VA Newsday

I’m thrilled to announce a new teleclass that I will be doing with my very good friend and colleague, Carla Wilson, next Wednesday called E-Product Flight Plan.  In this teleclass, Carla & I will be presenting a how-to guide on how to sell your knowledge online. If you are a coach or consultant…

One of the most important parts of any of my WordPress projects is the initial meeting when we discuss which WordPress theme would best meet the client’s needs. If you haven’t worked with WordPress yet, a WordPress theme gives the site its layout and navigation structure, as well as its “look and feel”.  (Click link…

One of the most important parts of any of my WordPress projects is the initial meeting when we discuss which WordPress theme would best meet the client’s needs. If you haven’t worked with WordPress yet, a WordPress theme gives the site its layout and navigation structure, as well as its “look and feel”.  So, what…

In the past month or so, I’ve been relatively quiet on my blog and on social media, as I’ve been very busy putting together my brand new blogsite development and support service packages . After years of working with VAs, Coaches and other Solopreneurs, there’s a clear pattern of what web services these kinds of businesses need in order to make the most of their online presence, not only for marketing and visibility, but also for easy maintenance and low “cost of ownership”.  With that in mind, I’ve come up with four package options – each designed to address the needs of the beginner blogger to the established coaching practice with infoproducts and support staff… [...]

Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to sample a more than a few of the thousands of WordPress plugins available that expand the functionality of a WordPress blogsite.  In case you’re wondering, plugins are simple WordPress add-ons that are easily installed and add additional features – typically a utility (such as backups) or a bell/whistle of some sort. Depending on the WP theme you are using, some plugins are absolutely necessary and add features that, frankly, should already be part of WP (or probably will be in the near future).  Some fulfill a specific requirement (such as social media or analytics needs)

It’s late on Saturday night, and yes – Im feeling a bit too lazy to write something original, so I thought I’d share some of my favorite blog articles for the week… WebWorkerDaily spotlights a new phenom in the world of career management: portfolio careers .  The idea is that many today (including yours truly) have a work life that consists of a string of loosely related projects that could be described as a portfolio. The post mentions the upcoming book And What Do You Do?: 10 Steps to Creating a Portfolio Career by Katie Ledger and Barrie Hopson, in which portfolio workers are described as “free-range humans” who are not “penned into an unhappy job-cage.”   Sounds pretty accurate to me.  Check out the full post here . ProBlogger is a must-read if you are thinking of starting a blog – especially one that makes money. Darren Rowse posted a 3-part series on how to actually make real money with Amazon Associates (no small achievement, that).  He’s made a bundle and he’s sharing some tips… here ,  here and here .  I’m guessing that there’s an ebook in the future on this topic and I will buy it. Zen Habits has a wonderful post about striving for minimalism and a few pointers on how to get closer to it  – with one basic principle:  Omit Needless Things . At the risk of this turning into a painting-in-a-painting sort of thing – IttyBiz’s Naomi Dunford posted her fav blog posts of the week .  I particularly enjoyed her views on giving things away for free, sales pages  and her copious swearing.  I don’t know if the post is from this week, but I read it this week and that’s all that matters. Finally, Smashing Magazine posted this nice overview of corporate blog design trends, emphasizing how the design supports the purpose, such as product promotion, reputation management or corporate responsibility. Enjoy!

Most of my clients are solopreneurs (like myself), small companies or non-profits. As such, their website development and maintenance budgets are small – so  much consideration is given to “bang for the buck” – in terms of function vs. form with initial site development and ongoing maintenance. It wasn’t too long ago that I did only custom designed websites – that they would have to have ongoing assistance to maintain (usually by me). However, the upside was that the client would have a truly unique site that reflects the company’s brand and allow for complete design freedom, plus they could rely on me to do quick content updates as they needed them. In the past two years or so, the playing field has shifted entirely. With the current version of WordPress  and the low-cost availability of beautiful, sophisticated WordPress layout themes, I can offer a robust CMS (content management system) along with the huge search visibility advantages of  a blog – and a professional-looking design. Ironically, all these advantages actually reduce the cost of site development, because they are baked-in to WordPress itself.  So, for most clients,  the superior WordPress option is actually less time consuming  to develop AND will deliver better search visibility AND a much lower cost of ownership (most content maintenance can be done by the client).  The only downside of using WordPress for business websites is that it is, after all, a templated managed content system with a set layout – you can’t just slap anything anywhere on the screen. People don’t shop for website services every day, so I usually have to educate clients as to what may be best for their needs and goals. Once clients get to know the options and their pros and cons,  they usually decide to forgo the design freedom of a custom website for the technical and cost advantages of a WordPress-based site. In almost all cases, that is the better decision for short term costs (development), marketing (search visibility) and long term services cost (maintenance). So, what’s more important to you in a website? Form or function?

This is just too funny – reminds me of the many times I’ve tried to explain it to “Twitter-resistant”  friends & family.  However, Kevin & Dave are waaaayyy more entertaining…  enjoy!! You can follow Kevin Spacey at http://twitter.com/KevinSpacey .  David Letterman not yet among the converted yet, as far as I know.

I always struggled (like many solopreneurs) with making the time to create email newsletters, which is ironic since I help clients with e-newsletters all the time! It’s not for lack of topics to talk about or the ability to create the e-newsletters – it can just be time consuming. However, with blogs and RSS,  you can not only repurpose your writing but also automate your newsletter creation process using your blog’s RSS feed and a email marketing provider like AWeber that offers this capability. Basically the idea is this: you already post to your blog – creating articles of interest to your audience. So, why reinvent the wheel when you create your e-newsletters? Your blog has an RSS feed (as all blogs do), so use it to automatically generate your newsletter content without rewriting or redesigning. This approach not only saves you time, but will keep your email marketing schedule on track with no extra work on your part. Once the initial process is set up, it literally will run itself… all you need to do is continue to post to your blog (there’s no way to automate that process just yet!). Setting this up is not as geeked-out or difficult as you may suspect – here’s a quick overview: First – you need to be working with an email marketing service that offers this feature, and not all of them do. Among the major self-service companies, only AWeber , iContact and MailChimp offer this feature.  Constant Contact , although one of the largest and most widely used, does not as of yet.  As a side note, you probably also want to choose an email marketing provider that offers autoresponders as well (as AWeber , iContact and MailChimp do).  My preference is AWeber , as they have fantastic client support and a host of sophisticated features including shopping cart integration. However, if you are looking for something that’s easier to use at a lower price point, iContact and MailChimp are excellent choices. This how-to overview focuses on AWeber , as that’s the service I use, but the process is basically the same no matter what provider you choose. 1. Within your AWeber account, Go to Messages then Blog Broadcast. .. then click the Create A New Blog Broadcast button. 2. Enter in the URL (web address) of your blog’s RSS feed. If you use Feedburner , use the Feedburner address, as the feed traffic will be tracked. 3. Type in the email’s subject line. With AWeber, you can enter in the recipient’s first name (if you collected it) so that your email subject line can be personalized – for example:  “ Jane, here are your latest blog updates from Mary “.  You can add other variable items too like dates or blog titles. 4. Select an email layout template you like. If you are handy with HTML you can also design your own or make changes to the one you pick.  You can also add other content that will be included with the mailing.  Also be sure the RSS data fields are present so that the feed-generated content will appear correctly within your mailing.  Your template will display the feed content fields – they look something like this: Be sure to not alter the highlighted fields above – they need to be there to define the area in which the feed content will appear. 5. Select your delivery settings. AWeber offers a lot of delivery options – and most are self-explanatory.  Note that when you are starting out with this, it’s probably best to NOT launch automatically, as you may want to review it or add other content before you send out your broadcast. So how does all this magic happen? In the case of AWeber , your blog’s feed address is checked every few hours to pick up the latest posts (that have not yet been broadcast). The message is compiled according to the parameters you set, and whenever those specific parameters are met, the broadcast message is automatically created and placed into queue for you to review and launch to your list. For example, I have my RSS-generated newsletter set up to compile every 1st & 3rd Sunday of the month at 5:00am. So on every 1st & 3rd Sunday of the month – at some time after 5am – I log into AWeber, check the new broadcast message that is in queue, make any adjustments – then launch. Other options include sending every “X” number of new posts, a particular day (or days) of the month or week.  You can also have the message launch automatically without your involvement at all – much like the Feedburner mailing service…. but with much more personalization and control. RSS Power Tip :  If you post to your blog frequently and categorize your posts  (you should)… use your blog’s category-specific feeds to create specialty topic newsletters! Again – there’s a bit of setup work at the beginning – and then – e-newsletter nirvana! Just check in with your email marketing provider at the mailing times you set and the work is already done for you!  Just don’t forget to post to your blog. 

January 6,  2009 – Philadelphia, PA – The Delaware Valley Virtual Assistants Association (www.dvvaa.org) is pleased to announce its new Board of Directors for 2009.

DVVAA bids farewell to 2008 Board President, Carla Wilson, owner of Wilson Virtual Assistants and welcomes Mary Motz, Owner of ProVirtual Solutions, as…