TaraZiegmont.com

Weekend Links

2012-10-07T21:53:47Z

I came across a few blog posts in my work today that I thought were worth sharing.

Be Happier in Business and Life: 10 Things To Stop Doing Right Now at Time Business
10 Words Every Successful Blogger Should Know at Problogger
8 Ways New Inexperienced Freelance Writers Can Get Clients at YoungPrePro (hint: one of them is to write a blog)
How I Repeatedly Get High Paying Freelance Writing Clients Without Sending a Single Pitch at The Renegade Writer (hint: one of the tips is to write a blog)
Small Business Checklist for Bloggers at Savvy Blogging

What good posts have you read this week?

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Making Money as a Virtual Assistant

2012-10-04T23:34:41Z

So you want to make real money working from home, right?

There’s a big leap between wanting to make money from home and actually doing it. You need readers or advertisers or clients or customers. You need a plan.

One of the myriad of ways you can do well in the online space is as a virtual assistant or VA. It’s a job that plays into our collective skills as bloggers.

I have a VA, Lisa Morosky. I love her. I recommend her. If you need a VA, you should hire her.

Because she’s awesome.

Lisa built a home business into an enterprise with employees. Then Lisa scaled back her business to spend more time living her life. She’s done it all, and she’s kept her focus on what’s most important – her family.

That’s why I do this. I want to help you make money while keeping your focus on what’s important.

If you want to build a business, you should read Lisa’s book, The Bootstrap VA.

The Bootstrap VA is great for anyone who wants to build a home business. Lisa gives sound advice that will help you identify an ideal customer (where have you heard that before?), build a business plan, and find the right clients.

Later in the book, she deals with issues specific to being a VA. If you’re thinking about taking the plunge, seeking clients, or approaching bloggers to help with their never-ending inboxes, you need to read The Bootstrap VA.

Lisa has graciously allowed me to print an excerpt from The Bootstrap VA, dealing with identifying your ideal customer.

From The Bootstrap VA:

This chapter is probably the most important chapter in the entire eBook. If it wouldn’t be totally obnoxious, I’d capitalize, bold, and italicize every single word. Creating a roadmap now will save you many navigational errors later. Start your business off on the right foot with an organized, thought-out business plan.

If the term “business plan” scares you a little bit (and brings to mind images of businessmen, lawyers, and bank executives in suits in a conference room mulling over a PowerPoint presentation) – don’t worry. We’re bootstrapping, remember? This is a small business you’re creating, and your business plan will reflect that. This is just a way for you to organize your thoughts, get on track, and create some accountability for yourself. No businessmen, lawyers, bank executives, suits, conference rooms, or PowerPoint presentations needed. But a piece of paper and a pen would be handy.

Last thing I want to note before we jump into it is this – don’t forget that what you’re creating here is a lifestyle business. No one I know became a virtual assistant without some significant lifestyle motivators. Perhaps you want to be at home with your kids. Or maybe you want the freedom of working the hours you choose so you can travel. Or maybe, like me, you just want to own a little bit more of your life. Whatever your lifestyle motivators are, make sure to incorporate them into your business plan. Create a business that complements your life and your goals, not one you eventually become a slave to.

So let’s get started on creating your business plan. All of the headings below should be part of your business plan as a whole.

Your Ideal Client

Your business plan needs to start with mapping out your ideal client. By “ideal client” I mean the type of person you’re creating this virtual assistant business to cater to. This is step one in your business plan because, quite literally, every single thing you do in your business – the market you choose, your branding, the services you offer, your rates, your marketing, etc – needs to be done with this person in mind.

Your business should be centered around wooing one specific type of client. This goes much deeper than just saying, for example, “lawyers are my ideal client”. When considering who your ideal client is, ask yourself the following questions in order to get a detailed persona.

Is this person male or female?
How old is this person?
What’s the marital status of this person?
Does this person have a family?
What does this person look like?
Where is this person located?
Where does this person work (at home, in an office, at a large company, etc)?
How educated is this person?
What does this person do for a living?
How much does this person make per year?
What are this person’s likes and dislikes?
What is this person afraid of?
What are the struggles this person deals with on a daily basis?
What’s important to this person?
What is this person’s personality like?
What makes this person happy?
What are this person’s strengths and weaknesses?
Where does this person hang out online and offline?
What does this person need that I can offer?

Certainly there are more questions you could ask yourself about your ideal client, but those are a good start. Here are my answers to those questions at this point in time (so you have an example). This is my ideal client right now (I’m not saying that I don’t have clients who are different than this that I love, because I do, but going forward this is the type of client I’d like to take on).

Is this person male or female? Female.
How old is this person? She’s between the ages of 30 and 50.
What’s the marital status of this person? She’s married (or was once married).
Does this person have a family? Yes. She has kids that range in age from toddler to teenager.
What does this person look like? She’s stylish (yet modest). She ranges in size, eye color, and hair color (looks aren’t important to me for my ideal client).
Where is this person located? She’s located in the United States.
Where does this person work (at home, in an office, at a large company, etc)? She works from home out of a home office.
How educated is this person? She’s college educated.
What does this person do for a living? She’s partly a stay-at-home mom and partly a work-athome mom. She’s a blogger, a handmade business owner, and/or a unique online business owner.
How much does this person make per year? She makes a moderate five-figure income each year.
What are this person’s likes and dislikes? She likes social media, blogging, and using technology to connect with others and get more done. She likes sharing about her lifestyle and home. She doesn’t like wasting time (because she doesn’t have much to spare) and the pressure to keep on top of every new idea and technology.
What is this person afraid of? Not getting her to-do list done, having her priorities out of whack (e.g., spending too much time on work and not enough time with her family), and making a big technological mistake that will take forever to fix.
What are the struggles this person deals with on a daily basis? Being too busy, keeping up with all the latest and greatest things, managing her schedule, implementing her ideas, getting through her email, and making sure everything family-wise and business-wise gets done.
What’s important to this person? Family, making an income from her business, and keeping on top of everything.
What is this person’s personality like? She’s busy (maybe even frazzled). She’s not the most organized person. She’s kind and loyal. She’s open and always willing to learn.
What makes this person happy? Feeling like everything is under control and she’s able to spend more time with her family than on her business.
What are this person’s strengths and weaknesses? She’s personable, friendly, has a great business sense, and she perseveres. She’s unorganized and a little bit “everywhere”.
Where does this person hang out online and offline? She’s all about connecting with others on her own platform, and on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. Offline she’s involved in local networking groups, her church, her children’s schools, and at an occasional conference she attends.
What does this person need that I can offer? She needs someone who knows her type of business to step along side her and take some of the regular tasks off her plate. She needs help with implementing her great ideas. She needs help organizing her business and creating systems. She needs a blog and business helper she can trust to get things done without a lot of direction or micromanaging.

That’s how detailed you should be in creating your ideal client profile. When I read my answers there, I can actually put faces to that description. When this is defined well, making decisions on services and how to market yourself is easy. Even making the decision on what to call yourself is easier decided when you have your ideal client profile completed (I’m a “blog helper” because that term means more to my ideal client than “virtual assistant” – maybe you’re a “personal assistant”, “marketing assistant”, or another term you come up with that matches your ideal client’s expectations).

I urge you to take some time and sketch this out. And when you’re done, stick your ideal client profile on the wall where you work as a reminder to keep focused. When taking on new clients, make sure to ask yourself if this person matches up with your ideal client profile and if their work will help your business and move you forward, or send you in a totally different direction you don’t want to head in.

And don’t forget – your ideal client can change over time. Mine certainly has. Whenever you’re considering a business shift, go back to this profile and reevaluate how you’re doing things. Are you still appealing to the same person? Do you even want to appeal to the same person (if not, then it’s time for a new profile to be made and to shift your business to fit that new ideal client)?

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17 Must-Have Plugins for WordPress

2012-10-04T23:32:53Z

Whether you’re setting up a new WordPress blog, trying to move an old one to WordPress (rip off the band-aid!), or simply maximizing your existing WordPress blog, you’re going to need some plugins.

A plugin is a tool that changes the way WordPress works. With the right plugin, you can make WordPress do almost anything you can imagine (and more, if you’re a concrete thinker like me).

Be aware that plugins work by installing scripts on your site. A script is like a mini program, a set of instructions telling the computer to do what you want.

In almost all cases, this is really awesome.

In a few other cases, scripts can leave loopholes through which hackers can enter your site.

Do some research, and make sure the plugins you add to your site are reputable and free of nefarious material.

I currently use or have used all of these plugins, and I think they are really good. Still, use them at your own risk, and don’t blame me if you break something.

They’re in alphabetical order because I’m compulsive like that.

17 Must-Have Plugins for WordPress

Akismet. Akismet is absolutely positively necessary on any blog. It filters out spam comments (and you will have them, no matter how small you think your blog is), and it does it well. It isn’t perfect, so you should check your folder once a week or so for good comments marked as spam. (Akismet is included with Jetpack, below.)
And the Winner Is. If you do giveaways, this plugin rocks. You mark the post as a giveaway, then when the giveaway period is over, you go into the Contests dashboard, tell the plugin how many winners to pick, and it randomly selects them. It displays the winner’s name and email address, and you can confirm the winner (and keep a record of it in the plugin) or reject the winner (because they didn’t get back to you in time or for whatever reason) and choose another.
Article Templates. If you write series of posts with the same format, you will want to use this one. You can save templates, and with one click, the template populates and you can begin creating your unique post. Does that make sense? It’s just like using a template in Word.
Broken Link Checker. Broken links are bad for your readers’ experience, and they’re bad for SEO. You want to remove them from your site as soon as possible. This plugin identifies them and makes it easy to edit or unlink them in bulk. (Think you don’t have any broken links? What happens if a commenter’s site changes its URL structure? If she changes her Twitter name? I see a hundred or more broken links a month, and very few are from my own site.)
CommentLuv. I have a love-hate relationship with this plugin. It’s really nice. It adds “‘s latest post” with a link at the bottom of her comment. It encourages commenting because it rewards your readers with a link back to their site (albeit a nofollow link). The downside is that CommentLuv can never find my feed, no matter how many times I submit a work ticket. When it works, it’s great. Jenn from Rebel Chick uses this one, too.
Comment Reply Notifications. This plugin is brilliant. It emails commenters when their comments have a new reply on your site. You can customize the text of the reply, and it’s very simple. Annie from Mama Dweeb uses a plugin called Reply-Me for this same thing.
Copyrighted post. I like this because it puts this { © 2012, Tara Ziegmont. All rights reserved. } at the bottom of every one of my posts.
Easy Recipe. If you post recipes, a recipe plugin is essential. This one converts the recipe to Google’s recipe format, making it infinitely more searchable. It’s really easy to use, too.
Jetpack by WordPress.com. I’ve heard lots of mixed reviews of Jetpack, but I really like it. It includes Akismet. It does stats. It does spelling & grammar check. It does social sharing (which I’ve never used) and contact forms and gravatars and about twelve other things. Dresden from Creating Motherhood also recommends this one.
Lijit. I use Lijit for my site-wide search bar. It’s much more reliable than my old Google search bar. (Don’t ask me why. I know not.) They also serve ads, but from my personal experience, you don’t make much unless you have 50k page views a month or more.
Link Within or nRelate. You really should have some kind of related content plugin to help readers find similar posts on your site. I used to have Link Within. A friend convinced me to switch over to nRelate. So far, it’s related content isn’t all that related, but I haven’t switched back. It’s mostly laziness and lack of time, but there are some good reasons to chose nRelate (specifically that it doesn’t reroute your traffic through another location).
PhotoDropper. I haven’t personally used this one, but Tina from Girls Lunch Out recommended it to me. She’s written a great article explaining how and why you’d want to use it on her site.
Tweet old post. After you install this plugin and set it up, it Tweets out an old post every few hours. How cool is that? Remember, when you set it up, exclude giveaways and round-up posts. It gets great exposure to posts that would otherwise lie buried in the basement.
WordPress.com popular posts. I use this to create a list of my most popular posts from the last 7 days. The list displays in my sidebar. This plugin is relatively simple, but it shows what’s going on with your site, and readers like it.
Wp greet box. This plugin displays an annoying but effective box above my main content that says something to the effect of, “Hey Googler! I can see that you’re new here. Take a moment to subscribe and get daily updates from Feels Like Home!” and it has a link to the subscription form. There’s another plugin called What Would Seth Godin Do that does the same thing, but I’ve never used that one.
WP Touch. Have you ever viewed your site from a smartphone browser? If you don’t have a mobile plugin, it is probably not a pleasant experience. Every site needs a mobile version, and this plugin will give you a customizable one instantly.
WordPress SEO (often called Yoast) – Thesis has really good SEO information built in, but Yoast takes SEO a few steps further and replaces at least 3 other plugins. It provides a quick and easy place to enter the meta data for your site and for each individual post. That part couldn’t be easier (and there are at least 5 plugins that do exactly the same thing). Yoast is different because it shows you where you need to add your keyword or phrase to improve the SEO of the post. It also creates an SEO dashboard for your site that allows you to customize at least 100 different things to improve your SEO.
If Yoast’s options scare you, All in One SEO is really good and very simple, but you’ll also need something like Google XML Sitemaps at a minimum.

Okay. That’s it for my must-haves. I use more (and will share them soon), but these are the ones that I think make the biggest difference in how my site works.

What are your must-have plugins?

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Comments

By: Jo-Lynne {Musings of a Housewife} by Jo-Lynne {Musings of a Housewife} http://www.musingsofahousewife.com
By: Jamee @ A New Kind of Normal by Jamee @ A New Kind of Normal http://www.anewkindofnormal.com
By: Sam @ Sam's Noggin by Sam @ Sam's Noggin http://samsnoggin.com
By: Frances by Frances http://www.franstasticallyfran.com
Lijit adds a search bar. That's what I use on Feels Like Home. ... by Tara Ziegmont

12 Tips for Making the Most of Your BlogHer Experience

2012-10-04T23:34:53Z

In two days, I’ll be getting on a train to go to the biggest women’s blogging conference in the world, BlogHer. More than 4,500 women (and some men) will converge on New York City for a weekend of networking, learning, and parties.

I’ve been watching the conference hashtag on and off for two weeks. I have seen scads of women lament about already feeling lost in the crowd, about packing stress, and about general anxiety related to the conference.

I went to BlogHer in 2009 (in Chicago), and I skipped 2010 and 2011. I made a lot of mistakes that first time around, so let me share with you some lessons I learned:

Know yourself. BlogHer will be as stressful or as relaxed as you make it.If you spend your time running from one appointment to the next, from one party to the next, and from one luncheon to the next, you are going to get stressed out really quickly.
I know that I need a lot of downtime to recharge and feel like myself. If I don’t have that time, I will get edgy and be miserable. In 2009, I let my fear of missing out tread all over my need for personal quiet time, and my conference experience suffered for it. I’ll not make that mistake this time around.
Be comfortable. As my friend, Dawn (whom I met in Chicago because she saved me and my boatload of BlogHer swag in the airport), says, BlogHer is a business conference, not cheerleading tryouts.Don’t wear shoes for the first time at the conference. Don’t pinch and squeeze and force yourself into clothing that doesn’t fit because you think you should.
Should you look your best? Absolutely! But please do that without making yourself miserable.
Plan your wardrobe ahead of time. At the very least, plan outfits ahead of time. Put together the clothes with accessories and shoes.You’ll need daytime outfits for Thursday (unless you’re arriving late), Friday, Saturday, and maybe Sunday, and nighttime outfits for Thursday night, Friday night, and Saturday night. I like to assign outfits to dates and times, but you don’t have to be that rigid.
What you do want to avoid is taking a whole bunch of stuff and having to make decisions in your hotel room. Make them now and pack as lightly as possible.
Set some conference goals. Why are you spending hundreds of dollars to go to BlogHer? Surely it is not to bring home a few free jars of grape jam, right? You could buy those at the grocery store for much less than the conference is costing you.Do you want to make connections with brands at the expo?
Meet small businesses?
Make face to face connections with other bloggers?
See old friends?
Learn about something new?

Decide now. What do you want to get out of this conference?

If you don’t know what you want, how will your investment be worthwhile?
Make a list of must-meet people now, before you leave home. Make a list of people you really want to meet up with: bloggers, company reps, PR people, Twitter friends, whomever.Make a list, get their cell phone numbers so that you can text each other and be sure to connect. If you don’t, you will get home without having met most of the people on that list.
Make a schedule. Create a schedule now, before you begin to travel. Write it down or type it, and fold the paper to fit into the purse or tote you’ll be carrying at the conference.Include a lot of downtime, more than you think is necessary. You might use downtime to work on your blog, peruse Twitter, have a conversation with someone you met, or go take a nap. You will need it, though, so plan for it.
Give yourself enough flexibility to change your plans or ditch a party or spend extra time chatting, and don’t forget to leave a little time to explore New York City if you’ve never done that before.
Don’t try to do everything.You just can’t. In 2009, I tried to go to every single party that I’d been invited to. In one night, I went to five different parties.Guess what. I didn’t have fun at any of them. I spent the whole night watching the clock to be sure not to miss the next party, and I barely connected with anyone. It was silly.
Limit yourself and enjoy the events you choose.
Don’t forget about the expo hall. If you go to every session and every party, you will miss out on the expo hall.Hundreds of companies are there, waiting for a chance to talk to you.
If you have absolutely no interest in monetization or products, skip it. If you have any inclination that you might want to work with companies now or in the future, do yourself a favor and meet some in the expo hall.
Do forget about the parties you aren’t invited to.Another thing I’ve seen on Twitter over and over and over again is the “I wish I was invited to #bigbrand’s party. I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t go.”Please. I decided to go to BlogHer two weeks ago, and I wasn’t invited to anything.
Guess what! I’m totally okay with that.

There are official parties going on in the Hilton from dinnertime until the wee hours of the morning, Thursday night, Friday night, and Saturday night. You don’t need a ticket; you’ve already paid for your conference registration.

Go to the official parties. Enjoy yourself.
Do forget about the swag. It’s worth repeating. FORGET ABOUT THE SWAG.I say that as much for myself as for you. In Chicago, I came home with so much swag, I had trouble getting through the airport. I picked up every single item I could possibly get my hands on, and I was delighted to be coming home with so much free stuff.
The problem was that most of the free stuff was junk, and I didn’t need it. We donated or tossed a good portion of it.

Be very selective with the swag you accept, and please don’t be one of those people who hunts for it everywhere.

Having said that, do be prepared to come home with a lot of stuff.

It sounds like I just contradicted myself, but I didn’t. Still be selective, and don’t go looking for swag.

Even if you don’t, you are going to come home with a lot, so go with a suitcase half full or an empty tote bag or suitcase packed inside your luggage.
Get out of your comfort zone. Your comfort zone holds you hostage in a place where you can’t grow.You are going to feel a little uncomfortable at first, introducing yourself to total strangers. It’s a risk.
But if you aren’t willing to stick your hand out and introduce yourself and start conversations, you might as well stay home.

The only person who thinks you aren’t good enough or interesting enough or big enough is you, so get over that feeling and start talking to people.

BlogHer is all about networking, connecting with new people. You and your blog will be so much better for it.
Relax and enjoy your weekend.Don’t tell my husband, but a blogging conference is a lot like a girls’ weekend away.It’s time without the kids, without the stress of housecleaning and chauffeuring and every day life. It’s a lot of work, but it’s fun.
Plan on having a great time, plan out stretching yourself, and then go do it.