While I wouldn’t go as far as claiming that the traditional resumes and cover letters are DEAD – as most people still find jobs the old-fashioned way; in today’s day and age, you should not rely on them solely when searching for a job or your next assignment.

Whether you are a consultant, writer, editor, marketing professional, designer; even if you are not looking for a job right now, there are some things that you should be doing to make sure you are always able to find work quickly, if you suddenly find yourself unemployed. Sure, you still may have to write that resume.

But to get a job in today’s economy you need to stand out. And having an online presence and a big social network can make you stand out from 1,000 resumes.

If Your Prospective Employers Google You, What Information Will They Find?

For many positions, people will not hire you based on just your resume and cover letter. They will use a variety of approaches to learn more about you and your accomplishments.

One approach may be to “google you”.

And if they do, what information can they find about YOU?

The reason you have to start NOW is simple: you cannot build an effective online presence overnight.

DO NOT wait till you are suddenly in full PANIC MODE (having just been downsized or fired), to start a blog, learn to Tweet, shoot video, become an expert writer for Ezinearticles, or whatever; and do it effectively enough to attract attention from potential employers.

Sure, it’s easier to just type a few sentences reciting your work experience in reverse chronological order, and email it or snail-mail to a prospective employer in response to a job ad. However, rather than editing your resume for the 20th time, spend your time creating your website, social profiles and/or a professional portfolio, so that when you network you can give the URL to your past work experience. It’s got way more info than your resume and will be more interesting to view.

It takes time and effort, as well as some (minimal) computer skills to build an online presence, but you should look at it as an INVESTMENT IN YOUR FUTURE.

Taking the 10 steps outlined below will help you:

• Build a strong personal brand.
• Proactively drive your career.
• Establish yourself, prove yourself and position yourself as an expert.
• Open up new opportunities you never thought of before.
• Build partnerships, alliances, and friendships.
• Learn new, highly marketable and in-demand skills.
• Build an online business (if you want to)
• Build passive income streams (if you want to)
• Become more fulfilled with life (I know this happened for me, and many others, so why not YOU??).

10 Things You Should Be Doing TODAY to Make Sure You Are Never Out of Work Tomorrow

The following are the steps to take to make sure you are never looking for a job or more work – the work will come to you instead!

1.  The first thing I recommend you do is Google yourself. Just type your name into the Google search box and see what comes up. If there is no information about you on the first page of search results, that’s not a good news for your future career.

2.  Define your focus. You will need to define your niche/ area of expertise, and unique selling proposition. Even if you already have a professional niche, or consider yourself a generalist, you need to find a unique angle, something to position yourself as the go-to-expert.

3. Build a website and write a blog. While there are many websites that offer free blogging, such as Blogger.com or WordPress.com, I recommend that you build a WordPress-powered website on your own hosting account. You don’t have to call it a blog, just because WordPress is a blogging platform. Call it whatever you want: an Online Cafe, E-Club, online magazine, virtual encyclopedia, or whatever else you want.

a. Choose and register a domain name
b. Choose a hosting provider and set up an account. I use Hostgator.
c. Install WordPress. Many providers (including Hostgator) provide easy, one- click installation.
d. Pick and install a theme. There are many free themes available on the WordPress.org website. For a more polished look and support in case of problems, you can purchase a professionally designed theme for under $100. Themes I recommend: Thesis, Woo Themes, Studio Press themes, and Elegant themes. You can also find many great themes on ThemeForest.com.

4. Set up your social media profiles with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. These three are not the only ones, but they will give you a good start. Continuously grow your network by consistently producing valuable content. Link to articles on your site. Share other people’s content. Be active, comment, leave feedback, and answer questions.

5. Provide valuable content. Take your expert topic and deliver valuable, relevant and compelling content. Write articles, ebooks, newsletters, white papers, reports, and industry rankings.  Especially effective and viral are How-to-guides, step-by-step tutorials, top 10 lists. But it’s not just about writing. Valuable content includes photography, graphics, video, audio, presentations, charts and graphs, and more. If you are a designer, design a WordPress theme and offer it as a free download (with a credit back-link to your site). If you are a programmer, write a plugin or widget. If you are a teacher, create a video explaining a difficult concept.

6. Recycle your content. And I don’t mean putting your old articles into recycle bins – whether electronic or real. I mean always looking at everything you have written to come up with new ways to put them to work. So, you’ve come up with a 10 fresh and exciting ways to do something, and you write an article. A single article can do so many things:

• Submit your article to an online directory, such as Ezine articles.
• Modify the article to submit it to a press release service.
• Post the article on your website or blog and tweet it.
• Re-write it and make into a Hubpage.
• Make a Squidoo lens.
• An article can be submitted to a local newspaper.
• A generic article can be re-written from a different angle and sent to professional or special interest publications.
• Compile a set of articles to create an FREE pdf and upload it to Scribd.com.
• Compile a set of articles to create an ebook or even a physical book, and offer it on your website or sell on Amazon.
• Include the article in your E-course.
• Read the article in front of a mirror a few times, then record it with a webcam or camcorder, and make a video clip, and post it to Youtube.
• Make a slideshow presentation, record it using a screen capture software, such as Jing, Snagit or Camtasia, and post it to YouTube.
• Read the article, record it, and make into a podcast.
• Rewrite your article and offer it to other bloggers as a guest post.
• Rewrite your article and submit it to even more directories, using automated submission service.

Tip #1: If your title can entice a person’s curiosity you’re already halfway in getting a person to read your article. Use statements and questions that utilize keywords that people are looking for. Provide titles or headers that describe your articles content but should also be short and concise.

Tip #2: You need to craft your “resource box” or “about the author” section, so that people are inclined to go online to find out more about you or your offerings. A boring resource box will never get a job done. Be fun and creative but at the same time show that you have a great deal to offer.

7. Get creative with your distribution channels:

• Video: YouTube, Vividler, etc.
• Audio: record podcasts
• Presentations: Slideshare.com. This is like a YouTube for PowerPoint presentations. Anytime you create a presentation, upload it to SlideShare site.
• Articles: Ezinearticles.com, Articlebase.com, and dozens of others.
• PDF/Word/Powerpoint: Scribd.com.
• Pictures – you, your products, events, etc.: Flickr.com
• Seminars online and in the “real world”. Gotomeeting.com. Record your seminars and offer to your subscribers.
• BlogTalkRadio allows anyone, anywhere the ability to host a live, Internet Talk Radio show, simply by using a telephone and a computer.
• Send your best articles to print newspapers, magazines and newsletters.

8. Write and publish a printed book. A printed book is considered the best recommendation anyone can have. When writing your content, think in terms of writing chapters for your future book. In a couple of months, a year, or two, you’ll have enough of material to get it published.

9.  Do seminars and public speaking. Great way to build credibility super fast. Speaking in public will take the previous steps to the next level. If you don’t feel you have what it takes, join your local Toastmasters, or read the book “Get Your Money Where Your Mouth is” by David R. Portney.

10. Help as many people as you can. Don’t make it all about you. If someone asks you for help, recommendation, a guest post, etc. – always say yes.

I’ve Created Great Content, Now What?

Rather than stand back waiting for you and your content to be discovered, take a proactive approach.

Compile a list of companies you want to work for and then develop a strategy for delivering your content to them.

Social media, and Linkedin in particular, is a tremendous resource for developing your prospect list. Use search functions to locate companies who need what you have to offer. Visit their websites to determine fit and search Linkedin further to discover who the hiring managers are.

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If you do the things outlined above, after a while you may find that a whole world of new opportunities is opening to you.

You may find new employers, friends, and partners.

You may wish to explore starting a business online, building passive income streams online, selling your own products and services, etc, etc.

But that’s a topic for a different article or, better yet, entire book.

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More reading:

If you are looking for a WordPress theme, the good news is that there are literally THOUSANDS of themes available for WordPress. The bad news is that you will have to choose just one for your website (which can be challenging, if you have problems with making choices when presented with too many options, like I often do).

Most of the themes are FREE, which is usually a good thing – believe me, I love free – however, in this case I believe it’s NOT the best way to go.

If you expect quality design and support that will provide answers to your questions, I recommend you purchase your theme template from a respected source. Also, most paid themes come with back-end functionality that free themes don’t provide. For example, some paid themes will allow you to change the colors specify the number and width of sidebars, change your header graphics, add your feedburner id, advertising, analytics code, right from the dashboard (without the need to tweak the code).

Plus, if you end up needing to customize the theme even further, the code of premium themes is usually very clean and easy to work with.

My suggestions for the best premium WordPress themes are:

Thesis. This site runs on Thesis. I have been using Thesis for a long time now, and I really love it. It works straight out-of-the-box, without any tweaking. The layout is very flexible, allowing you to choose the width of the columns, how many columns you want (1, 2, or 3) and where you want your sidebars to be located (left, or right-hand side). Once you buy it, you will get lifetime updates of the theme – with new features and more powerful features available with every new release. I have to admit, though, the out-of -the-box design is very plain, so you’ll need to spend time tweaking the colors, and designing custom header, if you want a blog design that stands out from the crowd. I also don’t like the fact that there are no footer design options from the admin panel. Plus, Thesis is rather pricey, compared to other themes.

Elegant Themes. I really love the clean design and rich textures that many of the Elegant Themes use. For $20 subscription price per YEAR for ALL themes, it’s hard to beat the price, too. You will get the Photoshop files too.

StudioPress. I have so far only used the Agent Press theme, but I can say it was easy to work with, even customizing the html code has been super easy. I love their magazine themes, and especially the newest Platinum.

WooThemes. They provide some free themes on their site, so you can download them and try them to get a sampling of Woo Themes and how they work. I use a Woo theme on my Marketing Advisor Online site.

ThemeForest. At ThemeForest you can buy HTML templates as well as themes for popular CMS products, with prices ranging from just $5 up to $40.  There are some great WordPress themes on their site, but there are so many of them, that it may give you a headache just trying to find what you need. They are contributed by different authors, so their quality may vary, but the good thing is that you can see how many purchases were made, the average rating that the theme has, and read user comments. In the comments area you may see if the users have any problems with the theme, and whether the author responds to the questions in a promptly.

When choosing a theme for your website, consider:

1. What is the main objective of your site? Is it to display your portfolio? Sell a product? Build a list of subscribers? Build an authority blog? Display properties for sale (if you are a real estate agent)? There are themes that are designed with a specific objective in mind.
2. Who is your audience?
3. Who is your competition and what do their websites look like?
4. Is it easy to customize? Keep in mind that you can usually change the header pretty easily. There are some things that may be  harder to change, such as the font, but background color and the header are usually pretty simple to change if you like the theme but hate the color.  Thesis will let you change all these attributes from the dashboard.
5. Where will you put your opt-in box?
6. Do you want advertising on your site?
7. How many sidebars do you want? Are you going to have categories in the sidebar? Are your categories going to be at the top of the page? Do you want them nested? Are your pages going to show up at the top of the page.
8. How much content will you have?
9. How will your content be organized: where will the categories, pages appear; do you want top navigation menus, etc. For example, if you are planning on having 3 or 4 main categories, with many subcategories, you may want to consider. You can set up each of those categories as a column on the front page and your visitors will be able to navigate quite easily through the content.
10. Will you be posting lots of video, audio, pictures? Some themes are specifically designed for video or pictures.

Still can’t decide? Check out your competitor’s sites. What do their websites look like? What features do they use? Where is their opt-in box? Do they use pop-ups?

Of course, you don’t need to obsess about which theme to choose, as with WordPress, changing the theme is super easy.

All you have to do is to upload the theme to the Themes folder of your website, go to the Themes page on your administrator’s dashboard, click Activate, and ta-da, there you have it – a completely new look for your site!

Note: OK, so in reality it’s going to be more work than just that. You will usually have to adjust some settings, because every theme is different. But it’s still super fast, when you consider that you are getting a completely redesigned website!

We all know that what we think and believe will affect the way we behave and live our life.

“Life really is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The biggest impediment to our success seems to be in our mind.”

And yet, we just cannot help it.

We create our limited form of reality based on what we feel and perceive about our experiences, and live in this reality like there is no other. Even if we have no  hard evidence to support these beliefs, they become a set of rules by which we conduct ourselves. We use self-talk such as “I knew that was going to happen,” “This always happens to me,” or “I’m no good at this sort of thing.’

For example: If I believe that life is not easy, I therefore believe that life is difficult. If I believe that success is hard, I therefore believe that success is unattainable for me.  If I believe that money, resources, or opportunities are limited; I’ll believe that I will not able to earn lots of money or get access to other resources or opportunities, if others get there first.

“The thing happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.” Frank Lloyd Wright

And then we even begin to find “evidence” to prove that these beliefs are right.

Try this experiment: spot as many white cars as possible. Suddenly, you start noticing white cars everywhere! Now, try and remember how many other cars of different colors you saw. I can almost guarantee, you won’t  remember how many red or black cars there were. You’ll know there were some, but your attention was drawn to spotting only red cars.

My Limiting Beliefs

For me, one of those limiting beliefs used to be scarcity. Growing up in Eastern Europe country may have been a big contributing factor: when I was a teenager,  there were few opportunities, my family had little money; and even if somebody had money, there were few things that you could buy, as stores were almost completely empty (literally - hard to imagine, I know; but you’d walk into a store – and there would be nothing in there, just the clerk behind the cash register). I wanted to travel abroad, but  it was exorbitantly expensive – my parents’ monthly salary could be exchanged for just a few dollars. Plus, just getting a passport was not an easy task.

So I formed that belief, that there is just not enough of money (resources, opportunities, etc.) to go around.  Therefore, if some people are getting richer, there must be lots of others who are getting poorer. I certainly did not want to contribute to anyone’s poverty.

Another one was that I could never be successful financially on my own - ”I can never build a successful business” - noone in my family had their own business, so it’s “not in my genes”.  I must have a JOB to earn a living, as I could never be successful as an entrepreneur.

Breaking FREE

Breaking those beliefs takes time and effort.

For me, it’s still a work in progress, but I’m getting there.

What helped me finally shake of the “scarcity” belief was “The Science of Getting Rich” written by Wallace D. Wattles in 1910. If you haven’t already read it, then download it here and read it.

You can download and read it here: “The Science of Getting Rich” by Wallace D.  Wattles

OK, so the language of the book is outdated, and it does sound a little weird sometimes – talking about “Formless Substance” or “Formless Intelligence” that permeates the universe. But if you give it a chance, and keep an open mind, it’s a 100 year old classic that can truly change the way you look at the universe and your life.

Breaking out of a limiting belief is like opening a door to another world – a door and world you hadn’t even realized was there.

Powerful Quotes from Wallace D. Wattles’ Writings

”The object of all life is development; and everything that lives has an inalienable right to all the development it is capable of attaining.”

“No one is kept poor because other people have monopolized the wealth and have put a fence around it.”

“Think of the riches the world is growing into instead of the poverty it is growing out of, and bear in mind that the only way you can assist the world in growing rich is by growing rich yourself through the creative method, not the competitive one.”

“You are to become a creator, not a competitor. You are going to get what you want, but in such a way that when you get it every other person whom you affect will have more than he has now.”

“Give every man more in use value than you take from him in cash value; then you are adding to the life of the world by every business transaction.”

“By thought, the thing you want is brought to you. By action, you receive it. Whatever your action is to be, it is evident that you must act NOW.”

“Talented people get rich, and blockheads get rich; intellectually brilliant people get rich, and very stupid people get rich; physically strong people get rich, and weak and sickly people get rich.”

“Because you are not in the right business or the right environment now, do not think that you must postpone action until you get into the right business or environment. And do not spend time in the present taking thought as to the best course in possible future emergencies; have faith in your ability to meet any emergency when it arrives.”

“The grateful mind is constantly fixed upon the best. Therefore it tends to become the best. It takes the form or character of the best, and will receive the best.”

“There is no labor from which most people shrink as they do from that of sustained and consecutive thought; it is the hardest work in the world.”

“You can begin to be great to-day in your own home, in your store or office, on the street, everywhere; you can begin to make yourself known as great; and you can do this by doing everything you do in a great way.”

“Many people who order their lives rightly, in all other ways are kept in poverty by their lack of gratitude.”

Download: “The Science of Getting Rich” by Wallace D.  Wattles

Here is an interesting read for you. If you are striving to build a strong brand for your business online and offline, this ebook that may provide you with valuable tips you might do to help with these efforts: Personal Branding For the Business Professional by Chris Brogan.

Below is just a short sampling what’s in there, so download and read the entire ebook: Personal Branding for The Business Professional.

“Why Build a Personal Brand?

A personal brand gives you the ability to stand out in a sea of similar products. In essence, youʼre marketing yourself as something different than the rest of the pack. Do you need this? I donʼt know. Do you like to be mixed in with the pack?

But How?

Branding oneʼs self in an online environment built on entropy and go-baby-go is difficult at best, and impossible if you forget to take your happy pills. To that end, Iʼve come up with a quick list of 100 things you might do to help with these efforts.

Listening

• Build ego searches using Technorati and Google Blogsearch
• Comment frequently (and meaningfully) on blogs that write about you and your posts
• Donʼt forget the conversations hiding in Twitter (use Summize.com) and Friendfeed. Be sure to stay aware of those.
• If you can afford it, buy professional listening tools, like Radian6 or others in that category.
• Use Google Reader to store your ego searches.
• Use Yahoo! Site Explorer to see whoʼs linking to your site.
• Use heat map tools like CrazyEgg to see how people relate to your site.
• Listen to others in your area of expertise. Learn from them.
• Listen to thought leaders in other areas, and see how their ideas apply to you.
• Donʼt forget podcasts. Check out iTunes and see whoʼs talking about your area of interest.

Home Base

• Home base is your blog/website. Not everyone needs a blog. But most people who want to develop a personal brand do.
• Buy an easy-to-remember, easy-to-spell, content-appropriate domain name if you can. Donʼt be TOO clever.
• A really nice layout doesnʼt have to cost a lot, but shows youʼre more than a social media dabbler.
• Your “About” page should be about you AND your business, should the blog be professional in nature. At least, it should be about you.
• Make sure itʼs easy to comment on your site.
• Make sure itʼs easy for people to subscribe to your siteʼs content.
• Use easy to read fonts and colors.
• A site laden with ads is a site that doesnʼt cherish its audience. Be thoughtful.
• Pay attention to which widgets you use in your sidebar. Donʼt be frivolous.
• Load time is key. Test your blog when you make changes, and ensure your load times are reasonable.
• Claim your site on Technorati.com
• Use WebsiteGrader.com to make sure your site is well built in Googleʼs eyes.

Passports

Passports are accounts on other social networks and social media platforms. Itʼs a good idea to build an account on some of these sites to further extend your personal branding.

• Twitter.com is a must if you have a social media audience. It also connects you to other practitioners.
• Facebook and/or MySpace are useful social networks where you can build outposts (see next list).
• Get a Flickr.com account for photo sharing.
• Get a YouTube.com account for video uploading.
• Get a StumbleUpon.com account for voting.
• Get a Digg.com account for voting, as well.
• Get an Upcoming.org account to promote events.
• Get a del.icio.us account for social bookmarking.
• Get a WordPress.com account for its OpenID benefits.
• Get a LinkedIn account for your professional network.
• Take a second look at Plaxo. Itʼs changed for the better.
• Get a Gmail.com account for use with reader, calendar, docs, and more.
• Get a Discus.com account for comment threading.
• Get a FriendFeed.com account.

(…)

Passion Drives Personal Brand

Thinking and Planning Passion is what fuels the best of what we do. Itʼs that tireless drive to do something that we feel matters that will bring us forward in so many ways…

Passion is Hard to Fake

Authenticity matters. Most people can sense authenticity without a lot of effort. They can also sense when youʼve one astray from what truly matters to you. So be true to your passion. …

Passion Includes Mistakes and Failures

Never worry about doing something wrong, going afoul, pissing people off. Donʼt SEEK to do it, but donʼt be afraid of it. How can you create passionately if youʼre worried about going outside the lines. Make mistakes all over the place. Donʼt TRY to hurt peopleʼs feelings, and most especially, admit when youʼre wrong, apologize, try to be friends again, and keep going….Life doesnʼt have a do-over button, and you learn really quickly who gets mired in the past and whoʼs focused on making the experience of the present and future better. Focus on those who understand the latter. History is there to learn from, but not to obsess over. Make mistakes. Apologize. Repeat. And grow from your passion.

Download and read the entire ebook: Personal Branding for The Business Professional.

Why Create Your Own Custom Twitter Background?

Using a customized Twitter background allows you to include much more information than you are normally allowed to enter in your bio box, such as information about yourself, company, products, and brands; a larger profile picture of yourself, a company and or brand logo; tag lines (slogans), addresses of other websites that you may have; detailed contact info (address, phone, fax), as well as addresses to other social media profiles – Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, MySpace, Skype, YouTube, Flickr, and Blogs.

A unique, professionally-looking Twitter background will demonstrate professionalism, increase credibility, and will help you stand out from the crowd. You’ll stand a better chance to grab attention and make a memorable first impression.

Of course don’t go overboard. Don’t crowd the space with too much information. Choose what you feel is important, will convey more about you, interest potential followers, and create a good first impression.

How to Create A Custom Background: Image Dimensions

When creating the background image, it is important to consider the image dimensions. An image that is not properly sized can be covered up  by your Twitter profile or can start to tile, which often leads to an undesired effect.

To cover the entire window, the image dimensions should be at least 1600px wide by 1200px tall. This will work with almost all screen resolutions. (Resolutions that are most often used are: 1024 x 764 and 1280 x 800).

If you want to add a left-hand column, it should be narrow enough not to be covered up by the central Twitter content – under 200px.

Note: You can also choose a smaller image and tile it over your background.

How to Change The Background Image

This one is easy.

Go to Settings (1), then Design (2), and click on “Change background image” (3).

You’ll be able browse your computer and add any image you’d like, so long as it’s under 800k in size, GIF, JPG, or PNG.

Leave the “tile background” unchecked, unless you want to tile your image.

You may want to change the settings of the other colors on your twitter page.

Click on “Save Changes.”

View your new page, and see if you need to make any adjustments.

Creating your custom background image requires some patience and trial-and-error. If you’re not a designer, here are some tools that can help.

7 helpful Twitter Background Resources

Not only do many of these tools provide pre-designed backgrounds, but many can also automatically update your background, provide detailed information and FAQs, and even fully-functional image editors. Here are a few of the best:

1. MyTweetSpace: MyTweetSpace is one of the simplest ways to create a Twitter background with minimal effort. It allows users to create badges, add graphics, play with text, and more to create elegant backgrounds and left-hand text columns. You can even log in with Twitter and MyTweetSpace will automatically update your background.

2. TwitterBacks: This website provides a set of templates perfect for creating your ideal Twitter background. The templates come in PSD (Photoshop) form. In fact, my Twitter account utilizes a TwitterBack template as the basis for my design. Can you guess which one?

3. TweetStyle: TweetStyle offers free background templates, custom Twitter backgrounds, and a few useful blog posts on the subject of the backdrop.

4. Free Twitter Designer: This handy little app provides an easy-to-use image editor to help you create a professional-looking theme.

5. TwitBacks(): This is another tool for creating backgrounds. This one specializes in left-hand column-based backgrounds.

6. TwitterGallery: TwitterGallery is a directory of themes based on color and category. You can even click the “install” button under any theme, log into Twitter, and poof!…your background is ready.

7. Peekr(): If you stumble across a great Twitter background and want to take a quick look at it in its pure form, the Peekr bookmarklet is the way to go. Click on the bookmarklet once to show only the background, and press it again to bring everything back to normal.

http://mashable.com/2009/05/23/twitter-backgrounds/

Sometimes the devil is truly in the details.

It happened to me once with one of my new sites that I was waiting anxiously for the site to be indexed and visitors to start finding my articles and buying the products.  I was totally perplexed and could not figure out for two weeks what was going on.

It happened to me, it happened to other people, and – believe me – it can happen to YOU!

What You Need to Do to Make Sure Your Site is Found By the Search Engines

This will only take a minutes of your time, I promise.

If you want your site be read by the search engines (you do!), you must make sure your blog is set to public, so that your content is visible to the search engines.

In your Administrator’s panel go to Settings, Privacy, and make sure that the first option is selected “I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Sphere, Technorati) and archivers“.

And that’s it, you are done!

I have to admit, this is a new territory for me. I’m very new to Twitter – so I’m learning this stuff as I write this post. Up to this point, I when I heard someone rave about Tweeter or Facebook – I just scratched my head. After all what can be so great about reading what someone had for breakfast or when someone is taking a shower….

I mean, I can see how it’s a good way to stay in touch with people and friends. Building connections with people and getting to know them on a personal level. However, so far I much preferred speding my time doing keyword research and writing another keyword-optimized article to be posted on Ezinearticles.com or Hubpages, than expose even the most innocent detail of my private life to the world… (you can tell I’m not much of a social person, either).

Well, one of my New Year’s resolutions have been to become more active in the social media and finally learn what the fuss is about.

So What’s So Great about Twitter?

If you are like me – still pretty much clueless about how to take advantage of this medium - I found a great article about 10 ways how twitter can change someone’s life. If you still need convincing, here are some benefits you may want to consider:

1)   Immediate access to people and information
I used to go to Google when I had a question or needed to research or understand something better. Now, I tweet. And all the questions I ask on Twitter get personalized, specific answers from friends and strangers who are willing to share their knowledge and expertise with me. I’m learning so much faster now!

2)   The ability to market myself 24/7 without leaving my house or spending a dime
(…) Thanks to Twitter, I can network and market myself all the time, even when I’m not at my computer (and instead playing with my kids), and I get to be relaxed and comfortable in my own house and on my own time. (…)

6)   Being surrounded and inundated with messages from my target market and what they want from me, making it easy for me to create solutions for them quickly
(…) I do searches on keywords and browse tweets and the people who are tweeting them to see what my target market is talking about. I watch/listen for problems, struggles, and pain points, and then start developing my solutions. When I have a new idea, I simply ask my followers on Twitter what they think of it. Good response? I create the offering. Low/bad response? I ditch it and move on.

7)   Being approached by other thought leaders who invite me to speak, collaborate, teach, write or coach, rather than me hunting for these outlets of exposure
Really, who has time to hunt for opportunities? Thanks to Twitter and my marketing strategy that is built around it, I am no longer a hunter and am now a receiver of opportunities to do cool things with other cool people. My presence on Twitter helps other people find me, and we’re able to connect and build things together that I would never be able to do by myself.

  The most powerful tool I know of to build visibility, credibility and my brand
Well, enough said. Almost. Because I like to talk and write J. I have around 8,500 followers. That means that everything I tweet reaches all of these people. And then there’s the whole viral thing, which means that all the people following those people see my tweets, too. And so on. My Twitter profile is my virtual business card. How else could I get my business card into the hands of 8,500+ people (and I only have to type 140 characters to do it)

9)   Creating a single platform in which I can leverage everything else I do in my business
I can tweet about my blogposts, my podcasts, my videos, my mastermind groups, my membership programs, my articles, my info products and my BlogTalkRadio shows with just a few clicks of the mouse. Twitter is the center of my online presence, making it easy for people who are interested in finding out more about what I do to have easy access to all I offer.

From 10 Ways Twitter Changed My Life by Lara Galloway.

So How Do You Sign Up For Twitter?

1. To sign up, go to http://www.twitter.com and click on “Sign up now”.
2. Choose your username, which can either be your name or your business name, or a keyword of what your business sells. Your username will them become a part of your twitter url. For example my Twitter url is http://www.twitter.com/JoannaSlodownik.  Fortunately, you are allowed to change your user name if you change your mind.
3. Once you have chosen a unique username, click on Create my account.
4. You will now need to fill in the rest of your information.
5. If you have a website, enter your website url. For this you can either link to your main page on your website or a specific page on your website for your Twitter followers.
6. Write a short bio. Twitter directories will use your bio to add you to different categories within their listings so make sure what you have in this section is how you want to be known.
7. Upload your photo, logo, etc. It’s a good idea if you are going to jump into social media sites that allow you to build profiles to create a square image, or avatar as they are called, to use on your profile and often with your activity. Keep the overall size of this image small but understand that some tools expand the image so you might want to upload a 400 x 400 px image.

Once you have filled in your basic information entered, you are ready to start tweeting!

You will be given a home page and a profile page – ie: my profile is http://twitter.com/JoannaSlodownik. So my twitter handle is @JoannaSlodownik.

Start following a few people right away to get used to Twitter and then follow more and more people the more comfortable you get.  Following someone simply means receiving their Twitter updates.   When you follow someone, every time they post a new message, it will appear on your Twitter home page.  New messages are added to your home page as people post them, so you always get the updates in real time.  When you log in, you can see what the latest updates are.You can search for people by name or user name, import friends from other networks, or invite friends via email.  Once you’ve found your friends, follow them to start getting their updates.

Note: Unless you are following others your twitter feed will be empty. If you don’t have followers then nobody will see your tweets.

There are no limits as to how often or how many Tweets you make a day.

So, now the question remains – what do I write about?…

Incorporating Tweets on your blog

Twitter can easily be integrated with other communication tools, like Facebook, or your WordPress blog. We have a link here to a plugin that will make a widget available for your blog sidebar to display your tweets.  The plugin properly handles twitter feeds, including @username and links parsing.  It supports displaying profile images, and even lets you control whether to display the time and date of a tweet or how log ago it happened (about 5 hours ago, etc).

Twitter Widget Pro allows you to not only have more than one instance of this widget on your site, but even allows more than one instance of this widget in a single sidebar. How cool is that!

Twitter Resources

You can go to the twitter help guide

http://help.twitter.com/portal where you can get all your basic how to questions answered.

I also found two good tutorials about Twitter.

Mastering Twitter in 10 minutes or less by Chris Demetrios.

Using Twitter For Business by Duct Tape Marketing.

This is a brief overview of Twitter for complete beginners (4 minutes)

How To Use Twitter Effectively for Business and Advocacy (57 Minutes) (haven’t watched the whole thing yet, but it may have some good info).

Although posting articles online, creating websites, sending e-mails, is easy, fast, and cheap; these are not always the most effective ways to get out the world about you or your offers.

First of all many markets are super competitive in the online world, and very hard for newbies to break into. But you rarely see people using offline promotional methods to promote a website or online business.

Also, keep in mind that there are still plenty of people out there who rely more on print media: magazines, newspapers, local publications, trade publications, than the Internet to get their information. The reasons for that may be very diverse, from lack of time to browse the web, to lack of computer skills or lack of trust, as they feel a printed article is more “trust-worthy” than any information they can find online.

And the fact that these people are not online does not mean that they are not worth pursuing – they include some wealthy consumers (for example, executives, who don’t have time to browse the web, but take magazines and newspapers to read on planes), or people in their 60s or older, who do not  trust the stuff that is published online or just do not like to sit in front of the computer too much – much preferring reading a printed word or hearing a news on a radio or television (I know my mother is one of them – she does not like computers beyond the use of video player to watch the latest video featuring her grandson performing in a schoolplay, learning to ski, or other fascinating stuff like that. She definitely does not trust what is published on the Internet – and I cannot blame her for that  ), and many others.

List of ideas to get you started in the world of offline publicity.

1.  Offer the local newspapers to write a series of articles about a popular subject. For example, if you have a site about gardening tools, you can create a series with Gardening tips – you can provide some timely information how to maintain your garden and what tools to use – with information about your site. You can also offer surprising facts about the products, invent a new use for the products, or tie what you offer to a season.

2.  Write about something controversial or break-a-news story and tie it to your niche, and submit it to the local papers, to attract attention and build traffic.  You can also turn your TV-watching to good use by expressing an opinion about an issue raised in a popular show.  Raise a question prompted by a best-selling book or blockbuster movie.

3.  Write an ebook about something relevant to your niche an/or your community and promote it in the local media.

4.  Hold a contest and give away a prize and write about it to the local newspapers. For example, if you have a costume site, hold a “best costume” contest – ask people to submit pictures of their costumes for a prize.  If your site sells unique chess sets, hold a chess competition.

5.  Hold a contest or other event and give away a prize and post a notice about it on community bulletin boards found in local libraries, grocery stores, and community centers.

6.  Conduct a survey, offer a prize for participation, and publicize it in the local media.

7.  Launch a community service project and publicize it.

8.  Do something memorable or controversial to encourage “word of mouth” marketing.

9.  Solicit the help of a local reporter to write up the articles for you.

10.  Print business cards and promotional cards and leave them wherever you can – for example, local libraries often have a place where local businesses leave their promotional materials for others to take, community centers, etc.  Ask if you can put your promotional materials in related retail or office locations.

11.  Write a press release and submit it to local newspapers.

12. Promote your sites using cheap or free classified ads in local newsletters and newspapers. This can be a great way to test the response to different offers and headlines.

13.  Submit articles to trade magazines with a link to your site in your bio.

14.  Offer a free email mini course or e-course and send announcement to local newspapers.

15.  Get some t-shirts printed with your URL and wear them everywhere.

16.  Participate in a trade show and bring a give-away with your site address.

17.  Network with other people at seminars and other live events.

18.  Speak at seminars and give the audience a reason to visit your website. Join local Toastmasters to improve your speaking skills and help you get rid of stage fright.

19.  Set up a kiosk or booth at community events and give away something free to create buzz.

20.  Place ads in the Yellowpages.

21.  Place classified ads in targeted magazines.

22.  Place ads on a local radio station. Talk radio is best.

23.  Place ads on internet radio stations. It’s cheap.

24.  Advertise on TV. This can be seem cost-prohibitive if you think about the national TV stations. But being a sponsor of the program on a local station can be surprisingly affordable and will give you huge exposure.

25.  Partner with a local business to integrate your products with.

26.  If you have a physical location, such as store or office, that people visit, put up a large advertising  with your web address.

27.  Donate money to a charity. This way you often end up on their promotional materials and website as a contributor.

28.  Sponsor a local event – for example, a local sports tournament.

29.  Go to the meetings of your local chamber of commerce to network. Ask them for a link to your site.

30. Send snail-mail letters or flyers to local businesses that could benefit from your products or services.

31.  Participate in package insert program with other local businesses. This involves mailing a package of flyers, brochures, business cards, etc. to potential clients and splitting the cost with non-competing businesses.

32.  Organize a free workshop at a local store, business, library, or organization.

33.  Constantly brainstorm for more ideas.  Always carry a notebook with you to record new ideas or record them on your cell phone, before you forget them.

Remember that you don’t even need to actually live in the area where you are promoting your stuff. For example, the fact that you once spend a vacation in the area and loved it can create a connection that may get you covered in places far away from home.

More Resources:

For printed resources, contact your local library. Most libraries carry at least one or more media directories.  You may try asking for the following:

• Bacon’s Newspaper/Magazine Directory.  Two volumes: newspaper and magazine.  Both volumes provides names, e-mails, phones and addresses of publications in the US, Canada, and beyond, with names of editors, columnists, news syndicates, and circulation.
• Bacon’s Radio/TV/Cable Directory. Provides names, addresses, phone numbers and profiles of all US and Canadian radio and broadcasts stations, cable TV stations, with names of hosts, producers, and broadcast times of specific programs.
• Encyclopedia of Associations. Guide to over 20,000 organizations, professional societies, trade groups and interest groups.  Most of them publish a newsletter or magazine for members.
• For online resources, try some of the following:
• Alternative Press Online Directory – Directory of alternative-lifestyle publications.
• ERSys – Find local media for thousands of cities and towns in the U.S.
• Magazines Directory – African-American, Latino, Home/Garden, Fitness/Health, Travel and some other niches.
• Magazine Mastheads – Volunteer-run directory of who’s who on staff at hundreds of magazines.
• MediaPost – Free directory for 13,000 radio, TV and cable stations, 8,000 publications and more.
• Radio-Locator – Search for radio station web sites by zip code, city, state, call letters, format or country.
• State by State Newspapers – Links to newspaper web sites by state.
• Go to http://www.yudkin.com/resources.htm for more ideas.

Writing interesting and persuasive content, day in and day out, can seem like a truly daunting task (I’m speaking from experience).

If you are not a writer, chances are you’ll be soon asking yourself “how do I write content so others want to read it (and buy stuff from me)”.

The bad news is, unless you hire a writer to do it for you, there is really no way around it. You’ll have to write lots of content, and the better your writing, the easier it will be for you to attract and keep your readers.

The good news are you don’t need to be a great writer to be successful online.

So, before you run out and search for copywriting courses or consider hiring a writer, here are some tips for you how to approach this copywriting thing:   

The #1 easiest way that you can transform the tepid results that you are getting, right now, out of ALL of your online efforts – and most specifically out of your copy – is to CARE more. Not about your results. About the pain that your client, your customer, your anonymous web browser is feeling in the pit of their stomach about the problem you are apt to solve. And I don’t mean by using more “power words” or any other of the nonsensical nothingness that many of these online copy teachers are torpedoing at your sense of self –improvement.

I mean you have to feel GENUINE empathy for your prospect. The best copywriters will tell you that good copy is an INTERIOR process – not the result of some compendium of slick words, headlines and buzz phrases. No amount of “scarcity” or cool fonts will make you good. If you care – it shows. If you’ve been there before – it shows more.

Want to be a better copywriter than the very best whose pens presently are pressed up against the proverbial paper? Go to what you know – and sell THAT. Know what it feels like to be fat and picked last in gym class, not go to your senior prom and hide while your friends and family were hitting the beach in the summer for fear of being humiliated in a bathing suit in public? Guess what? You WILL understand what your prospect needs to hear to make the change in his or her life – and will be able to communicate that FAR better than someone who has never walked a minute in those moccasins.

Look – at the end of the day – if you are able to FEEL something genuine and powerful and truly want to help people achieve their goals and move out of the ever-present ruts that we all occasionally find ourselves struggling through….You can be a phenomenal copywriter. Because you aren’t selling. You are SOLVING. And sharing. This is a very powerful distinction – and one I am personally so SICK and seeing overlooked, especially in the over hyped and under delivered online space. If you feel the obligation and honor that comes with helping people truly high step and hurdle their proverbial problems, you will be the richest man (or woman) in your niche. And that includes far more than just the kind of wealth you deposit in the bank.

How To Write Better Online Copy:

So, there you go. Write like it counts, no matter what your audience size.

So, you installed your first WordPress site, and you are eager to add your first post.  I have good news for you.

Crafting posts and pages in WordPress is super easy!

If you have ever used any text editor, or wrote an email message, then you should have no difficulty writing your first post in WordPress.

Writing a Post In WordPress

To add a new post, click on Posts, Add New (1).

Type the title of your post into the top field (2). You will see the “Permalink” appear right under the title, which you can edit this if you wish. For example:

Permalink: http://buildawebsiteacademy.com/writing-posts-in-wordpress/

Type your text (3) using the buttons to add formatting.

The WordPress editor offers a wide range of styling options, but my advice is to keep it simple. Click on the icon marked with number (4) to reveal more formatting options.  You may want to add:

Headings. Headings are a great way to organize a blog post. Before actually writing a post, you can write down a couple of subtitles for your post. Since Heading 1 is usually reserved for the page title, what you will ever need to structure a blog post is Heading 2 and in some cases Heading 3. You can use them to break down your main topic into subtopics, or maybe a list (yes, a list is more powerful when using headings).  Use subheads every few paragraphs, even in a 300-word post.

Hyperlinks. Link to resources that can be valuable to your readers. I select the Open link in new window option, as I don’t want you to leave my blog. 

Lists. Most readers love lists!  This doesn’t mean you have to make a list out of everything, but if you have “list material”, do use them! Don’t let your cool content fade away between your paragraphs – use bulleted points whenever you can.

Use bold text and italics for emphasis on words and phrases.

Pictures and videos. They make the pages colorful and viewers get to see a little of your part of the world (see description below).

When writing your post, you have the option of using the visual or HTML mode of the editor (5). The visual mode lets you see your post as is, while the HTML mode shows you the code and replaces the WYSIWYG editor buttons with quicktags.

Adding Categories

Categories are the general topics the post can be classified in. Most bloggers have 7-10 categories for their content, each post typically is assigned to one category. Readers can browse specific categories to see all posts in the category. To add a new category, click the Add New Category. You can manage your categories by going to Posts, Categories.

Adding Tags

Tags are to micro-categories for your blog, similar to including index entries for a page. Posts with similar tags are linked together when a user clicks one of the tags. Add new tags to the post by typing the tag into the box and clicking “Add”.

Adding Pictures, Video, and Audio Files

Click on the desired Upload/Insert icon to add a picture, video or audio file.

Indicate the location of the file (on your computer, or from URL)

Insert the file into the post.

Click Insert into Post, and that’s it!

Adding video to your posts can be very powerful, whether it is your own video, or someone else’s video from Youtube or Viddler.
Now, you can use the same method for adding video, but I prefer just to ‘embed’ the video to my posts. This is not as difficult as you may think. Go to Youtube.com, find the video you want to embed and copy the ‘Embed Code’.

Switch to HTML editor and paste the code into your post. It will look something like this:

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="425" height="344"
codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param
name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src"
value="http://www.youtube.com/v/q9b0jzcq0C4&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;" /><param name="allowfullscreen"
value="true" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"
src="http://www.youtube.com/v/q9b0jzcq0C4&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;" allowfullscreen="true"
allowscriptaccess="always"></embed></object>

When you are ready with your new page, click Save Draft to save it without posting to your site, or Publish (6).

A Few Practical Tips:

• Spell Check and Proof Read.  While there are spell check Plugins available, but even those can’t check for everything. Some serious writers will write their posts in a text editor with spell check, check all the spelling and proof it thoroughly before copying and pasting into WordPress.
• Preview your posts as you edit. You can preview your post as you make your changes. I usually keep two windows open, one for editing, one for viewing the final layout.
• Toggle Full Screen Mode. To make your editing screen larger, you can use the Full Screen Mode (Alt +Shift +G). 
• Increase the size of the post box. What I always do, is when I start a new WordPress site, I change the size of the post box to make it larger. It makes writing and editing your posts easier. To do that, go to Settings, Writing. Enter the desired number of lines for your post box (I use “40″), and click on Save Changes.

There are many things that I did not cover in this post (like optimizing the post for the search engines), but I don’t want to overwhelm you.

Watch this video that will show you how to add a new post and gives some other useful tips, not discussed here.