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Category Archives: Steps to Success
Seven Reasons You Might Not Want to Work from Home
Working from home has become increasingly popular in the last few years. For solo entrepreneurs and micro-business owners a home office has often become their primary business location, whether by necessity or choice. There are many good reasons to work from home. No long commute, no office overhead, no distracting co-workers, no having to get dressed up for the office.
Working from home does have its downside, though. There are definitely some logistical problems and challenges to having your home as your office. Commercial office space can offer benefits that a home office may not. Here are seven reasons you might want to consider an office away from home.
You don’t have to worry about whether your clients are allergic to cats. Meeting with clients when you work from home can be a real challenge. Not all of your clients will love the dog like you do—and the dog may not love them. Sure, you can meet at the local coffee shop but how certain are you going to be that there’s a quiet table available or that it won’t be full when you schedule that 2 p.m. meeting? Having your own office space will assure you of a quiet and professional space to meet with clients.
No distractions. When you work at the office, it’s pretty rare that someone will be interrupting you for a game of Candyland or a peanut butter sandwich. You aren’t likely to need to stop working to investigate that funny noise coming from the ice maker or to run someone to a friend’s house. When you have a commercial office for your business, it’s easier to focus on work and leave the distractions of home at home.
No crumbs in the keyboard. It’s not likely your admin will be eating peanut butter crackers at the computer, spilling their crumbs and their juice on your keyboard or leaving sticky fingerprints on the mouse. Not having to share the computer with your son’s homework or your spouse’s to-do list can really increase productivity and cut down on computer repairs.
Kids make lousy IT techs. There isn’t always ready tech support available when you work from home. Your son may be a whiz at setting up the video game console and your daughter may be able to text like crazy, but how much help will they be when your network goes down or your hard drive crashes? Many service providers charge a premium for home visits or mileage for a trip to suburbia to repair your computer. And where will you keep that equipment, anyway? A laptop and printer don’t necessarily take up much space, but what about a copier, a scanner or other office machines that speed up production and make life easier? Having an office space with your co-workers where you can share the cost of equipment and have ready access to technical support makes the work day go so much easier.
No one will color on your proposal. Oh, whoops? Was that an important paper, Mom? Having a private space of your own means not having to worry about your office supplies ending up the medium for your kids’ artistic endeavors.
More family or free time. One of the big reasons people choose to work at home is they think it will give them more family time. Recent studies show the opposite is more often true. With work right there staring you in the face 24 hours a day, it’s easy to get sucked into taking care of “just one more thing.” When you leave your work at the office—the one not at the kitchen table—you can come home and focus on your family.
Your own office—really. In many homes, private office space just doesn’t exist. Are you working in the guest room? Or do you set up at the dining room table? Having a commercial office means not having to quit early because you’re having dinner guests or put a project on hold because the in-laws are coming for a visit. An office of your own means you can work how you need to without worrying about what’s going on outside the office.
How about you? What are your ups and downs of working at home or not working at home. Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Get More Likes with this Easy Facebook Welcome Tab Tutorial
If you have a Facebook page for your business or blog and you don’t have a Welcome Tab, you are missing out on a free and easy opportunity to help people see who you are and what your business is all about. What is a Facebook Welcome Tab? It is the page that first time visitors (or those who haven’t yet liked your page) will see when they visit your page. Here is a sample Welcome Tab.
If your default landing page is your wall or, heaven forbid, your info page with a map, you need to take action now. There’s nothing wrong with your wall—it’s what everyone sees IF they ever visit your page again after they’ve liked it (most people don’t; they get your posts in their newsfeed if you’re active and can engage them in your page). As for having people see a map of your location when they come to your page—is that really the most important thing you want them to know the first time they visit? I’m pretty sure it’s not. That’s not usually why people visit your page.
So, how do you get a welcome tab?
It’s not as hard as some would have you think. Yes, there are lots of page creation apps out there. Some are free; some cost money. I’m working on a review of some of them and will post more about them in the coming weeks. But we want to get you started NOW. Not only that, but this first page will be free and will give you a presence while you figure out what you might like to do in the long term.
First, you need to create a welcome image. Do this in Photoshop or the image-editing program of your choice. I’m going to assume (yeah, I know, it’s a dangerous assumption) that you know how to create an image. It needs to be not wider than 520 pixels nor longer than 800 pixels. If it exceeds these dimensions, Facebook is going to put scroll bars on it and that really doesn’t look good. You also don’t really need or want something bigger as you want them to see it as soon as they land on your page without having to scroll around. Make it 72 dpi and save it as a level 8 or 9 JPG file.
Next, go to your FTP account (yes, I am again assuming you have a website and know how to get to the back end of it). Create a folder to hold your image and give it a simple name. Mine is called fbpages. Upload your image to the folder. Before closing your FTP, make sure you have the image. Type its address into your browser to check. When the image comes up, either bookmark it or paste the address into a text file; you’ll need this later.
Now, go to Facebook and find the Static HTML: iframe tabs app. Hint: It’s here.
Click the “add Static HTML to a Page” button. Select your page from the list that pops up (if you only have one page, you won’t get a list). Once you’ve selected your page and clicked on “Add Static HTML: iframe tabs”, it will automatically go to your page.
In the left-hand column under your profile picture, find the little star with “welcome” next to it. Click on that.
Now, this is the tricky part. It involves a teeny little bit of html, but I promise you can do this. Add this text in the box that says “Enter your content here”: <img src=”http://YOUR-IMAGE-ADDRESS-HERE.jpg”> Replace the http:// with the address of your jpg that you saved earlier. Click the save button in the upper right and then click preview. You should see your welcome image.
Once that is all done you want to set this new welcome page as the default for visitors. To do that, click “edit info” at the top of your business page. From the menu on the left, choose “manage permissions.” In the box next to “Default Landing Tab” choose “Welcome.” Save changes and you are all set.
Now, your new page visitors can be wowed by your great welcome page.
There are many fancier things you can do. You can add special content once they’ve liked your page, you can add an opt-in for your mailing list, but for now, pat yourself on the back for taking the first step and setting your page and your business apart from the rest.
And in case you need a little more step-by-step, here is a video tutorial for you.
Also posted in Social Media
Tagged business success, Facebook, how-to, marketing, social media
26 Comments
Why You Need to Love WordPress
I love WordPress.
I built my first website about a decade ago and have tried many different web platforms and templates over the years. For about the past five years, WordPress has been my platform of choice, both for my own sites and for sites that I have created for clients. Today, I only set up and work on WordPress websites.
Why do I love WordPress and why do I think you should love WordPress, too?
WordPress is Free.
It doesn’t cost anything to install and use WordPress. The only cost is to register your domain and pay for web hosting. Yes, you can have a completely free blog at wordpress.com but if you are using WordPress for business you NEED to self-host WordPress on your own domain. The cost of a web host and registration can be as little as $5/month. If you can’t afford it or aren’t willing to pay that, you should probably rethink entrepreneurship.
WordPress is Easy.
You don’t have to be a programmer to set up and maintain a WordPress website. You don’t have to know a speck of code (though a little knowledge can be helpful in customizing some themes). You don’t have to be a computer genius. Most web hosts come with WordPress pre-installed on your domain or have “one-button installation” and WordPress includes with a pre-installed default theme. So, if you really don’t want to do anything except start blogging, all you have to do is fill in your information and you are ready to go.
WordPress is Flexible.
Whether you want a blog, a static (traditional) website, an e-commerce site or some combination of the three, WordPress can handle it. Whether you are a one-person business or a multi-national corporation, WordPress can handle your needs. It’s used by everyone from solo entrepreneurs (like me) to Fortune 500 companies like GM, eBay and UPS.
WordPress has Options.
Unlike some web platforms, WordPress sites are not all the same. There are countless numbers of free WordPress templates, called themes, available (my latest Google search returned 6 million results) and nearly as many premium or paid themes. You can make WordPress look like a blog or look nothing like a blog. In addition to all the themes, there are also plug-ins that extend the functionality of WordPress and add additional customizations. WordPress is infinitely customizable.
WordPress is Search-Engine Friendly
If you have a website, you want to be found online and that means the search engines need to be able to find you. The WordPress platform is designed to be SEO (search engine optimization) friendly, meaning it has features that make it attractive to the programs search engines use to find content. This also makes it easy for theme developers to create and incorporate even more search-friendly features into their themes and plug-ins. And while this may all be Geek to you, all you need to know is that it’s good for your website and good for your business.
And that is why I love WordPress .
Do you love WordPress ? What features are your favorite?
Two Quick Steps to Increase Productivity Now!
Would you like to painlessly boost your productivity today? Here are two simple ways to improve your productivity, save you time and give you a little clarity.
#1. Clean off the top of your desk or workstation.
Really. Remove everything from the top of your desk. Leave the computer monitor and the phone. You don’t need to mess with those—that will make more work. But everything else needs to go. No matter how critical you think it is to your work life, take it off your desk.
Dust your desktop and your monitors and clean the phone. Wipe the phone down with an alcohol wipe; get all the grime and dirt and germs off it. Once you’ve done that, look at all the stuff you took off the desk. Yes, the piles, the pens, the sticky notes, the business cards, the mail, etc., etc. Give it a quick sort and figure out what you really need.
For me, critical desk items would be my pen cup (empty out all but your favorite and most-used implements here—the spare pens can go somewhere else), my notepad, my timer (find out why here), my sticky notes and my water bottle. That’s it.
I really don’t need the canned air, yesterday’s mail, the memory cards that need reformatting or the Chinese Fortune Sticks. Are those stress balls and Kid Meal toys really helping you get more done? If not (and you know the answer is no), find them a new home.
Now, doesn’t that look better? Doesn’t that feel better? Do this at least once a week and you’ll find that you are working better and thinking more clearly.
#2. Clean out the drawers.
Confession: I have computer desk; it has no drawers (yes, that is my desk in the picture and all the workspace I have). That’s one of the reasons my desk top gets messy. What I do have is a set of rolling drawers that sits next to my desk, but it’s just out of reach. Since I don’t have a dedicated office where I can keep everything, most of my office supplies live in the basement store room so the drawers have become my portable office for things I need on a regular basis.
When I am tidying up in a hurry, or when my kids don’t want to take something back to the basement, it gets stuffed in my drawers. As a result, they end up cluttered and messy and full of stuff I don’t need. Giving the drawers a quick clean out can produce some amazing finds.
Let’s do this one drawer at a time. Open the drawer, take EVERYTHING out of it and wipe down the inside. Turn it upside down over the wastebasket if you need to and get all the little cruddy stuff out. Look at the contents you have taken out and decide what really needs to be there. If it isn’t something you use regularly in your work, consider finding it a new home.
Yesterday my desk gave up two tape measures, a flashlight, an empty tape dispenser, some colored pencils, a compass (the math kind, not the Boy Scout kind), three checkbook covers and some other junk. It may not seem like a lot, but my drawers aren’t very big. If you have larger drawers, put a drawer organizer on your shopping list. My favorite—especially for the pencil drawer—is a silverware divider. They are just the right size for most desk drawers and the perfect for sorting writing implements.
Take a look at what you got from the desktop and the drawers. Throw away the trash and the broken stuff and then get rid of everything that isn’t helping you be more productive. Your kids’ art supplies and homework tools can go into a labeled bin in the closet that they can access when they need it. Receipts and other forms should be filed in your file box or cabinet.
If you keep in or on your workspace only what you currently need, you’ll find your workday going more smoothly, you won’t waste time trying to find things, your productivity will go up and your stress level will go down.
What’s your biggest productivity challenge or your best tip?
Please share your thoughts in the comment section below and let’s all get more successful together.
Do Your Little Kittens Keep Losing their Mittens?
Mine do–and it drives me crazy.
We live in an area where winter gear is more than a wardrobe accessory.
When I found eight gloves on my daughter’s desk–and not a matching pair in the bunch–I knew we needed a better way to keep track of all the hats, scarves, gloves and other winter clothes that seem to be draped over every chair, spindle and doorknob in our home.
I thought about putting bins or shelves in the front closet or letting their little fingers and noses turn blue and fall off, but none of those ideas went over well. I really wanted a solution that would be simple and seasonal. After all, we don’t’ need storage bins in the front closet in summer and that would just invite clutter to pile up.
And then I was at the store one day and found this.
For just a few dollars, I found this great over-the-door shoe organizer. I was looking for one with the pockets for each shoe, but this one–designed for pairs–works even better. There are enough pockets for each family member to store a hat, scarf and gloves in, plus extra pockets for heavy-duty ski (or shovel-the-front-walk) gloves.
I didn’t have to build shelves, find room for bins or make any permanent changes to my closet. When winter’s over, I can store it in the same bin as all the winter gear.
We have come to use shoe organizers for many things at our house. We’ve never used them for shoes, but they are handy for all kinds of other things: art supplies, hair accessories, neckties, jewelry. See-through small pockets and the ability to put them on the back of doors, utilizing otherwise unused space, makes these perfect for organizing.
Next year, I might even write names on the flaps so there’s no question about whose gear goes where.
How about you? Have you got a favorite organizing tip to share or an organizing challenge you’d like help with. Please leave your ideas, questions and suggestions in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
Tagged Family, Organization, Productivity
4 Comments
Keep Your Memories Safe
The holidays are over and if you are like most people, you pulled out your digital camera and took at least a few photos. If you have kids or grandkids you probably took a lot of photos.
Now what?
Are you going to print them and put them in an album?
Share them on Facebook?
Or let them languish on your camera’s memory card forever?
Are those pictures important to you? If they are, how will you keep them safe?
I hear on the news at least once a week the sad tale of someone whose home or car was burglarized and who lost their digital camera or computer with every single photo they ever had of their wedding or the birth of their child or some other important event. We rarely hear that the thieves felt remorse and sent back the photos. And if not loss by theft, what about accidentally erasing the card or having your hard drive crash? Yes, it happens. Hard drives fail. It’s not a matter of IF but WHEN.
Here are a few suggestions for preserving your important pictures so you can enjoy them, share them and pass them on to your children and grandchildren someday.
Back up your files. That little card in your camera wasn’t designed to be your image files’ permanent home. At the very least, download those images to your computer. If you can, use a dedicated hard drive for storage. My computer has one drive for the system and programs and one for image storage. If you don’t want to set aside a whole internal hard drive, consider a removable or portable hard drive for picture storage. There are many programs on the market for photo organizing and storage. My personal favorite is ACDSee. You can also use CD’s and DVD’s to store files, but be aware that disks don’t last forever. Disk writing software and technology can change, leaving older disks unreadable. Disks can get scratched or broken. If you back up to a disk, make more than one and test them after writing to make sure they are readable—sometimes the write can fail even when it says it didn’t (guess how I know).
Once you’ve downloaded your images, it’s ok to delete the bad ones. Just as you didn’t keep every print back when you were using film, you don’t have to keep every digital image. It’s always best to do your deleting from the computer and not in your camera. You are less likely to delete something you wanted and less likely to cause problems with your memory card. If you want to use photo editing software to make enhancements, go ahead—just remember, a little bit goes a long way. If you’re making big changes to a file, save it as a copy so your original will remain unharmed.
If you want an easy way to share your images with friends and family online, you can set up a free photo sharing account on a site like Flickr or Photobucket. You can also share them on Facebook, but some people don’t have Facebook accounts. When uploading photos for online sharing, remember to be sensitive to the feelings of your subjects and don’t share embarrassing or unflattering pictures without their permission; otherwise, they may return the favor.
Now that you’ve done all that, print your favorites. This is the best thing to do with a photograph and what they are really for. Take or send your files to your favorite photo lab and have prints made to frame and hang in your home or office, give as gifts, put in an album or pin on your bulletin board. Once they’re printed, display or scrapbook them so you can enjoy your photos. If you’re not into traditional scrapbooking, you can use a digital scrapbooking program and then have an album printed by any number of different printers.
I still recommend photo lab prints over home inkjet printers. It’s generally less expensive and the prints are more durable, though there are inkjet printers very capable of high-quality photographic reproduction these days. Some online labs even offer free photo storage for you so you have an online backup of your image files.
So what will you do with your holiday photos this year? Do you have any questions about storing or printing digital files? Please share your thoughts and questions in the comment section below.
And if you found this post helpful, please use the buttons above and below to share it on the web.
Wish Upon a Star
My oldest daughter is a Disney-phile. It’s so much her favorite place that she grew up and went to work there. When I went to visit her, this is the one image she asked for as a memento of my visit. She is definitely a “wish upon a star” girl. She wished and made her wish come true.
What wish upon a star will you make come true for you this year?
Let me know in the comment section below.
Use Alt Text to Increase Search Engine Rankings
Are you missing an important tool in the quest for search engine success?
If you are using images in your blog (and you should be), they can help move up your blog in the search rankings. But if you aren’t making use of the Alternate Text box that WordPress provides for each image, your images aren’t doing much for your blog’s rankings.
Using Alternate Text, also known as Alt Text, with your uploaded images helps Google (and other search engines) to more effectively index your blog. Search engines cannot “see” photographs or graphics, which means they cannot be indexed and included in search results.
When you add an image to your WordPress blog, you get this box.
For SEO, the most important parts of this box are the File Name, the “Title” and “Alternate Text.” The first step begins before you upload your image. Give your image a descriptive file name. If it’s a photograph it probably has a name like “IMG3456″ or if you have some sort of cataloguing system or are using a stock graphic it might have a name like “DIS1011.” That’s great for being organized and lousy for SEO.
Before I uploaded this image, I renamed it “epcot-at-twilight.” A descriptive name helps search engines to classify it in searches. Searchers may look for “epcot at twilight” or even “epcot” but they aren’t likely to look for “3456.”
WordPress automatically puts your file name in the Title Box. When a reader mouses over your image in the post, this is the text that will show up. You can change the title if you wish, but the file name is not changeable.
Next is the Alternate Text box. If your images don’t load for some reason, this is the text that will show up in their place. Alt Text should be descriptive and relate to both the image and the post. My Alt Text for this image is “Epcot at Twilight, Disneyworld, Orlando, Florida.” All of the text relates to the image and helps Google to know the subject of this image. Using just “Epcot” would also work, but the text should be as informative and descriptive as possible, especially if your blog or post are image-heavy, like a photography blog.
Avoid “keyword stuffing”, however, which can cause a search engine to decide your site is spam and maybe drop it completely. An example of keyword stuffing for this image would be “Epcot at twilight, Disneyworld, Orlando, Florida, Disney, resort, twilight, Disney Parks, sunset, Mickey Mouse, theme parks, Disney Resorts, Orlando tourist attraction, Walt Disney.”
In addition to using the alt tags, make sure the text on your page also relates to the images and puts them in context. If your blog or post is image-heavy, be sure to include some descriptive text in the body of your post that incorporates your keywords in a natural way. Combining relevant text with relevant Alt Text will help increase your blog’s search engine rankings and help to increase traffic and readers.
If you haven’t done this in the past, start doing it now and see how it helps your blog. And as you have time, you can go back and add Alt Text to previously uploaded and posted images to help your blog’s rankings even more.
Have you done this on your blog? Do you have any questions about Alt Texts or using images on your blog. Please share any comments or questions in the comment section below and I will answer them for you.
Tagged blogging, business success, how-to, Wordpress
5 Comments
Use Gmail Filters to Organize Your Email & Increase Productivity
Do you spend too much time on your email? Would you like to cut that time way back and not miss any important emails.
You can! If you use gmail, today’s tutorial is just for you. Learn how to create filters that will automatically sort your incoming emails into the folders of your choosing, so you can easily see what’s important and what can wait.
By the way, if your email is through your domain, you can still use gmail to read and process it. If you’d like to learn how, leave me a comment below and I’ll let you know when the next tutorial is up.
If you found this post helpful, please use the buttons above and below to share it on the web.
Tagged business success, email, how-to, Organization, Productivity
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Use a Journal to Boost Business Success
Do you journal?
You should.
Keeping a journal will help your business be more successful.
Having a daily or weekly record of your business growth helps you keep track of new ideas, measure your progress, celebrate your successes and analyze your flops.
What is journaling? Journaling is simply the act of putting thoughts or ideas onto paper. There are many ways to do it, but for our purposes, I consider journaling either using pen and paper or typing on the computer. Audio and Video journals serve a different purpose and aren’t as effective for business journals as writing is.
Write down ideas, record your successes and your failures, write about your challenges and how you handled them. A journal is a great place to analyze and note what went right, what went wrong and what you would do differently next time. Don’t waste time beating yourself up but if you need to vent, it’s better on paper than yelling at your partner or kicking the dog.
What’s the difference between a business journal and a personal journal or diary? A personal journal is just that—it’s where you write about your daily life, your kids, your vacation, current events and the price of milk. A personal journal is for the story of your life. Your business journal is the story of your business. It’s a place to brainstorm, to analyze and summarize meetings and events, and to plan strategies and assess your progress (or lack of).
Writing down thoughts and ideas frees your mind from having to remember everything, enabling you to focus on creativity and running your business. Having a written record of your progress helps you see patterns, organize your thoughts, find your passion, and see changes and refinements that will improve your business. Writing can help boost your creativity. It can be an outlet for emotions you aren’t comfortable sharing with others. Writing can give you clarity. I often find that a problematic situation becomes less so when I can put everything down on paper and then review it more objectively.
Write daily if you can. You don’t need to write a lot. Set aside 10 minutes at the end of each workday to journal. If not daily, write at least twice a week and whenever the thought strikes. Writing about things while they are fresh in your mind will give you a more accurate and complete picture of your life and your progress.
The beauty of journaling is that you can do it anywhere, anytime. I carry a small notebook with me wherever I go. I never know when I’ll need to jot down an idea or when I’ll have a few free minutes that I can spend journaling. Ideas that have made their way to my journal are not always implemented right away but I have found inspiration when I read back through it at a later time.
Do you journal? How do you do it and how has it helped your business? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Tagged business success, how-to, inspiration, Productivity, writing
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Connect with Me!
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