Men With Pens

APRIL 15, 2012

Let me tell you a story about what’s happening right now in Greece, my corner of the world, entrepreneurship-wise. The situation in Greece is quite bad at the moment. We keep hearing how it’s in ‘critical condition’ and ‘hanging from a thread’ If you’re an entrepreneur running your own business, the blows come one after the other: surging taxes, closing businesses, long periods of unemployment, spending on the decrease….

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Banking Consulting Freelance Social Media 73

ProBlogger

APRIL 2, 2012

As a blogger, I get pitched to a lot by companies and organizations asking me to endorse their products. The problem is I have limited or no experience with many of them, and to endorse them would feel like selling out. As a result, two years ago I created a list of things I would feel comfortable endorsing. It was a dream list of products that I would love to promote because I genuinely feel a love for them.

Social Media 55

Social Media Food Blogger Creativity 55

Men With Pens

APRIL 22, 2012

A lot of people have been telling me they wished they could register for the Damn Fine Words writing course. It’s launching May 7 for its 3rd edition, and people who write me say that if they could just get in on this course…. …they could finally start that online business, because they’d have the skills to write their web copy and blog for business. …they could improve their writing skills and pull in more clients and money, instead of making the meagre income they’

Writing 71

Writing Retail Consulting Copywriter 71

Men With Pens

APRIL 8, 2012

Do you ever wonder why so many ads, web pages and emails sound the same? And why is it that some copywriters get their content to sound so much better? Is there a secret copywriting conspiracy going on? Do they know something we don’t know? Yes. Yes, they do. And I’ll tell you what it is… right after I tell you a little story. Once upon a time, I wasn’t on the inside.

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Copywriter Copywriting Agency Copy 71

Speaker: Neal Boornazian, President and Nancy Harhut, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer - HBT Marketing

Direct mail has consistently remained a powerful tool in the marketer's arsenal, but in an age of digital dominance, its effectiveness hinges on the strategic integration of behavioral science. 💡 When you incorporate powerful behavioral science principles into your direct mail marketing strategies, you can prompt the hardwired decision-making shortcuts your audience relies on — and that automatically unlocks new avenues for engagement, conversion, and brand loyalty.

Engagement

Men With Pens

APRIL 25, 2012

You can’t really go anywhere online without hearing about Chris Guillebeau or his ultra-famous blog, the Art of Non-Conformity. He’s remarkably well known – and with good reason: Chris challenges conventional beliefs and helps his audience do the remarkable… on nearly zero budget. Chris puts his money where his mouth is: He’s visited 193 countries without ever having held a “real” job or earning a regular paycheck.

Writing 58

Writing Copywriter Copywriting Freelance 58

Men With Pens

APRIL 1, 2012

Freelancers tend to struggle with selling, to some extent. Some of us are better at it than others, and we know you folk by the fact that you’re making a healthy living and thumbing your nose at us as you drive by in your shiny new BMW… but I digress. If you’re anything like me, you’d love to just open your email and find a steady stream of “Can you do this for me?

Freelance Copywriting 57

Freelance Copywriting Freelance Consulting Banking 57

ProBlogger

APRIL 23, 2012

This guest post is by Neil Patel of Quick Sprout. Would you like to double, or even triple the number of fans you have on your Facebook business page? Are you looking to turn those fans into loyal and active fans? Your Facebook business page can die on the vine without a loyal and active following. But success will never come overnight. Instead it will require that you apply the marketing strategies you are about to read … plus a little bit of hustle.

Marketing 54

Marketing Medical Education Social Media 54

ProBlogger

APRIL 10, 2012

Last week I excitedly announced a competition to fly 10 ProBlogger readers into the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland. The response has been amazing. We’ve had hundreds of entries and there has been some great interest in the promotion. With just under a week to go to get your entries in I thought today I might whet your appetite a little by revealing the itinerary of the trip.

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Blogger Food Creativity Promotion 53

ProBlogger

APRIL 1, 2012

This guest post is by Eric Siu of Evergreen Search. WordPressers are always looking for helpful plugins for their blogs, and if you’ve been following today’s posts on ProBlogger, especially Install Your First WordPress Plugin , you’re probably in the same boat. So I thought I’d compile a list of the most popular to get you started.

Blog 48

Blog Blogging Editorial Agency 48

ProBlogger

APRIL 16, 2012

This guest post is by Joel Runyon of Impossible HQ. How do you stand out and differentiate yourself online when more and more people are starting blogs every day? Sure, you need to write stuff that’s gong to stand out, but a lot of blogging advice focuses just on writing. Sometimes to really stand out, you need to go beyond writing and create something different.

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Manufacturing Projects Social Media Audience 46

Speaker: Tim Buteyn, President of ThinkingKap Learning Solutions

💢 Do you find yourself stuck in never-ending review cycles? Are you wondering if your Subject Matter Expert actually got that last review request? Are you having trouble trying to decipher impractical or conflicting feedback? 💢 If any of these scenarios sounds familiar, you may benefit from a crash course on managing SME relationships!

Collaboration

ProBlogger

APRIL 25, 2012

Tomorrow is my birthday…. and it’s one of those ‘big ones’…. I’m turning 40! Life’s been so busy lately – with blogging, 3 kids, my photographic obsession and the other organisations I give time to – so I’ve not had a lot of time to ponder what being 40 years of age really means (or what shape my mid life crisis should take… I’m open to suggestions).

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Promotion Blog Blogging IT 45

ProBlogger

APRIL 7, 2012

This guest post is by Lisa Johnson of LisaJohnsonFitness.com. Social media has changed my life in a fundamental way that I never saw coming. My first innocent forays onto Twitter had not prepared me for the ride I was about to go on. Through social media I have started a new career, grown more close to my husband, been able to spend more time with my son, and still managed to help provide for my family.

Communication 45

Communication Social Media Media Advertising 45

ProBlogger

APRIL 8, 2012

If you read Lisa’s post on the Grace of Communication over the weekend, I hope you felt inspired. Her heartfelt post really spoke volumes, and not just about social media. As I read it, it reminded me of a question that I see asked often in the blogosphere: How can I make my blog more engaging? What’s “engaging”? If you’ve ever thought “I want my blog to be more engaging,” you probably had some idea in mind of what that means.

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Engagement Blog Blogging Communication 45

ProBlogger

APRIL 22, 2012

Over the next couple of days on ProBlogger, we’ll be taking a look at key marketing tactics bloggers are using on Twitter and Facebook. Since we covered Pinterest recently , I thought I’d explore Google+ today, and check out the approaches some of the A-list bloggers are using on this network. Tactic 1: Cross-promote a particular offering.

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Blog Blogging Social Media Promotion 44

Speaker: Jeff Tarran, COO, Gunderson Direct & Margaret Pepe, Executive Director of Product Management, U.S. Postal Service

Learn the secrets to direct mail success for growth marketers! Industry veterans Jeff Tarran and Margaret Pepe are here to delve into how direct mail has completely evolved in recent years, and has rightfully earned a seat at the table alongside the email and digital marketing plans of SMBs, enterprise companies, and agencies as they look into strategy for 2024 and beyond.

Marketing

ProBlogger

APRIL 17, 2012

This guest post is by Courtney Mroch of Haunt Jaunts. Statistics and their interpretation is often a popular topic on ProBlogger. One of my favorites about the subject was a guest post by Mark Seall called Who Cares How Many Subscribers You’ve Got? I loved the way he pointed out that some, if not most, of us will never reach 20,000 subscribers, based purely on the nature of our niches.

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Utilities Writer Projects Blogger 43

ProBlogger

APRIL 11, 2012

This guest post is by Kraig Stewardson of IT Manager HQ. My blog was failing. My subscribers were nonexistent. My posts were disjointed. My writing was awful. My confidence was shot. Honestly, I felt like giving up. I knew that I needed to make a change. I knew that I couldn’t continue this way. Sound familiar? That was me a little over month ago, before I took some drastic steps to turn things around.

Writing 43

Writing Blog Blogging Management 43

ProBlogger

APRIL 18, 2012

Once the heady days of new-blog success are over, many bloggers find themselves on a plateau. Readership has stalled, subscriptions seem to be maintaining momentum but not growing, and you’re having trouble squeezing more value out of your already-loyal customer base. What should you do? There are a number of ways to kick yourself off that plateau and move into a new phase of blog growth.

Blog 42

Blog Blogging Promotion Social Media 42

ProBlogger

APRIL 15, 2012

This guest post is by Joey of 100waystowellness.com. So you want to be a blogger? Or maybe you’re already an established authority in your niche, with a great following and a nicely designed website—congrats! Your contribution to the wonderful world of sharing knowledge and information is much appreciated. There is no doubt that the blogosphere is a giant place that’s loaded with some very awesome people, but let’s face it: us bloggers have a huge downfall, and very few of us actually realize wh

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Food Blog Blogging Blogger 41

Speaker: Akeel Jabber, B2B SaaS Investor and Growth Marketer at Horizen Capital

⭐ Are you ready to boost campaign success? Consider the untapped potential of integrating direct mail marketing seamlessly with digital marketing strategies. Combining the physical, tangible impact of direct mail with the dynamic reach of digital marketing can be a game-changer, significantly increasing your ROI when done right. Direct mail grabs attention, making it great for reaching your target audience 📩 Digital marketing keeps the momentum going, driving action 📲 So.

Digital Marketing

ProBlogger

APRIL 29, 2012

This guest post is by Kelly Crawford of Generation Cedar. The most important tool available to a blogger is his email subscriber list. It is the easiest and fastest way to increase sales. You probably already know that the readers who have voluntarily signed up to hear more of what you have to say are the ones who trust you the most, and the ones with whom it is easiest to keep building a relationship with.

Food 40

Food Advertising Sales Blogger 40

ProBlogger

APRIL 19, 2012

This guest post is by Josh Sarz of Sagoyism.com. I’m in love with blogging. If you’re like me, you marvel that you have your own website. It may not be huge for a lot of people who’ve been in the blogging biz for years, but it’s huge for me. My first few months of blogging flew by so fast, it seemed like only yesterday when I started writing online.

Freelance Copywriting 40

Freelance Copywriting Copywriter Copywriting Entertainment 40

ProBlogger

APRIL 14, 2012

This guest post is by Barb Sawyers of Sticky Communication. When I first started to write professionally, I hated people editing my work. To deal with these personal attacks, I would rant, cry, drink too much, and otherwise freak out. But one day I parked my ego long enough to realize that many of these editors were highly skilled. Others knew more about the subject or the organization’s perspective than I did.

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Construction Editorial Communication Education 40

ProBlogger

APRIL 27, 2012

In blogging, we often talk about the reader or the visitor, and what our audiences like (or don’t!). A lot of blanket statements are made around the ways we approach and connect with our audiences. But many of these ideas are little more than myth. Let’s look at four of the most common myths—and why you can safely ignore them. Myth #1. Readers don’t like to read.

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Entertainment Food Audience Writing Style 40

Speaker: Tim Buteyn

Let's set the scene: you’ve identified a critical performance gap in your organization and need to close that gap. A colleague suggests training, but you suspect there’s something going on that training can’t address. How can you determine if training is the right solution before you commit your budget and resources to a new training program? In this webinar, you will learn how to determine if training is the right solution using the Behavior Engineering Model.

Engineering

ProBlogger

APRIL 24, 2012

This guest post is by Kevin Muldoon of WordPress Mods. Google AdSense has been in the news a lot over the last month, for all the wrong reasons. Many top AdSense publishers such as Zac Johnson and Spencer Haws have had their accounts banned and their last month of earnings withheld. And Google won’t give a specific reason as to why any particular account—including either of these—has been banned.

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Publisher Publishing Publishing Advertising 40

ProBlogger

APRIL 23, 2012

This guest post is by Lior Levin. Twitter is one of the top three or four social media marketing tools today, with roughly 12% of online adults using Twitter according to this Pew Internet report. It’s easy to quickly share promotions and ideas on Twitter, and if they catch on, they can spread quickly, even crossing over to platforms such as Facebook or Pinterest in the process.

Marketing 40

Marketing Blog Blogging Social Media 40

ProBlogger

APRIL 25, 2012

This guest post is by Anshul Dayal of Nichsense Niche Marketing. Once upon a time, making money with affiliate marketing and AdSense was a question of following this step-by step recipe (circa 2009): Find a product to promote on Clickbank or other affiliate networks. Find a low-competition keyword. Register an exact or partial match domain. Write up a product review stuffed with keywords (which was of course always positive).

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Landing Page Keywords Engineering Sales 40

ProBlogger

APRIL 23, 2012

I’m really excited to announce that the ten winners of the Great Barrier Reef Competition that we’ve been running here on ProBlogger the last couple of weeks have been chosen. Over 800 entries were received. It was no easy task to shortlist them and choose the final winners because there were some amazing bloggers. As I looked through the entries I just kept saying to myself, “I’d love to have them on the trip!

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Blogger Publisher Publishing Publishing 39

Speaker: Tim Buteyn, President of ThinkingKap Learning Solutions

We’ve all been there. You’ve been given a pile of dry content and asked to create a compelling eLearning course. You’re determined to create something more engaging than the same old course that learners quickly click through, but how do you take this “boring” content and create something relevant and engaging? Many instructional designers will say, “Boring in means boring out.

Content

ProBlogger

APRIL 1, 2012

This guest post is by Karol K of ThemeFuse. WordPress is a platform that’s rather easy to use, for the most part. Publishing new posts is easy, creating new pages is easy, and moderating comments is—again—easy. And that’s great because, this way, the platform can be used by anybody. As Matt Hooper explained earlier today, in his post What Your Need to Know Before You Start a WordPress Blog , no web development or programming skills are required.

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Proofreader Social Media Copy Keywords 39

ProBlogger

APRIL 18, 2012

This guest post is by Amy Parmenter of ParmFarm.com. In the early stages of blogging, content is definitely king, but if you hope to be in it long-term, creativity must rule the day. It’s easy to think of new ideas when you’ve only been blogging a few months, but what will you write about next year? How will you offer new ideas—or the same ideas from a fresh perspective?

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Blog Blogging Creativity Finance 39

ProBlogger

APRIL 4, 2012

Recently at a parenting blogger conference here Melbourne, I was listening to a panel discussion on business models when Aussie blogger—Laney from Crash Test Mummy —made a statement that connected strongly with my own recent experience. I’m paraphrasing here, but Laney talked about how as bloggers we’re often on the receiving end of bad PR pitches from companies, and that we should learn from those bad pitches to make good ones ourselves.

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Collaboration Manufacturing Blog Blogging 39

ProBlogger

APRIL 16, 2012

Ten days ago I excitedly announced an amazing opportunity for ProBlogger readers to enter a competition to win one of ten trips to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. As I write this post, the deadline for entering this competition is less than 24 hours away, and those of you considering putting yourself in the running for this once-in-a-lifetime trip need to get your skates on!

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Blogger Blog Blogging Writing 39

Speaker: Chester Santos – Author, International Keynote Speaker, Executive Coach, Corporate Trainer, Memory Expert, U.S. Memory Champion

In October, scientists discovered that 75% of patients who experienced brain fog had a lower quality of life at work than those who did not. At best, brain fog makes you slower and less efficient. At worst, your performance and cognitive functions are impaired, resulting in memory, management, and task completion problems. In this entertaining and interactive presentation, Chester Santos, "The International Man of Memory," will assist you in developing life-changing skills that will greatly enha

Entertainment