Archive for Resources
Running Your Business With an iPhone
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Don’t you just love technology? A few short years ago it really wasn’t possible to run your business from your phone. Now you can do almost anything with the help of applications for your iPhone.
Writing/Editing
There are a number of apps that let you view and edit documents directly from your smartphone. One of the most popular is called Documents to Go. It lets you view and edit documents right on your phone.
You can also find text-based writing tools like PlainText and iA Writer that are inexpensive and easy to use.
Desktop Communication
You can use the GoToMyPC app to connect to your work computer. This makes it easy to access your work files directly. No need to plan ahead. You can also use Apps like Dropbox and CloudTalk to share and store information that is accessible both from your computer and your smartphone.
Communication
With Skype you can have voice chats (and video chats if your device has a camera) with customers and contractors.
You can also use dictation applications like Dragon and QuickVoice to record your thoughts or create business content or documents.
Payment and Invoicing
PayPal offers an easy to use payment application that lets you send invoices and manage your account from your smartphone. Many banks also offer applications that let you manage your account from your phone. Intuit, the makers of Quicken and QuickBooks also have a payment processing application called GoPayment that you can use on your smartphone.
Blogging
Like to blog on the go? Check out the WordPress application that makes it easy to write, edit and publish blogs from your smartphone.
Social Networking
There are myriad applications to manage your social networking for both Facebook and Twitter. You can post pictures, comments, and stay in touch with your friends from just about any mobile device. Check out Friendly and the iTunes Facebook app for Facebook. Check out the HootSuite application for Twitter.
Organization
Last but definitely not least are the wide number of organization and brainstorming applications that you can find to not only grow your business but also to manage it from your phone. Check out MindNode for mind mapping applications. Evernote and One Note are both fantastic note taking, clipping, and organizational tools.
And don’t forget the basics. You can access your Google accounts with Google applications which means you can check your AdSense earnings, analytics and of course you can check your email too.
Smartphone applications make owning and operating a business easier than it has ever been before. You can network, invoice, pay bills, brainstorm, publish content and launch new products – all from your phone.
6 Steps To Using Google Docs
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Most word processing software programs don’t come cheaply. Even the most commonly used, MS Word comes at a hefty price tag if it wasn’t preinstalled on your computer. If you’re looking for a top-notch word processing software that is absolutely free, don’t look any further than Google Docs.
Google Docs is Google’s answer to a web based documents system. To use the software all you have to do is have a Gmail account or go to http://docs.Google.com and register for a Google account. It’s absolutely free. In addition to word processing, you can create spreadsheets, forms, and presentations.
Once at the Google Docs website the rest is easy.
Step #1
Click on the Create button in the upper left hand corner.
Step #2
Choose the type of document you want to create. If you’re familiar with Excel, MS Word, and PowerPoint, these document types will look and feel familiar.
Step #3
Once you’ve made your document choice a new document will open. If you have chosen to create word processing document you’ll see the same type of toolbar at the top of the page. You can format your content the same way you would a Word document. You can choose your font type, size, and formatting. You can justify the page right or left, highlight, list items, and include text links.
Step #4
After you have created your document, the final step is to save it and here’s one of the ways where utilizing Google documents really pays off. You’ll save your document as a Google document. It won’t really ask you how you want to save your document. And it will store the document in a main folder or you can create sub folders, this allows you to label and organize them how you see fit. Whenever you sign into your Google or Gmail account you will have access to all of your Google documents.
Step #5
If you want to export the document and store it on your desktop or hard drive all you have to do is click on the file menu and choose “download as” from the pop up list. There you will see that you have the option to download the document as HTML, Open Office, Text, Word, RTF or PDF. That means if you’re sending the document to someone who uses MS Word, you can download it as a word doc and send it to them quickly and easily.
Step #6
Here’s the final reason Google documents is a great resource, you can share your documents by simply clicking the word “Share” in the upper right hand of the document toolbar. There you will see you have a number of options including sending a link to the document to a person, emailing the documents to a person or persons, inviting people to view the document or publishing as a web page. This makes collaboration very simplistic.
Google documents is one resource that makes creating, editing and sharing documents quick and easy and perhaps best of all, it’s extremely user friendly and it’s free.
Make Your Business Easier With Keyword Research Tools
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Conducting keyword research is likely to make up a large part of your online activities. You’ll need to know what keyword you’re targeting for every blog post, article, squeeze page, and sales page you write. You need keywords for anchor text, blog commenting, and domain names. Finding them is easy but keeping track of them can be a little daunting. That’s where keyword research tools can help make your business easier.
Google’s free keyword research tool is perfect for discovering new keywords you might not have considered, comparing the viability of hundreds of keywords at a time, and judging the commercial intent of your chosen keywords. What it lacks, however, is tracking.
For example, once you’ve chosen your keyword, written your blog post, and done some backlinking to help it rank better in the SERPs, you may want to keep track of how you’re post is performing. That’s where paid tools like Market Samurai can help.
Market Samurai allows you to enter your URL and keywords, and will tell you where your site ranks for each keyword you choose. It also keeps track of this data so you can watch trends and make sure your efforts are working. Finding your site’s rankings can also be accomplished via free tools like SEO Book’s Rank Checker, or simply by searching yourself, though that will take more time than simply tracking it via a paid tool.
Another important component of the Market Samurai tool is the ability to see a visual representation of the competition for any given keyword. Using a complex algorithm, Market Samurai evaluates the top-ten websites for your chosen keyword and produces a color-coded chart that allows you to see at a glance whether you will have an easy time ranking for that word, or if you’ll need a PhD in SEO to land on the first page of the SERPs (SERPs = Search Engine Results Pages).
For business owners, it’s probably best to use free tools to manually discover keywords and track your site’s performance. Doing so will ensure you have a good understanding of the theory behind the paid tools, and will help keep you from becoming overwhelmed with all the information available to you. Once you have a thorough understanding of keywords, how they’re used, and what actions on your part have an effect on your site’s rankings, using a paid tool like Market Samurai can greatly increase the speed of being found on Google and make your business easier.
How To Do Keyword Research
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Keyword Research
In all of Internet marketing, one bit of advice is repeated again and again – do your keyword research. But to a solopreneur, an adventure into the mystical land of keywords often ends in confusion and frustration. Fortunately, learning how to do keyword research is quite easy.
First, understand what keywords are. Simply put, a keyword (or key phrase) is the term an Internet user types into their search engine of choice when they’re looking for the answer to a question. If they want to know how to create a Powerpoint Presentation, they might type in “Powerpoint Presentation” or “how to create a PowerPoint Presentation” or “creating Powerpoint Presentations.” These are all keywords.
Next, you need to find out which is the best keyword for your purpose. This can depend on a lot of factors, but most commonly you’ll want to know how many people, on average, search for that exact term. Optimizing your page for the term “bad Powerpoint Presentations” won’t earn you a bit of traffic if no one ever searches for that term.
There are a variety of tools available for conducting keyword research in prices ranging from free to several hundred dollars per month. While the paid tools are able to do many fancy calculations like analyzing your potential competition and discovering the number of backlinks your page has, the free tools are more than adequate for initial keyword research. One of the most popular is Google’s own keyword research tool, which you can find here: www.adwords.google.com/keywordtool
To begin your keyword research, simply type your basic keyword into the box marked word or phrase, enter the captcha code (the anti-spam code), and click search. Google will present you with a list of words and phrases related to your chosen keyword. Clicking on the various headings will sort your list accordingly. If you want to find the keywords with the highest number of searches locally (local in this case is your country), click “Local Monthly Searches” and the list will sort itself.
For basic keyword research, you can ignore the column labeled “competition” as that is relevant only when choosing keywords for an Adwords campaign. It has nothing to do with keyword competition. You should, however, change your search preference from “broad” to “exact” in the left column. In a later post I’ll explain the difference, but for now just be aware that exact match means what it says, while broad match can be quite misleading.
Learning how to do keyword research is important for everyone who has a presence on the Internet, but it doesn’t have to be complicated or cumbersome. In most cases, simple keyword research using free tools is adequate.
Making Your Website Tablet Ready
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Tablet sales are sweeping the country. Best Buy has confirmed that since the iPad came out, laptop PC sales have dropped by over 40%. Over 15 million iPads have already been sold, with many more to come in the future. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, getting your website tablet ready is now a necessity.
Here’s how to get your website tablet ready.
Make Your Buttons Larger
Buttons that are easy to click can be very hard to press on with a finger. Remember that a mouse pointer is only a few pixels wide, but someone who needs to click on something with their finger is often much less precise.
Small buttons are frustrating for tablet users. Enlarge the buttons on your site so it’s easier for tablet users to use.
Use CSS to Make Your Width Fluid
Rather than using a fixed width, which looks very strange on the tablet, go for a fluid width CSS layout.
This allows the CSS to adapt the page width to whatever device is displaying it. If it’s on a large screen laptop PC, it’ll expand its width. If it’s on the small width iPad, the CSS will shrink the width down without distorting the website.
On WordPress? Get the OnSwipe Plug-In
If your site is hosted on WordPress, then get the OnSwipe plug-in to make your site tablet friendly.
OnSwipe is a plug-in already used by 18 million blogs, with integration features that make it easy for tablet users to view and use the website.
Cut the Flash
Unfortunately, Apple has decided not to support Flash on both iPads and iPhones. If you have a flash-based website or a website that has Flash incorporated in it, chances are your website won’t display properly on the tablet.
Flash has traditionally been quite a slow media and has had other disadvantages as well, such as not being able to be spidered by search engines. If you want to be tablet friendly, now might be the time to cut the Flash from your site.
Test It!
Finally, get an iPad and test out your new website version. What’s the user experience like? What do you like and what do you find frustrating?
Make any changes you need to make, then have a few friends and associates test it out on the iPad as well. Continue this process of refinement until you’re happy with your new, tablet-friendly website.
