set stretch goals for yourself to push your limits, but keep them within reach. The benefit is that you’ll see real progress toward success. The risk is that you do not achieve your goals and lose momentum or hope.

For example, you may have just launched a new blog and you want 20% of your visitors to sign up for your newsletter out of the gate. While this is a realistic rate that you could eventually achieve, it is unlikely to happen right away. A more attainable goal would be to grow your newsletter list by 5% each month.

Realistic

Is your goal realistic? You might want 5,000 newsletter subscribers, which is attainable, but is it realistic to achieve this goal by within 2 weeks? Maybe not. Be honest with yourself and your business when setting goals by keeping them realistic or you risk disappointment.

Timely

When is the deadline to achieve your goal? Next week, 3 months, by year end? Setting a specific date will help you identify your tactical sub-goals and action steps to achieve your goal within a given deadline. Map out these deadlines or milestones on a calendar. Plan rewards for yourself when you cross each line.

A common mistake is to generalize about timing. For example, avoid using descriptions such as “this year, next quarter, in the next two weeks.” Without a specific date, these deadlines will slip away.

In my experience, SMART goals help you reach your objectives more quickly with a defined path for success. I recommend writing them down and revisiting them frequently to check progress and adapt to changing circumstances. In most cases, you will over-achieve — either beating a deadline or delivering something of greater value.

What’s your experience setting goals for the new year? Do you use the SMART mnemonic?

How to Remove Mobile Formatting from WordPress Twenty-Eleven Theme

Steinar — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:51:02 +0000

By default the Twenty-Eleven WordPress theme includes custom CSS support for mobile viewing. In some situations, you might want to remove this option, but it’s not clear from the Dashboard has to do this.

To remove the mobile formatting, edit your theme and comment out one line of code. This image illustrates how it’s done.

Keep in mind that your should create a child theme if you want these customizations to survive when you update the theme.

How to Increase Your WordPress Site Speed

Steinar — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 17:23:15 +0000

We’ve heard for a while now that Google considers site speed as key factor in their search rankings. In other words, they look favorably upon sites that load faster and thus give them preferential treatment in search rankings when someone is searching on Google.

Site speed can also dramatically effect visitor experience. If your site is slow to load, visitors may be more likely to bounce or leave the site prematurely. You all know the feeling when you visit a site and it takes for ever for content to show up. You don’t want to be that site! You want your site to deliver content quickly, especially with the increased use of mobile web browsing.

There are several actions you can take to speed up your site. Let’s cover a few of the basics to get you started.

Measure your site’s speed

Google is nice enough to provide an entire set of tools to help speed up your site, including a handy Chrome speed monitoring extension for Developer Tools and an online Google Speed Test tool.

The report from this test explains potential issues effecting your site’s speed and categorizing them into high, medium and low priority. Obviously, it’s in your best interest to address the high priority issues first and work your way down the list. In my case, I had site caching disabled which raised a “high priority” flag.

I also ran a second site speed test at WebPageTest.org. The feedback from test results are similar in nature to those generated by Google’s online tool with one major advantage: WebPageTest let’s you compare site speed before and after improvements. My original test tracked my site’s Page Load Time at nearly 9.5 seconds, which is dreadful. After a few tweaks I managed to reduce page speed to 5.8 and eventually to 5.4 seconds. I’m not done yet!

WebPageTest.org also gives you a score on a scale of 0-100 and allows you to bookmark your results so that you can come back any time to run additional tests. Maybe you could compare your site to a competitor or another site that you think loads quickly?

Cache your WordPress site to increase page speed

I recommend you install a WordPress caching plugin, such as WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache. These services basically ”generate static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog, so that they load faster. After an html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.”

There are a ton of settings within both of these plugins, but the good news is that they are pretty self-explanatory with plenty of documentation to help you set things up right.

Once activated, you’ll notice a difference in site speed right away. Note that because you’re now caching your site, when you make changes to your site, they may not appear when you refresh your browser. To overcome this, either turn off the caching while updating your site or clear your browser’s cache file. It’s no big deal, but it can be confusing the first time you experience this.

Minify and Optimize your CSS

If you have a complex WordPress theme and multiple plugins, your site will slow down unless you properly optimize your javascript and css. You can do this manually, Wp-Minify is a great plugin that handles it for you.

There are only a few setting for this plugin and the default settings should do just fine. If you run into any problems, you may choose to exclude certain JavaScript or CSS files.

You can see in this screenshot that my page speed decreased by another full second after activating WP-Minify! Sweet!

Optimize your WordPress Database

If you’ve had your site up for any length of time, it’s likely that your MySql database is cluttered with extra content that is negatively impacting your site’s speed. Fortunately, there’s a great WordPress plugin to help clean up the mess.

WP-Optimize is a WordPress 2.9++ database cleanup and optimization tool. It doesn’t require PhpMyAdmin to optimize your database tables. It allows you to remove post revisions, comments in the spam queue, un-approved comments within few clicks.

via WordPress › WP-Optimize « WordPress Plugins.

Was this helpful? Let me know if your site speed improves!

Setup an RSS Feed for Your Google Plus Account

Steinar — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:59:43 +0000

If you’re like me, you like to use RSS feeds to aggregate and distribute content. Strangely enough, Google Plus does offer an RSS feed by default.

There is a simple solution from PlusFeed that takes less than a minute to setup.

First, visit your Google Plus profile and copy your account ID from your browser’s address bar.

Next, visit http://plusfeed.appspot.com/ and add your Google Plus ID to the end of the URL. This will generate your Google Plus RSS feed. From there, you can add your feed to Google Reader, connect it to FriendFeed, or a plethora of other options to track and distribute your content.

Enjoy!

How I use Google Analytics as Inspiration for Future Blog Posts

Steinar — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 06:08:35 +0000

I pay pretty close attention to my Google Analytics stats, because it’s a great way to find out what people are looking for and why they visit my site. HINT: It doesn’t show you any data from the people that did not visit your site, but you can use Google Webmaster Tools to do that.

More importantly, smart queries I run on keyword search data serves as great inspiration for future blog posts. To illustrate this point, I thought it would be fun to share a list of the search queries on my site from July that begin with “how.” This is a solid indicator of what questions people have and how I may be able to help them.

If you have Google Analytics and would like to run this same report on your site …

Go to Analytics>Traffic Sources >All Traffic.
Select Keywords as the Secondary Dimension
Enter “how” as the search term
Click Advanced and select “begins with”

Of course, you can change any of the variables to run a different report depending on your needs.

July search queries that begin with “How”

how to start a podcast
how important are tags in wordpress
how to attract customers
how does youtube search engine work
how to create a podcast on ipad
how to get facebook show my site picture when i post a link
how to make a podcast on ipad
how to publish podcast using ipad
how youtube seo works
how can ipad help my business
how i use my ipad
how to improve business facebook page
how to record podcast on ipad
how to share images from your website to facebook
how to share photos on page
how to start a pod cast
how to swipe back in web browser mac lion
how to swipe between desktops in lion
how youtube search works
how are consumers using foursquare
how businesses can leverage fourquare
how can a ipad help my business
how can an ipad help my business
how can companies engage with customers on twitter
how can i podcast with garage band for ipad
how can i scan a qr code into my phone?
how can i scan qr code on my phone
how can ipads help my business
how can the i pad help my business
how can the ipad be used to help business
how come i can no longer use the 3 finger swipe for back and forward in my browser on os x lion?
how do i create podcast on ipad
how do i create podcasts with an ipad
“how do i engage “”user agent”" in safari”
how do i get my garage band audio published as a podcast
how do i get my podcast in iweb to work
how do i make a podcast on ipad
how do i record podcast on ipad
how do i scan a qr code into my phone
how do i share a wall photo in facebook?
how do i use a mouse icon on the i pad?
how do i use the cursor in ipad safari
how do you engage with your customers?*
how do you get a different cursor for ipad
how do you get images to show up when you post links on facebook
how do you get picture show up in facebook link
how do you get your website logo to show up on facebook when you post its link
how do you make podcast on ipad
how do you scan a qr code into your phone
how do you swipe between desktops on osx lion
how do you swipe between desktops os x lion
how does facebook and twitter improve a business
how does fooursquare work for retailers
how fast is social networking growing
how i can share link from youtube on facebook via ipad
how important are post tags?
how important are tags in wordpress websites
how important is it to use post tags
how important tag post
how insert paypal buy now button in wordpress
how ipad help business
how much does it cost to distribute a podcast through itunes?
how much does it cost to start a podcast
how much does starting a podcast start
how to 520 grid
how to add author title to podcast in iweb
how to attract bussiness to your storefront
how to attract clients to your location
how to attract customers in opening day
how to attract customers to storefront
how to attract customers to your coffee store
how to attract customers to your store?
how to attract first time customer mobile phones
how to attract your online customers
how to build a distribution strategy
how to build samson mic
how to connect facebook video
how to create a fbml layout
how to create and publish a podcast on itunes from your ipad
how to create ipad podcast
how to create podcast for ipad
how to create podcast ipad
how to define social media objectives
how to define your social media objectives
how to do a blog mini series
how to do a podcast on an ipad
how to do podcast from ipad
how to drive customer engagement
how to embed a video from hulu on wordpress
how to embed audioboo into wordpress post
how to enhance my business facebook page
how to finger swipe browser on mac
how to fix facebook linter tool errors
how to get a description of your link to show up on facebook
how to get a picture to show up in facebook link
how to get a picture to show when you post a link on facebook
how to get better customers with social media
how to get cool back/forward in osx lion
how to get facebook show the picture when you link
how to get facebook wall updates from all friends
how to get website picture in facebook link
how to have picture show up facebook link
how to i improve my business page for facebook
how to improve facebook business page
how to improve facebook business pages
how to improve your company’s facebook page tutorial
how to link a blog for affiliate marketing
how to linter old post
how to log in to facebook as a page
how to log in to facebook pages
how to login as page facebook
how to lure customers by redeem marketing strategies
how to make a podcast for ipad
how to make a podcast from a ipad
how to make a podcast ipad
how to make a podcast mac garageband skype
how to make a podcast with skype on mac
how to make custom facebook layouts
how to make iphone to be a mouse on ipad
how to make podcast on ipad
how to make podcat on ipad
how to make the existing content works
how to mini-websites in facebook page
how to navigate in browsers with lion
how to navigate swipe os x lion
how to ping facebook for rss update
how to podcast a video from my ipad
how to podcast from ipad
how to podcast from your ipad
how to podcast garageband ipad
how to podcast on ipad
how to podcast with garageband ipad
how to podcast with your ipad
how to post audio
how to post in wall photos page
how to post update on facebook page
how to post updates on facebook
how to post updates on facebook page
how to post where you’re at on facebook
how to properly tag your images
how to publish a garageband podcast
how to publish a podcast on itunes ipad
how to publish a video from ipad
how to publish mp3 audio on twitter
how to pubslish podcast in iweb
how to record a podcast on ipad
how to record a podcast using the ipad
how to record a video podcast on ipad
how to record podcast from ipad
how to record podcast ipad
how to record sound and video on an ipad
how to record video blog on ipad
how to right click in osx lion browser
how to scan into my iphone
how to setup a new store front to attract people
how to share facebook wall to
how to share images in facebook from other site
how to share link on facebook with ipad
how to share photo from other website to facebook
how to share photos on a facebook page
how to share photos on another facebook page
how to share photos on facebook pages
how to share pictures on wall
how to share pictures on your wall
how to share tagged photos of you on facebook on your wall
how to share wall photo on facebook
how to start a podcast equipment
how to start a podcast on itunes
how to swip in browser in lion
how to swipe back in os x lion browser
how to swipe back lion browser
how to swipe back web navigation osx lion
how to swipe between desktops on lion
how to swipe to navigate on lion
how to uplaod a single picture to your wall on facebook
how to use 520grid
how to use ipad daily
how to use login facebook
how to use press this on wordpress
how to videocast ipad
how to wall photos on facebook
how web 2.0 works in seo
how will an ipad help productivity
how would a ipad help my business
how youtube search engine works
howto 520grid Facebook

How could this type of data from your website help you write better blog posts?

3 Tools to Record, Publish and Share Screen Capture Video

Steinar — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 02:28:46 +0000

I’ve often said that it’s good for bloggers to mix up their content with a variety of different forms of media. Rather than just text, you might spice things up with images, video, or audio. The benefit for your reader is that they’re not always seeing the same form of media and therefore your site is more interesting and more appealing to a broader range of readers.

Video can sometimes be a bit intimidating if you’re not comfortable putting your face on the camera. Video recording yourself is not always appropriate as well if you’re trying to demonstrate a product or show someone how to do something online. In those cases, it can sometimes make more sense to do a screen capture video. Here I’m going to discuss three alternative ways to record a screen capture video so that you can share something with your readers.

3 Tools for Screen Capture Video

1. Screenr.com

The first option is to use a great free online video capture service called screenr. You can visit the website screenr.com and joinby using your Twitter ID as your login username and password. From their screenr gives you the option to record a new video.

By simply clicking on the record now button you will be presented with a resizable window that you can basically position to fit the area of your computer screen that you want to record. You can either record something that you see on your browser or something that you see within an application such as PowerPoint or Keynote that you want to record.

Then you simply press the record button and start recording. You have 5 min. to record your video and you can just use the built-in microphone with your laptop or your computer to do the audio. Screenr records all of your mouse movements and does not require any editing. In fact there is no editing capability within screenr .

The benefit of using Screenr is that you can record videos very quickly on the fly and save them to YouTube. You can also download your videos for further editing if you choose and then republish them on any platform that you wish. I like to use screenr on occasion in those situations where I just need to record something quickly and get it out there without doing any editing.

2. Screenflow for Mac

A second option that I use quite frequently is Screenflow for Mac. Screenflow is a $99 product that gives you full control over the screen capture and audio recording requirements for recording anything that you see on your desktop. The beauty of Screenflow is the post recording editing capabilities.

In my opinion Screenflow provides the best end-user experience in terms of the way screen capture is presented because it allows you to zoom in on the mouse and record any keystrokes that you perform while recording the video. You can also add text titles and other zoom in zoom out effects to give it a very professional look and feel.

You can also add additional videos on top of one another so that you can combine multiple videos into one final product and create the best possible screen capture to get across your point. Screenflow is highly recommended by professionals and you see it quite often on some of the best tutorial websites across the web.

3. Quicktime

The third option for those of you that have a Mac is QuickTime. The latest version of QuickTime that comes with Lion OS X allows you to record video from your screen or any application on your computer and again allows you to determine the width and height of the recording capture size.

Quicktime is really a great solution if you just need a basic screen capture video. There is no built-in editing capability but if you’d like to export your video to iMovie the sky is the limit. The latest version of Quicktime also provide you with the ability to export to YouTube and Facebook among many other options. This is great if you want to use social media as a platform to distribute your videos online.

As I mentioned earlier screen capture is a great way to put video on your blog or on your website without actually shooting video of you talking or some other subject using a video camera. It’s a great way to illustrate a point or post a tutorial on your website and teach other people how to do something.

I’ve gotten tremendous traffic to my website with screen capture videos and I highly recommend them to any blogger looking to add a little variety to their blog.

Do you ever recorder and publish screen capture video on your website? What tools do you use?

A few cool finger swipe features in OSX Lion

Steinar — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 06:01:34 +0000

Apple released OSX Lion for the Mac this week. Here are a few of the cool new finger swipe features that should help improve user experience and efficiency.

OSX Lion iCal Navigation with 2-Finger Swipe

OSX Lion introduced a new version of iCal which allows you to navigate through days, weeks, months and years by simply using a 2-finger swipe to the left and right. This was particularly interesting to me since I was hoping we could get this feature on the iPad. It may be a sign of good things to come!

Browser swipe navigation with OSX Lion for the Mac

With OSX Lion you can navigate through your browser history simply by swiping two fingers left and right. No longer necessary to click the forward and back buttons. Very cool!

Switching desktops and apps with OSX Lion Mission Control

OSX Lion for Apple allows you to easily swipe between desktops and apps with a 3- finger swipe.

How to leverage Foursquare to engage local consumers and grow your business

Steinar — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 18:29:54 +0000

Foursquare is a web and mobile application that let’s users virtually “check-in” to your location and share their experience with friends within their social network.

Unlike Twitter, where people mostly talk about what they’re up to, Foursquare uses GPS to geo-tag an individual’s location. For example, if I visit Starbucks I can use the Foursquare iPhone app to “check-in”. When I do this, all my Foursquare friends and Twitter followers get an update or notification. That is, roughly 1500 people now see that I’m at Starbucks. While I’m there I can also add a comment, attach a photo or leave a tip for others that check-in later.

Why do I use Foursquare as a consumer? I check-in on Foursquare for a few reasons. First, I want to share places I love with my friends. I love the lunch menu at West Main Restaurant in Charlottesville, so every time I go there I take a picture of my meal and check-in. I also check-in to places because maybe it’s someplace new and I want to make other people aware of this store or location. Finally, I check-in on Foursquare because I want rewards. If I check-in enough I’ll become what’s called the Mayor. In some restaurants and retail establishment, the Mayor is given special discounts, free parking or other perks. That’s where you come in.

Businesses need to get a grasp on Foursquare to leverage the fact that there are millions of users checking in all the time. In Charlottesville alone there are likely 1,000 people actively using Foursquare on a regular basis. Most of us share our check-ins on Twitter and Facebook. What does this mean for your business? Well, if your business has some special incentive you could offer those who check-in or earn Mayor status, your brand can get a serious number of impressions across the social landscape rather quickly.

If you own a business, go to foursquare.com, register as a user and claim your location. Set up a special for all the Foursquare users out there and make it a good one. I don’t want 10% off – I want something really special.

Is your business using Foursquare? How’s that going? If not, why?

Video: how to connect with and engage other businesses on Facebook with your Facebook Page

Steinar — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 20:56:21 +0000

In the following two videos I show you how to connect with and engage other businesses on Facebook with your Facebook Page. This is a powerful strategy to build b2b relationships and build brand awareness through other brands.

How to share photos on your Facebook Page Wall

Steinar — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 22:46:49 +0000

Now that you have a Facebook Page and your business is ready to start sharing content with your fans, I recommend you consider pictures, photos, and other graphics in your status updates. These items are filtered with greater preference by Facebook on your fans’ news feed. In other words, they are given priority over text updates and links so your fans have a better chance of seeing them.

To share a photo on your Facebok Page Wall, click on the “Photo” in the Share section and either upload a single photo, snap a picture with your webcam or upload a series of photos into an album. Provide a meaningful description in either case, including a description for each individual photo in an album. You can also tag people or other Facebook Pages in your photos to begin sharing immediately.

In some cases a photograph might not make sense and you would like to share something from your desktop or website. Two great tools I recommend for this type of image screen capture are Skitch for the Mac or SnagIt for Windows. Both applications allow you to take a screenshot of a portion of your screen, save that image to your computer, which you may then share on Facebook. Very cool!

How are you creatively sharing photos and other images on your Facebook Page?

How to post status updates to your Facebook Page

Steinar — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 18:21:38 +0000

You have a Facebook Page for your business and now it’s time to post a status update. It’s seems rather straightforward but there are some strategies to make the most from this important process. For most people status updates are at the heart of communicating on Facebook so you want to understand how to do it well.

First, I recommend you post original thought in your updates. Don’t just regurgitate someone else’s words. Add something new to the conversation. For example, if you’re linking to a news article, add a question for your readers to consider and potentially answer. This is a great way to bring out the human side of your brand and encourage engagement.

Second, when posting a link, Facebook will automatically pull the Title and Description meta data from the target content. By clicking on these items, you can customize them for better impact and understanding. Occasionally, the meta data Facebook pulls in is complete garbage so this feature can be a real lifesaver.

Finally, take the time to explore the customization options available in your post targeting. You can select to whom the post is visible based on geography and gender. If it makes sense, target your posts to these audiences – the extra effort could have tremendous benefit.

What tactics have you found successful when posting to your Facebook Page?

How to login and use Facebook as a Page

Steinar — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 01:14:15 +0000

Using Facebook as a Page is a powerful alternative to the traditional login, in that it allows you to comment and post on other business Pages as a Page, rather than as an individual.

To switch to Page mode, simply click on Account in the upper right hand corner and choose “Use Facebook as a Page.” A popup screen will appear; find the Page your want to switch to (probably only one choice in the list); select Switch and you’re off and running. You can also do this by going to your Page and selecting “Use Facebook as ” on the right hand side.

To switch back to yourself on Facebook, select “Switch back to …” from the dropdown menu under Account in the upper righthand corner. Good luck and enjoy!

11 Examples of Jingles and Introductions from Leading Marketing Podcasts in iTunes

Steinar — Tue, 17 May 2011 19:19:12 +0000

I’m working on an introduction for my new podcast and threw together a few examples from some of the leading marketing podcasts on iTunes.

UPDATE: Here’s my new intro.

Some of these are better than others, but at the end of the day they provided me with some useful inspiration for my own podcast.

Enjoy!

These intros aren’t that difficult to create. You could easily create your own in Garageband with some simple sound bites mixed with some of the built in musical effects.

You could also use a sight such as fiverr.com. There are dozens of voice specialists that will create a killer podcast intro for only $5. Well worth $20 to get 4 versions put together, right?

Are you podcasting? How’s that going?

3 Reasons to Consider Video Marketing for Your Business

Steinar — Tue, 10 May 2011 16:43:43 +0000

In this video, I join Jim Harshaw of Riot Sports Marketing to discuss 3 reasons why businesses should consider using video marketing as a powerful marketing channel to communicate with their market online.

Three main reasons are:

YouTube is the #2 search engine on the Internet. More than ever, people are relying on video to learn about companies and consume content in general.
The availability of inexpensive, high quality video camera equipment makes it so easy to produce and publish content. You can use a webcam, a portable video camera such as the Kodak Zi8, a traditional camcorder such as the Canon HG20 or some of the new DSLR cameras which allow you to produce stunning HD video with depth of field.
Since Google owns YouTube, video is a great method to rank higher in search engines. With a keyword rich title and description, YouTube videos can drive significant traffic to your site from people searching on Google.

Getting started with YouTube is easy. Just head over to YouTube.com, sign up for your free account, and start uploading videos. If you’re nervous, just keep your videos private until you feel more comfortable in front of the camera.

What are you doing to leverage video as a powerful channel to communicate with your market?

Blog Monetization Strategy: Capturing Leads (Charlottesville Blogville Conference)

Steinar — Wed, 04 May 2011 20:15:25 +0000

Last week I spoke at the Blogville Conference in Charlottesville on the subject of Monetization. This video is a short except from that presentation specifically discussing the front end process of capturing leads.

Description: Capturing leads on your blog is the process of allowing visitors to share their email or contact information with you in order to communicate with them in the future.
Benefits: Capturing lead information provides the opportunity to develop deeper relationships with your readers, facilitate knowledge transfer, offer specials deals and build out your network.
Tools & Resources: Aweber, Constant Contact, iContact, MailChimp, Facebook Like, Twitter
Implementation: Embed a lead capture form. Don’t ask for a lot of information. Consider offering something of immediate value in return.
Reality Check: Readers will only opt-in to your list if they trust you can offer value specific to their needs. Consider a 3% opt-in rate excellent for a simple, non-targeted opt-in form. A highly targeted opt-in form on a landing page could expect something more in the range of 20-40%.

Podcasting 101: Realities of Creating and Editing your First Podcast Episode

Steinar — Tue, 03 May 2011 12:55:27 +0000

This is the second in a series of podcast episodes I’m doing with Mike Bisceglia from Cvillepodcast.com to help educate businesses on the realities and benefits of podcasting. In our first episode we talked about the basics of podcasting, including recording, editing, publishing and promotion.

In this episode Mike and I discuss a few applications to record and edit your podcast.

Listen or Download

Producing and editing your podcast can seem daunting at first. You may not feel comfortable putting your voice out there, but with practice and the right tools this may be overcome with time. Editing can be a rather technical process as well, so be prepared to either learn how to do it your self or hire someone to help.

Here are two great podcasting tools to get you on the right path:

1) GarageBand for the Mac. This audio software comes with every Mac and provides professional level editing tools to capture, enhance and out put your recording as an MP3.

2) Audacity for both Mac and Windows. Audacity has been around for years and is an excellent, free application to record and edit your podcast.

Feel free to contact me or email Mike Bisceglia at cvillepodcast@gmail.com for more information!

Podcasting 101: Tips To Create Your Own Podcast

Steinar — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:41:15 +0000

This is the first in a series of podcast episodes I’m doing with Mike Bisceglia from Cvillepodcast.com to help educate businesses on the realities and benefits of podcasting.

As you know, podcasting is a great channel to leverage the 100 million+ Apple devices out there not to mention the millions of other devices capable of subscribing and listening to your show.

In this episode we lay the groundwork with some basic tips and essential tools you can use to create your own podcast! Want to have your own show? We’ll discuss options to do-it-yourself or work with Mike in the radio production studio for a professional recording, editing and publishing experience.

Feel free to contact me or email Mike Bisceglia at cvillepodcast@gmail.com for more information!

Listen or Download

P.S. – It took some real guts to include this picture of me wearing that awful headset

P.S.S. – You can subscribe to my blog’s podcast via iTunes here

How to Attract Customers to Your Storefront with Foursquare

Steinar — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 20:12:53 +0000

Foursquare is one of the leading geo-location check-in mobile applications available to the millions of smart phone users around the world. It basically allows people to indicate they are at or nearby a given location based on GPS enabled services bundled with their phone. If you think this sounds silly, consider the fact that Foursquare is adding 35,000 new users each day as of April 2011.

For example, let’s say I stop in at a local coffee shop. When I open Foursquare on my iPhone, it recognizes that I’m nearby and with the click of a button I can “Check-In.” If I have “friends” or connections I’ve established on Foursquare then they all see see my check-in as well. I may also choose to broadcast my check-in on Twitter and Facebook and include a comment or picture as well.

At this point, I’ve shared my location, the name of the retailer and potentially some other color commentary to my friends. Simple enough.

Retailer Venue Setup on Foursquare

The retailer, on the other hand, has just benefited from free publicity. If I have 1200 friends between Twitter and Facebook, that’s 1200 people that have just seen their brand name. Maybe I mentioned how good the coffee was or how delightful the service was. Again, more free publicity.

Most retailers have a listing on Foursquare whether they know it or not. By simply creating an account, they can login, claim their location and update their profile with additional information to help spread the word and best represent their brand on Foursquare. It only takes a few minutes and can make a world of difference. For example, you can add detailed address information, product categories, and add tips and links to content you choose.

Setting up Foursquare Specials

Retailers and other businesses that use Foursquare have the ability to leverage Foursquare by offering Specials – incentives to Foursquare users that perform certain check-in behavior in order to earn rewards. There are four types of Specials a business can offer on Foursquare:

Friends Special -
You can set a minimum number of foursquare friends a user needs to check-in with to unlock a Special. That special is only redeemed when that pre-set number of friends check-in together. The goal is to get groups of friends coming to your venue.

Swarm Special -
You can set a minmum number of foursquare users that need to check-in within a 3-hour window in order to unlock this Special. It can only be unlocked once per day per venue, and is great to incentivize large groups to visit your business!

Flash Special -
This Special gets its name from “Flash Sale”. You set the number of Specials that you want to unlock per day, then after that its first-come, first-serve. When it reaches the unlock limit, there are no more Specials for the day. This is great for special limitied quanity sales.

Newbie Special -
This type of Special unlocks on a user’s first time visitng your venue. This is the most direct way to drive new traffic to your venue.

Check-in Special -
These are our classic Specials. They unlock on every check-in, or on whatever conditions you apply. This is great for rewarding users on their routine check-ins.

Mayor Special -
This Special is swarded to the Mayor fo your venue. The foursquare Mayor is the most frequent visitor over the last 60 days. This is a great way to reward your best customer and encouraging competition for the prize.

Loyalty Special -
There are a few ways to use a loyalty Special. You can reward a user every X times they visit, you can reward them for coming in X times in total, or you can reward them for being loyal within a certain period: for X visits over Y days.

The Newbie, Check-in, and Mayor specials seem to be most popular, I guess becuase they require the least amount of effort on behalf of both the customer and retailer. The other types of specials require longer-term participation and/or multiple users, so they maybe the next logical step.

What’s most suprising is how few retailers actually setup Specials. In Charlottesville, for example, there are roughly 15 specials throughout the entire city at any given time. Also, for those that have Specials, they haven’t changed … ever! Some retailers have had the same specials for nearly a year. Personally, I think they would benefit from some variety, especially, given the new types of specials available.

Fast Start with Foursquare

If you’re a retailer, first visit Foursquare and find your venue by searching on the homepage. If it’s listed you can “Claim this Venue” and make the necesary adjustments. If your venue does not already exist on foursquare, you can create a new venue by scrolling to the bottom of the search results (bottom of page) and clicking “Add a new venue to foursquare.”

Next, think about potential Specials you can run. Maybe run two to begin – one that’s easy for folks to achieve with a single check-in and another that requires some more work. Make it something truly fantastic, something they’ll want to share with all their friends on Twitter and Facebook.

What do you think of Foursquare? Do you find it useful as a consumer? Has your business seen much success using Foursquare to drive business?

5 Tips for a Better Facebook Page

Steinar — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 05:37:57 +0000

By now most of you who own a business or are in charge of marketing for your company have set up a Facebook Page. If you haven’t, please go to Facebook.com/pages and get started right away.

As you know Facebook is the number one website on the Internet and it’s critical for your company to have an established presence on Facebook and take advantage of the popularity of Facebook to connect with your market via social media.

If you’re struggling to customize your Facebook page and interact with fans, here are some simple steps to set up a professional Facebook page that best represents your brand.

1. Your logo can have maximum dimensions of 600 pixels tall by 200 pixels wide. Some companies use this space to create a custom JPEG or PNG image that includes additional information other than just their logo.

2. I find it’s best to post content to your Facebook page every day. This may seem like overkill at first but honestly don’t you have something to say about your business on a regular basis? The fact of the matter is that most people are following so many companies and individuals on Facebook that your message can easily get lost in the shuffle so don’t feel like you’re overwhelming your audience with too much information.

3. The recent updates to Facebook allow you to include a number of pictures at the top of your Facebook page. In fact you can include five pictures and I recommend you carefully pick these pictures to best illustrate your brand image and draw attention to your page. Some companies in fact have used this new feature as a way to better display their brand and present a more creative approach to the layout of their Facebook page.

4. If you have more than 25 fans I highly recommend that you create a custom username or custom URL for your Facebook page. Once you have 25 fans go to Facebook.com/username to register your custom URL. Please note that this custom URL can never be changed. The advantage of creating a custom URL is that you can use it in other forms of traditional marketing such as print advertising, radio advertising and television advertising to draw fans to your page. The worst thing you can do is say “find us on Facebook” and leave it up to the individual to find your page.

5. One last tip is to create content that invites users to interact with you on Facebook. Post a poll or ask a question. In fact, I recommend that you finish every post with a question. Studies suggest that people will leave comments more often if you pose a question rather than simply stating some facts or linking to another article off of Facebook. Did you also know that video and images get priority in terms of how they are distributed to your fans individual Facebook feeds?

I hope these tips help as you and your company explore the opportunities to leverage Facebook as a powerful channel to market your business online. Please contact me if you have any questions or would like help setting up your Facebook page.

P.S. — This blog post was written as a transcription from Dragon Dictation on my iPad 2. It’s just one tool I use to help increase my efficiency when it comes to marketing my business online. Plus, I can’t type that fast What tools are you using to increase efficiency and effectiveness in your online marketing?

Podcasting Equipment and Tools

Steinar — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 21:05:57 +0000

In this video we’ll discuss podcasting equipment and tools, including microphones, headphones, devices and software to record, edit, publish and promote your podcast. What’s most exciting is the variety of tools that are available – you can go simple with just a smart phone and publish without editing or high-end with professional sound equipment and edit as much as you want.

Podcasting Equipment and Tools:

Microphone
- Built-in
- USB External
- Phone
- Stand-alone recorder (Zoom)
Headphones
Recording Device
- Mac, PC, Phone, Tablet
Software

What podcasting equipment and tools are you using these days?

What is Podcasting and Why Is It Important for Your Business

Steinar — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 21:05:48 +0000

In this video I discuss what podcasting is and why it’s important for your business. With the proliferation of mobile devices and the ease with which you can create and publish audio, podcasting is a great channel to promote your business and connect with your market.

What is Podcasting?

Portable on Demand Broadcasting
Netcasting
Regularly schedule content delivery
Audio / Video / Pdf’s
No min or max time requirements
iTunes and/or iPod not required

Why Podcasting is Important for Your Business

Mobile device proliferation
Differentiate your business
Add variety to your blog
Say more with less effort
Discuss topics at length
Interview others
Broaden market reach
Audio may be “easier” than video

Have you tried podcasting? How’s that going for your business?

Thoughts on Podcasting

Steinar — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 21:47:01 +0000

Podcasting is a fantastic channel to engage your market and reach a new audience. This morning I led a discussion on this topic with the SheBlogs group in Charlottesville.

The main takeaway is that there are several different approaches to podcasting either from the web, your Mac or PC, your phone and even the web.

This audio was recorded using the VR+ recording app available on iTunes for $1.99 and I am writing this text using the WordPress iPhone app. No longer are we tied to the expensive tools that once served as a barrier to effective podcasting.

Listen or Download

What are your thoughts on podcasting? Have you considered it in your marketing mix?

Garageband for the iPad – Mobile Podcasting Getting Easier

Steinar — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 01:14:58 +0000

With the announcement last week of the iPad 2, Apple also introduced the release of Garageband for the iPad. For those of you not familiar with Garageband, it is a simple yet powerful music and audio production software tool that’s been available on the Mac for several years.

Garageband is loved by both musicians and podcasters because of its simplistic user interface, yet advanced capabilities. Want to burn a single track and email to your friend – no problem. Want to record 8-tracks with both live and MIDI instruments with complex effects and save to your iPod? No problem.

The beauty of Garageband on the iPad is that you’ll now be able to do all of this on the go, with great battery life and the ability for sync your GB file tracks back to your Mac for editing and final mixdown. That’s pretty appealing.

Video: How to Use Facebook as a Page

Steinar — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 15:10:12 +0000

The ability to use Facebook as a Page is a relatively new and exciting feature. The benefit is that companies can connect with other companies and members of their community or niche as a company rather than as an individual.

Try Facebook Sponsored Stories instead of traditional Facebook Ads

Steinar — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 15:16:58 +0000

By now, you have probably heard about, seen, or tried Facebook Ads. Just login to Facebook – they’re the stuff on the right side of the screen. If you’re trying to market something on Facebook, Facebook Ads are a great and very popular means with which to get your brand in front of millions of potential customers and fans.

Over the years, Facebook Ads setup options have remained relatively the same. That’s changed with the introduction of Facebook “Sponsored Stories.” Basically, this option gives you the ability to “Sponsor” a recent Facebook post on your target market’s feed, as a targeted story along the right sidebar.

I’ve found the best results by targeting friends of my Page’s fans. So if John Smith is a fan, my Story or Post shows up on his personal friend’s Facebook page. The hook is that below the Story it says “John Smith like this” and there a handy Like button included. This takes advantage of the social connections on Facebook rather than just serving up anonymous Ads. Plus, as you ad new posts to you Facebook Page, the Sponsored Stories change, so the Ads really never look the same.

In my recent experience, Sponsored Stories cost the same as traditional Ads and results are 100% better. For example, I ran a test yesterday to 40,000 people. The traditional ad got zero clicks, while the Sponsored Stories got 66 clicks – 100% of which where “Social” in nature.

To set up Facebook Ad, head over to facebook.com/ads or just click below and click Create an Ad. Enjoy!

New Facebook Comments in WordPress

Steinar — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 01:45:19 +0000

Facebook just released an exciting new set of code to embed Facebook Comments in your website.

You’ll need a Facebook Application ID, so first setup your app at the Facebook Developers Center.

Then, head over to the Facebook Comments Social Plugin Page to get the code for your Comments.

Here it is in action. (Hint: Leave a Comment!)

Not Seeing all your Friends or Pages on your Facebook Wall?

Steinar — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 21:28:15 +0000

With the latest Facebook update, there was a little talked about change that you may be impacting you Wall.

To make sure you can see all your friends or Pages on your Facebook Wall, visit your Wall and scroll all the way down to the bottom.

Click on “Edit Options”

Now choose to show posts from “All your friends and pages”

All better now.

5 Reasons to Like the New Facebook Pages Layout

Steinar — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:05:31 +0000

The new Facebook Pages layout is now available and there are some great new features that admins should like:

1. Ability to login to Facebook as a Page and post on other Pages. This was somewhat possible before by Liking and Mentioning other Pages, but the new process is much more straightforward.

2. Ability to arrange photos as a header for your Page. You now have your main logo (200x600px) plus 5 photos to work with. Time to get creative!

3. Ability to receive email updates when fans post or comment on your Page. This is a feature admins have been asking for since day one.

4. Ability to Like other Pages and feature their content in your sidebar. Nice if you’re trying build goodwill across multiple pages to grow your fanbase.

5. FBML moves to iFrames. This is huge since FBML was an entirely new language that most folks didn’t take the time to really understand. Now you can frame up your favorite HTML pages in a frame.

If you don’t understand how any of this works, take some time to poke around on your Facebook Page to familiarize yourself with the changes. Give me a call at 434-806-3272 or leave a comment below if you need help.

How to add a simple PayPal Buy Now button to your website

Steinar — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 18:25:19 +0000

PayPal payment buttons are an easy way to accept payments online for products and services. If you have something to sell online, installing these buttons is rather easy once you have an account.

1. Login to PayPal and visit Merchant Services

2. Click on the Buy Now Button icon

3. Fill in the appropriate details, including item name, item ID, and price. You may also have a series of options you can load into a convenient drop-down box.

4. Click Create Button, if you wish to simply install the standard button or continue to Steps 2 and 3 if you wish to further customize.

5. PayPal will now provide you with some HTML that you can paste into the body of your website. If you’re using WordPress, you could post this into a blog post (use the HTML view) or in the sidebar if you want it to show up on every page throughout your site.

Happy Selling!

Episode 6 – Blogging for Business: Using WordPress as Your Blogging Platform

Steinar — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 19:19:53 +0000

In this episode I discuss choosing a blogging platform and hosting package. I really focus on WordPress in particular but there are several options, including Blogger, Moveable Type, TypePad, or Tumblr to name a few.

I prefer WordPress because it’s free, it has a great community of users and developers that help provide support and it’s rather simple to use. You can either use WordPress at WordPress.com or download a version at WordPress.org.

I recommend you download WordPress from WordPress.org and install it on your own server. To do this you’ll need a hosting package from a domain hosting service, such as Bluehost. This approach gives you the greatest control and flexibility over the long run.

Adding new posts to your WordPress blog is simple. Just login to your admin panel and add a “New Post” much like you would write an email. Enter the subject and body of the Post and hit “Publish.” If you need to expand the functionality of the blog, there are a number of great plugins available in the WordPress Plugins directory.

How I use my iPad everyday to help manage my business

Steinar — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 03:01:14 +0000

I use my iPad everyday and have since May 2010 to help run my business. It’s a great tool to supplement my other computers and iPhone.

Primarily I use it for:
- Presentations to small groups of people (Keynote)
- Reading RSS feeds and sharing with clients or business partners (Reeder)
- Facebook & Twitter (Osfoora & FlipBoard)
- Blogging (WordPress)
- Recording and posting podcasts (AudioBoo)
- Writing my book (Pages)
- Reading books (iBooks and Kindle)
- Watching videos (YouTube)
- Refencing my files on the go (DropBox)
- Downloading and reading PDF’s (GoodReader)
- Taking notes (EverNote)
- Managing my email and calendar (Mail & Calendar)
- Online research and mapping directions for meetings (Safari & Maps)
- Sketching out ideas (Adobe Ideas)
- Managing my To-Do lists (Things)

There are other applications I use on a regular basis, but these are the main business apps I use to support my business. The iPad is great because it turns on immediately, it’s extremely portable, has great battery life, has the best selection of great applications, and has wireless and 3G Internet access. It’s a valuable asset to my business.

How do you use your iPad?

Easily Create Custom Facebook Page FBML Layouts with the 520 Grid System

Steinar — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 01:22:59 +0000

You’ll need some HTML and CSS know-how to take advantage of the very simple 520 Grid Layout available for download over at 520grid.com.

Personally, 520Grid just makes it easier to create custom FBML. Check it out.

520 Grid System – HTML/CSS Framework made for Facebook Page Developers.

Setting SMART Goals for your 2011 Internet Marketing Strategy

Steinar — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 21:00:16 +0000

Setting SMART goals is a proven approach to achieving success more quickly. As 2010 winds down, this is the perfect opportunity to examine your goals for 2011 and apply the SMART mnemonic or acronym to increase the likelihood your goals are met.

SMART stands for:

S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Attainable
R – Realistic
T – Timely

Free Template Downloads:

Specific

You want to clearly define your goals to articulate specifically what you are trying to achieve. The question is what, how and why are you striving toward this goal?

What are you going to do? Use action words, such as create, sell, manage, or grow, etc. to bring a sense of energy to your goals.
Why are you doing this? What is the ultimate outcome? Why is this important and what impact will this have on you, your business, or your customers?
How are you going to do this? What are the sub-goals or action steps that will enable you to achieve your goal

Measurable

Attainable

Realistic

Timely

What’s your experience setting goals for the new year? Do you use the SMART mnemonic?

Video: Episode 4 Blogging for Business – Intro to Search Engine Optimization

Steinar — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 12:38:30 +0000

In our last video we talked about planning for your blog. In this video I provide a brief introduction and overview of search engine optimization (SEO) as it relates to blogging.

Search engine optimization is all of the on-page and off-page tactics you can do to drive traffic to your site when people search on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other popular search engines. The tactics we use can help maximize your exposure on those search engines.

On-page optimization is all the things you can do on your blog to help search engines know what your website is about. There’s coding you can do behind the scenes and optimization you can do with the content itself. For example, you want to include keywords throughout your site so readers and search engines can index your site for the appropriate words.

Off-site optimization is all the things you can do outside your site to maximize indexing and traffic. For example, submitting your RSS feed to feed aggregators, submitting your sitemap, and getting backlinks from other high PageRank sites.

The most popular blogging platforms support SEO to some degree and provide tools to help make it easier. The key at this point is to write great content.

In the next video we’ll discuss content creation and how to get started writing!

Video: A few words on the importance of video as a marketing channel for your business

Steinar — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 16:33:31 +0000

Obviously, I love video. It’s a great marketing channel for your business and is increasingly expected at some level by website visitors.

Video: Introducing the NEW Twitter.com

Steinar — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 22:48:03 +0000

Many of you have yet to experience the NEW Twitter.com layout, so here’s a quick video that will cover the basics.

Personally, I really like the new layout. It reminds me of the Twitter iPad app with dual columns. Overall, it’s a huge improvement.

Here are some highlights:

New design. The site has a cleaner timeline and a rich details pane that instantly adds more impact to individual Tweets while still maintaining the simplicity of the timeline. And, experience infinite scroll — you no longer have to click “more” to view additional Tweets.

Media. Now, it’s easy to see embedded photos and videos directly on Twitter, thanks to partnerships with DailyBooth, deviantART, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, TwitVid, USTREAM, Vimeo, yfrog, and YouTube.

Related content. When you click a Tweet, the details pane shows additional information related to the author or subject. Depending on the Tweet’s content, you may see: replies, other Tweets by that user, a map of where a geotagged Tweet was sent from, and more.

Mini profiles. Click a username to see a mini profile without navigating from the page, which provides quick access to account information, including bio and recent Tweets.

via Twitter Blog.

Some are recommending it over other popular tools, such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite. How do like the new Twitter?

2-Minute Pro Blogging WordPress Tip: Use Press This to Quickly Quote 3rd Party Content

Steinar — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 20:22:08 +0000

“Press This” is a great WordPress tool that allows you to easily capture content from a third party website and quote that content in your blog post. This greatly increases your efficiency if you regularly quote content from other sites on your blog.

Listen or Download

The “Press This” function allows quick publishing with a special web browser bookmarklet. You can create a post by quoting some text, images, and videos on any web page.

via Press This « WordPress Codex.

Press This comes loaded with every WordPress installation and can easily be added as a link in your browser toolbar by going to your WP administration dashboard. From the dashboard go to the tools menu on the left hand side and you will see the Press This tool listed. Use your mouse and click to drag the Press This link from the page up into you your browser toolbar.

Now when you visit a website and would like to quote something from that site just click on the Press This link in your browser toolbar and a new WordPress post window will open up.

It’s as easy as that.

My Foursquare Check-Ins on Google Maps

Steinar — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:34:25 +0000

This is pretty cool. You can map your FourSquare check-ins on a Google Map.

View Larger Map

To map your check-ins on Google Maps:
1) Login to Foursquare
2) Go to www.foursquare.com/feeds
3) Copy the KLM link url
4) Paste it into the Google Maps search bar and hit enter

That’s it – enjoy!

3 Great WordPress Plugins to Customize Your Blog’s Navigation

Steinar — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 02:12:37 +0000

WordPress 3.o introduced some great new features including an advanced set of Menu options. Nonetheless, I always find the need for additional flexibility to customize what Posts and Pages are shown on my blog, when they’re shown and in what order.

Here are 3 WordPress Plugins to Customize Your Blog’s Navigation:

PageMash: This is one of my all time favorites. It allows to drag and drop Pages into the order you need for navigation. You can also drag and drop child Pages in, out and among Parent pages. This is a real life saver if you several nested Pages and want to change things around a bit.
Exclude Pages from Navigation: This plugin provides a checkbox on the editing page which you can check to exclude pages from the primary navigation. This is useful if you want to have a page “hidden” from everyday visitors or if you really only want people to find it through a link on another Page.
WP-PageNavi: If you have a lot of Posts you’ll like this plugin, which adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog. For example, instead “previous” and “next” at the bottom, this plugin will help create a numbered index of Posts, such as Prev, 1,2,3, Next, Last. It may require some custom CSS depending on your theme, but the end result is quote nice.

Any other WordPress Plugins you recommend to customize your blog’s navigation?

My fist QR Code – scan this into your phone

Steinar — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 21:25:10 +0000

If you’re not familiar with QR codes, they are an increasingly popular method of sharing information similar to a bar code. Users with a smartphone can focus their camera on this code and the QR code software will save the information behind the code on their phone.

In this case, it’s my URL, but it could be your contact info or any number of attributes.

Want to create your own QR code and track clicks?

Create a short link at Bitly.com.
Copy the the bitly link and paste into a new browser tab or window
Add “.qr” to the end and there’s your new QR code!
Now, right click to download or save your QR code image.

Looking for a QR scanning app for your phone? Here are some sources I found:

I’m already starting to see QR codes on packaging and websites. What do you think? Are QR codes here to stay?

… Sent from my iPhone

New Audio: Podcasting from my iPad again with AudioBoo

Steinar — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 04:12:16 +0000

Podcasting on your blog and iTunes is a great way to reach your market and the iPad makes it easy. Check out the Related Posts below for more details on how this is done.

Listen or Download

7 Tools to Increase Social Media Efficiency and Save A Ton of Time

Steinar — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 01:14:33 +0000

Nearly everyone agrees that social media is a great way to reach and communicate with your market online. Weather it’s through Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, direct access to your target market has never been easier. The challenge, of course, is finding the time and resources to make the process efficient and effective. Following is my list of 7 Tools to Increase Social Media Efficiency:

1. Google Reader

This one might not be so obvious, but Google Reader is a great tool for market intelligence and brand management when it comes to social media. Basically, Google Reader allow you to subscribe to the RSS feeds on other websites, blogs, Facebook Pages and Twitter Searches that you want to track or find relevant to your market niche. You can also subscribe to Google Blog or News results containing your name, product or brand. Finally, sign up for BackTweets and track Twitter updates that link to your content.

Now you have a powerful one-stop-shop for getting up to speed on the latest news, trends, and brand mentions in your niche. Now, use this for inspiration in your next blog post, reply to people’s comments about you, and share links with your social network.

Congratulations! You just saved hours a week by setting up a proper system that pushes your content to you!

2. WordPress “Press This”

“Press This” is a often overlooked bookmarklet that comes with every WordPress blog. Essentially, it allows you to highlight text on a website and then easily quote the content in a blog post. So instead of copying and pasting text and links back and forth between a webpage and your WordPress post editor, you can now do it with the single click of a button. This is a huge time saver!!

3. Ping.fm

If you’re like most people using social media today you have accounts on multiple social media networks. Ping.fm allows you to update multiple platforms at once without having to go to each individual account. The beauty of this system is that you have central control over how information is distributed.

For example, when this blog post is published, Ping.fm will automatically send a link to Twitter, Facebook, linkedIn, and Delicious. If at any point I decide to change my distribution strategy all I only have to login to my Ping.fm account and make the changes there. This is much more efficient than re-routing my content on each individual network.

4. Smart Phone (iPhone, Droid, Blackberry, etc)

Today’s smart phones provide users with many of the same capabilities available to them on a laptop or desktop computer. However, most smart phones also have cameras and GPS capabilities that add visual interest and location-based information to your social media updates. The tools are so easy to use that literally within less than 60 seconds you can take a picture of something, tag your location, and update all of your networks with just a few clicks.

To do this from your desktop or laptop computer would take considerably longer and would be virtually impossible to complete using a standard cell phone.

5. TweetDeck or Hootsuite

Tweetdeck and Hootsuite suite are two applications that allow you to control your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn updates from one single location. This is very helpful because you no longer need to log into each individual account to post an update or to see what others have to say. Another great feature of these services is the ability to schedule or timestamp your updates for future release.

For example, if you knew that next week you were going to be announcing a new product, you could schedule your updates over the course of the next few days all at once to correspond with the upcoming product launch. This saves you the time and hassle of manually updating your accounts every day with Marketing copy you already have available now.

6. InstaPaper

InstaPaper is a free and very simple online tool that allows you to save a webpage or article for later reference. Rather than printing the article or saving it to your bookmarks or favorites where he can easily get lost, InstaPaper keeps everything organized and accessible across multiple devices by storing information in the cloud. This is particularly important if you don’t have time to read the article now and/or you would like to reference the article in an upcoming blog post.

For example, I can save something using the InstaPaper bookmarklet on my iMac desktop and it will be instantly available for viewing and sharing within my iPad InstaPaper App. Dozens of third-party applications are supported and the functionality continues to expand, so check out InstaPaper when you get a chance.

7. Posterous

Posterous is a terrific blogging platform of sorts that allows you to easily capture text, images & audio and then share this content across multiple social media networks automatically. The real differentiator is that you can e-mail content to your Posterous account, and it will use a smart filtering process to determine where and how that content is posted on your blog.

For example, you just took a picture on your cellphone and would like to post it to your Posterous account, but you would also like that picture to get posted to your Flickr account at the same time. In this case, you would e-mail your picture from your phone to Flickr@Posterous.com and Posterous would take care of the rest. Again, trying to do this manually would take considerably longer.

There are so many other tools and approaches that you could incorporate into your process to increase your social media efficiency. I hope you learned at least one new idea in this post. What other tools are you using that help make your social media life easier?

More Evidence that Social Media is Critical to Online Business Strategy

Steinar — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 01:14:33 +0000

I help companies map out their Internet marketing strategies and one component is often the use of social media. A common response is that their customers do not use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. I often argue this point, given the growing numbers and expanding demographics of those using social media.

Currently, three quarters of Internet users worldwide visit a social network or blog when they go online — that’s a 24% increase over last year.

Joe Average (the international version) spends 66% more time on these sites than he did a year ago — for example, your average user spent 6 hours on these sites in April 2010, while last year he spent 3 hours, 31 minutes.

Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia make an appearance among the world’s most popular brands.

via How the World Is Spending Its Time Online [STATS]

If your company is considering social media as a tool to reach your market online, engage with existing customers, or expand your brand to connect with new prospects, I recommend you get started with three platforms: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Facebook is the leading online social network with over 500M users. Facebook Pages are a great way for a business to leverage this volume. Pages can be custom branded to fit within your other online assets and provide an excellent channel to offer a new communications channel to your online community.

Twitter is the leading microblogging platform. Currently Google indexes Twitter content into their “Updates” results and it’s believe to provide future value in how search engines determine webpage rank. In other words, if you’re engaged with customers on Twitter, it’s an indication that your website has value and may have some level of influence over others. There certainly are a number of tracking tools that indicate this is directionally true.

YouTube is owned by Google and is the leading online video sharing site. It provides companies with the opportunity to engage with customers using video rather than static text and images. Statistics suggest that video is more engaging and website visitor retention rates are higher when video is present. Video doesn’t need to be a high production excercise and I recommend you take a more casual, conversational approach with video when using it to speak directly to your customers.

Not convinced yet that social media is right for your company? What’s holding you back?

Record and publish online video with no additional hardware or software with screenr.com

Steinar — Wed, 19 May 2010 17:17:44 +0000

Sharing video content online is something we would all like to do and screenr.com makes it easy. It’s basically a free web app for simple screen casting. It’s great if you want to narrate a powerpoint presentation or share something you’ve found online via video.

Details: Up to 5 minutes, audio recording, download finished video, save or export to YouTube, embed link and custom URL’s for linking. Plus, it’s integrated with Twitter so it’s easy to share with your friends.

Check it out at screenr.com.

Share iPad links on Twitter and Facebook with Ping.fm bookmark in Safari browser

Steinar — Fri, 07 May 2010 23:19:21 +0000

Here’s an easy technique to share iPad Safari browser links on Twitter and Facebook with a Ping.fm bookmark.

One of the most popular tasks in twitter is sharing links with your followers. On a laptop or standard computer this is fairly simple since you can just cut and paste from the browser into your favorite Twitter client, such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite.

You can do the same on the iPad but Ping.fm makes the process significantly easier by adding a Ping This bookmark in your iPad Safari bookmarks. I use MobileMe , so the Ping This bookmark is already there from my iMac and Macbook Pro.

What do you think? Easy right?

Audio and Video: How to podcast from your iPad or iPhone and publish on WordPress and iTunes

Steinar — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:53:20 +0000

It’s finally here … Mobile Podcaster. Since January 2011 I’ve been podcasting on from my iPad and publishing to WordPress and iTunes without ever touching my blog or a computer. It’s a really awesome system. I’m really proud of it and it’s now available for you too, so if you’re interested check out Mobile Podcaster.

The process I’ve outlined below with Audioboo is also perfectly good, but Audioboo is limited to 5 minutes, so keep that in mind.

The iPad serves many purposes, but for me it’s about marketing and finding new and different ways to leverage mobile technology to grow my business and engage my market online. New media has been especially interesting and I’ve confirmed the iPad is great for recording audio to create podcast episodes which can translate into new WordPress blog posts.

Audio and Video Description of Recording and Creating a Podcast on my iPad with Audioboo

Listen or Download

Posting audio directly to WordPress from my iPhone has been a project of mine for a few weeks and I have a very good solution now that you might try.

Audio is a great format to communicate with your readers for several reasons:

audio blog posts are much faster to produce
audio blog posts do not require extensive editing
you can easily set up a separate RSS feed for audio posts and let readers subscribe via iTunes (see my sidebar)
audio blog posts can be created while driving – much like talking on the phone
audio blog posts are great for interviewing people
audio blog posts are a great way to differentiate your blog and add variety

My solution satisfies the following criteria:

post audio to WordPress from my iPhone without logging into WordPress
blog posts must contain a flash audio player that is user friendly for desktop users
blog posts must contain a direct link to the raw mp3 file so that audio is mobile friendly
audio posts must publish automatically without any further editing or logging into WordPress
Any social networking notifications stem from my blog and direct users to my site, not some 3rd party site.

Installation and Setup

Here are the steps to post audio directly to WordPress from your iPhone:

Install the AudioBoo app on your iPhone (Audiobook is limited to 5 minutes. For longer recordings, check out Mobile Podcaster)
Install WP-o-Matic plugin on your WordPress blog
Install Podcasting plugin on your WordPress blog

AudioBoo

No custom settings are required. Just set up an account, go to My Boos, and copy the RSS feed address from the Address Bar.

WP-o-Matic

Set up a new Campaign
In the Basic tab, give your campaign a name, activate it, and provide a slug. I use “audio.”
In the Feed tab insert the RSS feed address from AudioBoo
In the Categories tab, indicate your preferred category. I use “podcast.”
Leave Rewrite tab blank
In the Option tab create a custom post template with the code below.

- Set Frequency at no less than 1 per hour to determine when new feeds should be checked.
- Select Published when you’re ready to go live. Choose Private or Draft while testing.
- For Max Items, I select one(1) since I do not want more than one audio post per day. You could do more if you like.
In the Tools tab, do nothing.

Podcasting Plugin

The only option I recommend you modify is the Player Width under Audio Player Options so that it fits horizontally within your post appropriately. I use 480px on my site for example.

How to Use

Open the AudioBoo app on your iPhone
Record your audio, give it a title, and publish
Your MP3 will now appear as a new post, based on the frequency you selected in WP-o-Matic Options.
After post has published you may add text to the post. If you want the ability to add text prior to publishing, change the WP-o-Matic Options back to “Draft,” but this defeats the purpose for me – the ability to publish audio to my blog without logging into WordPress at all.

What do you think? Does this work for you? There are other solutions – what are you using?

Repurposing existing content for an additional boost to your online marketing and communications strategy

Steinar — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 01:56:28 +0000

If you’re creating online content for your business, at some point it may make sense to repurpose existing content for an additional boost to your online marketing & communications strategy.

For example, let’s say you’re an avid blogger. Chances are you have a series to posts that can be organized in a fashion that somewhat resembles a short novel. Heck, even if it’s just five posts on a niche subject, surely it’s meaningful to package those posts together into one coherent piece of work.

Why? Because packaging your content helps readers consume it more easily and the easier it is for your customers and prospects to consume your content, the better.

Repurposing existing content also give you the opportunity to share your best work in a new and different way. It may look the same to you, but for your readers it somehow seems fresh. Let’s take a look at how this might work …

3 great ways to repurpose existing content

1. Create an ebook. This is so simple and requires no additional software. Simply copy and paste your blog posts into your favorite word processing program, such as MS Word or Apple Pages. Spend a little time organizing the content, creating a table of contents, building a title page, and updating the content to reflect any changes in your original work.

Paginate, add some simple headers and footers and print it out as a PDF. Apple Pages has PDF output capabilities built in. If you’re using MS Word you’ll need to use one of the dozens of free PDF creator apps or online tools. Now, upload the PDF to your website or email it to all your friends and fans. Easy, you’ve just created an ebook. Now go create another one!

2. Create a real book. If you’re in the business of meeting face-to-face with clients, it might make sense to make an actual printed soft bound or spiral book from your content.

This could be as simple as printing out your content and stapling it together; a quick visit to your local print shop where they can bind your pages for you; or using a site like LuLu.com which allows you to upload your content and create a true piece of work. I’ve seen some of these LuLu books and they’re as nice as anything your would find at the local bookstore.

Think about how great it would be to greet new clients with a copy of your latest book!!!

3. Create video or audio. Text is great, but what’s even better is when you take your blog posts and create a cool video or audio to compliment your content.

For example, open the audio recording app on your computer (MS Recorder or Apple Garageband), hit record, and read your blog post out load. Add some color to your text or some variation to the original piece for interest. Post the audio along with your blog post or start a podcast on iTunes. Maybe forward the audio to one of your clients in an email and see their reaction.

A better approach would be to record a video of the content. This could go two of several ways: 1) turn the video into a presentation (PowerPoint or KeyNote) and record the presentation with voiceover, or 2) an easier method would be to use your webcam and speak into the video camera while reading the content.

This takes practice and I recommend you learn the content so as not to actually read the words off a page. Once complete, submit your video to TubeMogul and share with YouTube and other popular sharing sites. Include a copy in your blog and your Facebook Page.

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So, there are three pretty straightforward methods of repurposing existing content to market your business online.

What do your think? Is it worth the effort to repurpose existing content? Have you tried this? What’s the results?

Start a new blog on a shoestring

Steinar — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:09:08 +0000

Blogs are a great way to share your ideas and content online, maintain control over that content, and network with others within your niche. The good news is there are several ways to start a new blog on a shoestring.

The thought of setting up and managing your own blog may at first seem overwhelming and even unnecessary to some, but the truth is it’s quite simple.

If you’re looking for a free solution check out Blogger, WordPress.com, Tumblr or Weebly. These platforms have tons of great features and you can literally be up and running in minutes. The downside is you won’t have complete control over every aspect of the site, including the URL (which you can personalize for a fee).

Two great paid solutions include WordPress and TypePad. Wordpress is the most popular mainly because of the plugins and support community. Both are specifically designed for blogging, so the admin capabilities cater to ease of use and it’s very easy to add new content on a regular basis.

If you choose to download and install WordPress on your own server or domain, you’ll need a hosting package. I use Bluehost, but several other options exist. You’ll also need an FTP client such as CyberDuck, which allows you to easilly upload files, images, themes, etc.

Again, most of the functionality and features to get started are built in, but for those of you that want a more customized approach, WordPress is probably your best bet.

Any other good options you recommend to start a new blog on a shoestring?

Google PageRank Checker – Check Google Page Rank of any Web Page

Steinar — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:05:24 +0000

Google PageRank is a factor that many consider important to search engine optimization and how your site ranks in Google search results. Here’s a site that lets you quickly check:

Google PageRank Checker – Check Google page rank of any web pages.

How to increase your PageRank? Well, that’s one of the great mysteries. Here’s how Google explains it:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.

Use Safari, MobileMe and Ping.fm to share browser bookmarks and content across iMac, iPhone and iPad

Steinar — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:53:45 +0000

Here’s a quick video to illustrate how I use Safari, MobileMe and Ping.fm to share browser bookmarks and content across my iMac, iPhone and iPad.

Why do I take this approach?

MobileMe syncs Safari bookmarks across any Apple device you setup with MobileMe and Safari
Safari is a great browser - fast, reliable, and compliant with most of the latest website components
I constantly switch between devices and need consistent access to the same bookmarks
Ping.fm allows you to centrally manage how you share and distribute content. Rather than setting up share controls in individual applications like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, I prefer to centrally control the content from my blog and use Ping.fm to handle the distribution.

What do you think? Do you see value in using Safari, MobileMe and Ping.fm to share browser bookmarks and content across multiple Apple devices?

PS – here’s how I made that finger cursor mouse on my Mac

Mac Custom Human Finger Mouse Cursor for iPad and iPhone Simulator Screencasts and Tutorials

Steinar — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:07:47 +0000

Have a new iPad or iPhone app you want to demo? You probably want this Mac custom human finger mouse cursor app that offers a great solution for screencasts and tutorials using the iPad/iPhone Simulator.

PhoneFinger transforms your Mac’s mouse cursor into a realistic simulated human finger for testing and demoing iPad applications and websites.

Why would you want to do this?

Well, it’s a great solution if you want to demo a new app or record a screencast and make it look as realistic as possible. The app lets you resize the finger and choose from a male finger, female finger or minimalist circle.

PhoneFinger also includes instructions to make your own custom finger mouse cursor.

To download the free app and read the tutorial visit http://www.wonderwarp.com/phonefinger/

Here’s an example . . .

What do you think? Is this a “handy” app for developers?

Improve Productivity with the iPad – More Focus, Less Multi-Tasking

Steinar — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:33:08 +0000

With the upcoming iPad release, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how exactly I could use the new device in my daily routine. I already have an iMac, MacBook Pro and iPhone, so the questions for me as a business owner is will the iPad help improve productivity?

Many have criticized the iPad for its lack of Adobe Flash and inability to run multiple application simultaneously, unlike Windows or Mac OSX which allow you to multi-task and easily share your desktop among several apps at once.

I actually see the single app iPad limitation as an advantageous feature to help me focus on a single task and ultimately help drive productivity in some situations. Of course, there are exceptions, but with the right iPad apps, I believe this will be a good thing.

“When people try to perform two or more related tasks either at the same time or alternating rapidly between them, errors go way up, and it takes far longer — often double the time or more — to get the jobs done than if they were done sequentially.” — David E. Meyer, director of the Brain, Cognition, and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan

via 4 Steps for Managing Social Media Attention.

A good example is writing blog posts. Many times, we spend a disproportionate amount of time researching a new entry rather than actually writing. It’s not that the inspiration is difficult to find, it’s that we easily get distracted during our research by tangential subtopics, comments, and related posts from source material … I’m sure you can all relate.

On the iPad, however, I’ll be forced to stick to one app to write my post – at least the initial draft. Without the distraction of Twitter, email, and the web looming off to the side, I can spend some serious quality time focusing on my writing.

And yes, I have a few wireless Mac keyboards handy, so the physical typing part will be easy and familiar.

Of course, this sounds good in theory, but I won’t really know until I have the iPad in my hands.

What do you think? Will the iPad improve productivity? Is the lack of multi-tasking across apps a limitation or feature?

How to properly tag your images for search engine optimization

Steinar — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:17:17 +0000

Tagging your images for search engine optimization is a great tactic to drive more targeted traffic to your site.

If your site is being indexed by Google, chances are your images will be indexed as well. I suggest you sign up for Google Webmaster Tools (free) just to make sure Google know you want your images indexed.

First, I tend to only use one image per blog post, so the optimization settings are pretty simple and only take about 10 seconds.

Once you’ve inserted your image you want to set the Title, Alt and Description tags to include your keywords or at least some description that relates to the topic of your content. Some content publishing systems, like WordPress, allow you to right-click and set the tags, but you might have to look at the HTML in some cases.

For example, if I’m blogging about “homemade fishing lures”, my optimized code would look like this:

Easy right? Give it a shot and track your image related traffic in Google Analytics.

What do you think? Do you tag your images for search engine optimization?

Finding your Rhythm for Blogging, Social Media and Engaging Customers Online

Steinar — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:38:51 +0000

Whether you are new to blogging and social media or have been at it for a while, finding your rhythm can be a challenge and something that requires continuous improvement. This is especially true as the tools and platforms change in relation to your marketing strategy for engaging customers online.

This is my 100th post on this blog, so I thought it would be fitting to review my daily process. Let’s start with my goals.

My blogging and social media goals:

Stay informed of the latest news, trends and topics within my niche
Connect with other marketers, customers, and folks I find interesting
Share my thoughts and those of others with my network
Deliver valuable content to build my network, engage my market and grow my business online

Daily blogging, social media, and market engagement process:

I use Google Reader to find the latest news and keep my finger on the pulse of what happening within my niche. I subscribe to dozens of news sources, popular blogs and Google searches to find relevant articles, with which I can share, comment on, or use as inspiration for my next blog post. I usually check Google Reader 2-3 times a day for 5 minutes each and complete 1-2 actions as a result.
I use this blog as the main source for content creation and distribution. Creating content on my own domain allows me to maintain full control. Sure I post information on Facebook and Twitter, but anything with substantial content resides on my blog. I publish new posts every 1-2 days.
I use the WordPress ping.fm plugin to automatically share my blog RSS feed with Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, and a few other popular social media and bookmarking sites. Again, this allows me to maintain control rather than setting up 3rd party sites to receive my RSS feed. If I ever want to turn off my stream, I can control this from one central dashboard in ping.fm. Not everything flows through ping.fm – only content that I want to share with my entire network.
My iPhone is my Internet Marketing Remote Control. I can manage Twitter, check Google Reader, update WordPress posts, reply to comments on my blog, check in with Facebook friends and fans, snap images and record & publish podcast episodes from my iPhone with the click of a button. Of course, I can also use email and talk on the phone.
At night, I like to use Google Reader to answer questions on Twitter from people looking for help. I have several dozen search queries set up and RSS feeds organized in Google Reader to make this simple. Answering people’s questions on Twitter allows my to meet new people, learn something new, and share content I find helpful.

Keys to Success with Blogging and Social Media

The keys to successfull blogging and social media vary, depending on your particular situation. Here are a few things I find helpful:

Write original content. It’s OK to quote others, but the majority of your content should be original.
Find a frequency of engagement that suits you and be consistent.
Reply to comments, messages, and mentions quickly.
Write as if you were talking with your reader, but keep search engine optimization in mind.
Proactively promote your content by leveraging your RSS feed and providing links for people to find you.
Have a content creation strategy to help define what you will talk about and how that unfolds over time.

I hope you find this helpful as you continue to define or improve your process for blogging and engaging your market online through social media.

Any thoughts? What tools and process do you follow to increase your efficiency and effectiveness?

Create Video Content to Engage Your Readers Online

Steinar — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:23:18 +0000

Creating videos to engage your readers is a great tactic you should consider if you manage a blog or would like to take your online communications strategy to the next level.

Publishing online video has vastly improved over the years and for a minimal investment you can easily shoot, upload and share video on the fly. The two biggest barriers I most often see are 1) fear of criticism and 2) assumption that video takes a long time to produce.

I’ll admit, shooting video takes some nerve. My advice is to practice. If you need to, shoot a video everyday for 30 days and then start publishing. This will give you the chance to become familiar with the tools and find your voice or individual level of comfort.

In terms of time required – true video can take longer than simply typing out a new blog post. However, that doesn’t need to be the case if you’re willing to sacrifice perfection for efficiency. You can easily shoot and post video right within Youtube or use a tool such as Seesmic.

So, what’s your experience been shooting video and what’s the reaction you’re getting from others?

A popular subject – How to Podcast from your Mac

Steinar — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:25:32 +0000

Based on the traffic, comments, and backlinks I’m seeing, my series on how to podcast from your Mac is relatively popular. The numbers aren’t staggering but nearly 1000 visitors have come here to learn exactly how this all works.

So, here’s a summary of where we are in the series and what’s next.

You can also watch these on my YouTube Playlist: How to Podcast from Your Mac.

In upcoming episodes, I’ll cover:

How to host your podcast on WordPress and publish to iTunes
How to publish a video podcast from your Mac
How to include video, audio and pdf’s in your podcast
How to publicize your podcast on other podcasting networks beyond iTunes

Any other topics you would like me to explain on this subject?

Also, please subscribe to my RSS feed and newsletter to stay informed when these new episodes release.

Part IV – How to Podcast from Your Mac (iWeb and iTunes)

Steinar — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:39:36 +0000

In our last episode of How to Podcast from Your Mac with Skype I discussed how to record Skype conversations for your podcast and today I’ll show you how to publish your podcast using iWeb so that it is available on iTunes. This episode assumes you have a MobileMe account, but you can still achieve the same results with your own domain.

Basic Steps to publish your podcast from Your Mac using iWeb include:

Create your audio in Garageband and either Share with iWeb or save to a file
Open a new Site in iWeb, choose a theme, and choose the Podcast template
Change the name of your Site, Page, and entry to include the title of your podcast and any keywords to reflect your subject
Update the podcast page title, description, and image. This is information captured in the iTunes store for your podcast name and cover art
Update the podcast episode entry title, description and image
Import the audio and image for the episode (this is automatically done is you started in Garageband Share with iWeb)
Open Inspector>RSS>Podcast and update the podcast series and episode author, email, parental advisory, and Publish to iTunes Store settings
Update your site publishing settings to MobileMe (or other destination depending on your preference)
Publish the entire site
Choose File>Submit Podcast to iTunes, check settings and select Publish and Submit.
To add an additional episode, create your audio in Garageband and Share with iWeb to automatically create a new entry on your site.

At this point you will get a confirmation email from Apple that your podcast submission request is being reviewed. Within 24-48 you will get notification that it has been accepted or denied. If accepted, Apple will provide a link to your podcast on the iTunes store, which you can begin to share immediately on your website, email, Facebook, etc. Your podcast will begin to show up in search results on iTunes within another 24 hours.

Congratulations! You now have a podcast on iTunes that people can subscribe to and enjoy for free!

Just getting started with podcast on your Mac? Check out previous episodes:

What do you think? Does this process make sense and is this an easy approach to podcast from your Mac with iWeb? Let me know how it goes!

What does your Twitter psychological profile say about you?

Steinar — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:12:34 +0000

I have been doing some research on tools to analyze customer sentiment on social media networks and ran across TweetPsych which maps your psychological profile versus other Twitter users.

My results are pretty accurate based on my interests, work, and stream of content I share on Twitter. I’m most interested in Internet marketing, SEO, and new media and specialize in consulting, teaching and generally helping others learn how to leverage the Internet to grow their business. This comes accross clearly when you look at the TweetPsych analysis.

Visit TweetPsych to view your profile.

What do you think? Do you find it useful have this kind of Twitter psychological profile information?

Part III – How to Podcast from Your Mac (Recording Skype Conversations and Interviews)

Steinar — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 02:56:04 +0000

As I reviewed in Part II – How to Podcast from Your Mac, using Garageband to record a simple podcast is pretty straightforward. I hope you got a chance to try out the process I outlined in that video and found it rather easy to get started.

For most new podcasters, the challenge is finding a certain level of comfort in front of the microphone. It is a funny thing, considering we have no problem talking throughout the day, either in person or on the phone.

A great technique that many podcasters find appealing for their listeners is to record a conversation or an interview over the phone. Traditionally this would require a phone tap of sorts or a paid recording conference service.

Today it’s much easier with Skype. I f you’ve never tried Skype it’s basically an online phone service that let two people talk over the Internet anywhere in the world for free. You can also purchase blocks of minutes and call people on their land line from your computer.

WARNING: it is against the law to record a phone conversation without mutual consent. You must disclose the fact that you are recording the conversation and get verbal agreement from all parties that this is acceptable before you proceed with the recording.

The beauty for podcasters is that you can record Skype calls and the quality is generally very good.

Install Skype and Recording Plugin

Visit Skype.com and download the free application
Sign up for Skype Out if you plan to call people who do not have Skype. I highly recommend this even as a backup security measure should they have trouble connecting with Skype. Calls are only $.02-$.03 per minutes.
Download ECamm Call Recorder – this plugin let’s you record calls and split the tracks for editing in Garageband.
Get a good headset. Skype has a number of models they recommend. You can also use a mic like the Samson CO1U (aff) and a separate set of headphones. In either case I recommend the mic inputs are USB rather than using the mic input jack. Check out Part I – How to Podcast from Your Mac (Equipment and Software) for more tips on this.

When you first install Skype, you have the option to make a few free test calls. I also recommend you find a friend to also install Skype and familiarize yourself with how Skype works before you start doing any recording. Of course, I just dove right in and learned the hard way, though I must say Skype is simple to use.

Skype Recording Preferences - Click to Enlarge

Once you install Call Recorder, you have the option to modify its setting from within Skype, but you will be fine with the default settings. Personally, I set the recorder to record by default so as not to miss something by accident.

Once you’re ready to record, there are a few things to keep in mind:

Minimize any background noise. Turn off the ringer on your phone and any other machines that make white noise (fans, printers, etc). Close the door and put a sign outside if necessary – you don’t want someone barging in and ruining your great recording.
Click the red record button on Call Recorder when you are ready and let the conversation begin.
You might want to start off with an introduction of yourself and anyone else on the line.
Keep it conversational and do not read from a script. You may find a list of leading questions helpful, but try to talk as if you were have a regular discussion.
Speak clearly and ask open ended questions – those that require more than just a simple yes or no response. This will help keep the discussion going.
At the end of the call, ask your guest how people can find them (website, contact info, etc)
Thank your guest and finish the call.

At this point Call Recorder will stop and save the recording to the default folder. You can change this folder in Preferences.

After the recording is complete you have a few options:

Save the recording as is.
Open in QuickTime Pro and split the tracks. Save both tracks and import into Garageband, so you can tweak individual tracks
Open the recording in Garageband and edit or add some intro music and other elements.

In my upcoming posts, I will review how to send this new podcast episode to iWeb or WordPress, among other details for making your podcast public.

What do you think? Have you tried recording calls with Skype for your podcast? How is that going?

Facebook Via – Twitter Retweet Meets Facebook Allowing Friends to Easily Share Content

Steinar — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 13:55:04 +0000

It was only launched last night, but I’m already seeing use of Facebook’s new share feature or “via”. It basically allows you to share links from your friends’ posts, add your own commentary and give credit to your friend’s original post.

Generally speaking I think this will go over well, due to the limited nature of the simple “Like” feature and closed in nature of “comments.” By allowing friends to share and comment on each others’ content, Facebook is encouraging many-to-many conversations, like those taking place on Twitter.

We’ve long speculated as to when Facebook might get its own version of Twitter’s Retweet, and it appears that the time is now. This evening, the site rolled out a “via” feature that lets you repost another user’s shared items, with a “via” link attached for attribution.

via Facebook’s Version of the Retweet Has Arrived.

No doubt, anyone who owns a business should be delighted by the improvement if you’re leveraging Facebook to grow your business, since most of the updates businesses post on Facebook include a link.

What do you think? Have you tried the new “share via” features yet?

Mobile Phones Will Serve as the Online Content Consumption Platform of Choice by 2013

Steinar — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:11:37 +0000

More evidence today from Gartner that mobile phones will serve as the online content consumption platform of choice by 2013. Is your company preparing for the shift? It’s happening now, so get on-board.

By 2013, mobile phones could easily surpass PCs as the way most people hop onto the Web. Gartner’s statistics show that the total number of PCs will reach 1.78 billion in three years, while the number of smartphones and Web-enabled phones will shoot past 1.82 billion units and continue to climb after that. This trend will force more Web sites to revamp their pages to make them easier to surf on a mobile gadget.

via Smartphones to dominate PCs in Gartner forecast | Business Tech – CNET News.

Consider the following tactics to make your site mobile friendly:

Create a mobile version of your website or if you’re using WordPress, install a mobile theme such as WP-Touch.
Use mobile friendly video, not flash. YouTube is a great choice and now supports high-definition. Some services, such as Vimeo, don’t play nice on many devices, including the iPhone.
Understand the bandwidth and screen size limitations (and opportunities) of mobile devices. Large images, files and other on-page elements create a barrier for users.
Consider more new media – audio and video – instead of just text. Text is difficult to read in some cases if not properly formatted, whereas optimized audio and video can potentially get your message across faster and with greater impact.
Use a website statistics analysis tool, such as Google Analytics to track visitor devices and navigation. You can learn a great deal about their behavior and tweak your content appropriately.

What are your plans to meet the needs of mobile users? What’s working for you?

Part II – How to Podcast from Your Mac (GarageBand)

Steinar — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:22:42 +0000

This is part two in a video series on how to podcast from your Mac using GarageBand. In this episode I walk you through the steps of recording your voice, inserting a jingle and an image, and some simple editing to create your first podcast episode. Check out Part I: Podcasting equipment and software for the Mac if you missed it.

Basic Steps to podcast from Your Mac using GarageBand include:

Open GarageBand and select the Podcast template. Name your podcast.
Import artwork into the Podcast track from iPhoto or other location on you computer
Highlight the Male or Female Voice tracks and hit the record button at the bottom of the control panel
Hit record or play to stop the recording an rewind to review your audio
Insert a jingle or other audio clip in the Jingle menu by dragging pre-built jingles from the Media Bar off to the right
Adjust the timing of your audio track and the jingle by selecting the track and dragging it to the appropriate location
Rewind and play to review your finished podcast. Record new segments that you’re not happy with.
Save the GarageBand project and export as you wish.
To create a MP3 from GarageBand, export to iTunes and then convert in iTunes.

What do you think? Did this work for you? What questions do you have about how to podcast from your Mac?

Facebook is More Like Google and Why Your Business Needs a FaceBook Page

Steinar — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:25:30 +0000

In December, Facebook traffic reached 132 million unique visitors and continues to grow. Surprisingly, most small businesses claim “our customers don’t use Facebook!” Oh really?

Traditionally, we’ve compared Facebook to Twitter and MySpace, but with its mammoth size, Facebook looks more like Google …

… any comparison between Facebook and Twitter is meaningless and Facebook should actually be compared with Google.

via Facebook’s U.S. Traffic Reaches 132 Million Visitors.

If you have a business how are you leveraging Facebook? Do you have a Facebook Page, Application, or Ads? How’s that working?

5 ways to leverage social media to better engage customers

Steinar — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:31:46 +0000

Engaging customers through social media is not a trend, it is part of human nature. People simply want to feel like they have a voice, especially when dealing with a company they do business with.

This quote from eMarketer reinforces the idea that companies marketing on social media platforms need to take this to heart and make the extra effort to truly engage with their market:

Most businesses have realized that when it comes to social networks like Twitter or Facebook, simply broadcasting content isn’t quite enough. Consumers want companies to engage with them on social networks — not because they want to have a relationship, per say, with a brand of soap or shampoo, but because they appreciate the opportunity to give feedback on products, receive meaningful information from brands, and catch the occasional bargain, among other things.

via The eMarketer Blog.

Simple ways to engage customers with social media:

Actively search Twitter for people asking questions about your niche. For example search “how do i” [insert industry keywords]. Think of other leading indicators to surface questions and answer them directly.
Set up a blog search alert on Google and respond to any blog posts that mention your company name or brand. Include a link to your website or social media platform of choice.
Blog about your industry and your market. Invite customers to comment. Don’t edit the comments. Don’t hide the comments. Make the dialogue open and honest.
Setup a site similar to my Starbucks Idea and invite customers to provide innovative ideas. Make your customers part of the solution.
Reward customers that actively engage with you online somehow. Don’t make it some formal program. Make it a surprise and don’t publicize it. Let them do the promotion for you. That’s the power of social media

What do you think? How can companies leverage social media to better engage customers?

How to post audio directly to WordPress from iPhone

Steinar — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:09:55 +0000

Posting audio directly to WordPress from my iPhone has been a project of mine for a few weeks and I have a very good solution now that you might try.

Audio is a great format to communicate with your readers for several reasons:

audio blog posts are much faster to produce
audio blog posts do not require extensive editing
you can easily set up a separate RSS feed for audio posts and let readers subscribe via iTunes (see my sidebar)
audio blog posts can be created while driving – much like talking on the phone
audio blog posts are great for interviewing people
audio blog posts are a great way to differentiate your blog and add variety

My solution satisfies the following criteria:

post audio to WordPress from my iPhone without logging into WordPress
blog posts must contain a flash audio player that is user friendly for desktop users
blog posts must contain a direct link to the raw mp3 file so that audio is mobile friendly
audio posts must publish automatically without any further editing or logging into WordPress
Any social networking notifications stem from my blog and direct users to my site, not some 3rd party site.

Installation and Setup

Here are the steps to post audio directly to WordPress from your iPhone:

Install the AudioBoo app on your iPhone
Install WP-o-Matic plugin on your WordPress blog
Install Podcasting plugin on your WordPress blog

AudioBoo

No custom settings are required. Just set up an account, go to My Boos, and copy the RSS feed address from the Address Bar.

WP-o-Matic

Set up a new Campaign
In the Basic tab, give your campaign a name, activate it, and provide a slug. I use “audio.”
In the Feed tab insert the RSS feed address from AudioBoo
In the Categories tab, indicate your preferred category. I use “podcast.”
Leave Rewrite tab blank
In the Option tab create a custom post template with the code below.

- Set Frequency at no less than 1 per hour to determine when new feeds should be checked.
- Select Published when you’re ready to go live. Choose Private or Draft while testing.
- For Max Items, I select one(1) since I do not want more than one audio post per day. You could do more if you like.
In the Tools tab, do nothing.

Podcasting Plugin

The only option I recommend you modify is the Player Width under Audio Player Options so that it fits horizontally within your post appropriately. I use 480px on my site for example.

How to Use

Open the AudioBoo app on your iPhone
Record your audio, give it a title, and publish
Your MP3 will now appear as a new post, based on the frequency you selected in WP-o-Matic Options.
After post has published you may add text to the post. If you want the ability to add text prior to publishing, change the WP-o-Matic Options back to “Draft,” but this defeats the purpose for me – the ability to publish audio to my blog without logging into WordPress at all.

What do you think? Does this work for you? There are other solutions – what are you using?