Google Plus Widget for WordPress

02/04/2012 By Angela Leave a Comment

Easy Google Plus Widget for Your WordPress Site

I was thrilled not so long ago when I found a nice plugin that quickly created a great Google Plus Widget for my WordPress blog. That excitement was quickly replaced by disappointment when I found that plugin was no longer working. I set out looking for another solution and found one I actually like better than my original Google Plus widget. I like this widget because you can select the colors and the width so it fits really well with the layout of your WordPress blog.

Follow these quick instructions to get your Google Plus Widget

The site you are going to want to head to is called Widgetsplus.com. Simple enough to remember and it is easy to use and install. You can get fancy with it and customize colors to match your site or keep it simple and just add a few pieces of information. Here is what you will see when you first come to the site.

Your first step will be to select the button on the upper left that says, “get widget.” Now it is simply a matter of walking through each tab and setting your preferences. The tab you see below is the basic tab and where you will enter your Google+ id, the width you want the widget to be, your language, font and whether you want the widget to have your Google+ updates or not.

If you don’t know how to find your Google+ id to add to your Google Plus Widget you simply need to go to your Google+ profile and in the browser bar will be the numbers that make up your profile. You simply need to copy that long string of numbers and paste them where it asks for your Google+ id.

The second tab is where you will set color preferences for your Google Plus widget. You can keep them as is or you can grab your specific WordPress colors and make this widget really customized to your blogs look and feel.

This next tab is where you can choose to have a title on the widget, how you want to label that title, title color and you can choose to have the Google+ logo or not by using the check box.

The next option is for your name color and size.

Now you get to choose the size and preferences for your, “add to circles” button. You can get custom here to by changing up the color to match your site.

Last step on the widget site is selecting the size and text color for the button and then you are set to finish and get this installed on your WordPress blog.

When you have gone through all the steps you simple click, “get code” and it will create the code with your settings and preferences to use on your WordPress site.

After you have selected get code this is what your code will look like. Select all this code, copy it and head to your WordPress dashboard.

On your WordPress Dashboard go to your Widgets tab which should be under Appearance.

You are going to choose a Text Widget and simply drag the whole text widget over to your primary sidebar or which ever sidebar you want the google+ widget on.

Last step is to copy the code you got from the Google Plus Widget site into this text widget and make sure to save it.

Once you have it saved go to your home page and make sure you like the look of it. If for some reason you are not happy with how it came out it is simple to tweak and change. Here is what my Google Plus Widget looks like.

If you are looking for a good Google Plus Widget this is the one I recommend. There are others out there but many of the other ones I have seen do not allow you to get this customized.

Filed Under: Google + Tagged With: Google Plus Widget

What I Used That Increased Blog Traffic by Over 1000% Overnight

01/27/2012 By Angela Leave a Comment

Easy way I Increased Blog Traffic Overnight

There is a website that is quickly gaining popularity and becoming an obsession for a lot of people. This site has proved to me that not only can I have a fun with it but I was able to use and literally increases blog traffic to one of my blogs overnight. Take a look at the screen shots below and you can clearly see when I started using this strategy and how it exploded my blog traffic overnight. As you can imagine with a spike in traffic I also had a dramatic rise in my opt-ins. So check out what I did because you can easily do this too!

To make this effective and continue to drive traffic you need to be consistent. It is something that I have added to my daily things to do because the little effort to do it pays off well.

What I Used That Increased Blog Traffic

The site I used to bring an influx of traffic to my site is Pinterest. I am guessing you have heard of it and maybe are already using it. It is now one of the top ten social media sites. The site is growing at a rapid pace and it can be a great way to get traffic to your blog and be a nice way to expand your brand. I have to admit the site is better for some niches than others to drive traffic because right now the demographic is more females and the most popular things I see on the site are food and recipes, home decorating, organization, crafts and fitness. That being said I think there are ways you can be creative with the site in almost any niche and get traffic.

Tips for using Pinterest

Since Pinterest is a social media site just like any other social media site you want to be cool, have fun, be yourself, share helpful and interesting things, give value and be social.

1. Keep it clean. Create clean boards that are organized and easy to follow. Nice photos seem to draw attention and get repinned, liked or commented on. What I found to get me the most traffic was to pin eye catching photos that were paired up with helpful advice. I increased blog traffic by using helpful pins that then linked people back to my blog.

2. Be creative. Have some fun with it and create fun and interesting boards. When you have fun and share interesting things people are drawn to you.

3. Don’t only promote products. Let’s just say for example you sell clothes on your website. Don’t only show clothes. You could create boards with helpful tips on dressing for your body shape, fashion news, how to pair clothes with accessories, etc. I increased blog traffic for my health and wellness blog by creating fitness boards, helpful tips for working out each area of the body, healthy snacks, fitness tips, etc.

4. Connect your other social media with Pinterest. A great way to get more people to your Pinterest page is to connect it with your other social media sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter and your blog. The new Facebook Timeline has an app where you can share your pins. After each pin you can also share it on Twitter and Facebook.

If you are a blogger or own a website and want increased blog traffic this is a site to add to your social media arsenal.

Follow my personal Pinterest page

Follow my health and wellness pinterest page

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: increased blog traffic

Network Marketing and Twitter

01/19/2012 By Angela 1 Comment

Tips for Network Marketing and Twitter

“Start from wherever you are, and with whatever you’ve got” – Jim Rohn.

Building a large network marketing team and a large Twitter following are two rather similar pursuits. You have to build a large group of people who find you worth following. That is how you define popularity on Twitter and how you define success in network marketing, and interestingly popularity on Twitter can lead to success in network marketing!

As recruiting is all about reaching more of the right kind of person, and as Twitter now boasts millions of members, it is no longer something you can put off or ignore. Twitter is incredibly popular, the growth rate is exponential, and it’s here to stay.

The same principles apply to both network marketing and twitter success. You have to be someone worth following. You have to be an attractive personality. You have to have good tips and advice. Be both interested and interesting, and don’t just be “all about the business”. Just like in normal life, always taking about your business is boring and selfish. You’ve got to be more than your business opportunity – just be yourself!

There are thousands and thousands of your ideal prospects on Twitter, and you can reach them all. Just follow the simple advice in this article and you’ll be well on your way to regular online recruiting, with just 5 minutes ‘tweeting’ per day!

Growing in Network Marketing and Twitter by finding the right people-

1. search.twitter.com :: Twitter has their own search engine for finding the latest ‘Tweets’ on whatever keyword you type in. The Twitter search engine is great if you want to see what people are saying RIGHT NOW about a particular topic. Just type in Network Marketing or debt or hate my boss or hate my job, or anything related to your business, and see who wrote what in the last few seconds. This tool is excellent for finding people perfect for your business right when they are in a mood to do something about it.

2. The Followers of Big Names In Your Niche :: One of the great things about Twitter’s simplicity is the ease at which you can see who is following who, and how popular someone is. This means you can find a very popular person who reaches your target market (be it Mike Dillard for your recruiting, or a “health nut” for selling your products, etc) and effectively “steal” their followers! You simply click to see who is following them (i.e. who finds them interesting) and add them one by one. You can build your own audience by cleverly finding relevant people using search.twitter.com and following their followers using this method. This is a very simple method for network marketing and twitter success!

3. Google :: You can’t possibly talk about searching online without mentioning Google, the King of Search. Google is very focused on indexing Twitter in its database, with Google monitoring so much of the site on a regular basis that your posts show up in the Google index often within a matter of hours. Using Google to find people on Twitter is slightly different than using search.twitter.com because Google won’t just show you the most recent results. Google will show you what it thinks are the most important mentions of your keyword or phrase on the whole of Twitter. You can search just twitter.com using Google by entering in your search term like this – site:twitter.com keywords

4. Let Them Find You :: It is very important you present yourself in a way that makes others want to know more about you. Use relevant keywords in your posts to show up in the Twitter search results, but don’t forget that your audience is not search robots. You need to be attractive to the people you are trying to attract. You want them to see your profile and think that you look interesting! Attracting people to you is a very powerful method both in network marketing and Twitter.

Twitter is an excellent social networking tool, and by applying these simple tips you can turn it into an excellent recruiting tool.

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Filed Under: Twitter Tagged With: network marketing and twitter

How to Get Blog Traffic with Tribes

12/22/2011 By Angela 2 Comments

Get Blog Traffic with Tribes

Tribes are one of my favorite ways to get blog traffic. If you don’t know what Tribes are they are communities of people who work in cooperation to help each other out by sharing each others blog content. Each tribe operates differently but they are all are built around the concept of a community of people helping each other achieve success.

A tribe can help you get blog traffic and quite literally breathe new life into your blog. You should be building not only a viable business, but a community – one that supports and cares for each other. If you’re just out to make a buck, don’t be surprised if no one leaps to defend you or lend you a helping hand when things are tough.

When you use some of the old popular blog marketing strategies to get blog traffic you can get “slapped” by Google, you could get your PayPal account frozen, you could get hacked, robbed, or plagiarized. It happens.

Why use a tribe to get blog traffic

When you join a tribe, you’ll have a whole community on your side. But one thing to remember: The people who do the best in a tribe are the people who create friendships, give without expecting getting in return and are not doing it only for their own reward. A tribe is a great way to build great relationships and you get out of those relationships what you put into them.

The benefits of a tribe are meeting other bloggers and networking, syndicating and learning from tons of great content and having your content syndicated by others. Syndication is powerful because your content can reach a much larger audience than you would reach on your own and that will help you get blog traffic.

There are 2 tribes I use and highly recommend. Tribe TSA and TribePro. Both of these tribes are unique and have different advantages. If you are looking to join a tribe you might find one to suit your needs better so be sure to check them out. One thing is for certain though, they both will help you get blog traffic.

P.S. Want to learn even more about tribes and how they will help you get blog traffic? Watch this free recorded webinar that explains the power of tribes in detail.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: blog, Blogging, get blog traffic

Amazing Tool for a Highly Branded Twitter Page

12/05/2011 By Angela 4 Comments

An Amazing Tool to Create a Branded Twitter Page

If you are a Twitter lover like me I would be willing to bet you are looking for tools to help you share your brand and business and get more engaged Twitter followers. I just discovered this amazing tool to create a highly branded Twitter page that helps share who you are and what you Tweet about at a glance. The site is called Twylah and if you use Twitter frequently I highly recommend it!

How to get your Branded Twitter Page

It is simple and easy to get your branded Twitter page with Twylah. All you do is simply go to the homepage, select “request an invite” enter your e-mail and Twitter information. Now you simply wait and once your invite has been approved they will put together your Twylah for you. This is one cool tool because you don’t have to take the time to do it yourself, you don’t need to have the technical know how and you get a nice looking page that gives people a clear picture of what you are all about.

The awesome features of having your own branded Twitter page

When you set up your Twylah page not only do you get a nice looking page to share your tweets you will find some amazing benefits as well. Here are some of the reasons why you are going to love this!

You can easily share your page on your favorite social media sites like you would with your own website.
Manage what topics people see on your page. Pin important topics at the top or remove topics you don’t want people to see.
Gives you more exposure on the search engines. Twylah creates your Branded Twitter page so that each topic has it’s own landing page
Let’s you create power Tweets. A power Tweet essentially creates a landing page on your Twylah with your related topics that you Tweet about.
You can even own your tweets by putting your Twylah on your domain. This is mine for example-http://twitter.angelapaige.com

This is one sweet little Twitter tool to add to your arsenal. If you use Twitter to build your business or brand this is a free tool I would not miss! You can check out my Twylah page here to see what my page looks like.

Want some great Twitter training to go along with your new Twylah page? Check out this free recorded webinar, sharing the things you can do on Twitter to get 5-10 leads a day for your business. Grab it here.

Filed Under: Twitter Tagged With: Twitter, twitter page

How to Install a Custom Landing Page on Facebook Pages for Free

11/30/2011 By Angela Leave a Comment

Create and Install an Iframe for Facebook Pages

About a year ago I created a tutorial on how to create landing pages for a Facebook fan page. We all know how fast things change on Facebook and that video and training is now outdated. Since the time I made that training Facebook made the switch to Iframes.

I think you will find this very helpful because it is very simple to do. I looked into all different solutions for landing pages and quite frankly it made my head hurt. There were lots of choices but some options seemed like you needed to be a computer wiz to make it work and there were some solutions that were too expensive. I knew there had to be a way to do something similar for free. I found this was an easy and free solution to create a nice looking landing tab.

Take a look at the video, I think you will be impressed with how simple this is.

Here is the link to the free html editor I talk about in the video-http://www.coffeecup.com/free-editor/. If you have questions about this contact me and I would be happy to help you.

If you really want to leverage your Facebook Fan page, get leads, get fans and get paid don’t miss this free recorded webinar.

Filed Under: Facebook Tagged With: Custom Facebook Page, Facebook Iframe, Facebook Landing Page, Iframe

Why to Start a Blog if You Own a Business

11/20/2011 By Angela 1 Comment

Reasons Why You Should Start a Blog if You Own a Business

The reason to start a blog is that a blog indispensable for most business owners: it will help you bring in an exceptional amount of traffic, brand yourself as an expert and build trust with your customers, give you a place to give more value, gain more customers, and earn additional income.

When you start a blog you have a great way to communicate with customers

When you start a blog for your business it creates a place to have conversations with customers, it allows you to share your brand, answer questions, and provide value. It gives your customers a place to be heard and a way for you to build relationships with your customers.

Letting readers and customers comment on your blogs allows you to get feedback and input on your blog and this type of interaction tends to create a sense of community amongst users. Having a blog with a sense of community translates into loyalty, and loyalty means increased sales.

When you start a blog it lets you showcase your brand

A blog gives you more transparency, honesty, and accountability, and your customers will respond to that. It gives you a venue to to give customers a genuine look at who you are. A blog allows you to humanize your business by sharing stories and showing some of your style and personality.

When you start a blog you can drive a lot of traffic

A blog happens to be one of the best ways to drive up your SEO ranking, which means increased traffic to your site. Google loves blogs because they are very different from a static website where the content rarely changes. Blogs are very dynamic, always changing and provide fresh content. Google also loves the relevant incoming and outgoing links on blogs.

If you are going to start a blog I highly recommend using a self hosted WordPress blog because it allows you create a highly customized blog and gives you total control over your content. If you feel you are not technically inclined you can have a Wordpress blog set up for you.

In short, when you start a blog for your business it means increased traffic, more customers, more feedback from the market, increased value to customers, and ultimately more money.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: blog, business blogging, start a blog for business, why to start a blog

Why it is So Stinking Easy to Stand Out on Twitter

10/27/2011 By Angela 3 Comments

Simple Ways to Stand Out on Twitter

Whether you are a Twitter lover or hater one thing is for sure, this is one social network where it is easy to stand out. The reason that it is so easy to stand out is there is a lot of spam and noise on Twitter. There are people who are there to only talk and not listen but I don’t think that is the way to make your name known on Twitter. Unless you are some guru or someone famous it is very hard to stand out without interacting on Twitter. If you are on Twitter just to use it as a big megaphone to push your products or an advertising platform I think you are missing a big opportunity. Here are some easy ways you can avoid being part of the noise and stand out with your Twitter page.

Stand out on Twitter with your Direct Message

I would say that 90% of the direct messages I get on Twitter send me directly to a sales link, a lead capture page or a website. I will tell you that 99.9% of the time I will not go to that page or website. If I don’t know you and the first interaction we have is you trying to send me somewhere to buy something it is just like all the other spam and noise on Twitter and I completely overlook you. I have no clue as to whether I can trust you or your link when we have had no interaction. Now if in your direct message you send me something that starts a conversation like a question or a personal note you easily stand out to me and I will interact with you. If we chat a couple times and start building a connection I am likely to either find out what you are all about and visit your page on my own or very likely to check out something you send me in the future.

Stand Out on Twitter with Your Tweets and Retweets

Similar to direct messages if all you are posting is links to sales pages or websites it is hard to stand out. How on earth can you stand out and grab attention if all your doing is what so many other people are doing? I think links are fine interspersed with your Tweets but I would not make it the majority of the Tweets you send out. To stand out on Twitter here are some things I think make good tweets. I think sharing short, helpful tweets in your niche is perfect. Short tweets are easiest for people to retweet so they don’t have to edit it down to share it. Ask some questions or talk about current events to engage people. Look for people sharing good Tweets in your niche and both retweet them and interact with them. I know people retweeting and having a conversation with me makes me stand up and pay attention to them.

While there are millions of people on Twitter and lots of noise it really is not that hard to stand out from the crowd. It really is so stinking easy to stand out on Twitter by becoming someone who listens and interacts with people.

If you are are using Twitter to build a business you can grab a great free training on how to use Twitter to get leads here.

Filed Under: Twitter Tagged With: Stand Out on Twitter, Twitter

3 Reasons You Need to Use Video In Your Marketing

08/06/2011 By Angela 3 Comments

3 Reasons You Need to Use Video In Your Marketing

Using video in your marketing is something you want to be integrating as a part of your plan. It is getting too big to ignore and you can’t deny the results. I want to share 3 reasons I think video needs to be integrated into your marketing plan.

Video allows for a much better, deeper connection than you can get through just text or photos. Text and photos have their place but video allows you to connect on a whole different level. Video is just a more effective form of communication. I can’t tell you how many times I get comments on my video e-mails or people watching them over and over. While I love text e-mails I don’t get people reading them again and again.

Video helps you build your brand. Video helps you engage, share who you are and build trust and rapport with your customers. People buy from people they like, know and trust and nothing compares to the power of video when it comes to relationship building and engagement. Even big companies are starting to realize how valuable this is and implementing it into their marketing. Video marketing allows your customers a more intimate interaction with you, making them feel like they know you and helps relieve some of their buying anxiety.

You can’t ignore the statistics on how powerful video is. Just look around the internet and you will see stats everywhere about the use of video. One of the most telling in my mind is the stat from Cisco saying that video currently accounts for 30% of internet traffic but by 2013 it will account for 90% of internet traffic. Another site I ran across lately called Invodo has a whole page of impressive statistics of video, you can check it out here.

I have been using video e-mail lately as a way to connect with family, new customers and people on social media and love the responses I am getting to it. I love the company I use because they offer Free Video e-mail and extremely affordable video conferencing. I know there are lots of companies out there that offer these same services and they are wonderful as well but I have not seen any other company offering free video e-mail.

If you are not already using videos or video e-mails I highly suggest you think about integrating it into your plan. Take sometime to do your research and see what works for you and your business. You won’t regret it!